Joint Press Release This is a joint press release by NN Group N.V. ('NN Group') and Delta Lloyd N.V. ('Delta Lloyd'), pursuant to the provisions of Section 4 Paragraph 3 of the Decree on Public Takeover Bids (Besluit Openbare Biedingen Wft) (the 'Decree') in connection with the recommended public offer by NN Group Bidco B.V., a direct wholly-owned subsidiary of NN Group (the 'Offeror'), for all the issued and outstanding ordinary shares in the capital of Delta Lloyd. This announcement does not constitute an offer, or any solicitation of any offer, to buy or subscribe for any securities. An offer is made only by means of the 'Offer Memorandum', dated 2 February 2017, and subject to the restrictions set forth therein. Terms not defined in this press release will have the meaning given thereto in the Offer Memorandum. This announcement is not for release, publication or distribution, in whole or in part, in or into, directly or indirectly, Canada or Japan or in any other jurisdiction in which such release, publication or distribution would be unlawful. Reference is made to the joint press release by NN Group and Delta Lloyd dated 2 February 2017 regarding the publication of the Offer Memorandum for the recommended public cash offer by the Offeror to all holders of issued and outstanding ordinary shares in the capital of Delta Lloyd (the 'Shares') to acquire their Shares at a price of EUR 5.40 (cum dividend) in cash for each Share (the 'Offer'). NN Group and Delta Lloyd jointly announce that NN Group has obtained declarations of no objection from the Dutch Central Bank (DNB), the National Bank of Belgium (NBB) and the European Central Bank (ECB) in connection with the Offer. In addition, NN Group has obtained competition clearance from the European Commission. Further announcements will follow after expiry of the Offer Period at 17:40 hours CET today. Announcements Any further announcements in relation to the Offer will be issued by press release and, to the extent required, made public in Belgium by means of a supplement to the Offer Memorandum, in accordance with Article 17 of the Belgian Law on public takeover bids of 1 April 2007. Any press release issued by NN Group will be made available on NN Group's website (www.nn-group.com) and any press release issued by Delta Lloyd will be made available on Delta Lloyd's website (www.deltalloyd.com). Subject to any applicable requirements of the applicable rules and without limiting the manner in which the Offeror may choose to make any public announcement, the Offeror will have no obligation to communicate any public announcement other than as described in the Offer Memorandum. Offer Memorandum, Position Statement and further information This announcement contains selected, condensed information regarding the Offer and does not replace the Offer Memorandum and/or the Position Statement. The information in this announcement is not complete and additional information is contained in the Offer Memorandum and the Position Statement dated 2 February 2017. Digital copies of the Offer Memorandum are available on the websites of Delta Lloyd (www.deltalloyd.com) and NN Group (www.nn-group.com). Copies of the Offer Memorandum are also available free of charge at the offices of Delta Lloyd and the Settlement Agent at the addresses mentioned below. A digital copy of the Position Statement is available on the website of Delta Lloyd (www.deltalloyd.com). Delta Lloyd Delta Lloyd N.V. Amstelplein 6 1096 BC Amsterdam The Netherlands Settlement Agent (ABN AMRO) Gustav Mahlerlaan 10 P.O. Box 283 1000 EA Amsterdam The Netherlands Other To the extent permissible under applicable law or regulation, NN Group or its brokers (acting as agents for NN Group) may from time to time after the date hereof, and other than pursuant to the Offer, directly or indirectly purchase, or arrange to purchase, ordinary shares in the capital of Delta Lloyd, that are the subject of the Offer. To the extent information about such purchases or arrangements to purchase is made public in the Netherlands, such information will be disclosed by means of a press release to inform shareholders of such information, which will be made available on the website of NN Group. In addition, financial advisors to NN Group may also engage in ordinary course trading activities in securities of Delta Lloyd, which may include purchases or arrangements to purchase such securities. Press enquiries NN Group Media Relations +31 70 513 1918 mediarelations@nn-group.com Investor enquiries NN Group Investor Relations +31 88 663 5464 investor.relations@nn-group.com Press enquiries Delta Lloyd Media Relations +31 20 594 4488 mediarelations@deltalloyd.nl Investor enquiries Delta Lloyd Investor Relations +31 20 594 9693 ir@deltalloyd.nl NN Group profile NN Group is an international insurance and asset management company, active in 18 countries, with a strong presence in a number of European countries and Japan. With around 11,500 employees the group offers retirement services, insurance, investments and banking to more than 15 million customers. NN Group includes Nationale-Nederlanden, NN and NN Investment Partners. NN Group is listed on Euronext Amsterdam (NN). Delta Lloyd profile Delta Lloyd offers products and services in insurance, pensions, investment and banking, serving 4.2 million commercial and retail clients in The Netherlands and Belgium. Our four brands are Delta Lloyd, ABN AMRO Insurance, BeFrank and OHRA. Delta Lloyd is listed on Euronext Amsterdam and Brussels, and included in the DJSI World and DJSI Europe. Notice to US holders of Shares The Offer will be made for the issued and outstanding ordinary shares of Delta Lloyd N.V., a public limited liability company incorporated under Dutch Law, and is subject to Dutch disclosure and procedural requirements, which are different from those of the United States. The Offer will be made in the United States in compliance with Section 14(e) of the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the 'U.S. Exchange Act') and Regulation 14E promulgated thereunder, and the exemptions therefrom provided by Rule 14d-1(d), and otherwise in accordance with the requirements of Dutch and Belgium law. Accordingly, the Offer will be subject to certain disclosure and other procedural requirements, including with respect to withdrawal rights, the Offer timetable and settlement procedures and timing of payments that are different from those applicable under U.S. domestic tender offer procedures and laws. The receipt of cash pursuant to the Offer by a U.S. holder of Shares will generally be a taxable transaction for U.S. federal income tax purposes and may be a taxable transaction under applicable state and local, as well as foreign and other tax laws. Each holder of Shares is urged to consult his independent professional advisor immediately regarding the tax consequences of acceptance of the Offer. It may be difficult for U.S. holders of Shares to enforce their rights and claims arising out of the U.S. federal securities laws, since the Offeror and Delta Lloyd are located in a country other than the United States, and some or all of their officers and directors may be residents of a country other than the United States. U.S. holders of Shares may not be able to sue a non-U.S. company or its officers or directors in a non-U.S. court for violations of the U.S. securities laws. Further, it may be difficult to compel a non-U.S. company and its affiliates to subject themselves to a U.S. court's judgment. To the extent permissible under applicable law or regulation, including Rule 14e-5 of the U.S. Exchange Act, in accordance with normal Dutch practice, the Offeror and its Affiliates or brokers (acting as agents for the Offeror or its Affiliates, as applicable) may before or during the period in which the Offer remains open for acceptance, directly or indirectly, purchase, or arrange to purchase, Shares outside of the United States, from time to time, other than pursuant to the Offer. These purchases may occur either in the open market at prevailing prices or in private transactions at negotiated prices. In addition, the financial advisors to the Offeror may engage in ordinary course trading activities in securities of Delta Lloyd, which may include purchases or arrangements to purchase such securities. To the extent required in The Netherlands, any information about such purchases will be announced by press release in accordance with Article 13 of the Decree and posted on the website of NN Group at www.nn-group.com. Restrictions The distribution of this press release may, in some countries, be restricted by law or regulation. Accordingly, persons who come into possession of this document should inform themselves of and observe these restrictions. To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, NN Group and Delta Lloyd disclaim any responsibility or liability for the violation of any such restrictions by any person. Any failure to comply with these restrictions may constitute a violation of the securities laws of that jurisdiction. Neither NN Group, nor Delta Lloyd nor any of its advisors assumes any responsibility for any violation by any person of any of these restrictions. Any shareholder who is in any doubt as to its position should consult an appropriate professional advisor without delay. This announcement is not to be published or distributed in or to Canada or Japan or in any other jurisdiction in which such release, publication or distribution would be unlawful. The information in the press release is not intended to be complete, for further information reference is made to the Offer Memorandum. This announcement is for information purposes only and does not constitute an offer or an invitation to acquire or dispose of any securities or investment advice or an inducement to enter into investment activity. In addition, the Offer made pursuant to the Offer Memorandum is not being made in any jurisdiction in which the making or acceptance thereof would not be in compliance with the securities or other laws or regulations of such jurisdiction or would require any registration, approval or filing with any regulatory authority not expressly contemplated by the terms of the Offer Memorandum. Forward-looking statements Certain statements in this press release may be considered "forward-looking statements", such as statements relating to the impact of the Offer on the Offeror, NN Group and Delta Lloyd and the expected timing and completion of the Offer. Forward-looking statements include those preceded by, followed by or that include the words may, anticipated, expected or similar expressions. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this press release. Each of the Offeror, NN Group and Delta Lloyd, and any of their respective Affiliates, each with respect to the statements it has provided, believes the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions. Nevertheless, no assurance can be given that such statements will be fulfilled or prove to be correct, and no representations are made as to the future accuracy and completeness of such statements. The forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors, many of which are beyond the Offeror's, NN Group's and Delta Lloyd's control, that could cause actual results to differ materially from historical experience or those results expressed or implied in these forward-looking statements. Potential risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, (i) the risk that required regulatory approvals may delay the Offer or result in the imposition of conditions that could have a material adverse effect on the Combined Group or cause the Offeror, NN Group and Delta Lloyd to abandon the Offer, (ii) the risk that the Offer Conditions may not be satisfied, (iii) risks relating to NN Group's ability to successfully operate Delta Lloyd without disruption to its other business activities, which may result in the Combined Group not operating as effectively and efficiently as expected, (iv) the possibility that the Offer may involve unexpected costs, unexpected liabilities or unexpected delays, (v) the risk that the businesses of the Offeror, NN Group and Delta Lloyd may suffer as a result of uncertainty surrounding the Offer, (vi) the effects of competition (in particular the response to the Transaction in the marketplace) and competitive developments or risks inherent to NN Group's or Delta Lloyd's business plans, (vii) the risk that disruptions from the Transaction will harm relationships with customers, employees and suppliers, (viii) political, economic or legal changes in the markets and environments in which NN Group and/or Delta Lloyd does business, (ix) economic conditions in the global markets in which NN Group and Delta Lloyd operate, (x) uncertainties, risk and volatility in financial markets affecting the Offeror, NN Group and/or Delta Lloyd, and (xi) other factors that can be found in NN Group's and its subsidiaries' and Delta Lloyd's press releases and public filings. Neither the Offeror, NN Group nor Delta Lloyd, nor any of their respective Affiliates and advisors, accepts any responsibility for any financial information contained in the Offer Memorandum relating to the business, results of operations or financial condition of the other or their respective groups. Each of the Offeror, NN Group and Delta Lloyd expressly disclaims any obligation or undertaking to disseminate any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statements contained herein to reflect any change in the expectations with regard thereto or any change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statement is based except as required by applicable laws and regulations or by any competent regulatory authority. Tibets spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, arrived in the Buddhist town of Tawang, in northeastern Indias Arunachal Pradesh state Friday and was greeted by thousands of followers who had come to hear his religious teachings. After traveling seven hours by car along roads lined with prayer flags, the 81-year-old monk reached the 17th-century Tawang Gaden Lhatse monastery, where he was welcomed by local monks and Buddhist devotees from throughout the region, including several from neighboring Bhutan. A resident of Tawang, where the sixth Dalai Lama was discovered in the late 1600s, told RFAs Tibetan Service that the visit had been highly anticipated. We were waiting for this great occasion to see His Holiness the Dalai Lama, so we worked hard to put up a good reception for him with prayers flags and other decorations, said the resident, who spoke to RFA anonymously. Loden, a Tibetan visiting from Switzerland, said residents had gone to great lengths to prepare for the spiritual leaders arrival. Yesterday when I was coming down from the valley where most of the residents are nomads, they were cleaning the roads for several kilometers for His Holiness to pass through, he said. It was really amazing to see the sense of devotion and faith and joy they felt in preparing to see His Holiness. The Dalai Lamathe 14th of his lineagehad planned to fly by helicopter from Guwahati in neighboring Assam state to Tawang monastery to hold spiritual teachings beginning on Wednesday, but heavy rainfall forced him to travel by road through the region, delaying his arrival. He is expected to begin three days of teachings on Saturday. Beijing angered The nine-day visit to Arunachal Pradeshwhich China claims as its territoryhas angered Beijing, and on Thursday, Chinas Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying slammed India for extending the spiritual leader an invitation to the region. The Chinese side opposes the Dalai Lama's visit to the disputed area and any country's provision of venues for his anti-China separatist activities, she said at a media briefing, adding that Beijing had lodged stern representations with New Delhi. The Dalai Lama has lived in India since fleeing China in 1959 during an uprising against Chinese rule in Tibet, and New Delhi has warned Beijing to stay out of its internal affairs in response to criticism over the trip. On Thursday, after consecrating the Thupsung Dhargyeling monastery in Dirang amid nearly 10,000 devotees, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate dismissed Beijings claims while speaking with reporters. My visit is purely spiritualnothing [to do with] politicsso I wish some Chinese official would come here to observe what kind of activities [I am involved in], he said. The Dalai Lama also suggested that the Indian government should encourage Chinese Buddhists to visit important Buddhist sites in India, where the religion originated before being brought to China around the second century BC. China, historically, is a Buddhist country So often I suggest to concerned Indian officials that they create some sort of arrangement for Chinese Buddhists to make a pilgrimage in India, he said. Some sort of arrangement to come for these Chinese pilgrims, I think, would be very usefulfirstly, for individual satisfaction and secondly, for them to see Indias freedom. He reiterated statements that Tibetans are not seeking an independent nation, but rather that China provide them with meaningful self-rule, autonomy and must take full care of the environment. India and China have been embroiled in a row over the region for decades, as part of a greater dispute over their shared 3,500-kilometer (2,175-mile) border which prompted the brief 1962 Sino-Indian War. The two sides routinely accuse each other of intrusions across the Line of Actual Control (LAC), a de facto border that separates Indian-controlled territory from Chinese-controlled territory in the area. The Dalai Lama has traveled to Arunachal Pradesh on six earlier occasions since 1983. Reported by Passang Tsering for RFAs Tibetan Service. Translated by Karma Dorjee. Written in English by Joshua Lipes. A Vietnamese activist jailed seven years ago for writing online articles criticizing government policies is suffering failing vision after being kept in a dark cell, family members said after visiting him in prison at the beginning of the month. Tran Huynh Duy Thuc, 51, was convicted in 2010 on charges of plotting to overthrow the government under Article 79 of Vietnams penal code and is serving a 16-year prison term. He was tried along with lawyer Le Cong Dinh, engineer Nguyen Tien Trung, and businessman Le Thang Long. Transferred in May 2016 to Prison No. 6 in north-central Vietnams Nghe An province, Thuc has been kept in a dark cell and denied books and other reading materials, Thucs brother Tran Huynh Duy Tan told RFAs Vietnamese Service on April 7. Tan and other family members visited Thuc at his prison on April 1, he said. We are worried about the lack of light in his cell, Tan said. His eyes have dark circles under them, and he complains of seeing flies. He rarely complains about conditions in the prison, but whenever he writes to us, he always asks us to send him a flashlight. Power has frequently failed at the prison since August last year, Tan told RFA. Thuc has to live in the dark. If there is sunlight outside, the cell will be a bit brighter, but it is really dark inside if the day is overcast or raining, he said. Things are a bit better in the cold weather, but in the summer when it is hot, and there is no electricity, we dont see how he can cope with it, he said. Thucs family now plans to complain directly to Vietnams president Tran Dai Quang about conditions at the prison where Thuc is being held, his brother said. We will send our petition to the prison authorities and to the president himself, demanding that they respect the rule of law, as President Tran Dai Quang said would be the case in a speech on Feb. 17. He has talked a lot about respecting human rights and the rule of law for people serving sentences. But in this case, they are doing just the opposite, he said. Reported by Loan Ngo for RFAs Vietnamese Service. Translated by Viet Ha. Written in English by Richard Finney. The cruise-missile strike launched by the United States against an air base in Syria in the early hours of April 7 was a specifically targeted attack and not a precursor to war against that Mideast state, according to analysts. The launching of 59 Tomahawk missiles from two U.S. Navy destroyers in the Mediterranean Sea at Syria's western Shayrat Airfield was President Donald Trump's most ambitious military order since becoming president. But analysts said Trumps message with the strikes was likely aimed at stopping the use of chemical weapons, and not a prelude to deeper U.S. involvement in the Syrian conflict. "Tonight's strikes may deter Assad, compel Russian cooperation w/ US interests, not lead to deeper US military involvement, Micah Zenko, an expert on military intervention at the Council on Foreign Relations, said in an April 7 tweet. "Trump's statement makes it clear U.S. cruise missile strikes are for enhancing [international] norm against CW [chemical weapons] use, not protecting Syrian civilians, he added. The attack, in retaliation for a suspected nerve-gas attack on the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun on April 4 that killed more than 80 people, was the first U.S. assault explicitly targeting President Bashar al-Assads government in six years of civil war that has killed more than 300,000 Syrians, displaced millions of people, and threatened to pit regional and global powers against each other. "It is in the vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons," Trump said in announcing the U.S. action. "There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons and violated its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention, and ignored the urging of the UN Security Council. Years of previous attempts at changing Assad's behavior have all failed, and failed very dramatically." Trump cited the ongoing refugee crisis and regional instability "threatening the United States and its allies." Officials in Damascus insist their forces did not use chemical agents in Khan Sheikhoun. It remains unclear whether the United States plans to strike further targets in Syria. I suspect it depends also on what President Assad does," Tomas Valasek, director of think tank Carnegie Europe, told RFE/RL. "The trigger for the strike and the reason for the strike was quite obvious. It was obviously to make the point that chemical weapons are not to be used, that they really are off limits. So I suspect that whether force will be used again depends on whether President Assad takes that message to heart or not." Valasek said he doubts the strikes are part of any plan to broaden U.S. involvement on the ground in Syria. Nor does he think it will push the NATO security alliance into action in the region. The U.S. missile attack raised the ire of the pro-Assad Kremlin, which was reportedly informed of the offensive ahead of time, with Russian President Vladimir Putin calling the strikes against a sovereign state a "violation of...international law" that will "inflict major damage" to U.S.-Russia relations, according to spokesman Dmitry Peskov. Russia has lent Assad crucial diplomatic and military support throughout the war, including advanced air-defense equipment and an air campaign by Russian warplanes beginning in September 2015. Russia has a military area at Shayrat Airfield, but Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain Jeff Davis said precautions were taken by U.S. officials to ensure that area was not hit during the strikes. Russia's Defense Ministry said on April 7 that "a set of measures will be taken in the immediate future to reinforce and raise the effectiveness of the Syrian armed forces' air-defense system," according to TASS. Moscow also said it was suspending an agreement with Washington that is aimed at preventing midair incidents over Syria. Many U.S. lawmakers have feared any intervention in Syria could drag American forces deeper into the conflict, a scenario they are loathe to repeat with open-ended commitments with the memories of Iraq still fresh in their minds. "The strike was intended to deter the regime from using chemical weapons again," Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain Jeff Davis said. "The use of chemical weapons against innocent people will not be tolerated." In being careful to call the strikes "targeted" and "to prevent and deter the spread of chemical weapons," Trumps order may not threaten Assad directly, but it is "still a shock to the regime's system," said Jeff White, a defense analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East policy. Andrew Exum, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Middle East policy, said that while there is still much to be learned over the impact and reasoning behind the strikes, "the U.S. hand in negotiations over the fate of Bashar al-Assad is now strengthened." President Barack Obama in 2013 declined to engage the U.S. military directly in Syria after officials and outside experts concluded that Assad had used chemical weapons in an even deadlier attack on civilians. Obama had warned the Syrian government to avoid crossing a "red line" of "a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized." At the time, Trump, a billionaire real-estate developer and reality-TV celebrity, directed tweets at the U.S. president saying "do not attack Syria" and warning "there is no upside and tremendous downside." Trump also argued that "the President must get Congressional approval before attacking Syria." "The fact that the Obama administration didnt actually strike Syria when there was a major use of chemical weapons some years ago has been hotly debated since, and frankly Im not surprised by what we have seen," Ian Lesser, an analyst and vice president for foreign policy at The German Marshall Fund of the United States, told RFE/RL. "It's not so much about Syria, in a sense, as it is about the norms surrounding the use of weapons of mass destruction, and the United States and its allies have a very strong interest in upholding those norms." Still, the strikes caught many observers off-guard, even though they are not the first by U.S. forces in Syria. In September, a military base in the eastern city of Deir el-Zour was targeted. Sixty-two people were killed in the offensive and over 100 government soldiers were wounded. However, the Pentagon said the strike was meant to hit Islamic State (IS) militants and not a government installation, making the last U.S. military operation directed at an Arab government the 2011 intervention in Libya. Nonetheless, the April 7 attacks, which came just 77 days into the Trump administrations tenure, reinforce signals of a major shift in U.S. policy with respect to Assad. As recently as last week, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson suggested Assads fate should be left to the Syrian people to decide. "Conversations are already under way," Tillerson said just before the strikes. "There would be no role for him to govern the Syrian people." The URL has been copied to your clipboard The code has been copied to your clipboard. Two U.S. warships based in the eastern Mediterranean Sea fired Tomahawk cruise missiles at an air base in western Syria on April 6. The United States says aircraft from the base dropped chemical weapons in Syria's Idlib Province on April 4, killing dozens of civilians. (Reuters) If not for Vladimir Putin, there probably wouldn't be a Bashar al-Assad. At least not still in power. At least not with the ability to commit atrocities against his own people. If not for Putin, tens of thousands -- if not hundreds of thousands -- of people may not have died in Syria's civil war. Because Putin has been saving Assad's bacon for years. Back in 2013, after the Ghouta chemical-weapons attack, Putin helped prevent Western military action against Assad by brokering an agreement to place Syria's chemical weapons under international control. We learned this week how well that all worked out. In late 2015, when it looked like Assad was about to fall to rebel forces, Putin gave him a new lease on life with Russia's military intervention in Syria's civil war. As a result, the war continued and more death and destruction ensued. Putin gave Assad the vital airpower he needed for his brutal siege of Aleppo. Moscow has insisted that that any peace settlement in Syria keep Assad in power. And against the preponderance of evidence, Putin's regime continues to insist that Assad was not responsible for this week's chemical-weapons attack in Khan Sheikhoun. You can tell a lot about a man from the friends he keeps. Putin has supported, propped up, and defended Assad. He owns him. Assad now is Putin's creature. And that makes Putin's regime an accomplice to war crimes. Keep telling me what you think on The Power Vertical's Twitter feed and on our Facebook page. Georgia's president has criticized the ruling party and the government in an annual address to the nation, eliciting a rebuke from the prime minister. The exchange on April 7 was the latest sign of persistent political tension in the South Caucasus nation, where the prime minister has held more power than the president since a constitutional reform in 2013. In his address in parliament, President Giorgi Margvelashvili said the ruling Georgian Dream party had isolated itself and was rejecting any dialogue with other parties. "I believe someday a party that wins [in Georgia] will seek partners, not foes," Margvelashvili said. Margvelashvili also criticized the government for what he called shortcomings in fighting crime, as well as for its moves to legalize eavesdropping and switch to indirect presidential election system. Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili took aim at the president in response. "I wish the president's address had been deeper, more objective and richer in content," Kvirikashvili said. With reporting by RFE/RL's Georgian Service, apsny.ge, and Interfax Hillary Clinton said she is "deeply concerned" about allegations of Russian interference in last year's U.S. presidential election and called for an independent investigation and action to make sure it doesn't happen again. Speaking in New York at a summit on women's issues on April 6, the former Democratic presidential nominee and first lady said Russia intended to create "distrust and confusion" by hacking into and then leaking her party's internal e-mails to the media. "I think what was done to us was an act of aggression, and it was carried out by a foreign power under the control of someone who has a deep desire to dominate Europe and send us into a tailspin," she said, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Clinton said Congress should put aside party differences, set up an independent, nonpartisan commission to investigate, and take action to stop such Russian meddling. Otherwise, "they will be back," she said. In a one-on-one conversation with author Nicholas Kristof, Clinton touched on a range of issues, including lessons learned in the election, the war in Syria, and her own future plans, which include writing a book on what happened during the election. When asked about the first 100 days of Republican President Donald Trump's administration, Clinton said she didn't "take any pleasure in seeing the kind of chaotic functioning" seen at the White House. She said she was perplexed by the Trump administration's "commitment to hurt so many people" by temporarily banning people from six predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States and by proposing to take away health insurance from millions of Americans. Clinton said she doesn't expect to run for office again, but wants to help others running for office with the goal of helping her Democratic party regain control of Congress. With reporting by AP ALMATY -- A Kazakh student who was wrongly described by some Russian media outlets as a suspect in the April 3 subway bombing in St. Petersburg has been buried in Almaty. More than 200 people, including relatives, friends, and teachers, came to a ceremony for Maksim Aryshev, who was killed in the bombing, before he was buried on April 7. Aryshev, 22, a third-year IT student at St. Petersburg State Economic University, was among 14 people killed, including the suspected attacker. Some media outlets in Russia reported in the hours after the attack that Aryshev was a suspect. That was never officially confirmed, and he was later identified as a victim. Aryshev's parents said at the ceremony that their son had planned to return to Kazakhstan after graduation. ASTANA -- Kazakh labor union activist Nurbek Qushaqbaev has been sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison over a January oil workers' strike. A court in Astana on April 7 found Qushaqbaev guilty of instigating an illegal strike by workers and sentenced him the same day. The court also obliged Qushaqbaev to pay an equivalent of $80,000 to the Techno Trading Company as compensation for losses caused by the strike. Qushaqbaev, a member of the union at the Oil Construction Company (OCC) in the western Manghystau region, was arrested in January after hundreds of OCC workers struck for two weeks to protest the closure of a trade-union alliance. The strike was stopped after a local court declared it illegal. Qushaqbaev pleaded not guilty. His lawyers said they will appeal the verdict. The week began with a terrorist attack in St. Petersburg. And it ended with U.S. missile strikes against Syria that were condemned by Russia. And in between, a suspected chemical-weapons attack in Syria shocked the world. On this week's Power Vertical Podcast, we'll try to sort this all out and look ahead to what happens next. Will Vladimir Putin's regime be able to use this week's bombing in the St. Petersburg Metro to shift attention away from growing anger about official corruption? And will the Kremlin be able to use the attack to restore relations with the West and forge an international coalition against terrorism? Or will this be negated by growing tension between Russia and the West over Syria? Joining me on the podcast will be co-host Mark Galeotti, a senior research fellow at the Institute of International Relations in Prague, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, and author of the blog In Moscow's Shadows; and veteran Kremlin-watcher Donald Jensen, a former State Department official, a fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations in the Nitze School of International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, and a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis. Enjoy... Listen to or download the podcast above or subscribe to The Power Vertical Podcast on iTunes. NOTE TO POWER VERTICALISTAS: All Power Vertical products will take a hiatus from April 10-12, as I will be in Tbilisi for a speaking engagement. The regular schedule will resume on April 13. Also, due to the Easter holiday, the Power Vertical Podcast, Briefing, Daily Vertical, and Morning Vertical will not appear on Friday April 14 and Monday April 17. NN Group obtains declarations of no objection from DNB, NBB and ECB, and competition clearance from the European Commission Reference is made to the joint press release by NN Group and Delta Lloyd dated 2 February 2017 regarding the publication of the Offer Memorandum for the recommended public cash offer by the Offeror to all holders of issued and outstanding ordinary shares in the capital of Delta Lloyd (the 'Shares') to acquire their Shares at a price of EUR 5.40 (cum dividend) in cash for each Share (the 'Offer'). NN Group and Delta Lloyd jointly announce that NN Group has obtained declarations of no objection from the Dutch Central Bank (DNB), the National Bank of Belgium (NBB) and the European Central Bank (ECB) in connection with the Offer. In addition, NN Group has obtained competition clearance from the European Commission. Further announcements will follow after expiry of the Offer Period at 17:40 hours CET today. Announcements Any further announcements in relation to the Offer will be issued by press release and, to the extent required, made public in Belgium by means of a supplement to the Offer Memorandum, in accordance with Article 17 of the Belgian Law on public takeover bids of 1 April 2007. Any press release issued by NN Group will be made available on NN Group's website (www.nn-group.com) and any press release issued by Delta Lloyd will be made available on Delta Lloyd's website (www.deltalloyd.com). Subject to any applicable requirements of the applicable rules and without limiting the manner in which the Offeror may choose to make any public announcement, the Offeror will have no obligation to communicate any public announcement other than as described in the Offer Memorandum. Offer Memorandum, Position Statement and further information This announcement contains selected, condensed information regarding the Offer and does not replace the Offer Memorandum and/or the Position Statement. The information in this announcement is not complete and additional information is contained in the Offer Memorandum and the Position Statement dated 2 February 2017. Digital copies of the Offer Memorandum are available on the websites of Delta Lloyd (www.deltalloyd.com) and NN Group (www.nn-group.com). Copies of the Offer Memorandum are also available free of charge at the offices of Delta Lloyd and the Settlement Agent at the addresses mentioned below. A digital copy of the Position Statement is available on the website of Delta Lloyd (www.deltalloyd.com). Delta Lloyd Delta Lloyd N.V. Amstelplein 6 1096 BC Amsterdam The Netherlands Settlement Agent (ABN AMRO) Gustav Mahlerlaan 10 P.O. Box 283 1000 EA Amsterdam The Netherlands Other To the extent permissible under applicable law or regulation, NN Group or its brokers (acting as agents for NN Group) may from time to time after the date hereof, and other than pursuant to the Offer, directly or indirectly purchase, or arrange to purchase, ordinary shares in the capital of Delta Lloyd, that are the subject of the Offer. To the extent information about such purchases or arrangements to purchase is made public in the Netherlands, such information will be disclosed by means of a press release to inform shareholders of such information, which will be made available on the website of NN Group. In addition, financial advisors to NN Group may also engage in ordinary course trading activities in securities of Delta Lloyd, which may include purchases or arrangements to purchase such securities. Press enquiries NN Group Media Relations +31 70 513 1918 mediarelations@nn-group.com Investor enquiries NN Group Investor Relations +31 88 663 5464 investor.relations@nn-group.com Press enquiries Delta Lloyd Media Relations +31 20 594 4488 mediarelations@deltalloyd.nl Investor enquiries Delta Lloyd Investor Relations +31 20 594 9693 ir@deltalloyd.nl NN Group profile NN Group is an international insurance and asset management company, active in 18 countries, with a strong presence in a number of European countries and Japan. With around 11,500 employees the group offers retirement services, insurance, investments and banking to more than 15 million customers. NN Group includes Nationale-Nederlanden, NN and NN Investment Partners. NN Group is listed on Euronext Amsterdam (NN). Delta Lloyd profile Delta Lloyd offers products and services in insurance, pensions, investment and banking, serving 4.2 million commercial and retail clients in The Netherlands and Belgium. Our four brands are Delta Lloyd, ABN AMRO Insurance, BeFrank and OHRA. Delta Lloyd is listed on Euronext Amsterdam and Brussels, and included in the DJSI World and DJSI Europe. Notice to US holders of Shares The Offer will be made for the issued and outstanding ordinary shares of Delta Lloyd N.V., a public limited liability company incorporated under Dutch Law, and is subject to Dutch disclosure and procedural requirements, which are different from those of the United States. The Offer will be made in the United States in compliance with Section 14(e) of the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the 'U.S. Exchange Act') and Regulation 14E promulgated thereunder, and the exemptions therefrom provided by Rule 14d-1(d), and otherwise in accordance with the requirements of Dutch and Belgium law. Accordingly, the Offer will be subject to certain disclosure and other procedural requirements, including with respect to withdrawal rights, the Offer timetable and settlement procedures and timing of payments that are different from those applicable under U.S. domestic tender offer procedures and laws. The receipt of cash pursuant to the Offer by a U.S. holder of Shares will generally be a taxable transaction for U.S. federal income tax purposes and may be a taxable transaction under applicable state and local, as well as foreign and other tax laws. Each holder of Shares is urged to consult his independent professional advisor immediately regarding the tax consequences of acceptance of the Offer. It may be difficult for U.S. holders of Shares to enforce their rights and claims arising out of the U.S. federal securities laws, since the Offeror and Delta Lloyd are located in a country other than the United States, and some or all of their officers and directors may be residents of a country other than the United States. U.S. holders of Shares may not be able to sue a non-U.S. company or its officers or directors in a non-U.S. court for violations of the U.S. securities laws. Further, it may be difficult to compel a non-U.S. company and its affiliates to subject themselves to a U.S. court's judgment. To the extent permissible under applicable law or regulation, including Rule 14e-5 of the U.S. Exchange Act, in accordance with normal Dutch practice, the Offeror and its Affiliates or brokers (acting as agents for the Offeror or its Affiliates, as applicable) may before or during the period in which the Offer remains open for acceptance, directly or indirectly, purchase, or arrange to purchase, Shares outside of the United States, from time to time, other than pursuant to the Offer. These purchases may occur either in the open market at prevailing prices or in private transactions at negotiated prices. In addition, the financial advisors to the Offeror may engage in ordinary course trading activities in securities of Delta Lloyd, which may include purchases or arrangements to purchase such securities. To the extent required in The Netherlands, any information about such purchases will be announced by press release in accordance with Article 13 of the Decree and posted on the website of NN Group at www.nn-group.com. Restrictions The distribution of this press release may, in some countries, be restricted by law or regulation. Accordingly, persons who come into possession of this document should inform themselves of and observe these restrictions. To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, NN Group and Delta Lloyd disclaim any responsibility or liability for the violation of any such restrictions by any person. Any failure to comply with these restrictions may constitute a violation of the securities laws of that jurisdiction. Neither NN Group, nor Delta Lloyd nor any of its advisors assumes any responsibility for any violation by any person of any of these restrictions. Any shareholder who is in any doubt as to its position should consult an appropriate professional advisor without delay. This announcement is not to be published or distributed in or to Canada or Japan or in any other jurisdiction in which such release, publication or distribution would be unlawful. The information in the press release is not intended to be complete, for further information reference is made to the Offer Memorandum. This announcement is for information purposes only and does not constitute an offer or an invitation to acquire or dispose of any securities or investment advice or an inducement to enter into investment activity. In addition, the Offer made pursuant to the Offer Memorandum is not being made in any jurisdiction in which the making or acceptance thereof would not be in compliance with the securities or other laws or regulations of such jurisdiction or would require any registration, approval or filing with any regulatory authority not expressly contemplated by the terms of the Offer Memorandum. Forward-looking statements Certain statements in this press release may be considered "forward-looking statements", such as statements relating to the impact of the Offer on the Offeror, NN Group and Delta Lloyd and the expected timing and completion of the Offer. Forward-looking statements include those preceded by, followed by or that include the words may, anticipated, expected or similar expressions. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this press release. Each of the Offeror, NN Group and Delta Lloyd, and any of their respective Affiliates, each with respect to the statements it has provided, believes the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions. Nevertheless, no assurance can be given that such statements will be fulfilled or prove to be correct, and no representations are made as to the future accuracy and completeness of such statements. The forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors, many of which are beyond the Offeror's, NN Group's and Delta Lloyd's control, that could cause actual results to differ materially from historical experience or those results expressed or implied in these forward-looking statements. Potential risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, (i) the risk that required regulatory approvals may delay the Offer or result in the imposition of conditions that could have a material adverse effect on the Combined Group or cause the Offeror, NN Group and Delta Lloyd to abandon the Offer, (ii) the risk that the Offer Conditions may not be satisfied, (iii) risks relating to NN Group's ability to successfully operate Delta Lloyd without disruption to its other business activities, which may result in the Combined Group not operating as effectively and efficiently as expected, (iv) the possibility that the Offer may involve unexpected costs, unexpected liabilities or unexpected delays, (v) the risk that the businesses of the Offeror, NN Group and Delta Lloyd may suffer as a result of uncertainty surrounding the Offer, (vi) the effects of competition (in particular the response to the Transaction in the marketplace) and competitive developments or risks inherent to NN Group's or Delta Lloyd's business plans, (vii) the risk that disruptions from the Transaction will harm relationships with customers, employees and suppliers, (viii) political, economic or legal changes in the markets and environments in which NN Group and/or Delta Lloyd does business, (ix) economic conditions in the global markets in which NN Group and Delta Lloyd operate, (x) uncertainties, risk and volatility in financial markets affecting the Offeror, NN Group and/or Delta Lloyd, and (xi) other factors that can be found in NN Group's and its subsidiaries' and Delta Lloyd's press releases and public filings. Neither the Offeror, NN Group nor Delta Lloyd, nor any of their respective Affiliates and advisors, accepts any responsibility for any financial information contained in the Offer Memorandum relating to the business, results of operations or financial condition of the other or their respective groups. Each of the Offeror, NN Group and Delta Lloyd expressly disclaims any obligation or undertaking to disseminate any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statements contained herein to reflect any change in the expectations with regard thereto or any change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statement is based except as required by applicable laws and regulations or by any competent regulatory authority. Attachments: http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/a030a89f-7ed9-4a8c-96cb-232116b31868 Kyiv's forces have repelled several waves of Russian attacks in the Donbas, the Ukrainian military says, as President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the heavy losses sustained by the Russians on a daily basis highlighted the "madness" of Moscow's strategy of attack. In the southern city of Kherson, Ukraine accused Russia of looting empty homes and occupying them with troops in civilian clothes in expectation of a Ukrainian offensive to retake the city that was the first to fall to Moscow's forces at the start of its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's ongoing invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war, click here. The Ukrainian military's General Staff said in its daily update that Russian troops in the east continued their attacks on Bakhmut, Avdiyivka, and Novopavlivka, the focal points of Moscow's offensive in Donetsk in recent weeks. At the same time, the military said, Russian troops continue to shell critical infrastructure and civilian objectives in various regions of Ukraine. In his regular video address, Zelenskiy on November 7 called the intense combat in the Donetsk region "the epicenter of the biggest madness of the occupiers." "They are dying in hundreds every day," Zelenskiy said. "The ground in front of the Ukrainian positions is literally littered with the bodies of the occupiers." Zelenskiy also said that Russian soldiers in the Pavlivka area had complained to the governor of their region in the Russian Far East. CNN reported on November 7 that in a letter purportedly sent from the front lines to Primorsky region Governor Oleg Kozhemyako, the men of the 155th Brigade of the Russian Pacific Fleet Marines say they were thrown into an "incomprehensible battle" in the Donetsk and had lost about 300 men, dead and wounded, in four days, while also losing 50 percent of their equipment. Zelenskiy said that in response to the letter, Kozhemyako had said that the losses were "not that big" and they were "exaggerated." In Kherson, the only pocket of Russian-held territory on the west bank of the Dnieper River that bisects Ukraine, Moscow has ordered civilians out of the city in anticipation of a Ukrainian assault to recapture the city. Kherson, with a prewar population of nearly 300,000, has no power or running water, both sides said. Russian-installed officials blamed Ukrainian "sabotage," while Ukrainian officials said the Russians had dismantled 1 1/2 kilometers of power lines. Ukraine's military said Russian forces, "disguised in civilian clothes, occupy the premises of civilians and strengthen positions inside for conducting street battles." Russian forces were "involved in looting and theft from residents and from infrastructure sites and are taking away equipment, food, and vehicles to the Russian Federation," it said in an update late on November 7. The Ukrainian military reported hits on a Russian antiaircraft facility, ammunition dump, and the destruction of Russian armor in the Beryslav district of the Kherson region, in its November 8 statement. It said 32 Russian military personnel were killed. The information could not be independently confirmed. Meanwhile, Zelenskiy said the escalation of Russian missile strikes against critical infrastructure in his country has only resulted in the world responding with new aid to Ukraine. Ukraine has received "new systems that significantly strengthen our air defense," Zelenskiy said on November 7 in his nightly address. Kyiv will do everything "to ensure that as many countries as possible join this aid," he said. He added that the protection of the Ukrainian sky was "not 100 percent, but we are gradually moving toward our goal." Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov announced earlier on November 7 that Ukraine had received a shipment of NASAMS and Apside air defense systems to help it defend against Russian missile and drone attacks across the country. "These weapons will significantly strengthen #UAarmy and will make our skies safer," he said on Twitter. Reznikov did not specify which countries the systems were from, but in the tweet he thanked "our partners: Norway, Spain and the U.S." With reporting by Reuters and CNN The URL has been copied to your clipboard The code has been copied to your clipboard. Russian opposition activist Leonid Razvozzhayev has walked free from prison in Siberia after serving 4 1/2 years behind bars for organizing protests. He said he wanted to continue working for democratization in Russia. (RFE/RL's Russian Service) Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that the U.S. missile strikes on a Syrian base were conducted under "a completely false pretext," and are reminiscent of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Speaking at a meeting of the Commonwealth of Independent States in Tashkent, Lavrov said the U.S. action could further harm its relations with Russia. (Reuters) Hours after the United States struck a Syrian air base with a barrage of cruise missiles on April 7, Russian officials and Kremlin surrogates homed in on U.S. President Donald Trump's stated opposition to the Middle East military interventions of his predecessors. As President Vladimir Putin's Kremlin denounced Washington's "aggression" against its ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Russian state media, lawmakers, and Kremlin loyalists fanned out to warn that Trump was repeating the mistakes of George W. Bush and Barack Obama in Iraq and Libya, respectively. "In the 21st century, each U.S. president has had his own war in the Middle East, sometimes two," Aleksei Pushkov, a prominent foreign policy voice in Russia's upper house of parliament, wrote on Twitter. "If Trump goes into Syria, he will stand side-by-side with Bush and Obama." Throughout last year's presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly denounced Bush's 2003 invasion of Iraq and Obama's 2011 decision to intervene militarily in Libya as part of a NATO-led operation, both of which were supported at the time by his Democratic opponent in the race, Hillary Clinton. Trump has also vowed to end "our current strategy of nation-building and regime change," a pledge that echoed Russia's critical view of U.S. intervention abroad, and to "stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about." In a televised statement late on April 6, Trump said the Syria operation was "in the vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons" that Assad used in violation of international law, he said. WATCH: Russia Slams 'Thoughtless' U.S. Strikes On Syria Leonid Slutsky, the head of the international affairs committee in Russia's lower house of parliament, said the attack on the Syrian base shows that Washington "is ready to overthrow President Assad's regime at any price." Slutsky likened Trump's justification for the missile strikes -- namely, a suspected chemical-weapons attack against Syrian civilians this week that Washington blames on Assad -- to former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's 2003 argument for the Iraq intervention based on false claims that Baghdad had weapons of mass destruction. "Apparently, the United States did not learn its lesson from the Iraq campaign, in which weapons of mass destruction were ultimately never found," Slutsky was quoted by the state-run TASS news agency as saying. "And the methods of the American political elite to remove rogue regimes remains the same." Conspiracy Theories Other prominent voices in Russia's political establishment hinted at a kind of deep-state conspiracy to force Trump to back regime change in Syria one week after Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, said that "our priority is no longer to sit there and focus on getting Assad out." "You got the impression that neither people in the Pentagon nor in the intelligence services agreed with this message, and Trump was immediately placed against the wall of 'irrefutable evidence,'" Konstantin Kosachyov, head of the foreign affairs committee in Russia's upper house of parliament, wrote on Facebook in a reference to Powell's 2003 speech in the UN. Sergei Markov, a prominent Kremlin-connected political analyst known for positing conspiracy theories, said that this week's deadly chemical attack was "most likely" organized by "American agents," the Al-Qaeda affiliate previously known as the Al-Nusra Front, and the search-and-rescue group known as the White Helmets. This alleged conspiracy was a trap set by Trump's "domestic enemies," Markov claimed in a short blog post. He provided no evidence for the claim. Russian state television weighed in with references to previous U.S. military interventions, as well. While Washington received support for the Syria strikes from Britain, France, and Japan, among other countries, the Rossia network stressed the operation was "not agreed upon with the international community and had no UN mandate." "The unilateral night action was in the spirit of attacks on Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Libya," a Rossia reporter said, referring to the 1999 NATO-led military intervention in Yugoslavia that was fiercely opposed by Moscow. Rossia also posted a screen grab of a Trump tweet from 2013 in which he told Obama: "DO NOT ATTACK SYRIA -- IF YOU DO MANY VERY BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN." The other leading state-run network, Channel One, said in a report that "it's clear that this act of aggression by the States was carried out before they even got around to making sense of the situation." Throughout his presidential campaign, Trump said repeatedly that he would like to improve bilateral ties with Russia that have been badly strained over the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria. Trump has highlighted the prospects of teaming up with Moscow to fight Islamic State militants in the region. Those overtures were greeted with optimism in Moscow, which wants Washington to lift its sanctions on Moscow over Russia's seizure of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula and backing of separatists in eastern Ukraine. So far, the Trump administration has shown no signs that it is backing down on the sanctions, maintaining the policy inherited from Obama that insists on the return of Crimea and demands that Moscow halt "destabilizing" actions in eastern Ukraine. At least one well-known Kremlin opponent criticized Trump's action in Syria, as well. Vladimir Milov, a former deputy energy minister and leader of the opposition Democratic Choice party, wrote on Twitter that Trump is conducting "PR air strikes" with "no particular strategy." He likened the operation to U.S. air strikes ordered in the 1990s by President Bill Clinton in Afghanistan and Sudan. "There's still no solution to the Assad problem," Milov wrote. 'He Bombed Someone Somewhere!' Following Trump's election, Russian state television frequently defended Trump against his domestic political opponents and U.S. media reports, most notably in connection with what U.S. intelligence calls a Kremlin-directed hacking and propaganda campaign to help Trump defeat Clinton. (Russia denies the allegation.) Following the April 7 missile strikes on the Syrian base, the editor in chief of Russia's state-controlled international network RT tweeted that "for the first time in six months, the American media is writing positively about Trump." "He bombed someone somewhere! Whew, they exhaled with relief," Margarita Simonyan wrote. She subsequently tweeted that the United States had "spectacularly f@cked up" chances for a rapprochement between Washington and Moscow. The well-known Russian photographer Ilya Varlamov reminded his 260,000 followers of Simonyan's tweet the day after Trump's election, in which she said she wanted to "drive around Moscow with an American flag in the car window." On the morning of election day, when Clinton was widely expected to defeat Trump, Simonyan had tweeted: "Democracy. RIP." Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said Islamic State militants launched attacks straight after U.S. missile strikes on Syria, adding that Russia hoped this was not coordinated action. A number of senior Russian officials have condemned the strikes, which Washington said were retaliation for a chemical weapons attack it blamed on the Syrian government. (Reuters) KRASNOYARSK, Russia -- Russian opposition activist Leonid Razvozzhayev has been released from a Siberian prison after serving a 4 1/2-year sentence. Razvozzhayev says he was abducted by Russian security agents in Ukraine in 2012 and brought to Russia, where he was arrested and tried. A court in Moscow found him guilty of helping to organize a protest on Moscow's Bolotnaya Square in May 2012 and of attempts to organize similar rallies across Russia. Police and protesters blamed each other for violence that erupted at the protest on the eve of Vladimir Putin's return to the presidency for a third term. Razvozzhayev's wife, Yulia, met him at the prison gates in the city of Krasnoyarsk. Razvozzhayev told RFE/RL that he does not yet know what he is going to do now but that he would like to contribute to the democratization of Russia and reforms in the country's corrections system. For two years, Razvozzhayev will be monitored by police and barred from attending public gatherings and events. A spokesman for the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) has reported new details from the April 4 chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib Province in Syria that killed dozens of civilians. Speaking in Geneva, Christophe Boulierac said that hospital staff experienced symptoms of poisoning just from working with patients exposed to chemical agents and that they lacked basic supplies needed to respond to the emergency. (Reuters) ON MY MIND The week began with a terrorist attack in St. Petersburg. And it ended with U.S. missile strikes against Syria that were condemned by Russia. In between, a chemical-weapons attack in Syria shocked the world. On this week's Power Vertical Podcast, we'll try to sort this all out and look ahead to what happens next. Will Vladimir Putin's regime be able to use this week's bombing in the St. Petersburg subway to shift attention away from growing anger about official corruption? And will the Kremlin be able to use the attack to restore relations with the West and forge an international coalition against terrorism? Or will this be negated by growing tension between Russia and the West over Syria, highlighted by this week's chemical-weapons attack and ensuing U.S. missile strikes. Joining me on the podcast will be co-host Mark Galeotti, a senior research fellow at the Institute of International Relations in Prague, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, and author of the blog In Moscow's Shadows; and veteran Kremlin-watcher Donald Jensen, a former State Department official, a fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations in the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, and a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis. So be sure to tune in later today! IN THE NEWS The United States struck a Syrian air base with dozens of cruise missiles on April 7, responding to a deadly chemical-weapons attack against civilians earlier this week that Washington blamed on the Syrian government. The Kremlin called the U.S. strike a violation of international law. The United Nations Security Council on April 6 postponed voting on a resolution condemning a deadly chemical-weapons attack in northern Syria as negotiators wrangled over the wording. Hillary Clinton said she is "deeply concerned" about allegations of Russian interference in last year's U.S. presidential election and called for an independent investigation and action to make sure it doesn't happen again. Devin Nunes, the head of the Intelligence Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, has said he will temporarily step aside from his role leading the committees investigation of Russias alleged involvement in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Russian investigators have searched a St. Petersburg apartment where a number of citizens of unspecified Central Asian countries who reportedly had been in contact with subway bombing suspect Akbarjon Jalilov lived. The European Parliament has overwhelmingly approved a resolution calling for the "immediate release and dropping of all charges" against Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny "and all the peaceful protesters and journalists detained after the recent demonstrations in Russia." In what is being hailed by Israeli media as an "unexpected, unprecedented, and curious move," Russia has said it envisions West Jerusalem as the future capital of Israel and East Jerusalem to be the capital of a future Palestinian state. The government of Moldova has condemned a recent appeal by the de facto authorities in the country's breakaway Trandniester region asking Russia to recognize the region's travel documents. Russian President Vladimir Putin has dismissed the head of the Mari El region. The European Parliament has approved visa liberalization for Ukraine, a crucial step toward enabling Ukrainians to travel to the European Union without obtaining visas. Three Ukrainian Evangelical Christian activists who served 15 days in a Belarusian jail are being deported to Ukraine. WHAT I'M READING Showdown In Syria Mark Galeotti of the Institute of International Relations in Prague weighs in with a hot take on the U.S. missile strikes on Syria and the Russian response. In Republic.ru, Moscow-based foreign affairs analyst Vladimir Frolov looks at the fallout for Russia from the chemical-weapons attack in Khan Sheikhoun. Son Of Sputnik In its latest installment on Russian active measures in the Baltic states, the Riga-based investigative journalism site Re:Baltica exposes the Russian-language Baltnews as a Kremlin propaganda project. Disinformation Front Lines In an op-ed in The Washington Post, Christian Caryl also looks at Russian disinformation in the Baltics. The Attack On American Democracy In Politico, John P. Carlin, former assistant attorney general for national security and chair of the Aspen Institutes Cybersecurity and Technology Program, argues that "Russian meddling poses a dire threat to American democracy." Economic Lessons Of Putinism In The Guardian, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz argues that Putin's illiberal stagnation should provide a lesson for the West. How To Get Tough On Crimea On the Atlantic Council's website, Taras Kuzio, a senior fellow at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta, outlines three ways the West can get tough on Russia over Crimea. Russia's Asian Dreams In Intersection magazine, the University of Warsaw's Marcin Kaczmarski argues that in East Asia, Russia's ambitions fall short of reality. BELGRADE -- Thousands of mostly young people gathered in Belgrade and other Serbian towns on April 6 for a fourth straight evening of protests over the election of Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic as Serbia's new president. The protesters, mostly college and high school students, marched for several hours on the streets of central Belgrade, blowing whistles and trumpets and carrying banners reading "Down With Dictatorship," "Freedom Of Media, and "We Don't Want To Be Cheap Labor." The demonstrators squatted in front of the state-run TV building to protest reporting they consider biased. Opposition groups say the April 2 election was marred by major irregularities, including muzzling of the media, voter intimidation, and bribes. Similar protests were staged in other Serbian towns. The Belgrade protest ended after about four hours, with new rallies scheduled to take place on April 7-8. Vucic won a decisive 55 percent of the vote, ensuring he will continue to dominate the Balkan country as he pursues an agenda of seeking membership in the European Union while maintaining friendly ties with Russia. His new job will be largely ceremonial, but he is expected to retain de facto power through control of his ruling Serbian Progressive Party. With reporting by AP TORONTO, April 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Avalon Advanced Materials Inc. (TSX:AVL) (OTCQX:AVLNF) (Avalon or the Company) is pleased to announce the appointment of Ms. Patricia Mohr to the Companys Board of Directors. Ms. Mohr is the former Vice President, Economics and Commodity Market Specialist at Scotiabanks Executive Offices in Toronto, before retiring in 2016 after 31 years with the bank. At Scotiabank, Ms. Mohr worked closely with Corporate and Investment Banking, including the Mining team, with Wealth Management and Global Risk Management. Ms. Mohr prepared the metal and oil and gas price forecasts for all credit evaluations at Scotiabank. During this time, Ms. Mohr developed the Scotiabank Commodity Price Index: the first Index designed to measure price trends for Canadian commodities in export markets. Avalons President and CEO, Don Bubar, noted, Ms. Mohr brings extensive knowledge of national and international economic, financial and commodity market developments to the Companys Board of Directors. Ms. Mohr also shares an interest in lithium and other specialty metals and materials, and I believe she will be a great asset in advancing both Avalons Separation Rapids Lithium and East Kemptville Tin-Indium projects. We are delighted to have Ms. Mohr accept our invitation to join Avalons Board of Directors. Prior to joining Scotiabank, Ms. Mohr spent a number of years with Alberta Energy Co. Ltd. (now EnCana Corp.) in Calgary and with CP Ships and Canadian Pacific Bermuda in London as Corporate Economist. She holds an Honours B.A. Degree and an M.A. Degree in Economics from The University of British Columbia. Ms. Mohr began her career as a mineral economist with Energy, Mines and Resources (now Natural Resources Canada) in Ottawa. Ms. Mohr is also currently a Director of Emissions Reduction Alberta (ERA): an organization channelling public funds into leading-edge R&D for greenhouse gas mitigation. Ms. Mohr is a Director of the Centre for Research & Innovation in the Bio-Economy, established by the Ontario Government to fund and commercialize forest-based biotechnology. She has also recently joined the Board of the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade, on the Policy Council. Ms. Mohr commented, I am pleased to accept Avalons invitation to serve on its Board of Directors. I share the Companys vision for sustainable development that maximizes opportunities for business and community prosperity. I look forward to working with Avalons Board and management team in achieving the Companys aspirations in the specialty metals and minerals business. About Avalon Advanced Materials Inc. Avalon Advanced Materials Inc. is a Canadian mineral development company specializing in niche market metals and minerals with growing demand in new technology. The Company has three advanced stage projects, all 100%-owned, providing investors with exposure to lithium, tin and indium, as well as rare earth elements, tantalum, niobium, and zirconium. Avalon is currently focusing on its Separation Rapids Lithium Project, Kenora, ON and its East Kemptville Tin-Indium Project, Yarmouth, NS. Social responsibility and environmental stewardship are corporate cornerstones. For questions and feedback, please e-mail the Company at ir@AvalonAM.com, or phone Don Bubar, President & CEO at 416-364-4938. This news release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, the statement that Ms. Mohr will be a great asset in advancing both Avalons Separation Rapids Lithium and East Kemptville Tin-Indium projects. Generally, these forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as potential, scheduled, anticipates, continues, expects or does not expect, is expected, scheduled, targeted, planned, or believes, or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results may, could, would, might or will be or will not be taken, reached or result, will occur or be achieved. Forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of Avalon to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on assumptions management believes to be reasonable at the time such statements are made. Although Avalon has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. Factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from expected results described in forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to market conditions, and the possibility of cost overruns or unanticipated costs and expenses as well as those risk factors set out in the Companys current Annual Information Form, Managements Discussion and Analysis and other disclosure documents available under the Companys profile at www.SEDAR.com. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Such forward-looking statements have been provided for the purpose of assisting investors in understanding the Companys plans and objectives and may not be appropriate for other purposes. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Avalon does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements that are contained herein, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. U.S. President Donald Trump announced cruise-missile strikes on a Syrian air base that he said was responsible for a deadly chemical-weapons attack that killed dozens of civilians on April 4. Speaking to the media in Palm Beach, Florida, on April 6, Trump directly blamed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for what he called "a very barbaric act." (AP) U.S. President Donald Trump says he has made tremendous progress in relations with China after meeting with President Xi Jinping of China, a country Trump has heavily criticized in the past. Without citing specifics, Trump on April 7 said that "we have made tremendous progressI think truly progress has been made. Xi also spoke in vague, but generally positive terms at the presidents' joint press event. "We have engaged in deeper understanding, and have built a trust -- a preliminary working relationship and friendship," Xi said. "I believe we will keep developing in a stable way to form friendly relations. For the peace and stability of the world, we will also fulfill our historical responsibility. The comments at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in the southern state of Florida were in contrast to the harsh words repeated often during Trumps presidential campaign, in which he accused China of currency manipulation and unfair trade practices that were costing U.S. jobs. Just last week, Trump wrote in a Twitter message that the United States could no longer tolerate massive trade deficits and job losses and that his meeting with Xi "will be a very difficult one." The two-day meeting of the two presidents also came at a time of high tensions around the globe. The U.S. military overnight conducted a missile strike against a Syrian air base in retaliation for its suspected use of chemical weapons. And they came two days after China ally North Korea test-launched a ballistic missile in violation of United Nations resolutions, raising protests from the United States, South Korea, Japan, and other nations. During the second and final day of meetings with the Chinese leader, Trumps tone had appeared to soften, and Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported that Trump had accepted Xi's invitation to visit China. We will be making additional progress," Trump said as the second day of talks winded up. The relationship developed by President Xi and myself, I think, is outstanding. And I believe lots of very potentially bad problems will be going away," he added. The timing of the U.S. action against the Syrian government could be taken as message to the Chinese -- and the North Koreans -- about the Trump administrations willingness to use military power. Days before his meeting with Xi, Trump said he was ready to deal with North Korea alone if China did not do more to restrain Pyonyang. Nevertheless, any military action against North Korea would be substantially more difficult and risky. The rogue nation has tested nuclear weapons, and the U.S. military has about 28,500 troops stationed in South Korea, whose capital, Seoul, is within the North's artillery range. With reporting by Reuters, AP, and AFP The U.S. ambassador to Serbia said he sees the Balkan nation strengthening its ties to the European Union, downplaying the notion that Belgrade is turning closer to Russia at the expense of its relations with the West. In an interview with RFE/RLs Balkan Service, Ambassador Kyle Scott also said the mounting antigovernment street protests in Serbia are a sign of a vibrant democracy and a very healthy phenomenon." Scott, a career Foreign Service official who speaks Serbian and Russian, became the U.S. ambassador to Serbia on February 5, 2016. Among many other postings, he served as political officer at U.S. Embassy in Moscow from 1996 until 1998. Concerns about the future direction of Serbian foreign policy surfaced after Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic claimed a convincing victory on April 2 to become Serbia's new president. Vucic has vowed to continue Serbias path to EU membership, but he has also expressed desires for better ties with the countrys long-time ally, Russia. The presidential role is largely ceremonial, but he is expected to retain de facto power through control of his ruling Serbian Progressive Party. Protests Since the election, thousands of mostly young people have protested each night in Belgrade and other Serbian towns against Vucic, many carrying banners reading "Down with dictatorship" and "Freedom of media. Scott said he sees no deviation in Belgrade's course toward European integration. Serbia getting closer to Russia? No, quite the opposite. I think Serbia is seeking to and is moving closer to the European Union, he said in the interview. He said Serbia has stated the desire to be militarily neutral and we respect that." But he added that the country "wishes to integrate in the European Union, and we very much support that process as well. Scott added that EU membership would benefit the Serbian people and the entire Balkan region. On the antigovernment demonstrations, Scott said it is a fascinating and interesting phenomenon to watch. Ive been also very pleased to see the reaction of the government, which is to say, Of course these people have the right to protest; they should be heard; they should be able to present their views, just as others can present their views. So I think its a very healthy phenomenon," he said. "The right of citizens to take their grievances in public addresses, to speak freely, to the freedom of assembly are all key elements of a vibrant democracy," he added. The URL has been copied to your clipboard The code has been copied to your clipboard. Russia and the United States continued to trade barbs and accusations in the wake of a U.S. missile strike against a Syrian air base that Washington suspected was used by the Syrian military to launch a deadly chemical-weapons attack on civilians earlier this week. In a post on social media on April 7, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said the U.S. move brought the country to "the brink of combat clashes with Russia." Medvedev criticized U.S. President Donald Trump for acting "in defiance of international law, without approval from the United Nations, and in violation of [America's] own procedures that require Congress to be notified of a military operation." He said Trump's decision to authorize the missile strike showed he was "dependent on the opinion of the Washington establishment, which the new president criticized so sharply in his inauguration speech." Speaking at the United Nations, Russian deputy UN envoy Vladimir Safronkov said the missile strike was "a flagrant violation of international law." He said Moscow was calling on Washington to "immediately stop the aggression and join the efforts on a political settlement in Syria." Safronkov added that Moscow remains willing to work with the United States to combat terrorism, provided Washington stops dealing in "ultimatums." Meanwhile, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said that the U.S. missile strikes were "a very measured step" and warned that Washington is "prepared to do more -- but we hope that is not necessary." Britain's UN ambassador, Matthew Rycroft, said Russia bears substantial responsibility for the apparent chemical-weapons attack. "Russia has given [Syrian President Bashar al-]Assad everything he could dream of," Rycroft said. "Without Russia's seven vetoes in the Security Council, defying the views of other members of this council, Assad would have faced sanctions and justice." In Moscow, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the planned April 12 visit to Russia of U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson remains on the schedule. "Let him come and tell what strange things they did," Zakharova said. Earlier, Tillerson said Moscow deserved some blame for the apparent chemical attack because it has failed to live up to a 2013 agreement that was intended to strip Syria of its chemical-weapons stockpiles. "Either Russia has been complicit or Russia has been simply incompetent in its ability to deliver on its end of the agreement," Tillerson said. Nonetheless, Russia's Foreign Ministry also said Moscow was open to the possibility of resuming an agreement with the United States on preventing midair conflicts of Russian and U.S. aircraft over Syria. Earlier, Moscow said it suspended the agreement in the wake of the U.S. missile strike. U.S. military officials, however, said the hotline between the two countries' militaries remains open despite Moscow's earlier statement. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said the U.S. military attache in Moscow had been summoned and informed that the hotline would be cut off "as of April 8." WATCH: Syrian Army Spokesman Says U.S. Strike Caused 'Significant Damage' Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior U.S. official told journalists that the United States "suspects" the Syrian military "had help" in carrying out the attack, but he did not explicitly accuse Moscow. "At a minimum, the Russians failed to control the activities of their Syrian client," the official said. U.S. military officials reported that a drone was observed over the area shortly before the chemical-weapons incident and then again afterwards, shortly before a hospital treating the wounded was also targeted by a Syrian air strike. The officials said they did not know whether the drone was Syrian or Russian. U.S. Strike The overnight missile strike was the first direct U.S. attack targeting Assad's government in six years of civil war and was Trump's most substantial action abroad since he took office in January. The U.S. strike sharply increased tension between the United States and Russia, which immediately denounced the move as an "act of aggression" that would harm bilateral ties and serve the interests of terrorists. Moscow said it would condemn the U.S. action at the next session of the cease-fire task force of the International Syria Support Group, which meets in Geneva. The Syrian military said the U.S. strike killed six soldiers and caused extensive damage to the Shayrat Airfield in western Syria, which the Pentagon says was used to store chemical weapons. Syrian state news agency SANA said nine civilians were killed in villages near the air base, including four children, and that seven others were wounded. "What America did is nothing but reckless and irresponsible behavior, which only reveals its short-sightedness and political and military blindness to reality," Assad's office said in a statement. Russia and Iran, Assad's chief allies in the Middle Eastern country's civil war, quickly condemned the strike in strong terms. Washington's NATO and regional allies voiced support for the U.S. action. Russian President Vladimir Putin "considers the American strikes on Syria an aggression against a sovereign state in violation of...international law," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. He claimed the decision to strike was based on "an invented pretext." WATCH: U.S. Warships Launch Cruise Missiles Against Syrian Air Base "This step by Washington will deal a substantial blow to Russian-American relations, which are already in a lamentable state," and will "create serious obstacles to the creation of an international coalition for the fight" against terrorism, he said. The Pentagon earlier said it told Russia in advance of the strikes and that it took pains to avoid hitting parts of the air base where Russian forces were stationed. "Russian forces were notified in advance of the strike using the established deconfliction line," Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain Jeff Davis said, referring to a special military hotline. Iran, which has given Assad's government major military and economic support, said the assault would "strengthen terrorists in Syria" and "complicate the situation in Syria and the region." Iran condemns the use of chemical weapons but "believes it is dangerous, destructive, and [a] violation of international laws to use it as an excuse to take unilateral actions," the ISNA news agency quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi as saying. Support For Strike U.S. allies threw their support behind the U.S. action. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande said in a joint statement that Assad bears "sole responsibility" for the U.S. action. "Any use of chemical weapons is unacceptable, cannot go unanswered, and those responsible must be held accountable," NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said. "The Syrian regime bears the full responsibility for this development." WATCH: Australia Backs U.S. Strikes On Syria European Council President Donald Tusk said the strike demonstrated "needed resolve" against "barbaric chemical attacks." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted: "In both word and action, [Trump] sent a strong and clear message today that the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated. Israel fully supports President Trump's decision." Saudi Arabia gave "full backing" to the U.S. move, the official news agency SPA reported, citing an unnamed official at the Saudi Foreign Ministry. Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus also welcomed the strike, saying Assad's government should be punished and voicing hope "that this operation by the United States will contribute to peacemaking," state-run Anadolu news agency reported. A spokesman for the British government said "the UK government fully supports the U.S. action, which we believe was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical-weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime." Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said his government "supports the U.S. government's determination to strongly oppose the spread and use of chemical weapons" and understood the strike as "an effort to prevent further deterioration of the situation." 'Crossed Many Lines For Me' After what is believed to have been a nerve-gas attack on the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun on April 4 that killed more than 80 people, Trump said he was moved by photos of children being killed, which he said had "crossed many lines for me." "Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad launched a horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians. Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children," Trump said in a brief televised statement. "It is in the vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons," which Assad used in violation of international law, he said. "I call on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria," Trump said. "We hope that as long as America stands for justice, then peace and harmony will, in the end, prevail." The U.S. military launched 59 Tomahawk missiles from two Navy destroyers in the Mediterranean Sea, the USS Porter and USS Ross, at about 0040 GMT on April 7, targeting the Shayrat base. "These missiles targeted aircraft, hardened aircraft shelters, petroleum and logistical storage areas, ammunition supply bunkers, air defense systems, and radars," Pentagon spokesman Davis told the media "Initial indications are that this strike has severely damaged or destroyed Syrian aircraft and support infrastructure and equipment at Shayrat Airfield, reducing the Syrian government's ability to deliver chemical weapons," Davis said. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that the "air base was almost completely destroyed -- the runway, the fuel tanks, and the air defenses were all blown to pieces." The Reuters news agency quoted a U.S. official who spoke anonymously as saying the cruise-missile was a "one-off," suggesting that no further strikes are currently planned. Russia and Syria claim that the toxic gas was released when air strikes by government forces hit a rebel weapons depot, an assertion the United States and others reject. Peskov, Putin's spokesman, asserted that "the strikes were de facto carried out in the interests of IS, the Al-Nusra Front, and other terrorist organizations." "It can be said unequivocally that these strikes have damaged the cause of fighting terrorism," Peskov said ahead of a meeting of Putin's Security Council to discuss the situation. Russia's Defense Ministry, meanwhile, said that Syrian air defenses -- which rely in part on Russian antimissile systems -- will be strengthened. "To protect Syria's most sensitive infrastructure, a complex of measures will be implemented in the near future to strengthen and improve the effectiveness of the Syrian armed forces' air defense system," said ministry spokesman Konashenkov. He also claimed that the U.S. strike's effectiveness was "extremely low," saying that "only 23 missiles reached the air base. It is unclear where the other 36 fell." WATCH: Russia Slams 'Thoughtless' U.S. Strikes On Syria Trump did not announce the attack in advance, though he and other national security officials issued warnings to the Syrian government throughout the day on April 6. "I think what happened in Syria is one of the truly egregious crimes and shouldn't have happened and it shouldn't be allowed to happen," Trump told reporters traveling on Air Force One to Florida, where he was meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The air strikes won approval from some leaders of both parties in the U.S. Congress. "It is critical that Assad knows he will no longer enjoy impunity for his horrific crimes against his own citizens, and this proportional step was appropriate," said Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker. "Making sure Assad knows that when he commits such despicable atrocities he will pay a price is the right thing to do," said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer. But some U.S. lawmakers criticizing Trump for ordering the use force without seeking their approval. "Congress will work with the president, but his failure to seek congressional approval is unlawful, said Senator Tim Kaine, the 2016 Democratic vice presidential candidate. With reporting by AP, AFP, Reuters, TASS, RIA Novosti, Interfax, and NBC News Swedish police say a man has been arrested near the citys international airport after a suspected terror attack in Stockholm that killed four people, but they did not say if they think he was the driver of a stolen beer truck that smashed into a crowded department store in the city center. Police late on April 7 said they had arrested a man "we are particularly interested in" after the attack, which also injured 15 people. Police said the man resembles the person shown in a photo released by authorities earlier from a surveillance camera near the scene of the attack. The photo showed a man wearing a white sweater, a dark hoodie, and a green military jacket at the top of an escalator. Jan Evensson of the Stockholm police told reporters the man was arrested in the northern Stockholm suburb of Marsta, near the citys Arlanda International Airport. He asked the public for information on the man in the photo. He said the man had been "in the vicinity" of the truck crash when it occurred around 3 p.m. local time. The Aftonbladet newspaper reported earlier that a man with "slight injuries" had been arrested in Marsta and had claimed responsibility for the attack. Radio Sweden said police do not believe he was the driver of the truck but is being questioned in connection with the attack, although police did not officially comment on the details. Police also said earlier that they were questioning two people in connection with the attack but cautioned that they were not necessarily suspects. It was not clear if the person detained was one of the two being questioned. 'Sweden Has Been Attacked' The Swedish capital was reeling after the deadly attack on the Ahlens department store in the Stockholm city center. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but authorities were treating it as a terrorist attack. "Sweden has been attacked. This indicates that it is an act of terror," Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven. The country is in a state of shock." He vowed that terror will not be allowed to undermine Sweden's democracy. Lofven later said the country was strengthening its border controls for at least the next 10 days in reaction to the attack. Police also said it appeared to be an act of terror. "Given what has happened in other parts of Europe, we cannot currently exclude that this is a terrorist crime," a police statement said.. The Aftonbladet newspaper quoted a spokesman for the Spendrups brewing company as saying the truck involved in the incident had been stolen while the driver was unloading goods during a delivery earlier in the day. The company said the driver was safe. WATCH: Truck Drives Into Store In Stockholm, Causing Fatalities A witness told Aftonbladet that the truck came "out of nowhere." "I couldn't see if anyone was driving, but it was out of control. I saw at least two people get run down. I ran as fast as I could away from there," he said. Television footage showed smoke coming out of the upscale Ahlens department store on the city's pedestrian street Drottninggatan after the truck smashed into the store at about 3 p.m. local time. Police asked locals to avoid the center of the city and shut down the city's subway system for several hours. It was later reopened. Authorities ordered the evacuation of the nearby central train station, although they did not say why. Officials of national rail company SJ said all trains to and from Stockholm's central station would be canceled for the rest of the day as a result of the attack in the city. Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf said the royal family viewed the attack "with dismay." We follow developments, but as of now our thoughts go to the victims and their families," he said. International Reaction Among the early reactions from abroad, a spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel issued a statement saying: "Our thoughts go out to the people in Stockholm, to the injured, their relatives, rescuers and police. We stand together against terror." Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Unions chief executive, said, "We stand shoulder to shoulder in solidarity with the people of Sweden. "One of Europe's most vibrant and colorful cities appears to have been struck by those wishing it and our very way of life harm, he added. Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose country on April 3 suffered its own terrorist attack when 13 people were killed by a suspected suicide bomber in St. Petersburg's subway system, sent a note of condolences to the Swedish king. "In our country, people know, and not by hearsay, about the atrocities of international terrorism. At this difficult time, Russians mourn together with the people of Sweden," Putin said. Sweden's Scandinavian neighbors reacted by increasing security in public areas. Norwegian police said officers at the Oslo airport and in in the country's major citieswould be carrying weapons until further notice following the Stockholm attack. Norwegian police normally do not carry weapons. In Finland, police in the capital, Helsinki, said they were increasing patrols. There have been several recent terrorist attacks involving vehicles ramming crowds in Europe, all of them claimed by the Islamic State (IS) terrorist organization. Five people died as a result of a knife-and-vehicle attack in London on March 22. On December 19, 12 people were killed and 48 injured when a truck was driven into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin. In July 2016, 86 people were killed when a truck slammed into crowds in the French city of Nice. With reporting by AP, dpa, AFP, the BBC, and Reuters MOSCOW -- In confirming the deployment of its S-300 and state-of-the art S-400 missile-defense systems in Syria, the Kremlin boasted six months ago that it had secured the country's air bases from American cruise missiles. But after a barrage of U.S. Tomahawk cruise missiles hit the Syrian government air base at Shayrat on April 7, where some Russian military personnel were stationed, consternated Russians took to social networks asking: "Where the hell were the vaunted S-400s?" Am I the only one who doesnt understand why our S-400s. didnt shoot down the American rockets? asked one Twitter user. The Kremlin first deployed the "Triumph" S-400 system in Syria in 2015 after Turkey in November that year shot down a Russian warplane Ankara said had strayed into Turkish airspace. The system uses a package of four different types of missiles to account for various incoming weapons and aircraft: one has a long range of 400 kilometers, and another a range of only 40 kilometers, providing overlapping blanket coverage. The system is capable of downing aircraft, drones, and cruise missiles including Tomahawks, the RIA state news agency reported at the time. Russian and Western military analysts, however, say that the system was positioned too far away from the Shayrat air base to be effective against the April 7 strike, which used cruise missiles that skim the earth at about five meters off the ground, fly at subsonic speed, and follow their own flight paths. "All this talk that we have secured the whole of Syrian airspace is artistic whistling," said Pavel Felgengauer, a Moscow-based military analyst, and suggested this boasting was intended to boost the sale of arms showcased in Syria. "They certainly can't [intercept cruise missiles] at that distance from their location. At the very most, they can defend the nearest approach of the base where they are located," he said. The S-400 air-defense systems are located at Russia's air base at Latakia and its naval base at Tartus. The strike, which hit the Shayrat air base near Homs more than 75 kilometers away from the city of Tartus and more than 120 kilometers from Latakia, meant the American cruise missiles were safely out of the Russian air-defense system's effective range for cruise missiles, he said. "You can more or less defend a perimeter of about 40 kilometers." Justin Bronk, a defense analyst at the London-based think tank Royal United Services Institute, agreed, saying that despite the sophistication of the S-400s radar -- which covers up to 400 kilometers at higher altitudes -- the system would encounter problemswith targets at low altitudes farther away. "Any rough terrain between the radar and the flight path of the cruise missiles will prevent that system, in this case at Latakia and Tartus, engaging," said Bronk. "Also, while the S-400 is advertised as having an anti-cruise missile capability, it is more geared toward ballistic missiles coming in from very high angles, very quickly, and other tactical aircraft," he said. "It's more geared toward those kinds of targets than subsonic, land-skimming missiles." Another observer, however, left open the possibility that the system very well could have worked, but that Moscow opted not to activate it. Moscow-based military analyst Aleksandr Golts noted that U.S. officials notified Russian forces of the strike ahead of time in order to minimize losses to Russian and Syrian personnel -- in compliance with an airspace safety memorandum between Russia and the U.S.-led coalition in Syria, which is conducting separate air campaigns in the country. "We don't know whether the Russian military was not able [to intercept it] or if it did not want to," Golts said. "As far as we can see, the memorandum on preventing incidents was operating. The Americans complied with it by informing the Russians two hours before the attack. In such a situation, again, we don't know if Russia wanted to or didn't want to use their air-defense system." 'Not Idiots' Aytech Bizhev, the former deputy commander-in-chief of the Russian Air Force, told Interfax that the "flight path was set to bypass our missile-defense system so that they would not enter our strike range. The Americans are also not idiots." He told the Russian news agency that the Tomahawks would have been much less effective had they entered the range of Russian air defense. "We can't rule out that a part of the rockets would be able to get through with such a huge mass strike, but we have not only S-400s there, but also Pantsirs that are very effective against these kinds of cruise missiles at low altitudes. It would have been an entirely different picture." Russias Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said on April 7 that Russia would beef up Syrias air defenses "very soon in order to defend the most vulnerable objects of Syrian infrastructure," Interfax reported. Nonetheless, the perceived inefficacy of the S-400s prompted an outburst of snarky commentary on Russian language social networks, with one Twitter user writing: "Listen, I just want to check -- is Moscow also secured by S-300 and S-400s?" The URL has been copied to your clipboard The code has been copied to your clipboard. The U.S. has fired 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at Syrias Shayrat Airfield. According to the Pentagon, they targeted aircraft, hardened aircraft shelters, petroleum and logistical storage, ammunition supply bunkers, air defense systems, and radars. But why was Shayrat targeted in particular? Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. Court Approves $200 Million Rights Offering Emergence From Chapter 11 Expected in the Coming Weeks DENVER, April 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Bonanza Creek Energy, Inc. (NYSE:BCEI) (Bonanza Creek or the Company) today announced that, just over three months after it filed for Chapter 11 relief, the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware (the Court) has confirmed its Third Amended Plan of Reorganization (the Prepackaged Plan). In addition, the Court approved the commencement of a rights offering that will result in the infusion of approximately $200 million of new liquidity into the Company upon its emergence from bankruptcy. Bonanza Creek expects to emerge from bankruptcy before the end of this month. The Courts confirmation of our Prepackaged Plan represents a significant step toward completing our successful financial restructuring, said Richard Carty, Bonanza Creeks President and Chief Executive Officer. We will emerge as a strong and deleveraged company with a competitive business plan that will position us well vis a vis our industry peers. Bonanza Creek is thankful for the steadfast support of our dedicated employees, creditors, vendors and other parties throughout the restructuring process. The Prepackaged Plan, which received unanimous support from Bonanzas creditors, incorporates the terms of the previously announced Restructuring Supporting Agreement the Company entered into with certain noteholders and one of its crude oil purchase and sale counterparties, NGL Crude Logistics, LLC and its parent, NGL Energy Partners LP. The Prepackaged Plan equitizes over $867 million of unsecured debt, eliminates over $50 million in annual cash interest, and completes a new capital raise of $200 million through the rights offering. In addition, the Prepackaged Plan implements (i) agreements the Company reached with its existing secured lenders to continue their support of the Company through an amended and restated revolving reserved based lending agreement, (ii) a settlement with the Companys equity holders to provide them with their pro rata share of up to 4.5% of the equity of reorganized Bonanza Creek, subject to dilution as set forth in the Prepackaged Plan, and 3 year warrants for up to 7.5% of such equity of reorganized Bonanza Creek and (iii) a settlement with members of an ad hoc group of equity holders. All customer, vendor, and employee obligations associated with the ongoing business will remain unaffected. Advisors Davis, Polk & Wardwell LLP is acting as legal counsel, Perella Weinberg Partners LP is acting as financial advisor, and Alvarez & Marsal LLC is acting as restructuring advisor to the Company in connection with its restructuring efforts. About Bonanza Creek Energy Bonanza Creek Energy, Inc. is an independent oil and natural gas company engaged in the acquisition, exploration, development and production of onshore oil and associated liquids-rich natural gas in the United States. The Companys assets and operations are concentrated primarily in the Rocky Mountain region in the Wattenberg Field, focused on the Niobrara and Codell formations, and in southern Arkansas, focused on oily Cotton Valley sands. The Companys common shares are listed for trading on the NYSE under the symbol: BCEI. For more information about the Company, please visit www.bonanzacrk.com. Further information on the restructuring process and the Prepackaged Plan can be found on the Companys case information website, located at http://cases.primeclerk.com/bcei. Please note that the Company routinely posts important information about the Company under the Investor Relations section of its website. Safe Harbor Statement This release includes forward-looking statements and projections, made in reliance on the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements regarding our liquidity. Bonanza Creek has made every reasonable effort to ensure that the information and assumptions on which these statements and projections are based are current, reasonable, and complete. However, a variety of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from the projections, anticipated results or other expectations expressed in this release, including: (i) changes in demand for our services and any related material impact on our pricing and utilizations rates, (ii) Bonanza Creeks ability to execute, manage and integrate acquisitions successfully, (iii) changes in our expenses, including labor or fuel costs and financing costs, (iv) continued volatility of oil or natural gas prices, and any related changes in expenditures by our customers, (v) competition within our industry, (vi) Bonanza Creeks ability to comply with its financial and other covenants and metrics in its debt agreements, as well as any cross-default provisions, and (vii) the ability to execute Bonanza Creeks business and restructuring plan. Additional important risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations are disclosed in Item 1A of Bonanza Creeks Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2016. While Bonanza Creek makes these statements and projections in good faith, neither Bonanza Creek nor its management can guarantee that anticipated future results will be achieved. Bonanza Creek assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements made herein or any other forward-looking statements made by Bonanza Creek, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. PARIS and STOCKHOLM, Sweden, April 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Capgemini, a global leader in consulting, technology and outsourcing services, has announced an agreement with Ikano Bank AB, part of the Ikano Group. The new agreement will see Capgemini Sverige AB support Ikano Bank in strengthening its IT-capacity to support its growth strategy. After a competitive tender process, Ikano Bank is now embarking on a transformation journey with Capgemini as its chosen provider. The five-year contract will provide Ikano Bank with cost-efficient and effective operating of its IT landscape to support its growth and performance. Capgemini will provide agile and mature IT and business transformation services. Capgemini will help us grow. They have the right mix of skills with domain technical knowledge both locally and globally. They proposed a cost effective and innovative solution to strengthen our IT capacity and speed up our digital transformation. They are also a good cultural fit for our team members, says Stefan Nyrinder, CEO at Ikano Bank AB. We are delighted that Ikano Bank has chosen us as their partner for their IT transformation journey, says Anil Agarwal, Deputy CEO at Capgemini Sverige AB. This project will see Capgemini leverage its broad financial services and banking experience. The first step in the process is to transform the as is IT environment into a next Generation Information Communications Technology services platform, that will help launch Ikano Banks key objective to transform into an industrialized digital operation. Headquartered in Malmo in Sweden, Ikano Bank has operations in Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Poland, Austria, Russia and the UK. About Capgemini With more than 190,000 people, Capgemini is present in over 40 countries and celebrates its 50th Anniversary year in 2017. A global leader in consulting, technology and outsourcing services, the Group reported 2016 global revenues of EUR 12.5 billion. Together with its clients, Capgemini creates and delivers business, technology and digital solutions that fit their needs, enabling them to achieve innovation and competitiveness. A deeply multicultural organization, Capgemini has developed its own way of working, the Collaborative Business ExperienceTM, and draws on Rightshore, its worldwide delivery model. Learn more about us at www.capgemini.com. Rightshore is a trademark belonging to Capgemini For more information, please visit www.capgemini.com Amid boycotts and protests from some of Virginias elected leaders, President Donald Trump delivered a speech in Jamestown Tuesday to mark the birth of American democracy, pronouncing that in America we are not ruled from afar, we govern ourselves, and so help us God, we always will. Nearly half of all sixth-graders in Richmond missed class this school year because they didnt get the right shots. But the Richmond City Health District blames poverty rather than a growing anti-vaccination movement, and it is making an effort to help residents overcome barriers. Last year, 760 Richmond Public School students had not received their Tdap tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis vaccine on the first day of school, representing 44 percent of the sixth-grade population, according to data from RPS. That rate was up from 2015, when 516 sixth-graders, or 33 percent of the population, had not received their Tdap vaccines. In an effort to boost vaccination compliance by the first day of school, the health district is working with the school system this year on a Level Up! challenge, bringing nurses to schools to vaccinate fifth-graders before the summer, and entering them in a contest if they get their vaccines. We wanted to take a different approach and approach the children and not necessarily the adults, said Kara Holmes, a nurse manager with the citys health district who thought of the contest idea. The Tdap vaccine protects students from diphtheria, which causes a thick covering in the back of the throat that can lead to breathing problems, paralysis or death; and tetanus, otherwise known as lockjaw, that results in painful muscle tightening all over the body. It also protects against pertussis, more commonly known as whooping cough, a highly contagious respiratory infection that can become serious, especially in infants. The Richmond area experienced a pertussis outbreak in 2011 that was attributed to low immunization rates. Its all about protecting the public, and everybody plays a role in that protection, Holmes said. Its our job at the health district to provide those services, but its equally important for citizens to play their roles, too, by getting the proper vaccines to help prevent outbreaks. *** Vaccination rates have plateaued overall in Virginia in recent years, a trend the Virginia Department of Health attributes to a rising anti-vaccine movement. Under state law, students can present medical or religious exemptions to avoid getting the Tdap vaccination, but hundreds of students are still considered noncompliant at the start of the school year. According to state Department of Health data, very few RPS students submit religious or medical exemptions. Only seven of 1,708 sixth-graders were exempted from their vaccinations last year, though Henderson and Martin Luther King Jr. middle schools did not report on exemptions. Comparatively, in Henrico County Public Schools, a larger number of students submit exemptions, with 82 of 3,880 sixth-graders reporting religious or medical exemptions last year. In early March, three Henrico schools reported individual cases of mumps. The mumps vaccine is 88 percent effective, and even those with all their vaccinations can contract the illness. On Thursday, Virginia Commonwealth University Provost Gail Hackett sent a letter to students stating that the citys health district is investigating two cases of mumps within the VCU community. Hackett noted other recent cases of mumps in the Richmond area but did not suggest they were related. *** Having so few Richmond Public School students submit religious or medical exemptions suggests that other reasons such as cost, transportation or a lack of education may be getting in the way of students receiving their vaccinations on time, Holmes noted. With the demographics of Richmond, there are quite a few that fit into that bucket, she said. We are trying to take away those barriers. According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, 40 percent of the citys children were living in poverty in 2015. The health district plans to bring nurses to Richmond schools later this month to vaccinate the students who have their forms filled out. Providing vaccinations at school eliminates transportation as a barrier. Cost also should not be a barrier for parents federal and state programs are designed to provide vaccines to families who otherwise cannot afford them, Holmes said. But many parents may not know that. Along with the forms that students were given, the health district sent home material that explains what the Tdap vaccine prevents along with the benefits of other vaccines that are recommended HPV and the meningococcal. In a statement, Charlene Rodgers, the nursing services coordinator for RPS, said, Its important that our families are aware of the Tdap immunization requirement so that their child doesnt have to miss a day of school. When students come to school on the first day without proof of Tdap immunization, they are detained until they are released to a parent, who is told how to get the child the vaccination. Many students return to school within the first week. The students are encouraged to get their forms signed by their parents so they can get the vaccine, thus leveling up to the sixth grade. The health districts contest enters them to win a $50 gift card. The hope is that, if children become aware of how important it is to get their vaccines, they may be better equipped to talk with their parents and remind them that they need to get vaccinated before starting sixth grade. I dont think we give our students enough credit for just how smart they are, Holmes said. While Richmond has been recognized as a top city for travel and food, a less appealing ranking was revealed Friday: Last year, there were 20 dog attacks on mail carriers, making Richmond among the 40 most dangerous cities for carriers. Richmond was tied for 37th worst in the country in 2016 in the U.S. Postal Service annual report on dog attacks on carriers. Most of the cities with more attacks than Richmond are far more populous, meaning Richmond actually fares far worse per capita in many cases. Homeowners famous last words are: My dog doesnt bite, Postal Service spokeswoman Freda Sauter said in an interview Friday. The Postal Service is hoping to get the word out about the number of reports of dogs attacking mail carriers, while asking that customers do their part to help prevent future attacks. Nationwide, 6,755 postal employees were attacked by dogs in 2016, according to the Postal Service. Thats an increase of more than 200 compared with 2015. Even good dogs have bad days, U.S. Postal Service Safety Director Linda DeCarlo said in a statement. DeCarlo is based in Los Angeles, where 80 postal employees were attacked by dogs last year, the most in the country. Houstons 62 attacks ranked second highest, and Cleveland came in third with 60 attacks. The Postal Service urged people to notify them of their dogs in the package pickup application at usps.com. The scanners that Postal Service letter carriers use to confirm a customers delivery include a feature for carriers to indicate the presence of a dog at an individual address, DeCarlo said. This information is particularly helpful for substitute carriers who fill in for regular carriers on their days off. Half of the 4.5 million Americans bitten by dogs annually are children, according to data provided by the Postal Service from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A third redistricting possibility that could affect hundreds of Henrico County students was introduced this week. The newly crafted redistricting option, which would go into effect in fall 2018, is one of three currently being weighed by the school division as part of a rezoning process to relieve overcrowding at Hungary Creek Middle School and to free up space at L. Douglas Wilder Middle School for a proposed academy for gifted students. The new option calls for some Rivers Edge Elementary School students to attend Short Pump Middle School. It would send students at Springfield Park Elementary School and some Longan, Echo Lake and Glen Allen elementary school students to Holman Middle School. Additionally, some students who would traditionally attend L. Douglas Wilder Middle School would be split between Moody and Fairfield middle schools, according to information from the school districts website. Tiffany Hinton, director of research and planning, said the option was developed based on feedback from communities that didnt want to be divided by the redistricting, as well as proximity to schools. We tried to look at some options that may minimize those concerns, she said, noting that the new option doesnt change Shady Grove Elementary Schools current zoning and sends students at Twin Hickory Elementary School to the same middle school. Depending on which plan is chosen, the redistricting could affect 558 to 618 students, according to numbers from the school division. Families examined color-coded maps of all the redistricting possibilities at Wilder Middle on Thursday night. A public hearing wasnt held, but School Board members, administrators and redistricting consultant Cropper GIS circulated the gym to field questions and input. A formal public hearing will be held May 11. The School Board hopes to approve a redistricting plan at its May 25 meeting. In addition to the new option, the district is considering two others: The first would send elementary students at Shady Grove and half of those at Twin Hickory to Short Pump Middle. More Echo Lake Elementary and students who live in the northern part of Glen Allen Elementarys attendance area would attend Holman Middle. In the eastern part of the county, some would-be students at Wilder Middle would be rerouted to Brookland or Moody. The second also would send Shady Grove students and half of Twin Hickorys students to Short Pump Middle. Students at Springfield Park Elementary and some Longan Elementary students would both attend Holman Middle. Some students who would normally attend Wilder would attend Moody or Fairfield. In addition to the larger rezoning that will go into effect in fall 2018, the School Board approved a smaller redistricting in March that will send more than five dozen rising sixth-graders to Holman instead of Hungary Creek in the coming fall. The options were modified after the School Board approved the smaller redistricting to ensure that students arent affected twice. Virginia Commonwealth University students would need to pay about 5.3 percent more in tuition and fees next year to close an estimated $19.1 million funding gap, officials said Thursday. The university faces a revenue gap of about $11 million to pay for unavoidable costs and high-priority needs, including a 3 percent salary increase. An additional $8 million budget reduction from the state brings the total gap to $19.1 million. Raising tuition by 5.3 percent or $696 per academic year for in-state undergraduates would generate $19.7 million, Karol Kain Gray, VCUs vice president for finance and budget, told the VCU Board of Visitors during a budget workshop on Thursday. Board members will not vote on the budget and potential tuition increase until their May meeting. Being new here, I can tell you we are lean and mean, Gray said, but if the board members want VCU to be as competitive as its peer institutions, they need to fund a tuition increase. At least one board member, Robert D. Holsworth, took issue with Grays notion that a tuition increase necessarily leads to a higher quality education. The administration is not recommending an increase to most of the mandatory fees that all students pay, however, a 5.6 percent increase in the capital outlay fee for nonresidents has been proposed. Increases in fees for on-campus housing, dining and parking have also been proposed. The fact that the university has fewer tenured and tenure-track professors is a sign that VCU is operating at a lower level than its peer institutions like the University of Virginia, Virginia Tech and the College of William & Mary, Gray said. Adjunct and non-tenured professors tend to not cost as much to employ. Only 35 percent of VCUs professors are tenured or tenure-track, compared with 57 percent at U.Va., 62 percent at Virginia Tech and 65 percent at the College of William & Mary. English French Procedures for Requesting or Viewing Proxy Information for the Combined (Ordinary and Extraordinary) Annual Meeting on May 11, 2017 Charenton-le-Pont, France (April 7, 2017 - 8:00 p.m. CEST) - Shareholders are advised that the Combined (Ordinary and Extraordinary) Annual Meeting will be held on Thursday, May 11, 2017 at 10:45 a.m. CEST at the Maison de la Mutualite - 24, rue Saint-Victor - 75005 Paris - France. The preliminary notice of meeting, published in the Bulletin des Annonces Legales Obligatoires on March 29, 2017, contains information on the agenda, the proposed resolutions and the procedures for attending and voting. Proxy information may be viewed in the Investors section of the Essilor corporate website at www.essilor.com: "Annual Shareholders' Meetings". As provided for in Articles R.225-88 and R.225-89 of the French Commercial Code, any shareholder may consult the proxy documents and information, as described in Article R.225-83 of the French Commercial Code, at Company headquarters (147 rue de Paris - 94220 Charenton-le-Pont - France) or request that such documents be sent to him or her, by writing to: Societe Generale - Service des Assemblees - CS 30812 - 44308 Nantes Cedex 03 - France. About Essilor The world's leading ophthalmic optics company, Essilor designs, manufactures and markets a wide range of lenses to improve and protect eyesight. Its mission is to improve lives by improving sight. To support this mission, Essilor allocates more than 200 million to research and innovation every year, in a commitment to continuously bring new, more effective products to market. Its flagship brands are Varilux, Crizal, Transitions, EyezenTM, Xperio, Foster Grant, BolonTM and Costa. It also develops and markets equipment, instruments and services for eyecare professionals. Essilor reported consolidated revenue of more than 7.1 billion in 2016 and employs 64,000 people worldwide. It markets its products in more than 100 countries and has 33 plants, 490 prescription laboratories and edging facilities, as well as 5 research and development centers around the world. For more information, please visit www.essilor.com. The Essilor share trades on the Euronext Paris market and is included in the Euro Stoxx 50 and CAC 40 indices. Codes and symbols: ISIN: FR0000121667; Reuters: ESSI.PA; Bloomberg: EI:FP. ------------------------ Investor Relations and Financial Communications Phone: +33 (0)1 49 77 42 16 After serving as president of the College of William & Mary for 10 years, W. Taylor Reveley III announced Friday that he will retire on June 30, 2018. When I do retire, I will be 75, and I really want to have another life after my formal work life, which will have lasted 50 years, he said. I think 75 is probably pushing it as far as I can push it if I want to be reasonably sure I can enjoy the rights of retirement. Before taking on his current position, Reveley served as the dean of the William & Mary Law School for 10 years. He first took over his position on an interim basis in February 2008 after the tumultuous tenure and sudden resignation of his predecessor, Gene Nichol. During his time as W&Ms president, Reveley has overseen the colleges physical, academic and financial shift. By the end of 2018, more than 40 percent of the colleges infrastructure will have been built or renovated during his time there, according to a news release. He also oversaw the first revision of W&Ms undergraduate curriculum in 20 years, along with the addition of new programs and degrees. To me its remarkable that somebody who started as a transitional leader, as an interim president, became a transformational leader of the college, said Todd Stottlemyer, W&Ms rector. That doesnt always happen. In his final 14 months at W&M, Reveley said he will continue to push some of the Williamsburg universitys biggest initiatives. Lame duck is not in my DNA, he said. He is particularly interested in advancing W&Ms For the Bold $1 billion campaign for which it has raised $700 million so far and its attempt to get 40 percent of the undergraduate alumni to participate in annual giving. That measure really matters because its an indication of alumni loyalty and alumni commitment, Reveley said. W&Ms Board of Visitors is in the process of creating a presidential search committee to appoint the colleges 28th president. Reveley said the next president will have to ensure the new curriculum for its undergraduate students, COLL, continues its productive evolution. W&M launched COLL in September 2015. The universitys new engineering program, which is set to launch this fall, will need the next presidents attention, he said, as will the burgeoning online degree offerings. On the financial front, we have got to keep building the financial foundation rooted in endowment growth and in annual giving growth, he added. That is absolutely essential. He noted that, increasingly, state support as a percentage of W&Ms operating budget has declined. Last year was the first year the colleges operating budget was funded more by philanthropy than by state support, and that trend will likely continue, he said. But he said the next president should be most focused on the notion of William & Mary becoming excellent in everything. Its very important to me that William & Mary recognize just how magnificent an institution it is and make clear its pride, he said. We need to make clear, not just quietly in our hearts, but more demonstratively, that were proud of this place. Originally from Churchville in the Shenandoah Valley, Reveley completed his undergraduate education at Princeton in 1965, then went on to receive his law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1968. After he leaves the Brafferton W&Ms second-oldest building, which was formerly home to Native Americans brought to the school and now houses the presidents offices Reveley said he will move between his familys home in Richmond and their condominium in Williamsburg. I will turn out the lights in the Brafferton on June 30, 2018, he said, and then motor into the sunset. MADISON HEIGHTS The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating the transfer of residents from one of Virginias institutions for housing the intellectually and developmentally disabled to another state facility following three deaths, according to a state official. Virginia Health and Human Resources Secretary Bill Hazel said that since October, three of the six people transferred from Central Virginia Training Center in Madison Heights to Hiram W. Davis Medical Center in Petersburg have died, including 23-year-old Tyler Bryant. The transfers are part of a plan to address a nursing shortage at the training center and eventually shut down the facility. The state plans to close four of five training centers by 2020. Despite their mothers objections, Bryant and his twin brother, Taylor, were transferred on Jan. 17 from the training center, where they had lived for 20 years. Tyler died nearly two months later. Martha Bryant questions the states oversight of its medical centers and said her sons medications were changed or drastically reduced upon their move. Taylor Bryant still resides at Hiram Davis. GOP gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie disclosed more names of his 2016 consulting clients on Friday. They include the Institute for Energy Research, a think tank that has given President Donald Trump advice on energy. State law does not require statewide candidates to release the names of businesses operating in Virginia to whom they provided services. But last week, Gillespie voluntarily identified them as AT&T, Anthem, Microsoft and Bank of America. On Friday, at the request of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Gillespies campaign identified four clients for whom he consulted in 2016 who did business outside Virginia: The Institute for Energy Research and its affiliate American Energy Alliance, communication company Brunswick Group, and public affairs and communication company DCI Group. Thomas J. Pyle, a former lobbyist for Koch Industries and president of the Institute for Energy Research, served on Trumps transition team. When asked if Gillespie provided advice directly to the Brunswick Group and DCI Group or to clients who retained those companies Gillespie spokeswoman Abbi Sigler replied by email, I have nothing else to add. As I told you, Brunswick Group and DCI Group were Eds clients. The strategic advice he provided them is their proprietary information. Del. Marcus B. Simon, D-Fairfax, sent Gillespie a letter Friday asking that he disclose the past five years of his consulting clients and activities, and any Virginia contracts for which those clients bid, in the interest of transparency. Should he be elected governor, Simon said, the public would want to know if any of his previous clients were seeking business before the state or seats in his administration. Simons letter asked Gillespie, Please do not follow President Trumps lead on refusing to disclose personal financial details. Trump, unlike any other modern presidential nominee, refused last year to release his tax returns and still has not done so. Gillespie, a longtime political strategist and former lobbyist, stopped taking consulting clients this year as he seeks the GOP nomination for governor June 13. Hes competing with two other GOP contenders, state Sen. Frank W. Wagner, R-Virginia Beach, and Corey Stewart, chairman of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors. Gillespie nearly upended Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Warner in 2014. That year, he disclosed the names of clients he consulted for. He waded into the ethics issue on Thursday, holding a news conference to call for reforms, some of which his own party has fought in the General Assembly for years. They include an end to the personal use of campaign money. WASHINGTON Americas Congress is quietly becoming a European-style parliament and the transformation isnt for the good. Congress is fanning, not defusing, conflict. Although I have written about this before, the issue is worth revisiting, because its significance is underappreciated and it helps explain the brutal bitterness of todays politics. Witness the acrimonious debate over Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch or the stalemated status of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). In a well-functioning parliamentary system, voters pick one party or several associated parties that can control the legislature and adopt the majoritys political agenda. The key is parliamentary discipline. Legislators of the ruling party are committed by custom and self-interest to vote as a bloc. If they dont, the government may fall, resulting in a new election and the possible loss of seats. There is little freelancing. Parties are more ideological. They have a sweeping vision of governments role. Because this is so, some scholars favor parliamentary systems. Voters are offered a clear-cut choice. There is more clarity compared with, say, the traditional congressional system where philosophical coherence is diluted by regional, interest-group and religious differences. Up to a point, all this is true. But in practice, many parliamentary systems dont operate the way the theory dictates. They have at least three interrelated weaknesses, all of which are now apparent in Washington. First, politics becomes increasingly polarized and ideological because parties build popular support through various causes and crusades, which are advanced with great self-righteousness and emotional fervor. Those on the other side are not merely misguided. They are threatening and dangerous. Visions clash. This surely describes much of Americas present political situation. Politicians appeal to their parties partisan bases. The left is obsessed with fighting global climate change, reducing economic inequality, and promoting universal health care. The right thinks tax cuts and less regulation will spur economic growth, and some also believe that tight immigration controls will benefit todays Americans. Second, because each party is focused on its own issues, parliamentary democracy may produce dramatic shifts in policy if one party supplants the other in a general election. So? Elections have consequences. True. But theres a danger that the changes wont reflect public opinion; instead, theyll reflect party views and minority opinion. This, too, describes U.S. politics. Government policy is unstable. Backed by an approval rating of roughly 40 percent, President Trump has proposed radical changes in trade, immigration, government spending and taxes. When theres a broad consensus about governments role and proposed changes exist mostly on the fringes parliamentary government need not encourage social division. But that is not the case now. Finally, parliamentary democracy risks producing weak coalitions that cant govern at all, because no party commands a working majority. In these circumstances, small parties hold the balance of power, and they may demand a high political price for participating in a governing coalition. In this sense, parliamentary systems can be biased in favor of fringe parties and ideas. Italy, with its many parties, is an apt example of ungovernability. Again, this applies to our current situation, though thats not immediately obvious. Superficially, the Republicans have congressional majorities as well as the White House. But appearances are deceiving. Although we lack hordes of small parties, we do have many caucuses, on both right and left, that play a similar role. On the right, we have the House Freedom Caucus; on the left, we have the House Progressive Caucus. They can leverage their support, as the Freedom Caucus is now doing with Obamacare. A parliamentary system works best when there is general agreement about the role of government, when voting discipline is followed slavishly by its legislators, and when minority parties or their substitutes dont exert undue influence. None of these conditions exists in the United States today. We should not be surprised that there is confusion and paralysis. For decades, the United States governed itself by a system that favored centrist consensus not always wise, to be sure whereas our invisible parliamentary system does just the opposite. It empowers the fringes and weakens the center. True, most of our major social and political conflicts have independent origins. But parliamentary politics is making them worse. French English Procedures for Requesting or Viewing Proxy Information for the Special Meeting of Holders of Shares with Double Voting Rights on May 11, 2017 Charenton-le-Pont, France (April 7, 2017 - 8:00 p.m. CEST) - Shareholders are advised that a Special Meeting of holders of shares with double voting rights will be held on Thursday, May 11, 2017 at 9:00 a.m. CEST at the Maison de la Mutualite - 24, rue Saint-Victor - 75005 Paris - France. The preliminary notice of meeting, published in the Bulletin des Annonces Legales Obligatoires on March 29, 2017, contains information on the agenda, the proposed resolutions and the procedures for attending and voting. Proxy information may be viewed in the Investors section of the Essilor corporate website at www.essilor.com: "Annual Shareholders' Meetings". As provided for in Articles R.225-88 and R.225-89 of the French Commercial Code, any shareholder may consult the proxy documents and information, as described in Article R.225-83 of the French Commercial Code, at Company headquarters (147 rue de Paris - 94220 Charenton-le-Pont - France) or request that such documents be sent to him or her, by writing to: Societe Generale - Service des Assemblees - CS 30812 - 44308 Nantes Cedex 03 - France. About Essilor The world's leading ophthalmic optics company, Essilor designs, manufactures and markets a wide range of lenses to improve and protect eyesight. Its mission is to improve lives by improving sight. To support this mission, Essilor allocates more than 200 million to research and innovation every year, in a commitment to continuously bring new, more effective products to market. Its flagship brands are Varilux, Crizal, Transitions, EyezenTM, Xperio, Foster Grant, BolonTM and Costa. It also develops and markets equipment, instruments and services for eyecare professionals. Essilor reported consolidated revenue of more than 7.1 billion in 2016 and employs 64,000 people worldwide. It markets its products in more than 100 countries and has 33 plants, 490 prescription laboratories and edging facilities, as well as 5 research and development centers around the world. For more information, please visit www.essilor.com. The Essilor share trades on the Euronext Paris market and is included in the Euro Stoxx 50 and CAC 40 indices. Codes and symbols: ISIN: FR0000121667; Reuters: ESSI.PA; Bloomberg: EI:FP. ------------------------ Investor Relations and Financial Communications Phone: +33 (0)1 49 77 42 16 A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind. The Bank of Fincastle continues to build their team of experienced banking and lending executives with the announcement of the following new hires and promotions. Its no secret that The Bank of Fincastle has been expanding our team of professionals for the past couple of years, said Scott Steele, President and CEO. These new hires and promotions demonstrate our commitment to promoting staff from within the bank as well as our continued commitment to the communities we serve. Brian Taylor has joined The Bank of Fincastle as Commercial Loan Officer. Taylor comes to the bank from Farm Credit of the Virginias where he held the position of Loan Officer. A graduate of Virginia Tech, he received his B.A. in Political Science with minors in real estate and music. Taylor has extensive experience in lending and underwriting and has grown and managed loan portfolios in excess of 40 million dollars. April Singleton and Donna Blankenship have joined The Bank of Fincastle as Consumer Loan Processors, and Irma Francisco has joined the Deposit Operations department. April Singleton has 17 years of combined banking experience at First Virginia Bank, StellarOne and Freedom First. She has held positions in the branch, in operations and in loan operations throughout her career. Singleton is a native of Botetourt County and graduated Magna Cum Laude in Business Administration from Virginia Western Community College. Donna Blankenship of Salem joins The Bank of Fincastle with 17 years of experience in lending plus eight years experience in loan operations, most recently with Freedom First Federal Credit Union. Irma Francisco of Salem brings more than 28 years of experience in the financial industry to The Bank of Fincastle, most recently from the Bank of North Carolina and Valley Bank, both in Roanoke. She will hold the position of Deposit Operations Operator. Cindy Bailey of Daleville has been promoted to Officer and Marketing Director of The Bank of Fincastle. Bailey joined the bank in April of 2016 with more than ten years of bank marketing and retail banking experience in both the Roanoke and Richmond markets. She is active in the community and serves on the Board of The Botetourt Chamber of Commerce and Historic Fincastle, Inc. A native of Roanoke, Bailey graduated with a B.S. in Marketing and a minor in Psychology from Virginia Tech. Shantelle Crouch has been a dedicated employee at The Bank of Fincastle for 9 years and has been promoted to Customer Service Representative in the Daleville Branch. Erica (Nikki) Metz will be the new Head Teller in Daleville and has been employed as a teller for about a year. Submitted by Cindy Bailey Cosmetic surgeons performed nearly 16 million cosmetic procedures in 2015, including 1.7 million elective surgical procedures. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) reports that the five most common cosmetic surgical procedures are: Breast augmentation Liposuction Nose reshaping, or rhinoplasty Eyelid surgery Tummy tuck If you are considering these or any other cosmetic procedures, the ASPS recommends that you "do your homework" to maximize your chance of a safe and successful outcome. When you meet with a surgeon for a consultation, ask the following questions: Are you board-certified in plastic surgery by the American Board of Plastic Surgery? According to Kurtis E. Moyer, M.D., chief of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at Carilion Clinic, surgeons who are certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery have at least six years of specialized training, including three years in plastic surgery. The right surgeon will take the time to explain their credentials, education, training, experience and background during a personal consultation with you, said Dr. Moyer. Open communication and education about each procedure are of the utmost importance. You also want to make sure your procedure will be done in a surgical suite that is accredited by the American Association for Accreditation of Ambulatory Surgery Facilities. Am I a good candidate for this procedure? Your surgeon should be candid with you about the surgical and non-surgical options that make the most sense for you, considering your age, fitness level, underlying health conditions and goals. What results can I expect? Each individual is different and each procedure is different. Although your surgeon will share photographs or diagrams with you to give you a better understanding of your procedure, your results and recovery will depend on many factors specific to your case. Every patient is on a unique journey to achieve their desired results, said Dr. Moyer. The best thing a person can do who is considering cosmetic surgery is to schedule a personal consultation with a provider. said Dr. Moyer. Additional questions to ask a prospective surgeon can be found on Carilion Clinic Cosmetic Centers website. TORONTO, April 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The spokesgroup for the industry that is often characterized as the poster boy for the lack of regulatory harmonization in Canada, says it welcomes the new Canadian Free Trade Agreement (CFTA) announced today in Toronto by the provincial and federal governments. It will come into force on July 1, 2017. But the CEO of the Canadian Trucking Alliance, David Bradley, says, While we are encouraged, time will tell whether the new processes established to identify, prioritize and negotiate standardized rules will be more effective than previous attempts to increase the level of harmonization of trucking regulations. Indeed, in announcing the CFTA today, Brad Duguid, Ontarios minister of economic development and growth, who chaired the multi-government internal trade committee, made specific reference to the lack of harmonization that exists regarding truck driver hours of service rules across the country. A centerpiece of the agreement, which replaces the 1995 Agreement on Internal Trade, is a new regulatory reconciliation process. The CFTA establishes a Regulatory Reconciliation and Cooperation Table a federal-provincial-territorial body which will oversee the new process. We have maintained for many years that the processes and institutions Canada has been relying on to address provincial trade impediments and regulatory differences are in need of re-energization, modernization or replacement, says Bradley. The new table might provide that focus, he added, but noted the tables decisions will not be binding on provinces. Governments may opt out of reconciliation negotiations if they do not have an existing measure to reconcile or determine that reconciliation is not a desirable option for their jurisdiction. Even the ministers who spoke at todays press conference acknowledged there is still a lot of work to do and that in many respects the agreement is a first step. Nevertheless, I would prefer to remain encouraged at this point, said Bradley. We look at this as a new opportunity for a fresh look at some of our long-standing concerns or at least a better way forward. Bradley says it is imperative that Canada address the inefficiencies and complexities caused by the various provincial regulatory differences governing everything from truck weights and dimensions, to truck safety rules, to environmental standards. He also says trucking is unique in the sense that the industry is subject to both federal and provincial regulation. We need more harmonization not only between the provinces but between the provinces and the federal government as well. Bradley also says reducing internal trade barriers and reconciling internal regulatory differences is essential in the context of the countrys trade relationship with the United States and the upcoming NAFTA negotiations. Given the current lack of domestic regulatory harmonization and cohesiveness, Canada at least when it comes to trucking issues often does not speak with one voice, which makes it difficult, if not impossible, to achieve true North American or bilateral standards, he said. The Americans dont want to deal with 10 provinces, three territories and the federal government. They would like us to discuss these issues with a single voice. Jim Politis has a new heart but it's taking longer than expected for the former Montgomery County supervisor to get back to his home. Politis, a buffalo farmer, hemp advocate and former chairman of the county board of supervisors, has been a patient at the University of Virginia Health System in Charlottesville for about two months. He underwent a heart transplant on Oct. 27 and is slowly emerging from an array of complications that have included two additional major surgeries, his wife Jan Politis said last week. Politis remains on a ventilator that prevents him from speaking, and has a long list of physical and financial challenges ahead, his wife said. "In my wildest imaginations, I could not have thought it would take this long to recover. It's been a struggle, " Jan Politis said. The Politises have set up an account with the Help Hope Live organization where donations are being accepted to help with the family's costs. Even with insurance, expenses have mounted from what has been months of treatment, Jan Politis said. Still looming are the expenses of a planned relocation to a new, smaller home when Jim Politis gets out of the hospital, as well as the expected loss of Jan Politis' job as her Family Medical Leave Act time runs out. By midday Friday, the Help Hope Live website showed the campaign for Jim Politis had raised about $2,500 toward a $20,000 goal. Chris Tuck, a Montgomery County supervisor and longtime friend of the Politises, said Friday that the "Tuesday night supper club, " a group of friends that he and Jim Politis are part of, recently raised more than $1,500 for the Politises. This money was in addition to what is being raised on the Help Hope Live site, he added. Tuck said that he hoped others would add their own donations through the site. "I would hope that folks would look at the contributions that Jim has made to the community and give something to his family in their time of need, " Tuck said. Now 68 years old, Jim Politis has suffered from heart disease for about 15 years, Jan Politis said. His ventricular tachaychardia was largely controlled by medication. But two years ago about the time that he lost his bid for a fifth term on the board of supervisors a bout of bronchitis sent him to the hospital and one of his heart medications was stopped, she said. Though doctors tried, it seemed like the balance of medications was never restored, Jan Politis said. Jim Politis began experiencing fluid retention and sudden drops in blood pressure. During a family trip to Chicago last summer, he found that he couldn't breathe properly, Jan Politis said. Back home, a series of emergency room visits brought the news that his heart was failing. He was eventually advised to seek help at UVa. There, he was told that his options were to have doctors implant a Left Ventricular Assist Device a pump to help his heart or to go home and begin hospice care, Jan Politis said. Jim Politis had the pump installed in his chest on July 9, she said. He did well for a time, but in September developed a gastro-intestinal infection related to the surgery, then pneumonia, Jan Politis said. By the end of September he was back home but an angry red spot soon appeared on his abdomen, a sign that the infection was worsening, she said. By mid-October, Jim Politis was at UVa again, where he had surgery to remove the infected area. His doctors put him on the priority list for a heart transplant. Four days later, before he had left the hospital, a heart became available. Politis underwent a 12 -hour transplant operation. "He was really lucky, " Jan Politis said. "But unfortunately he hadn't had time to recover from the infection" and its surgery. For the past quarter century, more than 2,000 people have had heart transplants in the United States each year, according to figures from the U.S. Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network. In 2014, there were 2,655 heart transplants in the United States. In the first three quarters of 2015, there were 2,094. The network's website showed that on Friday, 4,199 people were waiting for heart transplants across the country. Politis' surgery took so long, Jan Politis said, because the new heart did not start beating strongly enough. Doctors installed an aortic pump alongside the new organ, along with a mechanical device called an ECMO the acronym stands for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation to help the heart put oxygen in Politis' blood. They decided to leave Politis' chest open for a week while the machines did their work, keeping him sedated the entire time. The new heart began working better. Both machines came out and Politis' chest was closed, Jan Politis said. But he needed dialysis because his kidneys had been damaged by the anti-rejection drugs needed for the transplant. It's a common effect of the transplant and doctors hope that the kidneys will return to normal function in a few months, Jan Politis said. Jim Politis also needed a ventilator to breathe because his right lung had tears that were probably caused by rubbing against the ECMO tubing, his wife said. Every time Politis coughed, air emerged through his surgical incision, she said. Then came an operation to move a piece of his small intestine to near the new heart to help with the healing there, Jan Politis said. And another to use muscle from his abdomen to plug a hole left from the ECMO. Politis had a tracheotomy to help him breathe without having a tube down his windpipe. But he still cannot talk or use his hands well enough to write although he sometimes uses a letter board to spell out messages, Jan Politis said. "I try to read his lips, " she added. Last weekend, doctors began slowly weaning Politis off the ventilator, a process that is going well, Jan Politis said. And on Tuesday, medical staff got him standing with lots of assistance for a few minutes, she said. "That made him feel good. He's coming back, " Jan Politis said. "But he's got a long way to go." Doctors are discussing another operation if the lung tear doesn't heal on its own, she said. When Jim Politis is well enough to leave the hospital, the Politises plan to move from the Riner farm that has been their home for years and which has a long history in Jan Politis' family to a new, smaller, single-level home in Christiansburg that Jim Politis will be better able to navigate, Jan Politis said. The couple have been trying to sell their 93-acre farm for years. Jan Politis said that they recently dropped the price because they need the sale to cover the cost of the Christiansburg home. Another financial pressure is what Jan Politis fears is the approaching end of her job with the billing staff at Carilion Clinic Home Health. Her employer has been sympathetic as she used up her vacation time and the six months of unpaid leave mandated by the Family Medical Leave Act, she said. But even stretching the leave as long as she could returning from UVa to work partial weeks while her sister or daughter took turns with Jim Politis in the hospital her time is about to run out, and she probably will no longer be able to keep her position, Jan Politis said. "I don't feel like I can leave him here by himself when he can't talk, " Jan Politis said last week, speaking by phone from her husband's hospital room. Still, at age 60 she planned to work for more years before retiring, Jan Politis said. She laughed at the irony of her work in health care being threatened by her care of her husband. Even with prior experience as an emergency medical technician, it's been an eye-opening year, she said. "I found out more medical knowledge in the past six months than I'd ever learned in my life, " Jan Politis said. With their 40th anniversary approaching in February, she said that she looks forward to having her husband return from the hospital. Support from friends, like the messages filling Jim Politis' Facebook page, have made the process easier to bear, Jan Politis said. She said that she and her husband are grateful for the financial contributions that have begun to come in. "It makes him feel good too, to know there's people out there thinking about him, " Jan Politis said. Low Moor, VA, February, 2016 In honor of heart month, the cardiovascular team at LewisGale Hospital Alleghany wants to help you take care of your heart. For both men and women nationwide, heart disease is the leading cause of death. Approximately 600,000 people die from heart disease annually and more than 700,000 Americans have a heart attack. As a certified chest pain center, LewisGale Hospital Alleghany is among a select group of rural hospitals who has achieved this benchmark of excellence. For patients it means the hospital offers a higher level of expertise in dealing with patients who arrive with symptoms of a heart attack. We stand prepared to care for you from the onset of your illness, said Donna Plott BSN, RN, Director of Cardiovascular Services, LewisGale Hospital Alleghany. We partner with local EMS to ensure your care starts with your 911 call. Thats why it is important for people not to drive to the hospital when experiencing chest pain or other heart-related symptoms. Plott further explains that local EMS ambulances are now equipped with EKG machines for rapid identification of heart attacks. In most cases these EKGs can be transmitted to the hospital ER or they are hand delivered as soon as the patient arrives, saving valuable time. If a heart attack is diagnosed, we can administer a thrombolytic, or clot buster, to minimize permanent heart damage, said Plott. Simultaneously, we are able to connect with a cardiologist and activate a heart alert at LewisGale Medical Center. Air and ground transport teams are readily available to assist. We also have a cardiac rehab team ready to care for patients during the rehabilitation period, providing a monitored exercise program under a physicians guidance For information on the services at LewisGale Hospital Alleghany or to arrange a speaker for a health related topic, contact Lynette Perkins at 540-862-6223 or Donna Plott at 540-862-6545. The hospital is also encouraging the public to attend one of its upcoming free educational heart programs this month. Lunch will be provided at these events. Friday, February 19, 12 p.m., Taking Control of Heart Failure Speakers: Laura White, RD, Clinical Dietitian Thursday, February 25, 12 p.m., Early Signs of Heart Attack Speaker: Michael Moran, MD, Emergency Department Medical Director To register for these events, call 1-877-2HCA DOCS (877-242-2362). Anytime a homeowner tries to use the courts to take real estate belonging to a neighbor, its kind of an eyebrow-raiser. When a judge attempts it, it ventures into the realm of newsworthy. And when the neighbor gets arrested on April Fools Day for mowing the small slice of disputed ground, it shifts the whole matter into jaw-dropping bizarro-land, and becomes an item for gossip in the legal community. Thats where things stood Wednesday morning, as the bell rang in a Fincastle courtroom for the sixth round of a still-mystifying legal brawl that had both civil and criminal dimensions. Before the day was out, everything was settled and nobody would talk. Perhaps we can call it a draw. Heres why its noteworthy: It pitted Botetourt County General District Court Judge Bill Cleaveland against a neighbor, Michael Vaughn. They live on different streets of a subdivision in southern Botetourt County, a neighborhood where homes can list in the range of $300,000 to $500,000 or more. Cleaveland has lived there since at least 1992; Vaughn since 2009. Cleavelands lot is a little more than an acre; Vaughns is a little more than an acre and a half. The judges rear property line abuts Vaughns side yard, behind Vaughns house. According to court papers, the row started when Vaughn put up a shed and childs swing in his rear yard. In September 2013, Cleaveland sued, claiming those violated neighborhood covenants. Vaughn removed the structures. You could call that round one. A month later, in October 2013 (about a year after Cleaveland became a judge), he filed a second lawsuit in Botetourt County Circuit Court claiming ownership of a small strip of land titled to Vaughn. Cleaveland also filed a quit claim deed to the ground in question, less than a tenth of an acre. More or less, that was round two in the saga. In Virginia law, the concept is known as adverse possession. Basically, a landowner who can prove hes had exclusive possession and use of property for 15 years can ask a court to rule he owns it. Clevelands lawsuit claimed hed planted trees, grass, groundcover and flowers on the strip, had erected birdhouses on it, and that his possession, use and dominion has been actual, exclusive, continuous, hostile, open, visible and notorious for 21 years. Vaughn contested the case, but little happened for the next 18 months. Round three came on April 1, 2015, when events suddenly got more hostile and notorious. According to a lawsuit he later filed, that afternoon Vaughn mowed his yard, including the disputed strip. That night around 10 p.m., Botetourt sheriffs deputies rousted him from bed, handcuffed him, and, in front of his family, arrested him on two misdemeanor charges. They took him to jail, where he was fingerprinted and photographed. Essentially, Vaughn was charged with a kind of trespass and damaging less than $1,000 worth of Cleavelands property via mowing even though ownership of the strip was still in dispute. Both those charges can be addressed through court summonses. But in this case the magistrate ordered Vaughn arrested, as if he was some kind of danger to society. That night, Vaughn posted a $1,000 bond to get released. Round four occurred about six weeks later, on May 18, 2015. A prosecutor brought in from Lynchburg dropped the charges against Vaughn. September brought round five. Vaughn sued Cleaveland, claiming the judge falsely, maliciously and without reasonable or probable cause whatsoever caused Vaughn to be arrested by using the power and influence of [Cleavelands] office. The lawsuit also claimed: Cleaveland instigated and procured the warrants from the magistrate with the intent to injure [Vaughns] reputation in the community, [and] to gain advantage in the ongoing land-ownership dispute. Vaughn sought $850,000 in compensatory and punitive damages. Round six Cleavelands adverse possession lawsuit seeking Vaughns land was slated for trial Wednesday. Retired Virginia Beach Circuit Court Judge Joseph Canada (who now lives in Franklin County) traveled to Fincastle to preside. But after huddling in private for hours, both sides agreed to a settlement and withdrew their claims. That means round seven a jury trial in Vaughns malicious prosecution lawsuit against Cleaveland, which was to be held in May before Judge William Alexander of Franklin County wont happen. Now it appears everything may be back to where it was before the dispute began. Its unclear if either side paid money. But a settlement order indicated Vaughn would grant Cleaveland an easement. I can only tell you the case is resolved, said Vaughns lawyer, Chris Kowalczuk. A lot of questions remain. The big one: Why? Cleavelands estimable legal career in the Roanoke Valley stretches back at least three decades. He was widely respected as a sharp and pugnacious prosecutor. Later, when he practiced criminal defense and personal injury law, he was known as a talented and zealous advocate. That solid reputation helped elect him to a seat in the House of Delegates in 2009 and later win an appointment to the bench. In light of all that, why would the judge pick such a penny-ante fight? Did he really pursue criminal charges and the arrest of a neighbor whose chief offense seemed to be mowing some disputed grass? Looking back, does Cleaveland have any regrets? You wont find answers here. The terms of the agreement indicate both sides are not going to comment at all, Cleaveland told me Thursday morning. Considering his reputation, its a little hard to believe Cleaveland misused the power and influence of his office, as Vaughns lawsuit so caustically claimed. But arguably, Cleavelands actions created an appearance he might have. Wise judges often go to great lengths to avoid things like that. Its spelled out in Virginias Canons of Judicial Conduct: A judge shall avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in all of the judges activities. The fine print says that applies out of court, too. The legal community has been abuzz with gossip about this case, so earlier this week I conducted a quick survey of six well-known Roanoke lawyers. Because I was asking about a sitting judge, none of them wanted to be named, which is understandable. I asked them one question: Is there any way Cleavelands action against his neighbor was NOT a total jerk move? None of those lawyers argued against that notion and one of them has sued two of his own neighbors in real-estate disputes. So here we are. Three-and-a-half years have passed. Four different lawyers from four different law firms have represented the plaintiffs and defendants in at least three lawsuits. Along the way, to avoid potential conflicts, the battle necessitated bringing in a prosecutor from Lynchburg and two judges from Franklin County. It appears were back to the status quo, plus an easement. Perhaps thats the right result. But jeez, what a waste of time and court resources. Aint justice grand? San Diego, April 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today at the 37th Annual International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation (ISHLT) Meeting & Scientific Sessions, researchers and physicians debated diagnostic and management topics beyond accepted practice during Symposium 28: Great Debates in Pulmonary Hypertension (PH). Debate topics included pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) specific therapy in a stable patient, treatment of borderline PAH, and managing PAH complicated by Interstitial Lung Disease. Marius Hoeper, MD from the Hannover Medical School in Hannover, Germany, debated the cons of treating patients with PAH due to lung disease with PAH-specific therapies. He noted there is no evidence from randomized controlled trials that treatments approved for PAH improve symptoms or outcomes in patients with PAH due to lung disease. To lend further credibility to his debate, Hoeper mentioned two recent randomized controlled trials using drugs approved for patients with PAH due to lung disease that have been prematurely discontinued because of an increased risk of adverse outcomes, including a higher mortality rate. Debate and subsequent research are the hallmarks of scientific progression, said SHLT 37th Annual Meeting and Scientific Sessions Program Chair and Board Member Jeffrey Teuteberg, MD. Creating a professional and collegial setting to discuss and challenge PAH therapies is exactly what we want our annual meetings to include. The debate continued with Bradley Maron, MD from Brigham and Womens Hospital discussing the Pros of treating patients with PAH due to lung disease. His presentation included information on the spectrum of clinical risk in PAH, which suggests that pulmonary artery pressures in the borderline range are associated with an important increase in the hazard for a hard clinical event. Maron noted that identifying patients at risk for PAH and diagnosing patients with borderline PAH is challenging. He concluded by saying that there is hope for early identification of pulmonary vascular disease through clinical screening in selected populations, such as those with systemic sclerosis. In this subgroup of patients, emerging data suggests that treating patients with borderline PH is linked to favorable treatment response and better outcome, which provides justification for broadening the methods by which patients at risk for PAH are identified and treated early. About PAH Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension is a type of high blood pressure that affects the arteries in a patients lungs and over time can impact the function of the right side of the heart. With PAH the lung arteries become thicker and stiffer which causes the pressure inside of the arteries to become elevated. Sometime the changes to the lung arteries is from a disease process of the arteries themselves, other times these changes are a result of lung or heart disease. Over time as the pressure builds in the lung arteries, it makes the right ventricle of the heart, which pumps blood through the lung arteries, work harder. The overuse of the heart muscle eventually causes the right ventricle to weaken and result in heart failure. Though most forms of PAH are not curable, there are now numerous medical therapies are available to treat symptoms and improve the quality of life for patients suffering with PH. About ISHLT The International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation (ISHLT) is a not-for-profit professional organization with more than 2,700 members from over 45 countries dedicated to improving the care of patients with advanced heart or lung disease through transplantation, mechanical support and innovative therapies via research, education and advocacy. For more information, visit www.ishlt.org. # # # Attachments: A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/88abd561-4be3-44f7-9abd-4068201f921c By J.D. Hansard Hansard is a retired math teacher living in Roanoke. Recently Judge Neil Gorsuch said, while being questioned by U.S. Senators, that no man is above the law. That is our ideal but it is not, taken literally, true. In reality, some men are above many of our laws. Consider the case of former President Bill Clinton. He lied under oath about having a sexual relationship with a woman not his wife. We Democrats said we certainly wished he had not done that. Republicans in the House of Representatives said he had committed a serious crime and deserved to be removed from office. There is a connection between breaking a law and committing a sin. We Christians generally believe that breaking a law is a sin, but some sins are not against the law. Bill Clinton committed two sins. He was unfaithful to his wife and he lied about it. Being unfaithful to his wife was a monumental sin. By comparison, his lying about it was relatively minor. When he was tried before the U.S. Senate, he was not convicted. His lying was deemed to be an insufficient reason for being removed from office. He was, in some regard, held to be above the perjury law. Important people are above some of our laws. How often is the mayor of a city given a speeding ticket? Rarely. Rich people are above some of our laws. It is a common saying that there are no millionaires on death row. People who can afford the finest lawyers in the land have more favorable outcomes than those represented by overworked public defenders. Is President Donald Trump above the law? Thanks to his wealth, he has been above many of our laws all of his life. That partly explains his anger and surprise when a so called judge ruled against him regarding his Muslim ban. He is unaccustomed to having the law stand in his way. When President Trump was campaigning, he made an amazing statement that bears on the idea of constraint by law. He said that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in New York City and he would not lose any voters. Two things about his statement amazed me. First, it is unusual for a person to ponder what would happen if they shot a random person, and then to admit such pondering on national TV. Second, and most troubling to me, was his assertion that his supporters would not be bothered by his shooting someone. I fear that he might have been, figuratively speaking, correct. Consider the following daydream I recently had. The Republicans in the U.S. Senate are shown a video of President Trump shooting someone in the White House. Who has seen this video? they asked. When assured that no one but them had seen it, they began to make a plan of action. First, they made certain that the video was destroyed. Then they put in place procedures to keep Trump from shooting additional people. They resolved that none of them would ever mention the video, and that their support of the president and his programs would continue unaltered. He did, in my daydream, not lose any voters in the U.S. Senate. When a man becomes president, he is placed at the head of an enormously powerful social movement. Millions of people particularly powerful people have a vested interest in the success of the movement. Whether our president violates a law now and then is far less important to them than the success or failure of his programs. Our president could collude with the Russians, he could make money dealing with Middle Eastern criminals, he could be bribed by despots, and it wouldnt matter. He would, in his own words, not lose any voters. If the stock market continues upward and jobs return to the country, Donald Trumps behavior will be tolerated. He is, for now, personally above the law. Donald Trump was elected thanks to millions of people who are in great pain and to whom he promised pain relief jobs will return, salaries will rise and everyone will have wonderful affordable health insurance. News stories asserting that he is a liar and a misogynist are irritating to his suffering supporters. They are willing to overlook his personal failings violating the occasional law as they anxiously await the fruition of his promises. I, for one, would like to see expanded service out of our ever busy Roanoke/Blacksburg regional airport. Our major carriers American, Delta, United and Allegiant already provide commendable service to major hubs in Atlanta, Charlotte, Dulles, New York, OHare and central Florida points. A new service to Pittsburgh (a viable destination from Roanoke for many years) would not only serve our neighbors in Western Pennsylvania along with the Upper Ohio Valley and West Virginia University, but also would offer connections to Condor, Southwest, Jet Blue, Frontier, One Jet and WOW. With only limited knowledge, I have selected Toronto-based Porter Airlines as a candidate for this new service. Porter now serves Raleigh/Durham, Richmond and Dulles and hopefully could extend Toronto/Pittsburgh flights down to our Star City. This new service, regardless of the carrier, would offer more choices to the Virginia Tech international community and our expanding diversified business community in the greater Roanoke Valley. DORR TUCKER ROANOKE NEW YORK, April 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Pomerantz LLP announces that a class action lawsuit has been filed against JBS S.A. (JBS or the Company) (OTCQX:JBSAY) and certain of its officers. The class action, filed in United States District Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania, is on behalf of a class consisting of investors who purchased or otherwise acquired the publicly traded American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) of JBS securities, seeking to recover compensable damages caused by defendants violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. If you are a shareholder who purchased JBS ADRs securities between June 2, 2015 and March 17, 2017, both dates inclusive, you have until May 22, 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] JBS processes and sells beef, lamb, pork, and chicken products in Brazil and internationally. The Company is incorporated in the Federative Republic of Brazil and its principal executive offices are in Sao Paulo- SP, Brazil. The Complaint alleges that throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and misleading statements regarding the Companys business, operational and compliance policies. Specifically, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (1) JBS executives bribed regulators and politicians to subvert food inspections of its plants and overlook unsanitary practices such as processing rotten meat and running plants with traces of salmonella; and (2) as a result, defendants statements about JBS's business, operations and prospects were materially false and misleading and/or lacked a reasonable bases at all relevant times. On March 17, 2017, news outlets reported that Brazilian federal police raided the offices of JBS and dozens of other meatpackers following a two-year investigation into alleged bribery of regulators to subvert inspections of their plants and overlook unsanitary practices. Police arrested two JBS employees, as well as 20 public officials. JBS stated in a securities filing that three of its plants and one of its employees were targeted in the probe. On this news, shares of JBS fell $0.71 per share, or over 9.2%, to close at $6.96 per share on March 17, 2017, damaging investors. The Pomerantz Firm, with offices in New York, Chicago, Florida, and Los Angeles, is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, the Pomerantz Firm pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 80 years later, the Pomerantz Firm continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomerantzlaw.com Business News Eurozone Ministers Push For Greece Bailout Deal | RobinsPost News & Noticias The Greek bailout talks once again ended without a conclusive agreement, but eurozone finance ministers shrugged it off, saying they are confident of a deal at their next meeting June 15. The almost ... Read More The Greek debt crisis highlighted a big problem in the eurozone and why it should be more than just a currency union. NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- The bailout ... rules in business deal-making is ... Read More Eurozone finance ministers on Thursday failed to nominate ... come with strict reform conditions as were imposed on Greece in a 2015 bailout when the then leftist government lost access to the ... Read More The International Monetary Fund Thursday agreed in principle to join Greeces 86 billion bailout package, ending a long standoff between it and eurozone finance ministers that had threatened the ... Read More The Greek parliament on Friday approved a deal ... for business Monday after a month, while Greece seeks more bailout funds. Struggling to unify his splintering Syriza party, Greek Prime Minister ... Read More However, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras ... receive the aid package from the Eurozone. Greek parliament has a strict Wednesday deadline to pass the reforms for bailout discussions to begin. Read More Athens, Greece (CNN)-- Greece has accepted an international aid package worth 110 billion euros (US $146 billion) over three years, according to eurozone finance ministers. The bailout deal ... Read More Greece became the epicenter of Europe's debt crisis, with two bailouts worth $264 billion so far and a third worth 86 billion euros on its way. That deal ... owed to the eurozone bailout fund ... Read More Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe has ruled himself out of the running for a job at the head of the eurozone bailout fund. After initially pleading no comment to the question, he told the ... Read More The IMF which provided a 110-billion-Euro lifeline to Greece along with the EU a year ago said Athens has put in place measures to correct past inertia blamed for missing some bailout deal targets ... Read More 2022 Fortune Media IP Limited. All Rights Reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy | CA Notice at Collection and ... Read More German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble has said debt relief for Greece violates EU law. But international finance experts say that's an exaggeration. Asked if the proposed bailout deal was ... Read More Business News Stocks Close Off Highs After Trump Comments On North Korea Syria Jobs Xi Meeting Loom | RobinsPost News & Noticias Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a rally ahead of the midterm elections, in Miami, Florida, U.S. 6, 2022. REUTERS/Marco Bello ... Read More Former President Trump shared classified letters from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ... of interviews with the former president. Trumps comments to Woodward reflect an awareness that the ... Read More Major indexes started Friday with declines before turning higher, finishing the session near their highs of the day. The Dow added 748.97 points, or 2.5%, to 31082.56. The S&P 500 added 86.97 ... Read More During his presidency, Trump met personally with Kim and pushed for peace talks between the U.S., North Korea and South Korea. Trump also reportedly exchanged what he called love letters ... Read More The Nasdaq Composite shed 0.61% to close at 10,614.84 ... continued their march higher, after strong jobless claims, and as the futures market priced in a high water mark of 5% for the Federal ... Read More North Korea Says It Will Not Overlook Any Kind of Military Provocations SEOUL (Reuters) -North Korea on Saturday warned that it would take "overwhelming military countermeasures" against what it ... Read More He's made several high ... Trump said about the delay. His latest comments echo his declaration in January that it isn't right or appropriate for Pelosi to trade individual stocks, given her ... Read More North Korea has fired two ... weapons tests Kim Jong Un's regime has set off in the last two weeks and came hours after the United States and South Korea finished a new round of naval drills ... Read More (Bloomberg) -- North Korea has finished preparations for a nuclear ... a Sudden Reversal for Landlords Musk Tells Bankers He Plans to Close Twitter Deal on Friday Stock Surge Is Pared After Hours on ... Read More Shares of Digital World Acquisition Corp., the company set to take Trump's media firm public, jumped after the news. DWAC has sought to delay the merger as it faces legal and financial obstacles. Read More The sharp sell-off came one day after the ruling Communist Party ... Politburo Standing Committee composed of President Xis close allies, market participants read the implications as President ... Read More Most Read from Bloomberg Stocks Surge in Wild Ride After CPI Data Selloff: Markets Wrap World Faces New Threats From Fast-Mutating Omicron Variants Core US Inflation Rises to 40-Year High ... Korea ... Read More Business News Norway Will Build The World S First Ship Tunnel | RobinsPost News & Noticias Construction of the worlds first shipping ... of ocean along the Norwegian coastline with a notorious reputation. However, many cruise ships will be too large for the tunnel. Read More Two load-bearing pillars of Norways leading maritime industry cluster in Sunmre on the countrys west coast offshore energy ... Read More Hurtigruten Group, a Norway-based cruise ... So tell us about your hybrid ships and how it fits into your sustainability strategy. Daniel Skjeldam: We built the worlds first factory of hybrid ... Read More Norway has announced that it will be upping its military preparedness amid the Russia-Ukraine conflict, but assured citizens they don't believe a Russian invasion is imminent. Read More scientists and professionals around the world and is arriving in Manila from Ishigaki, Japan. The arrival of the Norwegian ship marks the celebration of the successful partnership and business ... Read More Norwegian Cruise Line's newest cruise ship, the Norwegian Prima, finally completed its first US sailing in early October after seeing "record-breaking" demand in 2021. Source: Norwegian Cruise ... Read More Norwegian police say four Russian nationals ... that ruptured two natural gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea that were built to deliver Russian gas to Germany. The blasts happened off both ... Read More Norway--(BUSINESS WIRE)--StrongPoint ASA (ticker: STRO), a leading grocery retail technology provider, has been chosen to design and install the worlds first AutoStore solution purpose built ... Read More The news was first reported by Norwegian broadcaster NRK. The man represents a "threat to fundamental national interests" and should be expelled from Norway, deputy PST chief Hedvig Moe told ... Read More Find the best value sailings on GoToSea, a service of U.S. News.] Inspired by the legendary 1902 Preussen, the first five-masted ship ... in the world to view polar bears: the Norwegian ... Read More Migrants wait to be rescued by crew members of NGO rescue ship 'Ocean Viking' in the Mediterranean Sea, October 26, 2022. Camille Martin Juan/Sos Mediterranee/Handout via REUTERS ... Read More OSLO (Reuters) -Norway police on Friday investigated reports of a drone flying over the Kaarstoe gas plant in southwest Norway on Thursday, while in Arctic Norway a Russian-Israeli citizen was ... Read More Business News Croatia S Top Court Rejects Banks Call To Assess Franc Loan Conversion Law | RobinsPost News & Noticias Croatia's Ex-Prime Minister Not Guilty of War Profiteering - Zagreb Court ... Adria bank over the years 1991-95, which the prosecution said was an act of war profiteering punishable by law. Read More Turkish Opposition Calls New Media Law 'Censorship', Will Appeal to Top Court By Mert Ozkan and Jonathan Spicer ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey's main opposition ... access negative news about the ... Read More Germanys top court has rejected ... to the constitutional court after Germany's Federal Court of Justice rejected her appeal last year. 24/7 coverage of breaking news and live events ... Read More After a series of court victories this week, a federal appeals court has temporarily blocked Bidens student loan forgiveness plan. Heres what it means for borrowers seeking relief. Read More The Supreme Court rejected a request to block the Biden administration's student loan debt relief program ... deputy counsel of Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, Inc., which acted as lawyers ... Read More KAMPALA, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Media groups asked Uganda's top court on Monday ... who signed the bill into law on Thursday, has regularly complained about what he calls lies against his government ... Read More Online banks require you to conduct all of your financial business on the internet ... online or on a mobile app. CNET's list of the best online banks includes some of the most popular ... Read More ANKARA, Oct 14 (Reuters) - Turkey's main opposition group said on Friday it would ask the top court ... negative news about the government faster," he said. "They passed this law to counter ... Read More Germanys top court ... court after Germany's Federal Court of Justice rejected her appeal last year. Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first ... Read More Turkey's main opposition group said on Friday it would ask the top court to throw ... they can access negative news about the government faster," he said. "They passed this law to counter these ... Read More BERLIN (AP) Germanys top court on Monday rejected an appeal by ... participating in two bomb attacks and more than a dozen bank robberies, and of attempted murder for setting fire to ... Read More Business News Toyota Australia Adds 119 000 Vehicles To Takata Recall | RobinsPost News & Noticias In 2019, Toyota Australia was the subject of an attempted cyber attack and in March 2022 a cyber attack forced the car giant to temporarily halt production at all 14 of its Japanese factories ... Read More Rivian, the Irvine, California-based electric vehicle company, is recalling nearly all the vehicles it has produced to tighten a loose fastener in the vehicles front suspension. The recall ... Read More Many of Australia's most popular diesel vehicles are involved in "one of the biggest claims in Australia's legal history" alleging Toyota used "defeat devices" to hide vehicle emissions and evade ... Read More Electric truck and SUV maker Rivian Automotive said Friday it is recalling almost all the vehicles it has delivered to customers in order to tighten a loose fastener that could potentially affect ... Read More Rivian Automotive said Friday it is recalling almost all the vehicles it has delivered to customers in order to tighten a loose fastener that could affect drivers' ability to steer. The Electric ... Read More 3000 vehicles year to date. "The last thing any Rivian investor wants to see in a shaky market is a broad recall that hurts the brand and gives some lingering credibility issues to production ... Read More CNBC's Phil Lebeau, joins 'Squawk on the Street' to discuss Rivian's large-scale recall affecting nearly ... at least 15 minutes. Global Business and Financial News, Stock Quotes, and Market ... Read More Rivian has issued a recall that affects almost every vehicle the company has built to date. In the recall notice issued last week, Rivian said an improperly tightened fastener in the steering ... Read More Business News Brazil Airline Azul Tentatively Reschedules Ipo For Monday | RobinsPost News & Noticias There is a chance of CTG pricing the offering in December, making its IPO the only one on Brazilian exchange B3 in 2022. An offering early next year is more likely, the three sources said. Read More The Strong Business ... news. When asked who would be his finance minister, Lula didnt reply during the last presidential debate broadcast live on Sunday, October 16. Former Brazil's ... Read More Brazil, Monday, Oct. 17, 2022. Bolsonaro will compete against former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in a presidential runoff election on Oct. 30. Read More SAO PAULO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--CI&T (NYSE: CINT), a global digital specialist, has been awarded the Great Place To Work (GPTW) Brazil 2022 certification. In this edition, the company increased one ... Read More NEWPORT NEWS, Va ... interest from many other airlines. RELATED: Why experts say you should start your holiday shopping now I just got back from an air business conference," he said. Read More Brazil is days from a presidential election featuring two political titans and bitter rivals that could usher in another four years of far-right politics or return a leftist to the nations top ... Read More The news about "first class" seats comes from a report by Business Insider, which reported Friday that the Fort Worth-based airline's Chief Commercial Officer Vasu Raja made the announcement on an ... Read More American Airlines Group Inc. is replacing its first-class seats on international flights with new business-class suites. The reason: Customers arent that interested in buying first-class seats ... Read More American Airlines will phase out its first-class seats for more business-class seating on its long-haul international flights, the company said Thursday. The airline will offer an upgraded premium ... Read More Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who is running for a second term, smiles during a presidential debate in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Friday, Oct. 21, 2022. Rival Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva did not ... Read More BRASILIA, Brazil -- Brazil is days from a presidential election featuring two political titans and bitter rivals that could usher in another four years of far-right politics or return a leftist to ... Read More Brazil Election: What to Know About the High-Stakes Race By CARLA BRIDI, Associated Press BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) Brazil is days from a presidential election featuring two political titans and ... Read More Politics News The Globalist Cucks Are Winning | RobinsPost News & Noticias Last week, Democratic lawmakers Ro Khanna and Zach Wahls wrote an op-ed in The Economist that outlined their vision for the Democrats to win the fast ... in American politics these days. Read More And even if he doesnt win, what a pleasure to hear ... We would not have seen the eye- popping political convulsions which turned Britain into a global laughing stock. The soap opera is not ... Read More And the vast scale of industrial enterprises abetted organizing drives, as trade unions could rapidly gain scale by winning over a single shop. By encouraging their members to view politics ... Read More China is a major country with nearly one-fifth of the world's population and more than 18 percent of the global economy. Its political stability is good news for ... and practice win-win ... Read More Winning feels better than losing ... Rose said he wasnt concerned about a recent Spectrum News/Siena College poll that had him down 6 points to Malliotakis. Ive been in this too long ... Read More Hats off to the Daily Star - their lettuce has gone global ... Over the Channel, France's News 24 asked: What do British Prime Minister Liz Truss's political mandate and a head of wilted ... Read More Prime Minister Liz Truss brought Mr Hunt into her cabinet in an effort to stabilise both financial markets and her political future ... much of this crisis is global. And username johnny ... Read More The examination comes after McMaster University political science professor Henry Jacek told Global ... team is winning or is getting close. They can if they find their way into news stories ... Read More NBC News looks at the main contenders to replace ... the Brexit campaign to leave the European Union and then winning an 80-seat majority in the 2019 general election, including many areas where ... Read More Ms Truss succeeded Boris Johnson as PM after winning a clear victory over Rishi ... trade secretary - a job which meant meeting global political and business leaders to promote UK PLC. Read More Politics News Congress Probe Into Trump S Ties To Russia Puts Spotlight On A Low Profile Lawmaker | RobinsPost News & Noticias It was the second major admission in recent months by 61-year-old Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Read More Politics News California Legislature Votes To Raise Gas Taxes Vehicle Fees By 5 2 Billion A Year For Road Repairs And Transit | RobinsPost News & Noticias Katie Hobbs co-sponsored a bill in 2018 to raise gas taxes from 18 cents per gallon to 36 cents per gallon. The measure never received a vote by the full Senate. Without increases, the gasoline tax ... Read More Elections News Bill Requiring Joint School And City Elections In Iowa Sent To Branstad | RobinsPost News & Noticias Check back here for live Iowa election updates as ballots are cast, counted and midterm results start pouring in throughout Election Day. Read More Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate highlighted the operations conducted by his office that, he said, should convince Iowans their votes will be secure and counted accurately. Read More The final push is on. Candidates in Tuesdays election are delivering their closing arguments their tightened message that is designed to motivate or sway as many voters as possible. At the same ... Read More Elections News Iowa Senate Approves Joint School And City Elections | RobinsPost News & Noticias Check back here for live Iowa election updates as ballots are cast, counted and midterm results start pouring in throughout Election Day. Read More Republicans were trying Tuesday to sweep Iowas four seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, pushing to oust a vulnerable Democratic incumbent and to reelect two first-term congresswomen. If they ... Read More Unsure if you're registered to vote? Not sure where your polling place is? Need a ride to the polls? We have answers to all that and more. Read More The Nov. 8 general election is less than one week away. Follow our live coverage to get the latest news on the 2022 midterm elections. Read More Former President Donald J. Trump is eager to announce a new bid for the White House, and Iowa holds outsize importance. His Thursday night event will support two incumbents. Read More The 2022 midterm election is less than two weeks away, with control of Congress and key statehouses at stake. Our reporters are covering contests across the nation. Read More Potus News What Melania Trump Should Know About China S First Lady | RobinsPost News & Noticias Jill Biden just did something her predecessor, Melania Trump, never did and likely never would have done, or even considered, when she was first lady ... s reduce the incidence of cancer as we ... Read More Melania Trump will speak out in a rare solo interview, dubbed as her first sit-down since becoming First Lady ... s sit-down comes after her husband granted an interview to ABC News chief ... Read More Former first lady Melania Trump announced Wednesday that she will join the Women's Suffrage National Monument Foundation, serving as an honorary chair alongside first lady Jill Biden and former ... Read More If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, SheKnows may receive an affiliate commission. I am honored to join @WomensMonument and serve as an ... Read More Editors' Blog / Analysis & Opinion News Live Blog Morning ... Ghana (AP) Melania Trump opened her first big solo international trip as U.S. first lady on Tuesday with a wave, a smile and ... Read More Former first lady Melania Trump announced Wednesday that she will join the Women's Suffrage National Monument Foundation, serving as an honorary chair alongside first lady Jill Biden and former ... Read More Passion for fashion Born Melanija Knavs in 1970 in Novo Mesto, Yugoslavia now part of Slovenia the former First Lady ... knot at Trump's lavish Mar-a-Lago estate in 2005, and Melania ... Read More Former First Lady Melania Trump will join other first ladies to promote a women's suffrage monument. She tweeted that she is "honored" to help secure a monument "of enduring inspiration" for women. Read More Potus News Trump Lacks Staff For Trade Talks With China | RobinsPost News & Noticias Chinese authorities behind a major trade expo in Shanghai pulled an opening ceremony address by the European Council president that was set to criticise Russia's "illegal war" in Ukraine and call for ... Read More Taiwan and the United States will hold in-person trade talks next week in New York under a new joint initiative announced in June, the U.S. and Taiwanese governments said, a programme opposed by China ... Read More Potus News Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard Says Trump Acted Recklessly With Syria Missile Strikes | RobinsPost News & Noticias Despite saying former President Donald Trump was unfit to serve as president in 2019, Gabbard is now campaigning for Trump-endorsed GOP gubernatorial candidates, including Bailey, Tudor Dixon in ... Read More Potus News Ralph Peters Trump Shows We Finally Have A Fearless Leader Back In The White House | RobinsPost News & Noticias Former President Donald Trump surprised New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman by casually mentioning that he had kept White House documents ... Jong-un letters We have incredible things ... Read More White House Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre calls comments by former President Trump that American Jews were White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre briefed reporters and responded to ... Read More Republican House Leader Kevin McCarthy was among those urging former President Donald Trump to call back his supporters ... and talking on the phone. We have got to finish the proceedings ... Read More A newly obtained Secret Service message from that day shows how angry President Trump was about the outcome. Quote, "Just FYI, POTUS is pissed. Breaking news ... in the White House residence at a ... Read More The White House on ... from GOP leader Donald Trump." "His threat to Jewish Americans and his continued use of the antisemitic dual loyalty trope fuels hatred against Jews. We will not be ... Read More (CNSNews.com) - The White House on Monday condemned as anti-Semitic former President Donald Trumps comments about Jews needing to get their act together and appreciate what they have in Israel ... Read More I am hoping that we would have ... other witnesses have testified. The Secret Service emails show another plan under consideration was for Trump to stay at the White House and then go to ... Read More WASHINGTON, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Donald Trump's recent comments that American Jews have offered insufficient praise of his policies toward Israel were "insulting" and "anti-Semitic", White House ... Read More White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a news briefing ... by Trump. But Jean-Pierre said Monday that antisemitism and hateful speech "should be called out." "We need to root ... Read More Bannon doesnt like the optic of taking the Fifth Amendment in testimony: lawyer Former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon, who was sentenced to four months in prison for contempt ... Read More President Joe Biden has spent more time out of the White House at this point in his presidency than former President Donald Trump did ... The CNN tally shows Biden making over 55 visits to ... Read More Donald Trump's recent comments that American Jews have offered insufficient praise of his policies toward Israel were "insulting" and "antisemitic," White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre ... Read More Potus News Trump Says Progress Made In U S China Relations | RobinsPost News & Noticias Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has accused China of attempting to interfere in the country's elections.Mr Trudeau accused Beijing of playing "aggressive games" with democracies and of ... Read More A new U.S. defense strategy says China remains the greatest security challenge for the United States despite Russias ongoing war in Ukraine. It says the threat from Beijing will determine ... Read More Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has accused China of attempting to interfere in the country's elections. Mr Trudeau accused Beijing of playing "aggressive games" with democracies and of ... Read More Travel News Adesoun Travel Discounts Will Help Nigeria S Economy Grow By N5bn | RobinsPost News & Noticias In this interview with Northern Region Editor, Soni Daniel and Ethel Igboeche, Lajuwomi speaks authoritatively on what Nigeria needs to do to grow the economy and reduce poverty for the overall ... Read More The Executive Director of Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC), Dr Ezra Yakusak has said that non-oil sector is the only way to reposition Nigerias economy. Dr Ezra Yakusak, made this known ... Read More The Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) says Nigerias failure to develop other viable sectors of the nations economy has worsened the nations socio-economic challenges. In a statement ... Read More How did you discover your last adventure? Maybe you read an article in a travel publication that inspired a cozy weekend upstate or perhaps you were scrolling on TikTok and came across a 10-second ... Read More Using Technology to grow Nigerias GDP, noted that technology has had a significant impact on the Nigerian society. Represented by the Principal Manager Digital Economy, NCC, Mrs Eli ... Read More After active duty military members retire, travel discounts can ... All U.S. military veterans are eligible for a free membership with AFVC, which can help make trips to the Caribbean, Europe ... Read More Being flexible in your travel dates is the best way to find the best deals on airfare ... popular weeks can help you keep your costs down. According to the company's data, the first five days ... Read More There are plenty of reasons to buy travel insurance but saving money and potential headaches are top of mind. And inflation certainly doesn't help ... that high, it's a good idea to protect ... Read More A new report indicates the travel industry in Asia-Pacific may be the only one in the world to recover by 2023. This year's "Travel ... to the overall economy forecast to grow by 71%. Read More Travel expenses can be pricey ... The insurance company will then review it and determine if it's approved. Licensed agents can help you navigate policies and prices and determine which ... Read More Editor's Note Sign up for Unlocking the World, CNN Travel's weekly newsletter. Get news about destinations ... a bland dinner at 35,000 feet. With help from award-winning chef Nina Compton ... Read More Us News Police Find Handgun Drugs And A Caiman In Brooklyn Home | RobinsPost News & Noticias Police say two people were arrested after officers found a loaded gun and drugs in a car during a traffic stop in Inwood. The incident happened on Burnside Avenue when police pulled the car over ... Read More A New Cassel man is facing multiple charges following a major drug bust in Nassau. Police ... handgun and seven bags of what is believed to be cocaine from Walter Linder Navarros Westbury home ... Read More as well as a handgun, according to court documents filed by V.I. Police. Dorian Hairston, 21, has been jailed since the shooting on Oct. 12, and he appeared in V.I. Superior Court via ... Read More ALBANY, N.Y. (NEWS10) Albany Police Department paired with the US Marshal Taskforce carried out an investigation that resulted in the recovery of a loaded .45 caliber handgun and a large ... Read More legend drugs, marijuana, and neglect of a dependent. Powell was also charged with possession of a handgun by a serious violent felon, police said in the release. Police said four children were ... Read More A longtime law enforcement officer and former candidate for sheriff in Washington County has been sentenced to four years in prison for drug and gun-related ... the Bangor Daily News reported. Read More ATLANTA Atlanta police say a traffic stop ended up with two men being arrested after officers found guns and drugs inside their ... officers recovered one handgun that was reported stolen ... Read More A New Cassel man is facing multiple charges following a major drug bust in Nassau. Police say they ... Navarros Westbury home on Friday. They say the 9mm loaded handgun was reported stolen ... Read More Us News Roof Damage Reported In Dc Possible Tornado In Virginia | RobinsPost News & Noticias Friday's severe weather potential blanked portions of south-central Oklahoma, including Bryan County, and eastern Oklahoma. As of 5 p.m. Friday, a Tornado Warning was issued for Le Flore, Pushmataha ... Read More A metro woman talked to News 9 Monday about a possible tornado that caused ... and then I could hear the roof go off," Owen said. However, Owen said there was no damage to her home's interior. Read More Residents are cleaning up after severe storms swept through the area. Power outages are causing some school districts to delay the start of classes. Read More NOW, IF YOU JUST JOINING US, BRIAN SLOCUM HAS ... there still have not been any reports of damage.Trending Stores SPARTA, N.C. An earthquake was reported in Virginia Tuesday morning. Read More At least two confirmed tornadoes touched down, one each in Indian River and Martin counties, as a band of severe weather swept across the Treasure Coast Monday evening. Meteorologists said reports of ... Read More The coldest air so far this season will advance across Virginia on Tuesday ... and the next few days will keep us in that territory. But by the end of this week, the core of the cold will retreat ... Read More The Kanawha County Ambulance and FedEx truck that were in an accident on Vorpe Road have now left the scene around 1:50 p.m. (WOWK 13 News file/Photographer ... Read More WE TELL OU Power outages and damage have been reported in southeast Wisconsin after severe storms moved across the area on Wednesday, prompting tornado warnings for areas including Milwaukee County. Read More Preliminary storm reports indicate a mix of possible tornado touchdowns and straight-line wind damage. The National Weather Service will try to survey areas on Thursday to determine if tornadoes ... Read More Us News Sign Of The Times Solar Panels Power Kentucky Coal Museum | RobinsPost News & Noticias The school refurbished 16 of the 32 panels and placed them on top of the schools cafeteria where they were used to power the ... one of the solar panels to the National Museum of American ... Read More A new rooftop wind harvesting device is capable of generating 50 per cent more electricity than solar panels for the same cost, according to its inventors. A much smaller footprint means a single ... Read More Because the museum's electricity consumption is greatest in summer, solar panels are mulled. The museum's power bill for September grew four times compared to 2020 ... "We have made a proposal to the ... Read More high-efficiency photovoltaic cells with power-to-weight ratios some 50-100 times greater than even the solar panels currently used on the ISS and modern satellites. Creating similarly ... Read More The coming wave of satellite constellations all need power ... Our customers want to help us get flight heritage; we already delivered several small solar panels for demo flights, we expect ... Read More Most homes, as we know, are powered by the electric grid, and that electricity use is billed to us through ... from solar panels can be used to charge your EV the same way its used to power ... Read More One of the hottest innovations for the non-polluting generation of electricity is floating photovoltaics, or FPV, which involves anchoring solar panels in bodies of water, especially lakes ... Read More The webcasts provided above are from viewpoints at various locations in the visibility region, hence their different start times. Solar ... have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know ... Read More We earn a commission from partner links on Forbes Home. Commissions do not affect our editors' opinions or evaluations. Getty Youve probably heard that the best solar panels are a smart and ... Read More Renewable energy is all the rage, but while homeowners can install things like solar ... can power more intensives items too, such as your washing machine or refrigerator. The panels also have ... Read More A much smaller footprint means a single unit can also provide the same amount of power as up to 16 solar panels. The motionless design, created by Texas-based startup Aeromine Technologies ... Read More Us News Russia Decries Clear Act Of Aggression In Us Strike On Syria | RobinsPost News & Noticias It was a "very rare moment", said Syria expert Samuel Ramani, and a sign "that Russia ... helped US forces avoid a face-off with Syrian regime forces. dls/ho/ami/fz The Barron's news department ... Read More (Delil Souleiman/AFP via Getty Images) A base in northeast Syria housing U.S. and coalition forces was the target of a drone strike on Oct. 8, a press release from U.S. Central Command confirmed. Read More The United States will consider every means to advance ... but added that Moscow was instead "doubling and tripling down" on its aggression. Russia has intensified its missile and drone attacks ... Read More "Obviously, we're concerned about these allegations that the Russians raised, them, not us," John Kirby ... "Our countries made clear that we all reject Russias transparently false allegations ... Read More A U.S.-led coalition drone strike in northeastern ... deadly attacks in Syria and Iraq. IS fighters once held large parts of the two countries. 24/7 coverage of breaking news and live events ... Read More Russias defense minister accused Ukrainians of planning to use a so-called dirty bomb a claim that was strongly refuted by US officials on Sunday as a Russian false flag operation. Read More On Monday, Russia's defense ministry said army chief Valery Gerasimov made the same allegation in a conversation with US General Mark Milley. "During the conversation... the situation related to ... Read More The US and Russian defense chiefs spoke Friday for the first time in months but Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he saw no interest from Moscow for broader talks to end the Ukraine war. Read More US officials wont lead a walkout from high-level international meetings in Washington this week to protest Russias participation, as they did in April. The last time Group of 20 finance ... Read More A base in northeast Syria housing U.S. and coalition forces was the target of a drone strike on Oct. 8, a press release from U.S. Central Command confirmed. No U.S. or partnered troops were killed or ... Read More It was a "very rare moment", said Syria expert Samuel Ramani, and a sign "that Russia and the US still want deconfliction in Syria". A staunch opponent of the Syrian regime, Washington first deployed ... Read More Us News Severe Weather Does Damage In Dc Tornado Reportedly Touches Down In Virginia | RobinsPost News & Noticias Residents are cleaning up after severe storms swept through the area. Power outages are causing some school districts to delay the start of classes. Read More Officials are surveying the damage left behind after severe storms battered northeast Texas Friday by way of heavy rain, damaging winds and multiple tornadoes. A tornado watch was issued for 36 Texas ... Read More The National Weather Service says it has confirmed four tornadoes touched down on Wednesday during an unusual October severe weather ... or major structural damage as a result of any of the ... Read More Tornadoes touched down in Texas on Friday as the region faced severe weather leaving many residents without power. Read More At least two confirmed tornadoes touched down, one each in Indian River and Martin counties, as a band of severe weather swept across the Treasure Coast Monday evening. Meteorologists said reports of ... Read More Severe weather, including an apparent tornado in Athens, ripped through parts of Henderson County Friday evening, leaving major damage in its wake. Read More INDIAN RIVER COUNTY, Fla. The National Weather Service will assess whether a tornado touched down Monday evening in Indian River County, causing damage to several homes. Indian River County ... Read More THE SEVERE WEATHER THREAT IS OVER ... THEN WE HAD WARNINGS ALL OVER THE PLACE, READ WARNINGS, REGULAR TORNADO WARNING. WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? TORNADO WARNING INDICATED ON RADAR BUT NOT CONFIRMED ... Read More MILWAUKEE - Severe ... tornado touchdowns and straight-line wind damage. The National Weather Service will try to survey areas on Thursday to determine if tornadoes did touch down. Read More but the City of New Berlin Office of Emergency Management told residents that even though the tornado warning has been canceled there is still a potential for severe weather in the area. Credit: ... Read More Us News London Terror Attack Tourist Andreea Cristea Dies From Bridge Fall Injuries | RobinsPost News & Noticias The winning title is about the London Bridge stabbing in 2019 ... is about how a specific act of terrorist violence can shatter, rearrange and refocus us on what we have always known, what ... Read More Putin Calls Kerch Bridge Attack 'A Terrorist Act' by Kyiv By JUSTIN SPIKE ... At least 19 people died in Russian missile strikes on apartment buildings in the city on Thursday. Read More ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine (AP) Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday called the attack that damaged the huge bridge connecting Russia to the annexed territory of Crimea a terrorist act ... Read More President Putin calls the Kerch Bridge attack a "terrorist act" carried out by Ukraine's special services. 24/7 coverage of breaking news and live events ... Read More Again, however, it takes a lot of mental gymnastics to describe the Kerch bridge attack as "terrorism." According to Article 52 of the Geneva Convention, legitimate military targets are those that ... Read More ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine -- Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday called the attack that damaged the huge bridge connecting Russia to its annexed territory of Crimea "a terrorist act ... Read More ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine (AP) Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday called the attack that damaged the huge bridge connecting Russia to its annexed territory of Crimea a terrorist act ... Read More Russia President Vladimir Putin is calling the attack on the Kerch Bridge to Crimea a terrorist act carried ... At least 19 people died in Russian missile strikes on apartment buildings in the ... Read More Ukraine Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday called the attack that damaged the huge bridge connecting Russia to its annexed territory of Crimea a terrorist act masterminded by ... Read More Us News Utility Crews Work To Restore Power In Michigan After Storms | RobinsPost News & Noticias Consumers Energy crews are working to restore power to thousands of customers after wind storms knocked down trees and damaged electric lines across Michigan on Saturday. Consumers Energy said that a ... Read More Strong winds with powerful gusts swept through Indiana Michigan Powers service territory throughout much of the day Saturday, disrupting power to thousands of customers. As of 9 a.m. on Sunday, Nov. Read More As customers wait for their power to return, Consumers Energy is reminding people to stay away from downed power lines. Read More Consumers Energy told News 8 that power was restored by 6:17 a.m. Consumers Energy crews are working to restore power to over a thousand customers Saturday morning. (Map courtesy of Consumers ... Read More According to the BELCO outage map, hundreds of customers have lost power and the company said a crew has been dispatched and is working to restore power. This evening, BELCO company tweeted ... Read More Well send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Solar power news ... the USs largest rooftop solar installers. Executives and analysts also point to the numerous storms ... Read More Storms late Monday and early Tuesday across the ArkLaTex brought some much needed rainfall to the area, but also caused some problems. Thousands were left without power when trees and strong winds ... Read More Heavy rains and winds that caused more than 100,000 customers to lose power ... and our crews will work through the night if needed to continue to restore customers. The utility company ... Read More Cleanup crews want residents to pick up their leaves. As those leaves begin to fall, paired with an increase in stormy wet weather, they can become a combination that leads to clogged drains ... Read More Thousands of utility customers are without power after storms moved through the Valley Saturday morning and into the evening. Between APS and SRP, as of 6:30 p.m. Saturday, there were about 13,175 ... Read More Eversource crews restore power to most customers in Waltham after power surge Eversource crews ... We have hired external electricians who are assisting us and the affected customers to exchange ... Read More You may be worried about when your power is coming on, but others are just hoping their family members their husbands, wives, brothers, and sisters come back home after working on lines ... Read More Us News Maine Tv Weatherman Found Dead In Apparent Suicide Police Say | RobinsPost News & Noticias Its kind of odd to say now, but you never would have expected that," one neighbor said. Police are investigating after two people were found dead in an apparent murder-suicide in Hamilton on Saturday. Read More POLICE SAY A FAMILY ... NEIGHBORS TELL US OFF CAME Authorities have released the names of a Kingston couple found dead at their home Sunday in an apparent murder-suicide. Authorities have released ... Read More Hamilton police are investigating a murder-suicide report of a man and a woman who were found dead Saturday morning. Hamilton police Lt. Donald H. Taylor told our news partners at WCPO that ... Read More KINGSTON -- A husband and wife were found dead Sunday in an apparent murder-suicide in Kingston. They were identified by police Monday as ... Brandon Truitt joined WBZ-TV in January 2022 after ... Read More The Volusia County Sheriffs Office is investigating an apparent murder-suicide that happened ... 6:15 p.m. According to a news release, upon arrival, they found a man and woman in the house ... Read More Police investigating after teen found dead of apparent drug overdose in apartment ... She said she only wanted her niece to be safe. KDKA-TV Investigator Andy Sheehan began his broadcast ... Read More Police say the incidents are related ... less than 24 hours after four family members were found dead in an Elyria home in an apparent murder-suicide late Saturday night. Sundays incident ... Read More KINGSTON, MASS. (WHDH) - Initial investigation reveals man and a woman found dead at their home were likely in a domestic incident resulting in a murder-suicide, Kingston Police said. Kingston ... Read More MEEMPHIS, Tenn. A man was found dead on I-40 Sunday midday. At approximately 12:15 PM, Memphis Police responded to a man-down call on Austin Peay and I-40. When officers arrived, they found a ... Read More MEMPHIS, Tenn. A man was found dead in South Memphis Saturday morning. On Oct. 15 at approximately 10 AM, Memphis Police responded to a dead-on-arrival call on Moccasin Cove. On October 15 ... Read More Two people died Saturday following what police ... apparent murder-suicide. Officers responded around 9:24 a.m. to 676 Rockford Drive for a report of two people dead, Hamilton police said in a ... Read More World News The Gambia Holds Historic Post Jammeh Election | RobinsPost News & Noticias Mr Jammehs 22-year rule which ended in 2017, was characterised by alleged human rights abuses. Earlier this year, a government white paper recommended that Mr Jammeh and 69 others be prosecuted for ... Read More To really understand an election ... Their view of the world is driven in part by their generation's diversity, which studies show is the most diverse in U.S. history. They are under 30 and ... Read More Gambia Says Child Deaths Linked to Cough Syrup Have Risen to 70 BANJUL (Reuters) - Gambia's government on Friday said the number of child deaths from acute kidney injury, thought to be linked to ... Read More The strategy: Vote in person on Election Day or for voters who receive a mailed ballot hold onto it and hand ... told viewers of One America News Network earlier this month that we ... Read More Prominent election deniers Kari Lake, a former Fox News anchor, and Mark Finchem ... as the Washington Post reported. The secretary of state positions, which 12 election deniers are seeking ... Read More When voters in large chunks of metro Denver unfold their ballots, theyll notice a conspicuous blank with not even one candidate listed to represent their district on the Regional ... Read More Britain is set to have its third prime minister in just eight weeks amid widespread, often angry calls for a general election ... s government since 2010 and holds a commanding parliamentary ... Read More The Denver Post sent questionnaires to candidates in the following races click the link to go to a race. Answers have been lightly edited for spelling and grammar. U.S. Senate U.S ... Read More World News Key Moments From The U S Led Campaign In Iraq And Syria | RobinsPost News & Noticias Russia's war in Ukraine since February ... It was a "very rare moment", said Syria expert Samuel Ramani, and a sign "that Russia and the US still want deconfliction in Syria". Read More U.S. forces first deployed into Syria during the Obama administration's campaign against Islamic State, partnering with a Kurdish-led group called ... November 5, 2022 World Iran says it shipped ... Read More The general carrying out Vladimir Putin's new military strategy in Ukraine has a reputation for brutality for bombing civilians in Russia's campaign in Syria ... plays a key role in the ... Read More A U.S.-led coalition drone ... to carry out deadly attacks in Syria and Iraq. IS fighters once held large parts of the two countries. 24/7 coverage of breaking news and live events ... Read More Twenty years ago this week, Congress voted to authorize the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Like many things from 20 years agolandlines, Walkmans, and dial-up internetthe 2002 Authorization for the ... Read More His Chechen war experience, where he led the 42nd Guards Motor Rifle Division, will draw scrutiny as a campaign ... s Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu in September told Fox News Digital that the ... Read More moments later, the president made marijuana a headline issue. Alexander Panetta is a Washington-based correspondent for CBC News who has covered American politics and Canada-U.S. issues since 2013. Read More Queen Elizabeth IIs coronation on June 3, 1953 was the first to be seen live on television. Its such a key moment in ... AFP covers the world as a leading global news agency. Read More Geir Pedersen, the U.N. special envoy for Syria, spoke to reporters after meeting the foreign minister in Damascus. Syria's economic situation ... calls for a Syrian-led political process ... Read More Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez called Monday for freezing all U.S. cooperation with Saudi Arabia, delivering one of the strongest expressions yet of U.S. anger over ... Read More 14 (UPI) --Iraq's Parliament has elected a new ... the northern Atlantic at the end of the week. World News // 12 hours ago Iran marks U.S. Embassy takeover anniversary amid raging protests ... Read More World News Trump S Tough Talk On North Korea Will Be Put To The Test In His Meeting With Chinese Leader | RobinsPost News & Noticias The warning from the U.S., South Korea and Japan comes amid signs Pyongyang could be close to conducting its first such test since 2017. Read More Recent ballistic missile tests by North Korea were described by one expert as "the most significant" he's seen. Read More North Korea tested dozens of missiles last week but it is uncertain when its seventh nuclear test will take place. Some experts say Kim Jong Un is biding his time. Read More U.S., South Korean and Japanese officials are bracing for what would be Pyongyang's first nuclear test in years, amid already heightened global tensions. Read More World News Rohingya Activist Disappointed In Myanmar Leader Aung San Suu Kyi | RobinsPost News & Noticias For 21 months, Aung San Suu Kyi, one of the worlds most well-known and polarizing pro-democracy figures, has been locked away by an authoritarian junta in Myanmar. No one can visit her. She cant ... Read More Myanmar's National League for Democracy Party leader Aung San Suu Kyi speaks to media about the upcoming general elections, during a news conference ... article with image World November ... Read More A court in military-run Myanmar has sentenced Aung San Suu Kyi, the countrys deposed former leader and Nobel Peace ... two prominent pro-democracy activists and two other men accused of ... Read More Court controlled by junta adds a further three years in jail to raft of other sentences handed to the former leader ... court in Myanmar has sentenced ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi to a further ... Read More Myanmar's junta ... prison term.Ousted Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi was sentenced by a court to another three years in prison for corruption, a legal source told news agencies on Wednesday. Read More Myanmars Nobel laureate and deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been sentenced to a further three years in prison by a court in the military-ruled nation, bringing her combined jail term to 26 ... Read More Myanmar Court Jails Suu Kyi for 3 Years for Graft -Source (Reuters) -A court in military-ruled Myanmar on Wednesday sentenced deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi to three years in prison on charges of ... Read More 12 (UPI) --A court in military-run Myanmar convicted deposed civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi on two ... concerning the world's fight to curb climbing temperatures. World News // 6 hours ago ... Read More Bangkok: A court in military-ruled Myanmar convicted the countrys ousted leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, on two more corruption charges Wednesday, with two three-year sentences, to be served ... Read More World News Swiss Drugs Giant Novartis Likely Bribed Thousands In Greece Minister | RobinsPost News & Noticias Pharmaceutical giant Novartis has signed a licensing agreement ... pioneering this new licensing model with MPP". The drug is listed on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines ... Read More Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis on Tuesday reported a sharp ... noo/pta/imm/rox The Barron's news department was not involved in the creation of the content above. This story was produced ... Read More U.S. Supreme Court Rebuffs Novartis, Allows Generic Versions of MS Drug By Blake Brittain WASHINGTON ... the-fact damages trial" and that it was likely to win a Supreme Court appeal of the ... Read More REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo BERLIN, Oct 10 (Reuters) - Swiss drugs regulator Swissmedic ... article with image November 4, 2022 World China vows to continue with 'dynamic-clearing ... Read More Swiss pharmaceutical giant ... revenue likely reflect the expected impact of a strengthening U.S. dollar. Investors will be keeping a close eye out for any comments or updates from Novartis ... Read More Swiss pharma giant Novartis ... drug-Cosentyxs sales increased 12% in the previous quarter led by growth in Europe and the United States and similar growth rates are most likely to have ... Read More A mid a push to widen access to medicines to poor countries, Novartis has reached an agreement to license one of its best-selling cancer treatments so that generic manufacturers can produce copies ... Read More Geneva: Pharmaceutical giant Novartis has signed a licensing ... pioneering this new licensing model with MPP". The drug is listed on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines ... Read More Alpine Skiing - Ski World Cup - Men's Giant Slalom - Soelden, Austria - October 23, 2022 Switzerland's Marco Odermatt in action during the first run REUTERS/Lisa Leutner SOELDEN, AUSTRIA ... Read More Swiss drugmaker Novartis ... Court on Thursday turned down Novartis' bid to block the launch of generic versions of the company's blockbuster multiple sclerosis drug Gilenya in a dispute with ... Read More World News Pakistani Islamist Leader Calls On Taliban To Join His Political Party | RobinsPost News & Noticias Pakistani Taliban leaders ... political objectives but for years enjoyed control over vast areas. Baitullah Mehsud (2007-2009) had established a so-called Islamic Emirate of Waziristan. His ... Read More Pakistans former Prime Minister Imran Khan postponed the resumption of his protest march on the country's capital meant to challenge his successors government, his party said Tuesday. Fawad Chaudhry ... Read More The move is the second time in five years that the leader ... a stunning political comeback. He has drawn tens of thousands of people to his rallies across Pakistan, and his party has won sweeping ... Read More A gathering of Islamic ... The Taliban's swift rise to power resulted in economic disorder and food shortages that pushed the country to the brink of a humanitarian crisis. While world leaders ... Read More United States Special Representative for Afghanistan Thomas West has said that Washington does not need help from Pakistan ... for any third party to negotiate with the Taliban government ... Read More The PTI Chairman also claimed that his party had "all the ... to local media network ARY News, Khan also accused the Chief Election Commissioner of Pakistan (CEC) Sikandar Raja Sultan of ... Read More But by then Biden's original comments had reached news organizations in Pakistan ... political instability. The country is thought to have a nuclear arsenal of about 165 warheads - making it the ... Read More contested in seven of the eight seats his party went for, and emerged triumphant in six in an unprecedented move in Pakistan's political history. The party's win made its leaders reiterate their ... Read More United States President Joe Biden has said that Pakistan may be one of the most dangerous nations in the world as the country ... "After all his party is going after Donald Trump for trying ... Read More Yousafzai's visit comes as students at her former school join a strike over a rise in violence in her hometown of Mingora in the Swat Valley. The Pakistani Taliban waged a years-long insurgency in ... Read More Biden's remarks against Pakistan ... the world: Pakistan. Nuclear weapons without any cohesion," said Biden, as quoted in a White House press release of his remarks at the Democratic party event. Read More US President Joe Biden has said Pakistan is 'one of the most dangerous nations in the world' as it has 'nuclear weapons without cohesion.' He made the remarks while addressing a Democratic Party ... Read More World News Mexico Starts Giving Residency To Stranded Cubans | RobinsPost News & Noticias The next day, the sensational news ... was the start of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the tense 13-day confrontation that marked perhaps the darkest moment of the Cold War and brought the world ... Read More Illegal Border Crossings to US From Mexico Hit Annual High By ELLIOT SPAGAT, Associated Press SAN DIEGO (AP) A surge in migration from Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua in September brought the ... Read More In October of 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the World to the brink of nuclear ... but we may be witnessing the start of the regimes demise. The government continues to respond with ... Read More The money will be used in work with independent organizations like the Red Cross and not go through the Cuban government The ... Russian influence around the world. Hurricane Ian struck Cuba ... Read More SAN DIEGO A surge in migration from Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua in September brought the number of illegal crossings to the highest level ever recorded in a fiscal year, according to U.S ... Read More Nearly 78,000 migrants from Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua were stopped in September, compared to about 58,000 from Mexico and three countries of northern Central America that have historically ... Read More World News Main Venezuela Opposition Leader Barred From Office For 15 Years | RobinsPost News & Noticias Comptroller Elvis Amoroso said Mr Guaido's personal financial statements contained inconsistencies Venezuelan opposition leader ... be barred from holding further public office for 15 years ... Read More The Venezuelan government and the political opposition are preparing to resume talks stalled for more than a year, according to three people familiar with the process ... Read More considered the crown jewel of Venezuela's international assets. U.S. courts have recognized the legitimacy of those boards based on the recognition of Guaido as leader. Venezuelan opposition ... Read More Venezuela's opposition leader Juan Guaido addresses the media ... citing a senior figure in the opposition alliance. Three of the four main parties in the Unitary Platform opposition alliance ... Read More (Bloomberg) -- In a sharp reversal of strategy, Venezuelas main opposition parties plan to ... a cattle-raising state in western Venezuela, opposition parties plans to unite behind a single leader, ... Read More A spokesman for Guaido told the paper that there was no clear position among the opposition parties about the continuation of the interim government. Venezuela's 10 main opposition parties have ... Read More (Bloomberg) -- In a sharp reversal of strategy, Venezuelas main opposition parties ... in western Venezuela, opposition parties plans to unite behind a single leader, according to interviews ... Read More World News Topics Ex Cia Director Woolsey Strike Iran S Nukes In Syrian Response | RobinsPost News & Noticias He has had outsized influence on US policy with Moscow for the last several months, with US President Joe Bidens ear on all key predictions and decisions. As CIA ... world powers in Vienna ... Read More Iran did not acknowledge any disruption at the facility, though the semiofficial Tasnim news agency described the incident as a salary dispute. Iran is one of the worlds top natural gas ... Read More The Treasury Department also announced that it would allow American tech firms to expand their business in Iran, where most internet access has been cut off in response to the protests. U.S ... Read More added that the U.S. and other Western nations should "Set up a strike fund to help workers and their families." The London-based news organization Iran International provided links to the Twitter ... Read More What is happening in Iran is a revolution, not a protest movement. If the Iranian people overthrow the theocratic regime that has ruled their country since 1979, their achievement will be the ... Read More As the protests spread throughout the country in response, the regime of ... Atlantic at the end of the week. World News // 23 hours ago Iran marks U.S. Embassy takeover anniversary amid raging ... Read More RELATED Iran oil workers join anti-government protests The strike at the Bushehr ... some surrounding settlements. World News // 5 hours ago Apple: China's COVID-19 restrictions impacting iPhone ... Read More Iranian shopkeepers and factory workers said to be on strike as 80,000 ... around the world, including in Australia and Japan. Protesters against Irans religious police march through Shibuya ... Read More The United States national soccer team might not compete against the Islamic Republic of Iran in November's ... in the World Cup violates FIFA Statutes and Regulations." Fox News Digital has ... Read More Youre reading an excerpt from the Todays WorldView newsletter. Sign up to get the rest free, including news from around the globe and interesting ideas and opinions to know, sent to your ... Read More Iran yesterday vowed an "immediate" response to the European ... detained for allegedly breaching Iran's strict dress code for women. For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News ... Read More World News Topics Ohio Quadruplet Brothers Accepted At Ivy League Universities | RobinsPost News & Noticias A former Ohio high school teachers assistant and ... Andrew Mark Miller is a writer at Fox News. Find him on Twitter @andymarkmiller and email tips to AndrewMark.Miller@Fox.com. Read More VALLETTA, Malta A judge in Malta sentenced two brothers to 40 years in prison each after they abruptly reversed course and pleaded guilty Friday to the car-bomb murder of an anti-corruption ... Read More the U.S. attorney's office for Southern Ohio said in a news release. He faces a possible sentence of up to life in prison. According to the prosecutor's office, Genco identified as an "involuntary ... Read More COLUMBUS, Ohio When Ohio voters choose the states congressional delegation and most of the state legislature during the 2022 general election, they will be electing people to represent ... Read More Three people were shot outside a high school football game Friday in Toledo, Ohio, and their conditions ... this atrocious act," Anstadt said. ABC News' Victoria Arancio contributed to this ... Read More Four bodies were discovered inside an Ohio home after a man told a 911 dispatcher he had killed his family, police say. The alleged murder-suicide occurred in Elyria, about 30 miles southwest of ... Read More Under Section 568 of the Improving Americas Schools Act of 1994, the Ivy League was granted an exemption under the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act, allowing some of the worlds richest universities to ... Read More 14 (UPI) --A 100-year-old Ohio man who holds the Guinness World ... to -- and win a $1 million Powerball prize. Odd News // 2 days ago World's largest bread mosaic created in Mexico Nov. 4 ... Read More Oct 13 (Reuters) - Two men have been indicted in Ohio on criminal charges after being accused of cheating last month during a Lake Erie fishing tournament by placing weights in walleyes in a ... Read More Ohio ranks fourth in the United States in both mental illness prevalence and in states searching the most for therapists, said a study by NiceRX, which released its findings Friday before World ... Read More Blink 182's world tour will stop in Ohio next year.The rock band's new single, "Edging" comes out Friday and the band will perform at the Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse in Cleveland on May 16 ... Read More A CANNABIS farmer caught with a sawn-off shotgun has failed to convince top judges he was the victim of a miscarriage of justice. Vincenzo Leo pleaded guilty to having a banned weapon at Sheffield Crown Court in September 2015. Leo was arrested after police searched a flat in Barnsley Road, Wath, in January 2015 and found the gun and 40 cannabis plants. The single-barrelled shotgun, which had half of the barrel sawn-off, was hidden inside a wardrobe. Leo also admitted producing cannabis, possessing a firearm without a certificate and assault causing actual bodily harm. The 66-year-old, of Lister Avenue, Sheffield, was jailed for six years five of which were for having the banned gun. He tried to clear his name over the sawn-off shotgun at the Court of Appeal, in London last week. Leo insisted the weapon was not his and he only admitted his guilt because he felt under pressure. Leo tried to claim his lawyers had agreed to a deal with prosecutors and he therefore had no choice but to enter a guilty plea. But his appeal was rejected by three of the countrys most senior judges, who said there was no merit in his claims. Investigations revealed Leo's fingerprints were on the gun and a DNA sample obtained from it was a partial match for him. He did not live at the flat, but had been renting it for several months and was seen visiting regularly by neighbours. During an earlier encounter with police, after he reported another man he was involved in a running dispute with in September 2014, he showed officers a legal shotgun but for which he had no certificate. He also assaulted the man by firing a crossbow pistol at him, leaving him with a small graze, the Appeal Court heard. Dismissing his appeal, Mrs Justice Carr said Leo had been under no pressure from his lawyers and had admitted his guilt freely, in the face of overwhelming evidence. Sitting with Lord Justice Burnett and Judge Jeffrey Pegden QC, she added: A letter we have received from his counsel gives a comprehensive response to the matters raised by Leo. She concluded: He said he did not own the shotgun, but he knew of its existence. It was found on cannabis farm premises, which he was in charge of, and his fingerprints were on it. The Mayor of Rotherham Cllr Lyndsay Pitchley pictured with Anne and Brian Pearce of Moorgate, who donated 30,000 to her charities the Alzheimer's Society, The National Autistic Society and Guide Dogs for the Blind.170561 A GENEROUS terminally-ill woman stunned the Mayor by making two donations totalling 30,000 for her chosen charities. The cash from selfless Anne Pearce (73) will be split between the three good causes - Guide Dogs for the Blind, the National Autistic Society and the the Alzheimers Society - when the mayoral year ends. Anne and husband Brian (79) previously made headlines for setting up a 30,000 fund at the British Heart Foundation and giving 5,000 towards a defibrillator project. Anne, of Moorgate, said: When I come to the end of my life, I dont want to be sitting here with a fortnight to go, wishing I had done more. I have some rotten days, but while Im not very, very poorly, I want to help people. Anne said she had taken a first donation to the Town Hall a couple of weeks ago, followed by a second at Mondays open day, hosted by the Mayor of Rotherham, Cllr Lyndsay Pitchley. I dont look for pomp and ceremony, I do it from the heart, said Anne. I took the first one and just left it at the Town Hall. When I got home, there was a message waiting for us from the mayor to say thank you. It had us in tears, listening to it. Anne and Brian, who also has cancer, helped the Rotherham Libraries defibrillator project reach its cash target last autumn and set up their BHF Gift of Hope fund in January. She also keeps busy by knitting hats and blankets for children at Rotherham Hospital and made hampers for the mayors Easter charity raffle. Anne said: I like to keep active or I think I would go mad. Unfortunately, this tumour Ive got is terminal. I dont have a date but I want to see charities benefit rather than wait until its too late. We had a look at our finances. Weve got the house we own and we have a little bit of money spare. I love to help people. I love the feeling you get from it and seeing the look on peoples faces. Theres so many people and so many things that you can help. Thats the way I feel, giving money to different people rather than to one person. As well as thanking the Pearces, Cllr Pitchley paid tribute to everyone who made this weeks open day a success. She added: Thank you to my mum and Joanne Atkin for running the stall for my raffle, the catering staff for an excellent service as always, the Town Hall attendants Dean, Tony, Damion and Tracey, and our amazing behind-the-scenes team. THE councils business arm has warned its planners of the potential damage to the town centre if they grant Tescos request to cut free parking. The supermarket wants to scrap a planning condition allowing two hours free and impose a 5 minimum spend if vehicles are left for over half an hour. Rotherham Investment and Development Office - the business arm of Rotherham Borough Council - said firms feared a drop in customers if the change was approved by the planning board. A spokesman added: By removing this option, there is a high risk of negatively impacting on footfall, and discouraging shoppers who visit the store from also visiting the town centre. Businesses and shoppers felt the location and availability of free parking played an important role in bringing people into town, he said. The spokesman added: Following consultation with the market service committee, members have unanimously objected to the planning application on the grounds that they believe this will drive customers away from the markets complex and damage town centre footfall as a whole. Two hours free parking - for customers and non-customers - was included as a condition when the Drummond Street Tesco plans were passed in 2012. Another resident, responding to the planning application, said: Tesco should not be allowed to alter their free parking agreement. Surely they are making a big enough profit as it is and, as one of the largest supermarkets, its only fair that they should give something back to the people of Rotherham and its visitors. Associate Roderick MacLeod, of chartered surveyors Montagu Evans, acting on behalf of Tesco, said the revised parking policy would ensure a greater turnover of parking, meaning more freely available spaces for shoppers. An application for three number plate recognition cameras in the car park has already been granted by the council. We're just a few days away from the premiere of the third season of Better Call Saul, the story of how Jimmy McGill transformed into Saul Goodman (and then into Cinnabon Gene). To celebrate that and the return of Breaking Bad villain Gus Fring, AMC and Icon Parking have teamed up to launch a Los Pollos Hermanos pop-up in the Financial District this weekend. And here's your first glimpse of it! Daniel Boyar Fring's faux-restaurant will be open on Sunday, April 9th, from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Monday, April 10th, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. at an Icon Parking location at 243 Pearl Street (Saul premieres that same Monday night). You'll be able to try some of Frings "famous curly fries," and star Michael McKean (who plays Jimmy's mentally ill but brilliant brother, Chuck McGill) will be there at 3:15 p.m. on Monday to meet fans. In season two, Saul was funnier (Hoboken Squat Cobbler!), more comfortable with its Breaking Bad roots (Mike's one man war against the Salamancas), and more tragic (everything involving Chuck and Jimmy's long-simmering family feud), and we expect it to only continue its ascent in season threewhich is why it's one of our most anticipated shows of the spring. Check out a promo video featuring Fring and Los Pollos below. Deputy Finance Minister Moiseev is aware of investigation carried out in ALROSA's office 07 april 2017 News (TASS) - Alexey Moiseev, Russias Deputy Finance Minister knows about the investigative actions taking place in the Moscow office of ALROSA. "I know about this fact and that it is taking place. But such things should be confirmed by ALROSA, he told journalists in reply to a question from TASS whether such investigation is being conducted at ALROSA. Earlier, a source cited by TASS said that officers from Russias Federal Security Service are present in the ALROSA office. According to the source, they are engaged in obtaining documents related to transactions involving non-core assets in 2011-2013. There were no official comments from ALROSA or the investigating authorities. ALROSA is the worlds largest diamond producer. In 2016, ALROSAs output reached 37.2 million carats, while its sales were 40.1 million carats. The company earned $ 4.375 billion in proceeds from the sale of rough diamonds. ALROSA's shareholders are the Russian Federation represented by the Federal Property Management Agency (33.02%), the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) - 25% and Yakutias uluses (districts) - 8%. Currently, almost 34% of its shares are in free float. Tango Mining said 307.94 carats of diamonds produced from its Oena mine in South Africa were sold at an average price of $875 per carat in the month to March 20 this year. The top three highest value diamonds recovered during this period under consideration included an 8.740 carat diamond, which was sold at $2,584 per carat, an 8.64 carat diamond that attracted $2,558 per carat and a 3.480 carat diamond, which also sold at $4,382 per carat, it said. The top 53 diamonds in value, of the 183 diamonds recovered in the period, totalled 174.460 carats, had an average size of 3.292 carats and were sold with an average price of $1,358 per carat. Tango said diamond production from Oena, since acquisition, had now reached 564.06 carats and these were sold at an average price of $1,330 per carat. Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished North Arrow Minerals Inc. has announced final results from till sampling programs conducted in 2016 at its Loki diamond project which better identified potential kimberlite targets. The exploration has also started at LDG project. North Arrow's 100% owned Loki Project which consists of Loki South and Loki East blocks hosts the diamondiferous Monument kimberlite cluster and is located in close proximity to Diavik and Ekati diamond mines. The company has identified several potential kimberlite targets at Loki South and reviewed geophysical and till sampling datasets for Loki East. North Arrow singled out a number of priority targets immediately adjacent to the Monument kimberlite cluster. North Arrow recently received an exploration drilling permit for Loki which allows the company to drill test these exploration targets. The company also reported that exploration has started at the LDG project, a joint venture between North Arrow and Dominion Diamond Corporation. Dominion is the project operator and has commenced a $2.8M exploration program consisting of ground and airborne geophysical surveys and exploration drilling. Current work is focused on ground geophysical surveys of priority targets in advance of drill testing later this spring. Theodor Lisovoy, Rough&Polished, Moscow Botswana Diamonds said two blows were discovered on the kimberlite dyke system from the recently completed first phase of drilling at the flagship Vutomi project in Frischgewaagt, 280km north of Johannesburg, in South Africa. 34 percussion holes totalling 1,459m and 9 diamond drill holes totalling 432m were drilled along a 1,580m strike length of the dyke/blow complex, it said. Another round of drilling to be completed this month or May would identify the area for bulk sampling. The purpose of the first phase of drilling was to increase the geological confidence in the 6km long kimberlite dyke/blow system, which was east of and on strike with the former De Beers/ Southern Era operated Marsfontein Mine. Frischgewaagt is turning into a very exciting project. What we see in the drilling we like. To date we have discovered two blows on the kimberlite dyke system. We are moving to delineate the size of each one, said company chairperson John Teeling, Chairman. The drilling samples contain high quantities of diamond indicator minerals of similar profile to the highly profitable Marsfontein mine some 20km away. In the next two months we should have results from the microdiamond analyses and further information on the size and composition of the kimberlite dykes. Botswana Diamonds said 467 diamonds yielding 247 carats were recovered from the processing of surface material in previous work at the project. The largest diamond was 3.66 carats and the parcel had an average size of 0.53cts/stone. The diamonds achieved a rough diamond value of $180/ct and a modelled value of $259/ct at a bottom cut off of +2mm. Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished The world's largest diamond mining company, ALROSA, held an annual meeting of its active functionaries in Mirny, which summed up the company's production and economic activities in 2016. The meeting, which gathered more than 500 representatives from the companys units and subsidiaries, was attended by Yegor Borisov, First Deputy Chairman of the Supervisory Board of ALROSA and Head of Yakutia; Sergey Ivanov, President of ALROSA; People's Deputies of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia); heads of government ministries and agencies of Yakutia; heads of local municipalities, as well as by chairmen of primary trade union organizations. This was announced in a press release distributed by the company on Friday. President of ALROSA Sergey Ivanov, addressing the audience with an introductory speech, said: "AK ALROSA is a unique corporation systemically important for the domestic economy, which represents Russia beyond its borders. The position of the company obliges our team and business to comply with the highest standards of the industry, as well as the requirements set by the state and other shareholders - in terms of efficiency. Therefore, in the coming years our strategy will be aimed not only at further strengthening the companys leading positions in the market, but also at increasing the internal effectiveness and quality of our mutual work in all fields. " As it was noted at the meeting, ALROSA Group produced 37.4 million carats of diamonds in 2016. Its net profit will reach RUB 148.7 billion, which is 7 times as much as in 2015. Igor Sobolev, First Vice President and Executive Director of ALROSA said that the company intends to drive its diamond output to 39.2 million carats and maintain this level in the nearest term. The participants in the meeting also discussed a number of issues related to the development of social infrastructure, including the improvement of healthcare quality in the local municipalities and increasing the pace of construction of new housing. At the end of the meeting, ALROSA President Sergey Ivanov presented corporate awards and bonuses to the 43 best employees for their significant contribution to the companys development. Theodor Lisovoy, Rough&Polished, Moscow Features Talking to the multifaceted creator of the electronic scheme and his future projects. Heres introducing, scratch that, showcasing the guitarist, trumpet player and keyboardist of Delhi based unwired and super hard to classify Peter Cat Recording Company and the front runner/ guitarist of the three-piece Begum. In case, all of this is not enough, Kartik Pillai is also the main man behind the experimental electronic project Jamblu. Pillai, 27, started with Jamblu as a project in 2007. He defines his music as experimenting with cymatic frequencies and basically just doing whatever he wants to. He started his music as a form of sound healing and adds, Its my version of freedom in sound. Its my little corner where I can explore and be myself. Fuck everyone else. Since this is the kind of venture where its all about expressing ones kind of music and its different stature, Pillai further describes that Jamblu is basically light music which sometimes acquires the rhythm of noise, which sometimes is disturbing. It is the form of music which cant be done with guitars or drums, thus the music turns dark to light -Jamblu doesnt follow all noise; its more onto the aesthetics which turns into different transitions. He admits that outright noise is not his path. Going to be a creator till my body parts fall off, even that would be good art. Severed limbs and blood everywhere, or dust - Kartik Pillai aka Jamblu Jamblu recently released its third album. TDFDTU, which is a seven song conceptual album. Pillai illustrates all his three albums as essentially concept albums which means that they all have a very specific thought process behind them. He does not believe in revealing those ideas but eventually admits that he has to. Generally all the songs are represented by certain concepts and portray a continuous story from one album which runs into another album. The idea is all alteration based on which it does not limit to a certain album. About himself and his current space in India and globally, Pillai feels I fit in an extremely underground and niche circuit which Ive witnessed, love and adore just because of the beautiful kinds of people I get to meet. Also, being in an experimental scene means that you continuously get to learn no matter how old you are. Theres always something new that you just had no idea about. He had done tours in Europe- England- China, which he believes were life enhancing as he got to meet some extraordinary people. He has also collaborated with Lifafa for MusicCity in Liverpool. Pillai acknowledges that the people outstation are more open to the kind of music he creates and accepts it much more than that of the Indian audience as the kind of music he produces is very new in India. This leads to more venue gigs outside while still establishing a place in India. Jamblus outsource through REProduceArtists and his Listening Room sessions have been one of his favorite moments. Where the future projects are concerned, Pillai has his hands full. He is working on ideas for Jamblus music videos as he considers that without them the essence of his work gets lost in translation. There is also collaboration in cards with the British Producer, Pinch and Ravish Memom from New York. Pillai is also working side by side on his other two projects of PCRC and a theatrical release with Begum. So when Kartik isnt exactly working making music for a living, he is sitting home making music for the love of it. You can check out Jamblus music here You can watch the absurdist documentary filmed/edited by Jamblu during his tour to China here Cabinet office is set to release preliminary Japan leading economic indicators data for February at 1:00 am ET Friday. The leading index is expected to show a score of 104.6, slightly down from 104.9 in January. Ahead of the data, the yen held steady against its major rivals. As of 12:55 am ET, the yen was trading at 117.71 against the euro, 138.88 against the pound, 110.03 the Swiss franc and 110.57 against the U.S. dollar. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Forex News Industrial production from Germany and the UK are due on Friday, headlining a busy day for the European economic news. At 1.45 am ET, the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs is scheduled to issue the Swiss unemployment data for March. The jobless rate is forecast to fall to 3.4 percent in March from 3.6 percent in February. At 2.00 am ET, Destatis is set to publish Germany's industrial output and foreign trade data for February. Industrial output is forecast to fall 0.2 percent on month in February, reversing a 2.8 percent rise in January. Also, foreign trade data from Germany are due. Exports are forecast to fall 0.5 percent on month in February, reversing a 2.6 percent rise in January. In the meantime, Norway's industrial production figures are due for February. At 2.45 am ET, the French statistical office Insee releases industrial output data for February. Economists forecast production to climb 0.5 percent on month, in contrast to a 0.3 percent fall in January. Also, the French foreign trade data is due. At 3.00 am ET, industrial production from Spain and foreign trade data from Hungary are due. Hungary's trade surplus is forecast to rise to EUR 910 million from EUR 633 million in January. At 3.30 am ET, UK Halifax house prices data for March is due. Economists forecast house prices to increase 0.2 percent month-on-month in March, following a 0.1 percent rise in February. At 4.00 am ET, Italy's retail sales data is due. Sales are forecast to drop 0.2 percent month-on-month in February, in contrast to a 1.4 percent rise in January. At 4.30 am ET, UK industrial output figures are due. Production is expected to grow 0.2 percent in February, reversing a monthly 0.4 percent fall in January. Also, the Office for National Statistics publishes UK construction output and external trade figures for February. The visible trade deficit is seen at GBP 10.9 billion compared to -GBP 10.83 billion in January. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Economic News What parts of the world are seeing the best (and worst) economic performances lately? Click here to check out our Econ Scorecard and find out! See up-to-the-moment rankings for the best and worst performers in GDP, unemployment rate, inflation and much more. NYPD Commissioner James O'Neill said recently that he is shifting the department's sex trafficking policing tactics, in an effort to prevent people coerced to perform sex from also being criminalizedarrested for prostitution, fingerprinted, and sent through the court system. "Like all crime, we can't just arrest our way out of this problem," he said. O'Neill's new plan, he explained, is to focus on arresting pimps, johns, and traffickers. But prostitution arrests continue, and this week, O'Neill told reporters that while he has an "open mind" about moving prostitution from the criminal code to the civil code, doing so would "impede our ability to identify the people involved in it," and get them help. Mayor de Blasio agreed. "I think that the concern at the jump is that if you only have those civil penalties, that it is harder to stop these crimes," he said. "I don't know what movie the mayor is watching," said Kate Mogulescu, who heads up the Legal Aid Society's human trafficking advocacy program. "Please don't justify arrests by saying we're helping people, when what they need can't be obtained through criminal court," she added. Her team has argued that not all prostitution is exploitative, and that focusing the narrative on traffickingsuggesting that police sweep in as saviorshas bolstered criminalization all around. The NYPD and City Hall affirmed their stance days after the Independent Commission on New York City Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform suggested that prostitution shift to the civil code, along with turnstile jumping and marijuana possessionpart of a broader plan to decrease overall arrest rates and close Rikers Island over the next decade. (While momentum for decriminalizing sex work is building, in the US only Nevada currently has legal brothels.) A new report this week also details the shortcomings of NYC's current approach to policing prostitution: the vast majority of people arrested on prostitution charges in NYC between mid-2015 and mid-2016 were women of color. And while most of them ultimately had their charges vacatedpart of a recent effort to clear the records of sex trafficking victimscops and courts often leave sex workers and victims of trafficking feeling like criminals. "Anybody that's trafficked isn't looked at as a victim," one 32-year-old woman told researchers. "They're a criminal until after the aftermath. That's when they find out we're really victims and not criminals." The Urban Institute, a liberal think tank based in Washington, DC, reviewed the cases of 1,413 defendants arrested for prostitution or related charges in NYC between February 2015 and March 2016. All were clients of the Legal Aid Society's Exploitation Intervention Project, which represents the vast majority of people prosecuted for prostitution in NYC. Thirty-five percent of the defendants said that they had been trafficked into sex work at least one time in the past. Of the total, 93 percent were female. Just over a third were black, 32 percent Asian, and 17 percent were Hispanic. One prostitution-related arrest charge in particular, unlicensed massage, has soared in NYC in recent years, disproportionately impacting Asian women. Arrests of Asian women on this charge jumped 1,900 percent between 2012 and 2016: from 31 to 631. 91 percent of Legal Aid clients facing this charge were non-citizens, and 37 percent were undocumented. This is increasingly concerning for defendants in light of new Department of Homeland Security memoranda that expand deportation priorities to include anyone who has entered the country illegally, as well as visa holders who are arrested but have not yet been convicted of a crime. New York has passed legislation in recent years to assist victims of trafficking. A 2009 law helps human trafficking victims vacate prostitution and related convictions from their criminal records. And in 2013, new statewide human trafficking intervention courts (HTICs) offered alternatives to incarceration for sex trafficking victims, including counseling. Of the total cases reviewed for the report, 84 percent have been dismissed. "That's a very large percentage," said Meredith Dank, a report author and research professor at John Jay College. "But there's still the trauma around the arrest itself... the arrest, going into court, being held in a holding facility." In 2015, the Urban Institute interviewed 21 people who had applied to have past prostitution convictions vacated, some decades old. "Most clients described overwhelmingly negative experiences, which consisted of verbal abuse, intimidation, humiliation, sexual harassment, and profiling" at the hands of police, authors wrote. "I was going to the store, like just to go to the store, and they arrested me for prostitution," one 24-year-old black woman said. "Just because they knew me. So they locked me up. And I was literally in pajamas and bed slippers." A 19-year-old black woman said that she "actually walked into the precinct myself to make a report." A cop "laughed at my face like this is the life you chose. So, of course, I'm like, 'Oh wow, nobody's even going to listen to me, that's fine.'" Another women described an abusive arrest. "You know, parading me in the hotel with the handcuffs," she said. "They were like, I can't explain it, it was like a show." "We continue to gather reports about inappropriate policing, coercive policing," Mogulescu, the Legal Aid attorney, said. "We have inappropriate sexual conduct during the course of arrest, officers who want to take photos of clients on their personal cell phones." NYPD Commissioner O'Neill announcing his new approach to policing sex trafficking in February, with the First Lady (via Mayor's Flickr). Many defendants also reported that they weren't satisfied with the incarceration alternatives meted out in HTICs. Services they are offered, typically counseling, do not match with the services they feel they most need: employment, followed by housing, education and healthcare. Of the roughly 1,400 people surveyed for this report, only one listed mental health assistance as a primary need. "Criminal Court is not in a position to provide housing for women who need it," Mogulescu said. "If we're talking about offering meaningful assistance, we need pathways to a stable living wage. We could get it all out of criminal court and think about economic development programs for women with criminal histories." The Village Voice reports that Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance also sidestepped a question about decriminalizing prostitution, at a press conference last weekend. Instead, he praised the "180" that his office has made, focusing on efforts to vacate prostitution charges. "I feel like somebody took ten tons off my shoulders," one 60-year-old woman said, of her charges being vacated. "I feel like a gorilla has been on my back all this time." "Vance is totally right," Mogulescu said. "The Manhattan DA has been great about vacating prior convictions. But we don't have to be here. Because we're not ending prostitution by doing this, and we're not ending trafficking by doing this." Haverty Furniture Companies Inc. (HVT) reported that its comparable store sales for the first quarter 2017 rose 1.6%. Comparable store sales did not include locations opened, closed or otherwise non-comparable during the last 12 months. Sales for the first quarter 2017 increased 3.0% to $200.4 million, compared with $194.5 million for the first quarter of 2016. Total written sales for the first quarter of 2017 were up 2.5% and written comparable store sales increased 1.0% over last year's first quarter. Since 2016 was a leap year, this year's quarter contained one less day, a Saturday. This calendar change reduced the reported written sales increase by approximately 1.9%. Havertys stores are closed for Easter and the positive first quarter impact on written sales from the holiday occurring in April this year versus March last year is estimated to be approximately 1.2%. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Business News Germany's industrial production expanded unexpectedly in February driven by the construction sector. Likewise, exports registered a surprise growth amid a fall in imports, official data revealed Friday. Industrial output grew 2.2 percent month-on-month in February, the same pace of growth as seen in January, Destatis reported. This was the second consecutive growth in production. Output was expected to drop 0.2 percent after rising by initially estimated 2.8 percent in January. Exports climbed 0.8 percent month-on-month in February, in contrast to economists' forecast of 0.5 percent fall. Nonetheless, the increase was slower than January's 2.4 percent increase. At the same time, imports slid 1.6 percent, reversing January's 2.8 percent increase. This was the first drop in five months. Economists had forecast a 0.2 percent rise. As a result, the trade surplus increased to a seasonally adjusted EUR 21 billion from EUR 18.9 billion in January. February's sharp rise in German industrial production and wider trade surplus help to reconcile the recent gap between the hard data and surveys, and imply that GDP rose sharply in the first quarter, Jennifer McKeown, an economist at Capital Economics, said. Excluding energy and construction, industrial output gained only 0.9 percent in February. Within industry, energy production grew 0.6 percent and construction output surged 13.6 percent, data showed. The production of capital goods gained 1.1 percent and that of consumer goods by 1.4 percent. At the same time, production of intermediate goods showed an increase by 0.4 percent. Industrial production climbed 2.5 percent in February from the prior year after easing 0.5 percent in January. On a yearly basis, exports growth eased notably to 3.1 percent from 11.7 percent. Likewise, imports growth came in at 3.7 percent versus 11.4 percent a month ago. Further, data showed that the current account surplus dropped slightly to EUR 20.4 billion in February from EUR 20.6 billion in the prior year. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Economic News What parts of the world are seeing the best (and worst) economic performances lately? Click here to check out our Econ Scorecard and find out! See up-to-the-moment rankings for the best and worst performers in GDP, unemployment rate, inflation and much more. The US air strike on a Syrian airbase in retaliation for the deadly chemical weapons attack evoked mixed response from US lawmakers. While it received bipartisan support, some others raised constitutional concerns, saying that Congress should have been taken into confidence before initiating military action. After President Donald Trump ordered the attack on Al-Shayrat Air Base Thursday night, from where the chemical attack on Syria's Idlib province was launched Tuesday, nearly 60 Tomahawk missiles were fired from U.S. Navy ships in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. A statement issued by the Syrian army said six people died in the attack, and caused significant damage. They called it "a blatant act of aggression." Top Democrats, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin, offered their support for the air strike, but made clear they believed any escalation would require the approval of Congress. Rand Paul of Kentucky said the President needs congressional authorization for military action as required by the Constitution, and called on him to come to Congress for a proper debate. "Our prior interventions in this region have done nothing to make us safer, and Syria will be no different," he added. The Assad regime's use of chemical weapons is abhorrent, but a military response is not the answer, according to Senator Brian Schatz. Libertarian-minded Republican Senator Mike Lee demanded, "President Trump should make his case in front of the American people and allow their elected representatives to debate the benefits and risks of further Middle East intervention to our national security interests". "If President Trump wants to escalate U.S. involvement in yet another war, he should immediately send a new Authorization for Use of Military Force to Congress and Speaker Ryan must bring it to the House floor for debate and vote without delay," Rep. Barbara Lee said. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Political News Rue21 Inc. could soon be joining the growing list of apparel retailers filing for bankruptcy as the company struggles with a huge debt and sluggish mall traffic. The Warrendale, Pennsylvania-based teen fashion retailer is owned by private equity firm Apax Partners LP. The company operates more than 1,100 stores in shopping malls and outlets, offering its own brands such as ruebeaute!, rue21 etc!, Carbon Elements, rue+ and rueGuy. Rue21 has a debt load of about $1 billion, primarily stemming from its leveraged buyout by Apax Partners in 2013. According to Reuters, Rue21 has hired real estate advisers to help it negotiate with landlords, while it has also engaged an operational restructuring adviser for assistance in preparing for bankruptcy. The retailer has reportedly reached forbearance agreements with lenders that extends through late April. The forbearance agreement is said to have came after the company was unable to make a payment on a term loan. Rue21 joins several other retailers who have recently filed for bankruptcy protection, such as Nasty Girl, Gordman Stores, American Apparel, Aeropostale, and Wet Seal. Several apparel retailers have been struggling lately as traffic continues drop with teens preferring fast-fashion apparel retailer such as H&M and Forever 21 or online shopping. Earlier this week, specialty family footwear retailer Payless Shoesource said it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Business News Senator John McCain, R-Ariz., has harshly criticized the Trump administration policy toward Syria but praised the decision to launch a missile strike on a Syrian airbase. In an interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Friday, McCain suggested the attack should be the beginning of a sustained effort to end the conflict in Syria. "This is a beginning, and a lot of hard things have to be done, but without this, those other things couldn't have been done either," McCain said. McCain said he has spoken to National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and Defense Secretary James Mattis, noting, "They realize this is a long, hard slog." In a joint statement with Senator Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., following the attack, McCain said the U.S. must build on a credible first step and ensure that tactical success leads to strategic progress. "That means following through with a new, comprehensive strategy in coordination with our allies and partners to end the conflict in Syria," McCain and Graham said. McCain and Graham called for taking out Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's air force, bolstering support for the vetted Syrian opposition and establishing safe zones to address the ongoing humanitarian crisis. The Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, McCain previously bashed remarks by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson indicating the status of Assad would be decided by the Syrian people. In an interview on CNN's "New Day" on Tuesday, McCain said he was sure Assad and the Russians took note of what Tillerson said, calling it "one of the more incredible statements I've ever heard." "I'm sure they are encouraged to know the United States is withdrawing and seeking some kind of new arrangement with the Russians," he added. "It is another disgraceful chapter in American history, and it was predictable." The hawkish senator said he is not calling for U.S. troops on the ground in Syria but noted the U.S. is known to help people who want freedom and democracy. McCain accused the Assad regime of committing war crimes on a scale that is almost unmatched since Nazi Germany or Cambodian dictator Pol Pot. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Political News Federal appeals court judge Neil Gorsuch was confirmed as the next U.S. Supreme Court Justice on Friday after Republicans changed Senate rules in order to break a Democratic filibuster. The Senate voted 54 to 45 to confirm Gorsuch to fill the seat previously held by the late Justice Antonin Scalia. The vote largely came down along party lines, with only three Democrats joining with the Republicans in the chamber in support of Gorsuch's nomination. Democratic Senators Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., and Joe Manchin, D-W.V., voted to confirm Gorsuch, while Republican Senator Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., did not vote amid his recovery from back surgery. Ahead of the vote, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, described Gorsuch as a "brilliant, honest, humble man" and said he "will make a superb Justice." Grassley praised Gorsuch's deep understanding of the separation of powers and claimed he will not be beholden to the president who appointed him. The confirmation vote was largely a formality after Republicans invoked the so-called "nuclear option" to change Senate rules on Thursday. In a party line vote, the Senate voted 52 to 48 to change Senate rules that required 60 votes to break a filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee. Senate Republicans decided to change the rule after Democrats sought to block Gorsuch's nomination under the existing filibuster rules. With the new rule requiring only a majority to support limiting debate, the Senate voted 55 to 45 in favor of the cloture motion. Republicans accused their Democratic colleagues of engaging in an "unprecedented partisan filibuster" of a Supreme Court nominee. Grassley described Gorsuch as an "exceptional nominee" and claimed Democrats would filibuster anyone nominated by President Donald Trump. Meanwhile, Democrats suggested that the Supreme Court seat was "stolen" after Republicans refused to consider former President Barack Obama's nomination of federal appeals court judge Merrick Garland. The GOP's decision to invoke the "nuclear option" has raised concerns Trump or future presidents will be able to pick more ideologically extreme judges if they only need majority support. With Gorsuch replacing fellow conservative jurist Scalia, the balance of the court remains unchanged, but Trump may have the opportunity to nominate additional justices in the coming years. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Political News Following an expanded bilateral meeting with the Chinese President Xi Jinping, President Donald Trump said he thinks tremendous progress has been made in the U.S. relationship with China. "My representatives have been meeting one-on-one with their counterparts from China. And I think, truly, progress has been made," Trump said. "We'll be making a lot of additional progress." "The relationship developed by President Xi and myself I think is outstanding. We look forward to being together many times in the future," he added. "And I believe lots of very potentially bad problems will be going away." Trump thanked Xi for his visit to the U.S., calling it a tremendous honor to host his Chinese counterpart and his representatives. The highly anticipated meeting between the two leaders at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida has largely been overshadowed by the U.S. missile strike on a Syrian airbase. Ahead of the meeting, a statement from the White House said Trump and Xi would discuss global, regional, and bilateral issues of mutual concern. Trump repeatedly attacked U.S. trade relations with China on the campaign trail and has criticized China for failing to do more to deal with North Korea. (Photo: Marc Nozell) For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Business News Amtrak announced at approximately 7 a.m. today that work to repair damage caused by Monday's NJ Transit derailment was finally finished. Unfortunately for some Long Island commuters, the job was not done in time to avoid another morning of rush hour migraines. In an announcement that threw a fistful of shade in the very first sentence, the MTA informed hopeful Long Islanders that Amtrak failed them: Because Amtrak crews did not finish track repair work by 4 a.m. as promised and because they did not grant access to tracks overnight so that Long Island Rail Road could pre-position trains, LIRR is forced to once again operate a reduced morning rush-hour schedule this morning, which impacts 14 trains. LIRR must cancel 10 trains to Penn Station between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m., terminate three trains at Jamaica, and divert one train to Hunterspoint Avenue, Queens, because of reduced tracks available by Amtrak. The good news is that the MTA expects to restore full LIRR service for this evening's rush hour commute. (Details on this morning's LIRR cancellations below.) New York City Transit will cross-honor LIRR tickets at Jamaica, Atlantic Terminal and Hunterspoint Avenue. And NJ Transit has returned to a normal weekday schedule, with delays anticipated this morning. NJ Transit also announced that "cross honoring will remain in effect with NJ TRANSIT bus, light rail, private carrier bus, NY Waterway ferry, and PATH at Newark, Hoboken and 33rd Street." In announcing the completion of repair work, Amtrak cautioned that delays are expected this morning as service resumes for the various railroads which use the tracks at Penn Station. Monday morning's derailment caused severe damage to tracks and a switch machine at a heavily trafficked intercrossing, and resulted in a third of the tracks at Penn Station being taken out of service for four days, crippling NJ Transit, Amtrak, and the LIRR. Monday morning's derailment was the second "minor" derailment at Penn Station in less than two weeks. Yesterday Amtrak CEO Amtrak President & CEO Wick Moorman apologized for the incidents and admitted that Amtrak knew about the defective wood ties that caused the most recent derailment. "We had notation that these timbers needed to be replaced," Moorman said. "We clearly didn't have the understanding that there was going to be an imminent failure. We knew at some point this year the maintenance program would be getting to it. We got it wrong." The Federal Railroad Administration is currently conducting a full inspection of the Penn Station tracks, which are owned and operated by Amtrak. The day before Moorman's admission, NJ Governor Chris Christie sent an angry letter to Amtrak lambasting the company for its "apparent disregard for NJ Transits customers." Christie informed Amtrak that NJ Transit would stop paying Amtrak its usual fee for leasing the tracks until "an independent examination" verifies that the tracks, signals, and other equipment is in a state-of-good-repair. The commuter nightmares caused by these recent derailments have increased calls for fast-tracking the Gateway Program, which would add a new rail tunnel under the Hudson River and alleviate demands on the maxed-out tracks at Penn Station. But the $20 billion-plus project relies heavily on the federal government for funding, and there is now concern that President Trump's proposed budget would kill it. Below are details of the impacted LIRR rush hour trains, by branch: Babylon Branch The 6:13 a.m. train from Massapequa Park due into Penn Station at 7:08 a.m. is canceled. Customers can take the 6:26 a.m. train from Massapequa Park due into Penn Station at 7:22 a.m., which will have a stop added at St. Albans. The 6:31 a.m. train from Lindenhurst due into Penn Station at 7:33 a.m. is canceled. Customers can take the 6:32 a.m. from Babylon due into Penn Station at 7:37 a.m. making all local stops to Merrick. The 7:10 a.m. train from Babylon due into Penn Station at 8:20 a.m. is canceled. Customers will can take the 7:29 a.m. train from Babylon due into Atlantic Terminal at 8:43 a.m. Change at Jamaica for service to Penn Station. The 7:48 a.m. train from Wantagh due into Penn Station at 8:40 a.m. will terminate at Jamaica. Customers can change at Jamaica to a Long Island Rail Road train to Penn Station or the E subway line for continuing service to Manhattan. The 8:10 a.m. train from Freeport due into Penn Station at 8:50 a.m. is canceled. Customers will be accommodated by the 7:45 a.m. train from Babylon due into Penn Station at 8:56 a.m., adding stops at Freeport, Baldwin and Rockville Centre. The 8:35 a.m. train from Babylon due into Penn Station at 9:37 a.m. will terminate at Jamaica. Customers can change at Jamaica to a Long Island Rail Road train to Penn Station or the E subway line for continuing service to Manhattan. Hempstead Branch The 7:12 a.m. train from Hempstead due into Penn Station at 8:03 a.m. will terminate at Jamaica. Customers can change at Jamaica to a Long Island Rail Road train to Penn Station or the E subway line for continuing service to Manhattan. Long Beach Branch The 7:04 a.m. train from Long Beach due into Penn Station at 7:57 a.m. is canceled. Customers can take the 7:23 a.m. train from Long Beach due into Penn Station at 8:22 a.m. The 8:08 a.m. train from Long Beach due into Penn Station at 9:02 a.m. is canceled. Customers will be accommodated by the 8:03 a.m. from Long Beach due into Penn Station at 8:54 a.m., making added stops at Valley Stream, Jamaica and Woodside, or the 8:38 a.m. train from Long Beach due into Atlantic Terminal 9:26 a.m. Change at Jamaica for service to Penn Station. Port Jefferson Branch The 7:28 a.m. train from Cold Spring Harbor due into Penn Station at 8:25 a.m. is canceled. Customers can take the 7:37 a.m. train from Huntington due into Penn Station at 8:37 a.m., adding a stop at Hicksville. Port Washington Branch The 8:04 a.m. train from Great Neck due into Penn Station at 8:38 a.m. is canceled. Customers can take the 8:19 a.m. train from Great Neck due into Penn Station at 8:44 a.m., adding stops at Little Neck and Douglaston, or the 8:24 a.m. train from Great Neck, adding a stop at Woodside. Ronkonkoma Branch The 6:54 a.m. train from Central Islip, due into Penn Station at 8:06 a.m. is canceled. Customers can take the 6:56 a.m. train from Ronkonkoma due into Atlantic Terminal at 8:17 a.m. Change at Jamaica for service to Penn Station. The 6:57 a.m. train from Farmingdale due into Penn Station at 7:48 a.m. is canceled. Customers can take the 6:39 a.m. train from Ronkonkoma due into Penn Station at 8:00 a.m. making an added stop at Hicksville. West Hempstead Branch The 7:36 a.m. train from West Hempstead due into Penn Station at 8:29 a.m. will be diverted to Hunterspoint Ave. Customers can change at Jamaica to a Long Island Rail Road train to Penn Station or the E subway line for continuing service to Manhattan. Supreme Political Council condemns U.S. air aggression on Syria SANAA, April 07 (Saba) - The Supreme Political Council on Friday condemned the American aggression that targeted Syria early the day. In a press statement to Saba, the council confirmed that the American air aggression on Syria has proved the US alignment with al-Qaida, Daesh and Israel. The council said that the United States is the main player in the region that directs all wars against the countries. "We in the Supreme Political Council confirm that the blatant American aggression on Syria is an extension of their aggression on Yemen and the region," the council said. "The US attack came as a reaction to the blows by the Syrian army and its allies against the criminal organization of Daesh, which proves clearly the US support to Israel and Saudi regime that both sides provide financial support to the terrorist group and its operations in the region and the world. " "We absolutely confirm our respect to the sovereignty and independence of countries. We regard this action as an aggression against the independence and sovereignty of Syria and as a threat to the security and stability of the region," it said in the statement. "Therefore, Syria and Yemen or any country has the right to defend its security, stability and sovereignty by all means guaranteed by the international laws and charters," the statement added. The council considered the US military bases and its battleships in the region as a threat to the international peace and security. HA-ZAK Saba Facebook Facebook Twitter Twitter Whatsapp Whatsapp Telegram Telegram Email Email Print Print [07/April/2017] We rely on your support to make local news available to all Make your contribution now and help Gothamist thrive in 2022. Donate today 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 ... Actor Akshay Kumar, who has won his first National Film Award, says winning the honour has made the film "Rustom" even more special for him. Akshay was named the Best Actor for "Rustom" at the 64th National Film Awards, announced here on Friday. The 49-year-old actor's performance in crime thriller "Rustom" -- a film loosely based on the Commander K.M. Nanavati case -- has been lauded for "a perfect portrayal of a character caught in personal and social turmoil". In a video posted on his Twitter handle, Akshay said: "Thank you seems like a very small word right now, but I don't know how else to express what I am feeling right now. I am truly humbled by this honour. "I would like to thank the National Award jury and all my fans from the core of my heart for believing in my talent. 'Rustom' was a very special role to play. "Getting to wear the country's Navy uniform is in itself special... Be it for a film. And now this National Award has made this even more special." Akshay dedicated his award to his parents, family and wife Twinkle Khanna. Twinkle retweeted Akshay's video, and wrote: "I don't know if I am crying or laughing -- emotions all over the place. So proud of you Akshay Kumar -- you smart, humble, amazing creature." Akshay said it was "double celebration" on the set of "Padman", as Sonam Kapoor -- who has won a special mention for her role in the Best Hindi Film "Neerja" -- was with him. "As I speak, this National Award-winning actress Sonam Kapoor... The best thing is she is with me now. So it's a double celebration for us today," he added. Akshay captioned the video: "National Film Awards: Best Actor for 'Rustom', countless emotions, very hard to express my gratitude right now but still tried, a big thank you!" Akshay began his acting career in the 1990s, he primarily starred in action films and was known for his appearances in films of the "Khiladi series" as well as other action films such as "Waqt Hamara Hai", "Mohra", "Elaan", "Suhaag", "Sapoot" and "Jaanwar". His performances in comedy films such as "Hera Pheri", "Mujhse Shaadi Karogi", "Bhool Bhulaiyaa" and "Singh Is Kinng" have been much appreciated. He was feted with the Padma Shri in 2011. Emphasising the need for religious harmony, Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama on Thursday said India is still the best country to uphold religious harmony and tolerance. "Religious harmony is very essential at a time when the sense of responsibility is lacking. But despite niggles, it is possible in India -- the most-populated democratic country. This country has shown the way for thousands of years," he said while addressing people at the Buddha Park here. He said all the world's major religions flourished in India. "We are social animals and without a sense of compassion for each other, we won't be happy. Whether we are religious or not, there is a need for love and compassion in the world," the Dalai Lama said. Asserting he was disturbed by terrorism committed in the name of religion, the Dalai Lama said: "We hear a lot about Muslim terrorists, and of late of Buddhist terrorists (Myanmar). But as soon as anyone indulges in terrorism, he is no longer a Muslim or a Buddhist. Come to think of it, Chinese officials describe me as a terrorist too." The Tibetan leader also said it was right to consume the meat of dead animals but not of those slaughtered. "Buddhists are taught not to harm other creatures and are vegetarian; but Sri Lankan monk told me many years ago that they (monks) depend on begging for their survival... Buddhist monks are neither vegetarian nor non-vegetarian," he said. "Pope (Francis) said it is better to be a good human being than a stupid Christian. Similarly, it is better to be good human being than a stupid Buddhist," he said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said he has spoken to Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti over the flood situation in the state and offered the Centre's assistance. "Spoke to J&K CM Mehbooba Mufti on the flood situation in the state. Offered all possible support from Centre in dealing with the situation," the Prime Minister tweeted. Four persons were killed and five others went missing due to incessant rains in Jammu and Kashmir as authorities declared flood in the valley on Friday. According to the Flood Control Department, the Jhelum River is flowing above the flood mark at Sangam in Anantnag and at Ram Munshibagh in Srinagar. The strategic Jammu-Srinagar highway remained closed for the third consecutive day on Friday due to landslides in Ramban district and fresh snowfall in Bannihal sector of the highway. Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina arrived here on Friday on a four-day visit, and was received by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the airport. Modi welcomed Hasina with a bouquet as she alighted from the aircraft. According to reports, Modi travelled from Lok Kalyan Marg to Delhi airport in normal traffic and there were no route restrictions put in place. Both sides are expected to ink over 20 agreements ranging from ICT to defence cooperation during the visit. Air India on Friday lifted its ban on Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad, whose flight bookings had been cancelled repeatedly after he assaulted an officer of the national carrier last month. Official sources told media that the ban was lifted after the Civil Aviation Ministry wrote to the airline, a day after Gaikwad expressed "regrets" over the March 23 incident. The sources said the Ministry took the decision after the MP assured that such incidents won't be repeated. The Congress ' title=' Congress '>Congress criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday for not speaking out against the self-styled cow vigilantes who were beating and killing people on the pretext of cow protection. "You save cow, but humans should also be saved," Congress ' title=' Congress '>Congress senior leader and former minister Kapil Sibal said in a press conference here. He said that Modi does not even speak about such incidents. "Our Prime Minister does not speak (on these issues), whereas his ministers were saying that it didn't even happen," he said, referring to the Alwar incident in which a man succumbed to his injuries after being beaten by gau rakshaks last week. Minorities Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi denied that the incident even took place. "We must ask overselves whom should the government protect," he said. The Congress ' title=' Congress '>Congress leader listed other similar incidents in the past three years said this must be stopped. The Alwar lynching occurred on Saturday when a group of self-styled cow vigilantes attacked dairy farmer Pehlu Khan in Behror area. Khan was travelling in a truck with two cows and two calves. The attackers accused Khan of illegally smuggling cows for slaughter. However, his family said he had bought the animals for his small dairy business. In another incident in 2015, Akhlaq, a resident of Bisara village near Dadri in Uttar Pradesh, was lynched by a Hindu mob on September 28 for allegedly possessing and eating beef. There was ruckus in the Rajya Sabha on Friday over cow vigilantes lynching a Muslim man in Rajasthan's Alwar last week. Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad demanded a statement from Home Minister Rajnath Singh on the issue. Raising the issue, Azad said the government was "undermining the Rajya Sabha". Referring to a statement on Thursday by Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, wherein he had dismissed the incident as "did not happen", Azad said: "The Minister misled the house." The Congress ' title=' Congress '>Congress leader said the government was making different statements on the matter in the two houses of Parliament. "Home Minister Rajnath Singh admitted in Lok Sabha on Thursday that incident happened whereas the Minister (Naqvi) said that it didn't," he said. He also raised doubt over the intention of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on dealing with these self-styled 'gau rakshaks'. "He (Modi) criticised them using very strong words but it seems the Bharatiya Janata Party has told them to do whatever they wanted to," Azad said. He was supported by other opposition members, who approached the Chairman's podium and there was noisy scene for the second day in a row, seeking the minister's apology. On this, Naqvi, who also is the Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, said that the Home Minister will make a statement on the issue in the house on Monday. Earlier on Friday, Naqvi said the alleged lynching of a man in Rajasthan by cow vigilantes should not be viewed from a religious point of view as "criminals are just criminals". "A criminal, a murderer, a hooligan should not be looked at as a Hindu or a Muslim. A criminal is a criminal," Naqvi told the House. "One gets 14-day remand for slapping. But in this Rajasthan case, the accused was freed after a day. This government should take this house seriously," Azad said. "This is undermining the position of the Rajya Sabha. Since the Alwar issue was raised yesterday (Thursday), the Home Minister should have come today (Friday)." The lynching incident occurred on Saturday when a group of self-styled cow vigilantes allegedly attacked dairy farmer Pehlu Khan in Behror area of Alwar. Khan, hailing from Haryana, was travelling in a truck with two cows and two calves. The attackers accused Khan of illegally smuggling cows for slaughter. However, his family said he had bought the animals for his small dairy business. Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama arrived here in Arunachal Pradesh on Friday, the high point of a visit which has angered China. Buddhist monks and scores of devotees at the Tawang monastery, the biggest in India and second only to the world's largest, the Potala Palace in Tibet, received him warmly and with piety. The Nobel peace laureate will stay at the monastery. "He has arrived after a strenuous seven-hour road journey from Dirang. He is in the monastery praying," said the monastery Secretary, Lobsang Khum. Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu accompanied the Tibetan leader, who has lived in self-imposed exile in India since he fled Tibet in 1959. Nestled among snow-covered mountains and perched at a height of 10,000 feet, Tawang is home to Monpa people who follow Tibetan Buddhism. The town was decked up to welcome the 81-year-old. Tawang was decorated with colourful prayer flags, Indian and Tibetan flags as well as flowers. The roads were repainted and the drains cleared. Thousands of people from as far as Ladakh and neighbouring Bhutan holding traditional ceremonial scarves and burning incense queued up on both sides of the road for a glimpse of the Dalai Lama. Security forces kept a vigil in Tawang, about 25 km from the McMahon Line, an imaginary border known as the Line of Actual Control separating the Sino-Indian border. The Dalai Lama was to start his week-long religious visit to Arunachal Pradesh from Tawang on April 4. But bad weather forced him to take to the road as his helicopter couldn't take off from Assam. The Tawang monastery belongs to the Gelugpa school of Mahayana Buddhism and had a religious connection with Lhasa's Drepung monastery that continued during the British rule. Beijing refers to this connection to claim Tawang as part of China after invading and taking over Tibet in 1950. The Dalai Lama had stayed in the Tawang monastery for some days before he reached Assam after fleeing his homeland in 1959. The Dalai Lama first arrived in Bomdila, the district headquarters of West Kameng in Arunachal, and delivered religious discourses. He then drove to Dirang valley, about 50 km from Tawang where he consecrated the Thupsung Dhargyeling monastery on Thursday. On Friday, he left Dirang for Tawang by road. This will be the Dalai Lama's first visit to Arunachal after eight years. His first visit to the state was in 1983 and the last trip was in 2009. China has strongly opposed the Dalai Lama's visit to Arunachal Pradesh, which Beijing considers a part of Tibet. The Dalai Lama has lived in India since 1959. India is also home to some 100,000 Tibetan exiles. Having waived the loans of marginal and small farmers -- as promised in the run-up to the assembly polls -- the Uttar Pradesh government may well find itself carrying an unprecedented financial burden in the days to come. While officials and ministers in the Yogi Adityanath government insist the "whole thing has been planned well", financial experts here say the new Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government will find it hard to bear the burden, which will be around Rs 37,000 crore (over $6 billion), especially as it has said that there would be no new taxes levied on the people. Of the 23 million farmers in the state, 92.5 per cent (about 21.5 million), who are small and marginal, have been granted a waiver against crop loans up to a limit of Rs 1 lakh each. The Yogi government has also erased loans of around 700,000 farmers who have defaulted and are now under the non-performing assets (NPA) tag to the tune of Rs 5,630 crore. "There would be no burden on the people, they should remain relaxed," state Finance Minister Rajesh Agarwal said. But the bravado, many fear, could be short-lived. Siddhartha Nath Singh, a minister and the state government spokesman, has been candid in admitting that the Union government headed by the BJP has already said a firm no to any sharing of the burden following the farmer loan sop. "We are tied to fiscal discipline which mandates the states to keep the deficit not above three per cent of its GDP," Singh said citing the FRBM Act passed by Parliament. Other than this, the state government will also have to face the major burden of the Seventh Pay Commission payouts. The predecessor Akhilesh Yadav government had to bear this brunt for only three months but it would burn a hole in the pocket of the Yogi government for the entire 2017-18 and also in the years ahead. This alone involves an outgo of Rs 31,000 crore. With growing incidences of violence in the state by women over their demands for a liquor-free Uttar Pradesh, the state government's revenue will take a further hit in case it goes for such a social cause under pressure. Fear is looming large in the corridors of power on the shrinking revenue net and hence the loan waiver for farmers is being seen with some apprehension here. If all the debts of the Uttar Pradesh government are taken into consideration, an official said, the state is reeling under an unprecedented debt of Rs 375,049 crore -- a whopping 30.3 per cent of the state's GDP. "The financial system of the state and economic planning has been a complete mess in the past decade and it sure will take a lot of time to manage it, forget taking new hits like the loan waiver," a senior bureaucrat said. The state says it has an answer: Raise funds to cover for the loan waiver through a Kisan Relief Bond. The modalities of the bond are being worked out and it would be cleared during the forthcoming budget session of the state assembly. Even so, a tough litmus test awaits the Yogi government as it treads delicately between economic prudence and populism. Politically, the opposition parties are questioning the decision of the BJP government, saying it made a mockery of the pain being felt by the farmers. Former Chief Minister and Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav has called it a "farce perpetrated on farmers". "There was no capping in the promise made by the BJP during the state assembly election campaign; now they have done so and are only trying to fool the people," he said. The Congress, on its part, has welcomed the waiver, saying that while the decision was good, much more needed to be done by the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh and at the Centre. Veteran Congress leader and former Tripura Chief Minister Samir Ranjan Barman was expelled from the party, it announced here on Friday. " The All India Congress Committee (AICC) has expelled Samir Ranjan Barman from the party for six years for anti-party activities," Tripura Pradesh Congress President Birajit Sinha told the media. Barman, who was the state Congress chief for three years and Chief Minister for a year (1992-93), attended some public meetings of Trinamool Congress last year. At a public meeting, he shared the dias with Trinamool Congress supremo and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Barnerjee. Barman, a lawyer, was elected to the Tripura state assembly five times. Sinha said the AICC had earlier served show cause notice to Barman but he did not respond. In his over a five-decade-old political career, this is the fourth time that the 79-year-old leader has been expelled from the party. The former leader's son Sudip Roy Barman along with five other Congress legislators quit the party last year to protest the Congress' electoral alliance with the Left parties before the West Bengal assembly polls. The Congress has called a 24-hour shut-down in Tripura on May 18 to protest the alleged misrule of the Left Front government in the state. "Many illegal chit fund organisations taken away huge amounts of money from lakhs of people in Tripura, but the government did not take effective steps to bring back the hard-earned money of the depositors," said Sinha, who is also a Congress legislator. The opposition party demanded monthly allowance to the unemployed youths in the state. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday said it will not interfere in the Uttarakhand government's move making singing of the national anthem and song compulsory in the state universities. "That is the state government's decision and the state is bound by its decision. How does BJP interfere in the government functioning? We know the difference between the party and the government. I (party) have no authority," BJP spokesperson Meenakshi Lekhi told media persons here. Uttarakhand's Minister of State for Higher Education Dhan Singh Rawat, during a function at a collage in Roorkee, said that if students want to live in the state, they will have to sing national anthem in the morning and national song in the evening. Rawat had earlier made hoisting of national flag mandatory in the universities across the state. Pakistan on Thursday termed the change in Indias nuclear arms usage policy as "highly irresponsible and dangerous", and said it will "not help in promoting strategic restraint and stability in a nuclearised South Asia". "Pakistan has long maintained that the ambiguous no-first-use declaration is not verifiable and hence nothing more than an empty political statement," said Foreign Office spokesman Nafees Zakaria. The spokesman added that such ambiguous declaration cannot substitute for verifiable arms control and restraint measures. "Pakistan has to consider capabilities and not intentions, which can change anytime," said Zakaria in its weekly briefing. Recent reports suggested India may be considering revisiting its "no-first strike" policy, allowing its nuclear establishment to carry out a pre-emptive nuclear strike against Pakistan in the event of a war. According to a media report, this would not only formally change India's nuclear doctrine, which bars it from launching a first strike, but would loosen its interpretation to deem pre-emptive strikes as defensive. Earlier, former Defence Secretary Lt. Gen. (retd) Naeem Khalid Lodhi claimed that Pakistan possesses second strike capability against India. The second strike provides a military with the capability to hit back at an enemy in a situation where its land-based nuclear arsenal had been neutralised. The nuclear deterrence, said the former Defence Secretary, had been augmented by the second strike capability, efficient delivery systems and effective command and control system. Pakistan in January 2017 attained the credible "second strike capability" after successfully test-firing nuclear capable submarine-launched cruise missile (SLCM) Babur-III. US Ambassador to United Nations Nikki Haley recently voiced concerns over the India-Pakistan tensions, saying Washington wanted to play a role in de-escalation. The move, however, was promptly rejected by India, which has for long argued that Kashmir is a bilateral dispute, and will not accept any third-party mediation over it. Pakistan, on the contrary, has welcomed the offer of mediation to resolve the longstanding issue. "The world's concerns have been developed in the backdrop of the deteriorating human rights situation in Jammu and Kashmir," he said. "We welcome the statement of Ambassador Nikki Haley, expressing concerns over the rising tensions between Pakistan and India and the offer of mediation." The spokesperson regretted that India reacted negatively to the US offer. "India wants to speak of terrorism! We also insist on speaking of terrorism, which forms one of the elements of the comprehensive dialogue process. We need to address the Indian-sponsored terrorism in Pakistan. Kulbhushan Jadav and many other examples are irrefutable proof of Indian involvement in Pakistan," he said. Hundreds of civilians trying to escape from the embattled Iraqi city of Mosul were killed by the Islamic State earlier this week, with bodies being hung from electrical poles across the city, according to a report from the region on Friday. "On Monday and Tuesday, IS massacred 140 civilians fleeing to areas controlled by Iraqi forces," Kurdish broadcaster Rudaw cited tweets by the Kurdistan Region Security Council (KRSC) as saying. "Some bodies were later hung on electrical poles in (the) Eslah, Zirai and Tanak neighbourhoods. Others were taken to nearby front lines," the KRSC wrote. Eslah and Tanak are located in western Mosul, where government forces began an assault last month to dislodge IS fighters. Fierce fighting has continued in western Mosul as Iraqi forces battle to retake the Old City, where 400,000 people are believed to be living. Iraqi forces began an offensive in mid-October to oust IS from Mosul and now control the east of Mosul, Iraq's second city. IS captured Mosul in June 2014 and declared it the capital of its Islamic 'caliphate' stretching across swathes of territory it seized in Iraq and Syria during a lightening offensive. IS atrocities, including mass killings, public executions and murders of fleeing civilians have been widely reported in Mosul. _ _SHOW_MID_AD__ Find out final information before heading to the polls Tuesday As the 2022 midterm election day is finally upon us, here's where Saline County citizens can find out where to vote. CORRECTIONS TO ARTICLE IN THE OBSERVER DATED 31ST MARCH 2017 AND THE BETWEEN THE LINES PIECE DATED 2ND APRIL 2017 I refer to the articles in your above issues in regard to: Good Samaritan Puzzled by Delay (31st March 2017 edition) and Between the Lines [BTL], New Ministry Mooted, (2nd April 2017 edition). We wish to set the record straight as follows: A. With regard to the Observer article Good Samaritan Puzzled by Delay in your issue dated 31st March 2017: 1. The Ministry of Health was NOT part of the negotiations from the outset and was only made aware of the above donation on Friday the 31st March 2017 around 11am when Vaai Papu, Mauga Dr Harlich & Mrs Vera Stavemann visited our office at Motootua. This meeting was regarding the donation by the Stavemanns of medical supplies for the Sataua District Hospital. 2. Mauga Dr Harlich and Mrs Vera Stavemann requested that they would prefer to officially handover their donation of medical supplies to the health officials before they return to Germany on Sunday 2 April 2017. The handover was arranged immediately and their donation was officially handed over at 3pm the same day, at the Ministry of Health premises at Motootua, where the Hon Minister of Health Tuitama Dr T Tuitama was present to receive it. 3. Vaai Papu Vaai and Mauga Stavemann also informed us that they had been communicating directly with Samoa Fire and Emergency Services Authority (F.E.S.A) regarding the ambulance which is currently with F.E.S.A since its arrival early January 2017. They were hoping to handover the ambulance before they leave but are not sure why there was a delay by F.E.S.A. We then advised them to request F.E.S.A again or sought the assistance of Hon Prime Minister as F.E.S.A is of his portfolios, while they still have time in Samoa. The allegations in the article that the handover of the ambulance to the Sataua District Hospital was due to delays caused by the Ministry of Health are incorrect. The delay rests with F.E.S.A and as part of responsible journalism; questions on the delay should have been addressed with F.E.S.A, before blaming the Ministry of Health. It is unfortunate that we were not given the opportunity to respond to these accusations as reported in your newspaper. B. With regard to the related Between the Lines (BTL) article on Sunday the 2nd of April 2017 Observer, we wish to respond as follows: 1. The sarcastic remarks in relation to the Ministry of Health not getting their act together and causing embarrassment has no substance (refer facts noted above) hence your comments on this matter are unfounded and has no merit. 2. The BTL columnist did not research the facts and based on the comments in the article in your newspaper on the 31st March 2017 which was also incorrect. It is irresponsible for a highly rated newspaper to report on untrue information at the expense of the Ministry of Health. The Ministry of Health respectfully requests that the false reporting in your newspaper article be corrected and the BTL comments be retracted. We would very much appreciate if the Samoa Observer management could ensure that your journalists follow the basic principles of ethical and honest reporting. Thank you, Leausa Dr Take Naseri Director General of Health/CEO Ministry of Health Cc: Vaai Papu Vaai (Vaisala Hotel) Dr Harlich H Stavemann Vera Stavemann Lelevaga Faafouina Mupo (Commissioner FESA) Tuitama Leao Dr T Tuitama (Hon Minister Health) Eds note: Thank you Leausa for setting the record straight. Members of the public and our readers would surely appreciate the explanation. But we want to point out that we take responsible journalism very seriously. Your letter said questions on the delay should have been addressed with F.E.S.A, before blaming the Ministry of Health. We did not blame the Ministry of Health. The story was based on what Dr. Harlich H. Stavvemann said. He was the one who blamed the Ministry of Health. As part of responsible journalism, it was our responsibility to seek comments from the Ministry of Health, which we did. Questions were sent to [email protected] about the claims on Thursday 30 March 2017. We did not receive a response until Tuesday 4 April and by that time, it was obviously too late. This brings us to the BTL item in question. Although the BTL focussed on this particular case, the tongue-in-cheek opinion was not confined to the Ministry of Health. It was a general comment about a very common experience the media struggles with in dealing with most government bodies. Samoa and Argentina are ready to mark 24 years since they established diplomatic relations. The point was echoed by the Head of State, His Highness, Tui Atua Tupua Tamasese Efi, during his speech to welcome the new Ambassador of Argentina to Samoa, Fausto Lopez Crozet. Mr. Crozet presented his Letter of Credence to His Highness Tui Atua at Tuaefu yesterday. This is a significant milestone is a testament to a deep desire to work closer together and to forge mutually beneficial partnerships between our two peoples, His Highness Tui Atua said. I am confident that during your tenure to Samoa, the cordial relations that continue to exist between Samoa and Argentina will be strengthened and enhanced. Mr. Crozet conveyed the best wishes from his country to the people of Samoa. Both our countries share a commitment to international peace and security and are very mindful of the environment and the challenges the world is facing with climate change, Mr. Crozet said. Both countries share as well the view that multilateralism and international cooperation are among the best answers to these global challenges. Furthermore, both countries are enthusiastic sporting Nations and, as we all know, sport are a crucial factor not only for social integration but also for strengthening the promotion of tourism and cultural exchange as well as the commercial relationships. Ambassador Crozet is a career diplomat firstly graduating as a lawyer from the School of Law and Social Sciences at the Universidad Nacional de la Plata in 1989. He joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1993 after two years at the National Foreign Service Institute. He specialized in Public International Law. As a diplomat, he served in the Directorate of Antarctic Affairs for two periods (1993-1997 and 2008-2011) before becoming the Director General of the division from 2012 and 2016. Between 2004 and 2008, he served at the Chief of Staff office for the Commerce and International Economic Relations Secretariat. Oversea, he served at the Argentina Embassy in the Republic of Uruguay between 1997 and 2004, and the UNASUR General Secretariat. No job no problem. Thats the view of Eti Sefo from the village of Faleasiu. Armed with an oso (sharp tool used to plant taro) and a machete, his office is his plantation. This is how life is and this is what my life looks like, he sad. People only suffer because they dont want to work. I dont know why people sweat looking for jobs yet we have lands to work on. As long as we have food on the table thats all that matters. We have taro, we have bananas and if we want to eat something nice. the sea is right there to catch fish. Living in the village is a bonus. Sometimes if we dont have anything to eat for the day because we cant harvest our crops, then I make my way down to the ocean to get some fish. The 22-year-old is a father of one child. Everything is great here at our family. Of course sometimes we dont have money but we make do with what we have. I know its hard to plant banana trees and taro but we have no other choice because we have no jobs. You see, despite the weather being challenging, I still come out here to tend to my plantation. Despite the bad weather for the past few days, Eti said it hasnt been a problem. Today I am so grateful that its raining. Every time it rains, I feel this joy in my heart because I know that God is helping my plantation grow. We have so many obligations in our Samoa traditional ways, so dont give up if you cant find a job, farming can also provide for your family. The National University of Samoa (N.U.S) celebrated a first in the history of the University yesterday. During its graduation ceremony at the N.U.S gymnasium, two graduates were awarded doctorate degrees in Philosophy. They are Dr. Ramona Boodoosingh, of Trinidad and Tobago and Samoas very own, Tuiloma Dr. Susana Theresa Tauaa. Tuiloma is a senior lecturer in Geography at N.U.S in the Faculty of Arts. She was the first member of the N.U.S academic staff to be awarded the N.U.S Vice Chancellors scholarship award. Her thesis is entitled Urbanization, Poverty and Economic Informality: Characteristics of Informal Enterprises in Apia, Samoa. Her research question asks: to what extent does the urban non-agricultural informal economy provide livelihoods for Samoan people and prevent poverty? The thesis examines how economic informality has been perceived and analysed by aid donors, economists and geographers in developing countries generally, and in the Pacific Island countries specifically. Her conclusions are based on analyses of her primary research data collected from street vendors and stallholders and home-based operators selling food and a variety of goods in Apia. These show that informal enterprises are a vibrant and growing part of Samoas economy enabling significant number of rural as well as urban households to earn adequate livelihoods. The suggested policy significance of her thesis is that government and non-government agencies and development partners could continue to encourage informal enterprise by viewing it positively, removing regulatory barriers and by providing basic business advisory services and small loans. Ms. Boodoosingh of Trinidad and Tobago came to N.U.S Centre for Samoan Studies on a scholarship from the Caribbean Pacific Mobility Scheme (C.A.R.P.I.M.S) funded by the European Union. Dr. Boodoosinghs thesis is entitled Violence against Women in Developing Countries: Policy and Services in Samoa and Fiji. Her research question asks: are the models for helping victims of gender-based violence in rich countries, such as Australia or the U.S.A, effective in developing countries without social welfare systems? The thesis presents a detailed analysis of the services offered in Samoa by non-government organisations, and by government education, health and law and justice services, with some comparisons with Fiji. It concludes that western models tend to be unsustainable because most of the services offered are funded by charity or by development partners, with limited oversight by government or analysis of their effectiveness. She advocates core-funding and oversight by government for services that have been demonstrated as effective and sustainable. Tuiloma and Ms. Boodoosinghs thesis were widely praised by their international examiners from Universities in Australia, New Zealand and Fiji Yesterday, Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi congratulated them and close to 300 graduates who celebrated with their families and loved ones. To everyone who have graduated today, youre leaders and the future of Samoa, the Prime Minister said. Be honest in whatever callings that youre going to serve your family, church and the whole country. May we continue to light up that candle high for our future generations. To the Vice Chancellor and the staff of the National University of Samoa, thank you for all the hard works. To parents and relatives, thanks for your support for we all know that faiva e tapuaia e manuiaWe also remember the hard work of our past ancestors in everything ...especially for the development our country. Special Awards: Top Economic Student: Faafouina Tuputala Top Management Student: Amuolemoana Black Pearl Meredith Top Banking & Finance Student: Silaloata Elu Top Commercial Law Student: Rasela Taua Leifi Top Overall Accounting Student: Silimona Faataga Top Student in Medicine: Nolan Alalatama Fuamatu Top Student in Education: Folole Anderson Tofa Tuiala (primary) Leala Uaite Mose (Secondar) Top Student in BSc Majoring in Mathematics and Science: Soonalote Vliamu Taimalie The National University of Samoa celebrated two milestones on Thursday. The occasion was the launch of their Strategic Plan 2017-2021 and their first Statistical Digest 2015. Held at the Maritime School in Mulinuu, Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, was the keynote speaker. At first glance, the pairing of these documents may seem odd for a launch but in close reflection, it is appropriate, said Tuilaepa. As we consider these two documents, they do tell us a story. It its a story that touches on N.U.S. past and its envisioned future. It is a story that attempts to further connect N.U.S to its local, regional and international communities while acknowledging the important role our N.U.S. plays. Prime Minister Tuilaepa said the N.U.S. Statistical Digest is not a just a compilation of figures and numbers. Rather it is a publication that tells a story of N.U.S. programmes, student, staff and operational performance. It paints a picture of where N.U.S. was in 2015 and the two years priors. Yes, it is not lost on me that it is now 2017 and the Digest is 2015 but I am assured that he 2016 statistical Digest will be forthcoming in the next few months. This not withstanding, this documentation is part of N.U.S. History. It aims to capture and provide a snapshot of the university in a point in time. A snapshot that provides critical information to partners and key stakeholders. A snapshot that helps to inform its future. As we consider the future of N.U.S. it is also fitting that here today, we celebrate the launch of N.U.S. Strategic plan 2017-2021. I understand that this plan is refined from N.U.S. original strategic plan 2010-2020. It has been reviewed and refocused to map out strategies that are more strongly linked with our current context. It has been refocused to align and compliment our strategy for the development of Samoa; as well education sector plan. I commend these attempts to create synergy with our countrys overarching strategies. For we cannot accomplish all that we need to do for our country without working together. This document illustrates N.U.S. commitment and promised in its work for our community. Twenty-five customers of Origin Energy are winners following the draw of the companys Buy and Win promotion yesterday. A BBQ oven, water heater, rice cooker, wok burners were among a number of prizes awarded. More than twenty customers were also awarded with free refills. Sales and Marketing Manager, Saunoamalii Finafinau Sione said the promotion was the companys way of rewarding their customers. This is a small gesture of giving back to our dear customers for their loyalty and trusting Origin Energy and their service in the country, he said. The total cost of all these prizes is $30,000 and our next draw is next month and we are also ready in giving away heaps of prizes as well. From our General Manager, Felise Sam Chong, the whole staff of Origin Energy and One Look, we would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our customers for their continuous support. Origin Energy Samoa was established in Samoa in 1994 under Boral Gas. It was changed to its current name in 2001. It currently employs 19 people. Origin is the leading supplier of L.P.G. gas in Samoa, as well as other related services and appliances. The company prides itself on the fact that its supply never runs out, its safety record due to it being its number one priority, and the fact that it provides support services, repairs and maintains any type of L.P.G. appliances. Origin Energy also uses and maintains compliance with Australia and New Zealand standards on L.P.G. installations, handling and storage, as well as providing solutions for all their customers L.P.G. needs and requirements. Five top five winners; 1st. Paulo Mulipola Manono, (Gas BBQ) 2nd. Mafoe Atoa - Malaemalu, (water heater) 3rd. Emily (double wok burner with stand) 4th. Ati Leo Nonoa Saleimoa (gas rice cooker) 5th. Lynn Moamoa (double wok cooker) Samoa Breweries has officially released a range of new alcoholic products now available in Samoa. The new products will diversify the options Samoa already has available and will add the extra island flavour. They include: Katia Vodka, Fiji Rum and Bounty Rum. Katia Vodka: already launched in Fiji, comes in three different flavours:pineapple, tropical flavour and straight. The Katia is fresh with hint of Pacific Island flavour. Brewed in the region, it definitely captures the island flavour. The Fiji Rum has received multiple awards and accolades . The new range consists of eight flavours and sure has something for everyone. From Banana, Coconut, Golden Honey, White Rum and White Chocolate. Certain rums are available in the two year and eight year range. Born from the fertile volcanic soils of Viti Levu and aged in the warm tropical coastal climate, the Bounty captures the spirits of the South Pacific. This small batch rum ages patiently, awaiting our master blenders to select the best barrels to create our premium dark spirit. Rich mahogany in colour with intense dried fruit aromas, finishing with molasses and caramel notes. Rich, hot and thick in texture, dried fruits notes come through while the finish lingers with a touch of liquorices and spice tones. This is a great rum for sipping on ice and as a base for a rum punch. Samoa Breweries, through its subsidiary Paradise Beverage, hosted a tasting of the newly available products at the Sheraton Samoa Aggie Greys Hotel on Wednesday evening. Local business owners were the first on the island to try out the new releases and judging by the smiles on their faces, the products lived up to their reputation. Artsy village, beach town, host of racetrack and county fair History: Jacob Taylor is considered Del Mars founding father. He purchased 338 acres in 1885 with a dream of turning the land into a resort. He called it the most attractive place on the entire coast. The Stratford Inn (now Hotel Indigo) opened in 1910 and became a magnet for the Hollywood set. By 1937 crooner Bing Crosby and his partners established the racetrack, a year after the county fair opened in the San Dieguito Valley. The city incorporated in 1959. How it got its name: Railroad engineer Theodore Loop established a tent city by the beach in the early 1880s. His wife, Ella, named it after the Bayard Taylor poem The Fight of Paso Del Mar. Landmarks: The San Diego County Fair is by far the most popular event at the Del Mar Fairgrounds with more than 1.5 million attending annually. The fairgrounds are also the home for horse racing and music festivals. Powerhouse Park incorporates a 1928 powerhouse, now a community center. Advertisement Things to do: Del Mars coast offers spots to sit or play at Powerhouse and Seagrove parks or to let Fido run free much of the year at North Beach. Notable locals: Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz had a beach house here, as did Jimmy Durante. 4,331 POPULATION $1,900,000 MEDIAN HOME PRICE History: In the early 1980s, William Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, purchased the 4,660 acres that comprise Black Mountain Ranch from the Teamsters Union. He wanted to build Graduate Christian University, but environmentalists blocked his vision, which included high-density student housing, campus buildings and thousands of home sales to fund an endowment. The land sold in bankruptcy court to Fred Maas and his partners at Potomac Investment Associates, who eventually developed Del Sur. When completed, it will have about 3,000 residences, a business park, retail space and a hotel, along with two schools. Its many environmental features earned it the Governors Environmental and Economic Leadership Award. Advertisement How it got its name: Del Sur means of the south in Spanish. The main road into the area is Camino Del Sur. Landmarks: The Del Sur Town Center is filling with a mix of stores and restaurants. The Craftsman-inspired community center, called the Ranch House, was the first building in the county to earn a platinum rating for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) from the U.S. Green Building council. The building uses wood from an 1880s barn and a demolished pier in Portland, Ore. The ceiling panels are created from straw, and cabinets are made from compressed sunflower seed hulls. Notable locals: Fred Maas, who spearheaded the communitys development and lives there, became known in 2016 for helping the Chargers with their stadium initiative. Advertisement History: Farming and ranching were the mainstays of this area, once known as the Janal and Otay ranchos, Mexican land granted to Jose Antonio Estudillo. At 25,000 acres, Otay Ranch is nearly the size of San Francisco. Planning for the site began in the 1980s. More than 10,000 homes have been built since then with about 18,000 more to come. The first phase of the massive Eastlake development broke ground in 1986 and will eventually house 8,900 dwellings and 20,000 residents. How it got its name: The name Otay Ranch derives from the historic Rancho Otay. The Eastlake development was originally EastLake. Landmarks: In Otay Ranch, theres a round (really, 12-sided) bird barn off Hard Rock Road, built in the 1930s by mining magnate Stephen Birch. Its shape was supposed to protect quail from getting smothered in corners of a traditional barn. And Eastlake has a lake a 21.5-acre man-made body of water at Eastlake Shores Beach Club. The nearby Otay Lakes offer more lakeside recreation. Notable locals: Los Angeles Dodgers first baseman and former Padres player Adrian Gonzalez is an Eastlake High School alum, although his family lived in Bonita while he attended high school. Brother Edgar also played for the Padres. Things to do: Rent boats, canoes and kayaks at Lower Otay Reservoir. The area is also open to fishing and has grilling stations and picnic tables. Did you know? Eastlake was named San Diegos best new home community in 2010 by The San Diego Union-Tribune. Advertisement This area is known for Asian restaurants and has its share of enclaves. History: This scrubby mesa was mainly used for grazing cattle until World War I, when the Army founded Camp Kearny. During World War II, the Marines established an air base, which the Navy took over after the war. The base, Miramar Naval Air Station home of the Top Gun school was returned to the Marines in 1997. Bill Gibbs established an airfield in 1937, which became Montgomery Field after the city of San Diego bought it in 1947. How it got its name: Camp Kearny, built in 1917, was named after Brig. Gen. Stephen W. Kearny, a leader in the Mexican-American War. Serra Mesa is named for Spanish friar Junipero Serra. Landmarks: From dim sum to boba, Kearny Mesa is San Diegos hot spot for Asian food. Things to do: Hiking highlights for Serra Mesa include the Ruffin Canyon and Sandrock Canyon open spaces. Notable locals: The late actor Cleavon Little, best known as Sheriff Bart in Blazing Saddles, graduated from Kearny High School. Fun fact: Stu Segall Productions, headquartered here, created a string of San Diego-based TV series, including Silk Stalkings and Veronica Mars. Advertisement Known as Jewel of the Hills, La Mesa embraces its past and retains its small-town character. History: In 1869, rancher Robert Allison bought thousands of acres in the region. He helped bring water and the railroad to the area, known as Allison Springs. The transformation to a residential community began in 1906. It became a moviemaking mecca in 1911, when Allan Dwan filmed about 150 silent flickers. The community incorporated in 1912. How it got its name: Newspapers referred to the region as La Mesa Springs and La Mesa Colony. It was shortened to La Mesa when a post office was established in 1891. Neighboring Mount Helix got its name from Swiss-born scientist Louis Agassiz, who noted a snail Helix aspersa on a hike. Landmarks: Part of the areas charm is its connection with the past. The area has two museums: the 1899 McKinney House, now the La Mesa Historical Society, and the 1894 La Mesa Train Depot. The city has kept its system of public stairways, known as the Secret Stairs, in the Mount Nebo/Windsor Hills neighborhood. Things to do: Prosit! La Mesa has been hosting the regions largest Oktoberfest for more than 40 years. Mt. Helix Park, known for its panoramic view from the summit, is a popular spot for family picnics and first dates. Notable locals: Historian Hubert Howe Bancroft farmed olives and chronicled the crop at Helix Farms. Astronauts Ellen Ochoa, William Anders and Rick Sturckow all grew up in La Mesa and graduated from Grossmont High. Advertisement History: Lemon Grove was part of an expanse of land bought in 1869 by rancher Robert Allison, considered the first permanent resident. By the early 1900s, citrus farmers arrived and made orange and lemon growing the regions biggest business. By World War II, most of the groves had disappeared, replaced by housing. The city incorporated in 1977. How it got its name: The idea to name the area in honor of the citrus crop is credited to Allisons wife, Tempa Waterman Allison. Landmarks: The Giant Lemon at Broadway and Lemon avenues, first created in 1928 as the centerpiece for a float in a parade, is purportedly the largest lemon sculpture in the world. Its base displays the citys motto, Best Climate on Earth. Did you know? Lemon Grove in 1931 was the location of the nations first successful school desegregation case. According to the Journal of San Diego History, Jerome T. Green, principal of the Lemon Grove Grammar School, acting under instructions from the school trustees, stood at the door and admitted all pupils except the Mexican students. A judge ruled that the board must let the Mexican students back into the grammar school, rather than send them to a segregated school with lesser facilities. Notable locals: Actor Dennis Hopper moved to Lemon Grove as a child. He graduated in 1954 from Helix High School, where he was voted Most Likely to Succeed. The next year he appeared with James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. Advertisement History: The colony of Olivenhain started in Denver in 1884 with Theodore Pinther, Conrad Stroebel and five others who recruited members who had to speak German to qualify. Colonists paid an initiation fee, a membership fee and monthly dues and in return would get five acres and a house and the use of community property, such as horses, wagons and agricultural machinery. A few months later, 67 colonists headed for Rancho Las Encinitas, which Pinther and Stroebel bought with the membership dues. Soon the members realized that Pinther cheated them in the land deal and the idea of the colony fell apart. Although many left, some stayed, and a permanent community evolved. How it got its name: The original colonists decided on the name Olivenhain, German for olive grove. Landmarks: The Olivenhain Meeting Hall, built in 1885 and the site of countless Saturday night dances, picnics, and celebrations, is still the heart of the community. The grounds around the hall also house the Germania Hotel, the largest structure of the original colonist, although it was never used as a hotel. Things to do: Traditionally, the community celebrates its German heritage with an annual Oktoberfest. Notable locals: Oscar-winning actor Richard Dreyfuss lives here. He runs a civics initiative, as he puts it, to teach our kids how to run our country if we dont, someone else will run our country. Did you know? Many streets bear the names of first German settlers: Bumann Road, Cole Ranch Road, Teten Way and Wiegand Street. Advertisement University City, also known as the Golden Triangle, is a tale of two cities: an older section with single-family homes and a newer region bustling with commerce and high-rise apartments. History: The southern area of University City, between San Clemente and Rose canyons, was developed in the 1960s. The original goal was to build a residential area for students, staff and faculty of nearby UC San Diego, but instead it became a middle-class neighborhood. Ernest Hahns University Towne Centre opened in 1977 north of Rose Canyon, and a wave of residential, retail and office development followed. By the mid-1980s, it was one of the fastest-growing communities in Southern California. The Mid-Coast Trolley extension will connect University City to the U.S.-Mexico border by 2021. Did you know? The area was nicknamed the Golden Triangle because of its well-appointed location inside the 5, 805 and 52 freeways. Landmarks: Rose Canyon Open Space Park bisects the community. The canyon is an urban oasis with a creek and trails, as is San Clemente Canyon, on the southern border, also known as Marion Bear Memorial Park. The gleaming-white Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, with its twin 190-foot spires, is a signature building along Interstate 5. Things to do: Standley Park is the hub in the southern section. The recently remodeled Westfield UTC mall attracts shoppers and diners from throughout the county. This weeks question is inspired by President Donald Trumps son-in-law Jared Kushner heading up a White House Office of American Innovation. Jared Kushner declared in an interview last weekend at his West Wing office: We should have excellence in government. ... The government should be run like a great American company. Our hope is that we can achieve successes and efficiencies for our customers, who are the citizens. Question: Should the U.S. government be run like a business? Phil Blair, Manpower NO: As good as it sounds it is an unreasonable expectation. Businesses are focused on net profit and getting as much as they reasonably and ethically can. The welfares of its citizens should be the prime concern of governments at all levels. Government needs to be analytical and predictable so that business can plan around that structure. But all level of governments should spend its monies efficiently and effectively to meet its clear goals, never waste assets, and be comfortable having excess income over expenses, like businesses. Kelly Cunningham, National University System NO: Government service cannot be run like a business because capital is always conscripted from taxpayers. Monopolies (of which government is the foremost example) leads to higher prices and poorer services over time. Instead of voluntary payment for services rendered, revenues are derived by coercive taxation. Without profit-and-loss guiding choices, government decisions are inefficiently determined and made for production, quantity, location and method. Consequently decisions are usually poorer in quality, arbitrary and wasteful in resource allocation. David Ely, San Diego State University NO: Businesses typically focus on delivering quality products to their customers and providing competitive returns to shareholders. And, business executives generally strive to achieve a limited number of goals, such as profitability. In contrast, national government administrators must be accountable to multiple groups with wide ranging and often conflicting goals. Given these important differences, the processes that exist within the US government for decision making need to differ from those used by businesses. Gina Champion-Cain, American National Investments NO: A business operates to maximize profit and is controlled autocratically by an individual subject to little if any oversight. Our democracy operates to provide services, protection and a framework for functioning civil society. It's controlled by elected officials who govern collectively, constrained by robust checks and balances. The zero sum business structure cannot survive in the stifling bureaucracy of US government. It's far healthier that the two entities successfully coexist than attempt to merge. Alan Gin, University of San Diego NO: There are two big differences between the government and a business. First, there is no profit motive for the government. Rather than making money, the goal of the federal government is to promote the general welfare, however that is defined. The second difference is that there are co-equal branches in government. Unlike a company where the CEO might have absolute power, the president has to negotiate with Congress and/or might have decisions overturned by the courts. James Hamilton, UC San Diego NO: In my opinion, President Trumps management style so far has been a disaster. The U.S. government cannot be run like a business with a single person at the top giving orders. The job of the president instead is to persuade and build consensus. The president needs to do less talking and bullying and more listening and compromising. He needs a better team and to rely on it more. Gary London, London Group of Realty Advisors NO: Efficiency in government is a laudable goal. But the values of business and the values of government can be different. Businesses are not necessarily focused on the health, safety and welfare of our citizenry, as is government. Proposed cuts, for instance, in scientific research and health expenditures might lesson the bottom line (a business value) but diminish the importance of government properly acting to create innovation and change that the private sector alone might not support. Norm Miller, University of San Diego YES: A non-profit business serving the interests of both the current and future generations affected by our actions and policies, such as protecting our planet and not allowing special interests to dictate policies. There is no question that there are and will always be inefficiencies in government, but we can always improve services, increase the speed of decision making and sometimes lower cost with privatization. Jamie Moraga, IntelliSolutions YES: The government would benefit from the ability to be more streamlined, efficient and modernized. For example, improvement of customer service for our citizens, responding more quickly to emergent needs, process improvement, and more fiscal responsibility. Is it easily achievable? No. The government is large and bureaucratic, and like a snail it moves slowly. It is unlikely to be run 100 percent like a business because it isnt run for profit, and its structure is extremely complicated. Government needs business acumen coupled with public administration know how to make the many needed changes work. Gail Naughton, Histogen NO: Although many fundamental business principles could be of benefit to running the government the vast array of socially important tasks that are paramount to running a successful society cannot be run through a focus on the bottom line. The role of business and government are both essential and striking a healthy balance between an efficiently run public sector and a government focused on providing for the social needs of its citizens is key. Bob Rauch, R.A. Rauch & Associates YES: The government should be run like an effective, efficient non-profit business. Zero-based budgeting and a mindset of working within that budget will go a long way toward eliminating waste. The government model that we currently have in place is not receptive to change or improvement. This is seen across local, state and the federal government. As all of us who have dealt with government-run agencies know there is need for improvement. Lynn Reaser, Point Loma Nazarene University YES: The core principle of business is to make the best use of resources. While a goal of profit maximization allows this happen in the private sector, the government could more systematically strive to achieve its objectives at the lowest possible cost. Incentives need to be structured to guide all employees to that goal. Metrics are needed to establish accountability. Businesses stress efficiency and constantly assess the return on investment. The government should do this as well. John Sarkisian, SKLZ YES: By definition a business is a profit-seeking enterprise. However, there are also businesses that are formed to be nonprofits. The US government should be run like a nonprofit business. Nonprofit businesses understand their social mission and serve their members while generating revenue and managing expenses effectively and efficiently. The leaders of government should be held accountable to effectively and efficiently manage the government just like those who lead a non profit business. Dan Seiver, Reilly Financial Advisors NO: Business and government are fundamentally different organizations, with very different goals. Businesses are supposed to be run to make a profit for shareholders, while government is tasked with improving the welfare of all US citizens. A CEO does not have to persuade the citizens' deputies (Congress) to change policies. Businesses do not have rogue subsidiaries (California) that make their own policies in defiance of the CEO. And some employees of the government cannot be fired at will (Supreme Court). Chris Van Gorder, Scripps Health NO: Government and businesses have different roles and therefore operate differently. Private enterprise produces goods and services and should operate in competitive ways. Governments main responsibility is public safety and ensuring private enterprise operates fairly and safely. Governments should not use tax-payer money to produce goods and services; thats unfair competition. And private enterprise should not try to be governments. Each can learn from the other, but both have different missions and need different operating and funding structures. Have an idea for an EconoMeter question? Email roger.showley@sduniontribune.com Follow on Twitter: @rogershowley Downsizing, outsourcing, offshoring: The euphemisms for the forces that have led to very real suffering and rupture in Americans lives are as familiar as news of the latest factory closing. But when Dominique Morisseau sat down to a write a play set amid the economic freefall of the Great Recession, she had no intention of making it about such big-picture issues, nor necessarily about their effects on some great swath of society. It was much more localized for me, says Morisseau, the Detroit native whose play Skeleton Crew is about to get its first regional-theater production at San Diegos Old Globe Theatre, after a much-admired off-Broadway premiere last year. Advertisement Ive seen things in my hometown that concern me. I have family who work in the auto industry. My aunt lost her home, friends of mine lost their homes. And in my neighborhood growing up, which was a pretty affluent working-class community, Ive seen houses boarded up. Morisseaus efforts to answer the question What happened to us? took on a more personal face, though, when she and her husband attended a wedding reception at a very fancy Detroit hotel, and encountered a woman living in her car in the parking lot. After speaking with the woman on their way out and then getting back in their own car, both my husband and I got emotional, and I cried, Morisseau recalls. We were just devastated at the idea that this is a city of people who make cars how did we become a city of people living in their cars? Somethings not right about that. For me, personally, I had to investigate that. So its become about a larger part of the world, but it started with just being about the people that I know. And it turns out were much more connected that wed probably be able to imagine. Skeleton Crew When: Previews begin Saturday. Opens April 13. 7 p.m. Tuesdays-Wednesdays (plus 2 p.m. April 26); 8 p.m. Thursdays-Fridays; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays (no matinee April 29); 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays (no matinee today). Through May 7. Where: The Old Globes Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre, Balboa Park. Tickets: $29 and up Phone: (619) 234-5623 Online: theoldglobe.org Skeleton Crew, the third play in a trilogy called The Detroit Projects, is Motor City to its core: The piece is set largely in the break room of an auto plant where, it turns out, one of the characters is living. The four workers (all of them black) come together to contemplate their next steps and figure out how to deal with both their faltering employer and each other, as uncertainty fills the air. Morisseaus close focus on the plight of the people from one of Americas great homegrown industries proves to be what sounds like a natural fit for Delicia Turner Sonnenberg, whos directing the production. Its a big moment for Sonnenberg, one of our towns leading theater artists (and the San Diego Theatre Critics Circles 2015 honoree as director of the year). Not only is she making her Globe debut, but the Balboa Park theater is staging Skeleton Crew in association with Moxie Theatre, the women-centered company for which Sonnenberg is founding artistic director. It turns out shes as much in her element behind the wheel as she is in the drivers seat of a theater production. I love my car, says Sonnenberg of her Ford Flex, which she has even given a name: Rob. (Its actually an acronym for Rare Old Beauty, a moniker she borrowed from her father-in-laws name for his own ride.) Whats more, I always thank my car, Sonnenberg says. Thank you for getting me home safe at 1 in the morning after tech (rehearsal). But now, after becoming intimately familiar with Skeleton Crew, she also says: Thank you for the people who touched this car. An American story On a rehearsal break at the Globe one recent morning, Sonnenberg and Tonye Patano, who plays the key role of the veteran factory shop steward Faye, talk of how the piece has gotten into their heads. One of the most beautiful things about this play is its such an American story, Sonnenberg says. And Detroit is such an American city. Cars are so American. And it reminds me there are still people in our country who make things with their hands. Patano, who was a powerful presence as the tough Mama Nadi in La Jolla Playhouses 2009 production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Ruined, says the team behind the Globe show hopes its the kind of play that cant easily be left behind in the theater parking lot. Skeleton Crew director Delicia Turner Sonnenberg, cast member Tonye Patano and playwright Dominique Morisseau (from left) (Howard Lipin / San Diego Union-Tribune) With this, you want it to linger some, she says. You want people to know that when they get in that car, somebodys hands touched that car. And they built that for you. Sonnenberg says of the playwright that I do think one of the things shes exploring is these people who dedicate their lives to systems and institutions, and how does that break down? When does it start to fail these people who love their work, and dedicate their lives to it? Its one thing if one or two or four people, like we have (in the play), make some bad choices. But when whole neighborhoods are wiped out, and whole industries, the question really is, whats going on with the system thats failing people? Patano, who was also a star of TVs Weeds, says Skeleton Crew is a work that doesnt coddle its audience, but does invite playgoers to meet the storys characters on their own terms. She words it as almost a challenge to the curious and adventurous: You feelin froggy? Lets jump. At least get in the pool with me. You dont have to like the muck. But if youre in here, now you understand what it feels like. Splash around a little bit. Director Delicia Turner Sonnenberg (left) looks on as Tonye Patano rehearses a scene from the Old Globes Skeleton Crew. (Howard Lipin / San Diego Union-Tribune) Sonnenberg chimes in that one of the things that attracted me to this play was the female roles. Theyre so human. In other plays, rarely do you see a female character whose story isnt in service to the male protagonist, for example. And in this play, their stories have their own urgency, their own agency. But in this particular play, I also love the men, both of them, and the lines they have to walk in the world to be who they are. Thats partly because I have a son, a young black man, whos about to go into the world, Sonnenberg adds. As an artist lately Ive been fascinated with what that means, because I have to talk about it in my house. (The full cast of Skeleton Crew includes Amari Cheatom as Dez, Brian Marable as Reggie and Rachel Nicks as Shanita.) Speaking of letting ones own go out into the world: Morisseau is asked how she feels about Skeleton Crew seeing its first production outside of New York. I feel great about it, she says. Its time, and Im excited for it to happen. Its a play thats about the working class, so i want it to get into as many communities as possible, and to start dialogues around the country. Im more than ready for it to be out in the universe. Twitter: @jimhebert jim.hebert@sduniontribune.com The Border Patrol agent thinks its a con when Nayeli, the young Mexican heroine of Into the Beautiful North, tells him why she has just crossed into the U.S. illegally. You wanna go north to bring Mexicans back? he says with an incredulous laugh. Thats the most original story Ive heard. Original it definitely is; same for the Luis Alberto Urrea novel that the play which just opened (in one of its very first productions) at San Diego Rep is based upon. Advertisement So original, in fact, that it might be one reason Karen Zacariass funny and often charming adaptation has some trouble locating a consistent tone and a satisfying sense of momentum onstage. The 2009 books adventurous mix of the gritty and the cheeky, and of realism and almost comic-book fantasy not to mention its epic road-trip scope cant be easy to translate to a two-hour play, although director Sam Woodhouse and his strong cast put in a valiant effort at the Rep. While its not quite enough to keep the show from sagging in the second act, Into the Beautiful North still has its moments of winning humor, and the plays plot points of ominous fences and onerous discrimination can make it feel very of the moment. Into the Beautiful North When: 7 p.m. Wednesdays; 8 p.m. Thursdays-Fridays; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays; 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays. (Some exceptions; check with theater on specific dates.) Through April 23. Where: San Diego Repertory Theatres Lyceum Space, 79 Horton Plaza, downtown. Tickets: $38-$65 (discounts available) Phone: (619) 544-1000 Online: sdrep.org Nayelis story happens to be true: The tough-minded teen-ager (played by Kenia Ramirez) from the tiny seaside town of Tres Camarones is on a quest with her pals Vampi (Jennifer Paredes) and Tacho (Bryant Hernandez) to bring Mexican men back from the United States. The idea is for the recruits to protect the village from the narcos who threaten to overrun the place a gambit Nayeli has borrowed from the old western flick The Magnificent Seven, which she saw at the local cinema. The name of Nayeli and her friends hometown which translates as The Three Shrimps belies the fierceness of this tiny but mighty trio: Nayeli is a karate ace, Vampi is a fiery, leather-clad goth, and Tacho is self-consciously macho (and also proud of his gay identity). All three of the lead actors acquit themselves well: The poised newcomer Ramirez captures Nayelis infectious optimism and resiliency, while Paredes (whos been everywhere on local stages lately) is a fiery and funny Vampi, and plays a mean ukulele to boot. Hernandez gets plenty of good laughs along with some of the plays most sobering moments, as Tacho is singled out for abuse by various cops and criminals. Theres a lot going on in the story: Tia Irma (Catalina Maynard), Nayelis aunt, is campaigning to become the towns next mayor, and still pines for a long-ago flame who decamped for San Diego; likewise, both Nayeli and Vampi carry a torch for an American missionary once posted to Tres Camarones, while Nayeli also harbors hopes of bringing her long-lost father back from Illinois. All those entanglements play into the piece, and if they dont always serve to push the story forward, they do offer opportunities for some inspired multi-character work by the ensemble. Jorge Rodriguez in particular is an absolute scene-stealer as the self-styled superhero Atomiko, whom Nayeli and Co. pick up at the Tijuana dump, and as a hilarious vision of Johnny Depp who pops up (in pirate mode) in Nayelis dreams. Herbert Siguenza, the Culture Clash co-founder and current Rep playwright in residence, has several memorable turns as cops and more, while Maynard, Xavi Moreno and Javier Guerrero also switch things up impressively. The mural-decorated curtains on Ian Wallaces set help evoke the movie connection; his projections harmonize well with Lonnie Alcarazs lighting, Mat Lescault-Woods sound and Michael Roths original music, and Jennifer Brawn Gittings costumes (especially for Vampi) are a treat. It so happens that Urrea grew up in San Diego, and locals will appreciate the familiar landmarks that figure into the story. When the shows road trip gets a little fatiguing, its nice to be reminded of home. San Diego Theater On Now Video: Bruce Springsteen's solo trip to Broadway On Now Video: Inside the rehearsal room of SDMT's Damn Yankees! 2:22 On Now Video: La Jolla Playhouse-bred shows earn key Tony nominations 3:05 On Now Video: Broadway moment has arrived for La Jolla Playhouse's 'Come From Away 0:33 On Now Video: Lamb's Players Presents "An American Christmas" 2016 1:21 On Now Old Globe's 'Grinch' ready to rumble again 0:52 On Now Little Miss Sunshine at La Jolla Playhouse On Now Working the Magic On Now San Diego Repertory Theatre presents "Federal Jazz Project" On Now An American Christmas Twitter: @jimhebert jim.hebert@sduniontribune.com The military has punished the first two people linked to the Marines United cyber-bullying and sexual-denigration scandal a pair of service members from Camp Pendleton. A non-commissioned officer and a lower-ranking enlisted member of the 2nd Battalion, Fourth Marine Regiment at that base pleaded guilty to nonjudicial punishment, instead of going to trial in military court, for comments they made on United States Grunt Corps. Thats an online community created after Facebook shuttered the Marines United private page following allegations that some members swapped salacious images of female service members often without the womens knowledge or consent and openly derided them. On Wednesday, Camp Pendleton officials were alerted that the two Marines in question had used the Grunt Corps site to make contemptuous remarks against a person in their chain of command. The two Marines battalion commander, Lt. Col. Warren Cook, initiated an investigation and the pair admitted their guilt. Advertisement Both Marines were demoted by one pay grade, sentenced to 45 days of restriction to their barracks and given 45 days of punitive duties concurrent to the other punishments. No other details about the case, such as the two Marines names and what they wrote in the online forum, were disclosed. In a statement released by the Camp Pendleton-based 1st Marine Division to The San Diego Union-Tribune, Cook said the case proved that his unit refuses to tolerate personal attacks on their Marines, online or elsewhere. This kind of behavior flies in the face of our services core values and this organization refuses to condone it. Each member of this battalion is a valued part of a storied and effective combat unit, and our success is based on trust, mutual respect and teamwork, Cook said. The case was first reported on Friday by the Washington Post. Since March 22, service members in Marine units worldwide have signed counseling statements called Page 11s that are then added to their permanent records indicating that they understand and will follow the Corps revamped guidelines on cyber bullying. Those tougher standards were created in the wake of the Marines United scandal. At its peak in February, Marines United counted nearly 30,000 members active-duty or reserve Marines and sailors, along with veterans who served in those military branches. Most of those members didnt share inappropriate images or cast slurs against female service members; the ongoing criminal investigation has focused on an estimated 500 men who did. The probe involves the Marine Corps, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, the FBI, the U.S. Department of Justice and law-enforcement agencies in various states. During a Pentagon roundtable with reporters on Friday morning, Gen. Glenn Walters, assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, vowed to continue going after online wrongdoing by Marines while enacting deeper reforms to root out an often toxic culture in the military that vilifies women. Our Marines and the American people deserve nothing less. Marines dont fail. The vast majority of Marines live our ethos, and a part of that ethos is to correct or hold appropriately accountable those Marines who dont, Glenn said. Marines dont degrade their fellow Marines. Marines dont disrespect or discriminate based on gender, religious affiliation, sexuality or race. Semper Fidelis always faithful has a deep meaning that we are called to defend. The Marine Corps owns this problem and we are committed to addressing it for the long term. Glenn pointed to NCIS innovations that have increased information sharing and streamlined reporting of incidents to track online misconduct. NCIS agents can now ship investigative material on minor offenses or non-criminal actions to a fusion cell within the larger task force probing the Marines United scandal. The info is then routed to local commanders to punish the online scofflaws, such as the two Marines at Camp Pendleton. Part of the task force, which is led by Marine Col. Cheryl Blackstone, continues to study more than 150 potential changes to the way the Corps recruits, trains and retains personnel to clean up an institution long deemed by critics to be corrosive to women. Blackstone has commissioned studies exploring whether to increase the number of events where male and female Marines train together while looking at dozens of recently instituted changes to the training of Marine recruits, Glenn said. Future revamping could include a Women in the Marine Corps Advisory Council and the creation of a forum where current and former female Marines who were victimized in their careers can share their stories without fear of retaliation or reprisal. Since the Marines United case became public, critics of the Corps gender policies have expressed a range of reactions. Some have conveyed cautious optimism that top leaders of the service, including commandant Gen. Robert Neller, appear to be taking the scandal seriously. Others had said they cant trust the Corps to police its own because similar incidents in the past were ignored or minimized. Still others have given support to the Corps current reform efforts but question whether it, NCIS and other enforcement agencies are nimble enough to pursue violators in the rapidly shifting world of online forums. Military Videos On Now D-Day paratrooper from Coronado jumps again in France at age 96 On Now Remembering war's fallen, one name at a time On Now In Ramona, an airplane and an aviator provide living lessons on World War II 1:43 On Now Video: Navy's newest vessel sails into San Diego and a new future in surface warfare On Now Video: U.S. Navy files homicide charges over warship collisions On Now Stopping Marine hazing On Now Video: U.S. Navy Air Crew Grounded After Creating Vulgar Sky Drawing On Now Navy says Asia Pacific ship collisions were avoidable On Now Hundreds of recruits get sick at Marine boot camp On Now Cutler Dawson Talks Navy Federal cprine@sduniontribune.com With smoke clearing from the Syrian airfield blasted Thursday night by American missiles, the diplomatic and military ramifications of the attack remained murky on Friday morning. On the order of President Donald Trump, two U.S. Navy destroyers flung dozens of cruise missiles at the Shayrat Airfield in the Homs governate on Thursday, targeting aircraft, the hardened bunkers where theyre stored and the fuel that powers them. Pentagon officials told The San Diego Union-Tribune that the surprise attack from the guided-missile destroyers Ross and Porter also pounded radar installations and Syrian air defense weapons there. Advertisement Calling the American attack a blatant act of aggression, the government-run Syrian Arab News Agency claimed that nine civilians died in the American assault, including four children, with missiles straying into nearby houses. One missile struck al-Hamrat village nearly two miles from the base, killing four three civilian adults and a child, SANA said. The San Diego Union-Tribune could not independently confirm the Syrian accounts and the agency routinely fabricates information. Rebel media did not show images of civilian casualties. American officials reiterated Friday morning that they would continue to analyze battle damage to the air field but initial reports indicated severe damage and destroyed Syrian aircraft, equipment and support infrastructure at the base. There were no indications of errant strikes by the highly precise 59 Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles that were fired from the warships at undisclosed points in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. The aircraft used in the April 4 chemical gas attack on the village of Khan Sheikhoun are believed by American officials to have flown from the base one of six major military tarmacs in the Middle Eastern country currently used by the regime of Bashar al-Assad in its ongoing war against a wide array of rebels, including Islamic State militants. In a televised speech from Trumps Mar-a-Lago resort, President Trump said there was no dispute that dictator Assads forces launched the chemical attack that killed 86 Syrian civilians, a third of them children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many, Trump said of the Khan Sheikhoun atrocity. Even babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror. Deterring future Syrian chemical attacks was a vital American interest, the president added, although that seemed to contradict multiple statements Trump issued as a private citizen in 2013 and 2014, when then-President Barack Obama grappled with going to war with Syria over Assads chemical attacks, and the America First foreign policy that helped him win the White House in November. Trumps brief Thursday speech condemned Syria not only for what he said were violations of the international treaty banning chemical warfare but also the United Nations Security Council resolutions that were designed to eradicate Assads stockpiles of lethal chemicals. In a written statement sent to the Union-Tribune, the Pentagon said American forces took extraordinary measures to avoid civilian casualties and comply with international law while providing a proportional response to the heinous act against Khan Sheikhoun. The Pentagon conceded that it took every precaution to minimize risk to personnel at the base and Russian commanders allied with the Assad regime were notified in advance of the strikes. On Friday morning, the regime reiterated claims that it had nothing to do with the chemical massacre of the village, but the Assad regime is the only force in the civil war with the capability of dropping munitions from the air and it has routinely used chlorine gas canisters and other weapons to kill civilians in rebel-held territory. Although the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers Ross and Porter normally operate out of Rota, Spain, they fell under the control of Army Gen. Joseph Votel of U.S. Central Command for Thursday nights assault. The long range of the Tomahawks around 1,000 miles for most variants alleviated the need for the White House to secure flight corridors through Mediterranean countries, a key consideration after two hectic days of diplomatic wrangling between Russia, the United States and Americas allies in the region. Russias deputy envoy to the United Nations in New York, Vladimir Safronkov, told reporters on Thursday that America must consider negative consequences from an attack, adding that all the responsibility if military action occurred will be on the shoulders of those who initiated such doubtful and tragic enterprise. When asked what those consequences might resemble, he pointed to American-led conflicts in Libya and Iraq. Although Nikki Haley, the United States ambassador to the UN, last week had said the Trump administration no longer sought to depose Assad, a longtime goal of the Obama regime, that policy appeared to radically shift on Thursday. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson telegraphed a change by stating Assad no longer had a role in a future Syria. Trump punctuated the diplomats declaration with the cruise missile blitz. Tillerson is slated to arrive in Moscow on Tuesday for a series of talks with officials, including Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Deploring the American attack in Syria, on Thursday, Russian diplomats called for an emergency session of the UN Security Council to convene Friday on the matter. In Moscow, Russian officials said that they would halt their participation in the deconflication channels that are used to ensure the American-led air campaign against Islamic State militants does not get entangled in Russian efforts to pound rebels at war with the Assad regime. They said that the Kremlin planned to add more anti-aircraft systems to the defenses they share with the Syrian military and hinted that they could send frigates to the Mediterranean, perhaps to the Russian-held port of Tartus. Wire services contributed to this report. Military Videos On Now D-Day paratrooper from Coronado jumps again in France at age 96 On Now Remembering war's fallen, one name at a time On Now In Ramona, an airplane and an aviator provide living lessons on World War II 1:43 On Now Video: Navy's newest vessel sails into San Diego and a new future in surface warfare On Now Video: U.S. Navy files homicide charges over warship collisions On Now Stopping Marine hazing On Now Video: U.S. Navy Air Crew Grounded After Creating Vulgar Sky Drawing On Now Navy says Asia Pacific ship collisions were avoidable On Now Hundreds of recruits get sick at Marine boot camp On Now Cutler Dawson Talks Navy Federal cprine@sduniontribune.com The attorney general for the Mexican state of Nayarit and a part-time Chula Vista resident is expected to board a plane in San Diego under FBI custody and fly to New York Friday, where he will face federal drug-trafficking charges. Edgar Veytia, 46, was arrested on a warrant March 27 as he tried to enter the United States at the Cross Border Xpress, a bridge in Otay Mesa connecting San Diego to the Tijuana Airport. Trips here are common for Veytia, as he is a U.S. citizen and maintains a home in Chula Vista, said Jan Ronis, one of his San Diego-based attorneys. The indictment out of the Eastern District of New York accuses Veytia of conspiring to manufacture, distribute and import heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana. The indictment does not name alleged co-conspirators or an organized crime group. Advertisement The U.S. government is seeking to seize up to $250 million in proceeds linked to the alleged crimes. Veytia, who goes by the nicknames Diablo, Eepp and Lic Veytia, is accused of joining the conspiracy in 2013 the year he took office as Nayarits top law enforcement official. On Friday, he appeared in San Diego federal court in a rumpled pale yellow dress shirt, brown slacks and ankle restraints, dressed in preparation for his flight to New York later in the day. He admitted he is the same person in the New York warrant and agreed to be transferred there in time for a 9:30 a.m. hearing in Brooklyn on Saturday. His wife, sister and son, who are also U.S. citizens, watched from the courtroom gallery, Ronis said. The family did not speak to reporters afterward. Nayarit is a largely agricultural state bordered by scenic beaches on the Pacific that has developed into a resort destination known as the Riviera Nayarit. The coastline is less populated than Mazatlan to the north and Puerto Vallarta to the south. The state has been the site of increased drug cartel activity, including a gun battle in the capital city of Tepic in February between members of the Beltran-Leyva cartel and the Mexican military in helicopters. The regions reputed Beltran-Leyva boss was killed in the shootout, as well as seven associates. Veytia, a close ally of Nayarits governor, projected a law-and-order image and once said his state is not fertile for organized crime, according to the Los Angeles Times. He joins a recent slew of Mexican politicians and law enforcement officials being prosecuted in the United States on corruption charges. kristina.davis@sduniontribune.com Twitter: @kristinadavis Even though a police officer might ultimately be justified in shooting a person during a confrontation, can the officer still be held liable if he was found to have recklessly or intentionally provoked the violent encounter in the first place? Its a question the U.S. Supreme Court is considering in a Los Angeles-area case, and one that lawyers for El Cajon police say may have bearing on the lawsuit involving the fatal police shooting of Alfred Olango. The citys attorneys are asking a San Diego federal judge to put the lawsuit filed by Olangos father, Richard Olango Abuka, on hold to wait for the high court to rule in Mendez v. County of Los Angeles, arguing the decision materially impacts this case. Advertisement Alfred Olango, a 38-year-old Ugandan refugee, was unarmed when he was shot in a minutes-long confrontation with Officer Richard Gonsalves on Sept. 27. Olango had been acting strangely that morning, telling his sister he hadnt slept and was paranoid. His sister called 911 three times that morning, asking for help for her brother who was having a mental breakdown. Olango was found wandering in and out of traffic, and when Gonsalves pulled up in his patrol car, Olango was pacing in the parking lot of the Broadway Village shopping center in El Cajon. Surveillance and cellphone video show the two facing off. The officer said he commanded a visibly agitated Olango to take his hands out of his pockets, but he wouldnt comply. Olango suddenly pulled an item out of his pocket and pointed it at the officer, taking what police have described as a two-handed shooting stance, and the officer fired. The item turned out to be a vaping device with a barrel that resembled a gun, police said. The District Attorneys Office, which reviews all officer-involved shootings, found the use of deadly force was justified because the officer reasonably feared for his life. The lawsuit, filed in January, accuses Gonsalves of aggressively confronting and cornering Olango rather than waiting for a psychiatric team to arrive for help. The suit also alleges Gonsalves had a cowboy attitude and his demeanor provoked Olangos reaction, resulting in the shooting. In their motion to dismiss, lawyers for El Cajon argue that the lawsuit does not allege any unconstitutional conduct that occurred before the shooting. Not waiting for a P.E.R.T team before confronting a mentally unstable Olango does not constitute a Fourth Amendment violation. Nor did it violate the Fourth Amendment to confront, chase or corner Olango. At most, these might constitute negligent tactics and conduct, the lawyers from the firm Haley & Dean argue. Further, Gonsalves should be immune from liability because he did not knowingly violate any clearly established law, they argue. The Supreme Court has never set the constitutional parameters of a law enforcement officers interactions with the mentally incapacitated, the motion states. So under the provocation doctrine established by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, could it be argued that while Gonsalves was ultimately justified in using deadly force that he also be held liable for the way he approached the situation in the first place? Its what the Supreme Court is considering in the case involving the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department. In 2010, deputies went to a womans Lancaster home in search of a parolee believed to be armed and dangerous, and a couple of deputies went in the backyard to look for him or to catch him should he try to flee out the back door. The deputies came to a shack on the cluttered property and without announcing who they were and without a warrant opened the door. It turned out Angel Mendez and his pregnant wife were living in the shed as tenants. Mendez thought it was perhaps his friend who owns home at the door, and he grabbed his BB gun to move to the side so he could get out of bed. He said the gun was for shooting rats and pests. He was holding the gun when the deputies saw his silhouette, and both fired. Fifteen rounds went into the shack. Mendez had to have one leg amputated below the knee as a result of his injuries, and his wife was struck in the back. The U.S. District Court found that the deputies reasonably thought they might have been shot but also found them liable under the provocation theory, saying they recklessly entered the shack without a warrant. The 9th Circuit agreed with that decision. The deputies here should have been aware that the shack in the backyard was being used as a separate residence, wrote 9th Circuit Judge Ronald Gould. The deputies were told that a couple was living behind the house, and the shack itself was surrounded by an air conditioning unit, electric cord, water hose, and clothes locker. The couple were awarded about $4 million in damages at the conclusion of the bench trial, which the 9th Circuit upheld. The county appealed to the Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments March 22. Other courts in the country have split on the provocation issue. Los Angeles-based lawyer Rodney Diggs, who is representing Olango Abuka, said he will oppose the motion to put the fathers lawsuit on hold. The provocation theory is just one theory. There are other theories as well why we feel El Cajon is liable for the wrongful death of Alfred, Diggs said. Whatever way the Supreme Court rules on provocation, it doesnt stop the case. A hearing on the matter is set for May 1, although the San Diego judge may consider the issue on just the written arguments. Olangos sister, wife and children have also filed separate lawsuits against El Cajon. El Cajon Shooting On Now Dumanis rules El Cajon police shooting of Alfred Olango justified 2:09 On Now Justice for Alfred Olango 1:33 On Now Video: Protests in the weeks following Olango shooting 1:43 On Now El Cajon City Council Meeting 10.11.2016 1:49 On Now Protest still present after El Cajon Shooting 2:49 On Now Video: Faith leaders, demonstrators rally in El Cajon 3:32 On Now Video: Rally after El Cajon shooting 1:45 On Now Video: Prayer vigil draws crowd in El Cajon 1:12 On Now RAW: Full video of Alfred Olango officer involved shooting 1:46 On Now Angry crowd grows after man is shot by police in El Cajon 1:15 kristina.davis@sduniontribune.com Twitter: @kristinadavis Will Americans start seeing more lab coats at political rallies like the upcoming March for Science in the nations capital, San Diego and hundreds of other locations? While many scientists have shied away from explicitly political actions in recent decades, the community throughout history has spoken publicly on a wide variety of social, technological and ideological issues. That has included everything from opposing fascism, nuclear proliferation and the Vietnam War to sitting on government panels that advise elected leaders on stem-cell research involving human embryos. Sometimes history has proven the scientific majority to be correct, such as with the overall benefits of vaccination. At other times, history has shown that scientists are vulnerable to an assortment of biases, such as with eugenics research and the long-held view of sexual orientation as a lifestyle choice. Advertisement With the election of President Donald Trump, who denies that climate change is occurring and has threatened to shrink research budgets, scientists are again becoming more confrontational in their politics. Theyre even taking to the streets, including the nationwide March for Science protests planned for April 22. Physicists, oceanographers and biomedical specialists are expected to join ranks with environmental leaders, K-12 science teachers and others at those gatherings. It was almost a given that San Diego would be one of the rally spots. The region commands international acclaim as a hub of trailblazing science. UC San Diegos Scripps Institution of Oceanography is a premiere name in climate science, with six decades of pioneering work in the field. The area is also home to renowned people studying the brain, genetics, viruses, diseases such as cancer and Alzheimers, water quality, earthquakes, the Big Bang, customized medicine and many other subjects at the vanguard of science and health care. While some in this region and elsewhere see the more visible activism as long overdue, others fear it will widen partisan divides. And some are keeping a low profile, partly because theyre worried about being blacklisted for receiving federal research dollars. Naomi Oreskes, professor of the history of science at Harvard University and a prominent advocate for taking action to prevent climate change, speaks at a rally during the American Geophysical Unions fall meeting in San Francisco on Dec. 13, 2016. (Marcio Jose Sanchez / AP) Trump first drew the ire of scientists while on the campaign trail by calling global warming a hoax. The concerns have ratcheted up as the president has tapped two key deputies who are openly hostile to climate scientists, left dozens of scientific advisory positions unfilled and called for double-digit cuts to environmental and biomedical programs. Disturbed by the notion that America is losing a shared sense of what qualifies as fact, scientists and their supporters are starting to mount campaigns to champion science as a key part of the vision for the nations future. Their critics said this agenda unmasks what theyve long known scientists to be: political creatures who arent open-minded in their work. This is the first time as scientists that they are defending science itself against what they see as the new governments rejection of decision-making based on scientific reason and scientific consultation and scientific findings, said Kelly Moore, a sociology professor at Loyola University Chicago who specializes in topics involving scientific and social movements. H. Sterling Burnett, a research fellow on energy and the environment at the Heartland Institute, an organization well-known for questioning consensus findings by the worldwide community of climate scientists, said its clear that scientists are simply trying to preserve their pots of government money. Theyre destroying and hurting the credibility of their own field of science the more they enter into the realm of politics, speaking with a voice that is meant to persuade you to give them more resources, Burnett said. Whats undisputed is that from oncologists to anthropologists to climatologists, scientists are wading into activism all over the United States. A political action committee called 314 Action, named for the first three digits of Pi, launched a campaign earlier this year to help scientists run for office against incumbent lawmakers the group labels as anti-science. Hundreds of people have expressed interest in becoming those electoral challengers. Meanwhile, dozens of scientific organizations have publicly endorsed the March for Science, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the worlds largest general scientific society with more than 120,000 members. Additional supporters of this Earth Day event include national organizations like the American Geophysical Union and advocacy groups such as the Center for Biological Diversity and the California Coastkeeper Alliance. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt holds up a hardhat he was given during a visit to the Consol Pennsylvania Coal Companys Harvey Mine in Sycamore, Pa., on April 13, 2017. (Gene J. Puskar / AP) Think scientists arent political? These examples will make you think again We want to come together as a group of diverse scientists and also people who believe in science to say that science upholds the common good, and we need science to be incorporated into policy-making, said Joanna Spencer-Segal, a member of the marchs national steering committee and a physician-scientist at the University of Michigan. Some scientists have spoken out publicly against the march, including writing opinion pieces in major news publications arguing that such an event could undermine the credibility for science. Still others, such as David Victor, a professor of global politics at UC San Diego who studies climate-change policies, said the march and similar events will likely have little impact on the publics perceptions of scientists. It will signal to the folks who care about science that there are lots of people who care about science, but they already knew that, he said. And it will signal to the folks who want to cut the federal budget to the bare bones that science is a well-organized interest group. The debate is happening as long-range projections are still being hashed out concerning the extent to which climate change would harm the environment. For now, the public seems to hold scientists in relatively high regard. An October poll by the Pew Research Center found that 76 percent of U.S. adults had at least a fair amount of confidence in scientists. The only American institution that had more trust was the military, according to the survey. Elected officials came in last, with 27 percent of respondents having at least a fair amount of confidence and 19 percent saying they had none at all. Its uncertain what impact the march and similar campaigns will have on the American political narrative around science, but such efforts are worthwhile, said Naomi Oreskes, professor of the history of science at Harvard University and a prominent advocate for taking action to prevent climate change. One of the ways that social movements work is by people standing up and being counted, and by building coalitions and building alliances among different sorts of people, Oreskes said. If the American people are prepared to stand out in the street and say, We support science, thats actually a hugely important thing. Scientists are in a challenging moment, she added. I think everyone sees now that the threat to science is very real and very profound. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the leading scientific voice on global warming, has predicted harm from drought, wildfires and crop failures that will likely increase dramatically toward the end of the 21st Century. (David McNew / Getty Images) As evidence for human-caused climate change has continued to mount in the past decade, from record high global temperatures to melting ice caps, the opposition has broadened from outright denial of global warming to varying levels of skepticism. These critics also have said scientists are exaggerating their projections of the damage to come from climate change. A leading skeptic is Myron Ebell, who directs environmental and energy policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian advocacy group in Washington, D.C. Ebell, who ran Trumps transition team for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said climate change is likely happening, but that its unclear whether humans are causing it or how bad the effects will be. They know the ideal policies, the perfect economic set-up thats going to get you what you want, Ebell said ironically about scientists and Democratic policy-makers during a speech in March at the Heartland Institutes 12th annual International Conference on Climate Change. Those policies, once they enter the political realm, no matter how good they sound in theory, are always made as inefficient as, and in many cases, as criminal as possible. So what we have now as the result of global warming policy since the early 1990s is a climate-industrial complex that is sucking our economy dry for no benefit, he added. Theres a significant amount of uncertainty about how powerful the impact of climate change will be and how successfully or not humanity will adapt. The more conservative estimates including those published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the leading scientific voice on this issue have predicted harm from drought, wildfires and crop failures that will increase dramatically toward the end of the 21st Century. For years now, surveys from all manner of pollsters have shown that a majority of Americans believe climate change is occurring and that human activities play some role in that process. But far fewer Americans have said they would make major lifestyle and purchasing changes because of climate change, with those figures dropping the most during economic recessions. As climate scientists try to win the hearts and minds of Americans, their opponents have tried to convince politicians and the public that dramatic efforts to curb the burning of fossil fuels are necessary. The opponents strategies have included paying for billboard ads, funding the research of professors whose views run counter to the scientific consensus, lobbying Congress and mobilizing the public to target outspoken scientists who have called for greater government intervention to curb climate change. Last month, a handful of minority-view climate scientists testified before the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. They asked Congress to pay for red teams to conduct research looking into potential natural causes of climate change. The panel included scientists who have long questioned the dangers of climate change, including Judith Curry, president of the Climate Forecast Applications Network and professor emeritus at the Georgia Institute of Technology; Roger Pielke Jr., a professor in the Environmental Studies Department at the University of Colorado; and John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama at Huntsville and the states official climatologist. Throughout history, being outspoken on controversial issues has sometimes led to significant consequences for the scientists involved. In the early 1950s, for example, many scientists who opposed nuclear proliferation and testing were branded as communists by Sen. Joseph McCarthy and subjected to loyalty checks by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, according to historians. A lot of people would say thats really when scientists became apolitical because so many jobs during the Cold War were federal jobs if you were a scientist, said Audra Wolfe, a historian of Cold War science and author of the book Competing With the Soviets: Science, Technology and the State in Cold War America. You had to clear background checks, and any dabbling in leftist politics could make it impossible for you to get a fellowship or a job, she added. During the second half of the 20th Century, scientists embraced the apolitical mantle while taking up government advisory roles, Wolfe said. Influencing and informing policy-making from the inside became the rule, although there were a few exceptions. For instance: A good number of scientists, and science students, protested the Vietnam War and reconsidered their role in developing technology related to weapons systems. With the election of Trump, scientists today seem to be grappling once again with the transition from the inside to outside political game. Watching scientists wake up to this conversation feels a lot like the late 60s, Wolfe said. Its not about classified defense research, but its about what does it mean to work for the government? What does it mean to acknowledge that youre being political? Todays most vocal scientists on climate change have also had to grapple with personal attacks. Michael Mann, a professor of atmospheric science at Penn State University, said he has received death threats since the late 1990s. Hes also frequently the subject of critical messaging campaigns by groups such as the Heartland Institute and the Heritage Foundation. Science and reason are under renewed assault now in the age of Trump, said Mann, who plans to attend one of the science marches on April 22. Scientists have a responsibility to make sure that our public discourse over issues of policy-relevant science is informed by an honest assessment of what the science has to say. Other scientists who have felt a responsibility to publicly spotlight the projected threats posed by climate change have taken lower-key approaches. One of them is Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a climate researcher at UC San Diegos Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who has reached out to faith communities, most notably the Roman Catholic Church, with his message. Ramanathan, a member of the Vaticans Pontifical Academy of Sciences, played a significant role informing Pope Franciss encyclical that called for big lifestyle changes to combat global warming. I am not involved in the March for Science, he said. I am trying my best to stay focused on discussing climate change in an apolitical forum. Speaking recently at the Bethel Seminary, an evangelical school at Bethel University in San Diego, he urged the audience to vote for candidates who are informed by science. Theres a 10 percent possibility that we missed something, he said. But the question is, do you want to hope on this 10 percent and send your children to this hot planet? My argument is to take action not because of the certainty but because of uncertainty. I cant tell you which way it will go. Still other climate scientists are just starting to think about political activism. Scripps climatologist Ralph Keeling, who is carrying on his fathers groundbreaking research tying the rise of carbon-dioxide levels to global warming, recently agreed to be a keynote speaker at the March for Science in San Diego. The 60-year-old scientist said hes never served on government scientific panels and never participated in an event like the march. Keeling also said hes still thinking about where he draws the line between science and activism. I havent really defined it because I havent walk toward it, he said. Ive stayed pretty clear of it. You dont need to know where the border is to live in Kansas. Twitter: @jemersmith Phone: (619) 293-2234 Email: joshua.smith@sduniontribune.com UPDATES: This story was originally published on April 6, and it was updated on April 15. As the media features more and more non-citizens facing deportation under President Donald Trump, readers sometimes react by puzzling over why longtime residents never became U.S. citizens. If she has been here 25 years, why has she not applied for citizenship? asked Derrick Shoemake on Facebook in response to coverage by The San Diego Union Tribune about a deported grandmother. Patti Hamlin similarly commented, She had over 25 years to become legalized... yet she didnt. Advertisement And Ralph Gapol said, teaches her to get her citizenship. Unauthorized immigrants generally have no way to become legalized which is why some advocates have called for an overhaul of U.S. immigration laws to create a path to citizenship. Foreign nationals must first be granted a green card or legal permanent residency before they can apply for citizenship. Most unauthorized immigrants dont qualify for green cards, and for non-citizens who are eligible for green cards, the waits can be decades long. The majority of green card holders have to wait five years before they can even apply for citizenship. Those who are married to U.S. citizens can apply three years after they receive their green cards. Realistically, for your average situation, theres nothing, said Ginger Jacobs, a local immigration attorney. Theres no way to become a citizen unless youre a permanent resident first. Dulce Garcia, 33, understands that situation first hand. She is an immigration attorney and an unauthorized immigrant who came to the U.S. when she was about 5 years old. She has temporary protection from deportation under the deferred action program created by former President Barack Obama for those who came to the U.S. as children. She does not know what her fate will be under the Trump administration. Its frustrating, Garcia said. There is no line available to me. There is no path to citizenship for me. Garcia grew up in Barrio Logan, where she now has her law firm. She became an immigration attorney because she needed to understand immigration law, she said. She had dreamed from a young age of being a criminal defense lawyer. If there were a way for her to change her situation, she said, she would do it happily. If I could, I wouldve been on top of that a long time ago, she said. If theyre willing to open up that door to me, I would file immediately. Garcia said she could not picture a life for herself in Mexico. Given the choice, shed try to move to Canada before Mexico, she said. Her last memory of her home country is of her family getting robbed at the border before coming to the U.S. Im an American, Garcia said. Thats how I see myself, and thats what my answer has always been. Garcia worked multiple jobs while getting her bachelors and law degrees, she said. Because of her status, she was not eligible for federal aid. Shes proud that shes been paying taxes since she started working in 2001. Now that shes a business owner with two employees, one U.S. citizen and one green card holder, shes also proud of her economic contribution to the San Diego community. When I think of the American dream, thats been my goal my entire life, she said. Garcia sees two possibilities for her future. She hopes for what she calls a Hollywood ending in which Congress passes a law that gives people like her a path to citizenship. She fears a future that looks like her present, filled with the anxiety of not knowing whether she will be able to stay in the U.S. When your life can change so drastically from one moment to the next, its a lot to take in, she said. Garcia encourages her clients who are eligible for citizenship to naturalize, she said, and she sympathizes with those like her who arent eligible. For those who do have green cards, there are other factors that can keep them from becoming citizens, such as English-language requirements. Those who apply for U.S. citizenship have to take a test in basic English skills and a test on U.S. government. Jacobs said that some of her clients have felt intimidated by the tests. A green card holder could also be prevented from becoming a citizen by having a criminal record. Some serious crimes make a person permanently ineligible for becoming a citizen. Those crimes would also generally make that green card holder deportable, according to local attorney Andrew Nietor. Some less severe crimes can make a green card holder wait an additional five years to apply for citizenship. Applicants have to be able to show five years of good moral character. Nietor said he saw an uptick in green card holders interested in becoming citizens in the months leading up to last years election and that that trend has continued in the months since. He said he thinks most are motivated by a desire to participate in the next election rather than fear of deportation. One of his clients, a woman from the Philippines, recently knitted him an American flag and gave it to him after her naturalization ceremony. He keeps it in his office. In my experience, its overwhelmingly an affirmation of wanting to be part of American society, Nietor said. Immigration Videos On Now New developments in family separation case 9:53 On Now A San Diego woman volunteered as a medic in Texas helping migrant families 2:35 On Now Immigration policy protests in Carlsbad nearly cancelled after permit issue 1:38 On Now When children are separated from their parents at the border, here is where they go next On Now Prospects of a deal for 'Dreamers' may hinge on separating Trump from hard-liners on his staff On Now What is DACA? On Now Border wall prototype contractors selected On Now Video: Ukrainian boxer wins asylum in U.S. On Now 30 apprehended after Border Patrol agents discover tunnel On Now Video: Kurdish diaspora prepare to vote on independence kate.morrissey@sduniontribune.com, @bgirledukate After the surprise missile attack on a Syrian airfield Thursday launched by Navy warships, Reps. Scott Peters and Darrell Issa, said that the military response was necessary. Oct. 9, 2014_San Diego_ California_USA_| Rep. Scott Peters (D-52nd District) participated in a debate with Republican challenger Carl DeMaio at KGTV. | _Mandatory Photo Credit: Photo by K.C. Alfred/UT San Diego/Copyright 2014 (K.C. Alfred / UT San Diego/Zuma Press) The chemical attack this week was the latest in a long line of brutal atrocities committed against the Syrian people by Bashar al-Assad it warranted a response, Peters, D-San Diego, said in a statement. Advertisement But he criticized President Donald Trump for not including Congress in the decision. However, I am concerned that President Trump would launch an attack unilaterally without consulting the legislative branch. Congress has not provided the authority to conduct war against the Syrian government. In the future, the president should tell legislators and citizens of his larger military plans regarding Syria, he said. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista, said the cruise missile strikes launched from Destroyers in the Mediterranean Sea were appropriate and that Assads attacks on his own people could not go without a response. The crisis shows the importance of American intervention, and can distinguish Trump from his predecessor, President Barack Obama, Issa said. In every way, American leadership is needed right now, and this is the time to work closely with our allies around the world and in the Middle East as well as the international community to achieve what the previous administration did not: constructive engagement to deal responsibly with the crisis in Syria, he said in a statement. As of Friday afternoon the three other House members that represent parts of San Diego County had spoken on the attack. Twitter: @jptstewart joshua.stewart@sduniontribune.com (619) 293-1841 The man at the Otay Mesa border crossing didnt look like his visa photo, so U.S. Customs agents ran his fingerprints. It turned out he was a fugitive wanted in cases of attempted murder and arson in Las Vegas. The visa was not his, a federal official said. Antonio Perez, 42, walked up to the Otay Mesa port of entry from Mexico before 6 a.m. Wednesday and showed a tourist visa, agency spokeswoman Angelica De Cima said. She said an officer didnt think Perez looked like the photo on the visa, and sent him to another inspection area to check his fingerprints. Advertisement A computer database revealed that Perez was wanted by Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department on a no-bail warrant for an attempted homicide, and by North Las Vegas Police Department in an arson case with bail set at $250,000, De Cima said. She said the tourist visa Perez tried to use was real, but belonged to someone else and had not been reported stolen. Perez was booked into county jail to await extradition to Nevada. A suspected burglar was caught inside a Gaslamp Quarter clothing store where a glass door had been smashed early Friday, San Diego police said. A witness told police one man had run away but another man, wearing a blue shirt, was still inside Quiksilver cq on Fifth Avenue near J Street. The witness called police about 3:50 a.m. to report that a glass door to the store was smashed. An alarm company also notified police of the break-in. Five minutes later, officers found the 25-year-old intruder inside and took him into custody, police Officer Mark Herring said. Advertisement They used a police dog to search further for the second man, but he had escaped, Herring said. The store sells surf and snow boarding clothing and accessories. Chula Vista police officers and firefighters will soon use drones to help search for a missing person, assess a fire, or take video or photos of crime scenes. Six to eight officers will be trained to use the remote-controlled devices and may begin using them as early as July, city and police officials said. Its unclear how many firefighters will be trained. These drones will help make things safer for the community and enhance our response, said Chula Vista police Lt. Chris Kelley, the departments drone coordinator. Advertisement The announcement came nearly six months after the Sheriffs Department became the first law enforcement agency in San Diego County to employ drones. At the time, the department was criticized by the ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties for moving forward with its pilot program with little public input. Chula Vista police discussed its forthcoming use of the drones during coffee with a cop events and a public forum in September, police Capt. Vern Sallee said. The department also has met with the local chapter of the ACLU. A draft policy for the use of the technology in Chula Vista bans flying a drone for random surveillance a major concern among civil liberties advocates. It also prohibits attaching weapons to the aircraft. The same rules exist in the Sheriffs Departments policy. Like any other law enforcement agencies, the Chula Vista police and fire departments will be required to notify the FAA before launching a drone. To become pilots, officers and firefighters will have to pass an FAA-administered test about weather conditions, air traffic control procedures and other aspects. Federal regulations prohibit hovering a drone above 400 feet and require the drone be kept in eyesight. Sallee said two officers will be paired together: one of them will operate the device while looking at a monitor that shows the footage as its recorded; the other will keep the device in sight. The Chula Vista Police Department has allocated funds to purchase two $2,000 drones and a pair of detachable infrared cameras that cost roughly $10,000, with the total equipment costs ranging from $25,000 to $30,000. Police officials in Oceanside, Carlsbad, Escondido told the Union-Tribune in January that their respective departments are interested in using drones. Breaking News Email: david.hernandez@sduniontribune.com Phone: (619) 293-1876 Twitter: @D4VIDHernandez A robber pistol-whipped and injured a gas station convenience store employee in Scripps Ranch Thursday night, San Diego police said. At some point, the gunman also fired two shots, but the rounds struck a wall, police said. The Market at the Ranch employee was taken to a hospital with wounds he suffered when he was hit with the gun. His injuries were not serious, police Officer Robert Heims said. Advertisement The robbery at the store on Scripps Trail occurred about 9:40 p.m. Police did not give a description of the thief. Breaking News Email: david.hernandez@sduniontribune.com Phone: (619) 293-1876 Twitter: @D4VIDHernandez A man was wounded in a drive-by shooting while he walked down University Avenue in City Heights early Friday, San Diego police said. He and a companion ran away and he was later taken to a hospital. He is expected to survive, police said. The 28-year-old man and his friend were walking west on University about 1 a.m. when an eastbound car passed them near 35th street. Someone in the car fired at the pair, police Officer Robert Heims said. Advertisement One round hit the victim in the right side of his upper chest, Heims said. He said police had no description of the shooter or the car. Police cordoned off a section of University Avenue during the investigation. Two San Diego State University students were passengers when an Uber driver was shot to death in Rosarito Beach last week, Baja state officials said Thursday night. A U.S. high school student was also in the car, the Baja California Attorney Generals Office said. The students werent injured and none was identified. Advertisement The three passengers were picked up at Papas & Beer, a nightclub favored by San Diego college students, particularly during Spring Break. They were headed south on Federal Highway 1 to Club Marena, an oceanfront resort, when their driver was shot six times at about 11:15 p.m. from a vehicle that pulled up alongside their car, authorities said. Paramedics reported that the victim was struck in the neck and in the chest, Rosarito Beach police said. A police spokesman said the Uber driver, identified as Jose Humberto Felix Mendez, was the sole target in the shooting. The passengers carried Felix to a back seat and continued driving to Club Marena, where they asked a security guard for help, police said. Felix was a student at the Autonomous University of Baja California and lived in Playas de Tijuana. Breaking News Email: david.hernandez@sduniontribune.com Phone: (619) 293-1876 Twitter: @D4VIDHernandez During one of the first big meetings Sen. Kamala Harris attended back in California following her swearing in, she said something many of the progressive activists who look to her as an icon were taken aback to hear. As the Democratic party tries to claw its way back to control of Congress, she wanted them to at least consider rallying behind some of its most conservative and most vulnerable politicians. It was a room full of people who did not want to hear that, Harris said Thursday in a meeting with reporters and editors in The Times Washington bureau. They were like, What happened? Why are you saying this? Advertisement Amid all the self-reflection and infighting among Democrats about how they find their way out of the wilderness, Harris is emerging as a more nuanced political character than many on either side of the political line expected. Californias freshman senator, a civil rights crusader whose India-born mother and Jamaica-raised father met during political protests in the Bay Area, is so associated with the identity politics of the left that her Twitter feed was a punchline in a recent Saturday Night Live skit. But as she finds her way in Washington, Harris is embracing an approach somewhat at odds with that image. That became clear as she talked about the path back for Democrats, why she wont unconditionally slam the door on working with Trump, and what her mother told her about people like Supreme Court nominee Neil M. Gorsuch. The pressure on Harris to unwaveringly fly the flag of the resistance is intense. She recalled the event in Los Angeles where she encouraged supporters not to turn their backs on Sens. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Manchin III of West Virginia red-state Democrats some liberal activists would like to purge in their upcoming reelection bids. We cant afford to be purists, Harris said. You have to ask that question of yourself: Are we going to be purists to this resistance to the point that you let these guys go? Or can you understand that you may not agree with 50% of their policy positions, but I can guarantee you will disagree with 100% of their replacements policy positions. So that is part of the question. What do we have to do in this movement to be pragmatic? Harris hardly aligns herself with the counter-movement inside Democratic ranks that has pushed to reorient the partys focus more exclusively toward white, working-class voters in places like Scranton, Pa., and Lansing, Mich. There is this conversation that weve got to go back and get him, she said, referring to the prototypical white, male Trump voter. The inference there is that to do that we need to walk away from that Latina or black mom. That is a mistake. But she suggested the party has too often seized on wedge, identity politics issues that divide voters. What I do know about those two ladies and that guy is when we wake up at 3 in the morning or something is troubling us, it is never through the lens of, am I Democrat or Republican, or on our identity based on what other people have decided is our identity. Instead, she said, it is economic issues that weigh on people: their bills, their job troubles, their difficulty getting health insurance. We, as Democrats and progressives, cannot afford to be guilty of putting people in these narrow boxes based on what we have decided is their identity instead of seeing that they have lived full lives. They are full people, as multifaceted as the other people we know. She pointed to the incident at a bar outside of Kansas City, Kan., in February in which an attacker shot and killed an Indian immigrant he mistakenly believed to be a Muslim. Patrons in the bar risked their lives trying to protect the victim, she said. I bet you that patrons in that bar voted for Trump, Harris said. But when presented with that situation, at that moment, without reflection, they did the right thing. We cant afford to put people in boxes. Harris expected to be taking her post in a very different Washington. Up until late on election night, she said, she had been looking forward to pushing a nationwide expansion of the climate-change initiatives that have taken root in California and taking a leadership role in removing restrictions on immigrants. It was during a private family dinner as votes were being counted across the country that what was confronting her became real. She said she saw her 9-year-old nephew in tears at what was intended to be a celebratory event. That man cant win, the boy cried. Later, in the reception room where she declared her own victory, she saw similar scenes. But despite pressure from activists on the left, Harris refuses to rule out working with the White House. Political capital is something that does not gain interest, she said, when asked how she thought Democrats should respond if the White House offers to collaborate on joint priorities, such as federal money to rebuild outdated roads, bridges and airports. When youve got it, youve got to spend it. If the Trump administration puts in place a real, significant and genuine plan for infrastructure, Ill be down with it. Some things, though, are nonnegotiable, Harris said. She is not among the Democrats lamenting that too much political firepower might have been used fighting Gorsuch, whose confirmation moved forward Thursday after Republican leaders made the historic move of changing Senate rules to step around a Democratic filibuster. If you look at the decisions this guy has written? Harris said. And everyone presents him as a nice guy. My mother had many sayings. One of them was, Just because somebody has good manners, doesnt make them a good person. evan.halper@latimes.com Follow me: @evanhalper ALSO Trump administration concedes border wall wont be from sea to shining sea Did Susan Rice act inappropriately when she unmasked names in intelligence reports? At Trumps EPA, going to work can be an act of defiance Violence is not the right response in Syria There is no military solution to the crisis in Syria. With more than six years of war, millions displaced and a death toll of nearly half a million people, its clear that more bombs wont end the crisis. But for years the U.S. has bombed Syria, and last night, the U.S. expanded the war by attacking a Syrian government airbase. We mourn the death of Syrians killed in the chemical weapons attack. It was an unconscionable act against civilians. The Trump administrations response of bombing the airbase will only cause more killing and suffering for Syrian civilians. Instead of a military response, we should support the investigation of the chemical weapons attack and work with the international community to bring the perpetrators to justice. Congressional leaders need to acknowledge that the years of U.S. military intervention, weapons shipped to anti-government rebels, and support of armed groups in Syria have only increased the danger for Syrian civilians. Advertisement We must not escalate the war in Syria. Joan Helland San Diego Letters and commentary policy The U-T welcomes and encourages community dialogue on important public matters. Please visit this page for more details on our letters and commentaries policy. You can email letters@sduniontribune.com or leave a comment below. Early report numbers: Six Syrian soldiers killed. Fifty-nine Tomahawk cruise missiles launched (expended). Cost of each weapon, exclusive of ancillary expenses, $832,000 per copy. That calculates out to approximately six weapons per soldier or a trifle under $50 million spent on killing each Syrian soldier. Arrive at your own conclusions. I sure have. Stan Levin San Diego * * * I was an Army chemist who worked at Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland. The Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993 outlawed the manufacturing and stockpiling of Sarin GB as of April 1997. Sarin is a nerve agent which can kill in 10 minutes or at the very least cause serious neurological damage. It was a war crime for Syria to use it last Tuesday, especially on civilians. President Trump was right to order a targeted strike on the Syrian airfield Rolla Rich Spring Valley * * * How disappointing. Millions of Americans were hoping for a leader who focuses on rebuilding America instead of squandering trillions of dollars of taxpayers money fighting quixotic wars thousands of miles away. Instead, Donald Trump is showing himself to be no different from past American leaders who fight illegal wars abroad to distract the American public from the harder problems at home. Two wrongs dont make a right. Intervening in Syrias civil war has only made it worse. The West needs to exit Syria and let the Syrians resolve their differences on their own. Michael Pravica Henderson, NV * * * President Trumps order for the attack in Syria is a giant step towards making America great again. Dave Yaruss San Carlos * * * Tomahawk missiles used on the Syrian airfield cost $1 million each for the ones in the inventory now. Replacement missiles will cost about $1 million each. So Syria now owes us about $60 million. Its more expensive to destroy airfields than it is to build them. I wonder how we will be repaid? Bob Seelos San Diego * * * This air strike is just smoke and mirrors. If Trump meant business he would have taken out the main runway and not let Russia know we were coming. He just did this to keep everyone looking away from what is really happening in his White House not ours. Frances Rhodes San Diego * * * Mao Tse-Tung, echoing Sun Tzu, said politics is war without bloodshed and war is politics with bloodshed. War and politics reside on a continuum. They are not a dichotomy. Therefore, I dont have a problem with the air strike itself, because it was the only political way remaining to explain to Putin that he should exert a reasonable level of control over his ally. Evidently Obama did not explain the issue with sufficient clarity. Trump essentially told Russia that Assad can kill all the people he desires in suppressing the rebellion, but must not use chemical weapons. In terms of a deeper involvement inside Syria, I have problem because our troops would have to shoot several ways at the same time with most factions arrayed against them. Russia under Putin is pursuing a course Stalin, Khrushchev, or Brezhnev of the old Soviet Union would never have approved. For an ally like Syria, they would have authorized armed forces use only to the extent it was well within traditional actions that the Soviet Union would have been able to manage politically. Nolan Nelson Eugene Want to see more letters that appear only online? Follow @UTLetters on Twitter and UTOpinion on Facebook. Trumps fans buying anything hes selling Regarding Paper should focus on the Rice controversy (April 5): President Trump was desperate to divert attention from charges that Russia helped his campaign. Enter shiny object No. 1. He makes up a story that Barack Obama personally wiretapped him. But that doesnt work out very well, since there is no evidence for it. Lets try shiny object No. 2. He leaks secret information to Devin Nunes, who parrots it back to him and the media See, he was being wiretapped, but inadvertently. This doesnt fly either, so on to shiny object No. 3. Drag out Susan Rice to beat up. Fox runs a story without any evidence that she unmasked his team. You may well ask why they were on the other end of the phone with Russian agents. Advertisement Cue the Trump lemmings who write in to this paper complaining that they didnt sufficiently cover this latest attempt to divert attention. Phil Heinz Rancho Bernardo Letters and commentary policy The U-T welcomes and encourages community dialogue on important public matters. Please visit this page for more details on our letters and commentaries policy. You can email letters@sduniontribune.com or leave a comment below. ISIS joins those who underestimate Trump Is ISIS going mainstream? It said the U.S. is being run by an idiot. Now that it is ideologically aligned with the mainstream media and Democrats, shouldnt the United Nations offer it a seat? It would fit right in. Frank Felber San Diego Trumps tax reforms make sense for all In response to Will Donald Trump flub tax reform, too? (April 2): I take exception to your editorials claim that its mind-boggling and crazy that a disproportionate amount of tax relief may end up going to the richest Americans. This assertion flies in the face of the latest IRS statistics from 2013, which show that the average taxpayer paid a 13.6 percent income tax rate. The breakdown among taxpayer percentiles: the bottom half paid a 3 percent rate, the top half paid 15 percent, and the top 1 percent paid a whopping 27 percent. Your editorial ignores the context that taxes on the affluent already increased significantly during the Obama years, which arent yet reflected in these statistics. You also criticize the proposed abolition of the estate tax, which isnt reflected in these numbers either since its an immoral one-time tax on a decedents wealth. This simply propagates the demagogic narrative that the wealthy need to pay their fair share regardless of the actual numbers. Whats really mind-boggling is the notion that if youre not in favor of tax hikes on the rich into perpetuity, youre somehow against the middle class. Zachary M. Goldman San Diego Want to see more letters that appear only online? Follow @UTLetters on Twitter and UTOpinion on Facebook. President Donald Trump has responded to his first major foreign-policy test with what appears to be an appropriate, limited and strategic use of force. The firing of 59 Tomahawk missiles at the Al Shayrat airbase in Syria that launched a gruesome poison-gas attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib Province on Tuesday sends a message to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that the United States despite Trumps isolationist rhetoric on the campaign trail would be more willing to use force to enforce international norms than President Obama. But any satisfaction that Americans feel because of this attack on the perpetrator of atrocities needs to be tempered by many concerns. The first is that Obamas reluctance to use the military even for one-off message missions against the al-Assad regime was built on the understanding that the U.S. doesnt have good options in trying to resolve the war in Syria the deadliest of the 21st century and one of the most complex conflicts the world has ever seen. It began as a civil war in 2011 triggered by al-Assads crackdown on Arab Spring democracy protests, with rebels supported by the U.S., Turkey and many Western nations. It evolved into a larger sectarian war pitting Shiite Muslims (al-Assad, Iran, the Hezbollah terror group) versus Sunni Muslims (Syrian rebels joined by Islamic State and other jihadists who dont share the rebels goal of a democratic Syria). Advertisement But since Russia decided in 2015 to offer vigorous airpower support to the Syrian government, the conflict has also begun to resemble the proxy wars seen so often in the 20th century, with Russia and Iran taking on the United States and its allies. There are many other complexities as well. Yes, of course, Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson should strive to assemble an international coalition to end the carnage in Syria. But how does the United States broker a peace when it believes the two key entities on the ground in Syria in this complicated war the al-Assad regime and Islamic State are both beyond the pale? Seen in this context, Thursdays attack seems more like a gesture to make the United States feel good about itself than a first step toward a larger solution. The second concern has to do with how the president responds to the groundswell of approval he enjoyed after the U.S. missile strikes. His measured comments Thursday night struck an appropriate tone. The fact that he worked closely with military leaders and heeded their advice in shaping a response to the poison gas attack bodes well. But Trumps failure to consult with congressional leaders in any meaningful way before such a dramatic military move also raises concerns about his impulsiveness and his appreciation of his responsibilities. And given his taste for theatrics and showy gestures, its proper to worry that Trump will now see Wag the Dog-style military action against the worlds many bad hombres as an easy way to win public support and distract attention during the rough patches in his presidency. America is now in such a patch, one that began Jan. 20. Perhaps this week will be a turning point. There were reports Friday that Trump was considering ousting not just top strategist Steve Bannon but Chief of Staff Reince Priebus. If this is just a reaction to poor polling numbers, thats not necessarily good news. But if this happens because of Trump finally grasping what caused the poor numbers wild claims, policy chaos, divisive rhetoric that would be the best news of his presidency. Twitter: @sdutIdeas Facebook: UTOpinion President Donald Trumps decision Thursday to launch missiles that hammered Syrian forces early Friday led leaders from nations around the world to quickly speak up in support. The attack specifically 59 missiles hitting an airbase used by President Bashar al-Assads regime was in response to the use of chemical weapons in a rebel-held area of the country, an attack that killed dozens of citizens, including many children. Advertisement The U.S. military action had critics. Russia and Iran both Syrian government allies were outraged by the strike. China had a different tack condemning the use of chemical weapons without applauding the U.S. But most nations applauded the U.S. move. Heres a look at the messages of support that were sent to the U.S. 1. The United Kingdom A spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May said the government supported Trumps decision. The UK government fully supports the U.S. action which we believe was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime and is intended to deter further attacks, the spokesman said. 2. Turkey Turkey which shares a border with Syria said it welcomed the U.S. operation and called it a positive response to war crimes. This regime must be removed from leading Syria as soon as possible and the best way to do that is by starting the transitional process, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said. 3. Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabias U.S. embassy shared a statement saying the government praised this courageous decision by U.S. President Donald Trump to respond to the regimes crimes against its people in light of the failure of the international community to stop the regime from brutalizing its people. 4. Italy Comprendiamo ragioni di un'azione militare USA proporzionata nei tempi e nei modi. Angelino Alfano (@angealfa) April 7, 2017 Italy understands the reasons for the U.S. military action, Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano said on Twitter, according to a translation by Reuters, which also reported Alfano calling it a signal of deterrence against the risks of further use of chemical weapons by Assad. 5. France and Germany La France, avec ses partenaires, va prendre toutes les initiatives pour relancer le processus de transition politique en #Syrie Francois Hollande (@fhollande) April 7, 2017 French President Francois Hollande said on Twitter that the country and its partners are ready to work toward political transition in Syria, according to a translation by Bing. He also released a joint statement with German Chancellor Angela Merkel saying Assad bears full responsibility for this development. 6. Japan Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says the government in Japan supports the resolve of the U.S. government of never tolerating the proliferation and use of chemical weapons. 7. The European Union US strikes show needed resolve against barbaric chemical attacks. EU will work with the US to end brutality in Syria. Donald Tusk (@eucopresident) April 7, 2017 Donald Tusk, president of the European Union which includes more than two dozen countries said the EU will work with the U.S. to end brutality in Syria going forward. In a statement on behalf of the EU, he said the strike was understandable. However, he added that the alliance sees no military solution to the conflict and that it prefers a political solution. 8. Poland Oswiadczenie #MSZ w sprawie operacji USA przeciwko bazie syryjskich si powietrznych al-Shajrat. #Syria https://t.co/pacgbXkQ0y Ministerstwo Spraw Zagranicznych RP (@MSZ_RP) April 7, 2017 Polands Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a statement calling the strike a a proportionate and adequate response to the use of chemical weapons. In the opinion of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the decision by U.S. President Donald Trump has sent a strong and clear signal that further proliferation and use of chemical weapons, including against defenseless civilians in Syria, will not be tolerated, it said. 9. Australia The retribution has been proportionate and it has been swift and we support the US in that swift action. https://t.co/XbrmdZTpLo #Syria Malcolm Turnbull (@TurnbullMalcolm) April 7, 2017 Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the country strongly supports the swift and just response of the United States. This was a calibrated, proportionate and targeted response, his official statement said. It sends a strong message to the Assad regime, and as I said, has been struck at the very airfield from which the chemical attack was delivered. Australia was not involved in the strike but we remain fully committed as a coalition partner to our ongoing military operations in Iraq and Syria. 10. Israel The message of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Twitter was loud and clear. Israel fully supports President Trump's decision. PM of Israel (@IsraeliPM) April 7, 2017 Israel hopes this resolve in face of the Assad regimes horrific actions resonates not only in Damascus but in Tehran, Pyongyang and elsewhere, he also tweeted. Email: abby.hamblin@sduniontribune.com Twitter: @abbyhamblin Our District 50 representative, Mr. Duncan Hunter, is under investigation for campaign finance violations. On March 23, 2017, the House Committee on Ethics announced it was deferring its inquiry at the request of the Department of Justice. The committee investigates ethical lapses, the DOJ investigates crimes, a significant distinction. On its April 2015 quarterly report, Mr. Hunters campaign committee began identifying mistaken charges, including a hotel in Hawaii. More mistakes and reimbursements were reported in July and October of 2015, including payments to Steam Games, The Center for Oral & Facial Surgery, and Christian Unified Schools. Following a request for clarifying information from the Federal Election Commission in April 2016, more mistaken charges were revealed. These involved $1,200 to a garage door company, $360 to a surf and skate shop, and payments to Mrs. Hunter. On April 28, 2016, the Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington requested that the Office of Congressional Ethics investigate, citing these expenditures and the ambiguity of the explanations offered to the FEC. The CREW request also noted thousands of dollars in expenses for travel, lodging, and meals incurred during a Thanksgiving 2015 trip to Italy. None of these was identified as a personal expense on the April 2016 FEC report, including $216 for food and beverages paid to Gioiellaria Manetti, which is a jewelry store in Florence. Since then, citing an abundance of caution, more of these expenditures have been repaid. This phrase suggests Mr. Hunter saw no real problem but reimbursed his campaign account anyway. I doubt the DOJ is taking the same casual attitude. Mr. Hunters long drawn-out process of discovering more and more personal expenditures, which are strictly prohibited by FEC regulations, and then paying them back, does not erase the initial error, whether it proves to be ethical, criminal, or both. House Rule 23, clause 1, requires members to conduct themselves at all times in a manner that reflects creditably on the House. Dont the communities of District 50 have a right to expect the same thing? Lark Burkhart is a Ramona resident. An old house that sat for more than a century at the corner of Via Vera Cruz and Discovery Street in San Marcos has a new home a few hundred yards down the road. Its not easy to up and move a whole house, but the city has plans for that corner and didnt want to lose the historic structure for the sake of progress. The two-story clapboard home which was painted pink about 20 years ago was moved to make way for infrastructure work on the long-planned Creek District, a 214-acre retail and residential project designed to serve as a quaint downtown. Officials quietly relocated the old home in May. Advertisement Many residents know the structure as simply the pink house, although folks in the know call it the Meyer-Doran house. Either way, Tanis Brown, president of the San Marcos Historical Society, is thrilled to see it survive. We are so happy the city has decided to incorporate this into the Creek District, Brown said. Councilman Chris Orlando said he happened to be driving by the creek property on May 2 when he spotted the house, lifted atop blocks, getting ready for the big move down Discovery closer to San Marcos Boulevard. He grabbed his cellphone and snapped a couple of shots. I think that building, along with the buildings in Heritage Park, are icons for the city and touchstones of the past, Orlando said. Just exactly when the Meyer-Doran home was built is a bit murky. Wilhelm Meyer bought a 6.5-acre plot on Vera Cruz in 1889. The San Marcos Historical Society estimates he built the home sometime between then and 1903. So its at least 111 years old. Brown said the wood to build it was brought up by buggy from San Diego. For a century-old home to be still standing on a San Marcos flood plain is notable. But what really grabs attention about the house is what happened just outside of it in 1907: a fatal shooting. Heres the gist: William Doran had taken out a crop mortgage on the acreage around the Meyer home. One day, Doran found himself quarreling with business partner Gus Eliason, who according to 1907 story about the shooting in the Escondido Times, was in the habit of drinking wine while at work and was considerably under the influence of the red stuff and was somewhat abusive when Doran objected to his drinking. As per the newspaper, accounts varied. But the bottom line is that the two men struggled and Doran shot Eliason, who died three days later. Doran was cleared at the ensuing trial on the grounds of self-defense. In 1912, Doran married Emma Meyer Wilhelm Meyers daughter. She had inherited the home. A decade after the shooting, in 1917, Doran was elected to the state Assembly and served two terms. When he died in 1927, his Escondido Times Advocate obituary made no mention of the shooting. According to the Historical Society, the house changed hands in 1943, when A.E. Meador bought it and deeded it to a son, who added a bathroom. Until then, residents used an outhouse about 150 feet north of the home. Eventually, the home became a rental property. And at some point not all that long ago, perhaps two decades, someone painted the house pink. Before it was pink, no one asked about the house, Brown said. After it was pink, people started to call and ask about the history. Brown has never been inside the Meyer-Doran house. But the Historical Society does have chair that came from it, donated by a woman who picked it up during a yard sale at the home about four decades ago. For all that is documented about the house, much remains unknown. So Brown has a request: If you have information about the house, or if you lived in it, the Historical Society wants to hear from you. The San Marcos Historical Society can be reached at (760) 744-9025. The 65th Legislature has been taking a hard look at Montana State Parks this session, sending one bill to Gov. Steve Bullock that would give the division more autonomy while scrutinizing its budget and wrangling over how to spend more than $11 million it has in the bank. House Bill 324, brought by Rep. Bradley Hamlett, D-Cascade, puts the hiring and firing of the head of Montana State Parks in the hands of the governor-appointed Montana State Parks and Recreation Board. The State Parks administrator currently works under the governor-appointed Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks director. The bill also administratively attaches State Parks to FWP, meaning services such as accounting remain with the agency while day-to-day operations are autonomous in the parks division. Hamlett has advocated this session for giving the Parks division more autonomy from FWP, saying that he saw a turf war and red flags between parks and the often higher profile fish and wildlife divisions. Although the idea for HB324 traces back earlier, Hamlett introduced the bill as questions swirled around the dismissal of the former State Parks administrator and revelations that millions of dollars available to the division went unspent. The reasons behind the dismissal remain out of the public eye, with the state citing personnel rules prohibiting disclosure. Debate on Hamletts bill has been contentious, with lawmakers and those testifying split on a path forward for State Parks. This bill is the result of a long, long, long conflict that has been going on inside this department, Sen. Chas Vincent, R-Libby, said as he carried the bill on the floor. Im not going to stand here and say this bill is perfect, but I do believe the second floor (governors office) needs to have this bill in front of them to consider what might need to be done in the immediate future. Opponents see the appointment of interim FWP director Martha Williams, who has voiced support for the parks system, and the impending hiring of a new State Parks administrator as a chance for a new direction. Martha Williams has given us every indication that she holds parks in high regard, said Sen. Mike Phillips, D-Bozeman. I think this goes too far. I think we should give acting director Williams the chance to be the director of Fish, Wildlife and Parks by rejecting this bill. HB324 passed both chambers by wide margins and now sits in the hands of the governor. Bullocks staff says he is taking a close look at the legislation, but noted that his administration opposed the bill throughout the process when asked about a potential veto. On 324 I think the point here is this legislative session brought to bear some of the parks struggles thatve been documented for years, said Marne Hayes, coordinator of the Montana State Parks Foundation. The habitat and regulatory issues FWP deals with are now even more significant with the aquatic invasive species issues, and that leaves little room for something equally important with Parks. I think thats why the parks board and foundation have been really supportive and excited this moved forward. While questions persist about how State Parks, which faces a mounting maintenance backlog and staffing challenges, accrued $11.2 million in the bank, lawmakers have been looking for ways to spend it. House bills 2 and 5 came into the session with proposals to spend nearly $6 million on capital projects for Makoshika, Bannack and Lewis and Clark Caverns state parks. The expenditures are among the highest priorities in the system, although far from the only ones, with an estimated $23 million in needed maintenance. As the spending bills moved through committees and the chambers, with the House currently considering HB2 after Senate amendments, the three park projects have remained in the legislation. A number of proposals have also come to finance other park projects or divert it to other areas. As the bills currently stand, $4 million of State Parks money will be diverted from the ending fund. That includes $1 million in each of the next two years for maintenance and repair work at Virginia and Nevada cities. Another $2 million would go to rebuilding a county road to Hell Creek State Park near Jordan. This is getting a lot of bang for the buck in Garfield County, Sen. Duane Ankney, R-Colstrip, said about the project. Hell Creek has become a hot button issue surrounding the future of State Parks. The state has proposed walking away from the federally owned site, triggering uncertainty about the park. Parks board vice chair Mary Sexton does not agree with the diversion and pointed out that the board recently approved $773,000 for needed septic upgrades at Hell Creek. I think its a county issue, she said of the road. Sexton also disagreed with the $2 million going to Virginia and Nevada cities money that would be spent by the Montana Heritage Commission rather than State Parks. I know theres been the discussion about funding for parks, but I do not think it should go to other entities its disappointing, she said, adding that she is happy to see the requested park projects funded. The board intended to come back in two years to ask the Legislature to authorize more of the end fund for needed park maintenance and upgrades, she said. Hayes echoed the hope that the money would stay in State Parks, but says she sees some logic in the spending for historic preservation and access to a state park. We would like to see all the fund balance go to parks but know its been a challenging conversation, she said. Virginia City and Nevada City and the road to Hell Creek are at least somewhat appropriately related to parks. In addition to authorizing the funding, lawmakers put a zero base budget on State Parks and FWPs communication and education division. The provision means FWP will have to justify expenditures point-by-point to the Legislature. State Parks came into the session carrying the unspent funding, but also with a structurally imbalanced budget, meaning predicted expenditures exceed revenues. The department is working with the governors office to balance the budget. There has been no indication that the communication and education division face any budget issues, but Ankney said on the floor he intends to scrutinize the budget of every FWP division in future years. Ankney defended the zero base budget measure on the floor, saying We all want good parks where we can take our kids and grandkids and believe this will help them in their budget and within their organization. Its not punitive, its to help them find out their strengths and weaknesses. 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Ireland Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe Treasure State Internet & Telegraph's mission is to provide Montanans with high-quality, high-speed, and locally supported internet. A foundational point of our businesses is respecting the privacy of our customers, which is why we disagree with the federal removal of FCC regulations necessary to ensure a citizens right to privacy online is protected. We would like to make it very clear: Treasure State Internet & Telegraph will not sell our customers' internet use history. The internet is a large and curious place; as people begin to live significant portions of their lives in the digital world it becomes imperative they retain just as much privacy online as they enjoy in their homes. It now stands to reason that large ISPs operating in Montana will resume spying on their customers, selling their data, and denying them a practical and informed choice in the matter. Treasure State Internet & Telegraph supports any effort of the Montana Legislature allowing citizens to use the internet without being surveilled by the company they pay for that Internet connection. Whether it be a State implementation of the FCCs Broadband Privacy Rules, or a modified version customized to Montana privacy law, we would like to see Montana provide enforcement to our citizens constitutional right to privacy. No matter what happens we want the customers of TSI&T to rest assured that even with the FCC rules being repealed we will afford them the same respect and privacy as we always have. Regards, Eric Fulton, CEO of TSI&T Helena The remaining bill intended to battle suicide in Montana was heavily amended Wednesday to broaden its scope and divide $1 million among multiple programs, although some legislators said its missing important policy. Legislators in House Appropriations were up against a deadline last week and decided to move only one of three suicide prevention bills forward to the Senate and table the other two. Committee members said they hoped a working group could combine multiple pieces into one comprehensive bill, but some House legislators had spent years drafting their legislation and worried the final version wouldnt include the best policy. At the end of last week, it was unclear who, if anyone, would lead a working group and who would have their input included. Rep. Jonathan Windy Boy, D-Box Elder, who is the sponsor of the remaining bill, introduced House Bill 118 to a Senate committee with five pages of amendments requested by Sen. Albert Olszewski, R-Kalispell. Olszewski was said to be in charge of leading a working group, but he said he didnt expect a formal sit-down. Both Rep. Jessica Karjala, D-Billings, and Rep. Mary Ann Dunwell, D-Helena, had bills to address suicide prevention tabled last week. They were told by several legislators they likely wouldnt be included in the working group, regardless of its formality. Dunwells bill would have created a suicide grant prevention program in schools and require schools to have an evidence-based prevention plan. Dunwell said she was able to reach out to Sen. Edie McClafferty, D-Butte, and make recommendations on which parts of her bill to include. The requirement of schools to have a prevention plan didnt make the cut. Its certainly a move forward, she said. I would argue we need a lot more. Dunwells bill would have created a special revenue account to establish a reliable funding source, but the amended version appropriates half the funds as one-time-only. She said $1 million isnt enough to solve a problem and legislators will have to justify asking for more money in the next biennium. Its not something youre going to fix overnight, she said. Were changing a culture of suicide in Montana thats generational." The amendment appropriates $1 million to three different prevention programs administered by the Department of Public Health and Human Services. A recurring $500,000 from the national Master Settlement Agreement with tobacco companies will go into a state special revenue account to fund a suicide grant prevention program, including for veterans. A one-time-only appropriation of $250,000 from the health and medicaid special revenue account will help DPHHS implement the action steps in the Montana Native American youth suicide reduction plan. The final $250,000 is also one-time-only and will provide grants for school-based prevention programs. Karjala saw some important parts of her bill included but said she had to track down Olszewski during a brief recess to make recommendations. She said the inclusion of language to increase the knowledge of adverse childhood experiences, such as a child experiencing abuse, was crucial. She was disappointed to see its counterpart to provide trauma-based care wasnt included, since 80 percent of suicides can be attributed to an experience of trauma, she said. House Bill 118 also added language to make sure the programs implemented are evidence-based and requires communities receiving grants to report outcomes at the end of the biennium to DPHHS. While Karjala and Dunwell said they were frustrated to see parts of their bills missing, Dee Brown, Republican chair of the Senate State Administration committee, said the bill included everyones work. Everyone is pulling on the same rope, and everyone is pulling in the same direction, Brown said. Everyone had part of their (bill) survive. Brown said the committee should move the bill forward and explained the amendments to the rest of the committee. Before voting, she said she supports the bill because it allows communities to approach suicide prevention with their own evidence-based strategy. Its also addressing that one size doesnt fit all, she said. Your community is different from my community is different from his community. The bill will move to the Senate floor for debate. Weekly Newsletter The best of The Saturday Evening Post in your inbox! Join Tani-san stood like a grim little sentinel, gazing out over the wide blue ocean yet there was still no sign of the battered fishing vessel that had ferried them out to this rocky isle on the tip of the Shiretoko Peninsula. Indeed, such was her sense of imminent catastrophe that she would have gladly welcomed a Russian submarine. You can say what you like, she remarked to her less impressive companion, Mrs. Ishihama, who was inclined to take a more cheerful view of their current predicament, but my instincts are telling me that we could be stuck out here for quite some time. And as you know, they are never wrong. If blame was to be allocated, and it surely was, then it was to be laid at the door of their fellow castaway Mrs. Terakado, who had insisted on altering the schedule of their three-day trip to Hokkaido to take in the beauty of this tiny island, which was noted for its dazzling displays of wildflowers. Of course, what Mrs. Terakado had failed to establish was that it was also noted for its remoteness and the treachery of its surrounding waters, which was why the four little ladies had been obliged to charter a fishing boat to get them there in the first place. Subscribe and get unlimited access to our online magazine archive. Subscribe Today Yes, but surely they wont have forgotten about us? said Mrs. Ishihama, who was having to hold onto her sun hat to prevent it from blowing away. Well, take a moment and just think about it, said Tani-san, all too aware that she was asking Mrs. Ishihama to do something that did not come naturally to her like asking a crane to ride a bicycle. How many people know that were here? Mmm. Good question, mused her slow-witted friend as she gave the problem her full attention. Well, theres that fishing boat captain for a start. Yes, said Tani-san with great patience. And who else? Slowly and with painstaking diligence, Mrs. Ishihama went through her mental inventory of friends, acquaintances, relatives, neighbors, TV personalities, members of the government, and all of the various shop assistants that shed had dealings with at one time or another, crossing them off one by one until she had finally exhausted the possibilities. Oh, she said as the penny finally dropped. I see what you mean. Still, it took a great deal more than hard facts to put a dent in her empty-headed optimism, as soon became apparent: All the same, she said, I wouldnt worry too much if I were you. Im sure the captain will be along any minute now. I, for one, have every confidence in him. Hes so rugged and fascinating, dont you think? If truth be told, Mrs. Ishihama had developed a bit of a crush on the wooly-haired fisherman who had deposited them on the shores of this lonely island so her opinion of him was rather subjective to say the least. Well, if by rugged and fascinating you mean utterly incompetent and blind drunk, said Tani-san, then yes, I would have to say that he is by far the most rugged and fascinating seafarer that Ive ever come across. Ah! So you agree with me, then! No, said Tani-san, I most certainly do not. Apart from getting himself all tangled up in that fishing net, he somehow managed to fall off his own boat. Twice. And we hadnt even left the harbor at that point. No, my guess is that hell be slumped across the wheel out cold and well on his way to Vladivostok by now. So I wouldnt bank on a rescue coming from that quarter any time soon. Oh dear, said her dim friend, who was finally starting to appreciate the seriousness of the situation. What are we to do? Whatever we have to to survive, said Tani-san. And by that, I mean anything. Mrs. Ishihama cast her eyes over the surrounding slopes, which were copiously adorned with pretty roses, but very little else. Certainly there was nothing in their immediate vicinity that would equip them for survival as far as she could see. Well, couldnt we gather some dry sticks and make a beacon to signal a passing ship? she suggested hopefully. We could and we should, concurred Tani-san, but that would still be leaving everything to chance. I see no alternative but cannibalism. With that, she turned her gaze toward the other two members of their party Mrs. Terakado and Mrs. Sekiguchi who were sitting on a rock some distance away, chatting quietly and eating their packed lunches. The implication, it seemed, was patently obvious. All the same, it took Mrs. Ishihama a moment or two to make the connection. Oh, no! she exclaimed utterly aghast. You cant seriously be suggesting that we eat our dearest friends? I dont like it any more than you do, said a stern-faced Tani-san, but we may have no choice. Every now and then, a certain set of circumstances comes along that obliges you to eat an acquaintance. It is, perhaps, one of the more unpalatable facts of life, but there it is. Yes, but I really dont think that I could eat Mrs. Sekiguchi even if my life depended on it, protested her friend. Not only is she a member of my Tuesday evening flower arranging class, but she also happens to be my youngest nephews school teacher. Well, Im pretty sure that one flower arranger wont be missed and you would undoubtedly rise in your nephews estimation, said Tani-san. But if thats the way you feel about it, we shall start with Mrs. Terakado, who would have been my choice anyway. After all, it was her ineptitude that got us into this fix in the first place, aside from which there is a lot more meat on her. Her bottom alone would see us through the winter. Mrs. Ishihama shot a glance at Mrs. Terakado, who had just finished her miso-marinated asparagus and was about to start on a salmon rice ball. Even so, she maintained, I dont think that I could bring myself to eat her either. As a rule, I draw the line at whale blubber. And even if I were to contemplate something so unspeakable, it would only be as a last resort. Ah well, there you are, you see? said Tani-san. Thats where most castaways make their mistake. For some reason, they tend to regard the eating of their fellow survivors as some drastic final measure when, in fact, it should be the first thing they think of. Oh? said her puzzled counterpart. Whys that? To conserve vital resources, explained Tani-san. Observe, if you will, the sheer greed with which Mrs. Terakado is devouring that salmon onigiri. You can guarantee that she is not giving a single thought to the long-term sustainability of our supplies even though we may shortly be facing extinction. In no time at all, she will have emptied that lunch box and will soon be hungry again. What will happen then, do you think? Will she expect to share in our own meager provisions thereby jeopardizing the survival of the entire group, or should she pay for her selfishness in human burgers? Am I supposed to say yes or no? asked Mrs. Ishihama, who had lost the thread of the argument after vital resources. Yes, of course! said Tani-san. To both questions! For make no mistake, things will soon start to turn nasty once the food runs out. Even now, the two of them could be plotting against us. Oh yes, it may look as if theyre just sitting there, enjoying the scenery, but who knows what theyre talking about? Why, they might be planning to turn us into sukiyaki at this very minute! Well, I dont like the sound of that, said Mrs. Ishihama, who was rather perturbed by the idea of being talked about as the dish of the day. No, said Tani-san, neither do I, which is why its so important that we act first. By eating our own lunch boxes, you mean? What? said Tani-san, dismayed, as always, by Mrs. Ishihamas uncanny knack for missing the point. How does that help to conserve resources? No, what Im saying is that we have to get them before they get us! Oh, right, I see, said Mrs. Ishihama, who really didnt. The confused silence that followed indicated as much: But if we dont eat those burgers soon, she went on, theyre bound to go off in this heat. And the last thing we need right now is a case of food poisoning. WHAT B ? Tani-san stopped herself, having realized that it wasnt worth spending the next 10 minutes going through the whole thing again. It was so much easier just to go along with it. Youre right, she said. Well gobble them up once weve dealt with those two. The two lunch boxes. No! said Tani-san, rapidly approaching the limit of her self-control. Mrs. Sekiguchi and Mrs. Terakado! Ah yes, of course, said her brainless co-conspirator with a vague nod. And how are we going to do that? Surprisingly enough, it was a good question, and so Tani-san looked about for a suitable weapon. On the grassy bank to her left there were some loose rocks, but when she tried to lift even the smallest of them she found that it was too heavy for her. So she then picked up a long stick and began to swish it about in the air, yet that, too, failed to meet the necessary criteria: It was well suited to giving someone a good crack across the behind to liven them up a bit, but too thin and reedy to deal a fatal blow. Then, however, the answer came to her. So straightaway, she reached down and took off her shoe. I know! she said, brandishing it in the air. Ill come up behind them and hit them over the head with this! Mrs. Ishihama looked at the shoe and then at Tani-san. Are you sure thats going to work? she asked doubtfully. You only take a size 3. Oh, yes, said Tani-san. Ive done it before. The problem is that I can only hit one of them at a time, which means that I may need your help with the other one. Automatically, Mrs. Ishihama bent down and began to undo her shoelace. No, not now! said Tani-san. First we have to create a distraction so that theyre not ready for us. So heres what we do: When theyve finished eating, I will suggest that the four of us go for a walk along the cliffs. Then once weve reached a suitable spot, I will give you the signal and then WHAM!! We all have a nice sit down, said Mrs. Ishihama. Tani-san took a very deep breath. No one sits down with a wham, she explained very slowly, no one, not even Mrs. Terakado. When I give you the signal, you take off your shoe and hit the person in front of you as hard as you can. Thats what I mean by wham. Got it? Oh, I see. So this wham is like a game, then, said Mrs. Ishihama. Yes, said Tani-san, exactly like a game, but with more dead bodies. With that, she left Mrs. Ishihama at the waters edge and wandered over to where the other two ladies were finishing their lunches. Tani-san sat down with them and there was a brief discussion although every so often she would look across at Mrs. Ishihama just to make sure that she was still paying attention. When the time came for their postprandial walk, Tani-san called her over and then the four of them began heading up a narrow path towards the cape with Mrs. Sekiguchi and Mrs. Terakado leading the way. It was a tedious excursion as far as Tani-san was concerned because her three talkative traveling companions walked slowly and kept stopping all the time. Each new flower seemed to warrant some discussion. Then, just around the next headland, they chanced upon a startling rock formation that looked like a willy although everyone was too polite to say so. It was as they were approaching a little waterfall that Tani-san saw her opportunity, so she bent down to take off her shoe, signaling to her accomplice to do the same, although I have to say that she had drastically overestimated the storage capacity of Mrs. Ishihamas short-term memory. Oh yes! said Mrs. Ishihama with great enthusiasm. Mrs. Tani has had an excellent idea! Lets all take off our shoes and bathe our feet in the sparkling water! This was met by murmurs of approval from the two prospective murder victims, so now everyone was taking off their shoes. For all the confusion, Tani-san had the presence of mind to realize that she would have to act quickly if her plan was to be salvaged. And so stepping up behind Mrs. Terakado, she lifted her right shoe high above her head. But then just as she was about to bring it down with every bit of force that she could muster, Mrs. Ishihama stepped in to save the day: Oh look! she said, pointing to the open water. Theres the captain! Were saved! And sure enough, there was the little blue-and-white fishing boat, no more than a fleck on the ocean, chugging steadily towards the bay. With her characteristic aplomb, Tani-san turned the raised shoe gesture into a shake while making some vague remark about small stones getting into her footwear, and with that, the whole unnecessary business evaporated into thin air. Having said that, she was rather surprised that her instincts, which were usually so reliable, had turned out to be so wrong on this occasion. For the wooly-haired fisherman, whom she had so harshly criticized, had actually proved to be as good as his word. In fact, he was only 20 minutes late. Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/06/2017 -- Summary South Africa will remain one of the largest telecom service revenue markets in the AME region in 2016, generating estimated revenue of $9.2bn. Going forward, we expect the telecom services revenue in South Africa to decline at a CAGR of -2.4% in USD during 2016-2021, due to local currency depreciation. However, in local currency, the revenue is expected to expand by 3.3%, due to increasing uptake of mobile and fixed data services. Operators are investing in upgrading their network infrastructure, including the expansion of 4G services and rollout of fiber networks across the country. View Report @ http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/analysis/902809 Key Findings - The overall telecom service revenue in South Africa is estimated to generate $9.2bn in 2016 and is estimated to decline at a CAGR of -2.4% during 2016-2021. - Mobile revenue will account for 75.6% of the total telecom revenue in 2021. - The South Africa telecom market will be dominated by Vodacom and MTN South Africa. Operators will continue to invest in fixed and mobile networks focusing on network expansion to roll out next-generation technologies to stay competitive. Synopsis "South Africa: 4G Expansion and Fiber Deployment Creates Opportunities for Multiplay Offerings," a new Country Intelligence Report by Pyramid Research, provides an executive-level overview of the telecommunications market in South Africa today, with detailed forecasts of key indicators up to 2021. Published annually, the report provides detailed analysis of the near-term opportunities, competitive dynamics and evolution of demand by service type and technology/platform across the fixed telephony, broadband and mobile sectors, as well as a review of key regulatory trends. Get Sample Copy Of This Report @ http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/902809 The Country Intelligence Report provides in-depth analysis of the following: - Regional context: telecom market size and trends in South Africa compared with other countries in the region. - Economic, demographic and political context in South Africa. - The regulatory environment and trends: a review of the regulatory setting and agenda for the next 18-24 months as well as relevant developments pertaining to spectrum licensing, national broadband plans, number portability and more. - A demand profile: analysis as well as historical figures and forecasts of service revenue from the fixed telephony, broadband, mobile voice and mobile data. - Service evolution: a look at changes in the breakdown of overall revenue between the fixed and mobile sectors and between voice and data from 2016 to 2021. - The competitive landscape: an examination of key trends in competition and in the performance, revenue market shares and expected moves of service providers over the next 18-24 months. - In-depth sector analysis of fixed telephony, broadband, mobile voice and mobile data: a quantitative analysis of service adoption trends by network technology and by operator, as well as of average revenue per line/subscription and service revenue through the end of the forecast period. - Main opportunities: this section details the near-term opportunities for operators, vendors and investors in South Africa's telecommunication market. ReasonsToBuy - This Country Intelligence Report offers a thorough, forward-looking analysis of South Africa's telecommunications market, service providers and key opportunities in a concise format to help executives build proactive and profitable growth strategies. - Accompanying Pyramid Researchs Forecast products, the report examines the assumptions and drivers behind ongoing and upcoming trends in South Africa's mobile communications, fixed telephony and broadband markets, including the evolution of service provider market shares. - With more than 20 charts and tables, the report is designed for an executive-level audience, boasting presentation quality. - The report provides an easily digestible market assessment for decision-makers built around in-depth information gathered from local market players, which enables executives to quickly get up to speed with the current and emerging trends in South Africa's telecommunications market. - The broad perspective of the report coupled with comprehensive, actionable detail will help operators, equipment vendors and other telecom industry players succeed in the challenging telecommunications market in South Africa. About MarketResearchReports.biz MarketResearchReports.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. Contact Mr. Nachiket State Tower 90 Sate Street, Suite 700 Albany, NY 12207 Tel: +1-518-621-2074 Website: http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/06/2017 -- In 2016, Panama was the third largest telecom services market in Central America, behind Guatemala and Costa Rica, with estimated revenue of $1.3bn or 2.4% of GDP. This represents a 2.4% increase relative to 2015, mainly driven by fixed broadband, pay-TV and mobile data segments. Key Findings The fixed/mobile revenue split will continue to be inclined toward the mobile segment throughout the forecast period. Nevertheless, fixed services revenue share will increase, driven by government's national Internet network initiative for expanding Internet penetration in the country and attractive double and triple play services from operators such as Cable &Wireless Panama (CWP) and Cable Onda. The top two operators, CWP which provides fixed, mobile and pay-TV services and Digicel Panama, which provide mobile services, accounted for 57.7% of overall service revenue in 2016. CWP will continue to lead the Panamanian telecom market, throughout the forecast period, supported by strong investments in 4G network expansion and network modernization of its fixed infrastructure. LTE network expansion along with the rising demand for high-speed mobile data and increased availability of LTE-enabled smartphones will boost LTE subscriptions in Panama over the forecast period. View Report @ http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/analysis/928294 Synopsis Panama: 4G Network Expansion and Government's National Broadband Plan to Drive Data Revenue Growth' a new Country Intelligence Report, provides an executive-level overview of the telecommunications market in Panama today, with detailed forecasts of key indicators up to 2021. Published annually, the report provides detailed analysis of the near-term opportunities, competitive dynamics and evolution of demand by service type and technology/platform across the fixed telephony, broadband, mobile and pay-TV sectors, as well as a review of key regulatory trends. The Country Intelligence Report provides in-depth analysis of the following: Regional context: telecom market size and trends in Panama compared with other countries in the region. Economic, demographic and political context in Panama. The regulatory environment and trends: a review of the regulatory setting and agenda for the next 18-24 months as well as relevant developments pertaining to spectrum licensing, national broadband plans, number portability and more. A demand profile: analysis as well as historical figures and forecasts of service revenue from the fixed telephony (including VoIP), broadband, mobile voice, mobile data and pay-TV markets. Service evolution: a look at changes in the breakdown of overall revenue between the fixed/pay-TV and mobile sectors and between voice, data and video from 2016 to 2021. The competitive landscape: an examination of key trends in competition and in the performance, revenue market shares and expected moves of service providers over the next 18-24 months. In-depth sector analysis of fixed telephony, broadband, mobile voice, mobile data and pay-TV services: a quantitative analysis of service adoption trends by network technology and by operator, as well as of average revenue per line/subscription and service revenue through the end of the forecast period. Main opportunities: this section details the near-term opportunities for operators, vendors and investors in Panama's telecommunications and pay-TV markets. Get Sample Copy Of This Report @ http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/928294 Reasons To Buy This Country Intelligence Report offers a thorough, forward-looking analysis of Panama's telecommunications and pay-TV markets, service providers and key opportunities in a concise format to help executives build proactive and profitable growth strategies. Accompanying Forecast products, the report examines the assumptions and drivers behind ongoing and upcoming trends in Panama's mobile communications, fixed telephony/VoIP, broadband and pay-TV markets, including the evolution of service provider market shares. With more than 20 charts and tables, the report is designed for an executive-level audience, boasting presentation quality. The report provides an easily digestible market assessment for decision-makers built around in-depth information gathered from local market players, which enables executives to quickly get up to speed with the current and emerging trends in Panama's telecommunications and pay-TV markets. The broad perspective of the report coupled with comprehensive, actionable detail will help operators, equipment vendors and other telecom industry players succeed in the challenging telecommunications market in Panama. Table of Contents Executive summary Market and competitor overview Regional context Economic, demographic and political context Regulatory environment Demand profile Service evolution Competitive landscape Major market players Segment analysis Mobile services Fixed services Pay-TV Identifying opportunities Overall market opportunities Panama telecom market size and growth prospects in a regional context, 2016E Country indicators Regulatory structure and policy Major telecommunications policy issues Panama communications market revenue , 2014-2021, US$ Segment revenue CAGRs, 2016-2021, US$ Segment revenues 2014-2021 Service revenue mix: voice, data & video, 2016, 2021 Service revenue mix: fixed & mobile, 2016, 2021 Service revenue by operator, 2016 Key telecom market players Major telecommunications market players Mobile subscriptions and penetration, 2014-2021 Key mobile market indicators, 2016 Mobile data revenue mix, 2016, 2021 Total mobile ARPS; data percentage of total mobile ARPS, 20142021 Mobile market shares by subscriptions, 2014-2021 Mobile subscriptions by technology family, 2014-2021 Fixed-line penetration of population, 2014-2021 Key fixed market indicators, 2016 Fixed voice revenue, 2014-2021 Internet revenue, 2014-2021 Fixed market shares by service, 2016 Access lines by technology, 2016 and 2021 Pay-TV subscriptions by technology, 2014-2021 Opportunities in the Panama telecommunications market About MarketResearchReports.biz MarketResearchReports.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. Contact Mr. Nachiket State Tower 90 Sate Street, Suite 700 Albany, NY 12207 Tel: 518-621-2074 Website: http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz Sarasota, FL -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/07/2017 -- Zion Market Research has published a new report titled "Aquafeed Market by Source (Soybean, Fishmeal, Fish Oil, Corn, Additives, & Others) by End-user (Mollusks, Carp, Crustaceans, Carp, Tilapia, Catfish, Salmon, and Others): Global Industry Perspective, Comprehensive Analysis and Forecast, 2016 2022". According to the report, the global aquafeed market was valued at approximately USD 70.00 billion in 2016 and expected to reach approximately USD 155.50 billion by 2022, growing at a CAGR of around 12.5% between 2017 and 2022. Aquafeed is compounded meal intended for consumption by aquatic animals, which is produced by mixing various raw materials and additives. These aquafeeds are prepared according to specific required of the aquatic animals and age of the animal. High-quality aquafeed is beneficial to fish, mollusks, crustaceans & other aquatic animals than farm-made feed owing to its balanced and need specific composition. Request Free Sample Research Report @ https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/sample/aquafeed-market Increasing demand for seafood coupled with consumer awareness regarding a quality of seafood products is expected to drive the market growth over the years to come. Moreover, increasing per capita income, especially in developing countries is expected to have a positive impact on aquafeed industry. However, rising cost of raw material is expected to pose a threat to the market growth in the near future. Nonetheless, high demand for conventional and functional aquafeed from emerging economies especially in China and Rest of Asia is expected to offers new opportunities for the growth of the aquafeed market in the near future. On the basis of ingredients, the market can be segmented into soybean, fish meal, fish oil, corn, additives, & others. Soybean was the leading segment and it accounted for significant share of the total demand in 2016. Soybean has one of the best amino acid profiles of all vegetable oil meals. Additives are another key important segment of this market and are expected to grow at a decent rate in the years to come. The market can be segmented on the basis of end-use into mollusks, carp, crustaceans, carp, tilapia, catfish, salmon, and others. Carp was the leading segment and it held around 22% share of the total market in 2016 on account of owing to their compatibility in harsh environmental conditions. The market for aquafeed in Asia-Pacific registered a share of over 60% of the overall consumption in 2016. This growth is mainly attributed to increasing aquaculture production and growing seafood consumption in this region. Europe is anticipated to show noticeable growth owing to the presence of favorable regulations and rules. In 2015, Norway constitutes large chunk market share the total European aquafeed market due to high demand for salmon fish feed. Latin America is another key important regional market and is expected to witness substantial growth within the forecast period. Inquire more about this report @ https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/inquiry/aquafeed-market The global aquafeed market is fragmented in nature with a large number of medium and small scale aquafeed manufacturers across the globe. Key players present in this market include Alltech Inc, Biomar, Ridley, Aller Aqua, Dibaq Aquaculture, Nutreco N.V., Addcon Group GmbH, Cargill Incorporated, Cermaq ASA and Biomin. Some of the major players used acquisition and joint venture and expansion into emerging economies as key strategies for market growth. For instance, in 2015, Cargill signed joint venture agreement with Naturisa SA to develop a shrimp feed facility in Ecuador. This report segments the global aquafeed market as follows: Global Aquafeed Market: Source Segment Analysis Soybean Fishmeal Fish oil Corn Additives Others Global Aquafeed Market: End-use Segment Analysis Mollusks Carp Crustaceans Carp Tilapia Catfish Salmon Others Global Aquafeed Market: Regional Analysis North America U.S. Europe Germany France UK Asia Pacific China Japan India Latin America Brazil The Middle East and Africa Browse detail report with in-depth TOC @ https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/report/aquafeed-market Cleveland, OH -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/07/2017 -- Share Pregnancy and Infant Loss Support, Inc. has been helping bereaved parents since 1977. Share is dedicated to supporting parents and families throughout the United States, as well as internationally. Share Parents of Utah was established in 1983 and supports the Salt Lake area. We understand. We care. We can help. Many parents find that it helps to talk with another parent who has experienced the loss of a baby someone who can listen, understand, and be able to identify with some of their feelings. Just knowing that your experience is valid and that you are not alone can be very beneficial in working through your grief. Anyone who has lost a baby to miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, stillbirth, newborn death, and SIDS is welcome to attend a Support Meeting, as well as any support people you would like to have attend. Contact: Share Parents of Utah Melannie Green, President (801) 272-5355 Email: info@shareparentsofutah.org Share Pregnancy and Infant Loss Support, Inc. understands. Share Pregnancy and Infant Loss Support, Inc. care's. They can help. Many parents find that it helps to talk with another parent who has experienced the loss of a baby someone who can listen, understand, and be able to identify with some of their feelings. Talking with others who have suffered a pregnancy loss is very helpful. Anyone who has lost a baby through miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, stillbirth, or newborn-death is welcome to call Share Parents of Utah and/or attend support group meetings. Just knowing that ones experience is valid and that they are not alone can be very beneficial in working through grief. http://www.shareparentsofutah.org/p/about-us.html Cleveland, Ohio Reason #23 Why Donating to the Nationwide "Share Parents of Utah" Charity (http://www.ShareParentsofUtah.org) is Needed and Welcomed Due to the nature of topics discussed, Share Parents request that only adults attend the meetings. If one is not certain they are ready to attend a meeting, please contact Share Parents of Utah or get on their mailing list to be reminded about upcoming meetings. Join Share Parents of Utah at their monthly support group meetings and connect with other parents who have suffered a similar loss. Find Share Parents of Utah on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/303840128023/ Share Parents of Utah's mission is to serve those touched by the death of a baby through pregnancy loss, stillbirth, or in the first few months of life. Their purpose is to provide support toward healing at the time of or following the death of a baby. Share Parents of Utah provide's education and resources on the needs and rights of bereaved parents and siblings. They strive to set a standard of perinatal bereavement care through a lifetime of support, hope and healing-one family at a time. http://www.kutv.com/fresh-living/features/main/stories/Tips-for-Grieving-Parents-42412.shtml#.VCSOcxZDVA4 About Share Pregnancy and Infant Loss Support, Inc. Share Pregnancy and Infant Loss Support, Inc. has been helping bereaved parents since 1977. Share is dedicated to supporting parents and families throughout the United States, as well as internationally. Share Parents of Utah was established in 1983 and supports the Salt Lake area. Columbus, OH -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/07/2017 -- Share Pregnancy and Infant Loss Support, Inc. has been helping bereaved parents since 1977. Share is dedicated to supporting parents and families throughout the United States, as well as internationally. Share Parents of Utah was established in 1983 and supports the Salt Lake area. We understand. We care. We can help. Many parents find that it helps to talk with another parent who has experienced the loss of a baby someone who can listen, understand, and be able to identify with some of their feelings. Just knowing that your experience is valid and that you are not alone can be very beneficial in working through your grief. Anyone who has lost a baby to miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, stillbirth, newborn death, and SIDS is welcome to attend a Support Meeting, as well as any support people you would like to have attend. Contact: Share Parents of Utah Melannie Green, President (801) 272-5355 Email: info@shareparentsofutah.org Share Pregnancy and Infant Loss Support, Inc. understands. Share Pregnancy and Infant Loss Support, Inc. care's. They can help. Many parents find that it helps to talk with another parent who has experienced the loss of a baby someone who can listen, understand, and be able to identify with some of their feelings. Talking with others who have suffered a pregnancy loss is very helpful. Anyone who has lost a baby through miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, stillbirth, or newborn-death is welcome to call Share Parents of Utah and/or attend support group meetings. Just knowing that ones experience is valid and that they are not alone can be very beneficial in working through grief. http://www.shareparentsofutah.org/p/about-us.html Columbus, Ohio Reason #25 Why Financially Supporting the Local "Share Parents of Utah" Charity (http://www.ShareParentsofUtah.org) is Helpful and Welcomed Due to the nature of topics discussed, Share Parents request that only adults attend the meetings. If one is not certain they are ready to attend a meeting, please contact Share Parents of Utah or get on their mailing list to be reminded about upcoming meetings. Join Share Parents of Utah at their monthly support group meetings and connect with other parents who have suffered a similar loss. Find Share Parents of Utah on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/303840128023/ Share Parents of Utah's mission is to serve those touched by the death of a baby through pregnancy loss, stillbirth, or in the first few months of life. Their purpose is to provide support toward healing at the time of or following the death of a baby. Share Parents of Utah provide's education and resources on the needs and rights of bereaved parents and siblings. They strive to set a standard of perinatal bereavement care through a lifetime of support, hope and healing-one family at a time. http://www.kutv.com/fresh-living/features/main/stories/Tips-for-Grieving-Parents-42412.shtml#.VCSOcxZDVA4 About Share Pregnancy and Infant Loss Support, Inc. Share Pregnancy and Infant Loss Support, Inc. has been helping bereaved parents since 1977. Share is dedicated to supporting parents and families throughout the United States, as well as internationally. Share Parents of Utah was established in 1983 and supports the Salt Lake area. Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/06/2017 -- Pyramid Research estimates that total telecom services revenue in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) will be US$1.8bn in 2015. Over the next five years, we expect DRCs total market revenue to grow at a CAGR of 9.4%, to reach $2.8bn in 2020. Despite lower PPP-adjusted GDP per capita, the DRCs telecom market size is larger than that of regional markets including Sudan, Tanzania and Cameroon. Service revenue growth in the DRC over the next five years will be primarily driven by the continued growth in subscription acquisition as operators continue to expand their mobile networks into rural regions. Currently, the majority of network coverage is concentrated in urban regions. Mobile subscription population penetration will grow from an estimated 67.4% in 2015 to about 110% by 2020. View Report @ http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/analysis/442726 Key Findings The telecommunications market in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) will generate an estimated $1.8bn in service revenue in 2015, 26.7% more than in 2014. Mobile voice and data continue to account for the lions share of overall revenue. Mobile data is expected to grow to $249m in 2015, up 62.4% from 2014. Pyramid Research expects overall service revenue to grow at a CAGR of 9.4% between 2015 and 2020. Growth in service revenue will largely be driven by increasing mobile subscription population penetration, which will grow from an estimated 67.4% in 2015 to 109.9% in 2020. Investment opportunity in the DRC market is largely related to helping operators to expand network coverage across the country. Vendors have an opportunity to provide managed services to enable operators to reduce operational and capital expenditures. Device vendors have an opportunity to target the rapidly increasing mobile subscriber base by offering low-cost handsets through developing new distribution channels and increasing points of sale. Get Sample Copy Of This Report @ http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/442726 Synopsis DRC: Continued Mobile Network Expansion in the Provinces Will Support Subscriber Growth provides an executive-level overview of the telecommunications market in the DRC today, with detailed forecasts of key indicators up to 2020. It delivers deep quantitative and qualitative insight into the DRC telecom market, analyzing key trends, evaluating near-term opportunities and assessing risk factors, based on proprietary data from Pyramid Researchs databases. It provides in-depth analysis of the following: The DRC in a regional context; a comparative review of market size and trends with that of other countries in the Africa and Middle Eastern region Economic, demographic and political context in the DRC The regulatory environment and trends; a review of the regulatory setting and agenda for the next 18-24 months as well as relevant developments pertaining to foreign ownership restrictions, fiber rollout regulations, interconnection regulations and more A demand profile; analysis as well as forecasts and historical figures of service revenue from fixed telephony, broadband, mobile voice and data The service evolution; a look at the change in the breakdown of overall revenue by fixed and mobile sectors and by voice and data in the current year as well as the end of the forecast period The competitive landscape; an examination of key trends in competition and service providers performance, revenue market shares and expected moves over the next 18-24 months An in-depth sector analysis of fixed telephony and broadband services, mobile voice and data services; a quantitative analysis of service adoption trends by technology/platform as well as operator, average revenue per line/subscription and service revenue through the end of the forecast period Main opportunities; this section details the near-term opportunities for operators, vendors and investors in the DRCs telecommunications markets. ReasonsToBuy Provides an overview of the DRC telecom market through a combination of quantitative and qualitative insights. The graphical information consists of more than 20 charts and tables derived from Pyramid Researchs forecast products. Build profitable growth strategies by leveraging the analysis which includes an examination of current player strategies and the future trends of the DRC telecommunications market. Understand the factors behind ongoing and upcoming trends in the DRCs mobile communications, fixed telephony and broadband markets, including the evolution of service provider market shares, to align product offerings and strategies to meet customer demand. Gain insights on key telecom players in the market and their strategies to grow market share. Explore novel opportunities to align your product strategies and offerings to meet customer requirements and succeed in the challenging telecommunications market in the DRC. Read our latest Press Release at http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/pressreleases Table of Contents Executive summary Market and competitor overview Regional context Economic, demographic and political context Regulatory environment Demand profile Service evolution Competitive landscape Major market players Segment analysis Mobile services Fixed services Identifying opportunities Overall market opportunities About MarketResearchReports.biz MarketResearchReports.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. Contact Mr. Nachiket State Tower 90 Sate Street, Suite 700 Albany, NY 12207 Tel: 518-621-2074 Website: http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz BILLINGS Montanas congressional delegation is cautioning President Donald Trump not to proceed with any more Syrian bombings without Senate approval. U.S. Sens. Jon Tester and Steve Daines say they didnt oppose Thursday nights bombings but think its time Congress update the Authorization for Use of Military Force, which addresses military action in Afghanistan and Iraq but not Syria. The attack against a Syrian air base was the first U.S. assault against the government of President Bashar al-Assad. The lawmakers issued statements about the bombing after participating in a confidential, all-Senate briefing by the Trump administration. Before further military intervention in Syria we need to have a clear plan and a clear endgame. As I said when Barack Obama was president, the White House does not have a blank check to entangle our troops and taxpayers in foreign conflicts, said Tester, Montanas Democratic senior senator. The costs of war are great and take a toll on human life, returning service members, their families, and all Americans. In order to keep this nation safe and secure, we need a strategic plan with Congressional approval and oversight to hold the Putin-backed Assad regime accountable. Daines, also said the future military action required a congressionally approved plan, but he said the president was right to launch 59 missiles at a Syrian airstrip after the state attacked its citizens with deadly chemicals earlier this week. This was an appropriate strategic strike that had a defined mission and leveled the airfield where these horrific chemical attacks against Syrian children and families originated, said Daines, a Republican. However, I still remain concerned that a long-term strategy to deal with Assad and Russian interference is not yet clear and I want to ensure Americas interests are protected. After the briefing, both Daines and Tester flew out of Washington for a two-week Easter break. In the House, Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, called the bombings appropriate, while Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi asked Ryan to cancel the two-week break so a military plan could be developed. Montana doesn't have a representative in the House. Former Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke resigned from the state's at-large seat to lead the Department of Interior. Democrat Rob Quist, Republican Greg Gianforte and Libertarian Mark Wicks are campaigning to replace Zinke. Absentee ballots for a special election will be mailed out April 28. Voting ends Thursday, May 25. Both Gianforte and Quist said a military plan is needed for addressing Syria. "The Assad regime committed an atrocity when they brutally murdered innocent men, women, and children earlier this week," Gianforte said. "We have an obligation to protect and defend our national security and to stop the use of chemical weapons. President Trump acted within his authority as commander and chief, and I stand behind his decision to take out the air base where these chemical attacks were launched. Trump sent a strong message to Assad and other dictators around the world that the horrific use of chemical weapons will not be tolerated." "I look forward to President Trump and Congress working together on a long-term strategy to address this crisis in Syria," Gianforte continued. "As we work towards a solution, we must always ensure that America's interests are protected." Quist cautioned against committing to another Middle Eastern war without an exit plan. "What happened in Syria, the loss of innocent lives, including women and children, is intolerable. As the president said, its an affront to humanity. However, we need to have a clear plan and strategy before intervening militarily and Congress should be consulted going forward," Quist said. "Any military intervention needs to be strategic and with an endgame in place. The last thing we need is to get involved in yet another Middle Eastern war with no end in sight," the Democrat continued. "After all, it's our sons and daughters who have to bear the burden, so we'd better get it right when getting entangled in foreign conflicts." Wicks had not returned a call to his home by presstime. The Associated Press reported Friday that the Trump administration signaled new sanctions would soon follow the missile attack. The Pentagon was probing whether Russia was involved in the chemical weapons assault that compelled Trump to action. During the Obama presidency, Trump said Obama should have had congressional approval for military action. He wasnt the only one. Daines voted against authorizing U.S. military involvement in Syria in 2013 when he was Montanas lone congressman. At the time, Daines said he had heard from Montanans through telephone townhall meetings and concluded constituents didnt support military force. He said the objective of military action was unclear and the outcome uncertain. Daines' staff said the senators position on Syria was unchanged. A clear plan and certain outcome are required. Tester opposed a 2013 military strike in Syria, as well. Obama had asked Congress to approve military action to destroy chemical weapons. Like Daines, Tester said he had consulted with Montanans and concluded that military action was a bad idea. He said at the time it was better to pressure Syria to surrender its chemical weapons. Russia negotiated a deal with Syria in 2013 that required Syrias chemical weapons to be destroyed under international supervision. But the United Nations concluded that chemical weapons were again being used in 2014. Sarasota, FL -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/07/2017 -- Zion Market Research, the market research group announced the analysis report titled "Electronic Access Control System Market: Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecasts 20162024" Global Electronic Access Control System Market: Overview The electronic access control system consists of wide range of technical solutions which allows access to the authorized person while denies entry to unauthorized visitors. The system comprises of perimeter security systems, authentication system, and alarm system. In last few years, the electronic access control system is used in many applications ranging from commercial to defense sectors. The biometric technology is used for accurate identification and authentication services; this reduces the chances of illegal access of the data. Outdated building infrastructure has a higher threat of theft which can be eliminated by adding electronic access control system in order to improve security measures. Electronic access control system offers high accuracy, the convenience of use, and minimizes the time taken. Request Free Sample Report @ https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/sample/electronic-access-control-system-market Global Electronic Access Control System Market: Growth Factors Rising threat of terrorism and increasing demand for improved security system are major factors that are driving the global electronic access control system market. The retail, IT, hospital and banking sectors are largely adopting electronic access control system for better security to the assets. Increasing concerns regarding terrorism and major crimes are compelling many countries to implement electronic access control system to counter them. The factors that will benefit the market growth are criminal and spy activities, fraudulent entries, and illegal immigration. Increasing support from the government to protect against harmful attacks is projected to propel the global market growth. Government agencies, individuals, and organizations are giving more importance to the security to protect themselves against rising cases of vandalism, mounting terror attacks, and public violence, which contributes to the global market growth in future. However, lack of awareness and the high cost of the electronic access control systems is restraining the global access control system market growth. Global Electronic Access Control System Market: Segmentation The global electronic access control system market is categorized into technology which includes door contacts, door/window sensor, biometric, motion detector, touch screen & keypads, glass break detector, intruder alarm system, and card based system. The application segment is fragmented into telecommunication, defense, stadium, financial institutions, healthcare, and airports. On the basis of communication devices, the global electronic access control system market is segregated as buried perimeter security and free standing perimeter security. Request Report TOC (Table of Contents) @ https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/toc/electronic-access-control-system-market Global Electronic Access Control System Market: Regional Analysis Geographical segmentation of the electronic access control system market includes North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East & Africa. North America is the leading region for the electronic access control system, the demand is high especially in the US. Asia-Pacific region is highly adopting electronic access control system thus driving the market growth. Developing countries such as China, India, and Thailand are growing at a faster rate in the market; this growth is expected to continue in the near future owing to developing construction activities. Global Electronic Access Control System Market: Competitive Players Prominent companies in the global electronic access control system market include Safran SA, Magal Security Systems Ltd., Panasonic Corporation, Hitachi Ltd., 3M Cogent, Inc., Siemens AG, and Honeywell International Inc. Browse detail report @ https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/report/electronic-access-control-system-market Global Electronic Access Control System Market: Regional Segment Analysis North America U.S. Europe UK France Germany Asia Pacific China Japan India Latin America Brazil The Middle East and Africa What Report Provides Full in-depth analysis of the parent market Important changes in market dynamics Segmentation details of the market Former, on-going, and projected market analysis in terms of volume and value Assessment of niche industry developments Market share analysis Key strategies of major players Emerging segments and regional markets Testimonials to companies in order to fortify their foothold in the market. Ask for a customized report @ https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/custom/1437 Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/07/2017 -- "Slovakia: Higher ARPS Following Migration to FTTx and 4G Services to Boost Revenue Growth in Telecom Market", a new Country Intelligence Report by GlobalData, provides an executive-level overview of the telecommunications market in Slovakia today, with detailed forecasts of key indicators up to 2021. Published annually, the report provides detailed analysis of the near-term opportunities, competitive dynamics and evolution of demand by service type and technology/platform across the fixed telephony, broadband and mobile sectors, as well as a review of key regulatory trends. In 2016, Slovakia generated total telecom service revenue of $1.6bn (1.5bn) (or 1.8% of its nominal GDP), an increase of 1.6% over 2015, driven by growth in fixed Internet and mobile data revenue. Mobile data will primarily be the major growth driver through 2021 and is expected grow at a CAGR of 8.0% over 2016-2021, aided by operators investments in 4G network expansion as well as rising adoption of mobile broadband and M2M services. Operators should focus on fixed-mobile convergence and triple-play and quad-play offerings in order to strengthen their market position. Moreover, investments in 4G and fiber network expansion, rollout of advanced technologies along with the governments initiative to extend broadband coverage will provide significant opportunities for vendors and investors. Get a Sample Research PDF with TOC: http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=1054492 The Country Intelligence Report provides in-depth analysis of the following - - Regional context: telecom market size and trends in Slovakia compared with other countries in the region. - Economic, demographic and political context in Slovakia. - The regulatory environment and trends: a review of the regulatory setting and agenda for the next 18-24 months as well as relevant developments pertaining to spectrum licensing, national broadband plans, number portability and more. - A demand profile: analysis as well as historical figures and forecasts of service revenue from the fixed telephony, broadband, mobile voice and mobile data. - Service evolution: a look at changes in the breakdown of overall revenue between the fixed and mobile sectors and between voice and data from 2016 to 2021. - The competitive landscape: an examination of key trends in competition and in the performance, revenue market shares and expected moves of service providers over the next 18-24 months. - In-depth sector analysis of fixed telephony, broadband, mobile voice and mobile data: a quantitative analysis of service adoption trends by network technology and by operator, as well as of average revenue per line/subscription and service revenue through the end of the forecast period. - Main opportunities: this section details the near-term opportunities for operators, vendors and investors in Slovakia's telecommunication market. Scope - The overall telecom service revenue in Slovakia is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 2.7% (1.5% in terms) during 2016-2021. - Mobile revenue will account for 72.7% of the overall telecom service revenue in 2021, driven by increasing 4G services adoption. - In 2017, data will emerge as the largest segment, with its share increasing to 59.3% by 2021, driven by expansion of LTE and LTE-A technologies coupled with attractive data bundled services offered by operators - The Slovakian telecom market will be dominated by Slovak Telekom, Orange Slovakia and O2 Slovakia, which offer fixed and mobile services. In order to stay competitive and strengthen their market position, operators will continue to focus on 4G coverage expansions, bundled offers, triple- or quad-play offers and M2M services to stay competitive. Enquiry at: http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=1054492 Reasons to buy - This Country Intelligence Report offers a thorough, forward-looking analysis of Slovakia's telecommunication market, service providers and key opportunities in a concise format to help executives build proactive and profitable growth strategies. - Accompanying GlobalDatas Forecast products, the report examines the assumptions and drivers behind ongoing and upcoming trends in Slovakia's mobile communications, fixed telephony and broadband markets, including the evolution of service provider market shares. - With more than 20 charts and tables, the report is designed for an executive-level audience, boasting presentation quality. - The report provides an easily digestible market assessment for decision-makers built around in-depth information gathered from local market players, which enables executives to quickly get up to speed with the current and emerging trends in Slovakia's telecommunication market. - The broad perspective of the report coupled with comprehensive, actionable detail will help operators, equipment vendors and other telecom industry players succeed in the challenging telecommunications market in Slovakia. About ResearchMoz ResearchMoz is the world's fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives. ResearchMoz's service portfolio also includes value-added services such as market research customization, competitive landscaping, and in-depth surveys, delivered by a team of experienced Research Coordinators. Contact Us: Mr. Nachiket Albany NY - 12207 United States Tel: 518-621-2074 Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free) Email: sales@researchmoz.us Follow us on LinkedIn at: http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Sarasota, FL -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/06/2017 -- Zion Market Research, the market research group announced the analysis report titled "Vehicle Anti-Theft Systems Market: Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecasts 20162024" Global Vehicle Anti-Theft Systems Market: Overview There has been a rapid rise in the occurrences of vehicle theft. To combat this, there is a rise in the uptake of vehicle anti-theft systems globally. Factors affecting the uptake include ease of use and financial costs. Through these systems, tracking of the lost vehicle, detection of intrusion and sensing devices can be attached to the vehicle in order to secure them. Increasing production of automobiles of different kinds is boosting the vehicle anti-theft system market growth for vehicle anti-theft system market. Request Free Sample Report @ https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/sample/vehicle-anti-theft-systems-market Global Vehicle Anti-Theft Systems Market: Segmentation The global vehicle anti-theft system market is segmented into its product type, technology, vehicle type, and geography. On the basis of product type, the market is divided into alarm, steering lock, immobilizer, biometric capture device, central locking and remote keyless entry. Based on technology, the market is segregated into the global system for communication (GSM), global positioning system (GPS), global radio frequency identification, face detection system, automotive biometric technology and real-time location system (RTLS). On the basis of vehicle type, the vehicle anti-theft system market is classified into the commercial vehicle, passenger car, off-highway vehicle. Diversification of the global market based on region is seen into North America, Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East and Africa. Global Vehicle Anti-Theft Systems Market: Growth Factors The global vehicle anti-theft system market is a growing market. Major factors contributing towards this growth are a massive increase in the number of vehicles of different kinds, rising awareness about vehicle anti-theft devices, government regulations pertaining to vehicle safety and increasing development made in technology. In addition, increasing instances of theft in parking lots have necessitated the use of advanced anti-theft mechanisms for vehicle and passenger security and safety. The immobilizer system and the face detection system are the different sectors showing major growth in the vehicle anti-theft system market. Request Report TOC (Table of Contents) @ https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/toc/vehicle-anti-theft-systems-market Global Vehicle Anti-Theft Systems Market: Regional Analysis The largest market share in the vehicle anti-theft system market is held by Asia Pacific. Major countries contributing towards this growth are India, China, Australia, Japan and New Zealand. The growth of Asia-Pacific can be contributed to reasons such as rising population and increasing production of automobiles in this region. Asia-Pacific will continue to dominate the global market in the coming periods as well. Following the growth in Asia Pacific will be regions such as North America, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East and Africa. The growth in North America will be centered in countries such as the U.S. and Canada. An ample share of the market growth will be contributed by countries such as the U.K., Germany, Spain, France, Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg, Poland, Netherlands, and Russia in the European regions. Latin American countries such as Brazil, Mexico, Peru, and Chile will be contributing towards the increasing demand of the market. South Africa and North Africa will also show significant growth rate in the Middle East and African regions. Global Vehicle Anti-Theft Systems Market: Competitive Players Some of the major companies in the global vehicle anti-theft system market are Continental AG, Robert Bosch GmbH, Lear Corporation, Tokai Rika Ltd., Delphi Automotive LLP, Johnson Electric, VOXX International Corp. and Mitsubishi Electric Corporation. Browse detail report @ https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/report/vehicle-anti-theft-systems-market Global Vehicle Anti-Theft Systems Market: Regional Segment Analysis North America U.S. Europe UK France Germany Asia Pacific China Japan India Latin America Brazil The Middle East and Africa What Reports Provides Full in-depth analysis of the parent market Important changes in market dynamics Segmentation details of the market Former, on-going, and projected market analysis in terms of volume and value Assessment of niche industry developments Market share analysis Key strategies of major players Emerging segments and regional markets Testimonials to companies in order to fortify their foothold in the market Ask for a customized report @ https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/custom/1045 The Constitutional Court of South Africa ruled against an appeal made by the Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) to continue the prohibition on the sale of rhino horn in the domestic market. This means the sale of these horns in the domestic market is now legally permissible. The trading of horns is not allowed in the international market. The Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), signed by at least 100 countries worldwide, has prohibited the trading of horns since 1977. DEA Spokesperson Albie Modise said despite the ruling, there is an existing rule that requires permits for trading the horns domestically. Up to 80 percent or roughly equivalent to 20,000 of the world's rhino population is found in South Africa. There is an increasing demand for rhino horns in powdered form, as these are sold in China, Vietnam and other parts of the world as aphrodisiac and cure for cancer. Last year, poachers killed 1,054 rhinos in South Africa to meet the global demand for rhino horns. Private Rhino Owners Association Chairman Pelham Jones said they are delighted with the Constitutional Court's ruling on the legalization of the domestic trade of rhino horns. Some breeders believe that rhino poaching can only be stopped by open and legal trade, according to The Guardian. They proposed the use of anesthesia for rhinos before their horns are sawed off since the horns will grow back anyway. Research shows a continuous increase in the mass slaughter of rhinos in the past six years, with 1,388 animals killed in Africa last year for the rhino horns. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) reported that around 5,940 rhinos have been killed since 2008 due to poaching. The poaching has been blamed on the continuous demand for the horns because of their supposed medicinal properties. "Any increase in poaching is alarming but there are some positives. When poaching started to escalate in 2008, we saw year after year of exponentially increasingly poaching," IUCN African Rhino Specialist Group's Dr. Richard Emslie said. Emslie considered the slight decline in the rate of the rise in the numbers of rhinos killed from 1,215 in 2014 to only 1,175 in 2015 is encouraging, according to BBC. But while the situation in South Africa has slightly improved, there are more reasons to worry about the situation in Namibia and Zimbabwe. He said all countries need to be on guard against those who covet rhino horns. Cephalopods such as octopuses, cuttlefish and squids are indeed smart and exceptionally intelligent than other mollusks. They could do many things that an individual could not ever think of for a cephalopod to do. These include unscrewing the glass jars, escape from the aquarium, play and even do body-contorting mimicry. So, what are the secrets of these amazing spineless and many-legged creatures? A new study, which was printed in the journal Cell on Thursday, indicates that octopuses, cuttlefish and squids do not follow the normal rules of genetic information. Their RNA has been edited, especially the codes for proteins that are visible in the neurons of animals, according to The Washington Post. Cephalopods utilize the tweaked RNA to produce new proteins. The RNA editing referred to as recoding could permit an octopus gene to generate several types of proteins from the same DNA. Eli Eisenberg, a co-author of the study and an expert in RNA editing at Tel Aviv University, explained that recoding by editing efficiently produces a new protein sequence. This expands the protein repertoire at the organism's disposal. In the previous study, Joshua Rosenthal, a neurobiologist at the Marine Biological laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and one of the authors of the new study, found that octopuses inhabiting the Antarctic used RNA editing to make their nerves active and firing in icy waters. Likewise, in the new study, the scientists found that octopuses, cuttlefish and squids frequently edit RNA in about one out of each two transcribed genes. RNA editing in cephalopod genes is linked to nervous system functions. "It was making tweaks that really make a neuron a neuron," Rosenthal said. Some experts said that this could boost the brain functions of such cephalopods and expand their nervous system. RNA referred to as ribonucleic acid together with DNA is a nucleic acid just like the proteins and carbohydrates. These are essential for all living organisms. RNA is compiled as a chain of nucleotides and of single-strand folded onto itself. Some of the molecules of RNA have a significant role within cells, in which they catalyze biological reactions, control gene expression or communicate responses to cellular signals. With the recent announcement of Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ flagship devices, Samsung is expected to move on to the next step in the lineup of its Note series. Most of the world knows how the Galaxy Note 7 faced a mortifying downfall due to the explosion mayhem. However, that does not make the South Korean electronics manufacturer stop one of its most successful variants from the mobile market. That said, reports note that the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is under development, and unsurprisingly, the specs related to the upcoming device have started to reveal. It is reported that Samsung is going to reveal the next Galaxy Note variant by the codename "Great." Above all, a number of Galaxy Note 8 specs rumors are turning up that give a glimpse of what the new phone might pack under the hood. According to Value Walk, some of these specs rumors noted that the new Note will feature a dual-lens camera with force touch sensors. A number of features in the upcoming phone are already seen in the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+, the website further reported. The most notable ones are the "infinity display" layout and the absence of the physical Home button. If the button is removed, then the fingerprint sensor is expected to be placed at the back just like in Samsung's latest flagship devices. As far as the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 release date is concerned, the tech giant may reveal the device by the end of 2017. If that is the case, then expect the upcoming Android O to be a part of the Note variant. The addition of the latest Android OS to the device is a speculation based on the fact that Google tends to reveal the next Android version Q3 2017. If the Note 8 comes out in Q4 2017, then there are high chances that the device could get the new OS pre-installed. As usual, Samsung Galaxy Note 8 firmware development will feature various features of its own that are expected to run on the Android version, GSM Arena reported. If that is the case, then fans are likely to expect Note features like the use of Note S-pen, air command preferences and Samsung Edge screen bar. BILLINGS - The Big Horn County Attorney's Office has charged a Hardin man with the death of his 2-year-old daughter. Dana Redding Jr., 26, was arrested and charged with deliberate homicide, aggravated assault and assault with a weapon on Friday, two days after his daughter died in a hospital. Big Horn County Sheriff's Office deputies responded to the Hardin hospital on Wednesday after getting a report of an unresponsive toddler. Medical staff told law enforcement that the child had suffered a "massive amount of bruising" on her entire body, as well as an open wound on the back of her head, according to charging documents. The girl was pronounced dead at 12:36 p.m. on Wednesday. Redding was arrested that day, charges state. An autopsy conducted Thursday morning found the cause of death to be either blunt force trauma or organ failure due to "abusive physical contact," according to charging documents. An FBI child forensic interviewer spoke with the victim's sibling, identified as a 3-year-old. That child told the interviewer that "daddy" hurt his sister and that a tool was used, charges state. Health department records showed that Redding has "extensive" history of child abuse and neglect referrals, according to court documents. The arrest warrant issued for Redding carried a $1 million bond, according to an email from County Attorney Gerald "Jay" Harris. The Chinese yard and Northern Offshore have mutually agreed to further extend the rig acceptance date of a first rig Energy Engager to end-September this year, and the second rig Energy Encounter to end-March 2018. The owner and Cosco Dalian also agreed to delay delivery of the Energy Engager and Energy Encounter until further notice, said Cosco Corporation (Singapore) Limited, which controls 51% of Cosco Shipyard Group. In April 2015, Northern Offshore had negotiated a delay in the deliveries of the two rigs to December 2016 and June 2017. Cosco Corp said the further extensions were agreed upon taking into account the current unfavourable international marine market conditions. In view of the rescheduling and the uncertainty as to when the owner will take delivery of the rigs, it is not possible to ascertain the financial impact of the rescheduling at this point in time, Cosco Corp announced. The rigbuilding contracts were entered into by the parties back in November 2013. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate With blessings from six different religious leaders and a nod to the ancient tree spirits, the last steel beam was lifted Thursday to the top of the Salesforce Tower, the tallest building in San Francisco. It was a day of speeches and pride for the 1,070-foot tower, which rises on Mission Street between Fremont and First streets, and looms over the citys skyline. It can be seen from all parts of the Bay Area. This tower is more than an office building, said Fred Clarke, one of the principal architects on the project. It is fundamentally an act of optimism, comparable to a pyramid or an obelisk, marking a new place on Earth reaching for the heavens. The last piece of steel a 14-foot-long beam, painted white and covered with the signatures of workers, was lifted to the top of the building, 61 stories above the street about midday. Topping off the building is one of the oldest traditions in construction, and the beam had a 6-foot-tall cedar tree attached to it. It was a nod to an ancient rite. In the days when all buildings were wooden, crews crowed the highest point with a green tree to appease the spirits of wood and the forest. It brings luck, said Reint Smit, the towers chief engineer. The tree may bring luck, but the tower is the result of skill of the thousands of workers who built it; of Boston Properties, which owns it; and mostly of Salesforce, which will be the prime tenant. Many of the speakers at the topping-off ceremony hailed the building as the tallest west of Chicago. Reports that a Los Angeles building is 30 feet taller were not mentioned. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, who was the driving force behind the tower, said he remembered back when he was a little boy, watching the Bank of America building and the Transamerica Pyramid being built. I remember my grandfather telling me this was the new face of San Francisco going up, he said. Now his companys office building towers over the older skyscrapers. For years, the Transamerica, at 853 feet, was the citys tallest. The Salesforce Tower is 217 feet higher. Salesforce was born and raised in San Francisco just 15 years ago, said Elizabeth Pinkham, Salesforces executive vice president for real estate. She was showing off the view from the 60th floor to reporters and guests. Never in a million years would you think Salesforce would be here atop the tallest San Francisco tower. Salesforce will be the main tenant with offices on floors three to 30 and on the 60th and 61st floors. Benioff said the very top floor, which will be named the Ohana Floor, after the Hawaiian word for family, will be open to nonprofit and community groups for events. And we wont charge them, either, he said. Making the top of the tower available, Benioff said, is part of giving back to the community. It was a cloudy day with a touch of rain, but the city, the bay and the bridges looked like scale models from the top of the tower. This is an amazing building, Smit, the engineer, said. On a clear day, you can see the Farallon Islands from up here. He smiled. And with a bit of imagination, you can see Hawaii, he said. That may not be true, but you can see the citys high-tech future. This is the centerpiece of the city, Mayor Ed Lee said at the opening ceremony. Tall as it is, the original plan was for a tower that would have been 100 feet higher. That was too tall for Benioff. We scaled it down a bit, he said. Thats the backstory. Carl Nolte is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: cnolte@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @carlnoltesf LAKE FOREST Akorn Inc., a leading specialty generic pharmaceutical company with facilities in Decatur, has entered into discussions that could lead to its acquisition, the company confirmed Friday. The talks will be with Fresenius Kabi, a subsidiary of Fresenius SE & Co. KGaA. Fresenius SE is Europes biggest publicly traded health-care provider, based in Bad Homburg, Germany. An agreement to be acquired would be subject to approval by the executive board and supervisory board of Fresenius Management SE and the board of directors of Akorn. "There can be no assurance any transaction will result from these discussions, or as to the terms of any such transaction," Akorn said in a statement. Neither company will comment further until an agreement is reached or they deem it appropriate, Akorn's statement said. In March, Akorn cut the ribbon on a 30,000-square-foot expansion at its existing packaging facility on Wyckles road. The $5.6 million project helped to retain 200 jobs and created an additional 25 positions. Construction on the expansion started in 2016 after the company chose Decatur for the project instead of expanding its existing facilities in New York. Akorn had broken ground on a $25 million expansion of its Grand Ave. facility in October. The expanded facility at 1222 W. Grand Ave. will include a new lab and pilot plant on property that previously held a church and other businesses. The products manufactured and packaged at Akorn's two Decatur facilities are used in local hospitals and physicians' offices, in addition to other places across the country. Akorn Vice President and General Manager Jon Shoemaker praised Decatur's workforce at the Wyckles ribbon-cutting, saying the expansion was a credit to their hard work. Decatur learned March 23 its Meda Pharmaceuticals manufacturing facility is scheduled to close with the loss of 90 jobs. The closure will be phased in over the rest of this year and will finish in 2018, according to parent company, Mylan, which acquired Meda in 2016. The closure decision followed Mylan's takeover of Meda in a $7 billion deal in 2016. The Decatur Meda plant was formerly owned by MedPointe Pharmaceuticals until Meda bought it in 2007. Jacom Stephens/Getty Images Police in San Bruno found a dismembered human body at a home near Skyline College Thursday morning while in search of a missing person, officials said. Police have not yet determined whether the remains found are those of the missing person. A childrens swim instructor was arrested in San Francisco after investigators linked him to hundreds of child-pornography files uploaded and stored online, police said Thursday. The San Francisco Police Department identified the man as 28-year-old Nicholas Hodges of San Francisco. Hodges was arrested Tuesday after a search of his home yielded numerous media devices belonging to him that contained more than 600 files of child pornography, police said. When he was taken into custody at his workplace, police seized a cell phone containing more evidence of child exploitation, officials said. The pornography was traced to Hodges through an investigation started last month by the San Francisco Police Departments Internet Crimes against Children Unit, according to police. Police did not release the name of Hodges employer but said it is cooperating with the investigation. Hodges began working at La Petite Baleen a swim school in San Francisco, with other branches throughout the Bay Area in September 2015, owner John Kolbisen said in a statement. Kolbisen said the company, which offers swim lessons to children, was shocked and horrified by the charges and fired Hodges soon after the allegations surfaced. Kolbisen said he was not aware of evidence or allegations linking any of our students to the charges against Hodges. Filipa Ioannou and Michael Bodley are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: fioannou@sfchronicle.com and mbodley@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @obioannoukenobi and @michael_bodley Californias cap-and-trade system to fight global warming survived a major legal test Thursday when a state appeals court ruled that the auctions at the heart of the system do not constitute an illegal tax. While the California Chamber of Commerce, which sued to block the auctions four years ago, could still appeal to the state Supreme Court, Thursdays decision erases some of the uncertainty surrounding cap and trade. It also comes at a time when state officials have vowed not to abandon the fight against climate change, despite the Trump administrations moves to end many federal climate programs. Its good news, when we really need some, said Erica Morehouse, an attorney with the Environmental Defense Fund, which had participated in the lawsuit on the side of the state. A spokeswoman for the chamber said her organization is disappointed by the ruling. We are reviewing the decision and evaluating our options, said Denise Davis, vice president of media relations and external affairs. The closely watched case argued that the California Air Resources Board, which designed the cap-and-trade program, overstepped its authority when it created the auctions within the system. Under cap and trade, the state sets an annual limit on greenhouse gas emissions, allowing fewer emissions each year. Businesses must obtain a permit, called an allowance, for each ton of heat-trapping gases that they emit. While some of those allowances are handed out by the state for free to utility companies, for example others are sold in quarterly auctions. Companies can also buy and sell allowances among themselves. The chamber, backed by several other business associations, argued that Californias landmark 2006 climate change law, AB32, did not give the Air Resources Board authority to set up the auctions. They also claimed that the allowances were, in effect, a new state tax that had not been approved by the two-thirds vote required by Proposition 13, a 1978 state ballot measure on taxes. All three of the judges hearing the case agreed that the Air Resources Board had not exceeded its authority under AB32 in setting up the auction process. Two judges Elena Duarte and M. Kathleen Butz ruled that the allowances could not be considered a tax. Associate Justice Harry Hull Jr. dissented. Duarte and Butz agreed that the allowances did not meet the standard definitions of a tax. The auction system, they wrote in their decision, is not compulsory, because businesses have a choice of either buying an allowance or cutting their emissions. They also pointed to the presence in the market of financial companies, which buy and sell allowances strictly to make a profit. Air Quality Tracker Check levels down to the neighborhood Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes Taxes do not attract volunteers, they wrote. The Pacific Legal Foundation, which filed one of two auction lawsuits that were consolidated into one by the courts, faulted the judges arguments. Under the majoritys reasoning, Californias gasoline taxes are not really taxes, because the state does not compel you to buy gasoline, and you get something of value for paying the tax: a gallon of gas, said Tony Francois, senior attorney for the foundation, in a press release. Uncertainty about the outcome of the lawsuit helped depress interest in the most recent auctions, which did not sell all of the allowances available. In addition, some state officials have questioned whether the cap-and-trade system has the legal authority to continue past 2020. Gov. Jerry Brown tried to muster support for legislation last year that would have explicitly extended the system beyond 2020, but he couldnt secure the votes of two-thirds of the Legislature a step that would have protected the system if the courts had sided with the Chamber of Commerce. He has also said he may back a ballot measure protecting the programs future. David R. Baker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: dbaker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @DavidBakerSF Walmart is on a mission to forever change what people know about their groceries. The retail giant began in October to collaborate with IBM and Tsinghua University in Beijing to trace an array of food products moving through its vast global supply chain with an emerging technology known as blockchain. The experiment, which will wrap up next month, will help Walmart understand how to make use of blockchain a secure system of recording data that, many believe, could have a transformative effect on the worlds economy. The technology is already creeping into everything from supply chain management to banking to health care. Ive yet to come across an industry where it wont have an impact, said David Treat, a managing director at Accenture who leads the consulting firms financial services and blockchain practice group. At its core, blockchain refers to an accounting system known as a distributed ledger. That ledger lives on a network of synchronized computers that communally capture and verify when a transaction takes place. Any time something of value gets exchanged, the data surrounding that exchange are recorded, encrypted and placed into a block visible by anyone granted access to the network. Those blocks are then chained together chronologically, creating a timeline that can be traced to an initial transaction. That chronology is key to blockchains security, since no individual block of data could be successfully altered without affecting all the other blocks in the chain. The technology would replace methods of accounting and tracking transactions. Whether youre talking about a commodity or anything else, its a secure road map of where its been and whos held it, said Grant Fondo, an attorney and co-chairman of the digital currency and blockchain practice at the law firm Goodwin Procter in San Francisco. Blockchain technology emerged in the shadow of bitcoin. From the outset, a big appeal of the trendy digital currency was its ability to let users transfer funds without the need for a designated third party like a bank, credit card company or other payment network operator to verify the details of the transaction. But in recent years, even as the hype surrounding bitcoin has fizzled, blockchains secure ledger system is expected to endure by virtue of its versatility. Chronicled, a San Francisco startup (unrelated to The Chronicle), is using blockchain technology to tackle counterfeiting. By placing microchips onto or inside of virtually any physical object, Chronicled can register critical identifying data about that object onto the blockchain, authenticating it as the original and tracking each step in its purchasing history. We dont realize how bad the problem of copies and counterfeiting and clones really is, said Chronicled CEO Ryan Orr. But fake license plates, fake bottles of Champagne and spirits, fake Louis Vuitton handbags were talking about a $2 trillion counterfeit market today. Chronicleds anticounterfeiting technology has a particular appeal with the art world. In January, Chronicled teamed up with 111 Minna Gallery, a San Francisco art gallery and event space, for an event that was equal parts art exhibition and tech expo. Each piece of art was assigned a chip that registered it on a blockchain. Equipped with a special app on their phones, gallery-goers could access a wealth of information about the works, and even purchase them, if they chose to do so. This is a secure system of identification and identity verification thats never existed before, Orr said. So we can potentially solve this problem, and we can do a lot more on top of that once we can synchronize the physical and digital-world identities, which was never possible before. Walmarts blockchain pilot program is limited to China, but Frank Yiannas, vice president of food safety, said that the company is considering expanding it. So far, Walmart is offering scant details about precisely what types of foods are being tracked on its blockchain system, but Yiannas said the goal is to bring transparency into the food supply chain and to get the myriad players in that chain to harmonize the ways they keep track of products moving through it. The tracking device can be on a small sticker. Imagine if you could capture data at the farm level on a digital system, how something was produced, where it came from any relevant information to a consumer, he said. What that allows for is new insight that could provide a new era of transparency and insight we just dont have today. Yiannas said the level of detail he hopes to capture with blockchain gets down to an individual apple. You pick up an apple and you know where that apple came from, he said. Imagine the consumer, who is mostly removed from food production, being able to scan a food product and know the things they want to know about it, he added. Capturing data on a blockchain about a particular product as it moves from farm to fork, Yiannas said, will also allow Walmart to better respond to food safety recalls. Currently, it can take weeks to trace a tainted product back to its source a process that, with a blockchain, could take seconds, since growers, packing houses and distributors would all be placing their data in the same place, where all parties can see it. Air Quality Tracker Check levels down to the neighborhood Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes Beyond supply chains, blockchain technology has also made significant inroads in the banking industry, one that has a constant need to quickly authenticate and record transactions. Ripple, a blockchain developer in San Francisco, specializes in systems that allow banks to send payments to one another. Banks can save money by transacting directly with one another, rather than relying on a clearinghouse or other third party to verify and process payments. This month, a consortium of 47 banks in Japan announced they would be implementing Ripples technology after a successful pilot program. Blockchains are also beginning to reach into health care. In January, IBM, a major vendor of blockchain software, announced that it is working with the Food and Drug Administration to research how blockchains could be used to securely and efficiently transfer large amounts of patient data pulled from electronic medical records, clinical trials and even wearable devices. And officials in Cook County, Illinois, said last year that they intended to start a blockchain experiment for tracking the transfer of land titles. Distributed ledgers are a paradigm shift in how we process transactions, said Jesse Lund, the head of IBMs blockchain market development. It saves businesses money and it empowers consumers. I definitely think that its a shift with global implications, from a human perspective. Dominic Fracassa is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: dfracassa@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @dominicfracassa This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate In an effort to protect users from being unmasked by the government, Twitter has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security after agents demanded that the social media company hand over information on one of several accounts identifying themselves as alt or rogue federal workers. Its a strong statement from Twitter, one of the last big social networks that allows users to use fake names or remain anonymous, and one that is meant to signal to users that Twitter will defend their right to privacy and free speech, experts said. These tech companies have so much really personal information about all of us, and part of what we do when we give them this information is trust them to be stewards of it, said Emma Llanso, the director of the Free Speech Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology. For Twitter to fight back against such a broad demand from the government to unmask is really significant. Twitter received a summons March 14 from Customs and Border Protection Agent Adam Hoffman ordering the social media company to produce records related to an account known as @ALT_USCIS. Like other such alt-gov accounts, its handle refers to the agency about which the user claims to have knowledge in this case, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is housed under Homeland Security. The summons demanded that Twitter produce all records regarding the account @ALT_USCIS to include, user names, account login, phone numbers, mailing addresses and IP addresses, according to the lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court on Thursday afternoon. Customs and Border Patrol has limited jurisdiction outside U.S. border crossings, except for investigating the importation of goods. The agency told Twitter it was investigating the account to ascertain the correctness of entries, to determine the liability for duties taxes, fines, penalties or forfeitures, and/or to ensure compliance with the laws or regulations it administers. It was not clear from the filing what alleged violations the agency was investigating. Revealing @ALT_USCIS identity would have a grave chilling effect, Twitter wrote, on it and other accounts created to voice dissent to government policies. Since President Trumps inauguration in January, several of these accounts have appeared on Twitter. Some self-identify as federal employees who do not agree with how their agency, or the government at large, is being run. Others claim to be former federal workers, and still others say they are private citizens. Nearly all are run anonymously or use fake names and identifiers which makes it hard to tell whether these accounts are legitimate or not. Social media allows people who feel their speech might be limited by their jobs to create alternative personas to express alternative views, said Dana R. Fisher, a sociology professor at the University of Maryland. And the way these alt and rogue accounts have taken off and come to represent a kind of resistance from within is really fascinating. The @ALT_USCIS account was registered in January, according to its Twitter profile.Most of its tweets have been sharply critical of the Trump administrations immigration polices, including the presidents promise to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and recent attempts to ban immigrants from several Muslim-majority nations. Twitters policy on turning over user information to law enforcement requires that government agencies provide a subpoena or court order to justify why the agency requires the information. The government cant invade someones right to free, anonymous speech just because they dont like what theyre saying, Llanso said. The American Civil Liberties Union announced Thursday it will join Twitters case. This is not the first time the social media company has been at odds with the government. In 2012, Twitter defended an Occupy Wall Street protester in a New York appeals court after the government requested the company turn over tweets and personal information. Two years later, Twitter sued the federal government, challenging Obama-era policies that barred the social media company from publishing information about how user data was being used in government surveillance. By late Thursday, the Twitter account at the center of the lawsuit had pinned an image of the First Amendment to the top of their Twitter feed. FYI, the user wrote, some refugees became refugees out of fear of being unmasked by dictators because of dissent/opposing views. Lets not have that here. Marissa Lang is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mlang@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Marissa_Jae More than a year after her daughter was killed in a drive-by shooting, Nicole Gardner still refers to her death as the accident. To an extent, it was. Richmond police do not believe that Ronique Gardner-Williams was the intended target, just an innocent, random victim. Gardner-Williams, a 20-year-old College of Marin student, was in the passenger seat of a friends car texting on her phone when a gunman pulled up and opened fire, spraying bullets into the road. Several vehicles were hit, according to police, but she was the only casualty. She didnt have time to duck, no time to run, nothing, said Gardner, 45, who had relocated her children from Boston to Mill Valley eight years ago after a shooting permanently disabled one of her sons. I moved away from everything I knew to come here and be safe, and then this happened to my daughter. The brazen December 2015 shooting unfolded in daylight on a busy intersection near Hilltop Mall, and investigators believe the young man driving the car carrying Gardner-Williams may have been the intended target. They interviewed him but gained little information and police still have not identified a suspect. The unsolved killing is not unusual in the East Bay city of 110,000 residents. Once considered one of the nations most dangerous cities, Richmond has made strides in recent years to decrease violent crime and improve community relations. But suspects were arrested and charged in fewer than 1 in 3 homicides from 2011 through 2016, a Chronicle examination of federal and local police data shows, even as the number of homicides has experienced a long-term decline. Richmond police, according to state Department of Justice data, cleared just 28 percent of 90 homicides from 2011 through 2015, one of the worst clearance rates among California cities that averaged 10 or more homicides annually. A homicide is considered cleared when an arrest is made and a criminal complaint is filed, or when a suspect is identified but cannot be detained. Richmond police dispute that figure, saying a technical error in 2015 caused the state to misreport their crime data. But city police records obtained by The Chronicle show that from 2011 through 2016, roughly 40 percent of the 119 homicides in Richmond were cleared, a rate still well below national, statewide and Contra Costa County averages for that period. The failure to arrest and charge a high proportion of homicide suspects occurred even as the number of killings in the city fell from a recent high of 47 in 2009 to 24 last year, including one later determined to have occurred in El Cerrito, according to police records. And while a sexual misconduct scandal recently rocked several Bay Area police forces, leading to the firings of three Richmond officers, community-police relations generally have grown stronger something many experts consider key to solving crime. Mayor Tom Butt noted, too, that Richmond spends more per capita on public safety than many surrounding cities, including Oakland, El Cerrito, Berkeley, Hayward, Albany and Vallejo. Chuck Wexler, executive director of the national law enforcement think tank Police Executive Research Forum, said a departments clearance rate can be swayed by many factors, including financial and technical resources, the types of homicides commonly committed in a city, and how quickly detectives can get to the scene of a slaying. But some say there is more Richmond can and should do to arrest homicide suspects, including investing more resources into investigations and forging stronger ties in parts of the city most affected by gun violence. The consequences of having so many unsolved homicides can be far-reaching. Along with delaying closure for parents such as Gardner, they can diminish trust in law enforcement and prompt a cycle of violence, with one killing leading to another. Most of our gun violence in Richmond is retaliatory, people not trusting the police to solve the issue so they take it into their own hands, said Tamisha Walker, a longtime violence prevention activist in Richmond. If I only had to deal with solving one homicide at a time, I could be more effective than if I have one homicide that turns into three, all because the violence wasnt interrupted in time. Carol Ferguson Jones, whose organization advocates for the families of homicide victims in the East Bay and helps pay for funeral costs, said that when killers arent caught, the pain she sees in victims families is much more pronounced. Its well known, she said of Richmonds relatively low homicide arrest rate. Its sad when you sit there and you take families down to the district attorneys office and they have no information. Do I have to make the flyers for you? Do we have to march in the streets of Richmond? They want to know, Who killed my son, my grandson, my child? So far this year, Richmond has recorded four homicides, including the killing of Rashanda Franklin, 29, who was shot to death in her car in front of her two young sons Tuesday morning. Her former boyfriend, Lawyer Dushan McBride, 43, was detained for the crime Wednesday in Sacramento, and arrests have been made in two of the other homicide cases, according to police. But as of January, just eight of Richmonds 24 homicides in 2016 had ended with an arrest and criminal complaint. Police have suspects in mind for eight of the other cases, said Lt. Michael Booker, who leads the departments major crimes and homicide unit. City officials cite several reasons for why so few homicide cases make it to court. Police Chief Allwyn Brown points to Richmonds high number of gang-related shootings, which he says are difficult to have prosecuted because key witnesses are often reluctant to cooperate with law enforcement and physical evidence can be sparse. We may know how the crime occurred, what type of weapon was used, have a suspect identified, but we dont have corroborating evidence, so that case wont be filed, Booker said. If youre looking at the hierarchy of crime, homicides are the pinnacle, the top of the heap, so we will exhaust all resources to get that case to the D.A. But when you dont have a lot of leads or information to go on, you might hit a wall in an investigation. Some experts said the Police Departments structure may play a role in the low clearance rate. The 182-member force has no cold-case unit investigating older killings, something that has proved effective for clearing cases in other cities. And the citys four homicide detectives are tasked with solving other violent felonies as well. Three robbery investigators and two sergeants often assist with homicide cases, too, Booker said. Michigan State University criminologist and former police Officer David Carter said that given the number of slayings in Richmond, the department might benefit from creating a unit dedicated solely to investigating killings. You can increase clearances by changing your homicide investigation practices, and at the foundation of that is the caseload, Carter said. If they are (also) handling crimes against persons, thats too much. A high number of unsolved homicides signals to the community and to criminals that even the most serious offenses can go unpunished, said Thomas Hargrove, whose Murder Accountability Project in Washington, D.C., analyzes federal crime data to bring attention to unsolved slayings. Hargrove said his research shows that a person is twice as likely to be killed in a city that is underperforming in clearing homicides, partially because those who kill once are more likely to kill again or to become the next victim themselves. If you leave a killer on the street, everyone in the community is going to know, Hargrove said. And whats the message? Killers arent being caught. According to police records, 29 percent of the 119 homicides in Richmond from 2011 through 2016 ended with someone being arrested and charged with the crime. About 11 percent were exceptionally cleared, which most often means that the suspect had either died or it was determined that the crime was committed in self-defense. While the majority of those homicides were investigated by Richmond police, some were handled by outside agencies including a recent string of freeway shootings that were primarily investigated by the California Highway Patrol. State Department of Justice data show that more than 60 percent of homicides in the rest of Contra Costa County and the state were cleared from 2011 through 2015. Richmond is somewhat unique in that it is a relatively small city with a high amount of violent crime, but some California cities with similar per-capita homicide rates also cleared a higher ratio of slayings. In San Bernardino, police cleared 63 percent of the 209 homicides from 2011 through 2015, according to state data. In Bakersfield, more than 70 percent of the 115 homicides were cleared. And Vallejo police cleared a higher proportion of homicides than Richmond, even as the city was climbing out of bankruptcy. In an interview with The Chronicle, Mayor Butt acknowledged that Richmonds relatively low homicide clearance rate was not his top priority, though according to budget documents, improving the citys clearance rate to more than 50 percent has been a key objective for police since at least 2011. He said that preventing homicides in the first place and reducing the citys crime rate are more important goals than getting homicide cases prosecuted. Theres a culture here in Richmond of people killing each other over really stupid things, like being on the wrong side of town, Butt said. Some of these are old feuds somebodys uncle killed somebody from three decades ago. Many of the citys problems, the mayor said, can be traced to its economic woes. The city has consistently had one of the lowest median family incomes in the Bay Area, to the point where theres hardly enough money to run the city, he said. According to an independent review of Richmonds finances last April, increases in city expenditures are outpacing revenue, raising concerns about a growing deficit. That has meant that even violence-prevention programs credited with reducing crime have seen their funding drop in recent years. Cuts also brought the number of sworn officers down by about 7 percent between 2013 and 2016, from 196 to 182. Chief Brown said if he had more resources, he would put them toward nonenforcement, non-investigative roles, staffing more positions to engage directly with the community and help prevent homicides and gun violence. Scott Strazzante/The Chronicle We would like to prevent future cases from happening, and that really requires an investment in young people, he said. You have to look at the pathway a young person travels before they even have an intersection with law enforcement and become a teenage serial shooter. Many law enforcement experts consider community-police relations the most important factor in clearing homicides, and Richmond police have been lauded for strengthening ties with residents. During a visit there in September 2015, former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said the agency had become a model for how law enforcement should interact with the community. Scott Strazzante/The Chronicle But in parts of town plagued by gun violence, distrust of police is still strong, said DeVone Boggan, director of Richmonds Office of Neighborhood Safety, which tries to redirect people most at risk of committing or becoming victims of gun violence. A male in Richmond between the ages of 15 and 30 has a 1 in 250 chance of being slain, and nearly all victims are African American or Latino, according to city data. While Boggan said that the Police Department cannot solely be faulted for the citys low clearance rate, each time a shooting or homicide is not solved confidence in law enforcement erodes further. The communities most impacted find themselves feeling that police dont care if they did, they would have arrested someone, he said. When you have youngsters suspected of shooting a gun saying, I have a 60 percent chance of getting away with my own justice, thats scary. About two years ago, the district attorneys office began holding quarterly meetings with law enforcement agencies in West Contra Costa County including Richmond to brainstorm how to close pending homicide cases and reduce violent crime. The countys top homicide prosecutor, Derek Butts, said that despite the gains Richmond police have made, it is still hard to get valuable information in gang-related shootings. You dont want to be a snitch. ... You want to take revenge, Butts said. Thats their code. Youre not a man if you tell the police. Youre a man if you do something in retaliation. Butts pointed to the number of witnesses, and even victims, he has had to impeach for falsely testifying or hold in contempt of court for not showing up at all. You can blend in in Richmond having done these things, he said. And people accept it. The experience of another California city shows that a turnaround in homicide clearances is possible, even for departments that, like Richmonds, face challenges including gang violence, a high homicide rate and a lack of resources. In 1993, Orange Countys most populous city, Santa Ana, had one of the lowest clearance rates in the state at 28 percent. The citys Police Department was strapped for cash and had a low officer-to-resident ratio at a time when gang violence was increasing and homicides were on the rise. Former Santa Ana Police Chief Paul Walters found creative ways to address the problem. He stretched the departments budget, using asset forfeiture typically in the form of cash seized from suspected drug dealers to buy new equipment for detectives. And he started a reward program funded by an anonymous donor that offered payment for information on homicides. Walters also created a special unit that focused solely on gang-related homicides, hired retired detectives to work cold cases, and traded an investigator position for a firearms examiner, which allowed police to get ballistics information on guns used in killings much more quickly. The homicide clearance rate steadily improved, and by 2009, it topped 100 percent: Detectives had solved not only every current homicide, but those from previous years as well. Walters said making the improvements required obtaining every grant, federal partnership, technology and reward program he could get his hands on. You dont give the crooks any quarter, he said. Youre going to go to the end of the Earth to catch them and bring them to justice. We didnt care how long it took. Hargrove, the Murder Accountability Project researcher, said that elected officials in cities with low clearance rates often need to throw their weight behind the issue of unsolved killings before any progress can be made. Scott Strazzante/The Chronicle It comes down to political will, he said, and the failure of political will helps to generate more murders. Mayor Butt disagreed, saying his city does a remarkable job given its limited resources. There are a lot of subtleties to this, he said. Its not just statistics of this city has a high clearance rate and thats good and this one has a low one and thats bad. Youve got to look at the nuances. Nicole Gardner vividly remembers the day her daughter died. It was a rainy morning in early December. The two had been on the phone planning for Christmas. Scott Strazzante/The Chronicle An hour later, Gardners stepdaughter called her to say that Ronique had been shot in Richmond. Thinking her daughter was only injured, Gardner texted and called her phone over and over, then drove from her home in Mill Valley across the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge to try to find her. She checked the local hospitals, then went to the Richmond Civic Center looking for a police station. As she frantically searched for an officer, a community worker approached her. Are you here about the young lady that just got killed on the highway? the man asked, referring to the busy intersection of Hilltop Drive and San Pablo. She knew immediately he meant Ronique. Scott Strazzante/The Chronicle Gardner drove to the shooting scene near Hilltop Mall, still cordoned off by police tape. An officer confirmed her worst fear: Her daughter had been in a car with two friends when someone in another vehicle opened fire. The Redwood High graduate, a math whiz who wanted to be a veterinarian, died almost immediately. Detectives interviewed some witnesses but found few leads, said Lt. Booker, who goes to the scene of every homicide in the city. Shell casings were analyzed at the Contra Costa County crime lab, but the results were inconclusive, in part because they had been run over by other cars. Gardner soon started her own investigation scouring social media, talking to her daughters friends, hunting for anyone who might know who was responsible for the shooting. Police discourage civilians from getting involved in investigations, and Gardner knows shes taking a risk. Sometimes I can hear Ronique in the back of my head, saying, Mom, please stop, dont worry, Im OK, she said. But me, personally, I cant stop. I need to know who did this. On the anniversary of the shooting, Gardner and a dozen friends and family members gathered at the scene of the shooting to erect a memorial. The group lit candles, laid purple and white flowers on the sidewalk, and asked God to help bring the perpetrator to justice. All these months later, Gardner said she is still in shock. Im still trying to wrap my brain around it, she said. I go to sleep, I wake up and I feel like Im dreaming. ... But Im awake, and I know my daughter is not here. Joaquin Palomino and Kimberly Veklerov are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: jpalomino@sfchronicle.com, kveklerov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JoaquinPalomino, @KVeklerov Nearly two decades after the abduction of 13-year-old Christina Williams gripped and horrified her hometown of Seaside in Monterey County, authorities on Thursday said they had finally solved the case and plan to charge a man with kidnapping, sexually assaulting and murdering the girl. The suspect, Charles Allen Holifield, a 56-year-old sex offender and former resident of the same area, is serving a sentence of 25 years to life at Valley State Prison in Chowchilla (Madera County). Flanked by law enforcement officials who have worked the cold case since Christina vanished in June 1998, Monterey County District Attorney Dean Flippo told reporters at an afternoon news conference in Salinas that his office would charge Holifield in Christinas case by the end of next week. Holifield will be arraigned for first-degree murder with special circumstances and kidnapping, charges that make him eligible for the death penalty or life in prison without the chance of parole if convicted, said Assistant District Attorney Jeannine Pacioni. Holifield was a suspect from the early days of the investigation and had been questioned by police about Christinas disappearance, but prosecutors said previous evidence wasnt strong enough to warrant bringing the case to trial. Once charges are filed, Flippo said he expects Holifield to be extradited from prison to Monterey County a transfer that could take weeks. Flippo declined to say whether he would seek the death penalty, saying that determination would be made only after his office consults with Christinas surviving family, particularly her parents, Michael and Alice Williams. Christina disappeared June 12, 1998, after she took the family dog for a walk around the former Fort Ord Army base. About 45 minutes later, the dog was found with its leash but without Christina. Her disappearance shook the county, and soon after she went missing, celebrities helped bring nationwide attention to the case, while the FBI offered a six-figure reward for information leading to an arrest. Pictures of Christina, along with sketches of possible suspects, were posted around Monterey County, in the Bay Area and beyond. The girls decomposed body was discovered seven months later, on Jan. 12, 1999, by a botany researcher on land belonging to the University of California Natural Reserve system. She was found near where she was last seen. Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts. Flippo said DNA evidence linked Holifield definitively to Christinas death after investigators spent years, and thousands of hours of work, trying to establish a connection that would hold up in court. He declined to provide additional details. Holifield was previously convicted of assault with intent to commit rape in Monterey County. His current sentence stemmed from a 1999 conviction for attempted kidnapping and making criminal threats against a woman in 1998, said Pacioni. The charging of Holifield will never bring back Christina Williams, Flippo said, but the very least we can do is work very, very hard to try to present the evidence to a jury. Michael Bodley is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mbodley@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @michael_bodley Actor Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs has vivid memories of where he was on Jan. 23, 1977, the night that the groundbreaking miniseries Roots made its world premiere. He and John Travolta were at their Welcome Back, Kotter co-star Marcia Strassmans house to eat spaghetti and watch the show. Hilton-Jacobs was a star of Roots, playing rebellious slave Noah, but his episodes were scheduled to air later in the week. As the three co-workers watched the story of Kunta Kinte (LeVar Burton), a young man plucked from his African home and sold into bondage in America, Hilton-Jacobs remembers his friends reactions. Their jaws dropped, he says by phone from Los Angeles. A lot of the information about the life of slaves and the things that had gone on with slavery and the unfairness of it and the forced actions, they didnt really have a real clue. The miniseries was an adaptation of Alex Haleys Pulitzer Prize-winner that spent 22 weeks atop the New York Times best-seller list. Shown on eight consecutive nights, Roots became even more of a phenomenon. It was the most-watched show in television history, capturing the attention of an estimated 130 million to 140 million viewers. One hundred million people tuned in to the series finale, making it at the time the most-watched television episode of all time. (It has since fallen to third behind the 1980 Who Shot J.R.? episode of Dallas and the all-time ratings champion for episodic television, the 1983 MASH finale.) A second miniseries, Roots: The Next Generation, arrived in 1979; followed by Roots: The Gift, a 1988 TV movie; and then a 2016 remake. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 3 1 of 3 Courtesy of The Oakland International Film Festival Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Courtesy of The Oakland International Film Festival Show More Show Less 3 of 3 Paul Archuleta/Getty Images Show More Show Less The Oakland International Film Festival is feting this cultural landmark with a 40th anniversary celebration. Hilton-Jacobs will be in attendance; along with Louis Gossett Jr., an Emmy winner for his portrayal of Fiddler; Mandela Van Peebles, who played Noah in the 2016 Roots; Mario Van Peebles, who directed an episode of the 2016 miniseries; Danny Glover; and Mark Wolper, executive producer of the remake who is son of David L. Wolper, executive producer of the original Roots. Hilton-Jacobs found out he had a part in Roots from David Wolper. Welcome Back, Kotter was a Wolper production, and one day he appeared on set at the dinner break. He said, Youre going to be in Roots! Hilton-Jacobs says. Thats how it worked out for me. The impact was just unreal. I knew the impact of the book. It was frenzied. It was everywhere. Im not exaggerating. It was nuts. At the time, Hilton-Jacobs was just 23. He had co-starred opposite Diahann Carroll and James Earl Jones in the drama Claudine (1974) and starred alongside Glynn Turman in Cooley High (1975), a Chicago-set teen drama destined for cult classic status. Playing Freddie Boom Boom Washington, one of the cut-up high school students forever joking with Gabe Kaplans Mr. Kotter on the 1975-79 sitcom, he became a household name. But Roots, the young actor soon realized, was something else. AP I didnt have any idea what the scope would be until I went to visit on the set maybe three weeks before I started, Hilton-Jacobs says. I went just to see what was going on, and I watched Lou Gossett and John Amos work, and then I realized the size of this thing and how important it was and the involvement. I was beyond impressed. Hilton-Jacobs character, Noah, is a slave who tries to escape, but is captured, and who is separated from Kizzy (Leslie Uggams), the woman he loves who is sold to another slaveholder when it is discovered that she can read. They were taking her, and in the scene, we were with John Schuck, who played the slave master or the overseer, and he was taking her into the back of a wagon, Hilton-Jacobs says. John Amos and Madge Sinclair, playing her mom and dad, were begging him not to do it. I was standing by a tree in the background, reacting, because there was nothing I could do to save my lady. It was heart-wrenching, because it felt real to us, the idea of snatching somebodys child, and to hell with you. That got to me. Roots became one of the first watercooler shows that people discussed at work, even on the set of Welcome Back, Kotter. Hilton-Jacobs remembers stepping into producer James Komacks dressing room to say hello and found Komack watching Roots. He said, Larry, see that. Thats my story. Thats my story, Hilton-Jacobs says. I was thinking, Get out of here, man. Please. I let him trip, but what he was relating to was the Holocaust, the parallels between the Holocaust and the black people who were brought over from their homeland to be property and be mules. In the intervening years, Hilton-Jacobs has continued to act, keeping busy in both movies and television. His most recent work includes the 2016 films Dead Man Rising and 31, and the upcoming release A Chance in the World. He also has delved into directing and producing, most recently serving as associate producer on the 2009 documentary Directors on Directing, a project on which he was also a participant, and as the writer, director and star of a short, Me & Bobby McGee. At 63, hes a grandfather and recently introduced his young granddaughter to Roots. Poppa, you look so skinny, he recalls her saying, laughing. The actor is looking forward to the Roots reunion. It will be old-home week for him with friends like Gossett and Glover. I just hope we get a lot of pointed questions, he says. Ill answer anything. As youve probably noticed, I have no problem with talking. Pam Grady is a San Francisco freelance writer. Twitter: @cinepam. 40th Anniversary Celebration of Roots and the 15th Annual Oakland International Film Festival Awards Ceremony: 6 p.m. Sat., April 8. $65/$100/$250. Scottish Rite Theater, 1547 Lakeside Dr., Oakland. https://oaklandroots40th.info. To see a video of Hilton-Jacobs in Welcome Back, Kotter: www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUYqwR1vc5Q Im Dede Wilsey, a flower child, said the president of the board of trustees of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco at the start of the press briefing before the opening of The Summer of Love Experience. I actually was here in 1967, and things havent really gotten better. This was Thursday, April 6, when we learned that American missiles had bombed Syria, which was a few hours before we learned of the terrorist attack in Stockholm. Wilsey was wearing a designer (Andrew Gn) flowered dress, real baubles (I left my hippie earrings in the country), and fresh camellias woven into her hair with rubber bands usually used for her Malteses topknots ( I never realized how much it hurt). It was an A-list interpretation of the era, and it might be questioned by worshipers in the church of Janis Joplin and Jerry Garcia. But I thought her opening statement, while having little to do with the cultural and curatorial scholarship that went into creating this show, was an honest reflection of what most people who lived through that time were thinking. Curators Colleen Terry and Jill DAlessandro spoke about some of the 400 works in the show at the de Young as the press crowd moved through. I started taking notes, and then muttered to the man standing next to me that it seemed that taking notes wasnt in keeping with the spirit of the time. Or even listening, he said. Poster artist Victor Moscoso and photographer Elaine Mayes, who had collaborated on what looked like a 3-D moving poster and album cover for the Steve Miller Bands Children of the Future, stood by a display that utilized blinking colored lights to demonstrate the brilliance of the concept. Fellow artist Stanley Mouse , another icon of the era, stood nearby. Directed by Moscoso, Mayes had photographed pigeons in the Civic Center and then taken shots of people jumping off chairs. The series of photos was superimposed on each other; the end result looks like rainbow-colored silhouettes of people in flight. Light artist Ben Van Meter watched over a projected segment of the 100-foot-long light show he designed for the Avalon Ballroom. I designed it to the music, he said, using a slide projector on a lazy Susan hed bought at Goodwill. Hes raising money for Rebirth of a Nation, a book about his work (more information at http://benvanmeter.net). Were his memories infused with whatever substances hed inhaled/ingested while working? We smoked weed, he said. You couldnt do it on acid. While downstairs, within the show, artists were pleased to talk about their works; upstairs, there was a hubbub of excitement and music, as guests whod tied bands around their foreheads and put on glad rags theyd foraged from the backs of their closets mingled with costumed role-players eye-lined Johnny Depp look-alikes are apparently good for a variety of occasions pretending to be hippies. My favorite part, said 31-year-old Sam Sheldon, is peoples outfits. I sniffed the Wilsey Court to see if there was a whiff of marijuana, but the only thing that hit my nose was the smell of my purse, a beloved relic from the era that had taken on the aroma of its storage place in the attic. A crowd of 80 including Danny Glover, Deborah Santana and KTVUs Dave Clark gathered at the Museum of the African Diaspora recently for a fundraiser for Opera Noir, a nonprofit company that promotes cultural diversity in the classical arts. Artistic Director J. Rosalynn Smith-Clark says the Divas & Desserts event raised $52,500, a hearty chunk of support for the project to educate youth, support new artists and perform works by African American composers in addition to those by traditional European composers. Looking through the Craigslist SF gig listings, Lisa Ochs discovered an ad for party helpers to lend a hand for First birthday party for daughter ... with 125 guests. The dress code is black bottom and white top (the honoree has standards to maintain with her help), and the pay is $10 an hour. And in other employment notes, Elaine Molinari finds it interesting that although six out of 11 San Francisco supes are women, it was a man, Mark Farrell, who introduced a bill that might (by making it illegal for an employer to ask job seekers about past salaries) help women close the gap between what theyre paid and what men are paid. Leah Garchik is open for business in San Francisco, (415) 777-8426. Email: lgarchik@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @leahgarchik Public Eavesdropping Woman 1: I dont like movies about animals. Woman 2: This ones really about the Holocaust. Woman 1: Oh, thank God. With a new name, a new place in the calendar and a new commitment to focusing on local talent, the SFFilm festival opened on Wednesday, April 5, with a showing of Landline at the Castro Theatre. I loved the movie, but thats beside the following points: Bravo for the brevity of the standard introductory remarks and thank-yous that preceded the movie. And for the trailer, a film collage set in San Francisco that focused exactly on storytelling, which is, of course, what movies are all about. Also, bravo to the Cosmo Alleycats, who played vintage dance music at the opening-night party at the Regency Center. And to the Regency itself, which was designed to house a Masonic lodge, and perhaps due to that proud function, has the snazziest, most elegant porcelain urinals in town. (I have not made a comprehensive survey, but bravo, too, to the gentlemen who said the mens room was something I ought to see. If youre reading this online, take a look. This seemed particularly remarkable after slurping a cocktail.) And finally, cheers for Elisabeth Holm, who co-wrote the film, much of which is about sexuality from a womans point of view. In response to the festivals chief programmer, Rachel Rosen, who began the Q&A following the showing by asking where the story came from, Holm admitted, My answer changes depending wherever I am in my menstrual cycle. Nancy Cartwright, one of the writers on the movie In Search of Fellini, was at the 20th Sonoma International Film Festival with Maria Bello, one of the stars of the movie. At the Ledson Hotel next door to the Sebastiani Theater, they were gathered for a reception preceding the showing of the movie, when a bunch of skateboarders who usually hang out in the plaza across the street got in. Cartwright, who has received much praise as (since 1989) the voice of Bart Simpson, performed an instant Bart impression for the skateboard invaders. They left dazzled. According to Clyde Leland, Mick Mulvaney, director of the office of management and budget, has determined that its useless to spend any more money on climate change because theres no future in it. Bonnie Weiss modern version of Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?: Once we had Obama/ Life made sense/ Filled with meaning and hope./ Now were stuck with Bannon, Trump and Pence/ Brother can you spare a rope? I cut off a driverless car, says Dan St. Paul, so he sent me a JPEG of the finger. At the reception before The Chronicles recent Visionary of the Year dinner, San Diego-raised Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, whose time here seems to be more serene these days than when he assumed the post in 2012, said he has come to like San Francisco very much. Everything, he said, but the traffic and parking. Does prayer help? He said it might be useful to address prayers to St. Anthony of Padua, the saint of finding things and of safe travel. He spoke of getting a flat tire in a small town in Italy, looking up to find as by divine providence a tire repair shop. There are things that happen that are just too coincidental to chalk up to chance, said the archbishop. I forgot to ask for help regarding potholes, the current scourge of the streets. So the next day, I turned to an online directory of saints for suggestions. There was nothing specific about these gaping fissures in the roadway, but perhaps St. Antipas, patron saint for dentists (hole-fillers) might help. (As to information to file away for future use, I also stumbled across St. Roch, patron saint of surgeons, tile-makers, secondhand dealers and grave diggers.) P.S. Apologies here to the man of the cloth for putting him in a column that mentions body functions. Writer-editor Howard Junker is out with From the Morgue: The Story of My Brand as Told by The San Francisco Chronicle. He said this is the last of an 18-volume memoir. The entries include an SF Weekly interview in which Evan Karp (Datebooks own Out Loud columnist) asked him to name one thing he would change in the Bay Area: I would make Oakland a little closer to the City. Intrigued by the concept of geographical chess? I await your suggestions. (Im wondering whether Daly City residents would mind moving over to make room for Berkeley on this side of the bay.) Leah Garchik is open for business in San Francisco, (415) 777-8426. Email: lgarchik@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @leahgarchik Public Eavesdropping I dont watch soap operas any more. I just turn on CNN. DECATUR Michaelangelo Douglas, a 26-year-old Decatur man who is on probation for a domestic battery conviction, is back in custody after he allegedly shoved a police sergeant who was arresting him because he was wanted in two other cases. At about 8 a.m. Wednesday, officers located Douglas on the sidewalk on the 2000 block of North College Street. Patrol Sgt, Brian Earles was face-to-face with Douglas, when he told him to put his hands behind his back, in order to be handcuffed. Mr. Douglas placed his hands on the chest area of Sgt. Earles, pushing Sgt. Earles backwards slightly, Bowsher wrote in his statement. Douglas then took off running. He ran into a backyard and tried to jump over a chain link fence, but was entangled in the fence. Douglas continued to resist arrest by officers and subsequently a Taser had to be deployed to secure him in handcuffs. Douglas was wanted because of an incident that occurred last summer. Decatur police officers were sent to a westside residence Aug. 24, after a 35-year-old woman reported that Douglas entered her house while she had an order of protection against him. About the time the victim was reporting the offense to police, Douglas told a dispatcher he wanted to talk to an officer about retrieving his belongings from that residence, said a probable cause affidavit by Decatur patrol officer Sean Bowsher. When Bowsher asked Douglas on the phone if he knew there was an order of protection against him, he said, he didn't care and he will go to the (expletive's) house any time he wants to, Bowsher wrote in his statement. When the officer asked Douglas if he had been to the woman's house, he confirmed he was just at (her house) trying to get his property. For violating the order of protection, Douglas was placed on the police department's persons wanted list. On Oct. 12, a warrant was issued for Douglas' arrest, after he failed to appear in traffic court in a case in which he was convicted of driving on a suspended license. Douglas was booked into the jail Wednesday on preliminary charges including aggravated battery of a police officer and violation of an order of protection with a prior domestic battery conviction. He is being held on a $8,500 bond pending his arraignment by Thursday. Douglas has five prior convictions in criminal cases since 2009 and has served two terms in the Illinois Department of Corrections. He was convicted May 4 of domestic battery with a prior domestic battery conviction, for which he received a sentence of 24 days in jail and a two-year probation term. In that case, Douglas battered a 26-year-old woman in her head and face, causing her to fall to the floor, lose consciousness and suffer a facial laceration. Thursdays decision by Rep. Devin Nunes to recuse himself from the House Intelligence Committees investigation of Russian influence in the November election may be less about the Tulare Republican and more about the slipping political fortunes of President Trump and the GOP-controlled Congress. For weeks, Nunes, chairman of the committee, has adamantly refused to step aside from the investigation into what, if any, connections there were between the Trump campaign and reported Russian attempts to torpedo Democrat Hillary Clintons bid for president. That continued even after Nunes admitted he had received classified information from White House sources last month and then discussed it with the president, a possible target of the House probe, before sharing it with committee members. Give me a reason to recuse myself and I might consider it, Nunes told an ABC News reporter last week. That all changed Thursday when Nunes abruptly announced he was stepping aside. Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press Several left-wing activist groups have filed accusations against me with the Office of Congressional Ethics, he said in a statement. The charges are entirely false and politically motivated. Despite what he called the baselessness of the charges, Nunes said it would be in the best interests of the committee and Congress to have Texas Rep. Mike Conaway temporarily take charge of the committees Russia investigation. The question, though, is whether Nunes jumped from the leadership of the high-profile Russia investigation or was pushed. If his statement is true, its the first and probably the last time Devin Nunes gave in to left-wing activist groups, said David McCuan, a political science professor at Sonoma State University. The hue-and-cry against Nunes had been growing in recent days, especially from Democrats convinced that he was more beholden to Trump, on whose transition team he served, than he was to the bipartisan committee he chaired. On Tuesday, for example, 20 House Democrats, in a letter to GOP Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, called for Nunes to be removed from the investigation. This is about country, not party, they said in the letter. Chairman Nunes has demonstrated his bias, and the public will no longer accept the results of this probe as legitimate under his leadership. Nunes reportedly met with Ryan Wednesday night to discuss stepping aside from the Russia investigation. Ryan, who at a news conference last week simply said, No when asked if Nunes should drop out of the probe, had a different view Thursday. It is clear that this (ethics investigation) would be a distraction for the House Intelligence Committees investigation into Russian interference into our election, Ryan said. He added that he was confident that Conaway will oversee a professional investigation into Russias actions and follow the facts wherever they lead. And while the president last week tweeted that the Trump Russia story is a hoax! and has consistently suggested that any investigation should be aimed at former President Barack Obamas Democratic administration, the White House was unusually quiet Thursday. Trump spokesman Sean Spicer, who said he found out about the recusal when it was reported on Fox News, declined to comment on Nunes decision at his daily news conference, saying only that House committee decisions are up to them. But both Ryan and Trump are probably relieved to see at least one source of distraction removed at least temporarily from the political playing field, McCuan said. It has clearly reached a place where the White House and the Congress need some victories, he said. The only way to do that is by moving out some deadwood. In recent days, Trump quietly moved top political aide Stephen Bannon from his controversial position on the National Security Council and returned the national security director and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the councils top committee, the principals committee, after dumping them in January. K.T. McFarland, a former Fox News analyst who is the No. 2 person at the National Security Council, is probably on her way out after reportedly being offered the job of ambassador to Singapore. She was brought in by retired Gen. Michael Flynn, who was fired as national security adviser in February over questions about his contacts with Russian leaders. Congressional Republicans probably will get their victory Friday when the GOP-controlled Senate is expected to confirm Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court after changing the Senate rules to block a Democratic filibuster. There seems to be a concerted effort by Congress and the White House to finally get on the right foot and focus, McCuan said. They just dont need any distractions while they try and get a legislative agenda passed. The continuing controversy swirling around Nunes showed no sign of going away, which made him expendable, said Jack Pitney, a professor of American politics at Claremont McKenna College. The bad mojo reached critical mass, he said. Nunes was just too big a liability to the leadership. Democrats quickly praised Nunes decision to recuse himself, but had no kind words for the congressman or the Trump administration. It was the right call for Chairman Nunes to step aside, said Rep. Eric Swalwell of Dublin, a member of the committee. We now have a chance to reclaim our committees independence, credibility and ability to make progress. Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco was harsher, saying that Nunes decision was long overdue. Nunes was compromised from day one, and he had no business leading the investigation into the Trump-Russia connection, Pelosi said in a statement. The White House made a fool of Chairman Nunes, and he has deeply tarnished his credibility as chairman and the credibility of his Republican colleagues. Conaway, though, might not make things any easier for Democrats eager to tie the Trump administration to the Russians. He already has made it clear that hes not convinced the investigation has much worth. Speaking to the Dallas Morning News in January, Conaway compared Russian interference in the election to Democrats using Mexican entertainers to turn out Latino voters. Those are foreign actors, foreign people, influencing the vote in Nevada, Conaway told the newspaper. You dont hear the Democrats screaming or saying one word about that. Trying to clear away political disruptions like Nunes potential conflicts of interests or Bannons unprecedented spot on the National Security Council make a lot of sense for a Trump administration trying to right itself after weeks of missteps and conflicts, but it might take more than a few personnel changes to fix the problems, Pitney said. If the past performance means anything, he said, there probably is something else that could come up and blow them off course. John Wildermuth is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jfwildermuth Last week, I wrote about Dorothy DeBose, the 76-year-old retired phone-company employee who was evicted in March from the East Oakland house she inherited from her mother. For now, DeBose lives with her nephew, Omar Taylor, in a unit attached to her former Bancroft Avenue home. Taylor had a lease agreement with DeBose that established him as a tenant, which allows him to stay in the unit. But Community Fund LLC, the San Leandro property-management company that bought the house at a foreclosure auction, is taking him to court in less than two weeks. According to Taylor, Community Fund wants him and DeBose off the property. Thats not what Jessica Marr, Community Funds property manager, told me. Somethings not adding up, and it saddens me that an elderly woman has to worry about whether shes going to have a place to live next month. Marr said she wants to resolve the situation and has suggested three offers that would allow DeBose to return to her home. She said none has been accepted. Tell me what shes willing to pay, and I can negotiate something for you, Marr said. But if you just want to make somebody the bad guy, its not us. If the bad guys the bank, then tell the bank to give you the house back. Wells Fargo Bank, which foreclosed on the home in the fall, expressed sympathy for DeBoses predicament. This is clearly a difficult situation, and if we had been aware of any of the details, we may have been able to offer some options for assistance, said Tom Goyda, a spokesman for Wells Fargo. But Wells Fargos sympathy has a ceiling. Unfortunately, our records indicate we were never made aware of the death of Ms. DeBoses mother, Goyda said during a phone conversation this week. We didnt have any requests for assistance or responses to many outreach efforts we made in an effort to understand the circumstances and to offer assistance. And that went on for a period of years. Heres where DeBoses dilemma gets complex. Her mother, Bessie DeBose, who died in 2009, was the only borrower on the loan and was still the legal owner at the time of the foreclosure sale in 2016. Dorothy DeBose, who has not married and has no children, was bequeathed the house in which she spent four decades of her life when her mother died. We had no way of knowing what mightve been happening with regard to the property or the loan, Goyda said. Dorothy DeBoses mother had taken out a perilous pick-a-pay loan from World Savings Bank. Pick-a-pay allowed borrowers to choose among four payment options. They could make the minimum payment, an interest-only payment, a payment that paid off the loan in 30 years or one that paid it off in 15 years. What made the loans so dangerous was that most borrowers paid just the minimum, which didnt cover even the interest. After a set time period, the mandatory payment would jump. In 2005, the minimum payment for DeBoses mother was under $500. Ten years later, the minimum DeBose encountered had doubled. Goyda said the situation Debose faced wouldve been covered by the December 2010 agreement for Wells Fargo to make $2 billion in loan modifications for California homeowners with pick-a-pay mortgages that Wells had purchased from other banks. Taylor said DeBose thought the will, which left the house to her, was sufficient. She continued making the mortgage payments as the loan changed banks through acquisitions: from Oaklands World Savings Bank to Wachovia to Wells Fargo. According to Taylor, DeBose kept the mortgage current until her sister died in early 2016. She paid for the funeral and missed several payments. When she resumed paying Wells Fargo, her checks were returned. Goyda told me repeated attempts were made to contact Bessie DeBose not Dorothy DeBose about the loans status. And he said foreclosure notices were posted on the doors of the house and the attached unit in September. Taylor said they didnt see them. We live in East Oakland, he said. You cant post things on a house. At the time, Taylor was traveling between Oakland and Seattle for work. So did DeBose see the posted notices? Taylor said no. Keep in mind, shes 76 years old, Taylor said. Theres still a lot of information that went through her that Im still finding out. She was focusing on the mail she was familiar with. There was a tremendous amount of mail that her mother received. There seems to be some gulf of missing information between DeBose, Taylor, Wells Fargo and Community Fund. The house was sold Oct. 31 and purchased for $347,100 by Community Fund. And five months later, DeBose was escorted from the house, given 10 minutes to pack anything she wanted to take with her. Is it too late for DeBose to get her home back? And will Wells Fargo provide any assistance? Goyda was noncommittal. Besides, Wells doesnt even own the house. Community Funds Marr said deals have been proposed and rejected. What this underscores is how important it is for heirs to take action to protect their interests, Goyda said. San Francisco Chronicle columnist Otis R. Taylor Jr. appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Email: otaylor@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @otisrtaylorjr A truck overturned on the Bay Bridge on Thursday evening, shutting down westbound traffic, the Highway Patrol said. The accident, which was reported at 8:23 p.m. east of Treasure Island, was blocking all lanes, although some traffic was squeezing past on the edge of the roadway. Few issues have struck so close to home as the presidents January executive order to block federal grants to sanctuary cities. But whom would the order affect? We present four voices on the issue: U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas), San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera and Jose Antonio Vargas, founder and CEO of Define American, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that humanizes immigration. These are their opinions. Click to jump to an author: Jeff Sessions | John Culberson | Dennis Herrera | Jose Antonio Vargas By Jeff Sessions Kathryn Steinle might be alive today if she had not lived in a sanctuary city. Just 32 years old, Steinle was shot and killed nearly two years ago while strolling along San Franciscos Pier 14. The alleged shooter was an illegal immigrant with seven felony convictions who had been deported five times. Only weeks earlier, the city had released him from custody, even though federal immigration authorities had filed a detainer requesting he be kept in custody until they could remove him for deportation proceedings. Even worse, this man admitted he came to San Francisco in part because of its sanctuary policies. Steinles tragic death made the abstract debate over sanctuary cities something real for the American people. They were justifiably angry to learn that many cities and states obstruct enforcement of our immigration laws, and that this lawlessness is costing lives. As the attorney general of the United States, I have a duty to protect public safety and uphold our nations rule of law. Sanctuary city policies harm both. What is a sanctuary city? Jeff Sessions: Is not defined. The Department of Homeland Security is responsible for the definition and has not yet published one. John Culberson: Violates 8 U.S. Code 1373 by refusing to fully share information with immigration enforcement agencies. Dennis Herrera: Chooses to focus its resources on local priorities instead of using limited resources to enforce federal immigration law. Jose Antonio Vargas: Protects its residents, including undocumented residents, so everyone can approach law enforcement officers without fear of arrest. See More Collapse These policies take different forms. Some jurisdictions have explicit laws in place. In others, political leaders have declared they will not turn over criminal aliens in their jails to federal agents for lawful deportation or even notify federal agents that they have made an arrest preferring instead to release aliens who have committed crimes such as domestic violence, child abuse and rape back into their communities. Others are less blatant, simply refusing to honor Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainer requests. No matter what form these policies take, they all have the same effect: They harm public safety, by putting numerous criminal aliens back on our streets. They also undermine the rule of law, by signaling that our nations immigration laws laws passed by our representatives to serve our national interest can be willfully ignored. Supporters say sanctuary policies help fight crime by encouraging illegal immigrants to report crimes without fear of deportation. But how can we fight crime by allowing criminal aliens whom the law requires to be deported to stay in our country? And how does it promote the rule of law when our citizens see their leaders disregard the law? I want San Francisco and other cities to re-evaluate these policies and recognize that we must have a lawful immigration system that keeps us safe, upholds the rule of law, and serves our national interest. The American people want, and deserve, nothing less. Jeff Sessions is the U.S. attorney general. John Moore/Getty Images By John Culberson In San Francisco, Kathryn Steinle was killed at the hands of Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, a criminal illegal alien who was deported five times and had seven felony convictions. Lopez-Sanchez never should have been released by local authorities. Just after Steinles death, Marilyn Pharis was raped and murdered in her home in Santa Maria (Santa Barbara County). Pharis killer was a criminal illegal alien that was arrested on felony drug and sexual assault charges in 2014, but was released after the city failed to honor an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainer request. These tragedies are entirely preventable if jurisdictions would work with federal immigration authorities to remove dangerous criminal illegal aliens after they complete their sentences at local or state jails. Federal law requires local and state authorities to share information regarding criminal illegal aliens in custody with federal immigration authorities 100 percent of the time. A sanctuary city fails to fully share information with immigration enforcement agencies. These sanctuary policies violate a federal law enacted in 1996 to ensure total cooperation between local, state and federal agencies. When I learned of Steinles murder, it galvanized me to use Congress power of the purse to ensure that illegal aliens convicted of serious crimes in the United States would be deported immediately when released from a local or state jail. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly that Congress can put reasonable restrictions on federal money. As chairman of the Commerce, Justice and Science Subcommittee of the House Committee on Appropriations, I have made certain that if local or state agencies want federal law enforcement grant funds, then they must follow federal law. Receiving federal money is not a right; it is an option open to state and local agencies. The local authorities have a choice; protect criminal illegal aliens that endanger their citizens or receive federal money. They can no longer do both. Weve seen the tragic results of sanctuary policies time and time again. Living in the United States is a privilege, and when you enter the country illegally and commit a crime, that privilege should be revoked. John Culberson, a Texas Republican, represents parts of Houston and outlying suburban areas in the U.S. House of Representatives. Jeff Chiu / Associated Press 2017 By Dennis Herrera There is a reason more than 600 cities and counties across our country have some type of sanctuary policy: They work. Were all better off when everyone, regardless of how they came to this country, is willing to report a crime, enroll their children in school and access vaccines. There is no legal definition of a sanctuary jurisdiction, but generally, it refers to a city or county that chooses to focus its resources on local priorities. Immigration enforcement is the federal governments job. Public safety is local governments job. Cities and counties have to deal with reality: The federal immigration system has been broken for decades, and there are millions of hard-working, undocumented residents in this country. They have built lives here. They are our neighbors, our co-workers, our childrens classmates. If someone is too afraid to report that theyve been raped or robbed because they fear deportation, then a criminal goes free. Everyone is less safe. Thats what happens when President Trump tries to force local police to become deportation agents. A study found that 44 percent of Latinos and 70 percent of undocumented immigrants were less likely to contact police if they were the victim of a crime because they feared immigration questions. Some think sanctuary policies protect criminals. Thats false. In San Francisco, we follow federal law. The law does not require complying with immigration detainer requests it outlaws restrictions on sharing citizenship-status information with federal immigration officials. President Trumps attempt to withhold federal funds on that basis is patently unconstitutional. And we dont keep people in jail past their legal release date because courts have ruled that too is unconstitutional. But the federal government has the fingerprints of everyone in San Franciscos jails. If federal authorities believe someone is dangerous, then all they need is a criminal warrant, which San Francisco honors. Thats called the rule of law. Dennis Herrera is the city attorney of San Francisco. He has filed suit against the federal government over President Trumps executive order on sanctuary cities. Rob Schumacher/Associated Press By Jose Antonio Vargas Sanctuary cities are good for everyone, documented and undocumented. A community that promises to protect all of its members thrives. There are, on average, 35.5 fewer crimes committed per 10,000 people in sanctuary counties, according a study by the Center for American Progress. This doesnt surprise me. Undocumented people are just like everyone else: We want to work hard, support our families and pursue life, liberty and happiness. When we are witnesses to actual crimes, such as domestic abuse or robbery, we want to be able to report it without fearing deportation. Undocumented immigrants are very often victims of crime and extreme exploitation too especially when perpetrators know they cant ask for help. Without the assurance of sanctuary city policies, undocumented people will be less likely to report crime, which makes our cities less safe for everyone. In late March, the Los Angeles Police Department announced an unprecedented 25 percent drop in reports of rape among the citys Latino population since the beginning of 2017 a drop not seen in any other ethnic group which was attributed to immigrant fears of deportation. Whats happening in Los Angeles is likely occurring in other cities across the state. Nearly one-quarter of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States reside in California, where nearly half of all children have at least one immigrant parent (documented or undocumented). In other words, undocumented Californians are an integral part of this state, and our country. Just like our American-born neighbors, undocumented immigrants are human beings (not aliens). Whatever views U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions may hold on illegal immigration, he cannot argue with the fact that local police have enough on their hands without doing the work of the federal immigration authorities. To jeopardize Americans safety, immigrant or not, in the name of ignorance, fear and political capital would be irresponsible, and a failure to focus on protecting people. When cities, counties and even states put sanctuary statutes in place, theyre taking the pressure off local law enforcement to aid in the inhumane practice of rounding up people. As a result, communities have officers with smaller burdens and community members who are more engaged. Sanctuary cities mean stronger communities. Jose Antonio Vargas is the founder and CEO of Define American, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that humanizes immigration. During the last election cycle, six congressional candidates proved that you can run a competitive, successful race without relying on corporate political-action-committee funding. Two of those candidates now have a bill to prohibit candidates from accepting corporate PAC funds. Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Fremont, and Beto ORourke, D-Texas, have introduced the No PAC Act. If it becomes law, then it would be a positive step toward reducing the undue influence of corporations and special interests in the political process. No matter what their political views, most Americans say that money from corporate interests and the very wealthy few drowns out their voices in the political arena. Money from corporate interests undermines the purpose of our representative democracy: that our elected representatives will be our voice in a Congress, and responsive to constituents, not to corporations or outside interests. A number of our congressional representatives have decried the constant fundraising thats required of them. And, of course, more money can be raised more easily from the wealthy or from corporate political-action committees than from small-dollar contributors. Since the U.S. Supreme Courts decision in Citizens United in 2010, corporate and special-interest influence in the political process has grown. One way that this influence is wielded is through corporate PAC contributions. During the last election cycle, corporate PACs contributed approximately $475 million to congressional candidates. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, this accounted for about one-third of all funds to House candidates of both parties. Contributing money to politicians benefits corporations and special interests. Not only do the corporate PACs provide significant funding to congressional candidates, but they also provide significant input on policy. For example, Lee Drutman and Steven Teles have written about the time constraints on members of Congress and their staff who rarely have the time or resources to generate their own policies. Instead, many rely on corporate lobbyists and D.C. think tanks to draft legislation. This leaves candidates with a difficult choice: either accept corporate PAC funding, which provides corporate interests a place at the table, or reject the funding, and become dependent on individual donations. In the post-Citizens United world, accepting PAC funding is the status quo. Though lawful, accepting corporate PAC contributions (typically large donations) has increased the undue influence of corporate and special-interest groups. Candidates can reject this corporate PAC funding and become reliant on smaller-dollar individual donations. This requires more work to be able to raise sufficient funds to be competitive, as campaigns have become more and more expensive. In elections, this can mean the difference between winning and losing. But, choosing the small-dollar donations from many individuals puts the people first. When I was the chair of the Federal Elections Commission, I went on a cross-country listening tour. People would tell me that because campaign-finance laws affect Congress itself, they had little hope for change. But, Khanna, ORourke, and other members of Congress have shown that upholding our democratic principles is their most important role. I hope that HR1743, the No PAC Act, is given due consideration and signed into law. Its a legacy that cant be ignored. The Wolf, a new restaurant on Piedmont Avenue, took over the former space of Bay Wolf, which many called the Chez Panisse of Oakland because of its role in transforming how we eat in its 40-plus years in business. Nearly two years ago, Bay Wolf owner Michael Wild decided it was time to retire, and the restaurant was taken over by Rich and Rebekah Wood, the couple who once owned Frascati in San Francisco. They sold Frascati in 2006, thinking it was time to get out of the business, but after a few weeks Rich missed the energy. Six months later they got the opportunity to open Wood Tavern in Oakland. Taking over Bay Wolf was a good fit because they had an emotional connection. The couple went on one of their first dates at Bay Wolf, and they were intent on honoring the space and the name. It took about 18 months to remodel, but the Wolf finally opened in February with a full liquor license and a menu constructed by Yang Peng, who had been at Wood Tavern since opening. She became executive chef in 2012 and recently turned the Wood Tavern kitchen over to Esteban Escobar, so she could devote full time to the Wolf. I went to the Wolf with high expectations but left with the feeling that it could be just about any restaurant in any city in the United States. The food seems generic and oddly trapped in the 1990s. Its the type of place that restaurant critics dread. Its fun to write a review when youre excited whether good or bad but its a chore when everything is OK, but nothing stands out. That is, except for the owners, who epitomize hospitality and tried to carefully reconfigure the restaurant. The biggest change came when they received the liquor license and removed Bay Wolfs small bar to create more open space with a greatly expanded bar dominating the main dining room. Its front and center when diners enter from the enclosed tiled-floor patio that has also been redone. The Woods have chosen staff wisely as far as attitude, but the actual act of service can be a little hit or miss. Some waiters are well meaning but forgetful. I wish they were a little more polished, which is a similar feeling I had about the menu. Peng serves American food thats totally within the box: oysters, duck liver pate, roasted beets. Steak tartare ($15) was a preparation that vividly illustrates the weaknesses in the kitchen. The beef was imprecisely chopped and the chunks needed to be finer, though the mustard-y Hollandaise, capers, red onion and chives gave the beef a boost. A little more precision would go a long way to lifting this dish. John Storey/Special to the Chronicle Ive had olive oil-poached tuna ($12) with butter beans at different places, but not so much that its become a cliche. Unlike most other presentations at the Wolf, this one hugged the rim of the round plate and was enhanced with the addition of radishes, salsa verde and mizuna. It was the type of composed presentation that showed where the kitchen might go with a little more focus, although it seemed out of character with the rest of the menu. One appetizer that grabbed my attention was pommes Dauphine ($8), a classic preparation that Peng enhanced with trout roe, remoulade and dill. I thought the balls would be crisp but they were like gluey mashed potatoes with a thin, fried coating. I appreciate the spirit of generosity thats implied by the portion size, but at times theres too much of a good thing. The creamy duck liver pate ($12), slathered on a thick slice of grilled bread, was nearly an inch thick, and the whole pink peppercorns on top tasted medicinal. We scraped off half, taking most of the peppercorns in the process, and it improved the taste markedly. That said, I appreciated the sentiment that put it on the menu. Bay Wolf was known for its many preparations of duck including a creamy duck liver mousse. It was nice to see duck represented in both the appetizer and main courses. John Storey/Special to the Chronicle Soup ($10) is one of the best options and changes nightly: caramelized onion and bacon with a slice of Gruyere toast floating in the middle; chickpea and lemon; cream of celery with a poached egg and bacon on top. The arugula salad ($10) is also a good option. It is tossed with asparagus, fennel, quinoa and a lemon Parmesan vinaigrette, though the dressing needed to be more generously applied for maximum effect. Many main courses were served in bowls, a style that had a thankfully brief moment a few years ago. Its hard to cut slices of pork loin ($27) when diners have to contend with the rim. The bottom of the plate was glazed with a viscous mixture of green lentils, pearl onions and a few mustard greens. John Storey/Special to the Chronicle The other four choices included a black cod ($29) with sunchokes, black garlic, fried potatoes and mizuna. There is also a duck breast ($33) with polenta, maitake mushrooms and too much citrus-sage pan juices. It felt as if the kitchen relied too much on greens such as mustard, mizuna or frisee to garnish, which made even diverse plates seem redundant. Food Guide Top 25 Restaurants Where to eat in the Bay Area. Find spots near you, create a dining wishlist, and more. The best main course was carrot risotto ($19), containing a creamy blend of rice, pea tendrils, spring onions, hazelnuts, mint and, in the center, chunks of orange and purple carrots. John Storey/Special to the Chronicle Some desserts were surprisingly stylized considering prior courses. Baked Alaska ($9) featured a base of cake about the size of a silver dollar, topped with orange-vanilla ice cream and a beehive of toasted meringue. The two hand pies ($9) were too sweet and the apple filling was mushy. The Valrhona chocolate panna cotta ($9) tasted more like milk than anything else; the chocolate barely whispered. However, the warm molasses crumb tart ($9), with its flaky crust and restrained sweetness, was the type of dish that showed the kitchens strength. When it comes to food, the Wolf is struggling to find a point of view. Yet the restaurant seems destined to be a coveted neighborhood destination, especially with the Woods in charge. It certainly deserves the chance. The Wolf Food: Service: Atmosphere: Price: $$$$ Noise: Four Bells 3853 Piedmont Ave. (near Monte Vista Avenue), Oakland; (510) 879-7953. www.thewolfoakland.com Lunch 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m. weekdays. Dinner 5:30-10 p.m Monday-Thursday and until 10:30 Friday-Saturday and 9 p.m. Sunday. Full bar. Reservations and credit cards accepted. Difficult street parking. DECATUR As he stood in front of hundreds of leaders in the Decatur community, Gov. Bruce Rauner repeated one of his favorite sentiments when he visits the city. We have every reason to have a booming economy here in Decatur, Rauner said. I came over here from Springfield to talk about the changes we need ... to make sure were competitive here in Decatur and across Illinois. The governor was a surprise guest Thursday morning at the annual Community Leaders Breakfast at the Decatur Conference Center & Hotel. More than 500 Decatur-area business leaders enjoyed remarks from Herald & Review Executive Editor Chris Coates and Ohio-based "motivational humorist" Kay Frances. The governor touted Decaturs central location, the Midwest Inland Port and its work force as assets that can help the city succeed. But to get to there, Rauner listed a number of proposals that he has spent years touting as the state approaches nearly two years without a budget. Among those are a property tax freeze, term limits for all state lawmakers and pension reform. During a post-breakfast interview, Rauner repeatedly praised a plan from Senate Republicans that would address these concerns, and he dismissed any plan to approve another stopgap budget. Its a very good plan, and I hope the legislators will call the Senate Republican plan so we can have a balanced budget, he said. Rauner also met members of the Chicago International Trade Commissioner's Association, who were at the breakfast as part of a two-day tour of the area. Other speakers at the breakfast included Coates, who stressed the importance of vigilant community journalism. A good community newspaper is like an honest friend, he said. Its supportive and candid about the problems, direct but fair. It doesnt waste your time, and it wants you to succeed. Frances spent most of her nearly hourlong speech using humor to reinforce her message about the importance of laughter to relieve stress and taking care of ones mental well-being. Self-care is not selfish, she said. Two beloved San Francisco startups just made bank and they did it by selling soft goods, not software. In a world of automated Amazon shipments and algorithmically inclined apps, clothing and accessories retailer ModCloth and intimates maker True & Co. attracted loyal followings by listening to their customers and making the ecommerce experience feel personal even while expanding their assortment and customer base. This approach, and appeal, stood out to two major legacy companies. In late March, 15-year-old ModCloth was sold to Jet.com (which is owned by Walmart), and 5-year-old True & Co. was sold to PVH, the corporation behind Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, for undisclosed sums. ModCloths mission of inclusivity attracted a passionate following, from its six-month Fit Shop in San Francisco in 2015 to its pop-up in Los Angeles that was met with lines around the block. Their success inspired an IRL Tour through America last year. The company was among the first to stop using the word plus to classify sizes; featured a transgender customer as a model; and maintains a no-Photoshop policy for its marketing images. The ModCloth community reacted passionately to a letter from founder Susan Koger characterizing the sale as bittersweet. Nearly 300 customers commented that they were dismayed to see the independent brand move under the Walmart umbrella. If you step back from it for a second, it really does show how much love ModCloth has created in the world, said CEO Matt Kaness, noting he is empathetic to customer feedback and that he urges customers to hold ModCloth accountable. We will prove that this partnership is going to be not just better for our ability to amplify our message and have a bigger impact in the world, he said, but this will also be beneficial to our community through improving our business. True & Co. carved a niche by challenging a conventional approach to lingerie. It flatters a womans mental and physical comfort, rather than appeal to a prescribed notion of how ones underthings dictate ones sex appeal. But customer loyalty only goes so far, and the time had come for both companies to phone an older, wiser and more moneyed friend. The startups gain an injection of capital and infrastructure that is typically inaccessible, even to large stand-alone e-commerce outfits. Meanwhile, the 54- (Walmart) and 135-year-old (PVH) retail stalwarts can tap into the type of experimentation that has become currency in the Amazon era, and for which ModCloth and True & Co. have become known: in-depth customer feedback, bold approaches to personalization and a pioneering approach to physical stores. In the new world order, a sale can be viewed as a failure to launch. But these deals are more a success story. They would make sense even if Amazon werent the Prime-enabled elephant in the room. I would not call (selling) a necessary evil, said principal analyst Brendan Witcher at Forrester, a research and advisory firm. Its good business strategy. This is not an Amazon is pressuring us move. Its great acquisitions even if Amazon didnt exist. Its worth noting that some floundering retailers that were said to be looking for buyers have been unsuccessful (see: Nasty Gal, American Apparel, not to mention Macys and Neiman Marcus). If they failed to capitalize, they would have failed in the acquisitions. Under the tenure of CEO Kaness, who came on board two years ago after a spate of layoffs, ModCloth introduced a branded line of apparel and experimented with its first physical offering, which manifested into a permanent Fit Shop in Austin, Texas, that is closely linked with the companys digital experience. The True & Co. sale marks PVHs first digital-first e-commerce acquisition, which means, ostensibly, that more customers stand to gain more access to its offerings. This is very much an acquisition in the digital space, said a PVH Corp. spokeswoman. Its a way for PVH to leverage the innovation and the data-driven mind-set in (founder Michelle Lam) and her team, and to leverage a brand that can grow on a great scale. The companys Fit Quiz, which has been mimicked by others, allows True & Co. to make hyper-personal product recommendations. Our marketing is extremely targeted and personalized, so that we dont annoy our 5.5 million quiz-takers, Lam said. The data has informed True & Co.s in-house line of intimates, introduced in 2013. At first, Lam said, she was reading the data literally purple bras are popular but she is now able to identify patterns. She saw customers moving away from pushup bras from a mile away. This led to the new True Body collection, which the company was able to bring to market in four months. But a home-run product doesnt necessarily translate into smooth sailing. Lam said that although the company had its best sales quarter in the past three months, it has had to replenish stock six times over. To that end, PVH will provide a global supply chain. Lams first goal will be for True & Co. to always have available inventory. Its a perfect union of new school and old school, she said. ModCloths Kaness said that when he came on board, he could not have foreseen a sale just 22 months into his overhaul. It was impossible then to predict when the company would choose to pursue a transaction, and this doesnt change my personal commitment to leading this brand in the future, he said. The changes we made in the last two years have created the kind of value in the business that allows us to now think about accelerating growth and scaling the business. Kaness said that Walmart CEO Doug McMillon and Jet.com founder Marc Lore were attracted to what ModCloth had built, and that being under the Walmart umbrella will provide the capital and resources that it lacked, in addition to a larger platform. He wouldnt say what this meant for ModCloths possible retail expansion, or how and whether ModCloth would be available on Jet.com. The emotional connection ModCloth attracts is one obvious element of appeal for Walmart. Amazon, which has made no secret of its fashion aspirations, is not known for a touchy-feely experience or emotional purchases. You cant buy ModCloth on Amazon, Kaness pointed out, so there is an obvious advantage that Jet and Walmart now have. But we are small fish in a big pond. Most people dont know us, but those who do love us. But we arent widely available. The timing of the sales is not coincidental, say retail analysts. E-commerceis experiencing a major shift, and mergers and acquisitions in fashion are another indicator that 2017 will be the year apparel e-commerce really takes off, said L2 research director Cooper Smith. He pointed out that e-commerce is approaching 20 percent penetration of the U.S. apparel market historically the tipping point for when online shopping goes mainstream in a particular category. Expect Amazon to continue expanding its fashion assortment through third-party sellers and its own private label brands, Smith said. Lam, who was an investor in Rent the Runway, said the new climate is an interesting harbinger of things to come in e-commerce. There was this belief that digital was a magical beast, but now we know that e-commerce is just another way for customers to buy. We live in an offline and online world, and soon the two will meet. If you approach Lake County from the north on Highway 20 and you should, if winding mountain roads make you twitchy the first lake you come to is Upper Blue Lake. Known together with Lower Blue Lake to the south simply as Blue Lakes, they are a tiny fraction of the size of Clear Lake, and its easy to sail by without giving them any notice. But they have a culture and geology all their own, along with the devotion of families who have been visiting through several generations. Pulling off the road, you discover how narrow the lakes are. Snaking along the depths of Cold Creek Canyon, formed by the convergence of steep, densely wooded pine mountains, they stretch for about 2 miles, reaching 650 feet at their widest. You can almost skip a rock across the narrows, which divides Upper Blue Lake into two sections. Clear Lake, with which Blue Lakes have been joined at some points in their geological history, is fed by runoff, but Blue Lakes are fed by underground springs. Their unique ecosystem keeps the water cool and clear year round, even when Clear Lake is battling algae and other aquatic weeds. A ban on motorboats helps to keep Blue Lakes pristine, though electric pontoon boats and yachts, kayaks, paddle boats and of course inflatable tubes are popular. James Tensuan/Special To The Chronicle The scenic alpine lakes immediately captured Maryann and Peter Schmid, a Bay Area couple who were ready to retire from their successful automotive business. We discovered the beauty and the magic of Blue Lakes that reminded us of the Swiss lakes and mountains in Europe, Maryann says. Instead of retiring, they bought the empty, boarded-up Lodge at Blue Lakes in 2003 and reopened it a year later, despite having no hotel experience and warnings from other longtime lake resort owners that they would never succeed. After the original 1870s lodge twice burned down, the current property was built during the big-band era of the late 1930s and early 40s at the south end of Upper Blue Lake. Its recent history was a succession of new owners and subsequent bankruptcies. We have traveled all over the world, but have never seen a property with a lake that was crystal clear and possessed ... the intimacy of the rooms to the water, Maryann says. It was the setting that beckoned us. That was 14 years ago. She credits her husbands characteristic Swiss diligence and precision with their success in bringing the lodge back to life. They renovated all 20 rooms, converted the huge restaurant into an event center and built up an armada of electric boats. Most recently, the Schmids converted the former front office and owners quarters into new luxury suites. Each room is different; some have fireplaces, some have Jacuzzis, some have four-poster beds or kitchenettes. All have soothing, contemporary color schemes. Breakfast and one hours boat rental are included; a swimming pool, barbecue grill and fishing dock are available to guests. Fishing always has been Blue Lakes mainstay. The unique conditions support an abundance of largemouth bass, bluegill, crappie and catfish. The lakes are also stocked with trout. Fishing aficionados and their families have traditionally stayed in the cabins and campsites at resorts around Upper Blue Lake: Pine Acres, also at the south end but on the west side; the Narrows, midway up the lake on the west side; and Le Trianon, at the north end (closed in winter). The renovated lodge offers the type of accommodations fueling a resurgence of Lake Countys tourism. Travelers familiar with Clear Lake should keep a few things in mind when visiting Blue Lakes. Because the lakes are surrounded by high mountain slopes, morning comes late and evening falls early. The only sandy beaches are on private resort properties, though a little exploring will take you to some of the rope swings that can be found around the lakes shore. The nearest town is Upper Lake, and the 8-mile drive is a small price to pay for the excellent fare at the Blue Wing Saloon or the prime rib special at Running Creek Casino. You can go wine-tasting in Upper Lake at the Wine Studio, which has a changing selection of Lake County wines and hosts food and wine pairings and artists receptions. But for stays of more than a night or two, it would be wise to stock up on snacks (or groceries, for a kitchen unit). And this tip, from Liou Chao, assistant manager at the Lodge at Blue Lakes: Trout love garlic. They cant get enough of the stuff, and the lodge has Russian visitors from San Francisco who prepare their own concoction for their stays at the lodge several times a year. But you dont have to. Most of the anglers at Blue Lakes swear by white PowerBait, which is full of the stinking rose. Christine Delsol is a freelance writer. Email: travel@sfchronicle.com. If you go The Lodge at Blue Lakes: 5135 W. Highway 20, Upper Lake. (707) 275-2181, www.thelodgeatbluelakes.com. From $99. The Narrows Lodge Resort: 5690 Blue Lakes Road, Upper Lake. (707) 275-2718, www.thenarrowsresort.com. Rooms from $60 per night. Pine Acres Resort: 5328 Blue Lakes Road, Upper Lake. (707) 275-2811, www.bluelakepineacres.com. Cabins from $125, day use $10 per person. Le Trianon Resort: 5845 W. Highway 20, Upper Lake. (707) 275-2262, www.letrianon.com (closed November through March). Cabins $90, day pass $10 adult/$5 child. Blue Wing Saloon: Tallman Hotel, 9550 Main St., Upper Lake. (707) 275-2244, www.tallmanhotel.com/restaurant. Dinner entrees $11-$28. Lake County Wine Studio: 9505 Main St. No. 1 (corner of First Street), Upper Lake. (707) 275-8030, www.lakecountywinestudio.com. 1-7 p.m. Thursday and Saturday to Monday, 1-8 p.m. Friday. Running Creek Casino: 635 E. Highway 20, Upper Lake. (707) 262-5500, www.runningcreekcasino.com. Wild Creek Restaurant prime rib special $9.95. Who is the title character in AMCs action-packed drama The Son? There isnt just one, but in the beginning, there is Eli McCullough (Jacob Lofland), a teenager who witnesses most of his family being slain by marauding Indians in 1849. Later, there is a much older Eli McCullough (Pierce Brosnan), a hard-bitten, tyrannical patriarch of a wealthy family of cattle ranchers in South Texas in 1915. How the young man, who grows to manhood with the Indians, becomes the powerful, ambitious and sometimes merciless First Son of Texas is the arc of the AMC drama based on the best-seller by Philipp Meyer, who co-created the series, premiering Saturday, April 8. The Son is a family saga, essentially tracing the history of South Texas through the generations of the McCullough family, and begins only four years after Texas became a state. Young Eli is taken as a slave by the Comanche, but earns the protective respect of the tribal war chief, Toshaway (Zahn McClarnon). Over time, he adapts to life among the Indians, so much so that he begins to question his own identity. Toggling between young Elis and old Elis stories isnt just a way for Meyer and his co-creators, Lee Shipman and Brian McGreevy, to tell the story of one man or even one family. Rather, its a way to tell the story of Texas and much of the young nation as well. Elis younger son, Pete (Henry Garrett), has a more pragmatic and humanistic view of the changing social climate of Texas in the early 20th century than his father and elder brother, Phineas (David Wilson Barnes), who are determined to dominate the region. To so, they intend to keep Mexicans on their side of the Rio Grande and get investors to fund oil drilling on their land. The different viewpoints within the McCullough family are mirrored by those within the family of Pedro Garcia (Carlos Bardem), including his three children, one of whom, Maria (Paola Nunez), was once romantically involved with the now married Pete. Pedro Garcia believes that accommodation with the gringos is a way of survival, while younger members of the family are still fighting to push McCullough and his ilk out of what was once Mexico. The plot is familiar, and somewhat predictable because of that. Many elements, especially in the old Eli segments, evoke a more nuanced Dallas or Dynasty, with more interesting characters. Where those ancient melodramas were mostly one-dimensional and about power, sex and wealth, The Son makes points about xenophobia, racism and general fear and distrust of the other, which have been primary ingredients in our national melting pot since colonial days. Brosnan is commanding as old Eli, but it takes a while for him to fully inhabit the character. Part of that has to do with the series big question: What happened to Eli to so permanently embitter him between the time of his captivity and the present day in 1915? At the same time, Brosnans accent meanders all over the place, from his native Ireland to South Texas. Young Eli is more interesting, because we have more unanswered questions about him, and because Lofland delivers such a solid performance. In fact, the series best acting is to be found among some of the younger cast members, especially Sydney Lucas as Elis granddaughter Jeannie. Garrett, Nunez, McClarnon and James Parks as a villainous instigator of strife within the McCullough family are also among the cast standouts. The scripts structure is artificial, but it mostly succeeds in its purpose, which is to disguise the obviousness of the plot. The characters are nicely constructed, though, and the dialogue both rich and believable. Westerns used to ride herd over television programming back in the day, but their fundamental moral structure doesnt work quite as well on a contemporary audience. Westworld succeeds because its science fiction. Deadwood worked because character depth and complexity obviated the traditional and tired Western plot structure. Hell on Wheels was a modest success for five seasons, but it really didnt break the mold. Longmire works because its really a contemporary crime drama. The Son isnt going to revive the good ol days when Westerns dominated television, but its watchable and often well written and acted. David Wiegand is an assistant managing editor and the TV critic of The San Francisco Chronicle and co-host of The Do List every Friday morning at 6:22 and 8:22 on KQED-FM, 88.5 FM in San Francisco, 89.3 FM in Sacramento. Follow him on Facebook. Email: dwiegand@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @WaitWhat_TV The Son: two-hour, two-episode premiere 9 p.m. Saturday, April 8, AMC The number of U.S. Postal Service employees attacked by dogs last year rose to 6,755 nearly 200 more attacks than reported in 2015. Seven California cities made the list, with Los Angeles at the top with 80 attacks. Sacramento, Oakland, and San Jose also cracked the top 30. (See the full rankings below) "Some of these carriers are just never the same after that," USPS safety director Linda DeCarlo told Yahoo News. "We're not trying to teach people to be afraid of [dogs]. We're just trying to teach people to read the signals." USPS analyzes dog attacks by zip code and provides mail carriers with the data. DeCarlo told Yahoo that postal workers receive training in dog-bite prevention, such as using their mail bag as a barrier and spraying dog-repellent. 2016 Dog Attack Rankings by City Rank City 2016 1 LOS ANGELES CA 80 2 HOUSTON TX 62 3 CLEVELAND OH 60 4 SAN DIEGO CA 57 5 LOUISVILLE KY 51 6 DETROIT MI 48 7 DENVER CO 47 8 CHICAGO IL 46 9 INDIANAPOLIS IN 44 10 MINNEAPOLIS MN 43 11 SAN ANTONIO TX 42 12 PORTLAND OR 41 13 DALLAS TX 41 14 PHILADELPHIA PA 40 15 COLUMBUS OH 39 16 BALTIMORE MD 36 17 PHOENIX AZ 35 18 CHARLOTTE NC 33 18 MEMPHIS TN 33 18 FORT WORTH TX 33 19 ST LOUIS MO 31 19 SEATTLE WA 31 20 SACRAMENTO CA 30 20 KANSAS CITY MO 30 21 BUFFALO NY 28 22 BROOKLYN NY 27 23 ST PAUL MN 26 24 NEW ORLEANS LA 25 25 CINCINNATI OH 24 26 WICHITA KS 23 26 OAKLAND CA 23 27 LONG BEACH CA 22 27 FLUSHING NY 22 28 SAN JOSE CA 21 28 LAS VEGAS NV 21 28 AKRON OH 21 29 OKLAHOMA CITY OK 20 29 RICHMOND VA 20 30 FRESNO CA 19 30 WASHINGTON DC 19 Dog owners are advised to leave their pet in another room before opening the door to a mail carrier. Parents should teach children to not grab mail from the carrier if there is a dog in their home, to protect both parties. USPS added over one million delivery points and hired new employees last year, meaning postal workers are visiting previously uncharted territory. An increase in service means dog bites are on the rise. The annual dog-bite ranking kicks off National Dog Bite Prevention Week, which runs Sunday, April 9 to Saturday, April 15. More for you Dog found alive on N. Bay beach as owner mourned at a funeral "Even good dogs have bad days," said DeCarlo in a statement. "Dog bite prevention training and continuing education are important to keep pet owners, pets and those who visit homes like letter carriers happy and healthy." Read Michelle Robertsons latest stories and send her news tips at mrobertson@sfchronicle.com. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 6 1 of 6 Marin County Fire / Marin County Fire / Marin County Fire Show More Show Less 2 of 6 Marin County Fire / Marin County Fire / Marin County Fire Show More Show Less 3 of 6 4 of 6 Marin County Fire / Marin County Fire / Marin County Fire Show More Show Less 5 of 6 Marin County Fire / Marin County Fire / Marin County Fire Show More Show Less 6 of 6 A dog who survived three days stranded alone near a Marin County beach after her owner died in a boating accident was rescued Thursday by firefighters, officials said. The dogs owner, 47-year-old Brian Phidat Ho, died Monday when his 13-foot Boston whaler capsized in choppy water near the mouth of Tomales Bay. Four people were hospitalized, including a child and a firefighter, when a blaze tore through an apartment building early Friday in the Richmond District of San Francisco, officials said. Four three-story residential buildings were impacted by the fire, displacing 25 people, according to the San Francisco Fire Department. Rallies and protest events are a part of political life in the Bay Area. Heres a roundup of whats happening. Saturday Town halls: Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Elk Grove (Sacramento County), will host a town hall at 10 a.m. at Del Oro High School, 3301 Taylor Road in Loomis. Rep. Jerry McNerney, D-Stockton, will host a meeting at 10:30 a.m. at Nick Rodriguez Community Center Theater, 213 F St. in Antioch. Immigration seminar: Know Your Rights, a presentation and training for pro bono attorneys and others to help immigrant communities. The event, hosted by Canal Alliance Communication, is from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Guzman Hall, Dominican University, 50 Acacia Ave. in San Rafael. For information on tickets, contact Sara Matson at saram@canalalliance.org or (415) 306-0429. Dark-money talk: Hosted by the California Clean Money Campaign, a discussion on local actions to help pass the California Disclose Act, which calls for political ads to show their top three funders. The event is from noon to 2 p.m. at the Sycip conference room of the San Francisco Library Main Branch, 100 Larkin St. For information: www.cadisclose.org. Flash mob: A flash mob at 1 p.m. at the cable-car turnaround, 1 Powell St. in San Francisco, to sing the song I Cant Keep Quiet by MILCK. For information: http://bit.ly/2oazyIG. Monday Immigrant rights hearing: The Immigrants Rights Commission will hold a special hearing on the impact of federal policies on immigrants. The event is open to the public and is from 3:30 to 7:30 p.m. at City Hall, Hearing Room 416, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place in San Francisco. For information, call (415) 580-2360. Comedy: Benefit performance at the Punch Line Comedy Club for NARAL Pro-Choice America, an organization that supports abortion rights, access to birth control and paid parental leave. Tickets are $20. The event is at 7:30 p.m. at 444 Battery St. in San Francisco. For tickets: http://bit.ly/NARALPunchLine. Thursday Sign-making event: Sign-making event for the April 22 March for Science in San Francisco. The event is from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Public Library of Science, 1160 Battery St. in San Francisco. For information: http://bit.ly/2nYqXr4. Education discussion: The Lamorinda Democratic Club hosts a conversation on how federal funding will affect public education. The event is at 7 p.m. at the Lafayette Library and Community Center, 3491 Mount Diablo Blvd. For information: www.ldclub.org. April 15 Tax march: Protesters will march to demand that President Trump releases his tax returns. A San Francisco march will start at 1 p.m. at 11th and Market streets. For information: http://bit.ly/2m5xWOA. In San Jose, a march is from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. For information: http://bit.ly/2nSMxO7. Pro-Trump rally: The event is to promote free speech. Noon to 4 p.m. in Berkeley. Details are being confirmed. For information: www.facebook.com/events/185364111955870/?active_tab=discussion. Anti-Trump rally: A family-friendly event where attendees will use their bodies to spell out an enormous challenge to President Trump. The exact message has not been decided. The event begins at 10:30 a.m., and attendees are asked to meet 300 yards south of the Cliff House Restaurant, 1090 Point Lobos Ave., in San Francisco. For information: www.facebook.com/events/214702565673803. April 19 ACLU event: The League of Women Voters hosts a discussion with Jay Laefer of the American Civil Liberties Union on safeguarding the rights of our entire community. The event is from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Woodside Road United Methodist Church, 2000 Woodside Road in Redwood City. Conversation on Trump resistance: A new event series hosted by The Chronicle called Chronicle Chats. This event, The Future of the Left: Can the Trump Resistance Grow Beyond Protest, will be led by columnist David Talbot and will feature a senior adviser of the Bernie Sanders campaign and other experts and leaders. The event is from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness Ave. Tickets available: https://info.sfchronicle.com/chroniclechats. April 22 Town hall: Hosted by Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, at 10 a.m. at the gymnasium of Canada College, 4200 Farm Hill Blvd. in Woodside. Science march: Marches marking Earth Day. In San Francisco, a march begins at 11 a.m. at Justin Herman Plaza, Embarcadero Center at Market and Steuart streets, and ends at Civic Center Plaza. For information: http://bit.ly/2nAcLkN. In San Jose, a march will be held from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Details to be confirmed. For information: http://bit.ly/2oV8oSu. In Walnut Creek, a march is from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and will start at Civic Park, 1375 Civic Drive. In Hayward, a march is from 10 a.m. to noon and begins at the Hayward Shoreline Interpretive Center, 4901 Breakwater Ave. For information: http://bit.ly/2n7oonY. April 23 Sexual assault conversation: Loosid Projects, Planned Parenthood and Bay Area Women Against Rape host a discussion called Locker Room Talk: Confronting Sexual Violence in the Age of Trump. The event is from 6 to 8 p.m. at 507 55th St. in Oakland. Tickets are $10 at the door. For information, contact info@loosidity.com. Facebook is releasing a resource to help you spot false news and misleading information that spreads on its service. The resource, similar to previous efforts related to privacy and security, is basically a notification that pops up for a few days. Clicking on it takes you to tips and other information on how to spot false news and what to do about it. Tips to spot false news include looking closely at website addresses to see if they are trying to spoof real news sites, and checking websites about sections for more information. Some sites might look like real news at first glance, but their about sections inform the visitor that they are in fact satire. Adam Mosseri, vice president of News Feed at Facebook, said he hopes people will become more discerning consumers of news. The new feature is part of a broader plan by Facebook to clamp down false news stories, which gained outsize attention in the months leading up to the presidential election. False news, of course, was around long before the election. But supermarket tabloids peddling stories about aliens and celebrity miracles are less insidious than, say, a false Internet rumor that led a gunman to fire an assault weapon inside a Washington pizzeria in December. Facebook has been working very hard to figure out how to get their arms wrapped around this, said Lucy Dalglish, journalism dean at the University of Maryland. Facebook was always very interested in technology, but not the social and civic implications of technology. Its like they have become citizens. She praised the company for seeking help from outside experts, including academics, researchers and nonprofit journalism organizations. The company, for instance, is working with outside fact-checking and media organizations to identify false news as such. And once they are identified, Facebook is trying to dry up the economic incentives of false news sites by making it difficult for them to buy ads on Facebook. Mosseri said most of the false news content on Facebook is from spammers trying to seek a profit and not, for example, political propaganda. This is apparent as the sites often flip-flop around opposing political candidates or ideologies, or have multiple pages that support different candidates. Ride services Uber settles in Pennsylvania Pennsylvania regulators are settling a legal dispute with ride-hailing company Uber Technologies for $3.5 million. The Public Utility Commission, which regulates public transportation in Pennsylvania, said Thursday that the agreement ended a fight over Uber and subsidiaries that operated without authority in the state for six months in 2014. A pair of administrative judges had recommended a $50 million fine, which the commission whittled down to $11 million in May. Thats the fine Uber had been appealing before the settlement was reached. Uber says its glad the matter has been resolved. The settlement says both sides agree that Uber has been operating lawfully in the state since August 2014. Courts Muellers role in Takata case A federal judge in Detroit says he wants to appoint former FBI Director Robert Mueller to oversee nearly $1 billion in restitution payments to victims in the Takata air-bag scandal. Judge George Caram Steeh said Thursday that Mueller has outstanding credentials and has a similar role in Volkswagens emissions-cheating case in California. He says Takata and the U.S. Justice Department have indicated support for Mueller as special master. But he wants a formal response in the next few weeks. In February, Takata pleaded guilty to concealing a deadly defect in millions of its air-bag inflators. The company agreed to pay $125 million to individual victims and $850 million to automakers. Groceries Unilevers new approach Under pressure after spurning a blockbuster $143 billion takeover offer, Unilever said Thursday that it would explore the sale of its spreads business, restructure two major divisions, review its dual legal structure and buy back $5.3 billion in stock as it seeks to cut costs and appease investors. The moves, which include overhauling its food and beverage operations, are meant to reassure investors who had seen the possibility of more grocery store shelf space and cost savings from the takeover bid in February by a fellow food giant, Kraft Heinz. But Kraft Heinz withdrew its $143 billion offer for Unilever, the British-Dutch maker of Dove soap, Ben & Jerrys ice cream and Hellmanns mayonnaise, in the face of public criticism and of resistance from its prospective partner. Unilever said that the plans unveiled on Thursday would potentially unlock billions of dollars in savings and return billions more to shareholders by increasing its dividend 12 percent. The company also said it would seek to buy back about $5.3 billion in stock. The changes were announced after a strategic review of the companys operations, begun in February after the Kraft Heinz bid was withdrawn. Unemployment Jobless claims ease Fewer Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week, a sign that the job market appears to be increasingly secure for workers. The Labor Department says weekly applications for unemployment aid plunged 25,000 to a seasonally adjusted 234,000. The four-week average, a less volatile measure, dipped to 250,000. Applications are a proxy for layoffs. They have remained below 300,000, a level linked with job growth, for 109 weeks. Thats the longest such stretch since 1970, when the U.S. population was much smaller. The consistently low level indicates that employers are retaining workers and possibly looking to hire. The March jobs report to be released Friday is expected to show that employers added 178,000 jobs last month, according to a survey of economists by the data provider FactSet. Real estate Mortgage rates fall Long-term mortgage rates fell this week for a third straight week, approaching their low points for the year. Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday the rate on 30-year fixed-rate home loans declined to 4.10 percent from 4.14 percent last week. That brought the benchmark rate close to its 2017 low of 4.09 percent reached on Jan. 19. The 30-year rate stood at 3.59 percent a year ago and averaged 3.65 percent in 2016, the lowest level in records dating to 1971. The rate on 15-year mortgages eased to 3.36 percent from 3.39 percent last week. Chronicle News Services Wealthy Americans are giving away more money than ever to colleges and universities, and it seems like they have their eye set on California. In 2016, California received $1.83 billion in total mega gifts of at least $10 million, topping the list of donation recipients compared to any other state, according to data by the Chronicle of Philanthropy. Comcast unveiled Xfinity Mobile on Thursday, leaping into the cutthroat market for cell phone service, a move that other cable companies are expected to follow as customers rising Internet consumption pits providers of home and mobile broadband against each other. The company will offer its Xfinity customers two wireless options: one for unlimited data that costs from $45 to $65 per line a month, and a pay-as-you-go plan for $12 per gigabyte. The service will be available to customers by the end of June, Comcast said. The new offering is designed to help Comcast compete outside the home as Americans Internet use increasingly shifts to mobile devices. With mainstream wireless carriers such as Verizon and AT&T expanding their services in unlimited data and online video, Comcast said that offering cell phone service can help the company retain customers and extend the reach of its traditional TV product. Comcasts network differs from that of its rivals in the phone business. The cable companys service relies primarily on its network of 16 million public Wi-Fi hotspots for connectivity, allowing users to surf the Web, watch video and listen to streaming music on their phones without paying for cellular data. Where the companys Wi-Fi signals are unavailable, Xfinity Mobile will connect to the traditional cellular network owned by Verizon, which Comcast is using as a result of an airwaves agreement signed several years ago. Its similar to the approach taken by Google when it started its Project Fi wireless service. Comcast views Xfinity Mobile as a way to expand the traditional cable bundle, adding a fourth service on top of residential Internet, landline phone service and cable television. A Comcast Internet subscription is required for Xfinity Mobile to work, the company said. And the wireless services lowest rate (the $45 per month plan) will be available only to customers who subscribe to Comcast packages that include TV and broadband, the company said. The monthly wireless plans include unlimited data, in keeping with recent trends in the industry. A Comcast household can subscribe to multiple plans, meaning that a family of four could see two phones signed up for unlimited data and two phones signed up for the pay-as-you-go option. Switching between plans will be hassle-free, the company said during a presentation Thursday, adding that roughly 70 percent of customers today use less than 5 GB of wireless data per month. Comcasts enormous scale will be its biggest advantage as it seeks to build a wireless powerhouse. Beyond the existing hotspot network, its 29 million customers represent a target audience that is already tied into Comcasts products and businesses. Those customers will not need to undergo a separate credit check for Xfinity Mobile service, and any billing and shipping information will be included in Comcasts online signup forms. The simplicity of the offer lends itself to a digital-first experience, which is going to be at a very efficient cost to serve, as well, said Mike Cavanaugh, Comcasts chief financial officer. Under similar pressures, the rest of the cable industry is expected to move in Comcasts direction. Charter Communications has said that it intends to provide a wireless service next year. Comcast is leaping into a highly competitive industry that has seen companies such as T-Mobile and AT&T engage in price wars, dueling promotions and the return of popular features such as unlimited plans. Because it relies on Verizons infrastructure, Comcasts new service could be hurt if Verizon decides it poses a threat. But for the moment, analysts say, Xfinity Mobile appears to be headed for a successful introduction. Wireless should be a positive driver of value for Comcast, and the market isnt giving them credit for it today, said Jonathan Chaplin, an industry analyst at New Street Research, in a note to investors Thursday. Brian Fung is a Washington Post writer. Less than a day after being sued by Twitter in a bid to protect one of its users identities, federal investigators withdrew their demand that the social media company unmask one of several accounts claiming to be federal workers with views critical of President Trump. Twitter, which sued the Department of Homeland Security on Thursday, said that within hours of taking legal action, U.S. Customs and Border Protection retracted a summons that sought to collect private data about an account known as @ALT_USCIS. On March 14, a Customs agent had ordered Twitter to produce all records related to the account, including log-in information, associated emails, phone numbers, mailing addresses and IP addresses. That information, advocates said, could have been used to pinpoint the person behind the account, which is run anonymously. The user claims to be a federal worker at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services who is opposed to Trumps agenda. If the users identity were revealed, advocates said, it would likely lead to punishment or dismissal. The ... request appears to be a significant escalation of the governments pressure on tech companies for information on individuals, Robert Cattanach, a former trial attorney for the Department of Justice, said in an email Friday. Until now, government demands on tech companies have been justified by claimed national security concerns or high-profile law enforcement investigations like the San Bernardino shooting. Investigation of tweets critical of the president ... raises disturbing free speech issues. The @ALT_USCIS account is one of several alt or rogue government accounts that were created after Trumps inauguration. Most claim to be federal workers whose chosen Twitter handles refer to the agency of which they are a part. Some are former federal workers, still others are private citizens. Because nearly all such accounts are run anonymously or by people using a pseudonym, experts said, followers should be wary of the insider knowledge they purport to have. We have no idea who they are, and because of that, theres not any real legitimacy, said Dana Fisher, a sociology professor at the University of Maryland. But it doesnt really matter who they are. What matters is what theyve come to represent theyre symbolic of the resistance from within. Several journalists and pundits have called for Twitter to verify though not publicly identify these alt-gov accounts, lending the credibility that goes along with the small blue check-mark Twitter traditionally reserves for celebrities and other proven sources. In doing so, Twitter would need to collect more information about the people behind the accounts. According to Twitters guidelines, verified accounts must provide the company with a verifiable phone number, email address, biography, profile photo and birthday. While legal experts said that information could be helpful in lending credibility to or invalidating those users accounts, it also sets a dangerous precedent. Twitters policy on turning over user information to law enforcement requires that government agencies provide a subpoena or court order to justify the request for such information. Requiring verification would just give (Twitter) more and more data for the government to come and try to subpoena, said Emma Llanso, head of the Free Speech Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology. It would create so many risks, and probably have a major chilling effect on peoples willingness to speak out online. That protective cloak of anonymity is essential to them being able to express their opinion, because the fear of reprisal is so high. Marissa Lang is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mlang@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Marissa_Jae The 49ers released starting cornerback Tramaine Brock on Friday afternoon, one day after he was arrested in Santa Clara on a domestic violence charge involving his girlfriend. Other than a terse, one-sentence statement, the team had no comment. But that spoke volumes considering that Brocks arrest was the 15th for a 49ers player since 2012, the first under the new regime of general manager John Lynch and coach Kyle Shanahan. Brock made bail and was released at noon Friday after being arrested the night before on suspicion of felony domestic violence. He had no comment when he left the police station, and his agent didnt return calls. The 5-foot-10, 197-pound Brock started all 16 games at cornerback last season and 40 for the team in his seven-season career. He was one of six players remaining from the 49ers most recent Super Bowl appearance. Brock, 28, was arrested about 9:35 p.m. Thursday in Santa Clara. The incident allegedly took place at Brock's residence, less than a mile from the teams headquarters. Police called to investigate a domestic dispute discovered a woman, whom Brock apparently had been dating, with visible injuries, said Lt. Dan Moreno of the Santa Clara Police Department. She was not transported to the hospital, Moreno added. Brock was arrested and booked into the Santa Clara County Jail. Brock did not have any prior domestic violence calls in Santa Clara, Moreno said. At their Jan. 30 introductory news conference, Lynch and Shanahan discussed how they hoped to alter the culture of the team. Were going to hold people accountable, Shanahan said. Were going to do it the right way. Lynch elaborated by emphasizing that the team will consist of players with great character, football character and were going to have guys that are interested in making their community a better place. The string of 49ers arrests began in 2012 when suspended now-Raiders linebacker Aldon Smith was charged with DUI in Miami Beach. Before Thursday, the most recent had been in September when tight end Bruce Miller was arrested for assaulting an elderly man and his son in a San Francisco hotel. The team cut Miller, as it was his second arrest in two years. Brock has spent his entire career with San Francisco. He joined the team in 2010 as an undrafted free agent out of Belhaven University in Jackson, Miss. Brocks removal leaves the 49ers with only five players who played in the Super Bowl in February 2013 tight end Garrett Celek, center Daniel Kilgore, tackle Joe Staley, and linebackers NaVorro Bowman and Ahmad Brooks. It also leaves San Francisco with two starting cornerback vacancies, as Lynch said last month that Jimmie Ward is moving to free safety. Rashard Robinson, a fourth-round pick last year, Dontae Johnson and Keith Reaser are the next men up, and the team could also add a corner in three weeks at the NFL draft. Ohio State's Marshon Lattimore, a projected top-five pick, visited the 49ers facility earlier in the week. Vic Tafur and Sarah Ravani are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: vtafur@sfchronicle.com and sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Vic Tafur and @SarRavani This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate High-profile San Francisco political consultant Enrique Pearce who pleaded guilty to possessing more than 600 child pornography images, some portraying sexual sadism and masochism was sentenced to six months in county jail Friday after the sheriffs office denied his request for house arrest. Pearce, 42, who once held lucrative contracts with Mayor Ed Lee and other San Francisco politicians, sat expressionless next to his lawyers as Judge Rene Navarro handed down his sentence in San Francisco Superior Court. Neither Pearce nor his attorneys commented to reporters as they left court. Pearce was ordered to surrender Tuesday to begin serving his sentence. Additionally, he was ordered to serve two days in county jail for driving under the influence, to which he also pleaded guilty. Once hes released from jail, he must register as a lifetime sex offender and serve five years probation. Three women representing the child advocacy organization Partners in Prevention sat silently in court as Pearce was sentenced. Patty Schimek, a volunteer for the organization, said outside court that she would have preferred a state prison sentence for Pearce. I think its very light. This is not a victimless crime, she said. We know these images are out there forever. Prosecutors had initially sought a state prison term, then fought to prevent Pearce from serving the sentence at his home. Pearce had pleaded guilty in December to two counts of distribution of child pornography and possession of child pornography among other charges, with the expectation he could serve a six-month sentence under home detention. That plea deal was struck down by Sheriff Vicki Hennessy in March. The Sheriffs Department, which has the final say on where inmates serve sentences, said sex offenders do not qualify for the home detention program. Hennessys decision led Pearces attorney, Douglas Horngrad, to hold off the sentencing and weigh options, which included withdrawing the guilty plea and going to trial. Pearces McAllister Street apartment in the Tenderloin was raided in May 2015, when authorities confiscated devices with photos and videos of boys as young as infants being held down and raped. More than 600 images showed minors engaged in sexual conduct, Deputy District Attorney Alexis Fasteau said. The political career of Pearce, a lawyer when the investigation began, quickly ended after his arrest. A $5,000-a-month consulting contract between Pearces Left Coast Communications and Lees re-election campaign was terminated soon after he was taken into custody. The investigation began after a man reported an online chat in which a user tracked to Pearces computer wrote that the idea of sharing a boy with another man is really hot, used phrases like do you perv? and asked whether he was lookin to explore 8-12, according to Sgt. Candiece Lewis of the police special victims unit. Pearces phone also held more than 100 images of children unaware they were being photographed at spots throughout the city, Fasteau said. Sarah Ravani and Jenna Lyons are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com, jlyons@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani, @JennaJourno Speakeasy Ales & Lagers in San Francisco has had a hectic month, to say the least. Now it's announced it will outsource some of its production for the time being -- to upstate New York. The company has signed a contract-brewing agreement with Shmaltz Brewing Co., a Clifton Park, N.Y., brewery with Bay Area roots. Jigsaw Advisors, the court-appointed receiver that took control of Speakeasy in March after founder Forest Gray was unable to pay back its primary creditor, made the arrangements with Shmaltz about two weeks ago. The 90-day contract has Shmaltz producing 200 barrels each of Speakeasy's Big Daddy IPA, Prohibition Ale and Baby Daddy Session IPA, said Brian Stechschulte, the brewery's public relations and media director. Why outsource? Because Speakeasy is about to get bought -- that's what Jigsaw is here to oversee -- and when a new buyer comes in, the transfer of ownership and transfer of premise permits will likely take several months to get approved by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau. Shmaltz and Speakeasy have a longstanding relationship; the New York company contract-brewed some beer for them in 2015 while they were expanding their facility. New York is one of Speakeasy's best markets, anyway. "They have a great group of wholesalers out here as well," said Shmaltz founder Jeremy Cowan. "There's a ton of opportunity on the East Coast for their brand." The fact that there's already infrastructure in place to keep supply moving surely adds to Speakeasy's appeal for prospective buyers. Speaking of which, the deadline to bid on Speakeasy closes on Thursday, April 13. Stechschulte said he's been giving tours of the premises to a number of interested buyers, which include individual investors, private equity and existing breweries. "We're optimistic that it will remain a brewery," he said. Shmaltz will likely take over more of Speakeasy's production immediately following a sale, but it's unclear whether the relationship will continue longer-term. "We have the ability to produce as much as they need, and when the new owners come in, I'd love to participate in that group," Cowan said. "But I would always want to keep a home for Speakeasy in San Francisco." Cowan is himself a veteran of the Bay Area brewing scene, and founded his brewery out of his home in the Mission. "I've been a total fan and inspired by Speakeasy for 20 years," he said. "It's an important part of San Francisco brewing history. I'm excited to help keep them going." Esther Mobley is The San Francisco Chronicle's wine, beer and spirits writer. Email: emobley@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Esther_mobley Instagram: @esthermob DECATUR After a contentious meeting, the Decatur Township approved a $2.34 million budget for the coming fiscal year. The budget outlined Wednesday would be down from the current year's $2.5 million budget, with the majority of cuts coming from the assessors office. With its approval, the tentative budget must now be displayed for 30 days before the board must vote to ratify it. Nearly half of Wednesday nights two-hour meeting was occupied by the third tumultuous argument in the past month between Assessor Vicki Sheets and Trustee Tom Greanias, who served as assessor from 2009 to 2013. Sheets had presented a budget of $417,700 to the board, a reduction of more than $2,000 from the current budget. The proposed budget was the same she presented to the board at its March meeting, with the exception of $45,000 for Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund, Medicare and FICA being moved to their own separate line items at the request of an auditor. But the board shot down Sheets proposal by a 3-2 vote, with Trustee Michael Smith and Supervisor Lisa Stanley joining Greanias as "no" votes. Smith said he had no problem with the cuts that would require layoffs, while Stanley defended her vote by saying she wants a better description of Sheets purchases. Sheets also accused members of the board of micromanaging her and making things personal when asking Stanley to clarify spending in the general assistance fund. As during the last two budget discussions, Greanias suggested the board cut the assessors budget to $305,276, a reduction of $112,414 from Sheets original proposal. The plan would require Sheets to lay off two employees and move $100,000 to the townships contingencies line item. If Sheets needs to make future purchases for her office, Greanias said she would have to come to the board for approval. Im not trying to keep her down to a bare minimum, but I think we need more control beforehand, Greanias said. Under the plan, Sheets would have been the lone department head required to ask the board for additional money to operate their office. Trustee Amy Rueff suggested Greanias' plan was an attempt to micromanage the assessors office and undermined the boards duty to work with the department heads on a budget and not to force one upon them. Eventually, the board approved an amended budget for the assessor of $389,300, a reduction of $28,400 from what Sheets had originally requested and just under $31,000 less than her current budget. No layoffs would be necessary with the change, though Sheets will be required to ask for money in she wants to continue having outreach events or use computer services. Sheets said the cuts were personal for Greanias, adding she was disappointing board members would support the cuts. Greanias denied the cuts being anything more than being fiscally responsible, though he did get visibly upset when Sheets said she was sick of being personally attacked. "And I get sick of your whining," he told her. The rest of the budget discussions went smoothly, as the board approved budgets for the cemetery, general assistance and general town fund and heard Highway Commissioner Gary Brennan present his $138,446 budget. Its possible Wednesday nights meeting is a preview of things to come for the township, as Sheets easily won re-election on Tuesday night, while Rueff, Smith and Greanias all won new four-year terms as trustees. Stanley was unopposed in her bid for re-election. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The highly provocative (and addictive) HBO hit miniseries "Big Little Lies" is set on the picturesque Monterey Peninsula and Big Sur coastline. Its quaint towns, pretty beaches and rugged cliffs plunging into the sea serve as backdrops for the story centered around a mysterious murder and a group of women who's lives aren't quite as perfect as they might seem in tranquil Monterey. The opening credits alone are an enticing travel ad with footage of Big Sur's Bixby Bridge suspended across the Pacific and dreamy shots of crashing waves at Carmel-by-the-Sea beaches. For anyone living in the Bay Area, the dramatic scenery is a reminder of the Monterey area's astounding natural beauty and will make you want to get in your own car and go. And Monterey will be thrilled to have you. When a big budget television show or film is shot on location here in Monterey County, it not only has a positive impact on the local businesses and economy, but it also inspires people to want to visit, says Tammy Blount, president and CEO of the Monterey County Convention and Visitors Bureau. We hope that travelers will want to come to our destination and visit the sites where scenes were filmed as well as everything our region has to offer. More for you Pixar movie scenes that you can visit in real life in the Bay Area To help you make your trip happen, we highlight locations featured in the movie in the gallery above. "Big Little Lies" is based on a novel of the same name by author Liane Moriarty that takes place in Australia, and the story unfolds in a fictional beachside suburb just north of Sydney. The producers chose to set the HBO-version in Monterey since the town and the surrounding area provides spectacular scenery similar to what you might find Down Under. "It just has a hypnotic beauty. Aesthetically, we were looking to draw the audience in and have them say, 'I want to go there on vacation,'" the show's creator David E. Kelley told Vogue. The stars of the show are three type A, wealthy women and one single, less-affluent mom who send their children to the same progressive elementary school that's said to offer a private school education at "a public school price." Renata Klein played by Laura Dern works in tech and is on the board at PayPal. Madeleine played by Reese Witherspoon quips that she should be working full-time at Google. In real-life Northern California, this melodrama would unfold on the Bay Area Peninsula, in say Atherton or Woodside, the epicenter of tech wealth. But this show takes place a world away in Monterey, leading you to believe the Central California community is a high-gloss tech town, an extension of the Silicon Valley. NorCal locals knows this portrayal is slightly off. Monterey certainly isn't inexpensive, but it's too far from Google and Facebook for tech exec commutes and its main industries are tourism and farming. Its roots are in the working class who were employed by the canneries and famously chronicled by Nobel Prizewinning author John Steinbeck. No matter, the inaccuracy. You quickly forget about it, taking in the sublime scenery of Monterey. The manufacture of cigarettes and other tobacco products is becoming an increasing source of revenue for Armenia. In 2016, Armenian manufactured US$281 million worth of cigarettes, up 23.5% from the previous year. Last year, $209 million worth of cigarettes and other tobacco products were exported a total of some 21 billion cigarettes, cigars and cigarillos; almost 75% of domestic production. This is a 31% increase over 2015 in terms of the number of items exported and a 22% increase in terms of value. While cigarette exports have shot up since 2011, imports have basically remained the same, even decreasing slightly. Exports 2010 - $8.2 million 2011 - $16.3 million 2012 - $41.8 million 2013 - $68 million 2014 - $116.5 million 2015 - $171 million 2016 - $209 million Imports 2010 - $65.4 million 2011 - $57.3 million 2012 - $53.5 million 2013 - $68 million 2014 - $44.6 million 2015 - $39 million 2016 - $40.5 million Iraq remains the main importer of Armenian cigarettes some 60% overall. Syria is also a large importer some 16% of exports ($27.8 million worth). Last year, Armenian cigarettes broke into the UAE market 12.5% of exports. Armenian cigarettes are no longer exported to Turkmenistan and Jordan. Armenias entry into the Eurasian Economic Union hasnt led to an increase in cigarette exports to that market. Only 3% of Armenia cigarette exports go to Russia. None are exported to Belarus, Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan. The only African country importing Armenian cigarettes in Libya - $805,000 worth. Georgia imported $7.8 million worth of Armenia-made cigarettes. Much smaller importers are Germany ($660,000), Lithuania ($500,000) and Poland ($87,000). The tobacco sector in Armenia is also, due to its growth, a major taxpayer. In 2016, Grand Tobacco Armenian-Canadian Joint Venture Ltd. (GTAC-JV) was the second largest taxpayer in Armenia, paying some 22.6 billion AMD in taxes. This amounts to a 65% increase over 2015. There are three large tobacco producers in Armenia GTAC-JV), International Masis Tabac and Masis Tabac. All three belong to Grand Holding. Nikol Pashinyan, who won election to Armenias new parliament on April 2 running on the Yelk Alliance ticket, now says he wants the job of Yerevan mayor. Pashinyan, in a Facebook post, writes that he will head Yelks ticket in the mayoral race scheduled for May 14. We are participating in the election with just one aim in mind. That is to win and assume authority of Yerevan, Pashinyan said. Pashinyan said the decision to run for Yerevan mayor wasnt an easy one, given that he jusr won election to the parliament days ago. Nevertheless, Pashinyan said the parliamentary election results showed that the people were ready to vote for change and hope. Photo: Yelk Alliance Facebook page Hrachya Gevorgyan, who died on April 5 in Armenias Armavir Penitentiary, was not averse to ruffling the feathers of prison officials by speaking out on violations he witnessed on the inside. Nina Karapetyan, Gevorgyans lawyer and president of the Helsinki Association, links her clients death with the fact that he was so outspoken and that many of his articles about the need for prison reform appeared in the press. Gevorgyan was particularly tough on the Nubarashen Penitentiary, calling it the Nubarashen business center. In his correspondence with the Helsinki Association, whose lawyers supported Gevorgyan for the past six years, Gevorgyan wrote about the drug business being conducted in Nubarashen prison by the guards and other employees. Based on Gevorgyans testimony regarding the drugs, bribery and other abuses, including the beating of convicts, inside Nubarashen, Armenias Special Investigative Service launched two criminal cases. Gevorgyan also claimed that guards bribed inmates from 30,000-50,000 AMD to be granted family visitation rights. According to a statement released by Armenias Department of Corrections, Gevorgyan died suddenly on April 5. The justice ministry ordered an administrative examination of the death. Nina Karapetyan says its all for show and doesnt believe anyone will be held accountable. Karapetyan says that Gevorgyan, who had been suffering from chronic Hepatitis-C, arterial hypertension and bronchitis, never was adequately treated while in jail. Relatives had to bring him medicine. Armenias justice ministry begs to differ, saying that Gevorgyan had been examined several times and was receiving methadone. Arman Veziryan says the examinations were the result of pressure brought by the European Court of Human Rights. To press home his demand for adequate medical treatment, Gevorgyan went on hunger strike several times. The most recent lasted 57 days. Gevorgyan also suffered from Parkinsons Disease, listed in Armenias penal code as an illness that can be the basis for early condition release. Gevorgyan, forced to use a wheelchair since 2014, had claimed that he was poisoned at the Convicts Hospital while receiving an injection. He was transferred to a private hospital where he remained in a coma for ten days. Gevorgyans mother, Nakhshoun Yengibaryan, tried to set herself on fire near the presidential palace in 2013 to protest her sons treatment. Karapetyan told Hetq that her client say his mother once in six years while in jail. Prison officials said he was on a wheelchair and that they couldnt take him for visitations. Arayik Papikyan, another lawyer, says that inmates can buy a good cell in prison for $5,000. All the lawyers I interviewed agree that prison officials see their jobs as business ventures, and that the more people behind bars the better the business. Therefore, they believe pretrial detention is used almost exclusively, rather than bail, and why conditional early release is so rare. The lawyers say that Hrachya Gevorgyans case isnt unique for Armenia. There are many sick inmates languishing in Armenias jails and prisons. Attorney Papikyan sums up the situation by saying, Sadly, the view is that inmates are a potential source of revenue, not individuals. The more the number of inmates and the longer they stay inside, the greater the amount of illegal revenue. Photo of Hrachya Gevorgyan: epress.am This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 3 1 of 3 Marin County Fire Department Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Marin County Fire Department Show More Show Less 3 of 3 A dog that was aboard a boat that capsized Monday in Tomales Bay, killing a man on board, was found alive Thursday by Marin County firefighters. Two battalion chiefs were scouting locations for a firefighters' water rescue orientation around 11:30 a.m. when they encountered Yoda hunkered down under a rock outcropping. Firefighters in San Francisco this morning are at the scene of a three-alarm structure fire in the city's Richmond District that has reportedly injured at least three people. The fire broke out at a residence at 453 23rd Ave., according to the San Francisco Fire Department. 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. The National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) board of directors recently approved a list of changes to modify the Margin Protection Program for Dairy (MPP-Dairy) safety net for dairy producers passed in the 2014 Farm Bill. The changes approved by the NMPF board include adjustments to the feed coefficients and milk and feed prices used in the MPP-Dairy formula. In addition to the formula, NMPF approved adjustments to premium rates, a move to a monthly MPP-Dairy calculation, more flexible sign-up options, and better complementarity between the Livestock Gross Margin program for dairy and MPP-Dairy. All of the proposed NMPF changes are important to how MPP-Dairy operates. For example, increasing the feed coefficients back to the levels originally developed by NMPF back in 2009 would have lowered the May to June 2016 MPP-Dairy margin by nearly $1 and resulted in much larger payments to dairy farmers. Examination of the prices for feed and milk used in the MPP-Dairy formula could prove equally important. The current MPP-Dairy formula uses the prices received by producers for corn and alfalfa as reported at the national level by USDAs National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS). The range across states of alfalfa prices in the recent NASS report shows a low of $79 per ton in Nebraska and a high of $220 per ton in Kentucky. The U.S. average alfalfa price for January 2017 was $128 per ton. Many dairy producers suggest the price they pay for quality alfalfa is much higher than the reported U.S. average price. USDAs Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) also reports market prices for alfalfa for many states. While NASS reports Nebraska alfalfa at $79 per ton, AMS shows recent Nebraska premium large square alfalfa at $155 per ton. The differences reported in alfalfa prices by different USDA agencies implies that additional study is needed to determine what price best reflects dairy-quality alfalfa. For example, if a $50 per ton higher alfalfa price was used in the MPP-Dairy formula, the MPP-Dairy margin would decline by about 75 cents per cwt. This kind of change would have a marked effect on the MPP-Dairy safety net. Similar discussion could also occur with corn and milk prices used in the formula. With the development process for the next farm bill underway, it is time to carefully evaluate the current MPP-Dairy margin calculation and determine possible changes that can better reflect the margin experienced by dairy farmers and create a stronger safety net. "The HoseMaster is the funniest satirist writing about wine in the world today." --Karen MacNeil --Terry Theise HoseMaster HoseMaster HoseMaster --Robert Parker "...With sometimes crude analogies and occasional droppings of f-bombs, Washam cleverly uses satire to expose the underbelly of the wine business. It's often hilarious stuff as long as you're not the one being lampooned. Washam takes no prisoners in skewering all that is silly, stupid, frustrating and pretentious about wine, and his favorite targets are other bloggers and writers. No one is immune." -- Linda Murphy in "Vineyard and Winery Management" -- JancisRobinson.com " Hosemaster of Wine First: Im not sure if there is anyone better at cutting through the confidence trick that is often intrinsic to the business of wine. Second: in a world where offending people appears to border on the illegal, the Hosemaster piles in. No one is safe." --Joss Fowler "Vinolent.com" "As serious as the world of wine is, it does allow time for humor. Each Monday and Thursday, Ron Washam customarily posts a commentary on his needling wine blog HoseMaster of Wine . Washam, a former sommelier and comedy writer he might say they are closely related is the most opinionated, humorous and ribald observer in the wine world. His body of work is irreverent and remorseless. Its almost always satire and parody, though he occasionally drifts into straight commentary, sometimes even with tasting notes. This past year, one of his posts was named the best of the year in the Wine Blog Awards. His success has spawned several imitations, which in their awkwardness show just how difficult satire is." --Mike Dunne, Sacramento Bee Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/01/21/6089630/dunne-on-wine-wine-blogs-and-bloggers.html#storylink=cpy "Please let this guy write the scripts for Saturday Night Live which has gotten so lame...his newest "wisdom" is worth an Emmy....I wonder if he is the genius behind all those Hitler/Parker,etc. clips? No one else is remotely as funny or as talented.And the wine world sure needs someone to poke fun at all the nonsense and phoney/baloney unsufferable crap out there." --Robert Parker " Washam uses his own blog, HoseMaster of Wine , to skewer the industry in general and wine blogs in particular. If your mouse scoots to your browser's close box while reading a wine blog, Washam may be the blogger for you." -- San Francisco Chronicle "Ron Washam, former sommelier, is easily the most bitingly funny blogger/wine writer that we have ever come across. He is an equal opportunity crusader who pillories big wineries and amateur bloggers alike, as well as everything and everyone in between...One needs a sense of humor and a tolerance for earthiness to enjoy reading The Hosemaster . We must have both because this guy deserves a wider audience, in our humble opinion." --Connoisseurs' Guide to California Wine --Steve Heimoff "This site should carry a warning label. It's sort of a Dave Barry/George Carlin approach to wine. The Hosemaster (real name Ron Washam) skewers fellow bloggers and industry savants with glee, while offering hilarious wine guides such as his Honest Guide to Grapes... --Paul Gregutt, Seattle Times "Washam is a skilled wine judge (I have judged with him) who is willing to judge wine double blind, in public . To my knowledge, Parker does not do this and never has. So Ron's credentials are in place, and so is his sense of the absurd." --Dan Berger, VintageExperiences "...I consider Ron a talented writer and Ive long been an admirer of his scathing wit..." --1WineDude "And if any free sites think they can conquer the world, theres always the Hosemaster to take em down a notch." --Tyler Colman "Dr. Vino" --Jo Diaz "Juicy Tales by Jo Diaz" "I must say you are an idiot. I've never liked you. I have no idea why people find you funny." --Reign of Terroir --Will Lyons (WSJ) on Twitter --Levi Dalton on Twitter very My eldest brother Marc, 66, passed away on March 17. I dont need condolences, and Ill tell you why. Marc began showing symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia at age 18 it was not his fault, or anyone elses just the crappy hand he was dealt. All the promise he had, as a brilliant scholar, poet, athlete and musician, was forever redefined. He managed, in spite of his illness, not to get lost on the streets, like so many others; uncared for, feared, mocked and worst of all, passed by. He also managed, when he wasnt tormented by paranoia or giving in to understandable bitterness, to have a wizened cowpoke sense of humor, to be friendly to everyone he met, and most lasting, to write some heart-breakingly beautiful songs. Like many people with his illness, he refused medication. Hed seen what it had done to friends of his who happened to be in the same boat, and the side effects scared him. The medicine would have made him better for us, but Im not sure how much better the adjustment to his consciousness would have been for him, and the law didnt allow anyone to force it on him anyway. What the law also didnt do was establish adequate resources for people with mental illness. Deinstitutionalization, beginning in the 1970s, did help a few people from being medicated against their will or from languishing in mental hospitals. It sounded like a good idea, but now many of our mentally ill are either homeless or incarcerated? Marc refused any kind of medical care. In the last few years his health declined dramatically. My father, who turned 88 the day after Marc died, had been looking in on him weekly for many years, and never stopped urging him to get help. Three days before he died, Dad and Francis, a man who had known Marc in better days, and who dropped like an angel from heaven earlier in the year to help, went to his apartment and called 911, hoping he would go willingly to the hospital. He refused, mustering, as he often did, enough strength and guile to make the emergency staff think he was OK. He even joked with them. After speaking to Francis, and hearing the defeat in my dads voice, I dropped what I was doing and drove up to Vermont. I was afraid of what was coming, of seeing my brother suffering. He did suffer, greatly, but he also lived on his own terms and with tremendous courage. And even though the circumstances of his passing were traumatic, I felt blessed to be able to show him love on his journey out of this life. In lieu of condolences, which are easy, I want to ask you to do something hard. Be aware of the suffering of the mentally ill, particularly the mentally ill who are homeless. Dont be afraid of them, because they are rarely a danger to you. Know that they are much more than their mental illness they have talents, opinions and passions, and they are worthy of respect and compassion. Be very grateful for those who go into mental health social work, because its a tough job, and support the few politicians and legislators who care about the mentally ill. Let people like me talk to you about our loved ones, without judgment. Know that we feel helpless, and guilty for having the life that our brothers, sisters, parents, or children might have wanted to have. Be especially kind to the next person you meet who seems to be struggling with mental illness because that poor soul could be my brother. Rebecca Beaudin, holds a Master of Theological Studies degree from Harvard Divinity School. She lives in Philadelphia where she works as a professional makeup artist. Go to www.marcbeaudin.org to listen to some of Marcs music and read his poetry. Brain Candy Live! / Contributed photo Since Mythbusters ended last year, co-host and San Francisco resident Adam Savage has kept busy doing everything from City Arts & Lectures moderating gigs to an ongoing celebration of making things and pop culture on www.tested.com. He also found a new partner in science: YouTube star Michael Stevens, who hosts the education series Vsauce. Thursday night, United States President Donald Trump authorized the launching of 60 tomahawk missiles against a Syrian air base in retaliation for a Syrian government-ordered chemical weapons strike against its own civilians. Members of Congress were quick to issue statements regarding the missile strike, with some praising the president's decision and others voicing their concerns over the constitutionality of the attack. Interestingly, the responses were not dictated by party lines, as high-profile Democrats including Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer supported the strike, whereas others including Tim Kaine and Ted Lieu condemned it. Pelosi however cautioned that "if the President intends to escalate the U.S. military's involvement in Syria, he must come to Congress for an Authorization for Use of Military Force." The same divide could be found in the GOP, with Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham applauding the president's decision, but with Rand Paul and members of the House Freedom Caucus questioning the constitutionality of the strike. Click through the slideshow below to see how members of Congress responded to President Trump's decision to launch a missile strike against the Syrian air base that launched a chemical weapons attack: President Trump was briefed on his options by Defense Secretary James Mattis at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort, where he is currently hosting Chinese president Xi Jinping. Trump stated that "Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children." He also called on other countries "to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria." WASHINGTON The Senate confirmed Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court on Friday, capping more than a year of ferocious partisan combat whose end result has strengthened the power of the presidency over the high court, and put a conservative justice in a seat that opened during a Democratic presidency. White House spokesman Sean Spicer said President Trump will swear Gorsuch in Monday or Tuesday, restoring the courts 5-to-4 conservative majority by filling the vacancy opened by the death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016. Gorsuch won confirmation by a simple 54-to-45 majority. The vote came a day after Republicans changed Senate rules to overcome a successful filibuster of Gorsuch by Democrats. Democrats were furious over Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnells unprecedented decision last year to refuse to consider then-President Barack Obamas nominee to the seat, Merrick Garland, a moderately liberal chief judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. McConnell said Friday that his decision to hold the seat open for a Republican president to fill was the most consequential of his four-decade Senate career. It came at the sacrifice of the filibuster for all future Supreme Court nominations, including inevitable nominees by Democratic presidents. More for you Members of Congress comment on Syrian missile strike Known as the nuclear option, the decision to end the filibuster eliminates the need for bipartisan cooperation in the confirmation of Supreme Court nominees, greatly strengthening the hand of future presidents to shape the court to their liking, at least when their party controls the Senate. But McConnells strategy paid huge immediate dividends for Republicans by preventing Obama from flipping the courts ideological balance with a liberal justice. Gorsuch, 49, is a self-described originalist in the Scalia mode who believes in interpreting the Constitution as it was written. Over the next four years, the payoff to Republicans could be even bigger and endure for generations given the potential for Trump to cement a powerful conservative majority on the court. Two of the courts liberal justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 84, and Stephen Breyer, 78, are nearing retirement, as is the courts swing justice, Anthony Kennedy, 80. Democrats, fully aware of the stakes, showed no hesitation to filibuster Gorsuch after concluding that they were likely to lose that power anyway on the next court pick. Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., stressed the power the Supreme Court wields over civic life and said Friday she hopes Gorsuch reconsiders his narrow judicial philosophy. The integrity of the Supreme Court and the lives of millions of Americans depend on it, she said. Antiabortion, pro-gun, religious liberty and conservative legal groups heralded the confirmation vote as a monumental victory. Douglas Johnson, senior policy adviser for National Right to Life, said McConnells strategy produced a historic victory for Senate Republicans, the president, and the country and a huge defeat for a coalition of left-wing groups, led by the abortion lobby. Three Democrats facing re-election next year in states that Trump won in November voted with Republicans to approve Gorsuch to the lifetime appointment. They were Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Manchin of West Virginia. All Republicans voted for Gorsuch, with the exception of one who was not present because of illness, Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia. But other vulnerable Democrats, such as Claire McCaskill of Missouri, a state Trump won by 19 points, and Jon Tester of Montana, where Trump won by 21 points, did not break ranks despite a $10 million ad campaign by the conservative Judicial Crisis Network targeting vulnerable Democrats. The liberal Progressive Change Campaign Committee, for its part, ran Gorsuch attack ads against potentially vulnerable Senate Republicans such as Jeff Flake of Arizona and Dean Heller of Nevada. Carolyn Lochhead is The San Francisco Chronicles Washington correspondent. Email: clochhead@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @carolynlochhead This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The waterfront Scott's Seafood Restaurant must pay $395,000 in fines for limiting public access to the shoreline and holding an unauthorized number of private events. A regional commission approved the fine by an 18-0 vote on Thursday. Perched on the waterfront of Jack London Square, the restaurant modified its pavilion without permits and held an extensive number of unauthorized private events in the pavilion. The SF Bay Conservation and Development Commission said Scott's continually violated agency rules regarding public access to the shoreline. Last December, the Bay Commission proposed a penalty of $841,100 for the violations, which occurred over a 12-year period. This penalty is way out of line, Michael Verna, an attorney representing Scotts, told the East Bay Times in December. This is bureaucracy run amok. This is crazy. A commission subcommittee later recommended cutting the penalty to $395,000, and said the fine would be reduced by an additional 15 percent if Scott's quickly modifies the pavilion to meet agency standards. Founded in 1960, the Bay Commission is the world's first coastal protection agency, says a statement on its website. It was created to stop the filling of the San Francisco Bay and to encourage shoreline access. The commission granted Scott's a permit in 1996 to build a 4,400-square-foot open-air pavilion, with detachable fabric panels for private events, within the public open space at Jack London Square. The permit stipulated that the pavilion must be open to the public 80 percent of the time, while the remaining 20 percent is allocated to hosting private events. According to the San Francisco Business Times, neighbors have complained that Scott's made access to the shoreline so narrow, it discouraged many from accessing the water and blocked views of the estuary. In 2011, the commission says Scott's swapped the fabric pavilion walls with retractable metal walls and added a storage unit, door and roof without obtaining a permit. Scott's Seafood opened its first storefront on Lombard Street in 1976 before expanding to Jack London Square and Walnut Creek. Liz Gallagher, a Scott's executive, told the East Bay Times that she will ask the commission to increase the current limit of pavilion events to no more than 73 days a year in order to accommodate the many event requests from community and nonprofit organizations. Read Michelle Robertsons latest stories and send her news tips at mrobertson@sfchronicle.com. BERLIN Behind a metal gate in Berlin, in a small courtyard nestled between a residential building and a car park, stands a piece of American history. The Detroit home of civil rights icon Rosa Parks has been painstakingly rebuilt by American artist Ryan Mendoza outside his studio in the Wedding district of the German capital. The unlikely location is the result of the financial crisis of 2008 and Detroits dramatic decline. Like thousands of houses in Detroit, Parks home was abandoned after the subprime mortgage crisis hit. Authorities planned to demolish it in an effort to clean up the city. That Parks had moved there only two years after becoming famous for refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, Ala., did not matter. To stop the demolition, Parks niece Rhea McCauley bought the house from the city for $500 and donated it to Mendoza, who already had moved a Detroit house to Europe as part of an art project. When Mendoza said he wanted to bring Parks house to his studio in Berlin, McCauley agreed. It is something that is precious, she said while visiting the wooden two-story house in Berlin this week for the first time. And it is priceless. And yet it is being mistreated. Thats what I saw. And thats how it felt. And so when I met Ryan and he said, Lets bring it to Berlin and restore it, I said yes. In the summer of 2016, Mendoza and volunteers took the house apart, put it into containers and shipped it to Germany. Mendoza has spent six months rebuilding it. It would be a difficult thing to do if you didnt want to do it, he said. But I wanted to do it so much that it was a joy. Visitors will not be able to go inside, but lights will be on in the windows and Mendoza will play music from the time when Parks lived there. Parks moved to Detroit from Montgomery in 1957 to escape death threats and stayed in the house with her brother and his family. Jona Kallgren is an Associated Press writer. 1 Venezuela protests: Tens of thousands of demonstrators shut down much of Venezuelas capital on Thursday, blocking the citys main artery to protest what they call an attempted coup by the socialist administration. Many carried signs reading No to Dictatorship as they crowded the principal highway that cuts from Caracas wealthy eastern section to downtown. Later in the day, protesters clashed with police who turned the crowd away with tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons. This latest political crisis was triggered last week when the Supreme Court issued a ruling that nullified Congress. President Nicolas Maduro instructed the court to roll back that ruling a few days later, but opposition leaders said the attempt to invalidate a branch of power revealed the administrations true dictatorial nature. 2 Gaza executions: The Islamic militant Hamas group ruling the Gaza Strip on Thursday executed three Palestinians it had accused of collaborating with Israel, a development that was likely spurred by the killing of a senior Hamas commander last month. Hamas said the men were hanged at a police compound as dozens of Hamas leaders and officials watched. The three were sentenced months ago for relaying information on attack tunnels and other military details to Israel and were not directly connected to the killing of the senior commander but his death prompted their execution. PALM BEACH, Fla. President Trump said Friday he has developed an outstanding relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping after meeting with the leader of a nation Trump has criticized as a menace to the United States. The widely anticipated meeting of the leaders of the worlds two largest economies was largely overshadowed by the U.S. missile strikes at Syria. Those strikes added weight to Trumps threat last week to act unilaterally against North Koreas weapons program. Trump said in a brief appearance before reporters that he and Xi made tremendous progress in their first face-to-face talks and that he believe lots of very potentially bad problems will be going away. He did not elaborate on the progress or the problems. But the two days of talks at Trumps private estate in Florida were expected to focus on what Trump has described as Chinas unfair trade practices and inadequate efforts to halt North Koreas nuclear weapons and missile program. Xi said the delegations covered important topics and have established a good friendship and working relationship. He said he believes the U.S. and China can continue to develop the relationship, noting that its the historic responsibility of both countries to work toward peace and stability. The U.S. announced the missile barrage shortly after Trump and Xi wrapped up dinner Thursday. The strikes were retaliation against Syrian President Bashar Assad for a chemical weapons attack against civilians caught up in his countrys long civil war. China has sided with Russia at the United Nations in opposing condemnation of Assads government but has not become directly involved in the conflict. The timing of the attack could send a message to the Chinese. Trump told the Financial Times in the days before Xis arrival that he is prepared to go it alone on North Korea if China doesnt work with the U.S. to crack down on North Koreas nuclear program Military options against North Korea are much riskier than those against Syria. It has already tested nuclear weapons and South Koreas capital, Seoul, is in range of North Korean artillery. Taking action against North Korea has been a sticking point in U.S. talks with the Chinese. China is North Koreas most important ally and trading partner. Before Thursdays dinner, Trump said he and Xi already had had a long discussion and had developed a friendship, and then joked, I have gotten nothing, absolutely nothing. However, Xi apparently got something out of dinner. Chinese state media reported late Thursday that Trump has accepted Xis invitation to visit China this year. The official Xinhua News Agency said Trump will travel to China at an early date in 2017, but gave no details. The White House downplayed expectations for a breakthrough on issues like trade and tariffs, insisting that the 24-hour summit is mostly an introductory meeting for the two leaders. Within Trumps administration, divisions remain over how to approach China. Vivian Salama and Julie Pace are Associated Press writers. The U.S. military launched 59 cruise missiles at a Syrian military airfield late Thursday, in the first direct American assault on the government of President Bashar Assad since that countrys civil war began six years ago. The operation, which the Trump administration authorized in retaliation for a chemical attack killing scores of civilians this week, dramatically expands U.S. military involvement in Syria and exposes the U.S. to heightened risk of direct confrontation with Russia and Iran, both backing Assad in his attempt to crush his opposition. President Trump said the strike was in the vital national security interest of the United States and called on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria. And also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types. The missiles were launched from two Navy destroyers the Ross and the Porter in the eastern Mediterranean. They struck an air base called Shayrat in Homs province, the site from which the planes that conducted the chemical attack in Idlib are believed to have originated. The targets included air defenses, aircraft, hangars and fuel. The military said initial indications were that the strike had severely damaged or destroyed Syrian aircraft and support infrastructure. Syrian state TV said a U.S. missile attack hit a number of military targets inside the country, calling the attack an aggression, according to the Associated Press. U.S. officials said the Russians, who maintain significant forces in Syria, were given advance warning of the strike. There is a Russian military area at the base that was hit, but the U.S. took precautions not to strike that area, according to Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman. In comparison, the start of the Iraq War in 2003 saw the use of roughly 500 cruise missiles, and 47 were fired at the opening of the anti-Islamic State campaign in Syria in 2014. The attack may put hundreds of American troops now stationed in Syria in greater danger. They are advising local forces in advance of a major assault on the Syrian city of Raqqa, the Islamic States de facto capital. The decision to strike follows 48 hours of intense deliberations by U.S. officials, and represents a significant break with the previous administrations reluctance to wade militarily into the Syrian civil war and shift focus from the campaign against the Islamic State. Senior White House officials met on the issue of Syria on Wednesday evening in a session that lasted into early Thursday, and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, the national security adviser, have communicated repeatedly since Tuesdays chemical attack, the officials said. The U.S. Central Command has a broad arsenal in the region, enabling a quick response. While the Obama White House began operations against the Islamic State in 2014, it backed away from a planned assault on Syrian government sites a year earlier after a similar chemical attack on Syrian civilians. Tuesdays apparent nerve gas attack in northern Idlib, with its widely circulated images of lifeless children, appears to have galvanized Trump and top advisers. The assault adds new complexity to Syrias prolonged conflict, which includes fighters battling the Syrian government and others focused on combatting the Islamic State, which despite over two years of American and allied attacks remains a potent force. Within the administration, some officials urged immediate action against Assad. But others were concerned about second- and third-order effects, including Russias response. The Trump administrations position on the Assad regime appears to have quickly shifted in the wake of the chemical attack, as senior officials voiced new criticism of the Syrian leader. Earlier Thursday, Tillerson suggested that the United States and other nations would consider somehow removing Assad from power, but he did not say how. Just a few days ago, the White House had said that removing Assad was not realistic, with press secretary Sean Spicer saying it was necessary to accept the political reality in Syria. The attack appears to have involved only missiles. U.S. fighter planes, if used, would have had to contend with a modest web of Syrian air defenses and potentially more advanced types of surface-to-air missiles provided by Russia. It was not immediately clear whether Thursdays assault marked the beginning of a broader campaign against the Assad government. Sens. John McCain, R.-Ariz., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said the operation sent an important message the United States will no longer stand idly by as Assad, aided and abetted by Putins Russia, slaughters innocent Syrians with chemical weapons and barrel bombs. Dan Lamothe, Missy Ryan and Thomas Gibbons-Neff are Washington Post writers. New Zealand shares fell as investors likely freed up funds to buy Metlifecare after Infratil opted to sell its stake and on regional jitters after the U.S. launched cruise missiles at a Syrian airbase in response to a recent chemical attack. The S&P/NZX 50 index fell 46 points, or 0.6 percent, to 7,243.750. Within the index, 13 stocks gained, 28 fell and nine were unchanged. Turnover was unusually heavy, at $405.94 million. Infratil added 1.2 percent to $3 a share after news it had sold its cornerstone stake in Metlifecare for $237.9 million, generating an annual return of 15.5 percent over the three-and-a-half years it held shares of the retirement village operator and developer. "It does give them a fairly large cash stockpile to maybe look at other opportunities. It will be interesting to see what they've got in mind for those funds," said James Smalley, director at Hamilton Hindin Greene. Metlifecare shed 4.5 percent to $5.80. He said most of the declines were in the "heavier end of town" with large caps losing ground, like Contact Energy, which shed 1.7 percent to $5.17 and Auckland International Airport,which shed 1.5 percent to $6.70. Tourism Holdings ended down 1.9 percent at $3.55 while Meridian shed 1.9 percent to $2.895. "The need to raise funds to take up some of that Metlifecare purchase may have led to a bit of selling across the market today," he said. "It's fairly large in the context of our market and could be a factor of why the bourse is where it is at the moment." In the other direction, the biggest gainer on the day was Tegel Group, up 4.3 percent to $1.21 as investors were cheered after it told investors and analysts at the Credit Suisse / First NZ Capital Food and Beverage Conference in Sydney Thursday it is well-positioned for export growth and reiterated its full year guidance. Smalley said the presentation may have "helped regain some confidence in the stock." The stock has fallen recently on concerns ample supplies of chicken would stifle earnings. Comvita added 2.5 percent to $6.97 "as a few bargain hunters are stepping in, think the sell-down is overdone," he said. The shares slumped earlier in the week after the manuka honey company warned it will post an operational loss this year due to weaker than expected trading and as a poor season dents the honey harvest in New Zealand. Looking ahead, Smalley said investors will be watching for the "reaction from the Russians" after Trump said he ordered missile strikes against a Syrian airfield from which a deadly chemical weapons attack was launched, declaring he acted in America's "national security interest" against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. "It does add an element of macro-uncertainty and that may have led investors to sit on the sidelines toward the end of the week," he added. (BusinessDesk) Comments from our readers No comments yet Add your comment: Your name: Your email: Not displayed to the public Comment: Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. 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Related News: FSF - Results announced for the 2022 Fonterra Elections Heartland 2022 Annual Shareholder Meeting a2MC commences on-market buy-back of up to NZ$150 million TradeWindow enters trial agreement with GSBN November 8th Morning Report OCA - Notice of Half Year Result Announcement Westpac 2022 Full Year Financial Results Announcement David Mair Announced as Newest Board Member for Sanford HFL - Financial results for the year ended 31 August 2022 November 7th Morning Report The 18-screen theater on McKee Road in Fitchburg, seen here in 2017, formerly had the AMC name before it was sold to New Vision Theatres. It will be rebranded as an AMC theater when it reopens in June. Can any relationship survive that level of meta, where the characters are always putting quote marks around their own feelings? Love explores that in witty and poignant fashion. Share your opinion on this topic by sending a letter to the editor to tctvoice@madison.com. Include your full name, hometown and phone number. Your name and town will be published. The phone number is for verification purposes only. Please keep your letter to 250 words or less. KATHMANDU: India and Nepal today agreed for further studies and discussions on updating and reviewing some of the bilateral agreements including the crucial Peace and Friendship Treaty signed in 1950. This was decided at the third meeting of the India-Nepal Eminent Persons' Group which concluded here today. During the two-day meeting, the Nepalese and Indian sides held extensive talks on the treaty and on several bilateral issues, former Nepalese ambassador to India and leader of the Nepalese team Bhesh Bahadur Thapa said. The 1950 treaty is a bilateral treaty between Nepal and India for establishing a close strategic relationship. The meeting mainly dwelt on three areas: Nepal-India cooperation in water resources, ways to reducing Nepal's huge trade deficit with India and the 1950 treaty. "During the meeting, the entire gamut of Nepal-India ties were discussed," Thapa said. Bhagat Singh Koshyari-led Indian team took a positive note of Nepal's proposal regarding updating and reviewing some of the clauses of the 1950 treaty in the changed regional and global context, Thapa said. "The remaining issues will be discussed during the fourth meeting of the group scheduled for May 29-31 in Dehradun," he said, adding that issues like regulating the open India-Nepal border and controlling illegal activities there were also discussed. Those attended the meeting included Thapa, Nilamber Acharya, Rajan Bhattarai and Surya Nath Upadhyay from the Nepalese side, and Koshyari, Jayant Prasad, BC Upreti and Mahendra P Lama from the Indian side. The Eminent Persons Group on Nepal-India Relations (EPG-NIR) is a joint mechanism consisting experts and intellectuals from Nepal and India that was set up in February last year to provide necessary suggestions to update all existing bilateral treaties and agreements. Its first meeting was held in Kathmandu in July and second meeting in New Delhi in October last year. The EPG is supposed to submit its recommendations to the respective governments in July next year when its two-year tenure completes. Read Also: Inventor Of World Wide Web Wins Computing's 'Nobel Prize' India-UK Launch 240 Mn Pounds Joint Fund For Green Energy You have permission to edit this article. Edit Close 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... Criminal charges are pending against two felons with federal convictions involved in a shooting and police standoff Wednesday on La Crosses South Side. The La Crosse Police Departments tactical team was en route to 2612 S. 17th St. to search for Damon Taylor, wanted on a probation warrant, when investigators watching the apartment building saw Jonlazaire Burch and Trevongh Martin arrive at 5:38 p.m., according to police. Gunfire erupted as Burch and Martin entered the apartment. Someone inside shot Burch in the leg, and Martin returned fire as both men fled, according to police. Police arrested Martin in the 2800 block of South Avenue, while Burch was transported and treated at Gundersen Health System. Ontario Lowery, who lives at 2612 S. 17th St., fled his apartment and was arrested at 15th Street and Castle Place. Police arrested Damon Taylor inside the apartment about 12:20 a.m. Thursday after he failed to surrender during negotiations and the deployment of tear gas. Lowery, 37, and Taylor, 35, face charges of first-degree recklessly endangering safety, Lowery as party to the crime, when they appear Friday in La Crosse County Circuit Court. Taylor also faces charges gun and drug charges. Martin, 21, of Mount Horeb, is jailed on a probation hold. A Dane County judge placed Martin, who has a juvenile criminal record, on five years of probation in May 2014 for attempted armed robbery. Lowery and Taylor also are on probation. All three men are jailed and additional charges are pending. La Crosse County Circuit Judge Elliott Levine in February 2016 sentenced Taylor, who has a criminal record that spans 18 years, to three years on probation for possessing heroin while he was on federal supervision for the illegal purchase of a firearm. A federal judge in September 2011 sentenced Taylor to two years in prison and three years on supervision for having a woman buy a pistol for him at Monsoors Sport Shop, 517 Copeland Ave., according to court records. La Crosse police discovered Taylor with 5.7 grams of heroin packaged for sale on July 8, 2015, although he told officers he only conducts middle deals, according to the complaint. Taylor pleaded guilty to possession with intent to deliver heroin and denied he was a dealer, telling the judge he turned to heroin when he withdrew from powerful painkillers prescribed for injuries he suffered after a car crash. I look at this more as an addict case than a drug dealer case, Levine said during the hearing. A warrant for violating the conditions of his federal release was granted in September 2015 and Taylor faced sentencing on Feb. 22, 2016, although a federal court sealed records from the hearing. Lowerys criminal record in circuit court stretches back to 2000 and includes drug and battery convictions. In November 2013, he was indicted on federal sex trafficking charges in Utah for forcing four women to travel across several states to act as prostitutes in 2011. Two of the women told police in Salt Lake City that they were afraid to leave because Lowery assaulted them, took their identifications, slept with the car keys, and kept the money they earned, according to court records. A judge in September 2014 sentenced him to 40 months in prison and three years on supervised release. His release was transferred to Wisconsin in October. In February, a judge issued a warrant after he tested positive for using marijuana and drove drunk in Madison on Nov. 30. He failed to attend substance abuse treatment in February and March and tested positive for cocaine and marijuana on March 7, according to court records. Lowery has a judicial review hearing in federal court on April 19. By clicking Agree, you consent to Slates Terms of Service and Privacy Policy and the use of technologies such as cookies by Slate and our partners to deliver relevant advertising on our iOS app to personalize content and perform site analytics. Please see our Privacy Policy for more information about our use of data, your rights, and how to withdraw consent. Agree RACINE A Racine woman was charged Thursday with trying to kill her husband after allegedly telling him till death do us part as she was firing two gunshots. Three of the couples children were in the bedroom next door during the incident. Latoya Lewis, 32, of the 1500 block of Taylor Avenue, was charged Thursday with attempted first-degree intentional homicide, three counts of first-degree recklessly endangering safety, misdemeanor battery and drug possession. According to the criminal complaint: Police were called to the couples home Monday at 6:18 p.m. for a domestic dispute, with four of the couples children present. The husband told police they had been arguing over his admission of being unfaithful, and, as he was downloading divorce papers, Lewis attacked him in the bedroom. Police discovered marks on his lip and ear consistent with being struck. The victim told police he had to wrap his arms around Lewis and took her to the floor to stop her from continuing to hit him. When he got up she grabbed a gun he kept near the bed for protection and fired the gun twice allegedly saying, till death do us part. According to the report, the victim said he did not think Lewis would kill him. Police found a bullet hole in the hallway near where he was allegedly standing and another in the bedroom wall. Lewis told police the two were fighting over the gun when it went off. Police also found 6.5 grams of marijuana in the bedroom during the investigation. As of Thursday afternoon, Lewis remained in the Racine County Jail under a $50,000 cash bond. If convicted on the most serious charge, Lewis faces up to life in prison. Lewiss next court appearance is a preliminary hearing scheduled for April 12 at 9 a.m. at the Law Enforcement Center, 717 Wisconsin Ave. Private well owners in the western half of the towns of Onalaska and Holland are being urged to test their water after the La Crosse County Health Department discovered worrisome levels of nitrates and bacteria in much of the water supply. More than 2,000 residents received notices by mail last week alerting them to the problem, discussed during a press conference Thursday afternoon at the La Crosse County Administrative Center. This is the first time we have been able to identify with enough data that we do have a problem in our county, said Jen Rombalski, director of the La Crosse County Health Department. Water contamination data was requested in response to a 2016 audit showing multiple failings by the Wisconsin DNR to enforce the clean water laws. Results showed levels higher than 20 micrograms per milliliter of nitrates in some of the private well water supply, with several locations registering between between 10 and 20. Water typically registers 1 mcg per ml, and anything more than 10 mcg per ml can cause health problems, especially for infants and pregnant women. Risks include birth defects and blue baby syndrome. Private well water also tested positive for coliform, which in itself may not cause illness but can indicate the presence of E. coli, which may cause gastrointestinal problems including diarrhea and vomiting. Health and Human Services Committee Chair Monica Kruse stated that an exact cause of the contamination has not been determined, but contributing factors include sandy soil, run-off and general land use. It can take years and decades for this to occur and show up, and it can take years and decades for the levels to go back down, Rombalski stressed. In the short term, first and foremost you need to test your water, and, in the long term, we need to try to better protect our land so were protecting our ground water. The health department recommends having private well water tested annually and is offering kits and testing at a reduced cost to encourage residents in affected areas to act quickly. Kits are available at the La Crosse County Health Department, with results available by mail in two to four business days. Those with elevated nitrate levels are advised to use bottled water for drinking and cooking and to consider having reverse osmosis systems installed or have a deeper or new well drilled. Bacteria can be killed by boiling water before consumption, but is not recommended when nitrates are also present, as boiling can concentrate nitrates. While there are currently no concerns about nitrate levels and bacteria in the countys public water supply, Sen. Jennifer Shilling released a statement citing unease about water safety in general. Years of Republican budget cuts and staff reductions at the Department of Natural Resources are threatening our states drinking water and putting communities at risk, Shilling said. These problems arent new, but they are certainly getting worse as major violations are being ignored and swept under the rug. If we dont act to improve enforcement standards and protect access to clean drinking water, families are going to continue to face these serious health threats and economic challenges. Informational meetings for residents will be held at 6 p.m. Wednesday at Holland Town Hall, W7937 Hwy. MH, Holmen; and at 6 p.m. Thursday at Onalaska Town Hall, W7052 Second St. For more information on well water testing, visit www.co.la-crosse.wi.us/health/docs/InYourHome/Tests%20for%20Dinking.pdf. 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Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 125 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 157 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612e81f3ce8)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 948 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612e63ce328)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/2011159162/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 135 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612e81f3ce8)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1302 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1292 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 955 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612e63ce328)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 135 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612efe46898)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1300 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1292 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 481 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 481 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 433 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612e63ce328)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612e63ce328)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612e63ccf98)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612ec6784a0)') called at (eval 592) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612ec6784a0)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0 System error error: Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. context: ... 21: 22: 23: % foreach my $c (@categories) { 24: <%perl> 25: my $category_id = $c->get_id(); 26: my @stories = Bric::Biz::Asset::Business::Story->list ( { element_type_id=>1148, category_id=>$category_id , Order=> 'cover_date', publish_status => 't' , OrderDirection=> 'DESC' , Limit=>10 } ); 27: 28:
29: ... code stack: /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html:25 /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm:948 /var/cache/mason/obj/2011159162/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj:17 /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html:149 Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 125 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 157 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612f0172fc0)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 948 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f024e750)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/2011159162/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 135 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612f0172fc0)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1302 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1292 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 955 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f024e750)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 135 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612f015e590)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1300 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1292 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 481 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 481 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 433 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f024e750)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f024e750)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612efcf3358)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612f0610908)') called at (eval 592) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612f0610908)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0 The number of Canberra children and teenagers trying to contact Kids Helpline has risen by 45 per cent in two years. Mental health concerns topped the list of worries for young people contacting the counselling and referral service last year, followed by family relationship issues, emotional wellbeing and dating and relationships. More Canberra children are contacting Kids Helpline, mostly for counselling. Suicide-related concerns made up 11 per cent of ACT contacts, compared to 13 per cent nationally. Forty-five per cent of contacts from Canberra in 2016 were seeking counselling support with the remaining 55 per cent seeking information, referral or other forms of support. Most children contacted the service by phone. Anyone heading to the coast from Saturday onwards can now drop into the new IGA at Bungendore, with one of its selling points a new cheese fridge featuring more than 60 kinds of Australian cheese as well as imported varieties. A year ago the owner of the IGA, Darren Heathcote, was celebrating a decision by Woolworths not to open in Bungendore, leaving him free to sign a lease on the new building which was constructed in Malbon Street, behind Le Tres Bon French restaurant. IGA Bungendore owner Darren Heathcote is inviting everyone to the opening of the new supermarket on Saturday. Credit:Jay Cronan The new building is three times bigger than the old supermarket in Gibraltar Street. "We now have the space to showcase the local producers we work with such as Bay Marlin Seafoods from Batemans Bay, Two Sisters olive oil from Braidwood and Spicy Sauce Co curry mixes from the South Coast," he said. Protesters will also call for the Australian government to resettle asylum seekers imprisoned on Manus Island and Nauru here in Australia. Up to 5000 people are expected to join him in Civic Square next to the ACT Legislative Assembly at a Palm Sunday rally calling for an end to mandatory offshore detention. Until then, he will continue to fight for the rights of asylum seekers here in Australia. Hazara refugee Ismail Husseini hopes the journalism degree he is studying at the University of Canberra will help him one day return to Afghanistan to give his people a voice. Mr Husseini witnessed firsthand the hopelessness felt by asylum seekers while in detention at Christmas Island, after he came to Australia by boat when he was 17. With this week's chemical attack and US bombings expected to unleash another wave of Syrian refugees, Mr Husseini said: "This is the only chance for the refugees, for the asylum seekers to be heard." Former ACT chief minister Jon Stanhope said there was a misconception that offshore detention was no longer an issue given Australia's 'people swap' deal with the United States. "I don't accept that for a minute, I think that not only is there a real prospect that a number of people, particularly on Manus, will not be accepted by America, maybe none of them will, so I don't think we should be assuming that," Mr Stanhope said. "The issue that's at the heart of this is that the policy is wrong. Just because somebody has come along and made it easier for us and saved us from our own embarrassment doesn't mean that the issue will go away. Australia's dairy production is headed for 20-year lows as the slump in milk prices has prompted farmers to either quit the industry or slash output by cutting the size of their herds. And with farmgate prices tipped to rise only slightly over the balance of the year from present levels, as global prices for most of the main export products are likely to remain under pressure, a quick recovery is not on the cards. "It is a bit of a grind," said Steve Spencer of FreshAgenda, the specialty dairy advisory operator. Rabobank has forecast Australia's dairy output to decline as much as 7 per cent to less than 8.9 billion litres for 2016/17 which, if correct, will see output drop to 20-year lows. The fall in output is mainly being recorded in the key export-focused regions of southern Australia, centred on Victoria. But the recent uptick in some product prices coupled with good rains which led to flooding in some areas six months ago has helped to revive sentiment in some quarters. Australia Post is in the box seat to work with the global online giant Amazon when it officially opens in Australia, which is expected to be in the coming year. It's expected the large Australia Post network, which already helps deliver Amazon goods across the county, will reach out to the group to provide much-needed courier and postal services. Amazon has appointed CBRE to advise on a roll-out of larger distribution centres, which Amazon terms "fulfilment centres" and also, it is expected, smaller sites closer to the capital cities to ensure it can keep its promise of speedy deliveries. Ben Franzi, Australia Post's general manager parcel & e-commerce services, was in Sydney during the week to address the Business Breakfast Series and said the demand for e-commerce deliveries was "significant". ActewAGL's inability to accurately invoice at least 32,500 of its customers for their gas usage is the latest in a string of remarkable process failures by a range of organisations endured by their customers. When an organisation, either public or private, fails to perform a core function to community expectations it usually raises the question of whether or not the management and staff are up to the job. These issues were certainly extensively explored during the official and unofficial post mortems carried out in the wake of the 2016 $30 million census fail and the, as yet unresolved, Centrelink "robodebt" debacle. While the ActewAGL billing farce has not received the same degree of national publicity as these two cause celebres, principally because most of the damage has been localised to Canberra, it has caused a lot of people considerable grief and alarm. It seems, given the horrific images broadcast to the world in the wake of the chemical attack in Syria earlier this week, there will be considerable public support for America's decision to launch 59 cruise missiles against an Assad government air base in Homs. The slaughter of innocents in the badly troubled country has gone on for far to long; the regime's repeated use of chemical weapons against its own citizens is unconscionable and it is clearly time something has to give if this long running tragedy is to be brought to an end. Australia, as a key American ally, was notified of the missile launch before it occurred and Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, has come out in support of the action. He stressed, however, this did not mean Australia was at war with Syria. We now have a situation where if any president other than Donald Trump had given the order this would almost universally be considered an appropriate response to a premeditated atrocity that claimed at least 70 lives, including an as yet unknown number of children. The mild warming that we have experienced since the end of the Little Ice Age has been hugely beneficial. John McKerral, Batemans Bay, NSW Hasten adaptation measures Re the strange climate policy suggestion by John Smith (letters, April 4). To effectively mitigate climate change impacts there is a need to both rapidly reduce carbon emissions and adopt adaptation measures. With an average temperature increase forecast of probably over 2 degrees by the middle of the century and possibly 6 degrees by the end of the century under the present global emission control effort all the adaptation measures in the world will fail to prevent a climate change catastrophe. John Smith's idea of not putting investment into emission reduction measures such as renewables and instead diverting it to dry climate agriculture in northern Australia would frankly hasten the catastrophe. Australia as one of the highest per capita energy emitters cannot expect the rest of the world, particularly poor countries, to carry the burden of emission control. Rod Holesgrove, O'Connor ABC Leave it to the experts For some reason ABC has tried hard to include "Aboriginal astronomy" in their programming. They have completely embarrassed themselves and destroyed any notion of this skill in their Stargazing program on April 4. After listening to Professor Brian Cox and other experts discussing the wonders of the universe and the science that has allowed this, they then deferred to an Aboriginal gentleman who advised that his culture recognised a star formation that looked like an emu and had something to do with water. A more ridiculous juxtaposition of understanding is unlikely. Jevon Kinder, Murrumbateman More Afghanistan aid please The visit of Afghanistan's President Ghani is a welcome indication of Australia's bilateral relationship, after Prime Minister Turnbull's visit to Kabul in January. The withdrawal of ISAF troops did not mean "mission accomplished" there, with a strongly resurgent Taliban in evidence. However, the increase in our military commitment has not been matched by assistance to Afghanistan's civilians. Australia's help continues to decline, from $131million in 2014-15, to $87.1million in 2015-16 and $82.7million in 2016-17. Foreign assistance makes up 74 per cent of Afghanistan's public expenditure. An average Afghan income in 2014 was US$680, or about $13 per week. That aid reduction of $48million makes a difference to the average Afghan and their children. Our refugee policy does not help them. Australia's aid does: more please. Peter Graves, Curtin Time to show independence Well done, Sarah Gill ("Leadership has its obligations", April 3, p.12) for calling out Julie Bishop's seeming legitimation (by not denouncing it) of President Duterte's unleashing of a murderous rampage against (mostly poor) drug addicts and dealers. The US President has dramatically abandoned US leadership on human rights observance in international relations. This is a moment Australia can and must show that minimal standards of state behaviour are still important for reasons independent of moods in Washington. What more important time and issue to demonstrate our independence? Anthony Reid, New Acton Let's have a triple referendum Another Tasmanian local council is discussing changing the date of Australia Day. This is because a very small minority of the Australian community is very vocal about a change on the basis that January 26 was the day Australia was invaded back in 1788. It cannot be called an invasion, more a small group of people sent out from England to start a penal colony. None of them wanted to come here but they had no say. Invasion infers a plan to deliberately conquer and subdue the inhabitants. This colony of the first boat people, our first migrants, could not be further from an invasion force. Changing the current date of Australia Day may appease this vocal minority group but will definitely upset other groups. Local, state and federal governments need to stop being pressured into a change that will affect more in the community than this minority group. Take it to the people and have a referendum. Maybe a triple referendum. Australia Day date change, Australia becoming a republic and marriage equality. These are major issues that should be decided by the people, not politicians. Alan Leitch, Austin's Ferry, Tas. Too little, too late Michael Costello's "mea culpa" (Letters, April 6) is all very well, but it is still a very real concern that it has taken until early April for ActewAGL to be "smoked out" on this matter. I can't believe that ActewAGL's record keeping and information system is so bad that it didn't know well before Christmas, more than three months ago, that it had a very serious problem. Customer Service 101 and Business Crisis Management 101 both assume that organisations should communicate early and openly with customers, taking swift action to fix significant problems. My suspicion is that the organisation was engaged in backside protection, knowing that customers often feel powerless and have little sanction against it, and hoping it would all just go away or that people would forget. As an aside I went out last night and read our gas meter and checked the reading against our gas bill to make sure that we weren't being overcharged such was the impact of all of the letters to the CT. Actew AGL's billing behaviour is the sort of thing that fuels concerns in the electorate about big business behaviour. John R. Baker, Griffith It was so good to read in The Canberra Times (Letters, April 6) ACTew AGL's final admission of guilt over months of complaints with its extortionate gas bills. The CEO, Mr Costello's underestimate of the mismanagement of his gas company is almost as successful as his over guesstimate of his gas bills. How does he explain employees who had apparently been instructed to bamboozle customers by directing them from one department to another until they gave up and paid up. The more stubborn of us were offered extended periods of time to pay and a surprising number were offered hundreds of dollars presumably to keep quiet. We Canberrans own half this company, we are part-responsible for this scandal, and Messrs Barr and Rattenbury were informed thanks in part to the Canberra Times letters. But they remained as complicit as Mr Costello in the scandalous obfuscation and hoped that we would all just pay up and go away. P. K. Beckwith, Bruce I am one of the 32,500 customers gouged by ActewAGL because it didn't bother to read my meter. I am owed $400 as a result of overcharging, but have had no offer of refund. Furthermore, the graphs in recent bills are misleading because the right-hand column uses different units from the other columns. I will be changing to reverse-cycle airconditioning, because it is much cheaper for heating than gas, even with renewable energy, and finding another electricity supplier, since AGL can no longer be trusted. Dave Kelly, Aranda Collapse questions It is sad to read of the collapse of yet another building company owing up to $4 million, much of which is unpaid wages and superannuation ("Builder collapses owing $4m", CT April 5, p9). While it is bad enough the government is still allowing these companies to operate without having sufficient funds put safely aside in an untouchable account to pay all outstanding wages and superannuation, a serious issue for the ACT government is revealed in the article. It is stated a developer who hired the collapsed builder to carry out civil works on an ACT housing estate "would have to pay millions of dollars for ripping out faulty work" which the developer claims "failed to meet ACT building standards". Why was the building contractor allowed to carry out the "millions of dollars" of faulty work in the first place without any certification? Why did the developer not supervise the work he was paying the builder to carry out? Comments from those involved within the ACT government would be welcomed. Murray Upton, Belconnen Vision not splendid Canberrans already know what the Chief Minister's vision is. I suggest it's "if it's old, knock it down, if it's green, turn it brown". Another vision? What happened to the "knowledge capital", the "bush capital"? When will real community consultation occur before ratepayers are told by the government what's good for them and how much they will have to pay? As for the desecration of the West Basin and the foreshores of Lake Burley Griffin, hang your head in shame Chief Minister. Suzanne Vidler, O'Malley Watchdog role Richard Mulgan examined the tenuous existence of the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner ("The watchdog with three heads", The Public Sector Informant, April 2017). The office, which contains three statutory appointments, the commissioners for FOI, for information and for privacy, was saved from Tony Abbott's effort to disband it by the Senate. It also survived his effort to strangle it by drastically reducing its budget allocation. Mulgan was particularly interested in the government's use of aggregate data, an application of the "whole of government" approach. He didn't mention the jurisdiction of the tripartite office over the ongoing fiascos following attempts to merge the aggregate data of the ATO and the DHS. It is a big ask of a beleaguered commission to audit probity of these giant departments. But somebody has to do it. The secretaries and ministers thereof are simply stonewalling the issue. Gary J. Wilson, Macgregor Insanity plea flaws Years back, we widened scope across the states and territories for pleading insanity in cases involving serious crimes of violence. We also began giving more prisoners psychiatric drugs that may induce violence. These factors, along with street drugs with similar liabilities has raised the odds of random violence against the public anywhere, any time, even innocent children. What if Mon Haron Manis, an ex-psychiatric patient, had survived the Lindt Cafe siege? We should restrict the insanity plea, not widen it further. We should also be far more cautious of putting people with a history of violence on psychiatric drugs. Linda Vij, Mascot, NSW TO THE POINT PLIBERSEK SPOT ON Thank you for Tanya Plibersek's column (canberratimes.com.au, April 5). Tanya was spot on about a woman's wage having nothing to do with what her husband earns. Is more women in the LNP front bench the answer to women's inequality in Australia? I doubt it given the quality of the women they currently have. Jan Gulliver, Lyneham TICKING ALL THE BOXES Why couldn't the brief for Northbourne redevelopment simply mandate that replacement of demolished public housing be incorporated? Which box would that not tick? Graham Anderson, Garran VACANT BLOCK A SOLUTION The report on Wednesday evening's meeting of the Woden Valley Community Council ("Mawson residents vent", April 6, p1) omitted to mention some people spoke in support of using the vacant block on Shackleton Circuit, Mawson, for public housing. As a long-standing Mawson resident I welcome this; a practical use of an unsightly and poorly tended block of land. John Myrtle, Mawson ABETZ MISSING POINT Tasmanian Senator Eric Abetz's claim gay people can "become" straight misses an important point and highlights his anti-equality bias. He seems to imply most gay people would prefer to be straight. I doubt that this is the case, any more than suggesting the good senator and his straight friends might prefer to be gay. Ross Pulbrook, Wyong, NSW SILENT WITNESS The USA, UK and Australia went to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and found nothing. We see Syria using WMD and we are silent. But why? Sankar Kumar Chatterjee, Evatt Email: letters.editor@canberratimes.com.au. Send from the message eld, not as an attached le. Fax: 6280 2282. Mail: Letters to the Editor, The Canberra Times, PO Box 7155, Canberra Mail Centre, ACT 2610. "When you try to horse-trade," he told reporters recently during negotiations over legislation in the Senate, "you can end up with a donkey". Yet horse-trading is precisely what he does. It is how he makes change. Some in the major parties call him an unprincipled opportunist; he's unapologetic about his raw exploitation of the balance of power: "I'm not the government. I'm a crossbencher. And I'll use anything I can as a fulcrum to get the best possible outcome for public policy". In last week's trading, the government desperately wanted to salvage something of its signature economic initiative, a 10-year plan to cut the rate of company tax. This is the core of Malcolm Turnbull's election pledge to deliver "jobs and growth". Australia has been in the grip of an "investment strike" since the mining boom. To encourage more investment, Turnbull wants to increase the return on capital invested. To do that, he proposed cutting the corporate tax rate. The Hawke and Keating governments took the rate from 49 per cent to 36 per cent to invigorate the private sector. The Howard-Costello government took it to 30. It's stayed at that rate for the past 16 years, though businesses with annual sales below $2 million get a concessional rate of 28.5 per cent. Turnbull campaigned on cutting the rate for all companies to 25 per cent, starting with the smallest. Labor agreed to allow a further tax cut for only these smallest firms. Xenophon was the government's only chance at winning something more. Other Senate crossbenchers One Nation and, eventually, Darren Hinch, said they'd allow the cut to flow to companies with sales of up to $50 million. David Leyonhjelm and Cory Bernardi were in favour of the full government plan. In this line-up, Xenophon held the swing votes. His starting point was to say he would allow the tax cut to go to firms with sales of up to $10 million that was the limit. The government wanted much more. Its plan, after eight years, would begin extending the tax cut to the very biggest companies, including multi-billion-dollar multinationals. Xenophon eventually told the government's preferred Senate negotiator, Finance Minister Mathias Cormann, that he was prepared to think about giving the lower tax rate to companies over the $10 million threshold. In truth, though he told no one, Xenophon had already decided he'd allow the threshold to rise to $50 million. Why? "The tipping point for me was that an independent supermarket, medium sized, or independent petrol station could easily have sales of $10 million to $25 million. My rationale is that if this means independent supermarkets can get a leg-up on Coles and Woolworths, that can only be a good thing." But he'd see what he could extract from the government first. He applied pressure by making an impatient government wait. He wouldn't even begin discussions until last week, the last parliamentary sitting week before the budget. And only then did he name what he wanted in return energy. The senator for South Australia has been gripped by his state's power blackouts, and the energy crisis looming for the rest of the country. He sees the problem as a future-killer for the national economy: "I fear that this could be Australia's Argentina moment," he says. Argentina moment? At the dawn of the 20th century, Australia and Argentina vied for the title of the world's richest country, measured by income per person. Their fortunes have diverged dramatically since. Argentina took the course of ruinous populist politics; Australia was more successful in pursuing broadly rational policy. The result is that the World Bank ranked Australia in 2015 as the sixth richest nation on earth and Argentina as the 51st. Once closely matched, today Australian income per person is four times Argentina's. "I've been contacted by businesses saying they can't survive more than a year or two because of the rise in energy costs. I visited a business whose gas bill is going to triple and they need the gas to run the business. Unless we deal with this crisis, we're going to de-industrialise the economy, shedding jobs by the tens of thousands." The terms of the horse-trading were set. As Xenophon puts it: "I had to focus on company tax cuts. In turn, I wanted the debate to focus on the energy crisis. You can't only be concerned about the tax rate for a small-to-medium business when their energy costs are going to rise by three, four, five, up to 10 times as much as the size of any tax cut." The government agreed to talk terms. Yet Xenophon didn't get his opening demand. He told Cormann he wanted the government to enact an emissions intensity scheme. The government had weighed that idea earlier but then ruled it out, intimidated by vocal conservative Liberals and the Nationals. Tony Abbott had described it publicly as "a carbon tax by stealth". To embrace it now would be to bring on an internal insurrection. Xenophon soon found the Prime Minister on the line. Turnbull told him that his demand was too much. It was something that would have to go to the Coalition party room. Turnbull couldn't usurp his party. Xenophon's fallback? If you can't agree to specific policy measures to fix the energy crisis, you can at least agree to a process. That then became the focus of a frenetic week of negotiation. Turnbull stepped back and left it almost entirely to Cormann, getting involved only a couple of times. Cormann and Xenophon had somewhere between 15 and 20 conversations. Half were face to face in Cormann's office. The rest were by phone. After launching into the negotiations, on Tuesday afternoon, Xenophon got the news that a dear uncle had died. The funeral would be held in Adelaide on Thursday. That was scheduled to be the Senate's last sitting day. His death was sudden, the family much upset. Since infancy, Xenophon had been close to him. Xenophon left Canberra on Wednesday and returned on Thursday afternoon. But, apart from four hours during the funeral ceremony, he had his phone on. The negotiations with Cormann continued; the Senate sitting was extended to Friday. At 4.40pm last Friday, Cormann announced the result to the Senate. The net result? The government had the numbers in the Senate to cut the company tax rate to 27.5 per cent for firms with sales up to $50 million a year. This meant the government would be able to enact the first three years' worth of its 10-year plan. Enough to take it to the next election where it could campaign for the next phase. In return, Xenophon extracted six main undertakings to fix energy policy, plus a cash benefit for pensioners. On changing policy, the government promised to change the National Electricity Market Rules by July 1, 2018. To make the new rules as sensible as possible, the government agreed to commission the Climate Change Authority and the Australian Electricity Market Commission to conduct independent modelling and to produce an independent report. Their work would be published in June and factored into the Finkel review of the electricity market, supposedly the basis for Turnbull's new energy policy. The aim? "To improve the affordability and reliability of energy supplies," as Cormann put it. Second, the government is to enact a "use it or lose it" law to force gas-supplying companies to start selling, not hoarding, gas reserves. Third, if big gas exporters can't agree voluntarily to provide sufficient gas to the local market, the government will force them to a deal. Fourth, the government will enforce specific transparency mechanisms in the gas market so companies negotiating supply contracts will not be kept in the dark about the gas companies' pricing. Fifth, the government will ask the Productivity Commission to report on gas company joint ventures to minimise any collusion. Sixth, the government will give a $110 million low-interest loan to install a solar thermal plant in Port Augusta to improve supply and reliability of power in SA. Finally, single pensioners will get a one-off cash payment of $75 and couples $125 to help tide them over with rising power costs till the system can be fixed. The cost to the taxpayers to be $260 million. Both sides claim victory, horse trading delivering each a noble racing steed. In fact, they've each managed to get a pack horse that will do some useful trudging. Neither ended up a complete donkey. Tony Abbott, famously unsuccessful in negotiating most of his government's agenda through the Senate, has given up on any possibility of making the Senate workable. He's lately proposed a constitutional referendum to make wholesale changes. That will never happen. One company touts patented floor boards that create electricity when people walk on them. Another provides speech and language therapy online. Twenty-six finalists have been named in the Wisconsin Governor's Business Plan Contest, including 10 from the Madison area. The finalists, chosen from 172 entries, "are emblematic of Wisconsin's vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem," said Toni Sikes, chairwoman of the Wisconsin Technology Council, which organizes the competition. They include EWPanel, the floor board startup, and DotCom Therapy, with online speech therapy. Both are based in Madison. Other local finalists are: Cellular Logistics, Sun Prairie; Pilot Training System, Madison; ThirdSpace, Madison; Plumb Pharmaceuticals, Middleton; Fast Forward Forensics, Madison; Rigbot, Middleton; Curate, Madison; and Cardigan, Madison. The finalists will have to submit business plans, each up to 20 pages long, to be reviewed by a panel of judges. Then the pool will be pared further, to the top 12 contenders, who will each make a presentation at the Wisconsin Entrepreneurs' Conference in Madison in June. Winners will be announced on June 8. Rickles was soon being championed by Sinatra, Dean Martin and the other members of the show business circle known as the Rat Pack. Steady work in Las Vegas followed. But he was hardly an overnight success: he spent a decade in the comedy trenches before he broke through to a national audience. In 1965, he made the first of numerous appearances on The Tonight Show, treating Johnny Carson with his trademark disdain to the audience's (and Carson's) delight. He also became a regular on Dean Martin's televised roasts, where no celebrity was safe from his onslaughts. ("What's Bob Hope doing here? Is the war over?") Rickles' wife, who he said "likes to lie in bed, signalling ships with her jewellery", was not immune to his attacks. Neither was his mother, Etta, who he referred to as "the Jewish Patton". But off the stage, he didn't hesitate to express his gratitude to his mother for unflaggingly believing in his talent, even when he himself wasn't so sure. "She had a tremendous drive," he recalled in Warmth. "Drove me crazy. But she was like the driving force for me." He shared an apartment with his mother and did not marry until he was almost 40. After marrying Barbara Sklar in 1965, he saw to it that his mother had the apartment next door. His wife survives him, as do a daughter, Mindy Mann, and two grandchildren. Rickles' son, Lawrence, died in 2011. Donald Jay Rickles was born in the Jackson Heights neighbourhood of Queens on May 8, 1926, to Max Rickles, an insurance salesman, and the former Etta Feldman. During World War II, he honed his comedic skills while serving in the navy. ("On the ship that I went over to the Philippines," he told The New York Times in 2015, "out of 300 men I was the class comedian".) After being discharged, he followed his father into the insurance business, but when he had trouble getting his customers to sign on the dotted line, decided to try acting. He studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, an experience that he later said gave him a greater sense of himself. But he found it difficult to get acting jobs and turned to stand-up comedy. For a while, he pursued acting and comedy simultaneously. He did his stand-up act at Catskills resorts and in strip clubs, and his movie career got off to an auspicious start with a small part in the 1958 submarine drama Run Silent, Run Deep, starring Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster. But the bulk of his film work in the 1960s was in low-budget beach movies: Bikini Beach, Muscle Beach Party and Pajama Party, all in 1964, and Beach Blanket Bingo in 1965. By that time, his comedy career had begun gathering momentum. Focusing less on prepared material and more on interaction with his audience, he had found his voice. He was not the first insult comedian and in fact an earlier master of the comic insult, Jack E. Leonard, was known to complain that Rickles' act was too similar to his but he soon became far and away the most successful. Bookings in the late 1950s at the Slate Brothers nightclub in Hollywood and the lounge of the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas spread the word. During his Slate Brothers engagement, Carl Reiner recalled in Mr. Warmth, the biggest names in show business felt that "if they hadn't been insulted by Rickles, they weren't with it". His appearances insulting celebrities on the Dean Martin roasts and his sparring matches with Carson cemented Rickles' reputation, but his unscripted brand of humour proved an uneasy fit for weekly TV. A variety show in 1968 and a situation comedy in 1972, both called The Don Rickles Show, were short-lived, as was Daddy Dearest, a 1993 sitcom in which he and the comedian Richard Lewis played father and son. The closest thing to a hit show he had was CPO Sharkey, a navy comedy, which aired from 1976 to 1978. No critic, however thoughtful, could quite explain Rickles' durability in show business, given that until the end of his career he was peppering his act with slurs and stereotypes long out of favour. And yet he not only got away with it, but he also flourished. His own theory was that he was being rewarded for saying things others wanted to say but couldn't. "I'm the guy at the Christmas party," he said more than once, "who makes fun of the boss on Friday night and still has his job on Monday morning". Although Rickles sometimes expressed regret that he did not have more of a career as an actor, he did enjoy unexpected cinematic success late in life. In 1995, Martin Scorsese cast him in Casino, with Robert De Niro and Sharon Stone, and that same year he found a new audience as the voice of Mr. Potato Head in the hugely successful animated feature Toy Story, a role he reprised in its sequels. In 2014, he was the subject of an all-star tribute (inevitably, it turned out to be more like a roast) broadcast on the Spike cable channel. That show included appearances by David Letterman, Jerry Seinfeld, Jon Stewart and Bob Newhart, whose soft-spoken style of comedy could not be further removed from Rickles', but who he often said was his closest friend in show business. The Herald welcomes these decisive steps by US President Donald Trump to deter the Assad regime from repeating its flagrant crimes against humanity. It may well be that this action sets a precedent for American action against other rogue states such as North Korea. The Australian-supported missile strikes against an air field controlled by Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad sent, in the words of Malcolm Turnbull, an important signal. The world will not tolerate a shocking war crime in the form of chemical weapons used against civilians. The imperative of deterrence and punishment used by the US in attacking the al-Shayrat air base in Homs Province in western Syria could have just as easily justified strikes at any time during the six years of that nation's civil war. Indeed, the Assad regime crossed what the then US president Barack Obama called a "red line" on the use of sarin gas in 2013. Mr Obama could not rally Congressional support for military action. Instead, he chose to pursue a diplomatic answer at the same time as his negotiators worked towards a deal on nuclear non-proliferation with Syrian ally Iran. At the time the Herald argued that "the risks are clear in President Barack Obama's about-turn in delaying unilateral military action against Syria for sarin gas use but Obama has also left open the possibility of acting at any time, no matter the view of Congress, should Assad be found to be planning or using sarin gas again." The 2013 diplomacy involved a Russia-backed guarantee that the Assad regime would reduce chemical weapons. It clearly has not delivered, just as it has repeatedly hidden behind the cloak of Russia to bloc United Nations Security Council attempts to reduce the dangers it poses. While Mr Turnbull insisted on Friday that Washington did not intend these strikes to overthrow the Assad regime, US Secretary of State and erstwhile friend of Russia, Rex Tillerson, was clear that Moscow's support for the Syrian President was an indirect target. Moscow was "either complicit or incompetent" in its handling of the 2013 chemical weapons deal, Mr Tillerson said. About six hours before US President Donald Trump launched a barrage of Tomahawk missiles at Syrian government airstrips on Friday, Syria expert Iyad el-Baghdadi took to Twitter to spell out what would be a comprehensive response to the Assad regime's barbaric gas attack earlier in the week. "What we want", he wrote, is a "cease fire, NFZ [no-fly zone], all foreign fighters out, political transition, war crimes tribunal. What I'm afraid we'll get: Bombs". It was missiles, in the end, not bombs, but let's not quibble. Why did Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the activist and Muslim apostate, cancel her Australian tour this week? The truth is mysterious, with plenty of fake news obscuring the important issue at stake: free speech specifically, how much criticism of Islam our society can tolerate, and how much criticism the critics of Islam can tolerate themselves. Ali is a former Somalian refugee and the author of a powerful 2006 memoir, Infidel, in which she detailed her experiences of female genital mutilation and forced marriage (her account of her forced marriage has since been disputed). It is a forceful polemic which argues Islam is a misogynistic religion with war at its heart. It is also a strong argument for the superiority of civil society over tribalism, and a compelling refugee story. Larchfield Polly Clark Riverrun, $32.99 Following the fashion in contemporary fiction of writing novels about real people, Clark takes the life of poet W.H. Auden as her starting point in this beautifully written but not entirely convincing book. Dora Fielding is a London poet who has moved with her newish husband Kit to the small Scottish town of Helensburgh, where Auden once suffered through two years of teaching at Larchfield School as a young man in the 1930s. Isolated with a new baby, suffering from cabin fever and from the close proximity of the Neighbours From Hell, Dora enters into what might or might not be an imaginary friendship with the young Auden of 80 years earlier. Both poets are suffering the suspicion and interference of hostile locals, and both are starved for literary companionship. Clark too is a poet and her language, characters and imagery are all beguiling, but the novel's basic premise won't work for everyone. Coups are becoming increasingly common in Australia. This in turn means that, in recent years, party leadership has become much more precarious. Rather clumsily subtitled Media and Leadership Coups from Menzies to Abbott, Rodney Tiffen's Disposable Leaders begins with the claim that in 1941 the later long-serving federal Liberal luminary, Robert Gordon Menzies was "the first Prime Minister to be overthrown by his own party." This is questionable on two counts. In early 1923 W.H. ("Billy") Hughes was forced to resign as Prime Minister due to the refusal of the Country Party to support him and the willingness of his Nationalist Party colleagues to bow to Country Party demands. On 9 February 1923 Hughes was replaced as PM by his protege, Stanley Bruce. And in August 1941 Robert Menzies was not overthrown, but chose to step down as PM. He then resigned as leader of the United Australia Party to be replaced by "Billy" Hughes. A joint UAP-Country Party meeting then chose Arthur Fadden to lead the coalition and hence become prime minister. While Tiffen's claim about Menzies is doubtful, he is correct in stating that, after Liberal PM John Gorton fell in March 1971, it was 20 years until Paul Keating defeated Bob Hawke to take over as prime minister in December 1991. The anti-halal certification campaigner Kirralie Smith, who was a NSW Senate candidate for the right-wing Australian Liberty Alliance at the last election, has joined Cory Bernardi's Australian Conservatives. Asked if she was planning to run for office at the next federal election for Australian Conservatives, Mrs Smith said she was dedicated to supporting the new party in any way she could, whether that meant putting stamps on envelopes or again running for the Senate. Kirralie Smith has been described as a potential leader for a new conservative movement. She said it was clear from the last election that at least 1 million Australians had lost faith with the major parties and she wanted conservatives in Australia to unite behind Senator Bernardi's movement. Mrs Smith, viewed by some as a potential leader in right-wing circles outside mainstream politics, confirmed she joined the Australian Conservatives on Friday, having known Senator Bernardi for about seven years. Australian Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne has used speech in the United States to talk up the Australian-US military alliance and its ability "to deter our adversaries". Delivering the keynote speech at the G'Day USA Australia-US Dialogue on Defence Industries, Mr Pyne said he supported Mr Trump's repeated calls for allies to pay their own way militarily rather than rely on the US. "Strengthening the industrial alliance between our two countries will ensure our mutual prosperity and protect our national interests as we navigate an increasingly uncertain 21st century together," Mr Pyne told the event. "President Trump is right to expect that the friends and allies of the United States play their part in contributing to international peace and security. Lara Bingle in Harper's Bazaar. Credit:Sylve Colless But on the eve of her 30th birthday, the former "It Girl" who rose to fame as the "Where The Bloody Hell Are You" girl in those tourism ads over a decade ago, says motherhood and life away from Sydney have helped her mature. "But, to be honest, I do come back to Australia and get a bit of anxiety. I know I grew up being in the media constantly, but now, living in New York, you can just go about your day, and I've kind of let my guard down. I feel like living away has made me softer, and being able to raise the boys over here, I haven't had as much scrutiny as I probably would back home," she says. Interestingly she made no mention of the 2014 incident in New York when her husband was filmed hitting paparazzo Sheng Li, who then launched a $5 million lawsuit. The actor claimed he had been protecting his then-girlfriend from Li after the photographer allegedly kicked her in the shin. But the photographer hit back and accused Bingle of "attacking" him and trying to steal his camera after he took photos of the couple as they walked along the street. Worthington eventually agreed to an undisclosed out-of-court settlement, but the couple's relationship with the paparazzi remains fraught. Reporting from the front Media scrums and court reporting go hand in hand, but in the past few weeks there has been one young Sydney reporter who appears to be living by the lyrics of 80s pop anthem What About Me. Indeed Channel Seven's Laura Banks has been "pushed around, knocked to the ground" on more than one occasion in her pursuit of some interesting characters on our city's streets. It was Banks who was at the centre of the Salim Mehajer media scrum last weekend, during which she became the star of the story as her tiny frame was wedged between Mehajer's car and car door as she attempted to interview him as he tried to shut his door and drive off. Channel seven reporter Laura Banks has been "pushed around, knocked to the ground" on more than one occasion. The footage was then shown on slow-mo on the 6pm news bulletin, along with the lead up which shows Banks in dogged pursuit of Mehajer after he was charged with assaulting a taxi driver. The incident with Banks has resulted in a further assault charge against Mehajer. But it also follows Banks' spectacular performance outside Downing Centre Courts when she was caught on camera on the receiving end of some unseemly shenanigans trying to get a comment from the family of a mother who was jailed for swindling more than $2 million from lonely men to fund her lavish lifestyle. Laura Banks is wedged between Salim Mehajer's car and car door. Credit:Channel Nine News Channel Nine news cameras caught the violent scenes as Banks, in a red blazer, was knocked to the ground. Again she became the story on the nightly news. And just last month Banks, a former newspaper reporter, found herself kissing the pavement outside Waverley Local Court when she chased Leigh Mitchell down the road after he pleaded guilty to stealing a quadriplegic man's buggy. PS tracked Banks down on Friday morning en route to Queanbeyan in pursuit of teenagers accused of murdering a service station attendant, but she declined to comment as there were matters before the court. Whatever happened too ... ? There have been some interesting faces in the public gallery at millionaire Ron Medich's murder trial in recent weeks, not in the least the two youngest of his six children, sons Jake and Adam. But it is the absence of their mother, Medich's estranged wife Odetta, which has been the most intriguing. PS last spotted Odetta looking tired and drawn making a rare appearance on Sydney's streets six years ago. Indeed as the photos showed, the woman PS spotted was a far cry from the designer-clad, glamorous socialite Sydney once knew. Hobnobbing: Odetta Medich with Quentin Tarantino. It was not so long ago that Odetta was regularly at glittering gallery openings, hobnobbing with Sydney's rich and glamorous, her Lithuanian accent rising above the chatter at all the best parties. But those days are a distant memory, as is the family's mansion on Wolseley Road, Point Piper. Instead it is a somewhat less salubrious address in the south of France where Odetta resides these days, having dropped a "T" in her first name and going by a variety of monikers, including Odeta Rose, Odeta Suikys Rose and Madame Odetta Chtouikite. No longer a fixture on Sydney's social scene: Ron Medich's wife Odetta. Credit:Sasha Woolley A few years back she was tracked down by a Sydney real estate blogger who reported on the lavish renovation of her swish pied a terre, overseen by renowned expatriate Australian architect Carl Pickering and featured in the pages of Interiors magazine. Replete with sparkling crystal chandeliers and luxurious velvet sofas, it was evident that Odetta's tastes remain at the more expensive end of the decore spectrum. While none of her old friends PS contacted admitted to having much to do with her these days, rumours have been swirling that, on the eve of turning 50, cupid's arrow has once again found its way to Odetta's heart, this time in the form of an unnamed "wealthy Euro type". Ron Medich's former home in Wolseley Road, Point Piper, which sold for $37 million in 2014. Ever since her former husband was accused of the high-profile murder of Michael McGurk outside his Cremorne home in 2009, which he has vigorously denied, Odetta virtually evaporated from the Sydney social scene overnight, though she had previously launched herself onto the cocktail circuit as a new wealthy patron of the arts, her name emblazoned on the patrons' board in the foyer at the Museum of Contemporary Art. She was appointed to the Australia Council's commissioner's council for the 2009 Venice Biennale, alongside such heavy-hitters as Simon and Catriona Mordant, Morry and Anna Schwartz and Gene and Brian Sherman. In more recent years she has rarely popped up on the global arts scene, though she was photographed looking pretty chuffed standing next to Quentin Tarantino at a MOMA benefit in 2012. Aside from the occasional art show, Odetta has all but vanished from her old haunts. Dam those paparazzi Sunrise co-host Samantha Armytage and celebrity fat fighter Michelle Bridges were not on the guest list for Peter Stefanovic and Sylvia Jeffrey's wedding, but you can bet they were punching the air with joy over the Kangaroo Valley extravaganza. Jeffreys posted a photo on her Instagram account this week showing a small silver hatchback which ended up in a dam after the driver apparently miscalculated the terrain as he was in pursuit of unauthorised photos of the couple. It turns out the driver is none other than Sydney's "baby faced" paparazzo, 23-year-old Liam Mendes, the same intrepid snapper who landed in hot water over his dogged pursuit of Bridges in her local Woolworths which ended in a rather unseemly court battle for her failed bid to have a restraining order taken out on him. A day after they tied the knot, Stefanovic shared a picture dancing with Jeffreys. The candid picture was simply captioned, My beautiful wife. Credit:Instagram/ Peter Stefanovic A day after they tied the knot, Stefanovic shared a picture dancing with Jeffreys. The candid picture was simply captioned, My beautiful wife. He is also the same photographer who caused an almighty outcry after his unflattering shots of Armytage wearing "granny panties" were splashed across the media. A local farmer had to haul Mendes' vehicle out of the dam, in what will go down as one of the more embarrassing chapters in the take-no-prisoners Sydney paparazzi annals. Perhaps Mendes should go back to "Pap School"? Indeed you would have to wonder if the $1195 "Advanced Surveillance Course" he did in February was worth it. Liam Mendes, 22, the self-styled paparazzo who took photos of Samantha Armytage going about her business on a Bondi Street a week ago. Credit:Daniel Munoz Interestingly Mendes' sidekick Jonathan Marshall was also in the Kangaroo Valley but it was difficult to determine who was the celebrity and who was the pap, as Marshall had his own film crew following him about from the ABC's 7.30 Report who were apparently doing a story about "misunderstood professions". Meanwhile the witch hunt continues for the wedding guest who leaked video and audio to the media of Karl Stefanovic's highly entertaining but slightly off-key wedding speech/performance in which he suggested his brother Peter was gay, would end up behind bars like Channel Nine colleague Tara Brown and that the Stefanovic family "doesn't pay for shit". Hairdresser cuts to the chase Celebrity hairdresser Joh Bailey has vehemently denied claims published in the Sunday Telegraph last weekend that he was drunk, boisterous and unruly, but rues attending the Balinese wedding of two staff members. "I wish I never went ... as if I would light a cigarette as the bride walked in ... I've been stitched up," Bailey told PS. The wedding of hairdressers Tom Cole and Mariah Rota was held at seaside Atas Ombak Villa a fortnight ago. Society hairdresser Joh Bailey at his Double Bay salon. Credit:Dallas Kilponen Bailey said he had already left the reception when he was reportedly "ejected". Photos show the bride smiling with Bailey after the service. The hairdresser has also denied sacking Cole. "No one was sacked and as far as I know they are coming back to the salon," Bailey said. "I adore Mariah, she has worked with me for a long time, I have no interest in travelling to a wedding in Bali and ruining it for a bride; it's just so ridiculous." However Cole stood by the account of his wedding, saying he and his young bride were "devastated" after the day had been "ruined" but declined to comment on why it became a media story. He denied there was any connection to a new range of products he was about to launch and the timing of the publicity. Wedding a cut above When your husband-to-be is one half of celebrated fashion label Camilla and Marc, you can bet your wedding dress will be a show-stopper. This was the case for Sydney lawyer Nicole Landerer, who married designer Marc Freeman last Sunday at the Central Synagogue in Bondi Junction. The couple later had an elegant reception among the masterpieces of the Art Gallery of NSW. Marc Freeman and Nicole Landerer - engaged. Photo: @marcfreeman on Instagram Credit:Daniel Adams Landerer wore a beautiful custom-made gown, personally designed by her new sister-in-law Camilla Freeman, who was among the seven bridesmaids. The bridesmaids and flower girls also wore custom-made navy Camilla and Marc gowns while the groom opted for a Tom Ford suit. Fellow designer and close friend Josh Goot was master of ceremonies for the evening. His partner Christine Centenera Kim Kardashian's part-time stylist was also at the wedding. Nicole Landerer and Marc Freeman on their wedding day at the Art Gallery of NSW. "This increase is due to population growth and ageing, with more people living into the ages where depression is most common," UQ's Dr Alize Ferrari said. Mental and physical health As if the mental health statistics weren't enough, there are "very strong" links between our physical and mental health. Nearly half of those with depression or anxiety have a physical illness, while having a physical illness is "one of the strongest risk factors for depression". That includes diabetes: those with depression are more likely to develop type 2 diabetes (T2DM) and those with diabetes are two to three times more likely to develop depression than the rest of us. Why? Depression or emotional stress affect a number of factors including our sleep quality, immune system and are more likely to lead to unhealthy behaviours, explains Professor Jane Speight of The Australian Centre for Behavioural Research in Diabetes. "For example, it has been shown over an 18-year study that those with higher levels of emotional stress were at 33 per cent increased risk of developing T2DM during the 18-year follow-up," Speight explains. "Analyses showed that this association might be mediated by sleep quality, low energy level and impaired health. We know that depression affects sleep quality and quantity." She says there is less understanding about why those with diabetes are more at risk of developing depression, but says they believe it may be a combination of biological factors, stressful life circumstances, unhealthy behaviours, and also a personal or family history of depression. "Diabetes-specific contributors may include the chronic nature of the condition and complex management regimens," Speight adds. "As various factors can contribute, the exact cause will be different for every person. " The good news Despite how it can feel, depression is not a life sentence. "Depression can be prevented and treated," says WHO in a statement, noting that the purpose of the campaign is to get more people to seek and get help. "A better understanding of what depression is, and how it can be prevented and treated, will help reduce the stigma associated with the condition, and lead to more people seeking help." "It is vitally important that those people living with diabetes who experience symptoms of depression seek help," adds Diabetes Victoria CEO Craig Bennett. "Diabetes health professionals need to understand how to identify depressive symptoms and be prepared to discuss mental health issues." Matthew Johnstone was once overwhelmed by his "black dog". Not any more. He sought help and learned to keep it in check. There is always hope and perspective can be achieved with support. "We are not the sum of our experiences, and this is hugely important when considering mental health," he says. "There can be glitches in our lives but they can be managed; we can overcome them and become a better person if we start talking and seeking help." First we need to talk In a new paper, Vikram Patel a psychiatrist, professor of International Mental Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and one of Time magazine's most influential people in the world suggests a new framework for understanding depression. Right now, he argues that it is "binary" and either you have it or you don't. Many with "mild to moderate" symptoms fall through the cracks. Rather, he suggests we need to look at depression as a continuum ranging from well to distress to disorder. This, he believes, can help us to see depression in its diversity and allow for an equally diverse range of treatments. If youve seen pure flamenco or Spanish classical dance performed at the Overture Centers International Festival, onstage at a Wisconsin opera or symphony concert, or in a show at an intimate Madison coffeehouse, youve probably seen Tania Tandias. Tandias is Wisconsins sole authentic, highly trained flamenco dancer at least as far as she knows having been schooled in both Spain and the U.S. Southwest by experts in the art form. Blonde, blue-eyed and primarily of Norwegian descent, Tandias sticks out in a crowd primarily because of her reputation for bringing one of the worlds most beautiful dance forms to the Dairy State. Tandias, winner last year of the Wisconsin Dance Councils annual award for choreography/performance, will next be on stage in Snapshots of Spain, a production of Kanopy Dance performed Friday, Saturday and Sunday in Overtures Promenade Hall. Snapshots of Spain will feature Tandias; guest artist Danica Sena, a flamenco and contemporary dancer and director from San Francisco; Madisons Afro-Peruvian Jazz Trio Golpe Tierra; and Kanopy Dance Company. Known for its Martha Graham-inspired, creative approach to modern dance, Kanopy is venturing once again into new territory with its Spanish-flavored program. The concert will not try to mimic pure traditional Spanish dance, but rather feature original works inspired by the forms distinctive rhythms, rich movements and passionate music. Its nice for Kanopy that their dancers and their audiences can be exposed to a little bit different style of dance, Tandias said in a recent interview. I think it just broadens everybodys perspective about dance. And within Spanish dance right now, particularly within flamenco, its all about fusion. Its just like any other art form its evolving. There will be modern movements, jazzy movements you just see people experimenting a lot. Kanopy had talked with Tandias and Sena for a long time about collaborating on a show of original works, said Kanopy co-artistic director Lisa Thurrell. We had been talking, probably two or three years now, about this: Could we create a concert where we took a few more chances in terms of this fusion and mixing it up differently, taking some chances? Thurrell said. For example, were not asking our dancers to do flamenco footwork, but what they have been doing with Danica is some of the shawl work, the fan work, the traditional use of the canes used in Spanish dance, she said. And some of the rhythms. Youll see some of the rhythms in a different way not with the classical footwork, per se, but with them doing other things with their bodies. Were really pushing the edges a bit more, and seeing what things might turn out. Snapshots of Spain will feature many short, different pieces, said Thurrell. And their Spanish influences are broad. We wanted to look at aspects of Spain that werent just the dance, she said. Danica, for example, has a piece that was inspired by a Goya painting. So there are these beautiful tableaus reflecting that painting as the piece builds, with these almost painterly images within the structure of the dance. Thurrell herself is doing a piece inspired by artist Salvador Dali. How can we be inspired by the artistry of Spain? Were trying to really experiment in different ways, and make beauty with it, she said. Its been great fun for us as artists, and I think its paying off. Thurrell and Tandias go back to high school days in Madison, when both were members of the Greek folk dance troupe Mesoghios. Tandias had spent her youth involved in gymnastics. In college at UW-Madison where she would graduate with a degree in German she met her future husband Aman, who grew up in Indonesia and is of Chinese descent. Aman played classical and flamenco guitar, and through that music Tandias also fell in love with flamenco. Known as La Rubia, or blonde for her light hair, she studied with masters in the U.S. and abroad. Eventually she founded her own dance troupe in Madison, Tania (pronounced Tanya) Tandias Flamenco & Spanish Dance. Tandias, who teaches in Kanopys studio space on State Street, lives Madisons Greenbush neighborhood with her husband and daughter Tatiana, 17, a West High School student and accomplished cello player. Through the years Tandias has worked with Wisconsin symphonies and chamber groups performing flamenco on Spanish-influenced concert bills, and has choreographed for ballet companies across the state. Shell serve as choreographer for Madison Operas production of Carmen this fall. Shes pulled back on her performance schedule a bit because of chronic knee problems, and next season will be busy taking her daughter to colleges for music auditions, she said. I can only perform so much. I am definitely not dancing as much as I did when I was younger, said Tandias, 46. Flamenco requires tremendous precision, she said. We use lots of counter-time rhythms and heel work and brush steps. It has to be very, very precise, because it is like a drum. Its a musical instrument, she said. So basically, youre a dancer and a musician at the same time kind of like Irish step dance or tap dance. For the upper body, especially for the women though nowadays the genders all mix just very graceful hands and upper body movements. For both the men and women we use hand gestures called flores, making flower gestures with the hands, she said. Turns are very important, very fast turns. We also have dance technique with certain props, and I think youll definitely see that in the Kanopy Dance performance. As well as being the most influential poet of his time, T.S. Eliot was a director of Faber & Faber, in which capacity he employed a typist named Esme Valerie Fletcher as his assistant. Towards the end of 1956, the 68-year-old poet proposed marriage. He wrote the poem A Dedication to My Wife, which is filled with lines like To whom I owe the leaping delight and other adoring phrases which are almost un-Eliot-like in their warmth and sentimentality. After his death, Valerie became the editor and annotator of Eliots works. 4) Vladimir Nabokov Nabokovs wife, Vera, was her husbands sternest critic and biggest fan. Vera acted as his typist, editor and literary agent, and did all the driving. Vera was vigilant in making Vladimir rewrite his fastidious prose if it wasnt up to scratch. Theres also a story that she saved Lolita from the flames, when the manuscript was abandoned in a bout of frustrated rage. 5) William Wordsworth Not only did William Wordsworths sister Dorothy produce the fair copies of her brothers work, but his wife and sister-in-law also helped out with the transcribing. Rumour has it that Dorothy did far more than simply transcribe: she also acted as his literary executor after his death, and edited his unpublished works. 6) F. Scott Fitzgerald Fitzgerald was more indebted to his wife Zelda than he ever let on. As Zelda scathingly announced, after the publication of This Side of Paradise: "I recognise a portion of an old diary of mine which mysteriously disappeared shortly after my marriage, and also scraps of letters which, though considerably edited, sound to me vaguely familiar. In fact, Mr. FitzgeraldI believe that is how he spells his nameseems to believe that plagiarism begins at home." In a recently published book The Subversive Art of Zelda Fitzgerald, by my colleague Deborah Pike, you can finally read some of these stolen passages and their sources side by side. 7) Willy aka Henry Gauthier-Villars Willy was the pen name of the once famous but now forgotten writer Henry Gauthier-Villars, a tremendously successful self-promoter and author of 50 novels penned by a stable of ghostwriters, including his wife. The apocryphal story goes that Henry would go so far as to lock his wife in a room until she had produced the desired quantity of prose. One day his wife, deciding she had finally had enough, left. She published the rest of her work under a surname you might recognise: Colette. 8) Peter Carey Alison Summers was Peter Careys wife and editor for 20 years. Shes been thanked for a lot more than typing in all of Careys best known books, such as The True History of the Kelly Gang, where he thanks Summers for her clear literary intelligence and flawless dramatic instinct. This all changed following their famously acrimonious divorce, after which Summers claimed she had been transformed into a minor character described as the Alimony Whore in Theft: A Love Story. Carey denied the link. 9) Mark Twain On a happier note, Samuel Clemens better known as Mark Twain met Olivia Langdon in 1867, and took her to a reading by Charles Dickens. They married, and Olivia almost inevitably became her husbands editor, assisting him with his books, and also with his journalism, until her death in 1904. 10) John Stuart Mill Of course, if you want to thank your wife, and do the job properly, theres no better example than John Stuart Mill. His effusive thanks to his wife Harriet is exemplary. Mill wrote, in the dedication to On Liberty, that Harriet had been responsible for all of the great thoughts he ever had. More than a few churlish critics have taken issue with Mills claim, arguing that more than a few of these thoughts got published before John and Harriet even met. Of course, there have been times when the hard work has also run in the other direction. George Eliots portrait of Dorothea Brooke in Middlemarch, slaving away as an assistant for her strikingly untalented husband, Edward Casaubon, writing his unfinished book Key to All Mythologies, is not a portrait of her own relationship. Her soulmate George Henry Lewes never faltered in his admiration for his far more famous partner, and even, legend has it, went to fetch her library books. Leonard Woolf, husband to Virginia, the author of A Room of Ones Own perhaps the most famous argument for a space for women writers in a male dominated tradition - also gave up much to comfort his finally inconsolable wife. He took her on trips to Harley Street, and long cures in the country. As Virginia wrote in her fateful suicide note of 1941, "You have been entirely patient with me, and incredibly good I dont think two people could have been happier than we have been." Seeff is one of five photographers whose photographs of Patti Smith are on show at Sydney's Blender Gallery. Seeff shot Patti Smith around April 1969 soon after she had moved into room 207 of the Chelsea Hotel with Robert Mapplethorpe. This was six years before Patti Smith's debut album "Horses". It was before Robert began experimenting with a Polaroid camera, which led later to his famous photography dating from the mid '70s onwards. I arrived in New York at the end of 1968. It was the middle of a cold snowy winter, a shock after leaving Johannesburg in the summer. The reality of trying to start a new career hit hard and pretty soon I'm questioning why I had given up the "important" work of being a medical doctor for the "trivial" life of a photographer. After about four months of not getting any work, I made up my mind that I would do a photo session every day. I realised I had to build a portfolio with what I would call "an American sentiment" the feel of being in New York. I had brought some photographs from South Africa that were good but didn't relate to the subculture of NY. So the approach was to create a portfolio that people would recognise as "this is us, this is our lifestyle". I was really starting from scratch. The process was also about finding what my voice was how to bring a sense of authenticity to my images beyond the technical aspects of being a photographer. How did you come to know Patti? What is she like to photograph? I would just go to wherever I could find interesting people, like Max's Kansas City, a bar downtown that was a subculture hub. Andy Warhol and his mob were there and that's where I met Robert and Patti. It was a chance meeting and I didn't know anything about either of them. But we hit it off instantaneously and they responded positively to my request to do a session. I may have shown them the images that I was putting together in my portfolio at the time. Even after I worked with them I was still unaware of anything about them, other than we were just having a great time together. I found Patti absolutely fascinating, both of them really. I was thrilled with almost every shot from that session. They were both extraordinary. But I think the most extraordinary aspect was the way [they] related to each other. They were so willing to provide me with anything I asked for, to which they added their own creativity. They quickly got on a roll, moving from one way of relating to each other to the next and I was literally in an ecstatic state, capturing hundreds of wonderful images. When taking portraits, like those of Patti, how do you try and connect with your subject? A Fairfax Media analysis has identified that almost half (47 per cent) of Coalition MPs or their immediate families have an interest in trusts, a proportion considerably higher than previous parliaments and much greater than in the wider population. Of the 105 Coalition MPs, 49 have a personal or family interest in a discretionary trust, while active involvement in family trusts is closer to 5 per cent in the general population. Among senior members of the government, the proportion is greater still, with half - 10 out of 20 - of cabinet with trusts. This includes foreign minister Julie Bishop, employment minister Michaelia Cash and immigration minister Peter Dutton, as well as key economic portfolio holders Scott Morrison and Kelly O'Dwyer. Labor MPs are much less trust-inclined, though the proportion of Labor MPs with trusts is growing. About 21 MPs or families in the current ALP caucus (22 per cent) now have trusts. This includes deputy leader Tanya Plibersek, shadow attorney general Mark Dreyfus and fellow Victorians, David Feeney and Tim Watts. South Australian senator Nick Xenophon is a prominent crossbencher with a trust, and Victorian senator Derryn Hinch also have them. Senator Nick Xenophon has a family trust. Credit:Andrew Meares Neither Prime Minister Turnbull nor Opposition leader Bill Shorten has a family trust. On Friday, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull stressed he did not have a family trust and that he had "always been very conservative" in his approach to tax. But he confirmed there were no plans for "sweeping changes" on taxing trusts. "Trusts are a very legitimate form of business structure," he told 3AW's Neil Mitchell. "They're very widely used in small businesses, in family business, particularly with farms." The popularity of trusts among MPs compared to the general population is consistent with the observation that they disproportionately benefit wealthier Australians particularly those on incomes of $500,000 or more at the expense of average taxpayers. Serious reform of the tax advantages of trusts has not been proposed since Howard-era treasurer Peter Costello was stymied in his attempts by his Coalition colleagues in the early 2000s. University of NSW trust tax law expert Dale Boccabella estimates that trust tax perks are costing government coffers $2 billion a year or more, a bill picked up by other taxpayers. Even though the Coalition lost 17 seats at the July 2016 election, the number of its MPs with trusts has risen, up from 43 in previous parliament, and from 35 in the Gillard/Rudd years when Labor ran a minority government. And where records or reports are available, they point to far fewer MPs in the past with trusts, especially in Labor-dominated parliaments. Trust use is also increasing in the wider community. Unpublished figures provided exclusively to Fairfax Media by the Australian Taxation Office reveal almost 643,000 discretionary trusts (most family trusts are this kind) in Australia in the 2014-15 financial year (the most recent figures), about twice the number of 20 years earlier. Despite the growth, only about 5 per cent of the nation's 13.4 million taxpayers have discretionary trusts, a fraction of the equivalent percentage for Coalition MPs. Peter Dutton has a family trust. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Another 13 government MPs have self-managed superannuation funds (SMSFs) or other investment vehicles. Lack of transparency is an issue with both trusts and SMSFs. While MPs are required to declare family trusts and super funds along with companies and shareholdings, they are not obliged to declare investments made by trusts or SMSFs. It is possible, therefore, for a resources minister to have large shareholding in a mining company, through a trust or SMSF, but not declare it. Tanya Plibersek has a family trust. Credit:Wayne Taylor This week Transparency International called on the government for greater scrutiny of trusts, including a national public register. When told of the Coalition interest in trusts, Transparency chief executive Serena Lillywhite said: "This may explain why it's taken so long for a regime to be developed to clamp down on the use of trusts and shell companies". Trusts are a legal means of handling personal, business and family finances, and Australia has many forms of them, some of which are devoted to looking after people with disabilities, and children. The National Party has rewritten the rules on public service "decentralisation" to skew it towards its own seats in NSW and Queensland, research from the Parliamentary Library shows. Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce says he wants federal government "largesse" to be spread more evenly around the nation but Labor has re-doubled its attack on the policy, saying the library's research is clear proof of the "pork barrel". Labor's agriculture spokesman Joel Fitzgibbon. Credit:Damian White The library has found only four sites in nation fitting the bill under the government's new rules for relocating agricultural agencies, written at Mr Joyce's behest. Three of the towns are in Nationals' seats and a forth in a north Queensland marginal electorate the party desperately wants to win back. The trenches in Bullecourt: 3300 Australians were killed or wounded and 1170 taken prisoner during the battle. Credit:Australian War Memorial After the war, thousands of Australian women were left without husbands, fathers and brothers. Others had to care for severely disabled men. Single women faced a shortage of eligible men to marry and, unlike in Britain, there were few opportunities to enter the paid workforce. Their stories are only now coming to light thanks to the work of historians such as Honorary Research Associate at La Trobe University, Dr Marina Larsson. The five Leane brothers. Four would not return from the war. Credit:Australian War Memorial "This history hadn't been written before and it's such an important history there are very few books about ex-servicemen's experiences after the war and the experiences of their families," she says. Alice Leane's daughter-in-law Phyllis was 22, mother of a two-year-old daughter and pregnant with a second child when her husband Ben, the youngest of Alice's sons, sailed to war. He would survive Gallipoli only to be blown apart at Bullecourt. Theirs was a short but passionate marriage and Phyllis managed to get to London with her two young children in December 1916 to see Ben one last time. Widowed at 24, Phyllis lived to be 82 but never married again even though in one of his many letters to her, Ben had encouraged her to remarry if he should die in the war. Women did play a significant role during the war, in voluntary work. Middle-class women joined the patriotic funds, knitting socks, holding street stalls to raise money for parcels to send to soldiers at the front. Credit:State Library of NSW Much of the practical and emotional burden of care fell to family members within the domestic sphere, particularly wives, mothers and sisters. Dr Marina Larsson. For the families who had to care for sons and husbands severely injured by the war there were war pensions and medical treatment, says Dr Larsson, who has written extensively on the impact of war disability. "But much of the practical and emotional burden of care fell to family members within the domestic sphere, particularly wives, mothers and sisters" who had to feed and bath bedridden men, dispense medication and maintain surgical aids, she says. Allan Leane, killed in action at Bullecourt. Credit:Australian War Memorial In Sydney, for example, Louisa Hogan had to hand-feed her son Frederick with liquid meals after he returned from the war in 1917 with his lower jaw shot away and his right arm disabled. "Sixty thousand men died and 90,000 came back with some kind of disability. In war, there are always more men wounded than killed," says Dr Larsson. The former Bullecourt battlefield, as it looks now, with one of the identified Digger crosses. Some men were wounded multiple times. Another of Alice Leane's sons, Raymond, sustained wounds to his head and face, his left hand, and a serious wound to his left leg that forced him to wear a metal brace for the rest of his life. His was also hospitalised with pneumonia and suffered a physical breakdown. One of Australia's most decorated World War I soldiers, Raymond would end the war as a Brigadier General, but he would live with the memory of picking up the pieces of his brother Ben's body after it was blown apart at Bullecourt. He rarely talked about the war to his family. Dealing with a returned soldier crippled by his wounds was one thing. But families also had to deal with the disturbing and sometimes violent behaviour of shell-shock victims, and financially cope with the fact their men would mostly never work again, says Dr Larsson. After serving on the Western Front, Herbert Stephens was discharged in 1919, suffering from shell shock. First treated at Mont Park Hospital for the Insane in Melbourne in the mid 1920s, he eventually returned to live with his parents. The elderly Stephens couple had to look after a middle-aged son who was in their words "not normal". As his mother Clara told the Repatriation Department, theirs had been a "long war". Eighty per cent of the Australian Imperial Force were unmarried and 52 per cent were aged between 18 and 24, creating a shortage of eligible men to marry after the war. Young single women were encouraged to marry disabled veterans. For example, in 1921, weekly tabloid the Truth suggested the "helplessness" of disabled soldiers should awaken a spirit of "mothering" within women and they should consider devoting their lives to such men in marriage. Many women spent months, even years, corresponding with the government about war pensions. One such case was another of Alice Leane's daughters-in-law. According to letters she wrote to Base Records, Martha Leane's husband Ernest had deserted her during the war, did not send her any of his military salary and when he returned to Australia in 1920 didn't tell her where he was living. Martha's oldest son, Arnold, was killed at the Somme in 1916 the first of the extended Leane family to be killed in action. The war left Martha, who had very little education and still had three young children to look after, heart-broken and nearly destitute. She wrote several letters to Base Records seeking a war pension linked to her son's service but it's not clear if she ever received it. Many families also desperately sought information about their men who went missing on the battlefront. Of almost 60,000 Australian deaths on the battlefields, 23,000 have no known grave, making the grieving that much more difficult for their families. The war affected Australian women in other ways too. Emeritus Professor Joan Beaumont at the Australian National University says people often confuse the Australian situation with that of Britain, where women worked in munitions factories during the war, and stayed in the paid workforce afterwards. "The situation in Australia was quite different. We mostly supplied raw materials to Britain, not munitions. So women weren't needed in factories," explains Professor Beaumont. "There was also great resistance from the trade union movement against women taking men's jobs." Australia also didn't experience the same labour shortages as Britain because for a variety of personal and economic reasons only about half of the eligible men enlisted. Women did play a significant role, however, in voluntary work. "Middle-class women joined the patriotic funds, knitting socks, holding street stalls to raise money for parcels to send to soldiers at the front, and they were conservative women, very gung-ho about the war," says Professor Beaumont. For example, women flocked to the Australian Red Cross one of many voluntary organisations that sprang up after 1914 and helped supply more than 10 million cigarettes, 94,000 toothbrushes and 65,000 tins of cocoa and coffee to soldiers at the front. Loading In 1915, Alice Leane had boasted to a newspaper journalist that she had contributed five sons and six grandsons to the war. She missed them but she would rather they "go out and fight than skulk at home when the motherland is in need of them". The truth, of course, was much harsher and more complicated. Four of her boys never returned, several were wounded, and one, perhaps unable to cope with the loss of his own son in the war and the responsibilities he faced at home, abandoned his wife and surviving children. The men who survived had to live with the horrors they had witnessed. It was a high price to pay for defending the motherland. A Current Affair reporter Ben McCormack has been banned from accessing the internet and from being in the company of a child under the age of 16 under the strict bail conditions he must comply with after being charged with a child pornography offence. McCormack, 42, also must not communicate with anyone under the age of 16, visit areas known to be frequented by children such as playgrounds and schools, and cannot log on to any of his social media accounts even via a third party. His strict conditions, which include reporting to police twice a week and surrendering his passport, follow McCormack's roadside arrest at Moore Park on Thursday when he was later charged with using a carriage service for child pornography. Police allege McCormack sent child pornography images over the internet and also engaged in explicit conversation about children with another man online. Disgraced eastern suburbs socialite Kirsty Dayment has made a successful bid to stay out of jail for another weekend as she revealed she is no longer pregnant. During a sentencing hearing on March 4, Dayment revealed she was three months pregnant. Kirsty Dayment arrives at the Downing Centre District Court for a sentencing hearing on Friday. Credit:Brook Mitchell However, on Friday, her lawyers told the court she was no longer expecting a baby following a miscarriage on March 16. Judge Sarah Huggett said she was aware of the miscarriage and "I've taken that into account in sentencing". "If you need any assistance at all," Justice Geoff Bellew told the jury, "I am here ready, willing and able." It has been two weeks since the seven men and five women jury retired to deliberate on the fate of wealthy property developer Ron Medich. Ron Medich, outside the NSW Supreme Court, is on trial for murder. The jury has been considering their verdict for two weeks. Credit:Brook Mitchell Mr Medich, 68, has pleaded not guilty to the 2009 murder of his business foe Michael McGurk and the later intimidation of his widow Kimberley. On Tuesday, the jury sent the judge a note inquiring about what was needed to prove "intent" but there has been nothing from them since then. Samuel Thompson's grieving parents have been given confirmation a body found in bush north of Brisbane was their slain son. Forensic police have completed a post-mortem, finding evidence the 22-year-old Albion man was assaulted before his death. A police spokesman said it was unclear whether the assault caused his death. Police believe the man whose abandoned orange Ford Mustang sparked the year's largest murder investigation was likely dead before the car ever turned up at a north Brisbane waterhole that featured extensively in his murder investigation. Brisbane City Council's proposed metro system will eventually be extended to Chermside, Carindale and Springwood, deputy mayor Adrian Schrinner said, as more details of the revised project were revealed. According to the council's plans, the new Chermside line would feed into the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital station, while the Carindale line would feed into the Buranda metro station. Artist's impression of a Brisbane Metro bi-articulated bus crossing the Victoria Bridge. Credit:BCC The Springwood line would be an extension of the already announced Eight Mile Plains line, along the South East Busway. The revelation came weeks before the business case for Brisbane Metro 1 (between Eight Mile Plains and Roma Street) and 2 (between the University of Queensland and the RBWH) was due to be released. The great thing about Better Call Saul, which returns Monday for a third season, is that watching it feels like revisiting old friends. For fans of Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul is a must-watch prequel, the backstory of lawyer to the legally questionable, Saul Goodman, played to the hilt by Bob Odenkirk. From the first episode, we learn that Saul Goodman is not his real name; instead, Goodman is a persona that Jimmy McGill later cultivates for reasons as yet unknown. (For those unfamiliar with Breaking Bad, Saul can be just as entertaining, but youre not getting the fullest experience. It would be like watching Rogue One without having seen the 1977 Star Wars: Unrelated characters, different story, but gaps remain nonetheless.) Until now, weve seen Jimmys attempts to become a respected lawyer often thwarted by his willingness to take shortcuts a commercial he made without his firms approval got him in hot water with his firm; acting like a boorish employee got him fired. Hes also targeted by his brother, Chuck (Michael McKean), a highly successful lawyer who suffers from a (real or imagined) sensitivity to electricity, which forces him into tinfoil-lined suits and a darkened home office. Chuck has been jealous of Jimmy forever; a sibling rivalry rooted in the fact that, though their mother was extremely proud of Chuck, Jimmy made her laugh. Additionally, Chuck considers Jimmy not to be a real lawyer, and has been doing everything he can to expose Jimmys predilection for skirting moral boundaries. Despite the obstacles in his path to legitimacy, Jimmy seems to have landed in a good place, opening a firm with his friend and confidante Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn). Except for that audiotape Chuck has with Jimmys admission of committing a felony to help Kim secure a major client. That could mess things up a bit. As Saul advances in time toward the events of Breaking Bad, the appearance of familiar characters becomes inevitable. Already, Saul has provided backstory for Mike Ehrmantraut (Sauls eventual fixer), and weve met Hector and Tuco Salamanca, of a Mexican drug cartel. Later this season, another familiar face resurfaces: Gustavo Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito), purveyor of Los Pollos Hermanos and eventual meth lord of New Mexico and beyond. Introducing these characters, so familiar and so instrumental in Breaking Bad, allows Jimmys transformation to Saul take shape. There is something sad and tragic about Jimmy trying and failing, over and over again, and often with someone else pulling the strings. Seeing the good-intentioned Jimmy become disillusioned is heartbreaking; watching Saul emerge is a guilty pleasure. The third season of Better Call Saul premieres at 9 p.m. Monday on AMC. Not-so-blind Dates: Going on a first date carries enough pressure to be charming, to be likable, to be funny, to be poised so that, if the other person is none of those things, you can extricate yourself without too many hurt feelings. But imagine having said dates recorded, then narrated and broadcast on national TV? Thats the idea of First Dates, premiering Friday on NBC. From Ellen DeGeneres, based on a hit series in the U.K., Drew Barrymore narrates as a series of real first dates play out over one night at the same Chicago restaurant. The subjects hit all sorts of demographics, coming from across the country and covering a variety of ages, sexualities and dating experience. The daters are interviewed, introduced to each other, and sent on their dates, and every endearing, hilarious and excruciating detail of them are recorded for our voyeuristic pleasure. At the end of the hour, we do find out which pairs might see each other again, and which connections are severed for good. First Dates premieres at 7 p.m. Friday on Ch. 15. Reality bites: Two reality shows premiering Friday could have the power to change lives for real. First, ABCs The Toy Box pits inventors against mentors of the toy world; if their new toy makes it past that first panel, then it goes to the toughest judges of all: kids. Winning toys from each night (there are five a night) go on to compete in the final round, with the winning toy to be made by Mattel and sold exclusively at ToysRUs. The show, hosted by Eric Stonestreet of Modern Family, features such novel inventions as the Party Cannon, a game that launches toys and other prizes; and the Swurfer, a backyard swing inspired by a surfboard. The Toy Box premieres at 7 p.m. Friday on Ch. 27. Then its You the Jury, on Fox, where America votes on some high-profile civil cases. After the attorneys for both sides argue their cases, viewers will have about five minutes to vote via text and the Fox Now app. For Eastern and Central Time viewers, the binding decision will be revealed live at the end of the episode; however, if the Mountain and Western Time votes, when added to the Eastern and Central Time votes, result in a different verdict, the first decision will be overturned. Its a curious experiment that depends on the kind of viewer who watches live TV on a Friday night. Hosted by Fox News Jeanine Pirro, You the Jury premieres at 8 p.m. Friday on Ch. 47. Like father, like Son: A new limited series based on the best-seller of the same name, The Son tells the saga of the McCullough familys experiences from the wild, unsettled frontier land of Texas to having built their fortune on the oil under that land. Pierce Brosnan stars as Eli McCullough, the patriarch who lived through some violent childhood experiences to become a cool, calculating, and ruthless power broker teaching his family to follow in his footsteps. The sweeping drama endures clashes with Native Americans, Spanish settlers, and in-family rivalries, all in the name of legacy. The Son premieres at 8 p.m. Saturday on AMC. Pigeons in south-east Queensland common in Post Office Square, King George Square and Anzac Square and the region's river red gums are the two most likely sources of the fungus that causes about six cases of the very rare cryptococcal meningitis in Queensland each year, an infectious diseases expert said. Fairfax Media this week reported the case study of Camira man Milton Silcock, who said he contracted this rare form of fungal meningitis after sweeping up poo from swallows in a plumbing supplies business in Springfield. Pigeons in Brisbane's Post Office Square. The birds' droppings produce the fungus that can cause cryptococcal meningitis. Credit:Tony Moore In 2015, Cairns woman Nancy "Lee" Mules received a $6.7 million payout seven years after she first went to her GP when the meningitis eventually made her profoundly blind and deaf. Infectious diseases expert Professor Michael Whitby, from the University of Queensland, said dried dust from pigeon poo kicked up by shoes were the most common carrier of the fungus that caused "about 20" cases of fungal meningitis in Queensland each year. A man has been found not guilty by a jury of murdering his former partner, who was stabbed to death in central Queensland. Shandee Blackburn was walking home from work in Mackay on February 9, 2013, when she was robbed and left to die. John Peros was acquitted of Shandee Blackburn's murder by the jury. Credit:Louie Douvis Locals found the 23-year-old lying in the street covered in blood and called paramedics but she couldn't be saved. Her former partner John Peros was charged with her murder in September 2014 after an extensive police investigation, including involvement from the Crime and Corruption Commission. Small businesses want the Australian Securities and Investment Commission and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to investigate the practice of big businesses offering loans to small businesses. The Council of Small Business Australia has called for an investigation by the regulators into global giants pushing out payment times to small businesses and then offering the same small businesses loans to keep them afloat. Massive brands including Kellogg's, Mars and Fonterra all have payment terms of up to 120 days and offer loans to cover this period in a development highlighted by Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Commissioner Kate Carnell. Peter Strong, chief executive of COSBOA, has contacted the ASIC and the ACCC to request an investigation. The world's largest search engine is rolling out a new feature that places "Fact Check" tags on snippets of articles in its News results. The Alphabet Inc. unit had already run limited tests. On Friday, it extended the capability to every listing in its News pages and massive search catalogue. This is the latest sign Google is responding to mounting pressure to police content it hosts online after criticism the company, and other internet firms, help spread misinformation. Google search algorithms will determine whether the labels will appear on the articles or not. Credit:Jens Meyer However Google isn't entirely giving up its usual hands-off approach: The company is letting others do the fact-checking. The approach is meant to legitimise or question claims online, Google said in a blog post. Checked search results list the name of the person or group making the assertion and the determination of the fact-checker. Although Google is working with established fact-checking organisations, like PolitiFact and Snopes, it's also opening up the system to publishers including The Washington Post and The New York Times. In theory, media organisations could use the new feature to fact-check each other. Or publishers could give different verdicts on the veracity of the same article. Up to 4000 households will be invited to participate in a national broadband network (NBN) monitoring program from next month, to show consumers what speeds telcos are really providing during peak and off-peak hours. In a move that favours consumers over companies that argued against the scheme, the federal government on Friday announced $7 million will be provided over four years for the new Broadband Performance and Monitoring and Reporting program (BPMR). The speed monitoring program will tell customers whether NBN Co or their telco is responsible for slower than expected broadband speeds. Credit:Nic Walker Consumers will, for the first time, be able to see which internet providers deliver advertised speeds. "Performance information is a key factor for consumers when purchasing plans from a retail service provider," Communications Minister Mitch Fifield said in a statement. Four young men accused of leaving a father for dead in a violent Box Hill carjacking have been charged with stealing two more vehicles from another family on the same night. A Box Hill police Embona taskforce detective has confirmed the four people charged over the March 11 assault that left a 32-year-old man in a critical condition have also been charged over stealing another two vehicles in the eastern suburbs. After allegedly assaulting the Box Hill South man as he was getting into his Honda CRV in Massey Street about 6pm, the four are alleged to have travelled to another address in Camberwell and stolen two vehicles before midnight. The Camberwell victim, another young father who spoke to Fairfax Media on condition of anonymity, said he rushed outside when he heard the engine of his wife's Subaru Forester start up about 11.50pm. Four firefighters have been injured - two seriously - in a fire at an 1860's era hotel in eastern Victoria. The two men who were seriously injured were forced to jump out an upstairs window of the Bon Accord bed and breakfast in Sale after the downstairs fire escalated rapidly on Friday morning. The fire damaged Bon Accord bed and breakfast in Sale. Credit:Gippsland Times The two male volunteers have been flown to The Alfred hospital in Melbourne with serious burns and broken bones. "Buildings are nothing," said Tim Dunnett, the Bon Accord's owner. The jurors had been deliberating since Tuesday. Mr Paris was the husband of Mr Pain's step-daughter. A jury found Maxwell Pain guilty of killing David Paris, 36, in the Supreme Court on Friday. A man has been found guilty of murdering his wife's son-in-law, a court has heard. Justice Michael Croucher remanded Pain to appear in court again for a pre-sentence hearing on 16 May. More to come An Australian tourist has described witnessing a stolen truck ploughing through a crowd into a department store in central Stockholm, killing four people and wounding 15, in what appears to be a terror attack. "I turned around and saw a big truck coming towards me. It swerved from side to side. It didn't look out of control, it was trying to hit people," Glen Foran, an Australian tourist in his 40s, told Reuters after Friday's attack. "It hit people, it was terrible. It hit a pram with a kid in it, demolished it," he said. "It took a long time for police to get here. I suppose from their view it was quick, but it felt like forever." Washington: US President Donald Trump said he forged a friendship with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, striking a positive tone in the early hours of the first-ever meeting between leaders of the world's two biggest economies. "We had a long discussion already and so far I have gotten nothing, absolutely nothing," Trump joked on Thursday night at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida while dining with Xi, who arrived in the afternoon. "But we have developed a friendship. I can see that." "I think, long-term, we are going to have a very, very great relationship and I look very much forward to it," Trump said. The remarks came shortly before the US launched a cruise missile strike against Syria after Bashar al-Assad's regime used poison gas to kill scores of children. Trump had ignored a shouted question about Syria while he met with Xi. A couple from Baraboo have been charged with child neglect and reckless endangerment after police said they used heroin in a vehicle while their 7-month-old daughter was present, then both had to be revived after losing consciousness. Ayriden I. Pierce, 21, called police on Tuesday afternoon to the 5700 block of Portage Road in the town of Burke because her husband, John E. Pierce, 36, had overdosed on heroin and wasnt breathing. John Pierce required two doses of Naloxone, along with chest compressions and use of a defibrillator at the scene to save his life, according to a criminal complaint filed Friday in Dane County Circuit Court. As a Dane County sheriffs deputy spoke with Ayriden Pierce, she also became lethargic and unresponsive and required three doses of Naloxone to be revived, the complaint states. The complaint states the couple had come to Madison from Baraboo with their child, who was in the back seat of their vehicle when they overdosed. At an initial appearance Friday for John Pierce, Assistant District Attorney Curtis Hinca said Sauk County Child Protective Services is involved in the matter. John Pierce was jailed on $500 bail, but is also being held for a possible violation of his state Department of Corrections supervision. Ayriden Pierce did not appear in court Friday. Both Ayriden and John Pierce were charged with second-degree reckless endangerment of their daughter, child neglect and misdemeanor bail jumping. John Pierce is also charged with heroin possession and possession of drug paraphernalia. According to the complaint, Ayriden Pierce said they bought the heroin at a home near where police found them parked. They both used the drug, she said. Both were taken from the scene to a hospital. The couples daughter was also evaluated, a complaint states, and a urine test found evidence that the girl had been exposed to cocaine sometime during the previous 24 to 48 hours, but was not showing any symptoms of cocaine being in her body. Cernovich was adamant that Trump might actually listen to him and his readers for a decent reason: There's plenty of evidence that Trump reads and values conspiracy-theory sites like Infowars, and Cernovich himself appears to have some readers in the Trump administration. On Sunday, Cernovich was the first to report a story about Obama national security adviser Susan E. Rice requesting the "unmasking" of anonymous Americans named in foreign intelligence reports, implying that he now has sources with access to that information. And on Thursday afternoon, Cernovich said one of his sources told him US airstrikes were possible in Syria that evening, which turned out to be right (although rumours of a possible military action were circulating around Washington much of the day). Several hours into his livestream, however, news broke that Trump hadn't listened to them. "I don't know if this is true or not. This is not my journalism," he said, reading the news on his iPad while broadcasting live. "I certainly don't want this to be true." As it became clear to him that it was true, Cernovich said: "This is appalling really. This is unbelievable. This is not what we voted for. This is definitely not what we voted for." Cernovich resumed taking listeners' calls. One of the first after the strikes was particularly stark: "Is the world over? Are we all gonna die now?" the caller asked. Cernovich said it wasn't. The caller responded, "I"m literally scared sh--less now. I might have to kill myself. Okay, peace out." Another caller said that "Trump's contract with the people was essentially void." On Twitter, the reaction from the Trump Internet was fractured and furious. Paul Joseph Watson, a YouTuber who writes for Infowars, had one of the most dramatic: Jakarta: The Jakarta police chief has called for the blasphemy trial of the city's Christian governor to be suspended until after the final gubernatorial election this month citing security fears, as religious tensions continue to overshadow the election campaign. The embattled ethnic Chinese and Christian governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, universally known as Ahok, is reaching the pointy end of his trial for allegedly insulting Islam, with prosecutors scheduled to deliver their sentence demand next Tuesday. Facing possible jail time for blasphemy: Jakarta's governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama. Credit:AP Ahok faces a maximum five years' jail for telling voters they had been deceived by religious leaders who used the Koranic scripture al-Ma'ida to argue a non-Muslim should not be elected governor of Jakarta. Meanwhile an app - provocatively named after the sura or chapter of the Koran that landed Ahok in so much hot water - has been launched urging people from outside Jakarta to register to "guard" polling booths, raising fears that voters will be intimidated. Stephen Bannon has proven remarkably talented at creating a media mystique around himself. With his diligent assistance, he has been portrayed as both a virtuoso of deliberately orchestrated disruption and an avenging angel to working-class people (such as his father) who have been betrayed by global and financial elites. Bannon cleverly wields chaos to destabilise those elite foes in service of an economic nationalist mission that borders on Messianism. But now Bannon is being primarily viewed inside the White House as a destructive force, and other senior advisers are trying to undermine him in the eyes of President Donald Trump himself, according to multiple reports. Those reports undercut the narrative of Bannon as a Maestro of Disruption, and they also provide an occasion to probe the true nature of his self-ascribed economic nationalism. The New York Times reports that Bannon's removal on Wednesday from his post at the National Security Council is part of a broader internal push that may "diminish" his role. His position has been "undermined" by the failure of the immigration ban, which has been blocked by the courts. Beijing: To China's 'smog refugees' - the city residents who had fled to the countryside with their children for cleaner air - Dali was their Bali. The ancient town in southern Yunnan province, beneath Cang Mountain and near Erhai Lake, was once dubbed China's "hidden gem", for its pristine scenery and the traditional ways of its ethnic Bai inhabitants. A young Chinese couple take a photo in Dali, a city of 1 million that saw 24 million people visit last year. Credit:Sanghee Liu Nearby Shuanglang, a 1000-year-old fishing village, became a magnet for young Chinese seeking an alternative life, as hundreds of guest houses, bars and restaurants spread around Erhai's shore. The music and arts scene flourished. A school was set up to educate their children outside the Chinese education system. Bangkok: At first glance Rodrigo Duterte's order to deploy Philippine troops to 10 small islands and reefs in the flashpoint waters of the South China Sea is a serious escalation of a dispute that could engulf the world's major powers. But like so many comments made by the 72-year-old firebrand President since he took office last June, it is unclear whether he is joking, stirring patriotic sentiments at home or is serious. Taken at his word, sending the troops to build permanent structures like barracks and water desalination plants on the islands is a surprising reversal of his policy not to antagonise China. China in October pledged to invest $24 billion in the Philippines where poverty is widespread. "It looks like everybody else is making a grab for the islands there, so we better live on those that are vacant," the President told reporters during a visit to a military camp on the western island of Palawan on Thursday. Security forces raid a sit-in in Syria's third-largest city, Homs, where thousands of people tried to create the mood of Cairo's Tahrir Square, the epicenter of protests against Egypt's autocrat Hosni Mubarak. Obama calls on Assad to resign August 18, 2011 Then US President Barack Obama calls on Assad to resign and orders Syrian government assets to be frozen. Syrian fighting spreads to Aleppo Summer 2012 Fighting spreads to Aleppo, Syria's largest city and its former commercial capital. Residents walk through the destruction of the once rebel-held Salaheddine neighbourhood in eastern Aleppo, Syria. Credit:AP Obama says the use of chemical weapons would be a 'red line' August 20, 2012 Obama says the use of chemical weapons would be a "red line" that would change his calculus on intervening in the civil war and have "enormous consequences". Syrian government and opposition fight over accusations of gas attack March 19, 2013 The Syrian government and opposition trade accusations over a gas attack that killed 26 people, including more than a dozen government soldiers, in the town of Khan al-Assal in northern Syria. A UN investigation later finds that sarin nerve gas was used, but does not identify a culprit. Civilians killed in sarin attack August 21, 2013 Hundreds of people suffocate in rebel-held suburbs of the Syrian capital, with many suffering from convulsions, pinpoint pupils and foaming at the mouth. UN investigators visit the sites and determine that ground-to-ground missiles loaded with sarin were fired on civilian areas while residents slept. The US and others blame the Syrian government, the only party to the conflict known to have sarin gas. Obama seeks authorisation for strikes in Syria August 31, 2013 Obama says he will go to Congress for authorisation to carry out punitive strikes against the Syrian government, but appears to lack the necessary support in the legislature. UN orders Syria to destroy its chemical weapons September 27, 2013 The UN Security Council orders Syria to account for and destroy its chemical weapons stockpile, following a surprise agreement between Washington and Moscow, averting US strikes. The Security Council threatens to authorise the use of force in the event of non-compliance. Syria signs Chemical Weapons Convention October 14, 2013 Syria becomes a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention, prohibiting it from producing, stockpiling or using chemical weapons. Doubts over Syria's claim it removed chemical weapons June 23, 2014 Global watchdog The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons says it has removed the last of the Syrian government's chemical weapons. Syrian opposition officials maintain that the government's stocks were not fully accounted for, and that it retained supplies. US launches airstrikes on IS in Syria September 23, 2014 The US and allied nations launch airstrikes on Islamic State group targets in Syria. Video released by US Central Command showing a building in Tall Al Qitar, Syria, moments after a US airstrike. Credit:AP UN orders probe amid reports of chlorine gas attacks August 7, 2015 The UN Security Council authorises UN and Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons investigators to probe reports of chemical weapons use in Syria, as reports circulate of repeated chlorine gas attacks by government forces against civilians in opposition-held areas. Chlorine gas, though not as toxic as nerve agents, can be classified as a chemical weapon depending on its use. UN finds Syria used helicopters for chlorine gas attacks August, 24, 2016 The joint UN and Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons panel finds the Syrian government twice used helicopters to deploy chlorine gas against its opponents, in civilian areas in the northern Idlib province. A later report holds the government responsible for a third attack. The attacks occurred in 2014 and 2015. The panel also finds that the Islamic State group used mustard gas. Russia, China block UN sanctions on Syria February 28 Russia and China veto a United Nations Security Council action authorising sanctions against the Syrian Government over accusations of chemical weapons attacks. Trump administration stresses ousting Assad not a priority Friday, March 31 Trump administration officials stress that ousting Syria's President, Bashar al-Assad, is no longer a priority, and that Washington's main goal is to fight the Islamic State group. Suspected chemical attack kills up to 80 in Syria Tuesday, April 4 Up to 80 people, including 20 children, are killed and scores more are sickened in a suspected chemical attack in the northern Idlib province on Tuesday morning. The attack causes many people to choke or faint, and some have foam coming out of their mouths. Trump blames Obama administration for Assad's actions Tuesday, April 4 The White House blames the Syrian government for the attack, which it called a "reprehensible" act "that cannot be ignored by the civilised world", but also lashes out at the former Obama administration. Sean Spicer, White House spokesman, tells reporters during an off-camera briefing that "these heinous actions by Assad's regime are a consequence of the last administration's weakness and irresolution". Trump takes harder line against Assad Wednesday, April 5 Trump says the attack has "crossed a lot of lines" and calls it "an affront to humanity". "These heinous actions by the Assad regime cannot be tolerated," he says. US President Donald Trump sought to cast the attack as an effort to deter Syria from using chemical weapons in the future. The Kremlin responds, as world leaders urge action Thursday, April 6 The Kremlin says differences with Washington over the use of chemical weapons in Syria are unlikely to worsen US-Russia relations. Russian President Vladimir Putin warns against apportioning blame for the chemical weapons attack until it is investigated. Putin's spokesman, however, says Russia's support for the Syrian president is not unconditional.. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says he hopes Trump will take military action in Syria. German Chancellor Angela Merkel says chemical attack in Syria "barbaric" and a war crime. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull condemns Syria attack Friday, April 7 Mr Turnbull says the chemical attack in Syria is a "war crime of the worst sort" that "cries out for a strong response". He tells Melbourne radio station 3AW there does not appear to be any doubt that Syrian government forces were behind it. Malcolm Turnbull. Credit:Ryan Stuart He was ambivalent about whether this direct strike would deter Assad from further retaliation in rebel held areas such as Idlib, where the Youssef family is based. The guided-missile destroyer USS Ross fires a Tomahawk land attack missile towards Syria on April 7. Credit:AP "This airbase does not mean a whole [lot] to us as much as it is imperative to get rid of the dictator," he said. Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian leader who has withstood his country's uprising since March 2011 and plunged into a grinding conflict, remains in power due largely to Russian and Iranian military support. Entering its seventh year, the Syrian conflict has seen the loss of more than 200,000 lives and more than 5 million refugees fleeing the war. A man carries a child following the suspected chemical attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun. Credit:Edlib Media Centre The airstrikes mark the first direct assault on Assad by the United States since the start of the conflict, which has served as a proxy war for various international actors including Turkey, Qatar, Iran and Russia. There are fears that the military escalation could exacerbate damaged relations between Russia and the US. Russian President Vladimir Putin viewed the attack as "aggression against a sovereign nation" and Iran also condemned it. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was supportive of the Trump administration's targeted military action deeming it "proportionate and swift". The Syrian government labelled the US a partner of militant groups such as Islamic State and al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra in response to the strike in a statement released on Friday. It further denied responsibility for the chemical attacks days earlier. "We are used to it every time. The regime loses some ground and subsequently it takes it out on civilians. We are expecting more of this in the coming days. There's already a massacre just this morning hours after America's strikes," Abdul Aziz explained. He lamented that he had heard reports of Russian retaliatory strikes on the nearby district of Heesh in Idlib, with suggestions of up to nine dead. "The regime is still there with its airbases, weapons, tanks and sarin gas. It is a lesson for Assad though at this point," he added. Rifaat al-Youssef, 27, a construction engineer who is also Abdel Hamid's cousin and in Khan Shikhoun, was more skeptical of Trump's missiles. "They are not useful. It is [like an] anesthetic for now that detracts away from the larger crimes of Assad and Russia," he said. "If his planes are still in the sky and can still kill us, then this is all just in vain and a lie." He told Fairfax Media how he recovered the bodies of relatives strewn across the site of the chemical attack earlier in the week. "It was horribly unbelievable picking up 13 relatives of mine in my own hands - the youngest being a two-month old baby. We saw dead people everywhere. Others foaming at the mouth and losing conscience," he said. Abdel Hamid, who is still in shock over the deaths of his toddlers and wife, said he is not deterred to leave his home. "This is my land, my country, I will never leave." When the chemical weapons struck the asphalt, he ran to transport those affected to field hospitals on the outskirts of Kahn Sheikhoun and when he returned, the sarin gas had seeped through a shelter where his wife and children were hiding in. Unable to sleep from the effects of the sarin gas, as well as the psychological distress of burying his nine-month-old twin toddlers and their mother, Abdel Hamid's nights have been marred by nightmares. Trump said the strike was designed "to prevent and deter the spread of deadly chemical weapons". He said there was no doubt that Syria was behind the chemical attack. "Years of previous attempts at changing Assad's behaviour have all failed," he said. He called on other nations to end terrorism. "We ask for God's wisdom as we face this challenge," he said. In this image provided by the US Navy, the USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile on Friday, April 7, from the Mediterranean Sea. . Credit:AP Has anyone been killed in the missile strike? The latest reports suggest at least nine civilians, including four children, were killed in the missile attack, which also caused extensive damage to the air base. Agence France-Presse had reported that at least four Syrian soldiers had been killed. Russian lawmaker Dmitry Sablin was quoted saying that no Russians were hurt. What is Australia's position? Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said he "strongly supports" the strikes. A Tomahawk missile is launched during a test in 2010 in the Pacific Ocean. Credit:USNavy He said on Friday that Australian officials were briefed about the strike before it took place. "The retribution has been proportionate and it has been swift, and we support the US in that swift action," he said. He said that Australia was not at war with Assad and the strikes were not designed to overturn the Syrian president's regime. "Civilians, women, children, babies it was a crime that called out for a swift response," he said. He has previously called for a strong response to the deadly chemical attack. Opposition leader Bill Shorten also welcomed the action. "We support the US sending a strong signal that these gas attacks should have never occurred - and they should never occur again," he said. How has Russia responded? Russian is one of Assad's main backers, the other is Iran. Russian President Vladimir Putin says the missile strikes broke international law and would "inflict major damage" on US-Russia relations. "Putin views the US strikes on Syria as aggression against a sovereign state in violation of the norms of international law and on a made-up up pretext," Mr Putin's spokesman was reported saying. "Washington's step will inflict major damage on US-Russia ties." It has been reported that Russia is calling call for an urgent meeting of the U.N. Security Council to discuss the situation. Russia's coalition with the United States on the Syria crisis looks shaky, according to a senior Russian lawmaker. Konstantin Kosachev, who is chairman of the Russian parliament's international affairs committee, said the strikes were intended to "stamp an earlier verdict about al-Assad's responsibility for a chemical attack in Idlib with gunpowder", according to a report by the Interfax news agency. Russia has since said it will suspend a deal with the US to prevent mid-air collisions over Syria, according to the Associated Press. Under the memorandum, signed after Russia launched an air campaign in Syria in September 2015, Russia and the US had exchanged information about their flights to avoid incidents in the crowded skies over Syria. Iran reportedly denounced the attack as "destructive and dangerous". How are people reacting? The attack was described as "American aggression" by Syrian state TV. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Trump had sent a strong message "in both word and action" that the use of chemical weapons would not be tolerated. The Syrian National Coalition opposition group welcomed the strikes, saying it hoped they would continue. "We hope for the continuation of the strikes in order to prevent the regime from using its planes to launch any new air raids or going back to using internationally banned weapons," the Coalition's media official Ahmad Ramadan said. A Downing Street spokesman said the British government "fully supports US military action in Syria." He said that the attack was "was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, and is intended to deter further attacks." The Polish government said they supported all actions to end the humanitarian crisis in Syria. But Iran slammed the attack. "Iran ... condemns use of chemical weapons ... but at the same time believes it is dangerous, destructive and violation of international laws to use it as an excuse to take unilateral actions," the Students News Agency ISNA quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi as saying. "Iran strongly condemns any such unilateral strikes ... Such measures will strengthen terrorists in Syria ... and will complicate the situation in Syria and the region." A Pentagon statement said "he strike was a proportional response to Assad's heinous act" "Shayrat Airfield was used to store chemical weapons," it said. US Republican Senator John McCain said the strikes sent an important message that the US would not "stand by" as Assad, aided by Russia, "slaughters innocent Syrians." What happens next? It could be a one off attack. Reuters is quoting a US defense official saying the Tomahawk strike was a "one off". Turnbull made a similar statement at his Sydney press conference earlier today. The UN Security Council may convene another emergency meeting. The world is expecting Russia and Iran to make a statement. How did the United States initially respond to the chemical attack? On Thursday, the United States signalled it could take a more aggressive response to the chemical attack. Loading When asked if the attack on a Syrian hospital crossed a "red line", Trump said "it crossed a lot of lines". "That crosses many, many lines, beyond red lines," he said. "The UK government fully supports the US action which we believe was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime and is intended to deter further attacks," the spokesman said. Britain fully supports the US military strike against a Syrian air field from which a deadly chemical weapons attack was launched, a British government spokesman said on Friday. London: The world responded swiftly to the sharp escalation of the US military role in Syria, after two US warships fired dozens of cruise missiles from the eastern Mediterranean Sea at an air base controlled by President Bashar al-Assad's forces in response to the poison gas attack in a rebel-held area that killed more than 80 people on Tuesday. Here is what they said: "[The] Australian government strongly supports the swift and just response of the United States.... This was a calibrated, proportionate and targeted response. It sends a strong message to the Assad regime, and ... has been struck at the very airfield from which the chemical attack was delivered. But we are not at war with the Assad regime and the United States have made it clear that they are not seeking to overthrow the Assad regime," Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said. Military officials said 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles had hit al-Shayrat airfield near Homs in Syria. The missiles were aimed at Syrian fighter jets and other infrastructure but did not target anything that may have had chemical weapons. Credit:Google Maps "A responsible source at the foreign ministry expressed the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's full support for the American military operations on military targets in Syria, which came as a response to the Syrian regime's use of chemical weapons against innocent civilians...," said a statement by the Saudi Arabian government. "In both word and action" Trump "sent a strong and clear message" that "the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated," said PM Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. "We hope for the continuation of the strikes in order to prevent the regime from using its planes to launch any new air raids or going back to using internationally banned weapons," said Ahmad Ramadan from the Syrian National Coalition which fights the Assad regime. PHILIPSBURG:--- I dont remember a time that the relationship between these 2 entities has not been strained. Yes, we have had lulls, but the underlying currents have always been present. I remember the early years following the constitutional referendum of 2000 when the position of the Kingdom government was no separate (read: country) status for any entity in the Kingdom. You were either in or out! 10 years after our referendum, parties had managed to get out of that quandary to the cautious satisfaction of parties, it seemed. Nevertheless, some thorny issues remained, not in the last place the opposing positions partners on both sides of the ocean take as far as the contentious article 43 of the Charter is concerned. The recent amendment to the Charter while a step in the right direction, does not totally mitigate the democratic deficit, which remains a thorn in the relationship. Fast forward to today and not wanting to rehash the whole story regarding the Integrity Chamber, lets establish at least the following: The GOVERNMENT of St. Maarten presented draft legislation with respect to the Integrity Chamber. The PARLIAMENT of St. Maarten adopted the draft legislation and passed it. The CONSTITUTIONAL COURT of St. Maarten rejected the ordinance (law). THE GOVERNMENT of St. Maarten followed through with the agreed upon Protocol of May 24, 2015. The KINGDOM GOVERNMENT retreated (it seems) from the process. The GOVERNMENT of St. Maarten continued at its pace and based on its priorities in the area of integrity. Just before the Dutch election, the Kingdom government got in gear again and unilaterally restarted the process, which it had deserted following the signed protocol of 2015. Who is in their right? Who stuck to the bargain? These 2 questions over the past weeks have not been resolved at least to the satisfaction and agreement of all. Within the current constellation, I dont see an amicable solution to the fundamental questions of this relationship and surely not in the near future. Digging our heels in at this time, while at the same time knowing that we will not be out of this relationship tomorrow, serves no one. I can think of the effect this digging in will have in the area of health (hospital), low-interest financing, cooperation (landfill), de-risking, prison and several other areas, windward islands cooperation etc. So rather than dig in, lets reset. Agree to a point, where at least we were on the same page and work forward, while respecting the autonomy of, in this case, St. Maarten. I hope and pray that the caretaker government of the Kingdom (read: the Netherlands) will respect this and move forward cautiously, allowing some time to reset. Sarah Wescot Williams Chairlady of Parliament The fourth of five defendants in a counterfeiting scheme that took place in 2016 in southern Wisconsin has been sentenced to eight months in prison. Dominique Gaunichaux, 19, of Madison, was sentenced in federal court on Thursday by U.S. District Judge William Conley. He pleaded guilty in January. Gaunichaux will also have two years of supervised release and was ordered to pay $7,500 in restitution to the merchants swindled in the scheme, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney's Office. The scheme involved the five individuals going to restaurants and businesses from Baraboo to Janesville in January and February of 2016, making small purchases with fake $100 bills so they would get large amounts of legitimate change back. The schemers were arrested in Janesville during one of their shopping sprees. Three of the five defendants were sentenced in February. Ringleader Cornelius Stewart, 22, got two years in prison, while brother and sister Danesha and Marlo Phillips got 42 days time served and one year time served respectively. The fifth defendant, Parish Barbary-Wheatherby, 21, will be sentenced April 28. Eight police departments from Baraboo to Janesville and the Dane and Rock County sheriff's offices were involved in the investigation, coordinated by the Secret Service. The Secret Service investigates counterfeiting crimes in the U.S. Council of Advice to ratify instruction issued by Kingdom Council to establish Integrity Chamber, The HAGUE:--- The Kingdom Council imposed an instruction on St. Maarten to establish an integrity chamber, however, that instruction still has to be ratified by the Council of State. On Friday when the agenda was debated in the presence of St. Maartens Prime Minister William Marlin and Minister of Finance Richard Gibson. The Kingdom Council received an advice from Minister of Interior and Foreign Affairs Ronald Plasterk. The proposal states that the Integrity Chamber will have advisory functions. Based on several integrity reports conducted on St. Maarten it shows suspicion of integrity violations and has compelling recommendations to the government of St. Maarten how to handle this. If necessary the integrity chamber will report violations if there are any offenses. In addition, the Integrity Chamber advises the government of St. Maarten integrity. The Integrity Chamber is appointed by the National Council of Ministers and reports thereto. The content of the various reports on the integrity issues in St. Maarten shows that corruption, bribery, and nepotism are in all walks of life occurs, even in the political administration. Earlier there was agreement on St. Maarten where an integrity chamber was established and quartermaster was appointed, however, the agreement signed between St. Maarten and the Netherlands was overturned by the Constitutional Court on St. Maarten because it infringes on the rights to peoples privacy. While the Prime Minister of St. Maarten made clear that he does not support corruption and integrity breaches, the Netherlands will not be allowed to force its will on St. Maarten based on an agreement that was annulled by the courts. Click here to read the latest development on Friday's meeting on the Instruction Plasterk proposed to the Kingdom Council Cogeco Inc. Releases Its Results for the Second Quarter of Fiscal 2017 MONTREAL, QUEBEC (Marketwired) 04/06/17 Today, Cogeco Inc. (TSX: CGO) (Cogeco or the Corporation) announced its financial results for the second quarter ended February 28, 2017, in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). For the second quarter of fiscal 2017: For the six-month period ended February 28, 2017: Overall, results for Cogeco Inc.s second quarter of our fiscal year 2017 are satisfying, declared Louis Audet, President and Chief Executive Officer of Cogeco Inc. In our communications subsidiary, Cogeco Communications Inc., we remain pleased with the results in our Canadian broadband services sector, especially given the competitive conditions in the Canadian broadband market and the maturity of this industry. In the American broadband services sector, Atlantic Broadband remains a solid performer, added M. Audet. We are satisfied with results in fiscal 2017 so far, which are in line with our expectations. With our Business ICT services business, Cogeco Peer 1, we continue to focus on improvements and generating positive results, stated Mr. Audet. We are implementing thorough action plans for each of our geographic regions and our continued focus on controlling our costs and capital expenditures has resulted in meaningful free cash flow. At Cogeco Media, results remain strong. Our radio subsidiary once again performed very well while maintaining its leadership position in the Quebec radio market, based on the latest Numeris rankings, concluded Louis Audet. ABOUT COGECO Cogeco Inc. is a diversified holding corporation which operates in the communications and media sectors. Through its Cogeco Communications Inc. subsidiary, Cogeco provides its residential and business customers with video, Internet and telephony services through its two-way broadband fibre networks. Cogeco Communications Inc. operates in Canada under the Cogeco Connexion name in Quebec and Ontario, and in the United States under the Atlantic Broadband name in western Pennsylvania, south Florida, Maryland/Delaware, South Carolina and eastern Connecticut. Through Cogeco Peer 1, Cogeco Communications Inc. provides its business customers with a suite of information technology services (colocation, network connectivity, hosting, cloud and managed services), through its 16 data centres, extensive FastFiber Network and more than 50 points of presence in North America and Europe. Through its subsidiary Cogeco Media, Cogeco owns and operates 13 radio stations across most of Quebec with complementary radio formats serving a wide range of audiences as well as Cogeco News, its radio news agency. Cogeco Inc.s subordinate voting shares are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: CGO). The subordinate voting shares of Cogeco Communications Inc. are also listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: CCA). Contacts: Source: Cogeco Inc. Patrice Ouimet Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer 514-764-4700 Information: Media Rene Guimond Senior Vice-President, Public Affairs and Communications 514-764-4700 SQL Bits Conference: DataCore tells UK SQL User Community Gain Enterprise Functionality from your Standard SQL Environment without Increasing Transform Standard Microsoft SQL Licencing into Enterprise Grade Levels of Performance and Capability. Telford International Ctr, UK., April 7, 2017 In its first sponsorship of the popular SQL Bits Conference, DataCore Software will be presenting the dramatic performance impact that Parallel Processing Software can have, radically transforming SQL Server Licencing environments that may be experiencing sluggish response times. Additionally, the company is offering attending Microsoft Certified Professionals the opportunity to take advantage of fully functioning Not-for-Resale license keys for the latest release of its Software-Defined Storage and Hyper-Converged Virtual SAN software integrating its Parallel I/O technology. Brett Denly, Regional Director, DataCore Software, leads the serving team at the Conference. This annual conference is a recognised pillar of the SQL community. What better forum to highlight that struggling SQL environments can be easily reinvigorated by harnessing the power of Parallel I/O software through DataCore. Indeed UK organisations like e-commerce kitchen trading company, PWS are seamlessly using DataCore to power their backend SQL Server databases with notable performance results:- Nightly invoice processing has reduced from 2 hours > 20 minutes. Daily management reporting on best-selling lines reduced from 30 minutes > 10 seconds Customer queries that involve millions of SQL executions reduced from 24 hours + > 1 hour. Improvements in mining times continue at the British Red Cross. Here, DataCores Parallel I/O software layer boosts SQL performance by up to 300%. They are utilising OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) to swiftly answer multi-dimensional analytical queries through accurate Business Intelligence tools deployed on their SQL Server database. This level of data profiling entails significant I/O (Input/Output) processing demands and DataCore dramatically improves performance levels by increasing the speed of read/write to dramatically accelerate application response times. Andy Spencer, Systems Engineer, DataCore Software, will be hosting the presentation session in Dome 5 on Saturday. Andy has been instrumental on advising local SQL installs on how to maximise performance and decrease latency with minimal overhead. Additionally, DataCore will be offering all Microsoft Certified Professionals license keys for its Parallel I/O-powered DataCore Hyper-converged Virtual SAN software at no cost for non-production uses such as home labs, course development, training, feature testing and demonstration purposes. Download at: http://www.datacore.com/resources/software-downloads/free-nfr-vsan-for-microsoft-certified-professionals. Keys must be used for non-production purposes only. Solar Novus Today Has Been Integrated With Novus Light Technologies Today Visit Novus Light Technologies Today to see all the cutting-edge stories and products that you have come to enjoy on Solar Novus Today. In addition, you will find more information on related light-based technologies. Get the latest solar and renewable energy news delivered right to your inbox. Sign up for the Green Technologies newsletter CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE TO OUR GREEN TECHNOLOGIES NEWSLETTER JANESVILLE Schools closed in parts of south-central Wisconsin Friday as a nationwide manhunt continued for a felon from Janesville who authorities say stole guns, threatened public officials and wrote a 161-page anti-government manifesto that he sent to President Donald Trump. The FBI is offering a $10,000 reward for information that will lead to the arrest of Joseph Jakubowski, 32, who is a suspect in a gun shop break-in and theft in Janesville Tuesday evening and who police say made suggestions about attacking several targets, including schools. He has expressed an interest in attacking several different targets, which is our concern nationally, said FBI special agent Justin Tolomeo, who described Jakubowski as extremely dangerous. In addition to 18 guns that he allegedly stole, Jakubowski also has a bulletproof vest and a helmet, Rock County Sheriff Bob Spoden said. Local, state and federal law enforcement, including the Secret Service, were pursuing dozens of leads and had searched at least a dozen locations, at times accompanied by tactical teams with armored equipment the FBI made available. That will be part of the routine until this is resolved, said Rock County Sheriffs Office Commander Troy Knudson. All public and four parochial schools in Janesville canceled classes Friday, as did UW-Rock County and Blackhawk Technical College, both in Janesville; the Parkview School District in Orfordville; and Milton public schools. Many schools also canceled athletic and after-school events. The Edgerton, Fort Atkinson, Delavan-Darien, Jefferson and Whitewater school districts kept schools in a soft lockdown, during which classes continue but doors to school entrances and classrooms are locked and students arent allowed to go outside. Oregon police bolstered their presence at schools there as a precaution after the department received a call Thursday about a man thought to look like Jakubowski who was asking about the surveillance system at an Oregon gun shop, Oregon Police Chief Brian Uhl said. The man turned out not to be Jakubowski and apologized, Uhl said. Madison police were also stepping up visibility in school zones, although not in response to any specific threats, police spokesman Joel DeSpain said. Jakubowski is accused of taking 18 guns from the Armageddon Supplies gun shop on Highway 14 in Janesville Tuesday night and then setting fire to his vehicle about 20 minutes later. Were not sure what his intent was to burn his car in such a close proximity (or) if that was a statement he was making, Spoden said. People who were aware of Jakubowskis activities have been cooperating with law enforcement, Spoden said. Whether they were involved, we havent made that determination, he said. Investigators learned from associates of Jakubowski that he has been highly agitated by national politics and recently mentioned a plan to steal guns and use them to conduct an unspecified attack, Spoden said. Jakubowski was said to have also made specific threats to schools. Schools were notified of the threat, as well as other law enforcement agencies, including the U.S. Capitol Police and the Secret Service. The U.S. Capitol Police are in charge of security for Speaker of the House and Janesville resident Rep. Paul Ryan and his family. Online court records show Jakubowski was convicted in 2008 of a felony charge of attempting to disarm a police officer. He also was convicted of a felony charge of possession of marijuana with intent to deliver, which included a modifier for possession of a dangerous weapon. Since 2008, Jakubowski had just one criminal conviction, for disorderly conduct in 2014. He also has been cited more than 50 times for traffic offenses. What we have not seen in the past is his anti-government or terrorist information, Janesville Police Chief David Moore said. The anti-government rhetoric is a new piece to this investigation. Law enforcement authorities uncovered a printed copy of the manifesto from an associate of Jakubowski, according to Spoden. Jakubowski included in his manifesto a laundry list of what he believed were injustices by the government, law enforcement and the upper class, Spoden said. The manifesto does not include any alleged wrongs against Jakubowski but expresses his anger at all government officials. Whether its the president or whether its local officials or whether its law enforcement, he basically has a dislike for anyone who has authority or governmental power, Spoden said. The manifesto has been evaluated by FBI experts in behavioral analysis, Spoden said. Anyone with information about Jakubowskis whereabouts is asked to call the Rock County Sheriffs Office tipline at 608-757-7911 or the FBI at 800-225-5324. State Journal reporter Bill Novak contributed to this report. Something went wrong, please try again later. Invalid email Something went wrong, please try again later. A one pound coin that was supposedly misaligned during minting could be one of the most valuable coins yet, with its owner believing it to be the only one of its kind. Callum Hayden is in possession of a new 12-sided one pound coin that he claims was misaligned during minting leading it to be off-centred quite noticeably He's been trying for weeks to get someone to value it, believing the coin to be worth a considerable amount of money. Callum, who is at university in Edinburgh, said: "After a night out I went in to my student shop and I was given he coin in change. I was very excited as I'd not had one of the coins before. "You can clearly see it's misaligned, both at the side of the coin and on its edges. "I've got in touch with a few coin shops in the local area, but most have said it's not worth the effort of looking into. I do think it could be worth quite a bit though." His interest peaked when he noticed that coins stamped with "the wrong date" were being sold for around 250 on eBay. There are a number of the new 1 coins dated '2016' being listed on eBay for hundreds of pounds. With around 1.5 billion new 1 coins required for the launch, the Royal Mint said it started producing them last year. This means that all coins created last year are dated 2016 before the date was switched to 2017 this year. The Royal Mint said more than half a million new 1 coins were minted by the end of last year. There are a number of other rare 1 coins that could be worth considerable sums too. Can you see the misalignment of the tails? Trial coins According to a statement from the Royal Mint, they issued more than 200,000 trial 1 coins to industry stakeholders. These coins should have the word "trial" on them. They may not be legal tender, but can be sold on eBay for up to 200. Browsing eBay, you can find new coins listed for even more - up to 250 for a coin with a 2016 date on it. An eBay seller, "Glanvog", sold his edition for 200 last month, after bidders ramped up the war for the sought-after coin. These new 1 coins are on the market for around 200 Experts are now predicting their value to spike even further after launch. "These new 1 trial coins are fascinating, especially considering the financial precedent of the 2 trial coins in 1994, which have since become one of the most sought after collectable coins in Britain," said Money expert Alex Cassidy, from GoCompare's Coining It In. "If these new trial coins turn out to be as valuable as 1994's, then anyone who gets their hands on them now could be sitting on a future goldmine." Mr Cassidy said: "2017 is expected to be a good year for collectors, with the trend of 50p collectible limited release coins continuing into the new 1 coins. That's the main thing to look out for in the near future, because the first run of those collectibles will be huge." The ones to really look out for though are the "proof" coins. They are pre-production samples used to then produce to a much higher standard of finish. Chards is a leading coin and bullion dealer based in the UK. The firm buys and trades coins, jewellery and specialises in valuable gold and silver. According to the experts, the most valuable of all the 1 coins will be the 'proof' coins - the special pre-production samples - often used for "approval" purposes and produced to a much higher standard of finish. A Chards statement said: "Bear in mind they are producing over 2.2 billion 1 coins this year. "We do not think that the 2017 circulation 1 coin will be a good investment - however, the collector coins such as the silver proof, silver proof piedfort and gold proof will be the ones to invest in." Proof coins Mr Cassidy added: "We do not think that the 2017 circulation 1 coin will be a good investment - however, the collector coins such as the silver proof, silver proof piedfort and gold proof will be the ones to invest in." "As with the current 2 coins, the 2017 1 coin is bi-metallic - in this case an outer 'gold' coloured nickel-brass band with an inner 'silver' coloured cupro-nickel disc." "Because of this, any potential die errors during production, which occurs when the dies have become misaligned, could be worth a lot of money. "Punters should pay attention to both the floral crown on the reverse side for any rotations, as well as the Queen's head, which should sit directly above the new bevelled edge." New Portage Manor may go at current site or near Clay Township Park Since December 2021, when the planning for a new Portage Manor facility began, the county has paid at least $163,000 to two Fort Wayne firms. 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 Stock Compensation for Employees: The House on Tuesday voted, 331-87, to make it easier for private companies to offer stock compensation to employees without triggering Securities and Exchange Commission disclosure requirements. The bill raises from $5 million to $10 million the threshold in stock compensation over 12 months before SEC rules are invoked. A yes vote was to send HR 1343 to the Senate. Voting yes: Ron Kind, D-3, James Sensenbrenner, R-5, Sean Duffy, R-7, Mike Gallagher, R-8 Voting no: Mark Pocan, D-2, Gwen Moore, D-4 Not voting: Glenn Grothman, R-6 Congressional Trump- Russia Probes: The House on Tuesday refused, 185-228, to deny benefits under HR 1343 (above) to any firm whose officers or directors withhold from congressional committees information about ties between aides to candidate Donald Trump and Russian officials aimed at shaping the outcome of the 2016 presidential race. A yes vote was to adopt the Democratic motion. Voting yes: Pocan, Kind, Moore Voting no: Sensenbrenner, Duffy, Gallagher Not voting: Grothman Stop-Loss Insurance Rules: The House on Wednesday voted, 400-16, to prohibit future federal regulation of stop-loss insurance as health insurance under laws including the Affordable Care Act. This would benefit self-funded company health plans that use stop-loss policies to protect against catastrophic losses. A yes vote was to pass HR 1304. Voting yes: Pocan, Kind, Moore, Sensenbrenner, Grothman, Duffy, Gallagher Tax Code Reform, Trump Finances: The House on Wednesday killed, 228-185, a Democratic motion to force consideration of a resolution that would block action on tax reform legislation until after the Ways and Means Committee has privately reviewed Trumps tax returns from 2007-2016 to determine how proposed tax-code changes would affect his finances. A yes vote was to kill the motion. Voting yes: Sensenbrenner, Grothman, Duffy, Gallagher Voting no: Pocan, Kind, Moore Easing Venture Capital Rules: The House on Thursday voted, 417-3, to raise from 100 to 250 the number of investors allowed to join so-called angel private- equity funds before Securities and Exchange Commission registration rules take effect. Together, they could pool up to $10 million for purchasing nonpublic, unregistered securities in promising startups and other enterprises that seek capital. A yes vote was to pass a bill (HR 1219) that would spur investment in startup firms. Voting yes: Pocan, Kind, Moore, Sensenbrenner, Grothman, Duffy, Gallagher SENATE Elaine Duke Confirmation: The Senate on Tuesday confirmed, 85-14, Elaine C. Duke as deputy secretary in the Department of Homeland Security, the departments second-ranking official. A yes vote was to confirm Duke, a highly regarded manager who has held homeland- security posts under GOP and Democratic presidents. Voting yes: Tammy Baldwin, D, Ron Johnson, R Confirming Justice Neil Gorsuch: The Senate on Friday confirmed, 54-45, Judge Neil M. Gorsuch as the 113th Supreme Court justice. The GOP majority kept the seat open during Barack Obamas final 10 months as president by refusing to act on his nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in February 2016. A yes vote was to confirm Gorsuch. Voting yes: Johnson Voting no: Baldwin Choosing The Nuclear Option: Voting 48-52, the Senate on Thursday changed filibuster rules to set a simple-majority vote as the bar that must be cleared for advancing Supreme Court nominees. This replaced three-fifths majorities (usually 60 votes) as the hurdle. A yes vote was to avert the nuclear option and retain the 60-vote standard. A no vote was to change the rules and lower the standard. Voting yes: Baldwin Voting no: Johnson Winning Filibuster Against Gorsuch: The Senate on Thursday failed, 55-45, to reach 60 votes for ending a Democratic filibuster against Gorsuchs Supreme Court nomination. This prompted GOP leaders to invoke the nuclear option and set a simple majority as the bar for advancing nominees. A yes vote was to advance Gorsuch against the filibuster. Voting yes: Johnson Voting no: Baldwin Key Votes Ahead When Congress returns from Easter-Passover recess in the week of April 24, it will take up a bill to fund agencies and keep the government from shutting down after April 28. Thomas Voting Reports Tensions between Gov. Scott Walker and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos are evident in personal text messages between the two, newly released under Wisconsins open records law, in which they spar over the states next budget. The texts were released by Walkers office Friday. They came in response to a Wisconsin State Journal request for text messages between Walker and Vos relating to state business between March 29 and March 31. The texts give a glimpse of private friction between two of the top three leaders in state government, both Republicans. In one text, Walker laments being trashed by lawmakers for his proposal for the last state budget. Vos, R-Rochester, complains of being shut out from Walkers crafting of his 2017-19 budget plan. In another text, Vos criticizes Walker for upstaging a recent hearing of the Legislatures budget-writing Joint Finance Committee with a Twitter post in which the governor vowed to veto a gas tax increase if lawmakers pass one. The more your staff keeps injecting themselves into the JFC (Joint Finance Committee) process the more difficult you will make it. Lobbying by Twitter isnt going to work here, Vos wrote. Thats not staff. Thats me, Walker responded. Your members ran ads saying they were against my cuts to education, so Im assuming they will support my increases. In the tweet, Walker also said he doesnt support spending any less on K-12 schools than the roughly $650 million increase he proposed for the next budget. The tweet was posted as lawmakers were pressing Walkers new Transportation Secretary, Dave Ross, in a March 29 hearing. The exchange shows some give-and-take between the two leaders. Walker pledges to work toward Vos priority of more money for roads and bridges, while Vos vows to increase school funding, as Walker proposed. Theres no doubt we will support an increase (in K-12 funding) but Im not sure if we can afford what you propose to give? Vos wrote. Since it drives up the structural deficit and actually leaves us in a worse this composition (sic) after this biennium right? I believe we will have decent growth in the future, Walker responded. In another exchange, Vos questions Walkers decision to not really involve us before the process began unlike each of your other budgets. Without giving us ownership of any thing in your budget, its kind of hard for us just a rubber stamp it, Vos wrote. Walker responded, referring to his 2015-2017 spending plan: Unlike the last budget where we met with nearly every member in advance & got trashed. Two years ago, Republicans were unusually critical of Walkers budget proposal, with two of them famously deriding it as crap. In the end, 11 Assembly Republicans voted against the budget, which narrowly passed that chamber. In another text, Walker tells Vos: Im willing to work with you on ways to move more money into the transportation fund. Walker has pledged to veto a gas-tax increase but has not ruled out other ways to fill the transportation fund, which could include shifting money from the states general fund or increasing one of its current revenue sources, vehicle registration fees. Vos responds: Im more than willing to sit down with you so we can work out a deal but taking the line of attack that (Sen.) Duey (Stroebel) is using to somehow say that its a choice between funding our schools and having roads we can drive on really isnt all that helpful is it? Walkers spokesman, Tom Evenson, said in a statement Friday that Gov. Walker has a long-standing and good working relationship with Speaker Vos. As the speaker said, they agree on almost everything, but where they dont agree, they will have discussions along with the Senate to reach a solution, Evenson wrote. Vos, responding to the release of the text messages, said, I am probably one of Gov. Walkers top allies. He said the texts show their relationship is so strong Vos can push back when he sees something from Walker he doesnt like. The JFC process has just begun. To that end, Senator Stroebel will continue to discuss the budget with other lawmakers, Stroebel spokesman Ethan Hollenberger said in a statement. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in your country. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to your market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism. Lead levels in nearly 8 percent of drinking fountains and sinks in Madison schools were higher than the national standard during district-wide testing last month, spurred by limited testing in February. The Madison School District has turned off the 97 fixtures found to have elevated levels and is repairing, replacing or abandoning them, said Chad Wiese, director of building services. Fixtures with the highest levels including a fountain at Marquette Elementary School and one at West High School have been used little, if ever, for drinking in recent months or years, Wiese said. Lead levels in fixtures at a day care center at Marquette, where the potential risk for lead damage is greatest, among the youngest of children, were not elevated. We havent found any drinking fountains that we would consider high-use fixtures in our schools that have really high levels, Wiese said. I dont believe theres any reason for alarm, he said. If anything, I would hope that our families and our students would be thankful that we took on this voluntary effort. Amid increased attention to lead-contaminated water in places such as Flint, Michigan, parents, teachers, students and the Madison Water Utility urged the school district early this year to test its drinking water. Since Madison took the unusual step of replacing its lead water pipes more than a decade ago, the concern in schools stems mostly from lead or brass within water fixtures, not in water coming into schools. Sampling by the district in late February found elevated levels in 14 public fountains in six schools, among 157 public fountains in 19 schools tested in the East High School attendance area. Those findings led the district to hire the environmental testing firm TRC of Madison to test fountains in all locations, along with bottle-filling stations, sinks, ice machines and swimming pools, at all 50 schools in 42 buildings. That testing, conducted last month, found elevated lead levels in 97 of 1,246 fixtures tested, Wiese said Friday. Elevated levels are those at or above the Environmental Protection Agencys limit for municipal water systems of 15 parts per billion of lead. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says there is no safe blood lead level for children, however, as even small amounts absorbed into the bloodstream can cause brain damage and slow growth. Exposure to lead through drinking water depends on how much people drink, how high lead levels are and for how long the levels have been high, Wiese said. The highest levels found in Madison schools were in little-used fixtures, where stagnant water likely contributed to the high levels, he said. Many fixtures with elevated levels upon initial testing in the morning had considerably lower levels once water was flushed for 30 seconds, he said. A porcelain fountain in a corner of Wests cafeteria-gymnasium, largely obscured by bleachers and emitting rusty water, had a lead level of 530 ppb. It was extremely obvious to us that no one had turned the handle to get a drink out of that thing, potentially, in years, Wiese said. The highest level found (740 ppb) was in a fountain with a sink in a former classroom at Marquette, used as offices for specialized staff. A level of 270 ppb was found in an art room sink at the school. The fixtures in both rooms are used primarily for hand washing, not drinking, said Anastasia Doherty, a nurse at Marquette. Dr. Elizabeth Neary, a Madison pediatrician, said the apparent lack of drinking from fountains with the highest lead levels, the low levels found in most widely used fixtures and the absence of a problem at Marquettes day care suggest the water at Madison schools generally is safe. When you look at the details, the details are very reassuring, Neary said. I dont believe theres any reason for alarm. If anything, I would hope that our families and our students would be thankful that we took on this voluntary effort. Chad Wiese, director of building services Georgetown, SC (29440) Today Sunny to partly cloudy. High 71F. Winds NW at 10 to 15 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. Low 49F. Winds N at 10 to 15 mph. COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. Jeff Bezos' private spaceflight company Blue Origin is working on a lunar cargo delivery service, which could be used to support human settlements on the surface of the moon or in orbit. While the program was just announced last month, the company has already spent years developing the necessary technology. Wednesday (April 5), here at the 33rd annual Space Symposium, Blue Origin President Robert Meyerson said the lunar delivery program, called Blue Moon, will "directly leverage" the technology used in the company's New Shepard reusable rocket system. The company is marketing the suborbital rocket primarily for space tourism. "Blue Moon directly leverages our New Shepard proven vertical takeoff and vertical landing technology, combined with our extensive liquid propulsion capabilities to reduce development time and risk," Meyerson said. [How Blue Origin's Suborbital Rocket Ride Works (Infographic)] Meyerson didn't provide any more details about the lunar landing system, but a story published March 2 in The Washington Post (which Bezos purchased in 2014) said that the Blue Moon vehicle would land on the lunar surface similar to how the New Shepard reusable rocket booster lands in a vertical position after flight. The article also said the Blue Moon system could carry "as much as 10,000 pounds of material." The New Shepard suborbital rockets have yet to fly customer payloads, but test flights have shown that the rockets can land vertically, and that the boosters can be reused for subsequent flights. Blue Origin representatives have said that reusable rockets will lower the cost of access to space, and the company plans to make a reusable first-stage booster for its upcoming orbital rocket, New Glenn. "Reusability is the holy grail of rocketry," Meyerson said. Apparently, it could also help establish human colonies on the moon. Blue Origin President Rob Meyerson spoke about the company's Blue Moon program, which will deliver cargo to the lunar surface, at the 33rd annual Space Symposium. (Image credit: Space Foundation/Tom Kimmel Photography) Blue Moon Meyerson said Blue Origin is "working very closely with NASA" on the Blue Moon program. The agency has no immediate plans to build human settlements on the moon, but it is currently considering a small space station in lunar orbit as a "gateway" to deep-space destinations like Mars. "We believe that commercial systems and services can augment NASA systems to meet the resupply needs of longer human missions in lunar orbit and enhance NASA capabilities," Meyerson said. Many spaceflight industry experts agree that the lunar surface and lunar environment could provide a critical testing ground for technologies and skills needed to send humans to Mars. "Blue Origin has recently proposed a lunar lander architecture to cost-effectively soft-land large amounts of mass up to the lunar surface," Meyerson said. "Any credible first lunar settlement is going to require such capability." Besides human settlements that provide a steppingstone to Mars, the moon could also provide opportunities for space mining and science investigations. A heavy-lift rocket will be necessary to send a cargo-delivery vehicle all the way to the moon. Meyerson said the Blue Moon vehicle is being "designed and optimized" to fly on NASA's upcoming Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. But the vehicle could also fly on several different launch rockets, including a United Launch Alliance Atlas V, and Blue Origin's own New Glenn, a heavy-lift rocket still in development. When asked whether Blue Moon might fly humans to the lunar surface, Meyerson said the system was being designed only for cargo. Follow Calla Cofield @callacofield. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com. Artists illustration of a crewed moon base. Establishing such off-world outposts and a sustainable space economy will require a secure and safe environment, Air Force officials have said. The United States Air Force may become a sort of space cop in the not-too-distant future. An off-Earth economy cannot truly take off unless moon miners and other pioneering entrepreneurs are able to operate in a safe and stable environment, said Air Force Lt. Col. Thomas Schilling, of Air University. "The [U.S.] Navy secures the freedom of action for commerce globally for the good of all humankind, and I think it's going to take a force very similar to that to provide the predictability and security that the marketplace of space will need," Schilling said Tuesday (April 4) during a panel discussion at the 33rd National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colorado. "I think that would be the role of the United States Air Force moving into the future." [Home on the Moon: How to Build a Lunar Colony (Infographic)] Somebody needs to secure and protect "strategic choke points," such as lunar ice deposits and gravitationally stable spots near the moon, where spacecraft can camp out without burning fuel, Schilling added. "Fundamentally, I'd like that to be somebody with a value system that reflects the values that I share," he said. "I believe in the value of individual property rights and the rule of law." United Launch Alliance (ULA) CEO Tory Bruno moderated the panel, which featured Schilling, Offworld CEO Jim Keravala, Made In Space CEO Andrew Rush and former NASA astronaut Sandy Magnus, executive director of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. The panel focused on how activities in cislunar (Earth-moon) space could help spur the establishment of a sustainable off-Earth economy the basic idea behind the ULA-led "Cislunar 1,000" plan. "We have a vision: Within just a couple of decades from this moment in time, there will be 1,000 men and women living and working in space permanently," Bruno said. "As NASA and other people push deeper into deep space to explore, we want to develop the space between here and the moon." This vision is not so far-fetched, panelists said. Indeed, humanity may have recently reached an inflection point in the quest for off-Earth settlement, thanks to the combination of advancing technology, a glut of investment money and a coalescing community of customers and end users, Keravala said. Some of this technology is pretty high-profile. Made In Space is already manufacturing products on demand for customers using its 3D printer aboard the International Space Station, for example, and both SpaceX and Blue Origin have landed and re-flown rockets an approach that could lower the cost of spaceflight significantly. "We have an opportunity to do this now," Magnus said, referring to the Cislunar 1,000 vision. "It's going to take some time to build this, but the momentum's there, and it's very exciting." Establishing a secure environment in which such a space settlement can exist is part of the overall effort, Schilling stressed. "There's an old saying 'The flag follows commerce,'" he said. Bruno agreed with that assessment. But, he added, "successful and prosperous commerce comes after the flag. We see that today on Earth: Where regions are stable and secure, where people are safe, commerce flourishes. And where that is not true, it does not." You can watch the entire panel discussion at ULA's YouTube channel. Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com. Preparing for Liftoff USAF Thunderbirds At age 87, the second person to walk on the moon is still breaking records and flying high. Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin flew with the U.S. Air Force (USAF) Thunderbirds during the Melbourne Air & Space Show in Orlando, Florida on April 2 and became the oldest person to fly with the aerobatic team. Aerospace Magic USAF Thunderbirds The USAF Thunderbirds are one of the oldest aerobatic demonstration teams in the world, and have been flying since 1953. Rocket Men USAF Thunderbirds The USAF Thunderbirds flew over the Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral in Florida during the demonstration. Thunderbird Jet USAF Thunderbirds A close-up of a USAF Thunderbird jet. Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, 87, passed rigorous physical requirements to take part in the demonstration. Aldrin Takes Another Historic Flight USAF Thunderbirds Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, left, receives help preparing for a flight with the USAF Thunderbirds April 2. Aldrin is a retired Air Force colonel. At 87, Aldrin is the oldest person to participate in a Thunderbirds demonstration. Celebrating Flight USAF Thunderbirds Buzz Aldrin poses with members of the USAF Thunderbirds. Flight Through Space History USAF Thunderbirds The USAF Thunderbirds leave contrails in their wake as they fly past Launch Complex 39A, where Apollo 11 launched. Buzz Aldrin, flying with them, was part of Apollo 11's historic flight to the moon. In the background is the Vehicle Assembly Building, where the Apollo 11 rocket was assembled before going to space. Honoring the Past USAF Thunderbirds Another view of the Vehicle Assembly Building where Apollo 11's Saturn V rocket was put together as the USAF Thunderbirds fly overhead. Space Odyssey USAF Thunderbirds The USAF Thunderbirds fly over Florida's Space Coast April 2. 'ThunderBuzz' USAF Thunderbirds Buzz Aldrin jokingly called himself "ThunderBuzz" on Twitter after flying with members of the USAF Thunderbirds on April 2. Meeting the Team USAF Thunderbirds Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin (in gray suit) shakes hands with members of the USAF Thunderbirds. We at ABC for Health read with great concern the April 2 article by David Wahlberg titled High death rate for black babies in Dane County frustrates health officials. We are a nonprofit public interest law firm dedicated to connecting Wisconsin families with health coverage and care. Addressing infant mortality is a perplexing social problem that continues to challenge local health providers and the public health departments. Though our community has in the past seen progress toward addressing the disparity in death rates between African-American newborns and white newborns, hope has turned to alarm as infant death rates rise again in the African-American community. ABC for Health has long been concerned about one potential piece of the infant mortality puzzle that has yet to be addressed by local policy makers Wisconsins Medicaid Birth Cost Recovery (BCR) policies. Wisconsin is one of only a few states in the country that authorizes local child-support agencies to pursue unmarried fathers for childbirth expenses paid by Medicaid. In fact, Wisconsin leads the nation by a wide margin. While on the surface this practice may seem fair, birth-cost judgments are not the same thing as child support. Amounts recovered go directly to the state and county. Low-income fathers are saddled with debt and payment obligations that reduce their ability to support the mother and child. Sadly, Dane County also vigorously targets unmarried mothers, too often low-income and minority residents, to identify non-custodial fathers for the repayment of Medicaid-related birth costs. Mothers fearing the potential for negative physical, social or emotional consequences from identifying the birth father may forgo Medicaid enrollment and the critical prenatal care necessary to promote healthy birth. Exemptions from the identification requirement are buried in the bureaucratic weeds and almost never used. Women who refuse or cannot meet the burden of proving eligibility for an exemption risk losing access to Medicaid, FoodShare and other support resources while their babies are only 2 months old. The unintended consequences of Wisconsins BCR policy cost taxpayers and society so much more than the comparatively tiny sums that manage to flow back to the states Medicaid fund. For that reason, I have recently written Dane County Executive Joe Parisi and Madison Mayor Paul Soglin to offer assistance from ABC for Health to work to modify the Dane County policy and practice around Birth Cost Recovery. Together we can develop proactive strategies that promote responsible fatherhood while also encouraging low-income, pregnant moms to seek early prenatal care. We need to put together every piece of the puzzle to promote healthy birth outcomes in the African-American community. For more than three decades, the health insurance program for state employees in Wisconsin has been called a model for other states. It relies on free-market competition to deliver extraordinarily high-quality care and, importantly, contains costs for taxpayers. This model is under threat today because an unelected state board is pushing to consolidate and control Wisconsin public employee health insurance choices a move that also would negatively affect the private sector. I have spoken with retired leaders of four private-sector health insurers throughout Wisconsin, and we have seen first-hand the success of the existing state employee health program. Over the past six years, the programs costs have increased at an average that is half that of other large employers in the state, and well below large employers nationally. According to a state news release last August, the 2017 cost increase of 1.6 percent compares to a 6.7 percent increase for other private and public plans in Wisconsin, and a 6 percent increase nationwide. The current program has delivered lower costs for taxpayers, quality care for employees, and a robust insurance marketplace that delivers good value to private-sector employers as well. Unlike most states dominated by one or two insurers, Wisconsin is a highly competitive market with dozens of health insurers. All that is threatened by a proposal being considered by the Legislatures Joint Finance Committee that would create a state-sponsored central program and displace hundreds of private-sector, Wisconsin-based jobs. As a retired CEO, I dont have a personal stake in the ongoing debate over state employee benefits. As a taxpayer, however, I urge the Legislatures Joint Finance Committee to take a very critical look at the long-term impacts of the disruptive change being considered. If the state decides to self-fund its public employee health program, the high-quality, low-cost plans offered in the private sector are also at risk. Several health plans now competing in the Wisconsin marketplace would leave. More would be forced to drastically reduce their staff. Market competition would decrease, and the state, its employees and private-sector employers would be the worse for it. The proposed change to self-funding would move the state backward on the value-based health care continuum while the rest of the country is trying to catch-up to the model we have enjoyed in Wisconsin for decades. It is hard to believe that protecting a vibrant free market is even a debatable question in our current political environment. I am encouraged by the thoughtful consideration under way in the Joint Finance Committee and strongly urge that this proposal be rejected once and for all. Optimization Are you frustrated with a slow pc or a hard disk not performing as it should? Try SLOW-PCfighter to speed up boot time on a slow PC, or try a free scan of FULL-DISKfighter to recover space on a full disk. The latest offering is DRIVERfighter to update your driver updater. Get complete PC optimization and extend the life of your PC with these must-have software tools. The new American severity results from the assumption that the Russians and Iranians can only be forced into concessions if the West demonstrates that it isn't "weak" and that it can strike with just as much brutality as they can - and that it is prepared for an escalation of the Syrian conflict. Considering the situation, it is certainly reasonable to conclude that, since the softer approach yielded no benefits, it is perhaps worthwhile trying a more heavy-handed strategy. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande apparently agree, which is why they released a statement on Friday accepting the U.S. strikes. Is that the power of images? Are they so influential that they can, in the blink of a camera shutter, so dramatically change the course of a U.S. president's administration? What happened in Khan Sheikhoun, after all, isn't totally surprising. After all, Assad's regime hasn't only murdered hundreds of thousands of civilians by way of barrel bombs, gunfire and torture. It has also repeatedly deployed chemical weapons, although it has been quite some time since such attacks were as horrific as the one that struck on Tuesday morning at 6:40 a.m. local time. Deadly Minutes Dawn hadn't yet fully given way to day when two Su-22 jets belonging to the Syrian air force appeared in the skies above Khan Sheikhoun. Most people in town were still sleeping when four explosions -- three large ones and one smaller one -- rocked the town. One video shows two huge gray columns of dust and smoke over the city with a smaller white cloud a short distance away. It was this smaller cloud that quickly killed all the people in its surroundings. It took valuable, deadly minutes until the residents understood that they had been attacked with chemical weapons. The first responders who showed up to the impact crater wearing gas masks were presented with an appalling sight: Some of the victims had tried to get away, having run into the street in their pajamas and suffocating there. Others lay lifeless at the doors to their homes. Some died in the few bomb shelters in the area. The survivors struggled to breathe, their pupils narrowed and they were hardly able to see. They were the same symptoms seen following a chemical attack on several towns near Damascus in August 2013. Ground samples following those strikes showed that the nerve agent sarin had been deployed. "Dozens upon dozens of unconscious, gasping patients arrived here, they were foaming at the mouth. Children, men, women, elderly. They died in front of our eyes, without visible injuries and we initially didn't know what to do," says Fadi Othman, one of the medics. "We handled the first 50 patients with our bare hands." Five nurses and a doctor soon began experiencing the same symptoms as the victims. "It was only then that we put on disposable gloves," Othman continues. "Then we washed the patients with water and ordered them to undress and leave their contaminated clothing outside." Soon, he said in a telephone interview, the entire courtyard in front of the entrance was full of the injured and the dying. "There were 400 or 500 people. We then asked the ambulances to take patients somewhere else. Inside, we have room for 50 patients at most and our underground hospital quickly filled with poisonous fumes from the clothes and skin of the patients." The symptoms of a sarin attack can be treated with atropine, which blocks the poison's deadly effects on the nervous system. But atropine is difficult to find in the rebel-held areas of Syria, not least because in the days prior to the chemical attack, all important hospitals in Khan Sheikhoun and neighboring cities in the Idlib and Hama provinces were heavily damaged or destroyed by air strikes. 'Dying in Our Hands' "The victims are simply dying in our hands," said a desperate medic in Khan Sheikhoun on the day of the attack. "We don't have enough atropine and the only way to save them is to transport them to Turkey. But many can't make it that far." At least 86 people had died by Thursday evening. As if the chemical weapons attack wasn't bad enough, the clinic in Khan Sheikhoun was bombed as well, starting at midday on Tuesday. Because the hospital is underground, it was safe from most of the bombs and rockets, but not from the heavy bunker-buster bombs that have been repeatedly deployed by the Russian air force in recent months, most of them dropped by Su-34 bombers, which Assad's military does not possess. According to eyewitnesses, two such Su-34s flew an attack at midday on Tuesday against the hospital in Khan Sheikhoun and on the neighboring civil defense headquarters. "We were in the operating room. I have never experienced such a massive attack," says Mohammed Diab, one of the doctors who was on duty at the time. Many pieces of equipment were destroyed, he says, and the medical staff had to dig their way out of the hospital. Diab is concerned that the destruction of the clinic is just the first step in a larger plan. "First, all treatment facilities in the provinces of Idlib and Hama are going to be destroyed. Then, civilians will be attacked in their villages so that the fighters, who are from here, will have to focus on saving their families and will pull out. That could be the strategy the regime is pursuing to take control of the two provinces, both of which are rebel strongholds. The fact that Assad has again used chemical weapons is likely intended as a chilling message to his people -- with the goal, perhaps, of getting as many people to flee as possible. A Helping Hand in Moscow As usual, though, the primary suspect has denied any responsibility. Back in 2013, after the first large sarin attack, Assad said in an interview with DER SPIEGEL: "We did not use chemical weapons. This is a misstatement." Using almost the same words, the Syrian leadership this week likewise rejected claims that Damascus was to blame, with assistance from the Russian Defense Ministry. Russian military spokesman Igor Konashenkov claimed that the Syrian pilots had destroyed a large rebel weapons depot on the outskirts of Khan Sheikhoun at midday on Tuesday. He went on to say that there was also a factory at the site of the depot for the production of chemical projectiles, which are then delivered to Islamic State in Syria. He didn't, however, explain why dozens of victims had reportedly already died in the morning, several hours prior to the alleged strike on the weapons depot. Nor did he offer any explanation for why fighters in the northwestern province of Idlib would produce chemical weapons for their opponents in faraway Iraq and why the massive symptoms of poisoning were reported hours earlier that morning. Plus, the anti-Assad rebels, in contrast to IS, are not thought to have used chemical weapons thus far. A reporter from the Guardian, who traveled to the site of the air strikes mentioned by Konashenkov, said there were no signs of a weapons depot there, just two empty, half-destroyed grain silos. The type of chemical used in the Tuesday attacks has not yet been definitively determined. But the World Health Organization (WHO) is among those that have described the symptoms of some patients as being consistent with nerve agents, of which sarin is one. Should it ultimately be concluded that it was sarin, the Russian-Syrian narrative would become even more difficult to believe: The weaponized chemical is much more difficult to produce than chlorine gas and is extremely unstable. Usually, is it mixed shortly before deployment by combining two components. One of them is highly explosive and would have produced an enormous ball of fire had it been struck by a bomb. There was no such fireball to be seen on Tuesday morning. As such, the Russian claims seem to be nothing more than cover for Moscow's Syrian protectorate. War Crimes Become the Norm Following the sarin attack in 2013, there was no longer any doubt that Assad was prepared to use chemical weapons on his own people. It has been just as clear since then that the international community was prepared to accept it. On Aug. 20, 2012, Obama said: "We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized." Almost exactly one year later, around a thousand people in several towns on the outskirts of Damascus died from the effects of sarin. But instead of taking action, Obama wavered. First, he announced unilateral action and then he decided to request Congressional approval. Ultimately, the U.S. and Russia offered Assad a deal: There would be no attacks on the Assad regime as long as the country turned in all of its chemical weapons. Under the auspices of the UN and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), 1,300 tons of weaponized chemicals were destroyed. Since then, war crimes have become normal in Syria, and they no longer generate much of an outcry. Attacks on schools, bombs dropped on hospitals, the starving of entire cities, systematic expulsions: The regime is able to do all that without the fear of repercussion. Even before Khan Sheikhoun, there were doubts about whether Assad had really turned over his entire arsenal. In classified reports, OPCW officials have complained numerous times in the past that during their few inspections in Syria they had often detected unreported chemical weapons agents. In a television interview in May, a colonel who had deserted the army claimed that chemical weapons were being hidden at the Sayqal military air base. OPCW together with medical organizations count, based on the evidence available, exactly 161 chemical weapons attacks between 2011 and 2016. Beginning with the spring of 2014, the regime began frequently dropping chlorine gas from helicopters. DER SPIEGEL provided evidence for the use of the gas in April 2014 and OPCW also confirmed the same in a later investigative report. It is impossible, of course, to simply ban chlorine, due to its ubiquity and myriad applications, but it is prohibited to use chlorine gas as a weapon. "It's not as if we're just looking on without doing anything," says one leading expert at OPCW. "Behind closed doors, there is a serious dispute between the Russians and Syrians on one side and the Europeans and the Americans on the other. But in the end, all efforts fail when it comes down to the question: Who is going to curb this regime militarily? No one." All efforts to hold Syria accountable in the UN Security Council are systematically vetoed by Russia. The draft resolution that France, Britain and the United States introduced on Wednesday in response to the Khan Sheikhoun attack was kept intentionally tepid as a result. It didn't demand any sanctions, and it didn't address the question of responsibility. It merely demanded that OPCW teams be provided with access to the flight plans and bases of the Syrian air force. But the effort ultimately failed as a result of Russian objections. Russia's deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Vladimir Safronkov, gave an angry speech full of assertions and finger-pointing with the aim of sowing doubts about Assad's guilt. It isn't particular surprising that Russia would deny the evidence. A chemical weapons attack by the regime doesn't just cast a bad light on Russia's Syrian involvement -- it could also imperil Vladimir Putin's diplomatic successes. That may explain the equivocal statement made by Putin's spokesman on Thursday, when he said that Russia's support for Assad is "not unconditional." It took years before the United States and Turkey closed ranks with Russia in agreeing that Assad's ouster should not be a precondition for a peace agreement in Syria. When Russian soldiers helped Assad recapture eastern Aleppo, it demonstrated that Moscow could effectively deploy both its military and diplomatic weapons as Washington and the West simply looked on. Until this week, it appeared Putin would prevail in his risky game. Overwhelming Evidence Now it appears to be Assad, of all people, who has thwarted these plans. The evidence that the regime is behind the chemical weapons attack is overwhelming. In addition to the videos and photos of the victims, there has also been consistent testimony from survivors as well as the pending analysis of soil samples. But there's also another piece of evidence: a recording of radio communications between the Syrian pilots and the control tower. For self-defense purposes, rebels in numerous places have been eavesdropping on the radio communications between Syrian regime pilots and their bases since 2013. By doing so, they can determine which airplanes are taking off when and from which airport, what is being said to the pilots and the flightpaths they will be following. The rebels are then able to warn hospitals and other preferred regime targets. On Tuesday morning, a rebel post was listening in on the radio communications between operation command and the pilots as the two Sukhoi jets took off from the Shayrat air base near Homs. "At 6:26 a.m., the tower contacted the commanding pilot," the surveillance officer on duty at the time told DER SPIEGEL, "with the identification of Quds 1. Normally, the commander briefly asks the pilot if he is ready and then delivers the deployment order. But this time, the tower asked a second time if all conditions had truly been met and requested the pilot to double-check." "I've been eavesdropping for four years," the man monitoring the radio communications said. "I know the routine procedures. But this was not routine." He was able to record part of the radio communications and they have been obtained by DER SPIEGEL. He also issued an alarm, but unfortunately the wrong one. He alerted rebels at the front lines, where Assad's troops have been under pressure for weeks, but the deadly cargo was ultimately dropped over Khan Sheikhoun. The attack wasn't a complete surprise. On March 30, another unusual incident had taken place in the town of Latamne. It wasn't chlorine gas that got dropped this time -- it was another toxic substance. There were no deaths, but people did get injured, and they had symptoms characteristic of those shown by individuals who have been exposed to the nerve agent sarin. Interestingly, though, the pilot in that attack -- and the rebels reported this on March 30 -- had also been identified as "Quds 1." A Test for the World The few experts who took notice of the attack wondered why Assad's military leadership would use sarin, whose traces in the body and in the ground can be detected and proven for a longer period of time than chlorine gas. Five days later they got their answer. It was likely a test to see how the world would react. But there was none. Eighty-six people had to die first in the attack on Khan Sheikh before the world took note. German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said an attack like this "could not go without consequences. No war criminal can be allowed to feel safe." But it is precisely the lack of consequences that has allowed this war to continue for as long as it has. Now that Trump has conducted missile strikes on Syria, it is unclear what might happen next. His choice to bomb an Assad air base using Tomahawk missiles is certainly the least risky of the many options he had -- and still has -- at his disposal. But if he were to move forward and implement a no-fly zone or a protection zone for civilians, it's very unlikely this could be achieved from the air alone. It would almost certainly require a significant number of ground troops and would mean a massive military and logistics operation. During his election campaign, Trump spoke out clearly against such plans and warned of "World War III." Even with a limited military strike, there is a threat of a confrontation between the U.S. Air Force and Russian jets and anti-aircraft batteries. Four years ago, when Trump warned so emphatically against an intervention, the conditions for doing so were considerably more favorable than they are today. Russia wasn't yet active in Syria and there was still a large number of moderate rebels. For many observers, it is surprising, but also a bit scary how quickly Trump has now changed his mind. Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag also said: "We now have no doubt that the Assad regime used chemical weapons." Many survivors of the chemical weapons attack are now being treated in Turkish hospitals -- more than 50 patients, according to the Health Ministry. The country's emergency relief agency set up tents at the border where victims are being disinfected and provided with treatment. 'There is Much to Suggest Sarin' Five-year-old Obai Alsafar is being treated at the university hospital in the city of Antakya in southeast Turkey. An oxygen mask covers his mouth and nose. His eyes are glazed over, but he can talk. Obai says that he was sleeping when the jets attacked. Once the bombs struck, he ran outside with his parents. He says he suddenly grew dizzy. His muscles began cramping, at which point he fell to the ground and passed out. An ambulance drove him to the border. Doctors in Antakya say Obai was in very bad condition when he arrived at the hospital and that he was foaming at the mouth. "There is much to suggest sarin," says one of the doctors, "but we can't say with absolute certainty." The boy is now recovering and his blood sample is on its way to Ankara -- evidence of the cruelty of the Syrian regime that can be used in court. Autopsies of the bodies of three people who died in the attack have been carried out by Turkish doctors and representatives of OPCW in the city of Adana in Turkey. Prosecutors have said that traces of chemical weapons were found. The plan is for all samples to be sent later to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The court may one day hold Bashar Assad accountable. Or not. By Christian Esch, Maximilian Popp, Jan Puhl, Christoph Reuter, Mathieu von Rohr, Christoph Scheuermann and Christoph Sydow Quito, Ecuador, April 7, 2017 (SPS) - The President of the Republic, Secretary General of the Frente POLISARIO, Brahim Gali, sent a congratulatory message to the President-elect of the Republic of Ecuador, Lenin Moreno Garces, for his victory in the elections of last Sunday. The Saharawi president expressed his sincere congratulations to the brotherly people of Ecuador, underling that under the leadership of Moreno Garces, Ecuador and its citizens in a spirit of unity will achieve great success that will benefit all Ecuadorians. The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic and the Frente POLISARIO have always attached great importance to the fraternal relations with the Republic of Ecuador and we would like to reiterate our firm resolve to strengthen and develop our traditional ties of friendship, solidarity and cooperation between our two countries and brotherly peoples, concluded President Ghali in his message. Ecuador recognized the SADR on November 14, 1983, and since that date the two states have maintained excellent relations of friendship and cooperation. SPS 062/090/TRA Sydney (Australia), April 7, 2017 (SPS) - April 07, 2017 (SPS) - The Australian University of Sydney hosted a scientific conference on Western Sahara issue under the theme "Challenges, hopes and next stages of struggle for self-determination. In the presence of the Representative of the Frente POLISARIO in Australia, Kamal Fadel, and a large audience of interested parties, a seminar was organized on the peaceful resistance of the Saharawi people, where the organisers answered important questions posed by students on various aspects of the Sahrawi issue. The Sahrawi Representative presented a historical account of the Sahrawi issue and the challenges facing the Saharawi people's struggle for self-determination and independence. He lamented the negative role played by some Security Council member States such as France, which was the reason for the failure to implement the UN resolutions and the peace plan approved by the parties to the conflict and adopted by the United Nations. The Saharawi diplomat added that the most important thing the Saharawi people have is their strong resolve and faith in their just cause and their willingness to give more sacrifices. These factors have made the Moroccan regime suffer from isolation and increased international pressure. (SPS) 062/090/TRA The Madison City Council just lost another excuse for failing to equip city police officers with body cameras. Its too expensive, the refrain goes. A majority of council members even objected last year to a limited test of cop cameras on the citys North Side, which would have cost only $75,000. But now the price tag has dropped to zero. Axon, the company that makes Tasers, is offering free body cameras for a year to any police department that wants them. Axon will even provide the computer software, training and data storage at no charge. Madison Ald. Paul Skidmore, a body camera supporter, said Thursday he will sponsor a resolution to create a pilot program testing Axon cameras in the city. Axon is providing the free equipment because its confident most departments that try its cameras will want to keep them. Axon also is developing software to quickly produce video records of incidents, reducing the paperwork officers must complete. That means patrol officers can spend more time out in the community. Cameras on police can show how controversial interactions between law enforcement and citizens actually occur. They provide investigators and the public with objective evidence to help sort through conflicting accounts. They also have been shown to improve the behavior of both police and civilians. Complaints against officers and the use of force tend to fall, which increases public trust and safety. Madison officials will need to assess the cost of body cameras if they choose to continue with Axons products beyond the first year. Milwaukee, with three times as many officers as Madison, planned to spend $1 million annually on patrol cameras. Axon didnt respond Thursday with a cost estimate for Madison beyond the free trial. But adopting the technology also should produce savings. Besides less paperwork and fewer complaints, the city would enjoy less exposure to lawsuits. Madison is paying about $400,000 a year for insurance to protect against legal claims involving police conduct. And that premium is likely to increase, given settlements of $3.35 million and $2.3 million to the families of two young men shot and killed by police. Body camera evidence wasnt available to help clarify what happened. Some city leaders claim domestic abuse victims will be hurt by cop cameras. But a statewide group that advocates for these victims has endorsed the devices. Other City Council members claim police cameras could somehow lead to more deportations. How? Madison is falling behind the rest of the country in adopting this useful technology. Axons offer of a free trial should finally convince the City Council to act. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 5 1 of 5 Alex von Kleydorff / Hearst Connecticut Media Show More Show Less 2 of 5 Alex von Kleydorff / Hearst Connecticut Media Show More Show Less 3 of 5 4 of 5 Alex von Kleydorff / Hearst Connecticut Media Show More Show Less 5 of 5 For an evening devoted in part to recognition for the past 15 years that Ed Musante has led the Greater Norwalk Chamber of Commerce, the groups members logged far more time Thursday in a glimpse of the future including the chambers possible choice as Musantes replacement. Days after announcing his retirement plans for August, Musante presided over his final annual meeting of the Greater Norwalk Chamber of Commerce that he has led as president since May 2002, previously having been executive director of the Norwalk Redevelopment Agency. Created in 1889, the chamber today is open to members in Norwalk as well as Darien, New Canaan, Weston, Westport and Wilton. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate STAMFORD Nine city educators are among 210 who have been awarded grants to travel the world this summer and bring experiences back to their schools. The Stamford educators include a social worker who will travel to Costa Rica to improve her Spanish language skills and a library media specialist who will explore Ireland to support her schools literacy curriculum. The grants, which total more than $800,000, are provided through a partnership of the Dalio Foundation and Fund for Teachers, an organization that works to help teachers explore their passions and enhance their craft. A total of 123 schools in 60 districts won the grants to foster professional learning projects. The summer learning odysseys span more than 48 countries and, organizers say, will benefit thousands of students. Sarah Arnold, of Roxbury Elementary School, will participate in a Spanish language-immersion program created specifically for social workers. Arnold interacts with students and their families on a daily basis, but many of them speak Spanish and she doesnt. During the program in July, she will stay with a local family in Costa Rica who does not speak English. Im scared to death, but Im also looking forward to it, Arnold said. More Information Stamford-area Dalio Foundation and Fund for Teachers grant winners: Katherine Miserocchi, Riverside Elementary, Greenwich Alicia Collins, Saxe Middle School, New Canaan Melinda Meyer, Saxe Middle School, New Canaan Sarah Arnold, Roxbury Elementary School, Stamford Kristen Baldovin, Northeast Elementary School, Stamford Simona Bojkova and Niki Chrisikakos, Toquam Magnet Elementary School, Stamford Diane Keller, Toquam Magnet Elementary School, Stamford Annalisa DiNucci, Stamford High School Connie Konya, Katherine T. Murphy Elementary School, Stamford Lucila Telesco, Newfield Elementary School, Stamford Melissa Valendra Cloonan Middle School, Stamford See More Collapse Connie Konya, of K.T. Murphy Elementary School, will explore the landscape, mythology and culture of Ireland to build on her storytelling talents for the schools literacy curriculum. Almost anywhere in our curriculum, you can embed a story, she said. Konya, whos been a media specialist in Stamford for 24 years, said the impact of storytelling on children is phenomenal. Our kids dont get enough opportunities to just sit, listen and imagine, she said. For me, to be able to do more of that is powerful. This is the third straight year the Dalio Foundation has supported Funds for Teachers and public schools in providing professional learning grants for teachers. Fellows are chosen by local selection committees comprised of teachers, administrators, union leaders and community stakeholders. Every application was read three times and reviewed against program objectives. Since 2001, the group has awarded more than $27 million in grants, empowering nearly 7,500 teachers to explore their passions. Among the other seven Stamford teachers to win grants is Kristen Baldovin, of Northeast Elementary School. She will travel to Greece to investigate the historical and cultural influences that shaped mythological literature, art and architecture. In doing so, she will be able to provide context and engage students in literacy and writing. Annalisa DiNucci, of Stamford High School, will travel to Spain to observe effective language instruction. Diane Keller, of Toquam Magnet Elementary School, will attend a national conference in Las Vegas to learn about small group instruction using technology and writing, and adaptations for students with special needs. The local list also includes Cloonan Middle Schools Melissa Valendra and Toquam Magnet Elementary Schools Simona Bojkova and Niki Chrisikakos, who will travel to Spain; and Newfield Elementary Schools Lucila Telesco, who will travel to Florida. The Dalio Foundation and Fund for Teachers supports teachers who identify needs and opportunities in their school communities, seek out solutions, and strive for excellent teaching and learning by demonstrating awareness, inquiry, empathy, and resilience, said Karen Webb, executive director of Funds for Teachers. noliveira@stamfordadvocate.com, 203-964-2265, @olivnelson STAMFORD A convicted burglar known for blending in to upper-class neighborhoods with his stylish clothes, was sentenced to 12 years in jail Friday for a 2015 Weston home invasion. Stamford States Attorney Richard Colangelo, who prosecuted the case, said the outcome was appropriate for Dylan Garner, a 43-year-old Bridgeport man who has spent more than a decade in prison for other burglaries. Colangelo told judge Richard Comerford that Garner injured the woman occupant of the house when he tried to rip a ring off her finger. The woman, who is a doctor, still feels pain in her hand, he said. Im glad we were able to find a resolution to this matter that made the victim happy, Colangelo said. She went through a terrible ordeal and she has to deal with this every day. Garner pleaded guilty in February to tying up the woman on 10 Oclock Lane who surprised him while he was burglarizing her home. "Given that Dylan got 17 years in jail after being convicted at trial of several other burglaries, this is a reasonable disposition. But it's not a walk in the park," said public defender Barry Butler, who represented Garner when he pleaded guilty. The woman told police Garner forced his way into her home and pushed her into a bedroom, breaking her right forearm when he tried to use a fleece jacket to tie her up, his arrest affidavit said. Garner ripped a $35,000 diamond ring off the woman's finger and a $19,000 Rolex watch from her wrist, according to his arrest affidavit. The woman said she was watching television in her bedroom when the doorbell rang twice. She didn't answer the door since she wasn't expecting a visitor. About 10 minutes later, she heard a crash outside her bedroom and saw a well-dressed man wearing a hat from the 1930s, walking toward her and demanding her jewelry, Garner's arrest affidavit said. Police immediately suspected Garner, who had been convicted of burglaries in the area. Police said Garner was considered a "gentleman" burglar because he dressed nicely to fit in wealthy neighborhoods. jnickerson@stamfordadvocate.com; This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 3 1 of 3 Stamford police / Contributed Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Stamford police / Contributed Show More Show Less 3 of 3 STAMFORD A red-light runner who told police he was being chased by another car led cops to two loaded guns hidden under a mattress inside a West Side apartment on Thursday. The driver, who ran the light and struck another vehicle around 4 p.m. Thursday on East Main at Exit 9, told officers that a silver sedan had been following him and he provided a license plate number of the car because he was certain the driver and passenger meant to do him harm, Capt. Richard Conklin said. B anks have been ordered to reveal contingency plans for the full range of possible scenarios after Brexit to help ward off threats to financial stability, Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said on Friday Prudential Regulation Authority chief executive Sam Woods is writing to all firms trading with the EU such as US banks trading in Europe under passporting arrangements asking them to set out their plans, the Canadian said. Carneys comments come a week after Theresa Mays triggering of Article 50 set the clock running on two years of talks to find a deal likely to have a major impact on the Square Mile. Whatever is agreed, there are risks to financial stability both in the transition to the new relationship and in the new steady state. These risks include disruption of services, a further weakening of investment banking profitability and the potential for greater complexity in firms legal structures, he said. Carney also stressed that the UK was at a fork in the road and urged it to shun protectionism and take the high road to more jobs, stronger growth and better risk management. It is all too easy to give in to protectionism, but the road less taken is often the most rewarding, he said. UK industry wobbled in February as manufacturers struggled, official figures showed today. Output slid 0.7%, and the trade deficit also hit a five-month high. Capital Economics economist Ruth Gregory said: Todays deluge of UK economic data was fairly disappointing and adds to the evidence that the economy has lost some momentum during the first quarter. L loyds Banking Group is to pay out 100 million in compensation to victims of the HBOS Reading branch loans scam and open another investigation into its own conduct. The Financial Conduct Authority is also re-opening its probe into misconduct that saw a gang of rogue bankers destroy the businesses and lives of scores of customers, who saw their firms go bust and, in some cases, lost their home. Compensation for economic losses, distress and inconvenience take the cost to Lloyds of the scandal to 350 million so far. Lloyds will hire a senior independent lawyer, likely to be a retired judge or eminent QC, to examine whether top management investigated claims and reported to watchdogs adequately following the 2008 HBOS acquisition. That comes on top of a review by Professor Russel Griggs into how customers were treated and how they should be compensated. Thames Valley police could also re-open investigations. In February Lynden Scourfield, a senior HBOS manager, was sentenced to 11 years in jail. The judge said he had sold his soul for sex, for bling and for swag. The FCA put its original probe on hold back in 2013 while the police investigation widened. Its decision to resume it opens up the possibility of regulatory sanctions and fines for Lloyds. With anger growing at Lloyds for seeming to drag its feet on the issue, chief executive Antonio Horta-Osorio (pictured) expressed his deep regret. We are absolutely determined that victims of the crimes committed at HBOS Reading are fairly, swiftly and appropriately compensated, he said. Lloyds said it will provide living costs to assist victims in financial distress, cover reasonable fees for advice, and write off debts owed to the bank. Bank victims Paul and Nikki Turner the Cambridge couple who say they first alerted police to the scam said today: After nearly a decade-and-a-half of fighting, it is a relief to see that Lloyds is finally recognising its obligations to the victims of this scandal. However, we need to see a firm timetable from Lloyds on when restitution will be made. The bank has to recognise that victims suffered twice once from the fraud and a second time from the cover up. The Turners, who took a business loan of 160,000 from HBOS in 2003, say HBOS has tried to repossess their home 22 times. The scam saw the bankers make loans to firms which were often struggling and were then charged high consultancy fees and forced into bankruptcy. David Mills, Scourfields business associate, bribed bankers with holidays, watches and prostitutes. A diary entry from one of the sex workers read: Met guys, me, Amber and Suzie. Chinese meal. Then drinks at flat and quick shag. Easy 1500. F ull steam ahead was the message from Hornby on Friday, as the model trains maker declared the first phase of its turnaround complete. The owner of Scalextric, Corgi and Airfix suffered a string of profit warnings after supply chain cock-ups and losing touch with customers and retailers, but is back on track, providing loyal fans with products they love, chief executive Steve Cooke said today. Key successes included toys like the detailed replica of the latest Hitachi passenger train and a smartphone-controlled Scalextric set. The company remains loss-making, but Cooke said 1.1 million of cash on the balance sheet will enable progress, though it will probably pursue less ambitious sales growth. The shares rose as much as 13% in early trading, before settling 1.5p, nearly 5%, higher at 33.5p. The US strike on Syria had investors seeking safety in bonds and gold, but the FTSE 100 didnt fare too badly, retreating just 4.45 points to 7298.75. TODO: define component type brightcove Tesco, which will report annual figures next week, was among the top risers as analysts threw their weight behind the stock. The supermarket, pursuing a 3.7 billion takeover of wholesaler Booker, is underestimated, according to HSBC, while UBS praised its investment in price and products such as the Farm Brands range. It rose 3.6p to 188.85p. UBSs assessment of rival Sainsburys, that its core grocery business is in better shape than recent data might suggest, saw the stock gain 4.7p to hit 259.19p. It was harsher on online competitor Ocado, which is opening capacity into a slowing online market and fell 11.9p to 240.1p to become the FTSE 250s biggest faller. Oil services firm Hunting scored the mid-cap indexs biggest gain, climbing 23p to 611p, as investors reacted to its succession plans. Boss Dennis Proctor is to step down this year, but will stay on until his replacement is found. A downgrade from Investec hit shares in challenger bank Shawbrook, which last week rejected a renewed takeover bid from Pollen Street Capital and BC Partners. Investec cut Shawbrook, down 1.9p at 337.9p, to sell from hold and recommended a switch to rival stocks like Virgin Money. G rand National weekend is upon us but the Black Horse bank has hardly been thundering down the home straight so far in its handling of the compensation claims from dozens of victims of the HBOS Reading scandal. Many of the furious casualties of the fraud have been met with the equivalent of Aintrees fearsome fences in their dealings with Lloyds, which downed pens for six years for fear of prejudicing the criminal trial. So todays 100 million compensation package is better late than never, as well as the most fulsome apology yet from chief executive Antonio Horta-Osorio who must privately despair at having to clear up yet another mess not of his making. Support for customers financially crippled by the fraudsters probably amounting to around 1 million each on average is welcome. That said, Lloyds can hardly expect praise for its magnanimity in writing off debts where customers were victims of criminal conduct and not pursue them for any repayment. That should be par for the course. Meanwhile, the bank has other questions to answer. A senior lawyer will look into how well Lloyds bosses dealt with the fraud, and scour the period from its rescue of HBOS in January 2009 through to the conclusion of the criminal trial. But is the scope of the probe wide enough? The initial reports of an alleged cover-up claimed emails were pinging around between senior HBOS bosses on the issue as early as February 2008. The fraudsters have been punished, but what about the top brass? PR mis-steps apart, Lloyds investors will also be eager to hear how the bank prevents a repeat. In 2013, Paul and Nikki Turner two of the highest-profile victims argued to the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards that the sector was not only too big to fail but too big to regulate. Its hard to disagree. While the fraudsters get away with it the chances of improving the wider industrys battered standing are a non-starter. Money where Mao is Welcome to Lon-jing. Only this week Chinese buyer R&F Properties splashed out another 158 million on the capital for the Vauxhall Square development and plans to pump 1 billion into the site. And according to CBRE, there have already been a dozen property deals in 2017 involving 2.4 billion of Chinese cash, including the Cheesegrater skyscraper. But is it a Brexit bet on London, inspired by the cheap pound or a mad dash away from an overheating Chinese economy on the brink of meltdown? B mbattled electronics giant Samsung on Friday shrugged off a catalogue of scandals, including a corruption trial and fire-prone phones, and said it is on track for record profits. The South Korean company said operating profit for the first three months of this year was estimated at 9.9 trillion won (7 billion), up 48% from a year earlier. It is the groups best quarterly profit in almost four years. Sales are expected to be 50 trillion won. Samsung, which last week unveiled its new flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S8, was helped by strong sales of memory chips. That could help it stage a comeback in the wake of a string of controversies. Last year it had to pull its Galaxy Note 7 smartphones because their batteries were exploding. Billionaire vice-chairman Lee Jae-yong was arrested in February as part of a corruption scandal that has led to the impeachment of former South Korean President Park Geun-hye. Lee has gone on trial in South Korea. He and Samsung have denied wrongdoing. Karissa Chua of Euromonitor International said: Samsung has proved that it is well-insulated by its other business units such as its semiconductor and display business which helped to drive profits even as it recovers from the Note 7 recall. T he launch of 59 US cruise missiles on the Syrian army air base that the US considers responsible for the chemical weapons attack on civilians in Idlib has taken observers by surprise in its sheer rapidity and scale. On the face of it, this is a change of direction in US policy towards the Assad regime and Russia. But even if it is only a short-term response to an act of barbarism that does not mean the US taking further military action against the Assad regime, it sends an important signal about President Trumps willingness to back talk with action. The contrast with the Obama administration is almost too obvious to need spelling out: earlier in the war, President Obama had declared that the Assad regime had crossed a red line in using chemical weapons against civilians, yet had not acted to follow up that declaration. President Trump also said the regime had crossed a red line, and the following day he launched air strikes. One reason why Mr Obama did not take military action was, it seems, that there were doubts about who was actually responsible for the use of toxic gas, but if that was so, he should not have threatened force to begin with. Mr Trump has left his critics in a difficult position. He has, by attacking Russias ally and indeed Russians were in the air base before the attack challenged President Putin himself. Rather more importantly, domestically he has turned the tables on those Democrats who claim he is beholden to the Russian President and has unhealthily close links with Moscow. Just as much to the point, most of his foreign policy critics had taken exception to his previously accommodating approach to the Assad regime they can hardly complain of that now. As for timing, the attacks last night took place as President Xi of China arrived in the US for talks with Mr Trump; the implications of all this will not be lost on him. There is a liberal case for criticising this move. Mr Trump did not consult Congress though as Commander-in-Chief, he did not have to nor did he try very hard for a UN resolution authorising military action. Mr Putin may have a point in saying that unilateral US action of this kind is reminiscent of its approach in Iraq and Libya. It would be rash to assume that the air strikes mark a radical change of US direction in Syria. It may be a response simply to the use of chemical weapons against civilians by the Assad regime Mr Trump has said he was revolted by what happened to children killed by the gas. That would still leave the fundamentals of his policy intact: that is, to treat the fight against IS and al Qaeda as his priority. That remains a justifiable approach, given the genocidal brutality of IS and its threat to the region. The timing of all this is significant in another respect: the US Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, was to visit Moscow next week. If the visit goes ahead, it will be in a very different atmosphere than might have been the case. Yet, as Patrick Cockburn points out on this page, the Russian Presidents anger should chiefly be directed at his Syrian ally: not only was the use of chemical weapons barbarous, it was militarily unnecessary. What all parties in this war must now do is refocus their efforts on securing a political settlement. The air strikes should not distract us from that overriding priority. Masoods fifth victim The attacks by the terrorist Khalid Masood have taken another victim: a Romanian tourist, Andreea Cristea, who was driven into the Thames in the attack and has died of her injuries. Her boyfriend was due to propose that day. It is a desperately sad end to this tragedy. We all feel the utmost sympathy for Miss Cristeas family: she and her boyfriend were our guests. Masoods barbarity only hardens our contempt for the Islamist ideology he espoused. W hen was the last time you booed at a show? A childhood pantomime? Some especially unfunny comedian, perhaps? It is a stereotype that Brits are a reserved people, uncomfortable with bellowing our discontent. Until recently, that is. Booing at the Royal Opera House has been increasing in recent years. Oliver Mears, the venues new director, spoke out against it at the launch of his inaugural season this week. No matter what people have seen on stage, the performers 99.99 per cent of the time have absolutely given their all, and I think that is deserving of respect and applause, he said. Of course every show should be approached with an open mind and it would be cruel to buy a ticket with the intention of heckling, but performers goodwill doesnt guarantee a good audience experience. Mearss predecessor, Kasper Holten, was responsible for many excellent productions during his five-year tenure (the UK debut of George Enescus Oedipe was the best thing I saw last year) but not every show chimed with audiences. In 2015, Damiano Michielettos production of Guillaume Tell featured a graphic sexual assault that was greeted with loud boos. And the year before that a rubber shark that surfaced in a production of Idomeneo was met with a Mexican wave of booing, as one opera critic described it. Holten took a more relaxed approach than Mears. It is wonderful that people feel passionately about opera, he said last year after Katie Mitchells modern take on Donizettis Lucia di Lammermoor drew some jeers, and if you take risks as an artist or artistic organisation you also must accept that you open yourself to criticism, whether on social media, in the press or through booing. If Mears believes, as he has said, that opera is the most accessible art form there is, because its about emotion, then he cant blame audiences for getting angry if they feel that their emotional investment has been taken for granted, especially if they have spent up to 200 on a ticket. Theatregoers, who now can face ticket prices to rival opera, are a different kettle of rubber sharks. They would prefer to sit through 100 minutes of rubbish in tortured silence and then clap at the end anyway. But even clapping is too disruptive for some many spoken word poetry nights encourage audience members to click their fingers as a cool alternative signal of approval (snapplause). Our European friends are much more prone to booing, although there have been unsuccessful attempts to quell it when it goes too far. In 2006 the tenor Roberto Alagna stormed off stage during the first act of Verdis Aida at La Scala, Milan, after he was booed. His replacement, Antonello Palombi, was pushed on to the stage wearing jeans. Mears is something of an unknown figure to most Londoners, having built his career in Northern Ireland, so we will have to wait and see if he will ruffle feathers. I hope people come to every production with a willingness to enjoy it, but audiences have every right to express their displeasure. And you know how, dont you? You just put your lips together and boo. Thats what I call mileage Next weeks instalment in the Fast & Furious franchise will be the eighth. Yes, eighth. That means Universal has squeezed more than 15-and-a-half hours out of the Vin Diesel street-racing series. I naively assumed the sudden death of co-star Paul Walker would have been a reason to call it a day after Furious 7. But theres no end in sight for the biennial drip of Furious films, with the ninth entry scheduled for 2019 and the 10th for 2021. Never one to be outdone, explosion-happy director Michael Bay has announced that he has 14 Transformers films ready to go. And then he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer. Skin-deep why movie baddies are seen as evil The University of Texas studied the characters on the American Film Institutes 100 Greatest Heroes and Villains list and found that six out of the top 10 baddies had some sort of ghastly skin condition. Only two of the leading heroes had a facial disfigurement, and even then, Indiana Joness handsome little chin scar is tame compared with the Wicked Witch of the Wests warty, green mug or the long list of things wrong with the possessed girl from The Exorcist. The study concluded that Hollywood had a tendency to depict skin disease in an evil context, but a false connection between ugliness and immorality is hardly unique to the movies. It is prevalent throughout literature especially childrens books from Cinderellas stepsisters to Tolkiens mutilated orcs or Rowlings noseless Voldemort. Real people throughout history have also suffered the same unfair association: King James II of Scotland was known by his detractors as Fiery Face because of the large vermillion birthmark on his left cheek that was believed to represent his ruthless temperament. All good children, of course, are taught from a young age not to judge a book by its cover. Then again, that Steve Bannon... The net closes on Honest Ken George Washington famously could not tell a lie. Could he have something in common with Ken Livingstone? In 45 years since I won my first election, I have never lied, Livingstone said last year, in defence of his claims that Hitler supported Zionism. It is worth remembering something else he said in April of the same year: should the UK vote Leave, he would emigrate. Now that even his friend and ally Jeremy Corbyn has joined the line of Labour MPs queuing up to denounce him, is it not the perfect time for Honest Ken to live up to his promises? P resident Trumps decision to fire 59 Tomahawk missiles at an air base in Syria as punishment for its planes dropping chemical weapons on civilians changes the political landscape in both Syria and the US. The missile strike was not that extensive in military terms but is significant because what happened once can happen again. It means that the US will be more closely involved in the war in Syria in future, something that Mr Trump, who won the presidential election as an isolationist with the slogan America First, has been eager to avoid. But the single attack on the Al-Shayrat air base near the central city of Homs will not in itself alter the balance of military power in Syria, which remains very much in President Bashar al-Assads favour. The strike will do Mr Trump nothing but good in his battles at home with Republicans, Democrats and the media because many of his most vigorous opponents approve of his action overnight in Syria. Unlike the previous administration, President Trump confronted a pivotal moment in Syria and took action, said Republican senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who were previously highly critical of White House policy in a joint statement. Angry protests from Russia about a military assault on their Syrian ally by the US will be helpful to Mr Trump and his administration because they rebut claims that he and his senior officials are too friendly to Moscow. These charges are more vague and less conclusive than generally reported in the media as Mr Trump himself frequently protests but they have been doing him serious political damage. Russian criticism of the US is likely to mask even deeper anger in the Kremlin against Mr Assad, assuming they conclude, as they currently deny, that his planes did indeed carry out the chemical attacks that killed more than 80 civilians at Khan Sheikhoun. President Putin will wonder why his ally in Damascus should have been so foolish as to possibly throw away a game which, from his point of view, is already won. Only a few days ago, the US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was saying that the fate of Assad was in the hands of the Syrian people, which is as close as the US has come to saying publicly that the Syrian leader is going to stay. Approval by hawks such as McCain and Lindsey, who have long argued for greater American intervention aimed at overthrowing Assad in Syria, should be treated with caution. As with foreign intervention in Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011, the interventionists have always understated and misunderstood the complexity of the conflict in which they were proposing to become enmeshed. The Syrian civil war is, if anything, even more compacted than the others, and US military intervention is no more likely to produce a decisive outcome. US Navy launches cruise missile strike on Syria The conflict is half a dozen or more crises wrapped into one. Though it may have started off as a struggle between the people and the regime in 2011, it rapidly transmuted into a multi-sided sectarian and ethnic struggle in which Sunni Arabs fought against the minorities, jihadi against non-jihadi, secular against religious, Arab against Kurd. All these parties, sects and communities have their outside backers who have chosen Syria as the battlefield in which to fight out their differences. None of this has been changed by the missile strike overnight, though it would be if there were follow-up attacks with the purpose of destroying the Syrian air force. It is par for the course that Mr Trump and the Republicans should take a sideswipe at supposed inactivity of President Obama in Syria and Iraq but, up to now, his policies have not differed much from those of his predecessor. Both give priority to eliminating Islamic State and the al Qaeda clones and have gone a long way towards doing so. Both have accepted that fighting IS and al Qaeda means that, in practice, Mr Assad is going to stay in power in Damascus for the foreseeable future. The problem for the US and its allies has always been that, for all their talk of political transition in Syria, the dominant force in armed opposition holding territory on the ground in Syria is IS and al Qaeda. If the present regime goes, then they are the only replacement, something that terrifies many Syrians who do not like Assad but fear the alternative as being even worse. In this respect, the plan of Hillary Clintons advisers during the presidential election campaign to raise a neutral military force capable of fighting Assad, IS and al Qaeda, all at the same time, was much less realistic than anything Mr Trump has proposed. What will the impact of the US military strike in retaliation for the use of poison gas at Khan Sheikhoun be on the wider war against IS and al Qaeda? Islamic State has many enemies but in the past it has benefited enormously from the fact that they are disunited and hate and fear each other as much, if not more, than they do IS. But over the past six months, IS and al Qaeda have been rapidly losing ground in Syria and Iraq. The Iraqi armed forces, supported by the US-led air coalition, have captured three-quarters of Mosul, the de facto capital of the self-declared caliphate. The ferocious battle has now been going on for five months and will probably continue into the summer. The Syrian Kurds and their Arab allies are likewise preparing to assault Raqqa, the last city held by IS in Syria. With the loss of Mosul and Raqqa, IS will revert to being a guerrilla force using terrorist tactics, which will be very dangerous, but it will not pose the sort of threat that it did when the caliphate was a real state the size of Great Britain. The Tomahawk strike on Al-Shayrat increases US engagement in the Syrian crisis and is the first American military action against Assad forces. It does not change the nature of the war but it shows that so long as the conflict goes on, there is the danger of it getting worse. T his week marks the introduction of the Apprenticeship Levy businesses with a wage bill of more than 3 million now have to contribute 0.5 per cent of their salary bill towards this new fund. The Government hopes this will plug the funding gap so it can hit its target of three million apprenticeships. While I welcome the additional funding this will provide, the Government must not simply shift all the responsibility on to employers. It needs to ensure that the money provides the skills needed for the UK as it leaves the EU so that everyone has equal access to the opportunities a decent apprenticeship can provide. We are still currently seeing too many apprenticeships for low-skilled jobs. I am calling on the Government to ensure there is a greater degree of progression into the higher level apprenticeships, particularly for women, those from a black or minority-ethnic background and people with disabilities, who are currently missing out. Fiona Twycross, Labours London Assembly economy spokesperson Since the Chancellors Autumn Statement, the capitals businesses have been gearing up for changes in the provision of apprenticeships. One of the highlights was the Apprenticeship Levy, which came into force yesterday. Apprenticeships are great for Londons businesses as they can bridge the skills gap. The levy will only affect two per cent of businesses and be paid via the same process as PAYE and National Insurance contributions. The impact of Brexit will also be felt in a market where EU passport holders have made a significant contribution. Our research indicates 44 per cent of business owners anticipate that apprenticeships will offer realistic solutions for a temporary shortfall in local staffing. We all have a role in making apprenticeships a standard means of getting Londoners trained and working. This marks an exciting time for the capitals employers. Andy Wilson, CEO, Capital City College group Having done an apprenticeship without going to university, I cannot stress how vital the Apprenticeship Levy will be in helping NEETs (people not in education, employment or training) get on the jobs ladder. Some people will leave school and struggle to get a job in a skilled area. Apprenticeships offer a second chance rarely do you get to learn your trade in a job and get paid while doing it. I hope companies will not exploit the low wages that usually come with apprenticeships but use them to improve Londons workforce and the lives of young Londoners. D Connor Turning on the tap: Clare Halse as Peggy Sawyer leads the chorus in one of the musical's many dance numbers The exuberant 42nd Street shows it still has plenty of legs The musical 42nd Street has received mixed reviews in its first week. It was given five stars in the Telegraph and The Stage, yet Fiona Mountford gave it only three stars because she felt that despite the tapping her spirits began to flag [April 5]. It was also Ms Mountford who got a headache from watching Ragtime as there were too many songs in it. Tap dancing in a musical? Singing in a musical? Whatever next a rapping Hamilton? Martin Clark What would 42nd Street, that gloriously exuberant musical, have been like had it sketched out details of desperate people struggling in the aftermath of the Great Depression, as Fiona Mountford suggests it should? The whole purpose of the 1933 film on which it is based was surely to make audiences forget their troubles, not ram them down their throats. John Julius Time to celebrate the wonderful NHS As doctors and medical professionals we know first-hand the vital role the NHS plays for our citizens. That is why today, on World Health Day, we call on the people of the UK to recognise how fortunate we are to have it. In the worlds poorest regions even basic healthcare is unimaginable. Thankfully, through our foreign aid commitments, the UK can pass on our health expertise to the most vulnerable, helping to save lives and build healthier, stable communities. Preventing disease and curing illness in poor countries is more than a moral duty. It is in the UKs own interests because illness does not respect borders or race. When the Ebola outbreak threatened to spark a deadly global pandemic in 2015 UK doctors and nurses put themselves in danger to save lives and help stop the disease in its tracks. British aid workers are now spearheading the famine relief effort in Africa and we are assisting in the refugee crisis across the Middle East. Amid much instability around the world, now is not the time to turn our backs on those who need us. Dr Patrick Green, GP in Stoke Newington, and four other UK doctors Debts are hitting Europe so hard Those who are critical of Brexit should worry instead about the state of the eurozone. Public debt ratios in Spain, Greece, Portugal, Italy and Cyprus are already higher than at the height of the debt crisis in 2012. The European Central Bank has started to reduce debt purchases, although last year it bought the whole of Italys public debt. Who will buy Italian debt in future? The eurosceptic political parties are comfortably in the lead in Italy while Marine Le Pen could yet win the presidential election in France. Unemployment in the EU has only recently come down to 9.5 per cent on average and in southern Europe it is much higher. Youth unemployment is 25-40 per cent. Some of our elite may see Brexiteers as rats but they are rats deserting a sinking ship. Professor Alan Sked Join the conversation: #esnewsviews Review at a glance D amien Hirsts new show in Venice, Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable, is a complicated triumph. The labels for the works on display, dozens of objects, many enormous, depicting mythological beings monsters, ancient royalty, maiden warriors, three-headed dogs, and suchlike refer to them in a slightly puzzled or distant way as if only so much can be known. In other words, theyre like the labels in places at the British Museum, and the objects are like (if thats the word) the antiquities youd expect to find there. They are very old, it seems. But the materials listed, as well as Carrera marble and bronze, include powdered aluminum, printed polyester and fiberglass resin and some of the objects are Mickey Mouse. Ones Damien Hirst. The show is in fact a fiction about value and meaning, and the role of art as truth. Youre supposed to believe ancient artworks lying at the bottom of the ocean after a ship carrying them, called the Unbelievable, sank, were dragged up 2,000 years later by archaeologists hired by Hirst, and these are what youre seeing often covered in coloured barnacles (which allows Hirst to exercise his designer eye for decorative beauty), and accompanied by blow-up photos of the salvage operation. This is untrue but it is true that works were sunk into the sea and then dragged up again and the operation recorded just for the sake of the photos. The objects are not old, of course, but made over the last 10 years by workshops and studios all over the world, controlled by Hirst and based on his ideas. They take off from classical art but end up a curious mixture of nonsense props, and subtle goading and mocking conceptual artworks. Hes saying something about what people want or expect from art, what turns them on fantasies of spirituality as well as fury at pomposity and artificiality. This other narrative is an undercurrent but it constitutes the real worth of the event. The objects are displayed in two museums owned by the billionaire collector, Francois Pinault, and if you start in one the Punta della Dogana the first sights encountered are of three giant sculptures, including one that is ridiculously porny and another that looks like a scene in a comic. Each has the look of computer-generated heroic statues in the background of any nonsense fantasy movie or TV series. The catalogue and booklet that accompany the show have Shakespeare and Simon Schama in them. They dont have The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe but they certainly feel like they could. It all looks completely stupid and gruesomely kitsch, or else it looks convincing its pretty subjective. Whos to say that if someone thinks its magnificent art as it states in the catalogue with timeless beauty and superb technique, that theyre a sucker? Maybe an art critic ought to say it. Its certainly noticeable that there are multiple cons or fake facts, not just one: it isnt only British Museum art but theres also a feel of flicking through any world art coffee-table book. Surrealism pops up in the form of a blow-up illuminated photo of a real exhibition from the 1930s, which turns out to include some of Hirsts sculptures among the Max Ernsts and Salvador Dalis: is it a post-truth photo? Contemporary-art typical jokey sarcasm comes in: we see the mouse with a human ear grafted on its back from those disturbing news photos in 1997 that came from a scientists lab but here the creature is gnawing on the toes of a foot from a colossal statue. The nubile goddesses all have jutting breasts. A bust of a handsome Pharoah, head and torso, turns out to have a nipple ring. Its not until youve seen dozens of enormous objects, which are either solemn or else have hints of knowing jokiness, that the first full-on deliberately comic sight appears. The Collector with Friend is a life-size bronze statue of Hirst holding the hand of Mickey Mouse. The barnacles here are in Pop Art colours: red, yellow and blue. Perhaps collectors are nothing much, just ego-driven social climbers. Laughing and waving, Hirst is much bigger than Mickey but he depicts himself as no less foolish. Is he a Mickey Mouse artist? Is he taking the mickey? It takes a long while to gauge the jokes and even to see thats what they are, that lumbering obviousness is a set-up for darting clever mockery. But the answer to the question of who is fooling whom, with all the sexy women and the bald, muscular men radiating power, is left playfully up in the air. Is he laughing at oligarch collectors whove made him wealthy? Is he flattering and tickling them? Its a great series of reflections on fakery, belief, truth and absolutes the end of our world reflected in the end of ancient worlds. But no single object really tells you about this. Its a matter of cumulative effects and teased memory. Over 10 years, hes built up a body of work that amounts to art about art, but also peoples fantasies of what art is: the culture of selling and promoting, the medias gloating fascination with high prices and scandals, and a current of genuine fascination. A display of drawings in the other building, the Palazzo Grassi, appears as much like faked-up props as the sculptures. Youre teased to believe theyre sketches by the same artists from long ago. In the same room is a model boat: you can see all the objects in the show 189 of them as tiny miniatures in the hold, with little Egyptian sailors scurrying on the deck. The joke on scale here makes you think of another one elsewhere in the building, a demon 18 metres-high based on a drawing by William Blake called The Ghost of a Flea. The objects remain aesthetically worthless but theyre needed for the concepts after that they neednt be looked at again. Perseus and Andromeda is translated as Jaws meets another nubile sexy maiden with a Brazilian this time chained to a rock. The shark (of course!) might be Hirsts ego, the maiden arts innocence. If hes laughing at his own public image hes also mocking the terms of it how hypocritical are the art experts and how lazy and daft is the popular audience? From Sunday until December 3; palazzograssi.it R estaurateur Des McDonald is to open his seventh rooftop bar at Selfridges, inspired by California. Opening on Tuesday, The Roof Deck Restaurant and Bar and outdoor drinks terrace promises to transport visitors to the sunny climes of the West Coast. Customers will enter via a timber boardwalk lined with palms, with tropical plants and sand-lined floors filling the rest of the space. Executive chef Steve Tonkin, formerly of Dean Street Townhouse and Soho House Group, and head chef Baran Baltaci from The Ivy have created a health-focused menu including salads, grains, fresh fish and seafood, all with a Latin American influence. Outside under a retractable roof for when London is blessed with sunshine there is a separate terrace serving drinks and bar snacks with California-inspired cocktails. Best rooftop bars and pubs in London 1 /33 Best rooftop bars and pubs in London Netil 360, Hackney 1 Westgate St, E8 3RL, netil360.com During the day, Netil 360 (on top of Hackney's Netil House) has its serious face on, with free workspaces, a cafe and even yoga sessions. But throughout the summer, they're in a more relaxed mood, with day parties, outdoor movie screenings, comedy nights, and various workshops . Expect lots of drinks, foodie pop-ups, and, naturally, terrific views. Queen of Hoxton, Shoreditch 1 Curtain Rd, EC2A 3JX, queenofhoxton.com The Queen of Hoxton's rooftop has had more makeovers than Madonna and gleefully continues the trend this year. Their outside space has been re-imagined as A Tribute To Dr Strange, channelling San Francisco in 1967. Expect a side of psychedelia with all the food and drink. Proud, Camden The Horse Hospital, The Stables Market, Chalk Farm Rd, NW1 8AH, proudcamden.com Marking 150 years since Lewis Carroll's children's classic was first published, Proud have transformed their rooftop spot into a homage to Alice's Wonderland. It's well suited to late night drinks, but on Saturday's the 'Mad Hatter' hosts a tea party, complete with board games and croquet. Game on, old thing. Prince of Wales, Brixton 467- 469 Brixton Rd, SW9 8HH, pow-london.com For those who want to dance, POW salutes you: it is, unquestionably, a place to party. On the weekends, come for the DJs, while in the weekday, make do by bouncing between their three bars. Happy memories are made here, even if you won't always remember them the next morning. Dalston Roof Park, Dalston 18 Ashwin St, E8 3DL, bootstrapcompany.co.uk An eco-addition to Hackney's growing rooftop scene, the Roof Park always has something going on. On the one hand, it's an urban oasis covered in impressive topiary, solar panels which power it and allotments, while on the other, it hosts cinema screenings, acoustic gigs and foodie residencies., as well as its fair share of parties. Opposite the overground station, this is a super-convenient rooftop, open daily. Coq D'Argent, Bank 1 Poultry, EC2R 8EJ, coqdargent.co.uk A favourite among city types, D&D's Coq D'Argent has a storming menu and very decent wine list. The seated area is charming enough, but make sure to wander to their garden (pictured) for the best views. You'll leave in high spirits and with an empty wallet. The Rooftop at The Trafalgar 2 Spring Gardens, SW1A 2TS, thetrafalgar.com The Vista terrace is a little disconcerting, for one delightful reason: despite being in perhaps the busiest part of London, it somehow largely avoids being overcrowded. In fact, Vista is often surprisingly quiet, although expect the odd tourist. Drinks are as pricey as one would expect in the centre of town, but the views are hard to top. Frank's Cafe, Peckham Peckham Multi Story Carpark, 133 Rye Ln, SE15 4ST, frankscafe.org.uk This huge spot takes over the entire top of a multi-storey carpark, so there's plenty of space for everyone, despite it's immense popularity. From May 19, expect a fabulous barbecue, lots of drinks, and a very chilled vibe. Arguably London's coolest rooftop, and the 360 degree views are oddly soothing. Rex Sushi Samba, Bishopsgate Heron Tower, 110 Bishopsgate, EC2N 4AY, sushisamba.com The glamour here is only hampered if you're scared of heights: at 39 stories up, it's somewhat vertigo inducing. Still, they've one of the most glorious views in London and an excellent cocktail list. You'll have to fight your way through yah-yah types to get to the bar, but it's all part of the ridiculousness, which is what makes it fun. Boundary, Shoreditch 2-4 Boundary St, E2 7DD, boundary.london Come hungry to Boundary: they've just launched a Provencal-style summer menu, with the likes of Ortiz anchovies and ricotta, octopus and chorizo skewers. You'll need to book, as it gets busy quickly, but once you're up there, it's charmingly relaxed. Be sure to have a gin 'n' tonic, they've got their own label gin and are rightly keen on the stuff. Radio Rooftop Bar, The Strand 336-337 Strand, WC2R 1HA, radiorooftop.com Come up in the evening for a high-end Ibiza feel: there are plush white sofas and big bucket seats galore, as well as a few tables for couples. The drinks are pricey, and the music might not be for everyone (there's that Ibiza theme again), but the view includes the London Eye, Big Ben, the Shard, the Gherkin and more. With London landmarks like that and flickering candles, it's a very decent date night spot. Pergola on the Roof, Shepherd's Bush 101 Wood Ln, W12 7FA, pergolaontheroof.co.uk Head to the BBC's old haunt, the television centre, for this new pop-up. Food comes courtesy of Salt Yard, Le Coq, Rabbit and Patty & Bun, so you won't go hungry. Just prepare for it to be busy: they've a capacity of more than 500, so it's not one for a quiet drink. Oxo Tower, South Bank Barge House St, SE1 9PH, harveynichols.com When it's warm, the Oxo tower offers a lovely sense of occasion. Go for the stunning views over the Thames and beyond, including St Paul's and the Gherkin. Given how splendid these views are, the cocktails don't need to be anything special, so it's all the more pleasing that they are. A Michael Kyle www.michaelkyle.co.uk The Lost Format Society, Croydon NCP Fairfield Car Park, Barclay Road, CR0 1JN, lostformatsociety.co.uk Croydon get their first rooftop offering in the form of this rooftop cinema and bar. If you're not in the mood for a film, seek out the secret garden, where they've rooftop yoga, giant Jenga and Connect Four, bowls and plenty of music. The Culpeper, Spitalfields 40 Commercial St, E1 6LP, theculpeper.com When the sun comes out, this Spitalfields pub overflows onto the pavement around it: the trick is to head upstairs, which is a little quieter and has a view out over the Gherkin. Sunsets are particularly beautiful up here, but no-one comes to a pub for that, so rest assured that they've plenty of beers on tap, decent cocktails and the food is some of the best pub fare in London. Besides, in the small hours of the morning, it's popular with local bartenders as its usually open later than everywhere else, making for a great crowd. Aqua Spirit, Regent Street 240 Regent St, W1B 3BR, aquaspirit.co.uk This the where the well-groomed set come for a post-work sundowner in the hotter months. Twin terraces attached to the various Aqua restaurants allow brilliant views across Soho and Mayfair rooftops. There's plenty of standing room, too, so you'll likely be able to squeeze in: cocktails are pricey, but ingredients are top shelf. Angler at the South Place Hotel, Moorgate 3 South Pl, EC2M 2AF, southplacehotel.com You needn't eat at the two Michelin star Angler restaurant to enjoy this bar, though if you can walk past the menu without at least being tempted, we'll be impressed. Still, one can get a taste of it with the bar snacks here. Cocktails wise, order The Peruvian, a long riff on an Aperol Spritz. Perfect summer fare. The Castle, Islington 54 Pentonville Rd, N1 9HF, thecastleislington.co.uk This is an understated rooftop, and don't come for endless views, either: rather, spend an evening here gently unwinding with a pint as the sun fades. The food's decent, it's jolly, what else matters? The Lock Tavern, Camden 35 Chalk Farm Rd, NW1 8AJ, lock-tavern.com Something of a Camden institution, this pub does a decent raft of guest ales, offers a fine selection of whisky (including a few ryes and some Japanese) and often hosts gigs the the cozy confines of the second floor. Still, when the sun's out, head to the tiny terrace for the communal tables and or the row of repurposed cinema seats. It's almost always crowded, but it's a lively spot with charming views over Camden market. Roof Top Kitchen at Alfies Antique Market, Marylebone 13-25 Church St, NW8 8DT, alfiesantiques.com Alfies is a daytime port of calm: ideal if you're taking a break from the market. We'd come for lunch, order one of the daily-changing specials, and then give in to the temptation of wine and while away a few hours until closing time in the early evening. Roof Top Kitchen at Alfies Antique Market Queen Elizabeth Roof Gardens Bar, South Bank Belvedere Rd, London SE1 8XX, southbankcentre.co.uk The term 'hidden gem' is overused, but means something here: tourists and Londonders alike often walk straight past the yellow staircase that leads up to this roof terrace. That doesn't mean it doesn't get busy it is fairly central, after all. The garden is the result of volunteers from St Mungo's charity and feels a world away from the concrete lines of the Southbank Centre below. Jugs of Pimms and other summery libations are on offer with light snacks, well into the evening. Victor Frankowski & Southbank Centre The Roof Gardens, Kensington 99 Kensington High Street, W8 5SA, virginlimitededition.com You'll need to make a little effort to get in here, as they're big on glitz and glamour. Unsurprisingly, it's all rather lovely: the Babylon terrace gang are hot on their cocktails and when the grill gets going, the food is on point. Their parties have a reputation, too, for all the right reasons. Notch, Oxford Street 535 Oxford Street, W1Cnotchldn.com Notch takes over from the car crash which was Roofnic (Grace Dent declared she'd rather jump off the roof than return to it), and they've started from scratch. Try and nab a seat on one of the swings which looks over Oxford Street. There's street food on hand, plenty of drinks in jars and some excellent pre-mixed Negronis (served in tuna can-esque tins, no less) and, on the weekends, a brunch menu. Bussey Building, Peckham 133 Rye Ln, SE15 4ST, busseyrooftopbar.com The Bussey Building boasts a respectable bar, but head there for their regular film screenings, which show a mix of classics and fairly recent releases, with food laid on by Forza Win and Pizza Pilgrims. Golden Bee, Old Street Singer St, EC1V 9DD, goldenbee.co.uk Golden Bee's swank won't be to everyone's taste, but if it's your thing, you'll love it. And isn't diversity London's shining glory? There's no denying it's a beautiful spot, and if you want to listen to DJs spin club classics and house, it's hard to beat. And while plenty of people come dolled up, cocktails start at just 8.50. Mr McDonald, former head chef at The Ivy, said: Ive spent a lot of time in California and enjoy the fresh, healthy attitude to food so Im excited to bring this to London. Hannah Bass, Selfridges director of restaurants, said: We will be bringing the cool, calm Californian vibe to the roof, which we hope all our customers will enjoy. facebook.com/RoofDeckLondon S ongkran, the Thai New Year, falls as it does every year on April 13, this year a Thursday, and lasts until the 15. While once it flew somewhat under the radar, Songkran is slowly making its mark on the capitals annual calendar. While Londoners may struggle to start the day making an offering to Buddhist monks, theres a few chances to get stuck into the celebrations. Heres where to go. 1.The Battersea Barge With water a central part of Songkran, what better way could there be to get involved than with a trip down the Thames? Floating restaurant The Battersea Barge has been taken over by Sebby Holmes (founder and head chef of critically-acclaimed Farang) and Thai lager Singha. Unsurprisingly, beer will be flowing and Holmes will lay on three courses of authentic Thai cuisine. For anyone feeling creative, therell also be the chance to get stuck into some crafty bits and pieces. Info: April 12, 13, The Battersea Barge, Nine Elms Lane, SW8 5BP, eventbrite.co.uk 2. Mango Tree Belgravias Mango Tree is laying on a special menu combining both contemporary Thai food, like Pla goong, a spicy Thai spicy with steam prawns, with traditional favourites, including an authentic Thai fish curry with coconut milk, lime leaves, fish balls and noodles. Besides the food, therell be drummers to welcome in guests, and DJs to keep everyone in high spirits late into the evening. Info: April 15, Mango Tree, 46 Grosvenor Place, SW1X 7EQ, mangotree.org.uk 3. Nipa Thai Nipa Thai, inside the upscale Lancaster London off Hyde Park, is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. Theyll be going all out with a Taste of Thailand menu, which will feature a Songkran water blessing and a performance from Thai dancers. Just be sure to get there early, for a Thai cocktail to kick things off, and if youre into posting pictures of your evening, be sure to hashtag #NipaAnniversary theres a chance to win a nights stay in the hotel, or another supper at Nipa. Info: April 14 16, Nipa Thai, Lancaster London, Lancaster Terrace, W2 2TY, niparestaurant.co.uk Thailand - in pictures 1 /6 Thailand - in pictures Elephants chewing on sugar cane Alamy Mist over the hills near Chiang Mai Alamy Restaurants at the night market, Chiang Mai Alamy Produce and food stalls Alamy A group of elephants 4. Head to one of the capitals best Thai restaurants Thai food is better than ever in London. Our top picks for a celebratory meal, besides the above, include the Begging Bowl, som saa, Kiln, Farang, Tepa Thai, Smoking Goat and Rosas Thai Cafe (on another day, Rosas offshoot Lao Cafe is well worth trying for Laotian cooking, which is similar but a little different). A mega musical based on Meat Loafs Bat Out of Hell album is coming to the London Coliseum in June, and fans can catch a glimpse with an exclusive first look at the trailer. Bat Out of Hell, created by Jim Steinman 40 years ago, is currently being performed in Manchester before it comes to London. It features the legendary title song, as well as I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Wont Do That), and two previously unreleased songs. The album was always intended to be a musical but ended up becoming one of the bestselling albums in history, and has sold over 50 million albums. The show tells a story of rebellious youth and passionate love, with the leader of a gang falling in love with the daughter of a tyrannical ruler. Leading actor Andrew Polec previously told the Standard that he almost didnt become an actor; a major mountain bike accident dashed his hopes of becoming a sportsman. Buy tickets for Bat Out of Hell with Evening Standard Tickets A theatre project in east London has helped refugees and asylum seekers create a new play that tells the dramatic story of their journeys and their new lives in Britain. The production, 5 Strangers, will premiere in a sell-out production at the Arcola Theatre in Dalston today with the refugees themselves starring in it. It developed out of the project Speak To Me, run by London Connect Theatre. Working at the British Red Cross Day Centre in Dalston, the group used acting, puppetry and music to help migrants recount the conflicts and hardships they have fled and the positives and negatives they have experienced in the UK. The play focuses on the story of asylum seekers from Bangladesh, Tunisia, Pakistan, Turkey and Albania who meet in a hostel after arriving in Britain. April's unmissable theatre openings 1 /10 April's unmissable theatre openings Angels in America From April 11, National Theatre The Ferryman April 24 - May 20, Royal Court Theatre The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui April 20 - June 17, Donmar Warehouse The Treatment April 24 - June 10, Almeida Theatre The Philanthropist April 3 - July 22, Trafalgar Studios City of Glass April 20 - May 20, Lyric Hammersmith Junkyard April 19 - 30, Rose Theatre Kingston Romeo and Juliet April 22 - July 9, Shakespeares Globe All The Things I Lied About April 18 - May 6, Soho Theatre Cock and Bull April 25-30, Southbank Centre London Connect have had talks with the Young Vic about moving the play there, and also hope to take the project nationwide. Donna Sherifi, the productions director, said: The project gives them a voice. They can talk about where they have come from and help people understand what they go through. They have lost their homes. They cant go back because everything is destroyed and they are in danger. The family of Miss Sherifi, a theatre graduate of Kingston University, fled persecution in Kosovo when she was a child and were granted asylum in Sweden. She said London was on the whole very tolerant but incidents such as the attack on Reker Ahmed the 17-year-old Kurdish Iranian brutally beaten in Croydon last week illustrated the need to raise awareness. One participant in the project, Aisha, is seeking asylum after fleeing an abusive arranged marriage and family in Tunisia. She said: The drama and activity gave me a new confidence and it is amazing because I never thought I would be able to do something like that. The sell-out show was crowdfunded with more than 1,000 from Kickstarter. F rom dusk on April 10 to dusk on April 18, the feast of unleavened bread, Passover, commemorates the Israelites liberation from Egyptian slavery. While grain yeasts are forbidden throughout the festival, grape yeasts are lawful, making kosher wines, crafted crush-to-bottle by observant Jews, a staple. In fact, at the opening banquet, the Passover Seder, it is a Rabbinic requirement for adults to imbibe four cups of wine, representing sanctification, deliverance, redemption and hope. In a quest for quality cuvees to fill Passover cups, I went to the Kosher Food and Wine Experience in an art deco ballroom in Green Park. Here, habitues, winemakers and journalists sampled one of Londons most lavish buffets. Crafted by Jeff Morgan, bandleader at Monte Carlos Grand Casino turned wine journalist and winemaker, Covenant Lavan Napa Valley Chardonnay 2013 (45.99) is tropically lush yet poised. Of the grape, Morgan says: Its no accident the word Chardonnay is based in Hebrew etymology. Its believed that Templar Knights returned to France during the Crusades with cuttings grown near Jerusalem. These were referred to as Char Ha Adonoy (Gate of God). The French, never being able to pronounce H, meant it came out as Char-donnay. I also encountered expat German Jurgen Wagner, who fell in love at first sip with Spanish winery Capcanes two decades ago on tasting the complex Peraj Haabib 1995. Drawn to the vineyard source, Wagner ended up joining Capcanes as export manager, living in a tiny place hidden in the Catalan Priorat mountains among humble farmers. Capcanes Haabib 2012 dovetails old vine Grenache, Cabernet and Carignan in a rich posy of coffee, chocolate and liquorice flavours (34.99). Wagner praises winemaker Anna Rovira who brings a highly appreciated feminine element to our team, favouring finesse while adding a refreshing craziness to our wines. A privilege of youth! (kosherwineuk.com) D epression is one of the most common mental health issues in the UK, and yet it is still one of the most misunderstood. Globally, more than 300 million people suffer with depression, and yet many of us still do not have a real sense of what it is and its capacity to be treated. Lack of support for people with mental disorders, coupled with the fear of stigma, often prevent people from seeking the treatment they need to lead happy, healthy lives. This week marks Mental Health Awareness Week which aims to open up the global conversation surrounding mental health and tackle the preconceptions that many people still believe. Here, we break down some common misconceptions people have about depression: 1. "Depression isnt a real illness" While the treatment of depression can vary dramatically from person to person, it is still a serious medical condition. According to the NHS, some people think depression is trivial and not a genuine health condition. They're wrong it is a real illness with real symptoms. The Mayo Clinic states that people with depression actually have neurotransmitter and hormonal imbalances in their brain that determine their condition - it is not simply a case of experiencing bad moods. Labelling people as such downplays their feelings, and deters them from seeking help. 2. "Antidepressants always cure depression" Doctors commonly prescribe antidepressants for mental health issues to address deep-rooted biological issues that may be contributing to your condition. However, they arent the only treatment available. Many people suffering from depression find psychotherapy as an effective way to help address their symptoms. Most people also have to try a number of different methods before finding one that suits them best. 3. "Depression is a sign of weakness" Many people suffer in silence because there is a societal stigma attached to the label of depression, one which suggests that it is a sign of a weak or crazy person. It is important to remember that depression is a complex mental disorder that can affect anyone at any time, without choice. In reality, a person who suffers from depression but makes an effort to tackle their mental health issues on a daily basis shows great strength and resilience. Best books on mindfulness 1 /14 Best books on mindfulness Find your inner peace with our pick of the best mindfulness and meditation books... Mindfulness: a practical guide to finding peace in a frantic world This bestseller will get you in the right frame of mind for 2016. Based on Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) a successful form of brief meditation this book's success relies on the way in which authors Mark Williams and Danny Penman optimistically focus on adding joy to your life as opposed to ridding it of unhappiness. 10.50, Amazon, Buy it now Anti-Stress Dot-to-Dot Always thought that dot-to-dots were an activity for children? Apprently you're wrong be wrong the pictures in this book, featuring elegant buildings and nature scenes, will relax and focus your mind in a way you never thought a dot-to-dot book could. 5, Amazon, Buy it now I Am Here Now This will help enhance both your observation and creativity; with an audio track (featuring musings from mindfulness teacher Tara Brach) and a field notes page for recording purposes, I Am Here Now will enable your thoughts and emotions to take on a new lease of life. 7, Amazon, Buy it now The Mindful Workplace What better time to deploy the theories of mindfulness than at work? This book, filled with Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) techniques, provides an eight-week training course to keep your workplace attitude at its peak. 30.50, Amazon, Buy it now Get some headspace This book from Andy Puddicombe, founder of popular digital health platform Headspace, attempts to get people to take ten minutes out of their day for meditation purposes. Once the technique's been learned, these skills will stay with you for the rest of your life. 10, Amazon, Buy it now The Mindfulness Colouring Book Much like the dot-to-dot book above, this pocket-sized adult colouring book is the perfect activity for a 10-minute breather. Consider your stress and anxiety soothed. 4, Amazon, Buy it now The Little Book of Mindfulness In this day and age, it's more important to be in the moment than ever this book will help you with that. From Dr Patrizia Collard, these brief practices will rid your day of stress and have you feeling more optimistic. 4, Amazon, Buy it now Body Calm The saying mind over matter derives from the idea that our minds have the power to control our bodies if we really want them to. Equally, mental stress can have a damaging effect on our bodies. Newbigging teaches us a new self-healing meditation technique to help keep our bodies healthy and to understand the source of common stress and anxiety triggers. 11, Amazon, Buy it now The Power of Now The Power of Now has become one of the most famous mindfulness books out there. Helping us to tap into our innermost Being, Tolle guides us through various techniques to help us understand that the present moment is all that really matters. 8, Amazon, Buy it now A Mindfulness Guide for the Frazzled An ambassador for mental health awareness, Ruby Wax OBE has helped to make mindfulness accessible to all. Having suffered from depression herself, in this book she explores how modern living is causing us more stress and anxiety than ever as we know and see too much. Included are mindfulness exercises and tips for everyone from babies to adults; all with sound underlying scientific reasoning. 4, Amazon, Buy it now 4. "If your parents have depression, so will you" If there is a history of depression in your family, youre more likely to experience it yourself. However, experts arent sure how significant genetics are in your risk - it can often happen without significant reason or cause. Just because your parents suffer from depression, doesnt mean that you are guaranteed to experience it too. 'You really can make things better': Prince William and Prince Harry teams up with Lady Gaga for mental health message 5. "Youll need to be on antidepressants for the rest of your life" Depression treatment is entirely different from person to person. Many people use medication as a short-term aid, others may take them for years. Some people may also choose to not take antidepressants at all. While the exact amount of time will vary in each case, based upon the severity of the disorder, most people do not need to be on medication for the rest of their lives. Studies suggest that a large proportion of people can be treated for depression successfully in as little as 24 weeks with a combination of psychotherapy and medication. For more information visit who.int J esus, the joke goes, would have topped any party-invite list, given his trick of turning water into wine. Though the modern-day miracle-makers scientists havent quite managed to emulate the Big J, they now have a marvel of their own: taking the salt out of seawater. Give a man some drinking water and you quench his thirst for a day; give a man a sieve capable of producing that drinking water and you quench his thirst for a lifetime. Or something. This sieve which could help millions of people currently without access to clean drinking water is a membrane made from a chemical derivative of graphene, the material crystal ball-gazers see as a potential panacea for a plethora of the worlds problems. What makes it so useful is its strength (harder than diamond) and electrical conductivity (better than copper). The magic sieve, which is thought to be ultra-effective at filtering salts, is the work of a UK-based team of researchers. In the past, scientists have struggled to create graphene barriers, but the boffins overcame a number of hurdles by using graphene oxide instead, which can be produced through simple oxidation in a lab. Graphene is comprised of a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice. So what is it that makes it so special? Its the combination of the structure and the chemistry, says Dr Esther Garcia-Tunon, who worked on 3D printing using graphene at Imperial College London and is now a lecturer in materials science and engineering at the University of Liverpool. Like diamond and graphite, it is carbon, which has interesting propertiesl Graphene is strong but also super-thin in one dimension think of it like a large piece of paper. There are already alternative desalination methods, such as freezing and solar evaporation, but the sieve could should it receive the necessary investment be a cheap and easy-to-use alternative. When graphene the thinnest material ever created was isolated 13 years ago, it was hailed as sparking a potential industrial revolution, and recent years have seen a sharp rise in the number of patents filed. It could potentially be used to create flexible touchscreens and enhanced batteries. In 2013 the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, announced extra government funding for graphene research. So is graphene a super-material? Certainly, since the isolation of graphene, there are a lot of us doing research and focusing on its potential, says Garcia-Tunon. It is a very exciting material. There has been a lot of hype now we have to prove it has applications. Follow Rosamund Urwin on Twitter: @RosamundUrwin Ive never seen queues like this, said one Englishwoman to her daughter as they walked through the strip of land that marks the frontier between Gibraltar and Spain last night. She was one of hundreds of people, including me, wielding passports, waiting to be let through alongside a jam of motorbikes and cars. The Spanish border guards have been particularly diligent this week in marking the frontier with the wart of rock off southern Spain that has become the flashpoint for EU talks. Gib is the perfect story for some Brexiteers: a patriotic British enclave that has imported fish and chips and has a new Mayor so hot that she won Miss World in 2010. The Spanish want control, Michael Howard wants to send gunboats in to defend the bastion against the incursion of tapas, and Theresa May has just pleaded with European Council President Donald Tusk: Can we not go there, please? The story on Gibraltar itself is more complicated. While it might be like Bournemouth on steroids, with an M&S and tat souvenirs, Gibraltarians are their own people. Their First Minister is called Picardo and the new Mayor is Kaiane Lopez hardly Mr Thompson and Mrs Carruthers. They have their own language, Yanito. They love the Brits there are still plaques commemorating Queen Elizabeths trip in 1954 but they arent Brexiteers. One of my hosts in Gibraltar this week recalled what happened as the peninsula woke up to the news of the EU referendum result last summer. They had voted Remain by 96 per cent. It was very quiet, she said. Like nobody could believe it. Gibraltar was handed to the Brits in 1713 under the Treaty of Utrecht, it has been besieged 14 times, became a key defence post in the Second World War and named one of its main avenues after Winston Churchill. In 1969 General Franco closed the border, and it was not reopened until 1982. After having gone through all that and finally, under the umbrella of the EU, reached an accord with Spain, Little England has now turned it on its head. The border queues arrived along with tougher rules in the Schengen passport-free region Gib, part of the UK, is outside this. But with waits of up to three hours to cross, the locals take it personally. When Lopez won Miss World, Gibraltar erupted into a huge street party. But, reported one local, again the border police strangled their lifeline to the mainland. This isnt just about territory Spain is irritated to have what is essentially an offshore banking haven next door. But people arent happy with Brexit for other reasons. Unemployment in Spain is still around 20 per cent, and La Linea, over the border, depends on Gibraltar for work. Around 10,000 people cross into Gib every day, many of whom are Spaniards who do the restaurant and cleaning jobs Gibraltarians do the shipping, banking and casinos. Gibs unemployment rate is under one per cent. And thats not to mention the Brits who have settled on the mainland and commute in. Gibraltars frontier troubles are, in micro version, the problems of frontiers and rivalries that Brexit will throw up. The flags flying by the border post show which way the Gibs liked the wind blowing. Poles with the Union Jack, the Gibraltar flag and the yellow stars on the blue of the EU all stood side by side. We dont want to be alone, says one Gibraltarian in a cafe. We are international, we want to be everything. Joy Lo Dico: @joy_lo_dico U nless you've been living under a rock this month, you've probably heard of "S-Town". The blockbuster podcast was downloaded 16 million times in its first week (it took Serial eight weeks to hit this number). There are plenty more podcasts where this came from. Whether you are interested in true crime or would rather listen to love stories about long-lost romances, there is a series to match every taste. Here's a list to suit every length of commute.... Under 20 minute walk Tiny Desk Concerts This series of live concerts hosted by NPR Music brings some of the biggest names to perform in a tiny office, at the desk of All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen. Listening (or watching, if you prefer the video version) feels intimate and personal, almost as if youre there yourself, spending a chilled-out afternoon with Tegan and Sarah or Adele. Best for: Music junkies How to listen: iTunes The Bright Sessions iTunes This award-winning podcast is a sci-fi audio drama about people in therapy who have supernatural abilities. The art form of radio drama can often be pushed aside for the ever-popular narrative shows, but this cast of talented voice actors and captivating story threads will keep you hooked. Best for: Sci-fi enthusiasts How to listen: Soundcloud or iTunes Modern Love Based on the popular New York Times series of reader-submitted essays about love, this podcast goes deep into the readings by adding commentary from notable personalities, updated by the essayists themselves. Hosts Meghna Chakrabarti and Modern Love editor Daniel Jones give listeners an introspective view into one of the worlds most joyful yet complex and confusing phenomenon -- being in love. Best for: Anyone with a strong heart. It will ache, we promise. How to listen: Soundcloud, iTunes 30 minute walk Reply All For a show about the internet, this podcast teaches listeners so much more. Its about stolen cell phones, rainbow dogs, time travel and everything in between. Hosts PJ Vogt and Alex Goldman have an unbeatable dynamic, explaining quirky internet stories in ways that feel more like a conversation over coffee than a lesson in tech. Best for: Internet geeks How to listen: Soundcloud or iTunes Kitchen Sisters Presents From Peabody award winning Kitchen Sisters Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva comes a powerhouse production that brings audio to life, integrating lost recordings, hidden worlds and stories of real people. The episodes are a treat for the ear, telling deeply layered stories interlaced with pleasing music and tasteful field noise. Best for: Lovers of a good story How to listen: Soundcloud or iTunes Worst Idea of All Time Two guys who pick a terrible film and watch it every week for a year. What could go wrong? Guy Montgomery and Tim Batt, two New Zealand comedians, started the show by watching Grown Ups 2 once a week, every week for a year. Then they watched Sex and The City 2 52 times. Now they are watching We Are Your Friends. Best for: Anyone looking for a laugh (no movie snobs, though). How to listen: iTunes 45 minute walk Love + Radio Nick van der Kolks Love and Radio doesnt try to teach, preach or instil. It just tells stories in the most primal form, introducing real characters and scenarios that feel just that -- real. Nothing is as it seems, and the complicated plots of the show keeps you on your toes in a peaceful way, not a true crime way. Truly a delight. Best for: People interested in other people How to listen: iTunes My Dad Wrote a Porno iTunes When your 60-year-old father has written erotic books, what choice do you have but to read them aloud for thousands of listeners? Tune in to hear Jamie Morton and friends James Cooper and BBC Radio 1s Alice Levine read a new chapter every Monday. No guarantees that you wont laugh out loud in public. Best for: Those in need of a good chuckle How to listen: Soundcloud or iTunes The High Low A follow up to the freshly retired PanDolly Podcast, Pandora Sykes and Dolly Aldertons High Low mixes the trivial and the political into a tight 45 minutes. The female duo echoe the American trend (Think: Two Dope Queens, Call Your Girlfriend), but acknowledges their posh privilege in a refreshingly transparent manner. A chat show thats mindful, not mindless? The perfect background for your commute. Best for: Women with opinions How to listen: Soundcloud Desert Island Discs Its the classic game played on long car rides since the beginning of time -- what would you take with you on a desert island? This BBC4 programme was created by Roy Plomley in 1942, and is now hosted by Kirsty Young, who asks guests to choose the eight records they would take with them to a desert island. You can listen to every castaway from 1942 to the present, from David Beckham to Liberaci. Best for: Music lovers How to listen: BBC iPlayer radio or iTunes Podcast: The London Entertainment Lowdown 1 /2 Podcast: The London Entertainment Lowdown Dancing at Lughnasa Listen to our verdict on Dancing at Lughnasa La Clique One hour walk Adam Buxton Podcast iTunes Get an inside look at the actor/director/comedians life with this podcast, which is really more like a casual chat. There are silly rambles and even some singing, but youd be surprised at much youll learn about Buxtons life and the lives of his boisterous guests. Best for: Easy listening, a good chuckle How to listen: iTunes The Moth Stories told on the Moth Radio Hour are true, remembered live (without notes) and expose the rawest bits of the human condition. Moth storytellers in a roomful of strangers, telling stories that are heartwarming, terrifying and exhilarating. These stories are personal -- anyone with a tale can volunteer. For the stories behind the stories, this podcast re-airs all episodes of the show, plus additional pieces from their archives. Best for: People interested in other people How to listen: iTunes Kermode and Mayos Film Review The historic duo have been presenting radio programmes together for ages, but this podcast is one to note. Its a simple format: one hour of Mayo discussing the weeks top films, a conversation or two with an actor or director, and then one hour of Kemode ranting about the weeks film releases. Kemode is totally unleashed, launching unplanned assaults in the Kermodean rants he is so famously known for. The BBC Radio 5 programme is the channels flagship movie podcast. Best for: Movie lovers (and haters) How to listen: Soundcloud, BBC iPlayer Radio, iTunes T heres nothing worse than getting a text from your mobile phone provider, telling you that youve spent a small fortune on using the internet abroad. Now British holidaymakers are being warned to brace themselves for hefty bills when they travel to the European Union after Britain Brexits in 2019. Yesterday, European Parliament voted in Strasbourg to abolish call, text and data charges for mobile phone users travelling in the EU from June 15 this year. However, because Britain has voted to leave the European Union, it could be dropped from the arrangement once the decision comes into effect in March 2019. If this is the case, phone operators will be the ones to dictate the prices of data roaming charges for British holidaymakers. Finnish MEP Miapetra Kumpula-Natri, who drafted the roaming bill, told the i, After Brexit, its the market, the operators, that will decide the prices, If the UK operators get good deals with other European companies, roaming might be cheap. If not, it can be very expensive. While roaming fees in the European Union have been steadily on the decline, they are still high in non-EU countries such as Serbia, where Brits can expect to pay around 3,000 per Gb for mobile data usage. After Brexit this will change, Mrs Kumpula-Natri added. Britain will be in the same situation as Serbia with no EU regulation to keep the roaming prices low. 30 places to visit before you turn 30 1 /41 30 places to visit before you turn 30 Click through our gallery to discover the places you should visit before you turn 30... Shutterstock 1. Bali Highland panoramas, scenic waterfalls, open blue skies, golden sunsets and awesome sunrises across the coastline. Theres a reason why people say that Bali stirs the soul. Why go here before you turn 30? Explore temples and palaces, go river rafting, sign up to a surf school, volunteer at an orangutan sanctuary, take a yoga class in the mountains and party all night. Best of all, its cheap - so youll be able to live like a king on a fortnights trip here. Stephan Stansfield/Flickr 2. Island hopping in Greece If youve never made it to Greece, then schedule in some time to discover its lesser-known islands by boat. Go to big-hitters Santorini, Crete and Rhodes and and discover little-known gems Astypalea and Tinos. Why go here before you turn 30? Because you can explore whitewashed cubic houses, lie on white hot sands, take a dip in the bath water-warm Aegean. Shutterstock / Mikhail Gnatkovsk 3. Myanmar Until fairly recently, Myanmar was off limits to wanderlust Westerners. But after five decades of military rule, Asias formerly Junta-controlled diamond in the rough has finally opened its crystal shores to nirvana-seekers. Why go here before you turn 30? Unsullied beaches, ancient Pagan temples and incredibly cheap prices make Burma the perfect holiday spot for cash-strapped travellers in their 20s. Joe Connor 4. Ibiza No surprises here - the Island that never sleeps has long been one of the hottest places to play for people in their 20s. This hedonistic paradise is a lure for British clubbers drawn in by sun, sand and world-class DJs. Why go here before you turn 30? Because nowhere does sunset chilling quite like Ibiza. Shutterstock / FP media 5. Croatia Ancient walled towns, dreamy deep-blue seascapes, an unrivaled festival scene and guaranteed good weather. Whats not to love about Croatia? Why go here before you turn 30? Visit festival and wellness island Obonjan, go fun-seeking at Sonus, take a Game of Thrones tour, go white-water rafting, stroll around the museums in Zagreb or simply spend your days enjoying cocktail after cocktail on the beach. Angus Webster 6.Toronto, Canada Forget Williamsburg, hipsters looking for a cultural injection should make a beeline for Canadas largest city for art, food and dive bars by the dozen. Why go here before you turn 30? Ethnic enclaves, a bustling food scene and cool designer stays - there are plenty of reasons to discover Toronto. Shutterstock / njene 7. Pammukale, Turkey Pamukkale is actually Turkish for cotton castle, which accurately sums up this amazing display of natural hot water pools in Denizli Province. The city is famous for its travertines - terraces of dazzling white carbonate minerals left by the flowing water that tourists can bathe in. Why go here before you turn 30? It'll make for one stunning Instagram. Shutterstock / Copycat37 8. Backpack through Southeast Asia Southeast Asia is one of the most accessible regions for the novice traveller - thanks to its mix of volcanoes, rainforests, rice fields, beaches and coral reefs. Some popular stops include Chiang Mai in Thailand, Angkor Wat in Cambodia and Laos, Hanoi in Vietnam. Why go here before you turn 30? Explore thousand-year-old Hindu ruins, rave on the beach, attend a Buddhist ceremony at dawn and hike through the jungle looking for wildlife. The possibilities are endless. Shutterstock / Lena Serditova 9. Costa Rica Theres plenty of time for gentle package holidays in your later years. This tiny Central American oasis is a twenty-somethings playground of wild beaches, rocky points, volcanoes, reefs, rare wildlife and spectacular rainforests. Why go here before you turn 30? Because you can learn how to surf on the Nicoya peninsula, try truly amazing Costa Rican coffee, learn to speak Spanish, get lost on a hike in a rainforest, go white water rafting at Turrialba and see real life sloths, monkeys, crocodiles, ocelots and toucans. Autentico Adventures Costa Rica/Flickr 10. Tiger's Nest Monastery, Bhutan William and Kate put this remote kingdom on the map earlier this year, and a trip here isnt complete without paying a visit the the Tigers Nest Monastery. Believed to be the birthplace of Bhuddism, the Monastery has been a place of pilgrimage since it was built in 1692. Why go here before you turn 30? The temple complex clings to a cliff, a dizzying 3120 meters above the sea level on the side of the upper Paro valley. If you want to take in the stunning views of blue pines and rhododendrons youll need fearless stamina to hike to the top. Paula Bronstein/Getty Images 11. Songkran Festival, Thailand Songkran festival, or the Thai New Year, is three days of nonstop revelry. Its celebrated across the country, with locals and tourists gathering in the streets with super soakers, water balloons and buckets of water one almighty water fight. Why go here before you turn 30? Because who doesnt love a water fight? AFP/Getty Images 12. Banff, Canada This resort town is one of Canada's most popular tourist destinations, known for its mountainous surroundings and hot springs. A visit here offers the chance to experience the spectacular Canadian Rocky Mountains and glacier-fed lakes, bull elk and brown bear sightings, and small-town charm like no other. Why go here before you turn 30? Because its some of the finest mountain scenery youll find on the planet. Shutterstock / Songquan Deng 13. Norway Picturesque fjords, magical mountains, quaint coastal towns and the possibility of spotting the Northern Lights makes Norway a tempting trip for those on the hunt for natural beauty. Why go here before you turn 30? Visit trendy Oslo, discover magical lesser-known towns, stand on a gravity-defying boulder, sail around the fjords, stay in a fishermans cottage you may even spot a polar bear. Shutterstock / Carsten Pasternac 14. Half Dome in Yosemite National Park, California Rising nearly 5,000 feet above Yosemite Valley and 8,800 feet above sea level, Half Dome is one of the greatest hiking challenges a traveller can undertake. This granite dome sits at the eastern end of one of Americas most spectacular national parks. Why go here before you turn 30? The terrain is dramatic, the scenery is amazing, and its probably the single most iconic thing you can do in California. Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images 15. Iceland This Nordic island nation isnt far from the UK, but packs in astonishing natural phenomena and take-your-breath-away landscapes. Why go here before you turn 30? Contemporary cuisine, Lord of the Rings-esque lands, stargazing, endless hours of daylight and geothermal springs. Its hard to narrow it down. Shutterstock / pranodhm 16. The Inca Trail, Peru The Inca Trail is by far the most famous trek in South America. In just 26 miles it manages to combine beautiful mountain scenery, lush cloud-forest, subtropical jungle and, of course, a stunning mix of Inca paving stones, ruins and tunnels. Why go here before you turn 30? Because the final destination of the trail just cannot be beaten: Machu Picchu, the mysterious "Lost City of the Incas". Brent Stirton/Getty Images 17. Manchester, UK The capital of The North might not strike as the most exotic of travel destination, but its giving London a run for its money thanks to a wealth of music and art history, smart fine dining restaurants, hipster neighbourhoods and a swathe of cool new boutique hotels. Why go here before you turn 30? Because it's only 2 hours away by train from the capital. Shutterstock / Tupungato 18. India The food alone is enough of a draw to India, but throw in palm-fringed beaches, one of the seven wonders of the world, forts, mosques, monuments and ancient ruins, and you have a holiday on that ticks all the boxes on your hands. Why go here before you turn 30? Because youll want leave enough room to come back again and again over your lifetime. Shutterstock / LukaKikina 19. Berlin Edgy, cool and creative, Berlin is one of the worlds best cities for boutique shopping, brilliantly offbeat nights out and hipster hangouts. Why go here before you turn 30? Because its one of Europes most exciting cities. Shutterstock / Claudio Divizia 20. Melbourne, Australia Whether youre looking to party, simply kick-back on a beach or sample some of the best brunch in the world, Melbourne offers it all to young travellers and backpackers. Why go here before you turn 30? Australias coolest capital holds all kinds of attractions for people in their 20s, from bars and boutiques to clubs and cafes. Shutterstock / GagliardiImages 21. New Zealand Undoubtedly one of the most spectacular places on earth, New Zealand is home to some incredibly unspoilt scenery. Make sure to take a decent camera, because stunning national parks and reserves make up a third of its land. Why go here before you turn 30? When else can you spend a whole month hiking its natural peaks and troughs? Gareth Richman 22. Carnival, Rio de Janeiro Forget Notting Hill carnival: once a year, several million travellers descend on Rio to enjoy four days of parades and partying at the beginning of Lent. Why go here before you turn 30? Who wouldnt want to be part of the biggest street party on the planet? Raphael Dias/Getty Images 23. The Great Wall of China As the famous Chinese saying goes, 'he who does not reach the Great Wall is not a true man'. This great engineering marvel winds up and down across deserts, grasslands, mountains and plateaus, stretching across over 13,000 miles. Why go here before you turn 30? Because your 20s arent just for partying and frolicking... AFP/Getty Images 24. Burning Man Festival, Nevada Every year, tens of thousands of people gather in Nevadas Black Rock Desert to create Black Rock City, a temporary festival of art, hedonism and self-expression. Why go here before you turn 30? Because its the most outrageous festival of all: alongside meditation and yoga theres spanking classes, orgies, and naked foam parties. Chances are, youll only want to get involved when youre young enough not to regret it. Duncan Rawlinson/Flickr 25. Antelope Canyon, Arizona Located just outside of Page, in the heart of Navajo Country, Antelope may just be the most photographed slot canyon in the world - thanks to its awe-inspiring, sandstone formations. Why go here before you turn 30? The celestial light beams in the canyon make this place completely unforgettable and unmissable. AFP/Getty Images 26. Pacific Coast Highway, California The PCH is a road trip-lovers dream, with its winding ribbon roads that meander alongside the crashing Cali coast from Carmel to Morro Bay. The 123-mile route takes in Big Sur and the much photographed Bixby Bridge, as well as five hours of cliff-hugging open road. Why go here before you turn 30? The all-American road has been voted one of the top motorcycle rides in the U.S - its basically the drive of a lifetime, but youll enjoy the freedom most on two wheels. Howard Ignatius/Flickr 27. Bosnia & Herzegovina Turquoise rivers, medieval castles and tumbling waterfalls. It sounds like something out of a fairytale, but the craggily beautiful lands of Bosnia and Herzegovina are real - and theyre one of Europes best kept secrets. Why go here before you turn 30? Because there are few places in the world where you can enjoy hiking, beautiful countryside, rafting and swimming, inner-city bridge jumping and skiing all within one country. Shutterstock 28. Tokyo, Japan Japans busy capital shouldnt be overlooked - as well as providing endless Instagram opportunities, it manages to pack in both the ultramodern and the traditional - from neon-lit skyscrapers to historic temples. Why go here before you turn 30? Because you can sleep in a capsule, walk across the beautiful Tokyo bay, spend hours in an multi-storey arcade, slurp down some heavenly ramen and spend hours strolling through the brightly-lit streets. Shutterstock 29. Osea Island, Essex On Osea Island, they know how to throw a party. Located in the middle of Essexs Blackwater Estuary, the private island which is only accessible by boat, helicopter or car at low tide boasts four and a half miles of its own beaches and coastline perfect for social gatherings. Why go here before you turn 30? Because you can throw the most incredible weekend parties here. Alamy Stock Photo 30. Las Vegas, Nevada Live like a celebrity for amongst the glitz and glitter of one of the worlds most famous strips. Why go here before you turn 30? Win big at a casino, take in a cirque production, party all night, go four-wheeling in the surrounding national parks just make sure you dont accidentally get hitched. Shutterstock / Don Mammoser Theresa May is now tasked with the challenge of striking a deal on roaming alongside the governments planned trade agreement with the other 27 EU countries. If a deal cannot be made, then charges are expected to be reinstated for British travellers after less than two years. Travellers are being warned about the possibility of extortionate price hikes to data roaming charges. Mobile networks in the EU could charge British travellers eye-watering fees of 50 (43) every time they listen to a song on Spotify which would correspond with what visitors from the US currently pay. The European Commission has already ruled out a quick bilateral deal between the UK and the EU to cover roaming charges, so it will be a while before Brits know exactly how much theyll be expected to pay. In the meantime, perhaps its time to schedule a digital detox for 2019. T he families of two men found hanged in their cells at Woodhill prison have brought a High Court case over the "exceptionally high" suicide rate at the jail. Ian Brown, 44, hanged himself in his cell at the category A prison in July last year while Daniel Dunkley, 35, died a few days after he was found suspended by a ligature in his cell later the same month. Mr Brown's mother and sister, Pearl Scarfe and Julie Barber, and Mr Dunkley's brother, Jamie Blyde, who is himself a prisoner, want the court to order Woodhill's Governor and the Secretary of State for Justice to comply with the requirements of the Prison Service Instructions (PSIs). They cover management of prisoners at risk of harm to self, to others and from others, early days in custody and medical emergency response codes. The Governor and the Secretary of State say the judicial review claim is "neither appropriate nor necessary". In London on Friday, Heather Williams QC, for the families, said the claim addressed the "exceptionally high" current rate of self-inflicted deaths at the Milton Keynes prison. The inside of HMP Woodhill / PA Wire/PA Images There were seven self-inflicted deaths last year, five in 2015 and 18 at the prison since May 2013. "This case concerns an exceptionally grave situation," said Ms Williams. "The rate of self-inflicted death at HMP Woodhill is far higher than at any other prison, at a time when the suicide rate in the prison estate as a whole is at a record high. "There is a compelling and urgent need to protect other inmates at HMP Woodhill from killing themselves." She said the case raised serious ongoing breaches of the most fundamental provisions within Article 2 of the Human Rights Act, which protects the right to life, and involved grave, long-term failures to comply with the great responsibility placed on the authorities to protect prisoners. "This weighs strongly in favour of the court taking a more interventionist role than it might otherwise do." James Strachan QC said the Governor was well aware of his obligations to comply with the requirements of the PSIs and continued to take steps to ensure those obligations were met. The Secretary of State continued to provide support to assist him in doing so. Any self-inflicted death in custody was tragic and a matter of the utmost concern, said counsel. "The defendants do not dispute that the number of deaths at the prison is a legitimate matter of concern. It calls for action to be taken. "However, not only have the Governor and the Secretary of State taken significant action in 2016 to improve the situation, but as the taskforce approach shows, this is a continuing high priority. "It is being led at a senior level in NOMS (National Offender Management Service) headquarters. "There is a clear determination to drive through further improvements, as is evidenced by the commission of independent professional advice on the prevention of self-inflicted deaths and self-harm at HMP Woodhill." Lord Justice Irwin and Mr Justice Garnham will give their decision at a later date. Additional reporting by the Press Association A n Iraqi man has denied beating a fellow immigration facility detainee to death during an attack at a Hillingdon centre. Zana Assad Yusif, 31, allegedly killed Bangladeshi national Tarek Chowdhury in a cell at Colnbrook Immigration Removal Centre on December 1 last year. Mr Chowdhury, 64, was rushed to hospital following the alleged assault at the centre in Harmondsworth, West Drayton. Speaking only to confirm his name and enter a not guilty plea to the murder charge, Kurdish-speaking Yusif appeared at the Old Bailey via video link from jail. A two-week trial is due to begin on May 8 and a further hearing was scheduled for April 27. Colnbrook, which is adjacent to Heathrow Airport, detains people subject to immigration control and has the capacity to hold up to 396 men and 27 women. A drug trafficker who smuggled millions of pounds of cocaine into the UK using a secret roof space in his Bentley has been jailed for more than two decades. Florentino Gonzalez made dozens of journeys to London from his home in Belgium in his luxury car, which had been customised to hold 60kg of drugs in a hidden compartment. The 48-year-old was seen by police surveillance officers carrying out deals in south-east London in August and September last year. He was eventually arrested after a run bringing 30kg of cocaine, with a street value of around 3.6 million, into the capital. Jailed: Gonzalez was given a 24-year sentence at Blackfriars Crown Court / PA Gonzalez, a Belgian national living in Brussels, was jailed for a total of 24 years at Blackfriars Crown Court on Friday for conspiracy to supply Class A drugs in 2015 and 2016. Judge Christopher Sallon described the operation as a "highly sophisticated" plot smuggling commercial quantities of cocaine into the UK. "Huge consignments of this drug, which originated in South America, were smuggled into France or Belgium and finally on into the UK through the Eurotunnel, having been professionally concealed in luxury cars," he added. The interior compartment of the Bentley used to smuggle drugs / PA He continued: "The evils of this trade are well documented. The supply of a very addictive drug is a scourge which threatens and undermines the safety of communities, increases crime and endangers the lives of all those people to whom it is supplied, particularly the young and vulnerable." Police caught Gonzalez swapping the powder for bundles of cash in an underground car park beneath a set of luxury flats in Southwark. Drugs seized from Yelton Cera, a co-conspirator of Florentino Gonzalez / PA When a specialist Border Force team searched his car they found around 250,000 in bundles stashed in the purpose-built roof. Five of his co-conspirators were also jailed for their roles in the plot. Belgian national Armand Cuni, 39, and Edwin Abazi, 31, of Hillingdon, west London, were sentenced to 22 and 21 years respectively. Saimir Byberi, 30, of Bedford, was sentenced to 15 years, Yelton Cera, 26, an illegal Albanian immigrant, for 12 years and Bajram Elezi, 34, of Epsom in Surrey, for eight years for their part in the conspiracy. A Romanian tourist who plunged into the Thames in the horrific terror attack in Westminster has lost her fight for life. Andreea Cristea, 31, died yesterday, a fortnight after being pulled from the river when killer Khalid Masood ploughed into crowds on Westminster Bridge. Her life support was switched off at St Bartholomew's Hospital in the City. Her devastated family and partner Andrei Burnaz today paid tribute to a wonderful daughter sister and partner They said in a statement: After fighting for her life for over two weeks, our beloved and irreplaceable Andreea - wonderful daughter, sister, partner, dedicated friend and the most unique and life loving person you can imagine - was cruelly and brutally ripped away from our lives in the most heartless and spiritless way. Victim: Andreea Cristea fell into the Thames when Khalid Masood ploughed into tourists on Westminster Bridge (Metropolitan Police ) / Metropolitan Police She will always be remembered as our shining ray of light that will forever keep on shining in our hearts. There are no words to even begin to describe the crushing pain and emptiness that is left in our hearts. They added that money donated by generous well-wishers to aid her recovery would now be donated to charity and thanked medical staff and emergency services. Moving tribute: Boyfriend Andrei Burnaz during a vigil on Westminster Bridge / Stefan Wermuth/Reuters They added: Andreea is now unfortunately not able to have part of the money that was raised for her recovery, so we would like to donate it to charity. She would not have it any other way. Our family, together with Andrei, are deeply touched and eternally grateful for the unimaginable efforts and never-ending dedication provided to her and us by the entire medical personnel of each and every hospital involved. Their kindness and empathy are beyond compare. Our hearts and love go out to our two Family Liaison Officers, Detective Sergeants Tony De-Wilde and Geraint Jones, who stood beside us every single step of the way. Andreea Cristea: The Romanian tourist died on Thursday You were our lifeline and we will never be able to thank you enough." Ms Cristea is the fifth victim of the attack carried out by Masood on March 22. Loading.... Horrific footage showed the tourist thrown from the bridge as Masood mounted the pavement in a 4x4. She was pulled from the water unconscious by a passing boat. Westminster Bridge vigil - In pictures 1 /26 Westminster Bridge vigil - In pictures Schoolgirls on Westminster Bridge during the vigil today Jeremy Selwyn An injured man holding a rose is wheeled on to Westminster Bridge during an event to mark one week since a man drove his car into pedestrians then stabbed a police officer in London Stefan Wermuth/Reuters Police officers hold flowers at the event on Westminster Bridge Matt Dunham/AP Communities across London unite one week on from the attack in which four people died Metropolitan Police Police officers stand guard on Westminster Bridge ahead of the vigil Dan Kitwood/Getty Images Imams honour the victims of the attack on Westminster Bridge Carl Court/Getty Images Muslim men pray during an event to mark one week since a man drove his car into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge Hannah McKay/Reuters A group of Muslim men hold banners on Westminster Bridge Stefan Wermuth/Reuters Superintendent Jon Williams (centre) joins a vigil held on Westminster Bridge in London, exactly a week since the Westminster terror attack took plac Yui Mok/PA A vigil is held on Westminster Bridge in London, exactly a week since the Westminster terror attack took plac Yui Mok/PA Memorial Service on Westminster Bridge today a week on from the terror attack last week Jeremy Selwyn Memorial Service on Westminster Bridge today a week on from the terror attack last week Jeremy Selwyn People arrive to take part in a vigil on Westminster Bridge in London, exactly a week since the Westminster terror attack took place Yui Mok/PA Police block Bridge Street outside the Palace of Westminster as a vigil on Westminster Bridge is held a week since the terror attack took place Victoria Jones/PA People pay their respects and hold roses on Westminster Bridge as they attend a vigil to remember the victims of last week's Westminster terrorist attack Dan Kitwood/Getty Images People walking across Westminster Bridge in London after a vigil to mark a week since the Westminster terror attack took place BBC Police officers hold white roses on Westminster Bridge during a vigil to remember the victims of last week's Westminster terrorist attack Dan Kitwood/Getty Images Members of Ahmadiyya Muslim Association pay their respects in Parliament Square, London David Mirzoeff/PA Memorial Service on Westminster Bridge today a week on from the terror attack last week Jeremy Selwyn People hold posters on Westminster Bridge during an event to mark one week since a man drove his car into pedestrians then stabbed a police officer in London Stefan Wermuth/Reuters Spanish teacher Aysha Frade, who has two young children, was among those killed, as well as US tourist Kurt Cochran and 75-year-old Clapham resident Leslie Rhodes. The attacker ploughed a car into a crowd of pedestrians on the bridge before abandoning his vehicle and running towards Parliament armed with a knife. He fatally stabbed PC Keith Palmer to death before he was shot dead by armed police. A Met Police spokesman said: Whilst formal identification awaits, we believe the woman to be Andreea Cristea. Andreea was a Romanian national, but had been visiting London. Next of kin have been informed and are being supported by specially trained family liaison officers. C hildren younger than 10 are among hundreds of suspected forced marriage and honour crime victims in London. The tally, in police statistics obtained by the Standard, paints a detailed picture of the scale of so-called honour crimes in the capital, the range of violence inflicted and the backgrounds of victims and their abusers. It can be revealed that reports of honour violence soared more than 40 per cent over the past five years, with 1,081 made to Scotland Yard. Those relating to forced marriages doubled in the same period, with 367 in total. Women and girls overwhelmingly form the majority of reported victims, with more than half coming from Asian backgrounds. Dozens of rapes and other sexual crimes were reported as well as knives and guns being involved in more than 70 incidents. Politicians and charity leaders today called the findings troubling, shocking and abhorrent. Labour MP Yvette Cooper, chair of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, said: Too many of these awful crimes are still hidden. There is no honour in violence against women, rape, torture or abuse of a family member. These are deadly crimes and there is still too little protection, too few prosecutions and too much stigma which prevents people coming forward. "Its vital that when victims do speak out they get proper help from support groups and from the police to keep them safe. Aneeta Prem, founder of the Freedom Charity, which helps victims and visits schools to educate children, said they had recently provided support to a six-year-old girl suspected of being groomed by her family for a forced marriage after being taken to Bangladesh. The case was referred to police when her school raised the alarm. She said: These figures are shocking and to think this is happening in London in the 21st century is abhorrent, barbaric and wrong as well as against the law. Suicide rates among Asian girls between the ages of 16 and 25 are three times the national average. Tragically many girls feel the only way they can escape a forced marriage is to take their own lives. Detective chief inspector Sam Faulkner, of the Mets Community Safety Unit, said the crimes stem from communities using cultural and/or religious justifications for male violence against women and girls and other people, often based on traditions whereby an individual, family and communitys honour is weighted on women and girls. This can include refusing to go along with a marriage. He added: We see an increase in these types of offences as a positive step, an indication that victims have more confidence to report offences to police and seek the support they need. The figures, obtained under Freedom of Information requests, show that violence against the person was the most common honour attack, accounting for 85 per cent (915) of all 1,081 reports. This included 243 of assault with injury, 204 of common assault, 173 of harassment, 58 of wounding or GBH and 237 other violence. Sexual violence was the second largest category, with 56 rapes and 11 other sexual crimes. Of 1,083 victims, 84 per cent (905) were women, with Asian women accounting for more than half (596). The next biggest victim group was Asian men (120) followed by Arabian and Egyptian women (104), a group the Met called dark European women (80) and Afro-Caribbean women (70). Knives were allegedly used in 69 incidents and guns in four. The majority of victims were aged between 10 and 40, but 17 were under 10. Of 473 people proceeded against, 403 were men and 70 women. Those which relate to forced marriages, which includes victims abused while fearing a marriage which had not taken place, accounted for 35 rapes and eight other sexual, with women making up 91 per cent (344) of 376 victims. Victims or those who suspect abuse can call 101 or Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111. They can also download the Freedom Charity App or call its hotline on 0845 607 0133. A manhunt is underway after a 21-year-old was stabbed in the chest in a violent attack in Shepherds Bush. Police want to speak to Joseph Ormsby, 18, of no fixed address, after the incident in White City Close, a short walk from the former BBC Television Studios. Emergency services including an air ambulance raced to the scene at about 5.15pm on Saturday. A 21-year-old man was found suffering from a stab wound to the chest, police said. He was rushed to a central London hospital in a serious condition. His injuries were later deemed not life-threatening or life-changing and he has been since been discharged. He is expected to make a full recovery. On Sunday, an 18-year-old man was arrested and charged in connection with the incident. Officers from Hammersmith and Fulham CID are appealing for anyone who recognises Ormsby or anyone with any information about the incident to contact them. Anyone who can assist is asked to contact police Hammersmith and Fulham CID on 0208 246 2442 or via 101, or by tweeting @MetCC. To give information anonymously call Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111 or visit crimestoppers-uk.org. D etectives have today charged a third man with murder after a Romanian man was gunned down at a flat in west London in October. Scotland Yard said Yousef Mohamud, 21, had been arrested and charged with the murder of Ionut Lazar. The 28-year-old was the victim of a fatal shooting at a flat in Askew Road, Shepherds Bush. Two men have previously been charged with the murder. Hanad Mohamed and Sufyan ElBakali are currently in custody and will appear at the Old Bailey. All three men are also charged with one count of robbery on a second male. Mohamud is due to appear in custody at Bromley Magistrates Court on April 8, while the Old Bailey trial is due to begin on July 3. T he head of University College London today hailed the recruitment of high-profile Europeans to fill some of its key posts as a sign that the Brexit vote is not deterring top EU academics from moving here. Professor Michael Arthur, provost of UCL, said the new appointees would fill big jobs and had been attracted by the capitals outstanding reputation for science. He added that the appointments showed people have not been put off by Brexit and the very best talents were still keen to take posts in London. He also disclosed that there had been no exodus of European staff since last Junes vote and that the university was optimistic it could retain significant numbers of EU students after Britains departure. Professor Arthurs comments came during an interview with the Evening Standard in which he set out his universitys latest assessment of the potential impact of Brexit and the measures which it believes can minimise any damage. He said one of the biggest concerns included whether the Government could cook a deal with the EU to retain access to research funding, which last year accounted for about 60 million of UCLs income. Another huge worry was the potential loss of career development grants for junior and senior academics from the European Research Council. The university would also like either free mobility for researchers, academics, students or a very cleverly designed immigration system that the EU sees as being a special deal to ensure full access to talent and continued participation in European research schemes. But Professor Arthur emphasised that despite the challenges he believed that UCL would continue to thrive after Brexit and retain its top 10 status in the world university rankings. I have to be optimistic and I am, he said. I have been worried, those concerns are real, but you can also see a way through and you can see opportunity and therefore the optimism persists. I think London will remain a great global city and that will be great for London and great for us. He added: We have recruited some high-profile Europeans in recent weeks. Those people have not been put off by Brexit. What they see is a huge global scientific opportunity and the opportunity to make a real difference That seems to trump the impact of Brexit. Professor Arthur said UCL expected to see a drop in EU students after Brexit but that significant numbers were still likely to come. He said he was reassured that ministers were listening to the concerns of universities and was also encouraged by the desire of European institutions for their governments to strike a win, win deal allowing continued British participation in EU research schemes. Everyone points to British science as being crucial, he said. A mystery woman spent more than 1,600 in a lightning-fast spree at two charity shops in north London, almost clearing them out of items. In an extraordinary act of generosity, the customer visited the stores in Crouch End on Monday, buying everything from clothes and shoes to handbags and accessories. She spent a total of 1,116 at a Shelter store, grabbing mountains of items, and shelled out more than 500 at a Children's Air Ambulance store. As surprised workers workers sought to find out her identity, she claimed to one that she was a Brazilian businesswoman and told another that she owned a honey farm in Guyana. Sharon De-Freitas, manager of the Air Ambulance shop, told the Standard: Before she came in I thought business had been very slow, I was worried we weren't going to meet our targets. She came in with two huge suitcases. She started piling items at the counter. Shelter in Crouch End was one of two shops that the woman spent thousands of pounds in / Google It kept mounting up, she went to all the different departments, cleared me out of all my mens clothes and bought most of our ladies stock. She was in the store for at least half an hour. Ms De-Freitas, who has worked at the shop for four years, said the woman was buying the items for workers at her honey farm in Guyana. She added: As it kept going I started to have a little chat with her why she was buying so many items. She said she had a honey farm in Guyana, 1,000 acres and 5,000 people employed. I have had one customer come in and spend 100 but nothing like this has ever happened. Before she paid she said she had to go to the bank to make a transfer, I didnt think shed come back but she did. Meanwhile, as the same woman spent over a thousand pounds at a Shelter store, she claimed that she was a Brazilian businesswoman buying items for her mother. A spokeswoman for Shelter said: On Monday April 3, someone came into Shelters Crouch End shop on Topsfield Parade and purchased 1,116 worth of goods in one go, leaving the rails bare. The haul consisted of women's clothes, shoes, handbags and accessories meaning the store needed to be re-stocked from other Shelter charity shops nearby. We do not know much about the shopper except she was a Brazilian woman who said she was buying goods for her mother. A new piece of street art depicting North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as a child playing with a globe and a missile has appeared in a north London street. Anonymous artist Pegasus painted the image on the outside wall of a hair salon in Islington to reflect the ongoing tension between America and North Korea which could lead to a disastrous war. It shows a youthful Kim Jong-un, wearing shorts and t-shirt, sprawled on the floor with a large missile and a comparatively small globe in his hands. Placed in front of the two-foot painting are toy soldiers pointing guns at each other and building blocks which spell Domun-ation a play on the controversial leaders name. The work took the anonymous artist just over two hours to complete (Pegasus) / @pegasusart Pegasus, whose previous work includes Theresa May 'spanking' Donald Trump in Shoreditch, said his latest piece took just over two hours to paint. He told the Standard: This shows an infantile leader who in my mind throws all of his toys out of his pram in retaliation to crazy things that Donald Trump has said. So you have got two infantile leaders who are just ridiculous and in the end they are going to start a war which we will all be victims of. He added: Im pleased with the way its turned out. I thought it was going to go down really badly but its actually gone down quite well. The two-foot artwork appeared on the side of a salon in north London / Pegasus All of my stuff is very flat but with this piece I wanted to do more of an installation. The artists next project will see him head to New York in two weeks time for another Trump-themed piece of art. Hes given me lots of ammunition, joked Pegasus. In November, Pegasus spent three days designing a piece of art paying tribute to Prince Harry and his new girlfriend Meghan Markle. The artist, who was born in the US but now lives in north London, depicted Miss Markle wearing an American flag-patterned dress and a princess tiara as she stands between two Queens Guards. J eremy Paxman could be in trouble with the law. The Idler magazine is bringing back its Bad Grammar Award, and the ex-Newsnight host has been recruited as chief judge. He shows unsurprising ambition in his nomination: the Metropolitan Police. Will he be led away in handcuffs? Yesterday an email landed in our inbox from Tom Hodgkinson, editor of The Idler, announcing the return of the prize. Mr P has nominated the Metropolitan Police for multiple offences, Hodgkinson writes, citing routine barbarisms. Were not interested in nailing small businesses and individuals, as The Apostrophiser does. Were more interested in attacking tyrants. Paxo has a reputation for being strictly intellectual a scornful dismissal on University Challenge is the stuff of nightmares so its no wonder the boys in blue have got his back up. Reports previously suggested officers were wasting valuable hours correcting their colleagues paperwork errors. Previous winners of the Bad Grammar Award include the new director of the V&A Tristram Hunt, for the redundant phrase ongoing continuing professional development. Another culprit was a primary school which had the poster We all wash are hands after playing in the sandpits. The Londoner approached Paxman himself to ask which mistakes got his goat this year, to no reply. He has previously responded to our e-mails, only to correct our punctuation. The Met declined to comment this morning. We are quite busy, as you can imagine, said a spokesperson, and do not have the time to provide a comment around this. The Londoner is forwarding the message to Paxman and The Idler for inclusion. ----- Corbis via Getty Images TO Hatchards of Piccadilly last night for the launch of Antonia Seniors new novel, The Tyrants Shadow, set in Oliver Cromwells time. I thought Oliver Cromwell was a monster, she said. And it turns out he was a nice bloke. Senior is the head judge for Endeavour Ink, a new historical fiction prize, but her own book is out a month later than the cut-off point. Id be really good at judging my work as the best, she shrugged. Maybe next year. Blair and Mair get down to business AFP/Getty Images IT SEEMS that Euan Blair is finally stepping out of his fathers shadow. Yesterday he gave his first-ever broadcast interview to BBC Radio 4s PM show, discussing his company White Hat, which places high-calibre apprentices in leading businesses. Host Eddie Mair got to it: Forgive the cheap family shot which you could see coming a mile off, he said. But do you think the drive to get 50 per cent of young people into education is that counterproductive to what youre doing now? Blair questioned his fathers policy. University has become more expensive. The offer needs to be really good. We need to ask is sending 50 per cent of people to university right? Dont tell Tony. Quote of the Day (Photo credit should read AUNG HTET/AFP/Getty Images) / AFP/Getty Images Im no Mother Teresa. I never said I was Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of Burma and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, says shes more stateswoman than saint after claims of ethnic cleansing in her country. ----- More Pussy power to your elbow Pussy power: Simon Jenkins, Hannah Kaye, Howard Jacobson and Stephen Fry (image: Alice Lubbock) Comic novelists collided at Fortnum & Mason last night, as Howard Jacobson launched his new novel Pussy. His publisher, Dan Franklin, toasted this countrys most brilliant comic novelist. Then in came Stephen Fry. Just as I got here, he quipped.But the guests were there for Jacobson his latest book is a satire on Donald Trump. Hes the most ludicrous person Ive ever seen, Jacobson told The Londoner. Does Jacobson fear legal repercussions? Can you imagine being sued by the President of the United States for having written satire? he said. Bring it on. Hes no pussy. ----- (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images) / Getty Images WITH biography Call Me Dave, journalist Isabel Oakeshott forever connected David Cameron with pigs. Now she has moved on to Michael Gove and rabbits. After Gove today condemned Labours proposed school meal policy, she responded on Conservative Home: This particular furry animal has a variant of myxomatosis. Like the bunnies deliberately infected with that disease to control the population in the 1950s, Goves animal is spreading its own virus. Will he be hopping mad? Dawn milks book launch (Photo by David M. Benett/Dave Benett/Getty Images) DOWN to The Marylebone Hotel last night for the launch of Dawn OPorters frank new novel, The Cows. Actress Ophelia Lovibond and DJ Gemma Cairney sipped Perrier- Jouet but The Londoner was most surprised to see Lionel Shriver, the author of acclaimed novel We Need To Talk About Kevin. She and OPorter, pictured, used to be neighbours in Bermondsey. I was incredibly obsessed with her and would wait for the opportunity to meet her, OPorter told us. Then a piece of Lionels post got delivered to my house and I got to take it round she had no idea I was a stalking fan who lived two doors down. The Cows features a woman who is caught masturbating on the Tube and suffers dire consequences. I just want the book to show that society cant cope with women being overtly sexual, she said. Its held against her because shes a woman and because shes a mother: thats why the book is called The Cows, because their only function is to reproduce milk. Udder books pail in comparison. Tweet of the Day Michael Caines biggest film: a gang of British conmen try to get millions out of Europe, fail, drive a bus off a cliff instead. After The Sun parodies The Italian Job for a pro-Gibraltar front page, a reminder of the plot from writer Jack Bernhardt. -- Grime is the talk of the town Dave Benett/Getty Images for Cal 180 Strand hosted the launch of the Dazed 100 in collaboration with CK One, last night, the magazines list of the next generation shaping youth culture. Grime artist Skepta was among the guests, wearing a green velvet jacket and a question-mark necklace. Perhaps he was hoping an eye-catching ensemble might push him up the list. ----- Review of the day: Jeremy Corbyn met children in Leyland, Lancashire, to crack eggs and talk jam, to publicise his school-meal plan. His review? Nice kids, terrible taste in jam. Follow The Londoner on Twitter and Facebook here. L abour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has slammed an overnight US air strike on a Syrian military base over a devastating chemical attack on civilians. Mr Corbyn warned that US President Donald Trump's decision to take military action could further intensify a conflict that has already left hundreds of thousands of people dead. The US Navys barrage of 59 cruise missiles, given the green light by Mr Trump, targeted weapons bunkers and aircraft at a military base thought to be the launch site for the chemical attack on Tuesday. At least 72 people, including 20 children, were killed by a suspected mix of chlorine and nerve agent in the Idlib province. President Trump formally announces the military action in Syria in retaliation for the attack on civilians / AP Three soldiers and two civilians were killed in the US air strike which Mr Corbyn said risked escalating the war in Syria. He said in a statement: Tuesdays horrific chemical attack was a war crime which requires urgent independent UN investigation and those responsible must be held to account. But unilateral military action without legal authorisation or independent verification risks intensifying a multi-sided conflict that has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. TODO: define component type brightcove However, deputy Labour leader Tom Watson said he supports the strikes, calling them "a direct and proportionate response to a clear violation of international law". Mr Watson added that chemical weapon attacks "can never be tolerated and must have consequences". Mr Watson told the Birmingham Mail: "These US strikes appear to be a direct and proportionate response to a clear violation of international law by the Syrian regime. Britain backs US strike on Syrian air base after 'barbaric' chemical attack "It's clear from the nerve gas attack in Khan Sheikhoun earlier this week that President (Bashar) Assad had retained a chemical weapons capability, contrary to what was agreed in 2013. "Indiscriminate chemical weapons attacks on civilians can never be tolerated and must have consequences. "It's vital that the United States is now clear about its intentions and that the whole international community works towards a political settlement in Syria." S chools in Londons most deprived communities will bear the brunt of the Governments planned funding reforms, Labour claimed today. Boroughs where up to a third of pupils are on free school meals will see budget reductions of between one and three per cent if proposed changes are introduced in 2018-19. The warning comes as Labour pledged to provide free school meals for every primary school pupil if it wins the next general election, by charging VAT on private school fees. On the forthcoming funding changes, shadow education secretary Angela Rayner said: London is home to some of the very best schools in the country and Tory cuts to school budgets will put them at serious risk. Nine boroughs have more than 20 per cent of primary and secondary pupils receiving free school meals and will lose money when the Government reforms the national funding formula, according to the Education Policy Institute. Labour analysis says that in Tower Hamlets, where 36 per cent of children get free dinners, cuts of 2.7 per cent are proposed. Lambeth, Camden, Hackney and Tower Hamlets will see annual losses of 1.5 per cent to 2.8 per cent, despite having between 26 and 31 per cent of children on free school meals. Overall 19 boroughs can expect funding cuts in a years time compared with 13 which will gain between 0.3 per cent and 5.6 per cent to their budgets. Ms Rayner said: The Government needs to look again at the impact that it will have on the most disadvantaged areas in our country. Education Secretary Justine Greening has said changes to the funding formula are necessary to end the post-code lottery in school finances. B asque militant separatist group ETA today announced it was handing over its remaining arsenal of weapons. The BBC cited what it said was a letter from ETA declaring it had given its weapons to civilian go-betweens. But the process was not complete and declared tomorrow disarmament day. The move stops short of a full disbanding of the organisation that has killed more than 850 people in its 40-year struggle for an independent state in the mountainous Basque region that incorporates part of northern Spain and south-western France. The middlemen were due to hand over the weapons to authorities tomorrow in the French city of Bayonne in a process first flagged last month by Basque activists. We want to warn that still the process can be attacked by the enemies of peace, the letter said. The only real guarantee to succeed are the thousands of people gathering tomorrow in Bayonne [south-western France] supporting the disarmament. The letter, published in full on the BBC website, gave no details on how the handover would be carried out. It is not clear if the process will be formally accepted by the Spanish and French governments. Spains ruling Popular Party, which refuses to negotiate with ETA, said the planned handover was a surrender. On April 8, ETA will accept its defeat after nearly six years in which it said it would make concessions which never materialised, the PPs representative in the Basque parliament, Alfonso Alonso, told national radio last night. No government representative was immediately available for comment today. ETA was set up more than 50 years ago in the era of Spanish dictator General Franco. Its first known killing was in 1968, when a secret police chief, Meliton Manzanas, was shot dead in the Basque city of San Sebastian. Loading.... In 2014 the International Verification Commission of international inspectors said Eta had put some of its weapons out of action, but the Spanish government dismissed the move as theatrical. ETA declared a ceasefire in 2011, but did not disarm. The group has been severely weakened in recent years after authorities arrested hundreds of its members and seized several of its weapons stashes. I n the small hours of this morning 59 Tomahawk medium range land attack missiles, each carrying about 1,000 pounds of high explosive were launched by two US destroyers in the Mediterranean at Syrias Sheyrat air base. It was from there that the US and Britain now believe repeated air attacks were launched last Monday dropping chemical weapons on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun. At least 100 died there, including children in their beds. Follow-up attacks bombed the hospital in which victims of the first raid were being treated. First reports from the Governor of Homs, where the Sheyrat is situated, say that at least six Syrian soldiers were killed in the overnight Tomahawk strike and civilians injured. Some 14 warplanes, aircraft shelters and fuel dumps have been destroyed. The US military had given prior warning to Russia so they could get their military personnel out of harms way. Loading.... Russias official spokesman has denounced President Trump for an act of aggression against a sovereign nation and member of the UN. Commentators on state radio has said that the Trump administration had undermined the campaign against international terrorism, and had been doing the work of ISIS and al Qaeda for them. One went so far that as to say that the raid had been planned in collusion with Israel. Trump said that he had ordered the attack after Syrias horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians. Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many No child of God should ever such horror. President Trump formally announces the military action in Syria in retaliation for the attack on civilians / AP However, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the strike was a one-off. I would not in any way attempt to extrapolate that to a change in our policy or posture relative to our military activities in Syria today, he explained. The strike remains the most high profile outside intervention in Syrias six-year civil conflict, which has taken the lives of nearly half a million and displaced over 11 million more than half the Syrian population. When Assads artillery fired rockets with chemical warheads into the Gouta district of greater Damascus killing 231 on 21 August 2013, President Obama warned that Damascus had crossed a red line. Yet he did nothing deterred by a vote against the Cameron government using military action. Trump did not bother to seek assent from allies or Congress. He didnt need to. Following the US and British climb down in August 2013, the UN Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 2118, to remove and destroy Syrias chemical stockpile. Syria also signed, stating it would not use chemical weapons. The missiles targeted airstrips, hangars, control towers and ammunition areas in Sharyat, central Syria / AP Since then the Damascus junta has used chemical weapons several times, mostly by dropping chlorine in barrels from helicopters. This happened in Hamas last month. In Khan Sheikhoun they appear to have dropped barrels and rockets containing Sarin, a difficult and deadly agent to handlers and victims alike. The signs of children foaming from the mouth, ears and nostrils are recognized symptoms of the use of the gas. The use of chemical and biological weapons is banned under the Geneva Protocol of 1993, which is an update of protocols of 1925 based on the use of gas in the Frist World War. America could claim to act in supporting both the Chemical Warfare Convention or CWC, which Syria signed as well as the UN Security Council Resolution 2118. The US administration has stated again that it is not seeking regime change in Damascus. The actions of the past 24 hours do show, however, that Washington sees no future role for Assad in the long term. He is seen very much the problem and not a possible broker for peace in Syria, as Trump suggested during the presidential campaign. Response: Tomahawks were fired from guided missile destroyers USS Porter, pictured, and the USS Ross during the US strike on a Syrian air base / US Navy/AP Assad now poses an acute dilemma for his two principal allies, Russia and Iran. Both were seeking to scale back their military support, now that the second city, Aleppo, had been battered into submission. But on the ground Syrias military appears exhausted after six years of fighting, its roster of equipment from artillery to personnel carriers severely run down. Today Putins forces are overcommitted across three theatres, Ukraine and the Baltics, interior homeland security, and Syria. Even its much-hyped air defence and ground missile systems such as the S-300 and S-400, both deployed to Syria, appear not as effective as advertised. After all the 59 cruise missiles got through, the Russian electronic command and control seems susceptible to jamming from the US carrier fleets. The US administration has been careful to stress that it has reacted effectively, with limited focus targets, and proportionately within the parameters of international law and convention. In the same vein, President Clinton launched Tomahawk attacks in 1998 against al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Sudan, and later against Iraq. The pretext was terrorist attacks on US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and Saddams breech of ceasefire and no fly agreements from 1991. Then, as now, the US president said the raid were not aiming at regime change in 1998. Yet some three years later the Taliban regime in Kabul was gone, in just under five years later Saddam fled Baghdad. H illary Clinton called for a strikes on military targets in Syria hours before Donald Trump ordered the US to launch its missile attack. In her first interview since her election defeat, the democrat said she favoured aggressive action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The military base, which President Trump claims was the launch site for a devastating chemical attack on civilians, was struck by a surprise barrage of missiles on Friday morning. At a Women in the World Summit in New York, Clinton said the airfields needed to be taken out to prevent al-Assad from further attacks. She said: "I think we should have been more willing to confront Assad. "I really believe we should have and still should take out his air fields and prevent him from being able to use them to bomb innocent people and drop sarin gas on them." US Navy launches cruise missile strike on Syria Trump took the toughest line of direct US action yet in Syrias six-year-long civil war, raising risks of confrontation with Al-Assads two main military backers Russia and Iran. The Pentagon has confirmed that the US informed Russian ahead of the strike that saw 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles crash into the base. A Syrian official said the attack killed three soldiers and two civilians while seven others were wounded. Speaking from Florida, US President Donald Trump delivered an emotional message to the public in which he evoked images of children dying. Hillary called for the airstrike just hours before bombings of Assad's airfields / Getty Images Mr Trump said: " Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many. "Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. "Tonight I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched. "It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. Trumps announces Syria strikes Britain backed the overnight strike that Syrian officals say killed three and wounded seven, with Downing Street offering its full support to the US President. The missiles were a direct response to an attack using a suspected mixture of chlorine and nerve agent in the largely opposition-held Idlib province on Tuesday. A London-born DJ who played a dance remix of the Muslim call to prayer has been sentenced in his absence to a year in jail by a Tunisian court. Dax J was charged with public indecency and offending public morality after playing the track at Orbit Festival in Nabeul, in the north-east of the country, the BBC reported. The nightclub was shut down when footage of the event sparked outrage after being shared on social media. The DJ left the country before the court case and has issued a sincere apology to anyone who may have been offended. He said he never intended to upset or cause offence to anybody. A spokesman for the Tunisian court said that charges had been dropped against the club and event organiser. Defence lawyers claimed that they should have checked the DJs set list. The track included a dance version of a call to prayer, played at mosques five times a day before Muslims perform the religious act. Organisers of the Orbit Festival apologised in a post on the event's Facebook page, but said that they did not accept responsibility for the playing of any offensive music. The DJ "did not realise it might offend an audience from a Muslim country like ours," they wrote. R ussia has accused the US of violating international law and seriously hurting relations between Washington and Moscow following air strikes against Syria. A spokesman for President Vladimir Putin said that the Russian leader, a staunch ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, regarded the US action as "aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law". He said the strikes had been launched on a "made-up pretext" and as a cynical attempt to distract the world from civilian deaths in Iraq. Russia said it did not believe that Syria possessed chemical weapons and that the US move would inevitably create a serious obstacle to creating an international coalition to fight terrorism. The US fired 59 cruise missiles at targets in Syria / AP The row came after the US launched dozens of cruise missiles into central Syria, striking an Assad government-controlled air base. America says the base is where Syrian military initiated a deadly chemical attack that killed at least 72 civilians, including children, this week. Syrian state TV called the attack, announced by US president Donald Trump, an "aggression" that led to "losses" and Talal Barazi, the governor of Syria's Homs province, said later that the attack killed some Syrians. The UK has backed the military action by the United States / AP About 60 US Tomahawk missiles hit the Shayrat air base south east of Homs - a small installation with two runways, where aircraft often take off to bomb targets in northern and central Syria. The US missiles struck at 3.45am on Friday, Syria time (1.45am UK time), and targeted the base's airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, American officials said. US Navy launches cruise missile strike on Syria Britain backed its American allies over the strikes, saying they were an appropriate response to the chemical attack. Earlier, Alexei Pushkov, head of information policy commission in the upper house of the Russian parliament, said that if Mr Trump launched a military action in Syria it would put him in "the same league with Bush and Obama". Loading.... Russian deputy envoy to the UN, Vladimir Safronkov, said Russia had warned the US to "think about what military actions have led to in Iraq, Libya and other countries". President Trump formally announces the military action in Syria in retaliation for the attack on civilians / AP But, in an emotional statement, Mr Trump said the military action had been in the US national interest. He said: "Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many. "Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. "Tonight I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched. Loading.... "It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. S wedish police were hunting a terror suspect who hijacked a truck and ploughed into a shopping centre in Stockholm killing at least four people and injuring 15. The lorry drove into several people on Drottninggatan, a busy street in the Swedish capital, before hitting the Ahlens shopping centre on Friday afternoon, police said. Emergency services said four people died and nine of the 15 injured, including children, were in a serious condition in hospital. Police said the driver of the truck had fled and issued an image of a man they wanted to trace in connection with the attack at the busy shopping district. The image showed a man dressed in a grey hooded jacket stepping from an escalator. Swedish police said there had been no arrests and they officers were looking for "a person or persons" / REUTERS One person was arrested later in the day who matched the description of a suspect they were looking for, police said. A spokesman initially said there had been no arrests, adding: For the moment police are searching for a person or persons." Officers also confirmed they were interviewing two people in relation to the truck attack but that "it did not mean they were suspects". Truck attack: Smoke pours from the shopping centre in Drottninggatan / REUTERS Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said the incident which began at about 3pm local time appeared to have been "a terror attack". He told reporters during a visit in western Sweden: "Sweden has been attacked. Everything points to the fact that this is a terrorist attack." He was immediately returning to the capital. Five dead after truck ploughs into shoppers in Stockholm The truck had been stolen while making a delivery to a restaurant further up Drottninggatan, Spendrups Brewery spokesman Marten Lyth said. A masked person jumped into the cab, started the truck and drove away, he said. Witnesses described how they "ran for their lives" and hid in terror after the attack began. They told how victims lay dead in the street while medics and members of the public treated the injured. Glen Foran, an Australian tourist in his 40s, said: "I turned around and saw a big truck coming towards me. It swerved from side to side. It didn't look out of control, it was trying to hit people," "It hit people, it was terrible." Sweden truck crash - In pictures 1 /20 Sweden truck crash - In pictures Terror: People flee the scene of the crash in Stockholm Emergency servies work at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images Rex The smoking truck was shown embedded in the shopping centre TT News Agency/Andreas Schyman/via Reuters Ambulance in a street near the site were a truck was driven into a crowd in central Stockholm Per Haljestam/Reuters Police are treating the incident as a terror attack Jessica Gow/TT News Agency via Reuters Witnesses were shown sobbing near the Ahlens department store Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images Emergency services treated people at the scene Rex Special police forces work at the crash site Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images People walk away fro the scene after a truck crashed into a department store injuring several people in central Stockholm, Sweden Noella Johansson TT News Agency via AP The scene of an incident in Drottninggatan, a street in the centre of Stockholm, Sweden Arash Pendari/PA The truck left a trail of devastation in its wake TT News Agency/Andreas Schyman/via Reuters People were killed when a truck crashed into department store Ahlens on Drottninggatan, in central Stockholm Reuters The area around the shopping precinct was locked off TT News Agency/Noella Johansson/via Reuters Police officers work at the scene Noella Johansson/AFP/Getty Images Another witness, who asked not to be named, said: "We were standing by the traffic lights at Drottninggatan and then we heard some screaming and saw a truck coming. "Then it drove into a pillar at Ahlens City [department store] where the hood started burning. When it stopped we saw a man lying under the tyre. It was terrible to see." Dramatic images showed a huge police cordon at the scene and a swarm of emergency services vehicles in the busy shopping district. Several people were seen being rushed away in ambulances, and live television footage showed smoke pouring out of the department store. At a press conference national police commissioner Dan Eliasson said: "A truck was driven into Ahlen's department store on Drottninggatan. There are many people injured." He added: "We have no contact with the person or persons who drove the truck." Senior police officer Mats Lofving said: "We don't know whether this incident is isolated or whether we can expect more. "We have police positioned at several strategic places with a particular risk threat." All trains to and from the main station were halted and two large shopping malls in the capital were shut down after the attack. L ondon mayor Sadiq Khan said the city stands united with Stockholm after a hijacked truck ploughed into a shopping centre in the Swedish capital killing four people and injuring 15 more. Mr Khan said it appeared Sweden had seen a despicable act of terrorism aimed at harming innocent people and attacking our shared values of democracy, freedom, justice and tolerance." He said: Londoners know how it feels to suffer from senseless and cowardly terrorism. "And I know we share a steely determination with the people of Stockholm that we will never allow terrorists to succeed. We will never be cowed by terrorism and today London stands united with Stockholm. The lorry drove into several people on Drottninggatan, a busy street in Swedish capital, before hitting the Ahlens shopping centre on Friday afternoon, police said. Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said the incident which began at about 3pm local time appeared to have been "a terror attack". Deadly attack: A truck ploughed into crowds in Stockholm / Rex He told reporters during a visit in western Sweden: "Sweden has been attacked. Everything points to the fact that this is a terrorist attack." He was immediately returning to the capital. Widespread condemnation poured in from across the globe as news of the attack broke, including from German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who said he was "deeply concerned". Mr Johnson said: Deeply concerned by shocking incident in Stockholm. Britains thoughts are with the victims, their families and the whole of Sweden. The German Chancellor's spokesman said: "Our thoughts go out to the people in Stockholm, to the injured, their relatives, rescuers and police. "We stand together against terror. President of the EU Commission Jean-Claude Juncker said: "An attack on any of our Member States is an attack on us all." The foreign ministers of Germany and France reacted with shock to the deadly truck attack in Stockholm. Truck attack: Smoke pours from the shopping centre in Drottninggatan / REUTERS In a joint statement, Sigmar Gabriel and Jean-Marc Ayrault said Sweden's efforts for human rights, peace and justice around the world made the pictures emerging from the heart of Stockholm that much greater. Separately, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier expressed solidarity with the victims in Stockholm "and all people in Sweden." Sweden truck crash - In pictures 1 /20 Sweden truck crash - In pictures Terror: People flee the scene of the crash in Stockholm Emergency servies work at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images Rex The smoking truck was shown embedded in the shopping centre TT News Agency/Andreas Schyman/via Reuters Ambulance in a street near the site were a truck was driven into a crowd in central Stockholm Per Haljestam/Reuters Police are treating the incident as a terror attack Jessica Gow/TT News Agency via Reuters Witnesses were shown sobbing near the Ahlens department store Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images Emergency services treated people at the scene Rex Special police forces work at the crash site Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images People walk away fro the scene after a truck crashed into a department store injuring several people in central Stockholm, Sweden Noella Johansson TT News Agency via AP The scene of an incident in Drottninggatan, a street in the centre of Stockholm, Sweden Arash Pendari/PA The truck left a trail of devastation in its wake TT News Agency/Andreas Schyman/via Reuters People were killed when a truck crashed into department store Ahlens on Drottninggatan, in central Stockholm Reuters The area around the shopping precinct was locked off TT News Agency/Noella Johansson/via Reuters Police officers work at the scene Noella Johansson/AFP/Getty Images Paris' mayor Anne Hidalgo said the lights on the Eiffel Tower would go out from midnight in solidarity with Stockholm. She expressed solidarity with the victims and their loved ones, as well as with Stockholm Mayor Karin Wanngard "in this particularly difficult ordeal." Russian President Vladimir Putin sent a telegram of condolence to Sweden's monarch in the wake of the fatal truck crash. "In our country, people know, and not by hearsay, about the atrocities of international terrorism. At this difficult time, Russians mourn together with the people of Sweden," Putin said. A suicide bomb on a St. Petersburg subway train on Monday killed 13 passengers. The incident in Sweden comes after trucks were used in terror attacks in Nice and Berlin last year and just two weeks after Muslim convert Khalid Masood ploughed his car into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge in London. D ramatic images have emerged showing the aftermath of a US air strike on a Syrian military base. The US Navys barrage of 59 cruise missiles, given the green light by President Donald Trump, and launched at 1.45am UK time on Friday targeted weapons bunkers and aircraft at a military base thought to be the launch site for a chemical attack. At least 72 people, including 20 children, were killed by a suspected mix of chlorine and nerve agent in the Idlib province on Tuesday. State media reported seven people were killed in the US air strike. Russian journalist Evgeny Poddubnyy shared shocking images of the aftermath of the strike on the Shyrat Airbase on social media. Unverified footage uploaded on YouTube also appeared to show the aftermath of the site from a Russian Army drone. Photographs showed burnt-out aircraft and weapons bunkers where the missiles had hit. Mr Poddubnyy, who works for media outlet Russia 24, wrote on Twitter: It looks like the rockets reached 20 goals. Where are the rest? US missile airstrike on Syria - CCTV Images 1 /10 US missile airstrike on Syria - CCTV Images Russian drone footage appears to show the aftermath of an air strike on Syria Sky News The unverified footage was posted on YouTube Sky News Three soldiers and two civilians were killed in the strike Sky News The British Government have backed the strike Sky News Footage showed the aftermath of the missile strike on weapons bunkers Sky News The footage was allegedly released by Russia's Ministry of Defence Sky News Shocking images have been shared on social media Sky News The air strike was given the green light by US president Donald Trump Sky News He added: Not all airplanes (have been) destroyed. (There are) 9 burned down in hangars. Footage posted by the reporter on Instagram showed debris littering the ground of the deserted base. The video, shared by a Russian news organisation, claimed it had been released by the countrys Ministry of Defence. A caption posted alongside the footage read: The Russian Ministry of Defence published a video that shows the impact of US air strikes on the Syrian government airbase. Downing Street offered its full support to President Trump after the surprise launch early on Friday morning, UK time. Loading.... A spokeswoman for Number 10 said: The UK Government fully supports the US action, which we believe was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, and is intended to deter further attacks." However, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn called for urgent peace talks and slammed the move. US Navy launches cruise missile strike on Syria He wrote in a statement: Tuesdays horrific chemical attack was a war crime which requires urgent independent UN investigation and those responsible must be held to account. But unilateral military action without legal authorisation or independent verification risks intensifying a multi-sided conflict that has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. T he US air strike against Syria came as Donald Trump's administration and the UK demanded UN action over the use of chemical weapons against civilians. A resolution brought before the UN Security Council by the UK, US and France demanded an investigation into Tuesdays chemical attack, which killed at least 72 people, including 20 children. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said no one could reasonably object to the UN resolution, although Downing Street had distanced itself from any military action. But in the early hours of Friday, Mr Trump announced that a barrage of cruise missiles had been launched in response to the Idlib chemical attack, which he blamed on Syrian president Bashar Assad. Mask: rescue workers described a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib / REUTERS On Wednesday, Downing Street played down the prospect of military action in retaliation for the use of chemical weapons against civilians, insisting "nobody is talking" about an armed response to the atrocity. Speaking at a press conference, Mr Johnson said: "We in the UK, together with our French friends, have called an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council. "We have tabled a resolution which I hope absolutely everybody feels able to sign up to. "Because all we are saying is that there should be condemnation of that chemical weapons attack, and secondly, that there should be a thorough and urgent international investigation, and I don't think anybody could possibly, reasonably, oppose such a resolution." The draft resolution backed an investigation by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and demands the Syrian government provides information about its military operations on the day of the strike. US Navy launches cruise missile strike on Syria The text calls on Syria to provide flight plans, flight logs and other information on its military operations on April 4 and to hand over the names of commanders of helicopter squadrons. A vote on the resolution was delayed beyond Thursday, with consultation continuing among council members. Russia was expected to block the UN resolution, though, having previously used its veto power seven times to halt UN action that would put pressure on its ally Syria. Russia's defence ministry said the toxic agents were released when a Syrian air strike hit a rebel chemical weapons arsenal and munitions factory. Loading.... But Mr Johnson said he had seen "absolutely nothing to suggest" the attack was carried out by anyone but the government of Syria. B ritain has backed an overnight US strike on a Syrian military base which Donald Trump claims was the launch site for a devastating chemical attack on civilians. Downing Street offered its full support to President Trump after the surprise barrage of 59 cruise missiles in the early hours of Friday, UK time. The US Navy's attack was aimed at weapons bunkers and aircraft inside the Syrian military base and was the first direct US attack on Bashar Assad's Syrian government. A Syrian official said the attack killed three soldiers and two civilians while seven others were wounded. State TV called the attack an act of "aggression". Speaking from Florida, US President Donald Trump delivered an emotional message to the public in which he evoked images of children dying. Mr Trump said: " Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many. "Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. Trumps announces Syria strikes "Tonight I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched. "It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. Launched: The USS Ross fires a Tomahawk land attack missile from the Mediterranean Sea during the attack on the Syrian air base As Brits woke up to the news of the missile strike, a spokeswoman for Number 10 said: The UK Government fully supports the US action, which we believe was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, and is intended to deter further attacks." It comes as the UK and France were calling for diplomatic action over the use of chemical weapons and the government had played down the prospect of military strikes. One of the missiles fired from destroyer USS Porter travels towards its target / EPA The Tomahawk missiles, launched from two warships in the Mediterranean Sea, targeted airstrips, hangars, control towers and ammunition areas in Sharyat, central Syria, according to officials. Loading.... At least 72 people, including 20 children, were killed by a suspected mixture of chlorine and a nerve agent in an attack in the largely opposition-held Idlib province on Tuesday. Response: Tomahawks were fired from guided missile destroyers USS Porter, pictured, and the USS Ross during the US strike on a Syrian air base / US Navy/AP Mr Trump said the latest action was in the "vital national security interest", adding that the US must "prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons". He also called for other "civilised nations" to join efforts "seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria". A US satellite image shows the Shayrat air base which was blasted. / AP Reacting to the news on Friday, Russia - which is Syria's most powerful ally - called the US air strike an act of "aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law". A US Department of Defence statement on Friday said Russia was told in advance about the strike. An image released by the US showing the impact crater after Syria's alleged chemical weapons attack / Reuters Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said the strike was a "proportional response to Assad's heinous act". It succeeded in "reducing the Syrian government's ability to deliver chemical weapons" by severely damaging or destroying aircraft, according to initial indications, he added. Britain had been leading renewed calls for diplomatic action in response to the earlier chemical attack. How did the US launch the rockets? The US Navy fired the missiles from destroyers which were positioned in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. Two cruise destroyers were used, the USS Porter and USS Ross, to launch 59 land attack missiles. In the past, the USS Porter (DDG-78) has launched Tomahawk missiles during the Iraq war as well as sinking two pirate boats off the coast of Somalia in 2007. The USS Ross missile destroyer is slightly older, being launched in 1996. Its weapons include antisubmarine rockets, torpedoes and Harpoon anti-ship missiles. Earlier on Wednesday, Downing Street had played down the prospect of military action, insisting "nobody is talking" about an armed response to the atrocity. Syrian state TV went on to report missile attacks on a number of military targets, calling them an act of "aggression" which had led to "losses". Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said the strike was a "proportional response to Assad's heinous act". It succeeded in "reducing the Syrian government's ability to deliver chemical weapons" by severely damaging or destroying aircraft, according to initial indications, he added. Secretary of state Rex Tillerson said Russia had "failed" to deliver its commitment to secure Syria's chemical weapons, saying it had been either complicit or "simply incompetent". Major Jamil al-Saleh, a Syrian opposition commander whose district has been hit by chemical weapons, welcomed the US attack and hopes it will be a "turning point" in the six-year civil war. Loading.... The Syrian Coalition opposition group also backed the move, with senior official Ahmad Ramadan urging Mr Trump to "hit the snake's head". Additional reporting by the Press Association D onald Trump was briefed by his national security team on the air strike in Syria at a secure location in Mar-a-Lago, the White House has revealed. Press Secretary Sean Spicer shared a photo of the President sat at a table with his advisers and cabinet members in the improvised situation room. The advisers and cabinet members present included Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnunchin, National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, economic adviser Gary Cohn and chief of staff Reince Priebus. Mr Trumps chief strategist Steve Bannon and senior adviser Jared Jushner were also present at the briefing at his Floria resort, Mar-a-Lago, where he is currently entertaining the Chinese President Xi Jinping and his delegation. President Trump formally announces the military action in Syria in retaliation for the attack on civilians / AP The photo was taken about 45 minutes after the missiles landed and was posted by Spicer on Twitter with the caption: WH photo (ed for security): @potus receives briefing on #syria military strike fr Nat Security team, inc @vp , SECDEF, CJCS via secure VTC. The picture emerged as a tense emergency meeting of the UN security council got under way following the US air strike. At the meeting, the US envoy to the UN Nikki Haley warned that America may take further action and said her country would not stand by when chemical weapons were used as it was in its vital interest to stop their proliferation. Syria: What led to the US airstrikes? Syrian ally Russia accused the US of encouraging terrorists with its unilateral actions and promised to strengthen its allys anti-aircraft defences. It also said it was closing down a hotline with the US designed to avoid collisions between their air forces over Syria. At least six people are reported to have been killed in the US missile strikes early on Friday. US officials said the base was used to launch a chemical weapons attack that killed dozens of civilians on Tuesday. It is believed 89 people, including 33 children and 18 women, died in the suspected nerve agent attack in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun. Syria has denied using nerve gas. Downing Street offered its full support to Mr Trump after the surprise barrage of 59 cruise missiles. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn slammed the overnight air strike and warned that it could further intensify a conflict that has already left hundreds of thousands of people dead. B ritish actor Tim Pigott-Smith has died at the age of 70. Renowned for his roles on the stage and the big screen, he received an OBE for services to drama last month. Mr Pigott-Smith was best known for starring in the 1984 mini-series The Jewel in the Crown, as well as Quantum of Solace, Alice in Wonderland and Dr Who. A statement from his agent John Grant said: "It is with deep regret that I have to announce the sad news that Tim Pigott-Smith died this morning. "Tim was one of the great actors of his generation. Much-loved and admired by his peers, he will be remembered by many as a gentleman and a true friend. "He will be much missed. We ask that you respect the privacy of his wife, the actress Pamela Miles, his son Tom and the family." The actor was known for big screen roles in Quantum of Solace and Alice in Wonderland / PA Mr Pigott-Smith had already filmed the forthcoming BBC2 drama King Charles III having successfully played the title role in the theatre production on Broadway and in the West End. The play won the Olivier Award and the Critics' Circle Theatre Award for best new play and was staged in London and New York, with Mr Pigott-Smith winning rave reviews on both sides of the Atlantic. He was nominated for both an Olivier and a Tony Award for his performance. Mr Pigott-Smith's memorable television and film roles have included Merrick, the racist police superintendent in the ITV mini-series The Jewel In The Crown, and parts in the movies The Remains Of The Day and Martin Scorsese's Gangs Of New York, as well as more recent appearances in Bond film Quantum Of Solace and Alice In Wonderland. Mr Pigott-Smith said the highlight of his career was The Jewel in the Crown, saying in March: "That's the one that changed my life, a long time ago now, 1984, just in terms of a life experience and a job experience, quite phenomenal. "It really was an international event, it went everywhere." Tim Pigott-Smith got his big break in 1984 series The Jewel in the Crown / PA He appeared opposite leading ladies like Dame Helen Mirren and led the theatre company Compass for a period. He was due to star as Willy Loman in a revival of Arthur Miller's play Death Of A Salesman, which was scheduled to open at Royal & Derngate in Northampton on April 10, before an extensive nationwide tour. His real-life wife Pamela Miles was expected to play Willy's wife Linda but pulled out of the production after breaking a bone during rehearsals and was replaced on the bill. Born in Rugby, he trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and took smaller roles until his big break in The Jewel In The Crown. His distinctive voice made him a popular narrator of documentary series and he lent his voice to Battlefield, a series which examined pivotal battles of the Second World War and the 2007 series Monarchy: The Royal Family at Work. He had completed production on several films, including 6 Days, a drama about the hostage situation at the Iranian embassy in London in 1980, which also stars Jamie Bell and Mark Strong, and Stephen Frears's new film Victoria And Abdul, which also stars Olivia Williams, Michael Gambon and Judi Dench and is due for UK release in September. He is survived by his wife and their son Tom. J im Broadbent has confessed he has not finished watching Game Of Thrones despite joining the cast for the latest series. The actor, 67, told the Standard he had not had time to watch the first six series of the epic fantasy saga before starting filming. He said: I hadnt seen much of it before but Ive got the full box-set now. Seventy hours of TV to watch. I didnt have time to watch it all before thats going to be a long weekend or two. The penultimate series has been shrouded in secrecy to prevent spoilers leaking before its premiere in July. Jim Broadbent The Sense of an Ending premiere interview Broadbent is now staying tight-lipped about his role, having previously let slip that he will be playing an old professor character in five episodes. He said: I cant really talk about my role but I was just mighty impressed by the producers and the production. The actor will be back on the big screen next Friday, playing Tony Webster in the adaptation of Julian Barness Booker prize-winning novel The Sense Of An Ending. Game of Thrones: Season 6 1 /26 Game of Thrones: Season 6 Theon Greyjoy and Sansa Stark The pair find themselves on the run from Ramsay Bolton in Season 6 HBO Bran Stark and the Three-Eyed Raven Bran is back after being absent for Season 5 - but how is he standing up? HBO Arya Stark Maisie Williams' character went blind at the end of Season 5 King Tommen and Jaime Lannister The king and his father mourn the death of Myrcella Tyrion Lannister and Varys The pair remain in Meereen after Daenerys fled on the back of her dragons Roose and Ramsay Bolton The Boltons look set to continue their power-grab in the North Ramsay Bolton Iwan Rheon returns as possibly the most villainous character in the show's history Samwell Tarly and Gilly How much longer will Samwell survive after the death of Jon Snow? Yara Greyjoy Theon's sister returns - will she finally have some kind words for her brother after everything he's been through? Jaime Lannister Jaime transports Mrycella's body Cersei Lannister Expect a flashback to Cersei's imprisonment at the hand of the High Sparrow Missandei Jaime and Cersei Lannister HBO Sansa Stark Brienne of Tarth Melisandre Bran Stark Daenerys Targaryen Balon Greyjoy Tyrion Lannister HBO Playing a character who is forced to revisit his past when he finds a letter he wrote as a schoolboy, Broadbent, who was born in Lincolnshire, said he recognised himself. I loved the character, I recognised him same age, same sort of cultural background, all-male circles at sixth form, a bunch of smart-arse boys together, you know, he said. Theres an awful lot that I recognise about Tony Webster but hes not me. Were different enough to make it interesting. TODO: define component type brightcove If it was very close to me I wouldnt know how to do it really. Its never been my area of work anyway really, Im generally not cast because its a character that looks and behaves like me. Its a character that looks and behaves a bit like me but isnt like me. Broadbent, who has won an Oscar and two Baftas during a five-decade screen career, said he finds it easier to get out of character nowadays and prefers to have a laugh in between takes rather than stay in the role. I can shrug it off these days, he said. I think in my youth I had to get a bit more obsessed about it and not let it go. During the day theres so much hanging around, you cant stay in character. Some actors do but I read or do a crossword or gossip or muck about. P amela Anderson has finally addressed rumours that she is dating Julian Assange, saying that everyone deserves love. The former Baywatch star says that she understands that their affair has sparked curiosity but is reluctant to give out private details. I understand that our affair and the curiosity surrounding that might bring some attention to his situation, she told People magazine. Thats fine, but Id rather not go into private details. Lets just say everyone deserves love. New love? Julian Assange and Pamela Anderson are reportedly dating / Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire Anderson, 49, has been pictured visiting Londons Ecuadorian Embassy on a number of occasions over the last few months. My relationship with Julian - it's no secret. He is one of my favourite people and he might be the most famous, most politicised refugee of our time, she wrote in a recent blog post. Anderson said that she was concerned about the man that she has previously described as a dear friend. Famous for being persecuted is not a position of power but a position of vulnerability. I am concerned, she wrote. Julian Assange lawyers to appeal to Donald Trump to end US probe She went on to describe Assange as an extremely empathetic human being, who cares deeply about the world. And because of his work he has made some powerful enemies in a few countries, America especially, by exposing them, she added. Julian is trying to free the world by educating it. It is a romantic struggle. I love him for this. Assange has been living in the embassy in Knightsbridge since 2012, over fears that he will be extradited to the US as part of an investigation into Wikileaks. He is also wanted for questioning in Sweden over sexual assault allegations, which he denies . E uropean Unions can crumble, global leaders will come and go, even the Great British Bake Off may find its greatness has diminished, but there will always be Doctor Who. The first episode aired in 1963 and 26 full series followed until 1989, when bad scheduling and falling viewer figures led the BBC to suspend production. The time-travelling Tardis then remained dormant until 2003, when a saviour arrived in the form of Queer as Folk creator Russell T Davies. He gave us four series and two new Doctors (Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant) before handing the baton to Steven Moffat in 2010. Moffats hugely successful run, much of it concurrent with the similarly massive Sherlock, which he also writes and produces, continued Daviess proudly progressive tone and bagged several awards. However, the upcoming series, which starts on Easter Saturday, April 15, will be his last, as fans prepare to welcome new showrunner Chris Chibnall and an as-yet-uncast new Doctor to replace Peter Capaldi. Doctor Who - series 10 trailer - BBC On Sunday lucky audience members at the BFI & Radio Times Television Festival at the BFI Southbank will see a sneak preview of clips from the new series, plus a panel discussion with Capaldi, new companion Pearl Mackie and executive producer Bill Minchin. Its all change at Doctor Who but then hasnt regeneration always been kind of the Doctors thing? The new companion BBC When relative unknown Mackie was first introduced as the Doctors new companion, Bill Potts, in a two-minute introductory clip last year, the Twitter reaction was not overwhelmingly positive, with some confessing to finding her a bit, um, annoying. Those Bill-sceptics should be sure to tune into her first full episode, which reveals a more fully rounded character whos easy to warm to. Previous companion Clara (Jenna Coleman) always seemed to know what was going on (thanks, as it later transpired, to her Impossible Girl status long story) but Bill is a totally unpretentious newbie. She asks all the silly questions so we dont have to, such as Whats a Dalek? And if youre from another planet, why have you given your Tardis an English-language acronym? And, most importantly, Doctor what? Bill is also ace for another reason; shes the first openly gay companion the Doctor has had. Although as Mackie and Moffat have both pointed out, in 2017 is that really such a big deal? The new merch The Who Shop, the worlds only Doctor Who-dedicated emporium, is in London, of course, tucked away behind West Hams old Boleyn Ground stadium in Newham. Visitors may pore over the half-centurys worth of televisual treasures housed in a yes, you guessed it Tardis-like interior. Objects coveted and collected by owner Alexandra Loosely-Saul include a three-inch Dalek pin given to her by her brother in the Seventies (I thought it was the bees knees) and an air-filled, life-size, punchable Dalek, sadly lost in the intervening years. I think, perhaps, a council worker might have had his eye on that and it walked out the door, unfortunately. These days popular items include the Funko Pop! figurines and with a Bill edition expected any day now, to please Doctor Whos surprisingly knowledgeable, surprisingly young fanbase. On a daily basis we see an age range right across the board, says Loosely-Saul. Theyre telling me Pat Troughton [second incarnation, 1966-1969] is their favourite Doctor and I do a double take because theyre like eight- or nine-year-olds. How fantastic is that? Theyre educated little souls with a good imagination and they love it. Doctor Who Series 10 trailer - 14 things you need to see 1 /20 Doctor Who Series 10 trailer - 14 things you need to see Doctor Who - Series 10 Peter Capaldi is back for one last run as the titular Time Lord, this time with new companion Bill in tow Des Willie/BBC Nardoles back for good? Initially introduced in 2015s Christmas Special, Matt Lucas hapless bald-headed Nardole seems to have become a favourite of showrunner Steven Moffat. After returning for 2016s festive episode The Return of Doctor Mysterio, he seems to have full sidekick status in Series 10. BBC The new companion Pearl Mackie joins the cast this year as Bill, the Doctors new companion. We dont know much about her yet, but she seems more in the ordinary girl on extraordinary adventures vibe of Billie Pipers Rose Tyler than Moffats usual penchant for magical time-warping women. BBC Like and subscribe Were giving a thumbs-up to this new robot design which, as Bill points out, speaks emoji. Dont we all these days. BBC Back in time Its been a while since Doctor Who had a proper good old back-in-time romp. One story looks set to find Bill and the Doctor in 1814, a year which saw George Stephenson launch his first locomotive, and something called the London Beer Flood which might sound great, but demolished buildings and killed a number of people. BBC Something fishy There seems to be a water-centric episode, with several shots of sentient liquid and this huge monstrous eye. BBC Call in the exterminators It wouldnt be a series of Doctor Who without at least one Dalek story. This scene looks similar to the one which revealed the casting of Mackie as Bill, where the Doctor and his mystery companion found themselves running away from the iconic aliens. BBC New evolutions Immediately after the shot of the Dalek we know and love comes this a girl who seems to consist of water and says one very telling word: exterminate. Could the water story and the Dalek story be one and the same? BBC Nightmare fodder The family-friendly show usually includes one or two especially scary episodes per series and these new foes look set to haunt kids nightmares for weeks to come. BBC Familiar foe Michelle Gomez is confirmed to return as Missy, the latest incarnation of nefarious Time Lord sort-of villain The Master. Shes been a highlight of Capaldis run but will she be regenerating by the end of the series as well as The Doctor? BBC Sneaky creakers This wooden creature bears more than a passing resemblance to the tree creatures found in 2011 Christmas Special, The Doctor The Widow and the Wardrobe. BBC Special specs Brace yourselves, it looks like those hugely divisive sonic sunglasses (in lieu of the typical screwdriver) are making a comeback. BBC Blast from the past Much has been made of the return of the original Mondasian Cybermen, which havent been featured on the show in over 50 years. Apparently theyre a firm favourite of Capaldi, and are thought to play a part in his final episodes. BBC Scaled up Its not just the Daleks that might be getting a makeover this reptilian creature bares more than a passing resemblance to the Silurians, but theyve never looked exactly like this before. BBC New accessory If the return of the sonic sunglasses hint that the Doctors current blue screwdriver gets broken somehow, heres another interesting tidbit is that a new red screwdriver wheeling through the air? BBC The new fans This broad appeal will come as no surprise to Brian Minchin, the shows executive producer since 2013. Weve always known that for Doctor Who to thrive, its got to work on Saturday night on BBC1, he says. Like many of those who work on the show, Minchin is a long-term, serious fan: So yes, we can be tempted sometimes to bring characters back, or we find writers making in-jokes, referencing an episode in 1982, say. And we go, like, Oh well, lets just take that out then. We try and police ourselves quite rigorously, actually. As well as crossing age brackets and bridging the divide between casual viewers and obsessive Whovians, the shows reach is impressively global. As a BBC moneyspinner, it was only ever rivalled by Top Gear. You feel that responsibility because right around the world people are willing you to make amazing episodes and get everything right, says Minchin. Yet still theyre always on the lookout for new recruits. If youve never seen an episode before, series 10s opener, The Pilot, makes for an especially enticing introduction and thats by design. I think its one of our most welcoming starts, says Minchin. The new showrunner Man in charge: Chris Chibnall will be the new showrunner of Doctor Who in 2018 / IROZ GAIZKA/AFP/Getty Have you been keeping up with Broadchurch? Not as closely as the Doctor Who team, wed hazard, because Broadchurch creator Chris Chibnall will soon be taking over from current head honcho Steven Moffat, with this years Christmas special acting as their handover. What can we expect from the Chibnall era? Lingering shots of the famously picturesque Gallifreyan clifftops? A long diversion into the technicalities of the Time Lord legal system? Or perhaps Olivia Colman as the new Doctor? Hes keeping his cards very close to his chest, so its quite hard to speculate, says Minchin, but then, Chris has all of time and space to play with, really. I think it will be fantastic. The new star 10 actors who could realistically be the new Doctor Who 1 /13 10 actors who could realistically be the new Doctor Who Russell Tovey If the BBC want to go for a younger but still well-known actor, 35 year-old Russell Tovey could be the one. Despite making a move to the US for HBO drama Looking, hes also starred in The Night Manager and Sherlock in recent years. Oh, and hes been in Doctor Who before in David Tennants final episode, The End of Time BBC Daniel Kaluuya The multi-talented Daniel Kaluuya got his break starring in and writing for Skins, and starred in David Tennant-era Who story Planet of the Dead. Hed be a fresh new face for the show although his schedule is getting busy with a role in Marvels forthcoming Black Panther BBC Phoebe Waller-Bridge BBC Three comedy-drama Fleabag is universally beloved by everyone whos seen it and she could be a strong choice as the first female Doctor. She starred in the second series of Broadchurch, so shes certainly on showrunner Chris Chibnalls radar ITV Jonathan Bailey If Chibnall continues in the typical Doctor Who mould, Jonathan Bailey is a strong bet. Not only has he made a brief appearance on the show before in Peter Capaldi episode Time Heist, but hes had a recurring role in Broadchurch too ITV Michaela Coel The genius behind Chewing Gum would bring a perfect off-kilter, high-energy, alien vibe that the Time Lord really needs and recent appearances in Black Mirror and London Spy showed off her range. Coel would be a bold new face for Doctor Who Rebecca Reid Chris Addison Another bigger-name actor who might take on the role is The Thick of Its Chris Addison. He had a role in Capaldis first Doctor Who series, and would fit the typical nerdy vibe associated with the show Channel 4 Hayley Atwell Word is that Hayley Atwell, aka the Marvel Cinematic Universes Peggy Carter, is keen to play the Doctor and a big fanbase would be thrilled to see that happen. She can do action-packed sci-fi roles, and is looking for something new after her US legal drama Conviction was sadly cancelled ABC Zawe Ashton Having made a name for herself in Fresh Meat and Not Safe for Work, Zawe Ashton would make a great headstrong female Doctor. She also put in a great turn in Doctor Who as a rebel soldier in one of Capaldis first episodes Ruby Films Joivan Wade Hes probably still a bit too young, but having made a great impression as Rigsy in Series 8 and 9, Joivan Wade is well versed in the world of Doctor Who. Maybe once his time on EastEnders is up, he could be ready to be a Time Lord himself Tristan Fewings/Getty Images Olivia Colman With The Night Manager pushing her firmly into national treasure territory, Olivia Colman is likely too big for Doctor Who but if anyone could persuade her it might be Chris Chibnall. She previously starred in Matt Smiths first Doctor Who episode as a sharp-toothed shape-shifting monster BBC Chibnall will also have to make his biggest decision right out of the gate who to cast as the shows new lead. With a woman at No 10 and his old Broadchurch colleague Phoebe Waller-Bridge the odds-on favourite, theres a feeling that Chibnall might be about to break with tradition and cast the first female Doctor. Not everyone would be celebrating. Oh, God forbid, no! Oh, absolutely not! says Looseley-Saul. I hate to say that, as I am a woman running my company, but it would ruin it for me, personally. Doctor Who is your favourite uncle. You always have aunties that you absolutely love but your favourite uncle is your favourite uncle. The new medium Its not just Doctor Who thats currently negotiating a period of uncertainty so too is TV as a whole. Yet this show seems particularly well-suited to ride out the existential threat of internet streaming and mobile devices. It manages to be perfectly suited to the small screen while simultaneously operating on a grand scale note the new series use of pop culture metaphors to explain the illusion of time. There are still other shows which can unite the whole family around a TV set but very few of them also inspire huge online communities dedicated to discussing arcane story details. For individuals, industries and entire galaxies, Doctor Whos secret to handling change is the same: embrace it as the only constant. Follow Ellen E Jones: @MsEllenEJones ALLIANCE Rick Kuckkahn has more than 30 years of experience as a city manager, and now hes serving the people of Alliance full-time. Kuckkahn was hired in September 2016 as Alliances interim city manager, and was a city manager in Rockville, Maryland, prior to serving as the city manager for Scottsbluff, a position where he served in for 18 years before he retired last spring. At Tuesday nights Alliance city council meeting, Kuckkahn was appointed full-time. The city council approached me after I retired from Scottsbluff and asked if Id serve as the interim manager until they could hire a new one, Kuckkahn said. Kuckkahn said that the city advertised in trade journals, but when the search came up short, they hired a consultant who rounded out more candidates. As the search narrowed, the council knew they already found their man. Theyve been satisfied with what Ive done over the past seven months as an interim, he said. And Ive been really impressed with the council and the staff here, so there was a mutual good feeling about what was happening. After receiving the offer, Kuckkahn said hed evaluated the friendships hes made in Alliance, and felt that the position fit him well. Now hes ready to get several projects going. Alliance is in a really great financial position, he said. Our services are really diverse, from our city-run airport, city-run electric utility, and the traditional services like streets, roads and sewers, and a great financial situation. Im getting into a situation where theres complexity to keep it very interesting, and financial resources to do the things that need to get done. Kuckkahn said some of the priorities hes identified are street and road surfacing projects, rehabilitating Laing Lake in the northern part of the city, and cosmetic improvements like repainting the water tower. He said that area agriculture and the railroad industry have contributed greatly to the health and stability of not only the economy, but the community in Alliance, and that he hopes it will continue. The coal issue will certainly have an impact long-term on the rail industry, he said. But you have to have confidence that rail-lines will adjust to changing times too. There was a time where trains carried only passengers out to the west, and that changed to coal over time. We hope that industry is sophisticated enough to see the trends and adjust with them. There were many educational opportunities for students at the first stand-alone event for the Wyoming Air National Guard at the Western Nebraska Regional Airport on April 6. Wyoming Air National Guard Technical Sergeant Brandon Rodriguez said they flew out a Lockheed C-130 Hercules and they had other displays set up. Rodriguez said the day was a way for people to get familiar with the Air National Guard and see the multiple opportunities presented with the Air Guard. There was a recruiting table set up and people were able to see the C-130 up close, talk to some of the flight crew and people who are taking part in a career field with the Air National Guard. There were about 30 guardsmen at the event from various career fields. Among those who were interested in enlisting in the Wyoming Air National Guard was McKayla Soto, Gering High School junior. She was interested in the security forces division of the Wyoming Air National Guard. None of her friends have been in the military, which is one reason why she is interested. She said she learned a lot and one of the things she learned is that she will need more muscle. Alex Ossian, junior at GHS, said he is looking into all of the options to have military college benefits as well as doing an assignment for his video production class. He talked to them about job opportunities and said he would be interested in a type of mechanic position. He said he learned a lot about mechanical information of the plane. The unit which uses the C-130 is the 153d Airlift Wing. One of the big things we have there is a medical evacuation squadron where we have a bunch of flight nurses and med techs who basically turn the back of the C-130 into a flying hospital, Rodriguez said. The C-130 is also equipped with a modular airborne fighting system that is used to fight forest fires. Rodriguez said the aircraft is also good for training opportunities and federal deployments to drop cargo from the back. The plane is also capable of a lot of aerial jumps where parachuters drop out of the back of the plane. Matthew Dobbins, propulsion specialist for the 153d maintenance squadron, troubleshoots and does preventive maintenance for the C-130. If there are any problems whatsoever with the engine, its our responsibility to fix them, Dobbins said. There are multiple inspections done for the aircraft and he said people in his position are responsible for the entire system from the propellers to the engines. He said propulsion specialists do see the road quite a bit. Anytime the engine goes out for more than a few days, it could be a week or more that they have to go out. They even do some monthly missions. He said the C-130 is very efficient and that is doesnt have many catastrophic failures. Somebody in Dobbins position goes through 12 weeks of training plus basic training. After twelve weeks, he said, they are ready to go and then there is a year of somebody supervising the work done. Ive been doing this for five years now and Im expected to know what to do on my own, Dobbins said. Rodriguez said there are a lot of career opportunities and 100-150 positions that could be filled currently with the Wyoming Air National Guard. There are openings in everything from support services, which deals with careers in culinary arts, fitness and hotel management, to air transportation where they pack and load pallets onto the C-130. Rodriguez said there is also a lot of cyber positions and positions in the aircraft maintenance field. Were always looking for people to come out and come talk to us, Rodriguez said. LINCOLN A former Sheridan County attorney has been appointed by Gov. Pete Ricketts to a judgeship. On Thursday, Gov. Pete Ricketts announced his appointment of John R. Freudenberg to the County Court for the Third Judicial District of Nebraska. Freudenberg, 47, is the Criminal Bureau Chief at the Nebraska Attorney Generals Office. In this role, he supervises the prosecution, investigation, and criminal appeals sections as well as assists the Attorney General with his legislative agenda. Freudenberg was previously a partner at Smith, King, and Freudenberg in Gordon. Additionally, he served as the Sheridan County Attorney from 2003-2007. Freudenberg holds a Bachelor of Arts in Criminal Justice with minors in Legal Studies and Mathematics from Chadron State College. He received his Juris Doctor from the University of Nebraska College of Law. Freudenberg chairs the Nebraska Commission on Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice and is a past president of the Nebraska County Attorneys Association. The Third Judicial District for the County Court consists of portions of Lancaster County. The vacancy is due to the resignation of Judge Thomas Fox effective Jan. 5. Ronald D. Reifschneider. 70 of Minatare passed away Tuesday April 4, 2017 with loved ones at his side after a brief battle with cancer. His funeral service will be held on Saturday, April 8, 2017 at 9:30 a.m. at Salem Congregational Church with Pastor Dale Brown officiating. Interment will follow at West Lawn Cemetery in Gering. Visitation will be Friday from 1-5 p.m. at Dugan Kramer Funeral Chapel with family service at 5p.m. In lieu of flowers, memorials may be given to Arrids Acres to be designated by his family. Tributes of sympathy may be left at www.dugankramer.com. Ron was born on January 21, 1947 at rural Bayard, Nebraska son of Alex H and Emma (Maier) Reifschneider. He was raised and educated in Minatare, NE. Graduated from Scottsbluff High School in 1965. He also attended Denver Automotive Institute in Denver, Colorado in 1966. He farmed in the Minatare, Scottsbluff and Mitchell area from 1968-1994, raising sugar beets, beans, corn and alfalfa. He was High Ten sugar producer for the Scottsbluff District in 1977. Shortly after high school, he worked for Magnolia Mobile Homes 1966-1967. After retiring from farming in 1994, Ron worked for Case IH as a salesman for a short time. In 1995, he worked at Gering Irrigation District for 2 years. In 1997, he went to work for Farmer Irrigation District as an equipment operator and ditch rider. Ron liked working with water and the farmers that he knew all over the area. In 1999, Ron went to work for his brother Dennis, regional manager for Furst McNess Company in Gering, NE, hauling feed over the road with his semi-tractor trailer. Ron also drove rehaul semi for Great Western and Western Sugar hauling beets several winters. From the time, he was about 26 years 1976 to 2000. He then semi-retired to help farm the Farm & Ranch museum until 2003. He was one of a few who formed the original museum now called the Legacy of the Plains. He implemented the Antique Tractor show for many years at the Scottsbluff County Centennial. His most memorable time was having Senator Bob Kerry drive his Farmall F-30 during his campaign event. He was also on the Board of Directors for a short time at Lake Minatare School District. Ron had numerous hobbies from a time when in grade school starting with collecting just about anything that was old coins, stamps, old machinery, tractors, old cars, hot rods, and riding his sons Harley Davidson motorcycle. He enjoyed traveling to the Black Hills to visit his daughter and spend time together. He won many ribbons and awards at several parades with various tractors. His favorite tractor was driving the museums 1895 Waterloo Steam Engine and explaining how it works to several school students throughout the area. Ron learned to work hard from the time he was in the 4th grade. He was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous at Arrids Acres Scottsbluff with over 40 years sobriety. Survived by his love of his life, Peggy Hall. Earlene mother of his children, Ryan (Michelle) of Mitchell, Ne and Kim (Phil) of Custer, SD; grandchildren Chloey and Keegan Reifschneider of Scottsbluff, NE; brother Dennis (Connie) Reifschneider of Windsor, CO and sister Janet (Alvin Rhamig) of Gering, NE; and sister-in-law Susan Reifschneider of Aurora, CO, and numerous aunts and uncles, nieces, nephews, and cousins. He is preceded in death by his parents, Alex and Emma Reifschneider, brother Alvin Reifschneider. Floor debate on priority bills continued this week. It was the first week of full day sessions with all of the committee hearings behind us. Debate on mandatory minimum sentences for people convicted of human trafficking (LB 289) was very spirited and took up two full days. I was surprised by the number of Senators who objected to tough, long sentences in prison for people convicted of this despicable crime. I certainly didnt object. LB 356, a bill that would fund about $75,000 for a Civic Engagement program faced tough bi-partisan debate, so much so the Speaker used a very rare rule and put a Speaker Hold on the bill so it could be properly amended. The tough debate on this bill I believe foreshadows things to come. We have a very tough budget situation where we are nearly $1 billion dollars in the red. Bills that will cut tens of millions in spending are coming up. Every penny counts, even $75,000 for civic engagement. Had the speaker not put this bill on hold, I would have voted against it. We MUST cut spending. We have no choice. Nebraskas Constitution requires a balanced budget. I am so thankful it does. The Revenue Committee has met in Executive Session all week. So far, they havent reported any bills to the floor. By my count there are about fifteen bills that address property taxes in the Revenue Committee. The governors bill, LB 338, will likely come out of the committee, as well as others. My bill, LB 576, would cap property taxes for four years beginning in 2019. I think its a great idea, but I am not filled with optimism this bill will make it out of the Revenue Committee. There are quite a few really good ideas on property taxes in the form of several different bills this session. I think there will be a bill come out that is amended to include a number of these different good ideas. My priority bill, LB 340, was advanced to Enrollment and Review on a 39-0 vote last week. This bill will reorganize State agencies so the Department of Veterans Homes will come out of the Department of Health and Human Services and go under the Director of Veterans Affairs. It is going to be on the agenda next week for debate and voting to select file. I dont want to jinx it, but I think this will be the very first piece of legislation I get signed into law by the Governor. It saves tax money and delivers better care for Nebraskas Veterans. I received a lot of calls this week on LB 502. This bill would establish Constitutional Carry of firearms, otherwise known as Permit-less Carry. This has generated a lot of interest both pro and con. This caused me to learn an old political lesson. I learned that the voices of opposition are always more numerous and much louder than the voices of support. I mention that because it is just as important for me to receive calls and letters from people who support something I am doing as it is for me to hear from those who oppose something before the legislature. I do my best to represent the 43rd District. To do that, I need to hear from everyone. No matter which side of something you are on, please take a few seconds and give us a call. 402-471-2628. I want to thank everyone who contacts my office letting us know where you stand on bills before the legislature. Please keep your calls and letters coming. Please contact the office if you would like to set up a time to visit with me, or you have any concerns about what is happening in your legislature. The Romanian Orthodox Church spent 21 million euro in 2016 for social assistance and philanthropy, according basilica.ro. "The Romanian Orthodox Church is constantly working for the good of fellow human beings. Throughout the eparchies of the Romanian Patriarchy social-charitable and medical activities are being carried out in 718 institutions and social services. Currently, there are 617 ongoing projects and social programmes. Only in the last five years, for supporting all the social assistance and philanthropy activities and to support victims of the floods, the Romanian Patriarchate have spent over 100 million euro. In 2016, the spending amounted to 21 million euro, " the release says. According to basilica.ro, among social institutions, St. Hierarch Leontie Radauti children Establishment stands out; located near Bogdana Monastery, the establishment for orphans and children from broken families, is the largest of its kind hosting over 120 children and young people. Daily, 50 elderly people receive palliative care at St. Nectarie centre in Bucharest and in establishments from Plopului Valley and Screzii Valley over 500 people receive shelter and assistance. Funds were also allocated for the construction of Nera Clinic, located in the vicinity of the Monastery bearing same name, where cancer patients will be taken care of. At the end of 2015 the first ambulance service in the Romanian Patriarchate was opened in Bistrita. Among BOR's social philanthropic establishments there are also social canteens and bakeries, institutions that offer medical and pharmaceutical services, day care centers for children and the elderly, family centers, social kindergartens and afterschools, protected homes, emergency centres (for homeless people, victims of domestic violence, victims of trafficking), the source further reads. agerpres. ST. LOUIS A federal appeals court has upheld a jury award of $500,000 to an Overland woman, saying that jurors had ample evidence to find that her mortgage services company acted with a reckless indifference to her rights. Jeannie May, of Overland, has not received the money. Her lawyers said Thursday that Nationstar Mortgage LLC has several days to appeal the decision. But May said her whole goal was to get them exposed, because nobody should have to go through this. Theyre taking advantage of people, she said. May called the experience completely devastating. Youre fighting a big machine, and you have no control, she said. At one point, she and her adult son had packed half their things and stored them with Mays ex-husband, out of fear that someone would show up at the door and kick them out. Mays lawyer, Luke Wallace, of Tulsa, Okla., said that Mays case was the first to try and hold Nationstar accountable. His colleague, David Humphrey, said the company has thousands of complaints with the Better Business Bureau and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. They dont spend any money to do their job. They collect their fees. They bully the consumer if payments dont match what their records show, he said. The CFPB fined the company $1.75 million last month, saying it consistently failing to report accurate data about mortgage transactions for 2012 through 2014. It is the largest fine by the agency to date. The company, in a statement in response to the fine, said, The settlement does not reflect any wrongdoing impacting customers or fair lending; but rather, technical data issues that we have worked tirelessly to resolve through significant investments. The statement says the company regrets the mistakes that led to the reporting errors. These data issues are not reflective of our customer and compliance-driven business practices, and we remain committed to treating every applicant fairly and responsibly. The company declined to comment on Mays lawsuit. The March 29 appeals court opinion says that May bought the house in 2007 with a $100,000 mortgage, and shortly thereafter filed for bankruptcy. As part of the bankruptcy process, she entered a five-year plan to pay down the mortgage, including the back payments. Nationstar acquired her mortgage while the bankruptcy case was pending. At the completion of the bankruptcy process in 2013, May asked for monthly mortgage statements. The first mortgage statement erroneously included thousands of dollars in lender-paid expenses, and the company had improperly debited $5,162 instead of giving her a $51 credit, creating a $8,534.94 delinquency, the court opinion says. Nationstar then initiated collection efforts. Although May contacted the company repeatedly, Nationstar didnt correct the errors and repeatedly called May at home and at work. Nationstar also told May to leave her home or accept a loan modification that would have added in the companys errors to her principal. She refused, but they modified her loan anyway and then stopped accepting her mortgage payments and started the foreclosure process because her payments didnt match what they thought due, the opinion says. Even after May hired a lawyer, the company failed to research her claims, the opinion says. May, then 59, sued in St. Louis County Circuit Court in 2014 after Nationstar began preparing for a foreclosure sale. The company later removed the case to federal court. After a trial in November 2015 in U.S. District Court in St. Louis, jurors awarded May actual damages of $50,000 and punitive damages of $400,000 for invasion of privacy, and $50,000 in actual damages for negligent violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act. May testified at trial that Nationstar employees spoke to her in a mocking and sarcastic manner at times, and that the stress triggered physical ailments. After the trial, U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas C. Mummert III also awarded Mays lawyers $376,000 in attorneys fees and costs. The three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Court of Appeals last month rejected Nationstars claims that the punitive damages were excessive. The court said there was evidence that Nationstars conduct was reprehensible, as the severe stress caused abdominal pain, vomiting, depression and anxiety to a financially vulnerable woman, and repeatedly invaded her privacy with phone calls and inspections of her home. Nationstar was successful in excluding from the trial any discussion of other complaints against the company. The appeals court said that Mummert was within his discretion to avoid having a mini-trial about another borrowers experience. Nationstar, based in Texas, also has employees in the St. Louis area. It calls itself one of the largest and fastest growing mortgage servicers in the U.S., citing a servicing portfolio of $473 billion, but ranks near the bottom of a recent J.D. Power satisfaction study. May said that she wanted to move, but Nationstars errors made that impossible. She now hopes again to move and make sure I dont end up with Nationstar. MOBILE, Ala. In the years since the 2008 financial crisis, this southern U.S. port city has attracted a new Airbus factory, seen its steel industry retool, and gained thousands of jobs building the Navys new combat vessel. Some 300 miles north in Huntsville, new businesses sprout in farm fields drawn by readily available land, low taxes, flexible labor rules and improving infrastructure. As President Donald Trump faces pressure to deliver on his promise to revive manufacturing in the northern Rust Belt states that put him in the White House, his biggest challenge may not be Mexico or China, but the southern U.S. states that form the other pillar of his political base. States such as Alabama have built a presence in the global supply chain in direct competition with the countrys Midwestern industrial heartland, and even if Trump coaxes jobs back to the United States they may well head south rather than north. Whether the Rust Belts expectations are met will be central to 2018 U.S. midterm elections and likely frame the presidential race in 2020. Southern states are reliably Republican, but the partys ability to repeat its success in Midwestern swing states, such as Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin, may hinge on whether the Trump administration delivers on its economic promises. For a decade now, nine Southern states North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas together have accounted for a larger share of the U.S. economy than nine Northern states that defined the U.S. as the 20th centurys industrial superpower, according to a Reuters analysis of federal data. The analysis compared gross domestic product, population and other factors among Northern and Midwestern states that played a key role in Trumps victory or are typically considered part of the industrial heartland, with those in the South and along the Gulf Coast that have become an emerging destination for auto and other investment. Florida, a state whose population has boomed under an influx of retirees, many of them from the North, was excluded. Free land and degrees Economists and industrial site consultants say the reasons behind the trend have moved beyond lower wages and lower levels of unionization. Per capita income in the South has now almost caught up with that in the Midwest, and its skilled workforce continues to grow as college graduates move in. Labor? Perceived advantages. Taxes? Some of these are fairly low (tax) states. Real estate? For big projects that are going to employ three, four, five thousand people, you can find free land zero-cost land, said Darin Buelow, an industrial site specialist with Deloitte Consulting. In the South, business executives and development officials interviewed by Reuters were less likely to call for new tariffs and trade deals than to worry about how any new regime may disrupt a system they have learned to work with. David Fernandes, president of Toyota Motor Manufacturing Alabama, said that of the roughly 700,000 engines the factory made last year, half went to Mexico and Canada. The facility also makes engines for cars assembled at a Toyota plant in Georgetown, Ky. Anything that hinders the opportunity to provide product to a customer is what is concerning, he said. Plants in Kentucky and Indiana gave Toyota a U.S. foothold in the 1980s and 1990s, but in this century the Japanese carmaker turned to Alabama, Texas and Mississippi for expansion. Located on former cotton fields, the companys Huntsville, Ala., plant now employs more than 1,400 people and churns out about 3,000 engines a day. Gunmaker Remington Outdoor came to Huntsville lured by $110 million in tax and other concessions. Its factory here is expected to eventually employ 2,000, and it has already begun shifting employees from elsewhere, including 100 from the town in upstate New York where the company was founded two centuries ago. Jeremy Littlejohn moved his cloud computing startup RISC Networks from Chicago to Asheville, N.C., in 2012 for the less hectic pace, but has found the location a selling point as he grew from six to 33 employees. Many of those new workers came from out of state, contributing to North Carolinas net annual influx of about 46,000 college degree holders. That migration of educated workers is the norm among Southern states. The Rust Belt by contrast saw a net outflow of more than 400,000 residents with college degrees between 2007 and 2014. The customers are heading south too. From 1990 to 2015, population in the nine Southern and Gulf states grew 43 percent, to more than 76 million, and passed that of the Rust Belt states in the late 1990s. Population in the Rust Belt grew 13 percent, to 63 million, over the same period. When the Minnesota-based Polaris Industries Inc. began planning a new facility for its line of outdoor vehicles, there was no Minnesota play, said Eric Blackwell, director of operations at the companys new factory outside Huntsville. The market for Polaris machines, popular for farm work, hunting and sport riding, was growing in the South. Open land was available, and Alabama had programs to help recruit and train a workforce expected to rise to 1,500. From laggard to rising tide Globalization hit both the North and the South hard. Between 2000 and 2010 each lost about a third of their manufacturing jobs. But employment rebounded faster and more broadly in the South. Between 2000 and 2015, combined private sector employment in nine Southern and Gulf Coast states still grew 13.5 percent. In the nine Northern states, total private sector jobs as of 2015 remained 1.3 percent below their 2000 level, according to federal data. The transition dates back to the 1980s, when German and Japanese automakers began investing in what has become a sprawling, regional industry. Supplier networks followed, creating even stiffer competition in an industry already changing because of passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the growth of automaking in Mexico. New industries, such as aerospace, followed. Boeing opened a new factory in Charleston, S.C., while decades of federal spending on space and defense programs created a pool of engineers in Alabama. A surge in energy and locally important industries such as wood products added to the employment gains. Judith Adams, vice president at the Alabama State Port Authority, speeds visitors through warehouses of wood fiber products, steel ingots and other goods ready to ship abroad. The port is spending $47 million to boost its capacity to 500,000 containers a year from 300,000. The longer-term goal is to triple that to 1.5 million. The vessel sizes are getting bigger. The market is getting bigger. The cargo is here, Adams said. When European aircraft maker Airbus scouted sites for its $600 million North American plant more than a decade ago it settled on a former Air Force base in Mobile. As it ramps up production, local officials say 20 suppliers have already arrived in Airbus wake, with firms such as Irelands Maas Aviation looking to put 150 people to work painting planes. We looked at transportation costs, labor costs, productivity and it made sense, said Allan McArtor, chief executive of Airbus Group Inc. We will be building single-aisle airplanes (in Mobile) for a long, long time. Additional reporting by Jonathan Spicer in Cleveland. Coal supplier Peabody Energy is trying to help save one of its biggest U.S. customers. On Thursday, the mining giant released a report it commissioned showing the 2,250-megawatt, coal-fired Navajo power plant in Arizona, the largest in the U.S. West, is capable of making money through 2040, even in an era of cheap natural gas. It's also offering to cut the price the plant pays for its coal. The complex's utility owners have meanwhile said they may have to shut it later this decade due to higher costs. Peabody has joined an escalating fight to keep one of the nation's biggest coal plants alive. Native Americans who work there have turned its survival into a national issue, calling on President Donald Trump to make good on his promise to support coal and protect U.S. jobs. If retired, the complex would join the thousands of megawatts of coal-fired generation that have already shut from mounting costs, environmental regulations and cheap natural gas unleashed by the shale boom. Peabody is helping advance a plan that will make the Navajo plant "one of the most competitive baseload generating stations in the region," Kemal Williamson, Peabody's president for the Americas, said in a statement. Thousands of jobs would be lost if the plant closes, Beth Sutton, a spokeswoman for Peabody, said by phone Thursday. The U.S. Department of the Interior is coordinating talks in Washington next week to keep it running, she said. The four utility owners of the plant are seeking an extension to their lease with the Navajo Nation so they can keep the plant running through 2019, when they can begin the decommissioning process. UNS Energy, which has a 7.5 percent stake in the plant, is in favor of not going beyond the 2019 shutdown date as part of a shift away from coal, but its chief executive officer urged caution. "Knowing the effect it will have on those communities, we're not stepping on the gas," UNS CEO David Hutchens said in an interview at Bloomberg's headquarters in New York on Thursday. "People have woken up and said is there a way to bridge the gap between the 2019 shutdown date and something further off." One idea was to look at providing a transition for the native tribes from coal jobs to other industries or economic activities, he said. Conceived in the 1960s, the plant is located in the Navajo Nation near Page, Ariz. It's jointly owned by state and federal agencies as well as publicly traded utilities. The study commissioned by Peabody was carried out by Navigant Consulting and presented at a working group meeting of the Arizona Corporation Commission in Phoenix. Civil society organisations allege role of upper castes in the mysterious incident Investigation into the death of a Dalit, M. Madhukar, in the Peddapally district of Telangana, allegedly involving the upper castes of his village, took a crucial turn on Thursday. The High Court in Hyderabad directed the authorities to conduct another post-mortem examination of his body. Dalit organisations and people's associations have been agitating for a fortnight to seek justice for Madhukars family. They have alleged that the police are trying to protect the accused by registering a case of suspicious death. The Manthani police of the newly formed Ramagundam police commissionerate, who had stuck to their stand that it was a case of suspicious death, could not explain how Police Inspector Prabhakar had concluded that it was suicide even before doctors confirmed the cause of death, they said. The organisations have accused him of helping the culprits at the behest of Manthanis ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi MLA Putta Madhu who belongs to the upper caste. Commissioner Vikram Jeet Duggal transferred the Inspector two days ago. A resident of Khanapur village, Madhukar, a tractor driver, was reportedly in love with a woman of an upper caste in Venkatapur, located 10 km away. Physical injuries Madhukar left his house on the morning of March 13 and was found dead in the bushes the next day on the village outskirts. There were injuries on his eyes and private parts. He was tortured to death by the womans family members who came to know of their love affair, Madhukar's sibling M. Shekhar alleged. Even as Madhukars family members alleged foul play, the police maintained that Madhukar committed suicide by consuming pesticide. Suspicions raised by the victim's family got support after some photos of his body with injuries surfaced on social media. This weekend and next weekend sold out before the show even opened, but it may still be possible to get tickets for a later performance of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street at Stray Dog Theatre. Go for it. Under the direction of Justin Been, this big, bold show crams the little Tower Grove Abbey with dark comedy, Stephen Sondheims music and an unrelenting, though fortunately theatrical, prospect of evil. Why does it work so well? Beens frankly presentational style, with actors moving around pieces of Rob Lipperts set right in front of us, reveals theatrical secrets. The cast sketches many vivid characters for us: unctuous Beadle Bamford (Mike Wells); a deranged, pathetic Beggar Woman (Kay Love); their many anonymous fellows on the mean streets of Victorian London. The band, led by Chris Petersen, variously attacks (No Place Like London) and caresses (Johanna) the music. But the main thing might be Stray Dogs home, the Tower Grove Abbey. Intimate settings are a special asset for musicals in the wonderfully ignoble line of the 1928 masterpiece The Threepenny Opera, by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. These shows which include Urinetown: The Musical by Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis and the Kander & Ebb twins Cabaret and Chicago work hard to put us off. They all are set in times and places removed from the audience; they all involve seedy milieus where life is pretty cheap. But a small theater pulls us in the opposite direction. It drags us into the action before our eyes or, in this case, all around us, when actors take to the aisles in song and dance. It makes us confront the ugliness of a world where, as the title character sings, The history of the world, my sweet/ Is who gets eaten and who gets to eat. (That has to be an homage to Threepenny, in which the prostitute Jenny makes more or less the same point, but in German.) And it introduces us to perhaps the strangest couple in musical theater: the vengeful barber Sweeney Todd (Jonathan Hey) and his practical, amoral partner in crime, a baker called Mrs. Lovett (Lavonne Byers). Their weaponized performances are tempered to this show, a very funny, absolutely appalling story of greed and lust, murder and cannibalism. Sondheim, who wrote the music and lyrics (the book is Hugh Wheelers), mentions right away that Sweeneys eye is odd. No kidding. Heys eyes, made up to sink deeply into his scarred and shaven skull, are terrifying, empty pools. What does Sweeney see? His beautiful wife and darling baby girl, stolen from him by corrupt Judge Turpin (Gerry Love), who transported him to an Australian penal colony on a trumped-up charge? But Sweeney escaped and returned to London, determined to kill Turpin. A man who makes his living with a straight razor has the means to equal his motive. In his old neighborhood, he meets Mrs. Lovett, baker of The Worst Pies in London. Recognizing him despite the passage of time, she gives him back the tools of his trade. When Sweeney kills someone else who recognizes him, Mrs. Lovett has an insight. (These things just pop into my head, she says brightly, a stroke of the toxic humor that sharply outlines Sweeneys madness.) Her pies are terrible because meat costs too much. And whats a corpse but ...? Thats correct. Serving humans in pastry shells (A Little Priest), the twosome enjoy a burst of success (God, Thats Good) that Mrs. Lovett translates into dreams of domestic bliss (By the Sea). Is her husband a serial killer? Well, why is that her problem? Adding a dash of goofy Lucy Ricardo to Brechts ruthless Jenny, Byers creates a memorably sentimental killer all her own. And Hey clutches Sweeneys obsession as tightly as the handle of a razor. Wanting only one thing, he can feign normality in its service. He lets us see him shoot a conspiratorial glance at Byers, lets us see the thrill coursing through his chest and arms as he spreads shaving cream on a mans bare throat. When he sings Sondheims aching plaint, Ill never see my girl again, Hey seems to crumble, like old plaster. Its almost too painful to watch. Byers and Hey get lots of support from a fine ensemble that includes Eileen Engel as Turpins ward and Cole Gutmann as the sailor who loves her. They could use better enunciation on Kiss Me, which is funny if you can understand it. But their combination of love and nerve comes through. Tyler Cheatem makes a broad comic treat as Sweeneys foppish rival in barbering, and Connor Johnson, as an adorable waif Mrs. Lovett takes in, evokes sweet Oliver Twist, without the happy ending. MAPLEWOOD A second lawsuit was filed Friday claiming the city of Maplewood violates the law by targeting crime victims or victims of domestic violence with nuisance ordinances. The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in St. Louis by the American Civil Liberties Union against the city, City Manager Martin Corcoran, Police Chief Stephen Kruse and Director of Public Works/Assistant City Manager Anthony Traxler. It says that Maplewood banned a disabled woman, Rosetta Watson, from getting housing for six months after she was the victim of domestic violence four times. Corcoran said Friday that he could not comment because he had not yet seen the lawsuit. The suit says that Maplewoods enforcement of its ordinances violates Watson free speech rights as well as her right to equal protection under the law and the federal Violence Against Women Act. Watson began renting a home in Maplewood in June 2010, the suit says, with her rent subsidized by a Section 8 voucher. She was repeatedly attacked by an ex-boyfriend while living there, the suit says. From September 2011 to February 2012, Maplewood police went to Watsons home four times for domestic violence calls. Maplewood then enforced the nuisance ordinance against Watson based on the four police calls, the suit said. After a hearing, Watsons occupancy permit was revoked May 30, 2012, for six months. She was barred from trying to obtain an occupancy permit elsewhere in the city, the suit says. Her ex-boyfriend was arrested May 28, 2012, for assaulting Watson, the suit says. She was attacked and stabbed in the leg in St. Louis, where she moved, the suit claims. Watson feared calling police, the suit says, because of her treatment by Maplewood, but hospital staff notified police about the incident. A suit filed last month by the Metropolitan St. Louis Equal Housing and Opportunity Council said that Maplewood violates the Fair Housing Act and the Missouri Human Rights Act by disproportionately revoking the occupancy permits of African-Americans, women and disabled residents. The group called Maplewoods nuisance ordinance one of the countrys most onerous. At the time, Corcoran denied that the city took any actions based on race, religion, age, [or] gender. How To Be Your Own Music Publicist: Part 1 [Cyber PR] Even in the age of music D.I.Y., publicity is one of the first tasks that many artists outsource. That may not be your best strategy, says Ariel Hyatt and her experienced team at Cyber PR. And even if they do get help, there's a lot that every artist needs to do to set themselves up for PR success. ______________________________ By Ariel Hyatt and the team at Cyber PR The world of music publicity is loud and overwhelming (just like the people in it!) Contrary to prior belief, music PR especially independent music PR is not just about Pitchfork, Stereogum and Rolling Stone. Indie music PR revolves around an entire complex ecosystem of blogs (big and small), podcasters, publicists, fans, concertgoers, promoters, bookers, talent agents, managers, sync licensing people and more that contribute to growing artists careers. With so many possible cooks in the kitchen, its nearly impossible to know who to listen to. The Cyber PR team has years of experience helping independent musicians become their own publicists. While Ariel previously wrote an article about this subject, there have been so many crucial developments to the PR space in recent years (the most significant being the addition of social media), so we figured it was time for a 2017 revamp! Click to download the Ultimate Guide to Music Publicity The State of Music Publicity Now Music publicity has changed radically over the years and will continue to change in the future. 90% of the music journalists that we used to know dont write anymore their publications went away years ago. So, we ventured into the digital world and cultivated relationships with thousands of music blogs online (and thousands more that crop up every year). Its not only about the media, though. Theres no question that music blogs, podcasts, and websites are important, but the internet has brought another huge change to music publicity: the ability to personally connect with fans through social media. Facebook, Twitter, email newsletters, Instagram however you want to reach your fans, social media makes it easy (and often free) to do so. Why does this matter? Because music publicity and social media are now intertwined. In order to get good publicity for your music, you have to have a good social media strategy. It can be challenging to get press if the writers dont see that you already have fans. Music bloggers and journalists are trying to get people to come to their sites theyre not going to write about you (or even listen to your music, really) if theres no proof that at least some people already believe in what youre doing. Therefore, in order to run an effective PR/publicity campaign for your music, you first have to make sure that your social media strategy is solid. We could wax poetic on ways to make your socials great (check out posts on FB and Instagram), but for now, lets focus on the nitty-gritty of how to become your own music publicist. Music publicity, like building a fan base, takes time, dedication and effort. When you are in the throes of a PR campaign the effort sometimes feels Herculean compared to the result (if you gauge the result solely on how many placements you receive). However, with a bit of foresight, organization and grit, you can get good results. Lets get started! The First 5 Steps: Preparing Your Digital Press Kit Writers are very busy people who are constantly working towards a deadline. They get hundreds of emails a day from publicists and artists. Therefore, you should never make a writer work to get any information they may need. A digital press kit will help organize your information so they can immediately access your music and quickly get a sense of who you are. Heres what your press kit should include: Your Music Genres and Comparisons Your Signature Story Photos and Album Artwork Your Socials Our team at Cyber PR has helped to create hundreds of effective press kits, so well give you some tips on how to make the best impression possible. 1. Your Music As a general rule, most writers prefer to get music via SoundCloud links. Unless their submission policy specifically states to send an MP3, DO NOT send files to writers. It clogs up their computers, and quite often your email will just be deleted or be sent right to the spam folder. We have a great 3-part SoundCloud guide if you need to walk yourself through best practices. Make sure you have your full album or EP (along with the artwork) on SoundCloud as one playlist. If the album is not yet available you can set it to private, but make sure you test the link first! The last thing you want is for a writer to click on the link you provided only to find that they cant access your music. If you are leading with just a single, make sure the single is uploaded separately. If you have separate artwork for the single you should definitely include that. If youre trying to get an exclusive premiere, send a private share link like the one above. TIP: On your SoundCloud profile, add a 100 200 word bio (a few captivating sentences), and include all the links to your website & socials, as well as where to find your music on iTunes, Amazon, Bandcamp, Spotify, etc. Music blogs rarely include links to buy, because most new listeners just want to stream, but its always a good idea to have those links available just in case. 2. Genres and Comparisons I know that describing your own music can be a really challenging thing. But bloggers and music journalists are getting pitches constantly, and they dont have the time or the inclination to read two paragraphs about how your music is genre-defying or something equally vague. You need to find a way to quickly describe your music, an elevator pitch that will get the right people interested right away. How does one do this? Choose 2-3 genres that fit your music. Then choose 2-3 soundalike artists. This paints an instant picture of your music. But be careful David Bowie might be your hero, but that doesnt mean your music sounds like his. Get accurate feedback from people you trust, and be as truthful as possible. If you pitch yourself inaccurately, youll miss the opportunity to catch the attention of bloggers who might like your music, while simultaneously annoying bloggers who click on your SoundCloud link, expecting something completely different. 3. Your Signature Story Your Signature Story is the second cornerstone of your brand and your artistry (the first, clearly, is your music). This story shouldnt be bland and boring! It should be personal or painful or revealing in some way, and, of course, interesting to read. The idea here is not to eclipse who you are as an artist or songwriter, but to create a hook an angle that makes you relatable, and reels in a potential fan. A really strong signature story is not easy to create on your own. I strongly advise hiring a bio writer to help you. Include what your music sounds like towards the beginning of your bio. This way, if a writer is pressed for time, she can simply take a sentence or two from your bio and place it directly in the write-up. This is the perfect place for your 2-3 genres and 2-3 comparisons. TIP: Avoid vague cliches such as melodic, brilliant harmonies, masterful guitar playing, tight rhythm section, etc. These are terms that can be used to describe any music. Really think about what makes your music special! 4. Photos & Album Artwork A great photo is crucial. You need at least one photo that is clear, well-lit, and attention-grabbing. You want it to show off your personality and the vibe of your band. Try to avoid the typical band sitting on a couch or band standing up against a wall cliches music writers see about 500 of those a day. Be sure to go to the sites that youre aiming for and see what the cover art they are posting looks like. While your music and art should obviously be your vision, its important to fit in with the other artists on the site as branding is half the battle. eye-catching cover art from MJ Ultra Make sure your photos are easy to locate and download (in hi-res). Ensure that the file is properly named so that if the writer downloads it, it will show up easily in a cluttered file or on a desktop. TIP: Put several color images, both vertical and horizontal, as well as your album artwork on your photos page, so editors can choose the ones they like best and which work best for their specific formats & layout. 5. Your Socials Be sure to include links to your socials! Not only does this give the media a better sense of your music and who you are, it also shows that other people give a damn. The bandwagon effect is a powerful tool in the music industry, and if a blogger sees that people are already excited about you (even if its just your friends!), then its a lot easier for them to get excited about you too. Just make sure that youre actually updating the socials you link to, and if youve gotten any sort of press in the past, make sure to post it. Showing your gratitude and support of the sites/journalists that feature your music makes it much more likely that others will want to feature you too. Prepare Your Kit Now that you have the elements needed for your digital press kit, you have a few options. Presskit.io is a fantastic place to get started. If neither of these are appealing to you, you can also just create an area on your website that houses all of this information. Make sure you update it regularly, though! Theres nothing more unprofessional than sending a press kit with really old, outdated content. Check out our article on making an affordable website HERE. Thats all for now! In Part 2, well show you how to start contacting and establishing relationships with music bloggers! Share on: UPDATED at 6:30 p.m. information about previous incident on MetroLink involving victim NORMANDY A man shot to death on a MetroLink train late Wednesday at a station on the University of Missouri-St. Louis campus had pleaded guilty last year to a violent robbery on a MetroLink train, authorities say. In Wednesdays attack, police say a man shot Jesse Boone, 22, of St. Louis, in the chest as they rode in the back of the train about 11:15 p.m. The shooting followed a fight between Boone and the gunman as their MetroLink train approached the UMSL South station, near Natural Bridge Road. Authorities did not provide a motive. Students riding in the same train car witnessed Wednesday nights shooting and called for help. Police say they caught Djion Oates, 18, fleeing from the train station with a gun. He was charged Thursday with second-degree murder, armed criminal action and unlawful possession of a firearm. He was held with bail set at $500,000, cash-only. The shooting came less than six months after the victim had pleaded guilty to a December 2015 robbery on a MetroLink train in St. Louis. Boone was given a suspended seven-year sentence and put on probation in October, according to court records. Police said the man killed Wednesday lived in the 5600 block of Maple Avenue in St. Louis. The Jesse Boone who pleaded guilty to robbery last year lived in the 4900 block of Maple, according to court records, but a spokeswoman for the St. Louis circuit attorneys office confirmed that they are the same man. St. Louis County police said they were aware of Boones prior robbery conviction in a MetroLink incident. In the 2015 robbery, Boone was part of a group of men who attacked a passenger, leaving him bloodied while other passengers watched but did not intervene. Police said Boone had grabbed the victim from behind while another man hit the victim and others went through his pockets. Boone was charged in March and was sentenced in October after pleading guilty. In Wednesdays shooting, police say that about 50 people were on the train at the time and that about a dozen people witnessed some or all of the fight between Oates and Boone. There was no video surveillance available from the train, Metro said. Neither Boone nor Oates was an UMSL student, police say. Investigators were still trying to determine whether the men knew each other. When the train stopped, the doors opened and the gunman raced off, running south on the tracks. Police officers caught Oates within minutes and recovered a gun. Oates lives in the 6700 block of Thurston Avenue in Berkeley, police said. He is on probation for robbing someone at gunpoint of a PlayStation on Oates 16th birthday. That crime took place in Florissant in 2014. Oates was certified to be charged as an adult. Court records show he pleaded guilty in February 2016, received a suspended execution of sentence and was put on five years probation. As to what led to Wednesday nights fatal shooting, St. Louis County police Officer Benjamin Granda said. We do not have any type of motive for the incident at this time. There were no police or MetroLink public safety officers on the train, though there were police officers and MetroLink officers nearby who were able to quickly respond, according to Granda and Metro spokeswoman Patti Beck. UMSLs chief of police, Forrest Van Ness, said students on the train saw what happened and called police. The students also pressed a mobile app on their phones that alerts campus police. Van Ness said his campus officers arrived at the platform with county police and helped with the preliminary investigation. At the same time, a campus police employee sent the first of three campus alerts via text. Such messages are mandated by federal law. Counseling is available for students who witnessed the shooting. Safety concerns Crime on MetroLink has been an concern systemwide. And last month, a man was fatally shot as he stood on the Busch Stadium platform. Mac Payne, 57, was killed when a gun went off inside a train during an assault and robbery. A bullet passed through a window and struck Payne in the head. A state law on the books since 1993, when MetroLink opened, bars Metro Transit from having its own police force. About 215 people provide security, including 38 county and eight city officers, as well as about a dozen St. Clair County Sheriffs deputies, 120 security guards and 37 Metro public safety officers. The county was planning to go to 44. Beck, the Metro spokeswoman, there arent police officers on every train, and theres not a security guard at every platform, she said. Beck said rider safety is the agencys top priority, and it responded to the shooting at the Busch Stadium platform last month by adding patrols. Obviously, our public safety department is adding patrols and we are using all available resources, she said. We depend on our police partners to keep the transit-riding public safe on the system. Were always looking for ways to make the system safer. Denise Hollinshed of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report. JEFFERSON CITY A measure advancing through the state Legislature would require Missouri police to get a warrant before using controversial cellphone trackers that have been at the center of several legal challenges in St. Louis. Cell site stimulators, also known as Stingrays, mimic cell phone towers, allowing law enforcement to scan personal data on a cellphone and track its location. Their use in St. Louis has been called into question in criminal cases where theyve provided key evidence. Recently, city police began getting warrants instead of just court orders, after transparency concerns were raised. Now, lawmakers are weighing a statewide statute governing the use of the devices in Missouri. For example, under the bill, using a stimulator without a warrant would be a class E felony. It also bars unlawfully collected information from being used as evidence, and limits the warrants to 30 days of use. Illinois lawmakers passed similar regulations last year. Groups like the American Civil Liberties Union have long had qualms with the tracking technology, which is powerful enough to give police access to data from phones in a wide vicinity, not just one belonging to a particular suspect. The proposal requires any court authorization to direct police to limit data collection to the target. Theyd also be required to delete any data they collect from the suspect within 30 days, and data collected from other civilians immediately. Sponsoring Sen. Will Kraus, R-Lees Summit, said if theres a risk of invading privacy, law enforcement should at least have to make their case to a court. I think its only smart for us to make sure we require them to get warrants, if theyre tapping into our cell phones, Kraus said. The Senate gave the bill initial approval on Thursday. The bill is SB 84. ST. LOUIS A man shot outside a bar in St. Louis' Fairground neighborhood just after midnight Friday has died from his injuries at a local hospital, according to St. Louis police. Police identified the man Friday night as Darnell Duff, 34, of the 7200 block of Normandy Place. Police say he was shot several times in the 4100 block of Peck before he collapsed outside a bar across the street. Duff was found unconscious and lying inside the entryway of Marsha's LTD Bar and Grill at 3501 Kossuth Avenue, police said. He had gunshot wounds to his chest and legs. He taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead. Duff had exchanged words with more than one person outside the bar shortly before the shooting, investigators said. He then walked across the street to Peck, where he was shot by several shooters who then fled the scene. Duff collapsed at the bar after he was shot. Police said that no arrests have been made in connection to the shooting. The investigation is ongoing. A woman was injured in the same block in February when a stray bullet was shot through the wall of her apartment. JEFFERSON CITY Missouris auditor will review the states involvement with a Missouri transportation enterprise, after a Post-Dispatch report revealed the FBI is investigating state employees who sit on the nonprofits board of directors while also regulating the industry. HELP Inc., a nonprofit that does business with the state, has invested about $20 million in electronic weigh station technology in Missouri. State regulators who sit on the board of HELP have blocked a Texas-based competitor from entering the market, the Post-Dispatchs Tony Messenger reported. Efforts to keep outside competition from the state raise concerns about a conflict of interest, Missouri Auditor Nicole Galloway said. Missourians are fed up with the appearance of insider games and political favors in Jefferson City, Galloway said in a statement Friday. My review will focus on the use of taxpayer resources and whether actions taken by state officials were appropriate. Among those officials are Col. Bret Johnson, former superintendent of the Highway Patrol, and Scott Marion, head of the Motor Carrier Services for MoDOT, who sat on the nonprofits board while also serving the state. Others who have gone on to work for HELP after regulating it as a state employee include Jan Skouby, Marions predecessor as head of motor carrier services, and former Highway Patrol Maj. Greg Kindle. I inherited a mess! President Trump complained at a news conference with Jordans King Abdullah II on Wednesday afternoon. For the second day in a row, he blamed President Barack Obamas administration for Tuesdays chemical weapons attack by Syrias Bashar Assad regime and, for good measure, he blamed his predecessor for one of the worst deals I have ever witnessed, with Iran. Whether its the Middle East, whether its North Korea, whether its so many other things, whether its in our country, horrible trade deals I inherited a mess, he repeated. No, Mr. President, were the ones who inherited a mess. Problems are piling up quickly, and Trump is pointing his finger everywhere but inward. President George W. Bush years ago spoke of ushering in a new era of personal responsibility. Now, Trump has ushered in his own era of personal responsibility: Everything is the responsibility of other persons. Much has been said of Trumps attempt to blame this weeks attack in Syria on Obama, because Obama didnt enforce his 2012 red line against the Assad regime using chemical weapons. This blame shifting might have worked better if the attack hadnt happened on Trumps watch and if Trump himself hadnt strenuously and repeatedly opposed military action against Assad. This was just the latest item on a long and growing list of Trumps problems that he blames on others. Here is a partial compilation of his buck-passing since taking office: He blamed the failure of the GOP health care bill on Democrats, moderate Republicans, conservative Republicans in the House Freedom Caucus, the Heritage Foundation, the Club for Growth and, indirectly, House Speaker Paul Ryan. He blamed a Yemen counterterrorism raid that didnt go according to plan both on his generals and on Obama. He blamed airport protests of his travel ban on a Delta Air Lines systems outage and on the tears of Senator (Chuck) Schumer. He pre-emptively blamed future terrorist attacks on the judge who blocked the travel ban and on the court system. He blamed his own decision to remove national security adviser Michael Flynn on the intelligence community, the media and Democrats trying to cover up Hillary Clintons loss. He blamed his loss of the popular vote on voter fraud. He blamed Democrats for the long-running investigation into his contacts with Russia. He blamed the intelligence community for leaking information about his contacts with Russia, comparing their actions to those seen in Russia or Nazi Germany. He blamed the media for inventing a narrative that he criticized the intelligence community. Trump blamed Obama and his people both for leaks and for widespread public protests against the administration. He blamed Obama for a nonexistent wiretap of Trump Tower. His aides blamed British intelligence for being involved. Trump aide Kellyanne Conway blamed Australia for leaking a transcript of their prime ministers contentious phone call with Trump. Trump himself suggested that an unidentified somebody might be to blame for anti-Semitic vandalism and threats as part of a false-flag operation. He blamed Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., for failing to schedule a meeting with him on the cost of prescription drugs. He blamed Senate Democrats for failing to confirm his nominees; The New York Times noted this week that nominees to 21 out of 28 Treasury Department posts havent been named. Trump blamed his staff for giving him bad information when he falsely claimed that he had the largest electoral victory since Ronald Reagan. He blamed Nordstrom for treating Ivanka Trump so unfairly by dropping her fashion line. And, of course, he has blamed the media for everything: for playing down the crowd size at his inauguration, for portraying him (accurately) as sympathetic to WikiLeaks, for not telling the truth about Obamacare and for failing to report that the White House is running so smoothly. All presidents, to some extent, try to blame predecessors. But never has the office been occupied by such a prodigious blame-shifter. On his way to the White House, Trump blamed Clinton for starting the birther movement, blamed Mexico for exporting criminals, blamed his failure to release tax returns on an audit, blamed China for problems with North Korea and blamed George W. Bush for the 9/11 attacks. The harsh response to Trumps Syria statement this week suggests the buck-passing may be losing its charm. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told CNN that Assad had been encouraged by Trumps hands-off attitude toward the regime, calling it another disgraceful chapter in American history. Tough words but who could blame him? Dana Milbank Washington Post A fatal shooting on MetroLink Wednesday night the second on transit system property in just over two weeks underscores the need for security improvements to make the system safe for riders instead of a magnet for criminality. The public is losing confidence in Metro, partly because authorities refuse to release crime data and have rebuffed senior city and county officials demands for transparency and accountability. Metro Transit, which oversees the areas public transportation system, says it wont release the numbers because they dont paint an accurate picture of crime. Thats a flimsy excuse, and it is not the agencys job to determine whether crime statistics on MetroLink properties present a skewed safety picture. Authorities must stop diverting responsibility by claiming its the job of local police to collect crime data. The Post-Dispatchs Leah Thorsen and Walker Moskop wrote last month that the newspaper has been trying since October to get data for crimes reported on MetroLink the past five years. Metro responded that it doesnt generate and maintain crime data and police reports and doesnt have to comply with public-information laws because it is an interstate compact agency operating in Missouri and Illinois. Sunshine laws in both states require release of publicly available information. Bi-State Development must comply with laws in the states where it operates. Metros budget of about $309 million is supported by taxpayers, with roughly 43 percent from St. Louis County. St. Louis city voters on Tuesday approved a half-cent sales tax increase to help launch the first phase of the citys portion of a north-south MetroLink line. In trying to convince voters of the need for additional money, supporters touted increased public safety as a campaign selling point. Security is something voters care about and may have influenced the election outcome. John Nations, Bi-States president and chief executive officer, should respond by releasing the data to show how additional funds will keep riders and bystanders safe on MetroLink property. Providing the data could bolster enthusiasm for his request to increase authority for security guards and Metro public safety officers. By hiding data, he weakens his case. St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger and county police Chief Jon Belmar are among those dissatisfied with Bi-States refusal to release crime data. Likewise for St. Louis police Chief Sam Dotson and Washington University, whose students and staff are among the systems biggest users. Lyda Krewson, the newly elected mayor of St. Louis, says the city needs to get serious about security deficiencies. Metro riders are barred from carrying guns, but that hasnt stopped some. Riders jump on trains for free because there are no turnstiles or ticket takers. The systems security needs an overhaul or riders will simply stop using it, no matter how many new lines are added. What has happened to our powers of discernment and our ability to see these people for what they are, which is that they care nothing for us? The 30-year-old actress, Lindsay Lohan, has published several photos of her in the Islamic swimsuit known as the Burkini. In these photos that were taken in Phuket, Thailand, last week, Lohan was spotted wearing a Burkini from head to toe before she was seen paddle boarding. According to her Instagram, Lindsay Lohan headed to Thailand for a week, after she had been in Dubai for a family visit. The 30-year-old-actress had already announced that she is studying Islam and the Quran. She stated that she has found peace in it, saying that no one can convert to a new religion overnight because it is a matter of culture and practice. The burkini was first designed by Aheda Zanetti in Australia for women who want to uphold modesty traditions. The Australian designer Zanetti has said many non-Muslim women have bought the design, including Hindus, Christians and others. She said that about 40 percent of the customers are estimated to be non-Muslims. Pakistans National Security Adviser Nasser Janjua, while defending General Raheel Sharifs decision to lead the Saudi-backed military alliance, rejected the notion that the former army chief would do anything against Iran. Addressing the 'Leaders in Islamabad' business summit, Janjua addressed many of the misconceptions held about Pakistan. He told the attendees that globally Pakistan is perceived to be a dangerous country, one with a nuclear arsenal that is believed to be unsafe.That it is considered to be interfering in Afghanistan and playing a double game with regards to the Taliban. He stressed that these misconceptions were not the true reflection of Pakistan. Pakistan has fought for the survival of Afghanistan, said the National Security Adviser, adding that Pakistan has shown flexibility in its relations. Janjua explained that while fighting on the frontlines for world peace, Pakistan has paid huge sacrifices over the last four decades. Pakistan has fought alongside America against those behind the 9/11 attacks and has never played a double game, the adviser said before adding that Pakistan acted against the Afghan Taliban and as a result, they created the Pakistani Taliban. Janjua told attendees that the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan is very porous with many points along the border one can cross over, he gave an example of just Khyber Pakhtunkhwa where over 125 such points exist and in Balochistan there are over 200 illegal border crossings that Afghans use to enter Pakistan. He added that there are many villages that sit divided between the two countries. China's nationalistic tabloid, the Global Times, has published an editorial attempting to explain Donald Trump's missile strike against Syria which threatens to shake up his Mar-a-Lago summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. "Trump's decision to attack the Assad government is a show of force from the US president," the editorial reads. "He wants to prove that he dares to do what Obama dared not. He wants to prove to the world that he is no 'businessman president' and that he will use US military force without hesitation when he considers it necessary." Experts believe that Trump may have timed the strike to take place during his dinner with Xi in order to send that message specifically to the Chinese president; illustrating his willingness to use military power to address conflicts that arise in Taiwan, the South China Sea, and, of course, North Korea. Earlier this week, Trump ominously vowed that "If China is not going to solve North Korea, we will." The Global Times fails to speculate on this possiblity. Meanwhile, China has stopped short of condemning the US strikes against a Syrian airfield. "China always opposes the use of force and insists that disputes be solved peacefully through dialogue," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said at a press briefing on Friday, adding that China urges the "protection of security in Syria" in order to prevent the situation from worsening further, calling on relevant parties to "stick to political settlements." "We dont allow anyone, for any purpose, to use chemical weapons," Hua added. However, China has long voted against sanctions and interventions in Syria, even as the number of chemical bombings against civilians continue to rise. Recently, China's official Xinhua news agency has been relaying the Syrian regime's side of the story without criticism. Syria FM confirms rebel depot containing chemical weapons, saying "not logical" for Syria to fire #toxicgas https://t.co/53TQ8iDRNg pic.twitter.com/0RwuaDivaH China Xinhua News (@XHNews) April 6, 2017 Syria "has not, did not and will not" use chemical weapons against Syrian people or even against terrorists: Syrian FM pic.twitter.com/8AXC5bVeBX China Xinhua News (@XHNews) April 7, 2017 More substantive talks between Xi and Trump will commence later today. Already, Trump claims that the two leaders have "developed a friendship." Clayton Mitchell New Zealand First MP Spoiler alert: red and blue parties dont listen to voters! On a Wednesday night in March the Broadcasting (Games of National Significance) Amendment Bill had its First Reading, and the level of fear it generated in the establishment parties and their lackeys was quite astounding. Getting the Bill through its First Reading, into Select Committee, would have enabled robust debate and fine-tuning of the Bill in front of all New Zealanders in an open public forum, with complete transparency and accountability to voters and taxpayers. 84% of Kiwis in one online survey were in favour of sporting events of national significance being live and free-to-air, but were ignored and over-ruled by a cross-section of political elitists who claim to know better. We werent surprised this blue government opposed this Bill, voting, once again, for their multi-national corporate paymasters, but never in a million years did we expect the red party to join them and vote it down again red and blue, nothing new. They claimed its a property rights issue, or we cant afford it, or the money we cant know really how much without a Select Committee investigation could be spent on other more important things like flag referenda, presumably. We are public servants. We are supposed to create legislation for the right reasons, regulations come later, once weve agreed on what we want to do. This was a Bill New Zealanders wanted, but we have not been well served. Quite frankly, its disgusting. So, it looks as though we will have to switch off our phones and unplug the internet and sit in a dark room hiding from the spoilers, in order to watch delayed coverage of our sporting heroes and heroines in action. Alternatively, we can magically pull $1,000 out of thin air to pay for the privilege of spoiler avoidance, watching live only on Sky. Red and blue believe that Skys profits are more important than voters opinions and cultural identity. But I suppose theres nothing new there, and New Zealanders have yet more evidence that the only real choice for New Zealand is black and white. Brian Rogers Rogers Rabbits www.sunlive.co.nz Tauranga is now New Zealands third largest city. If you ignore Auckland. And that other one. Weve been ignoring Auckland for a good few years now and its working out very well. Most of the South Island is with us. So that makes the top three NZ cities by population and general coolness: Christchurch, Wellington, Tauranga. Not necessarily in that order. Dunedin and Hamilton are close in the mix somewhere but unless you particularly like students and damp, theyre a lost cause. Rotorua would like to think it rates but really Nelson and Gisborne have more X factor and less hot mud, which has become a bit seventies if you ask me. We asked some locals, what in Tauranga stands out? They all said The Mount. I think they took that question quite literally. Theyre right of course, it stands out geographically but also spiritually. Its the sort of natural icon a city is blessed with, so it doesnt have to erect a giant carrot or lobster or a sky tower. Wear it out The climb up Mount Maunganui is no doubt the most iconic walking track of the Tauranga region. Its taking a thrashing at the moment with so many people attempting the Everest Challenge, in which they climb the Mount to match the equivalent height of the Himalayan peak. Youd think it would be wearing out and might be getting easier, especially after the relentless trodding by local MP Todd Muller, who has diligently traipsed up there every day for the last umpteen. But alas, it seems for us slackers, the climb isnt getting any easier. I know this, not because I have climbed it in recent years, but because from base camp in a cosy cafe on Marine Parade, I have spoken on the phone to people who are actually up there. Apart from sounding a bit puffed, they inform me that it is a very healthy thing to do. And have confirmed that it is still as high as we, remaining sensibly near water level, have suspected. More new research Now you may think we are not taking exercise seriously. But we are in fact taking heed of recent research, which points to a possible major flaw in the exercise regime of many fitness fanatics. And that is, they are failing to give their bodies sufficient rest time between workouts. Minimum is 48 hours for the body to recover and strengthen, otherwise it is continuing to damage itself and doesnt get a chance to recover and repair. I and many other drinkers of sugar cane derivatives, are erring on the side of caution and giving it a good couple of years between workouts, mountain climbing, trips to the letterbox etc. just to be on the safe side. So far Ive pushed the recovery period out to two, maybe three years. I think the last major exertion may have been running to catch a plane. I cant stress enough the importance of allowing the body sufficient time to get over such a workout. Dont be pushed back into workouts too soon, allow your body its repair time, keep up the fluids and enjoy that all important rest. Particularly nasty weather The recent couple of bouts of nasty weather and the response from some of our citizens has left me a bit perplexed. The warnings were there. In fact, the warning signs may as well have been large and bold and flashing neon. Dont go out, was the message. It couldnt have been any clearer if was tattooed on their foreheads. But alas, in the last couple of storms, some folk decided it was a good idea to be boating on the ocean at 2am, camp beside a notoriously flood-prone river for a festival, and go tripping around the country in the face of one of the most ferocious storm forecasts of the year. So it was little surprise to the rest of us, sensibly tucked up at home with a cat on lap, that the Sundaise festival a few weeks back, was evacuated by the army and that two coastguard units were called to help a boat back into harbour. And that countless motorists were stranded, that cattle died a needlessly brutal death and facebook and our news sites ran rampant with floody photos largely because quite a lot of people failed to take any notice of the storm warnings. No sense of sense Now at the risk of being a killjoy, it would seem that some people just dont know when to be sensible. I guess we were all young once and flipped the bird in the face of officialdom and said, eff it, well do it anyway. But some of these hapless folk are not young and exuberant; theyre seasoned repeat offenders. Im be the first to get out and go adventuring. But people, we really have to learn to pick the time and place. Weather forecasting, despite the critics, has never been better. Technology affords us the luxury of having unsurpassed levels of accuracy. Our forebears, trying to eek a living off the land, would have been ecstatic over the level of climate knowledge that abounds today. Its there, folks. Use it wisely. Give the ambos, fire teams and emergency services a break. If the weather looks like rubbish, stay off the roads, the ocean and the riverbanks. Parting thought: Even duct tape cant fix stupid. But it can muffle the sound. River levels around the Bay of Plenty town of Edgecumbe are dropping but the town is still likely to be under water a day after the Rangitaiki River breached its banks, officials say. The town of around 2000 was evacuated yesterday when the river broke through the stopbank at College Rd, turning some streets into rivers about 1.5-metres deep. Whakatane district Mayor Tony Bonne says the evacuation was a combined effort from police, firefighters and the public, and went smoothly. Most were now staying with friends and family, he told Newshub this morning. "Youve got to feel for the people. You see those houses... I spoke to a couple of old people that got off the trailer only in bare feet. They only just had time to move." The breach would need to be fixed and then water in the town removed. Council staff would be inspecting flooded homes today to determine if they are habitable. Millions of dollars had been spent on stopbank protection, and Tony says he wanted to know why it hadnt worked. "This has gone like clockwork. It shouldnt have happened though, its the thing that really gets you." Some residents may need to be out of their homes for 72 hours. State Highway 2 through the town and SH34 was closed by flooding and around 2200 in the wider region were isolated, the council says. Aerial food drops will be made to them. On Thursday police and the fire crews went house to house searching for anyone needing help evacuating, while welfare centres were set up at the Firmin Lodge in Kawerau and at the Whakatane War Memorial Hall. Boats were also used to rescue some residents in areas that couldnt be reached by trucks. Council engineers have reinforced at-risk stop banks with rocks and say they were able to reduce the river flow by keeping water back behind the dam at Matahina Lake. Engineers would start looking at how they might fix the breach in the College Rd stopbank. Prime Minister Bill English will visit the area this morning to assess damage. Rainfall from ex-cyclone Debbie, which has drenched the country this week, has led to unprecedented river levels throughout the Bay of Plenty, and the council has called Edgecumbe a one-in-500 year flood event. After three days of heavy rains and flash flooding the MetService is predicting fine weather for much of the country on Friday. - AAP People wanting to help those affected by flooding in Edgecumbe will be able to drop items off at Coopers Tyres in Mount Maunganui today. In a post on its Facebook page, Coopers Tyres says they are starting a collection for non-perishables, including water and canned goods. [Were] also accepting blankets, towels and pillow. This will be at our store at122 Hewletts Road. We will also be making a sizeable donation for the people of Edgecumbe. Feel free to drop off at our store or contact us on Facebook for details on how we can pick up bulk goods. Were praying for our neighbours in Edgecumbe during this tough time. We have a lot of customers down that way and want to show our support. There is also a drop off point being organised at the Bethlehem Shopping Centre at 9pm for those who cant make it to Coopers Tyres today. Meanwhile, the Rangitaiki River remains the main focus for Bay of Plenty Regional Council flood management teams today. Most Eastern Bay rivers have returned to below warning levels and the Rangitaiki is receding, but floodwaters continue to come through the breach on College Road in Edgecumbe. The regional council has put rock armouring and toe loading in several at-risk areas. These have now stabilised and there have been no stop bank failures under prolonged elevated flood levels from an overdesign flood. As waters lower, well be able to better assess the breach and we may be able to fill the gap as a temporary measure on the weekend, says flood manager Peter Blackwood. This was an unprecedented event. Ex-cyclone Debbie rainfall levels were very high on the Rangitaiki, sites logged between 200-320mm in 48 hours. Stop banks in the Eastern Bay are designed for a one-in-100 year event. At their peak, river flows were more than 30 percent larger than this. TrustPower started lowering the levels in Matahina Lake from Monday lunch time well before the predicted rainfall. Bay of Plenty Regional Council activated its Whakatane flood room at midday on Wednesday and its experienced flood managers and their teams have worked round the clock since then to minimise flood damage and protect communities. The flood management plan for the Matahina Dam is designed to take 100 m3/s off the flood peak. We exceeded this by taking off 110 cumecs per second. If we hadnt used the storage in Matahina dam, 12 percent more water would have flowed down the river at the peak of the flood, says Peter. Tough decisions were made well and our data shows that those have paid off. River and stop bank inspections by Bay of Plenty Regional Council staff continue today. The Rangitaiki River flow has reduced to 420 cumecs per second, down from more than 700 cumecs yesterday. A free online initiative to help New Zealanders learn New Zealand Sign Language is now available to the public. Learn NZSL is an e-learning resource developed by the Deaf Studies Research Unit at Victoria University of Wellington. It covers everyday vocabulary, phrases and conversations, supported by interactive tasks and 660 videos. The government contributed $230,000 through the NZSL Fund, administered by the NZSL Board. Disability Issues Minister Nicky Wagner says since NZSL became an official language in 2006, there has been an increase in the number of people wanting to learn how to sign. The government is absolutely committed to maintaining and promoting NZSL. This free online initiative will enable New Zealanders to learn anywhere and at any time, she says. Congratulations to the Deaf Studies Research Unit and to Sara Pivac Alexander, the project lead, for driving and developing such an important resource. Learn NZSL can be accessed online at: www.learnnzsl.nz Mount Maunganuis on again off again urban plaza plan for the Phoenix carpark is on again with the City Transformation Committee recommending the council adopt a plan that keeps some of the Phoenix carpark parks. The plan to turn the down town carpark into an urban park was faltering because of a fairly evenly split vote from retailers on what to do with the park. But property owner and businessman Peter McSweeney pointed out to committee members that two thirds of the retailers want a park, 34 of them voted for option one, turning the whole carpark into a park and 35 voted for option 2, keeping some of the car parks. There are 32 Mount Mainstreet members who want no change. Peter favours redeveloping the entire carpark and says the keeping some carparks on site is a dollar each way compromise on behalf of the committee. Some committee members view the compromise as enabling the council to later change its mind about the park if Mainstreet members dont like it. Peter McSweeney says the combination of carparks and urban parks doesnt work and will create safety issues. He told the committee that if the council goes ahead with the full park development he intends rebuilding the Eves building alongside the park so that retail spaces and a cafe open out onto the Phoenix. The modern use of urban spaces involves giving people reasons to stay longer, shopping, and also having a meal or a coffee; says Peter, pointing to the success of Aucklands Britomart precinct. The committee is recommending council include the 15-20 carparks which will become paid carparks. They will be the only paid carparks in Mount Maunganui. The compromise which was supported by former Mainstreet manager, councillor Leanne Brown, was something the committee members had come to agreement on over the last 48 hours or so, says committee chair Larry Baldock. The Phoenix carpark was bought from the city councils transport department using $4.5 million of $5.47 million available in development contributions, that either have to be spent in the Mount North area before 2021 or returned to the developers that paid them. If the council spends the remaining $1.27 million on anything other than open space development it will breach its own development contributions policy. Council staff say repaying the money could cost an additional $50,000 to $100,000 because of the time and people required to search the records for all the people who paid it. Following council approval the next steps are detailed design, consenting, calling the tender for construction works and construction. The open space is expected to be delivered by summer 2018/19. All you lovers of the bizarre better hold on to your tin foil hats because outsider musician, actor and painter David Liebe Hart is landing in Mount Maunganui this month. Hosted by Tauranga Music Sux, the avant-garde American artist backed by electronic wiz Jonah Th Mole Mociun and supported by local acts Nuggiez and Wheatbags Anonymous will be taking to the stage at Totara Street in the Mauao Performing Arts Centre on April 18. Known for his roles on Tim & Eric Awesome Show Great Job!, plus appearances on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Jimmy Kimmel Live!, this upcoming gig is part of Davids first tour of New Zealand and promises to be an event never, ever, ever seen before in the Mount. The mould was broken when David was made. Not only does he have a vast and bizarre catalogue of songs about aliens, religion, and failed relationships under his belt, but hes also communicated with extra-terrestrials, owns a large collection of puppets, and is obsessed with trains. Over the past decade, the 61-year-old has amassed a huge and die-hard fan base, thanks largely to Davids good-heartedness, honesty and hilarious idiosyncrasies, as well his fun and engaging stage shows. DLH and Th Mole will perform electronic versions of Davids old favourites plus new songs, accompanied by puppets, projected video, and his oddly endearing stories of past relationships and paranormal encounters. SunLive has two double passes to give away to two lucky readers who can tell us what type of item David Liebe Hart own a large collection of? Enter online at www.sunlive.co.nz under the competition section. All entries must be received by Wednesday, April 12. David Liebe Hart with Jonah Th Mole Mociun, supported by Nuggiez and Wheatbags Anonymous, play Totara Street in Mount Maunganui on Tuesday, April 18. Doors 8pm. R18 gig. Tickets cost $20 + BF and available online at undertheradar.co.nz For more information about David Lieve Hart, visit artbyliebehart.com With the return of New Zealands red stag roar, the end of March to early April is a prime time for hunting and the bush will be crawling with hunters or varying levels of experience. And every year and every roar, a hunter shoots another hunter because they fail to properly Identify their target often as a result of buck fever the name given to the over adrenalized state of an inexperienced hunter believing he has a deer in his sights. Mountain Safety Council CEO Mike Daisley says while the roar is an exciting time of year for hunters, it does have specific risks that need to be managed. Almost 40 per cent of big game hunting fatalities are from are from misidentification. These are completely avoidable incidents that change families in an instant. Whats also troubling is that 88 per cent of all North Island big game fatalities involve a firearm. If you roll March and April together, you have 56 per cent of fatalities between June 2006 and June 2016, and 40 per cent of search and rescue events from 2010 to 2015, says Mike. Once again, hunters are being urged by the council to focus on safe practices overall, with a particular focus on target identification. The ultimate responsibility for target identification is with the shooter. Until you can be categorically certain, assume any shape, colour, movement or sound is a human until you can prove otherwise. A Hunters Tale: A deep dive into hunting incidents in New Zealand,released to the public last month, has some sobering statistics for those heading out this year, with target misidentification remaining the biggest cause of fatalities for big game hunters. There are about 166,675 active hunters across New Zealand and with more than half of them hunting at least once per month, its extremely important that those who are hunting do all they can to keep themselves and others safe, both police and the Mountain Safety Council plead. Anyone who is planning to use a firearm, whether its hunting for game animals, birds or target shooting for sport, is required to be in possession of a valid firearms licence and comply with the New Zealand Arms Code at all times, says senior constable Darren Cox. Darren is based at Omakau in Central Otago and he covers a large rural policing area which is popular for its hunting opportunities. The area has also had hunting tragedies, something Darrens keen to prevent in the future. Anyone using a firearm needs to ensure not only their safety but the safety of others who may be around them. If you do not have a licence you must be with someone who does and they in turn must supervise the unlicensed person closely. Even if you are an unlicensed person accompanying a licensed hunter, it is still a good idea to familiarise yourself with the New Zealand Arms Code, which sets out the seven key basics of firearms safety. These include treating every firearm as loaded, always pointing firearms in a safe direction, loading firearms only when ready to fire, identifying targets beyond all doubt, checking firing zone, storing firearms and ammunition safely, and laying off alcohol and/or drugs when handling firearms. If hunting, you need to be aware there may be other hunters nearby who you are not aware of, adds Darren. They may make noises imitating the calls of game, which can mistakenly be taken for the real thing. Even the definite sight of skin and antlers is not positive enough to identify your target, as hunters have been shot while carrying deer. This means you must double and triple check that your target is in fact live game, and you must be 110 per cent sure before taking a shot, as the slightest mistake can have lifelong and tragic consequences. If there is any doubt about the target, do not shoot. The Arms Code outlines the circumstances under which it is not safe to fire. These circumstanes are not firing at movement only, not firing at colour only, not firing at sound only, and not firing at shape only In addition, hunters must ensure they have the necessary permits, or permission from the landowner for the land you are hunting on and respect the boundaries of land you are not entitled to hunt on. Also be aware that there may be other hunters, trampers or people working in these areas. But if everyone takes the time to familiarise themselves with the Arms Code and follows the seven rules, then this will go a long way to ensure that everyone gets home safely to the family and loved ones. For information about firearm safety visit either NZ Polices website www.police.govt.nz or the Mountain Safety Councils website www.mountainsafety.org.nz For many who voted for Brexit in last years EU referendum, Wednesday 29 March was a long-awaited day of celebration. Triggering Article 50 was like firing a party gun and releasing colourful streamers to add to the fun and festivities. A few days later, however, those festive strips of paper were limp and tangled and some of the British media even began talking about sending warships to Spain, after the content of the European Councils draft guidelines for the Brexit negotiations became known. Clause 22 The draft guidelines were issued on Friday 31 March. They took a firm line, and made it clear that the EU will act as one in negotiations over Britains withdrawal, but will be constructive throughout. They reiterated the EUs wish to have the United Kingdom as a close partner in the future. However, Clause 22 appeared to come as a shock to both the UK and Gibraltar: After the United Kingdom leaves the Union, no agreement between the EU and the United Kingdom may apply to the territory of Gibraltar without the agreement between the Kingdom of Spain and the United Kingdom, it stated. Like the other member countries of the EU, Spain will have an automatic veto over any of the UKs Brexit negotiations, but the wording of this clause appears to mean that Gibraltar could be excluded from future trade agreements between the UK and EU. Its inclusion, however, is important for several other reasons: Firstly, it appears to acknowledge that Spain has a claim to Gibraltar, which it ceded in perpetuity to Britain over 300 years ago; secondly, it indicates that bilateral discussions between the UK and Spain would be in order. This is something upon which Spain has been insisting in the past, refusing to take part in trilateral talks in which Gibraltar was involved; thirdly, it places Gibraltar as a bargaining chip in the Brexit negotiations. "Disgraceful attempt" A statement issued by the Gibraltar government on Friday afternoon said that Gibraltar has shamefully been singled out [] for unfavourable treatment by the Council, at the behest of Spain, and quoted chief minister Fabian Picardo as saying This is a disgraceful attempt by Spain to manipulate the European Council for its own, narrow, political interests. Brexit is already complicated enough without Spain trying to complicate it further. Amid general belief that the British prime minister appeared to have forgotten about Gibraltar in her Brexit negotiations, Picardo appeared on the BBCs Andrew Marr show on Sunday, where he stressed to interviewer Eddie Mair that these were only draft guidelines, and that they did not mention sovereignty over Gibraltar. He insisted that Gibraltar is fully involved in the discussions about Brexit, and said it wasnt important that Theresa May hadnt mentioned it in her letter to European Council president Donald Tusk because Gibraltar is referred to tangentially in the Brexit White Paper. The UKs defence secretary, Michael Fallon, confirmed this when he appeared later on the same show, saying that Gibraltar was referenced eight times in the White Paper. Picardo also said that any trade deals etc. agreed between the EU and the UK should automatically apply to Gibraltar. Media explosion By then, however, some of the British media had begun to accuse Spain of using the Brexit negotiations to make a land grab for Gibraltar, and matters came to a head when former Conservative Party leader Michael Howard suggested to Sky News on Sunday that Theresa May would be prepared to go to war to protect Gibraltar in the same way that Margaret Thatcher did over the Falklands. Social media exploded, with heated arguments between people who thought it would be best for Gibraltar to accept Spains joint or sole sovereignty in order to remain in the EU and others who urged the British government to take military action against Spain to stop it getting its hands on the British Overseas Territory. Such was the hostility expressed towards Spain by some elements of the UK media over the weekend, that on Monday Spanish foreign minister Alfonso Dastis said that some in the UK were losing their cool over Gibraltar unnecessarily, and that the Spanish government was surprised by the tone of some of the comments. However, with regard to Clause 22 of the draft EC guidelines, he insisted that as the EU is negotiating Brexit as a bloc, it is obliged to support Spain and not the UKs position with regard to Gibraltar. Further disappointment In general, politicians in the UK and Gibraltar are keeping calm. Fabian Picardo says he has received reassurance from Theresa May and Boris Johnson that the British government continues to support Gibraltar and that it will continue to be fully involved in the Brexit negotiations. On Wednesday, Britains minister for Brexit, David Davis, told the chief minister that the UKwould not enter into any deals which did not include Gibraltar. It had been hoped that Clause 22 could be dropped from the draft guidelines, but there was further disappointment on Wednesday when the European Parliament voted to approve the EUs negotiating parameters without any amendments. Although 209 MEPs supported the inclusion of a reference to Gibraltar, 440 voted against as part of a pact not to allow any amendments to be tabled, something which deputy chief minister Dr Joseph Garcia described as unfortunate. The government (of Gibraltar) is very grateful to the 209 MEPs who defied this intense pressure and decided to vote to include Gibraltar anyway and to the Office in Brussels for their work, he said. Theres no other time of year when visitors and foreign residents have their eyes opened as much to the pomp and ceremony of religious tradition in Spain than Semana Santa (Holy Week). Across the country finishing touches are being made to this years events. From Palm Sunday through to Easter Sunday traffic through major towns and cities will be cut off to allow the solemn processions to pass through, sometimes up to seven times a day. The pungent aroma of incense and hot wax, the mournful melody of the trumpets and the spectacle of the swaying tronos, icons of tearful virgins and hooded brotherhoods are all part of the unique experience that is Semana Santa. All small towns and villages have scaled-down versions of the bigger processions. However these still manage to demonstrate the strong religious convictions that are present throughout Spain but not always on view. What will be on view, besides the processions, will be the increased security presence over Easter. As Spain is currently on level four alert for a terrorist attack, many towns and cities have had to bring in more officers to work alongside the Local and National Police and civil protection teams to ensure that everything goes smoothly over the Easter period. Marbella alone will have 250 officers on duty to cope with the influx of visitors to the town and is coordinating with taxis and bus companies to ensure minimum disruption. The police are also operating a campaign to monitor cars and their drivers during the processions. Hotel owners are expecting a good Semana Santa with around 90 per cent room occupancy, up on last year, providing the weather forecast stays sunny. The weather is a big concern not only the hotels, but also for other tourist businesses such as the restaurants and bars. The beach bars along the coast are in preparation for a bumper Easter as is Estepona council which has rushed to top up the sand on the beaches that were eroded in the recent storms. Anthony J. Saliba is no shrinking violet. As a prominent Chicago financier as well as a trustee of the nations leading conservative think tank, he has seen his share of rough-and-tumble battles. It was just scary that my picture was bigger than life on a big doll they were carrying around, Tony Saliba says. But Tony Saliba hadnt ever seen a crude effigy of himself paraded around, one that represented him a puppeteer manipulating the president of the United States. Until recently at a landmark of Chicagos financial district, anyway. There could be better places to hide than Puerto Banus, which is known as a place where people go to be seen. However, despite his aversion to photographers, that is where Rifaat al-Assad decided to call home for much of the year, when he was not in Paris or London. Born in 1937, he moved to Marbella in 1986, two years after his brother, then president of Syria, sent him into a comfortable exile after being informed that he was plotting against him. Rifaat enjoyed a certain prestige with the authorities, after being credited with putting down a rebellion in Hama, Syrias fourth largest city, in a massacre in which at least 10,000 people died. When banished, Al-Assad went to Marbella with a large entourage. When photographers tried to film him in Puerto Banus his bodyguards drew their weapons, something which has discouraged people from trying to get close to him ever since. He is reputed to be difficult to do business with, and local entrepreneurs tend to avoid him. In June 2000, when his brother died, he made a rare public appearance to criticise his nephew and cast doubts on his ability to run the country. His name came up again last year, when the French authorities confiscated several properties as part of an investigation which has now spread to Spain. The funding for Malaga in the 2017 State Budget has now been announced, and it is the lowest so far this century. The province is due to receive approximately 138 million euros, which is about 40 per cent less than last year. Not only will this make it impossible to progress some long- awaited infrastructure improvements, but it will also stifle new projects. This is a far cry from 2008, when investment funding in Malaga totalled 1.2 billion euros. The train to Marbella will have to be put on hold yet again, even in the format proposed by the former Minister for Public Works, Ana Pastor, by extending the suburban line from Fuengirola, and despite promises during the last legislature that it would be given priority. It appears that those in charge of investment funding are once again evaluating a completely new railway route from the airport, which would link up with the high speed line. The government has only allocated 350,000 euros for the coastal railway project, barely enough to pay for the studies carried out by the state-owned Cedex company. The only noteworthy funding from the Ministry of Public Works this year is the northern access to the airport from the second bypass, which will receive 6.5 million euros. There will also be money for the A-7 link road in Fuengirola (500,000 euros). Improvements to the exit from the A-7 at Benalmadena-Arroyo de la Miel, one of the busiest and most dangerous on the provincial road network, will receive 422,000 euros. On the other hand, hardly any funding has been allocated for the Bobadilla-Ronda-Algeciras freight railway line, which is key for the development of this logistical area, at least for the Malaga stretch. At the Cadiz end, minister Inigo de la Serna has announced an insufficient 20 million euros to remodel the stretch in Algeciras. There are still plans to carry out a study into a new bypass in the metropolitan area. Banos del Carmen to benefit The Ministry of Industry will pay 1.7 million euros for the Digital Content Pole (a training centre in new technologies in the audiovisual sector) in Malaga city. The Ministry of the Environment has allocated 500,000 euros to start regeneration works at the beach at Los Banos del Carmen, with specific amounts for replacing the sand, recovering coastal systems, accesses and controlling erosion of the coast. The Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport will only be providing 100,000 for the long-awaited State Public Library at San Agustin, while the Ministry of the Economy plans to continue work on the Oceanography Centre in Malaga Port, which have currently been suspended due to a problem with the foundations (2.15 million). From public companies, most of the funds allocated to Malaga by Adif will be used on the Antequera-Granada high speed railway line (27.8 million), although all the works will be in Granada province because those in Malaga have already been completed. Aguas de las Cuencas Mediterraneas (Acuamed) will be providing 141,000 euros towards energy improvement at the Marbella desalination plant and funds for re-use of waste water at the treatment plants at Cerro del Aguila, La Vibora and Arroyo de la Miel, all of which are on the Costa del Sol (1.7 million altogether). The pipes in Campanillas will also be improved. The plans to improve roads and parking at the airport will be allocated 3.2 million euros from the State budget, while State ports will be providing 165,000 euros for a study into moving the freight train underground. Archidonas new prison, which is due to open this year, will receive 21.4 million, the largest amount of funding in Malaga province this year. One million euros are also earmarked for remodelling the Parador hotel in Nerja, a project which will cost eight million. The four political parties which represent Malaga in parliament had different reactions to the news. PSOE and Podemos were the most critical. Socialist MP Miguel Angel Heredia complained that Mariano Rajoys government had once again placed the province at the back of the queue for investment. Malaga is only going to receive a miserable one per cent of the investment in Spain. This will mean that major projects cannot be carried out, he said. Alberto Montero from Podemos said the budget represents the general tone of a government which questions the bases of recovery by not increasing the amount of investment in Malaga, and agreed that progress is being jeopardised. The coastal train continues to be nothing more than a wish. These budgets anchor us in a past of tourism and construction to which we do not want to return, he said. PPs Carolina Espana, however, said that the government is maintaining its strong commitment to Malaga with budgets which are realistic, focus on giving continuity to projects which the province needs, as well as ensuring economy recovery, creating employment and greater social protection, while Guillermo Diaz, of Ciudadanos, pointed out that there had been larger budgets on paper in the past, but these had not been fulfilled. He said his group will be closely watching to make sure that the northern airport access, the Banos del Carmen and access to Arroyo de la Miel projects are carried out. Javier Leon is the new foreigners-department officer at Frigiliana town hall. He has been in the job since 1 March this year, after successfully passing the oposiciones, or civil service exams in January. Javier, 48, is already a well-known figure in the town, as he and his wife have lived there since 2012 and own the Axarca beer company, which has its distribution centre in Frigiliana. Born in Switzerland to Spanish immigrants, Javier speaks five languages. He puts his multilingualism down to his country of birth. Switzerland is a mix of languages and cultures. From an early age kids are encouraged to learn the languages spoken in the country and English,he explains. He adds that children of immigrants in Switzerland must also learn their parents mother tongue. Its in case for some reason you have to, or decide to, return to your own country, Javier explains. Imagine not having any sense of the language or culture if you suddenly have to go back for some reason. Multilingual Being able to speak Spanish, English, French, Italian and Portuguese, Javier is able to help many of the 1,000 foreigners that make up a big part of Frigilianas 3,000 population. While Britons make up the majority of the foreigners in the local population, there are many other nationalities registered on the padron, or town hall register. Contact Information Email.extranjeros@frigiliana.es Phone.951 707 659 / 678 457 454 Address.Ayuntamiento, C/Real 80, Frigiliana Javier says that the effects of Brexit are already being felt in Frigiliana and he knows of expatriates who are either already trying to sell their properties or are not sure what to do. Frigiliana is a very small town and the foreign residents know each other. Iknow that there are people who have decided to leave he says. The problem is that there is no information and people cant be in this limbo for long. They need to make decisions. Information In fact lack of information is a problem in general for foreigners that move to another country, says Javier and his aim is to make that transition as easy as possible, at least for people who come to Frigiliana. There is very little information readily available and in other languages,the foreigners officer says. People often dont know what they have to do and why things like registering on the padron are important and what it involves. Javier describes his new role as, solving problems for foreigners,and working closely with the other departments in the town hall. Javier is supported by Councillor Carmen Cerezo, who is responsible for foreigners, tourism and culture. Javier works at the town hall from Monday to Friday, but on Mondays helps out at Frigilianas health centre as a translator. His current contract is for 12 months, until 28 February 2018. After then it is unclear whether Javier will continue or the job will go to someone else who also passed the oposiciones exams for the job in January. Low-cost airline, Norwegian, will start three new routes from Malaga airport next month as well as increasing their onboard capacity by just over 20 per cent for the summer period, adding nearly 230,000 extra seats for passengers in total. The airline will now fly to the German cities of Dusseldorf and Hannover as well as Rome Fiumicino airport in Italy. One of the new routes involves the use of the Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, the largest aeroplane using Malaga airport, with capacity for 344 passengers. Altogether, the company will be offering 23 routes to and from Malaga this summer, three more than last year, with five Norwegian and German destinations and four UK airports included. Other companies have also increased the number of flights from Malaga, with Ryanair now running flights to Amsterdam and Frankfurt, while Jet2 have increased their links with UK airports with flights now landing at Birmingham and London Stansted Airport. It isnt a palace, its a luxury apartment block at the entrance to Puerto Banus, but locals call it the Syrians palace rather than by its name, Gray dAlbion. The building, with its pink marble facade and golden domes, is the height of ostentation. On Tuesday, however, people were gazing at it for a different reason. Early that morning 30 Guardia Civil officers arrived to search the homes and offices of Rifaat al-Assad, the brother of former Syrian president Hafez al-Assad and uncle of present leader Bashar al-Assad. Rifaat al-Assad is at the centre of an investigation into money laundering by a criminal organisation. The investigation, called Operation Scar, is being led by judge Jose de la Mata and information has been obtained from French judge Renaud Van Ruymbeke, who is investigating Al-Assads wealth in that country. De la Mata authorised 15 raids to be carried out on Wednesday, most of them in Puerto Banus, three summonses were issued, and the bank accounts of 16 people linked to Rifaat al-Assad were frozen, as were a further 76 company accounts. The Guardia Civil removed numerous items from the building, including jewellery, antiques, tapestries and six vehicles. The fire brigade assisted with the operation and opened several safes, which were found to contain documentation but no money. So far, nobody has been arrested. As well as the Gray dAlbion building, where Al-Assad owns most of the apartments and where some of his sons have their permanent residence, the Guardia Civil also searched other properties associated with the Syrian: the Park Banus hotel, the Benabola apartments, an underground car park by the entrance to the port and several commercial premises. According to judge De La Mata, Rifaat al-Assad used seven of his children, two wives and two daughters-in-law to hide his businesses and 503 properties in Spain, which are valued at 690 million euros and were acquired through 34 companies associated with his relatives. He is believed to have been investing in this country since 1988. Mayor Pugh explained her flip-flop on the issue Hiking the minimum wage, Pugh explained, would cause employers to flee the city and result in a loss of job opportunities available to Baltimoreans. Given the "economic impact" of the policy, she asserted it was "not appropriate at this time" to implement it. Pugh carefully walked reporters through her journey to the decision, emphasizing that she "did some research" on the potential impacts and spoke with small business owners, ministers, nonprofits, and other stakeholders before coming to her surprising conclusion. Confronted with the reality of implementing liberal policies pitched as quick fixes to complicated problems like poverty, Pugh discovered things just aren't that easy. This was a politician who held a view and changed her mind when she investigated the consequences. Shocking. Cook County Board of Commissioners soon followed suit, although the four Republicans on the board objected. Thus far, six home rule municipalities within the county have exercised their independence and exempted themselves from Cook County's mandate - declaring instead that they choose to adhere to an Illinois Supreme Court ruling that gives the state, not counties, the right to impose such dramatic changes on employment. SPRINGFIELD - The Chicago City Council is all for requiring all the city's employers pay at least $15 per hour to their employees - that includes everyone, even 16 year olds who live at home with parents and are experiencing their first jobs. In the past week, the $15 minimum wage mandate passed committee in the Illinois House, headed for a floor vote. If the Democrat majority passes the mandate in the House, its companion bill in the Senate is likely to pass with an even larger Democrat majority. The Democrats' effort will then be in the hands of Republican Governor Bruce Rauner - who is juggling low approval ratings and an impending re-election campaign in 2018. Proponents of a higher minimum wage point to the obvious and visible benefits to some workers those who may find a job at the higher wage or keep their existing job and get a higher wage. "But that is only part of the story there are many less obvious downsides to an artificially high minimum wages that take longer to recognize, and its those inevitable negative effects that lead economists to generally oppose minimum wage laws," Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute writes. What are the specific objections of economists to the minimum wage and why do they generally favor market wages instead? Perry lists ten reasons in favor of market wages over a government-mandated minimum wage: Proposed minimum wages are almost always arbitrary and never based on sound economic analysis. Why $10.10 an hour and not $9.10? Why $15 an hour and not $16 an hour? A uniform federal minimum wage may be sub-optimal for many states, and uniform state minimum wages may be sub-optimal for many cities. A one-size-fits-all approach to the minimum wage is really a one-size-fits-none. Minimum wage laws require costly taxpayer-funded monitoring and enforcement mechanisms, whereas market wages dont. Minimum wage laws discriminate against unskilled workers in favor of skilled workers, and the greatest amount of discrimination takes place against minority groups, like blacks. Adjustments to total compensation following minimum wage laws will disadvantage workers in the form of reduced hours, reduced fringe benefits, and reduced on-the-job training. Many unskilled workers will be unable to find work and will be denied valuable on-the-job training and the opportunity to acquire experience and skills. Minimum wage laws prevent mutually advantageous, voluntary labor agreements between employers and employees from taking place. To the extent that higher minimum wages result in lower firm profits and higher retail prices, thats a form of legal plunder by workers from employers and consumers that is objectionable. Market-determined wages are efficient, whereas government-mandated wages create distortions in the labor markets that prevent labor markets from clearing. Like all government price controls, minimum wage laws are distortionary. If you trust government officials and politicians to legislate and enforce a minimum wage for unskilled workers, you should logically trust those same bureaucrats to set all prices, wages and interest rates in the economy. Realistically, if you agree that those economy-wide price controls would be undesirable, then you should also agree that the minimum wage law is also undesirable. In summary, despite arguments proponents claim about economists not being concerned about unskilled workers, the overall effect of maximized employment opportunities lead economists to oppose the minimum wage. "Simply put, we would rather see unskilled workers employed at a market wage even if that wage is only $5, $6 an hour that allows them to gain valuable work experience and on-the-job training, than to be unemployed at $0.00 an hour" Perry writes. "And unfortunately, a $15 minimum wage maximizes the probability that an unskilled worker will be unemployed at $0.00 an hour instead of being gainfully employed." Published first at American Enterprise Institute The sign dedicated in Floyd Saturday is the most recent addition to the Virginia Civil War Trails system, explained John Graham of the Floyd County Historical Society (FCHS). The Civil War Trails system, he added, connects visitors to the wars well-known and less familiar sites and allows them to follow in the footsteps of different military campaigns of the American Civil War. The dedication was held in front of the sign, which now stands on the lawn of the FCHS Museum on Locust Street. Graham, who made opening remarks, led the project to get the sign for Floyd County. Graham said the Civil War Trails System has 1,552 sites across 5 states, which tell the heartfelt stories of soldiers and civilians. The Floyd Sign, which is part of the 1865 Stonemans Raid trail, is the first sign out of North Carolina, he noted. When the state maps are reprinted, Floyd will be included on the Virginia and North Carolina Civil War Trails maps. The Civil War Trails Program was started by Mitch Bowman about 20 years ago with Lees Retreat, a driving tour, Graham continued. The program has now grown to a multi-state tourism initiative. Graham held up a copy of Americas Civil War magazine and told the group gathered that Floyd will be included in the new edition in July. The gravesite of Wise Headen, a former slave mentioned on the new sign, is located in the Oak Hill Cemetery near town. The historical society plans to help repair his footstone. Graham said thats what the Civil War Trails signs are also doing. They do a lot in making lost or little-known parts of our history visible again. Chris Hartley, author of Stonemans Raid, 1865, read excerpts from his book. Stonemans Raid, he explained, lasted almost 60 days and went from Virginia to North Carolina and South Carolina before ending in Alabama. It was one of the longest raids in American history. Almost 2000 miles in length, the raid brought the war up close and personal to people in the south. When Stoneman and his men came through Jacksonville (now Floyd), they met with resistance. One man, Lt. James M. Mat Howard, was killed. Headen is quoted on the sign as saying that Confederate surgeon Callohill M. Stigleman waved a stick with a white handkerchief on it. Stoneman then ate at Stiglemans house (still standing at 406 East Main Street). Hartley said one of most interesting parts of the history involves a song, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, written by Robbie Robertson and originally recorded in 1969 by the Band, composed mostly of Canadians . The song refers to George Stonemans raids in Danville, Virginia. Later performers in their covers of the song (Janis Joplin and Bob Dylan) changed the reference from Stonemans calvary to so much calvary. Hartley said its intriguing Stonemans Raid came up in this song, because it was on a national stage and not a local stage, that impacted us so much. Stonemans Raid also made its way to a Walt Disney movie, Hartley pointed out. Menace on the Mountain, a 1970 film starring Jodie Foster, told the story of a family in the south trying to protect their home from Civil War deserters. Syracuse, N.Y. -- Ever since moving to Syracuse seven years ago from Schroon Lake in the Adirondacks, Aaron Metthe thought about opening a shop to sell something he's loved most of his life -- coffee. "My dad gave me the love for coffee," he said. Last week, Metthe, 34, a former skills-builder at Hillside Children's Center, realized his dream and opened Salt City Coffee on the first floor of an 1860s house at 509 W. Onondaga St. The house served as the home of the McMahon-Ryan Child Advocacy Center until 2011. Located on West Onondaga Street between Midland and South avenues, the shop is open 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. It sells coffee, espresso, tea and specialty drinks. It has free Wi-Fi and lots of on-site parking. Metthe buys coffee beans from a half-dozen countries (Brazil, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Mexico and Sumatra) and roasts them in the back of the shop. In addition to selling cups of coffee and tea, he sells bags of roasted coffee and loose leaf tea. Metthe said 6,000 cars a day pass by the home, and he's hoping some of those motorists will stop in for a cup of joe on a regular basis. Customers are encouraged to consume their beverages in the shop, which has seating for 34. "We want this to be a neighborhood hangout, even if your neighborhood is downtown," he said. Contact Rick Moriarty anytime: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 315-470-3148 Once upon a child family From left to right, Eva, Maeve, Lily, and Arianne Dougherty. Arianne Dougherty runs Once Upon a Child with her husband and three daughters, pictured here. The couple also has an 8-year-old son. (Provided photo) DEWITT, NY - After operating a line of gift shops in the past, Michael and Arianne Dougherty have opened a retail store at 5775 Bridge Street in DeWitt, behind Chimney's Plaza. The couple recently opened the Syracuse franchise of "Once Upon a Child," a chain of stores that buy and sell "gently used" and nearly-new infant and children's clothing, shoes, toys, accessories, games, furniture and equipment. The Minneapolis, Minn.-based company is owned by Winmark Corp., which also operates Plato's Closet and Play It Again Sports. There are more than 235 locations across the U.S. and Canada. Michael Dougherty, a developer who runs Fayetteville-based Mayflower Associates, said the 7,000-square-foot-plus store is the largest store in the company because the Central New York market is so big. Dougherty is the developer behind the new building at 5805 Bridge St., which currently houses DiBellas Subs, and other area projects such as Chipotle in DeWitt. The new Once Upon a Child store in DeWitt The new store is located in the plaza Dougherty owns - and the Doughertys said they decided the space would be perfect for this type of business. Years ago, the couple owned and operated "Christmas Traditions" seasonal gift shops at locations across upstate New York. "We saw a need in the market for a store like this,'' Arianne Dougherty said, "and this is a venture very close to our hearts, because we have four children." In fact, the four often help out at the shop. The Doughertys have three teen-aged daughters and an 8-year-old son. The shop opens with no inventory, Arianne Dougherty explained, and devotes the first six to eight weeks to buying the items from customers to stock the shelves. People with items to sell can come in and are given cash on the spot - unlike a consignment shop, where the item has to sell before any cash is exchanged. Once they have a complete inventory, there will be a grand opening, most likely in May, the Doughertys said. The store will then both buy items, and sell the ones they've purchased, much like the business model used by Plato's Closet stores. Another Once Upon a Child store operates in New Hartford. Featured at The Heartland Institute's Twelfth International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC-12), held March 23-24 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Washington, D.C., were eleven panel discussions over the two-day period. The six panel discussions I was able to attend were held back-to-back with six other panel discussions taking place simultaneously in a nearby hotel ballroom. Joseph Bast is president and CEO of The Heartland Institute, headquartered at 3939 North Wilke Road, Arlington Heights, IL 60004. Early on I decided to write about an afternoon panel discussion held on the first day of ICCC-12. Not only did the title of the panel intrigue me, Fossil Fuels and World Peace, but all three of the speakers spoke with authority and clarity on the subjects provided, which as a whole provided an understanding of how fossil fuels foster world peace. PANEL 3B - FOSSIL FUELS AND WORLD PEACE Panel moderator: lsaac Orr, research fellow on energy and environmental issues at the Heartland Institute. Panel 3B Speakers in order of presentation: Craig D. Idso, Ph.D., founder and former president of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change and currently serves as chairman of its board of directors. He is the lead author of the Climate Change Reconsidered series produce by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate change. Check our , founder and former president of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change and currently serves as chairman of its board of directors. He is the lead author of the Climate Change Reconsidered series produce by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate change. Check our Dr. Idso's excellent blog and subscribe for free. Dennis T. Avery, a senior fellow of the Hudson Institute since 1989. Prior to that, he was a senior analyst in the U.S. Department of State (1980-88), where he won the National Intelligence Medal of Achievement in 19883. Avery is co-author, with , a senior fellow of the Hudson Institute since 1989. Prior to that, he was a senior analyst in the U.S. Department of State (1980-88), where he won the National Intelligence Medal of Achievement in 19883. Avery is co-author, with Fred Singer , of the New York Times bestseller, Unstoppable Global Warming -- Every 1,500 years, published in 2007. Dennis Avery's forthcoming book is titled, When Weather IS Extreme: the Little Ice Ages. Aaron Stover, a senior staff member and policy analyst for The Heartland Institute. He previously worked on transatlantic policy projects focused on Central and Eastern Europe for the Atlantic Council, the Center for European Policy Analysis, and the U.S.-EU-Slovakia Action Commission at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Craig D. Idso, Ph.D. - Historical Relationship Between Carbon Dioxide, Climate and Social Conflict For his presentation, Craig Idso was asked to highlight the historical relationship between carbon dioxide, climate and social conflict. As an introduction to his remarks, Idso noted that many political and opinion leaders feel it is important to enact legislation to limit carbon dioxide emissions out of concern that global warming is detrimental to society. Craig Idso then proceeded to set forth the historical relationship between carbon dioxide, climate and social conflict. China was used by Idso as a good test case to begin highlighting the relationship between global warming and social stability. Why? Because it has been a well-populated, primarily agricultural country for millennia, and it has a relatively well-recorded history over this period. A 2013 study by Lee and Zhang (2013) indicated how natural calamities and human catastrophes peaked during the colder climates of the 17th and 19th centuries, whereas during the relatively warm 18th century, agriculture production was enhanced, famines were abated, wars, rebellions and epidemics were minimal and population growth surged. A 2005 Zhang et al study of social unrest and dynastic transitions from the mid-ninth through early twentieth century in China found similar results; namely, that warmer climates have been immensely more effective than cooler climates in terms of helping to keep the peace. What's more, China is no different from the rest of the world in this regard. Focusing next on the whole of Europe, Idso employed a 2010 Tol and Wagner study showing through documentation that periods with lower temperatures in the pre-industrial era [were] accompanied by violent conflicts". This in contrast to periods of warmth which generally correlated with more peaceful times and epochs of less warfare. It became clear after Idso's presentation of several additional studies, that literature does not support concerns over potential future increases in civil strife due to CO 2 -induced global warming. Empirical data instead confirms that the reality is just the opposite of climate alarmist projections. What is more, ironically, there are legitimate reasons to conclude that rising atmospheric CO 2 will actually help to alleviate social unrest in the future. Even Jimmy Carter understood how atmospheric C02 was helpful in alleviating social arrest. In an op-ed published a number of years ago, To Cultivate Peace, We Must First Cultivate Food, Carter wrote: "raise the standard of living of the millions of rural people who live in poverty by increasing agricultural productivity, His argument was that thriving agriculture is the engine that fuels broader economic growth and development, thus paving the way for prosperity and peace. Said Carter, leaders of developing nations must make food security a priority, for there can be no peace until people have enough to eat. Of importance is whether the food needs necessary for an increase in human population will be achievable. Craig Idso spoke of estimates he developed and analyzed as to a supply-and-demand food scenario for the year 2050, then comparing those results with the food needs of the human population that is expected to be inhabiting the planet at that future date. Idso concluded that a very real and devastating food crisis is looming on the horizon, and that continuing advancements in agricultural technology and expertise will most likely not be able to bridge the gap between global food supply and global food demand just a few short years from now. A positive impact on crop yields would be achieved through a rising atmospheric CO2 level, which would considerably lessen the severity of the coming food shortage. In some regions and countries it will mean the difference between being food secure or food insecure. Thus the worlds food security envisioned by President Carter is precariously dependent upon the continued rising of the airs CO 2 concentration. According to an article published by Norman Borlaug in 2000, in order to meet the needs of the growing population of the planet, we will have to nearly double current production again within a few short decades." But Dr. Borlaug saw some ominous forces at work that could keep society from achieving the food needed to feed an expanding population, citing those that array themselves against the genetic engineering of agricultural crops and their unsubstantiated scare mongering done by opponents of genetic engineering. It is however a given that new technology must be developed for global food insecurity to have any chance to surface in the future. Concluding thoughts by Craig Idso: CO 2 -induced global warming is not leading, nor will it lead, to increased incidences of social unrest and war. Rather, future warming (if it is to occur) in conjunction with the very real and measurable benefits expected by continuing atmospheric CO 2 enrichment will help to foster social stability and peace. Its time for the true deniers to wake up and face the facts. For far too long now they have besmirched and defamed the many virtues of carbon dioxide. Atmospheric CO 2 is not a pollutant, it is the very elixir of life. Dennis T. Avery - War in the Cold Dennis Avery explained in his presentation, War in the Cold, that until recent times the wars among earth's peoples were concentrated in the planet's "little ice ages." These "little ice ages" lasted 350-550 years. The wars were triggered mainly by hunger. Crops were assailed in the cold periods by 1) short growing seasons with heavily overcast skies, massive regional droughts that lasted up to 350 years, and heavier floods that drowned farmers and their fields. Crops failed across cultures and around the world. Cities couldn't be fed because they could neither produce nor preserve food for famines. Governments collapsed and/or invaded neighbors. Rebellions proliferated. Ancient periods of conflict included the Bronze Age Collapse (1200 BC), the Iron Age Cooling (800 BC) the Dark Ages (600 AD), and the Little Ice Age (1300 AD to 1850.) The Modern Warming morphed seamlessly out of the icy cold after 1850. Avery noted a study of China, the earth's most war-torn culture, by David Zhang. He found that China had 500 wars, rebellions, and dynastic collapses in the 900-year span from AD 1000 to AD 1900. China was the most fought-over because 1) the region gets major cyclical shifts in climate every few centuries from cold/dry to warm/wet. 2) The tropical rain belts move north and south over China, changing rainfall regimes and forcing constant adaptations. 3) Locust attacks are stimulated by the alternating floods and droughts of the little ice ages. 4) Finally, bubonic plague was triggered by droughts in western China's grasslands. China suffered three bubonic pandemics that killed huge percentages of the population. Global pandemics were triggered by the Chinese droughts, because the billions of bubonic-resistant rodents in western China's grasslands starvedso their fleas sought new hosts like the camel caravans and merchant ship crews trading with nations to the west. The first global bubonic plague in Europe happened during the Dark Ages droughts of AD 540-740, when 30-60% of Europe's population died over three centuries. The second European bubonic plague epidemics happened in the 15th century when millions of deaths, with no treatment or prevention, occurred in Central Europe, 1621-31; France 1628-31; Italy, 1629-31, 1630-52; and Austria, 1679-80. Avery highlighted the 17th and the19th centuries as two of the world's war peaks. The 17th century suffered the ultra-cold Maunder Minimum with massive crop losses. Europe suffered the 30 Years War 1618-1648. As many as 11 million people may have died, while trampling armies ravaged farming and spread massive epidemics. Europe's populated almost doubled nonetheless, from 1700 to 1800. This happened because better sailing ships began swapping crops and livestock globally, with crops like potatoes and corn spreading worldwide, and America getting wheat, cattle and horses. Europe also discovered a whole new set of higher-yielding European farm technologies (including crop rotation and seeders). These events disarmed much of the famine impact of the cold. The 19th century thus found a much larger human population again attacked by cold and chaotic weather. Avery noted the plight of America's Woodlands Indians. The woodland Indians' populations got new corn and bean varieties from Mexico, and doubled in the Medieval Warming from 900-1300 AD. But the Little Ice Age threatened their vital corn crops with short, cloudy growing seasons. The six Iroquois tribes fought against each other so fiercely they signed a peace treaty; henceforth, they pledged to kill only warriors from other tribes. Food is no longer the societal constraint of ancient times simply because of its current abundance. Avery believes that better farming today promises to feed a last surge of human population growth between today and 2060. Then human numbers will begin a long decline as birth rates continue to decline worldwide. Energy, however, has replaced food as the new constraint on human affairs. Fortunately, World War II taught us that the only rational way for a nation to get resources it lacked was to buy them in the open market. Unfortunately, our ancient dread of overpopulation has stimulated todays surge in environmental protection. The movement seems dedicated to making the world poorer and more dangerousas a way to shrink human numbers. That has spilled over into denying ourselves the energy that our intelligence created. Historic headlines tell us that the earth has had a climate panic about every 30 yearsaalternating between fears of too cold and fears of too hot. Science should now use its emerging knowledge of natural climate cycles to predict abrupt climate changes. This is still imperfect, but so are the weather predictions. If the climate forecasts just refocused our attention to the reality that the climate is always changing, that would be a massive benefit. Appallingly, we almost voted voluntarily to renounce our energy -- without real evidence of man-made warming. Aaron Stover - Fossil Fuels and National Security Recent remarks by Secretary of Defense James Mattis were evaluated as to how they were in compliance with President Trump's own views of global warming. Mattis remarked that "climate change is impacting stability in areas of the world where our troops are operating today. It is appropriate for the Combatant Commands to incorporate drivers of instability that impact the security environment in their areas into their planning." Mr. Stover reasoned that it was up to Mattis to consider all factors, that climate has always been a part of defense planning, further stating that no reference was made to humans as the cause of global warming. Questioned by Stover was the validity of the Climate-Security Hypotheses, which Stover said were based on IPCC (United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate) findings whose models are flawed with massively exaggerated temperature predictions. As such causality is assumed without evidence. Stover went on to list five primary variables in the climate-conflict hypothesis, indicating how each one lacks credibility. 1. Water: This variable lacks empirical evidence as findings indicate there has never been a single war fought over water. 2. Famine: Climate security alarmists suggest rising temperatures and water shortages will reduce crop yields, but this ignores technological adaptation and the fertilizing effects of CO2. 3. Resource Scarcity: In recent times, no interstate conflicts have been driven by depletion of mineral resources. Just the opposite has happened with improved resource extraction technology. As with the water scarcity variable, economic incentives imply cooperation, not conflict. 4. Refugee Flow: According to Aaron Stover, very seldom do "climate refugees" resort to violence. 5. The Arctic: Because of melting ice the theory is that an increase in Arctic shipping lanes could heighten instability. Stover elaborated how doing the Cold War, the U.S. and U.S.S.R. conducted military operations without conflict at a time of greater instability. Current defense presence in five Arctic nations is akin to territorial policing. Stover told a cautionary tale about the U.S. Navy "Farm-to-Fleet" Biofuels Program and how there is no reservoir of alternative fuels, nor will there be for the foreseeable future. Furthermore, in 2011 the Departments of Navy and Agriculture partnered to deliver biofuel blends to power Navy ships and aircraft. "Green Fleets" 2012 maiden voyage used 50% biofuel-blend that cost $27/gallon, compared to $3.60/gallon for traditional fuel. From 2007-2014 the Navy spent at least $58 billion on alternative fuel, averaging $29.30 a gallon. In conclusion, Aaron Stover indicated the following as to why Climate Change Security Planning is futile and wasteful: Efforts to link climate change to the deterioration of U.S. national security rely on improbable scenarios, imprecise and speculative methods, and scant empirical support. Accepting the connection can lead to the dangerous expansion of U.S. security concerns, inappropriately applied resources, and diversion of attention from more effective responses to known environmental challenges. The danger of this approach is that it offers a sense of urgency which may not be warranted, given the gaps in the current state of knowledge about climate, the known flaws in the methods used to construct the scenarios of which these security scenarios are based, and confusion over the underlying causes of those security concerns. Article 1: Thorner: New Chapter in Global Warming Debate Realized at Heartland's ICCC-12 http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2017/03/thorner-new-chapter-in-global-warming-debate-realized-at-heartlands-iccc-12.html#more Syracuse, NY -- A former Clay man who fled to Africa after being charged with raping an underage girl in 2010 indicated he wanted to be deported "as soon as possible" after serving his sentence, his lawyer said today. It took four years and coordination between local, federal and British officials to bring Tobias Bowen, 50, back to face charges in the 2010 incident involving the underage girl. By the time he was sentenced in January -- to 3 years in prison -- he'd already served his time in custody. Bowen was sent to state prison in February and paroled a month later to immigration, according to prison records. Bowen is now in the hands of immigration agents, who plan to deport him, County Court Judge Robert Bauer said this morning. That's only an issue because, under law, Bowen should come back to local court to be rated as a state sex offender. He hadn't officially given up his right to attend that hearing. But it appeared that Bowen wanted to be deported "as soon as possible," his assigned lawyer, Janelle Eckel said. She promised to see if she could get a better idea of his status. It may be Bowen is deported before he can be contacted, Bauer noted. Bowen is apparently being held in a facility closer to New York City. The international drama began after Bowen was charged with rape, sexual abuse and related charges in connection with an underage girl incapable of consent. Before his arraignment, Bowen fled to the African country of Liberia, where he worked openly as a administrator at the Redemption Hospital. He was quoted in media and never tried to hide his identity. Local authorities enlisted the help of federal agents. But an extradition request sent to Liberia was never carried out. So federal agents waited for years, until they got a tip that Bowen was traveling to Great Britain in 2014. Working with British authorities, Bowen was taken into custody when his plane landed in Britain. His case then dragged on in British courts, before Bowen was finally returned to the U.S. in 2016. He was arraigned on rape and related charges in August of that year. He was sentenced in January to 3 years in prison for sex abuse, but given credit for the time he'd been in custody, leading to his quick release to immigration officials. But if deported, he may not be going back to Africa: Bowen is actually a citizen of the Netherlands. This page no longer exists or may have been moved.If you believe this is a mistake please email Oiltanking North America has acquired around 89 hectares of waterfront and industrial land in Texas City. This transaction will provide the necessary area to develop Oiltankings Texas Independent Deepwater Expansion (TIDE) terminal, the company explained. During the initial phase of development, construction of a finger pier will begin with two deepwater berths of up to 14 m draft. The new terminal has ready-to-build land available to construct over 1.6 mill cu m of storage, pipelines and additional jetties, as needed, for crude oil, petroleum and gas products in the Houston market. Upon completion of the initial development phase, the terminal will form an export/import/blending hub alternative in the Houston market by creating a logistics platform with significant flexibility and optionality, Oiltanking claimed. The TIDE terminal is close to Oiltankings existing Texas City terminal, which offers around 550,000 cu m of liquid petroleum products, renewables, chemicals and gas storage capacity. This terminal has rail and truck facilities and has two berths for vessels with up to 12 m draft, plus eight barge docks. Texas City is home to a large refinery market and several chemical companies. It is also a short sailing time to the sea and the uncongested marine traffic position makes the port a highly valuable player in the Houston market, Oiltanking said. This Page Is Under Construction - Coming Soon! Why am I seeing this 'Under Construction' page? Thank you for reading! Please purchase a subscription to read our premium content. If you have a subscription, please log in or sign up for an account on our website to continue. Canonicals long and winding quest for a unified user experience came to a sudden halt on Wednesday, as founder Mark Shuttleworth announced the firms decision to stop investing in its struggling Unity8 shell and revert to Gnome for its Ubuntu 18.04 LTS desktop OS release. The 6-year-old Unity plan was to create a user interface that could work on various types of devices, ranging from a mobile phone to a personal computer or tablet. The project had been the subject of rampant speculation over the past couple of years, as public updates were scarce. There was speculation that the companys own resources were insufficient to carry the project where it needed to go yet there seemed to be a reluctance to collaborate. Canonical remains committed to the Ubuntu desktop that millions already rely on, Shuttleworth said, and it will continue to produce what is touts as the most usable open source desktop in the world, maintaining existing LTS releases and working with commercial partners to deliver the desktop. He extended that commitment to corporate users who rely on the desktop and millions of IoT and cloud developers who use it to innovate. Shuttleworth believed that convergence was the future and that a converged product would appeal to the free software community, but I was wrong on both counts, he said. In the community, our efforts were seen [as] fragmentation not innovation. And industry has not rallied to the possibility, instead taking a better the devil you know approach to those form factors, or investing in home-grown platforms. Focus on Future The plan now is to invest in areas that will contribute to the companys growth, said Shuttleworth, including Ubuntu for desktops, servers and virtual machines; cloud infrastructure products, including OpenStack and Kubernetes; and cloud operations, including Maas, LXD, Boostack, Juju, and IoT in snaps and Ubuntu Core. All of those have communities, customers, revenue and growth, the ingredients for a great and independent company, with scale and momentum, he said. Hard Lessons I think the decision is an admission that user experience is very much tied to hardware and specific usage models, observed Paul Teich, principal analyst at Tirias Research. With no direct connection to hardware, the open source user interface will always lag in delivering new UX features and in taking advantage of new hardware capabilities, he told LinuxInsider. Google would have fallen behind in mobile without Pixel and previous Nexus phones and tablets, Teich said, noting that Apple uses vertical integration of both their own OS and hardware to pioneer new user experiences. The same arguments can used to justify Googles Chromebooks, which are driving the non-PC user experience for clamshell form factors, he suggested. This is probably the biggest impediment to Linux desktop UX development, Teich added. Google is working closely with hardware manufacturers to provide a better, integrated experience between Chrome and the underlying hardware. A software only effort cant even get close and this is the core of why Mark wisely let go of Unity8. The move reflects a recognition that the mobile space is crowded, said Al Gillen, group vice president for software development and open source at IDC. Shuttleworths aim, Gillen told LinuxInsider, is to reallocate resources into a space where Canonical and Ubuntu can gain more traction and make a difference. Taser International, best known for the non-lethal electrical stun guns, has announced radical new business plans today. The company will be renaming itself Axon after its line of law enforcement body cameras. In a press release this morning, the company announced the move as well as their plan to offer free body cameras to "every police officer in America." They called the move 'all-in' in their effort to keep police officers safe and accountable on the job. The new program will provide hardware, software, training, support, and cloud data storage to any interested department for one year. This also includes Evidence.com webservice for tracking police video. Following the one year free trial, departments will have the opportunity to then purchase the gear. Rick Smith, the founder and CEO said in his statement that "We are changing our name from Taser to Axon to reflect the evolution of our company from a less-lethal weapons manufacturing company to a full solutions provider of cloud and mobile software, connected devices, wearable cameras, and now artificial intelligence." Across the US there are about 18,000 different police departments with three-quarters of a million police officers. This is a big market for Axon to expand more into. Like most cloud connected services, they can start charging a yearly fee for officers to use the connected body cameras. It's easy to see why Axon wants their cameras out on the streets and in the hands of officers to try out. AAXN stock (formerly TASR) was up 5.4% at the time of publishing following the announcement. Stanford applicant Ziad Ahmed did not mince words when he answered the question What matters to you, and why? on his Stanford University undergraduate application. He wrote this 100 times: #BlackLivesMatter. The daring move actually paid off when Ahmed, a senior at New Jerseys Princeton Day School, received his acceptance letter from Stanford. Unconventional Answers The unusual, even risky, way of answering the standard application essay drew attention since Ahmed posted his answer and acceptance letter on Twitter. The post, now receiving more than 2,000 likes and hundreds of retweets, was again accompanied by the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter. Ahmed told Mic that he was surprised to see he was admitted. "I didn't think I would get admitted to Stanford at all, but it's quite refreshing to see that they view my unapologetic activism as an asset rather than a liability, he explained in an email. This unapologetic progressivism, Ahmed added, is a central part of his identity, which he wanted to be sufficiently represented in his college application. Fueled By Islamic Faith Ahmed recognized his Islamic faith as one of the reasons he is a supporter of the BLM movement. His faith and commitment to justice are intertwined and he would not be able to practice his religion properly if he turns a blind eye to injustices upon the black community, he went further. The new Stanford admit cited that up to one-third of the U.S. Muslim community are black, and warned against separating justice for Muslims from those for blacks as well as the rest of the countrys communities. Its no accident that the Bangladeshi-American teen did this act given his line of activism work. At age 18, he was already invited to the White House Iftar dinner and, during Obamas term, was recognized as a Muslim-American change-maker. In 2015, Ahmed also delivered a TedxTalk in Panama on the dangers and effects of stereotypes as a Muslim teenager. And its not just Stanford that the senior high school student got into, but also Yale and Princeton. BLM Movement #BlackLivesMatter came to life in 2012 when Trayvon Martins murderer, George Zimmerman, was acquitted for the crime and the dead 17-year-old was posthumously placed on trial for his own murder, according to the national BLM organization. Anchored on the experiences of black people in the United States who actively resist dehumanization, the movement is mounted as a response to the virulent anti-Black racism said to permeate society. BLM movement has a structural criticism of racism. So, theyre not just criticizing the justice system. Theyre making a claim that the justice system in the United States is connected to unemployment, public school segregation, environmental racism and inequality, said African-American history expert and University of Texas professor Peniel Joseph in an interview. So its just basically the police are the tip of a larger iceberg of systemic oppression. For Joseph, the movement illustrates the depth and breadth of structural racism and state violence via police power against minority groups as well as poor white communities in the United States. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The bliss of sound sleep may be a mirage in old age. Unlike the youthful days, many seniors find nights becoming longish with recurring bouts of wakefulness and bathroom visits. Disturbances considered, older people still need the minimum hours of deep sleep to maintain good health. But many processes will not allow a sound sleep, and the causes include a change in brain waves and neuro chemicals. The fragmented sleep conditions lead to waking up multiple times at night. It also contributes to other mental and physical ailments. Some of the medical conditions emanating from sleep fragmentation include depression and dementia. Health Problems From Sleep Deficit A research paper by UC Berkeley researchers noted that sleep deficit of the elderly is enhancing the risk of memory loss and other disorders, including mental and physical problems. The paper has been published in the journal Neuron. The researchers underscored that sleep is essential for all animals. Lead author Matthew Walker notes that sleep is vital to life as every major organ and regulatory system require sleep as a precondition to work properly. "Nearly every disease killing us in later life has a causal link to lack of sleep," said Walker, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at UC Berkeley. He deplored that great progress has been made in extending life span but health span has not been extended. Many seniors are losing the ability to get deep sleep and are struggling with health consequences, noted co-author Bryce Mander, also from UC Berkeley. Sleep problems are also induced by medical conditions and their treatments, noted Mander, and that poor sleep triggers many other diseases as well. Key Reasons For Loss Of Sleep Among Old People According to the researchers, one of the reasons of sleep loss includes a change in brain mechanisms in old age, which denies the required quantum of sleep. The study expresses optimism that the new knowledge will help in developing sleep therapies to treat these issues. In recent years, many studies have revealed the linkage between sleeplessness and diseases of heart, diabetes, and obesity. The research notes that the trend toward fractured sleep starts from the early 30s and escalates into cognitive and physical ailments in middle age. At the same time, Walker is cautioning against the use of pills to attain deep sleep as a substitute for natural sleep cycles. "Don't be fooled into thinking sedation is real sleep. It's not," Walker cautions. Impact Of Weakening Brain Waves The researchers highlight that advancing age comes with a progressive decline of deep non-rapid eye movement, which is also called slow wave sleep. The brain waves connected with slow waves and additional bursts of "sleep spindles" become weak and affect the transfer of information and memories from the hippocampus to the prefrontal cortex where the storage area of the brain exists. Another limiting factor from old age is lax regulation of neurochemicals such as galanin that hastens sleep and orexin that enhances wakefulness. Mander notes that the hampered process disrupts the sleep-wake rhythm, and older adults feel tired during the day and restless at night. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. As businesses increasingly move online, new threats to their information security have emerged. Hacker attacks and other security breaches are on the rise, and 70 percent of organizations report having been victims of a successful cyberattack in 2014. With the average cost of a corporate data breach hovering around $3.5 million, protecting critical business information is essential to the bottom line of any business. Retreating back to the analog era is not an option, but protecting business information is far from impossible. By understanding the digital threat landscape and implementing security best practices, business managers can drastically reduce the risk of a serious data breach. Looming Threats to Business Information Developing and implementing a successful information security strategy requires that business managers have a thorough understanding of the most common attack vectors. While no comprehensive list of threats can be compiled, most businesses suffer data breaches through one of a handful of vectors. Most importantly, the single greatest threat to any company's sensitive information is from accidental or malicious disclosure from employees or contractors. While human error or gossip may seem mundane compared to a coordinated hacker attack, the damage it can do to a business is very real. Furthermore, many successful cybercriminals will use social engineering techniques to gain access to your company's information, and it is vital that all employees with access to sensitive information are well-trained in security best practices. Hackers and malware also pose a serious threat to business information security. Hackers can target customer information or intellectual property, and the costs of a serious data breach are devastating. More malware is produced every year, and viruses are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Businesses should also consider traditional security threats to their information. Lost or stolen documents, phones or laptops with sensitive information on them can easily fall into the wrong hands, and disgruntled employees can act in bad faith to hand critical information over to the competition. Mitigating Your Business' Risks While perfect security is impossible, developing an information security strategy for your company and monitoring your systems for new threats can go a long way to insulating your firm from serious risk. Understanding where your sensitive data is located and restricting access to it is an important first step. Savvy managers will ensure that root or other highly privileged levels of access to sensitive systems is held by as few people as possible, and limited to IT professionals. Using unbroken encryption systems to protect your servers, like RSA or AES-256, can help protect against man-in-the-middle attacks or other methods hackers use to intercept information. Other steps to keep your information safe may seem more mundane, but are still essential to maintaining the security of your critical systems. Ensure that all of your software, especially operating systems and malware and virus protections, are up to date and functioning properly. When hiring employees who will have access to sensitive systems, conduct background checks and check references to ensure they have a history of behaving ethically. It is worthwhile to consider using VPNs or other private network services to isolate sensitive data, like customer records, from the Internet entirely. While it may seem elementary, unlocked doors or open file cabinets are a major source of information breaches with a simple solution. While there is no magic bullet for information security, businesses that take the time to understand how to keep their information safe can dramatically reduce the risks posed by hackers or other bad actors. There is a wealth of information available on security best practices, and effective, low-cost tools are available to address most security concerns. By taking the time to understand the threats posed to sensitive data and implementing policies to address them, business managers can take major steps to keep their companies safe. Edited by Alicia Young The Venezuelan leader urged the countries of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO) to reactivate their mechanisms of coordinated action. | Read More In this image provided by the U.S. Navy, the USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile Friday, April 7, 2017, from the Mediterranean Sea. The United States blasted a Syrian air base with a barrage of cruise missiles in fiery retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. (Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Robert S. Price/U.S. Navy via AP) Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. The state will get $10 million in federal aid to help repair roads and bridges damaged in the August flood, Louisiana's congressional delegation announced Thursday. "This grant is a critical step in helping Louisiana recover and rebuild after the 'thousand year flood' last August," U. S. Sen. John Kennedy, R-Madisonville said in a statement. "I am grateful this vital assistance is on the way." State officials last year put damage totals between $15 million and $20 million. Shawn Wilson, secretary for the state Department of Transportation and Development, said at the time that 455 roads and bridges were closed at some point because of flooding caused by record rainfall. The repair work includes stabilizing and reworking roadway embankments; rebuilding damaged highways and repairing and replacing damaged structures. U. S. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-Metairie, praised the grant, which will come from the U. S. Department of Transportation. "Recovery efforts in Louisiana are ongoing, and I'm glad that this grant was approved to help rebuild local infrastructure that was damaged," said Scalise, also in a statement. Republicans in the state House proved they can win. Last year, the party used its majority to break precedent, buck the newly elected Democratic governor and install one of its own as House Speaker. They proved they can obstruct. Gov. John Bel Edwards has seen a number of his major initiatives, including campaign promises he made in his winning 2015 race, die in unfriendly House committees. The question that remains, though, is whether they can govern. The answer is likely to come in the upcoming legislative session, when the lower chamber's GOP majority will have a chance to show that it can finally help stabilize the state's tax code and put the budget on surer footing or else confirm critics' complaints that it can't, or simply won't. House leaders have made the case that the vote to elevate Republican state Rep. Taylor Barras as speaker over Edwards' chosen candidate, Democrat Walt Leger III, amounted to a show of legislative independence. But now that they've won that independence, they need to figure out what to do with it. This year, that means deciding whether their primary aim is to stymie Edwards, who has introduced a comprehensive and controversial proposal to restructure the tax system, or to push through their own ideas. Edwards' proposal swaps out some tax breaks for lower overall income tax rates. The governor's also pushing a new tax on commercial activities, a phase-out of the corporate franchise tax and an expansion of sales tax to cover many transactions that are currently exempt. The governors plan seeks at least enough recurring revenue to offset $1.3 billion in expiring temporary taxes, including a one-cent sales tax increase that now gives Louisiana the highest combined state and local sales tax in the country, and to steer the state away from what's become known as the fiscal cliff. The cliff that lawmakers are staring down is actually there because Republicans in the House insisted on putting it there. Facing a crisis situation last year, they pushed to adopt an added penny of sales tax until 2018, with the aim of forcing the Legislature's hand on broader tax reform. They also supported creating a blue ribbon task force, which has issued a number of recommendations that found their way into Edwards' package. A notable exception is the commercial activities tax, which the administration proposed on its own. With the task force report out and the penny tax set to expire next year, though, GOP lawmakers as a whole have neither endorsed the group's recommendations nor offered their own. Barras told The Advocate's Tyler Bridges last week that a number of Republicans plan to offer bills, and that the sum total would constitute something of a plan. State Rep. John Schroder, a candidate for state treasurer who authored the bill to create the task force, is now focusing more on reducing spending. So is Lance Harris, the House's Republican Caucus Chair, who said that the GOP would support some bills but that I never said wed release (the party's fiscal plan) to the public. Meanwhile, several people who attended a recent GOP retreat told Bridges that Harris didn't seem to want to produce a comprehensive Republican-backed plan at all. Edwards calls all of this a cop-out. "The only thing you hear from them is no, without a plan, the governor said. He's also criticized Republicans for talking up the idea of spending cuts but not offering a plan on that either. Unless and until the House leadership shows its hand, it'll be hard to argue with Edwards' criticisms. Their position, in fact, isn't that different from that of Republicans in Washington who now control both Congress and the presidency, and are still struggling to come up with an agenda beyond opposing what former President Barack Obama supported. One congressman from Florida, Republican Tom Rooney, put it in particularly blunt terms: Ive been in this job eight years, and Im wracking my brain to think of one thing our party has done thats been something positive, thats been something other than stopping something else from happening, he told The Atlantic. You've got to wonder how many Louisiana lawmakers can relate. A long-running civil war on the often fraught island of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea is one of the major reasons its well-regarded cocoa beans stopped being exported to Australia. But relative peace in recent times and efforts by Australian authorities in February saw what is believed to be the first direct shipment of cocoa to Australia from Bougainville in more than 20 years. Li Peng Monroe and Peter Channells of Jasper + Myrtle Chocolate. They are making chocolate in Canberra using beans from Bouganville. Credit:Rohan Thomson And the shipment was to make chocolate bars in Canberra. Garran couple Li Peng Monroe and Peter Channells run the still-new local chocolate company Jasper+Myrtle, a bespoke operation in which they roast the beans to hand make the chocolate bars from home. A court heard police were close to laying charges against two men linked to the shooting death of a man in Canberra's north as their sister, accused of stashing the murder weapon, was denied her second bid for bail. Deanne Pikula, 26, pleaded not guilty to being an accessory after the fact to murder in relation to the killing of Eden Waugh on November 3. Police at the murder scene in Windeyer Street, Watson. Credit:Karleen Minney Police found Mr Waugh, 37, dead with a gunshot wound to his chest when they were called to the Watson unit he shared with his partner. It's alleged Pikula hid the gun for her brothers, Jason Pikula-Carroll, 21, and Tavake Lee Pikula, 31, after they targeted Mr Waugh as retribution after he went to police about a home invasion arising from a botched drug deal. In a lethal rampage spanning 14 hours two teens have allegedly killed a man, stabbed another and brutally attacked a third with a tyre iron. The pair, aged 15 and 16, were arrested in the ACT on Friday morning and it is expected they will be extradited to NSW on Saturday after allegedly stabbing Caltex service station attendant Zeeshan Akbar, 29, to death at Queanbeyan. NSW Police Force Deputy Commissioner Catherine Burns said there was some evidence the spree could be terror-related or linked to drugs. "We have two teenagers in custody and sufficient information to believe the actions of one of those teenagers may be related to terrorism," she said. Bangkok: The Thai government says it is ready to hold talks with Australian gold mining company, Kingsgate Consolidated, over the closure of its Thai mining operations last year. The move comes after Kingsgate stepped up the pressure on the Thai government to seek talks as well as compensation for its mine being shut down. Promised justice: Thailand Prime Minister Prayut Chan-Ocha. Credit:Paula Bronstein Thai Industry Ministry officials said the government was planning to meet Kingsgate executives as well as officials from related Thai agencies to discuss the mine's future. On Monday, Kingsgate forwarded a letter to Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha, seeking talks over the mine's closure under the Thai, Australia Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA). Try telling West Australians there's a terrible housing bubble that's forcing our regulators to crack down on lenders. As they watch Perth prices fall around them, you'll get short shrift. The locals in Adelaide, Brisbane, Darwin and Canberra will be similarly less than alarmed about what prices are doing, and perhaps more concerned that they could become collateral damage from the excesses of easy money and federal politics in Sydney and Melbourne. Friday's NAB residential housing survey and forecasts by independent property analyst Michael Matusik vary in extent, but agree in direction Sydney and Melbourne remain hot, the rest of the nation not so much. And if the regulators are successful with jawbone and bank-bashing in cooling the market, they also could be denying the provinces the benefits of the real estate arbitrage that sends would-be owners from the big smoke to the provinces. The unilateral attack by the US against the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was a justified, proportionate and carefully targeted response to the latest in a series of crimes against humanity. The Age believes the Australian government is right to strongly support the move, designed to prevent further use of chemical weapons, which cause hideous deaths and have long been a war crime. The footage of children dying in the most horrific circumstances shows just why. The US move comes after many failed efforts by the international community to broker a political end to the six-year Syrian civil war during which as many as 400,000 people have died and millions more have been displaced, driving the biggest refugee crisis the world has experienced since the Second World War. The unilateral missile attack by the US against the airbase was a humanitarian strike a moral act, not one of war. There were no comfortable options; the retaliation, though, was the least bad one. The forces of Dr Assad, it is all but certain, launched a chemical attack that killed close to 100 innocent children, women and men. Dr Assad's brutal attack was the latest in a long series of such atrocities. While it would have been better for this to have been handled by the United Nations, the reality is Russia and China have continually blocked any UN intervention in Syria. The previous US administration had warned that Dr Assad could no longer act with impunity, could not cross what it called "the red line", but it failed to carry out the threat, and Dr Assad seemed to believe there would be no retaliation. This swift and unexpected action from President Donald Trump he had long opposed striking the Assad regime might be a circuit-breaker and is certainly an unambiguous statement that the use of chemical weapons will not be tolerated. He is rightly calling on all civilised nations to support this message, as Australia and others have. The US, Britain and France have proposed a UN Security Council resolution to condemn a suspected deadly chemical weapons attack in Syria. He said that, given the gas attack, "it would seem that there would be no role for [Mr Assad] to govern the Syrian people". United States' Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, holds pictures of Syrian victims. Credit:AP He also said removing Mr Assad needed an international effort and, when asked if the US would organise that effort, said "those steps are under way". The US response in Syria has been an about-face from its previous stated position. Last week Washington told the United Nations that removing Mr Assad was not a priority. And it was uncertain whether Mr Tillerson was referring to international steps that have been under way for two years to find a political process for the removal of Mr Assad as part of ending the Syrian civil war. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Credit:AP US media reports overnight stated that the Pentagon was preparing military options for President Donald Trump against the Syrian regime. Mr Trump said of Mr Assad that "something should happen" in response to the chemical attacks. Hillary Clinton on Friday called for the Trump administration to "take out" the Syrian air force to prevent further attacks. The gas attack on the opposition-held town on Khan Sheikhoun killed more than 80 people, including dozens of children. Photos and videos shared on social media showed victims choking and foaming at the mouth, with some locals needing to be hosed down by rescue workers. Asked on Friday morning whether Australia would step up its military effort in Syria beyond air strikes against the so-called Islamic State group, Mr Turnbull said he had spoken "a little while ago" to Defence Minister Marise Payne and Chief of the Defence Force Mark Binskin but refused to say if any action was being discussed. "I don't want to speculate any further about that. You know where we stand. We have condemned this attack, utterly. It cries out for a strong response and we are in very close touch, as we always are, constant communications with our allies, in particular the United States. In a slap at the administration of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Mr Turnbull said that "Russia obviously is the principal foreign sponsor of the Assad regime". Asked whether Russia had behaved appropriately, Mr Turnbull said, "No." The most likely way that the US can find a political path forward to removing Mr Assad would be to persuade his key backer, Moscow, to help engineer his removal. But Mr Putin has long refused to abandon his military and political support for his ally, frustrating international efforts to remove the dictator. Illustrating the uncertainty about the process for removing Mr Assad, Mr Tillerson said the international community effort would mean first defeating the Islamic State group, then stabilising Syria and working on a political transition. But such a transition has been discussed for two years without progress, given that there is little leverage to oust Mr Assad - a situation that would only become further solidified if Syria were stabilised with the regime still in power. Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said Australia was already providing forces to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria but it was up to countries such as Russia and Iran to pressure the Assad regime. "Australia certainly can provide some sort of international condemnation of Assad," he said. "You can't gas citizens of your own country. That is a war crime. "It's time for Putin and the Russians to step up." The Turnbull government has used the swift US missile strike against the Syrian regime over its deadly gas attack on civilians to ramp up pressure on Russia to stop further war crimes by the regime of Bashar al-Assad. In the wake of the strike on Friday, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said that the US had not requested expanded military help from Australia. The missile attack on Shayrat air base which, along with other US allies, Australia has strongly endorsed was a "single strike" to deter further use of chemical weapons rather than the start of any deepened military effort in Syria. Senior sources indicated to Fairfax Media that they did not see regime change as part of the US government's plans. Mr Turnbull, however, said that Russia had a "solemn obligation" to stop its "client" from using such weapons prohibited under international law. The most pressing, fraught and urgent issue for discussion between Australia and Papua New Guinea did not warrant a mention in the Prime Minister's statement announcing his trip to Port Moresby. "My first official visits to Papua New Guinea and India will focus on trade, security, economic growth and security," Mr Turnbull, who was due to arrive in PNG late on Friday, says in the statement. Nowhere does Mr Turnbull mention the fate of around 1000 refugees and asylum seekers who are well into their fourth year in limbo in PNG and are battling some of the highest rates of depressive and anxiety disorders ever recorded. Around 300 of the refugees have been fingerprinted and photographed in the second phase of "extreme vetting" for potential resettlement in the United States and another 300 are likely to be interviewed in coming months. In 18th-century Paris salons, Franz Mesmer supposedly "mesmerised" people to better mental health by restoring their "animal magnetism", a "universal force" within all humans. At first he used magnets on patients, but later used his hands and a magnetised wand, inducing trances. Though widely considered a charlatan, Mesmer's work helped shape the development of hypnosis, which has evolved over time into a relaxation tool and a way to treat pain. In the 1930s, Italian neurologist Ugo Cerletti discovered electroshock therapy, where an electrical current is passed through the head of an anaesthetised patient. It is still sometimes used for severe depression, though it is not known how or why it works. Psychotherapy crept into the mainstream after the two world wars to treat traumatised returning soldiers. But with so much money being spent on "talk therapy", particularly in the US, it wasn't long, according to Steven Schwartz in Classic Studies in Abnormal Psychology, before questions started being asked about its efficacy. Psychologist Hans Eysenck first raised the issue in 1952, writing: "Psychoanalysts and psychotherapists generally assert that their methods cure psychoneurotic disorders Clearly, therefore, it is on them that the onus of proof must rest." This call for proof eventually led to the sidelining of the work of Sigmund Freud, the great neurologist and psychoanalyst. While his theories about the unconscious, the ego and the id, fixations, sexualised dreams and unresolved baggage dominated until the 1980s, they were difficult to prove. Szabo says people could undergo analysis for years, often daily, without any way of showing that the therapy "worked". (Despite this, there are still practising psychoanalysts with some modernised and shorter psychodynamic therapies seen as having a useful impact.) As Freudian ideas flourished, behaviourism was slowly developing. First proposed in 1913 by psychologist John Watson in reaction to Freud's couch, it didn't really take off as a therapy until the 1960s. Behaviourism is based on the idea that people can change their negative behaviours through learning experiences. While Szabo says behaviourism has a "massive amount of proof" behind it and still exerts a strong influence on much modern counselling, some aspects gave the concept a bad name and are no longer used, particularly aversion therapy. You can't dish out mindfulness as a sterile, mechanical manual ... It's not going to work. Psychiatrist Eng-Kong Tan As Freud faded and behaviourism rose, a raft of other "schools" with their own styles of treatment bubbled on the side. These included humanism, which focused on love, hope and personal growth, and sociopolitical psychology, which asserted that society was to blame for mental illness. Hypnosis also re-emerged, alongside various relaxation techniques and much more radical treatments, including primal scream therapy and rebirthing breath-work. But one treatment materialised which has come to dominate: cognitive behaviour therapy, or CBT. While other theorists had been exploring cognition, this particular revolution began in 1976 with the publication of Aaron Beck's Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders. Beck, a psychotherapist, had observed how depressed patients displayed distorted thinking habits: seeing the worst in any situation; making mountains out of molehills; thinking everything is their fault. By evaluating their thoughts, these patients were able to be more realistic about them. Now the most common psychological practice in Australia, CBT has years of evidence behind it, though not all of it is positive in 2015, a team of researchers from Norway found that its efficacy in treating depression reduced over time. Of course, no therapy is 100 per cent effective, not even the widely accepted CBT. The result, says Szabo, herself trained in CBT, was a search for alternatives, one of which was mindfulness. "Whereas CBT takes thoughts seriously you have this thought and you evaluate it: is it right? Is it wrong? mindfulness is more about distancing oneself from the thoughts. Thoughts are not a reflection of reality, they are not right or wrong." Clinical psychologist Dr Marianna Szabo: 'Meditation is part of my research, practice and whole life,' she says. Credit:Janie Barrett There are traditions of meditative practice within all the major religions, but the modern strain of mindfulness has its DNA in Buddhism. For centuries, however, Buddhist meditation practices, with a few exceptions, were seldom practised outside a monastery. According to religious scholar David McMahan, it was only when Buddhist countries such as Burma and Sri Lanka were colonised by European powers that monks re-evaluated the place of meditation and began offering it to the laity. "They were worried that [Buddhism] was going to be wiped out by colonisation," says McMahan, professor of religious studies at Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania. "That was the first move for meditation to be widely offered outside monasteries." Another scholar, Erik Braun, tells the story in The Birth of Insight of a charismatic monk, Ledi Sayadaw, who simplified and standardised meditation and encouraged the masses to practise it in response to the British takeover of Burma in 1885. "For the first time, serious meditation practice became plausible, appealing and even patriotic," he writes. McMahan explains that the next big shift in mindfulness occurred with the spread of Vipassana meditation by S.N. Goenka, a Burmese-Indian who offered the practice outside of a Buddhist context and said anybody could do it. He set up his first centre in western Indian in 1976, offering 10-day meditation retreats; the practice subsequently spread and there are now more than 170 of these retreats globally, including seven in Australia. Another trend was Zen, which was becoming popular in the West in the 1950s, influenced by the writings of Japanese philosopher D.T. Suzuki. University of Massachusetts emeritus professor Jon Kabat-Zinn helped bring mindfulness meditation into the mainstream. Credit:D Dipasupil/Getty Images The next wave began in 1979 when Jon Kabat-Zinn, a molecular biologist working at the University of Massachusetts Medical School who was trained in both Vipassana and Zen, was on a meditation retreat and experienced a 10-second vision. "Why not try to make meditation so commonsensical that anyone could be drawn to it?" he wrote of the experience in a 2011 essay in which he also talked about how he wanted to bring the dharma generally defined as Buddha's teachings into the mainstream. What better place," Kabat-Zinn wrote in the essay, "than a hospital to make the dharma available to people in ways that they might possibly understand it and be inspired by a heartfelt and practical invitation to explore themselves as a complement to their more traditional medical treatment All this to be undertaken, of course, without ever mentioning the word 'dharma'." As McMahan says of Kabat-Zinn: "He got people to see it more as a health-related practice, a psychological practice. He did this very consciously, to try to get it more accepted in places like hospitals, to get more scientific research on it, and to get it accepted in businesses and all throughout secular society." Kabat-Zinn soon recruited chronically ill patients to take part in an eight-week mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) group course at a clinic he'd set up at the hospital. While the meditation was pitched as a secular project, the curriculum was underpinned by Buddhist thought and teachings. MBSR has a secular equivalent in mindful-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), developed by the UK's Oxford Mindfulness Centre, and is often used in conjunction with other therapies. It has also evolved into a myriad of treatments: relapse prevention, birthing and parenting, self-compassion and elder care. In patients with chronic physical illness, MBSR and MBCT have been found to help with pain, depressive symptoms, anxiety and stress. But researching the effectiveness of mindfulness meditation in a clinical setting, like a lot of psychology, is complicated. It's very hard to know what people are really doing when they meditate. They could be watching their thoughts or they could be doing something entirely different; teachers have varying levels of training; some patients just can't do it, or they may not be honest about how much "meditation homework" they have done. There are also different forms of meditation: while practitioners of mindfulness and Vipassana focus on one solitary thing, devotees of Transcendental Meditation, a Hindu-based form that was big in the 1970s, chant a mantra. Also, are people benefiting from the meditation or the learning in group classes? There is evidence of brain differences in long-term meditators compared to non-meditators. Credit:Getty Images While there is a lot of fanfare about the benefits of mindfulness, burrowing into the studies reveals a mixed bag: positive findings with some conceptual and methodological flaws, scientifically sound ones with unexciting outcomes. In 2014, researchers at Johns Hopkins University in the US looked into more than 1600 papers on the subject and ended up with 47 trials they deemed acceptable. Overall, they found that mindfulness interventions led to moderate improvements in anxiety, depression and pain but there was low evidence of improvement in stress and quality of life. There was also no evidence that meditation programs were better than taking drugs, exercising or other behavioural therapies. Closer to home, a 2016 study by Griffith University and Cancer Council Queensland showed that mindfulness had no benefit for 189 men with advanced prostate cancer. Where it does show promise is in the area of depression. While the respected Society of Clinical Psychology in the US and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence in the UK say there is not enough evidence for using mindfulness with most specific psychiatric disorders, the latter has recommended that MBCT be used to help prevent relapses in depression. Another challenge with the research has been the selective reporting of positive studies, says Zoltan Dienes, professor of experimental psychology at the University of Sussex. He says one explanation for all the positivity is that the people being studied know they are in a mindfulness experiment, so they expect a lot and also know what the experimenter wants. "We need more direct and exact replications of key studies which are pre-registered and guaranteed to be published regardless of outcome," he says. Freud couldn't scan for the ego and id, but modern researchers can look at what a brain is doing during meditation. Dienes says there is evidence of brain differences in long-term meditators compared to non-meditators (though this may say more about the sort of person who becomes a meditator than the effects of meditation on the brain), as well as some confirmation that eight weeks' training in meditation changes some brain function. He points to the work of US scientist Fadel Zeidan, who has shown that mindfulness engages with a unique set of brain regions depending on how much training a person has done. (Other scientists have called for more rigorous methods to definitively link meditation to an altered brain structure.) With all the science around mindfulness, Dr Miguel Farias and Catherine Wikholm, British psychologists and authors of The Buddha Pill: Can Meditation Change You?, question why the negatives of meditation are rarely reported. In a recent Lancet article, they point to three recent studies which show that even relatively short treatments can lead to increases in stress and depression and a resurfacing of childhood trauma. One involved 30 in-depth interviews with male meditators in London, which found while meditation was reported as good for wellbeing, a quarter of the interviewees had substantial problems ranging from troubling thoughts that were hard to manage to exacerbated mental health issues. In a few cases, meditators had psychotic episodes. Farias and Wikholm also question why mindfulness is pitched as a natural human ability, with benefits for everybody, when the reality is that people react so differently to it: some like it, others can't do it, and there can be negative effects. Because there can be "dark nights" damaging or disturbing meditation experiences the pair are concerned about mindfulness being taught by those with no training in managing mental health issues. Margaret Wilson, 82, a psychologist in Bathurst, NSW, says that in nearly 40 years in practice, mindfulness is the "best thing" she has encountered. She runs twice-yearly group meditation classes and says while most of the participants have been referred to her for mood disorders or pain problems, there are others "who just want to learn about meditation. And the changes they report are quite astounding. It makes a difference to the way people are." Wilson, who spent two weeks training with Kabat-Zinn, believes teachers also need to be practitioners. "It's part of my world," she says. "You can practise in the shower, eating a meal, walking, anything. You can actually, intentionally, be in the moment, be aware of everything that has happened. I would say a lot of therapists don't do that." Eng-Kong Tan, a psychiatrist at Sydney's Metta Clinic and founding president of the Australian Association of Buddhist Counsellors and Psychotherapists, says another reason mindfulness may not be working in a clinical setting is that it is more than just focusing on the breath. With "layers and layers of meaning", mindfulness also has an ethical foundation. "You can't dish out mindfulness as a sterile, mechanical manual," he says. "Unless mindfulness call it what you like is delivered with deep understanding of the client's pain, and attending to the pain with wisdom, compassion, it's not going to work." Lara and Sam Worthington are sticking to their unique tradition of unusual baby names, with the couple finally revealing their new baby's name, five months after welcoming him into the world. And the name of Rocket Zot's baby brother is drum roll Racer. Lara Bingle and Sam Worthington arrive at the 3rd Annual AACTA Awards Ceremony at The Star in 2014. Credit:Lisa Maree Williams Yep, that's right, they have named the baby boy Racer. Worthington reveals the name in a new interview she has given to Harper's Bazaar Australia, which is out on Monday, but offers no explanation of the name, though she is adamant it be spelled correctly, slowly going through the name letter by letter to Harper's editor-in-chief, Kellie Hush. Ah, yes, enhancing the experience. Of late, there's been a fair amount of yoga-enhancing going on. It's yoga with something extra on the side. Would you like beer with your yoga? There's a class for that. Yoga in the buff? Manhattan's Bold and Naked Yoga is precisely what it says it is. For yogis who prefer to bundle in down, there's snowga - yoga with snowshoes. Some classes eschew the calm and quiet many practitioners seek. Y7, with locations in New York and Los Angeles, bills itself as "the original hip-hop yoga studio." Wish to vocalise at multiple decibels above a soothing ohm? There's yoga with karaoke and - YES! REALLY! - tantrum yoga, which encourages poses and primal screams. Trampoline yoga also exists, which must make balancing in Tree pose a challenge. And, because it had to happen, there's a yoga class with goats. Yoga now welcomes a menagerie of critters, in fact: yoga with horses, yoga with dogs (doga - yoga lends itself to a sun salutation series of puns), yoga with bunnies, even yoga with cats, which seems like an exercise doomed to failure. Already rife with rival and sometimes competing schools, the ancient practice has become a tabula rasa, open to endless permutations and personal spins. It's such a fixture in popular culture that it has inevitably become ripe for parody, in fare such as "Yoga Hosers," a Johnny Depp spoof in which a pair of teenage Californians use their yoga prowess to defeat villains. So we have to ask: Has yoga jumped the shark? (Or goat?) Depends on whom you ask. "Yoga has become the answer to everything," laments John Philpin his documentary, Yoga, Inc., which traces - and bemoans - yoga's evolution from spiritual practice to a global commercialised endeavour. But Andrea R. Jain, associate professor of religious studies at Indiana University and the author of Selling Yoga: From Counterculture to Pop Culture points out that although yoga dates back thousands of years, "it has always been open to malleability." The vast and unusual array of classes reflects a marketplace bursting with jewel-toned rubber mats. From 2012 to 2016, the number of Americans practicing yoga - three-fourths of them women - almost doubled to nearly 37 million, according to a major study, creating a $17 billion industry. The growth is partly attributable to the promotion of yoga and wellness and the pervasive practice of mindfulness. Or maybe it's just that yoga's super trendy. It would seem a challenge to make yoga expensive. It's not exactly yachting. You don't need specific togs, shoes, nor even a mat. But it has come to be viewed as a privileged practice, done in $98 Lululemon pants in Bali or Tulum, some exotic beach retreat far, far from home. "We've packaged yoga to make it look like it's done only by young, thin white women," says Lori Hunter, a University of Colorado sociology professor who teaches a course titled Yoga, Culture & Society. "If that's not you, you feel that space is not for you." Enter the goats and bunnies, the tantrums and marijuana, brought in to make yoga appear fun, less exclusive and sanctimonious, and to attract different people. Like men. "If adding cats and bunnies to yoga introduces more people to a positive physical and mental experience that leads them to pursue deeper study of yoga, then it's all for the good," says Andrew Tanner, chief ambassador for the nonprofit Yoga Alliance, which represents 76,000 registered yoga teachers and 5,000 yoga schools. The breakfast-cereal aisle of offerings, a little hip-hop with your plank pose, has not pleased everyone. In 2014, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a dedicated yogi, launched a campaign to reclaim yoga as Indian and to strengthen its moorings to Hinduism, and even appointed a yoga minister. And that was before the yoga and goats business. So how's that working out? Unsurprisingly, Higher Self regularly attracts lots of male students, some taking yoga for the first time. Almost half of tonight's class is male, which is also diverse in age and race. "Maybe they've been toying with the idea of yoga in a safe space," Stambouli says of the male contingent. "Socially, yoga's a girl thing to do." Or, she notes, "Maybe they're fans of marijuana." Maybe? The 90-minute class incorporates meditation, deep breathing and gentle beginner poses, rather than an aerobic regimen of sun salutations. It is supremely mellow. A good thing, because some poses are decidedly raggedy in their execution. Triangle poses melt into trapezoids. Bridge poses crumble. One student becomes too baked to attempt anything more rigorous than Savasana, the aptly named Corpse pose. For much of the class, he lies on the mat doing the most rigorous yoga he can muster, which is almost nothing at all. Possibly, he is sleeping. One man struggles to distinguish right limb from left and tumbles repeatedly from Downward-Facing Dog. Goda Yoga is a 15-year-old studio that Stambouli purchased last August. There are three other studios within a less than two kilometres of her practice. "That's nothing compared to Santa Monica, where there must be 20 in one mile [1.6 kilometres]," she says. "It's like Starbucks. There's a yoga studio on every corner." Goda "had an older client base. I'm trying to bring it up and distinguish it from other studios," says Stambouli, who quit a career in marketing to join what she calls "the yoga industry." In 2018, recreational marijuana will be legal in California, creating the nation's largest market for its products. And activities incorporating those products. "The demand for yoga and weed is going to explode," Stambouli says. For the time being, she says, "We're going to let the buzz build." She may add a second monthly class. The British high command had decided to use tanks for the first time in fighting history. The tanks, primitive beasts, were supposed to have arrived a day before, and the men had waited out in a blizzard on the morning of April 10, but no tanks had appeared and the attack had been called off. By then, the Germans defending their Hindenburg Line of wire and trenches and fortifications knew what was coming. Twelve tanks finally arrived on the morning of April 11, but too late to be of any use. Their job was to flatten the barbed wire behind which the Germans waited, a task normally undertaken by artillery. But only three tanks made it to the wire, and by then Australia's ground troops, unwilling to wait for daylight to expose them, had already flung themselves into battle. We have become numbed to mountains of ghastly statistics from the Western Front, but the bare facts of what happened to Australia's young men in the fields outside Bullecourt 100 years ago remain an ache in our history. The Australian 4th Division, which provided the ranks of young bodies for the battle, lost 3000, dead and wounded. One of the division's two brigades, the 4th, lost 2339 of its 3000 men all on its own. Another 1170 Australians were taken prisoner by the Germans. This was more than a quarter of all Australians taken prisoner during the entire war, and their fate is often forgotten. Most of those captured on that day were imprisoned in an old stone fort near Lille, Belgium, and were put to hard labour building huts and dugouts and carrying and loading heavy ammunition for the Germans. According to Private Horace Ganson of the 16th Battalion, who was captured at Bullecourt, he and his fellow prisoners were fed a slice of bread in the morning and a watery soup at lunch. One in 12 of Australia's prisoners of World War I died in captivity. The remainder were sustained by Red Cross parcels sent across the lines. This, then, was the harvest of the first battle of Bullecourt. After this disaster, a second battle of Bullecourt would be waged within a month. Of course. It would take the lives and the vitality of thousands more Australian men this time it would be, in turn, the 2nd Division, the 1st Division and the 5th Division. The destroyed village of Bullecourt and a bit of strategically meaningless land was gained. The casualties were 7000. By the end of it, almost every Australian soldier in France in the first half of 1917 had taken part in the fighting around Bullecourt. But soon, the high command lost interest and shifted its attention to other parts of the front, and the battles of Bullecourt faded into the crushing stalemate that epitomised that long, medieval war fought with modern weapons of mass destruction. And what of my grandfather? In old age, he told me this, as if he needed to unload a weight: As he and his mates of the 14th Battalion rushed through the dawn towards their fate, the terror and the wildness on them, a young man came out of the mist and the smoke, blundering towards him. My grandfather, himself only 22, had known the boy all his life he came from a farm in the same district as his own family's holding back in western Victoria. My grandfather called to the young man that he was going the wrong way, that he should turn around. But as he came close, it became obvious there was to be no turning around. The boy's eyes were rolling, his tongue hung out like that of a crazed horse and in the frozen dawn, he face poured with sweat. Fear, my grandfather said, had stolen the boy's sense of himself. The military would have called it cowardice and desertion. My grandfather had never been willing to make such a judgment. And yet, he said, when they came home to their farms, neither he nor his former mate could look at each other, and through all the years of their lives, they never spoke again. Just weeks before workmates discovered the body of China Crawford in her unit, the Cairns 32-year-old had shared a message on social media encouraging friends to be grateful for life. A 26-year-old man from Yorkeys Knob was expected to front court on Saturday morning charged with murder, after Ms Crawford was found dead in her Bentley Park unit on Wednesday. China Lily Crawford was found dead in her unit, with police saying she had been assaulted. Credit:Facebook Friends and co-workers shocked by news of her death have described Ms Crawford as having a "beautiful soul" and the "biggest smile" in tributes on social media. On February 3, she had shared a message on her Facebook account that read: "No matter how good or bad your life is, wake up each morning and be thankful that you still have one." Police have charged a man with attempted murder after a his parents' Logan house was damaged by fire overnight on Thursday. A man, 57, and woman, 55, called police after a fire broke out in their Tanah Merah home just after midnight. Police saw smoke billowing out from a bedroom of the Nandala Drive house and forced their way in to help evacuate the couple. The son of the victims was allegedly found nearby and taken to Logan Hospital, after complaining about chest pain. It will be alleged he threw an unknown accelerant into the house before fleeing on foot. The victims told police the object thrown through the window caused extensive damage to one bedroom and smoke damage throughout the home. The Andrews government has welcomed Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's new interest in building a rail link to Melbourne Airport, but played down the project's urgency, arguing the best advice is it won't be needed for another 15 to 30 years. Melbourne Airport rail was listed as a mid to long-term project in Infrastructure Victoria's recent 30-year planning blueprint for the state. Credit:Chris Hopkins The Andrews government has said it is happy to be guided by that independent advice and has made no commitment to build a rail line to the airport. "The independent Infrastructure Victoria report that was released late last year indicated that an airport rail link is needed within the next 15 to 30 years and we certainly want to work towards achieving that," Victoria's Public Transport Minister Jacinta Allan Ms Allan told ABC Radio on Friday morning. Smell smoke? You're not the only one. Controlled burns are being conducted across Victoria this week as part of the state government's bushfire fuel management plan. Credit:Simon O'Dwyer Stable, mild and warm weather this week made for the perfect conditions for more than 100 planned burns from Noojee to Wye River. The burns have created a haze around Melbourne in recent days but it is not expected to last past Sunday as the operation is winding down. People wanting to know whether the smoke they see or smell is part of a planned burn can visit a live map on the government's website. Meanwhile, those worried about smoke in the air are encouraged to check the EPA's Hourly air quality data table. At 9am on Friday the table stated very poor air quality in Traralgon and Mooroolbark but wind changes mean those conditions could move on quickly. Any remaining haze is predicted to be swept away by showers forecast for Sunday. "Planned burning may mean some parks and forests are closed, said Forest Fire Management Victoria Chief Fire Officer Stephanie Rotarangi. Sam Liszczak was charged after the shooting of police officer Ben Ashmole. Justice Michael Croucher could only sentence on the charges before him. He said, "The 'injury' caused to Constable Ashmole is about as grave as it gets without being classified as a 'serious injury'." Faced with reduced charges and the required discount for the guilty plea Justice Croucher gave them four years for shooting the policeman which is at the upper end of the scale. Throw in the remaining grab bag of arson, firearms and theft charges and they both ended up with a minimum of around six years. Matthew Johnson the man who killed Carl Williams with the metal stem of an exercise bike. Credit:Paul Rovere If they were kids who panicked, if the gun was accidentally discharged or if they were mentally impaired then maybe there was room wriggle room but Phillips and Liszczak have had more chances than the Marsh brothers in the Australian Test side. Liszczak went into state care at the age of eight and his criminal history started when he was 13. He'd only been released from his latest prison stint a few days when he started the attacks on the Williams family. George Williams - seen here with his daughter-in-law Roberta - was let out of prison for his wife's funeral in December 2008. Credit:Jason South Since the age of 17 Phillips has spent only five months out of prison. He had previously been charged with attempted murder but you guessed it was able to do a deal to plead to lesser offences. Like his mate Liszczak he had only been out of prison a few days before the attacks. In jail they were part of the notorious Prisoners of War gang run by Matthew Johnson who in 2010 murdered Carl Williams in Barwon Jail by bashing him with the stem of an exercise bike seat. Clearly the two freshly released inmates were assigned to continue the vendetta against the Williams family. George Williams died in 2016 after suffering a massive heart attack. Credit:Joe Armao At Liszczak's house police found two posters. One was of Carl Williams that contained the words "Missing" and "Have you seen this dog?" Scrawled underneath was, "Last seen chewing on a bike seat"; and "Please contact owner at VicPol #000". The second poster was of Roberta, headed "Should be missing"; and "Last seen working for VicPol". This proves two things: Sam is no master criminal and his future as a caption writer is extremely limited. At sentence Justice Crowther said, "Police have a hard enough job as it is. To be subjected to such frightening violence is totally unacceptable. The courts must protect police and the wider community from such harmful and dangerous behaviour by denouncing it in the strongest terms and passing sentences that punish the perpetrators justly and stand as a deterrent both to them and any others who might be minded to engage in such behaviour." Ms Williams arrives with Carl Williams at the scene of a gangland murder in 2004. Credit:Angela Wylie This is exactly what did not happen and could not happen once the charges were diluted. So why did the Crown accept such a lopsided deal? Because the laws surrounding the use of firearms are pathetic and while politicians are queuing up to pass vacuous tough guy laws that only impress headline writers no one is addressing the real problem. We smugly sneer at the US gun culture while failing to address our own issues. There are more guns in the underworld than ever before and our lack of action normalises the unacceptable. While crooks once thought Hugo Boss cufflinks were a sign of success they now see a Glock semi-automatic as the gangster fashion statement of choice. Consider this: You shoot someone in the guts and they die you are charged with murder but if you shoot them in the guts and they live you are unlikely to be convicted of attempted murder. Why? Because in an attempted murder case you have to prove intent. Do me a favour what do you think will happen if you shoot someone in the belly? Indigestion? We are sending a terrible message to half-wits who carry guns. Every week someone fronts hospital with a gunshot wound and on many occasions the victim is uncooperative. The reason? Most times it is a payback for not paying a drug debt with crooks believing a slug in the leg concentrates the mind more than a stern letter from a solicitor. Police privately call the victims cockroaches because they are nearly impossible to kill. One such fellow turned up at hospital with a gunshot wound and when he saw there would be a delay in treatment popped off to a nearby pub to play the pokies. Clearly he thought he was lucky to be alive and decided to try to extend his winning streak. In one case a victim was lured to a meeting with two crooks at an industrial estate in Campbellfield where he was ambushed and blasted with a sawn off, double-barrelled shotgun. The wounded man bolted for his car as the second offender ordered the gunman to "shoot him again." The victim was hospitalised for three days with 22 pellets in his head, face, neck, body and arms. The two crooks were charged with attempted murder but allowed to plead to lesser charges with the gunman eventually sentenced to a non-parole period of three years and his partner to a minimum of 17 months. In one aggravated burglary on a business the offender held a gun just above the right ear of his terrified victim who begged for his life then ducked his head forward as the gunman pulled the trigger. Which meant that instead of blowing his brains out the bullet grazed the back of his head. The charges were whittled down and he was sentenced to a minimum of just under four years. No one can possibly see these sentences as just and if we do not fix the holes in the law then crooks will continue to leave holes in their victims. For a start we need to look at the criminal action, not the medical reaction. Shooting someone is likely to cause death or serious injury and the charges and sentences must reflect the blindingly obvious. Police should only have to prove that offender A shot victim B. The seriousness of the injury can be taken into account at sentence. These should be the rules. You carry a gun then there is a presumption you will use it. You fire a shot the presumption must be you intend to hit someone. An alleged gunman on the run for nearly a month has been nabbed and charged with 30 serious offences. The 31-year-old man was described as a "danger to the community" after allegedly being involved in a police shooting in Dandenong North on March 7. Heavily-armed police outside the Dandenong North property in March. Credit:Courtesy of Nine News . He was taken hospital for treatment of minor injuries after he was arrested in South Melbourne on Tuesday. Three men are in hospital with gunshot wounds to the legs after a fight escalated inside a bikie clubhouse in Melbourne's north last night. The anti-bikie Echo Taskforce is investigating the incident that took place at the Bandidos' Weston Street, Brunswick base about 11pm. Three men have been taken to hospital with serious injuries. Credit:Pat Scala A Victoria Police spokesman said three men were shot during the fight and were taken to hospital with serious injuries. Ambulance Victoria spokesman John Mullen said one man was taken to the Royal Melbourne Hospital and two men were taken to The Alfred hospital for treatment to leg wounds. The trio were in a serious but stable condition. One of WA's most baffling missing persons cases will be the subject of a coronial inquiry later this year. The case of missing Nannup mother Chantelle McDougall, her daughter Leela and two other men, Tony Popic and Simon Kadwell, has been investigated by police for almost a decade. Pictured are Chantelle McDougall and her daughter Leela (top) and Tony Popic (bottom left) and Simon Kadwell. Ms McDougall and her then six-year-old daughter went missing in July 2007, together with her partner Mr Kadwell, 45, and their lodger Mr Popic, 40. They left behind wallets, credit cards and dirty plates on the table at their Nannup home, 280km south of Perth. Chinese state media have notably played down the awkward timing of the US launching an air strike on Syria as Chinese president Xi Jinping dined with Donald Trump, Fairfax Media's China correspondent Kirsty Needham writes. "The front page of the Chinese language Global Times showed Mr Xi and Mr Trump strolling at Mar a Lago, and Mr Trump's declaration of an"outstanding relationship" with China. The US air strike on Syria was relegated to the world news pages.The English version of the paper, known for its hawkish anti- western views at times, highlighted that Ivanka Trump's children had sung and recited Classical Chinese verse to Mr Xi and his wife. The Chinese government has been muted in its response to the airstrikes, waiting six hours before making any public comment.Then, China's foreign ministry avoided direct criticism of the US action, but called for calm and pointedly said a political solution was urgently needed. China's reaction is being closely watched because it holds veto power over any UN Security Council vote to sanction Syria, and in February had joined with Russia to block a UN sanction against Syria's use of chemical weapons. This time, however, China's early response has sat in contrast to Russia, which had quickly labelled the US strikes an act ofaggression.Overnight in the United Nations Security Council, China's delegate Liu Jieyi said: "A political solution is the only way out for the Syrian issue. Military means will not work." Any criticism by China of the US action in Syria is unlikely to come while Mr Xi was in Florida. The Chinese government had placed great importance on the Xi-Trump meeting being a success, and stabilising the relationship with the Trump administration, which had gotten off to a rocky start even before Mr Trump's inauguration." As it happened: Donald Trump tipped off Australia before launching Syria missile strike Were sorry, this feature is currently unavailable. Were working to restore it. Please try again later. Dismiss The woman who fell into the Thames during last month's London terror attack has died, taking the death toll from the day to six. Andreea Cristea, a Romanian national who had been visiting London at the time of the attack, died in hospital after her life support was switched off on Thursday, police said. Ms Cristea fell into the River Thames from Westminster Bridge after being driven at by Khalid Masood who ploughed a rented car into pedestrians and stabbed a policeman to death before being shot dead on March 22. Her family, together with her partner Andrei Burnaz, remembered Ms Cristea as "a wonderful daughter, sister, partner, dedicated friend and the most unique and life loving person you can imagine". Palm Beach: US President Donald Trump said on Friday he had made progress in talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping and expected them to overcome many problems, a marked contrast to the stridently anti-China rhetoric of the Trump election campaign. Sitting across from Xi on the second day of a Florida summit overshadowed by US missile strikes in Syria overnight, Trump declared that his relationship with the Chinese leader was "outstanding" after they discussed trade irritants and concerns about North Korea's nuclear program. Trump had said he intended to raise concerns about China's trade practices and press Xi to do more to rein in North Korea's nuclear ambitions during his visit to the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, though no major deals on either issue are expected. The Republican president, who took office on January 20, tweeted last week that the United States could no longer tolerate massive trade deficits and job losses and that his meeting with Xi "will be a very difficult one." Mexico's President Enrique Pena Nieto has received a leading Venezuelan opposition activist for the first time, in a policy shift that reflects Mexico's increasing assertiveness against the government of Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro. Pena Nieto's meeting with Lilian Tintori, wife of jailed opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, in the Mexican capital follows statements by the Mexican government demanding that democracy be "re-established" in Venezuela, where elections have been postponed. Enrique Pena Nieto has met with a leading Venezuelan opposition activist. Credit:AP "We trust that, via an agreement between all sides, it will be the Venezuelans who re-establish the democratic order," Pena Nieto said via Twitter late on Thursday after the meeting. The position reflects deep concern about the humanitarian crisis of food and medicine shortages in Venezuela, as well as the Supreme Court's short-lived decision last week to take over the powers of the country's opposition-controlled Congress. Washington: Senate Republicans on Thursday crushed a Democratic blockade of President Donald Trump's US Supreme Court nominee in a fierce partisan brawl, approving a rule change dubbed the "nuclear option" to allow for conservative judge Neil Gorsuch's confirmation by Friday. Experts said eliminating the filibuster for Supreme Court appointments could make it more likely that presidents, with little incentive to choose centrist justices who could attract support from the other party, will pick ideologically extreme nominees in the future. Ending the filibuster also would make it easier for future Supreme Court nominees to be confirmed when the president and Senate leadership belong to the same party. The filibuster in one form or another dates back to the 19th century but assumed its current form in the 1970s. A statement from the Kremlin on Friday afternoon said the US strike on Syria was "aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law," according to Associated Press. Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said "the Syrian army doesn't have chemical weapons", adding this had been confirmed by a United Nations chemical weapons unit. President Donald Trump speaks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida. Credit:AP Putin saw the US missile strike on Syria as an attempt to distract attention from civilian casualties in Iraq, Peskov said. "This step deals significant damage to US-Russian ties, which are already in a deplorable state." Syria's information minister told a Syrian TV network the US strike was "limited" and "expected". He said he does not expect military escalation following the missile launch. The guided-missile destroyer USS Porter in the Mediterranean Sea last month. Credit:AP In a statement, Trump cited the innocent suffering of civilians in making the decision to launch the missiles. "Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children," he said. "It was a slow and brutal death for so many. A Tomahawk missile is launched during a test in 2010 in the Pacific Ocean. Credit:USNavy "Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered at this very barbaric attack. "No child of God should ever suffer such horror." A Syrian doctor treats a boy following a suspected chemical attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun. Credit:AP The President said the US must "prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons". He said there was "no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons". Bashar al-Assad is thumbing his nose at the West. Credit:AP "Tonight, I call on all civilised nations to join us in seeking to end the [slaughter] and bloodshed in Syria," he said. "Also, to end terrorism of all kinds and all types. "We ask for God's wisdom as we face the challenge of our very troubled world," Trump said. Trump ordered the strikes just a day after he pointed the finger at Assad for this week's chemical attack, which killed more than 80 people, many of them children, in the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun. The Syrian government has denied it was behind the attack. Trump, who was attending a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping at his Florida resort, said earlier on Thursday that "something should happen" with Assad as the White House and Pentagon studied military options. Russia's warning US military action put the new President at odds with Russia, which has air and ground forces in Syria after intervening there on Assad's side in 2015 and turning the tide against mostly Sunni Muslim rebel groups. A US defence official said the US had been in contact with Russia throughout the day leading up to the missile attack, according to CNN. Nevertheless, Russians were located at the targeted base, as well, the network reported. There was no indication about what happened to them. Syrian state TV described the attack as "American aggression" that targeted Syrian military targets. Just before the attack, Russia's deputy UN envoy, Vladimir Safronkov, warned of "negative consequences" if the US carried out military strikes against Syria over the deadly gas attack. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Russia failed to carry out a 2013 agreement to secure Syrian chemical weapons. Tillerson said Moscow was either complicit, or incompetent, in its ability to carry out the agreement. Russian news agencies later quoted a senior Russian lawmaker as saying that Russia's coalition with the US on the Syria crisis was in doubt. Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the international affairs committee in the upper house of the Russian Parliament, said the strikes were intended to "stamp an earlier verdict about Assad's responsibility for a chemical attack in Idlib with gunpowder", the Interfax news agency reported. Strategy change Trump has until now focused his Syria policy almost exclusively on defeating Islamic State militants in northern Syria, where US special forces are supporting Arab and Kurdish armed groups. The risks have grown worse since 2013, when Barack Obama, Trump's predecessor, considered and then rejected ordering a cruise missile strike in response to the use of chemical weapons by Assad's loyalists. The air strikes were carried out less than an hour after the President concluded a dinner with the President of China at his estate in Mar-a-Lago in Florida, sending an unmistakably aggressive message about Trump's willingness to use the military power at his disposal. Trump authorised the strike with no congressional approval for the use of force, an assertion of presidential authority that contrasts sharply with the protracted deliberations over the use of force by his predecessor. Two Republican senators, John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, praised the strike in a statement and called for Trump to go further and to "take Assad's air force - which is responsible not just for the latest chemical weapons attack, but countless atrocities against the Syrian people - completely out of the fight." Strikes serve the terrorists: Homs governor US missile strikes on Syrian military positions serve the goals of "armed terrorist groups" and Islamic State, the Governor of Syria's Homs province said. "Syrian leadership and Syrian policy will not change," Homs Governor Talal Barazi said in a phone interview with state television on Friday. "This targeting was not the first and I don't believe it will be the last," he added. "The armed terrorist groups and Daesh [Islamic State] failed to target the Syrian Arab Army and Russian military positions," Barazi said. The Syrian government describes all armed groups opposed to it as terrorists. The US strikes "targeted military positions in Syria and in Homs specifically" to publicly "serve the goals of terrorism in Syria and the goals of Israel in the long run", Barazi added. Later, Barazi told Reuters that fire and rescue operations had been going on at the air base for more than two hours. Australia told in advance The Trump administration informed the Australian government in advance of its plans to launch the Tomahawk missile attack on Syria, Fairfax Media understands. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull had pointedly said before news of the strikes broke that the chemical attack on civilians "cries out for a strong response". On Friday morning, Mr Turnbull linked the attacks to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and blamed Russia for failing to rein in its ally. Why Tomahawk missiles? The Tomahawk has been a critical part of US warfare since the Persian Gulf War in 1991, and commonly carries a 1000-pound (453-kilogram) warhead. One of the largest advantages of the Tomahawk is that it does not require a pilot to be anywhere near a potential target. It can be launched from Navy destroyers up to 1600 kilometres away, a tactical consideration when facing enemy air defences. The attack appears to have involved only missiles. US fighter planes, if used, would have had to contend with a modest web of Syrian air defences and potentially more advanced types of surface-to-air missiles provided by Russia. One of Assad's more prevalent systems, the S-200, was used to target Israeli jets last month, but missiles were intercepted by Israeli defence systems. The S-200 has a range of roughly 300 kilometres, according to US military documents, and can hit targets flying at altitudes of around 130,000 feet. Russian S-300 and S-400 missiles, located primarily around Khmeimim air base in western Syria, have a shorter range than the S-200, but have more-advanced radar systems and fly considerably faster than their older counterparts used by Syrian forces. The S-300 has a range of roughly 140 kilometres and could also be used to target incoming US cruise missiles. Air strike rocks sharemarket, dollar Australia's sharemarket and key Asian exchanges reversed sharply into negative territory on the news the United States had launched the missile strikes. CMC Markets chief market analyst Ric Spooner said the Australian sharemarket had been fairly brittle this week, and investors were responding to the news of the US strike. Mr Spooner said investors would now be looking to see how Russia responds or if the conflict spreads elsewhere into the Middle East. Equites markets in Japan, Korea and Singapore were all lower following news of the strike while gold and oil prices rose and the Australian dollar fell against major currencies. Mr Spooner said news of the strike was pushing up the oil market because Syria was an oil producer, albeit not a major one. "The region most in the firing line for an escalation is the Middle East, and so if things did get worse, there's concerns that there could be disruption [to oil supply] in Iran and Iraq," Mr Spooner said. The Australian dollar fell to a one-month low with analysts tipping that uncertainty about US and Russia would keep pressure on the currency. The local unit had fallen to 75.24 US cents at 12.30pm AEST, from 75.38 before news broke, its lowest level since March 11. Westpac senior currency strategist Sean Callow said it was a "textbook market response" for traders to sell risk currencies such as the Aussie in times of uncertainty. "Years of previous attempts at changing Assad's behaviour have all failed, and failed very dramatically. As a result, the refugee crisis continues to deepen, and the region continues to destabilise, threatening the United States and its allies." Face-off: DOnald Trump and Vladimir Putin. United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres appealed to parties involved in the Syrian conflict for restraint to avoid adding to the suffering. "Mindful of the risk of escalation, I appeal for restraint to avoid any acts that could deepen the suffering of the Syrian people," he said. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson speaks with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, centre, on Friday. Credit:AP According to the The situation in Syria now "amounts to an international armed conflict" following the US missile strikes, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. "Any military operation by a state on the territory of another without the consent of the other amounts to an international armed conflict," ICRC spokeswoman Iolanda Jaquemet said in Geneva. The guided-missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG 78) launches a Tomahawk land attack missile towards Syria on Friday. Credit:US Navy/AP "So according to available information the US attack on Syrian military infrastructure the situation amounts to an international armed conflict." Russian state TV said the air strikes had destroyed nine planes, but had left the main runway relatively unscathed. The Rossiya 24 channel showed footage of the base after it was struck by US cruise missiles. Craters, debris and rubble was visible, but the main runway looked largely intact. It was unclear whether the channel was showing all or just part of the base. The Syrian army said the attack "undermines the operation of combating terrorism that the Syrian Arab Army is carrying out". "The United States has tried to justify this aggression under the pretext of the Syrian Arab Army using chemical weapons in Khan Sheikhoun, without knowing the reality of what happened," it added. In Moscow, Russia said it would withdraw from a pact with Washington to share information about warplane missions over Syria, where a US-led coalition is also waging airstrikes on Islamic State targets. Russian President Vladimir Putin called for an immediate meeting of the UN Security Council and his spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, called the US missile strikes "violations of the norms of international law, and under a far-fetched pretext." The Kremlin claim only 23 of 59 cruise missiles reached the air base, destroying six Syrian jets but leaving the runway intact. Moscow also confirmed it had been informed of the attack in advance. A US-led coalition has been bombing Islamic State targets in Syria since 2014, while Russia's air force has been striking both extremist groups and Syrian rebels in order to aid Assad's forces. In the US, politicians from both parties backed Mr Trump's missile strikes, while urging him to spell out a broader strategy for dealing with the conflict. "I am hopeful these strikes will convince the Assad regime that such actions should never be repeated," said Senator Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat. But Warner, who said he had been briefed on the strikes by Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, urged Trump, a Republican, to lay out his plans for the multi-sided Syria conflict. "President Trump has said repeatedly that his objective in Syria is to defeat [Islamic State militants]. Last night's strike was aimed at a different objective," he said. "President Trump needs to articulate a coherent strategy for dealing with this complex conflict, because the consequences of a misstep are grave." Armed Services Committee chairman, Senator John McCain, who has long called for more aggressive action against Assad, said "the signal I think that was sent last night ... was a very, very important one." Trump, he said, should be "prepared to take other action," including establishing safe zones within Syria and further arming and training of anti-Assad rebels. Several legislators said Trump should seek Congress' approval if he decides to take additional military action in Syria. US allies around the world expressed support, if sometimes cautiously, of Washington's strikes on Syria. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the strikes sent "a vitally important message" that the world would not tolerate the use of chemical weapons. "The retribution has been proportionate and it has been swift," he said. "We support the United States in that swift action." Britain, France and Japan all expressed support. "The UK government fully supports the US action, which we believe was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime and is intended to deter further attacks," a British government spokesman said. Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters: "Many innocent people became victims from the chemical attacks. The international community was shocked by the tragedy that left many young children among the victims. Japan supports the US government's determination to prevent the spread and use of chemical weapons." French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said Russia and Iran needed to understand that supporting Assad made no sense and that the escalation of the US military role in Syria was a "warning" to "a criminal regime". Turkey's Foreign Minister called for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's immediate removal, saying a transitional government must be established and voicing support for the air strike. "It is necessary to oust this regime as soon as possible from the leadership of Syria," Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters in the southern town of Alanya in comments broadcast live. "If he doesn't want to go, if there is no transition government, and if he continues committing humanitarian crimes, the necessary steps to oust him should be taken," he said. Cavusoglu said safe zones for civilians in Syria were now more important than ever. He said the coalition had been informed of the US missile strike and that he had spoken by phone with the French and German foreign ministers, although he did not say when. He also said contacts had been initiated with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Washington has blamed Assad's forces for the chemical attack. The Syrian government has strongly denied responsibility and blamed the deaths on leaks from a rebel chemical arms store it says was hit by a Syrian air strike. Rebels say there were no military positions in the targeted area in Khan Sheikhoun and that they have no chemical weapons. The army said Friday's US attack "sends the wrong messages to the terrorist organisations and makes them go further in using chemical weapons in the future whenever they face big losses on the battlefield". Loading A direct strike on the Assad regime's chemical weapons storage facilities was seen as too risky to civilians, because it would have produced a plume of noxious gas. President Trump speaks at Mar-a-Lago, Florida, after the missile attack. Credit:AP Instead military planners drew up a target list that included Assad's chemical weapons units and the aircraft and artillery that the regime would need to deliver the ordnance. "The intent was to strike the various chemical weapons units," said a former US official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss military planning. Doctor turned mass murderer: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Credit:AP "We had postured our intelligence units to give us bomb damage assessments - and if we didn't get the effect we were looking for, we would have hit them again." The biggest difference that Trump and his commanders confront now is the presence of Russian troops on the battlefield and Russian air defence systems that are capable of shooting down US planes. A Tomahawk missile is launched during a test in 2010 in the Pacific Ocean. Credit:USNavy Today, Russian troops are intermingled with Syrian forces, and any strike on a Syrian military target could also produce Russian military casualties. Retired General John Allen, who co-ordinated the campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria during the Obama administration, said that the military strikes could have had a "decisive" impact on the war had they been launched in 2013. He described Obama's decision not to strike as devastating. "It is much harder now," Allen said. "The United States has to ask itself a question: How angry do we want to be on this issue? Are we enraged enough morally that we are ready to take action even with the possibility of dead Russians?" The other big worries are the Syrian and Russian air defence systems that have not targeted US planes because the American aircraft are largely focused on fighting the Islamic State, a common enemy of the United States and the Syrian regime. "Both the Syrians and Russians can act as a spoiler," said Andrew Exum, a former senior defence official in the Obama administration. "American and coalition aircraft have flown around and through their air defence systems for the last two years. If you launched a strike against the regime, it would have every excuse to start lighting up coalition planes with anti-aircraft systems." At a minimum, such a move by the Syrians and Russians could spook some US coalition partners and cause them to pull out of the fight, Exum said. If US aircraft were shot down or forced to fire back at the Syrian and Russian radar, the United States could get pulled into the middle of Syria's messy civil war. Such an outcome would not only put American lives at further risk, it would make the US war against the Islamic State, which Trump has declared his top foreign policy priority, far more difficult. Trump could mitigate some of those risks by assuring the Russians that the strikes are designed solely to punish Assad for using chemical weapons and not to tip the balance in the broader civil war. It is also possible that the strikes could give the United States added leverage to broker a compromise with the Russians that would end the civil war, some analysts said. "The political message a strike would send is that you are using an approach that is completely different than the previous administration," said Andrew Tabler, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute. Such a move would probably induce anxiety inside the Syrian regime that the United States could use to its advantage. "Creating uncertainty and being unpredictable might get you a lot more than what the Obama administration was willing to do, which was nothing," Tabler said. Even as they acknowledged the big risks of a strike and their concerns about Trump's erratic nature, some Obama administration officials urged action. 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... Life Behind Bars, Episode 1: The Professor, Jerry Thomas Jerry Thomas was a legend in his own time having run famous bars on both coasts. He also wrote the first cocktail book, The Bon Vivants Companion: How to Mix Drinks. Since it was initially published in 1862 it hasnt been out of print with countless editions, including ones edited by Herbert Asbury of Gangs of New York fame. This episode will cover Thomas history, his book and how its become a bible for the current generation of cocktail bartenders. The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee is now under an ethics investigation into whether he disclosed classified information without authorization. A Daily Beast review has unearthed a number of instances where that may have occurred. Rep. Devin Nunes has denied spilling secret information, even as he recused himself from the committees Russia investigation into the matter. As the House Ethics Committee announced that it had launched an inquiry, Nunes said the allegations were entirely false and politically motivated. But Nunes may have disclosed secret information in plain sightduring his various press conferences, in which he publicly discussed the contents of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) surveillance. FISA-authorized surveillance is some of the governments most tightly held secret information. Two weeks ago, Nunes told the press that Trump transition team members had been caught up in incidental collection during U.S. foreign surveillance. Asked if the information he obtained came from surveillance obtained under FISA, Nunes responded, it appears so. He also said, it has to do with FISA, and there are multiple FISA warrants that are out there. The existence or non-existence of a FISA warrant is a classified fact. The details from the warrant, namely who got caught up in incidental collection, is a classified fact, national security lawyer Bradley Moss said, when The Daily Beast first considered whether Nunes would be subject to an ethics investigation. Nuness primary defense has been that he did not discuss the matter in great enough detail. Nuness spokesman told The Daily Beast last week, The chairman did not reveal any of the specific details of the information, such as the target of the collection, and did not reveal classified information. But on multiple other occasions, at other press conferences, Nunes has spoken about FISA surveillance and specifically connected them to an individual: former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Criticizing the illegal leak that led to reporting that Flynn had conversations with the Russian ambassador during the Trump transition period, Nunes suggested on Feb. 27 that Flynns discussions had been picked up through FISA surveillance. Now, the good thing is about FISA and the way it works, there should be a record of who in the government knew about General Flynn talking to the Russian ambassador, and from there we should be able to do know who is in the realm of the possible, who we would need to talk to, Nunes said at the time. On March 2, asked about FBI cooperation with the committee, Nunes suggested it would be difficult because the committee was seeking information that had to do with FISA. Its not always easy to get this because youre talking about information that was gathered through FISA, that some of it possibly was picked up incidentally of Americans, especially as it relates to General Flynn, Nunes said. To some experts in the field, there is enough evidence in these public statements to show that Nunes did reveal classified information. Each of those remarks disclosed the existence of a classified fact, namely that there was a FISA warrant(s) and that it incidentally collected info on certain U.S. persons, Moss said Thursday. The repeated dissemination of the information by Nunes undermines any claim Nunes could make that the unauthorized disclosure was inadvertent or accidental. Susan Hennessey, the managing editor of Lawfare and a former lawyer at the National Security Agency, was more bearish on the matter. Nuness public statements probably do not involve disclosure of classified information in a way that he could be criminally prosecuted for, she said. [However,] it is sufficiently careless that it makes the very strong rhetoric about leaks that Nunes and other congressional Republicans [have criticized] seem a little hypocritical, Hennessey told The Daily Beast. I dont read [Nuness statements about FISA] and say, clearly he disclosed classified information. The pieces dont indicate that to me. Theres a possibility, certainly, that hes discussing topics that are classified. Ultimately, the House Ethics Committee found the matter worthy of investigation. On Thursday, the panel announced it was beginning an 18(a) investigation, which is a staff-driven probe that was initiated by the committee itself, rather than by any sort of outside referral. The Committee is aware of public allegations that Representative Devin Nunes may have made unauthorized disclosures of classified information, in violation of House Rules, law, regulations, or other standards of conduct, the panel said in a statement Thursday. The Committee has determined to investigate these allegations in order to fulfill its institutional obligation. Nunes still has the upper hand. He remains the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and a powerful member of Congress. If he had made the same statements about FISA as a less influential federal employee, his career may have already been ended. If this were a rank and file federal employee, the odds would certainly be stacked against them. It would be more than likely that they would ultimately lose their security clearance and, consequently, their job, Moss said. Fresh from a revealing and rousingly received Women in the World interview, Hillary Clinton, accompanied by longtime aide Huma Abedin, headed to Broadway on Thursday night for the opening night of War Paint. Just as with another recent Broadway foray for Clinton (to Sunset Boulevard), this is a musical featuring strong women. A loud standing ovation greeted Clinton at both shows. Along with the rumbling rivalry between Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein, as they grew their cosmetic empires, War Paint also hints that the pairwho apparently never met in personhad more in common than they could have imagined. In their own ways they both felt like outsiders, and left behind by the charge of modern times and modern makeup. As Clinton and Abedin sat there, many rueful nods accompanied lyrics focusing on facing misogyny, and fighting and succeeding on their own terms. The musical, inspired by Lindy Woodheads book War Paint and Ann Carol Grossman and Arnie Reismans documentary The Powder and the Glory, is a respectful affair, maybe a little too much so if you were expecting the bitchiness of Joan Crawford and Bette Daviss dueling as evoked in FXs Feud. The animosity, as sketched in the musical, seems to have extended to years of frostiness, and insults and grievances mostly privately held and voiced to intimates. It also powered two empires. Just as in Feud, where the larger issue is the treatment of women by Hollywood, a sexism that only fueled the womens rivalry, so War Paintas well as focusing on Arden and Rubinsteinhas bigger questions to ask about the politics of makeup. Are the duo liberating women, one face cream at a time, or enslaving them? After a shaky opening, War Paint heats up in the second act. The first zigzags a little fruitlessly in a search for plot and animus between its leads. It begins with a nice idea: An unseen voice baits a group of women about their beauty regimes and why they would benefit from makeup. This mini-circus of insecurities is awkwardly scored, and the orchestraas happens occasionally elsewhereis so loud it plays over some of the sung words. Christine Ebersole as Elizabeth Arden appears first, mistress of all she surveys in her pink palace, with faithful husband Tommy (John Dossett) wanting some recognition that never comes. Then comes Patti LuPone as Helena Rubinstein, with her longtime business partner Harry (Douglas Sills). From the beginning, as far as the women are concerned, triumph in the makeup market is indivisible from the destruction of the other. It is Rubinstein who gets the best lines, with Arden left to say commanding things, but with considerably less sharp talons. The best scenes of the piece see Rubinstein commanding events from her bed, dispensing insults and demands, armed with a hooked prong, on which she requisitions sundry jewels to be placed in a series of graded boxes according to their worth. Her cash offer on a penthouse is refused because she is Jewish. The biggest applause of the evening comes when she reveals she was not cast down by this: She just bought the building. The men are subsidiary, and know it. They swap sides, and Harrywho is gay, closeted, and has a liking for sailorsalso earns a few, unresponded-to homophobic insults, which the performance I attended elicited a few laughs from the audience. (Note to the producers: These insults may be true to the era, but they are being performed, with no countering voice, in 2017.) If the musicals intention is to show how different and opposed the women were, it keeps illustrating their similarities. One is no more mean and nasty than the other, so its a bit of an extended game of she-said, she-said. Both men reveal company secrets to both women. Both women reported each other to the authorities, leading to the ingredients of cosmetics having to be listed on packaging. They both made World War II into a consumer opportunity (one of the weirder moments comes when Arden puts lipstick on a shop girl about to do her military servicethis is her war paint, she is told cheerily). Both women sing If Id Been a Man, noting the sexism they have had to face. The challenge in illustrating a rivalry with no evidence of the two subjects ever meeting is met by having both Ebersole and LuPone share the stage to sing duets, or eavesdrop on each other but move spectrally around one other. If we believe the musical, the women also shared neighboring fancy-restaurant banquettesand so it is that Rubinstein, the victim of anti-Semitism, hears Arden being rejected from a fancy club because she earns money rather than just spends a husbands. For all the luxe backdrops of makeup bottles and potions, the jewels and truly amazing hats, there is an austere, slightly stilted feeling to the movement in War Paint, with characters standing at rigid angles to each other, and other odd bits of stiff, confected movement. This restraint is mirrored in the script and lyrics. The songs never fully capture the supposed power of the womens animosity. Beyond their light versus dark looks, there isnt a compelling psychological duality sketched between them, captured in a number like I Know Him So Well from Chess. Still, the wonderful LuPone is given verbal red meat to chew onand when she does, the audience sparks. Both women sing beautifully, but the songs, with their repeated tropes of ambition and triumph over setbacks, remain unmemorable until War Paints impressive final section. Here, the women reject TV advertising as too common, unlike Charles Revson (a snappy and undeferential Erik Liberman), founder of Revlon. His aggressive approach is contrasted to the two women insisting on some kind of class over crass commercialism. The musical doesnt query the hypocrisy of their revulsion: They were hardly shrinking violets when it came to marketing themselves. This renders them now dinoasurs, according to Tommy and Harrys late and brilliant drunken duet together, before Ebersole sings Pink and LuPone Forever Beautiful, two solo, well-written summations of personal legacy and belief, with Rubinsteins illustrated by a number of hanging portraits of her done by artists including Picasso. Audaciouslyalthough it really had to, I guessthe musical has the women coming together at an awards luncheon. No spoilers as to what happens, but they both agree never to mention the meetingwhich gives the musicals creators some latitude in its creation on stage. How it would have been, they sing, if they could have joined forces; and have they really damaged or empowered women, they wonder. Both of these questions are unanswerable. Whatever this rivalry was, it made both women lots of money, and the overflowing beauty counters of department stores and our obsession with looks provide their own answer about the products they inspired. One doubts (and hopes in vain) that todays generation of makeup czars are decreeing lipstick colors from their beds, bedecked in jewels, and bitching merrily about their competitors. War Paint is at the Nederlander Theatre, 208 West 41st Street, NYC. Book tickets here. As a person, Im OK. As an American, Im pretty worried, Hillary Clinton said on Thursday in regards to the nascent Trump presidency. At the Women in the World conference in New York City, Clinton said she did not understand Trump pursuing an apparent commitment to hurt so many people. Blaming Russian president Vladimir Putin directly for meddling in the presidential election, Clinton said she favored an independent, non-partisan investigation into what had occurred. If we dont take action together to hold whoever it was accountable, they will be back again. Clinton also said FBI director James Comeys decision to reopen investigations into her emails, and WikiLeaks, had had a determinative effect in her election loss. I do admit it was somewhat gratifying, she said of the failure of TrumpCare to pass. Clinton also voiced her support for taking out Syrias air force, after a chemical attack killed more than 70 people in the country. As part of her introduction to Clintons first major interview since losing the 2016 presidential election, the comedian and TV host Samantha Bee said to an as-yet-unseen Clinton, It should have been you. The loud applause that greeted that pronouncement was nothing compared to the roar and standing ovation that greeted Clinton herself, as she took a seat opposite her interviewer, the journalist Nicholas Kristof. See the full interview here. Accepting there are certainly enough condolences to go around over her loss, Clinton said, in reference to the turmoil of the Trump presidency: I hope we will be able to move on to positive developments in our country, but thats going to take some time apparently. Asked how she was, she said, You know what? I am doing pretty well, all things considered, although the aftermath of the election was so devastating. Everything that has come to light in the days and weeks since has been so troubling. She had been, she said, yes, going for long walks in the woods and spending time with her grandchildren and friends. On Comeys decision to reopen an investigation into Clintons emails ten days before the election, only to close it eight days later, Clinton said drily, Yes that was one of the high points. I am obviously concerned what went on with Russia. {We need to] start acting like patriotic Americans because a foreign power meddled with our election. Were learning more about it every single day. The Russian hacking, Clinton said, should give chills to anyone who cares about democracy. What was done to us was an act of aggression by foreign power with the aim of damaging Europe and sending America into a tailspin. And what Putin wanted to do was sow distrust and confusion as well as influence our election. The Russian hackings appeared to be a more effective theft even than Watergate, Clinton added. She said she favored an independent, non-partisan investigation. If we dont take action together to hold whoever it was accountable, they will be back again. Putin was, Clinton said, somebody who plays the long game. He plays 3-dimensional chess. He is always trying to figure out how to advance himself, his oligarchic companions, and in his country in that order. Hes very much focused on the destabilization of Europe, Nato, the United Statesdemocracies, real democracies. She added, Hes not exactly fond of strong women, although he did shake hands with me. Putins claim that Clinton had caused demonstrations to be held against him was absurd, Clinton added. The Russians demonstrating were merely doing so in favor of democracy, she said. Asked about the 53 per cent of white women who had voted for Donald Trump, Clinton revealed she was writing a book where I spend a lot of time wrestling with this. As you might guess, I have thought about it more than once. It is fair to say misogyny played a role. Why and what the underlining reasons were, I am trying to parse out for myself. There is a constant strugglenot just with women; women and menin times of rapid change like the one we are living through between something that is different, and may hold out possible, positive consequences and something that is familiar, and the security of what we have right now. The election was a very real struggle between what is viewed as change that is welcomed and exciting to so many Americans and change that is worrisome and threatening to so many others. You lay the first woman president over that and some people, women included, had real problems. The misogyny that Clinton endured during the election would not put her off encouraging women to go into politics and public service. The abuse was not new, but it feels new and painful every time it happens to you. She understood Eleanor Roosevelts observation that women entering public life needed to grow skin as thick as a rhino With men, success and ambition are correlated with likeability. The more successful a man is the more likeable he becomes. With a woman, guess what? Its the exact opposite. Clinton pondered that she had a high approval rating as Secretary of State, but by time they finished with me I was Typhoid Mary, and poor Mary, she didnt deserve it either. Of the relentless attacks, she said, I take it seriously, but dont take it personally. Part of personal attacks, part of bullying and name-calling which has become more pervasive because of the internet, is to crush your spirit, and make you doubt yourself. And I refused to do that, and that infuriated them even more. Kristof asked if she assigned blame to Bernie Sanders, the media, emails? How much time do you need? Clinton deadpanned. Obama? Not him. Yourself? The combination of the Comey letter and WikiLeaks, which played a much bigger role than many people understand yet, had a determinative effect. The weaponization of informationI didnt fully understand how impactful it was, Clinton added. It created doubts in people, but then the Comey letter coming as it did 10 days before the election raised serious questions in a lot of people that I think were obviously unfounded and nevertheless happened. Weve got to be really clear: Democrats, Republicans, whatever. What was done in that election what was unprecedented, and we need to be willing to say that cannot happen again. She didnt want another candidate of any political hue to be subjected to what I was. Communications were stolen, it was theft. We should have tough, aggressive campaigning. That goes with the territory. But were not going to let someone sitting in th4e Kremlin with a thousand agents, bots and trolls mix up in our election. And weve got to make sure thats a bipartisan American commitment. Of the Trump administration so far, Clinton insisted she took no pleasure in seeing its chaotic functioning. She had prepared a really good transition operation, while Trump was going through some very public growing pains. However, Clinton added, I dont understand the commitment to hurt so many people that this administration this White House, seems to be pursuing. There had been so many examples in just 100 daysthe ban on people coming to our countrythat really sent a chilling effect across the world not just to Muslims but to people who thought, Dont you still have Lady Liberty in New York harbor. It had a terrible impact. As for replacing Obamacare, she said the Republicans had no clue, no idea on what to replace it with after she had listened to them for seven years reciting repeal and replace. I dont think they had read the bill (Obamacare) and how it worked. However, the targeting of women, which is whats going on, is absolutely beyond any political agenda. Theres something else happening here. The policy-making around the global gag rule and stripping funding from the UN Population Fund, Clinton particularly denounced for endangering women and childrens lives. The more we support women, the more we support democracy, she said. Womens issues are national security issues around the world. The things that come out of some of these mens mouths! she added. Why do we have to cover maternity care? Ooo I dunno, maybe you were dropped by immaculate conception. That classic picture of all of them sitting around table deciding how to defund Planned Parenthood and end maternity care, and end access to insurance for family planning and contraception looking at that picture, I thought, Its got to be from a skit on Saturday Night Live. It cant possibly be true. Clintons favorite current GIF, she said, was the one where the men around the table are substituted by discussing feline health. On Syria, Clinton called on the United States to take out Syrian leader Bashar al-Assads Air Force. Assad has an air force, and that air force is the cause of most of these civilian deaths as we have seen over the years and as we saw again in the last few days, Clinton said. And I really believe that we should have and still should take out his air fields and prevent him from being able to use them to bomb innocent people and drop sarin gas on them. Kristof asked if she would run for office again. Clinton replied, The short answer is I am really focused on just doing some things that I can help make a difference with, like supporting young people, getting more women into politics, and I very much want to help Democrats take back the Congress. That didnt sound like a definitive refusal, Kristof said. You know I am looking into doing interesting things. I dont think that will involve running for office again. There are lots of ways to make a difference. These might be profit and not for profit organizations that help people to live own lives better, and tell their stories better. Rights and opportunities for women and girls is the unfinished business of the 21st century. I think theres a lot to do. A standing ovation, whoops, and cries of We love you, Hillary followed. Tina Brown, the founder of Women in the World--and formerly the founder and editor of the Daily Beast--told her that Clinton was still needed to be out there bigtime. We need your leadership, we need your voice. Its always going to be important. More whooping and cries of Love you followed as Clinton shook audience members outstretched hands, and the hollering continued as she finally disappeared from the stage. President Donald Trump ordered missile strikes in Syria on Thursday evening, just days after a deadly chemical weapons strike that the United States attributed to the Assad regime. More than 50 Tomahawk cruise missiles were launched toward an airbase near Homs, Syria, from ships in the eastern Mediterranean, according to Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis. On Tuesday, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad launched a horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians using a deadly nerve agent. Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women, and children, Trump said from his Mar-a-Lago Resort in Florida. Tonight, I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched. It is in the vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. The Pentagon said targets included aircraft, petroleum and logistical storage, ammunition supply bunkers, air defense systems, and radars. A U.S. official told The Daily Beast the punitive strikes had a good effect on target. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to describe the initial reports of the aftermath of the strikes. Pentagon spokesman Davis said the U.S. intelligence community believes aircraft from Shayrat Airfield conducted the chemical weapons attack on Tuesday. Thursdays strikes occurred at Shayrat Airfield at 8:40 p.m. Eastern, or approximately 4:40 a.m. in Syria. Initial indications are that this strike has severely damaged or destroyed Syrian aircraft and support infrastructure and equipment at Shayrat Airfield, reducing the Syrian governments ability to deliver chemical weapons, Davis said. The use of chemical weapons against innocent people will not be tolerated. Tonight, I call on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end this slaughter and bloodshed in Syria and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types. We ask for Gods wisdom as we face the challenge of our very troubled world, Trump said. We pray for the lives of the wounded and for the souls of those who have passed, and we hope that as long as America stands for justice, then peace and harmony will in the end prevail. Trump made the announcement Thursday night surrounded by top aides: Steve Bannon, Reince Priebus, Ivanka Trump, Dina Powell, Wilbur Ross, and numerous others. He read off two teleprompters, stuck to prepared remarks, and answered no questions before leaving the stage. Trump had previously been a critic of proposed military action against the Assad regime in 2013, arguing that it was costly and that President Obama required congressional approval to make the strike. The aerial bombing in Idlib province Tuesday, which the United States has attributed to the Syrian regime, appeared to have swayed Trump to take military action. That attack on children yesterday had a big impact on mebig impact, he said on Wednesday. It crossed a lot of lines for me. When you kill innocent children, innocent babies that crosses many, many lines, beyond a red line. Many, many lines. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who a week before had hinted the U.S. could tolerate Bashar al-Assad staying in power in Syria, stepped in line, telling the press that plans were already under way to organize an international coalition to remove Assad. Assads role in the future is uncertain, clearly, and with the acts that he has taken, it would seem that there would be no role for him to govern the Syrian people, Tillerson said. The process by which Assad would leave is something that I think requires an international community effortboth to first defeat ISIS within Syria, to stabilize the Syrian country, to avoid further civil war, and then to work collectively with our partners around the world through a political process that would lead to Assad leaving. U.S officials have radar-derived intelligence confirming that Syrian regime aircraft dropped munitions on the town at the time of the attack in Idlib. Officials believe it was some kind of chemical but do not yet have high confidence that it was sarin, one of the officials said, referring to the deadly nerve agent. The second official said their main source of information on the suspected sarin attack is images provided by the World Health Organization of the victims. Republican hawks, who have typically been critics of the president, were quick to praise his decision. Unlike the previous administration, President Trump confronted a pivotal moment in Syria and took action. For that, he deserves the support of the American people, said Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham after the strikes had been reported. Earlier Thursday, former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton gave Trump political cover, calling on the United States to take out Assads air forcea more aggressive action than what Trump ordered Thursday evening. Assad has an air force, and that air force is the cause of most of these civilian deaths, as we have seen over the years and as we saw again in the last few days, Clinton said. And I really believe that we should have and still should take out his air fields and prevent him from being able to use them to bomb innocent people and drop sarin gas on them. But elected Democrats wary of giving Trump a blank check were more reserved. Sen. Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, praised the strikes but said any continued action would require congressional buy-in. These military strikes against Assads arsenal send a clear signal that the United States will stand up for internationally accepted norms and rules against the use of chemical weapons, Cardin said. However, and I cannot emphasize this enough, any longer-term or larger military operation in Syria by the Trump administration will need to be done in consultation with the Congress. No contacts were made with the Russian government, Tillerson told the press late Thursday night at a briefing with reporters at the Tideline Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida. However, military deconfliction agreements between U.S. and Russian forces were used to prevent misunderstanding. The one thing that I will tell you, though: There was an effort to minimize risk to third country nationals at that airportI think you read Russians from thatwe took great pains to try to avoid that. Of course, you know, anytime in a military operation, there are no guarantees, he said. The U.S. Navy destroyers USS Ross and USS Porter fired the Tomahawks from the eastern Mediterranean. Ross and Porter are both Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers that can carry up to 90 missiles apiece in vertical launch tubes. The subsonic Tomahawk missiles fly pre-planned routes to blast fixed targets as far as 1,000 miles away with their 1,000-pound warheads. Its not hard to see why the Pentagon chose Tomahawks for Thursdays strikes. The military has deployed hundreds of manned warplanes in the Middle East, including F-22 stealth fighters. B-2 stealth bombers based in Missouri can fly direct to Syria drop precision-guided bombs. But the Pentagon apparently balked at sending pilots into western Syria. There were three options we discussed with the president, and the president asked us to focus on two options in particular, to mature those options, and he had a series of questions for us that we endeavored to answer, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster told the press Thursday evening. Military planners made the same call in September 2014, when the United States first began hitting ISIS forces in Syria. For strikes on militants in western Syria, the Pentagon opted to send Tomahawks instead of manned planes. While the Israeli air forceamong the best-trained in the worldfrequently bombs regime positions in western Syria, other air forces are wary of the risk. Of all the Middle Eastern nations, Syria has one of the most robust [surface-to-air missile] networks, wrote Sean OConnor, an independent air-defense expert based in Indiana. Multiple SAM sites provide redundancy, allowing for overlapping coverage in many critical areas, including population centers. Damascus has upgraded its mostly Soviet-era missiles with Chinese technology, making them nimbler and more independentand thus harder to destroy. With modern Chinese radars and modern Russian SAMs [Syria] has moved away from the bomb-able model of air defense, OConnor wrote. In addition to its own air-defense missiles, the Syrian regime enjoys the protection of long-range S400 and S300 missiles that Moscow deployed to its air base in Latakia and the port of Tartus, respectively. Its not clear whether Russia forces had authorization to defend against an American attack on Moscows ally in Syria. But the Tomahawk strike risked directly striking Russian forces and forcing Moscows hand. The main target, Shayrat Airfield outside Homs, recently hosted Russian attack helicopters supporting Syrian ground forces operating in the area. President Donald Trumps most fervent far-right and alt-right supporters began to publicly turn on the administration on Thursday, angry or in denial at the administrations apparent refusal to believe a Russian talking point that a chemical weapons attack in Syria was a false flagor didnt happen at all. And after the president announced that the U.S. had launched 50 Tomahawk missiles at Syrian military targets Thursday night, many alt-right figureheads went a step further, publicly denouncing and pulling their support from the administration in statements on Twitter. I guess Trump wasnt Putins puppet after all, he was just another deep state/Neo-Con puppet, wrote InfoWars editor Paul Joseph Watson. Im officially OFF the Trump train. White-nationalist agitator Richard Spencer, founder of the term alt-right, appeared to switch his support to Hawaii Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, who had met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in January. On Thursday night, he tweeted, I absolutely condemn Washingtons military strike against Syria. #Syria #NoMoreWar, then Tulsi Gabbard 2020. On Wednesday, Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova passed off the severity of Tuesdays chemical weapons attack as totally fake information in reply to a proposed United Nations resolution condemning Syrias government for the strike. The Russian Ministry of Defense then redefined its position on Thursday, saying that Syrian jets bombed an arms depot where chemical weapons were stored. But before Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson signaled that military action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assads government may be on the horizon, some of Trumps most ardent defenders were already questioning whether the attack was a false flag, some even positing that the photos of dead children were staged with prop blood. Creator of Dilbert and noted Trump supporter Scott Adams called the chemical weapons attack a fake war crime. Im going to call bullshit on the gas attack. Its too on-the-nose, as Hollywood script-writers sometimes say, meaning a little too perfect to be natural, Adams wrote. This has the look of a manufactured event. On Tuesday morning, WikiLeaks tweeted While western establishment media beat the drum for more war in Syria the matter is far from clear, then linked to a YouTube video titled False Flag Chemical Attack in Syria? Mike Cernovichone of the main drivers of the debunked Pizzagate conspiracy about a nonexistent child sex ring involving Hillary Clinton and a series of pizza shops in Washington, D.C, and a separate conspiracy alleging that Clinton was dying of a litany of fatal diseases during the campaignencouraged fans to help #SyriaHoax trend on Twitter. At press time, it was the No. 2 trend in the United States. #SyriaGasAttack was sponsored by deep state, he wrote late Wednesday night. One day prior, Donald Trump, Jr. tweeted of Cernovich: in a time of unbiased journalism, hed win the Pulitzer. Conspiracy website InfoWars published several articles and videos claiming the attacks had ties to Democrats or Hillary Clinton, including one titled REPORT: SOROS-LINKED GROUP BEHIND CHEMICAL ATTACK IN SYRIA. But by Thursday night, when it became clear the Trump administration had for the first time broken from Kremlin foreign policy talking points questioning any gruesome footage coming out of Syria, that same website began to turn on the president. Substitute Al-Qaeda for ISIS and were in the same position as 2013, wrote InfoWars editor Paul Joseph Watson. Watson had spent Thursday writing that the White Helmets, a rescue group that has been accused by Assad apologists (and some moderates) of having questionable ties to rebel groups and jihadi groups, somehow committed the aerial bombing. Your supporters didnt vote for this @realDonaldTrump. The Internets largest pro-Donald Trump community, Reddits r/The_Donald, appeared to be in denial about Trumps turn away from pro-Assad rhetoric. The most upvoted entry on Thursday was a screenshot of a post from 4chans /pol/ board, which is a troll board with a fervently pro-Trump bent. /pol/ is working around the clock to determine if the Syrian gas attack was a false flag designed to manipulate President Trump into war, the post reads. Two other top ten posts blame the deep state for manipulating the president. One newer post with more than 1,100 upvotes at press time still did not believe Trump to be serious about his threats to take out Assad. CONCERN TROLLS, it reads. Our glorious leader did not maneuver through 16 candidates, 1 spawn of moloch and a rigged media all while under surveillance only to be duped by this chemical attack By late Thursday, however, even Cernovichwho received public support both from the presidents son and advisor Kellyanne Conway this weekwas urging Trumps alt-right base to bombard the White House phone lines with condemnation of airstrikes in Syria, between retweeting users who claimed the chemical weapons attack that was a false flag. Fake news is forming a pro-war media narrative in real time. #SyriaHoax They want war and will attack people who want peace, Cernovich tweeted. This is not the first time that Russian talking points, as readily repeated by websites like InfoWars, aimed to push blame for an atrocity in Syria away from Assad, or questioned whether anyone was truly killed in a bombing. In December, RT anchors and Russian government-backed viral news sites used the burgeoning buzzword fake news to describe the shelling of Aleppo. Foreign Policy Research Institute fellow Clint Watts, who testified in front of the Senate about Russias disinformation campaign last week, told The Daily Beast at the time that this is a long-held Russian strategy to deflect blame through propaganda, and cause even viewers of disturbing footage taken from the attacks to question an objective reality. Its not just an information war on Americaits a war on information itself, Watts said. The point of it is that you cant trust anything. Then theres no baseline. You can say and do whatever you want, and then deny it ever happened. ISTANBULJust hours after the U.S. damaged a Syrian airbase linked to a chemical weapons attack, the Assad regime and its Russian ally launched three airstrikes against the very same rebel-held town where Assad was accused of using poison gas to kill more than 100 men, women, and children on Tuesday. The attacks on Khan Sheikhoun and seven other towns appeared to be both a taunt and a warning to President Donald Trumps administration: that cruise missiles may have damaged the Shayrat air base, but Syria has many other bases, ample munitions, and the political will backed up by Russia to continue targeting civilians. The latest airstrikes on Khan Sheikhoun utilized small conventional rockets, and there were no reported injuries, given that much of the population had fled the town. But at least 10 people were killed in a regime or Russian airstrike against Hish, just north of Khan Sheikhoun, a few hours before the 4:00 a.m. U.S. cruise missile attack. In Irbin, east of Damascus, a woman and two children were killed and many civilians wounded in a regime airstrike on a public market and a mosque. There were also attacks on Jisr al Shughour, west of Idlib, the city of Douma east of Damascus, Daraa, Latamnah, and Kafr Zeta in northern Hama. Those who remained in Khan Sheikhoun, a town in the south of Idlib province, welcomed the U.S. intervention, but said they were worried that the Assad regime still has a powerful air force and 20 other air bases. We thought that we are forgotten by the entire world, but it seems the chemical weapons attack awakened the human spirit amid people in the West, said Othman al Khani, the head of the media office in Khan Sheikhoun, who spoke to The Daily Beast over WhatsApp. The first of the three latest airstrikes occurred in Khan Sheikhoun at around 9:30 a.m. Friday and even as al Khani was describing it, two more came in rapid succession. It was 4:21 p.m. At this moment, a warplane just struck the northern road into the city and is now maneuvering to carry out another strike, he said. Five minutes later, he texted that a second airstrike had occurred in the city. Local civilian volunteers, who are connected with a network of plane-spotters, reported that the aircraft was Russian and had taken off from the Hmemim military base in Latakia on the Mediterranean coast. We are glad, but we want a plan to protect innocent civilians forever, said Saleh Hawa, a school teacher from an Aleppo suburb who was displaced with his family last summer to a village in north Idlib province. In a Skype conversation with The Daily Beast, he said the Trump administration had made a major statement: We are here. We are the strongest player in the region. He said airstrikes are the only language which Russia and its allies can understand. A key decision will be how the United States now responds to more conventional violence employed by the Assad regime. The majority of the 400,000 that have been killed [in the Syrian Civil War] werent killed by chemical weapons. They were from barrel bombs, Russian precision strikes into hospitals into Aleppoclearly a violation of any standards of behavior, clearly illegal, said Republican Sen. John McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who has urged more aggressive U.S. military action in Syria. But many viewed the use of chemical weapons as the trigger, and the appropriate narrow justification, for the strikes the U.S. conducted. Basically, the chemical weapons that were being used, which we thought were eliminated, were not eliminated, said Sen. Joe Manchin, a centrist Democrat in a swing state. I think the president was very much within his realm, and Im very much supportive of what was done last night. *** Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose country hosts 3 million Syrian refugees, called the U.S. intervention a concrete step against the Assad regimes war crimes, but said, I dont see this as enough. He called for the declaration of a safe zone inside Syria on the Turkish border so that Syrian refugees go back to their country. His sentiment was echoed by Republican hawks in the United States Senate, who called on Trump to take further steps to weaken Assad, including the grounding of Syrias air force, the creation of humanitarian safe zones, and the training of an opposition force that could depose Assad. Its got to be a step in whats going to be a fairly long journey. My goal is to neutralize Assads air power. His ability to kill people using conventional weapons has to be taken off the table If Assad goes back into the air, goes back to this town and drops bombs and kills babies in another way, I hope we will hit him again, said Sen. Lindsey Graham. The Syrian Opposition Coalition, an umbrella organization for all political opposition groups abroad, welcomed the U.S. intervention as the the first time that U.S. words were translated into action to punish the perpetrators of horrific war crimes. But the cautious welcome underscored uncertainty throughout the region about whether the U.S. has a plan to protect civilians and facilitate an end to the conflict. Sen. Bob Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said there were no plans to continue military action in Syria. A plan would be you plan to go forward with something. Options would mean theres additional action could take place as behavior necessitates, Corker said Friday, following a classified briefing on the U.S. strikes in Syria. This was an operation intended as a specific response to a specific activity, and no one in America or the Middle East should think there is a plan to continue on. Should there be behavior [that necessitates it], certainly they have additional options. Its just a week since the administration put out the message here in Turkey during a visit by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, that it would no longer seek Assads ouster. But after the attack on Khan Sheikhoun, Tillerson told reporters theres no role for him to govern the Syrian people, and said the U.S. would engage in a political process leading to his departure. Judging from Fridays multiple reported attacks on civilians, challenges to U.S. resolve are likely to appear daily. Indeed, on Tuesdaythe day that chemical weapons are alleged to have been usedthe Assad regime was accused of bombing two hospitals and a headquarters of the White Helmets rescue volunteers, attacks that would qualify as war crimes under international humanitarian law. *** There are limits to the U.S. interventions ability to protect civilians. But on the other side, in their responses to the American action, Russia, whose air force controls the skies over Syria, and Iran, whose volunteers control the ground, and President Bashar al Assad, who controls the apparatus of government, may find they are limited as well. Now that Trump has shown that he can pivot from a hands-off approach to the first direct U.S. intervention since the Syrian uprising began in March 2011, the Assad regime and its foreign allies will have reason to proceed with caution lest they trigger a further unexpected response. The regime also appears to have a tenuous hold on domestic public opinion in those parts of the country it controls, as witnessed by its failure to tell the full story of the damage caused by the U.S. attack. Regime media said that 10 civilians were killed by the U.S. airstrikes in villages near the Shayrat base, but it didnt say a word about government casualties. Baybars al Tillawi, a media activist based in Waer, a suburb of Homs, said he saw dozens of ambulances headed to the airport after the attack. A report on Al Jazeera, which could not be confirmed independently, said as many as 40 soldiers were killed and 70 wounded in the attack. Tim Mak contributed to this report. Somewhere between Donald Trumps presidential campaign announcement, during which he called Mexican immigrants rapists and drug dealers, and his first Republican primary win in New Hampshire, a narrative started to take hold: he was the insult comic candidate. The Don Rickles of politics, as historian Kevin Kruse put it on Twitter in August of 2015. Trump himself invoked Rickless name at one point to describe his opponent Marco Rubio, who had started making jokes about the size of his hands on the campaign trail. Its not who he is. I didnt like it, Trump said on Fox and Friends of Rubios comments. But all of a sudden, he became Don Rickles. And hes not Don Rickles. One couldnt help but think Trump was a little upset that another candidate was homing in on his territory. If anyone was Don Rickles, surely it was him, he must have thought to himself. While Trump may have a knack for insulting people, there is a huge difference between our current president and Rickles, the greatest insult comic of all time, who died this week at the age of 90. The primary difference between the two menbesides the fact that Rickless jokes were much, much funnier than Trumps unimaginative put-downsis that while Rickles was an equal-opportunity offender who almost always told his jokes right to his targets face, Trump is little more than a petulant bully who likes to lob his insults from afar. As a billionaire real-estate developer and reality TV host, he was almost always punching down. As president, you can remove the word almost. The philosophy behind the comedic roast is very different. Jeff Ross, the self-proclaimed Roastmaster General and arguably Rickless biggest disciple, titled his 2009 book, I Only Roast the Ones I Love: How to Bust Balls Without Burning Bridges. Speaking to the Today shows Al Roker just this past October, Rickles said his approach to insult comedy was similar: Im never hurtful, he said. Its always something thats sarcastic, but fun. Trump has also claimed sarcasm on occasion, like when he called on Russia to hack Hillary Clintons emails, but to quote the great Inigo Montoya, You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. After he called Obama the founder of ISIS, he tweeted that he was being sarcastic. But then when radio host Hugh Hewitt tried to get him to clarify, suggesting that perhaps Trump was speaking metaphorically, he replied, No, I meant hes the founder of ISIS. Perhaps the best way to judge someones sense of humor is their ability to laugh at themselvessomething Rickles excelled at, as can be seen in his best late-night talk show appearances. In 2014, he was the guest of honor at an all-star comedy roast called One Night Only in which Jerry Seinfeld, Jon Stewart, David Letterman and a host of others spent hours making fun of him. Rickles laughed and applauded throughout, especially when the only two women on the bill got up to take him down a peg. Trump, on the other hand, almost never laughsperiod. And certainly not at himself. The stories from his Comedy Central roast in 2011 demonstrate just how little interest he had in being the butt of any jokes. When he received the list of jokes writers had put together for him, he literally crossed out the punchlines, representing a classic lack of an understanding of how a joke works, as one of the writers put it. That same year, Trump had such a horrible time being mocked by President Obama and Seth Meyers at the White House Correspondents Dinner that many believe it drove him to seek the presidency in a more serious way. Now that he is president, he has decided he would rather alienate the White House Press Corps and skip the event entirely than subject himself to the no doubt merciless treatment he would receive from whatever comedian they choose to host this year. He was similarly lost at sea when he hosted Saturday Night Live at the height of his Republican primary campaign. As former cast member (and pre-Alec Baldwin Trump impersonator) Taran Killam recalled in a new interview, Trump struggled to read at the table read, which did not give many of us great confidence. Didnt get the jokes, really. This echoed Pete Davidsons assertion that Trump doesnt really know how to read. Nowhere were Trumps lack of comedic skills more fully on display, however, than at the Al Smith Dinner just days before he won the presidency. Traditionally, the charity event has been a chance for the two candidates, who have been going after each other for months on the campaign trail, to trade some light-hearted jabs in good fun. That was, more or less, how Hillary Clinton approached her speech. But when Trump got up, he took his brand of insult comedy entirely too far. After throwing his own wife under the bus for plagiarizing first lady Michelle Obamas convention speech, Trump was hit with a chorus of boos from the crowd as he said, Hillary is so corrupt, she got kicked off the Watergate Commission, and later, Here she is tonight, in public, pretending not to hate Catholics. Rickles would be the first to point out that if youre getting more groans than laughs, youre doing it wrong. Insult comedy only works when the person youre insulting is in on the joke. As Al Roker said in that 2016 interview, getting insulted by Rickles was a badge of honor for fans and fellow comedians alike. The nickname Mr. Warmth was given to Rickles ironically, but it contained some truth about the man as well. Behind all of the insults was a genuinely warm guy, who deep down just wanted to make people laugh. The same cannot be said for Donald Trump. President Donald Trumps chief strategist Steve Bannon and Trumps son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner are locked in a West-Wing power struggleand far-right, nationalist, passionately pro-Trump media are lining up behind the man who made them relevant in the West Wing. This week, multiple outlets reported on the ongoing infighting within the Trump White House between Kushner and Bannon, who represent two diametrically opposed factions of the presidents political inner circle. Kushner has been trying to carefully push Bannon from his seat of power and influence, and Bannon views Kushner as a virtually-lefty shill and obstacle. Its been an open secret that Bannon and Kushner often clash face-to-face, according to multiple senior Trump administration officials speaking to The Daily Beast on Thursday morning. Bannon has privately vented about Kushner being a globalist and a cuck, an administration official said. Kushner has recently and successfully expanded his reach and responsibilities in the White House, while Bannon has, for instance, found himself officially booted from the National Security Council on Wednesday. Bannons fate in Trumps administration is, of course, unknown for now, with one camp saying hes nearing his way out the door, and another faction saying hes digging in for a fight and staying in The Donalds good graces. Important allies who Bannon has on the outside are some heavy-hitters in influential, Trump-venerating right-wing media. Jared Kushner, perhaps the one presidential aide who cannot be fired, is now in regular text message communications with [MSNBC host] Joe Scarborough, Roger Stone, a former longtime political adviser to Trump, claimed on Alex Joness popular Infowars show on Tuesday, the day before all this news broke. The Daily Beast reached out to Stone for clarification on the claim, but did not hear back. Jones is one of Americas leading conspiracy theorists, and hosted Trump on his show during the campaign. Jones also claims to still be in touch with the president as an informal adviser of sorts. Many of the anti-Steve Bannon stories that you see, the themes that you see on [MSNBCs] Morning Joe, are being dictated by Kushner, Stone alleged. And while Mr. Kushners plate is very full with Middle Eastern peace and the China visit, and so on, in this case I think he is disserving the president. Influential conservative radio host Mark Levin did not appear pleased this week with the current state of the power struggle being fought in the Trump administration. Levin warned on Twitter Wednesday night: Jared Kushner, Gary Cohn, Dina Powell: the three big-government liberals tightening their hold on the White House. Bannon out. Nunes out. Flynn out. Sessions recused. We won WH & both houses! Imagine if we lost. GOP would be picking up Dems dry cleaning, prominent Trump booster and columnist Ann Coulter tweeted on Thursday. Coulter subsequently told The Daily Beast in an email: I have no idea whats going on in the White House (and am disinclined to believe news reports on internal clashes), but its never a good day for the president when the public is reminded that he hired his SON IN LAW, no matter how talented jared is. Bobby Kennedy was pretty impressive, too, and even the press removed its nose from JFKs butt long enough to denounce him for hiring his brother, Coulter continued. Breitbart, which Bannon used to run and still serves as one of Trumps staunchest enforcers and allies, shouldnt be expected to sit on the sidelines, either, as negative stories about its staffs former boss trickle out. This week alone, the hard-right website has published several negative posts about Kushner, including a report on Wednesday that leads with pointing out that Jared Kushner boasts a thin resume in diplomacy. This is a different perspective from the one Breitbart took in, say, mid-February when it was running headlines like, HAS JARED KUSHNER BECOME A STEVE BANNON GROUPIE? Breitbart has also demonstrated a recently developed habit for targeting alleged traitors and leakers working in Trumps White House. President Trumps son-in-law is increasingly looking like the websites next object of ire. Its not like we need [Bannons] blessing to go after Jared or other globalist-types, a Breitbart staffer told The Daily Beast, on the condition of anonymity in order to speak freely. You can expect to see more. Felicia Sanders was recalling the moment that her son Tywanza confronted Dylann Roof, who killed nine parishioners at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in June 2015. As Roof shot and killed people, Tywanza asked Roof, Why are you doing this? At the Women in the World conference in New York City, talking to ABC News presenter Juju Chang, Sanders recalled Roof saying he had to continue his murder spree because we [black people] were raping white women and taking over the world. Tywanza, his mother recalled, said to Roof, You do not have to do this. We mean you no harm. Tywanza was killed that day, and Roof was this week transferred to federal custody following an earlier agreement that he plead guilty to state murder charges in order to avoid a second death sentence. He was sentenced to death in January. Sanders was speaking at a panel, Life After Death: Defeating White Supremacy. She recalled Roof coming to Bible study that day, and seeming calm. Roof engaged twice with the group in their discussions. Then, just as the group closed its eyes to pray, the bullets started going off. Sanders had her granddaughter on one side, and her son and aunt on the other. I had to choose which one I was going to cover. My granddaughter kept saying, Granny, Im so afraid. I kept telling her to be quiet. So, I just muzzled her mouth into my ribs. I told her to play dead, and told my son to play dead too. That is when Tywanza spoke to Roof. I look around the audience, Sanders told the conference, and see so much Caucasians. We really do not mean you no harm. The problem is that we dont take time to know each other. Tywanza was widely loved, she said: He was 26, and years ahead of his time. At Roofs trial, Sanders said he would not look any of his victims loved ones in the eyes, so she made it her mission to look Roof directly in the eyes. He seemed cold and callous, she noted. He had been planning his massacre for a year and a half, Sanders said, adding he had deserved every last one of the 33 federal hate-crimes charges he had been found guilty of. Dont be afraid of me, Sanders said to the audience. The only thing that separates us is not knowing one another. We may have a different skin color, but we all bleed red. To audience laughter, she said, In heaven, there are no segregated areas. What are you going to do? We made this mess, Sanders said. We divided one another. This is not the plan God had for us. After a standing ovation for Sanders, Chang then spoke to Brendan Cox, husband of Jo Cox, the British MP assassinated by an extremist just before Britains Brexit vote. Hatred, said Cox, had been legitimized by figures including Donald Trump. We should stop calling them populists, Cox said. They are racists, homophobeswe should call them what they are, and take them on. They pretend to be the silent majority. But they are not silent, and they are not the majority. To confront the alt-right and white nationalism, Cox said minority and persecuted groups needed to mobilize together. These groups collectively were the "true silent majority," he saidwhich, for Cox, was why the stories of figures like Sanders were so valuable. If it wasnt clear before, it is now: Attorney General Jeff Sessions is extremely skeptical of Obama-era federal police oversight and believes some efforts to reform police could actually increase crime. On Friday morning, a federal judge denied the Justice Departments request to delay the implementation of a deal between the federal government and Baltimore to reform the citys police. The deal, called a consent decree, was negotiated with the city at the very end of Obamas presidency, following the 2015 death of Freddie Gray at the hands of officers. After U.S. District Judge James Bredar signed off on the consent decree, Sessions pushed back, saying the judges decision could make the city less safe. While the Department of Justice continues to fully support police reform in Baltimore, I have grave concerns that some provisions of this decree will reduce the lawful powers of the police department and result in a less safe city, Sessions said in a statement. The mayor and police chief in Baltimore say they are committed to better policing and that there should be no delay to review this decree, he continued, but there are clear departures from many proven principles of good policing that we fear will result in more crime. Sessions also noted that there has been an increase in homicides in Baltimore over the past few years. 2016 had the second highest number of homicides per capita on record, according to the Baltimore Sun, and 2015 had the most. Sessions statement is his strongest criticism yet of consent decrees, which the DOJ can use to push police departments to make reforms. Negotiating consent decrees was a top priority of Obamas Justice Department, with the DOJs Civil Rights Division investigating departments around the country for evidence that they routinely violated peoples Constitutional rights. The divisions work was the most visible part of the Obama administrations response to a rash of high-profile shootings of black men by white police officers. Civil rights groups praised the divisions work, arguing it ultimately helped cut crime by improving relations between police officers and community members. But some police unions and conservatives criticized the undertaking, arguing it vilified police officers and cost cities too much money to implement. Sessions has always been skeptical of consent decrees, but his statement today is unique because it shows he thinks these agreements can result in increased violence. Every consent decree is different, and Sessions statement shouldnt be read as a broadside against all the agreements currently being enforced around the country, of which there are more than a dozen. But it indicates that he will be much, much, much more circumspect about using the DOJs Civil Rights Division to push for change. MOSCOW Tensions between Moscow and Washington escalated sharply Thursday night after U.S. President Donald Trump launched a cruise-missile attack against a Syrian government airbase. On Friday, Russia woke up to the words bombings and war. Russian President Vladimir Putin referred to the missile strike as an act of aggression. Putin also accused Washington of manipulating public opinion to distract the worlds attention from the hundreds of casualties caused by U.S. jets bombing in Mosul, Iraq. To Russian political thinkers, this day would be remembered as the day of Trumps red line. Russian parliament members made angry statements, promising a tough response to the U.S. strike: the end of Russias military cooperation with United States, or even worse, violent clashes between the countries air forces in the sky over Syria. President Trump might have changed his mind about Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad after the chemical attack that killed dozens of civilians, including newly born babies in Syrias Idlib province this week; but the Kremlin has not. Theyre still backing the Syrian president. And Russian officials publicly doubted Trumps official reason for the U.S. airstrike. Once again officials raised the specter of the Cold War, or an upcoming big war, remembering Vietnam. One major difference between now and then: Unlike during the Vietnam War, when Moscow supported Hanoi from afar, Russian forces officially are on the ground in Syria. Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Defense and Security Victor Ozerov compared President Trumps launch of missiles on Syria to the decision made by George W. Bush to begin the war in Iraq. Back then they looked for chemical weapons in Iraq and we all know perfectly well what that decision led to, Ozerov told reporters on Friday morning. State Duma Deputy Mikhail Yemelyanov predicted that Trumps irresponsible airstrike would cause an even bigger escalation of violence: This is fraught with [the possibility of] direct clashes between Russia and United States, exchanges of fire, nothing can be excluded now, Yemelyanov told Interfax. But hours passed and no actions were taken by the Kremlin. So far Russia sits with its tail between its legs, astonished by Trumps quick return to the Middle East, says senior military analyst Alexander Golts. Washington gave Moscow a notice, two hours before the strike, but Putin did nothing to protect Assads base, Golts told The Daily Beast. Soon Moscow will miss President Barack Obama, who was much different from the impulsive Trump and took time for consultations before any offensive moves, enough time for Assad to capture territories back from the rebels, with Russias help, Alexei Makarkin, deputy director of the Center for Political Technolgy said in an interview with The Daily Beast. With the Kremlins friend [Michael] Flynn gone [as national security adviser], Steve Bannons positions weakened, Trump is surrounded with establishment voices, unable to hear Moscows point of view, so right now we witness the official end of Trumpomania in Russia, Markin added. All political experts The Daily Beast interviewed agreed that Trumps attack on Syria would make it much harder for U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to find common ground in his negotiations with President Putin. Tillerson is due to come to Moscow next week. The Kremlin had hoped talks would focus on ending the new Cold War with Russia that began in 2014 after the annexation of Crimea, the launch of an insurgency in eastern Ukraine, and Western sanctions in response. But now it appears the key agenda issue will be the future of Assad. Tillerson was unusually vocaland bluntThursday night after the cruise missiles were launched. Russia has failed in its responsibility to deliver on a 2013 commitment to secure Syrias chemical weapons, he told reporters. Moscow either was complicit in the horrific chemical attack on civilians Tuesday, or simply incompetent in failing to deliver on its end of the agreement. Moscow is presenting an entirely alternative narrative. Both Trump and Tillerson know perfectly well that it was not Assad who used chemical weapons against peaceful Syrian people, but the forces of Jabhat al Nusra [the former name of an al Qaeda affiliate] with the help of CIA, said Sergey Markov, a member of the Russian parliaments Public Chamber. Moscow had called earlier for an investigation into the chemical-weapons attack to determine how it happened and who was responsible. Meanwhile, on Friday morning the foreign ministry announced it was suspending the agreement with Washington that prevented direct conflict between Russian and U.S. air forces operating in Syria. But Trump decided to strike and be a popular politician in the media, so in response Russia suspends our deal with the U.S., Markov told The Daily Beast. So now our forces in Syria can bring down American jets. The Cold War, far from going away, appears to be heating up. President Trump ordered a military strike on Syria Thursday night in response to a recent chemical attack. By Friday afternoon, a supportive PAC was fundraising off of the strike. Last night, President Trump ordered military action against Syria in response to their chemical weapons attack, an email from the Great America PAC, first flagged by Dave Levinthal at the Center for Public Integrity, read. 59 United States tomahawk missiles destroyed the airfield used to store Syrias toxic weapons and aircraft involved in the Sarin gas attack. What are your thoughts? The message asks respondents to vote on whether they approve of the strike and subsequently includes a request for money. The email was signed by Ed Rollins, currently the national co-chair of the PAC who joined the group in May of 2016. A representative for the PAC did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Daily Beast. When the PAC was established in early 2016, it was among a horde of organizations that formed often making it difficult for donors to ascertain where they should contribute their money. At the time of its inception, the PAC, led by Eric Beach, who worked for Rand Pauls presidential campaign, was referred to by longtime Trump ally Roger Stone as a scam. He took particular issue with the presence of Jesse Benton on the staff, who was convicted last year, of falsifying campaign records in a 2012 attempt to buy an endorsement for Ron Paul. According to OpenSecrets.org, Great America PAC raised over $28 million during the 2016 cycle and spent over $26 million. Its biggest contributor was Bob Mcnair, the owner of the Houston Texans, who contributed $2,000,000 to the PAC according to OpenSecrets.org. One of the PACs first ads used the attack at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando to help bolster Trumps bonafides as being tough on terror. Trumps campaign, at one stage, formally disavowed the PAC saying in a form to the Federal Election Commission: This Committee is concerned about the likelihood of confusion among the public, which may be led to believe such activities are authorized by Mr. Trump or this Committee or that contributions to such unauthorized committees are being made to Mr. Trumps campaign, when they are not. The group went on to accidentally expose private donor information of some 336 people, according to a review from the Center for Public Integrity. Probation officer Reyes Soberon Jr.s guilty plea of sexually assaulting Kim Adams while she was under his supervision should have been the beginning of justice for her. But a court in Kern County, California, stopped Adams from suing Soberon and his former employer because she filed her claim two months too late. Now Adams is suing in federal court, alleging the Kern County Probation Department was aware of the sexual assaults that occurred in its office and in front of Adamss children for three years. Adams met Soberon in 2012 when she was placed on probation following several months in prison for burglary. When she visited the probation department, according to her lawsuit, she had not yet been assigned an officerbut Soberon saw her and assigned himself to her case. On her third visit, Soberon sexually assaulted her in the office, she claims in the lawsuit. Worse still, other probation officers appeared aware of Soberons conduct, Adams alleges. The majority of the molestations actually took place within the Probation Office itself, in the corner, her suit reads. Other probation employees would sometimes pass by, but no one questioned Soberons conduct with Ms. Adams. Additionally, the Probation Department would notice that Ms. Adams would sign in frequently, on a monthly basis, despite the fact that, unbeknownst to her, she could mail in the documentation and was not required to meet with Soberon personally. The Kern County Probation Department told The Daily Beast it had not reviewed Adamss lawsuit or her allegations. We havent seen the lawsuit, a spokesperson said. Its just been served, so we dont have a comment yet. But some of the worst assaults allegedly happened in Adamss home, where she lived with her three sons. In one horrific instance, Soberon sexually assaulted Ms. Adams in her home in front of her disabled son suffering from cerebral palsy as he lay helpless, crawling on the ground, her suit reads. Soberons power as Adamss probation officer kept her quiet and in fear for her family. He allegedly threatened to jail her for the rest of her life if she refused his advances. And soon Soberons actions nearly sent Adams to prison. Adams was at home when a different probation officer knocked on her door one day in 2015, her suit alleges. The officer, a woman, said Adams was under arrest for failing to complete her community service obligations. Adams was stunned; she had complied with her court-ordered community service until Soberon allegedly told her he had changed her schedule. Adams took out her phone, where she had text messages from Soberon describing the changes to her community service requirements. The probation officer looked through Adamss phone and confirmed that Soberon had told her to skip her latest service. The probation officer also allegedly saw other text messages from Soberon. Its me baby Doll, read one text, which is entered as an exhibit in Adamss suit. Hi Sexy mamacita how are you, read another. The probation officer left Adamss home without arresting her. The death threats began soon after. Following this incident, Ms. Adams began receiving threatening calls from Soberon in which he stated that he was going to kill her, her suit alleges. But when Adams went to the probation office to report the Soberon, his colleagues allegedly flocked to his defense. Numerous probation officers attempted to dissuade Ms. Adams from making her report, her suit reads. The Kern County Probation Departments Internal Affairs Division investigated the matter; Internal Affairs told Ms. Adams that she could not speak with anyone about it, especially the FBI, and could not retain an attorney. Out of options, Adams lived in constant fear until several months into 2016, when she received a subpoena to testify against Soberon in the case of her sexual assault. Soberon had been arrested December 2015 after Adams showed Soberons text messages to a new probation officer, Adamss lawyer told The Daily Beast. But no one informed her of the arrest until she received the subpoena, she said. With Soberon behind bars, Adams realized that she could finally file a report against him without fear of retaliation. Her initial handwritten complaint, provided to The Daily Beast by her lawyers, shows Adamss initial attempt at summarizing three years of alleged abuse. Constant fear, Adams wrote in a form for claims against Kern County. Constantly fearing what might happen to myself or kids. (Constantly reminded of what would happen if I told and how much power he had.) Sexually assaulted numerous times, fondled, touched inappropriately any time he wanted to. Manipulated by his power and rank as a high up probation officer. Harassed constantly to do what he wantedas in touching me, kissing me, sexually assaulting. Invasion of my personal privacy. Going through my cell phone, erasing messages. Looking through my personal stuff in my phone. Physical and mental emotional stress. Depression. Extreme fear for my safety. Always being threatened that something would happen to me if I didnt follow orders. But Kern County called her complaint invalid. Under the California Tort Claims Act, claims against the government must be filed within six months of an incident. Adams, who at the time lacked a lawyer, had filed her claim eight months after the most recent assault. Claimants can often request a filing extension under the California Tort Claims Act. The law has a backstop for individuals who dont realize that deadline, Adamss lawyer Ben Meiselas told The Daily Beast. It says that if you still file within a year and you have good cause, that the municipality shall permit you to file two or three months late, if the claimant can prove disability or excusable neglect. The provision allows lawyers extra time to file, should they accidentally miss a deadline, and is also flexible for people with disabilities. Adams hired lawyers who filed a petition asking Kern County to accept Adamss slightly delayed claim. But both the Kern County Board of Supervisors and a Kern County court denied Adamss petitions, even after her lawyers attached a physicians report that Meiselas said diagnosed Adams with PTSD was so debilitating that she couldnt even perform basic, core, day-to-day functions, let alone understand the complexities of a government tort claims form unrepresented, while also fearing for her life that this probation officer whos been after her for a number of years is out there on the street. A November 2016 ruling from a Kern County court found that Adamss PTSD diagnosis was not of such an all-encompassing nature as to prevent her from even authorizing another to file the claim within six months of Soberons most recent assault. Of course having Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder because you were raped and sexually assaulted over three years would constitute a disability, Meiselas said. I didnt even think that was a controversial topic or concept in the 21st century. Meanwhile, Soberon was facing criminal charges for the same attacks that Kern County refused to recognize in civil court. In December 2016, Soberon was sentenced to six months in prison and three years of probation for sexual assault, after pleading no contest to charges that he forcibly touched Adams and two unnamed women. Meiselas described Soberons 180 days behind bars as insufficient. Soon Soberon will be out of prison and under the supervision of his own probation officer. In the interim, Adamss lawyers are appealing the Kern County ruling, and have filed her civil rights claim in federal court, where the statute of limitations have yet to expire. A note at the end of Adamss original handwritten claim explains why she did not report her attacker earlier. Please note that the reason that I havent filed this paper in a timely manner, is because of the strong intimidation and fear that I have been under throughout the whole time and even now, I am still in fear, she wrote. I was told not to tell anyone or else something would happen to me. I am still scared as of this day. In fear of mine and my childrens life and safety. He said he had the power to make things happen to me. He said he would hurt me. He always said he would get me put in jail. I am in fear. So, please consider this and if there is any way that you can make an exception on the time I would appreciate this. Just before President Trump launched missile strikes Thursday evening, a senior Russian diplomat warned of negative consequences if the United States resorted to military action in response to a chemical attack in Syria. We have to think about negative consequences, and all the responsibility, Moscows deputy United Nations ambassador, Vladimir Safronkov, told a gaggle of reporters after the UN Security Council reached a deadlock on an attempt to address the crisis diplomatically. If military action occurred, [it] will be on shoulders of those who initiated such doubtful and tragic enterprise. Look at Iraq, look at Libya, he added. Earlier, Olof Skoog, Swedens ambassador to the United Nations, sounded a similar note. I remember Hans Blix. Of course Im concerned about the possibility of a U.S. attack in Syria, he said. Skoog was referring to the former UN inspector who famously warned about the negative consequences of an American invasion of Iraq. The two diplomats spoke amid hours of frantic negotiations over a resolution to address the attack at Khan Sheikhoun in Syrias Idlib province, which left dozens dead. The U.S. and other Western countries argue that the well-documented attack included chemical weapons. And as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said earlier, Theres no question in our minds that the Syrian government was responsible for the attack. If true, Damascus has violated an international convention that it signed in 2014, which bans the use, stockpiling, and weaponizing of all types of chemical arms. Early on Thursday, Russia proposed a resolution to address the chemical attack in Idlib. Moscow insisted that a commission to investigate must be regionally balanced, as Safronkov put it. He accused a current UN inspection team in Syria of bias, saying it too often relies on unverified reports. Moscow has vetoed past Security Council proposals to condemn Syria for violating the Chemical Weapons Convention, even though UN inspectors verified that the Syrian army used chlorine as a weapon on its enemies. The Russian proposal Thursday was a counteroffer to an American-British-French text that called on the Syrian government to fully cooperate with the UN inspectors. That text included a demand to hand over to the inspectors air logs, details of helicopter squadrons, including higher brass, and access to relevant Syrian air bases. Russia made clear it would veto the resolution. The U.S. and its allies told Russia that its resolution would not pass. At that point the 10 non-permanent members of the council proposed yet a third text, attempting to bridge the differences. Instead of detailing the steps the Syrian government must take to cooperate with the inspectors, the new text simply called for providing the inspectors with immediate and unfettered access. China said it might support the new proposal, but the other veto-wielding members dismissed it. Reaching an impasse late in the evening, the 15 members of the council left the building on First Avenue, failing even to agree on further negotiations the next day. When they arrived home, after a long day of hard negotiations on a resolution that would collectively address what all of them agreed was a horrific event, they saw on their TV sets that the United States had already found a different way to address it. And then, according to a UN diplomat, Bolivia, a current member of the Security Council, requested an emergency session to address, and perhaps condemn, the U.S. missile attack in Syria. And in short order, Moscow joined the request. The American move is an act of aggression of the U.S. against a UN nation, said Viktor Ozerov, the head of the defense committee in Russias upper house of parliament. As the president of the council in April, the U.S. will probably schedule the session for Friday. But as one of the top five members, it will likely veto any attempt to condemn its action. LONDON A picture of the American coalition-building style under President Donald Trump began to emerge from around the world Friday. And the short version was: We dont need no stinkin coalition. The Brits, the Israelis, and other core allies were informed by telephone shortly before 59 Tomahawk missiles were fired at the Shayrat airfield near Homs in the heart of Syria. The leaders of these allied nations were able to say publicly that they had been told about the attacks in advance, but so were the Russiansand even the Syrians, according to witnesses who saw the airfield being evacuated before the missiles struck. There was to be no Coalition of the Willing. Trump did not wait for the Russians to veto a UN Security Council resolution; there was no request for an emergency NATO summit. Hell, Washington (or should that be Mar-a-Lago?) didnt even bother to ask if Britain would provide a fig leaf of international consensus as it had done during Operation Desert Fox against Iraqi targets in 1998, or the first salvoes of the war in Afghanistan in 2001. Britains defense secretary admitted that his U.S. counterpart, Gen. James Mattis, was not asking for permission or even co-operation when he called. The U.S. made it clear this was to be a United States operation, a chastened Sir Michael Fallon told the BBC. The contrast to President Barack Obamas strategy of collective actionoften derided as leading from behindcould hardly be more stark. Obama had backed away from his own red line on Syrian use of chemical weapons in the summer of 2013, shortly after British support for U.S. military strikes against the Assad regime collapsed. As opposed to Americas willingness to strike at terror targets all over the world, unilateral missile strikes against sovereign nations have been extremely rare since President Reagans bombing raid against Libya in 1986, and missile strikes on Iraq in the early 1990s. President Clintons humanitarian airstrikes on Serbia in 1999 took place under a NATO umbrella. President George W. Bush secured NATO support soon after a joint U.S.-U.K. intervention in Afghanistan. The alliance against Saddam Hussein took far longer to build, but Bush and Colin Powell spent months cajoling more than 40 nations to offer their support before a missile was fired. President Barack Obama led from as far behind as he could in the Libyan intervention of 2011, which was spearheaded by the French and Britishwhich may be one reason he was so shocked in 2013 when the British parliament pulled the plug on a Syrian intervention. The Trump administration wasted no time at all. The order was given from Trumps luxury resort in Florida, and staff rushed to the phones to let allies know what was about to happen. Mattis had called the British defense secretary earlier in the day to share the U.S. assessment of the Assad regimes culpability in the chemical attack. During that call, he discussed the military options being considered for the first time. Awkwardly for Britain, Downing Street had been playing down any prospect of airstrikes in response to the suspected use of the deadly nerve agent sarin. No one is talking about military action, a spokesman said Tuesday. When Fallons phone rang late Thursday night, Mattis informed him of Trumps decision. Fallon explained Friday that the U.S. had never asked its allies to take part in a joint strike. Theres a coalition involved in fighting Daesh [the so-called Islamic State] in Iraq and Syria, but the U.S. made it clear this was to be a United States operation, he said. In the aftermath of the attack, Britain fell right in behind the U.S.offering its enthusiastic backing. The U.K. government fully supports the U.S. action, which we believe was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical-weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, and is intended to deter further attacks, said a spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May. Israel was even quicker in offering support for the strikesless than 90 minutes after Trump spokeBenjamin Netanyahu released a statement at 6 a.m. Israeli time. Israel fully supports President Trumps decision and hopes that this message of resolve in the face of the Assad regimes horrific actions will resonate not only in Damascus, but in Tehran, Pyongyang, and elsewhere, he said. Netanyahu and the Israeli security apparatus had been left infuriated when Obama backed out of military strikes that Israelis believed he had committed to deliver. Like Britain, Israel was called in advance of the strikes but its unclear how much time they were given to preparein 2013, they held talks with the Obama administration about bolstering their defensive systems ahead of the planned strikes. A joint statement from European leaders Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande was less enthusiastic about the unilateral strike but blamed Assad for the escalation. President Assad alone bears responsibility for this development. His repeated use of chemical weapons and his crimes against his own population had to be sanctioned, the German and French leaders said. German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel sounded even more cautious. As understandable as a U.S. military strike against military structures is after the failure of the Security Council, its just as crucial to look at joint peace efforts in the framework of the UN, he said. Australiaa U.S. ally so loyal that it joined the military intervention in Vietnam when even the British steered clearoffered its support for the strikes in Syria, but was keen to emphasize that the U.S. had reassured it that this was not a growing conflict and was not aimed at regime change. This was a calibrated, proportionate, and targeted response, said Malcolm Turnbull, Australias prime minister. But we are not at war with the Assad regime, and the United States have made it clear that they are not seeking to overthrow the Assad regime. Turnbull, along with Netanyahu, May and Merkel, will be among the first to hear if Donald Trump decides that has changed. ROMEBodies in suitcases are generally pretty mysterious, and the one that authorities discovered bobbing in the Rimini, Italy, harbor last week was no exception. At first, they thought the emaciated woman inside was the victim of a heinous murder. Instead, she was a victim of the deadly eating disorder anorexia nervosa, and it appears her mother was too embarrassed to tell anyone her daughter had starved to death. When the body was first discovered, authorities thought the corpse belonved to Yinglei Li, an Ireland based Chinese woman who went missing on a Mediterranean cruise in February. Her husband remains jailed in Rome for her presumed murder. But the body was too tall to be Yinglei Li, and far too thin, so investigators thought perhaps she was yet another victim of human trafficking for the illegal garment trade run in Italy by organized crime using Chinese workers. That also seemed plausible, but turned out not to be true. Instead, the body belonged to Katerina Laktionova, a 27-year-old Russian citizen who had suffered from anorexia nervosa for the last decade, according to her friends. Her Russian mother, who worked as a caretaker for the elderly in Italy, had committed her daughter to local hospitals several times in the past, but the young woman had resisted treatment. She weighed just 77 pounds when she died. Laktionovas mother, who fled to Moscow after ditching the suitcase with her daughters body in the Adriatic Sea, confessed to a friend about what she had done, adding that she was sure authorities would blame her for negligence in her daughters death. She had left her employment and told friends that she was taking her daughter to Moscow for experimental treatment for the eating disorder. Whether that is true remains unclear, but her daughter didnt live long enough to make the trip. Eating disorders including anorexia nervosa, bulimia, and binge eating affect more than 70 million people worldwide, according to the website mirror-mirror.org, that works to educate both those who suffer and their families through what is often a lifelong battle. Anorexia is the third most prevalent disease affecting adolescents and young adults in developed nations, after asthma and diabetes. About a quarter of sufferers are men. Many blame the fashion industry and the use of size zero models. Others blame advertisers of weight loss programs that send subliminal messages about overeating to those already vulnerable to the disease. In 2010, French model Isabelle Caro died after a long public battle with anorexia. Her mother committed suicide a few weeks later. Her death prompted the fashion industry to rethink the use of super-skinny models. Currently Italy prohibits size zero models at fashion shows, although many fashion houses and model agencies disagree, saying that the regulations discriminated against naturally thin women. Other countries require models to have a healthy BMI or body mass index that ties weight to height. Marked by a distorted sense of body image and extreme voluntary starvationand closely associated with perfectionism and depression[anorexia] is the most deadly psychiatric disorder, according to Psychology Today. Anorexia is highly resistant to treatment, and when the starvation becomes life-threatening, the usual recourse is hospitalization with forced feeding. Laktionovas friends say her mother did seek treatment for her daughters disease, and that she felt personally responsible for her daughters struggle. Dealing with the guilt that mothers, especially, take on when their daughters have debilitating eating disorders is often an integral part of the treatment. Authorities in Italy confirm they wont charge Laktionovas mother for any crimes relating to the death, but she will face charges for illegal disposal of a body and failure to report a death. They likely wont seek extradition if she decides to stay in Russia. If a terrorist were to attack Stockholm, the popular pedestrian thoroughfare of Drottningattan would be an appealing target. Flanked with shops, restaurants, and bars, the street is typically packed with people, especially on weekends. Indeed, moments after a hijacked beer truck barreled into a branch of Ahlens, a popular department store chain, this afternoon, early footage of panicked crowds fleeing the area suggests that before the driver began his deadly rampage the street was as bustling (and as vulnerable) as usual. At least three people were killed and eight others were injured in what police and government officials are calling a terrorist attack. Sweden has been attacked. Everything points to the fact that this is a terrorist attack, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven told a group of reporters shortly after the incident during a visit in western Sweden. The city immediately went into lockdown, closing the metro system, evacuating the central train station, and stationing armed guards around the downtown area. Shaken pedestrians sheltered inside nearby bars, and unconfirmed reports of a shooter loose in the area filled social media feeds. It is surreal, Stockholm resident Joakim Becklen told The Daily Beast from Barreto bar, where he and others were sheltering just a few blocks away from where the attack occurred. There are choppers flying around. I have never seen the center of a major city like this before. Footage of the scene depicts black smoke billowing from the building the truck careened into, while the shrieks of emergency sirens can be heard in the background. Christoffer Ung was shopping in the Ahlens department store when the hijacked truck plowed through the wall. I was on my way to the exit and just saw the wall coming towards us like an avalanche, he told the TT news agency, as quoted by The Local. The Swedish news site Expressen has released photos of a person police believe may be linked to the attack and who remains at large. The grainy images depict a man in a dark hooded sweatshirt and a green jacket, but it is difficult to make out his features. The attack is not the first time Drottninggatan has been targeted. In December 2010, an apparent suicide bomber blew himself up there, injuring two and causing panic among the throngs of Christmas shoppers. In that instance, a Swedish news agency said that it had received messages about 10 minutes before the blasts in Arabic and Swedish protesting the countrys presence in Afghanistan. The killer's motives in this latest rampage are not yet known. And as police continue to hunt for the suspect, shaken Swedes are trying to come to grips with the sort of attack that has become an unsettling refrain across Europe in recent months. I was close, very close. Becklen said. It could have been me. At the United Nations in New York Thursday night, famed primatologist Jane Goodall chatted with supermodel Karlie Kloss about the plush, stuffed monkey Mr. H that she totes around like a mascot. Thats so sweet! Kloss replied, towering above Goodall on the red carpet ahead of the 8th annual DVF Awards, where the odd pairingtwo seemingly otherworldly womenwere among five award recipients this year. She made me kick off my heels when we took a photo together earlier, Kloss, who wore a custom blue sequin DVF gown and silver Louboutins, told reporters. It was a running joke throughout the night: the 62 supermodel and entrepreneur felt small next to the other award recipients that night, like Yoani Sanchez, a journalist whose 14ymedio is the only independent digital news outlet in Cuba, where media is still state-controlled. I thought theyd made a mistake, Kloss said of learning she would receive this years Inspiration Award for giving young women and girls the opportunity to learn to code through her Kode With Klossy summer camp. The DVF Awards honor extraordinary women who have had the courage to fight, the power to survive, and the leadership to inspire, as host Diane von Furstenberg put it ahead of the event. Like von Furstenberg, they use their resources and visibility to help other women. Honorees receive $50,000 through the Diller-von-Furstenberg Family Foundation to support their activist organizations. (Full disclosure: von Furstenbergs husband, Barry Diller, owns IAC, the Daily Beasts parent company.) My job as a designer was to give women confidence with my dresses, von Furstenberg continued on the red carpet, wearing a silver and sequin variation on her signature wrap dress. For my third act in life, my mission is to use my voice to elevate other womens voices, so that we can weave our voices together in a fabric of compassion. Later, while presenting Goodall with this years Lifetime Achievement award, von Furstenberg described the 83-year-old doyenne of primatology as her fantasy woman: adventurous, educated, compassionateshe travels the world sharing a message of hope. Through her work with animals, she teaches us that every small thing we do has an impact. During her lengthy acceptance speech, the soft-spoken Goodall talked about how she wouldnt have pursued her dreams of being a primatologist were it not for her mother. Everyone else told me, Jane, dream about something you can achieve! But not my mother. Goodall explained how her groundbreaking work with chimpanzees in Africa awakened her to the poverty of people living around the chimpanzee habitatand ultimately inspired her to establish Roots & Shoots, a global community action program that teaches young people the importance of environmental conservation. She touched on climate change (its not a Chinese hoax; its real) and how teaching young generations to treat the planet better than generations before them is my greatest reason for hope in a world that often only feels depressing. This years Peoples Choice award went to the executive director of iCivics, a civic education program founded by Sandra Day OConnor. At a time when young voters are especially disillusioned with the political process and civic education curriculums arent sufficiently engaging young students, iCivics uses educational video games to teach students how government works. Kids who play iCivics get to pretend to be president of the United States, and they come to us and say, Being president is hard! Maybe some people are figuring that out now, said Louise Dube, in a thinly veiled jibe at our current POTUS. Our goal is to make every single person in America an active member of democracy. ROME Its hard to say just which of the photos of the dead babies affected President Donald Trump the most. Whether it was the one of Abdul-Hamid Alyousef clutching his nine-month-old dead twins as rigor mortis set in, or the one of a pile of dying children, their noses and mouths still foaming from a suspected sarin gas attack in Idlib province doesnt really matter. It was a slow and brutal death for so many, Trump said as he announced the attack on a Syrian airbase, retaliating for the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror. But, heres the thing: More than 55,000 children have died in the six-year civil war, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights. They died in air raids, car bombs, and chemical attacks. Yet until this week, the rhetoric and policy of this administration was moving toward at least tacit cooperation with Bashar al-Assad and his Russian backers in Syria. And now Trump appears to be reacting to grim, glossy pictures, not the very messy problems behind them. Days before the chemical attack, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson pointedly nodded in the Syrian dictators direction. The longer-term status of President Assad, Tillerson said, will be decided by the Syrian people, a euphemism used by Damascus, Moscow, and Tehran to indicate that he isnt going anywhere. And then there is the matter of children whove fled the carnage. Some 600 or more died last year alone trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea to safety, according to Save the Children. On average, two children die each day trying to find safety. Those who survive are part of a lost generation who will never know safety, forever robbed of a happy childhood. Dead children have captured the worlds attention before. When 4-year-old Aylan Kurdi washed up on a beach in Turkey in 2015, the world seemingly stopped to consider just what was happening. A short time later, the image, which was called fake by Assad, was forgotten. A year later, Omran Daqneesh, the 5-year-old bleeding boy in the ambulance captured hearts again, but not enough to make anyone change tactics or strategies in making the war stop. This time, though, the dead babies appear to have made a difference. I now have responsibility, Trump said during his news conference with Jordans King Abdullah II ahead of the early Friday strikes. It crossed a lot of lines for me. When you kill innocent children, innocent babies, babies, little babies, with a chemical gas that is so lethal that crosses many, many lines, beyond a red line. So when Trump announced the strikes on the Syrian airfield where those chemical weapons reportedly were launched, he referred to those babies again. On Tuesday, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad launched a horrible chemical-weapons attack on innocent civilians using a deadly nerve agent. Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women, and children, Trump said from his Mar-a-Lago Resort in Florida. And among those children, the beautiful babies. Tonight, I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched. It is in the vital national-security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. Make no mistake, all of the babies did die in vain. Their senseless deaths can never be avenged, no retaliatory attack can ever bring them back. But, for the first time since the deadly civil war started, at least this time they seem to have made a difference to Donald Trump. Whether he will change his policy attempting to ban all Syrian refugees, including children, from entering the United Statesthat remains an open question. DALLASA Mexican journalist who was beaten by the countrys federal police for his reporting has been denied asylum in the United States as a result of Trump administration policy and faces deportation back to Mexico. Martin Mendez Pineda, 25, is currently incarcerated in an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement holding facility in El Paso, Texas. Pineda met a U.S. lawyer at the El Paso border crossing on Feb. 5 and turned himself over to ICE seeking asylum. Pineda underwent a credible fear interview with Citizenship and Immigration Services who deemed his life would be in danger if he returned to Mexico, according to Pinedas attorney, Carlos Spector. Yet ICE denied Pineda parole, and instead of asylum he now waits for a court hearing where deportation proceedings will begin, Spector said. An ICE official said the decision to deny Pineda parole was made upstairs, according to Spector, who took it as a code for officials in Washington. On Jan. 25, Trump signed an executive order that called for fewer people to be released into the United States after detention (the so-called catch and release policy). A February memo from the Department of Homeland Security telling law enforcement how to carry out Trumps order requires either ICEs deputy or the deputy commissioner of Customs and Border Patrol to personally sign off on nearly all decisions to grant parole to immigrants. ICE told The Daily Beast in a statement that parole determinations are made on a case-by-case basis taking into account all aspects of the case, including safety considerations and any sensitivities involving the case. Pinedas case was one of the apparent few to make it to officials in Washington, according to Spector. An ICE officer who I know personally told me that the decision went upstairs to Washington, Spector said. So the folks in Washington had the letter from RSF asking for [Pineda] to be granted political asylum, and they had all the evidence of why Martin was in danger, and they still denied him. On Feb. 22, 2016, Pineda went to the scene of a car accident where the Gendarmerie, a subdivision of the Mexican federal police, were responding. When he arrived, Pineda reported the occupants of one vehicle were being beaten by officers. When Pineda began taking photos of the scene he was threatened and beaten by police, Spectors attorney said. After writing his story for Novadades Acapulco, Pineda told Spector he was again threatened in person by officers. Two weeks later, masked, armed individuals showed up at Pinedas home and threatened to kill him. Pineda contacted Mexicos National Commission for Human Rights and, feeling that his case wasnt being taken seriously, eventually went to Reporters Sans Frontiers (Reporters Without Borders). The group counseled Pineda to seek political asylum in the United States and contacted Spector, who walked Pineda across the border and into ICE custody. He was very, very scared and he didnt have anywhere to go other than the U.S., said Emmanuel Colombie, RSFs Director for Latin America. ICE denied Pinedas release because it deemed him a flight risk, according to immigration documents provided by Spector to The Daily Beast. ICE claimed that Pineda does not have significant ties to the community, meaning he does not have family in the U.S. Spector told ICE in a letter asking for Pinedas release that his client has no criminal record in Mexico. Hes a flight risk because he comes into the country asking for help? That makes no sense, Spector said. Greg Chen of the American Immigration Lawyers Association said Pineda is simply the latest victim of DHS policy that requires parole to be approved at the highest levels. Chen said the provision has effectively stopped nearly all parole requests from being granted, because regional ICE agents are disincentivized from sending those requests to superiors in Washington. Functionally the presidents order is the death of parole, meaning thousands of people who pose no threat to safetyincluding families and long-time residentswill be stuck in jail, and detention rates will rise astronomically, Chen said. Guerrero, the state in which Pineda worked, is one of the most dangerous in Mexico, said Colombie, and Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists. Three Mexican journalists have been murdered so far this year. The killings began on March 2, when Guerrero journalist Cecilio Pineda Birto was murdered execution style, according to authoritiesshot at least 10 times while laying in a hammock near a car wash. On March 19, Ricardo Monlui Cabrera was gunned down while leaving a restaurant with his wife and child. Four days later, Miroslava Breach was murdered not far from her home in the capital city of Chihuahua. The killers left a note that read tattletale. Breach covered violence, organized crime, and political corruption. It is unclear if any arrests have been made in last months murders of the three journalists. We know that most of the time its guys coming in a car who are masked and they just shoot and run away, said Colombie. We cannot know for sure whether the orders come from the local cartel leaders or if its in connection to [politicians]. Following Breachs murder, her editor decided hed had enough. In a column titled Adios, Oscar Cantu announced that Breachs former paper, Norte de Ciudad Juarez, would close. Everything in life has a beginning and an end, and a price to pay, and if the price is life, I am not prepared for any more of my collaborators to pay it, nor am I prepared to pay it either, Cantu wrote. Pineda also wasnt prepared to pay for journalism with his life, which is why he fled to the United States, Spector said. Now, he faces an uncertain future and a long battle in Americas overworked and crowded immigration system. It goes against the moral sense of who we are as a people, said Spector. You cant lock up human beings who are fleeing for their lives. Tuesday was Equal Pay Day, the day dedicated to raising awareness of the alleged gender pay gapor the oft-reported idea that women make 77 cents for every dollar a man makes. Largely the result of women being more likely to take time off or work in lower-paid jobs and industries, many hijack this topic to advocate for more workplace regulation or signal their rage about sexism (despite the statistics showing a more complicated story). Its fair for the idea of a gender pay gap to frustrate many on a visceral level. Although the dramatic statistics often cited are not accurate, its true that women are more prominent in lower-paid professions and roles. This happens for many reasonsanything from social conditioning that makes it harder to ask for raises to needing flexibility for childrearing. But these shoddy statistics are used as a talking point by those trying to push legislative agendas, especially on the left. Senator Elizabeth Warren has, in particular, been an outspoken proponent for leveling the gap. As she tweeted last year: Equal pay day isnt a national day of celebration. Its a national day of embarrassment. Unfortunately, her outrage fails to show self-awareness, on some level. Sen. Warrens own office seems to be afflicted by the same issues shes publicly decrying. The Daily Caller and Washington Free Beacon recently reported on this, claiming that her employees experience a gap of about $20,000 for median annual earnings, by gender. Ah, the hypocrisy! As nice as it would be if the story were that simple, there are several caveats that come with Senate staffer pay reports; bonuses could inflate salaries, no distinctions are made between part- and full-time employees, and some staff could be interns or working for multiple offices. Relying too heavily on these statistics is irresponsible without more context. After talking to the senators staffers (including her press secretary), its clear that several news organizations neglected their due diligence. Had they done more research, they would have noticed that she has many prominent female campaign staffers, as well as several congressional staffers that have switched over to the campaign side. These constant changes distort public records and make it hard to get the full story. Or they couldve looked at her pay records over time or even asked Sen. Warrens office if they keep data on pay by gender (which they do). When looking at pay records over the last four years, there was no ridiculous discrepancy in median incomes by gender, particularly when noting duration of employment. In the past, Warren has employed many high-performing females, especially on the campaign side. Her campaign manager and deputy campaign manager, for example, were both womenand were compensated accordingly. However, there are still worrisome trends in Warrens employment practices: If you look at those paid most highly (I used statistics from April-September 2016), there are more men than women at the top. I looked at those who were paid above $40,000 for these six months and found the breakdown to be discouraging: There were nine male employees and three female employees in that bracket. Even worse, none of the female employees made above $60,000 and the three largest earners were men, earning up to $84,729. Of course, it would be unwise to extrapolate from this pay period to others, so I looked at the same criteria for the preceding six months. These data showed more gender egalitarianism (as there were seven men and five women making $40,000 or above) but the same pattern persisted: The three top earners were still men. If Warren is as feminist as she claims, she should reflect on her own paying practices and determine if theyre aligned with her values. Or perhaps shes more focused on political posturing to make this issue seem worse than it is. Of course, theres one crucial caveat to consider: Some staffers float between roles in congressional offices and campaigns. This distorts the data, as Warrens staffers pointed out, and makes it easy to misrepresent. As I looked at employment records for Warrens campaign staff, it became clear that many of her top campaign aides areand have historically beenwomen. So even if theres some gender disparity in her office, I wouldnt assume its out of malice, but rather how things sometimes shake out. Unlike Warren and many liberals, I dont think pay disparity necessarily means bad intentions. Perhaps the senator hired the people best for each job instead of giving a specific demographic a leg up. But if that is the case, she should realize that many other organizations do that too. It doesnt necessarily show horrific, sexist business practices. If even Elizabeth Warren cant promote egalitarian gender roles perfectly, what hope is there for the rest of us? Compensating men and women equallyespecially when dealing with different work hours and lifestyle choicesisnt as simple as companies being intentionally chauvinistic. If we truly want women to succeed in the workplace, dishonest statistics wont help (Im looking at you, Washington Free Beacon). Everyonefrom top CEOs to Elizabeth Warrenneeds to understand that pay gaps dont always result from bad intentions, but a variety of structural factors and lifestyle choices. Instead of demonizing companies, organizations should be self-aware and find ways to help women succeed in their specific set of circumstances. Twitter outrage and overzealous criticism without context certainly wont be the solution. Liz Wolfe is managing editor at Young Voices. She lives in Austin, Texas, where she writes about criminal justice and feminist issues. She tweets at @lizzywol. Outerspace Vodka lands in UK Outerspace Vodka has launched in the UK, initially online, exclusively through 31Dover.com. Outerspace Vodka claims that its unique alien design and packaging has made it one of the fastest growing liquor brands globally. Since launching in the US 18 months ago, the brand is available in 42 states and has gone on to sell over 40,000 cases. It claims that its distinctive green alien head has attracted something of a cult following among consumers and on social media. Made from US corn vodka, filtered five times, the liquid is then filtered through a 4-billion-year-old meteorite. James Denoon, Outerspace Vodka's co-founder, says: The UK is a market we have been looking forward to entering since our launch in late 2015. Weve had a lot of interest and demand from consumers and retailers there asking when we will be available. Touching down this month will be great fun and we have some exciting plans for the brand and our development in the UK Outerspace Vodka will be imported exclusively in the UK and Europe by Gravity Drinks Limited. Mathew Maslin, director of Gravity Drinks, says: We will be partnering with 31Dover.com as our exclusive online retailer. Theyve shown tremendous enthusiasm for the brand and concept. As the UKs leading online drinks retailer, its platform and next day delivery will appeal to our customers. Outerspace Vodka is set to launch on April 12 marking the anniversary of the first human space flight when Yuri Gagarin blasted out of earths atmosphere. Available immediately in 700ml and 50ml miniatures later this year. 5 April 2017 - Sam Coyne The Drinks Report, news editor Officials say a man who died after he became ill while being booked into the Brazos County Jail in February died from a cocaine overdose. According to the Brazos County Sheriffs Office, 29-year-old Johnny Dewayne Hall was arrested Feb. 15 after he evaded arrest and threw a bag of cocaine out of his car window. While being booked into the jail, Hall, who was in the intake area, began to become disoriented. Jail staff tended to him and medical personnel were called. after he was transported to a local hospital, Hall died. The sheriffs office conducted an internal investigation, and the Department of Public Safetys Texas Ranger division also investigated. Halls body was sent to the Travis County Medical Examiner for an autopsy. Results of the autopsy came back Wednesday and showed died from acute cocaine toxicity. Officials found no signs of trauma or injury. The sheriffs office has finished its investigation and a final report is being submitted to the attorney generals office. After deliberating just a little more than four hours Thursday, a Brazos County jury convicted a 38-year-old Bryan man of capital murder in the 2015 killing of a 7-month-old girl. The jury found Talawrence Tennell guilty of killing Hailey Burleson on Feb. 25, 2015. The girls mother, Crystal Harris, who had been living with Tennell at the time in an apartment complex in Bryan, had left Burleson with her then-boyfriend while she went to pick up her other daughter for a doctors appointment, according to court documents. After Harris had returned to the apartment several hours later, Burleson had suffered multiple fractures to her skull, ribs and various extremities and had cuts and bruises across her body. Tennell will be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole at 9 a.m. Friday. District Court Judge Kyle Hawthorne included both capital murder for which Tennell had been indicted by a grand jury in November 2015 and the lesser offense of felony murder in his charge to the jury before they left for deliberation just after 3 p.m. The three-day trial featured 15 state-called witnesses over two full days and two called by the defense over the span of about an hour Thursday morning. Earl Gray, who served along with Amy Banks as Tennells court-appointed attorneys, thanked the jury for their time and said they respected the jurys verdict. District Attorney Jarvis Parsons declined to comment, as Tennell had not yet been officially sentenced. Harris will give a victim impact statement Friday morning shortly before Hawthorne officially sentences Tennell. Banks said her client will file an appeal. The capital murder trial was Brazos Countys first since a jury sentenced Gabriel Hall to death in October 2015. Officials say a man who died after he became ill while being booked into the Brazos County Jail in February died from a cocaine overdose. According to the Brazos County Sheriff's Office, 29-year-old Johnny Dewayne Hall was arrested Feb. 15 after he evaded arrest and threw a bag of cocaine out of his car window. While being booked into the jail, Hall, who was in the intake area, began to become disoriented. Jail staff tended to him and medical personnel were called. After he was transported to a local hospital, Hall died. The sheriff's office conducted an internal investigation, and the Department of Public Safety's Texas Ranger division also investigated. Hall's body was sent to the Travis County Medical Examiner for an autopsy. Results of the autopsy came back Wednesday and showed Hall died from acute cocaine toxicity. Officials found no signs of trauma or injury. The sheriff's office has finished its investigation, and a final report is being submitted to the attorney general's office. As students continue to create a demand for housing close to the Texas A&M campus, more College Station residents of surrounding established neighborhoods have watched with apprehension as the development of rental properties and "stealth dorms" have crept onto their blocks. The anxiety of student housing encroaching on single-family neighborhoods has also moved south, with residents frequently opposing land rezonings for apartments that developers have promised will be geared toward young professionals. City staff presented research on potential ways to address the issues to the Planning and Zoning Commission on Thursday, and more discussions are set for future meetings. The first idea floated was looking into the possibility of creating specific zoning districts that distinguish market-rate apartments, which rent by the unit, from student-oriented multi-family housing. The latter typically rents by the bedroom. Recent applications for multi-family projects have received strong opposition from nearby single-family neighborhoods fearing that projects pitched as housing for young professionals would eventually be geared toward students. Senior planner Mark Bombek said these types of zoning districts could probably be accomplished legally, but the city will have to decide if it makes sense to create them. Research shows that the number of site plans and zoning applications for student-oriented apartments have decreased in recent years. However, there's an increasing market demand for infill development in College Station, particularly for replatting and rebuilding homes on lots in established neighborhoods for rental property. Staff have also been researching best practices followed in similar university-centric cities regarding the management of student housing in single-family neighborhoods. Senior planner Jessica Bullock told the P&Z commissioners Thursday that the city protects the potential negative affects of student housing, such as traffic, noise and various other quality-of-life concerns, through tools such as code enforcement, deed restrictions and restricting the number of unrelated people living in a home. Neighborhood conservation overlays, such as the one approved for the McCulloch subdivision in 2015, can also put additional standards in place for new development to protect character and integrity. Some additional short-term solutions for managing student housing, Bullock said, could include providing more requirements in those overlay districts such as further restricting the number of unrelated tenants who can live in a home or requiring things such as garages and a certain amount of lot coverage. Other benchmark cities have also implemented distance regulations that require rental properties to be a set number of feet from each other or only cover a certain percentage of a block. Long-term, the city could also look at creating a city-initiated "student-friendly" overlay zone that could entice students with a more lax noise ordinance and the potential for more of a mix of residential and commercial uses. An update to the city's comprehensive plan could also be an opportunity to evaluate redevelopment areas and opportunities and increase the range of housing types offered to alleviate pressure on neighborhoods. Only a couple of the commissioners gave specific feedback Thursday. Commissioner Casey Oldham and said the options presented are still only fixes to the symptoms of the problem, and all could have unintended consequences. "At the end of the day, we're Planning and Zoning -- there's two pieces of it," Oldham said. "And the planning part of it should have been, we have a university in the middle of our city, and that is where all the students are going to be, and from a public transportation standpoint and from an infrastructure standpoint, we should have thought about, hey, maybe students should live next to the university." Texas A&M is meeting some of that need through housing being built through several public-private partnerships, Oldham said, saying his direction for now would be that the city pause discussions of additional governance and regulations. "We going to have to have better public discussions with our university and collaboration with them on what we're going to do with housing," Oldham said. "That's the answer in the short-term." Commissioner Bill Mather said he liked the concept of creating a student-friendly overlay. "Let's entice them to go places we'd like them to be other than in our backyard," he said. Chairwoman Jane Kee said she'd like to discuss more workshops to the issue to discuss potential short- and long-range solutions. International visitors from 27 countries were in College Station on Thursday seeking to build stronger relationships with Texas A&M University and the City of College Station. The visit, which included 51 international participants, was a part of an Americas Competitiveness Exchanges tour of Central Texas, which also included stops in Austin, San Antonio, New Braunfels, Fredericksburg and San Marcos. The event is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Commerce and the Organization of American States. Barnett L. Haga, a senior adviser for economic engagement with the Department of Commerce, said the goal of the initiative is to establish pathways for mutually beneficial investment opportunities between hosting sites and the visiting delegates. "It could be a penetration point for new research, shared students or a company in an incubator," Haga said. "It's really designed to create a mutually beneficial partnership. ... We want to use events like this to help those relationships to grow naturally." Haga said the participants are chosen from a broad pool of more than 300 applicants representing government offices as well as private businesses. Following a morning full of tours across a variety of Texas A&M's facilities in the area, participants were treated to a lunch in the AgriLife Center on the university's West Campus, where academic officials from the College of Engineering, the College of Architecture and the Mays Business School shared presentations about their respective programs. Introducing the presentations, Texas A&M University System Chancellor John Sharp said it is "our greatest hope that you will decide to partner with us, either [through] the universities or businesses from your countries." "Texas A&M University is open for business," Sharp said. Economic Development Director of College Station Natalie Ruiz, who helped to coordinate the group's time in town, said the visit is a positive opportunity for the area to share the benefits it has to offer to a diverse international audience. "Having [representatives from] 27 different countries here in College Station looking for partnership opportunities is huge for such a small community," Ruiz said. "I hope that coming out of this event we can establish and collaborate on different levels with some of these potential new partners." In addition to academic partnerships, Ruiz said the possibility of private companies interested in establishing a presence in the U.S. coming to College Station is an enticing thought. "We just want to make those countries aware that this is a great place to be," Ruiz said. "A lot of these companies may not have a U.S. presence, but if they want one, we want it to be here in College Station." Juan Carlos Paiz, a class of '87 Aggie, businessman and former high commissioner for competitiveness in Guatemala, said the trip was especially enjoyable for him thanks to his long-standing ties to the area. Paiz said each time he visits the university he is impressed with the growth it has made while simultaneously retaining the essence he believes makes it a special community. Moving forward, he said he plans to seek out more ways to encourage collaboration between his home country and his alma mater. To learn more about the Americas Competitiveness Exchanges, visit www.riacevents.org/ace. The Starlight Music Festival will kick off Saturday with performances by the Texas Unlimited Band and guest Rosie Flores as part of six free concerts at Wolf Pen Creek Amphitheater. Following Saturdays show, three concerts are set in May the 6th, 13th and 27th with the final two shows on June 10 and June 24. Gerry Logan, special events supervisor at the Parks and Recreation Department in College Station, said the festival is a great chance for guests to come see the type of live music they requested. Starlight has been put on each year since 2002. For last years series, we had opportunities for the public to suggest what kind of music they wanted to see, Logan said. We use that information that we get from those evaluations to determine what we pick. And its not really a surprise that country is pretty popular in the area, but this years lineup is pretty diverse. Some of the other performers over the course the festival include Will Hoge, Cory Morrow and Def Leggend. The Voters Choice, brought back to Starlight for the second year, gives new bands an opportunity to showcase their talent, Logan said. Fans vote on three bands for the May 6 show and each group chosen will earn cash prizes, with first place receiving an artist development package from local studio Revive 45. For us, it was kind of a discussion we started having really two years ago, but we implemented it for last year where we wanted a chance to really promote local talent and give an opportunity for bands that might not otherwise get a shot to perform on a stage, Logan said. In addition to the music, the annual Ducky Derby will be during Saturdays show. The fundraiser for the Childrens Museum of the Brazos Valley is put on by Delta Kappa Epsilon. Rubber ducks will race, through Wolf Pen Creek with the top three finishers winning prizes. Attendees can bring coolers with drinks, but the cooler must be 48 quarts or smaller and glasses containers or kegs are not allowed. Guests can also bring chairs but they must be set outside of the blanket-only seating area. Pets are not allowed and smoking is allowed only in designated areas. Admission is free and the gates will open Saturday at 6 p.m., with the show beginning at 7 p.m. Free parking is available at Post Oak Mall. For more information and the full lineup, visit cstx.gov/starlight. After deliberating just a little more than four hours Thursday, a Brazos County jury convicted a 38-year-old Bryan man of capital murder in the 2015 killing of a 7-month-old girl. The jury found Talawrence Tennell guilty of killing Hailey Burleson on Feb. 25, 2015. The girl's mother, Crystal Harris, who had been living with Tennell at the time in an apartment complex in Bryan, had left Burleson with her then-boyfriend while she went to pick up her other daughter for a doctor's appointment, according to court documents. After Harris had returned to the apartment several hours later, Burleson had suffered multiple fractures to her skull, ribs and various extremities and had cuts and bruises across her body. Tennell will be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole at 9 a.m. today. District Court Judge Kyle Hawthorne included both capital murder -- for which Tennell had been indicted by a grand jury in November 2015 -- and the lesser offense of felony murder in his charge to the jury before they left for deliberation just after 3 p.m. The three-day trial featured 15 state-called witnesses over two full days and two called by the defense over the span of about an hour Thursday morning. Earl Gray, who served along with Amy Banks as Tennell's court-appointed attorneys, thanked the jury for their time and said they respected the jury's verdict. District Attorney Jarvis Parsons declined to comment, as Tennell had not yet been officially sentenced. "Talawrence Tennell took the most innocent and precious thing that exists in this world, and he destroyed it," Kara Comte, who also prosecuted the case for the state, said in her closing statement. "The defendant made the choice to beat the life out of her with his hands and feet, against some object that left her absolutely destroyed," said Comte. Banks said in her closing argument that the case "breaks my heart," but argued to the jury that the state had not met its burden of proof for capital murder. "He didn't kill this baby intentionally," said Banks. The defense attorney went on to argue that Tennell had "stepped into the role of 'daddy' for this child," based on testimony from previous witnesses who had said Tennell had never "mistreated this baby." "This man is a PCP addict," Banks said of the self-confessed drug-user. He had used PCP and other illicit drugs in the past, Banks said, but he had gotten high on the day Burleson died through a transdermic delivery caused by spilling a large amount of PCP on his jeans. "It stands to reason that this man had a bigger dose of PCP than he had ever had before," said Banks. Comte said "there was no evidence he ever had those jeans on his body anywhere near the date where Hailey was killed." After the defense wrapped their closing statements, Parsons referenced the testimony of Lisa Coleman, who works at the Brazos County Jail medical division, who said on the stand Wednesday that Tennell had told her he had smoked PCP that day and "probably had a lot of PCP" in his system. "There is no testimony at all that the defendant was in these jeans," said Parsons. The attorneys sparred over the state's emphasis on the emotional impact of the case -- "Wouldn't we have expected to hear at least from one detective?" Gray asked the jury -- rather than on the investigation, given that Tennell's DNA was not found on the baby, and the DNA from an unknown woman was found at the home in which Burleson died. "They have not brought a shred of evidence connecting Talawrence to this crime," said Gray. Parsons, speaking to 14 jurors and a courtroom so packed that at times observers were standing in the back row, said the case "isn't about sympathy. This is about justice. We don't meet injustice with mercy. We meet it with justice." "The message that you send," Parsons told the jury, "is whether or not you are responsible for your actions when you hurt the least among us, the ones you are supposed to hold dear." Several members of Tennell's family sat outside the 85th District Courtroom for the four hours the jury deliberated. They talked amongst themselves about whether they would be allowed to hug Talawrence Tennell after the jury had reached a verdict and whether they should leave the courthouse to get dinner and risk not being there when the jury finished deliberating. Eventually, a cousin of the defendant started playing religious sermons from his phone. After Hawthorne read the jury's verdict, the four Tennell family members cried and hugged Talawrence Tennell once he'd been placed in handcuffs. The 6'1", roughly 280-pound man who had just been convicted of capital murder cried silently as his aunt, sister and cousin hugged him and sobbed. His sister, who had testified earlier Thursday, started coughing so hard while crying that she had to sit down. The Tennell family took a picture with the defendant before the bailiff escorted him from the courtroom. Harris was not in the courtroom for the jury's verdict; she had left the courthouse after the attorneys' closing statements to attend a school function for her other daughter. Harris will give a victim impact statement this morning shortly before Hawthorne officially sentences Tennell. Banks said her client will file an appeal. The capital murder trial was Brazos County's first since a jury sentenced Gabriel Hall to death in October 2015. August 2, 1932 - March 31, 2017 On the evening of March 31, 2017, Patsy Ann Lang escaped the bonds of her age-beaten and broken body, and leapt into the waiting arms of her savior, Jesus Christ. While separation is hard and we who remain behind are grieving, we are comforted in having witnessed her passing--peaceful and without pain--into Glory. Patsy was born on August 2, 1932 on a farm near Sudan, TX to Velma and A.B. Morgan. She was preceded in death by her husband, Clarence Wayne Lang, her mother Velma Hollaway, father A.B. Morgan, brothers A. Benton Morgan, Bobby Joe Morgan, Otis James Morgan, and a sister, Jean Webb. Patsy leaves behind a daughter, Becky Lynn Smith of Navasota, TX, son and daughter-in-law Bobby Wayne and Brenda Davis of Baytown, TX, and son and daughter-in-law Billy Ray and Michele Lang of Lubbock, TX. She also leaves sisters Yvonne Johnston of Tulsa, OK and Naomi Slagle of Paris, TX. Patsy also leaves six grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. Honoring Patsy's wishes, there will not be an immediate service. The family wishes to extend appreciation to the nurses at St. Joseph's Hospital and Hospice Brazos Valley for their compassion and caring during this difficult time. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations in Patsy's honor to Hospice Brazos Valley. An announcement will be made when details are finalized for a memorial service. Thank you so much for your thoughts and prayers during this time. They have meant more than you can imagine. God bless you all! Please View and Sign the Guestbook at TrevinoSmithFuneralHome.com Serving Your Family Is Our Family Business SNP's Paul Monaghan, echoing the words of Sefan Hogan of the Northern Ireland TB Strategic Partnership Group regarding their hopes for an Integrated Eradication Programme, suggested to beleaguered Minister for Defra George Eustice, that wasn't it the case that the government "could have as much Bovine TB as it was prepared to pay for?" Gamma interferon works! Best not use it too much then ... Back at the Imperial College Symposium, Welsh Chief Veterinary Officer Christianne Glossop pointed to "the battle raging in the countryside" and explained the more proactive and pragmatic "keep it out / find it fast / stop it spreading / stamp it out" approach of the Welsh Assembly in Wales. Gamma interferon testing had been brought in to bolster the poor-performing tuberculin skin test and was producing promising early results. Nigel Gibbens, like George Eustice the day before in Westminster, limply used the same phrase in relation to use of gamma testing in England: "we will use it more". No commitment to compulsory and free issue across England though. This is the method that could root out the disease, and send infected cattle for slaughter as necessary, in a well-planned way. England has plans to use gamma in the failed Pilot badger culling areas, which will further muddy any attempts to analyse those already scrambled events. Gibbens indicated twice that the government culling policy was now 'rolled out', when no such formal decision has been taken. He seemed to indicate that there might be large expansion of badger culling in around 20% of the High Risk Area in 2017 - another 15,000 badgers condemned, with many new areas to face the divisive disruption waste and local misery that such activity brings. Policy-based science However at least to me, for the first time, government scientists were being honest about the severe constraints surrounding how their science fits the political direction of their masters. Otherwise known as 'policy-based science'. It was refreshing for them to be so open and honest on such a difficult matter, akin to yelling 'help' from the roof. Most telling, both Boyd and Gibbens gave the "not in our lifetime" view on bTB control - an apparent surrender both to the disease and to the political masters who think economy-led management of livestock disease is a sane approach. Perhaps they meant not in the lifetime of the soon to play-out Brexit hard-times for farming. And the symposium had no immediate solace for the badger protection world. The data from 20 years of failed badger culling in Republic of Ireland (ROI) was presented as if it had statistical significance. There was an ROI "vaccination programme to come" sweetener; an exit strategy to the pointless 100 million decimation of badgers in the disrupted Irish ecosystems. Hardly reflecting the Brussels inspections, that has given Dublin notice to think again in recent years. Everywhere, vaccination of both cattle and badgers had its 'jam maybe tomorrow' promise and the difficulties and delays of progressing research re-stated. What does work, and what doesn't However, the Symposium did have some brighter moments with molecular biologist Cath Rees from Nottingham University showing how work carried out on the edge of legal restrictions to experimentation had enabled the refinement of a bacteriophage blood test, offering a potential new dawn for bTB testing. Gareth Enticott from Cardiff University quoted the "mythology of New Zealand as a TB policy leader" showing how governments mismanage their farming community at their peril. Amie Adkin from the APHA gave useful insight into farmer attitudes towards risk-based trading. James Wood from Cambridge University Vet School outlined the knowns, unknowns and goals in BTB testing and the quest for the Divergence test to tell vaccinated cattle apart from diseased ones. Much to the chagrin of some bTB modellers, a new review collecting data from a wide range of studies shows that the tuberculin skin test fails not only to detect up to 20% but sometimes up to 50% of bTB reactor cows. No wonder the disease is perpetuating itself. No wonder ordinary work-a-day farmers are angry about the uncertainty in the current measures, with no end in sight. Enough #fakescience to shake a stick at! Including the RBCT As it began however, the Symposium was upstaged by Zoological Society researcher and RBCT veteran Rosie Woodroffe, letting rip at Defra, according to a BBC report, accusing the government of cherry-picking evidence and forming "fake science" to justify their approach to the Pilot badger culls in England. Strong words from a DEFRA-funded researcher whose own work was also under question in the same week. Having restated her view that badgers are responsible for 1 in 20 herd breakdowns and up to 50% of bTB generally in herds, she offered her latest hypothesis that cows may catch bTB by inhaling over badger latrines. Tim Coulson (of the original Pilot Cull Independent Expert Panel) from Oxford University had earlier explained government approach to badger population estimates in pilot culling zones. His deadpan treatment exposed with cold clarity the total farce and mockery that is DEFRA and Natural England's twisting and turning to make evidence fit the policy. The symposium expert panel looked to the RBCT team when asked why, given the RBCT (upon which the 2011 English bTB Policy hangs) used confirmed rather than all reactor breakdown data in its final 2007 analysis, the current government policy was still valid. Since completion of the RBCT, a lack of visible lung lesions at post-mortem is no longer viewed as a non-Tb contact. This oversight is the time-bomb in both Lords Zuckerman's (1980) & Krebs (1997) reviews, and continued into the 2007 ISG report (see page 93-96). In fairness, in 2007 Bourne pointed towards poor post-mortem culturing as the reason that the disease was overlooked in 'unconfirmed' reactors. Analysis based on all breakdowns (confirmed and unconfirmed) does not show any significant effect of proactive culling of badgers on herd breakdowns. So science now says that the RBCT made no meaningful contribution to the question of whether badgers pass bovine TB to cattle. The fall of the proactive cull benefit science, is now added to the insignificant reactive cull findings (trials stopped prematurely), and the beleaguered perturbation hypothesis that in 2007 was rejected by the Chief Scientist of the day and others. The RBCT has not born the test of time well. These are fatal blows to the RBCT and its derivative science papers as we know it, now trapped haplessly in peer-reviewed immortality. It is shocking when one realises how they were used to underpin the millions of pounds of research efforts over the last decade, and indeed the 2011 bTB policy and its clumsy progress. As Krebs himself recently commented; "we must acknowledge as scientists that we don't always get it right. Models make assumptions, labels slip in freezers." The answer: stop the cull, roll out the gamma testing As for the policy? Well the correct procedure would be for MPs to require 'Suspension'. The irony is that the RBCT took a year-off during its progress due to foot and mouth, so pausing for a year now to rethink would even be consistent with the current policy, based on the RBCT methods. However, given the sums and likely outcomes indicated, it is hard to understand how badger culling could continue as a credible policy, and the bTB Symposium marks the end of its era. Farmers deserve better than this and so do our cows. Public money must be better spent and farmers protected. It has been a salutary lesson for scientists making assumptions and modelling data in unsafe conditions. What next? Well the government can use its badger cull savings on rolling out gamma testing with the SICCT test, as in Wales and save as much of the 2 billion that would be frittered stringing it out to 2038 and beyond. This would be following, what international experts have been advising for years; bringing down bovine TB in England to acceptable levels. And the badgers? The cats and the moles and worms and the deer and everything else in what now look like the phoney reservoir? Well some of work on the poorly understood epidemiology that was overlooked in the 1990s can be carefully started, in the normal way. It is called evidence-based science and you ignore it at your peril. Tom Langton is a consulting ecologist to government, business and industry and a voluntary sector volunteer, more recently working on assisting small pressure groups in their legal opposition to destruction of species and habitats in Europe. Although the Colombian government has adamantly defended the strength of its own regulatory framework, the country's own Comptroller has warned of irregularities, and has ordered the National Hydrocarbons Agency to "to refrain from signing contracts for the exploitation of non-conventional oil deposits". The country's Ministry of Environment is also set to release a study showing that the country is not ready to monitor or regulate non-conventional fossil fuel extraction. In a country with over one hundred active socio-environmental conflicts, the expansion of fracking risks aggravating tensions. Colombia is still in the process of implementing a landmark peace agreement brokered in late 2016 between the government and the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), which drew five decades of civil war to a close. Last October, Cordatec wrote that the government's actions to push through fracking "demonstrate the real way in which the national government is building "territorial peace". While it sits in Havana, negotiates and comes to an agreement with the FARC to put an end to 50 years of war, in benefit of multinational companies and economic interests...it uses violence against communities who defend life, water, land and ecosystems." Approved exploration contracts for fracking overlap with the territories of Indigenous communities such as the Yupka, Wiwa and Wayuu peoples. They also cross the "Black Line" - an established demarcation of territories in the Sierra Nevada region that hold sacred value for the Kogi, Wiwa, Kankuamo and Aruaco peoples. In addition to contravening the land rights of Colombia's Native peoples, the Colombian Government's issuance of contracts for fracking has prompted fears of possible human rights violations, given the oil industry's historic record in the country. Since oil companies first arrived in Colombia at the turn of the century, numerous local communities have experienced gross ecological and social impacts, ranging from water depletion to brutal intimidation. Drummond, an American company party to five new fracking-related contracts, has previously been linked to paramilitary payoffs and violence in the northeastern region of Cesar. The new fracking concessions also threaten a range of paramo ecosystems, including the Chingaza paramo, a unique water ecosystem that provides the capital city of Bogota with four-fifths of its water. The Sumapaz paramo, the largest in the world, is also under threat. In other parts of the country, unique wetland ecosystems could also be at risk. While the scale of Colombia's fracking concessions is unprecedented in the region, the extractive practice is no newcomer to Latin America, with fracking ventures active in at least seven countries. Argentina, home to the second largest shale reserve in the world, has seen a flurry of extraction projects in northern Patagonia, with Royal Dutch Shell recently announcing major investments. Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Peru, and Mexico have also seen the use of fracking. These Authors Sebastian Ordonez Munoz is senior international programmes officer (Latin America) at War on Want and Daniel MacMilllen Voskoboynik is coordinator at This Changes Everything UK 20 years ago this week April 7, 1997 A limo bike built for one Ronald Bressler of Rocky Mount has a custom built bike for one himself. This is the worlds first two-wheel, 20-foot bike, Bressler asserts. He built it over an eight week period, working four hours every Monday night in the Franklin County High School shop. I cant weld, Bressler said, so he drew on the helping hands of two shop teachers Larry Hylton and Diane OMalley, and their students, Thomas Hylton and Shawn Love. They all helped every step of the way. And when the job was finished, OMalley brought her class out to watch Bressler ride off on his long bike. It wasnt that the group didnt think he could do it, but they clapped when he successfully peddled down the street toward his workplace. He explained that he is in the process of rebuilding a boat trailer to transport his bicycle. Right now, I dont have any way to haul it, so I rode it from the high school to my job in Rocky Mount, Bressler said. Then I rode it on home which totals a distance of about a mile. 50 years ago this week April 6, 1967 File redistrict petition T. Ford Cundiff, member of the Franklin County Board of Supervisors from the Rocky Mount District, at noon Wednesday filed with the Clerks Office a petition requesting the redistricting of Franklin County. Circulation of the petition was started by a group of interested citizens several months ago. Cundiff this week also filed for re-election as supervisor of the Rocky Mount district. Cundiff has urged the Franklin County Board of Supervisors for the past several months to take the initiative in re-districting the county into a more equitable distribution of population. Commonwealths Attorney Virgil H. Goode told Cundiff that he (Cundiff) was the first person he had heard mention the matter. Cundiff assured Goode that many people had talked with him about it, and offered to send some of those who were in favor of it to see Goode. Goode said at that time a move to redistrict a county is always done by a petition. He read a section of the Code of Virginia stating that a petition bearing at least 50 names must be presented before redistricting could take place. Oh, no, Cundiff answered at the February meeting, youre wrong, Mr. Goode. He suggested that Goode continue to look in the law books. I think youll find its been changed and a new amendment has been added, he told Goode. Cundiff then suggested to Goode that he ask Circuit Judge Langhorne Jones about it. Goode answered, I dont have to ask Judge Jones. I just read you the law, Mr. Cundiff. Leggetts specials Bath towels, two for $1 Water hose, 50 foot, $3.79 State Pride ironing board, $3.88 State Pride vacuum cleaner, $34.88 You have voting questions? We have answers Unsure if you're registered to vote? Not sure where your polling place is? Need a ride to the polls? We have answers to all that and more. Last week I had a whirlwind experience, flying across the country to check out the Tropicana orange groves near Sarasota, Florida! As you guys know, Ive been working with Tropicana since last year (check out my Sticky Orange Chicken and Orange Sweet Potato Casserole recipes!) so I was thrilled to be able to see where the oranges are actually grown and how they process them into the OJ you buy from your grocery store. Disclaimer: This post is sponsored by Tropicana. Thank you for supporting the brands that help make THM possible. But first, a story. Im a weird person who loves when I get a chatty Uber driver. Especially since I work for myself, I welcome any opportunity for human contact that I can get. So when I hopped in my Uber to the airport to catch my flight to Florida, I was totally down when my driver started asking questions about my trip. I told him I was a health and wellness blogger, which seemed intriguing to him, but it was mostly the fact that I was going down to Florida with Tropicana that seemed to catch his attention. Tropicana?! Isnt it full of sugar?! He seemed surprised that someone who is passionate about health and wellness would be working with Trop OJ. Lucky for him (or unlucky since we all know how I am when Im on my Soap Box!), I knew exactly how to address this question. I have no idea where along the way, but juice somehow got demonized in the health industry. Sure, I can understand when theres all sorts of added sugars or additives, but in the case of Tropicana Pure Premium Orange Juice, were talking about 100% Pure OJ. And thats it! Seriously, look at the ingredient list. My uber driver was surprised to discover this too. He was convinced there was added sugars or the juice was made from concentrate. I had to be the one to burst his bubble, and honestly, I was more than okay with it. Because heres the thing, I love freshly squeezed orange juice as much as the next person, but I realistically dont have the time to do that everyday. On top of that, there are people who live in food deserts or in areas that cant get access to local produce and theres no reason they shouldnt get the benefits of oranges. Im born and raised in Toronto, and let me tell you, it aint cheap or easy buying oranges that most certainly dont grow in the area in the dead of winter. This is why we need accessible products like Tropicana Orange Juice. This is also why I was so excited to be invited down to the groves to see them for myself and show you guys where their pure premium orange juice comes from. And honestly? I was blown away by the experience. Im giving you a brief overview of what we did and saw, but for a full recap be sure to watch the video I posted on my YouTube channel! The festivities kicked off on Monday afternoon where we had a chance to meet the other bloggers/youtubers/instagrammers and the Tropicana team. We got a low-down on the juice, its benefits and what wed be seeing over the next day. Ive included some key facts about Tropicana and the list of other people on the trip below. From there we enjoyed a mimosa and afternoon at the spa (I felt way too spoiled!) and experienced my first Vitamin C facial. Vitamin C helps fight free-radicals and sun damage to your skin. My facialist did a vitamin C mask and honestly, my skin was glowing. I feel an orange juice face mask recipe coming After the spa we had a cocktail hour before sitting down for a citrus-themed dinner. I had two of the Sunshine Mules (made with Tropicana!) and seriously fell in love. Need to recreate it at home. For dinner I had the salad with orange segments and oregano vinaigrette and the pan seared grouper with citrus beurre blanc and enjoyed some chit chat over our beautifully set table. But we had to be up early so it was time to get to sleep before our 6:30 AM wakeup call. After a quick breakfast we boarded a bus to Bradenton to check out one of the citrus groves that Tropicana sources its oranges from. Tropicana doesnt own any of the groves themselves, but actually works with local producers to source oranges directly from them. They have over 400 growers in Florida! Every single Tropicana orange comes from Florida and only purchased from farms that pay their workers fair wages (always at or above minimum wage). We were given a tour of Hi Hat Ranch (one of Tropicanas growers) and were able to walk through the groves and see where the oranges are grown. I wish all of you could have experienced this, because Ive never SMELLED anything like this! It was the most delicious smell of orange blossoms that I wish I could have bottled up and taken home. We learned that each farm has its own peak season (usually around March) and then theres a 3 week window in which the oranges would need to be picked. From there, they are brought to the Tropicana plant and squeezed and bottled within 24 hours of being picked. It really doesnt get much fresher than that! Visiting the plant was a crazy experience. First of all, its literally bigger than a college campus. Its HUGE. They bottle 2.5 million bottles a day, so you can imagine how large it must be. But at the same time, everywhere we went people said hello and there were cute cards for peoples birthdays and milestones. For such an enormous place, it still had a family-feel. We watched as the oranges arrived, were sorted, squeezed and then bottled into the clear bottles you see in the grocery store. While most of the production is done by machines, there were plenty of people overseeing the process and making sure everything went according to plan. I also discovered that after the oranges have been juiced, the skins are composted or given for cattle feed. Absolutely nothing goes to waste. So what are the benefits of Orange Juice? Lets chat. One 8-ounce glass contains: A daily serving of vitamin C 2 of your daily servings of fruit As much potassium as a banana A great source of folate, vitamin D and zinc Helps with absorption of iron What I wish people knew about Tropicana Orange Juice: There is absolutely NO SUGAR ADDED any sugar is simply naturally-occurring sugars from the oranges. Their juice is NOT from concentrate certain brands remove the water from their juice and freeze it to prolong its shelf-life. Tropicana never removes the water or freezes its OJ. This means that juice wont last as long, but is truly fresh. I mean anything fresh shouldnt last months on end anyway! While it isnt meant to replace fruit, if you live in a place with limited access to fresh fruit, its a great alternative I just wanted to quickly share who else was on the trip! I have to give a huge thanks to Tropicana for facilitating this experience and allowing me to bring this story to you. I genuinely had a great time seeing where their product is made and once again getting an opportunity to wear a hairnetHonestly, guys, this is weirdly becoming a trend on the blog! See here and here! This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Blue Sky Studios will extend its stay in Greenwich until at least 2025, according to a Friday statement from Twentieth Century Fox Film, the animation studios parent company. The studio, based in the upper reaches of town at Greenwich American Center since 2009, has produced hit films including Dr. Seuss Horton Hears a Who, Ice Age and Rio. Following the companys decision to renew its lease with New York City-based commercial real estate company Tishman Speyer, state leaders announced their support. Blue Sky Studios is one of the worlds leading digital animation movie studios and we are proud of their commitment to stay and grow in Connecticut, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said in a statement. Blue Sky Studios has doubled its staff over the last eight years, recruiting top industry talent from around the world to live, work and create in Connecticut. Their announcement to stay reinforces Connecticuts position as a great location for cutting-edge digital media companies. In January, a group of state General Assembly members toured Blue Sky and repeated their support for Connecticuts Digital Animation Tax Credit program, from which Blue Sky has benefited over the years. Their leadership in digital animation is second to none and is of great benefit to our Connecticut workforce, said state Sen. L. Scott Frantz, R-Greenwich, in a statement Friday. Around 450 artists, engineers and scientists are employed through Blue Sky, according to Twentieth Century Fox Film. Blue Sky Studios is proud to be a part of the business community at the Greenwich American Center, and honored to make our home here in the state of Connecticut, said Blue Sky CEO Brian Keane in a statement. This state welcomed us in several years ago, and since then weve released a number of incredible films, and added over 200 quality jobs. We are thankful for the ongoing support from Governor Malloy, the state Legislature, Tishman-Speyer and the entire community here in Connecticut, and look forward to calling Connecticut home for many years to come. In December, Blue Sky plans to release its latest film, Ferdinand, which features a bull with a big heart. MBennett@greenwich time.com, 203-625-4411; Twitter @Macaela_ Conflicted over the U.S. bombing of Syria, members of Connecticuts Washington delegation say the use of force against the Assad regime was justified, but that Donald Trump should have gone to Congress first for authorization. Multiple lawmakers termed the first major military action of Trumps presidency as a proportionate response to Tuesdays poison gas attack by President Bashar al-Assad, which killed at least 72 civilians, including scores of children. The airstrike, launched from two Navy war ships in the Mediterranean Sea, targeted an airbase that was allegedly used to carry out the chemical attack with 59 Tomahawk missiles. Made up entirely of Democrats, the delegation leveled criticism that Trump overstepped his authority. Thats not a new grievance. During Barack Obamas presidency, his administration was faulted by members of his own party for bypassing Congress during the bombing of Islamic State, or ISIS camps. Despite classified briefings Friday by Trumps administration, Congress members said that hadnt allayed their concerns about the need for a comprehensive U.S. strategy in Syria and a material response to a worsening humanitarian crisis there. I understand the need to punish Assad for what he did, but you have to be able to play this out over the course of weeks and months to make sure that youre not doing more harm than good, U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., told Hearst Connecticut Media. A request for comment was left Friday with Trumps administration. Like his Connecticut colleagues, Murphy said he received no heads up about the airstrike, which was conducted at 8:45 p.m. EDT Thursday. The order came down after Trump reportedly viewed widely disseminated photos of young children killed in the attack. Its hard to understand how the president was moved by those images given that he is still intent on locking those children in Syria, Murphy said. The president continues to oppose resettling Syrian refugees. Some conservatives took Murphy to task over a 2013 Tweet he posted reacting to a deal struck by the Obama administration in Geneva with Russia over the dismantling of Syrias chemical weapons stockpile, however. Great news out of Geneva. Win-win: chemical weapons gone, no U.S. military intervention," Murphy Tweeted at the time. Victims and refugees Former U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons, R-Conn., a former CIA agent and Bronze star recipient for service in Vietnam, said Trump had the fortitude to do what Obama didnt do in Syria in 2013. Its a profoundly naive statement and history has proven it to be a profoundly naive statement, Simmons said of Murphys Tweet. (Trump) pulled out the old 2013 (Obama) plan and said, Theres a new sheriff in town and you dont do that anymore. Bang, bang. Its a wake-up call to the Middle East, the Russians, NATO and our so-called European partners that were not going to tolerate this anymore. Murphy stood by the 2013 accord, but said Russia reneged on the deal. They didnt live up to the agreement, but that doesnt mean it wasnt an important agreement, Murphy said. It also forestalled a military strike, which I thought at the time would have been disastrous for Syrians living inside the civil war. U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said the airstrike was not a game-changer and characterized the Trump administrations position on Syria as erratic. He pointed to recent comments by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that it was up to the Syrian people to decide whether Assad should be removed from power. The question is whether the Trump administration now pursues an aggressive course involving Russia and Iran, who are the aiders and abettors, Blumenthal said. Assad is there because of Russia. Hes Russias client. He would not be using chemical weapons but for the Russians. U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., a House Intelligence Committee member, had just wrapped up an appearance with Anderson Cooper on CNN and was eating dinner during the bombing. Maybe (Trump) can now link refugees with victims, which is what they are, Himes said. Remember there have been hundreds of thousands of people killed in the Syrian civil war and the president chose to act based on some particularly emotional photographs. I dont blame him for doing so. The use of chemical weapons should be out of bounds. (But) I worry that this president is impulsive and being impulsive in the Middle East is a way to get yourself into a lot of trouble. U.S. Rep. Elizabeth Esty, D-Conn., said Congress alone is empowered to declare war and must be consulted. Particularly for a president who did not even win a majority of the popular vote, its all that much more important in these divided times to reach a consensus, Esty said. U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., called on Trump to rescind his ban on accepting Syrian refugees. When a humanitarian crisis sends millions of people fleeing their homes, we must step up and respond with the American values that have guided our nation for generations, DeLauro said. nvigdor@hearstmediact.com; 203-625-4436; http://twitter.com/gettinviggy WILTON The Wilton Chamber of Commerce welcomed new business and chamber member, Sola Salon Studios, at 5 River Road on Wednesday, March 29. The Chamber celebrated with a ribbon cutting ceremony and enjoyed refreshments in the 18-studio salon with owners Rich and Holly Bobrow, who also own the Westport location. First Selectman Lynne Vanderslice, chamber president Tom Sato and chamber board members John DiCenzo and Pat Russo were present. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate WILTON After producing the 2011 critically acclaimed film, TRIAL BY FIRE: Lives Re-Forged, Megan Smith-Harris found that people struggled with the heavy subject of burn survivors. So she decided to follow her husbands advice for her next film. My husband came up to me and said, We have to have a little talk. I love your heart, I love that you want to make films that change the world but can you choose a subject thats a little accessible? Something with kids and puppies. The Buddy System, which explores the bond between children with autism and assistance dogs, will screen at the first annual AutFest International Film Festival on April 22-23 in Orange, Calif., presented by Autism Society of America. The Autism Society of America launched the festival in April in light of National Autism Awareness Month. Were really honored and proud to be a part of their first inaugural film festival, Smith-Harris said. Going into the project, Smith-Harris expected to see changes throughout the three-year period but didnt expect them to be as dramatic as they were. David Williams, 9, changed from the minute he met his dog, Buddy. He read him a book in a loud voice and no longer spoke in whispers. Jack DeSavino, 13, no longer needed to take medication. He started to make eye contact. His confidence soared. And the Janus girls 9, 11, 13 enjoyed having a loyal companion. So many children on the autism spectrum are ostracized or left out, Smith-Harris said. And this is a way of providing them with a buddy, a friend, someone they can talk to. Seeing the impact that the dog has on each childs life is quite remarkable. Smith-Harris connected to each family through Patty Dobbs Gross, founder and executive director of North Star Foundation, which places assistant dogs with children with autism. She met with Gross in the early months of 2014. Gross said shed been waiting years for someone to make a documentary on her nonprofits efforts. Gross started the foundation 20 years ago, around the time her son, who has autism, received one of the first autism assistant placements in the world. From that placement, she said she saw a need for a more focused approach on the quality of the bond shared between a child with autism and a dog. The North Star Foundation attempts to address this issue through specific breeding that focuses on temperamental fit and introducing the dog to a child when its a couple months old. I really think the method for placement needs to be different, and thats what were pioneering, Gross said. Every placement we make is unique one to the other, custom-designed. I think thats how you keep this field effective and safe. Since the nonprofits founding, more than 250 assistant dogs have been placed with children with autism around the world, mostly in the U.S. Smith-Harris and her production team hope the film will not only raise awareness about autism and assistant dogs but will also raise appreciation for people with autism and to celebrate them and their families, she said. One of the things that surprised me the most while making this and doing the research, and that concerned me the most, is that 85 percent of individuals on the autism spectrum are unemployed or underemployed, and thats just not good enough, she said. We as a society need to make room for people with differences and find ways that they can support themselves and live independently. The film is also being screened across the country at various film festivals and autism, canine and educational community events most recently at two screenings at the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival at the Palm Theatre, SLO on March 16 and 17. The next screening will be at Ridgefield Theatre at 11 a.m. Saturday, May 20. To purchase a ticket, visit hwww.riff.website/featured-events. Our goal is to get a national broadcast, Smith-Harris said. Smith-Harris owns the independent production company, Pyewackitt Productions, with her husband Bill, former television programming executive with 30 years of broadcast and cable experience. Smith-Harris is also the editor of the high-end lifestyle publication, Wilton Magazine, and programs and moderates the New Perspectives Documentary Series at Wilton Library. skim@hearstmediact.com; 203-354-1044; @stephaniehnkim Dear Annie: A few years ago, my son Bill and his family moved to a new state. They left me behind with no family or friends because they chose my ex over me (because Im disabled and they needed someone to help with the kids while they were at work). It broke my heart, to the point that I didnt care whether I lived or died. I prayed to God to help me, and thanks to Him, I ended up finding an apartment that I could afford in my sons new town. I was so excited that Id be close to my grandbabies and my son. I got a Realtor, a moving company and a plane ticket. Things started going badly as soon as I got there. My son and his wife didnt bring my grandbabies to the airport, and all we did was ride past their house. When I asked about going to see his new house, he told me that I was being overbearing and Id go to his house when he invited me. I started to question why Id even moved. I have a bunch of furniture I ordered online that is still sitting unassembled in boxes. Bill lives less than five minutes away but always has a reason for why he cant help me around the house e.g., his long hours at work, his three children and his housework. My ex-husband also lives with them, and my daughter-in-law has told me that he does the laundry. To me, that is the most time-consuming chore. I dont see how housework could fill all your days off if laundry is already done for you! I just want my apartment to look the way that I envisioned it. I live on disability and cant really afford to pay people to come help. My son and his wife have no problem coming over and borrowing money from me. (I took out a $5,000 loan for them in my name.) Im feeling alone and depressed. Should I give up on their helping me and including me in family events? Brokenhearted Mom Dear Brokenhearted: All the outside help in the world wont help you if you dont first learn to help yourself. Achieving more personal independence will allow you to have a healthier relationship with your family. It will also empower you to have a healthier relationship with yourself. Try getting involved with a local church or community activity to make some friends. Dont give your son any more loans. Instead, save that money for you. As soon as you can afford it, hire a handyman for one day (ask a neighbor for a recommendation) to come assemble the furniture thats still sitting in boxes. It will be well worth the money for you to have the peace and rest that come with a happy nest. Finally, you mentioned at one point not caring about whether you lived or died. Please, if youre ever in such a dark place again, reach out to a counselor, a religious adviser or the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (800-273-8255). Do not give up. There is a light at the end of the tunnel; in fact, theres light all around it. You just cant see it yet. Annie Lane, a graduate of New York Law School and New York University, writes this column for Creators Syndicate. Email questions to dearannie@creators.com. A man named Dwight Nelson originally told this humorous and true story about his pastors cat. The pastors kitten had climbed up a tree in his backyard and then was afraid to come down. The tree was not sturdy enough to climb, so the pastor decided that if he tied a rope to his car and drove away so that the tree bent down, he could then reach up and get the kitten. Thats what he did, all the while checking his progress in the car. He figured if he went just s little bit further, the tree would be bent sufficiently for him to reach the kitten. But as he moved the car a little farther forward, the rope broke. The tree went boing! and the kitten instantly sailed through the air out of sight. The pastor felt terrible. He walked all over the neighborhood asking people if they had seen a little kitten. No, nobody had seen a stray kitten. So he prayed, Lord, I just commit this kitten to your keeping, and went about his business. A few days later, he was in the grocery store, and met one of his church members. He happened to look into her shopping cart and was amazed to see cat food. This woman was a cat-hater and everyone knew it, so he asked her, Why are you buying cat food when you hate cats so much? She replied, You wont believe this, and then told him how her little girl had been begging her for a cat, but she kept refusing. Then a few days later, the child had begged again, so the mom finally told her little girl, Well, if God gives you a cat, Ill let you keep it. She told the pastor, I watched my child go out in the yard, get on her knees, and ask God for a cat, and really, pastor, you wont believe this, but I saw it with my own eyes. A kitten suddenly came flying out of the blue sky, with its paws outspread, and landed right in front of her! This story of the pastors flying cat reminds us that God has a powerful and unique sense of humor! Despite stories like that, some of us still wonder if God has a good laugh. After all, in the Bible the shortest verse is Jesus wept. But there arent any verses that say Jesus laughed. However, if we read further in the Bible, we find out why Jesus wept. Jesus endured the cross, the Bible says, for the joy set before him. (Hebrews 12:2). Also, we find the second shortest verse in the Bible is, Rejoice evermore (1 Thessalonians 5:16). What is the end result of our discipleship with Jesus? Its not a grim-faced follower but a wide-eyed entrance in the joy of the Lord (Nehemiah 8:10) and the exceeding joy we find in God. (Psalms 43:4) Lastly, theres great wisdom in joy, as we read in Proverbs 17:22, A cheerful heart is good medicine. Prayer: Our Lord, we get caught up too quickly in somber judgments about life, remind us to lighten the load by casting off the heavy negative burdens and walking with a cheerful heart. Amen. The Rev. Dan Safarik serves St. Luke United Methodist Church in Lincoln. Email him at dan@stlukelincoln.org For the 21st year, gift baskets in the Easter Basket Extravaganza will be auctioned off. The money will go to help feed Central Nebraska, according to Doug Winder, president of Project Hunger. Winder said proceeds from Saturdays Easter Basket Extravaganza at the Conestoga Mall will help stock the food pantry. The event begins with the opening of the Conestoga Mall in the morning and continues until 3 p.m. Saturday. Winder would like to have as many as 400 baskets to auction off, but as of Thursday evening donations of gift baskets were running a little below that total. If anybody wants to donate a basket, wants to put something together Friday afternoon and bring it out Saturday morning, well accept it. Project Hunger currently spends between $6,000 and $8,000 per month. He hopes the Easter Basket Extravaganza will bring in anywhere from $14,000 to $18,000, which will support the organizations programs for two to three months. Our need has increased again this year, Winder said. He said Project Hunger has entered into more collaborations with other organizations to make its money go further. One Project Hunger initiative is the Holiday Baskets program, when baskets are filled with all the ingredients needed for a holiday meal before being distributed to needy families. Project Hunger helps with bulk food and funds supplied to organizations such as the Salvation Army, Hope Harbor, Crossroads Rescue Mission, Health and Human Services and Orphan Grain Train. One of the many other programs involving Project Hunger is Third City Food Bucks, which allows people to purchase tax-deductible food bucks at the check-out stands in local grocery stores. Money from that program is then used to purchase grocery items from that store to be distributed by Project Hunger. Project Hunger also is involved with coupon food vouchers given to needy families. Families can redeem the vouchers for groceries. Project Hunger also is involved with Food for Thought, where backpacks are filled with food from the food pantry and sent home with selected schoolchildren on Friday afternoons to ensure they have enough to eat during the weekends when breakfasts and lunches are not provided through the school food program. The Easter Basket Extravaganza is one of three major annual fundraisers. During the Hall County Fair, people create Canned Food Sculptures for people to admire. After the fair concludes, Project Hunger takes the cans used for the sculptures and gives them to the local food pantry. The Harvest Festival for Hunger Awareness, held each fall, is the organizations biggest fundraiser monetarily. But Winder said the Easter Basket Extravaganza is probably one of Project Hungers highest-profile events. All the is bidding done in a store space at the Conestoga Mall. In addition to the gift basket auction, Project Hunger will be doing a lot of teaching on Saturday. Well have a lot of stuff set up, telling people, Here is what we do, here is how things work, this is what things cost. Winder said the three big annual fundraisers, because food never just shows up, always costs money. The 2017 Easter Basket Extravaganza is being held in the south square of the Conestoga Mall, with all of the gift baskets being sold via a silent auction. Most gift baskets will have sheets of paper filled halfway down with bids from various individuals, while the nicest gift baskets get enough bidders to fill up a full sheet of paper. He noted the heaviest bidding typically occurs between 2 and 3 p.m. Bidders do not have to be present to win. Gift baskets donated thus far include items that are used for outdoor grilling and baskets filled with items that kids would like. Winder complimented the students in the National Honor Society at Grand Island Senior High for picking the Easter Basket Extravaganza as one of its community service projects. He said the students have worked every evening starting on Monday, wrapping the gift baskets and setting them up. These kids are outstanding, he said. They have been here every night. They are wonderful, wonderful helpers. They are doing an awesome job. It sure makes the work easier when you have that many hands. EDITOR'S NOTE: This story is one of two covering the two-day Mission of Mercy dental clinic. A story will run in Sundays Independent on the numerous volunteers that make the event happen. Hundreds of people packed into the Pinnacle Bank Expo Center at Fonner Park on Friday morning to receive dental care at no cost. The Mission of Mercy dental clinic provides no-cost care on a first-come, first-served basis. Teresa Anderson, health director for the Central District Health Department and one of the organizers of the event, said they see every type of person coming through the door, but the majority of those being served are without dental insurance or access to a dentist. We see a lot of folks who have to let their teeth go for a number of years (without dental care), she said. In February, dentist Steve Anderson said nearly 50 percent of people have never seen a dentist and live day to day and month to month with dental problems that cause excruciating pain. When people dont have dental insurance or cant afford to go to a dentist, it becomes worse, he said. LaDonna Cool, one of the volunteers at the Mission of Mercy, said she had been there since the doors opened at 5:30 a.m. Friday. There was a line of people wrapped around the expo center when the doors opened. It was dark. I could barely see the building, Cool said. They had chairs, and blankets over their heads. It was like somebody wanted to get into a concert. Teressa Johnson of Grand Island said she lined up outside the doors at 11 p.m. Thursday to make sure she got in to receive dental care. She camped outside with a chair and a blanket to get a few teeth pulled and have a cavity filled. When asked if it was worth the wait, Johnson said it was well worth it to receive dental care at no cost. I knew I had two teeth that were broken and a cavity. I wanted to make sure I was able to get everything done, she said. With an attitude of gratitude, I was here to get it done. Johnson added that, while she was waiting in line to get into the expo center on Friday morning, she talked to people who had been there since 4 p.m. Thursday and one person who got there at noon Thursday. Johnson said she also spoke with a man who had come to Grand Island from Florida and wanted to receive dental care at the Mission of Mercy. There were people curled up in sleeping bags, snoring all night long before they opened the doors, she said. Johnson added she was just so blessed that the Mission of Mercy event was taking place. Shanda Hecox of Hastings said she woke up at 3 a.m. Friday to board a bus from Crossroads Center Rescue Mission to Grand Island. She got to the Mission of Mercy clinic at 4 and in the door at 6. The line was long, but it wasnt too long of a wait. It wasnt too cold, and the people were great all around me, Hecox said. She said she was there to get some teeth surgically removed. She said the dental work will make it easier for her to find a job, allow her to smile more and lead her to live a happier life. Dave Johnson of Bertrand said he arrived at the expo center at 4 a.m. Friday to get some teeth pulled due to having a lot of bad teeth over the years. He called the no-cost dental clinic awesome because he does not have dental insurance and a lot of dentists will not see patients unless they have dental insurance. Johnson said the line moved quickly and everything had gone smoothly. He was grateful for the Mission of Mercy providing no-cost dental care that will help him feel like a new man. The Mission of Mercy dental clinic will continue from 5:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday at the Pinnacle Bank Expo Center at Fonner Park. HASTINGS A cotton ball brushes red paint across the page, creating a light tint. Christopher Leet, a senior art student at Hastings College, sat in a quiet room in the Jackson Dinsdale Art Center with his painting classmates. The group of nearly 10 learned a new, to them, art form: painting over photographs. Visual artist Kate Breakey visited the class to teach the students the medium, which she does for a career. Everything I do is about the natural world, Breakey said. Her work depicts nature and the life and death in it. She grew up in rural Australia, developing a love for the topic. She said she likes to memorialize animals that have died. She paints photographs of flowers and nature settings and brings them back to life. Breakey demonstrated her techniques to students as she painted a black-and-white photo of a bowl of fruit. She used several layers of colors and shading to make the fruit seem to leap from the paper. The students then tried their hand at the techniques, making the fruit photo their own. Breakey and the students didnt use paintbrushes but instead used cotton balls and Q-tips to wisp the colors in the way they wanted. Waylon Remyngton, a sophomore studio art student, made his photo with vibrant colors. The color is what you can have fun with, Remyngton said. Remyngton said his favorite medium to work with is ceramics, and hed never painted over a photograph before. He liked learning from Breakey and learning how to do something new. Its really worth it, Remyngton said. Leet said after learning the new medium, he thought, I want to do more of these. He also had never done anything like this before. He said the challenge is to stay true to what the original artist, the photographer, might have intended. Leet said he sees the medium as a collaboration between two artists if someone else takes the photograph, but thats a beautiful thing. Leet said learning the technique opens more doors for him as an artist and broadens his palette. Another world-famous artist, photographer George Nobechi, also visited with students. Nobechi spoke at Hastings College on Wednesday night. Breakey gave her talk on Thursday night. Nobechi, who hails from Tokyo, presented to a handful of people in the Gray Center at Hastings College. He spoke about a photo project he worked on in Tokyo about people working in finance. His project depicted the loneliness of those working in the citys industry, which he also used to work in. As a whole, Nobechi said his work is about life, being and the beautiful world we live in. He often photographs settings, and a recent gallery he worked on depicts scenes of looking out a window. Nobechi said the biggest thing that makes photos memorable and successful is mystery. He went through his process of the layers that create his mysterious photos. He said a photo should keep the viewer wanting to know more of the story behind it. He said he tries to put as much time into an assignment as possible. That may mean talking with someone for two hours before he picks up the camera for a photograph. Its good to just sit down and talk and hear peoples stories, Nobechi said. This was Nobechis second time at Hastings College but the first time working with students. This was Breakeys first time at Hastings College. Both came because of their connection to Brett Erickson, an associate professor of visual arts at Hastings College. About being at the college and working with students, Breakey and Nobechi said they hope they inspire people to do and continue their own art. Breakey said her medium of painting photographs is another way of using photography and another expression. Nobechi said its great to learn from students and others, too, because everyone brings something different to the table. He said he likes teaching people, especially high schoolers, and hopes to inspire. Its all about inspiration, Nobechi said. He said with him, and especially Breakey, at the college, people can see different art forms and can see what is possible. Images of the human horror in Syria filled the worlds news screens this week: Infants, children, teens, adults, some strong, some weak, all helpless and hopeless. Mouths gasping for air and oozing foam, eyes staring but not seeing. The dying lay alongside the already dead. All were innocent victims of deadly chemical weapons that Russias Vladimir Putin and his despotic client, Syrian President Bashar Assad, had assured the world no longer existed. Now the world has seen with its own eyes why, even though Assad may have ordered the crime, Putin must bear the ultimate blame. And maybe the most conscientious world leaders, who once again found it inconvenient to intervene and easy to just accept the assurances of the untrustworthy, will know that they too must share the ultimate shame. Once again, the world watched but did not act. Perhaps now the Russian people will finally see why the world blames Russia for enabling the horror in Syria and elsewhere. And perhaps Russians will finally figure out that although Putins militarism and swagger makes them feel strong and makes others fearful, fear is a weak substitute for the real strength that comes from genuine prosperity, which they not long ago came close to achieving. But maybe not. Perhaps Russias citizens have forgotten or never even knew! that just three years ago, Putin came close to convincing world leaders Russia could be a trusted partner in the global economy. But Putins chance to bring prosperity to his people was shattered when his inner KGB nerve-stem erupted in rage. The re-emergence of Putins inner KGB was masterfully explained last month by respected CNN international affairs analyst Fareed Zakaria in his documentary, The Most Powerful Man in the World. It began by reporting on the trauma and shame Putin felt in 1989 as a 37-year-old KGB agent in East Germany when the Berlin Wall fell. And how Putin has relied on military power to make sure Russia never suffered that sort of embarrassment again. But I believe there was a crucial gap in CNNs otherwise comprehensive documentary. It overlooked the almost-success of a non-military plan Putin never announced but definitely implemented. Ive previously called it the Sochi Two-Step. One: Putin would convince the world to hold its 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Two: Putin would then convince the G8 world economic leaders to hold their June 2014 summit in Sochi, where he would deploy round two of his charm offensive. It was way back in 2010 that Putin set out to make it happen. Thats when he went to the Olympic Committees meeting in Guatemala City and launched a charm offensive. He brazenly built an ice rink in that tropical locale and worked with the skill of a Chicago alderman to impress each committee member. Sochi won in a close vote. A Russian official called it one of the most important days in Russian history. The 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi was a huge success for Russia and Putins grand plan seemed on the verge of delivering for the Russian people. But when Putin saw Ukraine, once a Soviet family jewel, seeking closer ties with NATO and Europe, his inner KGB resurfaced. Putin snatched Crimea from Ukraine in March and boosted his military backing of Ukraine rebels. A stunned G8 retaliated by canceling its June summit in Sochi and held a G7 (minus Russia) in Germany instead. The West slapped Russia with new sanctions. Putin abandoned all pretense of being a global good neighbor and aligned himself with the worlds worst. He militarily propped up Syrias mass murdering Assad; Syrian or Russian jets repeatedly bombed hospitals. And across the pond, Putin ordered a neo-Watergate cyber-stealing and leaking of Democratic Party emails to help Donald Trump get elected. Russians seemed charmed by Putins strongman ways. His polls percentages soared into the 80s. And the Moscow Times reported a 2014 poll showing an astounding 45 percent of Russians felt the sacrifices of the Stalin era were justified (up from only 25 percent two years earlier). And 39 percent actually expressed admiration, kind regards, or sympathy for Stalin. But Russians may soon wise up and realize they cant deposit Putins swagger in their bank accounts. Once again, Putin is seeing antigovernment protests in the streets. And a terrorists subway bomb in St. Petersburg just killed 11. Any day now, Russians may figure out their tough-guy president has failed to deliver the prosperity that, back in the days of Putins kinder, gentler Sochi Two-Step, seemed to be just a step away. New Delhi, Apr 7 (IBNS): The Union Ministry of Finance said on Friday that coordinated actions by the Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) under the Department of Revenue has been instrumental in fighting the menace of black money during the past three years. A release from the Ministry said through 23,064 searches and surveys conducted (Income Tax 17,525; Customs 2,509; Central Excise 1,913; Service Tax 1,120), more than Rs. 1.37 lakh crore of tax evasion has been detected (Income Tax 6,9434; Customs 11,405; Central Excise 13,952; Service Tax 42,727). Simultaneously, criminal prosecutions were launched in 2,814 cases (Income Tax 1,966; Customs 526; Central Excise 293; Service Tax 29) and 3,893 persons were placed under arrest (Customs 3,782; Central Excise 47 and Service Tax 64) The release mentioned that the Enforcement Directorate registered 519 cases and conducted 396 searches. Arrests were made in 79 cases and properties worth Rs.14,933 crore were attached. The Ministry said that Benami prohibition law, which remained in-operative for the past 28 years, was made operational through a comprehensive amendment with effect from November, 2016. More than 245 benami transactions have already been identified by the department. Provisional attachments of properties worth Rs.55 crore have already been made in 124 cases. Other steps taken by the department include penalising cash transaction of more than Rs. 2 lakh; limiting allowable cash expense up-to Rs.10000 only; making Aadhaar mandatory for obtaining PAN and filing of income tax returns; making PAN mandatory for cash deposits above Rs.50,000; compulsory linking of PAN with bank accounts; prohibiting cash of Rs. 20,000 or more in transfer of immovable property by imposition of a penalty of an equal amount and mandatory reporting of cash deposits above Rs.2.5 lakh in savings accounts and Rs.12.5 lakh in current account between November 9 and December 30, 2016. The release also highlighted that crackdown against thousands of shell companies engaged in nefarious activities was effected through enforcement actions (searches, surveys, arrests, prosecutions) by the LEAs (IT/ED/MCA/SFIO/CBI). During the last three financial years (2013-14 to 2015-16), Income Tax investigations led to detection of more than 1155 shell companies / entities used as conduits by over 22,000 beneficiaries, the release said. The amount involved in non-genuine transactions of such beneficiaries was more than Rs. 13,300 crore. The Ministry of Corporate Affairs has issued more than a lakh notices for striking off names of defunct / non-compliant companies. A high powered group has been set-up for coordinating and monitoring the actions taken by departments concerned with the objective of eliminating the conduits of black money generation and application. 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. Srinagar, Apr 7 (IBNS) : After rainfall stopped on Thursday night water level in the Jhelum and it's tributaries started receding on Friday allaying the fears of floods across the valley. According to officials, the water level in Jhelum started receding at around 3 am at Sangam in South Kashmir, though the flood like situation in Srinagar hasn't improved much. The water level at Ram Munshi Bagh in Srinagar is still increasing and we hope it will decrease slowly, Chief Engineer Irrigation and Flood Control Division Mohammad Hanief Lone told India Blooms in Srinagar. The water level at Sangam was recorded at 22.10 feet at around 2:00 am while it was 21.70 feet at 7:00 am on Friday morning. The water level of the tributaries like Rambiara and Lidder streams has receded substantially. Altogether four persons have been killed and five others have gone missing following incessant rains in Jammu and Kashmir as authorities declared flood in the valley. An avalanche hit an Indian army post in the Batalik sector of Ladakh region on Thursday burying five soldiers. . Two soldiers have been rescued so far while the operation to locate the other three is still on. (Reporting by Saleem Iqbal Qadri)Kashmir,RainfallStopped,JhelumReceding,Sangam Kites will be flying high over Joe Glik Park on Saturday, April 29 for the citys annual Flying 4 Kids event. The Edwardsville Parks and Recreation Department will be hosting the event from 9 a.m. to noon, partnering with the Illinois Association of Park Districts (IAPD) for the state-wide program. Recreational Activities Supervisor Hayley Verheyen said although the event will be dependent on the weather, the department is expecting a good turnout. Were definitely expecting a good turnout, but this event is very dependent on weather. So, were hoping for 75, sunny and a little bit of wind, Verheyen said. Last year it did get rained out and we had to move it to the following weekend and the weather ended up being pretty nice. We had around 50 people and were hoping this year well have good weather and 70 to 80 people would be our goal, she added. The kite fly will be the same as last years, as the first 50 participants will receive goody bags, and kites will be provided for all, courtesy of Cassens Transport. Kids are also able to decorate their kites prior to flying them. The Gateway Kite Club will be on site as well, performing with stunt kites and demonstrating kite demos. Verheyen said overall, this event is enjoyable for both the parks department and participating families. I think the most enjoyable thing is the kites we provide people are very easy to fly. So a two or three-year-old can fly a kite without any assistance from any of their parents. Just the look on their faces when their kite goes up in the air the first time. Its definitely a really cool experience, both for us as a parks department as well as the parents and the child, she said. The Flying 4 Kids event aims to raise awareness of the park district youth license plates, and each sale and renewal contributes to a special grant fund for youth beyond-school programs at Illinois parks and recreation departments. The state-wide kite flies are held in April and May each year. For more information about the Flying 4 Kids event, visit the IAPDs website at www.ilparks.org or contact the Edwardsville Parks Department at 618-692-7538. In the case of severe weather, check the city's website at www.cityofedwardsville.com for cancellation information. After recently receiving a donation from the Allison Cassens Foundation in honor and in memory of the late Allison Cassens for the establishment and implementation of a Competitive Swimming Scholarship Fund, the Edwardsville YMCA has recently announced the establishment of the Allison Cassens Competitive Swimming Scholarship and its first scholarship recipients EHS seniors Brian Baggette, Victoria Brady, Callista Poiter and Tyler Morris. This scholarship fund, which will be administered by the YMCA, is in honor of the late Allison Cassens who was active in the YMCA as a child. At a very young age Cassens learned to swim at the Edwardsville YMCA and participated in numerous YMCA programs. Years later Cassens participated in competitive swimming at a very high level and trained and competed throughout the country in national and international competitions. At the young age of 33, Cassens passed away after a long and courageous battle with cancer, but prior to her passing, she established a trust fund that could be used to support her passions. The Trustees are honored to fulfill Allisons dream and provide support to the YMCA for the implementation of this scholarship program, Larry Wehmeyer, a Trustee and representative of the Allison Cassens Foundation said in a YMCA news release. Brian Baggette, Victoria Brady, Callista Poiter and Tyler Morris have been named as the first recipients of the Allison Cassens Competitive Swimming Scholarship. The scholarships recognize individuals for their commitment to the YMCA and their pursuit of competitive swimming at the collegiate level. The four recipients met the criteria established for eligibility which included being a 2017 graduating senior at Edwardsville High School, a member of the Edwardsville YMCA Breakers Swim Team for a minimum of four years, and a member of the Edwardsville High School swim team for a minimum of two years with plans to continue their education at an accredited university or college and continue to pursue competitive swimming. In addition, each recipient also presented a reflection essay on how YMCA competitive swimming or other YMCA programming impacted their life in the areas of youth development, healthy living and social responsibility. Baggette has been a member of the Edwardsville YMCA Breakers Swim Team for 13 years and a member of the Edwardsville High School Swim Team for the past four years. Baggette will attend McKendree University in Lebanon in the fall and be a member of McKendrees Swimming and Diving Team. Brady has been a member of the Edwardsville YMCA Breakers Swim Team for 13 years and a member of the Edwardsville High School Swim Team for the past four years. Brady will attend Delta State University in Cleveland, Miss., in the fall and be a member of Delta States Swimming and Diving Team. Poiter has been a member of the Edwardsville YMCA Breakers Swim Team for nine years and a member of the Edwardsville High School Swim Team for the past three years. Poiter will attend Hendrix College in Conway, Ark., in the fall and will be a member of the Hendrix College Swimming and Diving Team. Morris has been a member of the Edwardsville YMCA Breakers Swim Team for 10 years and a member of the Edwardsville High School Swim Team for the past four years. Morris will attend McKendree University in Lebanon, in the fall and will be a member of McKendrees Swimming and Diving Team. In addition to being student athletes, all four recipients have volunteered in several capacities in the community. The Madison County Youth Board has developed a youth-led tobacco prevention campaign targeting middle school, high school and college students with tobacco prevention videos to help prevent lung cancer and other tobacco-related diseases. The videos were funded in part by the Illinois Department of Public Healths Illinois Tobacco Free Communities Initiative and the Madison County Health Department. Madison County Youth Board gives the youth in our county a voice and a chance to make a real change regarding the issues that impact them, Amy J. Yeager, Health Promotion Manager at MCHD and Co-Sponsor of the Madison County Youth Board, said. Yeager said tobacco use continues to be a major concern for our local community, especially among youth. She said during the past three school years, the Youth Board began the process of identifying tobacco issues among their peers and developing a strategy to help address them. The 2016 Illinois Youth Survey (IYS) results for Madison County revealed: 4 percent of 8th graders, 10 percent of 10th graders, and 14 percent of 12th graders reported using cigarettes in the past year; 5 percent of 8th graders, 13 percent of 10th graders, and 22 percent of 12th graders reported using any tobacco product (excluding e-cigarettes) in the past year. The Youth Board indicated that cigarettes were not the primary tobacco product of choice or concern and wanted to focus on other products. We hear about the dangers of cigarettes all the time, but no one is really talking about the other forms of tobacco, Jessi Krebs, President of the Youth Board, said. We see more of our peers with e-cigs, chew, and hookahs than we do with cigarettes. This is why we think our videos are so important because they are taking a different angle on tobacco prevention. During the process, Youth Board members learned facts about each of these tobacco products, created characters and story concepts, wrote scripts for four animated videos, gave creative input on the video style and creation, voiced the scripts during production, developed a dissemination plan, and released the videos to peers via social media as Phase One of that plan. Phase Two of the dissemination plan is to release the videos to the community and invite school districts and community organizations to help spread the word about tobacco prevention by posting the video links to their websites, social media sites and distributing them throughout their contacts. WSIE Radio at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville provided in-kind contributions by allowing the Youth Board to use their sound booth to record the voices for the videos, a staff member to conduct and format the recordings, and a staff member to provide one of the adult voices. Pickett Productions in St. Louis, MO provided a significant amount of in-kind contributions by donating the time and cost of a major portion of the creative and production talent for the videos. The tobacco prevention videos will be released on Wednesday on the Health Departments YouTube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLwSMinpj4h50mpFvL89QHFiQnw3rjsmf. The Illinois Department of Public Health will also be releasing the videos statewide through social media as part of National Public Health Week (April 3 to 9.) For more information about the Madison County Youth Board, visit www.co.madison.il.us/departments/health/madison_county_youth_board_(mcyb).php and click on the Member Invitation Letter tab. Governor Bruce Rauner visited Cope Plastics Inc. recently and discussed the need to make changes in Springfield in order to spur economic growth in Illinois. Rauner toured the long-time Alton business, which employs 200 people, before holding a town hall discussion with workers. He said Cope Plastics was a model business as it has re-evaluated trends and continues to grow. In order to ensure that businesses like Cope Plastics continue to thrive, we have to make structural changes to put Illinois back on track for success. Speaking to employees on Wednesday, Rauner highlighted education funding, term limits, eliminating workmans compensation fraud and putting technical and vocational training back in public schools as keys to making Illinois competitive. We have a broken system in Illinois, he said. We can do a lot better we just have to get government working for the people and not working for career politicians in Chicago. Rauner said in the last 17 years, Illinois has lost 300,000 manufacturing jobs while neighboring states have gained 100,000 manufacturing jobs over the same period. Our neighbors are winning and we are losing. Our regulations and taxes are so brutal that companies dont want to come here or stay here, he said. Rauner said changes have to be made in the way Illinois does business and the first step is to change the entire political system. We have to get rid of the Chicago machine and term limits and redistricting reforms are the first place to start, he said. He explained that the political system is rigged. There is not democracy, this is a rigged system, he said. Through gerrymandering there is not competition in elections. In the last election two-thirds of the races for the general assembly had no opponents because the districts are rigged to protect the person in office. The governor also listed workmans compensation reform as a move that would generate job growth. He said Illinois has the highest workmans comp rates in the country. He said the reason is that the system is abused. Everyone who is hurt on the job should be treated fairly and compensated, he said. But injuries that have nothing to do with a job are becoming a burden of an employer. There is too much abuse and too much fraud. Lastly, Rauner said education funding should be the top priority of the government. He said in the 10 years before he was elected education funding was cut four times. You cant balance the budget by cutting funding to schools, he said. We are dead last in state supported schools and because of this districts over rely on property taxes to support public education. Rauner added that he would like to see technical and vocation training brought back to public high schools. We should have technical training in high school so young people can come out of high school and have the skills to get good paying jobs, he said. Rauner was invited to tour Cope Plastics by Madison County Board Member Michael Walters, R-Godfrey. Walters said the Chicago democrats, particularly Rep. Mike Madigan, must start compromising to get Illinois competitive again. Governor Rauner ran on a platform to create jobs and bring jobs back to Illinois, he said. He started with a 48-point plan but met resistance from the speaker (Madigan) and has gotten nowhere. Now he has a four- or five- point plan but Madigan is still not budging. If we could ever get a budget passed we would see a lot of job growth in Illinois. At Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, students studying within the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) have numerous opportunities for experiential learning within and outside the classroom environment. Randall Pearson, PhD, professor and chair of the Department of Geography, has been a key player in providing opportunities for students to expand their knowledge of spatial analysis through hands-on projects with the departments Laboratory of Spatial Analysis (LASA). During this weeks episode of Segue, SIUEs premier radio show on WSIE 88.7 FM The Sound, Greg Budzban, PhD, CAS dean, discusses Pearsons LASA work and the impact his discipline has on the southern Illinois region and beyond. Prior to joining the department and forming LASA, Pearson worked at NASAs Space Remote Sensing Center in Mississippi. He also served as the director of CSIs Center for Spatial Analysis in Tacoma, Wash. Ultimately, I always wanted to teach, but I didnt want to teach what I was taught, he says. I spent eight years working for the government and industry. I brought that skillset back to the university setting, and I have been doing that for 22 years. When he arrived at SIUE, Pearson formed LASA as a means of addressing the geographic information system and remote sensing needs throughout the St. Louis area. The famous film quote, if you build it, they will come, is quite fitting for this laboratory as the fixture has grown into a self-sustaining innovator for geospatial information technology. It serves as both a laboratory of ideas and of people, he says. I look at our group as a teaching hospital. Our students come in and gain valuable experience working on projects that have real purpose. For example, LASA has worked to study the coal mining systems across southern Illinois. By analyzing maps created when the systems were initially being cultivated, and overlaying new roads and land-use cover maps, the researchers can view and assess potential risk both on and below the surface. When you are working on projects to that magnitude, there is a large public service aspect to that, Budzban says. There certainly is, Pearson replies, Were 18 years into that particular project, and through the Illinois Geological Survey data, we are working to find ways to integrate this data and allow it to serve the public. LASA also has worked with agricultural corporation Monsanto on several different projects using aerial imagery. Before, it was standard for photographers to head up to the sky in airplanes and helicopters to capture the landscape. Now, the popularity and use of unmanned aircraft and drones have bombarded the market. Although it may seem quite simple to simply record digital images of several hundred acres of fields, what some fail to realize is that these systems to be the most useful, they must be calibrated correctly and the data translated into percent reflectance. Companies are flying these drones without properly calibrating their equipment, Pearson says. They will go on to provide data (vegetation quality maps) that may be misleading. We are trying to bring this reality into the picture and hold industrys feet to the fire. Technology will eventually catch up with the needs of industry, but right now, were not quite there. Though plenty of LASAs work has involved the corporate sector, local communities are also looking toward the laboratory for its expertise and to educate the next generation. LASA has worked directly with the East St. Louis community to seek out potential at-risk kindergartners. By surveying students and parents, creating concepts of mapping neighborhoods within this community, researchers hope to understand and work to solve potential problems. Not only have SIUEs students been able to take a hands-on approach to projects at LASA, but also students within the Edwardsville School District have been able to participate, as well. We are teaching this technology to approximately 50 high school students, Pearson says. As EHS high school seniors present their final projects to SIUE faculty, they will also be showcasing their research to the user community (similar to SIUE senior assignment) on April 28. By capturing and analyzing aerial photography, viewing census information and other homogenous grouping data, LASA continues to work on identifying hot spots or problem areas from a number of different perspectives to solve issues that exist within the region. Demographics mean everything, Pearson says. There is an immense value to working with and within communities to solve problems, and technology can certainly help us in that cause, so we can ask and answer questions that can affect so many people. Catch the rest of this conversation at 9 a.m. on Sunday by tuning in to WSIE 88.7 FM The Sound. SIUE Marketing & Communications Kolkata, Apr 7 (IBNS): The uprising of self publishing in India has made it possible for new, talented writers to start a career in writing. This fast, convenient and modern mode of publishing allows new writers to choose from publishing packages or publishing services like editing, cover design, video book trailer, etc. ala carte, and pay the package or service fee. According to Pinaki Ghosh, founder of Power Publishers, the first self publishing company of India, "Parents are being more open minded about the career their sons and daughters are opting for. Uncommon and once perceived as 'uncertain' careers like a career as an author are being taken seriously today. Just fifteen years ago, a new writer with the aspiration to become an author, or start a career in writing would have found a solid wall before her. It was practically impossible for a new author to publish a book in India." Traditional publishers back in 1990s and early 2000s would invest in established authors whose books they could sell in excess of 5,000 copies. New and talented writers and poets faced refusal to get published. Post 2010, due to the popularity of digital printing, short print runs of 50 copies or less became possible, making it possible for first time authors to get their books published, he added. Digital printing, as opposed to offset printing made self publishing in India possible, opening new doors for first time authors. Ghosh, of Power Publishers, said, they offer self publishing packages ranging from Rs 14,990 to Rs 49,990, the higher packager having better national and international distribution and promotion included. Use of technology like live sales record checking mechanism and modern promotion methods like video book trailer to promote books, availability in Flipkart, Amazon, etc have made a first time author's book visible to potential readers. First time authors like Madhura Banerjee, author of 'A Tenant of the World' released her first book in March 2017 and sold over 100 copies in the first week, opting for self publishing. Madhura, a student of St. Xaviers College plans to publish a new book every year, making it a fool proof plan to establish her career as an author. Being active on social media platforms helps first time authors to generate the necessary initial buzz, after which the quality of content and word of mouth takes the book and the writer's career ahead. Indranil Majumder, another self published author, who had chosen Power Publishers to publish his book Life of a Rascal, supports opting for self publishing to publish a book in India. Many such authors have got offers from traditional publishers to publish their subsequent books, after their first self published books became a success. Some of these traditional publishers had turned the first time authors down when they had approached them earlier with their first book. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Andreas Kurniawan (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, April 7, 2017 Recently netizens were shocked by the suicide of a young man, broadcast live on Facebook. Some condemned him, while others expressed pity and regret. Some commentators reportedly urged the victim to take the rope when he posted his suicide note. While the victim clearly stated in his suicide note that his action was related to family matters, it still remains a mystery. Some said he had been depressed, while others brushed him off as an attention seeker who had gone too far. Some blamed him for lacking faith, while others blamed his wife. Unfortunately, we cant make a psychiatric diagnosis on a dead person, and such a conclusion can only be drawn through professional observation. Isnt depression just sadness? Depression is a common mental disorder that affects people of all ages and backgrounds. While there are several contributing factors, such as economic, work or relationship problems, researchers have found that genetics and biological causes may play a dominant role in depression. Some people may be more prone to depression than others. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Zamzami Zainuddin (The Jakarta Post) Hong Kong Fri, April 7, 2017 Irwandi Yusuf won Acehs 2017 gubernatorial election after leading in the polls of the 2017 regional election. He was formally declared as the winner by the provinces election commission with 48 percent more votes over his opponent, Muzakkir Manaf. The Constitutional Court on Tuesday also rejected a challenge brought by his rival. Irwandi is not a new figure for Acehnese or the central government. He is the first governor-elect after the 2005 peace agreement between the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) and the Indonesian government, serving from 2007-2012. Most of his supporters argued that Irwandi had demonstrated his credibility when he served as a governor by launching a series of programs. Two most notable initiatives are the Aceh Health Insurance (Jaminan Kesehatan Aceh) and the Aceh scholarship. Due to these endeavors, Aceh people now yearn for a progressive leader and pin their hopes on effective programs, particularly for human resources development and social welfare. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Eesha Muneeb (The Jakarta Post) Singapore Fri, April 7, 2017 With the first quarter of 2017 under our belt, the oil markets are ruminating over several shifts in the underlying strata of the industrys modus operandi. For most of January and February, crude benchmarks traded in a tight range, with ICE Brent fluctuating between approximately US$53-$57/b up until March, while NYMEX light sweet crude maintained a close correlation in a $50-$54/b range over the same period. Prices tumbled in March after the euphoria from OPECs unexpectedly high compliance to its cuts turned into willful acceptance as such things are bound to, and a bigger, more resilient issue came into the limelight that of the almost juggernaut revival of US shale production. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Klaus Heinrich Raditio (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, April 7, 2017 That the extensive claim over the body of water within Chinas nine-dash line in the South China Sea does not correspond to international law should not be overlooked. Furthermore, Chinas behavior in the South China Sea, namely the massive construction of artificial islands, is undeniably worrying. However, there are some disagreements regarding the strategy of maintaining peace and stability in the region. Which is why this piece attempts to complement the arguments of Aaron Connelly, which appeared in The Jakarta Post on April 5, to provide readers with a better idea of the issue. (Read also: Indonesia must lead for sake of its interests in South China Sea) to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Vyara Wurjanta (The Jakarta Post) Paris Fri, April 7, 2017 13:13 2041 a291276806121264c0bd211cde820f68 4 Lifestyle Paris,seine-river,Chinese-descents,Chinese-Indonesian-residents,marriage,wedding Free It was around 7 p.m. in Paris, France. The sky was partly cloudy, but the sun still shone brightly in the west sky. A group of nicely dressed people gathered on the deck of a luxury cruise boat named the River Palace, anchored in the Port of Javel Haut in the Seine riverbank. It was a wedding celebration of Siska an Indonesian originally from Magelang, Central Java, who was living and working in Shanghai, China. She met Remi, her Chinese-Parisian husband, while studying in China eight years ago. The couple got married at the Hotel de Ville in Paris before taking off in an antique white limousine around the city to the cheers of children running alongside the car. Its not an everyday scene to see a long and shiny antique limo driving around the streets of Paris. On the River Palace, an exciting Barongsai dragon show on the upper deck marked the start of the wedding party. The performers danced and tossed oranges out for the guests. Dragon dancers: The newlyweds pose with the Barongsai dance crew.(Smath Linh/File) As the sun set, the yachts engine hummed and it started to sail smoothly along the Seine River. A statue of Lady Liberty standing on Ile aux Cygnes near the Grenelle Bridge towered over the departing boat. The cloudy sky slowly dimmed, and the city night lights of Paris started to show off. The Eiffel Tower came magnificently into view with its stunning lights. Everybody excitedly took selfies with the famous tower that stood in the distance. Despite shivering chills brought by the breeze, the air was warm as people chatted and laughed. Siska, the bride, and Remi, the groom, lingered and chatted leisurely with the guests. The atmosphere was different compared to most formal Indonesian weddings back home, where the bride and groom stay locked on a stage standing, receiving congratulations from guests filed in a line. Here, the newlyweds, as well as the guests, mingled freely while cruising along the Seine River. Ready to go: The River Palace is seen docked on the Seine River in Paris.(Smath Linh/File) I feel so blessed to be here right now. This is so great. A great night to remember. You meet old friends and get to know new ones, said Nini Wang of Germany, who first met the couple in Shanghai a couple of years ago. The boat kept sailing along the river. At every bridge they passed under, while beaming excitedly like children, they shouted nimporte quoi (anything, whatever) to hear their echoes. And now, ladies and gentlemen, were passing Le Musee du Louvre on the left side, announced Siska, who had already changed into an elegant gold kebaya and batik skirt. All guests immediately took pictures, even though there was only a small portion of the roof of the famous museum that was visible. In the ballroom downstairs, two Indonesian dancers performed Golek Tirto Kencono, a classical Javanese dance, as guests gathered to watch and take pictures. Indonesian touch: Dancers perform the Cendrawasih dance.(Smath Linh/File) Now I get what Siska meant when she said she wanted to have an international Chinese-Indonesian-themed wedding, a guest said. Appetizers were served in beautifully arranged plates and waiters and waitresses moved around, making sure every guest was served. An hour later Siska and Remi showed up in the ballroom for their first dance to the song of Christina Perris A Thousand Years. All smiled. This night of celebration would certainly be remembered not just by the happy couple but also the guests, even long after the cruise reached the final destination at the Seine River. City of light: From the cruise boat, tourists are seen relaxing on the Seine riverbank in Paris.(Smath Linh/File) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, April 7, 2017 09:50 2041 a291276806121264c0bd211cde819633 1 Lifestyle Payless,Payless-ShoeSource,company,fashion,#fashion,shoes,#shoes,bankruptcy Free International footwear retailer Payless ShoeSource has announced that it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and will close 400 stores. The news, which comes hot on the heels of news of other bankruptcies from retailers such as Nasty Gal and Wet Seal Inc, was not unexpected. Similar stores, such as Macys Inc. and Sears Holdings Corp., have also expressed plans to close more than 1000 stores. The 60-year-old retailer said it had filed to facilitate the financial and operational restructuring necessary to strengthen its balance sheet and position the company for long-term success. Read also: 5 local shoe brands you can brag about The company also aims to optimize its store footprint with the immediate closure of nearly 400 underperforming locations in the United States and Puerto Rico and work to aggressively manage the remaining real estate lease portfolio either by modifying terms or evaluating closures of additional locations, according to Women's Wear Daily. This is a difficult, but necessary decision driven by the continued challenges of the retail environment, which will only intensify, said the company's CEO W. Paul Jones in a statement. We will build a stronger Payless for our customers, vendors and suppliers, associates, business partners and other stakeholders through this process." (sul/kes) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Malcolm Ritter (Associated Press) New York, United States Fri, April 7, 2017 You know those snacks that are OK if they're handy, but not worth the bother if you have to go track them down? Our Stone Age forerunners may have felt the same way about eating each other. Neanderthals and prehistoric members of our own species occasionally practiced cannibalism and explaining that is a scientific challenge. Generally, it has been attributed to factors like starvation, violence between groups or ceremonial practices following a death. Now a new study suggests they were probably not hunting each other just for food. That's because "we are not very nutritious, on a calorie level," compared to large game animals, says James Cole of the University of Brighton in England. Next to a mammoth, even a dozen burly Neanderthals would be slim pickings. Cole presented his argument Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports . He focused on nine previously reported fossil sites where researchers have found evidence of cannibalism, like marks on the bones that indicated butchery. The sites were dated to between roughly 14,000 years ago to more than 900,000 years ago, which falls within the Paleolithic period the study focused on. Five involved our evolutionary cousins the Neanderthals, two involved our own species, and the rest were other extinct members of the human evolutionary branch. His question: How many calories would the bodies at each site provide? To estimate that, he first used previously published data to conclude that eating an average-sized modern-day man could yield up to about 144,000 calories. He then adapted that to the age ranges of the bodies. Read also: Norway to build world's first ship tunnel through coast Even if all the bodies at a site were consumed in a single episode, he concluded, the energy payoff would be no more than what a hunter could get from a single large animal like a mammoth, a woolly rhino or a bear. So why bother with the hassle of hunting your own kind? "You're dealing with an animal that is as smart as you are, as resourceful as you are, and can fight back in the way you fight them," Cole said. Maybe in some cases, our ancestors ate companions who had died for an easy meal, Cole said. But his main point is that usually, the cannibalism was probably driven by some social or cultural factors rather than just nutrition. For example, it may have followed episodes of violence, as in defending territory, he said. Cole's paper seems unlikely to revolutionize the field. Two experts, Tim White of the University of California, Berkeley, and Paola Villa of the University of Colorado Museum in Boulder, said they don't know of anybody who has credibly proposed the idea that Cole takes aim at, that our ancestors hunted each other simply as food. The new work "does not change our general understanding of human cannibalism," Villa said in an email. But Palmira Saladie, of the Catalan Institute for Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution near Barcelona, Spain, said Cole's study "will undoubtedly be key in the interpretation of new sites (and) the re-evaluation of old interpretations." To understand why our forerunners sometimes ate each other, she wrote in an email, "We still have a long way to go." Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Clara Anastasia (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, April 7, 2017 11:23 2041 a291276806121264c0bd211cde81d5ae 4 Art & Culture theater,theatrical-play,regeneration-theater,tri-mbak-kentir Free The rise of the creative industry in Indonesia reflects the artistic minds of the countrys young talents. That is why when a door opens, hidden talents will show up to snatch the opportunity. Galeri Indonesia Kaya (GIK) with its Creative Space for Indonesian Performance program invited young artists to propose their art projects. After a selection process, 10 people were given a chance to undergo art training covering both theory and practical skills that would guide them in the process of creating their dream shows throughout the year. The young talents received guidance from three influential mentors theater Garasi co-founder Yudi Ahmad Tajudin, dancer Eko Supriyanto and film auteur Garin Nugroho. In March, GIK hosted a theater performance presented by one of the selected 10 communities, Jolly M. Sijabat of Regeneration Theater. Jolly directed a play titled Tri Mbak Kentir (Three Crazy Women), Story of Three Friends Living Under One Roof, which tells the story of three close friends with diverse backgrounds living in the same rental home, but sharing the same profession as prostitutes. Fear tears: Momon (left to right), Marlina and Sumarah cry as their pimp vents his anger at them.(Image Dynamics/Galeri Indonesia Kaya/File) The three main characters of the play are Sumarah, Marlina and Momon. Sumarah, played by Delila, comes from a poor family and wants to change her fate in the city, while Marlina (Sheila Octarina) is from a rich family but lacked attention from her father. The third character, Momon (Yusuf Bakrie), is a transgender. Read also: Helateater highlights nonverbal plays in Indonesia Eventually the three friends fall in love with clients. What they dont realize is that the client is the same person. Once they discover the truth, their friendship almost falls apart, bringing them to an emotional ride that brings tears before they eventually learn a moral lesson to appreciate the importance of friendship. Lasting less than two hours, the play manages to nail a very humorous show, easily grabbing the attention of audience members, who were of all ages, with the actors brilliant performances. While the actors dived into the world of body language and facial expressions, the audience in the small auditorium felt a connection with the characters. Tri Mbak Kentir is a witty and unordinary play delivered through creatively composed dialogue, naturally flowing from the actors instinct along with unexpected phrases that made the room fill with laughter. Depression: Sumarah (right) is shocked after learning about a problem that will test their friendship.(JP/Clara Anastasia) The hardest part to making it happen was in building a connection between the actors and their characters. We went over and over it again until we finally decided it was a perfect fit, Jolly said. He said the play took around two and a half months to prepare. He secured a script written by a friend that was inspired by real life experience and needed only slight changes. Jolly wanted to present a show that reflected a fresh image, so he tried to grab the audiences attention to demonstrate his perspective in encountering problems. Read also: Jakarta Performing Arts Communitys road to West Side Story Regeneration Theater, originally called Smas Regeneration, consists of 30 young artists with a passion for drama. It was initially created because they were concerned about the few platforms there were for performing arts in Indonesia. Young people who are involved in Regeneration Theatre realize that theater is an ideal platform for them to express their creativity. We initiated the Creative Space program so that young creators like Regeneration Theatre cold obtain sufficient education about the performing arts from experts so they can present an enjoyable performance, said Renitasari Adrian, the program director of Bakti Budaya Djarum Foundation. Jolly said the Regeneration Theater would stage a lot of other plays in the near future. We wanted to produce a play that people would love. We became very excited when we heard about Creative Space at Galeri Indonesia Kaya. There are also offers to restage the play, Tri Mbak Kentir, but Im also considering making a fresh act in the future he said. *** The writer is an intern at The Jakarta Post. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Winda A. Charmila (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, April 7 2017 When people think of run-down schools in the country, most minds are likely to wander toward schools in outer regions. However, students in Jakarta also have to endure decaying school facilities, even in an affluent neighborhood like Menteng in Central Jakarta. It has been two years since the library roof at state elementary school SDN 03 in Menteng collapsed, causing the school to move the library to an unused computer lab. We used to prop up the roof with wood, but it didnt help much. There are a lot of termites here which caused the roof to collapse, the schools vice principal, Ihal, recently said. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, April 7, 2017 19:00 2041 a291276806121264c0bd211cde83419c 1 National house-of-representatives,terrorism-law-amandment,terrorism,terrorism-victims,#Terrorism,bomb-blast,bombing Free A civil society organization is calling on the government to strengthen the rights of terror attack victims in the amendment of the 2003 Terrorism Law, which is being discussed at the House of Representatives. The Alliance for a Peaceful Indonesia (AIDA) said many victims of terror attacks found it was still quite difficult for their lives to return to normal given the prolonged trauma they suffered. Their rights to compensation as stipulated by the 2003 Terrorism Law had never been fully implemented. AIDA director Hasibullah Satrawi said on Thursday the current mechanism in the law that required a court verdict for the payment of compensation for terror attack victims had hampered the fulfillment of the victims rights. With a long and complicated procedure to get a court verdict, what they often received was just a small sum of financial aid instead of compensation as mandated. Hasibullah said it was hoped that during the revision, the mechanism for the disbursement of the compensation could be changed. We suggest that the compensation be determined through assessments conducted by a government agency, which receives its mandate in the new law. Hasibullah further said the draft revision should also explicitly cite the rights of terror attack victims to receive medical assistance as soon as a terror attack occurred. Daisy, who survived the 2004 bomb attack outside the Australian Embassy, Jakarta, said the government should restore the livelihood of terrorism victims. Its quite difficult for them to return to their jobs because of their trauma. (mrc/ebf) New Delhi, Apr 7 (IBNS): Senior BJP leader Tarun Vijay has apologised for his remarks against South Indian people which has triggered a controversy. Participating in a debate on Al Jazeera TV over the issue of attack on Nigerian nationals in Greater Noida area recently, Vijay triggered a controversy with his statement where he said Indian should not considered as racist as they are living with South Indian people who are 'black'. He was quoted as saying in the debate: "If we were racist, why would we have the entire south (India)? Why do we live with them? We have blacks, black people around us." He later apologised for his statement. He admitted that his choice of words were wrong. "I said we worship Krishna, which literally em,ans black, we were the first to oppose any racism and were in fact victims of racist British," he said. The leader said :"Yes, it sounds ridiculous and very bad. I meant, we worship Krishna, which literally means black. and we have never had any racism." Vijay apologised for his remark and said: "My words perhaps were not enough to convey this.Feel bad,really feel sorry, my apologies to those who feel i said different than what I meant." He said: "I feel the entire statement sas this- we have fought racism and we have people with different colour and culture still never had any racism." Image: Tarun Vijay Twitter page Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Julie Pace (Associated Press) Palm Beach Fri, April 7, 2017 President Donald Trump's sudden decision to order airstrikes against the Syrian government was an overnight evolution for a president who long warned against deeper American involvement in one of the world's most stubbornly violent conflicts. As he soberly announced the assault Thursday night, Trump argued that the move was still within the framework of his "America First" foreign policy agenda. The United States, he said, has a "vital national security interest" in stopping the proliferation of the kinds of chemical weapons the Syrian government used against its citizens earlier this week. Yet Trump's actions left no doubt that at least in this instance his view of America's role in the world has been altered. Trump is hardly the first president to reconsider his views after assuming the responsibility of controlling the world's most powerful military. But with a major shift coming just 77 days into his presidency, his may be one of the fastest transformations in recent memory. After spending years warning U.S. leaders that Syria was a dangerous quagmire, Trump is said to have been moved by the gripping images of young Syrian children's listless bodies that were beamed across the world following the chemical attack. He mourned the "beautiful babies" were among the dozens killed by the deadly gases and accused Syrian President Bashar Assad of having "choked" his own citizens. His sentiment the United States' "responsibility to protect" echoed those often used by some Trump's ardent detractors. That doctrine, espoused most notably by President Barack Obama's former ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, holds that world powers have an obligation to defend civilians from conflict, particularly from their own governments. Trump campaigned on a wholly different vision for the nation's foreign policy, one that bordered on isolationism and centered on recalibrating trade deals with international partners. He has specifically said the Middle East is one region of the world he hoped to avoid. Yet in the short term, Trump's decision to plunge the U.S. deeper into the Syria conflict won him plaudits from his own party. Even some Democrats were muted in their response, a signal of how frustration with U.S. inaction in Syria has permeated both parties. "The question now is what the consequences and reactions will be, and what are the president's strategic and long-range goals and plans with respect to U.S. involvement in Syria," said Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee. Trump's decision was all the more remarkable for his strident public opposition to launching a strike on Syria when the decision weighed on his predecessor. In September 2013, Trump repeatedly took to Twitter to urge Obama to not to attack Syria after another chemical weapons attack. "AGAIN, TO OUR VERY FOOLISH LEADER, DO NOT ATTACK SYRIA - IF YOU DO MANY VERY BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN & FROM THAT FIGHT THE U.S. GETS NOTHING!," he wrote. He followed two days later with another tweet declaring, "There is no upside and tremendous downside" to an attack. Obama nearly ordered strikes, but ultimately pulled back. He called for a vote in Congress that never came, then rallied behind a Russian-backed plan to remove Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles an agreement that appeared to have failed, given this most recent attack. (Read also: Syria decries 'aggression' as US launches cruise missiles) Though Trump castigated Obama for appearing weak and indecisive, he maintained as a candidate that Syria was a morass the U.S. should avoid. As recently as a week ago, Trump's top diplomats, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, both indicated the U.S. might take a hands-off approach to a civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and forced millions more from their homes. The long-term implications of Trump's sudden policy shift are deeply uncertain. But his supporters seemed willing to accept his decision. "President Trump has tonight more than earned a second or third look from a lot of doubters both at home and abroad," said Kevin Kellems, a Republican strategist who briefly worked on Trump's campaign and also advised former Vice President Dick Cheney. Kellems singled out in particular "the speed and precision of the decision to strike." In addition to the blunt message sent to Assad, the strikes are also a signal to Russia and Iran, Syria's main benefactors, as well as China, which the U.S. believes isn't doing enough to stop North Korea's nuclear pursuits. Trump ordered the attack while hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida amid an ongoing struggle between Washington and Beijing over how to rein in Pyongyang's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. "This clearly indicates the president is willing to take decisive action when called for," Tillerson said. ____ AP Diplomatic Writer Matthew Lee contributed from Washington. Follow Lee at http://twitter.com/APDiploWriter and Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, April 7, 2017 13:52 2041 a291276806121264c0bd211cde8255a7 1 City #JakartaElection2017,voter-list Free The campaign team of governor candidate Anies Baswedan refused to agree to the results of a meeting between the two candidates and the Jakarta General Elections Commission (KPU Jakarta) on Thursday night related to the number of voters on a fixed list. The team secretary Syarif said on Thursday that their investigation found there were still 153,000 invalid voters on the list, with most of them registered in West Jakarta and East Jakarta. We refuse to sign the meeting results about the municipality level, especially West and East Jakarta, he said as quoted by kompas.com. The runoff vote for the next Jakarta governor has been scheduled for April 19. On Thursday night the commission decided that the runoff election would involve 7,218,280 registered voters. KPU Jakarta head Sumarno said that there would be another meeting on Friday to discuss the objections of the Anies team. If we find invalid voters on the list, we will make a mark and make sure that they could not vote, Sumarno said. (idb) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Tama Salim (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, April 7 2017 Southeast Asian diplomats revealed this week that ASEAN and China have made significant progress in talks on a document of provisions aiming to prevent conflict in the disputed South China Sea. China claims almost the entire disputed waterway, through which about US$5 trillion in sea-borne goods pass every year; while five ASEAN member countries Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam have competing claims. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Anton Hermansyah (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, April 7 2017 Digital investment portal Bareksa expects to increase the number of mutual fund investors using its platform by more than threefold this year through closer cooperation with e-payment provider DOKU. The portal has worked with 24 asset management firms, offering a total of 111 mutual fund products. As of last month, it had 32,000 mutual fund investors who invested a total of Rp 200 billion (US$15 million) in funds. Bareksa president director Karaniya Dharmasaputra said the portal aimed to have 100,000 registered mutual fund investors by the end of the year, with total funds invested of Rp 500 billion. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Stefani Ribka (The Jakarta Post) Fri, April 7 2017 The introduction of online channels might help retailers to widen market outreach, but the impact of such a strategy largely relies on successfully bringing an in-store experience into e-commerce platforms, experts and business players have suggested. Dont see e-commerce as merely a transaction place. Rather, invest in the online experience as much as the in-store experience. Businesses need to update their strategies with e-commerce in mind, Ade Elimin, a partner at consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Indonesia, said on the sidelines of the release of the PwC Total Retail Survey 2017 on Wednesday. Nearly 60 percent of Indonesian consumers are omnishoppers who buy things via online and offline channels, the survey shows. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Philip Isa (Associated Press) Beirut Fri, April 7, 2017 Investigators have rushed to Turkey to examine survivors of the chemical attack in neighboring Syria and collect samples that could reveal the nature of the toxins, the means of delivery and, ultimately, who was responsible for one of the war's most disturbing atrocities. The victims' presence in Turkey offers a way around a problem that has bedeviled past investigations and sown confusion for policymakers: limited access to attack sites. The byproducts of the nerve agents suspected in Tuesday's attack can remain in the bloodstream long after the effects have worn off. "Whoever wants to find out the truth and the weapon that was used has enough evidence" in Turkey, said Dr. Osama Abo Elezz, a physician from Khan Sheikhoun, the opposition-held town where the chemical attack took place. "This has not happened before." But even with the heightened media attention and the anguish the attack has provoked in the highest offices in the US and other Western capitals, the inspectors have been hamstrung by a thicket of rules and precautions that could frustrate even the most determined investigators. Witnesses described pandemonium at the Bab al-Hawa border crossing, where medical staff, terrified of exposure to toxins, donned hulking hazmat suits and pushed victims on gurneys to a decontamination tent. Even second-hand exposure to sarin, the nerve agent suspected in the attack, can produce symptoms leading to death. In the past, Turkish authorities have not always facilitated weapons probes, according to two doctors who cross regularly from Turkey into Syria to treat patients. "Turkey's hesitation is nothing new. Turkey has never wanted to be involved in the operations," said Dr. Hossam Nahas, the lead coordinator for the chemical weapons response team of the Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations, a network of Syrian doctors that provides support to medical staff in rebel-held areas. Another physician, Dr. Zaher Sahloul, who is Syrian American, said he has detected little appetite among Turkish officials to investigate allegations of war crimes they were powerless to stop. "If they think a sample is coming, they will block it," Sahloul told The Associated Press in the wake of reports last week that patients in the central Syrian town of Latamneh were arriving at hospitals with muscle spasms and foaming at the mouth signs that a nerve agent might have been dispersed in a presumed government or Russian airstrike in the area. That suspected attack was five days before the more dramatic assault Tuesday in Khan Sheikhoun. The quick global response to the latest attack, as well as the rush of victims to the Turkish border may have compelled Turkish authorities to open the border and offer greater cooperation, Sahloul said Thursday. "There are several reasons for the change in response. The first is the scale of the attack and the fact that many victims are children and women. And the public outrage, globally," Sahloul told the AP by phone from the Chicago hospital where he works. "All of these factors have been changing the level of seriousness they take in these attacks." In February, Russia and China vetoed a UN Security Council resolution authorizing punitive actions against the Syrian government after a joint investigative team from the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons watchdog group concluded that the government carried out chlorine gas attacks three times in 2014 and 2015. The OPCW, which has the international authority to investigate such incidents, said Thursday it was "already collecting and analyzing information" about Tuesday's attack, and had initiated contact with the Syrian authorities. Residents, however, said they have yet to see any international observers arriving in Khan Sheikhoun. Video from the town, distributed Thursday by the activist-run Syrian Institute For Justice, showed residents wearing gloves and dust masks collecting samples from the crater where it was believed the missile carrying the toxins struck. Nahas said it was crucial that inspectors be allowed into the attack site to counter claims by the Russian and Syrian governments the chemicals were released when a Syrian airstrike struck a rebel munitions and chemical factory. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem said the Syrian government might authorize an investigative team to enter the town on the condition it travels from Damascus, not Turkey. He said Syria would also need assurances any investigation would be impartial and non-politicized. The Turkish Health Ministry, meanwhile, said Thursday its own examinations of victims "suggest that the patients were exposed to ... sarin." It said it would allow the OPCW to take samples for its own investigation to The Hague, Netherlands. The international chemical weapons watchdog sets the gold standard for chemical weapons investigations, but for many Syria observers, its work is frustratingly slow. "I appreciate the international community have wanted to wait for the full due process and the full chain of evidence," said Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former British army chemical weapons expert and director of Doctors Under Fire. "But that takes years, and we're now four years down the line from chemical weapons usage and it is now the norm." To de Bretton-Gordon, as well as intelligence officials and political leaders in the West, it is already clear from video of the aftermath of Tuesday's attack that the victims were exposed to sarin gas. "I'm absolutely convinced," Bretton-Gordon said. "For those who don't die immediately, it's the convulsions and pinpoint pupils. Because nerve agents basically attack your nerves and stop them working, which is why your eyes don't work. ... Because the nerve in the eye is dead." Moreover, the government claim that it struck a rebel warehouse storing toxic gas does not hold water, he said. Sarin is not stable enough to withstand the intense heat or pressure of a bomb blast. "That is how you destroy sarin you burn it or you blow it up," he said. Also, if patients were exposed to sarin from a warehouse explosion, he said, they would have shrapnel wounds, as well as symptoms of nerve poisoning. ___ Associated Press writers Sarah El Deeb in Beirut, Michael Corder in Amsterdam and Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report. (**) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Stefani Ribka (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, April 7, 2017 11:55 2041 a291276806121264c0bd211cde81e9c3 1 Business Gapki,production,exports,Oil-palm-products,decline Free Crude palm oil (CPO) and palm kernel oil (PKO) production declined by 8 percent month-on-month (MoM) to 2.2 million tons in February, Indonesia Association of Oil Palm Producers (GAPKI) data shows. Exports of palm products, including oleo chemicals and biodiesel also dropped by 6 percent to 2.66 million tons in the corresponding period. The drop in exports is more due to the rise in export duties to US$18 per ton in the second month. This made producers and traders delay their sales and purchases, said GAPKI executive director Fadhil Hasan on Thursday press statement. (Read also: Palm oil producers revise up palm oil production, stock data) The drop in production combined with high exports, albeit lower than in January, reduced stocks by 32.5 percent to 1.93 million tons from 2.85 million tons. However, exports to the Middle East rose significantly by 116 percent MoM to 224,730 tons in February. Exports to Bangladesh, China and African countries also increased by 23 percent, 9 percent and 3 percent respectively. Exports to the United States declined by 46 percent MoM to 54,850 tons. Exports to the European Union, Pakistan and India dropped by 43 percent, 25 percent and 13 percent respectively. GAPKI predicts CPO prices will stagnate at $680 to $720 per ton in the first two weeks of April after remaining at between $685 and $750 per ton throughout March and being higher at $725 to $820 throughout February. The Indonesian government has issued an April CPO price reference of $762.88 per ton and consequently lowered export duties to $3 per ton. (bbn) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Vyara Wurjanta (The Jakarta Post) Paris Fri, April 7 2017 Paris is known as the city of love the place where couples vow to love one another for the rest of their lives. It was around 7 p.m. in Paris, France. The sky was partly cloudy, but the sun still shone brightly in the west sky. A group of nicely dressed people gathered on the deck of a luxury cruise boat named the River Palace, anchored in the Port of Javel Haut in the Seine riverbank. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, April 7 2017 Prominent architect Wiratman, who designed the planned Sunda Strait Bridge, passed away at the Pondok Indah Hospital in South Jakarta on Wednesday and was buried in Bandung on Thursday. He was 82 years old. The vice chancellor for academic and student affairs at the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), Bermawi Priyatna Iskandar, expressed his condolences moments before Wiratmans body was transported to the Caringin general cemetery for the funeral. The deceased is a figure we need to note for his works, and his way of life should be emulated as an example, Bermawi said. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, April 7, 2017 13:53 2041 a291276806121264c0bd211cde8256af 1 National setya-novanto,Golkar,GolkarParty,e-ID,#e-ID,graft,corruption,ade-komarudin,house-of-representatives,setya Free Former House of Representatives Speaker and Golkar Party politician Ade Komarudin said Thursday he was worried the electronic ID card (e-ID) corruption case, which has implicated dozens of House lawmakers, including Golkar chairman Setya Novanto, would significantly affect the party. Speaking in the e-ID trial at the Jakarta Corruption Court on Thursday, Ade told the courts judicial panel he expressed his feelings to former Golkar chairman and senior politician Aburizal Bakrie when the high-profile case became public. He told Aburizal that if Setya was really involved in the case, it could lead to the dissolution of the party. I said, I want Abang [Aburizal] reminded [of Setya]. I am afraid Pak Nov [Setya] was involved in this case. The party can break up, Ade said as quoted by kompas.com. He was testifying in the trial of two Home Ministry officials, Irman and Sugiharto, who stand accused in the case. (Read also: E-ID graft trial defendants brush off Setya Novantos testimony) Ade did not detail when he met Aburizal but said it was when the latter was still Golkar chairman. Aburizal led Golkar from 2009 to 2014. Ade said at that time he read news stories that stated a portion of the e-ID money flowed to the party I really love this party because I have been a lawmaker until today [because of this party], Ade said. The e-ID graft case, which has allegedly cost the state Rp 2.3 trillion (US$172 million), has implicated more than 30 lawmakers in the House, including Setya, according to the KPK indictment read out earlier last month against the two Home Ministry officials. (saf/ebf) New Delhi, Apr 7 (IBNS): Union Minister for Transport Nitin Gadkari took a dig at Congress leader Digvijaya Singh by saying that the latter was sleeping while the poll process was taking place that resulted in a defeat of his party, in Lok Sabha on Friday, media reports. During an ongoing debate about the motor vehicles law made by the minister, another Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge in a sarcastic tone said that "Nitin Gadkari is performing so well. But there is no one. There is no support for him," referring to the absence of BJP MPs in LS, following which another MP Venugopal mentioned the role of Gadkari like a villain in Goa. Taking a jibe at senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh, Gadkari said: " Why are you blaming me? Your hero (Digvijaya Singh) had slept through the night. Your film would have run if your hero had not slept through the night." Congress alleged Bharatiya Janata Party earlier for forming government in states like Goa and Manipur with money power though INC emerged as the single largest party. Earlier after taking the oath as CM, Manohar Parrikar said that miserable results were inevitable in Goa as Singh went there for holidaying. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Elly Burhaini Faizal (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, April 7, 2017 18:56 2041 a291276806121264c0bd211cde833dde 1 National Garuda,Garuda-Indonesia,Ida-Fiqriah,female-pilot,#GarudaIndonesia,kartini Free National flag carrier Garuda Indonesia has inducted Ida Fiqriah as its first female pilot to reach the rank of captain of Boeing B737-800 NG planes, a narrow body-style aircraft, after she successfully recorded 10,585 flight hours. It is hoped Ida can later also become the first female pilot captain for wide-body aircraft. Garuda Indonesia operational director Capt. Novianto Harupratomo personally pinned a Boeing B737-800 Bar Captain rating emblem on Ida in a ceremony on Wednesday. Its not by chance that the induction ceremony coincides with Kartini Day, which will be celebrated across the nation on April 21. This moment clearly shows that Garuda Indonesia gives equal opportunities to anyone who shows top work performance in their profession, said Novianto in a press statement. (Read also: Miss Universe visits Garuda Indonesia Training Center) He further said that attaining the position of pilot captain was not easy and took a lot of hard work, adding that Capt. Ida Fiqriahs achievements had made her an Ibu Kartini of the modern era and it was hoped that her career developments would inspire all women in Indonesia. Ida has also had the longest career at Garuda of any of the companys female pilots. She has now flown for Garuda for around 18 years. Her career began in 1999 as a first officer or co-pilot. Graduating from aviation school PLP Curug in Tangerang, Banten, in 1999, Ida has piloted various Garuda Indonesia aircraft, starting with the Boeing B737-300/400/500 series and the wide-body Airbus A330-300/200. Of Garuda Indonesias 1,380 pilots, only 30 of them are women. We hope the induction of Ida Fiqriah as a pilot captain can motivate all female pilots in this company, said Novianto. (saf) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, April 7, 2017 18:25 2041 a291276806121264c0bd211cde8337b1 4 Business land-certification,land-redistribution,Darmin-nasution,funding-gap Free Coordinating Economic Minister Darmin Nasution has said the government did not have enough funds to meet the target of certifying 5 million plots of land this year. The agrarian and spatial planning minister has reported that there is a problem with the budget, said Darmin as reported by kompas.com in Jakarta on Friday, adding that the Rp 1.4 trillion (US$105 million) allocated in the 2017 state budget was only enough to certify 2 million plots of land. The land certification program is part of the nations agrarian reform agenda, which is being carried out to provide legal certainly for landowners. (Read also: Govt goes extra mile to accelerate land distribution) Previously, President Joko Jokowi Widodo said the government was targeting to distribute 5 million hectares of land this year and 7 million ha next year. Usually, it usually only issues certification for 500,000 to 700,000 ha per year. Darmin said the Finance Ministry would try to find a way of securing funds to finance the certification of the remaining 3 million plots of land. As part of the land certification program, the government has developed a measuring system, said Darmin, adding that training and vocational programs were expected to produce land measuring professionals. We have to create a system for doing the job. The Agrarian and Spatial Planning Ministry will announce which villages will start receiving land certification, Darmin added. (bbn) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Haeril Halim and Margareth S. Aritonang (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, April 7 2017 As the bribery trial centering on procurement for the electronic identity card (e-ID) project proceeds, it is becoming more difficult for House of Representatives Speaker and Golkar Party chairman Setya Novanto to disentangle himself from the scandal. Ever more evidence has been presented that points toward his close ties with a businessman who allegedly devised the scheme to plunder Rp 2.3 trillion ($172 million) from the project in 2011. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Liza Yosephine (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, April 7, 2017 16:43 2041 a291276806121264c0bd211cde82f8b6 1 World #USAttackAgainstSyria,Syria Free Indonesia has expressed concern over an airstrike on Syria that was ordered by United States President Donald Trump in response to a chemical attack in the war-torn country. As a state party to the Chemical Weapons Convention, Indonesia strongly condemns the use of chemical weapons in Syria that caused the loss of many innocent lives including children. The country, however, remains firm in its position of a peaceful approach to conflict settlement. "At the same time, Indonesia is concerned about unilateral actions by any parties, including the use of Tomahawk missiles, in response to the chemical weapons attack tragedy in Syria," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Arrmanatha Nasir told reporters on Friday. Jakarta stated its concern over military actions undertaken without prior authorization of the United Nations Security Council, saying they were not in line with international legal principles in the peaceful settlement of disputes, as stipulated in the UN Charter. The country further requests the UN Security Council to take immediate steps to resolve the crisis in Syria. "For Indonesia, peace and stability in Syria can only be achieved through dialogue and an inclusive political process," Arrmanatha said. The US fired Tomahawk missiles into Syria in retaliation for the regime of Bashar al-Assad using nerve agents to attack his people, according to the US Defense Department. (Read also: ANALYSIS: For Trump, an overnight evolution on Syria) The Pentagon said 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles were launched in the early hours of Friday morning, local Syrian time, its first direct military actions against the Assad regime. (dan) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Safrin La Batu (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, April 7, 2017 13:37 2041 a291276806121264c0bd211cde82354f 1 National UPR,Universal-Periodic-Review,UN,United-Nations,human-rights,#humanrights,Islamic-groups Free Indonesia has not yet improved its policies on the promotion and protection of human rights, despite the evaluations in 2008 and 2012 of the United Nations-sponsored Universal Periodic Review (UPR), a coalition of civil society groups has said. The Civil Society Coalition for the Third UPR said Indonesia agreed to receive 150 of the 180 recommendations issued by the UPR in 2012 that highlighted major human rights violations in the country and provide ways to address the problems. The government has not held a formal, open and participatory mechanism to follow up on the recommendations. We see the government has not executed most of the recommendations, the coalition said in a statement sent from Geneva, Switzerland. Among the issues highlighted in the 2012 recommendations were 20 regarding freedom of religion. The UPR said mob violence involving hard-line Islamic groups was still rampant in the country. A number of recommendations in the 2012 UPR have not been clearly, firmly and constitutionally implemented, said Elga Sarapung, who represents the Indonesian Interreligious Network (JAII), which is part of the coalition. The right to have a house of worship and the right to exercise beliefs, as well as to be free from intimidation and violence made in the name of religion, are not fully protected by the government, he added. Besides freedom of religion, the coalition also highlighted a number of other human rights issues, such as foreign journalists being barred from entering Papua and Indonesias death penalty for convicted drug traffickers. The UPR third review on Indonesia will commence in Geneva next month. (ebf) After a long, bureaucratic process, the Santo Agustinus Pastoral Institute (STP) in Kubu Raya, West Kalimantan, experienced a historic moment on Thursday as it began operations as a government-run educational institution now named the Pontianak State Catholic Institute (STAKatN). As the first ever state Catholic institute in Indonesia, STAKatN Pontianak is expected to play a significant role in supporting the spirit of unity in the diverse nation. Speaking during the inauguration of the institute, Religious Affairs Minister Lukman Hakim Saifuddin said religious education was important in maintaining the spirit of unity in Indonesia despite its enormous diversity. Hence, he hoped the inauguration of the state Catholic university could be immediately followed by the development of similar institutions in other areas across Indonesia. Religion is all about feeling. Hence, religion is not something to be debated in the public sphere, but a set of values we should implement in our daily lives, said Lukman. West Kalimantan Governor Cornelis and Pontianak Archbishop Agustinus Agus accompanied the religious affairs minister at the inauguration ceremony. Former STP Santo Agustinus head Andreas Muhrotien said the institute, which opened in 2006, was previously a private institution, which initially aimed to provide a solution to the provinces shortage of Catholic religious education teachers. We have undertaken a long journey to become a state institute. Thank God we have reached our goal today. This is a historic moment, because this is the first Catholic state institute in Indonesia, said Andreas. In the last 10 years, STAKatN Pontianak has produced 1,250 bachelor graduates and 31 masters graduates while 703 people have participated in a program to make their school degrees equal to bachelor degrees. Around 70 percent of its graduates have been recruited as non-permanent teachers of Catholic religious education in various schools across the province. Citing West Pontianak Education Agency data, Agustinus said only 355 out of 1,222 state junior high schools across the province had Catholic religious education teachers. From a total 4,341 state elementary schools in the province, only 1,603 have Catholic religious education teachers, while at state senior high schools, only 89 out of the total 378 schools do. I want to convey here that the local situation should also be taken into consideration in determining the quota of religious teachers, because each region cannot be compared with others. This province is very vast, and religious teachers do not only teach about religion but also act as leaders who give guidance based on faith [to their students], said the Pontianak archbishop. Lukman said the shortage of Catholic religious education teachers in West Kalimantan would be the main agenda item of a meeting held by the Religious Affairs Ministry next week. He acknowledged that the process to award STP Santo Agustinus the status of a state-run institute had taken a relatively long time. This was not only due to the long bureaucratic procedure but also problems at the local level that had hampered the process, he said. I previously felt guilty when I saw that all religions in our country except Catholics had state institutes. It made me quite concerned, said Lukman. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, April 7, 2017 15:22 2041 a291276806121264c0bd211cde82956c 1 Business buffalo-meat,India,imports Free The State Logistics Agency (Bulog) has proposed to import 51,728 tons of buffalo meat from India this year to guarantee adequate stocks throughout 2017. We are in the process of gradually importing it. Our quota is 51,728 tons by December, said Bulog commercial director Febrianto as reported by tempo.co on Friday. Last year, the buffalo meat quota was 100,000 tons. He said the buffalo meat stocks in the Bulog warehouse reached 39,500 tons in April, including 6,800 tons of meat that had been imported in March. (Read also: Meat stocks secured up to Ramadhan) The stocks are adequate to meet market demand during the Ramadhan fasting month and the Idul Fitri celebration in June, he said, adding that the import quota was based on the calculation of meat demand during the two aforementioned events, plus during Christmas and New Year's Eve. He stressed that the importation should be implemented gradually to prevent overstocking at the port. In May, for example, there will be 5,000 tons of meat entering and it will continue up to December, depending on the market demand, Febrianto added. The Central Statistics Agency (BPS) records that meat production in 2017 will total 468,369 tons, while consumption will be 729,911 tons. Meanwhile, consumption in the Greater Jakarta amounts to 51,450 tons, while production is only at 20,166 tons. In addition to 39,500 tons of buffalo meat, Bulog also still has 304 tons of beef in its warehouses. (bbn) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Klaus Heinrich Raditio (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, April 7 2017 That the extensive claim over the body of water within Chinas nine-dash line in the South China Sea does not correspond to international law should not be overlooked. Furthermore, Chinas behavior in the South China Sea, namely the massive construction of artificial islands, is undeniably worrying. However, there are some disagreements regarding the strategy of maintaining peace and stability in the region. Which is why this piece attempts to complement the arguments of Aaron Connelly, which appeared in The Jakarta Post on April 5, to provide readers with a better idea of the issue. First, Connelly advocates Indonesia leading the region in voicing grave reservations about Chinas behavior by stating clearly and repeatedly its expectation that China will adhere to the arbitral tribunals award in Philippines v. China and end its use of the nine-dash line to outline Chinas claims. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Fri, April 7 2017 ) Coordinating Maritime Minister Luhut Pandjaitan is spearheading the implementation of President Joko Jokowi Widodos most defining initiative; turning the nation back to the sea -- a promise the President made out of concern that maritime development had been largely neglected despite its gargantuan potential. The Jakarta Posts Rendi A. Witular interviewed on Wednesday Jokowis key confidant about how he deals with the challenges in turning the initiative into reality, and on his take over recent attempts by certain groups to fuel anti-Chinese sentiment. Here are excerpts from the interview. Question: Can you sum up the progress the administration has achieved so far in implementing the maritime development initiative? to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, April 7, 2017 13:41 2041 a291276806121264c0bd211cde824433 1 City #JakartaElection2017,voter-list Free The Jakarta General Elections Commission (KPU Jakarta) has established a final list of 7,218,280 Jakarta residents eligible to use their voting rights in the upcoming gubernatorial runoff election on April 19. As many as 109,164 new voters were added to the list of 7,108,509 voters eligible in the first round of the election, said KPU Jakarta head Sumarno. "After the gubernatorial candidates and the Jakarta Elections Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) approves the change, we will establish the final voters list," Sumarno said as quoted by kompas.com on Friday. "There are also additions from retired officers of the police force and the Army who were previously not allowed to vote," he said. During the process of determining the final voters list, KPU Jakarta also received suggestions from the campaign teams of the remaining gubernatorial candidates, incumbants Basuki 'Ahok' Tjahaja Purnama and Djarot Saiful Hidayat and challengers Anies Baswedan and Sandiaga Uno. The number of voters on the runoff's final list, however, was less than the temporary voters list of 7,264,749 people. KPU Jakarta revoked the voting rights of thousands of people because they were deceased, or had moved out of Jakarta, or for other reasons. (dea) New Delhi, Apr 7 (IBNS): Minister of State for External Affairs, M.J. Akbar is paying an official visit to the UAE from Apr 10-11. During the visit, he will be meeting his UAE counterparts and other UAE leadership and hold official discussions covering the entire gamut of bilateral, regional and international matters of mutual interest. He will take this opportunity to also address the annual Forum for the UAEs Ambassadors being held in Abu Dhabi. India enjoys close and multifaceted bilateral ties with the UAE, anchored on regular high-level visits and extensive people-to-people contacts. The recent visits of Prime Minister, Narendra Modi to the UAE in August 2015 and Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi to India in February 2016 and subsequently as the Chief Guest at the Republic Day celebrations during January 2017 have elevated the relationship to a comprehensive strategic partnership, read the statement issued by the Indian government. Our well-balanced bilateral trade amounting to around US$ 50 billion makes UAE our third largest trading partner while for the UAE we have been the largest trading partner. The UAE is among the largest investors in India in terms of foreign direct investments. It contributes significantly to India's energy security and has been the fifth largest supplier of crude oil to India in 2015-16, read a government statement. About 2.6 million strong and vibrant Indian community forms the largest expatriate group in the UAE. Their positive and well-appreciated contribution in the development of their host country has been an important anchor of our excellent bilateral engagement. This visit will provide a useful opportunity to further cement our mutually beneficial bilateral ties with the UAE. Image: Vikas Swarup Twitter page The Jakarta Police believe legal proceedings against embattled governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama are adding to alreadyheightened public tension in the lead-up to the gubernatorial runoff election on April 19. As part of efforts to ensure a safe and peaceful election, Jakarta Police chief Insp. Gen. M. Iriawan has sent a letter to the North Jakarta District Court, requesting that it postpone further hearings of Ahoks trial, given the vulnerable security conditions in the capital. The postponement was necessary because police and military personnel would have to start shifting their focus to safeguarding the election, he said. We suggest that the prosecutions sentence demands in Ahoks blasphemy trial be postponed until after the runoff, Iriawan said in the letter made available to The Jakarta Post on Thursday. The letter was also sent to the chief justice of the Supreme Court, the National Police chief, the polices general supervision inspector, the Jakarta High Court head and the attorney general. Late last year, police requested that the trial be moved from the North Jakarta District Court to the Agriculture Ministrys main hall in South Jakarta due to security concerns. Based on an initial schedule, prosecutors are expected to make their sentence demands on March 11, while the defendant is scheduled to read out his defense statement on April 17, just two days before the runoff. The campaign period, which runs from March 7 until April 15, has been dominated by religious sentiment and racial bigotry resulting from the blasphemy allegations against the governor, who is a Christian of Chinese descent. In early March, some local mosques displayed banners saying that those who voted for blasphemers would not be entitled to Islamic funeral rites and prayers when they died. Less than three weeks before the election, thousands of people staged a rally called 313 in reference to the date to demand the incarceration of Ahok. Further, there is the antiAhok Tamasya Al-Maidah movement, facilitated through an application available on Playstore, which encourages Muslims from across the country to flock to polling stations to supervise the election. Separately, Jakarta Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Argo Yuwono said the polices letter was issued to ensure voting day would pass safely, especially given the fact that Ahoks scheduled hearing on April 17 would take place in the cooling-off period between April 16 and April 18. Separately, North Jakarta District Court spokesman Hasoloan Sianturi said the court had received the letter, but in accordance with a decision made by judges in an April 4 hearing, the trial would continue on April 11. The decision to postpone hearings could only be made in the courtroom, he added. Ahoks lawyer Fifi Lety Indra said the governors legal team would comply with the courts decision regarding the next hearing. Besides requesting the court to postpone Ahoks hearing, Gen. M. Iriawan also informed the court that the police would postpone their interrogation of Ahoks rival candidate pair, Anies Baswedan and Sandiaga Uno, who have also been reported to the police for several alleged violations. Ahoks legal team reported Anies for alleged defamation on Wednesday after the candidate publicly claimed that Ahok would evict the residents of 300 areas across the city if he was reelected as Jakarta governor. Sandiaga was reported by a person named Edward S Soeryadjaya to the Jakarta Police for alleged embezzlement and receipt forgery. A campaign team member of Anies and Sandiaga, Yupen Hadi, said the team appreciated the polices order. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, April 7, 2017 14:12 2041 a291276806121264c0bd211cde8266b2 1 City National-Police,fake-ointment,West-Jakarta,Salep-Kulit-88,#NationalPolice,counterfeit-ointment,counterfeit Free Personnel of the narcotics directorate at the National Polices Criminal Investigation Department (Bareskrim) on Thursday arrested a resident of Kalideres, West Jakarta, for allegedly producing and distributing thousands of counterfeit ointments. The ointments, sold under a popular brand name, Salep Kulit 88, were allegedly manufactured at the home of the accused in Kalideres. We seized evidence, including 20,000 [examples] of fake Salep Kulit 88 products, National Police spokesperson Sr. Comr. Martinus Sitompul told journalists in a press conference in Jakarta on Thursday. He said the police officers found chemical substances and tools used to manufacture the fake ointments when they raided the home. The fake ointments were very similar to the original ones so it would be difficult for consumers to differentiate between the two products. Before the police raid took place on Thursday morning, the accused had allegedly prepared one sack of sulphur powder, one box of peel menthol, two bottles of coloring liquid, a compressed air system, one box of faked Salep Kulit 88 holograms and other items used to make the counterfeits look and smell like the real product. Salep Kulit 88 is a locally made skin ointment used to relieve inflammation associated with fungal and bacterial infections. Martinus said the arrested man would be charged under the health and consumer protection laws. (hol/ebf) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Bassem Mroue and Ian Phillips (Associated Press) Beirut Fri, April 7, 2017 President Bashar Assad's government came under mounting international pressure after a chemical attack in northern Syria, with even key ally Russia saying its support is not unconditional and the U.S. launching a barrage of cruise missiles at a government-controlled air base in Syria. Turkey, meanwhile, said samples from victims of Tuesday's attack, which killed more than 80 people in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, indicate they were exposed to sarin, a highly toxic nerve agent. Syria rejected the accusations, and Moscow warned against apportioning blame until an investigation has been carried out. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday that "unconditional support is not possible in this current world." But he added that "it is not correct to say that Moscow can convince Mr. Assad to do whatever is wanted in Moscow. This is totally wrong." Russia has provided military support for the Syrian government since September 2015, turning the balance of power in Assad's favor. Moscow has used its veto power at the Security Council on several occasions since the civil war began six years ago to prevent sanctions against Damascus. The two countries "enjoy a relationship of cooperation, of exchange of views and full mutual support," said Peskov, a spokesman for President Vladimir Putin. Assad and his army are "the only real power in Syria that can resist terrorists on the ground," he said. Syria maintains it didn't use chemical weapons, blaming opposition fighters for stockpiling the chemicals. Russia's Defense Ministry said the toxic agents were released when a Syrian airstrike hit a rebel chemical weapons arsenal and munitions factory on the eastern outskirts of Khan Sheikhoun. "I stress, once again, that the Syrian Arab Army did not and will not use such weapons even against the terrorists who are targeting our people," Syria's Foreign Minister Walid Moallem told reporters in Damascus. (Read also: US blasts Syria base with cruise missiles) U.S. President Donald Trump said the attack crossed "many, many lines," and put the blame squarely on Assad's forces. Speaking Thursday on Air Force One, Trump said the attack "shouldn't have happened, and it shouldn't be allowed to happen." Early Friday morning Syrian time, the United States fired cruise missiles into Syria in a surprise strike that marked a striking reversal for Trump, who warned as a candidate against the U.S. getting pulled into the Syrian civil war, now in its seventh year. About 60 U.S. Tomahawk missiles, fired from warships in the Mediterranean Sea, targeted an air base in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack that American officials believe Syrian government aircraft launched with a nerve agent, possibly sarin. Trump called on "all civilized nations" to join the U.S. in seeking an end to the carnage in Syria. Earlier, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had said he hopes Trump will take military action, Turkey's state-run Anadolu Agency quoted him as saying. Erdogan said Turkey would be prepared to do "whatever falls on us" to support possible military action, the news agency reported. U.S. officials had said they hoped for a vote late Thursday night on a U.N. Security Council resolution that would condemn the chemical attack, but with council members still negotiating the text into the evening, the British Mission's political coordinator Stephen Hickey tweeted the vote wouldn't take place until later. At the U.N., the United States, which currently holds the presidency of the Security Council, it drafted a resolution along with Britain and France that condemns the use of chemical weapons, particularly in the attack on Khan Sheikhoun, "in the strongest terms." Russia objected to key provisions in the resolution and negotiations have been underway to try to bridge the differences. Britain's deputy ambassador Peter Wilson said "what we want is a unanimous resolution ... and we want to see this done soon." A day earlier, Russia had argued against holding Assad's government responsible. France's U.N. Ambassador Francois Delattre indicated difficulty in reaching agreement on a resolution. "We have engaged into negotiations in good faith to adopt a resolution - but make no mistake about it we need a robust text," he said. "We cannot be willing to have a text at any cost." After the attack, hospitals around Khan Sheikhoun were overwhelmed, and paramedics sent victims to medical facilities across rebel-held areas in northern Syria, as well as to Turkey. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group put the death toll at 86. The attack happened in Syria's Idlib province about 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the Turkish border, and the Turkish government a close ally of Syria's rebels set up a decontamination center at a border crossing in Hatay province, where the victims were treated initially. Turkish officials said nearly 60 victims of the attack were brought to Turkey for treatment and three of them died. Victims showed signs of nerve gas exposure, including suffocation, foaming at the mouth, convulsions, constricted pupils and involuntary defecation, the World Health Organization and Doctors Without Borders said. Paramedics used fire hoses to wash the chemicals from the bodies of victims. Visuals from the scene were reminiscent of a 2013 nerve gas attack on the suburbs of Damascus that left hundreds dead. In Turkey, Anadolu and the private DHA news agencies on Thursday quoted Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag as saying "it was determined after the autopsy that a chemical weapon was used." The Turkish Health Ministry said later that "according to the results of the first analysis, there were findings suggesting that the patients were exposed to chemical substance (sarin)." WHO experts took part in the autopsies in the Turkish city of Adana late Wednesday, Turkish media reported. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said it has "initiated contact" with Syrian authorities and its Technical Secretariat has been collecting and analyzing information about the allegations. "This is an ongoing investigation," it said. Russia has warned against fixing blame for the attack until an investigation is completed. At a news conference in Damascus, Moallem echoed that statement, saying the Syrian army bombed a warehouse belonging to al-Qaida's branch in Syria that contained chemical weapons. He did not say whether the government knew in advance that the warehouse contained chemical weapons. The minister said al-Qaida and the Islamic State group have been bringing chemical weapons from neighboring Iraq. Asked whether Syria would give access to a fact-finding mission on the use of chemical weapons, Moallem said: "Our experiences with international investigating committees were not encouraging, because they come out of Damascus with certain indications, which then change at their headquarters." Syria wants guarantees that any investigation would be impartial and not politicized, Moallem said. The area of Khan Sheikhoun is difficult to access, and as more time passes since the attack, it will be increasingly difficult to determine exactly what happened. ___ Phillips reported from Moscow. Associated Press writers Albert Aji in Damascus and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed. A recent decision by the Constitutional Court reveals a sour fact for businesspeople: The roots of their bureaucracy issues seem to go deeper than just business-stifling regulations and into the nations entire legal system. In a decision regarding a request for a judicial review of the 2014 Regional Government Law submitted by the Indonesian Regency Administrations Association (Apkasi), together with 45 regencies nationwide and one individual, the Constitutional Court recently annulled four provisions in Article 251, Paragraphs 2, 3, 4 and 8 of the law that principally allow the central government to scrap problematic bylaws. As a consequence, a bylaw revocation can now only be filed to the Supreme Court, which is responsible for examining judicial reviews of regulations of a lower level than national law, such as bylaws, as outlined in the Constitution. Indonesian Employers Association (Apindo) chairman Hariyadi Sukamdani expressed concern at the decision, saying that some administrations often issued bizarre regulations that hampered investment through bureaucratic red tape and high regional taxes. The courts decision will trigger more problems, as local [administrations] can revive the revoked bylaws if they think [the revocations are] invalid, he said on Thursday, adding that the situation would hamper investment in the regions. Even high-ranking government officials have said the decision would push the central governments deregulation efforts started in 2015 back to square one, as the Home Ministry would no longer be able to revoke bylaws that contradicted central government policy, including those related to ease of doing business. The comprehensive deregulation program between the government and local administrations surely will be hampered, because many bylaws that contradict higher regulations remain, Home Minister Tjahjo Kumolo said on Thursday. The Home Ministry scrapped 3,143 business-stifling bylaws last year without going through a judicial review procedure at the Supreme Court. The revocation is a part of its deregulation efforts under a series of economic policy packages launched since September 2015 to improve the countrys business climate. He also expressed doubt that the Supreme Court would be able to annul all conflicting bylaws. A Supreme Court report shows that its 39 justices resolved 14,501 cases in 2014, leaving 4,425 unresolved. Economists voiced a similar view, saying that the ruling could negatively affect the economy, particularly the go vernments commitment to deregulation and cutting red tape, two topics that have dominated the 14 previous economic policy packages. The ruling created another contradiction and inconsistency between governance at the central and regional levels that is expected to trigger uncertainty for the business world and investment climate, Center of Reform on Economics (CORE) Indonesia executive director Mohammad Faisal said. [The problem] comes from the concept of regional autonomy that was previously not thoroughly prepared, he said. Four of nine judges gave dissenting opinions on the ruling, along with businesspeople who voiced their concern over the result. In their official legal opinion, the dissenting judges said the regional autonomy concept was different from the federal systemin which the central government cannot intervene in regional regulations. Under the regional autonomy system, local administrations are responsible to the president and receive a chunk of the state budget through a regional transfer scheme. Thus, the central government can measure which regional administrations have bylaws that are most friendly to investment and implement a clear system of rewards and punishments through managing allocations of regional transfer funds. The central government can reduce fund transfers to a region with bylaws that are unfriendly to investment while gradually improving their awareness on the importance of business-friendly bylaws, said Institute for Development of Economics and Finance (INDEF) economist Eko Listiyanto. [The ruling] will only prompt some regional administrations to maintain a number of bylaws that have been generating revenue for their budgets all this time, said Institute for Development of Economics and Finance (INDEF) economist Eko Listiyanto. Responding to the ruling, Coordinating Economic Minister Darmin Nasution said the government had to seek ways to ensure deregulation continued. But if the Home Ministry cannot [revoke bylaws anymore], theres still the president, he said. TheJakartaPost Please Update your browser Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below. Just click on the icons to get to the download page. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Farida Susanty (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, April 7, 2017 16:56 2041 a291276806121264c0bd211cde831847 1 Business Tourism-Ministry,tourism,air-traffic-movement,Ngurah-Rai-International-Airport,state-revenue Free Indonesia could obtain an additional US$1 billion in state revenue this year from foreign tourist spending through increased air traffic at major airports, a top government official has said. If we add two more air traffic movements, we can add Rp 250 billion [$18.74 million] in revenue for airport operators, while the Tourism Ministry can attract 1 million more seats [for tourists] and $1 billion from their average spending of $1,000 per person, Tourism Minister Arief Yahya said on Friday. For instance, an additional two air traffic movements at I Gusti Ngurah Rai International Airport in Denpasar, Bali, would see the airport manage 27 aircraft movements per hour from the current 25 aircraft movements per hour. (Read also: Indonesia to invite IORA members to invest in tourism) Arief said Gatwick Airport in the United Kingdom had one runway as Ngurah Rai airport had, yet Gatwick could facilitate 55 aircraft movements in an hour. Air connectivity is important because it accounts for up to 80 percent [of tourist transportation], he said. Indonesia is eyeing 15 million foreign tourist visits this year, up from last years target of 12 million foreign tourists. (tas) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Zeina Karam and Sarah El Deeb (Associated Press) Beirut Fri, April 7, 2017 Syria condemned a U.S. missile strike on one of its air bases that killed seven people early Friday as an "aggression," while the Syrian opposition welcomed military action against President Bashar Assad after a chemical attack earlier this week killed over 80. The surprise U.S. strike drew quick reactions from the friends and foes of the Syrian government and further strained relations with Russia, a key ally of Assad, which suspended a deal with the U.S. to prevent midair collisions in Syria's crowded skies. Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which support the Syrian opposition, welcomed the missile strike, with Riyadh calling it a "courageous decision" by Trump. Iran, another close ally of the Syrian government, condemned the strike, describing "unilateral action" as "dangerous." Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi warned the strikes would "strengthen terrorists," further complicating the situation in Syria. Shiite Iran and majority Sunni Saudi Arabia have been locked in a power struggle over influence in Syria and elsewhere in the region. The bombing represents Trump's most dramatic military order since taking office and thrusts the U.S. administration deeper into the complex Syrian conflict. The Obama administration threatened to attack Assad's forces after previous chemical attacks, but never followed through. Trump called on "all civilized nations" to join the U.S. in seeking an end to the carnage in Syria. (Read also: Mounting confidence nerve gas was used in Syria attack) About 60 U.S. Tomahawk missiles hit the Shayrat air base, southeast of Homs, a small installation with two runways, where aircraft often take off to bomb targets in northern and central Syria. The U.S. missiles hit at 3:45 a.m. (0045 GMT) Friday morning and targeted the base's airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, U.S. officials said. They were fired from two warships in the Mediterranean Sea, in retaliation for Tuesday's deadly chemical attack, which officials said used chlorine mixed with a nerve agent, possibly sarin. The Syrian military said at least seven people were killed and nine wounded in the missile strike. A Syrian opposition monitor put the death toll at four, including a general and three soldiers. The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin believes the U.S. strike is an "aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law." Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in Friday's statement carried by Russian news agencies that Putin believes the U.S. launched the strikes under a "far-fetched pretext." "Washington's move deals a significant blow to the Russia-U.S. relations, which are already in a deplorable shape," Peskov said. He added that the attack creates a "serious obstacle" for creating an international coalition against terrorism. Russia's Foreign Ministry later said it is suspending a memorandum with Washington signed after Russia began an air campaign in support of Assad in September 2015 under which the two countries exchange information about sorties over Syria. A U.S.-led coalition has been bombing Islamic State targets in Syria since 2014, while Russia's air force has been striking both extremist groups and Syrian rebels in order to aid Assad's forces. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the missile attack, saying that Trump "sent a strong and clear message" that "the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated." A Syrian opposition group, the Syrian Coalition, welcomed the U.S. attack, saying it puts an end to an age of "impunity" and should herald the start of a larger campaign against Damascus. Maj. Jamil al-Saleh, a U.S-backed rebel commander based in the area where the U.S. attack took place, told The Associated Press he hoped the strike would be a "turning point" in the six-year-old war, which has killed an estimated 400,000 people. Assad's government had been under mounting international pressure after the chemical attack, with even key ally Russia saying its support is not unconditional. Syria rejected the accusations, and blames opposition fighters for stockpiling the chemicals. Russia has said the toxic agents were released when a Syrian airstrike hit a rebel chemical weapons arsenal on the eastern outskirts of Khan Sheikhoun, and that blame should not be apportioned until a full investigation has been carried out. Russia's intervention in Syria since September 2015 has turned the balance of power in Assad's favor, and Moscow has used its veto power at the Security Council on several occasions to prevent sanctions against Damascus. Trump had said the chemical attack crossed "many, many lines," and put the blame squarely on Assad's forces. Speaking Thursday on Air Force One, Trump said the attack "shouldn't have happened, and it shouldn't be allowed to happen." A survivor of the chemical attack told the AP he hopes the U.S. missile attack puts an end to government airstrikes, creating a safe area for civilians. Alaa Alyousef, a 27-year old resident of Khan Sheikhoun, said the U.S. missile attack "alleviates a small part of our suffering," but he said he worried it would be an "anesthetic" that numbs their pain and saves face for the international community. "What good is a strike on Shayrat air base alone while we have more than 15 other air bases," he said. Alyousef lost at least 25 relatives in the chemical attack. The U.S. had initially focused on diplomatic efforts after the chemical attack, and had pressed the U.N. Security Council to adopt a resolution drafted with Britain and France that would have condemned Syria's suspected use of chemical weapons. But the vote was canceled because of differences among the 15 members. ___ Associated Press writers Albert Aji in Damascus, Syria, Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates and Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this report. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Zeina Karam and Sarah El Deeb (Associated Press) Beirut Fri, April 7, 2017 The United States fired cruise missiles into central Syria early Friday morning, striking an Assad government-controlled air base where U.S. officials say the Syrian military launched a deadly chemical attack that killed dozens of civilians earlier this week. Syrian state TV called the attack an "aggression" that lead to "losses." About 60 U.S. Tomahawk missiles hit the Shayrat air base, southeast of Homs, a small installation with two runways, where aircraft often take off to bomb targets in northern and central Syria. The U.S. missiles hit at 3:45 a.m. Friday morning and targeted the base's airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, U.S. officials said. They were fired from two warships in the Mediterranean Sea, in retaliation for Tuesday's deadly chemical attack that officials said used chlorine mixed with a nerve agent, possibly sarin. A military official quoted on Syrian TV said an air base in central Syria was hit early Friday, causing material damage. Another statement, also attributed to an unnamed official, referred to "losses." The officials did not elaborate. Talal Barazi, the governor of Homs province, where the targeted air base is located, told The Associated Press by phone that most of the strikes appeared to target the province in central Syria. He also said the strikes are meant to "support the terrorists on the ground." A Syrian opposition group, the Syrian Coalition, welcomed the U.S. attack, saying it puts an end to an age of "impunity" and should be just the beginning. The bombing represents President Donald Trump's most dramatic military order since taking office. The Obama administration threatened attacking Assad's forces for previous chemical weapons attacks, but never followed through. Trump called on "all civilized nations" to join the U.S. in seeking an end to the carnage in Syria. President Bashar Assad's government had been under mounting international pressure after the chemical attack in northern Syria, with even key ally Russia saying its support is not unconditional and the U.S. launching a barrage of cruise missiles at a government-controlled air base in Syria. Turkey, meanwhile, said samples from victims of Tuesday's attack, which killed more than 80 people in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, indicate they were exposed to sarin, a highly toxic nerve agent. Syria rejected the accusations, and Moscow had warned against apportioning blame until an investigation has been carried out. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday that "unconditional support is not possible in this current world." But he added that "it is not correct to say that Moscow can convince Mr. Assad to do whatever is wanted in Moscow. This is totally wrong." Russia has provided military support for the Syrian government since September 2015, turning the balance of power in Assad's favor. Moscow has used its veto power at the Security Council on several occasions since the civil war began six years ago to prevent sanctions against Damascus. Syria maintains it didn't use chemical weapons, blaming opposition fighters for stockpiling the chemicals. Russia's Defense Ministry said the toxic agents were released when a Syrian airstrike hit a rebel chemical weapons arsenal and munitions factory on the eastern outskirts of Khan Sheikhoun. "I stress, once again, that the Syrian Arab Army did not and will not use such weapons even against the terrorists who are targeting our people," Syria's Foreign Minister Walid Moallem told reporters in Damascus. Trump had said the attack crossed "many, many lines," and put the blame squarely on Assad's forces. Speaking Thursday on Air Force One, Trump said the attack "shouldn't have happened, and it shouldn't be allowed to happen." Earlier, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had said he hopes Trump will take military action, Turkey's state-run Anadolu Agency quoted him as saying. Erdogan said Turkey would be prepared to do "whatever falls on us" to support possible military action, the news agency reported. U.S. officials had said they hoped for a vote late Thursday night on a U.N. Security Council resolution that would condemn the chemical attack, but with council members still negotiating the text into the evening, the British Mission's political coordinator Stephen Hickey tweeted the vote wouldn't take place until later. At the U.N., the United States, which currently holds the presidency of the Security Council, it drafted a resolution along with Britain and France that condemns the use of chemical weapons, particularly in the attack on Khan Sheikhoun, "in the strongest terms." Russia, which has warned against fixing blame for the attack until an investigation is completed, objected to key provisions in the resolution and negotiations have been underway to try to bridge the differences. Britain's deputy ambassador Peter Wilson said "what we want is a unanimous resolution ... and we want to see this done soon." France's U.N. Ambassador Francois Delattre indicated difficulty in reaching agreement on a resolution. After the attack, hospitals around Khan Sheikhoun were overwhelmed, and paramedics sent victims to medical facilities across rebel-held areas in northern Syria, as well as to Turkey. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group put the death toll at 86. The attack happened in Syria's Idlib province about 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the Turkish border, and the Turkish government a close ally of Syria's rebels set up a decontamination center at a border crossing in Hatay province, where the victims were treated initially. Turkish officials said nearly 60 victims of the attack were brought to Turkey for treatment and three of them died. Victims showed signs of nerve gas exposure, including suffocation, foaming at the mouth, convulsions, constricted pupils and involuntary defecation, the World Health Organization and Doctors Without Borders said. Paramedics used fire hoses to wash the chemicals from the bodies of victims. Visuals from the scene were reminiscent of a 2013 nerve gas attack on the suburbs of Damascus that left hundreds dead. In Turkey, Anadolu and the private DHA news agencies on Thursday quoted Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag as saying "it was determined after the autopsy that a chemical weapon was used." The Turkish Health Ministry said later that "according to the results of the first analysis, there were findings suggesting that the patients were exposed to chemical substance (sarin)." WHO experts took part in the autopsies in the Turkish city of Adana late Wednesday, Turkish media reported. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said it has "initiated contact" with Syrian authorities and its Technical Secretariat has been collecting and analyzing information about the allegations. "This is an ongoing investigation," it said. The area of Khan Sheikhoun is difficult to access, and as more time passes since the attack, it will be increasingly difficult to determine exactly what happened. ___ Ian Phillips contributed from Moscow. Associated Press writers Albert Aji in Damascus and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (Associated Press) Beirut Fri, April 7, 2017 The U.S. attack on a Syrian air base came after years of heated debate and deliberation in Washington over intervention in the bloody civil war. Chemical weapons have killed hundreds of people since the start of the conflict, with the U.N. blaming three attacks on the Syrian government and a fourth on the Islamic State group. One of the worst yet came Tuesday in rebel-held northern Idlib and killed dozens, including women and children. That attack prompted President Donald Trump, on day 77 of his presidency, to dramatically shift U.S. policy, with the first direct U.S. attack on the Syrian government. Trump blamed Syrian President Bashar Assad for the attack and called on the international community to join him in trying to end the bloodshed. A timeline of events in Syria leading up to Tuesday's attack: March 2011: Protests erupt in the city of Daraa over security forces' detention of a group of boys accused of painting anti-government graffiti on the walls of their school. On March 15, a protest is held in Damascus' Old City. On March 18, security forces open fire on a protest in Daraa, killing four people in what activists regard as the first deaths of the uprising. Demonstrations spread, as does the crackdown by President Bashar Assad's forces. (Read also: Pressure builds on Syria's Assad; US launches missiles) April 2011: Security forces raid a sit-in in Syria's third-largest city, Homs, where thousands of people tried to create the mood of Cairo's Tahrir Square, the epicenter of protests against Egypt's autocrat Hosni Mubarak. Aug. 18, 2011: President Barack Obama calls on Assad to resign and orders Syrian government assets frozen. Summer 2012: Fighting spreads to Aleppo, Syria's largest city and its former commercial capital. Aug. 20, 2012: Obama says the use of chemical weapons would be a "red line" that would change his calculus on intervening in the civil war and have "enormous consequences." March 19, 2013: The Syrian government and opposition trade accusations over a gas attack that killed some 26 people, including more than a dozen government soldiers, in the town of Khan al-Assal in northern Syria. A U.N. investigation later finds that sarin nerve gas was used, but does not identify a culprit. Aug. 21, 2013: Hundreds of people suffocate in rebel-held suburbs of the Syrian capital, with many suffering from convulsions, pinpoint pupils, and foaming at the mouth. U.N. investigators visit the sites and determine that ground-to-ground missiles loaded with sarin were fired on civilian areas while residents slept. The U.S. and others blame the Syrian government, the only party to the conflict known to have sarin gas. Aug. 31, 2013: Obama says he will go to Congress for authorization to carry out punitive strikes against the Syrian government, but appears to lack the necessary support in the legislature. Sept. 27, 2013: The U.N. Security Council orders Syria to account for and destroy its chemical weapons stockpile, following a surprise agreement between Washington and Moscow, averting U.S. strikes. The Security Council threatens to authorize the use of force in the event of non-compliance. Oct. 14, 2013: Syria becomes a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention, prohibiting it from producing, stockpiling or using chemical weapons. June 23, 2014: The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons says it has removed the last of the Syrian government's chemical weapons. Syrian opposition officials maintain that the government's stocks were not fully accounted for, and that it retained supplies. Sept. 23, 2014: The U.S. launches airstrikes on Islamic State group targets in Syria. Aug. 7, 2015: The U.N. Security Council authorizes the OPCW and U.N. investigators to probe reports of chemical weapons use in Syria, as reports circulate of repeated chlorine gas attacks by government forces against civilians in opposition-held areas. Chlorine gas, though not as toxic as nerve agents, can be classified as a chemical weapon depending on its use. Aug. 24, 2016: The joint OPCW-U.N. panel determines the Syrian government twice used helicopters to deploy chlorine gas against its opponents, in civilian areas in the northern Idlib province. A later report holds the government responsible for a third attack. The attacks occurred in 2014 and 2015. The panel also finds that the Islamic State group used mustard gas. Feb. 28, 2017: Russia, a stalwart ally of the Syrian government, and China veto a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing sanctions against the Syrian government for chemical weapons use. April 4, 2017: At least 58 people are killed in what doctors say could be a nerve gas attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun in the rebel-held Idlib province. Victims show signs of suffocation, convulsions, foaming at the mouth and pupil constriction. Witnesses say the attack was carried out by either Russian or Syrian Sukhoi jets. Moscow and Damascus deny responsibility. April 4, 2017: President Donald Trump issues a statement saying that the "heinous" actions of Assad's government are the direct result of Obama administration's "weakness and irresolution." April 5, 2017: Trump says Assad's government has "crossed a lot of lines" with the suspected chemical attack in Syria. April 6, 2017: The U.S. fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria Thursday night in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians, U.S. officials said. It was the first direct American assault on the Syrian government and Trump's most dramatic military order since becoming president. Trump said strike on Syria in the "vital national security interest" of the United States. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Nani Afrida (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, April 7, 2017 12:11 2041 a291276806121264c0bd211cde81f250 1 National Anambas-Islands,TNI,TNI-commander-Gatot-Nurmantyo,Indonesian-Military,fiber-optic-network,#Malaysia,Malaysia,#TNI Free The Indonesian Military (TNI) has blocked a submarine optical cable project being undertaken by a Malaysia-based communications company, PT Sacofa, because it considers it a violation of Indonesias sovereignty. TNI commander Gen. Gatot Nurmantyo inspected PT Sacofas servers and its fiber optic cables located in West Tarempa village, Siantan district, Anambas regency, Riau Islands, on Wednesday. He demanded the company shut down operations. Under Law No.17/1985 on the ratification of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea [UNCLOS], Indonesia gives opportunities to companies to carry out submarine optical cable installment. To do so, they must obtain permission from the country, Gatot said in Anambas. The military commander claimed that PT Sacofas permit expired in Nov, 26, 2016, but the company resumed operations on March 23. Gatot said the companys project must be halted as it would endanger Indonesias security system. The fiber optic cables and servers will be directly connected to a satellite. If more devices are added to the system, the technology will sense all vibrations from sea surface or submarines, Gatot said. Previously the Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Ministry forbad PT Sacofa from resuming the project, alleging it would make an impact on Indonesias sovereignty. (ebf) Stockholm,Apr 7 (IBNS): Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday condemned the attack in central Stockholm area of Sweden which killed at least three people. "We condemn the attack in Stockholm. My thoughts are with the families of the deceased & prayers with those injured. @SwedishPM," Modi tweeted. "India stands firmly with the people of Sweden in this hour of grief. @SwedishPM," he said. Joining the lists of recent attacks in various parts of the world, a truck with high speed drove into the crowd in the streets of central Stockholm leading to the death of at least 3 people and injuring several others, on Friday, media reports. Police have cordoned the area where the truck entered and led to the casualties. The Swedish Parliament was locked down following the incident, which is referred to as a terrorist attack. "Sweden has been attacked. Everything indicates an act of terror," Swedish PM Stefan Lofven was quoted as saying by The Local. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, April 7, 2017 13:28 2041 a291276806121264c0bd211cde82212a 1 National bribery,bribery-case,National-Police,national-police-chief,Tito-Karnavian,#TitoKarnavian Free National Police chief Gen. Tito Karnavian has said he will impose serious punishments on 15 arrested South Sumatra Police officers if they are found guilty of having extorted money from people applying to be recruits in the province. If it is proven that they have violated the code of ethics, I want them to be fired, Tito told journalists on Friday. As reported earlier, 15 South Sumatra Police personnel were accused of having committed extortion worth about Rp 4.7 billion (US$352,562) in the recruitment of new members for the provincial police command from 2015 to 2016. Eight of them have been sent to Jakarta for further investigation. (Read also: South Sumatra police officers implicated in bribery undergo further investigation) National Police spokesperson Brig. Gen. Rikwanto said on Wednesday that the polices internal affairs division (Propam) was still gathering evidence from documents connected to the candidate selection process. Rikwanto also said it was hoped the polices serious investigation of the extortion case would teach a lesson and provide shock therapy to all officers who handled National Police candidate recruitment so they would never take advantage of the process. (hol/ebf) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Vivian Salama and Julie Pace (Associated Press) Palm Beach, Fla. Fri, April 7, 2017 President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping opened their high-stakes summit at Trump's Florida beach resort Thursday, with the urgent threat of North Korea's nuclear ambitions and tensions over trade on the agenda for the first meeting between the leaders of the world's two largest economies. Trump and first lady Melania Trump greeted Xi and his wife at the Mar-a-Lago estate before making their way to dinner. The meeting kicked off amid suggestions the Trump administration was considering military action against Syria in response to a chemical weapons attack that killed more than 80 people. The president pointed to the crisis in North Korea as a top priority in the meetings with Xi, telling reporters on Air Force One on his way to Florida on Thursday that he thinks China will "want to be stepping up" in trying to deter North Korea's nuclear ambitions. Still, Trump appeared lighthearted as he greeted Xi, gesturing and pointing to journalists as they tussled to get a shot of the two leaders together for the first time. Ahead of the dinner, Trump said he and Xi already had had a long discussion and had "developed a friendship," and then joked, "I have gotten nothing, absolutely nothing." The White House said the location was selected to give the two days of discussions a more relaxed feel. A number of Trump's top advisers were in attendance, including his daughter, Ivanka Trump, and son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Outside the dining room where the two delegations gathered for a lavish dinner, Mar-a-Lago club members packed the patio for dinner. While Trump would not say what he wants China to do specifically with regard to North Korea, he suggested there was a link between "terrible" trade agreements the US has made with China and Pyongyang's provocations. He says the two issues "really do mix." The president has said that if China doesn't exert more pressure on North Korea, the US will act alone. Both as a candidate and president, Trump has taken an aggressive posture toward China, labeling Beijing a "tremendous problem" and arguing that lopsided trade deals with China shortchange American businesses and workers. Last week, the president predicted in a tweet that his meeting with Xi would be "very difficult." The White House has downplayed expectations for a breakthrough on issues like trade and tariffs, insisting that the 24-hour summit is mostly an introductory meeting for the two leaders. And within Trump's administration, there are still divisions over how to approach China. According to US and foreign officials, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and economic adviser Gary Cohn are leading the charge for boosting ties and exploring the potential for greater economic cooperation. But economic adviser Peter Navarro, author of the book "Death by China: Confronting the Dragon a Global Call to Action," prefers trying to isolate China, in keeping with Trump's "America First" mantra. Patrick Cronin, a China expert with the Center for a New American Security, said the Trump administration does not have "a reconciled trade and economic policy yet, and the differing views on China in the White House underscore that." Ahead of the summit, Trump signed a pair of executive orders focused on reducing the US trade deficit. The moves appeared to be a shot at China, which accounted for the vast bulk $347 billion of last year's $502 billion trade deficit. Chinese exports to the US totaled some $388.1 billion last year. Anthony Ruggiero, an East Asia expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said China may be more willing to accommodate Trump on trade and economic issues than on regional security issues, including North Korea. Xi, a shrewd political operator, is unlikely to want to rock the boat ahead of a Communist Party conclave later this year that will install new leadership. Xi is also expected to seek assurances that Trump will not interfere in the territorial dispute over the South China Sea or question the "One China" policy by reaching out to Taiwan's leader again, as he did during the transition. The move infuriated Beijing, leading Trump to eventually reiterate his commitment to the decades-old policy. Previous White Houses have held China accountable for its human rights record, something this administration has made very little mention of, whether in China or elsewhere. It also remains to be seen whether the Obama administration's deal with Beijing to curb Chinese cybertheft for economic gain and its hacking of US companies will be addressed. _ Follow Vivian Salama at http://twitter.com/vmsalama and Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC (**) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Edith M. Lederer (Associated Press) United Nations Fri, April 7, 2017 The Security Council on Thursday strongly condemned North Korea's latest ballistic missile launch and demanded a halt to all missile tests, stressing again that they violate UN sanctions and "are significantly increasing tension in the region and beyond." A press statement agreed to by all 15 members expresses "utmost concern" at North Korea's "highly destabilizing behavior and flagrant and provocative defiance of the Security Council" by conducting the latest launch less than three weeks after the previous test. Council members said they "deplore" all North Korean ballistic missile activity, stressing that it contributes to the country's development of nuclear weapons delivery systems and diverts resources from the needs of its people. Tensions have escalated over North Korean moves to accelerate its weapons development. The North conducted two nuclear tests and 24 ballistic missile tests last year, defying six Security Council sanctions resolutions banning any testing. The constant testing has deepened concern especially in nearby Japan and neighboring South Korea and also in Washington over fears that Pyongyang could soon develop a nuclear-armed missile capable of reaching the US mainland. A US official said Wednesday's missile test ended in failure when the rocket spun out of control and plunged into the ocean in a fiery crash. The council the failed test followed a missile launch on March 21 and two additional rounds of launches and an engine test in February and March. The council statement was issued hours before US President Donald Trump meets China's President Xi Jinping at his Florida resort, where North Korea will be at the top of the agenda. US Ambassador Nikki Haley said Monday that "the United States has seen China for 25 plus years say that they're concerned about North Korea, but we haven't seen them act like they're concerned about North Korea." "This administration wants to see them act, and I think they're going to pressure them to do that," she said. (**) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Lolita C. Baldor (Associated Press) Washington Fri, April 7, 2017 The United States fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria Thursday night in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians, US officials said. It was the first direct American assault on the Syrian government and Donald Trump's most dramatic military order since becoming president. The surprise strike marked a striking reversal for Trump, who warned as a candidate against the US getting pulled into the Syrian civil war, now in its seventh year. But the president appeared moved by the photos of children killed in the chemical attack, calling it a "disgrace to humanity" that crossed "a lot of lines." About 60 US Tomahawk missiles, fired from warships in the Mediterranean Sea, targeted an air base in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack that American officials believe Syrian government aircraft launched with a nerve agent, possibly sarin. The president did not announce the attacks in advance, though he and other national security officials ratcheted up their warnings to the Syrian government throughout the day Thursday. "I think what happened in Syria is one of the truly egregious crimes and shouldn't have happened and it shouldn't be allowed to happen," Trump told reporters traveling on Air Force One to Florida, where he was holding a two-day summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The strike came as Trump was hosting Xi in meetings focused in part on another pressing US security dilemma: North Korea's nuclear program. Trump's actions in Syria could signal to China that the new president isn't afraid of unilateral military steps. even if key nations like China are standing in the way. (**) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, April 7, 2017 13:49 2041 a291276806121264c0bd211cde824af6 1 National Pence,Joseph-R-Donovan,Joseph-R-Donovan-Jr,US,JusufKalla,jusuf-kalla,Jokowi,jokowidodo Free United States Ambassador to Indonesia Joseph R. Donovan Jr. has said the planned visit of US Vice President Michael R. Pence to Jakarta reflects the US governments continued regard of the strategic partnership the two countries have achieved. His engagement with Indonesian leaders will serve to strengthen our strategic partnership through discussions centered on deepening our economic engagement, boosting our cooperation on shared regional security priorities and increasing our people-to-people contact and exchanges, the US ambassador said in a statement on Friday. During the visit, Donovan said, Vice President Pence would meet with President Jokowi Jokowi Widodo, Vice President Jusuf Kalla and a number of senior ministers and other Indonesian government officials. Pence will also meet with senior ASEAN officials and diplomats and have the opportunity to learn about Indonesias religious diversity and tradition of interfaith tolerance from Indonesian faith leaders, he added. He will also engage with Indonesian and American business communities to listen to their concerns and better understand how we can expand and deepen our economic ties, said Donovan. The ambassador said as the second and third largest democracies in the world, US and Indonesia were natural partners. We share many of the same values, as well as a desire to create greater economic opportunity for our citizens, Donovan said. We hope that the vice presidents visit will further cement our shared goal of mutual prosperity for the citizens of both countries and allow us to work in tandem to help ensure a secure and stable Asia-Pacific region. (ebf) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Deviana Wijaya Dewi (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Sat, April 8 2017 April 7 marks the founding day of the World Health Organization (WHO), which is celebrated as World Health Day. This years theme is Depression: Lets talk, highlighting the importance of mental health by encouraging people with depression across the world to seek and get help. The WHO states depression is characterized by feelings of sadness or tiredness, loss of interest or pleasure, feelings of guilt or low self-worth, disrupted sleep or appetite, and poor concentration for 14 days or longer and today it is estimated that more than 300 million people are currently living with depression. The WHO has found a strong association between depression and other non-communicable disorders and diseases such as diabetes and heart disease, placing depression as the leading cause of ill health and disability worldwide. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Liza Yosephine (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Sat, April 8 2017 Indonesia has raised concerns about the United States recent unilateral air strike on Syria, which was launched on US President Donald Trumps order and has sparked mixed international reactions. The Pentagon hit Shayrat Airfield in Syria with 59 Tomahawk missiles early Friday morning, local time, as a response to the Syrian governments chemical weapons attack in Khan Sheikhoun, the US Defense Department said on its website. In the statement, Trump said the targeted military strike was in the vital national security interest of the US to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Agnes Anya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Sat, April 8 2017 As the air in Greater Jakarta has become increasingly polluted, commuters need more than a regular disposable mask to avoid being exposed to hazardous air pollutants, which could lead to premature death, experts say. Greenpeace Indonesia has called on commuters to start wearing N95 masks, which are commonly used for medical purposes, after the environmental organization found that the level of air pollutant PM 2.5 in Greater Jakarta was much higher than the safety threshold estimated by the World Health Organization (WHO). to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Kaweewit Kaewjinda (Associate Press) Bangkok Fri, April 7, 2017 Thailand's king signed the country's new military-backed constitution on Thursday, approving a charter that could see the ruling junta allow fresh elections but limit the authority of the politicians who eventually take office. King Vajiralongkorn Bodindradebayavarangkun endorsed the document in an elaborate ceremony at the Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall attended by senior members of the country's military government as well as foreign diplomats. It becomes the nation's 20th constitution since the absolute monarchy was abolished in 1932. The military junta, which seized control of the country in a coup nearly three years ago, has said the promulgation of the constitution will clear the way for new elections no later than November 2018, though it has repeatedly delayed previous promised poll dates. In a televised speech Thursday night, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said the government's timetable did not allow for an exact date for the elections to be set because of the need to pass several laws to allow polling to be held. "Once the elections are held and the new government is formed, this government will hand over its duties to the new government and will cease its duties," he said. An earlier version of the new charter was approved by voters in a public referendum last year, though campaigns against the document were outlawed by the junta, which still restricts freedom of speech and assembly in the country. The military government says the document is needed to move the country past more than a decade of political unrest and social division that been punctuated by two coups and multiple rounds of deadly street protests. Critics say the constitution drafted by a junta-appointed panel is undemocratic, will allow the military to keep its grip on power even after elections, and will ultimately deepen the country's divisions. They say the charter limits the power of voters by empowering unelected bodies, creating a fully appointed senate that includes military commanders, and neutering the authority of elected officials. "In addition to the military, the judiciary and other accountability-promoting agencies are less connected and accountable to the electorate because the upper chamber is now a military domain, no longer elected by the people," said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political science professor at Chulalongkorn University. He said Thursday's "major" ceremony meant the constitution "has a better chance of staying around longer than its predecessors, and therefore democratic aspirations in the charter will have to be expressed via amendments rather than a complete rewrite." The draft signed Thursday was modified after last year's referendum to give Vajiralongkorn more powers. The signing ceremony took place on Chakri Day, an annual holiday marking the establishment of the Chakri dynasty. Vajiralongkorn is the 10th king in the dynasty, having inherited the throne from his father, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who died in October. The new constitution will do little to reverse human rights problems that arose under military rule, London-based human rights group Amnesty International said. "Thailand's military government retains its carte blanche authority to rule by diktat until elections are held, and future governments will have free rein to restrict human rights on various vaguely defined grounds," said Champa Patel, the group's director for Southeast Asia and the Pacific. "The new constitution also keeps in place the full gamut of orders and decrees imposed by the military government since the 2014 coup, which have facilitated widespread human rights violations." Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, April 7, 2017 14:38 2041 a291276806121264c0bd211cde827b5f 1 News tourism,#tourism,travel,#travel,digital-tourism,tourist-village-homestay,air-accessibility,tourism-ministry-wonderful-Indonesia,Tourism-Ministry-Pesona-Indonesia Free Digital tourism, tourist village homestays and air accessibility have been revealed as the Tourism Ministry's top three priority programs this year. Regarding digital tourism, Tourism Minister Arief Yahya reportedly said that today's market had changed because of a change in travelers' lifestyles. "About 63 percent of travel service transactions were conducted online; if travel agents don't quickly adapt to digital, they could end up like wartel [public phone booths]," he said, adding that about 70 percent of foreign tourists also utilize digital media to search for and share travel-related matters. The ministry's digital tourism program will kick off with the launch of a marketplace platform named the Indonesia Tourism Exchange (ITX) that aims to offer transaction space for buyers and sellers like travel agents, accommodation providers and attractions. "Accessible via smartphone, customers can easily book a hotel, flight, homestay, or attraction across Indonesia." (Read also: Travel agents, airlines told to offer government's 10 tourist destinations) Meanwhile, the tourist village homestay program is part of the ministry's support for the government's 1 million houses program for low- and middle-income residents. It reportedly would contribute by developing 100,000 homestays with the tourist village concept by 2019. "We are set to build 20,000, 30,000 and 50,000 homestays in 2017, 2018 and 2019, respectively." Last year, the ministry held a tourist village homestay design competition from which the winners' ideas will be used as the design model for homestays in 10 priority destinations. As for air accessibility, about 80 percent of foreign tourists visited the archipelago via air transportation, thus the number of airline seats is key to reach the target of tourist arrivals. Arief said that the current availability of 19.5 million seats by Indonesian and foreign airlines was only enough to accommodate 12 million foreign tourists in 2016. (kes) New Delhi, Apr 7 (IBNS): Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, who is on a three day visit to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, laid the foundation stone for the Solar Power Plants of 17 MW capacity (Manglutan) and 8MW (Chidiyatapu), at Guptapara Village in South Andaman District on Friday. Later, at Car Nicobar, the Home Minister visited the Mus Church and laid wreath at the Memorial of Late Bishop John Richardson. He also visited the Tsunami Memorial and laid wreath there. The Home Minister thereafter inaugurated the new building of Senior Secondary School at Malacca village and interacted with the Captains of Tribal Council and other tribal leaders. Yesterday, upon his arrival at Port Blair, Rajnath Singh was accorded a warm welcome. On his arrival at the Veer Savarkar International Airport, the Home Minister was received by the Lt Governor, A&N Islands, Prof. Jagdish Mukhi, Member of Parliament, Bishnu Pada Ray, Chief Secretary, Anindo Majumdar and CINCAN, A&N Command, Vice Admiral Bimal Verma. Soon after his arrival, Rajnath Singh visited the National Memorial, Cellular Jail and paid tribute to the freedom fighters by placing a wreath at the Martyrs Column there. The Home Minister also visited the Veer Savarkar Cell in the Cellular Jail. Later in the evening, the Home Minister held a meeting with the Lt. Governor, Member of Parliament and Senior Officers of the A&N Administration at Raj Niwas. Important issues pertaining to the development of A&N Islands were discussed and status of implementation of various schemes and projects was reviewed during the meeting. The Home Minister directed the officials of Ministry of Home Affairs to take up important issues related to A&N Islands with the other Central Ministries for early solution of the issues. The Union Home Minister on Saturday is scheduled to visit Havelock Island. After returning from Havelock, Rajnath Singh will meet various social groups at Raj Niwas before returning New Delhi. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Fri, April 7, 2017 13:02 2041 a291276806121264c0bd211cde8206a4 1 News Tidore-Islands,North-Maluku,Juanga-Parade,parade,#parade,festival,#festival,tourism,#tourism,Tidore-Festival,tourism-ministry-wonderful-Indonesia,Tourism-Ministry-Pesona-Indonesia Free The islands of the Tidore in North Maluku, home to maritime attractions and examples of heritage connected to the Dutch occupation, are set to host a boat parade on April 10. "The Juanga Parade will be very interesting for tourists; we celebrate it to commemorate the bravery of Tidore Sultanate's Juanga armada led by Sultan Nuku when fighting against foreign colonizers," said Sultan Tidore Husain Sjah during the event to launch the Tidore Festival in Jakarta on Wednesday. According to Tidore history, the sultanate's resistance against the Dutch East Indies Company in the 16th century was sparked by the firm's efforts to dominate the clove trade in the region. Around 100 Juanga boats are to participate in the event, circling the territories of the Tidore and Ternate sultanates. "All the Juanga [boats] are owned by the Tidore people." (Read also: Theater show about Maluku's Run Island to be performed in New York) In addition to circling the region, the participants will conduct a napak tilas (commemoration) of the Tidore War, a ritual known as Lufu Kie. "Through this parade, we want to revive the fighting spirit of the Tidore sultanate according to the present context, which of course is to make it a tourist attraction," said Husain. The parade will be part of the two-day Tidore Festival that ends on April 11. Up to 15,800 tourists visited the Tidore Islands in 2016. For this year, the city administration has set a target to attract at least 20,500 visitors. (kes) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Gurveen Kaur (The Straits Times/Asia News Network) Fri, April 7, 2017 13:37 2041 a291276806121264c0bd211cde822a1d 2 News yacht,yachts,#yacht,Singapore-Yacht-Show,Singapore,#singapore Free The Singapore Yacht Show returns for its seventh edition this year with its largest vessel on display to date - the 77m-long Silver Fast by Australian builder SilverYachts. It can take its passengers from Australia to Europe in just 21 days with a single fuel stop and accommodates 18 guests in seven en suite cabins and a dedicated owner's apartment. Its price tag: 79.5 million (US$84.7 million). Entry to the show costs from S$50 (US$35.65) a person for a single-day ticket. Visitors can view and perhaps step aboard the Silver Fast and 11 other superyachts among the more than 90 yachts featured this year. The show, at ONE15 Marina Club in Sentosa Cove, opened yesterday and will run till Sunday. Superyachts are vessels that measure more than 24m in length. Among the superyachts at the show is the Ocean Emerald, which was featured in the 2015 remake of the 1991 cult action flick Point Break. The 41m-long Ocean Emerald stands out with its distinctive curved design courtesy of famed British architect Norman Foster, the man behind London's landmark The Gherkin tower. The smaller vessels are open to all visitors. But those who want to step into the superyachts have to make an appointment - access is at the discretion of the yacht owner or representative. (Read also: Govt to allow yacht, private jet visits to boost tourism) Visitors to the show will also be the first in the world to marvel at some boats as they make their global debut. These include the tri-deck catamaran Charley by Australian yard Echo Yachts. The 51m-long support vessel can carry a fleet of up to 10 watercraft and has enough space for a piano lounge and touch-and-go helicopter pad. The show is not just all about the sailing vessels. An array of yacht toys such as the JetSurf, a motorized surboard and paddleboards will be available for visitors to try out. Children may play at luxury yacht Lady Quikglow, where inflatable slides and a climbing wall have been set up on deck by FunAir, a company specializing in inflatable yacht toys. Visitors can also dive to the bottom of the ocean or try their hand at sailing without getting wet, thanks to virtual-reality technology that will be exhibited at Dutch submersible maker U Boat Worx and virtual-reality firm Ignite VR. Mr Andy Treadwell, founder and chief executive officer of the Singapore Yacht Show, has big dreams to make South-east Asia a destination for superyachts in the next three years. "The Singapore Yacht Show is the only event in Asia that can introduce newcomers and experienced boaters alike to the whole spectrum of the yachting and boating lifestyle, from A to Z," he says. Topics : This article appeared on The Straits Times newspaper website, which is a member of Asia News Network and a media partner of The Jakarta Post Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Rumy Doo (The Korea Herald/Asia News Network) Montreux, Switzerland Fri, April 7, 2017 Park Sung-eun is a Korean student studying hotel management in Neuchatel, a quaint Swiss town whose medieval architecture has been untouched for centuries by war or renovation. She wakes up in a dorm room decorated like a hotel room, located within the International Hotel and Tourism Training Institute. I love talking to people, she said, which is why Park wanted to pursue an interactive profession in a field where she could at once hone her foreign language skills and social manners. Since high school, the 20-year-old aspiring hotelier has been less invested in academics than in gaining the practical skills necessary for the service industry. Certain about her own personality and interests, she decided to forgo the traditional college route in Korea and ventured to the Swiss school. Among the plethora of private schools in Switzerland, a handful of boarding institutions near the city of Montreux have a long tradition of specializing in hospitality -- a field which ranges from fine dining and luxury branding to hotel management and finances. In five schools under the arm of the Swiss Education Group, students pursue hospitality studies in magnificent buildings that were once hotels. At these institutions, a lobby and reception area replace what would normally be the central lawn on a university campus; students go about classes poised in uniforms; and a stunning view of the Swiss lakes is visible through the windows. (Read also: Video gaming becomes a scholarship sport at University of Utah) Students participate in the International Recruitment Forum, a forum for hospitality industry executives and students, on March 13 in Montreux.(Swiss Education Group via The Korea Herald/File) Students participate in the International Recruitment Forum, a forum for hospitality industry executives and students, on March 13 in Montreux. (Swiss Education Group via The Korea Herald/File) During their first year, all students acquire the basics of fine dining. We learn how to dress tables, which fork goes where, about wines and cheeses and how to serve courses, Park explained. Real-life experience and applicable skills are key: internships, along with learning a new language, are mandatory. Apart from classes, tea time and cocktail hour are regularly held to host guests, often from multiple countries. Students mingle and approach strangers with ease. Some of us are shy by nature, but here we learn naturally to open up, said Veronika Dvoretskaya, a Russian student studying at Hotel Institute Montreux, where graduates obtain dual European and American university degrees. In hospitality, soft skills are necessary to respond to people of all nationalities, according to SEGs CEO Florent Rondez. After mastering the practical, in their second and third years, the students move onto theory in management, finances, marketing, and other studies necessary in executive-level hospitality. (Read also: Prasetiya Mulya offers undergraduate program in event management) Students gather at the lobby of Hotel Institute Montreux.(Swiss Education Group via The Korea Herald/File) Hotel Institute Montreux.(Hotel Institute Montreux via The Korea Herald/File) Enrollment statistics reflect the global hospitality trend, SEG officials say. Currently, some 69.2 percent of the student body of SEGs schools consist of pupils from the greater Asia and Pacific region, reflecting the tourism boom in the area. Of those, many hail from China, Korea and Taiwan. Asian students go into the hospitality industry for a number of reasons. Some have parents who run hotels and recommend the Swiss schools to their children, wanting their successors to be expertly trained. Others have no background in the business, but are passionate about specializing in the field. My final goal is to open up my own fine-dining restaurant in Seoul, after gaining experience in Europe, said Shin Dong-hwan, 21, a student at the Swiss Hotel Management School who has no family ties to the hospitality industry. Located on the mountainside of the village of Caux, the school is housed in a real-life castle built in 1902, the Caux Palace. One of our biggest projects is to organize a banquet at the end of the term, said Shin. Foreign emissaries and other prominent figures are invited to the castles event, entirely planned and executed by the students. We network, and were graded on the food, the interior, the schedule and so on. (Read also: Singaporean school named best university in Asia) Students at Swiss Education Group schools learn the basics of fine dining during their first year studies.(Swiss Education Group via The Korea Herald/File) What the students are here to learn, they explained, is the centuries-old Swiss tradition in the hotel business, which they believe sets a firm foundation for todays luxury services. And modern technology is another essential part of the education -- all students are given iPads upon admission, and study with e-books. The notion of hospitality has changed immensely throughout the years, said Jeroen Greven, academic director at SHMS. When Caux Palace was a hotel frequented by aristocrats decades ago, butlers, cooks and others who offered service were to be strictly out of the way. Now, employees are encouraged to engage with the clients, gather feedback and offer conversation. Graduates are not restricted to the hospitality sector in their job search, SEG officials stressed. Their studies being applicable in sectors that are increasingly becoming service-oriented to a private clientele, from banking to medicine to airlines, many branch out. Some launch their own businesses in niche hospitality areas such as destination weddings and education consultation. John Paul, the founder of a luxury concierge agency of the same name, says he welcomes SEG students who are both resourceful and creative. Speaking about an intern from an SEG school who used tech-savviness and people skills to snatch up reservations at a famously hard-to-book venue, Paul remarked, That kind of creativity is essential in service. This article appeared on The Korea Herald newspaper website, which is a member of Asia News Network and a media partner of The Jakarta Post Agudath Israel of America congratulates Neil Gorsuch upon his confirmation to serve as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. As we noted in our statement of support for his candidacy, Mr. Gorsuch has a stellar record as an outstanding jurist, and a keen appreciation of the bedrock principle of religious liberty. We believe Justice Gorsuch will be a worthy successor to the late Justice Antonin Scalia, and we look forward to him making a major contribution to American jurisprudence and law. There are, of course, many questions about the potential impact of the Trump administrations budget proposal on New York City. One project still moving forward is the multi-million dollar East River flood protection initiative. Earlier this week, city officials held a public hearing on the Lower East Side to gather feedback for the latest version of the plan. New York will soon submit an Action Plan Amendment to the federal government that will detail how a Community Development Block Grant awarded in 2014 will be spent. The revised proposal is now available online. You can submit comments through April 24. The East Side Coastal Resiliency Project will create a series of flood walls from Montgomery Street up to East 25th St. As part of the design, new recreational spaces will be created and connections between local communities and the East River will be improved. The federal government awarded $335 million for the project and the city has added its own funding, bringing the total to $767 million. Theres separate funding for flood protection below Montgomery Street. While the federal money has already been allocated, there are serious concerns about how the grant will be administered. This is because the Trump administration has proposed eliminating the Community Development Block Grant program. You can read the Action Plan Amendment here. There will be more opportunities to comment regarding the plan later this year. A land use (ULURP) hearing is expected at Community Board 3 this coming summer. Groundbreaking for the project is anticipated in the spring of 2019. A Lower East Side landlord has been arrested and indicted in an alleged mortgage fraud scheme. State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced yesterday that Dean Galasso faces multiple charges in connection with the financing of 43 Essex St., a tenement he purchased for $6.9 million in 2014. The building was previously owned by the Zerling family, which operated G&S Sporting Goods from the ground floor storefront for decades. Prosecutors say Galasso fraudulently obtained a $5 million mortgage for 43 Essex St. by submitting false mortgage documents to Investors Bank, including a falsified rent roll. The AG believes he forged residential leases to back up the false information contained in the rent roll. In a statement, Attorney General Scheniderman said, Bad landlords are now on notice: if you attempt to break the law, we will find you and prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law Our task force will continue to identify, investigate, and prosecute those who try to game the system. Charges faced by Galasso include grand larceny, forgery and falsifying business records. If convicted on all charges, he could be sentenced to as long as 25 years in prison. In a statement, City Council member Margaret Chin said, These felony charges should serve as a reminder to bad landlords in the Lower East Side, Chinatown, and throughout my Council District that fraud and tenant abuse come with serious consequences, including jail time. Authorities were first alerted to problems at 43 Essex St. by Asian Americans for Equality (AAFE) and Manhattan Legal Services. The non-profit organizations helped rent stabilized tenants take Galasso to court. They won a settlement for the tenants, who claimed harassment by Galasso and deplorable living conditions. As soon as Dean Galasso purchased 43 Essex he immediately began making life miserable for the buildings rent-regulated residents, said AAFE Executive Director Chris Kui. With (Thursdays) indictment it is now clear that Galasso had targeted the residents for eviction before he even purchased the building. This case shows the lengths that predators are willing to go to cash in on a hot neighborhood, all while destroying the lives of the people in it. The case was initially investigated by the joint city/state Tenant Harassment Prevention Task Force. Google maps Guwahati, Apr 7 (IBNS): A local court of Guwahati on Friday sent the arrested Special Superintendent of Police (CID) to two-day police custody, who allegedly leaked the information of the investigation process of the All Assam Students Union (AASU) office in Silapathar on March 6 through RTI. Earlier, the crime branch of Guwahati city police arrested SSP (CID) Dr N Rajamarthandan on Thursday night after confirming his involvement and violation of the government order. The Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM) of Kamrup (Metro) district had sent the top police cop to judicial custody after the crime branch produced him in the court. Earlier, the state government had suspended N Rajamarthandan after he provided investigation process information of the Silapathar case to the secretary of Nikhil Bharat Bangali Udbastu Samanvay Samiti (NIBBUSS) through RTI. The Assam government had already notified that, CID organization is exempted from providing information under RTI Act as per government notification no PLA.384/2005/54 dated March 8, 2006 and no details of investigation can be divulged to anyone without the permission of the competent court. Following leaking the investigation information, a case (311/2017) was registered against Rajamarthandan after a top official of CID had filed an FIR at Paltan Bazar. (Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath) Guwahati, Apr 7 (IBNS): Former Congress Minister Sumitra Doley on Friday joined BJP ahead of the by-poll in Dhemaji assembly constituency. Former minister and MLA Sumitra Doley joined the saffron party during a election meeting held at Dhemaji in presence of Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal and other state ministers. Meanwhile, Assam Congress unit president Ripun Bora said that, Sumitra Doley Patir has gone to the saffron party to survive from the Assam Public Service Commission (APSC)s cash-for-job scam after her name entitled with the scam. The by-poll to the Dhemaji assembly constituency will be held on April 9. BJP has fielded Mishing community leader Ranoj Pegu as its candidate in the by-election while Congress fielded Babul Sonowal as its candidate. (Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath) The United States has unleashed a barrage of cruise missiles on Syria which President Donald Trump has called in the vital national security interest. Heres everything you need to know: Whats happened? (Seaman Ford Williams/US Navy/PA) The US has launched dozens of cruise missiles at a Syrian government air base from where America says the Syrian military initiated a deadly chemical attack. About 60 US Tomahawk missiles hit the Shayrat air base south east of Homs. Its a small installation with two runways, where aircraft often take off to bomb targets in northern and central Syria. The US missiles struck at 3.45am on Friday, Syria time, and targeted the bases airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, American officials said. They were fired from two warships in the Mediterranean Sea in retaliation for Tuesdays deadly chemical attack that officials said used chlorine mixed with a nerve agent, possibly sarin. Why? (Alex Brandon/AP) Donald Trump said in a statement that the strike was to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. On Tuesday, the northern opposition-held town of Khan Sheikhoun was attacked, killing 80 people. Turkey said samples from the victims indicate they were exposed to sarin, a highly toxic nerve agent. The Syrian government maintains it did not use chemical weapons, instead blaming opposition fighters for stockpiling the chemicals. Similarly, Russias defence ministry said the toxic agents were released when a Syrian air strike hit a rebel chemical weapons arsenal and munitions factory. But British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said he had seen absolutely nothing to suggest the attack was carried out by anyone but the government of Syria. How many casualties are there? (MC3 (SW) Robert S. Price/US Depa/PA) Its thought to be five a Syrian official said the attack killed three soldiers and two civilians, while seven others were wounded. Talal Barazi, the governor of Homs province, said a fire raged at the air base for over an hour following the barrage of missiles. A Syrian opposition monitor said the attack killed four soldiers, including a general. How has the UK responded to the missile strike? (Jack Taylor/PA) Britain has backed the US missile strike as an appropriate response to Bashar Assad regimes barbaric chemical attack. A No 10 spokeswoman said: The UK Government fully supports the US action, which we believe was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, and is intended to deter further attacks. What about Russia? (Mikhail Klimentyev/AP) Russia condemned the attack, calling it an aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law. President Vladimir Putins spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said Putin believed the US had carried out the strikes under a far-fetched pretext. Russia has also said it is suspending a deal with the US to prevent mid-air incidents over Syria in response to the strike. And the media? (Stefan Rousseau/PA) Trump has received tentative support from one of his biggest critics in the US media, The New York Times. The paper, which has also been repeatedly criticised by Trump since he took office, published an opinion piece saying the president should be commended for the military action. Yesterday, I began writing a piece warning against hasty overreactions to the chemical attack in Idlib, Syria. Today, I find that I need not bother completing it. I could say that I saw this coming. The debate over Syria has, since the attack, taken on a sinister and familiar tone. Questions, posed by everyone from the media commentariat to public audiences, have ceased to be equivocal; no longer is it what should we do; last night, on Question Time, the panellists were asked what action should we take? Moreover, what action should we take against Assad? We have entered the territory of folly. Something must be done. This is something, therefore this must be done. Too many minds are made up, and too soon. The United States has launched 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airbase in al-Shayrat. This follows comments made by President Trump in recent days; he has said that the chemical attack had changed his view of Assad and his regime. Which it would and should, if it were proven that Assad and his regime were responsible for the attack. But it has not been proven. To say that the Assad regime is 'probably' responsible for the chemical attack in Idlib, a line taken by our own ambassador to the UN as recently as yesterday, is not the same thing as saying that the Assad regime is 'actually' responsible for the attack. Probability is not evidence, and the evidence is either lacking or denied to us. We have to hope that the US possesses indisputable proof that it has not shared either with the public or (it would seem) the UK government. Yet if it possessed such proof, why would it have demanded, at the UN, that the Assad regime provides flight logs for its military aircraft? Why would it have demanded that inspectors be allowed access to Syrian airfields? I think we can all agree that the response of both the Russian and Syrian regimes, which was to refuse these demands, was wrong and suspicious. But, again, why would the Trump administration seek to acquire information it already has? And if it does not possess indisputable proof, then it has launched a direct military attack on a country against which it has never, to my knowledge, formally declared war, and it has done so based on nothing more than an educated guess. We now await the Russian response. Boris Johnson will meet Vladmir Putins foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, on Monday; US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will meet his counterpart on Wednesday. Russia supports Assad, lending him planes and pilots and an undisclosed number of personnel on the ground. We must hope that none were present at the base targeted by US missiles. And, regardless, we must hope that the Russian response is more measured and rational than that of the US. This is not a position in which we should be comfortable. Belize is a coastal country with a rich history of Mayan civilization and European influence. Today it is still home to relics from the past, and ancient artefacts that overwhelm visitors with their history. Belize is well balanced in that for those who prefer relaxation to adventure, and sandy beaches and authentic Creole cuisine are staples of the country's culture. Whichever activity suits your interests, Belize is a welcoming place full of friendly people and opportunities to see awe-inspiring places. Where to go Begin in Northern Belize, where there is plenty to do - ranging from the wildlife and scenery along The New River, to Mayan regions waiting to be explored and tasty foods with Mestizo influences. If you want to avoid large crowds and become one with the earth, Northern Belize is a destination of nature and tranquillity. To the east of Northern Belize are the North Islands, which follow suit with a slow, relaxed pace of life where individuals are easy-going and the night life is lively. Here you can submerge yourself in the Caribbean Sea by scuba diving near the largest barrier reef in the Northern Hemisphere. For a good dish you will not have to go far, as the Central Coast is known for its meat pies, rice and beans, cowfoot soup and stewed chicken. To put the energy from these meals to use, hiking and exploring ancient Maya sites are popular activities. Belize City is also located in The Central Coast and serves as the cultural and business epicentre of Belize. Test the true adventurer in you in Western Belize, where you can go cave tubing, hiking, kayaking and horseback riding. In San Ignacio you will be able to find everything you will need to ensure a thrilling experience. Down the Southeast Coast you will find wildlife in national parks and in sanctuaries, as well as in the Caribbean Sea on whale or shark watching trips. The beaches here are also inviting for anyone who would like to lay back and soak up the sun. Mayan ruins in Belize In Southern Belize there are more ancient Maya sites to be discovered, as well as tons of natural wonders. Jungles contain ancient potteries and other artefacts from the history of a region often referred to as The Forgotten Land. What to do Grace your eyes on the Lamanai Maya temples On the New River, enjoy a boat ride from Orange Walk to the historical temples that tell the story of Belizes earliest human habitation and the European contact that came nearly 700 years later. During the boat ride you will see wildlife ranging from snail kites to morelets crocodile. Once at the temples, visit a museum containing ancient Mayan artefacts as well as the remnants of two Spanish churches dating from the 16th Century. A well-preserved mask of a Mayan ruler serves as a major attraction of Lamanai. Snorkel in the Belize Barrier Reef The Belize Barrier Reef is home to 500 fish, and over 100 coral species. Guided scuba diving tours are a great way to see the reef from a different perspective as well as to stimulate your senses in unfamiliar territory. Also in this region, about 43 miles off-shore, is the Great Blue Hole, which reaches 407 feet deep. The Discovery Channel has named this site number one on The 10 most amazing places on Earth. The clear blue water here allows for clear visibility of stalactites and sharks. When visiting Belize, this location should be a must on your list of places to see. The Blue Hole Dabble in Creole and Garifuna cuisine in the Central Coast To immerse yourself in further culture while exploring Belize, try the authentic cuisine of Central Coast by visiting Innie's restaurant in Hopkins, or Chef Rob's Gourmet Cafe. Innie's is a relaxing joint where drummers enhance the scene with soothing sounds, children dance to the beat and Garifuna foods, including a variety of fish, are served. Chef Rob's Gourmet Cafe is another welcoming option, with pork and fish dishes that are sure to make your mouth water. With ocean-side dining and a host of respectful and friendly servers, you are sure to feel very comfortable as you enjoy Creole cooking. Spelunk in Western Belize After you have had your fill of food and have spent some time enjoying the local hospitality in the Central Coast, pop over to Western Belize for an exhilarating experience exploring the complex cave systems by kayak, foot, or another more adventurous way that spelunking might offer. The Cayo District is a great place to tour caves, including Barton Creek Cave, Chechum Ha and Actun Tunichil Muknal. See the worlds first wildlife sanctuary for jaguars Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary provides 150 miles of preserved wilderness and is home to a healthy population of jaguar, puma, margay, brocket deer, otter and 300 species of birds. There are several trails ranging in difficulty that can be walked to explore the sanctuary. During the rainy season of June and July wildlife can be seen at its highest activity level, whilst in December on cool and cloudy days the most birds can be observed. Finally, enjoy a drink in Southern Belize Have a local drink, perhaps a seaweed shake consisting of dried seaweed, condensed milk, cinnamon and ice. At Barefoot Bar, located on the beach in Placencia, you will find live music, fire dancing, and inexpensive rum. Stay here all throughout the night and contemplate your journey under the moon before bringing your visit to a close. On talkholiday.com, the social network for super travellers, you can plan and book your trips, explore destinations and download free travel guides. Socialise and connect with locals and people like you. Stay safe by using the free Crisis Vault enabling the storage of your essential travel and personal information. With Master of None returning to Netflix on Friday May 12th, the trailer shows us Aziz Ansari blissfully traipsing through the Italian countryside before returning to New York. The new trailer features Dev chilling out, driving mopeds through the beautiful Italian countryside, going on numerous dates (looking disappointed after each of them), and sightseeing, all until he has to go back and face everything that's waiting for him in New York. John Legend playing piano also makes an appearance. The first season of the Netflix exclusive show, created by Ansari along with Alan Yang, tells the story of the personal and professional life of Dev, a 30-year-old actor in New York. According to the official synopsis on Netflix, after travelling abroad, Dev returns 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." Season 2 will be released to Netflix on Friday May 12th. 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Namun jangan khawatir, disini sebagai situs slot gacor MGS88 kami akan memberikan penjelasan lengkap mengenai tentang istilah yang ada di RTP SLOT dibawah ini. New York, Apr 7(Just Earth News): The United Nations Security Council on Thursday strongly condemned the latest ballistic missile launch by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), calling it ain grave violationa of the country's international obligations under six of the body's resolutions passed between 2007 and 2017. In a press statement, the 15 members said that they were concerned about DPRK's highly destabilizing behaviour and flagrant and provocative defiance of the Security Council following the 4 April launch. The members of the Security Council demanded that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea shall immediately refrain from further actions in violation of the relevant Security Council resolutions and comply fully with its obligations under these resolutions, according to the statement. The latest launch comes less than three weeks after the previous launch on 21 March, and two additional rounds of launches and an engine test in February and March 2017. Such activities contribute to the development of nuclear weapons delivery syste and are significantly increasing tension in the region and beyond, the members cautioned. They further regretted that the country is diverting resources to the pursuit of ballistic missiles while the country's citizens have great unmet needs. Also in the statement, the Council called on all UN Member States to redouble their efforts to implement fully the measures imposed on the DPRK by the Council. These include, for example, limiting the number of bank accounts held by diplomatic missions and consular posts within their respective territories, and suspending scientific and technical cooperation with persons or groups officially sponsored by or representing DPRK. The Council also emphasized the vital importance of DPRK showing sincere commitment to denuclearization, and expressed its own commitment to a peaceful, diplomatic and political solution to the situation. UN Photo/JC McIlwaine (file) Source: www.justearthnews.com New York, Apr 7(Just Earth News): Recognizing the importance of micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises in achieving the new global development goals, the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday designated 27 June as International Day for those actors. In a resolution adopted without a vote, the 193-member body also invited all stakeholders, including Member States, UN entities and civil society organizations, to observe the Day and raise public awareness of their contribution to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which the Assembly adopted in September 2015. The resolution was introduced by the delegation of Argentina, with its representative stating that more than 95 per cent of enterprises in the world are micro-, small- and medium-sized and they account for about 70 per cent of private sector employment. These enterprises can in fact become the engines that sustain growth for long-term development in developing countries, the representative said, thanking the contribution made by the International Council for Small Business (ICSB) to the creation of the Day. ICSB held its 71st Annual World Conference here at United Nations last year, in which authorities from over 55 countries participated. In that occasion, ICSB made a declaration about the urgent need to have a day to recognize the important role of micro, small, and medium enterprises in the development of economies as a whole. Photo: Visual News Associates/World Bank Source: www.justearthnews.com New York, Apr 7(Just Earth News): The United Nations emergency food agency resumed rations this month to refugees in Kenya's Dadaab and Kakuma camps, but cautioned that there is not enough funding to also provide cash transfers through the summer. Each month, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) provides each refugee with a mix of food items cereals, pulses, vegetable oil, and nutrient-enriched flour and cash, sent through mobile telephones, allowing refugees to buy food products of their choice from local markets. We are pleased to announce that can resume full rations for the refugees thanks to new donor contributions, said Annalisa Conte, WFP's Country Director for Kenya. However, we are urging our donors to continue making new resources available to enable us to carry on providing this much-needed food assistance for 420,000 people. WFP has said that was able to restore the full food ration for all refugees from April to July. However, the funding currently available for cash transfers which make up 30 percent of the refugees' food assistance will last only until May. This is already a boost from last year, when a lack of funds forced WFP to cut food rations in the camps by 50 per cent, potentially endangering refugees' nutrition and health. Dadaab is the world's largest refugee camp, bordering near Somalia, while Kakuma takes in mostly Sudanese refugees, bordering near South Sudan and Uganda. Both camps are run by the Kenyan Government. Photo: Luca Catalano Gonzaga Source: www.justearthnews.com New York, Apr 7(Just Earth News): Host communities and aid agencies in Uganda are struggling to feed and shelter new refugees who have been displaced following a spike in violence in parts of neighbouring South Sudan's Eastern Equatoria province, the United Nations refugee agency said on Friday. According to estimates, some 6,000 newly displaced have arrived in Lamwo district (northern Uganda) since Monday, after an attack on the town of Pajok, some 15 kilometres (about 9.5 miles) across the border, and there are fears that number could rise as fighting is reported in the bordering towns of Magwi and Oboo. Describing the incident in Pajok as a horrible attack, Babar Baloch, a spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) told journalists at a regular media briefing in Geneva that refugees claimed that the town came under an indiscriminate attack by the South Sudan armed forces. [They] reported witnessing their loved ones shot dead at a close range, with many arrested or slaughtered, including children. Families fled in different directions; the elderly and disabled who could not run were shot dead, he added. Furthermore, there are reports that many people are still hiding in the bush trying to find their way to safety and that their homes and properties were looted and burned. Main roads out of the town are also reportedly blocked by armed groups, noted the UNHCR spokesperson. UNHCR staff in northern Uganda are working to help women, children, elderly, and the disabled who are in dire need of immediate humanitarian assistance and trying to provide them with food, shelter, water and medical care but are reporting severe shortage of resources. This January, in light of the worsening crisis in the world's youngest nation, the funding appeal for the 'South Sudan Situation' that includes support for Uganda, Ethiopia, Sudan, Kenya, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic as well as South Sudan was revised to nearly $782 million, up nearly $298 million (61 per cent) from the original appeal. However, it is only 11 per cent funded. Uganda currently hosts more than 832,000 refugees from South Sudan and its approach in dealing with refugees has been hailed as the most progressive, promoting self-reliance of refugees and their hosts, but the chronic under-funding is putting such relief activities at risk. Photo: UNHCR/David Azia Source: www.justearthnews.com Images: twitter.com/DeptofDefense Washington, Apr 7 (IBNS): The US government on Thursday launched at least 59 Tomahawk Missiles at the Syrian military airbase, reports said. This is the first ever direct US attack on the Syrian government in six years. Confirming the news, a statement from Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis read: "The strike was conducted using Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles (TLAMs) launched from the destroyers USS Porter and USS Ross in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. A total of 59 TLAMs targeted aircraft, hardened aircraft shelters, petroleum and logistical storage, ammunition supply bunkers, air defense systems, and radars. As always, the U.S. took extraordinary measures to avoid civilian casualties and to comply with the Law of Armed Conflict. Every precaution was taken to execute this strike with minimal risk to personnel at the airfield. The strike was a proportional response to Assad's heinous act. Shayrat Airfield was used to store chemical weapons and Syrian air forces. The U.S. intelligence community assesses that aircraft from Shayrat conducted the chemical weapons attack on April 4. The strike was intended to deter the regime from using chemical weapons again. Russian forces were notified in advance of the strike using the established deconfliction line. U.S. military planners took precautions to minimize risk to Russian or Syrian personnel located at the airfield. We are assessing the results of the strike. Initial indications are that this strike has severely damaged or destroyed Syrian aircraft and support infrastructure and equipment at Shayrat Airfield, reducing the Syrian Government's ability to deliver chemical weapons. The use of chemical weapons against innocent people will not be tolerated." US President Donald Trump, who ordered the strikes, said, "On Tuesday, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad launched a horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians using a deadly nerve agent. Assad choked out the lives of innocent men, women and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this barbaric attack. No child of god should ever suffer such horror. Tonight I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched. It's in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the chemical weapons convention, and ignored the urging of the UN security council. Years of previous attempts at changing Assads behaviour have all failed. As a result the refugee crisis continues to deepen and the region continues to destabilise, threatening the United States and its allies. Tonight I call on all civilised nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria, and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types. We ask for gods wisdom as we face the challenge of our very troubled world. We pray for the lives of the wounded and for the souls of those who have passed. And we hope that as long as America stands for justice that peace and harmony will in the end prevail. Goodnight and god bless America and the entire world." Meanwhile, the US action received praise from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said, "President Trump sent a strong and clear message...Israel fully supports President Trump's decision." South Dakota gubernatorial candidates hold rallies ahead of Election Day Throughout campaign rallies in the final week before Election Day, Gov. Kristi Noem and Rep. Jamie Smith spoke to their base and encouraged others to get out the vote. "Im a firm believer in not being greedy and giving what you can when you can." We hear a lot about Grinnells commitment to social responsibility. Its plastered all over the Colleges website and the glossy brochures it sends out every fall. But what does that commitment look like in practice? Last October, UGSDW (Union of Grinnell Student Dining Workers) signed a contract with the College, raising student staff wages in the dining hall from $8.50 to $9.25 per hour. The College also decided to raise wages for workers at the Spencer Grill and Catering. But it left some workers out. There are about a dozen students from Grinnell High School who work in the dining hall. They do the same kind of work as their college-aged counterparts, and often have more experience and work more hours per week. But they have been left out to dry by the College administration, which refuses to pay them the contract-mandated higher wage. When UGSDW found out about the issue, we immediately filed a grievance with the College, following a process we agreed on to resolve disputes. However, the College maintained that these students were not covered and would not receive the pay we supported. We then presented the case to the College for binding arbitration, where a panel of SGA officers and faculty members would hold a hearing and make a final decision. The College refused. Their refusal was a blatant repudiation of the contract and a shameful attempt to dodge the issue. If they are so certain that they are right, what is there to fear from a panel of impartial arbitrators? At this point, the union had little choice but to bring the issue before the National Labor Relations Board, a federal government agency. The National Labor Relations Board has appointed an agent to investigate the claim and decide whether to bring formal charges against the College. Regardless of the outcome of the federal investigation, the College retains a legal and moral obligation to pay high school students a fair wage. These students work the same shifts and have the same duties as we do, but the College should not pay them less for their work. What more, the College refuses even to discuss the issue. Grinnellits simple. If you truly care about social responsibility, stop cheating your workers and start following the rules. Quinn Ercolani 20 UGSDW Treasurer ercolani@grinnell.edu By Max Fenton fentonma@grinnell.edu The English Franciscan friar William of Ockham was a titanic philosophical figure in the fourteenth century and involved himself in the raging political and theological debates of his time. Despite his significant contributions to Catholic theology and medieval thought, he is most commonly remembered for the problem-solving method of Occams Razor. Its basic principle is that the simplest, least assumptive explanation for a particular occurrence is most likely to be true. Inversely, the more assumptions one must make, the less likely something is to be true. Though most attribute the Razor as a scientific heuristic, it remains a good general rule in everyday logic when seeking to explain a particular event or phenomenon. Nevertheless, people often choose to ignore inconvenient simple truths for convoluted, yet comforting, assumptions. Our increasingly shambolic political life exemplifies this in modern society. Though a short two-and-a-half months into the Trump presidency, it appears as if American politics has become its most disorganized in recent memory. The simultaneous explosion of domestic scandal and international crisis, coupled with the relative ineptitude of this administration, has left many pondering how we ever got here in the first place. Democrats lose sleep wondering how the former Secretary of State could lose to a man that once received a Stone Cold Stunner from the wrestler Steve Austin himself. And yet, we are here. The initial shock of Nov 9 continues to reverberate throughout politics and has manifested itself in diverse reactions. The Democrats dark night left many clamoring for a comforting but complex explanation one that removes any risk of their party being at fault. The indignant have taken to social media to express their rage, railing against Donald Trump and anyone who dares to criticize the Democratic Partys tactics in 2016. This cadre defends Hillary Clinton both from real attacks by Republicans as well as from left-leaning journalists who provide meaningful, constructive criticism of the Democratic Party. The arguments of these pro-Clinton Twitter militants boil down to a few key points: first, the Clinton campaign is sacrosanct and blameless for its loss in 2016. Rather, the Russians interference solely gave Trump an advantage in the race. Second, any criticism of Hillary Clinton or her campaign makes the critic either divisive or a Kremlin shill. The Twitter militant immaturely makes these connections. Some are so talented that they have proven that the Kremlin has spooky kompromat on everyone from Bernie Sanders to journalist Matt Taibbi. (By the way, I categorically deny any connections with the Kremlin). Finally, all information related to the Russia story must be true, because its so obvious considering what has already been insinuated and reported by the Twitter echo chamber. Not only is this line of argument fundamentally contrived, but it replaces inconvenient facts with as-yet unproven assumptions about the 2016 race. While the links between Trump and Russia seem extensive, we should sort out facts from assumptions. Occams Razor is of paramount importance in sifting truth from fiction when looking at the 2016 race. Though investigations are ongoing, and though theres a lot of smoke, no fire has yet been found. Proof of Russian collusion with Trump to interfere in the election has yet to be found. But many Democrats act as though it is a done deal, demanding Trump resign over the Russia scandal, rather than the multiple other under-reported scandals in his administration thus far. Not only is it intellectually dishonest to base factual arguments solely on unproven assumption, but it is a dangerous game for the Democratic Party. In failing to recognize the Clinton campaigns shortcomings in favor of a mythology about as-yet unproven collusion with Russia, Democrats are ignoring the political realities that caused their defeat. At the end of the day, what we must use to explain the Democrats stunning loss are often uncomfortable facts. The Clinton campaigns disorganization in Michigan and other Blue Wall states cannot be denied. Nor can the Democratic Partys failure to reach to out white working class voters. Nor should FBI Director James Comey be used as a scapegoat. Instead of owning up to these real failings and political circumstances, it seems that many Democrats would rather blame Russia than update their strategy for the better. Ultimately, political discourse needs a shave from Occams Razor for its own good. If the Democrats hope to bounce back, they need to learn from facts instead of placating themselves with unproven assumptions. By Megan Tcheng tchengme@grinnell.edu Two members of this years graduating class, Oleksandr Sasha Kuzura 17 and Alejandra Ale Rodriguez Wheelock 17, have been selected as recipients of the prestigious Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. As part of their award, Watson Fellows receive a 30,000 dollar to travel abroad and pursue an independently designed academic project. During the yearlong span of their fellowship, the students will live abroad, immerse themselves in local communities and engage in their personal research topics on a global scale. During his fellowship, Kuzura plans to travel to Thailand, Peru, India and Bosnia to explore the applications of shoestring engineering across a range of cultures. Kuzura hopes to identify the different ways that folk engineers respond to the limited resources made available to them through the application of endless ingenuity, innovation and shared knowledge. Kuzuras project was inspired by his two grandfathers, who are both engineers, and the summers he spent with them in Ukraine as a child. Specifically, Kuzura drew comparisons between their approaches to engineering and those exposed to him in college. As a physics major at Grinnell and a student in the 32 engineering program with Dartmouth College, Kuzura is distinctly aware of the different ways attitudes towards engineering have been shaped by culture and social biases. One of them built a house in two weeks, with both of his hands, all by himself, Kurzura said of his grandfather. When I started reflecting on engineering in the West and then the way things are done where I grew up, I was struck by how incredible [folk engineering] is. Here, we have all of these pre-fab houses and hyper-technological advancements but do we really need all of that? During his yearlong exploration into community engineering practices, Kuzura plans to interview locals, observe their engineering practices and directly work alongside them in their various projects. Reflecting on his upcoming travels, Kuzura emphasized the personal responsibility he feels over his Watson Fellowship project. A year of time is significant its huge. And when were given an opportunity like this, its our responsibility to use it for all its worth. Im hoping that Ill have the self-awareness to know that Im living the year to its full potential, Kuzura said. In contrast to Kuzura, Rodriguez Wheelock, an international student from Guatemala, plans to spend her Watson Fellowship exploring the way that counseling interventions provided in pediatric cancer centers have been shaped by cultural, historical and religious attitudes towards death. As a philosophy and psychology major with a concentration in neuroscience, Rodriguez Wheelock partially credits her personal experiences and her academic pursuits at Grinnell with the development of her research project. My time as a student not only gave me the philosophical and psychological basis to realize this project [it also] gave me the confidence to try something that has never been done before Having the confidence to say Im going to do this came from being in Grinnell and being faced with a lot of academic challenges, Rodriguez Wheelock said. Rodriguez Wheelocks project will take her to a range of different pediatric clinics and hospitals in the United Kingdom, Rwanda, India and the Dominican Republic. In each country, she plans to shadow counselors and observe the way social and psychological interventions vary from culture to culture. I dont know where these stories will take me. Im just trying to follow through and see what will happen Im going to try to understand something that some of the greatest minds in history have written about and tried to understand. What is the meaning of life? Why are we here? Why do we constantly fight something like cancer? Rodriguez Wheelock said. Kuzura and Rodriguez Wheelock, along with 38 fellow finalists from Watson partner colleges, learned of their acceptance in mid-March, following an intensive application process. To be considered for the fellowship, fourth year students were asked to submit detailed proposals outlining their project topics, personal goals and overall travel plans. In preparation for the sheer intensity and responsibility of their independent travel experiences, applicants were also encouraged to consider the nuances and distinct benefits that come with pursuing their studies abroad. The application process started in the early summer [but] I only realized that I was going to do it a month and a half before the deadline. I make no exaggeration every single waking moment I spent thinking about it for a month and a half. I spent the whole time thinking about why do I want this, what kinds of things are important to me and what can I do with a year, Kuzura said. As both Rodriguez Wheelock and Kuzura prepare for their graduation in May and their upcoming year of travel, both will continue to be driven by their genuine curiosity, drive and passion for their work. Like the 75 Grinnell graduates who have already been awarded the prestigious fellowship, Wheelock and Kuzura can now proudly call themselves part of the Watson Fellowship programs network of global scholars and leaders. By Saiham Sharif sharifsa@grinnell.edu Professor Timothy Dobe, religious studies, won the prestigious Burkhardt Fellowship for his research on Mahatma Gandhis engagement with the Muslim community. The fellowship will provide Dobe with 95,000 dollars, as well as funds for research and associated costs. Through the fellowship, Dobe will spend the 2018-2019 academic year at Duke Universitys Islamic Studies Center, where he will devote the year to his project, The Muslim Gandhi: Islamicate Hinduism, Alternative Communities and Radical Religious Love. Dobes project will involve translating works into Urdu and investigating Gandhis engagement with the Muslim Community. Although Gandhis collected works are available in English, Dobe believes that using Urdu translations of his work will provide more knowledge about Gandhis ideas. Certain concepts lose meaning through translation the idea that Gandhi connected with commoners by criticizing spiritual leaders is conveyed through his use of the terms shastri, which means learned scholar and mullah, which means religious authority. English translations of these terms, however, lose some of the implications. Further, Dobe said that Gandhis connection with Christianity has been researched, but his engagement with the Muslim community has not been, and its unclear why. Gandhi studied the Quran and learned Urdu. It was a Muslim trader who brought Gandhi to South Africa. Gandhis alliance with Muslim leaders was significant. Nathuram Godse assassinated Gandhi because he believed his policies were too pro-Muslim Gandhi had proposed sending a large sum of money to Pakistan after partition. Dobes research fits into a larger resurgence of Gandhi scholarship, particularly since political scientists and other scholars realized that throughout the 20th century, nonviolence has been twice as effective in creating political change as violent movements. Philosophical interest in the compatibility of capitalism and democracy and Gandhis idea of localized economies has also fueled the resurgence. Dobe plans to incorporate his research into his future coursework at Grinnell. Dobe explained that the College has supported his research and that the College has increased its support for professors at this stage through different measures, such as increasing sabbatical time. He, however, has not reached the point where he can leave for sabbatical. The Office of Corporate, Foundation and Government Relations helped Dobe discover the Burkhardt Fellowship, which is one of many grants designed to revitalize the research of tenured professors and more uncommonly, for professors at liberal arts colleges. Theres a personal question of what are you going to work on next and theres the question of service. At Grinnell, Dobe acts as the Department Chair of religious studies, helps coordinate activates for the South Asian Student Organization and does many other things to help the institution run, all of which take time away from research. This fellowship will give him more of an opportunity to focus. By Philip Kiely kielyphi@grinnell.edu A stunning pair of contrasting exhibits open this Friday in Faulconer Gallery: both the gallery of student work in the Bachelor of Arts Exhibition (BAX) and a powerful collection of Vietnam War Photographs by Robert Hodierne 68. You really get a clear sense that you are in two different exhibitions. I like that, we have a big space so the fact that we can use it for several different kinds is terrific, said the Director of Faulconer Gallery, Lesley Wright. BAX features colorful sculptures, video, prints and mixed media works. From a collection of household objects, to large sculptures mounted on the wall, BAX displays the breadth of student art at Grinnell. Each year, the exhibition gives upper-level art students the chance to display their work. Any third or fourth year student who has taken upper-division studio art classes is eligible to submit up to two works to BAX. They can submit a third if it is done jointly with somebody else. We review them all just before spring break and they deliver them here and my staff helps design the installation and helps the students get them up on the walls. It will be up for a month, Wright said. Each year the college brings in a juror to award prizes to the students. This year, Professor Tameka Jenean Meka Jean Norris, a University of Iowa professor, will serve as the juror. The Student Government Association and the Office of Student Affairs will also award prizes. The juror this year is an artist, sometimes its a professor or a critic. She is coming from Iowa City, where shes a visiting professor there are endowed funds for BAX that allows there to be really decent prize money to be given to students for the best in show and then some merit awards that the juror can opt to give. We also have prizes that are given by the student government association and the office of student affairs, Wright said After surveying the best of current student work, visitors will encounter Hodiernes poignant solo exhibition. Hodierne left Grinnell after his third year and photographed the war in Vietnam for over a year. After graduating in 1968, he enlisted and returned to Vietnam as a correspondent for The Pacific Stars & Stripes to continue documenting the war. He has had a distinguished career in photojournalism, including work in several combat zones. The fifty-year-old photographs are mostly focused on individual soldiers. Most are single shots, but there are some series, including the burning of a village. He thinks of them not as anti-war photographs but as an unblinking look at what we expect of young people when we send them into combat, Wright explained. The exhibit contains another interesting historical artifact: old copies of The Scarlet & Black that include dispatches from Hodierne. One of our trustees, Hal Fuson, had his career in the news business. He was the managing editor of The S&B back in his day, and when Robert was in Vietnam in that 66 and 67 period, he would send back dispatches from Vietnam to The S&B, so he was their reporter in Vietnam, and Hal had a full set of S&Bs, and he sent them to us to keep in the gallery for people to look at, said Wright. Both exhibitions open this afternoon. Hodierne will be giving a gallery talk on April 27 about his work. By Teresa Fleming flemingt17@grinnell.edu Tilly Woodward shared the intersections of her artistic and personal lives to a group of colleagues and students last Wednesdays, tracing a narrative of art as a means of connection and learning. In addition to serving as Curator of Academic and Community Outreach for the Faulconer Gallery, Woodward has explored notions of community and expression through her work. She first found herself drawn to art as a mode of processing trauma and dealing with the isolation she experienced growing up on a farm. But agricultural life also proved a catalyst to her work, as Woodward engaged in her early work with the materiality of the welders and power saws she grew up with. But as Woodward attended school and developed her artistic practice, she expanded her scope to address global issues of political shifts and human rights that characterized the 1980s. I had spent all this time making work thats personal to me and I started engaging with news media, Woodward said. Creating new work made me step out of this insular space of making art about my own experience. Woodward exhibited many of her large scale chalk pastel drawings on billboard space along the I-70 highway, where they drew a varied range of responses from passing motorists. One local woman confronted Woodward about the apparent ambiguity of a drawing that depicted a scene of a hanging in Minsk, explaining that she would prefer a piece that offered explicit moralizing instructions to the viewer. Woodward spent years depicting Iowa residences in large chalk pastel and oil portraits, showcasing demographics that fall outside the typically imagined Iowan identity. All the while, Woodward continued to bring her artistic practice outside the studio, working with community art organizations to give people permission and a way to express themselves. But of late, Woodwards work has turned away from portraits, refocusing on oil paintings of still lifes featuring the natural materials and forms that characterized her early efforts and which appear luminescent against dark backdrops. Woodward continues to spend her evenings from 7 to 9 p.m. working on her paintings. The world is huge and confusing, and so to have two hours to focus on one thing and try to see it and reproduce it, is important. By Carter Howe cartherthom@grinnell.edu Governor Terry Branstad recently signed into law Senate File 447, which limits the amount of compensation that can be received in lawsuits against livestock feeding operations filed by nearby residents. The law limits the potential compensation plaintiffs can receive for damages caused by the livestock operation to the value of the loss in their property value, compensation for adverse health effects, and compensation for annoyance and loss of comfort, which cannot be more than 1.5 times the value of the other two segments of potential compensation. Additionally, if the lawsuit is won, the law makes it difficult for the plaintiff to sue the livestock producer again even if the plaintiff experiences more adverse effects in the future, although lawsuits would still be allowed if the livestock producer is violating existing laws and regulations. Chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, Republican Senator Dan Zumbach, says the bill is meant to spur rural economic development and reward prudent livestock producers by protecting them from frivolous lawsuits. Environmentalists and most Democrats argue that the bill worsens the quality of life of rural Iowans and prevents companies from curbing air and water pollution from livestock production. In recently published editorial by the The Des Moines Register staff argued that existing laws are insufficient, which is why affected residents have turned to the courts to attempt to mitigate damage from livestock producers. Professor Susan Kolbe, biology, agreed, saying this law leaves rural Iowans who live near concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) few ways to respond to livestock producers who are worsening their health and quality of life. There arent that many protections, Kolbe said. What has happened lately is a CAFO can now come in to be near your home, and theres really no limit to the distance as long as theyre under a certain size, and so when theyre under that size, then they can add on, and they dont have to meet any of the requirements. This is especially true because of a loophole in the law that allows CAFOs to expand beyond their original size. They slip under the bill with this loopholethey still have to obey the codes of the DNR, but theyre not going to be inspected or anything if theyre under a certain size, so really theres not a lot you can do to stop it, Kolbe said. According to a report by the Iowa Policy Project, asthma rates are much higher among children who live or go to school near CAFOs and properties in their vicinity can lose up to 26 percent of their value. Republicans, however, maintain that it will help Iowas important livestock industry prosper. Republican representative of Boone, IA, Chip Baltimore said that the law is justified because of the importance of livestock production to the state. We raise pigs in Iowa, Baltimore said to The Des Moines Register. Thats what we do. The Agricultural Committee standing behind the bill echoes this desire to ensure the agricultural industrys continued large profits. This is an economic development bill, Zumbach said. Instead, Kolbe thinks this legislation is a reaction to recent lawsuits against CAFOs that residents have won, including one in Chester Township in Poweshiek County where a family was awarded upwards of $400,000 in compensation. The pork producersthose large corporationstheyre trying to make it so that they can operate in the state without any recourse, and this makes it much easier because one of the only recourses there is if a CAFO comes in that exists anymore is to take them to court for nuisance, Kolbe said. By Jack Marchesi marchesi@grinnell.edu What better way is there to commemorate your college years than getting locally inked? For residents of Grinnell, Slingin Ink Tattoos is the lone parlor in town, providing creative tattoo expertise that can literally last a lifetime. After moving to Grinnell in 2007, Slingin Ink Tattoos began to provide their artworks in their parlor donned with particular antique and taxidermied decor. On their website, Slingin Ink cites studio atmosphere as an indispensable aspect to their identity, which is without a doubt reassuring for customers. That first general feeling that one gets when undergoing a life-changing experience, such as getting a tattoo, is paramount to their subsequent mood. Slingin Ink certainly delivers a vintage, relaxed yet orderly skilled aura. Upon entrance, Jackson Schulte 20 and I were amicably met by Danny Reed, a shop artist since 2008. This was both of our first experiences in a tattoo studio, so being met with exceptional customer service immediately eased our skepticisms about the tattoo process. For the sake of this article, both Jackson and I valiantly defied our parents exhausted advice and volunteered to receive an everlasting alteration to our body. In short, it was most definitely worth it. Our time spent collaborating with Reed and finalizing our stencils felt natural. Transcending his occupation as a tattoo artist is Reeds underlying passion for all things art. Though his prevailing medium is painting, Reed expressed interests in photography and music as well, which struck up ardent discussions with both Jackson and myself. While conversing on our common ground, Reed proceeded to tell us his story. He was born and raised in Oskaloosa, Iowa, where he currently resides. After discovering that art was his passion, he sought opportunities to make a living off it, leading him to obtain his tattooing license in the state of Iowa. Throughout this consistently friendly experience, I couldnt help but to continuously return to the rumored notion that Slingin Ink is home to white-nationalists. Though the origin of this rumor is uncertain, I can authentically praise the studio for its politically and religiously neutral atmosphere. In fact, there is a sign noticeable upon entry that, among other things, condemns explicit politics and religious affiliation. Overall, our experience at Slingin Ink was a productive opportunity to experience Grinnellians with no affiliation to the College. Unfortunately, it often seems that there is a dogmatic view on campus that associates residents of Grinnell with extreme conservatism by default due to the towns rural location. While there certainly are concrete examples of these politics, Slingin Ink Tattoos is not one of them. The studio makes a conspicuous effort to make a space that is inclusive for all who share a passion for tattoos. The store itself is moving locations at the end of the month, and will no longer be called Slingin Ink. The new locale will bring on the name Broad Street Tattoos, and will luckily be remaining in Grinnell. After a wonderful experience, both Jackson and I thoroughly encourage you to finally get that tattoo youve been pondering for quite some time now. The Pakistan censor board wanted the scenes with the Indian flag and national anthem to be snipped, but Aamir Khan put his foot down. By India Today Web Desk: Bilateral ties with Pakistan may be strained post the Uri attack in September last year, but our neighbour's love for Bollywood is untarnished. In spite of the huge popularity of our films across the border, Aamir Khan will not release his Dangal in Pakistan. The actor's spokesperson confirmed the news to India Today Television and said that the decision to not screen Dangal in Pakistan was taken early last week. advertisement When Pakistani distributors approached Aamir, he was happy to release the film in Pakistan, until their censor board made some demands of their own. The Pakistan censor board wanted the scene with the Indian flag and the national anthem to be snipped from Dangal, but Aamir put his foot down. He could not see why the scenes should be removed, given that the film had no reference to Pakistan and the scenes were not jingoistic, but an essential part of the script. Directed by Nitesh Tiwari, Dangal is the story of Haryanvi wrestler Mahavir Singh Phogat, and his strugle to train his daughters Geeta Phogat and Babita Kumari to become world-champions in the sport, amidst opposition from a patriarchal society. ALSO READ: Whoa! Did Aamir Khan earn Rs 175 crore from Dangal? ALSO READ: Geeta Phogat's coach says distortion of facts in Dangal has hurt his reputation EXCLUSIVE: Watch Aamir's Dangal team and the Phogat family come together for a chat --- ENDS --- Actor-producer Aamir Khan has decided against releasing his Bollywood blockbuster Dangal in Pakistan after the censor board there demanded that two scenes involving the Indian flag and anthem be cut. Mobashir Hasan, Pakistan's Central Board of Film Censors (CBFC) head, told IANS over social media: "Yes, the board unanimously decided to skip two scenes." Asked why the Indian flag and anthem needed to be cut, Hasan said: "The decision is the collective wisdom of the board." He added that it was now up to the local distributor Geo Films to release it or not. Subsequently, Aamir has decided not to release the movie in Pakistan, saying the demanded cuts were crucial to the spirit of the film, his spokesperson told . Dangal is a movie inspired by the real-life story of wrestler Mahavir Singh Phogat, who trains his daughters to become wrestling champions. The movie was loved by Indian audiences, which was proved by its whopping Rs 385 crore-plus collection in the country. The news comes just over two months after Pakistani film exhibitors and cinema owners lifted a self-imposed ban on the screening of Indian films in the wake of heightened tensions with India over the September 2016 terror attack in Uri that left 19 Indian soldiers dead. Title: The Builders of Delhi; Author: Imtiaz Ahmed Khan; Publisher: Zarreen Khan; Pages: 179; Price: Not mentioned The late Imtiaz Ahmed Khan was an accomplished IAS officer who served in many parts of the country, including in Delhi where a street close to Parliament is named after him. But this is not yet another book on Delhi. It is very different. The chapters were originally published in a series of articles in a leading newspaper in 1996-97. What is noteworthy is that the work was put together when there was no Wikipedia and Internet barely existed. Khan delved into history books and archives to produce this riveting tale. History to Imtiaz Khan was not just about boring facts, obtuse dates, incomprehensible architectural details and inconsequential battles that most people loathe to study. As his daughter-publisher Zarreen Khan says, if you read it as her father narrated it, and read it with his signature sense of humour, "perhaps it will make history a more interesting read, as it did for me". According to Imtiaz Khan, there is perhaps no city in the world that withstood as many onslaughts from foreign as well as domestic forces as Delhi. Many interesting bits follow: The spot on which Yudhishthira pitched tent was chosen to build the Pandava Palace; this is believed to be the same site where the Purana Qila (Old Fort) now stands. Mahipalpur near Vasant Kunj in south Delhi is named after a Tomar dynasty king, Mahipal. After Khwaja Bakhtiar Kaki settled in south Delhi, the place was given the name "Mihir Wali" the abode of the saint. This later got corrupted to Mehrauli. During the time of Sultan Alauddin Khilji, Mongol prisoners in thousands were herded to Shahpur Jat village (near present Panchsheel), their heads chopped off and cemented in stone rubble with lime paste. And thus came up the Siri Fort. The unending statistics and facts extend to the Mughal and British rule too. This is a book worth a read if you want to know Delhi better. ExxonMobil and partner Qatar Petroleum have signed a deal with Cyprus to carry out exploratory drilling off the east Mediterranean island's southern coast. Qatar Petroleum chief executive Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi told the AP there's "a strong possibility" that the geological structure in the area where the partnership is licensed to drill could potentially hold hydrocarbons. Al-Kaabi said after signing ceremony on Wednesday that a first exploration well is scheduled to be drilled in the first half of 2018. ExxonMobil Senior Vice President Andrew Swiger said three-dimensional seismic surveys will first be conducted to determine the best drilling locations. It's the first time that ExxonMobil has looked for oil and gas in the eastern Mediterranean, where recent large finds in Egyptian and Israeli waters have raised hopes that more could be found Hundreds of Maruti and other factory workers demonstrated at a protest march and public hearing on the recent conviction of their colleagues by a trial court in Gurugram in the widely-known Maruti case. Workers, students and intellectuals present at the meeting termed the conviction of Maruti workers extremely unjust and unfair". On 10 March, a trial court in Gurugram had convicted 31 Maruti workers of the 148 who were under trial. Thirteen of them were convicted for murder and 18 for causing serious injuries to management officers. Another 117 who had already spent four years in jail were acquitted. Talking to The Statesman, Sunny from automobile industry contract workers union said, The evidence presented in the court against convicted Maruti workers was weak in nature. The witnesses could not identify any of the convicted workers but despite this they were given punishment. This judgment makes a mockery of the belief that the judicial system is equal for all. What we are seeing today is that no management official is ever punished for exploiting the rights of workers in broad daylight and mocking at the existing labour laws, but workers are given life sentences for crimes that they never committed." Simran, a leader of Bigul Mazdoor Dasta, said the judgement is clearly in favour of the capitalist class in the country. He said, "this comes at a time when people like Aseemanand are set free despite enormous evidence against them and despite Aseemanand himself confessing that he was involved in terror activities. It is the age of ironies. Pointing to loopholes in the judgement, she said, It is shocking that all those convicted for murder are in the leading bodies of unions. The clash took place on 18 July 2012 at around 7:20 pm, police was deployed outside the factory at around 11 a m but it was not allowed to enter the premises as long as the situation went out of control. In the First Information Report it is mentioned that almost 400 to 500 people entered the Human Resource premises equipped with sticks and rods but none of the witnesses testified to it. The protest meeting and public hearing was attended by industry contract workers union, Naujawan Bharat Sabha, Omax workers , Honda workers among other organisations. More than 200 Peerless employees from all states gathered at Jantar Mantar here under the banner of All India Peerless Employees Union and CITU (Central Industrial Trade Union) to demand the government take over Peerless General Finance and Investment Co Ltd to protect the livelihoods of thousands of officers and field employees. Earlier, a delegation of Peerless employees, including Nitya Gopal Dutta, working president, Indranil Sengupta, vice-president, and Gautam Chatterjee, general secretary of All India Peerless Employees Union, led by MP Shankar Prasad Dutt met Arjun Meghwal, Minister of State for Finance and handed a memorandum demanding taking over of Peerless. The delegation told The Statesman the minister assured them that he will look into the matter. Peerless, a premier finance company, had been directed by Reserve Bank of India to stop its deposit taking business from 1 April 2011. The company had been doing this business under the guidance and supervision of RBI since 1987. Gautam Chatterjee, general secretary of the union, said: The company used to mobilise small savings from people across the country. So far as the reputation of the company is concerned, Peerless has an impeccable record of paying back more than Rs 20000 crore to its depositors on maturity. Besides Reserve Bank of India has informed honourable Supreme Court of India in 2010 that the finances of the company are very sound , Peerless has deposited 100% of its deposit liability in Public Sector Banks and Government Securities and was running its business as per the RBI guidelines. However, Reserve Bank of India issued directive in 2007 to exit from its nature of business and start an alternative business from 01/04/2011, while directing the RBI has completely ignored the advice of the apex court. As a consequence it has resulted in mass loss of employment of thousand of field and office employees of Peerless who were employed in the company," Chatterjee added. Senior leaders and members of CITU and CPI-M had assembled along with the employees of Peerless. M L Malkotia, CITU treasurer and MPs Shankar Prasad Dutta, Badroddaza Khan and A Sampat expressed their solidarity. Sampath said , The demands of the employees are very genuine and CPI-M stands with them. We will make sure that we raise the issue in Parliament." The Delhi Police on Friday were taken aback when they learnt from the media that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had gone to the airport to receive Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, without keeping them in the loop. Joint Commissioner of Police Dependra Pathak said that senior officers learnt through the media about Prime Minister Modi travelling from his Lok Kalyan Marg official residence to Delhi's Palam Air Force station in normal traffic and with no route restrictions in place. The Delhi Police is responsible for the security of VVIP movements in the national capital. "Generally, we are informed about any VVIP movement in advance and accordingly route restrictions are put in place for security purpose. But, we were not informed about Prime Minister's visit to the airport today (Friday)," Pathak said. At the airport, the Prime Minister welcomed Hasina, who is on four-day visit to India from Friday, with a bouquet as she alighted from the aircraft. Both the leaders are expected to ink over 20 agreements ranging from ICT to defence cooperation during the visit. Senior state BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi on Friday demanded sacking of Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad's two sons from the Bihar Cabinet for the alleged soil scam. "It is no more mere allegations. I have solid documentary evidences against Lalu and his two sons Deputy Chief Minister Tejaswi Yadav and Health and Forest Minister Tej Pratap Yadav. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar should sack both Tejaswi and Tej Pratap on moral grounds," the BJP leader told the media here. Modi, a former Deputy Chief Minister, claimed Lalu was given the prime land in 2005 by a businessman in lieu of help as the Railway Minister. Initially, the land was in the name of RJD Rajya Sabha member Prem Chand Gupta and his family but was later transferred in the names of Lalu and his sons, he added. The senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader earlier said that Tej Pratap is behind the allocation of a contract of Rs 90 lakh for earth-filling work at the Sanjay Gandhi Biological Park to a company without following the tender process. The company was also to construct a pathway and beautify the park. The earth was excavated from the land, where a mall is now coming up. Modi said Lalu should also explain to the people how a mall was coming up on the park's land in Patna. Lalu and his sons have denied Modi's allegations about the soil scam. Air India flight 156 from Delhi to Goa was cleared for take off from the runway which was allotted to IndiGo flight no. 398 coming in to Delhi from Ranchi. By India Today Web Desk: A major disaster was averted at Delhi's Indira Gandhi Airport today when two aircraft came close to each other. An Air India flight was preparing to take off from the same runway which was cleared for landing for an IndiGo aircraft coming from Ranchi. According to reports, Air India flight no. 156 from Delhi to Goa was cleared for take off from runway which was allotted to IndiGo flight no. 398 coming in to Delhi from Ranchi by the Air Traffic Control (ATC). advertisement Noticing the mistake, the ATC sprung into action directing IndiGo pilots to abort landing just in time. An internal inquiry has been ordered in to the incident which took place at about 11 am today not long before Prime Minister Narendra Modi went to the airport to receive Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina. The Air India flight finally took off for Goa at 12.50 pm with 122 passengers. In December 2016, two aircraft came face-to-face moments before one was to takeoff at the Delhi airport. An Indigo flight was headed towards taxiway after landing just when a SpiceJet aircraft was preparing for takeoff. Both the passenger jets came face-to-face. ALSO READ: Disaster averted at Delhi airport as Indigo, SpiceJet aircraft come face-to-face Jet Airways Goa-Mumbai flight with 161 on board skids off runway, all passengers evacuated BSF aircraft crashes near Delhi airport, all 10 on board killed --- ENDS --- DMK working president MK Stalin on Friday demanded resignation of Tamil Nadu Health Minister Vijaya Bhaskar following Income Tax Department raids on his residence. As per reports, Income Tax Department officials on Friday raided Vijayabaskar's residence in Chennai following complaints that he was involved in cash distribution to voters in RK Nagar constituency where a byelection will be held on April 12. Vijayabaskar is the first minister to come under IT raids in recent times. "The raids were being conducted in at least 20 places in Chennai and 11 other places in the rest of the state," an IT officials was quoted as saying. The official said the minister was on IT radar for the past one year in connection with his quarry business. Vijayabaskar is in the limelight since the AIADMK split into two factions with former chief minister O Panneerselvam accusing him of siding with V K Sasikala. (With inputs from agencies) As news of Don Rickles's death spread, stars including Tom Hanks, Bob Saget and Amy Schumer, took to social media to pay their respects to the legendary comedian. Rickles died of kidney failure on Thursday at his home here, his publicist Paul Shefrin said. He was 90. The master of the comic insult, Rickles rose to fame in the 1950s through his association with the Rat Pack. Although he was widely known as an "insult" comic, stars, especially those in the comedy world, refuted that with stories about his kindness. In a statement, Bob and Ginnie Newhart expressed their shock and condolences regarding Rickles' death, reports variety.com. The statement read: "He was called The Merchant of Venom' but in truth, he was one of the kindest, caring and most sensitive human beings we have ever known. We are devastated and our world will never be the same. We were totally unprepared for this." Rose Marie, co-star of "The Dick Van Dyke Show", also said: "One of my dearest friends is gone. What a talent! He was remarkable and one of our favourites to work with on The Dick Van Dyke Show'. I have known him since he came to California. I will miss him something terrible." Dick Van Dyke also paid tribute to the late comic. "Those were the days, my friend Don. We thought they'd never end. We loved you so," Van Dyke tweeted. David Letterman said of the late comic: "Don coming on our show was always a highlight for me. Just endless mischief and nonsense, and a guy who would make the audience go completely crazy. Such a professional, such a gentleman. I already miss him." Director Martin Scorsese, whom Rickles worked with in his 1995 crime drama "Casino", appreciated the fact that he was able to see the "evolution" of Rickles's comedy. Tom Hanks tweeted: "A God died today. Don Rickles, we did not want to ever lose you. Never. Hanx." Jimmy Kimmel also posted: "90 years with Don Rickles weren't enough. One of the sweetest and most lovely people I had the pleasure of knowing. We miss you already." He was later a frequent and outrageous guest on "The Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts," which ran on NBC from the mid-1970s to the mid-'80s. The comedian, sarcastically nicknamed "Mr. Warmth," starred in "Pajama Party" and "Kelly's Heroes" among other films, and was the voice of Mr. Potato Head in the popular "Toy Story." Mel Brooks tweeted: "Don Rickles. One of the bravest, funniest, and sweetest guys that ever performed. A dear pal that we will all sorely miss." Mark Wahlberg said "Don Rickles was an absolute legend, my favourite comedian, and also my friend. Rest in peace." David Arquette said death won't stop Rickles from doing what he does best. In another development to the Alwar lynching incident, the Supreme Court on Friday issued notice Centre and other six states and sought response within three weeks. A top court bench issued notice to Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Jharkhand, UP and sought a detailed report on a petition seeking ban on cow vigilante groups. According to reports, Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday told the Lok Sabha that the Centre would ensure that justice prevails in the lynching case in Rajasthan's Alwar. "The state government has taken cognisance of the matter. FIR has been registered and some arrests have been made in the case. Centre would try that justice would prevail," Singh said. Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Thursday condemned the killing of a Muslim man in Alwar and said the government should take strict action against those responsible for the brutal and senseless attack. "When government abdicates responsibility and allows lynch mobs to rule, tragedies of immense proportion follow. Shocking breakdown of law and order in Alwar," he said. Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad accused the Bharatiya Janata Party government of ignorance, saying that the entire world knows about these attacks except them. Madhusudan Mistry of the Congress raised the matter during Zero Hour and said that the self-styled 'gau rakshaks' were harassing and killing people in the name cow protection. Pehlu Khan, a 50-year-old man, died on Monday in Alwar, Rajasthan, after being brutally beaten up by a group of self-proclaimed 'gau rakshaks'. Khan was a part of a group of men that was transporting cows in a highway in Rajasthan's Alwar on Saturday. The Air India Cabin Crew Association has said Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad must not be allowed to fly until he tenders an "unconditional apology" for beating up a 60-year-old staffer, and asserted that he poses a risk to flight safety. In a letter to the AI Chairman and Managing Director Ashwani Lohani, the association has said that a decision by either the Ministry of Civil Aviation or Parliament to lift the ban will affect the morale of the employees. "Unless he tenders an unconditional apology to AI employees, and undertakes in writing to abide by the Chicago and Tokyo Conventions & Rules of the Air and follow all cabin safety and public behaviour norms, we must not let him on board," says the letter. On Friday, Gaikwad, in a letter to Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapthi Raju, had conveyed his "regrets" over the "unfortunate incident", but stopped short of tendering an apology to either the national carrier or to the staffer concerned. "Ravindra Gaikwad is and will continue to be a risk to flight safety and flight operations and to Cabin Crew safety on board, and hence Government must think long and hard about letting him back on," the letter added. The association said it would be a "crying shame" if he is let off "without even a rap on the knuckles". "For either the ministry or the Parliament to allow such a person to get away without even a rap on the knuckles or even forcing an apology to all Air- Indians and indeed all Indians, would be a crying shame. "It would also crush the morale of all employees and indeed all fair minded Indians. We do not wish to be flying such a person," the association wrote in the letter. India on Friday took strong exception to the passage of a Private Members Motion in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario that called the 1984 anti-Sikh riots genocide, adding that it had conveyed its views on the issue to the political leadership of Canada. We reject this misguided motion which is based on a limited understanding of India, its Constitution, society, ethos, rule of law and the judicial process, MEA spokesperson Gopal Baglay said when his reaction was sought on the passage of the motion. New Delhi, it is learnt, is quite unhappy since the motion was moved by a Member of the Provincial Parliament (MPP) belonging to the ruling Liberal Party of Ontario, which had moved a similar motion last summer. The Ontario Assembly, thus, became the first legislature in Canada to carry a motion that described the 1984 anti-Sikh riots as genocide. The motion was moved by Harinder Malhi, the MPP from the riding (as constituencies are called in Canada) of Brampton-Springdale, near Toronto. After a debate, the motion was carried with 34 MPPs (the equivalent of MLAs) voting in favour and just five against. Those present at the vote numbered just about a third of the assemblys total strength of 107. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday received his Bangladesh counterpart Sheikh Hasina at Delhi airport who is on a four-day official visit. This is Hasinas first visit to India after PM Modi took office in May, 2014. Hasina's visit carries importance as both the countries are all set to be sign at least 25 bilateral agreements including in key areas of civil nuclear cooperation and defence. Issues like combating terrorism, containing radicalism and enhancing security cooperation between the two countries will be discussed. During her visit, which comes after a gap of seven years, Hasina will hold wide-ranging talks with Prime Minister Modi on Saturday and PM Modi will announce a line of credit of $500 million to Bangladesh for military supplies. The Bangladesh prime minister will visit Ajmer Sharif on Sunday and will hold talks with Indian business leaders on Monday. She will also take part in a function at the Manekshaw Centre to honour Indian Armed Forces members who embraced martyrdom in Bangladeshs War of Liberation in 1971. According to reports, Hasina will call on President Pranab Mukherjee and meet opposition leader Sonia Gandhi. (With inputs from agencies) As a child, almost everyone, loved superheroes like the Superman, Batman, Shaktimaan, Casper, Phantom, the Ghost Who walks, and others. Kids love to wear those out of the world attires and try to fly like them or be strong like them. But ever wondered why even babies love superheroes and why heroic acts fascinate them? Kids adore superheroes, perhaps, because they are born with a sense of justice portrayed through the characters's heroic acts, according to researchers. Their findings, which was published in the journal Nature Human Behavior, showed that infants, who can barely talk, are "capable of recognising" heroic acts of justice. Babies are drawn to strong figures who can protect the weak, they say. A team of researchers conducted experiments where infants were shown animations of one character chasing and bumping into another, as a third character watches from a distance."In human society, selflessly protecting the powerless is considered an act of heroic justice," Yasuhiro Kanakogi from the Kyoto University was quoted as saying in the journal. (With inputs from agencies) Last month, Professor Michael Heng argued in Singapore that in order to achieve the Asian Century, there is a need for Asian cultural-intellectual rejuvenation. Hengs lecture was in the tradition of Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy Dean Kishore Mahbubanis 1998 challenge -Can Asians think? This search for intellectual rejuvenation is made more urgent by the rise of Trumpism, which has overturned the American neo-liberal world order to spread free markets, democracy and technology to the rest of the world. Chinese President Xis defense of globalisation at Davos this year was a dramatic contrast to the protectionist and inward-looking tone of Trump. Professor Heng categorised the issues as three challenges how to rejuvenate Asian cultures, learning from non-Asians and learning from each other. These are serious challenges that deserve serious thinking. How the questions are framed often affect their answers. Whilst we can identify at least five Asian cultures and intellectual traditions (Islam, Hindu, Chinese, Shinto and South-East Asian), it is no longer possible to delineate precisely where these traditions have affected each other, Western culture and traditions and how they are evolving. Cultures, like languages, are living and not fixed in time, borrowing, learning, forgetting and adapting to a changing environment, including changing the environment itself. Whereas in the 17th century, cultures were segregated by geography, the advances in transport and communications technology are such that almost no culture can be an island they are invaded by foreign technology to such an extent that the lines have become blurred. But cultures survive because they are preserved and reborn. Even as Syrian culture and society is shattered by its devastating civil war, Syrian music is being spread throughout the world through the Internet, preserved by Syrian migrant and expatriate musicians and artists. Thus, the issue of cultural-intellectual rejuvenation is a perennial search for identity in a rapidly changing world, bombarded by politics, economics, technology, climate change, religion and human migration and conflicts. The search for identity was construed by English philosopher Stephen Toulmin (1922-2009) as the two paths to Post-Modernity one forward looking in facing the future, and the other nostalgic and backing into old ideas of religious purity and nationalism. The American lurch towards protectionism is part of the Republican nostalgia for right wing values mostly defined in White Christian terms. This is not unlike the search for religious and ethnic sacred values within Asia in Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Shinto or other native beliefs. Modern human and informational migration is such that we are all today genetic or ideological hybrids, simultaneously local, global, liberal and fundamentalist in different aspects of our lives. Even though billions have been lifted out of poverty and illiteracy, inequality remains rife and keenly felt, creating resentment, insecurity and conflict. Each Asian culture is being melded profoundly in a potpourri that is becoming inseparable from daily contact with technology, foreigners and social media. Small wonder that such insecurity has fed the populist drive for purity and identity, seeking to protect identities from foreign or others contaminations. Such daily disruption is being forced on all of us, from the poorest to the most privileged. How else can we explain President Trumps inaugural address when he promised to address American carnage, meaning the perceived destruction of American jobs and the decline of the white middle class worker in terms of income and power? Every nation-state and religion is being pulled in the two Toulmin directions, one to move forward with open modernity and the other to return to a glorious past of pure values that exist only in someones imagination. We cannot categorise the trials and tribulations of every local communitys struggle with globalisation in simple terms they are the product of complex, complicated and convulsive forces that interact with each other in non-quantifiable and qualitative terms. Current social science cannot quantify nor predict, let alone control the these conflicts of values that directly threaten social stability. We are witnessing terrorism and cataclysmic civil wars that ensue from the toxic mixture of geo-politics, religion and ethnicity, natural disasters from drought or famine and incompetent governance. No all-encompassing philosophy, religion or culture can restore the broken families and societies, destroyed by terrorism and civil war. Asias current strength arises from the fact that the region remains the fastest growing, with leadership that has so far been open-minded to globalisation, trade and technology as solutions to domestic poverty and under-development. Whether one likes it or not, the resources for dealing with social inequities, climate change and security can only come from growth. Asians have learnt from war and devastating conflict that without political and social stability, growth cannot be achieved, creating a vicious cycle of declining resources and growing social fragmentation and ultimately crises. Each society, irrespective of those in Asia or elsewhere, must find its own solution or rationale for being, because globalisation is irreversible. National economies and local cultures are inter-connected through social media and migration to such an extent that for better or worse, there is no returning to any glorious past. Despite the fact that Asia is itself a concept of geography and a mosaic of cultures, success appears in clustered neighbourhoods. Thus, if Asian economies, especially cities, do not begin the search for modernity and moderate values and beliefs in earnest, they will be overwhelmed by the forces of extremism, domestic or imported. To do so, Asians need both the secular and the sacred an openness to science and globalisation with a simultaneous openness to understanding and respect for what is sacred to each and everyone of us. Asean was able to break out of poverty despite diversity of development and cultures, because of a pragmatic approach to consensus-building. We cannot find common values if we are each stuck in our own mental silos, compartmentalised and fragmented in gated communities, ghettos or sects. The Asian story is not a belief but a process, in which all of us have a stake to succeed or fail. The writer, a Distinguished Fellow with the Asia Global Institute of the University of Hong Kong, writes on global issues from an Asian perspective. 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. A soft-spoken political lightweight has achieved what others dared not attempt. In refusing to be cowed down by the bullying tactics of the Shiv Sena, the civil aviation minister, Mr Ashok Gajapathi Raju, has put the Prime Minister in the dock. Will Mr Narendra Modi take an upright stance and earn the admiration of all who serve the people, or will good governance be sacrificed at the altar of political expediency because the BJP remains dependent on the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra/Mumbai? Many would opine that Modi sarkar has already buckled: a no-nonsense Prime Minister would have immediately dropped Anant Geete from the ministerial council after he joined other Shiv Sena members of the Lok Sabha in surrounding and heckling Mr Gajapathi Raju for taking a principled position on safety being of paramount importance in airlines operations. The Sena has consistently defended the outrageous conduct of its MP, Ravindra Gaikwad, who shamelessly boasted having used his slipper to assault an Air India official. Some other ministers escorted Mr Gajapathi Raju out of the House ~ but thereafter efforts were launched to effect a compromise solution, something acceptable only to politicians skewed value-system. At the time of writing this commentary the situation was still fluid, but little sincerity is to be attached to the letter of apology from Gaikwad ~ certainly not after the chaos in Parliament, talk of boycotting an NDA function and threats to disrupt the operations of the national carrier at Mumbai. Apologies are of no value when insincere, and it is indeed worrying that the Speaker appears to be going soft on Sena MPs who live up to their partys muscle-flexing reputation. Apart from extending due support to Mr Gajapathi Raju, Mr Modis advisors must explain to him that all across the nation people will assess the impact on overall administration in the light of the decisions taken. Already there is much rumbling over the PM making all the right noises but opting for paralytic silence when goons ~ call them vigilantes or the lunatic fringe according to the convenience of the moment ~ run riot. The gravity of the situation is compounded when the goons get political backing. Air Indias functioning is not glitch-free, but even the most vicious critic of the dethroned Maharajah will condemn a staffer being thrashed by an elected representative of the people. Mr Narendra Modi is not a creature of Parliament, hence well-posited to take the bold step of having parliamentary privileges codified. The system gets derailed when the people hold MPs in low esteem. That esteem will be further lowered if Mr Modi endorses any short-cut solution ~ and pressures the airlines into carrying Gaikwad until he convinces them that he can behave. The National School of Drama, for the last five years, has been searching the roots of Indian culture by organising tribal festivals presenting various tribal troupes from all over India. Ratan Thiyam, globally-reputed theatre personality as well as Chairman of NSD, has just completed hosting such a festival in Tinsukia, Assam as the seventh event of this particular series titled Adivasi Adibimb. In fact this project is the brain-child of Thiyam who thinks, quite rightly that our rich tradition of tribal culture is at present in a moribund state. Hence this effort to preserve and protect it. This time the Adivasi Adibimb, the three-day National Tribal Festival of Music, Dance and Drama witnessed programmes by 32 troupes from seven states of the North East i.e. Assam, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram apart from Sikkim and other states of India including West Bengal. The audience had a grand opportunity to see the dance of Assams Mising Bihu, Deuri, Rabha (Goalpara), Bodo dance (Guwahati), very special Jhumur dance (based on Karam Puja) of the tea tribe (Dibrugarh). Arunachal Pradeshs mountainous regions Galung Dance (to worship their God for cultivation) was totally different from other tribes. The host city Tinsukia brought a variety of dance items by different groups. The Limbuguri Tea Estates production Odiya Dance had a unique style of presentation while their Santhali dance Dong bore a particular mark of the Tea Tribe. Meghalayas Wangla dance needs specially mention for its inimitable style of performance by Garo Tribes (from Shillongs Forest Colony) with drum beats and chanting for Gods blessings. Manipurs Rongmei Kabui is popular as bee dance, and showed vigorous footwork and sharp, graceful body movements. Tripuras Hojagiri Dance reminds us of our Kojagori rituals. It creates excitement due to its magical exercise of balance by supporting their body on another dancers shoulder with weight in hands. Chakhesang Naga Dance of Dimapur is the very symbol of bravery and courage. The Jharkhand based troupe presented Chhau Dance which was highly entertaining and full of energy. The dancers wearing masks and costume of lions mesmerized the audience by performing martial arts and acrobatics with great agility. Our very own Santhal dance by Birbhum Blossom Theatre (Director Partha Gupta) was performed with a soothing rhythm while the mesmerizing music of Dhamsa and Madal stole the show. Three separate stages created with clay were for music, dance and drama respectively. The dramas, Kurbani Bekar Nahi Jayegi (Jharkhand) based on the sacrifice of freedom fighter Birsa Munda, and Lamana (Manipur) which revolves around suppression on poor Adivasi people showed new techniques and thoughts developed independently outside the influence of our urban theatre. Of great academic interest yet drawing a large audience was a very important seminar session on Tribal Life and Culture. Academicians and scholars like Anil Saikia, Papiya Roy, Ram Sasoni and Srabanti Choudhuri shared their views on the subject initiated by Ratan Thiyam. The main festival was inaugurated by Mr Ratan Thiyam along with Mr Binod Hazarika and Mr Sanjoy Kishan, the MLAs of the region. By Press Trust of India: New Delhi, Apr 7 (PTI) Minister of State for External Affairs M J Akbar will visit the UAE next week during which he will review with the top leadership there the entire gamut of bilateral ties, which were recently elevated to the strategic level. During his visit to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) from April 10-11, he will be meeting his counterparts and the top leadership there. advertisement He will hold discussions covering the entire gamut of bilateral, regional and international matters of mutual interest, a Ministry of External Affairs release said. Akbar will also address the annual Forum for the UAEs Ambassadors being held in Abu Dhabi. His visit comes just months after Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan was in India to be the Chief Guest at the Republic Day celebrations in January. During that visit, India and the UAE signed a comprehensive strategic partnership agreement and over a dozen pacts in key areas like defence, security, trade and energy. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had asserted back then that cooperation stands poised for a "major take off". Before the Crown Princes January visit, Modi visited the UAE in August 2015. The Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi had also visited India in February 2016. The bilateral trade between the two countries amounts to around USD 50 billion. The UAE is Indias third largest trading partner. For the UAE, India has been the largest trading partner. The UAE is among the largest investors in India in terms of foreign direct investments. It contributes significantly to Indias energy security and has been the fifth largest supplier of crude oil to India in 2015-16. About 2.6 million strong Indian community forms the largest expatriate group in the UAE. This visit will provide a useful opportunity to further cement our mutually beneficial bilateral ties with the UAE, the statement said. PTI ASK ZMN --- ENDS --- Actor Justin Theroux says he loves being married to actress Jennifer Aniston because she always backs him. "Marriage makes the small things much smaller and the big things small," unitedmags.com quoted Theroux as saying. He added: "You have an ally. It's good to have someone have your back." The actor got married to Aniston in August 2015. For Theroux, getting in in front of the camera was an adventure. He said: "It was an interesting thing, realising (that acting) is not a completely personal, therapeutic journey it's something you actually have to translate to someone else Like someone saying, I have a great book in my head, you should read it'. "So that was a big light-bulb moment for me: It's not about me. It's about servicing the playwright and servicing the director and really just trying to take the hard work they've done and be the copper cable between the audience and them." Meanwhile, Theroux is busy with the promotional activity for the third and final season of his acclaimed drama "The Leftovers". The final season of The Leftovers, which also stars Amy Brenneman, Christopher Eccleston and Liv Tyler, will air in India from April 18 on Star World Premiere HD. Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Friday embarked on a four-day visit to India which will see signing of at least 25 bilateral agreements including in key areas of civil nuclear cooperation and defence. During her visit, which comes after a gap of seven years, Hasina will hold wide-ranging talks with her Indian counterpart Narendra Modi tomorrow during which India is also set to announce a line of credit of $500 million to Bangladesh for military supplies. "The upcoming visit is expected to further expand the cordial and cooperative relationship between India and Bangladesh and build on the strong ties of friendship and trust between the two leaders," a joint statement issued by the two countries said earlier. Hasina will also call on President Pranab Mukherjee and meet opposition leader Sonia Gandhi. She will visit Ajmer on Sunday and will meet Indian business leaders on Monday. She will also join a function at Manekshaw Centre to honour Indian Armed Forces members who embraced martyrdom in Bangladesh's War of Liberation in 1971. Diplomatic quarters of both sides expected that the reciprocal visit of the Bangladesh premier would take the Dhaka-New Delhi "historic relations" to a new height unveiling newer dimensions of cooperation in various sectors including trade and commerce, economy and connectivity. It will be Hasina's first bilateral visit to India in her current term as prime minister. Ramping up cooperation in defence and security will be a major focus area of the talks between Modi and Hasina and apart from an MoU to provide $500 million credit, another pact is likely to be inked to formalise regular defence engagements. Issues like combating terrorism, containing radicalism and enhancing security cooperation between the two countries are likely to figure prominently besides stalemate over the Teesta pact during talks between Modi and Hasina. Liberation War Affairs minister AKM Mozammel Haque, Water Resources Minister Anisul Islam Mahmud, Law Minister Anisul Haque, Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali, the Premier's Economic Affairs Advisor Moshiour Rahman and State Minister for Foreign Affairs Shahriar Alam are accompanying Hasina for the visit. Iran strongly condemned the US missile attack on a Syrian army airbase, calling it a "dangerous" action, state TV reported on Friday. The missile attack is a "pretext for unilateral action, dangerous, destructive and violation of peremptory principles of international laws", Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi said. The US launched 59 Tomahawks at the Shayrat airport in central Syria late Thursday, the Pentagon confirmed, saying the strike was intended to deter the Syrian government from using chemical weapons again. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said on Thursday that the Syrian recent airstrike on a rebel-held town in Idlib province in northwestern Syria struck a rebel depot containing chemical materials, denying that the air force fired toxic gas during the attack. The Japanese government on Friday approved a two-year extension of its unilateral sanctions against North Korea, including a total blockade of trade, in response to Pyongyang's latest missile tests. The sanctions, which were scheduled to expire in mid-April, were imposed on North Korea in response to a lack of progress on the abductions of Japanese citizens by Pyongyang in the 1970s and 1980s, and its repeated missile provocations, government spokesperson Yoshihide Suga said at a press conference. Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said Japan will continue to implement its policy of bilateral talks and sanctions against North Korea, Efe news reported. Tokyo imposed a set of unilateral sanctions on North Korea in response to its missile tests in 2006, which have since been extended several times. These measures were endorsed simultaneously with sanctions by the UN Security Council. Japan, together with the US and South Korea, tightened sanctions in December 2016, following North Korea's nuclear and missile tests. The sanctions include a total ban on trade and on the entry of North Korean vessels into Japanese ports. Members of the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, known locally as Chongryon, are also prohibited from re-entering Japan if they leave the country to visit North Korea. The tensions between Japan and North Korea have increased following a number of successful mid-range missile launches by North Korea in March, one of which fell about 200 km off the Japanese coast. A proxy battle with Russia in Syria and multiple Russia-related investigations in the US will follow Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to Moscow next week on a trip designed to test the Trump administration's hopes for closer ties to the former Cold War foe. Tillerson will make the first visit to Russia by a Trump administration official just days after the US launched cruise missiles against an air base in Syria, where Russia's military is on the ground propping up its ally, President Bashar Assad. Until yesterday, the US had avoided striking Assad's forces, largely out of concern about being pulled into a military conflict with Russia. Tillerson, speaking just after the strikes were announced, said Russia had failed in its responsibility to deliver on a 2013 deal it helped broker to destroy Syria's chemical weapons arsenal. So either Russia has been complicit, or Russia has been simply incompetent on its ability to deliver, Tillerson said. Growing disagreements about Syria are just the latest obstacle to any plans President Donald Trump had to closer align the US and Russia on the world stage. Trump and his associates are embroiled in mushrooming investigations into potential collusion between his presidential campaign and Russian President Vladimir Putin's government, accused by America's spy agencies of interfering in the election to help elect Trump. Despite Trump's much-hyped campaign talk about a Russia reset, there's no appetite for that from either political party in the US Skepticism about Russia's intentions was only compounded by its defense of Assad after a deadly chemical attack that the US says was no doubt carried out by Assad's forces. Even minor concessions to Russia would trigger immediate accusations from Trump's opponents that the president who has praised Putin generously and repeatedly is beholden to Putin, a former KBG agent. Add to that Trump's anger at Russia for violating a nuclear arms treaty and continued global outrage over Putin's actions in Ukraine, and it's difficult to see realistic chances for near-term rapprochement. I think the Russians have adjusted their expectations down as to the possibilities of a breakthrough, and what happened in Syria is going to add to that, said Michael McFaul, the U.S. ambassador to Russia under President Barack Obama. Still, he said the Russians would likely treat Tillerson warmly in hopes his trip could smooth the path toward a Trump-Putin meeting. Tillerson arrives in Moscow on Tuesday after a brief visit to Lucca, Italy, to meet with counterparts from the Group of 7 industrialized economies. While in Russia, Tillerson plans to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Turkey welcomed the US air strike on a Syrian airbase today as a positive move and urged the international community to maintain its stance against the barbarism of President Bashar al-Assad. We welcome this as positive but we believe that the Assad regime must be punished completely in the international arena, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus told Turkey's Fox TV in an interview, quoted by state-run news agency Anadolu. The international community must maintain its stance clearly against this barbarism, said Kurtulmus, who is also government spokesman. He described the strikes against the base as significant and meaningful after civilians had been targeted and there were victims presumably of chemical weapons. The Assad regime's barbarism must be stopped at once, Kurtulmus said, saying the peace process should hasten a fair and lasting peace for the people. I hope that this United States operation will contribute to securing peace. Turkey has repeatedly called for Assad to go while Russia and Iran remain the president's most important allies in the more than six-year war. US President Donald Trump ordered a military strike on the base in retaliation for what he said was a very barbaric attack after dozens were killed early on Tuesday in Khan Sheikhun in Idlib, northwestern Syria. The Turkish health ministry on Thursday said initial analysis suggested victims were exposed to the deadly nerve agent sarin. remaining of Thank you for reading! On your next view you will be asked to log in to your subscriber account or create an account and subscribepurchase a subscription to continue reading. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif. is pursued by reporters as he leaves Capitol Hill in Washington on Thursday. By India Today Web Desk: He has given innumerable hits and some great performances in a career spanning over two decades, but has never won a national award. But it all changed for Akshay Kumar on Friday afternoon (April 7) when he won the national award for Best Actor for Rustom. Known to be a bankable actor, Akshay has become a favourite with fans and directors in the last few years. And his performance in 2016 film Rustom has won him his first national award. advertisement In an interview to Hindustan Times, Khiladi Kumar expressed his happiness over the national award win. He said, "It is great news. National Film awards are the most prestigious awards in the country. It is a moment of pride for sure. The first reaction, honestly, was if this was a late April Fool's joke (laughs)! Actually, I am still trying to process this win, it is a mix of many emotions - surprise, happiness and, most prominently, gratitude to the jury, makers of the film, my parents and of course the beloved fans." Last year has been great for Akshay for the kind of films he did. He added that he had a fantastic 2016 but it seems there was more to come his way. "I dont think anything can top this National Award win," he told the daily. Akshay, who won his first national award, said that he has been honest towards his work. "Itna keh sakta hun mai ki ye award bhi maine imandari se jita hai. Maine aaj tak cheating nahi ki. Neither have I ever made a call to anyone to win an award nor have given money or done favours for it," he added. He also took to Twitter to thank his fans. He said, "Rustom was a very special role to play. I would like to dedicate this award to my parents, my family and especially my lovely wife who often jokes that it is good that you have stopped going to award shows as you never get an award - khaer, der aaye, durust aaye. Kuch toh aaye." #NationalFilmAwards : Best Actor for Rustom,countless emotions,very hard to express my gratitude right now but still tried,a big THANK YOU???? pic.twitter.com/Wo7mfi6dI8- Akshay Kumar (@akshaykumar) April 7, 2017 He also made a special mention for Sonam Kapoor. The 30-year-old actor received a special mention for Neerja at National Awards. Akshay and Sonam are currently shooting for R Balki's Padman. ALSO READ: Akshay Kumar wins national award for Best Actor for Rustom advertisement ALSO READ: Sonam Kapoor's Neerja wins Best Hindi Film at National Awards ALSO WATCH: Akshay Kumar is the real Khiladi of Bollywood --- ENDS --- 18-year-old Aleexandra Kefren from Romania who shocked the world by announcing her decision to auction her virginity has finally sold her prized possession to a Hong Kong Businessman. By India Today Web Desk: Shocking right? But, when it comes to a perfect happy ending, we guess the ball is definitely in her court. The world is changing fast and we know that. GenY around the world is opting for the weirdest and strangest ways to make money and there's no denying that. While some are making skits and videos on YouTube, others are becoming sugar babies. But, it looks like selling one's virginity is the 'real' deal nowadays. advertisement 18-year-old Aleexandra Kefren from Romania did the same when she shocked the world by announcing that she will be selling her first ever sexual experience for money last year. Kegren said that she will be selling her virginity through a German escort service, for a minimum of 1 million euros to anyone around the world. Kegren finally announced that she auctioned her virginity for about 2.5 million euros (approx. 17 crore). The escort service known as Cinderella Escorts booked Kegren for the highest bidder, a businessman from Hong Kong. Aleexandra Kefren faced a lot of backlash on social media for her decision including from her family. Kefren's family told her to take a step back or they'll disown her but it didn't stop her from chasing her dreams. She said, "I wanted to sell my virginity with Cinderella Escorts rather than giving it to a future friend who might have left me anyway. And I think many other girls have the same attitude." She also added, "How many would possibly forgo their first time in retrospect if they could have 2.5 million euros instead? Everyone has to ask himself this question. Of course, there will be different opinions, but everyone should be able to represent and live their own." Aleexandra Kefren said she auctioned her prized possession because she needed money to fund her college. But, it was later learnt that her parents are already quite settled in life. The escort service that arranged this 'arrangement' received a lot of auction options from around the world from girls after Kefren's successful deal was finalised. The agency keeps a share of 20 per cent and gives the rest of the amount to the auctioneer. Well, it might be not a traditional way to success but it definitely is an unusual one. Also read: 21-year-old girl becomes India's youngest pilot, plans to fly Russia's MIG-29 Also read: YouTube star Gina Shkeda gives commendable reality check to teen who wanted to look like her Also watch: Do You Even Lift, Bro? Maids Train Macho Men at this Tokyo Gym --- ENDS --- Hansal Mehta is disappointed that his film Aligarh has not won any National Award. However, he hopes that the debate surrounding LGBTQ rights is not pushed under the carpet. By India Today Web Desk: Filmmaker Hansal Mehta is upset that his film Aligarh has not bagged any National Awards this year. Based on the trials and tribulations that a homosexual man faces in India, Aligarh starring Manoj Bajpayee as the protagonist was highly acclaimed by critics. However, the film has failed to impress the 64th National Film Awards jury. Hansal Mehta took to Twitter to express his disappointment. However, he added that he hopes that the debate surrounding LGBTQ rights is not pushed under the carpet. advertisement 'I am getting calls asking me if Aligarh was entered for the National Awards and if I was disappointed with the results. Yes, Aligarh was entered and while we are disappointed like many other colleagues, I would like to congratulate all the winners," he wrote. Then he added, "There is no point brooding over the results. There is merit in only moving on and continuing to work, to make movies that we believe in." Aligarh is set in the Uttar Pradesh town of the same name and follows the story of a professor Shriniwas Ramchandra Siras (Manoj Bajpayee) who is cornered and persecuted for his sexuality. Speaking on the film's content, Hansal Mehta wrote, "If Aligarh has shined a light on these issues and if India's ignored LGBTQ's population are able to move forward with dignity rights, and unconditional integration into the mainstream, we will consider our task in making 'Aligarh' accomplished." ALSO READ: FULL 64TH NATIONAL FILM AWARDS WINNERS' LIST FROM INDIA TODAY MAGAZINE: The story of the making of Aligarh WATCH: Short film 'Reaching for the Stars' by Hansal Mehta --- ENDS --- Patnaik's close aides say that to understand him, one has to understand his empathy By Pratul Sharma/Photos Sanjay Ahlawat According to sources, during interrogation, the three arrested after being identified from videos that were circulated on social media, told cops that the attack was a result of sudden provocation. The state police has arrested three people and is searching for others named in the FIR after they allegedly beat up 55-year-old Pehlu Khan. By Amit Kumar: An investigation into the killing of a Muslim dairy farmer in Rajasthan so far does not indicate the role of any member of a cow protection committee or a Hindu organisation, sources told Mail Today on Thursday. The state police has arrested three people and is searching for others named in the FIR after they allegedly beat up 55-year-old Pehlu Khan and some of his associates on suspicions that they were transporting cows for slaughter. advertisement The incident took place in Alwar district on Saturday, while Khan succumbed to his injuries two days later. Opposition leaders and activists have slammed the BJP governments in the state and Centre for doing nothing against vigilante groups thrashing people on the pretext of protecting cows, considered sacred by many Hindus. Rajasthan police said no innocents will be targeted but the culprits will soon be behind bars. RS 5,000 REWARD FOR INFORMATION ON ABSCONDERS "We have announced a reward of Rs 5,000 to get the information regarding whereabouts of the absconders, who are named in the FIR," Alwar's superintendent of police Rahul Prakash told Mail Today. "The six named suspects in the FIR - Hukum Chand, Jagmal, Om Prakash, Sudheer, Rahul Saini and Navin Saini -are on the run. The postmortem of Pehlu Khan, a resident of Haryana's Nuh district, indicated that serious internal and external injuries caused his death. "We have been awaiting Khan's viscera report from FSL (forensic lab) to find the exact cause of death," said a senior police officer. Horrifying visuals caught on camera show a man being brutally thrashed by goons in broad daylight in the middle of a highway over suspicions of cow smuggling. Critics say vigilantes have been emboldened by the election in 2014 of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party whose members have been pushing for a nationwide ban on cow slaughter. ATTACK RESULT OF SUDDEN PROVOCATION? According to sources, during interrogation, Vipin Yadav (19), Ramdeen Yadav (30) and Kalu Ram Yadav (44), who were arrested after being identified from videos that were circulated on social media, told cops that the attack was a result of sudden provocation. "The police had sought two-day remand, but managed to get only one day. The interrogation will lead to other people involved in the crime and also their association with any Hindu organisation, if any. However, these three accused have no association with any cow protection group (Gau Raksha Samiti). Police are also trying to identify most of the 200 vigilantes who attacked Khan and injured six others while they were transporting dozens of cows into a neighbouring state," said a police officer. Shortly before the attack on April 1, cops said they had arrested 11 people and rescued 28 bovines. "The cattle were being transported in six pick-up vans. While police intercepted four of them, two were attacked by the cow vigilantes," said an officer. In Rajasthan, the slaughter of bovine animals is punishable with imprisonment for a minimum of one year and maximum of ten years. advertisement ALSO READ | Alwar cow vigilante killing: Cattle carriers had Jaipur municipal receipts, cops booked them for smuggling ALSO READ | Alwar gau rakshak attack: Did not take place, says BJP's Naqvi; even NYT knows about it, says Congress's Azad ALSO WATCH | Alwar gau rakshak attack: Despite legal papers, cow transporters were arrested by police --- ENDS --- Reacting to the news of having bagged National Film Awards, actors Akshay Kumar and Sonam Kapoor took to social media to share their surprise and excitement with their fans and followers. Akshay won the Best Actor award for his film Rustom while Sonam's Neerja won the Best Hindi Film award on Friday. When the news broke, both actors were together in Maheshwar, Madhya Pradesh, shooting for their upcoming film upcoming film Pad Man. Sharing a photo with Akshay on Instagram, Sonam wrote: Who wouldve thought!! Shocked and grateful!! All the way from maheshvar!!! #nationalawards #neerja #rustom @akshaykumar. Who would've thought!! Shocked and grateful!! All the way from maheshvar!!! #nationalawards #neerja #rustom @akshaykumar A post shared by sonamkapoor (@sonamkapoor) on Apr 7, 2017 at 1:10am PDT The 'Khiladi' star posted a video, sharing his feelings with his fans, on his Twitter handle. In the minute-long video, he said that wearing the uniform of Indian Navy was an honour in itself and now, the national award for that role has made it even more special. Rustom is based on the real-life story of K.M. Nanavati, an Indian Navy officer, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for killing his wife's paramour in 1959. Even at the time of the release in August 2016, Akshay's portrayal of the patriotic, morally-upright Naval officer, Rustom Pavri, had been widely appreciated. Thanking the national award jury and his fans, the 49-year-old actor said: "I am truly humbled by this honour. I would like to thank the national award jury and all my fans from the core of my heart for believing in my talent." He dedicated the award to his parents and family. He made a special mention of his wife Twinkle Khanna and said: I will like to thank my wife who used to tease me often, saying that its good that I stopped attending award functions since I never returned with an award. #NationalFilmAwards : Best Actor for Rustom,countless emotions,very hard to express my gratitude right now but still tried,a big THANK YOU pic.twitter.com/Wo7mfi6dI8 Akshay Kumar (@akshaykumar) April 7, 2017 Overwhelmed with her husbands win, Twinkle expressed her joy and excitement on Twitter. "I don't know if I am crying or laughing-emotions all over the place-So proud of you @akshaykumar you smart, humble, amazing creature!" I don't know if I am crying or laughing-emotions all over the place-So proud of you @akshaykumar you smart, humble, amazing creature! https://t.co/K0YRx2WBtI Twinkle Khanna (@mrsfunnybones) April 7, 2017 Since afternoon, Twitter has been abuzz with congratulatory messages for Akshay from members of the Indian film fraternity. Addressing him by his screen name, his co-star in Rustom, Ileana D'Cruz, tweeted: Russi continuing to win hearts nationwide and his Cynthia couldn't be prouder! Congratulations @akshaykumar! Meanwhile, actor Anupam Kher congratulated him for the award and an inspirational career graph as an actor. Here's how some of the biggest names in Bollywood reacted to the news: With Prime Minister Justin Trudeau set to visit India late 2017 or early 2018, Canada is keen to cement stronger strategic and economic ties. Canadian Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan, a Indian-origin Sikh who has served in the Canadian army in Bosnia and Afghanistan, will arrive in a fortnight on what is described as an exploratory visit. We are already cooperating in training and several other aspects. There are MoUs on defence research and development, said Canadian High Commissioner to India, Nadir Patel, also a person of Indian descent, in a chat with members of the Indian Association of Foreign Affairs Correspondents (IAFAC). Canada is learnt to be keen to collaborate with India in defence electronics and land warfare technologies. In the nuclear field, there is robust cooperation between India and Canada. A deal has been inked and Canada has already started supplying uranium. Beyond that, our companies are coming here to look for ways to expand cooperation in sectors like reactor technology, waste management and reactor safety, said Patel. Canada is a strong supporter of India becoming a member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). Patel pointed out that India and Canada have four ongoing strategic dialogues, and that seven ministers in the Trudeau cabinet have visited India in the last eight months. Moreover, Delhi is our largest diplomatic mission in the world, he said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had visited Canada in April 2015 when Stephen Harper was the prime minister. That was the first stand-alone visit to Canada by an Indian prime minister in the last 42 years. Bilateral trade, though only $8 billion, is largely balanced. There is potential to do a lot more, said Patel. There are around 1,000 Canadian companies in India, of which 400 are physically present. Canada is keen to cooperate with India in food security, aviation, start-ups and clean energy programmes. They are also keen to have a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) with India. There are about 1.2 million people of Indian origin in Canada. Of them, 5,00,000 hail from Punjab and 3,00,000 from Gujarat. Canadian Parliament has 19 members of Indian origin, four of whom are in the cabinet. Once again, its a day of high profile IT raids in the power corridors of Tamil Nadu. Income Tax sleuths on Friday morning came knocking at the doors of Health Minister C. Vijaya Bhaskar, Health Secretary J. Radhakrishnan, actor-politician Sarathkumar, MGR Medical University Vice Chancellor Geetalakshmi and AIADMK leader Chitlapakkam Rajendran. The IT officers were conducting raids in 35 places across the state. In Chennai alone, searches were being carried out in as many as 20 locations. Raids were under way in 15 places in Pudukkottai, Namakkal and Trichy where minister Bhaskar is believed to have close connections. Besides, Tamil Nadus high profile MLAs hostel was also raided. According to highly placed sources in the IT investigation wing, the raids began early on Friday morning and at least 100 officers are at work. The IT raids reportedly come in the wake of reports of huge money flow and cash distribution ahead of the R.K. Nagar by-election. The election, although for a single seat, is significant as it would decide the future of Tamil Nadu politics and would make known who has the maximum public support. With just five days left for the crucial by-poll, each of the contenders, including the AIADMK (Amma) led by T.T.V Dinakaran, AIADMK (Puratchi Thalaivi Amma) led by O. Panneerselvam and the opposition DMK have been accusing each other of distributing money in the constituency to win votes. Incidentally, Sarathkumar, who once supported the Panneerselvam faction, had switched sides and extended support to Dinakaran. The actor-turned-politician called on Dinakaran at his posh Besant Nagar residence on Thursday for a cup of coffee and conveyed his decision to support the latter. Sarathkumar was reportedly brought into the AIADMK (Amma) camp by Health Minister Vijaya Bhasakar. In fact, he came to meet Dinakaran with Bhaskar in the minister's car. The meeting, which Sarathkumar called cordial, sent out signals of a possible victory for the Dinakaran camp. In fact, Sarathkumar was all set to campaign for Dinakaran from Friday evening. The party considered him as one of the star campaigners who would help fetch more votes. In February when Panneerselvam revolted against Sasikala, he named Bhasakar as one of the key conspirators operating with Sasikala faction. In a press conference Panneerselvam said, He told me that Chinnammas brother Dhivakaran had asked him to speak to me. He said Dhivakaran was unhappy and was planning to take back Chinnamma to their home town. When I asked for the reason behind this he said Dhivakaran wants Chinnamma to be the general secretary. On the other hand, the OPS camp seems to sailing smooth with the political developments and G.K. Vasans Tamil Maanila Congress (TMC) extending support. Vasan has also agreed to campaign for OPSs candidate E Madhusoodhanan. Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad wrote a letter to Union Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapthi Raju voicing "regret" over the "unfortunate incident". The Air India Cabin Crew Association, however, has said he must not be allowed to fly until he tenders an "unconditional apology" Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad, at the centre of a row over assaulting an Air India employee, on Thursday wrote a letter to Union Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapthi Raju voicing "regret" over the "unfortunate incident". "I write to convey my regrets for the unfortunate incident that took place on 23rd March, 2017 in the Air India Flight No. AI-852 seat No. 1F," Gaikwad, who has been steadfast in refusing to tender an apology to either the national carrier or the staffer concerned, said. "It could have been no one's intention to have let the situation aggravate to the level that it eventually did. While the on-going investigation will bring out the factual sequence of events to fix responsibility, this incident may kindly not be seen as a reason for likely recurrence of such an event in future also," he said in the letter. The letter, according to official sources, followed a meeting in Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan's chamber in Parliament where Shiv Sena MPs were told that if Gaikwad issued a statement committing that he would not engage in any such incident in future, the government could intervene and have the ban revoked. "As the restriction on flying is affecting the effective discharge of my duties and responsibilities, I would request you to lift this restriction and let the investigation eventually determine the circumstances which led to the incident," Gaikwad said. 'Gaikwad poses threat to flight safety' The Air India Cabin Crew Association has said Gaikwad must not be allowed to fly until he tenders an "unconditional apology" for beating up a 60-year-old staffer, and asserted that he poses a risk to flight safety. In a letter to the AI Chairman and Managing Director Ashwani Lohani, the association has said a decision by either the Ministry of Civil Aviation or Parliament to lift the ban will affect the morale of the employees. "Unless he tenders an unconditional apology to AI employees, and undertakes in writing to abide by the Chicago and Tokyo Conventions & Rules of the Air and follow all cabin safety and public behaviour norms, we must not let him on board," says the letter. "Ravindra Gaikwad is and will continue to be a risk to flight safety and flight operations and to Cabin Crew safety on board, and hence Government must think long and hard about letting him back on," the letter added. The association said it would be a "crying shame" if he is let off "without even a rap on the knuckles". "For either the ministry or the Parliament to allow such a person to get away without even a rap on the knuckles or even forcing an apology to all Air- Indians and indeed all Indians, would be a crying shame. "It would also crush the morale of all employees and indeed all fair minded Indians. We do not wish to be flying such a person," the association wrote in the letter. The national leadership of the BJP has hit out against Keralas electricity minister, M.M. Mani, 72, for attacking Prime Minister Narendra Modi personally at a byelection rally in Malappuram Lok Sabha constituency in Kerala. Mani, apparently, said that Modi was suffering from biological defects, and that was the reason his wife left him. He also said that Modi treated his mother badly. Said the BJPs national secretary and party in-charge for Kerala, H. Raja, to THE WEEK, We are going to take legal action against Mani. It is unbecoming for a minister to speak like this. We will deal with him. National general secretary of the BJP P. Muralidhar Rao said that the onus was now on the CPI(M) to get rid of such useless leaders. Said Rao to THE WEEK, First, the CPI(M) in Kerala has to condemn the ministers statement. Or else, we will have to construe that as the partys reaction. The communist parties in India cannot afford to have such leaders, who will erode their popularity even further. Spokesperson of the BJP G.V.L. Narasimha Rao said that leaders in CPI(M) in Kerala were jealous of Modi and his growing popularity. Said he to THE WEEK, Such a statement from the minister reflects the partys mindset. The LDF in Kerala, of which the CPI(M) is a part of, is facing the heat of the BJPs emergence in the state. People of Kerala are hurt by Manis comment against the prime minister. Soon, they will give a befitting response. The CPI(M) in Kerala continues to practise gutter politics. Mani, on his part, has denied making any personal attack on the prime minister. Said he to THE WEEK, My words were twisted by journalists. I never said that Modi had a biological problem. I only said that he should not have abandoned his wife in this manner. Whats wrong with that? Television channels showed Mani saying it. Said CPI(M) Polit Bureau member S. Ramachandran Pillai to THE WEEK, I am not aware of what Mani said. I will try to find out why he said that. A controversial leader who is known to speak his mind, Mani is an accused in the murder of a Congress leader at his hometown in Idukki district in 1982. In 2012, at a rally, Mani boasted about the so-called party method of killing its opponents. After much furore, he stepped down as the partys secretary in Idukki. A police case was registered against him. Notwithstanding the speech, Mani won the 2016 assembly elections in the state from Udumbanchola constituency by a margin of around thousand votes. In November, Mani took over as the state electricity minister after the then industries minister E.P. Jayarajan resigned over nepotism charges. US President Donald Trump said on Thursday he ordered a targeted military strike against an airfield in Syria from which a deadly chemical attack was launched this week. US officials said the military launched dozens of cruise missile strikes against an airbase controlled by Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad's forces in response to the chemical attack on Tuesday in a rebel-held area. Facing his biggest foreign policy crisis since taking office in January, Trump took the toughest direct US action yet in Syria's six-year-old civil war, raising the risk of confrontation with Russia and Iran, Assad's two main military backers. Some 50 Tomahawk missiles were launched from US Navy warships in the Mediterranean Sea, striking multiple targetsincluding the airstrip, aircraft and fuel stationson an airbase in Homs, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Further details and damage estimates from the strikes, which were conducted at 8:45 pm EDT (0045 GMT Friday), were not immediately known. Trump ordered the strikes just a day after he pointed the finger at Assad for this week's chemical attack, which killed at least 70 people, many of them children, in the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun. The Syrian government has denied it was behind the attack. Trump appeared to have opted for measured and targeted air attacks instead of a full-blown assault on Assad's forces and installations. Trump, who was attending a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping at his Florida resort, said earlier on Thursday that "something should happen" with Assad but did not specifically call for his ouster. Officials from the Pentagon and State Department met all day to discuss plans for the missile strikes. US military action put the new president at odds with Russia, which has air and ground forces in Syria after intervening there on Assad's side in 2015 and turning the tide against mostly Sunni Muslim rebel groups. Trump has until now focused his Syria policy almost exclusively on defeating Islamic State militants in northern Syria, where US special forces are supporting Arab and Kurdish armed groups. The risks have grown worse since 2013, when Barack Obama, Trump's predecessor, considered and then rejected ordering a cruise missile strike in response to the use of chemical weapons by Assad's loyalists. Only last week, US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said the US diplomatic policy on Syria for now was no longer focused on making Assad leave power, one of Obama's aims. But Trump said on Wednesday the gas attack in Idlib province, which sparked outrage around the world, had caused him to think again about Assad. Speaking just before the strikes were announced, Russia's deputy UN envoy, Vladimir Safronkov, warned of "negative consequences" if the United States went ahead with military action, saying the blame would be on shoulders of those who initiated such doubtful and tragic enterprise. The deployment of military force against Assad marked a major reversal for Trump. Obamas set a red line in 2012 against Assads use of chemical weapons. When Obama then threatened military action after a 2013 chemical attack, Trump issued a series of tweets opposing the idea, including Do NOT attack Syria, fix USA. Obama backtracked on the air strikes, and after the latest attack, Trump was quick to blame his Democratic predecessor for weakness and irresolution that emboldened Assad. He won accolades and awards for cinematography for his first film Omkara. The training he received from American Film School in Los Angeles prepared Tassaduq Hussain Mufti, the only son of former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, for his debut in the reel world. He is now making his debut in politics, at a time when his Peoples Democratic Party appears to be on a downward spiral. Its alliance with the BJP has hit the party hard even in its strongholds like Anantnag, from where Tassaduq is contesting a Lok Sabha byelection. The legacy of his father, he hopes, would bring him votes on April 12, the election day. Yet, it wont be easy for the 45-year-old, especially as the byelection comes after a violent year of mass uprisings in which as many as 96 Kashmiris lost their lives. There is no doubt that Tassaduqs entry into politics could alter Kashmirs political landscape. There is already talk about his sister Mehbooba Mufti, the chief minister, wanting to give up an active political role like Sonia Gandhi. But, that is easier said than done, given Kashmirs complex and unpredictable political climate. Tassaduqs main opponent is state Congress president Ghulam Ahmad Mir, who is supported by the National Conference. Politics never really thrilled me, Tassaduq told THE WEEK. I was more of a free spirit and wanted to do things to my liking. My father never interfered in what I did. As a young boy, Tassaduq enjoyed camping, trekking and swimming in the Dal lake. He remembers his father as more of an easygoing person than an astute politician. He took us fishing, horse riding and to visit mulberry plantations and silk factories, said Tassaduq. Mehbooba would guide him in studies and teach him maths. As we grew older, all of us siblings got busy with our own lives. Now Mehbooba is my mentor again, said Tassaduq. When militancy erupted in Kashmir, Tassaduq, like most other rich and well-connected kids, left Kashmir. He went to a business school in Delhi. My father was Union home minister and I used to be surrounded by a lot of security, he said. But after I returned from Los Angeles, nobody knew who I was. Even Vishal Bhardwaj, director of Omkara, was surprised when he found out. Although he stayed out of Kashmir for a large part of his life, Tassaduq has retained close ties with the state. He had shot a documentary on the families of missing people in Kashmir. I have not edited it yet, he said. He had also filmed a promotional campaign for Incredible India. Although it was a promotional campaign, the shooting went on for 31 days because of Kashmir, said Tassaduq. Sometimes the strongest images come from tragedies, discontent and chaos. Kashmir never fails to inspire an artist or a filmmaker. Whether it is the pain or the beauty of Kashmir, it grips you, said Tassaduq. He has plans to set up skill-based training schools for the educated youth of Kashmir. He also plans to rope in some of his friends from the American Film Institute to set up a film school in Kashmir. He has already invited an editor of the Film and Television Institute of India for a training workshop for budding documentary filmmakers. As elections approach, Tassaduq has not forgotten his political commitments. He starts his day by reading newspapers, followed by attending a briefing of the days schedule. He then sets out for campaign along with Mehbooba and uncle Sartaj Madni and other PDP leaders. Although he has made a few measured speeches, most of the talking is done by Mehbooba. Tassaduq said he was enjoying his new career move. I am learning new things and getting a little bit lazy because I am not doing much. I dont understand regions and sub-regions; I need to brush up on history, too, he said. I would allow my sister to handle things and learn for her. Baby steps are what I need. Son-rise in the valley Tassaduq Hussain Mufti * Only son and youngest of four children of Mufti Mohammed Sayeed * Studied at Tyndale-Biscoe school in Srinagar * Left Kashmir in 1989 as militancy gained momentum * Did MBA in Delhi * Joined the American Film School in Los Angeles to learn cinematography * Notable films include Omkara and Kaminey * Entered politics in January 2016 a year after the death of his father * Contesting from Anantnag Lok Sabha seat vacated by sister Mehbooba Mufti * Pet causes include environmental and ecological preservation and cultural heritage of Kashmir The politicians of the secular brigade are the ones who have fuelled this by teasing Hindus into a state where they might react, said VHP leader Surendra Jain. By Siddhartha Rai: The ultra-right Hindutva outfit and Sangh affiliate Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) believes the Alwar killing, where a mob lynched a Muslim man over suspicions of him being a cow smuggler, was an expression of the popular and spontaneous anger of the Hindus and that it had nothing to do with any Hindutva outfit. "We do not favour killing, but it needs to be understood that Hindus have long been mistreated in their own country and that such incidents are but an expression of the deep-seated anger among Hindus which bursts spontaneously. The politicians of the secular brigade are the ones who have fuelled this by teasing Hindus into a state where they might react," VHP leader Surendra Jain said. advertisement "Asaduddin Owaisi stopped desecrating Hindu gods and goddesses when we told him in Hyderabad that we would be pushed to the wall and we could start the same for the Prophet," said VHPs international joint general secretary Surendra Jain. "Karnataka CM argued that he would continue to eat beef." HINDUS ARE ANGRY, SAYS JAIN The Hindu community is in anger, Jain said, and that it could express itself in spontaneous ways that we don't have control over. "These people forget that the 1857 freedom movement was sparked and based around the symbol of cow. Hindus will continue to be furious if their sentiments are hurt," he said. "The Muslim community is entirely responsible for such incidents where the two communities clash over the cow. Muslims are Christians have desecrated Hindu gods and goddesses and have written such denigrating documents against Ram and Krishna and Kali to fill halls at end," Jain added. "If some from the Muslim community disrespects Hindus, then the Muslim community must stand and issue a fatwa against him or her. Then we shall understand that Muslims are serious about ending this strife," Jain said. ALSO READ | Alwar gau rakshak attack: Did not take place, says BJP's Naqvi; even NYT knows about it, says Congress's Azad ALSO READ | Alwar cow vigilante killing: Cattle carriers had Jaipur municipal receipts, cops booked them for smuggling --- ENDS --- The NHRC has issued a notice to the chief secretary, Rajasthan calling for a detailed report in the matter along with action taken against the culprits. By Shivendra Srivastava: The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has taken action on the basis of reports that on 1st April in Behror area of Alwar on National Highway-8 in Rajasthan, a group of so called gau rakshaks attacked some persons dubbing them as cattle smugglers, though they were dairy farmers carrying cows, legally purchased under a receipt and stamp of Jaipur Municipal Corporation. advertisement The brutal assault resulted in the death of a person. However, reportedly, the Rajasthan police have registered an FIR against the victims of assault for illegally transporting cattle for slaughter. The NHRC has issued a notice to the chief secretary, Rajasthan calling for a detailed report in the matter along with action taken against the culprits. A notice has also been issued to the Union home secretary, calling for a response as to what steps have been taken or proposed to be taken by the Centre to deal with such incidents in the country. The response is expected within four weeks. The NHRC has observed that the contents of the media reports are painful. This is a serious issue of violation of human rights of the victims. Self-proclaimed volunteers creating an atmosphere of fear in society by taking law in their hands are required to be dealt with strictly as per law. The State has a responsibility to remain vigilant to prevent such activities. It has also observed that this incident is not the first of its kind, which has come to its notice. Earlier, in a similar incident, four Dalit boys, possessing beef, were severely beaten up and dragged in the Gir Somnath district of Gujarat in the month of July, 2016. The matter is already under its consideration. Reportedly, the family members of the deceased, a dairy farmer, stated that the victims showed the attackers the receipt of legally purchased cows, but they continued to thrash them. They snatched their wallets and Rs one lakh as well as cell phones. Also read: Alwar lynching: Culprits not cow protectors, reveals primary probe Alwar gau rakshak attack: Did not take place, says BJP's Naqvi; even NYT knows about it, says Congress's Azad --- ENDS --- "Apraadhi, qaatil, gunda, badmash... Usko Hindu-Musalman ki nazar se mat dekhiye, apraadhi apraadhi hai (Criminal, murderers, goons, law-breakers... Don't look at them as Hindus or Muslims, a criminal is a criminal)," Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said in the Rajya Sabha. By Supriya Bhardwaj: Ruckus continued in the Rajya Sabha on Friday with the Opposition demanding an apology from Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, who on Thursday claimed "no incident" had happened in Alwar where a Muslim man was lynched by a group of cow vigilantes last week. The Opposition, led by the Congress in the Upper House, has asked Naqvi to apologise. The minister, meanwhile, repeated it was a law and order issue and asked the Opposition to not look at the incident as a "Hindu-Muslim question". advertisement "Apraadhi, qaatil, gunda, badmash... Usko Hindu-Musalman ki nazar se mat dekhiye, apraadhi apraadhi hai (Criminal, murderers, goons, law-breakers... Don't look at them as Hindus or Muslims, a criminal is a criminal)," he said in Rajya Sabha. Naqvi said Home Minister Rajnath Singh will make a detailed statement on the Alwar killing on Monday. Naqvi said Home Minister Rajnath Singh will make a detailed statement on the Alwar killing on Monday. "The discussion was on and the Opposition started mentioning other states. It is then the statement was given in context of the overall picture. It is a very sensitive issue. We don't accept what happened in Alwar and in such sensitive matter everyone should behave in a sensitive fashion," he added. Meanwhile, Congress-BJP war of words over Naqvi's statement escalated with BJP MP Subramaniam Swami extending his support for the Union Minister. "Naqvi is right. I was in house when the Opposition mentioned other states. Then he gave that statement in general," BJP leader Subramanian Swamy said. Stating that BJP is playing with fire, Congress Rajya Sabha MP PL Punia said, "The discussion was about Alwar. Such a heinous crime took place and minister gave such a statement." On Thursday, Naqvi had triggered a storm when he tried to downplay the murder of 55-year-old Pehlu Khan and denied it was a case of cow vigilantism, even as the lynching was recorded on various mobile cameras. Rejecting the Opposition's attack that such attacks were happening in the BJP-ruled states, the Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs said it was a very sensitive issue, but "no such incident has happened, the way the matter is being presented here." To this, Leader of Opposition and senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad said, "I am extremely sorry that the minister is so ill-informed. Even the New York Times has reported (on it) and the minister does not know...I have not come across such an insensitive government." Also read Alwar gau rakshak attack: Did not take place, says BJP's Naqvi; even NYT knows about it, says Congress's Azad --- ENDS --- advertisement The Alwar mob lynching case has been transferred to an Alwar Deputy SP rank officer from the Behror SHO after the local police came under scanner for lackadaisical approach. The district police came under scanner for evading questions about the six people named in an FIR out of a mob of at least 20. By Dev Ankur Wadhawan: After receiving flak for its callous handling of the case wherein a group of 15 men were beaten by cow vigilantes in Alwar, the case has been passed to Alwar Deputy SP rank officer from the Behror Police Station House Officer (SHO). Behror Police has been accused of reacting late to the mob violence that later claimed life of Pahalu Khan, who succumbed to his injuries on Monday. advertisement Superintended of Police (SP)Parmal Singh is now in-charge of the investigates in the case. WHAT HAPPENED At least 15 men from Haryana were attacked by gaurakshaks or cow vigilantes on NH-8 in Behror, Rajasthan on April 1 on suspicion of transporting cows for slaughter. The mob thrashed them even after they showed the documents to prove that they had bought the cows from a livestock fair in Jaipur. According to locals, the police reached the spot an hour later after being intimated about the violent turn of events. All were rushed to a nearby hospital, where Khan breathed his last owing to the violent beating he was subjected to. The district police came under scanner for evading questions about the six people named in an FIR. "Looking at the seriousness of this investigation, we have transferred it to the level of Deputy SP and whichever things were mentioned in the FIR , all of them have to be verified, evidence has to be submitted. No person is punished by merely arresting that person. There has to be proper investigation...", said Rahul Prakash, Superintendent of police, Alwar. Prakash also appealed to the public to come forward with any information that might be of help in the case. "There are some faces which can be seen beating up but so far, we have been unable to identify them. So, we appeal to those who were present at the scene, if they know them, kindly contact us", he added. Also read: Muslim man killed by cow vigilantes: Rajasthan home minister holds both sides guilty Also read: Alwar cow vigilante killing: Cattle carriers had Jaipur municipal receipts, cops booked them for smuggling Also read: Alwar lynching: One of the main accused in cow vigilante killing arrested --- ENDS --- The following statement was released by to the media by Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkats office after his planned speaking engagement at San Francisco University was canceled. At San Francisco State last April, dozens of anti-Israel protesters disrupted my public lecture through intimidation and provocation, vulgarities and incitement that bordered on the anti-Semitic. Following the incident, President Wong invited me back to the University to provide students the opportunity to learn that they were denied last spring. I felt a moral obligation to return to San Francisco State and share Jerusalems progress, challenges, and opportunities. Unfortunately, the University did not offer the lecture that would provide the kind of healing needed after the assault on free speech last year. Instead, the University offered a ticketed, limited event, and no legitimate effort was made on the part of the University to publicize the lecture. I have decided not to participate. By failing to provide the necessary public forum and properly publicize my lecture, the University has contributed to the continuing marginalization and demonization of the Jewish state. If I were a representative of any other country, no institution of higher learning would have allowed my speech to be drowned out by protestors inciting violence and then bring me back to campus in a limited, secluded way. Mostly importantly, the Universitys proposed framework is nothing short of a double standard. The University has demonstrated that they will protect the rights of anti-Israel students to drown out diverse voices through violent incitement, while they will not protect the rights of the students to engage in open, robust dialogue. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) The state prosecutor on Thursday 10 Nissan expressed support for a plea bargain agreement with former Chief Rabbi of Israel Rabbi Yonah Metzger. The agreement was presented to the High Court after a district court had rejected the deal earlier, sentencing the rabbi to 4.5 years imprisonment for his conviction of an plethora of white collar charges. Under the plea bargain, his sentence is 3.5 years, of which he will only have to serve 2 years, Walla News reports. The prosecution told the High Court it has learned that there were errors in presenting the original plea bargain deal, errors the court called cardinal. Attorneys Tal Gabbai and Yehuda Fried told the High Court the deal had been accepted at the highest levels of the State Prosecutors Office and one of the reasons was to encourage public servants to admit to their actions and sign such agreements. The prosecution also explained there are difficulties regarding the integrity of the states main witness, Rabbi Metzgers former driver and personal assistant. In addition, Rabbi Metzger addressed the fact the district court stated he has not expressed remorse, standing before the High Court in tears, seeking the courts mercy. I was asked by Justice Moshe HaKohen if I had anything to add. I was unaware I was expected to express remorse before the court. I am stating now that I transgressed, sinned and broke the state laws. I do not have to be punished more. I have accepted responsibility for my actions he told the High Court. The rabbi is expected to begin serving his prison sentence on May 3, 2017. In addition, he has been fined NIS 5 million. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) [PHOTOS IN EXTENDED ARTICLE] Israel Police is on heightened alert ahead of Pesach and is calling on the tzibur to remain vigilant and to report anything suspicious without hesitation. Police are out in large numbers and will continue doing so throughout Yomtov and Chol Hamoed. Officials are calling on the general public to remain vigilant, especially in public areas. Thousands of regular police, border police, and specialized units will be standing watch over Pesach. Citizens are urged to pay close attention to security officers and to adhere to any and all instructions. In the event of an emergency, one should phone the 100 emergency dispatcher. One may also phone the nationwide 110 number to receive status reports from police. If you are traveling for Yomtov, police advise leaving a number of room lights on. One is also advised not to leave keys in known places such as an electric box, under a plant or under a doormat. If one is not home it is a good idea to leave a radio on, but not too loud as to avoid disturbing ones neighbors. One should inform ones close neighbors if one is traveling as well. One should ask a close friend to collect mail and newspapers so it does not appear that no one is at home. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) Following the atrocities perpetrated against civilians in Syria this week by the Bashar al-Assad administration, the use of chemical weaponry, a call for world action has been released by Yad Vashem. In the wake of the latest news emerging from Syria regarding chemical warfare waged upon civilians, Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev reiterated that following World War II, the global community enacted universal principles and instituted international organizations with the express purpose of averting future crimes against humanity. Shalev expressed deep concern over the appalling evidence of renewed carnage in Syria and the images of massacred children in this turbulent area. He called upon world leaders and the global community to act now in order to put a stop to the atrocities and avert further suffering. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) [PHOTOS IN EXTENDED ARTICLE] At times, police in Hebron are accused of being too aggressive, especially by left-wing watchdog organizations but in reality, they are fighting a heinous enemy, one who does not discriminate in his desire to murder Jews. Bchasdei Hashem, once again police had Siyata Dishmaya and another attack was prevented. An Arab teen had a kitchen knife hidden in his knapsack. Police report that of late, groups of 15 and 16-year-old Arab youths come to the Machpelah in Hebron and at times, try to approach inspections areas as in this case. A search of a 15-year-olds bag revealed the knife, which was intended for use in a stabbing attack but BH it was prevented. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem/Photo Credit: Police Spokesman Unit) Mayor Bill de Blasio says New York will start rolling out its citywide ferry service a month ahead of schedule. Shipyard workers in Louisiana and Alabama have been scrambling to get the fleet ready. The first two routes are being launched on May 1. De Blasio says a new Rockaway, Queens, route gets top priority because residents there have some of the citys longest commute times. The launch will also include an existing East River route with refurbished vessels. The service, now officially named NYC Ferry , will travel between Manhattan and waterfront neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. A South Brooklyn route will start June 1. An Astoria, Queens route launches in August, followed by Lower East Side and Bronx routes in 2018. A ride will cost $2.75. (AP) MK Haneen Zoabi (Joint List) was booted off a radio program today after a stormy interview in which she equated the recent chemical attack in Syria to IDF operations in Gaza. The heated exchange took place on Israel Radios HaMaznon program, after host Yoav Krakovsky asked MK Zoabi for her views on the worlds inaction in Syria. Zoabi responded by asking Krakovsky if his conscience and professional integrity only exists in a case when discussing children that the IDF didnt kill, and proceeded to accuse the IDF of perpetrating war crimes in Gaza. Why didnt you interview me when you slaughtered children and babies in Gaza?, asked Zoabi. [Assad] has been a criminal for five years since the start of the revolution in Syria, but there is another criminal the Israeli army, and their place is in the International Court of Justice in Hague. Zoabis remarks sparked outrage from one of the shows guest hosts, who said that he can no longer remain silent when MK Zoabi is lying and turning the Israeli army, which is the most moral army in the world, into the army of Assads murderers. Dont you dare preach about morality, retorted a livid Zoabi, I dont want to hear you. Zoabi was soon kicked off the program after shouting at the hosts to shut up. Zoabis remarks came a day after Joint List Chairman Ayman Odeh drew sharp condemnation for drawing a parallel between the situation of the murdered children in Syria and the children in Gaza. My heart aches for the children murdered in Syria in the same way that it feels shame for the children murdered in Yemen and in Gaza too, Odeh said yesterday from the Knesset plenum. Im Tirtzu CEO Matan Peleg responded to the comments and said: The radical remarks of Joint List MKs Zoabi and Odeh against the State of Israel and IDF soldiers prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is a party that seeks to damage the relations between Jews and Arabs in Israel. Peleg added: These MKs are fueled by hatred and extremism and have no interest in serving the needs of the Arab sector, and this has always been the case. The United States blasted a Syrian air base with a barrage of cruise missiles Thursday night in fiery retaliation for this weeks gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. President Donald Trump cast the U.S. assault as vital to deter future use of poison gas and called on other nations to join in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria. It was the first direct American assault on the Syrian government and Trumps most dramatic military order since becoming president just over two months ago. Announcing the assault from his Florida resort, Trump said there was no doubt Syrian President Bashar Assad was responsible for the chemical attack, which he said employed banned gases and killed dozens. Assad choked out the lives of innocent men, women and children, Trumped declared. The U.S. strikes hit the government-controlled Shayrat air base in central Syria, where U.S. officials say the Syrian military planes that dropped the chemicals had taken off. The U.S. missiles hit at 8:45 p.m. in Washington, 3:45 a.m. Friday morning in Syria. The missiles targeted the bases airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, officials said. Syrian state TV reported a U.S. missile attack on a number of military targets and called the attack an aggression. The surprise U.S. assault marked a striking reversal for Trump, who warned as a candidate against the U.S. getting pulled into the Syrian civil war, now in its seventh year. But the president earlier in the week appeared moved by the photos of children killed in the chemical attack, calling it a disgrace to humanity that crossed a lot of lines. About 60 U.S. Tomahawk missiles, fired from warships in the Mediterranean Sea, targeted an air base in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack that American officials believe Syrian government aircraft launched with a nerve agent, possibly sarin. The president did not announce the attacks in advance, though he and other national security officials ratcheted up their warnings to the Syrian government throughout the day Thursday. I think what happened in Syria is one of the truly egregious crimes and shouldnt have happened and it shouldnt be allowed to happen, Trump told reporters traveling on Air Force One to Florida, where he was holding a two-day summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The strike came as Trump was hosting Xi in meetings focused in part on another pressing U.S. security dilemma: North Koreas nuclear program. Trumps actions in Syria could signal to China that the new president isnt afraid of unilateral military steps. even if key nations like China are standing in the way. Trump has advocated greater counterterrorism cooperation with Russia, Assads most powerful military backer. Just last week, the Trump administration signaled the U.S. was no longer interested in trying to push Assad from power over his direction of a conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and led to the worst refugee crisis since World War II. U.S. military officials sought to portray the strikes as an appropriate, measured response. But the assault still risks plunging America into the middle of Syrias conflict, complicating the safety of the hundreds of U.S. forces fighting a separate campaign against the Islamic State group in the north of the country. If Assads military persists in further gas attacks, the Trump administration might logically pursue increased retaliation. Russia and Iran, Assads allies, pose other problems. Russian military personnel and aircraft are embedded with Syrias, and Iranian troops and paramilitary forces are also on the ground helping Assad fight the array of opposition groups hoping to topple him. Before the strikes, U.S. military officials said they informed their Russian counterparts of the impending attack. The goal was to avoid any accident involving Russian forces. Nevertheless, Russias Deputy U.N. ambassador Vladimir Safronkov warned that any negative consequences from the strikes would be on the shoulders of those who initiated such a doubtful and tragic enterprise. The U.S. also notified its partner countries in the region prior to launching the strikes. Trumps decision to attack Syria came three-and-a-half years after President Barack Obama threatened Assad with military action after an earlier chemical weapons attack killed hundreds outside of Damascus. Obama had declared the use of such weapons a red line. At the time, several American ships in the Mediterranean were poised to launch missiles, only for Obama to abruptly pull back after key U.S. ally Britain and the U.S. Congress balked at his plan. He opted instead for a Russian-backed plan that was supposed to remove and eliminate Syrias chemical weapons stockpiles. Thursday nights strikes were launched from the USS Ross and USS Porter and landed in the early morning Friday in Syria. The world learned of the chemical attack earlier in the week in footage that showed people dying in the streets and bodies of children stacked in piles. The international outcry fueled an emotional response from Trump, who appeared to abandon his much-touted America First vision for a stance of humanitarian intervention, akin to that of previous American leaders. I think what happened in Syria is a disgrace to humanity, he said Thursday. Trump seemed to rapidly reconsider his feelings about Assad, saying: Hes there and I guess hes running things, so something should happen. The show of force in Syria raises legal questions. Its unclear what authority Trump is relying on to attack another government. When Obama intervened in Libya in 2011, he used a U.N. Security Council mandate and NATOs overall leadership of the mission to argue that he had legal authority arguments that many Republicans opposed. Trump cant rely on either justification here. Unclear also is whether Trump is adopting any broader effort to combat Assad. Under Obama, the United States largely pulled back from its support for so-called moderate rebels when Russias military intervention in September 2015 led them to suffer a series of battlefield defeats. Instead, Obama sought to work with Russia on a negotiated transition. Trump and his top aides had acknowledged in recent days the reality of Assad being in power, saying his ouster was no longer a priority. But the chemical weapons attack seemed to spur a rethink. In Florida on Thursday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said of Assad: Theres no role for him to govern the Syrian people. (AP) American evangelist Donna Schambach and two others - Patricia King and Apostle P S Rama Babu - were supposed to hold a programme called the Power and Reality of the Kingdom on April 8 and April 9 in Bengaluru. By Rohini Swamy: American evangelist Donna Schambach has been forced to cancel her event in Bengaluru after VHP leader Girish Bhardwaj lodged a complaint alleging that she had violated visa rules. Schambach, along with two others - Patricia King and Apostle P S Rama Babu, was supposed to hold a programme called the Power and Reality of the Kingdom on Saturday and Sunday in Bengaluru. advertisement In his complaint, Bhardwaj said that Schambach and her evangelist colleagues had violated visa rules, which clearly state that "no visas will be issued to evangelists who desire to propagate their religion in the country. The Government of India will not issue visas to evangelists who desire to come to India to attend religious campaigns." Bhardwaj has alleged that Schambach and Patricia King clearly misled the Indian consulate and obtained visas by stating that they were coming to India to attend a "conference." WORD 'HARVEST' IN TWEET SHOWS INTENT TO CONVERT: VHP Speaking to India Today, Bhardhwaj said that the use of the word "harvest" itself indicated that they were here for conversion. The first complaint was filed by Girish Bhardwaj, while the youth wing of the Bajrang Dal lodged another. A massive protest was planned but the Bangalore police took cognisance of the complaint and denied permission to hold the meeting. WHAT SHE TWEETED Schambach in her tweet had said, "Amazing 2 days of harvest with Apostle Ram Babu and Patricia King in the interior of India. With Apostle Ram babu and his son Ankit. Close to 8000 souls in two days." Soon after the protests began, Donna deleted her tweets. When we contacted one of the organisers on the phone, they did not want to come on record, but said that the event had been cancelled due to unknown reasons. WATCH VIDEO | American evangelist's Bengaluru event cancelled after fringe groups accuse her of flouting visa rules, trying to convert --- ENDS --- Israels prime minister has welcomed the U.S. attack on a Syrian air base saying he fully supports President Trumps decision. Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday in a statement that In both word and action Trump sent a strong and clear message that the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated. Israels Channel 2 TV said Israel along with other allies was notified about the U.S. strike. The attacks in neighboring Syria have worried Israel, which has warned against game-changing weapons reaching Hezbollah in Lebanon from the country, which supports the militant group. Last month Israel shot down an anti-aircraft missile fired at its planes as they struck a suspected Hezbollah weapons convoy. Israel also has treated several thousand Syrians wounded in fighting and provided humanitarian aid to some Syrian communities near the Israeli frontier in the Golan Heights. (AP) By Rabbi Yair Hoffman for the Five Towns Jewish Times Written in honor of the shalom zachar of our fifth grandchild to take place bezras Hashem tonight. It is a minhag in Ashkenazic Jewish circles to host a Shalom Zachar where the baby is found on the Shabbos after a baby boy is born. It is generally held after the Shabbos evening meal. It is not a meal where people wash. SEVERAL REASONS FOR THE MEAL The Rambam (Hilchos Meulah 8:8) tells us that it is important to understand the reason why we do our Mitzvos. He also writes this in Moreh Nevuchim (3:31). It is also the view of the Zohar (Parshas Yisro p. 93b) and Rabbeinu Yonah Shaarei HaAvodah #54. This is also true for understanding why we perform our customs. There are three reasons cited for this custom. GRATITUDE REASON The Terumas HaDeshen (Siman 269) explains that it is a Seudas Hodaah, a meal of thanksgiving. It is held in thanks that the child was saved from the travails and dangers involved in the birth. This is how the Terumas HaDeshen understands the view of Rabbeinu Tam cited in Tosfos in Bava Kamma (80a, Yeshua HaBen). This reason highlights to us the idea that we should always have and develop a feeling of gratitude and appreciation for all that Hashem gives us. We should also have this appreciation for all that others do for us as well. APPRECIATING TORAH REASON The TaZ cites another reason in the name of the Drisha. He writes that is based upon the Gemorah in Niddah 30b that states that when the child is born an angel strikes the baby on his mouth and causes the child to forget all of the Torah he had learned while in his mothers womb. This meal, according to the Taz is to mourn the Torah that was lost. According to this reason, we highlight our appreciation for Torah study. APPRECIATING SHABBOS The TaZ provides his own reason based upon a Midrash found in chapter 27 of VaYikra Rabba. There, the Midrash explains why the Bris Milah is held on the eighth day. It draws a comparison between a king who tells his subjects that he will only grant them an audience after they first appear before a matronisa a hostess. The TaZ writes that this is the reason we hold the Shalom Zachar on Shabbos. From the TaZ we gain an appreciation of the gift that Hashem gave us in the Shabbos. It is important to remember that more than the Jew has kept Shabbos Shabbos has kept the Jew. Although it is somewhat ironic that the person who coined this expression was not observant, it is, nonetheless, a truism. WHY NOT FOR GIRLS? Rav Yechezkel Landau of Prague is noted to have asked the question on the reason cited by the Terumas HaDeshen (in his Dagul Mervavah sefer on Yoreh Deah). If this is the, in fact, the reason for the Seudah to express our appreciation for the salvation of the baby how come we do not hold this meal when a girl is born? This author would like to answer that question with a shocking find. In Meseches Smachos Aivel Rabbasi (2:3) we do find such a meal! The meal is called Shavuah HaBas and it parallels the name found in Bava Kamma called Shavuah HaBen. It is also likely that the Kiddush that we have in shul on Shabbos when a girl is born is in order to fulfill this idea too. It is well known that Rav Chaim Kanievsky Shlita has consistently advised young women who are still in search of a Shidduch to hold a Kiddush in shul even if the girl is now in her twenties! It could very well be that the Shabbos Kiddush is a fulfillmeny of the Shavuah HaBas that is referenced in Aivel Rabbasi. [This author is in the process of forwarding the question to Rav Kanievsky Shlita.] REASON FOR THE NAME The Yaavetz writes in his Sefer Migdol Oz that the reason it is called Shalom Zachar is on account of the fact that it is to remember or commemorate the Torah that was lost. IS IT A SEUDAS MITZVAH? The Trumas HaDeshen rules that, in fact, the Shalom Zachar is a Seudas Mitzvah. He cites as a proof that the Gemorah in Bava Kamma tells us that Rav entered the meal of Yeshua HaBen (as it was called then, according to the Trumas HaDeshen). We know from elsewhere (Chullin 95b) that Rav never ate at a Seudas Reshus a festive meal that was not a seudas Mitzvah. Therefore, the Trumas HaDeshen concludes that it is a Seudas Mitzvah. The Chavos Yair, however, disagrees. He states (Siman 70) that it is possible that Rav had just popped in and did not partake of the actual meal itself. DELAYED BRIS If the child is jaundiced or otherwise ill and the Bris will not be held within the next week, there is a debate among authorities as to when the Shalom Zachar is to be held. Some hold it on the Shabbos before the Bris (Yaavetz and Chochmas Adam 149:24), while others (Zocher Habris) hold that it is always the Shabbos after the baby is born. The language of the Ramah seems to indicate that he held to this view. The prevailing custom seems to be that it is held after the birth. A FRIDAY NIGHT BIRTH What happens when the baby is born on Friday night? In such circumstances it is often logistically difficult to arrange a Shalom Zachar. The Pri MaGadim (MZ YD 444:9) writes that one does it as close to the birth as possible. The Chayei Adaam, however, disagrees and writes that it should be done as close to the Bris Milah as possible. Each person should ask his own Rav. The author can be reached at [email protected] THE SHALOM ZACHAR WILL BEGIN AT 9:30 PM THIS EVENING AT THE AUTHORS HOME. MAZEL TOV TO THE PARENTS, MIRELLE AND RAPHAEL GILLER. President Donald Trumps Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, headed for confirmation on Friday after Republicans tore up the Senates voting rules to allow him to ascend to the high court over furious Democratic objections. Vice President Mike Pence was expected to preside as all 52 Republicans and three moderate Democrats from states that Trump won Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Donnelly of Indiana cast their votes for the Supreme Court nominee. Democrats denounced the GOPs use of what both sides dubbed the nuclear option to put Gorsuch on the court, calling it an epic power grab that would further corrode politics in Congress, the courts and the United States. Many Republicans bemoaned reaching that point, too, but they blamed Democrats for pushing them to it. We will sadly point to today as a turning point in the history of the Senate and the Supreme Court, Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York declared on the Senate floor Thursday. This is going to be a chapter, a monumental event in the history of the Senate, not for the better but for the worse, warned Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a senior Republican. The final confirmation vote on Gorsuch is expected Friday, and he should be sworn in soon to hear the final cases of the term. He was nominated by Trump shortly after the January inauguration. The Senate change, affecting how many votes a nominee needs for confirmation, will apply to all future Supreme Court candidates, likely ensuring more ideological justices chosen with no need for consultation with the minority party. Trump himself predicted to reporters aboard Air Force One that there could be as many as four Supreme Court vacancies for him to fill during his administration. In fact, under a certain scenario, there could even be more than that, Trump said. There is no way to know how many there will be, if any, but several justices are quite elderly. Even as they united in indignation, lawmakers of both parties, pulled by fierce political forces from left and right, were unwilling to stop the confirmation rules change. The maneuvering played out in a tense Senate chamber with most members in their seats, a rare and theatrical occurrence. First Democrats tried to mount a filibuster in an effort to block Gorsuch by denying him the 60 votes needed to advance to a final vote. That was successful only briefly, as Gorsuch fell five votes short. Then Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., raised a point of order, suggesting that Supreme Court nominees should not be subjected to a 60-vote threshold but instead a simple majority in the 100-member Senate. McConnell was overruled, but he appealed the ruling. And on that he prevailed on a 52-48 party-line vote. The 60-vote filibuster requirement on Supreme Court nominees was effectively gone, and with it the last vestige of bipartisanship on presidential nominees in an increasingly polarized Senate. The developments were accompanied by unusually bitter accusations and counter-accusations. And yet in many ways the showdown had been pre-ordained, the final chapter in years of partisan warfare over judicial nominees. In 2005, with the Senate under GOP control, Republicans prepared to utilize the nuclear option to remove the filibuster for lower-court nominees. A bipartisan deal at the time headed off that change. But then in 2013, with Democrats in charge and Republicans blocking President Barack Obamas nominees, the Democrats did take the step, removing the filibuster for all presidential appointments except the Supreme Court. McConnell accused Democrats of forcing his hand by trying to filibuster a highly qualified nominee in Gorsuch, 49, a 10-year veteran of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver with a consistently conservative record. But Democrats were unable to pull back from the brink, partly because they remain livid over McConnells decision last year to block Obamas Supreme Court nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, who was denied even a hearing after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016. Instead McConnell kept Scalias seat open, a calculation that is now paying off for Republicans and Trump. Even as Graham and other senior Republicans lamented the voting change, McConnell and some allies argued that all they were doing was returning to a time, not long ago, when filibusters of judicial nominees were unusual, and it was virtually unheard-of to try to block a Supreme Court nominee in that fashion. (AP) World leaders rallied around the United States after it launched a missile strike early Friday on a Syrian air base in response to this weeks chemical attack, while Russia condemned the move as aggression and suspended crucial coordination with Washington in Syrias congested skies. The overnight missile attack, which marked the first time the U.S. has directly targeted Syrian President Bashar Assads forces, was condemned by his allies in Russia and Iran but welcomed by the Syrian opposition and its supporters, who expressed hope it signaled a turning point in the devastating six-year-old civil war. The bombing represents Trumps most dramatic military order since taking office and thrusts the U.S. administration deeper into the complex Syrian conflict. The Obama administration threatened to attack Assads forces after previous chemical attacks, but never followed through. About 60 U.S. Tomahawk missiles hit the Shayrat air base, a small installation with two runways, where aircraft often take off to bomb targets in northern and central Syria. The U.S. missiles hit at 3:45 a.m. (0045 GMT) Friday and targeted the bases airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, U.S. officials said. They were fired from two warships in the Mediterranean Sea, in retaliation for Tuesdays deadly chemical attack, which officials said used chlorine mixed with a nerve agent, possibly sarin. Assads office called the U.S. missile strike reckless and irresponsible. The Syrian military said at least seven people were killed and nine wounded in the strike. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition monitor, also put the death toll at seven, including a general and three soldiers. The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin believes the U.S. strike is an aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Washingtons move deals a significant blow to the Russia-U.S. relations, which are already in a deplorable shape, and poses a serious obstacle for creating an international coalition against terrorism. Russias Foreign Ministry said it is suspending a memorandum with Washington signed after Russia began an air campaign in support of Assad in September 2015 under which the two countries exchange information about sorties over Syria. The Kremlin said just 23 of 59 cruise missiles reached the air base, destroying six Syrian jets but leaving the runway intact. A U.S. official said all but one of the 59 missiles struck their intended targets, hitting multiple aircraft and hardened air shelters, and destroying the fuel area. The official, who was not authorized to discuss initial reports, spoke on condition of anonymity. A U.S.-led coalition has been bombing Islamic State targets in Syria since 2014, while Russias air force has been striking both extremist groups and Syrian rebels in order to aid Assads forces. Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which support the Syrian opposition, welcomed the missile strike, with Riyadh calling it a courageous decision by Trump. Iran called it a dangerous unilateral action that would strengthen terrorists and further complicate the conflict. The British government says it was informed in advance about the strike and firmly supports the American action. Prime Minister Theresa Mays office says the action was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, and is intended to deter further attacks. France, Italy and Israel also welcomed the strikes. The opposition Syrian Coalition said the U.S. attack puts an end to an age of impunity and should herald the start of a larger campaign against Damascus. Maj. Jamil al-Saleh, a U.S-backed rebel commander based in the area where the U.S. attack took place, told The Associated Press he hoped the strike would be a turning point in the six-year-old war, which has killed an estimated 400,000 people. Assad had been under mounting international pressure after the chemical attack on the northern town of Khan Sheikhoun, which killed 87 people, including 31 children. Even Russia has said its support is not unconditional. Syria rejected the accusations, and blames opposition fighters for stockpiling the chemicals. Russia has said the toxic agents were released when a Syrian airstrike hit a rebel chemical weapons arsenal, and that blame should not be apportioned until a full investigation has been completed. Russias military intervention in Syria has turned the balance of power in Assads favor, and Moscow has used its veto power at the Security Council on several occasions to prevent sanctions against Damascus. The U.S. had initially focused on diplomatic efforts, pressing the U.N. Security Council to adopt a resolution drafted with Britain and France that would have condemned Syrias suspected use of chemical weapons. But the vote was canceled because of differences among the 15 members. The Security Council plans to meet at 11:30 a.m. (1530 GMT) for a briefing on the U.S. strike. In Geneva, the U.N. envoy for Syria told the AP his office is in crisis mode after the strike, and that he would soon convene an urgent meeting of a Syrian cease-fire task force chaired by the United States and Russia. Staffan de Mistura said Russia requested the meeting, which was agreed upon by the United States. The envoy has been spearheading peace-making efforts for nearly three years, with little progress. Trump had said the chemical attack crossed many, many lines, and put the blame squarely on Assads forces. Speaking Thursday on Air Force One, Trump said the attack shouldnt have happened, and it shouldnt be allowed to happen. A survivor of the chemical attack said he hopes the U.S. missile attack puts an end to government airstrikes, creating a safe area for civilians. Alaa Alyousef, who lost 25 relatives in the chemical attack, said the U.S. missile strike alleviates a small part of our suffering, but he worries it will be an anesthetic that merely numbs the pain while allowing the international community to save face. (AP) A hijacked beer truck crashed into an upscale department store in central Stockholm on Friday, killing at least two people, according to Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, who called the crash a terror attack. Live television footage showed smoke coming out of the upscale Ahlens department store on the citys pedestrian street Drottninggatan, the store the truck smashed into about 3 p.m. People in the downtown area fled in panic. Authorities evacuated the citys nearby Central Station, which links regional trains with the Swedish capitals subway system. All trains to and from the main station were halted and two large shopping malls in the capital were shut down. Sweden has been attacked, Lofven said in a nationally televised press conference. This indicates that it is an act of terror. Broadcaster SVT said at least five people were killed in the attack while Swedish radio reported three dead, but police could not immediately confirm either report. The countrys intelligence agency said a large number of people were wounded in the crash. We stood inside a shoe store and heard something and then people started to scream, witness Jan Granroth told the Aftonbladet daily. I looked out of the store and saw a big truck. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack and police at a later news conference said no one had been arrested so far, contradicting earlier Swedish media reports that one person was in custody. We have no contact with the person or persons who drove the truck, Swedens top police chief, Dan Eliasson, told reporters. Right now, we have no one arrested, said Jan Evensson of the Stockholm police, who urged people not to drive into central Stockholm. Swedish beer maker Spendrups said one of its trucks had been hijacked earlier Friday. It is one of our delivery trucks. In connection with a delivery to a restaurant called Caliente, someone jumped into the truck and drove it away while the driver was unloading his delivery, Spendrups spokesman Marten Luth told the Swedish news agency TT. He said the original beer truck driver was not injured. Mats Loving of the national polices operational unit said police presence across the Scandinavian country had been stepped up. The TT news agency reported that checkpoints were set up on the Oresund bridge to Denmark. Swedens security agency boss, Anders Thornberg, said the SAPO agency was working with police on the case and had no indications earlier that an attack was imminent. Swedish government spokeswoman Tina Israelsson said the government is following developments and is in close contact with officials who are responsible for dealing with the situation. Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf cut short a visit to Brazil to return earlier than planned and sent the royal familys condolences to the families of the victims and those who were wounded. The truck crash appeared to be the latest attack in Europe using a vehicle. Last month, in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group, a man drove into a crowd on Londons Westminster Bridge, killing three people and injuring many others before stabbing a policeman to death. He was shot dead by police. A fourth person, a woman thrown into the Thames by the force of the car attack, died Thursday. The IS group also claimed responsibility for a truck attack that killed 86 people in Nice, France, in July during a Bastille Day festival last year and another truck attack that killed 12 people at a Christmas market in Berlin. Condolences poured into Sweden on Friday from top European Union officials and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. In neighboring Finland, President Sauli Niinisto said he was shocked by the maniac act of terror in Stockholm. Every terror attack is to be equally condemned. But it touches us deeply when such an attack takes place in our Nordic neighborhood, Niinisto said. The Finnish Border Guard stepped up security measures at airports and harbors following the Stockholm attack and Helsinki police tightened security in the Finnish capital. The mayor of Paris said the Eiffel Tower will go black from midnight Friday in homage to the victims in Stockholm. Mayor Anne Hidalgo expressed her strong emotion over this new terrorist attack of immense cowardice. EU Council President Donald Tusk said in a tweet Friday that my heart is in Stockholm this afternoon. My thoughts are with the victims and their families and friends of todays terrible attack. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said one of Europes most vibrant and colorful cities appears to have been struck by those wishing it and our very way of life harm. Juncker also said an attack on any of our (EU) member states is an attack on us all and that Sweden can count on EU help. Fridays crash is near the site of a December 2010 attack in Stockholm in which Taimour Abdulwahab, a Swedish citizen who lived in Britain, detonated a suicide bomb, killing himself and injuring two others. Abdulwahab had rigged a car with explosives in the hope the blast would drive people to Drottninggatan the street hit Friday where he would set off devices strapped to his chest and back. The car bomb never went off, and Abdulwahab died when one of his devices exploded among panicked Christmas shoppers. (AP) The United States is looking into whether Russia participated in the Syrian chemical weapons attack that provoked President Donald Trumps airstrikes against the Assad government, a revelation that could have dramatic implications for relations between Washington and Moscow. On Friday, senior U.S. military officials said a drone belonging to either Russia or Syria was seen hovering over the site of the chemical weapons attack after the assault earlier this week. Russia is one of Syrias most important patrons and has long resisted U.S. efforts to push President Bashar Assad from power. The Trump administration sent conflicting messages on what the strikes signaled for the overall U.S. policy in Syria. White House officials said the assault was not a step toward deeper involvement in Syrias civil war, though Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Washington was prepared to take further military action. We are prepared to do more, but we hope that will not be necessary, Haley said at an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council. The president approved the strike while in Florida for a two-day summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. He did not respond to shouted questions about the assault from reporters as he opened meetings with Xi on Friday. The strikes 59 missiles launched from the USS Ross and USS Porter hit the government-controlled Shayrat air base in central Syria, where U.S. officials say the Syrian military planes that dropped the chemicals had taken off. The U.S. missiles hit at 8:45 p.m. in Washington, 3:45 Friday morning in Syria. The missiles targeted the bases airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, officials said. A spokesman for Vladimir Putin said the strike deals a significant blow to the Russia-U.S. relations, which are already in a deplorable shape, and poses a serious obstacle for creating an international coalition against terrorism. But there was widespread praise from other nations, including Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which support the Syrian opposition. British Prime Minister Theresa Mays office said the action was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, and is intended to deter further attacks. France, Italy and Israel also welcomed the strikes. In Washington, Republican leaders applauded Trumps actions, despite the president launching the strike without congressional authorization. Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell called Trumps decision entirely correct. I think the president had the authority to do what he did, and Im glad he did it, McConnell said. Democrats were muted in their response. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, R-Calif., said the strikes were a limited but necessary response and called on Trump to develop a comprehensive strategy to end Syrias civil war. The Syrian military said at least 7 people were killed and several were wounded in the strikes on the air base. The U.S. assault marked a striking reversal for Trump, who warned as a candidate against the U.S. being pulled into the Syrian civil war that began six years ago. Advisers said he was moved to act in part by the gripping images of young children killed in the attack. U.S. officials were blistering in their condemnation of Russia, which has brokered a 2013 agreement with Washington to strip Syria of its chemical weapons stockpiles. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in Florida with Trump, said Moscow had failed to live up to its obligations. Either Russia has been complicit or Russia has been simply incompetent in its ability to deliver on its end of the agreement, Tillerson said. Trump had advocated greater counterterrorism cooperation with Russia, Assads most powerful military backer. Just last week, the Trump administration signaled the U.S. was no longer interested in trying to push Assad from power over his direction of a conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and led to the worst refugee crisis since World War II. White House officials said Trumps actions sent a clear message to Assad, though they continued to avoid explicitly calling for him to leave office . The president believes that the Syrian government, the Assad regime, should at the minimum agree to abide by the agreements they made to not use chemical weapons, presidential spokesman Sean Spicer said. U.S. officials portrayed the strikes as an appropriate, measured response and said they did not signal a broader shift in the Trump administrations approach to the Syrian conflict. But there could be other problems. Russian military personnel and aircraft are embedded with Syrias, and Iranian troops and paramilitary forces are also on the ground helping Assad fight the array of opposition groups hoping to topple him. Before the strikes, U.S. military officials said they informed their Russian counterparts of the impending attack. The goal was to avoid any accident involving Russian forces. Nevertheless, Russias Deputy U.N. ambassador Vladimir Safronkov warned that any negative consequences from the strikes would be on the shoulders of those who initiated such a doubtful and tragic enterprise. The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin believes that the U.S. strike on a Syrian air base is an aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law. Irans foreign ministry also condemned the strike and called it a violation of international law. Spicer said the U.S. notified its partner countries in the region prior to launching the strikes. Vice President Mike Pence called key congressional lawmakers in both parties after the cruise missiles were launched. Trumps decision to attack Syria came three-and-a-half years after President Barack Obama threatened Assad with military action after an earlier chemical weapons attack killed hundreds outside Damascus. Obama had declared the use of such weapons a red line. At the time, several American ships in the Mediterranean were poised to launch missiles, only for Obama to abruptly pull back after key U.S. ally Britain and the U.S. Congress balked at his plan. He opted instead for the Russian-backed plan that was supposed to remove and eliminate Syrias chemical weapons stockpiles. The world learned of the chemical attack earlier in the week in footage that showed people dying in the streets and bodies of children stacked in piles. The international outcry fueled an emotional response from Trump, who appeared to abandon his much-touted America First vision for a stance of humanitarian intervention, akin to that of previous American leaders. The show of force in Syria raises legal questions. Its unclear what authority Trump is relying on to attack another government. When Obama intervened in Libya in 2011, he used a U.N. Security Council mandate and NATOs overall leadership of the mission to argue that he had legal authority arguments many Republicans opposed. Trump cant rely on either justification here. (AP) President Donald Trump said Friday he has developed an outstanding relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping after meeting with the leader of a nation Trump has criticized as a menace to the United States. The widely anticipated meeting of the leaders of the worlds two largest economies was largely overshadowed by the U.S. missile strikes at Syria. Those strikes added weight to Trumps threat last week to act unilaterally against North Koreas weapons program. Trump said in a brief appearance before reporters that he and Xi made tremendous progress in their first face-to-face talks and that he believe lots of very potentially bad problems will be going away. He did not elaborate on the progress or the problems. But the two days of talks at Trumps private estate in Florida were expected to focus on what Trump has described as Chinas unfair trade practices and inadequate efforts to halt North Koreas nuclear weapons and missile program. Xi said the delegations covered important topics and have established a good friendship and working relationship. He said he believes the U.S. and China can continue to develop the relationship, noting that its the historic responsibility of both countries to work toward peace and stability. The U.S. announced the missile barrage shortly after Trump and Xi wrapped up dinner Thursday. The strikes were retaliation against Syrian President Bashar Assad for a chemical weapons attack against civilians caught up in his countrys long civil war. China has sided with Russia at the United Nations in opposing condemnation of Assads government but has not become directly involved in the conflict. On Friday, Chinas Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said China opposed the use of chemical weapons by any party under any circumstances but didnt comment on the U.S. attack. The timing of the attack could send a message to the Chinese. Trump told the Financial Times in the days before Xis arrival that he is prepared to go it alone on North Korea if China doesnt work with the U.S. to crack down on North Koreas nuclear program Military options against North Korea are much riskier than those against Syria. It has already tested nuclear weapons and South Koreas capital, Seoul, is in range of North Korean artillery. Taking action against North Korea has been a sticking point in U.S. talks with the Chinese. China is North Koreas most important ally and trading partner. Before Thursdays dinner, Trump said he and Xi already had had a long discussion and had developed a friendship, and then joked, I have gotten nothing, absolutely nothing. However, Xi apparently got something out of dinner. Chinese state media reported late Thursday that Trump has accepted Xis invitation to visit China this year. The official Xinhua News Agency said Trump will travel to China at an early date in 2017, but gave no details. The White House downplayed expectations for a breakthrough on issues like trade and tariffs, insisting that the 24-hour summit is mostly an introductory meeting for the two leaders. Within Trumps administration, divisions remain over how to approach China. As a candidate and president, Trump has taken an aggressive posture toward China, labeling Beijing a tremendous problem and arguing that lopsided trade deals with China shortchange American businesses and workers. Last week, the president tweeted that his meeting with Xi would be very difficult. He also last week signed a pair of executive orders focused on reducing the U.S. trade deficit, an apparent shot at China, which accounted for the vast bulk $347 billion of last years $502 billion trade deficit. Speaking to reporters while traveling to Florida, Trump suggested a link between terrible trade agreements the U.S. has made with China and Pyongyangs provocations. He said the two issues really do mix. While Trump would not say what he wants China to do specifically, he said he thinks China will want to be stepping up on the North Korea issue. Xi was expected to seek assurances that Trump will not interfere in the territorial dispute over the South China Sea or question the One China policy by reaching out to Taiwans leader again, as Trump did during the transition. (AP) Russia said Friday it was cutting a hotline intended to prevent midair incidents over Syria in response to the U.S. missile attack on a Syrian base. The response that demonstrates Moscows readiness to defy Washington and could even put the two nuclear superpowers on a course toward military confrontation. Russia President Vladimir Putin signaled he was ready to risk a clash with the U.S. and abandon hopes for mending ties under President Donald Trump, rather than accept the humiliation of standing by while his ally is bombed. Russias decision to suspend the hotline established after the launch of the Russian air campaign in Syria in September 2015 effectively means that Russian and U.S. planes could fly dangerously close to each other during combat missions, raising the risk of inadvertent or deliberate clashes in the crowded skies over Syria. Senior U.S. military officials told The Associated Press on Friday that the U.S. and Russia will maintain the hotline. But Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said the U.S. was informed that Russia would suspend its obligations at midnight Saturday (2100 GMT Friday). By freezing the information channel between the two potent militaries, Russia is signaling to Washington that it will tolerate no further strikes on Syrian government facilities. Syria has aging Soviet-built aircraft and air defense missile systems, while Russia has deployed dozens of its cutting edge warplanes and air defense batteries at its base in Syrias coastal province of Latakia. It also has a strategically important naval outpost in the Syrian port of Tartus, which is protected by air defense assets. Further upping the ante, the Russian Defense Ministry said it will now help strengthen Syrian air defenses. U.S. officials accused Russia of failing to ensure Syrian President Bashar Assads commitment to a 2013 deal for the destruction of Assads chemical weapons arsenal. The U.S. says that arsenal was tapped for a chemical attack that killed dozens of civilians in the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province. Trump cited the chemical attack as justification for the missile strike on a Syrian air base. But the Kremlin insists Assads government wasnt responsible for the attack, saying civilians in Khan Sheikhoun were exposed to toxic agents from a rebel arsenal that was hit by Syrian warplanes. President Putin believes that the U.S. strikes on Syria represent an aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law under a far-fetched pretext, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a statement. Washingtons move deals a significant blow to Russia-U.S. relations, which are already in deplorable shape. Until the attack on the Syrian air base, the U.S. had avoided striking Assads forces for fear of provoking a clash with the Russian military. The action comes ahead of U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillersons trip to Moscow next week. The Kremlin initially had been encouraged by Trumps goal of repairing ties with Moscow, which plunged to post-Cold War lows under former President Barack Obama, but hopes for a thaw have withered amid the congressional investigation of possible links between Trump campaign officials and Russia. The U.S. missile strike could make it all but impossible to improve relations. Some people here thought that it would be easy to deal with Trump, Yelena Suponina, a Moscow-based Mideast expert, said in televised remarks. No, it will be very difficult. Hes not only ready to make tough decisions, he is unpredictable. Mikhail Yemelyanov, a senior member of the lower house of parliament, warned that the U.S. action raised the threat of a direct clash between Russia and the U.S. Consequences could be grave, up to military confrontation and exchange of blows, nothing can be excluded, he said, according to the Interfax news agency. Tillerson said Russia had failed in its responsibility to deliver on a 2013 deal it helped broker to destroy Syrias chemical arsenal. So either Russia has been complicit, or Russia has been simply incompetent on its ability to deliver, he said. By ordering the strike, Trump threatened the military assets of Assad, who has enjoyed Russias support throughout the six-year conflict. Russias military has helped turn the war in Assads favor and Moscow has used its U.N. Security Council veto to protect Damascus from censure. Russia also has important military facilities in Syria that could be put at risk if Assad is removed from power, a goal of Western powers that had recently been put on the back burner because of the focus on fighting Islamic State extremists in Syria and Iraq. Peskov said the U.S. gave Russia advance notice about the strike. He added that Moscow believes it makes no sense to maintain the hotline. Asked if the decision to freeze the information exchange could raise the risk of midair incidents, Peskov said it was the U.S. attack that increased such danger. Peskov wouldnt say if Russia could use its military assets to protect Syrian facilities from future U.S. strikes. Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Russia will quickly strengthen the Syrian air defense system and increase its efficiency in order to protect Syrias most sensitive infrastructure facilities. (AP) By Press Trust of India: Umaria (MP), Apr 7 (PTI) The Election Commission today transferred three officials amid complaints that they were campaigning in favour of the BJP candidate in the run up to the Bandhavgarh Assembly bypoll, scheduled on April 9. One of the transferred officials is a brother of Shivnarayan Singh, BJPs candidate for the Bandhavgarh assembly bypoll. advertisement "We had received complaints against four officials. Three of them were transferred from their current field posting and attached to the district administrations offices. The complaint against another officer is still being examined," Umaria District Collector and Returning Officer Abhishek Singh said. Those transferred include a patwari (revenue official) Nar Narayan Singh (brother of BJP candidate Shivnarayan Singh), Karkeli Janpads Chief Executive Officer R K Mandavi and Labour Department official Ghanshyam Gupta, he added. "They were transferred from their current field posting and attached to different offices of the district administration," Singh said. A complaint had also been lodged against South Eastern Coalfields Limiteds General Manager O P Katare. Singh said the complaint against Katare was being examined. Umaria district Congress chief Rajesh Sharma said his party had lodged the complaint with the EC against these officials "for campaigning in favour of BJP". The Leader of Opposition in Madhya Pradesh Assembly, Ajay Singh took up the matter with the poll watchdog, after which action was taken against the officials, Sharma claimed. "We have demanded the removal of these officers from the field as they were campaigning in favour of the BJP candidate," he said. The bypoll in Bandhavgarh and Ater (Bhind district) assembly constituencies will be held on April 9. In Ater, the top contenders are Congress Hemant Katare and BJPs Arvind Singh Bhadoria, while in Bandhavgarh, the contest is mainly between BJPs Shivnarayan Singh and Congress candidate Savitri Singh. The counting of votes will be held on April 13. In Ater, the by-election was necessitated following the death of Congress leader Satyadev Katare, while the Bandhavgarh (ST) seat in Umaria district fell vacant as MLA Gyan Singh was elected to the Lok Sabha in November last year. Campaigning for the bypolls will end this evening. PTI COR ADU MAS NP --- ENDS --- It is believed that at least three groups of cash handlers deposited around Rs.100.57 crore in about 25 shell companies' accounts maintained with Axis Bank, Memnagar Branch. By Shivendra Srivastava: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has registered a case against the branch manager, two officials of Axis Bank, Memnagar Branch in Ahmedabad along with nine other persons. It is alleged that the officials of Axis Bank, Memnagar Branch had misused their official position and allowed unauthorised transactions to shell companies between November-December 2016. The bank officials had allegedly violated the KYC (Know Your Customer) guidelines in aiding the transactions. They have also been booked under the Anti-Money Laundering Act. advertisement It is believed that at least three groups of cash handlers deposited around Rs.100.57 crore in about 25 shell companies' accounts maintained with Axis Bank, Memnagar Branch. The profiles of companies and the people depositing such huge amount of money were found to be non-commensurate with the deposits. WHERE ARE THE PAY-IN SLIPS? It was found that during the period of depositing and exchanging notes of old tender, lump sum deposits were made multiple times by same person in a day. There is intel that cash deposit slips of Rs 13 crore are not available with the bank, which was then immediately transferred to accounts of bullion traders and jewelers through RTGS (Real Time Gross Settlement). As per guidelines during demonetisation period, cash could be deposited either by the account holder or a representative duly authorised. But, in above cases, majority pay in slips have forged signatures. Searches are now being conducted in Ahmedabad at 16 places, including office and residential premises of the accused persons. Also read: Axis Bank officials charged for helping launder Rs 40 crore of demonetised notes Also read: Demonetisation: ED files prosecution complaint against Axis Bank officials --- ENDS --- Paul Polman has a reputation for embracing grand global causes when a bit more attention to the nitty-gritty of Unilever might have been useful. Anglo-Saxon capitalism in the shape of Kraft Heinz has done what it is meant to do in the case of perceived underperformance and lit a fuse under the Dove soap to Ben & Jerry's group. A wide-ranging strategy review finished in record time ought to silence critics and keep predators at bay. It would have been a huge mistake for investors in the Anglo-Dutch group to have succumbed to cash blandishments and ignored the value of Unilever as a global brand leader with a long UK heritage and a R&D and marketing powerhouse. Blinkered: Paul Polman has a reputation for embracing grand global causes when a bit more attention to the nitty-gritty of Unilever might have been useful Rather than doing the splits as some analysts advocated, Unilever will rid itself of its low-growth Flora, butter and spreads brands. With a turnover of 2.6billion, the spreads could be the subject of a trade sale, a private equity buyout or even an initial public offering. There is also a recognition that performance needs to be sharpened and chief executive Polman is targeting a 20 per cent margin by 2020, up from 16.4 per cent. Such numerical targets are a hostage to fortune but they can be helpful in driving executives harder. The promise is being made that along the way any savings will be reinvested in the enterprise, to keep momentum going. It will also be operating using a less conservative balance sheet, appropriately making the most out of leverage. Shareholders, having remained stout in the face of a Brazilian and Warren Buffett-backed classroom bully, are being rewarded with a lift in the dividend and a handsome 4.3billion share buyback. On the expansion front, Unilever plans to add to its brand portfolio when the opportunities arise and Reckitt Benckiser's hot sauces might be tempting. Unilever stock has had a good run so the rise in latest trading was modest. Significantly, Polman has created a model for corporate defiance in the face of overseas buccaneers and established the need for a public interest test. Pay Gulf No one can accuse BP of ignoring last year's shareholder protest against Bob Dudley's fat cat pay. Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg and the pay panel have done a good job in guiding down Dudley's remuneration, cut by 40 per cent this year. One suspects as Deepwater Horizon and 55billion of penalties and compensation fade into the background there will be a sharp lift in performance and Dudley and executive pay will creep up again. As an American, Dudley tends to see his cohorts as being on the other side of the Atlantic. Having steered clear of Obama's America, BP is back in the US, drilling in the Gulf of Mexico with Chevron. Dudley's pay package of 9.3million still exceeds that of Ben van Beurden of Shell and the Total boss. Van Beurden may have to wait for the BG acquisition to pay its way before enjoying a bonanza. The quantum difference between pay in the boardrooms and that on the shop floor remains obscene. But there are signs that pay committees are no longer sticking their finger in the air and using formulaic performance criteria to drive pay ever higher. Serial offenders, including Reckitt Benckiser and GlaxoSmithKline, have recognised the need to roll back generous packages. Much of what is being done looks like window dressing and more permanent reforms to calm excess are needed. Some fund managers believe the answer is higher basic salaries and long-term share awards which do not vest for five or seven years. The case against that is that if the wrong person is given the job costs of dismissal become too high. That is a lame excuse for doing nothing. Zuma risk The steady shift of smart money out of South Africa continues apace. When Barclays boss Jes Staley signalled a historic departure from the region it looked like a betrayal. Dismissal of trusted finance minister Pravin Gordhan and the build-up of corruption charges against President Jacob Zuma suggest that the sooner the British bank divests its remaining 50 per cent stake the safer investors will be. Foreign investors in South Africa hold debt shares equivalent to 68 per cent of total output, or GDP. A run on the rand and foreign investment could trigger political change. But history suggests even freely elected African leaders are not easily shifted. Cause for alarm? Unilever boss Paul Polman Unilever boss Paul Polman hosted a conference call with journalists yesterday to outline plans to sell parts of his firm's food division. It was interrupted by a piercing siren, which could be heard echoing around the firm's Surrey HQ. He said: 'It's just a fire alarm. No need to panic.' Will he be saying the same to jittery employees? Co-op Bank is now officially worthless, a sorry predicament it blames on its disastrous 2009 merger with Britannia Building Society. Investors point an accusatory finger at Neville Richardson, 58, the ex-Britannia boss who sold the lender, complete with ruinous loan book, while taking over the Co-op. He swanned off two years later clutching a whopping 4.6million, so perhaps this disastrous episode's not all sad news. Bank of England rate setter, beanpole Belgian economist Gertjan Vlieghe, 45, pompously compares central bankers to doctors in that 'doctors influence your health, and central banks influence economic outturns'. Not like weather forecasters, he says, 'who can only tell you that chance of rain is high or low, not when it is actually going to rain' a dig at colleague Andy Haldane, who unfavourably compared economists to hapless weatherman Michael Fish. A sensitive bunch, central bankers. While her team were getting thrashed at Arsenal, glossy West Ham chief executive Karren Brady (Baroness Brady of Knightsbridge don'tcha know?) grandly tweeted a picture of the puddings she was enjoying in her corporate box. A trifle tactless? An angry fan responds: 'Having your cake and eating it too, while we're getting our just desserts on the pitch.' Bravo! Refined Financial Times editor and Kevin Spacey lookalike Lionel Barber is crowing after landing an interview with President Trump. He writes: 'The president decided to talk to the FT because it offered his administration a medium through which to speak to an influential global audience.' Clearly no one warned The Donald's people that the FT sells fewer copies here than the Dundee Courier. Early last month Ton Buchner, the super-fit, dog-loving chief executive of the Dutch chemical group that owns Dulux was asked if he'd fancy a coffee with the boss of a rival firm from the US. The old business acquaintance was Mike McGarry, chairman of the US industrial group Pittsburgh Plate Glass (PPG). As is courtesy among the chiefs of giant firms, Buchner who runs paint group Akzo Nobel accepted. They agreed to meet at the Hilton Hotel at the vast Schiphol airport outside Amsterdam on March 2. Cool head: Akzo Nobel boss Ton Buchner last month rejected a 19.4bn offer to buy out the firm which owns two great British corporate enterprises - Courtaulds and ICI The pair shook hands then McGarry, in the manner of a TV lawyer delivering a writ, produced a sealed white envelope. Buchner opened it in silence. Inside was a 19.4billion offer to buy out the firm. Stunned, he promised only to 'diligently look through the proposal and do the homework'. But no sooner had the hand-delivered bombshell hit its target, and before the board could get to grips with the weighty issues, the New York rumour mill started bubbling. Seven days after getting the bid, Buchner had to go public. He revealed he'd received 'an unsolicited, uninitiated, unentertained offer which Akzo was firmly rejecting'. But, to unlock value, he would sell off Akzo's speciality chemicals division. Buchner has been in London this week, to rally support from shareholders. A remarkable 40 per cent of the Dutch-listed company's register are based in the UK, a legacy of its own opportunistic takeovers of two great British corporate enterprises, Courtaulds and ICI. Factfile: Ton Buchner Job: Chairman and CEO of Akzo Nobel, earning 3million a year. Education: MSc in civil engineering from TU Delft; MBA from IMD in Lausanne. Family: Married to Manuela, a Swiss fitness trainer. They have a huge Alaskan Malamute dog which 'needs ten kilometres of running a day to get rid of energy'. Previous job: CEO of Swiss-quoted Sulzer mechanical engineering firm. Worst moment: In 2012, took leave of absence from Akzo after being diagnosed with fatigue, just months after taking the hot seat. Management style: Frequently seen in the staff canteen mixing with employees. Hobbies: Playing the saxophone with friends. At weekends goes on long runs with his spouse and the dog. Also snowboarding in the Swiss Alps. Reading: Sapiens by Israeli author Yuval Noah Harari. Saves the fiction for holidays. Likes: Sci-fi movies. Current favourite is 'Ghost in the Shell'. He's involved in a war. PPG has this week boasted of having almost all of Akzo's top 20 investors on its side. Activist shareholders, including the aggressive American fund Elliott Advisors, are trying to force him to engage with the American predator. So far, Buchner has refused. 'There is no reason for you to go and engage with an offer if it's unacceptable,' he says. Buchner insists the US group and restless investors must wait until April 19 when his company will unveil new strategic plans. Taking a leaf out of the book of fellow Dutchman Paul Polman, chief executive of Unilever, he is not prepared to take a hostile bid, based on price, as a reason to sell Akzo's corporate soul. In contrast to many British firms, who are only too happy to bite the hand of buyers without consideration of broader stakeholder and public interest, the 51-year-old is adamant that other factors including the well-being of the company's 80,000 UK pensioners must be part of the package. Indeed, at times he appears more enthusiastic about the UK brands and Britain's research and development culture than many FTSE quoted firms. 'We have a large decorative paint R&D centre in Slough. We have the global coatings R&D at Felling outside Gateshead. And there we also do our cryogenic fire protections for buildings and platforms,' he says. In a comment which ought to be embraced in Whitehall as it seeks to get behind a new industrial strategy, Buchner says: 'the UK is the supplier of new technologies to the rest of the world.' It takes a Swiss-educated engineer to make the case for the UK, inside or outside of Europe, which evaded the employers' group, the CBI, and many of our politicians during the raging Brexit debate. Ownership of ICI's world-beating Dulux paint brand may have switched to the Netherlands after the 2007 takeover but the British brand is still a critical part of Akzo's make-up. 'We are the proud custodians of the super-brand Dulux that everybody in the UK knows,' Buchner pronounces. 'It is a fantastic brand especially when it comes to the shipping and protective coatings industry.' It has become the battering ram for an assault on the Pacific with Dulux sales soaring in China and fast-growing Asian economies. UK asset: Ownership of ICI's world-beating Dulux paint brand may have switched to the Netherlands after the 2007 takeover Far from betraying Dulux's British roots the Dutch firm has just invested 100m in a new factory, still employs 3,300 people and has used Dulux to open doors to markets around the world. In much the same way as Kraft Heinz hoped to use Unilever as its cutting edge in growth markets, so PPG seeks to use Dulux in the same way but without any guarantees of jobs, R&D or pensions in Britain. In his bullish defence of Akzo to the Daily Mail, the Dutch CEO is fully aware of our commitment to British ownership and a public interest test for takeovers. The difference is that under Dutch law boards are required to assess how a bid might affect the broader range of stakeholders from those involved in R&D to pensioners and the supply chain. Buchner insists that as an Anglo-Dutch company 'there is a special culture that we carry along and it is where we have invested and where we have our global knowledge'. In particular the company has been focused on 'sustainability' R&D, aimed at making its products ever more energy efficient. For example, devising coatings developed in the UK that can reduce resistance on ships and hygienic paints that resist bacteria in hospitals. For the 80,000 or so Brits in Akzo's inherited pension funds, keeping stable ownership is hugely important. It has made a real commitment with the trustees to de-risking the UK funds. And it has committed 256million a year, more than 10 per cent of the free cash flow of 1.9billion, to keeping the funds topped up. That cannot be said of some foreign owners, such as Tata Steel, which sought ways to dilute obligations to the old British Steel workforce. Since PPG unfurled its offer Buchner insists that he has reached out to investors a 'tremendous amount'. He says: 'They have appreciated the decision to separate out speciality chemicals and there is a general view that the PPG offer undervalues the business.' As for Brexit, it makes no difference to the Dutch group. 'The building of the Dulux brands will continue. We are totally committed to the UK. 'Our preferred option would have been for the UK to stay. But we totally respect the decision of the British people. 'We don't think there will be an enormous impact,' is the encouraging verdict of an Continental firm which is among the nation's export leaders. Greka Drilling was one of the main risers on the junior market this week after the announcement of a new contract in India put a rocket under its share price. The firm won the US$15million contract from Indias largest exploration and production company to drill 73 holes over a three year period, fending off competition from 16 other bidders. The deal with state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) is still subject to contract, but Greka is expecting to be issued with a letter of intent later this month. Greka's announcement of a new contract in India put a rocket under its share price Once this LOI has been received, the mobilisation of one of the contract drillers semi-automated GD75 rigs is expected to begin rolling within 90 days. Assuming everything goes ahead as planned, Greka will provide drilling and mud services at ONGCs Bokaro coal bed methane asset, as well as providing the necessary equipment. Shares boomed on Thursday and continued to rise on Friday, finishing the week up more than 64 per cent at 4.55p. Another on the front foot over the past few days was Brighter Foods, as its latest acquisition went down a treat with investors. The food ingredients business snapped up a controlling stake in Welsh healthy snack bar maker Brighter Foods on Wednesday. The 9 million purchase is expected to immediately enhance Real Good Foods earnings. House broker finnCap responded to the news by upgrading its forecast of headline profit before tax for the current financial year by 71 per cent to 6.4 million. Pieter Totte, Executive Chairman of Real Good Food plc The acquisition and subsequent broker upgrade sent shares 32 per cent higher to 34.25p over the course of the five days. After a difficult start to the year (for its share price at least), Firestone Diamonds rediscovered its sparkle earlier this week. That was because the miner found its largest diamond to date a 110 carat gem-quality light yellow diamond during the ramp up phase at its Liqhobong diamond mine. Firestone said the diamond recovery confirmed the significant larger stones potential that exists at the mine and chief executive Stuart Brown hopes this is the first of many big finds. Shares rose 25 per cent to 54p. It wasnt such a smooth ascent for Corero Network Security this week, although the group was well in the black come Friday. Shares in the technology firm initially fell after it announced it would be increasing the size of its recently announced fund-raising from 5 million to 5.4 million. Traders seem to have had a change of heart, however, with the shares reversing and surging ahead some 26 per cent to 6.05p. Corero said the size of the share placing had been increased due to investor demand, which is obviously a good sign. Chairman Jens Montanana will still be backing the share placing, but not to the extent that it will take his stake over 50 per cent, which was the original plan. That can only be good for share trading liquidity, which might also explain the rise in the shares. With some solid performers among its ranks, it was no surprise to see the AIM All Share rise albeit fairly modestly this week. The junior market added 0.15 per cent, or 1.4 points, to finish the week at 930.8. Although far from a spectacular run, it was still good enough to get another victory over its big brother, the FTSE 100. The blue chip index slumped 0.3 per cent or 20 points, over the past five days to 7,305. With the AIM All Share only posting a small increase even with several stellar performances, a few firms were obviously weighing on it as well. The heaviest of those was China-based pharma group Taihua which slumped 62 per cent to 1.01p after revealing its plans to de-list from AIM. Taihua said it made financial sense to cancel its shares given that the purpose of being on the junior market was to help it raise money, which it has found difficult to do. The high costs of admission to AIM also outweighed any benefits the firm received as a publicly traded company, Taihua added. Its listing is expected to be cancelled on or around May 8, at which point it will become a private company. Pebble Beach Systems week wasnt as glorious as the place it was named after, either, as its share price collapsed 32 per cent to 3.5p following a disappointing set of full-years. The group slumped to a total operating loss of 55.3 million (2015: loss of 0.8mln) for the 12 months to December 31 following a poor trading performance from its Visilink Communication Systems business. Sales in the division which Pebble has since offloaded dipped more than 32 per cent, with the firm blaming challenging market conditions for its significant underperformance. To make things worse, the software group said it still expects to breach its banking covenants, never something investors want to hear. Elsewhere, shares in Weatherly International were under pressure after the miner reported a drop in copper cathode production for the March 2017 quarter. It blamed delays caused by bad weather and slower than expected recoveries as it produced 3,236 tonnes in the period, 24 per cent below nameplate. Full year production to June 2017 was revised down as a result and is now expected to be 14,500 to 15,000 tonnes. Even with a minor recovery on Friday, shares still plunged 21 per cent to 0.5p over the week. A Chinese fighter plane has been spotted on a Chinese-held island in the South China Sea, the first such sighting in a year and the first since US President Trump took office, a US think tank reported on Thursday. By Reuters: A Chinese fighter plane has been spotted on a Chinese-held island in the South China Sea, the first such sighting in a year and the first since US President Trump took office, a US think tank reported on Thursday. The Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI), part of Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the J-11 fighter was visible in a satellite image taken on March 29 of Woody Island in the Paracel island chain. advertisement News of the sighting came as Trump was in Florida for meetings with China's President Xi Jinping on Thursday and Friday at which he is expected to air US concerns about China's pursuit of territory and militarization of outposts in the South China Sea. "This isn't a first, but it's the first time in a year," AMTI director Greg Poling said of the jet sighting. Referring to the single fighter plane visible in the image, he said: "There are likely more in the hangars nearby." Poling said it was unclear how long the plane had been there, but added that similar deployments on artificial islands China has built further south in the South China Sea's Spratly archipelago could be expected now that military facilities had been completed there. The United States has said in the past that rotational deployments of Chinese fighter jets to Woody Island were part of a disturbing trend of militarization that raised questions about Beijing's intentions in the South China Sea, which is an important trade route. The Chinese embassy did not respond to a request for comment. China has previously rejected US charges that it is militarising the South China Sea, and in March, Premier Li Keqiang said defense equipment had been placed on islands in the disputed waterway to maintain "freedom of navigation." A US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the presence of a fighter aircraft on Woody Island was not something unexpected. "It is already heavily militarized; no surprise we would be seeing military aircraft there," the official said. Earlier on Thursday, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said he had ordered troops to occupy uninhabited islands and shoals it claims in the South China Sea, something likely to anger China, which claims most of the strategic waterway. Also Read Chinese military strategist Liu Kui says India's aircraft carrier strategy 'a failure' --- ENDS --- In the petition filed with the National Green Tribunal (NGT), a special court for environment-related cases, Ridhima Pandey said the government has failed to implement its environment laws. By Reuters: A nine-year-old girl has filed a legal case against the Indian government for failing to take action on climate change, highlighting the growing concern over pollution and environmental degradation in the country. In the petition filed with the National Green Tribunal (NGT), a special court for environment-related cases, Ridhima Pandey said the government has failed to implement its environment laws. advertisement "As a young person (Ridhima) is part of a class that amongst all Indians is most vulnerable to changes in climate, yet are not part of the decision making process," the 52-page petition said. The petition called on the tribunal to direct the government "to take effective, science-based action to reduce and minimise the adverse impacts of climate change". ENVIRONMENT MINISTRY's RESPONSE SOUGHT WITHIN 2 WEEKS The tribunal has asked the Ministry of Environment and the Central Pollution Control Board to respond within two weeks. A spokesman from the Ministry of Environment told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that they would respond as directed by the tribunal. India is home to four of the 10 worst ranked cities in the world for air pollution. Along with China, India accounted for more than half the total number of global deaths attributable to air pollution in 2015, according to a recent study. Despite several laws to protect India's forests, clean up its rivers and improve air quality, critics are concerned that implementation is poor, and economic growth often takes precedence over the environment. Flash floods and landslides in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, where Ridhima lives, killed hundreds of people and left tens of thousands homeless in 2013. The devastation affected Ridhima, the daughter of an environmental activist, said Rahul Choudhary, a lawyer representing her. "For someone so young, she is very aware of the issue of climate change, and she is very concerned about how it will impact her in future," he said. "She wanted to do something that can have a meaningful effect, and we suggested she could file a petition against the government," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Ridhima is not the first child in India to take the government to task over inaction to protect the environment. WHO ALL HAVE SLAMMED GOVT FOR FAILING TO SAVE ENVIRONMENT Last year, six teenagers filed a petition with the NGT over air pollution in New Delhi which has the worst air quality in the country. India is taking some action to mitigate the damage. As a signatory to the Paris agreement on climate change, it is committed to ensuring that at least 40 percent of its electricity is generated from non-fossil-fuel sources by 2030. advertisement In her petition, Ridhima asked the court to order the government to assess industrial projects for climate-related issues, prepare a "carbon budget" to limit carbon dioxide emissions, and create a national climate recovery plan. "That a young girl is doing so much to draw the government's attention is something. We hope the case puts some pressure on the government to act," said Choudhary. Also read | Environment an essential component of education, compulsory subject in schools: HRD Ministry Also read | Supreme Court to Centre: Pet coke, furnace oil main causes of pollution in Delhi-NCR, must be banned Also read | NGT norms on appointing chiefs of pollution boards face opposition --- ENDS --- MBABANE Government is accused of having adopted the what will they do attitude towards the court. This was the response of the Swaziland National Association of Teachers (SNAT) in the application filed by government to stay the execution of the judgment of the Industrial Court which ruled in favour of the heads of department (HODs) of schools. Government argued that placing HODs at grade E1 will be in contrary to the collective agreement as it will exceed the E850 million. In his replying affidavit, SNAT Secretary General Zwelithi Mndzebele, argued that government had not complied with the order and this clearly showed that it had no regard for court orders. No lawful reason and or justification had been given by them (government) which can be a legally acceptable reason for the conduct. It is total disregard for the orders of the court and the rule of law, which is the measure of the countrys standing internationally, contended Mndzebele. He further highlighted that the Minister of Public Service, Owen Nxumalo, was delegated in terms of the Constitution and had to perform his obligations to the nation and must comply with the court order. The secretary general told the court that no reason or explanation had been given by the minister and the Principal Secretary (PS) Evart Madlopha for not complying with the court order. Mndzebele pointed out that a very poor attempt had been made by the respondent (PS and minister) to purge them before the court. The mala fide is clear from the facts of the matter and is demonstrated by the fact that they had 30 days to appeal the matter. They only filed a notice of appeal a day after the payroll had been issued by government, he stated. MANZINI The family of the man who was recently given two life sentences by the South Africa courts for trafficking three minors and raping will appeal the sentences. Makhosini Fakudze was given this punishment after the South Africa courts found him guilty of being an illegal immigrant in that country. He was further found guilty of trafficking three minors whom are said to have been his stepdaughters. The eldest of the trio, who was 13 years old when she was trafficked to South Africa is said to have been impregnated by Fakudze. The convicts brother, Sive Fakudze said the family would be approaching the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) today to discuss issues pertaining to the said issue of the appeal. Sive mentioned that their appeal was based on the recent developments regarding the case of Mduduzi Bhembe, the Swaziland Principal Association (SWAPA) President who was arrested together with lawyer Sanele Mabila on allegations of smuggling Makhosini to SA. However, the matter of the duo is pending in court and they have not been found guilty of any crime. Our brother lived a miserable life in South Africa and we last saw him sometime last year before his arrest. He looked malnourished and did not even have shoes. We had to give him a pair of shoes. He informed us he had come to the country to collect money from some people and left again for SA, said Fakudze. He also revealed that the family was shocked when his brothers ex wife, Nomsa* disclosed that the children did not belong to Makhosini. He said they were shocked over the said allegations as the minors stayed with the Fakudze family from when they were born until their father took them to South Africa illegally. Sihle Shongwe with her husband on their wedding day. (Courtesy pic) PIGGS PEAK Almost like a scene from a soap opera, it has now turned out that the woman who was fetched by her father from her boyfriends house is in fact a married woman. Last Sunday, Sihle Shongwe was allegedly fetched from her boyfriends house at around 5pm by her distressed father, who ordered her to come home with him, as confirmed by the police. Speaking after the incident, Shongwe said the incident humiliated her but it has now emerged that she is still married to someone else. Shongwes husband, who spoke through his mother, is based in South Africa (SA) where he is working. His mother, Susan Masimula, confirmed that Shongwe was in fact their makoti (daughter-in-law). Speaking on behalf of her son, who authorised her to address the matter, Susan said the couple had two children born from the union. She recalled that she (Susan) was the most important person during the wedding ceremony as she was the first to be covered with a blanket as per culture. Susan further confirmed that her son is also a pastor and that he is employed in one of the medical facilities in South Africa. She said the duo got married on May 1, 2010. I remember clearly because the wedding was on May Day, she said. She revealed that trouble started when she noticed a photo of Shongwe with her boyfriend in the Times of Swaziland. Susan said the family was shocked because they had always known that Shongwe was their daughter-in-law. I then received many phone calls from people asking me why I allowed my daughter-in-law to be with someone else, said Susan. She further revealed that the marriage had taken place in Piggs Peak. The apex court notice came days after a 55-year-old Muslim man was lynched in Rajasthan's Alwar town by a group of Gau Rakshaks. By India Today Web Desk: The Supreme Court today sought the response of the Centre and six states, including Rajasthan, following a petition seeking a ban on cow vigilante groups. The apex court notice came days after a 55-year-old Muslim man was lynched in Rajasthan's Alwar town by a group of Gau Rakshaks. Besides the central government, the notice has been issued to Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Jharkhand. The court has sought a detailed reply on the Alwar lynching within three weeks. The next hearing has been scheduled for May 3. advertisement THE INCIDENT The Muslim man, Pehlu Khan, was beaten up by alleged cow vigilantes in Rajasthan's Alwar district. He succumbed to his wounds on Monday night. A group of nearly 15 people were attacked while transporting cows. The men, who were from Haryana, came under attack by alleged gau rakshaks while transporting the animals on the Behror highway in Alwar, police said. According to reports, Pehlu Khan was a dairy farmer and not a cow smuggler. He had a valid Jaipur Municipal Corporation receipts to transport cattle. POLITICAL RESPONSE Union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, responding to the attack, said that no such incident, as was reported by the media, took place. Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said the Vasundhara Raje-led Rajasthan government has denied the news report being cited. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi took to Twitter to condemn the Alwar incident and said, "When government abdicates responsibility and allows lynch mobs to rule, tragedies of immense proportion follow. Shocking breakdown of law and order in Alwar". Also Read: Alwar gau rakshak attack: Did not happen, says BJP's Naqvi; even NYT knows it, counters Congress' Azad Alwar lynching: Cattle carriers had Jaipur municipal receipts, cops booked them for smuggling Alwar gau rakshak attack: VHP blames it on deep-seated anger among Hindus ALSO WATCH --- ENDS --- AAP's Delhi unit convenor Dilip Pandey claimed that out of 30,000 ballot units, which have been ordered for MCD polls, 4600 are faulty. By Press Trust of India: The AAP on Thursday renewed its demand to use paper ballots, alleging that the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) could be tampered with. Citing media reports, the party claimed that nearly 30,000 ballot units and 20,000 control units have been ordered by the state election commission for MCD polls. AAP's Delhi unit convenor Dilip Pandey claimed that of these ballot units, 4600 are faulty. advertisement Ballot units are the ones through which people cast their votes while control units record these votes and it is under the supervision of election officer. "The suspicion that the EVMs could be faulty and tampered now becomes more solid with this report. We again urge the state election commission to postpone the poll dates so that traditional paper ballots could be used for MCD elections," Pandey said. The party, in a letter to Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi on Wednesday, also requested the EC to provide the details of components like micro-controllers, and chips used for storage of memory in voting machines. Amid Election Commission's plan to invite politicians to try and hack EVMs, the AAP has asked the poll body to allow it to pick machines randomly from Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, where Assembly elections were recently held. AAP's PAST ALLEGATIONS Arvind Kejriwal, after the Punjab election too, had asked the Election commission to investigate the alleged tampering of EVMs in Punjab. "In 32 places in Punjab, (Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail) VVPAT were installed. We demand the (poll panel) to match the details of the VVPAT with EVMs. Around 20-25 per cent of our votes were transferred to the SAD-BJP through tampering of EVMs," he then said. Also on April 4, AAP's Goa convener, Elvis Gomes alleged that EVMs used in Goa assembly election were rigged. In the Punjab election, the AAP got 20 seats, while the Congress won a landslide 77 in the 117-member Assembly. In Goa, which threw up a hung verdict letting the BJP form the government later, the AAP failed to open its account. ALSO READ| AAP was sweeping Punjab, even BJP's Advani doubted EVMs: Kejriwal asks EC to probe alleged tampering ALSO READ| Supreme Court issues notice to Election Commission on EVM tampering --- ENDS --- I would like to tell your readers of your newspaper about an organization that I am proud to support. It is called Paralyzed Veterans of America. As a veteran of the United States Navy who had served in the Vietnam era, I applaud such a important organization that helps our disabled veterans. It is a organization founded in 1946 by a group of veterans who had been paralyzed in WWII. Paralyzed Veterans of America is a national, nonprofit organization dedicated to serving former members of the U.S. Armed Forces who suffered catastrophic paralysis as a result of spinal cord injury or disease. These brave men and women deserve our support, having given their all preserving freedom and protecting what we all hold dear and that is life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as stated in the Constitution. For more information on how help you can help these very special people who were willing to serve and protect the freedoms we enjoy today, at great cost to themselves and their families, please go to their website at www.Suppo rtVet erans.org . You can also show support for our veterans and all those still serving by flying the American flag on all patriotic holidays. For all this, I say thank you. Frederick R. Bedell Jr. Glen Oaks Village ,N.Y. Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams By Patrick Donachie Timothy Caughman was remembered at his funeral by well-wishers and elected officials as a generous and warm individual who loved conversing with fellow New Yorkers. Caughman was allegedly murdered by Baltimore resident James Harris Jackson, with a motivation based on racial hatred, authorities said. Mayor Bill de Blasio was on hand to speak to parishioners at Mount Zion Baptist Church in Jamaica, at 10660 Union Hall St., last Saturday. Caughman was born in Jamaica and grew up in the South Jamaica Houses. He was living in Manhattan when he was killed. He was attacked because of who he was, plain and simple. And dont think for a moment it was an attack on one stray man, because it was an attack on all of us, de Blasio said during his remarks. It was a racist attack. It was an act of domestic terrorism. We have to call it what it is, but it was also an attack on all of us because this city stands for something. So, its no surprise that evil came calling here. According to Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance, Jackson traveled to New York City and walked the streets of New York for three days, seeking a black person to murder. Vance said Jackson allegedly found his victim in front of 462 9th Avenue in Manhattan, repeatedly stabbing Caughman before fleeing. Vance said Jackson had traveled to New York to murder black men because he thought the act would get more publicity. De Blasio referred to previous speakers, who had mentioned Caughman as living in a state of joy, which the mayor said could be difficult to maintain in a city as frenzied as New York. We all have to work hard to try and find the joy sometimes even when its staring us in the face, he said. Timothy understood something that maybe a lot of us dont understand well enough. He understood what was good around us and he obviously had a love for his fellow human being. De Blasio did not explicitly refer to President Donald Trump, though he did allude to a need to understand the forces of hate that have been unleashed in recent months, and also chastised reporters who had focused on mistakes Caughman made rather than the fact that he had been killed in a racist attack. He was a black man killed by a white man whose goal was to find black people and kill them. Period, the mayor said. And it was noted, and then quickly the media, and our society in general, moved onto other topics. Let me be straight forward: What if it had been a black man who traveled to another city with the sole purpose of killing white people? Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams By Patrick Donachie During a town hall last week at IS 61 in Corona, Mayor Bill de Blasio pledged that the city was working to stop housing homeless individuals in two hotels in the area. The town hall, which was moderated March 31 by Councilwoman Julissa Ferreras-Copeland (D-Corona), touched on a wide variety of topics and challenges, including school segregation, domestic violence protection, and consistent anxieties about President Donald Trumps potential impact on Queens immigrant populations. De Blasio said he had been buoyed by the events in Washington that unfolded during the past week, when Republicans in Congress, along with Trump, failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act signed into law by President Barack Obama. Im very happy to say we got a better answer than we expected, de Blasio said, noting that two million New Yorkers had been insured under the ACA. The world is a better world than a week ago, because there was a full-court press to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and they couldnt get the votes. A series of attendees asked a variety of questions regarding the Trump administrations approach to undocumented immigrants, with the mayor stressing strongly that city schools and the NYPD would not inquire about a persons immigration status. After one questioner said people were scared to come to the town hall because of their status, de Blasio decried the atmosphere of fear. If you create an atmosphere, people will not participate. People will not come forward if they are witness to a crime, the mayor said. Everything that has to do with the city of New York has to do with respect for people regardless of documentation. Another individual also questioned de Blasio about whether private companies who have undocumented workers on their payrolls would still qualify to bid on public projects. De Blasio said any attempt by the Trump administration to target all undocumented immigrants in the country would be an economic calamity. Its very cynical of them to arrest a few people and make an example. Theyre not, in my opinion, stupid enough to try to arrest everyone because the backlash would be unsupportable and the economic impact would be unsupportable, he said. Were going to do what we see fit and were going to keep working with your business. De Blasio also detailed his long-term plans regarding city homelessness, stressing a desire to ensure that homeless individuals were not placed far from the original residencies or communities. While anyone is homeless, we want to make sure theyre supported in their own borough and as close to their own community as possible, he said. However, he said that there was more capacity than necessary in the community district the town hall was held in, which would help the city transfer the homeless individuals living in the hotels into other spaces. Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams By Mark Hallum Democrats representing Queens in Washington gave President Donald Trumps decision to take military action against the Assad regime mixed support Friday after news surfaced of Tomahawk cruise missiles striking air base targets in Syria. The United States acted in retaliation against Syrias use of banned chemical weapons, which killed about 70 non-combatants in the Middle Eastern country long ravaged by civil war. While U.S. Reps. Tom Suozzi (D-Huntington) and Joseph Crowley (D-Jackson Heights) thought the actions by the administration were reasonable, U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) insisted the only solution to the conflict and repeated use of chemical weapons by Syrias government was through non-military action. I support President Trumps decisive action to launch an airstrike as an appropriate response. Syrian President Assads use of chemical weapons was an affront to humanity and this sends a clear message that it will not be tolerated. We now must have a long-term strategy and end-game for the Syrian crisis, Suozzi said. As a member of the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees, I believe the Trump administration should now reach out to Congress so we can figure out the best way forward in a bipartisan manner. Crowley gave the move a stamp of approval, but also stressed the necessity of the Trump administrations including Congress in any further action to gain its backing. As the leader of the free world, the U.S. should never sit on the sidelines as atrocities unfold. The decision to strike an air base in Syria after Bashir al-Assad perpetrated the deadly attack against his own people appears to be a proportional response by the Trump Administration, Crowley said. President Trump owes it to our men and women in uniform and the American people to explain his long-term strategy toward Syria and how it enhances American security and advances protections of human rights. Gillibrand said the atrocities which resulted in the deaths of women and children demanded firm action. However, unilateral military action by the U.S. in a Middle East conflict causes grave concern, given the lack of any Authorization for Use of Military Force from Congress and the absence of any long-term plan or strategy to address any consequences from such unilateral action, Gillibrand said. Furthermore, there is no military only solution to the suffering in Syria. The American people need answers from the administration about their plan here and how they will bring coalition partners to the table for a long-term diplomatic solution. Highly disturbing videos and photos surfaced in the media and on social networks that detailed the suffering of the victims of the attack, and prompted a response from former Secretary of State and Trump foe Hillary Clinton, who called for military action against Assads airfields during a Women in the World summit speech Thursday. By Press Trust of India: Dholpur, Apr 7 (PTI) Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje today conducted a road show here to seek votes for BJP candidate Shobha Rani contesting the by-election for Dholpur assembly seat. Raje began the road show at Sagarpada along with the BJP state president Ashok Parnami which passed through several roads and areas during which she appealed people to vote for the party candidate. advertisement Both BJP and Congress leaders are leaving no stone unturned to reach out to voters today, the last day of campaigning. After the astounding victory in Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, the BJP is making every effort to ensure victory in the bye-election on April 9 as it has become a prestige issue for the party. The party is seeking votes on development agenda while the Congress leaders led by PCC Chief Sachin Pilot are accusing the BJP government of failing to deliver and exuded confidence of winning the seat. The bye-election was necessitated after the seat fell vacant on termination of the membership of B L Kushwah following conviction and life imprisonment in a murder case in December last year. As many as 15 candidates, including 12 independents, are in the fray for the bypoll. The BJP has fielded Kushwahs wife Shobha Rani while the Congress candidate is veteran leader and five-time MLA Banwari Lal Sharma. The Samajwadi Party has fielded Banvari Sharma. The seat will go to poll on April 9 and counting of votes will take place on April 13. PTI SDA DIP --- ENDS --- The EU will abolish mobile phone roaming charges from June 15 following a vote in the European Parliament on Thursday. MEPs backed a deal between operators and European Union member states that will mean the end of extra charges when people use their phones abroad in other EU states. "Europeans will no longer be in a state of shock when they get their telephone bills," said Finnish MEP Miapetra Kumpula-Natri, who backed the resolution. From mid-June, EU citizens will no longer pay extra charges for calls, SMS messages or internet outside their home countries, when travelling in the EU. Operators will still have to pay a charge. EU digital affairs commissioner Andrus Ansip said it would have an "immediate positive impact on the life of millions of Europeans." The move will cap 10 years of efforts by the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, to end roaming charges. SOURCE: AFP Several thousand mostly young people have marched in Serbia\s capital and several other cities to protest the election of powerful Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic as the country\s new president. Chanting slogans against Vucic, the protesters held banners with phrases such as "Stop the government terror." Demonstrators have gathered every day since Vucic\s victory Sunday, responding to calls on social media that have accused him of leading a "dictatorship." Government officials claim the demonstrations are organized by opposition leaders. They deny it. The opposition alleges the vote was marred by major irregularities, including muzzling of the media during the campaign, as well as voter intimidation and bribes on election day. During the march on Thursday, the demonstrators squatted in front of the state-run TV building to protest reporting they consider biased. SOURCE: AP Heres what to know in Beaver County this Election Day If youre a registered voter in Beaver County planning to vote in person today, heres what you need to know. "Tonight, I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched. It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons,"said Trump. By Reuters: US President Donald Trump launched more than 50 missiles at a Syrian airbase controlled by President Bashar al-Assad on Friday, in response to a deadly chemical attack in Syria's rebel-held northwestern province of Idlib this week. This is the US military's first ever direct assault on the Bashar-al-Assad government. Here is what he said"My fellow Americans: On Tuesday, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad launched a horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians. Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror. advertisement Tonight, I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched. It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention, and ignored the urging of the U.N. Security Council. Years of previous attempts at changing Assad's behavior have all failed, and failed very dramatically. As a result, the refugee crisis continues to deepen and the region continues to destabilize, threatening the United States and its allies. Tonight, I call on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria, and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types. We ask for God's wisdom as we face the challenge of our very troubled world. We pray for the lives of the wounded and for the souls of those who have passed. And we hope that as long as America stands for justice, then peace and harmony will, in the end, prevail. Goodnight. And God bless America and the entire world. Thank you." Also Read Trump launches more than 50 missiles at Syrian air base in retaliation to chemical gas attack --- ENDS --- Albany County District Attorney's Office ALBANY An Albany man was sentenced to 6 years in prison for attempted criminal possession of a weapon, District Attorney David Soares' office said Friday. Hacief Oliver, 20, pleaded guilty to the felony charge in February. State Supreme Court Judge Thomas Breslin also sentenced Oliver to 3 years of post-release supervision. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate If Lifetime's "New York Prison Break: The Seduction of Joyce Mitchell" doesn't meet your need for more about killers Richard Matt and David Sweat's 2015 escape from Clinton Correctional Facility, the cable channel is ready to help. The Press-Republican in Plattsburgh says a documentary, "Biography Presents: Joyce Mitchell and the New York Prison Break," will be broadcast on Lifetime immediately after the movie is broadcast on April 24. Read the Press-Republican's article. The escape led to a multi-week manhunt for Richard Matt and David Sweat, who had befriended prison tailor shop worker Joyce Mitchell and coaxed her into aiding their breakout. But she got cold feet and never arrived with the getaway vehicle, forcing them to flee on foot across rugged terrain. The men, who lived in the prison's honor block, stuffed sweatshirts to make it look like they were asleep in their beds while they actually were navigating the bowels of the prison along a route they had cleared by hand. They shimmied their way through a steam pipe and emerged a block away from the prison's thick concrete walls through a manhole. With Mitchell never arriving in the getaway car, their plan to speed off to Mexico was foiled. Instead, they spent weeks navigating the thick North Country brush, sometimes narrowly eluding law enforcement, and foraging for sustenance and shelter in off-the-grid hunting camps that dot the wilderness. More than two weeks after the escape, Matt was shot and killed by U.S. Border Patrol officers as Sweat remained on the lam. Sweat was shot and captured days later by State Police just miles from the Canadian border. He has since been returned to prison in Romulus, Seneca County. A year after the escape, a report by the state inspector general laid blame for the incident on "chronic complacency and systemic failures of security procedures" within the prison. In the time since the escape, Mitchell has pleaded guilty to her role in aiding the two felons, as has former prison guard Gene Palmer, who also provided the men with some of the materials used in the escape. The case of a woman who was briefly held in Albany last year for allegedly killing her twin sister by driving their SUV off a cliff in Hawaii is being featured in the latest issue of People magazine. Alexandria Duval was sent back to Hawaii after waiving extradition in Albany late last year. At the time, her lawyer, Terence Kindlon, said she wanted to get back to Hawaii and defend herself against a second-degree murder charge. Keith Weiss, a Florida chef who says he dated Anastasia Duval, told People he used to socialize with the twins, describing a volatile relationship between the pair. The women had ties to Utica and changed their legal names from Alison and Ann Dadow to Alexandria and Anastasia Dubal. "I once got a call from Ann [Anastasia] saying, 'Get over here now ... I'm going to kill her,'" Weiss recalled in the People interview. "She actually started hitting Alison [Alexandria] with the phone. I heard it ... thump, thump, thump. They were both screaming at each other. Weiss says he witnessed explosive fights between the sisters, which would erupt without warning and often in public spaces. "I get to their apartment and there's broken glass everywhere from wine bottles and shattered glasses. There was blood everywhere, and the bedroom door was falling off its hinges," Weiss said. "Both of them were sitting on the couch when I walked in, and they were like, 'Hey ... how are you doing?' Alison had a bruise on her face. I asked them if they were okay, and they were like, 'We're good, we're fine. We're just watching a movie.' Meanwhile, all around them, it's total destruction. They seemed to not know they wanted to kill each other just minutes earlier." SEE THE REST OF THE PEOPLE ARTICLE Authorities in Hawaii say Duval was driving an SUV in May with her sister, Anastasia, in the passenger seat when the vehicle crashed into a rock wall and plunged about 200 feet. The 38-year-old traveled to upstate New York after an initial indictment stemming from the fatal crash was dismissed by a judge earlier this year. She was arrested in Albany in November. She was taken into custody on a warrant that accused her of killing her sister during a car crash on the so-called Road to Hana, a twisting and at times treacherous road that stretches across the north side of Maui. Trump said he wants to raise concerns about China's trade practices and urge Xi to do more to rein in North Korea's nuclear ambitions in the talks. By Reuters: US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping met face-to-face for the first time on Thursday, spending some social time together with their wives before digging in to the thorny trade and security issues that bedevil the relationship between the world's two largest economies. Trump said he wants to raise concerns about China's trade practices and urge Xi to do more to rein in North Korea's nuclear ambitions in the talks, though no major deals on either issue were expected. advertisement Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, drove down a palm-lined driveway past a military honor guard to Trump's Spanish-style Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, welcomed by Trump and his wife Melania before going inside. The couples posed for pictures sitting on sofas in the resort's formal living room. They were set to dine in a candle-lit ornate private dining room at 6.30 pm (2230 GMT) at a long table set for about 30 people and festooned with red and yellow floral centerpieces. They were expected to get into more detailed discussions about trade and foreign policy issues on Friday, concluding their summit with a working lunch. Trump promised during the 2016 presidential campaign to stop what he called the theft of American jobs by China and rebuild the country's manufacturing base. Many blue-collar workers helped propel him to his unexpected election victory on Nov. 8 and Trump wants to deliver for them. "We have been treated unfairly and have made terrible trade deals with China for many, many years. That's one of the things we are going to be talking about," Trump told reporters travelling with him on Air Force One. Trump, a former real estate magnate, is still finding his footing in the White House and has yet to spell out a strategy for what his advisers called a trade relationship based on "the principle of reciprocity." He brought his top economic and national advisers to Florida for the meeting, including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. "Even as we share a desire to work together, the United States does recognize the challenges China can present to American interests," said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, also in Florida for the meeting. The dinner comes as Trump and his national security team face a completely different weighty foreign policy issue: how to respond to a deadly poison gas attack in Syria. A U.S. official said the White House and Pentagon were discussing military options. DIFFERING PERSONALITIES Their summit brings together two leaders who could not seem more different: the often stormy Trump, prone to angry tweets, and Xi, outwardly calm, measured and tightly scripted, with no known social media presence. advertisement What worries the protocol-conscious Chinese more than policy clashes is the risk that the unpredictable Trump could publicly embarrass Xi, after several foreign leaders experienced awkward moments with the new U.S. president. "Ensuring President Xi does not lose face is a top priority for China," a Chinese official said. US labor leaders say Trump needs to take a direct, unambiguous tone in his talks with Xi. "President Trump needs to come away from the meeting with concrete deliverables that will restore production and employment here in the US in those sectors that have been ravaged by China's predatory and protectionist practices," said Holly Hart, legislative director for the United Steelworkers union. A US administration official told Reuters that Washington expects to have to use legal tools to fight for U.S. companies, such as pursuing World Trade Organization lawsuits. "I don't expect a grand bargain on trade. I think what you are going to see is that the president makes very clear to Xi and publicly what we expect on trade," a US official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. Trump has often complained Beijing undervalues its currency to boost trade, but his administration looks unlikely to formally label China as a currency manipulator in the near term - a designation that could come with penalties. advertisement NORTH KOREA A TEST The most urgent problem facing Trump and Xi is how to persuade nuclear-armed North Korea to halt unpredictable behavior like missile test launches that have heightened tensions in South Korea and Japan. North Korea is working to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting the United States. The White House has said North Korea was a test for the US-China relationship, and Trump has threatened to use trade to try to force China to exert influence over Pyongyang. "I think China will be stepping up," Trump told reporters. Beijing says its influence is limited and that it is doing all it can but that it is up to the United States to find a way back to talks with North Korea. Trump consulted on Wednesday with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who said he and the president agreed by phone that North Korea's latest ballistic missile launch was "a dangerous provocation and a serious threat." A White House strategy review is focusing on options for pressuring Pyongyang economically and militarily. Among measures under consideration are "secondary sanctions" against Chinese banks and firms that do the most business with Pyongyang. advertisement A long-standing option of pre-emptive strikes remains on the table, but despite the tougher recent US talk, the internal review "de-emphasizes direct military action," the US official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Analysts believe any military action would likely provoke severe North Korean retaliation and massive casualties in South Korea and Japan and among US troops stationed there. ALSO READ | Chinese President Xi Jinping arrives in US for first meeting with Trump ALSO READ | North Korea is a strategic liability for China: US ALSO WATCH | Trump may mediate in India-Pakistan peace process: Top Indian-American diplomat Nikki Haley --- ENDS --- Mio Posto, the former Saratoga Springs restaurant that was displaced by a November fire that destroyed its building, will reopen as soon as June 1 at 200 Lark St. in Albany, taking over what is now Lark & Lily Wine Bar & Kitchen. Mio Posto chef-owner Danny Urschel tells me he's struck a deal, now in the hands of lawyers, with Lark & Lily owner Silvia Lilly to buy the business. Lark & Lily will remain open until a full transition plan is finalized. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Schenectady The historic Nicholaus Building is history. Demolition began about 10 p.m. Friday several hours after a warning to the city that the building on State Street and Erie Boulevard was ready to collapse. With lights concentrating on the building, Jackson Demolition Services started at the top shortly after crews disconnected the structure from utilities. Demolition company owner Chris Jackson said he wasn't sure how long the demolition would take, but said the Nicholaus could be gone by Saturday morning. "I've never taken down one like this one," he said, noting that the building was reinforced with steel framework prior to the demolition of an adjacent building. Police on Friday afternoon closed off the southbound lanes of Erie Boulevard at Liberty Street after engineering crews monitoring the building told the city the potential for collapse was very high, police spokesman Sgt. Matt Dearing said. Other traffic impacts: Only one northbound lane of Erie Boulevard was open. State Street was closed in both directions from Ferry Street to Erie Boulevard. All traffic traveling west on State Street was being diverted north to Erie. All street closures were barricaded. Signboards were placed around the area and detour routes were be labeled. The brick building dating to the 1800s previously housed the Thai Thai Bistro on the ground level, with apartments above. A year ago, during demolition of an adjacent building, the bistro owner told city officials the building was shaking and vibrating, causing cracking and separating of the walls, ceilings and floors. The building was vacated later that day and had been unoccupied since. Engineers notified the city Friday that the building "poses an immediate threat to public safety and could collapse," Dearing said. It was unknown just what triggered the sudden higher level of alarm. The Nicholaus building was adjacent to the former Olender Mattress building. Before the Olender was razed, historic preservationists called for an in-depth review of how demolition might affect the Nicholaus building. At the time, Schenectady Heritage Foundation Chairwoman Gloria Kishton said she believed the demolition would "extremely endanger" the Nicholaus building, and called for an engineering plan to be developed that would ensure its structural integrity. cchurchill@timesunion.com 518-454-5442 @chris_churchill Beirut Investigators have rushed to Turkey to examine survivors of the chemical attack in neighboring Syria and collect samples that could reveal the nature of the toxins, the means of delivery and, ultimately, who was responsible for one of the war's most disturbing atrocities. The victims' presence in Turkey offers a way around a problem that has bedeviled past investigations and sown confusion for policymakers: limited access to attack sites. The byproducts of the nerve agents suspected in Tuesday's attack can remain in the bloodstream long after the effects have worn off. "Whoever wants to find out the truth and the weapon that was used has enough evidence" in Turkey, said Dr. Osama Abo Elezz, a physician from Khan Sheikhoun, the opposition-held town where the chemical attack took place. "This has not happened before." But even with the heightened media attention and the anguish the attack has provoked in the highest offices in the U.S. and other Western capitals, the inspectors have been hamstrung by a thicket of rules and precautions that could frustrate even the most determined investigators. Witnesses described pandemonium at the Bab al-Hawa border crossing, where medical staff, terrified of exposure to toxins, donned hulking hazmat suits and pushed victims on gurneys to a decontamination tent. Even second-hand exposure to sarin, the nerve agent suspected in the attack, can produce symptoms leading to death. In the past, Turkish authorities have not always facilitated weapons probes, according to two doctors who cross regularly from Turkey into Syria to treat patients. "Turkey's hesitation is nothing new. Turkey has never wanted to be involved in the operations," said Dr. Hossam Nahas, the lead coordinator for the chemical weapons response team of the Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations, a network of Syrian doctors that provides support to medical staff in rebel-held areas. Another physician, Dr. Zaher Sahloul, who is Syrian American, said he has detected little appetite among Turkish officials to investigate allegations of war crimes they were powerless to stop. "If they think a sample is coming, they will block it," Sahloul said in the wake of reports last week that patients in the central Syrian town of Latamneh were arriving at hospitals with muscle spasms and foaming at the mouth signs that a nerve agent might have been dispersed in a presumed government or Russian airstrike in the area. That suspected attack was five days before the more dramatic assault Tuesday in Khan Sheikhoun. The quick global response to the latest attack, as well as the rush of victims to the Turkish border may have compelled Turkish authorities to open the border and offer greater cooperation, Sahloul said Thursday. "There are several reasons for the change in response. The first is the scale of the attack and the fact that many victims are children and women. And the public outrage, globally," Sahloul told the AP by phone from the Chicago hospital where he works. "All of these factors have been changing the level of seriousness they take in these attacks." In February, Russia and China vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing punitive actions against the Syrian government after a joint investigative team from the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons watchdog group concluded that the government carried out chlorine gas attacks three times in 2014 and 2015. The OPCW, which has the international authority to investigate such incidents, said Thursday it was "already collecting and analyzing information" about Tuesday's attack, and had initiated contact with the Syrian authorities. Residents, however, said they have yet to see any international observers arriving in Khan Sheikhoun. Video from the town, distributed Thursday by the activist-run Syrian Institute For Justice, showed residents wearing gloves and dust masks collecting samples from the crater where it was believed the missile carrying the toxins struck. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Washington The Republican chairman is stepping aside from leading a congressional investigation of Russian interference in last year's U.S. presidential election, citing ethics complaints that he mishandled classified information. The decision by Rep. Devin Nunes of California comes amid partisan turmoil on the House intelligence committee. Democrats have alleged that Nunes, who was on President Donald Trump's transition team, is too close to the White House and cannot lead an impartial inquiry. In an extraordinary step, the usually-quiet House ethics committee said that it is investigating whether Nunes improperly disclosed classified information. President Donald Trump said Nunes is "a very honorable guy." Nunes blamed "left-wing activist groups" for filing accusations against him with the Office of Congressional Ethics. "The charges are entirely false and politically motivated and are being leveled just as the American people are beginning to learn the truth about the improper unmasking of the identities of U.S. citizens and other abuses of power," Nunes said in a statement. Nunes' move could be seen as a win for Democrats whose cries for an independent panel to investigate Russia's possible ties with the Trump campaign have grown. They have pointed in particular to two Nunes trips to the White House one announced, one not as evidence that his loyalty to Trump outweighs his commitment to leading a bipartisan investigation. By all accounts, the intelligence committee's growing partisanship has become a distraction from its underlying investigations. The top Democrat on the committee, Adam Schiff of California, said he appreciated Nunes' decision to step aside from the Russia investigation. "There was a cloud hanging over us after the White House incident," Schiff said Thursday. As the majority party in the House, Republicans will keep the committee chairmanship. GOP Rep. Mike Conaway of Texas, with help from Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina and Rep. Tom Rooney of Florida, will temporarily take charge of the investigation, said Speaker Paul Ryan. Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Thursday that he doesn't know Conaway, but he heard he was well-respected. "High quality," Trump said. Schiff said Conaway does not have the same history with the White House that Nunes does. Two watchdog groups, Democracy 21 and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, had asked the House ethics committee to investigate whether Nunes disclosed classified information he learned from intelligence reports. In a statement, CREW spokesman Jordan Libowitz said the group believes that Nunes' potential violation of House ethics rules "is so grave that it needs to be investigated right away." Nunes last month disclosed that Trump associates' communications had been swept up by U.S. spy agencies and, he suggested, mishandled by Obama administration officials. The announcement was striking, as it is unusual for a member of the committee to publicly discuss the existence of what would be classified intelligence reports. Nunes later acknowledged that the material had been shared by a secret source on the White House grounds, raising fresh questions about his coordination with the White House. Trump seized on the information as evidence backing up his unfounded claim that President Barack Obama wiretapped the phones at his New York skyscraper. Schiff later saw the same material, but refused to publicly discuss what he learned. He said Thursday he understood the material was now to be shared with other intelligence committee members. Republican Speaker Ryan said he supported Nunes' decision to step aside. "It is clear that this process would be a distraction for the House intelligence committee's investigation into Russian interference in our election," Ryan said. A Republican aide said Nunes met with Ryan on Wednesday night to discuss stepping aside from the Russia probe. That's when Ryan learned of the House ethics probe, according to the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. Nunes said in his statement, "I will continue to fulfill all my other responsibilities as committee chairman, and I am requesting to speak to the ethics committee at the earliest possible opportunity in order to expedite the dismissal of these false claims." The ethics committee investigation of Nunes' actions will be led by Republican Chairwoman Susan Brooks of Indiana and Democrat Ted Deutch of Florida. Conaway's ascendance immediately drew attention to his statement earlier this year expressing skepticism about the subject of the investigation. In January, Conaway compared Russia's interference in the 2016 election to the Democrats' employing Mexican entertainers to help turn out the Latino vote. "Those are foreign actors, foreign people, influencing the vote in Nevada," Conaway told the Dallas Morning News. "You don't hear the Democrats screaming and saying one word about that." During the committee's first hearing on the Russia probe last month, his questions were focused on how intelligence agencies prove who is behind a hack and what a foreign leader's "intent" is. All 17 intelligence agencies have agreed that Russia was behind the hack of Democratic email systems and tried to influence the 2016 election to benefit Trump. Baltimore The Trump Justice Department expressed "grave concerns" Thursday about an agreement the Obama administration reached with the city of Baltimore to overhaul its police department in the wake of the racially explosive Freddie Gray case. A government attorney weighed in on the proposed consent decree at a public hearing as about 50 Baltimore residents lined up to endorse the reforms and complain of deep-seated racism, abuse and deadly force at the hands of the police. "The consent decree needs to be passed for us to feel we can call on the Baltimore Police Department without them making us into the criminals when we are the victims," said black high school student Shane-jah McCaffity. But Justice Department lawyer John Gore said Attorney General Jeff Sessions is worried about whether the agreement "will achieve the goals of public safety and law enforcement while at the same time protecting civil rights." Gore said there has been a spike in crime in Baltimore and the administration wants to make sure that the agreement "will help rather than hinder public safety." The stand represents the start of what appears to be a retreat by the Trump administration from the federal consent decrees that have been put in place in several U.S. cities in recent years to root out racism, excessive force and other abuses against minorities. In April 2015, Baltimore erupted in the worst rioting in decades over the death of Gray, a 25-year-old black man whose neck was broken during what prosecutors said was a jolting ride in a police van while handcuffed and shackled. The Justice Department launched an investigation and issued a scathing report outlining widespread mistreatment of black people, including excessive force and unlawful stops. The proposed agreement to remedy the abuses was negotiated during the final days of the Obama administration. Baltimore Solicitor David Ralph said Thursday that the plan was designed to help police fight crime while also protecting residents' rights and repairing trust between the community and the department. Mayor Catherine Pugh and Police Commissioner Kevin Davis have vowed to press on with police reform regardless of what happens with the consent decree. But they stressed they would prefer to see a court-enforceable agreement. By India Today Web Desk: Oscar winning actor Emma Stone is every boy's heartthrob, and 17-year-old Jacob Staudenmaier from Arizona is no different. The teenager staged an elaborate 'prom-posal' for Emma, where he recreated the opening scene of her La La Land. In his own version of the film's opening song, Another Day of Sun, Jacob asks the 28-year-old actor to his high school prom on April 29. "Jacob Staudenmaier is my name... Emma Stone if you came, I think I'd lose it, go insane," he sings in the video, which has now gone viral. advertisement "I know my voice ain't great, but please be my prom date," Jacob continues, even saying that people think he resembles Emma's La La Land co-star Ryan Gosling, although he admits "maybe that's a bit far-fetched". After two minutes of persuasion in the smoothest way possible, his friends hold up signs asking "Prom?" as he holds a bouquet of white flowers in the hope that Emma will agree. The actor hasn't responded yet, but netizens are rooting for the teenager. Well, here's to the one's who dream. WATCH THE VIDEO HERE IM ASKING EMMA STONE TO PROM, and decided to recreate the opening scene from la la land @RyanGosling @LaLaLand @johnjayandrich #prom pic.twitter.com/l28R2rv3I7 - Jacob Staudenmaier (@upsettrout) April 4, 2017 ALSO READ | La La Land movie review: Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone create magic ALSO WATCH | Dev Patel, Emma Stone, Casey Affleck win at BAFTA 2017 --- ENDS --- This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Albany From painted stones to trading cards, the 1624 Keepsake Challenge continues to evolve, much like the city it celebrates. Launched as a prelude to the annual Tulip Festival on Mother's Day weekend in Washington Park, the goal of the collaborative community art initiative is to promote Albany's history and culture. Residents and visitors are encouraged to create 1,624 hand-painted trading cards at events and locations throughout the city to celebrate Albany's first trade settlement at Fort Orange in 1624. More Information Sister city reflections For a list of community partners facilitating the 1624 Keepsake Challenge in Albany, go to http://albanycentergallery.org/1624-keepsake-challenge. See More Collapse Presented by the Albany Center Gallery and the city's Office of Cultural Affairs, in coordination with the Albany County Convention & Visitors Bureau, Albany Public Library and the Albany Art Room, cards must be completed by April 28. "We started talking about something we could do that related to the Tulip Fest and the history of Albany, and my idea was to paint 1,624 stones, but that didn't seem feasible," said Karen Schupack, owner of the Albany Art Room who donated materials for the cards. "Trading cards were the way to go, to celebrate Albany's beginnings as a trading post." To make the challenge a success, organizers need the community's help and are asking people to create a trading card, measuring 2 by 3 inches, that reflects their vision of Albany like a favorite place, landmark, neighborhood or thing to do. Tony Iadicicco, executive director of the Albany Center Gallery and point person for the project, said that about 800 cards have been created so far, depicting everything from the Moses statue in Washington Park, The Egg, colorful tulips and even someone's favorite sandwich at the Olde English Pub. "People are creating pieces that they love so much, they end up taking them home, so we're trying to make sure they leave them behind for the project," Iadicicco said. "We have many locations for people to be creative, and we're all working together as a group to make it a little easier on each other." The effort kicked off in February at the Times Union Home Expo, where the Albany Center Gallery had an art booth set up. Hundreds of people visited and made a trading card, which helped organizers visualize the concept and for the project to take shape. Trading cards and art supplies are available at the following locations: Albany Center Gallery, Albany Heritage Area Visitors Center, Albany City Hall, Albany Art Room, the Albany Institute of History & Art, Stacks Espresso Bar, Cider Belly, Delaware Trolley House and Cafe, Uncommon Grounds and 3Fish Coffee. People can share their creations on social media with the hashtag #1624Keepsake. Iadicicco said that once all cards are collected, they will be scanned and made into a slideshow, which will be displayed at City Hall. A collage of about 20 cards will be woven together in a quilt pattern, printed and framed. That work of art will be presented to representatives from Albany's sister city, Nijmegen, in the Netherlands to solidify a cultural exchange. "It's another way the gallery is showcasing international talent on the local level," Iadicicco said. "And it's a great way for lots of different people to make art and celebrate history," Schupack added. "Now I just have to find a use for all those stones piled up outside." jpatterson@timesunion.com @JenSPatterson 518-454-5340 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: deg C New Delhi, Apr 7 (PTI) Flood fears in Kashmir eased as water in Jhelum started to recede after rainfall stopped last night while higher reaches of the Valley received snowfall today, even as the mercury stayed within normal limits in parts of the northern plains. But, Jharsuguda in Odisha sizzled at 43.5 degrees Celsius, followed by Chandrapur in Vidarbha region at 43.2 degrees Celsius. advertisement In the national capital, the maximum temperature settled at 34.4 degrees Celsius, while the minimum was 22.3 degrees Celsius. According to the Safdarjung observatory, the recording of which is considered official for Delhi, the city received 0.4 mm rainfall since yesterday. The water level in Jhelum and its tributaries started to recede after rainfall stopped last night, easing flood fears in Kashmir, while in Jammu region one person was killed, eight others injured and over 40 structures were damaged in floods and high speed winds. One woman was washed away after a drain was flooded in Sudhmahadev area, while around 8 persons were injured in Udhampur district, police said, adding efforts are on to restore the power supply and clear the roads in the district. Yesterday, the water level in the Jhelum had crossed the flood declaration mark at Ram Munshi Bagh in Srinagar even as 17 people were rescued from flash floods in Poonch and a woman was killed in lightning in Rajouri. The Srinagar-Jammu National Highway, connecting Kashmir Valley to the rest of the country, remained closed for the third consecutive day today due to landslides and shooting stones triggered by rains and snow. Parts of Kashmir received intermittent rains during the night, while some areas in the higher reaches experienced fresh snowfall. There were reports of snowfall in some areas in the higher reaches of the Valley, a MeT official said. South Kashmirs Kokernag area recorded 79.9 mm of rainfall during the night, while the neighbouring Qazigund and Pahalgam each received 38.2 mm of rains. Srinagar received 19.5 mm of rains, while Kupwara in north Kashmir recorded 26.3 mm rainfall, the official said. The bodies of the three soldiers who were missing after multiple avalanches struck an Army post in Batalik sector of Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir were recovered from under 15 feet of snow. Unprecedented snowfall had triggered multiple avalanches in Batalik yesterday, burying the post. Fresh avalanches hit army posts in Kaksar belt of Kargil district but all soldiers were rescued, and Army official said. In parts of Rajasthan, heat wave conditions abated with the day temperatures dipping by a few notches. advertisement Kota recorded maximum temperature of 37 degrees Celsius, while the mercury in Barmer settled as 35.5 degrees Celsius, the MeT Department here said, adding other places in the state registered their maximums below the 35 degrees Celsius mark. In several parts of Punjab and Haryana, maximum temperatures hovered around normal level a day after rains brought respite from the hot weather conditions in the two states. Chandigarh recorded a maximum of 33 degrees Celsius, while in Punjab, Amritsar registered a high of 29.5 degrees Celsius. In Haryana, Ambala recorded a maximum of 33.4 degrees Celsius In Bihar, the capital city Patna recorded maximum temperature of 36.8 degrees Celsius, while Gaya was the hottest place in the state with the mercury climbing to 40.6 degrees Celsius. The MeT office has forecast partly cloudy sky with possibility of rain or thundershowers in the state tomorrow. Day temperatures were above normal in parts of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Odisha, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Goa, Telangana and Tamil Nadu. PTI TEAM NSD --- ENDS --- In 2000, when Group Editorial Director Raj Chengappa came to the newsroom and said the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) had plans to launch a mission to the moon, I with my usual journalistic cynicism took a bet with him that it would never happen. It took eight years for ISRO to fulfil its dream of putting an Indian signature on the moon-in 2008, the Chandrayaan mission sent an orbiter around the moon, had a Moon Impact Probe detach from it and crash-land on the surface. In doing so, India became only the fifth country to put an unmanned probe on the moon. I was happy to lose the bet to Raj, which was a bottle of champagne, as nothing lifts India's spirits more than a global achievement. ISRO has done India proud. Despite the constraints of being a government-owned organisation, it has delivered consistently, building wide-ranging capability that is world-class in both satellites and launchers. It even sent a mission to Mars, with its spacecraft orbiting the red planet in its first attempt in 2013. Across the world, major developments in space technology have seen the entry of private players in the arena, in particular US billionaire Elon Musk, whose Space X has successfully built launchers, even reusable ones. For the first time, an Indian enterprise, TeamIndus, has entered the most exciting competition in space for a private entity to land a spacecraft on the moon and have a robot probe its surface. Having already won $1 million for the best designed lunar lander for Google's Lunar X prize, TeamIndus is now one of the five finalists in the race to claim the $20 million grand prize and become the first privately-funded team to land a robot on the moon, make it travel over 500 metres and transmit high definition images and videos. advertisement It's a story that mirrors the aspirations of New India. Formed in 2011, TeamIndus is a group of young entrepreneurs who gave up regular jobs for a shot at the moon. Starting a company called Axiom Research Labs Pvt. Ltd in Bengaluru, they built a team of 100 youngsters with the average age of 26. They also roped in retired ISRO scientists associated with the Chandrayaan mission. This group of moon believers is racing to meet the December 2017 deadline and has attracted funds from private Indian donors. TeamIndus estimates it needs Rs 450 crore for the launch. From April 12 onwards, it is launching a crowd-funding drive called Har Indian Ka Moonshot, asking for Rs 500 each from 1.5 million Indians that would net them about Rs 75 crore. They expect more to come in from other sources-competition rules say 90 per cent of their funds must come from private sources and does not permit concessional deals from the government or its agencies. Chengappa and Group Photo Editor Bandeep Singh spent some time with the team at the complex and narrate the remarkable story of this unique venture in this week's cover story. While originally there were 16 competitors, the field has narrowed down to five. Apart from TeamIndus, there is a Japanese team, an American, an Israeli and an international consortium of private entrepreneurs. Says Chengappa, "Their enthusiasm and confidence are infectious. You get that nothing-is-impossible feeling." Whether they succeed or not, it is a shining example of the vaulting ambition and spirit of enterprise of India's youth. Plus their belief that they can compete with the best in the world. This venture will inspire many others in India to have audacious goals, which is why we have chosen to put this unusual story on our cover. This time I am betting TeamIndus will succeed. What about you? --- ENDS --- After Holocaust the sentiment in the world was to ensure a mass extermination event does not take place. But even after that, there has been at least one mass extermination event in every decade since the World War 2. Find out more about it. The skulls and bones of Rwandan victims rest on shelves at a genocide memorial inside the church at Ntarama just outside the capital Kigali. (Photo: Reuters) By Sushmita Choudhury: The popular slogan after the Holocaust was 'never again'. Why did it turn into 'again and again'? In fact, there has been at least one mass extermination event in every decade since the World War 2. Let's take a look: China's Great Leap Forward (1958) Chairman Mao killed an estimated 30-40 million fellow citizens between 1958 and 1962 in his experiment to collectivise agriculture. Chairman Mao Zedong (Phoo: Reuters) advertisement Siege of Biafra (1967) During Nigeria's civil war, over 2 million people died in the newly created Republic of Biafra, most of them Igbo. Many, particularly children, starved to death due to Biafra's blockade. Photo: liberationofpeople.blogspot.in Photo: liberationofpeople.blogspot.in Bangladesh genocide (1971) Pakistan army's genocidal "Operation Searchlight" against ethnic Bengali separatists fighting for East Pakistan's independence led to an estimated 5,00,000 to 3 million deaths. Photo: YouTube Cambodian genocide (1975-79) Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge wiped out nearly 21 per cent of the country's population (2 million Cambodians) in an attempt to create a new agrarian utopia. Photo: YouTube Guatemala's Mayan genocide (1981-83) In what became known as "The Silent Holocaust," the USA-backed Guatemalan government began a systematic campaign against the "inferior" Mayan Indians that led to around 2,00,000 deaths. Photo: amoreno123.blogspot.in Kurdish genocide (1987-89) The infamous al-Anfal campaign during Saddam Hussein's reign saw an estimated 180,000 Kurds-70% men-killed & about 1.5 million deported. Bosnian war (1992-95) In July 1995, towards the end of the Bosnian war, Serb forces overran Srebrenica town, a UN-designated "safe area". In a four-day window, up to 8,000 "battle-age" men were massacred & an estimated 23,000 women, children & elderly people were expelled from the area. Photo taken from: srebrenica-genocide.blogspot.in (Photographer: Patrick Robert) Rwanda genocide (1994) In the course of just 100 days, an estimated 8,00,000 Tutsis were hacked & clubbed to death by some 2,00,000 Hutus. The skulls and bones of Rwandan victims rest on shelves at a genocide memorial inside the church at Ntarama just outside the capital Kigali. (Photo: Reuters) Darfur genocide (2003 onward) The first genocide of the 21st century targeting the non-Arab African tribal of Darfur in Western Sudan has seen up to 3,00,000 deaths and some 3 million people displaced. Yazidi genocide (2014 onward) The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militant group has been systematically wiping out the minority Yazidi sect in Iraq and Syria. As you read this, more than 3,200 Yazidi women and children are being enslaved and countless others murdered. --- ENDS --- By Press Trust of India: scam Patna, Apr 6 (PTI) With the soil purchase scam in Patna Zoo creating a flutter in Bihar politics, the state government today called for a detailed report on the matter from the Environment and Forest Department. RJD President Lalu Prasads son Tej Pratap Yadav, the state Environment and Forest minister is under attack from the BJP on the issue. advertisement Chief Secretary Anjani Kumar Singh asked Principal Secretary of Environment and Forest Department Vivek Kumar Singh to present "the entire facts" about the issue to him. The CS confirmed asking the department to present the entire factual report to him about the matter. He, however, denied ordering any probe into the matter. Meanwhile, Sushil Modi today urged Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to break his silence on the soil purchase scam involving family members of RJD supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav. "The Chief Minister should break his silence (on the soil purchase scam)," he said in a statement. Sushil Modi also accused the state government officials of trying to suppress the alleged scam on Prasads direction and warned that such officials will be penalised. He also said such officials would lose their jobs like it happened in the fodder scam. Reacting on the governments decision to seek a report on the soil purchase scam, Sushil Kumar Modi trashed it as a "conspiracy to give clean chit to Lalu Prasads family." "Seeking report on soil purchase by the government is nothing but a conspiracy to give clean chit to Lalu Prasads family," Sushil Modi tweeted. "Which official has the courage to inquire against Lalu Prasads family...coalition government will fall," the BJP leader said. "Father indulged in scam in purchase of fodder for animals, son scripted soil scam," Sushil Modi said in another tweet targeting Lalu Prasad and his family on corruption issue. The senior BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi on Tuesday last demanded Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to order an all party probe into the alleged soil purchase scam. On Thursday, he alleged that earth filling work at Patna Zoo was carried out without a plan or approval and asked the state government to explain why the work was done at all. He said that the soil was purchased from an under-construction mall registered in the name of a company whose board of directors include several members of Lalu Prasads family. advertisement The names include those of his minister sons - Tej Pratap Yadav and Tejaswi Prasad Yadav. "Five lakh cubic feet of soil was transported to Patna Zoo from the mall premises by trucks which made 1000 round trips over three months," he claimed. The BJP leader also charged the Patna Zoo authorities for making a payment of Rs 90 lakh for soil from the corpus of Bihar Wildlife Conservation Fund by flouting guidelines under which the interest amount of the corpus of Rs 334.41 crore can be spent only for wildlife conservation. Sushil Modi also said that the Bihar Chief Secretary heads the Bihar Wildlife Conservation Fund and asked him to explain how the funds were used for soil purchase and whether any prior approval was taken in this regard. PTI SNS KDK SNS SBN --- ENDS --- Sunshine Coast rockers Hobo Magic have just dropped something we dont quite see every day a self-titled single and its yet another ripper from the champions of groove. While it all starts off quite dark and menacing, laced with wobbly, droning riffs and a slow but unrelenting stomp, it soon builds into a searing seven-minute epic. In the bands words, the track pushes home a message of perseverance, passion, co-operation and positive change for anyone who is creative, and wishes to follow a path in life that is different than the social norm, and, considering its named after them, that pretty much sums up the band themselves. We last checked in with this mob late last year when they dropped the equally-huge The World Today before heading out on a national tour, and theyll be doing the same thing this time round, starting tonight at The Bangalow Bowls Club with The Badlands, and The Urban Chiefs. The guys are fresh off a set at Brissy fest Mojo Burning where they played alongside some of the best blues, rock and stoner rock bands in the business, including QOTSA/Kyuss wild man Nick Oliveri, and theyll soon be touring alongside another Kyuss member in Brant Bjork when he heads to Australia for a 14-date tour next month. Give their new jam a listen, and if you like what theyre laying down, check out the tour dates below. Hobo Magic Tour Fri 07 April Byron Bay @ Bangalow Bowls Club Thu 20 April Sydney @ Frankies Pizza By the Slice Fri 21 April Newcastle @ The Wicko Sat 22 April Wollongong @ Dicey Rileys Thu 27 April Brisbane @ Crowbar w Hydromedusa Sat 29 April Mackay @ Langfords Hotel Sun 30 April Bundaberg @ Globe Hotel Fri 05 May Melbourne @ Bendigo Hotel Sat 06 May Geelong @ Negative Waves Fest Fri 12 May Brisbane @ Crowbar w Brant Bjork Sun 21 May Hervey Bay Skate Park (AA) Fri 26 May Sunshine Coast @ Solbar Fri 02 June Nimbin Hotel Sun 04 June Gold Coast @ Miami Shark Bar TKC Blog Community Confirmed As Local Politicos Fall Into Line Behind Prez Trump Kansas City Leaders Supportive Of Trump's Attack On Syrian Air Base Kansas City leaders seemed unified Friday in supporting President Donald Trump's decision to fire 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian air base in response to that government's deadly chemical weapons attack this week. Fariz Turkmani, a Syrian who emigrated to Kansas City in 1979, said he was happy about Trump's move, especially since he hit the air base and not areas where civilians live. Fear Suspected Golden Ghetto Creeper Overland Park searching for child enticement suspect OVERLAND PARK, Kan. - Overland Park police are looking for a suspect in a child enticement incident this morning. Police were called to W. 140 th and Metcalf around 7 a.m. after a man driving a silver SUV pulled up to a young girl waiting at a bus stop. Sunflower State Gunfire Gone Wrong 2 Kansas men accused of shooting, killing golden eagle Two Kansas men are accused of shooting and killing a golden eagle. U.S. Attorney Tom Beall said in a news release that Michael Dusin, 22, of Phillipsburg, and Elijah J. Kuhlman, 22, of Sharon Springs, are charged with violating the federal Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. Local Dude Celebrates Prez Syrian man living in KC says he approves of President Trump's decision, calls him his hero KANSAS CITY -- Syrians in Kansas City are applauding the U.S. military strike Thursday, launched after a chemical weapons attack killed dozens of civilians in their native land. In the last year, nearly 30 Syrian refugee families have resettled in the metro area, and Syrian-Americans such as Fariz Turkmani have been instrumental in helping them adapt to their new lives. Media Hateration Against Democracy Ferguson, Mo., Stays in the Sunken Place: Re-Elects Failed Mayor This is why we can't have nice things. Not because they are taken from us. Or hidden from us. Or placed behind a thousand-foot wall we can't scale. Nope, sometimes black people can't have nice things because we steadfastly, inexcusably, sabotage ourselves with apathy and ignorance. Sign Of Fanboy Support Royals new mural showcases local artist, familiar faces KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Next time you drive past 25th and Southwest Boulevard, be sure to check out a new Royals mural. This is KC's first #RaisedRoyal mural. Phil Shafer, the artist behind the mural, shares the significance of it. Another Night Of Kansas City Twang Garth Brooks adds 7th KC concert Garth Brooks has added a seventh show at Kansas City's Sprint Center, concert officials announced Friday. The seventh show is set for May 13 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets for that show, along with May 12th's show at 7 p.m. went on sale Friday at 10 a.m. isn't afraid to show off herand this inspires us to offer these Kansas City links to our blog community of Friday afternoon clock watchers. Take a peek:And this is thefor right now . . . "Mike Shanin interviews Tricia Johnson, Executive Director of Show Me KC Schools, about her organization's efforts and the year-long KCPT education project, Take Note. Then Lisa Johnston, Jim Heeter, Ron Freeman and Patrick Tuohey analyze Tuesday's election results, the implications of Governor Greitens avoiding the media and Claire McCaskill's stance on Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch." For late night local news junkies, here's a peek at the Kansas City chattering class talking over topics that our blog community has already discussed in greater detail.Still, a worthwhile conversation from "the leaders" of our local discourse.Checkit:You decide . . . Welcome To The Trump War Trump: Syrian strike is in 'vital national security interest' of United States PALM BEACH, Fla. - President Trump said he ordered targeted air strikes against a Syrian airfield Thursday in retaliation for the regime's chemical weapons attack against civilians this week. "It is in the vital national security interest of the United states to prevent and deter the use of deadly chemical weapons," Trump said. Kansas City Crazy House Discount Mental health crisis center saving local hospitals millions KANSAS CITY - The Kansas City Assessment and Triage Center is expanding in the face of a glaring mental health problem in Kansas City. People with mental illnesses or substance abuse disorders go to the emergency room multiple times a year. For some people, it's more than 100 times a year. Kraske Kisses Up To Mayor Sly Steve Kraske: Sly James has KC feeling good about itself again Sly James is king of the world - or maybe just Kansas City. Either way, let's pause for a moment to appreciate just what King James achieved this week. Make no mistake: The degree of difficulty in passing three general-obligation bond proposals - the largest GO bond authorization in city history - ranks as a treacherous nine on a 10-point scale. Rock Chalk Tax Break Smack Down Kansas Senate Rejects Brownback's 'Flat' Tax; Work Continues On Budget Fix After sitting on the sidelines since his veto of a tax bill in February, Gov. Sam Brownback this week re-engaged with lawmakers working on a solution to the state's budget crisis. He needn't have bothered. The Senate on Thursday rejected the "flat" tax bill that he was lobbying for by a decisive 37-3 vote. Kansas City MWWS Trending Human remains found this week opened old wounds for Kelsey Smith's mother KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Two sets of human remains found in Cass County opened old wounds for a woman whose daughter was kidnapped and found dead. Kelsey Smith was an Overland Park teen who was abducted and murdered in 2007. Kelsey's body was found days later in a wooded area. More Deets Of Mom Friendship Moms of missing metro women brought together by tragedy vow to fight for justice and each other BELTON, Mo. -- One mother has answers and another waits for word on whether her missing daughter has been found. The mothers of Jessica Runions and Kara Kopetsky sat down with FOX 4's Shannon O'Brien on Thursday to talk about the recent discovery of human remains, one being those of Jessica Runions. Check The Cowtown Old School A look at Kansas City 100 years ago 100 years ago on April 6th, the United States entered World War One. Kansas City has changed dramatically in the last century. We went to the Kansas City Public Library downtown where local historian and Missouri Valley Special Collections manager, Jeremy Drouin, showed us some of what those changes looked like. Global conflict continues with a threat to escalate as we check news closer to home tonight . . .And this is thefor right now . . . Celebrate KC Hairdo Forecast!!! First Alert: Beautiful weather ahead for your Friday After a chilly start, temperatures will rebound nicely. Look for a high near 65 degrees. Kansas City Start-up Celebration After $8.5M raise, KC-based Pepper eyes IoT dominance From app-controlled to smart egg trays , the world of IoT is rapidly expanding. In fact, by 2020, it's expected that more than 24 billion internet-connected devices will be online. And now one well-heeled Kansas City-based IoT startup wants to serve as the hub for those gadgets. Last Night's Bombing Quote Local man with family in Syria thankful for Trump administration air strikes Fariz Turkmani said this should have been done a long time ago. Finding More Clues In Cass County Investigators hope 'several pieces of evidence' lead to Runions' killer, help identify second victim CASS COUNTY, Mo. -- For nine long and grueling hours, more than 100 investigators from the Kansas City Police Department, the Cass County Sheriff's Office, the FBI and several other metro area law enforcement agencies searched a thick, muddy wooded area on Thursday. Selling Old School Garth Today Tickets for Garth Brooks' 6th show in Kansas City go on sale Friday KANSAS CITY, Mo. - For the first time in 10 years, The Garth Brooks World Tour with Trisha Yearwood is coming to Kansas City, Missouri. The tour is presented by Amazon Music Unlimited. Concert dates at the Sprint Center: Friday, May 5, 7:00 p.m. Saturday, May 6, 3:00 p.m. Hopping Good Times For Rugrats Downtown community Easter Egg Hunt is set for Saturday null McTavish Makes The Weekend List 6 'Kitchen Sink' Things To Do In Kansas City This Weekend While drudgery may be the first thing brought to mind by the kitchen sink - peel those potatoes! - this weekend feels like everything but the kitchen sink. We're playing just a bit of ketchup for the morning but right nowinspires our first peek at all the Kansas City news right now. Checkit:is the song of the day and this is thefor right now . . . OUR TKC SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH AND BLOG COMMUNITY CONVERSATION REVEALS THAT KANSAS CITY RESIDENTS OVERWHELMINGLY SUPPORT PREZ TRUMP'S "INTERVENTION" BY WAY OF MILITARY TARGET ATTACK!!! "President Trump has been duped into military action, there will be more, there will be other countries, there will be an escalation of war-mongering to fulfill the Big Oil foreign policy agenda." "Whatever. Chemical weapons used on children in mass is not something anyone should stand around and ignore." "As far as evidence saying otherwise on Assad gassing his own people, is something you have pulled out of the air. There is full evidence Assad deliberately gassed his people. This has nothing to do with oil, Assad picked this fight not Trump. This is about humanity something Obama and democrats know nothing about. To have let this go on like Obama did, would be like the people who turned their back on Hitler gassing the Jews. If you want to go after big business people go after Hillary Clinton for the money she got from the Saudi's for favors." TKC FACT CHECK: THROUGHOUT AMERICAN HISTORY -- KANSAS CITY MAINSTREAM OPINION HAS GENERALLY SUPPORTED THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF ENGAGING IN MILITARY ACTION!!! NBC News: Trump Reverses Policy on Syrian Airstrikes After Years of Tweeting Disapproval Five Thirty Eight Blog: The Syria Strike Is Trump's First Big Break From His Campaign Rhetoric After the U.S. military unleashed afollowing reports of chemical attacks on civilians by the ruling Assad regime, now the war for control of the narrative amid this nation's divisive discourse is now in full swing.To wit . . .Highlights from some of the smarter comments and behind the scenes chatter . . .First and foremost, the dissent should be noted . . .The reaction to conspiracy theories has been swift among locals:An important summary from a rather smart TKC blog community denizens:For better or worse, Kansas City native and Democratic leader has emerged from his disappearance following election defeat and weighed in on the issue from a partisan perspective:The GOP reaction . . .And so, here's where an exceptionally complex issue becomes very simple for locals . . .That's not to say that there hasn't or won't be important dissent and questions . . . Butand a few conversations this morning with opinion leaders confirms that rooting against the home team doesn't play well in Kansas City. Furthermore, turning what is purportedly a defense of human rights into a partisan attack doesn't seem to be moving the dial for Democratic Party loyalists.Accordingly, and as this story evolves, take a look at some of the most important aspects of the Syrian crisis.As always, you decide . . . THANKS TO TKC TIPSTERS FOR INTERCEPTING AND SHARING THIS CITY HALL MEMO INVITING "LEADERS" TO PROVIDE AIRPORT FEEDBACK!!! Request for Neighborhood Input for Future KCI Upgrades Now that Mayor Sly and his corporate consultant cronies have $800-MILLION for pet pet projects . . ., the fight for a new single-terminal airport is underway.To wit . . .Meanwhile, over and over again, the public as told Mayor Sly & Council "NO" on the airport andWith the election out of the way, here's a look at the text of recent dox beyond cleaned up media hype.Checkit:Dear Kansas City, Missouri, neighborhood leader:Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Pat Klein and I am the Director of Aviation for the City of Kansas City, Missouri, Aviation Department.We are asking residents to weigh in directly on the next step in the planning process for any potential upgrades at Kansas City International Airport. Feedback from residents will be gathered through a series of listening sessions hosted by business, neighborhood and community groups.The listening sessions will be an open forum for residents to discuss their thoughts and concerns about the airport with Aviation Department leadership, and will include a short presentation to bring everyone up-to-date on previous planning efforts. Information gathered through community listening sessions will directly influence the terminal facility planning process and will be shared with City Council members.For ease of logistics, the listening session should be added to the top of the agenda of regularly scheduled Kansas City, Missouri, neighborhood group or homeowners association meetings in a non-residential gathering place such as a clubhouse, meeting hall or community center. The number of attendees should be greater than 10. We ask that you or your organization or homeowners association handle all meeting logistics and notifications. We are able to use your groups projector to display content on group-provided screens or walls, but are also able to bring a projector if need be.Aviation Department leadership is able to attend existing neighborhood meetings beginning the week of April 17, 2017 and continuing through the summer of 2017. Background information and a form to book your group can be found ator you may book through John Holland at John.Holland@kcmo.org or (816) 243-3115.We at the Aviation Department welcome you and your communitys opinions. If you so desire, we will come to you to do so. We look forward to hearing from you.Sincerely,Patrick KleinDirector of Aviation / Assistant City Manager################Developing . . . Exploratory drilling is set to take place in block 11 of Cyprus Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in the first two weeks of July, a top Total official said, on Thursday. Eleanor Rowley, Totals VP of Exploration, MENA region, was addressing a ceremony, at the Presidential Palace, during which the contracts for exploration and production sharing for blocks 6 and 8 within Cyprus EEZ were signed. Im happy to say that this will be the first test of the Zohr play in Cypriot waters. So we are very excited to operate this well along with our partners ENI, she said. She added that her company is looking forward to go ahead with an exploratory drill in block 6 within 2018 in the framework of its joint venture with ENI, noting that the seismic data for block 6 had already been acquired. We are looking to spot a well in block 6 area within 2018. This well will be operated by ENI so we look forward to further testing the Zohr play in that block, she said. Rowley also said that the company very much looks forward to have a strong exploration programme in 2017 and 2018 in Cyprus. In his speech during the ceremony Vice President of ENI for Southern Europe, Carlo Vito Russo, said that the signing was an important event for the companies, for Cyprus and for the entire East Mediterranean region. As he said the signature of the contracts for blocks 6 and 8, will allow the companies to verify the potential of Cyprus EEZ and if drilling will be successful as in other parts of the region as Egypt and Israel. This is important for the development of Cyprus for the partners of the joint venture and also for the entire region, he said adding that the only way to know it is to start to drill in the two blocks. As he said ENI with its partners as operators in the two blocks, are ready to do it as soon as possible. Totals continued commitment in the Cypriot EEZ In his address Cypriot Energy Minister Yiorgos Lakkotrypis said that ENIs and Totals continued commitment in the Cypriot EEZ despite the challenges faced by the global oil & gas industry creates optimism for its prospects. He also noted that it is particularly important that the two companies are joining forces in block 6 just as they recently did in the licensed block 11. Both companies possess extensive expertise in the field of hydrocarbons, as well as experience in the Eastern Mediterranean, and by submitting ambitious applications in the 3rd Licensing Round they have opted to further strengthen their presence in our EEZ and, consequently, in the wider region. Of particular significance for the quality of their exploration programmes is the fact that they join forces in Block 6, a strategic move they have also made recently in Block 11, said Lakkotrypis. The Minister noted said that with todays signing of the exploration and production sharing contracts, as well as the hydrocarbons exploration licenses, for blocks 6 and 8 in Cyprus EEZ, the 3rd Licensing Round is officially concluded. The Republic of Cyprus, by exercising its sovereign rights, continues unabated to implement its strategy for advancing the exploration and exploitation of its offshore wealth, he said. The consortium of ENI Cyprus Limited and Total E&P Cyprus B.V. is licensed for Block 6, while ENI Cyprus Limited for Block 8. On Wednesday Cyprus government signed a contract for Block 10 with consortium ExxonMobil and Qatar Petroleum. Representatives of ENI and Total had earlier a meeting with President Nicos Anastasiades at the Presidential Palace. Source: CNA 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 According to cops, after committing a crime they used to stay in the cave for three or four days and also kept their stolen goods there. By Tanseem Haider: The Delhi Police has unearthed a gang that had built a 50 feet-long cave in Chankayapuri area of New Delhi and has arrested six notorious burglars. Constructed near a railway track, they used this cave to hoodwink cops for long. Police team has recovered stolen cash Rs 50,000, 10 mobile phones, 2 laptops, 1 Nikon digital camera worth Rs 3 lakh, 13 imported wrist watches, jewellary worth Rs 2 lakh, 2 motorcycles & 1 scooty and claims to have solved 16 burglary and theft cases. advertisement Series of robberies and theft had taken place in South Delhi. According to cops, after committing a crime they used to stay in the cave for three or four days and also kept their stolen goods there. On April 4th, one Vandana Rajpal, a resident of Shanti Niketan, New Delhi reported that at around 5 am, she woke up and found her house ransacked and the entire gold and diamond jewellery, watches, mobile phones and cash about Rs 1 lakh and other items like mobile speakers, clothes, camera stolen. After getting specific input about the movement of a desperate burglar-cum-robbers Prem Chand Ki Guffa, behind Smriti Vatika Park, Moti Bagh-I, a trap was laid and accused Virender, Kunal, Raju, Santosh Gupta, Bablu Rajasthani and Anand Kant were arrested. During investigation, stolen cash, electronic articles and housebreaking equipments were recovered, which they had stolen along with his associates from the area of South Campus, Sarojini Nagar, Vasant Vihar, Chanakyapuri, Mandir Marg, Rajender Nagar and R. K. Puram. Accused also disclosed that they used to enter the houses through windows and would break open the locks with the help of iron wrench and steal electronic items and cash. While committing crime, they use surgical hand gloves to avoid leaving their fingerprints. They further revealed that they also used to visit the call girls and in order to meet the expenses incurred on drugs and lust, they started committing robbery. Also read: Delhi: AAP youth wing leader arrested for robbery Police foil robbery bid, arrest one --- ENDS --- The European Peoples Party (EPP) announced it would support the banning of the Islamic veil across Europe during its annual meeting in Malta, Friday. We want to ban the veiling of the face all over Europe, the partys head Manfred Weber told German media. Many European countries have adopted a stance favouring a ban of the Islamic head scarf for women over the past years citing security reasons and the threat of Islamic terrorism. 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 Come on! Who is this stupid, said the ambassador in response Pro-Erdogan TV presenter Ertem Sener on Wednesday attacked Richard Moore, British ambassador to Turkey, on social media, using offensive language that included expletives. Boss of the murderer who killed children with chemical weapons in Syria cannot talk about spring and tulips! You are sons of *itches, said Sener in his Twitter message, quoting a tweet of Ambassador Moore on spring. Tulips in Istanbul heralding spring. Hooray! said Ambassador Moore in a tweet with a photo of tulips outside Dolmabahce Palace in Istanbul. They explicitly give this sort message to Turkey. They say that if the coup attempt had succeeded, those tulips would have blossomed earlier. Come on boys, come again! said Sener in a follow-up Twitter message. The center of attention British dog! The soil of those tulips was irrigated with blood for centuries. Your grandfathers know it well. Dishonored dogs! added Sener. They are such vile people!!! Those people campaign for [a] no [vote], want a military coup. May Allah save our country from those dishonorable, those vile people, said Sener in another Twitter message quoting the ambassadors the same tweet. Come on! Who is this stupid, said the ambassador in response to Seners tweet. On March 23, Moore became the center of attention when he criticized an advisor of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for not condemning a London terror attack that killed five people and wounded many more. Terror attack in England. Terror says Europe: The UK is your safest region? I would hit you in your safest place, said Burhan Kuzu, a chief advisor to Erdogan, commenting on the London terror attack last month. UK Ambassador Moore responded to Kuzu on Twitter, writing: No condemnation? No solidarity? Shame, and asked him, Do you not agree with the kind messages of President Erdogan, Prime Minister Binali Yldrm and other ministers? Moore similarly slammed the pro-government Star dailys Editor-in-Chief Nuh Albayrak, who called the London attack a comedy, implying that the terror attack was plotted. Albayrak tweeted after the London attack and condemned Turkish TV stations for contributing to the perception operation being conducted by the British. Source: turkishminute.com 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 Europe is dealing with an unusual crisis which goes beyond Britains planned exit from the European Union and will not blow over in a few months or years, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said in joint press conference with Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos in Athens on Friday. The remaining 27 member-states should strive to keep Europe united as what we considered self-evident may not be so self-evident, he said. Steinmeier is on a two-day visit to the Greek capital to open the international contemporary art exhibition, documenta14, following an invitation by Pavlopoulos. One way of overcoming peoples indifference for politics is by finding answers to problems which have not been answered yet, he said, noting there is much more activity and discussion in the EU today than 2-3 years ago. "Its important to provide real answers on questions that have not been answered yet. There are issues of domestic and external security. People are ready for consultations and we have to provide answers on migration, growth and employment, he continued. "The limited consultations between us are no longer enough. We have to provide real solutions to problems and answers that our people so far havent heard from us, he added. Commenting on the migration crisis, Steinmeier said the large waves of migration have had consequences on Greece and created additional challenges. The answer to all these issues should not just be controlling the EUs external borders but a different asylum policy [] well stand on Greeces side on migration, he said, adding that Europe must give credit to Greece for the weight it has shouldered. On the economic crisis, the German president said the completion of the review must not monopolize Greek-German relations adding hes pleased with todays news of a deal between the Greek government and its creditors. I hope there will be a comprehensive conclusion of the review to end uncertainty, he said. Commenting on documenta14, which will be inaugurated tonight by the two presidents, Steinmeier said he doesnt know what he will see but he expects a fresh impetus and different view of our relations. Crucial time for the EU and the Eurozone Welcoming the German president to the Presidential Mansion, Pavlopoulos said his visit takes place at a crucial time for the EU and the Eurozone. I want to assure you that Greece will overcome the crisis and will remain in the EU and Eurozone. Greece is doing so with the great sacrifices of its people. I believe that Greeces sacrifices should be taken into account. Greece will meet in full its obligations provided that its partners do the same, he said and hailed Eurogroups decision to approve the return of the institutions to Greece. Commenting on developments in Syria, he said Europes mission is to ensure peace and to help end the war, especially in Syria. The end of the war is not only a question of geo-strategic objectives, but also about the consolidation of peace and humanity, he said.Europe must respond to the barbaric terrorism of Jihadists as befits those who commit crimes against humanity. On migration, Pavlopoulos said it must be handled with humanism and solidarity. There can be no European peoples with phobias towards refugees, he said, adding that Europe has to defend peoples basic rights. "Were ready to cooperate with all our partners and Germany for a strong Europe, refuting those who rushed to leave Europe believing that it cannot reach its final goal, he continued, noting that Greece so dedicated to its European orientation that it incorporates its national issues into a European framework. He then cited the Lausanne Treaty, saying it defines EU borders and questioning it will not be tolerated. Greece wants to support Turkeys European path but this hinges on the full respect of international and European law. PM Tsipras receives German President at Maximos Mansion Following the press conference, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras also received the German President at the Maximos Mansion in Athens, greeting him as a politician that is fighting for Europe's unity and a good friend of Greece. He noted that art and culture were a bridge that could help unite the Greek and German people, overcoming the recent years' disruption in Greek-German relations. Steinmeier, on his part, referred to a need to once again 'start talking positively about Europe and not consider that Europe is responsible for everything," especially in the wake of Brexit. 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 For most residents of mainland Greece, the islands are often endowed with somewhat mythical dimensions associated with summer holidays. But what are Greeces islands really like, guide-book descriptions and stereotypes aside? The answers lie in a new atlas of the islands created by the University of the Aegean, an impressive piece of work that is interesting not just for the encyclopedic knowledge it imparts, but also the useful information on the character and evolutions of the islands, their potential and weaknesses. The atlas is the work of the universitys Laboratory of Regional and Island Development and the team was headed by Assistant Professor Ioannis Spilanis from the Department of Environmental Studies and Thanassis Kizos from the Department of Geography. It covers all of the countrys 114 populated islands from a geographic, demographic and economic perspective, and includes some really fascinating information. In the prefecture of Lasithi on Crete, for example, the primary sector represents the largest share of the local economy at 10.77 percent compared with the country average of 3.69 percent. Manufacturing is almost nonexistent on the islands, from just 1.42 percent of gross domestic product on Cephalonia to 6.05 percent in Iraklio, Crete. The presence of the civil sector is particularly high on the Aegean island of Lesvos, at 35.2 percent, followed by the prefectures of Iraklio and Hania on Crete. Meanwhile, the largest number of businesses per 100 residents are to be found on Patmos (42.7), Paxi (29.3), Sifnos (26.5) and Ios (25.6). The smallest are on Nisyros (5), Oinousses (4.9), Psara (4.8) and Agathonisi (4.3), while the biggest surprise comes from Samothraki, which has the highest turnover per business, followed by popular holiday islands Myconos and Rhodes. Employment The five islands with the highest rate of employment are Koufonisia (49.6 percent), Myconos (48.7 percent), Kos (46 percent) and Irakleia (45 percent). In contrast, the highest rates of unemployment are on Mathraki (61 percent), Antikythera (50 percent), Othonoi (27 pct) and Nisyros (25 percent). In terms of tourism, the University of the Aegean found that the majority of beds is concentrated on a limited number of islands: Crete has 164,249, Rhodes 84,942, Kos 45,097, Corfu 43,940 and Zakynthos 28,837, while these are followed by Evia, Santorini, Myconos, Thasos and Cephalonia, which all have more than 10,000 beds. At the other end of the scale, Greece has 12 islands with less than 100 hotel beds and another 12 with no hotels at all. However, the rise in the number of hotels beds has been most rapid for those islands that experienced a boom in tourism in the 2000s, such as Koufonisia, Meganisi, Astypalaia, Tilos, Leipsoi and Kastellorizo (over 200 percent), as well as Zakynthos (116 percent). Oinousses, Psara, Kythnos, Poros, Nisyros, Aegina, Agistri and Samos, in contrast, saw bed numbers decline in the same period. Land use According to the new atlas, brushland comprises 52.1 percent of the entire area of Greeces islands, the majority of which is used for grazing. The second most widespread use of land is for crop growing, at 22.6 percent, including both annual as well as permanent crops. The standouts include Corfu, where 79 percent of its area is planted with olive and citrus trees, Santorini, where 59.9 percent comprises vineyards, Kea, with 55.15 percent olives and oaks, Naxos, with 53.1 percent of annuals and olives, and Kos, with 53 percent of vines, olives and annuals. Demographics How much have Greeces islands changed? Which have seen their populations grow and which are at threat of becoming deserted? The University of the Aegean atlas points to the need for a strategic plan to ensure the islands sustainability both in terms of their economies and natural environment, to encourage locals to stay and to offer new and innovative forms of tourism. In terms of numbers, only Crete is considered a very big island, with a population of over 500,000. Evia, Rhodes, Corfu, Lesvos and Chios rank as large because their population numbers range from 50,000 to 500,000, while 21 islands have 5,000-50,000 residents, 32 have 750-5,000, 46 have less than 750 residents and just 20 edge above the 100-resident mark. Of these, only one, Telendos, is not also a municipality, as it is administratively part of Kalymnos. Of the 35 islands that have fewer than 100 residents, only seven are inhabited all year round. Greeces most densely populated island is Salamina, off the coast of Piraeus, with 413.5 residents per square kilometer, followed by the other Saronic islands with the exception of Hydra, Syros (257.1 residents/sq.km.), Santorini (200.9) and Corfu (170.3). Among the small islands, Tilos has the greatest concentration of residents. Crete, Evia, Zakynthos and another eight islands are the only ones among the 114 that had a larger population in 2011 compared with 1951, while the biggest population decline in the last 60 years has been experienced by the prefecture of Lesvos (-33 percent). The islands with the highest birthrates are Myconos (8.2 percent), Santorini (7.7 percent), Rhodes (5.98 percent), Kos (5.9 percent), Kalymnos (5 percent) and Kastellorizo (4.05 percent). As far as the last 30 years are concerned, the five islands with the biggest population increases were Tilos, Othonoi, Kastellorizo, Ereikousa and Santorini, ranging from 15.9 to 11.5 percent, and the biggest drops were on Antikythera, Hydra and Meganisi, with single digits of 2.2 to 4 percent. Proliferation of residences Another interesting fact concerns the proliferation of residences, where the university team found that the biggest increases between 1971 and 2011 were on Tinos, Antiparos and Myconos, at a whopping 130, 128 and 114 percent respectively. Half (50 percent) of the residences on Antiparos were new constructions. The largest number of empty residences compared to the permanent population is on Nisyros (1.52 residences per resident), followed by Serifos (1.47), Kythnos (1.43), Anafi (1.24) and Kea (1.12). However, the most urbanized Greek island is Salamina, which it is basically a suburb of the greater Athens area, with 41.8 percent of its expanse covered by buildings, roads and other constructions. It is followed by Santorini at 18.6 percent, Aegina at 12.5 percent, Spetses at 8 percent and Corfu at 7.7 percent. So what was the biggest issue to emerge from this comprehensive approach to Greeces islands? What determines the islands sustainability is the existence of activities that will keep residents there, says atlas team chief Spilanos. The need for a strategic plan is even more pressing for islands like Antikythera, which are very close to complete desertion. The professor notes that for some other islands, the main challenge is environmental. He cites Santorini, whose huge popularity as a tourism destination is stretching its resources and taxing its natural beauty, from the availability of drinking water to waste management and noise pollution. Last but not least, another important issue is the low level of education on many islands, which weighs on the quality of available human resources and growth potential, adds Spilanos. This is a discussion that is already being held at the European level. 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 Dubai-based P&O Ports, a leading shipping and ports services provider, has won a 30-year concession for the management and development of a multi-purpose port project at Bosasso in the Puntland State of Somalia. The approximate investment for the modern multi-purpose facility will be $336m (Dh1.235 billion) divided into two phases: $136 million (Dh500 million) for phase 1 and $200 million (Dh745 million) for phase 2. President of Puntland, Abdiweli Mohamed Ali and the chairman of Ports, Customs & Freezone Corporation (PCFC), Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem signed the agreement at a ceremony in Dubai, UAE yesterday (April 6), in the presence of senior Government officials and representatives of PCFC. Work on the project will involve building a 450-metre quay and a five-hectare back up area, dredging to a depth of 12 metres with reclamation work using dredge spoil. There will also be major investment in an IT and Terminal Operating System (TOS), mobile harbour cranes and container handling equipment. This investment is a huge undertaking in Puntland and will greatly contribute to the infrastructure development in Somalia, particularly the Puntland State of Somalia, said Ali. Infrastructure development is a priority for the government of Puntland as it underpins the efforts of taking this country forward. This concession agreement of expanding the Bosasso port is a major achievement for my government and for the people of Puntland. It promotes the historical and the trade relations between the countries of UAE and Somalia. Bin Sulayem said: The Port of Bosaso is a unique opportunity to enter into a multi-purpose port that is transitioning to containerization in a country that is growing strongly as it enters a period of sustained peace. It fits ideally into P&O Ports mandate to invest in multipurpose ports in emerging markets, employing local people and developing skills. In return, the state of Puntland will benefit from an internationally recognized port operator contributing to its economic growth and trade potential. The Port of Bosaso is located in Puntland State of Somalia, 2000 km north of Mogadishu. It occupies a strategic location for maritime transport in the Gulf of Aden at the Southern approach to the Red Sea and Suez Canal. TradeArabia News Service Saudi Arabia said it "fully supports" the US missle strikes against a Syrian air base, adding that it was a "courageous decision" by President Donald Trump. US conducted the strike in response to the alleged use of chemical weapons against civilians in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, in northwestern Syria. "A responsible source at the foreign ministry expressed the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's full support for the American military operations on military targets in Syria, which came as a response to the Syrian regime's use of chemical weapons against innocent civilians," a statement carried by Saudi news agency SPA said. The statement said it holds the government of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad responsible for the deaths of dozens of civilians in in Khan Sheikhoun. A major petrochemicals complex being developed by Oman Oil Duqm Development Company at the Duqm Special Economic Zone (SEZ) will feature 10 large-scale plants involving several billion of dollars in investment, a report said. The company provided an overview of the scope and strategic nature of this initiative at the 2nd Oman Downstream Exhibition & Conference (ODEC) which opened at the new Oman Convention & Exhibition Centre in Muscat, said the Oman Daily Observer report. Hilal Al Kharusi, executive managing director, was quoted by the report as saying the dedicated zone earmarked for the development will host 10 plants producing over 20 products. The products will range from commodities to specialty products and pave the way for more than 30 chemical processing downstream businesses. The centrepiece of the ambitious development is the Duqm Refinery, a greenfield refinery. Oman Oil Company (OOC) and Kuwait Petroleum Corporation are the 50:50 equity joint venture partners in the estimated $6 billion venture. A formal partnership agreement will be signed in Muscat for the project on April 10. Once the refinery is completed, it will have the capacity to process around 230,000 barrels of crude oil per day. Diesel, jet fuel, naphtha and LPG are to be its primary products. Duqm Refinery has completed its 900 hectares site preparation work and received the final technical submissions from bidders for EPC packages one and two, which are the process units package and the utilities and offsites package, respectively. The technical evaluation is now completed and bidders have been invited to submit their commercial bids. Invitation to tender has been sent to prequalified bidders for EPC package 3 (offsite facilities) consisting of the product storage and export terminal in Duqm, crude storage tanks in Ras Markaz, and the 80 km crude pipeline from Ras Markaz to the refinery complex. Duqm Refinery will be one of the growth engines for the special economic zone. It will provide development opportunities for new projects that will directly and indirectly interface with the refinery. These projects will look to benefit from the refinerys products as well as provide different logistic services to the refinery. Boeing has signed an agreement with Iran Aseman Airlines, expressing the airlines intent to purchase 30 Boeing 737 MAX airplanes with a list price value of $3 billion. The agreement also provides the airline with purchase rights for 30 additional 737 MAXs. According to the US Department of Commerce, an aerospace sale of this magnitude creates or sustains approximately 18,000 jobs in the United States. Deliveries would be scheduled to start in 2022. Boeing negotiated the agreement under authorizations from the US government following a determination that Iran had met its obligations under the nuclear accord signed in 2015. Boeing will look to the Office of Foreign Assets Control for approval to perform under this transaction, a statement said. Boeing continues to follow the lead of the US government with regards to working with Irans airlines, and any and all contracts with Irans airlines are contingent upon US government approval, it added. TradeArabia News Service Sale of liquor in a canteen in Una, Himachal Pradesh and two in Punjab's Basrat and Saharghat were closed as they were located within 500 metre radius, Army sources said. By Ajit Kumar Dubey: Army canteens, which sell liquor exclusively to defence personnel in the country, seems to have fallen on the wrong side of the Supreme court's judgment banning sale of liquor in the 500 metre radius of highways, as three of them in Himachal Pradesh and Punjab had to be closed after excise officials raised objections over sale of booze there. advertisement "Sale of liquor in one canteen in Una, Himachal Pradesh and two in Punjab's Basrat and Saharghat were closed as they were located within the 500 metre radius. All these canteens were serving the ex-servicemen requirements in their respective areas," Army sources told Mail Today. The issue over sale of liquor in canteens, situated close to highways, had started after central excise officials reached a CSD canteen in Chandigarh and asked them to stop liquor sale, as the outlets were supposedly selling liquor in violation of the Supreme Court directives. "We are extensively going through the honourable Supreme Court order and the extent to which it would have implications on us... we will get further clarity on the issue and will take further action accordingly," the sources said. OBJECTIONS NOT JUSTIFIED? The sources stated that the army will abide by all the directives in this regard. Sources in the defence forces said the objections raised by the excise officials didn't seem to be justified as the canteens were only storing and disbursing liquor and not selling them to common people. "The sale is also limited to only authorised personnel who can't consume liquor from the liquor vends on roadside," they said. Sale of liquor is big part of the total revenue collected by the defence canteens, that will now have to depend on the excise department's approval for collecting liquor bottles for sale in the canteens. "Before requisition of liquor from major depots, the canteens have to get excise clearance from the department and then only, they can collect it for sales," sources said. The CSD has almost 1.2 crore direct customers in form of serving and retired personnel along with their families and had a turnover of over Rs 13,000 crore last year. In the forces, depending upon the hierarchy of the officers and men, liquor quotas are decided based on which they are issued particular number of bottles of different types of liquor. ALSO READ | Highway liquor ban: Bar owners say they will be forced to commit suicide like farmers advertisement ALSO READ | Use dipper, not liquor: Supreme Court refuses to modify liquor ban along highways, Cyber Hub to remain dry --- ENDS --- Parents who want to go on a vacation with their children during school term will be prosecuted if they failed to ask for permission from the school. About 60 percent of families within four years were found guilty of not following the policy, with 20,000 of parents committing the offense in a year or an equivalent of 105 court cases annually. The sudden reminder of the policy came when a father took his child to Disneyland in April 2015. Jon Platt, a businessman, took his 6-year-old daughter on a week-long trip to Florida during a school term. He should pay a penalty of 120 or nearly $150 for his child's "unauthorized absence" after the Supreme Court ruled in the decision. "Our position remains that children should not be taken out of school without good reason," a spokesperson for the Department of Education told The Daily Mail. "That is why we have tightened the rules and are supporting schools and local authorities to use their powers to tackle unauthorized absence." Meanwhile, Platt apologized to his wife and said he was not surprised with the decision. But Platt believed that the verdict was outrageous because erring parents can be penalized with high fees or end up in custody for two years. He told The Telegraph that the Department of Education's recent win is the state's way of ruling the children over parent's rights. Platt is facing legal charges of 10,000 penalty fees and a penalty of 1,000, which are equivalent to nearly $14,000. Various attorneys told Platt that there's a chance the penalty might be waived if his child has an outstanding performance and attendance rate of at least 92.3 percent. According to the UK government, children are allowed to miss school if they're sick or have received an acknowledgment permission to leave school for a few days. Parents who will take their kids without notifying the school will be fined 60 going to 120 if unpaid after 21 days. After 28 days, parents are penalized of a fine amounting to 2,500 or will be taken in custody for three months. See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018 Michelin-starred and infamously foul-mouthed celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay refuses to eat airline food even in luxury airlines. The chef, who owns a restaurant in one of Heathrow Airport's terminals, said, "I know where [the food] has been." In an interview with New Zealand Herald, Gordon Ramsay rarely says no to a dish, and airline food is one of them. He said his decade of work with Singapore Airlines as a culinary adviser had exposed him to the realities of preparing airline food. He added that he knows "where this food's been and where it goes" along with "the time it took before it got on board." According to Stuff New Zealand, airplane food tastes bland and somewhat unappealing because the food is cooked with fresh ingredients but it is packed, transported and then placed in an oven for reheating, a process that makes the food taste even worse. But the preparation and reserving process alone does not make the food taste worse. Eating at 8,000 feet above the air disrupts the tongue and nose's ability to function properly, which makes the food more dry and bland to the taste. Somehow, dishes could still stand out in flight, such as a filet mignon for its great consistency and tastefulness. Desserts are also great ways to snack in airlines rather than reheated airline food. Gordon Ramsay suggests to frequent airline diners to eat before their flight instead. His restaurant in Heathrow is somewhere he also eats in when he flies out of the country. However, be sure to avoid eating heavy and oily food before taking on a flight. High air pressure inside airplane cabins temporarily holds blood circulation and if more blood is used to digest one's food, it could create blood clots and worse, fatal health problems, according to Independent Traveler. See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018 While there are a lot of popular or overrated travel destinations out there, Morocco is certainly considered as one of the top destinations for spring vacations. With its vibrant and magnificent landscapes, rich cultural heritage and amazing activities to explore, there are actually thousands of reasons why this country is a must-see. If you are planning a Moroccan trip this spring break, here are some of the things that you must know. Mint tea everywhere. The Moroccan mint tea is an indispensable element in the traditional Moroccan culture. It is the country's national beverage and is also served in rituals and significant ceremonies. According to the College Tourist, Moroccans are used to offer a cup or two of a steaming hot mint tea to guests upon their arrival. Like any other customary traditions, it is likewise impolite to refuse a local who offers you a cup of mint tea so the best thing to do is to say "Thank you" then drink. Many mosques do not allow non-Muslim guests to enter. Almost nine out of 10 Moroccans are Muslims, CNN says. So if you are going to travel to Morocco, you must basically expect to find mosques of all sorts everywhere. However, while not all travelers, especially those from the United States are non-Muslims, bear in mind that a lot of mosques in Morocco, including Casablanca's Hassan II Mosque, prohibits non-Muslims guests to enter inside these facilities. Learn to love cumin. Just like mint tea, cumin is literally in every corner of Morocco. You can seldom find authentic Moroccan dishes that do not have cumin on them. This spice is basically one of the principal spices that are used by the Moroccans alongside sea salt, saffron and paprika. Aside from culinary, cumin is also used as a cure for diarrhea and other diseases. Dromedary riding. What is travel to Morocco without trying to ride one of the Moroccan camels? Arabian camels with one hump are called dromedaries. These are the type of camels that you will likely encounter in the deserts of Morocco. You might need to wear longer pants and closed shoes as the rides are expected to be bumpy (and sandy). Avoid trash talk. While most of the Moroccans speak Arabic, many of the locals know different languages like Spanish, French and Berber. Do not be fooled by their proficiency in their own dialect called Darija because many of them are good English speakers, too! So be careful with your words for they might likewise understand what you are saying. See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018 The Bradley Smith Hair Express Bar has been launched inside the Heathrow Terminal 5, making it the very first airport salon in the UK. The salon is owned by Bradley Smith who is known to be a popular hairdresser for celebrities. Smith, along with other names on the styling scene, competed in order to catch the three-year contract in Heathrow. Chris Annetts, Retail and Service Proposition Director of Heathrow said that the company is pleased to have the Bradley Smith Hair Express Bar in the arrivals hall of Heathrow Terminal 5. "With so many of our passengers heading straight from the airport to the office or an event in London, this new bar will be the perfect way of ensuring they feel refreshed and look their best," Annetts said in a statement released to Travelers Today. Passengers arriving at the airport can now pamper and groom themselves after a tiring long-haul flight in Bradley Smith's salon that can be found opposite the Heathrow Express. The Bradley Smith Hair Express Bar offers services for walk-in clients, such as a 15-minute blow dry threading, massage and manicure. The salon also offers haircuts for men, which will only last for seven minutes. On the other hand, clients who do not want to wait for long can also schedule an appointment through the official website of Bradley Smith. According to the statement, the celebrity stylist said that the salon's aim is to give the customers the essentials that they need when they arrive at Heathrow. According to Smith, passengers' arrivals are all about doing the basics as fast as possible. Therefore, the Bradley Smith Hair Express Bar can help a lot in getting the passengers fixed, especially those who are arriving for business meetings. Bradley Smith, who was the founder of Bradley Smith Hair, is a stylist and a famous celebrity hairdresser. In the year 2015, Smith was chosen as a Fellowship for British Hairdressing's member. Some of his notable clients include Craig David and Lady Wilnelia Forsyth. Aside from the one in Heathrow, Smith also has a number of salons in West London. See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018 The U.S. has always been a top tourist destination for international travelers. But it seems like Trump's presidency is causing a dwindle in the country's tourism revenue. Visitors aren't just as keen on traveling to the U.S. as before. Experts are calling it 'Trump Slump', and over millions of dollars' worth of losses in tourism revenue have been attributed to Trump's influence. The Independent UK reports that the week after Trump's controversial travel ban was proposed on January 27, international travel to the US lessened by 6.5 percent. Online searches for American flights also dropped significantly in the same week, and the days that came after only worsened the poll. Trump's travel ban hinders travelers from a number of Muslim countries and Syrian refugees from entering the U.S., sparking outrage from netizens worldwide. According to Travel Pulse, the World Economic Forum's 2017 Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report shows that the United States dropped two spots from being the most tourist-friendly destination in the world, now ranking sixth unlike in 2015 when the country ranked 4th. The United Kingdom and Japan bested the U.S. this year. As calculated by the Global Business Travel Association, over $185 million in business travel bookings were estimated to be lost from January 28 to February 4. Experts predicted more declines in tourism in the country this year as well, as much as 4.3 million fewer visitors and a staggering amount of $7.4 billion in revenue losses. Dara Khosrowshahi, Expedia CEO, have mentioned that the tourism industry of the U.S. is in for "a turbulent year amid falling international interest in visiting the country." And even though the revised travel ban of Trump has been halted by the federal court, travelers are still not clamoring to visit the country. The American travel industry is really in a slump nowadays, and it seems that they are well aware of the current predicament. Something has to be done before the decline in tourism lessens even more and the billion-dollar tourism industry of the U.S. may fall off the ranks. See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018 By Press Trust of India: Chennai, Apr 7 (PTI) Income Tax sleuths today launched simultaneous searches at premises of Tamil Nadu Health Minister C Vijayabaskar and at least one MLA in connection with a tax evasion probe. Officials said the searches were being conducted at over 30 locations in the state including against certain medical professionals, pharma firms and their executives. advertisement Over 100 I-T sleuths along with security personnel are part of the operation, they said, adding premises related to officials of a medical university in the state are also being searched. Searches have also been carried out against an MLA, officials said but did not give further details. "The searches were being carried out in multiple locations, including Chennai and Pudukottai, following a tip-off about alleged tax evasion," a source told PTI. Officials said there were certain "inputs" that black money is allegedly being pumped in for the byelection to R K Nagar Assembly bypolls. There were also several complaints of alleged money distribution by AIADMKs Amma faction. The bypolls is scheduled for April 12. The seat fell vacant after the death ofthe then chief minister J Jayalalithaa and it is being viewed as a battle of prestige for the two factions of the AIADMK. Vijayabaskar is a prominent loyalist of AIADMK (Amma) factions candidate TTV Dinakaran. Vijayabaskar, who is the first state minister to come under the lens of tax men, is among the key campaigners in the bypoll. Officials said certain leads in the Sekhar Reddy case, the mining baron arrested for alleged financial irregularities post demonetisation, have also prompted the latest action. PTI NES/VGN RC RT --- ENDS --- An American wife and Trump supporter believed US President Donald Trump will not deport the good people, including her undocumented Mexican husband. Reality proved her wrong when her Mexican husband was suddenly sent back to Mexico late Tuesday night. The Trump supporter named Helen married Roberto Beristain, a Mexican immigrant the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers deported back to Juarez, Mexico. ICE has detained the Indiana resident in different detention centers across six states since Feb. 6 after a routine check-in. Chicago-based attorney Adam Ansari told BuzzFeed News that he and his team of pro bono immigration lawyers all agreed the rush removal of their client was "highly unusual." Ansari thought the immigration services just wanted to "short-circuit the judicial system." ICE spokeswoman Leticia Zamarripa acknowledged in a statement that Beristain had been "turned over to Mexican authorities," but kept mum on the lawyers' claims. The Trump supporter's husband managed to live in the US for almost two decades without the proper immigration papers. His first brush with the authorities happened in 2000 when he and his wife accidentally crossed the US-Canadian border during their trip to the Niagara Falls. Beristain was then released after posting bail and ordered to voluntarily leave the country in 60 days. The Mexican national, however, ignored the order because Helen was pregnant at that time. He then regularly checked himself with ICE and obtained a permit to put up a local restaurant in Granger as well as obtained a driver's license and social security card. According to CNN, Helen told CNN affiliate WSBT in March that she voted for Trump even when her husband worried about Trump's proposed anti-immigration policies. She assured her husband then that Trump would only take on the "bad hombres" and believed that the real estate mogul only wanted to keep the country safe. She told WSBT then, "I think our President is going to keep all the good people here. He is not going to tear up families." See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018 Summer is here, and Europe has a way to beat the heat. The continent celebrates one of the biggest music festivals around the planet, and this top five list shows you why they hit the craze that good. Nuits Sonores, France (May 23-28). For five days, the music fest will be performing in 40 locations across Lyons while integrating other art fields like design and architecture. They would be even playing in landmarks and heritage sites that can hold up more than 10,000 people. For their 15th year, Nuits Sonores will bring The Black Madonna and notable underground punksters in the music scene. Rock am Ring & Rock im Park, Germany (June 2-4). Two rock festivals rolled into one? Sure. Rock am Ring & Rock im Park is back in the Mendig and Nurnberg, Germany, with an incredible line-up this year. System Of A Down is coming to perform during the music fest and so is Prophets of Rage. Not to mention, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis will be making an appearance this year as well. The Rock am Ring & Rock im Park is one of Germany's largest festival and one of the most attended music fest in the world. UVA Festival, Spain (June 2-4). Coinciding with Germany's Rock am Ring & Rock im Park is Spain's music fest loaded with arts and architecture roll up as well. If you want a more soulful and less crowded scenery, UVA Festival is located in the 12th-century Spanish monastery at Ronda Andalucia. Travelers Today reported that UVA Festival has one of the best music outdoor music venues. Expect music from different genres like blues, jazz, afro and bossa to punk and electronics. Into the Valley: Estonia, Sweden, South Africa (June 29-July 1, August 10-12, January 26-27). Hosting a music festival in different sites over a year can sound so thrilling. In Estonia, the music festival will be staged at an abandoned quarry in Rummu, abandoned factory in Stora Vika, Sweden and Castle of Good Hope, Cape Town, according to The Guardian. Super Bock Super Rock, Lisbon, Portugal (13-15 July). The music fest, though a little bit low-profile, seriously boasts of great lineups. In 2016 alone, hip hop artist Kendrick Lamar and indie rock band The National performed live in beautiful Lisbon. What's more, according to Festicket, Red Hot Chili Peppers will be performing there in this year's event. See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018 I-T officials suspect that Vijayabaskar used black money for the upcoming RK Nagar byelection. By Akshaya Nath, Virendrasingh Ghunawat: The Income Tax department today raided properties associated with Tamil Nadu Health Minister Dr C Vijayabaskar. Reports of the raids, which were carried out at his Greenways Road residence and other places, came out early today morning. The raids come just days before the bypoll is held for the crucial RK Nagar seat, the constituency of the late Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalitha. advertisement A top Income Tax official confirmed that that raids have taken place. Apart from the state minister, the raids, which are in connection with the RK Nagar byelection, targeted a few Tamil Nadu MLAs associated with him and around a dozen pharmaceutical companies. The raids are being carried out across Tamil Nadu with a total of 32 premises on the radar. Puthiya Thalaimurai, a local Tamil news channel, tweeted that I-T officials also raided the house of actor and Samathuva Makkal Katchi chief Sarath Kumar, five rooms in the MLA hostel in Chennai's Chepauk area as well as homes of former AIADMK MP Chitlapaakkam Rajendran and MGR Medical University vice chancellor Geethalakshmi. Kumar has lent his support to the Sasikala-led AIADMK camp for the RK Nagar byelection. I-T officials believe that the health minister and others associated with him have used black money for the April 12 RK Nagar byelection. The RK Nagar by-election has seen fiery campaigning with allegations of votes being bought flying fast and loose. The warring faction of AIADMK, one supporting former chief minister O Panneerselvam and the other backing current CM E Palanisamy and VK Sasikala. For the bypoll, the OPS faction is represented by E Madhusudhanan, while TTV Dhinakaran is fighting on the Sasikala-led AIADMK Amma's ticket. ALSO READ | RK Nagar bypoll: Has AIADMK's OPS faction gone too far by using Amma's coffin replica? ALSO WATCH | RK Nagar by polls: Rs 2.2 crore seized from Health Minister Vijayabaskar's aide --- ENDS --- UNITED AIRLINES TO INCREASE HOUSTON SUMMER FLIGHTS TO U.S. VIRGIN ISLANDS NEW YORK (April 7, 2017) - United Airlines will boost air capacity to the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI) this summer. Following talks with United Airlines executives in Chicago this week, USVI Commissioner of Tourism Beverly Nicholson-Doty reported the carrier will increase its frequency of flights from Houston to St. Thomas during the summer season. Commissioner Nicholson-Doty, who attended the meeting with Governor Kenneth Mapp and members of the Virgin Islands Port Authority, said the daily flights will operate from June 8 to August 14 this year, an increase from four weekly flights last summer. "United is reporting strong demand for the U.S. Virgin Islands and we look forward to the additional lift to the Territory, " she said, noting that the airline thanked the destination for offering a product that appeals to its passengers. The goal for the Houston-St. Thomas service is year-round flights. In addition to daily flights from George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, United Airlines will once again serve Washington Dulles International Airport with daily service to St. Thomas this summer, and extend its weekly Saturday service from Newark, N.J., to St. Thomas beyond the summer months, through September and October. Commissioner Nicholson-Doty and Governor Mapp were in Chicago this week to meet with United Airlines executives, and to promote the Territory through a series of strategic meetings with travel industry partners. The Commissioner met with Chicago-based meetings and event planners, local elected officials and influencers, and was later joined by the Governor to address Chicago-area journalists and editors from outlets such as The Chicago Sun-Times, Ebony and PBS. IN CHICAGO THIS WEEK (from left): Illinois State Representative for the 34th District Elgie Sims Jr.; Debbie Meyers-Martin, President of the Village of Olympia Fields; USVI Commissioner of Tourism Beverly Nicholson-Doty; Riley Rogers, Mayor of the Village of Dolton; and Cassandra Matz, Trustee of the Village of Olympia Fields and Chief of Staff to Illinois Senator Michael Hastings. According to the U.S. Virgin Islands Bureau of Economic Research (BER), stay-over visitor arrivals to the Territory in 2016 were up 4.3 percent compared with 2015. St. Croix registered a 6.5 percent increase and St. Thomas/St. John was up by 3.8 percent. For the first two months of the year, stay-over arrivals were up by 4.5 percent over the same period last year, with St. Thomas/St. John reporting a 4.4 percent increase in arrivals while St. Croix was up by 5.3 percent. The Governor and Commissioner are currently in New York for additional meetings to drive awareness and increase visitors to the Territory. The water level, however, is higher compared to the water level from the same period last year. By Supriya Bhardwaj: With the onset of summer, water scarcity is looming large in parts of India with the as Ministry of Water Resources saying that water level at 91 major reservoirs in the county has gone down by one per cent in one week. "The water storage available in 91 major reservoirs of the country for the week ending on April 6 was 50.435 billion cubic meter (BCM), which is 32 per cent of total storage capacity of these reservoirs. This percentage was at 33 per cent for the week ending on March 30, 2017," said a ministry official. advertisement The ministry also issued a statement saying that the level of water until April 6 this year was 129 per cent of the water stored in the same period last year and 105 per cent of the average water stored in the last ten years. "The total storage capacity of these 91 reservoirs is 157.799 BCM," the ministry added. Out of these 91, 37 reservoirs are outfitted with hydropower abilities with an installed capacity of more than 60 MW. ALSO READ | Ahead of Bangladesh PM's visit, Mamata claims there is no water in Teesta river --- ENDS --- By Press Trust of India: New Delhi, Apr 7 (PTI) Iran has cut by one-third the time it gives to Indian refiners to pay for oil they buy from it and has also raised ship freight rates as a retaliatory measure to New Delhis decision to reduce Iranian oil imports. Iran, Indias third biggest oil supplier, used to give a 90-day credit period to refiners like Indian Oil Corp (IOC) and Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd (MRPL) to pay for the oil they would buy from it. advertisement Now, Tehran has reduced this to 60 days, essentially means that IOC and MRPL would have to pay for the oil they buy from Iran in 60 days instead of previous liberal term of 90 days, sources privy to the development said. Iran oil sale terms were the most attractive for Indian refiners. Besides a liberal credit period, it also shipped the oil to India for a nominal 20 per cent of normal ocean freight. Other Middle-East sellers offer not more than 15-day credit period. Sources said National Iranian Oil Co (NIOC) has also decided to cut the discount it offers to Indian buyers on freight from 80 per cent to about 60 per cent. IOC and MRPL -- largest state buyers of Iranian crude -- will cut imports from Tehran to 4 million tonnes in 2017-18 from 5 million tonnes in the previous year. Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd (HPCL) will cut oil imports from Iran by 0.5 million tonnes each to 1.5 million tonnes as New Delhi built pressure on Tehran to award the Farzad-B field to its discoverer, ONGC Videsh Ltd. Iran has deterred in awarding rights to develop the 12.5 trillion cubic feet discovery OVL had made 10 years back and now New Delhi is using its oil imports as a bargaining tool to get Tehran to agree. Earlier this week, Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zangeneh had dismissed the threat of cutting imports, saying, "We cannot enter deals under threats." "Using language of threats is not appropriate," Zangeneh was quoted as saying by Iranian news agency Irna. "There are a lot of customers for Iranian oil and their demand surpasses our export capacity." India is Irans second biggest oil buyer after China and was among a few which had continued to import crude despite Western sanctions against Tehran. Since lifting of the sanctions last year, Iran is playing hardballs over award of rights to develop Farzad-B gas field in the Persian Gulf to OVL, the overseas arm of state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC). advertisement OVL has submitted a revised master development plan of over USD 5 billion for developing the field. The new plan, filed with Iranian Offshore Oil Company (IOOC), excludes liquefaction facilities to turn the gas into LNG for ease of shipping to nations like India, sources said. The two nations were initially targeting concluding a deal on Farzad-B field development by November 2016 but later mutually agreed to push the timeline to February 2017. Now, the deal is being targeted to be wrapped up by September after the two sides agree on a price and a rate of return for OVLs investments. Farzad-B was discovered by OVL in the Farsi block about 10 years ago. The project has so far cost the OVL-led consortium, which also includes Oil India and IOC, over USD 80 million. Iran was initially unhappy with the USD 10 billion plan submitted by OVL for development of the 12.5 trillion cubic feet (tcf) reserves in Farzad-B field and an accompanying plant to liquefy the gas for transportation in ships. It felt the USD 5 billion cost OVL and its partners have put for developing the field was on the higher side and wanted it to be reduced. OVL will earn a fixed rate of return and get to recover all the investment it has made in the field development. advertisement The field in the Farsi block was discovered by the OVL- led consortium in 2008. It has an in-place gas reserve of 21.7 tcf, of which 12.5 tcf is recoverable. PTI ANZ BAL --- ENDS --- Tribune News Service New Delhi, April 7 A day after RBI Governor Urjit Patel sounded alarm on populist measure like farm loans waiver by Uttar Pradesh, BJPs Kisan Morcha chief Virendra Singh Mast took a swipe at him saying that banks are driven by profits but unconcerned with human feelings or sensitivity. Patel had yesterday cautioned about moral consequences of such measures stating that waivers engender moral hazard. However, according to the BJPs Bhadohi MP, who was also instrumental in penning UPs farmer blueprint ahead of the Assembly polls the Kisan Sankalp Patra more state governments, including party-administered Maharashtra, should support similar demands by farmers keeping under the federal structure of the country. Though debt waiver for small and marginal farmers is not a long-term answer or a permanent solution to the problem, he agreed, adding that the Narendra Modi government was formulating long-lasting solution for the issue. Responding to Patels observations, the BJP leader said: Banks are a commercial organisation and doing business is their primary job. They do not deal with manaviya samvedna (human feelings/compassion), the administration, the government has to look after that aspect and the fact is farmers are distressed and committing suicides. I would also like to remind the RBI Governor of the high more than 90 per cent recovery of farmers loans. He is also forgetting that the report on the nationalisation of commercial banks recommended that 45% of investments should be for local benefit. Vijay C Roy Tribune News Service Chandigarh, April 7 Taking a step forward in assisting the Central government in formulating common industrial policy for the Himalayan states, the CII has submitted its recommendations to NITI Aayog. During a stakeholder consultation meeting led by Suresh Redhu, past chairman, CII Uttarakhand State Council, held recently, the CII recommended that the common industrial policy for these states must extend incentives under the earlier scheme, which included concessional industrial package 2003 for Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand and J&K Package II, for another five years. These incentives, to a large extent, would help in mitigating the logistics disadvantage of industry being located in the hill states. The Government of India is contemplating a common industrial policy for Himalayan states. According to Babu Khan, Regional Director, CII Northern Region, special incentives have resulted in the growth of industry in the hill states despite their small market size and land-locked nature. In the new policy, the Centre must also introduce special concessional railway/air freight for the hill states, extend transport subsidy as per the earlier scheme, among other steps that have been recommended. The CII has suggested that all industries in the himalayan states old and new should be extended special concessional railway freight, CONCOR rates and air cargo rates. The CII also proposed that in addition to extending the above incentives, the government may extend all benefits under the earlier schemes for 10 years from the date of commencement of production/offering of services. It has also suggested that insurance reimbursement applicable in J&K should also be extended to Uttarakhand interest subsidy of 3% with a cap of Rs 1 crore for MSEs, Rs 2 crore for medium enterprises and Rs 3 crore for large industries. Charu Chhibber Tribune News Service Chandigarh, April 7 Prof Arun Kumar Grover, Vice-Chancellor of Panjab University, has not received his salary for the past three months. He told this to students from various campus-based organisations, who were attending a meeting with him and other university officials here today. The VC made the statement when ABVP member Krishan Sheoran, one of the students protesting against the fee hike, questioned him as to how much his salary was. File an RTI plea to know about that, the VC said. He said his salary at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, and the PU was exactly the same. Not a penny more, not a penny less, he said. Getting a bit emotional, Professor Grover said he had not received his salary for the past three months. Everyone complains. The teachers complain when their salaries are delayed. The students complain when the fee is hiked. Who do I go and complain to? asked the Vice-Chancellor in a poignant tone. The VC confirmed he had not received his salary for the months of January, February and March as the case of re-fixation of his salary was pending with the Ministry of Human Resource Development. Meanwhile, during the meeting, which lasted over an hour and a half, students from the NSUI, PUSUS, ABVP, SOI, SFS and other organisations urged Professor Grover to find a solution to the fee hike. The VC, however, expressed helplessness. When the students urged the VC to guide them as to what could be done, he refused to comment. I cannot say anything more on the issue, said an exasperated Professor Grover. Student leaders Daman, Harman and Nitin told the VC that the student organisations were ready to unite and take up the cause provided the university lent its support to them. As many as 15,000 students are with you. If you agree to provide a solution, we are ready to go to Delhi with you. Just say something, urged Nitin. However, he failed to evoke any response from the VC. We are not here to protest, say students Student leaders told the VC that they were not keen on protesting and were looking for a peaceful way out. Our parents didnt send us here to protest and to be beaten up. Neither are we here to ruin the atmosphere of the university. We dislike protesting as much as you dislike our protests, said the student leaders. The VC, however, remained mum. Demand for emergency Senate meeting rejected The VC said the next hearing with regard to the UGCs special leave petition was on April 10 in the apex court. He said if the outcome of the hearing turned out to be positive, the next hearing would be held in the High Court on April 17. No meeting can be held before April 17, he told the students who were demanding an emergency Senate meeting to discuss the fee hike issue. He said the fee hike matter would be discussed at a meeting of the Board of Finance and Syndicate, scheduled for April 30. Student representatives to meet Senators on April 10 During the meeting, the students demand for an emergency Senate meeting was rejected by the VC. He said he would consider the demand if the Senators sent a proposal in this regard. He asked the students to meet the Senators in this regard. It was decided that 10 student representatives from various student organisations would meet 10 Senators on April 10 to discuss the fee hike issue. Karthik Venkatesh INDIA is currently witness to a cultural battle in its universities and schools about what is to be taught and what is not. The ruling dispensation wishes to alter the existing curriculum to suit their ideology. Among the half-truths in circulation about our school curriculum is that it does not dwell on the greatness of our heritage. It does not highlight "our" writers, "our scientists", and so on. Even a Shashi Tharoor fell into this trap when he lamented that while Shakespeare was taught in schools, Kalidasa wasn't. The Shakespeare-Kalidasa charge falls flat when one looks at the facts. Shakespeare and Kalidasa, owing to the fact that they wrote in different languages, will obviously be studied separately. A study of English literature will include Shakespeare whereas Sanskrit literature will include Kalidasa. If more students know more about Shakespeare than Kalidasa, the stress on English education is to blame, not the "neglect" of "our" writers. The reasons for an English education preference are due to the fact that it enables people to obtain jobs in the technology sector, academia and also facilitates migration. Our vernaculars are themselves in danger from English. The fate of a little-used language like Sanskrit whose use is limited is bound to be too. It is an issue of economic concerns and the dubious effects of colonialism. Contrary to perception, Indian writers are studied when students study Indian languages. A Hindi textbook will include Tulsidas, Mirabai, Kabir and others. A Sanskrit textbook is bound to include Kalidasa. History is another subject that ignites extreme passions. Some areas have been debated extensively. There is the Aryan Invasion Theory. This is much ado about nothing. This theory has been written out of our history books a while ago. The decline of the Indus Civilisation is no longer attributed to the Aryan invasion.Due to fresh evidence,historians have altered their earlier narrations. Schoolbooks talk of a possible migration or more rightly, several migrations of proto Indo-Aryan speakers who may have co-existed with Indus people before going on to dominate the "Vedic Age". The contention that the Indus people and the Vedic peoples were the same is still a matter of debate and for the moment, there can be no change in school textbooks. The columnist, Tavleen Singh, among others has made the accusation that our schools teach Greek, Roman and English History in preference to our own. This is erroneous too. The National Curriculum Framework 2005 (NCF 2005) clearly states that that a focus on Indian history coupled with some world history is what is recommended. In the CBSE system, formal historical studies begin only in Class 6. Class 6 is devoted to ancient Indian history, Class 7 to the medieval and Class 8 to the modern. In Class 9 and 10, there is some world history. CBSE books and many state education department books follow the NCF in letter and spirit. Deviations are some times found in international schools which follow the GCSE and IB curriculum. Those who claim to be outraged are clearly barking up the wrong tree. The charge that ancient India's scientific contributions have not been recognised too needs to be understood in context. Science and mathematics have largely become part of the western knowledge corpus since the Enlightenment. Non-western contributions have definitely been short-changed. The case for a more inclusive history of science exists, but it is up to us to write it. The writing will have to be rigorous and well-researched. Once done, a case can be made for school students being taught the history of science which gives sufficient place to ancient Indian contributions. The entry of Islamic invaders to India and their "contributions" or "destruction" is perhaps the most controversial topic of them all. Here, the issue of "ours" and "not ours" is displayed in all its vulgarity. Our Islamic heritage is sought to be disowned because Islam is not an indigenous construct, but came from the Arabian Peninsula. The temple-breaking exploits of Islamic rulers are recounted in a masochistic fashion to create a sense of Hindu "victimhood". There is no attempt to understand things in relation to power politics, temples as economic institutions and so on. It's a mathematical exercise that merely tallies the temples destroyed. Parallelly, we are happy to crow about the fact that the Indian cultural sphere included South-East Asia during the Chola rule and extended up to Afghanistan for much of our history. Did it perhaps destroy the local cultures there? That question is met with silence and the contradiction does strikes none as hypocritical. Another eerie silence is maintained about the treatment of Dalits and tribal populations throughout our history. Is there a case for a mathematical exercise there as well? While there is much that the self-proclaimed victims want to exclude, they have no ideas about what should be included. Can we introduce Indian philosophical thought in our schools? Won't it be more valuable than 'Moral Science' or 'Life Skills'? This debate hasn't even begun. Are Indian philosophy's accommodative ideas in contrast to the belligerent mood of our "nationalists" who see in monochrome? Our school books should not be employed in the service of an aggressive nationalism that stokes victimhood and wants brutal retaliation for 500-year-old happenings. The focus ought to be on knowledge creation and research and not on taking potshots at shadows. That is truly the Indian way. The writer taught history to high school students for 10 years and is now an Editor with a publishing firm. The views expressed are personal. S Nihal Singh AFRICAN envoys strong rebuke of India on the racial discrimination of fellow Africans elicited an expected reply from New Delhi challenging its characterisation of recent incidents as xenophobic and racial. The protest grew out of the beating of Nigerians in the National Capital Region on suspicion about the death of an Indian. The truth is that proud as India is of its role in helping blacks fight apartheid in South Africa, in particular Mahatma Gandhi's role, ameliorating racism in the country is beyond the power of the present government. As any Indian living in northern India will testify, racism is built into the psyche of North Indians. It starts in the traditional home, with the head of the household, usually the grandmother, selecting a bride for a marriageable son. The first criterion of selection is her skin colour and the highest accolade given to a prospective bride is that she is, in Punjabi idiom, white as milk. The loud advertisements for fairness creams speak for themselves. The Indian concept of beauty draws from supposedly Aryan roots. Those who do not tally with the norm are looked down upon as others. Our fellow citizens from the North-East know about discrimination the hard way. Africans studying at Indian universities, often on scholarships, have learnt to live with discrimination. Their defence mechanism is to band together and the African envoys anger aroused by the nature of the brutal mob attack on Nigerians was only one of a series of incidents. The irony is that Indians deeply resent their countrymen and women being racially abused in the West and make strenuous protests, featured in the countrys newspapers. Most Indians do not see any contradiction between the two positions because they are, after all, the high-born. Against this backdrop, how can India pursue its outreach programme to Africa an important trade and political relationship is involved to the prevailing norms of the countrys behaviour towards Africans? There are no easy answers because of the ingrained racial prejudice among Indians. The first step necessarily is officially to acknowledge that a problem exists, instead of brushing it away under the carpet to point to the historical role India played in helping the African peoples freedom struggles. A beginning must be made by revising primary school textbooks to sensitise boys and girls at a tender age that all human beings are the same, irrespective of their skin colour. In a sense, the BJP government is particularly unsuited to the job because it is revising history for other reasons: to hark back to a mythical era of ancient history and make new gods of the pioneers of the RSS. The official BJP periodical Organiser is spending pages in seeking the imaginary Saraswati river, rather than tackling urgent national problems. Take the example of the US and the fate of African Americans, initially brought to the country as slave labour. It is a credit to the American practice of democracy that under bold Presidents their legislatures passed pioneering laws to end discrimination. I experienced African Americans plight first-hand 60 years ago in 1957 when the hotel I stayed in, in New Orleans, did not permit Africans, except as serving staff and a visit to Martin Luther King Jrs office in Montgomery, Alabama, led to a brief meeting with him in his office. At a black church service in the town the previous evening, I was complimented by an African woman on my then abundant straight hair, in contrast to the crinkly hair that is the African norm. Above all, Americans achieved the greatest feat in their history in electing and re-electing a black President, Barack Obama, undoubtedly, a man of ability and a great speaker. The irony is that race relations have worsened, rather than improved, after his eight years in the White House, with the advent of the Trump era, with its locker room humour often tinged with racism. It must however be said for the American system that African Americans enjoy full citizenship rights although they are not treated equally by the largely white police force. The American example shows us how difficult it is to remove prejudices that have taken hold among peoples, determined by history, traditions and financial standing. The American practice of looking themselves in the eye and take steps to correct a wrong is to be commended, despite the handicaps and discrimination Africans continue to suffer. The problem for official India to deny that such a problem exists in our country will lead us nowhere, leaving aside the economic and diplomatic ramifications. Once the government confesses that our anti-African prejudices are real and need to be corrected, a nationwide programme can be evolved to begin the long process of re-education. In younger days I recall the decision of a woman fellow journalist marrying an African American caused a stir in the community. PM Modi is capable of taking bold decisions such as demonetisation, whatever the intrinsic merits of the measure. It is unlikely that he will take up the issue of colour prejudice when his energies are concentrated on winning the 2019 general election by playing the Hindu card. But delaying the process of bringing the country into civilised society can only mean greater pain in the end. Given its narrow nationalism, the BJP government is less capable of beginning the long process of redemption than a Congress government would have been with its more catholic attitude to peoples, had it been less obsessed with running a fractious coalition in the second phase of the UPA II. Opportunities offered in the shape of stray incidents involving Africans were not grasped. We are thus left with the prospect of a BJP government for another two years, if not longer, unwilling to acknowledge the problem because it says it simply does not exist. An effort by citizens to make the leading lights of the BJP recognise the truth would be helpful. Israel Aerospace Industries would supply medium-range surface-to-air missile systems and long-range air and missile defence systems to India. By Press Trust of India: Israel has signed a USD 2 billion contract with India to supply it with missile defence systems, the state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries said today. Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) in an announcement said that it has been awarded its largest defence contract of almost USD 2 billion for supplying advanced medium-range surface-to-air missile systems (MRSAM) to India. advertisement IAI said it would also supply additional long-range air and missile defence systems (LRSAM) for the first locally produced Indian aircraft carrier. The contract is worth USD 1.6 billion for IAI, with the rest going to another state-owned defence company Rafael, that will be providing components for the systems. DEFENCE DEAL BOOSTS 'MAKE IN INDIA' "The current contracts represent an enormous expression of confidence by the government of India in IAI's capabilities and advanced technologies, which are being developed with our local partners as part of the Indian government's 'Make in India' policy," IAI Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Joseph Weiss said in a statement. President Reuven Rivlin, who is said to have discussed the deal with Indian leaders during his trip to India early this year, called to congratulate Weiss on this "historic" deal terming it truly "exceptional". "Please pass on my congratulations to all who contributed to this important achievement. You have come such a long way to arrive at this point, it is truly exceptional," Rivlin told IAI's CEO. "Israel's willingness to share technology and form joint ventures with Indian companies to develop and manufacture military equipment supporting the 'Make in India' initiative is said to have been well received in New Delhi. MEDIUM RANGE SURFACE TO AIR MISSILE SYSTEM In the case of MRSAM, an advanced air and missile defence system that provides protection against a variety of aerial threats, the technology is said to have been jointly developed by IAI and India's Defence Research and Development Organisation in collaboration with Rafael and IAI's Elta division. Indian companies such as Larsen and Toubro are said to have also participated in the project. MRSAM's current version is operational with the Indian Air Force, Indian Navy and Israel Defence Forces (IDF). The system includes an advanced phased-array radar, command and control, mobile launchers and missiles with advanced RF seekers. ALSO READ| PM Modi clears air defence missile deal with Israel for Rs 17,000 crore ALSO READ| India prepares Israeli SPYDER air defence missile system for Pakistan border --- ENDS --- advertisement Protests at Panjab University have highlighted student unrest at the hike in tuition fee, introduced by the institution recently. Even as both parties brandish figures, what is clear is the expectation of highly subsidised, public-funded education, and, on the other hand, a major cash crunch staring the university in the face. Some may see the protests as posturing by student unions, others may point out and rightly so that many of the protesters are people of means; that private universities charge more, fees are not that high, etc., but obviously there are always those students who find it difficult to get enough funds to study. Their need must be addressed. We have a large infrastructure of government-funded higher education institutions in India, but in recent years, funds have been hard to come by for many universities. Consequently, fees have been rising, more so for courses that are in high demand because of their perceived value in the job market. Every time this happens, protests take place. Fee increase is inevitable, but at the same time we need to endeavour that no good student should suffer for want of funds. Panjab University should take proactive measures to highlight various schemes under which it offers concessions. Such concessions need to be publicised widely, and effort made to reach out to as many students as possible. Internationally, universities provide exhaustive information on how students can get financial assistance. The university should work with banks to help students get low-interest student loans; alumni associations can be tapped to set up scholarships and funds for students in need; charitable organisations can pitch in to provide for those who slip through the cracks of rigorously allotted scholarships a lot can be done, provided there is transparent functioning and student-oriented thinking. Most institutions of higher education will face difficulties in government funding. All stakeholders administrators, teachers, students and alumni need to creatively find answers rather than relying exclusively on government funds. Tribune News Service Faridabad, April 7 All 259 brick-kilns in Faridabad and Palwal districts, which have been served notices to comply with air pollution norms on smoke emission by March 31, have been allowed to work as usual till the present season of brick preparation comes to an end. Brij Mohan Gupta, president of the Faridabad Brick-Kiln Owners Association, said the brick-kilns needed adequate time and money to replace the current emission technique. The notice issued by the Pollution Control Board had asked the brick-kilns to adopt the new zigzag technique of air emission by March 31 or face action, but the brick-kiln association had opposed it claiming that it was not possible in such a short period. Balraj Singh, Regional Officer, Pollution Control Board, said that the notice had been served to comply with the directions issued by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), which had asked the brick-kilns in the NCR to adopt the zigzag technique of air emission to reduce pollution. He said all brick-kilns were using the natural draft technology in which smoke was emitted directly unlike the new zigzag technique that emitted emission in an indirect manner and thus reduced harmful contents blown into the air by the technique currently in use. Tribune News Service Sunaria (Rohtak), April 7 Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar has said that the matter pertaining to waiving farmers loans was under consideration. He said 14,000 vacant posts in the police would be filled soon. The Chief Minister, who was here to inspect the passing-out parade of recruits at the Police Training Centre today, said the states first cyber-crime police station would open in Gurugram. CCTV cameras will be installed on the Delhi-Ambala highway to ensure the maintenance of law and order. At least 250 cameras have already been installed and the entire stretch will be covered soon. Police posts will be established at every 10 km on the KMP highway, the CM said. The Chief Minister announced that Haryana Police personnel would now work in 12-hour shifts and every policeman would get a weekly off. The state government had approved the construction of 3,600 new houses for police officials, he added. KP. Singh, DGP, said a campaign had been launched against gangsters, illegal mining and crime against women. Pratibha Chauhan Tribune News Shimla, April 7 Campaigning for the Bhoranj by-poll came to an end today with the two main political parties Congress and the BJP putting in their might to register victory in an election, which could set the tenor for the Assembly polls due later this year. Being termed as the semi-final before the electoral final is played out in November, registering a win is important for both the parties. Being a BJP citadel for the last 27 years from where former Minister ID Dhiman won six consecutive elections, the opposition has worked overtime to ensure that they retain the reserved Assembly segment in Hamirpur district. Despite the presence of rebels, both of the Congress and the BJP in the fray, the contest is primarily between the two main parties. There are a total of five candidates - Dr Anil Dhiman (BJP), Parmila Devi (Congress) and three independents - Pawan Kumar (BJP rebel), Ramesh Chand (Congress rebel) and Kusum Kumari. Ramesh Chand had contested the 2012 Assembly poll on the Congress ticket unsuccessfully and lost by 10,500 votes. As far as the BJP rebel Pawan Kumar is concerned, he is a sitting Zila Parishad Member from Bhoranj ward. He had also contested the 2012 Assembly polls against ID Dhiman on the Himachal Lokhit Party (HLP) ticket and polled 891 votes. As such both the Congress and BJP rebels have almost equal standing and could poll a small percentage of votes, which would get negated as both parties stand to get damaged almost equally. Being the ruling party, the Congress is under tremendous pressure to wrest the seat from the BJP. However, the timing of the court verdict in the cases faced by the Chief Minister could upset the Congress game plan with ministers and close Virbhadra aides camping in Delhi and joining the campaign only during the last two days. On a high after the resounding victory of the BJP in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, the BJP is confident of retaining the seat. The BJP has undertaken unprecedented development works in the Bhoranj segment and people still have a lot of regard for ID Dhiman, who enjoyed an impeccable image and excellent rapport with the electorate, said Randhir Sharma, MLA and overall BJP election in-charge in Bhoranj. Harping on the issue of BJP promoting parivarvaad and dynastic politics, the Congress is hoping to encash on anti-incumbency and need for a change. The Congress has fielded a young, educated lady from a dalit family who is getting very good response, so we are hopeful that the Congress flag will fly high, said Ram Lal Thakur, former Minister. Tribune News Service Jammu, April 7 A group of 30 students from Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi, visited the University of Jammu (JU) today. The students are on an educational/national integration tour organised by the Army. The tour was led by Major Mahinder. A university visit-cum-cultural interaction programme was arranged for the students by the Department of Students Welfare in which they interacted with the students of the University of Jammu and shared their experiences. An interactive session of these students with the students cultural council and campus cultural committee was also organised by the department under the guidance of Prof Satnam Kour, dean, Students Welfare, University of Jammu. Others who were present on the occasion included Prof Tasleem, dean, Students Welfare, Jamia Millia Islamia University; Prof SK Pandita, co-chairman, campus cultural committee, University of Jammu and Dr Anupama Vohra, associate dean, Students Welfare. The students participated enthusiastically in the interaction programme and expressed happiness on visiting the university. Students from both the universities presented cultural items like, songs, poetry, etc. Members of the campus cultural committee who attended the programme included Parmil Kumar, Hema Gandotra, Garima Gupta, Savita Nayyar, Vijal Saigal, Shashiprabha, Meghna Dhar and Madhulika Singh. The event was coordinated by Sumeet Sharma and Ifra Kak. Amir Karim Tantray Tribune News Service Jammu, April 7 Dealing with armed insurgency for the past 28 years, the state is now faced with new security concerns emerging from the illegal settlement of Rohingya Muslim refugees in Jammu, forcing the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to think of their deportation to their country. The issue snowballed into a major controversy when some refugees managed to acquire important documents such as Aadhaar cards, ration cards, fake permanent residence certificates and election identity proof through fraudulent means with the help of officials of the district administration. The refugees are also getting birth certificates, facilitating the admission of their children to government-run schools in the state. The Home Ministry was made aware of the development by intelligence agencies recently. On several occasions earlier, intelligence agencies have received input about refugees being vulnerable and at risk of falling into the hands of anti-national elements. The CID and other intelligence agencies have warned the MHA about the designs of the illegal settlement of Rohingya refugees in the state. As they are dependent on aid and relief from the government and NGOs and dont have any means of livelihood, they could become a tool in the hands of anti-national elements which will prove disastrous for the security of the state, said an intelligence source. The fears were compounded when important identity documents were recovered by the Jammu district administration from the possession of a few Rohingya families. Following the recovery, an inquiry committee was constituted to probe the matter. The panel report is awaited. Insiders in the district administration told The Tribune that Aadhaar cards, ration cards, fake permanent resident certificates and election identity proofs were recovered by officials from some refugees. This is a dangerous trend and the pattern was unearthed on time. Officials of the district administration were involved in the issuance of the documents to Rohingya refugees and it is being probed, said a source in the district administration. The stay of the Rohingyas has been facilitated by the state administration by allowing them to construct hutments with barbed wire fencing around the area. The Rohingyas from Myanmar took refuge in India after facing threat to life from the Buddhist government in their own country. After entering India, the refugees covered hundreds of miles and took shelter in Jammu. The state government has said the Rohingya refugees were not brought here under a well-thought-out plan. During the Budget session, Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti had said in reply to a question in the Legislative Assembly that the Rohingya refugees have entered the state on their own and nobody guided them to travel thousands of miles to reach Jammu. None of them is involved in any militancy-related activity, but 17 FIRs stand registered against 38 Rohingyas for various offences, including illegal border crossing. However, strict surveillance is being kept on the activities of the foreigners and the organisations helping them. Deportation plan The Jammu district administration recently recovered important identity documents from the possession of a few Rohingya families. The issue has snowballed into a major controversy The Home Ministry, as per sources, is working out a plan to deport them to Myanmar after they received a negative report from intelligence agencies about the refugees Reside near Muslim areas New Delhi, April 7 Air India on Friday revoked its flight ban on Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad with immediate effect, two weeks after he had assaulted an airline staffer onboard a plane. An airline spokesperson said the move follows a written order from the Ministry of Civil Aviation. Aviation sources said that with the AI revoking the ban, private airlines may follow suit. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) The 56-year-old Osmanabad MP had yesterday written a letter to Minister for Civil Aviation Ashok Gajapathi Raju expressing his regrets over the unfortunate incident on March 23. I write to convey my regrets for the unfortunate incident that took place on 23rd March, 2017 in the Air India Flight No. AI-852 seat No.1F, Gaikwad had said in the letter. The ban was lifted by Air India, hours after it thwarted an attempt by Gaikwad to book a ticket for the seventh time in the last two weeks. However, the MP, in a statement denied having made any attempt to book a flight. An airline head on the condition of anonymity said it has been agreed that police investigation will continue and the MP will give a commitment that he will show acceptable behaviour in the future. Gaikwad had assaulted an Air India employee and had boastfully claimed on national TV about having hit him with slippers 25 times. He was banned by the airline on March 24. He, however, yesterday played the victim card, claiming he had only retaliated when provoked. The MP, who had attended the Lok Sabha for the first time yesterday since the incident, had denied any wrongdoing on his part and instead accused Air India officials of misbehaving with him, and sought action against them, especially the airlines CMD. He struck a somewhat conciliatory note when he tendered an apology to Parliament but insisted he owed no apology to the airline officials. In his letter to the civil aviation minister, the MP had stopped short of tendering an apology to either the national carrier or the staffer concerned. A combative Shiv Sena had yesterday threatened to disrupt AI operations in Mumbai and Pune and forced repeated adjournment of the Lok Sabha over the issue. The party had also declared it would not attend the April 10 meeting of the NDA if the ban was not lifted. PTI Tawang (Arunachal Pradesh), April 7 The Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama arrived here on Friday along with Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu amid protests by China. The exiled Tibetan leader was to reach Tawang by chopper on April 4 but due to bad weather, he travelled over 550 km by road from Guwahati to reach here. He covered 140 km by road from Dirang in West Kameng district accompanied by Khandu with a 30-km stretch of the route at Sela being partly snow-covered and having turned into muddy and slippery due to the melting snow. The state police and paramilitary personnel are keeping vigil along the 140-km stretch between Dirang and Tawang, particularly at Sela (13,700 feet). His first stop was Bomdila, the headquarters of West Kameng district, from where Chinese soldiers retreated after the 1962 war. A day after delivering sermons in Bomdila, he spent two days at Dirang, about 40 km north of Bomdila, where he consecrated the Thupsing Dhargye monastery. Tawang has been decorated with colourful prayer flags and flowers with the roads repainted and the drains cleaned. "A series of religious discourses by the Dalai Lama will begin tomorrow. He will stay at the Tawang monastery for four nights before leaving on April 11, Tawang deputy commissioner Sang Phuntso said. Security has been strengthened around the Tawang monastery, the Yid-Ga-Choezin ground where the spiritual leader will deliver his sermons. The 336-year-old monastery is the largest in India and second largest in the world after Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet. Perched on a cliff at 10,000 feet, Tawang monastery is known in Tibetan as 'Tawang Gaden Namgyal Lhatse,' meaning celestial paradise chosen by the horse. It belongs to the Gelugpa school of Mahayana Buddhism and had religious connection with Lhasa's Drepung Monastery that continued during the British rule. Beijing refers to this connection to claim Tawang as part of China after invading and taking over Tibet in 1950. Chinese state media had said on Wednesday that India is using the Dalai Lama as a diplomatic leverage to challenge China's "bottom line." The Dalai Lama was compelled to flee Lhasa in 1959 and cross over to India by foot via the Tawang sector. PTI New Delhi, April 7 The Air India Cabin Crew Association has said Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad must not be allowed to fly until he tenders an "unconditional apology" for beating up a 60-year-old staffer, and asserted that he poses a risk to flight safety. Video: Gaikwad evades questions on Air India staffer assault case #WATCH: Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad evades questions on Air India staffer assault case. pic.twitter.com/BrLVahGqdR ANI (@ANI_news) April 6, 2017 Meanwhile, Gaikwad again tried to book tickets on Air India flights, but the airline rejected the booking. This is the seventh attempt on the part of the Sena MP to book a flight on Air India, which barred him from flying after he assaulted the airline's staffer. "There was an attempt to book a ticket at 5 am today through our web portal. The reservations were being made for March 17 for travel from Delhi to Mumbai and for 24 March from Mumbai to Delhi," said an airline source. The ticket was being booked under the name 'Ravindra Gaikwad' and we were alerted through our tracker, the source said. The MP has also made an attempt each to book an IndiGo flight as well as a SpiceJet flight since the flying ban on him by all domestic carriers was put in place. In a letter to the AI Chairman and Managing Director Ashwani Lohani, the association has said that a decision by either the Ministry of Civil Aviation or Parliament to lift the ban will affect the morale of the employees. "Unless he tenders an unconditional apology to AI employees, and undertakes in writing to abide by the Chicago and Tokyo Conventions & Rules of the Air and follow all cabin safety and public behaviour norms, we must not let him on board," says the letter. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) Yesterday, Gaikwad, in a letter to Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapthi Raju, had conveyed his "regrets" over the "unfortunate incident", but stopped short of tendering an apology to either the national carrier or to the staffer concerned. "Ravindra Gaikwad is and will continue to be a risk to flight safety and flight operations and to Cabin Crew safety on board, and hence Government must think long and hard about letting him back on," the letter added. The association said it would be a "crying shame" if he is let off "without even a rap on the knuckles". "For either the ministry or the Parliament to allow such a person to get away without even a rap on the knuckles or even forcing an apology to all Air Indians and indeed all Indians, would be a crying shame. #WATCH Live: Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad speaking in Lok Sabha https://t.co/7cYNiIVwSQ ANI (@ANI_news) April 6, 2017 "It would also crush the morale of all employees and indeed all fair minded Indians. We do not wish to be flying such a person," the association wrote in the letter. The Indian Commercial Pilot's Association, one of the unions of pilots of Air India, has also demanded an "unconditional apology" from the Shiva Sena MP, failing which they have threatened to not fly him. "ICPA strongly condemns his misconduct and demands an unconditional apology for the same, failing which we will be constrained to direct our members not to operate any flight which has Mr Ravindra Gaikwad on board in the interest of the safety and security of our own people," they wrote in a letter to the Civil Aviation Minister. PTI Two hours drive from Srinagar, DIG North Kashmir Nitish Kumar is working hard on a proposal to build a library and issue good books for the youth to read. Special counselling sessions and libraries are to be set up for the youth. By Kamaljit Kaur Sandhu: Jammu Kashmir Police is leaving no stone unturned to assist the violence-racked state's "misguided youth". A top police officer overseeing law and order in the "notorious" Downtown area, infamous for maximum stone-pelting in the city, said, "While we apprehended as many as 800 youth in the region alone, we also picked up kids ranging from 8 to 16 years of age. But since these were students, we roped in teachers for a handful of students. advertisement "While some charged the cops many teachers volunteered to tutor the kids for free. These teachers would turn up at Thana's to teach them lessons as we counselled and reformed them." Two hours drive from Srinagar, DIG North Kashmir Nitish Kumar is working hard on a proposal to build a library. He tells Mail Today, "We are spending Rs 10 lakh to build a reading room in Baramulla, where youth can spend quality time. We will also issue books." Sources say with lack of cafes, cinema halls even in towns like Baramulla, the youth may have an opportunity to read up on good books. CHANCE FOR REFORMATION DIG South Kashmir Swayam Prakash Pani, who has seen the maximum number of encounters, followed by heavy shower of stone-pelting in this region in the past several months organised 'Run for Fun' in which 400 school children participated running along with senior cops. He said, "The response has been overwhelming by school children." While police and many stone-pelting children may be at loggerheads quite literally, the response in hard-core terror hotbed is seen to be very encouraging". But the real work by cops is turning mentors, though they may not have any official training for the job. SSP Sopore Harmeet Singh said, "We identify youth indulging in stone pelting. We apprehend them. While the legal process is on, we also counsel them." The police often also rope in parents to keep up a check on the youth maatan se khanabal run for fun. Mail Today spoke to counselled youths in their 20s. Zayed says he's jobless. "Now that we have been counselled, we agree that we did wrong by pelting stones. But this is our chance for reformation." ALSO READ | Kashmiris should stop stone pelting at forces, says Cheeta's wife ALSO READ | Stone pelters on hire in Kashmir: India Today nails Valley's insidious villains ALSO WATCH | Stone pelters are fighting for their nation: National Conference president Farooq Abdullah --- ENDS --- Simran Sodhi Tribune News Service New Delhi, April 7 In a rare gesture, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today received Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at the airport. Hasina arrived here today on a four-day visit, which is likely to see the signing of more than 30 agreements, though the Teesta water sharing agreement is unlikely to be inked. The PM welcomed the Bangladesh leader with a bouquet and set the tone for a visit that is highly anticipated from both sides. Defence ties will be the primary focus during the visit when two important MoUs on defence will be signed. The first MoU will be a framework agreement on defence cooperation that will provide a structure for the defence-based engagement over the next few years. The second MoU would allow Bangladesh to buy defence equipment from India. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, ahead of Hasinas visit here, said there was no water in the Teesta River. The Centre has not been able to move ahead on the Teesta agreement with Dhaka in the face of little or no cooperation from Banerjee. She has also claimed the Centre has not consulted her over the issue. What will I do if there is no water? There is no water in the Teesta, she had said on Wednesday. However, Banerjee will attend a banquet dinner hosted by President Pranab Mukherjee in honour of Hasina and also a lunch banquet to be hosted by Modi. Chief Ministers of the northeastern states bordering Bangladesh will also be attending the presidential banquet. On Saturday both leaders will hold talks but Banerjee is not expected to be part of the dialogue. With the aim of increasing connectivity, a MoU is expected to be signed on running passenger and goods trains between Bangladesh and northeast India. During her visit here, Hasina will stay at the Rashtrapati Bhavan as a guest of the President. Its another honour extended by India in recognition of the special relationship the two countries share and of Hasinas contribution in building the bilateral ties. Simran Sodhi Tribune News Service New Delhi, April 7 In a major embarrassment for India, the legislative assembly of the Canadian province of Ontario has passed a motion describing the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 as genocide, which New Delhi was quick to reject as misguided. It also conveyed its views to the government of Canada. MEA spokesperson Gopal Baglay said India has noted the passage of a Private Members Motion... We reject this misguided motion which is based on a limited understanding of India, its Constitution, society, ethos, rule of law and the judicial process. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) The motion was moved by Liberal Member of Provincial Parliament Harinder Malhi, who represents Brampton-Springdale Riding near Toronto. The ruling Liberal Party of Ontario had voted down a similar motion last summer. Those privy to the developments said India had conveyed its concerns in advance to the ministers in Justin Trudeaus government. India has long struggled to keep any global condemnation of the 1984 riots out of official and state assembly resolutions while human rights organisations have lobbied for the riots to be labelled as genocide. Several prominent Indo-Canadian organisations had written to Premier Kathleen Wynne and representatives to oppose the motion. But it went through nevertheless. GS Paul Tribune News Service Amritsar, April 6 With the flow of the Beas towards the Ferozepur and Rajasthan feeder halted on March 27 for repair works, rare aquatic species at the Harike wetland are feared to have died for want of water. Efforts are now on to rescue the Indus dolphin, say sources. Normally 30,000 cusecs of water flows into the Harike wetland, a confluence of the Sutlej and Beas rivers. However, it measures just 3,770 cusecs as of now. The wetland is home to at least 26 species of fish, including rohu, catla, puntius, cirrhina, chhanna, mystus, chitala, cyprinus, ambassis ranga, besides the Indus dolphin which was discovered in 2007 at two points upstream Beas. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) The World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF), Punjab, says pond areas in different pockets of the Harike wetland have dried up. Its chairman Gunbir Singh squarely blames the sudden stopping of waters for the rampant destruction of aquatic life. At least 90 per cent of rare species of fish and turtle are dead. The Indus dolphin, the pride of this wetland, is in danger too. To make matters worse, encroachers have stepped up activities on the dry beds, he said. While the Irrigation Department blames the Forest and Wildlife Department for its failure to take timely measures, the latter, denying rare species have been lost, say Irrigation officials have been dilly dallying on releasing water into the wetland. Gulshan Nagpal, XEN, Harike Division (Ferozepur), said they had to stop the water flow as gates on the Harike banks and the main head works needed immediate repairs. There are 31 gates downstream and 14 gates upstream. Nine gates are still to be repaired, he explained. The water flow has been stopped till April 16 for repairs that have been undertaken after 12 years. The government had sent a copy of the notification in this regard to the head office of the Forest and Wildlife Department well in advance on March 8. They could have raised temporary embankments to hold back water. But they did not plan anything to rescue the water species, he said. While Wildlife Block Officer Baljeet Singh claimed their repeated pleas to the Irrigation Department for releasing the water had been spurned, District Forest Officer (DFO) Baljeet Singh said the situation was not all that alarming and that the dolphins were safe. We were worried about the dolphins. But all seven are in Beas safe zone where the water level is 3 feet. We found a few turtles on dry patches. These were saved, he said. Palm Beach/Beirut, April 7 The US fired 59 cruise missiles on Friday at a Syrian air ase from which President Donald Trump said a deadly chemical weapons attack had been launched, the first direct US assault on the government of Bashar al-Assad in six years of civil war. Edit: Trumps first strike In the biggest foreign policy decision of his presidency so far, Trump ordered the step his predecessor Barack Obama never took: directly targeting the Syrian military for its suspected role in a poisonous gas attack that killed at least 70 people, catapulting Washington into confrontation with Russia. Trump announced the strikes from Florida, where he was meeting Chinese President. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) The Kremlin termed the strikes illegal. Russian PM Dmitry Medvedev said the strikes were one step away from clashing with the Russian military. Syria President Bashar al-Assads office said they would strike enemies harder. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged restraint and said there is no other way to solve the conflict than through a political solution. US officials said the strike was a one-off intended to deter future chemical weapons attacks, and not an expansion of the US role in the Syria war. The missiles were fired from two US warships from the Mediterranean, killing 15. Agencies New Delhi, April 7 India and Bangladesh share many commonalities and have demonstrated the will to resolve issues, like the long-standing land boundary agreement, then why should the Teesta water sharing issue be allowed to linger, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has said in a newspaper article. Hasina, who arrived here on Friday on a four-day official visit, her first in seven years, has in a piece titled Friendship is a flowing river in The Hindu, expressed hope that her visit would take the cooperation between the two countries to new heights. Hasina said there was no reason why there should be any contention between the two countries over sharing the waters of common rivers. Only peaceful co-existence can ensure peace. There are some issues between us. But I believe that any problem can be resolved in a peaceful manner. We have demonstrated our willpower through the implementation of the Land Boundary Agreement. There are some more issues like sharing of waters of the common rivers (the Teesta issue is currently under discussion) that need to be resolved, she wrote. Im an optimistic person. I would like to rest my trust on the goodwill of the great people and the leaders of our neighbour. I know resources are scarce, but we can share those for the benefit of the people of both countries. We share the same culture and heritage. There are a lot of commonalities (at least with West Bengal). We share our Lalon, Rabindranath, Kazi Nazrul, Jibanananda; there is similarity in our language, we are nourished by the waters of the Padma, Brahmaputra, Teesta and so on. The Sundarbans is our common pride. We dont have any strife over it. Then, why should there be any contention over the waters of common rivers? she asked. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjees assent is seen as crucial for inking of a deal with Bangladesh on sharing the Teesta river waters. In 2011, Banerjee had at the last moment dropped out of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singhs Dhaka visit over her opposition to the Teesta agreement draft, which was set to be inked then. Banerjee has been invited for talks with Sheikh Hasina and Prime Minister Modi in New Delhi, but likelihood of an accord on Teesta being signed appear dim. IANS Satya Prakash Tribune News Service New Delhi, April 7 Victims of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots from Kanpur on Friday moved the Supreme Court demanding setting up of a special investigation team (SIT) to probe the murders of over 125 people. In a petition filed in the top court, petitioners Manjit Singh GK and others demanded reinvestigation of at least seven cases registered at Bazaria and Nazirabad police stations that had been closed by the police for want of evidence. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) Complaining that no significant action had been taken by the authorities, the petitioners said: There is mockery of criminal justice system as far as the case of riots victims is concerned. The petitioners alleged that even after 33 years there was no constructive action on the part of the Uttar Pradesh Government and the police to provide them justice or to rehabilitate and compensate them. Its an irony...that in the city of Kanpur, in the knowledge of the petitioners, 127 persons belonging to the Sikh community were brutally murdered/burnt to death in different police station areas. However, none of the police stations is even ready to acknowledge their deaths, the petitioners submitted. Petitioners counsel Prasoon Kumar told a Bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra that no action had been taken to prosecute perpetrators of the crime. The Bench posted the matter for hearing on April 24 along with another PIL on anti-Sikh riots in Delhi where almost 3,000 Sikhs were killed in the riots that broke out following the assassination of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on October 31, 1984. The top court had on March 24 asked the Centre to produce the files pertaining to 199 cases relating to 1984 anti-Sikh riots closed by a special investigation team (SIT) that was set up to reinvestigate them. It had asked Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi that the files should be produced before it in three weeks. Two years after the Narendra Modi government set up an SIT to reinvestigate serious anti-Sikh riots cases of 1984 that had been closed, the SIT has filed charge sheets only in four of the 59 cases taken up for further probe. In a status report filed in the Supreme Court last month, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said 38 of the cases taken up for further probe have been closed while 17 were still under investigation. Rohatgi had told the Bench on the last hearing that four more cases had since been closed and now only 13 remain under probe. However, the MHA report had said: It is being ensured that investigation is carried out expeditiously and thoroughly. No stone is being left unturned to ensure a thorough and comprehensive investigation. The MHA which extended the tenure of the SIT up to August 11, 2017 last monthhas also written to the Delhi Government and the Delhi High Court for designating a single court for anti-Sikh riots cases. The SIT has been notified as a police station having jurisdiction over whole of Delhi. Sanjeev Kumar Bakshi Hoshiarpur, April 7 Three children and the driver of their school bus were killed on Friday as the bus collided with a speeding pick-up vehicle on the Dasuya-Talwara road. Eleven others, including the bus attendant, were injured. Of these the five critical cases were referred to a specialty hospital. The accident took place around 8 near Singhpur village as the bus of Gems Cambridge International School, Dasuya, collided with the vehicle loaded with potatoes. According to information, the bus was on its way from Talwara to the school. Eyewitnesses said the pickup vehicle that was coming at a great speed from the opposite direction collided with the bus. The collision was so severe that the vehicle pierced into the right front portion of the bus. The driver and the three students sitting behind the drivers seat were killed on the spot. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) The deceased children were identified as twins Anirudh and Surbhi and Kanishk; and the driver as Ranjit Singh. The 11 injured were taken to Civil Hospital, Dasuya, with the help of 108 ambulance. Of them, five--Shivan Thakur, Shivangi Thakur, Akash Kumar, Palak Sharma, and Priya, the attendant in the bus, were referred to the specialty hospital. Those under treatment at the Dasuya hospital are Palak Sharma, Vardaan Sharma, Navya, Rakesh Sharma, Aradhya and Sarthan. Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh expressed deep shock and anguish over the tragic accident. He also directed the civil and police administration to extend all possible help and support to ensure best possible treatment to all the injured free of cost. Aparna Banerji Tribune News Service Dasuya/Talwara/Hoshiarpur, April 7 Three students were killed and 11 injured when a bus of Gems Cambridge International School, Dasuya, was hit by a speeding Mahindra Bolero pick-up at Singhpur village today. The bus driver, Ranjit Singh, was also killed. The deceased children -- all from Talwara -- were identified as Tanish (12) and twins Surabhi (7) and Anirudh (7). There were about 15 students on board, a majority of them from Talwara. The pick-up driver, Dharam Singh, and his helper, Mandeep Singh, were injured. A witness said, The pick-up and the truck collided while trying to save a biker who was driving on the wrong side. While the bus was going towards Dasuya, the pick-up was heading towards Jalandhar. The injured were taken to the Dasuya Civil Hospital, from there they were referred to a private hospital in Hoshiarpur. Three of the injured students from Talwara are still under treatment at the private hospital, while one child was referred to the DMC, Ludhiana, and another to Amritsar. The other injured students were discharged. Surabhi and Anirudh were students of Class I. They were sitting on a seat behind the driver as the usual occupant schoolteacher Monica - was on leave. The twins father, Rohit Sharma, is a resident auditor with the PSPCL, while mother Nidhi teaches science at Government Senior Secondary School, Talwara. Tanishs father Anil Sharma is in the construction business, while mother Neha is a teacher. The injured students were identified as Shivani Thakur, Vaishnavi Thakur, Anirudh, Palak Sharma, Vardan Sharma, Rakesh Sharma, Navya, Ardhya, Sarthan, Nishan Sharma and Raghav Sharma. Bus conductor Rakesh Kumar is under treatment at the private hospital in Hoshiarpur. Dasuya MLA Arun Dogra and Hoshiarpur legislator Sunder Sham Arora met the victims kin. The school administration visited the deceased students families this evening. Mother fears for kids life, dies of shock Hajipur (Hoshiarpur): Pooja, a resident of Khatigarh village, near here, died of a heart attack after she came to know about the accident. Her husband, Vipan, alias Deepa, who runs a provision store in Hajipur, said his children were studying at Cambridge School, Dasuya. He said his children left for school in the morning, while his wife was at home. Someone informed her about the accident. Fearing for her kids life, she suffered a nervous breakdown and collapsed. She was taken to a hospital, where doctors declared her dead. Ironically, her children were not aboard the ill-fated bus. OC Tribune News Service Amritsar, April 7 The SGPC today hailed the passing of a motion in the Legislative Assembly of Ontorio (Canada) to recognise the 1984 anti-Sikh riots as Sikh genocide. It demanded that the Indian government should also apologise for the riots in Parliament. Several Sikh organisations rallied behind the SGPC in this connection. It also asked the Centre to recognise Baisakhi as Sikh National Day on the lines of the US House of Representatives recognising Baisakhi as the day of creation of Khalsa. Kirpal Singh Badungar, SGPC president, said a communication had been sent to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, asking him to keep in mind the sacrifices made by Sikhs for the nation before considering the demands. Dal Khalsa president Harpal Singh Cheema and spokesperson Kanwar Pal Singh said that after more than three decades of struggle for justice by Sikh advocacy groups, the international community had started accepting the role of the Indian state in the riots. Tribune News Service Chandigarh, April 7 An eight-member parliamentary delegation from Uganda met Speaker Rana Kanwar Pal Singh at his office here today. The delegation discussed various constitutional and political aspects pertaining to parliamentary and legislative working, besides deliberating on the avenues to strengthen bilateral relations between the two countries. The delegation also extended an invitation to the Speaker to visit Uganda, which was accepted by him. As the master filmmaker's Kaatru Veliyidai is in theatres, we give you the reasons why the film will be magical, in terms of its content and performance. By India Today Web Desk: One of the most celebrated directors, Mani Ratnam, is back with his romantic thriller Kaatru Veliyidai, which, from the trailer, appears to be solid in terms of the emotional quotient. In a career spanning three decades, Mani Ratnam has left no stone unturned when it comes to content. Though this may sound cliched, his films aren't! advertisement After getting lukewarm response from audience for his Raavan and Kadal, Mani Ratnam made a stunning comeback with OK Kanmani, which won the hearts of the younger lot. Mani Ratnam has always been audacious with his scripts, be it Mouna Raagam or Iruvar. In a conservative society like Tamil Nadu, his OK Kanmani, which deals with live-in relationships, was enjoyable mainly because, Mani Ratnam. Although Dulquer Salmaan and Nithya Menen were a delight to watch on the screen. While its Hindi version tanked, the Tamil version, despite an average grosser, is considered one of Mani's best in the recent past. With his Kaatru Veliyidai in theatres, we give you the reasons why the Mani Ratnam film will be magical. Mani Ratnam: Divya Chandramouli (Revathi) reports Manohar (Karthik) to the police for a crime in Mouna Raagam. After getting to know the actual reason behind his involvement, Divya bails him out. When she apologises, the director cuts to Manohar who winks at her. And Ilaiyaraaja's terrific background score gently surfaces. At a time when actors were delivering pages of dialogues, Mani Ratnam emphasised mainly on capturing the emotions on screen. Take the scene opening shot of Kannathil Muthamittal, a couple (played by JD Chakravarthy and Nandita Das), while having a private moment, is cautiously aware of the sounds of Sri Lankan troops, who has romanticised brutality in films better than Mani Ratnam? Name anything in cinema and you have it answered by Ratnam. From Kaatru Veliyidai's trailer, it's pretty much evident that Mani Ratnam has finally returned to his forte, something on the lines of Roja and Bombay, where the premise of the film is love, but laced with a social angle. It goes without saying that Mani has had nailed it to perfection when it comes to films in this genre. Mani Ratnam and AR Rahman: Mani Ratnam and AR Rahman combo is unarguably the best we have in Tamil cinema today. While Ratnam goes synonymous with visual storytelling, it is Rahman's soul-stirring compositions that give life on-screen. Also, the duo has produced for 25 years. That's right! 25 years of Mani Ratnam and AR Rahman. In a practical sense, it's tough for two creative people to tag along for such a long time, especially in cinema. But these two have remained Guru and Sishya; sometimes both, for the sheer love of cinema. Kaatru Veliyidai songs are a hit among the audiences. Especially Saarattu Vandiyila and Nallai Allai. Karthi and Aditi Rao: Karthi, an erstwhile assistant director to Mani Ratnam is playing the lead role in this one. Karthi is one of the rare method actors in Tamil. He can deliver a Paruthiveeran and leave the audience teary-eyed in the climax. And at the same time, act in a film like Oopiri and yet shine. We have seen Karthi as a village ruffian/urban youngster in several films. For change, Karthi is poised in Kaatru Veliyidai. Barring a few films, Aditi Rao Hydari hasn't had a successful run in Bollywood. But Kaatru Veliyidai should be a game changer for Aditi, as Mani has the reputation of giving prominence to his female characters. advertisement Kaatru Veliyidai's plot: Mani has been vocal on the fact that the film is not an out-and-out comedy like OK Kanmani or Alaipayuthey. Interestingly, Kaatru Veliyidai talks about the life journey of a fighter pilot and the challenges he faces. Going by the trailer, the film promises for a fun, yet serious emotional drama. Mani Ratnam moments: Of course, how can we miss Mani's signature elements in the film? Though Mani Ratnam plays with visuals, his dialogues have a niche following down south. Right from "Nallavana Kettavana", "Nee En Nanban", to his most-sought after one in Alaipayuthey, Mani will be more remembered for his lovely dialogues. There's a lovely portion in the trailer, where Karthi expresses his love for Aditi. Here's hoping a lot from the film. advertisement ALSO READ: Rajini- Kamal Haasan is the angriest person I've ever met ALSO READ: Mani Ratnam- Kaatru Veliyidai is an intense, emotional relationship drama ALSO READ: Before Baahubali re-release- 5 best moments from The Beginning WATCH: Kaatru Veliyidai Trailer --- ENDS --- Arun Sharma Tribune News Service Ropar, April 7 Old enmity led to a Brahman Majra village resident being shot dead by gangster Dilpreet Singh in the wee hours of Friday. The deceased has been identified as Pehalwan Des Raj. According to the family, Dilpreet, along with his accomplices, knocked at the door of the victims house in the wee hours and took away four members of the family at gun point before firing at Pehalwan. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) Dilpreet had fled police custody with the help of his gang in July last year from a roadside dhaba near Asron when he was being taken to Hoshiarpur jail after appearance in a Ropar court. Varinder Singh Tribune News Service Toronto, April 7 While India has rejected the motion passed by the Ontario Assembly recognising the 1984 anti-Sikh riots and Operation Bluestar as genocide and discarded it as misguided, the Punjabi diaspora, particularly Sikhs, is elated even as they argued that the move should have been initiated much earlier. The motion a brainchild of what was called as the Powerful Punjabi Caucus in the power circles of Ontario was moved by Brampton-Springdale Member of the Provincial Parliament (MPP) Harinder Malhi on Thursday. The motion was supported by a majority of 35 members, while five members opposed it after a day-long debate. MPPs Harinder Malhi, Vick Dhillon and Harinder Takhar have joined hands to push the motion even as a section of the Opposition has been describing the Liberal Party move as a last-ditch effort to save its political existence and its image ahead of the elections. The three MPPs were said to have been working on the motion and lobbying for its success for a couple of months. Malhi said it was a historic victory not only for the Punjabis, but for the Indians and South Asians based in Canada. Every life is precious and no one can snatch the right to live from the innocent people. We have been waiting for this moment for years. During the discussion on the motion, Malhi said it is the duty of the Ontario Assembly to condemn all genres of communal violence, hostility, prejudices, intolerance and hatred in India and rest of the world. That is the least we can do. So, it is the need of the hour to consider the 1984 killings as genocide perpetrated against Sikhs. We also recognise the social justice human rights and reconciliation in India. Vicky Dhillon, a former Brampton councillor, said, It (the motion) is ok, but they should have also brought a motion exempting Sikhs from wearing helmets in the province of Ontario. Asked what could be the effect of the Ontario Assembly act in Canada, he said other provinces, particularly Punjabi-dominated, could follow the suit. Tribune News Service Amritsar, April 7 Residents blocked the GT road near Putlighar area here on Friday protesting against the death of a woman at a private hospital. They alleged that Divya had died due to negligence of the doctors who operated upon her. She had undergone a minor surgery. Kulwinder Sandhu Tribune News Service Moga, April 7 The Government of Ontario province in Canada on Friday passed a motion in the Legislative Assembly to officially recognise the 1984 anti-Sikh riots as Sikh genocide while calling upon all sides to embrace truth and reconciliation. In November of 1984, thousands of Sikhs, including women and children, were killed in planned and systematic executions, also rendering thousands of others homeless in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and other states of the country. The motion was brought forward by Liberal Member of the Legislative Assembly Harinder Kaur Malhi (Brampton-Springdale), which received support from all three provincial parties. In advance of the successful vote, the motion read aloud stated, That, in the opinion of this House, the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, should reaffirm our commitment to the values we cherishjustice, human rights and fairnessand condemn all forms of communal violence, hatred, hostility, prejudice, racism and intolerance in India and anywhere else in the world, including the 1984 genocide perpetrated against the Sikhs throughout India, and call on all sides to embrace truth and reconciliation. According to Jatinder Singh Grewal, the Director of International Policy for Sikhs for Justice, an official recognition of genocide offers great comfort to Sikhs who call Ontario home. It remains, however, the first step towards broader recognition and healing. All Sikhs applaud Ontario today and give thanks to Premier Kathleen Wynne and Liberal MP Harinder Malhi for hearing us, appreciating the evidence that exists and officially recognizing that the murder of tens of thousands of Sikhs was an attempt at genocide. We will continue to press upon other governments here in Canada and globally to stand with us in Ontario on the side of justice. Admiring Kathleen Wynne, Premier of Ontario, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, Legal Advisor to Sikhs for Justice, while talking to The Tribune over phone, said, Despite the stiff opposition from Canada India Foundation who tried to bury the genocide resolution under the business opportunities with India, Kathleen Wynne stood with the victims and made sure that justice prevailed over the economics. Canada India Foundation, a pro-business and India group, wrote to the Ontario Premier, seeking assistance and lobbied unsuccessfully to stop the Ontario Parliament from taking up the Genocide resolution. India said it rejected the Bill and that it had conveyed its views to Canada. Anil Dhall It is now a well-known fact that cardiovascular diseases have emerged as a major epidemic in India in recent years. Almost 25 per cent of all deaths today are attributable to heart disease. What is more worrying is the different ways these cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are manifesting among Indians as compared to western populations. The age-standardised CVD death rate of 272 per 100,000 population in India is higher than the global average of 235 per 100,000 population. The early age of disease onset, its accelerated buildup and high fatality rate are major factors in India vis a vis cardiovascular disease. The heart diseases today are no more confined to affluent and urban populations. In fact, heart disease has emerged as the leading cause of death in poorer regions and rural areas. While its incidence has increased rapidly in recent years, awareness about its causes, lifestyle factors that up its risks, and easy prevention mechanisms have not penetrated well enough. Given the fact that cardiovascular diseases kill more Indians than any other disease, here are a few heart health basics every Indian must know: Smoking doubles the risk Smoking is the single biggest preventable risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Smokers are twice as likely to have a heart attack compared to non-smokers. The good news is that as soon as you quit smoking, the risk of CVD and stroke goes down drastically as well the risk of cancers. Sedentary jobs are harmful A recent research at the University of Warwick examined the health of two groups at the postal department 55 office workers (desk jobs) and 56 delivery persons. Those performing desk jobs had bigger waist circumference and higher BMI and were also found to have a higher risk of cardiovascular disease over ten years. A vast number of urban professionals spend more than six hours every day sitting in front of their computers. Arguably, today sitting is emerging as the new smoking! The lifestyle medications are only to adequately counter the risk by increasing daily activity. Taking a five-minute walking break every hour at work, plus 30 minutes of daily exercise can drastically reduce the risk of heart attacks. Heartburn or heart attack? Often the initial symptoms of heart attack seem similar as those of heartburn or acidity. A burning sensation in the chest accompanied by pain or tingling sensation is a common sign of acidity but it is also a warning sign of heart attack. A large number of heart attack patients delay in reaching hospitals because they mistake the initial symptoms to be that of heartburn. This factor not only increases mortality rate but also increases the rate of damage caused to the heart due to delay in medical intervention. It is really important to educate all people to report any symptom of chest pain or burning sensation immediately to a doctor. Even if it turns out to be a case of heartburn, it is better to be safe than sorry. Danger proportional to waist circumference A paunch can be a sign of your vulnerability to cardiovascular disease. While the connection between excessive weight and the risk of cardiovascular disease is well-known, your waist circumference is also a major determiner of risk of heart disease. The bigger the waistline, the higher is the susceptibility to heart disease. So, while the BMI is a good indicator to determine heart disease risk, measuring the waistline will give a better picture of the risk. If most of your body fat is concentrated around your waist, youre at a higher risk for both heart disease and type 2 diabetes. This risk goes up with a waist size that is greater than 35 inches for women or greater than 40 inches for men. Your plate determines your heart health The more your daily plate is filled with colourful fruits and vegetables, the more heart healthy you are likely to be. Vegetables and fruits are rich in vitamins, minerals, fibre and are low on fat and calories. Eating a variety of fruits and vegetables helps you control your weight as well as blood pressure. The American Heart Association recommends eating eight or more fruit and vegetable servings every day. Not just quantity, the variety also matters. So consume a variety of seasonal fruits and vegetables. Whatever is coloured and not pulpy, is likely to be good for you .This will protect you against heart disease, up your immunity and help you lower the risk of cancer. Omega 3 fatty acids, also known as the good fats are another good source of heart health. Fish is a good source of omega-3 fatty acids, so are soybean and flaxseed oils. Symptoms that need prompt attention There are very few cardinal symptoms of heart disease, namely shortness of breath, chest discomfort/ heaviness, uncomfortable awareness of ones heartbeat, dizziness, syncope or transient loss of consciousness and fatigue. However, these cardinal and common symptoms may have some atypical presentations which make a patient think of them as gas or acidity or cervical. We must sensitise the general public about the necessity of having a high index of suspicion in patients at high risk of disease as delay in treatment may have disastrous consequences. The writer is Director, Cardio Vascular Sciences, Venkateshwar Hospital, New Delhi Know your numbers We must all give special attention to recognised and well-validated risk factors for atherosclerosis and cardiovascular diseases Dehradun, April 7 Uttarakhand Legislative Assembly Speaker Prem Chand Aggarwal yesterday directed the officials to impose a ban on the consumption of gutka and tobacco. During a surprise inspection of the Uttarakhand Legislative Assembly building, the Speaker took the officials to task for failing to maintain cleanliness on the premises. The Speaker has asked us to ensure a ban on gutka and consumption of tobacco, said Jagdish Chander, Secretary, Uttarakhand Legislative Assembly. TNS Karachi, April 7 At least nine people were killed and 30 others injured on Friday when a speeding bus plunged into a ravine in Pakistans southwestern Balochistan province. The bus which was going to Karachi fell into a ravine in Lak Pass area near provincial capital Quetta, when the driver lost control of the bus while overtaking another vehicle. The injured were transferred to various hospitals in Quetta, police said. Provincial Chief Minister Nawab Sanaullah Khan Zehri has announced financial aid for the injured and relatives of the victims. Road accidents are common in Pakistan which are often caused due to bad roads or careless driving practices. PTI Stockholm, April 7 A truck drove into a crowd on a shopping street and crashed into a department store in central Stockholm on Friday, killing three persons and injuring eight in what the Swedish Prime Minister said appeared to be a terrorist attack. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) Part of central Stockholm was cordoned off and the area was evacuated, including the main train station. All subway traffic was halted on orders from the police. Sweden has been attacked. Everything points to the fact that this is a terrorist attack, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven told reporters during a visit in western Sweden. He was immediately returning to the Capital. Many police and emergency services personnel were at the scene, a Reuters witness said. Nobody has been arrested in connection with the attack, the police said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Several attacks in which trucks or cars have driven into crowds have taken place in Europe in the past year. Al-Qaeda in 2010 urged its followers to use trucks as a weapon. In London on March 22, a man in a car ploughed into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, killing four, and then stabbed a policeman to death before being shot by the police. Islamic State claimed responsibility for both an attack in Nice, France, last July, when a truck killed 86 people celebrating Bastille Day, and one in Berlin in December, when a truck smashed through a Christmas market, killing 12 persons. A government source told Reuters all Swedish government offices had been closed. All ministers were safe, the source said. We were standing by the traffic lights at Drottninggatan (Queen Street) and then we heard some screaming and saw a truck coming, a witness, who declined to be named, told Reuters. Then it drove into a pillar at Ahlens City (department store) where the hood started burning. When it stopped we saw a man lying under the tire. It was terrible to see, said the man, who saw the incident from inside his car. Radio Sweden reporter Martin Svenningsen said he saw three dead people but probably more. A Reuters witness saw a number of body-like forms covered by blankets at the scene. The police confirmed three deaths and eight persons injured. King Carl Gustaf, Swedens head of state, expressed his horror at the attack. Our thoughts are going out to those that were affected, and to their families, he said in a statement from the royal palace. In Brussels, the European Union offered Sweden support and solidarity. An attack on any of our member states is an attack on us all, said EU chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker. One of Europes most vibrant and colourful cities appears to have been struck by those wishing it and our very way of life harm. Police release picture of suspect Swedish police have released a picture of a suspect captured on video surveillance cameras near the scene of the attack. We do not have contact with the driver, national police chief Dan Eliasson told reporters, as another police officer showed a picture of a man wearing a white sweater and dark hoodie under a military green jacket, with dark stubble on his face. PM Modi condemns attack Meanwhile, Prime Minister Narendra Modi tonight condemned the attack in Stockholm and said India stands firmly with the people of Sweden in this hour of grief. We condemn the attack in Stockholm. My thoughts are with the families of the deceased & prayers with those injured, he tweeted. India stands firmly with the people of Sweden in this hour of grief, he added. Agencies United Nations, April 7 The UN Security Council will meet today at 11:30 am (local time) to discuss the US missile strikes on Syria, US diplomats said. Russia demanded an emergency meeting after angrily denouncing the military action as an aggression against a sovereign state. US President Donald Trump on Thursday ordered cruise missile strikes on a Syrian air base in response to a suspected chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held town that killed 86 people and shocked the world. The strike - the first direct US action against President Bashar al-Assad and Trumps biggest military decision since taking office - marked a dramatic escalation in American involvement in Syrias six-year war. The Security Council failed during a meeting yesterday to agree on terms for an investigation of the suspected sarin gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhun. Council members will hold an open meeting today and hear a briefing on the US military action, the US mission to the United Nations said. The United States holds this months presidency of the Security Council. Russias Deputy Ambassador Vladimir Safronkov on Thursday warned of negative consequences from the US military action, which he described as a doubtful, tragic enterprise. Look at Iraq, look at Libya, he said, referring to Western interventions that unleashed years of chaos in those countries. At least 27 children died in the suspected attack in Khan Sheikhun. Results from post-mortems performed on victims point to exposure to the deadly sarin nerve agent, according to Turkish health officials. AFP The comedian had a blast with his special someone on his birthday. By India Today Web Desk: Ace comedian and host of The Kapil Sharma Show, Kapil Sharma, has been making news lately, and for all the wrong reasons. Also read: Here is why Kapil Sharma was missing from the social media scene all this while After his fight with comedian Sunil Grover started flashing on the internet, Kapil immersed himself in preparing for his new film Firangi. advertisement In fact, the comedian even stopped posting stuff on social media sites. Kapil was instead busy shooting for his film and having a private birthday party with his girlfriend Ginni Chatrath. Check out the video from the bash: Kapil later took to Twitter, and apologised to his fans for his absence from the social media. He tweeted, "Thank u all for ur love n best wishes, shooting in forests of Rajasthan, so couldn't come online. Love always. Stay happy." While former members of the team; Chandan Prabhakar, Ali Asgar, and Sunil Grover; didn't wish the comedian on any social media site, Kiku Sharda was the only one from his team who had posted a birthday message for Kapil. --- ENDS --- Riyadh/Cairo, April 7 US strikes on Syria in retaliation for a chemical attack marked a sharp escalation in the countrys civil war but were not viewed in the Arab world as a gamechanger in a six-year conflict that has divided the region. Two US warships fired cruise missiles at a Syrian ai base controlled by President Bashar al-Assads forces on Friday in response to the poison gas attack which killed at 70 people in a rebel-held area. US officials said the strike was a one-off intended to deter future chemical attacks, and not part of a wider expansion of the US role in the war. The reactions were predictable from Damascus ally Iran and foe Saudi Arabia, two regional powers waging proxy wars in Syria and other Middle Eastern countries. Saudi Arabia hailed the strike as a courageous decision by President Donald Trump, and Saudi ally the UAE, a member of the US-led coalition fighting Islamist militants in Syria, also expressed its support. Iran denounced the unilateral strikes. Such steps will boost terrorists in Syria... and will complicate the situation in Syria and the region, the Students News Agency ISNA quoted foreign ministry spokesman Bahrem Qasemi as saying. It was the toughest direct US action yet in Syria, but Arab political analysts were sceptical it would make much difference in the direction of the conflict in Syria or in efforts to find a political solution. It did, however, indicate how far Trump was willing to go, possibly with his domestic audience in mind, even if it risked contradicting previous positions as well as confrontation with Assads other main military backer, Russia. Trump had repeatedly said he wanted better ties with Moscow and has so far focused his Syria policy almost exclusively on that effort. But he also criticised his predecessor Obama for setting a red line threatening force against Assad if he used chemical arms, only to pull back from ordering air strikes in 2013 when Assad agreed to give up his chemical arsenal. Russian President Vladimir Putin has condemned the strikes as an illegal move that would hurt US-Russia ties. This kind of strike will not bring down the Syrian regime, said Abdulaziz al-Sager, chairman of the Jeddah-based Gulf Research Centre. But it shows a new attitude from the US administration in the region which is to take initiatives individually if needed. Over the past few months, many western nations have been backing away from demands that Assad leave power, accepting that rebels no longer had the power to remove him by force. After the chemical attack , however, several countries said Assad must go. Reuters Russia suspends flight safety deal Moscow: A Russian foreign ministry statement on Friday said Moscow was suspending an air safety pact with the US originally drawn up to ensure that the two nations' planes did not collide. Russia later notified the US-led coalition of its intent to suspend a communication channel for avoiding air accidents in the crowded airspace over Syria, a coalition spokesman said. Putin told reporters separately that Russia would keep military channels of communication open with Washington, but would not exchange any information through them. Reuters Syrian air defences to be strengthened Moscow: The Russian military on Friday said a US strike on a regime air base in Syria was ineffective, but announced Syrian air defences would be strengthened to shield the country's key infrastructure. To protect Syria's most sensitive infrastructure, a complex of measures will be implemented in the near future to strengthen and improve the effectiveness of the Syrian armed forces air defence system, Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said. He said the strike had had an extremely low military impact, and fewer than half of the 59 reported US missiles had actually found their target. Only 23 missiles reached the Syrian air base, he said. AFP Deadly Tomahawk Weight: 1587kg Warhead payload: 453 kg Speed: 880 kmph Length: 20 ft Cost: $1.5m The Tomahawk cruise missile can be launched from navy cruisers, destroyers and submarines over 2,000 km away. It travels low to the ground, thus avoiding air and missile defence systems as well as radar. It takes a circumnavigation route so cant be shot down. The US first used cruise missiles during the first Gulf War in 1991 A video released the BJP shows Congress's women's wing president Lakshmi Hebbalkar with wads of cash. The BJP claims she was distributing money to voters. India Today cannot confirm the authenticity of the video released by the BJP. By Rohini Swamy: The Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are slugging it out hard ahead of the crucial Nanjangud and Gundlupet bypoll in Karnataka. Both the parties are leaving no stones unturned to target each other. In the latest incident, the BJP's Chamarajanagar unit released a video which allegedly shows Karnataka Pradesh Congress women's wing president Lakshmi Hebbalkar with wads of cash. advertisement The BJP claimed that Hebbalkar is distributing money to voters in the video. India Today is in possession of the video. But we cannot verify the authenticity or source of the video which has been provided by the BJP. In the video, Lakshmi Hebbalkar is seen sitting with some women holding wads of Rs 2000 notes. However, the video doesn't show the woman Congress leader handing over the money to anyone. The BJP claimed Lakshmi was distributing money to women self help groups in Annurkeri village of Chamarajanagar. Meanwhile, Karnataka Home Minister G Parameshwara has asked the BJP to file a complaint with the Election Commission over the issue. "I urge you to file a complaint with the Election Commission, and the law will take its own course to decide what the truth is," Parameshwara said. ALSO READ: Bengaluru: LED screen goes missing from Karnataka DGP's office; cops scanning 13 CCTVs footage to trace the culprits RK Nagar byelection: Income Tax raids on Tamil Nadu minister, actor Sarath Kumar Bengaluru jail rules violated for VVIP prisoner Sasikala --- ENDS --- Ladakh and Kargil have seen heavy snowfall since Wednesday. By India Today Web Desk: Three Indian Army soldier lost their lives in an avalanche in Kargil's Batalik sector. The jawans died due to the injuries suffered in the incident. A total of five jawans had been trapped in the avalanche , with news agency ANI confirming today morning that three others have been rescued. Jammu and Kashmir has seen inclement weather recently with incessant rain and snowfall. Ladakh and Kargil have seen heavy snowfall since Wednesday. advertisement NAMES OF SOLDIERS MARTYRED Havildar Prabhu Shayu Kirke (43) Lance Naik Bihari Marandi (34) Sepoy Kuldeep Lakra (22) VALLEY SHUTDOWN Schools and colleges in the valley were shut down for a few days and a flood alert was issued after water levels in river Jehlum reached the alert mark. #WATCH: Snowfall at Sela Pass in Tawang, Arunachal Pradesh pic.twitter.com/BuDSkhoO24 ANI (@ANI_news) April 7, 2017 According to MeT department officials, Srinagar received 83.9 mm rain and snowfall between Wednesday and Thursday while Kokernag in south Kashmir received 69.9 mm of rains in the same period period. Pahalgam, also in south Kashmir, recorded rainfall of 64.2 mm of rains between Wednesday and Thursday. This year has seen a high number of avalanche-related casualties in Jammu and Kashmir. In January, 20 Army personnel lost their lives in three separate incidents of avalanches in Sonamarg in Ganderbal, Gurez in Bandipora and Machhil in Kupwara. ALSO WATCH | Jammu Kashmir: 10 soldiers killed in Gurez avalanche, rescue operations still on --- ENDS --- OKLAHOMA CITY Gov. Mary Fallin on Thursday signed a bill to give a supplemental appropriation to the Department of Human Services. House Bill 2342 taps the states Unclaimed Property Fund for nearly $30 million and the currently empty Rainy Day Fund for $4.2 million. The Rainy Day Fund is empty because state officials borrowed $240 million from it to cover cash flow issues. The state is experiencing a revenue failure, requiring cuts to state-appropriated agencies. In addition, lawmakers expect to have nearly $900 million less to spend in crafting a fiscal year 2018 budget. Fallin and Finance Secretary Preston Doerflinger have said borrowing from the Rainy Day Fund was legal. They also say the fund will be replenished before the money is dispersed to the agency. Doerflinger said in a release Thursday his office is confident it worked within statutory and constitutional guidelines in tapping the fund, but it is seeking an opinion by Attorney General Mike Hunter simply to clear up any confusion others may have on the matter for this administration and future administrations and to counter any false information being spread by special interest groups who are attempting to advance their own agenda. Earlier this week, State Treasurer Ken Miller was asked about the viability of continuing to take money from the Unclaimed Property Fund and borrowing from the Rainy Day Fund. He said Doerflinger clearly has the ability to borrow from the fund. Miller said it is his duty to make sure the state is not in a position where it cant pay claims from the Unclaimed Property Fund back to the rightful owners. But clearly the giving tree has given almost as much as it can and we are going to have to get away from tapping that source, Miller said. Miller said he has discussed the issue with the chairs of the Senate and House appropriations committees. They understand they need not take any more out of the fund, he said. There has been a substantial amount of money in this fiscal year taken out, Miller said. It is close to $80 million in one fiscal year, which is the most ever removed from that fund in one fiscal year. DHS was given a 10-month budget with the understanding that lawmakers would provide a supplemental, officials have said. To me, that gets around the spirit of the balanced budget requirement in our constitution, Miller said. If you knowingly only appropriate 10 months of someones budget, as was done for DHS, and in the past has done with the Department of Corrections, you are at best getting around the spirit of the balanced budget requirement because agencies should be funded for 12 months not 10. If you cant build a 12-month budget, that underscores a revenue problem. Southwest Tulsa parents are feeling disheartened and frustrated after learning that their schools could be consolidated next year if Tulsa Public Schools moves forward with a proposal to offset projected state funding reductions. The consolidation would move ECDC Porter, Remington Elementary School and Park Elementary School to the Clinton Middle School campus and Clinton students to the Webster High School campus. Sandra Crook, the mother of a fifth-grader and a third-grader at Park, said the school notified parents about the proposal just 1 hours before a special school board meeting Wednesday where it was presented by Superintendent Deborah Gist. I was pretty angry, Crook said about the short notice. I was really frustrated that we werent given ample time to get together and go to the school board and let them know that we all felt this way. After the meeting, where she made an emotionally charged statement against the consolidation proposal during the public comments portion, Crook said she returned home to find her children crying. I dont want my school to close, she said her children were telling her. The consolidation plan is part of $12.4 million in budget reductions Gist presented as preliminary recommendations to offset projected state funding cuts. District officials anticipate bringing final recommendations to the school board on May 1. Many questions remain unanswered about the consolidation proposal, which Gist said would save the district $906,877, and district officials say they are working on scheduling meetings to discuss more details. Crook says she is upset because it seems that the decision has already been made without our consent. Im angry that my life is being changed and I dont have a say in it, she said. And youre talking about changing my kids lives, and we dont have a say in it. The schools were selected for consolidation based on current and projected enrollment, as well as utilization of space, Gist said. Remington enrollment is currently at about 63 percent of capacity, with 208 students, according to the district. Park enrollment is at about 90 percent of capacity, with 222 students. There would be space for about 225 more students at the Clinton Middle School campus after all of the students currently enrolled at Remington, Park and Porter were moved there, according to TPS. Webster High School would have space for about 77 more students after all of the Clinton students were moved there. Parents say they dont want closing schools to disintegrate the communities they have built. Its like a small town, Crook said about Park Elementary. Her husband of 13 years attended the school along with his brothers, and his mother worked there for a long time, she said. Parents of Park Elementary students also worry that merging schools might affect class sizes and the individual attention their children are currently getting from their teachers. She gets the one-on-one that she needs (at Park), Brandi Griffith said about her daughter Bailee, whos in the third grade. Its just going to overpopulate the classrooms and put more stress on teachers, because now theyre going to have more students that they have to take care of, predicted Mark Polk, whose son is in the fourth grade at Park. Polk said he had already been considering leaving Tulsa Public Schools and might accelerate that decision if the district moves forward with the consolidation plan. Crook said she wouldnt want her school staff and leadership at Park Elementary to change because they have been absolutely amazing. TPS officials say they would hope to relocate teachers along with their students. The three schools that would be consolidated and moved to the Clinton Middle School campus currently have a total of 45 certified and 24 support staff, according to TPS. Clinton Middle School, which would be moved to the Webster High School campus, has 35 certified and 12 support staff. In addition to the budget crisis we face as a district, we continue to grapple with a teacher shortage, so educator retention is absolutely critical, district spokeswoman Emma Garrett Nelson told the Tulsa World on Thursday. Griffith said she would be concerned about sixth-graders going to school at the same campus as 12th-graders. To throw them into that environment, its just scary, Griffith said. Gary Percefull, the school board member representing all the schools that would be affected, said Thursday that because of their low enrollment, he wasnt surprised those schools were recommended for consolidation. Percefull said he was spending most of the day Thursday visiting community members and the schools that would be affected, listening to peoples concerns. Remington and Park havent had full allocations for enrichment programs such as art, music and physical education, said Percefull, who would hope combining them would give students better access to those opportunities. Theyre just tiny schools, and I have not been very happy that we couldnt afford to offer the kiddos full (enrichment programs), Percefull said. Im hoping that maybe were working our way towards being able to offer better opportunities to the kiddos in these schools. When asked whether the district plans to sell the buildings where Park, Remington and ECDC Porter are currently located, Garrett Nelson said: We are discussing plans for the buildings but have not yet made any decisions. OKLAHOMA CITY Lt. Gov. Todd Lamb is strongly considering a run for governor in 2018 and has filed papers with the Ethics Commission signaling his interest, he said Friday. Lamb filed a statement of organization of a candidate committee, which he said allows him to begin establishing a statewide campaign effort. The move was expected. Since being elected lieutenant governor in 2010, I have visited each of Oklahomas 77 counties on an annual basis, listening and talking to Oklahomans regarding issues of importance to them and our great state, Lamb said. I am extremely optimistic about Oklahomas future and believe our best days lie ahead. Larry Nichols, former CEO of Oklahoma City-based Devon Energy Corp., serves as chairman of Oklahomans for Lamb, 2018. Lamb, a native of Enid, is a former Republican state senator from Edmond. He was re-elected lieutenant governor in 2014. He is the son of Norman Lamb, the former Oklahoma secretary for veterans affairs. State Auditor and Inspector Gary Jones, a former Oklahoma Republican Party chairman, said he also is considering running for governor. Jones said he will not make a decision until late summer. Tulsa attorney Gary L. Richardson is also considering running as a Republican. I should have a decision fairly soon, but I am not ready to make that announcement at this point, Richardson said, indicating that he will make a decision in a few weeks. Richardson made two unsuccessful runs for Congress as a Republican and a failed attempt for governor as an independent. On the Democratic side, former Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson has said he is considering the race, as is House Minority Leader Scott Inman, D-Del City. I am still considering it, Edmondson said. I am closer to running than I was a few months ago. Edmondson made a failed bid for governor in 2010 and ran unsuccessfully for Congress twice. Former state Sen. Connie Johnson has announced her intent to run, filing her statement of organization on March 2. Johnson, a Democrat, made a failed bid for U.S. Senate in 2014. Norman Jay Brown of Oklahoma City has also filed a statement of organization to run for governor as a Democrat. He is a disabled auto mechanic. Brown said he has been sitting around watching television and seeing the states finances worsen for seven years. He said that instead of complaining about it, he decided to do something. I decided to go big, Brown said. Former state Sen. Kenneth Corn, a Democrat from Poteau, said he has ruled out a run for governor. For Srinagar seat all powerful National Conference president Dr Farooq Abdullah is himself contesting against PDP's Nazir Khan. In total nine candidates are in the fray for the seat. By Shuja-ul-Haq : As campaigning for the bypoll to the Srinagar Lok Sabha seat comes to an end, it is interesting to notice how it has been a very low key affair this time. This time the polls have some of the most high profile candidates fighting it out for the Parliament seats. For both ruling PDP and the main opposition NC, it is a high stake battle. advertisement For Srinagar seat all powerful National Conference president Dr Farooq Abdullah is himself contesting against PDP's Nazir Khan. In total nine candidates are in the fray for the seat. For Farooq Abdullah the importance of these elections is more as he lost from this seat in 2014 which was seen as a major embarrassment for the party. For Anantnag seat, the PDP has its new comer and the Mufti scion Tasaduk Mufti testing waters against the powerful Congress leader GA Mir. Mir has the backing of National Conference as well. The Congress and NC have entered into a seat-sharing arrangement for the bypolls to fight against the ruling-PDP. As much as it is a high profile battle for both political parties it has been the most colourless campaigning as well. There are hardly any banners in the cities and towns and very few rallies have taken place. The political parties have not been able to hold big rallies and have rather preferred to go for small worker meetings. Experts believe this is because of the increased security threat as young local boys have joined militant groups especially in areas of south Kashmir. The other reason of dampening interest is recent unrest of 2016 post Burhan Wani encounter. The bypolls in Srinagar and Anantnag parliamentary constituencies are going to be held on 9 and 12 April, respectively, and in total 15 candidates are in the fray. Out of the total 24 candidate the four main candidates have a lot at stake. Particularly for Dr Farooq Abdullah it may be the last electoral battle presumably because of his age and health and for the cinematographer-turned-politician Tasaduk Mufti it is a maiden entry into Kashmir's electoral politics. Also read: Farooq Abdullah glorifies stone pelters, lashes out at Modi government National Conference president Farooq Abdullah files nomination for Srinagar Lok Sabha seat --- ENDS --- On Mondays Four Corners Peter Greste presents Cracking the Code: What Facebook really knows about you. Whats on your mind? Its the friendly Facebook question which lets you share what youre thinking and what youve been up to. Its also the question that unlocks the details of your life and helps turn your thoughts into Facebooks profits. They are the most successful company arguably in human history at just gathering peoples time and turning that time into money. Reporter On Monday night, Four Corners explores the world of Facebook and how your data is being mined to drive the huge success of the social media giant. Facebooks very well aware of our sentiment, our moodit can put all that data together and start to understand who our exs are, who our friends are, who our old friends are, who our new friends are, and thats how it really works. Marketing executive Reporter Peter Greste examines the Facebook business model and shows why your private life is making them billions. Facebook has very cleverly figured out how to wrap itself around our lives. Its the family album. Its your messaging to your friends. Its your daily diary. Its your contact list. Its all these things wrapped around your life. Digital privacy expert The program investigates how Facebook has the ability to track much of your browsing history, even when youre not logged on, and even if you arent a member of the social network at all. Even if you close your account, even if you log out of all of your services, the way that theyre set up, with their sharing buttons, theyre still going to be able to build a profile for you. Its very difficult to opt out of Facebooks reach. IT security consultant And shows how the methods used to deliver targeted advertising also drives what news appears in your Facebook feed, and why you are unlikely to see anything that challenges your world view. This feedback loop is fuelling the rise and power of fake news. Were seeing news thats tailored ever more tightly towards those kinds of things that people will click on, and will share, rather than things that perhaps are necessarily good for them. Media analyst With more than 16 million Australian Facebook accounts, joining more than a billion other users, Four Corners investigates how much we are giving up to be part of the social network. If somebody was going to build a dossier on me based on what Facebook knows about me, what would it look like? I should be able to know that so that I can make informed decisions at how Im going to use the platform. Internet privacy advocate Monday 10th April at 8.30pm on ABC. Tom Ballard stand-up show The World Keeps Happening is the latest special to feature in the One Night Stan showcase, available from today. What with the world going to hell in a hand basket and all, I thought I may as well try to fix everything by yelling at an audience for 80 minutes, Ballard says. Thanks to Stan, you can now stream my expletive-ridden rantings from the comfort of your own home/bunker as the coming Apocalypse descends upon us in a fiery blaze of populism, climate destruction and violence. Enjoy! As well as receiving the prestigious Helpmann Award in 2016, The World Keeps Happening was also nominated for the Barry Award for best show at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and the Edinburgh Comedy Award at the Edinburgh Fringe. A rising star of Australian media, including four years co-hosting the triple j breakfast show, Ballard is leading the charge for the next generation of comic talent. Next to be featured is Sam Simmons with his show Stop Being Silly on April 14. Veteran US comedian Don Rickles, best known as the master of comedic insults, has died aged 90. He died on Thursday at his Los Angeles home from kidney failure, his publicist said. New York born Rickles, who served in the U.S. Navy, made his film debut as a junior officer alongside Clark Cable and Burt Lancaster in the 1958 submarine drama Run Silent, Run Deep. He went on to appear in a series of 1960s beach party movies with Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon and in 1970 played Army hustler Sergeant Crapgame in the wartime caper Kellys Heroes, with Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas and Donald Sutherland. He got his big break when he appeared on The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson in the 60s, the start of a long association with the show. Rickles said he devised his brand of mockery-based humour because he was no good at telling traditional jokes. He delighted nightclub audiences, Hollywood royalty and politicians by hurling invective at them, all in good fun, telling Frank Sinatra: Make yourself at home, Frank hit somebody. At the second inaugural gala of U.S. President Ronald Reagan in 1985, Rickles asked, Is this too fast for you, Ronnie? Eventually, poking fun at audience members would become a major part of his act. He endeared himself to an entirely new generation as the voice of Mr. Potato Head in Toy Story and had a dramatic role in Martin Scorseses Las Vegas crime film Casino. Several TV series were short-lived, the most popular of which was the comedy C.P.O. Sharkey, lasting just two seasons. But there were numerous guest appearances on US sitcoms. Rickles last appeared on stage in Las Vegas in late October. But he continued to work after falling ill in February. He was called The Merchant of Venom but in truth, he was one of the kindest, caring and most sensitive human beings we have ever known, actor-comedian Bob Newhart and his wife, Ginnie, said in a statement. Comic actor Jim Carrey tweeted: Don once begged me for a couple of bucks, then told me to twist myself into a pretzel. Ego slayer! Comic Everest! Tom Hanks also tweeted a tribute to his Toy Story co-star, saying, A God died today. Don Rickles, we did not want to ever lose you. Never. Source: Reuters By India Today Web Desk: Deepika Padukone was recently signed on as the face of a cosmetic brand that Katrina Kaif was formerly associated with. As soon as the news broke, rumours began doing the rounds that Kat was dropped in favour of Deepika. While some said Katrina left because she wanted to launch her own cosmetics line, it began to be questioned as a face-saving tactic when no announcement regarding the launch was made. advertisement However, a source close to Katrina told DNA, "Let's talk facts: The international cosmetic brand that signed Katrina doesn't let go of its brand ambassadors - be it Aishwarya Rai Bachchan or Sonam Kapoor either. Katrina was with them for two years, but when an opportunity to launch her own line of cosmetics presented itself, Kat was interested. She did the ethical thing and told the international brand that she wanted to opt out as it would mean a conflict of interest. She could have continued without anybody knowing." As for no official announcement being made about the launch of Katrina's own brand, the source said that starting a new cosmetics line from scratch takes a lot of research and that's what the actor is busy doing. But the friend of Katrina's blamed Deepika's PR team for spreading false rumours. The friend questioned, "Why is there insecurity about Katrina? Wonder who DP's advisers are, who are behaving like this? One could understand if you don't have anything. But when you do, what is the need to pull down others to push yourself up?" ALSO READ: Deepika-Katrina cold war reaches a new level. And Coldplay is involved ALSO READ: KJo torn between Deepika and Katrina for his love triangle with Ranbir, SRK? ALSO WATCH: When Deepika Padukone wished Katrina Kaif a happy birthday --- ENDS --- The UCLA women's rowing program travels to the state of Oregon this weekend to compete against Pac-12 foes Washington, Washington State, Oregon State and Oregon at the fifth annual Oregon State Classic in Lowell, Ore. The Bruins are scheduled to race in each of two sessions on Saturday, April 8. The morning session, running between 9:00-10:45 a.m., will include dual races between the Bruins and Washington. The afternoon session, scheduled from approximately 1:00-2:00 p.m., will include five races featuring all four Pac-12 programs. Results of Saturday's races will be available by visiting Oregon's State's website (www.osubeavers.com). Admission to Saturday's event is free. The race can be viewed from the shore at Lowell Recreation Site and the finish can be seen from the dock at the park. The 2,000-meter course begins near the covered bridge, passing the picnic area and marina at the Lowell Recreation Site and finishes approximately 500 meters past the dock at the boat ramp. Saturday's Schedule Morning Session 9:10 a.m. women's varsity eight 9:20 a.m. women's varsity eight 9:40 a.m. women's second varsity eight 9:50 a.m. women's second varsity eight 10:10 a.m. women's varsity four 10:20 a.m. women's varsity four 10:30 a.m. women's second varsity four 10:40 a.m. women's third varsity eight Afternoon Session 1:00 p.m. women's second varsity four 1:15 p.m. women's varsity four 1:30 p.m. women's second varsity eight 1:45 p.m. women's varsity eight 2:00 p.m. women's third varsity eight/novice eight Getting to Dexter Lake (Lowell, Ore.) From the I-5 North or South: Take Exit 188A Highway 58/Willamette Hwy towards Oakridge Follow Highway 58 east for approximately 13.5 miles Left at Jasper-Lowell Road (covered bridge is on the left-hand side right before the turn) Follow Jasper-Lowell Road for 0.7 miles Left on North Shore Drive North Shore Drive turns into Pengra Road Lowell Recreation Site is located 0.7 miles from turn on the left-hand side Hi, my name is Scott C. Waring and I wrote a few books and am currently a ESL School Owner in Taiwan. I have had my own UFO sighting up close and personal, but that's how it works right? A non believer becomes a believer when they experience their first sighting. You witnessed it, your perceptual field changes, so now you need to share it. I created this site to help the UFO community get a little bit organized. I noticed that there was a lot of chaos when searching for UFO sighting reports, so I hope this site helps. I wanted to support those eyewitnesses who have tried to tell others about what they have seen, yet were laughed at by even closest of friends. More and more each day the governments of the world leak bits and pieces of UFO information to the public. They have a trickle down theory in hopes of slowly getting citizens use to the idea that we are not alone in universe and never have been. The truth is being leaked drop by drop until one day we look around and find ourselves neck high in it. The discovery of alien species in existence is the most monumental scientific event in human history, suppression of that information is a crime against humanity. About me: I live in Taiwan. I OWN MY OWN ENGLISH SCHOOL, AND ONCE HAD 5 SCHOOLS. Am Former USAF at SAC base (flight line). Age: 42 Educ: BA in Elem ed. Masters in Counseling ed. I had two UFO sightings, (30+bus size orbs) in military and in 2012 personally saw the UFO over Taipei 101 building on New Years Day (and recored it). By Press Trust of India: Thiruvananthapuram, Apr 7 (PTI) A Keralite, who reportedly went missing in Kuwait, has been located and will be repatriated soon, according to the External Affairs Ministry. In a letter to Rajya Sabha member and NDA Kerala vice-chairman Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Minister of State for External Affairs M J Akbar has said the missing Keralite, Ani Sathyanesan, has been located and accommodated at a shelter of the Indian mission in Kuwait. advertisement He will be repatriated as soon as the immigration formalities are completed and the emergency certificate and travel documents are issued to him by the mission, said Akbar. Sathyanesan, hailing from nearby Parassala, had gone to Kuwait in 2013 to work as a driver. Subsequently, he was allowed to come home only once and his sponsor did not even let him return to Kerala for treatment after he fell ill. His mother wrote to Chandrasekhar seeking help to trace her son and the letter was forwarded to the External Affairs Ministry. PTI UD APR RC --- ENDS --- Margarita Ramirez* knew who it was when she heard the loud thuds on her front door. She opened it a crack and saw several members of the Barrio 18 street gang which ruled her neighbourhood. Wheres your son? one asked calmly. Margarita, who made a living selling bread from a small street stand in her hometown in western El Salvador, recognized many of the gangsters who came to her door that night. She had maintained a tenuous peace with them for years, giving the young men bread to stay in their good graces. But that all changed when the gang began shaking down her 37-year-old son, Jose, the owner of a small convenience store. He had failed to keep up with the war tax they demanded and was now hiding in her house My son? I dont know. Hes not here, Margarita responded coolly. Jose quietly ran into the back room, hopped out a window, and sprinted down the alleyway. He left the neighbourhood and did not come back. I was standing there lying to them, but I just asked God to give me strength even though my heart was going Thump, thump, thump, she says, pounding her chest. Her deception worked. But the next day they were back with a threat: You either hand him over or well get rid of you to get back at him. That was the breaking point. Margarita knew she had to leave. With just a small bag of clothes, the 72-year-old left before dawn, headed to the nearest bus station and left El Salvador for good. By that night, she was at a river marking the Mexico-Guatemala border, which she crossed on a makeshift raft. I didnt know anything about Mexico when I came here, she says. I didnt know anyone. I didnt know Id have to cross a river. I knew nothing! Margarita helps to care for the one-year-old daughter of her neighbours next door. UNHCR/Daniele Volpe Margarita shops for groceries in a local supermarket. UNHCR/Daniele Volpe Margarita talks to a UNHCR protection officer in her modest home in southern Mexico. UNHCR/Daniele Volpe Margarita, 72, introduces herself to her new classmates on the first day of school. "I am so grateful to be here," says Margarita who left school at the age of eight. UNHCR/Daniele Volpe Margarita eats with her neighbours. UNHCR/Daniele Volpe A growing number of men, women and children are fleeing the street gangs or maras, whose reach extends throughout El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, where they commit crimes ranging from drug dealing, extortion and robbery to rape and murder. Among those seeking asylum in Mexico from the so-called Northern Triangle countries of Central America are more and more elderly people like Margarita, who face distinct challenges. Starting from scratch in a new country is difficult, but it can be particularly difficult for elderly refugees, says Mark Manly, UNHCRs representative in Mexico. Many are pillars of their family and the community but others face particular problems because of illness or the wear-and-tear of old age. Since reaching Mexico in mid-2016, Margarita has been granted refugee status and is now a Mexican resident. Through financial support from UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, she has been able to pay rent and get groceries from a food bank. I saw people my age just fall over and die in El Salvador. You live under so much stress all the time, she says, noting the new lease on life that a fresh start in southern Mexico has given her. At 72, I feel young! While simple, her small, one-room house with a slim mattress, a bedside lamp, and a small dresser - is nevertheless homely. To keep herself busy, she helps out with child care for a young couple and their one-year-old daughter who live next door. She has also found part-time work as a housekeeper for another family nearby, which gives her enough income to get by, and she one day dreams of having a stall in the local market. Meanwhile, Margarita is striving for something she did not have the chance to do in El Salvador: study. She left school at the age of eight but is now getting back into the classroom 64 years later. I dont know how to read much only my bible and I cant write, she says. And I want to learn, now that the opportunity is in front of me! Through a programme started by UNHCR and Mexicos Secretariat of Public Education, Margarita and several other refugees who have missed out on schooling are studying two days a week to receive a primary school certificate. As the first class begins, Margarita decades older than anyone else in the class stands first to introduce herself. I am so grateful to be here, she says. We all have a great opportunity and I am so inspired seeing all the people who have come here and chosen to learn. *Name changed for protection reasons. South Sudanese new arrivals rest at Ngoromoro after a long journey from South Sudan's Pajok town. UNHCR/Rocco Nuri LAMWO, Uganda Following a recent attack on the town of Pajok in South Sudan, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency today expressed alarm at the deteriorating security situation in the country which has forced even more refugees to flee for their lives. Ugandas northern Lamwo district has received over 6,000 South Sudanese since Monday (April 3), with at least 4,500 still crowded together at the border. As well as the fighting near Pajok in Eastern Equatoria, ongoing fighting is also reported in the districts of Magwi and Oboo close to the border with Uganda, now the main host of the worlds fastest growing refugee crisis. This spreading of violence signifies a worrying development. People fleeing the recent incident claimed that the town came under an indiscriminate attack by the South Sudan armed forces, UNHCR spokesperson Babar Baloch told a news briefing in Geneva. 4,500+ South Sudanese have fled into #Uganda since the attack on Pojok on 3 Apr & many more are looking for safe routes to cross @Refugees pic.twitter.com/6RCwKq6ZkB Rocco Nuri (@Rocconuri) April 6, 2017 Refugees have witnessed loved ones shot dead at a close range, with many others arrested and then killed, including children. Auma Lucy Yubuan escaped and walked for two days. The soldiers were looting, breaking doors and beating people. They would arrest you and ask you to show them where the rebels are. But when you tell them you dont know, they beat you. They killed people, she told UNHCR. She and her children ran in different directions, but found each other again at the border. I am so happy even though I have nothing to eat and I have lost everything, my children are alive. I was so scared I didnt know if I would see them again. The bullets were flying everywhere and you couldnt move, you had to lie on your belly. I am very grateful I am alive, she added. Baloch said families fled the attack in Pajok in different directions; the elderly and disabled who could not run were shot dead. Many people are still hiding in the bush trying to find their way to Uganda, while homes and properties were looted and burned. Main roads out of the town are reportedly blocked by armed groups. UNHCR staff wristband South Sudanese new arrivals from Pojok prior to relocating them to Palorinya settlement in Uganda's Moyo district. UNHCR/Rocco Nuri UNHCR staff in northern Uganda are helping desperate women, children, elderly, and the disabled. Refugees are in dire need of immediate humanitarian assistance including food, shelter, water and medical care. Around 4,000 refugees immediately fled South Sudan in the after aftermath of the horrible attack on Pajok town, which has an estimated population of up to 50,000. Uganda currently hosts more than 832,000 refugees from South Sudan. Some 192,000 have arrived in 2017 with an average of 2000 refugees fleeing insecurity, violence and famine every day. Over 62 per cent of the new arrivals are children. Some 1.7 million refugees have fled the worlds youngest country and the continuing brutal conflict. For more details, click here. Donate now South Sudanese refugees carrying Core Relief Items walk down a road in Bidibidi refugee settlement, Yumbe District, Northern Region, Uganda. UNHCR/David Azia UNHCR is alarmed at the ongoing deterioration of the security situation inside South Sudan as a recent attack in the town of Pajok in the Eastern Equatoria region is forcing more refugees to flee for safety. Ugandas northern Lamwo district has received over 6,000 South Sudanese since Monday (April 3). Ongoing fighting is also reported in the districts of Magwi and Oboo - towns also close to the border. This spreading of violence signifies a worrying development. People fleeing the recent incident claimed that the town came under an indiscriminate attack by the South Sudan armed forces. Refugees report witnessing their loved ones shot dead at a close range, with many arrested or slaughtered, including children. Families fled in different directions; the elderly and disabled who could not run were shot dead. Many people are still hiding in the bush trying to find their way to Uganda, while homes and properties were looted and burned. Main roads out of the town are reportedly blocked by armed groups. UNHCR staff in northern Uganda are helping desperate women, children, elderly, and the disabled. Refugees are in dire need of immediate humanitarian assistance including food, shelter, water and medical care. Around 4,000 refugees immediately fled South Sudan in the after aftermath of the horrible attack on Pajok town, which has an estimated population of up to 50,000. Uganda currently hosts more than 832,000 refugees from South Sudan. Some 192,000 have arrived in 2017 with an average of 2000 refugees fleeing insecurity, violence and famine every day. Over 62 per cent of the new arrival are children. Some 1.7 million refugees have fled the worlds youngest country and the continuing brutal conflict, compounded by the limited availability of food could displace thousands more into South Sudans neighbourhood. Within South Sudan itself, over 1.9 million people are internally displaced, from a population of under 12 million. Though Ugandas approach in dealing with refugees is among the most progressive, promoting self-reliance of refugees and their hosts, chronic under funding continues to affect relief activities. Host communities and humanitarian agencies are struggling to feed and shelter the arriving refugees and provide basic services. Supply of safe drinking water remains an urgent priority in the dry lands of northern Uganda where refugees are being hosted. UNHCR continues to appeal to the international community for urgent and massive support for the thousands of South Sudan refugees in Uganda, Sudan (380,000), Ethiopia (356,000) and elsewhere in the neighbourhood. Our funding appeal for South Sudan situation of US$781.8 Million is only 11 per cent funded. For more information on this topic, please contact: Hollywood actress Lindsay Lohan has been vacationing in Thailand for the past two weeks. By India Today Web Desk: After a tumultuous public and personal life, Lindsay Lohan has taken to studying Islam of late. But that's not what this is about. This is about Lindsay Lohan taking to Islam a little too seriously--she's been vacationing in Thailand for a while now, and was recently spotted sporting a burkini while stepped out for a paddle-boarding session in Phuket. Not a bikini; a burkini-- full-body swimsuit worn by Muslim women. Picture courtesy: Instagram/liloversforever advertisement The dress covered the 30-year-old from head to toe as she got ready for paddle-boarding. Her head was covered with a black hood, which also concealed her ears. According to her Instagram, Lindsay has been vacationing in Thailand for two weeks. Before that, she was in Dubai to meet her family. --- ENDS --- Aaron Dworkin has announced on Wednesday that he will step down as dean of University of Michigan's School of Music, Theatre & Dance. Dworkin, who founded Detroit's Sphinx organization became dean in July 2015 said it was necessary for him to have the opportunity to focus more on his family. He added that he made the decision with intensely mixed emotions. Dworkin, 46, has a wife, Afa, and two sons. He said he needed to be more present in his family life. His role as a dean was a 24/7 position and he also needed to be able to dedicate his additional time to his family, MLive reported. He said that Interim Provost Paul Courant will recommend an interim dean in the coming months. He is set to step down effective Aug. 15 but will remain on the faculty, teaching Creative Entrepreneurship and Arts Leadership courses in the fall, Crain's reported. He will also continue speaking at universities across the country and on his mentoring website. For his remaining months as dean, he said he aims to continue positioning the school to be the most relevant performing arts institution and raise funds for scholarships. Dworkin was appointed by the UM Board of Regents in May 2015 and served as dean for nearly two years. Among the school's accomplishments during his term, he listed the creation of the Department of Chamber Music and EXCEL, which provides training and career services for student entrepreneurial projects in the performing arts. Dworkin founded Sphinx when he was a UM undergrad to provide music education and opportunities for black and Latino musicians. He has master's degrees in music and violin performance from UM. UM was a place where his life was built, said Dworkin. He added that everyone at school have inspired and motivated him at a time when the role of arts in the society was so critically important. The impact made by the faculty, staff, and students was profound and that he still look forward to continue working with them in his new capacity. By Press Trust of India: Mumbai, Apr 7 (PTI) Maharashtra Government will soon initiate a pension scheme for journalists in the state, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis told the Legislative Council today. Fadnavis was responding to a Calling Attention motion moved by the Congress member Sanjay Dutt. "The government is positive about a pension scheme for journalists and is studying the pension schemes of other states who are implementing them. We will soon be initiating it (scheme) in our state as well," the chief minister said. advertisement Earlier, Dutt demanded that the government introduce a pension scheme for journalists before the monsoon session of the state legislature. Dutt said that several states, including smaller ones like Goa, Jharkhand, Arunachal Pradesh etc. are giving pension to journalists, apart from Delhi. "Why Maharashtra cannot do so," he asked. Dutt demanded that a corpus fund be allocated for the purpose and that interest accumulated on it can be utilised towards payment of the monthly pension to journos. He also asked the government to ensure effective implementation of the Journalist Protection Act once it is approved by the state legislature. The Maharashtra cabinet yesterday gave its approval to the draft Bill on the law prohibiting attacks on journalists (Journalists Protection Act). PTI MM NSK BAS --- ENDS --- Country music star Keith Urban received the Recording Artists Coalition Award at the 2017 Grammys on The Hill on Wednesday. He was honored for dedicating his time and resources to music education programs. The four-time Grammy Award winner said his two daughters inspired him to fight for music education. The Grammy-winning artist, who has been producing hit records for more than two decades has provided thousands of musical instruments to underserve programs across the country. It all started when he was shocked to find out that the programs were frequently cut in public schools, USA Today reported. Along with Urban the academy also honored Sens. Tom Udall, D-New Mexico, Susan Collins, and R-Maine for their ongoing support of music programs and the National Endowment for the Arts. Wynonna Judd, John Popper of the Blues Traveler and Motown star Duke Fakir of the Four Tops were a few other musicians who also appeared at the event. ABC News reported Urban said the opportunity to bring attention to music education was wonderful and it was what the night was all about. He added that music needed to be more seriously considered for the effects it has on kids and that it wasn't some frivolous subject that can be discarded so effortlessly. Martina McBride was the master of ceremonies for the even in Washington D.C. McBride herself was previously honored at the same event. Artists were also advocating on Capitol Hill for performers' rights and equitable royalty practices. John Popper said that with technology changing over the last 40 years, the royalty rates should reflect the same kind of adjustments. President of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences Neil Portnow stressed the importance of music as a form of diplomacy. Portnow said that the cold war was not won with just missiles and that it was won with Elvis. Urban attributed his success to his supportive parents and love of music. He shared that he fell in love with music when he was 6-years-old with his guitar. Many soon-to-be college students are now facing a difficult time choosing which college to go to for their freshman year.This decision-making process is even more difficult for this 17-year old teen from Denver who got accepted to all 8 Ivy League Schools, in addition to Stanford University. Ifeoma White-Thorpe was accepted to the 8 Ivy League Schools, plus Stanford University, but has not really decided yet which school to attend, The Mercury News reported. She is the one who leads the student government and is also taking Advanced Placement courses at Morris Hills High School. She intends to study Biology in college but her decision will depend on which university is going to offer the most financial aid. White-Thorpe was shaking when she received the acceptance letters, and she told CNN how she felt when she opened the eighth letter. Now she has to choose among Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, Dartmouth and Brown. Aside from Biology, she also wants to pursue a career in global health, and that is why she decided to apply to all Ivy League because they all offer great research facilities. It is indeed an achievement to be able to get into all Ivies, and there were also a couple of other students in the past who achieved the same success - Kwasi Enin in 2014, Harold Ekeh in 2015 and Augusta Uwamanzu-Nna and Kelly Hyles last year. As to which college she will be attending, her parents said that the decision will depend on her. It might be a really difficult decision to make because aside from these schools, she also has Stanford University to consider as part of her choices. Cooley is now known as Western Michigan University Thomas M. Cooley Law School. It was the biggest law school in the country then. In 2007, before the financial crisis turned the job market for new lawyers down and classes in Cooley were big then. Between 2010 and 2016, law school enrollment fell by 25 percent nationwide. Cooley's enrollment in particular fell more than 60 percent, which dropped from a peak of 3,931 students in 2010 to less than 1,300 last year according to Cooley data from the American Bar Association. Year 2010 was Cooley's peak where it brought in more than $123 million. By 2014, which was the most recent year where tax records were available, the revenue plummeted to $63 million. Even when enrollment rates started to drop, the school was still bringing in money. Cooley's end-of-the-year balance continued to rise until 2012. It also opened a new campus near Tampa, Florida, which peaked at $132 million and fell to less than $110 million by 2014. As a result they laid off more than half of its full-time faculty and closed the Ann Arbor campus. The Lansing State Journal reported that the research and study building appeared to be mostly empty these days. The 105,000-square-foot former Masonic Temple has been on the market since December 2014. Its original price was $8.15 million, today it's priced at $4.75 million. Cooley is still looking for students and last year it had 1,067 applicants, which was less than 6,000 compared to 2010 however they still offered admission to 915 students and accepted 415. It has become one of the least selective law schools in the country, 85 percent of their applicants were students most other law schools would reject. Cooley and Western Michigan University signed an agreement in 2013. The two schools have retained their financial and leadership independence. However, it's not clear that Western Michigan University Thomas M. Cooley Law School would fit well on the sign and it's also not clear that Cooley would be in a position to re-up that commitment. A number of teacher resignation letters recently went viral online. Interestingly, a study finds out that neither low payments nor retirement issues fuel this fiasco alone. Michigan State University investigates the controversial letters and discovers a bigger problem at hand. Alyssa Hadley Dunn, an expert at Michigan State University, leads a team of researchers to examine the strange scenario of educators posting their resignations online. Apparently, teachers from all grade levels are frustrated and brokenhearted due to "scripted curriculum". It appears that they grew tired of standardized tests and retributive evaluation systems. According to Phys.org, in the second part of the trio study, another reason that drives the resignation madness is the hunger for the chance to be heard. Through posting their resignation letters, teachers get the attention of the public that they failed to have before. The first study entitled "With regret: The genre of teachers' public resignation letters" was published in April in the journal "Linguistics and Education". Meanwhile, the second installment will appear on "Teaching and Teacher Education" this May. Now, the third and final research unveils that these educators want to eliminate the "blame game" and the connotation of a "bad" teacher. Well, teachers are commonly blamed for school failures. To better illustrate, soldiers get blamed for a failed mission but the truth is: they just followed orders. The third study will be published in "Teachers College Record". Some of the people Dunn worked with include Jennifer VanDerHeide, Matthew Deroo, Scott Farver, Amy Guenther, and Lindsay Wexler. They are all from Michigan State, either as assistant professors or doctorate students. All in all, Dunn suggests that school administrators need to allow teachers to engage in the development of curriculum and educational policies. Per Science Daily, this move will make teachers feel wanted and forget the feeling to resign. Lastly, teacher turnover costs about $2.2 billion in the US alone, on a yearly basis. It also decreases student achievement in reading and math test scores. Recently, tourists on a cruise ship witnessed the slaughtering of two killer whales in the Caribbean. Apparently, whale hunting and dolphin fishing are legal in that area. On a Facebook post, Captain Paul Watson of a conservation group known as the Sea Shepherd asked people to sign a petition urging Prime Minister Dr. Ralph E. Gonzales to ban the inhumane activity. A lot of countries are actually supporting whale conservation efforts now. Even Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz already spoke against commercial whalers. Watson earlier said that it is time for governments to step in. Obviously, there is no more tradition in people with speedboats and weapons - this is already a business. Also known as orcas, these intelligent sea creatures are technically classified as dolphins. Their sheer sizes make them look like whales but their dorsal fins prove otherwise. Dubbed as something mightier than the great white shark, people were horrified to see these killer whales look helpless. In fact, per the Caribbean360, Thomson Cruises already canceled its trips to St. Vincent and Grenadines after the traumatic incident as a sign of protest. The tourists were onboard the TUI Discovery when a pod of four orcas emerged. Unfortunately, hunters on speed boats with harpoons rushed in and immediately targeted the pod. Another cruising vessel, the Fantasea, was on the scene when the bloody hunt occurred. The captains of both tourist boats tried to steer away knowing that the day would turn brutal but the passengers still heard the "loud explosions" from the fishing weapons. It was later reported that the killer whales were dragged to the shore and then chopped for food. The group of whalers from Grenadine is called Bequia (an island) while the group from St. Vincent is known as the Barrouallie (also an island). The former was granted a quota of four Humpback whales each year by the International Whaling Commission. Barrouallie, meanwhile, do indiscriminate hunting of hundreds of dolphins using harpoons donated by the Japanese Fisheries Agency. For the record, Japan's whaling fleet in the Antarctic killed 333 minke whales this season. Nonetheless, Sea Shepherd noted that kills are now dwindling down since they started the fight against commercial whaling. Sadly, most of these activities are cultural traditions which make them hard to stop. In St. Vincent and Grenadines, a Scottish settler named William Wallace introduced whaling in 1875, the Daily Mail reported. He and Joseph Ollivierre, his French business partner, built the first whaling station of Bequia. Since then, whaling evolved from a tradition to a profitable practice. One of the largest dolphin slaughtering areas on Earth is found in Taiji Cove, Japan. Also, people with Scottish blood run to the shores of the Faroe Islands, Denmark to massacre pilot whales every year. The meat will be cut into strips which will be dried under the sun. Villagers will either eat it or sell it to other islands as toppings for soups. Astronomers plan to coordinate different observatories all over the world to turn them into one colossal lens with one purpose: to capture the first images of a black hole. The project is dubbed as the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) which started on April 5 and will last until April 14. EHT will feature radio astronomers pointing their telescopes at the thin edge of a super huge black hole found at the center of our galaxy. For the record, that "thin edge" is known as the event horizon or the "point of no return". It is so powerful than even light cannot penetrate through it. Well, the closest humans have come to "seeing" a black hole was when the LIGO observatory detected signs of it last year. However, they were just "time-warping gravitational waves" radiating from a collision some 1.3 billion years ago. Until now, no concrete image has been captured. For one, black holes are difficult to spot because even the big ones appear tiny in the center of gigantic galaxies. Also, black holes are black and the universe is black, which makes the former almost invisible. Dimitrios Psaltis, an astrophysicist at the University of Arizona, said in previous media interviews that the largest dark circle ever discovered is the one in the middle of the Milky Way. Yet, the process of taking a picture of it is like snapping a shot of a CD on the surface of the moon. Per IFL Science, the subject of EHT lies about 26,000 light-years away from Earth. It is in the center of our own galaxy, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), and measures for about 30 times bigger than the sun. That is actually small, like a grape on the surface of the moon. If successful, the first photos will appear sometime in 2018. For his part, Gopal Narayanan of the University of Massachusetts Amherst said that EHT will open doors to understanding black holes in a way that "we have never understood before." The UMass Amherst reported that the Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT) of the University of Massachusetts and Mexico's Instituto Nacional de Astrofisica, Optica y Electronica is the largest and most expensive single-aperture (millimeter-wavelength) telescope on Earth. Telescopes situated in Hawaii, Arizona, Chile, Spain, and the South Pole would complement the LMT. UNISPACE+50 will consist of two main parts: From 22 to 29 June, COPUOS will revert to its regular session. A number of participants are also organising side events in the margins of UNISPACE+50. The UNISPACE+50 Symposium, High-level Segment, COPUOS regular session, most side events and media activities will take place in the M Building of the Vienna International Centre (VIC). In addition, a UNISPACE+50 exhibition consisting of around 40 exhibitors will be held in the Rotunda of the VIC from 18 to 23 June. The exhibition will be open to the public on Saturday 23 June from 9.00am to 12.30pm. The UNISPACE+50 programme is available here. A List of UNISPACE+50 Signing Ceremonies and Donation Events is available here . Practical information for participants is available here. A list of suggested hotels in Vienna is available here. A petition was filed seeking implementation of a circular issued in 2002 by the Maharashtra government directing the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to close slaughterhouses and to ban sale of meat on Mahavir Jayanti. By Kamlesh Damodar Sutar: After the Bombay High Court bench recently quashed a 14-year-old ban against mutton sale during Mahavir Jayanti, the Maharashtra government has decided to appeal against the order in the apex court. A petition was filed seeking implementation of a circular issued in 2002 by the Maharashtra government directing the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to close slaughterhouses and to ban sale of meat on Mahavir Jayanti. advertisement The division bench of Justice Abhaya Oka and Justice A.K. Menon had dismissed the petition on the grounds that the state government had no power to give directions to Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai to close slaughterhouses or ban sale of meat. The issue was also raised in Maharashtra Legislative Assembly by BJP members Raj Purohit and Mangal Prabhat Lodha. "We met the chief minister with our demands, Minister of State Ranjeet Patil has assured us that the state government will move to the Supreme Court against the Bombay High court decision" Lodha said. Meanwhile, the All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul Muslimeen (AIMIM) too has jumped into the fray and demanded closure of Liquor shops, sale of Liquor on Eid and during the holy month of Ramadan as well. "If it is about respecting religious sentiments, then the government should respect everyone's religious sentiments. So they should also ban sale of Liquor and close Liquor shops during Ramadan as well as on Eid too", demanded Imtiaz Jalil, AIMIM MLA. MUST READ: Maharashtra beef ban: Supreme Court defers hearing on petitions challenging Bombay HC order Around 65,000 cos in Mumbai migrated to GST: Service Tax Dept --- ENDS --- When he wanted to motivate members of Congress to vote his way, former President Lyndon Baines Johnson lived by the adage, Dont tell a man to go to hell unless you can send him there. And, whether youre talking about Johnson when he was Senate Majority Leader or President of the United States, he had more power to send people to hell than Saint Peter. Every once in a while, hed have to banish someone to the fiery pits, but, more often than not, the pressure worked and votes broke his way. But that was back in the day when congressional leadership had genuine power over their members. If congressional leaders needed a members vote, they had sweeteners to make it a deal that was impossible to refuse but if they still didnt come around, there were a million different ways they could make life very difficult on that wayward legislator. Well, times have changed and congressional leadership doesnt have the same pull with their caucus that they once did. To put it simply, a combination of modern technology, a shift in how campaigns are funded and good government reforms have taken away most of leaderships carrots and sticks. This new reality was on full display during the unsuccessful vote on the American Health Care Act in the House of Representatives. Former Congressman Trey Radel, author of the book Democrazy: A True Story of Weird Politics and Fancy Finger Food, told me this fact of life will cause Speaker Paul Ryan fits in perpetuity. The carrots used to be earmarks. The Republicans, when they swept the House in 2010, got rid of earmarks. Earmarks used to be there to make deals. Earmarks were how congressmen were able to take money and appropriate it within their own district. They cant do that now, so they cant strike any deals, Radel said. The libertarian-leaning Republican was quick to point out that while its true that earmarks were once abused ... the problem is that youve got no more carrots now. Radel also believes that any threats coming from the Speakers office are merely hollow. [T]he stick approach used to be: Leadership would tell you we arent gonna raise money for you anymore. These days, because of multiple factors, including social media and outside groups like 501(c)(4)s, like the Club for Growth and Heritage (Action), they can come in raise you boatloads of cash and they love it when you give the middle finger to your own partys leadership. Just before Speaker Ryan canceled the scheduled House vote on the American Health Care Act, the Washington Post estimated as many as 32 Republicans and all of the Democrats were prepared to vote no, in defiance of his pleas. The former legislator feels that the winds of change sweeping through Congress are the direct result of new technology: [T]he internet wrecked so many different business models; the internet has been able to directly affect politics in terms of the carrot and stick, he analyzed. He also predicts we could see more big votes experience the same fate. You have a Republican Party right now, which I believe showed that its going to be very, very hard for them to come together and govern. The pressure [on members] cant be there, he said. If Radel is correct, that spells big trouble for upcoming legislation dealing with tax reform, infrastructure spending and raising the debt ceiling. Speaker Ryans legacy rests on pushing these legislative packages through the Congress. If his carrots and sticks arent producing the needed votes, he will need to get creative and find new tools. My advice to Paul Ryan: Start gardening! John Phillips is a CNN political commentator and can be heard weekdays at 3 p.m. on The Drive Home with Jillian Barberie and John Phillips on KABC/AM 790. Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers. Take Back the Night at UW April 19 A Take Back the Night candlelight vigil is planned Wednesday, April 19, at 7:30 p.m. on Prexys Pasture at the University of Wyoming in honor of Whitney French and all victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. Students in UW Professor Colleen Denneys Visual Culture of Gendered Activism course, in conjunction with the Gender and Womens Studies Program and the recognized student organization Voices of Courage, sponsor the event. Since the 1970s, Take Back the Night marches and events have been organized globally in communities and on college campuses to reclaim the night as a safe space for women. More recently, Take Back the Night has become a safe, holding space for all communities, free from fear of sexual assault and domestic violence, says Denney, a professor of gender and womens studies. Take Back the Night events have occurred at UW during the month of April, which is designated as Sexual Assault Awareness Month, with the color of teal as the activist, aware color. We have decided to host a candlelight vigil, as an act of solidarity, Denney says. Bring cellphones and/or glow sticks to help us illuminate the space, but we also will have artificial candles. Wyoming Business Tips for April 16-22 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 Jim Drever, WSBDC regional director and certified cybersecurity specialist What is ransomware, and how do I avoid it? Ken, Saratoga Ransomware is a computer program that, when installed and run on your computer, will encrypt almost every file on a computer, then give a pop-up warning that you have a certain amount of time to pay the software distributors a ransom to get the password to unlock all personal files. There are dozens of varieties of ransomware, but they do about the same thing: They hold your data and files for ransom. One insidious version lets you either pay to unlock or infect others; once it is paid, your computer will be unlocked. To defend yourself, the best method is to back up the computer on a drive that is not continuously connected to the computer -- otherwise, the ransomware also will lock up the files -- using a program that saves incremental versions of your computer. The reason for incremental backups is because, often, ransomware has an incubation period that the latest backup could contain the malware. If you get ransomware, simply wipe the hard drive and install from a backup. Last November, San Franciscos train ticketing system was hit by ransomware; they recovered using backups. Another piece of advice you probably already know: Use anti-virus/anti-malware. It can see the signatures of some of the known ransomware versions and protect you. When installing software that you werent looking for, dont install. If you do, keep it updated, especially Flash and Java for your web browser. Finally, if it is too late, and you get ransomware and dont want to pay, free decryption tools can sometimes unlock files. These can be found on the No More Ransom Project website. The WSBDC provides free and confidential cybersecurity advising to business owners. 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. NASA has released a new picture of Mars showing off a patch of scaly surface, which looks much like a lizard skin. By India Today Web Desk: Mars, the Red Planet planet which has impressed us with its pictures so far, has freaked Earth-dwellers a little with its most recent photo. NASA has released a new picture of Mars showing off a patch of scaly surface, which looks much like a lizard (or even a skin disease). The photo, taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), takes a shot of a frigid region near Mars' south pole. We're studying this circular feature on Mars' South Polar layered deposits, which may be an impact crater. More: https://t.co/WgmKc4zetm pic.twitter.com/jM9HI463aw- NASA (@NASA) April 5, 2017 advertisement NASA released this picture on Tuesday with a description saying that the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's camera took a shot "to take a closer look at a circular feature that might be an impact structure on the South Polar layered deposits,". "Measuring the sizes and frequency of impact craters provides a constraint on the age of the landscape," said the description. "However, craters in icy terrain are modified by processes that flatten and change them in such a manner that it is hard to say for sure if it had an impact origin." The MRO mission was launched in August 2005, and it reached Mars in March 2006. || Read more at FYI || Destination Mars: All you need to know about NASA's most powerful rocket ever Watch: Elon Musk's SpaceX envisions colonisation of Mars by 2024, says no guarantee of survival NASA scientists find evidence of water on Mars || Watch more || --- ENDS --- By Press Trust of India: Aizawl, Apr 7 (PTI) Mizoram government today allocated Rs two crore as emergency disaster fund to take up works to prevent further sinking of land in Hunthar locality of Aizawl, an official statement said. The statement said that the detailed project report (DPR) submitted to the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) for allocation of Rs 15 crore was yet to be released and the heavy pre-monsoon downpours necessitated taking up preventive works on an emergency basis. advertisement The proposed preventive works included prevention of entry of water into the soil and construction and improvement of drainage system and retaining walls in the strategic locations, the statement said. Sinking of land in the area had caused 45 families to vacate their homes while four houses had been dismantled last year. PTI HCV RG --- ENDS --- By Press Trust of India: New Delhi, Apr 7 (PTI) Mukta Dutta Tomar, a 1984-batch IFS officer, has been appointed as Indias next ambassador to Germany. The appointment of Tomar, who will succeed Gurjit Singh, comes ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to Germany next month. The external affairs ministry today said she is expected to take up the assignment shortly. advertisement Among other positions, Tomar has been Consul General of India in Chicago. PTI PYK SC --- ENDS --- A Muslim man was beaten to death in Jharkhand for being in a relationship with a Hindu woman. Muslim man was beaten to death in Jharkhand for being in a relationship with a Hindu woman. By India Today Web Desk: A mob of villagers beat a 20-year-old Muslim man to death in Jharkhand on Wednesday, after seeing hIM with a Hindu woman he was in love with. Police identified the victim as Mohammad Shalik -- a resident of Raza Colony in Gumla town, reported the Hindustan Times. Shalik had been in a relationship with a Hindu woman from a nearby village for more than a year. advertisement THE CRIME The couple met for a Ram Navami procession at Gumla on Wednesday, and Shakil decided to drop the woman home on his scooty. The mob saw Shakil and surrounded him. They tied him to a tree and then went on to thrash him for hours, the woman informed police. Shalik's father Mohammad Minhaj told HT that two people came to his house and told him about his son being thrashed in the neighbouring village. "I informed police immediately. When we reached at the village, we found my son was critically injured," said Minhaj. Shakil was immediately taken to Sadar hospital, and eventually referred to Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) in Ranchi, but he succumbed to his injuries on the way there. ARRESTS Police have arrested three people and lodged an FIR against unnamed people in the case. "Though investigation is on, we were told by the villagers that the boy had been asked earlier not to meet the girl and never visit the village," Gumla superintendent of police Chandan Kumar Jha told HT. The police is also tackling raised tensions in Gumla by deploying hundreds of officers. "The situation is under control," Jha told HT. --- ENDS --- While I have found a great deal of truth in the saying that wine only grows in beautiful places not every bit of wine country is created equal. If youre lucky enough to spend some of your time traveling through the worlds wine regions, some places seem to almost vibrate with their potential to produce phenomenal wine. This can be true on the grand scale, as those lucky enough to have their breath taken away by the Douro River valley in Portugal or the Franschhoek Valley in South Africa might easily attest. But this feeling manifests most profoundly for me at the level of the individual site, and most often when standing in a vineyard established by vision and determination in the most unlikely of places. We signed for this property on February 14th, 1997, and then got married the day after, says Sherwyn Veldhuizen. That amounted to two life sentences in 24 hours. Were not sure how to get off this ride, she continues, with a laugh that makes it clear she would rather be doing nothing else. Veldhuizen and her husband Marcel Giesen met in the early 90s while she was a harvest intern at his familys eponymous winery near Christchurch, New Zealand. Though she had gone to school initially for Business Management, Veldhuizen discovered wine early in her university days, and decided to angle for a career in the wine business, which meant attending New Zealands Lincoln University for a postgrad degree in viticulture and winemaking, and the heading off to work harvest at various wineries around the world. She and Giesen conspired to work a harvest together in Burgundy, and says they came away from the experience permanently convinced of their mutual desire to work with Pinot Noir planted on limestone. While no definitive scientific studies exist proving that Pinot Noir and Chardonnay require limestone soils to reach their utmost potential, the anecdotal evidence has been piling up for centuries that these grapes can make incredibly special wines when planted on limestone. The histories of Burgundy and Champagne offer unassailable case studies on the epitome of both Pinot and Chardonnay. The purchase of a small Burgundian domaine wasnt an option for the new couple, so they returned to their home country and began the search for a bit of limestone that they might call their own. The search took less time than they might have imagined, thanks in part to the coincidence of where Giesens family business was located at the time a wine region known as North Canterbury the most limestone influenced terroir in New Zealand. A set of small hills crown the northern part of the Waipara Valley, bisected by State Highway 7, which follows the winding path of the Waipara River through the gorge it cut through some of the southern hemispheres purest limestone. Known as the Weka Pass, this seam of ancient marine sediments was thrust up from the valley floor by the system of faults that make this region so earthquake prone much to the recent regret of local residents. If North Canterbury represents New Zealands body of limestone terroir, then the Weka Pass is its beating heart. As Veldhuizen and Giesen explored the area, they came across a farm with the remains of an old quarry on the property, marked on old maps as Bell Hill, so named thanks to its gently curving shape. Pay a visit to Bell Hill and its not hard to imagine the couples reaction at finding the site, which mirrored the astonishment of most visitors who round the edge of the hill and see a scant six inches of topsoil laid upon a thick base of pure limestone so white, it becomes blinding in the right light conditions. If youre looking for limestone, Bell Hill cant be described as anything other than a jackpot. And if youre attuned to the kinds of places that wine loves to grow, this land all but screams greatness. Everything is pure lime, says Veldhuizen. This is the one region in the area where the soils have no windblown loess in them. Instead, all the soil, all the clays at the bottom of the hills everything is eroded lime. The couple convinced the farmer who owned the place to part with it, and after only a brief detour to say their vows, they got to work creating their vision for a small estate in the model of a tiny Burgundian domaine. The estates roughly 5 acres of vineyard are planted at a density rarely seen outside of Burgundy, with an average of 4600 vines per acre, made up of the most diverse set of clones available at the time. The estate has been farmed organically since 2005, and using many biodynamic principles and preparations since 2008, due in large part to the influence of their friends and neighbors at Pyramid Valley Vineyard. We always knew we wanted to be organic, explains Veldhuizen, but when we first started here in 1997 it was high risk. We didnt know if it would work, and we definitely couldnt afford to buy the specialized machinery required. Grapes are hand harvested in stages, block-by-block as the different areas of the hill ripen at different speeds. The Chardonnay pressed (sometimes as whole cluster) to old oak barrels to ferment spontaneously, while the Pinot Noir (with usually some percentage of whole cluster) is given a cold maceration for a week before starting the fermentation using a technique known as a pied de cuve. This involves letting a small portion (often just a bucketful) of grapes ferment spontaneously and then once the yeast has become prolific, dumping this into the main fermenter. This has the effect of more easily jump-starting the fermentation in the larger vessel, while ensuring that the fermentation is based primarily on the yeasts that came into the winery on the skins of the grapes. With the exception of some sulfur and occasionally a little tartaric acid for pH stabilization during fermentation, nothing else is added to the meager 1000 cases of wine the estate produces each year. This production is spread across their Bell Hill Pinot Noir, a not-quite-second-label-but-definitely-less-expensive bottling they call the Old Weka Pass Pinot Noir, and their Chardonnay. At the moment, the couple is focused on getting some of their newest plantings ready to bear fruit in the hopes of increasing their volume of grapes. In 2015 we had hailstorm in November, which was devastating, says Veldhuizen. We lost 60% or more of our crop. In this little corner of the world we generally have cold temperatures during springtime, even outside of frost, which we protect for. It can be bitterly cold during flowering. She ticks years off on her fingers. 2005, 2007, 2010, 2012 were all low yielding years. Not quite one out of two with very poor fruit sets. One out of three seems to be the norm. Were hoping that in two years the additional plantings will take us out of our low volume years where were weather affected. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Veldhuizen and Giesen pursue a lean, tension-filled style of wine reminiscent of their favorite Burgundies. While in the earliest years they were content to let the grapes ripen significantly (mostly to see if they actually could), once satisfied that sugar levels were not going to be a barrier, they settled down to pick early, preserving freshness and a transparency to the wonderfully stony character of their site. Our ideal of the wine that we thought should come from here, when we started, we wanted to see minerality and acid backbone, says Veldhuizen. Thats what we were looking for. We didnt want plump fruity Pinots. Its a part of you, what youre looking for in a wine. In some ways youre looking for yourself in a wine. I want these wines to age, and to have the structure to allow them to do that. Above all, were looking for balance. And how do they do that? We always think about our winemaking and wine growing, says Veldhuizen. Its important to retain humility and always be questioning how youre doing and why youre doing things. Were aware of that at the moment. Were certainly very aware of the work, the amount work we have to do and how we can get into processing mode rather than thinking about what were doing or wanting to experiment more. Were conscious of that at the moment. We want to make the time to plan for experimentation. We know what works but we want to push the boundaries a bit, refine things. I can remember my first taste of the Bell Hill wines a little more than four years ago. I was spending time in the North Canterbury area of the Wellington Pinot Noir conference, moving from table to table as I explored a region of the country I knew very little about. My first taste of a Bell Hill wine brought me up short, even before I put it in my mouth. Pale colored and silky in the glass, these wines looked different from everything else I had tasted in New Zealand. And then when I put them in my mouth, I found myself enthralled by the crystalline, floral intensity of the wines. Simply put, their Pinot Noir is among the very best made in New Zealand, and, dare I say it, the entirety of the Southern Hemisphere. The wines are hard to come by, owing to their small production levels, and correspondingly high prices (especially when the costs of transport are taken into account). But if youre willing to accept the consequences of supply and demand in pursuit of great terroir expression, you simply cannot pass up these wines. As an expression of the place they come from, they are delightful. As an indication of the potential for New Zealand Pinot Noir as a genre, they are revelatory. TASTING NOTES: 2013 Bell Hill Chardonnay, Weka Pass, North Canterbury, New Zealand Light greenish gold in the glass, this wine smells of lemon curd with a hint of pineapple on top. In the mouth, lovely lemon curd and lemon juice flavors mix with citrus pith and wet stones and a hint of yellow herbs. Fantastic acidity and precision. Closed with screwcap. 13% alcohol. 1429 bottles produced. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Cost: $100. click to buy. 2010 Bell Hill Chardonnay, Weka Pass, North Canterbury, New Zealand Pale greenish gold in the glass, this wine smells of lemon curd, a hint of melted butter and, a touch of tropical fruits. In the mouth, notes of lemon, pineapple, a hint of dried mango, and deep pink grapefruit juice are zippy with acidity. Gorgeous silky texture and length. Lovely minerality underneath it all, prickling the front of the tongue with acidity. Closed with screwcap. 13% alcohol. 457 bottles produced. Score: around 9. Cost: $100. click to buy. 2013 Bell Hill Pinot Noir, Weka Pass, North Canterbury, New Zealand Light to medium garnet in color, this wine smells of lavender, wet earth, and redcurrant. In the mouth, beautifully dynamic flavors of redcurrant, fresh herbs and a touch of wet earth mix in a vibrant dazzle of acidity. Gorgeously savory, with the fruit welded to this herbal earthy core of the wine, with high notes of sourish redcurrant lingering in the finish. The tannins are quite fine and stony in quality, lingering along with the wet chalkboard, slightly saline quality in the finish. Closed with screwcap. 13% alcohol. 4458 bottles produced. Score: around 9.5. Cost: $115. click to buy. 2013 Bell Hill Old Weka Pass Road Pinot Noir, Weka Pass, North Canterbury, New Zealand Medium garnet in color, this wine smells of wet stone and forest berries. In the mouth, wonderfully savory notes of herbs mix with the red raspberry and other forest berry flavors that are buzzing with excellent acidity. Notes of herbs and dried flowers linger in the finish with a hint of aromatic cedar and citrus peel. Very faint, nearly imperceptible tannins hang on the edges of the mouth. Closed with screwcap. 13% alcohol. 1056 bottles produced. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Cost: $65. click to buy. 2012 Bell Hill Pinot Noir, Weka Pass, North Canterbury, New Zealand Light to medium garnet in the glass, this wine smells of forest floor and raspberry and raspberry leaf. In the mouth, the wine is exceedingly silky, with mouthwatering flavors of raspberry and redcurrant mixing with dried herbs and a hint of dried citrus peel. Slightly saline notes mix with the barest touch of nutmeg spice as the wine lingers long in the finish with extremely fine grained tannins and a wet chalkboard note. Closed with screwcap. 13% alcohol. 1788 bottles produced. Score: around 9.5. Cost: $115. click to buy. 2002 Bell Hill Old Weka Pass Road Pinot Noir, Weka Pass, North Canterbury, New Zealand A slightly cloudy medium ruby in the glass, this wine smells of wet leaves, dried red apple skin, carob and vegetable ash. In the mouth the wines fruit has faded to a hint of redcurrant and dried raspberry, with herbs both fresh and dried, as well as a touch of wet leaves and forest floor. The wine has a gorgeous soaring finish in which the fruit emerges along with dried leaves. Theres still that faint sense of minerality that marks these wines, but softer. Faint, putty-like tannins. Still good acidity. A fun look at the history of this plot of land. Closed with screwcap. 12.5% alcohol. 900 bottles produced. Score: between 8.5 and 9. Cost: $ n/a A VietJet A320 airplane is seen while parking before departure for Bangkok, at Noi Bai.- Photo themalaymailonline.com At a press conference in Ha Noi on Wednesday, deputy minister Nguyen Hong Truong said the aviation market was growing strongly and diversifying, owing to the participation of foreign private businesses, so the ministry needed to consider this issue from every angle. The conference was to review the ministrys operations in the first quarter and its work for the second quarter. The CAAV will study and gain aviation management experience from other countries so as to create conditions locally that encourage people to fly, by offering reasonable prices while ensuring that airlines do not suffer losses, Truong said. The ministry will take a decision on the floor price soon, he added. The most important thing is to have a method that corresponds, ensures competitiveness as well as meets the airlines operation costs. The carriers profits should come from their quality services rather than through hike in ticket prices, the deputy minister said. To offer better services while keeping ticket prices down and making profits, carriers will have to cut costs, Truong said. The transport ministry is currently downsizing the workforce in airlines, air traffic management units and airport ground service companies as the salaries here are quite hefty. If businesses fail to cut costs, air ticket prices will have to bear the high expenses. CAAV director Lai Xuan Thanh said the decision on whether or not to apply a minimum price for domestic air tickets would be based on what the law says, especially the Law on Civil Aviation, the governments management orientation, and the operational reality of airlines. Thanh said the Law on Civil Aviation 2006 had regulations on price frames, which means on both ceiling and floor prices. The revised 2014 law also allows for the fixing of ceiling and floor prices. But its not enough grounds to give an official answer on the floor price to the public. We need more time to listen to peoples ideas and opinions, Thanh said. On March 17, the transport ministry held a conference to gather ideas and opinions from airlines for a draft decision on price ranges for economy-class fares for domestic flights, which is expected to replace the finance ministrys Decision 3282/QD-BTC issued in December 2014, regulating the ceiling for economy-class fares for domestic routes. Several airlines, including Jetstar Pacific (JPA), have agreed with the draft decision. JPA also proposed that the decision should incorporate floor price, while low-cost airline Vietjet (VJ) did not want a floor price as it said that would reduce market competitiveness. Truong said the ministry must put the interests of the people ahead of the interests of the airlines. The important thing is to come up with a reasonable method, ensuring competitiveness, profits and quality service. Roaming charges will no longer apply in the EU from Jun 15. (AFP/Oli SCARFF) MEPs backed a deal between operators and European Union member states that will mean the end of extra charges when people use their phones abroad in other EU states. "Europeans will no longer be in a state of shock when they get their telephone bills," said Finnish MEP Miapetra Kumpula-Natri, who backed the resolution. From mid-June, EU citizens will no longer pay extra charges for calls, SMS messages or internet outside their home countries, when travelling in the EU. Operators will still have to pay a charge. EU digital affairs commissioner Andrus Ansip said it would have an "immediate positive impact on the life of millions of Europeans." The move will cap 10 years of efforts by the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, to end roaming charges. photo baohatinh.vn Deputy director of MoNREs Vietnam Environment Agency Hoang Van Thuc announced the conclusion on April 4 at the meeting with HFS and the Ha Tinh Peoples Committee after the working group had carried out an investigation of the environmental protection components of the $10.5-billion steel and port complex in the central province of Ha Tinh. The experts asked that the company complete the remaining procedures to be able to start operation of the wastewater quality monitoring system, as well as compile a plan of action in case of an incident, and train workers in operating these components. They said that as of now, HFS has corrected 52 out of 53 of the violations identified by government agencies earlier. There is only one left, changing the technology from the current wet to dry quenching of coke, which HFS said would be completed in 2019. Originally, HFSs project was approved by authorities with dry quenching technology, but then the company one-sidedly switched to using wet quenching, which causes more pollution. The delegation said HFS now meets the requirements for the first blast furnace to start operation. It asked the company to complete the remaining structures and then the delegation will evaluate the whole complex before it reports to the MoNRE and the Prime Minister, who will then officially authorise HFS to start operation. On April 4 it was revealed that a party committee meeting had voted to remove Vo Kim Cu, former Secretary of the Ha Tinh Party Committee and Chairman of the Ha Tinh Peoples Committee, from his current position as Party Secretary-cum-Chairman of the Vietnam Co-operative Alliance for his responsibility in the Formosa environmental disaster last year. In April 2016, fish were found dying en masse along the central coast of Vietnam. Consequent inspection identified the reason as wastewater released during HFS test run. In late June, HFS said it would pay a compensation of $500 million for households suffering economic damage and for marine environmental pollution treatment of four provinces. According to the governments report evaluating the damages released at the end of July 2016, seafood exploited within 20 nautical miles of HFSs wastewater discharge pipe was wholly unmarketable and the price of products exploited within 20 nautical miles of the shores of Vietnam decreased by 30-50 per cent on-year. In the area of tourism, the four provinces saw about 50 per cent of pre-arranged tours cancelled and received 40-50 per cent less bookings than in the same period of 2015. HFS has started paying out the promised compensation, but many shortcomings were reported in the process. According to newspaper tuoitre.vn, there were cases where people whose livelihood is centred on fishing and related services and were directly affected by the Formosa incident were not compensated, while people who work in jobs not at all affected received hefty compensation, causing disagreements. Three women were killed in a fire that broke out in this house in a Nang City on Wednesday. - VNS Photo Anh Tuan The same day, five people were injured in the mountainous district of Nam Giang after a car went off the road and plunged down a ravine. Chairwoman of the Ngu Hanh Son District Peoples Committee, Nguyen Thi Anh Thi, said the fire broke out in a house on Nguyen Tu Gian Street, 10km from downtown a Nang, around 3.30am. Two daughters of the house owner and a housemaid perished in the fire. The dead have been identified as Nguyen Hien Ha, 18, and Nguyen Thi Hoa, 25, two daughters of Nguyen Van Bay, 46, and Nguyen Thi Thu, 52, a housemaid. Bay, his wife Nguyen Thi Ha and his son Nguyen Song Toan escaped to safety. While firefighters were able to put out the blaze within 30 minutes, they could not save the lives of the three women. It is suspected that the fire was caused by a short circuit. Meanwhile, authorities in Phu Ninh District, Quang Nam Province, confirmed that one man was killed when he and his wife were digging in an illegal gold mine tunnel in Tam Lanh Commune of the district on Wednesday. Nguyen The Vinh, chairman of the communal Peoples Committee said a sixty-year old man, not named, and his wife were digging for gold in a 10m long tunnel on Wednesday when it suddenly collapsed. The wife got out of the tunnel by herself, but her husband was buried. A rescue force got the man out, but he died in the hospital. It was the first tunnel collapse recorded in the area this year. The commune, which is considered a hotspot for illegal gold mining, closed many mines in 2015. Last year, four people died after inhaling toxic gas in an illegal gold mine in Nam Giang District, Quang Nam Province. EVN officials injured Meanwhile, Nam Giang District officials said five people who were on a business trip to the Song Bung 2 Hydropower Plant were injured after their car plunged 20m down an incline. The four-wheel drive Range Rover (plate number 43A-11509) was traveling from Zuoih Commune to the plant slid from the mountain road near the Kaviko Bridge. Police said the car was carrying a team of officials from the Viet Nam Electricity Group (EVN) on an inspection trip to the hydropower plant. The five are recuperating in a hospital. The car was completely damaged in the accident. A parking lot near Hoan Kiem Lake in Hanoi. In particular, the city should focus on constructing more irrigation lakes to increase water regulation capacity and reduce flooding in the city. Dung also asked the municipal Peoples Committee to review comprehensively its technical infrastructure plans, making sure transport plans are coordinated and consistent with the citys approved master plan. In addition, Hanoi needs to pay attention to the planning of underground spaces and the construction of traffic points connecting the inner city with suburban areas and satellite towns. The city should boost investment toward building traffic junctions linking bus stations, parking lots with specific investment plans and building mechanisms to attract investors. The citys Peoples Committee is required to work with the Ministry of Transport to manage and operate the national railway system. The city needs to speed up the construction of two urban railway lines and study to develop inland waterways in order to reduce the pressure on roads and railways. Dung said that the citys Peoples Committee should review and make adjustments to water supply planning, which focuses on developing surface water plants to gradually replace the underground water sources. The city needs to chalk out plans to upgrade and expand its water plants to provide clean water at reasonable prices throughout the city. In the process of reviewing and supplementing the water drainage plan, the city must study the sustainable wastewater drainage and concentrate projects on flood control, he added. Hanoi and HCM City face a severe shortage of parking places. Cars and motorbikes continue to park illegally in streets and on pavement. Figures from the citys police showed that the capital city has a total of 939 parking areas, 687 on pavement and 245 on the street. Of those, 244 parking places are illegal. The city also reportedly lacks of public parks and playgrounds. The rapid rate of urbanization and loose management by local authorities are to blame. There are about 200 public parks and playgrounds in the city. Of those, 29 are in the inner city. The citys Department of Planning and Architecture planned to build more than 100 public parks with total area of 59 hectares around the city last year. Sacombank is due to organise its annual general shareholders meeting in April 28.-Photo vneconomy In December 2016, NVL had sent a letter to the SBV, expressing interest in participating in the restructuring of Sacombank. As per NVLs submission, the firm and its chairman of board of directors Bui Thanh Nhon proposed to acquire 20 per cent stake in Sacombank, equivalent to 360.7 million shares of the bank. Sacombanks charter capital is currently VND18.036 trillion. The market price of Sacombank shares as on March 24 was VND11,400 per share, which means that NVL will have to spend VND4.112 trillion on this acquisition. Explaining for the withdrawal, Nhon said during the time waiting for the State Bank of Viet Nam (SBV)s approval, a lot of negative information arose that was unfavourable to NVL. Restructuring Sacombank is a difficult task, which requires a lot of effort, money, time, transparency and determination as well as support from the central bank and the Government, he said. According to Sacombanks financial reports, its non-performing loan ratio at the end of 2016 stood at 5.53 per cent of the banks total outstanding loans. Recently, there have been reports that heavyweights such as New York-based investment bank Evercore Group, M&A consulting firm Redsun Capital Limited and Dang Van Thanh, president of Thanh Thanh Cong Group (TTC), would likely participate in the restructuring of Sacombank. Sacombank is due to organise its annual general shareholders meeting in April 28. The central bank has so far also required Sacombank to complete its management and administrative structure; continue implementing restructuring solutions to guarantee the rights and benefits of depositors; stabilise operations; and make sure its financial system is secure. NVL has VND7 trillion in charter capital, and 5,000 employees. The group currently operates two core businesses: real estate (NovaLand) and agriculture (Anova Corp). The capitalisation value of NVL is VND40.666 trillion, based on its share price on March 24. The companys shareholders include many foreign investment funds, including the Singapore governments GIC. A section of the HCM City - Trung Luong Highway that crosses Long An Provinces Tan An City. The highway will be part of the North-South Highway.-VNA/VNS Photo Hoang Hai He has asked the Ministry of Transport (MoT) to conduct a pre-feasibility study and report its results to the Government, the Giao Thong (Transport) newspaper reported on Thursday, citing a Government Office announcement. The highway will be constructed using a Public Private Partnership (PPP) model that is transparent and highly effective, the announcement said. The Government will also provide capital support for site clearance. The report said that a consultancy firm would be selected through a competitive bidding process to plan and design the highway construction. The final selection will be based on cost and feasibility of their technical designs, it added. The transport ministry will be responsible for directing the planning of component projects soon after the National Assembly approves of highways master plan. It will also collaborate with the ministries of Planning and Investment, Finance, Construction and Justice, and the State Bank of Viet Nam to develop investment mechanisms and policies for the project, the report said. It quoted the PM as saying the mechanisms and policies must both abide with regulations and attract investment. He has asked the Ministry of Planning and Investment to form a State council to assess the project. The PM has also instructed the MoT to review and adjust the plan on developing Viet Nams expressway network until 2020 (with a vision to 2030), towards developing the North-South Highway into 6-10 lanes instead of 4, as originally proposed. Road markers should be installed along the highway to manage land in accordance with regulations, the PM said. The PMs latest instructions follow the transport ministrys submission of three proposals last December on building the North-South Highway (from Ha Noi to HCM City). Undying appeal As reported by the Manila Times, the Philippiness largest beer maker San Miguel Brewery (SMB), a unit of San Miguel Corp. (SMC), is considering a potential bid for Sabeco. At the moment, we are evaluating the deal and will definitely join the public bidding of the Vietnamese government for the brewery, the newspaper quoted Ramon Ang, SMC president and chief operating officer. The company has thus joined the long list of suitors that include names such as Asahi, Singha, AB InBev, and more. At the moment, the price of Sabecos shares has not yet been announced. Since it was listed on the HoSE in December last year at the price of VND110,000 ($4.85) a share, the price has almost doubled, to end April 5 at VND200,400 ($8.8) a share. According to Sabecos prospectus, the Ministry of Industry and Trade is holding 89.59 per cent of the companys chartered capital. Last August, the MoIT announced a divestment plan through which it would sell 53.59 per cent of the shares in 2016 and the remaining 36 per cent in 2017. So far, it has not made a move to sell, even though one after another investor has shown interest. The MoIT expected to earn VND40 trillion ($1.76 billion) from the divestment. If the shares are sold at the current price of VND200,400 ($8.8), the amount is going to be more than double of that. Yet Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry Do Thang Hai said at the April 3 regular government press meeting that the current price of VND200,400 ($8.8) per share is only an expected price, and not the real price of SAB. 2017 prospects Sabeco (HoSE: SAB) is going to hold its 2017 annual shareholders meeting on April 18. According to the report to be submitted to shareholders to ratify during the meeting, the board of directors targeted Sabecos 2017 sales at 1.7 million litres, up 3 per cent on-year. Revenue is targeted at VND34.5 trillion ($1.52 billion) and net profit at VND4.7 trillion ($207 million), representing respective increases of 9 and 1 per cent on-year. Dividend will increase from 2016s level of VND3,000 (13 US cent) per share to VND3,500 (15 US cent). The board said that there are favourable conditions that would enable the company to realise these targets. First of all is a sharp decrease in the price of input materials and the preferential tax on malt, the growing and still young demographic, and the steady growth of the rural market, where Saigon Beer is a very strong brand due to its correct product positioning and large distribution system. In the short term, the company is going to launch new products to diversify its portfolio and replace product lines that no longer fit the taste of consumers. Sabeco is still facing difficulties, such as competition from partners and an excise tax of 55 per cent since January 1, 2017 (an increase from the earlier 50 per cent). If the proposal to put a stamp on all beer products is ratified, the cost of production will increase by about VND200 (1 US cent) per can of beer, or as the company estimated, VND900 billion ($39.7 million) in expense for stamping, not including equipment for the task. The board proposed to the shareholders that the company increase the fund for the salary of four members of the board and the board of supervisors that do not hold any other position in the company by 60 per cent and decrease their bonus fund by almost 20 per cent. Effectively, these members are going to see an increase of almost 50 per cent in their income, from the monthly VND105.5 million ($4,650) per person in 2016 to VND150 million ($6,610) in 2017. Meanwhile, the number of members of the boards that also hold one or more other posts in the company is proposed to expand to six from the original four, and with the proposed increase in the wage fund, each member is going to see an increase of 65 per cent in their annual pay from VND196 million ($8,640) to VND324 million ($14,280) per person. In 2016, Sabeco earned VND30.66 trillion ($1.34 billion) in revenue, up 12.88 per cent on-year. The companys net profit was VND4.66 trillion ($205 million), up 33 per cent on-year. This is the highest profit ever since the company was founded. According to the roadmap, the consultation programme started in 2015 with focus on industries such as printing, packaging, and plastic moulding. In 2017, Samsung will expand their field of consultation to hi-tech industries such as electric and electronics (PCB, speakers built into TV, wire harness and more) to help Vietnamese enterprises produce sophisticated electronic parts which have added-value and hi-tech content in the global supply chain. Samsungs target in 2017 will be to provide consultation for 12 Vietnamese suppliers, which would bring the total number of business consultees to 26 since the year 2015. And Samsung affiliates like Samsung Display Vietnam and Samsung Electro-mechanics Vietnam will join this programme for the first time. Also in this year, Samsung will launch a pilot model for tier-1 vendors to guide tier-2 vendors, creating a ripple effect in Vietnams supporting industry. This turning point demonstrates the Samsungs commitment in increasing localisation rate, supporting Vietnamese businesses to get further involved in Samsungs component supply chain and contributing to the development of Vietnams supporting industry. With 12 Vietnamese firms participating in the consultation programme in 2017, Samsung will continue to send South Korean experts experienced in the field of final product technology and production quality control to directly guide them for 12 weeks. The South Korean experts will survey and assess local firms for two weeks and directly consult and work with them in the following 10 weeks in reforming production procedures and complete all standards in the product and parts supply process for Samsungs factories in Vietnam. In response to the call of the government of Vietnam, which is raising the localisation rate and the presence of Vietnamese enterprises in Samsung's component supply chain, since 2015, Samsungs supporting programmes have helped increase the competitiveness of Vietnamese enterprises, bringing positive achievements in improving equipment efficiency as well as reducing inventory days and poor-quality stages. Through the consulting, all suppliers have achieved good results, including average 25 per cent reduction in defect rate and a 30 per cent increase in manufacturing capacity During the past two years, Samsung has always endeavoured to support Vietnamese enterprises in increasing their competitiveness in production and product quality. The consultation expansion into hi-tech industry with the aim of assisting local firms in producing sophisticated parts and joining the value chain is a strong affirmation for Samsung's long-term and sustainable commitments in Vietnam, Han Myoung Sup, president of Samsung Complex Vietnam, said. This consultation programme is one of the Samsungs efforts to dramatically increase the number of local firms participating in its supply chain with 201 vendors in total (23 tier-1 vendors and 178 tier-2 vendors). They are participating in supply chain for three Samsungs plants in Vietnam, namely Samsung Electronics Vietnam (SEV), Samsung Electronics Vietnam Thai Nguyen (SEVT), and SEHC Complex in Ho Chi Minh City. It is expected that, Samsungs total number of tier-1 vendors will increase to 29 ones in 2017. Besides, Samsung Vietnam has also recorded the significant breakthrough in raising the localisation rate of products from 35 per cent in 2014 to 57 per cent at present. This year, the turning point in supporting programme for high-tech enterprises will promisingly create more opportunities for Vietnamese suppliers to join Samsung's global value chain as well as help Samsung achieve its goal of increasing localisation rate in 2017. Narcotics Cell has busted a network of drug peddlers supplying narcotics drugs in Delhi and has arrested two Nigerian nationals. By Tanseem Haider: Narcotics Cell of Crime Branch has busted a network of drug peddlers supplying narcotics drugs in Delhi and has arrested two Nigerian nationals Kennedy Dominic and Anayo Godswill. Kennedy Dominic came to India in 2014 and Anayo Godswill, the main kingpin, came 8 years ago. On April 1, Narcotics Cell officials received information that one Nigerian national named Kennedy Dominic residing in Uttam Nagar, Delhi is indulging in sale & supply of cocaine in the national capital. advertisement On this tip-off, a team of Narcotics Cell officials laid a trap and he was apprehended with 210 grams of cocaine worth Rs 10 lakh (approx.) During interrogation, accused Dominic disclosed that he used to sell & supply cocaine on higher price after getting them from another Nigerian national Anayo Godswill at cheaper rates. Soon, Anayo Godswill too was apprehended from his house in Uttam Nagar and 282 gram cocaine was recovered during search. During interrogation, he revealed he came to India 8 years back and was living with an Indian woman in live-in-relationship and indulged in sale & supply of cocaine in Delhi and nearby areas. He invested the money earned from the sale of drug in exporting Indian sarees to Nigeria where his elder brother runs a garment shop. Also read: Nigerian man held for possessing 53 grams cocaine --- ENDS --- Kevin Frazier, a spokesman for Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, said that CEO Sergio Marchionne believed the company needed to know more about a potential border adjustment tax plan, (AFP/MARCO BERTORELLO) Tax plans advanced by some Republicans currently include arrangements to reform corporate taxation while favoring exports but discouraging imports. President Donald Trump has said the measure could be a job creator but the proposal has faced stiff opposition from some conservatives and import-reliant industries. Draft legislation has not been introduced. Kevin Frazier, a spokesman for Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, said on Thursday that CEO Sergio Marchionne believed the company needed to know more. "While it's our practice not to discuss future product and production plans, let me remind you that Mr Marchionne has said that 'were waiting for clarity,' Frazier told AFP in an email. Mark Reuss, GM's executive vice president for product development, told reporters this week that carmakers planned and developed their product lines years in advance. This made it difficult to anticipate what the future effects of the shifting political landscape would be, he said, adding that a border tax remained a significant unknown. "We don't really know what that is," Reuss said. "How do you make product plans and capacity allocations?" Reuss spoke to reporters after a news conference at the GM Technical Center in Detroit, where he introduced a new Buick Regal that will be built for GM by Opel in Germany. The production of the Regal in Russelsheim will go forward even though GM is selling both the Opel and Vauxhall brands to France's PSA Group, he added. Plans to manufacture the car in Germany did not anticipate a possible US border tax, which could raise the price of the Regal and other imported vehicles significantly. GM is developing contingency plans to shift production and capital if US tax policy changes, according to Reuss. "The agility piece is very important. You have to be prepared to do it faster than anybody else," he said. Buick now sells vehicles in the US that are built in China and South Korea as well as in the European Union. Meanwhile, Fiat Chrysler is moving ahead with plans to import the new Jeep Compass into the United States from Mexico, starting this month. Ford, however, has said it will absorb a US$200 million write-off a Mexican assembly plant on which construction had already started but halted in January. Viet Nam Dairy Products Joint Stock Company, or Vinamilk, will spend almost US$11 million to buy its Cambodian partners entire stake in Angkor Dairy Product Company Limited (Angkormilk) in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.-Photo soha.vn Viet Nam is also Cambodias third largest partner, with bilateral trade reaching $3 billion until the end of last year. The two countries are striving to raise the figure to $5 billion in the following years. In the first two months of the year, two-way trade turnover reached $624.1 million, up 21.2 per cent compared with the same period last year. In addition, Viet Nam was always among the highest number of visitors to Cambodia, and vice versa, as Cambodian tourists consider Viet Nam their top choice for travel. The information was presented by Vietnamese Ambassador to Cambodia Thach Du at a seminar in Cambodia, held by the Vietnamese Embassy with the participation of some 100 Vietnamese firms. Traditional friendship, favourable geographical conditions and concerns of the two governments were the foundation for promoting economic, trade and investment co-operation between Viet Nam and Cambodia in recent years, Du added. The seminar was aimed at helping Viet Nams enterprises better understand the situation and business opportunities in Cambodia to continue to maintain the leading position in the country. It provided an opportunity to connect with other businesses investing in Cambodia. Many representatives of companies attending the seminar, such as the Association of Vietnamese Investors in Cambodia (AVIC), Viet Nam Rubber Group (VRG), Metfone, Angkor Milk and Chak Angre Hospital, also mentioned their difficulties and obstacles in doing business abroad. In addition, they proposed some recommendations of the enterprise community on existing issues, such as tax and visa-related issues for Vietnamese workers, to the governments of the two countries. By Press Trust of India: BJP New Delhi, Apr 6 (PTI) The nominations of six BJP candidates in the MCD polls were rejected during scrutiny, even as the party today accused the Kejriwal government of "pressurising" the returning officers for rejecting party candidates nominations on "trivial" grounds. The BJP candidate from SC (Women) reserved Lado Sarai seat Rinki Kumar was cancelled for furnishing "incorrect" caste certificate. advertisement She was asked by the returning officer to clarify her caste although, it was mentioned as Bairwa, alleged Delhi BJP general secretary Kuljeet Chahal. Nominations of BJP candidates from Baprola, Trilokpuri, Abul Fazal Enclave, Vinod Nagar and Kishanganj wards have also been rejected. The BJP will now contest only on 266 of the 272 ward seats as there was no covering candidate available for the seats from where the nominations of its candidates have been cancelled. It has also given five seats to its partner Akali Dal and hence the effective number of wards contested by the party will be only 261. Party MP Meenakshi Lekhi today met State Election Commissioner S K Srivastava and complained against the rejection of BJP candidates nominations on "trivial" grounds. A Delhi BJP delegation led by Chahal met Lt Governor Anil Baijal and complained against rejection of nominations allegedly under "pressure" from the Kejriwal government. "The returning officers work under the Delhi government and they are under pressure from it to reject the nominations of the BJP candidates," Chahal said. The nomination of Trilokpuri reserved ward candidate Saroj Singh was rejected because the male/female column was not marked, while signature of Ravi Negi, who had filed nominations from Vinod Nagar seat, were missing, Chahal said. "It is duty of the returning officers to help candidates to fill the forms properly but it seems they are working under pressure," he said. Besides, six candidates of BJP, nominations of one candidate of Congress and 24 of Swaraj India have also been rejected. Nearly 40 per cent of the total 4500 nominations received for 272 wards in three municipal corporations have been rejected during scrutiny, said an official of State Election Commission. 619 nominations have been rejected in the North, 763 in the South and 337 in the East Delhi Municipal Corporations, he said. Also, 7 candidates in East, 6 in North and 4 in South MCD withdrew their nominations today, he added. PTI VIT SMJ --- ENDS --- advertisement Jasmine Yahid, 25, had plastic surgery on her nose on Jan. 15, 2015, to improve her profile. She is photographed here on Jan. 31 in Santa Monica, Calif. Language arts students at Carver Middle School in Miami-Dade County prepare for the state assessments. Across Florida, parents are pushing back on standardized tests. Some say schoolchildren are taking too many exams. Others have concerns about the quality of the tests, and the way the results are being used. (Charlotte Southern/Miami Herald/TNS) The director of the Documentation Center for Cambodia (DC-Cam), Youk Chhang, who has devoted much of his life preserving information about Khmer Rouge atrocities, has won the Judith Lee Stronach Human Rights Award. Chhang will head to San Francisco in May to receive the award from the Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA). Like millions of his fellow Cambodians, Chhang was a survivor of the Khmer Rouge regime. He fled to the United States as a refugee, but memories of the suffering he endured brought him back to his homeland in the early 1990s. He founded DC-Cam and has led the organization since 1995, creating a national genocide education program. Nushin Sarkarati, a senior attorney at CJA, said that without Chhangs dedication there would be little justice for the victims and survivors. Without the work that he and DC-Cam and other human rights defenders in Cambodia did on the ground to preserve the evidence of this crime, there would be no justice today for the victims in Cambodia or the victims of the Khmer Rouge, specifically. Beth Van Schaack, a Stanford law professor who advises DC-Cam, said the groups orientation towards victims made Chhang a natural choice for the award. What CJA really admires about DC-Cam is it also has a very victim centered approach, working-hard to help Cambodian victims, experience justice before the ECCC [Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia] and DC-Cam has become in many ways a model for other documentation centers around the world that are collecting information that can be submitted to justice processes where human rights are concerned, she said. Nate Thayer, a journalist who has reported on Cambodia for some three decades, said without Chhangs work, the Khmer Rouge perpetrators would have gotten away with their crimes. Youk Chhang was a one-man army fighting for justice for those who suffered in Cambodia and his personal passion and devotion bringing those who responsible for mass murder to justice, to face the music, to answer for their crime. Peter Maguire, a law professor and an author of Facing Death in Cambodia, called Chhang a Cambodian national treasure whose efforts bring more truth and reconciliation to the Cambodian people than the combined efforts of the United Nations and ECCC. I would say that Youk Chhang is nothing less than a Cambodian national treasure, and that he plays the key role in Cambodians taking possession of their history, he said. Neth Pheaktra, ECCC spokesman, told VOA Khmer that DC-Cam deserved the award as it had uncovered valuable evidence that could be used at the court. The work that DC-Cam has done helps the ECCC save time in finding evidence by ourselves, and it shows us the way, brings us information as well as some historical documents we needed for the trials. The annual award, which launched in 2007, is named after the late human rights activist Judith Lee Stronach. The award is given annually to an individual or an organization which has made an outstanding contribution to the movement for global justice, according to CJA. Chhang is currently working on developing the Sleuk Rith Institute, a permanent hub for genocide studies in Asia based in Phnom Penh. In Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary, four days had passed by the time the 11 mud-cloaked elephants were rescued from a large bomb crater where they were trapped. The rescue came after local villagers found the stranded herd and contacted the environment department in Mondulkiri province, who alerted the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). The elephants were likely walking along a path to drink at a nearby creek when one or more juveniles fell into the crater. As other members of the family came to the rescue, they in turn became stuck in the mud. Keo Sopheak, head of the Mondulkiri Environment Department, said locals pumped water into the crater and dug with their hands to free the elephants, who were submerged up to their shoulders. A slope was dug into the crater and tree branches laid to allow the elephants to climb out once they had been freed. The rescuers offered sugar cane, bamboo leaves and bananas to the elephants after they were freed, a move that the WCS said should never be attempted with wild elephants. Tan Setha of the WCS said the rescue had prevented a great loss of Cambodias ecosystem. If the community had not come together with the Wildlife Conservation Society, Elephant Livelihood Initiative Environment (E.L.I.E) and the Department of Environment, to rescue these 11 Asian Elephants, this would have been a tragedy, he said. Ross Sinclair, WCS country director, said: This is a great example of everyone working together in Cambodia to save wildlife. Too often the stories around conservation are about conflict and failure, but this is one about cooperation and success. That the last elephant to be rescued needed everyone to pull together on a rope to drag it to safety is symbolic of how we have to work together for conservation, he added. Rapid agricultural development, endemic corruption and a booming population has led to increasing threats against wildlife in Cambodias protected areas. Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary is one of Cambodias flagship protected areas. Not only does it contain a regionally important population of Asian elephants, and local indigenous communities dependent on the area for their livelihoods, but also was the first successful demonstration of the Reduced Emission from Deforestation and Degradation conservation financing model in the country, WCS told VOA in an email. Sopheak of the environment department said that the government is stepping up its protection efforts in the sanctuary by way of selling carbon credits to The Walt Disney Company. Currently, the government is reinforcing the protection of Seima sanctuary because these days the government is selling carbon which they called REDD+ to Disney, a company in America. So the government takes a step in preventing further forest clearance. U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday he ordered a targeted military strike against an airfield controlled by Syrian President Bashar al-Assads forces. A deadly chemical attack was launched this week from that base. Here are the reactions of some members of Congress: House Speaker Paul Ryan This action was appropriate and just. Resolving the years-long crisis in Syria is a complex task, but Bashar al-Assad must be held accountable, and his enablers must be persuaded to change course. I look forward to the administration further engaging Congress in this effort. Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham Building on tonights credible first step, we must finally learn the lessons of history and ensure that tactical success leads to strategic progress. That means following through with anew, comprehensive strategy in coordination with our allies and partners to end the conflict in Syria. Senator Bob Corker, chairman Senate Foreign Relations It is critical that Assad knows he will no longer enjoy impunity for his horrific crimes against his own citizens, and this proportional step was appropriate. As we move forward, it will be important for the administration to engage with Congress and clearly communicate its full strategy to the American people. Representative Ed Royce, chairman House Foreign Affairs Assad was warned, repeatedly, by the U.S. and the U.N. that the intentional targeting of innocent men, women and children is intolerable. Now Assad has been caught red-handed carrying out another abhorrent chemical attack, and the administration has taken a measured response. Representative Adam Schiff, ranking member, House Intelligence I will be reintroducing an authorization for use of military force against ISIS and al-Qaida when Congress returns to session. Congress cannot abdicate its responsibility any longer and should vote on any use of force not made in self-defense. This is necessary whether action is taken against terrorist groups or, as here, against regime capabilities. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer Making sure Assad knows that when he commits such despicable atrocities he will pay a price is the right thing to do. It is incumbent on the Trump administration to come up with a strategy and consult with Congress before implementing it. Senator Ben Cardin, top Democrat on Senate Foreign Relations I cannot emphasize this enough, any longer-term or larger military operation in Syria by the Trump administration will need to be done in consultation with the Congress. Furthermore, it is the presidents responsibility to inform the legislative branch and the American people about his larger policy in Syria, as well as the legal basis for this action and any additional military activities in that country. Senator Marco Rubio, Republican on Senate Foreign Relations What must follow is a real and comprehensive strategy to ensure that Assad is no longer a threat to his people and to U.S. security, and that Russia no longer has free rein to support his regime. Republican Senator Rand Paul While we all condemn the atrocities in Syria, the United States was not attacked. The president needs congressional authorization for military action as required by the Constitution, and I call on him to come to Congress for a proper debate. Our prior interventions in this region have done nothing to make us safer, and Syria will be no different. Senator Dick Durbin, Democratic Whip My preliminary briefing by the White House indicated that this was a measured response to the Syrian nerve gas atrocity. Any further action will require close scrutiny by Congress, and any escalation beyond air strikes or missile strikes will require engaging the American people in that decision. Democratic Senator Chris Coons While Im encouraged that the Trump administration has felt compelled to act forcefully in Syria against the Assad regime, Im gravely concerned that the United States is engaging further militarily in Syria without a well-thought-out, comprehensive plan. Frankly, the presidents actions today generate more questions than answers. The cruise missiles that crashed down before dawn on a Syrian airfield sent a clear message to President Bashar Assad: The use of chemical weapons will be met with U.S. force. The outcome is less clear: Assads grip on power is as firm as ever and he has lost little of his ability to carry out more chemical attacks. President Donald Trump said the goal of the military action was deterrence. Officials said strikes targeted the Shayrat airfield to prevent it from being used to launch attacks like the one this week that killed about 100 people and provided sickening images of individuals suffering from exposure to a sarin-like nerve gas. The fields airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas were struck. Where is Syria policy going? The United States is not at war with Syria at least not yet. The intervention was extremely limited, giving Assads military the ability to end it there by changing its behavior and allowing for Washington to incrementally expand its military action if required. But the surprise barrage of missiles raises questions about where U.S. Syria policy is headed after Trumps rapid reversal of positions in recent days. Just last week, his administration stressed that removing Assad from power was no longer a priority and that Americas focus was entirely on defeating an Islamic State insurgency in the north of the country. But Thursday night Trump appeared to endorse a new, open-ended commitment to respond to any use by Assad of weapons of mass destruction. Watch: President Trump's Statement on US Missile Strikes on Syria It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons, Trump said. Assad could up the ante Such declarations carry risks. No U.S. officials declared the threat of more chemical weapons eliminated. If Assad isnt deterred, more attacks would mean more scenes of people foaming at the mouth in agony and bodies lying in heaps. The United States may have little option but to up the ante militarily. Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said the U.S. was still assessing the result of the 59 Tomahawks it fired, expressing hope that Assads government learned a lesson. He said it was ultimately the regimes choice if more U.S. military action would be needed. That raises the potential for Assad to suck the U.S. deeper into the Arab countrys brutal, six-year civil war. The conflict has killed hundreds of thousands of people, contributed to the worst refugee crisis since World War II, and shows no end in sight. Assads forces are locked in battle with a bitter, if weakening, opposition camp. Under President Barack Obama, the United States spent most of the war trying to stay out of the fray. Engaging the Syrian government as an enemy means Damascus can respond in kind. That creates added danger for U.S. forces on the ground in northern Syria waging a separate war against the Islamic State group, and American aircraft targeting extremist groups from Syrias skies. Up to now, despite public complaints, Syrias government and its allies, Russia and Iran, have essentially given the United States and its coalition partners a free pass to conduct their counterterrorism mission. And if Trump is now willing to protect Syrians from chemical attacks, will he feel compelled to shield others from what has been Assads more pervasive slaughter? Perversely, the U.S. strikes also risk emboldening Assad to use even greater brutality if he senses Washingtons intrusion as a threat to his rule. One strike against one air base may be enough to deter him from using sarin gas again, but it will not deter his effort to target civilians, target hospitals, said Jennifer Cafarella, a Mideast expert at the Institute for the Study of War. Russia, Iran relations The United States is also in a murky situation now with Assads two key international backers. Keen to avoid any accident that would create a confrontation with Moscow, Trump administration officials told their Russian counterparts of the impending attack and warned them to stay away. U.S. officials, meanwhile, said little about Iran, a country that could retaliate against the United States and its allies in a variety of ways, from interfering with Persian Gulf shipping to provoking Israel. But Edward Djerejian, a former U.S. ambassador to Syria and professor at Rice University, said Trumps message to the regions potential foes was clear. Assad thought he had a green light to do what he needed to do in Syria to counter the opposition to his regime, Djerejian said. By proceeding with this attack, its a signal to Assad, to the Russians, its a signal to the Iranians, to Hezbollah and all those supporting Assads regime that this is not a free playing field. There are limits. U.S. President Trump sits down with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte looks to shore up assets in the South China Sea as ASEAN continues to negotiate a code of conduct with Beijing. Myanmars leader says theres no ethnic cleansing of Rohingya, but others object. Plus, Japan tries to rekindle ties with South Korea. VOAs Steve Miller gives you a glimpse at what happened April 3-7, 2017. By Press Trust of India: From Namita Tewari Budapest, Apr 7 (PTI) Lending more depth to business ties with India, Hungary Prime Minister Viktor Orban today inaugurated Apollo Tyres largest greenfield facility in the country with an investment of 475 million euros. This is Apollo Tyres sixth global manufacturing unit and the second one in Europe and its final capacity at the end of Phase I would be 5.5 million passenger car and light truck (PCLT) tyres and 675,000 commercial vehicle tyres. advertisement There have been unexpected developments around the world in the global security arena, Orban said at his inaugural address. "There will not be any compromise on safety and security issues whether during war or peace...security of people living here will be prime," Orban said as he inaugurated the facility by breaking a coconut in the traditional Indian manner. The Prime Minister said there were "well-educated pessimists who used to say opening towards the East is hopeless" but history is changing. Now it has been proved that "anything from the East is increasingly dominant in the world and India is an example," he said. Orban said that the investment by Apollo Tyres should not be viewed as foreign investment and this should be viewed as advancement in a close relationship as "you (Apollo Tyres) are not strangers, you are members of a large family of Hungarians." He stressed that Hungary is the driving force in Central Europe and Apollo Tyres is at its centre adding that the bonds between India and Hungary were strong and were further consolidating. Located less than 100 km from the capital Budapest, this is Apollo Tyres first greenfield facility outside India, a highly automated plant with use of IT-driven systems and robotics, it employs young and skilled associates on the shopfloor, mostly hired locally. Speaking on the occasion Onkar S Kanwar, Chairman, Apollo Tyres said, "With this inauguration today, of our Hungary greenfield facility, we have crossed another milestone in our global growth journey. This facility will help us further increase our presence and market share in Europe. From being a replacement market focussed company in Europe, we would soon be starting supplies of our tyres to all the leading OEs in Europe." Built over 72 hectares, construction began at Gyongyoshalasz on April 10, 2015. The company is investing 475 million euros here and the final capacity at the end of Phase I would be 5.5 million passenger car and light truck (PCLT) tyres and 6,75,000 commercial vehicle tyres. This facility will complement Apollo Tyres existing facility in the Netherlands and produce both Apollo and Vredestein brand of tyres for the European market. advertisement The Gyongyoshalasz facility will produce both Apollo and Vredestein branded tyres and will cater to the entire European market. Apollo Tyres turnover stands at USD 1.8 billion, backed by a global workforce of around 16,000 employees. PTI NAM MKJ --- ENDS --- Conservative activist groups that generally support Republicans but oppose a pro-export, anti-import Republican tax proposal released a study on Thursday estimating its impact on individual U.S. states, underscoring the party's division over taxes. The two activist groups, backed by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, reported that seven states won by President Donald Trump in November's election would be among the 10 hardest hit by the proposal. Freedom Partners and Americans for Prosperity, both based in the Washington area, said the "border adjustment tax," or BAT, would harm all 50 states, but that those heavily dependent on imports could suffer most. The report predicted economic harm to Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas all states Trump won in the 2016 presidential election. The list of hard-hit states also includes California, New Jersey and Illinois, which Democrat Hillary Clinton carried. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, a Texas Republican who intends to include the BAT in tax reform legislation this spring, sharply criticized the study. 'Fantasy figures' "That so-called study will be easily discredited and probably fits the definition of fake news," Brady told reporters. "It takes one provision, pretends the economy freezes ... applies it in our current tax code and comes up with fantasy figures." BAT, billed as a way to boost U.S. manufacturing, would exempt export revenues from federal tax, while ending the deductibility of import costs by corporations, making imports for production or resale costlier. The plan is part of a tax reform blueprint supported by House Speaker Paul Ryan. Trump is also working on a tax plan. The proposal is also opposed by a number of Senate Republicans who could prevent its passage, should the House approve a tax reform bill that contains it. Koch organizations, including the brothers' privately held conglomerate, Koch Industries, have warned that BAT could devastate the U.S. economy by raising prices on consumer goods, including gasoline. Refineries owned by Koch Industries rely on oil imports from Canada. The Koch groups say they support tax reform but oppose BAT. Severe drought has displaced nearly half a million people in Somalia. In the Puntland region, herders who have lost their livestock are now seeking refuge in urban areas. Those towns are struggling to deal with the influx of displaced families. Neha Wadekar has the story for VOA from the town of Qardho. U.S. President Donald Trump said to light laughter at a Thursday evening dinner he hosted for Chinese President Xi Jinping that after a long discussion, I have gotten nothing, absolutely nothing from his guest. But Trump added that the two leaders, who chatted earlier at the presidents Florida resort, had quickly developed a friendship, and he predicted that long term were going to have a very, very great relationship and I look very much forward to it. Xi did not make remarks while reporters were in the Mar-a-Lago dining room, and Trump did not answer questions about Syria or North Korea directed at him by journalists. Earlier, Trump and members of his administration made it clear they hope to pressure Beijing into doing more to rein in North Koreas nuclear weapons development. Trade high on agenda In remarks to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump said the roughly $310 billion U.S. trade deficit with China is high on the agenda. We have been treated unfairly and have made terrible trade deals with China for many, many years. So thats one of the things were gonna be talking about. But he also appeared to link that issue with U.S. concerns over North Koreas nuclear weapons program. The other thing, of course, is going to be North Korea, and somehow they will mix. They really do mix. So were going to be talking about trade, North Korea, and many other things, he said, without elaborating. A working lunch also is on the agenda for the two leaders Friday. North Korea 'a big problem' Earlier this week, Trump warned, If China is not going to solve North Korea, we will. His administration is considering sanctions against Chinese banks and companies that give Pyongyang access to international financing. China supplies North Korea with almost all its fuel oil, imported foods, consumer goods and the raw materials used to construct its weapons program. But China also has grown weary of the militaristic aspirations of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who has yet to visit Beijing during his six-year rule. A series of U.N. sanctions against North Korea have not deterred it from a string of missile tests, the latest this week. Trump and Xi, who oversee the worlds two largest economies, are meeting for the first time. On Wednesday, Trump said dealing with North Koreas nuclear development program could have been made a lot easier if it was handled years ago. But the U.S. leader, in office less than three months, said he welcomes the challenge. We have a big problem; we have somebody that is not doing the right thing, and thats going to be my responsibility, Trump said. Differing views on climate According to advance thoughts on the summit from Beijing, Xi could offer the United States more Chinese investments, which would create more American jobs, a key Trump campaign pledge. Under former U.S. President Barack Obama, Chinese American relations often were focused on curbing greenhouse gas emissions in the two biggest polluting countries in the world. But Xi and Trump have taken sharply divergent paths on curbing pollution. The Chinese government recently canceled construction of more than 100 coal-fired power plants and is investing at least $360 billion in green energy projects by 2020.Trump, meanwhile, has vowed to bring back mining jobs that have been lost through automation and closure of U.S. mines, as the country has turned to the use of cheaper natural gas. Trump in the past has described global warming as a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese to hurt the U.S. economy. Last week, he signed an executive order aimed at rolling back Obama-era policies regulating carbon emissions. Beijing appears to be focused more on atmospherics and slogans at the summit. From what analysts and officials in Beijing say, China will be watching closely for telltale signs that Washington may be adopting its view of relations between the two countries, the so-called new style of major power relations. US China relations defined China expects Trump to reaffirm a pledge that was made by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson last month, during his visit to Beijing. The two presidents are going to define the nature of the relationship between China and the United States as characterized by this phrase: no conflict, no confrontation, mutual respect and win-win cooperation, said Wang Dong, a political scientist at Peking University. Wang said China hopes the informal get-together will inject some stability into the relationship and help reduce the uncertainties that have arisen during the transition to the new administration. Just after sunrise, the crew from the Rappahannock Oyster Company heads out on the river to pull the first oyster cages of the day. Ean Reed navigates the small skiff by sight and memory, watching for rough patches in the water. The crew will pull nine cages full of two-year-old oysters bound for restaurants across the country. The Rappahannock Oyster Company was started in 2001 by Ryan Croxton whose grandfather, decades earlier, fished oysters from the muddy Rappahannock River bottom near the Chesapeake Bay. As the boat enters shallow water, Reed raises the outboard motor while pointing out local landmarks such as the 3-kilometer Norris Bridge connecting Virginia's Lancaster and Middlesex counties. He starts pulling up the almost-meter-square cages, which look a little rough for wear after nearly two years on the bottom. "They grew a little faster than we thought they would," said Reed, concerned the oysters might be bigger than the cocktail-sized oysters most restaurants prefer. Since 2001, the Rappahannock Oyster Company has opened six restaurants from nearby Washington, D.C., all the way to Los Angeles, California. Known for their not-too-salty, almost-buttery taste, the river oysters have become prized by connoisseurs. EPA success story The company is one of many success stories brought on by a decades-old program funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to improve water quality in the Chesapeake Bay the largest estuary in the U.S. and its tributaries. The Chesapeake Bay Program began in 1983 as a partnership between six surrounding states and the District of Columbia to clean up the heavily polluted bay. At the time, the bay's once abundant fish, crabs and shellfish stocks were in serious decline from overfishing, sewage, and nitrogen-rich farm runoff that produced large algae blooms. The algae consumed the water's oxygen and blocked sunlight, killing bottom grasses where fish and shellfish live and breed. The program was strengthened in 2010 by using the EPA's Clean Water Act to strike an agreement among six surrounding states and Washington DC, capping the total amount of pollution allowed into the bay by 2025. The American Farm Bureau Federation and the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau, representing farmers who believed the restrictions would be too costly for them, filed suit, arguing the that the EPA overreached. Some 20 other states attorneys general joined the lawsuit, including Attorney General of Oklahoma Scott Pruitt, who is now President Trump's EPA administrator. A federal court threw out the suit in 2013. When the Supreme Court declined to hear the case, it was effectively over. In the years since, the Chesapeake's program has widely been considered a success. Water quality has steadily improved. Fish and shellfish have come roaring back. So, too, have the jobs connected with the fishing and aquaculture industry. Former critics like Scott Pruitt came to praise what he called the bay's "pollution diet." During his Senate confirmation hearing earlier this year, Pruitt said his objections were rooted in the concern that the EPA might take similar action in other parts of the country. But he said he believed the program should be "commended and celebrated." Trump plan That is why many were stunned to hear President Donald Trump, in his first budget to Congress, propose cancelling the $73-million funding grant to the EPA to run the Chesapeake Bay Program. "I think it is a horrible idea," said Reed. "It never should have been thought of. We need to keep funds into that because if not, everything is going to get trashed and dirty. It is just going to be horrible, and I guess we will find the outcome sooner or later." Following up on his campaign pledge, Trump has begun rolling back water-quality regulations and cutting funds from the EPA's budget. In February, Trump signed an executive order rolling back the Obama-era "Waters of the U.S. Rule," which clarified which waterways and wetlands would fall under federal protection. Trump argued the regulation was a power grab by the federal government and a symbol of regulation run amok. The rules were opposed by ranchers, farmers and agricultural workers who say the regulations extended beyond federal land and prevented them from performing simple tasks like drilling wells on their land to water cattle. In February, flanked by representatives from ranching and agricultural interests, Trump signed the executive order rolling back the regulation. "The EPA's regulators were putting people out of jobs by the hundreds of thousands," he said, harkening back to his campaign theme that environmental regulation kills jobs. Fight for funding Environmentalists were alarmed. Kim Coble, vice president of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, couldn't disagree more. Speaking about the bay region, she said, "We found that clean water will bring an additional $22 billion a year to this economy, conservatively estimated. So there is no doubt in our mind that there is a direct link between clean water and jobs." Trumps' cuts to the EPA would also include funding for the Chesapeake Bay Program. His budget recommends returning responsibility for such programs to the state and local levels, arguing Washington should not fund regional efforts. Advocates describe the EPA's function in the program as the glue that holds the six states of the Chesapeake watershed and Washington, D.C., together. "They provide the science that really drives the numbers in terms of what is coming out of the waterways and into the bay," said Coble. "They work with the states to design plans to clean it up." Coble says the funding also went to academic institutions to do the actual monitoring. "They can't afford to do it without that money," she said. "So if you think about trying to design a cleanup program of an estuary the size of the Chesapeake Bay without any oversight and coordination, it is basically trying to fly a plane without any instruments." Oysters are filter feeders that live off nutrients floating by in the water. An oyster's reproductive cycle is very susceptible to the slightest changes in water chemistry, something monitored under the EPA program. The possibility that oversight could be cut is alarming to aquaculture farmers like Patrick Oliver, who manages three oyster farms for the Rappahannock Oyster Company. "If that water doesn't slightly have the right chemistry, the oysters will not spawn correctly," he said. Oliver is also concerned about ocean acidification caused by global warming. Over-acidification inhibits an oyster's ability to produce its shell. "Aquaculture, especially in the state of Virginia, is just booming. It is an industry that is just taking off. And it's going to need all the foresight it can get, basically, to continue on that path," Oliver said. Bay advocates say there is still hope. Seventeen members of Congress have signed a letter to Trump urging him to restore funding to the Chesapeake Bay Program. Congress is expected to review Trump's 2018 budget over the next several months. Ethiopia has declared an outbreak of acute watery diarrhea, also known as AWD, in the country's Somali region, where people are already struggling to cope with a persistent drought. Dr. Akpaka Kalu, the World Health Organization representative to Ethiopia, told VOA on Friday that 16,000 cases of AWD had been recorded in the region since January. The total number of deaths is uncertain. Regional President Abdi Mohammed Omar said Friday that 19 children had died of AWD in Dollo zone, an area near the southern border with Somalia. This week, residents of a remote village, Qorile, told VOAs Somali service that dozens had died and more than 700 had received treatment for the illness. Omar said some of the treatment centers set up to address the outbreak were making headway. We have managed to control the worst effects of the disease by establishing temporary emergency medical posts in remote villages," he said. Federal authorities have deployed 500 nurses and 68 doctors to fight the disease, in addition to 700 trained health officers, he told VOA's Amharic service. Additionally, the WHO has deployed teams on the ground and set up treatment camps to address the outbreak. Kalu said a U.N. team regional coordinator, WHO representatives and a few others would go to the Somali region, also known as the Ogaden, on Saturday to assess the situation. From WHO, for example, we have nearing 40 people on the ground right now. A team went there today in addition to the team thats been on the ground for some months now," he said over the telephone. "So we are there working, supporting them to bring it under control." Managing the outbreak Ethiopian officials insist on describing the outbreak as one of AWD, not cholera, which has similar symptoms. On Monday, a woman who told VOA Somali that she had lost five relatives to cholera and that hundreds of people were suffering from the disease was reportedly arrested by Ethiopian authorities. She was released Wednesday. In neighboring Somalia, government officials have reported more than 13,000 cases of cholera and 300 deaths since January. WHO said cholera cases were five times greater than what the country experienced last year. It is not clear what is causing the outbreak in Ethiopia. But Kalu said the government was assessing the situation to try to determine the cause. Asked whether it was a cholera outbreak, Kalu said, Cholera is a laboratory diagnosis. You have to test the stool to confirm the cause of the acute watery diarrhea. The government of Ethiopia has declared it acute watery diarrhea. The [assessment] is going on to confirm the causes of acute watery diarrhea, and government is doing that. Projects suspended The outbreak comes as Ethiopian authorities attempt to deal with a dire regional drought. An estimated 5.6 million Ethiopians are in need of emergency food aid. Another 6 million people face starvation in neighboring Somalia and the breakaway republic of Somaliland. This week Somaliland decided to suspend development projects to focus on drought response and related disease emergency assistance. Ethiopia and Kenya have partially diverted funds from infrastructure investments to finance drought relief efforts. U.N. humanitarian coordinators have requested close to $1 billion to provide food, water and sanitation assistance in Ethiopia. The World Food Program announced it needs $268 million to provide food assistance in Ethiopia from now until July. Washingtons allies in Europe have offered a cautious welcome to the United States missile strikes on Syrian military targets. The US action was in response to a chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held town, which the West blames on the regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad. Several European powers have called for the international community to take further measures against Syria via the United Nations, as Henry Ridgwell reports from London. The European Parliament on Thursday supported easing travel rules for Ukrainians, driving on a Western integration viewed with great suspicion by Moscow. Ukraine has been the scene of the worst confrontation between Russia and the West in Europe since the Cold War with Moscow annexing Crimea from Kyiv in 2014 and backing separatist rebels in the east of the country. The West has sided with Ukraine, where Russia intervened after a Moscow-allied president was toppled by street protests demanding an end to corruption and closer EU ties. Russia denies direct military involvement in its southern neighbor. European lawmakers voted 521 to 75 to grant Ukrainians holding biometric passports the right to visit for up to 90 days for tourism, business or visiting relatives and friends. "Great day for the people of Europe and Ukraine," said Anna Maria Corazza Bildt, a Swedish member of the Parliament. The visa waiver, which does not give Ukrainians the right to work in the EU, is expected to take effect this summer. The pro-Western government in Kiev is moving closer to the EU and NATO. But a weak economy and endemic corruption would hinder any move to accession, and some states would be unwilling to further anger Ukraine's Soviet-era ruler, Russia, by incorporating it into an alliance it views as hostile. The waiver covers all EU states except Ireland and Britain, as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland - not in the EU but members of Europe's free-travel Schengen zone. Kyiv's Europe Minister Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze said the vote on Thursday was "a strong signal to the aggressor that Ukraine is on its way back to the European family." Three years of fighting in Ukraine's industrial east killed more than 10,000 people. While the heaviest battles have died down, the conflict is still simmering and peace efforts are stalled amid mutual recriminations by Kyiv, EU and NATO on the one side, and Russia and the rebels on the other. Pirooz Parvarandeh, a longtime Silicon Valley executive, saw a problem. Although he has lived in the United States for more than 40 years, he knew little about the contributions and accomplishments of Iranian Americans like himself. That lack of knowledge is widespread, he feared, and in his view makes Iranians in America more subject to stereotypes, discrimination and attacks. "What image comes up with 'Iranian'? A terrorist? A hostage-taker? Or a contributing member of society?" he asked at a talk this week at the University of California, Berkeley. "If we don't know the contributions of Iranian Americans, how can we expect the American public to know? If the public is not with us, why would policymakers want to stick up for us?" Last year, Parvarandeh met with other Iranian Americans to come up with the Iranian Americans' Contribution Project, a nonprofit that uses technology to gather and analyze data about Iranian Americans. Their efforts picked up steam after Iran was listed among countries included in the Trump administration's travel ban. "We want to build a shield," Parvarandeh said. "We want to build a protective mechanism to say, 'Here is what we've done.'" Counting contributions Parvarandeh's quest is one that many immigrant groups have considered as they try to both assimilate in the U.S. and stand proud of their cultural identity. For Iranian Americans, the issue has been especially complicated by long-standing tensions between the U.S. and Iran. An estimated one million Iranians live in the U.S., mainly in California. The project aims to stay out of the political fray and has no religious affiliation. It approaches the question of Iranian Americans' contributions in a systematic way, something Parvarandeh considers "pioneering" among all of the U.S. diaspora groups. Working with software engineers, the project has come up with an algorithm that captures 200,000 unique Iranian last names and 70,000 unique first names. By applying that algorithm to public databases the organization buys or finds of professional organizations, scholarly articles and licensing bodies, the project creates a snapshot of Iranian Americans in a variety of professions. So far, the project has found 490 Iranian American chiropractors, more than 9,000 physicians, more than 3,000 dentists and about 1,000 pharmacists. Iranians have been awarded at least 40,000 patents and they make up more than 2.5 percent of lawyers admitted to the State Bar of California. On its website, the project shows where Iranians in a variety of professions are on a U.S. map, sometimes county by county. It also offers a breakdown of professions of people found through LinkedIn. Since some Iranian names can be found in other countries, the algorithm also calculates the probability that a person is Iranian. Building a brand The approach has its limits. The second generation of Iranian Americans and people marrying non-Iranian Americans may begin to take more American-sounding names. But Parvarandeh says he is hoping that Iranian Americans will participate in the project and help make it more accurate. At the moment, the data is anonymized, meaning that it doesn't list the names of people it captures. But the project combines the data with interviews with Iranian Americans about their life stories and accomplishments. "There are many arrows being shot in our direction," he said. "There's anti-immigrant sentiment in the U.S. and Europe. What we're trying to do is build a reputation, build a brand." Collapsing Islamic State's self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria will not be enough to slow the terror group's plots against the West and elsewhere, according to multiple U.S. and Western officials. U.S. officials, in particular, are bracing for what could be a "significant lag" between the time Islamic State is routed from its remaining holdings in Iraq and Syria and when its brand and loyal operatives cease to pose a serious global threat. "The very welcome defeat of ISIS's army-like capabilities in Iraq and Syria will not bring an end to the global terrorist attack threat that ISIS poses," Lieutenant General Michael Nagata cautioned Wednesday, using an acronym for the terror group. Nagata is the strategic operational planning director at the National Counterterrorism Center, a division of the U.S. intelligence director's office. "ISIS's ability to export its ideology, its resources and people, and its intent to attack, they have demonstrated a global ability to do all these," Nagata told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington public policy research group. "They will continue to do so." European officials, especially those from countries already victimized by IS plots, are equally alarmed as they stare down a complex set of threats that, for the moment, have been networked under the terror group's banner. The challenge, many say, is Islamic State's approach to command and control, which is an organization's ability to exercise authority over a given area. Operatives, supporters Officials think the group's external plotters rely on carefully cultivated operatives with specific instructions and on loose networks of supporters, whom the plotters are constantly trying to inspire to act on their own. There also is a possibility the two groups overlap, sometimes in ways that may be difficult to foresee. "ISIS remains a dangerous enemy," a U.S. National Security Council official told VOA on condition of anonymity, noting the ongoing White House review of the country's anti-IS strategy. A key part of that review, the official said, has been "to understand and prepare for the evolution the group might undertake." On the surface, there seems to have been little change in the terror group's approach, with IS leaders and supporters continuing their drumbeat of calls for attacks on the West. "To the supporters of the caliphate in America, Russia and Europe, the enemy's interest can easily be targeted by you," IS spokesman Abu Hassan al-Muhajir said in an audio message published Tuesday on social media. "Make the enemy busy with itself so they can be distracted from targeting the nation of Islam." At the same time, IS propagandists have been trying to capitalize on attacks when they happen, like the one by Khalid Masood, 52, late last month on Westminster Bridge in London that killed three people and wounded dozens. British officials have said they think Masood acted alone, although IS claimed responsibility. "ISIS continues to publicly encourage actions that benefit its cause and distract from its battlefield losses," a U.S. counterterrorism official told VOA, adding that the group also "has shown its opportunism by stepping up its claims of inspired attacks even in cases that do not appear to be connected." And there are indications IS is trying to ramp up the pressure. "Following London, the group has increased its efforts to persuade supporters in the West to execute additional attacks," said Michael S. Smith II, a terrorism analyst who has consulted with the U.S. and British governments. "Islamic State officials have been devolving explicit directives to supporters here via the group's propaganda." Capabilities degraded But U.S. military officials say efforts on the ground in Iraq and Syria have weakened the terror group's capabilities, noting almost half of IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's inner circle has been killed. Former IS spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, considered to be the architect of the group's external plots, was one of the first to die, targeted in an airstrike near al-Bab, Syria, last August. Then in November, a series of U.S. airstrikes killed Boubaker al-Hakim, in charge of plotting attacks on the West, as well as Salah Gourmat and Sammy Djedou, both of whom had been linked to the Paris terror attacks in 2015. Still, some officials harbor deep concerns that IS may be capable of pulling off a more complex or devastating attack, noting the group has been able to use the past several years to build and entrench its external operations across Europe, while also finding ways to reach into central and south Asia, and even into the Asia-Pacific region. "They've already dispatched operatives. They may have teams who can attack," said Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a terrorism research group in Washington. "The virtual-planner model will remain feasible." Such concerns have resonated in countries like France and Belgium, which have seen relatively large numbers of residents flock to Syria and Iraq to join IS, while those countries also struggle with Islamist radicalization at home. "The French are aware that this terrorism will strike again," the French Interior Ministry's Muriel Domenach warned this week during a visit to Washington, pointing to 12,000 active cases tied to radicalization. And she warned that even those who appear to have acted alone almost certainly had help. "Most of those we thought were lone wolves proved to be Daesh-inspired or even Daesh-commanded," she said, using the terror group's Arabic acronym. In neighboring Belgium, authorities have 200 active terror-related investigations, with the number of terror convictions more than doubling since 2014. "For Belgium, this is a really big number," said Cedric Janssens de Bisthoven with the Belgium Embassy in Washington. "We're in this for the long haul." Returning fighters Belgium and other European countries also are deeply concerned about the potential impact of foreign fighters returning from the front in Syria and Iraq. "We still in Belgium have around 250 [Belgian] fighters in Syria, in Iraq," said Thomas Renard, a senior fellow at the Royal Institute for International Relations, an independent research group in Brussels. "The problem is that those people who will return now, we cannot assume that they return because they are disillusioned. They are returning because there is nothing to be done [in Syria and Iraq]." Such a return home is probably more difficult now than it once was, with efforts to shut down the flow of foreign fighters to Syria and Iraq also making it more difficult for fighters to move back. Still, intelligence officials note that IS operatives, including some tied to the terror attacks in Paris and Brussels, have successfully used forged documents. Yet, what frightens U.S. and other Western officials most is that the intelligence has provided "very little precision" about the movements of foreign fighters or other operatives. "It's hard to identify these people," said Nagata of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center. "The chaos around Syria ... if you want to hide, you can hide." "We have to be patient. We are not going to end this threat this year," he added. "I don't think we can identify a time horizon." New Delhi and Dhaka are set to sign an umbrella agreement to increase defense cooperation during Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's four-day visit to India, which begins Friday. All deals would be struck maintaining the friendly terms between the two countries, and there will be nothing detrimental to the interests of Bangladesh in the agreement, Hasina said Wednesday in Dhaka. But many security experts, diplomats and others in Bangladesh think the proposed agreement would not benefit Bangladesh and could even go against the country's interests. "Bangladesh does not need a defense pact with India, or for that matter with any other country, because it does not face any threat of external aggression from any of its neighbors," Serajul Islam, a former Bangladeshi diplomat, told VOA. "With China, a sworn enemy of India, Bangladesh has been in defense-related cooperation for decades. If Bangladesh signs such a defense pact [with India], it would be viewed by Beijing as a deal directed against it." Where are the details? Leaders of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party accused the Hasina-led government of not making public details of the agreement. "From whatever we have learned from the media, it appears Indian policymakers are coercing Bangladesh government to sign the agreement," BNP Joint Secretary General Ruhul Kabir Rizvi Ahmed told VOA. "The submission by the Bangladesh government to this Indian coercion has triggered an uneasiness and suspicion among people in the country." Bangladesh has long had a defense cooperation agreement with China, which is the country's largest military hardware supplier. With Chinese collaboration, Bangladesh also has been producing small arms and weapons for many years. In recent years, India has been trying to counter China's growing influence in the region. Soon after Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Dhaka in October, signing 27 deals amounting to $25 billion, India reportedly began pushing Bangladesh for an umbrella agreement. After India's Defense Minister Manohar Parikkar visited Bangladesh in December, and then other senior Indian foreign and defense ministry officials made trips to India pursuing the issue, it came to light that Dhaka and New Delhi were set to sign an umbrella agreement. 35 deals According to sketchy details of the pact, Bangladesh would sign up to 35 agreements and memoranda of understanding during Hasina's visit. The deals would include, among others, an increase in trade, cooperation on nuclear energy, distribution of water from common rivers and expansion of military cooperation, Bangladesh Foreign Minister Abul Hasan Mahmood Ali said this week. As part of the umbrella accord, India is expected to offer Bangladesh a $5 billion line of credit to develop infrastructure and purchase military hardware. Quoting anonymous sources, several Bangladeshi news agencies have reported that India will be mostly focused on the defense pact during Hasina's visit. India is pushing ahead with the agreement largely to counter China's expanding military influence in Bangladesh, said professor Rajagopal Dhar Chakraborti, director of the Center for South & South East Asian Studies at the University of Calcutta. "India wants Bangladesh to buy Indian military hardware and thus become less dependent on China. India wants to enter the defense market in Bangladesh, preferably through a long-term pact, aiming to cut down on China's share there," Chakraborti told VOA. The India-Bangladesh umbrella agreement also seeks to set up joint military production in Bangladesh. A Bangladeshi security analyst, retired Major General A.L.M. Fazlur Rahman, said a joint venture with India, apparently to produce small arms and light heavy weapons, would not help Bangladeshi militarily. Needs would be unmet "Since the 1970s, following the liberation of our country, our army have been using mostly Chinese-made small arms and light heavy weapons. We have also been producing arms in our ordnance factory in Bangladesh in collaboration with China, using the same world-class Chinese technology. India's military technology is not yet world-class standard, and it happens to be an arms-importing country," Rahman told VOA. "Setting up of a joint venture armament factory with India will certainly produce low-grade weaponry and will not at all help meet the advanced needs of Bangladesh army," he said. "As an old trusted friend, China supplies 90 percent of Bangladesh's military hardware needs and is set to invest massively in our country. If Bangladesh signs this agreement with India, we may lose this friend and become weak." On the other hand, Bangladesh can continue to remain a good neighbor of India, even without signing this strategically sensitive agreement, Rahman said. "Bangladesh should not do anything which makes it lose a friend like China and become dependent solely on India," he said. They were stranded on a small strip of land in the middle of the heavily burgeoned Poonch river. By Ashwini Kumar: The Indian Air Force rescued 17 villagers, which included a baby, from flash floods in Poonch on Thursday evening. They were stranded on a small strip of land in the middle of the heavily burgeoned Poonch river. The Army received the villagers and provided first aid and refreshments, thus bringing to a close the Herculean evacuation. Defence spokesman, Lt Col Manish Mehta said that on Thursday due to incessant rains in Poonch and adjoining areas were severely affected by floods, with water-level rising above dangerous levels. advertisement He said at 1200 hours, the 'Condors', a Mi-17 1V helicopter unit in Jammu, was tasked for this rescue. Spokesman said that due to the proximity of huts and electricity wires, the helicopter couldn't land and established a hover on the first island at fifteen feet. The Air Force Garud Commandos bravely went down a rope ladder and organised the villagers and started rescuing them one by one. The J&K state department requested the Indian Air Force for assistance, after and rescue efforts by the local authorities turned out to be futile. Also read: Water level in Jhelum crosses flood declaration mark Three soldiers killed as avalanches struck Ladakh --- ENDS --- Adios! With that front-page farewell, the daily El Norte newspaper in the northern Mexico city of Juarez announced its closing this week primarily out of fear for its journalists safety. The last print edition came out Sunday and the final digital edition was posted Tuesday, ending more than a quarter-century of covering the city and its surroundings at the U.S.-Mexico border, across from El Paso, Texas. Oscar Cantu Murguia, the papers director, told VOA he reached that decision after the March 23 shooting death of former colleague Miroslava Breach Velducea. A correspondent for La Jornada national newspaper, she was gunned down in her driveway in Chihuahua, capital city of the state that shares its name. Juarez lies at its northern edge, almost 350 kilometers, or 215 miles, north. The investigative journalists murder forced me to reflect that everything that we have done, what we have shown and published in 27 years, has not made any progress, Cantu said in a Skype interview Wednesday. He described the papers closing as his protest that deadly assaults against journalists are conducted with impunity. It is very painful to see a life lost, but it is even more painful if nothing is done to clarify that murder and to continue reporting on crimes as a natural occurrence, Cantu said, contending authorities dont aggressively investigate and prosecute attacks against journalists. Mexicos federal Special Prosecutor for Attention to Crimes Against Freedom of Expression said it had opened an investigation into the attack on Breach, the watchdog Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reported on the day of her shooting. Mexico is among the worlds most dangerous places for journalists, with at least 38 reported killed since 1992 for motives tied to their work, according to CPJ records. At least five of those deaths have occurred since October. That toll doesnt include other violence. Just days after Breachs death, Armando Arrieta Granados, a journalist with the daily Veracruz newspaper La Opinion, was shot and gravely wounded outside his home in the city of Poza Rica, according to the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, based at the University of Texas in Austin. The Veracruz attorney generals office announced it was investigating the March 29 shooting. Violence is wielded to silence or intimidate journalists. Breach reportedly had been probing the effects of drug trafficking on governance. Cantu said that El Norte over the years had reported on government improprieties and on corruption. We see how the three levels of government federal, state and municipal have led a policy of strangulation with the media, the Knight Center quoted Cantu as telling another news organization, El Universal, this week. It is institutionalized violence. Frankly, there is neither security nor economic conditions to continue working. El Norte, which published about 30,000 daily copies during the week and 35,000 on the weekend, had been grappling with financial distress. In interviews with various media, Cantu said Chihuahuas governor cancelled publicity contracts with the paper and still owed back payments for services rendered. The papers closing would put about 150 people out of work, he told The Washington Post. Some readers responded to the closing with sadness or indignation, telling the journalists they shouldnt give up. Cantu objected to the characterization. It is unjust to tell us that we surrender when it is society that has tolerated this situation, he told VOA. In his view, Mexican authorities have surrendered. By closing the paper, hes issuing a call so that we have more firmness. And let us not allow such crimes against the exercise of democracy. Everything in life has a beginning and an end, a price to pay, Cantu wrote in his final column for El Norte. And if this is life, I am not prepared for any more of my collaborators to pay it, nor with my own person. VOAs Carol Guensburg contributed to this report. Mexico's President Enrique Pena Nieto received a leading Venezuelan opposition activist for the first time, in a policy shift that reflects Mexico's increasing assertiveness against the government of Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro. Pena Nieto's meeting with Lilian Tintori, wife of jailed opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, in the Mexican capital follows statements by the Mexican government demanding that democracy be "re-established" in Venezuela, where elections have been postponed. "We trust that, via an agreement between all sides, it will be the Venezuelans who re-establish the democratic order," Pena Nieto said via Twitter late on Thursday after the meeting. The position reflects deep concern about the humanitarian crisis of food and medicine shortages in Venezuela, as well as the Supreme Court's short-lived decision last week to take over the powers of the country's opposition-controlled Congress. It is also seen by diplomats as helping support ties between Mexico and the government of U.S. President Donald Trump. Venezuela's Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez last week slammed her Mexican counterpart Luis Videgaray's "betrayal" and called him "servile" after Videgaray said the situation in Venezuela was a "systematic violation" of democratic principles. Mexico has taken a leading role in efforts at the Washington-based Organization of American States (OAS) to pressure the Maduro government under threat of being expelled from the regional diplomatic body. "Pena Nieto is worried about what Venezuelans are living, Tintori said in an interview with Mexican media network Grupo Imagen that also referred to Mexico's role in the OAS. The Mexican stance against Maduro's government is a shift from a traditional neutral approach to the politics of its Latin American neighbors. It brings Mexico in line with recently elected conservative governments in Argentina, Brazil and Peru but puts it at odds with Venezuela's allies in the region. Some in Mexican foreign policy circles had been pushing for Pena Nieto to receive Tintori as a message of support for the Venezuelan opposition. Tintori had previously met Videgaray's predecessor as foreign minister. Thailands newest constitution, signed into law by King Maha Vajiralongkorn, opens the way to new elections in late 2018. Thursday elaborate signing ceremony marks a fresh bid to ensure a constitution that can be sustained. Its the 20th charter since Thailand became a constitutional monarchy in 1932; past ones have been tossed out over years of political volatility and military coups. Many experts on Thai politics, however, have doubts it will succeed. This charter comes almost three years after the military seized power from the administration of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra in May 2014. Thailand has faced 21 coups or coup attempts since 1932; the 2006 coup that ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, Ms. Yinglucks brother, has led to more than a decade of political tension in the country. Voters approved the constitution in a referendum last year, and it was amended afterward to clarify the role of the monarch. Military senators approved The 250 senators, appointed by the military, and 500 elected members of the House of Representatives, also approved the charter. The two houses of parliament are empowered to select prime ministers. While many political analysts in Thailand see the new constitution as a step forward, they warn that with the military in control of the Senate, political unrest may continue. Titipol Pakdeewanich, a political scientist from Ubon Ratchathani University, says the military is now looking to elections as the next step. With this constitution, theres no way that they wouldnt be able to maintain their power and then but by maintaining their power through a constitution within Thailand is not enough. For them, having an election is another thing that they really want to have so they can again speak to the West and gain more recognition, Titipol said. Role of political parties unclear Political scientist Thitinan Pongsudhirak, in a newspaper commentary, said, The bad news, however, is the likely recurrence of past election civil-military tensions and squabbles because the military has embedded its influence and supervision over Thai politics. He fears Thailand may waste another decade on conflict and confrontation after years of polarization and relative inertia. The military government has imposed tough restrictions on political parties with no clear timeline or legal structure for when they will again be allowed to be active ahead of new elections. Pandit Chanrochanakit, a political scientist at Chulalongkorn University, said the militarys challenge has been to step away from a leadership position in government since taking power in 2014. The hardest problem for every junta is the withdrawal how they can make a peaceful transition without having any trouble, Pandit told VOA. He said the leading political parties, the Pheu Thai Party linked to Yingluck Shinawatra and the Democrat Party, both are dealing with internal divisions over leadership. Analysts say already some key military leaders in the government are looking to political party backing ahead of the national polls; if they are elected to represent parties, it gives the military even more control. Some analysts say the new constitution is disdainful of voters. That the constitution is not a very democratic one is a concern. Its hard to believe that this would restore democracy in Thailand, because from my personal opinion it undermines at least one man one vote, Titipol said. It doesnt stack up with treating everyone equally. So when the constitution is not democratic, how can you expect democracy in a country? he said. The constitution allows the parliament to select a prime minister who had not been elected to a parliamentary seat, analysts note. Chulalongkorn Universitys Pandit says this raises fears of a repeat of the political protests in 1992 against Prime Minister Suchinda Kraprayoon, who was put in place by the military. Suchinda was forced to resign after three days of bloodshed that left at least 50 people dead and hundreds wounded. The 1992 uprising [occurred] because we dont want a non-representative to be the prime minister. So this would be the next challenge for the junta, Pandit said. The protests ended when the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej intervened, forcing an end to the militarys control and opening a long period of democratic development. Nigeria aims to legalize illicit oil refineries in the turbulent Niger Delta region, the vice president's office said Thursday, hoping to bring peace to the production heartland for the crude on which the country relies. If the refineries are legalized, it could help soothe tensions in the Delta states, where an uneasy peace is now being kept as the government holds talks with local communities, including militants whose attacks cut oil production by as much as a third last year. Nigeria's government depends on oil sales for around two-thirds of its revenue. "Under the plan that is being developed, communities would come together working with their respective state governments, the federal government and private sector operators to work out a template for the establishment of modular refineries in the communities," said the statement from the vice presidency. The legalized refineries must be structured "in a way that works for business or structure it in a way that is realistic and works, otherwise it would not last ... it is a business proposition first and foremost, it must make sense," said Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, according to the statement. The bush refineries, which support tens of thousands of people locally, are makeshift, blackened structures of pipes and metal tanks hidden in oil-soaked clearings, processing stolen crude from oil company pipelines. Their legalization is one of the main demands of community leaders in talks with the government. A security crackdown has risked driving hundreds of young men from the refineries into the militant groups that have been attacking legitimate oil facilities in an attempt to force the government to allocate more money to the impoverished region. "We are saying there is a way out of violent agitation, but it is by creating opportunities and the environment where the people in the communities can benefit," Osinbajo said, according to the statement. The U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations told an emergency meeting of the Security Council on Friday that Washington was "fully justified" in striking a Syrian airfield overnight. "The United States took a very measured step last night," Nikki Haley said, referring to the retaliatory missile strikes. "We are prepared to do more, but we hope that will not be necessary." The U.S. said Bashar al-Assad's regime used the Shayrat airfield Tuesday to launch aircraft carrying poison gas that killed scores of civilians in the town of Khan Shaykhun in Idlib province. "The United States will no longer wait for Assad to use chemical weapons without any consequences," Haley said. "Those days are over." Haley said that the international community must now move to a new phase in Syria a drive toward a political solution. She said until this point, Assad and his allies have not taken political negotiations seriously. "We expect Russia and Iran to hold their ally accountable and abide by the terms of the cease-fire," she added. Russia Russia's deputy U.N. envoy was irate over the U.S. unilateral military strike, calling it a "flagrant violation of international law and an act of aggression." "We strongly condemn the illegitimate actions by the U.S.," Vladimir Safronkov told council members. "The consequences of this for regional and international stability could be extremely serious." He dismissed U.S. calls to move the political process forward, calling them "hypocritical" in the wake of the military strike. "As we see it, you have chosen a different path," Safronkov said. "We must recall that when you take your own path, this leads to horrible tragedies for people in the region," he said, recalling the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the U.S. intervention in Libya in 2011 as part of a NATO coalition. Syria Syria's deputy U.N. envoy Mounzer Mounzer said the strike was illegal aggression. "These aggressions really promise total chaos in many parts of the world and will make the law of the jungle the only way to deal with regional and economic crises," he said. China China, which normally votes with Russia in the council on matters relating to Syria, did not overtly criticize the U.S. strike, perhaps because President Xi Jinping is currently meeting with President Donald Trump in Florida. Instead, Ambassador Liu Jieyi called only for a political solution, saying, "military means will not work, they will only worsen the suffering of the Syrian people." Bolivia The emergency meeting was called by council member Bolivia. Ambassador Sacha Llorenti delivered an impassioned statement in the council denouncing the U.S. strike as a violation of international law, and an impediment to an impartial and independent investigation into the Khan Shaykhun chemical attack. Western allies Many Western allies expressed support for the intervention, calling it an appropriate and measured response. Ally Sweden did question its legality, saying such action must be based on international law. "Last night's missile attack also raises questions of compatibility with international law," Ambassador Olof Skoog told council members. Under international law, military action against another country requires either Security Council authorization or cause under Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, which says that states have an inherent right to individual or collective self-defense. Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg began a trade trip to China on Friday, signaling a restoration of diplomatic ties between the two countries, six years after China cut relations over a Chinese dissident's selection as Nobel Peace Prize winner. Solberg met with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang during a welcoming ceremony, in which the premier told Solberg the visit "symbolizes the normalization of the China-Norwegian relationship." China cut off ties with Norway in 2010, after the Nobel committee awarded its peace prize to Liu Xiabao, a Chinese dissident convicted of subversion in 2009 for writing a document calling for democracy in China. Despite Norway's government having no control over the peace prize selection process, China suspended a bilateral trade deal with Norway and restricted imports of Norwegian salmon. Solberg told Li she thinks the two countries can "find a lot of common areas of shared interests to work together." An official statement from Norway's government named combating climate change as one of the areas for possible cooperation, and said China is "playing a key role" in the area already. The Chinese Foreign Ministry said in December the two countries had restored normal relations after Norway "made important and explicit statements on issues concerning China's sovereignty and territorial integrity." The World Health Organization Friday marked World Health Day with the warning that depression is the most common cause of ill health, affecting some 300 million people worldwide. The U.N. agency is urging people to seek treatment for depression, which can lead to disability and even death. WHO says conflict, wars and natural disasters are major risk factors for depression. WHO estimates one in five people affected by these events suffers from depression or anxiety. Given the magnitude of the problem, it says mental health and psychosocial assistance should be a part of all humanitarian assistance. Apart from these situations, WHO reports depression is the leading cause of disability. The director of WHOs department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse, Shekhar Saxena, says depression is behind a global epidemic of death by suicide. All over the world, 800,000 people die because of suicide every year and this converts into a death every 40 seconds," said Saxena. "So, while we are dealing with the number of deaths, which are of course very unfortunate in conflicts and wars, we also need to remember that there are silent epidemics going on in the world, which are also killing a very large number of people without obvious headlines and banners. Saxena tells VOA there is no significant difference in the prevalence of depression between developed and developing countries. He notes the majority of people with depression lives in low- and middle-income countries. Depression is more common amongst the women - 5.1 percent versus 3.6 percent amongst men," said Saxena. "Other risk factors include poverty, discrimination, and all adverse life situations - either chronic or acute, especially amongst young people. Saxena says treatment usually involves psychotherapy, antidepressant medication or a combination of both. He says it is not necessary to have a specialist treat depression. He says the so-called talking cure administered by general doctors, nurses, or health care workers can be just as effective. The U.S. military fired a barrage of missiles into Syria early Friday in retaliation for a gruesome chemical weapons attack blamed on President Bashar al-Assads forces that killed about 100 civilians. It is the first direct U.S. assault on Syrian government forces. The 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles were launched from the U.S. Navy destroyers USS Ross and USS Porter, which are deployed in the eastern Mediterranean. U.S. forces are said to have targeted Shayrat Airfield in western Syria in retaliation for the chemical weapons attack that American officials believe Syrian government aircraft launched on a rebel-held town with a nerve gas, possibly sarin. Sarin nerve gas We have a very high level of confidence the strikes Tuesday were carried out by aircraft of the Bashar al-Assad regime and a high degree of confidence it was sarin nerve gas, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Thursday. WATCH: Trump's prime-time address to the nation U.S. officials said the missile strikes avoided depots where they believe sarin is being stored. Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said an initial assessment of the strikes found they had severely damaged or destroyed Syrian aircraft and support infrastructure and equipment. In an address to the nation late Thursday, U.S. President Donald Trump said the strikes were ordered because it was in the vital national security interest of the U.S. On Tuesday Syrian President Bashar al-Assad launched a horrible chemical attack on innocent civilians using a deadly nerve agent. ... Tonight I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched, Trump said. It is in this vital national security interest of the Untied States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons, he added, calling the chemical weapons attack this week very barbaric, saying it had choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children. Trump also called on all civilized nations to join the U.S. in seeking an end to the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria. Syrian state TV called the U.S. strike an act of aggression. While a Turkish-based Syrian opposition group, the Syrian Coalition, welcomed the U.S. attack, saying it puts an end to an age of impunity and said the military action should continue. Not a small strike National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, speaking to reporters late Thursday, said, Obviously, the regime will retain a capacity to commit mass murder with chemical weapons beyond this airfield. He added: This was not a small strike. In a statement released shortly after the U.S. airstrikes, Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham said, We salute the skill and professionalism of the U.S. Armed Forces who carried out tonights strikes in Syria. Acting on the orders of their commander-in-chief, they have sent an important message the United States will no longer stand idly by as Assad, aided and abetted by (President Vladimir) Putins Russia, slaughters innocent Syrians with chemical weapons and barrel bombs. Early Friday, Russia responded by saying its relations with Washington would likely deteriorate after the U.S. missile strikes. The deputy chairman of the defense committee said Moscow may terminate interaction with the U.S. military regarding Syria. Russia also said it would seek an urgent meeting of the U.N. Security Council to discuss the U.S. act of aggression in Syria. Chinese leaders visit The airstrike came as Trump entertained Chinese President Xi Jinping at the presidents Mar-a-Lago retreat. Trump did not announce the attacks in advance, although he and other national security officials ratcheted up their warnings to the Syrian government throughout the day Thursday. Tillerson, who is scheduled to travel to Russia next week, said the U.S. coordinated very carefully with our international partners in terms of communicating with them around the world about the military strike. I would tell you that the response from our allies, as well as the region and the Middle East has been overwhelmingly supportive of the action we have taken, he added. U.S. officials said they were not in communication with the Russian government before the airstrike. They were, however, in communication with Russian troops, who were present at the Shayrat airfield, before the military action was carried out. Shift in policy The surprise action marked a striking reversal for Trump, who warned as a candidate against the U.S. getting pulled into the Syrian civil war, now in its seventh year. But the president appeared moved by the video and photos of children killed in that chemical attack, calling it a disgrace to humanity that crossed a lot of lines. What Assad did is terrible. I think what happened in Syria is one of the truly egregious crimes, and it shouldnt have happened and it shouldnt be allowed to happen, he told reporters on Air Force One en route to his talks in Florida with the Chinese president. Last week, the White House backed away from the former Obama administrations stance that Assad must be removed and focused instead on defeating the Islamic State insurgency. But on Thursday, that seemed to be changing. Tillerson: Assad must go While Trump did not say whether he now thought, in the wake of the gas attack, Assad should be driven from power, he did appear to endorse a new commitment to respond to the use of weapons of mass destruction. Secretary of State Tillerson was more clear. He said Thursday that Assad had to go. Tillerson told reporters there was no role for him to govern the Syrian people in the future. The process by which Assad would leave is something that requires an international community effort, both to first defeat ISIS [Islamic State extremists] within Syria, to stabilize the Syrian country to avoid further civil war, and then to work collectively with our partners around the world through a political process that would lead to Assad leaving, he said. The six-year civil was had killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions, contributing to the largest refugee crisis since the end of World War Two. U.S. officials said this week there was no doubt the Syrian military was behind the apparent sarin gas attack on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun. The attack also sickened 350. Television pictures showed horrifying scenes men, women and children foaming at the mouth, convulsing uncontrollably and struggling to breathe. Some families, including babies, died in their beds. Doctors showed that the pupils of the victims eyes were tiny pinpoints that did not react to light a clear sign of sarin gas poisoning. U.S. officials rejected Russian and Syrian claims the gas had come from a missile strike on a rebel-controlled warehouse where chemical weapons had been stockpiled. UN discussions At the United Nations, diplomats met earlier Thursday to discuss three draft resolutions responding to the gas attack. One put forward by the U.S., Britain and France, a competing draft put forward by Russia, and a third compromise draft from the 10 nonpermanent members of the Council. Discussions ran late into the evening Thursday, but no consensus was reached and Council members departed, many looking tense. Russias deputy U.N. Ambassador Vladimir Safronkov said negative consequences must be considered if the U.S. were to take unilateral military action. All responsibility, if military action occurred, will be on [the] shoulders of those who initiated such [a] doubtful and tragic enterprise, Safronkov said in response to reporters questions. I was here with Hans Blix in 2003, Swedens envoy Olof Skoog said, referring to the Swedish U.N. weapons inspector who told the Security Council that year that his team had found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Saddam Husseins Iraq. Were worried, Skoog said, adding he had spoken to the U.S. ambassador about it. Denies allegations Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem said his country did not use chemical weapons during airstrikes on Khan Sheikhoun. He insisted they would never be used, even against terrorists. But Dr. Annie Sparrow, a public health specialist and a critical-care pediatrician at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York who has carried out many studies on Syria, said a chemical cocktail was used on the town. She gave this chilling assessment to the VOA Turkish service: Its quite possible that Assad and Putin are using this ... as a kind of experiment to test out new combinations of lethal chemical weapons. Sparrow said there was no way the Syrian rebels could have been responsible for the attack. Of course Russia and the Assad regime will deny this, because they know they are war crimes in the same way they deny attacks on hospitals and targeting civilians, Sparrow said. So theyre not going to fess up because they are war criminals conducting war crimes. VOA's Mehmet Sumer contributed to this report. The reconstruction of areas of Peru hit by severe floods in recent months will cost $3 billion in the short term, and up to $9 billion over five years, the country's president, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, said in a radio interview on Friday. Although Peru's mining-dependent economy was healthy in the long-term, the immediate effects of the floods were severe, Kuczynski said. "Immediate reconstruction I think will cost us two to three billion dollars, and after that, the public works that will allow Peru to be a modern country will take time, not 15 years, but, yes, five years," the president said on local radio station RPP. "There we have another five or six billion dollars." Over a hundred people have died in Peru from rain-related events since December, many in March after a sudden warming of Pacific waters unleashed torrential downpours in the Andean nation. At least 6,000 miles of highways have been destroyed. Kuczynski said in March that Peru would hike its 2017 budget by 3 percent to fund emergency and recovery efforts. "Now, they're discussing if the fiscal deficit is going to be 2 or 3 percent, if (2017) growth is going to be 3 or 3.5 percent," Kuczynski said in the interview. Last week, Peru's finance minister said reconstruction efforts would cost about $3 billion over three years and begin in the second half of 2017. The recovery process would merit a wider fiscal deficit target, he said, but would not require the country to access debt markets. Philippine President Rodrigo Dutertes plans to deploy troops to islands in the disputed South China Sea and personally plant a flag there indicate the country has tired of Chinas maritime expansion, despite friendly relations since October. Duterte told reporters Thursday he would send troops to nine tiny features in the Spratly Island chain in the South China Sea just west of the main Philippine archipelago. Brunei, China, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam have claims in the same island chain. His announcement Thursday also called for new or repaired facilities on the Philippines Spratly holdings, news outlets in Manila said. China voiced its surprise and concern about the latest development at a regular press briefing Friday. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Beijing is speaking with the Philippines about the planned deployment and hopes to resolve the matter soon. Analysts say China is unlikely to respond strongly to a deployment of troops in the Spratlys. The Chinese government, they dont care, because they know they can fight, said Franklin Cattigay, commander of the coast guard in Masinloc, a Philippine city dependent on fishing in waters policed by China. Just six months ago, Duterte had started to ease four years of Sino-Philippine hostility over maritime disputes with a visit to Beijing, which claims nearly the entire South China Sea, including much of Manilas exclusive economic zone. A flag-planting would call attention that there is still a dispute in the South China Sea, said Termsak Chalermpalanupap, a maritime security-specialized fellow with the ISEAS Yusof Ihsak Institute in Singapore. Duterte did not say how many troops he would send to the Spratlys, where at least one islet, called Pag-asa or Thitu, already bunks soldiers and has an airstrip. Last June, the Philippine leader said he may visit Pag-asa to plant the Philippine flag on independence day. New hot spot Dutertes announcement follows a disclosure that Chinese research vessels were stationed last year at a Philippine-controlled plateau under the Pacific Ocean off the countrys northeast coast. The president told reporters in mid-March he knew about Chinese vessels at Benham Rise, a 13 million-hectare plateau rich in minerals and undersea natural gas. At least one research vessel spent about three months there. That case is adding to calls among Filipinos, including some in government and fishermen weary of being blocked by Chinese vessels, to stand up to Beijing. The line would be if China does one of the following: one if they pursue an aggressive survey of the (Benham Rise) area not within the limits of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, which gave us sovereign rights, said Ramon Casiple, executive director of the Philippine advocacy group Institute for Political and Electoral Reform. Second case, maybe if they (do not) acknowledge in words and in deeds the sovereign rights, he said. The United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf approved the Philippine claim to Benham Rise in 2012. Chinas foreign ministry has said the U.N. Convention lets it freely navigate or pass over the rise. Certainly China has no legal basis for any countervailing claim either to the sovereign rights to the seabed or to the column because for the obvious reason were talking about a feature thats on the opposite side of the archipelago, said Euan Graham, international security director with the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney. Manila may offer a concession to parts of Benham Rise, which is 35 meters below the ocean surface at its highest, for resource exploration. Last year firms from Japan, already a big investor in the Philippines, and South Korea expressed interest. Fighting back Duterte told a news conference on March 13 he hoped to keep peace with China. He has said the Philippine armed forces lack the strength to fight China if needed. Let us not fight about ownership or sovereignty at this time, because things are going great for my country, Duterte told the news conference concerning Benham Rise, as shown in a video on the local news site Philstar.com. I cannot match the might of China. Beijing, with one of the worlds most powerful armed forces, is militarizing parts of the South China Sea, including islets in the Spratly chain. China has angered the Philippines since 2012 by occupying Scarborough Shoal, a prime South China Sea fishing ground 198 kilometers west of Luzon Island. Beijing has alarmed Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines over the past half-decade by landfilling small islets for military use. The 3.5 million-square-kilometer South China Sea is coveted for fisheries, shipping lanes and fossil fuel reserves. By Press Trust of India: New Delhi, Apr 7 (PTI) Over Rs 2 lakh worth of contracts for procurement of military hardware and weapons have been signed in the last three years to modernise the armed forces, Defence Minister Arun Jaitley said today. Replying to a question in Lok Sabha, he said the government has taken a slew of measures for military modernisation and to keep the defence forces in a state of readiness to meet operational challenges. advertisement "147 contracts involving over Rs 2 lakh have been signed for procurement of various equipment during the year 2014-15, 2015-16 and 2016-17 (up to February, 2017)," he said. To a separate question, MoS Defence Subhash Bhamre said a committee of experts has recommended creation of a central autonomous professional organisation to build up indigenous defence capability as a strategic imperative for long-term self reliance. He also said the government has recently approved a Defence Innovation Fund (DIF) which aims at creation of an ecosystem to foster innovation and technology development in defence. On whether Mazgaon Dock Shipbuilders Ltd and French firm DCNS were keen on making three more scorpene-class submarines, he replied in the affirmative. Replying to another question, Bhamre said 54 missing defence personnel including one from BSF of 1965 and 1971 wars are believed to be in the custody of Pakistan. He said the government has repeatedly been taking up the matter with the Pakistan government but Islamabad does not acknowledge the presence of any Indian personnel in its custody. PTI MPB ZMN --- ENDS --- The director general of an international coalition of 61 Rohingya organizations said he was disappointed at Myanmars leader Aung San Suu Kyi for saying ethnic cleansing was too strong a term to describe what was happening in the Muslim-majority Rakhine region. Wakar Uddin also called on her to reinstate a pre-independence system that showed Rohingyas citizenship. I was very disappointed, said Uddin of the Arakan Rohingya Union. I can understand why she said that because shes the head of state. If she admits it is ethnic cleansing, and for that matter genocide, there will be consequences from the international community. BBC televised a rare interview with the Myanmars state counselor on Wednesday. Attacks on Myanmar border guard posts in October last year by a previously unknown insurgent group set off the biggest crisis of Aung San Suu Kyi's year in power. More than 75,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh in the ensuing army crackdown. "I don't think there is ethnic cleansing going on," Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi said of the situation in Rakhine state. "I think ethnic cleansing is too strong an expression to use for what is happening." "It is not just a matter of ethnic cleansing, she said. It is a matter of people on different sides of a divide, and this divide we are trying to close up as best as possible and not to widen it further. "What we are trying to go for is reconciliation, not condemnation," Aung San Suu Kyi told the BBC. "It is Muslims killing Muslims as well." Uddin, a professor of plant pathology and environmental microbiology at Penn State University, said in response that Ethnic cleansing is defined by what is going on on the ground. She needs to understand, to know, the truth of what is going on -- the violence, the turbulence, the population displacement. The recent violence is the latest in a long cycle. Zar Ni, a genocide scholar in London, said Half of the [Rohingya] population was deported from the country in 1978. Almost 300,000 were then driven out of [Myanmar]. About 200,000 of them later came back. This kind of harassment is repeated every five or 10 years. The expression genocide is used based on these actions of about 40 years, he said. There is no necessity to actively kill the entire population to say that is genocide. Burmese authorities consider most Rohingya to be "resident foreigners," not citizens, according to Human Rights Watch. In a report, the organization says This lack of full citizenship rights means that the Rohingya are subject to other abuses, including restrictions on their freedom of movement, discriminatory limitations on access to education, and arbitrary confiscation of property. Uddin called on Aung San Suu Kyi to reinstate the national registration certificate (NRC), cards issued to Rohingya as proof of citizenship in 1947, a year before Myanmar - then known as Burma - gained independence from Britain. The military effectively voided the NRC with the 1982 citizenship law, by defining who was not a citizen and making some 800,000 Rohingya stateless. Reinstate the NRC, Uddin said. Many people still have those cards. The NRC cardholders and their children, who hold white cards, Aung San Suu Kyi can reinstate those and go from there. That is a fundamental issue. Myanmar has launched its own probe into possible crimes in Rakhine and appointed former United Nations chief Kofi Annan to head a commission tasked with healing long-simmering divisions between Buddhists and Muslims. A U.N. human rights report issued earlier this year said Myanmar's security forces had committed mass killings and gang rapes against Rohingya during their campaign against the insurgents, which may amount to crimes against humanity. The military has denied the accusations, saying it was engaged in a legitimate counterinsurgency operation. The U.N. Human Rights Council has called for an investigation, which Myanmar has refused to accommodate. In the interview, Aung San Suu Kyi tried to reassure those who fled that "if they come back they will be safe." Thar Nyunt Oo contributed to this report which originated with the VOA Burmese Service. Russia on Friday condemned the U.S. strike on a government-controlled air base in Syria, saying it would increase Syria's air defenses in reaction. Russia called the attack an aggression against a sovereign state and a violation of international law under false pretenses. Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the U.S. cruise missile attack was effectively helping Islamist militant groups active in Syria, including the so-called Islamic State group and al-Qaida-linked al-Nusra. "We don't yet know what goals Washington wanted to achieve by deciding to carry out these strikes, but it is unequivocally clear that the strikes were de facto carried out in the interests of Islamic State, Jabhat al-Nusra and other terrorist organizations, said Peskov. WATCH: Russia's Suspension of US Cooperation on Syrian Airspace Elevates Risk of Clash Damascus and Moscow say the air base was used for launching bomber jets that were targeting terrorists inside Syria. The United States says it was used to deliver a chemical weapons attack Tuesday in Idlib province that killed scores of civilians, including a number of children. U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the strike of Tomahawk missiles after weighing military responses to what the U.S. says was a deliberate gas attack on civilians. Russia has backed Syrian government claims that the poisonous gas was released from chemical weapons stored by Syrian rebels in buildings destroyed during fighting. Russias Defense Ministry Friday said Washington planned the Syria strikes before the chemical weapons victims emerged in Idlib, but offered no evidence. Russias Foreign Ministry suspended an airspace safety memorandum with the United States for Syria. The agreement, which minimized the risk of accidents by communicating flight paths, was made after Moscow in September 2015 began a bombing campaign against rebels and jihadists in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. U.S.-led coalition planes from Western and Gulf states were for some years already bombing Islamist fighters in Syria, making for crowded skies and the possibility of incidents. Suspending the agreement elevates the risk of direct clashes there between Russian forces and the U.S.-led coalition. When Russia suspended this memorandum it means that first, Americans do not need to inform Russia before (the) next strike and, Russia wants to have open hand to do anything it wants in response, said deputy editor of Yezhenedelny Zhurnal (Weekly Journal) Alexander Golts. So, it makes (the) possibility of direct conflict much more possible than it was two days before. Syria says several of its troops and civilians were killed in the airstrike, which destroyed a number of planes and buildings at the air base. There were no Russian casualties reported and the Kremlin acknowledged the U.S. notified it in advance so it could remove personnel from the site. Despite having anti-missile systems in Syria, and the warning time, Russia apparently made no attempt to intercept the Tomahawks, raising some questions. I do not understand why Russia did not protect Assad in this case, says political analyst Alexei Malashenko. Maybe it is impossible. I do not know if something can be done against Tomahawks. It is a question for militaries. But, at the same time, there is a broader issue: is Russia able to protect Assad in case of the next aggression? It means that Assad is not totally protected by Russia and it proves a weakness of Russia. Its a big question for me, says Golts. (Can Russia) intercept American cruise missiles or did they reject this idea? The Kremlin, while backing the Syrian government, has consistently said its support of Assad is not without limits. From the very beginning ...the prime goal for this (Russian military) presence, was not (the) fight against so-called terrorists, says Golts. The prime goal of (the) Russian military operation was to push Americans to speak with them. And, in fact, it was clear blackmail. You should speak with us or any accidents can be possible. And, this way he undermines all Russian attempts to use military force in Syria as (a) serious instrument in its international policy. The increase in tensions comes just days ahead of a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to Moscow, where he is expected to meet Wednesday with Russian leaders. Tillerson had tough words for Moscow ahead of his visit. He said the Tuesday gas attack showed Russia failed to carry out a 2013 agreement to secure Syrian chemical weapons and was either complicit or incompetent. Nonetheless, there were no indications that Russia would make any changes to Tillersons scheduled meetings. The International Affairs Committee of Russias parliament, the Duma, said the U.S. strikes should not impact Tillerson's Moscow visit. "Of course I am upset that all of this brings more damage to already frayed relations between Russia and the United States, said Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. But I hope these provocations will not lead to some kind of irreversible consequences." The International Criminal Court held a hearing Friday on South Africa's refusal to arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir when he visited the country in 2015. The ICC wanted South African authorities to detain and hand over the Sudanese leader, who is wanted on charges of genocide. South Africa told the International Criminal Court it was under no duty to arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir when he came to Johannesburg in 2015. The ICC filed a complaint against South Africa for non-compliance after authorities there refused to detain Al-Bashir. The legal representative for South Africa, Dire Tladi, told the court that South Africa has immunity clauses in every inter-governmental agreement for conferences. There is no duty in international law, in general and in particular under the Rome Statue, on South Africa to arrest of a serving head of an non-state party, such as Mister al-Bashir, said Tladi. One hundred twenty-four countries, including South Africa, are state parties to the Rome Statue, the agreement that grants the ICC its authority and jurisdiction. The Sudanese president was on South African territory for two days during a summit of the African Union, hosted by South Africa. He hastily left the country from a military airport, after local courts and the ICC requested his arrest. ICC prosecutor Julian Nicholls says South Africas non-compliance is so severe that the issue should be referred to the United Nations Security Council. The obligation to arrest and surrender a suspect wanted on ICC warrants is one of the highest obligations a state party has to the court," he said. "Without state parties fulfilling that obligation, its impossible for the court to exercise its most important functions and powers, its ability to put on trial those for whose warrants have been issued for the most serious crimes of concerns. The ICC does not have its own police force and relies on states to arrest and surrender those who are warranted by the court. Although Sudan never signed up to the ICC, a U.N. resolution referred the Darfur issue to the court in 2005. Prosecutors of the ICC charged al-Bashir with crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide for his role in the long-running Darfur conflict, a western region of Sudan. ICC judges are expected to make a decision about South Africa and its alleged non-compliance within the next three months. South Africa is insisting to International Criminal Court judges that it did not have to arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir when he visited Johannesburg in 2015. At a hearing Friday lawyers for South Africa said the court's founding treaty, the Rome Statute, does not oblige authorities to arrest heads of state of countries that are not members of the court, such as Sudan. South African lawyer Dire Tladi told judges that "there is no duty under international law in general, and in particular under the Rome Statute, on South Africa to arrest a serving head of a non-state party." ICC prosecutors have charged al-Bashir with genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Sudan's Darfur region, but the ICC has no police force of its own to arrest him. The U.N. refugee agency reports spreading violence in South Sudans East Equatoria region is forcing thousands of civilians to flee across the border into neighboring Uganda in search of refuge. he U.N. refugee agency expresses alarm at the ongoing deterioration of the security situation inside South Sudan. It reports more than 6,000 refugees have arrived in Uganda since April 3 when violence erupted in the town of Pajok in the Eastern Equatoria region. As fighting spreads to other towns, the UNHCR says an average of 2,000 refugees fleeing insecurity, violence and famine are arriving in northern Uganda every day. UNHCR spokesman Babar Baloch says newly arriving refugees, who claim their town had come under indiscriminate attack by South Sudans armed forces, recount tales of horrific abuse. Refugees report witnessing their loved ones shot dead at a close range, many being slaughtered, others arrested, including children," Baloch sasid. "Families fled in different directions. The elderly and disabled who could not run were shot dead. Baloch says many people are still hiding in the bush. He says refugees report homes and properties were looted and burned and armed groups are preventing people from escaping by blocking main roads out of town. Baloch tells VOA the Ugandan government and aid agencies are overwhelmed by the numbers arriving and there is no sign this refugee exodus is slowing down. Humanitarian agencies do not have enough funding to help support those who are arriving ," Baloch sasid. " My UNHCR colleagues are on the ground, but we are struggling to feed these people. We are struggling to provide them shelter, safe drinking water and medical care. Balloch calls this a losing battle as UNHCRs humanitarian appeal for South Sudan of nearly $782 million is only 11 percent funded. Uganda currently hosts more than 832,000 South Sudanese refugees. An estimated 192,000 have arrived this year. First there was panic, then bluster. The alert the U.S. military gave Russia on Thursday of an upcoming cruise missile strike was quickly circulated by Russian officials to their Syrian counterparts. Fearing the al-Shayrat air base might not be the only target, many fled Damascus or hustled their families out of the Syrian capital, according to a Syrian businessman with links to the government of President Bashar al-Assad. The reaction, he told VOA, was much the same back in August 2013 when Assad loyalists had expected then-U.S. President Barack Obama to match words and deeds and order airstrikes on government targets in the capital as punishment for the use of sarin gas on a rebellious Damascus suburb. As the sun rose Friday in Damascus and the cruise strike appeared to be over, panic turned into bluster. Syria's information minister, Ramez Turjman, shrugged off the strike. "I believe this strike was limited in time and space, and it was expected," he told Syrian state television in a phone interview. State media relayed a terse statement from the country's military command, accusing the United States of an outrageous act of aggression as it confirmed the missile strike had targeted an air base in central Syria, "which had led to losses." The governor of Syria's Homs province, Talal Barazi, also interviewed on Syrian state television, and again by phone, said the strike and any further targeting by the U.S. wouldn't divert the government. "Syrian leadership and Syrian policy will not change," he said. Shift in dynamic In its broader outlines, say analysts, maybe the war policy of the Assad regime won't be changed because of one barrage of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles. But at the very least, it will give the regime pause before using chemical weapons again, says Charles Lister, an analyst at the Middle East Institute, a Washington research institution. Like other analysts, Lister argues the dynamic in Syria has been shifted. While the intervention punishment for the alleged use earlier this week of sarin gas by the government on a town in Idlib province that left more than 80 dead and hundreds injured may have been limited, he says, the strike is "a big development." "Regional states will feel empowered to re-back opposition" to Assad, he added. It also leaves Damascus guessing about whether the missile strike is just a warning, or marks a turning point. And U.S. officials appear to want to keep the Assad government off balance. Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters Friday that he hoped Assad's government had learned a lesson but added it was ultimately "the regime's choice" if more U.S. military action would be needed in the future. Airfield damage For all of the regime's bluster, the attack on al-Shayrat will have hurt militarily, say analysts. While the full scale of the damage that was inflicted by the U.S. remains unclear U.S. officials say they are still assessing the results it does appear extensive. "The places we targeted were the things that made the airfield operate," said Davis. A pro-Assad Emirates-based news outlet, al-Masdar, reported that cruise missiles struck both runways and a hangar. It said that 15 fighter jets had been damaged or destroyed and that fuel tankers exploded, causing several large blasts and a massive fireball that was still raging several hours after the strike. Some reports suggest that at least one of the two main runways is now unusable. Turkish presidential spokesperson Ibrahim Kaln talked about "the destruction of al-Sharyat air base," saying Friday in Ankara, "It marks an important step to ensure that both chemical and conventional attacks against the civilian population do not go unpunished." The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based watchdog that relies on activists on the ground for its information, says the base, which covers an area more than eight square kilometers and has two runways as well as dozens of buildings, silos and storage facilities, was "almost completely destroyed." The attack damaged more than a dozen hangars, a fuel depot and an air defense base, the observatory said. If true, then the Syrian military will feel the loss of the base and likely face a severe challenge in the coming days in operations in northwest and central Syria. Al-Sharyat has been crucial in recent weeks in the regime's efforts to repel a rebel offensive in Hama. For the opposition, the missile strike holds out the hope that its cause is not totally lost despite U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson telling reporters that the strike did not mean the wider U.S. policy on Syria had changed. The Syrian National Coalition, the main political opposition group, welcomed the U.S. attack, saying it puts an end to an age of "impunity" and hoped it was just the beginning. Strikes consequences Questions remain about what the consequences of the attack will be. If it is a one-only action, then it may only limit the Assad government's use of chemical weapons and nerve agents. However, analysts and no doubt regime strategists, too are trying to fathom whether the strike will draw the U.S. deeper into the Syrian war. Will other red lines be drawn by the Trump administration, for example, when it comes to barrel bombs being dropped on civilians? And what will be the impact on the effort by the U.S. and its allies to expel Islamic State fighters from the terror group's de facto capital of Raqqa? U.S. airstrikes on IS, and a ground presence of hundreds of U.S. Marines and special forces in northern Syria, have benefited from an arrangement among the U.S., Russia and Syria established to avoid their warplanes tangling in the crowded airspace over northern Syria. The Kremlin said Friday it is suspending an air safety agreement with the U.S. in response to the missile strike, and the Russian military announced it is reinforcing Syrian air defenses. Other uncertainties are thrown up by the cruise strike. Alberto Fernandez, a former U.S. ambassador, warns there could be an impact in the battle for Mosul, Iraq, and says "Iraq bears careful watching. "That is where Iranian proxies could orchestrate a response," to the U.S. cruise attack, he said. Iran, a staunch Assad ally, condemned the U.S. missile strike, warning it was "dangerous." Mosul is Iraq's second-largest city. IS militants took control of Mosul in 2014 and, in October of last year, Iraqi military forces launched an offensive to retake the city. Hundreds of thousands of children are paying a heavy price in the three-year conflict between the government of Ukraine and Russian-backed rebels in Donetsk and Luhansk in the eastern part of the country. Although the war has taken thousands of lives and injured many more, the U.N. children's fund said the conflict has been all but forgotten by the world and become an "invisible crisis" to all except those forced to suffer from ongoing violence, abuse and deprivation. Among those hardest hit are the more than 200,000 children living along the "contact line," a 15-kilometer zone that divides government and rebel-controlled areas where the fighting is most intense. "These are children that are surviving death, that are living constantly with the sound of shelling, that have witnessed death. Some children have even witnessed the death of loved ones," said Giovanna Barberis, UNICEF's Ukraine representative. Barberis has frequently traveled to the contact line and seen the hardships and suffering of the children, who live in a state of constant fear and uncertainty. The trauma has taken a huge emotional and psychological toll, according to Barberis. "Parents, teachers, school directors and psychologists describe striking behavior changes among children as young as 3 years old," she said. "Children are very anxious. They wet their beds. They have nightmares. In some cases, they act quite aggressively and often withdraw from their families and friends." Barberis said some children no longer seek safety in bomb shelters because they think such attacks are "normal now." "Families and children are getting used to living in a very abnormal and exceptional situation," she said. "But this does not mean that they cope well with the situation." Escalating hostilities There have been multiple violations of the Minsk peace agreement since it was signed in September 2014 by representatives of Ukraine, Russia and the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics. In its latest report on the situation in Ukraine, the U.N. Human Rights Mission found that a sharp escalation of hostilities between January 29 and February 3 had "a devastating impact" on all aspects of life for civilians living along the contact line. It said seven civilians were killed and 46 wounded in those six days. In addition, "Several hundreds of people are isolated and deprived of basic necessities," according to the report. The nearest grocery store is seven kilometers away, and children crossing the contact line have "to walk up to three kilometers to go to school." UNICEF's Barberis told VOA that it often was not safe to go to school, so children had difficulty gaining regular access to education. "We have estimated that from the beginning of the conflict, something like 740 schools were damaged or destroyed," she said, "and just these last few weeks, when we had the deteriorating situation of the areas along the contact line something like seven schools were damaged." Barberis said children in eastern Ukraine require urgent and sustained support to help them come to grips with the daily trauma of war. However, she noted, UNICEF has received less than one-third of the $31.2 million it needs to support children and families affected by the conflict. "Children should not have to live with the emotional scars from a conflict they had no part in creating," Barberis said. Thousands of protesters marched throughout South Africa on Friday, with people of all backgrounds and colors gathering at multiple locations throughout the Rainbow Nation to demand President Jacob Zuma's resignation. Authorities said Friday afternoon that most gatherings had been peaceful and orderly, although local news stations reported that police fired rubber bullets at a group of Zuma supporters in central Johannesburg. In Polokwane, a city that is a stronghold of the ruling African National Congress, dozens of angry protesters set fire to tires. Most of the planned events unfolded peacefully. In central Johannesburg, blue-clad supporters of the opposition Democratic Alliance shuffled slowly through the streets, yelling, "Zuma must go." That party has called for a no-confidence vote in parliament, scheduled for April 18. In other Johannesburg neighborhoods, the protests took on a convivial air as residents brought pets, children and babies to small street-corner gatherings with dozens of attendees. In Cape Town, Archbishop Desmond Tutu lent his influential and increasingly critical voice to an anti-Zuma march as protesters waved flags and formed a human chain outside of parliament. And in the tiny seaside hamlet of St. Francis Bay, hundreds gathered to pray ahead of a peaceful march. The increasingly unpopular president has already earned many critics for a raft of long-simmering corruption scandals, but his decision last week to fire a well-respected finance minister and reshuffle his Cabinet prompted those critics to call for protests and a nationwide shutdown Friday. The controversial political moves also sent the currency tumbling and prompted a major ratings agency to downgrade South Africa to "junk" status. In Johannesburg, 46-year-old property manager Kenny Davids took the day off to voice his displeasure with the president. Davids, who is black, says he was once loyal to the party of Nelson Mandela, South Africa's first black president. He dismissed ANC supporters' arguments that to turn against the party is a form of racism. "It's not about race; it's about the country now," he said. "The ANC liberated us, but they can't lead us now. It's not about, 'now we must be stuck with the ANC when they're doing wrong.' No, we can't." Outside African National Congress headquarters in central Johannesburg, thousands of Zuma supporters gathered to stand by their man. Hundreds donned the camouflage uniform of the ANC's now-defunct military wing and stood at attention around the building, preparing, they said, to defend against an attack. In a nearby square, college student Patricia Molutsi, who wore an image of Zuma's face on her shirt, says she took an overnight bus from the city of Bloemfontein to show her support. Molutsi, 23, was born after the end of apartheid, but says she feels it's important to protect the gains made by the anti-apartheid movement. "I came all the way here to fight for what my late brothers and sisters fought for," she said. "Zuma is not the best president ever, but yet again I say, people do make mistakes, and who am I to judge? Where do we get power? If we let him go right now, we are going to have struggle again to start from the bottom to get the power. So, I basically came here to fight for what my brothers and sisters died for." The protests also drew out South Africans who, until now, have remained politically silent. At 7 a.m. on this gray Friday, 32-year-old corporate worker Jenny Min sat in her car and carefully stenciled over a cardboard sign which read, "Zuma: do the right thing! Say your goodbyes!" "I think with what's recently happening, it's just come to a point where, enough is enough," she said. Other South Africans said they chose to stay out of the fray. Neonatal nurse Aubrey Mahlewele, 35, says he opposes Zuma, but stays away from protests as he opposes how they sometimes turn violent. Mahlewele says he longs for Mandela's ANC. "They knew how to do things at that time," he said with a sigh. "This is not the same ANC that we know now, compared to the ANC that we knew before." President Donald Trump's decision to authorize cruise-missile strikes on a Syrian government air base has drawn rare bipartisan support from congressional leaders. However, a number of lawmakers from both parties also expressed concern, saying that if the president plans any escalation of military action, Congress has a constitutional role to play. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the "well-executed" action sent a powerful message to U.S. allies and adversaries that "you don't use chemical weapons without consequences." The senator from Kentucky also suggested Trump's military action could have policy implications ranging beyond Syria: "America is back, in terms of playing a leadership role, and trying to be constructive in a variety of different places around the world." McConnell added that the cruise-missile raid could be read "as a message to Iran, and North Korea, and the Russians, that America intends to lead again." Asked if he would counsel Trump to reconsider the ban on Syrian refugees in light of the atrocities civilians are facing, McConnell said he would not offer the president any advice on the subject. Praise for Trump's decision Republican senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain put out a joint statement, saying: "Unlike the previous administration, President Trump confronted a pivotal moment in Syria and took action." Several of the president's Democratic political opponents also spoke out in support of the missile attack. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the airstrikes "the right thing to do" in light of the Syrian military's alleged use of outlawed chemical weapons. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called it "a proportional response," but she added that the president needs a comprehensive strategy for Syria. "The crisis in Syria will not be resolved by one night of airstrikes," she said. U.S. military leaders said 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired into Syria from warships in the Mediterranean, targeting the Syrian government air base that they contend was responsible for dropping sarin nerve gas. The choking gas fell on a rebel-held area of Idlib province, killing at least 72 civilians, including women and children. The Obama and Trump administrations have relied on Congress' authorization of military force following the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks against the United States to carry out strikes against groups such as Islamic State and al-Qaida. Obama asked Congress to pass an authorization of the use of military force, or AUMF, for the U.S.-led military campaign against Islamic State, but Congress did not. Now, some lawmakers both Democrats and Republicans are saying the strike Trump ordered against the Syrian government should be specifically authorized by Congress. Criticism for strikes Republican Senator Rand Paul strongly criticized the strikes, saying prior U.S. interventions in Middle East conflicts "have done nothing to make us safer." "The president needs congressional authorization for military action as required by the Constitution," Paul said in a statement. Senator Tim Kaine, the unsuccessful candidate for vice president last year, agreed: "There is no legal justification for this. [Trump] should not have done this without coming to Congress." Congressman Thomas Massie, a Republican, tweeted: "Didn't the missile attack just make the situation better for [Islamic State]?" The chairman of the U.S. military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joe Dunford, gave a classified briefing to all members of the Senate and any remaining House members still at the Capitol before a recess Friday afternoon. No one wants to choose to be a refugee, but many are forced to do just that. They flee violence at home, face restrictions in their new country, and are usually dependent upon others for food, water and health care. Uganda, a country hosting more than 1.1 million refugees and asylum seekers, is trying to ease their burdens with what many analysts call its "progressive" refugee policy. Senior refugee settlement officer in the Ugandan prime minister's office, Solomon Osakan, works with the U.N. humanitarian agency to coordinate refugee operations. He says his country's approach comes from a Pan-African mindset of helping Africans in trouble, which currently includes those in neighboring South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Burundi. "So, I think this policy emanates from our leaders," Osakan said. "Previously, many of our leaders were displaced as refugees, they sought asylum in neighboring countries, and went as far as Europe. In that time, this changed their perception in thinking that when you are a refugee, you need to be supported to survive; otherwise, hostility only worsens." Uganda has refugee "settlements," not camps. Host communities have donated much of the land for these settlements. Refugees receive a 50-by-50-meter plot for shelter and cultivation, enjoy freedom of movement, receive employment waivers in order to work and can start businesses. Watch: Uganda Welcomes Refugees with 'Progressive' Policies "It is good, because here, in Uganda here, we are feeling good," said Joyce Alua, 19, who says she fled gun violence in South Sudan in July 2016 while she was pregnant. "There is no fighting like South Sudan. And other things, also, they are good." Critics: 'Outsiders' take jobs But not everyone is pleased. In Imvepi, Uganda's newest settlement that opened in February, some local people are upset that so-called "outsiders" are getting the jobs, not them. "But the bad thing here is we are lacking of jobs," said Charles Acema, 35, who says he has lived in the Imvepi area his entire life. "Those who are here, they do not give the jobs for us." Acema is referring to the United Nations and Ugandan government, who responded that many of the jobs in the settlements require skills not always found in the local communities. Despite his grievances, Acema says he is happy his country is hosting refugees. "Us, we know that Uganda is a God-loving country," he said. "That is why they welcome refugees here ... we don't have a problem with the refugees. These are our brothers and sisters. We welcome [them] here." U.N.: Funds needed Many refugees complain of food shortages. The United Nations has cited underfunding as the problem. Last year, food rations were cut by 50 percent for refugees who arrived prior to July 2015, except for the particularly vulnerable. The United Nations says it requires roughly $500 million dollars for its 2017 Uganda operations, but as of mid-March had received about $35 million, seven percent of the total. Uganda hosts more than 816,000 South Sudanese refugees, more than 219,000 from the DRC, more than 44,000 from Burundi and more than 41,000 from Somalia. By Press Trust of India: Mumbai, Apr 7 (PTI) The rupee pared initial losses and was trading higher by 14 paise to 64.38 against US dollar in the late morning trade due to fresh selling of the American currency by banks and exporters. The rupee resumed lower at 64.63 against the greenback at the Interbank Foreign Exchange (Forex) market as compared to yesterdays closing level of 64.52 against dollar. It dropped further to 64.65 on the back of increased dollar demand from banks and importers as the American unit strengthened in the global market amid fall in the domestic equity market. advertisement However, it washed out initial losses and recovered to 64.32 per dollar before quoting at 64.38 at 1100 hrs due to fresh selling of dollars by banks and exporters following recovery in the equity market. The domestic currency moved in a range of 64.32 and 64.65 per dollar in the late morning trade. In the overseas market, dollar strengthened against its main rivals as investors anticipated another blockbuster jobs report on Friday, though its rise was constrained by investors bracing for the possibility that a US-China summit in Florida could unleash a torrent of volatility. Asian stocks edged lower after the US fired dozens of cruise missiles into Syria. The missile strikes happened as President Donald Trump hosts Chinese President Xi Jinping at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Meanwhile, the BSE benchmark Sensex dropped by 70.82 points or 0.24 per cent to 29,856.52 at 1100 hrs. PTI RSU BPD BAL --- ENDS --- Providing sanitary pads to schoolgirls is a controversial subject in Uganda. During the 2016 election campaign, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni pledged to buy sanitary towels for girls in need. The government estimates that 30 percent of Ugandan girls from poor families miss school because of lack of sanitary towels. But in February this year, the first lady, who is also the minister for education, told parliament the government didn't have enough funding for the president's $4.4 million initiative. This angered Makerere University researcher Stella Nyanzi, who created Pads for Girls Uganda on the social media site Facebook to collect donations of sanitary towels. Soon, however, she found herself in a police interrogation room accused of insulting the first lady online. "The interrogation was about four hours," Nyanzi said. "By the time I was out, my sister, who had my mobile phone number, said, 'By the way, you are almost getting to your one million pads.' The following day was Women's Day and, surprisingly, we got one million sanitary pads within two days." Nyanzi continues to push the government to make sanitary pads for girls a priority. Public debate about the subject continues, and the government recently announced that sanitary pads are now to be sold free of value-added tax. Girls at the Parents Care Infant Academy, in the slum area of Makindye, have taken matters into their own hands. At the back of the class, there are four sewing machines that students use to make reusable sanitary towels. Large pieces of pink cloth are laid on the table as some of the girls carefully measure and cut, then place a piece of cotton in between and stitch with pins. Ready to be sewn, it is then passed onto the tailors, who include 14-year-old Nantume Catherine. "Oh, this hole, it's used to put there cotton, that cotton to hold blood to not come out. You remove it, you throw and you wash it through this hole," she said. Sarah Sanyu is the headmistress of the school. "It was very, very difficult for these girls to stay in public without having these pads," Sanyu said, "so when we got this idea of making sanitary pads, we bought the materials for ourselves, then we got someone to come and teach us." The school also held a special class to teach the girls about menstruation. Some question the cleanliness of reusable pads, but health officials assure VOA they are safe if properly washed with soap and water. However, access to clean water is not a guarantee in some parts of Uganda. So important are sanitary pads to keeping girls in school that the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) has distributed 50,000 disposable pads in 14 districts of Uganda since November of 2015. "It has been very difficult to keep girls in schools, especially in Karamoja, where they have to use leaves," said Dr. Edson Herbert Muhwezi, assistant representative at UNFPA Uganda. "There are no rags to use, some of them even sit in the sun hoping to dry. They are kept there isolated, staying four days and nights in the bush. It's really dehumanizing." Nyanzi says that is unacceptable. She visits schools to pass out the pads donated to her Facebook group, urging the girls not to let their circumstances hold them down. Senior U.S. military officials said Friday that they were looking into whether Russia aided Syrian forces in this week's deadly chemical attack on civilians in Idlib province. "We think we have a good picture of who supported them as well," one senior military official told reporters at the Pentagon, adding that the Pentagon was "carefully assessing any information that would implicate the Russians knew or assisted with this Syrian capability." The officials said that at a minimum, the Russians failed to rein in the Syrian regime activity that has killed innocent Syrian civilians. They said Russia also failed to fulfill its 2013 guarantee that Syria's chemical weapons would be eliminated. The U.S. military officials noted that they had not seen evidence of Russian involvement in the chemical attack. However, the officials said the Russians had an aviation unit based at the airfield where the attack originated and have "chemical expertise in country." U.S. military officials have shown reporters the Syrian aircraft flight path that was taken April 4 from al-Shayrat airfield to the town of Khan Sheikhoun, where more than 80 people were killed in the attack that local doctors said involved sarin nerve gas. U.S. military officials said Friday that after the attack, they watched a small drone, also called a UAV, flying over the hospital in Khan Sheikoun where victims of the chemical attack were being treated. "About five hours later, the UAV returned, and the hospital was struck by additional munitions," one official said. The senior military official said the U.S. did not know why the hospital was struck or who carried out the strike, but had determined that it was potentially done "to hide the evidence of a chemical attack." U.S.-Russia communication Meanwhile, senior military officials said the United States and Russia would maintain a line of communication aimed at preventing midair collisions of their warplanes in Syrian airspace. That contradicted Moscow's earlier assertion that it had suspended those communications in protest against the Tomahawk cruise missile strike on al-Shayrat airfield. The communication line is primarily used to ensure that Russian and U.S. planes conducting combat missions in Syria do not get into unintentional confrontations. The U.S. is using the airspace to conduct strikes against Islamic State terrorists. The U.S. used the line to inform the Russians of the intent to strike in order to warn any Russians who were at the base, officials said. Friday's U.S. strike used 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles to hit targets on the Syrian airfield, including about 20 aircraft, aircraft storage facilities, ammunition supply bunkers and radars, officials said. A U.S. military official told VOA there was an area on the airfield known to have been used as a chemical weapons depot. The source said that the U.S. military did not know whether chemical weapons were still in that area, but out of an abundance of caution to avoid potential casualties, the missiles did not strike that area. Other U.S. military officials told VOA the strikes did not target the airfield runways so as to not threaten Russians, adding that the Tomahawk type used was for "precision strikes, not cratering." One military official deemed the strikes as "appropriate, proportionate, precise and effective." The office of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad described the strikes in a statement Friday as "reckless" and "irresponsible." The statement added that the attacks were "shortsighted" and a continuation of a U.S. policy of "subjugating people." Russia, which is providing troops and air support to the Assad government, condemned the U.S. military action, calling it "aggression against a sovereign state," and said it was suspending a memorandum of understanding with the U.S. for flight safety over Syria. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said Friday that the United States "took a very measured step last night." She added, "We are prepared to do more, but we hope that will not be necessary." VOA's Margaret Besheer contributed to this report. The U.S. Air Force is open to buying rides on previously flown SpaceX rockets to put military satellites into orbit, a move expected to cut launch costs for the Pentagon, the head of the Air Force Space Command said on Thursday. The idea of flying on recycled rockets became a reality a week ago when privately owned Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, launched a communications satellite on a Falcon 9 booster that previously put a cargo ship into orbit for NASA. That Falcon main stage had been recovered from a successful return landing on an ocean platform shortly after its maiden flight last April, then was relaunched and salvaged again last Thursday, marking a spaceflight first. "I would be comfortable if we were to fly on a reused booster," General John "Jay" Raymond told reporters at the U.S. Space Symposium in Colorado Springs. "They've proven they can do it. ... It's going to get us to lower cost." SpaceX has so far won three launch contracts to fly military and national security satellites - business previously awarded exclusively to United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Lockheed Martin and Boeing. All those flights will take place on new Falcon 9 rockets. SpaceX, owned and operated by technology entrepreneur Elon Musk, has a backlog of more than 70 missions worth more than $10 billion. After last week's landmark launch, Musk said the company planned to fly about 20 more rockets this year, including the debut blastoff of its new heavy-lift vehicle. Up to six of those missions, including the Falcon Heavy, will use previously flown boosters, he said. Speaking at the symposium on Wednesday, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said the cost of refurbishing and reflying the Falcon 9 first stage was "substantially less than half" the cost of manufacturing a new booster - the most expensive part of the rocket. SpaceX's website lists the cost of a basic Falcon 9 launch at $62 million. SpaceX expects to reduce costs even further. The company's next goal is to launch and return a rocket and relaunch it within 24 hours. "That's when we'll really feel like we've got reusability right," Shotwell said. Raymond said the Air Force would need to certify that a used booster could safely deliver its satellites into orbit. "I'm pretty comfortable we'll get comfortable with doing it," Raymond said. "This is just beginning." The U.S. missile strike against Syria in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack that killed about 100 civilians is threatening relations between the U.S. and Russia, a staunch ally of the Syrian government. Russian President Vladimir Putin said early Friday that the attack would "inflict major damage on U.S.-Russia ties" and was in "violation of international law," according to a Kremlin statement. In response to the U.S. attack, Russia said it was suspending an agreement aimed at avoiding accidental conflicts between U.S. and Russian military aircraft operating in Syrian airspace. Senior U.S. military officials, however, said Friday that the hotline with Russia remains open. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said at an emergency U.N. meeting Friday that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could be "playing Russia for fools" by concealing chemical weapons from Moscow, a possible explanation for Russia's unwavering military support for the Syrian regime. The U.S. military fired a barrage of missiles into Syria, the first direct U.S. assault on Syrian government forces. The 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles were launched about 4:40 a.m. local time from the U.S. Navy destroyers USS Ross and USS Porter, which are deployed in the eastern Mediterranean. The missile launch lasted for three to four minutes, U.S. officials said. The office of the Syrian president described the strikes in a statement as "reckless" and "irresponsible." The statement added that the attacks were "shortsighted" and a continuation of a U.S. policy of "subjugating people." U.S. forces were said to have targeted Shayrat Airfield in western Syria. A Navy official told VOA the airfield was targeted because it was most likely used to launch Tuesday's chemical strikes on a rebel-held town. Sarin nerve gas We have a very high level of confidence that the attacks were carried out under aircraft under the direction of Bashar al-Assads regime. We have very high confidence that the attacks involved the use of sarin nerve gas, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters late Thursday. Tillerson said it was important to take action against the Syrian leader, because as Assad has continued to use chemical weapons in these attacks with no response, with no response from the international community, he, in effect, is normalizing the use of chemical weapons, which may then be adopted by others. Action needed to be taken, he added, to make clear that these chemical weapons continue to be a violation of international norms. National security adviser H.R. McMaster said the strikes avoided depots located on the airbase where U.S. officials thought sarin was being stored. "Obviously, the regime will retain a capacity to commit mass murder with chemical weapons beyond this airfield," McMaster said. But, he added, "this was not a small strike." Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said the targets included aircraft, structures, petroleum and logistical storage, and ammunition supply bunkers. Davis said military planners "took precautions" to limit risks to Russian and Syrian personnel at the airfield. Syria's military, however, said Friday morning that six people had been killed and several others wounded. "Initial indications are that this strike has severely damaged or destroyed Syrian aircraft and support infrastructure and equipment at Shayrat Airfield, reducing the Syrian government's ability to deliver chemical weapons," Davis said in a statement. Davis added that the Russian government had been given advance warning of the missile attack. Tillerson added, We feel that the strike itself was proportional because it was targeted at the facility that delivered this most recent chemical weapons attack. U.S. President Donald Trump addressed the nation Thursday night. Watch: President Trump's Statement on US Missile Strikes on Syria U.S. President Donald Trump addressed the Nation Thursday night. "On Tuesday, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad launched a horrible chemical attack on innocent civilians using a deadly nerve agent. ... Tonight I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched," Trump said. "It is in this vital national security interest of the Untied States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons." Trump called on all civilized nations to join the U.S. "in seeking an end to the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria." Reaction Syrian state TV called the U.S. strike an act of "aggression." While a Turkish-based Syrian opposition group, the Syrian Coalition, welcomed the U.S. attack, saying that it had put an end to an age of "impunity" and that the military action should continue. Syria ally Iran also condemned the U.S. military action. Leaders from countries allied with the U.S. Germany, France, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, along with several others voiced support for the early-morning strike. Chinese leaders visit The airstrike came as Trump entertained Chinese President Xi Jinping at the president's Mar-a-Lago retreat in Florida. Trump did not announce the attacks in advance, although he and other national security officials ratcheted up their warnings to the Syrian government throughout the day Thursday. "I would tell you that the response from our allies, as well as the region and the Middle East, has been overwhelmingly supportive of the action we taken," Tillerson said. He is scheduled to travel to Russia next week. Surprise action The surprise action marked a striking reversal for Trump, who warned as a candidate against the U.S. getting pulled into the Syrian civil war, now in its seventh year. But the president appeared moved by the video and photos of children killed in the chemical attack, calling it a "disgrace to humanity" that crossed "a lot of lines." Just last week, the White House backed away from the former Obama administration's stance that Assad must be removed from power. While Trump did not say whether he now thought, in the wake of the gas attack, Assad should be driven from power, Tillerson said earlier Thursday that Assad had to go and that there was "no role for him to govern the Syrian people" in the future. Syria's civil was had killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions, contributing to the largest refugee crisis since the end of World War II. UN discussions At the emergency U.N. meeting Friday, Haley said the U.S. attacks were "fully justified" and warned that the U.S. was "prepared to do more, but we hope that will not be necessary." After U.N. diplomats met Thursday to discuss draft resolutions responding to the gas attack, Russia's deputy U.N. ambassador, Vladimir Safronov, said "negative consequences" must be considered if the U.S. were to take unilateral military action. Discussions ran late into the evening Thursday, but no consensus was agreed to. Denies allegations Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem said his country did not use chemical weapons during airstrikes on Khan Sheikhoun. He insisted they would never be used, "even against terrorists." But Dr. Annie Sparrow, a public health specialist and a critical-care pediatrician at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York who has carried out many studies on Syria, told VOA Turkish service that a "chemical cocktail" was used on the town. VOA's Jamie Dettmer, Mehmet Sumer and Wayne Lee contributed to this report. The largest U.S. Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization is expressing hope the U.S. military strike in Syria is signaling a reversal of President Donald Trumps stance on banning U.S. entry to people from six majority-Muslim countries, including Syria. Trump, who was viscerally moved by footage of an apparent chemical weapons attack in Syria on civilians, including women and children, ordered a missile attack on Syria in retaliation. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said the U.S. must lead an international effort to establish no-fly zones and safe-zones for civilians in Syria. The group wants the U.S. to impose economic and diplomatic sanctions on any individual, group or government that has a role in the continuing genocide in Syria. Congress wants clear policy U.S. politicians, meanwhile, have supported Trumps move in Syria, but have cautioned that going forward, the president must have a plan and must work with Congress. House Speaker Paul Ryan said the U.S. action in Syria was appropriate and just, but he is looking forward to the administration further engaging Congress in this effort. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was caught red-handed carrying out an abhorrent chemical attack. Royce said the Trump administration must work with Congress and lay out clear policy goals for Syria and the region. U.S. Senator Chris Coons, an opposition Democrat and member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said images of the Syrian children and adults who were brutally murdered and poisoned by their own government were not only heartbreaking and horrifying, they were a call to action for the global community. While Im encouraged that the Trump Administration has felt compelled to act forcefully in Syria against the Assad regime, Im gravely concerned that the United States is engaging further militarily in Syria without a well-thought-out comprehensive plan. Coons urged Trump to work with Congress to address the ongoing crisis in Syria and to seek proper authorization for further use of military force. The United States and Russia will maintain a hotline aimed at preventing midair collisions of their warplanes in Syria, senior U.S. military officials said Friday, contradicting Moscow's claims that it has suspended the "deconfliction" talks in protest of America's cruise missile strikes on a Syrian air base. The officials also said they're looking into whether Russia participated in the chemical weapons attack in Syria earlier this week that prompted President Donald Trump's order for a retaliation. They said Russia has failed to control the Syrian government's use of chemical weapons or to account for chemical agents that were supposed to have been eliminated under a 2013 agreement, and may have been complicit in Tuesday's horrifying strike that involved the use of a sarin-like nerve gas. In Moscow, the Russian government on Friday announced its own swift response to the American intervention against its Arab ally. It said it would cut the hotline that was established after Russia joined Syria's civil war in 2015 to help Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government against opposition groups. The hotline's primary intent is to ensure Russian planes conducting combat missions in Syria's skies don't stumble into an accident or confrontation with aircraft flown by the U.S.-led coalition fighting an Islamic State insurgency in the north of the country. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova reportedly said later Friday that Moscow would consider reactivating the memorandum with the United States on preventing air incidents in Syria. "Today, everyone heard the statement of the Defense Ministry, which gave a clear assessment of this step and what motivated it," she was quoted as saying on Russian television station NTV. "We will proceed from the real situation." But the senior U.S. military officials, who weren't authorized to speak publicly on the matter and demanded anonymity, said U.S.-Russian discussions have continued since Thursday night's attack on the Syrian military base. They said American officials asked to make sure the military talks would continue, and the Russians said they would. Pressed on whether the Russians were actively participating in the safety calls, one official said conversations were ongoing. Neither side had previously expressed an interest in severing the line of communication. Even when the U.S., under President Barack Obama, briefly halted talks with Russia on a Syrian peace process, both sides maintained the military communications. Eliminating the hotline could enhance the risk of an accident involving the two nuclear powers. The U.S. officials, however, said they were also reviewing evidence to see if Russia was complicit in the attack on the northern Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun, where more than 80 people were killed. They said a drone belonging either to Russia or Syria was seen hovering over the site of the chemical weapons attack Tuesday after it happened. The drone returned late in the day as citizens were going to a nearby hospital for treatment. The hospital was bombed shortly afterward, officials said, possibly in an effort to cover up evidence of chemical weapons usage. The U.S. says a sarin-like nerve agent was used. Syria denies the claim. And the Kremlin says Syria's government wasn't responsible. The U.S. officials also said they're aware of Russians with chemical weapons expertise who've been in Syria. The U.S. Department of Justice said Thursday that it has paid out more than $800 million from a Congressionally-created fund to compensate thousands of American victims of international terrorist acts dating back decades. Among the 2,332 claimants were Americans held hostage by Iran from 1979 to 1981, as well as victims of the 1998 al-Qaida bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the Justice Department said in a statement. The U.S. Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund was set up by Congress in 2015 and is administered by the Justice Department's Criminal Division. Congress authorized the department to deposit into the fund certain forfeiture proceeds, penalties and fines that come from civil and criminal matters involving prohibited transactions with state sponsors of terrorism. Congress originally appropriated $1.025 billion for payments to victims, and recent Justice Department prosecutions and U.S. government enforcement actions have increased the total available for initial payments to more than $1.1 billion, the statement said. "Through this program, we will continue to be resolute in our commitment to victims of state-sponsored terrorism and aggressively search for illicit funds and assets to compensate them for their losses," Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division Kenneth Blanco said in a statement. The looming collapse of the Islamic State terror group's self-declared caliphate is a welcome development for many Western officials. But even when it happens, many warn of a secondary problem: what to do about the thousands of IS foreign fighters who may survive. "The most vivid challenge we now face is ensuring that the information and intelligence about the travel, the plans, the intentions and identities of foreign terrorist fighters are as broadly known as possible everywhere in the world, because their travel can be so unpredictable," said Lieutenant General Michael Nagata, director of strategic operational planning at the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center. Here are the latest U.S. data on foreign fighters, as given by a senior U.S. counterterrorism official: More than 40,100 foreign fighters have traveled to Syria and Iraq since the conflict began. Foreign fighters come from at least 120 countries. Approximately 280 U.S. residents have traveled or attempted to travel to Syria and Iraq. Approximately 36 Americans have died after traveling to Syria to partake in the conflict. The coalition to defeat Islamic State is also getting help from its newest member, INTERPOL, according to a senior White House official: INTERPOL now has information about 14,000 foreign fighters from 60 countries. In the past four years, there has been "a thousandfold increase" in the amount of information shared on foreign fighters European countries have also taken steps to cut down on foreign fighter travel, the White House said: EU countries adopted passenger name recognition protocols. Thirty-one non-EU countries are implementing enhanced traveler screening measures. U.S. officials have also described accelerated efforts to make travel for foreign fighters more difficult. "We cannot guarantee that none will trickle out. It's our objective to help ensure that those who are still in [IS leader Abu Bakr al-] Baghdadi's rapidly shrinking caliphate will die there," a senior White House official said. U.S. allies in Europe offered a cautious welcome to the American missile strikes on a Syrian military base overnight Friday. The U.S. action was in response to a chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held town, which the West blames on the regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad. Washington acted alone in targeting Syrias Shayrat air base, where its believed the aircraft were based that launched the chemical weapons attack. But key European allies offered Washington their backing. Faced with this first test of the slaughter of nearly a hundred people, including children, from a gas attack by the regime, the Trump administration has acted and we believe rightly and we fully support that action, Britains Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said Friday. Germany echoed those words of support. "No one can say that no other roads were tried to prevent or to end the use of chemical weapons, German Foreign Ministry Spokesman Sebastian Fischer told reporters. "The attack of the United States is understandable given the dimension of the war crimes, given the suffering of innocent people, and given the blockage in the U.N. Security Council, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters. Jean-Marc Ayrault, the French foreign minister, said the "use of chemical weapons is appalling and should be punished because it is a war crime." Proportionate response French President Francois Hollande suggested Washingtons response was proportionate. "I consider this operation a response, which must now be pursued at the international level within the Framework of the United Nations, he said in a television address Friday. President Trump had previously backed away from the Obama administration's position that Bashar al-Assad must leave power. But the Trump administration abruptly shifted that position in recent days following the chemical weapons attack. There is some nervousness in Europe over the apparent unpredictability of current US foreign policy. US policy in Syria, in particular military intervention, has an impact on key issues for Europe including both security when it comes to issues like terrorism, but certainly also migration. In this case we certainly dont see a major escalation of US military intervention, Jonathan Wood of analyst group Control Risks told VOA. Syrias ally Russia has rejected Western claims that President Assads regime carried out the chemical attack, and blames rebel fighters for the incident. Russian President Vladimir Putin called the attack an "aggression against a sovereign nation" on a "made-up pretext." The Kremlin said in a statement the U.S. action has inflicted "considerable damage" to already "lamentable" U.S.-Russia ties. The air strikes against President Assad will impact the Wests already fractious relations with Moscow over its actions in Ukraine, says Jonathan Wood. We would not be surprised to see some continuation of the increased frequency of Russian snap military exercises in that region certainly Russian posturing and even sabre-rattling in north-eastern Europe as a result of these strikes. But fundamentally theyre unlikely to result in a major change of the status quo in Europe. Analysts say US allies are waiting to see if this is a one-off attack, or the start of a longer military campaign against the Syrian government. More reactions Iran "strongly condemned" the U.S. strike, saying the "unilateral action is dangerous, destructive and violates the principles of international law." Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Ankara is ready to work with Washington in a more assertive policy towards the Syrian regime. He also criticized Moscow for its ongoing support of Damascus. Saudi Arabia said in a statement Trump's move was a "courageous decision." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said "this message of resolve in the face of the Assad regime's horrific actions will resonate not only in Damascus, but in Tehran, Pyongyang and elsewhere." Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said his government supports the U.S. action as a means to "prevent further deterioration of the situation." China's Foreign Ministry has called on all sides to stick to political settlements. Dorian Jones and Edward Yeranian contributed to this report The United States, through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), provided humanitarian assistance for over 2 million Zimbabweans during the El Nino-induced drought that led to widespread crop failure and left 4.1 million rural Zimbabweans food insecure. In a statement on Thursday, the U.S Embassy in Harare said as the annual harvest approaches, USAID and its partners are reviewing the progress and achievements of a successful drought response and continuing ongoing activities that aim to improve long-term food security for Zimbabwe. The Embassy quoted USAID/Zimbabwe Mission Director Stephanie Funk, as saying, The United States stood with the people of Zimbabwe during the drought. USAIDs assistance reduced suffering for over 2 million Zimbabweans and ensured that families had the necessary tools to cope with the negative effects of the drought. According to the Embassy, since 2015, USAID has responded to the drought with agility and speed to meet the immediate food needs of the most vulnerable people while also building their resilience against future droughts. USAID supported a substantial expansion of the World Food Programme (WFP)s Lean Season Assistance, which provided a full basket of monthly food rations for the most food insecure people in the hardest hit districts of Zimbabwe. This food assistance also reached hundreds of Zimbabweans displaced by flooding last month. Together with partners including UNICEF and WFP, USAID is providing emergency nutrition for malnourished children and people living with HIV, nutrition and health services, access to safe drinking water, and seeds and livestock support to promote agricultural recovery. This emergency assistance aims to maintain or improve the nutritional status of vulnerable groups, save lives, and facilitate a quicker recovery for struggling communities. During the drought, USAID also dramatically scaled up its two ongoing food security activities, Enhancing Nutrition, Stepping Up Resilience and Enterprise (ENSURE) and Amalima, which aim to address the underlying causes of chronic food insecurity and malnutrition in rural areas. Launched in 2013, ENSURE and Amalima are implemented by consortia led by World Vision and Cultivating New Frontiers in Agriculture, respectively. These activities provide food for pregnant and lactating women and children under the age of two; help communities repair and create productive assets, compensating workers for their labor; and provide health and nutrition training, improved water and sanitation systems, and training to increase agricultural productivity and incomes. As the drought intensified, ENSURE and Amalima adapted their work to provide additional food rations and assisted communities to create 80 productive assets, including dams, irrigation schemes, and dip tanks, to improve food security over the long-term. These efforts have already demonstrated broad impact. The global acute malnutrition rate among children under 5 actually fell from 4.4 percent in May 2016 to 3.1 percent in January 2017 at the height of the hunger season. USAIDs long-term food security activities are also producing results: the stunting rate chronic malnutrition that impacts childrens growth and development has decreased from 32 percent in 2010 to 27 percent in 2015. The warships USS Porter and USS Ross in the Mediterranean Sea launched dozens of Tomahawk missiles at the Shayrat air base. By Reuters: Russia warned on Friday that US cruise missile strikes on a Syrian air base could have "extremely serious" consequences, as President Donald Trump's first major foray into a foreign conflict opened up a rift between Moscow and Washington. The warships USS Porter and USS Ross in the Mediterranean Sea launched dozens of Tomahawk missiles at the Shayrat air base, which the Pentagon says was involved in a chemical weapons attack this week. advertisement It was Trump's biggest foreign policy decision since taking office in January and the kind of direct intervention in Syria's 6-year-old civil war his predecessor Barack Obama avoided. The strikes were in reaction to what Washington says was a poison gas attack by the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that killed at least 70 people in rebel-held territory. They catapulted Washington into confrontation with Russia, which has advisers on the ground aiding its close ally Assad. "We strongly condemn the illegitimate actions by the US The consequences of this for regional and international stability could be extremely serious," Russia's deputy UN envoy, Vladimir Safronkov, told a meeting of the UN Security Council on Friday. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev charged that the US strikes were one step away from clashing with Russia's military. US officials informed Russian forces ahead of the missile strikes and avoided hitting Russian personnel. Satellite imagery suggests the base houses Russian special forces and helicopters, part of the Kremlin's effort to help Assad fight Islamic State and other militant groups. Trump has frequently urged improved relations with Russia, strained under Obama over Syria, Ukraine and other issues, but in launching the attacks on Thursday night he said action had to be taken against Assad. "Years of previous attempts at changing Assad's behaviour have all failed and failed very dramatically," Trump said as he announced the attack on Thursday night from his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, where he was meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping. 'PREPARED TO DO MORE' US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said on Friday the Trump administration was ready to take further steps if needed. "We are prepared to do more, but we hope that will not be necessary," she told the UN Security Council. "The United States will not stand by when chemical weapons are used. It is in our vital national security interest to prevent the spread and use of chemical weapons." Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who was in Florida with Trump and is scheduled to go to Moscow next week, said he was disappointed but not surprised by the Russian reaction because it showed continued support for Assad. advertisement Iran, which supports Assad and has been criticized by Trump, condemned the strike, with President Hassan Rouhani saying it would bring "only destruction and danger to the region and the globe." US officials called the intervention a "one-off" intended to deter future chemical weapons attacks and not an expansion of the US role in the Syrian war. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said the United States would announce additional sanctions on Syria in the near future but offered no specifics. US allies from Asia, Europe and the Middle East expressed support for the attack, if sometimes cautiously. The action is likely to be interpreted as a signal to Russia, and countries such as North Korea, China and Iran where Trump has faced foreign policy tests early in his presidency, of his willingness to use force. The United States is now likely to be more aggressive in pursuing intelligence about Syria's suspected chemical weapons program. The Pentagon has also signalled interest in determining any Russian complicity. "At a minimum, the Russians failed to rein in the Syrian regime activity," a senior US military official told reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity. advertisement The official also said the United States had been unable to determine if a Russian or Syrian aircraft bombed a hospital that was treating victims of the chemical attack. Russia joined the war on Assad's behalf in 2015, turning the momentum in his favor. Although Moscow supports opposing sides in the war between Assad and rebels, the United States and Russia say they share a single main enemy, Islamic State. Tillerson said the strike took out about 20 per cent of the seventh wing of the Syrian air force and hit a fueling facility. The base's runway was still in use. Assad's office said Syria would strike its enemies harder. Damascus and Moscow denied Syrian forces were behind the gas attack but Western countries dismissed their explanation that chemicals leaked from a rebel weapons depot after an air strike. The Syrian army said the US attack killed six people and called it "blatant aggression" that made the United States a partner of "terrorist groups" including Islamic State. There was no independent confirmation of civilian casualties. US lawmakers from both parties on Friday backed Trump's action but demanded he spell out a broader strategy for dealing with the conflict and consult with Congress on any further action. advertisement The UN Security Council had been negotiating a resolution, proposed by the United States, France and Britain on Tuesday, to condemn the gas attack and push the Syrian government to cooperate with international investigators. Russia said the text was unacceptable and diplomats said it was unlikely to be put to a vote. MOSCOW WANTS EXPLANATION Russia expects Tillerson to explain Washington's stance when he visits Moscow next week, Interfax news agency cited a Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman as saying. Washington has long backed rebels fighting Assad in a multi-sided civil war that has killed more than 4,00,000 people and driven half of Syrians from their homes since 2011. The United States has conducted air strikes against Islamic State, which controls territory in eastern and northern Syria, and a small number of US troops are helping rebel militias. Asked whether the strikes set back any efforts to work with Russia to defeat Islamic State, sometimes known as ISIS, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said: "There can be a shared commitment to defeat ISIS and also agree that you can't gas your own people." Tuesday's attack was the first time since 2013 that Syria was accused of using sarin, a banned nerve agent it was meant to have given up under a Russian-brokered, UN-enforced deal that persuaded Obama to call off air strikes four years ago. Video depicted limp bodies and children choking while rescuers tried to wash off the poison gas. Russian state television blamed rebels and did not show footage of victims. The US strikes cheered Assad's enemies, after months when Western powers appeared to grow increasingly resigned to his staying in power. But opposition figures said an isolated assault was far from the decisive intervention they seek. Neither the Trump administration nor its predecessor has laid out a policy aimed at ending the Syrian conflict. ALSO READ | Join us in ending slaughter in Syria, says Trump after US missile strike: Full text ALSO READ | Syrian civil war: The biggest human crisis since the World War II ALSO WATCH | US launched over 50 Tomahawk cruise missiles at Syria airbase in retaliation to chemical gas attack --- ENDS --- The U.S. military fired a barrage of missiles into Syria early Friday in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack blamed on President Bashar al-Assad's forces that killed about 100 civilians. It is the first direct U.S. assault on Syrian government forces. Russia, which is providing troops and air support to the Assad government, condemned the U.S. military action, calling it an aggression against a sovereign state, and said it was suspending a memorandum of understanding with the U.S. for flight safety over Syria. The 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles were launched about 4:40 a.m. local time from the U.S. Navy destroyers USS Ross and USS Porter, which are deployed in the eastern Mediterranean. The missile launch lasted for three to four minutes, U.S. officials said. U.S. forces are said to have targeted Shayrat Airfield in western Syria. A Navy official told VOA the airfield was targeted because it was most likely used to launch Tuesday's chemical strikes on a rebel-held town. Sarin nerve gas We have a very high level of confidence that the attacks were carried out under aircraft under the direction of Bashar al-Assads regime. We have very high confidence that the attacks involved the use of sarin nerve gas, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters late Thursday. Tillerson said it was important to take action against the Syrian leader, because as Assad has continued to use chemical weapons in these attacks with no response, with no response from the international community, he - in effect - is normalizing the use of chemical weapons, which may then be adopted by others. Action needed to be taken, he added to make clear that these chemical weapons continue to be a violation of international norms. National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster said the strikes avoided depots located on the air base where U.S. officials believe sarin is being stored. "Obviously, the regime will retain a capacity to commit mass murder with chemical weapons beyond this airfield, McMaster said. But, he added, This was not a small strike. Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said the targets included aircraft, structures, petroleum and logistical storage, and ammunition supply bunkers. Initial indications are that this strike has severely damaged or destroyed Syrian aircraft and support infrastructure and equipment at Shayrat Airfield, reducing the Syrian Government's ability to deliver chemical weapons, Davis said in a statement. Tillerson added, We feel that the strike itself was proportional because it was targeted at the facility that delivered this most recent chemical weapons attack. Watch: President Trump's Statement on US Missile Strikes on Syria U.S. President Donald Trump addressed the Nation Thursday night. "On Tuesday Syrian President Bashar al-Assad launched a horrible chemical attack on innocent civilians using a deadly nerve agent. ... Tonight I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched," Trump said. "It is in this vital national security interest of the Untied States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons." Trump called on all civilized nations to join the U.S. "in seeking an end to the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria." Reaction Syrian state TV called the U.S. strike an act of "aggression." While a Turkish-based Syrian opposition group, the Syrian Coalition, welcomed the U.S. attack, saying it puts an end to an age of "impunity" and said the military action should continue. Early Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the attack was in violation of international law, spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a statement. U.S. officials said they were not in communication with the Russian government before the airstrike. Russia said it would seek an urgent meeting of the U.N. Security Council to discuss the Syria attack. Syria ally Iran also condemned the U.S. military action. Chinese leaders visit The airstrike came as Trump entertained Chinese President Xi Jinping at the president's Mar-a-Lago retreat. Trump did not announce the attacks in advance, although he and other national security officials ratcheted up their warnings to the Syrian government throughout the day Thursday. "I would tell you that the response from our allies, as well as the region and the Middle East has been overwhelmingly supportive of the action we taken," Tillerson said. He is scheduled to travel to Russia next week. Leaders from countries allied with the U.S. -- Germany, France, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, along with several others -- voiced support for the early-morning strike. Pentagon spokesman Davis said military planners took precautions to limit risks to Russian and Syrian personnel at the airfield. Syrias military, however, said Friday morning that six people had been killed and several others wounded in the attack. Surprise action The surprise action marked a striking reversal for Trump, who warned as a candidate against the U.S. getting pulled into the Syrian civil war, now in its seventh year. But the president appeared moved by the video and photos of children killed in that chemical attack, calling it a "disgrace to humanity" that crossed "a lot of lines." Just last week, the White House backed away from the former Obama administration's stance that Assad must be removed from power. While Trump did not say whether he now thought, in the wake of the gas attack, Assad should be driven from power, Tillerson said earlier Thursday Assad had to go and that there was "no role for him to govern the Syrian people" in the future. The six-year civil was had killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions, contributing to the largest refugee crisis since the end of World War Two. UN discussions At the United Nations, diplomats met earlier Thursday to discuss three separate draft resolutions responding to the gas attack. One put forward by the U.S., Britain and France, a competing draft put forward by Russia, and a third compromise draft from the 10 nonpermanent members of the Council. Discussions ran late into the evening Thursday, but no consensus was agreed and Council members departed, many looking tense. Russia's deputy U.N. Ambassador Vladimir Safronkov said "negative consequences" must be considered if the U.S. were to take unilateral military action. "All responsibility, if military action occurred, will be on [the] shoulders of those who initiated such [a] doubtful and tragic enterprise," Safronkov said in response to reporters' questions. Denies allegations Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem said his country did not use chemical weapons during airstrikes on Khan Sheikhoun. He insisted they would never be used, "even against terrorists." But Dr. Annie Sparrow, a public health specialist and a critical-care pediatrician at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York who has carried out many studies on Syria, told VOA Turkish service that a "chemical cocktail" was used on the town. VOA's Jamie Dettmer and Mehmet Sumer contributed to this report. Several U.S. allies say they fully support the U.S. military action in Syria, while Russian President Vladimir Putin views the U.S. move as an "aggression against a sovereign nation" on a "made-up pretext." International reaction to the U.S. missile strike on a Syrian air base has been flowing into various media outlets around the globe as the world ponders the news that U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the strike in retaliation to the recent gruesome chemical weapons attack that killed about 100 Syrian civilians, including women and children. A Syrian watchdog says the air base attack killed at least four Syrian soldiers, while Syrian officials say six people were killed and several wounded. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the attack damaged more than a dozen hangars, a fuel depot and an air defense base. Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, said the Russian president, who is a staunch ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, does not believe Syria has chemical weapons. The Kremlin said in a statement the U.S. action has inflicted "considerable damage" to already "lamentable" U.S.-Russia ties. The Russian Foreign Ministry says it is calling for an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council, and says the Syrian air safety agreement that has been in place with the U.S. has been suspended. Iran also "strongly condemned" the U.S. strike, saying the "unilateral action is dangerous, destructive and violates the principles of international law." However, Numan Kurtulmus, Turkey's deputy prime minister, said in a live television interview the U.S. strike on the Syrian air base was "positive" and that the regime's "barbarism must immediately be stopped." He said "We believe that the Assad regime must be punished completely in the international arena." Turkish forces have been involved in the fight in Syria and hosts many refugees from the neighboring country. Turkey's foreign minister called for the immediate removal of Assad and the establishment of a transitional government. "It is necessary to oust this regime as soon as possible from the leadership of Syria," said Mevlut Cavusoglu. "If he doesn't want to go, if there is no transition government, and if he continues committing humanitarian crimes, the necessary steps to oust him should be taken." A British government spokesman said Friday, "The UK government fully supports the U.S. action, which we believe was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime and is intended to deter further attack." French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel issued a joint statement saying Assad bore "sole responsibility" for the airstrike, following the chemical attack. Jean-Marc Ayrault, the French foreign minister, said "Use of chemical weapons is appalling and should be punished because it is a war crime." Saudi Arabia said in a statement Trump's move was a "courageous decision." The Saudi Foreign Ministry said U.S. action was the right response to "the crimes of this regime to its people in light of the failure of the international community to stop it." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said "this message of resolve in the face of the Assad regime's horrific actions will resonate not only in Damascus, but in Tehran, Pyongyang and elsewhere." Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said his government supports the U.S. action as a means to "prevent further deterioration of the situation." China's Foreign Ministry has called on all sides to stick to political settlements. Beijing make the comment Friday as President Xi Jinping continued his visit to the U.S. where he will meet with Trump again Friday after the two met Thursday at Trump's Florida resort. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the U.S. missile strike on the Syrian air base was "a calibrated, proportionate and targeted response." A Polish government spokesman said his government "supports all actions to end war and humanitarian crisis in Syria." This morning, the United States are said to have fired 59 cruise missiles from the Mediterranean in order to destroy the Syrian military air base at Shairat. The attack was intended as a unilateral action aimed at punishing the chemical weapons attack which the US attributes to the Syrian Arab Army. Stunned by the amplitude of the reaction by the US, all commentators concluded that the Trump administration had made a 180 turn concerning the Syrian question. The White House was claimed to have finally adopted the position of its US opposition and its British, French and German allies. Really? The reality does not correspond to the story Without hindrance, the US cruise missiles crossed the zone controlled by the new Russian weapon which inhibits NATO communications and commands. According to General Philip Breedlove, ex-Supreme Commander of NATO, this weapon enabled Russia to gain the advantage over the United States in terms of conventional warfare. It should normally have upset the guidance systems of these missiles, but apparently did not function. This indicates either that the Pentagon has finally found a technical riposte, or that the weapon had been de-activated by the Russians. The Syrian anti-air defence system includes S-300s controlled by the Syrian Arab Army and S-400s served by the Russian army. These weapons are supposed to be capable of intercepting cruise missiles, although the situation has never yet presented itself in combat conditions. They are, of course, triggered automatically, but they did not function either. Therefore no anti-missile missiles were fired, neither by the Russian army, nor by the Syrian army. When the US cruise missiles hit their targets, they landed on a military base which was almost deserted, having been evacuated only a short time before. Therefore, the missiles destroyed the tarmac, the radar equipment and a number of aircraft which had long been out of service, some hangars and living quarters. They nonetheless caused a dozen victims, six of whom died. Although no cruise missile was officially tracked as off-course or destroyed, only 23 and not 59 hit the base at Shairat. What does this masquerade mean? Since he acceded to the White House, President Trump has been trying to change his countrys policies, to substitute cooperation for the current confrontational system. On the question of the Greater Middle East , he took position for the destruction of jihadist organisations (and not for their reduction , as his predecessor claimed). Over the last few days, Trump has recognised the legitimacy of the Syrian Arab Republic, and thus the maintenance in power of the democratically-elected President, Bachar el-Assad. He received the Egyptian President, Marshall Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, an ally of Syria, and congratulated him for his fight against the jihadists. He has re-established a direct communications channels between Washington and Damascus. In any case, President Trumps problem was to convince his allies to apply his policies whatever the investment they had made to overthrow the Syrian Arab Republic. It is of course possible that President Trump made his about-face in three days simply because he saw a video broadcast on YouTube, but it is more probable that this mornings military action is the continuation of his previous diplomatic actions. By attacking,President Trump satisfied his opposition, so they will be unable to oppose the next phase of operations. Yesterday, Hillary Clinton called for the bombing of Syria in a riposte to the alleged use of chemical weapons. Donald Trump ordered his troops to fire cruise missiles on an almost empty base, after having given advance notice to the whole world, including Russia and Syria. Damascus, by sacrificing this base and the lives of a few men, gave him the authority to carry out a vast action against anyone who uses chemical weapons. But so far, the only people who actually use these weapons, and have been identified by the United Nations for doing so, are the jihadists. Daesh, which had also been warned of the US attack (but by its British, French and German commanders), immediately launched an attack on Homs, which is now deprived of an air base. We shall see in the next few days how Washington and its allies will react to the jihadist advance. It will only be at that moment that we shall know if Donald Trumps manuvre and the gamble by Vladimir Putin and Bachar el-Assad has worked. Harvey Weinstein. Photo: John Phillips/Getty Images No one not even Kris Jenner herself is as slick with self-generating buzz as Harvey Weinstein. The latest case? The Weinstein Company announcing that it is gearing up for a fight with the MPAA over an R rating for its trans teen drama 3 Generations. The fact that an R rating would prevent high-school students from seeing this film would truly be a travesty, Weinstein said in a statement released Thursday. The MPAA and I were able to come to an agreement on Bully and I am confident that we will be able to do so again. As that statement implies, all this has happened before a couple of times, actually. When a Weinstein release needs an awards-season push or a box-office boost, the companys head honcho is a master of ringing up the MPAA and declaring war. This is the man who created the modern Oscar campaign, after all. (Then again, every unsavory thing youve heard about Harvey Weinstein is a lie.) It happens so often, in fact, that weve just got to assume Harvey Weinstein has an iCal alert that goes off once every few months, reminding him to stage a battle royale with the MPAA. 1994: Clerks Back in the Miramax days, the MPAA gave Kevin Smiths Sundance comedy an NC-17 rating for sexually explicit language. On appeal, the rating was softened to an R. In this case, the ratings fight wasnt so much to drum up publicity as it was to ensure the tiny film didnt receive a box-office death sentence. 2008: Zack and Miri Make a Porno and then Harvey made some clever posters. When the MPAA protested images of Elizabeth Banks and Seth Rogen on the movies poster as being too risque, the studio swapped in two stick figure drawings and the phrase Seth Rogen & Elizabeth Banks made a movie so titillating that we can only show you this drawing. Eventually the titled was shortened to just Zack and Miri, and the Kevin Smith movie got its initial NC-17 rating knocked down to an R without making any cuts. 2010: Blue Valentine Blue Valentines somber love story was slapped with a NC-17 rating from the MPAA, which decided that the movies sad (and, honestly, rather tame) sex scene was too explicit. Harvey issued a strongly worded statement expressing his disappointment in the MPAAs rating, but also signaled that he was ready for a buzzy fight, pointing to another recent picture Piranha 3-D that eked out an R rating while featuring a scene where a piranha coughed up a penis. When asked if hed recut the movie to meet an R rating, Harvey said hed decline: [Director Derek Cianfrance] doesnt want to do it, I dont think theres any reason to do it, and of course Im worried that if we dont get the R it could jeopardize the business of the movie and more importantly my actors because they are eminently nominatable. (Eminently nominatable theres your new Twitter bio.) After all this, Harvey announced that hed assembled a legal team to duke it out with the MPAA over Blue Valentines NC-17 as well as the next film on this list. 2011: The Kings Speech As the Weinsteins Kings Speech battled the critical darling Social Network for the Best Picture Oscar, Weinstein raised the stakes by teasing a PG-13 cut of the movie that could be shown to a wider audience. The Kings Speechs original theatrical cut, released in November 2010, was rated R for scenes of Colin Firth swearing. And then, in Social Network parlance, Harvey lawyered up, asshole: He joined Speechs cause with Blue Valentines. He failed, but it didnt matter: So many people saw the R version that, by the time the PG-13 cut was released, it was a box-office flop. 2012: Bully The Weinstein Company planned to take Bully, Lee Hirschs documentary about a handful of teens suffering severe bullying at school, on a tour of middle and high schools. Then, the MPAA handed the movie an R rating for foul language. I have been through many of these appeals, but this one-vote loss is a huge blow to me personally, Weinstein said, citing a plea from one of the docs subjects. After Weinstein enlisted a range of high-profile supporters to squawk for justice, the film was released unrated; buzz attained, the Weinsteins released a PG-13 cut a few weeks later. 2013: Philomena Philomena, a very sweet movie where Judi Dench plays an elderly Irish woman, originally landed an R rating from the MPAA for language, but the Weinstein Company argued that its messages of family and humility outweighed the F-bombs. Dench showed up in a video appeal in costume as M from the Bond films, while co-star Steve Coogan also flew to Los Angeles for an MPAA hearing. Because some gimmicks just work, the studio won. By this time, everyone recognized that this was just a play for a box-office boost. 2017: 3 Generations Now, here we are, with Weinstein Company once again lawyering up to contest a rating. Well see what happens with the rating, but the primary goal getting people to write about 3 Generations seems to be working so far. Update, April 27: The Weinstein Company has lost the battle, but theyve arguably won the war. After suggesting that theyd challenge 3 Generations R rating (and garnering support from the president of GLAAD), TWC has announced that theyve made the necessary cuts to the family drama to earn a PG-13 rating. GLAAD president and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis spoke with Harvey and the MPAAs Joan Graves to mediate, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The cuts were reportedly made for profanity, and didnt undermine the movies trans story line. Honestly, this is not a publicity attempt, Weinstein told the Associated Press when the MPAA issued the R rating. If it was Id just say so because I dont care. I find nothing wrong with seeking publicity. This is issue oriented. 3 Generations rating achieves both goals: The movie has generated its share of free press, and earned some allies along the way. Phillipa Soo in Amelie. Photo: Joan Marcus Sixteen years after the release of the French film Amelie, the young girl in Montmartre is searching for her destiny again, but this time in New York. A stage adaption of the whimsical tale opened on Broadway this week with Hamiltons Phillipa Soo in the title role despite director Jean-Pierre Jeunets distaste for musicals. In order to make sense of Amelies legacy, Vulture sat down with Guillaume Laurant, who co-wrote the film with Jeunet, and Craig Lucas, who wrote the book for the musical, to discuss the storys lessons about human connection, the enduring appeal of Paris, and how our perspective on the heroine changes in the new adaptation. Craig, how did you become interested in the story of Amelie and why did you think it might make a good musical? Craig Lucas: I dont think you take a work of art, especially one that is as successful on its own term, and try to make it in another form. Ive never understood that. If Amelie exists, if you want to see it, you go see it. To move it as it is onto the stage seems to me to be an exercise in madness. To me, the only reason to do it in the theater was to bring a different perspective to it. This was different because musical theater enables you to get inside the head and the heart of people through a language that transcends reason. The movie of Amelie is very powerful because you watch this womans face and she says very little. You must imagine, to a certain degree, what shes thinking and feeling. You fall in love with her partly because of her laconic nature. So we had an absurd task, which was, what is she thinking? What is she feeling? And trying to give voice to it. The movie has very much the feeling of a male gaze, a heterosexual looking at this woman going, I love this person. What is she thinking? This was a project where we had a female director and she wanted to explore what it was like for Amelie to find her voice and to be able to use her voice, to do that without necessarily being told how to do that by men. As a gay person, Im perversely interested in subverting that narrative that women need men to tell them how to live their lives. Its a different thing. It honors the movie, but in some ways, its even sillier. It was a chance to put a different perspective on it. Guillaume, have you seen the musical? Guillaume Laurant: Yes. In L.A. in December. And what was your reaction to it? GL: I was very impressed because, first of all, the question I had is, how do we reduce to just a few sets a film thats so rich with so many characters and so many sets? The main thing, as far seeing the musical is that, ultimately, as people said to us when they would see the film this is a film that makes us feel good about life. It makes you feel good, thats really essential to the film. When I saw the musical, I came out feeling good with a smile on my face. So that, they really got. Craig, what struck me in constructing the musical was that you had to go from filmic devices to musical storytelling devices. You dont have the same third-person narration, and instead, theres Amelie singing about her desires. CL: The fascinating thing about what Guillaume Laurant and Jeunet did is they created a character who doesnt know she has a problem. Because she thinks she has the perfect life. She has survived a difficult childhood by using her imagination and her faith in herself. But I think as Freud and Lacan say, its the thing that gets us through childhood is the thing that hobbles us as adults. Her relying on herself and her imagination keeps her at a great remove. The other brilliant thing that they created is a similar isolation between people in all of the relationships of the film. Everyone is having some difficulty in connecting with other people. And thats very moving, and thats how a musical works. The central idea is built into all their relationships. Guillaume, you developed the film with Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who said in 2013 that he wasnt interested in seeing the musical and that he wasnt in favor of there being a musical of this film. Have you talked to him about this production at all? Has he changed his opinion at all or is his mind still the same? GL: Well, I think in Jean-Pierre Jeunets case, culturally, the French people are much less into musicals than, for instance, Americans and British people. Its a culture that you have to have and undeniably, Jean-Pierre Jeunet does not. I do. Ive seen musicals onstage, Ive seen a lot of musicals on film, including the Fred Astaire films. When I was a kid I used to put tacks on my shoes to do tap dancing. But its a prejudice that a lot of people in France have against musical. And in the particular case of this film, of Amelie, its such a special story. The film was turned down by three production companies. We thought wed never be able to make it. And then what happened was so magical. It was a global success. So I think both Jeunet and I, in a sense, thought of Amelie as this only child. We agreed, since he and I shared the rights, that there would be no Amelie 2, there would be no Amelie on television, there would be no Amelie series. The musical is a particular case and it did take about 15 years to convince Jeunet to let it happen. But now its a little bit as if Amelie had a child of her own and its time for Jean-Pierre and myself to be grandparents. Craig, how did you approach the depiction of Paris in such an American art form? I was struck by the fact that the score sounds a little bit more like an American musical than a the stereotypical Parisian sound there arent a lot of accordions or anything. CL: Of course that comes from the composer and the lyricist, but they were not interested in trying to do a faux-French musical. In fact, Broadway history is littered with sort of dozens of twee failures where Americans have tried to pastiche France and French music. And I think its insulting to the French. What I think the musical aims for is theres an internationalism about Paris. Theres a feeling in Paris, and I was there for a long time during the development of An American in Paris, and Ive never been happier anywhere in the world. Speaking of Parisian art, the Renoir painting Luncheon of the Boating Party becomes such a key motif in both the musical and in the movie, especially with the idea that girl with the glass is a symbol for Amelie herself. What did that painting symbolize for you? GL: So, that idea in the script, at least in the first version, was very different. At one point, the painting was much more important. There was a version in which I had had all the characters in the painting be in the film as characters as well. And then we kind pulled it back to have only Amelie. CL: You know, we tried that actually in the musical. We made a transparency of the painting and we put the entire cast, which is the same number of people as the painting, behind the faces. Something I wanted very badly to put in the show, we couldnt find a way for, is that though individuals in the painting are looking at the other people, those people are not looking on them. So its all you can draw a diagram. Its 14 people not connecting, which is exactly what the show is. The only person meeting anyones gaze is the girl with the glass because shes looking at the you, the viewer. Amelies also so affected by her childhood relationship with her family in the film, with her distant parents, and theres a sense that Nino also had a tough childhood that really affected him. GL: In a sense, thats what the painter pushes her to do when he tells her, Go towards life. Embrace life. The whole question is to succeed in becoming an adult while keeping that childhood imagination. Thats really the theme of the film and the musical. I thought there was a great idea in the musical, which is to have the adult Amelie talk to the child Amelie, which, in a sense, allows her to reconcile herself with herself. How did you come up with the idea of having the child Amelie converse with her older self in the musical? CL: My first play involved an adult dealing with their childhood psyche so Id already experimented with that and the team was interested in that here because that child in that movie is such a genius. Shes so fed up with those grown-ups. Shes so funny! She just knows that theyre clueless and she just has to wait to get out of that house, which is exactly how I felt as a child. You also introduce this running theme where Amelies mother teaches her about Zenos paradox and it becomes this metaphor for how she cant connect with people. CL: Zenos paradox isnt in the movie at all, if I recall. But this wonderful moment when the mother is trying to teach and the child is not at all interested seemed really useful. We needed something to represent the bad lessons that she was getting from those parents. They were scared by how un-normal she is, so they told her a lie, which appeared as science. But its bad science: Nothing ever, ever touches. So Amelie has to overcome those bad lessons with her fantastical imagination? CL: Its rather brilliant what they did [in the film] because shes a rather, in many ways, an ordinary person. Its the fabulous destiny of someone who spends five years in Paris and is still a waitress. Shes quotidian, yet shes kind of a genius. I just fell in love with it. The more I worked with it, the more I fell in love with it. Its also, we havent said, its a masterpiece of cinema technique. Things were done with Jeunet that havent been done before. Deep focus and racking and color design. Theres very rarely any vision that doesnt have a burn of red in it and a green kind of feel. And of course the American press was rather, pfft, the way they are. GL: It was very mixed [in France, too]. Some critics liked it; some hated it. They just cant get along. CL: Why cant we just get along? GL: I have a niece whos going to film school in San Diego and they each have to choose a film that theyre going to study all year long. Shes French-Spanish, there might one Australian, but for the rest, theyre all American. There are six students who chose Amelie to study for a full year which is more than any other film, despite the fact that its a film thats now 16 years old. This interview has been edited and condensed. Adrien Titieni in Graduation. Photo: Mobra Films Theres a lot of talk about nice men in Graduation. Nice men who will help you cheat on a test, nice men who will bump you up on the liver donation list. Hes a nice man, he will understand. A network of nice men form the fabric of Romanian director Cristian Mungius irony-fueled tragedy, and the nicest of them all is Romeo (Adrian Titieni), a well-meaning doctor whose college-bound daughter Eliza (Maria Dragus) is assaulted just before a pivotal entrance exam. Shes traumatized and her writing hand is sprained so Romeo, like the good dad he desperately needs to believe he is, sets out to bend the rules for her, so she can get into Oxbridge and make his and his wifes humdrum life mean something. Graduation, like Mungius lauded 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, layers misfortunes and mistakes on top of one another in a way that feels both oppressive and true. Its largely constructed out of long conversations, often done in one take, where avalanches of fate-changing information are delivered in some cases without the characters leaving their chairs. The film ends up playing out like a much more talky, small-town-corruption version of Final Destination. By refusing to accept one cruel twist of fate, Romeo sets in motion an entirely different domino collapse that ends up implicating pretty much everyone in his life. Mungiu is almost sadistically patient in letting this play out; by the last 40 or so minutes you can more or less see where its all headed, even if its through your fingers. The attack, as well as the unexplained windshield smashings and rocks through windows that punctuate Romeos familys life, may or may not have been random. Theres a creeping sense, in the spirit of Michael Hanekes Cache, that the past holds a long-forgotten injustice that is now being avenged. Like so many cinematic petit bourgeois strivers before him, Romeo surrounds himself with classical music and opera to buffer his conscience. As a viewer, its very possible to slip into his paranoid, me-first shoes, wondering which bit player in his life might have it in for him. But Mungiu never gets specific about it, which is for the best theres enough plot here already, and the discussion about competition and the race to get out of Romania is laid on thick. For someone who knows little about the culture, it could be easily surmised that getting your kids into the right school is as cutthroat in small-town Romania as it is in Park Slope. And there as here, competitively providing for your children requires king-size blinders, and a healthy dose of hypocrisy and neglect. Eliza may be a top-of-her-class student who wants for nothing, but the family is visibly broken even before the real disasters start raining down. Its implied the attack on Eliza could have been prevented if Romeo had dropped her off closer to school instead of being in such a rush to see his mistress. There are volumes of injustices and broken promises at play before that first rock comes through the window, which, somewhat counterintuitively, keeps Mungius film from feeling outright punishing. Theres more to say besides life sucks or people are terrible hes more interested in the collective wiling of societal pressures and corruption. Whats more, the effort to salvage Elizas future is for naught; its clear as things wear on that shed just as soon move to nearby Cluj with her motorcycle-instructor boyfriend and stay close to her friends. She hints at this early in the film, but Romeo brushes it off of course she doesnt want to stay at home, of course her friends dont matter that much, shes destined for greatness. Its all a projection of course, but the desires of a bright teenage girl with her whole life ahead of her hardly matter when it comes to the pride and image of an aging philanderer with a gut. After all, she may be a smart girl, but hes a nice man. The Bollywood star recently revealed that he might open up a restaurant chain in the future. By India Today Web Desk: There are many Bollywood actors who have opened and maintained their own restaurants. Whether it's Shilpa Shetty or Suneil Shetty, or more recently with Govinda, Indian actors have always considered the food and beverage industry a good place to work at--apart from their own field of course. Now it seems that Shah Rukh Khan is also joining this group! advertisement Also Read: Govinda just launched his restaurant and it's called Hero No 1, obviously We've seen the actor play a chef long back, in a movie called Duplicate. But the idea that he will open a chain of restaurants has blown our minds. SRK revealed this bit of news during a recent interview with Hindustan Times. He said: "I know it sounds very girlish (smiles). But then, I'm all for empowerment of women. I want to be equal to women. I want to go higher up to their level, instead of thinking that they have to go higher. But I genuinely want to cook. Imagine, if I open a chain of restaurants and stores, kitna business karunga main (smiles). Having said that, Juhi (Chawla) once asked me, 'Why have you named your company, Red Chillies?' And I was like, 'just in case film-making fails, I'll open a restaurant by the same name. Red Chillies Restaurant toh chalega hi (laughs)." Also Read: Is Shilpa Shetty launching her own chain of vegetarian restaurants? If this is anything to go by, we might soon get a restaurant chain--or maybe just one restaurant--under the Red Chillies banner. We hope to heaven that really happens, because as SRK has shown time and again, he loves to cook, eat and has a lot of love to share. Don't believe us? Just check out this video of Shah Rukh Khan cooking pasta like a pro, here: Celebrating Bob Dylan's Nobel while learning how to cook...The Times They Are a-Changin' A post shared by Shah Rukh Khan (@iamsrk) on Oct 13, 2016 at 3:39pm PDT --- ENDS --- After a truly upsetting hour in which we watched Maggie Pierce say good-bye to her mom, a Greys Anatomy episode like Whats Inside is just, ahem, what the doctor ordered. It felt like old-school, A-game Greys, what with the genuine mix of tears and laughter, the romantic drama, the dancing it out. We really needed to dance it out, you guys. Sure, Amelia is still wandering around in her wrongness being terrible to Owen, but even Amelia being infuriating feels like it is part of the Greys tradition now, doesnt it? Regardless, not even her ridiculousness can bring me down today. That was some down-home Greys Anatomy comfort food right there. Everyone at Grey Sloan is apprehensive about Maggie coming back to work. I mean, everyone. Even that OB doctor (Debbie Allens daughter, Vivian Nixon!), who is barely given one line, gives some side-eye when Maggie kicks Riggs off the very intricate fetal-heart-tumor surgery so that she can take it. Per usual, there is some added drama to the case: That little fetal heart belongs to the unborn child of two of Owens friends from the V.A., Leo and Jenna so Owen isnt exactly thrilled when he finds out that Arizona will now be doing the big surgery with Mags. Aint no thing to Maggie Pierce, though. She takes Owen to task in front of Leo and Jenna for wanting her off the case solely because of a personal issue, even though shes the chief of cardio and the best doctor to perform this surgery. Leo and Jenna want the best. So that solves that, Owen Hunt. Okay, Ill try not to be too mean to the guy. He spends the entirety of the hour trying to get Amelia to at least go and say hello to Leo and Jenna, two of his very good friends who were at their wedding and are going through a very tough time. Amelia refuses repeatedly because theyre Owens friends and also she has no heart. Why am I even surprised by her terrible choices anymore? Anyway, Maggie isnt alone in believing shes ready and able to perform this surgery. Meredith cant believe everyone else is up in arms over it. She and Amelia have been around Maggie since Dianes death and Meredith thinks Maggie is grieving in a healthy way. No one outright laughs at Meredith for thinking she knows what healthy grieving looks like, but, like, they should have. Meredith also reminds everyone that they all work through a lot of pain for instance, she performed surgery while having a miscarriage in the middle of a hospital shoot-out. Bless Shonda for Jackson Avery, who flat-out informs his buddy, Thats not normal. On second thought, that is very normal for this hospital. In any case, Meredith and Amelia agree to have a sisterly chat with Maggie before she heads into the O.R. to make sure shes really okay to be operating on a fetus. Poor Maggie! She was feeling so good to be back at work and have a distraction a problem she could actually fix and instead shes met with doubt at every corner. She tells her sisters that she wasnt nervous until they came to talk to her. Whatever is the opposite of a pep talk, Meredith and Amelia just gave it to Maggie. On that hopeful note, Maggie steps into the O.R. for the first time since losing her mother. And guess what? Shes totally fine. Shes more than fine! She slays that monster of a tumor. Even when the babys heart rate starts dropping and everyone thinks Maggie is freezing up because she isnt doing anything about it (admittedly, the inaction seems very worrisome), Maggie is actually kicking some fetal-heart-tumor ass. Shes giving that babys heart a minute to adjust to its new normal. It just needs time. In case you havent guessed: She isnt just talking about that heart, you guys. After the surgery, Jackson comes by to congratulate his friend and remarks on how well shes doing. Shes not doing well, she tells Jackson. Shes doing her job. When Maggie says shes not doing well, she really means it. Meredith opens up her front door on her way out to her first date with Riggs excuse me, its a hang-out to see if they like each other enough to continue hanging out, not a date and runs into Maggie, standing on the porch, sobbing. Meredith brings her inside and Amelia joins them for a little hug sesh. After Riggs arrives to pick up Meredith for their date, all dimples and expectations, Meredith explains that she cant go out. She has people to take care of, and Riggs isnt one of them. Part of this is for sure true, but its becoming obvious to both the audience and Riggs that Meredith is stalling on this whole relationship thing. As is her right, but like, cut the dude loose if you cant pull the trigger, girl. Those dimples could be useful to someone else. In this instance, Ill forgive her unceremoniously tossing Riggs to the curb. You know why? Because after Meredith decides to stay in with her sisters for the night, THERE IS DANCING. Meredith may be a woman of science, but she knows that sometimes the only cure for pain is to get up off the couch and wiggle it, just a little bit. Its a glorious nod the great Greys tradition of dancing in Merediths living room during a montage. Its Merediths gift to her sister, but its mainly a gift to the die-hard fans. Dancing it out helps Maggie for a little while, but eventually she ends up sitting alone on the porch swing. Later, Jackson comes by. He hands Maggie all of her mothers medical records and tells her that Diane knew she was extremely sick before Jackson did, and that she came to Grey Sloan not because he was the best doctor for her, but because she knew she was dying. She knew she was dying and that Jackson, Maggies step-brother (sometimes I forget this, but also I love it), would be able to help take care of Maggie after she was gone. He hands her photos Diane gave to him to give to Maggie when he thought she might need them most. Theyre photos of Diane, after she found out how sick she was, living life. Traveling. Sky-diving. Living. As Riggs astutely points out to Meredith while shes cancelling their date, Maggie will always be grieving her loss one way or another, and thats very true but for now, these photos seem to be helping. Maggies not doing well, but shes getting there. Laughter Is the Best Medicine, Except for Real Medicine: This little Bailey-and-Webber bubble is a real treat. This week, they bicker over who should be apologizing to whom for the whole Minnick Mutiny debacle, until Ben tells Bailey that maybe Webber is just lonely. And then Bailey finally refers to herself as Webbers Work Wife and all the world seems lifted up, if only for one moment. I cannot get enough of these adorable Bailey and Ben moments in the O.R. gallery. This week its frank discussions and tender massages. Next week can they please be eating leftovers out of Tupperware while discussing a patient care plan? Add Arizona and Riggs to the list of great Greys Anatomy friendships! After sharing about their secret romances, AZ informs Doctor Dimples that theyre friends now, and there is nothing he can do about it. Bad news for him, since Arizona is THE WORST friend and blathers on about Meredith and Dereks epic love story right before the guy goes on his first date with Dr. Grey. Read the room, AZ. Greys is trying very hard to make Cross a thing, but its not going to happen. He somehow has contracted abdominal tuberculosis. The only good thing to come from this story line is Stephs face when a heavily medicated Cross tells her how sexy she is. Ive said it before and Ill say it again: Stephanie Edwards deserves better. Serious question: Is Grumpy Alex the best Alex? Followup: Do we not deserve a scene of Alex actually yelling Get off my lawn! at interns as a reward for sitting through several episodes with very little Alex to be found? Discuss below. For a show that focuses so much on tragedy and death, Greys Anatomy sure does have the funniest cemetery scenes on television. First, the uncontrollable laughter at Georges funeral, now Meredith and Amelia comparing tragic backstories. Youre sick and twisted, Greys, and thats why we love you. I could hate you. I have before. Meredith is my favorite. The Sob Scale: 4/10 Baby surgery plus Maggie crying, I want my mom equals a misty-eyed recapper. The Situation. Photo: Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic/Getty Images Michael the Situation Sorrentino has gotten himself into another sticky situation. (A special thank you to the nickname that keeps on giving.) In 2014, the Jersey Shore star and his brother Marc were indicted for tax offenses and conspiring to defraud the United States, and now the two face new charges of tax evasion and structuring and falsifying records to obstruct a grand jury investigation. The brothers previously pleaded not guilty to filing false tax returns on $9 million in income, claiming millions of dollars of personal expenses were for business; theyll be arraigned on the new charges on April 17. This isnt the first time the master of GTL (thats gym, tan, laundry, not lawsuit, though that works now too) has gotten into legal hot water. In 2012 he sued Abercrombie & Fitch for their shirt The Fitchuation and lost (but lets be honest, there were no winners here). Then A&F offered to pay $10,000 if Sorrentino would stop wearing their clothing on Jersey Shore. Then in 2013, Sorrentino filed a breach of contract lawsuit against Devotion Vodka for allegedly cheating him out of millions after endorsing the protein-infused vodka (wait, what?). But they countersued him for fraud and breach of contract. Remember when his main interest was abs? Joining the legion of comedy-world figures mourning the death of Don Rickles, Jimmy Kimmel devoted a lengthy portion of Thursdays Jimmy Kimmel Live! to the memory of the iconic insult comic. Speaking through a quivering voice and on the verge of tears, Kimmel eulogized Rickles, a man he considered a close friend, as humble, thoughtful, and extraordinarily generous with postage the kind of person who paid to overnight personalized, dig-equipped letters to friends. Kimmel also passed on Bob Newharts tale about Rickles using his trademark caustic humor to stem a Frank Sinatra ketchup outburst. Ultimately, though, Kimmel let Rickles represent himself, presenting the comedians most memorable appearances on the show in a moving, hilarious package. Father John Misty. Photo: Ben Gabbe/Getty Images for The New Yorker In a season packed with many hotly anticipated album releases, its saying something to be among the hottest of the hotly anticipated. So it is with Father John Mistys Pure Comedy, a record bearing pressure to not only live up to 2015s romantic opus I Love You, Honeybear but also pressure to not become a joke under the weight of Father John Misty himself a.k.a. Josh Tillman and his ever-quotable, kind of ridiculous, teetering-on-annoying-but-narrowly-missing-it persona. Well now the moment of truth has arrived: Pure Comedy is streamable for your listening pleasure, below. Find out if you hate or love it, honeybear. Kidman in Dead Calm, The Paperboy, and To Die For. Photo: Kennedy Miller Productions, Lee Daniels Entertainment, Columbia Pictures Fans of Nicole Kidman know shes no slouch. For decades, the actress has demonstrated her chops, braving the cold waters of high camp, the effulgent fantasy of the modern musical, the lonely life of a Southern belle, even a famous prosthetic nose to become one our most beguiling and discussed big-screen thespians. And thanks to a standout performance on the HBO mini-series Big Little Lies this year, Kidman is raking in praise like never before. A recent BuzzFeed article by Anne Helen Petersen, How Many Times Does Nicole Kidman Have to Prove Herself?, questioned the nature of this reappraisal. Why, Petersen asks, is an actress so meticulous and iconic reconsidered so often? Issues like her famous ex-husband, famous current husband, plastic surgery, and ties to Scientology are cited, all reminders that while famous men often eschew their entanglements, famous women are frequently defined by them. Now that Big Little Lies may have drawn new adherents to the Church of Kidman, people previously unexposed to her master-class filmography may need a primer. Here is a sampling of the underrated, stellar work Kidman has been turning in since the 1980s, roles that prove shes multifaceted, engrossing, and willing to get weird. In other words, shes the most interesting and, frankly, the best actress of her generation. 1. Dead Calm This adaptation of a 1963 Charles Williams novel was almost put to screen by Orson Welles, though his version was never completed. Instead, it became a 1989 high-seas thriller starring Sam Neill, Billy Zane, and a 21-year-old Nicole Kidman. The film was Kidmans first big success, and led to her casting in Days of Thunder, her international breakthrough (and the film that introduced her to Tom Cruise). But its here that we first see the superstar Kidman would become. As she and Neill are tortured by Zanes sociopathic Hughie, she displays a gravitas that extends far beyond her years. Shes gripping and intelligent; you cant take your eyes off her. Its her star is born moment. 2. To Die For Depending on your circle, this one may not qualify as underrated. The 1995 Gus Van Sant satire is well-remembered for Kidmans galvanizing turn as a ruthless news anchor and contains star-making performances from Casey Affleck and Joaquin Phoenix as the high-school students she manipulates into killing her husband. Its the part that helped Kidman transcend her status as Mrs. Tom Cruise, and her $2 million paycheck cemented her as a bankable Hollywood actress. Still, the dark comedy lacks mainstream pop-culture appeal and is sometimes sidestepped in Kidman conversations. 3. The Portrait of a Lady Its a shame Kidman hasnt done more costume dramas since she has just the face and body to lend vulnerability and fluidity to stiff corsets and repressive layers of fabric. She demonstrates this ability in Jane Campions 1996 adaptation of Henry Jamess The Portrait of a Lady, where she shares the screen with maestros like John Malkovich and Barbara Hershey, but remains the movies centerpiece. As Isabel, her even face guides us through every revelation, every flush of passion. As men bide for her hand, she considers them with her trademark steely grace. The film itself comes up a little short, but every performance is stellar, and Kidman is the anchor. She will team up with Campion later this year for the second season of Top of the Lake. 4. Practical Magic As Gillian Owens, a sensual witch whose talents pale in comparison to her more naturally gifted sister, Sally (Sandra Bullock), Kidman uses her serpentine body like an instrument. Shes seductive and funny, and later in the film, when shes possessed by her dead lover, she slips easily into tortured and venomous. Practical Magic has seen a recent renaissance as witch culture grows popular among young women finding power in the message of nature and sisterhood. Kidman and Bullock sell that message well. Both are entrancing and lovable, elevating the film above the rom-com trappings used to market it. 5. Eyes Wide Shut Stanley Kubricks final film remains polarizing. The auteur famously tapped real-life couple Cruise and Kidman to play a husband and wife in the throes of sexual panic, and also famously died before he could wrap up postproduction. The result is a distant, bizarre portrait of a marriage torn open by doubt and jealousy. Cruise gets most of the screen time, but Kidman is the real sizzler. Her bedroom speech about a sexual fantasy is the movies bedrock moment. The camera barely leaves her face as she rides a tidal wave of guilt, emotion, and regret. The scene also lays bare the films central theme: that well never fully understand the multitudes our partners contain, and that maybe its better that way. 6. Birth A young boy claims to be the reincarnated version of a womans dead husband. Thats the bizarre plot of Birth, Jonathan Glazers divisive 2004 drama. Kidman, as the mourning wife about to be remarried, is mesmerizing, her pixie cut and demure mannerisms evoking Mia Farrow in Rosemarys Baby curious in an increasingly ominous situation. That shes able to briskly sell us on the possibility of the childs claim is no easy feat. One notable scene focuses the camera firmly on her face as she sits in the audience of an opera. The arch music accents her emotion, her eyes communicating the conflict taking place in her id with a subtle crescendo. Its a stunning piece of work in a film that demonstrates her keen eye for projects you wont soon forget, whether you like them or not. 7. Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus Fur has its limitations. Truly capturing the minds eye of famed photographer Diane Arbus is an impossible task, and despite its best attempts, Fur never quite gets there. But its not aiming for reality. Director Steven Shainberg creates a fantasy situation where Arbus, played by Kidman, explores the fringes of society after meeting a man covered in fur, played by Robert Downey Jr. As with Birth, you see a Kidman whos not afraid to get downright strange. She is somehow able to makes a shaving scene oddly sensual. Its a weird film with a weird premise made substantial by the subtleties of both Kidman and Downey. 8. Rabbit Hole Kidman received an Oscar nomination for her work in Rabbit Hole, but it has since receded into the less memorable regions of her filmography. Its a shame, because its some of her finest work, and probably the most similar to her eventual performance on Big Little Lies. As Becca Corbett, a mother whose 4-year-old son was recently killed in a car accident, Kidman is absolutely devastating. Her grief doesnt fit into a neat little box. As her husband, played by Aaron Eckhart, goes to grief counseling, she strikes up a relationship with the young man who ran over her child. Her performance is a kaleidoscope of sorts; twist the knob and you get something new every time. She can be light on her toes one minute, and destroyed by pain the next. Its a portrait of grief that never feels preachy. Kidman is astounding. 9. The Paperboy The Paperboy features a much talked about but seldom seen Kidman performance one that really, really must be seen to be believed. Yes, she pees on Zac Efron and orgasms in a courtroom. But the whole performance is a schlocky, camp-fueled tour de force. Even a rotten spray tan and bottle-blonde hair cant betray Kidmans natural beauty, but she goes to great depths to make herself grotesque. The film was mostly maligned, which is a shame, because its a ton of fun, and in addition to Kidmans bravado work, it also features great turns from Matthew McConaughey, Zac Efron, David Oyelowo and John Cusack. 10. Stoker Perhaps the most criminally under-seen and under-loved film in the Kidman oeuvre, Stoker is a feast of gothic delight, like a Shirley Jackson novel animated by Edward Gorey then filmed to life by director Park Chan-wook, in his first English-language film. Kidman plays Evelyn Stoker, mother to India (Mia Wasikowska), in a nasty, delicious play on rivalry between attractive families. After the death of Indias father and the arrival of his handsome brother, mother and daughter must vie for his attention in equally despicable ways. As India undergoes a sexual awakening that aligns her passions with violence, Evelyn must find it in herself to love the daughter that sucked away her husbands devotion. Weirdly, it winds up being bravely feminist and powerful. But before it arrives at that conclusion, we get another trademark Kidman monologue, this time about the travails of motherhood. Personally speaking, I cant wait to watch life tear you apart, Evelyn snips to India before devolving into tears. Its Kidman at her wicked best. Maple syrup is big business in Riverdale: The Blossom Maple Farms label can be spotted in just about every fridge in town, which presumably means that there is a municipal diabetes crisis going on. But with would-be heir Jason gone, the Blossoms board of trustees are uneasy about the future of the family business. A fleet of ominous black Town Cars pulls up to the Blossom farm, out of which emerge some equally ominous red-haired strangers. Cheryl invites Archie as her date to the Blossoms annual tree-tapping ceremony, an event of borderline religious importance to the family. But he declines to tap her maple he has a girlfriend, the lovely Val. Penelope Blossom finds Archie at school and casually informs him that Cheryls great-uncle serves on the board of the Brandenburg Music Academy, known for its prestigious summer program. (Archie loves music. Did you know?) Penelope could put in a good word if young Archibald decides to escort Cheryl to the ceremony, that is. He accepts. Polly, whos officially expecting twins, has been ignoring her sisters attempts to contact her, to Bettys dismay. She begs Archie to talk to Polly while hes fraternizing with the enemy. Ethel Muggs is back from the Upside-Down, sharing a poem with her class that I am pretty sure she plagiarized directly from my Xanga in 2004. I quote, in part: They put me in a wooden box As I desperately opposed But all my screaming was for naught My mouth had been sewn closed Youll be hearing from my attorney, maam. And also, I hope, from a guidance counselor? Veronica checks in with Ethel to see if everythings okay. Shes having trouble at home her parents are fighting. Veronica knows the feeling well. She invites Ethel over for lunch and pampering. Ethel explains that her family will have to sell their house. We lost our place at the Dakota, confides Veronica, relatably. As soon as Hermione hears the name Muggs, she knows what happened. Ethels dad invested with her husband, Hiram Lodge. Not only did he ruin their family, but theyre planning to testify against him. Thats not the only truth bomb that Mrs. Lodge has to drop. She finally tells Fred Andrews that the mystery buyer hes working for is Lodge Industries; worse still, the thugs who attacked the construction site were almost certainly hired by her jealous husband. Unsurprisingly, Hermiones bearded boy toy is furious. She implores him to stick with the SoDale project anyway. At the tapping, the extended Blossom family is decked out in their reddest finery, looking more than a little like the cast of Get Out. It falls to Cheryl wearing an extremely covetable spider brooch to tap the first tree. With smiling encouragement from designated bucket-holder Archie, she pulls it off flawlessly. Archie also finds a moment to confront Polly about her radio silence, but all shell say is that Betty shouldnt worry. (We know Pollys been touched by evil now that shes rocking a smoky eye.) After the ceremony, Archie has a little chat with Clifford Blossom, who has the most unsettling hair I have ever seen on a man who is not the 45th president of the United States. Theyre hosting a banquet for the board later that week. Archie is invited to escort Cheryl to that, too Mr. Blossoms tailor will even fit him for a suit. You have to come. Im wearing viridian! chirps Cheryl. Over at the office of The Riverdale Register, which appears only slightly more modern than that of the Stars Hollow Gazette, Alice presents an expose on the Blossom family to her estranged husband, but he refuses to publish this personal vendetta. She tries to log in to their computer the kind of mid-90s model you had to wait your turn for at the library, but which inevitably crashed in the middle of your Oregon Trail journey but shes locked out. Alice, you see, has been fired. Outside, she shouts, I want my daughter back, you bastard, and throws a brick through the office window. Its unclear how this, exactly, will help get her daughter back, but you have to admire her enthusiasm. When she learns that Ethels dad has attempted suicide, Veronica is distraught. She rips off her trademark necklace and pearls scatter all over the locker-room floor. Tapping trees, throwing bricks, tearing pearls: This episode has it all! V and B visit the Muggs family at the hospital, bearing flowers. Veronica feels compelled to reveal her parentage (this might not be the best time, Ronnie), and Mrs. Muggs is disgusted. Her father is a criminal, she tells Ethel. Hes the reason Dad did this to himself. But back at school, Ethel accepts Veronicas apology. After all, she was there for her when she desperately needed a friend. At the banquet, Clifford shares his motives for bringing Jason 2.0 I mean, Archie into the fold. The board is skeptical of Cheryls leadership potential, but with someone as upstanding and stable (and lame, and boring) as Archie by her side, they might reconsider. It also seems like the Blossoms have a vested interest in establishing some kind of redheaded master race. Polly swoops in to ask Archie to dance. She quietly explains that shes really staying at Thornhill to uncover the connection between the Blossoms and their sons death. The last thing she needs is the Betty Brigade swinging in to her rescue. Outside the party, Cheryl (who looks amaze in viridian) tells Archie that she knows her family thinks shes a train wreck. He reassures her that he thinks shes awesome. She kisses Archie, noting, My lipsticks maple red, by the way, in case youre wondering why it tastes so sweet. (Not to deflate the romantic mood, but heres a video of me five minutes after having purchased maple lipstick.) Archie flees, and as he does, he overhears the Blossom parents conspiring to reclaim the drive-in property. Hermione Lodge will crumble, says Clifford. Maybe you should have sent her to jail instead of Hiram, says Penelope. Cheryl catches up with Archie and makes the stakes more explicit: If you leave, the radiant sun that is the Blossom family stops shining on you. No more suits. No more summer program. No more Pretty Woman treatment. Hell pass, but thanks! Cheryl copes with rejection in a way that is not, well, un-murderer-ish. On a photo from the tree-tapping ceremony, she scrawls over Archies face and then Pollys with an on-brand red marker. (Sorry, but Cheryl and Archie are now my OTP, if only because Cheryl is perfect and deserves everything she wants.) After sharing the good news that Polly is a double agent, Jughead and Betty invite Alice, an adult woman, to write for the school newspaper. Somehow, this is the single most implausible thing to happen on Riverdale, which is really an achievement. Archie may be done with the Blossoms, but Val is done with him. Shes skeeved out by the way hes let the Blossoms buy him, and more importantly, hes been essentially ignoring her. (Excellent judgment, Val.) Archie isnt the only newly single Andrews man. Fred will stick with SoDale, he tells Hermione in exchange for a 20 percent stake. He wont be a pawn any longer, and nor, for that matter, will he continue to be her sort-of boyfriend. Archie relays the conversation between Mr. and Mrs. Blossom to Jughead and Betty. If the Blossoms had plotted to destroy the Lodge family, could Hiram have returned the favor? Voila, a new suspects name finds its way onto the Jason Blossom murder board. Seth Meyers is here to say sorry to the president of the United States for so casually and callously suggesting Steve Bannon is some kind of secret political puppet master manipulating Trump. It was an easy joke to make, both because its low-hanging fruit and also because it sometimes seems like maybe its a little bit true. Either way, Seth Meyers feels horrible that Trumps feelings were hurt and will not send the shows beautifully Photoshopped presidential portrait of Steve Bannon to the Oval Office. Taran Killam. Photo: Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images While Taran Killam was recently (and sensually) crowned King George III in Broadways Hamilton, hes perhaps best remembered for his six-year run on Saturday Night Live, which ended in 2016. Today, in a Brooklyn Magazine interview, Killam revisited his time on the long-running NBC sketch show, specifically as it regarded a certain host whos now the leader of the free world. It was not fun, Killam said of having Trump host the show. Killam confirmed, as fellow SNL cast member Pete Davidson has stated previously, that Trump struggled to read at his episodes table read and didnt seem to get the jokes. Much like the White House, Trump didnt seem to be happy to be there either, and operated powered by bluster. Leaving no doubt as to Killams feelings about the matter, he ended succinctly: The president is a moron. Killams run as King George III in Hamilton is happening now for a limited time, so if youre looking to watch another blustery leader make critical mistakes, dont throw away your shot. Anne Hathaway in Colossal. Photo: Toy Fight Productions As is appropriate for its sizable title, there are many things in the movie Colossal that are big: the monster that is mysteriously connected to Anne Hathaway, the immensity of male entitlement that weighs upon her, an airplane (airplanes are very big), but most of all, her wig. Hathaway performs underneath a Starbucks-logo-ready shock of brunette frizz that foams over her shoulders in every scene. Her character, Gloria, is an alcoholic who has returned home to try, and fail, to get her life together. Her imperfect wig, massive and ungainly, fits her perfectly its a mess, and its never going to change. Lets run down Anne Hathaways wigs major accomplishments in Colossal: It arrives on top of Glorias head as she enters the film at the end of a bender, exasperating her boyfriend, capturing end of night bleeding into morning hair. It stays with Gloria as she hangs out with Jason Sudeikiss Oscar at his bar, giving us some oh no, Im slipping into old habits realness. It allows the extremely likable (or hateable, for some very wrong people) actress to transform her appearance. It serves a major plot point, which we wont reveal, but involves the fact that Gloria always has an itch right at the top of her head, which just so happens to be where her hair is parted. The wig looks very itchy, so this is all believable. A good wig shouldnt draw attention to itself. It hides in the background. You might not realize its a wig until after youve seen the movie. Many wigs fit this category, and frankly, it would be impolite to single them out. A bad wig, like Kate Maras shambolic reshoots wig in Fantastic Four or Julia Robertss recycled Mothers Day Notting Hill wig, stands out for all the wrong reasons. A great wig, however, might remind you its a wig and still be convincing for a character. The Americans has a clearance sales worth of spy wigs, which cap the grim series with grace notes of levity. American Hustle went all-in on noticeable wigs, but frankly, it overshot. Colossal has a way of arriving at serious themes through silly ones. The movie mixes pulpy genre fare with realistic small-scale drama, and turns a monster gimmick into a story about an abrasive woman facing some, but crucially not all, of her demons. Colossal doesnt always go for laughs, but it never takes itself too seriously. In some parts, you might worry that Colossals verging into melodrama, or that the stakes are getting out of its control Anne Hathaway keeps accidentally killing people in a major urban metropolis, the depiction of commonplace misogyny is deeply unsettling but then you look at Anne Hathaways wig and have something of a reminder of the films inherent silliness. This is all still a fable, a tall tale, something to convey a message and also entertain you. Long live smart monster movies, and silly monster wigs. The Get Down Gamble Everything Season 1 Episode 10 Editors Rating 2 stars * * Previous Next Previous Episode Next Episode THE GET DOWN Photo: Courtesy of Netflix My aunt was right. Leon was right. Mylene was right. Im a drug dealer. Books utters these words to Shao on the rooftop of Shaos building. Shao tries to reassure him that Dizzee will recover from his near-fatal dusting incident. Hes tough, he says. But Books is troubled by more than that. He correctly pegs that the 10-51 Club exists primarily to sell Annies product. Accusing Shao of being more committed to drug pushing than D.J. scratching, Books recalls the origin of their friendship. When I met you, Shao, it was because of a record. Because of music, he says. And we did it for free. Realizing lifes too short, Books demands that Shao help the Get Down Brothers break their contract with Fat Annie. Faced with this impossible task, Shao lashes out, citing that he has no family besides the Les Inferno crew. You got me, Books says. Family is about love. Fat Annie is all about business. So begins the 10th episode of The Get Down, the intriguingly titled Gamble Everything. After the series best episode, were presented with its worst. Its a heavy-handed and rushed affair, haunted by a visual and aural sense of impending doom that feels laid on with a trowel. Director Ed Bianchi goes for full Baz Luhrmann excess, and while there are pleasures to be had (the first 15 minutes are especially good), the entire thing feels forced and underwritten. Making matters worse, the Zulu Nation comes off more as a deus ex machina than a legitimate entity worthy of the same attention as Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flashs kingdoms in prior episodes. Despite its shortcomings, this episode has one of the series best storylines, a showcase for Skylan Brooks Ra-Ra. Last episode, Ra-Ra was given a flier by Tanya, a queen in the Zulu Nation. The Zulu are ruled by the force behind the brilliant Kraftwerk-inspired jam Planet Rock, Afrika Bambaataa. Ra-Ra calls the regal Tanya, and is so overwhelmed by her presence on the other side of the phone that he fumbles his words. His opening line is Hello Ra-Ra, this is Tanya! Youre Tanya? she asks. After digging himself even deeper into embarrassment, Ra-Ra requests a do-over. Ill call you back! he says anxiously before hanging up the phone. Did he just hang up on me, Tanya asks incredulously. When Ra-Ra calls her back, he successfully procures a date, but theres just one problem: Tanya lives in a hood Ra-Ra has no desire to visit. So you scared to be my man? asks Tanya after Ra-Ra balks at picking her up. I admired the honesty of his response: Im not scared, Im petrified! But he agrees to meet her in Little Vietnam. Before Tanya accepts the date, she demands that Ra-Ra sing a song. Ra-Ra not only sings to her, he sings Earth Wind and Fires Philip Bailey falsetto classic Reasons, a song so high that its killed more than one brother trying to impress a lady. But Ra-Ra nails his bars and the dates on. The force is strong with this one, Ra-Ra says to himself after hanging up the phone. The force is also strong in the Zulu Nation, whose denizens are not about to let a Get Down Brother into their hood. The Nation is fiercely anti-drug and Shaos reputation has been tainted by the 10-51 debacle. Tanya sneaks him into the party instead and Ra-Ra gets a jolt of inspiration that he cant wait to share with his crew. Bambaataas a king, and gangsters are scared of him, he tells Shao, providing a way for Shao to maneuver his way out of Fat Annies contract. Its a better idea than Shaos actual method, which involves pistol-whipping his benefactor unconscious when she reveals shes ditching the DJ role on the novelty rap record. Fat Annies replacing Shaolin Fantastic with a muthafuckin six-piece band. That mistake will play out in the finale. Meanwhile, the rest of the Kipling kids appear briefly. Jaden Smith, Tremaine Brown Jr. and Skylan Brooks have done a great job portraying the brotherly mix of camaraderie, rivalry and love. Boo-Boos unconditional acceptance of his weird-ass older brother is a comfort to all us weird-ass older brothers out there. He shares a nice, quiet moment with his recuperating brother, Dizzee, but its Yolanda who sets this episodes problematic main plot in motion. After backing out of the Soul Madonnas appearance at RubyCon due to her discomfort with the raunchy choreography, Yolanda snitches on her girls. When Mrs. Kipling hears about Mylenes debut, she calls Mrs. Cruz. Unbeknownst to Mrs. K., Lydia and her hubby, Reverend Buggin Out, are having a full-on argument about his swollen ego. Now that Mylenes a star, the church wants to broadcast a show from her huge new church an idea that would put Reverend Buggin Out in the same league as his real-life Washington Heights partner in Jesus, Reverend Ike. But Rev. Ike sold trinkets his followers bought to improve their standing with the God of prosperity; Rev. Buggin Out only offers the word of God. When told of Mylenes plans, her father tells Mrs. Kipling she must be mistaken. A quick search of the house proves he is not. Wheres Mylene? he angrily demands. I set her free, to be who she wants to be, to sing for herself! says Lydia. Im not sitting back while you squeeze the life out of my daughter like you did to me, she continues. Youre not going to rise to stardom on my daughters back. Lydias defiance is met with a brutal slap across the face, one she immediately reciprocates before being overpowered by her husband. Lydias brutal beating is intercut with scenes from inside RubyCon, the sin-filled den of disco iniquity where Mylene is about to make her debut. According to its Joel Grey-in-Cabaret-style host, Hell must be empty because all the devils are here! Ive put up with a lot of way-too-on-the-nose bullshit on this show, usually with bemused glee, but positioning this club as facilitating Reverend Buggin Outs descent into Hell was a bridge too far for me. Eventually, hell show up at RubyCon, but before he does, Robert Stigwood and Roy Ashton do. They are met by a heavily- accented female greeter who says what I hope they tell me before I enter Hell. For blowjob or pharmaceuticals, just ring bell, she says, handing the duo one of those old-school servant bells. While I contemplated whether it was one ring for blow and two rings to be blown, Mylene, Books and Regina arrive at the RubyCon in their limo. Shane ushers the ladies into their dressing room to change. While theyre in there, the first of our unexpected guests arrives. Its Misty Holloway, scorned lover, disco diva and still-bangin 30-year old whos about to lose her acting debut to Mylene Cruz. And she came to slay. After singing a killer version of the OJays classic Backstabbers, Misty pulls a few knives of her own. Mylene hears Misty throwing major shade and she panics. Books coaxes her out of her dressing room with what has become their mantra: If you dont believe, how am I gonna believe? Mylene and Regina go on stage, and in the middle of their number, Mylene spots her father. She freaks out, but Books is there to encourage her to continue. RubyCon is the first stop on Reverend Buggin Outs hellish night. After seeing a sexualized Mylene singing about the stuff the Bible mentions only in Song of Solomon, the Good Reverend tries to drag her from the club. Someone rings the bell for ass beatings, and the bouncers gleefully dispense one to the crazed religious zealot screaming for his daughter. Before taking his whuppin, I wish Giancarlo Espositos Pastor Ramon Cruz had yelled out Lord help me! My daughters song sounds like something they dug out of Rihannas garbage can! Because the supposedly dirty Toy Box is not only barely PG-13, it doesnt live up to the hype weve been hearing about for three episodes. Granted, Herizen F. Guardiola sings the hell out of it, but unlike the usually consistent musical choices on this show, Toy Box evaporates the minute after you hear it. Reverend Buggin Outs second stop is to his brother Papa Fuertes house. Now drunk and as battered as his wife, he spots Lydia kissing her true love in the window. The Cruz brothers have a showdown, where Lydia reveals that Mylene is not his daughter: Papa Fuerte is a Papa in more than name only. Realizing that Mylene is his niece and not his progeny, Pastor Cruz makes his final stop at his huge new church. After recording a delusional, though not inaccurate, sermon on cassette, he blows his brains out. Fresh off her successful night at RubyCon, Mylene arrives to find his body. After 15 days of being grounded, Ravindra Gaikwad will now be able to fly again. By India Today Web Desk: Controversial Shiv Sena Member of Parliament Ravindra Gaikwad will fly again after 15 days of being grounded. The Ministry of Civil Aviation in a statement has said Air India has been asked to lift the ban on the controversial MP. Gaikwad has been embroiled in controversy ever since he hit an 60-year-old Air India staffer 25 times with his slipper over a seat disagreement. advertisement Yesterday, the Minister of State of Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha held a two-hour meeting with Air India CMD Ashwani Lohani over the Gaikwad issue. Following that, Gaikwad wrote a letter addressed the Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju in which he expressed 'regret' for the incident, but, notably, did not apologise outright. Taking notice of Gaikwad's letter, the aviation ministry has now asked that the ban on the Osmanabad, Maharashtra MP be lifted. Interestingly, the All India Cabin Crew Association (AICCA) had today said that Gaikwad remains a flight risk and demanded that the ban on him stay in place. Air India also cancelled yet another ticket issued in the name of Ravindra Gaikwad. The MP, who has had his tickets cancelled multiple times by Air India and IndigGo, claimed that he never booked a ticket today. ISSUE ROCKS PARLIAMENT Yesterday, the Shiv Sena raised a hue and cry in Parliament over the ban imposed on their MP. The party contended that Gaikwad was tried by the media and that airlines (private carriers including Jet Airways and IndiGo had also banned him from flying) barring him from taking to the skies was unfair. Sena leaders disrupted proceedings in Lok Sabha and there were indications yesterday itself that the ban on Gaikwad would be lifted. House Speaker Sumitra Mahajan even said that MPs could not be expected to travel by rail or road, considering their busy schedules. WHAT HAPPENED? The incident that sparked nationwide furore took place on March 23 when Gaikwad, travelling from Pune to Delhi, got into an argument with Air India staffers. He claimed that he booked a business class ticket but the airline did not inform him at the time of booking the flight not have business class seats. The confrontation with AI employees soon turned violent when Gaikwad started hitting Sukumar, a 60-year-old staffer, with his slippers. The incident sparked outrage after it came out in the news and even received prime-time coverage on news channels. Air India registered police complaints against the MP on the same evening even as the MP, in interviews to the media, remained defiant and unapologetic. advertisement The next day, March 24, airlines started banning Gaikwad from flying with them. Air India was the first to announce that Gaikwad was not welcome on their flights and soon six private airliners followed suit. It remains to be seen whether private players such as IndiGo and Jet Airways will lift their respective bans on Gaikwad. ALSO READ | Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad who beat up Air India staff is repeat offender WATCH VIDEO ALSO WATCH | I apologise to Parliament not to Air India: Ravindra Gaikwad in Lok Sabha --- ENDS --- The lawyer, who filed the PIL in the soil scam, alleged that the money used to buy the soil was from the corpus of Bihar Wildlife Conservation Fund. By Rohit Kumar Singh: A public interest litigation was filed in the Patna High Court on Friday, seeking a CBI probe into the soil scam involving RJD Supremo Lalu Prasad's eldest son and Forest and Environment Minister Tej Pratap Yadav. According to Mani Bhushan Sengar, the lawyer who filed the PIL, Tej Pratap Yadav and Chief Secretary Anjani Kumar Singh are both party in the case. advertisement Speaking to India Today after filing the PIL, petitioner said that Patna zoo purchased the land from the mall site and later claimed that the exercise was undertaken for the beautification of the zoo. Petitioner also alleged that the Rs 90 lakh used to buy the soil was from the corpus of Bihar Wildlife Conservation Fund. Mani Bhushan said that the interest amount available in the corpus to the tune of Rs 334 crore of Bihar Wildlife Conservation Fund could only be spent for conservation of wildlife and not beautification. It may be noted that the Chairman of the Bihar Wildlife Conservation Fund is the Chief Secretary of the Bihar government, in this case Anjani Kumar Singh and PIL maintains that the onus also lies on him for the scam. "The purchase of the soil by the Sanjay Gandhi Zoological park to the tune of Rs 90 lakh is illegal and baseless. The soil was purchased by the Patna zoo from the upcoming mall site, which is co-owned by Tej Pratap Yadav. Anjani Kumar Singh is Chairman of Bihar Wildlife Conservation Fund and therefore also responsible for the scam. Therefore I have sought a CBI or judicial probe in the scam," said Mani Bhushan Sengar. The case has been listed for hearing next week. Also read | Patna: Bihar govt orders probe into soil scam, seeks report --- ENDS --- Cultural Arts of Waco and Neighborworks Waco are sponsoring Art on Elm from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday on Elm Avenue in East Waco, between Dallas and Turner streets. The free pop-up art exhibition will feature local artists, live music, craft and food vendors. For more information, visit www.artonelm.org. Spring Farm Day World Hunger Relief, 356 Spring Lake Road, will have its annual Spring Farm Day from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday. Included will be hayrides, a petting zoo and live music. A farm fresh lunch will be available to purchase. Visit http://worldhungerrelief.org for details. KWB cleanup Keep Waco Beautiful will have its quarterly Brazos River and downtown cleanup from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday. Registration will start at 10:30 near the entrance of the Suspension Bridge in Indian Spring Park. Keep Waco Beautiful will provide all materials. For more information, call Ashley Millerd at 750-5728 or email kwacob@gmail.com. Democratic meeting Texas Democratic Women of Central Texas will meet at 11 a.m. Saturday at the East Waco Library, 901 Elm Ave. Heather Busby, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Texas, will present an overview of the bills in play during the current Texas legislative session that relate to womens health and reproductive care. For more information, call Mary Mann at 715-1923. Egg hunt Saturday Waco-area trail riding clubs are having an Easter Egg Hunt for ages 1 to 13 from noon to 2 p.m. Saturday at Bledsoe-Miller Community Center, 300 N. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. Egg hunt participants will need to bring baskets. Soul food, health fair The Waco-McLennan County Health District is having a Healthy Soul Food and Health Fair event from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday at the Waco Multipurpose Center, 1020 Elm Ave. Chef Sean Perrodin, from Southern Creole Foods/iCreole Bistro in Beaumont, will present a cooking demonstration. The event will include free checks of body-mass index, blood-pressure and blood-glucose levels. For more information, email ramona_curtis@baylor.edu or call 710-1294. Brookview meeting The Brookview Neighborhood Association will meet at 10 a.m. Saturday at S.J. Guthrie Park, 3400 E. Brookview Drive. For information email ginger@centexagc.org. Texas-based 7-Elevens parent company will buy more than 1,100 convenience stores, including those carrying the Stripes brand, in a $3.3 billion deal with Sunoco that could close in the second half of the year. Officials with 7-Eleven would not comment on whether Stripes locations would become 7-Eleven-branded sites as part of the deal. Stripes, based in Corpus Christi, has pushed into the Greater Waco market in recent years, opening seven stores. Until the sale is finalized, it will be business as usual, which means we will focus on guest services, Sunoco spokeswoman Alyson Gomez said. Meanwhile, a transition team will be considering a variety of issues. Gomez said she could not address the issue of whether Stripes stores would be rebranded. Irving-based 7-Eleven, meanwhile, provided only press releases confirming the sale. This acquisition supports our growth strategy in key geographic areas, including Florida, mid-Atlantic states, Northeast states and Central Texas, said Joe DePinto, president and CEO of 7-Eleven Inc., in a statement. It also provides 7-Eleven entry into Houston, the fourth-largest city in the United States, and a strong presence in Corpus Christi and across South Texas. 7-Eleven has 8,707 stores in the United States and Canada. The acquisition would be one of the largest in 7-Elevens history and will bring 7-Elevens total number of stores to 9,815 in those countries, according to a company statement. Globally, 7-Eleven operates, franchises or licenses more than 62,000 stores in 17 countries, it reported. It has returned to the Greater Waco market by opening or re-branding locations at 2524 LaSalle Ave., 701 S. University Parks Drive and 100 S. New Road in Waco and at 5801 Woodway Drive in Woodway and S. Interstate 35 in Lacy Lakeview. Sunoco, a publicly traded partnership controlled by pipeline operator Energy Transfer Equity, operates about 1,350 retail fueling sites and convenience stores under names including APlus and Stripes, according to the companys website. The company said in a statement it plans to sell another 200 stores by the end of the year and to expand its distribution business, partly through acquisitions. Sunoco said it expects to use the proceeds from the sale primarily to repay debt, which totaled $4.5 billion in December. It released a statement saying that, as part of the deal, it will supply about 2.2 billion gallons of fuel annually for 15 years to a unit that operates 7-Eleven stores. That unit is Seven & I Holdings, a Japanese retail giant that owns the 7-Eleven chain. It originally took the business over in the early 1990s after initially licensing the brand for use in Japan, according to the New York Times. It has been buying up other American companies. In June, for example, it bought 79 gas stations and convenience stores in California and Wyoming from CST Brands. Last year, 7-Elevens combined U.S. and Canadian sales were estimated at $25 billion, with 60 percent coming from inside the store and 40 percent from fuel pumps, according to a list of top food retailers published by Supermarket News and cited by the Dallas Morning News in a report on the transaction. Worldwide 2016 sales exceeded $89 billion. Sonam Kapoor is on cloud nine thanks to her film Neerja winning big at the 64th National Film Awards, and her boyfriend Anand Ahuja is leaving no stone unturned in letting the world know what Kapoor means to him. By India Today Web Desk: Sonam Kapoor is on cloud nine today. The actor, who carved a niche for herself in acting with her 2016 film Neerja, has now received a Special Mention for her role in the film at the 64th National Film Awards. The awards were announced this morning, and Neerja was adjudged the Best Hindi Film of 2016. advertisement While Sonam is yet to react to Neerja's National Award win, her rumoured boyfriend Anand Ahuja is not leaving any stone unturned in letting the world know what she means to him. Anand took to Instagram to say, "'The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.' #PabloPicasso ... To @sonamkapoor , the purest exemplification of selflessness, contribution, thoughtfulness, love and care. Many congratulations to you and everyone around you, encouraging (and challenging) you to become the person you are. @kapoor.sunita @anilskapoor @rheakapoor @harshvardhankapoor #gr8likewhoa #everydayphenomenal (sic)" Just last month, Anand was in London with Sonam's family to celebrate her mother's birthday. Rumour has it that Sonam and Anand are looking to get engaged soon. ALSO READ: Sonam Kapoor's mother wants her to get married to Anand Ahuja? ALSO SEE: 64th National Film Awards Full Winners' List ALSO WATCH: Sonam Kapoor says Neerja helped her conquer her own fears --- ENDS --- A former swimming pool company owner charged with sexually abusing a young family member over a four-year period beginning when she was 6 will have to wait a bit longer to learn his fate. Jurors in Wacos 54th State District Court deliberated the case against Jose Salazar-Hernandez for about four hours Thursday before telling Judge Matt Johnson they wanted to recess for the evening. Salazar-Hernandez, 43, who as of Thursday had been in jail 658 days, is on trial on charges of continuous sexual abuse of a young child and four counts of indecency with a child by contact. The jury will return at 9 a.m. Friday to continue deliberations. If convicted, Salazar-Hernandez faces a minimum of 25 years without parole and up to life in prison without parole on the first count and up to 20 years in prison on the remaining four counts. Salazar-Hernandez, the only witness called by defense attorneys Robert Callahan and Kayla Dailey, testified with the assistance of a translator and denied the allegations. I felt very bad when I first heard of these accusations, Salazar-Hernandez told the jury. I suffer from high blood pressure, and it hit me hard. I thought it couldnt possibly be. The girl, who is now a 13-year-old eighth grader, testified Wednesday that she cried and called out for her mother the first time Salazar-Hernandez fondled her inappropriately. While she said he abused her on numerous occasions, she also testified that she has a hard time distinguishing between what was real and the abuse she suffered in her nightmares. She said Salazar-Hernandez came into her bedroom at night and once made her touch his penis when he was in the shower. He molested her breasts at least eight times, she said. Salazar-Hernandez told the jury he had no explanation for why the girl would make up stories about the abuse. He said he loves her and she loves him. Under cross-examination from prosecutor Hilary LaBorde, Salazar-Hernandez acknowledged he saw the girl acting out sexually with one of her older brothers, but no one in the family reported that to Child Protective Services workers. LaBorde asked Salazar-Hernandez where a 6-year-old girl would learn such inappropriate behavior. He said he doesnt know but theorized she saw it on cable TV or on her iPad. In summations Thursday morning, LaBorde told the jury there is no evidence the girl was angry at Salazar-Hernandez and there is no other explanation about why she said he abused her. Do you think it is a coincidence that she is dreaming about him sexually abusing her? Those are nightmares. She is reliving the abuse. What little girls dream those kind of things? LaBorde said. The defense is saying she just made it up, but they arent even giving you a reason why. The girl testified she didnt report the abuse until about a year after it stopped. She said a school friend disclosed to her that a family member was abusing her and the girl said, me, too. After that, her teacher reported it to police, who took the girl to the Advocacy Center for Crime Victims and Children. Me, too, Callahan said to the jury in summations. Two words, just two words and that is all it took to get the ball rolling. That is all it takes to set this in motion. Now the ball has rolled too far, and we cant get it back. Callahan told the jury they must find Salazar-Hernandez not guilty. If there was ever a case with reasonable doubt where the defendant has done nothing wrong, this has got to be the case, Callahan said. Prosecutor Christi Hunting Horse countered that there is no reason for the girl to lie. She told the jury the circumstances of each child abuse case is different, and each victim handles those traumatic events in different ways. Everything she has done is hard, Hunting Horse said. She took the stand and told you horrible things about a person she still loves. It was probably the hardest thing she will ever have to do in her life. She sat up there telling you the most intimate details. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas will speak at McLennan Community College on Sept. 7 at The Highlands Gym, the college announced in a press release Thursday afternoon. The event is free and open to the public, but tickets will be required, according to the press release. Former Baylor University President Ken Starr will join the conversation with MCC government faculty members Ashley Cruseturner and Andi Ramon. Copies of Thomas 2007 book, My Grandfathers Son, will be available for purchase and signing after the event. Thomas was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1991 by President George H.W. Bush and confirmed by a 52-48 Senate vote. Viewed as a conservative member of the court, Thomas rarely speaks, once going more than ten years without asking a question. A Mart High School student was arrested on a first-degree felony charge of sexual assault of a child Thursday, accused of having a sexual relationship with a 13-year-old girl, an arrest affidavit states. Dominic Greene, 18, of Mart, was arrested after the girl reported sexual abuse April 4, saying she was willingly having sex with Greene. The girl's parents confronted her after she left the house to meet Green on April 3, according to the affidavit. "(The girl) also stated to (the) forensic interviewer that before the incident took place she exited her house through a bedroom window and met up with Dominic Greene at the high school, next to the elementary school in Mart," the arrest affidavit states. "Dominic Greene asked (the girl) if she wanted to have sex with him in which she replied yes." The girl said Greene is a friend and the two went to Greene's home, the arrest affidavit states. When the girl returned to her house, she told her parents about the incident after they confronted her. According to Mart Independent School District administrators, Greene is a senior and is enrolled at The Learning Center. TLC students attend a drop-out prevention center served by Falls County Co-op to help students recover credits and graduate. Greene was arrested Thursday afternoon on a first-degree felony charge of aggravated sexual assault of a child. He was taken to McLennan County Jail and was released by Friday afternoon on a $50,000 bond. Despite President Donald Trumps claims that investing in climate action is a waste of money or that decarbonizing our energy would be job-killing, Texas has proved the opposite. Our state has helped the nation reduce its carbon footprint and has earned a lot of money along the way. As the world chooses a path of decarbonization, we will deploy our vast expanses of cheap, flat, sunny, windy land and extensive reserves of natural gas trapped in shales to sell consumers the low-carbon energy they desire. The biggest impact on Texas in recent years was from the shale revolution, which has helped the nation wean itself from coal and has reduced emissions dramatically along the way. Shale production created an abundance of affordable natural gas, which is cleaner to burn than coal. New natural-gas plants are also about twice as efficient as decades-old coal plants, compounding the benefits of switching from coal to gas. Combine this fuel substitution of coal to gas with the rise of renewables such as wind and solar along with efficiency standards for autos and appliances and you get the remarkable trend that is afoot: U.S. carbon emissions have been dropping even as the population and economy have grown. And state leadership helped make it so. The shale boom in many ways is Texan in origin. Its modern incarnation took root in the Barnett Shale outside the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. If Texas were a country, it would be the third-largest natural gas producer in the world. But shale production invited some environmental conundrums: Although dropping emissions is desirable and its satisfying to see how affordably and quickly emissions could be cut by market competition between coal and natural gas, doing so through propagation of fossil-fuel use isnt what many environmentalists had in mind. Thats Texas for you: getting to the right result whether it meant to or not and by a pathway that wasnt obvious beforehand. Although Texas role as an international leader in oil and gas is part of its reputation, dont overlook our leadership in the renewable-power sector, too, and how that helped the nation reduce its carbon emissions. Texas is the top state for installed wind power capacity, with as much wind power as the next three states (Iowa, Oklahoma and California) combined. If Texas were a country, it would be the sixth-largest wind-power generator in the world. The lesson of Texas is that when we move forward, we do it at a global scale. We did it with natural gas and wind, and were about to do it with solar. We also lead the world in industrial efficiency. Our refineries are the worlds cleanest and most efficient primarily because of the widespread implementation of combined heat and power, which cleverly uses waste heat from on-site power plants for refining and chemicals manufacturing. Irony: Trumps campaign promises are confounding for Texas. One of the most specific policy pledges he made on the campaign trail is to bring back coal. That is not in Texas interest. Although its a common talking point that Barack Obamas war on coal caused coals decline, in reality it was fierce competition from cheap natural gas that doomed its fate. If the Trump administration intervenes to directly benefit coal via mandates or subsidies then that will be bad for natural gas. We need the opposite: The tighter the rules are for reducing emissions, the more we benefit. The nation will turn to us to sell them clean gas, wind and solar. The lessons offered by the shale and wind booms are many. When we work together, we get great solutions. If we invest in our infrastructure, we enable affordable energy production. If we build out markets sensibly, we get the cleanest, cheapest, most reliable forms of energy. But its not clear that these are lessons some politicians are ready to learn. And maybe thats the most important outcome from Trumps arrival into power: His policies look so erratic and jarring that they have the potential of undermining trust in the federal government. That means the future of energy will run through Texas, not Washington, D.C. In that case, the state has a bright future and we can hope for more reductions in CO2. COLON To say that Sharron Ankersen is passionate about trail riding would be an understatement. The Colon woman not only hauls a sleeper horse trailer across the state and other parts of the country to participate in trail rides, she also plays an active role in maintaining the trails for others. Her commitment to Nebraska trails and promoting good horsemanship have not gone unnoticed. Ankersen was awarded the 2017 Friends and Ambassador Award by the Nebraska Horse Trails Committee at its annual expo. The March 11 and 12 expo was held at Chance Ridge in Elkhorn. Im very appreciative. Im not sure Im totally deserving of it, because theres so many dedicated to the cause that are worthy of the award, said Ankersen of her reaction to being this years recipient. NHTC Chairman Kathy Newberg said Ankersen goes above and beyond in supporting horse trails in Nebraska. Sharron is always willing to do the tough, less glamourous jobs without complaint, Newberg said. Sharron is a great trail advocate and valuable member of the Nebraska Horse Trails Committee, supporting trails with her hands and heart. Ankersen has been a member of NHTC for the past seven to eight years, and secretary for three. The NHTC is an organization that provides trail maintenance, trail heads and horse camp improvements and negotiates new trails, primarily at state parks. The group is currently in the process of receiving nonprofit status. The organization is open to anyone with a desire to support Nebraska horse trails, but the majority of the groups members reside in eastern and central Nebraska. Ankersen is part of a 15-20 group that participate in trail clearings on a need-be basis. Some trails are close to home. The group had 10 trail clearings last year at Branched Oak State Recreation Area near Raymond. Ankersen attended nine. The group travels to Nebraska Game and Parks locations across the state, but the four primary parks they maintain are Rock Creek Station, Branched Oak SRA, Indian Cave State Park and Two Rivers SRA. They haul a trailer loaded with tools to the trail clearings, which are funded by the groups two fundraisers. In addition to the expo, they host a trail challenge at Branched Oak SRA. We raise money for corrals, water hydrants and tools for the trailer, Ankersen said. Our main focus is to put all the money back into the upkeep of trails and campgrounds. But its not all work with no play. The group often bring along their own horses, combining a trail project with a weekend camping trip. All the hard work is worth it when youre surrounded by company that shares a similar interest. You meet the nicest people, she said. Theyve become my closest friend group. But Ankersen said she enjoys going alone with her American Paint, Boomer, for a weekend here and there too. Going alone doesnt bother me in the least, she said. Thats my life. To just get away is so relaxing and fun. But shes never really alone, with Boomer and a dog always in tow. An explosive device similar to the one found at the Ploshchad Vosstania metro station in St Petersburg, along with firearms and ammunition, was seized at the detainees' residences. By Indo-Asian News Service: Six people in St Petersburg and two others here were detained for suspected involvement in a deadly blast in the St Petersburg metro on Monday, the Russian Investigative Committee (RIC) said in a statement. An explosive device similar to the one found at the Ploshchad Vosstania metro station in St Petersburg, along with firearms and ammunition, was seized at the detainees' residences, said the statement on Thursday. advertisement The RIC offered names of the eight suspects but did not disclose their nationalities or whether they have links to terrorist groups, Xinhua news agency reported. A blast took place on Monday afternoon in a train carriage in the tunnel between metro stations Technological Institute and Sennaya Ploshchad in St Petersburg, Russia's second largest city, killing 14 people and wounding dozens. The RIC said on Tuesday that 22-year-old Akbarzhon Dzhalilov carried out the deadly bomb attack, and he left an additional bomb at the Ploshchad Vosstania station, which was defused later by investigators. Dzhalilov himself died in the blast and he was widely-reported as a native of Kyrgyzstan. On Wednesday, six Central Asian nationals were detained in St Petersburg on suspicion of facilitating terrorist activities and recruiting their compatriots for the Islamic State and other terrorist groups. Their connections with Dzhalilov are still under investigation. ALSO READ | St Petersburg metro bombing: Kyrgyzstan-born Russian citizen likely suspect ALSO READ | St. Petersburg subway blast was a suicide attack ALSO WATCH | St Petersburg metro bombing: Kyrgyzstan-born Russian citizen likely suspect --- ENDS --- The incident took place only a few metres away from the Indian Embassy office in central Stockholm. Swedish police has cordoned off the area. People running for cover as a van drove into a crowd in Stockholm. Image: Twitter. By Agencies: After 5 people were killed and several others injured when a truck drove into a department store in central Stockholm on Friday, Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Loven has hinted at the possibility of the attack being an act of terror. The incident took place only a few metres away from the Indian Embassy office in Stockholm. Police have confirmed reports of injuries. Swedish broadcaster SVT said that shots had been fired. People in the area were seen fleeing the scene. advertisement Condemning the incident, Lofven said, "Sweden has been attacked. All indications are that it is an act of terrorism. Be vigilant, and listen to the Police information." One person has been arrested in connection with the case. Meanwhile, Swedish police has released the image of the man wanted in connection with the truck attack in Stockholm, according to reports. "A vehicle has injured people on Drottningatan," police spokeswoman Towe Hagg told Reuters, but she did not confirm the deaths. AREA CORDONED OFF The area in central Stockholm has been cordoned off by the Swedish police. The van that drove into a crowd of people in central Stockholm. According to a Swedish news agency, several people have been rushed away in ambulances. Live television footage showed smoke coming out of the department store that the truck smashed into, the agency added. Swedish police said say they had received calls about a person who had injured others driving a truck on the central Stockholm street of Drottninggatan. ANI Exclusive: Visuals of the Stockholm attack from Drottninggatan street (Visuals deferred by unspecified time) pic.twitter.com/tu4koGRL4m- ANI (@ANI_news) April 7, 2017 All subway traffic has been shut down in Stockholm. According to a witness, body-like forms seen covered by blankets at the site of the incident on the city street in central Stockholm. INDIAN STAFF IN EMBASSY SAFE Meanwhile, speaking to ANI, Indian ambassador to Sweden Monika Mehta said that she saw two people lying on the street, heard loud noises, saw three others injured and helicopters flying. All Indian staff are reported to be safe, according to embassy sources in Stockholm. An eyewitness was quoted as saying, "I was in a nearby store on Drottninggatan street when the attack happened, there was a lot of chaos, people crying." PM MODI TWEETS CONDOLENCES Prime Minister Narendra Modi has condemned the attack in Stockholm and condoled the loss of lives in the incident. Any Indians affected in the attack in Stockholm are requested to contact the Embassy most urgently on the following numbers -- 08-4117090, 08-107008. advertisement (WITH INPUTS FROM AP AND REUTERS) WATCH VIDEO --- ENDS --- Commonwealth Bank chief executive Ian Narev later apologised for the bank's behaviour. Credit:Andrew Meares "My doctors never indicated that I wouldn't [be] eligible," he says. "They took the questions that were presented to them and made it very clear that I would fit the criteria." But a doctor inside CommInsure decided to include the possibility Bishop would receive a lung transplant, which had the effect of boosting his life expectancy beyond 12 months, which meant CommInsure could decline the claim. Trying to predict the likelihood of an organ transplant is a risky business. Only two out of five patients on the transplant waiting list are lucky enough to get an organ each year. Some die, some fall off the list, some are rolled over to the next year. The odds are slightly better at three out of five if you need a lung transplant, but there are no guarantees. I've got nothing against them sending me to another doctor to get another opinion, but not a doctor that's chosen by them... Bernadette Richert The wait for an organ can vary from between six months to four years. According to Bishops' doctors, he had just 12 months left. Bishop was lucky enough to receive a transplant, but he remains furious that CommInsure considered rolling the dice. "I was a joke, it was a complete joke, a travesty of justice," he says. CommInsure settled Bishop's case after he threatened to go to the media. Chief executive Ian Narev later apologised for the bank's behaviour. Bishop still feels he was treated unfairly when his claim was originally rejected and believes CommInsure cherry-picked the advice to justify the initial denial. But deciding between competing medical opinions is the bread and butter of the insurance industry. Col Fullagar used to be a director of a life insurance company and now assists claimants. He says there is a fine line between cherry picking and opportunism. "When you use the word cherry picking my interpretation is you are deliberately going to a particularly doctor because you are somewhat confident they will come up with the right answer ... There's also opportunism, meaning I can go to a range of doctors, and I can opportunistically hope they give me the 'right' or a different answer," he says. "Whether it is opportunism or cherry picking, I don't think it matters." Last month the corporate regulator, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission released the findings of its 12-month report into CommInsure, which found "no evidence" of cherry picking. The regulator told Fairfax Media it also looked at the use of medical experts as part of this report. Likewise, the Commonwealth Bank's own independent review did not identify "any systemic issues relating to historically declined claims". The Commonwealth Bank told Fairfax Media it has conducted exhaustive reviews into its files and has found no evidence to support claims employees cherry-picked doctors to provide medical opinions for the purpose of declining claims. "We've taken these concerns very seriously, commissioning thorough reviews and investigations led by experts including Deloitte, DLA Piper and EY," the bank said. "The reviews of CommInsure have been extensive, involving more than 5 million email messages and documents, 80 interviews and the manual review of more than 200,000 individual emails." The bank has previously pointed out its reviews have been backed by the banking regulator Australian Prudential Regulation Authority. But the experience of having a claim denied can feel quite different. When Matthew Attwater, a former call room worker at the bank, had his TPD claim denied he says it certainly felt like it was cherry picking. 'It felt like they were calling me a liar,' says former CBA employee Matt Attwater. He had already been assessed by the Commonwealth Bank by a psychologist who found he was not capable of returning to the workforce "at any foreseeable time in the future or in any ongoing manner" in a report which was used to justify his retirement from the bank on health grounds. But when it came to assessing his Total Permanent Disability claim he was sent to a second psychologist, this time organised by CommInsure, who found "he may well improve to the degree that at some time in the future he may be able to return to some form of employment". Attwater was featured in Fairfax's investigation into CommInsure last year. He was eventually paid out but only after he challenged the claim denial through lawyers. The Commonwealth Bank's chief executive Ian Narev ended up meeting with Attwater to apologise for his treatment personally. He remembers reading the second psychologist's report in December 2013. "I was devastated," he says. "It really painted a picture that was not true. It contradicted what all the evidence I had to me, it felt like they were calling me a liar." He says it was based on a half-hour examination and ignored the mountains of evidence and expert testimony he had amounted. Attwater's psychiatrist was hired by CommInsure as an Independent Medical Examiner or IME. In some cases CommInsure now asks customers to choose their own IME from a list which it sources from a provider. IMEs are supposed to act independently of the claimant and the insurer, providing an objective third-party view on a medical claimant. But this isn't always the case according to some who say the system can be guns for hire, or used to deliberately string out a claim for years. Will Barsby, Principal of Superannuation & Life Insurance at Shine Lawyers, says while IMEs are an important part of assessing claims, the system has been abused. "A case I had in the last two weeks, the life insurer sent the claimant to four medical examiners," he says. > "This was a big retail life insurer, and in this case it was four doctors and they weren't getting the answers they want so they just continued, continued and continued." "In the face of a treating specialist, a surgeon, a GP, one or two independent reports, insurers will say 'this still isn't enough evidence' in this claim." Barsby says he has watched the use of IMEs expand into a lucrative industry in the past five years, with companies now specialising in connecting insurers with doctors. "We have seen more doctors want to be in life insurance case. We see these [IME] companies, largely unregulated, pooling together experts," he says. Working as an IMEs can create a lucrative income stream. Lawyers say they have seen IMEs paid as much as $4000 for a consultation enough to allow them to retire from general practice. One IME working for CGU Insurance, processing claims for WorkSafe Victoria, earned $1.25 million, according to a state government report. Barsby says IMEs are generally paid upfront by insurers which he says gives them an incentive to offer opinions that might win them more work. "One average they [IMEs] are paid between $3000-$4000, these are expert doctors and that's all that they do," he says. "Particularly if you look at the doctors who align themselves with an insurance company, the insurance company pays them up front. "If it is a claimant they have to negotiate terms of payment. I'm no economist but if you look at an analysis, if you have experts getting paid up front for work from the insurer it naturally follows they become a mouthpiece for their customers." IMEs are big business. One of Australia's biggest suppliers of IMEs is MlCoa, owned by the MedHealth group, which last year earned almost $70 million in revenue, which represents a 2000 per cent increase in five years. In April MedHealth's parent company, American IME provider ExamWorks, was bought out by US-based private equity firm Leonard Green & Partners LP for $US2.2 billion ($2.8 billion). Questions have been raised about MlCoa's record-keeping and privacy practices when a leaked internal memo asked MlCoa's IMEs to "check their rooms/homes/offices etc for any MlCoa Hobart patient files that have not been returned to us". At the time MlCoa said it was just a general reminder to doctors to be careful with files. Authorities have long held serious concerns about the use of IMEs. In September last year the Victorian Ombudsman Deborah Glass released a scathing report into the use of IMEs by WorkSafe Victoria. The 174-page report looked at 65 cases and was highly critical of how IMEs were being used. Victorian Ombudsman Deborah Glass. Credit:Simon Schluter "We found agents cherry-picking evidence to support a decision to reject or terminate a claim as little as one line in a medical report while disregarding overwhelming evidence to the contrary," the report found. "We found IMEs whose opinions agents use to support their decision-making on compensation receiving selective, incomplete or inaccurate information. We also saw evidence that some IMEs were used selectively to advantage the insurers including those described by agent staff as 'good for terminations'." One psychiatrist quoted anonymously in the report said disabled patients had been "abruptly terminated on the basis of one examination by a so-called independent medical examiner ... my contrary opinion, based on seeing the patient on a regular basis often over a period of years was ignored as was that of their general practitioners". There was also evidence of staff going on "fishing exercises" requesting multiple supplementary reports from IMEs in an attempt to get the "right" answer. Elevator repairman Dave White suffered a fractured skull and crushed vertebra when a three-metre tall piece of glass crashed onto his head in March 2012. 'My mind started changing and I got angrier than I used to be', says elevator repairman Dave White. The 55-year-old spent around 30 years working as an elevator repairman a job he loved where he would regularly be called to rescue people who became stranded inside faulty lifts across Queensland. "It was an exciting job, you could go to work and you get a call saying there's a pregnant lady trapped in a lift and you would help them out," he says. His employer decided to expand its business into repairing glass-sliding doors. In 2012 he was sent to Townsville's Flinders Street to repair a glass door. While holding the lower half of the three-metre glass door it "exploded" with three heavy shards cutting his head to the bone and compressing his spinal column. Dazed and covered in blood, he stumbled to a nearby medical clinic. He was later told if the angle been slightly different, it could have snapped his neck. "The glass had cut my head open to the skull," he says. "Later I found out it chipped a piece of my skull. It broke the skull and chipped a piece off the skull itself ... It wouldn't be no bigger than a fingernail it's a triangle piece. It's still inside me." In the weeks after the accident, he began experiencing numbness and debilitating headaches. His mood changed too, he became more aggressive and, out of character for him, began to be accused of bullying. "At the time I just thought it was a normal accident but my mind started changing and I got angrier than I used to be, I would be angry at people for no reason, and the company saw that and the people around me didn't like that," he says. He also had trouble walking or sitting still for even short periods of time experiencing a creeping numbness throughout his body. He says his back was so brittle doctors refused to operate on him. In June 2015 WorkCover accepted his claim. Three months later, after making an application for Total Permanent Disability with MLC Life, he was asked by the insurer to see more doctors to justify the claim. MLC sent White to six more IMEs which included two trips to Brisbane on flights that caused him "agony". On one occasion an appointment was cancelled without his knowledge, leaving him in severe pain while he waited in the foyer. "It was just over and over, it's so tiring it just drains the life out of you. You just say 'let me die'. It's a revolving, going around and round, in a massive circle and you don't see any future in it," he says. "They have it in your head you are not injured, and then they try to prove it." MLC said it did not comment on individual claims, but had a long history of paying insurance claims "in a timely manner". "We strive to make the right decisions and support ethical and fair outcomes. We aim to support each customer with integrity, fairness, and compassion," the company said in a statement. "IMEs provide a valuable role in helping us to understand the nature of the condition(s) suffered by the applicant, the treatments appropriate for them and, generally speaking, the prospects of them returning to work in the future." The Australian Medical Association has strict guidance for doctors acting as independent experts emphasising the requirement to remain independent and unbiased. "The weight of your opinion may be diminished if it is shown to be biased. Your role is to assist the court by providing an independent opinion, even though your opinion may be used to diminish one side's case," the advice reads. Maurice Blackburn's National Head of Superannuation and Insurance Claims Kim Shaw says visiting multiple IMEs can be "overwhelming stressful" for claimants, already under stress or suffering depression. She's come across consultations with IMEs lasting less than 15 minutes, then selectively relied on to justify the rejection of a claim. "Where it becomes overwhelming is where, if the [doctor] appointed doesn't get the answer they want, the claimant gets sent to a second and a third doctor and the last one is always the one the insurer relies on," she says. About an hour's south West of Melbourne in Geelong, 59-year-old Bernadette Richert worked as a pharmacy assistant. In May 2013 she had to step down from her job after suffering depression and fibromyalgia a condition which results in widespread pain across the body. Three days after Christmas last year her insurer Zurich Australia denied her Total Permanent Disability claim. According to her lawyers Maurice Blackburn, the rejection relied exclusively on evidence from an IME, ignoring two medical reports from her treating doctors. She was devastated. "I'm sure there are thousands of other unfortunate people who pay for these covers, but when it comes to paying out any money they [the insurance companies] will worm their way out of it," she says. Richert says her consultation took only 15 minutes with the IME down playing her complaints and belittling her. "When I went to see their doctor, he was too busy asking me about my family, my background, how I was letting my family down. He was absolutely belittling me," she says. "I've got nothing against them sending me to another doctor to get another opinion, but not a doctor that's chosen by them ... I'm just emotionally depleted by the whole thing." Richert's lawyers Maurice Blackburn wrote to Zurich Australia accusing the company of "erroneously omitting relevant evidence in place of a more favourable opinion of a non-treating doctor to decline the claim". Zurich said it tries to pay "all genuine claims as quickly as possible, with as much empathy and transparency as possible". The company wouldn't comment on Richert's situation directly, but said total and permanent disability cases were complex and the company considers a broad range of evidence before making a decision. "Decisions on claims are not weighted to a single report." Barsby says he's seen cases where clients have committed suicide while they are bounced between IMEs, waiting for a determination. "I've seen that. The claimant give us a heads up and communicates with us in writing or email and say things like 'I can't take this any more. I can't cope, it's taking too long' ... then you hear from a family later on what happened," he says. Referring to Lalu's eldest son Tej Pratap Yadav's recent stint of selling soil extracted from a mall site to the Patna zoo for Rs 90 lakhs, Modi said, "What began as a soil scam has turned into a mall scam." By Rohit Kumar Singh: BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi has leveled allegation against Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad Yadav and family for acquiring benami property worth Rs 950 crores in Patna. Referring to Lalu's eldest son Tej Pratap Yadav's recent stint of selling soil extracted from a mall site to the Patna zoo for Rs 90 lakhs, Modi said, "What began as a soil scam has turned into a mall scam." advertisement He added, "The company in whose name the land for the construction of mall has been registered is a shell company which is owned by Lalu Prasad Yadav and his family members." Here is the report card : On 25th February 2005, Lalu as railway minister facilitated businessman Harsh Kochar who acquired two hotels owned by railways in Ranchi and Puri. In return, Kochar purchased two acres of land in Patna's Saguna Mor area for Lalu and got it registered in name of Delight Marketing Pvt Ltd, a company owned by Lalu's trusted Prem Gupta. From 2010-11 onward, members of Yadav family started becoming members of Delight Marketing. First Rabri Devi, then Tej Pratap, Tejaswi, Chanda and Ragini became shareholders in the company. In 2014, Tejaswi and Tej Pratap and Lalu's daughter Chanda Yadav became directors of the Delight Marketing Pvt Ltd. On 12 November, 2016 the name of Delight Marketing Pvt Ltd was changed to LARA ( Lalu-Rabri) Projects Pvt Ltd. In LARA Projects Pvt Ltd, the new directors were Rabri Devi, Tej Pratap, Tejaswi, Chanda and Ragini. On 14 February, 2017 the name of the company was again changed to LARA Projects LLP and Chanda and Ragini were removed as directors. MODI QUESTIONS AND HOW When Lalu claims that he is son of a peon, how come in the last 30 years of his political career, he amassed wealth worth thousands of crores? Tejaswi and Tej Pratap should divulge details of their position on the LARA Projects LLP company. The cost of land on which mall is being constructed in worth more than Rs. 200 crore, how did Lalu acquire it? He added that both Tejaswi and Tej Pratap did not mention holding this land in the affidavit filed before Bihar elections. On January 1 each year, all ministers in Bihar submit details of their assets to the government. He said, Rabri currently holds 2,402, Tejaswi 800 and Tej Pratap 800 shares in LARA Projects LLP. The BJP leader has now demanded expulsion of Tejaswi and Tej Pratap Yadav from the cabinet. --- ENDS --- 7-Eleven has so far paid back $83 million in compensation to workers. Credit:Paul Jeffers In the case of wage fraud scandals, investors have zero tolerance. It is no longer just about the poor ethics, but the potential investment, reputation and legal risk if the business gets caught. 7-Eleven convenience store giant was embroiled in systemic wage fraud throughout its franchise network and has so far paid back $83 million in compensation to workers. It has had to change its business model and has entered into a pro-active compliance deed with the workplace regulator. This all costs time and money. AMP said it would sell $570 million worth of investments in tobacco, biological and chemical weapon stocks. Credit:Brendon Thorne It is part of a bigger picture of shareholder activism sweeping the market. In January retail and super funds waded into the controversial debate on problem gambling, lobbying the big four banks to stop credit cards being used for online betting. Footage obtained by the Transport Workers Union shows squalid conditions for workers at Sydney International Airport. First Super isn't interested in investing in companies that operate in a 'grey area' when it comes to labour practices. First Super chief executive Bill Watson The Responsible Investment Association Australasia (RIAA), whose members manage $1 trillion in assets under management, wrote to the chairs of the big four banks outlining the concerns of some of its members ethical and mainstream funds about the growth in online gambling and the role of the banks facilitating it through credit card merchant facilities. Last month AMP Capital, which is the country's second biggest fund manager, declared war on tobacco, saying it would sell $570 million worth of investments in tobacco, biological and chemical weapon stocks after overhauling its ethical guidelines. Against this backdrop, the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors (ACSI), which engages with listed companies on environmental, social and governance issues, on behalf of its 29 member funds, who between them own an average 11 per cent of ASX200 companies, has committed to taking a particular interest in the way companies are managing their labour force, their supply chain and their exposure to climate change. ACSI chief executive Louise Davidson said the link between good management of ESG issues and the long-term sustainability of companies was increasingly clear. Activism has evolved from super funds casting a vote at AGMs to holding companies to account for their management of material business practices such as the way they manage their staff; the way they build and maintain relationships with customers and the community and their impact on the environment. "It's not enough for companies to focus on short-term financial outcomes super fund members invest for over 40 years so the super funds have a strong interest in the long-term sustainability of the companies in which they invest," Davidson said. First Super's decision to investigate its private equity portfolio reflected concerns about the investment risks associated with poor labour practices at companies in which First Super was invested through private equity funds. These companies include Urban Purveyor Group, which was sold in 2015 to private equity group Quadrant and renamed Rockpool Dining Group. Watson said he wanted a "deep dive" into the business to ensure it was paying correct award wages. He said the hospitality industry had attracted a lot of complaints in recent years about award rates and he wanted to make sure that any company First Super invested in listed or unlisted was doing the right thing. Rockpool Dining Group boss Tom Pash said wages was something the group looks at constantly. He said it does an external audit annually to ensure workers were paid in line with the award rate. Another company raised by First Super was Archer Capital's private equity-owned baggage handling business Aerocare, which hit the headlines last month with graphic video footage suggesting some ground staff at Sydney Airport were forced to sleep on makeshift beds in between their shifts. The footage was powerful. But it has been hotly disputed by Aerocare. In a media statement, Aerocare boss Glenn Rutherford said: "Aerocare provides a comfortable, air conditioned, catered lounge for the use of its staff." It said most of the personnel shown in the images were not Aerocare employees. Aerocare and Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth airports and the Australian Border Force have completed an investigation into the allegations and found nothing to substantiate the existence of "camps" where people are sleeping on site or any similar practices. Other businesses to be looked into included an after school care operator, given its heavy reliance on labour. Watson said the review of First Super's $100 million private equity investments would be completed and presented to the board at an investment committee meeting in June. "We are extremely concerned at exposure to investment risk through companies that have enterprise agreements in place which have lower wages and conditions than what is contained in the relevant modern award," Watson said. He said any business that is based on unsustainable labour costs or industrial arrangements that could be challenged posed a high risk to investment returns. Stevan Premutico can remember the precise moment the idea that would change his life came to him. The Sydney-born founder of Dimmi a restaurant booking and review site now owned by global internet giant TripAdvisor was in London at the time, working for the Hilton hotel chain. "I was sitting in a coffee shop in Chelsea, thinking about how the internet and online was transforming the hotel business, when it dawned on me that the same impact could change the restaurant business," he says. "I grabbed a napkin and the only pen I could find a red one and started scribbling down my ideas. That was 10 years ago, pretty much to the day." What inspired Premutico was his own relationship with food, and how his extended Italian family would gather around a table every Sunday. "Life is about moments, and many great moments happen when you are breaking bread with your family and friends," he says. "So I started thinking about a website that connected people with restaurants, where they could celebrate moments and break bread together." In the decade since, Dimmi has gone from an idea sketched on the back of a napkin to the biggest restaurant booking site in the country. But the journey has not been without its challenges. The Turnbull government has abandoned plans to allow universities to set their own fees for selected "flagship" courses, but students still face the prospect of increased fees and a lower HECS repayment threshold in next month's budget. Dumping the flagships proposal, which was spruiked by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull during the election campaign, will allow the government to finally kill off the spectre of fee deregulation, which has dogged it since the 2014 budget. The proposal received almost blanket opposition from university vice-chancellors, who warned it would create a "two-tiered" university system. The government is also expected to use the May budget to finally dump one of the most notorious "zombie" measures from the Abbott government's first budget: a 20 per cent cut to university course funding. Last year, after reading more advice on how individual women could overcome the gap in retirement savings, the Australia Institute's chief economist Dr Richard Denniss decided to write some advice of his own. To avoid the pitfall of retiring with insufficient superannuation, he recommends women follow these four rules: Caring professions such as nursing tend to be female-dominated and low paid. Credit:Ken Merrigan 1. Don't go into caring professions. Do not be a nurse, or work in childcare, or do a job where you help other people, because we will pay you low wages. 2. Don't take time out of work while you are young. Do you not understand the way compound interest works? If you do take time out of work while you are young, it will have a catastrophic effect on your retirement income. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spoke by phone with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov about the chemical attack on Wednesday. But instead of Tillerson calling back to inform Lavrov of Thursday's missile strike, the heads-up was left to the Pentagon which informed senior Russian military officers through the 'deconfliction' channel, a Pentagon to Kremlin line intended to ensure the safety of US and Russian military operations. The US blasted a Syrian air base with a barrage of cruise missiles in fiery retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. Credit:US Navy/AP On Thursday evening, Tillerson pointedly let it be known that Russian President Vladimir Putin had not been personally advised and that Trump, who was hosting Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Florida, had not troubled himself to call Putin after the strike. There was always a possibility that Moscow would have alerted Assad to the incoming American barrage. An American official told reporters: "With a lot of Tomahawks flying, we didn't want to hit any Russian planes". "The level of trust at the working level ... has degraded": Russian President Vladimir Putin. Credit:AP There is a Russian military area within the Syrian-run base that was hit, but the official claimed that no Russian aircraft were on the ground and that the Russian sector in the base had not been targeted. Compared with 2013, when President Barack Obama failed to act on his "red-line" to the Damascus regime that Washington would launch military strikes against the regime if it used chemical weapons but didn't, the biggest difference in the Syrian theatre is the hair-trigger complexity introduced by the presence of Russian ground forces the installation of powerful Russian air defence systems that could take down US aircraft. On Wednesday Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said: 'We are considering an appropriate response for this chemical weapons attack'. Credit:AP In two years of American air strikes in Syria, the US aircraft have not come under attack from the Syrian and Russian air defence systems, because the US has mostly been targeting IS while the regime and its sponsors have focused their war on anti-regime forces. "Both the Syrians and Russians can act as a spoiler," Andrew Exum, who served under Obama as a defence official, told The Post. "American and coalition aircraft have flown around and through their air defence systems for the last two years. [But] If you launch a strike against the regime, it would have every excuse to start lighting up coalition planes with antiaircraft systems". A Tomahawk missile is launched during a test in 2010 in the Pacific Ocean. Credit:USNavy If US and Syrian or Russian aircraft were to get into a dogfight or were shot down, the Syrian civil war and Trump's priority, the war on IS, would become messier. Retired General John Allen, who ran the US-led war effort against IS in Syria and Iraq in the Obama years, was ambivalent on the strategic usefulness of Thursday's US missile attack, telling The Washington Post that it might have been decisive in 2013. The guided-missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG 78) launches a tomahawk land attack missile in the Mediterranean Sea on Friday. Credit:US Navy/AP Acknowledging his personal devastation in response to Obama's refusal to strike, he said: "It is much harder now the US has to ask itself a question: How angry do we want to be on this issue? Are we enraged enough morally that we are ready to take action even with the possibility of dead Russians?" As it is, Thursday's strike has posed a question over the meaning of another Trump priority his America First policy, under which the horror of the Idlib chemical attack might have been ignored on the grounds that it was not a threat to American interests. In recent days Assad was not an American problem Trump's UN ambassador Nikki Haley's declared that "our priority is no longer to sit there and focus on getting Assad out;" and Tillerson, cold-heartedly, insisted that it was up to the war-ravaged Syrians, not the US, to decide Assad's fate. And even as he condemned the chemical attack, White House spokesman Sean Spicer insisted that the US was unlikely to change its thinking on Assad because of Syrian "political realities". All that was in keeping with Trump's campaign rhetoric when he mocked previous administrations' campaigns in the Middle East, insisting instead that he put "America first". And as refugee waves poured out of Syria, he insisted that they'd not be admitted to the US. And earlier, in 2013, Trump mocked the notion of US retaliating against the Syrian regime for its use of chemical weapons. Urging Obama not to get into the Syrian civil war, he famously tweeted: "Again, to our very foolish leader, do not attack Syria - if you do many very bad things will happen & from that fight the U.S. gets nothing!" The Syrian conflict has once again raised concerns over the use of chemical weapons during war. Reports say that 86 people including 27 children were killed in a sarin gas attack in Syria this week. Here is what you can do in case of a chemical attack. By Prabhash K Dutta: Banned under the United Nations Chemical Convention of 1997, highly poisonous gas sarin reportedly killed 86 people including 27 children early this week in Sryia. Syrian signed the UN Convention in 2013 and agreed to destroy all its chemical weapons including sarin. President Bashar al-Assad's army allegedly used sarin gas in Idlib province of Syria. Turkish doctors, who conducted autopsy on the dead persons, confirmed that inhaling of sarin caused death of the victims of Idlib attack. advertisement WHAT IS SARIN? Chemically a hydrocarbon derivative, Sarin is a highly poisonous gas. It is considered nearly 80 times as deadly as cyanide. The physical properties of the gas make it difficult to identify for common people. It is colourless, odourless and tasteless. It is kept in liquefied state like LPG. Sarin is very volatile and short-lived. Once out of the container, it quickly evaporates and mixes with air. Sarin was first developed in Adolf Hitler's Germany in 1938 as potential pesticide. As chemical weapon, sarin is used against targets by spraying them as liquid or gas particles mixed with air. Chemical bombs are designed in such a manner to spray sarin on detonation. Turkish experts enter Syria to evacuate a victim of alleged chemical weapons attacks in Syrian city of Idlib, at a local hospital in Turkey. (Photo: AP) HOW DOES IT AFFECT HUMANS? Sarin is a nerve agent, which destroys brain's ability to give out signals and instructions to the rest of the body if the gas is inhaled. Sarin causes muscles and organs to contract and soon asphyxiation follows in the victim. A victim may find his eyes, pupils shrinking, breathlessness, vomiting and paralysis before collapsing. World Health Organization experts work as they take part in an autopsy conducted in a hospital in Adana, Turkey. (Photo: AP) WHAT CAN BE DONE? Not breathing the air that is contaminated by a chemical agent is the best solution to escape the fate that it brings along. Since, no one can control his/her breath beyond a point, certain measures could be adopted to deal with a chemical attack situation. 10 THINGS TO DO DURING CHEMICAL ATTACK Cover your mouth and nose with a mask. If mask is not available, cover your mouth and nose with a wet piece of cloth. If possible, soak the cloth in a solution of baking soda. Experts believe that had the victims of Bhopal gas tragedy known about such a simple tool of protection, thousands of lives could have been saved. Cover bare arms, legs and any other part of the body. Cover body parts with clothing or even bandages. If you have had physical contact with the chemical attack agent, splash the body part that came in contact with warm soapy water. Man takes a child to hospital after chemical attack in Syria. (Photo: AP) If water is not available, a victim of chemical attack can use talcum powder or even flour. These powders are very effective means of decontamination of liquid chemical agents. Leave the flour or talcum powder for about 30-40 seconds on the affected skin area before brushing off completely. It is important to brush off flour or powder completely as these soak the chemical agent and become contaminated. Most of the chemical agents are heavier than the air and tend to settle near the ground. This makes the higher up in a building relatively safer place. Move as far up as possible. If evacuation from the affected area is not possible, it is advisable to stay indoors and shut all the windows. Cover the windows and other openings in the room with wet cloth. WHO experts at work in Turkey after victims of Syrian chemical attack were taken to that country. (Photo: AP) Once indoors, switch off fans, air-coolers, air-conditioners and any other appliances that keep air in circulation. If in a car at the time of chemical attack, stay inside and shut off all the vents that may let outside air gush in. Roll up the windows and breathe easy so that the oxygen inside the car lasts longer. You must seek medical assistance as soon as possible even if there are no immediate symptoms on the body. advertisement ALSO READ |Syria: Who is fighting who as United States rains missiles at Assad's airbase advertisement Russia slams 'thoughtless' US strike on Syria airbase, calls for emergency UN Security Council meetingSyria decries US strike on airbase, calls it an 'aggression' ALSO WATCH | --- ENDS --- Four Syrian soldiers have reportedly died in the missile strike carried out by US on a military air base. US launched military attacks at syria in retaliation of chemical attacks. By India Today Web Desk: At least four Syrian soldiers, including an officer, were killed at the al Shayrat airbase in missile strikes carried out by the US on Thursday. The Syrian regime is also insisting that in its missile strike, the US military targetted an air base that was actually being used to fight ISIS terrorists. The government's claim is being seconded by local journalists. advertisement Leith Abou Fadel, CEO of Syria's Al-Masdar News, wrote on Twitter, "Of all the airbases the US can target in Syria, they target the one installation the Syrian Air Force uses to specifically bomb ISIS." Another expert Haidar Sumeri wrote, "Syria is about to be handed over on a silver platter to Al-Qaeda." BREAKING: Da'ish has now launched an attack on Syrian forces not far from the airfield that Trump bombed. I hope Americans are proud.- Haidar Sumeri (@IraqiSecurity) April 7, 2017 Telegram channels belonging to Al-Qaeda and Da'ish supporters are openly celebrating Trump's Tomahawk missile strike on #Syria. Says it all.- Haidar Sumeri (@IraqiSecurity) April 7, 2017 US strikes 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles had hit Al Shayrat airfield in Syria, a senior military official told The New York Times. The cruise missiles struck the airfield around 8:30 pm Eastern Time on Thursday and the strikes continued for three to four minutes. 50 plus Tomahawk Missileshave been launched against Syria Trump says: "Vital National Security Interest" #SyriaGasAttack pic.twitter.com/X824DZRu72- EAGLE WINGS (@ConstanceQueen8) April 7, 2017 This is the US military's first ever direct assault on the Bashar-al-Assad government. US President Donald Trump launched the offensive in response to a deadly chemical attack in Syria's rebel-held northwestern province of Idlib this week. Trump says strikes of 'vital national security interest' Soon after the strike was announced, Trump told the media, "it is in the vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons." "Tonight I call on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria, and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types," said Trump. Pres. Trump after U.S. strikes in Syria: I call on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria?? pic.twitter.com/Nf7gqOufgT- ABC News (@ABC) April 7, 2017 Talking about Tuesday's chemical gas attack in Syria, Trump said, "Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women, and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many - even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror." Trump had said on Thursday that "something should happen" with Assad as the White House and Pentagon studied military options. advertisement The chemical attack presented the biggest foreign policy crisis for Trump since he took office in January. This is the toughest direct US action yet in Syria's six-year-old civil war. Trump has until now focused his Syria policy almost exclusively on defeating Islamic State militants in northern Syria, where US special forces are supporting Arab and Kurdish armed groups. Also, Trump authorized the strike without an approval for the use of force from the US Congress. His approach is quite a contrast to that of Barack Obama who had a number of deliberations with the Congress over the use of force. Again, the reason that we didn't strike Syria back in 2013 was that basically no one in Congress wanted to vote to authorize strikes.- Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes) April 6, 2017 Obama had considered, and then rejected ordering a cruise missile strike in response to the use of chemical weapons by Assad's loyalists in 2013. Interestingly, just hours prior to the attack, Hillary Clinton had told NBC News that US should attack Assad's airfields. "(Assad's) air force is the cause of most of the civilian deaths... and I really believe that we should have and still should take out his air fields," she said. WATCH: Hillary Clinton said U.S. should attack Assad's airfields hours before missile strike. More: https://t.co/BQ6AEMNpZh pic.twitter.com/GtiAjJE7sK- NBC News (@NBCNews) April 7, 2017 advertisement 'Russia was informed' Minutes after Trump's statements Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis told reporters that the US military had given Russian forces advanced notice of its strikes on the Syrian air base. Davis said US missiles did not hit sections of the Syrian air base where Russians were believed to be present. A single airfield is pretty easy to rebuild, and Russias happy to help do it. Wont curb Assads behavior.- Max Fisher (@Max_Fisher) April 7, 2017 Davis told reporters the US military had "multiple" conversations with Russian forces before the strike on Syrian military air base. This line of communication had been established previously to prevent an accidental clash in ear-torn country during the fight against Islamic State. Syrian state TV says attack an "aggression" Syrian state TV reported that the US missile attack hit a number of military targets. It called the attack an "aggression." advertisement Read: Syria chemical attack kills 22 members of a single family --- ENDS --- Under the auspices of the WCO-INAMA project (funded by Sweden, US Department of State, GiZ and CITES Secretariat) the Malawi Revenue Authority (MRA) received further support from the WCO in strengthening its intelligence function. The primary objective of this activity was to improve MRAs intelligence capacity with a focus on the illegal wildlife trade. This support was provided through a WCO experts mission to the MRA headquarters in Blantyre, held from 13th to 17th March 2017. In the framework of this mission the MRA appointed team, with the advice of the WCO experts, drafted a business case for going ahead with the process of implementing an Intelligence Function. During the mission the WCO team met with the Commissioner General of MRA, Mr. Tom Gray Malata, with Commissioner-Customs & Excise Mr. Fatch Valeta, and with several Directors and Deputy Directors from MRA as well. The Commissioner General stressed, once again, the importance of using intelligence to inform risk management and investigations, and confirmed his strong support for this initiative. The above-mentioned business case which was developed by the MRA team was submitted to the Commissioners General for approval during the last day of the mission. The Commissioner General of the MRA recently informed the WCO in a formal letter that the MRA had endorsed the recommendations of the team, and that they also had adopted the business case as a guiding tool to ensure successful implementation of this endeavour that would bring benefits to MRA beyond the main objective of the INAMA project. The mission was funded by the German Agency for International Cooperation (GiZ). For more information about this mission and the WCO-INAMA Project, please contact the WCO-INAMA project manager, Marco Foddi (marco.foddi@wcoomd.org). The U.S. military strike on the Syrian Government target in response to Tuesday's chemical weapon attack drew mixed reactions from the officials in Trump administration. By Asian News International: Some welcomed what they considered as a long overdue action against the human rights abuses of the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad regime, while others were troubled by the lack of 'a congressional or an international authorisation.' House Speaker Paul Ryan called the strike 'appropriate and just,' The Guardian reports. "Earlier this week, the Assad regime murdered dozens of innocent men, women, and children in a barbaric chemical weapons attack. Tonight the United States responded. This action was appropriate and just. These tactical strikes make clear that the Assad regime can no longer count on American inaction as it carries out atrocities against the Syrian people," Ryan said. advertisement "Resolving the years-long crisis in Syria is a complex task, but Bashar al-Assad must be held accountable and his enablers must be persuaded to change course. I look forward to the administration further engaging Congress in this effort," he added. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Russia bore responsibility for its handling of the 2013 deal that was supposed to remove Assad's chemical weapons stockpile. "They would act as the guarantor that these weapons would no longer be present in Syria. Clearly Russia has failed in its responsibility to deliver on that commitment from 2013. Either Russia has been complicit or Russia has been simply incompetent in its ability to deliver on its end of that agreement," he said. In a joint statement, senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham welcomed Trump's actions as sending 'an important message the United States will no longer stand idly by as Assad, aided and abetted by Putin's Russia, slaughters innocent Syrians with chemical weapons and barrel bombs.' In contrast, Senator Rand Paul, who has long been skeptical of military intervention, expressed his scepticism and demanded a congressional vote. "While we all condemn the atrocities in Syria, the US was not attacked. The President needs congressional authorisation for military action and I call on him to come to Congress for a proper debate on our role. Our prior interventions in this region have done nothing to make us safer and Syria will be no different," he said. TRUMP NEEDS TO CONSULT CONGRESS: DEMOCRATS Democrats struck a more unified tone and emphasised the need for congressional approval. Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Senate foreign relations committee, said in a statement,"Any longer-term or larger military operation in Syria by the Trump administration will need to be done in consultation with the Congress. It is the president's responsibility to inform the legislative branch and the American people about his larger policy in Syria, as well as the legal basis for this action and any additional military activities in that country." Echoing similar statement, Ted Lieu, a Democratic congressman from California, proclaimed the move 'illegal'. Earlier, Syrian State TV responded to the US military strike by dubbing it as 'American aggression,' albeit without much detail. advertisement "American aggression targets Syrian military targets with a number of missiles," The Guardian reported State TV as telecasting. The Pentagon confirmed it used a hotline for minimising the risk of aerial combat between U.S. and Russian jets in eastern Syria to alert Moscow of the strike against the Syrian Government. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, however, contradicted the information and said Russia was not alerted. Hours after launching the strike, Trump called on all 'civilised nations' to stop the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria. He also asserted that Assad "choked out the lives of innocent men, women and children." "Tonight I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched. It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the chemical weapons convention, and ignored the urging of the UN security council," he said. "Years of previous attempts at changing Assad's behaviour have all failed and failed very dramatically. As a result the refugee crisis continues to deepen and the region continues to destabilise, threatening the United States and its allies. Tonight I call on all civilised nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria, and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types," he added. advertisement On Trump's orders, U.S. warships launched between 50-60 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Syria Government airbase where the warplanes that carried out the chemical attacks were based, U.S. officials said. Trump had famously said the chemical attack on Syria's Idlib province affected his deeply and tranformed his thinking about Assad. Dozens of people, including at least ten children, were killed and over 200 injured as a result of asphyxiation caused by exposure to an unknown gas on Tuesday. The death toll is said to be at least 67, according to activist al-Diab, while the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has reported it to be 58. The High Negotiations Committee claimed the death toll could be as high as 100 with up to 400 injured. Also Read: 59 Tomahawks, 2 US Navy destroyers: Details of US strike on Syria airbase Also Read: US launches missile strike in Syria after chemical attack --- ENDS --- advertisement Syria decried a US missile attack early Friday morning on a government-controlled air base where US officials say the Syrian military launched a deadly chemical attack earlier this week, calling it an "aggression" that led to "losses." Rebels welcomed the US attack. By AP: Syria decried a US missile attack early Friday morning on a government-controlled air base where US officials say the Syrian military launched a deadly chemical attack earlier this week, calling it an "aggression" that led to "losses." Rebels welcomed the US attack. About 60 US Tomahawk missiles hit the Shayrat air base, southeast of Homs, a small installation with two runways, where aircraft often take off to bomb targets in northern and central Syria. The US missiles hit at 3:45 a.m. Friday morning and targeted the base's airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, US officials said. advertisement They were fired from two warships in the Mediterranean Sea, in retaliation for Tuesday's deadly chemical attack that officials said used chlorine mixed with a nerve agent, possibly sarin. A military official quoted on Syrian TV said an air base in central Syria was hit early Friday, causing material damage. Another statement, also attributed to an unnamed official, referred to "losses." The officials did not elaborate. Talal Barazi, the governor of Homs province, where the targeted air base is located, told The Associated Press by phone that most of the strikes appeared to target the province in central Syria. He also said the strikes were meant to "support the terrorists on the ground." He told Al Arabiya TV that a fire raged for two hours in the base, until it was put out. SYRIAN OPPOSITION WELCOMES THE AIRSTRIKE A Syrian opposition group, the Syrian Coalition, welcomed the US attack, saying it puts an end to an age of "impunity" and should be just the beginning. Major Jamil al-Saleh, a U.S-backed rebel commander whose Hama district in the country's center was struck by the suspected chemical weapons attack, said he hoped the US attack on a government air base would be a "turning point" in the six-year war that has left more than 400,000 dead. Israel's prime minister welcomed the US attack. Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday in a statement that "In both word and action" President Donald Trump "sent a strong and clear message" that "the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated." The bombing represents Trump's most dramatic military order since taking office. The Obama administration threatened attacking Assad's forces for previous chemical weapons attacks, but never followed through. Trump called on "all civilized nations" to join the US in seeking an end to the carnage in Syria. President Bashar Assad's government had been under mounting international pressure after the chemical attack in northern Syria, with even key ally Russia saying its support is not unconditional and the US launching a barrage of cruise missiles at a government-controlled air base in Syria. advertisement Turkey, meanwhile, said samples from victims of Tuesday's attack, which killed more than 80 people in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, indicate they were exposed to sarin, a highly toxic nerve agent. Syria rejected the accusations, and Moscow had warned against apportioning blame until an investigation has been carried out. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday that "unconditional support is not possible in this current world." But he added that "it is not correct to say that Moscow can convince Mr. Assad to do whatever is wanted in Moscow. This is totally wrong." Russia has provided military support for the Syrian government since September 2015, turning the balance of power in Assad's favor. Moscow has used its veto power at the Security Council on several occasions since the civil war began six years ago to prevent sanctions against Damascus. Syria maintains it didn't use chemical weapons, blaming opposition fighters for stockpiling the chemicals. Russia's Defense Ministry said the toxic agents were released when a Syrian airstrike hit a rebel chemical weapons arsenal and munitions factory on the eastern outskirts of Khan Sheikhoun. advertisement Trump had said the attack crossed "many, many lines," and put the blame squarely on Assad's forces. Speaking Thursday on Air Force One, Trump said the attack "shouldn't have happened, and it shouldn't be allowed to happen." Earlier, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had said he hopes Trump will take military action, Turkey's state-run Anadolu Agency quoted him as saying. Erdogan said Turkey would be prepared to do "whatever falls on us" to support possible military action, the news agency reported. VOTING IN UNITED NATIONS US officials had said they hoped for a vote late Thursday night on a U.N. Security Council resolution that would condemn the chemical attack, but with council members still negotiating the text into the evening, the British Mission's political coordinator Stephen Hickey tweeted the vote wouldn't take place until later. At the United Nations, the US had hoped for a vote Thursday evening on a Security Council resolution it drafted with Britain and France that would have condemned Syria's suspected use of chemical weapons - but it was canceled because of differences among the 15 members. Russia strongly objected to provisions in that draft and circulated its own text which diplomats said wasn't acceptable to the three Western nations. The 10 elected council members then presented what they hoped would be a compromise text on Thursday that addressed a key Russian objection - spelling out Syrian government obligations to investigators. advertisement Russia's deputy U.N. ambassador Vladimir Safronkov said the canceled vote "opens a window of opportunity" to keep working to find a compromise. He said he was grateful for the draft submitted by the elected members "because it's a clear attempt to find a common denominator" but he said it has to carefully studied in Moscow. Safronkov stressed that a resolution "should not, cannot and will not pre-judge the outcome from investigation." The attack happened in Syria's Idlib province about 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the Turkish border, and the Turkish government - a close ally of Syria's rebels - set up a decontamination center at a border crossing in Hatay province, where the victims were treated initially. Turkish officials said nearly 60 victims of the attack were brought to Turkey for treatment and three of them died. Victims showed signs of nerve gas exposure, including suffocation, foaming at the mouth, convulsions, constricted pupils and involuntary defecation, the World Health Organization and Doctors Without Borders said. Paramedics used fire hoses to wash the chemicals from the bodies of victims. Visuals from the scene were reminiscent of a 2013 nerve gas attack on the suburbs of Damascus that left hundreds dead. In Turkey, Anadolu and the private DHA news agencies on Thursday quoted Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag as saying "it was determined after the autopsy that a chemical weapon was used." The Turkish Health Ministry said later that "according to the results of the first analysis, there were findings suggesting that the patients were exposed to chemical substance." Also Read: US launches missile strike in Syria after chemical attack 59 Tomahawks, 2 US Navy destroyers: Details of US strike on Syria airbase Twitter disses Donald Trump against missile strike on Syrian air base US rains missiles on Syria: Who all are fighting whom in al-Assad's country Also Watch: --- ENDS --- Since the beginning of the Syrian civil war, around 5,00,000 Syrians have been killed in the civil war, some 7,00,000 are trapped in various conflict theatres and over 6 million are internally displaced. By Santosh Chaubey: On March 15 this year, Syrian civil war completed its sixth year, and going by the state of affairs now, even after the first ever direct US missile attack on a Syrian regime airbase, no end looks in sight. The result is the human cost - the biggest human crisis since the World War II. Since the beginning of the Syrian civil war, around 5,00,000 Syrians have been killed in the civil war, some 7,00,000 are trapped in various conflict theatres and over 6 million are internally displaced. advertisement To cap it is the number of Syrian refugees. According to the UN, at the end of March 2017, the number of registered Syrian refugees, scattered in different countries, stood at 5.1 million. It is more than ten times the count of Syrian refugees in 2012. And the actual number may be even higher. Unofficial figures quote over 7 million Syrian refugees and over 12 million internally displaced. Dependent and helpless, children are the biggest losers in any civil war. According to UNICEF, 23 million Syrian children had to flee the country while another 3 million are living in conflict theatres and cut-off regions and they need immediate help. According to the website http://www.iamsyria.org, the Syrian civil war has killed around over 50,000 children. 12 million human lives, including millions of children, dead, trapped in conflict theatres, forced to flee their homes and even their country, that is the human cost the Syrian civil war and it is still unfolding. According to a report from the Syrian Centre for Policy Research, the ongoing Syrian civil war has wiped 11.5 per cent of the Syrian population. Thousands have died in their desperate rush to cross the Mediterranean Sea to find refuge in Europe, 5000 of them alone in 2016. Thousands of them have been killed in chemical attacks. Though under international pressure, in 2013, Syria signed the Convention on Chemical Weapons that bans production, storage, use and transportation of chemical weapons, it has been alleged that Syria never disclosed its full chemical arsenal for international inspection and destruction. And these allegations are not baseless. A recent ABC News report, quoting the White House, speaks about at least over a dozen chemical attacks in Syria since 2012. These include the chemical attack of August 2013 in Aleppo which killed around 1500 people and left thousands others crippled with symptoms of nerve gas attack. There was an international hue and cry, but the responsibility could not be affixed. Yesterday's US missile attack on a Syrian airbase was in response to a chemical attack in Syria's Idlib city which killed over 100. It was the first direct US military attack on Syria and was targeted at a Syrian airbase that was reportedly used to launch the Idlib chemical attack. Syria has denied its hands and its ally Russia has strongly defended it. On the contrary, it has blamed the Syrian rebels for the attack, like it does every time. advertisement The never ending Syrian crisis has forced the biggest migration of people since the Second World War - a wave that countries, especially the European ones are feeling too difficult a crisis to handle. Syrians are the biggest migrants group in Europe - those who have got asylum - those who are still waiting in the 'nowhere' zone - and those who lost their lives while trying to reach those elusive borders of the European continent. Also read: US strike: Syria reports deaths, claims air base was being used to fight ISIS Syria: Who is fighting who as United States rains missiles at Assad's airbase WATCH THE VIDEO: --- ENDS --- Participating in a debate on Al Jazeera TV over the issue of attack on some Nigerians in Greater Noida, Tarun Vijay said it was wrong to say that Indians are racist. By India Today Web Desk: Former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Rajya Sabha MP has come out with an apology for hurting sentiments after making a bizarre statement hinting that Indians can not be considered racist as they live with 'black' South Indians. Participating in a debate on Al Jazeera TV over the issue of attack on some Nigerians in Greater Noida, Vijay said it was wrong to say that Indians are racist. advertisement "If we were racist, why would we have the entire south (India)? Why do we live with them (if we are racist)? We hae blacks, black people around us," Vijay said. The BJP leader, however, apologised for his statement while admitting that his choice of words may have been wrong. "I feel the entire statement sas this - we have fought racism and we have people with different colour and culture still never had any racism," Vijay said. "My words perhaps were not enough to convey this. Feel bad,really feel sorry, my apologies to those who feel I said different than what I meant," he added. I feel the entire statement sas this- we have fought racism and we have people with different colour and culture still never had any racism. - Tarun Vijay (@Tarunvijay) April 7, 2017 Earlier this week, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj criticised the African envoys who described the attacks on Nigerians in Greater Noida as 'xenophobic and racial'. Speaking in the Lok Sabha during, Swaraj said, "You can't say that steps we took were inadequate. We are committed to ensuring security of all foreigners in India". Four Nigerian students were attacked by a group of Greater Noida residents who took out a candle-light march last after a 17-year-old boy Manish died due to suspected drug overdose last month. WATCH: If we were racist, why would we have the entire south India: Rajya Sabha MP Tarun Vijay ALSO READ: Sushma Swaraj on attacks on Africans: Not all incidents racist; envoys' statement painful, surprising Attack on Nigerian students in Greater Noida: Hundreds booked, 5 arrested --- ENDS --- Tarun Vijay once called himself the adopted son of Tamil Thaai (mother) and campaigned to make Tamil the national language of India. By Prabhash K Dutta: The Al Jazeera TV debate on racism will pinch former BJP MP Tarun Vijay for rest of his life. To oppose racism, Tarun Vijay made a comment that defied his defence of India not being a race-conscious society. Tarun Vijay said, "If we (Indians) were racist, why would we have the entire south (India)? Why do we live with them (south Indians)? We have blacks people around us." advertisement This statement has undone the good work that Tarun Vijay has been championing for past few years - to put Tamil language and culture at the top of Indian national scene. TARUN VIJAY'S CAMPAIGN FOR TAMIL Tarun Vijay has been campaigning vigorously for making Tamil as one of the official languages in the Madras High Court. Tarun Vijay has been demanding that Tamil be accorded the status of national language of India. Tarun Vijay raised this demand on the floor of the Rajya Sabha when he was a member of the House. In an interview to the News Minute Tarun Vijay called himself "the adopted son of Tamil Thaai (mother)." On one occasion when Parliament session was being washed out in the monsoons of 2015, Tarun Vijay was seen holding a placard outside the entrance gate urging the members to follow the path shown by the great Tamil poet Thiruvalluvar. The placard read, "Let Thiruvalluvar bless us and guide our path in the Parliament." Tarun Vijay outside the entrance of Parliament holding placard in Tamil and a photograph of Thiruvalluvar. (Photo: PTI) FELICITATION FOR PRO-TAMIL WORK In November 2014, Tarun Vijay was felicitated by noted Tamil lyricist Vairamuthu for his efforts to make Tamil go national and recognised by rest of the country. Tarun Vijay had then said that there was no India without Tamil and its poet Thirukkural. Tarun Vijay was given Thirukkural Thuthar award - literally meaning the ambassador of Tamil epic Thirukkural composed by Thiruvalluvar. Unraveling his love for Tamil, Tarun Vijay had then said, "I feel like I am working for Mother India when I work for Mother Tamil. Everyone should read Thirukkural, since it introduced India and Indians to the world." In 2015, Tarun Vijay undertook a 'kural yatra' across Tamil Nadu and demanded the Thirukkural be introduced in north Indian schools. Tarun Vijay played the pivotal role in getting a statue of Thiruvalluvar installed at Haridwar last year. Earlier, he had presented a portrait of Thiruvalluvar to the then Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. WHAT ELSE TARUN VIJAY SAID ABOUT TAMIL The News Minute reported in 2015 that Tarun Vijay questioned the logic of being selective in teaching the children more about north India rulers and ignoring the Tamil rulers from the past. advertisement Tarun Vijay was quoted as saying, "Why should we learn only about Vikramaditya and Ashoka? Raja Raja Chozha too was a great king. Do we give him the same importance as we give to other historical figures from north India?" "India is not just about Tulsidas and Valmiki unless we include Thiruvalluvar, Subramanian Bharathi, and Andal," Tarun Vijay had earlier said. Tarun Vijay has maintained that "Tamil is Indian civilisational heritage." ALSO READ | Indians not racist, we accept South Indians, says BJP's Tarun Vijay, apologises later WATCH: If we were racist, why would we have the entire south India: Rajya Sabha MP Tarun Vijay --- ENDS --- WSU Hosts Off-campus, Student Housing Meeting April 7, 2017 OGDEN, Utah The public is invited to a community meeting to learn more about the proposed construction of additional off-campus, student housing to encourage growth at Weber State University, April 12 from 7-9 p.m. in the Hurst Center Dumke Legacy Hall. The meeting will include information about a proposed 41-unit student housing development on Harrison Boulevard near 3850 South. Current ordinances prevent its construction due to planning and zoning restrictions and definitions that prohibit more than three unrelated people living in the same unit. For the project to proceed, Ogden would have to amend its community plan, change zoning restrictions to accommodate student multi-unit dwellings along Harrison Boulevard near the university, and create a new definition for student housing that allows more than three unrelated residents per unit. The Ogden planning commission has drafted ordinance revisions that include those changes. This meeting is intended to educate the community before forwarding the suggested changes to the City Council. The meeting will include comments from Ogden Mayor Mike Caldwell, WSU President Charles A. Wight and WSU Vice President for University Advancement Brad Mortensen. The projects lead developer will discuss his proposal, and an Ogden city planner will explain the process and timeline of future decisions. Following the vision of our College Town Charter, we are committed to work with Ogden City to mutually pursue initiatives that make Ogden and Weber State a unique and vibrant place, Mortensen said. The university wants to be a good neighbor and inform the community of its needs and plans for success. We would like to encourage robust growth for the future of both Ogden city and Weber State University. Out-of-state students make up less than 10 percent of WSUs total enrollment, which is less than half of most other Utah universities that offer more student housing options. WSU did not receive state funding for enrollment growth this year. Lack of off-campus student housing is a strategic part of future growth. Other Utah communities with universities have found solutions to allow private developers to build off-campus housing that allows more than three residents per unit. Without such a provision, projects are not economically viable. Comments and questions may be submitted via comment cards available at the meeting or in advance by email to studenthousing@ogdencity.com. Parking for attendees is available in the A12 and A13 lots to the west and east of the Hurst Center, or in the street in front of the building. Campus parking restrictions are not enforced after 4 p.m. Visit weber.edu/wsutoday for more news about Weber State University. Email To : Multiple e-mail addresses must be separated with a comma character(maximum 200 characters) Email To is required. Your Full Name: (optional) Your Email Address: Your Email Address is required. By West Kentucky Star Staff Apr. 07, 2017 | 11:19 AM | GRAVES COUNTY, KY Graves County Sheriff Dewayne Redmon is warning Mayfield and Graves County residents about recent thefts in the area. Redmon says over the past few days, the sheriff's office has been investigating numerous vehicle break-ins that have occurred during the night time hours.Redmon said these thefts and attempted thefts from vehicles have occurred just north of Mayfield on Treeland Drive, Lumber Road and Construction Drive. They also occurred overnight Thursday night just west of Mayfield on Bel-Aire Drive, Wagon Lane, Chariot Circle and KY 80 West. Redmon said residents should lock the doors on their vehicles and remove any valuables from their vehicles. He also encouraged residents to report any suspicious activity they see. Anyone with information on the recent thefts is asked to call the Graves County Sheriff's Office. By West Kentucky Star Staff Apr. 07, 2017 | 04:29 PM | MARSHALL COUNTY, KY A Marshall County man could be facing charges after shots were fired following a car crash Thursday morning. According to the Marshall County Sheriff's Office, Marshall County Central Dispatch received a 911 call around 1:30 am reporting an incident on US 68 West between Palma and Sharpe. The caller said a car crash had occurred and she had stopped to help, when the driver in the crash produced a handgun and fired shots. The suspect got into the victim's vehicle and demanded he be driven somewhere. The victim got into the vehicle with another witness. More shots were fired. Police arrived on scene and the road was shut down as the suspect barricaded himself inside the vehicle and refused to surrender. More shots were fired from the vehicle after officers' arrival. The Marshall County Special Response Team was dispatched to the scene and a negotiator with the team spent multiple hours trying to diffuse the situation and get the man to surrender. Eventually the SRT approached the vehicle and used less lethal munitions to bring the incident to a close. Police said the man, identified as 64-year-old Gregory McCall of Benton, appeared to very intoxicated on an unknown substance. McCall was treated at the scene by SRT medics and then transported by EMS to Marshall County Hospital. Police said a substance believed to be methamphetamine was found in McCall's vehicle. A .40 caliber handgun was recovered from the vehicle that McCall barricaded himself in. Charges are pending by warrant as McCall continues to receive medical care. No other injuries were reported.The case remains under investigation. A community that faced abuse and unnecessary glares for ages is on its way to being treated like human beings. Like equals. By Neha Vashishth: With a population of over 5,00,000, transgender community is an undeniably important part of our society. India and Indians have come a long way when it comes to treating the transgender community the way they should be -- the way normal human beings are treated -- with respect. The community has been facing a lot of discrimination, harassment and abuses on a day-to-day basis for a long time in the country. advertisement SUCCESS ISN'T SEXIST Called hijra and chakka in a derogatory manner, there was a certain image the society projected of the transgender community. But many transgender people, time and again, proved their mettle and fought against the society. Everyone knows that the transgender community faces a lot of eye rolls and jokes when it comes to them being taken seriously, but in the past few years the scenario has changed. The community's strong willpower and with unceasing sensitisation by activists, the destiny of the distressed community seems to be changing. From sharing silver screens to becoming trail blazers, transgender community fought against all odds and proved that when it comes to being successful, gender does NOT matter. CHANGING THE HAUNTING IMAGE If we go 20 years back in time, we would probably just remember transgender people as those who many people called when a baby was born, in the belief that getting their blessings would be auspicious for the baby, but today, the community has defied societal norms and proved why third gender is as equal as other genders. We live in a country where people, regardless of their gender, are fighting their own battles, be it women facing rampant sexism and misogyny or men who are expected to behave, live in a certain way and often considered at fault. One thing remains common - people of all genders are stereotyped and are expected to fit in. Transgender activists and government together fought their way through the lack of acceptance of the third gender, despite knowing that majority of our population isn't open to the idea of welcoming the LGBTQ community into their lives as normal human beings, and proved equality rises above all. Over the past few years, the changes in laws for the transgender community proved that slowly but steadily, the transgender community is on the path of acceptance and being treated as equal citizens. Here are the significant changes in laws that made life easier for transgender community: Tamil Nadu and Kerala were the first two states to introduce transgender welfare policy which gave free access to sex reassignment surgery (SRS), free housing programs, admission in government with full scholarship for higher studies, income generation programs etc. In 2014, Supreme Court recognised transgenders as the third gender. To help improve their degrading living conditions, Supreme Court of India declared transgender community as economically backward class in April 2014, to entitle them with reservations and welfare benefits like skill development, 2% reservations in government jobs, legal aid, pension and allowances. On April 24, 2015, the rights of transgender persons bill was passed by Rajya Sabha in order to prevent abuse, unemployment, violence and exploitation of the third gender. The bill was proposed by DMK MP Tiruchi Siva and it was the first time that the house passed a private member's bill in 45 years. Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation allowed the transgender community in April 2017 to use the toilet of their own choice in all states in public. By taking this step, the government has broken the 'toilet' stigma attached to the third gender. The city of Mysore became the only city to provide a public toilet for the 'third gender'. advertisement Life is not kind to all, is not easy for all and it has never been easy for the members of the LGBTQ community. Our lawmakers and in turn law not turning a blind eye to their plight prove that the sun might shine 'equally' for everyone in the near future. advertisement || FYI || What is Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer community? All you need to know || Also read: India's first transgender police officer appointed in Tamil Nadu Also read: Sanitation ministry allows transgender people use public toilets, wants them recognised as equal citizens Also watch: This video of a transgender mother is winning a million heart --- ENDS --- Loading... Legendary actor Tim Pigott-Smith has passed away at the age of 70, it has been announced. He was due to open in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman at Royal and Derngate in Northampton. His agent confirmed that he died today. An announcement was made this week that the opening of the production would be delayed due to an unrelated cast injury. Pigott-Smith was due to star opposite his wife Pamela Miles as Linda Loman, who dropped out of the role due to a broken bone. Pigott-Smith received Tony and Olivier Award nominations in 2014/2015 for his role in the play King Charles III. He trained at the Bristol Old Vic before appearing on stage and screen in countless productions. He made his break in ITV's The Jewel in the Crown about the final days of the British Raj in India. Other plays include Enron and A Delicate Balance at the Almeida Theatre. Pigott-Smith's films included Johnny English, The Remains of the Day and V for Vendetta. He also wrote a series of children's books. King Charles III has been made into a TV play and will be broadcast later this year, with Pigott-Smith reprising his role. Pigott-Smith's agent John Grant said today: "It is with deep regret that I have to announce the sad news that Tim Pigott-Smith died this morning. Tim was one of the great actors of his generation. Much loved and admired by his peers, he will be remembered by many as a gentleman and a true friend. He will be much missed. We ask that you respect the privacy of his wife, the actress Pamela Miles, and his son Tom and the family." Actors and industry figures paid tribute to him on Twitter. All at the Almeida are sad to hear of the death of Tim Pigott-Smith. Great friend to us all & a formidable talent. He will be sorely missed. pic.twitter.com/7zocaa2NZs Almeida Theatre (@AlmeidaTheatre) April 7, 2017 So sad about Tim Pigott-Smith. A wonderful actor and a really lovely man. RIP David Morrissey (@davemorrissey64) April 7, 2017 So very sad to hear that Tim Pigott-Smith has passed away. A lovely man and a wonderful actor. My thoughts with Pam and the family. RIP Mark Gatiss (@Markgatiss) April 7, 2017 Loading... Mike Leigh's study of suburban '70s mores is revived in its full screaming awfulness for the stage, in Sarah Esdaile's 40th anniversary production touring. Amanda Abbington, slinking conspicuously around in an off-the-shoulder white maxi and a Farrah Fawcett-esque blonde blow-dry, plays Beverly, an Essex housewife hosting the sort of soiree you'd feign an attack of syphilis to avoid. She hen-pecks her priggish husband Laurence, an estate agent in a brown suit who only wants to bore on about his middle-brow taste in art. She patronises her two neighbours the giggling Ange and the reserved, pained Susan - and shamelessly puts the move on Ange's hirsute young husband, Tony. The five are brought together because Susan's teenage daughter, Abigail, is throwing the eponymous party next door. For the first half, Leigh's pitch-perfectly caught dialogue confines itself mostly to awkward half-chat about home improvements and the trouble with teenagers. Class signifiers spear the conversation like the cheese and pineapple sticks that get passed around, while the bickering, bile and bitterness of their various disappointing relationships is swallowed as desperately as their endless rounds of G&Ts. Abbington has a monstrous magnetism as Beverly even when her chat is wildly condescending. The women undermine their men (and each other), while the blokes occasionally snap back, in micro-demonstrations of the violent control apparently considered all part of married life. Much of the script is slicingly funny, but much of this production isn't funny enough - sure, the first half is meant to be stilted and banal, but it doesn't always feel as if the cast have quite found their feet with its understated, uber-naturalistic rhythm. Rose Keegan as the long-suffering Susan, whose swoopy, vacant delivery is wonderfully odd, initially just seems fake, and it's Ciaran Owens' perfectly-timed monosyllabic answers as Tony that get the largest laughs. For a while, it's almost as boring as being stuck at such a party, although things warm up in the more lively (and vicious) second half. Abbington is gleefully ghastly especially when her eyes travel up and down Tony, her mouth half open as if to catch her prey. But she doesn't find much light and shade in Beverly; there's little sense of the damage behind the manipulative facade. And Ben Caplan as Laurence, although impressively appearing to retract his whole head into his shoulders with stress, also doesn't develop much. There's a snooping, snobbish pleasure to be had in watching the whole thing derail, but not much human warmth in a production which itself seems overly snide towards its characters. The slanted wooden walls of the front room open up, box like, beckoning us right into this domestic disaster. Inside, Janet Bird's retro set is tricked out with every cheesy '70s staple going: shag pile carpet, cheese plants, orange-and-brown patterned soft furnishings. But while we may be invited in to wince at the skewering of these comically awful characters, it's not exactly an unmissable party. Abigail's Party runs at Oxford Playhouse until 8 April before touring the UK. Syria has been a battleground for past six years. Bashar al-Assad's regime is fighting against a rebel faction, the Kurds, the Islamic State and a few other jihadi groups. These groups are also fighting against one-another displacing more than half of Syrian population from their homes. By Prabhash K Dutta: If things go the same way for some more time, the Oxford dictionary may consider introducing a synonym for war as Syria. Syria is at war with itself for past six years. Every single group of some power that you may think of is fighting with the other. Even those, one can't think of is vying for its share in the land that nourished one of the oldest civilisations in the world. advertisement The Syrian civil war began in March 2011, when the entire west Asia and northern Africa was under the sway of spring revolution. It began as a peaceful protest against the ruling family of Syria. THE BEGINNING OF SYRIAN CONFLICT The al-Assad's family is controlling the country since 1971 when Hafez al-Assad became the President of Syria and established a totalitarian regime under the Ba'ath Party. The present President Bashar al-Assad succeeded Hafez upon his death in 2000. The first signs of revolt were seen in Deraa in the first half of 2011. By 2012, the full-fledged fighting had spread to several areas with Aleppo emerging as the focal point where fierce fighting still goes on. US missile strike on Syria. (Photo: AP) US missile strike on Syria. (Photo: AP) The Arab Spring movements of 2011 inspired thousands of civilians to protest against al-Assad's family rule citing widespread corruption and unemployment demanding a new democratic government for better livelihood. In next few months, the protests turned violent and armed groups appeared all over Syria. Syrian army, officially called the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) suffered mass defections. The rival group consolidated under the banner of Free Syrian Army. This army fights for the rebel faction against the regime. WHO ALL ARE FIGHTING NOW IN SYRIA Besides the regime and rebel armies there are jihadist groups, regional and international powers fighting in Syria. The regime army has over 2,00,000 regular soldiers coming from the national defence forces. It has support from Lebanon's power Shia militia Hezbollah, the Iranian government forces, Iraqi and Afghan fighters. In 2015, Russia entered the fray when it launched air strikes in support of the al-Assad's forces. US navy ship used in Syrian attacks. (Photo: AP) The rebels have their own army, whose number is not known. The rebels have their sympathisers among the United States - which just launched more than 50 missiles on Syrian territories - Franch and the UK. Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar are also the friends of the rebels. Then there is a Kurd militia - People's Protection Army, popularly known as YPG. The United States has backed the YPG, which is fighting against the ISIS. There are two important jihadi groups fighting to take control of Syria - at least in theory. These groups are the Islamic State and Fatel al-Sham. advertisement The Islamic State entered and captured large part of Syrian territory in 2014. Fatel al-Sham has been fighting an older jihad in Syria. WHO FIGHTS WHOM IN SYRIA This is a complex war situation in Syria, where enemy lines are so fluid that they merge with one another. The regime forces are fighting against the rebel army. The main battleground is the western part of Syria. The regime army is also fighting the jihadi forces including Fateh al-Sham - earlier known as Al-Nusra Front of the Al-Qaeda. It has strong presence in the southern part of Syria. A victim of suspected chemical gas attack in Syria. (Photo: AP) In the north, the regime army is challenged by the Islamic State, which has strong presence in Raqqa, Aleppo and rest of the north Syria. The army of al-Assad is fighting the Kurds, who are controlling some areas in the northeast Syria - mainly in and around Hassaka. Kurds also have strong presence along Syrian boundary with Turkey. Kurds are also fighting the Islamic State in the north and northeastern Syria. With the backing and support of the United States, the Kurds have waged some successful battles against the Islamic State in Raqqa and Hassaka provinces. advertisement In the northwest Syria, the Islamic State is fighting against the rebel army. The rebel are regularly aided by Turkey, which is strongly aligned against the Islamic State. The West remained passively engaged in Syrian conflict for first three years. But, in 2014, US-led coalition of about 60 countries attacked Islamic State-controlled areas. Russia entered the scene a year later. The guided-missile destroyer USS Porter. (Photo: AP) WHO CONTROLS WHAT IN SYRIA Bashar al-Assad's government and the Islamic State are the biggest stakeholders in terms of territory of Syria. The regime controls about 30-35 per cent of the territory and nearly 60 per cent of population. National capital Damascus is under the regime control. Major ports of Syria are also under its control. The Islamic State has almost one-third area under its control despite reverses at several fronts. Territories along borders with Iraq and large swathes of northern Syria are under the control of the Islamic State. The Kurd fighters have control over almost three-fourths of the Syrian Turkish border area. They have declared the region as autonomous and have their own government there. The region under their control comprises about 15-18 per cent of Syrian territory. advertisement Fateh al-sham and the Free Syrian Army control about 10-12 per cent of Syrian territory. Who controls what in Syria. (Graphics: AP) WHAT THEY ALL WANT Bashar al-Assad wants to take control of the entire Syrian territory under the regime's control once again. He is not ready to quit. The rebels, supported by the West, want a new government put in place after removing Bashar al-Assad. The United States has asked Bashar al-Assad to resign and leave the seat of power. Russia backs Assad insisting that he must not go. Iran also rallies behind the regime while Turkey backs the rebel group. The Islamic State and Fateh al-Sham are aiming to establish their respective versions of Islamic rule in Syria. The Islamic State wants a caliphate while the Fateh al-Sham envisions an Islamic emirate. Sectarian divide in Syria. (Graphical representation: AP) The Kurdish group is not seeking independence but an autonomous form of governance in the areas, where Kurds are in majority. Meanwhile, during the six years of war and destruction, nearly 3,00,000 people have been killed. Some reports suggest the number of those died in the fighting over 5,00,000. The United Nations stopped counting the dead in the Syrian conflict after August 2014. More than half the population of Syria is said to have been displaced in the conflict. ALSO READ | US missile strikes: Syria reports deaths, claims air base was being used to fight ISIS ALSO WATCH | --- ENDS --- Russia said the US strike on a Syrian airbase would complicate and deepen the problems in Syria. The missile strike would also harm US-Russia relations, Kremlin said. By India Today Web Desk: Russia reacted strongly to the US missile strike on Syria, calling the attack on the Bashar al-Assad controlled airbase a "thoughtless" action that would deepen the existing geo-political problems in Syria. Russia, notably, backs Syrian President Bashar al-Assad while the US has for long advocated Assad's ouster. Washington and Moscow have, however, joined hands to fight the Islamic State in the region. advertisement The Russian military said in a statement that it was suspending a Syrian air safety agreement with the United States, saying, "This is not the first time the United States has resorted to such a thoughtless step, which merely exacerbates existing problems and threatens global security." Moscow even accused Washington of premeditating the missile strike, with the Russian foreign ministry saying that the United States had planned the strike much before the April 4 gas attack in Syria's Idlib. The West, including the US, has blamed the Bashar al-Assad regime for the chemical attack, in which scores of people, including several children, lost their lives. Russia, however, dismissed those claims. US President Donald Trump has said the strike, which saw two US Navy destroyers firing 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles , was in direct response to the gas incident and that the airbase targeted was the one used to launch the horrific April 4 chemical attack. RUSSIA WANTS SECURITY COUNCIL MEETING The Russian Foreign Ministry also said that it wants an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss the US strike on Syria. President Vladimir Putin was quoted as saying by agencies that he believed the US strike broke international law and had seriously harmed US-Russia relations. Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov was cited as saying that the Russian president, a staunch ally of Assad, regarded the US action as "aggression against a sovereign nation" on a "made-up pretext" and as a cynical attempt to distract the world from civilian deaths in Iraq. Peskov was quoted as saying that Russia did not believe that Syria possessed chemical weapons and that the US move would inevitably create a serious obstacle to creating an international coalition to fight terrorism, an idea that Putin has repeatedly pushed. WORLD POWERS REACT Iran and Indonesia joined Russia in its condemnation of the US missile strike. "Iran strongly condemns any such unilateral strikes...Such measures will strengthen terrorists in Syria...and will complicate the situation in Syria and the region," an agency quoted Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Bahram Qasemi as saying. Indonesia, home to the world's largest Muslim population, issued a statement saying, "At the same time, Indonesia is concerned with unilateral actions by any parties, including the use of Tomahawk missiles, in responding to the chemical weapon attack tragedy in Syria," Foreign Ministry spokesman Armanatha Nasir said in a text message. advertisement US ally Britain however assured support saying the missile strike sends "a vitally important message" that the world would not tolerate the use of chemical weapons. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull meanwhile said, "The retribution has been proportionate and it has been swift...We support the United States in that swift action." Turkey too voiced support, with Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus saying, the international community should sustain its stance against the "barbarity" of the Syrian government. France, on the other hand, while supporting the strike, also hit out at Russia and Iran. Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said Russia and Iran needed to understand that supporting Assad made no sense and that the escalation of the US military role in Syria was a "warning" to "a criminal regime". "Use of chemical weapons is appalling and should be punished because it is a war crime," Ayrault told news agencies. (With inputs from Reuters) ALSO READ | Syria decries US strike on airbase, calls it an 'aggression' advertisement ALSO READ | Syria: Who is fighting whom? WATCH | US launches 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles targeting Syria airbase --- ENDS --- The US launched 59 Tomahawk missiles to target a Syrian airbase, US intelligence believes, was used in the April 4 gas attack. By India Today Web Desk: The United States Department of Defence released a statement offering details of the US attack on a Syrian airbase. The strike, which was launched in retaliation to the recent Syrian gas attack, saw two US Navy ships fire 59 Tomahawk missiles targeting the Al Shayrat Airfield. The strike, the US said, was intended to deter gas attacks like the one that happened on April 4, with Reuters quoting an unnamed US official to report that the strike was a "one-off." advertisement The US and other western countries have blamed Syria's Bashar al-Assad regime for the gas attack, in which dozens of people, including several children, died. Syria, meanwhile, has denied the charge, with Russia, which backs Assad, instead choosing to blame Syrian rebels. DETAILS OF US STRIKE ON SYRIA BASE The strike was launched at 6.10 am IST, or at 4.40 am Syrian time. The strike, which hit the Al Shayrat airfield in Syria, continued for around three to four minutes. US President Donald Trump as well as the Pentagon said the strike was intended to deter gas attacks like the one that took place this week in Syria. The US used the Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles, or TLAMs, to launch the attack. Two US Navy destroyers - USS Porter and USS Ross - fired the missiles from the eastern Mediterranean Sea. The Pentagon reveal that a total of 59 Tomahawk missiles were used to target aircraft, hardened aircraft shelters, petroleum and logistical storage, ammunition supply bunkers, air defence systems, and radars at the Al Shayrat airfield, which is controlled by the Assad regime. A Pentagon official said that the US, "as always" took "extraordinary measures to avoid civilian casualties and to comply with the Law of Armed Conflict." "Every precaution was taken to execute this strike with minimal risk to personnel at the airfield," Navy Capt. Jeff Davis added. Davis further noted that the Al Shayrat airbase that was targeted was used to store chemical weapons and Syrian air forces. According to US intelligence, the airbase was used to launch the April 4 Syrian chemical weapons attack, which provoked worldwide shock and outrage. Notably, the Pentagon said that Russian forces, which operate in Syria, were notified about the US strike in advance. The planners of the strike took precautions to minimise risk to Russian or Syrian personnel at the airfield, the US Defence Department reiterated. "We are assessing the results of the strike," Davis said. "Initial indications are that this strike has severely damaged or destroyed Syrian aircraft and support infrastructure and equipment at Shayrat Airfield, reducing the Syrian government's ability to deliver chemical weapons. The Syrian government responded to the strike calling it an act of aggression and also saying that deaths have been resulted as a result of the US strike and that the airbase that was targeted was being used to fight the Islamic State in Syria. The Syrian National Coalition, meanwhile, expressed hopes that the strikes would continue in order to stop Syrian govt air strikes and "use of internationally banned weapons". #WATCH: 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles fired by US at an air base in Syria. (Source: US Department of Defense) pic.twitter.com/r1J5ikfx8Y- ANI (@ANI_news) April 7, 2017 ALSO READ | Syria: Day after gas attack killed dozens, warplanes mount fresh strikes in same area ALSO READ | Russia says Syria gas incident caused by rebels' own chemical arsenal ALSO WATCH | This video of a Syrian father with twin kids who survived chemical attack will move you --- ENDS --- Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 06/04/2017 (2042 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. A scathing report on MRI management by Manitobas auditor general criticized everything from lengthy delays to unnecessary and inappropriate scans, as well as duplicate requests and preferential access. As well, the average wait time for a magnetic resonance imaging scan in Manitoba nearly doubled from 12 weeks in 2011 to 23 weeks in 2015, according to the report released Thursday. Norm Ricards 43-page report includes a list of two-dozen recommendations aimed in large part at standardizing MRI requisitions and protocols across the province. The average wait time for a magnetic resonance imaging scan in Manitoba nearly doubled from 12 weeks in 2011 to 23 weeks in 2015 (Ken Gigliotti / Winnipeg Free Press files) Were absolutely taking these issues seriously, said Dr. Brock Wright, chief medical officer with the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority. Theres a real opportunity in Manitoba to better integrate and coordinate what we do. The auditor generals report was based on research gathered between September 2015 and June 2016. It found that requests were not being effectively monitored to ensure appropriate use of MRIs, and that some patients with private insurance professional athletes, patients with influence were being prioritized. Were very clear on the fact that access to diagnostic services, to any service, should be based on medical need, said Wright, stressing that many athletes will get an MRI faster because their injuries are often acute as opposed to chronic. The reason they pay is not for the faster access, but because theyre often not from Manitoba and as such dont have provincial health coverage, he added. We dont condone them getting preferred access, Wright said. The auditor general examined the WRHA, Diagnostic Services Manitoba (DSM), and Prairie Mountain Health. Those organizations have been working together on priorities for collaboration, said Petr Kresta, chief operating officer of DSM, and standardization is top of the list. Having a standardized report thats used by all the organizations would improve (care) and reduce delays in booking MRI exams, Kresta said. How we manage cancellations, how we schedule patients, how we track wait times by priority levels all of those kinds of things can be standardized across the province and we have the vehicle to do that, Wright said. We are engaged in that as we speak. Some of the auditor generals recommendations include centralizing the intake of MRI requests, standardizing requests forms and eventually moving towards a province-wide electronic request form, as well as implementing scheduling practices that would maximize the number of scans being done daily. Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen told reporters the government would be willing to take a look at centralizing intake, but cautioned it must be reasonable for patients. Ive heard sometimes people say theyre willing to go to a procedure in the middle of the night if thats what it takes, he said, but maybe not drive halfway across the province. As for critiques from the auditor general that decisions regarding the four most recent MRIs were not supported with analyses of options, costs, benefits, and risk, Goertzen said that will be left to the provinces Wait Times Reduction Task Force to investigate. The task force is currently looking at health care access across the province, including MRIs. Wright said he expects that will also inform MRI changes in the near future. Matt Wiebe, the NDPs health critic, deflected a question about the fact that waits for MRIs climbed substantially in the latter years of NDP rule. I was happy to see that the auditor general has taken a look at this. (He) made, I think, some good recommendations for making the public system better. I think the government should take those recommendations seriously. with files from Larry Kusch jane.gerster@freepress.mb.ca Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 06/04/2017 (2042 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. A small, local firm that manufacturers Italian gourmet products made from almonds could see its sales take off this year after striking a deal with a B.C. company to have its goods distributed across Western Canada. Piccola Cucina, which is co-owned by the mother-daughter team of Anita and Pina Romolo, recently negotiated a deal with specialty foods distributor Canadian Choice Wholesalers that will see it distribute Piccola Cucinas products to natural-food and grocery stores in British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan. Pina Romolo said Thursday the partnership could potentially put their products on the shelves of more than 100 more stores in the three provinces. BORIS MINKEVICH / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Mother-and-daughter team of Anita, left, and Pina Romolo, co-owners of Piccola Cucina, a Winnipeg firm which manufacturers Italian gourmet products made from almonds. This is a very exciting opportunity for us, she said. Im forecasting this account alone will potentially double our sales (this year), if not more, which means hiring more people and potentially expanding our (production) facility. Although Piccola Cucina has been in business for eight years, its still relatively modest in size. Its production facility at Unit 14, 360 Keewatin St. employs two full-time and four part-time workers, plus Pina and her mother. Pina Romolo said its too soon to say how many more workers theyll hire this year, but it will be at least two. Until they see how much their sales increase, its also hard to predict how much theyll need to expand production. There is room to expand at their current location, she said, which means they wont have to halt production in order to move their equipment to a different facility. Theyll expand into the vacant unit next door. While the company has been in business since 2009, Pina Romolo noted it was just a part-time operation for the first four or five years while they refined their products and packaging. But since becoming a full-time operation, theyve doubled their sales each year, she said. The companys lineup of almond products includes its own brand of almond flour, two types of gluten-free pie and tart shells, and six flavours of Italian macaroons. Pina Romolo said DeLuca Brothers has been distributing their products in Manitoba for several years, and she recently started distributing them herself to stores in Ontario and parts of the United States. The hope is that if she builds up a client list on her own, theyll land a distributor for Eastern Canada. Its hard to get into stores until you have a distributor, and its hard to get a distributor until you have a book of business. So its sort of chicken and egg. She said they were able to strike a deal with the western distributor after their company was one of 12 businesses selected last year to participate in the second cohort of Canadian entrepreneur/television personality Arlene Dickinsons District Ventures, which is a non-profit accelerator dedicated to connecting growth-stage companies in the consumer packaged-goods industry with a network of business supports that includes mentors, investors and distributors. Our relationship was sort of solidified because of our involvement with District Ventures, she said. She noted the distributor has an extensive catalogue of specialty food products that are environmentally and socially responsible and are made from natural ingredients. It has relationships with many natural food and grocery stores throughout Western Canada. So its a good fit for Piccola Cucina and its products, she said. murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 07/04/2017 (2041 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Three Winnipeg hospital emergency departments will be shut down in the next two years as part of sweeping health-system changes designed to reduce wait times and beef up care for the elderly. At a news conference Friday, the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority and Manitoba Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen said change is needed to improve service and increase efficiency. Neither the WRHA nor the minister could place a cost on the changes, saying that detailed plans are still being worked out. The WRHA said in the long run savings should be achieved through greater streamlining and efficiencies. RUTH / BONNEVILLE WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen announces general surgery and emergency room services will be consolidated at three city hospitals. Health Sciences Centre, St. Boniface General Hospital and Grace Hospital will continue to offer full surgical and ER services. Seven Oaks, Victoria and Concordia will have different roles in the system. While the changes will be implemented over a 24-month period, Winnipeggers will start to see the plan being implemented in the next six months as the emergency department at Victoria transitions to an urgent-care centre to handle serious, but not life-threatening cases. Goertzen said the health-care system in Winnipeg is broken and the measures being implemented are evidence based and follow consultations with hundreds of stakeholders. Doing nothing was not an option, he said. Things were not going to improve if we didnt change things. We just couldnt just continue to pour money into a system that wasnt working. The changes are based on recommendations from Nova Scotia consultant David Peachey, who issued a 233-page report to the government in February. His report was commissioned by the previous NDP government in 2015. Cities such as Vancouver, Calgary and Ottawa have fewer emergency departments per capita, yet have shorter wait times than Winnipeg. Clearly, more is not better, Peachey said. Three emergency departments will allow the WRHA to provide more focused and specialized care. The report, titled Provincial Clinical and Preventive Services Planning for Manitoba, Doing Things Differently and Better, proposed that the remaining city hospitals be designated for convalescence and rehabilitation services. With all city hospitals possessing critical-care units and emergency departments, the system has evolved into an expensive, unsustainable model that is failing patients and potentially could result in harm, the report said. The majority of patients in medical beds in the WRHA do not require this level of care, and in fact are at the level of convalescence or simply waiting for a non-hospital option. WRHA board chairwoman Karen Dunlop warned there would be disruptions as the changes are implemented. But she said her board, appointed by the Progressive Conservative government is, unanimously, behind the plan. It improves quality of care, strengthens the system, improves patient services and lowers cost, she said. The WRHA will be launching a public education campaign in the coming days to explain the changes. It has also created a new website to provide information: healingourhealthsystem.ca. Winnipeggers suffer some of the longest waits for emergency-room service and certain critical-health procedures in the country, and various attempts over the years to improve service within the existing system have largely failed. It has been a case of trying to do too much at too many hospitals, experts say. Manitoba cant afford to place enough specialists, technicians and critical diagnostic equipment in all six facilities around the clock. RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Concordia Hospital will have its role change. WRHA president and CEO Milton Sussman said patients currently wait too long for care, stay in hospital too long and often have to be taken to multiple centres for tests and treatment. There are too many transfers of our sickest patients between facilities, he said. Getting tests results on time and seeing specialists can be difficult, he said. The equipment and the experts are spread too thinly across our system, which results in long wait times. And there is a growing need for more elder care, home care and mental-health services. Medical experts say the consolidation of services has already begun. Cardiac emergencies are sent to St. Boniface and Health Sciences Centre handles trauma cases; community hospital ERs are already bypassed most of the time in those situations. Its estimated that 85 to 90 per cent of medical emergencies are less serious and can be dealt with at urgent-care facilities. The city will have two at Victoria and Seven Oaks hospitals. The existing urgent-care clinic at Misericordia Health Centre will be shut down and the space used for intravenous therapy. Winnipeggers who fear their lives or those of family members are in danger should call 911 and they will be transported to the appropriate facility, reporters were told Friday. While there was never any doubt that the provinces two largest hospitals St. Boniface and HSC would continue as full-service facilities with emergency departments, there was a choice to be made for a third from among the four community hospitals. Grace was chosen for several reasons. For one, it has an MRI onsite and its emergency department is currently undergoing a major redevelopment that will be completed next spring. Dr. Brock Wright, the WRHAs chief medical officer, said the hospital already has the best ability to take on increased surgical capacity, and its internal medicine department is also the largest of the community hospitals. The three hospitals losing ERs will take on new responsibilities relating to an aging population. And, while few details were provided Friday, the WRHA said it will be expanding home-care services to allow more than 1,200 patients each year to transition home for recovery after theyve been treated to take pressure off the hospital system. BORIS MINKEVICH / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Victoria General Hospital The WRHA said the program will also support high-risk patients in the community who would otherwise rely on emergency departments for care. We will better support those people and their families so they can be safe and as independent as possible in the community for as long as possible, said Lori Lamont, the WRHAs chief nursing officer If wait times in emergency departments and other key services improve, then the changes will have proven to be successful. But that wont be clear for several years. The WRHA couldnt say Friday how much it will cost to revamp the system. Instead, officials insisted that a more efficient and streamlined system was bound to be less costly. Ultimately, we do think by having our system more effective and efficient it will lower our costs, Sussman said. We believe this will, at its end, save us a significant amount of dollars. It was evident Friday that the changes are still very much a work in progress, with WRHA officials admitting that three months of detailed planning remain before any changes will be implemented. They said that apart from the redevelopment of the emergency department at Grace, which is already well underway, there should be minimal capital costs to cover. Lamont said in order to accommodate the changes, some medical staff will have to relocate. At this point, we dont anticipate any significant job loss as a result of this, she said Friday. This is about moving services and aligning services in a better way. Its not about cutting front-line staff. larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca Peachey report Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 06/04/2017 (2042 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. The tiny, bruised and starving girl who was rushed to hospital not breathing nearly three years ago was unrecognizable as the shy but happy baby child-welfare workers believed they had successfully reunited with her family. Six months before a Manitoba toddler was murdered after being returned, Child and Family Services (CFS) workers stopped visiting the family, deciding there was no cause for concern. They didnt know the family who had worked to have the little girl returned to their care, and who seemed to be bonding well with her, would later be charged in her death, court records reveal. Ruth Bonneville / Winnipeg Free Press Files The 21-month-old girls mother pleaded guilty this week to second-degree murder, admitting to causing fatal internal injuries and leaving the child malnourished and lacking medical attention. The horrific signs of prolonged abuse skull and rib fractures, bruises, a dislocated shoulder, missing teeth, a cut upper lip and an eroded nose were not apparent when CFS officials made frequent visits to the Interlake familys home, two CFS workers testified during a preliminary inquiry in the criminal case. I never had any concerns. I would have noticed if something was wrong because Ive worked with so many children, a retired CFS worker told court. Child allegedly hit, pushed, slapped, force-fed A different, much more disturbing story emerged after a lengthy RCMP investigation resulted in charges against three people in January 2015. And as part of an ongoing Free Press investigation, the untold account that the child welfare system, the courts and police have kept from public view can finally be told, now that the childs mother admitted guilt and is awaiting sentencing. Unfortunately, justice still seems to elude the victim of this murder, as a publication ban imposed for reasons that remain unclear prevents the Free Press from identifying the child or the mother. In a case that has been compared to that of Phoenix Sinclair, prosecutors have painted a picture of months of abuse suffered by the tiny toddler. She was allegedly hit, pushed, slapped, force-fed and kept in a locked room for hours or even days without food or a clean diaper and made to sleep on the floor, testimony at the preliminary inquiry revealed. I didnt see no concerns there during that time when I was working with them, right till the end. -CFS worker Her mother would become frustrated with the girls constant crying and take her anger out on the child, court heard, sometimes throwing her into her room and locking the door. The little girl seemed afraid of her mother and would often refuse to eat, resulting in even more frustration. She weighed only about seven kilograms at the time of her death after her tiny, dehydrated body had been supplied with fluids as medical staff tried to revive her. She looked more like a nine-month-old infant than a nearly two-year-old girl when she was brought in, unresponsive, her skin already turning grey, doctors noted. The girls mother initially gave paramedics several different explanations for her daughters injuries. She blamed the bruises on her older children, saying the baby had accidentally found her way into the path of their flying toys. She said the unusual injury to the childs nose was due to eczema. She told paramedics the girl hadnt eaten for three days, but later explained her daughter had choked on a sausage and said she had accidentally dropped her on the head while trying to perform the Heimlich manoeuvre. The childs mother has now admitted to assaulting her on the day she died, causing severe damage to her internal organs, including her liver and pancreas. But CFS workers testified they saw no bruises, no signs of malnutrition, no hint that something was wrong in the year before her death. Taken into care at birth The girl was taken into foster care when she was born in October 2012 because of domestic abuse allegations made against another family member. Two older siblings had previously been apprehended by CFS, and the baby was placed with a foster parent in Winnipeg. Shed been born premature, a small but otherwise healthy baby, and went to live with a foster mother who had been providing a short-term home for kids for more than 30 years. The baby girl with puppy-dog eyes wasnt a picky eater, though she didnt like peaches she would spit them at you, her former foster mother testified. The baby didnt smile much and would make strange and cry anytime she was around new people, she said, but was easily comforted by her foster mom, court heard. Meanwhile, her family worked to regain custody of all three children, completing every program CFS required of them to make that possible. The baby and her older brother and sister were returned to their family in July 2013, a year before the 21-month-old died. File closed a month before death A CFS worker visited the family about three times within five months, trading off regular visits with another CFS worker, who said the pair visited at least monthly, sometimes more often starting in July 2013. The worker last stopped by their home the day before she retired in late December 2013 the little girl wasnt walking yet, but if she wasnt sleeping she could sometimes be seen crawling or clinging to furniture, trying to pull herself up. She seemed happy, kind of shy. When you spoke to her, shed smile, and I always thought that she was a happy child, the CFS worker testified. During the time CFS monitored the family, the mother would sometimes call to ask for help with the little girl, who often cried around her, court heard. But CFS workers believed things were OK in the family. The final CFS visit came on Jan. 12, 2014, and by then, the CFS agency decided to close the case. The family was happy; the children were happy. Either mom or the dad would carry the children, they would take turns caring for their child. And oftentimes (the baby) would be sleeping, but she was OK. Everything was OK. They were healthy. I didnt see no concerns there during that time when I was working with them, right till the end (on Jan. 12, 2014), another CFS worker testified in court. We were in the midst of closing the files. For each of the CFS visits, some scheduled and some drop-in, the house was clean, the children were dressed properly, and the family seemed to be doing well, the second worker testified. The CFS file was officially closed about a month before the girls death, but only because techology issues and problems with accessing Internet in the small community prevented it from being done sooner. katie.may@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @thatkatiemay Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 07/04/2017 (2041 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Winnipeg police are warning the public again about a phone-based tax scam after reports keep coming in about the calls. In every case, impostors pretend to be with the Canada Revenue Agency or police. The callers try to obtain personal information and then tell the victim they owe taxes and have to pay up immediately or theyll be arrested. Unfortunately, they are often very aggressive, even going as far as saying they will have the police at the victims residence to arrest them or a family member if they do not pay immediately, police said. Fraud artists can easily spoof a victims home phone number and use it to make it look like they are inside someones home, when they arent, police said in the statement. The Canada Revenue Agency does not practise such tactics and nor do police, but in many cases the scammers target newcomers to Canada who are unfamiliar with Canadian tax or justice systems to raise the odds the scam will pay off, police said. The tax scam involves getting the victim to pay outstanding taxes by going to a store and buying a prepaid credit or gift card or by going to a money transfer storefront. Police reminded the public that Canada Revenue Agency has your identity information and wont phone you to get it and they never ask for gift cards or money transfers through a storefront business. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 06/04/2017 (2042 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Dry weather cut the province a much-needed break Thursday as high waters threatening several areas of southern Manitoba began to recede. The Red River, which crested at 19.4 feet Wednesday at Winnipegs James Avenue monitoring station, was down to 18.3 feet Thursday morning. The floodway remains in operation and water levels are expect to stay at about 18 feet for the next week as Red River levels recede and Assiniboine River levels rise, the provinces said in its daily flood update. The flood warning has been lifted for the Morris River and the flood watch has been cancelled for the La Salle River as they have both crested and flows are decreasing. The Roseau River has also crested. PHIL HOSSACK / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS One of several homes along the Boyne RIver in Carman hastily sandbagged Sunday morning after an ice jam left the community scrambling. However, concerns remain in some areas. Flood warnings continued at all points along the Souris and Pembina rivers. Warnings are in effect for western Manitobas Birdtail Creek and the upper Assiniboine River from Shellmouth Dam to Holland, Pelican, Rock and Oak lakes. Flood watches were issued for Red Deer River and Plum Creek. In the north, a high-water advisory remained in effect for the Carrot River near The Pas. The Carrot is affected by the Saskatchewan River, and while levels there remain low, there is danger of ice currently intact in Manitoba jamming on both rivers. Annual spring ice jams are always a wild card in flood forecasting, as melt water surges through the provinces river systems before the ice clears. That was the case Wednesday as ice in the Portage Diversion reservoir triggered fluctuations in levels downstream on the lower Assiniboine River. Even though there is no flooding in the area, crews in St. Francois Xavier were working to fill more than 8,000 sandbags Thursday. The rural municipality is downstream of the diversion 30 kilometres west of Winnipeg and east of Portage la Prairie. Reeve Dwayne Clark said hes relying on the channel to control water levels, but hes not taking any chances. Based on Thursdays update, that decision seems prudent. A flood watch remains in effect for the area between Portage la Prairie and Headingley as flows on the lower Assiniboine River could gradually increase to about 12,000 cubic feet per second by the weekend, it said. The Canadian Red Cross said its still providing support to nearly 300 evacuees from four Manitoba First Nations Peguis, Sioux Valley Dakota, Long Plain and Canupawakpa. alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 06/04/2017 (2042 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Not long ago, Greg Janzen was worried for asylum seekers crossing the border during spring floods now hes concerned about a potential flood of border jumpers when the waters recede. The reeve of the Municipality of Emerson-Franklin is also disturbed by the refusal of the RCMP or Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) to continue releasing the exact number of asylum seekers crossing, after initially publicizing the numbers once a week. The Free Press reported last week that between Jan. 1 and March 30, the number of asylum seekers who crossed the Canadian border at Emerson was 332. WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Greg Janzen, reeve of the Emerson-Franklin municipality, is concerned about the increase in asylum seekers. The numbers are going to be through the roof, Janzen said on Thursday. I hope they post the right numbers. Its every day. I wouldnt be surprised if we were at 400 since January. They might miss one day, then theres three or four groups the next day. Its pretty constant. The problem, said Janzen, is that federal departments both enforcement and government officials refuse to tell local community leaders just how many refugee claimants are arriving. Most reports are anecdotal, such as the two asylum seekers who were found in Dominion City (about 15 kilometres north of the border) on Monday. Said Janzen: I dont know whats going on and its really starting to piss me off. Our local MP Ted Falk cant even get numbers and hes an elected federal official. Its coming all the way from Ottawa. The RCMP and CBSA have been told not to give anyone any numbers. Due to recent flooding, tributaries into the Red River that run past Emerson have been rising, confining the routes of asylum seekers to the train tracks into town or the old No. 75 highway, the reeve said. Theres a lot of water in these drains and it goes as wide as two or three miles, he added, noting that some of the drains are six to eight feet deep. For that reason, water rescue teams at Dominion City and Emerson held a refresher meeting on Monday. Just in case we get a call, he said. They just want to make sure everything is working and everybody knows the drill and how to pull people out of the water. Janzen expects the water to recede in two to three weeks. Theyre coming, and lots, he predicted. Enforcement are bracing for a lot more. Theyre gearing up once the weather warms up and the water recedes. IBET (the RCMPs Integrated Border Enforcement Team) is getting a lot more resources and equipment. RCMP spokesperson Tara Seel would not confirm any additional resources for IBET, but noted, It stands to reason that the warmer months will continue to see people crossing the border illegally. We have all appropriate resources in place along the border to effectively manage any issues. Abdi Ahmed, the coordinator of Immigration Partnership Winnipeg, echoed the reeves concerns. The numbers are not receding at all, said Ahmed, who volunteers to help refugee claimants seeking asylum. If anything I know for certain the numbers are more. In fact, Ahmed is currently attempting to send updated Manitoba flood reports to leaders of the Somali community in Minneapolis, where a large portion of the border jumpers at Emerson now reside. Im worried about people being stuck in floods, he said. Its a dangerous situation. Most of these people (Africans) come from places where theres no bodies of water so most of them dont know how to swim. Ahmed said a troubling development at the border is that in the past two months, three asylum seekers have been unaccompanied minors. A spokesperson for the Manitoba Department of Families confirmed on Thursday that one of the minors was from Somalia (February), while two from Djibouti crossed the border in March. All three were 17 years old and they have been placed with Winnipeg Child and Family Services. In general, the process would be that each child is assessed to determine their unique needs and could be placed in a variety of care settings just as for any child in care: a foster home, residential care setting, a place of safety, independent living situation with supports it can even be with a local family from the same geographic area, the spokesperson said in an email. Due to terms of the CFS Act, including protecting the privacy of individuals, we are not able to provide specific details about any child or family (i.e. where they are now located). Ahmed said he has met the minors in question. What happens is the CFS will work with the (Somali) community in Winnipeg to find someone who can host them, he said. Theyve had success in having people in the community step forward to provide a home to some of these minors. In the instances of minors, Ahmed said they may have lost one or both parents and were travelling with others, or their parents send them alone to get them out of Somalia (especially boys) so they would not be forcefully recruited by terrorist groups, such as al-Shabab. Its extremely tough, Ahmed noted. But weve had worse situations. Weve had 10-year-olds making long trips across borders without their parents (in other countries, such as Somalia and Syria) to seek safety. randy.turner@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @randyturner15 Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 06/04/2017 (2042 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. A 21-year-old Winnipeg woman who says she was propositioned for sex by a taxi driver during a ride home last November said an $850 fine to the driver is nothing more than a slap on the wrist. Patricia Nosal said the Manitoba Taxicab Board recently ruled a Duffys Taxi driver had to pay the fine after it found the man made Nosal feel uncomfortable and insecure and ordered him to pay $850. She said she has been told the driver paid the fine and is back driving a cab. I just cant shake the fact that an $850 fine is kind of just a slap on the wrist, Nosal said Thursday. PHIL HOSSACK / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Patricia Nosal, a 21-year-old Winnipeg woman, says she was propositioned for sex by a taxi driver during a ride home last November, and the $850 fine to the driver is nothing more than a "slap on the wrist." Im very happy theres some sort of mechanism in place that can hold these drivers accountable and for them to know that this sort of behaviour is unacceptable. The fact that they thought they could get away with something like this is kind of baffling, she said. Given that this is a recurring theme there were many other stories like this I feel like this is a bigger issue. Some sort of additional training, some ethics, was needed (for the driver). A spokeswoman from the Taxicab Board confirmed the driver of Nosals taxi was fined $850 for being found in breach of the Taxicab Act and Regulation: making a passenger feel uncomfortable and insecure by directing another driver and his passenger to the location of the complainants home. He was also found in breach of using a cell phone while transporting a passenger and for not engaging the meter. She said a second driver was also found in breach of the Taxicab Act and Regulation for referring a passenger to another taxi and used a cell phone while transporting a passenger and was fined $250. Nosal was a passenger in a Duffys taxicab on Nov. 6, 2016 at about 3:30 a.m. for a ride home after a night out with friends when the male driver asked her if she wanted to make some extra money. She said she felt uneasy because it was obvious he was referring to sex. I just said, Thats really not for me. Im not that kind of person, she said. When the driver eventually dropped her off at home, another taxi was already there. As she got out of her cab, a male passenger from the other cab came up to her. He said, I heard you wanted to make some extra money, and I said to my cab driver, I dont know what the hell is going on here, I dont know what youre trying to do, but I am not interested, Nosal said. Nosal said the incident was frightening, and she believes the two drivers and the passenger in the other cab had co-ordinated their arrivals. Her parents were in the house so she said she hurried inside. Nosal said she immediately called Duffys but felt her complaint was not taken seriously. She said was told she was wasting her time and to call back on Monday. She posted her experience on Facebook and, later that day, she had hundreds of shares, comments from numerous other women sharing similar experiences and the media picked up the story. An explanation a short time later from Duffys didnt make sense, Nosal said. She was told the driver of her cab said he was talking to a second driver who said he had a family emergency and asked her driver to pick up the second drivers passenger. Her driver said the make some extra money comment was supposedly him repeating what the other driver had said to him in reference to making extra money for picking up the other passenger. There was no explanation as to why the passenger in the second cab also made a comment to her about making extra money. She said the camera footage of her incident was reviewed but she was told more action could not be taken in her case because what the driver said to her could not be heard. No one from Duffys responded to a request for comment by the Winnipeg Free Press. ashley.prest@freepress.mb.ca Opinion Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 07/04/2017 (2041 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. On Friday, the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority announced a plan to heal the health-care system, making fundamental and necessary changes that reduce wait times, promote access to services and ensure the sustainability of the system itself. Manitobans have every reason, today, to feel positively about that plan. My colleagues and I spent 2016 studying the needs of patients in Manitoba and attending hundreds of meetings with community representatives, Regional Health Authority leadership and staff, unions and associations, indigenous organizations, clinical leaders in all major specialties across the province and other important stakeholders, all aimed at identifying major opportunities to improve care, enhance prevention and make the system more financially sustainable. While stakeholder perspectives varied, their goals were shared: build a system aligned with the needs of those it serves, structured in a way that makes sense, and built on a commitment to sustain it for generations to come. Health-care systems and planning must break away from the mindset that more is better evidence is compelling that this is simply untrue. Accessibility, quality and equity are founded in evidence-based planning premised on need and new models of collaborative care. RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Dr. David Peachey speaks about changes to the healh-care system in Manitoba on Friday. Recently, each Regional Health Authority developed clinical plans that reflect priority needs and health service delivery models consistent with the provincial plan. Some included redefining the role of hospitals to better meet patient need, increasing home care capacity, enhancing collaborative care models that use the full scope of practice for all types of providers, and strengthening the care of older adults at more elder-friendly facilities. The recently released WRHA Healing Our Health System Plan reflects these approaches and is an important step in the right direction. The clinical and preventive services plan is an example of how more can be replaced with better all to the benefit of patients. Acute services had become diluted in the city, and non-acute services, such has home care, chronic care, and long-term care, more difficult to access in a timely fashion. A transition to grouping emergency medicine, critical care and related medical and surgical services from six sites to three in Winnipeg will give these hospitals a critical mass to improve access and efficiency, all significant factors in improving quality for patients. As well, the remaining hospitals in the city, in parallel, will transition to improved and expanded convalescent and rehabilitation services, with two providing urgent care for those patients not requiring emergency services of the greatest intensity. Any change can be difficult, especially when it relates to something as important as health care; still, a failure to change will diminish the overall impact of the clinical and preventive services planning and impair the ability to meet patients needs in Manitoba. Further, the plan must transform the sectors of acute care, mental health and addictions, care of indigenous peoples, palliative care, care of older adults, home care, and primary care. These actions alone will distinguish the province as a leader in care and outcomes. Combined with the other dimensions in the plan, there is a real opportunity to redefine healthcare, boldly, in an evidence-based and cost-efficient manner. Health-care systems that are unplanned or outdated rarely, if ever, reach this potential; the level of commitment begins with high political office and senior management, and extends through an interdependent network of management and staff, characterized by mutual respect and a collective commitment to integrated, collaborative care. Successful planning provides better services for patients and their families, and opportunities to address inequities. In the long term, it requires commitment across the system, belief in the values of the system, and the imperative for change that maintains patients at the centre of that system. All of the requirements for the plan to succeed are in place in Manitoba, in the context of care driven by a belief in the values of a safe and sustainable health-care system that is equitable and accessible. Doing things differently and better will reflect new models of collaborative care, where all providers are working at the top of their scopes of practice. The plan is the beginning of a journey, not the end. The beliefs and values that underpin it can be reduced to a single question, If it isnt being done for the patient, why is it being done? David Peachey is a physician and the principal of Health Intelligence Inc. He was the lead consultant in the development of the clinical and preventive services plan for Manitoba. Peachey report Opinion Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 07/04/2017 (2041 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. As the sun rises on Vimy Ridge on Sunday, thousands of Canadians will be there to commemorate the centenary of the assault that some say forged a nation. The soaring marble statuary that dominates the skyline, just as the ridge dominated the battlefield, has come to mean more than its creators intended. Or so the story goes. Debates rage among historians about the actual importance of the battle, or about how the memorial (and its significance) have grown over time to serve less noble purposes in the propaganda wars of another era. For me, the battle for Vimy Ridge is personal. The unit that without the promised artillery barrage climbed out of their trenches and took the summit of the ridge on Hill 145 was the 85th Battalion (Nova Scotia Highlanders). Its second-in-command was my grandmothers cousin, Major James Layton Ralston, a lawyer and politician from Prince Edward Island. The officer commanding C Company, who made the decision to go forward, according to Pierre Bertons book Vimy, was Captain Harvey Crowell, a friend of my grandparents whom I met once, when I was 12. A small man, he was an accountant. CANADA DEPT. OF NATIONAL DEFENCE / NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF CANADA / PA-001017 Canadian machine gunners in shell holes on Vimy Ridge in April 1917. For me, the mythology of Vimy Ridge is thus not about its importance as a battle or the magnificent monument to the sacrifice of a nation. It is about a small group of ordinary Canadians miners, loggers, fishermen understrength because of illness, inexperienced in battle and used to fetch, carry and dig, led by lawyers and bookkeepers and sneered at as the Highlanders without kilts who simply got the job done when the professional soldiers could not. No doubt my Nova Scotian roots are showing, but it is the same attitude that the young nation demonstrated throughout the Great War of 1914-1918, during the Depression and in the darkest days of the Second World War, too. Scattered across the Canadian countryside are small churches with large memorial plaques, showing how many men went to war. The stars next to the names of those who did not come back are silent memorials to the sacrifices made by those who sent them, too. The futility of such a sacrifice was not something that people realized only afterward. Everyone who was there knew exactly how little it all meant. They fought to end the war, not to win it. Looking back over the First World War, the word stalemate was used with good reason to describe fighting on the Western Front. For four years, little changed apart from the casualty figures. Hundreds of thousands of troops died on both sides of that ridge, before the Nova Scotia Highlanders took the crest in 1917. It was a war of inches won, lost and won again. Those four years of unnecessary conflict, however, resulted in the disappearance of four empires and the devastation of two others, killed millions and set the stage for the rise of fascism and communism, the horrors of the Second World War and everything (good and bad) that has followed since. For me, the historians debate misses the point of why we remember the battle for Vimy Ridge and what those Canadians including my Nova Scotia Highlanders accomplished that day in 1917. The monument displays the personal grief of a small country whose families were torn apart by a war that they did not want or start. It marks the resting place of those who did not come back, but it does not celebrate their sacrifice to king and country. Its dedication in 1936 was the final act of a long funeral service, just as the war clouds gathered again in Europe. Funerals are never for the dead. They are for the living, to strengthen and renew the bonds of the relationships they share that death, once again, has threatened. The Vimy Ridge site is a reminder to the living of the futility of war; the price that is paid by ordinary people for the folly of leaders whose egos outstripped their understanding and their wit; the desire for peace and compassion in the world; and the ultimate triumph of life over death. That is what we should remember on April 9. Every generation has its defining struggle, its great work. Ours will not be measured by winning inches of dirt, as it was in 1917, but by changing how we live together, one person at a time, so there is justice for all living things. The spirit of those ordinary Canadians who charged forward on that Easter Monday is just as desperately needed today, as we struggle to live in a climate-changing world dominated by leaders who are as blind to their own folly now as they were in 1914. Which empires will fall over the next four years still remains to be seen, but there will either be a sustainable future for all or for none. Peter Denton is adjunct associate professor of history at the Royal Military College of Canada. Images of the human horror in Syria filled the worlds news screens this week: Infants, children, teens, adults, some strong, some weak, all helpless and hopeless. Mouths gasping for air and oozing foam, eyes staring but not seeing. The dying lay alongside the already dead. All were innocent victims of deadly chemical weapons that Russias Vladimir Putin and his despotic client, Syrian President Bashar Assad, had assured the world no longer existed. Now the world has seen with its own eyes why, even though Assad may have ordered the crime, Putin must bear the ultimate blame. And maybe the most conscientious world leaders, who once again found it inconvenient to intervene and easy to just accept the assurances of the untrustworthy, will know that they too must share the ultimate shame. Once again, the world watched but did not act. Perhaps now the Russian people will finally see why the world blames Russia for enabling the horror in Syria and elsewhere. And perhaps Russians will finally figure out that although Putins militarism and swagger makes them feel strong and makes others fearful, fear is a weak substitute for the real strength that comes from genuine prosperity, which they not long ago came close to achieving. But maybe not. Perhaps Russias citizens have forgotten or never even knew! that just three years ago, Putin came close to convincing world leaders Russia could be a trusted partner in the global economy. But Putins chance to bring prosperity to his people was shattered when his inner KGB nerve-stem erupted in rage. The re-emergence of Putins inner KGB was masterfully explained last month by respected CNN international affairs analyst Fareed Zakaria in his documentary, The Most Powerful Man in the World. It began by reporting on the trauma and shame Putin felt in 1989 as a 37-year-old KGB agent in East Germany when the Berlin Wall fell. And how Putin has relied on military power to make sure Russia never suffered that sort of embarrassment again. But I believe there was a crucial gap in CNNs otherwise comprehensive documentary. It overlooked the almost-success of a non-military plan Putin never announced but definitely implemented. Ive previously called it the Sochi Two-Step. One: Putin would convince the world to hold its 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Two: Putin would then convince the G8 world economic leaders to hold their June 2014 summit in Sochi, where he would deploy round two of his charm offensive. It was way back in 2010 that Putin set out to make it happen. Thats when he went to the Olympic Committees meeting in Guatemala City and launched a charm offensive. He brazenly built an ice rink in that tropical locale and worked with the skill of a Chicago alderman to impress each committee member. Sochi won in a close vote. A Russian official called it one of the most important days in Russian history. The 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi was a huge success for Russia and Putins grand plan seemed on the verge of delivering for the Russian people. But when Putin saw Ukraine, once a Soviet family jewel, seeking closer ties with NATO and Europe, his inner KGB resurfaced. Putin snatched Crimea from Ukraine in March and boosted his military backing of Ukraine rebels. A stunned G8 retaliated by cancelling its June summit in Sochi and held a G7 (minus Russia) in Germany instead. The West slapped Russia with new sanctions. Putin abandoned all pretense of being a global good neighbor and aligned himself with the worlds worst. He militarily propped up Syrias mass murdering Assad; Syrian or Russian jets repeatedly bombed hospitals. And across the pond, Putin ordered a neo-Watergate cyber-stealing and leaking of Democratic Party emails to help Donald Trump get elected. Russians seemed charmed by Putins strongman ways. His polls percentages soared into the 80s. And the Moscow Times reported a 2014 poll showing an astounding 45 percent of Russians felt the sacrifices of the Stalin era were justified (up from only 25 percent two years earlier). And 39 percent actually expressed admiration, kind regards, or sympathy for Stalin. But Russians may soon wise up and realize they cant deposit Putins swagger in their bank accounts. Once again, Putin is seeing antigovernment protests in the streets. And a terrorists subway bomb in St. Petersburg just killed 11. Any day now, Russians may figure out their tough-guy president has failed to deliver the prosperity that, back in the days of Putins kinder, gentler Sochi Two-Step, seemed to be just a step away. WISCONSIN DELLS Familiar faces are helping tell a well-known story this spring at the Palace Theater. The cast of Jack and the Beanstalk features three Baraboo performers, alongside actors from around Wisconsin. Four times a week they present the classic tale of a boy who sells his familys cow for magic beans that create a towering beanstalk and set the stage for a battle with an angry giant. Morning performances at the Wisconsin Dells theater run through April 15. This adaptation of the English fairy tale features songs, audience participation, references to modern technology and nods to hit Broadway musicals. This show is fun, said Molly Arbogast of Baraboo, who plays the giants wife. It has great humor for kids of all ages, as well as for parents and grandparents. The morning performances attract school groups and young children attending with their parents. Many eagerly offer the actors advice as the plot unfolds. The energy from a theater of children is indescribable and completely magical, said Sarah Krahn, a Baraboo native who plays Jacks mother. When I step on stage I can feel and oftentimes hear the childrens excitement and energy, and it fuels and inspires me every single morning. ^pThe Palace Theater has consistently cast locals in its plays in recent years, this time tapping Baraboo theater fixture Scott Rawson as the giant. He faced a tall order, learning how to walk on stilts. Its just one more thing to add to my theatrical resume, he said. ^pThe entire cast faces a challenge in sparking in its pint-sized audience an interest in live theater. We get so many kids who have never seen a play, and to see this, and then get to shake hands with all of the characters, up close and personal, after the showthat just blows their little minds, Arbogast said. After taking a picture with the cast, they walk out of there with what I know will be a lifetime memory. This version of Jack and the Beanstalk offers new twists, such as the giants wife dreaming of a career on stage. Subplots involve one mysterious characters surprising connection to Jack, as well as a budding romance thats sealed with a kiss, eliciting cries of Ewwwwww! from the audience. Because the story is well-known and tickets are priced affordably at $11, this production is an ideal introduction to theater. Many of these children have never seen a live theatrical production before, so it is incredible to be able to create these moments with them, Krahn said. Best of all is the expressions on the kids faces after the show, Arbogast agreed. Theyre so mesmerized by the entire experience. A self-described meth addict charged with identity theft told police the drug has kept him awake for as long as 20 days, and has wiped his memory for periods of time. Sauk County prosecutors have charged Steven M. Pedroza, 21, of North Freedom with multiple counts of felony identity theft, misdemeanor theft, property damage and bail jumping. According to a criminal complaint, police received reports in December from people who claimed their debit or credit cards had been stolen and used at convenience stores in Lake Delton. In one case, police found surveillance footage of an individual breaking into a womans car and taking her purse at Anytime Fitness in Reedsburg, the complaint states. Officers reported that the thief matched the description of the person who later used a stolen card at a Lake Delton store. Pedroza even presented his drivers license to a store clerk when she asked for identification, according to the complaint. The clerk asked why the name on the credit card and the license didnt match, and Pedroza allegedly replied that it was his wifes card and he had permission to use it. Police also said surveillance footage at Anytime Fitness showed the license plate of the thiefs vehicle matched that of a vehicle owned by Pedrozas mother. When confronted with the evidence, Pedroza allegedly told investigators he had no recollection of committing the crimes. He said his memory is poor because of his addiction to methamphetamine, according to a detective. I asked Steven if meth affected his memory and he stated it did and he will not remember things for days on end or will stay up for 20 days without sleep, the detective reported. Steven said he does not remember breaking the window and stealing items but that doesnt mean he did not do it. Pedrozas criminal history in Wisconsin goes back to 2013 and includes convictions for criminal damage to property, entry into a locked vehicle, and graffiti, according to online court records. The new charges include two counts of felony identity theft, one count of misdemeanor theft, one count of misdemeanor criminal damage to property, and three counts of misdemeanor bail jumping. The identity theft charges carry a maximum penalty of six years in prison and $10,000 in fines. Pedroza is due to appear in court April 26. This organisational exercise is aimed at, said party leaders, consolidating the electoral gains, and further bolstering the grip of the party among the voters at the organisational level. The idea is to take PM Modi and CM Yogi in every sector of the state, rather than a mega rally in some massive ground. (File photo) By Siddhartha Rai: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would be holding "Yogi-Modi Sandesh" rallies across the newly conquered Uttar Pradesh as it goes into a massive mass-contact programme in the wake of celebrations on the occasion of its founding day, on April 6. The idea is to take PM Modi and CM Yogi in every sector of the state, rather than a mega rally in some massive ground. advertisement The BJP is moving fast both at the level of governmental action in the state that are aimed at highlighting the shortcomings of the previous regimes and at the same time restructuring the basic infrastructure of the state, ranging from highways to medical services provided by the state government. This organisational exercise is aimed at, said party leaders, consolidating the electoral gains, and further bolstering the grip of the party among the voters at the organisational level. The party had tapped newer sections in the elections. DOWN TO GRASSROOT According to party functionaries, the idea was to take the organisational activities from centralised mode to a more devolved and local mode - where the party wants to shift away from mega rallies to localised marches and gatherings. For the purpose, UP BJP spokesperson Chandra Mohan told Mail Today, the party would be organising sector-wise events to commemorate the founding of the party. "We will be holding 'sector karyakarta sammelan' in each of the sectors of the state. The events in each sector will be attended by all the booth-level activists and members falling under the individual sectors along with the members of the booth committees of the party," Mohan told Mail Today. According to the BJP spokesperson, the events would be used to disseminate the achievements of the Narendra Modi government at the Centre. The Goods and Services Tax (GST) has been singled out for special mention and education to the members. MESSAGE "The sector-wise events will culminate in 'Yogi-Modi sandesh yatras'. Our supporters and members will march across the sector and disseminate the message behind the policy initiatives of UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath and our Prime Minister Narendra Modi. People will be educated in the 'Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas' philosophy of the party and the polices that have been the embodiment of this tenet," said Mohan. Moreover, the party is also making efforts to reach its booth-level activists and members via the 'Shakti Kendra Sammelan'. In the BJP organisation, a group of 10 booths is called a shakti kendra. At these centres, the cadre and members would be tutored on the party's and the central government's achievements. advertisement The BHIM app would also be popularised among the activists as part of the Union's vision of a cashless economy as well as to further the Dalit agenda of the party that paid off handsomely in the UP polls. Senior leaders of the party would be visiting all parliamentary seats as part of the founding day exercise. "MPs will also be made to attend programmes not just in their constituencies, but also one adjacent to it," said Bhupendra Yadav. According to national general secretary Anil Jain, while the plan is to cover all the parliamentary constituencies across the country, the focus would obviously be those where the party lost in 2014. ALSO READ | BJP Foundation Day: Party's rise to power from 2 MPs in 1984 to 282 in 2014 ALSO READ | Yogi Adityanath: Previous UP govt gave us slaughterhouse, instead of hospital with good doctors --- ENDS --- Since there are many questions about charter, voucher and public schools, its important to understand their differences. Nonprofit charter schools are created and administered by school districts to teach students who need specialized education. Public charter schools and other public schools do not expect to make profits and are totally accountable to taxpayers. Private religious schools are almost always administered by religious denominations. For-profit charter and other private schools are administered by companies that expect to make a profit. And vouchers are payments of taxpayer money that pay for all or most of the tuition charged by those private schools. Private schools that receive taxpayer money in the form of vouchers are not obligated to divulge any financial information. In other words, voucher schools arent accountable to taxpayers even though they receive taxpayer money. Not only that, but here in Wisconsin parents who send their children to private schools can receive thousands of dollars in tax credits in addition to the vouchers that help pay tuition at those private schools. Gov. Scott Walker, most Republican legislators here in Wisconsin and President Trumps secretary of education all want to increase the number of taxpayer-funded voucher schools. Thats a bad idea for many reasons. Giving money to church-run schools, which are over 90 percent of Wisconsins voucher schools, is a violation of the intent of Section 18 of Wisconsins constitution, which states: nor shall any money be drawn from the treasury for the benefit of religious societies. How do they get away with it? By giving the money to parents, who pass it to the churches that operate the schools. Im not against private schools. I attended religious schools for nine years. And I think its fair to offer a reasonable tax break to lower-income parents who send their children to them. But I dont believe taxpayers should be expected to fund those schools. First of all, private schools dont have to follow the same guidelines as public schools. Unlike public schools, they arent required to do background checks on their teachers or other staff. They dont have to observe federal nondiscrimination laws or offer the same services to students with special needs, while public schools accept everyone and are required to offer all needed services. Private schools can teach whatever they want, even if it contradicts established scientific findings or discriminates against certain groups. We need to ask if taxpayers should be responsible for supporting schools that teach religious, sometimes extreme, ideologies. Are we okay with our tax money going to schools that teach Sharia Law, discriminate against gays and minorities or warn that using birth control is a sin? On the financial side, its costing Wisconsin taxpayers a fortune to support private schools. In 2015 alone, private schools received $209 million in taxpayer funding. That was before Walker and the GOP expanded the program and after they cut $782 million in funding from our public schools. On Jan. 26, 2016, Milwaukee Public Radio explained how the funding works: The state pays about 60 percent of the total cost of a voucher, while the remaining 40 percent is paid by the school district in which a voucher program is located. That money comes through a reduction in the districts state aid. According to the report, those districts lost more than $16 million in tax money to vouchers last year alone. It should also be noted that each time a student leaves a public school for a private one, the school district loses money. Meanwhile, costs to maintain public school facilities and programs remain the same. It gets worse. According to a recent memo by the non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau, under Walkers proposed budget, voucher operators will receive at least $1,000 more per student than public school students within the next eight years. Were already supporting private schools, even if they dont get voucher money. They have free access to state-funded programs such as the School Lunch Aid, the School Breakfast Program and the School Day Milk Program. Plus, they receive transportation services and Title I services, which are provided by public school districts. Just these benefits add up to over $1,000 in taxpayer aid per private school pupil. Most people dont realize that. If voucher schools showed better results than public schools, it would make sense to fund them. But scores of nonpartisan studies have determined that students who attend them perform no better, and often worse, than those in public schools. Look it up; the evidence is overwhelming. Make your voices heard. Please contact your legislators and ask them to stop the expansion of unaccountable voucher schools and restore funding to our struggling public schools. During the celebration of National Library Workers Day, the Friends of the Beaver Dam Community Library honored charter member and Friends of the Library Treasurer Frances Schmidt for 50 years of service in the organization. The Friends of the Beaver Dam Community Library formed in 1967 as effort to help alleviate the crowded conditions at the former Williams Free Library. The Friends of the Beaver Dam Community Library is a community organization with members from Beaver Dam and the surrounding areas that works with the Library Board and staff to support and enhance library services for the community. The Friends of the Beaver Dam Community Library have fostered support and promoted the community library mission for over 50 years. Thank you for your continued support and dedication. JUNEAU A 27-year-old Oconomowoc man is charged with breaking into an occupied home and stealing prescription medicine from the home before fleeing in a purple car. Kalan L. Hayes is charged with felony counts of burglary of a building or a dwelling and bail jumping along with a misdemeanor charge of theft. He could face up to 19 years in prison and a $45,000 fine if convicted of the charges. According to the criminal complaint, the Dodge County Communications Center received a report on April 3 at 7 p.m. two men with masks on their faces entered a residence in the town of Lebanon and ran into the back bedroom where they stole pain medications. The homeowners son ran after the suspects and saw them leave in a newer, dark purple car. An anonymous source contacted police on April 4th and reported that Hayes had told them that he had taken methadone and Percocet from a home. According to the criminal complaint, the homeowner said Hayes was a former friend of her sons. Hayes had said he was at his mothers house at the time of the robbery. A preliminary hearing in the case is scheduled for April 13 at 8:30 a.m. JUNEAU A 45-year-old Juneau man made his initial appearance in court on Thursday after being charged with possession of drugs. Durante M. McDaniel is charged with a felony county of possession of narcotic drugs and a misdemeanor count of possession of cocaine. If convicted, he could face up to 3 and a half years in prison on the felony charge and a year in jail on the misdemeanor charge. He also could be fined up to $15,000. Dodge County Circuit Court Judge Steven Bauer found probable cause. McDaniel was given a $1,000 cash bond with conditions that he shall not use, possess or control any controlled substance without a valid prescription or drug paraphernalia nor be in the presence of anyone else who does. According to the criminal complaint, McDaniel was taken into custody April 5 at a Beaver Dam business on a probation and parole warrant. McDaniel was searched and police located a baggie in one pocket and Durante allegedly said that it was cocaine. Police also found evidence of heroin in the baggy. The preliminary hearing in the case is April 13. MADISON Lydia Brockel of Columbus, a Madison College Baking and Decorative Arts program student, earned a bronze medal in the Wisconsin Bakers Association cake and breads competition at the Midwest Foodservice Expo held March 13-15. Five Madison College students competed in various categories at the event. Brockel took third place in the Wedding Cake Non-Fondant category with her flower basket three-layer cake. A 2016 graduate of Columbus High School, she will receive a technical diploma in Baking and Decorative Arts in May. I learned what other cake decorators are doing in the industry and what some clients may or may not be looking for in a wedding cake, Brockel said. I also learned many techniques and skills I can use in my future career. For more information about Madison Colleges Baking and Decorative Arts program visit www.madisoncollege.edu/program/baking-decorative-arts. Jen Holbergs dedicated work in providing innovative learning opportunities for students in Mauston was rewarded when she was recently honored with the Forward Award. Holberg, the library media center specialist for both Olson Middle School and Mauston High School, was given the honor during the Wisconsin Educational Media & Technology Association Awards (WEMTA) Luncheon March 20 at the Kalahari Resort in Wisconsin Dells. Holberg will also be honored by the Mauston Board of Education at its next meeting April 17. In January, Holberg was nominated for the award by MHS Principal Jim Dillin. According to WEMTA, the Forward Award is given to exemplary school library media programs in Wisconsins schools, in order to strengthen school library programs and support student achievement. Along with a few of her peers, Holberg was instrumental in developing the OMS MakerLab, which allows middle and high school students opportunities to learn real world, hands-on skills through a variety of methods. The one piece that really pushed me to nominate her was her work, along with an outstanding group of middle school teachers, to develop the MakerLab space, Dillin said. This is Holbergs 17th year with the Mauston School District, but only her second as an LMC specialist. Holberg taught health and language arts for 15 years before a rare opportunity came up she couldnt turn down. This has always been my dream, Holberg said. The field is so encompassing. I was a reader as a kid and I raised my girls to be avid readers. Even when I taught health, there was a big literacy component just because it was so relatable and there are so many life lessons to be learned through reading. The MakerLab at OMS is designed to give students 21st Century skills to prepare them for careers in technology. The lab allows students to work on projects independently, ignite their creative passions and set personal goals. The MakerLab was officially unveiled to the public last fall during an open house. Dillin said he was blown away by all the learning capabilities created through the MakerLab. During the open house, for about 30 minutes, I had a seventh-grader teach me about green screens, the use of iPads and how to improve learning, Dillin said. It just really left a huge impression on me. For this young man, personalized learning allowed him to grow a passion that he had. I became the student and he was the teacher. I will never forget the pride in that young mans face as he just taught and taught. I just felt Jens efforts warranted that nomination. The kids are encouraged to innovate through the MakerLab, Holberg said. This is our first year of having an actual space for it. Its exciting because theyre into it. Thats the best part of my day when I can watch the kids just create. As she concluded her interview with the Star-Times on April 3, seventh-grade science students rushed into Holbergs class, eager to learn through technology. Every other Monday they do genius hour, so its a self-selected project, Holberg said. Some of the kids have individual projects theyre working on, some of them are still in the research mode, but it all comes back to that blending of technology and reading. Since becoming an LMC specialist, Holberg has led several other innovative efforts in the school district. She has worn many hats including digital citizenship educator, library collection manager, which includes technology and media resources, professional development planner and leader, curriculum integrator, co-teacher in the library and classrooms, OMS social media specialist, and many other leadership roles. Holberg said teaching students about literacy and technology is the perfect blend for her. Its just so much fun for me, Holberg said. No day is ever the same; no hour here is ever the same. In the future, Holberg hopes to expand the MakerLab by removing a wall between the OMS library and the lab. Holberg is working on an expansion proposal to bring in front of the school board. By expanding the space, we can expand how many kids we serve at one time, Holberg said. I think it would be amazing for these younger kids to teach the older kids through collaboration. Dillin said the MakerLab, along with Holbergs vision for teaching, is an essential part of Maustons 20/20 Vision plan to install more technology-based learning by 2020. For instance, we have a 3D printer at the MakerLab and those are some things we want to prepare are kids for because theyre now being used in all levels of business and industry, Dillin said. When I talked to kids during the open house, you could really see their passion for learning and when you have that passion, great things will happen. That passion starts with Jen and that team of teachers who put that together. The ACLU is suing the state of Wisconsin over its decision in January to eliminate insurance coverage for gender reassignment surgery and other care for people transitioning between genders. In a federal sex discrimination lawsuit filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Madison, two UW-Madison employees who are transitioning to female say they are illegally being denied coverage for gender transition-related care after the state reinstated a ban on the coverage in late January. According to the lawsuit, the state Group Insurance Board (GIB) amended the state insurance plan policy in July to begin providing coverage for transition-related care starting in January. GIB sets policy for the state Department of Employee Trust Funds, which sets the scope of health insurance coverage for state employees. But in August, the state Department of Justice asked the board to reinstate the exclusion, according to the lawsuit, arguing that the rules were based on a misreading of the law, and that transition-related care is not medically necessary. GIB initially rejected DOJs arguments but relented in late January and reinstated the ban on coverage under the states medical insurance policy for transition-related care as of Feb. 1. As a result, the lawsuit states, plaintiffs Alina Boyden and Shannon Andrews have been denied coverage for medically necessary, doctor-prescribed treatments for gender dysphoria. Andrews was forced to pay for gender confirmation surgery out-of-pocket, and Boyden has had to forgo it entirely. The lawsuit states that the state is in violation of federal law by banning coverage for transition-related care. A spokesman for DOJ did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment on the lawsuit. According to the lawsuit: Boyden, a teaching assistant and a doctoral candidate in anthropology at UW-Madison, began to transition to female while in college in California in 2002 and 2003. Her North Carolina drivers license identifies her as female, and everyone at UW knows her as a woman. Boyden filed a complaint against UW-Madison in 2015 for discriminating against her by excluding coverage for gender transition care. In May 2016, she requested pre-approval of sex reassignment surgery from her insurer, Dean Health Plan, but was denied. In mid-July, when GIB and ETF amended the state insurance plan policy, Boyden again requested pre-approval for surgery but was denied until the change in the plan was effective on Jan. 1. Even after she re-applied in January, pre-approval was denied. Andrews is a research assistant in the Clinical Sciences Center, part of the UW Carbone Cancer Center. She presented as female outside of work, but came out as transgender to co-workers in June 2014. She is female in all of her personal identification. In the fall of 2015, Andrews had surgery in Pennsylvania to treat her gender dyphoria, but her claims for coverage, submitted to Wisconsin Physicians Service, were denied. The lawsuit seeks a declaration that the state violated the equal protection rights of Boyden and Andrews, along with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. It also seeks an order that their transition-related care be covered by insurance. Register for more free articles. Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading. Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox! Sign up! Already a Subscriber? Already a Subscriber? Sign in Terms of Service Privacy Policy Uttarakhand's higher education minister, Dhan Singh Rawat has sparked a row after his statement that singing Vande Mataram should be made mandatory, if one wants to live in Uttarakhand. By Devina Gupta: Uttarakhand minister Dhan Singh Rawat has once again courted controversy by saying, "If you want to stay in Uttarakhand, then you must sing Vande Matram". Dhan Singh Rawat to India Today. "There were around 3000 students at Roorkee College and I appealed to them that shouldn't our national flag be established in our colleges? Does anyone have a problem with our national song? They said no one has an issue. So if no one has any problem in bearing our national flag and singing national song, we don't have any problem. I think no one should take it in any other context," said Dhan Singh Rawat, who holds the higher education portfolio in the BJP ruled Uttarakhand told India Today. advertisement Interestingly, while Rawat repeatedly referred to 'Vande Matram' as India's 'national song', the Supreme Court has observed that there is no concept of a 'national song'. A bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra observed in February that Article 51A of the constitution requires to promote national anthem and national flag but there is no reference to a national song. A fact clearly missed by the Uttarakhand minister in his over zealous patriotism pitch. "There is no question of apology. National song shouldn't be linked to any religion, college shouldn't have any objection", Dhan Singh Rawat, MoS education, told India Today. There have been repeated cases from another BJP ruled state in Uttar Pradesh where municipal corporations are facing internal turmoil over singing of Vande Matram before meetings. From Meerut to Allahabad, councillors have made headlines for fighting over making Vande Matram compulsory and banishing those who refuse to comply. But unfazed inspite of the controversy, the minister has told India Today that his government plans to start a process to make Vande Matram compulsory in state colleges and schools. "I have said that no one should have any objection. We will speak to stakeholders in college. We will take suggestions on making it compulsory," said Dhan Singh Rawat. --- ENDS --- Items are listed under the day of the event only, running as space permits prior to the event. To submit items, call 745-3511, email jcutsforth@capitalnewspapers.com or visit www.portagedailyregister.com. Include name and phone number. TODAY Art exhibit: Portage Center for the Arts Drury Gallery presents the Area High School Student Exhibit, Portage Center for the Arts, 301 E. Cook St., Portage. Portage High School and Lodi Area Homeschool Organization will be featured. Opening reception from 4 to 6 p.m. The gallery is open from 1 to 6 p.m. Wednesday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday. Call 742-5655 for more information. Euchre card party: Portage Presbyterian Church, 120 W. Pleasant St., Portage. Luncheon at 6 p.m. and cards at 6:30 p.m. Cost is $5 for food, cards and prizes. This is a benefit to support the Yakutat Presbyterian Church in Yakutat, Alaska. A donation to the food pantry would be appreciated. Fish fry: 5 to 7:30 p.m. Knights of Columbus fish fry, Knights of Columbus Hall, 918 Silver Lake Drive, Portage. Cocktails at 4 p.m. Public invited. Cost is $10.75. Hope House support group: 1 to 2 p.m. Portage Public Library, 253 W. Edgewater St., Portage. Has domestic violence touched your life in some way? Find connections with supportive individuals who have similar life experiences as you at Hope Houses newest support group. All are welcome. Held on the first and third Friday of the month. For more information, contact Katie Fluger, outreach advocate, at 608-356-9123. Seniors Bowling Social: 1 p.m. Fireball Lanes, 817 E. Wisconsin St., Portage. Cost is $6 and includes three games of bowling and shoe rental. Unique Singles: 5 p.m. Suzys Steak and Seafood Restaurant, 2701 County Highway CX, Portage. All single men and women older than age 50 welcome. The group is strictly social with no dues or officers. SATURDAY, APRIL 8 Endeavor Wisconsin Committee to Protect All Pensions: 10 a.m. Endeavor/Moundville Fire Station/Bingo Hall, 631 S. Limits Road, Endeavor. Active workers, retirees, spouses and all people concerned about stopping retirement theft are invited to attend. For more information, visit http://mycspensionhandsoff.com.Fundraiser for Carol Heisz: 5:30 to 9 p.m. Trails Lounge, 125 Wauona Trail, Portage. Carol will be attending the dinner. One hundred percent of bar sales and 50 percent of food sales will be donated. Choice of jumbo shrimp or 10 oz. prime rib dinner for $17.99. If you intend to come for the fundraiser dinner, please make reservations with your entree choice so we can be prepared. Call 608-742-2325. There will also be a silent auction. We will also be open to the public with our regular menu. Griefshare support group: 10 a.m. to noon, Portage United Methodist Church, 1804 New Pinery Road, Portage. Offered to individuals suffering from the loss of loved one(s). Meetings are held weekly on Saturdays. Call Laurie at 608-450-1081 or Jen at 608-345-8928 or visit www.griefshare.org for more information. Harmony for the Homeless Concert: 7 p.m. Portage Center for the Arts, 301 E. Cook St., Portage. Enjoy an evening listening to the sweet harmonies of The Flannels with Mike Powers. In addition to melodic tunes, indulge in some refreshments and go home with a prize or two with the drawing and silent auction. Purchase tickets at the Chamber of Commerce, Portage Center of the Arts or at the door on the evening of the event. Tickets are $15 each. Indoor Flea Market and Craft Sale: 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. 309 DeWitt St., Portage. Featuring more than 25 crafters and vendors. Museum at the Portage: 804 MacFarlane Road, Portage. Open from 1 to 4 p.m. Thursday through Saturday in April and May; and 1 to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday in June, July and August. Admission is free. Pardeeville Class of 2018 Prom: 8 to 11 p.m. Wyocena Community Center, 165 Dodge St., Wyocena. The theme is Once Upon a Time. Grand March at 9:30 p.m. Admission is $10. SUNDAY, APRIL 9 Lodi Valley Chapter of the Ice Age Trail Alliance full moon hike: Meet at the West Point side of the Merrimac Ferry at 7 p.m. and walk south on the trail to take in the views of Lake Wisconsin, Paradise Island and the moon. Depending on how energetic everyone is we might go further. The moon rises about 6 p.m., but we will probably still need to rely on flashlights and headlamps. Please wear appropriate clothing for the weather and bring along a flashlight or headlamp. Leashed dogs are welcome. Watch for the yellow Ice Age Trail Event signs. For directions visit: https://goo.gl/maps/5SdNk. Zumba: 5:30 p.m. Rusch Elementary School, Portage. $5 drop in fee. Contact Tami at 608-346-3971 or 4dreamers@frontier.com. MONDAY, APRIL 10 Clinic: 8 a.m. to noon, Columbia County Public Health Walk-In Clinic, Columbia County Division of Health, 2652 Murphy Road, Portage. Use door No. 4. Bring childs immunization record. Visit www.co.columbia.wi.us for more information. Blood drive: Poynette Red Cross blood drive, 1 to 6 p.m. Dekorra Lutheran Church, N3099 Smith Road, Poynette. Download the American Red Cross Blood Donor app, visit www.redcrossblood.org or call 800-733-2767 to make an appointment or for more information. All blood types are needed. A blood donor card or drivers license or two other forms of identification are required. Euchre card party: 6:30 p.m. Bethlehem Lutheran Church, W8267 Highway 33 East, Portage. Public welcome. Contact: Cloe, 429-2363. Food pantry: 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. Portage Second Harvest mobile food pantry, Building No. 8, Columbia County Fairgrounds, Portage. No need to line up earlier than 10:15 a.m. Pantry will not start early. Plenty of food for everyone. Bring boxes, bags, baskets or wagons to carry food. Volunteers are always welcome.Lodi Red Cross blood drive in memory of Sierra Skarda: noon to 5:30 p.m. Lodi High School, 1100 Sauk St., Lodi. As a junior at Lodi High School, Sierra was known to have big dreams, a sparkling personality, all while sharing her compassion with others. Sierra was killed in a tragic car accident on her way to school, Jan. 26, 2016. Download the American Red Cross Blood Donor App, visit or call 1-800-733-2767 to make an appointment or for more information. All blood types are needed. A blood donor card or drivers license or two other forms of identification are required at check-in. Monday Movie Day: 10 a.m. Portage Public Library, 253 W. Edgewater St., Portage. The Library will show newly released movies with free admission and popcorn. For a list of whats playing, visit the librarys website at w . Ostomy support group: 5 to 6 p.m. Divine Savior Healthcare, 2817 New Pinery Road, Portage. Walk-ins welcome. This support group is intended for those who are living with an ostomy, anticipate ostomy surgery, as well as caregivers and family members. This group allows individuals to make connections with those who have similar experiences, gain knowledge and provide support. The group meets every other month. The next meeting will be held June 12. Portage American Legion Post 47 and Auxiliary: Portage Knights of Columbus Hall, 918 Silver Lake Drive, Portage. Social time at 5 p.m., soup and sandwich meal served at 6 p.m. Meetings held at 7 p.m. Zumba/Zumba Toning: 6 p.m. Harrisville. $5 drop in fee. Contact Tami at 608-346-3971 or 4dreamers@frontier.com. TUESDAY, APRIL 11 Congressman Glenn Grothman town hall meeting: 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. Marquette County Senior Dining Site, 140 Lake Court, Montello. Knitting and crocheting group: 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Portage Public Library, 253 W. Edgwater St., Portage. Bring your projects and share your progress with friends. We will also be doing knit-alongs where we work on a project together. The first project we will be working on is a leftovers sweater, using leftover yarn from other projects. A free pattern will be provided. Feel free to bring your lunch along with your knitting. Teen Tuesdays: 4 p.m. Portage Public Library, 253 W. Edgewater St., Portage. Teen Tuesdays will be held every Tuesday through May 9. The program is for students in 6th through 12th grades. Programs vary by week but crafts, movies and games are regular components, and snacks are provided. Zumba Toning: 4:30 p.m. Woodridge Primary School, Portage. $5 drop in fee. Contact Tami at 608-346-3971 or 4dreamers@frontier.com. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 12 Bingo: 5:30 p.m. Old Chicago, 147 N. Main St., Pardeeville. Bingo will be played every Wednesday, except the first one of the month. Blood drive: Rio Red Cross blood drive, 1 to 5 p.m. Rio Middle School, 411 Church St., Rio. Download the American Red Cross Blood Donor app, visit www.redcrossblood.org or call 800-733-2767 to make an appointment or for more information. All blood types are needed. A blood donor card or drivers license or two other forms of identification are required. Clinic: 8 a.m. to noon, Columbia County Public Health Walk-In Clinic, Columbia County Division of Health, 2652 Murphy Road, Portage. Use door No. 4. Bring childs immunization record. Visit www.co.columbia.wi.us for more information. Free blood pressure screenings: 1 to 5 p.m. Divine Savior Healthcare, 2817 New Pinery Road, Portage. No appointment necessary. Call 745-6405 for more information. Do not eat, smoke, drink caffeine or exercise for 30 minutes prior. St. Vincent de Paul free medical clinic: 9 a.m. to noon. Wilz Drugs lower level, 140 E. Cook St., Portage. No appointments needed. Information needed is name, date of birth and a contact number. A foot clinic is available every week. The clinic can do exams and prescribe medications. Physical therapist available. Discounted medications are available at Wilz and Walmart. Call Bonny Oestreich, RN, at 608-234-0159 for information. University of Wisconsin-Baraboo/Sauk County spring Preview Day: 9 to 11:30 a.m. R.G. Brown Theatre, UW-Baraboo/Sauk County campus, Baraboo. For prospective students and their families. The event is free and open to the public. Zumba/Zumba Toning: 5 p.m. Montello. $5 drop in fee. Contact Tami at 608-346-3971 or 4dreamers@frontier.com. Zumba: 5:30 p.m. 1208 Northport Road (the former Freedom Carpeting building). This is a $5 drop-in class. For more information, contact Deb at DJMACK00001@yahoo.com or Rena at 697-6713. THURSDAY, APRIL 13 Bingo: 6:30 p.m. Endeavor Lions Club Bingo, Endeavor-Moundville Fire Department, Endeavor. BloodCenter of Wisconsin blood drive: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Divine Savior Healthcare, 2817 New Pinery Road, Portage. Donors can schedule an appointment by calling 1-877-232-4376 or visiting www.bcw.edu. Anyone 17 or older who is in general good health and meets eligibility requirements is encouraged to donate. Appointments are preferred, but walk-ins are welcome. Parental consent is required for 16-year-olds to donate. The entire process takes about an hour. Donors should bring a photo ID that includes birth date. Cookie sale: 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. front lobby, Divine Savior Healthcare, 2817 New Pinery Road, Portage. On the second Thursday of each month, the Volunteer Partners of Divine Savior bake Smart Cookies. Cookies are 50 cents each or $5.50 per dozen. Cookie selection varies month to month, but chocolate chip is always available. All proceeds benefit scholarships for students educating in healthcare-related fields. Making A Difference Study Group: 9 to 10:30 am. Portage Public Library, Bidwell Room, 253 W. Edgewater St. Portage. Making a Difference is a group that is meeting to turn concerns into action. Open to the public. What are your concerns? Museum: 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Portage World War II Museum, 119 E. Cook St., Portage. Free tours for veterans every Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The tours take 2 1/2 hours. For information, call 608-697-3690. Writing group: Writers at the Portage, 5:30 p.m. Portage Public Library, 253 W. Edgewater St., Portage. New writers and any genre welcome. The Portage Parks and Recreation Board this week endorsed a band shelter at Pauquette Park that would be built with no funding from the city, a move that puts the Portage Service Club Association in a better position to seek fundraising for the entire $300,000. The endorsement from the board, however, does not mean the band shelter will be built, Parks Director Dan Kremer said, as the service organization would still need to reach an agreement with the board before the item could move on to the Common Council. PSCA in September had presented to the Parks Board a plan to construct the 75-foot by 35-foot structure in the park where there is currently a concrete slab, a project for which the city was asked to invest $150,000 half the cost while PSCA raised the other half. Portage parks leaders were not in favor of that plan, mainly due to the cost. Board members in their February meeting were more open to supporting the project due to the clubs confidence it could raise the entire $300,000. Nancy Beasley of PSCA said Thursday that the club has $150,000 in promised donations and that two corporate entities were just waiting for endorsement prior to making large donations. Beasley said there is no question the club can raise the entire $300,000 for the band shelter, such as it did for the Splash Pad in Goodyear Park. At this point, were elated, she said of the Parks Boards endorsement. Service club members in February had pointed out the many community benefits for a band shelter, reminding the board that no other community has hosted the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra for 25 consecutive years, which Portage is poised to do this summer. Parks Board member Mike Charles the lone dissenting vote against Tuesdays endorsement brought to the boards attention some concerns from residents who opposed the construction of the band shelter, which included lack of parking nearby and the noise level. Beasley countered that any parking issues that might come up at Pauquette Park wouldnt be different from any of the parks in Portage, which, without large parking lots, require some people to park in residential areas. We have to remember Pauquette Park is more than just a neighborhood playground, Beasley said. Its a community park; its the signature park for the city of Portage, and it belongs to everyone. Results from a recent 13-question survey conducted on the city website, using SurveyMonkey software, showed that more than 88 percent of 81 respondents supported a band shelter for Pauquette Park, according to the Parks Board meeting packet available online. About 91 percent of 78 respondents voted in support of the project if it is paid for entirely by private donations, though 64 percent of 81 respondents voted in support of the city providing some financial assistance. Other questions in the survey attempted to gauge how respondents would feel about more major events being held at the park and the preferred days of the week for such events. Even if the construction is entirely funded by the service club, concerns from the board remain about the costs regarding maintenance, as noted by member Larry Messer when the Parks Board discussed the issue in February. Specifics regarding the construction, such as the removal of the current concrete slab and some trees, would still need to be hashed out and agreed upon later if and when the service club raises the money. (The board) endorsed the project, but an actual memorandum of understanding will be required to move forward, Kremer said. George Beasley of PSCA said Thursday he appreciated the boards endorsement, which has a lot of people excited about building a band shelter. Being on a board is not easy, because some people want something that others dont and they make the decision. Hopefully well come up with the money to get it done. George Beasley also noted the recent formation of a charitable trust dubbed Positively Portage, the board for which is made up of about a half dozen community volunteers, including himself, Mike Hurd and Rich Jacobson. TOWN OF WEST POINT Farmer Joe Keller hopes he can make an impact by helping his peers in Clark County, Kansas rebuild after wildfires burned 467,000 acres and destroyed 31 homes last month. Along with several friends and acquaintances, Keller formed the group Fences Among Friends, which aims to fill a semi truck with fence posts and barbed wire supplies desperately needed in the region following the disaster. I saw a lot of videos and posts on Facebook about the fires and part of what motivated me to do something was other people taking action, Keller said. Right now there is an immense need. Ashland, Kansas resident Jeff Kay, who is coordinating efforts there, said his whole town was evacuated due to the fires and strong winds. Ashland has a population of about 800. At one point fire got to about 50-100 yards from the edge of town, but someone above us said Ashland, this isnt your time, Kay said. It was very devastating county-wide. It created a lot of chaos. Kay said Ashland is a farming and ranching community about 60 miles from the nearest Walmart. Its very isolated, Kay said. Farmers returning to their properties after fleeing the quickly spreading fires found dead and injured cattle and ashes of hay, as well as more than 4,000 miles of destroyed fencing. After seeing the devastation, community members began organizing and reaching out on social media. Thats how Keller learned of the devastation. I went online and donated myself, but I felt even my $100 wasnt enough, Keller said. But I know every dollar counts. Its just the need is so great out there. Wanting to do more, he formed Fences Among Friends. He hopes word will spread quickly, as they goal is to fill a semi by April 18. He said one semi load is estimated to be enough to build 10 miles of fencing. The goal is to raise $25,000 to buy materials to fill the semi with the needed materials. Im a farmer. I was born and raised and now live on the 800 acre farm I grew up on, Keller said. The farming community is a small part of the population and these people we are trying to help are 800 miles away but I still consider them to be friends and neighbors. Kay said the outpouring of support has been amazing. Its heartwarming and sends chills up my spine to see how the outside world has gone to great lengths to help us, he said. We just want to say a personal thank you from Ashland, Kansas. We appreciate every little thing. The Community Bank of Portage and Bank of Wisconsin Dells would like to thank Customer Service Representative, Jeanne DAmour, for her 25 years of hard work, dedication and commitment. This year we celebrate DAmours 25th consecutive year with the Bank of Wisconsin Dells. DAmour, a Mauston native, has over 30 years of combined banking experience with the Bank of Wisconsin Dells. DAmour has been a teller, a loan processor, customer service representative supervisor, and now shares her experience with the customer service representative team at our Portage location. The Community Bank of Portage and Bank of Wisconsin Dells thank DAmour for her hard work, dedication, and commitment. By Press Trust of India: Allahabad, Apr 7 (PTI) The row over Vande Mataram has spread to Allahabad municipal corporation, where a proposal to make singing of the national song compulsory at commencement of proceedings led to protest by Samajwadi Party corporators. The incident came days after municipal corporations in Meerut and Varanasi too witnessed similar ruckus over the issue. advertisement BJP member Girishankar Prabhakar yesterday mooted a proposal in Allahabad civic body for singing of national song at the start of proceedings and the national anthem upon conclusion. However, Samajwadi Party corporators led by Athar Raza and Sushil Yadav vociferously opposed it. BJP members alleged that the protesting corporators refused to stand when the national song was sung after Mayor Abhilasha Gupta gave her nod to Prabhakars proposal. Defending their opposition to the move, Raza alleged that the "politicization" of Vande Mataram has always been a "ploy" of the BJP. The SP members opposed "laying down a new rule at a time when just a few months were left for the expiry of the term of the house". The protest led to suspension of proceedings for a couple of hours. After the house met again, Mayor Abhilasha Gupta gave her nod to Prabhakars proposal following which the national song Vande Mataram was recited by members. The protesting members left the premises in protest even as proceedings concluded later in the day with the recital of national anthem ? Jana Gana Mana. BJP corporators later alleged that during the recital of Vande Mataram, the protesting councillors had remained seated which was tantamount to insulting the national song. "We have received the complaints. The CCTV footage is being examined to ascertain the veracity of the allegations. "If the charges are found true, action will be taken accordingly," the Mayor told reporters. Raja said their protest was "not against national song and national anthem per se, but against starting a new trend just ahead of the next municipal polls. "It is unfortunate that the Mayor, whose close ties to the BJP are well known, became a party to this." Guptas husband Nand Gopal Gupta Nandi is a cabinet minister in the Yogi Adityanath government in the state.The BJP won two-thirds majority in the recent election in Uttar Pradesh, returning to power after 15 years. PTI NAC RT --- ENDS --- Your Ultimate Investing Toolkit Sign up for MarketBeat All Access to gain access to MarketBeat's full suite of research tools: Portfolio Monitoring Top Stock Lists Premium Reports Stock Screeners Live News Feed Premium Support Free for your first month. A spokesperson of the HN Reliance Foundation and Research Centre has said that actor Vinod Khanna is responding well to the treatment, and is now stable. By Virendrasingh Ghunawat: After a picture of Vinod Khanna looking frail went viral and sparked rumours that the actor was suffering from cancer, a spokesperson of the HN Reliance Foundation and Research Centre has said that he is now stable. "Mr Vinod Khanna was admitted to Sir HN Reliance Foundation hospital on Friday with severe dehydration. He is under the care of our doctors and has responded positively to the treatment and is now stable. His family thanks his well-wishers for the good wishes and requests to respect their privacy," the spokesperson said, refusing to comment on the cancer rumours. advertisement The 70-year-old actor's son Rahul Khanna had told PTI that he was recovering and will be discharged soon. However, a photo of Vinod Khanna went viral and reports began doing the rounds that he was suffering from bladder cancer. We wish the actor a speedy recovery. ALSO READ: Vinod Khanna hospitalised, son Rahul says he will be discharged soon ALSO READ: Vinod Khanna's son Sakshi to make his debut with Dhadkan 2? ALSO WATCH: Vinod Khanna's filmy attack on Partap Singh Bajwa --- ENDS --- Truist Financial Corp. operates as a financial holding company, which engages in the provision of banking services to individuals, businesses and municipalities. The firm offers a variety of loans and lease financing to individuals and entities, including insurance premium financing, permanent commercial real estate financing arrangements, loan servicing for third-party investors, direct consumer finance loans to individuals, credit card lending, automobile financing and equipment financing. It also markets a range of other services, including deposits, life insurance, property and casualty insurance, health Truist Financial Corp. operates as a financial holding company. It engages in the provision of banking services to individuals, businesses and municipalities. The company operates through the following segments: Consumer Banking and Wealth; Corporate and Commercial Banking; and Insurance Holdings. The firm offers a variety of loans and lease financing to individuals and entities, including insurance premium financing, permanent commercial real estate financing arrangements, loan servicing for third-party investors, direct consumer finance loans to individuals, credit card lending, automobile financing and equipment financing. It also markets a range of other services, including deposits, life insurance, property and casualty insurance, health insurance and commercial general liability insurance on an agency basis and through a wholesale insurance brokerage operation, merchant services, trust and retirement services, comprehensive wealth advisory services, asset management and capital markets services. The company was founded on December 6, 2019 and is headquartered in Charlotte, NC. insurance and commercial general liability insurance on an agency basis and through a wholesale insurance brokerage operation, merchant services, trust and retirement services, comprehensive wealth advisory services, asset management and capital markets services. The company was founded on December 6, 2019 and is headquartered in Charlotte, NC. In a written reply to a question raised in Lok Sabha, he added that the training was given to 11,428 teachers in 2016-17 under the Rashriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA). By Supriya Bhardwaj: Minister of State for Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (AYUSH) Shripad Yesso Naik today said that Centre spent Rs 166.255 lakhs to impart yoga training to physical education teachers of government schools. In a written reply to a question raised in Lok Sabha, he added that the training was given to 11,428 teachers in 2016-17 under the Rashriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA). advertisement National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) recommended yoga as an integral part of health and physical education in the National Curriculum Framework (NCF). DON'T REDUCE TIME FOR GAMES, YOGA: MINISTER TO SCHOOLS Health and physical education is a compulsory subject up to Class 10. "According to the National Curriculum Framework 2005, the health and physical education and yoga must taken together in a comprehensive health and physical education curriculum, replacing the fragmentary approach in schools today. As core part of the curriculum, time allocated for games and yoga must not be reduced or taken away under any circumstances," said Naik. There are nine universities that offer higher education in yoga and two universities that offer higher education in 'yoga and naturopathy' in the country. Also read: Modi can't do yoga, alleges Rahul Gandhi Also read: PM Modi skips yoga session, has breakfast with mother Heeraben in Gandhinagar Also read: Supreme Court to Centre: Decide if yoga should be made compulsory in schools --- ENDS --- Faculty on topic: the historical cost and consequences of using force Clayton J. Cleveland is a lecturer of government at William & Mary. Cleveland recently sat down with W&M News to discuss the history and consequences of the United States' multilateral and unilateral participation in global conflicts. Photo by Justin K. Thomas U.N. Security Council members are seen here in 2015 as they unanimously vote to endorse a deal to limit Iran's nuclear program in return for sanctions relief. According to Clayton J. Cleveland, a lecturer of government at W&M, the security council is the standard by which the use of military force is measured and authorized between conflicting nations. Photo by Mike Segar Getting The Facts A leader of an infantry platoon assigned to the U.S. Army's 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division (left) tries to listen to multiple questions from citizens after his unit conducted a presence patrol in the Babil region of Iraq. According to Clayton J. Cleveland, a lecturer of government at William & Mary, since participating in the Iraq War without the U.N. Security Council's authorization, the United States has gained a tarnished international reputation. Photo by Justin K. Thomas Protective Posture Soldiers of the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division provide a protective posture over Iraqi citizens after they incurred small-arms fire from suspected insurgents. According to Clayton J. Cleveland, a lecturer of government at William & Mary, since participating in the Iraq War without the U.N. Security Council's authorization, the United States has gained a tarnished international reputation. Photo by Justin K. Thomas Expressing Concerns A village elder (standing) voices his concerns to an officer of the U.S. Army's 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division assigned to the Babil region of Iraq. According to Clayton J. Cleveland, a lecturer of government at William & Mary, since participating in the Iraq War without the U.N. Security Council's consent, the United States has gained a tarnished international reputation. Photo by Justin K. Thomas Photo - of - Hide Caption According to Clayton J. Cleveland, governments of countries around the world are more likely to work together in joint military operations because the monetary costs of unilateral action are becoming too high and are being viewed as politically inappropriate. W&M News recently sat down with Cleveland, a lecturer of government at William & Mary who specializes in how foreign countries facilitate the use of force as a means to help nations achieve their goals, to discuss how that idea has played out on the international stage over the past 30 years. {{youtube:medium|PCcyJ4UkkKY, Clayton J. Cleveland, a lecturer of government at William & Mary discusses the use of unilateral versus multilateral military force.}} Since 1990, states have been more likely to pursue the use of military force within multilateral organizations, he said. The [overall] costs associated with using the military for stronger and wealthier states has risen while, at the same time, access to armaments has also grown making it cheaper for weaker and poorer actors to get the necessary materials to wage war. In his research, Cleveland has also found that it does not necessarily mean that nations are not willing to use military force outside of multilateral forums, but they know the price can be steep. A notable example [of this cost] was the outcome of the Iraq War, Cleveland said. In 2003, the U.S. made substantial attempts to gain international authorization from the United Nations Security Council to engage the Iraqi military, and it paid a significant price for failing to acquire the councils approval. That penalty, Cleveland stated, is the lingering effect on the United States global reputation because his research indicates that working through international institutions such as the U.N. is the standard by which the use of force against other world powers is measured. There is an expectation that states will seek and act if they have received authorization from the U.N. Security Council when they project military force, he said. If states fail to live up to this standard they must pay the costs including political ramifications. Failure to secure international consent for the Iraq War meant that the U.S. plans were subject to more international scrutiny. The result was a tarnished reputation. {{youtube:medium|K7nmaGTVZfg, Clayton J. Cleveland, a lecturer of government at William & Mary discusses the political intricacies of the U.N. Security Council.}} Even though Americas standing following the Iraq War may have been lowered in the eyes of some people around the globe, the U.S. continues to invest more capital in defense than any other nation, therefore it has effectively discouraged direct military confrontations, Cleveland said. The U.S. is successfully deterring other powerful countries from attacking, he said. This means that right now the options available to other actors in international politics are very constrained. It does not make sense for them to even consider a war because of the enormous [personnel, equipment and financial] losses that would be inflicted should the United States have to defend itself. {{youtube:medium|VMCAmn91dTk, Clayton J. Cleveland, a lecturer of government at William & Mary discusses the ability of the United States to defend itself through strategic and conventional deterrence}} The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute states that, as of April 2016, the U.S. had a $596 billion defense budget, which was more than China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, the United Kingdom, India, France and Japan combined. In late February 2017, the White House proposed an increase of $54 billion to its current defense spending, according to an article in the New York Times. Cleveland also stated that Americas ability to keep larger threats contained has helped immensely in aiding in its relations with other nations. However, possible adversaries are adapting their defense policies to include more surreptitious methods of gaining a political and military edge over the United States. Since this is an obvious consequence of American capabilities, foreign leaders use other means to achieve their goals, he said. The success of the U.S. militarys capabilities has made states alter their strategies to adapt to using hybrid-warfare and other forms of deception. {{youtube:medium|x9-yo5mMV_k, Clayton J. Cleveland, a lecturer of government at William & Mary discusses "hybrid warfare."}} In addition to facing new tactics from potential enemies, a concurrent problem the U.S. government faces comes from the voluntary process it uses to recruit military personnel which will, in turn, affect how the nations armed forces sustain combat operations, said Cleveland. Although the all-volunteer force has its advantages, such as it is not compulsory for American citizens to join, there can be sociological limitations to that model, Cleveland said. If the general public does not have to bear the full costs of fighting a war by actually participating in it, they may be more likely to support American involvement in future conflicts. One benefit of living in a democracy [like the United States] is that people who voluntarily bear the costs of the states actions of today also get to contribute to political decisions, said Cleveland. This is unlike the Vietnam War era where a mandatory draft was used to populate the military. So the cost of war may be acuter to the average American citizen when there is a draft. Today, military recruitment focuses on those from lower socioeconomic statuses. Since those who die in combat volunteer to serve their country, the poor suffer more when the U.S. goes to war while the average American does not have to contribute or change their own status. Currently, Cleveland is working on several projects including a book manuscript titled Storming the Security Council: The Revolution in International Authorization, Normative Change, and the Projection of Military Force and an article titled Exit, Voice, and AIIB: Shifting Powers and Reaction Mechanisms of Institutional Change. The paper will discuss the rise of China and the creation of international institutions in an era of power transition. China News on Women Sorry, the page you requested was not found. If you're having trouble locating a destination on Womenofchina.cn, try visiting the Womenofchina Home page From left, Thomas Fenner, 10, of Woonsocket, Lynn Tobin, of Mapleville, and Amanda Karmozyn, also of Mapleville, were among the thousands who ventured to the grand opening of the new Ollie's Bargain Outlet in Woonsocket Wednesday morning. Moderator loading starts at Chinese demonstration HTGR 07 April 2017 Share CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that uranium fuel was being loaded. In fact only graphite moderator elements are being loaded, as described below. The loading of spherical moderator elements has begun at China's Shidaowan HTR-PM - a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) demonstration project. The unit is scheduled to begin operating later this year. Workers inspect the spherical moderator elements prior to their loading (Image: CNI23) The first of the graphite moderator spheres was loaded within the reactor's core on 5 April, China Nuclear Industry 23 Construction Company Limited (CNI23) announced today. In a nuclear reactor, the moderator slows the neutrons released by each fission to the right speed to trigger another, thereby enabling the chain reaction. Each of the graphite spheres is 60 millimeters in diameter and weighs about 0.192 kilograms. Later, CNI23 will load the fuel spheres, which are the same shape and size as the moderator spheres but incorporate 7 grams of uranium enriched to 8.5% uranium-235. Ultimately the reactor cavity will be filled with a total of 245,318 elements, to a depth of over 11 meters. Work on two demonstration HTR-PM units at China Huaneng Group's Shidaowan site near Weihai city in China's Shandong province, began in December 2012. The plant will initially comprise twin HTR-PM reactor modules driving a single 210 MWe steam turbine. A proposal to construct two 600 MWe HTR plants - each featuring three twin reactor and turbine units - 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. China has been actively promoting its HTR technology overseas and has already signed agreements with other countries - including Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the UAE - to consider the construction of HTGR plants. Last August, China Nuclear Energy Engineering Group 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 EDF defies Fessenheim shutdown order 07 April 2017 Share EDF's board of directors yesterday voted against the imminent closure of the Fessenheim nuclear power plant in eastern France, as demanded by the current government. The company said it intends to comply with previously announced legal requirements regarding the plant's continued operation. Fessenheim (Image: EDF) French President Francois Hollande's 2012 election pledge was to limit nuclear's share of French generation at 50% by 2025, and to close Fessenheim - the country's oldest plant - by the end of his five-year term, which ends in May. In June 2014, following a national energy debate, his government announced the country's nuclear generating capacity would be capped at the current level of 63.2 GWe. It will also be limited to 50% of France's total output by 2025. The French Energy Transition for Green Growth Law was adopted in August 2015. Nuclear currently accounts for almost 75% of the country's electricity production, making closures of power reactors appear inevitable. While not calling for the shutdown of any currently operating power reactors, the new policy means that EDF would have to close older reactors in order to bring new ones online. The utility is constructing a 1650 MWe EPR unit at Flamanville which is expected to start up in late 2018. EDF would therefore be forced to shut the equivalent capacity - most likely the two reactors at Fessenheim - by that time in order to begin operating the Flamanville unit. In accordance with French law, a decree is required to revoke the Fessenheim plant's operating licence. This decree is to be issued at EDF's request and will take effect at the same time as the commissioning of the Flamanville 3 EPR. At a meeting yesterday, the board of directors of EDF instructed chairman and CEO Jean-Bernard Levy to issue a request for this decree within six months prior to the commissioning of the Flamanville 3 EPR. It also authorised him to sign the compensation protocol agreed between the utility and the government in January no later than the date on which the request for the decree is issued. The board's decision effectively means Fessenheim will continue operating beyond the end of Hollande's term as president. Levy said: "The decision of the board, taken in application of the law and respecting the company's social interest, enables EDF, fully committed to the energy transition, to have the nuclear fleet necessary to fulfil its obligations to supply its customers." In response to the board's decision, France's Ministry of the Environment, Energy and the Sea said it will "legally endorse ... in the coming days" the "inevitable and irreversible" closure of the Fessenheim plant. The ministry said, "Announced long ago and without any jobs being eliminated, this closure is part of the objectives of diversification of our electricity mix set by the energy transition law, and will enable EDF to strengthen its commitment in the energy transition." However, it noted it is "in the interest" of EDF to "ensure visibility that will prepare the future of the pool of jobs concerned and allocate its investments optimally in favour of the energy transition". The General Confederation of Labour (CGT) - one of a number of trade unions that has strongly opposed the closure of Fessenheim - welcomed the EDF board's decision. "It would have been heart-breaking to sacrifice, for political reasons, an industrial facility that brings back 1 million a day to the public company and contributes to providing reliable electricity that does not emit greenhouse gases," it said. "Especially since Fessenheim is a nuclear power plant declared safe by the Nuclear Safety Authority and whose post-Fukushima compliance investments have been made, contrary to the counter-truths put forward by the [energy] minister." Fessenheim's two 880 MWe pressurized water reactors have been in operation since 1977 and 1978, respectively. The plant employs around 800 people, with considerably more joining during maintenance and refuelling outages. Researched and written by World Nuclear News Related topics IAEA and WANO agree to closer ties 07 April 2017 Share The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO) have agreed to enhance cooperation to strengthen nuclear operational safety and to support countries that are planning or considering launching nuclear power programs. Representatives of the two organisations met at a side event to the Seventh Review Meeting of the Contracting Parties to the Convention on Nuclear Safety (CNS), the IAEA said yesterday. The convention is being held at the IAEA's Vienna headquarters and is due to end today. "Our activities are complementary in nature and are bound by a common interest in keeping nuclear energy safe," Greg Rzentkowski, the IAEA's director of nuclear installation safety, said. "For example, we both respond to existing and emerging challenges such as the need for harmonised approaches to strong safety culture implementation for both operators and regulators as well as support to countries new to nuclear power." WANO CEO Peter Prozesky said both the IAEA and WANO work to promote a strong safety culture in nuclear power, and both needed to work with newcomer countries and countries that are rapidly expanding their nuclear power programs, to ensure that new units will meet the same standards of excellence as existing ones. "The IAEA has a stronger role to play in the early establishment of the capacity of a country to begin a new program, and WANO engages at the time that an operator has embarked on the build of a new plant," he said. "We collaborate to help prospective new-build players create the appropriate infrastructure, skills and processes that will ensure safe operation." WANO is a non-profit member organisation that works to maximise nuclear power plant safety and reliability by enabling operators to work together to assess, benchmark and improve performance through mutual support, information exchange and the sharing of best practices. Every company in the world that operates nuclear power facilities is a member of the organisation, the strict external confidentiality policy of which encourages full and frank internal information exchange between operators, WANO said. The IAEA is the intergovernmental forum for scientific and technical cooperation in nuclear technology, and is an autonomous organisation under the United Nations. Both bodies offer peer review services to nuclear operators. WANO's peer review program helps its members compare their operational performance against standards of excellence through an in-depth, objective review of their operations by an independent team external to their utility. The IAEA offers its members a wide array of review services, including its Operational Safety Review Team (OSART) program. This assists member states in strengthening the safety of their nuclear power plants during commissioning and operation, by comparing actual practices with IAEA safety standards and making suggestions for improvement where appropriate. OSART missions are carried out by international, multidisciplinary expert teams including peers from nuclear power plants, but also from regulatory bodies or technical support organisations. Juan Carlos Lentijo, IAEA deputy director general and head of the agency's Department of Nuclear Safety and Security, said sharing resources and avoiding the duplication of effort was an "important enabler of more effective peer review services," while WANO chairman Jacques Regaldo said increasing the efficiency of reviews will be particularly important as the number of nuclear facilities worldwide increases. "By 2030, half of the nuclear power reactors will be based in Asia, and we will have many newcomers to nuclear power," he said. "There is real value for WANO to work together with the IAEA and others to help maximise the safety and reliability of nuclear power plants." In 2012 the two organisations signed a memorandum of understanding to enhance their cooperation, including participation in each other's safety review missions, common working groups to provide emergency response support, and jointly organised workshops and meetings to facilitate the exchange of experiences, good practice and lessons learned among operators and regulators. Researched and written by World Nuclear News Related topics San Ysidro Falls was an attractive 40-50ft waterfall with an underlying cliff that was colored with yellow and green algae and moss. The falls very much reminded me of a larger version of the Little Falls in the Santa Lucia Wilderness near Arroyo Grande further up the California coast. Being one of the handful of waterfalls in the Santa Barbara area, I had always been targeting the San Ysidro Falls for a visit. Unfortunately, for one reason or another (drought, lack of time, etc.), I never really had a chance to make this visit. That all changed when we made a spontaneous trip that occurred during April Fools Day of 2017. As you can see from the photo above, this waterfall was no joke. It certainly benefitted from the replenishing rains that most of Southern California had gotten earlier in the year, which helped to offset the drought that really hit Santa Barbara hard. In any case, we found the San Ysidro Falls to be a very accessible hike that seemed pretty family friendly for the most part. After all, I encountered many families bringing kids older than about 5-6 years or so. Perhaps the only tricky part was the approach to the base of the falls where some cliff erosion and landslides made the footing a bit slippery and precarious. This may change though because there were advertisements notifying the general public of California Trails Day on April 15. This was where volunteers would restore the damaged parts of the San Ysidro Trail from the heavy rains that hit Santa Barbara earlier in 2017. San Ysidro Falls Trail Description from residences to the Edison Catway Speaking of the trail, it started between some residences right off East Mountain Drive (see directions below). Signposted as San Ysidro Trail, it passed between some private yards before joining up with West Park Lane, which was another residential road. This road was full of no parking signs, and the absence of parked vehicles suggested that legal parking was not possible here. In any case, I continued walking north alongside West Park Lane before the trail would start to leave the pavement and follow alongside San Ysidro Creek. The creek had surprisingly good flow (considering how little water Seven Falls had earlier in the morning of my hike). Anyways, the trail would pass by a couple of gates as well as a signed trail junction with the McMenemy Trail. I kept right at this junction to remain on the San Ysidro Trail as the McMenemy Trail would cross San Ysidro Creek and head west instead of north. The San Ysidro Trail would continue its gentle uphill trajectory while meandering alongside San Ysidro Creek. Throughout the creek, I noticed numerous minor cascades and waterfalls, which constantly filled the silence with the calm sounds of rushing water. In addition to the creek, the trail also passed by some interesting rock formations as well as a few groves of cacti (attesting to how arid this area can be). At about a mile from the trailhead, I reached a signposted junction with the Edison Catway. Up to this point, the San Ysidro Trail was wide and quite family-friendly, which was saying something for a waterfalling excursion in Santa Barbara. The other well-known ones in the area like Seven Falls and Tangerine Falls were far more difficult. San Ysidro Falls Trail Description from the Edison Catway junction to the waterfall But once I kept right to leave the Edison Catway and continue on the San Ysidro Trail, the trail was now considerably narrower. Meanwhile, it started to climb a little more steeply than the gentle uphill trajectory that I was on up to this point. Still, the San Ysidro Trail remained easy to follow and there were still more minor cascades and waterfalls along the way. Some of these cascades had informal trails leading closer to them where wading or dipping pools awaited. Anyways, at about another half-mile from the Edison Catway junction, the trail then led to another fork. The left fork followed San Ysidro Creek and eventually disappeared into the creek. The right fork continued to climb steeply up a couple of switchbacks before clinging to ledges with overhanging cliffs and boulders threatening to fall. While the trail on the left fork would ultimately lead to a pair of converging waterfalls after some stream scrambling (pictured in Ann Marie Browns book ), this was not the San Ysidro Falls. Instead, the San Ysidro Trail continued up the right fork as it would gain most of its 1,200ft climb in this stretch. By the way, I did manage to catch a glimpse of the converging waterfalls that I would have seen at the end of the scramble down below during this climb. After another 0.3 miles of hiking, the elevation gain momentarily peaked. Then, the trail descended past some landslide-affected section before continuing towards a crossing of San Ysidro Creek. Continuing on the opposite side of the creek, the trail now followed a smaller creek as it had split off from its confluence with San Ysidro Creek near the stream crossing. After a few more minutes of hiking along some landslide-reinforced parts of the trail, I encountered another trail junction. A path followed the creek to the left and the main trail continued to the right as it immediately started climbing again. I kept left at this junction, and after another minute or two of hiking, that was when I finally arrived at the end of the trail before the San Ysidro Falls. The area around the falls definitely looked like it had suffered from some rock falls and landslides from the rains earlier in 2017. However, I was still able to scramble right up to the rock wall at the base of the falls without any issues. San Ysidro Falls Trail Description brief exploration beyond the waterfall Once I had my fill of the San Ysidro Falls, I explored a little bit of the main trail just to get an idea of what was up there. I was at least curious about what the brink of the San Ysidro Falls might be like, or if I might stumble upon more falls up there. Well, after making it to overgrown view of the brink of the falls, I decided there wasnt a whole lot more compelling about that area. So I turned back and headed back down the main trail while enjoying the nice views towards the ocean as I was well above the trees at the base of the canyon. Overall, I wound up spending nearly 2.5 hours to finish the 4 miles of hiking. That said, I probably didnt need to go up to the top of San Ysidro Falls so that could have saved some more time and effort. The return hike went quickly (less than an hour) because it was pretty much all downhill. Authorities San Ysidro Falls resides in the Los Padres National Forest near Montecito in Santa Barbara County, California. It is administered by the USDA Forest Service. For information or inquiries about the area as well as current conditions, visit their website. Futuro Houses- Futuristic UFO Inspired Living Futuro houses gained popularity in the late 1960s and early 1970s, although fewer than 100 of them were built. Although the construction of Futuro houses once represented hope for technology and the future, they were not popular with consumers and were taken off the market before reaching commercial prosperity. Today, only an estimated 60 of them still exist in various parts of the world, in various different states of condition. History The design of the Futuro house was created by Matti Suuronen, a Finnish Architect, in the late 1960s. Finland at that time was experiencing a period of economic growth, which meant that there was an increased time for leisure, which was often spent outside of the home. Matti envisioned a portable home that could adapt to almost any terrain. Description Futuro houses were built using fibreglass-reinforced polyester plastic that was placed on four concrete piers for support. A Futuro house consisted of 16 parts bolted together in total to form the floor and roof. The house could easily be assembled and dismantled. A hatch functioned as a door which gave access to an elliptical space complete with a living room, fireplace, bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom. The Futuro house could be heated quickly thanks to the integrated electric heating system and polyurethane insulation. The structure occupied an area of 538.2 square feet and was 26.25 feet in diameter. The house was lightweight. Commercial Failure The first of this structure was assembled near Lake Puulavesi in Finland. However, it elicited public outcry as many thought it looked too unnatural for the surrounding rural environment. Futuro houses in the US also met criticism with some towns banning through zoning regulations. Other Futuro houses were vandalized or destroyed. Banks were hesitant to finance their construction. The biggest blow to the houses came in 1973 during the oil crisis, when high gasoline prices increased the cost of manufacturing plastic. Famous Futuro Houses A few Futuro houses are exhibited in various parts of the world. One Futuro referenced as no. 001 sits at the WeeGee Exhibition Centre in Espoo, Finland. Another Futuro, with the serial number 000, was a prototype and is displayed at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. The only Futuro house in the UK is owned by the artist Craig Barnes. Barnes stumbled upon the wreck in South Africa while on vacation and had it restored in the United Kingdom. Legacy The Futuro house is known as one of the most unusual architectural designs in history, reflecting the spirit of experimentation and optimism present in the period when it was constructed. A Futuro house is an icon of 1960s and early 1970s space age design and architecture. The Futuro house was launched in the same week that Neil Armstrong walked on the moon and thus contributed to space-related euphoria. The house now exists as a piece of art and is a prized collection for enthusiasts. Prohibition refers to a period of time in the US during the 19th Century when the production, distribution, and consumption of alcohol was banned. The period lasted from 1920 to 1933. This ban was implemented after a widespread petition from temperance movement and dry crusaders. It was brought forth by an amendment to the United States Constitution called the Eighteenth Amendment. The intention was to lower the rising crime rate, improve the health status of the population, and reduce poverty levels. However, the ban on alcohol allowed groups like gangs and the Mafia to grow, many of which saw an opportunity through the illegal selling of alcohol (called rum-running or bootlegging). This, paired with some other outcomes, led many to argue that Prohibition in fact had the opposite effect of what was intended. Background On Prohibition And Its Implementation The fight for the prohibition of alcohol started in the 1800s and extended to the early 1920s, spearheaded by activists who believed alcohol was contributing to the high crime rate that was emerging in American society. The American Temperance Society and the Anti-Saloon League were the major powers behind the ratification and implementation of the Volstead Act. The Volstead Act was ratified by 36 of the 48 states in 1919. The Volstead Act enabled the 18th Amendment to be enforced. Of all the states, only Rhode Island and Connecticut never ratified the act. However, even without the support of these two states, the three-quarter rule was achieved, and the law was enacted to ban alcoholic beverages nationwide. Immediately after the 18th Amendment came into effect, a special group of police, called Federal Prohibition agents, were dispatched. 1,520 police officers were tasked with its implementation. The law was met with much resistance during its initial implementation. At the time, there were many controversies around the medicinal value of alcohol, and alcohol was still available as prescribed by a doctor. Cider and wine were the only allowed alcoholic beverages to be made for domestic use only. Challenges Faced In The Implementation Of Prohibition From the outset, the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act was viewed by the citizens as preposterous and unnecessary. The law was thus broken as early as 1925. The poor and middle-class people suffered the most consequences, but their masters stocked alcohol in their cellars. In fact, the majority of members of Congress and even the president stocked their home supplies. The poor class of the society created a new way of accessing alcohol illegally through bootlegging. Organized cartels and syndicates arose out of bootlegging. The cartels grew stronger with each passing day by expanding their territories to Mexico, Canada, and Cuba to buy rum, whiskey, and more. The illegal consumption of alcohol led to more organized crime and created the very problems it was intended to eliminate. During the late 1920s and early 1930s, more pressure was mounting on the government to disband the law. The law was growing weaker and faded with time, greatly because of the difficulty of its implementation. Patrons celebrated when the prohibition of alochol mets its end. Disbanding Prohibition And Its Impacts The economic crisis that was hitting the country together with the pressure from the electorates forced the repeal of Volstead Act. In 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Cullen-Harrison Act. The act modified the Volstead Act allowing the sale of 3.2 percent beers and light wines. Finally, the 18th Amendment was repealed in December 1933. It was followed by the ratification of the 21st Amendment. There was substantial decrease in the level of alcohol consumption estimated at 60% at around 1925. The decreased consumption rates were also thought to have lowered the rates of cirrhosis. Prohibition is said to have led to an increased number of organized crimes. Bootlegging flourished, but this involved organized cartels that controlled territories. The number of crimes in 1921 was estimated to have risen by about 24%. Prohibition had also led to the collapse of many breweries. The industrialization within this sector was reversed together with its significant contribution to the countrys revenue. Email Sign Up For Our Free Weekly Newsletter Sign Up Free | The WPJ Weekly Newsletter Relevant real estate news. Actionable market intelligence. Right to your inbox every week. Go Thank you for your interest! You will now be receiving our Weekly Real Estate Newsletter. Real Estate Listings Showcase According to JLL, just over $500 million of Irish property has traded in the first 3 months of 2017. Volumes were boosted by a few large transactions, with one deal greater than $106 million. 13-18 City Quay, which was sold by Targeted Investment Opportunities and purchased by Irish Life, was the largest transaction at $134 million. The 110,000 sq. ft office building, which was pre-let last year to Grant Thornton on a 25-year lease is due to start construction imminently, and therefore this sale is a forward funding investment for an office development.Hannah Dwyer, Head of Research at JLL said, "Like Q1 2016, 2017 has started relatively slowly, with limited supply of new quality product coming to the market in the first 3 months of the year. Although $500 million for Q1 is a steady start to the year, a number of these transactions, particularly the larger ones, are deals that were concluding towards the end of last year.The largest transaction was the forward funding of an office development that is under construction. There will be further opportunities for access to some larger transactions over the course of the next 12 months via forward funding. As pricing for prime Dublin office buildings has intensified in the last 2 years, forward funding offers investors an opportunity to purchase a Grade A office investment opportunity at slightly lower pricing levels, albeit with slightly more risk.Demand continues to be steady from both domestic and overseas purchasers, but some are being more selective, depending on the investor type. We are continuing to see new entrants to the market which is positive. The depth of bidding on some transactions, is critically dependent on vendor price aspirations with a noticeable swallowing of demand where the property is regarded as over-priced." KETCHIKAN, Alaska (AP) The death of a Ketchikan doctor remains under investigation after police learned that the friend who reported the doctor missing was accused of stealing money and valuable items from his home, authorities said. Eric Garcia was reported missing March 27 by his 31-year-old friend, Jordan Joplin of Maple Valley, Washington. He called police to say Garcia had not been seen for 10 days, the Ketchikan Daily News reported. Police say they later heard from Garcias family members that a coin collection, watches and alcohol were missing from his home. The collections... Plaid Cymru Launch Local Elections Manifesto In Wrexham This article is old - Published: Friday, Apr 7th, 2017 The national launch of Plaid Cymrus local election manifesto took place in the Wrexham Lager brewery yesterday afternoon. Party Leader Leanne Wood attended the launch of their Wales-wide document, and was also given a tour of the facility, plus received a gift pack of the wonderful product. Leanne Wood was accompanied by two local Plaid Cymru candidates Marc Jones and Carrie Harper, Llyr Gruffydd AM and Mabon ap Gwynfor the latter already election unopposed in Llandrillo for the Denbighshire council elections. A statement was issued along with the manifesto launch, copied below: Leanne Wood said: Plaid Cymrus manifesto for the local elections is an ambitious programme for strengthening our communities by caring for our people and defending our childrens future. We have a strong track record of delivering for people in their local area. In Ceredigion, Plaid Cymru leads Wales in spending per pupil. In Gwynedd, we have protected 1,400 households from the Tory Bedroom Tax. In Plaid-led councils, top manager pay is on average 22% lower than Labour-led councils. If people want better governance and a better chance of seeing their local services safeguarded, I would urge them to back Plaid Cymru on May 4th. Llyr Gruffydd AM for North Wales said: In these local elections, Plaid Cymru is putting forward a comprehensive programme of policies, designed to protect local services and reverse the decline seen in many communities under Labour and the Tories. On housing, education, the environment and more, Plaid Cymru has the right ideas required to ensure that everyone in our communities have safe and adequate accommodation, to clean up our streets, and to give our children the best possible start in life. Our candidates form a strong team of community champions dedicated to making a real difference in their local area. A vote for Plaid Cymru on May 4th is Waless best hope of saving local services, opposing austerity and spreading wealth fairly across the country. Plaid Cymru Wrexham council candidate Carrie Harper added: Local people in Wrexham have been clear that they want a new council that listens to them, that represents their interests and that delivers for our community. Plaid Cymru is standing a record number of candidates here and we will be the positive change Wrexham needs. Its appropriate that we are launching the national manifesto from a local business today, with one of our key local pledges being to help more local firms win council contracts and boost our local economy. All our candidates here in Wrexham have also pledged not to take pay rises over the next council terms or to take new iPads. Were also committed to protecting our green fields from overdevelopment as well as working to revive our town centre. The manifesto document is readable online or downloadable via the Plaid Cymru website here, back in January a Wrexham specific manifesto was also launched (details here). You can view all candidates and Q&As on our NEW Wrexham.com/election2017 section, and we expect further manifesto launches shortly! TO BE HOPEFUL in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our livesIf we remember those times and placeswhere people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we dont have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory. --Howard Zinn I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him. --Martin Luther King Jr. True religion consisted in an inward life, wherein the heart does love and reverence God the Creator, and learns to exercise true justice and goodness...I found no narrowness respecting sects and opinions, but believed that sincere, upright-hearted people, in every society, who truly love God, were accepted of him. --John Woolman Love each other as I have loved you.. I call you friends because I have made known to you everything I heard from my Father. --Jesus in John 15: 12-15 ...Love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself. You have answered right, said Jesus, do this and life is yours... Who is my neighbor? Jesus replied with the Parable of the Good Samaritan [heretic, outsider, enemy]. --from Luke 10:27-37 Religion has been emphatically embodied, not in speculative theories, but in practical righteousness, in active virtues, in reverence to God, in benevolence to man- the latter being the only sure test of the former. --Thomas M'Clintock ...It is safer to approach God through the Holy Spirit than through the door of theology. We can identify the Holy Spirit whenever it makes its presence felt. Whenever we see someone who is loving, compassionate, mindful, caring, and understanding, we know that the Holy Spirit is there. --Thich Nhat Hanh President Donald Trump removed his chief political adviser, Stephen K. Bannon, from the principals committee of the National Security Council, the top foreign policy decision-making body within the White House. The action was not formally announced, but made public through a presidential memorandum made available to news organizations late Wednesday. The memorandum restructures the principals committee, which brings together key White House and cabinet officials either to make decisions or recommend options to the president. Besides removing Bannon, it restores several top military-intelligence officials who had been removed only two months ago, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA director. The demotion of Bannon, the most openly fascistic of Trumps inner circle, brings into the open a ferocious conflict within the new right-wing administration, involving both foreign and domestic policy. In national security affairs, Bannon has been displaced by National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster, an active duty Army lieutenant-general named by Trump in February to replace retired General Michael Flynn. Top military officers control all the top national security positions in the Trump administration: McMaster at NSC, retired Marine General James (Mad Dog) Mattis at the Pentagon and another retired Marine general, John F. Kelly, at the Department of Homeland Security. McMaster has gradually consolidated control over the National Security Council, removing many Flynn appointees. Prior to the ouster of Bannon, deputy national security adviser K. T. McFarland, a former Fox News personality and Republican candidate for US Senate, was offered the post of ambassador to Singapore, or some other State Department post of her choosing, to allow McMaster to advance his own deputy, former Bush administration official and Goldman Sachs banker Dina Powell. The memorandum signed Wednesday by Trump places Powell on the principals committee as McMasters alternate. In domestic policy, Bannon, Trump chief adviser on policy Stephen Miller and director of the National Trade Council Peter Navarro are identified with a policy of extreme economic nationalism and right-wing populism. They have conflicted with Wall Street veterans, including Gary Cohn, former president of Goldman Sachs, who heads the National Economic Council, as well as Trumps son-in-law Jared Kushner, himself the scion of a billion-dollar New York real estate fortune. On Thursday, the US media was filled with sensationalized accounts of civil war in the White House between the Wall Street globalists headed by Cohn and Kushner (each possessed of a fortune of more than half a billion dollars), and the nationalists headed by Bannon. There were reports of face-to-face clashes between Kushner and Bannon, nonstop fighting amid vitriolic diatribes by Bannon in particular. There is no disguising the anti-Semitic subtext of much of the conflict, since Cohn and Kushner are both Jewish. Bannon is well known for his religious bigotry, which he thinly disguises as opposition to what he has called the New York faction of Trumps inner circle. The bulk of the corporate media sides with Kushner and Cohnboth longtime donors to the Democratic Party, like Trump himself, until the 2016 election campaignand against Bannon. But both sides in this factional struggle are reactionary defenders of big business and American imperialism, whatever their personal and tactical differences. Cohn and Kushner were said to be opposed to a full-court-press approach to the repeal of Obamacare. This reflects the widespread support in the corporate elite for Obamas efforts to reduce the cost of health care to both government and business. Obamacare placed more of the burden on individual working people, moving towards an openly two-tier medical system, with cut-rate care for working people, while the wealthy have the best care money can buy. Cohn and Kushner favored focusing instead on cutting taxes for the wealthy and big business, and slashing spending on entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare. They have opposed even token, demagogic efforts to appeal to working people, as with proposals for increased spending on infrastructure. The New York Times suggested that Bannon was on his way out entirely, reporting Wednesday that he had threatened to resign from the White House rather than accept his demotion on foreign policy, a claim that Bannon stridently denied. Such reports have sparked a flood of complacent and celebratory comments from pro-Democratic Party media pundits. Typical of these was Michelle Goldberg on Slate, who detected a tiny crack of light in the black cloud hanging over Washington, D.C. We might be seeing the berserk horror of Trumpism giving way to the slightly lesser horror of normal conservatism Perhaps were moving from the President Bannon phase of the Trump nightmare into a President Jared Kushner period. Ultra-right media outlets have taken up a campaign in defense of Bannon, warning Trump against siding with the Democratic faction in his own White House. Former Trump adviser Roger Stone claimed that Kushner was directly inspiring anti-Bannon stories in the media. Right-wing talk radio host Mark Levin took to Twitter Wednesday night to denounce Jared Kushner, Gary Cohn, Dina Powell: the three big-government liberals tightening their hold on the White House. The conflicts over foreign policy continue to drive the congressional investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US elections. Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, stepped aside from the committees probe Thursday, less than 24 hours after the demotion of Bannon, an action that seems to represent a congressional parallel to the White House shake-up. Nunes was seen as the most determined defender of the president within the committee, going so far as to engage in a clumsy effort to vindicate Trumps claim that Barack Obama had ordered the wiretapping of Trump Tower during the election campaign. Nearly all Democrats and many Republicans had criticized Nuness conduct, but he flatly rejected calls to step down from the inquiry until formal charges were filed with the House Ethics Committee, based on the claim that in his public statements about intelligence agencies intercepting the communications of Trump transition aides he had revealed classified information. Nunes met Wednesday night with House Speaker Paul Ryan and apparently got his marching orders, announcing the next morning that he would remain as chairman of the committee, but turn over the investigation into Russian hackingas well as Trumps unsupported claims of Obama-ordered wiretappingto a trio of Republican representatives, Mike Conaway of Texas, Trey Gowdy of South Carolina and Tom Rooney of Pennsylvania. The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva last month adopted a resolution setting up an investigation into serious crimes committed by the Burmese (Myanmar) security forces and nationalist thugs against the countrys Rohingya Muslim minority in Rakhine state bordering Bangladesh. UN reports dating back to early February document accounts of mass killings, rapes and the burning of whole villages in military clearance operations. These atrocities began last October after attacks on Burmese border posts, allegedly by Rohingya militants, killed nine security force members. Since then over 70,000 Rohingya have fled into Bangladesh taking the total number of refugees there to over 300,000, in addition to 140,000 internally displaced inside Burma. UN reports indicate the commission of crimes on a mass scale. UN officials have estimated that at least 1,000 people have been killed and unknown numbers, particularly of males aged 1745, are missing. Over 200 refugees were interviewed in eight separate Bangladesh refugee camps. The destruction of villages has been confirmed by satellite images. The extent of the operation indicates that a systematic pogrom organised by the military, with the complicity of the government, is underway and ultimately designed to drive all of the one million Rohingya out of Burma. The resolution was a rotten compromise worked out among the 47 nations on the UNHRC. Calls by the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights in Burma, Yanghee Lee, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Raad al-Hussein, as well as 13 international human rights groups, for a Commission of Inquiry (COI), the UNs highest level of investigation, were rejected. Instead the UNHRC adopted a proposal from European Union diplomats for a fact-finding mission, including forensic and sexual violence experts to urgently establish facts with a view to ensuring full accountability for perpetrators and justice for victims. The resolution is premised on cooperation from the hybrid military-National League for Democracy (NLD) government led by Aung San Suu Kyi, the Wests democratic icon. The urgent investigation will submit an initial report in September and a full report next year. In her submission of February 24, UN Rapporteur Lee had called for an inquiry to also examine similar military operations in 2012 and 2014, which were largely passed over until the anti-Rohingya drive reached its current intensity. The aim of the EU diplomats is to cover up the role of Suu Kyi. Lee told journalists last month that the EU leaders wanted to give Suu Kyi more time before a full-scale investigation was launched and initially opposed any inquiry that did not fully involve Burmas own investigators. The NLD shares power with the military that exercised a brutal dictatorship over the country for half a century. It took over from militarys United Solidarity and Development Party government last April but key security ministries remain in the hands of the generals. Both the NLD and the armed forces are steeped in the anti-Rohingya chauvinism that permeates the entire Buddhist Burmese political establishment. The Rohingya, most of whom have been in Burma for generations and have been terrorised and denied citizenship, are officially described as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. The response of the Burmese ruling elite to the March 24 UNHRC resolution has been uniform. Burmas ambassador to the UN in Geneva, U Htin Lynn, a representative of the foreign ministry that is under Suu Kyis direct control denounced the resolution prior to its adoption saying: We will do what needs to be done. The day after the resolution was passed the foreign affairs ministry stated that Burma dissociated itself from the resolution as whole and added an international fact-finding mission would do more to inflame, rather than resolve the issues at this time. Suu Kyi, who has previously maintained a stony silence on the Rohingya massacres, explicitly backed the actions of the military in comments to the BBC yesterday. She denied that there was ethnic cleansing in Rakhine, and underscored her government's support for the army's operations, stating, They are free to go in and fight. And of course, that is in the constitution ... Military matters are to be left to the army. Suu Kyis comments were in line with those of senior military figures in the government. Army strongman General Min Aung Hlaing, who directly controls the ministries of home affairs, defence and border security, condemned any UN intervention into Burma, stating that the Rohingya were Bengalis not one of Burmas nationalities and therefore had no right to remain in Burma. The arguments at the UNHRC over what type of investigation should take place were not based on any concern for the democratic rights of the Rohingya or any other section of the population. The differences reflected conflicting economic and geo-political interests in Burma. The installation of the NLD government in April last year was the culmination of a Faustian deal with the generals, sealed in 2011. It was fostered and overseen by Washington under the Obama administration. The junta needed to get out from under Western sanctions and its economic over-dependence on China. After years of repression, Suu Kyi and the NLD, representing sections of the Burmese elite seeking closer ties and investment from the West, accepted the role of junior partner to the military and provide a democratic facade for the hybrid regime. The arrangement opened up economic opportunities for both sides as Burma was converted into a cheap labour platform and mineral exporter to the West. The Obama administration prised Burma from dependence on Beijing and established ties with the military as part of its strategy of encircling China. The EU moved quickly to lift economic sanctions after the deal was sealed, forcing a much faster pace of engagement with the NLD regime than many in Washington planned. International finance circles gushed about Burma being a new frontier where abundant untapped natural resources and cheap labour offered big profits. Burma received $US9.4 billion in foreign direct investment in 20152016 with EU members Britain, the Netherlands and France high on the list, and the US well back at 35th. Chinas economic preponderance remains. In 201516, Singapore was the greatest contributor with $4.3 billion but China was second with $3.3 billion and still Burmas largest trading partner. Burmese and Chinese officials announced this week that they expect a 771-kilometre oil pipeline from Burmas Maday Island to southern China to begin operation in May. The US and its EU allies cynically exploit concerns over human rights in Burma and elsewhere to advance their geo-political interests. The inquiry into the militarys atrocities against the Rohingya minority, while limited at present, is a means of exerting pressure on the regime if it fails to toe the line. Canadas House of Commons adopted late last month a Liberal government-backed motion condemning Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination. The motion, M-103, is a pro-forma, non-binding statement of opposition to discrimination and violent attacks targeting Muslims, under conditions where there has been a surge of such attacks, including the Jan. 29 assault on a Quebec City mosque that killed six Muslims. The Liberals decision to champion the motion was a cynical maneuver, aimed at covering up their agenda of militarism, austerity, and hostility to refugees, and, most immediately, their burgeoning alliance with the Trump administration. The virulent, right-wing campaign against the motionit passed by a vote of 201 to 91must, however, serve as a warning. As in the US and Europe, important sections of the ruling class and political establishment are whipping up chauvinism and xenophobia, and allying with extreme-right, fascistic elements, so as to push politics still further right and split the working class. The Official Opposition Conservatives voted almost en bloc against M-103 and trotted out a series of reactionary and spurious pretexts to justify their opposition. M-103, they claimed, attacks free speech and gives Islam a more privileged status than other religions. Some even said that it represents the first step toward the Islamization of Canada. Hours before the final vote on M-103, dozens of protesters gathered on Parliament Hill. Among them were members of the Soldiers of Odinan anti-refugee group linked to neo-Nazis in Europe. In Canada, as in Europe, the group is known for organizing so-called street patrols and for physically assaulting immigrants. Last Saturday, members of the Soldiers of Odin clashed with counter-demonstrators in downtown Toronto. The far-right group baldly defended its role in a Facebook post, declaring that it had been called upon to provide security for a demonstration by the Canadian Coalition for Concerned Citizens (CCCC), a right-wing, anti-Muslim group, modeled on Pegida, which mounted nationwide protests against M-103 in early March. While all New Democratic Party and nearly all Liberal MPs supported the motion, 95 out of 97 Conservative MPs voted against it or were absent. All MPs of the pro-Quebec independence Bloc Quebecois (BQ) also opposed M-103. The BQs interim leader, Rheal Fortin, said he couldnt support the motion because he doesnt agree with the idea that there exists a climate of fear and hate against Muslims. The BQ, like its provincial sister party, the Parti Quebecois (PQ), and the Quebec sovereigntist or independence movement as a whole has long promoted anti-immigrant, and particularly anti-Muslim, sentiment. First proposed by Liberal backbencher Iqra Khalid last December, M-103 was initially debated in parliament in February and subsequently endorsed by the Liberals parliamentary caucus. Khalid based her motion on an online anti-Islamophobia petition that received some 70,000 signatures. She has reported that she has received numerous death threats, and thousands of sexist and Islamophobic comments since introducing her motion. The Liberals only decided to champion Khalids motion after the Quebec mosque massacre, which was carried out by a 27-year-old Quebec nationalist and self-avowed admirer of Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen. The massacre came in the midst of a worldwide outcry over Trumps travel ban targeting people from seven predominantly Muslim countries. In its wake, the Liberals seized on M-103 as a hypocritical maneuver to conceal their growing alliance with the Trump administration and their own anti-immigrant policies, including their refusal to cancel the Safe Third Country agreement with the US, which has forced hundreds of asylum seekers to risk their lives by crossing the border illegally into Canada. In Quebec, the political establishment responded to the mosque shooting with hypocritical calls for unity and by suggesting that the decade-long, reactionary campaign against excessive accommodations to immigrants and religious minorities be toned down. But it didnt take long for the most chauvinistic section of the elite associated with the Coalition Avenir Quebec and the Quebec sovereigntist movementincluding the pseudo-left party Quebec Solidaireto renew this campaign. They joined together to denounce a reactionary Quebec Liberal government bill that would ban Muslim women wearing the burqa or niqab from receiving public services, including health care and education, claiming it did not go far enough in restricting minority rights. The Conservatives refusal to oppose Islamophobia, even in such vague and superficial terms as those contained in M-103, was a deliberate appeal to the most chauvinistic and right-wing factions of the ruling class, as well as backward middle class elements. Conservative MPs legitimized and amplified the arguments of the far right, going so far as to absurdly claim that M-103 would open the door to the introduction of Sharia Law in Canada. Conservative MP and defence critic James Bezan sponsored an e-petition demanding Sharia Law never have a place in the Canadian Justice System. The ongoing Conservative Party leadership contest has accelerated the shift to the right of the Canadian ruling elites alternate party of government. Kellie Leitch, a former Harper government minister, has echoed Trumps anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim appeals with calls for all immigrants and visitors to Canada to be screened for Canadian values. Late last month, she took the Conservatives opposition to M-103 to its logical conclusion by appearing at a meeting alongside members of the far-right Rise Canada group. Rise Canada rails against the Islamization of Canada and Sharia creep. Its web site noted that its members had talked with Leitch about her position on various issues. Maxime Bernier, another leadership contender, recently declared that he would deploy the Canadian Armed Forces to prevent refugees crossing the US-Canada border illegally. The Liberal government has no intention of countering the rise of the far right; its policies are, in fact, playing directly into its hands. Prime Minister Trudeaus support for M-103, along with his refugee-friendly posturing, seeks to cover up the Liberal Partys own responsibility for disseminating anti-Muslim bigotry, including as part of the war on terror narrative following 9/11. Jean Chretiens Liberal government justified the Canadian participation in the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan and the clampdown on basic democratic rights within Canada by invoking Islamist terrorism as an ever-present threat to Canadians security. Trudeau adopted a phony pro-refugee pose during the 2015 election campaign, capping it off with a visit to the airport to greet the first plane-load of Syrian refugees to arrive after he took office. But after accepting a mere 40,000 refugees during their first year in office, a significant number of whom were privately sponsored, the Liberals true indifference and hostility to towards those fleeing imperialist war and social breakdown has been exposed by their determination to consummate a close working partnership with the Trump administration, the most right-wing in American history. With the backing of the overwhelming majority of the ruling class, Trudeau avoided making any criticism of Trumps brutal crackdown on immigrants and his discriminatory travel bans during his February 13 trip to the White House. This polite silence was aimed at ensuring the maintenance of the Canadian ruling elites vast economic ties and military-security partnership with the US, both of which are pivotal to the wealth and global geostrategic reach of Canadian imperialism. Despite growing concerns among legal scholars and refugee advocacy organizations, the Liberals have refused to scrap the reactionary Canada-US Safe Third Country Agreement, which strips most asylum-seekers who enter Canada from the US at an official border checkpoint of the right to even make a refugee claim. Citing a survey that claimed 97 per cent of asylum-seekers who crossed into Manitoba in recent weeks had spent less than two months in the United States before heading north, Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen recently declared that the wave of migrants crossing into Canada is not linked to Trumps cruel anti-immigrant policies. Hussen reiterated that the Trudeau government will not suspend the Third Country agreement and would continue to reinforce the border. If we eliminate that agreement or suspend that agreement, we will have disorder, said Hussen. Europe Greek postal and bus workers strike On Tuesday, Greek postal workers employed by the Hellenic Postal Service (ELTA) began a series of 24-hour strikes, to last the week. They are members of the ELTA union and are protesting the outsourcing of mail delivery services to private courier companies. On Wednesday, trolley bus drivers in Athens held a five-hour strike, beginning at 11 a.m. The stoppage was over their collective bargaining agreement. Cypriot port workers delay action Stevedores in the Cypriot port of Limassol postponed their strike, due to begin Wednesday, to allow talks with the transport ministry. The dispute with the port operator, Dubai Ports, is over the distribution of workloads, specifically who should carry out the onshore unloading of cargo. The stevedores union argues that the 110 registered stackers should carry out this role. Dockworkers had struck over the weekend. The company had agreed 50 percent of the work could be carried out by porters, which the dockers reject. Following intervention by the transport ministry the stevedores union agreed to postpone any action until April. Transit workers in Hungarian capital set date for action Unions representing staff working for the Budapest public transit authority (BKV) have announced they will begin an eight-day strike beginning at midnight on April 18. They are seeking a 30 percent pay increase to be paid over three years in line with increases given to public employees earlier this year. The unions announced the strike after negotiations broke down. Low pay at BKV has meant growing shortages for drivers, engineers and other skilled staff. The unions plan to circumvent labour law, which requires 60 percent of vehicles to run during a strike, by only providing staffing during off peak times. Walkout hits Italian airline Unions at the Italian airline Alitalia took strike action Wednesday. Some unions took 24-hour action while others began their strike at 12 noon. They were protesting the airlines plans to cut staff numbers by around 2,000 out of total workforce of 12,500. Etihad Airways has a 49 percent stake in the airline and has de facto control. The plans will hit office and ground-based staff, some of whom will be made redundant or their services outsourced. Around 300 maintenance staff are due to be transferred to Atitech, the airline servicing company. The strike affected flights, with around 60 percent domestic and international flights cancelled. Talks between the unions and the company have been taking place under the auspices of the Ministry of Economic Development. The talks were expected to be resumed following the 24-hour strike. Portuguese ferry service hit by industrial dispute Workers operating the Tagus river ferry service took two days of strike action last week. The ferry service connects Lisbon, Seixal, Montijo, Cachilhas, Trafaria and Porto Brandao. The workers struck to protest the state of the boats and to push for a new collective bargaining agreement. Second week of action by French museum staff The strike by staff at the Centre Pompidou museum and art gallery in Paris is now in its second week. The staff began their strike on March 27 and voted on March 31 to continue their action following the breakdown of talks with the Ministry of Culture. The staff, members of the FNEC-FP-FO union, are opposing the reclassification of the centres salaried contract staff as civil servants, as a result of changes to employment law enacted last year. As a result of the transfer, the staff would lose gains they fought for and won over 40 years, resulting in a 20 to 30 percent cut in pay. The union claims around a third of the staff are taking part in the strike. Staff were only informed of the implications of the transfer on March 7 and held an initial strike on March 9. UK train drivers reject deal over driver-only operated trains for second time Members of the train drivers union ASLEF have again rejected a deal to end the dispute at Southern Rail, operated by Govia Thameslink Railway, over expanding the use of driver-only operated (DOO) trains. The result of the second ballot was announced on Monday, with 51.8 percent of the drivers rejecting the deal that had been drawn up in secret talks, sponsored by the TUC, between the company and ASLEF. The company and the union have resumed talks on the dispute. UK rail conductors to hold further strikes over DOO trains Conductor/guards on three UK rail operators are due to hold a 24-hour strike on Saturday over the expanded use of DOO trains. The train operators are Southern Rail, Northern Rail and Mersey Rail. They are members of the Rail Maritime and Transport union (RMT). Under DOO, the conductor/guards would lose their safety role in closing and opening the doors among other safety roles; they fear that their role could be ended altogether. UK car workers to take series of strike over pension changes On Wednesday, the Unite union announced it would hold a series of eight 24-hour strikes beginning on April 19 at BMW car production sites. The sites are Cowley, Hams Hall, Swindon and Goodwood. The company plans to end its final salary pension scheme and put all workers on a less generous one than that signed up to by all new starters since 2014. The final salary pension scheme is scheduled to end on May 31. BMW staff voted by 93 percent majority to take strike action. Teachers in UK capital protest budget cuts Teachers at three schools in London held strikes last week over nationwide budget cuts that will total 3 billion by 2020 as a result of the Conservative governments fair funding formula. The schools involved were Forest Hill in Lewisham, Parkwood Primary school and the Inclusion and Specialist Support Team based in Hackney. Middle East Strike call by Algerian energy workers Staff at Algerian state-owned Soneglaz, which distributes electricity and natural gas, have voted to take three days strike action beginning April 11. They are organised by the Algerian electricity and gas workers union, SNATEGS. They are protesting the attack by security forces on a strike held in March in pursuit of a pay rise, during which around 400 workers were arrested and abused. Among those arrested was Mellal Raouf, the unions president. The company employs over 87,000 workers. On March 31, police prevented some 200 trade unionists entering the SNATEGS headquarters in Bab Ezzouar for a meeting. Soneglaz employs over 87,000. SNATEGS has more than 30,000 members at 27 of the companys sites. Israeli union federation declares dispute over broadcasting changes On Monday, the labour federation Histadrut declared a public sector-wide dispute, paving the way for a strike in the next few weeks. At issue are the governments plans to change the Israeli Broadcasting Authority (IBA) and set up a new broadcasting service known as Kan. Under a deal hammered out by the Israeli government, staff who had been hired for the Kan news division will lose their jobs, which will go to news staff at the IBA. The dispute has been called to protest the treatment of news staff at Kan and the attempts by the government to pit one set of workers against another. Protest by Kuwaiti public employees Employees of the Kuwaiti Ministry of Electricity and Water (MEW) held a sit-in protest at MEW headquarters in South Surra on Monday. The protest followed MEWs decision to suspend allowances to workers who have to travel to remote areas to perform their duties. Africa Ghanaian Media workers threaten action over victimisation The Public Services Workers Union of Ghana (PSWU) has given notice to the TV3 Network Company of a strike to take place Tuesday, April 11. TV3 management are refusing to negotiate over the sacking of 32 employees. They were sacked on the spot as they carried out a very limited protest over management refusal to conclude long, drawn-out negotiations over end of service benefits. The PSWU general secretary complained that the management took action without consulting the union, thus leaving it with no option than to demand an immediate reinstatement of the affected staff. The PSWU are calling on its national membership to wear red armbands in support of the strike and threatening a national strike, April 24, if the media workers are not reinstated. Kenyan doctors and nurses threaten strike over unsanitary hospital conditions In the aftermath of the Kenyan doctors strike, doctors and nurses at the Busia County Referral Hospital have still not returned to work. They are boycotting the hospital because of dangerous unsanitary conditions on the wards. Contract cleaning staff at the hospital have been on strike for three weeks demanding three months of unpaid wages. Although prisoners from Korinda prison had been brought in to undermine the strike and clean the wards, conditions remain deplorable. Reporters visiting the hospitals maternity wards have said placentas and used gloves were heaped in one corner of a corridor, with food also strewn down the corridors. Doctors from the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Union (just recently returned to work after a 100-day strike) have already stopped working in fear of a cholera outbreak. Nurses from the Kenya National Union of Nurses are also concerned over the possibility of the outbreak of disease and say they will again go on strike unless the hospital is cleaned up. Nigerian tanker drivers strike for improved working conditions and security A strike by Nigerias oil tanker drivers that began on Monday was called off by the Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) hours after it started. Drivers were striking to protest pay, poor conditions of the roads, and security for drivers subject to attack and abuse by security forces. The strike was utilised by NUPENG to bring government pressure on the National Association of Transport Owners to sign an overdue collective bargaining agreement with the union. The union called off the strike when the government intervened with a promise to look into the drivers demands. A state representative for the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation said he agreed that transportation charges should be increased. Nigerian judicial workers strike for implementation of salary structure Judicial workers in Enugu state, under the umbrella of the Judicial Staff Union of Nigeria, have gone on strike demanding the implementation of their Consolidated Salary Structure. The indefinite strike has rendered the courts inoperable throughout the state, even though the General Commission for Justice declared the strike illegal. A ruling by the federal court in 2010 granted all states judiciary workers the Consolidated Judiciary Salary Structure (CONJUSS) except those in Enugu, while some other states won an appeal against the salary structures implementation. The federal ruling included a provision stating the implementation of CONJUSS was dependent on the health of the local state economy. JUSUN rejected this provision, arguing no wage agreement should be dependent on what is called the Internally Generated Economy, the economic condition of the state. South African council workers strike over missing insurance premiums Public sector employees working for South Africas Ugu district municipality have walked out on strike, demanding information from the courts about the recovery of life insurance payments they are owed. A court case has been underway involving the insurance and banking company Sanlam and Ugu district council over payments. The workers accuse the district manager of reneging on a promise to pay them back. Ugu district council workers went on strike last December demanding what was owed to them, and part payments were made. They are concerned to know if Sanlam has paid Ugu council the rest of the funds still outstanding and where they are. They have resumed their strike, complaining they have been kept in the dark over any progress in the case and that the district manager only responds to the withdrawal of labour. Security guards strike at prestigious South African universities Workers providing security at the University of South Africa (UNISA) and Tshwaine University of Technology (TUT) have began what has been deemed an illegal strike on Monday and vowed to bring the institutions to a standstill if a promise to transform casual employment to permanent employment is not met. Protesters at TUT university on Friday said they had given their management until April 30 to come back with their proposals, prior to renewal of contracts in June. Their union, the General Industries Workers Union of South Africa, also want the doubling of the present wages from around R2, 500, (US$180) to R5, 000 (US$360) a month. UNISA is the largest university on the African continent and draws a third of all higher education students in South Africa. South African bakery workers forced back to work Bakery workers supplying the PicknPay retail company have ended their five-week strike. They are subcontracted by Assist Bakeries, a black empowerment company, employing casual labour with no union representation. The strike by the 52 bakers, which began on February 28, was led by a factory committee member who had worked at the bakery for seven years. They are demanding R10, 000 (US$725) a month pay, a 40-hour workweek, with no more than two hours paid overtime a day. Assist Bakeries is offering R3600 (US$250) and a weekly work roster (that) does not include any shifts that exceed eight hours. Workers at present are only supposed to work a 40-hour week, but have been doing up to 12 hours unpaid overtime. Workers already receive R3200 (US$230) a month. A worker commented that he felt they were being driven back to work because of their isolation and desperate financial situation. Harmony wildcat miners action continues in South Africa Harmony Gold miners striking at the South African companys Kusasalethu mine have had their wildcat strike judged unprotected (illegal) by the labour courts. The two-week strike was over the disciplining of 40 union officials accused of encouraging a previous strike. Harmony management thanked the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union for calling off an unofficial strike on March 27, which had begun four days earlier. However, the wildcat strike appears to be continuing as no workers had returned to work by Monday, April 3, and the company announced, An ultimatum has now been issued to Kusasalethu employees to return to work tomorrow [Tuesday] night, failing which they may be subject to disciplinary action. South African health sector workers strike continues Health sector workers are continuing their one-month strike in South Africas Polokwane district. The strike was deemed illegal from its outset and striking workers have been threatened with disciplinary action if they do not return to work. The strikers are calling for an improvement in the working conditions of all Social Development department employees and the implementation of the 2015 Social Work resolutions, with the protection of the professional council for Social Service Professionals. In the aftermath of the alleged gas attack in the Syrian province of Idlib, German politicians and media outlets have switched to war mode. Although the circumstances remain entirely unclear and everything points to an imperialist provocation, the German government and other European powers are advocating the overthrow of the Assad regime and a confrontation with Russia. On the sidelines of the Syrian donor summit in Brussels on Wednesday, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel described the gas attack in Syria as a barbaric war crime and demanded retaliation. Those responsible for this barbarism in the Assad regime must be held accountable. And there can be no alignment with the Assad regimeeven in the struggle against the terrorists of the so-called Islamic State, he said. As an ally of the Assad regime, Russia bore particular responsibility. Gabriel left no doubt that the chief goal of the imperialist powers in Syria is the overthrow of Assad. The struggle against Islamic State was important, but it could not be permitted to push the fight against the crimes of the civil war in Syria, torture, poison gas attacks, into the background. The political process for a new constitution, free elections and a democratic end to the Assad regime was the precondition for permanent peace in the region. It is a cynical lie for the German government to claim that it is interested in democracy, peace and human rights in the Middle East. It was made public over recent days that the German military supplied the coordinates for a massacre in Syria that killed at least 33, including women and children. Unlike the war in Libya in 2011, Germany has been one of the warring parties from the outset in Syria, seeking to enforce its economic and geostrategic interests in the Middle East. Already in 2012, the Foreign Ministry, in conjunction with the German Institute for Foreign Affairs (SWP) and sections of the Syrian opposition, began the project The Day After and drafted a vision for a post-Assad order. Then at the end of 2015, the German army intervened directly into the conflict with Tornado fighter jets, a warship and 1,200 soldiers. The German government is now seeking to utilise the gas attack to strengthen its position in the US-led coalition. Their main concern in this is not the well-being of Syria, but rather that the United States under President Trump sticks to the goal of overthrowing Assad and ensures Germany a share of the spoils in the plundering of Syria. The brutal, inhumane gas attack cannot pass without consequences, SPD parliamentary group leader Thomas Oppermann told Der Spiegel. However, the threats from President Trump that the US will go it alone would not help the situation. Notwithstanding Trumps verbal about-face with regard to Assad, his Syria policy remains very contradictory and this political back and forth makes it more difficult to reach a consensus in the international community to resolve the conflict, Oppermann added. The Green Party spoke in similar terms. Green parliamentary deputy Franziska Brantner called on the US president in an interview to end his zigzag course towards Assad and to take a clear stance against him. I think the conflicts are simply too grave for us to carry on listening to such manoeuvring. The Europeans must demand a clear statement. By a clear statement Brantner means a major military intervention. The question is, how long do we want to look on? There is actually a UN Security Council resolution from 2015 which unambiguously states that if another poison gas attack takes place, measures under Chapter VII will be adopted. These are the harshest measures the United Nations has. To reach the desperate people, air bridges would have to be established and secured militarily, she continued. Brantners proposal aims unambiguously to bring about regime change in Damascus. In March 2011, the establishment of a no-fly zone in Libya under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which was also justified with humanitarian arguments, was the pretext for a massive NATO air war against the oil-rich country, which reached a brutal high point with the murder of Muammar Gaddafi by Western-backed Islamist rebels. In Syria, the establishment of air bridges and the intervention of the military in accordance with Chapter VII would result in a direct confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia and Iran, Assads main allies. Despite this, Gregor Gysi, the chairman of the European Left in the European Parliament, called for a more aggressive intervention, regardless of who was responsible for the spreading of poison gas in Syria. He added, Either it was a gas attack, then at some point those responsible have to be held accountable for war crimes. Or a poison gas factory was bombed in which other troops, not Syrian government troops, were producing gas. The Left Party politician continued, They should also be sharply criticised and held to account. With Russias intervention in Syria having cut across the German governments plans and driven the Islamist militias to the brink of defeat, the German media is also waging an ever more hysterical campaign for military action against Damascus. Hubert Wetzel, who in 2013 called for the firing of a salvo of cruise missiles at Bashar al-Assads army headquarters, wrote in the Suddeutsche Zeitung on Thursday in a piece entitled Now its Trumps war, A truth does not become a lie just because the liar Donald Trump said it. Thats why: Trump is right. The Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad continues to murder his own population and can still gas women and children to death because of the weakness and indecisiveness of Barack Obama, as Trump said of the former president. Then he added, A president used to govern in Washington who drew red lines in the sky but never defended them. Today, a president governs in Washington who up to now thought Assad was a nice guy and Russiaa warring party in Syriaa partner for peace; who has not drawn any red lines, but who thinks many lines that he never drew have been crossed. Assad need not worry for now. Berthold Kohler, the co-editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, raged, All eyes are also turned towards the Kremlin, because without the Russian attack to benefit the butcher Assad, his regime would no longer exist. It seems to have finally been understood in Washington that Russia did not simply intervene in the Syrian civil war out of neighbourly love. However, the United States, like Europe, still doesnt have a plan to prevent Assad from gassing his people. Three separate votes in the US Senate, exactly following the script set by leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties, have set the stage for the final confirmation vote for President Trumps first nominee to the Supreme Court, Appeals Court Judge Neil Gorsuch, now set for sometime Friday night. First came a vote on a motion to close debate on the Gorsuch nomination, which failed on a 55-45 vote Thursday morning. Three Democrats joined all 52 Republicans, but the cloture motion failed to reach the 60-vote threshold set in Senate rules to end a filibuster against Gorsuch conducted by the Democrats since Tuesday. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) then carried out his threat, long foreshadowed and then announced officially on Tuesday, to change Senate voting rules to forbid filibusters of Supreme Court nominations, the so-called nuclear option. He raised a point of order against the filibuster, a move requiring only a simple majority vote, and was upheld by a straight party-line vote of 52-48, with the 46 Democrats joined by two nominal independents who vote with them, Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine. The rules change was then followed by a 55-45 majority vote, exactly the same as the vote on cloture, but this time without a 60-vote requirement, limiting debate on the nomination, leading to a final confirmation vote that will take place sometime Friday, and will undoubtedly place Gorsuch on the highest US court. The latest partisan combat over judicial nominations was set in motion by the sudden death of ultra-right Justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016. When President Barack Obama chose Appeals Court justice Merrick Garland, among the most conservative potential Democratic nominees, the Republican majority in the Senate announced that it would not consider his nomination or even hold a hearing, preserving the vacancy to be filled by the winner of the presidential election in November. Senate Majority Leader McConnell calculated that using the vacancy as an election campaign issue would help boost turnout among Christian fundamentalists. Trump made the same calculation, issuing a list of 21 names from which he promised to choose the nominee to fill the Supreme Court vacancy. Gorsuchs name was on the list, and the nominee was well known for his right-wing record on such issues as abortion, gay rights and other issues of concern to the fundamentalists as well as other elements of the Republican base. Trump followed through with the Gorsuch nomination within days of his inauguration in January, and the Senate Judiciary Committee began three days of hearings last month, to fill a seat that has remained vacant for nearly 14 months. The nominee sidestepped many issues in Senate questioning, as expected, but his record makes clear that, while he may project a blander persona than the provocative and arrogant Scalia, his votes on the Court will be quite similar. The use of the nuclear option was accompanied by hand-wringing predictions by both capitalist parties and the corporate media of even greater partisan warfare in the future. McConnell, well known for his parliamentary maneuvers, called the Democrats attempt to halt Gorsuchs nomination the latest escalation in the lefts never-ending judicial warit cannot and it will not stand. There cannot be two sets of standards, one for the nominees of the Democratic president and another for the nominee of a Republican president. The Democrats, for their part, accused their rivals of hypocrisy, pointing out that the refusal to act on the nomination of Garland for more than seven months last year was a filibuster in all but name. They took the opportunity to posture as opponents of the right-wing Gorsuch while knowing in advance that his nomination would go through. Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee made much of their supposed discovery that Gorsuchs rulings favored big business. In the words of Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, the more we learned about Judge Gorsuchs record, the more we didnt like. In fact, there are few major differences, when it comes to attacks on the working class, between Gorsuch and Garland, also noted for his pro-business rulings. The Democrats also sought to tie opposition to Gorsuch to their anti-Russian campaign against Trump. This was exemplified in the remarks of Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal. Alluding to the ongoing campaign on the alleged ties between the Trump administration and Russia, Blumenthal said the Supreme Court may be called on to enforce a subpoena against the president, and the incoming justice must be fully independent of the Trump White House. The conflict between the competing factions of the ruling class does not reflect fundamental differences when it comes to the interests of Wall Street. While the Democrats have used identity politics and other issues to build up a constituency in the upper middle class, their new version of liberalism is more openly directed against the working class than ever. The Republicans have meanwhile continued their march to the extreme right, now with the installation of a president employing fascistic rhetoric, at the same time as his cabinet and top advisers reads like a whos who of billionaires and multimillionaires. The campaign to ensure the expulsion from the Labour Party of Ken Livingstone is being stepped up through the organised lobbying by right-wing and Zionist Labourites and their media backers. Livingstone, the partys London Mayor until as recently as 2008, was suspended from membership for two years on Tuesday by Labours National Constitutional Committee (NCC), based on allegations that he made anti-Semitic statements that brought the party into disrepute. Livingstone had already been suspended for a year, since making his original comments last April. This has not satisfied Britains political and media establishment, who have issued a chorus of demands that Livingstone is expelled from the party. Last April, while defending Labour MP Naz Shah against bogus charges of anti-Semitism, Livingstone said, Lets remember, when Hitler won his election in 1932 [sic] his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism. [He then] went mad and ended up killing 6 million Jews. Livingstone spoke with insufficient care--and can be legitimately challenged on both factual grounds and on his interpretation. But it is a matter of historical record that the Nazis, with Hitlers support, entered an agreement with significant sections of the Zionist movement meant to facilitate Jewish emigration to British Mandate Palestine. Over the last days, a flood of op-eds and editorials have appeared in the national media demanding Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn expel Livingstone, his long-time ally. In the five days to Friday, more than 50 articles have appeared in the UK national media, with a significant number demanding Livingstones head. This offensive is being led by the Guardian, whose front page Thursday was dominated by the headline, 100 Labour MPs condemn decision not to expel veteran over Hitler remarks. It was referring to the letter signed Wednesday by 107 MPs, nearly half of the parliamentary party and including eight members of Corbyns shadow cabinet, along with 47 Labour peers. The letter reads, We stand united in making it clear that we will not allow our party to be a home for antisemitism and Holocaust revisionism. We stand with the Jewish community and British society against this insidious racism. On Wednesday, the Guardian editorialised that the NCC decision was wrong and sent a terrible message. Livingstones comments were a grotesque misreading of history and Most Jews think it [Livingstones language] was hurtful. But a Labour committee has decided not to mind their pain. The Guardian proclaimed of the NCC decision, An ugly conclusion is inevitable: Labour values Mr Livingstones membership over the fight against antisemitism. Guardian columnists Suzanne Moore, Jonn Elledge and Anne Perkins all weighed in with vitriolic denunciations of Livingstone. The campaign for his removal on grounds of bringing the party into disrepute will have a destructive impact on the democratic rights of rank and file Labour members, including many of its Jewish members and a chilling effect more broadly on criticism of the state of Israel and its ongoing war against the Palestinians. Five Jewish members of the party--including 93-year-old Walter Wolfgang, whose family was persecuted by the Nazis--submitted evidence to the NCC in Livingstones defence. We are appalled by the decision to continue the suspension of Ken Livingstone, it stated. It is an attempt to protect Israel from criticism, while simultaneously weakening the position of Jeremy Corbyn, a principled supporter of Palestinian rights. That letter was preceded by one sent by 30 Jewish members and supporters of the Labour Party in support of Livingstone. These included Marion Kozak, of the Holborn and St Pancras Constituency Labour Party, who is the mother of former party leader Ed Miliband. Another signatory is the actress Miriam Margolyes, a member of Lambeth CLP. The letter stated that the origins of the attack on Livingstone date back to February last year, with a skilfully delivered campaign to present the Left of the Labour Party as riddled with antisemitism, a charge which we can refute based on many years of accumulated experience. Regarding Livingstones statements, the letter continues, To be specific, we do not find Ken Livingstones remarks about the Zionist leaderships involvement in negotiating the Haavarah (Transfer) agreement with the Nazis in the 1930s in any way antisemitic. This agreement is a historical fact, and it gave vital support to Hitler at a time when his regime was under severe international pressure. The 30 members state that Livingstones comments fall well within the spectrum of reasonable comment on a contentious political issue. They declared, As Jews, we are appalled that such a serious issue as antisemitism is being used in this cynical and manipulative way. It is harmful to Jewish people that false charges of antisemitism are so casually thrown around. On the Guardians letters pages Labour member Dr Ian Saville wrote, It may have been politically inept to bring up the question of Nazi support for Zionism in the way Ken Livingstone did However, while it is possible to argue about the extent or motivation of Nazi-Zionist support and collaboration, the transfer agreement and other Nazi endorsements of some aspects of Zionism really did happen. It is chilling to insist that a member of a democratic party believing in free speech should resile from what is indisputable historical fact. Saville concluded, So as a Jewish member of the Labour party, I feel I must, therefore, support Ken Livingstone, and oppose the punishment imposed on him. If that means I will be expelled from the party, so be it. Another letter by Steven Rose, emeritus professor of biology and neurobiology at the Open University and Gresham College, London, stated, Ken Livingstone may be tactless and self-indulgent, but the facts of collaboration between the Zionist leadership and the Nazis are well established, uncomfortable though they may well be. The censorship being imposed goes way beyond banning criticism of Israel. What is taking place is a process in which any political position that runs counter to that sanctioned by the Labour right-wing is forbidden. The charge of bringing the party into disrepute is almost always employed by the right-wing against its opponents. Prior to Livingstone, the Blairites in 2003 engineered the expulsion of another high profile party figure, George Galloway, who was targeted due to his being the most prominent opponent within the party of the Iraq War. The working class must draw crucial lessons as to the character of Labour as a party entirely beholden to the interests of the capitalist class. The Labour MPs demanding action against Livingstone have repeatedly demonstrated their support for austerity, war and the evisceration of democratic rights. In their pursuance of such policies--antithetical to the interests of the working class--this right-wing cabal cannot abide any dissent. Jeremy Corbyn--who was elected on a mandate of opposing the Blairites--has instead only reinforced their grip on the party. Following the NCCs decision not to expel his long-time ally, Corbyn has convened meetings of the ruling National Executive Committee to consider further disciplinary action against Livingstone. The author also recommends: Oppose the witch-hunt of Ken Livingstone! [2 May 2016] UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn joins right-wing campaign against Ken Livingstone [6 April 2017] Workers participated in protests throughout India on April 4 and 5 to oppose the frame-up of the 13 Maruti Suzuki workers condemned to life imprisonment on trumped-up murder charges. A judge in the northern state of Haryana handed down the brutal sentences on March 18 after a years-long company-state vendetta aimed at crushing militant labor struggles at the car assembly plant near Delhi and intimidating the working class as a whole. Another four workers were sentenced to five years in prison on lesser charges. An estimated 500 members and supporters of the Maruti Suzuki Workers Union (MSWU) protested at Kamla Nehru Park in Gurgaon on Tuesday to demand the release of their imprisoned comrades. The MSWU won recognition at the factory in 2012, after workers rebelled against a corporate- and government-sanctioned puppet union and fought to unify permanent workers with brutally exploited contract laborers. Twelve of the 13 workers now condemned to prison for life were leaders of the MSWU. Protesters delivered a statement to the deputy commissioner of Gurgaon demanding the reversal of Judge Rajinder Pal Goyals March 10 conviction of the framed-up workers. It also called for the immediate reinstatement of the 117 workers Judge Goyal was forced to clear of all charges due to the transparent character of the concocted evidence against them. The workers who have been convicted are being framed, Rajesh Karl, a MSWU member at the rally told the Hindustan Times. The management fabricated the evidence. We will fight against this injustice and will take this battle to different parts of the world as well, he said. The MSWU called for an all-India protest and an international day of solidarity for April 4. Workers from different factories and their supporters reportedly protested in 15 Indian states and at 30 locations, including in Panipat, Kaithal, Gohana, Fatehabad, Faridabad, Kurukshetra and Ambala in Haryana, the national capital Delhi, and Mumbai, Indias second largest city. Protests were also held in Patna, Sasaram and Rohtas in the state of Bihar; Kolkata and Siliguri in West Bengal; Chennai and Madurai in Tamil Nadu; Bangalore in Karnataka; Bhubaneswar in Odisha; and Ahmedabad in Gujarat. The Socialist Equality Party in Sri Lanka held a public meeting in Colombo Tuesday evening to demand the release of the Maruti Suzuki workers. The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) and the World Socialist Web Site have initiated an international campaign and an online petition to demand their immediate freedom. SEP speakers outlined the need to mobilize the working class in South Asia and throughout the world to win the freedom of these courageous workers. The major obstacle to the mobilization of the working class in India, they said, was the treacherous role of the Stalinist parties and their affiliated unions, which isolated the Maruti Suzuki workers for years while encouraging illusions that they would receive justice through the capitalist courts. There is widespread sympathy for the framed-up workers. This weeks protests in India, however, were just a pale reflection of the potential support that could be mobilized to demand their freedom. This is due to deliberate suppression of opposition by the Communist Party of India (CPI) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM and their respective trade union federationsthe All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) and the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU). The Stalinist parties, which have millions of supporters, have remained silent on the conviction and sentencing of these workers, as has the AITUC. As for the CITU, it issued a perfunctory press release after the March 18 sentencing. With mounting support for the Maruti Suzuki workers, the Stalinist unions decided to call token protests, while doing nothing to seriously mobilize working-class support. In a still unexplained action, the unions called their protest for Wednesday, April 5, rather than Tuesday, April 4, the day the MSWU called for solidarity actions. It is likely they did not want to be associated with the MSWUs initial calllater rescindedfor solidarity strikes and other job actions. The Stalinists called their protests in conjunction with various other labor federations, including the Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC), the union affiliate of the Congress Party, the chief political party of the ruling class since India became independent in 1947. This is a slap in the face to Maruti Suzuki workers. It was the then-Congress-led Haryana government that spearheaded the witch hunt and persecution of these workers. The Stalinist parties and their union affiliates fear the rebelliousness of the working class expressed by the Maruti Suzuki workers, whose defiant strikes, plant occupations and mass struggles inspired workers throughout the giant auto and manufacturing belt of Manesar-Gurgaon. These struggles pose a direct threat to the Stalinists, which have been a party to the Indian elites efforts to attract foreign capital by offering up Indian workers as a cheap and docile labor force. The mobilization of the working class behind the Maruti Suzuki workers also cuts across the political maneuvers the Stalinists are carrying out within the political establishment, including their efforts to revive a political alliance with the Congress Party, which broke apart nine years ago. On Wednesday, CPM General Secretary, Sitaram Yechury, held an hour-long meeting with Congress Vice-President and de facto party leader Rahul Gandhi at the partys parliamentary offices in Delhi. The next day, CPI and CPM leaders met to discuss the CPIs call for the Stalinist parties to strike a formal alliance with the Congress Party and other democratic, secular parties to oppose Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu-chauvinist Bharatiya Janata Party in the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha (lower house of parliament) elections. In other words, the Stalinist parties are sacrificing the Maruti Suzuki workers to their sordid political maneuvers with the same capitalist party, which led the witch hunt against these courageous workers and which over the past quarter century has done most of the heavy lifting in the push to make India a cheap-labor haven for international capital and forge a global strategic partnership with US imperialism. This is what is behind the relatively small demonstrations across the country Wednesday. For example, in Chennai, the countrys fourth most populous cities, with nearly 8 million residents, the CPM-affiliated CITU did not even bother to hold a demonstration or protest rally, although the CPM claims that its Tamil Nadu state unit is its fourth largest. A Maoist affiliated union, the New Democratic Labor Front (NDLF), did organize a rally of 30 people, mostly union officials, on Tuesday in Kancheepuram, 70 kilometers from Chennai. While one of NDLF speakers denounced the frame-up of the Maruti Suzuki workers as a joint conspiracy by the company, police and judiciary, he was deliberately silent on the role of the Congress Party in that conspiracy. The fact remains, however, that it was the then-Congress-led Haryana state government that deployed its police to suppress Maruti Suzuki workers on behalf of the Japan-based corporation, while it created the foul atmosphere for the judicial frame-up by claiming the workers struggle had been instigated by terrorists and outsiders to undermine economic growth in Haryana. The freedom of the Maruti Suzuki workers requires the widest mobilization of the working class throughout India, Asia and the entire world. This is only possible in a struggle against the Stalinist and other pseudo-left parties that seek to subordinate the working class to the capitalist political parties waging a class war against workers in every single country. The fight for the freedom of the Maruti Suzuki workers is a component part of the struggle to unite the working class around the world against exploitation by the global corporations and the austerity, authoritarian and militarist policies pursued by capitalist political parties of every stripe. Only the international working class can put an end to this injustice and win the freedom of these class-war prisoners. As we have seen, Judge Goyal found thirteen workerstwelve of them leaders of the Maruti Suzuki Workers Union (MSWU)guilty of culpable homicide or murder in the death of company Human Resources Manager Avineesh Dev. At trial, the thirteen contested the prosecutions claim that they or other workers at Maruti Suzukis Manesar car assembly plant attacked Dev or plotted his murder. They said Dev was set upon by some of the large contingent of bouncers, that is thugs, the company had brought into the plant to intimidate the workers and that he was attacked because he was sympathetic to the workers cause. At the meeting between MSWU leaders and company managers that directly preceded the July 18, 2012 altercation and fire, Dev, they further explained, had announced he was resigning in protest over managements intransigence. Judge Goyal rejected the workers version of events out of hand. He declared there was no proof Dev had resigned and that this and the claim company bouncers had assaulted Dev and the workers were made up. As proof, he cited the failure of the jailed, impoverished workers to place their claim of what happened on record until weeks after July 18. Yet elsewhere in his judgment, the judge had to admit police colluded with management and fabricated evidence, i.e., that they were not the least bit interested in the workers version of the events. Post-mortem examination established Dev was not beaten to death. He did not die from the injuries he suffered, whether at the hands of the workers or company thugs, in the factory-floor altercation, but from asphyxiation due to smoke inhalation. The prosecutions murder case thus hinged on proving beyond reasonable doubt that the workers had injured Dev, rendering him incapable of escaping the fumes, and even more fundamentally that they had deliberately lit the fire. The prosecution failed to do either. But as the provenance of the fire is the nub of the case, examination of the prosecutions claims about the fire are pivotal to the exposure of the frame-up. So too, is consideration of how Judge Goyal dealt with the fire in his verdict. Who lit the fire? The prosecution witnesses testimony on the setting of the fire is wrought with inconsistencies. One witness, P.K. Roy, said he saw Jiya Lal and others setting the management office on fire, yet this witness failed to identify those people in court. Virenda Parshad, another prosecution witness, contradicted Roy and listed different workers as having set the fire. Another management witness, Shalil Bihari, said Jiya Lal and another worker set the fire, but then wrongly identified another worker as Jiya Lal. Another management witness, Vikram Sareen, failed to identify who started the fire. Chander Pal, a Labour Inspector and prosecution witness, tried to get the companys and prosecutions point across more bluntly when he testified that all the leaders of the union started the fire. Prosecution witnesses were also systematically unable to identify those they had implicated in the supposed violent worker assault on management personnel. To fill these glaring gaps in its case, the prosecution relied heavily on its witnesses assertions that workers were heard saying various incriminating statements. These statements, which the workers deny making, amount to statements of intent to kill, intent to set fire, and intent to harm all management officials. The prosecution claimed, and the judge concurred, that it is merely a coincidence that these statements supply exactly the proof the prosecution needed to secure convictions and that they were heard only by managers in Maruti Suzukis employ. Counsel for the workers quoted legal precedent that sheds light on what the prosecution was likely trying to accomplish: When the prosecution are unable to prove satisfactorily the intention of knowledge of an accused person, they generally ascribed to him certain words which he is supposed to have spoken in order to supply the missing proof. The unscathed matchbox cover The police were never able to establish how the fire was ignited, nor where it began. But at trial the prosecution contended that a matchbox cover found in the ashes of the gutted management office was potentially the key to solving the puzzle of the fires origins. In reality it only served to highlight the holes in the prosecution case. First and most importantly, nothing connected any of the accused workers to the matchbox. Second, there was what the judge himself referred to as the matter of doubt surrounding the recovery of the matchbox. It was not discovered when police first combed through the crime scene, but only the next day by police forensics specialist Dr. Rajesh Soni. As the judge had to acknowledge, Even the fingerprints from the match box were not lifted by Dr. Rajesh Soni. Even Dr. Rajesh Soni was not examined as witness and even the recovery memo of (the) match box did not bear the signatures of Dr. Rajesh Soni. Rather it bore the signature of another investigating official, H.C. Satpal, who may not even have been present when the matchbox cover was purportedly found. Third, there is the inexplicable condition of the matchbox cover, which had no burn or smoke marks although all around it was gutted by the fire. Elsewhere in his decision, the judge found that computer, computer parts, furniture, record and other articles were burnt in a huge quantity, yet the matchbox cover is said to have escaped unscathed. In his verdict, Judge Goyal conceded that the prosecution has not been able to establish who lit the fire, that is, it failed to prove what should have been the cornerstone of its murder case. How then does he justifyin reality concocta legal, or rather pseudo-legal, argument for convicting the 13 workers? Judge Goyal dismisses out of hand defense counsels suggestion that the matchbox was planted, finding it without force. Yet in two other instances, to which we will return later, he had no choice but to admit police had fabricated evidence. He argues in a manner designed to cover over and shift attention away from the holes and discrepancies in the prosecutions case and effectively place the burden of proof on the workers. Thus in regard to the matchbox, which the prosecution was in no way able to connect to any worker and on which police oddly failed to conduct routine forensics, the judge writes: It was neither burnt nor it consisted of matchsticks but it does not mean that the accused did not lit [sic] the fire, did not cause the injuries to the management officials and did not cause the death of Avineesh Dev. Continuing in the vein of prosecution advocate, Judge Goyal latter adds, It is not the case of the prosecution that the fire was started by this matchbox cover here is a possibility that the said matchbox cover was thrown at a place where it was not engulfed in fire whereas the box and match sticks were burnt. The judges shifting of the onus of proof onto the accused is even more explicit, when he cynically declares, It is for the accused to explain if Avineesh Dev was so dear to them, then how did he die because he was a sympathizer of the workers according to them This brings us back to the question of Devs relations with the workers. There is considerable evidence, some of it summarized in Judge Goyals own judgment, to show that he was supportive of the workers and that they were appreciative of him. This includes the fact that he assisted their registering the MSWU with the Haryana Labour Department and the admission of a key prosecution witness and Maruti Suzuki manager, Vikram Khajanchi, that in May 2012 Dev had fallen ill and the union leaders had gone to see him in hospital. Yet Goyal claims this is of no import. Maruti Suzuki had bitterly contested the formation of the MSWU, as attested by three strikes that erupted in 2011 and its repeated appeals to the police to repress the workers. Relations in the plant were such that management deployed, according to the judges own ruling, some 300 security personnel on July 18. Yet he takes effectively the same position as the Judicial Magistrate who dismissed the workers counter-complaint against management, in which they alleged company bouncers attacked Dev: there is no evidence on record showing Maruti Suzuki management ever had any issue with Avineesh Dev. In the next part we will explore the discrepancies, gaps and contradictions in the claims of the company and prosecutionclaims the court upheld in the mainthat the workers, led by the MSWU leaders, went on a violent rampage. Not least among the many questions such a probe raises is: how is it that the only fatality in this rampage, indeed the only Maruti Suzuki manager to suffer serious injury, was the one company official who had proven sympathetic to the workers? The third part in this series will be posted April 11. With the cruise missile attack on Syria, the United States has opened up a new chapter in its war for global hegemony that it began more than a quarter century ago with the invasion of Iraq. The claim that this attack is a response to the Syrian governments use of poison gas is a transparent lie. Once again, as in the air war against Serbia in 1999, the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, and the attack on Libya in 2011, the United States has concocted a pretext to justify the violation of another countrys sovereignty. The bombing of Syria is a unilateral abrogation by the US of the agreement negotiated with Russia in 2013, which resulted in the calling off of a long-planned direct military intervention by the US in the on-going civil war. As the International Committee of the Fourth International warned in September 2013, The postponement of war does not lessen the likelihood, indeed, the inevitability, of the outbreak of a major war. As the bellicose statements emanating from Washington make clear, the military option remains on the table. Nor is Syria the only target for military attack. US operations against Syria would set the stage for a clash with Iran. And, still further, the logic of US imperialisms drive for global dominance leads to a confrontation with Russia and China. Nor can it be excluded that the conflict of interests among the major imperialist powersfor example, the United States and Germanymight under certain conditions metastasize into armed conflict. [1] This warning has been substantiated. Moreover, the attacks signify at least a partial resolution of the bitter conflict over foreign policy that has been raging within the highest echelons of the American state since last Novembers presidential election. With the support of the most powerful factions of the Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency, the Democratic Partys demand for war against Syria and intensified confrontation with Russia has prevailed. The Trump White House has been compelled to execute an astonishing about-face from the policy that it had publicly announced only days earlier. What is most extraordinary about these developments is the speed with which they have unfolded. The launching of cruise missiles against Syria came barely 48 hours after the first report of an incident in Syrias northwestern Idlib province, an area largely controlled by the Syrian affiliate of Al Qaeda, in which approximately 70 people were allegedly killed by poison gas. Literally within minutes of the incident becoming known, the US corporate media swung into action denouncing the government of President Bashar al-Assad as the culprit. Editorialists for the New York Times and other major newspapers, along with the talking heads of television news, all worked off of the same script, voicing moral outrage and demanding that Washington carry out retribution. Everything points to the media having been thoroughly briefed beforehand in order to carry out a carefully orchestrated war propaganda exercise. On Wednesday, Trump echoed this media narrative at a White House press conference, declaring that the heinous actions by the Assad regime cannot be tolerated, while his ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, issued an open threat of unilateral US military action. Trump repeated this line in a statement to the media from his Mar-a-Lago resort home on Thursday night. The denials by the Syrian government of responsibility for any chemical attack have been summarily dismissed by the White House and the media, as has the record of Al Qaeda forces in Syria carrying out their own chemical weapons attacks and blaming them on the government. The case of who was responsible for the alleged chemical weapons attack was solved in less time than the New York Police Department devotes to investigating a street mugging. The verdict was in and the sentence is now being carried out. One only has to compare this forensic fast-track to the methods employed when the US military carries out air strikes in Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen killing hundreds of civilians. The Pentagon routinely insists that it has no credible evidence of any civilian casualties. In those cases in which it deems an investigation unavoidable, it usually takes weeks before it issues a report either denying the carnage or reporting a small fraction of the real death toll. Barely 200 miles away from the site of the alleged chemical weapons attack, in the city of Mosul, the US has slaughtered hundreds of Iraqi men, women and children, burying entire families alive with bombs and missiles and destroying entire city blocks. Needless to say, the US corporate media is not broadcasting footage of the aftermath of these attacks with their charred dead and scattered body parts. None of the talking heads crying crocodile tears over the alleged gas attack in Syria have managed to summon up an ounce of moral outrage for those killed by the American military. There is no doubt that the incident in Syria was a concocted pretext for the launching of a long planned US military intervention. The first place to investigate in order to get to the bottom of what happened in Idlib is the division of the CIA responsible for dirty operations in Syria and coordination with US proxy forces organized around Al Qaeda. We have been here so many times before that it is hardly worth wasting the time required to refute the official story. It is now 14 years since the US launched its invasion of Iraq over similar lies about weapons of mass destruction, setting into motion a vast slaughter that has claimed the lives of over one million people and turned millions more into refugees. Similar lies were told in 2011 to provide the pretext for the US-NATO war for regime change in Libya. The media breathes not a word about these notorious precedents. Nor for that matter is there even a hint that this new US war is being carried out in alliance with Al Qaeda. The days of embedded journalism during the Iraq war now seem almost quaint. The media has abandoned the slightest pretense of independent journalism. Americas ruling oligarchy demanded another campaign of military aggression to secure its hegemony over the Middle East and push back against its regional and global rivals, particularly Iran and Russia. Like the invasion of Iraq, the intervention against Syria is a war crime. The US is intervening into a civil war that it itself provoked, armed and financed with the aim of toppling the Assad government and installing a US puppet regime. The attempt to achieve these aims by means of Islamist proxy forces has failed after claiming nearly half a million lives and turning five million Syrians into refugees. This failure is due to not only the Russian and Iranian backing for Assad, but also the fear and hatred felt by the majority of Syrians for the US-backed elements linked to Al Qaeda. The abrupt shift in line by the Trump administration is a measure of the immense pressure for war from within the US capitalist ruling class. Only days before the alleged incident in Idlib, administration officials were stating that Assads rule in Syria was a reality that had to be accepted. Trump himself repeatedly voiced his disagreement with the Obama administrations policy on Syria, insisting that the only US aim there should be to combat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The bitter denunciations of Trump by the Democrats and the Democratic-aligned media like the New York Times have been precisely over this question, his perceived softness on both the Syrian government and, even more critically, its chief ally, Russia. Had Trumps presidential rival Hillary Clinton won in November, it can be safely assumed that US bombs and missiles would have been striking Syrian targets within days of her election. Trumps delay in pursuing such a course underlay the furor of the Democratic Party, the political instrument of Wall Street and the US military and intelligence apparatus, in denouncing him for alleged ties to Moscow. Trump has now been brought into line. The shift in policy has been accompanied by a shakeup within the White House staff. Stephen Bannon has been removed from the National Security Council amid an increasing assertion of power by the military. This was an entirely predictable change of course. As the World Socialist Web Site commented last December, amid Trumps naming of one senior military officer after another to top posts in his administration: As much as Trump is choosing ex-generals, the generals may themselves be choosing to join his administration, confident that they can ultimately dictate policy. For its part, Russias foreign policy lies in shambles, exposing the false perspective of those within the government of President Vladimir Putin who naively believed that something as insignificant as a change in presidents could alter the elemental drive by US imperialism toward new and ever wider wars. The war against Syria has no popular support. The political shakeup in Washington and the preparations for renewed military aggression have unfolded behind the backs of the American people. The indifference of the ruling establishment to popular sentiment is reflected in the absence of even so much as an opinion poll on this new war of aggression. No critical voices are being raised against the war, either in Congress or the media. There is not even the pretense of a debate. Democrats who denounced Trump yesterday are now rallying in a bipartisan show of support for their commander in chief and the military. Typical was frequent Trump critic Congressman Adam Schiff (Democrat, California), who allowed that he would feel more comfortable knowing that [Trump] was relying on Gen. Mattis and Gen. McMaster. Bernie Sanders, the former Democratic presidential candidate, self-described democratic socialist and leader of the supposedly progressive wing of the party said nothing about the war plans, because he supported them. The entire opposition of the Democratic Party to Trump was based on these issues. All the talk about Trumps hounding down of immigrants, deportations and wholesale attacks on democratic rights will quickly fade in the interest of unity on the question of war. An attack on Syria carries with it the direct threat of a far wider and potentially world catastrophic war. What will be the reaction of Russia, a nuclear power, if American missiles kill its military personnel on the ground in Syria? The American ruling class is willing to take the risk. Confronted with the protracted decline of its once unchallenged dominance of the world economy, it is forced to rely more and more on its military power as a means of asserting global hegemony. That such a course points inevitably to a new world war that would threaten the survival of humanity will not cause it to change course. The actions of the US oligarchy recall nothing so much as Trotskys description of the world bourgeoisie on the eve of World War II, hurtling with closed eyes toward an economic and military catastrophe. The conflict that has erupted will not end with Tomahawk missiles. The drive of the United States for global hegemony cannot be resolved outside of an endless series of military escalations, each more reckless than the one before, leading ultimately to catastrophe. These events express the burning necessity for the building of a mass anti-war movement, based on the working class, and having as its aim the abolition of the capitalist social order that is the root cause of war. [1] David North, A Quarter Century of War: The US Drive for Global Hegemony 1990 -2016 The American trade union bureaucracy spent much of this week praising Donald Trump and bolstering the billionaire presidents claim that he is a champion of American workers. Trump, who has outlined a program of savage austerity, a war on both immigrant and native-born workers, and unrestrained militarism, was given a rousing welcome at the North America Building Trades Unions National Legislative Conference at the Washington Hilton on Tuesday. Just two miles away at the National Press Club, Richard Trumka, the head of the AFL-CIO labor federation, also had warm words for Trump. I promise you that Americas labor leaders will always find an open door with Donald Trump, Trump told the union conference, before launching into his standard rant against foreign countries and workers who had supposedly stolen Americas wealth and left US workers impoverished through unfair trade deals. The bureaucrats applauded approvingly as Trump pledged to lift environmental regulations on employers and pointed to his record of restarting the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines. They cheered as he said his administration was cracking down on illegal immigration and preparing to end visa abuses that undermine the American worker. In his remarks at the National Press Club, AFL-CIO President Trumkawho has been a frequent visitor to the White Housepraised Trump for pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact and redrafting the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Mexico and Canada. He complained, however, that Trump had left the most oppressive pieces in NAFTA in place and failed to assure the unions that dues-paying members would be employed in federally funded infrastructure projects while cutting regulations and programs the unions backed. The AFL-CIO chief urged the new administration of billionaires, generals and fascists not to succumb to the corrupting influence of big money. We are closing in on the first 100 days of President Trumps administration, and two very different factions have emerged, Trumka claimed. There is a Wall Street wing that undermines Donald Trumps promises to workers, and a competing wing that could win the progress working people need. President Trump needs to decide who he stands with. The coal miners, farmers, steelworkers and other regular Americans who he promised to help in the campaign, or the Wall Street tycoons who are rigging the economy at our expense. This decision will be the single greatest test of his presidency, Trumka declared. Like the rest of the union bureaucracy, Trumka is backward and ignorant, but this long-time stooge of big business is not entirely a fool. He knows Trumps anti-working class program will, sooner than later, provoke immense working-class opposition, including from thousands of workers in the Midwest Rust Belt states who voted for Trump out of desperation and disgust with Obama, Clinton and the Democrats. In so far as he is advising Trump to follow the supposedly anti-Wall Street wing of his administration, he means checking the most fanatical anti-union elements in the Republican Party so the White House can more aggressively enlist the unions to suppress the class struggle and spread nationalist poison to disorient and divide workers. [I]t is not enough simply to demand companies stay in America if the jobs saved provide low wages and little voice, the AFL-CIO head commented. President Trump should use his office and influence to call for an end to workplace intimidation, reject right to work once and for all and promote and protect the freedom of every single worker to form or join a union and bargain for a better life. Trumka also urged Congress to pass, and the president to sign, the Miners Protection Act to shore up the United Mine Workers multibillion-dollar health and retirement funds before the April 30 expiration of health care benefits for more than 22,000 retirees and surviving spouses. There is no anti-Wall Street faction in the Trump administration or in the Republican and Democratic parties. Trumka and other union officials, however, do have a natural affinity for Trumps top aide and former Breitbart News editor, Stephen Bannon. After studying various Italian and French fascist ideologues, Bannon, a former Goldman Sachs investor, concluded that a little anti-Wall Street rhetoric could be added to racist and xenophobic agitation to build a future fascist movement in America. Steeped in anti-communism and nationalism for decades, the American trade union bureaucracy has long been an incubator for semi-fascist and fascist tendencies. As early as the 1980s, under conditions of declining world position of American industry and the globalization of capitalist production, the unions adopted the corporatist outlook of labor-management-government collusion and the subordination of the working class to the national interest. These views brought the US unions strikingly close to the labor syndicates in Mussolinis fascist Italy and the Peronist unions in Argentina. The denial that workers had independent and antagonistic class interests in relation to their capitalist exploiters meant sacrificing everything to boost the profits and competitive position of American capitalism. This opened the floodgates to the four-decade-long destruction of jobs and living standards, under Democrats and Republicans alike, which has made the US the most unequal advanced country in the world. The unions long ago ceased to be genuine workers organizations. Instead they function as direct tools of corporate management and the government. While they have traditionally subordinated the working class to the domestic and foreign policy needs of the ruling class through the vehicle of the Democrats, they see in Trump and Bannon kindred spirits who embrace their program of Buy American, hire American to divert social opposition outward. What drives these reactionary forces together is their mutual fear of the growing anti-capitalist and anti-war sentiment in the working class. Trumka made this clear during his remarks at National Press Club. As I close, I want to mention a recent study from Harvard. It showed that only 30 percent of those born since the 1980s believe its essential to live in a democratic nation. This is a startling statistic. I believe it reflects the simple truth that young people are bearing the brunt of our economic imbalance. The American idea that anything is possible if you work hard and play by the rules, has been fading away for this generation and too many others. Trumkas concerns are not about the danger of fascism, something large sections of the labor apparatus would openly welcome or adapt to. The union chiefs primary concern is that capitalist democracy has become discredited. Because of this, millions of workers and young people will seek more radical solutions. Pointing to the fact that more than half of eligible voters already refuse to go to the polls, knowing no matter which party wins, they will lose, Trumka asked, what will happen when the majority no longer believe in the current system? The only way to reverse that, he said, was by rewriting the rules of the economy to make it work for the majority. If workers see no way to reverse those rules, Trumka warned, they will find a way, they will find a way. The only rules the Trump administration will rewrite are more than a century of reforms so the corporations can be freed from virtually all restrictions on the exploitation of the working class. This will drive ever more workers and young people to conclude that they must carry out the revolutionary struggle to replace the dictatorship of the super-rich and capitalism with a workers government, genuine democracy and socialism. The AFL-CIO and Trumka are no less opposed to this than Trump and the entire US political establishment. TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - Following the U.S. strike on Syria overnight, Andrew Gillum is calling on communities to welcome Syrian refugees fleeing a violent war. ABC News reports that about 60 U.S. Thomahawk missiles hit the Shayrat air base, where aircraft are often taking off to bomb areas in northern and central Syria. Andrew Gillum sent out this statement: "Last night's strike on Syria, first and foremost, leads us to pray for the safety of our brave servicemen and women who are in harm's way defending our nation. As we closely monitor the Administration's actions, we must not lose sight of the more than 5 million Syrian refugees who are fleeing a violent civil war. "We must welcome them with open arms into our communities, instead of turning our backs on the families and children who have been driven from their homes. Too often, politicians claim they welcome the stranger now is the time for us to live those values." The U.S. attack comes after Syria's deadly chemical attack on Tuesday that killed 80 and drew "wide international condemnation." Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told ABC News that the U.S. insisted that an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council on the U.S. missile attack on Syria be held in the open so that "any country that chooses to defend the atrocities of the Syrian regime will have to do in full public view, for all the world to hear." COLQUITT, Ga. (WTXL) - One case of tuberculosis has been reported at Miller County High School and according to the interim superintendent, "People have no need to panic, its curable. Jimmy Phillips, Interim Superintendent of Miller County Schools gave us this exclusive statement: We are complying with all health department requirements and doing every thing we can. People have no need to panic, its curable. The investigation into a possible exposure to TB at Miller County High School is well underway, with around 250 kids being tested, public health officials say. "To date, tests results indicate more than 90 percent of those tested are unaffected by TB infection," said Southwest Health District Health Director Dr. Charles Ruis. "Less than five percent have TB in their system. That's very encouraging." Dr. Ruis stressed that there is a distinction between tuberculosis infection and disease. Even if your child hasn't been at a high risk of exposure, you can still schedule an appointment at the Miller County Health Department for a TB skin test. Officials say the fee for this test is $27. Symptoms of active TB include persistent cough, fever, night sweats and unexplained weight loss. Additional information on TB can be found at http://www.cdc.gov/TB/. For more information, contact the Miller County Health Department at 229-758-3344. TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - The Florida Auditor General has released results of a recent audit of Florida A&M University. Among the findings, auditors say, from April 2015 to June 2016, purchasing cards were issued to 127 employees with expenses at $3.2 million. According to the report, in the same time period, 11 university employees, including the president, chief of staff, six vice presidents, and other high-ranking university officials, spent $149,000. Of that, $48,000 of their expenditures included airline tickets, hotels, rental cars and fuels costs and auditors say the purchases were not supported by receipts. The report also found four employee's cards were not canceled until 17 to 305 days after leaving the university. Here's how FAMU Interim President Dr. Larry Robinson responded, in a letter with proposed corrective actions: "In June of 2016, p-card compliance was handed over to the controller's office to procurement services. They developed a procurement compliance section that will monitor activities including card deactivation." TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - Several current and former state lawmakers, as well as members of the nation's oldest Black sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha gathered at the state capitol today, calling on the legislature to honor the late educator and civil-rights leader Mary McLeod Bethune in the National Statuary Hall in Washington, D.C. Bethune would replace a confederate general as one of Florida's representatives in a set of statues at the U.S. Capitol, under one proposal filed in the Senate. The legislature voted last year to replace General Edmund Kirby Smith's statue amid a backlash against confederate symbols, following the 2015 shooting deaths of nine African-American worshippers. State Senator Perry Thurston says the reasons to choose Bethune are many, adding it would be a good symbolic gesture. Last June, Bethune, who founded what is now known as Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach appeared to be the favorite to replace Smith, getting the votes of all of the members of the "Great Floridians Committee". TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - State college presidents, students and several lawmakers gathered at the State Capitol Thursday, speaking about the potential impact of proposed budget cuts for the upcoming fiscal year. Both the House and Senate have laid out plans calling for millions of dollars in funding reductions for Florida's 28 two-year state and community colleges. Supporters of the schools say the cuts will hurt non-traditional students who find it difficult to go straight to a traditional four-year university. Pasco-Hernando State College President Tim Beard also says state and community colleges are often overlooked for the services they provide, when compared to universities. The Florida Senate is looking to increase university funding by more than ten percent next year, while cutting the budget of state colleges. In the house, both colleges and universities are looking at a loss of money for the 2017-18 fiscal year. Arrests have been made in 14 of the cases. In another, investigators said the suspect killed his wife, then himself. Mercedes-Benz scores new delivery records Worldwide The German premium automotive manufacturer sold more cars in March 2017 than ever before in one month, and says it has also recorded the best quarter in the companys history. Mercedes-Benz has reported the strongest sales month ever, with growth of 14.8% and 228,296 vehicles delivered in March 2017. The first quarter of the year also surpassed all previous quarters, with sales rising 16% to 560,625 units. The manufacturer says it was the premium-market leader in March, in countries such as Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Japan, Australia and Canada. The E-Class Saloon and Estate continued along their successful path in March with growth of around 65%. The bestselling model series of Mercedes-Benz has now been completed with the new E-Class Cabriolet, which we presented to the public at the Geneva Motor Show, right on time for the start of spring, said Britta Seeger, Member of the Board of Management of Daimler AG responsible for Mercedes-Benz Cars Marketing & Sales. In Europe, the premium brand delivered over 100,000 vehicles to customers for the first time in one month (109,237 in March 2017), and a total of 233,329 units were sold between January and March 2017 (+10.8); achieving double-digit growth in March and in the first quarter in the UK, Belgium, Spain, Austria and Poland. In its home market of Germany, a total of 70,594 cars were delivered to its customers in the first quarter (+8.9%). In March, unit sales in the Asia-Pacific region increased to the new record of 78,649 cars (+23.1%), while in China Mercedes-Benz increased its unit sales by over 30%; delivering 49,871 vehicles, a new record. In South Korea, Australia and Malaysia, the Stuttgart-based company says it has also set best-ever sales figures in March and in the first quarter, while the NAFTA region recorded a 6.3% increase (34,922 units). New records for the first quarter were also set for each of the individual NAFTA countries: the U.S., Canada and Mexico; in the U.S, demand for Mercedes-Benz automobiles increased 4.5%, resulting in sales of 79,141 units. If you are sending a Letter To the Editor, please be sure to follow these rules: Letters have a firm 200-word limit and will be edited for grammar, clarity and accuracy. The person who signs the letter must be the author. Anonymous letters will not be considered. Letters must address the editor, not a third party. We will not print form letters, libelous letters, business promotions or personal disputes, poetry, open letters, letters espousing religious views without reference to a current issue, or letters considered in poor taste. Letters reflect the opinion of the writer. The Yakima Herald-Republic cannot verify the accuracy of all statements made in letters. Writers are limited to one published letter per calendar month. About Me I'm a patent lawyer located in central New Jersey. I have a J.D. from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. from Stanford University, where I studied graphite intercalation compounds at the Center for Materials Research. I worked at Exxon Corporate Research in areas ranging from engine deposits through coal and petroleum to fullerenes. An article that I wrote in The Trademark Reporter, 1994, 84, 379-407 on color trademarks was cited by Supreme Court in Qualitex v. Jacobson, 514 US 159 (1995) and the methodology was adopted in the Capri case in N.D. Ill. An article that I wrote on DNA profiling was cited by the Colorado Supreme Court (Shreck case) and a Florida appellate court (Brim case). I was interviewed by NHK-TV about the Jan-Hendrik Schon affair. I am developing ipABC, an entity that combines rigorous IP analytics with study of business models, to optimize utilization of intellectual property. I can be reached at C8AsF5 at yahoo.com. View my complete profile The following article was written before the US strike on Syria on Friday. Those who wrote in September 2013 that US President Barack Obamas conduct on the Syrian issue was amateurish, hasty and dangerous received a defying nod. The United State and Russia are finally cooperating on something, said the people who believed in that agreement. Why ruin it with gloomy prophecies? Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Those were not gloomy prophecies, however. The agreement that Russian President Vladimir Putin presented to Obama did not include a binding decision of the Security Council under Chapter VII of the United Nations Chapter, which permits the use of force against Syrian President Bashar Assad if he violated his commitments. It was also clear that the agreement provided Assad with an insurance policy against an overthrow. It was clear then, as it is clear now, that Assad and the Assad family are the fundamental problem of the Syrian war, and that without their defeat the battle would only escalate. All those things are still true, but now we are 400,000 deaths into the battle, with a refugee crisis and the rise to power of a leader, one Donald Trump, who used the images of Syrian refugees in his campaign ads. Alleged chemical attack in Idlib. Assad is responsible for at least 70 percent of civilian victims in the civil war, and Russia has been killing more people in Syria than ISIS (Photo: Reuters) And now, there has been another atrocity. There is no difference between a child murdered by a bullet in the head and a child poisoned by gas, who is seen in the pictures quivering, trying to draw one last breath of air into lungs that had stopped functioning. Both children were murdered, and they were murdered with complete malice. Assad is responsible for at least 70 percent of the civilian victims in the civil war. In the past few months, his great ally Russia has been killing more people in Syria than ISIS. Assad and Putin are demonstrating to the world the power of unrestrained, brutal and goal-fixated force. The international bodies were supposed to block and disrupt the use of such force, but they are paralyzed. They are paralyzed because of the basic structure which gives Russia the power to veto and they are paralyzed because of American indetermination. Trumps White House blamed the Obama administration for the situation in Syria, which is not an unfounded accusation of course, but blaming your predecessor is witchcraft with an expiration date. On Tuesday, Trump made an appearance several hours after hundreds of civilians were gassed in Syria. In fact, he made two public appearances. He was busy thanking scaffolding erectors and air conditioning installers and making it clear that America First was the administrations guideline. In other words, Obama chose to isolate America from the crisis in Syria, and reaped a whirlwind. Trump wants to isolate America from the entire world and its crises, including Syria. Obama despised Putin, but thoughtmaking a horrible mistakehe would be able to sign an agreement with him on Syria. Trump admires Putin and is not pressing him to sign an agreement at this stage. There is no need for that. After all, as new Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said, the longer-term status of President Assad will be decided by the Syrian people. Republican Senator John McCain was so shocked by the Putinist change in his partys direction that he blasted the comment as a disgraceful chapter in American history. Syria is a complete failure of the Western non-intervention policy. It is a Russian failure too. Putin has been up to his neck in war for years, leading to a horrible outcome for Syria and the world: Half of the residents have been displaced and are refugees in their own country or elsewhere; one in 10 people has been either killed or wounded; and the war serves as fertile ground for training and recruiting people to the worlds most murderous organizations. In order to resolve the crisis, the world needs an effective global watchdog, and there is only one such personin Washington. Unfortunately, for the time being, he is refusing to assume that role. Lets hope that changes. Nadav Eyal is Channel 10's chief international correspondent. (Translated and edited by Sandy Livak-Furmanski) Syria's Foreign Minister Walid Moallem is categorically denying that his government used chemical weapons in the attack this week in Idlib province or in any other attack, expressing wonder over Israels denouncements of the Syrian regime. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Its strange to see Netanyahu almost crying over what happened in Khan Shaykhun (the place of the incident). Israel helps the rebels both medically, and by supplying them with armaments, Moallem told a press conference in the Syrian capital on Thursday, echoing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's claims Syria's foreign minister Walid Moallem (Photo: Reuters) Moallem accused Israel of attacking targets in Syria every time the rebels are forced into a corner, adding that they are destroying Hezbollah armaments and weapon supply lines. Every shot thats fired against the Syrian army serves Israels interest, Moallem argued, claiming that Israel is the "main beneficiary" of the rebellion and what people call the Arab Spring. Walid Moallem insisted during a press conference in Damascus on Thursday that "the Syrian Arab Army has never used chemical weapons and will not use chemical weapons against Syrians or even against terrorists." He says the Syrian army bombed a warehouse for al-Qaida's branch in Syria that contained chemical weapons, repeating the Russian defense ministry's claim. He denounced the "chorus" of accusations against Syria, which he says was being conducted by countries known for their hostility. The Syrian foreign minister says Damascus needs assurances that any fact-finding mission into Idlib's attack would be impartial and not politicized, adding that Syria's experience with past missions is "not encouraging." He then said that any investigative mission would need to take off from Damascus and be far from the sphere of Turkish influence. Photo: EPA Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Tugrul Turkes says he is unconvinced by Russia's claim that Syrians killed in a northern town were the victims of toxic agents that were released by a Syrian airstrike which hit a rebel chemical weapons arsenal. Turkes spoke in an interview with Turkey's state-run Anadolu Agency on Thursday. He described the Russian explanation as "unsatisfying, noting that "if the Syrian regime knew that there were chemical weapons in the warehouse, it should have also known that it should not have attacked it." He stated that there is "no excuse. To me, this is evidence that strengthens the fact that it was the work of the (Syrian) regime and that it was an attack against civilians." When Moallem was asked if Syria would accept an international investigation, he said that "when we are sure we have convincing answers to these questions, we will give you an answer." (Translated & edited by Lior Mor) A police detective who went undercover as an IDF soldier led to the arrest of eight suspects who attacked uniformed men in the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Mea Shearim in Jerusalem on Thursday. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter The undercover operation took place Thursday when the detective entered Mea Shearim wearing a military uniform, and when a group of extremists attacked him, they were jumped by police officers who then followed to arrest them. Arrest of ultra-Orthodox in Mea Shearim X The Israel Police said it "had been working for quite some time to locate and arrest suspects in the attacks of soldiers in the Mea Shearim neighborhood, only because they were in uniform." During the activity, police forces spotted suspects who began attacking, spitting and throwing objects at a uniformed person who was walking in the neighborhoodand they immediately arrested them. Among the detainees were also suspects who attempted to prevent the police from arresting the attackers. On Wednesday, residents of the Mea Shearim neighborhood attacked a soldier from the Givati Brigade and threw eggs at him. Some of those present called the soldier "Hardak"which is a derogatory term that means "fickle haredi." A police force summoned to the scene arrested one of the suspects in the incident. On Sunday, another case of violence against ultra-Orthodox soldiers was recorded when local residents shouted abuse at an ultra-Orthodox IDF soldier who had entered a store in the neighborhood. The rescued soldier refused to file a complaint with the police. In the footage captured from the scene, a few ultra-Orthodox crowded the shop, shouting and even throwing a hat at a policewoman. On the same day, the Jerusalem faction of the ultra-Orthodox community announced that it was expanding the protest against the arrest of the draft-dodging yeshiva students. The plan was to hold demonstrations in Ben Gurion Airport at one of the busiest times of the year, in a manner that would potentially detain departing passengers. In an "important announcement" published by the Committee to Save the World of Torah, the organization that organized the demonstrations against the draft, it was written: "In light of the escalation in the government's harassment of prisoners of the Torah world, it was decided to expand the protest so that it will reach the ears of the entire world." (Translated and edited by N. Elias) A video that will be published in the coming days by the Temple Mount Movement, which is working for the rights of Jews on the Temple Mount and aspires to build the third Jewish Temple, is asking Muslims to evacuate the compound this coming Monday to allow the performance of the Passover sacrifice. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter "On Monday, April 10, we, the Jewish people, are commanded to perform a special sacrifice on the Temple Mount. Over the years, the Jewish people have been looking forward to the moment when they would be able to renew this mitzvah. So please, evacuate the Temple Mount compound on this day to allow the Jewish people to perform the Passover sacrifice in its rightful time and place," said Rafael Morris in Arabic. (Photo: Temple Mount Movement) In a conversation with Ynet on Tuesday, Morris rejected the claim that his intentions were fanning the flames. "Whoever wants to do this (perform a sacrifice) will do it, no matter what we say. Our goal is to make the Temple Mount a place of brotherhood among all and build a Jewish Temple. We ask them to evacuate the mountain to fulfill one of the most serious commandments in the Torah. It is possible and realistic." "The Passover Sacrifice" (Photo: Temple Mount Movement) "Commanded to perform a special sacrifice on the Temple Mount" (Photo: Temple Mount Movement) "We will perform a Passover sacrifice" (Photo: Temple Mount Movement) Las week, the Jerusalem district commander, Yoram Halevi, prohibited the holding of a rehearsal of the Passover sacrifice event at the foot of the Temple Mount. At the event, they planned to slaughter sheep on an altar and then roast the lamb on coals. The organizers petitioned the High Court of Justice against Halevi and Police Commissioner Roni Alsheikh, demanding that the police decision be canceled, but on Sunday they were rejected. (Tanslated and edited by N. Elias) US President Donald Trump said on Thursday he ordered missile strikes against a Syrian airfield from which a deadly chemical weapons attack was launched, declaring he acted in America's "vital national security interest." Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter In a sharp escalation of the US military role in Syria, two US warships fired dozens of cruise missiles from the eastern Mediterranean Sea at the airbase controlled by President Bashar al-Assad's forces in response to the poison gas attack in a rebel-held area on Tuesday, US officials said. Photo: EPA Photo: AFP US President Donald Trump (Photo: Reuters) Facing his biggest foreign policy crisis since taking office in January, Trump took the toughest direct US action yet in Syria's six-year-old civil war, raising the risk of confrontation with Russia and Iran, Assad's two main military backers. US officials said they informed Russian forces ahead of the missile attacks and that there were no strikes on sections of the base where Russians were present. But they said the administration did not seek Moscow's approval. "Years of previous attempts at changing Assads behavior have all failed and failed very dramatically," Trump said from his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, where he was attending a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Trump anounces attack against Syrian airbase (Credit: Reuters) () X Trump ordered the strikes just a day after he pointed the finger at Assad for this week's chemical attack, which killed at least 70 people, many of them children, in the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun. The Syrian government has denied it was behind the attack. Fifty-nine Tomahawk missiles were launched from the USS Porter and USS Ross around 8:40 p.m. EDT, striking multiple targets - including the airstrip, aircraft and fuel stations - on the Shayrat Air Base, which the Pentagon says was used to store chemical weapons. The strikes occurred as Trump and Xi were wrapping up a dinner of Dover sole and dry-aged New York strip steak. "Initial indications are that this strike has severely damaged or destroyed Syrian aircraft and support infrastructure and equipment at Shayrat Airfield, reducing the Syrian government's ability to deliver chemical weapons," said Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis. Photo: EPA The US cruise missile attack was a "one-off," a US defense official told Reuters, meaning it was expected to be a single strike with no current plans for escalation. 'Proportionate' Syrian state TV said that "American aggression" had targeted a Syrian military base with "a number of missiles and cited a Syrian military source as saying the strike had "led to losses." The governor of Syria's Homs province, where the airbase is located, said the strikes were not believed to have caused "big human casualties" but had caused material damage. Governor Talal Barazi told Reuters the attack served the interests of "armed terrorist groups" including Islamic State, adding that the targeted air base had been providing air support for army operations against Islamic State east of Palmyra. "I believe - God willing - that the human casualties are not big, but there is material damage. We hope there are not many victims and martyrs," he said by telephone. Trump said: "Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad launched a horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians ... Tonight I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched." Shayrat Airfield in Homs, Syria (Photo: AFP) "It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons," he said. Trump appeared to have opted for measured and targeted air attacks instead of a full-blown assault on Assad's forces and installations. "We feel the strike itself was proportionate," said US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (Photo: Reuters) According to a US defense official, Trump first asked about possible military action on Wednesday, after US intelligence agencies confirmed that Syrian aircraft based at the al Shayrat airbase had dropped Sarin gas on civilians. Planning began on Wednesday and accelerated at the Pentagon, the State Department and the White House on Thursday, helped by the fact that the Defense Department had numerous off-the-shelf plans, including for cruise missile strikes on Syrian airfields. "It was a matter of dusting those off and adapting them for the current target set and timing," the official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. At odds with Russia The relatively quick response to the chemical attack came as Trump faced a growing list of global problems, from North Korea and China to Iran and Islamic State, and may have been intended to send a message to friends and foes alike of his resolve to use military force if deemed necessary. "One question is whether Russia will respond in any meaningful way," said a senior US official involved in planning the raid. "If they do, they will be further complicit in the actions of the Syrian regime." From left to right: Russian President Putin, US President Trump, Syrian President Assad (Photo: Reuters, EPA, AP) The attack has put Trump at odds with Russia, which has air and ground forces in Syria after intervening there on Assad's side in 2015 and turning the tide against mostly Sunni Muslim rebel groups. Trump has until now focused his Syria policy almost exclusively on defeating Islamic State militants in northern Syria, where US special forces are supporting Arab and Kurdish armed groups. Speaking just before the strikes were announced, Russia's deputy UN envoy, Vladimir Safronkov, warned of "negative consequences" if the United States went ahead with military action, saying the blame would be "on shoulders of those who initiated such doubtful and tragic enterprise." Israel welcomed the move "In both word and action, President Trump sent a strong and clear message today that the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said in a statement. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu (Photo: EPA) US lawmakers had a mixed reaction, with some criticizing Trump's decision to use force without getting their approval. "Congress will work with the president, but his failure to seek congressional approval is unlawful, said Senator Tim Kaine, the 2016 Democratic vice presidential candidate. The UN Security Council was expected to hold closed-door consultations on Friday about the US strike on Syria following a request by Bolivia, an elected member of the council, a senior Security Council diplomat said. Israels heads of government and state expressed their support on Friday for the American attack on a Syrian air base. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter In a sharp escalation of the US military role in Syria, two US warships fired dozens of cruise missiles from the eastern Mediterranean Sea at the airbase controlled by President Bashar al-Assads forces in response to the poison gas attack in a rebel-held area on Tuesday, US officials said. US strike (Photo: EPA) President Reuven Rivlin commented, Against the terrible use of chemical weapons against innocent civilians, the clear and determined steps of the administration and the American army led by President Trump constitute an appropriate and suitable response to unthinkable brutality. Thus, the United States served as an example of the entire free world that is called to support any step required to bring the atrocities in Syria to an end. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu joined in the presidents sentiments. An official statement from his office announced, In both word and action, President Trump sent a strong and clear message today that the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated. Reuven Rivlin (Photo: Motti Kimchi) On his Twitter account, he wrote, Israel fully supports President Trumps decision. Israel hopes this resolve in face of the Assad regimes horrific actions resonates not only in Damascus but in Tehran, Pyongyang & elsewhere. The IDF Spokespersons Unit said that the IDF had been briefed in advance on the American attack and expressed its support for the decision. Benjamin Netanyahu (Photo: Mark Yisrael Salem) A source in the Saudi Foreign Ministry said that the kingdom fully supports US military operations against military targets in Syria in response to the regimes use of chemical weapons against civilians. The governor of Homs province told the Al-Mayadeen network that the American attack in Syria was part of the division of duties between the United States, Israel and those who support terrorism. The attacks are intended to raise the morale of the terrorist organizations, he said. He did not rule out the possibility that the American attack was carried out at the request of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. An indictment was filed against 19-year-old Malec Bassam Ismail Sa'ada, who stabbed 44-year-old school principal Revital Kanino in Lod last week, for attempted murder, committing a terrorist act and unlawful entry and stay in Israeli territory. According to the indictment, Sa'ada decided to kill Kanino after he realized she was Jewish, fleeing the scene and dropping his knife after she started screaming for help. Sa'ada was arrested a day after the incident, trying to return to the West Bank. Bomb blasts were among 23 coordinated attacks that rocked Muslim-majority southern Thailand early on Friday, a security officer said, just hours after King Maha Vajiralongkorn signed a new constitution as a step towards ending military rule. Police reported no casualties in the region, site of a recent upsurge in a decades-old Muslim separatist insurgency that had voted the most strongly against the new constitution at a referendum last year. "The incidents are aimed to create disturbances," Pramote Prom-in, a spokesman for regional security forces, told Reuters. "They want to destroy the government's credibility and create fear among people." There was no immediate claim of responsibility and security forces said they could not yet identify which insurgent group was to blame. Syrian military says the US missile attack on one of its air bases in central Syria has killed six and caused extensive damage, calling it an aggression that undermines Damascus' counter terrorism operations. The statement read on TV Friday came hours after the US sent nearly 60 Tomahawk missiles into the Shayrat air base, southeast of Homs, the first American attack against the Syrian army since the war started in 2011. General Ali Ayyoub , the chief of the General Staff of the Syrian Army, said Washington has used the chemical attack in the northern town of Khan Sheikhoun earlier this week as a "pretext" to carry out the "blatant aggression" , without knowing what really happened. Syria blames the opposition fighters of stockpiling chemical weapons. This in turn is of course only one aspect of the broader growth in foreign investment that the Islamic Republic of Iran has experienced since the nuclear deal went into effect in January 2016. It is unsurprising to see such nearby economic partners as India contributing to this trend, especially considering that Indian-Iranian transactions are so important to the formers economy that it was granted special exemptions to US sanctions in the past. What is more significant, however, is the apparent growth of investment and business dealings coming out of the West and particularly the US itself. This has been slow in coming, as has been widely reported in the international media. The Iranian regime continues to think of the US and its allies as bitter enemies of the Islamic Republic, and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has used this to urge the return to a resistance economy that urges domestic development instead of reliance on foreign capital. Meanwhile, American policymakers have pointed to persistent Iranian rhetoric as justification for a skeptical attitude toward the nuclear deals implementation and business dealings with Iran. This point of view has taken on new prominence since the election of President Donald Trump, who insisted on the campaign trail that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was among the worst deals ever negotiated, and that his administration would renegotiate it. In a report published on Monday, Al-Monitor pointed out, as numerous other outlets have pointed out in the past, that Trump has stepped back from this promise and the associated rhetoric since taking office. Although he has evidently remained committed to rigorously enforcing the JCPOA and possibly also to finding ways to strengthen it, there are growing questions about what effect his policies might have on the prospects for expanded Western investment in the Islamic Republic. If anything, the answers to these questions became even more uncertain on Tuesday amidst reports that Irans Aseman Airlines had signed a preliminary deal with Boeing to purchase 30 commercial jets, with an option to later order an additional 30. The sale expands upon an earlier deal with which Boeing arranged to sell 80 aircraft to IranAir. The earlier deal had been brokered while Trumps predecessor Barack Obama was still in office, and it generated a good deal of criticism from US policymakers, particularly Republicans, some of whom worried that the US-made jets would end up being used by Mahan Air, which is still under sanctions as a result of its use by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps in illicit activities such as arms smuggling. But even though the Trump administration has helped to embolden Western criticisms of the nuclear agreement and its consequences, Trump himself has notably had little to say about the aircraft sales, perhaps because they reflect well upon his domestic promises regarding the generation of industrial and manufacturing jobs for American workers. In any event, the Reuters report upon the Aseman sale indicated that Trump had voiced no public opinion whatsoever. The initial sale of 30 aircraft would reportedly involve a list price of 3.4 billion dollars. If the full range of sales goes ahead, it may bode well for European firms seeking similar deals, many of whom are required to receive licenses from the US Treasury Department authorizing them, because those deals involve trade in American-manufactured parts, or among entities that also have operations within the US. The British energy giant BP, for instance, has extensive operations in the US which necessitate American licensing, but according to Reuters it has already received the relevant licenses in the case of its intended investment in Irans Rhum gas field. Nevertheless, it is too early to regard these recent developments as indications that the Trump administration is seriously reconsidering its aversion to normalized Western relations with the Islamic Republic. Indeed, the Al-Monitor article points out that uncertainty about Trumps overall policy has kept European eagerness in check, such that figures for exports to and imports from Iran are still well below their pre-sanctions levels. European entities, no doubt, are still keenly aware of the 15 billion dollars in penalties that they were forced to pay during the Obama era for violations of US sanctions. It is unrealistic to think that the Trump administration will be less rigorous in its enforcement of these same sanctions. And although Al-Monitor concludes that the White House will not directly undermine the nuclear deal with the enforcement of currently suspended sanctions, both the White House and Congress are considering other measures that could make the business environment more restrictive, such as the blacklisting of the Revolutionary Guards. These and other factors lead Al-Monitor to the further conclusion that the bulk of Europe will maintain a wait-and-see approach to their potential financial dealings with the Islamic Republic, at least until after Iranian presidential elections in May, and perhaps considerably longer than that. Meanwhile, even as the US government signs off on a growing number of financial transactions with the Islamic Republic, there are things that Tehran and its affiliates might do to demonstrate the potential consequences of such dealings, and thus to prompt the Trump administration toward a more restrictive approach. Last week, the National Council of Resistance of Iran reported that an Iranian-Canadian dual national named Ghoban Ghasempour had been brought up on charges in Washington, D.C. for using his business networks to enable the smuggling of missile testing components into the Islamic Republic. Two other individuals implicated in the same scheme have yet to be charged, but the arrests highlight the persistent operations of anti-Western entities like the Revolutionary Guards, who have been deemed responsible for all of Irans recent, illicit ballistic missile tests while also controlling upwards of half of the Iranian GDP. Israel Aerospace Industries' (IAI) largest export deal to date was signed with India recently, supplying India's Navy with "Lightning-8" air defense missiles for $ 1.6 billion, and those involved are extremely pleased with the deal. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter "Two hours ago we left the Indian Defense Ministry with great excitement. Five years of negotiations were finished with a great amount of trust on their part," said Dror Bar from in a call from New Delhi. Lightning-8 missile launch (Photo: IAI) The Lightning-8 project began in 2006, when Israel and India decided to band together to develop an air defense system for the India and Israel's navies. India had already purchased three of those systems for three of their navy's battleships before announcing a tender for a new defense system, where the IAI and its Indian partners offered a system used with their Lightning-8 missiles, which was the one ultimately chosen. At the same time, India ordered a Lightning-8 system for an aircraft carrier that they're currently building, the INS Vikrant, for an additional $400 million. "This isn't a case of a foreign client purchasing one of our systems. The Indians are our partners in the project," added Bar, noting that "they developed and made the rocket's engine. "I lived in India with my family for two and a half years, and they're very similar to us in many different aspects, such as creativity and obstacle circumvention. "Real bonds of friendship were created between us. They have a lot of appreciation towards us, and they rely on us. In the last two years they put the Lightning-8 through a long series of tests, and got amazing results. The Lightning-8 is not just another weapon system for them, but a national defense system, and we appreciate the fact that they chose us to supply it." Lightning-8 test footage (Credit: IAI) (: ) X Ezra, 68, one of the senior engineers in the IAI, started working with the Indian Navy back in 1999, when they purchased the Lightning-1, the first in the series, to defend their ship. "At the time, they had Russian ships from the 1950s, very old. Those that we installed the Lightning-1 on became flagships of the navy due to its advanced Radars and their ability to supply their commanders with the best aerial photos," said Ezra. "From there it slowly advanced to the Lightning-8. Officers I knew at the time I was working there have advanced from captain to brigadier general, or even retired." Ezra has also reached retirement age, but the IAI employ him in a special contract to aid in training the next generation of engineers. Lightning-8 missile system (Photo: IAI) "The Lightning-8 was a great challenge. We had to combine three big teams in three different factories in Israel with the Indian teams. They stayed here for three years; we set up the system together, and had to face many challenges with keeping everyone's motivation high. "The Indians told us that they greatly appreciate working with us. They purchase weapon systems from other companies in other countries as well, who come to sell their technology and leave, and sometimes look down on us. We're not the only ones in the world that know how to make rockets and radars. "That's why they appreciate our openness, our efforts, and knowing that they going to get from us the best that we can provide." (Translated & edited by Lior Mor) A joint task force of the IDF, Shin Bet, and Israel and Border Police stormed the homes of Malak Hamed's extended family on Thursday night. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Hamed is the 21-year-old resident of Silwad who killed Sgt. Elchai Teharlev and injured another soldier in a car-ramming attack at a bus stop outside of Ofra, north of Jerusalem in the West Bank, which took place earlier that day. Hamed's brother arrested (Photo: IDF) Hamed's brother was arrested during the operation as part of the IDF's policy to prevent the terrorist's family from aiding in further terrorist acts. Six cars were seized after being identified as stolen vehicles. In addition, NIS 40,000 were seized on the suspicion of being used to fund terrorism. Security forces storms the homes of the Hamed extended family (Credit: IDF) (: ") X Malak Hamed was arrested following the attack and taken for interrogation by the Shin Bet. He is part of the Hamed extended family, which is linked to Hamas. Nine members of the family have committed terrorist crimes in the West Bank over the years. Malak himself was arrested in 2015 when he tried to illegally enter Geva Binyamin, but he was released after three months. Malak Hamed Two hours after the attack his home was searched and evidence, such as phone messages, was found that indicated his intention to carry out an attack. (Translated & edited by Lior Mor) Security researchers at Google and Lookout have discovered an extremely sophisticated Android app capable of spying on users by hacking their smartphones' camera and microphone, as well as track calls, messages, internet history and more. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Called Chrysaor, the spyware seems to be linked to Pegasus , a notorious program that was found to be targeting iPhone users in 2016 and is suspected of having been created by Israeli firm NSO Group Technologies. Photo: AP Google and Lookout announced the discovery of the spyware last week. The app, which was not available for download from Google Play, has already been detected on 36 devices, most of which were owned by people living in Israel. Other countries to have found infected devices are Georgia, Mexico, Turkey, Kenya and others. NSO Group Technologies has previously been accused of developing Smartphone hacking software and selling them to spy agencies across the globe, as they allegedly did with Pegasus. To install Chrysaor, we believe an attacker coaxed specifically targeted individuals to download the malicious software onto their device, said Google. Once Chrysaor is installed, a remote operator is able to surveil the victims activities on the device and within the vicinity, leveraging microphone, camera, data collection, and logging and tracking application activities on communication apps such as phone and SMS. One of Pegasus' targets (Photo: AP) Chrysaor also had a self-destruct feature, helping NSO Group's malware avoid detection. "If it feels like it's going to be found, it removes itself," said Lookout mobile security researcher Michael Flossman. "That's why it took so long to find these samples." Lookout and Google said that though the samples date from 2014, there was evidence the spyware was working on some victim Android phones when discovered in the last few months. The likelihood of being affected by such spyware may be small, however Google recommends users take precautionary measures such as installing apps only from reputable sources and keeping devices up-to-date with the latest security patches to protect themselves. All known targets of Chrysaor have been alerted. (Translated & edited by Lior Mor) The family of the soldier who was murdered in Thursdays vehicular attack told the minister of defense on Friday that they expected their sons killer never to be released from prison. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter The family of 20-year-old Sgt. Elchai Teharlev spoke with Avigdor Lieberman in person when he came to visit them during the ritual, week-long period of Jewish mourning. They said that the terrorist, Malak Hamed, exited his car with his hands raised knowing that the soldiers present at the junction would not kill him, and muttered that he was sorry. We expect him to rot in jail, they told Lieberman. Avigdor Lieberman sitting with the family (Photo: Gil Yohanan) Avigdor Lieberman shakes the mother's hand (Photo: Shaul Golan) The family gathered in their home in the West Bank settlement of Talmon to share stories of the lost loved one. His mother, Avital, said that on the day before her son was ruthlessly mowed down, she had spoken with him at length while he was in Amona. Avital, who was passing through nearby Ofra, planned to visit her son, but didnt make it in the end.. Now I understand what a large opportunity I missed, she said. Family members said that when he was murdered, Teharlev had been on his way to visit a friend with a cup of coffee. His mother added, He was murdered with a cup of coffee in his hand, which is so characteristic of Elchai: a boy who always takes everything easily and calmly a child who loved the natural landscape and especially springs. Elchai Teharlev Yesterday when we were on our way to the funeral, and we had half an hour, so we went to the spring and we wrote the eulogies there. Some of the siblings at the funeral on Thursday (Photo: Hillel Maeir/TPS) Golani soldiers stand at Teharlev's grave shortly after his interment (Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg) Eitam, Elchais brother, recounted, When we heard about the incident, my father and mother knew immediately. It was some kind of parents intuition. It pains me that weve joined the circle of bereaved families. (Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg) The youngest brother, Matanya, shared, There wasnt a day when we didnt fight. We always quarreled in the room over the air conditioner. What I remember about him is his quiet and relaxed nature. A joint task force of the IDF, Shin Bet, and Israel and Border Police raided the homes of Malak Hamed's extended family on Thursday night in Silwad. The terrorists brother was arrested, and 6 stolen vehicles were seized along with NIS 40,000 that served to fund terrorism. (Translated and edited by J. Herzog) Swedish media said a truck crashed into a department store in central Stockholm, killing four people, injuring 15, 9 of them seriously. Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said everything indicates truck crashing into department store is "a terror attack." One person has been arrested. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Swedish radio said Friday that three people have been killed in the crash and Swedish broadcaster SVT said shots have been fired. People in the area were seen fleeing the scene. Swedish police has ordered the evacuation of the central train station. Footage: people fleeing the scene in Sweden X The Swedish news agency TT said several people have been rushed away in ambulances, and live television footage showed smoke coming out of the department store that the truck smashed into. Swedish police showed a picture of a person they said was of interest. Mats Lofving, head of Swedish police's National Operations Department (NOA) said the picture, which appeared to be CCTV footage, was taken close to the time of the incident, in the vicinity of the incident. The suspect caught on CCTV "I have a picture of a person who has been seen at the location at this point in time. We want to get in contact with this person," he told a news conference. The grainy image shown by police showed a man wearing a jacket with a dark hood over a bright t-shirt and dark trousers. The truck stuck in the department store (Photo: AFP) Swedish police said they have received calls about a person who has injured others driving a vehicle on the central Stockholm street of Drottninggatan. Police spokeswoman Towe Hagg said people have been injured but she would not confirm the deaths. Swedish police issued a warning to avoid the city center. Dimitris, an eyewitness to the event, told the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet: "I was walking down the main street and suddenly a big truck came out of nowhere, I couldnt see who was driving it, but it got out of control. I ran away as fast as I could." Friday's incident is near the site of a December 2010 attack in which Taimour Abdulwahab, a Swedish citizen who lived in Britain, detonated a suicide bomb, killing himself and injuring two others. Abdulwahab rigged a car with explosives in the hope that the blast would drive people to Drottninggatanthe street hit Fridaywhere he would set off devices strapped to his chest and back. The car bomb never went off, and Abdulwahab died when one of his devices exploded among panicked Christmas shoppers. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Friday's attack, but vehicles have been common weapons in recent extremist attacks. Last month, in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group, a man drove into a crowd on London's Westminster Bridge, killing three people and injuring many others before stabbing a policeman to death. A fourth person, a woman thrown into the Thames by the force of the car, died Thursday. The incident in Sweden came months after the terrorist attack in Berlin in which an Islamist terrorist committed a truck-ramming attack, claiming 12 lives, including an Israeli citizen, and wounding dozens. In a similar attack, just over six months ago, an ISIS terrorist who drove a truck ran over 85 people and injured more than 100 during France's Independence Day celebrations in Nice. Hundreds of protesters performed a funeral prayer in Istanbul for the victims of the Syrian regime's chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun. Ahmet Camurluoglu, the head of Istanbul Platform consisting of Islamic-leaning NGOs, blamed the west for the creation of chemical weapons used in Syria. "In this massacre, imperialist West, especially Russia, the US and Iran are accomplices of cruel Assad," he said. Calling the US "the great devil," Camurluoglu said the country "can't escape the curse of hundreds of martyrs with a few bombs," referring to the US missile strikes. The protesters chanted "murderer America, get out of Syria" and "murderer Russia, get out of Syria" after the prayer. Hezbollah said Friday that US President Donald Trump's move was a foolish step that would only lead to great danger and tension in the Middle East, which serves Israel's interests Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter "This new crime shows that the Trump administration is determined to continue the constant aggression the United States has adopted against our nation to serve the Zionist entity and to achieve its ambitions in the region." The statement also said that "this is a foolish step carried out by the Trump administration, which will lead to great and dangerous tension in the region, and will only complicate the situation in the world." Hassan Nasrallah's terrorist organization added that there was no chance that the American attack would harm the spirit of the Syrian army, which had scored many victories over the "terrorists" as he put it: "This will not affect the alliance of resistance and its steadfastness (i.e., Hezbollah and its ally) in the ongoing war against terrorism." Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said that the cruise missiles fired by the US military on the Syrian military base were very close to causing a confrontation between the US army and the Russian army. It was reported that US officials had updated the Russian forces shortly before the attack that they were planning to attack, thus avoiding harming Russian forces. Against the backdrop of fears of escalation in the region, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on all parties involved in the war to show restraint so as not to add to the suffering of the Syrians In the West, meanwhile, Trump is on the receiving end of something unusual: a flood of compliments, some very correct and some quite warm, from senior Western officialseven those who tend to criticize him. During the day, he received reinforcements from Germany, France, Britain and other European countries. Many Arab and Muslim countries also expressed support for his move, including Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. (Translated and edited by N. Elias) Top birders from around the world recently gathered in EilatIsraels southern touristic cityto compete in the fourth annual Champions of the Flyway (COTF), involving 17 multiple-nationality teams from countries including Finland, South Africa, China, Turkey, the UK, United States, and an Israeli-Palestinian team. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter The goal of the birding race, which was organized by the Society of Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNIBirdlife Israel), together with BirdLife International, was to document as many bird species as possible within 24 hours to raise funds for conservation efforts. This year, over $60,000 were raised during the Champions of the Flyway, which took place on Tuesday, March 28. The money will go to Doga Dernegi (BirdLife in Turkey), an organization that aims to increase educational initiatives on the ground to end the illegal practice of hunting and trapping songbirds in southern Turkey. (Photo: Yuval Dax, SPNI) Over 250 species of birds were sighted during this years Champions of the Flyway race, which took place from midnight to midnight, Jonathan Meyrav, the Tourism Directior for SPNIs Israel Ornithological Center told Tazpit Press Service in an interview. He noted that participants included both the young and old, ranging from age nine to 80, with people coming from all over Israel and the world to participate in the competition which has both an Israeli and international division. Eilat is the best stage in the world to witness bird migration, Meyrav told TPS. You can see tens of thousands of birds of prey, for example, passing through the Eilat Mountains during this time of year. As one of the busiest migration hotspots in the world, Eilat is strategically positioned at the tip of the Red Sea. Millions of birds during the peak of spring migration in late March and early April, fly over the Eilat Mountains and up the valley to rest as they travel to their northern breeding grounds across Eurasia. Indeed, the East Mediterranean Flyway, which is shared by Israel, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Cyprus, Greece, and Georgia, is the worlds second largest flyway during the spring and autumn migration of birds. However, in many of the countries that share the East Mediterranean Flyway, like Turkey, the migrating birds are trapped and hunted either for food, trade, falconry and sport. Each year the race raises funds for programs working to prevent illegal bird hunting along the Eurasian-African flyway, commented Meyrav. In the past, we have donated funds to bird conservation causes in Georgia, Greece, and Cyprus. (Photo: Yuval Dax, SPNI) He also pointed out that Champions of the Flyaway is the largest international competition of its kind, with birdwatching teams coming from many places. This year we had a new team from China. Teams from Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and other countries also took part, said Meyrav who noted that inspiration for the Israeli birding competition originates from a birding race in New Jersey. The team to raise the most funds for this years initiative was the South African team, the Birding Ecotours Youth Africa Birders, who won both the the Guardians of the Flyway Award as well as the Knights of the Flyway Award for their work to promote the Israeli birding competition back in Capetown. For the second consecutive year, the Zeiss Arctic Redpolls of Finland, were the winning Champions of the Flyway. The Finnish team was able to document 181 different species of birds. Meyrav explained that the teams came a week before to scout the desert across southern Israel and to take part in the Eilat Birds Festival. Thats how you win a bird race you need to prepare and get to know the playing field beforehand, he said. We are proud to be able to work together on an international level to protect birds that share the East Mediterranean flyway through this amazing initiative. Many of the birds that pass through Israel and then fly on to Turkey, are often hunted and killed, explained Meyrav. This kind of cooperation will help educate people about keeping migrating birds safe. BirdLife International, which SPNI partners with to organize Champions of the Flyway, is the worlds largest nature conservation group with 120 BirdLife partners. The global partnership of conservation organizations aims to conserve birds, their habitats and global biodiversity. Against an empty white wall in a nondescript Jerusalem law office hangs an impressionist work of art that encapsulates 80 years of tragedy, conflict, mystery and redemption. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Max Liebermann's Basket Weavers is set to return to the American heirs of its original Jewish owner after it was confiscated by the Nazis, jockeyed by an unscrupulous German art trader, and ultimately purchased by an Israeli Holocaust survivor unaware of its murky past. Following an emotional negotiation, the valuable canvas is now being sent to the United States in what the attorney who brokered the deal called a fitting conclusion to a saga that pitted two Holocaust survivors against one anotherand exposed one of the lingering wounds of the German campaign to annihilate Europe's Jews and steal their belongings. Max Liebermann's Basket Weavers painting (Photo: AP) Meir Heller, the Jerusalem lawyer whose Israeli client insists on maintaining his anonymity, said both were relieved to have finally closed this historic circle. "This was not a legal case that I wanted to win because it would not be a victory for either of the sides or for the interests of the Jewish people," he said. "I'm glad that we have come to an agreement with all the emotions and all the baggage involved." Washington-based attorney Peter Toren said his 91-year-old father David was eager to receive the painting but called it "at best bittersweet" since he has gone blind and would not be able to enjoy its beauty. "He's of mixed emotions because he still harbors, understandably, a lot of resentment and anger toward the Germans," he said. "A painting certainly can't make up for that." The tale began in 1939, when the wealthy Jewish industrialist and art collector David Friedmann was forced to flee and the Nazis pillaged the vast collection he left behind. Many of the works ended up in the hands of Hildebrand Gurlitt, a notorious German art dealer who traded in what the Nazis called "degenerate art"works deemed inferior because they were un-German, Jewish or Communist or, as is the case with impressionist and other modernist works, did not employ traditionally realistic formsbut were pleased to sell to help fund their war machine. Much of Gurlitt's collection remained unseen for decades and experts feared they had been lost or destroyed. But in a shocking discovery, a vast horde resurfaced in 2012 when German authorities raided a Munich apartment belonging to his son Cornelius while investigating him for tax evasion. Paintings by artists including Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Henri Matisse were discovered. Cornelius Gurlitt said he had inherited much of the art from his father. The reclusive Cornelius Gurlitt kept more than 1,200 works in his Munich apartment and 250 more in Salzburg, Austria. The discovery brought renewed attention to the many unresolved cases of looted art that was never returned to original Jewish owners or their descendants. "When there is a plan for genocide then it is OK to steal and pillage. There was a complete disregard for any individual rights," said Yehudit Shendar, a retired deputy director of the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem and an expert on the Gurlitt art cache. "The whole issue of the theft of art is directly related to that fact that its owners were destined for destruction." She said the nearly 1,500 Gurlitt items, valued at 1.3 billion euros ($1.39 billion), represented only a fraction of the looted art. Cornelius Gurlitt died in 2014 at age 81, designating Switzerland's Kunstmuseum Bern as his sole heir. As in many restitution cases, though, the heirs' demands for the return of looted art led to conflicts with the current owners. Germany even created a special body, known as the Limbach Commission, to mediate ownership disputes. Because of this complex process of determining ownership, and because so few direct descendants of victims remain to claim their property, only five pieces of the Gurlitt cache have thus far been returned to the descendants of their Jewish owners. One of those was Liebermann's Two Riders on the Beach, which went to Friedmann's great nephewDavid Toren of New York City, who along with his brother were the only family members to survive the Holocaust. He later sold the painting for $2.5 million. The recovery led Toren to seek out another Liebermann painting he recalled featuring five Dutch looking boys weaving baskets out of straw. The sleuthing led him to believe that Basket Weavers had made its way to Israel and he made a public plea to have it returned. Word reached an Israeli man who had resisted the Nazis during World War II and had donated generously to fellow survivors since then. To his horror, the man learned that the painting he had purchased at a Berlin auction in 2000 for 130,000 euros ($139,000) was the one Nazis looted from Friedmann. That's when the Israeli man approached Heller about returning the painting to its rightful owners. "This caused him great turmoil," Heller said. "It retroactively sullied the artwork. He couldn't even look at it anymore." The case hit a surprising hitch last year when the Israeli contacted Peter Toren, and was deeply offended by insinuations that he had in fact known of the picture's origins. Heller said his client refused to return the painting until he received an apology. A compromise was reached: An apology would be made, Heller's client would be compensated and the proceeds would be donated to aid needy survivors. Peter Toren said he is currently focused on suing the German government for the return of 52 additional paintings he says were looted, based on a detailed inventory he acquired that was compiled by a Nazi art expert in 1942. In the meantime, he says he is looking forward to seeing the Liebermann painting hanging once again on his family's walls. "Having something tangible that when you look at it and think about it once being in the possession of my family and the history of itit is very special," he said. President Donald Trump said Friday he has developed an "outstanding" relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping after meeting with the leader, who Trump has previously criticized as a menace to the United States. The widely anticipated meeting of the leaders of the world's two largest economies was largely overshadowed by the US missile strikes at Syria. Those strikes added weight to Trump's threat last week to act unilaterally against North Korea's weapons program. Trump said in a brief appearance before reporters that he and Xi made "tremendous progress" in their first face-to-face talks and that he believe "lots of very potentially bad problems will be going away." Israeli company ImageSat International released Friday high-resolution satellite images revealing the results of the American attack last night on the Syrian air force base. The pictures provide a before and after to the points where the US Tomahawks fell. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Syrian Chief of Staff visits attacked Air base X A source in the Syrian army revealed to the AFP news agency that the Syrian army had received a warning about the American attack a few hours before it was carried out. "We learned that the Americans were about to attack and we took precautionary measures in several military compounds, including the base that was attacked, and we transferred several aircrafts to other locations." Satellite photos (Photo: ISI) This source failed to mention who warned the Syrian government. Thus far, it was only known that the US had informed Russia and some of its allies, including Israel, of its intention to attack. Meanwhile, Hezbollah responded for the first time to the American attack on Syria, its biggest ally, and said that US President Donald Trump's move was a foolish step that would only lead to great danger and tension in the Middle East, which serves Israel's interests. LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by a former Nebraska State Patrol trooper who alleged the agencys commander torpedoed his chances for advancement. The Lincoln Journal Star (http://bit.ly/2nXfcj3 ) reports the lawsuit was filed by Todd Steckelberg, who was a trooper for more than 25 years before he retired last year. The suit alleged that Col. Brad Rice created a hostile work environment and passed Steckelberg over for a job to protect the governor because he feared Steckelberg might run his mouth. Steckelberg also alleged retaliation for reporting policy violations and accused Rice and others of infringing on his religious freedoms by requiring that he do a ride along with a State Patrol chaplain. U.S. District Judge John Gerrard said the allegations werent supported by facts. The plaintiffs unsubstantiated beliefs are no substitute for facts supporting his claim, the judge wrote when dismissing the lawsuit late last month. And more fundamentally, the plaintiff has still not alleged anything regarding the chaplains activities, particularly any religious proselytizing. Gerrard said he also couldnt find any legal basis to conclude that being asked to ride in a car with a chaplain would qualify as a constitutional violation. The lawsuit was originally filed in Lancaster County District Court and later moved to U.S. District Court in Lincoln. It stemmed from Steckelbergs time in ONeill when Rice was captain of Troop B, which covers north-central and northeast Nebraska. LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts says he does not understand why a legislative committee working on the next two-year budget would cut the number of additional corrections officers he requested in half. Ricketts said Wednesday he was greatly disturbed by the Appropriations Committees decision not to fund all 48 new officer positions. He says lawmakers have spent the past year asking him what the corrections department needs and then chose not to create the positions. The corrections department has struggled to fill open positions and had nearly 150 officer vacancies as of March 31. Ricketts says he plans to continue advocating for more guards. Creating 48 new positions would cost about $11 million over two years. The request comes as Nebraska faces a projected $288 million two-year revenue shortfall. LINCOLN, Neb. Nebraska judges will get a 2.5 percent pay raise over a two-year period if a bill advanced by lawmakers becomes law. Senators gave the measure first-round approval on Wednesday with a 31-0 vote, amid concerns about retaining quality jurists. Members of the Nebraska Supreme Court would see their salaries increase to roughly $176,300 a year by July 1, 2019. Their current salaries are about $171,975. Members of the Nebraska Court of Appeals, district courts, juvenile courts, workers compensation courts and county courts will also get raises because their salaries are tied to what Nebraska Supreme Court justices make. Supporters say judges could make far more money as private attorneys, but they want to serve the public. Two additional votes are required before the proposal goes to Gov. Pete Ricketts. The first weekend of the month has come. Citizen Airmen wake up early Saturday morning, put on their uniforms, leave their loved ones and report here for the monthly Unit Training Assembly. They arrive in their offices and often head to breakfast as a team. Sometimes thoughts of home creep in and many may begin to miss their families. Time away from home is not always easy for 910th Airlift Wing Citizen Airmen, but there is a team at the YARS Community Activities Center (CAC) here which works tirelessly to provide a measure of comfort and a small touch of home. We try to make every meal feel like a special event, said Nancy Rubino, Chief of the 910th Force Support Squadron (FSS) Sustainment Services Flight (SSF). Were here to provide a certain quality of life. We want to be your home away from home. This teams selfless work has garnered national recognition from Air Force Reserve Command (AFRC). The team, led by CAC Manager Dale Novello, won the 2016 AFRC Award for Food Operations Program of the Year. The CAC team was recognized for this achievement during a 910th FSS commanders call held at the facility here, April 2, 2017. Rubino described what their team did to achieve the award. Build a team and people that are passionate about food, said Rubino. Service has to be in you, along with a good attitude in public service. Love what you do, and do what you love. This simple culture of caring snowballed into a year of amazing accomplishments such as a 26.5 percent increase in revenue, a six percent increase in the amount of meals served, and hosting more than 30 social events at the CAC. Creativity, passion and having fun have been the keys to our improvement, said Novello. The team has been able to right the ship and change the whole culture. Word of mouth has caught on and has resulted in increased dining and increased revenue. The team received an email from AFRC telling them about their nationally recognized work and what is coming next. We wish our nominees all the best as they compete against the Best of the Best from every MAJCOM (Major Command) throughout our great Air Force, wrote Col. Anne B. Gunter, AFRC Director of Manpower, Personnel and Services. Rubino and the team have received this national recognition, but vow not to become complacent. Were always looking for opportunities, said Rubino. The award is nice, but we must continue to look to improve. Creating an experience and memories for service members every month is our main goal. Civilian bosss deploy from Luke More than 60 local civilian employers of citizen airmen from the 944th Fighter Wing visited experienced a deployment scenario for Bosses Day 2017 here April 1. Bosses Day is designed to provide civilian employers insight into a day in the life of a reservist. This year, bosses experienced first-hand what a reservist would go through preparing to deploy overseas and the necessary preparations involved before-hand. The guest employers arrived early and were greeted by Col. Kurt Gallegos, 944th FW commander, who welcomed them with opening remarks and a mission brief. To deliver even more authenticity, the group received duffle bags filled with standard military equipment needed down range for them to inventory. Afterward, the group was given a simulated intelligence brief of the pre-determined overseas location and hazards their Airman would encounter during their deployment. "The entire day was well organized, very interesting, and informative," said Don Majors, Discount Tire senior vice president of product marketing and development and 69th Fighter Squadron honorary commander. "If only a larger swath of Americans could see first-hand the dedication and commitment that our men and women in the military put forth for our country." Stations were set-up with key personnel from finance, legal, and the Chaplin's office to give presentations service members would experience during the deployment process. The bosses were then loaded onto a KC-135, flown by the 452nd Air Mobility Wing, March Air Force Base, California, to observe an air refueling mission. The group also visited different displays from the various sections within the 944 FW allowing the bosses an opportunity to ask questions about the different unit. Lunch was prepared by the 944th Force Support Squadron in their field kitchen to round out their deployment experience. "The opportunity to walk through the deployment process, talk with a fighter pilot and some of the medical staff, get up close to the jets that fly over my school every day, then to experience the flight on the cargo plane and the mid-air refueling were all truly amazing experiences," said Terri Carter, Dysart High School chemistry teacher. To end the day, the participants gathered for closing comments and presentations of Employer Support Guard and Reserve Patriot Awards. "My boss was not expecting the award from ESGR with the wing commander at the end of the day," said Master Sgt. Thomas Kiser, 944th Civil Engineer Squadron heavy equipment NCO-in-charge and McLane Sunwest Inc., driver. "He has been very understanding of my military obligation and now has a better understanding of my role as a reservist. He is also the first boss I have invited to a reserve related function." The Patriot Award, given by the ESGR, reflects the efforts made by civilian employers to support Reserve members through a wide range of actions including flexible schedules, time off prior to and after deployment, caring for families and granting leaves of absence if needed. "I nominated my boss for this event because of his unwavering support and I knew that this was something he would enjoy," said Capt. Breck Smith, 944th Aeromedical Staging Squadron nurse and orthopedic certified registered nurse at Honorhealth Shea Medical Center Total Joint Center. "He has expressed interest in better understanding what I do in the Air Force and this gave him the prime opportunity to do so. He absolutely enjoyed the event and said that he had an "awesome time." The objective of the day was to give employers a better understanding of what their Air Force Reserve employees do when they are away from the office serving their military commitment Gallegos explained to the bosses. "Balancing family, a civilian and a military career is not easy. The support given by a civilian employer is invaluable, if it wasn't for you all, we could not do our job," said Gallegos. "I truly believe we accomplished that goal here today." Real estate agents and other parties involved in property transactions will be required to report suspicious clients under anti-money laundering rules the federal government is planning to extend to the property industry, said the Real Estate Institute of Australia (REIA). Jock Kreitals, CEO of REIA, said the lobby group was trying to ensure that the rules would be implemented in a way that would minimise regulatory burdens. Our task is to work out something that is not truly onerous, Kreitals told the Australian Financial Review. We are aware of the recommendations and aware that in time they will be imposed on Australia. We are working with the government on something sensible. Australia has yet to comply with its international commitments to apply strict anti-money laundering rules to lawyers, real estate agents, accountants, and tax planners involved in the property industry, according to Transparency International (TI), a Berlin-based non-government organisation. If implemented, property lawyers and real estate agents would have to instruct their clients to reveal who was really buying the properties purchased via shell companies. In a recent report, entitled Doors Wide Open: Corruption and Real Estate in Four Key Markets, TI said the governments of Australia, Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom needed to close glaring loopholes to prevent corrupt elites from laundering the proceeds of grand corruption in their local real estate markets. Not surprisingly, Chinese investors have been identified as major players in these scams. There is clear evidence that such investment in Australian property is also an easy and convenient way to hide hundreds of millions of dollars from criminal investigators, tax authorities or others tracking criminal behaviour and the proceeds of crime, the report said. In Australia, 70 per cent of Chinese buyers pay in cash and they represent the largest proportion of foreign purchases in the country. The Australian government promised during an anti-corruption summit in London last year that it would tighten its anti-money laundering rules. However, Transparency International thinks the government has been slow to deliver on its promises. AUSTRAC, the money laundering watchdog, investigated more than $3bn in suspicious transfers by Chinese investors in 2016, including about $1bn in property transactions. Related stories: Tougher penalties for agents and developers the next step in foreign investment crackdown Are foreign investors really to blame for Sydneys house prices? Sydney real estate is cheap by international standards and the Australian property market is not experiencing a bubble, said a senior executive at Knight Frank, one of the worlds largest residential and commercial property consultancies. Within a global marketplace Sydney does look cheap, theres no doubt about that, Lord Andrew Hay, global head of residential at Knight Frank, told the Domain Group. And I dont think you are heading for a crash. Lord Hay was in Sydney on Wednesday for an event to promote the 11th edition of Knight Franks Wealth Report. The report provides statistics, analysis, and predictions about the worlds high net worth (HNW) and ultra-high net worth (UHNW) individuals. He told Fairfax Media that the worlds one percent are increasingly drawn to Sydney and Melbourne, and that London-headquartered Knight Frank was beefing up its presence in Australia as a result. Sydney and Melbourne didnt really feature in the global desirability rankings 10 years ago, but now they absolutely do, Lord Hay said. Sydney is in 11th position and Melbourne is in 20th position in terms of most desirable cities for HNWs to live and invest in. Australias growing prominence can be partially attributed to the higher cost of buying property in other global cities. According to the Wealth Report, $1.3m can buy 17sq m in Monaco, or 26sq m in New York City. However, the same amount of money can buy 59sq m in Sydney and 110sq m in Melbourne. Locally, Sydney property may feel expensive now, but compared with other global markets its mid-range, Lord Hay said. Its still, in a global context, quite affordable. The global elite are also attracted to Australia due to its perceived stability and safety. With insecurity a growing issue in so many parts of the world, Australia is viewed as a secure haven where the wealthy can reside and park their wealth. HNW and UHNW individuals want to settle in stable countries that boast world-class educational institutions, mature financial markets, well-developed regulatory systems, as well as transparent government. Australia clearly fits this description. Related stories: Economy, interest rates point to continued strength for Australian real estate Foreign elites are parking illicit cash in Aussie real estate Dobra, k. Szczecina 900 m2 40 miejsc parkingowych Atut: Dodatkowe dochody z paczkomatow InPostu, a juz niedugo i z myjni samoobsugowej. Tradycyjny zakup nieruchomosci, mozliwosc wykupienia uzytkowania wieczystego. Maiduguri: Boko Haram jihadists have torched a military base in northeast Nigeria, a day after the group killed seven people in a separate raid, residents said. Jihadists believed to be loyal to a Boko Haram faction that is recognised by the Islamic State group on Thursday attacked the base in Wajirko village, 150 kilometres (90 miles) from Maiduguri, capital of Borno state, forcing the soldiers to flee. "The gunmen arrived in pickups and engaged soldiers in the base just outside the village in a heavy shootout," Wajirko resident Bukar Maduye told AFP. "The soldiers were outgunned and forced to withdraw from the base and allowed the gunmen, who were from Mamman Nur faction, to take over the base which they looted and set on fire," he said, adding that villagers were not attacked. The assailants were believed to be loyal to the faction headed by Abu Musab Al-Barnawi, the son of Boko Haram founder Mohammed Yusuf. Barnawi was appointed last year by the Islamic State group to replace leader Abubakar Shekau. But Barnawi`s right-hand man Mamman Nur, the alleged mastermind of a 2011 bombing of a UN building in Nigeria`s capital Abuja, is believed by many to be the real leader. A vigilante assisting the military in its fight against Boko Haram confirmed the incident, adding that the soldiers had moved to a military base 40 kilometres away (25 miles). "There were no reports of casualties from either side but the (military) base was completely burnt by the Boko Haram terrorists and the soldiers fled," Mustapha Karimbe said. In a separate attack on Wednesday scores of Boko Haram fighters rode on motorcycles into Abbati, a farming community outside Maiduguri, where they killed seven men and stole 360 livestock. "They slaughtered the two men they had forced to lead them to the community and shot dead the five owners of the cattle herds who had confronted them with bows and arrows," said vigilante Babakura Kolo. Barnawi and Mamman Nur have previously promised residents in areas under their control they would not be harmed as long as they did not cooperate with Nigerian troops fighting Boko Haram. But in recent weeks the Islamist fighters have intensified raids in areas near Lake Chad, stealing food from residents. They have also killed several civilians they accused of cooperating with the military. Beijing: US President Donald Trump accepted his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping`s invitation to visit China, the official Xinhua news agency said on Friday, citing officials. Xi, on a two-day visit to Trump`s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, the first meeting between the two presidents, also urged cooperation with the United States on investment, infrastructure and energy, Xinhua said. Johannesburg: Thousands of South Africans took to the streets across the country on Friday to protest against President Jacob Zuma and demanding his resignation. The most populous demonstration took place in the capital, Pretoria, where the civic collective "Save South Africa" organised a march from the treasury to the presidential seat of the Union Buildings, Efe news reported. In Johannesburg, the Democratic Alliance main opposition party called its supporters to gather in a downtown square to protest against Jacob Zuma. Cape Town, Durban and other cities also experienced similar protests. Friday`s mass protests came a week after the sacking of former Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, who triggered a tide of reactions against Zuma and led the credit rating agency Standard and Poor`s to downgrade South Africa`s rating to junk status. Gordhan, a person of Indian origin, has become a symbol of the fight against corruption for refusing to approve several projects that would allegedly benefit businessmen close to Zuma. Gordhan`s sacking provoked a deep fracture in the governmental alliance led by Zuma`s African National Congress, as its partners, the Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions, have also called for the president`s departure. Meanwhile, the opposition has redoubled its efforts to overthrow Zuma, and filed a no-confidence motion against the country`s president to be debated by members of parliament on April 18. Zuma`s ruling party, the African National Congress, has an absolute majority in parliament, but the opposition expects many of the ruling MPs to break the party discipline and vote conscientiously. New York: In his first public appearance since being fired, India-born former top federal prosecutor Preet Bharara took swipes at President Donald Trump, saying "you don't drain a swamp with a slogan" and poked fun at his fixation on crowd sizes. During an hour-long speech at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art here, Bharara used wit as well as brutal criticism as he offered his thoughts about the Trump administration and reflected on his 7.5 year journey as the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Bharara, who was fired by the Trump administration last month, used the President's popular campaign slogan to "drain the swamp" to offer a brutal criticism of the new administration and its way of working. "There is a swamp, a lot of the system is rigged and lots of your fellow Americans have been forgotten and have been left behind. Those are not alternative facts. That is not fake news," the 48-year-old said to a packed hall. "But I would respectfully submit you don't drain a swamp with a slogan. You don't drain it by replacing one set of partisans with another. You don't replace muck with muck. To drain a swamp you need an Army Corps of Engineers, experts schooled in service and serious purpose, not do-nothing, say-anything neophyte opportunists who know a lot about how to bully and bluster but not so much about truth, justice and fairness." "Draining a swamp takes genuine commitment to justice and fairness and not attention to what benefits one group over another or divides one group against another," he said. Bharara began 'The John Jay Iselin Memorial Lecture' yesterday by taking a dig at Trump's fixation with crowd sizes, saying the audience for his own event was much bigger than the one that showed up for former President Barack Obama. "This actually seems like a very great and welcoming crowd. This is like the largest sell-out crowd of my career," Bharara said, adding that the last time he was in the Cooper Union hall was about seven years ago when Obama was there to give a speech. "I just want to say one thing for the record in front of everyone about crowd size," Bharara said amid huge round of applause and laughter. "I don't care what the picture shows. My crowd is a lot bigger than Obama's crowd, much bigger than Obama's crowd. From where I stand here, it looks to be about 1-1.5 million people. It's a really huge crowd. Look that's the information I was given," he said. He was referring to Trump's constant bragging of how the size of the crowd at his inauguration was much bigger than that at the time of Obama's swearing-in ceremony in 2009. Bharara acknowledged the presence of some of his former colleagues, including some from his press office who he said "were the only people who stood between me and the dishonest media," in another swipe at Trump. "That's called tongue and cheek," Bharara said. He also thanked New York University's School of Law for giving him a job as the distinguished scholar in residence. "My father-in-law was really happy to hear that I was going to have a job," he said. During the lecture, Bharara reflected on his time as Manhattan's top federal prosecutor and his office's accomplishments in rooting out corruption and fighting terrorism and insider trading cases. He said he has no complaints and remorse and his term as US Attorney will be the "greatest professional honour of my life." Even when Bharara was in office, he repeatedly dismissed speculation that he will eventually run for public office and reiterated that he will not enter politics. "I don't have any plans to enter politics just like I had no plans to join the circus. I mean no offense to the circus," he said to laughter from the audience. Bharara called on American citizens to unite and continue the fight against injustice, saying active citizenship matters and is "desperately needed now more than ever, individually and collectively." "In this time of antagonism and polarisation, in this time of head-strong faith that your side is always right and the other side is always wrong," Bharara cited the example of processes in a court of law where both sides have the right to present arguments and to challenge arguments. He said a court "let's both sides do so without fear of being shouted down or shut down." In a statement released on Thursday, the Japanese carmaker announced that it will be recalling 23,157 units of its premium sedan, the Corolla Altis, soon over airbag issues. The airbags were supplied by another Japanese firm, Takata Corp. However, only the cars manufactured between January 2010 and December 2012 will be affected in this recall. Last year, some Takata airbags exploded in cars abruptly, leading to the death of 16 people in different instances worldwide. As per claimed reports, Takata airbags can explode in the event of prolonged exposure to heat. Many global carmakers who had equipped their cars with these airbags are facing the brunt of a recall. It is one of the most historic recalls in the automotive sector, with over 100 million vehicles recalled across the globe. The recall is being done in phases and the massive cost incurring has forced the airbag maker to look for a sponsor. Toyota had recently launched the Corolla Altis facelift on March 15, 2017. It gets Bi-Beam LED projector headlamps, LED DRLs, reworked grille and a sporty 16-inch alloy wheels. The interior features a newly designed instrument panel with soft-touch plastics on the dashboard and an updated 7.0-inch infotainment system. Moreover, safety is increased in the new model with the addition of reverse-linked ORVMs and seven airbags. It also got a new shade, Phantom Brown. Among the cars in its Indian portfolio, Toyota currently has the Etios Liva hatch, Platinum Etios sedan, Etios Cross, Corolla Altis sedan, Innova Crysta MPV, Fortuner SUV, Camry premium sedan, Prius hybrid sedan, Land Cruiser Prado SUV and the Land Cruiser SUV. Source: CarDekho.com Patna: The Supreme Court on Friday ruled that Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's decision to appoint election strategist Prashant Kishore as his advisor, a position with the rank of a cabinet minister, is not wrong. "The Chief Minister might have confidence in him and he might have worked with him. We can't interfere," NDTV quoted Chief Justice JS Khehar as saying. Earlier, a lawyer had objected to the appointment of Kishore as the chief minister's advisor, which holds the status of a cabinet minister. Thirty-nine-year-old Kishor had worked with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the Lok Sabha elections in 2014. He later switched sides and joined hands with Nitish Kumar, who stormed to power for third consecutive time soon after the general elections. Kishor had also worked with the Congress in the recently held assembly elections. However, the results didn't go well in their favour. The party faired badly in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand while it emerged as the single largest party in Punjab, Manipur and Goa. Mumbai: Akshay Kumar, who was named winner of the National Film Award in the Best Actor category on Friday, took to Twitter to express his gratitude and thank the jury for the prestigious honour. Akshay, who has been in the field of acting for over two-decades-and-a-half, bagged the coveted award for his performance in the film Rustom, in which he plays a patriotic Naval Officer. In a video posted on Twitter, Akshay shared his feelings loaded with countless emotions in the simplest way. WATCH the video here: #NationalFilmAwards : Best Actor for Rustom,countless emotions,very hard to express my gratitude right now but still tried,a big THANK YOU pic.twitter.com/Wo7mfi6dI8 Akshay Kumar (@akshaykumar) 7 April 2017 Heres congratulating our very own Khiladi superstar for winning the award. Chennai: The Income Tax Department officials on Friday raided Tamil Nadu Health Minister C Vijayabasker's residence here and premises of his associates, an official said. The Income Tax sleuths also launched a search at premises of at least one MLA in connection with a tax evasion probe. Raids were also conducted at actor Sarathkumar's house, the senior I-T official told news agency IANS on condition of anonymity. He said: "Trigger for raids at Vijayabasker's residence is the money distributed to voters in RK Nagar constituency where bypoll is slated on April 12. The officer said the Minister was on the Income Tax radar for the past one year in connection with his quarry business. Meanwhile, the Tamil Nadu health minister said that he was unnecessarily being harassed. "I am innocent and have done no wrong. They are unnecessarily harassing me and my children. They have not allowed my child to go to school," he told reporters outside his residence. The minister further alleged: They found nothing, not even Rs 10,000 in my house. The raids are taking place based on O Panneerselvam's complaints. I am innocent." Officials said the searches were being conducted at over 30 locations in the state including against certain medical professionals, pharma firms, and their executives. Over 100 I-T sleuths along with security personnel are part of the operation, they said, adding premises related to officials of a medical university in the state are also being searched. "The searches were being carried out in multiple locations, including Chennai and Pudukottai, following a tip-off about alleged tax evasion," a source told news agency PTI. RK Nagar Assembly bypolls is scheduled to take place on April 12. The seat fell vacant after the death of the then chief minister J Jayalalithaa and it is being viewed as a battle of prestige between the two factions of the AIADMK. Vijayabasker is a prominent loyalist of AIADMK (Amma) faction's candidate TTV Dinakaran. Vijayabasker, who is the first state minister to come under the lens of tax men, is among the key campaigners in the bypoll. Officials said certain leads in the Sekhar Reddy case, the mining baron arrested for alleged financial irregularities post demonetisation, have also prompted the latest action. New Delhi: As many as 4,558 listed companies have complied with markets regulator Sebi's norms of having at least one woman director on board. All listed firms were required to have at least one woman director on their boards from April 1, 2015, as per a Sebi directive, as also under the Companies Act, 2013. These rules are aimed at ensuring gender diversity in boardrooms. As many as 4,192 and 1,721 companies are listed on the BSE and NSE, respectively. Of this, 923 firms have been suspended by the BSE while the count for the NSE is 138. This means 3,269 companies are active on the BSE and 1,583 on the NSE. Of these active companies, 3,028 BSE-listed entities and 1,530-NSE listed ones have appointed a woman director on board as on December 31, 2016, Minister of State for Finance Arjun Ram Meghwal said in a reply to the Lok Sabha. "Sebi has been seeking compliance status with regard to appointment of women directors on the boards of listed companies from the stock exchanges on a regular basis due to which 92.63 per cent and 96.65 per cent of the active companies on the BSE and NSE, respectively, are in compliance with this requirement," he added. About steps taken to ensure compliance with its direction by listed entities, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) announced a four-stage penalty structure wherein fines will increase with passage of time. The listed companies that comply with the norms between April 1 and June 30, 2015, will have to pay Rs 50,000 as fine. Those complying between July 1 and September 30 will need to pay Rs 50,000, besides Rs 1,000 per day till compliance. The listed firms complying on or after October 1, 2015, will have to pay Rs 1.42 lakh, plus Rs 5,000 per day till the date of compliance. For any non-compliance beyond September 30, 2015, the regulator may take any other action against the non-compliant entities, their promoters and/or directors or issue such directions in accordance with law as considered appropriate. New Delhi: Indiabulls Housing Finance on Friday said it has raised Rs 43 crore through an issue of non-convertible debentures (NCDs) as part of its plans to raise Rs 6,000 crore from the market. This is the sixteenth tranche of NCDs of having a face value of Rs 10 lakh each, Indiabulls Housing Finance said in a BSE filing. "We wish to inform that in term of the board authorisation dated October 21, 2016, the company has today, April 7, 2017, allotted its sixteenth tranche of Secured, Redeemable, NCDs of face value Rs 10 lakh each aggregating to Rs 43 crore," the company said. The tenor of the NCDs will be 1,179 days and date of maturity will be June 29, 2020. Mumbai: Private sector Kotak Mahindra Bank (KMB) today announced plans to float an infrastructure debt fund. The Uday Kotak-led bank, which received a board approval recently to raise over Rs 5,000 crore, said it has obtained the RBI nod for floating a subsidiary to manage the fund. "The RBI has issued a certificate of registration to Kotak Infrastructure Debt Fund Ltd, a subsidiary of the bank, permitting it to commence the business of non-banking financial institution as infrastructure debt fund (NBC-IDF)," the lender said in a regulatory filing this evening. It can be noted that the country's fourth largest private sector lender has so far stayed away from lending in the infrastructure segment. The RBI had floated this vehicle in 2013, allowing banks and non-banks to float IDFs for meeting the requirements of the infrastructure sector. According to the RBI, IDFs are envisaged as vehicles for refinancing existing debt of infrastructure firm, thereby creating fresh headroom for banks to lend to fresh projects. At present, three IDFs are in operation, promoted by ICICI Bank, IDFC and Larsen & Toubro. The KMB scrip closed 2.18 percent down at Rs 874.45 on BSE as against a 0.74 percent correction in the benchmark. New Delhi: The CBI on Friday carried out searches at 16 locations in Ahmedabad after booking 12 people, including Axis bank employees, for alleged illegal cash deposits of around Rs 100 crore post demonetisation. The cash deposits of Rs 100.57 crore in purported shell companies' accounts in Axis Bank's Memnagar branch in Ahmedabad were in violation of RBI notifications issued after November 8 last year, when the government, in a sudden move, scrapped Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes. The CBI has booked branch manager Yasha Mehta, operations head Ahbhimanyu Singh Naruka and customers' relations officer Rita Kumar and nine others, including the cash handlers. The agency teams swooped down on 16 locations in Ahmedabad at offices and residences of the accused. There were three groups of cash handlers who were depositing demonetised Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes in the accounts of purported shell companies at the bank, CBI sources said. CBI spokesperson R K Gaur said the notes were allegedly being deposited by a group of people in name lending accounts with the help of the branch manager and other bank officials. The first group was Sanjay Manu Soni, Saurin Soni and Sameer, the second was Himanshu Agarwal, Jaideep, J D Shroff and Afzal and the third was Kiran Parekh and Hitesh Parekh, he said. The bank officials allegedly abused their position by allowing huge amount of unauthorised transactions in accounts of shell companies between November and December last year, he said. Owners of the so-called shell companies as well as those who were used for depositing the huge amount of cash in the said accounts were people of no-means and whose profile was non-commensurate with the quantum of such huge suspicious deposits, the FIR said. The accused were creating such accounts for "lending" purposes for depositing cash on commission basis and converting black money into white, they said, adding huge cash deposits were made in the bank several times during a day by one person. It is alleged that the first group of cash handlers deposited Rs 55.70 crore, the second group deposited Rs 41.62 crore and third group Rs 3.25 crore, they said. "At many such instances, they deposited huge amount of cash by way of submitting multiple deposit slips in one go, with cash value of less than Rs nine lakh, per slip, as per the advise of the bank officials," Gaur said. "It was also alleged that cash deposit slips of approximately Rs 13 crore are not available with the bank," he said. These suspicious deposits were transferred to bullion traders and jewellers by way of RTGS, sources said, adding these bullion traders and jewellers will soon be called for questioning. The RBI guidelines issued after November 8, mandated that cash could have been deposited either by the account holder or their authorised representatives on production of suitable identity document. "...In the above cases, a majority of the pay in slips bear forged signatures of the account holders, which were ignored by bank officials," Gaur said. He said the accused in active connivance with the bank officials had failed to disclose their unaccounted wealth, in accordance with the amnesty schemes declared by the government and has converted black money into white by misusing the banking channels. New Delhi: Sharpening its attack on the Arvind Kejriwal government in Delhi over the findings of Shunglu Committee, the BJP today demanded CBI and CVC probes into "illegal" decisions of the AAP dispensation as flagged by the panel in its report. The party also demanded Lt Governor Anil Baijal set aside all appointments of AAP functionaries in the Delhi government, made without the LG's approval. Addressing a press conference here, BJP leader Meenakshi Lekhi alleged that Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal "looted" public money to benefit AAP functionaries. Lekhi, flanked by Leader of Opposition in Delhi Assembly Vijender Gupta, also charged the Kejriwal government with engaging in "nepotism and corruption". "We demanded CBI and Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) probes into the three-member Shunglu panel report which has flagged AAP-led Delhi government's various illegal decisions including appointment of party functionaries, and allotment of land to Aam Aadmi Party for its office," she said. Gupta alleged that Kejriwal-led Delhi Cabinet violated laid down rules to take several decisions. In its report, the panel has pointed out "gross abuse of power" by the AAP government. Yesterday, BJP demanded demanded the "suspension" of AAP government, which enjoys a massive mandate of 65 out of 70 seats in the Assembly. The committee headed by former CAG V K Shunglu was set up in August, 2016 to ascertain the functioning of the AAP government. Delhi Congress chief Ajay Maken had accessed the report through an RTI in February. New Delhi: The government could consider increasing the import duty on wheat from the present ten percent. Agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh said in the Rajya Sabha during the Question Hour that the government could look at increasing the import duty if required. He was responding to JD(U) member Harivansh's statement that despite the government imposing an import duty, the importers were reportedly finding buying of wheat from abroad cheaper. Singh said that for the first time, import duty had been imposed by the present government. It was removed last year in view of the shortage of wheat, he said, adding that the duty was introduced to upto 10 percent. In his reply tabled in the House, Singh said the "government has raised import duty on wheat from zero to ten percent with effect from 28, March, 2017. Speaking about pulses, the Agriculture Minister said that a bumper crop was expected this time, but it would still be less than the demand. He said that steps had been taken to encourage domestic pusrchase of 'tur dal'. He also said that a committee has submitted a report on the process through which Minimum Support Price (MSP) is determined may be revised. "The ministry is already considering the suggestions of the committee," Singh said. Congress member Jairam Ramesh had asked Singh to review the cost of production of wheat so that the right MSP could be set. He said to increase the income of farmers, measures like providing irrigation and seeds were too important. Often it is seen that various states spend less on farmers than what is earmarked, Ramesh said. To this, Singh said "we are going to release data on how different states have released the money, which was meant for the welfare of the farmers." New Delhi: Private traders imported 44.10 lakh tonnes of wheat during the first eleven months of the last fiscal, the government said today. "The government has not imported wheat since 2008. However, private traders have imported 44.10 lakh tonnes of wheat from April 2016 to February 2017," Minister of State for Agriculture S S Ahluwalia said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha. He said the government has raised import duty on wheat to 10 percent with effect from March 28. "To ensure remunerative prices to farmers, several steps are taken by the government such as fixing Minimum Support price (MSP) every year and procurement of wheat from the farmers," he said. The minister informed that the government had wheat stock of 94.29 lakh tonnes at the beginning of March as against the buffer norm of 64.60 lakh tonnes as on April 1. The wheat stock is likely to improve in the coming months when Rabi crop arrives in markets, Ahluwalia said. India's wheat production is estimated at record 96.64 million tonnes in the 2016-17 crop year (July-June) as against 92.29 million tonnes in 2015-16 on the back of a good monsoon. New Delhi: Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi on Friday said the alleged lynching of a man in Rajasthan by cow vigilantes should not be viewed from a religious point of view as "criminals are just criminals". Speaking in Rajya Sabha, Naqvi said a FIR has been registered against six persons in Alwar case. On Thursday, he had denied the lynching of a man transporting cows in Rajasthan by vigilantes, but today he clarified that he was referring to Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh where no such incident had taken place. The Opposition raised the issue in the Rajya Sabha amid noisy scenes for the second day in a row, seeking an apology from Naqvi for misleading the House on Thursday. Naqvi assured the House that Home Minister Rajnath Singh was likely to make a statement over the incident on Monday. Terming the issue as "sensitive", he said it required to be handled carefully and criminals should not be looked from the prism of religion, "otherwise a wrong message will go out, disturbing peace and harmony. "A criminal, a murderer, a hooligan should not be looked at as a Hindu or a Muslim. A criminal is a criminal," Naqvi told the House. Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad demanded Naqvi's apology for "misleading the House" and also sought action against the self-styled "gau rakshaks" who were harassing and killing people in the name of cow protection. Congress MPs gathered near the Chairman's podium, demanding adjournment. However, Deputy Chairman PJ Kurien, presiding the proceedings, rejected the demand. The lynching incident occurred on Saturday when a group of self-styled cow vigilantes allegedly attacked dairy farmer Pehlu Khan in Behror area of Alwar. Khan was travelling in a truck with two cows and two calves. The attackers accused Khan of illegally smuggling cows for slaughter. However, his family said he had bought the animals for his small dairy business. (With Agency inputs) New Delhi: The Air India on Friday lifted its flight ban on Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad with immediate effect, after rejecting the Shiv Sena MP's booking this morning. The tough-talking MP from Maharashtra's Osmanabad was barred from flying nearly two weeks ago after he assaulted the national carrier's staffer. An airline spokesperson said the ban was revoked after the airline received a letter from the Civil Aviation Ministry to do so. Gaikwad had written a letter to Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju yesterday expressing 'regrets' over the March 23 fracas on Pune-Delhi flight AI 852. He had also virtually given and undertaking that there would be no repeat of the unsavoury incident and sought lifting of the ban. The spokesperson said, "AI is committed to ensuring its employees are not assaulted or misbehaved with. We will take strong action to preserve the dignity of our employees." Aviation sources said that with the AI revoking the ban, private airlines may follow suit. The revocation of the ban came despite two AI union of the cabin crew and pilots deprecating any move to lift the restrictions imposed on air travel of the MP before he tendered an "unconditional apology" for assaulting R Sukumar, a sexagenarian duty manager of the state-run airline. "Unless he tenders an unconditional apology to AI employees, and undertakes in writing to abide by the Chicago and Tokyo Conventions & Rules of the Air and follow all cabin safety and public behaviour norms, we must not let him on board," said the letter from the Air India Cabin Crew Association to its Chairman and Managing Director Ashwani Lohani. It said any decision by either the Ministry of Civil Aviation or Parliament to lift the ban will affect the morale of the employees. "Ravindra Gaikwad is and will continue to be a risk to flight safety and flight operations and to Cabin Crew safety on board, and hence Government must think long and hard about letting him back on," the letter added. The association said it would be a "crying shame" if he is let off "without even a rap on the knuckles", adding "It would also crush the morale of all employees and indeed all fair minded Indians. We do not wish to be flying such a person." The Indian Commercial Pilot's Association, one of the unions of pilots of Air India, also demanded an "unconditional apology" from the Shiva Sena MP, failing which they threatened to not fly him. "ICPA strongly condemns his misconduct and demands an unconditional apology for the same, failing which we will be constrained to direct our members not to operate any flight which has Mr Ravindra Gaikwad on board in the interest of the safety and security of our own people," they wrote in a letter to the Civil Aviation Minister. Gaikwad had yesterday written to Raju voicing "regret" over the incident but stopped short of tendering an apology. "It could have been no one's intention to have let the situation aggravate to the level that it eventually did. While the on-going investigation will bring out the factual sequence of events to fix responsibility, this incident may kindly not be seen as a reason for likely recurrence of such an event in future also," he said in the letter. Agitated Shiv Sena MPs had earlier in the day repeatedly forced the House to adjourn amid unruly scenes and even threatened to disrupt Air India operations in Mumbai and Pune. The party's Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Raut had declared the Sena would boycott the April 10 NDA meeting if the ban was not lifted by then. Gaikwad's letter to the Civil Aviation Minister followed a meeting in Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan's chamber in Parliament yesterday where Shiv Sena MPs were told that if he issued a statement undertaking that he would not engage in any such incident in future, the government could intervene and have the ban revoked. The Osmanabad MP had assaulted the AI employee on March 23 after he landed here on a Pune-Delhi all-economy flight. Complaining about not being able to travel business class, Gaikwad repeatedly hit Sukumar with slippers when the latter went to persuade him to disembark after he refused to alight. Gaikwad later boastfully claimed on TV he had hit the official 25 times with slippers. New Delhi: Setting aside protocol, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday received his Bangladeshi counterpart Sheikh Hasina at an airport here. The PM travelled from his residence at Lok Kalyan Marg to the Indira Gandhi International airport in normal traffic and there were no route restrictions. PM Modi welcomed Hasina with a bouquet as she alighted from the aircraft. Hasina will hold wide-ranging talks with Modi tomorrow during which India is also set to announce a line of credit of USD 500 million to Bangladesh for military supplies. More than 20 agreements ranging from ICT to defence cooperation are expected to be signed during Hasina's four-day India visit but a key agreement on Teesta river waters sharing is unlikely to be inked. "We are expecting to sign over 20 agreements. These are meaningful agreements in ICT, in science and technology, cyber security, defence, development partnership, trade and investment, shipping, bus services, mass media and so on," Sripriya Ranganathan, Joint Secretary (Bangladesh/Myanmar) in the Ministry of External Affairs, had said at a media briefing here on Thursday ahead of the Bangladesh Prime Minister's visit. Ranganathan said that on the oil and gas front "we have embarked on a very, very new and positive approach". "Tangible outcomes which we are looking forward to are finalisation of a long-term arrangement for supply of high-speed diesel to Bangladesh, which we believe will help people in north Bangladesh in particular," she stated. When asked about the possibility of the Teesta river waters agreement being signed, Ranganathan said that it remained "a work in progress". It is reliably learned that when Prime Minister Narendra Modi holds a bilateral summit with Sheikh Hasina on Saturday, no forward movement is expected on the Teesta waters agreement despite public opinion in Bangladesh on the matter. Both India and Bangladesh, as good neighbours, have moved forward on other sectors like power, investment and security but the Teesta waters issue remains a vexed issue. Though an agreement on sharing of the Teesta waters was drafted ahead of then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Bangladesh in 2011, it was withdrawn at the last moment when West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee protested against its provisions. Banerjee's position is that the treaty would render north Bengal dry and affect Indian farmers. She is of the view that with the Teesta Barrage, Bangladesh's largest irrigation project, running, that country does not deserve more water. Now, ahead of Sheikh Hasina's visit, Banerjee on Wednesday said there is no water in the river. The West Bengal Chief Minister, whose cooperation is crucial for any river water agreement with Bangladesh, has maintained that she will prioritise her state's interest while deciding on the proposed water-sharing treaty. She has also claimed the Centre has not consulted her over the issue. "What will I do if there is no water? There is no water in the Teesta," she said on Wednesday. Though Banerjee is scheduled to join a banquet dinner hosted by President Pranab Mukherjee in honour of Sheikh Hasina and a lunch banquet to be hosted by Modi, she will not attend the bilateral summit to be held at Hyderabad House. Chief Ministers of the northeastern states bordering Bangladesh will also be attending the presidential banquet. At the media briefing, Ranganathan said that two Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) will be signed with Bangladesh during Hasina's visit. "One is a framework agreement on defence cooperation and that provides a structure for the defence-based engagement over the next few years," she said. The second MoU, the Joint Secretary said, would allow Bangladesh to buy defence equipment from India. In terms of development cooperation, the MEA officer said that Bangladesh has shown interest in concessional finance from India in areas like infrastructure, education and health. Regarding concerns over rising Islamic radicalism in Bangladesh, Ranganthan said there has been "excellent cooperation" between the governments of India and Bangladesh to contain radicalism, and an agreement on cooperation in cyber security is likely to be signed during Hasina's visit. With energy cooperation showing a lot of positivity, a civil nuclear agreement is also expected to be signed between the two sides. Connectivity is another issue of mutual interest and a MoU is likely to be signed on running passenger and goods trains which will be of benefit to both Bangladesh and the northeast India. Modi and Sheikh Hasina will jointly launch a bus service and a train service between Kolkata and Khulna as also a rail link from Radhikapur in north Bengal. As for bilateral trade, which stands at USD 6.5 billion with Indian exports accounting for around USD 5.8 billion, Ranganathan said that a MoU on setting up border haats is likely to be signed. Following Saturday's bilateral summit, Sheikh Hasina will visit Ajmer Sharif on Sunday and attend a business event on Monday before leaving for Bangladesh. Her visit comes seven years after her last bilateral visit to India in January 2010 and is the first bilateral visit since her new government came to power in January 2014. (With Agency inputs) Jerusalem: Taking bilateral defence cooperation to the next level, Israel has signed a USD 2 billion contract with India to supply advanced missile defence systems. Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) said that it has been awarded its largest defence contract for supplying advanced medium-range surface-to-air missile systems (MRSAM) to India. The Indian and Israeli defence forces already have in operation the MRSAM - the technology is said to have been jointly developed by IAI and India's DRDO in collaboration with Rafael and IAI's Elta division. The new deal will lead to the development and supply of an more advanced air and missile defence system that provides protection against a variety of aerial threats. The system includes an advanced phased-array radar, command and control, mobile launchers and missiles with advanced RF seekers. The Israeli defence major will also supply long-range air and missile defence systems (LRSAM) for India's first indegenious aircraft carrier. "The current contracts represent an enormous expression of confidence by the government of India in IAI's capabilities and advanced technologies, which are being developed with our local partners as part of the Indian government's 'Make in India' policy," IAI Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Joseph Weiss said in a statement. The Indian side is also lauding Israel's willingness to share technology and form joint ventures to manufacture military quipement under the Prime Minster Narendra Modi's 'Make in India' initiative. Importantly, the fact that the deal has come through months before Prime Minister Narendra Modi's historic visit to Israel the first by any Indian PM shows the deep level of understanding, cooperation and trust between the two nations. With PTI inputs New Delhi: Former Bharatiya Janata Party MP Tarun Vijay on Friday stoked a controversy when he appeared to suggest that Indians cannot be called racist as they live with black people hailing from the southern states of the country. Participating in a debate on Al-Jazeera news channel, the BJP leader defended India against the charge of racism following attacks on African students and said: We have blacks, black people around...If we were racist, why would we have the entire south?" His controversial comments triggered a backlash, especially on social media, forcing him to tender an apology on Twitter. "If we were racist, why would we have the entire south? Which is you know... Completely Tamil, you know Kerala, you know Karnataka and Andhra. Why do we live with them? We have blacks, black people all around us," he said on air. Vijay, a former editor of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)-affiliated weekly Panchjanya, claimed that people with African ancestors have been living amicably in Maharashtra and Gujarat. He also said Indians worship black gods and referred to Lord Krishna. The former BJP parliamentarian, however, apologised today for his controversial remarks. He said he had been misinterpreted. Faced with criticism, he said his words were perhaps not enough to convey what he wanted to say. "My words perhaps were not enough to convey this. Feel bad, really feel sorry, My apologies to those who feel I said different than what I meant." Vijay said that he was misinterpreted and tweeted: "And, I never, never, even in a slip, termed south India as black. have patience to watch the show before reacting angrily." "I can die but how can I ridicule my own culture, my own people and my own nation? Think before you misinterpret my badly framed sentence," Vijay said in another tweet. "In many parts of the nation we have different people, in colour and never ever we had any discrimination against them." "Yes, it sounds ridiculous and very bad. I meant, we worship Krishna, which literally means black. And we have never had any racism," Vijay said. "... we were the first to oppose any racism and were in fact victims of racist British." Clarifying that his statement was wrongly interpreted, Vijay said: "I feel the entire statement was this - we have fought racism and we have people with different colour and culture still never had any racism." He added that he meant that our country has people of all colour. Replying to tweets, Vijay said: "I have Tamil, Bengali, Telugu in my family - worked with commitment for Tamil culture, without any politics, collectively with all." Vijay's comments invited a barrage of criticism on social media. Meanwhile, the Congress described Vijay's remark as shocking, while the DMK said it was funny. Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge said the comments showed the saffron party's tendency to discriminate among people of the country. DMK MP TKS Elangovan said Vijay's comments were funny as not all people in the south India are dark-skinned and cited the example of late Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa. His party's spokesperson said his comments offered a glimpse of a divide between north India and south India. Congress leader Khushboo said such remarks by the BJP leader were "shocking" and he should have been more careful. The actress-turned-politician noted that he has worked to promote the Tamil culture. "This is a country which is secular and does not believe in any colour and here is a party which is trying to give one single colour to it. This is absolutely not acceptable," Khushboo said. BJP spokesperson Shaina NC said her party believes in inclusive approach towards every religion, language and culture. "May be he (Vijay) could have worded it differently... For whatever words (used by Vijay), India continues to be a diverse country," she said. (With Agency inputs) New Delhi: The Congress on Friday accused the BJP-led NDA government of having "no principles" after it lifted the flight ban on Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad who had assaulted an Air India staffer. Criticising the government for lifting the ban, Congress spokesperson Kapil Sibal said the government should have taken a stand instead of succumbing to pressure. "This is the difference between UPA government and this government. They stand on 'no principles'. This government should have taken a stand on principles," he told reporters when asked to respond on the issue. Air India lifted its ban on the Shiv Sena MP after he expressed regret for assaulting one of its employees, ending his 14-day humiliating ordeal when other airlines also refused to let him on board in solidarity with the national carrier. In a sudden climbdown after combative Shiv Sena members disrupted Lok Sabha proceedings, the tough-talking MP from Maharashtra's Osmanabad, had written a letter to Union Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju yesterday expressing "regret" over the "unfortunate incident". Shiv Sena MPs, including a Union Minister, had yesterday 'gheraoed' Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju in Lok Sabha after he refused to lift the ban on Gaikwad. New Delhi: The Delhi Police on Friday were taken aback when they learnt from the media that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had gone to the airport to receive Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, without keeping them in the loop. Joint Commissioner of Police Dependra Pathak said that senior officers learnt through the media about Prime Minister Modi travelling from his Lok Kalyan Marg official residence to Delhi`s Palam Air Force station in normal traffic and with no route restrictions in place. The Delhi Police is responsible for the security of VVIP movements in the national capital. "Generally, we are informed about any VVIP movement in advance and accordingly route restrictions are put in place for security purpose. But, we were not informed about Prime Minister`s visit to the airport today (Friday)," Pathak told IANS. At the airport, the Prime Minister welcomed Hasina, who is on four-day visit to India from Friday, with a bouquet as she alighted from the aircraft. Both the leaders are expected to ink over 20 agreements ranging from ICT to defence cooperation during the visit. New Delhi: The Legislative assembly of Ontario has passed a motion extending the official recognition to the 1984 riots as Sikh "genocide" in India, which has strongly rejected the move terming it as "misguided". External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Gopal Baglay said India's views have been conveyed to the government and political leadership in Canada. "We have noted the passage of a Private Members' Motion in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario on April 6. We reject this misguided Motion which is based on a limited understanding of India, its constitution, society, ethos, rule of law and the judicial process." "Our views have been conveyed to the government and political leadership in Canada," he said. He was replying to a question regarding passage of a private members' motion in the legislative assembly of Ontario. The motion by Harinder Malhi, a Liberal member of provincial parliament, read "That, in the opinion of this House... Should reaffirm our commitment to the values we cherish - justice, human rights and fairness - and condemn all forms of communal violence, hatred, hostility, prejudice, racism and intolerance in India and anywhere else in the world, including the 1984 Genocide perpetrated against the Sikhs throughout India, and call on all sides to embrace truth, justice and reconciliation." New Delhi: The Indian government on Thursday strongly rejected the motion passed by the legislative assembly of Ontorio in connection with the 1984 anti-Sikh riots case. Earlier today, the Ontario government termed the 1984 Sikh massacre in India as 'genocide'. However, the Indian government strongly rejected the move and termed it as misguided. External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Gopal Baglay confirmed the report and said that Indian government has taken up the matter with the Canadian leadership. "We have noted the passage of a Private Members' Motion in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario on April 6. We reject this misguided Motion which is based on a limited understanding of India, its constitution, society, ethos, rule of law and the judicial process." "Our views have been conveyed to the government and political leadership in Canada," he said. However, the spokesperson did not give further details. He was replying to a question regarding passage of a private members' motion in the legislative assembly of Ontario. The motion by Harinder Malhi, a Liberal member of provincial parliament, read "That, in the opinion of this House... Should reaffirm our commitment to the values we cherish - justice, human rights and fairness - and condemn all forms of communal violence, hatred, hostility, prejudice, racism and intolerance in India and anywhere else in the world, including the 1984 Genocide perpetrated against the Sikhs throughout India, and call on all sides to embrace truth, justice and reconciliation." According to reports, the motion was passed with 34 MPPs voting in favour and just five against. The 1984 anti-Sikh riots occurred in the wake of assassination of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards. While official Indian government reports put the death toll at about 2,800 deaths across India, including 2,100 in Delhi, other independent sources estimate the number of deaths to be around 8,000 including at least 3,000 in Delhi. Rise Broadband Debuts National Alliance Channel Programs for Telecom and Cloud Master Agents & Resellers Rise Broadband, the nation's largest fixed wireless broadband service provider, announces its new Alliance Channel Partner (News - Alert) Programs which recruit and support Master Agents, Broadband Resellers and Aggregators. The programs appeal to all broadband channel partners desiring unique network routes for primary and/or redundancy service. Rise Broadband's high-capacity Ethernet, Internet and Voice-over-Fixed-Wireless services are currently available in 16 states; providing access in rural and suburban regions often unserved or underserved by wireline or cable providers. "Our national Alliance Channel programs will enhance our partners' ability to provide their enterprise customers with dedicated high-bandwidth alternatives regardless of location," said Fred Barnes, Rise Broadband's VP of Enterprise Sales. "Our partners also get the advantage of having a cost effective way to expand market share while better serving current and future customers." By receiving technical expertise, financial incentives, ongoing support and expert follow-through, Master Agents, Resellers and Aggregators can easily add Rise to their service providerportfolio. Rise has recently hired two wireless industry veterans as Alliance Channel Managers - Taryn Cain in Dallas and Jennie Hickinbotham in Denver. Ms. Cain comes to Rise after working with TBI, One Ring and Airband; Ms. Hickinbotham was most recently with MHO Networks. "Many industry partners are looking for alternatives to traditional broadband providers and Rise's nationally recognized fixed wireless capability is an excellent option," said Michael Fair, Founding Partner of MarketRace, an industry-leading channel consultancy. "Rise's Alliance Channel programs appeal to partners on a national basis and Rise is committed to investing in their success." To learn more about Rise Broadband's partner programs, e-mail [email protected]. Also, visit Rise at the Channel Partners Expo on April 10-13, 2017, in Las Vegas in Booth 565. About Rise Broadband Rise Broadband is the largest fixed wireless internet service provider in the US; offering affordable high-speed broadband (internet and phone) services in 16 states. Established in 2005 as JAB Wireless, Inc., Rise serves nearly 200,000 residential and business accounts in rural and suburban areas throughout the Midwest, Rocky Mountain and Southwest regions. The company also offers DISH and DIRECTV service as well as PC Care; a one-stop resource for residential tech assistance. Rise is headquartered in Englewood, CO (metro Denver) with more information available at RiseBroadband.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170406006196/en/ New Delhi: Asserting that India has all the credential required to become a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), External Affairs Minister Sushma Swara, Friday, said that the government was making diplomatic efforts to ensure India's entry into the select club. During question hour in the Rajya Sabha, Swaraj pointed out that four members of UNSC - US, Russia. United Kingdom and France have extended their support to India's bid - and the fifth member China has not publicly opposed it. "I am confident that if not this time, then next time, India will become a permanent member of the Security Council," she said. The minister also expressed hope that the new members of the powerful grouping will have the same rights, including veto power, as enjoyed by the existing members, adding that India wants the same responsibilities, prerogatives as well as obligations as the current permanent members. Swaraj said, "We don't want any discrimination between old and new members. We don't want two classes - that there is a first class and a second class of permanent members. This should make it clear that India wants the same responsibilities, prerogatives and obligations as the current permanent members. During the inter-governmental negotiations on the issue, the US and the UK had opposed extension of veto to new members. France supported the extension while Russia and China did not make any submission on the issue. Islamabad: Amidst ongoing tension between New Delhi and Islamabad, the Pakistan government on Friday said that it is willing to resume talks with India on the issue of terrorism. "India wants to speak of terrorism! We also insist on speaking of terrorism, which forms one of the elements of the comprehensive dialogue process," Foreign Office spokesperson Nafees Zakaria told media while alleging that Kulbhushan Yadav and many other examples are irrefutable proof of India's involvement in Pakistan. Responding to US Ambassador to UN Nikki Haley hinting at US mediation between India and Pakistan on the issue of Kashmir, Zakaria said Pakistan has always welcomed offers of mediation, which has been made by various countries, to resolve the outstanding issue of Jammu and Kashmir dispute between Pakistan and India. Earlier, Haley had said that the Trump Administration will try to be part of efforts to deescalate tensions between India and Pakistan. "It`s absolutely right that this administration is concerned about the relationship between India and Pakistan and very much wants to see how we deescalate any sort of conflict going forward," she told media here on Monday after the United States assumed the presidentship of the United Nations Security Council for the month of April. Ambassador Haley, who is of Indian ancestry, was asked whether Washington would make any effort to get India and Pakistan to engage in peace talks. It was the first comment by a member of the Trump Administration on escalating tensions between Islamabad and New Delhi.Reacting to the offer of mediation, Indian External Affairs Ministry (MEA) had said that the government`s position for bilateral redressal of all issues concerning India and Pakistan in an environment free of terror and violence hasn`t changed yet. "We, of course, expect the international community and organisations to enforce international mechanisms and mandates concerning terrorism emanating from Pakistan which continues to be the single biggest threat to peace and stability in our region and beyond," MEA official spokesperson Gopal Baglay said. New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday issued notices to Gujarat, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan governments seeking a detailed reply on a petition regarding cow vigilantism. Notably, all the above-mentioned states are led by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The apex court issued the notices to the state governments after hearing a plea seeking a ban on cow vigilante groups. A bench comprising Justices Dipak Misra and AM Khanwilkar issued notices to Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh and asked them to file their reply within three weeks. The bench has fixed the matter for hearing on May 3. The SC also issued a notice to Karnataka government led by the Congress on the particular issue. The counsel claimed that the ground-level situation in these states was worrisome as the cow vigilante groups were resorting to violence there. The Supreme Court had on October 21, last year agreed to examine the plea which sought action against cow vigilantes who were allegedly indulging in violence and committing atrocities against Dalits and minorities. The lynching of a Muslim man by cow vigilantes in Alwar in Rajasthan snowballed into a political row on Thursday with Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi saying no such incident, as was being presented, had happened and the Congress questioning his remark. The three men arrested in connection with the brutal attack on 55-year-old Pehlu Khan and others on suspicions they were smuggling cows on Saturday were, meanwhile, remanded to police custody for a day by an Alwar court. Khan succumbed to his injuries on Monday night. New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a Karnataka government plea seeking review of its September 20, 2016 order asking it to release 6,000 cusecs of Cauvery water per day to Tamil Nadu till September 27, saying it has become "infructuous" as several subsequent orders were passed. A bench of Justices Dipak Misra and U U Lalit rejected the review plea and said that it has passed several orders subsequent to the September 20 direction and, hence the present plea deserves to become "extinct". The apex court had on September 20 last year directed the Karnataka government to release 6,000 cusecs of Cauvery water per day to Tamil Nadu till September 27 while raising the quantum fixed by the Supervisory Committee by 3,000 cusecs. Meanwhile, during the brief hearing, senior counsel Shekhar Naphade, appearing for the Tamil Nadu government, raised the issue of severe drinking water crisis in the coastal state and alleged that Karnataka is not fullfilling its obligations. "We are having severe drinking water problem in Tamil Nadu. But Karnataka is not giving that," he said. The apex court had on March 21 this year said that all interim orders of releasing 2000 cusecs of water by Karnataka will continue to be in force till further orders. The court, in its September 20 last year order, had also directed the Centre to constitute the Cauvery Water Management Board (CWMB) as asked by Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal (CWDT) in its award. The apex court had said it will commence on July 11 the final hearing of the appeals filed by Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala against the 2007 award of the Cauvery Water Dispute Tribunal (CWDT) on sharing of water for 15 consecutive workings days. Dhaka [Bangladesh]: Embarking on her four-day state visit to India on Friday, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has said that she expects bilateral relations between the two nations to touch new heights of cooperation, and added that she would renew her efforts for the signing of a deal to share waters of the River Teesta. She said both India and Bangladesh do have issues that need to be resolved, but also share a cultural heritage and common Bangla language between Bangladesh and West Bengal.She recalled the political will shown by the two governments to implement the Land Boundary Agreement (LBA) after more than 40 years. She said,"There are a lot of commonalities (at least with West Bengal). We share our Lalon, Rabindranath, Kazi Nazrul, Jibanananda; there is similarity in our language, we are nourished by the waters of the Padma, Brahmaputra, Teesta and so on. The Sundarbans is our common pride. We don`t have any strife over it. Then, why should there be any contention over the waters of common rivers?" She described herself as being optimistic and having the trust that India would not allow the existing goodwill between the two countries to take a hit in the short as well as the long term.During her visit, the Bangladesh Prime Minister is expected to have one-to-one and delegation-level talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. She will also meet West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee twice and call on President Pranab Mukherjee.She said, "Cooperation between Bangladesh and India has been bolstered manifold. Rail, road, and waterway connectivity has been boosted. Trade, commerce and investment (has been) maximised. People-to-people contact also got momentum and "such mutual cooperation is definitely benefitting our people." "Relations, at a personal or national level, largely depend on give-and-take measures," she added. New Delhi: All India Cabin Crew Association (AICCA) has categorically stated that Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad won't be allowed to board any aircraft till he tenders an unconditional apology to Air India employees. In a letter to Air India, AICCA came out in support of Air India stressing for an unconditional apology by the Shiv Sena MP. The AICCA said Gaikwad is and will continue to be risk to flight safety, thus the government must think hard about letting him back to board aircrafts. AICCA's decision comes after Gaikwad on Thursday tendered an apology to the Lok Sabha for the incident and also voiced "regret" over the "unfortunate incident". He, however, refused to say sorry to the AI officials. Lok Sabha member from Osmanabad in Maharashtra, 57-year-old Gaikwad had abused and assaulted a 60-year-old duty manager of Ait India with slippers over not being able to fly business class despite having boarded an all-economy Pune-New Delhi flight. The Shiv Sena MP, accused of beating up an Air India employee, on Thursday claimed innocence in the Parliament, saying the national carrier staffer misbehaved first. Presenting his side of the story in Lok Sabha, Gaikwad said AI official's rude behaviour was responsible for the unruly incident. While admitting to pushing the Air India employee, the Sena MP said he was ready to apologise to the Parliament if his act caused disrespect to the temple of democracy, but not to the Air India official. The AI official spoke rudely, held my collar, but I remained calm, as humility is in my nature, said Gaikwad. Gaikwad claimed he just pushed an official only after he was pushed around. New Delhi: Former Bharatiya Janata Party MP Tarun Vijay on Friday faced accusations of racism after he appeared to suggest that Indians cannot be called racist as they live with black people hailing from the southern states of the country. Speaking on a TV programme to defend India against the charge of racism following attacks on African students, he said, "We have blacks, black people around" and asked, "If we were racist, why would we have the entire south?" His controversial comments triggered a backlash, especially on social media. However, a look at his past works suggests just the opposite. Tarun Vijay is a familiar face in Tamil Nadu, widely accepted as the Dravidian culture, because of his expression of love for Tamil, Thirukkural, and Thiruvalluvar. Thiruvalluvar is a celebrated Tamil poet and philosopher whose contribution to Tamil literature is known as the Thirukkural, a literature talking about everyday virtues of an individual. Vijay's campaign to spread the Tamil language and culture of Tamilians in the north had earned him prestigious Thirukkural Thuthar (Ambassador of Tamil epic class Thirukkural by Thiruvalluvar) award in 2014. "I shall do all that I can to promote Tamil and the great icons of literature for the unity of north and south," the BJP leader had said after receiving the award. "It is unfortunate that so far the greatest icon of Indian philosophy and universal brotherhood Thiruvalluvar was not introduced in the North...India is not just about Tulsidas and Valmiki unless we include Thiruvalluvar, Subramanian Bharathi, and Andal," Vijay had said. He is also known as the one who brought a statue of Thiruvalluvar from Kanyakumari to the banks of the River Ganga in Haridwar. Talking to The Hindu in June 2016, the leader denied having any political agenda, hidden or otherwise, behind his move of installing Thiruvalluvar's statue in Hardwar and claimed that his love for the Tamil language was genuine. The former editor of RSS's weekly organ 'Panchajanya' had also been felicitated by Tamil literary personalities in Chennai for his efforts. Vijay has also advocated making the biography of Thiruvalluvar a part of the syllabus in schools all over the country. However, his recent comments on Al Jazeera news channel have put the BJP leader in the dock. He said he had been misinterpreted. Attacked for his controversial comments, Vijay apologised and tweeted: "My words perhaps were not enough to convey this. Feel bad, really feel sorry, My apologies to those who feel I said different than what I meant." New Delhi: Trinamool Congress MP Dola Sen on Friday created a ruckus onboard Air India flight from New Delhi to Kolkata. The Rajya Sabha member delayed the flight by 30 minutes after refusing to abide by security protocols, ANI news agency reported. The incident happened after Sen refused to oblige to AI staff's request to shift her senior citizen mother's seat from the emergency exit. The latest episode comes just days after Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad assaulted an officer of the national carrier last month. Air India today revoked its flight ban on Gaikwad with immediate effect, two weeks after he had assaulted an airline staffer onboard a plane. The 56-year-old Osmanabad MP had yesterday written a letter to Minister for Civil Aviation Ashok Gajapathi Raju expressing his "regrets" over the "unfortunate incident" on March 23. "I write to convey my regrets for the unfortunate incident that took place on 23rd March, 2017 in the Air India Flight No. AI-852 seat No.1F," Gaikwad had said in the letter. New Delhi: PM Narendra Modi on Friday spoke to Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti and offered all possible support in dealing with flood situation. "Spoke to J&K CM @MehboobaMufti on the flood situation in the state. Offered all possible support from Centre in dealing with the situation," he tweeted. Meanwhile, water level in river Jhelum and it's tributaries started to recede today after rainfall stopped last night, easing flood fears in Kashmir, officials said. Incessant rain and untimely snowfall in the plains on Thursday led to a flood-like situation in parts of Jammu and Kashmir Valley where many low-lying areas across the Kashmir Valley were inundated while a flood was declared in Srinagar, where the Jhelum River crossed the danger mark.Jammu and Kashmir Valley where many low-lying areas across the Kashmir Valley were inundated while a flood was declared in Srinagar, where the Jhelum River crossed the danger mark. Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti chaired a high-level meeting here to take stock of the situation. The chief minister had asked the divisional administration to gear up to meet any eventuality in view of the inclement weather. Faced with untimely fresh snowfall in the plains and continuous rains during the last three days, the divisional administration on Thursday ordered closure of all schools in the Kashmir Valley till Monday. [April 06, 2017] Magneto Resistive RAM (MRAM) Market - Global Industry Analysis, Trend, Size, Share, and Forecast 2016 - 2024 LONDON, April 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Global Magneto Resistive RAM (MRAM) Market: Overview MRAM or Magneto-resistive random-access memory technology has been under development since the 1990s. MRAM is a non-volatile random access memory technology that utilizes magnetic charges for storing data instead of electric charges as in the case of DRAM (dynamic random access memory) and SRAM (static random access memory) technologies. Unlike DRAM and SRAM technologies, that requires constant flow of electricity to maintain data integrity, MRAM retains data even if power is turned off and requires very less amount of electricity in order to store data bits in it. Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/4547534/ MRAM, by combining the inherent advantages of both DRAM in terms of density and SRAM in term of read and write speed has the potential of becoming a universal memory in the coming years. The global MRAM market is predicted to have tremendous growth opportunity in the coming years as a nonvolatile solid state memory in order to replace other electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM) and flash memory where high write endurance is required. Surge in the demand of flexible and wearable electronics market is the primary factor predicted to boost the demand of MRAM during the forecast period from 2016 to 2024. Currently rapid technological advancements is taking place in the field to flexible and wearable consumer electronics. Flexible magnetic memories forms an integral part of the flexile and wearable consumer electronic devices for storing and processing data. Moreover, the major challenge of fabricating high performing memory chips on soft flexible substrates without reducing the performance is also eliminated by technologically advanced MRAM technology. MRAM outperforms the traditional NAND memory used in wearable and flexible electronics in terms of data retention capacity after power cut off, low power consumption along with increased processing speed. In addition, MRAM has the apability of operating in extreme temperature condition and can resist very high radiation. Thus, MRAM is also predicted to witness huge demand from various aerospace and military applications in the coming years. Global Magneto Resistive RAM (MRAM) Market: Segmentation For the purpose of providing detailed study of the market, the global MRAM market has been segmented on the basis of product type, application and geography. MRAM is available in two different product types including toggle MRAM and second generation MRAM (STT-MRAM). In order to track the market accurately, the third generation MRAM that is predicted to get commercialized by the beginning of 2019, has also been considered within the scope of research. MRAM also finds its application across different product segments such as consumer electronics, robotics, automotive, enterprise storage, aerospace and defense and others. The others segment includes application of MRAM in sensing devices, medical devices and smart meters. Geographically, the market has been segmented into Asia Pacific , North America , Europe , Latin America and Middle-East and Africa (MEA). In terms of revenue and growth, the Asia Pacific region is anticipated to drive the market of MRAM in the coming years due to rapid growth in computationally intensive applications and rising demand for highly scalable memory solutions. Global MRAM market report provides an in-depth study of the current market trend and future forecast during the period from 2016 to 2024 in terms of revenue (USD Million). Global Magneto Resistive RAM (MRAM) Market: Competitive Landscape This report also provides an exhaustive study of the global MRAM market including the key strategies adopted by leading players, market attractiveness analysis by product type, value chain analysis, industry evolution and comparative advantage of MRAM over other memory solutions. Moreover, the penetration rate of MRAM across various industry verticals during the period from 2014 to 2018 is also highlighted in this report. In addition, detailed analysis of the drivers, restraints and opportunities that are predicted to affect the market in the coming years is provided in this report. Some of the major players operating in the global MRAM market includes Everspin Technologies Inc. (U.S), Avalanche Technologies (U.S) and Spin Transfer Technologies (U.S) among others. Global MRAM market is segmented into:- By Product Type Toggle MRAM Second Generation MRAM (STT-MRAM) By Application Consumer Electronics Robotics Automotive Enterprise storage Aerospace and Defense Others By Geography North America Europe Asia Pacific Middle-East and Africa (MEA) Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/4547534/ About Reportbuyer Reportbuyer is a leading industry intelligence solution that provides all market research reports from top publishers http://www.reportbuyer.com For more information: Sarah Smith Research Advisor at Reportbuyer.com Email: [email protected] Tel: +44 208 816 85 48 Website: www.reportbuyer.com To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/magneto-resistive-ram-mram-market---global-industry-analysis-trend-size-share-and-forecast-2016---2024-300436262.html SOURCE ReportBuyer [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Bhopal: Though the campaign for the April 9 Assembly bypolls in Madhya Pradesh remained politically less intense, there has been much heat over EVMs after a VVPAT machine reportedly dispensed slips of only the BJP symbol during a trial. The opposition Congress has pressed for a return to the paper ballot for all elections. It all began with the trial of an EVM at Ater in Bhind district, when some reports suggested that voter-verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) machine dispensed only BJP slips, no matter which button on it was pressed. However, MP's Chief Electoral Officer denied this. The Congress has said it will continue to demand for bringing back ballot papers for elections instead of using the EVMs and exuded confidence of winning the two upcoming Assembly bypolls in MP. In Ater, the by-election is necessitated following the death of Congress leader Satyadev Katare while the Bandhavgarh (ST) seat in Umari district fell vacant as incumbent MLA Gyan Singh was elected to the Lok Sabha in November last year. The principal fight in Ater is between Congress' Hemant Katare, son of Satyadev Katare, and BJP's Arvind Singh Bhadoria, while the combat in Bandhavgarh (ST) seat between Shivnarayan Singh of BJP and Savitri Singh of Congress. The counting of votes will take place on April 13. "We are firm on our decision and will continue to press for reverting back from EVMs to ballot paper system for conducting the polls as demanded by all major political parties except BJP," MP Congress' chief spokesman K K Mishra told PTI. "The fight for replacing EVMs has already been started and now our leaders are raising it at the national level," Mishra said. Notably, Congress General Secretary Digvijaya Singh earlier this week said in the Rajya Sabha that the testing of EVMs for a by-election in MP showed manipulations by which votes could be credited to BJP irrespective of the candidate for whom these have been cast. He demanded that ballot papers be used for these bypolls and other elections henceforth. Mishra said they are confident of winning the Ater bypoll as people have "lot of sympathy for Congress candidate Hemant Katare, following the death of his father." "The people are also fed up of the long list of false promises made by BJP in the run-up to every election and it is very much clear at the ground level that Congress would win the polls comfortably," he claimed. "Despite this if Congress loses in Ater, it will be proved beyond doubt that EVMs have major role in it," he said. However, state BJP chief spokesperson Deepak Vijaywargiya said, "Since Congress is losing in the entire country, their leaders were looking for a scapegoat to hide their ineffectiveness." "Humble EVM is the best answer for it and therefore Congress leadership is blaming it for its poor show," he said. "There is no direction in Congress. Instead of focusing on strengthening itself in the entire country, it is wasting time on issues like EVM and others," he said. He exuded confidence that BJP will win Bandhavgarh and will also snatch Ater from Congress. In the 2013 state polls, Bhadoria lost to Katare from Ater in 2013 by a margin of over 11,400 votes while Gyan Singh defeated Pyarelal Baiga of Congress by over 18,600 ballots. Meanwhile, state Joint Chief Electoral Officer S S Bansal said, "For the first time in Madhya Pradesh, the polling in both Bandhavgarh and Ater constituencies will be held with the help of VVPAT enabled EVM machines." Mumbai: The Maharashtra government planned to develop a cab hailing app in three months for black- and- yellow taxis on the lines of the services provided by private aggregators like Ola and Uber,Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said on Friday. The measure was meant to help the black-and-yellow taxi operators facing stiff competition from the cab hailing services, especially in Mumbai and other major cities. Fandavis disclosed this while responding to a query by Leader of Opposition Dhananjay Munde, Hemant Takle (NCP) and other members in the Legislative Council. Takle said that after app-based cab aggregators came into the picture the business of black-and-yellow taxi drivers had been hit and sought to know if the Government could take some steps to ensure their survival. Munde said that private cab hailing services enabled the users to track locations besides providing easy services, and asked when would the government bring in such an App for black-and-yellow taxis. To this, Fadnavis said, "the government is in the process of developing an electronic platform for black-and- yellow taxis similar to that of cab aggregators. It will provide services similar to those given by cab aggregators. This app will be launched in three months." Kiran Pawaskar (NCP) said cab aggregators survived across the world due to the low costs they charge from customers, cleanliness and manners of their cabs and drivers as well as tracking facility. "On the other hand, black and yellow taxi drivers do not wear uniforms, do not behave properly and often refuse to ferry customers. They do not provide proper service and would hold people to ransom anytime. Will they be asked to adhere to rules ?" he asked. Transport Minister Diwakar Raote said black-and-yellow taxi drivers would themselves have to deal with issues like good manners and cleanliness to boost their business and survive the competition. He said taxi unions could help them in addressing these issues. Raote also said the government was mulling to provide AC services to customers of black and yellow taxi drivers who had taken new cars to bring them at par with hailing services already in the field. New Delhi: Appreciating the Air India`s move to lift the ban on Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad, the party on Friday said all is well that ends well, adding nothing can be acquired without struggle. "As I have said the incident has ended well which means everything is fine now. Everything involves struggle, nothing can be achieved easily," Shiv Sena leader Arvind Sawant told ANI. He further said the party had protested as per the law eventually and got the desired results."We did not threaten anybody, it is all rumours. We talked politely, but when it did not work out we had to put efforts," he said. Air India had earlier in the day announced that it has cancelled Gaikwad`s Delhi-Mumbai round tickets for April 17 and 24. Air India`s move comes a day after protests in Parliament by the Shiv Sena MPs, who threatened to disrupt the airline`s operations in Mumbai unless the ban on Gaikwad was revoked. Gaikwad today said that neither did he book a ticket for April 17 nor for April 24 for any airline as being aired by the media. "It is learnt through media that I have booked the tickets for Air India to travel from Delhi to Mumbai for 17 and 24 April and my defaming is continued. On this connection, I would like to make it clear that I have neither booked a ticket for 17 nor 24th April, 2017 for any airline as being aired by media as the session will be sin-e-die on 13th April 2017," Gaikwad said in a statement. New Delhi: From what appears from Samsung's media invite that it is likely to launch the Galaxy C7 Pro in India on Friday. Nothing concrete can be ascertained from Samsung's press invite, which says "Lean Is the New Mean". However two smartphones are the most speculated ones Galaxy C7 Pro and Galaxy C5 Pro. Galaxy C7 Pro is most widely speculated as today's launch because Galaxy C5 Pro made its debut only last month while the Galaxy C7 Pro was launched in China in January. The Galaxy C7 Pro comes with a 5.7-inch Super AMOLED large display (1920 x 1080). At merely 7-mm thick C7 Pro is equipped with 4GB of RAM and an Octa Core processor of 2.2 GHz. The smartphone not only comes with 64GB of internal storage, but supports microSD card with up to 256GB of memory. Galaxy C7 Pro supports USB Type-C for convenient data transfer. With fast-charging function, the devices 3,300mAh battery can be fully charged in just 102 minutes. Both of Galaxy C7 Pros front and rear cameras are equipped with 16-megapixels and super wide F1.9 aperture lens. Galaxy C7 Pro is available in three colors, including the all-new Navy Blue, Gold and Pink Gold. New Delhi/Mumbai: A day after Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad refused to tender an apology to the 60-year-old Air India staffer, the airline on Friday cancelled his tickets between Mumbai and Delhi booked for later this month. This is the seventh attempt on the part of the Sena MP to book a flight on Air India, which barred him from flying after he assaulted the airline's staffer. Gaikwad is facing a ban from various airlines from flying after he assaulted a 60-year-old Air India official with his footwear on March 23 after his Pune-Delhi flight landed at the Delhi airport. "There was an attempt to book a ticket at 5 am today through our web portal. The reservations were being made for March 17 for travel from Delhi to Mumbai and for 24 March from Mumbai to Delhi," said an airline source. The ticket was being booked under the name 'Ravindra Gaikwad' and we were alerted through our tracker, the source said. The MP has also made an attempt each to book an IndiGo flight and a SpiceJet flight since the flying ban on him by all the domestic carriers was put in place. However, his refusal to apologise to the official made Air India cancel the Shiv Sena MP's Delhi-Mumbai and Mumbai-Delhi tickets for April 17 and 24 respectively. Gaikwad, however, has denied booking any ticket. The MP has claimed that someone was trying to defame him by attempting to book tickets in his name. "I neither booked a ticket for April 17 nor April 24 for any airlines as reported since (Budget) Session is to be adjourned sine die on April 13," Gaikwad said. Here is the copy of Gaikwad's Air India ticket which was cancelled by the airlines: On Thursday, Gaikwad apologised in the Lok Sabha for the assault on an airline staffer but defended himself. Also, Gaikwad's party colleagues in the Lok Sabha demanded the lifting of the flying ban against him and the party threatened to boycott an April 10 National Democratic Alliance meeting in case the matter was not sorted out at the earliest. Unhappy with the government response, Union Minister Anant Geete, of the Shiv Sena, questioned how an attempt to murder charge could be slapped against Gaikwad. Geete and Civil Aviation Minister P Ashok Gajapathi Raju almost came to blows as the latter maintained that flight safety was paramount. Earlier yesterday, Gaikwad also wrote a letter to Raju requesting the flying ban on him be lifted. But the national passenger carrier did not remove the ban but sources in the Civil Aviation Ministry said that they are looking into the matter after Gaikwad's assurance that such incident will not be repeated. Also Read: Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad continues to be risk to flight safety, should tender apology to Air India staff: AICCA An Air India official told news agency IANS that the airline has beefed up security to protect its employees at Mumbai and Pune following an alleged threat by Shiv Sena to disrupt the company's operations if the ban is not revoked. (With Agency inputs) Tawang: Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama arrived here in Arunachal Pradesh on Friday, the high point of a visit which has angered China. Buddhist monks and scores of devotees at the Tawang monastery, the biggest in India and second only to the world`s largest, the Potala Palace in Tibet, received him warmly and with piety. The Nobel peace laureate will stay at the monastery. "He has arrived after a strenuous seven-hour road journey from Dirang. He is in the monastery praying," said the monastery Secretary, Lobsang Khum. Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu accompanied the Tibetan leader, who has lived in self-imposed exile in India since he fled Tibet in 1959. Nestled among snow-covered mountains and perched at a height of 10,000 feet, Tawang is home to Monpa people who follow Tibetan Buddhism. The town was decked up to welcome the 81-year-old. Tawang was decorated with colourful prayer flags, Indian and Tibetan flags as well as flowers. The roads were repainted and the drains cleared. Thousands of people from as far as Ladakh and neighbouring Bhutan holding traditional ceremonial scarves and burning incense queued up on both sides of the road for a glimpse of the Dalai Lama. Security forces kept a vigil in Tawang, about 25 km from the McMahon Line, an imaginary border known as the Line of Actual Control separating the Sino-Indian border. The Dalai Lama was to start his week-long religious visit to Arunachal Pradesh from Tawang on April 4. But bad weather forced him to take to the road as his helicopter couldn`t take off from Assam. The Tawang monastery belongs to the Gelugpa school of Mahayana Buddhism and had a religious connection with Lhasa`s Drepung monastery that continued during the British rule. Beijing refers to this connection to claim Tawang as part of China after invading and taking over Tibet in 1950. The Dalai Lama had stayed in the Tawang monastery for some days before he reached Assam after fleeing his homeland in 1959. The Dalai Lama first arrived in Bomdila, the district headquarters of West Kameng in Arunachal, and delivered religious discourses. He then drove to Dirang valley, about 50 km from Tawang where he consecrated the Thupsung Dhargyeling monastery on Thursday. On Friday, he left Dirang for Tawang by road. This will be the Dalai Lama`s first visit to Arunachal after eight years. His first visit to the state was in 1983 and the last trip was in 2009. China has strongly opposed the Dalai Lama`s visit to Arunachal Pradesh, which Beijing considers a part of Tibet. The Dalai Lama has lived in India since 1959. India is also home to some 100,000 Tibetan exiles. Dirang: Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama on Friday began his winding road journey to Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh -- the high point of his visit that has angered China. The Dalai Lama was to start his week-long religious visit to Arunachal Pradesh from Tawang on April 4. But bad weather forced him to take to the road as his helicopter couldn`t take off from Dibrugarh in Assam. Nestled among the snow-covered mountains and perched at a height of 10,000 feet, Tawang is home to Monpa people who practice Tibetan Buddhism. The town is all set to welcome the Dalai Lama. Tawang has been decorated with colourful prayer flags, besides Indian and Tibetan flags and flowers. The roads have been repainted and the drains cleared. The Nobel peace laureate will stay at Tawang monastery, the largest in India and second only to the world`s largest - the Potala Palace in Tibet. The 81-year-old Dalai Lama`s journey to Tawang will take him over the 13,700 feet Sela Pass. He is likely to touch Tawang after noon. "Hundreds of people are holding traditional ceremonial scarves and burning incense all along the road to see the Dalai Lama and receive his blessings," a government official told IANS Security forces kept a vigil, particularly at Sela Pass, which is wet because of melting snow, muddy and slippery. "All necessary security arrangements have been taken," Arunachal Pradesh police chief Sandeep Goel told IANS. The Dalai Lama first arrived in Bomdila, the district headquarters of West Kameng in Arunachal, and delivered his religious discourses and interacted with people. From there, he drove to Dirang valley, about 50 km from Tawang where he consecrated the Thupsung Dhargyeling monastery on Thursday. Chief Minister Pema Khandu is accompanying the Tibetan leader. The Tawang monastery belongs to the Gelugpa school of Mahayana Buddhism and had a religious connection with Lhasa`s Drepung monastery that continued during the British rule. Beijing refers to this connection to claim Tawang as part of China after invading and taking over Tibet in 1950. The Dalai Lama had stayed in the Tawang monastery for some days before he reached Assam after fleeing his homeland in 1959. Thousands of people as far as from Ladakh and neighbouring Bhutan have descended at Tawang for a glimpse of the Dalai Lama. "We have been preparing for the last two months. Everybody wants to see him, talk to him and get his blessings. The Dalai Lama is our revered leader," said the monastery Secretary, Lobsang Khum. This will be the Dalai Lama`s first visit to Arunachal after eight years. His first visit to this mountainous state was in 1983 and the last trip was in 2009, which coincided with his 50 years since he crossed through Arunachal Pradesh. The Dalai Lama has lived in India in self-imposed exile since 1959. India is also home to some 100,000 Tibetan exiles. New Delhi: Ace comedian Kapil Sharma would never have thought that his name can remain in headlines for any wrong reasons but this year the unexpected did happen. After his ugly fight with fellow actor Sunil Grover onboard a flight, Kapil and his show are running in deep trouble. For past many days, rumours around the fate of 'The Kapil Sharma Show' and how his team is no longer together have been hitting the headlines in a row. However, in order to keep his mind cool, it seems the actor-comedian has taken refuge in rather shooting for his upcoming film 'Firangi'. According to Times Of India.com, Kapil recently celebrated his birthday in Bikaner where the shooting for 'Firangi' was on. He shot at Laxmi Niwas Palace in Bikaner from April 1 to 5 along with other actors in the film. The report states that Kapil also celebrated his birthday on April 2, on the film sets in Bikaner. Quoting a source, the report mentions, He was focusing on the shooting.There were a few from the production team who even tried to crack some jokes on this issue (Sunil-Kapil fight), but Kapil kept a straight face. Kapil's girlfriend Ginni Chatrath was also present with the actor on the sets of 'Firangi' in Bikaner, reportedly. Looks like the king of comedy on television celebrated his birthday in the presence of his ladylove. New Delhi: The most coveted and prestigious National Awards have been announced today and Sonam Kapoor starrer 'Neerja' and Akshay Kumar' 'Rustom' emerged as big winners. The winners of the 64th National Film Awards were announced this morning at the National Media Centre by veteran filmmaker Priyadarshan. Sonam Kapoor's powerful protrayal in 'Neerja' is based on the life of Neerja Bhanot, purser of Pan Am 73 in 1986, who lost her life while saving passengers on board the hijacked flight. Atul Kasbekar, who turned producer with 'Neerja' expressed his gratitude and happiness over the big win. He said, No one could have scripted this. The recognition that Neerja has got from everywhere is genuinely humbling. Ram Madhvani and I were clear that we'd be achingly honest in its making. Deeply grateful that FoxStar backed us with guts, supported our vision and made every effort to make Neerja happen. Special thanks to the Bhanot family for their trust and faith. We don't know why they trusted a first time producer n director but we are so grateful that you did. Vijay Singh, CEO, Fox Star Studios said, "It is a huge honour for Fox Star Studios to have got this incredible recognition from the National Awards picking 'Neerja' as the Best Film ! It's hugely exciting & humbling that we are now the only Studio to have won two National Awards for Best Film (Jolly LLB 1 and now Neerja). This recognition gives us further confidence to back great stories and push the envelope on content. As a Studio we are committed to creating content that not only entertains audiences but also makes us proud of our heritage & culture. 'Neerja' was directed by Ram Madhvani and produced by Atul Kasbekar's company, Bling Unplugged, alongside Vijay Singh's Fox Star Studios. Mumbai: Veteran Bollywood actor Vinod Khanna, who was hospitalised last week due to severe dehydration, has responded positively to treatment and is stable, doctors treating him said on Thursday. The actor was admitted to Sir H.N. Reliance Foundation Hospital on Friday with severe dehydration. He is under the care of our doctors and has responded positively to the treatment and is now stable," the hospital spokesperson said. "His family thanks his well-wishers for the good wishes and requests to respect their privacy," he added. Vinod Khanna's son Rahul told IANS on Tuesday: "Dad was hospitalised on Friday (March 31) for severe dehydration. The situation was quickly brought under control, he's doing much better and the doctors are looking to discharge him soon." Rahul, who is also an actor, added that the family is "touched by all the good wishes pouring in". The actor, who is a sitting Bharatiya Janata Party member of the Lok Sabha from the Gurdaspur constituency in Punjab, was admitted to Sir H.N. Reliance Foundation Hospital and Research Centre in Girgaon, Mumbai. The 70-year-old actor has featured in films like Mere Apne, Insaaf and Amar, Akbar, Anthony. [April 06, 2017] Vermont Department of Libraries Modernizes with Auto-Graphics' Library Management Solutions MONTPELIER, Vt., April 06, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In the summer of 2017, Vermonters will have ready access to library materials from 549 libraries across the State as the Vermont Department of Libraries upgrades Vermonts interlibrary loan system. Auto-Graphics, Inc., a leading provider of library software, was selected to provide a new integrated library system and a resource sharing system, giving library patrons the ability to search across all participating libraries in the state. Tom McMurdo, Collections & Digital Initiatives Librarian, says, The Department of Libraries looks forward to modernizing our resource sharing system and getting more information into the hands of Vermont citizens. Over 50,000 items are circulated through the Department of Libraries current interlibrary loan system each year. In addition to saving libraries time and money, the new systems ease of use will expand this popular service. According to McMurdo, Auto-Graphics software solution provides a seamless, efficient experience for anyone requesting an interlibrary loan or using the Department of Libraries catalog. This will allow us to maximize our resources to better serve the people of Vermont. About Auto-Graphics, Inc. Auto-Graphics is the only publicly-traded library software vendor to provide software solutions alongwith full financial transparency. The companys nearly seven (7) decades of providing solutions to the markets it serves reflects how well Auto-Graphics has listened to their customer base and stayed abreast of new technologies, continuously reinventing their products and services to help libraries of all sizes become more efficient and patron-centric. The Auto-Graphics browser-based Library Management Platform for patrons and staff currently used by more than 11,000 libraries in North America is comprised of VERSO, an integrated public library system (ILS); SHAREit, a resource sharing product providing patron-initiated sharing, circulation-based interlibrary loan (ILL) using NCIP and consortial borrowing solutions; SEARCHit, a federated search and discovery module; SLIMS, a small library information management system, and MONTAGEdc, a digital asset management (DAM) solution. All products are fully compliant with ISO and NISO standards, and are available through the effective cloud-based delivery (SaaS - Software as a Service) model. For more information, please visit www.auto-graphics.com, Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter. Auto-Graphics trades under the stock symbol AIFS. Auto-Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. VERSO, SHAREit, SEARCHit, MONTAGEdc, & SLIMS are trademarks of Auto-Graphics, Inc and part of their AGent Library Platform. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Department of Libraries Media Contact: Cherie Yaeger Phone: 802-828-3266 E-mail: [email protected] Auto-Graphics Media contact: Elizabeth Kelley Auto-Graphics, Inc. (909) 569-1544 [email protected] [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] New Delhi: Retirement fund body EPFO is likely to approve a proposal to hike wage ceiling for coverage under its social security schemes to Rs 25,000 per month from the existing Rs 15,000, as per media reports. The move can bring in 50 lakh more formal sector workers into the social security net of the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) in addition to its existing subscriber base of around 4 crore organised sector workers. The EPFO and ESIC run social security schemes for formal sector workers and are under administrative control of the Labour Ministry. EPFO had increased the wage ceiling to Rs 15,000 per month from Rs 6,500 on September 1, 2014 in view of price rise and pay revisions in the formal sector. The Union Cabinet made it optional for employees earning less than Rs 15,000 per month to contribute towards EPFO schemes. At present, employees are required to contribute 12 percent of their basic wages towards social security schemes run by the EPFO. With PTI Inputs Jaipur: Three persons arrested in connection with the death of a man after he was beaten up by so-called cow vigilantes in Rajasthan's Alwar district were sent to 14-day judicial custody on Friday. Kalu Ram (44) of Ratanpura, Vipin Yadav (19) and Ravindra Yadav (30), both from Behror, were produced in a court here which granted their custody and they were sent to jail, Alwar SP Rahul Prakash told PTI. He said no fresh arrest has been made in the case and that police teams are looking for other accused named in the FIR. The three were on one-day police remand yesterday after they were booked under IPC sections 302 (murder), 143 (unlawful assembly), 308 (culpable homicide), among others. They have identified on the basis of a video footage and are among the prime accused in the case. Last Saturday, Pehlu Khan (55) and four others, including his two sons, were brutally beaten up by so-called cow vigilantes who suspected that they were smuggling cows. As many as 16 people were transporting 36 bovine animals in six pick-up vans. They were on their way to Haryana from Jaipur when they were stopped on Jaipur-Delhi national highway. Khan died on Monday during treatment. New Delhi: The National Human Rights Commission on Thursday issued a notice to the Rajasthan government in connection with the death of a Muslim man who was brutally thrashed up by a group of cow vigilantes in Alwar district of Rajasthan. The rights panel took suo motu cognizance of media reports that on April 1, 2017 in Behror area of Alwar on National Highway-8 in Rajasthan, a group of so called Gau Rakshaks attacked some persons calling them as cattle smugglers, though several media reports claimed that they were dairy farmers carrying cows. The cows had been legally purchased under a receipt and stamp of Jaipur Municipal Corporation, a report claimed. The brutal assault on five men resulted in the death of a man named Pehlu Khan. Shockingly, the Rajasthan Police registered an FIR against the victims of assualt for illegally transporting the cattle. The commission has issued a notice to the chief secretary, Rajasthan calling for a detailed report in the matter along with action taken against the perpetrators. A notice has also been issued to the union home secretary, calling for a response as to what steps have been taken or proposed to be taken by the Centre to deal with such incidents in the country. The response is expected within four weeks. Chennai: Income Tax sleuths today launched simultaneous searches at premises of Tamil Nadu Health Minister C Vijayabaskar and at least one MLA in connection with a tax evasion probe. Officials said the searches were being conducted at over 30 locations in the state including against certain medical professionals, pharma firms and their executives. Over 100 I-T sleuths along with security personnel are part of the operation, they said, adding premises related to officials of a medical university in the state are also being searched. Searches have also been carried out against an MLA, officials said but did not give further details. "The searches were being carried out in multiple locations, including Chennai and Pudukottai, following a tip-off about alleged tax evasion," a source told PTI. Officials said there were certain "inputs" that black money is allegedly being pumped in for the byelection to R K Nagar Assembly bypolls. There were also several complaints of alleged money distribution by AIADMK's Amma faction. The bypolls is scheduled for April 12. The seat fell vacant after the death of?the then chief minister J Jayalalithaa and it is being viewed as a battle of prestige for the two factions of the AIADMK. Vijayabaskar is a prominent loyalist of AIADMK (Amma) faction's candidate TTV Dinakaran. Vijayabaskar, who is the first state minister to come under the lens of tax men, is among the key campaigners in the bypoll. Officials said certain leads in the Sekhar Reddy case, the mining baron arrested for alleged financial irregularities post demonetisation, have also prompted the latest action. Udhagamandalam: A minor tribal girl in the district has been allegedly raped by a 21-year old labourer, who was arrested on Friday, police said. The eight-year old Kurumba tribe girl was taken to a lonely place in a tea-estate at Kinnakorai, 60 km from here, and sexually assaulted on April 3 evening. The girl came home crying and narrated the incident to her mother that night. The parents, after discussing with their community heads, lodged the police complaint only this morning, based on which police arrested Prathap, a labourer, police said. The girl was subjected to medical examination at the government hospital here which confirmed the rape, police said adding the accused was produced before a court which remanded him to judicial custody. Lucknow: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday slammed the opposition for politicising the national song and the national anthem and asked rival parties to develop patriotic sentiment. Dubbing arguments over the national song and anthem as unfortunate Uttar Pradesh Health Minister Siddharth Nath Singh said such themes bind the nation and must not be subjected to derogation or ridiculed. "It is unfortunate that we are having arguments on national song and national anthem in this nation. These are few aspects which bind the nation as one. I would like to urge the political parties politicising such issues to bring some sense of patriotism in their thinking," said Singh. "It is very shameful that people are drawing communal lines around such topics. I would like to urge to these political parties that you have many issues to raise your political stature, so don`t be so bank corrupt, so as to demean or undermine nationalistic issues," he added. A week after the mayor of Meerut asked all corporators to either sing Vande Mataram or leave the country, BJP councillors at the Allahabad Nagar Nigam yesterday demanded that a new rule is passed under which the House proceedings would start with the national song Vande Matram and end with the national anthem Jana Gana Mana. Some councillors objected to the proposal and it led to ruckus and disruption of the proceedings of the House.Councilors in the Opposition alleged that BJP Councillors are raising this demand because of BJP coming to power in the state. Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has laid out massive plans to improve power supply in the state. Here are the details: - In the coming 100 days, the UP government plans to give five lakh new electricity connections. - The administration has ordered the power supply department to ensure that the transformers should be replaced within 24 hours in urban areas and 48 hours in rural areas. - The senior officials have been ordered to ensure uninterrupted power supply between 6 pm 6 am in rural areas. - The Adityanath government has asked the officials to make sure that from April 14 District headquarters, Tehsils and villages should get 24, 20 and 18 hours of electricity respectively. - The Below Poverty Line (BPL) households will be given free electricity connections. - Those above poverty line (APL) will be given 100 percent financing option with easy EMIs. - These electricity connections would be given without any discrimination on caste or religious lines and would be based on the latest Socio-Economic Census data. - There would be a state-wide campaign against power theft, along with a drive to sensitise all the stakeholders to shun corruption and bring in honesty in the sector. - 100 percent feeder separation and smart metering expeditiously, waving off of interests on electricity dues and provision of option of EMIs to pay off the principal amounts and bringing in zero government official discretion. Madrid: Basque militant separatist group ETA, which waged a bloody campaign for independence from Spain for over half a century, said early on Friday it had given up all its arms and explosives. The BBC cited what it said was a letter from ETA declaring it had handed all its weapons to civilian go-betweens and was now a disarmed organisation. The move stops short of a full disbanding of the organisation that has killed more than 850 people in its quest for an independent state in the mountainous Basque region that incorporates part of northern Spain and south-western France. The middlemen are due to hand over the weapons to authorities on Saturday in the French city of Bayonne in a process first flagged in March by Basque activists. The letter, published in full on the BBC website, gave no details on how the handover would be carried out. It is not clear if the process will be formally accepted by the Spanish and French governments. Spain`s ruling Popular Party, which refuses to negotiate with ETA, said the planned handover was a surrender. "On April 8, ETA will accept its defeat after nearly six years in which it said it would make concessions which never materialised," the PP's representative in the Basque parliament, Alfonso Alonso, told national radio late on Thursday. No government representative was immediately available for comment on Friday. ETA declared a ceasefire in 2011, but did not disarm. The group, formed in 1959 during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, has been severely weakened in recent years after authorities arrested hundreds of its members and seized several of its weapons stashes. Beijing: China on Friday urged all parties in Syria to try to find a political settlement in the six-year-old war after a US military strike on a Syrian airfield, which came as China`s president met with US President Donald Trump. China also hoped that "relevant parties stay calm, exercise restraint and avoid doing anything that might raise tensions", Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said. "The latest developments in Syria again speak to the urgent need for a political settlement to resolve the Syria issue," Hua Chunying told reporters at a regular briefing. "We call on all relevant parties to resolutely stick to promoting a political settlement and not abandon efforts to find a political settlement." US officials said the military launched dozens of cruise missile strikes against an airbase controlled by Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad`s forces in response to the chemical attack on Tuesday in a rebel-held area. Facing his biggest foreign policy crisis since taking office in January, Trump took the toughest direct US action yet in Syria`s civil war, raising the risk of confrontation with Russia and Iran, Assad`s two main military backers. China has routinely sided with Russia in blocking action by the UN Security Council on Syria, and Beijing`s special envoy for the Syrian crisis has praised Russia`s military role there as effective in combating international terrorism. While relying on the region for oil supplies, China tends to leave Middle Eastern diplomacy to the other permanent members of the UN Security Council, namely the United States, Britain, France and Russia. But China has urged that a diplomatic resolution to the violence there be found and has hosted Syrian government and opposition figures. While showing no interest in getting involved militarily, China`s Defence Ministry said last year that it had been providing medical equipment and training for Syria. Beijing has its own security concerns about violence in the region, worried that Uighurs, a mostly Muslim people from western China`s Xinjiang region, have been fighting with militant groups in Syria and Iraq. A group purporting to be affiliated with the Islamic State issued a bloody video in late February, showing ethnic Uighur fighters training in Iraq, killing prisoners, and vowing to plant their flag in China. [April 07, 2017] VR Eco Hackathon Creates VR, AR & 360 Video Climate Change Content in Boston on Earth Day 2017 BROOKLINE, Mass., April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Sustainable Realities: Hacking the Future in VR, AR & 360 is the first-ever climate-change focused VR hackathon on Earth Day weekend, April 21-23rd, 2017 in the Boston area. The VR EcoHack offers a free, community-based, participatory media weekend for creatives, coders, educators, students and activists to come together to produce virtual reality content that highlights key sustainability issues locally and around the world in VR, AR and 360 video. The weekend will kick off at 5:30pm on Friday, April 21st with a free public expo of VR, AR and 360 demos, climate change speakers, followed by hackers starting their engines soon after 7pm. To promote this event, co-founder of the Public VR Lab, Kathy Bisbee, and her team created a parody video of the classic Star Wars scene where Princess Leia says, "Obi-Wan, you're my only hope." Bisbee, dressed in costume, asks EcoHack participants for help, "Ecohackers, you're our only hope." "It's felt like a way we could show some respect to Carrie Fisher, to Star Wars fans everywhere, and create an awesome promotion for the event to encourage a diverse response for signups. So far, over 50% of the hackers who have signed up are women participants, and the age range is 13-65, so I think we are doing something right to make this an inclusive and empowering event for all." Participants will be able to create and test their stories, apps and games on multiple VR headsets (HTC Vives, Oculus Rift, PSVR, Samsung, Hololens, Google Daydream, etc.). Cash and equipment prizes will provided in all three categories; VR, AR, and 360 video. Hackers will also receive free snacks, caffeination, computer labs, mentors, a mini-theatre, television studios, 360 cameras, stickers, t-shirts, and access to the Public VR lab all weekend. Participants will also have free access to a VR Bootcamp offered at BIG in Brookline the week prior to the hackathon to grow their skills no matter what their current skill or access level to to VR equipment. Designed to provide innovative and interdisciplinary training for the next generation of content creators and storycoders and encourage climate change consciousness, this hackathon challenges teams to hack a solution to advance climate change awareness in educational settings. In May of 2016, BIG co-founded the Public VR Lab, in partnership with their sister organization, Northampton Community Television (NCTV). Kathy Bisbee, BIG's executive director and co-founder of the Lab, shared that the Lab was an extension of their community media arts centers, where they train content creators in multimedia, and now in VR, to develop content in the public and community's interest. BIG then developed a VR Academy to train users in all forms of VR creation. BIG offers class in Unity, a coding engine for virtual reality content; in Blender-for the creation of 3D objects in VR, in VR oodler- an illustration tool with a low-barrier to access, in Simmetri, one of Boston's featured VR startups and VR content creation tool; Cinematography and audio classes in 360 video; Aframe/Web VR classes and will offer additional advanced graphic design and programming classes. Bisbee explained her vision, "VR is the birth of a new art form for telling stories, experiencing reality, and exploring spatial interactivity, so it makes sense to invest in building access and community participation in the VR space like the one we have already created inside of community-based filmmaking." She explained why climate change and VR seemed like an opportunity to challenge assumptions and create new compelling content, "VR content is more deeply personal because of its highly visceral and persuasively-real experience. Inside of VR, you can actually feel the physical threat and reality of sea-level rise when water starts pouring in all around you." Her organization, BIG, springs from the tradition of public access television, or community TV, a thirty-year old industry with roots in free speech, government transparency, and social documentary. Bisbee sees her mission as more far-reaching than just that. She wants to train the next generation of storytellers, promote creativity and skill development in VR-related technologies, and educate the next generation of coders and the IT crowd on climate change and media literacy. Last fall the Lab started a VR Academy and began providing free public demos weekly in their Brookline and Northampton locations, at the senior and teen centers and in public spaces, and organized meetups and hosted hackathons to help educate the community on these new tools. Over 85 "ecohackers" have already signed up via the Hack's eventbrite link, but there's still time to Save the Planet: Hack the Future! Signup here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/vr-ecohack-hacking-the-future-in-vr-ar-360-tickets-32803656620?aff=es2 The VR EcoHack is supported by: Brookline Interactive Group, The Public VR Lab, Boston VR, Teach for America, The VR/AR Association, Wayfair, Fasility, VR Doodler, Mass Media Literacy, Traces.io, LearnLaunch, VR at MIT, the Brookline Public Schools, Lifeliqe, Simmetri, VR- Before It's Too Late, ROTU, and the Transformative Culture Project. ABOUT the Public VR Lab www.publicvrlab.com Twitter & Facebook: @PublicVRLab The Public VR Lab is a collaborative effort to facilitate a public dialogue and projects around new VR-related technologies; to support the community creation of 360, virtual and augmented content, provide access to tools and headsets; and to generate socially-relevant and locally-focused public interest VR experiences. Brookline Interactive Group (BIG) and Northampton Community Television (NCTV) launched this VR accessibility and literacy initiative at their community media centers in Northampton and Brookline, MA, beginning in Spring of 2016, making it the first ever publicly-funded community VR center in the U.S. Since then the Lab has offered free weekly public demos of VR experiences via the HTC Vive headset and controllers at both media center locations in eastern and western Massachusetts, at senior and teen centers, community fairs, and at pop-up public events, at awards and film festivals, and last fall created a VR Academy to teach community members how to create and view content in 360 video, Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR). The Lab held its first Meetup in Boston in August 2016 with speakers from the VR content creation team at FRONTLINE on their pioneering immersive journalism films and projects, and has since partnered with VR/AR Hackathons, with other mixed reality creators and labs, and in collaboration with Boston VR, Teach for America, Wayfair, Fasility, VR Doodler, Mass Media Literacy, Traces.io, LearnLaunch, VR at MIT, the Brookline Public Schools, Lifeliqe, Simmetri, VR- Before It's Too Late, ROTU, and the Transformative Culture Project, the Science & Media Awards Summit, the Pioneer Valley Game Group, and curated the interactive component of the 2016 Northampton Film Festival. The Public VR Lab is the founder of the VR EcoHack, the first weekend-long hackathon focused on creating VR, AR and 360 video to promote climate change education, awareness and action: http://vrecohack.com/. Related Images image1.jpg image2.png Related Links VR EcoHack Related Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yr5-F8J6dx8 This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/vr-eco-hackathon-creates-vr-ar--360-video-climate-change-content-in-boston-on-earth-day-2017-300436396.html SOURCE The Public VR Lab at Brookline Interactive Group (BIG) [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Beijing: China urged calm in dealing with the Syrian conflict on Friday after the United States military attacked a Syrian airfield with cruise missiles. "What is urgent now is to avoid further deterioration of the situation," Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Hua Chunying said during a regular press briefing. She continued: "We oppose use of chemical weapons by any country, organisation or individual in any circumstance, for any purpose." Washington: The Republican-led Senate on Friday gave Donald Trump the biggest triumph of his young presidency, confirming his Supreme Court nominee over stout Democratic opposition and restoring a conservative majority on the highest U.S. judicial body. The Senate, which last year refused to consider Democratic former President Barack Obama`s nominee to the court, voted 54-45 to approve Republican Trump`s pick, Colorado-based federal appeals court judge Neil Gorsuch, to the lifetime job. Three Democrats joined the Republicans in voting for Gorsuch. Gorsuch`s confirmation ends the longest Supreme Court vacancy since 1862 during the American Civil War, with the court down a justice for almost 14 months since long-serving conservative Justice Antonin Scalia died on Feb. 13, 2016. "He`s going to make an incredible addition to the court," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on the Senate floor. McConnell said Gorsuch, who also worked in the Justice Department under Republican former President George W. Bush and is the son of the first woman to head the Environmental Protection Agency, has "sterling credentials, an excellent record and an ideal judicial temperament." Illustrating the importance of the moment, Vice President Mike Pence served as the Senate`s presiding officer during the vote. Republicans, possessing a 52-48 Senate majority, on Thursday overcame a ferocious Democratic effort to block a confirmation vote by resorting to a rule change known as the "nuclear option." Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, who led the opposition to Gorsuch, said he hopes the judge would heed concerns that the court is "increasingly drifting towards becoming a more pro-corporate court that favors employers, corporations and special interests over working America." The Senate`s approval of Gorsuch, 49, reinstates the nine-seat court`s 5-4 conservative majority, fulfilling an important campaign promise made by the Republican president. Gorsuch was the youngest Supreme Court nominee since Republican President George H.W. Bush in 1991 picked Clarence Thomas, who was 43 at the time. Gorsuch could be expected to serve for decades, while Trump could make further appointments to the high court to make it even more solidly conservative because three of the eight justices are 78 or older. Gorsuch`s confirmation gave a boost to Trump, showing he can get important agenda items through a Congress controlled by his fellow Republicans after the House of Representatives last month failed to pass healthcare overhaul legislation. Trump is planning major tax cut legislation as well. EXTRAORDINARY STEPS It was not easy. Senate Republicans resorted to extraordinary steps to overcome Democratic opposition to Gorsuch, including changing long-standing Senate rules to prohibit the use of a procedural blockade called a filibuster for Supreme Court nominees. The rule change was dubbed the "nuclear option" because it was considered an extreme break from Senate tradition. Gorsuch joins fellow conservatives Thomas, John Roberts, Samuel Alito and Anthony Kennedy on a court that also includes liberal justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Had the Senate confirmed Obama`s nominee Merrick Garland, the court would have tilted to the left for the first time in decades. Trump has recorded accomplishments since taking office on Jan. 20, including a variety of unilateral executive actions such as moving to undo Obama`s climate change regulations. But Trump has run into trouble with some other major initiatives. Courts blocked his executive action to stop people from several Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States. His administration also has faced questions about any role the president`s associates may have played in alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to help Trump. The rule change could make it easier for Trump to win confirmation of Supreme Court nominees as long as Republicans control the Senate, with Democrats left powerless to resist even if he gets a chance to replace the court`s senior liberal, 84-year-old Ginsburg, or the court`s swing vote, 80-year-old Kennedy, with more conservative replacements. Democrats accused Gorsuch of being so conservative as to be outside the judicial mainstream, favoring corporate interests over ordinary Americans in legal opinions, and displaying insufficient independence from Trump. A conservative-majority court is more likely to support gun rights, abortion regulations, an expansive view of religious liberty and Republican-backed voting restrictions, while opposing curbs on political spending. The court also is likely to tackle transgender rights and union funding in coming years. Gorsuch could be sworn in as early as Friday so he can begin preparing for the court`s next session of oral arguments, starting on April 17. The court`s current term ends in June. Gorsuch is expected to hear arguments in 13 cases. Gorsuch`s first official act would be to participate in the justices` private April 13 conference to consider new cases to hear. There are appeals pending on expanding gun rights to include carrying concealed firearms in public, state voting restrictions that critics say are aimed at reducing minority turnout, and allowing business owners to object on religious grounds to provide certain services to gay couples. On April 19, the court will hear a religious rights case in which a church contends Missouri violated the U.S. Constitution`s guarantee of religious freedom by denying it funds for a playground project due to a state ban on aid to religious organizations. Gorsuch has ruled several times in favor of expansive religious rights during his decade as a judge. Yangon: An official working for Aung San Suu Kyi`s government was sentenced to six months in jail by a Yangon court Friday for criticising Myanmar`s army chief in a Facebook post. It is the latest verdict to highlight lingering limits on free speech in the young democracy, where the military remains a powerful player despite the end of junta rule. Myo Yan Naung Thein, a researcher for Suu Kyi`s ruling party, was arrested in October for urging the head of the army to resign over deadly raids on police posts in the north of Rakhine State. The attacks, by a militant group claiming to represent Myanmar's stateless Rohingya Muslims, sparked an army crackdown so brutal UN investigators believe it may amount to crimes against humanity. In a Facebook post just days after the October raids, Myo Yan Naung Thein said Senior General Min Aung Hlaing was "shameless" for allowing the raids to happen and called for his resignation. The 43-year-old appeared calm as he heard the verdict read out in Yangon`s Kamayut township court on Friday, flanked by military officers. But he struck a defiant note as he left the court, criticising the army`s continued grip on power even after Suu Kyi`s National League for Democracy (NLD) won the first free elections in half a century in 2015. Under a junta-era constitution the military still controls a quarter of parliament seats and the ministries of home affairs, defence and borders. "It`s obvious that we have two groups ruling Myanmar, not only our (elected) government," he told journalists. Myo Yan Naung Thein has been held in jail since his arrest and will be able to walk free in a few weeks because of time served. Prosecutions under a controversial online defamation law have soared since the NLD took power in March 2016, targeting both those who have criticised the army and the new civilian administration. The law was originally passed by the previous military-backed government as part of a raft of measures designed to attract foreign investment in Myanmar`s telecoms sector. But activists say it is increasingly being used to stifle free speech and criticism of the government, dashing hopes the NLD would usher in a new era of openness after half a century of repressive military rule. At least 46 cases have been brought over the past year, compared to just seven between when the legislation was passed in 2013 to when the NLD took power. They include cases against two officials from one of the country`s biggest media groups, a man who called the president `crazy` on Facebook and another who wrote curses about the army on his car. Last month a mother launched proceedings against her own son for writing insulting comments about her relationships on Facebook.bww London: Pakistan wanted to jeopardise the 136th Inter Parliamentary Union (IPU) Assembly to be held in Dhaka, Bangladesh, by boycotting the event, an article published by the Dhaka Tribune claimed on Friday. In the article, Nadeem Qadir, Press Minister of the Bangladesh High Commission in Britain, writes that Pakistan wanted to jeopardise the mega conference by pulling out at the last moment, but the other participants from around the world did not play along. Qadir terms this as 'a major achievement for Bangladesh'. He also speculates that the militant attacks that took place in Bangladesh just before the conference may have been the doing of pro-Pakistani elements to scare off the participants. He rationalises that Pakistan wanted to boycott the IPU Assembly as a tit-for-tat measure against Bangladesh for boycotting the SAARC Summit that was scheduled to be held in Islamabad in November last year. A total of 1,348 delegates, including 650 parliament members, 53 speakers, deputy speakers, and 209 women parliamentarians of 131 countries, attended the mega event.Dhaka gained more from the event, as the world community agreed that interference by Islamabad in the internal affairs of Bangladesh had crossed all limits. Qadari further writes that every time a 1971 war criminal was and is executed, Islamabad took up the issue in parliament, proving that those executed were indeed "important, celebrity collaborators" of the Pakistani Army. He also speculates that another reason for Pakistan to boycott the IPU Assembly could have been the mandatory visits to the National Martyrs` Memorial and the museum dedicated to the memory of Bangladesh`s first Prime Minister Sheikh Mujibur Rehman. He adds that even though former president Pervez Musharraf had laid a wreath at the memorial in Savar and had "regretted" the "incidents" of 1971, the military and top politicians felt embarrassed. The Dhaka Tribune quotes him, as saying that Pakistan can fix this situation if its leadership listens to its people, who want the government to seek forgiveness for their crimes against humanity in 1971 and stop patronising anti-liberation forces like the Jamaat-e-Islami and pro-Pakistani political elements. "My experience in Pakistan says the majority now know the true history of 1971, thanks to the Internet, and Islamabad should respect the voice of its own people, he adds.The five-day long 136th Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) Assembly ended yesterday with the declaration of "Dhaka Communique" that called for strengthening efforts to open parliaments to all people and better representing the most impoverished community. The declaration also urged to take measures to enhance transparency and to protect the political system from the influence of money and organised lobbies. The IPU, established in 1889 with its headquarters in Switzerland, is the focal point for global parliamentary dialogues for peace, development and cooperation among peoples, and for the safeguard of representative democracy. Earlier, while boycotting the conference, Pakistan had cited continued malicious and uncalled for propaganda and unfriendly attitude of the Bangladesh government against the people and the state behind this move. In his statement, Speaker Ayaz Sadiq said that members of the National Assembly have noted with dismay and disappointment the continuing actions and negative public statements of the leadership, public officials and the media of Bangladesh despite Pakistan`s restraint and overtures to that country. He said that Bangladesh also boycotted all international parliamentary moots, organised by the parliament of Pakistan during the last two years despite personal requests by the highest parliamentary leadership to the speaker of the Bangladesh Parliament. This included invitations to attend the SAARC Young Parliamentarians Conference in August 2016, the International Women Parliamentarians Conference 2017 and the Asian Parliamentary Assembly in 2017, it said. (With ANI inputs) Delhi: The U.S. air strikes on a Syrian airbase could undermine efforts to fight terrorism, RIA news agency quoted Viktor Ozerov, the head of the defence and security committee at the Russian upper house of parliament, as saying on Friday. He also said that Russia would call for an urgent meeting of the U.N. Security Council. "This (the attack) could be viewed as an act of aggression of the U.S. against a U.N. nation," he was quoted as saying. Damascus: Syria's armed forces were warned about the threat of American military action hours before the US strike on the Shayrat airbase on Friday, a military source said. "We learned of the American threat and the expected military bombardment on Syrian territory," the source told AFP. "We took precautions in more than one military point, including in the Shayrat airbase. We moved a number of airplanes towards other areas," the official said, adding they were forewarned "hours" before the strike. He did not specify where the planes had been moved to or who had warned the Syrian government. American forces fired a barrage of 59 cruise missiles at Shayrat airbase in central Syria overnight -- the first time the US has carried out direct military action against President Bashar al-Assad`s troops. US officials said Russia`s military in Syria had been informed of the strike beforehand in order to avoid casualties that could prompt a broader crisis. The Kremlin confirmed it had been warned by the United States, but refused to say whether any Russian soldiers had to be evacuated from the base. According to the Syrian military source, the strike put nine planes out of service, including several that were "totally destroyed". It came in response to a suspected chemical attack on a rebel-held town on Tuesday widely blamed on the Damascus regime, which has repeatedly denied it has used toxic substances. Instead, the Syrian government says, it struck a warehouse used by jihadist groups to store toxic substances. Sydney: A Pakistani petrol station attendant was stabbed to death during an "absolutely horrific" crime spree in Australia, authorities said, fearing Friday that the attack was terror-linked. The 29-year-old man was found with multiple stab wounds late Thursday after allegedly being attacked by two teenage boys. Police believe the pair, aged 15 and 16, went on a rampage, allegedly stabbing another man in the stomach, hitting a third with a tyre iron and a fourth with a beer bottle. Sydney`s Daily Telegraph reported that "IS" appeared to be scrawled in blood on a window at the petrol station, referring to the Islamic State group. Authorities did not confirm the gruesome details but Deputy Commissioner Catherine Burn said "there was physical evidence at the scene which does go to our view that this might be an act of terrorism". "We don`t know the motivation. We don't know what might have led to this. All we know again is that there are very, very serious crimes," she told reporters at a press conference in Sydney. The boys were arrested early Friday after being chased by New South Wales state police into the Australian Capital Territory. The Sydney Morning Herald said one of the teenager`s mothers thought her son had been radicalised in recent weeks. Burn added that both were known to police for other offences, but not terrorism. The 16-year-old was being investigated for terror links, she said. Local police commander Superintendent Rod Smith described the incident as "absolutely horrific" and said "it doesn`t get more serious than this". Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull called it "shocking" and reiterated concerns about the radicalisation of youths. Counter-terrorism police have made a series of arrests since late 2014 across Australia and say they have prevented 11 terror attacks on home soil in the past two years. But several attacks have taken place, including the murder of a Sydney police employee in 2015 by a 15-year-old boy, who was then killed in an exchange of gunfire with officers. The young age and radicalisation of many of those detained has been a growing concern for authorities. Last year parliament passed new legislation to lower from 16 to 14 the age at which individuals can be subject to a control order, which aims to prevent a terror attack by limiting a person`s movements, communication and activity. United Nations: The UN Security Council will meet on Friday at 11:30 am (local time) to discuss the US missile strikes on Syria, US diplomats said. Russia demanded an emergency meeting after angrily denouncing the military action as an "aggression against a sovereign state." US President Donald Trump yesterday ordered cruise missile strikes on a Syrian air base in response to a suspected chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held town that killed 86 people and shocked the world. The strike - the first direct US action against President Bashar al-Assad and Trump's biggest military decision since taking office - marked a dramatic escalation in American involvement in Syria's six-year war. The Security Council failed during a meeting yesterday to agree on terms for an investigation of the suspected sarin gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhun. Council members will hold an open meeting today and hear a briefing on the US military action, the US mission to the United Nations said. The United States holds this month's presidency of the Security Council. Russia's Deputy Ambassador Vladimir Safronkov yesterday warned of "negative consequences" from the US military action, which he described as a "doubtful, tragic enterprise." "Look at Iraq, look at Libya," he said, referring to Western interventions that unleashed years of chaos in those countries. At least 27 children died in the suspected attack in Khan Sheikhun. Results from post-mortems performed on victims point to exposure to the deadly sarin nerve agent, according to Turkish health officials. United Nations: The United Nations Security Council will meet at 1130 EDT (1530 GMT) on Friday to discuss Thursday`s U.S. cruise missile strikes on Syria, diplomats said. The meeting of the 15-member council will be public, diplomats said. Florida: US President Donald Trump ordered a massive military strike against Syria on Thursday in retaliation for a chemical attack with a sarin-like nerve agent which Washington blames on President Bashar al-Assad. A White House official said 59 precision-guided missiles hit Shayrat Airfield in Syria, where the United States believes Tuesday`s deadly attack was launched. The official had earlier given the number of missiles involved as 70. The missiles were blasted from the USS Porter and the USS Ross, which belong to the US Navy`s Sixth Fleet and are located in the eastern Mediterranean. A US official said the missiles targeted aircraft and runways at the base. "This site was associated with the Syrian regime`s chemical weapons program and directly linked to the horrific chemical weapons attack April 4th," the White House official said. "We assess with a high degree of confidence that the chemical weapons attack earlier this week was launched from this site by air assets under the command of the Assad regime," the official added. "We also assess, with a similar degree of confidence, that the Assad regime used a chemical nerve agent consistent with sarin in these attacks." Inhaled or absorbed through the skin, sarin gas kills by crippling the respiratory center of the central nervous system and paralyses the muscles around the lungs. Sarin was used by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein`s regime to gas thousands of Kurds in the northern town of Halabja in 1988. The UN Security Council failed Thursday to reach agreement on demands for a thorough investigation of the strike in northwestern Syria`s Khan Sheikhun, in which at least 86 people, including 27 children, died. Beirut: A leading rebel group said a US strike against a Syrian airbase on Friday was "not enough," urging further action after Washington`s first operation against the regime in the six-year civil war. "Hitting one airbase is not enough, there are 26 airbases that target civilians," a key figure in the Army of Islam faction, Mohamed Alloush, said on his Twitter account. Other rebel groups welcomed the US strike against the Shayrat airbase in central Syria and called for continued military action against the regime. YEREVAN, APRIL 7, ARMENPRESS. Azerbaijani forces made over 25 ceasefire violations in the Artsakh-Azerbaijan line of contact, the defense ministry of Artsakh told ARMENPRESS. The ministry released a statement, saying : On April 6 and overnight April 7 Azerbaijan violated the ceasefire more than 25 times, firing over 400 shots from various caliber firearms at Artsakh positions. Azerbaijani forces also fired 60mm mortars (4 shells) in the north-eastern direction of the line of contact. The Defense Army is under full control of the situation and takes countermeasures in case of necessity. YEREVAN, APRIL 7, ARMENPRESS. The European Union plans to provide 40-45 million Euros in budget assistance for Armenia during 2017, Hoa-Binh Adjemian head of the cooperation department of the EU delegation to Armenia, told reporters on April 7. This means we will provide around one million Euros every week to Armenia this year, he said. He mentioned that budgetary assistance is a tool, due to which as result of work with the government they are able to create good conditions for reforms. Firstly we come to an agreement on the goals, after which the EU finances the realization of these goals. The purpose of budgetary assistance is to support reforms, which will provide the best result for Armenian citizens, he said. Adjemian also noted that unlike other donor organizations, the EU allocates budgetary assistance to Armenia as gratuitous grants. For instance, the World Bank, the European Investment Bank, Asian Development Bank, provide loans, while we provide grants, he said. YEREVAN, APRIL 7, ARMENPRESS. Armenias Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian on April 7 participated in the Council session of the CIS Foreign Ministers in Tashkent during which he delivered speech, press service of the MFA told Armenpress. The session agenda covered issues related to increasing the effectiveness of the organizations activity, holding consultations between the Foreign Ministries, modernizing the structure in line with contemporary realities. The CIS FMs exchanged views on urgent international affairs. They adopted a statement on the impermissibility of intolerance and discrimination against Christians, Muslims and representatives of other religions. They also discussed issues related to intensifying the cooperation in law enforcement, cyber-security, cultural, educational fields. The FMs Council made a decision to approve the draft decision on declaring Armenias Goris town as a CIS Cultural Capital 2018. The session participants discussed and approved 16 draft documents. It was decided to hold the next session in October, 2017 in Moscow. VILNIUS, APRIL 7, ARMENPRESS. The national news agencies of Armenia and Lithuania, ARMENPRESS and ELTA, signed a cooperation agreement which will enable to boost information exchange and professional partnership between the two agencies. The document was signed by Aram Ananyan, director of ARMENPRESS, and Romas Bubnelis, director-general of ELTA. In terms of enhancing international cooperation, 2017 is a fruitful year and the cooperation agreement signed with the national news agency of Lithuania comes to fill the expanded network of cooperating media outlets, which we form. I think the cooperation will give specific results in terms of mutual recognition in the two societies, director of ARMENPRESS Aram Ananyan said. Aram Ananyan and Romas Bubnelis greatly highlighted the signing of the document and found it to be a good foundation for numerous joint projects. They expressed willingness on holding mutually enriching events on experience exchange. Earlier on April 4 ARMENPRESS signed a cooperation agreement with Latvias national news agency LETA in Riga. On March 11, ARMENPRESS enhanced partnership with Spains EFE news agency with a memorandum of understanding, signed in Yerevan. ARMENPRESS news agency was established on December 18, 1918. It is a state news agency. The agency is the oldest in Armenia. At the moment it produces eleven newslines in four languages. ARMENPRESS has signed bilateral cooperation agreements with more than 20 leading news agencies of the world, nearly 1/3 being signed during the last 5 years. ELTA is one of the largest Baltic news agencies, which provides multi language coverage of the political, economic, social and cultural life of the Baltic region. It was established in 1920. YEREVAN, APRIL 7, ARMENPRESS. Armenian Brandy festival will be held for the first time in Tsaghkadzor resort town on May 7, reports Armenpress. Chairman of Tourism Development Fund Tigran Karapetyan said 30 brandy companies will take part in the festival. We expect a great number of tourists mainly from Russia after the facilitation of entry to Armenia with their internal passports, he said. Karapetyan said Tsaghkadzor was selected as a place for holding the festival since it is quite a famous place for Russians. Tsaghkadzor Mayor assisted on selecting the place of holding the festival. The pavilions were ordered in accordance with standards necessary for holding a brandy festival, Tigran Karapetyan said. Ara Khzmalyan Director of Tourism Affairs at the Development Foundation of Armenia, said the base of the festival is the brandy since when we say brandy abroad it is directly associated with Armenia. Brandy is the taste and smell of Armenia, he said. YEREVAN, APRIL 7, ARMENPRESS. The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) has made new exposure on Azerbaijans corruption scandal in PACE. Armenpress reports Investigators preparing for the upcoming Milan trial of Luca Volonte, an Italian member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), say they have uncovered 2.39 million in payments to Volonte through British and offshore companies. Most of the funding came through the British company Hilux Services LLP and its account in an Estonian bank from Baktelekom MMC, a limited liability corporation in Azerbaijan. A reporter for OCCRP discovered that the Azerbaijani company is owned by a businessman with ties to that countrys first family. The payments, prosecutors allege, were made in exchange for Volontes efforts to mute the European bodys criticism of Azerbaijans human rights record. While prosecutors say they traced the 2.39 million directly to Volonte between 2012 and 2014, the indictment also notes that as much as 1 billion was funneled into the account of British Hilux Services LLP between December 2013 and December 2014, leading to suspicions that the corruption scheme could be much bigger than the Volonte case. The Milan Police and Prosecution launched a criminal case against Luca Volonte in February, 2016, who is a former MP of the Christian-Democratic Party and is the former Chairman of the EPP faction at PACE. Volonte is accused of taking a bribe of 2.4 million Euros from Azerbaijan in 2012-2013. Instead, he was being used by official Baku in the Italian Parliament and the PACE. The criminal case launched against Volonte is comprised of two parts: Bribery and money laundering. It is important to state that Volonte keeps silent and refuses to talk with the investigators. YEREVAN, APRIL 7, ARMENPRESS. A photo exhibition demonstrating the partnership between Armenia and China took place in Yerevan on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two states. The exhibition was entitled Mutually beneficial cooperation and firm friendship. Photos about high level mutual visits, cooperation in humanitarian, cultural, educational and other spheres are shown at the exhibition. The photos taken by Armenpress news agency are also exhibited. Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of China to Armenia Tian Erlong delivered opening remarks. Today we open a photo exhibition dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Armenia and China. Its well known that our peoples are united by ancient friendly ties dating back centuries ago, the era of Silk Road. Diplomatic relations between Armenia and China established on April 6, 1992 when Armenia had just gained independence. Since then a new page opened in the relations of our countries Armenpress reports Tian Erlong saying. He also added that looking back to the past, it can be easily noted that Armenian-Chinese bilateral relations have dynamically developed during that period. The Ambassador also stressed that during the past 25 years political relations have also developed between the two states. This is best evidenced by the state visit of President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan to China in 2015, the Chinese Ambassador said, adding that the visit gave new impetus to bilateral relations. YEREVAN, APRIL 7, ARMENPRESS. President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan sent a condolence message to the Prime Minister of Sweden Stefan Lofven on April 7 on the occasion of the terror act that took place in the Swedish capital Stockholm claiming lives of innocent people, Armenpress was informed from the press service of the Armenian Presidents Office. In this difficult period for Sweden I extent my sincere sympathy and solidarity to You, the friendly people of Sweden and the relatives of the victims, wishing endurance, strength and tenacity as well as a speedy recovery to the injured, reads the Presidents condolence letter. Serzh Sargsyan reaffirmed Armenias solidarity with the struggle against international terrorism targeting numerous innocent people. There are deep divisions between European creditors led by Germany, and the IMF, which believes that the Europeans' expectations of Greece's economic performance are too ambitious Greece gave in and accepted a tough set of reforms with its eurozone creditors on Friday in hopes of unlocking bailout cash in time to avert a looming debt default. Eurozone finance ministers meeting in the Maltese capital of Valletta said Athens agreed in principle to the new reforms and technical teams would visit Greece as soon as possible to seal the deal. "The big blocks have now been sorted out and now we just have the final stretch," Eurogroup head Jeroen Dijsselbloem said after the talks. Heavily-indebted Athens and the EU and IMF which handle the bailout, have been deadlocked over reforms for months amid disagreements on debt relief and budget targets. The deal is needed in order to prevent the country defaulting on its creditors as early as July, when Athens owes about seven billion euros ($7.4 billion) in debt repayments. The eurozone is under heavy pressure to end the feud in order to avert a chaotic default and inflicting damage on an already stalled Greek recovery. Despite projections for growth, the Greek economy actually stalled in 2016 and recent data show that after some stabilisation, it has begun to falter again amid uncertainty triggered by the row. "Greece needs this; we must end the uncertainties that are scaring investors," EU Economic Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici said. Dijsselbloem said the Greek government accepted to reduce pensions in 2019 and lower tax breaks in 2020 in return for a bailout payment despite widespread public opposition to the new measures. Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos said the commitments would pass through parliament as soon as possible, although the gamble relies on his Syriza party's razor-thin majority. - 'Before summer' - Tsakalotos said his eurozone counterparts had also agreed that Greece could boost social spending if budget targets were met, and that debt relief would also come back to the table. "We will be ready for all the pieces of the puzzle to fit in for the discussion on debt," said Tsakalotos, for whom debt relief is a key demand. Story continues "I think we will have (a solution) well before summer," he added. The accord was a victory of sorts for Dijsselbloem who visited Brussels and Berlin ahead of Friday's talks in hopes of finding a compromise. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras had until now refused to accept reforms beyond the term of Greece's current bailout that is due to end in 2018. The impasse has held up the latest instalment of Greece's 86-billion-euro ($92-billion) bailout, agreed in 2015 with the 19 countries that use the single currency. Without a deal in Malta, Tsipras had said he would ask for a eurozone leaders summit later this month, and made his case in a phone call to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Europe's most powerful leader. - 'Credible strategy' - Also pressing matters is a desire by eurozone ministers to present a united front to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) later this month at the fund's annual meetings in Washington. The Europeans have been at loggerheads with the IMF over the Washington-based lender's demands for more realistic budget targets and firm commitments to reduce Greece's mountain of debt. An agreement among eurozone ministers would go a long way towards getting the IMF on board as a financial partner in the bailout, a major demand of Germany, Greece's biggest lender. The IMF, which has so far stayed out of the current rescue, praised the progress made, but warned that Greece's huge debt pile remained a big problem. Eurozone ministers must "ensure satisfactory assurances on a credible strategy to restore debt sustainability, before a programme is presented to the IMF executive board," said IMF spokesperson Gerry Rice. LAS VEGASImToy, a manufacturer based in Las Vegas and China, is supporting South Africas Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT), a nonprofit organization dedicated to conserving threatened species and ecosystems in southern Africa. We want to distance ourselves from the environmentally damaging reputation that hangs over Chinese manufacturers and, instead, be pioneers in creating products for pleasure that give back too, said Johnny Jiang, the Shenzhen-based CEO of ImToy. This initiative is also especially pertinent given the rhino horn-poaching problem in the southern African region, whichunfortunatelyfrequently finds its way onto the Asian market. Were all about getting your kickswere in the business of providing bliss, after allbut never at the expense of another living creature. As a company, ImToy takes a strong stance against the illicit trade of animal productsThe only Rhino in your bedside drawer should be the naughty little number from our Zoo Collection, the company saidand this year the manufacturer are taking a stand by donating a portion of its proceeds to the EWT. We would like to take this opportunity to thank ImToy for their generous donation to the Endangered Wildlife Trust and commitment to continue supporting us during 2017, said EWTs Tammy Baker. ImToy was established in 2012 with a focus on designing intelligent sex toys and sexual health products to create awareness around intimate wellbeing, to stimulate, to entice and most certainly to turn people on. The No. 1 objective is to achieve the perfect balance between design, functionality and performance. ImToy will donate $1 from each online sale of an item from the Zoo collection to the EWT. For more, visit ImToy.com or find them on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. LOS ANGELESRealDoll, makers of some of the most realistic looking love dolls on the market, plans to release its most advanced model ever, "Harmony," in December. Harmony is programmed with artificial intelligence that allows her to not only engage in conversation, but actually remember details and develop feelings. An external processor powers Harmony through personality traits chosen by customers. According to an interview on Vocativ.com, RealDoll CEO Matt McMullen says the traits range from kind and sexual to jealous and moody. If youre nice, kind and give her complements and say things like, I missed you and I really enjoy talking to you, those are going to longterm raise the love meter, McMullen told the publication. If youre not nice, if youre like, Youre real boring, I dont like talking to you, then youll be more in the friend zone. The artificial intelligence of Harmony will allow the doll to blink, conduct a simple conversation, react to stimulus such as speech and touch and much more. She can learn and develop a relationship with her partner. Harmony as a head-only option will retail for about $10,000; a complete RealDoll with the Harmony unit will retail for roughly $60,000. The Harmony is much like the Samantha love doll from Spanish engineer Sergi Santos. AVN reported on that version here. MIAMI, Fla.Cam Con, a B2B/fan event for the live webcam industry, has five open sponsorship opportunities for the fourth annual event, held June 20-24 at Miami Beachs SLS South Beach Hotel. "We are only taking on five sponsors this year," said Cam Con founder and show organizer Clinton Cox. "The combined activations will give the sponsors the opportunity to create real awareness for their brand." Cox added, The modeling industry represents the largest growth sector in media right now, and Cam Con is at the forefront of that growth. The barriers of entry are gone and it's a new age. We provide an international forumand an excellent, secure environmentfor doing business within the modeling community. Plus, who does not enjoy a few days in Miami Beach at the SLS? As a Cam Con sponsor, companies will have significant levels of on-site exposure. "A large percentage of our model attendees are tastemakers," said Stacey Havoc. "These are career models who are very active on many social media platforms and within the entire industries itself. You want our models to see and learn about your brand. Most importantly, they will leave Miami talking about it." Sponsorship levels include Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze. Industry Day showcase booths are available as well. Go to CamCon.com/sponsorship for information. You knew it was coming. Trump's first war. It ended up being Syria. I guess we're about to find out if absolute unpredictability is just the antidote the Middle East needs. Joshua Hersh (@joshuahersh) April 7, 2017 U.S President Donald Trump said on Thursday night U.S. time he ordered missile strikes against a Syrian airfield from which Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad launched a chemical weapons attack earlier this week that killed more than 80 civilians. Trump says the air strikes on the military target in the northern part of Syria were in America's "national security interest." It is not clear how. Putin spox says US attacks on #Syria are "aggression," a violation of international law "under an invented pretext." https://t.co/rjTxvWIT31 Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) April 7, 2017 The Pentagon says 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired at Al Shayrat airfield in Syria. "The missiles were aimed at Syrian fighter jets, hardened aircraft shelters, radars, ammunition bunkers, sites for storing fuel and air defense systems," reports the New York Times. The cruise missiles struck the airfield beginning around 8:40 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, and the strikes continued for three to four minutes. According to Captain Davis, the missiles were fired from the destroyers Porter and Ross in the eastern Mediterranean. The military escalation was done in the name of Syria's children, but those same innocents are barred from seeking refuge in the United States by Trump's Executive Order limiting travel from predominantly Muslim nations he doesn't happen to be doing business with right now. "Oil prices surged more than 2 percent to a one-month high on Friday after the United States launched dozens of cruise missiles at an airbase in Syria, later dropping back as there seemed no immediate threat to supplies." Here is a video and transcript of President Trump's remarks on the airstrikes in Syria https://t.co/oeoseusBNl pic.twitter.com/icpzJTfJLs New York Times World (@nytimesworld) April 7, 2017 Oil prices spiked after the US launched a military strike on a Syria https://t.co/9vxkdYKWcg pic.twitter.com/sG8pN6yLxn CNN International (@cnni) April 7, 2017 NSC staffers were also kept out of the loop until after it had happened, per sources. https://t.co/dsUygBjyyH Christina Wilkie (@christinawilkie) April 7, 2017 Russian news reporting that US officials agreed to not strike parts of Shayrat base where Russians were present https://t.co/uhoNU9fBaE Neil Hauer (@NeilPHauer) April 7, 2017 UPDATE: Syrian observatory says airbase hit by U.S. strike is 'almost completely destroyed' Reuters Top News (@Reuters) April 7, 2017 A couple observations: Huge, international drama played out against backdrop of club members eating, drinking no idea what was going on. Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) April 7, 2017 Adam Schiff: 'In terms of U.S. law None of what we're doing in Syria is authorized' pic.twitter.com/TyCiRQWvhP CitizenSlant (@CitizenSlant) April 7, 2017 Whatever it is, it exceeds all prior precedents under domestic and international law. https://t.co/qExal4wRm6 Jack Goldsmith (@jacklgoldsmith) April 7, 2017 Mapping the targets of the American military attack on Syria https://t.co/RGWuma4l9K The New York Times (@nytimes) April 7, 2017 What we know and don't know about the Syria airstrikeshttps://t.co/jeP7e5DZhU The New York Times (@nytimes) April 7, 2017 Remember Devin Nunes? And the Senate going nuclear? And the Chinese summit?? That was today too. Greg Krieg (@GregJKrieg) April 7, 2017 Rex Tillerson has harsh words for Russia on Syria: "Either Russia has been complicit or simply incompetent." https://t.co/Jtixf6tQ6u pic.twitter.com/kh5vHFSaGX ABC News (@ABC) April 7, 2017 MORE: At least four Syrian soldiers killed at airbase attacked by U.S: Syrian Observatory Reuters World (@ReutersWorld) April 7, 2017 Here it comeshttps://t.co/d6pbRYnC2g Eli Valley (@elivalley) April 7, 2017 "Just 3 days ago, the president saying this is not our fight." But "as soon as he saw those images" https://t.co/krjYdHzhST pic.twitter.com/2gMtTDlHJt Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) April 7, 2017 MORE: At least four Syrian soldiers killed at airbase attacked by U.S: Syrian Observatory Reuters Top News (@Reuters) April 7, 2017 Anatomy of a Tomahawk missile: Explaining the weapons the US used to strike Syria.https://t.co/lkrWioVEti pic.twitter.com/OhD79JKjdf CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) April 7, 2017 Trump on Syrian children: "I don't think they should be coming into the United States."https://t.co/UwotbfQAMl via @HuffPostPol Adam Jentleson (@AJentleson) April 7, 2017 Trump on Syrian children: "I don't think they should be coming into the United States."https://t.co/UwotbfQAMl via @HuffPostPol Adam Jentleson (@AJentleson) April 7, 2017 Pentagon says Russians were given a "heads up" before Syria attackso any chemical weapons were likely whisked away https://t.co/I72RCgthYF Adam Khan (@Khanoisseur) April 7, 2017 Folks he's made the pivot https://t.co/KoCQWiRbUH Gideon Resnick (@GideonResnick) April 7, 2017 MEXICO CITY, MEXICO--(Marketwired - April 07, 2017) - Aeromexico, Mexico's global airline, celebrates ten years serving the Argentinian market as the only carrier offering direct daily flights between the two capital cities. In 2016, Mexico ranked Argentina as its fifth largest market in terms of passenger arrivals, representing the second largest market in Latin America. To meet market demand and growth, Aeromexico currently offers seven nonstop flights per week to Argentina during the regular season, with 12 flights per week on high season. The carrier operates the route with two of its Boeing models, the B777 with 277 seats -- 49 in Clase Premier, Aeromexico's Business Class Cabin -- and the B787-8 Dreamliner, considered one of the most modern aircraft in the sky, with 243 seats, including 32 in Clase Premier. Aeromexico offers customers the following flight schedules between Mexico City and Buenos Aires: Mexico City - Buenos Aires* AM 30 09:30 a.m. 09:25 p.m. Daily Buenos Aires - Mexico City* AM 29 00:50 a.m. 07:40 a.m. Daily *Times published are local to each country and are subject to changes without notice. In this regard, Aeromexico's Global Sales Senior Vice President Jorge Goytortua said, "Argentina is one of our leading destinations in South America. In 2016 alone, we carried more than 189,000 customers between these two markets by offering more than 3,800 seats per week. That is why celebrating our first decade serving this market that draws both countries closer fills us with a great sense of pride and satisfaction." Mexican Secretary of Tourism Enrique de la Madrid said, "We are very pleased to be in Argentina ten years after Aeromexico started to serve the route with its outstanding service, and work together to promote it enjoying one of the best moments in the tourist industry. We firmly believe that working together and connecting people, helps improve their lives, so we are very grateful to Aeromexico for continuing to strengthen the relationship between Mexico and Argentina. Many good things will come as we continue charting this course. Congratulations, Aeromexico!" he added. Story continues Aeromexico's extensive network connects customers traveling on this route to major destinations in Mexico such as Bajio-Leon, Cancun, Guadalajara, Monterrey, Puerto Vallarta, Tijuana, Veracruz, and Villahermosa, among others. Other flight connection options also include international destinations like Havana, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Madrid, New York, Orlando, Paris, and San Francisco. Thanks to the Aeromexico and Aerolineas Argentinas codeshare agreement signed by these two SkyTeam members, customers are able to travel between Buenos Aires, Mexico City, and Cancun on flights that are jointly sold and operated by both carriers. With 20 years and 15 destinations in South America, Aeromexico consolidates its leadership position in Argentina by offering connectivity to 44 destinations in Mexico, 19 in the United States, four in Europe, four in Canada, and three in Asia, strengthening its ties through air connectivity and promoting tourism in both nations. About Grupo Aeromexico Grupo Aeromexico, S.A.B. de C.V. is a holding company whose subsidiaries provide commercial aviation services and promote passenger loyalty programs in Mexico. Aeromexico, Mexico's global airline, offers more than 600 daily flights and operates its main hub out of Terminal 2 at the Mexico City International Airport. Its route network spans more than 80 cities on three continents including 44 in Mexico, 19 in the United States, 15 in Latin America, four in Canada, four in Europe, and three in Asia. The Group's fleet of more than 130 aircraft is comprised of Boeing 787, 777, and 737 jet airliners and next generation Embraer 190, 170, and 145 models. In 2012, the airline announced the most significant investment strategy in aviation history in Mexico, to purchase 100 Boeing aircraft including 90 MAX 737 airliners and ten B787-9 Dreamliners. As a founding member of the SkyTeam global alliance, Aeromexico offers customers more than 1,000 destinations in 177 countries served by its top 20 airline partners rewarding passengers with benefits including access to 672 premium airport lounges around the world. Aeromexico also offers travel options with its code share partners Delta Air Lines, Alaska Airlines, Avianca, Copa Airlines, and WestJet with extensive connectivity in countries like the United States, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, and Peru. www.aeromexico.com and www.skyteam.com Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2017/4/7/11G135397/Images/unnamed_(1)-95761e547f26a729942a9cb9c4d8129a.jpg Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2017/4/7/11G135397/Images/unnamed-ee71def0a46492cebcb3de739ec1bce8.jpg Reuters Inflation has surged to levels not seen in several decades, prompting a third of G20 countries to identify rising prices as their top concern, the Executive Opinion Survey conducted by the World Economic Forum's Centre for the New Economy and Society showed. The survey, which comes ahead of the COP27 in Egypt and the G20 summit in Indonesia later this month, also showed that environmental concerns took a back seat for the first time in years, as the world attends to more immediate socio-economic problems ranging from the fallout of the Ukraine war to the cost of living crisis. "The transition to net zero has dropped too far down on the short-term agendas of many business leaders," said Peter Giger, group chief risk officer at Zurich Insurance. The logo of Ford is pictured at the 38th Bangkok International Motor Show in Bangkok, Thailand March 28, 2017. REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha (Reuters) BEIJING (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co plans to launch its mid-size Ranger pickup truck in China in 2018, hoping to draw more Chinese consumers, who generally prefer sport-utility vehicles (SUVs), towards a new segment of cars. Ford would import the Ranger to China and currently has no plans to manufacture it locally, a spokeswoman said. The Chinese government's pilot program to relax policies that restrict pickup trucks from driving in urban areas is a potential boon for Ford, whose F-series pickup truck has been a bestseller in the United States for more than 30 years. At present, the Ranger is targeting markets outside the United States. However, Ford plans to reintroduce the model, which is smaller than the F-150, the entry-level F-series truck, in the country. Last year, Ford announced plans to sell the high-end Raptor version of the F-150 in China, to gauge demand in a relatively undeveloped segment and change the image of the pickup as a low-end workhorse in China. The first Raptor F150s will be delivered to customers on Saturday. The pickup offerings come as wealthy Chinese motorists look to buy larger cars, with SUVs driving growth in Chinese automobile sales amid weak demand for sedans. (Reporting by Jake Spring; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Sherry Jacob-Phillips) national-bank-16-9 National Bank of Canada (TSX:NA) is the sixth-largest Canadian bank and the largest in the province of Quebec. The company offers a wide range of financial services to its customers, but it gets most of its revenues from its personal and commercial banking segments, which account for approximately 48% and 36% of total revenues, respectively. Many investors have left National Bank of Canada off their radars because they?ve mostly been enticed by the Big Five Canadian banks. National Bank of Canada is a very solid dividend-growth king, like its peers in the Big Five, and I think it may be one of the most underrated stocks out there today. Should you pick up shares of National Bank of Canada? Or would you do better with a Big Five bank? There?s no question that the management team is ambitious about National Bank of Canada?s growth potential. They believe they?re well equipped to compete directly with the Big Five banks in the investment banking segment. The company has set the goal of becoming a top three Canadian investment bank by 2023. This will not be an easy task, as the Big Five incumbents are firing on all cylinders in this department. According to John Aiken, an analyst at Barclays, National Bank of Canada will need to lend money at more attractive rates in order to compete. National Bank of Canada is looking to hire more investment bankers this year, so it will be interesting to see how the company?s investment banking division fairs against the competition over the next few years. I?m not sure if it?ll become a top three investment bank, but one thing is for certain: the company has its foot to the pedal, and the long-term results will be beneficial to shareholders. Although National Bank of Canada has a huge presence in Quebec, the company is working on making its retail banking division more internationally diversified. The company currently has assets located in the U.S., the Ivory Coast, Mauritius, Cambodia, and Mongolia. Story continues Some international diversification to spice up your portfolio is great for growth, especially if you?re overexposed to the unstable Canadian market. There?s not a huge amount of international diversification right now, but the management team is on the right track. Going forward, it?s expected that strategic acquisitions of foreign assets may be in the cards as the company looks to further diversify into the fast-growing emerging markets. The stock currently trades at a 14.1 price-to-earnings multiple, a 1.9 price-to-book multiple, and a 3.1 price-to-sales multiple, all of which are higher than the company?s five-year historical average multiples of 10.3, 1.8, and 2.7, respectively, so the company isn?t a steal like it was before the surge in bank stocks, but I still think the price is somewhat attractive given the company?s growth potential. The stock offers a bountiful 3.98% dividend yield which is certainly enticing. The company also has great growth prospects, but for now, I think one of the Big Five banks with a larger amount of U.S. exposure would be a better bet, as National Bank of Canada looks fully valued. 1 Massive Dividend Stock to Buy Today (7.8% Yield!) - The Dividend Giveaway The Motley Fool Canada's top dividend expert and lead adviser of Dividend Investor Canada, Bryan White, recently released a premium "buy report" on a dividend giant he thinks everyone should own. Not only that - but he's created a must-have, exclusive report that outlines all the alarming traits of dividend stocks that are about to blow up - and how you can avoid them. For this limited time only, we're not only taking 57% off Dividend Investor Canada, but we're offering you special access to two brand-new reports, free of charge upon signing up. They will outline everything you need to know so you steer clear of dividend burn-outs AND take advantage of the dividend giants in the Canadian market. While this offer is still available, you can find out how to get a copy of these brand-new reports by simply clicking here. More reading Fool contributor Joey Frenette has no position in any stocks mentioned. 1 Massive Dividend Stock to Buy Today (7.8% Yield!) - The Dividend Giveaway The Motley Fool Canada's top dividend expert and lead adviser of Dividend Investor Canada, Bryan White, recently released a premium "buy report" on a dividend giant he thinks everyone should own. Not only that - but he's created a must-have, exclusive report that outlines all the alarming traits of dividend stocks that are about to blow up - and how you can avoid them. For this limited time only, we're not only taking 57% off Dividend Investor Canada, but we're offering you special access to two brand-new reports, free of charge upon signing up. They will outline everything you need to know so you steer clear of dividend burn-outs AND take advantage of the dividend giants in the Canadian market. While this offer is still available, you can find out how to get a copy of these brand-new reports by simply clicking here. Fool contributor Joey Frenette has no position in any stocks mentioned. Cherry blossom season is one of Japans most celebrated annual events, with trees in bloom and sakura flavor popping up in everything from Kit Kats to Krispy Kreme. This year, Starbucks Japan is celebrating the fruits of those blossoms in a uniquely American-themed way, with an American Cherry Pie Frappuccino. According to the (Google translated) press release, the creamy vanilla base is layered with a sweet and tart American-style pie filling, going for the a la mode flavor profile. That sounds good enough on its own, but the best touch is yet to come. The domed, whipped cream-accommodating plastic lid youre used to seeing is being replaced with a pie crust. Yes, a hemisphere of flaky pastry full of whipped topping, which you stab with your straw to break up into the drink. The announcement describes it as (again, via Google translation) a drink you can enjoy as if you are eating a pie with a fork. Its only available in the Tall size, which is probably a good thing. A Trenta would likely be tantamount to eating an entire pie. The cherry pie beverage is the first of Starbucks Japans Starbucks Summer Festival 2017 promotions, which will also include a Classic Tea Cream Frappuccino that blends Earl Grey, Ceylon and red teas into a cold, blended treat. Its not the first time Starbucks Japan has turned to American flavors for inspiration (and, in turn, Starbucks America has ignored how much wed like to try these things, too). Last winter, stores in Japan also offered a Hot Baked Apple Pie latte. They also have a pre-packaged Smores latte available in convenience stores, which is touted as an American and Canadian dessert item. Video: Black Tap's Pink Milkshake for Breast Cancer Awareness The American Cherry Pie Frappuccino will be available in Japans Starbucks stores nationwide for a limited time only, from April 13th to May 16th. This article was originally published on Food&Wine.com By John Irish NOUAKCHOTT (Reuters) - France backs efforts by West African states to boost security in their Sahel region, including a plan for a 5,000-strong multinational force to combat Islamist fighters, its foreign minister said on Thursday. Jean-Marc Ayrault said the G5 Sahel states - Mali, Mauritania, Chad, Burkina Faso and Niger - must improve their counter-terrorism capacity. "The countries of the G5 have decided to enter a new phase ... with the creation of a common force to protect their borders," Ayrault said after meeting Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz. "The second phase consists of training specialized troops, not to replace Barkhane, but to strengthen it in the fight against terrorist groups, but also all sorts of trafficking that is wreaking havoc on the region," he told Reuters. Former colonial power France intervened in 2013 to drive out al Qaeda-linked militants who seized northern Mali the year before. It has since deployed some 4,000 soldiers, known as the Barkhane force, across the region to hunt down Islamists. U.N. peacekeepers have also been deployed to Mali. The Sahel region, whose desert expanses stretch from Mauritania to Sudan, is home to several jihadist groups. Mali-based groups have continued to launch attacks across the region in the past 18 months. A spike of violence in central Mali has spilled over its southern border into Burkina Faso. A French soldier died in a clash with militants in Mali on Wednesday near the border with Burkina Faso in the latest example of risks faced by security forces. Ayrault, on a two-day trip to the region with his German counterpart Sigmar Gabriel, will travel to Gao in Mali on Friday to pay tribute to the soldier. Paris was already providing training and equipment and undertaking mixed patrols along border areas, Ayrault said, adding: "It will be a long-term project." A French diplomatic source said the aim was to create a 5,000-troop strong reaction force similar to the multinational contingent fighting Nigeria's Boko Haram insurgency. "The mission would cost several hundred million dollars as it would need to be properly equipped. It first needs to be rubber-stamped by the African Union and then the EU would be asked for financial aid," the source said. (Editing by Joe Bavier, Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Toom Heneghan) FRIDAY, April 7, 2017 (HealthDay News) -- U.S. blood banks are confident they have the tools to protect America's blood supply from possible new Zika virus outbreaks during the upcoming mosquito season. A transfusion of Zika-tainted blood can pass the virus to an unsuspecting recipient, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But sophisticated genetic tests and blood processing procedures make it highly unlikely that anyone will contract Zika from donated blood, according to a series of articles in a special issue of the journal Transfusion. Every blood donation in the United States undergoes testing for the presence of Zika virus, based on guidance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, said Susan Stramer, vice president of scientific affairs for the American Red Cross. About 40 U.S. donations have tested positive for Zika since screening began, mostly in Florida, Stramer said. Thanks to this testing, there have been no documented or alleged cases of Zika infection through blood transfusion in either the United States or its territories, said Dr. Louis Katz, chief medical officer of America's Blood Centers. The risk "was low before donor screening and is an extremely remote possibility now, with donor blood screening in place," Katz said. "Further, women in the most vulnerable period of pregnancy for bad fetal outcomes are rarely transfused in the United States, so [Zika-related birth defects] are even remoter risks." Zika causes no symptoms in 4 out of 5 people infected, so it's unlikely that most donors would suspect they're carrying the virus. Zika poses its main threat to the unborn, increasing a pregnant woman's risk of delivering a baby with microcephaly or other birth defects. One out of 10 pregnant U.S. women with confirmed infection in 2016 had a fetus or baby affected by Zika-related birth defects, the CDC said. Microcephaly causes newborns to have underdeveloped heads and brains. Four people in Brazil have contracted Zika through blood from three infected donors, Stramer said. At that time, blood donations were not being effectively screened in that country. U.S. blood banks use two tests that look for the genetic material of Zika in samples, Katz said. Any donations with potential infection are discarded. Blood sample screening in the southern United States last year detected 23 potentially Zika-tainted donations out of nearly 360,000. Fourteen of those samples, all from Florida, were judged as probably infected based on further genetic testing and interviews with donors, according to one of the new studies. Ten of the 14 donors reported travel to an active Zika transmission area within 90 days before donating blood, researchers reported. Two involved travel within the Miami outbreak area, while the rest involved travel to Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Trinidad, Mexico, Cuba or the Dominican Republic. A second study reported detection of five Zika-tainted samples out of more than 466,000 donations across the entire United States, all linked to travel in Central or South America. The cases occurred in Arizona, California, Nevada, New York and Texas. "We know these tests are extremely sensitive. They are much more sensitive than tests used in diagnostic public health labs," Stramer said. "It's highly unlikely that we would miss an infectious unit, but we never say never." These tests also have detected more than 350 infected blood donations in Puerto Rico, where Zika transmission reached epidemic levels last year, the researchers said. The screening tests are so effective that donation centers don't bother asking about travel to active Zika areas. "We'll get a more truthful answer from testing that we would by asking a donor about travel history," Stramer said. Routine blood processing adds another layer of protection to the blood supply. A third study in the journal reports that Zika is inactivated when plasma is separated from whole blood and undergoes standard pasteurization. "Indeed, Zika virus seems to be more sensitive to heat than other closely related viruses," federal regulators wrote in an accompanying editorial. However, because pasteurization alters proteins in whole blood, it can't be used to rid most donor blood of Zika, Stramer noted. In any case, people are much more likely to contract Zika from mosquitoes, or even from transmission during sex, than from a blood donation, Stramer and Katz agreed. "It's biologically possible. Transfusion transmission has been demonstrated. But the risk in the U.S. is remote," Stramer said. Though largely confined to Latin America and the Caribbean in 2016, Zika appeared in the United States last summer, with local transmission occurring in a couple of Miami-area neighborhoods. However, so far, most U.S. cases of Zika have occurred in travelers who contracted the virus in other countries. Of 5,197 cases reported, only 222 occurred due to local transmission, most of them in Florida, according to the CDC. More information For more on Zika infection through transfusion, visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by the editors of HealthDay: Most in Tobacco-Growing Kentucky Now Support Public Smoking Ban: Poll Most residents of Kentucky support outlawing smoking in public places, even though the state is one of the largest tobacco producers in the United States, a new survey shows. The Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky poll found that more than 7 in 10 people in the state back a statewide smoking ban in most public places, the Associated Press reported. That's the highest level of support since the group first started asking the question in 2011. Kentucky has the highest rate of tobacco-related cancer cases in the U.S. and anti-smoking advocates hope the results from the survey last fall will boost efforts to get a public smoking ban implemented, the AP reported. In Kentucky, smoking bans introduced by local governments cover about one-third of the state's residents, according to the Kentucky Center for Smoke-Free Policy. Nationwide, 27 states and the District of Columbia have workplace smoking bans, and many local governments have bans, the AP reported. ----- 2nd Opinion Yields Different Diagnosis for 1 in 5 Patients: Study One-fifth of patients who sought a second opinion at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. had been misdiagnosed by their primary care providers, a new study says. Twelve percent of the 286 patients who sought a second opinion after seeing primary-care physicians, physician assistants and nurse practitioners in 2009 and 2010 received the same diagnosis both times, and the remaining patients received "better defined/refined" diagnoses when they sought a second opinion, the Washington Post reported. The study was published in the Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice. "Diagnostic error is an area where we need more research, more study and more information," said study leader James Naessens, a professor of health services research at the Mayo Clinic, the Post reported. "The second opinion is a good approach for certain patients to figure out what's there and to keep costs down." He noted that the patients in the study felt their conditions were were serious enough to have them re-checked by some of the best doctors in the country, which makes this group of patients somewhat different than the general population. "It's not going to be 20 percent wrong every time" a patient sees a doctor, Naessens told the Post. ----- Painkiller Maker Settles With U.S. Government A leading maker of narcotic painkillers will pay $35 million to settle a U.S. government investigation of its distribution of those drugs. Dublin, Ireland-based Mallinckrodt PLC sells a range of opioid painkillers including generic pills containing fentanyl, morphine and oxycodone, and brand-name products such as extended-release Exalgo, Xartemis and Roxicodone pills, the Associated Press reported. The company also makes medicines to treat narcotic addiction. Possible links between marketing of addictive painkillers and the epidemic of opioid and heroin deaths in the U.S. have been under investigation by lawmakers and prosecutors, the AP reported. On Monday, Mallinckrodt said it had reached a deal with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. attorneys for the Eastern District of Michigan and Northern District of New York. The agreement requires further review and approval by the DEA and Justice Department. As is typical in such cases, Mallinckrodt didn't admit any wrongdoing, the AP reported. A number of companies that sell opioid painkillers have been accused by U.S. politicians and others of playing a role in the nation's opioid epidemic. Many people become addicted to opioids after being prescribed them after surgery or injury, and a number eventually turn to much-cheaper heroin. In 2015, a record number of more than 33,000 Americans died of an opioid overdose, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nearly half of such deaths involve a prescription opioid, the AP reported. Florida Governor Rick Scott Gov. Rick Scott has decided to step up his assault on Aramis Ayala, the state attorney for Orange and Osceola counties who had the audacity to refuse to seek the death penalty for an accused cop killer - or other defendants accused of capital crimes. After removing her last month from the prosecution of the accused, Markeith Loyd, Scott on Monday - acting "in the interest of justice" - reassigned 21 additional 1st-degree murder cases to an outspoken death-penalty proponent, Brad King, the Ocala-based state attorney for the 5th Judicial Circuit. These executive orders disrespect the sanctity of both the electoral and judicial processes. And Scott should reverse them immediately. It's hard to see this as anything but a politically motivated power grab by a governor whose disdain for the traditional checks and balances of government can be palpable - especially when it comes to the judiciary. Ayala, Florida's 1st black elected state attorney, announced last month that she would not seek death for Loyd - accused in the murder of his pregnant ex-girlfriend, Sade Dixon, and the execution-style killing of Orlando Police Lt. Debra Clayton. Scott's decision to remove her from the case was swift, coming within hours of her announcement. Nearly as swift was reaction from Republican lawmakers, calling for the governor to remove Ayala from office and reducing her office's funding. Just Tuesday morning, a group of Central Florida Republicans held a news conference again calling for her removal. To be sure, Florida lawmakers are still a bit sore about being forced - twice - to pass a bill requiring a unanimous jury vote for the death penalty. Both the Florida and U.S. Supreme Courts had struck down the state's capital punishment system as unconstitutional, making more than 1/2 the state's 400 death row inmates eligible for new sentencing. Likely, many GOP lawmakers saw Ayala's decision as another slap in the face. But that's their problem. They should understand that prosecutors have broad discretionary power. That's why every 1st-degree murder case is not a death penalty case. Aggravating circumstance also must be present. We don't necessarily agree with Ayala's position rejecting the death penalty in all cases. But we respect her authority, vested by the voters of the 9th Circuit, to do so. Those same voters - who elected her by a double-digit margin - can remove her from office if she does not represent their views about criminal justice. That's the point. The governor would have us believe this is about the death penalty. It's not. This is about a chief executive's unprecedented overreach based on a political philosophy. The law Scott cites, which allows a governor to remove prosecutors from cases if the prosecutors are unfit or if there is a conflict of interest, is also a stretch. In a statement Monday, Scott said the victims' families "deserve a state attorney who will take the time to review every individual fact and circumstance before making such an impactful decision." Aramis Ayala, state attorney for Orange and Osceola counties, Florida They also deserve a state attorney of their own choosing. They deserve a state attorney who's not fearful of doing what's best for their constituents by making a politically unpopular decision. And one not subject to knee-jerk reactions. Ayala cited numerous problems with the death penalty as the basis for her decision, which she said she reached after "extensive and painstaking thought and consideration." Nearly 150 law professors, former prosecutors and judges wrote a letter of protest to Scott. They kept it simple. "Florida's entire criminal justice system is premised on the independence of prosecutors," they wrote. Ayala "is solely empowered to make prosecutorial decisions for her circuit." If the governor is truly genuine about his passion for "justice," he needs to step back from this dangerously slippery slope. The governor would have us believe this is about the death penalty. It's not. Death penalty will be sought against Markeith Loyd State attorney calls Loyd 'especially heinous, atrocious or cruel' The state attorney prosecuting accused double murderer Markeith Loyd will seek the death penalty, according to a notice filed Monday evening. Fifth Judicial Circuit State Attorney Brad King cited several aggravated circumstances that he believes qualify the case for the death penalty. He called the crimes of which Loyd is accused of committing "especially heinous, atrocious or cruel." "The capital felony was a homicide and was committed in a cold, calculated and premeditated manner, without any pretense of moral or legal justification," the notice read. Loyd is accused of killing his pregnant ex-girlfriend Sade Dixon on Dec. 13 and then shooting Orlando police Lt. Debra Clayton "execution style" on Jan. 9 when she tried to apprehend him at a John Young Parkway Walmart. Loyd was found in an abandoned home on Jan. 17, bringing a 9-day manhunt to an end. The death penalty announcement in Loyd's case came 1 day after Gov. Rick Scott removed Orange Osceola State Attorney Aramis Ayala from 21 1st-degree murder cases and reassigned them to King's office. Ayala was originally set to prosecute Loyd, but Scott issued an executive order reassigning it to King hours after she announced that she would not seek the death penalty against Loyd or in any other case her office prosecutes. Law enforcement officials across Central Florida said it was a slap in the face to not seek capital punishment and applauded Scott's executive order. "I have seen the video of Markeith Loyd executing Lt. Debra Clayton while she lay defenseless on the ground," Orlando police chief John Mina said. "She was given no chance to live. A cop killer -- who also killed his pregnant girlfriend -- should not be given that chance." Up until the notice was filed Monday evening, King remained relatively mum when asked about the possibility of capital punishment, saying only that he planned to "seek justice" for the victims. | 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 Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE! Source: Palm Beach Post, Editorial, April 6, 2017Source: clickorlando.com, April 6, 2017 By Steve Holland and Koh Gui Qing PALM BEACH, Fla. (Reuters) - President Donald Trump pressed Chinese President Xi Jinping to do more to curb North Koreas nuclear programme and help reduce the gaping U.S. trade deficit with Beijing in talks on Friday, even as he toned down the strident anti-China rhetoric of his election campaign. Trump spoke publicly of progress on a range of issues in his first U.S.-China summit as did several of his top aides but they provided few concrete specifics other than China's agreement to work together to narrow disagreements and find common ground for cooperation. As the two leaders wrapped up a Florida summit overshadowed by U.S. missile strikes in Syria overnight, Xi joined Trump in stressing the positive mood of the meetings and at the same time papering over deep differences that have caused friction between the worlds two biggest economies. Trumps aides insisted he had made good on his pledge to raise concerns about Chinas trade practices and said there was some headway, Xi agreeing to a 100-day plan for trade talks aimed at boosting U.S. exports and reducing Chinas trade surplus with the United States. Speaking after the two-day summit at Trumps Mar-a-Lago resort, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson also said that Xi had agreed to increased cooperation in reining in North Koreas missile and nuclear programs though he did not offer any new formula for cracking Pyongyangs defiant attitude. Trump promised during the campaign to stop what he called the theft of American jobs by China. Many blue-collar workers helped propel him to his unexpected election victory on Nov. 8 and Trump is under pressure to deliver for them. The Republican president tweeted last week that the United States could no longer tolerate massive trade deficits and job losses and that his meeting with Xi "will be a very difficult one." On Friday, the unpredictable Trump not only set a different tone but also avoided any public lapses in protocol that Chinese officials had feared could embarrass their leader. "We have made tremendous progress in our relationship with China," Trump told reporters as the two delegations met around tables flanked by large U.S. and Chinese flags. "We will be making additional progress. The relationship developed by President Xi and myself I think is outstanding. And I believe lots of very potentially bad problems will be going away," he added, without providing details. 'AGREE WITH YOU 100 PERCENT' Xi also spoke in mostly positive terms. We have engaged in deeper understanding, and have built a trust," he said. I believe we will keep developing in a stable way to form friendly relations ... For the peace and stability of the world, we will also fulfil our historical responsibility. Well, I agree with you 100 percent," Trump replied. But in a sign that rough spots remained, Tillerson afterwards described the discussions as very frank and candid. After the meeting, Trump took Xi on a walk around the manicured grounds of his lavish Spanish-style complex. Trump could be seen chatting and gesturing to Xi, who did the same. Tillerson said Trump had accepted Xis invitation to visit China and that they also agreed to upgrade a U.S.-China dialogue by putting the two presidents at the head of the forum. U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the Chinese had expressed an interest in reducing Chinas trade surplus as a way of controlling their own inflation. Thats the first time Ive heard them say that in a bilateral context, he said. The highly anticipated U.S.-China summit was upstaged by U.S. missile strikes overnight against a Syrian air base from which Trump said a deadly chemical weapon attack had been launched. It was the first direct U.S. assault on the Russian-backed government of Bashar al-Assad in six years of civil war. The swift action in Syria could be interpreted as a signal especially to defiant nuclear-armed North Korea and by extension, its ally China as well as other countries like Iran and Russia of Trumps willingness to use military force. North Korea is developing missiles capable of hitting the United States. Tillerson said Xi agreed with Trump that North Korea's nuclear advances had reached a very serious stage. He said Trump also raised U.S.concerns about China's activities in the South China Sea. Beijing is building and fortifying islands in pursuit of expansive territorial claims in the strategic waterway. (This version of the story corrects spelling of Jinping in first paragraph, removes reference to "this year" in 16th paragraph) (Writing by Matt Spetalnick and David Brunnstrom in Washington; Editing by Howard Goller) Nigel Farage appeared disappointed by Donald Trump Many former Donald Trump supporters have turned on the president after his decision to retaliate against the Assad regime for its chemical weapons attack. Nigel Farage, Milo Yiannopoulos, Katie Hopkins, Right-wing vlogger Paul Joseph Watson, Ukip leader Paul Nuttall and Ukip donor Arron Banks are among the Trump supporters who have been disappointed by their hero. Mr Farage said: "I am very surprised by this. I think a lot of Trump voters will be waking up this morning and scratching their heads and saying 'where will it all end?' Many Trump voters will be worried about this military intervention. Where will it end? Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) April 7, 2017 "As a firm Trump supporter, I say, yes, the pictures were horrible, but Im surprised. Whatever Assads sins, he is secular." He said Britain should not get involved in any further strikes, commenting: "Previous interventions in the Middle East have made things worse rather than better." Other Donald Trump supporters have been more forthright in their comments. The U.S. bombing of Syria last night was rash, trigger happy, nonsensical and will achieve nothing. I hoped for better. Paul Nuttall (@paulnuttallukip) April 7, 2017 Ukip leader Paul Nuttall said: "The US bombing of Syria last night was rash, trigger happy, nonsensical and will achieve nothing. I hoped for better." Infowars' Paul Joseph Watson said: "I guess Trump wasn't 'Putin's puppet' after all, he was just another deep state/Neo-Con puppet. I'm officially OFF the Trump train. "It's been fun lads, but the fun is over. I'll be focusing my efforts on Le Pen, who tried to warn Trump against this disaster." Trump campaigned on not getting involved in Mideast. Said it always helps our enemies & creates more refugees. Then he saw a picture on TV. Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) April 7, 2017 American right-wing commentator Ann Coulter, who campaigned for Donald Trump, wrote: "Those who wanted us meddling in the Middle East voted for other candidates. Story continues "Trump campaigned on not getting involved in Mideast. Said it always helps our enemies & creates more refugees. Then he saw a picture on TV." Right first time. Stupid https://t.co/uxYe73tqWO Arron Banks (@Arron_banks) April 7, 2017 Disgraced right-wing firebrand and Trump campaigner Milo Yiannapolous wrote: "There comes a day in every child's life when his Daddy [Trump] bitterly disappoints him." Ukip donor Arron Banks labelled Donald Trump's choice "stupid" and said the president should have stayed out of the Middle East. He tweeted: "You maybe correct but destabilising another country on the border of Lebanon and Israel just nuts. ISIS must be loving this." And columnist Katie Hopkins asked: "Who stole my president?" MATTOON -- Research indicates a potential physician shortage could occur in the U.S. within the next decade. A new program in Coles County aims to combat that trend by boosting interest in medical careers during high school. Students from Charleston, Mattoon and Oakland high schools, as well as many homeschooled students, have met monthly since September to learn from health care professionals in the region. SIU School of Medicine's Eastern regional office is now expanding the Health CareeRx Club program to include three more schools from neighboring Edgar and Cumberland counties: Kansas, Cumberland and Neoga high schools. Presentations from pharmacists, chiropractors, family physicians, rural clinicians and pediatric nurse practitioners have showcased a range of career opportunities within the health care industry. The March program featured a fly-in visit from the Effingham-based Air Evac Lifeteam. The group arrived by helicopter at Sarah Bush Lincoln Hospital in Mattoon. The academic year will conclude in April with a health careers fair at Lake Land College. Many of the states public universities and some private institutions will highlight their health education programs. Its very exciting to see and hear firsthand what these dedicated men and women do for a living, said Brent Todd, assistant director of the Office of Regional Programs Eastern Region at SIU. The students are getting a variety of options to consider as they think about their futures. The program is a joint effort between staff at Area Health Education Centers, Carle of Mattoon, Eastern Illinois Education for Employment System, Eastern Illinois University, Lake Land College, Sarah Bush Lincoln Health System and SIU School of Medicine. ARCOLA -- The Best Western Plus Green Mill Village Hotel & Suites Convention Center in Arcola received the Champion Customer Care Award at Best Western Hotels & Resorts District III Meeting held recently in Chicago. According to a press release, the award was presented in front of several hundred District III Best Western hoteliers from Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Ontario, Canada. This honor is bestowed upon those member properties that demonstrate and best exemplify exceptional levels of service and care. The hotels must also meet quality and design standards and other membership requirements to qualify. The Best Western Plus Green Mill Village Hotel and Suites was one of only 101 hotels out of more than 2,100 properties in the U.S. and Canada to receive this designation this year. I am pleased to congratulate the Best Western Plus Green Mill Village on receiving the Champion Customer Care Award, said Terry Bichsel, chairman of Best Western Hotels & Resorts Board of Directors. As Best Western continues to evolve and meet the needs of todays travelers, this award honors exemplary hotels that deliver on guest expectations, drive our brand forward, and continue our reign as a leader in hospitality. Located at 917 Green Mill Road in Arcola, the Best Western Plus Green Mill Village Hotel & Suites Convention Center features 68 rooms decorated with local artwork and furnished with locally hand crafted Amish furniture. The hotel has an indoor swimming pool and fitness center, as well as a free breakfast complete with fresh eggs, bacon, sausage, pancakes and much more. It features a convention center, which has become a popular spot for wedding receptions, meetings and parties of all kinds. This top-rated hotel also carries a five-star tripadvisor ranking and a AAA three diamond rating. For reservations, call the hotel directly at 217-268-5000 or call Best Westerns 24-hour, toll-free number at 1-800-WESTERN. Reservations are also available through the hotel chains website at bestwestern.com. For convention center information, call the hotel directly at 217-268-5000 and speak to Tammy Fox-Walker, general manager. Best Western Hotels & Resorts, headquartered in Phoenix, Ariz., is a privately held hotel brand with a global network of 4,200 hotels in more than 100 countries and territories worldwide. 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 CHARLESTON -- Sgt. Heath Thornton of the Charleston Police Department recently told the Charleston Rotary Club about the departments K-9 program. Thornton is on his third dog, a German Shepherd named Kye. Along with German Shepherds, the other dogs employed by the CPD have included Malamutes and black Labradors. Previously the departments dogs came from Slovakia, primarily due to overall quality of breeding and bloodlines, but more recently donated dogs have been used. The latter has much to do with the total costs involved in securing and training police dogs, which easily can be in the $15,000 to $20,000 range, and this against the backdrop of a limited city budget dollars for the police dogs program. For this reason, officers in the K-9 program also are actively engaged in ongoing fundraising efforts to support the program. Kye is a full-service police dog, meaning he is used actively in patrol-related work. Along with patrol duties, police dogs will be trained for one specialization such as narcotics, cadaver or explosive-related work. The training process itself may range from four to 10 weeks, depending on the dog and the handler. CHARLESTON -- John Clough acknowledges that he's now on the "opposite side of the justice system." The Charleston man who spent years in law enforcement now has a different role, that of one of the people who helps decide about the future of people in prison. Clough, who recently ended his career as a Coles County sheriff's deputy, said that and his new job as a member of the Illinois Prisoner Review Board are both about "making a difference." When he was a street cop, he said, he would rather have told the parents of a kid in trouble about what happened than anything else. "It wasn't so much about arresting people," he said. Clough then added that he feels the board's work with prisoners might not really be that different. "A lot of them just want to be heard," he said. Clough said a friend in law enforcement told him a year ago about upcoming vacancies on the Prisoner Review Board. Official notice of the vacancies was released on March 10, the same day he left his position with the sheriff's office. Those coincided because board members are paid employees and aren't allowed to have other jobs, he said. After he applied, he received letters of support from local officials, including county Coroner Ed Schniers, Charleston police Deputy Chief Chad Reed and Charleston Mayor Brandon Combs. Gov. Bruce Rauner appointed Clough to the board on March 20, and since then he's traveled to three state prisons and one juvenile detention facility for what's basically been on-the-job training. The Prisoner Review Board is likely best known for making decisions on whether to release prisoners on parole, but Clough said that's only part of the job. He's spent most of his time so far on hearings at which the board sets the conditions for a prisoner's release once parole actually begins. Clough said that often addresses counseling a parolee might need and how to keep that person from returning to the environment that contributed to the crime leading to the prison sentence in the first place. Next week, he's scheduled to be in Chicago to take part in clemency hearings, forming recommendations for the governor to consider when deciding whether to reduce a prisoner's sentence. The state Senate has to confirm his appointment, but he expects that soon. His term on the board runs until 2023. His career as a sheriff's deputy helped meet some of the board's qualification requirements, which include a background in law enforcement, juvenile justice or a related area. Clough's various duties with the sheriff's office included time as its juvenile officer, as well as detective, K-9 officer and the patrol officer duties he had when he left the office. His 23 years in law enforcement was enough for him to retire, but he hasn't done that officially and hasn't started drawing his pension yet. Clough is also the county's Republican Party chairman and made an unsuccessful run for the party's nomination for sheriff in 2014. 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 ... The Russian Black Sea Fleets frigate The Admiral Grigorovich, currently on a routine voyage, is to enter the Mediterranean later on Friday, a military-diplomatic source in Moscow told TASS, adding that the ship would make a stop at the logistics base in Syrias port of Tartus, Joinfo.com reports. The Russian ship armed with cruise missiles Kalibr will visit the logistics base in Tartus, Syria, the source said. The Admiral Grigorovich is currently near the Black Sea straits. It is scheduled to enter the Mediterranean at about 14:00 Moscow time. The ship left on a voyage after replenishing supplies at Novorossiisk and taking part in a joint exercise with Turkish ships in the Black Sea. The source said the frigates presence off Syrias shores will depend on the situation, but in any way it will last more than a month. TASS has no confirmation of this from official sources. The frigates previous voyage lasted for the whole month of March. The ship entered the Mediterranean on March 2. On March 31 the Defense Ministry said it was back to Novorossiisk. The Admiral Grigorovich is the head ship of project 11356. Such ships have a displacement of about 4,000 tonnes, speed of 30 knots and endurance of 30 days. It is armed with Kalibr-NK cruise missiles, a missile self-defense system Shtil-1, and a 100 mm artillery piece A-190. It is capable of carrying a deck helicopter. Generated samples. Related code can be found here Motivation zi2zi is the follow-up work for my last project, once again tackling the same problem of style transfer between Chinese fonts. It is a pleasant surprise that the Rewrite project gets a fair amount of attention and interests, however, looking back, the result feels underwhelming. As an experimental attempt it does fulfill its purpose, but some big issues remain: The generated images are oftentimes blurry Fails under more stylized fonts Limited to learn and output only one target font style at a time That is how zi2zi comes into being, an attempt to solve the above problems in one blow, this time blessed with the mighty power of GAN. On a more personal note, it also serves as a playground for me to tap into the wonderland of GAN and its variants. One GAN to Rule Them All TL;DR: It is a conditional generative adversarial network, combined from 3 awesome papers, with a little additional spice: As its name hints, the zi2zi model is directly derived and extended from the popular pix2pix model. The network structure is illustrated below. The structure of Encoder, Decoder and Discriminator are directly borrowed from the pix2pix, specifically the Unet model, which are detailed in the original papers Appendix section Intuition Imagine a human designer work on a new typeface, they are definitely not learning the alphabet from scratch! Real world designers go through years of training to understand the structure of the letters/characters and the fundamental principles, before they could design a font on their own. To reflect this, it is important to make the model not only aware of its own style, but other fonts styles as well. Thus it is essential to enable to model to learn multiple font styles at the same time. Modeling multiple styles concurrently has two major benefits: The encoder gets exposed to many more characters, not only limited to one target font, but from all the fonts combined. The decoder could also learn different ways of writing the same radicals from other fonts. By training multiple fonts together, it enforces the model to learn from each one of them then use the learned experience to improve the rest of the crowd. Category Embedding for One-to-Many Modeling Now we have a problem that same character could appear in multiple fonts. Vanilla pix2pix model doesnt handle such one-to-many relationship out-of-box. Inspired by Googles zero-shot GNMT paper, the introduction of category embedding solves this by concatenating a non-trainable gaussian noise as style embedding to the character embedding, right before it goes through decoder. By doing this, encoder still maps same character into the same vector, the decoder, on the other hand, will take both the character and style embeddings to generate the target character. Losses, Lots of Losses With category embedding, we now have a GAN that can handle multiple styles at the same time. However, a new problem emerges: the model starts to confuse and mix the styles together, generating characters that dont look like any of the provided targets. Stolen from the AC-GAN model, the multi-class category loss is added to supervise the discriminator to penalize such scenarios, by predicting the style of the generated characters, thus preserving the style itself. Another important piece of the model is the constant loss borrowed from DTN network. It follows a simple idea: the source and generated character should resemble the same character, thus they must appear close to each other in the embedded space as well. The introduction of this loss GREATLY, GREATLY improves the convergence speed, by enforcing the encoder to preserve the identity of generated character, narrowing down the possible search space. Finally total variation loss is included, but from an empirical point of view, it doesnt do much visible to improve the quality of generated images. Also for a lot of brush writing fonts, tv loss actually works against our real interests, so here it is left as optional. How to Train Your (dra)GAN GAN is truly a beast to deal with. Only recommendation is to watch the losses goes up and down, then praise the SUN! Two-Step Training One strategy I adopt is to split training into a two-step processes. First, train a big model with many fonts, then freeze the encoder. After that, we can choose to fine-tune the interesting individual fonts. This way, we have an encoder that trained to the extract abstract character structural information with tens of thousands characters, and a dedicated decoder to flesh out the target. This can be also viewed as a way of transfer learning using weight sharing. Experiment Details The big model is trained with 27 different fonts, approximately half Chinese half Japanese. For each font, between 1000 and 2000 characters are randomly sampled. During the fine-tune process, however, a different and bigger set of characters may be used, mostly in between 2000 to 3000 characters, with one exception that is trained with 4000 characters. And as with the same as Rewrite, the source font is SIMSUM. It takes about 2 days on a single 1080 GTX to train the big model over 30 epochs, which contains about 29,000 examples. Learning rate is initially set to 0.001 with a batch size 16, with other parameters left as defaults (L1_penalty=100, Lconst_penalty=15). The learning rate is slashed by half after every 10 epochs. The fine-tune process, however, varies case by case, depending on difficulty and performance, usually with possibly higher L1 and const losses, e.g you can try L1_penalty=500, Lconst_penalty=1000. Notes One seemingly trivial but fairly important thing to do before training, is to verify your data, for things like whether certain characters go missing, or whether the overall shape stay consistent between source and target fonts, since certain font might choose older or rarer ways of writing of some characters. Failure to do so would confuse the model and lead to mode collapse. Have Fun With the Model Compare with Ground Truth The comparison with ground truth is shown below, with left being the original character and right as the inferred character: The result is pretty exciting. Compare with Rewrite, for many characters, the inferred shape is almost identical to its ground truth. Another pretty noticeable improvement is, the zi2zi model can handle much more stylized and complex font than Rewrite, having not shown bias towards certain families of fonts. Discover the Embedded Space One perk we get from having continuous embeddings is that we can interpolate between different styles, and witness the states in between: Below is the animation of transition between multiple pairs of fonts, which demonstrate the interpolation process in a more dynamic context: From (HanZi) to (Hangul) Chinese characters, no matter simplified or traditional or Japanese Kanji, are all constructed under common principles and a shared set of radicals. Would it be possible that this model just remember the radical shape and recombine them, and fails to generalize beyond that? This makes Hangul(, ), the Korean Alphabet, the perfect target for this question. Hangul, though having similar box-like structure as Chinese characters, is essentially its own system, with radicals that cannot be found in Chinese characters. It is an interesting challenge to test the models generalization capability beyond realm of Chinese characters: The leftmost column is a sample of source Chinese font, with the rest being the inferred Hangul counterparts. Noteworthily, at this moment, the model has not see any Hangul characters during the training. As the result shows, the output seems to resemble closely the style of the source Chinese font, which is a fairly strong evidence that the model generalizes beyond simply remembering the radicals and rehashing them. It can infer the look of unseen radicals as well, indicating the capturing of deeper structural and style information. Failure Cases The failure cases usually happen when the target font differs dramstically from other fonts it is trained with: Such cases could be bypassed by fine-tuning the font in question, with a higher learning rate. Tried but Didnt Work During the project, one thing I tried but didnt work is using instance normalization instead of batch normalization. Specifically the Conditional Instance Normalization introduced in this paper. Though more parameters are used to represent each style, in reality it leads to longer convergence time, and higher chance of mode collapse. While still in the code, it is not used in any of the examples above. This may add as another interesting testament of the unreasonable representational power of BN. Moving On It is both surprising and exciting to see that GAN works so well with fonts. Even better, unlike existing approaches, zi2zi works in an End-2-End fashion, assuming no stroke label or any other auxiliary information which is hard to obtain, only the images of the characters. Even though for now, zi2zi works mainly for CJK family fonts, because of its E2E nature, it could easily extend beyond that. In my wildest dream, could we train a model to learn the typefaces of all the languages in the world, that later on, people just need to design a single font, then automatically get the corresponding fonts in all the other languages? That is indeed a very exciting future to witness. Further on, it will be interesting to see how new GAN techniques apply to this problem. It is hard to believe, only in 6 months, new ideas are already piling up. Trying stuff like StackGAN, better GAN models like WGAN and LSGAN(Loss Sensitive GAN), and other domain transfer network like DiscoGAN with it, could be enormously fun. Acknowledgements Code derived and rehashed from: Chuwi launched its first laptop just a few months ago. But the Chinese company has been producing Windows and Android tablets for a while, and has a habit of offering models with either head-turning specs or price tags or sometimes both. Case in point? The companys next laptop features a 12.3 inch, 2736 x 1824 pixel display and 6GB of RAM. The company hasnt revealed a price for the Chuwi Lapbook 12.3 yet, but the notebooks other specs suggest it will be relatively cheap for a computer with the same display panel Microsoft uses in the Surface Pro 4 tablet. The Lapbook 12.3 features an Intel Celeron 3450 quad-core Apollo Lake processor and 64GB of eMMC storage. But theres also an M.2 slot under the hood, so you can add your own solid state drive if you want more (or faster) storage. Chuwi plans to begin selling the Lapbook 12.3 by the end of April. Youll probably be able to find it at Chuwis official AliExpress store, among other places. Update: Chuwi has revealed some more specs. The laptop measures 11.8 x 8.8 x 0.66 and weighs 3.2 pounds. Update 2: The laptop is now available for purchase from Gearbest. It has USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 ports, mini HDMI output, a microSD card slot, an Intel 3165 wireless card with dual-band 802.11ac WiFi and Bluetooth 4.2. And the laptop is powered by a 36.48 Wh battery. Chuwi says the Lapbook 12.3 should be available by the end of April. via TechTablets (HealthDay)U.S. blood banks are confident they have the tools to protect America's blood supply from possible new Zika virus outbreaks during the upcoming mosquito season. A transfusion of Zika-tainted blood can pass the virus to an unsuspecting recipient, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But sophisticated genetic tests and blood processing procedures make it highly unlikely that anyone will contract Zika from donated blood, according to a series of articles in a special issue of the journal Transfusion. Every blood donation in the United States undergoes testing for the presence of Zika virus, based on guidance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, said Susan Stramer, vice president of scientific affairs for the American Red Cross. About 40 U.S. donations have tested positive for Zika since screening began, mostly in Florida, Stramer said. Thanks to this testing, there have been no documented or alleged cases of Zika infection through blood transfusion in either the United States or its territories, said Dr. Louis Katz, chief medical officer of America's Blood Centers. The risk "was low before donor screening and is an extremely remote possibility now, with donor blood screening in place," Katz said. "Further, women in the most vulnerable period of pregnancy for bad fetal outcomes are rarely transfused in the United States, so [Zika-related birth defects] are even remoter risks." Zika causes no symptoms in 4 out of 5 people infected, so it's unlikely that most donors would suspect they're carrying the virus. Zika poses its main threat to the unborn, increasing a pregnant woman's risk of delivering a baby with microcephaly or other birth defects. One out of 10 pregnant U.S. women with confirmed infection in 2016 had a fetus or baby affected by Zika-related birth defects, the CDC said. Microcephaly causes newborns to have underdeveloped heads and brains. Four people in Brazil have contracted Zika through blood from three infected donors, Stramer said. At that time, blood donations were not being effectively screened in that country. U.S. blood banks use two tests that look for the genetic material of Zika in samples, Katz said. Any donations with potential infection are discarded. Blood sample screening in the southern United States last year detected 23 potentially Zika-tainted donations out of nearly 360,000. Fourteen of those samples, all from Florida, were judged as probably infected based on further genetic testing and interviews with donors, according to one of the new studies. Ten of the 14 donors reported travel to an active Zika transmission area within 90 days before donating blood, researchers reported. Two involved travel within the Miami outbreak area, while the rest involved travel to Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Trinidad, Mexico, Cuba or the Dominican Republic. A second study reported detection of five Zika-tainted samples out of more than 466,000 donations across the entire United States, all linked to travel in Central or South America. The cases occurred in Arizona, California, Nevada, New York and Texas. "We know these tests are extremely sensitive. They are much more sensitive than tests used in diagnostic public health labs," Stramer said. "It's highly unlikely that we would miss an infectious unit, but we never say never." These tests also have detected more than 350 infected blood donations in Puerto Rico, where Zika transmission reached epidemic levels last year, the researchers said. The screening tests are so effective that donation centers don't bother asking about travel to active Zika areas. "We'll get a more truthful answer from testing that we would by asking a donor about travel history," Stramer said. Routine blood processing adds another layer of protection to the blood supply. A third study in the journal reports that Zika is inactivated when plasma is separated from whole blood and undergoes standard pasteurization. "Indeed, Zika virus seems to be more sensitive to heat than other closely related viruses," federal regulators wrote in an accompanying editorial. However, because pasteurization alters proteins in whole blood, it can't be used to rid most donor blood of Zika, Stramer noted. In any case, people are much more likely to contract Zika from mosquitoes, or even from transmission during sex, than from a blood donation, Stramer and Katz agreed. "It's biologically possible. Transfusion transmission has been demonstrated. But the risk in the U.S. is remote," Stramer said. Though largely confined to Latin America and the Caribbean in 2016, Zika appeared in the United States last summer, with local transmission occurring in a couple of Miami-area neighborhoods. However, so far, most U.S. cases of Zika have occurred in travelers who contracted the virus in other countries. Of 5,197 cases reported, only 222 occurred due to local transmission, most of them in Florida, according to the CDC. More information: Susan Stramer, Ph.D., vice president, scientific affairs, American Red Cross; Louis Katz, M.D., chief medical officer, America's Blood Centers; March 2017, Transfusion Susan Stramer, Ph.D., vice president, scientific affairs, American Red Cross; Louis Katz, M.D., chief medical officer, America's Blood Centers; March 2017, For more on Zika infection through transfusion, visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Copyright 2017 HealthDay. All rights reserved. About 85 per cent of patients with horse-related trauma were female, and more than a third of injuries involved children aged 12 to 14 years. Credit: University of Queensland A new study has recommended helmets should always be worn by children not only when riding horses but also when around horses, to reduce the risk of head injuries. The research conducted by The University of Queensland's Centre for Children's Burns and Trauma Research Group is one of few recent comprehensive studies of paediatric horse-related trauma in Australia. Lead author Dr Jane Theodore said the paper examined six years of data from patients with horse-related injuries at the Royal Children's Hospital, which was Queensland's only tertiary paediatric trauma hospital at the time. "We looked at 187 incidents in children aged up to 16 years, and most resulted from falls while riding horses," Dr Theodore said. "Traumatic brain injury was the most common injury sustained, with riders who wore helmets having significantly less severe traumatic brain injuries and shorter stays in hospital compared with those who did not." Dr Theodore said there were more than 40 cases where children suffered non-riding injuries. "In this group the majority were not wearing helmets, and of these more than a third sustained a traumatic brain injury. "Children who undertake activities while handling horses, such as grooming, can be injured by horse kicks, being knocked down or trampled. "Wearing a helmet in these instances may reduce the risk of acquiring a more severe traumatic brain injury." About 85 per cent of patients with horse-related trauma were female, and more than a third of injuries involved children aged from 12 to 14 years. There were three deaths, and more than seven per cent of patients suffered permanent injuries to their brain, eyes, face and limbs. Horse-related injuries tended to occur at home or other private residences, predominantly near metropolitan and regional locations. Dr Theodore, who is now working within the Department of Surgery at Redcliffe Hospital, said the study also revealed the need for a horse-related injury pro forma in hospital emergency. "This would prompt health professionals to record whether or not patients were wearing safety gear, such as helmets or body protectors," she said. "The data could be used for future studies on horse-related injury prevention in the paediatric population." The Centre for Children's Burns and Trauma Research Group is part of The University of Queensland's Child Health Research Centre. The study is published in the Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health. More information: Jane E Theodore et al. Paediatric horse-related trauma, Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health (2017). Jane E Theodore et al. Paediatric horse-related trauma,(2017). DOI: 10.1111/jpc.13471 In a recent research study published in the journal of Social Science & Medicine, Health Geography PhD candidate Killan Atuoye, MA16, highlights elevated mental distress in heads of households where food insecurity is moderate to high. The study was conducted with nearly 1,500 household heads in the northwestern region of Ghana, Africa, where food insecurity is an issue. Credit: Krista Habermehl // Western News While a lack of access to safe and nutritious food can contribute to malnutrition, and a whole host of other physical effects, what, if any, are the effects on mental health? According to Geography PhD candidate Killan Atuoye, MA'16, heads of households who experience severe to moderate food insecurity meaning they have limited or uncertain access to nutritionally adequate or safe foods, or do not have the ability to acquire food in a socially acceptable way report elevated mental distress compared to those from food secure households. His findings, written in collaboration with Isaac Luginaah, associate professor with the Department of Geography and Canada Research Chair in Health Geography, were recently published in the journal Social Science & Medicine. "The World Health Organization has recognized social determinants of health but the element of food was missing. From my fieldwork, it came out clearly that this was a big issue," said Atuoye, who, for the study, surveyed nearly 1,500 people in northwestern Ghana, Africa, where food insecurity is an issue. "In the northern part of Ghana, we came to realize the social stigma around food insecurity and not having food to eat. You just don't carry that burden (food insecurity) alone, you also carry the burden of being called names." Atuoye, who grew up in northwestern Ghana, said there are several situations in the region where social stigma plays a role in mental health and depression. For example, in communal living housing complexes, where several families share one kitchen, those experiencing food insecurity feel pressure to pretend to cook a meal to avoid being stigmatized. In rural communities, if a farmer's family goes hungry due to an unsuccessful crop one year, the community perception is he can't feed his family because he is lazy. Even children are faced with social stigma related to food scarcity. "I remember, when growing up in Ghana, some families that really felt food insecurity at certain times of the year when you are kids, playing outside and living among them and calling them names. Kids would go to their house crying; saying 'this kid was calling me names,'" Atuoye said. "You can see, apart from malnutrition, the burden of being locked up inside and parents not allowing their kids to go outside and play that alone contributes to depression. That affects kids growing up." The research study also revealed female household heads, compared with their male counterparts, were more likely to report elevated mental distress as a result of food insecurity. Atuoye said this could be that while the majority of the household heads surveyed were male, and had the responsibility to provide grains for the family, women generally carry the greatest burden related to food because they are responsible for the day-to-day cooking. While food security is a big issue in sub-Saharan Africa, Atuoye said even in the Canadian context it's a problem in some areas; as is stigma. However, there are systems in place to combat food insecurity in Canada. In Ghana, those same formalized structures don't exist. Going forward, Atuoye hopes his research will shed some light on the need for policies, in Ghana in particular, that address mental health within the context of food insecurity. "Food access hasn't been elevated to the level of mental health. We need to, in terms of policy, try to relate these two together and provide a mental-health policy and pay attention to a person's access to food as a social dynamic. "Those who feel food insecurity already know what it is, but those who make the policies probably don't appreciate it because they're probably not experiencing food insecurity. This research hopefully shows policy-makers, especially, there's a link when it comes to food and mental health and there's a need to take some action around it." This bioactive foam can be easily shaped to fit gaps in skull bone caused by injury, surgery, or birth defect, and will be replaced by the body's own bone over time. Credit: Texas A&M University A team including researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is developing a new material that can be used to replace skull bone lost to injury, surgery, or birth defect. The bioactive foam is malleable when exposed to warm saline, allowing surgeons to easily shape it to fit irregular defects in the skull, where it hardens in place. Once implanted in the skull, specially coated pores within the foam attract bone cells, naturally regenerating bone to replace the foam, which dissolves over time. The foama shape memory polymer coated in a bioactive polydopamineis intended as an alternative to materials currently used to treat cranio-maxillofacial gaps. Most commonly, such gaps are filled with a bone graft surgically harvested from the patient, such as from the hip. Such rigid bone grafts are often difficult to harvest, and cannot be readily manipulated to fit within irregularly shaped bone defects, compromising healing. The research is supported by a four-year $1.9 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and is led by Texas A&M University associate professor Melissa Grunlan, who developed the foam. "This is like trying to fill in a missing puzzle piece with the wrong piece," Grunlan said. "These bone defects can cause tremendous functional problems and aesthetic issues for individuals, so it was recognized that a better treatment would make a big impact." Mariah Hahn, a Rensselaer professor of biomedical engineering and an expert in bone tissue engineering, will test various formulations of the foam in vitro, recommending the most successful formulations for further pre-clinical testing, and providing insights on why some foams are more or less successful in promoting bone growth. "We want to find the ideal formulation that maintains the amazing shape memory properties of the foam while providing the optimal environment for stimulating new bone formation," said Hahn, a member of the Rensselaer Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies. The research draws upon Hahn's expertise in bone formation and bone tissue engineering in evaluating the materials and proposing next steps to optimize the formulations. Hahn's research focuses on understanding cell-to-cell and cell-to-material interactions at a fundamental level. The Hahn Tissue Lab specializes in development of tissue-engineered replacements for diseased small-caliber arteries and osteochondral tissues, and in regeneration of chronically scarred tissue. The lab is also involved in the development of tissue-engineered disease models. The project began about five years ago, and has already shown good biocompatibility in preliminary tests in small animal models. Many more years of refinement and testing are required before a product reaches surgeons as a treatment option. However, said Hahn, the approach has a number of advantages, particularly when contrasted with other options under research, such as 3-D printing methods. "A moldable bone-promoting scaffold could have broad use if it's successful," said Hahn. "It takes advantages of the body's own healing ability, and it's a low-cost, 'off the shelf' solution that would not need to be pre-tailored to the individual defect." Hahn and Grunlan are joined in their research by Texas A&M researchers Dr. W. Brian Saunders and Dr. Roy Pool in the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, and Michael Moreno, a professor of mechanical engineering. Hahn's research is enabled by the vision of The New Polytechnic, an emerging paradigm for higher education which recognizes that global challenges and opportunities are so great they cannot be adequately addressed by even the most talented person working alone. Rensselaer serves as a crossroads for collaborationworking with partners across disciplines, sectors, and geographic regionsto address complex global challenges, using the most advanced tools and technologies, many of which are developed at Rensselaer. Research at Rensselaer addresses some of the world's most pressing technological challengesfrom energy security and sustainable development to biotechnology and human health. The New Polytechnic is transformative in the global impact of research, in its innovative pedagogy, and in the lives of students at Rensselaer. (HealthDay)Fewer than 1,000 residents have followed through since Oregon became the first state to permit physician-aided dying in 1997, according to a report published online April 6 in JAMA Oncology. Using data from the Oregon Health Authority from 1998 through 2015, Charles Blanke, M.D., a professor of medicine at the Oregon Health & Science University's Knight Cancer Institute in Portland, and colleagues found that 1,545 prescriptions for lethal medication were written. But, less than two-thirds of these patients991 in allused the drugs. Of those who took their life, men slightly outnumbered women. Patients' ages in 2015 ranged from 25 to 102, with more than half older than 71. While cancer accounted for the overwhelming majority of cases, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, lung disease, heart disease, and HIV also led to physician-assisted death. For nine out of 10, losing autonomy and not enjoying activities of daily living were the primary reasons for wanting to die. Loss of dignity led to 78.7 percent of the overall deaths, while uncontrolled pain was cited by one-quarter of patients. The researchers said that 5.3 percent of the patients underwent a psychiatric evaluation to assess their competence in making end-of-life decisions. Also, "contrary to claims that it might be pushed onto the poorly educated or disadvantagedmostly white, older, college-educated people used the law," Blanke told HealthDay. For example, nearly all were white. More than 9 out of 10 were receiving hospice care and had health insurance. And 70.8 percent had at least some college education. Most patients died at home. On average, they fell into a coma 5 minutes after taking the drug and died within 25 minutes. Copyright 2017 HealthDay. All rights reserved. Structural racism, mass incarceration, and the widening income gap between rich and poor all feed growing health inequalities in the USA, which the health care systemby its very design and financing - only helps exacerbate, according to a new five paper Series published in The Lancet. Published as the new administration approaches its first 100 days in office, the Series highlights the urgent need for broad initiatives to address racism and inequality, as well as health reform that move towards a single-payer system, to address growing health inequalities in the USA, and prevent a 21st century health-poverty trap. Writing in The Lancet, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, says: "Health care is not a commodity. It is a human right. The goal of a health-care system should be to keep people well, not to make stockholders rich. The USA has the most expensive, bureaucratic, wasteful, and ineffective healthcare system in the world. Medicare-for-all would change that by eliminating private health insurers' profits and overhead costs, and much of the paperwork they inflict on hospitals and doctors, saving hundreds of billions in medical costs." Income inequality The survival gap between the richest and poorest Americans is widening, with low-income Americans being left further behind. Since 2001, the poorest 5% of Americans have experienced no gains in survival, while middle and high income Americans have seen their life expectancy increase by 2 years. Today, the richest 1% of Americans live 10-15 years longer than the poorest 1%. The authors identify two trends during 2001-2014: 1) poverty deepened and 2) poverty became an increasingly important risk factor for poor health. Based on current trends, the authors predict that the gap in life expectancy between the poorest 20% and wealthiest 20% of Americans will increase by nearly a decade in a single generation - from 77 and 82 for the poorest and wealthiest Americans born in 1930, to 76 and 89 for those born in 1960. Dr Jacob Bor, Boston University School of Public Health, says: "We are witnessing a slow-moving disaster unfolding for the health of lower-income Americans who have spent their working lives in a period of rising income inequalities. Rising economic insecurity among poor and middle class Americans has led to the persistence of smoking and the rise of obesity and opioid epidemics, with adverse consequences for health and life expectancy. At the same time, paying for health care in the USA today can bankrupt households and impoverish families. The growing link between income and health in the USA has potential to create a health-poverty trap." The Affordable Care Act While the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has reduced the number of Americans without health insurance from 48.6 million in 2010 to 28.6 million in 2015, the high cost of co-payments, deductibles and co-insurance still drive many households into debt, even bankruptcy. The ACA's Medicaid expansion targeted the poorest Americans, but 19 states - mostly southern states with large minority populations and poor records of health care access - chose to opt out. Even if the ACA were not altered or repealed, an estimated 28 million people would remain uninsured in 2024. Health care access inequalities among income groups are stark - in 2015, 25.2% of poor Americans were uninsured, compared to 7.6% of non-poor Americans. Dr David Himmelstein, City University of New York, co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program and lead author of the Series says: "Today, 43 million people in the USA are poor, and although the ACA has nearly halved the number of people without insurance, 29 million Americans, many of them poor or near-poor, remain uninsured. Health inequalities are more entrenched than ever, and rather than address them, the US health care system often exacerbates them. In order to tackle health inequalities in the US, it is essential that we move towards a non-market financing system that treats health care as a human right." Dr Adam Gaffney, Cambridge Health Alliance and Harvard Medical School, says: "Republican proposals focus on market based reforms that would slash federal funding for Medicaid, replace the ACA's subsidies with regressive tax credits, and further privatise Medicare. Rather than improve the health inequalities that remain a grave problem even in the era of the Affordable Care Act, this approach would only make things worse. Real reform is now needed to take us towards a universal single-payer system." Structural racism Significant health disparities exist among racial groups. For instance, the rate of infant mortality is twice as high for black Americans compared to white Americans. And, in 2013, median family wealth for the non-Hispanic white population was 10 times that of Hispanics and more than 12 times that of African-Americans. Despite the passage of civil rights laws in the 1960s, structural racism in public and private policy - from discrimination in hiring decisions and housing to tough sentencing laws for drugs - contributes to health inequalities. Residential segregation relegates many black Americans to neighbourhoods with over-priced, substandard housing, often near busy roads and other sources of air pollution (such as factories, toxic sites). Residents experience under-funded public schools, few employment opportunities, increased rates of crime, and (as in the case of the Flint lead water contamination crisis) can suffer government neglect of public health issues. "Racial and ethnic health disparities in the United States are well documented, but structural racism is rarely discussed as a root cause," says Dr Mary T. Bassett, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. "Structural racism refers to all the ways in which systems foster inequitable outcomes, whether in housing, education, employment, media, health care or the criminal justice system. All have profound effects on health. If we don't address structural racism, health inequities will persist." The authors point to several potential solutions to improve health equity by targeting structural racism, including community programmes to address housing and access to health care; policy reform to reduce sentencing laws and imprisonment; and training the next generation of health professionals. Mass incarceration The US has the highest incarceration rate of any country at 743 per 100000 people in 2005. Among other developed countries, its closest competitor is New Zealand at 173. Every step of the criminal justice system - from arrest to re-entry - influences health, and has wide repercussions for families and communities. Compared with non-incarcerated individuals, prisoners and ex-prisoners have higher rates of HIV, hepatitis C, hypertension, diabetes, substance use and mental health disorders. Moreover, the authors' analysis shows that people on probation and parole have particularly high mortality. Research suggests that if incarceration had remained at its mid-1980s level, US life expectancy would have increased by an additional 51.1% and infant mortality would have fallen by an additional 39.6%. The annual rate of incarceration for black men is 3.8-10.5 times higher than for white men. Dr Christopher Wildeman, Cornell University, Ithaca, says: "Soaring incarceration since the 1970s has profoundly affected health in the USA and, because of the uneven distribution of incarceration, the criminal justice system further contributes to racial health inequalities. Overcrowding, high costs and aggressive policing have led to increasing recognition that mass incarceration has failed. But, sweeping reforms are needed to reduce incarceration of technical parole violators, expand community corrections for low-level property and drug crimes, and medical paroles for elderly or sick inmates, in addition to expanded access to health care for individuals affected by the criminal justice system." KEY DATA: health inequalities in the USA The US is one of the most unequal countries in the OECD - only Chile, Turkey and Mexico are more unequal. The life expectancy gap between rich and poor is among the highest in developed countries. The richest 1% of Americans live 10-15 years longer than the poorest 1%. The life expectancy gap has increased in recent decades, with poverty an increasingly strong risk factor for early death. Many people forgo medical care altogether: 39% of low income Americans reported not seeing a doctor because of costs, compared to 7% in Canada and 1% in the UK. The US health care system is the most expensive of any other country, yet people with serious illness commonly face financial hardship - 1 in 10 families with medical bill problems have declared bankruptcy. The poorest fifth of American spend 6% of their income on private insurance - nearly twice what the wealthiest fifth pay at 3.2% The ACA significantly reduced the number of people who are uninsured - from 48.6 million in 2010, to 28.6 million in 2015, mostly through Medicaid expansions which Congress recently threatened to roll back. Before the 2014 implementation of the ACA, in 2012 43% of adults avoided needed care and 41% had medical bill difficulties, down to 36% and 35% in 2014. In 2015, inequalities remain: 25.2% of poor Americans are uninsured, compared to 7.6% of non-poor Americans; 27.7% for Hispanics, 14.4% for non-Hispanic blacks and 8.7% for non-Hispanic whites. US life expectancy would have increased 511% more and infant mortality would have fallen 396% more from 1983 to 2005 if incarceration had remained at its mid-1980s level. Greece's justice minister on Friday said Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis had likely bribed "thousands" of doctors and civil servants to promote its products, amid an ongoing probe. "A great number of state officials are implicated... from what I'm beginning to realise from reports, it must be thousands who were directly bribed from Switzerland," Stavros Kontonis told state agency ANA radio. "National health service doctors and state officials were bribed to promote drugs in an illegal and anti-scientific manner," Kontonis said. Scores of people have been questioned in a probe ongoing since last year, with anti-corruption prosecutors also visiting Novartis's premises near Athens earlier this year to gather evidence. The case gained attention following a suicide attempt in Athens on New Year's Day, by a Novartis manager. That attempt was thwarted by police and according to the judicial source, the manager was one of those questioned over alleged corruption. Kontonis on Friday said Novartis continued to sell "overpriced" drugs even after the country was hit by economic crisis in 2010 and huge cuts were imposed on state budgets, leaving many Greeks without access to affordable medicine. In January, Novartis issued a statement saying it was "aware of the media reports about our business practises" in Greece and that it was seeking more information and was cooperating with the authorities. "Novartis is committed to the highest standards of ethical business conduct and regulatory compliance in all aspects of its work and takes any allegation of misconduct extremely seriously," the company said in the statement. The Swiss pharmaceutical giant was investigated by US authorities in 2014, accused of paying bribes in order to boost sales of some of its medicines, and was later fined $390 million (366 million euros) by the US Justice Department. In March, Novartis also paid $25 million (22.4 million euros) to settle claims involving its Chinese subsidiary. 2017 AFP Dr Frederic Thomas from the French National Centre for Scientific Research and Dr Beata Ujvari from the Centre for Integrative Ecology. Credit: Deakin University A world-first book combining evolutionary ecology and oncology aims to improve cancer prevention and therapies. When Deakin University's Dr Beata Ujvari was asked by a publishing company to suggest an idea for a book, she didn't envision co-editing a first-of-its-kind publication in an exciting new scientific field. Dr Ujvari, a molecular biologist and geneticist with an interest in evolutionary biology from Deakin's Centre for Integrative Ecology (CIE), was looking for a textbook on the ecology and evolution of cancer. She thought only that she would like someone to write such a book, so she could read it. Three years later, "The Ecology and Evolution of Cancer" is the first in the relatively new field of evolutionary medicine, which encompasses the disciplines of ecology, oncology and biology and takes an evolutionary and ecology approach to treating cancer. "With this book, we are proposing a new concept that we should bring evolutionary knowledge into how we treat cancer patients," Dr Ujvari said. "Current cancer treatment attempts to completely eradicate the tumour. However, there are always one or two cells that survive and, by the process of trying to eradicate everything you are actually selecting for treatment resistant cancer cells. "The idea of the evolutionary and ecology approach is to tailor the treatment to the tumour, not to eradicate it but to slow its growth and prevent it metastasising," she explained. "This concept has been advocated by a small number of people for about 50 years, but now the field is growing. "That's why we really need this book, to open up the field for people who are not reading evolutionary literature about evolutionary oncology." Launched last month by French scientific and technology attache Anne Rouault, "The Ecology and Evolution of Cancer" was co-edited by Dr Ujvari and French scientists Dr Frederic Thomas and Dr Benjamin Roche, co-founders of the French research institution The Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Cancer Research. The book's distinctive cover, designed by French artist Eric Pelatan, is designed to capture different aspects of the evolutionary and ecology approach. It features Charles Darwin as the author of the theory of evolution, the Tasmanian Devil as the iconic species for transmissible cancer, and a number of species that are highly resistant to cancer including the naked mole rat, the elephant and the whale. It also depicts a hydra, a lower ranked organism which can be affected by cancer, illustrating that the disease is not unique to highly-developed, multicellular organisms. Dr Ujvari hoped that, as both an introduction to cancer evolution and a review of current research in the field, "The Ecology and Evolution of Cancer" would attract a wide audience. "The book, like the field, is quite broad," she said. "We're trying to bridge ecology, evolution, cancer research and oncology and attract academics, students and clinicians as well as the general public. "The topic is so new that people might just glance over it, but the cover is so attractive we hope people will pick it up to see what it's about. "There is a lot of science in the chapters, but all our authors tried to make the subject matter accessible, so that if you came across it in a bookshop you would understand it." Dr Ujvari said that while people look upon cancer as a recent disease, it had actually been present during the whole of human evolutionary history, with evidence of prostate cancer being discovered in ancient Egyptian mummies. "People, and other animals, have developed tumour resistant mechanisms over time and we could study those mechanisms and exploit them for better knowledge, for better treatment and better outcomes," she said. 'It's knowledge that has been largely overlooked until now." Shamubeel Eaqub delivered a cogent and informed presentation at an NZPI planning conference plenary session. Hard to do justice to it here- but I've done my best with notes taken at the time - and try to tell his story to the conference. I begin with his summary of the problem:He was at pains to emphasise that the housing problem NZ now has, has been building for the past 30 years.This graphic is his version of what has been regularly communicated - the ratio between house price and hosuehold income.This is his version of the boomer/millenial generational gap that has opened up in the ability to buy a house. He characterises it as a landed gentry/mortgage slavery divide similar to Victorian times.One of his main points is the fact that we - as a society - don't want to create housing supply for the "poor" - the bottom half of society. He notes that the number of state houses/1000 head of the population now is back to what it was in 1941.Another of his concerns is the amount of bank loans now tied up in house mortgages compared to previous periods, and how this is potentially restricting other parts of the economy from expanding - starved of investment capital.Eaqub also focuses attention on the demand side of the equation. Many commentators have argued that a major driver for demand has been natural population growth - but this data demonstrates that the ntural growth demand has remained reasonably stable since the 1950's, while the demand from migration has sharply increased.The economics of rental housing - particularly in Auckland - is highlighted in ths graph. Return on housing investment in Auckland is about 3%, while in the rest of New Zealand it is between 5% and 6% - above the cost of borrowing.Eaqub's assessment of the cumulative housing shortage is dramatic - and is based on the rate of house or home construction that occurred post way, up to the period of reform in the mid 1980's.His final slides explored what was happening now to the broader economy in NZ - by examining house sales, and the availability of loan capital. The above graph is used to suggest that the peak in the house market has turned.......and that new loans are reducing. This particular indicator was also picked up by Chris Aitken (Hobsonville Land Company).Shamubeel suggests there will be a bust in the construction economy, even though the country desperately needs more homses.He ended his presentation by suggesting that "planners will be vilified" because they will be exposed as the villains, blamed for pushing new unitary plans enabling intensification ("unilateral plan" - my thought here), and pushing, driving change to enable urban renewal through compliance with new requirements and provisions coming down the line including NPS Urban Development Capacity obligations and duties. The Economists 2017 African business outlook survey states that South Africas latest set of broad-based black economic empowerment (B-BBEE) regulations are unworkable. In November 2016, Minister of Telecommunications and Postal Services Siyabonga Cwele launched the Amended B-BBEE ICT Sector Code. Cwele said the ICT sector needed to move South Africa forward, following the devastating effects of more than 350 years of colonialism and institutionalised apartheid racism. The new B-BBEE ICT Sector Code increases the minimum prescribed equity to be held by black people in a company to 30%, versus 25% in the countrys generic B-BBEE code. The new B-BBEE ICT Sector Code and the generic B-BBEE code for South Africa will see many non-black-owned businesses struggle to achieve high BEE ratings. The changes were also not well received by large businesses, which described the new regulations as unworkable. My principals in North America are not going to approve of us essentially having to give away equity to raise our B-BBEE rating, said one executive. We would rather run the risk of losing business [to other companies with a higher BEE rating] for now. The impact of black economic empowerment is not positive when seen in the context of economic growth. South Africas economy is expected to grow slightly faster in 2017 than in 2016, but the overall pace of expansion remains pedestrian and below potential. According to The Economist Intelligence Unit, BEE is a contributing factor to this slow growth. BEE is listed as one factor hampering economic growth, along with labour rigidity, legislative and regulatory uncertainty, and internal divisions in the ANC. The arrest of the Azeribaijani citizen Elnur Husseinzades has been extended for another two months, his attorney, Arkadi Israelyan, told Armemnian News NEWS.am. The attorney also noted that he periodically meets with his client. According to the statement of the press-service of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR) National Security Service, on February 1, a group of Azerbaijani servicemen made a diversionary infiltration attempt in the direction of Talish village of NKR, taking advantage of the foggy weather. The attempt was prevented by the Karabakh military subunits defending the state border of Artsakh. On the same day, serviceman of the intelligence troop of 157th motorized rifle brigade of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces, Elnur Husseinzade, was revealed and detained. A criminal case has been launched into making an infiltration attempt and illegal crossing of the state border of NKR under Articles 33-317 and Article 350(1) of the NKR Criminal Code. Dollar, euro continue to rise in Armenia EU partners welcome justice sector reforms in Armenia Armenia government to have academic city project development working group Zelenskyy to attend G20 leaders' summit Russian MFA offers Tehran and Riyadh to mediate dialogue Survey: Georgia residents say Armenia is their friend Arman Yeghoyan to Poland colleague: Armenia needs support from European platforms State Department official: American side is impressed by Armenia Police reforms Anna Astvatsaturian Turcotte: I realized that this project is the right one Heads of general staffs of CSTO countries armies to discuss military cooperation development President: Climate change agenda continues to remain priority for Armenia despite challenges, security concerns Armenia discusses issue of EEU citizens' stay in country for more than 180 days Economy minister: 74% of Diaspora Armenians ready to invest in Armenia 158 people die in Philippines storm Close to $7.5M allocated for Armenia scientific infrastructure, material, technical base modernization Byblos Bank Armenia finances the construction of two major solar parks Bloomberg: EU mechanism to provide Ukraine with $18 billion implies conditions Turkey voices its full and unconditional support for Azerbaijan Ombudsperson attends Armenia-EU Human Rights Dialogue session, presents facts recorded in her ad hoc reports Israeli embassy congratulates Azerbaijan on 'Victory Day' World gold prices going down Ankara offers its storage capacity for Russian grain Zelenskiy calls key conditions for talks with Russia Bitcoin price goes down Copper price goes down World oil prices dropping Blinken: Armenia and Azerbaijan are taking courageous steps to achieve peace Newspaper: What changes expected in "Brussels package" of Armenia-Azerbaijan normalization talks? 13 billion cubic meters of natural gas found off Israel coast State Security Service of Azerbaijan is scared by YouTube video about situation in Nakhichevan MFA: Armenia, Azerbaijan FMs agree to expedite their negotiations President: UAE is a responsible energy supplier as long as the world needs oil and gas EU has serious concerns about US inflation reduction act Head of IMF: The global surge in consumer prices may be close to the high point Germany wants EU to resume trade talks with US as soon as possible Pashinyan's closed meeting with MPs of ruling Civil Contract faction is over Hungary will not support EU efforts to help Ukraine with joint funds Greece to soon ban sale of spyware U.S. military delegation arrives in Turkey German industry calls for postponement of global minimum corporate tax Podolyak: Ukraine has never refused to negotiate Elon Musk calls on 'independent-minded' voters to vote for Republicans Bezos Earth Fund pledges $1 billion by 2030 to protect carbon stocks and biodiversity 7 people killed in collision between truck and passenger bus in Turkey Nikol Pashinyan holds closed meeting with members of ruling party faction Qatar's foreign minister calls criticism of West 'arrogant' and 'racist' Algeria officially applies to join BRICS group Delegations headed by Armenian and Azerbaijani FMs meet in Washington 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 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 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 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 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 The National Interest: Iran turns attention to the Caucasus Tokayev: Kazakhstan is ready to use other measures, besides diplomacy, for its defense 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 The United States has launched more than 50 Tomahawk cruise missiles at an airbase in Syria. US President Donald Trump he stated he ordered the strike, reiterating claims that the Syrian government was behind the chemical attack in the province of Idlib. U.S. defense officials tell Fox News that two warships based in the eastern Mediterranean, the USS Porter and the USS Ross, have been training for the past two days to execute this mission. According to the American side, there are Russians at the base, but said they had been warned multiple times to leave. He did not know whether Russian aircraft were at the base when the missiles hit. The strike was a proportional response to Assad's heinous act, Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis said. The strike was intended to deter the regime from using chemical weapons again. STEPANAKERT. The adversary violated the ceasefire along the line of contact between the Karabakh and Azerbaijani opposing forces more than 25 times, from late Thursday night to early Friday morning. During this time the Azerbaijani armed forces fired about 400 shots toward the position-holders of the Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh Republic/NKR) Defense Army, and with different-caliber shooting weapons, the defense army informed Armenian News-NEWS.am. In addition, the adversary fired four mortar shells, in the northeastern direction of the line of contact. But the Artsakh defense army vanguard units continue to have full control over the frontline, and they take actions in response when necessary. The US Democrats and Republicans are always ready to stand with their friend and ally, Armenia, said Senator Ed Markey, at a US Congress evening event commemorating Armenian Genocide, reported Voice of America Armenian service. Numerous Congress members that addressed at the event stressed that they stand with the Armenian people in the recognition of this tragedy. Congressman Salud Carbajal said the truth is just. Congresswoman Anna Eshoo noted that she was ashamed that the US has not yet formally recognized Armenian Genocide; but she expressed confidence that they will prevail. Congressman Dave Trott stated that US President Donald Trump was not a conventional politician, and expressed the hope that Trump will recognize Armenian Genocide, with a statement. Influential Congressman Adam Schiff also spoke about the chances of Trumps official recognition of this tragedy. And as per Congressman Brad Sherman, the US recognition of Armenian Genocide will help the Turkish people themselves in acknowledging their history. YEREVAN. Opposition Yelk (Way Out) Bloc is considering running in the Yerevan Council election together with Zaruhi Postanjyan, blocs spokesperson Tigran Avinyan said at a press conference on Friday. Avinyan noted that Postanjyan could run in this election on the Yelk list. The matter of collaboration with Zaruhi Postanjyan in some format is being discussed, he added. Former member of Armenias opposition Heritage Party, MP Zaruhi Postanjyan, recently founded the Erkir Tsirani (Country of Apricot) Party. Yerevan Council election will be conducted on May 14. The documents required for registration to run in this voting shall be submitted to the Central Electoral Commission of Armenia by no later than Sunday 6pm. Dollar, euro continue to rise in Armenia EU partners welcome justice sector reforms in Armenia Armenia government to have academic city project development working group Zelenskyy to attend G20 leaders' summit Russian MFA offers Tehran and Riyadh to mediate dialogue Survey: Georgia residents say Armenia is their friend Arman Yeghoyan to Poland colleague: Armenia needs support from European platforms State Department official: American side is impressed by Armenia Police reforms Anna Astvatsaturian Turcotte: I realized that this project is the right one Heads of general staffs of CSTO countries armies to discuss military cooperation development President: Climate change agenda continues to remain priority for Armenia despite challenges, security concerns Armenia discusses issue of EEU citizens' stay in country for more than 180 days Economy minister: 74% of Diaspora Armenians ready to invest in Armenia 158 people die in Philippines storm Close to $7.5M allocated for Armenia scientific infrastructure, material, technical base modernization Byblos Bank Armenia finances the construction of two major solar parks Bloomberg: EU mechanism to provide Ukraine with $18 billion implies conditions Turkey voices its full and unconditional support for Azerbaijan Ombudsperson attends Armenia-EU Human Rights Dialogue session, presents facts recorded in her ad hoc reports Israeli embassy congratulates Azerbaijan on 'Victory Day' World gold prices going down Ankara offers its storage capacity for Russian grain Zelenskiy calls key conditions for talks with Russia Bitcoin price goes down Copper price goes down World oil prices dropping Blinken: Armenia and Azerbaijan are taking courageous steps to achieve peace Newspaper: What changes expected in "Brussels package" of Armenia-Azerbaijan normalization talks? 13 billion cubic meters of natural gas found off Israel coast State Security Service of Azerbaijan is scared by YouTube video about situation in Nakhichevan MFA: Armenia, Azerbaijan FMs agree to expedite their negotiations President: UAE is a responsible energy supplier as long as the world needs oil and gas EU has serious concerns about US inflation reduction act Head of IMF: The global surge in consumer prices may be close to the high point Germany wants EU to resume trade talks with US as soon as possible Pashinyan's closed meeting with MPs of ruling Civil Contract faction is over Hungary will not support EU efforts to help Ukraine with joint funds Greece to soon ban sale of spyware U.S. military delegation arrives in Turkey German industry calls for postponement of global minimum corporate tax Podolyak: Ukraine has never refused to negotiate Elon Musk calls on 'independent-minded' voters to vote for Republicans Bezos Earth Fund pledges $1 billion by 2030 to protect carbon stocks and biodiversity 7 people killed in collision between truck and passenger bus in Turkey Nikol Pashinyan holds closed meeting with members of ruling party faction Qatar's foreign minister calls criticism of West 'arrogant' and 'racist' Algeria officially applies to join BRICS group Delegations headed by Armenian and Azerbaijani FMs meet in Washington 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 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 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 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 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 The National Interest: Iran turns attention to the Caucasus Tokayev: Kazakhstan is ready to use other measures, besides diplomacy, for its defense 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 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 Japan to exterminate 150 thousand chickens because of bird flu outbreak Armenia informational online platform for promoting highly qualified specialists engagement is launched South Korea's president apologizes for crush in downtown Seoul Documento: Greek PM Mitsotakis used intelligence services to spy on dozens of people 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 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 Investigators of the upcoming corruption trial on the case of the PACE member Luka Volonte announced, that they had revealed payments in the amount of 2.39 million euros made by means of British and offshore companies. This was stated in the investigation of Khadizha Ismailova, published on The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Projects webpage (OCCRP). Most part of the financing fells on the part of the British Hilux Services LLP and the account of Baktelekom company at Estonian bank, which is registered in Azerbaijan. According to prosecutors, the payments were made as a reward to Volonte to mitigate the criticism of PACE over the Azerbaijan's policy in connection with human rights. The indictment states, that up to 1 billion euros was transferred to the account of the British company from 2013 to 2014. As it is claimed, the deal of Azerbaijan with Volonte goes back to 2011. At that time, Azerbaijan refused to grant a visa to the Bundestag MP Christoph Strasen, who was assigned to compile a report about political prisoners in Azerbaijan. Instead, Volonte visited Azerbaijan by the invitation of his colleague MP Elkhan Suleymanov the same year. It turned out, that Baktelekom MMC had links with the Azerbaijani businessman Rasim Asadov, whereas the documents of OCCRP show that Asadov is a colleague of Jalal Pashayev. The latest, is the cousin of the first Lady of Azerbaijan Mehriban Aliyeva. Armenia government to have academic city project development working group Zelenskyy to attend G20 leaders' summit Russian MFA offers Tehran and Riyadh to mediate dialogue Survey: Georgia residents say Armenia is their friend Arman Yeghoyan to Poland colleague: Armenia needs support from European platforms State Department official: American side is impressed by Armenia Police reforms Anna Astvatsaturian Turcotte: I realized that this project is the right one Heads of general staffs of CSTO countries armies to discuss military cooperation development President: Climate change agenda continues to remain priority for Armenia despite challenges, security concerns Armenia discusses issue of EEU citizens' stay in country for more than 180 days Economy minister: 74% of Diaspora Armenians ready to invest in Armenia 158 people die in Philippines storm Close to $7.5M allocated for Armenia scientific infrastructure, material, technical base modernization Byblos Bank Armenia finances the construction of two major solar parks Bloomberg: EU mechanism to provide Ukraine with $18 billion implies conditions Turkey voices its full and unconditional support for Azerbaijan Ombudsperson attends Armenia-EU Human Rights Dialogue session, presents facts recorded in her ad hoc reports Israeli embassy congratulates Azerbaijan on 'Victory Day' World gold prices going down Ankara offers its storage capacity for Russian grain Zelenskiy calls key conditions for talks with Russia Bitcoin price goes down Copper price goes down World oil prices dropping Blinken: Armenia and Azerbaijan are taking courageous steps to achieve peace Newspaper: What changes expected in "Brussels package" of Armenia-Azerbaijan normalization talks? 13 billion cubic meters of natural gas found off Israel coast State Security Service of Azerbaijan is scared by YouTube video about situation in Nakhichevan MFA: Armenia, Azerbaijan FMs agree to expedite their negotiations President: UAE is a responsible energy supplier as long as the world needs oil and gas EU has serious concerns about US inflation reduction act Head of IMF: The global surge in consumer prices may be close to the high point Germany wants EU to resume trade talks with US as soon as possible Pashinyan's closed meeting with MPs of ruling Civil Contract faction is over Hungary will not support EU efforts to help Ukraine with joint funds Greece to soon ban sale of spyware U.S. military delegation arrives in Turkey German industry calls for postponement of global minimum corporate tax Podolyak: Ukraine has never refused to negotiate Elon Musk calls on 'independent-minded' voters to vote for Republicans Bezos Earth Fund pledges $1 billion by 2030 to protect carbon stocks and biodiversity 7 people killed in collision between truck and passenger bus in Turkey Nikol Pashinyan holds closed meeting with members of ruling party faction Qatar's foreign minister calls criticism of West 'arrogant' and 'racist' Algeria officially applies to join BRICS group Delegations headed by Armenian and Azerbaijani FMs meet in Washington 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 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 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 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 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 The National Interest: Iran turns attention to the Caucasus Tokayev: Kazakhstan is ready to use other measures, besides diplomacy, for its defense 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 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 Japan to exterminate 150 thousand chickens because of bird flu outbreak Armenia informational online platform for promoting highly qualified specialists engagement is launched South Korea's president apologizes for crush in downtown Seoul Documento: Greek PM Mitsotakis used intelligence services to spy on dozens of people 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 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 Armenia President to attend climate change convention in Egypt Gold prices change slightly EU partners welcome justice sector reforms in Armenia Armenia government to have academic city project development working group Zelenskyy to attend G20 leaders' summit Russian MFA offers Tehran and Riyadh to mediate dialogue Survey: Georgia residents say Armenia is their friend Arman Yeghoyan to Poland colleague: Armenia needs support from European platforms State Department official: American side is impressed by Armenia Police reforms Anna Astvatsaturian Turcotte: I realized that this project is the right one Heads of general staffs of CSTO countries armies to discuss military cooperation development President: Climate change agenda continues to remain priority for Armenia despite challenges, security concerns Armenia discusses issue of EEU citizens' stay in country for more than 180 days Economy minister: 74% of Diaspora Armenians ready to invest in Armenia 158 people die in Philippines storm Close to $7.5M allocated for Armenia scientific infrastructure, material, technical base modernization Byblos Bank Armenia finances the construction of two major solar parks Bloomberg: EU mechanism to provide Ukraine with $18 billion implies conditions Turkey voices its full and unconditional support for Azerbaijan Ombudsperson attends Armenia-EU Human Rights Dialogue session, presents facts recorded in her ad hoc reports Israeli embassy congratulates Azerbaijan on 'Victory Day' World gold prices going down Ankara offers its storage capacity for Russian grain Zelenskiy calls key conditions for talks with Russia Bitcoin price goes down Copper price goes down World oil prices dropping Blinken: Armenia and Azerbaijan are taking courageous steps to achieve peace Newspaper: What changes expected in "Brussels package" of Armenia-Azerbaijan normalization talks? 13 billion cubic meters of natural gas found off Israel coast State Security Service of Azerbaijan is scared by YouTube video about situation in Nakhichevan MFA: Armenia, Azerbaijan FMs agree to expedite their negotiations President: UAE is a responsible energy supplier as long as the world needs oil and gas EU has serious concerns about US inflation reduction act Head of IMF: The global surge in consumer prices may be close to the high point Germany wants EU to resume trade talks with US as soon as possible Pashinyan's closed meeting with MPs of ruling Civil Contract faction is over Hungary will not support EU efforts to help Ukraine with joint funds Greece to soon ban sale of spyware U.S. military delegation arrives in Turkey German industry calls for postponement of global minimum corporate tax Podolyak: Ukraine has never refused to negotiate Elon Musk calls on 'independent-minded' voters to vote for Republicans Bezos Earth Fund pledges $1 billion by 2030 to protect carbon stocks and biodiversity 7 people killed in collision between truck and passenger bus in Turkey Nikol Pashinyan holds closed meeting with members of ruling party faction Qatar's foreign minister calls criticism of West 'arrogant' and 'racist' Algeria officially applies to join BRICS group Delegations headed by Armenian and Azerbaijani FMs meet in Washington 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 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 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 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 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 The National Interest: Iran turns attention to the Caucasus Tokayev: Kazakhstan is ready to use other measures, besides diplomacy, for its defense 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 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 Japan to exterminate 150 thousand chickens because of bird flu outbreak Armenia informational online platform for promoting highly qualified specialists engagement is launched South Korea's president apologizes for crush in downtown Seoul Documento: Greek PM Mitsotakis used intelligence services to spy on dozens of people 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 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 Armenia President to attend climate change convention in Egypt Milwaukee Brewers outfielder Keon Broxton left Thursday's game after being struck in the helmet with a 92-mph fastball from Colorado rookie Antonio Senzatela in the second inning. The ball struck a protective flap on Broxton's helmet as he batted with one out and the bases empty. The force of the pitch appeared to push the helmet flap into Broxton's nose. He briefly was sprawled out in the right-handed batter's box before getting to his feet with assistance from a trainer. Manager Craig Counsell said Broxton is day-to-day and unlikely to go on the disable list. Mattingly says Jeter has talked about ownership: Miami Marlins manager Don Mattingly says Derek Jeter, his successor as captain of the New York Yankees, has "always talked about" owning a major league team one day. A report on FoxBusiness.com said Jeter and former Florida governor Jeb Bush were among those who could try to buy the Marlins from Jeffrey Loria. Howard signs with Braves: Free agent slugger Ryan Howard has reached a minor league deal with the Atlanta Braves, hoping for another chance to play in the majors. The 37-year-old Howard wasn't signed by the Philadelphia Phillies after last season. Howard will report to extended spring training next week. The first baseman will then join Triple-A Gwinnett when he's ready. White Sox place Petricka on DL: The Chicago White Sox have placed reliever Jake Petricka on the 10-day disabled list because of a strained muscle on the right side of his back. Petricka pitched one scoreless inning in Tuesday's opener. Yankees prospect Kaprielian out: Top Yankees pitching prospect James Kaprielian was placed on the minor league disabled list because of pain in his right elbow and will be sent for scans. Kiewit Showcases Honolulu Transit Construction The first phase of the 20-mile light rail system may open in late 2020, and the entire system is scheduled to be fully operational in 2025. With 5 miles of the guideway completed for Oahu's light rail transit system as of January 2017 -- 25 percent of the entire project's 20-mile elevated guideway -- the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation (HART) has much to celebrate this year. Kiewit Corporation won the first three contracts to construct the guideway and has featured an article about the 1.55 billion project's construction in its first-quarter 2017 Kieways newsletter. The article notes the light rail system will ease significant traffic congestion, and it explains some of the decisions made by Kiewit as it has built the guideway. For example, the company is using a form-first column method and also an underslung guideway installation process. Kiewit Operations Manager Dustin Donahoo explains in the article that, "By documenting a step-by-step process for [the underslung guideway approach], crews were trained and able to consistently perform the operation to meet quality standards. We needed to make sure we knew what all the steps were to the underslung truss and that we had good, solid processes that everyone could follow to prevent quality or safety mistakes." Completing the first 5 miles is "an important milestone," Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell said. "This is a visual reminder of the fact that we are building our way to a better transportation future. As commuters drive by and look at the guideway, they know that an alternative to sitting in traffic is on the way." The first phase of the light rail system may open in late 2020, and the entire system is scheduled to be fully operational in 2025. Pandemics Film 'Unseen Enemy' Debuts April 7 "The public plays an essential role in the fight to contain and eradicate diseases like Ebola, Zika, and influenza," said CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. "The situation is urgent, but information can help make us less vulnerable." A film about the public health risks of disease pandemics makes its debut April 7. Titled "Unseen Enemy," it is a CNN Films creation being broadcast for World Health Day and is exclusively presented by Johnson & Johnson. According to CNN Films, all of its broadcasts will have limited commercial interruptions. The film is written and directed by Janet Tobias, with CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta being an executive producer and consultant for the film. Paul G. Allen is another executive producer. The focus is on disease investigators and outbreaks of viruses such as Zika, Ebola, and influenza. "From inside the hot zones in Brazil and Liberia, the film includes doctors who detail their heroic and often hazardous work from the front lines of the outbreak response. Doctors and researchers describe how they encountered the diseases, and how they are fighting the pathogens to save patients," according to CNN Films' release about it. "While the headlines of deadly outbreaks are alarming, Tobias' film makes the case that successful containment can be achieved with coordinated efforts of medical professionals, researchers, governments, communicators, and the public. Two historic examples support her case. World-renowned epidemiologist Dr. Larry Brilliant, guides viewers through his difficult decisions as he worked on the teams that forcibly vaccinated the last remote villagers against smallpox. Others describe how the global spread of HIV/AIDS could have been stopped if governments and public health bodies had acted more deliberately to warn the public. Dr. Brilliant warns now that there may be 30 emerging human pathogens that have the potential to become epidemics." "The public plays an essential role in the fight to contain and eradicate diseases like Ebola, Zika, and influenza," said Gupta. "It's always been my goal to bring the best scientific and medical information to viewers so they can make informed decisions that improve their health. The situation is urgent, but information can help make us less vulnerable." Encore presentations of the film are scheduled for Saturday, April 15 and Sunday, April 16. "Because we witnessed epidemics up close during filming, our team came away with hope that we can win the fight against them. Around the world, there are dedicated scientists, innovative technologists, heroic doctors and nurses, as well as survivors, moms, dads, sisters, and brothers, who understand we all have a role to play," said Tobias. "It's only by each of us doing our part that we will win the battle." Honeybee (Apis mellifera) landing on a milk thistle flower (Silybum marianum). Credit: Fir0002/Flagstaffotos/ Wikipedia/GFDL v1.2 (Phys.org)A pair of biology professors, one with the University of Illinois, the other with Macquarie University in Australia has proposed in a Perspective piece in the journal Science that the traits we see as instinctual in animals were likely learned by ancestors. In their paper, Gene Robinson and Andrew Barron suggest that those behaviors learned by ancestors wound up in their DNA somehow, making them instinctual behaviors in later generations. Scientists (and everyone else) know that certain behaviors in some animals are instinctualthey are hard-wired, which means that a given animal is able to do something without being taught. Birds can fly and migrate, for example, fish can swim, etc. But where did these innate abilities come from? That is the question posed by Robinson and Barronthey suggest many, if not all innate abilities arise due to an ancestor learning how to do something and then somehow passing that information along in their DNA. To bolster their argument, the research pair note that epigenetic changes (nongenetic influences on gene expression) have been observed in the laba mouse exposed to Vinclozolin, for example, experiences changes to its DNA packagingchanges that can be passed down for three generations. As another example, they note that lab rats taught to react more calmly to stress events wind up behaving in ways that influence their offspring, which in turn causes them to react more calmly to such eventsbehavior that can also be passed on to a third generation. They also suggest that instinctual and learned behaviors are likely governed by the same neural circuitry, which means it might be possible that epigenetic changes could possibly be coded into DNA in some instances, allowing a learned response to become an instinctual response in offspring and their ancestors. The pair suggest such a form of natural selection could lead to behaviors being adopted at increasingly early stages, until they appear as if hard-wired into the brain, which suggests they might display it even before a given stimuli had been encountered. They readily acknowledge that no such mechanism has been found for converting epigenetic changes into DNA changes, but note that epigenetics is still a young science and that such a mechanism could yet be found. More information: Gene E. Robinson et al. Epigenetics and the evolution of instincts, Science (2017). DOI: 10.1126/science.aam6142 Summary An animal mind is not born as an empty canvas: Bottlenose dolphins know how to swim and honey bees know how to dance without ever having learned these skills. Little is known about how animals acquire the instincts that enable such innate behavior. Instincts are widely held to be ancestral to learned behavior. Some have been elegantly analyzed at the cellular and molecular levels, but general principles do not exist. Based on recent research, we argue instead that instincts evolve from learning and are therefore served by the same general principles that explain learning. Journal information: Science 2017 Phys.org Renato Lima de Oliveira in front of a shipyard in Baku, Azerbaijan. Credit: courtesy of Renato Lima de Oliveira Let's say country X is sitting on an abundance of oil reserves. If its institutions are strong and stablethink Norwaythen society will benefit. If, on the other hand, its institutions are precariousthink Nigeriathen this resource will lead to negative outcomes, such as weaker democracy, less economic growth, and more corruption. Right? Well, yes and no. According to political economist Renato Lima de Oliveira, a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science, it's more complicated than the "resource curse" literature reflects: Those natural resources, he says, can actually influence how institutions are built. In the case of state-owned companies producing oil that is easy to extract, with a large margin between the cost of production and the selling price (known as low-cost oil), most of the profits go to government. And rather than invest in infrastructure and human capital, individuals in government invest in staying in powerby coopting or repressing the opposition, say, or by pouring money into pet projects. There's no incentive to reform policies, Lima de Oliveira explains. On the other hand, high-cost extraction, which is needed for offshore oil, changes the politics and leads to more productive investmentsin technical capabilities, training of workers, and meritocratic staffing of oil companies (rather than patronage). "It becomes an incentive to be more professional in the way you handle your natural resource sector," he says. To test his theory Lima de Oliveira studied three countriesBrazil, Malaysia, and Mexicowith remarkably similar levels of institutional development (neither as high as Norway's nor as complicated as Nigeria's) and per capita GDPs, but with different geological endowments. Whereas Mexico's oil has been historically easy to exploit, reserves in Brazil and Malaysia require a much higher-cost, more technically complex method of production. This dissimilarity enabled Lima de Oliveira to show that different geological endowments have different political and economic impacts. For example, it was the limited nature of Malaysia's oil reserves and high extraction cost, rather than healthy institutional constraints, that created incentives for policymakers and Petronas, the national oil company, to both develop local suppliers and internationalize and develop reserves outside the country. "Malaysia has been successful in attracting investment in the country to develop a complex supply chain and in going abroad," Lima de Oliveira explains, even without reforming its institutions to be more like Norway's. "It's not just about good institutions, or transparency, or insulation from political use of the oil company. It's also about the incentive that comes from a geological challenge." The other effect, he says, is that where production cost is higher, the impact of oil on society comes from more than just the price per barrel. It comes from the production itselfthe capital goods and services needed to output that barrel. Lima de Oliveira is quick to highlight the policy implications, such as the fact that the oil and gas industry can drive the development of human capital and industrial capabilities. A business reporter before studying political science, he covered oil in his native Brazil. There, he noticed that "one of the things that becomes political is not just how you spend the oil money, but how you design the rules of procurement: Who is going to be the supplier of the oil platform, the tankers? When a state got an investment to build a shipyard for the oil industry, that state had to invest a lot to raise the quality of local human resourcescreating new university courses, technical schools, and so on." Countries that have to engage in more technically complex development of resources tend to invest more in technology, support infrastructure, and the development of local supply chains. Another spillover effect in Brazil was that large oil companies are required to allocate 1 percent of their sales to R&D. As a result, universities are working not only on ways to improve the oil industry, but also to develop biofuels, carbon storage, and solar and wind energy. As Lima de Oliveira did his fieldwork and research, his journalism experience stood him in good stead. "Approaching sources, understanding potential biases, knowing how to triangulate different sources of evidence, it's kind of second nature for me," he says. "It really helps when you're trying to get a lot of information to know how credible it is." Lima de Oliveira loves to delve deeply into a single topic and develop a theoretical framework to explain what he observessomething he couldn't do as a journalist. A former MIT Energy Fellow, he's read extensively about the geology of each country he studies. "The great thing about being here is the discussions about the energy sector and having friends who are petroleum engineers. I can enter into a dialogue with them about my hypotheses." He values not only the technical knowledge and rigorous political science training MIT offers, but also the "deep appreciation about the policy implications of what this work means to the world." He'll keep that connection going when he moves to Kuala Lumpur this year to join the faculty of the Asia School of Business, a collaboration with the MIT Sloan School of Management. "The work I do influences the way policymakers see the issues they face," Lima de Oliveira says. "When you think about the oil industry there's an industry behind it. It's not just rents, not just money flowing easily. How can we develop this industry to best fit our domestic capabilities?" This story is republished courtesy of MIT News (web.mit.edu/newsoffice/), a popular site that covers news about MIT research, innovation and teaching. Novel organocatalytic system to selectively generate diastereomers in high yield and selectivity. Credit: Nagoya University Researchers at Nagoya University have reported in Nature Communications on the development of an organic catalyst (organocatalyst) that triggers a highly stereoselective 1,6-addition of azlactones (nucleophile) to a -aryl dienyl carbonyl compound (electrophile) to generate amino acid derivatives in high yields. The generated 1,6-adduct contains two carbon stereocenters, and a slight structural change in the organocatalyst leads to inversion of stereochemistry at a single stereocenter to form a diastereomer in high selectivity. The group started this research in 2012 and found this inversion of stereochemistry upon screening various amino acids incorporated in their unique iminophosphorane catalyst. Many molecules with pharmaceutical uses contain stereocenters (chiral centers, where an atom has three or more different atoms or functional groups attached to it). Researchers seek the development of efficient stereoselective reactions to synthesize a particular stereoisomer (isomers that differ in the three-dimensional orientations of their atoms in space). Each stereoisomer usually has different characteristics and precise control is required to obtain the desired stereoisomer in a pure form. When connecting carbon atoms that have three different functional groups attached to them, this can result in a series of stereoisomers, in which the functional groups are orientated differently in space. Enantiomers are a type of stereoisomer that contain one or more stereocenters and are mirror images of each other. So far, numerous asymmetric reactions have been developed to generate chiral centers in high efficiency. Diastereomers are stereoisomers of a compound that have different configurations at one or more stereocenters and are not mirror images of each other. Reactions between carbons containing three different functional groups can potentially lead to the generation of 4 products that have their functional groups orientated differently in space (stereoisomers). Credit: Nagoya University A pair of carbon molecules with two different hands can be connected in a variety of combinations, and four different stereoisomers can be synthesized in theory. These stereoisomers are a series of enantiomers and diastereomers depending on the relationship to each other (mirror image or not). Conventional methods to synthesize diastereomers have required a specific catalyst for each isomer. In most cases, a completely new catalytic system is necessary to specifically obtain one of the stereoisomers. When two molecules to be connected each have four different hands, the situation becomes more complicated and potentially leads to 16 (24) types of stereoisomers. Since the reaction can now occur at different positions, the possible generation of regioisomers (positional isomers) also arises. In order to make a specific stereoisomer (regioisomer, enantiomer, or diastereomer), a reaction system needs to be established for the starting materials to react at a specific site and in a specific orientation, i.e. for the molecules to be positioned to hold hands in a particular manner. Professor Takashi Ooi's group at the Institute of Transformative Bio-Molecules (ITbM) of Nagoya University has developed iminophosphorane catalysts that can generate specific stereoisomers in high yield and selectivity. Moreover, a slight change in the organocatalyst structure leads to pinpoint inversion of a single stereocenter to generate a diastereomer, enabling access to a particular diastereomer of interest in a pure form. "I was really excited the moment I saw the inversion in stereochemistry by changing the organocatalyst," says Ken Yoshioka, a graduate student in Professor Ooi's research group. "Initially, we were trying to expand the scope of our catalytic system to new substrates, so this was also the moment when I thought that this was more than an ordinary stereoselective reaction." The iminophosphorane catalyst is derived from amino acids, and a change in the amino acid structure can tune the properties of the catalyst. In this case, a slight change in the position of the methyl groups on the catalyst led to the diastereomer of the 1,6-adduct. Possible combination of stereoisomers that can be generated from the reaction between molecules that each has 4 different hands. Credit: Nagoya University "Since starting this research five years ago, it took me about three years to find the optimal reaction conditions after finding the stereochemical inversion reaction," continues Yoshioka. "One main issue was the reproducibility of this reaction, as the selectivities varied in each reaction. I had repeated the reaction over and over again to see what was happening." "We were really confused by these variable results, and we initially assumed that the presence of water was playing a role in the transition state and was affecting the selectivity of this reaction," says Daisuke Uraguchi, an Associate Professor at Nagoya University. Complete removal of water is difficult in organocatalysts as they are able to form hydrogen bonds with water molecules. "After various optimization studies, we were able to find that lowering the temperature to 30 C was the key to controlling the selectivity of this 1,6-addition reaction," says Yoshioka. "This took a while to figure out, and were relieved to be able to generate reliable results. We were also able to stereospecifically synthesize diversely functionalized proline derivatives by further reactions of the 1,6-adducts." "We then carried out experimental and computational studies to find a rationale for this unique stereochemical inversion," explains Uraguchi. "The organocatalysts that lead to different diastereomers share the same core and we were keen to find out how the position of the methyl groups on the catalyst affects the diastereoselectivity of this reaction." Analysis by X-ray crystallography and DFT (density functional theory) studies revealed that the shape of the catalyst has a major role on positioning the substrates for reacting with one another. "Even though the methyl groups appear to be on the outside of the catalyst, they actually have a huge influence on holding the substrates in place to react on a particular face," says Uraguchi. "We were able to show that a small difference in the catalyst structure changes the transition state, and leads to a change in diastereoselectivity. Proline derivatives synthesized from the 1,6-adducts. Credit: Nagoya University Diastereodivergence (making diastereomers from a common set of substrates) has been a challenging topic, but the group succeeded in developing a new strategy for the inversion of stereochemistry by their unique reaction system. "I had been working on this project throughout the course of my graduate studies and I believe that my persistence paid off," says Yoshioka. "Although there were times where we were unsure of what was happening in the reaction, we checked each factor one by one and it was a great feeling of satisfaction to find the origin of the stereoselectivity." "We were pleased to accomplish diastereodivergence in 1,6-addition reactions with high levels of stereocontrol, and envisage that this diastereodivergent strategy will advance the field of asymmetric synthesis," says Uraguchi and Takashi Ooi, a Professor at Nagoya University, who led this study. "We hope to continue to make unique catalysts that will contribute to making complex molecules, which will have potential uses in the pharmaceutical and agrochemical industries," says Ooi. More information: Daisuke Uraguchi et al. Complete diastereodivergence in asymmetric 1,6-addition reactions enabled by minimal modification of a chiral catalyst, Nature Communications (2017). DOI: 10.1038/ncomms14793 Journal information: Nature Communications Women and minorities are more likely to benefit from entrepreneurship training programs when compared to Caucasian men, according to recent research conducted by Ivey Business School Professor Laurina Zhang. Credit: Adela Talbot // Western News Women and minorities are more likely to benefit from entrepreneurship training programs when compared to Caucasian men, according to recent research conducted by an Ivey Business School professor. "The study was motivated by the idea that over the past decade, there have been a lot of public and private resources that have been directed towards entrepreneurship training and incubation programs. Despite this trend, there's actually very little consensus on whether entrepreneurs are born if (the skill) is genetic or whether entrepreneurial abilities can actually be taught," said Ivey professor Laurina Zhang, who conducted a study with Elizabeth Lyons, a professor at University of California, San Diego, looking to determine the effect of entrepreneurship programs. "We have very little understanding of how the effects of these programs differ across different types of people, which poses problems for both policy decisions, and (entrepreneurship) program strategy, overall," she added. The study, Creating Entrepreneurs: The Impact of Entrepreneurship Programs on Minorities, which indicates women and minorities are more likely to see benefits from entrepreneurship training, is set for publication in the May 2017 issue of American Economic Review: Papers & Proceedings. As part of their research, Zhang and Lyons worked with 335 undergraduate students who participated in The Next 36, a large entrepreneurship training program based out of Toronto, between 2011-15. By comparing program participants' subsequent entrepreneurial activities with those of individuals who applied and got to the final stages of the application process, but were not accepted into The Next 36, Zhang and Lyons looked to see whether certain minority groups females and non-Caucasians were differentially affected by entrepreneurship training. "Essentially, we found that people who go through the program are much more likely to work in the start-up sector, but the effect is differentially benefiting females and minorities non-Caucasians," Zhang said. "We looked at this both in the short-term outcomes and a longer-term outcome, and essentially, we found three results. First, participation in the program is correlated with an increase in the likelihood of subsequent start-up activity in the short term for non-minorities (males or white participants) and the effect is less pronounced for minorities," she explained. "But then, the impact of the program is much more pronounced for the minorities' likelihood of ongoing and longer-term start-up activity, compared to non-minority participants." This could have something to do with access to resources like mentorship and capital that minority groups and women might have more difficulty securing, Zhang added. "We think this is because (an entrepreneurship program) is expediting the time it takes male and Caucasian participants to capture program benefits, like networks or capital, which they would eventually get, even in the absence of the program, whereas the benefits are much harder to capture for women and minorities in the absence of the program," she continued. The study results have three implications, Zhang said. The first is in policy decisions. In order to evaluate the efficacy of entrepreneurship programs, it is important to look at heterogeneity and the differential effects of these types of programs on different subgroups. "A lot of prior studies have focused on the average effect of these programs, but our results show these programs have very different outcomes for different subgroups, which is important for resource allocation, at the policy level and evaluating the efficacy of the programs," she noted. The second implication of the study findings is for program strategy. "Given the increasingly competitive landscape for these entrepreneurship programs, we see these types of programs pop up all over the place, and it's important to think about what is the ultimate outcome, or desired goal, of these programs," Zhang said. "From our results, it seems to suggest clearly these programs are more beneficial for one group and less beneficial for the other, so it's important to think about what component of the program is actually facilitating these outcomes." Finally, on the individual level, study findings might be something to consider if you are weighing applying to, and participating in, entrepreneurship training opportunities. Is participation worth it, if participants are differentially affected? "As an applicant deciding to apply for these programs, given the sometimes high opportunity costs applicants might have to relocate, they can't do other employment or engage in other coursework when they are in these programs it's important for them to think about the decision. These results suggest it may differentially impact career outcomes for different groups," Zhang noted. She is still exploring the heterogeneous effects of entrepreneurship programs on different groups of high and low capabilities for a related, follow-up study. Farmers and ranchers will sometimes enter into handshake agreements with neighbors or family members for a financial stake in each others crops or livestock. Lincoln ag tech startup FarmAfield is developing a platform to scale that concept and increase the amount of investment capital available to producers. Usually youll see these relationships in a small radius around the farm or ranch, said Matt Foley, one of the four co-founders of the business. We will provide a streamlined platform that gives anyone a chance to browse available openings and make that transaction happen. A grain farmer can remotely own cattle. The platform also will include risk assessment and management tools available to producers at no charge. We want to give farmers the whole financial analysis of how this will help their bottom line, Foley said. Its a real benefit if you can hedge your bets instead of going all in on corn or soybeans. Maybe theres a little profit to be made in cattle. Foley envisions the possibility that some transactions may be very small. Something weve pitched is maybe there are some college kids that grew up in a small town, moved away and want to have a $50 partial ownership in a cow, he said. Some city kid from Chicago might want to put $15 in cattle and watch it grow. The platform will also include a feedback feature. Farmers have never had a platform to do the contract, the relationship, and build in a feedback feature, Foley said. If youre buying a car, do you trust the salesman or hundreds of reviews? There are some trial transactions underway, but the primary platform is still in development. The work is accelerating with support from a Phase I SBIR grant from the National Science Foundation. The National Science Foundation supports small businesses with the most innovative, cutting-edge ideas that have the potential to become great commercial successes and make huge societal impacts, said Barry Johnson, Director of the NSFs Division of Industrial Innovation and Partnerships in a news release. We hope that this seed funding will spark solutions to some of the most important challenges of our time across all areas of science and technology. Some thought is being given to marketing and promotion once the platform is launched. But the current focus is on development. Not a dime of the Phase I grant can be spent on marketing, only research and development, Foley said. Phase II is commercialization. FarmAfield plans to pursue that Phase II SBIR grant later this year. In the meantime, there are some ideas under consideration to begin building the customer base. Maybe some real small micro-transactions for free so farmers can see how the process works, Foley said. The risk analysis portion will be completely free. A farmer can see how annual income could increase with some ownership in cattle. The idea for FarmAfield originated with Mitch Minarick while he was a graduate student in Illinois. He reached out to his brother Andrew, Brennan Costello and Foley, and the business was initiated in the spring of 2015 while the co-founders were still students at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Weve had a lot of cool experiences, Foley said. We went to Switzerland as a finalist in the Thought for Food Challenge. Last month we traveled to Thailand to present on scalable business models. Foley gives considerable credit to University of Nebraska-Lincoln for their success so far. I want to give a shout out to the University, especially the Engler Program and the Center for Entrepreneurship, he said. Were fortunate to have a solid team around us. Three years ago Id never have guessed wed be where we are and visited the places weve been, he added. This undated photo provided by the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences shows a Faberge egg and a jeweled elephant designed to fit inside it. The two items will be reunited for the first time in almost a century thanks to a loan from Queen Elizabeth II to the museum. The exhibit opening Monday, April 10, 2017, features the elephant that was only in recent years discovered to have been the egg's missing "surprise. (Houston Museum of Natural Sciences via AP) A Faberge egg and the jeweled elephant designed to fit inside it are being reunited for the first time in almost a century thanks to a loan from Queen Elizabeth II to a Texas museum. A gallery that opens Monday at the Houston Museum of Natural Science features the elephant, which only recently was discovered to be the egg's missing "surprise." "It's a really good opportunity to see the two together and marvel at Faberge's workmanship," said Caroline de Guitaut, a curator at the Royal Collection Trust. De Guitaut announced in 2015 that she'd discovered that the small elephant in the queen's collection was created by famed Russian artisan Peter Carl Faberge. "It had been sitting there in many ways in plain sight, minding its own business in a display case," she said. The Imperial Diamond Trellis Egg, originally an Easter gift from Russian czar Alexander III to his wife in 1892, belongs to a Houston couple whose private collection of items created by Faberge is housed at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. The reunited pieces will be displayed in a new gallery showcasing more than 600 Faberge items from Dorothy and Artie McFerrin that have been part of the museum for several years. Joel Bartsch, president of the Houston museum, said the elephant will remain on display there for a year before returning to England. De Guitaut said the elephant caught her eye because it seemed to match the published description of the missing elephant. Upon careful examination, she eventually figured out that the tower on the elephant's back had a lid and found the Faberge mark on the inside rim. "I did feel quite sort of giddy, kind of dizzy and a little bit faint," de Guitaut said. She said the two items were believed to have last been together when the Russian government sold them around 1922. De Guitaut said the elephant, which walks and moves its head when wound, was purchased in 1935 by King George V, apparently with no knowledge that it was Faberge. She said Faberge only made 50 eggs for the Russian royal family as Easter gifts; only 43 are known to survive. More information: Houston Museum of Natural Science, www.hmns.org 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. Credit: Tom D/Flickr, CC BY-SA According to some animal rights groups the grey squirrel is a victim of circumstance. They say it has been made a scapegoat for regional red squirrel population extinctions and claim that loss of the reds is caused entirely coincidentally by habitat change. They suggest the true facts are being hidden and scientific research being intentionally misinterpreted. If so, then this conspiracy must extend to British legal provisions and EU directives both listing the grey squirrel as an invader to be controlled, right? Well, no put this argument to the test and you'll see that the facts actually do stack up against the grey squirrel. The reality is that, while the grey squirrel is an important part of North American forest ecosystems, since being brought to Europe by the Victorians in 1876, the animal has had severe ecological and economic impacts on British woodlands. Acrobatic and entertaining they may be, but the charge sheet against the grey squirrel is based on hundreds of peer-reviewed research papers. There really is no defence for it. Greys vs red in Europe Today there are approximately 2.5m grey squirrels in Britain, but less than 140,000 reds. Grey squirrels out-compete native reds for food and space. They also dig up and consume seed that red squirrels have buried as a winter store. This behaviour reduces red squirrel skeletal growth rates and adult size, and greatly depresses juvenile survival rates too. In addition, greys harbour infections including squirrel pox, which can devastate red squirrel populations. They elevate local viral and nematode infection rates, and bring in new parasites, such as Strongyloides robustus, which are picked up by red squirrels. Occasionally a healthy red squirrel is found with squirrel pox antibodies some researchers have suggested that this is evidence of them evolving resistance to the pox. Unfortunately, 63% of red squirrels dying from pox have also been found to have this antibody response present and there is no evidence that these antibodies confer immunity. Even if they did, research has also shown that antibodies are gone within 18 months and, irrespective of any resistance, red populations would be replaced by grey via competition anyway. Squirrel pox. Credit: Sarah McNeil, Author provided Woodland damage Grey squirrels also damage and kill forest trees making it impossible for foresters to grow high-grade hardwood. This means such material is imported instead, bringing with it the risk of new tree pests and pathogens. Tree damage is most frequently seen on the branches and trunks of oak, beech and maple; bark is stripped by squirrels eager to consume the the sap underneath. Tree stems break or die following stripping, which in turn leads to changes in the structure and species composition of high canopy in amenity woodlands. Even songbirds are affected by grey squirrels. A recent study gave evidence of negative association between woodland songbird fledging rates and presence of grey squirrels though it must be noted that this was not observed annually and only seen on some of the sites studied. Earlier studies didn't find evidence to indicate greys affect bird population, but also didn't exclude the possibility even for bird species whose population is increasing overall. Other animals may be affected by greys too: there has been some suggestion that squirrels compete with dormice for hazel nuts, though more research is needed to confirm the true impact. Controlling greys The Wildlife Trust has recently started to recruit 5,000 volunteers to monitor and control grey squirrel populations. However, a look beyond the headlines will reveal thousands of people are already legally trapping and shooting greys across the country to control their numbers. Volunteer groups cull 6,000 grey squirrels per year in the north of England, for example. Even in areas where reds are absent, locals control grey squirrels to protect woodlands or prevent damage to property. This is not some dramatic new approach by the Wildlife Trust, but is simply reinforcing an established national movement. The eradication of greys from the Welsh isle of Anglesey saw red squirrel numbers increase from 40 to 700 and there are other examples of grey control halting or reversing red squirrel decline. Research has also demonstrated that red squirrels do not prefer conifer to broadleaved habitat and are just as happy in either. Future control may involve giving the squirrels contraception, but will almost certainly not rely solely on this because of logistical barriers. The pine marten may assist in some landscapes too: one Irish study found a strong negative correlation between pine martens and greys in the woodlands studied. However, the use of trapping and shooting will inevitably continue as part of an integrated national approach. And so the grey squirrel stands guilty as charged. Their presence has decimated the British countryside since they were introduced from North America, and if we do not continue to control the species, the future for red squirrels and woodland ecosystems will be bleak. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Credit: Jeff Belmonte / Wikipedia Outdated divorce law is causing needlessly painful and destructive breakups and exacerbating conflict between couples, a major new study has found. Spouses feel they have no alternative but to give inaccurate accounts of how their marriage broke down, stretching the truth to meet legal requirements, research suggests. The half a century-old legislation for England and Wales should be scrapped in favour of a no-fault, modern system, similar to those currently operating in many other countries, experts working on the first major study of divorce law for 30 years have said. The recent Owens v Owens divorce case, where a wife was barred from being granted a divorce because her reasons were not judged sufficient, recently demonstrated the inadequacy of the law. Researchers are interviewing 75 people going through the divorce process over the course of a year, as well as conducting focus groups and interviews with family lawyers. They are examining the court files of 300 routine or undefended divorce cases and 100 files where the divorce was contested. They have also surveyed 2,000 adults in England and Wales and 1,000 divorced adults about their attitudes to the current law on divorce and civil partnership dissolution and views on law reform. The research is being conducted by Professor Liz Trinder from the University of Exeter Law School, Mark Sefton, Bryson Purdon Social Research and One Plus One, with support from Resolution and Wikivorce. Initial findings show nearly half of all divorces are now based on 'unreasonable' behaviour, and having to make allegations to support this can create conflict between the divorcing couple, or make existing conflict much worse. The law can make it harder for couples to try to sort out their finances and parenting arrangements, and does not protect children from conflict. To get a divorce, the petitioner must fit their circumstances into one of five legal facts available: adultery, behaviour, desertion, two years separation with consent or five years separation. In practice most couples are having cite unreasonable behaviour to gain a divorce, and stretch the truth so their reasons are lawful. Except in the very rare defended cases, the court generally has to take the petitioner's allegations at face value, even where the respondent casts doubt upon or rejects the allegations. Professor Trinder, who is leading the study, which is funded by the Nuffield Foundation, said: "The study really highlights the need for law reform, made more urgent after the Owens v Owens decision. We need a law that helps families look forward rather than back. The current law encourages spouses to blame each other for the breakdown, but then once they've done that, it expects them to work together as parents to put their children first. "In reality, we already have divorce by consent or 'on demand'. However, achieving that divorce without a long wait requires one party to throw mud at the other in what can be a needlessly painful and sometimes destructive legal ritual. The constraints on the court mean that undefended petitions can only be taken at face value and there is very little risk of a divorce petition being rejected on legal grounds. This is not a new problem. Just the same problems were found when the last major studies of divorce were done in the 1980s. "The government is currently introducing a new online system for handling the divorce paperwork. This should result in a clearer and simpler process for the parties at a very stressful time in their lives. This would be a very good opportunity to also reform the substantive law so that divorce is based solely on irretrievable breakdown. That would mean a clearer, fairer and more honest." There are around 110,000 divorces in England and Wales each year. In 2014, 61 per cent of divorces were based on fault, with 'behaviour' petitions forming 48 per cent of all divorces. More information: For more information, visit findingfault.org.uk/ Coucou de Rennes, a French breed with the characteristic sex-linked barring phenotype. Credit: Herve Ronne, Ecomusee du pays de Rennes Birds show an amazing diversity in plumage colour and patterning. But what are the genetic mechanisms creating such patterns? In a new study published today in PLOS Genetics, Swedish and French researchers report that two independent mutations are required to explain the development of the sex-linked barring pattern in chicken. Both mutations affect the function of CDKN2A, a tumour suppressor gene associated with melanoma in humans. Research in pigmentation biology has made major advances the last 20 years in identifying genes controlling variation in pigmentation in mammals and birds. However, the most challenging question is still how colour patterns are genetically controlled. Birds are outstanding as regards the diversity and complexity in colour patterning. The study published today has revealed the genetic basis for the striped feather characteristic of sex-linked barring. One example of this fascinating plumage colour is the French breed Coucou de Rennes. The name refers to the fact that this plumage colour resembles the barring patterns present in the common cuckoo (Cuculus canorus). The sex-linked barring locus is on the Z chromosome. (In chickens as well as in other birds the male has chromosomes ZZ while females have ZW). "Our data show that sex-linked barring is caused by two independent mutations that act together. One is a regulatory mutation that increases the expression of CDKN2A. The other changes the protein sequence and makes the protein less functionally active. We are sure that both mutations contribute to the sex-linked barring pattern because we have also studied chicken that only carry the regulatory mutation and they show a very pale plumage with only weak dark stripes. Thus, this represents an evolutionary process in which the regulatory mutation occurred first followed by the mutation affecting the protein structure. The combined effect of the two mutations causes an even more appealing phenotype for the human eye," says Leif Andersson, Uppsala University, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and Texas A&M University, who led the study. "The most important reason for the extensive colour variation among our domestic animals is that we appreciate this diversity, as long as the mutations underlying the variation are not causing health issues for the animals," says Leif Andersson. The study illustrates how useful domestic animals are as models for evolutionary processes in nature. Leif Andersson argues that a similar evolution of gene variants comprising multiple genetic changes affecting the function of a single gene is the rule rather than the exception in natural populations. CDKN2A is a well-studied tumour suppressor gene that takes part in the regulation of cell division and cell survival. Mutations that inactivate CDKN2A are the most common explanation for familiar forms of melanomas in humans. (However, the great majority of melanoma cases are not associated with a strong genetic risk factor.) "The gene variant underlying sex-linked barring has an opposite effect compared with the mutations causing melanoma in humans. Sex-linked barring is associated with a gene variant that makes CDKN2A more active leading to a cyclic deficit of pigment cells causing the white stripes during the development of an individual feather. It appears that pigment cells are particularly susceptible to changes in the function of CDKN2A as inactivating mutations in humans are associated with melanoma but rarely other cancer forms and activating mutations cause sex-linked barring in chickens but no other side effects are known," says Doreen Schwochow Thalmann, PhD student and first author of the paper. "It is fascinating that a large proportion of chickens used for egg and meat production around the world carry these mutations in a tumour suppressor gene. An example of such a breed is White Leghorn which is one of the most prominent breeds used for egg production, but sex-linked barring is not apparent in these breeds because they also carry the dominant white colour that eliminates all pigment production and masks the effect of sex-linked barring," says Leif Andersson. More information: Doreen Schwochow Thalmann et al, The evolution of Sex-linked barring alleles in chickens involves both regulatory and coding changes in CDKN2A, PLOS Genetics (2017). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1006665 Journal information: PLoS Genetics Led by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, the EU North State project has developed a new method of using satellite images to evaluate the forest carbon balance. The carbon balance indicates how much carbon is sequestered or released by forests each year. This enables the carbon balance to be displayed on digital maps, with an accuracy of up to ten metres. The technique involves mapping the key features of forest areas and forests - such as the location, main tree species, height and biomass - from images provided by the European Sentinel satellites. These digital images are fed into a model, alongside climate data. The result is carbon sequestration maps. Such maps reveal which areas are carbon sinks or carbon sources. This information can be used for activities such as planning forest management and assessing climate impacts. The simplest maps show the amount of carbon sequestered through photosynthesis, but take no account of carbon released by the decomposition of organic matter. More refined products take account of carbon released by living plants and carbon emissions from the soil. They provide a more precise idea of the carbon balance, but require the best source data. It was possible to create more advanced carbon balance maps of Finnish territory because sufficient ground reference data was available for guiding satellite image interpretation. "The partners in the project developed advanced methods of interpreting satellite and drone images. The University of Helsinki did the computing for the final carbon balance maps, based on VTT's satellite image interpretation.. We had to invent a new approach to processing such huge quantities of data," says Research Professor Tuomas Hame. The University of Helsinki also developed a new way of using its carbon balance model to forecast growing stock volumes. The growing stock estimates for Finland yielded almost the same result as national forest inventories. At their most detailed, the maps had a resolution of ten metres. Coarser maps with a resolution of 500 metres were used to calculate the balance for the entire boreal coniferous forest zone from Iceland to the Urals. The same techniques could be used for satellite image interpretation and assessing the carbon balance, despite the major differences in image resolutions. The researchers conclude that there is significant potential for social media monitoring to be included in mainstream disease surveillance and response systems. Credit: DENYS Rudyi / 123rf That social networking sites are a pervasive force won't come as a surprise to the billions of users worldwide. But how effective are they when it comes to informing the public health response to disease outbreaks? To answer this question and provide clear, quantitative data on how social media supports disease monitoring and response, a joint study between the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) Institute of High Performance Computing and Singapore's Ministry of Health examined the 2013 avian flu outbreak in China. Avian influenza A (H7N9) is a severe viral infection characterized by pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome. China announced its first three human cases in March 2013. International concern about the impact of this infection on global health and security grew quickly. Obtaining documented information on cases is key to limiting disease spread. To assess the efficacy and accuracy of social media in reporting incidents, researchers compared the timing of reporting new cases by means of conventional news agencies, public health agency reports (like the National Health and Family Planning Commission of China and the World Health Organization), and posts from Sina Weibo, a popular social networking site with more than 500 million registered users at the time of the outbreak. Their results illustrate that Weibo was significantly faster in reporting new cases of infection than conventional reporting sites and public health agency reports. Weibo also provided access to additional crowdsourced information, such as updates on patients' health conditions, exposure history and family contacts, which were not readily available through official sources. This rapid disclosure of information helped accelerate official responses and recording by Chinese health authorities. In addition, the authorities were able to leverage Weibo as an interactive platform for risk communication to the general public, by holding, for example, real time question and answer sessions. The researchers conclude that there is significant potential for social media monitoring to be included in mainstream disease surveillance and response systems. Their research also indicates that it could provide an early warning system for unusual public health events abroad. More information: Zhang, E. X., Yang, Y., Shang, R. D., Simons, J. J. P., Quek, B. K. et al. "Leveraging social networking sites for disease surveillance and public sensing: the case of the 2013 avian influenza A (H7N9) outbreak in China." Western Pacific Surveillance and Response Journal. (2015). The excavation of the Aztec spiritual center, the Templo Mayor, by archaeologist Eduardo Matos Moctezuma provided otherwise unknowable information about the religion and society of the post-classical Mesoamerican empire. Credit: Templo Mayor-INAH For more than two decades, leading Mexican archaeologist Eduardo Matos Moctezuma directed the excavations of the main Aztec temple, located in the ancient capital of Tenochtitlan, in what is now Mexico City's famous central square. Under Matos Moctezuma, the excavations at the Templo Mayor, built between 1325 and 1519, provided glimpses into Aztec religion, life, and society that otherwise would have been unknown to the world. His work brought him international acclaim. To honor his achievements, the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, the Moses Mesoamerican Archive, and Harvard Divinity School (HDS) will launch the Eduardo Matos Moctezuma Lecture Series in the fall. In a phone interview with Matos Moctezuma from Mexico City, he talked about the Aztecs, his work at the Templo Mayor, and what's left to learn about one of the world's most compelling ancient civilizations. This interview is translated from the original Spanish. GAZETTE: All ancient cultures have creation myths. What was the Aztecs'? MATOS MOCTEZUMA: They believed they came from a place called Aztlan, hence the name Aztecs. Some experts think Aztlan is a myth because it has yet to be discovered. According to the myth, they left Aztlan guided by one of their gods until they arrived in the Texcoco Lake, in what's now Mexico City, where they founded Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec empire, in the year 1325. GAZETTE: But how did the Aztec empire really originate? MATOS MOCTEZUMA: Mexico is a country with an ancient history that goes back 20,000 years. Before the Aztecs, there were the cultures of Teotihuacan, Monte Alban, Palenque, and Tajin. But the Aztecs, also called Mexicas, emerged in the 14th century when they freed themselves from their former masters, the Azcapotzalcos, after forming an alliance with the Texcocos and Tacubas. They began a large expansion across what is now Mexico and Mesoamerica through wars. It is said that when the Spaniards arrived in the early 16th century, the Aztecs ruled over 370 small city-states that paid tribute in goods to Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec empire. GAZETTE: The Aztec culture has been described as fierce and bloodthirsty. What were the Aztecs really like? MATOS MOCTEZUMA: The Aztec was fundamentally a culture based on war and agriculture. Their two most important deities were Huitzilopochtli, the god of war, and Tlaloc, the god of rain. The duality of war and agriculture was crucial for the Aztec economy. The Aztecs expanded their empire through military conquest and sustained it through tributes imposed on the conquered regions. Every 80 days, the new subjects of the Aztecs had to pay tributes to Tenochtitlan. As for the Aztec society, it was very complex. It was socially divided between the nobility and the populace. The nobles included the ruler, the priests, and the military, all of whom had privileges and didn't pay taxes. The poorer people had to work as painters, poets, sculptors, peasants, doctors, or architects. They attended schools to learn their trades and received military training to be prepared for wars. They also attended schools to learn about religion, music, and their language, the Nahuatl, which we know because they left codices with pictograms and texts that told their history. When the Spaniards came, Tenochtitlan had approximately 200,000 people. It was one of the world's largest cities in the 16th century. The Aztecs were one of the world's greatest civilizations. GAZETTE: How do you compare the Aztecs to other great ancient civilizations, such as the Mayas, the Incas, the Chinese, or the Egyptians? MATOS MOCTEZUMA: According to experts, there are six large regions in the world that are the cradles of civilization. Those regions are Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, the Indus Valley, Mesoamerica, and the Andes, where people developed civilizations independently, boasting large cities and strong states. In Mesoamerica, it was the Aztecs and the Mayas but also the Zapotecas, Mixtecas, Toltecas, etc., and in the Andes, the Incas, but also the Moche, Chimu, Chavin, and others. The Aztec was a strong state due to its military power, its religion, and its tribute system. They developed their own calendar of 18 months of 20 days each, built large cities and huge pyramids and temples, and developed a farming system called chinampas that they used to grow crops on shallow lake beds. They grew maize, beans, tomatoes, pumpkins, chilis, etc. The Aztecs' contributions to the modern world are extensive, from agricultural products to farming techniques to stunning art and architecture. GAZETTE: Let's talk about the Aztec religion. Much has been said about the role of human sacrifice among Aztecs. What is the truth about human sacrifices? MATOS MOCTEZUMA: The Aztec religion was primarily polytheist. They had different gods, male and female. The sun god was Tonatiuh. There were many deities, and they were revered in monthly festivities with rich offerings. There is this black legend that only the Aztecs used human sacrifices in their religious rituals, when there is evidence that they existed in many other ancient cultures that were mostly agricultural societies. In the Aztecs' case, human sacrifices were meant to please the sun god so that he could continue providing them with light, warmth, and life. They believed that without human sacrifices, the sun could stop and everything was going to die. So the sun had to be fed so that it could continue with its movement, so that there would be day and night. But not all rituals demanded human sacrifices. In general, those who were sacrificed were slaves or prisoners of war. GAZETTE: What factors contributed to the fall of the Aztec empire? MATOS MOCTEZUMA: Before the arrival of the Spaniards, there were nine emperors, and during the war of conquest, two more. During the last 18 years of the Aztec empire, the ruler was Moctezuma II. In those years, the empire continued its expansion through war, but exacting tribute from their subjects created discontent among them. There were small rebellions, but the Aztecs, who had the military power, always won. When the Spaniards landed in 1519 in what is today Veracruz, the local people there, the Totonacas, complained to conquistador Hernan Cortes that they were subjugated by Moctezuma, the senor of Tenochtitlan. When Cortes heard this, he promised that they would be freed from paying tribute if they become their allies to overthrow Moctezuma. With their help, Cortes gained more allies among other disgruntled groups in the region, and he planned the advance towards Tenochtitlan. There is a myth about the question of how 800 Spaniards defeated a whole empire. Well, it wasn't only 800 Spaniards. They were supported by thousands of indigenous people who wanted to get rid of Aztec rule. When the conquest happened, when Tenochtitlan was about to fall, surrounded by land and sea, those groups of local enemies of the Aztecs played a fundamental role in the fall of the Aztec empire. Also, the Aztecs used a tactic that worked against them. Unlike the Spaniards who came to kill, the Aztecs preferred to take prisoners of war for human sacrifices. The Aztecs captured Cortes, and they didn't kill him because they were going to sacrifice him. But his comrades saved him. Moctezuma was taken prisoner and was killed by the Spaniards. GAZETTE: Are you a descendant of Moctezuma, the Aztec emperor? MATOS MOCTEZUMA: There are not too many who have that last name in Mexico. According to my mom, we are descendants of Moctezuma. But I am not sure, and I don't care too much about it. GAZETTE: You spent 40 years, a large part of your career as an archaeologist, excavating the remains of the Templo Mayor. What was the significance of the Templo Mayor for the Aztecs? MATOS MOCTEZUMA: The Templo Mayor was the center of the ancient Aztec empire, the most sacred place for the Aztecs. In 2014, we celebrated the 100th anniversary of the discovery of the Templo Mayor. In 1914, Manuel Gamio found remains that led him to believe that the site was the Templo Mayor, which until then we had only heard about. But the site was in the middle of the city; it was actually underneath Mexico City. Years went by, and in 1978 electrical workers who were excavating underground found a big sculpture, which turned out to be a monolith depicting an Aztec goddess, which led to the discovery of the Templo Mayor. The same year, the Templo Mayor Project was founded, with me as the director, and under my helm and with a multidisciplinary team, we started excavations and were able to find a large part of the remains of the religious heart of the Aztecs. Excavations are still taking place, and, as in the past, we're excavating the ritual heart of the Aztec empire, which we had only heard of before. After we dug up the remains of the temple, we were able to learn the role of the Templo Mayor in Aztecs' life and the powerful symbolism it held in the empire. GAZETTE: What is left to learn about the Aztecs? MATOS MOCTEZUMA: We've just scratched the surface of Tenochtitlan, the capital, but we still need to know how it was organized, the social hierarchies, and the way it functioned. Since it's underneath the city, there is a lot still to be learned. This story is published courtesy of the Harvard Gazette, Harvard University's official newspaper. For additional university news, visit Harvard.edu. Credit: University of Reading Planting wild flowers at the edges of arable fields could significantly improve the habitat for farmland birds and contribute to their survival, a study has found. Researchers have been exploring how by making simple changes to land otherwise left untended can have a huge impact on wildlife. Scientists from the University of Reading were part of a study investigating the effect of three different seed mixes, including the standard grass-only mix, in addressing the decline of birds like yellowhammers, goldfinches and whitethroats across agricultural landscapes. It was led by Dr Duncan Westbury, a senior ecologist from the University of Worcester, and also involved the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH). The study looked at what plant and invertebrate resources, such as beetles, were present in so-called 'field margins' strips of unused land at the edges of crop fields. It found that if these areas were cultivated and sown with certain plant species, such as knapweed and teasel, the amount of food available to birds was dramatically increased. 'CRUCIAL TO MANY SPECIES' Dr Westbury said: "It is evident that the ability of field margins to support many farmland bird species has been limited due to birds not always being able to find enough food within them. "This study has shown that simple but effective approaches, such as sowing wild flower seeds, could be crucial to the survival of many species. The barrier to widespread implementation is now to convince policy makers to support such action." The research findings were published in the Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment journal. The study also recommends that periodically disturbing grass-only areas next to the crop edge, which are more cost-effective, as opposed to annual mowing, can improve their value to birds. The findings of this study have implications for ecological conservation on farms which are part of national schemes that were devised to address the decline in farmland birds in the UK. Dr Ben Woodcock, a co-author of the research from CEH, said: "What this study shows is that the quality of habitat created at the edges of arable fields is crucial in terms of the amount of food produced. "As these field margin habitats are on land that could otherwise be used to grow crops, it is of vital importance that opportunities for birds to use this resource are not wasted, by managing to the highest quality to provide as much bird food as possible." More information: D.B. Westbury et al. Buffer strip management to deliver plant and invertebrate resources for farmland birds in agricultural landscapes, Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment (2017). DOI: 10.1016/j.agee.2017.02.031 Inventory needs to be managed and managed well, or you are going to get in recurring trouble, and lose your credibility and hard-earned conversions, whether Read more Register for more free articles. Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading. The business news you need Get the latest local business news delivered FREE to your inbox weekly. Sign up! Already a Subscriber? Already a Subscriber? Sign in Terms of Service Privacy Policy Many factors contribute to the health of a population, and worldwide health varies to the extreme. While most Americans are aware that these global health disparities exist, a look at the health outcomes of each country's population reveals the extent of these massive health differences. In the United States, which has its own well-documented health issues, the average person born today can expect to live to be about 79 years old. In the southern African nation of Swaziland, life expectancy is three decades shorter. It should be noted that the U.S. ranks behind 30 other nations longevity. ALSO READ: 25 Worst Tasting Beers in America Although it is certainly important, the quality of a country's health care system is not the only factor contributing to the health of a population. Poverty, the regional presence of disease, and health behaviors all help determine both quality and length of life. Reviewing health factors such as life expectancy, maternal and infant mortality rates, and the incidence of tuberculosis, 24/7 Wall St. identified the healthiest and least healthy countries. Based on our analysis, Iceland is the healthiest nation, while the southern African nation of Lesotho ranks as the least healthy. The relative affluence of a region can have wide-reaching implications on the health of its populace. Extremely poor populations are more likely to live in conditions that put them at greater risk of illness. They are less likely to be able to afford proper nourishment, and more likely to experience stress, which can affect health as well. Those with little or no disposable income are also much less likely to be able to afford proper health treatment. On a national level, governments and private health enterprises with fewer resources are less likely to be able to provide needed treatment. Greater health spending is by no means a guarantee of better health outcomes. For example, health spending per capita in the United States is higher than nearly any nation on Earth, but U.S. health ranks behind dozens of nations on this list. However, there appears to be a minimum threshold of health spending necessary to maintain adequate public wellness. The worlds healthiest nations tend to spend more on health than others, and in many of the least healthy nations, spending amounts to a tiny fraction of that in the most developed countries. Story continues In each of the 10 healthiest nations, spending ranges from at least $1,610 per person to $9,674 per person. Among the least healthy nations, health spending ranges from $570 per person in South Africa to just $15.60 per person in the Central African Republic. The relationship between spending and health outcomes likely points not to prices of care, but to access and use of treatment. It is probably no coincidence that many of the healthiest nations have some form of government subsidized or wholly-funded health care. In Iceland, not only is health care provided by the government, but registration with a general practitioner is compulsory, which contributes to residents' access to care and increases preventive practices. One of the major differences between the healthiest and least healthy nations is the presence of preventable illnesses. While tuberculosis, a treatable illness with an existing vaccine, has been effectively eliminated as a threat in most industrialized countries, it remains a serious problem in developing nations. TB's widespread presence in these nations points to an unsophisticated or inadequate health infrastructure, with minimal vaccination. In the United States, there are just 3.2 new reported cases of TB per 100,000 residents annually. In South Africa, one of the least healthy nations, there are 834 new reported cases each year per 100,000 people. In the Swaziland, TB leads to 7% of all deaths, making it the third leading cause of death in the country. While TB is a serious problem in many of the nations on this list, Americans are likely more familiar with another deadly illness, HIV/AIDS. While infection rates of the blood-borne virus have slowly subsided in the United States, the disease continues to decimate large segments of Africa, particularly in southern Africa, where four of the 10 least healthy nations -- Lesotho, Swaziland, South Africa, and Mozambique -- are located. In Swaziland, nearly 30% of the population lives with the virus. The Healthiest Countries 10. Spain > Life expectancy: 83.1 > Infant mortality rate (per 1,000 live births): 3.5 > Health expenditure per capita: $2,658 > GDP per capita: $34,861 Based on residents' life expectancy, the incidence of disease, and mortality rates for infants and mothers, Spain is one of the healthiest countries in the world. There are about 12 new reported cases of tuberculosis for every 100,000 people each year in Spain, one of the lowest such incidence rates in the world. Tuberculosis is known as the disease of poverty, and low prevalence of the disease is tied to affluence and access to medical services. Indeed, there are approximately five physicians in Spain for every 1,000 residents, the highest ratio of all nations reviewed. Additionally, with a GDP per capita of $34,861, Spain -- while considerably less prosperous than several other countries on this list -- still ranks among the wealthiest nations in the world. ALSO READ: America's Fastest Shrinking Cities 9. Norway > Life expectancy: 81.8 > Infant mortality rate (per 1,000 live births): 2.0 > Health expenditure per capita: $9,522 > GDP per capita: $68,591 At 81.8 years, average life expectancy at birth in Norway is nearly the highest in the world and well above the 78.9 year average life expectancy in the United States. The country's infant mortality rate is also one of the lowest worldwide. About two out of every 1,000 infants die in their first year of life, a lower rate than in all but a handful of other countries. As is the case with the other countries on this list, every Norwegian, urban or rural, has access to basic infrastructure such as clean water and electricity. This, in addition to universal health care, likely contributes to the country's positive health outcomes. Another important factor is investment in health care. Total public and private annual health care spending in Norway is equal to roughly $9,522 per capita, more than nearly every other country. 8. Switzerland > Life expectancy: 82.8 > Infant mortality rate (per 1,000 live births): 3.4 > Health expenditure per capita: $9,674 > GDP per capita: $58,647 No country spends more on health care than Switzerland. Private and public health expenditure amounts to $9,674 per resident each year. Much of that money goes to pay doctors -- a profession the country has no shortage of. There are about four physicians for every 1,000 people in Switzerland, nearly the highest share in the world. While greater spending does not necessarily translate to better outcomes, the Swiss are also some of the healthiest people in the world. Average life expectancy at birth in the Central European country is 82.8 years, higher than in all but three other countries examined. 7. United Arab Emirates > Life expectancy: 77.4 > Infant mortality rate (per 1,000 live births): 5.9 > Health expenditure per capita: $1,611 > GDP per capita: $67,217 The UAE is the healthiest country in the Middle East and one of the healthiest in the world. Though life expectancy at birth in the country is about a year and a half shy of life expectancy in the United States, the rate of women who die giving birth is less than half the rate of 14 deaths per 100,000 live childbirths in the United States. Healthy outcomes in the the UAE are largely the result of healthy behaviors. For example, UAE residents are far less likely to drink to excess than those in nearly every other country on this list. Partially because alcohol is heavily restricted, annual per capita alcohol consumption is equal to only 1.8 liters in UAE. In comparison, Americans consume an average of 8.8 liters of alcohol annually. 6. Finland > Life expectancy: 81.1 > Infant mortality rate (per 1,000 live births): 1.9 > Health expenditure per capita: $4,612 > GDP per capita: $41,109 Infancy is perhaps the most vulnerable stage of life, and preventing infant mortality requires a certain level of health care, including professionals, facilities, and medical supplies. Like most of the nations on this list, Finlands health spending of $4,612 per capita is among the highest of all countries reviewed. And as in most relatively wealthy, advanced economies, Finlands infant mortality rate of 1.9 deaths in the first year of life per 1,000 live births is indicative of a healthy population and an effective health system. By comparison, the U.S. infant mortality rate is 5.6 deaths per 1,000 live births. 5. Sweden > Life expectancy: 82.0 > Infant mortality rate (per 1,000 live births): 2.4 > Health expenditure per capita: $6,808 > GDP per capita: $48,199 Indicative of both a healthy population and capable medical facilities, childbirth is almost never fatal in Sweden. Both the countrys infant mortality and maternal mortality rates are nearly the lowest in the world. Additionally, life expectancy at birth in the country is 82 years, approximately three years longer than in the United States. ALSO READ: America's 25 Largest Private Companies Long, healthy lives come at a cost in Sweden. The country spends $6,808 annually in both public and private investments on health care, more than all but four other countries reviewed. Like many other countries on this list, health care is a universal right in Sweden, ensured by the state. 4. Singapore > Life expectancy: 82.6 > Infant mortality rate (per 1,000 live births): 2.1 > Health expenditure per capita: $2,752 > GDP per capita: $85,382 The presence of tuberculosis, all but eliminated in many affluent nations, is often a sign of deficiencies in a country's health system. Compared to many of the healthiest nations, the incidence rate of tuberculosis in Singapore -- at 44 new cases each year per 100,000 residents -- is somewhat high. While it is an outlier in this regard, the southeast Asian city-state is in most measures one of the healthiest nations on earth. The average life expectancy at birth of 82.6 years is 3.7 years longer than in the United States. Singapore also has one of the lowest infant and maternal mortality rates of any nation. 3. Italy > Life expectancy: 82.7 > Infant mortality rate (per 1,000 live births): 2.9 > Health expenditure per capita: $3,258 > GDP per capita: $35,781 Indicative of both a healthy population and an effective health care system, tuberculosis is relatively rare in Italy. The Mediterranean countrys annual tuberculosis incidence rate of 5.8 diagnosis per 100,000 people is well below all but a handful of other nations. Like many other countries on this list, Italians are guaranteed essential health care services through their government. Despite universal coverage, Italy spends far less on health care than the United States. Public and private health care costs amount to $3,258 per person a year in Italy, a fraction of the $9,403 per capita annual health care expenditure in the United States. 2. Japan > Life expectancy: 83.6 > Infant mortality rate (per 1,000 live births): 2.0 > Health expenditure per capita: $3,703 > GDP per capita: $38,142 The Japanese are more likely to live longer and healthier lives than residents of nearly any other country. Life expectancy at birth in the east Asian nation is 83.6 years, the longest of all countries considered. Health insurance coverage is universal in Japan, and patients are only responsible for a maximum of 30% of their medical bills. Additionally, according to the most recent available data from the World Bank, there are 14.1 hospital beds in the country for every 1,000 residents, far and away the most in the world among those with available data. Japans health care system changed recently, implementing new surcharges and incentivizing certain preventative dental treatments as the countrys rapidly-aging population is putting considerable strain on the system. 1. Iceland > Life expectancy: 82.1 > Infant mortality rate (per 1,000 live births): 1.6 > Health expenditure per capita: $4,662 > GDP per capita: $45,666 The small nation of Iceland ranks as the healthiest country in the world. Iceland performs better than most nations in life expectancy, infant and maternal mortality, and incidence of diseases like tuberculosis. Like many of the healthiest nations, health spending is quite high in Iceland, with the equivalent of $4,662 per capita spent on health care. Iceland has a state-funded, universal health care system. Icelanders are also required by law to register with a physician, which may further increase the frequency with which residents receive preventative care. The Least Healthy Countries 10. Liberia > Life expectancy: 60.8 > Infant mortality rate (per 1,000 live births): 52.8 > Health expenditure per capita: $46 > GDP per capita: $875 Still recovering from a bloody and destructive civil war in the 1990s, Liberia today lacks many of the infrastructural elements necessary for good public health. Less than 10% of the population has access to electricity, and roughly one in every four residents lacks access to sanitized water. Such poor access to basic necessities likely heavily contributes to Liberia's poor health outcomes, which are some of the worst on the planet. The infant mortality rate in Liberia, at 53 deaths for every 1,000 births, is one of the highest of any country. While the maternal mortality rate in many advanced countries is less than five maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, in Liberia an average of 725 women die per 100,000 births -- nearly the highest rate of any country. ALSO READ: Countries Buying the Most Weapons From the US Government 9. South Africa > Life expectancy: 57.2 > Infant mortality rate (per 1,000 live births): 33.6 > Health expenditure per capita: $570 > GDP per capita: $13,209 Tuberculosis, a potentially deadly disease primarily affecting young adults -- common in impoverished countries -- is a major problem in South Africa. There are 834 new incidents of tuberculosis for every 100,000 people annually, the highest TB rate of any country considered. The country also faces a serious HIV problem. Nearly one in every five South Africans between the ages of 15 and 49 are HIV positive, one of the highest such shares in the world. A lack of education surrounding the disease may be partially to blame. The countrys president, Jacob Zuma, famously claimed he once showered after having sex with an HIV positive woman to reduce the likelihood of being infected. 8. Cote d'Ivoire > Life expectancy: 51.6 > Infant mortality rate (per 1,000 live births): 66.6 > Health expenditure per capita: $88 > GDP per capita: $3,359 While there was relative peace in Ivory Coast for several decades after the country gained independence from France in 1960, a military rebellion in 2002 ignited a period of violence and instability that left thousands dead and much of the nations infrastructure in disrepair. Just 56% of the Ivory Coast population today has access to electricity, and nearly one in five residents lack access to sanitized water. The average life expectancy at birth in the country of just 52 years is nearly the lowest in the world and 27 years less than the U.S. life expectancy of about 79 years. 7. Mozambique > Life expectancy: 55.0 > Infant mortality rate (per 1,000 live births): 56.7 > Health expenditure per capita: $42 > GDP per capita: $1,192 Many Mozambicans lack access to basic infrastructure that people in healthier countries take for granted. Only about half of the countrys population has access to clean water, and only 20% have access to electricity. Such access is even scarcer in the countrys rural areas. Lack of access to modern amenities likely contributes the countrys low 55 year life expectancy. Like many unhealthy countries, health spending in Mozambique is relatively low. Combined annual public and private health care expenditure amounts to only about $42 per capita. In comparison, annual U.S. health care spending tops $9,400. Low investment in health care is partially the consequence of weak economic conditions. The countrys official unemployment rate of 22.6% is among the worst in the world. 6. Guinea-Bissau > Life expectancy: 55.2 > Infant mortality rate (per 1,000 live births): 60.3 > Health expenditure per capita: $37 > GDP per capita: $1,511 Childbirth is far riskier for both mothers and infants in Guinea-Bissau than it is in most other countries. Infants are over 10 times more likely to die within the first year of life in the West African nation than in the United States. Similarly, the maternal mortality rate during childbirth is nearly 40 times the U.S. rate. Progress, as measured by health outcomes, is likely hindered by inadequate infrastructure and education. For example, slightly more than half of the population of 1.8 million lives in rural areas, many of whom lack basic amenities. Only 60.3% of the countrys rural residents have access to clean water, and 21.5% have access to electricity. 5. Nigeria > Life expectancy: 52.8 > Infant mortality rate (per 1,000 live births): 69.4 > Health expenditure per capita: $118 > GDP per capita: $6,121 Despite Nigerias vast proven oil reserves -- the second most of any country in Africa and the 10th most in the world -- instability in the region has hindered foreign investment and limited economic development. Currently the seventh most populous country, Nigeria is expanding at a rapid pace and is on track to be the third most populous in the world by 2050. With resources spread thin across the nation, just $118 is spent on health care per Nigerian annually, approximately 1% of the health care expenditure for the average American. The country's average life expectancy at birth is just 53 years, 26 years less than the U.S. life expectancy. ALSO READ: 19 Mistakes the IRS Says Filers Must Avoid 4. Swaziland > Life expectancy: 48.9 > Infant mortality rate (per 1,000 live births): 44.5 > Health expenditure per capita: $248 > GDP per capita: $9,712 The average person born in the southern African monarchy of Swaziland today is expected to live to be just 48.9 years old, 30 years less than the average person born in the United States today. Chief among the many factors contributing to the nations poor health is the AIDS epidemic. According to UNICEF, Swaziland has the highest recorded incidence rate of HIV on Earth. The World Bank estimates that a staggering 28.8% of the population aged 15-49 is afflicted with the virus. HIV/AIDS is not the only deadly disease presenting a national health crisis in Swaziland. The country has nearly the highest annual incidence rate of tuberculosis. Approximately 7% of deaths are due to TB, making it the third leading cause of death in the country. 3. Sierra Leone > Life expectancy: 50.9 > Infant mortality rate (per 1,000 live births): 87.1 > Health expenditure per capita: $86 > GDP per capita: $1,593 Indicative of poor overall health and health care facilities, child birth is significantly more deadly in Sierra Leone than anywhere else in the world. Some 1,360 mothers die during childbirth for every 100,000 live births each year, by far the worst maternal mortality rate of any country considered. Not surprisingly, life expectancy is also extremely low. At birth, the typical Sierra Leone resident is expected to live only 50.9 years. Sierra Leone resembles most other unhealthy countries in several measures. Slightly more than 60% of the country's 6.3 million residents live in rural areas, and many lack basic amenities. Only 47.8% of the nation's rural population has access to clean water, and almost none have access to electricity. 2. Central African Republic > Life expectancy: 50.7 > Infant mortality rate (per 1,000 live births): 91.5 > Health expenditure per capita: $16 > GDP per capita: $628 Infant and maternal mortality rates are often used as proxies for both the health of the population and the quality of the health system. In Central African Republic, about 880 mothers die for every 100,000 live births, and roughly 90 children die before the age of one for every 1,000 live births -- each nearly the highest rate in the world. The country's poor health outcomes are also tied to conditions accompanying extreme poverty, such as the populations minimal access to medical treatment and healthy food. The nation's GDP per capita of $628 is one-89th the U.S. GDP per capita. As might be expected, annual health spending in CAR is also extremely low, at just $16 per person. In dozens of nations, at least $1,000 is spent per person on health. 1. Lesotho > Life expectancy: 49.7 > Infant mortality rate (per 1,000 live births): 69.2 > Health expenditure per capita: $105 > GDP per capita: $3,003 Lesotho is encompassed entirely by South Africa, another country with some of the worst health outcomes in the world. Like its neighbor, both TB and HIV are major problems in Lesotho. For every 100,000 people, there are 788 new cases of tuberculosis annually, and 22.7% of country residents aged 15-49 are HIV positive -- each the second largest share of any country with available data. Some unhealthy behaviors vary considerably by gender. While only 0.4% of women smoke, slightly more than half of men do. Like many unhealthy countries, Lesotho is primarily rural. Only 27.3% of the countrys 1.9 million residents live in urban areas, which tend to have greater access to basic amenities like electricity and clean water. ALSO READ: Tesla Passes Ford, Becomes Second Most Valuable Car Company in America Methodology To determine the most and least healthy countries, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed infant mortality rates (per 1,000 live births), maternal mortality rates (per 100,000 live births), life expectancy at birth, and the incidence of tuberculosis -- a widely-used approximation of disease incidence -- in 170 countries from data published by the World Bank. We normalized values using the min-max method and took the geometric mean to compare countries. Up-to-date health measures comparable globally are often very limited. We only considered data that was available for at least 75% of the countries on our list, and we excluded countries with fewer than 250,000 people. We used data for the most recent year available. In addition to health measures used in the ranking, we collected data on access to health services. We looked at the share of a countrys population with access to clean water, clean air, and electricity all data came from the World Bank. We also reviewed per capita health expenditure by public and private sources, as well as adult literacy rates, unemployment rates, population counts, and smoking rates. All economic data came from the World Bank. Related Articles Tens of thousands of protesters marched through South African cities on Friday demanding President Jacob Zuma's resignation, as a second ratings agency downgraded the country's debt to junk status. Zuma's sacking of respected finance minister Pravin Gordhan last week has fanned public anger, divisions within the ruling ANC party and a sharp decline in investor confidence in the country. "Recent political events, including a major cabinet reshuffle, will weaken standards of governance and public finances," the Fitch ratings agency predicted as it announced the downgrade. The Standard & Poor's agency had also downgraded South African sovereign debt to junk status after Zuma's dramatic ministerial shake-up. Zuma, who came to power in 2009, has been battered by a series of corruption scandals during his time in office, while the country has suffered record unemployment, slowing growth and stubborn racial inequality. His removal of Gordhan unleashed a fresh bout of criticism, as many ordinary South Africans and international investors saw the former minister as a bulwark against corruption. In the biggest political protests for several years, large crowds gathered in the capital Pretoria, the economic hub Johannesburg and coastal cities of Durban and Cape Town. Several thousand people attended the Johannesburg protest organised by the opposition Democratic Alliance party, which hopes to make gains in 2019 elections under its leader Mmusi Maimane, 36. "We want Zuma to fall. He is too corrupt. Real people are struggling. I voted for Nelson Mandela, but Maimane has a lot of integrity and he's young," protester Vanessa Michael, 54, from East Rand, told AFP. Mabefw Malega, a 38-year-old undertaker who had travelled three hours from Limpopo province to march said "people just want Zuma gone". One young woman in a wheelchair held a banner that said "I love my country, not my government". Johannesburg was thronged with the DA's signature blue while Luthuli House, the nerve centre of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), was surrounded by its veteran anti-apartheid fighters, dressed in camouflage, in a show of loyalty to Zuma. The ANC led the decades-long struggle against apartheid, and carried Nelson Mandela to power in the 1994 elections that ended white-minority rule. But the party has lost popularity in recent years and slipped to 55 percent of the vote in last year's local elections -- its worst ever result. - Divided ANC? - Zuma this week appeared to have quelled a rebellion within the ANC despite senior party figures, including Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, speaking out against Gordhan's sacking. The cabinet overhaul -- which was announced in a midnight statement -- cleared out many of Zuma's critics and placed loyalists in key positions. "Tensions within the ANC will mean that political energy will be absorbed by efforts to maintain party unity and fend off leadership challenges," Fitch said in its statement. "The agency believes that the cabinet reshuffle will further undermine the investment climate." Junk status was likely to increase the cost of the government's debt and shrink public funds available for welfare, health, education and housing. South Africa's trade union federation Cosatu this week joined many anti-apartheid veterans, civil action groups and business leaders calling for the president to resign. "We must move forward with the South Africa of our dreams -- not South Africa that will enrich a few cronies," Solly Mapaila, of the South African Communist Party, told the rally in Pretoria. Zuma, 74, is due to step down as head of the ANC in December, and as president ahead of the 2019 general election. He is seen as favouring his ex-wife, former African Union chief Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, to succeed him. Zuma has been accused of being in the sway of the wealthy Gupta business family, allegedly granting them influence over government appointments, contracts and state-owned businesses. Friday's marches were mainly peaceful, though police used stun grenades to disperse rival groups of protesters outside the Guptas' main residence in Johannesburg. Outside Cape Town, retired archbishop Desmond Tutu, who is in frail health, made an appearance to support the protests. Parliament will vote on a motion of no confidence in the president on April 18, though he has easily survived previous such votes against him. The Latest: US calls for transparency in UN Syria summit BEIRUT (AP) The Latest on events in Syria (all times local): 6:25 p.m. Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said the U.S. insisted that an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council on the U.S. missile attack on Syria be held in the open so that "any country that chooses to defend the atrocities of the Syrian regime will have to do in full public view, for all the world to hear." The Security Council has called an emergency meeting at 11:30 a.m. to discuss the developments in Syria. ___ 6 p.m. Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group says the U.S. missile attack on a Syrian air base is "a new crime" by the American administration that will increase tensions in the Middle East. Hezbollah warned in a statement Friday that this "foolish step by the Trump administration will be the beginning of a great and dangerous escalation in the region." Hezbollah, which sent thousands of its fighters to Syria to back President Bashar Assad's forces, said the missile attack will complicate the situation worldwide. ___ 5:50 p.m. Syrian state TV says opposition fighters have fired shells at a government-controlled neighborhood of the capital Damascus killing one person and wounding 20. The TV says Friday's shelling of the Jaramana district occurred in the afternoon. The attack on the capital came at a time when opposition activists reported airstrikes north of the country. ___ 5:30 p.m. Hundreds of protesters performed a funeral prayer in Istanbul for the victims of the Syrian regime's chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun. Ahmet Camurluoglu, the head of Istanbul Platform consisting of Islamic-leaning NGOs, blamed the west for the creation of chemical weapons used in Syria. "In this massacre, imperialist West, especially Russia, the U.S. and Iran are accomplices of cruel Assad," he said. Calling the U.S. "the great devil," Camurluoglu said the country "can't escape the curse of hundreds of martyrs with a few bombs," referring to the U.S. missile strikes. Story continues The protesters chanted "murderer America, get out of Syria" and "murderer Russia, get out of Syria" after the prayer. ___ 5:10 p.m. The U.N. envoy for Syria tells The Associated Press that his office is in "crisis management mode" following a U.S. strike on a Syrian air base. Staffan de Mistura said he was convening an "emergency meeting" later Friday of the International Syria Support Group's cease-fire task force. He said Russia requested the meeting, which was "agreed upon" by the United States. The two countries are the co-chairs of the multi-country panel that meets regularly in Geneva. In a text message to the AP, de Mistura said: "We currently are in full operational crisis management mode," without elaborating. The acknowledgement marked the biggest sign yet that the first intentional U.S. military action against President Bashar Assad's forces could affect nearly three years of peace-making efforts by the U.N. envoy. ___ 5 p.m. Syria's Foreign Ministry is calling the chemical attack that killed scores in northern Syria a "premeditated action that aimed to justify the launching of a US attack on the Syrian army." The ministry described the U.S. missile attack that heavily damaged the Shayrat air base in the central province of Homs "a flagrant aggression." It said in a statement Friday that the real objective of the U.S. attack was to "weaken the strength of the Syrian army in confronting terrorist groups." ___ 4:45 p.m. The United Nations Security Council will meet at 11:30 a.m. EDT for a briefing on the U.S. air strike on Syrian targets, according to the U.S. Mission spokesman. ___ 4:35 p.m. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Canada fully supports what he called the United States' "limited and focused action" in carrying out a missile strike on Syria. Trudeau said in a statement Friday the Assad regime's use of chemical weapons against its own people cannot be ignored. He says these gruesome attacks cannot be permitted to continue operating with impunity. He also says this week's attack in southern Idlib is a war crime. The U.S. blasted a Syrian air base Thursday night with a barrage of cruise missiles in fiery retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. President Donald Trump cast the United States assault as vital to deter future use of poison gas. ___ 4:25 p.m. The U.S. military says 58 of the 59 missiles struck their intended targets in the strike on a Syrian air base. A U.S. official says the initial assessment suggests one of the missiles malfunctioned. The official says the missiles hit multiple aircraft and hardened aircraft shelters and destroyed the fuel area. The official says information is still coming in from the site of the strike. The official is not authorized to discuss initial reports and spoke on condition of anonymity. Lolita Baldor in Washington, D.C. ___ 4:10 p.m. Turkey's president says the U.S. missile strike on a Syrian air base is a "concrete step" but argues that it's not enough. Speaking at a rally in the southern province of Hatay, which borders Syria, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the U.S. has recently made positive initiatives in Syria and that Turkey supports all efforts to ensure the safety of the Syrian people. Referring to the U.S. strikes against Shayrat air base, Erdogan said, "I want to express from Hatay that we evaluate this concrete step against the Assad regime's war crimes using chemical and conventional weapons as positive." "But I don't see this as enough," Erdogan said, and repeated Turkey's calls for a "terror-free zone" to be established. "Let us declare a safe zone in northern Syria on the Turkish border, which can be 4000 or 5000 square kilometers, let us build homes there and settle our Syrian citizens," he said. ___ 3:15 p.m. The Russian military says its facilities in Syria are reliably protected by cutting edge air defense weapons, a statement that follows a U.S. missile strike on a Syrian air base. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Friday that the S-400 and Pantsyr air defense systems offer a "guaranteed protection" to Russian warplanes stationed at Hemeimeem air base in Syria's province of Latakia. He added that a Russian navy outpost in Syria's Mediterranean port of Tartus is protected by S-300 air defense systems. Konashenkov has previously said that the Russian military would help the Syrian military beef up its air defenses following the U.S. strike. ___ 3:05 p.m. The Kremlin says the presidential Security Council has voiced regret over the damage to U.S.-Russia ties inflicted by the U.S. strike on a Syrian air base. The Kremlin said in a statement carried by Russian news agencies that the senior Russian officials who attended Friday's meeting described the U.S. action as an "act of aggression in violation of international law." It added that the meeting's participants discussed "various issues related to the continuation of Russian air force operations in support of the Syrian army's anti-terror actions." The Kremlin said those who spoke at the meeting voiced a "deep concern over inevitable negative consequences of such aggressive actions for joint efforts to fight terrorism." ___ 2:50 p.m. Dozens of members of a Turkish trade union, carrying coffins, have demonstrated in front of the Iranian and Russian embassies in protest of this week's chemical weapons attack that killed more than 80 people in northern Syria. The group of some 250 members of a pro-government union held funeral prayers for the victims of the assault in front of the Iranian embassy in the Turkish capital on Friday before marching to the Russian embassy. They were carrying dozens of black-painted coffins with images of the attack's child victims attached. Iran and Russia are Syrian President Bashar Assad's strongest supporters. ___ 2:30 p.m. Two Arab countries in the Gulf are backing the U.S. missile strike on Syria. The United Arab Emirates, which hosts some 4,000 American troops, said Friday the U.S. had its "full support." Anwar Gargash, minister of state for foreign affairs, praised Trump's "courageous and wise decision." That mirrored earlier language used by Saudi Arabia. The tiny island nation of Bahrain described the U.S. missile strike on Syria as "needed to stop the bloodshed" in that country's war. That island kingdom hosts the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet. Rulers in both countries long have been suspicious of Iran and its influence in Syria and the greater region. Both have opposed the rule of embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad. ___ 2:30 p.m. Iran's parliament news agency, ICANA.ir is reporting that the country "won't be quiet" after the U.S. missile attack that hit a number of military targets in central Syria. The Friday report quotes Allaeddin Boroujerdi, head of parliamentary committee on national security and foreign policy, as saying "Russia and Iran won't be quiet against such acts which violate interests of the region." He said serious consequences would follow the U.S. action. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif took to Twitter on Friday to denounce the strikes, saying: "Not even two decades after 9/11, U.S. military fighting on same side as al-Qaida & ISIS in Yemen & Syria. Time to stop hype and cover-ups." The U.S. strike came in fiery retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. ___ 2:15 p.m. The office of Syria's President is calling the U.S. missile strike against one of its air bases in central Homs "reckless" and "irresponsible." The statement Friday said the strikes were "shortsighted" and reflect a continuation of policy regardless of which administration that is based on targeting and "subjugating people." The statement said the dawn attack on the Shayrat air base near Homs was not based on true facts. The U.S. strike followed Tuesday's gruesome chemical attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, where more than 80 people were killed. ___ 2:05 p.m. A Syrian official says a U.S. missile strike on an air base in the country's center has killed seven people. Talal Barazi, the governor of the province of Homs where the base is based, says the Friday dawn attack has also wounded nine. Initial reports said six were killed. The attack also caused extensive damage to the air base. The Syrian military called the attack a "blatant aggression" that would undermine its war on terror. ___ 1:55 p.m. The Kremlin says Russian President Vladimir Putin will chair a meeting of his Security Council to discuss the U.S. strikes on Syria. Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov wouldn't say if Russia could use its military assets in Syria to protect Syrian facilities in case of new U.S. strikes. He also wouldn't speculate on whether Russia's move to cut a hotline with the U.S. military in Syria could provoke collisions in the crowded skies over Syria. Asked if Russia sees Syria as a military ally, Peskov answered positively. He argued Friday that the U.S. attack has "de facto served interests of the Islamic State and other terrorist organizations ___ 1:45 p.m. Top European Union officials are supporting the U.S. missile strikes on military targets in Syria as a means of deterring further chemical weapons attacks by Damascus. EU Council President Donald Tusk said in a tweet Friday that the "U.S. strikes show needed resolve against barbaric chemical attacks. EU will work with the U.S. to end brutality in Syria." European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said in a statement that he "understands efforts to deter further attacks." He said "there is a clear distinction between airstrikes on military targets and the use of chemical weapons against civilians." ____ 1:35 p.m. Syrian opposition activists say warplanes have carried out their first airstrike since a U.S. missile attack damaged a major air base in the central province of Homs. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the airstrike struck the northern edge of the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun where a chemical attack killed more than 80 people earlier this week. The Observatory and Turkey-based activist Ahmad al-Ahmad said Friday's airstrike caused material damaged but no casualties. They said it was not immediately clear if the warplanes were Syrian or Russian. ___ 1:25 p.m. The Russian military says it will help Syria beef up its air defenses after the U.S. strike on a Syrian air base. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Friday that a "complex of measures" to strengthen Syrian air defenses will be done shortly to help "protect the most sensitive Syrian infrastructure facilities." Konashenkov said "the combat efficiency of the U.S. strike was very low," adding that only 23 of the 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles reached the Shayrat air base in the province of Homs. He said it destroyed six MiG-23 fighter jets of the Syrian air force which were under repairs, but didn't damage other Syrian warplanes at the base. Konashenkov added that the base's runway also has been left undamaged. ___ 1:15 p.m. The U.N. coordinator for humanitarian affairs says it has no sign that U.S. military strikes against a Syrian air base have had "any direct consequence" on overall aid operations in Syria. Jens Laerke of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said such violence "is not a new feature" of Syria's war, and cited continued U.N.-led efforts to reach people in besieged and hard-to-reach areas of the country. The United States launched cruise missile strikes against Shayrat air base in Homs province following a chemical attack in a northern village that U.S. officials and others have blamed on President Bashar Assad's forces. U.N. human rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said Friday at a U.N. briefing that use of chemical weapons, if confirmed, would amount to a war crime. ___ 12:40 p.m. Italy says the U.S. strikes on Syria were "proportionate" given the "war crimes" committed by the Assad regime in using chemical weapons against its own people. It says the U.S. strikes would serve as a deterrent for any possible future chemical attacks. Premier Paolo Gentiloni says: "Against war crimes, for which the Bashar Assad regime is responsible, I believe the images of death and suffering that we have seen in recent days after the use of chemical weapons are images that we cannot accept seeing again." Italy urged Russia to use its influence with Damascus to enforce a cease-fire, and expressed hope that renewed U.S.-Russia talks could result in a U.N.-guided political transition in Syria. Italy is a close U.S. ally and has participated in U.S.-led military coalitions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Italy's largest opposition group, the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, condemned the U.S. attack and demanded Italy not get drawn in. The opposition center-right Northern League party called the strikes a "gift to ISIS," the Islamic State group. ___ 12:30 p.m. Denmark's Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen has tweeted: "Good that coward assaults on women, men and children has consequences. The United States has clearly indicated that (Syrian President Bashar) Assad's atrocities do not go unpunished." Denmark's Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen said in a live television interview Friday that a "line needs to be drawn in the sand" when it comes to the use of chemical weapons, adding that Denmark was not briefed in advance. Former NATO secretary-general and ex-Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen also tweeted: "US drew a red line on chemical weapons. Failure to enforce again would have emboldened Assad & others. On balance, strikes were justified." ___ 12:20 p.m. The British government says it was informed in advance about U.S. missile strikes on a Syrian air base, and firmly supports the American action. Prime Minister Theresa May's office says the action was "an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, and is intended to deter further attacks." Defense Secretary Michael Fallon says British officials have "been in close contact with the American government over the last couple of days," and that Defense Secretary James Mattis informed him late Thursday that the U.S. planned to take military action in response to a chemical attack in Syria. Fallon said Britain, part of an international coalition against the Islamic State group in Syria, had not been asked to participate in the action. ___ 12:15 p.m. Turkey's foreign minister has called for the removal of President Bashar Assad's regime in Syria, while urging supporters of the regime to stop legitimizing it and to help establish a political solution. In a televised statement Friday, Mevlut Cavusoglu expressed Turkey's support for the U.S. missile strike on Syria. "This regime must be removed from leading Syria as soon as possible and the best way to do that is by starting the transitional process," the minister said. Cavusoglu said steps to remove Assad must be decided upon as he refuses to leave while "continuing crimes against humanity." Pointing to the possibility of new refugee flows, Cavusoglu reiterated the need for widening safe zones __ 11:55 a.m. French President Francois Hollande is convening an emergency defense meeting to discuss next steps in Syria after U.S. airstrikes targeting President Bashar Assad's government. Hollande said he will hold the meeting with top security officials in Paris on Friday, as France tries to relaunch international peace negotiations for Syria. He called the U.S. airstrikes a response to a chemical weapons attack that Western powers blame on Assad's forces. French warplanes are active in the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State extremists and France has long called for Assad's departure, but French diplomats have pushed this week for resumed peace talks instead of international intervention. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said the U.S. bombing was a warning to Assad's allies Russia and Iran. ___ 11:45 a.m. Russia's foreign minister says no Russian servicemen have been hurt in a U.S. strike on a Syrian air base. Sergey Lavrov said Friday that he was unaware of any Russian military casualties at the air base hit by U.S. cruise missiles. Lavrov, speaking on a trip to Uzbekistan, strongly condemned the U.S. strike saying it violates international law. Russian state TV aired the footage showing the damage from the U.S. strikes at the Syrian air base. It showed craters and pockmarks left by explosions and said that nine Syrian air force jets have been destroyed in the attack. ___ 11:35 a.m. Syria's state TV is showing footage of the U.S. missile strike on a Syrian air base in the country's center, showing a fast sequence of orange flashes that lit the dark sky in the distance before the crack of dawn. The shaky footage, apparently filmed with a mobile phone camera and aired Friday, came hours after about 60 U.S. Tomahawk missiles hit the base in Homs province, causing extensive damage to the base. In a different sequence after day break, the Syrian TV station al-Ikhbariyah showed another short clip of smoke billowing in the distance, hovering over a raging fire, the tip of which emerges and a forest of trees is in the foreground. The Syrian government said at least six people were killed, and several wounded in the attack. Activists say the air base, hangars, fuel depot and aircraft were badly damaged. A government official said a fire raged for over an hour. The attack is the first by U.S. aircraft against the Syrian army since the war began. The U.S is also leading an international coalition against Islamic State group militants in Syria. ___ 11:25 a.m. Israel's president says the U.S. strike on Syria was an "appropriate response" to the "unthinkable brutality" of the chemical attacks in Syria this week that killed dozens of civilians. Reuven Rivlin said Friday the U.S. "serves as an example to the entire free world" to support steps to end atrocities in Syria. Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said President Trump sent a message that "war crimes" by Syrian President Bashar Assad will not be tolerated. The country's opposition leader Isaac Herzog told Channel 10 TV that he doesn't believe the strike will impact Israel. Israel has repeatedly warned against "game-changing" weapons reaching Hezbollah in Lebanon from Syria, which along with Iran supports the militant group. It has carried out a number of airstrikes on suspected weapon convoys en route to Hezbollah. ___ 11:20 a.m. The leaders of Germany and France say President Bashar Assad brought American missile strikes upon himself by using chemical weapons. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande said in a joint statement Friday after talking on the phone that "President Assad alone carries responsibility for these developments" with his "repeated use of chemical weapons and his crimes against his own people." The two leaders said their countries would continue to work with United Nations partners in "efforts to hold President Assad responsible for his criminal acts." They called upon the international community to "join forces for a political transition in Syria" in accordance with the U.N. resolution. ___ 11:05 a.m. Turkish officials continue to voice their support for the U.S. missile strike on Syria. Turkey's foreign ministry welcomed the U.S. missile strike on Shayrat air base following the chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun as "very positive." In a written statement Friday, the ministry said steps to ensure that war crimes do not go unpunished and are held accountable "will have Turkey's full support." Presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin also called the strike "an important step," according to Turkey's state-run Anadolu news agency. Kalin repeated Turkey's calls for a no-fly zone and safe zone in Syria so that "similar massacres do not happen again." ___ 10:55 a.m. French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen says U.S. President Donald Trump is trying to be the "world's policeman" with airstrikes on Syria and is suggesting that it could backfire. Le Pen has expressed support for Syrian President Bashar Assad in the past, and said on France-2 television Friday that she was "surprised" by Trump's sudden move. Le Pen said that Trump indicated he would not make the U.S. "the world's policeman, and that's exactly what he did yesterday." She warned that past international interventions in Iraq and Libya have led to rising Islamic extremism. Le Pen appeared to be distancing herself from Trump. The two have similar views and Le Pen is hoping to ride a wave of protectionist, anti-immigrant sentiment to the presidency next month. ___ 10:45 a.m. Russia says it's suspending a deal with the U.S. to prevent midair collisions over Syria in response to the U.S. strike on a Syrian air base. The Russian Foreign Ministry said in Friday's statement that Moscow is suspending a memorandum with the U.S. to prevent incidents and ensure flight safety. Under the memorandum, signed after Russia launched an air campaign in Syria in September 2015, Russia and the U.S. had exchanged information about their flights to avoid incidents in the crowded skies over Syria. Russia has several dozen warplanes and batteries of air-defense missiles at its base in Syria. ___ 10:35 a.m. Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressed support for the U.S. missile attack on a Syrian government-controlled air base. Abe on Friday said Japan understood and supported the U.S. strategy, saying the strikes were "a means to prevent further deterioration of the situation" referring to the suspected chemical attack earlier in Syria this week. About 60 U.S. Tomahawk missiles hit the Shayrat air base, southeast of Homs, a small installation with two runways, where aircraft often take off to bomb targets in northern and central Syria. ___ 10:35 a.m. Indonesia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs says it's concerned by unilateral foreign actions in Syria including the U.S. attack on a Syrian government air base on Thursday night. Ministry spokesman Arrmanatha Nasir said Indonesia rejects the use of chemical weapons for any purpose and condemns a chemical weapons attack in Syria earlier this week that killed dozens of civilians. But it did not praise President Donald Trump's retaliation against the government of Syria's President Bashar Assad. Nasir says, "We are also very concerned by unilateral actions that have been taken by many parties including the recent launch of Tomahawks in response to the use of chemical weapons." ___ 10:35 a.m. NATO's chief was warned that the United States was to launch missile strikes in Syria and is making no comment on the incident. Jens Stoltenberg's office said Friday that "we can confirm that NATO Secretary-General was informed by the US Secretary of Defense prior to the strikes." But it said "we refer you to the US authorities regarding the strikes in Syria." ___ 10:25 a.m. Syrian military says the U.S. missile attack on one of its air bases in central Syria has killed six and caused extensive damage, calling it an aggression that undermines Damascus' counter terrorism operations. The statement read on TV Friday came hours after the U.S. sent nearly 60 Tomahawk missiles into the Shayrat air base, southeast of Homs, the first American attack against the Syrian army since the war started in 2011. Ali Mayhoub, Syrian army spokesman, said Washington has used the chemical attack in the northern town of Khan Sheikhoun earlier this week as a "pretext" to carry out the "blatant aggression" , without knowing what really happened. Syria blames the opposition fighters of stockpiling chemical weapons. ___ 9:40 a.m. A communication link between the U.S. and Russia used to protect their pilots flying sorties over Syria was used ahead of an American missile strike on the country. The so-called "deconfliction line" is operated by the U.S. military's Central Command at the sprawling al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar. It serves as a crucial link to make sure the increasingly crowded Syrian airspace doesn't see any accidental collisions or attacks on each other. Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis says: "U.S. military planners took precautions to minimize risk to Russian or Syrian personnel located at the airfield" targeted in Syria's Homs province. U.S. Central Command did not immediately respond to an Associated Press query on specifics of how the line was used. About 60 U.S. Tomahawk missiles launched early Friday hit the Shayrat air base, southeast of the city of Homs, a small installation with two runways. The attack came in response for a chemical weapons attack Tuesday in Syria. ___ 9:35 a.m. Turkey has welcomed the U.S. missile strike on Syria, saying it was an "important and meaningful" development but called for a continued tough stance against President Bashar Assad that would render him "no longer able to harm his people." Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said in a live television interview Friday: "It is imperative that the Assad regime is fully punished by the international community." "We see the (air strikes) as positive, but we believe that this should be completed," Kurtulmus said. "The Assad regime's barbarism must immediately be stopped." Kurtulmus added that he hoped the U.S. action would help accelerate peace efforts in Syria. Turkey is a strong opponent of Syrian President Bashar Assad and has backed the Syrian opposition fighting against him. ___ 9:20 a.m. The Kremlin says President Vladimir Putin believes that the U.S. strike on a Syrian air base is an "aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law." Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in Friday's statement carried by Russian news agencies that Putin believes that the U.S. has dealt the strikes under "far-fetched pretext." Russia has argued that the death of civilians in the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun on Tuesday resulted from Syrian forces hitting a rebel chemical arsenal there. Peskov said that the U.S. has ignored past incidents of the use of chemical weapons by Syrian rebels. He argued that the Syrian government has destroyed its chemical weapons stockpiles under international control. ___ 9 a.m. A survivor of the chemical attack in a northern Syrian town says he hopes the U.S. missile attack could help put an end to Syrian government airstrikes, creating a safe area for civilians. Alaa Alyousef, a 27-year old resident of Khan Sheikhoun, said Friday the U.S. missile attack "alleviates a small part of our sufferings," but he worries it will be like "anesthetics," to save face. AlYousef said the U.S. is capable of "paralyzing" Syrian warplanes . "What good is a strike on Shayrat air base alone while we have more than 15 other air bases," he said. Alyousef lost at least 25 relatives in this week's gruesome chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun. The Syrian government denies it was behind the attack, believed to have deployed chemical weapons. ___ 8:50 a.m. A Syrian official tells The Associated Press that the U.S. missile attack that hit military targets in central Syria has killed three soldiers and two civilians. Talal Barazi, the governor of Homs province, said seven others were wounded in the early Friday attack. He had earlier said a fire raged in the air base in Homs for over an hour following the barrage of missiles. A Syrian opposition monitor said the attack killed four soldiers, including a general. The attack came in fiery retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. ___ 7:45 a.m. Iran has condemned the U.S. missile strike on Syria, saying the "unilateral action is dangerous, destructive and violates the principles of international law." That's according to Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi. He made the comments in a report carried Friday by the semi-official ISNA news agency. Iran is one of the biggest supporters of embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad. Its hard-line paramilitary Revolutionary Guard is deeply involved in the war. America's Sunni Arab allies in the Gulf view Syria as a proxy conflict between it and Shiite power Iran. Ghasemi described Iran as "the biggest victim of chemical weapons in recent history," referencing Iraqi use of the weapons during its 1980s war with the Islamic Republic. He said Iran condemned the missile launch "regardless of the perpetrators and the victims" of Tuesday's chemical weapons attack in Syria. He also warned it would "strengthen terrorists" and further add to "the complexity of the situation in Syria and the region." ___ 8:25 a.m. Saudi Arabia is praising the "courageous decision" by U.S. President Donald Trump to launch missile strikes on Syria over a deadly chemical weapons attack. A statement carried by the state-run Saudi Press Agency on Friday firmly blames the government of embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad for the chemical weapons attack. The Saudi Foreign Ministry said the missile launch by Trump was the right response to "the crimes of this regime to its people in light of the failure of the international community to stop it." Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia is a longtime opponent of Assad and has supported the rebels fighting against him. It also views the long-running war as a proxy conflict between it and its Middle East archrival, the Shiite power Iran. ___ 8:20 a.m. A senior Russian lawmaker says that U.S. strike on Syria likely has put an end to hopes for Russia-U.S. cooperation in Syria. Konstantin Kosachev, the head of the foreign affairs committee in the Kremlin-controlled upper house of parliament said on his Facebook that the prospective U.S.-Russian anti-terror coalition has been "put to rest without even being born." Kosachev added that "it's a pity," suggesting that Trump had been pressured to act by the Pentagon. He added that while "Russian cruise missiles strike the terrorists, U.S. missiles strike Syrian government forces who are spearheading the fight against the terrorists." ___ 8:10 a.m. A Syrian opposition monitor says the U.S. missile attack on an air base in the country's center has killed at least four Syrian soldiers, including a general, and caused extensive damage. The head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the early Friday missile attack damaged over a dozen hangars, a fuel depot and an air defense base. About 60 U.S. Tomahawk missiles hit the Shayrat air base, southeast of Homs, a small installation with two runways. A Syrian official the attack caused deaths and a fire, but didn't elaborate. The U.S. attack came in fiery retaliation to Tuesday's deadly chemical attack that officials said used chlorine mixed with a nerve agent, possibly sarin. More than 80 were killed in that attack that drew wide international condemnation. ___ 8 a.m. Israel's ambassador to the U.N. says the U.S. sent a "significant message" to the region and beyond with the attack on a Syrian air base. Danny Danon told Channel 10 TV "it was a moral decision that delivered a triple message." He said it told the Syrians to stop using chemical weapons and sent a message to Iran and North Korea. He said it also told the international community that "if the U.N. is incapable of acting in these situations it will lead." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier "this message of resolve in the face of the Assad regime's horrific actions will resonate not only in Damascus, but in Tehran, Pyongyang and elsewhere." Israel's military says it was notified ahead of the strike. ___ 7:55 a.m. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says the "Australian government strongly supports the swift and just response of the United States" in launching a rocket attack on a Syrian air base. He tells reporters in Sydney on Friday: "This was a calibrated, proportionate and targeted response. It sends a strong message to the Assad regime, and ... has been struck at the very airfield from which the chemical attack was delivered." "But we are not at war with the Assad regime and the United States have made it clear that they are not seeking to overthrow the Assad regime," he added. ___ 7:45 a.m. Russia's Foreign Ministry says it is preparing a statement regarding U.S. strikes on a Syrian base. Shortly before the strikes, the head of information policy commission in the upper house of Russian parliament, Alexei Pushkov, said on Twitter said that if Trump launches a military action in Syria it would put him in "the same league with Bush and Obama." Russian deputy envoy to the U.N., Vladimir Safronkov, said Russia had warned the U.S. to "think about what military actions have led to in Iraq, Libya and other countries," according to the Interfax news agency. ___ 7:30 a.m. A Syrian official tells The Associated Press that the U.S. missile attack that hit a number of military targets in central Syria has left a number of dead and wounded. Talal Barazi, the governor of Homs province, didn't say how many were killed in the early Friday attack. He said a fire raged in the air base in Homs for over an hour following the barrage of missiles. Barazi says the evacuation and transfer of casualties is ongoing. He called the air base, which is about 45 kilometers (28 miles) east of the city of Homs, a "supporting base" for Syria's fight against terrorism. Islamic State group militants operate in the central Homs province. Activists and rebels say the base serves as one of the government's most active launching pad for airstrikes on all rebel areas in central and northern Syria. Syria's government calls all armed groups "terrorists." The attack came in fiery retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. ___ 5:50 a.m. Israel's prime minister has welcomed the U.S. attack on a Syrian air base saying he "fully supports" President Trump's decision. Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday in a statement that "In both word and action" Trump "sent a strong and clear message" that "the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated." Israel's Channel 2 TV said Israel along with other allies was notified about the U.S. strike. The attacks in neighboring Syria have worried Israel, which has warned against "game-changing" weapons reaching Hezbollah in Lebanon from the country, which supports the militant group. Last month Israel shot down an anti-aircraft missile fired at its planes as they struck a suspected Hezbollah weapons convoy. Israel also has treated several thousand Syrians wounded in fighting and provided humanitarian aid to some Syrian communities near the Israeli frontier in the Golan Heights. The Philippines' military said Friday that it plans to upgrade and improve facilities on islands it already occupies in the disputed South China Sea, not embark on a new land grab. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said Thursday that he had ordered the armed forces to "occupy all" remote reefs claimed by Manila. Rival claimant Beijing responded Friday with a pledge to "firmly safeguard its territorial sovereignty, its maritime rights and interests" in the South China Sea, which is rich in resources and hosts vital shipping lanes. The firebrand Filipino leader said he wanted "nine or 10" islands occupied and fortified, but did not make clear whether he was referring to the nine islands already held by the army, or to some of the 40-odd other Spratly features also claimed by Manila. Duterte's announcement had appeared to be a sharp departure from his previously cordial overtures to Beijing and non-confrontational approach. But military officials on Friday said they did not think order required the army to occupy new outcrops. "The context with which we take the order is to improve on our already occupied islands, islets and features," military spokesman Colonel Edgard Arevalo told AFP. The defence department said the plan was to add military barracks, water desalination systems, power generators, light houses, and shelters for fishermen to the features that the Philippines currently occupy. "The president recently announced plans to improve, and implement the Pag-asa development plan which includes nine areas," Duterte spokesman Ernesto Abella said, referring Pag-asa municipality, the Philippines' political subdivision for the Spratly islands that it claims. "This is part of his mandate to serve the best interests of the nation," he added. All other major outcrops inside the section of the Spratlys claimed by Manila are already occupied by troops from other claimant countries, Filipino maritime law expert Jay Batongbacal told AFP Friday. Only a few "reefs and shoals" do not currently have soldiers on them, he said, adding that the Philippine government would likely back away from Duterte's explosive original proposal. China claims most of the sea and in recent years has been building up disputed reefs into artificial islands that can house military facilities, further raising tensions. "We hope the Philippines side can continue to properly manage maritime disputes with China and safeguard together the sound and stable situation of China-Philippines relations," Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a regular press briefing Friday. This photo gallery highlights some of the top news images made by Associated Press photographers in Latin America and Caribbean that were published in the last week. Venezuelan riot police launched pepper spray and tear gas to disperse an angry crowd of several thousand anti-government demonstrators trying to make their way to congress in Caracas, while in Paraguay clashes erupt between police and protesters outside congress after senators approve a constitutional amendment to allow a president to run for a second term. In Rio de Janeiro, a stray bullet that killed Maria Eduarda Alves de Conceicao was fired during a shootout between police and suspected drug traffickers in low-income neighborhood of Acari. She was inside a nearby school attending a physical education class when she was struck. It was one of the worst natural disasters in Colombia in recent years. Three of the six rivers surrounding Mocoa overran their banks, causing a wall of muddy brown water and tree limbs to race through the streets, destroying homes and carrying away cars and appliances like driftwood. In Cuba, zoologist Marta Llanes has cared for 10 baby chimps in her Havana apartment since she started work at the city zoo in 1983. Many of the bereaved go into a lifetime of debt to send off deceased relatives in Haiti, where two out of three people live on less than $2 per day and burying the dead is a predatory business. Brazilian club Chapecoense beat Colombia's Atletico Nacional 2-1 in a highly emotional match that commemorated the victims of last year's fatal air crash in South America. AP journalists continue traveling to the U.S.-Mexico border to have a look at how U.S. immigration policies are affecting the area. ___ This photo gallery was curated by photo editor Silvia Izquierdo in Rio de Janeiro. ___ Follow AP photographers and photo editors on Twitter: http://apne.ws/15Oo6jo A gleaming white structure topped with seven domes, set to be the world's biggest Yazidi temple, is being built in a tiny village in Armenia. Long persecuted, most recently by Islamic jihadists in Iraq, the Kurdish-speaking, religious minority hopes the new temple will prove a symbol of strength as it tries to preserve its unique blend of faiths. Yazidis, adherents of an ancient religion rooted in Zoroastrianism, number around 35,000 in Armenia today but currently have just one tiny temple in the Caucasus country. The new edifice, called Quba Mere Diwane, is being constructed in Aknalich, a village 35 kilometres (22 miles) from the capital, Yerevan, thanks to funding by a wealthy Moscow-based Yazidi businessman Mirza Sloyan, who was born nearby. Aknalich is home to 150 Yazidis, as well as the existing temple, built in 2012 which only holds up to 30 people. Created from granite and marble, the new 25-metre-high (82-foot) structure will include a large prayer hall, religious school and museum. Its seven domes represent seven angels revered by the Yazidis. - 'Glimmer of hope' - Of the world's 1.5 million Yazidis, the largest community is in Iraq where they have long been one of the country's most vulnerable minorities. Persecution by Saddam Hussein forced thousands of families to flee. In August 2014, Yazidis were brutally targeted by Islamic State jihadists when their bastion Sinjar in northwestern Iraq was seized. They suffered crimes which the United Nations has described as genocide. "We suffered terrible losses in Sinjar and are extremely depressed, but this temple gives us a glimmer of hope for revival," said Sheikh Hasan Hasanyan, the spiritual leader of the Armenian Yazidis. "If we can build such a splendid temple, that means Yazidis withstood, they didn't give up," he told AFP by telephone. - An old prayer - The ex-Soviet country's largest minority group, Yazidis are well integrated into Armenian society, enjoy freedom of religious belief, and publish Yazidi-language newspapers and textbooks. But widespread poverty and unemployment have sent a wave of migrants to Europe, Russia and the United States in search of work. "I hope that the new temple will motivate my children -- who are living in Europe -- to come back to Aknalich, remind them that they are Yazidis," said local resident Misha Davrshyan. Yazidis worship one God, who, they believe, created the world and entrusted it to seven Holy Beings, the most important of which is Melek Taus, or Peacock Angel. Their unique beliefs -- which over time integrated elements of Judaism, Christianity and Islam -- have often been misconstrued as satanic. Orthodox Muslims consider the peacock a demon figure and refer to Yazidis as devil-worshippers. Fearing assimilation, Yazidis discourage marriage outside the community and even across their caste system, and strictly follow traditional customs -- some refrain from eating lettuce or wearing the colour blue. "We have no state and, as a vulnerable minority, we risk imminent assimilation if we stop protecting our traditions," said Hasanyan. He said he hoped that the new temple, expected to open this year, "will become a major spiritual centre for Yazidi pilgrims from all over the world." "There is an old Yazidi prayer asking God to give peace and happiness first to the world's other nations and then to our tormented people," he said. "That's what we will be praying for in the new temple." MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's President Enrique Pena Nieto received a leading Venezuelan opposition activist for the first time, in a policy shift that reflects Mexico's increasing assertiveness against the government of Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro. Pena Nieto's meeting with Lilian Tintori, wife of jailed opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, in the Mexican capital follows statements by the Mexican government demanding that democracy be "re-established" in Venezuela, where elections have been postponed. "We trust that, via an agreement between all sides, it will be the Venezuelans who re-establish the democratic order," Pena Nieto said via Twitter late on Thursday after the meeting. The position reflects deep concern about the humanitarian crisis of food and medicine shortages in Venezuela, as well as the Supreme Court's short-lived decision last week to take over the powers of the country's opposition-controlled Congress. It is also seen by diplomats as helping support ties between Mexico and the government of U.S. President Donald Trump. Venezuela's Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez last week slammed her Mexican counterpart Luis Videgaray's "betrayal" and called him "servile" after Videgaray said the situation in Venezuela was a "systematic violation" of democratic principles. Mexico has taken a leading role in efforts at the Washington-based Organization of American States (OAS) to pressure the Maduro government under threat of being expelled from the regional diplomatic body. "Pena Nieto is worried about what Venezuelans are living, Tintori said in an interview with Mexican media network Grupo Imagen that also referred to Mexico's role in the OAS. The Mexican stance against Maduro's government is a shift from a traditional neutral approach to the politics of its Latin American neighbors. It brings Mexico in line with recently elected conservative governments in Argentina, Brazil and Peru but puts it at odds with Venezuela's allies in the region. Some in Mexican foreign policy circles had been pushing for Pena Nieto to receive Tintori as a message of support for the Venezuelan opposition. Tintori had previously met Videgaray's predecessor as foreign minister. (Reporting by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Bernadette Baum) Gambians head to the polls on Thursday for the first time since the departure of longtime leader Yahya Jammeh, with multiple parties poised to enter parliament after 22 years of effective one-party rule. Several opposition parties united to form a coalition in December to oust Jammeh from power and deliver flagbearer Adama Barrow to victory as the new president. But internal tensions caused that coalition to break apart, meaning nine parties will run in Thursday's legislative polls including Jammeh's Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction (APRC) and the strongest traditional opposition force, the United Democratic Party (UDP). They face a significant threat from the Gambia Democratic Congress (GDC), a youth-led party which did not join the governing coalition, and whose leader Mama Kandeh came third in the presidential poll. More than 880,000 Gambians are eligible to vote, with the polls open from 8:00 am until 5:00 pm. The first results are expected during the evening and a full set due by late morning on Friday. There is no formal opinion polling in the tiny west African nation, making it difficult to establish voting intentions, but the scarcity of APRC rallies which once dominated every street during campaigning suggests voters are unlikely to give them the near-total majority of past elections. There are 53 seats up for grabs in The Gambia's National Assembly, five more than in 2012, according to the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC). Five extra places are appointed by the president to give a total of 58 seats in the legislative chamber, which was long derided as a rubber stamp for Jammeh's executive orders. - Roll of the marble - The African Union, regional ECOWAS bloc and the European Union have all sent observers to monitor voters casting their ballots with The Gambia's unique system, where marbles are dropped into coloured metal barrels representing different candidates. Miroslav Poche, chief EU observer and a Czech MEP, told AFP that the IEC had showed its impartiality under great pressure by standing up to Jammeh when he lost the vote last year and filed legal action against the body. "The IEC has proved itself during the December 2016 presidential elections," he said, but added that the marble drum system was a "big challenge" for his technical support team. It is the first time the EU has sent a fully-fledged observer mission to The Gambia, and it has bankrolled the vote at a time when state coffers are almost empty. West African troops remain on Gambian soil three months after Jammeh's departure, and will stay until Barrow is satisfied security service reforms have removed rogue elements from its ranks. Experts say that while the result could go feasibly in any direction, the relative novelty of a truly democratic election might distract from the unified front required to carry out the comprehensive overhaul of the state promised by Barrow. "Given Jammeh's stranglehold over Gambian politics for the past 22 years, the country's opposition parties are inexperienced to the democratic process and relatively weak institutionally," said Joseph Siegle, director of research at the US-based Africa Center for Strategic Studies. "Once Jammeh was defeated and departed the country (under pressure from ECOWAS), the competing agendas and political aspirations of the respective political actors in the opposition were bound to emerge," he added. Mexican immigrant Roberto Beristain's own American wife voted for Donald Trump as US president because he promised to expel crooks from the country. Now, after 20 years living and working in the United States, it is Beristain himself, a 43-year-old father of three, who has been deported. "My wife is not very happy, because she supported him," Trump, he told AFP at the migrant shelter where he is staying in the Mexican border town of Ciudad Juarez. "We thought he was going to be a good president because we wanted security. His promises to expel criminals from the country seemed like a good idea," he added. "We never thought it would end like this." - Responsibilities - After leaving his home in Mexico City, Beristain entered the United States illegally in 1998. He met his wife there and they married 17 years ago. "I became what I had not been in Mexico -- a responsible person." Their children were all born in the United States: Maria, 15; Jasmine, 14 and Demetri, eight. Despite never fully settling his residency status, he was able to buy a restaurant in Indianapolis. Now, "I feel betrayed, because they were going to get criminals out of the country but now we see that they are not doing that," he said. "They are removing good people, who pay their taxes and have never committed a crime in their lives." - Treated like criminal - He was arrested in early February this year when he went to a routine appointment with immigration authorities. He was then sent to a detention center in Wisconsin shortly after Trump ordered deportations to be stepped up, and was deported on Monday night. Beristain's case hit the headlines when his wife Helen spoke publicly about how she had voted for Trump. She said she thought her husband would be safe from deportation since he had committed no crime -- he had never gotten so much as a parking ticket. "What hurt most was having my family see me arrested, as if I was a criminal," Beristain said, his voice breaking. "I don't want my children to have that image of me." - 'Deporting the innocent' - Trump campaigned for the presidency on vows to kick out what he called "bad hombres" -- criminals who enter the United States from Mexico. Since Trump ordered deportations to be stepped up in late February, immigrants have been terrified of being rounded up and torn away from their families. Beristain arrived in Ciudad Juarez with nothing but the clothes he was wearing when detained two months ago. Alone, without family or friends in the city, he is trying to get back to the United States, to work in his restaurant and raise his family. He hopes his US lawyers can help. In the Ciudad Juarez Migrant Center, he sits on the edge of his seat with his cell phone, waiting for them to call. "I don't know much about politics, but there is one thing I am sure of," he said. "It is not fair that they are deporting innocent people like me." The PNP Drug Enforcement Group arrested another foreign national in a buy-bust operation in Pasay City. After 3 weeks of surveillance, the authorities nabbed drug suspect Jun No, alias Justine, a Korean-American national in an operation on Wednesday, in Pasay City. Recovered from the suspect were 140 tablets of ecstasy. He was among PNPs list of big time drug traffickers. He will be charged today for violation of section-5 which is trading, administration, dispensation, delivery, distribution and transportation of dangerous drugs, said PNP Drug Enforcement Group director PSSupt. Graciano Mijares. Based on PNPs findings, the confiscated tablets of ecstasy were locally made. Each tablet has a selling price of P3,000 pesos. Director Mijares believes, the suspect could have established a network of customers since he has been traveling to Cebu and Manila in the past three years. He could be a part of a group. We are still in a process of conducting follow up operations against the other members of the syndicate, Mijares said. According to the PNP, demand for party drugs is usually high during summer season when occasions are very common. The PNP-DEG assures that they are continuously doing surveillance against high value targets and narco-politicians. Grace Casin | UNTV News & Rescue The post Korean-American national, nabbed for selling ecstasy appeared first on UNTV News. The Philippine government and communist rebels have agreed in principle on an interim ceasefire to boost ongoing peace talks aimed at ending one of the world's longest insurgencies, the two sides said Thursday. The temporary truce would take effect after the two sides iron out the guidelines and ground rules, they said in a joint statement without giving a timetable. The two parties "have agreed to formulate an interim joint ceasefire agreement that will boost trust and confidence in the ... peace negotiations," rebel leader Jose Maria Sison told a joint news conference Thursday in the western Dutch town of Noordwijk aan Zee. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's peace adviser Jesus Dureza cautioned there was "still a lot of work that will have to be done by both sides. We don't have a ceasefire in place right now, to make it very clear." But he earlier hailed the outcome of four days of talks in The Netherlands "as another step closer to our dream". The communist insurgency in the poverty-stricken Asian country began in 1968 and is one of the longest running in the world. It has claimed an estimated 30,000 lives, according to the military. About 4,000 New People's Army guerrillas continue to attack isolated military and police outposts and extort money from businesses to finance their armed campaign, the military said. Peace talks have been conducted on and off for 30 years, seeing a revival after the election of Duterte last year. Duterte, a self-described socialist, has made a peace deal with the rebels a top priority. The negotiators agreed that the next round would be held between May 27 and June 1, although a venue has yet to be agreed upon. The government has billed a permanent ceasefire as its primary goal, with Duterte imposing conditions including that the rebels stop extortion and arson activities. The interim agreement followed what negotiators described as a "difficult" round of discussions, with the communists insisting they exercised "maximum flexibility" in response to the president's conditions. Duterte angrily called off the peace talks in February after the collapse of unilateral ceasefires that saw guerrillas killing several soldiers and police in a series of attacks. - 'Genuine land reform' - "The ceasefire agreement is necessary and of high importance," said rebel leader Sison. "But far more important and decisive in realising a just and lasting peace is the adoption and implementation of basic social, economic and political reforms that are needed and demanded by the people," he added. The interim ceasefire agreement directs negotiators to craft guidelines regarding "the presence of armed groups in local communities, creation of buffer zones, prohibited, hostile and provocative acts including the collection of revolutionary taxes". Norwegian special envoy to the peace process Elisabeth Slattum said that on the issue "of the social and economic reforms, the parties have firmed up the agreement on free distribution of land as the basic principle of genuine land reform." The guerrillas are represented at the talks by Dutch-based exiled leaders including Sison, founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines. The two sides have also announced they would release prisoners as another confidence-building measure. The communists said they would soon free four kidnapped security forces, while the government said it would release 23 detained rebels who were sick and elderly. President Duterte plans to go to Pag-asa Island someday to wave a Philippine flag there. The Pag-asa or Kalayaan island is one of the disputed territories by Philippines and China. Aside from this, the President has also ordered the AFP to occupy all island territories of the Philippines in the West Philippine Sea as he aims to assert the rights of the country over its islands. Nine or ten islands there, we have to fortify. I must build bunkers there or houses, and I make provisions for habitations, he said. The President also said he is ready to release money for the development of the islands. He is also determined to strengthen the Philippines assertion of its rights over the Benham Rise which is in the northeastern part of the Philippines. The development there has my full support. Gagastos ako sa fortification diyan (I will allocate budget for the fortification there), because I want to include the Benham Rise on the right side of the Philippines in the Pacific. I will officially claim it as ours. I will rename it and I will call it the Philippine Ridge, he said. The President also plans to replace the vessel Sierra Madre which ran aground the Ayungin shoal. Atin man yun, palitan ko luxury liner, may mga waiter, pagkain swimming pool para ang sundalo tataba at least sa hirap nila, (Thats ours anyway. I will replace it with a luxury liner. There will be waiters, food and swimming pool for the soldiers so at least they will fatten up for all their hardships), he said. Meanwhile, according to maritime law expert UP Professor Atty. Jay Batongbacal, President Dutertes statement seems confusing because there is no island left to occupy. The country also submitted a complaint to which the international arbitral tribunal decided against China. Batongbacal also argued that the President seemed to be contradicting his own statement not to provoke further tension between the Philippines and China. Rosali Coz | UNTV News & Rescue Story continues WATCH: Prof. Jay Batongbacal talks about PHs maritime issues The post PRRD orders the military to occupy all Philippine territories in the West Philippine Sea appeared first on UNTV News. Greece's justice minister on Friday said Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis had likely bribed "thousands" of doctors and civil servants to promote its products, amid an ongoing probe. "A great number of state officials are implicated... from what I'm beginning to realise from reports, it must be thousands who were directly bribed from Switzerland," Stavros Kontonis told state agency ANA radio. "National health service doctors and state officials were bribed to promote drugs in an illegal and anti-scientific manner," Kontonis said. Scores of people have been questioned in a probe ongoing since last year, with anti-corruption prosecutors also visiting Novartis's premises near Athens earlier this year to gather evidence. The case gained attention following a suicide attempt in Athens on New Year's Day, by a Novartis manager. That attempt was thwarted by police and according to the judicial source, the manager was one of those questioned over alleged corruption. Kontonis on Friday said Novartis continued to sell "overpriced" drugs even after the country was hit by economic crisis in 2010 and huge cuts were imposed on state budgets, leaving many Greeks without access to affordable medicine. In January, Novartis issued a statement saying it was "aware of the media reports about our business practises" in Greece and that it was seeking more information and was cooperating with the authorities. "Novartis is committed to the highest standards of ethical business conduct and regulatory compliance in all aspects of its work and takes any allegation of misconduct extremely seriously," the company said in the statement. The Swiss pharmaceutical giant was investigated by US authorities in 2014, accused of paying bribes in order to boost sales of some of its medicines, and was later fined $390 million (366 million euros) by the US Justice Department. In March, Novartis also paid $25 million (22.4 million euros) to settle claims involving its Chinese subsidiary. BEIRUT (Reuters) - The U.S. missile attack on a Syrian airbase on Friday will elevate political tensions but is not expected to lead to a military escalation, said a senior official in the military alliance supporting President Bashar al-Assad. "No doubt this will leave great tension on the political level, but I do not expect a military escalation. Currently I do not believe that we are going towards a big war in the region," the official told Reuters. The official, a non-Syrian, spoke on condition of anonymity, saying this was a personal assessment and not said as a spokesman for the alliance. Assad has been backed in the six-year-old war by Russia, Iran and Shi'ite militias from countries including Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan. "I doubt that the Russians will escalate towards military friction with the Americans," the official said. (Reporting by Laila Bassam; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Andrew Roche) A massive manhunt was underway for the driver of a stolen truck that ploughed into a crowd outside a busy department store in central Stockholm Friday, killing four and injuring 15, Swedish police said. A national police chief, Stefan Hector, said the police's "working hypothesis is that this is a terror attack." One man was arrested in connection with the attack but the driver remained at large, police said. According to the Aftonbladet newspaper, the arrested man is a 39-year-old of Uzbek origin and a supporter of the Islamic State (IS) group. Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said he had strengthened the country's border controls. "Terrorists want us to be afraid, want us to change our behaviour, want us to not live our lives normally, but that is what we're going to do. So terrorists can never defeat Sweden, never," he said. If confirmed as a terror attack, it would be Sweden's first such attack with a deadly outcome. Pictures taken at the scene showed a large blue truck with a mangled undercarriage smashed into the Ahlens department store. Witnesses described scenes of terror and panic. One witness identified only as Dimitris told the Aftonbladet the truck came "out of nowhere." "I couldn't see if anyone was driving but it was out of control. I saw at least two people get run down. I ran as fast as I could away from there," he said. - 'Like a bomb' - Another shopper, 66-year-old Leander Nordling, was at Ahlens when he suddenly heard a loud bang. "It sounded like a bomb exploding and smoke starting pouring in through the main entrance," he told the Aftonbladet. He and fellow shoppers took refuge in a storage room inside the department store. "After that the building was evacuated ... There were a lot of guards who took care of us outside and they urged us to leave the scene immediately," Nordling said. Video footage taken from above showed scores of people streaming down the street in terror. A spokeswoman for beer company Spendrups told AFP that the truck involved "had been stolen during a delivery to a restaurant." Friday's attack was the latest in a string of similar assaults with vehicles in Europe, including in London, Berlin and the southern French city of Nice. - 'Attack on us all' - The attack occurred just before 1300 GMT at the corner of the store and Drottninggatan, the city's biggest pedestrian street, above ground from Stockholm's central subway station. Thick smoke billowed from the scene, while the area was blocked off by police and crowds gathered around the police cordon. Police vans circulating in the city using loudspeakers urged people to go straight home and avoid large crowds. The centre of the usually buzzing city was put on lockdown, with the central train station evacuated and other stores quickly emptied of shoppers. The Stockholm metro was also completely shut down for several hours before resuming in the early evening, with the attack taking place at T-Centralen station, through which all the city's lines pass. Cinemas, shopping malls and other public buildings were also evacuated. The area around the attack was cordoned off, but other streets in the city were packed for hours with pedestrians trying to find a way home. Another section of Drottninggatan was also the scene of Sweden's only other terror attack, in 2010, when a suicide bomber blew himself up, killing himself and slightly injuring several others. European politicians expressed solidarity, with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker saying that it was an "attack on us all." A spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said: "Our thoughts go out to the people in Stockholm, to the injured, their relatives, rescuers and police. "We stand together against terror." US State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Washington was ready to provide any help it could to investigate "this brutal and senseless attack". "Attacks like this are intended to sow the seeds of fear, but in fact they only strengthen our shared resolve to combat terrorism around the world," he added. - Trucks as weapons - It followed a string of similar attacks in Europe by people using vehicles as weapons. The deadliest came last year in France on the July 14 Bastille Day national holiday, when a man rammed a truck into a crowd in the Mediterranean resort of Nice, killing 86 people. Last month, Khalid Masood, a 52-year-old convert to Islam known to British security services, killed five people when he drove a car at high speed into pedestrians on London's Westminster Bridge before launching a frenzied knife attack on a policeman guarding the parliament building. And in December, a man hijacked a truck and slammed into shoppers at a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 people. In 2014, IS called for attacks on citizens of Western countries and gave instructions on how they could be carried out without military equipment, using rocks or knives, or by running people over in vehicles. This is the overview of hoaxes that appeared over the past week. Font size: A - | A + Comments disabled Amnesties are attempt for a coup The US and the third sector are preparing a state coup in Slovakia. They allegedly aim to overthrow the government of Robert Fico, create a government of experts controlled by President Andrej Kiska, and subsequently proceed with the planned sale of Slovakias drinking water reserves, mineral springs, and land to foreign investors. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement An article that claims all these things has been shared by almost a thousand people on Facebook. The hoax was originally published by the idemvolit.sk website. But it is so absurd that even the readers themselves expressed their doubts in the online discussion that it might be an April Fools prank. Read also: Read also: The Sme daily starts a hunt for hoaxes Read more The article is based on an alleged statement of opposition OLaNO MP Veronika Remisova that the aim of the abrogation of the Meciar amnesties is the fall of Ficos government. But such a statement cannot be found in any archives. The article only quotes a little-known blog that cites Remisovas criticism of Ficos government. The MP compared it with the government of Vladimir Meciar in a televised debate on RTVS, because she saw a parallel between the fact that Meciar and his government took the power to appoint the secret service director (originally the president had that power), and the fact that Ficos government is now taking the competence to appoint the head of the regulatory office URSO. It is unclear how the author of the article derived the plan to overthrow the current government from this statement. Particularly if the ruling coalition headed by Smer supports the scrapping of the amnesties. Further fake information in the article is that the opposition would not be able to put together a new government because Kotlebas LSNS would be in its way. The article cites leaked polls that allegedly show the support of LSNS at 25 percent. The only source that came up with such numbers were disputable charts that were circulating on the social networks, without source or method stated. According to trustworthy polls, the party never polled at more than half of that number. The rest of the article is only composed of conspiracies and unfounded conclusions with the main protagonists being the US, President Kiska, including the claim that one year ago he was considering converting to the Jewish faith. The author thus concludes that Kiska does not like being Slovak. Most of the alternative media found themselves in a curious situation over the amnesties. They defend the amnesties and see their scrapping as lawlessness, even though under any other circumstances they are always standing against the system. The Zem a Vek conspiracy magazine published an article that says the abrogation of the Meciar amnesties is only a test. It claims the EU wants to test the reaction of Slovaks to this fundamental legal step, to find out how to proceed with dismantling of the nation states. The author completely ignores the fact that the Meciar amnesties have been hanging over Slovakia since 1998, at which time the EU had 15 members and Slovakia could only dream about its membership. The article also refers to the false information that no country in the world has so far dared to scrap amnesties. But there are known cases from Peru and Argentina where courts allowed the cancellation of amnesties that the ruling power bestowed upon itself. The author also sees parallels between Meciars amnesties and the fall of the Polish government plane, and claims that the renewed investigation of the Smolensk tragedy is a similar test on the part of the EU. The problem with that claim is that it is the current Polish government that is pushing for the investigation, and it is not known to have very good relations with the EU. Conspiracy magazine complains about hoax hunting The fight against propaganda on conspiracy websites brings Slovakia back to the 1950s. This is a claim from a recent article of the known conspiracy magazine Zem a Vek, which addresses the recently planned strengthening of the computer criminality department of the Interior Ministry. There will be 12 new police officers who will follow disinformation campaigns, propaganda, and hoaxes in Slovakia. The magazine suggests it to be an anti-democratic measure that suppresses freedom of speech and practically takes Slovakia back to the 1950s. The author even expresses concerns that the department could be used for ideological, political, and geopolitical aims that are in contrast with the interests of Slovakia, and claims that it is aimed at limiting the citizens freedom to choose their geopolitical orientation. Read also: Read also: American military base in Slovakia and war in Europe are hoaxes Read more All the claims in the article are easily proven to be hoaxes, using accessible sources. 1. Keeping an eye on disinformation and conspiracy websites is anti-democratic - there are a number of studies that have proved how propaganda and hoaxes influence public opinion and decisions of citizens. Therefore, it is logical that if there are activities being pursued on the states territory that threaten the internal security of the state and its citizens, the state should take measures. The Interior Ministry, the secret service, and other sources claim that Slovakia is a target of propaganda and disinformation campaigns that undermine peoples trust in state and European institutions. Which means the ministrys measure strengthens democracy and freedom of speech when it helps identify conspiracy websites and media that spread hoaxes. 2. The department can be used for ideological, political, and even geopolitical aims. This is an unfounded and illogical claim again, as Slovakia is a member of NATO and EU, and the strategic documents like the countrys security strategy from 2005 confirm that. Conspiracy websites and media that spread hoaxes and pro-Russian propaganda label these institutions as criminal and fascist. These websites thus act in contrast with Slovakias interests, therefore, the measure is rightly directed against them. 3. The measure should suppress the freedom of citizens to choose their geopolitical orientation. In 2003, a referendum took place in Slovakia in which 92.46 percent of the voters who turned out (52.15 percent) voted in favour of Slovakias EU entry. Citizens thus freely chose the geopolitical orientation of their country to be pro-western, democratic, and liberal. 4. Neoliberal politicians and their correctly thinking journalists are behind everything. This is a typical conspiracy claim that all the alternative media work with, in an attempt to show that the traditional media cooperate with political elites and try to cover up the truth, while alternative media uncover the secret facts and conspiracies. Just think how often alternative media participated in uncovering actual scandals and corruption. They only write about Putin, Russia, NATO, Trump, chemtrails, anti-vax, NATO, fascists, neocons, and similar themes, but no corruption and embezzlement in the state. By Tomas Cizik, director of the Centre for European and North-Atlantic Affairs. Putins peace call reappears NATO expects Russia to give up its territories and the US want to start a war to get over their debt crisis and kickstart their arms industry, says a letter that has recently circulated the social networks again. It is allegedly an open letter authored by Russian President Vladimir Putin. In the text of the letter, the author addresses fellow citizens of Europe and warns them of the alleged non-democratic ways in Ukraine, the attitude of the EU towards Russia, and calls for the boycott of politicians who favour sanctions, and a boycott of Ukraines entry into NATO. Most recently, the hoax letter was published by the religious-conspiracy blog K svetlu (To the light). Their article, with the headline Call for peace! Europeans, do we really want World War III? has been circulating the internet for over two years now, and it has been proved to be a hoax numerous times. The letter appeared surfaced back in December 2014 on the Svobodne Noviny website. At that time, however, it was not signed with the name Vladimir Vladimirovic Putin. The website states as the source of the text the former SNS politician Sergej Chelemendik who died in May 2016. The open letter looks like his personal call, and the name of the Russian president was only added as a signature in its later versions. The hoax.sk website labelled the letter as untrustworthy in February 2015 and confirmed that the text does not come from the official websites of the Russian president and is spread almost exclusively in Slovak and Czech. The fake letter appears on social networks and on various conspiracy websites periodically, every year, despite the fact that the letter is in reaction to the events surrounding the conflict in Ukraine in 2014. The Slovak Spectator brings the selection of hoaxes that were published on the internet and shared by Slovak users on social networks in cooperation with the Sme daily, which runs the project aimed at spotting hoaxes and confronting them with facts. Font size: A - | A + Humans are now the closest they have ever been in getting to Mars. Hopefully, human missions to the red planet may start in 10-15 years, says astrobiologist Michaela Musilova, chair of the non-governmental Slovak Organisation for Space Activities (SOSA), who has recently returned from her second simulated mission to Mars, in which she served as a commander. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement The Slovak Spectator (TSS): You have recently returned from a simulated mission to Mars. What do you consider the most successful part? Michaela Musilova (MM): The main purpose of all of these missions is to help prepare people to colonise Mars in the future. We test technologies and research experiments that will help either to get humans to Mars or to live there. Then there is the psychological aspect: whether a crew of approximately six people can survive in the extreme conditions of these missions. As with a real mission to Mars, the crew has to survive the simulation with a limited amount of water, food or electricity and you can only communicate with people on Earth for a couple of hours a day. During our mission we had to perform about six different scientific and technological experiments, and luckily in the end they were all successful. This was actually my second simulated mission on Mars. In the first one I was the so-called greenhouse officer and I was also in charge of all the research we had onboard. This second time I was the commander of the entire mission. I also got to choose the crew, and it was very important for me to find people that were compatible together. I think I did a good job because we had to overcome several challenges. For example, the toilet didnt work from the very first day as we had snow and wind storms that caused a lot of problems. Despite all that we managed to work together very well, communicate effectively and all the problems got resolved, even crisis situations like when we lost two-thirds of our water supply. Furthermore, it was important for me to give Slovak researchers access to this mission. Thus, I brought two research projects from Slovakia with me. Also, as I wanted to get Slovak students involved too, I organised a competition with a Slovak electricity company Mission to Mars. Students from secondary schools were able to invent an experiment relevant to Mars and I took the winning project with me on the mission: growing spinach in the simulated Martian conditions. Students from a school in Detva were giving me instructions on how to do the experiment during the mission. It worked very well and our last supper on Mars included fresh spinach. TSS: What were the criteria for choosing the project? Will you continue testing it for further use? MM: The criteria for selection were first of all whether its scientifically robust; whether the students made sure all the procedures were thought through and whether they took into account all the limitations of the mission. It also had to be a very lightweight, small, compact experiment, not very expensive and had to fulfil various biological and technological criteria. The students needed to demonstrate that they did enough background research. The originality of the project was also important. There are several possibilities for what can be done with this experiment in the future. Since it was successful, I think the Mars Society is going to use a similar system in the future. Moreover, we are actually planning to continue it partially here in Slovakia. SOSA is planning on building a mini-greenhouse at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology at the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava (STU), where it is based, and continue the project. Conducting research on Slovak Misia Mars experiment at MDRS (Photo: Niamh Shaw) (Source: Niamh Shaw) TSS: How do you assess the interest of students? What other experiments did you find interesting? MM: There was a lot of interest. The best part for me was that the experiments came from all over Slovakia, even very small towns or cities. Ironically, there were no projects from Bratislava. The students, for example, built a pretty big Lego rover which was meant to sample the Martian soil. To collect a few samples, but also to put some different biochemical experiments into it. It was very well-designed in terms of the engineering, but from the scientific point of view they lost points because they didnt think through the chemical sampling very well and they didnt do their literature research well enough. Another experiment was focused on monitoring dust storms on Mars. It just lost its point because it wasnt fully applicable at the research station where our simulated mission took place. TSS: What do you think persuaded the Mars Society to ask you to command the simulated mission to Mars? MM: One thing I think contributed to this was my performance in the previous mission of the first British crew to the Mars Desert Research Station. At the time, I was doing my PhD in Bristol. I had also worked with NASA, the European Space Agency and the UK Space Agency, had relevant research experiences, and I had also participated in extreme expeditions to places like Greenland or Japan. This is why I was given the role of being in charge of the research on Mars. The selection of the crew before the mission was focused more on the individual psychological profiles, not the compatibility of the crew together. That later led to many problems as there was one person who had problems with her own research and started to take her frustrations out on another team member. The space within the station is very constrained (with only eight metres in diameter), and there was no way to escape it. This caused that the person to go a little bit crazy and she actually wanted to escape the station. I was the main person that was calming her down, trying to solve the situation and who communicated with all the parties involved. Since we were monitored at all times, I think the managers of the mission noticed that I had the right reaction to the situation and the necessary communication skills. I have also remained in contact with the Mars Society for the last three years and we have proposed several projects together. TSS: How did you choose the members of your crew? MM: I chose people that I had seen work together before or I had some working with them. I knew how they react to certain situations, how responsible they are in terms of doing research. I had to weigh out many criteria, but the compatibility was one of the main things. TSS: Your mission was accompanied by several problems, as you mentioned before. How important is to manage stress in such situations? MM: Extremely important. The main thing is to react well to the stress. To first take a deep breath, look at the whole situation, make an assessment of what you can do, how you can solve it and then start reacting rather than to start to panic instantly. TSS: How do you maintain good mental condition? MM: Its lifetime of training. My number one thing is weighing out priorities in life or the situation, and just realising that I dont need to panic. My first instinct is to stop, take a deep breath and assess the situation. And then I start dealing with it. At the same time, I try to keep myself calm. You always have to find something positive. No matter how unpleasant or stressful the situation is, think about the good things in life. TSS: What were the main differences between this mission and the one in 2014? MM: The first difference was the number of types of scientific experiments we brought with us, which also changed the focus of the mission. Interestingly, both had experiments that involved doing some work outside and inside the Martian station. During both missions I had to take samples quite far away from the station, so we had to take all the rovers we had. In terms of the work inside, both had experiments in the greenhouse and the biochemical labs. As for the team, in the first mission we were seven. We were originally meant to be six, but we had an additional crew member who joined us later: a cameraman. He was meant to be filming us from the outside, but then they decided to have someone on the inside filming us. Ironically, there were also meant to be six of us on the second mission, but at the last minute one member couldnt make it. The number of people did make quite a difference because there was much more personal space per crew member during the second mission. There were also cameras installed everywhere. And the crew interaction was very different. The psychological aspect was more difficult this time, even though we worked better as a crew. We faced more challenges. On the first day, for example, the toilet broke. That was done on purpose to challenge us and it made us think of crazy solutions. We had several tests like this. Musilova on "Mars" (Photo: Niamh Shaw) (Source: Niamh Shaw) TSS: When did your fascination with Mars begin? MM: My fascination with space started when I was eight years old. It was the reason I became an astrobiologist, with a focus on finding whether we are alone and whether the life can manage to form elsewhere in the universe, or at least within our solar system. When I was working at NASA JPL, we were focusing on Mars in particular and we were actually preparing the rover Curiosity which was meant to be sent to Mars at the time. During my research there I realised that there is actually a possibility for life to exist on Mars today and even for humans to get there in the near future. TSS: Doesnt it sound like science fiction that soon there may be missions to Mars and colonisation? MM: For someone from the space sector, it isnt science fiction. I teach at the International Space University, I work closely with various space companies and my organisation SOSA here in Slovakia actually communicates with many universities in Slovakia and elsewhere. I have a pretty good overview of what the situation is like. Actually, these days were closer than ever to getting humans to Mars because luckily its not just in the hands of space agencies anymore. Private companies are raising money and building technologies to get humans to Mars, which could get us there even in the next decade or 15 years. My problem as an astrobiologist is that I face a dilemma. On one hand, I want to find out if theres life on Mars or if it existed there in the past. Even finding at least some fossils there would change our knowledge so far about how easy it is for life to form on another planet within the same star system. On the other hand, getting humans to Mars means were likely to contaminate the planet with our germs and other microbes from Earth. Either humans will try to do astrobiology research on Mars themselves, or Im afraid that our search for life there is limited to the next few years. If all goes well, humans will get to Mars by the 2030s. Conducting astrobiology research at MDRS (Photo: Niamh Shaw) (Source: Niamh Shaw) TSS: Isnt there a risk that private companies will turn it into a business? MM: There are some companies like Mars One, which for years has been talking about sending humans on a one-way mission to Mars. Its more of a commercial stunt, as they want to raise funds by making something like a Big Brother show. Their selection process is ridiculous as they are not following the strict selection process needed for astronauts. However, companies like SpaceX are very successful in building rockets. They are developing technologies relevant to Mars. Also, theyre not planning on doing everything alone. As long as they will unite with other companies and space agencies that are good in the other segments, it will probably accelerate getting humans to Mars. Currently an individual country just cannot afford to fund a mission like that. TSS: You studied at foreign universities because there were not many opportunities in Slovakia. Has the situation changed since then? MM: Actually, one of my goals is to change it. Astronomy and astrophysics research has existed in Slovakia for many years. There have been several researchers in Kosice involved in space missions, like Rosseta. We do have a heritage of some space research and technology, but its quite limited and its very difficult to study it here. Recently, the Faculty of Aeronautics of the Technical University in Kosice mentioned theyve opened up courses in space technologies. But thats it. Im trying to bring the astrobiology research to Slovakia. I actually have students in Slovakia engaged in space-related activities in incubators recently opened at STU. Hopefully, in the near future things will change and people wont have to leave. Bratislava's department of the foreigners' police will be out of service on April 11. Font size: A - | A + Offices of the department of the foreigners' police for Bratislava, at Hrobakova 42 and Hrobakova 44, will not be serving clients on Tuesday, April 11, between 8:00 and 13:30, due to electricity outage, the TASR newswire reported. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement "We recommend clients to postpone their visit to another day," the Police Corps spokesperson Denisa Balogova said as quoted by TASR. The Holocaust film has become a genre unto itself, and sadly, there are more than enough stories from that era to continue the trend. Against ever-shifting, polarized political landscapes, the lessons gleaned from the horrors of this very recent past are never not relevant. But too often, many of these biopics fall prey to well-trod norms and conventions. In Niki Caros The Zookeepers Wife, the backdrop of a Warsaw zoo offers a new angle, and features a show-stopping performance from Jessica Chastain as the real life Antonina Zabinski, but it otherwise follows a familiar path. Caro, working from script by Angela Workman adapted from Diane Ackermans book, smartly places the focus on Antonina. The rest of the plot may go a bit muddy, but when were trained on our protagonist, its all crystal clear. In an opening sequence, we witness her unique bond with the animals of the zoo, the power she holds over them with her simple approach of open-hearted love and empathy for all. With tenderness and bravery, she calms an elephant and rescues its baby, and those same qualities make her a hero for humans in the face of unspeakable evil. The story is one we know, of ordinary people choosing to do extraordinary things to preserve a shred of humanity in times of war and human destruction. Antonina and her husband, Jan (Johan Heldenbergh), decide to harbor Jews from the Warsaw ghetto in the basement of their home while their zoo is occupied by Nazi forces. They hide these guests in plain sight with a system of signals, transporting them from Jans garbage collecting truck to underground tunnels. Caro never quite achieves the razors edge suspense that such a scenario engenders, as their ruse is only one sneeze, one bad lie, one snitch away from discovery. That danger is never fully rendered on screen in the way that it could be. The truly powerful moments come from Chastains soul-baring performance as a gentle woman who loves enormously, cares diligently, and always does the hard thing when the situation calls for it. She might be a bit too competent for the purposes of cinematic drama. The Zookeepers Wife delivers a singularly female experience of this war. The male characters are, of course, important, and Heldenbergh and Chastain express a strong chemistry as a couple that is both physically passionate as well as intellectually and ethically aligned. But the perspective is distinctly feminine, and Antonina is unquestionably the hero of the story. The threat of sexual violence simmers throughout, underneath every interaction between Antonina and Lutz Heck (Daniel Bruhl), an overbearing and cruel Berlin zoologist turned military man, who imposes on their property in the form of supervision over an oxen breeding program hes installed. Its a stark reality that Antonina faces in her darkest times, as well as for Urszula, played by the formidable young Israeli actress Shira Haas, a girl who has experienced the worst crimes of the Nazi soldiers in the Warsaw ghetto. Caro explores this theme unflinchingly but doesnt exploit the material for salaciousness. The films flaws in pacing and suspense are easily overlooked in the shadow of Chastains moving performance, as well as the performances of those around her. Caro unspools an evergreen tale about the clarifying power of empathy to diffuse fear and hatred. Mobile Amazon to Refund $70 Million for In-App Purchases Made by Kids Amazon Inc. will refund millions of unauthorized in-app purchases made by kids on mobile devices. According an announcement from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) earlier this week, more than $70 million in in-app purchases made between November 2011 and May 2016 may be eligible for refund. The news comes after the online retail powerhouse dropped its appeal of last years ruling by a federal judge that sided with the FTCs lawsuit against Amazon. In April 2016, Judge John Coughenour found that Amazon had billed consumers for unauthorized in-app charges incurred by children using Amazon mobile apps. The court ruled that Amazon failed to get parents consent for these charges, according to the FTC statement. The same ruling also denied the FTCs request for an injunction to prevent Amazon from similar conduct in the future. The FTC appealed the denial of the injunction, but this week ended the appeal. The commissions suit against Amazon followed similar cases against Apple Inc. and Google Inc. Both companies settled before the cases went to course and agreed to refund unauthorized in-app charged incurred by children. As for Amazon, the decision by the FTC and Amazon to end their litigation will allow the refund process to begin shortly, according to the FTC statement. Details on the refund programs, which Amazon will operate, will be announced shortly. This case demonstrates what should be a bedrock principle for all companies you must get customers consent before you charge them, said Thomas B. Pahl, acting director of the FTCs Bureau of Consumer Protection. Consumers affected by Amazons practices can now be compensated for charges they didnt expect or authorize. Financial Aid Nitro Introduces Student Loan Affordability Calculator Image Credit: Nitro. While FAFSAs IRS Data Retrieval Tool used by millions of students each year to apply for federal financial aid is temporarily out of commission, another online tool could be of use for students and parents planning their finances for college. A no-cost calculator from Nitro taps into actual college cost data to inform students of their ability to repay student loans. The NitroScore online calculator ranks college and major choices based on a students predicted ability to repay student loans after graduation. Families can compare schools, financial aid offers and majors to find an affordable option. And its straightforward: The lower the NitroScore, the more challenging it will be to pay back those student loans. For example: An in-state student who receives a $5,000 scholarship from the West Virginia University will have a NitroScore of 578 for accounting and 691 for computer science. So, if they choose accounting, 21 percent of their post-grad income will be used to pay back debt, compared to 14 percent for computer science. According to a NitroScore statement, the tool is fueled by advanced analytics, proprietary data and individual consumer preferences, as well as information from the National Center for Education Statistics and PayScale, an online salary, benefits and compensation company. Users can look at college costs for 4,138 higher education institutions in the United States, including data on tuition, room and board, supplies and other college expenses. They can also view salary data based on a PayScale survey of 1.4 million college graduates comprising 336 majors at four-year colleges and 140 two-year college majors. VR and AR Lifeliqe Piloting Mixed Reality on Microsoft HoloLens for Grade 6-12 Classrooms A student at Renton Prep Christian School in Washington state tries out the Lifeliqe mixed reality app on HoloLens. Using interactive 3D models and lesson plans from its app, Lifeliqe (pronounced life like) is now delivering educational content on two major immersive hardware platforms (Microsoft HoloLens and HTC Vive) as well as software platforms (Windows and iOS). Students and teachers at Renton Prep Christian School in Washington state and Castro Valley Unified College in California participated in the pilot and were the first ever to try out Lifeliqes educational content on HoloLens during a science lesson (see video). Weve been using virtual reality as part of education at school for several months, said Michelle Zimmerman, director of innovative teaching and learning sciences at Renton Prep, in a statement. It seems that students have preference for mixed reality for learning, but the reason for it will be our next round of investigation. Richard Schneck, career specialist at Castro Valley Unified College, said in a statement: When using Lifeliqe's learning experiences students were excited to dive into the blood vessel because they could visualize it, which should help their memory retention. The students used Lifeliqe on HoloLens in lessons on the circulatory system and electronegativity. I thought it was really realistic and it was really fun to experience, said Emmy, an eighth grade student from Renton Prep. More students and teachers will be able to experience Lifeliqe on HoloLens as the pilots will be conducted at number of schools in coming weeks, the company said in a news release. Mixed reality offers [a] completely unique means to deliver educational content and we are excited to take another step forward in providing immersive learning experiences, said Ondrej Homola, CEO of Lifeliqe, in a statement. The excitement we witnessed during the pilot shows us the great potential mixed reality has in sparking lightbulb moments. Microsoft is the second major tech company to start cooperating with Lifeliqe on content development, Homola said. In 2016, Lifeliqe was chosen by HTC Vive as a strategic partner for education. To learn more about Lifeliqe and its educational projects, visit the companys website. Lifeliqe, a San Francisco-based visual learning platform incorporating virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), mixed reality and interactive 3D, is piloting mixed reality educational scenarios for Microsoft HoloLens in grade 6-12 classrooms. School Funding Report: Funding More Equitable in CA K12 But Gaps Persist School district funding in California is more equitable but access gaps persist, according to a new research study published by The Education TrustWest. Through comprehensive data analysis, the report finds that Californias Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) which gives school districts more autonomy to decide which programs and services to spend state funding on has reversed inequitable revenue gaps that used to exist between the highest and lowest poverty school districts. The revenue gap was at its widest point right before LCFF, passed in 2013, with the highest poverty districts receiving $829 less per student in 2012-2013. The analysis found that funding three years into LCFF was more equitable, with the highest poverty districts receiving an average of $334 more per student in 2015-16. While this research finds that funding has become more equitable, it did not find evidence that the funding has yet translated into more equitable opportunities for students in low-income schools. The highest poverty schools still have less access to crucial school support staff, as well as a rigorous and broad curriculum. In some cases, these gaps have widened, the report said. For example, low-income students have significantly less access to counselors and librarians and courses like calculus, physics, computer science and music. The research could not fully assess how equitable spending is at the specific school site level, since budget information is not reported in a standardized or centralized way. While we fully support the intent of the law, LCFFs success hinges on how we implement the formula and how districts think about using the whole budget to support equity, said Ryan J. Smith, executive director of The Education TrustWest, in a statement. The law revolutionized how we fund districts; now its time that we focus on closing opportunity gaps for low-income students and students of color. Despite policy and economic constraints, some districts are using the full budget and leveraging personnel to support equity, the study found. These districts are shifting dollars and staff to higher need schools, and addressing institutional barriers to opportunities. The report, titled The Steep Road to Resource Equity in California Education: The Local Control Funding Formula After Three Years, concludes with recommendations for policymakers and district leaders to reaffirm Californias commitment to LCFF, improve funding transparency and use LCFF to expand equitable opportunities in school districts. To see the full report, visit this Education TrustWest site. The Education TrustWest is the Oakland, CA-based office of the national nonprofit organization, based in Washington, D.C. For more information, visit the organizations website. After reading so many glowing reports on Hanoi we were looking forward to hitting the city after an almost 2000 miles journey from the chaos of Saigon on our bikes. Finally completing our original challenge of riding through Vietnam from one major city to the other it felt like a strange mixture of emotions rolling into Hanoi, sadness, excitement, a huge sense of achievement. However soon our road worn minds and bodies began to become annoyed with the city, empty due to tet and yet full of aggressive locals with no patience or the warmth we had seen in the rest of the country. It was a challenge just to find a safe place for our bikes, something new to us! We hated it if we are being truthful and couldnt wait to head up north to Sapa and back into the countryside. However on our return, and finishing point of our biking journey we discovered a totally different city, one which now felt like home! Heres our top Hanoi attractions! Our first visit: A jaded end to our amazing adventure through Vietnam We were in two minds how to feel as we glided through the last few km towards the capital city. We were now seasoned on the bikes, weaving through the traffic and beeping with Vietnamese style abundance. We felt comfortable riding here, it almost felt like a home we loved to hate and hated to love all at the same time. Vietnam had been a tough journey all round, the long days on the bikes really take it out of you. Early mornings and 14hrs riding are some of the most memorable, exhilarating and insane experiences weve ever had, and yet they also grind you down too! Feeling like Hanoi wasnt all it was cracked up to be! We had read so many posts about Hanoi, heard many other travellers along the way wax lyrical about the coffee culture, the wonderful architecture, the atmosphere and the amazing things to do. We rocked up and felt jaded, everything was closed apart from a few overpriced cafes, people were aggressive and lacked the patience and helpfulness we had found in the more rural parts of the country and our fellow backpackers, new to the challenges of this land spoke about cruising it in two weeks. We rolled our eyes with a mixture of tired arrogance as we left the building to barter for almost an hour for a place to park the bikes for two nights. That was enough, my rumbling stomach, tired eyes and frankly bored brain couldnt take any more. Now I am usually a city person, I loved Saigon, but really, after the wilds of rural Vietnam, the endless villages and twisting jungle roads, I couldnt hack this place and longed for the road once more. I began to wonder what people saw in this place, it was drab, quiet and over priced as well as being full of pretentious bastards who appear to have been trapped here for months under the pretence of travelling through Asia! But I guess if it was your first stop in Vietnam it did have much of that stereotypical chaotic charm and triangular hat wearing locals we all fall in love with over here! Heading up to Sapa and falling back in love with Vietnam After a few days I was desperately craving the unforgiving seat of my motorbike, the feeling of leaning into curve after curve and cruising through the ever changing Vietnamese countryside drew me back in. We decided to make a break for it and set off on the two day ride up the Sapa, a mountainous region in the very north of Vietnam famed for its rugged rice terraced and hill tribe villages, just what the doctor ordered. Even better was our stop in at the tiny city of Yen Bai and an even more remote little village to stop in a homestay for the last night of Tet. Finally we were back in authentic Vietnam, sleeping in a bamboo stilt house and drinking rice wine with local villagers whilst toasting the new year. I was back in love with this country that kept turning from hot to cold from day to day (literally and emotionally). What I realise from seeing how many people write about their unrelenting love for Vietnam is how different their experience must have been. I can see that if you took buses from Saigon to Dalat, then over to Hoi An and then up to Hanoi it looked like a totally different place. In truth it was the grimy middle bits most dont visit that we both loved and hated in equal measure. The bikes carrying dogs to their grim deaths in rusty metal cages, having to survive on cakes and crisps from a corner shop because nowhere offers anything remotely vegetarian or even understands the concept, being covered from head to toe in dust after 18hours of riding only to retire to the only hotel in the town and your damp bug infested room! Then again this was the real Vietnam, the places where we got people waving and shouting hello, kids running alongside the bike, ate with families in their little houses and saw some of the most beautiful, unspoilt and isolated landscape in the region. Book your transport across Vietnam and Asia here: Powered by 12Go Asia system Coming back home and falling in love Vietnam is to us not a love story in the traditional sense, it didnt grab us with its chaotic arms and take us under its spell instantly as many experience or we have with other places. Vietnam after 7 weeks began to feel like home, like a special place to us that we love and hate in the same way you feel about your hometown. At times we wanted to escape its oppressive ways, and then we knew we had to stay, stick it out and in doing so were constantly rewarded by diverse and ever changing sights and experiences. Heading back to Hanoi a second time everything felt so familiar, the streets we had trodden before and we knew the layout of the city. We stayed again in the backpacker quarter of the city and ended up running into at least 5 or 6 people we had met before on our travels. After having seen all the sights on our previous visit this time we mostly hung out, drank 18p Bia Hoi, snacked on Bahn Mi, met new people, chatted about travelling and worked on the blog. It was comfortable, friendly and familiarjust like home. By this point we had become immune to all the strangeness that Vietnam can throw at you, and honestly Hanoi felt remotely sane and normal compared to the rest of the country. Now we loved it! What we loved: Hanoi attractions Street food and beer! The street food in Asia is universally regarded as the best and cheapest in the world, but by the time you hit Vietnam you might just have grown old of noodles and be craving something a little more homely. Never fear, thanks to the French influence on Vietnam they have a taste for baguettes and cheese alongside meat if you so desire. A delicious toasted Bahn Mi will set you back around 15,000 Dong, around 0.50! of course, if pho or noodles take your fancy, or even BBQing your own food over a lantern, then the options are a plenty! Not the first thing you might think of when you consider Hanoi attractions but well worth the time and effort to seek out! The guy next door to See you at lilys does the best in the city! Then there is the beer, or should I say Bia! Head out around the streets of the old quarter at night and you will be sure to find some old woman laughing her head off surrounded by an overcrowded pavement full of adults sat on childrens chairs! This is Bia Hoi, which means fresh beer. Locally brewed and served straight from the keg for only 5,000 Dong (around 0.18) a glass! Its a right laugh! This unorthodox inclusion of Hanoi attractions can be found in its best across from Vietnam backpackers (worst hostel in the world!) Roaming the old quarter The most beautiful and interesting area of Hanoi has to be the old French Quarter, crumbling colonial architecture mixed with the grime and chaos of Vietnam make this a unique area and host to many of the top Hanoi attractions. Side streets are alive with locals whose houses pour out onto the street, there are bars, street food carts, fruit sellers in their triangular hats and a mesmerising array of pastel shaded and mould covered building tangled up within the web of power lines. It really needs to be seen to be believed. Wander further though and you will see the change in the buildings, from tiny apartment blocks and warren like back streets to open boulevards and grand old residences. You can see where the rich French folks once lived and where the humble locals ended up! Seeing our old pal Ho Chi Minh From reading our blog you might know we love all things communism, after visiting Lenin in Moscow and Mao in Beijing it only seemed right that we call by and say Hi to Ho! After a shorter queue than expected found ourselves ready to enter his iconic mausoleum. Wearing shorts and flip flops the solemn occasion was surprisingly easy to do and of course, as expected totally surreal and strange on every level possible. The building itself stands out a mile in Hanoi and is of typical brutal communist style! Just how we like it! The whole thing is remarkably like visiting Lenin, even down to the coffin Ho Chi Minh is in! What might seem like a strange thing to be included on the list of Hanoi attractions it really is a rite of passage for any commie! Chilling out at the Hoan Kiem Lake Hanoi can be a crazy place for sure, even by Vietnamese standards. But the city is built around a stunning lake that allows even the most stressed out visitor or local to find a slice of serenity! The lake is pretty big too, head to the side closest to the main shopping area and you will find it a buzzing hub of activity, especially on the weekends. Take a longer walk and visit the pagodas and temples for something a little more relaxing and peaceful, its also a great area to shop for the perfect hanoi souvenirs. The Ex-Pat community and backpacker hub Hanoi seems to attract backpackers in spades, many of them seem to also end up staying. Hanoi is just one of those addictive places that draws you in after a while. Youre never quite sure why a you are with places like Pai or Chiang Mai, but here there is something that just grabs you. There is a unique atmosphere in Hanoi created by the gathering of people from all over the world, from all age ranges and backgrounds. A little community within a huge one where there always seemed to be an atmosphere of adventure and possibilities! Hoa Lo Prison Wherever you go in Vietnam you are reminded of the horrors if its past, whether that be the fight for independence and the remnants of colonial architecture or bomb craters and tunnels used in the fight against America. All over the country different stories of these eras are told as the different regions fought their own different wars. Up in Hanoi the story develops once again. Initially built to house those intent on a revolution by the French the prison held some of the most legendary communist figures in Vietnamese history. Moving on from then it became a holding area for the captured American prisoners of war, despite Hanoi never being involved in fighting on the ground it was targeted by a campaign of bombing from the air. This was also were John McCain was famously held after being captured. Taking trips outside of the city Another reason to love Hanoi is its proximity to other great areas within Vietnam to visit. Even if you only managed to see the northern regions of this vast country you would be treated to some varied landscapes and cultures. Ninh Binh to the south allows you to visit some amazing mountains surrounded by rice paddies. Ha Long Bay across toward the coast is then legendary karst region flooded by the sea. Here you can kayak through caves, meet monkeys, swim in the sea and cruise through the bay. Looking for some more outdoor adventure. Head up north to the wonderful region of Sapa, our favourite area of Vietnam, to see the wild landscape tamed by the hill tribes. Rice terraces perch on impossible mountainsides and the HMong people wander the towns and villages in their traditional dress, truly magical. Book your transport across Vietnam and Asia here: Powered by 12Go Asia system Book your accommodation here Hey, youve got your Travel Insurance sorted havent you? Travelling and especially backpacking is a wild adventure, but make sure you are covered just incase something goes wrong, which if youre living it up to the fullest its always a possibility! Check travel insurance prices with World Nomads here! Have you been to Hanoi, did you enjoy it? See more from this country: See more from our backpacking adventures: Reuters While inflation in western Europe is largely expected to be tamed within a year, there is a growing sense that in central Europe runaway prices will be around for much longer. Central and eastern Europe have for months been at the forefront of the inflation battle, ahead of the curve both in terms of the acceleration of price pressures and the sometimes uneven efforts of its central banks to curb them. Hungarian bread and cheese prices rose by around 70% year-on-year in September while sugar prices in Poland have jumped 50% with some shops running low in the summer on hoarding in anticipation of more price rises. Performing the world premiere of a sonata is always special, but to present one more than 70 years old by an Academy Award-winning film composer, well, thats something else entirely. Just ask Clark Potter. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln viola professor and Mark Clinton, a UNL piano professor, will give what is believed to be the inaugural performance of Ernest Golds unpublished Sonata for Viola and Piano during a recital Wednesday at Kimball Recital Hall. Gold (1921-1999), who completed the sonata in May 1946, won the Oscar in 1960 for best score for Exodus, Otto Premingers epic film about the formation of the state of Israel. Gold also scored such films as "The Defiant Ones" (1958), "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" (1963) and "Fun With Dick and Jane" (1977). To work on a piece with absolutely no recording of it has been fun for Mark and me, Potter said. Were constructing it as best we know how to and with the greatest effect. To set off the piece, Potter also will perform works by three other celebrated film composers and show clips from their films as well as a Gold film clip. They include three-time Oscar winner Miklos Rozsa (Introduction and Allegro, Op. 44, for solo viola; Ben Hur film clip), nine-time Oscar winner Alfred Newman (Miriams Song of the Resurrection; The Robe film clip) and Newmans daughter Maria Newman (Dance for Deliverance for Viola Alone; silent film Tender Hearts). Maria Newman is Potters friend and recommended Rozsa and her father for Potters recital. She was a huge help in making this happen, he said. The 17-minute Gold piece is the impetus for the recital, and the story behind Potter getting his hands on it is a tale in itself. Musicologist and music publisher Bruce Gbur of Manhattan, Kansas, called Potter in October to gauge his interest in premiering the recently discovered Gold sonata. The two first met in 2007 in Hastings when Potter had performed there. I didnt think but more than a minute, and it may not have been that long, Potter said. Of course I wanted to do it. I was honored. Gbur, who runs Prairie Dawg Press and Mountain Lion Music in Manhattan, had been hot on the trail of the sonata for seven to eight years since finding a reference to it at the Library of Congress while looking into other Gold works. He searched the internet and contacted Brigham Young University, where some of Golds works have been archived, but came up empty. Then, 18 months ago, he did another internet search and discovered it was at the San Francisco Conservatory. It had been part of late violist Milton Thomas collection, which the conservatory had acquired. Thomas, it appears, never had performed or recorded it. I was on a merry chase for several years until San Francisco updated its electronic holdings, said Gbur, who will attend and speak about the piece at Potters recital. Gbur contacted Golds family, whom he had worked with before on other Gold pieces, to secure permission to publish the sonata, which will happen not long after Potter and Clintons premiere performance. (Daughters) Martha and Melanie are excited the viola sonata finally will get performed, especially since its been languishing a little over 70 years now, Gbur said. As for the sonata, Potter said it bears little resemblance to Golds well-known main theme from Exodus. This piece doesnt sound like that, but it has its moments of beauty, he said. Its clearly written from viola and piano performance standpoint, with changing meters and unusual melodies. After two chaotic months as president, Donald Trump is widely credited with rewriting the political rule book. We are witnessing Trumps new era of post-fact politics, where distraction and obfuscation are central, and critical stories are dismissed as fake news. Thousands of column inches have analysed the new president. The Guardian calls him a master of distraction. Rolling Stone argues he has stoked chaos by creating hurricanes of misdirection. But while his leadership style has been criticised for being chaotic and made up on the hoof, we have actually seen it all before. It comes straight from the tobacco industrys cynical playbook. Lets go back to mid-December 1953, to the New York Plaza hotel. Here took place a meeting between the presidents of four of the largest tobacco companies in the US and John Hill, founder of public relations (PR) company, Hill and Knowlton (H&K). The tobacco industry was in crisis. Three years earlier in the UK, two esteemed epidemiologists, Richard Doll and Austin Bradford Hill, had published a paper on a causal link between smoking and cancer. And now, Readers Digest, then the worlds most read publication, ran an article entitled Cancer by the carton, taking the scientific findings mainstream. How were these companies going to stop smokers from giving up in droves? The answer: the most creative and well-resourced public relations campaign ever seen. The PR strategy devised at the Plaza in 1953 was all about a two-pronged public relations campaign in order to get the industry out of a hole and to stop public panic. One memo outlined: There is only one problem confidence, and how to establish it; public assurance, and how to create it. By January 1954, the industry had published A Frank Statement in 448 media publications across the US, reaching some 43m people. The statement cast doubt on the science linking smoking with ill health and pledged to smokers that it would create the now defunct Tobacco Industry Research Committee, hiring the best scientists to get to the truth. What it did not say is that the committee would support almost without exception, projects which are not related directly to smoking and lung cancer. Obfuscation and diversion were key to the strategy, as were alternative facts. Story continues Cloak of smoke The ensuing campaign to deny any health impact from smoking would last for decades and be replicated by the fossil fuel companies and some in the food and drink industry. Despite heavy criticism, these methods are still in play today from politicians speaking about climate change to Trump and Brexit. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, the tobacco industry, guided by the PR gurus at H&K, was learning to divert attention all the time. In 1968, an executive from H&K reiterated the best media angles for the industry magazine, Tobacco and Health Research: The most important type of story is that which casts doubt in the cause and effect theory of disease and smoking. Eye-grabbing headlines should strongly call out the point Controversy! Contradiction! Other Factors! Unknowns! The following year, one now well-quoted internal memo from Brown and Williamson, a subsidiary of British American Tobacco (BAT), outlined how: Doubt is our product since it is the best way of competing with the body of fact that exists in the mind of the public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy. The industry kept the controversy alive by sowing doubt. There was no substantial evidence, no clinical evidence. The debate was unresolved and still open as nothing had been statistically proven or scientifically established. There was no scientific proof. It was clinical and cynical. A demand for scientific proof is always a formula for inaction and delay and usually the first reaction of the guilty, conceded the head of research at BAT in 1976. Another way was to seek alternative facts. In 1970, Helmut Wakeham, head of research and development of Philip Morris, wrote: Lets face it. We are interested in evidence which we believe denies the allegations that cigarette smoking causes disease. Cue: Trump Nine years later, in 1979, Trump purchased an 11-story property which would become Trump Tower, just three minutes walk from the New York Plaza. By now, the industry was also denying the evidence of the health harms of secondhand smoke. Once again, the industry set up organisations to conduct research and divert attention away from the truth. To further confuse the debate, it set up front groups who acted on its behalf and smokers rights organisations to promote industry arguments. Trump Tower was finished in 1984, the year that forms the title of George Orwells famous novel. This novel depicted a dystopian future of censorship, Big Brother and manipulated truth. The public began to understand the true level of the tobacco industrys own manipulated truth via the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement, which forced previously private internal documents to be made public. The legal ruling forced the closure of the Tobacco Industry Research Committee, which was described as an example of a sophisticated public relations vehicle based on the premise of conducting independent scientific research to deny the harms of smoking and reassure the public. In 2004, the year that Trump and his tower gained notoriety in the popular television series The Apprentice, research by the UK epidemiologist Sir Richard Doll estimated during the industrys 50-year denial campaign, some 6m people had been killed by tobacco in the UK alone. Since its internal workings were exposed in the 1990s, the tobacco industry has tried to reposition itself as responsible, as the corporate and political playbook evolves. But whereas once the tobacco industry courted scientists, both the Brexiteers and Trump have been quick to attack experts. People in this country have had enough of experts, said Michael Gove at the height of the Brexit campaign. Trump and his advisers seem to have taken the playbook to a new level. After a row over the size of his inauguration crowd, Trumps advisor Kellyanne Conway was widely criticised for using the term alternative facts. Her use of the term has spawned its own Wikipedia page, which notes the phrase was extensively described as Orwellian. By January 26, 2017, sales of the book Nineteen Eighty-Four had increased by 9,500%, which The New York Times and others attributed to Conways use of the phrase. However, the industry got there first. Brown and Williamson even developed a cigarette brand called Fact, which allowed it to twist the language of smoking and health, and an advertising agency developed current fact and alternative fact concepts. Is Fact a safer cigarette? asked one document from the 1970s. Critics of smoking claim that cigarettes are dangerous. We dont agree Thats not a claim. Thats a Fact. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. The Conversation At the University of Bath, Andrew Rowell receives funding from ODA. He is also a director of Public Interest Investigations Karen Evans-Reeves receives funding from Cancer Research UK and is a member of the UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies. France 24 An India-based computer hacking gang targeted critics of the Qatar World Cup, an investigation by British journalists said on Sunday, as the Qatari government furiously denied it had played any part in commissioning the eavesdropping. A database leaked to Britain's Sunday Times and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism revealed the hacking of a dozen lawyers, journalists and famous people from 2019 "commissioned by one particular client", the newspaper and the bureau said in a statement."This i By Michele Kambas NICOSIA (Reuters) - Cyprus's president said on Friday he would not be willing to put any peace deal to a popular vote unless he was convinced a blueprint to reunite estranged Greek and Turkish Cypriots would work. In an interview with Reuters, President Nicos Anastasiades also said a lasting deal would be in the interests of Turkey, which has had troops stationed on the northern third of the island since a war in 1974. Anastasiades and Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci will resume peace talks on April 11 after a two-month interruption. United Nations mediators hope that will lead to a deal which would then be put to referendum. "If I am not satisfied that what we are trying to achieve meets our expectations, and (those of) both communities, then I would not be willing to put it before the people," said Anastasiades, whose five-year term ends next February. He has not said if he will stand again. "It must be a balanced deal, which doesn't create the feeling of ... one side winning over the other." Cyprus has been split since 1974, when a brief coup triggered a Turkish invasion. The subsequent stalemate has been a source of tension between NATO allies Greece and Turkey and an obstacle to Turkey's ambitions to join the European Union. Led by Akinci and Anastasiades, the two sides are now trying to forge a new partnership based on a federation. Recent hydrocarbons discoveries in the eastern Mediterranean, where energy potential has not been fully developed, are another incentive to find a deal. "We have excellent relationships with our neighbours," said Anastasiades. "A possible solution on Cyprus would facilitate Turkey's plans, either concerning supplies in its internal market, or converting Turkey into an energy hub." MODERATE Regarded as a moderate, Anastasiades has frequently tried to temper expectations of a quick fix to divisions that have defied many previous mediators. "There might be other opportunities, but the issue there is what solution it would lead to," he said. "In any case that doesn't depend on the Greek Cypriot side ... It depends on the resolve and the sincere intent also of the other side." Reunification efforts failed in 2004, when Greek Cypriots rejected and Turkish Cypriots accepted a United Nations peace blueprint. Present negotiations are Cypriot-led. Turkey, whose role in a post-reunification Cyprus remains a highly sensitive issue in the talks, will hold a referendum on April 16 on boosting the powers of President Tayyip Erdogan. Anastasiades said he didn't want to speculate how a victory in that vote for Erdogan might affect the Cyprus talks, but said he was concerned at friction emerging between Turkey and Europe. "I believe that after the referendum a restoration of relations will be sought. But I'm not sure that will be enough," Anastasiades said. "Now it appears there are basic differences in philosophy from European perceptions and those of President Erdogan." (Editing by Catherine Evans) By Erik Matzen COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Denmark decided to turn down an offer last year from Chinese mining company General Nice Group to buy an abandoned naval base on Greenland due to security concerns, sources involved in the decision said. Danish politicians did not want to jeopardise their country's relationship with the United States, Copenhagen's main ally, by granting another power a potentially military foothold in Greenland, the sources told Reuters. In a statement to Reuters, the Danish defence ministry said the base at Gronnedal - which had been put up for sale - would be reopened as a strategic and logistical location for storing fuel and materiel and for training personnel. It did not comment on the Chinese offer. "The government does not want to sell the naval base to China, as we have a long, close partnership with the U.S. and a defence agreement for Greenland with the U.S. from April 1951 to think about," said a source with direct knowledge of the matter. Greenland is part of Denmark with self-government over domestic affairs, while Copenhagen handles defence and foreign policy. "It should be obvious to everyone that Denmark cannot have two superpowers playing hide-and-seek in Greenland. I don't think the U.S. would find such a situation amusing either," a second source said. Neither source wanted to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter. General Nice Group, which is registered in Hong Kong, did not respond to email and telephone calls requesting comment. The U.S. government struck an agreement with Denmark in 1951 that gave it substantial military rights in Greenland to boost the defence of North America and the Arctic. Instead of selling the Gronnedal base, which was constructed by the United States in 1942 to protect the flight route between America and Europe, the sale was suddenly cancelled last year. The decision was supported by an overwhelming majority in the Danish parliament, which backed the decision to reestablish the base almost two years after it had been abandoned. The defence ministry intends to send six people to Gronnedal soon to reopen the buildings and the harbour facilities, a government source told Reuters. While the cancelled sale highlights western concerns over Chinese presence in the Arctic region, Greenland still hopes to attract foreign investment from China and other nations to bolster its economy with projects such as in gold, rare earths, iron ore and oil. A collapse in global commodity prices has put this ambition temporarily on hold. Because of the melting of Arctic ice in recent decades, the region has become increasingly interesting as a new route for shipping between Europe and the Far East. In 2013, China became a observer to the Arctic Council, whose members are the United States, Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. (Reporting by Erik Matzen; Editing by Stine Jacobsen and Tom Heneghan) Donald Trump and Nigel Farage at their famous New York meeting (PA) They are the best of friends. But the bromance between Nigel Farage and President Donald Trump might be over after the UKIP MEP admitted he was worried by the decision to bomb Syria overnight. I am very surprised by this, said Farage. I think a lot of Trump voters will be waking up this morning and scratching their heads and saying where will it all end?. MORE: Mixed global reaction to Trumps Syria air strikes MORE: Brighton to London train passengers told to take care after Trump raid on Syria He continued: As a firm Trump supporter, I say, yes, the pictures were horrible, but Im surprised. Whatever Assads sins, he is secular. And he warned against the US getting further involved in another Middle East military conflict. Previous interventions in the Middle East have made things worse rather than better. He also took to Twitter to ask: Many Trump voters will be worried about this military intervention. Where will it end? Farage on the Trump campaign trail back in August last year (Rex) The concerns over Syria mark Farages first criticism of Trump, who he has unquestioningly supported until now and even helped him on the president campaign trail. Famously, Farage was also pictured in Trumps New York mansion and became the first UK politician to meet the new president after his election victory. President Trump ordered air strikes on a Syrian government military base overnight after blaming Bashar Al-Assads government for a chemical attack on civilians earlier this week on a rebel-held town near Idlib, which left around 80 people dead, including children. Fifty nine Tomahawk missiles were fired by the US, targeting Shayrat airfield, near Homs. The air strikes also left UKIP leader Paul Nuttall unimpressed. In a statement he said that the strikes were rash, trigger-happy, nonsensical and will achieve nothing. By Sally Hayden LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Hungarian charities on Thursday criticised a draft law that would require them to declare foreign funding, saying it would clamp down on freedom of speech and undermine their work with migrants and other vulnerable groups. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Viktor Orban's Fidesz party said it would present a bill to parliament this week requiring non-governmental organisations (NGOs) with a yearly foreign income of 7.2 million forints ($25,000) to register with authorities. The bill said "foreign interest groups" could use their funding of local NGOs to "pursue their own interests" in Hungary, threatening the country's political and economic interests. "This is an attempt to discredit NGOs in the eyes of the public," said Aniko Bakonyi, project manager at human rights watchdog, the Hungarian Helsinki Committee. The Fidesz party announcement came a day after parliament approved a law that could force out a university founded by Hungarian-born financier George Soros, despite protests against the move and condemnation abroad. Orban, a critic of liberal civil organisations which receive grants from Soros' Open Society Foundation, said last week the Central European University had violated regulations in awarding diplomas, an allegation the college rejects. European lawmakers have demanded disciplinary action against Hungary over the crackdown on foreign universities, the latest step by Orban to subdue independent institutions - including the judiciary, central bank, NGOs and media. Goran Buldioski, the Hungarian-based director of the Soros-funded Open Society Initiative for Europe, said he expected small civil society organisations would suffer the most. "This is a long term policy the government have taken for a while in order to eradicate all voices that speak freely," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "We find it totally unnecessary, stigmatising and discriminatory." ($1 = 291.2400 forints) (Reporting by Sally Hayden @sallyhayd, Editing by Katie Nguyen.; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience. Visit http://news.trust.org) MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Seven Latin American nations jointly expressed on Friday their concern about the escalation of violence in Syria and "strongly condemned the inhumane use of chemical weapons in that nation against civilians, particularly children." In a statement issued my Mexico's foreign ministry, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay urged all parties involved, including countries with influence in the region, to exercise the "greatest prudence" in Syria. The statement called on the relevant parties to avoid an escalation of tensions in Syria and to find a political solution to the conflict under the auspices of the United Nations. The statement made no reference to the U.S. missile strikes on Syrian targets on Thursday, but said steps to prevent the deployment of chemical weapons should be backed by "the entire international community" in accordance with international law. (Reporting by Anthony Esposito) Storyful Music boomed through a darkened street in Kyiv, Ukraine, on November 5, despite the city experiencing widespread blackouts due to the damage of critical infrastructure.Video filmed by Sergio Olmos shows the light from a patio heater illuminating a section of an otherwise dark street in Kyiv while speakers play electronic music.The National Commission for State Regulation of Energy and Public Utilities of Ukraine released a statement regarding the blackouts on November 4, blaming Russian energy terror for the restricted service.Such measures are forced steps to ensure the balance of the energy system and avoid network overload. The commission emphasizes that emergency teams of energy companies are doing everything possible to restore all energy facilities damaged by Russian attacks as soon as possible. With this in mind, the NKRECP appeals to consumers and asks them to understand such temporary steps to restrict electricity supply, the regulator said, according to a machine translation.On November 4, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said 450,000 people in the city were without power.On November 6, Klitschko posted on Facebook saying officials have to be prepared for different scenarios and urged people to save electricity, according to a machine translation.In the war situation in which we live, you need to have plans in case of various scenarios of events and emergencies. And be prepared for action. Preparing for winter, we have purchased, engaged from foreign partners and continue to purchase generators, heat guns, equip heat points, secure critical infrastructure facilities. We are doing everything we can to ensure the livelihood of the capital in these difficult conditions, Klitschko wrote.According to a New York Times report, Ukrainian officials have begun planning for the possibility of a total blackout in Kyiv, and the evacuation of its civilians. Credit: Sergio Olmos via Storyful A special legislative committee has dismissed a challenge to whether Omaha Sen. Ernie Chambers was living in his District 11 when he ran for office last year. His opponent, John Sciara, filed the challenge. The committee heard testimony and accepted evidence Friday morning and made the motion to dismiss the challenge by mid-afternoon. The motion passed unanimously. The committee's decision will go to the full Legislature now to accept or reject. After the hearing, Chambers gave credit to the committee Chairman Dan Watermeier, Vice Chairman John Kuehn, members Sue Crawford, John McCollister, Kate Bolz, Dan Hughes and Speaker Jim Scheer for their work and the result. "I'm sure they were being pressured to do something other than what they did," he said. But the challenge procedure, he said, is flawed in being so easy "for all this machinery to clank into operation." It has to be changed, he said. "It should take more than a disgruntled loser (of an election) to make an allegation based on no facts whatsoever," Chambers said. There should be at least an appearance of a factual basis for a challenge, he said. It's the first time such a challenge has gone through the legislative system, and Watermeier has said several times the committee was charting new territory. Because of that, he said he took every precaution. Chambers said he was glad he the most-experienced member of the Legislature was the one to go through it. "Having participated in this as the target, I'm in a position to point out why we have to rewrite, revamp the rules governing this kind of activity," he said. "This is not something that even my worst enemy should have to confront." During the hearing, Sciara served as his own attorney. Chambers was represented by Lincoln attorney Mark McGuire. Sciara said he couldn't find anyone willing to represent him. Even with the loss, Sciara said he could hold his head up because he's done something no one else has done, even with the challenges he faced in trying to present his case. "So I showed some level of integrity, in my opinion," he said. It's possible, he said, he could run again for the office. Chambers cannot run again in 2020 because of term limits. During the hearing, Sciara tried to present evidence that Chambers didn't live at his north Omaha address, mostly by using utility bills to show how much water or electricity Chambers had used during several months this year. He said usage at Chambers' house was lower than at an average residence, but didn't indicate whether the average residence was that of a single person who spent much of his or her time at a job in another city, and living a minimalist lifestyle. At one point, Sciara asked Chambers about his water usage, which lapsed into a report on how many times Chambers would flush his toilet and how often he bathed. Sciara testified that he would drive by Chambers' house at all hours of the day and night and only occasionally saw Chambers was home. He also parked down the street from Cynthia Grandberry's Bellevue residence early in the morning to see if Chambers was there. Grandberry has been Chambers' legislative assistant for many years. She testified that Chambers picked her up in the mornings and they would drive together to Lincoln and then he would bring her home. Sometimes he would come in to use her copier, or go over legislative business or stay for dinner. Chambers said because they are friends, he mows the lawn and shovels snow at her house. Sen. Carol Blood of Bellevue lives on the same street as Grandberry, five houses away, and testified to seeing him pick up and drop off Grandberry. "We know what's going on in our neighborhood and Sen. Chambers does not live there," Blood told the committee. Chambers' attorney presented evidence to show the senator lived in north Omaha, with bills, mailings, tax statements, proof of home improvements and that he gets a World-Herald newspaper delivered to his house each morning. Chambers said he recognized Sciara's challenge as a serious proceeding that could have the potential of overturning the will of the voters in his district and removing him from office. But he didn't see anything in the challenge petition but what Sciara said he had heard from people, which would have been dismissed in any court. "It should be based on more than rumor, scandal-mongering and whatever else is involved in this," he said. The state Constitution says a senator must reside within the district for one year before election. But state law defines residence as the place in which a person is domiciled, has a settled connection for civil status or other legal purposes, because it is actually or legally his or her permanent and principal home. And if a person leaves the residence, he or she must intend to return. Watermeier said the committee would not answer questions on its deliberations, but would issue a report sometime next week. (Reuters) - Maldives police arrested an opposition leader on accusations of plotting to overthrow the government, they said on Friday, days after the opposition failed in a bid to impeach the speaker of parliament. Qasim Ibrahim, the leader of the Jumhooree Party and a former presidential candidate, was remanded for six days by a Male court. Denying the allegations, his lawyer said Qasim had acted lawfully. The largely Muslim island chain with a population of 400,000 and a reputation as a tourist paradise has been mired in political unrest for years. The impeachment motion against Speaker Abdulla Maseeh Mohamed, a close ally of President Abdulla Yameen, was defeated by 48 votes to zero in parliament after all opposition lawmakers walked out in protest at their colleagues' expulsion from the chamber for unruly behaviour. A second impeachment vote, against the deputy speaker, is scheduled for Monday. Police in their charge sheet said Qasim was arrested for allegedly of bribing and "undue influencing of parliament members and state security forces" in the impeachment vote against the speaker. Police also cited "unlawful incitement to the removal, from office, of the legitimate government". Hussein Shameem, Qasim's lawyer, said his client was an opposition whip and was by law entitled to try to convince lawmakers to vote a certain way. "He has not used undue influence and no unlawful activities were done. He acted within the law," Shameem told Reuters. Qasim, a tourism tycoon who ran for the presidency in 2013, backed Yameen in the second round of the poll against former president Mohamed Nasheed. Yameen won by a slim margin. After he and Yameen fell out, Qasim formed an opposition coalition along with former presidents Nasheed and Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, a half brother of Yameen. The Maldives has been plagued by unrest since Nasheed, its first democratically elected leader, was ousted in disputed circumstances in 2012. He was later sentenced to 13 years in jail on terrorism charges after a widely criticised trial and now lives in exile. Many potential challengers to Yameen in elections due in 2018 have been arrested for alleged security offences. The opposition alleges his administration is trying to cover up corruption including money laundering. The government denies this and says it does not influence law enforcement. Significant numbers of radicalised Maldives youths have enlisted to fight for Islamic State in the Middle East. (Reporting by Shihar Aneez and Ranga Sirilal; Editing by Nick Macfie and John Stonestreet) A man has been arrested after a lorry struck pedestrians during a "terror attack" in central Stockholm, police have said. Four people were killed and 15 others were wounded after the hijacked beer truck drove through a crowd before crashing into a department store. Emergency services said children were among those hurt. Police say the man they have detained is someone "whom we are particularly interested in" - and detectives claim he was "in the vicinity" of the incident. However, investigators added they are still looking for the driver of the truck - and a nationwide manhunt is under way. Sky sources say a suspect is thought to have run towards an underground station following the crash. Sweden's Prime Minister, Stefan Lofven, has described Friday afternoon's assault as a terrorist attack. He told a news conference: "These kinds of actions will never succeed. We know that our enemies are these atrocious murderers and not each other. "Our message will always be clear: you will not defeat us, you will not govern our lives, you will never, ever win." The brewery which owned the truck said a masked hijacker had stolen the vehicle as it made a beer delivery at a tapas restaurant. A spokesman added that the delivery driver was unharmed but shocked. It travelled down Drottninggatan - known in English as Queen Street - where pedestrians doing their shopping were sent running for their lives. Glen Foran, an Australian tourist, told the Reuters news agency: "I turned around and saw a big truck coming towards me. It swerved from side to side. It didn't look out of control, it was trying to hit people." The truck eventually crashed into the pillar of the Ahlens department store, where the hood started burning. Late into the night, forensic police were collecting evidence from the stolen vehicle, which remains at the crash site. Officers have said there was no indication an attack was imminent. Story continues The European Commission tweeted: "An attack on any of our Member States is an attack on us all." A spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said: "Our thoughts go out to the people in Stockholm, to the injured, their relatives, rescuers and police. We stand together against terror." The underground in Stockholm has reopened, although the public transport authority said trains would not be stopping at the two stations nearest the location of the attack. DUBLIN (Reuters) - Militants would be able to get around a ban on carrying large electronic items into the cabins of planes bound for the United States by travelling from cities not impacted by the ban, Qatar Airways' chief executive was quoted as saying on Friday. The U.S. introduced security measures on March 25 banning electronic gadgets larger than a mobile phone from passenger cabins on direct flights to the United States from 10 airports in the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey, including Qatar. "Instead of going from the airports where there is a ban, they will go to airports where there is no ban," Akbar Al Baker told the Irish Times in an interview. "And there are no bans in certain airports that are very risky I don't want to name them but it is far easier to get on to aeroplanes from those places than it is with us." Announcement of the restrictions prompted some media speculation it was aimed at protecting U.S. airlines by stifling the growth of the fast-expanding Gulf carriers and Turkish Airlines, a theory dismissed by U.S. officials and many experts. Gulf airlines Qatar, Emirates and Etihad Airways have been battling a lobbying campaign in Washington by U.S. carriers that accuse them of receiving unfair subsidies, charges that the Gulf carriers deny and which Al Baker dismissed. "We got equity, not taxpayers' money, and we were given enough equity for us to be independent, which we are today, and we have to show profit," he was quoted saying. "We are buying American aeroplanes in big numbers and we are providing jobs. Every single flight we do brings economic benefits to the U.S. So to us, America is first." The newspaper also quoted Al Baker as saying Qatar did not plan to increase its 20 percent stake in British Airways-owner IAG. (Reporting by Padraic Halpin; Editing by David Holmes) The Kremlin has slammed the US missile strike as an aggression against a sovereign nation. A spokesperson for President Vladimir Putin, a staunch ally of the Syrian regime, said it violated the norms of international law and was carried out on a made-up pretext in a cynical bid to distract the world from civilian deaths in Iraq. It is clear that this strike was well prepared in advance, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova told reporters. It is clear for every expert that Washington took the decision before the events in Idlib. And this is a pretext to show their force. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he hoped the US strikes would not irreparably damage relations between Moscow and Washington. This is an act of aggression, on an absolutely made-up pretext, Lavrov told a news conference in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. It reminds me of the situation in 2003 when the United States and Britain, along with some of their allies, attacked Iraq. US actions in Syria reminiscent of military intervention in #Iraq Lavrov https://t.co/BQKsi1rS5t #USStrikesSyria pic.twitter.com/hf0xECHim6 Sputnik (@SputnikInt) 7 avril 2017 Lavrov said Russia would demand Washington explain why it conducted the strikes. I hope this provocation will not lead to irreparable damage (to U.S.-Russian ties), Lavrov said. No Russian servicemen were known to have been killed in the US strikes, he added. As Moscow demanded an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, there was a very different reaction from London. British Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon said that the UK had been in close contact with the US and fully supported the military strike ordered by President Trump. This was a very limited, very appropriate, narrowly focussed action to attack the airfield, the aeroplanes and the equipment that the United States believe was involved in the gas attack to deter the regime from future attacks and hopefully therefore to save lives in future, he said. Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon has welcomed US strikes on a Syrian airfield last night, saying they were limited and appropriate. Ministry of Defence (@DefenceHQ) 7 avril 2017 When asked if the strike was the start of a new military campaign, Fallon said: We dont see last nights strike like that. For All Views on the Syria conflict, click here with Reuters The Kremlin has slammed the US missile strike as an aggression against a sovereign nation. A spokesperson for President Vladimir Putin, a staunch ally of the Syrian regime, said it violated the norms of international law and was carried out on a made-up pretext in a cynical bid to distract the world from civilian deaths in Iraq. It is clear that this strike was well prepared in advance, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova told reporters. It is clear for every expert that Washington took the decision before the events in Idlib. And this is a pretext to show their force. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he hoped the US strikes would not irreparably damage relations between Moscow and Washington. This is an act of aggression, on an absolutely made-up pretext, Lavrov told a news conference in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. It reminds me of the situation in 2003 when the United States and Britain, along with some of their allies, attacked Iraq. US actions in Syria reminiscent of military intervention in #Iraq Lavrov https://t.co/BQKsi1rS5t #USStrikesSyria pic.twitter.com/hf0xECHim6 Sputnik (@SputnikInt) 7 avril 2017 Lavrov said Russia would demand Washington explain why it conducted the strikes. I hope this provocation will not lead to irreparable damage (to U.S.-Russian ties), Lavrov said. No Russian servicemen were known to have been killed in the U.S. strikes, he added. As Moscow demanded an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, there was a very different reaction from London. Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon told British media that the UK had been in close contact with the US and fully supported the military strike ordered by President Trump. This was a very limited, very appropriate, narrowly focussed action to attack the airfield, the airplanes and the equipment that the United States believe was involved in the gas attack to deter the regime from future attacks and hopefully therefore to save lives in the future, he said. Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon has welcomed US strikes on a Syrian airfield last night, saying they were limited and appropriate. Ministry of Defence (@DefenceHQ) 7 avril 2017 When asked if the strike was the start of a new military campaign, Fallon said: We dont see last nights strike like that. For All Views on the Syria conflict, click here At least five people are feared dead after a suspected terror attack which saw a hijacked beer lorry plough into a crowd of pedestrians in Stockholm. Stefan Lofven, the Swedish Prime Minister, said it appeared the crash was a terror attack and the countrys intelligence service confirmed there was a large number of injured. A manhunt is underway for an individual who is thought to have fled to the subway system. According to local media reports, the suspect is wearing a green jacket, white shoes and a grey hoodie The Prime Minister had earlier said there had been an arrest, but the Reuters news agency is now quoting police saying no one has been detained. Reports of the incident first emerged on social media shortly after 2pm GMT. Around 30 minutes later, reports also emerged of a shooting near the site of the crash, although it has not been confirmed whether the two incidents are linked. At 3.30pm, police also ordered the evacuation of the central train station in Stockholm, according to the TT news agency. Pools of blood were visible on the street along with bodies covered in blankets in pictures showing the aftermath of the attack. Paramedics could also be seen tending to the injured near the truck. There is total confusion, I do not know how many are injured, many people are totally shocked, one witness, Leif Arnmar, who was working in the department store, told Swedish national broadcaster SVT. Hundreds ran screaming from the site of the crash (Reuters) Jan Granroth told the Aftonbladet newspaper: We stood inside a shoe store and heard something and then people started to scream. I looked out of the store and saw a big truck. British national Itay Lotem was nearby when the lorry ploughed into pedestrians in the centre of the city. I was sitting in a cafe, I just suddenly saw people coming in and talking about a lorry that had driven into people, he told BBC News. I walked out and there were many people in that street, its a pedestrian street. Very quickly police cordoned everything off. Story continues Pictures posted on social media showed the aftermath of the scene. Stockholmdeki olay 14 Temmuzda Fransada gerceklesen teror saldrsna benziyor. Umarm olu yoktur. pic.twitter.com/mVlbEouxhW ezgi (@ezgirobespierre) 7 April 2017 Isvecin baskenti Stockholmde kamyonlu teror saldrs: ilk belirlemelere gore 3 olu 17 yaral @Malikejder47 pic.twitter.com/WjJFdgyqJi KAOS editoru (@bristol_29) 7 April 2017 The Aftonbladet newspaper reported that the truck had been hijacked from Swedish beermaker Spendrups earlier on Friday. Drottninggatan is a shopping street close to the citys main train station. The lorry ploughed into the Ahlens department store which is part of a countrywide chain. Jean-Claude Juncker, the President of the European Commission, said: Our thoughts are with the people of Sweden following the tragic events in Stockholm today. On behalf of the European Commission, I would like to send my sincere condolences to the families of the victims and to salute the courageous work of the first responders who arrived so quickly on the scene. An attack on any of our Member States is an attack on us all. The crash is close to the scene of a terror attack in 2010 when Taimour Abdulwahab, a Swedish citizen who lived in Luton, blew himself up. The rear of a truck, left, protrudes after it crashed into a department store injuring several people in central Stockholm (AP) The terrorist, who police concluded acted alone, died on December 11 2010 in the Bryggargatan area. No-one else was killed. Abdulwahab rigged an Audi car with explosives in the hope that the blast would drive people to Drottninggatan, a busy shopping street, where he was waiting to set off two more devices strapped to his chest and back. The car bomb never went off and, after setting fire to the Audi, he was unable to detonate the other two explosives as planned. He made his way down a side street off Drottninggatan and, in an apparent attempt to fix the faulty trigger up his sleeve, set off the bomb on the front of his body, killing only himself. This article will be updated shortly NAIROBI (Reuters) - South Sudanese authorities are blocking United Nations peacekeepers from visiting a town where soldiers are alleged to have killed civilians including children this week, a U.N. spokeswoman said on Friday. Peacekeepers have been trying to get to the town of Pajok, near the border with Uganda, for four days after unconfirmed reports emerged of mass killings. "They are still not there," said Shantal Persaud, a spokeswoman for the U.N. Mission in South Sudan. "Negotiations continue with the local authorities." The peacekeepers have been barred by the South Sudanese military, New York-based U.N. spokeswoman Eri Kaneko said this week. Thousands of South Sudanese refugees fled into Uganda this week after they said government forces killed civilians in Pajok on Monday. A Reuters tally of witness testimonies counted at least 17 deaths. The refugees said some of those killed were children shot as they tried to flee, while others had their throats slit before their bodies were strung up from door frames. The South Sudanese government denied its forces targeted civilians. It said an operation in Pajok, a town of more than 50,000 people 15 km (10 miles) north of the Ugandan frontier, was to flush out guerrillas. South Sudan seceded from Sudan in 2011 after decades of war, but has been mired in factional conflict since President Salva Kiir sacked his vice president Riek Machar in 2013. The fighting that followed has often split the country along ethnic lines. Both sides have targeted civilians, human rights groups say. More than 6,000 people fled from Pajok to Uganda this week, Babar Baloch, a U.N. refugee agency spokesman, said in a statement on Friday. "Refugees report witnessing their loved ones shot dead at a close range, with many arrested or slaughtered, including children. Families fled in different directions; the elderly and disabled who could not run were shot dead," he said. Baloch added that many displaced people were still hiding in the bush trying to find their way to Uganda while homes and properties had been looted and burned, with main roads out of the town reported to be blocked by armed groups. The assault on Pajok is the latest in a series of attacks in the fertile Equatoria region. Many towns and villages in the region are now deserted, residents say. Around 1.7 million people have fled South Sudan, most of them to Uganda, which is struggling to cope with the influx. Nearly two-thirds of the new arrivals are children. (Editing by Mark Heinrich) By Panarat Thepgumpanat and Patpicha Tanakasempipat BANGKOK (Reuters) - Bomb blasts were among 23 coordinated attacks that rocked Muslim-majority southern Thailand early on Friday, a security officer said, just hours after King Maha Vajiralongkorn signed a new constitution as a step towards ending military rule. Police reported no casualties in the region, site of a recent upsurge in a decades-old Muslim separatist insurgency that had voted the most strongly against the new constitution at a referendum last year. "The incidents are aimed to create disturbances," Pramote Prom-in, a spokesman for regional security forces, told Reuters. "They want to destroy the government's credibility and create fear among people." There was no immediate claim of responsibility and security forces said they could not yet identify which insurgent group was to blame. The attacks were scattered across 19 districts in the southern region, grouping the provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat, and the nearby province of Songkhla, he said. A large number of co-ordinated attacks in the region is unusual. Complete details were not immediately available, but they ranged from bomb explosions at 52 electricity poles, triggering widespread regional power cuts, to several tyre-burning incidents, Pramote added. On Thursday, Thailand's king signed into law a military-backed constitution, an essential step towards an election the ruling junta has promised will restore democracy after the 12th successful coup in little over 80 years. The new constitution is the Southeast Asian country's 20th since the end of absolute monarchy in 1932, and critics say it will still give the generals a powerful say over Thai politics for years, if not decades. Voters in the most heavily Muslim parts of Thailand were among the few to reject the draft constitution in last year's referendum. The timing of the attacks just hours after the constitution was proclaimed was curious, said Defence Minister Prawit Wongsuwan, but there was no conclusive evidence it was a motive. A Malay Muslim separatist insurgency in the three southern provinces has killed more than 6,500 since it escalated in 2004, independent monitoring group Deep South Watch says. On Monday, police reported what they called the biggest insurgent attack in the south in years, when about 30 people fired more than 500 shots into a police booth. In February, the government of the Buddhist-majority country struck a deal with MARA Patani, an umbrella group that says it speaks for the insurgents, but other separatists rejected it. (Reporting by Panarat Thepgumpanat and Patpicha Tanakasempipat; Writing by Matthew Tostevin; Editing by Clarence Fernandez) Much Ado About Nothing weaves the story of a wildly mismatched couple and their misguided friends brushed in the brilliance of Shakespeares pen. Aux Dog Theatre will perform the full play in its theater April 8 to 30. The actors will tread down the street to Nob Hills Triangle Park at Monte Vista and Central for two free evenings of scenes from the play on April 8 and 15. Much Ado About Nothing launches the companys first foray into what it calls Shakespeare 505, its new Bardian branch of annual productions. Much Ado lends itself to outdoor performances, artistic director Victoria Liberatori said. It has a masked dance sequence. It has a wedding sequence. Im setting the whole piece in contemporary New Mexico. Placitas will sub for Sicilys Messina as the sun-drenched hub of mistaken identities wrapped in meditations on honor, shame and court foolery. Young lovers Hero and Claudio are to be married in one week. To pass the time, they conspire with Don Pedro to set a lovers trap for Benedick, an arrogant confirmed bachelor, and Beatrice, his favorite sparring partner. Meanwhile, the evil Don conspires to break up the wedding by accusing Hero of infidelity. In the end, it all turns out to be much ado about nothing. We have Beatrice and Benedick, both of whom are confirmed bachelors, Liberatori said. However, they do fall in love. Watching the two of them resisting falling in love is part of the story. In casting the play, Liberatori has pulled off Shakespearian gender roles in reverse: Leonato, the governor of Messina (transplanted to Placitas), is now Leonata, played by Albuquerque actress Angela Littleton. Its a joyful play, Liberatori said. Beatrice and Benedick are two of his most fully rounded characters. Liberatori has updated the play, sans swords and tights. I dont want to perform it with the audience scratching their heads, she said. I want to make it very accessible so that they enjoy it and its exciting. Thats why I want to make it contemporary. Well be carrying cellphones. Well be texting. We will not be setting it in the 15th century. The highly acclaimed 1993 movie starred Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson, Denzel Washington, Keanu Reeves, Michael Keaton, Robert Sean Leonard, Imelda Staunton and Kate Beckinsale. Much Ado About Nothing WHEN AND WHERE: 8 p.m. Saturday, April 8, and 2 p.m. Sunday, April 9; weekends through April 30, Aux Dog Theatre, 3011-3015 Monte Vista NE, Nob Hill (full play); 2 p.m. Saturday, April 8, and 2 p.m. April 15, Triangle Park, Monte Vista and Central NE, Nob Hill (scenes only) HOW MUCH: Triangle Park scenes free; full play in theater $15; students with ID arriving 5 minutes before opening $5; anyone arriving 10 minutes before opening $10, first weekend only; call 254-7716 For the first time in New Mexico, Tequila Chamucos will be highlighted as part of a pairing dinner. Chamucos owner and master distiller Mark Howard has teamed up with Bien Shur Rooftop Restaurant at Sandia Resort & Casino for this dinner on May 4. Howard will attend the event and bring a special tasting gift for guests that no one else in the country will get to experience for the next couple years. Chamucos is grown and cultivated in the Los Altos region of Jalisco, Mexico, using organic farming practices since 1995, according to its importer Palm Bay Internationals website. It is the true expression of tequila. Its amazing purity, aroma and flavor is the result of careful small batch production. Bien Shur has received great interest in this event, which is expected to sell out. The food, the drinks, the environment and the incredible service all adds to the experience that no one is going to have because this is the first time in New Mexico with Chamucos, the first time with these cocktails, and the service is flawless at these dinners, Bien Shur manager Bill Howley said. Mixologist Victor Acoya will be creating one-of-a-kind cocktails using Chamucos Blanco, Chamucos Reposado and Chamucos Anejo. Acoya said he wanted to use traditional flavors of Mexico in his cocktails, including horchata in his Pina and hibiscus in his Hibiscus Fresca. I like using hibiscus. Its just a great natural flower that brings out so much flavor, adding a little bit of ginger to the infused (Chamucos) Blanco, just brings it out with the pairing of the fresh lemon- and mint-infused ice spheres, Acoya said of his Hibiscus Fresca. I think its going to make a great balance to the cocktail. The Hibiscus Fresca is part of the intro and accompanies a seared diver scallop. The diver scallop is going to be a lot of fun, because were going to do marinated avocado and papaya salad with this amazing Chamucos citrus foam where were actually going to use the Chamucos hot sauce where they age it in reposado barrels, Bien Shur head chef J. Martin Torrez said. Torrez wanted to go lighter on the second course and went with a yellow wax bean and pea shoot salad. It will be nice and light with Acoyas Paloma cocktail made with Chamucos Blanco, fresh grapefuit, fresh lime juice and honey. The main plate will follow and be paired with Acoyas Cham Thyme, which features Chamucos Reposado, blueberry syrup and an infused lime ice sphere. I wanted to go a little bit gamey because when I think of Chamucos Reposado and blueberries, I think about heavier flavors so thats why I wanted to do flavors from that drink that go with the duo of lamb, Torrez explained. We have a lamb chop with a thyme demi-glace and a lamb loin with a blueberry balsamic caviar and some starch action with some local Tucumcari and Hatch green chile tater tots. The dinner will end on a sweet note of mango panna cotta paired with Acoyas Pina featuring Chamucos Anejo. I am excited about the Pina, Acoya said.It is actually a grilled infused pineapple with brown sugar tequila. I let it sit there and create these amazing flavors, from the sugar to the sweetness of the pineapple and the cinnamon added for a little bit of spice. And (Im adding) some horchata, one of Mexicos favorite (aguas) frescas made with rice water, which is amazing. Tequila Chamucos Dinner WHEN: Welcome reception from 6 to 6:45 p.m., dinner at 7 p.m. May 4 WHERE: Bien Shur Rooftop Restaurant at Sandia Resort & Casino, 30 Rainbow Road NE HOW MUCH: $85 per person, tax and gratuity not included. Reservations, call 798-3959. For information on Tequila Chamucos, visit palmbay.com/producers/Chamucos-Tequila Sometimes you love a movie even as you realize its far from perfect. Thats what Im here to tell ya. I loved Gifted, even though I realize its far from perfect. Yes, the screenplay creates a big ongoing courtroom conflict that could have been more readily resolved a half-dozen other ways. Yes, the tear-soaked drama often crosses the line into unabashed, old-timey movie sentimentality. And yes, any film with a lovable, one-eyed cat named Fred that winds up on death row at one point isnt exactly being subtle about grabbing for your heart. I wasnt much bothered by any of that, because I cared so much about the characters and I wanted things to work out for them, and maybe youll feel the same way after you see Gifted. Go see Gifted. Chris Evans is best-known for playing Steve Rogers/Captain America, and hes quite capable in that role, but Evans has the opportunity to flex different sets of acting muscles as Frank Adler in Gifted, and the result is maybe the best work hes ever done. (Evans also gets to flex his actual muscles, as the Florida coastal locale of the story and his job as a boat mechanic afford plenty of opportunity for that.) Frank acts like a crabby old man in a young mans shell as he keeps his head down and tries to keep his interactions with the outside world to a minimum, but we know from the get-go this guys heart is in the right place. Frank has had custody of his 7-year-old niece, Mary (McKenna Grace), ever since Marys mother committed suicide when the girl was an infant. Even with their modest circumstances and Franks make-it-up-as-you-go-along approach to guardianship, they seem to be doing just fine on their own, until the time comes for Mary to get on the school bus and start first grade. This is the thing about Mary. Shes a mathematical genius, a one-in-a-billion prodigy. On the first day of class, it takes about five minutes for Marys teacher, Bonnie (Jenny Slate), to realize this kid should not be wasting her time adding two plus two. This sets in motion a chain of events that includes the schools principal (Elizabeth Marvel) offering to place Mary in an ultra-expensive school for gifted children, and the arrival from Boston of Franks estranged mother, Evelyn (Lindsay Duncan), a wealthy, domineering presence who would have to warm up to have ice water in her veins. Evelyn, a onetime math prodigy herself who was obsessed with pushing her daughter to greatness, has learned of her granddaughters prowess, which suddenly makes the child interesting to Evelyn. She swoops into town, meets Mary for the first time, gives Mary an Apple MacBook loaded with math texts and announces she will be taking custody of the child. See you in court, son! The screenplay by Tom Flynn is filled with sharp dialogue and warm, funny vignettes, but also some pretty big leaps of credibility, especially in the increasingly escalating emotions of the courtroom battle. (Evelyn has a scene on the witness stand thats the coldhearted mothers version of Jack Nicholsons self-destructive diatribe in A Few Good Men. Its an amazing piece of acting from Lindsay Duncan, but its so theatrical youll feel as if you just walked into a Broadway play.) Octavia Spencer supplies heart and humor as Roberta, the property manager/next-door neighbor who is always using her master key to enter Franks place and meddle in his life. (Frank pretends to be annoyed by this, but he is eternally grateful to have Roberta in his life and more important, in Marys life.) And Jenny Slate gives a wonderfully modulated, sympathetic performance as Bonnie the schoolteacher, who tells Frank theres no way they get involved, ahem. In a role that requires much math talk and even more serious emoting, McKenna Grace is an irresistible force. Evans and Grace are sensational in their scenes together, whether its low-key bantering about the nature of her breakfast or waterworks-inducing separations and reunions. Gifted isnt the best or most sophisticated or most original film of the year, but it just might be my favorite. City officials announced at a news conference Thursday that the 2020 National Speech and Debate Competition, which is being headquartered at the Albuquerque Convention Center, will bring in more than 8,000 attendees and an estimated $10,085,754 in direct spending. The event will also utilize seven APS schools and 15 Albuquerque Hotels. Tania Armenta, president and CEO of Visit Albuquerque, said that excluding sporting events, this will be the largest event that the city has hosted since 2001. The competition will host students from sixth through 12th grade, from 48 states. The last time Albuquerque hosted the National Speech and Debate Competition was 1967, when the entire competition fit into a single room at UNM, said Trey Smith, District Chairman of the New Mexico Speech and Debate Association. One of the reasons we were chosen to host this is New Mexico is a constant presence at the national competitions, Smith told the Journal. Albuquerque was chosen for a number of reasons. The city we choose needs to be committed to infrastructure. Ten million dollars doesnt mean anything if there is nowhere to spend it, said J. Scott Wunn Executive Director of the National Speech and Debate Association, who also attended the conference. Mayor Richard Berry also spoke and cited the renovations to the Convention Center as a major draw. People used to come here and see the beautiful skies and see the great Sunport, which is one of the best of its kind in the world, and see our wonderful city and then get through the front door of the Convention Center and say, No thank you, we are going home,' Mayor Berry told the Journal. But now, with the renovation (to the Convention Center) they see a facility that matches our great city. Samson Goitom was an active person. He loved to run, sometimes right out of the house and into his northwest Lincoln neighborhood. "We had to put locks on the top of the door or he'd just take off like the wind," his mother, Semira Osman, said this week. "He was so fast." But as fast as he was on land, he was even better in water. "We called him 'little fish,'" Osman said. "He loved swimming since he was a baby." The family became regulars at Lincoln's YMCAs after moving from Washington in the early 2000s. When Goitom was younger, Osman would stand by watching him swim. And she would regularly remind lifeguards that her son was autistic, she said. "I would say, 'Don't take your eye away from him,'" she said. "But he was gifted. He knew how to manipulate the water. 'Water' was his middle name." Goitom, 21, died March 22, two days after suffering a medical episode at the Fallbrook YMCA as he sat in a hot tub, according to his family. Osman said there's not much she can say about what happened, other than she believes her son had a seizure before his head went into the water. The tragic incident lasted just seconds, she said. "We are grieving," she said, choking back tears. "It's so hard to process. You don't expect this to happen, and we didn't get a chance to say goodbye." Barb Bettin, CEO of the Lincoln YMCA, said an off-duty swim instructor was in the hot tub when Goitom was found face-down in the water. Lincoln police said the woman was looking in the other direction before Goitom was discovered. He was immediately taken out of the tub and was alive and responsive before being taken to the hospital, Bettin said. He was taken off life support March 22. Goitom was diagnosed with autism just before his second birthday, Osman said. His mother described him as a joyful, very smiley boy. "He was a very loving person," she said. "Everybody who met him just loved him. He was an angel." Osman raised Goitom and his sister alone and did her best between work and college classes to give him the attention he needed. He graduated last year from Lincoln North Star High School with an A average, she said. "He was a very smart boy," Osman said. As he grew older and bigger, Goitom needed more attention, so his aunt quit her job and cared for him full-time. Goitom had a few close calls with getting hurt growing up. He was prone to accidents, Osman said. "There were a lot of incidents that happened that he survived," she said. His life was an example of "it takes a village to raise a child." "I would always tell the neighborhood kids to look out for him," Osman said. "If he ran out, they'd run with him. He thought it was like a chasing game." When Osman moved her children to Nebraska, their new community rallied behind them. "I just loved it here," she said. "Everybody would say, 'Hi, Sam,' when we walked down the street and he'd just wave big. A lot of people in Lincoln knew him. I'd say, 'Sam, you're so popular.'" Lincoln police said Goitom's death has been classified as accidental. However, the investigation is ongoing as officers await the results of an autopsy. "The volunteers and staff of the Lincoln YMCA are profoundly saddened by this situation," Bettin said. "We have extended our condolences to Mr. Goitoms family and are keeping them in our thoughts and prayers. For sophisticated connoisseurs of Chinese, Japanese and Southeast Asian cuisines, Jinja probably will not appeal. But for the rest of us, habituated to conventional choices among those three very different sets of flavors, Jinjas Pacific Rim and Pan-Asian menu is just fine. The Santa Fe branch of this mini-chain (there are two Jinjas in Albuquerque) is a pleasant place offering a cozy, suitably dark bar lined with vintage South Seas travel posters and an airy but also slightly nostalgic dining room. We were pleased to be seated in a comfortable booth in the bar during a recent lunch visit. Jinjas menu might best be described as flexible, in that many choices are offered in larger and smaller servings, including several of the appetizers, making them suitable for sharing among a table, or making a meal for one or two people. Two varieties of chicken wings, tempura, sashimi, lettuce wraps and spring rolls, a couple of Chinese-style dumplings and even crispy tofu are available. We were only two, so the small order of spring rolls ($9.49) was fine. Four slender cylinders of crisply fried wrappers enclosing ground chicken flavored with green onion and cilantro were served with a Vietnamese-style dipping sauce that, by my guess, included soy sauce, a hint of rice wine vinegar and something else with a slightly sweet note. Mirin, perhaps? My guest, a longtime visitor to Southeast Asia, opted for the Thai-style red beef curry ($18.99 for the large size, which gave her plenty to take home for dinner). It was excellent: just spicy-hot enough to please her, with a complexity of other spices, too. The beef chunks were tender, and stir-fried with onion and sweet pepper chunks before the addition of the curry. I went for the land-and-sea combo ($18.99), two good-size skewers, one laden with shrimp, the other with beef, sweet peppers and onion. Two dipping sauces, one a dark, garlicky concoction and the other a refreshing combo of cilantro and lime, accompanied the kebabs. A Japanese-style cucumber salad and, of course, a mound of rice of choice (jasmine for my guest, brown for me) accompanied each of our entrees. The kebabs were excellent: the shrimp grilled just done, the beef medium-rare as requested and succulently tender. I enjoyed the straightforward flavors of the two sauces. And here, too, there was more than enough to supply a take-home dinner. Choosing is a conundrum at Jinja, however. I saw all sorts of Asian classics that sorely tempted. Jinja offers rice-paper-wrapped salmon or (unusually) halibut, grilled tuna or shrimp, or shrimp in your choice of red or green curry (certainly a different twist on the New Mexico state question). The meat side of the menu includes Chinese-style classics like kung pao chicken with cashews, sesame chicken, mu shu pork with signature tiny pancakes, and sweet-sour pork. Beef is also served four or five ways, or as a straight-up grilled steak with frites. Noodle dishes are served in classic Thai, Japanese or Chinese styles; there are three salad choices, including traditional Chinese chicken, and a couple of incongruous but tasty-sounding Asian variations on western Caesar and Cobb salads. After all that food, there was no need for dessert. But we were duty-bound and chose the macadamia nut tart ($7.99) as possibly the least cloying option outside of ice cream. It was a good choice, not as sweet as American-style pecan pie, but made richer, perhaps, by the macadamia nuts. The filling was minimal, just enough to glue the nuts to the crust and, given our surfeit, that was a good thing. Service at Jinja during a modestly crowded lunch hour was good if a little leisurely. But our needs were readily attended to by whichever waiter happened to be passing. Jinja Bar and Bistro LOCATION: 510 N. Guadalupe, 505-982-4321/jinjabistro.com HOURS: Open Mon.-Fri. 11 a.m.-10 p.m.; Sat., Sun. Noon-10 p.m. FOOD: Pacific Rim/Pan-Asian favorites ATMOSPHERE: Colonial nostalgia SERVICE: Good Full liquor license 3.5 stars One image shows a young soldier wearing sunglasses indoors while reading Life magazine with the Beatles on the cover. The wall behind him is decorated with pin-up girls. Others show soldiers at a Bob Hope USO show and a young soldier sleeping in the daytime in his underwear. In his show Sleeping During the Day-Vietnam 1968, opening today at the New Mexico History Museum, Santa Fe photographer Herbert Lotz shows a different side of the war that he experienced as a young radio operator, a war that still haunts him to the point that he doesnt like the night. This is not a rah-rah exhibit of how great it is to be a soldier out in field conquering a country, Lotz said during a recent interview in his studio. These are mostly images about the men and what they are going through, being soldiers in this situation. Lotz, 72, grew up in a small Illinois farming town with pacifist parents. They encouraged him in the arts while, he says, they probably realized he was gay. He was drafted in 1967. Attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, he fell below the required college credits to maintain a student deferment. After advanced Army training in southern Arizona, he was posted to a large base at Cu Chi, South Vietnam, in 1968, near the Ho Chi Minh Trail and during the Tet offensive. He built a bunker fortified with empty ammo boxes to protect against incoming rockets and mortars. During the daytime, you would sleep, you could really sleep, because there was not enemy activity, Lottz said. At night, even if you were off duty, there would be stuff going on. There would be a lot of flares in the sky, lighting up the sky. Things would blow up, he continued.We would get hit with rockets and mortars at night, so at night you were more on edge and, during the daytime, that all went silent. The 33 images selected for the History Museum exhibition reflect what little peace soldiers could latch onto during daylight. One photo titled the The Bros,' depicts four Afro-American soldiers standing at ease in front of a shack protected by sand bags. The war was intimately personal for Lotz. Combat took a lover with whom he had a brief affair. When I met him, I thought this is great, I am going meet people just like myself, Lotz recalled. But it was not something you wore on your sleeve, of who you were in terms of being gay, but you knew there were like-minded people. Lotzs photojournalism transcends individual loss. It shows me at the beginning of my tour, a young, smiley kid til the end of my tour, not so smiley, he said. So much of it is about the loss of innocence, about why we were in Vietnam, and why we were soldiers in this particular situation. The Cu Chi area was famous for its vast network of Viet Cong tunnels that hid the enemy and from which they launched the crucial Tet Offensive. The tunnel network is now a tourist attraction. Lotz said that when he got home to the U.S.A., reuniting with his parents was difficult. They started grieving my death the day I left for Vietnam, he said. when I came home, they had pretty much buried me. I tried to re-enter the life I had and I couldnt. The war had changed me in ways that you dont know that it changes you. For several months, he lived in a Chicago hotel with down-and-outers. Later, because of his prior Arizona stay, he decided to go back to the Southwest where it is safe and wonderful. A friend told him about Santa Fe and friends provided letters of introduction to people in the artistic community here. I got to walk into a place that accepted me beautifully and I felt so safe here, he said. I came over here and started this new life, started drinking, met a lot of great friends. After working for six years as a server at the Pink Adobe, Lotz acquired enough commercial photography work with galleries and artists to do it full-time. But in about 1981, things went downhill. It all started to fall apart, he said. My lover and I, we built a house in the country, his drug use, my alcohol use wrecked us. I started drinking pretty badly, and I was about to blow my brains out and I didnt know why. He saw a public service announcement on television with a number for vets with problems to call. He got help from two veterans from Albuquerque. Lotz realized he was suffering from what is now known as PTSD. He went to an Albuquerque vet center for three years. Its not by accident that I have an eight-foot wall around my house and that I behave in the way I do, that I dont like movie theaters, he said. You learn the best you can to cope with it and live with it. He still doesnt like being in the dark of movie theaters where he cant see everybody. I dont like the night anymore, I lost the night, I used to love the night but, over there, during the night is when all the crap happened, so the night became unsafe, it (PTSD) does change you. The war was more than about fighting and Lotz would like those attending the exhibit to see that, through his photographs. I hope they would take away a moment of silence in terms of observation sort of an understanding of something other than the rockets and the mortars and the shooting and the rah rah rah, the quietness, what men look like when they are not out fighting, what their faces look like. He believes its never too late to awaken to the realities of post-Vietnam life. If there are vets out there that are having trouble, even now at our age, I would strongly suggest that they consider going to a vet center. He still goes every week to see other Vietnam vets. We just hang out with each other and it provides me with this comfort in life that I get nowhere else. If you go WHAT: Sleeping During the Day-Vietnam 1968, photos from the Vietnam War WHEN: Today-Oct. 1. WHERE: New Mexico History Museum, 113 Lincoln Ave., Santa Fe CHICAGO Last year, in the Harvard Business Review, Avivah Wittenberg-Cox wrote that in order to get more women and minorities into corporate America, diversity initiatives must harness the credibility, power and political capital of white men. Most of the work of diversity and inclusion approaches in companies to date has focused on empowering the out groups or training the in groups about their unconscious biases. This has succeeded only in annoying everyone, wrote Wittenberg-Cox, the CEO of a consulting firm that focuses on gender matters. When old majorities become new minorities, its time to update our approach. And yet rarely have I ever seen inclusion strategies that stress the need to include, listen to, and work with the dominant group the one that is seeing its pre-eminence questioned. That is where leadership is most needed: in helping todays dominant group embrace tomorrows reality. Wittenberg-Coxs words rang in my ears in the aftermath of the recent shooting of a Mexican immigrant in his Chicago home, allegedly by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. The 53-year-old man, Felix Torres, was wounded as agents attempted to serve an arrest warrant for his 23-year-old son. Torres and his wife have resided in Chicago for more than 25 years and are legal residents. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, there were six other people in the home at the time, including three children who are U.S.-born citizens.The son, Felix Torres Jr., who was also born in the U.S., was questioned about his citizenship before being released without charges, the family lawyer says. Agents reportedly say the father pointed a gun at them; the family denies he was armed. Chicagos immigrant community was horrified their worst fears had come true. Emboldened by the Trump administrations vow to take the shackles off ICE agents and reprioritize any unlawfully present immigrants for deportation, the focus is no longer on those with the most severe criminal convictions. First weve got an administration that is escalating the criminalization of our community, and now weve got ICE agents shooting into homes, said Analia Rodriguez, executive director of the Latino Union of Chicago. Its driving a lot of fear in our community people are afraid to go shopping for their groceries, theyre afraid to be in their homes because its clear that (Department of Homeland Security and ICE agents) have guns and are ready to use them. Rodriguez said the Latino Union, which organizes low-income immigrant and U.S.-born workers, views this incident as illustrative of the consequences of a president who rode into office with blustery rhetoric about getting bad hombres out. People need to see that ICE is planning and executing violent raids in our homes and in our workplaces, with no recourse for the people it targets, Rodriguez said. She added change will not come until people who are not directly affected by the threat of deportations or have family or friends living under such a threat understand whats going on in immigrant communities. These sorts of incidents need to open the eyes and ears of people who, in the past, may have read about such incidents in the newspapers or saw something on the news and said, Oh this is really bad, but never really did anything about it. To put it another way, Hispanics both immigrant and U.S.-born alike need non-Hispanics to go to bat for them.The organizations are already out there, working on these issues, said Rodriguez, and we already have people who are willing to sign an online petition or write a check to help us do our work. Some may even come out to a rally. But what we really need are people who will help us get our voices heard. Imagine it: White people, and other non-immigrants, convincing their peers that not all Hispanics are immigrants, that not all immigrants are unlawfully present, and that not all unlawfully present immigrants are violent criminals deserving of aggressive, even deadly, removal. As a homeowner who has watched her electric bill increase by more than 50 percent since 2008, I had high hopes for State Senate Bill 360. Sponsored by Santa Fe nonprofit New Energy Economy and Sen. Joseph Cervantes (D-Las Cruces), the bill required utilities like PNM to solicit open market bids when they sought to add new energy capacity. These bids, obtained through a request for proposal process, would then be analyzed by an independent evaluator. The process was designed to be transparent, fair, and comprehensible to the public and regulators alike. It also offered sustainable energy technologies a level playing field on which to compete with legacy energy interests. Over several days at the Roundhouse, I listened as the bill was debated in committee. Big utilities were predictably opposed, while expert after expert testified in favor, citing the benefits for consumers and suppliers alike. In the end, common sense lost, and regressive thinking and obstructionism prevailed. The question, as always, is why? Competitive bidding is a staple of the American economy. State law already requires utilities to select least-cost solutions to energy problems with preference for minimally environmentally damaging solutions, which implies some sort of comparison shopping. A number of neighboring states, including Arizona, Oklahoma and Utah, have enacted similar laws and the proposed legislation was in line with industry standards. Overall, the RFP process exemplifies good governance: its open, unbiased and mindful of public trust. The New Mexico Senate Democratic Caucus supported SB 360, stating in a February press release, Not only does the bill increase competition, save ratepayers money, promote efficiency, transparency and accountability, in states where competitive procurement for electricity supply has been adopted, the process has also proven to stimulate the economy. In other words, it creates jobs. We want jobs, right? New Mexico currently has the highest unemployment rate in the country. But when innovation meets vested interests, expect blow-back. Neighboring states that have adopted the RFP process are ushering in a rapid transition to renewables, lowering the cost for (energy) generation and ratepayers are reaping the savings from a diversified energy portfolio. These wind and solar resources are a win for good government, good jobs and responsibility to our children, to quote Senator Cervantes. Whats not to like? As always, its instructive to follow the money. A switch to renewable energy threatens utilities legacy investments, which are expensive to maintain. Fixing and replacing outdated technology and mine reclamation costs are pricey, and decommissioning a nuclear plant like Palo Verde could cost billions. Inevitably, a large percentage of these costs are passed on to consumers. PNMs energy portfolio is approximately 60 percent coal and 30 percent nuclear, with renewables coming in at a paltry 10 percent. Solar energy costs half the price of nuclear and 30 percent less than coal, with wind power even less expensive. The company has repeatedly stated renewable energy isnt reliable, cost-effective or feasible, but when Facebook requested 100 percent renewable energy for its proposed Los Lunas plant, PNM said it would have it for the company by the end of this year. The final irony? In a brief for the PRC, PNM admitted the RFP process ensures that renewable resources are procured at the lowest reasonable cost. In other words, the process saves money. Back in that Senate committee room, hypocrisy on the part of utilities and a regrettable legislative strategy of business as usual were on full display. Sen. Pat Woods (R-Broadview) described the proposed bill as mistrust utilities legislation. What he failed to see was that bidding transparency offers utilities a valuable opportunity to generate confidence in consumers burned by rate increase after rate increase. Between 2008 and 2014, at a time when real income was declining for New Mexicans, PNMs ongoing earnings increased a whopping 461%. Sen. Cisco McSorley (D-Albuquerque) got it right when he called SB 360 a consumer protection bill. The Santa Fe City Council recently unanimously passed a resolution in support of SB 360, stating the city uses RFP processes in its own procurement processes. The state should follow the citys lead. Renewable energy is cheap, clean and supported by the majority of New Mexicans. This bill was a win for suppliers and consumers alike, and utilities should have seen it as such, instead of fighting the inevitable. Anne Pedersen is a writer, journalist and visual artist. She lives in Santa Fe. A second round of campaign finance reports for the coming Santa Fe soda tax special election is due today, and likely to show up on the report of the political committee supporting the tax will be something from Albuquerque-based Organizers in the Land of Enchantment, more commonly known as OLE, an Albuquerque-based group that advocates for early childhood education and on other issues. The May 2 election asks voters whether to impose a tax of 2 cents per ounce on sugar-sweetened beverages. The tax is estimated to raise more than $7 million a year to help fund early childhood education programs within the Santa Fe Public Schools district and make pre-K programs available free or at reduced rates to families that otherwise couldnt afford it. On its first campaign finance report itemizing contributions and expenses through March 22, Pre-K for Santa Fe the political committee supporting the tax-for-pre-K plan listed monetary contributions of $100,000 from OLE and another $30,208 in in-kind support. The money from OLE represented virtually all of the cash donated to Pre-K for Santa Fe for the first reporting period. The political committee reported only $1,000 from other sources. OLE isnt saying where the $100,000 came from. OLE is supported by various foundations, as well as membership. There are a lot of different groups, Andrea Serrano, executive director of OLE, said in a recent interview. Charities headed by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and hedge fund manager John D. Arnold have spent money supporting taxes on sugary drinks elsewhere. Bloombergs name showed up on Pre-K for Santa Fes finance report, but as an in-kind contributor of nearly $100,000 for research and media. Serrano pointed out that as a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, OLE is not obligated to disclose its contributors, under existing law. Serrano said that OLE has about 4,000 members statewide. What is OLE? OLE may have filled the void left after the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, disbanded in 2010. ACORN, founded in 1970, advocated on behalf of low-income families on such issues as affordable housing, health care and voter registration until bad publicity led to its demise. It cracked after conservative activists secretly filmed what seemed to show ACORN employees providing advice about how to run a brothel with underage prostitutes. Though the video leaked to the media in 2009 was later found to have been selectively edited and partly falsified, the bad publicity caused Congress to deny all federal funding to the organization. Donations from private contributors also waned, and the group dissolved the next year. Matthew Henderson was Southwest regional director of ACORN at the time. He was listed as the registered agent for OLE at the time the group filed as a domestic nonprofit corporation in November 2009, according to the Secretary of States website, and served as OLEs first executive director until 2015. OLE describes itself as a nonprofit group that uses grassroots organizing to strengthen our communities through social advocacy and economic reform, using issue-based campaigns and electoral engagement to ensure that working families are playing a critical role in shaping New Mexicos future with a united voice. It has a high profile in Albuquerque. OLE was a prominent supporter of the effort that resulted in voter approval of a minimum wage increase in Albuquerque in 2012 and a proposal there to require employers to provide paid sick leave, which will come before Duke City voters in the fall if it withstands legal challenges. OLE also has been part of a legal fight against state limitations on worker wage theft claims and a campaign called Con Mujeres o Contra Mujeres campaign, or Stand With Women or Stand in the Way, to push legislation in favor of securing tax funding for, and access to, programs that supply early childhood education, food subsidies, reproductive health care and environmental oversight. On its website, OLE lists the issues its working on as conservation, citizenship, a healthy workforce, workers rights and early education. Disclosure forms A look at OLEs public 990 form tax filings shows an organization that has grown steadily, nearly doubling its revenues and expenditures over a recent three-year period. For tax year 2011, OLE reported $291,000 in total functional expenses the sum of its program, administrative and fundraising expenses. For 2014, the most recent available, its expenses totaled $632,000. More than $460,000 of that was spent on program services. Over the same period, total revenue increased from $327,000 to $637,000. Contributions tripled during that time. OLE reported contributions of $58,000 in 2011. Contrtibutions jumped to over $100,000 the next year and were reported at $176,000 in 2014. Although Serrano wouldnt say where OLE came up with the $100,000 it gave to Pre-K for Santa Fe, she was happy to talk about the groups work. She said OLE has been lobbying the Legislature to support early childhood education using money from the states permanent fund the past several years. Those efforts have been unsuccessful. OLEs website features a timeline chart showing its effort in support of pre-K, starting with organization of a group called the Working Parents Association in 2010. Asked why the group had such an interest in the soda tax election in Santa Fe, Serrano said that in addition to getting involved in an issue that OLE supports, it wants to be good neighbors. Traditionally in New Mexico, the way we look at things here and the way we talk about access to early education, people look out for each other, she said. Albuquerque wants what is good for its neighbors. Whats good in one town in New Mexico is good for another town. Grass roots effort Sandra Wechsler of Pre-K for Santa Fe said her group welcomes OLEs involvement. They are a statewide organization that has been working to pass pre-K for many, many years. Theyve become known as an amazing grass-roots organization with a fantastic reputation, both for being effective and community-oriented, she said. Wechsler said OLE is a natural partner for Pre-K for Santa Fe because of its advocacy for early childhood education. Because the issue hasnt made progress at the state level, it makes sense for OLE to take on the issue in a local election. This is an exciting opportunity to try something different, she said. OLEs in-kind contributions involved members of the group canvassing Santa Fe neighborhoods to encourage registered voters to support the tax. We have a great team of folks who are talking to voters every day, mostly doing education, Serrano said. A lot of the information being passed around about the election has been false information. What were doing really gives voters an opportunity to ask questions and engage in conversation. A lot of what were missing today is the opportunity to have those one-on-one conversations, and those are vital because thats what makes this a community effort. Serrano and Wechsler both argue that theirs is a community-based effort, whereas the political committee opposing the tax is supported mostly by the soda industry. That committee, Better Way for Santa Fe & Pre-K, disclosed on its campaign finance report that the Washington D.C.-based American Beverage Association, also a nonprofit, contributed $100,000 in cash and $150,000 of in-kind contributions, which included advertising and consulting. Better Way also received more than $44,000 in in-kind services from the local Coca-Cola distributor, which paid for signs, fliers, employee time and meals. Coca-Cola North America in Atlanta contributed an additional $16,000 of in-kind contributions to pay for employee time, meals and travel. The Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce provided $2,000 worth of in-kind contributions for employee time and travel. In a related matter, Gov. Susana Martinez must decide by today whether to OK or veto legislation that would make nonprofits and other dark money groups subject to financial disclosure requirements on spending and donors when they spend at least $1,000 on campaigns. However, the bill apparently wouldnt apply to how the nonprofits OLE and the ABA have participated in the soda tax campaign fight, as long as the nonprofits could still be considered merely contributors of money and services to political committees, instead of operating independently, in trying to sway voters. Another group has entered the public conversation over a proposed tax on sugary drinks in Santa Fe. The libertarian or free-market think tank Rio Grande Foundation said Thursday that it was launching what it calls an education initiative, dubbed No Way Santa Fe, about what it says is Mayor Javier Gonzales public deception campaign on the soda tax. Gonzales proposed a tax of 2 cents per ounce on the distributors of sugar-sweetened beverages to help pay for early childhood education programs. After gaining the support of all but one member of the City Council, the fate of tax will be decided by voters in a May 2 special election. Mayor Javier Gonzales may think Santa Feans will fall for his tax-and-spend scheme, but he will soon find the city different as most residents are opposed to regressive taxes that target the poor and middle class, Paul Gessing, president of the Rio Grande Foundation, said in a news release. The involvement of the Rio Grande Foundation and another group, Smart Progress New Mexico, is raising questions about the line between political committees formally supporting or opposing the tax measure and nonprofit groups that say they arent specifically urging people to vote yes or no but are instead working to educate the public about the issue. PACs for and against the tax are required to file public campaign finance reports detailing their donors and spending, and two dueling PACs have done so. New disclosure reports are due today. Groups or nonprofits that merely educate can skirt the disclosure requirements under the current state of election law. Our efforts are purely educational within the scope of our 501(c)(3), Gessing by e-mail Thursday. I dont believe we are required to file under city law, although I understand there is some debate over this. Gessing said the Rio Grande Foundation has already spent money on Facebook advertisements and plans to run radio ads. The legal issue of when a 501(c)(3) is doing more than educating is a really messy area of the law, said Karen Heldmeyer, a former city councilor who is not an attorney but has worked to improve the citys campaign code. While not directly telling voters to vote against the tax, the Rio Grande Foundations news release says the tax would be bad policy because it would be regressive and disproportionately hurt poor and middle-class families; is bad criminal justice policy because it could create an illegal market for smuggled soda; is bad social policy because it taxes sugary drinks at a much higher rate than beer; and is bad education policy because the effectiveness of pre-K programs and the sustainability of the soda tax as a funding source are questionable. As has been the case with some other advertisements that never say vote for or vote against, this comes closer to the line of being political, Heldmeyer said after reviewing RGFs press release. Its definitely against the tax but never says vote against it. Complicating matters is that the foundation is a well-established group that has been around for years. The political committees formally calling for yes or no votes and Smart Progress New Mexico the other nonprofit that has entered the fray were created only after the mayors proposal had been introduced. Legally, its different, Heldmeyer said of the Rio Grande Foundation. Theyre an already established entity and havent been created for the purposes of this election, but where that line is between educating and advocating is a really unclear. Asked to respond to the foundations accusation that the mayor had engaged in a public deception campaign, the mayor sent an emailed statement saying, This from the same people who have advocated for the policies that put New Mexico dead last in child well-being, children living in poverty and economic growth. They may have found an audience in the Governors Mansion, but Santa Feans are smarter than that. The truth is we eliminated a $15 million deficit and have built one of New Mexicos strongest job-creating economies all without raising a single persons taxes. Now, were fighting for a dedicated revenue source that will change kids lives for the better in this community by giving 1,000 families access to high-quality pre-K, and I believe this city will come together to ignore these attacks. City attorney acts On Wednesday, the City Attorneys Office sent a letter to Smart Progress New Mexico, saying that if it has spent more than $250 on advertisements that reached more than 100 eligible voters, it must file a campaign finance report with the City Clerks Office, as per the citys campaign code. The letter from Assistant City Attorney Zach Shandler said that if the group didnt believe it was required to file disclosures, it should contact the City Clerks Office and explain why not in writing. A similar letter was sent to the Rio Grande Foundation on Thursday. In an interview last month, Smart Progress New Mexico spokesman Loveless Johnson III told the Journal the group was planning to file as a political committee with the city, but it never did. At that time, the group was circulating a petition against the tax. As of Thursday afternoon, it was inviting people to sign its No Unfair Tax Petition on its website. Tell the Santa Fe Mayor and City Council NO to any new unfair taxes! the site says, possibly referring to the City Councils recent vote to put the tax on the ballot. Like that statement, images on the Smart Progress Facebook page steer away from telling people to vote no in the May election, although they come close. One says Tax the poor to help the poor? No. We can do better. Another asks, Why is the mayor rushing us into an unfair tax that cant ever sustain fully funding our pre-K? Is it political? Johnson did not return phone messages left for him Thursday. LOS ALAMOS Joe Bergstein would bury up to 50 bodies a day in mass graves while working in Japanese prison camps during World War II. He told himself he wouldnt be buried that way. If there were more than 25, we had to dig two big holes, Bergstein said. I dont know how rigor mortis works exactly, but wed lower them into this hole that was only 4 or 5 feet deep and there would be an arm sticking up. I would stand on the side of the hole and push the arm down with my foot. We didnt want it sticking out for animals. At his Los Alamos home Thursday, Bergstein said he and his fellow soldiers would cover the naked bodies with dry grass, just to preserve some dignity, before the chaplain came out to help guide souls to the next realm. The chaplain would finish up and say, For we must surely follow,' Bergstein said. I would look at these racks of bones and say, Not like that, I aint.' Bergstein, now 94, survived more than three years in the Japanese prison camps. Sunday, April 9, marks 75 years since he was among about 75,000 American and Filipino troops who surrendered to the Japanese in 1942. They subsequently were forced to make what is known as the Bataan Death March to various prison camps throughout the Philippines, during which an estimated 10,000 died. Many more died in captivity 11,500 among the American prisoners, according to the New Mexico National Guard. There were 1,800 New Mexico prisoners more than half died before the wars end. Only 11 of the former New Mexico troops survive, according to the state Department of Veterans Affairs. There will be ceremonies across the state this weekend to commemorate the grim anniversary, including one in Santa Fe hosted by the New Mexico National Guard at the Bataan Building, downtown at 400 Don Gaspar Ave., at 10 a.m. Sunday. There will be a reception immediately following the ceremony at the New Mexico National Guard Museum on Old Pecos Trail. Bergstein wasnt part of the sizeable New Mexico contingent in the Philippines he grew up in a town outside Pittsburgh, Pa., and joined the Army in February 1941 because, he says, he couldnt find another job after graduating high school the year before during the tail end of the Great Depression. He was soon stationed in the Philippines, which at the time was a U.S. territory. Japanese forces bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1941, and began dropping bombs on the Philippines hours later. Japanese troops then landed about 30 kilometers south of where Bergstein was stationed at Luzon. He said soldiers had to escape and make their way to Fort McKinley, in Manila, on the same island. There wasnt a road that led all the way to Manila. We eventually had to blow up our trucks and our equipment, and walk the rest of the way. We had to keep the Japanese from getting them. Bergstein said the soldiers eventually made it back to Manila, just in time to be evacuated to Bataan, a peninsula across Manila Bay American and Filipino forces tried to hold off Japanese invaders there, but they were overwhelmed and eventually surrendered. We would lay down our arms and their troops would do as they wanted, he said. Sometimes, when they came upon groups, they shot us, and sometimes they accepted a surrender. Bergstein said he had not eaten for about three days when he was captured and weighed about 100 pounds. He said his captors would make the Americans carry their packs and marched them out of Bataan to various prison camps in groups of 100. On the hellships It was a long slog, he said. I didnt have anything to eat for at least eight days and water was very hard to come by. The (Japanese) were gratuitously cruel. There were wells along the road that had bamboo pipes dripping with water, but Bergstein said anyone who tried to get a sip paid the ultimate price. They shot anybody that tried to go over there and fill their canteen, he said. They shot anybody that fell out of the march, or bayoneted them whatever they felt like doing. It was pretty terrible. We never called it a death march in the camps. We referred to it as the hike.' The Japanese then loaded 100 prisoners each on train boxcars to be shipped to Camp ODonnell, originally a Filipino army post. Bergstein said the boxcars were so tightly packed that men who died on the trip stayed standing up. About 1,300 prisoners were killed in six weeks at ODonnell, he said. After Bergstein was put on burial detail at the camp, he buried 35 to 50 soldiers a day. Troops mainly died of malaria, dysentery and diphtheria. Anything was fatal, he said. You really had to take care of yourself. Bergstein was moved to a camp outside Manila in the spring of 1944 and the camp was later attacked by U.S. bombers. Prisoners were then moved to a penitentiary in Manila before being put on ships and sent to Japan. They were all hellships and they were well named, Bergstein said. They were literally hell. They packed us into the hull standing up. Just back-to-chest and back-to-chest. A lot of people who were good, strong men were really broken on that ship. People tried to walk around at night and everywhere they went they stepped on people. He said some people would beat each other to death with canteens. Bergstein got to Japan in January 1945 and began working in a copper mine before working in an electric motor repair shop. The Japanese finally surrendered on Aug. 15, 1945, and guards at the prison camp fled. A Navy plane found Bergsteins camp a few days later, and started dropping food and other supplies. Soldiers stayed at the camp for about a month before leaving. We started really stuffing ourselves, which we now know we shouldnt have done, but we all got away with it. It was a hell of an end. The soldiers eventually ended up on a Navy ship and began their recovery. We hadnt had bread in years, Bergstein said. It tasted like cake. They gave us ice cream. It was wonderful. They spent about six weeks in the Philippines, fattening up again, before going back to the States. Despite surviving over three years of unspeakable horrors, Bergstein said it was fairly easy to resume life in America. How did I move on? Easy, he said. They sent me to Miami Beach for a week for rest and recuperation. It was great. I almost re-enlisted. Bergstein went to college in Virginia when he returned, and majored in math and physics. By 1947, he was married and had a child, and he moved to New Mexico for a job in Los Alamos after getting his masters degree. Hes been in New Mexico for more than six decades. Along with many other Bataan survivors, he didnt become involved in veteran affairs after leaving the Pacific. He said he went to one Bataan memorial ceremony in the past, but said he wont likely do that again. I never became a professional veteran, he said. I never joined any of the organizations. I just walked away. I had the chance to go to college and Ive had a good life here. IF YOU GO Events commemorating the 75th anniversary of the fall of the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines in World War II and the beginning of the Bataan Death March: Saturday, the Filipino-American Foundation of New Mexico will host its annual Bataan Remembrance Day Ceremony at Bataan Memorial Park in Albuquerque at 1 p.m. Sunday, the New Mexico National Guard will host its annual Bataan Remembrance Day Ceremony at the Eternal Flame Monument in front of the Bataan Memorial Building downtown at 10 a.m. There will be a reception immediately after the ceremony at the New Mexico National Guard Museum on Old Pecos Trail. Sunday, the Remember Bataan Foundation of Las Cruces will host state Department of Veterans Services Secretary Jack Fox for a ceremony at 4 p.m. at the Veterans Memorial Park on North Roadrunner Parkway. A 21-year-old man is facing charges for the third time in a 2015 murder case that has been dismissed twice before, according to court documents. The new indictment, filed March 23, comes just eight months after a prosecutor dismissed the case, saying a thorough investigation showed that pursuing the charges would not be in the best interest of justice. Michael Patrick, a spokesman for the District Attorneys Office said a recent reexamination of the evidence revealed a nugget that was enough for prosecutors to decide it was worth reopening. Isaiah Vasquez is accused in the death of Carla Estrada, who was shot and killed in a southwest Albuquerque residential street in March 2015. Online court records show his case has yet to be assigned to a defense attorney. The murder case was first indicted in March 2015, only to be dismissed by a judge in September 2015 over missed deadlines. By December 2015, Vasquez was facing the same charges again, which were dismissed in August 2016 when prosecutor Donald Sears Jr. said that a thorough pre-trial investigation revealed insufficient evidence to proceed. The state takes its ethical duties very seriously and it would not be in the best interests of justice to proceed at this time, wrote Sears, who Patrick said no longer works for the DAs Office. Prosecutors sometimes revisit dismissed homicide cases, Patrick said, to search for signs that it could be worth refiling. A second set of eyes might find something new, he said, and different prosecutors have different approaches. In this case, a second look at a detailed firearms report, physical evidence collected at the scene and a criminalistics report led to the decision, he said. Its our belief that there is sufficient evidence to reopen the case, he said. According to police, Vasquez pulled out a gun as an argument between his girlfriend and Estrada escalated into a physical fight during a party at a home near Unser and Arenal. When Vasquez and his girlfriend were asked to leave the party, he fired a shot into the air before jumping into a Dodge Charger. His girlfriend hopped into the drivers seat, and she and Estrada continued to fight through the window. Police said Vasquez admitted firing through the drivers side window, though he also said he did not know hed shot Estrada. Vasquez is also charged with aggravated battery, shooting from a vehicle, aggravated assault and shooting at an occupied dwelling. BEIRUT World leaders rallied around the United States after it launched a missile strike early Friday on a Syrian air base in response to this weeks chemical attack, while Russia condemned the move as aggression and suspended crucial coordination with Washington in Syrias congested skies. The overnight missile attack, which marked the first time the U.S. has directly targeted Syrian President Bashar Assads forces, was condemned by his allies in Russia and Iran but welcomed by the Syrian opposition and its supporters, who expressed hope it signaled a turning point in the devastating six-year-old civil war. The bombing represents Trumps most dramatic military order since taking office and thrusts the U.S. administration deeper into the complex Syrian conflict. The Obama administration threatened to attack Assads forces after previous chemical attacks, but never followed through. About 60 U.S. Tomahawk missiles hit the Shayrat air base, a small installation with two runways, where aircraft often take off to bomb targets in northern and central Syria. The U.S. missiles hit at 3:45 a.m. (0045 GMT) Friday and targeted the bases airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, U.S. officials said. They were fired from two warships in the Mediterranean Sea, in retaliation for Tuesdays deadly chemical attack, which officials said used chlorine mixed with a nerve agent, possibly sarin. Assads office called the U.S. missile strike reckless and irresponsible. The Syrian military said at least seven people were killed and nine wounded. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition monitor said the seven included a general and three soldiers. The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin believes the U.S. strike is an aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Washingtons move deals a significant blow to the Russia-U.S. relations, which are already in a deplorable shape, and poses a serious obstacle for creating an international coalition against terrorism. Russia said it is suspending a memorandum with Washington signed after Russia began an air campaign in support of Assad in September 2015 under which the two exchange information about their sorties over Syria. The Kremlin said just 23 of 59 missiles reached the air base, destroying six Syrian jets but leaving the runway intact. A U.S. official said all but one of the 59 missiles struck their targets, hitting multiple aircraft and air shelters, and destroying the fuel area. The official, who was not authorized to discuss initial reports, spoke on condition of anonymity. A U.S.-led coalition has been bombing Islamic State targets in Syria since 2014, while Russias air force has been striking both extremist groups and Syrian rebels in order to aid Assads forces. Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which support the Syrian opposition, welcomed the missile strike, with Riyadh calling it a courageous decision by Trump. Iran called it a dangerous move that would strengthen terrorists and exacerbate the conflict. Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Lebanese group that has sent thousands of fighters to Syria to bolster Assad, said the foolish strike would lead to a dangerous escalation in the region. The British government said it was informed in advance about the strike and firmly supports the American action. Prime Minister Theresa Mays office says the action was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, and is intended to deter further attacks. France, Italy and Israel also welcomed the strikes. The opposition Syrian Coalition said the U.S. attack puts an end to an age of impunity and should herald the start of a larger campaign against Damascus. Maj. Jamil al-Saleh, a U.S-backed rebel commander based in the area where the U.S. attack took place, told The Associated Press he hoped the strike would be a turning point in the six-year-old war, which has killed an estimated 400,000 people. Assad had been under mounting international pressure after the chemical attack on the northern town of Khan Sheikhoun, which killed 87 people, including 31 children. Even Russia has said its support is not unconditional. Syria denied using chemical weapons. Russia has said the toxic agents were released when a Syrian airstrike hit a rebel chemical weapons arsenal, and that blame should not be apportioned until a full investigation has been completed. Russias military intervention in Syria has turned the balance of power in Assads favor, and Moscow has used its veto power at the Security Council on several occasions to prevent sanctions against Damascus. The U.S. had initially focused on diplomatic efforts, pressing the U.N. Security Council to adopt a resolution to condemn Syrias suspected use of chemical weapons. But the vote was canceled because of differences among the 15 members. The Security Council plans to meet at 11:30 a.m. (1530 GMT) for a briefing on the U.S. strike. In Geneva, the U.N. envoy for Syria told the AP his office is in crisis mode after the strike, and that he would soon convene an urgent meeting of a Syrian cease-fire task force chaired by the United States and Russia. Staffan de Mistura said Russia requested the meeting, which was agreed upon by the United States. The envoy has been spearheading peace-making efforts for nearly three years, with little progress. Trump had said the chemical attack crossed many, many lines, and put the blame squarely on Assads forces. Speaking Thursday on Air Force One, Trump said the attack shouldnt have happened, and it shouldnt be allowed to happen. A survivor of the chemical attack said he hopes the U.S. missile attack puts an end to government airstrikes, creating a safe area for civilians. Alaa Alyousef, who lost 25 relatives in the chemical attack, said the U.S. missile strike alleviates a small part of our suffering, but he worries it will be an anesthetic that merely numbs the pain while allowing the international community to save face. ___ Associated Press writers Albert Aji in Damascus, Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow, Lolita C. Baldor in Washington and Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report. PALM BEACH, Fla. What was billed as a showdown between the leaders of the United States and China over trade and North Korea ended with little sign of confrontation Friday or of concrete progress in resolving their differences. President Donald Trump had predicted a very difficult meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. After their first face-to-face at the Mar-a-Lago resort, he trumpeted they had developed an outstanding relationship. U.S. officials said the two sides agreed to increase cooperation on trying to get North Koreas to abandon its nuclear weapons program, and China acknowledged the need for more balanced trade with the U.S. But the two days of meetings appeared heavier on optics than substance. The most powerful message for the Chinese leader may have been Trumps decision to launch U.S. missile strikes at Syria. Those strikes added weight to Trumps threat last week to act unilaterally against North Koreas weapons program although a much heavier risk would be required to take military action against the nuclear-armed North, which has its artillery and missiles trained on a key U.S. ally, South Korea. The U.S. administrations first recourse is very likely to be economic pushing China to crack down on Chinese banks and companies said to provide North Korea access to the international financial system. In a possible harbinger of the kind of punishments Washington could inflict, a leading Chinese telecoms company, ZTE, was fined nearly $900 million in March for shipping sensitive U.S.-made technology to Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions. They recognize that shows our clear determination to crack down on this sort of activity, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told reporters. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the U.S. and China agreed to increase cooperation and work with the international community to convince the DPRK to peacefully resolve the issue and abandon its illicit weapons programs. DPRK stands for North Koreas official name, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea. Tillerson said Trump and Xi noted the urgency of the threat of North Koreas weapons program and that they reaffirmed their commitment to a denuclearization of the divided Korean Peninsula. On trade issues, Trump called for China to level the playing field for American workers, stressing the need for reciprocal market access. He also noted the importance of protecting human rights, and asked China to adhere to international norms in the seas of East Asia, Tillerson said. As a candidate and president, Trump has taken an aggressive posture toward China, labeling Beijing a tremendous problem and arguing that lopsided trade deals with China shortchange American businesses and workers. Some $347 billion of the $502 billion trade deficit recorded by the U.S. last year was with China. Trump said in a brief appearance before reporters Friday that he and Xi made tremendous progress in their talks and that he believes lots of very potentially bad problems will be going away. He did not elaborate. For Xi, who is entering a twice-a-decade Communist Party congress in the fall, the meeting with Trump was more about stabilizing the critical U.S.-China relationship and burnishing his foreign policy credentials than achieving a breakthrough. The only other foreign leader to be hosted at Mar-a-Lago during Trumps presidency so far is Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a close U.S. ally. Speaking alongside Trump, Xi said the two delegations discussed important topics and established a good friendship and working relationship. He noted the historic responsibility of both countries the worlds largest economies and emerging military rivals to work toward peace and stability. The visit was overshadowed by the missile barrage aimed at Syria, announced shortly after Trump and Xi wrapped up dinner Thursday night. The strikes were retaliation against Syrian President Bashar Assad for a chemical weapons attack against civilians caught up in his countrys long civil war. Chinas response was muted. Its U.N. ambassador, Liu Jieyi, never mentioned the suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria, or the U.S. airstrikes, at an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Friday. Liu focused instead on the need for a political solution to the six-year Syrian conflict. ___ Pennington reported from Washington. Follow Vivian Salama at http://twitter.com/vmsalama The controversy surrounding the Omaha Public Schools board and its failed search for a new superintendent filtered into the state education boardroom Thursday. Nebraska Education Commissioner Matt Blomstedt acknowledged state education board members have heard from community members asking if the state can address problems that led to all three OPS superintendent finalists withdrawing from consideration last month. The bottom line: the state board and the Nebraska Department of Education dont have the authority to step in or to hire a superintendent but they are willing to offer assistance if the OPS board asks for it. That assistance could take the form of providing resources to the board or helping train new board members, Blomstedt said. Im convinced we can help in some circumstances, but we have to understand our role, he said. "I dont want anyone in the state of Nebraska to believe we dont want to be part of the solution. The OPS board which in January hit a stalemate after 125 rounds of voting for the board president is now planning to hire an interim superintendent. John Witzel, board member from Papillion, said the focus should remain on making sure the 52,000 students at OPS are getting the education they need. While the problems with the OPS board have gotten a lot of attention, it isn't the only school board in the state to have problems, nor is OPS the only district to be without a superintendent, Blomstedt said. He said hed like to find ways for the state to work with school boards more regularly, offering strategies for working effectively or helping new board members. The education department has worked closely with school districts, including OPS, on ways to improve student achievement, Blomstedt said. So far, the OPS boards problems have not affected the states work with Druid Hill Elementary, one of three low-performing schools where the state has intervened. AP/Journal staff The Senate has confirmed Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, bringing a contentious 14-month partisan battle to a close after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Sens. Martin Heinrich and Tom Udall, both Democrats, voted against the former 10th Circuit Court judge from Denver. The vote was 54-45 on Friday. The victory gives President Donald Trumps 49-year-old nominee a lifetime spot on the court and his party a much-needed political win after failing to pass legislation on health care and other issues. The final confirmation vote came after Senate Republicans rewrote the chambers rules, voting to eliminate the 60-vote filibuster threshold on Supreme Court nominees. The change allowed the Senate to proceed to the final vote with a simple majority. Democrats opposed Gorsuch in part because Senate Republicans blocked former President Barack Obamas nominee, Merrick Garland, last year. 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. PHOENIX An Arizona Court of Appeals ruling rejects a 72-year-old mans appeal that his gun rights must be restored on grounds that the state didnt enact a ban on felons possessing guns until years after his own conviction. Robert Nixon argued that applying the 1994 law suspending felons gun rights cannot apply retroactively to him because his conviction for attempted child molestation occurred in 1987. However, the court ruling Thursday said applying the 1994 law to a person convicted of a felony before 1994 is permissible. The ruling said thats because the law merely relates to circumstances at the time the statute was enacted, namely that Nixon was a felon at the time. The ruling says that doesnt attach new legal consequences to a conviction before 1993. President Donald Trump raised the ire of his counterpart in Moscow by striking a Syrian airfield Thursday, and in doing so disrupted the media narrative that he is too cozy with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Coverage of Trumps military action has noted that the launch of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles aimed at the airfield from which Syrian President Bashar Assads forces are believed to have deployed a chemical-weapon attack on civilians this week puts the United States at odds with Russia, which has supported the Assad regime. A few excerpts from the coverage: Putin denounced the U.S. action as aggression against a sovereign state in violation of the norms of international law under a far-fetched pretext. He said the strikes dealt a serious blow to Russian-U.S. relations and that their aim was to distract from the civilian deaths from coalition airstrikes in Iraq, a statement from his press office said. (CNN) Mr. Putin considered the attack a breach of international law that had been made under a false pretext, Peskov said. Moscow also called on the United Nations Security Council to convene an emergency meeting, and the Russian Foreign Ministry said it was freezing an agreement with the United States to coordinate air operations over Syria. (New York Times) Trumps decision to strike Syrian government forces is a particularly notable shift for a leader who in the past had repeatedly said he wanted better relations with Moscow, including to cooperate with Russia to fight Islamic State. Russian media long portrayed Trump as a figure who would promote closer relations with Moscow. At home, Trumps opponents have accused him of being too supportive of Putin. (Reuters) The Reuters excerpt captures the dynamic perfectly. During the presidential campaign, Trump praised Putin, calling him a stronger leader than former president Barack Obama. After his inauguration, Trump did little to inspire confidence that he could stand up to Putin when he defended the Russian leader in a high-profile interview on Super Bowl Sunday. Interviewer Bill OReilly of Fox News remarked to Trump that Putin is a killer, referring to suspicions that the Kremlin has been behind the deaths of journalists and political dissidents. There are a lot of killers, Trump replied. We have a lot of killers. Well, you think our country is so innocent? Most significant, FBI Director James B. Comey confirmed last month that his agency is investigating whether Trumps campaign colluded with Russia to meddle in the election by spreading negative information about Democrat Hillary Clinton. There is no proof of collusion, but the FBI and CIA agree that Russia sought to help Trump win a conclusion that would seem to make the president disinclined to cross such a powerful supporter. Yet that is exactly what Trump did by authorizing Thursdays airstrike. The move does not answer questions about collusion one way or the other, but it does counter the notion that Trump might reflexively yield to Putin on important decisions. Sign up for the Todays WorldView Newsletter The Washington Post. Two Marines have been disciplined for posting derogatory comments on social media, marking the first time the Marine Corps has officially punished members for online misconduct following last months revelations that hundreds of service members shared illicit photos of their female counterparts on a Facebook group, Marine officials said Friday. The two active-duty Marines, one a noncommissioned officer and the other a junior enlisted Marine, had made demeaning comments about one of their enlisted leaders, said a Marine official, who requested anonymity to speak about punishments that had not been made public. The Marines were reduced in rank and lost pay, the official said. The Marines belonged to 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, an infantry unit stationed in California. The Marines and Sailors of 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines do not tolerate personal attacks on their Marines, online or elsewhere, said the units commander, Lt. Col. Warren Cook, in a statement. This kind of behavior flies in the face of our services core values and this organization refuses to condone it. The comments were part of a longer thread that disparaged a female Marine who had completed infantry training, the official said. This is a good a start, said Erin Kirk-Cuomo, a former Marine sergeant who co-founded the group Not in My Marine Corps. The organization is composed of active-duty and veteran service members committed to ending sexual assault and sexual harassment in the armed services. These guys werent advocating for the assault of women and theyre being punished, she said. The Marine Corps is taking swift action, and thats exactly what we need. The punishments come as the Marine Corps scrambles to combat a subculture of sexism and misogyny that has flourished on numerous social media pages in recent years. News reports in 2013 and 2014 brought the issues to light, but it wasnt until last month that the branchs leadership decided to take action after a Marine-turned-journalist exposed a Facebook page where Marines were sharing illicit photos of women without their permission. In the weeks since, the top-ranking officer in the Marine Corps, Gen. Robert B. Neller, has testified in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee. On Capitol Hill, lawmakers tore into Neller for what they considered a long-standing record of inaction on the issue. Have you actually investigated and found guilty anybody? Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., asked. If we cant crack Facebook, how are we supposed to be able to confront Russian aggression and cyberhacking throughout our military? On Wednesday, two female Marines spoke about the photo scandal to lawmakers in the Democratic Womens Working Group. Erika Butner, a Marine who left active duty recently, told the group that female recruits are taught from the beginning to accept an overtly sexist culture and that those involved in the photo-sharing scandal need to be publicly punished. Im not blaming the drill instructors, she said. They were preparing us to have thick skin because it is so ingrained in this culture that they dont know how to change it, so they go with the grain. No Marine officials attended Wednesdays meeting, drawing ire from some of the lawmakers present, including Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif. Last month Speier, as well as others in the House, introduced a bill that wound amend the militarys Uniform Code of Military Justice to allow for harsher punishments for service members caught distributing private sexual images. Since news of the scandal broke, Marine officials have created a task force to understand and combat the services cultural issues. They also have implemented a new social media policy that Marines have to read and sign. In recent weeks, the Naval Criminal Investigation Service has identified hundreds of names potentially associated with sharing the illicit photos and has set up a tip line for those affected to come forward. In March, Neller said that more than 20 people had reported some sort of online harassment associated with photo sharing. Sign up for the Todays WorldView Newsletter The Washington Post. PHOENIX Phoenix police say one man is dead and another wounded following a shooting early Friday morning at a large party held in a parking lot in downtown Phoenix. Sgt. Alan Pfohl says callers reported hearing approximately 20 shots and that the wounded mans injury isnt life-threatening. Pfohl also says people were leaving the area when officers arrived and that potential witnesses at the site several blocks south of Chase Field were uncooperative with police. Media outlets reported that the party was a fish fry sponsored by a motorcycle club with about 1,000 people in attendance. New Mexico Rep. Steve Pearce, a Republican, and Sen. Martin Heinrich, a Democrat, today both voiced support for American air strikes on Syria as a response to poison gas attacks by the Syrian government on its own people. However, Heinrich also warned that the Trump administration must have a good strategy moving forward. Regardless of who is president, or which party occupies the White House, we have a moral obligation to act when a regime violates international law and gasses their own people with impunity, Heinrich told the Journal. Last night, we sent an important message to the world that the United States will not stand by when chemical weapons kill dozens of innocent people, including children. The situation in Syria is incredibly complex. We cannot and should not become directly entangled in a civil war in the Middle East. The Trump Administration must have a strategy with an end game in sight. Pearce said he stood behind the presidents action. The atrocities of the Syrian Civil War were seen by the world in yesterdays horrific use of chemical weapons on men, women, and children in Syria, Pearce said. President Trump demonstrated through his actions that the United States will not stand back and watch in silence while crimes against humanity occur. I stand behind the Presidents targeted response and believe the administration needs to work towards a strategic plan led by moderate Arab states that brings stability to Syria so its people and families can return to leading normal lives. Sen. Tom Udall, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, sounded alarm about Trumps Syria strike, saying it showed a disturbing lack of respect for the possible ramifications. Bashar al-Assad should be held accountable for the heinous killing of his own people, including the many thousands who have been murdered by chemical and conventional weapons alike throughout his time in power. And I pray that all U.S. service personnel involved in these and any U.S. military actions are safe and secure, Udall said in a statement. But the presidents decision to launch s retaliation showed a disturbing lack of respect for the extremely dangerous impact our actions can have on American troops and the Syrian people and how they could affect the civil war and the greater war against ISIS in the region. It isnt at all clear that further U.S. involvement, military regime change, and occupation of Syria during this complex civil war will truly save lives. In fact, an escalation of our involvement in this exceedingly complicated conflict may only make matters worse. Udall also noted Trumps contrary statements about Syria. One of the things that concerns me the most is how quickly President Trump changed tack, from backing Assad to bombing him over a few days. What does President Trump plan to do if Assad gasses his own people again, and what is the U.S. approach with regard to Russia and Iran, which are propping up the Assad regime? Udall asked. Does the policy of attacking first and asking questions later also apply to other countries where civilian populations are threatened by civil war and authoritarian leadership? After arguing against foreign interventions as a candidate, President Trump has, in less than 100 days, sent hundreds of troops to Syria and now launched a missile attack. The American people should be very concerned that we are heading rapidly toward another war in the Middle East with no strategy, no clear time frame or cost, no clear winner and no authorization from Congress. Udall also said he worries about another U.S. quagmire in the Middle East. My position is the same under President Trumps administration as it was under President Obamas, he said. Targeted airstrikes in response to chemical attacks may or may not have an impact on Assads behavior, but the United States cant afford endless war and occupation in the Middle East. The president should seek a new AUMF for the fight against ISIS. And if he wants to wage war against the Syrian government, the Constitution requires him to seek an AUMF from Congress. If he does not, Congress should vote on whether to allow President Trump to maintain the troops he already sent into Syrian territory. Congress must do its job before our men and women in uniform are sent into another catastrophic war from which many may never return home. Meanwhile, Rep. Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., demanded congressional involvement on any additional military action by the U.S. in Syria following President Donald Trumps decision to strike the Middle Eastern country. Lujan issued a statement this morning and Udall on sounded off on Twitter Thursday night. Syrias use of chemical weapons against civilians and children is a despicable and heinous act, Lujan said. While this missile strike was clearly meant to deter their use, chemical weapons need to be dealt with by a global coalition. Before we take any further military action, Congress should be called back from recess to be briefed, and a plan must be presented, reviewed, and debated. Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham, also a Democrat, offered a more lengthy and nuanced response Friday. The gas attacks and slaughter of innocent civilians and children in Syria is yet another act against humanity by the Russian-backed Assad regime, said Lujan Grisham, who is seeking the New Mexico governorship in 2018. These are war crimes that cannot go unanswered. However, Americans deserve a plan of action, which means an immediate debate in Congress regarding the use of force. We cannot allow an inexperienced and volatile President to act alone when the stakes are so high. President Trumps illegal anti-refugee actions have only worsened the political crisis in Syria, emboldened our enemies, and turned our back on millions of innocent people fleeing Assads crimes against humanity. We must work on a comprehensive approach to hold Assad and his Russian backers accountable, address the humanitarian crisis, and develop an international political strategy to ultimately end the violence. SANTA FE Gov. Susana Martinezs veto pen struck down the $350 million tax package proposed by the Democratic-controlled Legislature and took the unprecedented action of removing all funding for the states colleges and universities. Those actions set the stage for a special session in the coming weeks. The two-term Republican governor did sign a separate budget bill approved by lawmakers but used her line-item veto authority to ax $774.8 million from the plan including the higher education funding as well as all funding for the legislative branch. Those vetoes were apparently aimed at forcing lawmakers back to the bargaining table for the special session while temporarily balancing the spending bill without tax increases. Both lawmakers and the governor said they intend to pass a new funding measure for universities and the legislative branch in a special session, but university leaders say the vetoes could make it difficult for them to plan for the coming budget year, which starts in less than three months. And the vetoes drew scathing criticism from top-ranking Democratic lawmakers. Senate Finance Committee Chairman John Arthur Smith, D-Deming, said Martinezs action reflected a lack of fiscal competence. Ive served under five governors, and all of those previous governors were responsible, Smith told the Journal. The bottom line is, Ive never seen anything like this. Another longtime lawmaker, Senate Minority Leader Stuart Ingle, R-Portales, called the governors actions a little bit different, but expressed confidence that a deal will be struck to ensure adequate funding is provided before July. Weve got to come back up there and get it fixed, and Im sure we will, Ingle said Friday. Martinez, who also vetoed a Democratic-backed tax overhaul measure, signaled Friday that there would be ample time in the special session to come up with a new funding measure for higher education institutions, which have already faced steep spending reductions in recent years. But the governor also expressed simmering frustration with the Senate for not holding confirmation hearings on several of her regent appointees, including some at the University of New Mexico, as part of the reason for her line-item veto of $744.8 million in proposed funding for colleges and universities. The Legislature has disappointed me in the past, but I cannot recall another time where Ive ever felt that their reckless decision had left New Mexico hanging in the balance, Martinez said in a statement. Budget crisis A state budget crisis caused largely by plummeting oil and natural gas prices was a dominant theme in this years 60-day legislative session, which ended last month. Lawmakers began the session by approving a $190 million solvency package aimed at plugging a projected budget deficit for this year by taking money from school district reserve funds and various state government accounts. Later in the session, in putting together a $6.1 billion spending plan for the coming year, leading Democratic lawmakers relied on tax and fee increases to help fund government operations, saying additional spending cuts would harm the states economy New Mexico already has the nations highest jobless rate and cripple state services. But Martinez, in her veto message on the $350 million tax package, House Bill 202, said the legislation would have hit low- and middle-income New Mexico families the hardest. From the beginning, I have said that I will not raise taxes, yet the Legislature continues to try to force tax increases on New Mexican families and small businesses, she said. Since taking office in 2011, Martinez has vowed to oppose any tax increases approved by lawmakers, though her administration has signaled a willingness to close certain tax loopholes if doing so levels the states tax code. The vetoed tax legislation included an increase of 10 cents a gallon in the states gasoline tax, a higher tax rate for buying new or used vehicles and a requirement that out-of-state online retailers collect gross receipts tax from consumers. In her veto message Friday, Martinez encouraged lawmakers to work in a bipartisan fashion on tax overhaul legislation during the coming special session. Such legislation could include both a plan to overhaul the states gross receipts tax system by eliminating hundreds of exemptions and lowering the states base rate, and a proposal to create a new rainy-day fund that would bolster the states cash reserves when oil and gas prices drop. Both proposals were introduced by Republican lawmakers during this years legislative session, and theres no guarantee the Democratic-controlled Legislature would have the appetite to pass them in a special session. Rep. Jason Harper, R-Rio Rancho, who sponsored the measure to overhaul the gross receipts tax, applauded the governors veto of the tax package and expressed optimism that a deal could be in the works. We are ready to compromise on ways to generate revenue if its part of comprehensive tax reform to get us out of our economic death spiral, Harper said in an interview. Im hopeful we can come together. However, some Democratic lawmakers questioned how much leverage Martinez, whose term ends in 2018, would have in a special session. Were going to find out how many (legislators) are still going to be willing to walk in lockstep with her, Smith said. Legal questions The governors line-item veto of both funding for higher education institutions and nearly $18.8 million in funding for legislative branch agencies prompted some legislators to question the legality of the action. Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth, D-Santa Fe, said Friday that legislative staff would review the constitutionality of the vetoes, which could pave the way for a possible court challenge. The question is whether a line-item veto can be used to eliminate state agencies and go one step further and eliminate another branch of government by taking away its funding, Wirth said Friday. She clearly can veto the whole budget, but thats not what she did. These are targeted vetoes. I think its the Legislatures authority to create agencies, Wirth added. This action in effect does away with higher education in New Mexico I think there are a number of legal questions about whether thats allowable. Legislative Council Service Director Raul Burciaga confirmed Friday that the administrative agency had initiated a legal review of the issue, which he described as largely unprecedented in recent New Mexico history. The decision to veto legislative branch funding is not expected to have an immediate impact. It was made largely due to frustration with lawmakers resistance to reducing legislative spending levels, according to the Governors Office. Meanwhile, a date for the special session has not been announced, but its expected to be called before the end of this month. Martinez has said shed like for the special session to be a short one such sessions can cost up to $50,000 a day in taxpayer dollars but has also indicated she might add other issues to the agenda. Journal Capitol Bureau reporter Dan McKay contributed to this report. LAREDO, Texas Federal prosecutors say the leader of a drug-trafficking network along the border with Mexico has been sentenced to life in prison and his two sons also received lengthy sentences for dealing crack and other illicit drugs. Authorities say 40-year-old Adan Melendez was sentenced Thursday for leading the drug distribution ring from Laredo. He was previously convicted of numerous charges that included using minors in a drug operation. Melendezs two sons, one 22 years old and the other 21, also were sentenced Thursday to at least 12 years in prison. They had earlier been convicted of drug conspiracy and other charges. Fifteen other people previously were sentenced for their roles in the drug network and prosecutors say 10 others are awaiting sentencing. Authorities say Melendez profited about $1,200 a day from his operation. Local residents, including people with heart and lung disease, are advised to stay indoors Saturday because of smoke levels from agricultural burning, the Lincoln-Lancaster County Health Department said. Southerly winds and extensive, controlled burning in the Midwest particularly the Flint Hills area of Kansas are predicted to expose residents of Lincoln and all of Southeast Nebraska to unhealthy air, said Chris Schroeder, air quality supervisor at the Health Department. The forecast indicates that our community is likely to be impacted this weekend, Schroeder said. Particles and gases in smoke can cause asthma attacks, worsen chronic bronchitis and emphysema and cause angina (chest pain) in people with heart disease, Schroeder said. Older adults and children may also be sensitive to the smoke levels. Avoiding strenuous activities is advised. Residents are also advised to keep windows and doors closed and use the re-circulate air setting in their vehicle. The Health Department monitors Air Quality Index hourly at lincoln.ne.gov (keyword: air, click on air quality link). Schroeder said later Friday that air quality was unhealthy for everyone. Farmers in the Flint Hills area of Kansas are allowed to burn up to 2 million acres of grassland each year to produce better grass for their cattle. Because of wet weather last month, farmers havent been able to burn. It's now near the end of the farmers' time frame to get the burn finished, said Jim Burnstock of the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality. SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) A man who was fined for allowing his pet snake to slither freely in a South Dakota park said an animal control officer suggested he use a leash to restrain the reptile. Jerry Kimball said he initially thought the recommendation was a joke because it was April Fool's Day when he was fined $190 and ticketed last week for animals running at large, told the Argus Leader (http://argusne.ws/2oMstxK ). He was literally asking me to put a rope around my snake, Kimball said. I was like, 'Dude, no.' I was dumbfounded. Kimball was approached by the officer after a woman complained that his Fire Bee Ball Python was roaming freely at Falls Park in Sioux Falls. Animal Control Supervisor Julie DeJong said a city ordinance requires all pets to be leashed or restrained in public. She said pet snakes can be held or kept in a container to comply. If it's in public and it's not on a leash, it's at large. The ordinance doesn't really distinguish between animals, she said. DeJong added that snake lovers should be more sensitive to the aversion many people feel toward the animal. While non-venomous snakes are legal to own, not all park visitors will welcome a python in a park. But Kimball said he considers it his mission to rid the public's fear of snakes. That's my purpose in life: To let people know that snakes aren't killers, he said. What better way to give back than to help people understand these misunderstood creatures? Kimball said he plans to fight the ticket in court. Information from: Argus Leader, http://www.argusleader.com 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. A 19-year-old man was arrested Thursday for stabbing one man to death and critically injuring another in Rio Rancho last week, according to a spokesman for the Rio Rancho Police Department. Lt. Joel Holt said Joseph Vargas is charged with murder and tampering with evidence and was booked into the Sandoval County Detention Center. Around 10:30 p.m. on March 31, police were called to Eventide SE for a fight and a possible shooting. Holt wouldnt say why the fight started. When officers arrived they instead found two men had been stabbed. Kenneth Torres, 23, died at the scene, according to police. The second person, Julian Torres, 20, was taken to the hospital where he remains in critical condition. The two men are not related, Holt said. Officers found a vehicle belonging to one of the men and processed it as evidence, but Holt said he could not say to whom the vehicle belonged. He also would not say where the vehicle was found or if it had been stolen. Cannot comment due to ongoing investigation, Holt replied in response to several emailed questions. He did say that when Vargas was arrested he admitted to the stabbings. Mr. Vargas was arrested yesterday and interviewed, Holt said. During the interview, he confessed to the stabbing of Kenneth Torres and Julian Torres. He wouldnt say if police are looking for additional suspects, but he did say the investigation is ongoing. Gathering of Nations founder Derek Mathews said Friday he had been gearing up for a year of trauma and tragedy after learning last year that his iconic event would no longer be welcome at WisePies Arena, AKA the Pit, at the University of New Mexico. But the move to its new home on the Powwow Grounds at Expo New Mexico/Tingley Coliseum, he said, actually turned out to be a really great thing. Mayor Richard Berry, at a news conference Friday, hailed the event as a boon to the local economy. Were going to have over 700 tribes from throughout the United States, Canada and around the world, Berry said during a Friday morning news conference promoting the event. We will have 100,000 from all over the world visit our city. He said that translates into 50,000 room nights and an economic impact to the area economy of more than $20 million. The 34th Annual Gathering of Nations Powwow kicks off on April 27 and will run through April 29. The event is billed as the worlds largest gathering of Native American and indigenous people. It is a cultural event, it is an arts event, it is a music event, but Ive never taken someone to the Gathering of Nations that didnt come out of that different in a very good way, Berry said. It is just an iconic event. It is an important social event. Its an important civic event. It is an amazing event to see, and its here. Mathews said that among the new attractions at this years Gathering of Nations will be a Teepee Village, a place to relax and enjoy the sounds of the powwow. He said a white buffalo considered sacred to many tribes will also be part of the event. Dan Mayfield, who is helping to promote the musical talent that will be performing on Stage 49 as part of Gathering of Nations, said the event now has a pavilion specifically made for outdoor performances. The Gathering of Nations opens with the Miss Indian World competition at 7 p.m. April 27 at the Albuquerque Convention Center in downtown Albuquerque. For many, the highlight of Gathering of Nations is the Grand Entry, where thousands of Native American dancers enter simultaneously dressed in colorful outfits and traditional dress to the sounds of hundreds of beating drums. The Grand Entry will be at noon April 28 at Tingley Coliseum. Tickets for the event range in price from $18 to $73, plus online fees, and are available in advance at www.gatheringofnations.com/tickets.aspx. Tickets will also be available at the door during the event. Public Service Co. of New Mexico and intervening parties in the utilitys latest rate case are bickering over attorney fees. PNM says it doesnt want to reveal details, such as the hourly rates it pays, so it can maintain a competitive advantage when negotiating legal fees in the future. But opposing parties say if customers have to pay the bill, they should be able to review the costs to determine if theyre reasonable. PNM requested in late March that Ashley Schannauer, the Public Regulation Commission hearing examiner assigned to the rate case, allow attorney fee information to be withheld from all intervening parties, except for PRC staff and the Attorney Generals office. The utility has already provided the total amount PNM is paying its attorneys, which would be recovered from customers through new rates. But to reveal more specific information about individual agreements could provide some parties with unintended competitive advantages, said PNM spokesman Pahl Shipley. That can have a chilling effect on the willingness of the contractors who negotiate with the company to offer favorable pricing in the future, Shipley told the Journal in an email. New Mexico Industrial Energy Consumers, the environmental group Western Resource Advocates, and the Coalition for Clean Affordable Energy filed counter briefs opposing PNMs request. PNM is always trying to keep information secret that they think gives them a competitive advantage or disadvantage, and sometimes thats legitimate because there are trade secrets, said the Industrial Energy Consumers general counsel, Peter Gould. But the notion that ratepayers should fully pay for PNMs attorney fees without even being able to look at it is nonsense The effort to keep everything secret in this case is just offensive, almost laughable. Western Resource attorney Steve Michel said PNMs argument runs counter to market logic. PNMs confidentiality claims are exactly backward from an economic standpoint, Michel said. The notion that revealing information will somehow evolve into higher prices is bogus, because competitive markets require as much information as possible to be competitive. If you disguise or hide information, you end up with higher, not lower, prices. In any case, all parties have already signed confidentiality agreements to review information in the rate case, Michel said. Public hearings in the case are scheduled to begin in June. PNM is seeking an overall average rate increase of 14 percent to recover $99.2 million for costs incurred in shutting down two of four units at the coal-fired San Juan Generating Station near Farmington, and for new capital investments in the electric grid, among other things. If approved by the PRC, average residential customers would pay about $10 more on their monthly utility bills. PNM proposes to buffer the impact by imposing half the increase in 2018, and the remainder in 2019. The 12th edition of Goafest got underway at Grand Hyatt Goa amid much enthusiasm, expectations and a full house. Indias biggest advertising festival, organised by the AAAI and The Advertising Club, promises to elevate the entire experience through recognising successful brand stories, facilitating a progressive speaker line-up, launching meaningful initiatives and curating an enhanced awards experience. Setting the tone for this years festival, Ashish Bhasin, Chairman, Goafest, said, This year we promise to be different from all the other years. Of course, there will be the staple Sam Balsara in his classic shorts and the sight of seeing people run helter-skelter at the sight of Nakul Chopra, but there will be lots of new things. Raj Nayak, President, The Advertising Club, preferred to call Goafest the worlds largest industry event by the Indians, for the Indians and made in India. We are the only national awards that are not for profit, and we intend to keep making it better. Every professional in the country who has made a name for him/herself is made of Abbys, he declared. Meanwhile, Ashish Bhasin, Chairman, Goafest 2017; Nakul Chopra, President, AAAI; and Ramesh Narayan, Chairman, Awards Governing Council, Abby Awards, stressed upon two key differentiators this year Goafest going Green in partnership with National Geographic and the launch of the Gender Sensitivity campaign. From delegate badges made of recycled paper to efforts encouraging carpooling, to making people conscious about water wastage with strategically placed tanks to empty water bottles in; Goafest 2017 took a big leap towards being greener as well, in partnership with National Geographic. Day Ones proceedings commenced with an opening note by Ashish Bhasin, followed by Raj Nayak, who mentioned that the Association will be spending around Rs 8-10 crore over the next three days in an attempt to give back to the industry. The Association subsidises for the under 30 professionals and encourages the youngsters as much as possible, he added. Karan Bajaj, Senior Vice President & General Manager, South Asia, Discovery Networks, Asia Pacific, kicked off the Discovery Channel presents Industry Conclave on the topic Role of Brands in Changing India. He put a spin on the topic by making it the role of brands changing India, stating, The brands that we experience in this room have a deeper impact on our lives than we realise. Im happy to be in a roomful of people who are impacting people and lives. First on the dais was Upasana Taku, Co-Founder MobiKwik, who talked about demonetisation, the growth of digital payments and powering 55 million users and 1.4 million retailers in India. Brands have played a role in transforming India. Consumer choice drives brands, and brands have the power to transform an entire country. 86 per cent of Indias spending is cash. Its a massive amount of money that moves in an unaccounted manner. I truly believe its the era of mobile wallets, and wont deny that demonetisation has sped up the journey, she observed. While speaking on how brands and consumers have an impact on each other, Taku cited the examples of Amul and Parle G as two brands that strongly resonate with the consumers. She pointed out, Today, the consumer is evolving and wants choices. They chose the brands that they can relate to. India is a country with many consumer segments. While some still shop grocery from a kirana store, a few would prefer supermarkets like Big Bazaar for premium products while the others, the tech savvy ones, are hooked to grocery apps like BigBasket.com. The consumers demand choice and brands are here to cater to those demands. On the other hand, brands, too, have shaped user behaviour a lot, Taku maintained. Applauding Patanjalis growing dominance in the market, Taku termed it as a brand that resonated with the people at an ethos level. This is the behaviour observed not just in India, but globally. Even globally, consumer is driving the brands and innovation, she added. Taku further termed Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led demonetisation drive as a monumental step in the right direction, which has brought a mindset change in the whole country and how Indians, despite challenges, have reacted positively to the move. It collectively provided a very large opportunity to the fintech sector as well as to all kinds of companies operating in this area. In 2015, we were speaking to a different audience. Post demonetisation, we are appealing to Bharat and not just India. Just creating a brand is not enough, we need to spread awareness. While consumer choices are increasing, it is up to brands to create larger and larger impact. Start-ups are marching their way forward to change India through product innovation, commented Taku. While also speaking about e-commerce and digitisation, Hemant Malik, Divisional Chairman of ITCs Food Business, acknowledged the evolution of Goafest. He also spoke about the shift from hierarchical collectivist culture to individualistic. He noted that even as Apple and Facebook have changed the world, brands like Patanjai and Reliance Jio are changing India. While mentioning how the homemaker is changing in todays age, Malik noted that a wife is transforming from being just a provider to an equal partner today. Digitalisation has brought about a drastic change, where people have become active participants. Exciting consumer trends have come to the fore. If there exists a trend, there also exists a counter trend. The role of brands is to make taboos outstream, he observed. According to Malik, communication is only one of the pillars of brand building. Supply chain, product & packaging, pricing & promotion constitute the other pillars. The mantra for brand building in changing India is that there is no amrit mantra to it. But it is important to define the role of brands, what the brand stands for, speaking to the right consumer, what he/she needs, and utilising every opportunity, he advised. Like MobiKwiks Taku, Malik, too, acknowledged the growth of Patanjali, which, he admitted, had eaten into everybodys business. Taking the stage next was the CEO and MD of the much acknowledge brand Patanjali, Acharya Balkrishna. Dressed traditionally on dhoti and kurta and speaking in chaste Hindi, Acharya Balkrishna won over the audience with his take on marketing peppered with observations on life and philosophy. Hence, it was not surprising to see his session start and end with resounding applause, laughter and standing ovation. Speaking at the Goafest forum, Acharya Balkrishna said, If you learn to applaud yourself sometimes, the world will learn to applaud you. He further added, The nation is ours, the children are ours, the life is ours. We must take care of it ourselves. Always remember, for the world India is just a market place; for us, its our home. We dont want to sit with patents. We want to share the knowledge and act as mediators between the farmers and the consumers. We are starting a new Parampara. It was a great day for Make In India, and a greater day for Goafest. After a power-packed, standing ovation leading to the end of Day 1 in a full house, Goafest Day 1 proved that the number of delegates keeps increasing exponentially every year, and this year is no different. Day 2 promises to be an even bigger blockbuster # Media How Britannia is wooing digital natives with a Western Snacking offer Britannia Industries Limited, India's largest bakery foods company, has forayed into the Western Snacking space with the launch of the all-new Treat.... Federal Department of Foreign Affairs Bern, 07.04.2017 - The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration is the international community's response to the challenges of migration at international level. The president of the UN General Assembly has tasked Switzerland's representative to the United Nations in New York, Ambassador Jurg Lauber, and his Mexican counterpart, Juan Jose Gomez Camacho, to facilitate the drafting of the international framework on migration. The New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants adopted by the member states of the UN in September 2016 launched a two-year process to draft a global compact on refugees and a global compact on migration. The Global Compact on Migration will set out common although not legally binding standards to ensure safe, orderly and regulated migration worldwide. The important role of Switzerland and Mexico is to lead the negotiations and seek compromise between the member states. The two ambassadors already successfully led the drafting of the resolution on modalities adopted on 6 April 2017 by the UN General Assembly, which sets out the stages in the negotiation process scheduled to culminate in the adoption of the Global Compact on Migration in autumn 2018. The two ambassadors will now be focusing their efforts on the content of the global compact. The process leading to the adoption of the global compact is organised in three phases. Between April and November 2017 member states are invited to share inputs and experiences on the issue of migration. Six sessions in Geneva (3), New York (2) and Vienna (1) addressing specific migration themes are central to this phase. The phase from November 2017 to January 2018 will take stock of the inputs. Finally the two ambassadors will prepare an initial draft of the global compact, which they will present to the international community for intergovernmental negotiations. At the end of the negotiations, a text will be presented to the heads of state and government of the 193 UN member states for adoption. For Switzerland, this is an opportunity to be closely involved in an important UN process on one of the major issues of our time. Address for enquiries FDFA Communication Federal Palace West Wing CH-3003 Bern, Switzerland Tel. Communication service: +41 58 462 31 53 Tel. Press service: +41 58 460 55 55 E-mail: kommunikation@eda.admin.ch Twitter: @SwissMFA Publisher Federal Department of Foreign Affairs https://www.eda.admin.ch/eda/en/home.html General Secretariat of the Federal Department of Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications; General Secretariat DETEC Bern, 07.04.2017 - President Doris Leuthard is shortly due to pay official visits to Argentina and Peru. On 18 April she will meet President Mauricio Macri and a number of government ministers in Argentina. The aim of the visit is to bring fresh impulses to the longstanding and dynamic relations between the two countries. In Peru too the aim of the visit will be to deepen bilateral relations. On 21 April President Leuthard will be received by President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski in Lima. The presidential talks in Buenos Aires are expected to cover cooperation between Switzerland and Argentina on business and trade, which is to be deepened in upcoming negotiations on a free trade agreement between EFTA and Mercosur. Closer cooperation is also being sought in the areas of science, justice and finance, and within the UN where both countries have worked together successfully on human rights. President Macri will inform President Leuthard about his reform agenda. As well as meeting President Macri, Ms Leuthard will meet with a number of ministers to discuss energy, transport, environment, finance and trade issues. Also on the agenda are meetings with business representatives and members of the Swiss community. There will be an opportunity to visit a tunnelling site on the Sarmiento railway as an example of Argentinas infrastructure projects, and Ms Leuthard has also been invited to give a speech at the foreign policy think tank, Consejo Argentino para las Relaciones Internacionales (CARI). Relations between Switzerland and Argentina are longstanding and wide ranging. Around 16,000 Swiss nationals live in Argentina today the largest Swiss community in Latin America. In 2016 Argentina was the fifth largest trade partner in the region after Brazil, Venezuela, Peru and Mexico. Official visit to Peru Relations between Switzerland and Peru the second stop on the presidents voyage are close and wide ranging. Since the turn of the century Peru has strengthened its democracy and experienced impressive economic growth. Switzerland first became involved in Peru in 1964 within the framework of traditional development aid. Since 2009 Peru has been a SECO priority country for economic development cooperation. Among other things the current programme aims to further strengthen the competitiveness of Perus economy. Peru is also part of the SDCs Andes programme run from Lima tackling climate change and the sustainable management of water resources. As of the end of 2015 there were 3,100 Swiss nationals living in Peru. During talks with President Kuczynski on Friday, 21 April, President Leuthard will discuss economic and trade policy, cooperation in legal matters and cultural affairs, as well as climate change and human rights. Ms Leuthard will also be present at the launch of SECOs cooperation strategy for 2017 to 2020. Possible ways of supporting reconstruction following the severe storms and flooding that have ravaged Peru in recent months will also be discussed. The programme in Peru will include visits to projects facilitated by Switzerland and a meeting with Swiss and Peruvian businesses in Lima. It is the first time that a Swiss president has paid an official visit to either country. Ms Leuthard will be accompanied on her voyage by a business delegation. Press call in Buenos Aires: 18 April, 2.30pm, Casa Rosada (Photo opportunity at welcome ceremony at midday). Contact person: Daniel Ryf, Attache for Political Affairs and Communication, Tel. + 54 11 4311-6491 Email: daniel-felipe.ryf@eda.admin.ch Press call in Lima: 21 April, 1pm, Government Palace. Contact person: Esther-Marie Merz, Attache for Cultural Affairs and Communication, Tel. + 51 584852848 Email: esther-marie.merz@eda.admin.ch Address for enquiries Communication DETEC, +41 58 462 55 11 Publisher General Secretariat of the Federal Department of Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications; General Secretariat DETEC https://www.uvek.admin.ch/uvek/en/home.html We can help you make sense of the agribusiness industry, extending from chemicals and fertilizers used as inputs into agriculture, to the commodities, food and by-products that are an output to farming, with policy and regulation applied at every step of the value chain. Asiana Airlines and Samsung Electronics are preparing to launch a special limited edition of the Galaxy S8 and the Galaxy S8 Plus, Korean media reports. The Seoul-based consumer electronics manufacturer will reportedly only manufacture 2,000 units of both devices, and Asiana Airlines will offer them to customers with a high number of mileage points. Customers interested in getting their hands on either device can apply as of today until April 17, a period that corresponds to the pre-ordering time frame for the standard editions of Samsungs new devices. Those who amass 30,000 or more Asiana Airlines mileage points will be able to purchase either device at a discount, though its currently unclear how high that discount will be. The Asiana Airlines edition of the Galaxy S8 and the Galaxy S8 Plus will feature a unique system theme and will display the airlines logo when being powered on, but should otherwise be identical to the regular models. While users will likely be able to replace the custom Asiana Airlines theme with anything they want, the companys logo probably wont be as easy to remove from the boot screen. The second largest airline in South Korea said that this offer is yet another step in its new initiative aimed at offering unique products and services to its loyal customers, likely referring to the special editions of the Galaxy S7 and the Galaxy S7 Edge that were launched last year. Regarding the smartphones themselves, the Galaxy S8 features a 5.8-inch Super AMOLED display panel, while the Galaxy S8 Plus boasts a 6.2-inch one, both of which offer a QHD+ resolution of 2960 by 1440 pixels. The devices are powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 and the Exynos 8895 chipset, depending on the territory, in addition to featuring 4GB of RAM and a minimum of 64GB of internal storage. Other notable features of the Galaxy S8 and the Galaxy S8 Plus include IP68 certification, Bluetooth 5.0 support, and Bixby, Samsungs new voice-enabled artificial intelligence (AI) assistant thats deeply integrated into a number of default apps that will ship with the phones. Both the Galaxy S8 and the Galaxy S8 Plus are scheduled to hit the market on April 21, and the aforementioned Asiana Airlines limited editions will likely be available on the same date. As the cost of smartphones go up, the need to have a smartphone that comes with some level of out of the box protection increases. Thankfully, this is not a point lost on manufacturers and a number of smartphones coming through are now coming with more of a rugged build than before. Not to mention, quite a few smartphones are also now coming with an IP68 certification for water and dust-resistance. Which is a big help as it does mean that these smartphones are not only more durable, but can withstand accidental encounters with water. If you are in the market for a new smartphone and preferably a rugged one, then here are six choices worth considering which span the price and spec spectrum. 1. Samsung Galaxy S8 & S8 Plus Advertisement The Galaxy S8 and the Galaxy S8 Plus are the two brand new flagship smartphones from Samsung. Which already makes them worth considering. However, name aside, these phones come packed to the gills with features and specs, including an unusual and tall display aspect ratio. Although with such a tall and premium display, you will want to make sure they are protected. Thankfully, the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus come with an IP68 certification. So not only are you getting a premium phone with a premium display, but water and dust will not be a problem. Regardless of whether you opt for the Galaxy S8 or the S8 Plus, you can also expect 4GB RAM, 64GB internal storage, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 (in the US) or a Samsung Exynos 8895 SoC. As well as a 12-megapixel rear camera, an 8-megapixel front-facing camera, fingerprint sensor, iris scanner, a 3,000 mAh battery, and more. 2. Sony Xperia XZs Advertisement Samsung is not the only manufacturer to release a phone recently, as Sony did as well. In fact, the Sony Xperia XZs became available to buy just this week and this is another smartphone that comes loaded with an IP68 certification, so you can be sure this one is protected from water and dust encounters. This is also a good option for those looking for a more compact phone as the Xperia XZs comes loaded with a 5.2-inch TRILUMINOS FHD display. While the rest of the specs include 4GB RAM, 64GB internal storage, and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 SoC. As well as a 19-megapixel rear camera, a 13-megapixel front-facing camera, NFC, USB Type-C, a 2,900 mAh battery, and more. 3. AGM X1 Advertisement The AGM X1 on the other hand is another smartphone worth considering. Not only is this IP68 certified and a rugged smartphone, but it is also the first rugged smartphone to come loaded with dual camera. So if you are as equally interested in smartphone photography as a rugged build, then the included twin 13-megapixel rear cameras should suffice nicely. In addition to the rugged build and dual rear cameras, this is also a smartphone that comes with a competitive spec list. For instance, the AGM X1 comes packed with a 5-inch Super AMOLED FHD display, 4GB of RAM, 64GB internal storage, and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 SoC. As well as expanded storage (up to 128GB), a 5,400 mAh battery, Quick Charge 2.0 support, and more. Best of all, this one is priced under $300. 4. Samsung Galaxy S7 Active Advertisement Back to Samsung again, and while the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus come with added protection, if you want Samsung design but even more protection than the Galaxy S7 Active is one you will want to check out. This might be an older phone now, but it is one which comes with a great spec breakdown and an even more rugged build than you will find on other Samsung devices. So not only is this one IP68 certified, but it is also housed within a military-grade shock-resistant body. In terms of those specs, the Galaxy S7 Active comes with a 5.1-inch QHD Super AMOLED display, 4GB RAM, 32GB internal storage, and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 SoC. As well as a 12-megapixel rear camera, a 5-megapixel front-facing camera, a 4,000 mAh battery, and more. 5. LG G6 Advertisement Along with Samsung and Sony, LG also has a new smartphone that you might want to consider. Like the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus, the LG G6 also makes a play with the display and also comes with an unusual aspect ratio. So in many ways, this is a smartphone that is quite comparable to the Galaxy S8. In addition to the play on the screen, the LG G6 is also a smartphone that comes with an IP68 certification for dust and water protection. In terms of the rest of the specs, the LG G6 comes loaded with a 5.7-inch QHD+ FullVision display. This is in addition to 4GB RAM, 32GB internal storage, and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 SoC. As well as two 13-megapixel rear cameras, a 5-megapixel front-facing camera, a Hi-Fi Quad DAC, a 3,300 mAh battery, and more. 6. Blackview BV6000 Advertisement Closing out the list today is the Blackview BV6000. This is another option worth considering if you are looking for an affordable smartphone as it is the cheapest option on this list. Although, it also comes with a lesser spec list by comparison. However, it is an IP68 certified smartphone and also does come with a more durable body. In terms of those specs, this is the smallest smartphone on the list as it comes with a 4.7-inch display and a resolution that is resigned to HD. Inside, the Blackview BV6000 comes packed with 3GB RAM, 32GB internal storage and is powered by a MediaTek MTK6755 SoC. In addition, you can expect to find a 13-megapixel rear camera, a 5-megapixel front-facing camera, expandable storage, a 4,200 mAh battery, and more. Starting June 15th, travelers to the EU will be able to use their mobile phones without being subjected to expensive roaming charges, as the European Parliament voted on Thursday to approve an agreement which ends them. The plans faced fierce opposition from network operators who claimed their profitability would be unduly harmed when they were officially announced in 2015. The high costs of using a mobile device in Europe were a result of networks charging travelers to use their services while abroad, but an agreement was finally reached in February which means that the costs will be shared between operators. The end of roaming charges means that the worry for consumers facing a huge bill upon the return home many rack up bills without even realizing they will face such charges is gone. The Vice-President for the Single Digital Market, Andrus Ansip said of Thursdays vote, I welcome todays positive vote of the European Parliament on wholesale roaming prices, following the agreement reached between the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission at the beginning of the year. This is a great achievement for all of us. As of June 15th, 2017, making calls, sending texts, and using data will cost the same in every EU country. All contracts which allow data roaming will automatically switch to the new contract, which is known as roam like at home. The rules state that as long as you spend less time abroad than you do at home you will pay the normal rates for using your device. Carriers have warned that they will contact consumers who violate this and ask them to clarify the situation. Those who have a mobile phone contract that offers unlimited minutes and texts will be able to use those anywhere in the EU. With regards to data, a fair use policy will apply to anyone who has a cheap or unlimited data plan. It is thought that consumers from the UK will only be able to take advantage of this agreement for approximately two years until Britain leaves the EU. The plan to scrap the charges hasnt yet been formally approved by the European Parliament and all Member States, although this is expected to occur fairly soon. Googles new artificial intelligence (AI) assistant announced last year along with the Google Pixel smartphones seems to have a more fleshed-out personality than its older competitors, and this is largely thanks to the AIs ability to understand context. However, Android smartphone users who have spent time with the Google Assistant might also be aware that the new AI is rather witty and armed with numerous amusing replies when asked some personal questions. According to a recent BBC report, this sense of wittiness and awareness was partially created by a storyboard artist who previously worked on Pixars animated movie Brave, and is now working with Google as part of the Assistant Personality Team. The Google Assistant is the result of joined efforts from various Google teams working on different aspects of the AI, one of which is known as the Google Assistant Personality Team. This group of employees isnt necessarily involved with the Google Assistants inner workings, but instead, it consists of a group of writers, artists, and creative minds who work on giving the Assistant its personality and off-topic dialogue. One of the Google Assistant Personality Team members is a 31-year-old Emma Coats. In addition to Brave, Coats also worked on Pixars Monster University, and while working with Google she also creates her own short films. Coding the Google Assistant falls on Googles team of software engineers, though Coats claims the Google Assistant Personality Team adds delight to the Assistants conversations whenever possible. The rest of Google has all the useful parts of the Assistant covered, says the artist, adding that the Personality Team supports Googles engineers by coming up with new and fun things the Google Assistant can do. The Google Assistant was initially launched exclusively on the Google Pixel smartphones, but the digital companion is now making its way to other smartphones running Android Marshmallow and Android Nougat. In any case, the Google Assistant Personality Team seems to have put a lot of effort into giving the AI a sense of personality, and Android smartphone users who have access to the Google Assistant can try and explore the companions chatty nature by asking more personal questions like what is your name? or when is your birthday? As a number of companies, including Google and Amazon, battle it out for drone supremacy, Google has filed a patent for a drone-to-ground robot delivery system. The application for the patent is based on Googles theory that having a drone-only delivery system may not be the safest route to go as their rotating blades could be of danger to nearby pets, overhead power lines, small children, or even porch ceiling fans. They also point out that the drone may have to leave the package on a sidewalk near a busy street where it could be prone to vandals or thieves. Googles delivery receptacle would send out an infrared (IR) signal that would guide the aerial delivery device to this receptacle to leave the package in a secure location. Once it receives the package, the delivery receptacle would move along the ground and deliver the package to a more secure location, such as a garage, and without danger to humans, pets, or inanimate objects. Google points out that a typical delivery service read that as USPS, UPS, FedEx has hubs located across the US where bulk deliveries arrive and are then placed in local delivery trucks or smaller vehicles for delivery to the final customer. Googles patent is doing the same thing only with drones delivering the packages quickly to their hub or delivery receptacles that will then make the final delivery to the customers home. The difference being that the delivery system could be one of several methods possibly a warehouse for the customer to pick up the package, a manned courier service if a proof of delivery or signature is required, a package delivery agent, or even an unmanned device that travels along the ground and not through the air. The patent points out that Google believes there will be a tremendous growth in e-commerce, and with that growth, it will bring about an increased demand for package delivery and aerial drones can add to the delivery system. Amazon is already working on making home delivery via drones a reality in the not too distant future, while Drone Delivery Canada (DDC) is expecting to start tests with customers during the first part of 2017. Google points out that drones can be used for a variety of purposes, such as assisting in delivering medical supplies to disaster relief areas where it can be impossible for a large aircraft or even humans to be on the scene. Although, it does seem that delivering packages, while not quite as important as medical supplies, is going to be one of the main functions of drones. Following the initial rumors that came through late last year, it does seem to be the case that Samsung plans on selling refurbished Galaxy Note 7s. Now, images have come through from SamsungVN which are said to be of a refurbished Galaxy Note 7. From the pictures, we are looking at a model number of SM-N935, a smaller battery, running Android 7.0 (Nougat), and what is said to be a Galaxy Note 7R name most likely for refurbished. The original battery in the Note 7 was 3,500 mAh and the refurbished version seems to be running a 3,200 mAh battery. This maybe Samsungs inversion to the 3,500 mAh battery or possibly it was just too big to fit properly in the device. The pictures also show a new ROM version number and rumors have it only be sold in India and Vietnam, although no pricing was announced. In March, Samsung made an official announcement that confirmed they would be reselling and/or renting refurbished Galaxy Note 7s. The units that are selected for this process will be ones that look brand new and meet certain quality assurances. Samsung had previously ruled out India as a possible destination of the refurbished devices but then said it would decide based on local demand. We know for sure that none of the refurbished units will be sent to the US for sale Samsung does not want anything to interfere with the launch of their new Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus, not to mention the upcoming Galaxy Note 8 in the fall. The Galaxy Note 7 was very popular in the US and after two recalls, it seems Samsung would rather keep it out of the US picture. When Samsung undertook its final recall, it had a significant number of almost new Galaxy Note 7s to get rid of, and this is not the kind of thing you can put out for your local trash pickup. There are toxic chemicals in the batteries and even in the circuit boards. Care and great expense must be doled out to dispose of them properly. The Note 7 debacle had already cost Samsung a lot of cash in lost sales and the recall effort and spending more money to properly dispose of the components was probably not something that greatly appealed to Samsung. However, by refurbishing the devices with a good battery and updated software and putting them up for resale in emerging markets could save them a lot of money and help keep landfills a little more empty. MediaTek was once on top of the smartphone world in China and a few other territories, but squeezing by rival Qualcomm, among other factors, seems poised to push their first quarter numbers for 2017 below 100 million shipped chips. The disappointing first quarter comes after a fairly good 2016, which saw MediaTek put out somewhere around 480 million units, averaging out to 120 million per quarter. Should this pattern continue, MediaTek will post no growth for 2017, but stands to actually have a worse year by nearly 100 million units. MediaTek has been losing ground since the second half of 2016, thanks to many of their biggest Chinese clients, such as Meizu, Xiaomi, and OPPO, either shifting toward ordering more from Qualcomm, their biggest rival, or making their own chips. Qualcomm butting in on MediaTeks turf is not the only factor of their recent troubles, but its certainly one of the biggest; according to research by Digitimes, Qualcomm stands to shoot up to owning 30% of the smartphone chip market in China by the end of the quarter, while MediaTek will sink a bit, seeing only 40% of the total market under their own banner. On top of the market loss from Qualcomm stepping into the Chinese arena with a stronger foot than before, MediaTek has to contend with the plateauing of smartphone ownership and upgrade cycles; as devices become faster, more capable, and more durable, less and less people are getting new devices less and less often. While this also affects rival Qualcomm, MediaTeks troubles are compounded by the slowdown. MediaTeks problems with profit growth are fairly recent; while Qualcomm has had a presence in the Chinese market for some time, MediaTek has ruled the roost practically since their inception. Outside of China, MediaTeks operations in India are being stepped on by Qualcomm, thanks to the massive popularity of Xiaomis phones; the Chinese giant was court ordered to only use Qualcomm chips in their Indian smartphones. In other territories, MediaTek is largely relegated to the budget sector; in the United States, for example, MediaTeks chips can be found in some lower-end and mid-range phones from makers like BLU, whose business revolves around customizing and rebranding Chinese phones. Budget phones from more premium makers, such as Samsungs Galaxy J series and Motos G series, meanwhile, all use Qualcomm processors. MediaTeks falling popularity is slightly offset by Samsung using them in a limited number of models in some territories, but it likely wont be enough to bring them back to profit growth unless something changes in 2017. Ericsson, a leading global telecommunications equipment supplier, has identified the need for new and innovative business as 5G technologies continue to emerge. With 5G technology enabling a wide variety of use cases, stakeholders in the wireless industry, especially the wireless carriers, must provide creative business models to effectively utilize 5G technologies. New business models need new perspectives on what can be considered as a customer, moving away from the carriers traditional targets like individual subscribers. Some of the new business models proposed involve the Internet-of-Things, which include not only devices found in the home but also connected healthcare and industrial devices. The increased capacity and speed of 5G allows the wireless carriers to provide plans and services related to IoT devices not only to individuals but also to businesses and organizations. An example of how IoT devices can be useful to businesses is through tracking the performance of products sold to their customers, with the data gathered used to improve their products. Given the benefits of more data for product improvement, manufacturers of products will likely shoulder the bill for 5G connectivity used for the embedded IoT devices. New business models like these help improve the return on investment made on 5G infrastructure. It is not the first time that the need for carriers to provide innovative business models and services is highlighted. CCS Insight has mentioned that there is a need for new plans and services that should suit and adapt to the lifestyle and use cases of individual subscribers. There were several suggestions made to the carriers for new data plans including plans based on speed tiers rather than data caps, and designation of unlimited plans as high-end offerings that complement cheaper plans with data caps. These plans allow the carriers to transform subscriber data use, improving the return on investment made on the infrastructure. The testing and deployment of 5G are now in full swing, despite the lack of a 5G standard provided by the FCC. Major carriers have significantly invested in 5G infrastructure within the past year. Verizon has started 5G testing in 11 cities in the US using hundreds of cell sites deployed in various customer locations. AT&T, meanwhile, has announced that they will have 5G services ready for their customers as early as 2018. T-Mobile and Sprint have already announced their plans for 5G, with Sprint having a 5G network ready for commercialization in the year 2020 and T-Mobile promising a 5G network deployment within the next few years. A new Motorola smartphone, which could possibly be the Moto E4 Plus, has passed the FCC certification testing. This might be the larger brother to the Moto E4, another entry-level smartphone offering from Motorola, a mobile brand owned by Chinese tech giant Lenovo. In its FCC filing, Motorola details some connectivity features of Moto E4 Plus, which include 4G LTE compatibility, 2.4 GHz WiFi 802.11-n support, Bluetooth Low Energy version 4.2, and NFC. Some of the bands Moto E4 Plus will likely support include LTE Bands 5, 7, and 38. Looking through FCC documentation, it is interesting to point out that the devices have two FCC IDs, one of which lacks NFC. Whether this will matter in the retail version of the phone is something we have yet to see. Motorola has also mentioned that the devices will have Mediateks MT6169, a WWAN chipset and the devices can support LTE Band 40 but Motorola has stated in its filing that it will disable Band 40 support through software. Aside from the information about connectivity features, another piece of information that is mentioned in the FCC filings is that the Moto E4 Plus may have a non-removable battery, in contrast to last years Moto E3 and Moto E3 Power which have a removable one. The Moto E4 Plus may still have a removable back cover but if it does it will only allow access to the SIM card. The Moto E4 Plus, along with its rumored smaller brother the Moto E4, is expected to replace the Moto E3 and the Moto E3 Power which were both released last year. Moto E is the entry-level smartphone line from Motorola and Lenovo, the lowest-tier in its trio of smartphone lines which also include the mid-range Moto G series and the high-end Moto X/Z lines. The Moto E phones are usually priced at a little bit more than $100, making it a value proposition for people who need a less expensive device or a cheap backup phone, or people who just find even the mid-range Moto G too expensive for their liking. The Moto E has seen great success in developing countries, as Motorola made a successful combination of brand name, durable construction, and respectable specs for use case scenario and price. The Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage might hit more markets in the future, Samsung said, as reported by the Yonhap News Agency. Representatives of the Seoul-based consumer electronics manufacturer reportedly said that the availability of the premium variant of an already premium smartphone will depend on consumer demand, implying the most expensive member of the Galaxy S8 lineup may actually be sold in the West later this year. The Galaxy S8 Plus model with 6GB of RAM will initially only be available in Samsungs home country and China. The company reportedly opted to create a more powerful variant of the device for the Chinese market due to the fact that a number of Chinas original equipment manufacturers have already been releasing devices with 6GB of RAM for several months, meaning Samsung will follow suit in order to stay competitive. Smartphones with 6GB of RAM still arent a common occurrence in the West, which is why the Seoul-based tech giant isnt pressured to release the most expensive variant of the Galaxy S8 Plus in North America and Europe. The device in question was officially announced earlier this week, shortly after Samsung unveiled its latest flagship duo at a special event in New York City. The model with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage will cost approximately $1,020 in the Far East, though the high price tag is partially justified by the fact that Samsung is bundling the smartphone with the Samsung Desktop Experience (DeX), a special dock that allows you to essentially turn your handset into an extremely portable computer that can be connected with most contemporary monitors and standard computer peripherals like mouses and keyboards. Despite the fact that the 6GB variant of the Galaxy S8 Plus might be coming to the West in some unspecified future, the wording of Samsungs statement on the matter suggests that likely wont happen in the coming months. Regardless, an update on the situation will probably follow later this year. In the meantime, all other variants of the Galaxy S8 and the Galaxy S8 Plus are available for pre-orders in the rest of the world and will be hitting the market on April 21. The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has dropped its request for information on a dissident Twitter account that has been criticizing President Trump and the current U.S. administration in recent months. Legal representatives of the San Francisco-based social media giant learned about that development earlier today, following their meeting with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) regarding a lawsuit theyve filed against the DHS over the ordeal. After being notified that the cabinet department withdrew its information request, Twitter promptly dropped its lawsuit in response to the latest turn of events. Neither Twitter nor the DHS have yet made an official statement on the matter that was uncovered by The Verge. The lawsuit against the DHS that Twitter now agreed to drop was filed just yesterday, with the social media company arguing the government is violating the First Amendment by trying to suppress free speech. In March, Customs agents made an official request for information on @Alt_USCIS, a Twitter account that has continuously been criticizing President Trump and the current U.S. administration. The account thats said to be associated with some federal immigration staff drew the attention of government officials following months of high-profile criticism of the U.S. executive branch, but Twitter is seemingly adamant to keep possibly identifiable information about the person or persons running it a secret. The now-withdrawn request for information was also harshly criticized by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The matter might still not be over as its currently unclear whether the DHS dropped its request following the public backlash against its decision, or whether the agency is looking to obtain the information it sought through different legal means. The request filed by Customs agents in March was based on an obscure statute related to tax regulations that Twitter never used as a basis to honor fulfill similar information requests in the past, so its still possible that the DHS will be looking to rephrase and reargument its appeal at some point in the future. Regardless, an update on the situation is bound to follow shortly as at least one involved party is expected to publicly comment on the matter given the high-profile nature of this unusual case. YEREVAN, APRIL 6, ARMENPRESS. On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Armenia and China, Prime Minister of Armenia Karen Karapetyan sent a message to Chinese Premier Li Keqiang. As Armenpress was informed from the press service of the Government of Armenia, the message runs as follows, Partnership between Armenia and China significantly developed during the past 25 years, reflected by high-level political dialogue, effective cooperation in international platforms, positive trends in economic cooperation, as well as expansion of cultural and education exchange programs. I have to note with satisfaction that the development of inter-state relations between Armenia and China was the results of consistent efforts and effective joint work of the Governments of both countries. I am convinced Armenian-Chinese economic cooperation has great potential, and I am ready to make joint efforts with You, honorable Mr. Prime Minister, to foster and develop the existing potential for the benefit of our peoples and states. I wish You, Your Excellency, health and successes, and happiness and welfare to the friendly people of China. SUV PHEV AMG AWD FWD The Cross Bronx Expressway, for example, is the most congested street in the land of the free and the home of the brave. 5th Avenue, the Lincoln Tunnel, and the George Washington Bridge are other places where traffic jams are notorious. But worst of all, its excruciatingly hard to go places by car in New York City because parking is a bit of a headache. And a bit of a walk.For better and for worse, NYC offers a breath of fresh air to gearheads every April or so. The New York Auto Show is what Im on about, and its high time for us to talk about what this years edition has to offer. As ever, NYIAS lags behind NAIAS in terms of numbers. But numerical advantage has nothing to do with the caliber of NY-bound debuts.And yes, this years New York Auto Show is full of goodies. Three of the eight premieres our editorial team decided you should look forward to are from North American auto companies, four originate from the Land of the Rising Sun, and the final exhibit is a German ruffian. Here's the lowdown:The king of the muscle cars. The daddy. The baddest Challenger of them all. Its name is Demon and, as the label suggests, its a devilish machine for daredevil-minded people. What Dodge built here is, in laymans terms, a brawnier SRT Hellcat that runs on either 91 gas or 100-octane race fuel.Lighter than the Hellcat, the Demon boasts four 315/40-section R18 Nitto NT05R drag radials and launches off the line like a bat out of hell. Based on a series of teasers, it appears that the 6.2-liter blown V8 develops 757 horsepower at the very least. The said ponies are joined by 700-plus lb-ft.Probably the most telling detail about the Demon is its much wider stance. The Air Grabber cold air intake hood measures more than 45 sq.in., and it furthers the Demons no-nonsense presence. Oh, and one more thing: the front fascia features two Air Catcher headlamps. Because why the hell not?The Trackhawk has been long in the making, but Jeeps head honcho is adamant the wait has been worth it. The ultimate iteration of the Grand Cherokee, as you might have heard, features the supercharged HEMI blunderbuss from the Challenger SRT Hellcat. Its clear, then, that this baby churns out more testosterone than the 6.4-liter atmospheric V8 in the SRT.Theres no telling just how many horsepower and pound-feet the blown HEMI produces, with rumors suggest that the all-wheel-drive system will take it toll in this regard. More to the point, the safest bet is for us to expect less than 707 hp and 650 lb-ft, with the blown V8 detuned to ease the burden on the mid-sizes drivetrain.Itll be a hoot to drive on a backroad nonetheless, and a stiff middle finger salute to what other automakers are doing with their go-faster SUVs. Not only is the Grand Cherokee Trackhawks engine massive, even when compared to the Bentaygas 6.0-liter W12, but it also boasts an IHI-developed 2.4L twin-screw blower instead of your average twin-turbo setup.The Clarity Fuel Cell isnt just Honda trying to prove that hydrogen is great. The zero-emission vehicle also happens to pride itself on the longest range in the business at 366 miles from full to empty. Not even the Tesla Model S 100D can top that, but Honda knows hydrogen plays second fiddle to BEVs and plug-in hybrid vehicles.And so, the 2018 model year will see the Japanese automaker bring forth two more takes on the Clarity. For the battery-powered model, word has it Honda will play it safe in terms of pricing at $35,000 or thereabout before government incentives and tax credits. But this pricing strategy has a drawback: range. Supposedly, the Clarity Electric wont be capable of more than 80 miles from full to empty.However, theres an alternative to range anxiety in the form of the Clarity. On electricity alone, the PHEV is capable of traveling more than 40 miles before the gasoline engine kicks in. The obvious problem is, plug-in hybrid powertrains are more expensive to produce than all-electric ones, so dont expect this mid-sized sedan to be cheap by mid-size sedan standards.Until the first-ever Type R-branded Honda for North America gets here, the Civic Si will have to make do. Compared to the old generation, the Si for 2018 adopts a 1.5-liter turbo four-cylinder in the detriment of a 2.4-liter freely aspirated VTEC engine. Curiously enough, theres no news on the output front because both of the mills develop 205 horsepower.Torque is a different story. Thanks to the turbocharging system, what the Si loses in displacement it gains in get-up-and-go. At 192 pound-feet, the newcomer betters its predecessor by 18 lb-ft, and thats not bad considering this thing is not about out-and-out grunt. The Honda Civic Si has always been about driving fun and great handling.Some of the ingredients that help in this regard are the short-throw manual transmission, adaptive damping, an adaptive electric power steering system, and a limited-slip differential. And certainly not least, the Si gets 12.3-inch brakes up front and 235/40 R18 tires all around.Crossovers are hot stuff, but hot crossovers are dynamite! The latter is the perfect word for the latest brawlers from Mercedes-: the GLC 63 and GLC 63 Coupe. Based on the C-Class platform it may be, but this duo comes exclusively with all-wheel-drive. The 4Matic+ system, however, doesnt have a drift mode like the E 63 S' 4Matic+.The super SUVs come in two guises: 63 and 63 S, with the letter S standing for stupendous. In a similar fashion to the C63 family, the GLC 63s are gifted with a handcrafted 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8. In the lesser application, youre looking at 476 PS (469 hp) and 650 Nm or 479 pound-feet of torque. As for the stupendous iteration, thatll be 510 PS (503 hp) and 700 Nm or 516 pound-feet of rotational force.An area where the all-new GLC 63 and GLC 63 Coupe strike a discordant note from the C63 and C63 Coupe is the tranny. A 9-speeder going by the name of AMG Speedshift MCT 9 comes standard, integrating a start-off wet clutch instead of a torque converter, all in the name of performance. Speaking of which, the Mercedes-AMG GLC 63 S hits 100 km/h (62 mph) in just 3.8 clicks.At long last, Buick replaced the Regal with an all-new generation. As expected, the 2018 model is also based on the Opel Insignia, but for once, the General Motors-owned brand did the right thing by bringing to the U.S. the station wagon body style as well. Its not just any other longroof, though, but a premium utility wagon augmented withDubbed TourX, the North American equivalent to the Insignia Country Tourer and Commodore Tourer is animated by a 2.0-liter four-banger. Sure it may seem underwhelming considering this is a mid-sized vehicle, but the numbers tell otherwise: 250 hp and 295 lb-ft (GM estimates).Then theres the Regal Sportback, a.k.a. the sedan. This body style is available with AWD, with front-wheel-drive shipping as standard. And in the bone stock configuration, torque from the 2.0-liter turbocharged engine slips to 260 pound-feet for some reason or other. The upside is, the Regal Sportbackhas a 9-speed automatic transmission, not the 8-speed box thats exclusive to the all-wheel-driven alternative.A huge unveil. Thats all Infiniti is willing to share about its surprise for the 2017 New York Auto Show. A full-sized one of those, that is. Christened QX80 Monograph and teased by a single photo showing half of the car from the front, its impossible to tell what this thing is.Views on the QX80 Monograph are divided. While some may say, This is a concept, a one-off, nothing else, others claim that the luxurious behemoth is a glimpse into the next-gen QX80s design language. The elaborate headlights, however, dont appear to be production-spec. Nor is the illuminated emblem. In other words, it might be just a concept. Whatever Infiniti wants to prove here, theres no shadow of a doubt the current-gen QX80 is rather old.In fact, this is the seventh year since production started at Nissan Shatai Kyushu, a contract manufacturer thats also responsible for making the Nissan Patrol, which is known in the U.S. as Armada. Bearing in mind the first-generation QX80 was built from 2004 to 2010, maybe an all-new model is indeed looming on the horizon.The FJ Cruiser is no longer in production. But as Jeep prepares to launch the JL Wrangler and Ford is working on bringing back the Bronco on a mid-size pickup truck platform, Toyota has a reason to take a deep breath, look in the mirror, and think about a competitor.And this brings us to the FT-4X Concept. Four wheeling. Scene stealing, is how Toyota describes its mysterious show car, and based on the tread and size (255/55 R18) of that tire, its highly possible that this thing is a snippet of the FJ Cruisers successor.Another reason why many 4x4 enthusiasts think that Toyota is developing an off-roader is a trademark filed with the USPTO in October 2016. It remains to be seen, however, what exactly the FT-4X stands for, and if the purported FJ Cruiser replacement will be made available with a good old stick shift. SUV This time, the 2018 Kona has uncovered a bit of its interior, all thanks to the efforts of our spy photographers. This product comes as the South Korean automaker's reply in the segment made relevant by the Nissan Juke, and that has since seen a broad portfolio of new cars from multiple brands.While the brand did have a product in this segment , it was not bold enough to have a shot at the share of the market.Hyundai wants to become the number one Asian brand in Europe by 2021, and this model has much ambition riding on four wheels to get it in that direction.The Kona shares many components with the i20, including its platform and interior parts, but some of its elements will be unique. A look at the passenger compartment confirms the idea in the previous phrase.You may have already noticed its dual headlight setup , which is not original in the class, along with LED taillights. The body of this crossover does not look like it has a bold design, but there may be hope under all that camouflage. Who knows, maybe Hyundai took a huge chance with the Kona, and we just do not see it yet.Few automakers have attempted to use a tamed design in the segment. While their propositions are reasonable as automobiles, they do not have the appeal of the Juke, which was a polarizing appearance when it reached the market.Back when it was launched, you could not help yourself from looking at it, and a potential customer had to struggle to get one configured in a dull shade.Hyundai is not expected to fit all-wheel-drive to the Kona , as many cars in this area of the market do not have and do not need this feature.While it may seem logical that an automobile that is styled like an, has a raised ground clearance, and looks like it could scale mountains, most of the products in the segment do not leave paved roads in their entire existence, so automakers have not bothered in fitting them with all-wheel-drive. The event is held in the fall of every other year, as it alternates with the Paris Motor Show. Its organizers, Germanys industry association - VDA, have confirmed that several car makers have told them that they will not join this edition of their show.Some of the brands that are rumored to skip the event have already confirmed the news, while others refused to provide official positions on the matter. Peugeot and Nissan have already confirmed that their products will not be seen at the 2017 Frankfurt Motor Show. In the case of the brand from Sochaux, its representatives explained that participating in such shows will not happen out of habit, and that company executives are reevaluating the return on investment in their presence at motor shows.Instead of renting a stand at this years Frankfurt event, Peugeot and DS will invest in social media and other forms of web advertising. Citroen will be present to support a product launch, officials have told Automotive News Nissans representatives have also confirmed that they will skip the 2017 IAA after an internal review of the companys show strategy. The Japanese brand will focus on events that will broaden its reach and appeal among influencers and wider consumers. Those words make us think about an increased implication in social media and web advertising.Automobilwoche informs that Mitsubishi and Volvo will also skip the Frankfurt event, while Fiat Chrysler Automobiles representatives have declined to comment the rumors that announced that the conglomerate would not be present at the IAA.If the rumors regarding FCA skipping the Frankfurt event , as insiders claim, the Fiat, Jeep, Maserati, and Alfa Romeo brands will not be present at the exhibition.The same is expected regarding Infiniti, Nissans premium division. Tech companies like Sony, Qualcomm, and IBM might get their exhibition spaces as they mark their first presence at the event. Instead of selling new cars in the U.S. immediately, the conglomerate plans a different strategy, which would not have been feasible until the recent technological advancements in the world, which range from smartphones to LTE internet connections across extended areas.The programs first step is introducing car sharing services in Los Angeles, which will happen through the Free2Move company, a mobility brand owned by the corporation.The French already own TravelCar, a startup that was founded just five years ago, and that was used to start the new mobility service company in North America.At first, the car sharing services will be offered to travelers who are using the Los Angeles airport. The service started this week, and will be expanded further into the USA.Unlike traditional rent-a-car services, Free2Move will be optimized to ensure that the fleet it operates will rarely go unused, and it will run lower prices than competing services from the regular service.Their clients will get facilities like free or extremely affordable parking, on top of the reduced costs when compared to regular operators.PSA already has experience in the field of ride sharing, as the group owns TravelCar, which was founded in 2012, and already has a network of 200 agencies in ten European countries. It has signed up 300,000 users in the past five years, which gives them a significant experience in the domain to be ready for more.The entry in North America has been laid out in the form of a ten-year project that is part of the Push to Pass offensive penned by Carlos Tavares and his team. Larry Dominique, a former employee of GM, Chrysler, and Nissan was named Senior Vice President and Head of the companys North American entity.Mr. Dominiques career involves over three decades of experience in the automotive industry, and his previous job was at TrueCar, where he served as Executive Vice President. He is also the President of Automotive Lease Guide. After weeks of "nonstop fighting," Stephen Bannon, an outspoken nationalist, called Jared Kushner a "cuck" and a "globalist" behind his back, according to several Trump officials who talked to The Daily Beast. Bannon accused Kushner of trying to push him out of the White House, one official said. "[Steve] recently vented to us about Jared being a 'globalist' and a 'cuck'He actually said 'cuck,' as in "cuckservative. - an administration official to The Daily Beast. A brief history on the term cuck: The term "cuck" is short for a much older term used often by Shakespeare "cuckold," which literally refers to a man whose spouse is unfaithful. Origins: The word was derived from the cuckoo bird, whose females lay their eggs in different nests. Racial insinuation: In pornography, the cuckold was most often a white man whose white wife cheated on him with a black man, according to GQ. Political use: During the 2016 election season, the term became a favorite of the alt-right to describe mainstream Republicans who did not support Donald Trump "cuckservatives" whom they saw as weak. President Trump is considering a broad shakeup of his White House that could include the replacement of White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and the departure of chief strategist Steve Bannon, aides and advisers tell us. A top aide to Trump said he's contemplating major changes, but that the situation is very fluid and the timing uncertain: "Things are happening, but it's very unclear the president's willing to pull that trigger." Insiders tell me that the possibilities for chief of staff include: House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who developed a bond with Trump as one of the earlier congressional leaders to support him, and remains a confidant. (R-Calif.), who developed a bond with Trump as one of the earlier congressional leaders to support him, and remains a confidant. Wayne Berman of Blackstone Group, a Washington heavy-hitter who was an Assistant Secretary of Commerce under President George H.W. Bush, and a key adviser on eight presidential campaigns. of Blackstone Group, a Washington heavy-hitter who was an Assistant Secretary of Commerce under President George H.W. Bush, and a key adviser on eight presidential campaigns. David Urban of the Washington advisory firm American Continental Group, and a former chief of staff to the late Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.). Urban helped Trump win an upset victory in Pennsylvania, and was in constant cellphone contact with the candidate throughout the campaign. of the Washington advisory firm American Continental Group, and a former chief of staff to the late Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.). Urban helped Trump win an upset victory in Pennsylvania, and was in constant cellphone contact with the candidate throughout the campaign. Gary Cohn, Trump's economic adviser and the former #2 at Goldman Sachs, who has built a formidable team and internal clout. The West Wing "Game of Thrones" has been raging ever since Trump took office. But the war between the nationalists and the moderates, led by Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, burst into the open this week after Bannon was taken off the National Security Council, setting off a torrent of leaks against him. Bannon called reports that he was ready to quit "100 percent nonsense." Axios' Jonathan Swan reports that Bannon told associates: "I love a gunfight." The top aide along with many other Trump officials, advisers and friends told us that it seems to be more a question of "when" not "whether" change will come: "The tension, the exhaustion, the raw nerves have gotten much harder to disguise." The embattled nuclear power industry is circulating an analysis in Washington that makes a rather blunt political point: Regions with nuclear plants are a "critical element" of the coalition that elected President Trump. Their case: The Nuclear Energy Institute memo and maps (see example above) overlays the location of nuclear power plants with county-level results in the 2016 elections. Trump carried 45 of the 61 counties that have reactors in the general election, and won all but 13 of them in the GOP primaries, according to NEI. Their warning: "Given the razor-thin popular vote margin in the states that delivered the Electoral College to President Trump, these are voters he can ill-afford to lose," the memo states. There are 22 reactors in six battleground states that flipped from Obama to Trump in 2016, the group said. Why it matters: The nuclear industry wants help from the federal government. It has been stuck in neutral for years, with very few new projects getting off the ground and a number of existing reactors facing potential closure. It has set a series of policy goals at several agencies, including the Energy Department, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. To be sure: The 100,000 people directly employed by the industry is not make-or-break for the economy in the big picture (the economy added 235,000 total jobs in February alone, for instance). But the memo argues that the industry is a vital economic driver in counties with nuclear plants through workers and their families, supporting other types of businesses, and providing a big chunk of the local tax base. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes will temporarily step aside from the committee's investigation into Russian interference in the November presidential election, as well as Trump's campaign associates' ties to Moscow. The Ethics Committee announced its looking at whether Nunes "made unauthorized disclosures of classified information." Paul Ryan's statement today: "It is clear that this process would be a distraction for the House Intelligence Committee's investigation into Russian interference in our election. Chairman Nunes has decided to step aside as the lead Republican on this probe, and I fully support this decision." The probe will now be led by Reps. Michael Conaway, Trey Gowdy, and Tom Rooney. Read the timeline on Devin Nunes and Trump's surveillance claims. Reports are emerging that President Trump could order military strikes against the Syrian regime as early as tonight. Here's what NBC's Richard Engel is reporting: "I've been talking to senior US military officials and they say that something is seriously under consideration, that it could happen imminently, that a wide range of options are being presented to the president. This could develop very quickly, even within the next couple, the next several hours." Engel's sources tell him Trump is leaning toward a "limited" response, perhaps targeting Assad's chemical weapons capabilities. Reporters who cover the Pentagon have also been advised to stay late, in another sign that something could be coming shortly. Reminder: Trump is at Mar-a-Lago tonight for his summit with Chinese president Xi Jinping. He was reportedly briefed today by Defense Secretary Mattis about military options in Syria. Per pool reports, the White House is mum about potential action tonight. Defense Secretary James Mattis will present President Trump with plans prepared by U.S. Central Command for a "saturation strike" on Syrian military targets tonight at Mar-a-Lago, per The Intercept. What that means: The U.S. would launch dozens of Tomahawk missiles at Syrian military targets to overwhelm their Russian-bolstered defense systems and cripple Syrian air capability against rebel forces, military sources told the Intercept. The U.S. would launch dozens of Tomahawk missiles at Syrian military targets to overwhelm their Russian-bolstered defense systems and cripple Syrian air capability against rebel forces, military sources told the Intercept. The big risk: The saturation strike would almost certainly result in Russian deaths, which is the "sticking point" for Mattis. The risk of Russian casualties plus the location of Syrian air defenses in densely populated areas were big reasons why the Obama administration never went forward with such a plan. President Trump ordered a missile strike Thursday night on an air base from which the Syrian regime carried out a deadly chemical weapons attack on Tuesday. Shortly after the strike, he said: "It is in the vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons... years of previous attempts at changing Assad's behavior have all failed and failed very dramatically." Details of the strike: 50 to 60 Tomahawk missiles were launched between 8:30 and 9pm ET from two destroyers in the Mediterranean Sea. The target was al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs in western Syria. The strike was designed to destroy air infrastructure, but avoid a chemical weapons storage unit so as not to release toxins that might harm civilians in the area. The role of Russia: Russians operating out of the base were given a warning, but Putin was not directly notified. Tillerson: "Russia has failed in its responsibility" to ensure that the Assad regime destroys its chemical weapons and has been either "complicit" or "incompetent." How Trump decided to act: Trump: "Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror." "Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror." H.R. McMaster: "The president was immediately notified upon news of the chemical attack..... There were three options we discussed with the president, and the president asked us to focus on two options in particular. After a meeting of considerable length and a far-reaching discussion, the president decided to act." "The president was immediately notified upon news of the chemical attack..... There were three options we discussed with the president, and the president asked us to focus on two options in particular. After a meeting of considerable length and a far-reaching discussion, the president decided to act." Tillerson: "We feel that the strike itself was proportional because it was targeted at the facility that delivered this most recent chemical weapons attack." Our roundup of reactions to the attack can be found here. Timeline of how we got here below: Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Ford Williams/U.S. Navy via AP Timeline Tuesday: An attack involving chemical weapons kills at least 70 people and wounds hundreds more in Idlib Province in Syria. Bashar al-Assad is deemed the obvious culprit. Tillerson initially refuses to answer questions about the attack but later releases a statement denouncing the Syrian regime. Trump condemns the attacks but claims Barack Obama's "weakness" is to blame. Wednesday: Nikki Haley confronts Russia at the U.N. Security Council, and says the U.S. may take unilateral action in Syria. Trump says "you'll see" when asked how he'll respond to the attack. Later, at a press conference with the Jordanian king, he says his attitude toward Assad has changed and that the attack crossed "many lines," but would not say whether he'd take military action. Thursday afternoon: It is reported that the Pentagon will brief Trump on possible military options in Syria. Tillerson says the U.S. is prepared to lead a coalition to oust Assad. Trump tells reporters on Air Force One: "I think what happened in Syria is a disgrace to humanity so I guess something should happen." Trump arrives in Mar-a-Lago, where he reportedly receives a briefing from his national security team. Thursday evening (times approximate): President Trump gaggled with reporters on Air Force One today during his flight to Palm Beach for his meeting with President Xi Jinping of China, per the White House pool report. On Assad stepping down in Syria: "I think what happened in Syria is a disgrace to humanity, and he's there, and I guess he's running things, so I guess something should happen." On the China summit: The two biggest issues for him to discuss with Xi are "North Korea and trade." On the nuclear option affecting future SCOTUS choices: "Hopefully if there is a second [Supreme Court vacancy] in my administration there could be as many as 4 I don't think the nuclear option has anything to do with it at all." On his 76 days as president thus far: "I think we've had one of the most successful 13 weeks in the history of the presidency." Twitter has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government to fight off a request for information about an anti-Trump account claiming to be run by US immigration officials. @ALT_USCIS, which already has 34,000 followers, and has been tweeting against President Trump's policies since January. Twitter declined to comment beyond the court document. First Amendment: Twitter is invoking the First Amendment's free speech protection in its complaint. Twitter also claims the Customs and Border Protection agency is misusing a law meant only for cases of potentially illegal merchandise imports to get the account's information, though it's clear to the company that it has other motives. Twitter has fought multiple government requests for information in the past, as well as gag orders preventing it from disclosing the requests themselves. Twitter and Trump: Twitter is finding itself caught in the middle of Trump and his opponents. The president has been regularly using the service to broadcast his thoughts and to rally his supporters, so opponents have also taken to using the service. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Sen. Deb Fischer said Thursday afternoon she hoped the Trump administration would take "strong action" against Syria and President Bashar Assad in retaliation for a chemical attack that killed scores of civilians, including children. "This was a crime," Fischer said during a telephone conference call from Washington. Fischer said inaction by the Obama administration "made this region less secure" by emboldening Russia to enter the Syrian arena and increasing the influence of Iran in Syria. "Assad is a puppet of Iran," the Republican senator said. Later Thursday, the U.S. launched missiles at a Syrian air base as retaliation for the chemical attack. President Donald Trump condemned the act and, in particular, its deadly impact on "beautiful babies" and other children. "This is a president who feels the weight of the office and has an understanding of the role of the United States globally," Fischer said. "The United States cannot continue to back away from our leadership position in the world," she said. On another matter, Fischer said the Senate Republican majority's decision to eliminate the ability of the Senate minority to filibuster nominations of U.S. Supreme Court justices means "we've gone back to where the Senate was" before the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch was filibustered. Senate Democrats had mounted a filibuster to prevent a vote on Trump's nomination of Gorsuch to the Supreme Court before Republicans wiped out that authority by changing a Senate rule. The GOP majority now is positioned to confirm the nomination Friday. Neither of President Obama's nominations to the Supreme Court was filibustered by Senate Republicans, Fischer noted. In answer to a question, Fischer said she has no town halls or listening sessions scheduled for the upcoming Senate recess, but she will travel the state during the two-week period for scheduled meetings with Nebraskans. From Burma to Buffalo topic of presentation Buffalo News reporter Jerry Zremski and photographer Derek Gee will discuss their experiences reporting on the lives of refugees from Burma during From Burma to Buffalo, a presentation sponsored by the School of Social Works Immigrant and Refugee Research Institute. Zremski and Gee, who spent 20 months reporting the series of stories detailing the arrival of more than 8,000 Burmese refugees in Buffalo, also will discuss how the Trump administrations stance on immigration and refugees will affect refugees in the resettlement program. Their talk will take place from 3:30-5:30 p.m. April 12 in 403 Hayes Hall, South Campus. The event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served. Those wishing to attend should RSVP. For further information contact Isok Kim, assistant professor in the School of Social Work. Ireland built an average of just 6,700 homes a year between 2011 and 2016, census data showed on Thursday, over a third fewer than suggested by the statistics the government relies on to tackle a chronic housing shortage. While Ireland was left with a surplus of houses after values were cut in half following the bursting of a property bubble in 2007, a recovery in its construction sector has lagged behind a rapid economic turnaround and led to supply falling far short of demand. Ireland's government has pledged to double housing output to 25,000 by 2019 and has pointed to progress in data it publishes that showed the number of house completions as measured by new electricity connections rose to almost 15,000 last year from a low of 8,300 in 2013. Some analysts have criticised the government for using that measure as a true reflection of activity as it effectively double counts large swathes of new builds left vacant when the market crashed that have been recently reconnected to the grid. The census backed up that analysis by showing that in the five years to the end of April 2016, 33,400 houses were built compared to the 51,600 measured by new electricity connections. Other indicators have shown construction activity picking up over the last year. Yet the lower base means Ireland may face a longer wait to hit the at least 25,000 annual builds that analysts say are needed to keep up with demand in a population that is also growing three times faster than the euro zone average. The slow supply response has accelerated house price growth again in recent months to a year-on-year average of almost 8%, while residential rents have already risen back above their "Celtic Tiger" peak. The census data also showed that the average household size increased to 2.75 persons from 2.73 persons in 2011, a reversal Trinity College Economics Professor Ronan Lyons described as an "astonishing result" as the figure had been falling steadily for decades. With more and more young workers either living at home with their parents for longer or having to share accommodation in greater numbers, Lyons said the change in the household size trend was a "damning indictment of inadequate housing supply." (Reuters) Source: www.businessworld.ie About us Published On Apr 07, 2017 06:50 PM By Khan Mohd. Takata airbag saga continues, 23,157 units of the Corolla Altis will be recalled soon In a statement released on Thursday, the Japanese carmaker announced that it will be recalling 23,157 units of its premium sedan, the Corolla Altis, soon over airbag issues. The airbags were supplied by another Japanese firm, Takata Corp. However, only the cars manufactured between January 2010 and December 2012 will be affected in this recall. Last year, some Takata airbags exploded in cars abruptly, leading to the death of 16 people in different instances worldwide. As per claimed reports, Takata airbags can explode in the event of prolonged exposure to heat. Many global carmakers who had equipped their cars with these airbags are facing the brunt of a recall. It is one of the most historic recalls in the automotive sector, with over 100 million vehicles recalled across the globe. The recall is being done in phases and the massive cost incurring has forced the airbag maker to look for a sponsor. Toyota had recently launched the Corolla Altis facelift on March 15, 2017. It gets Bi-Beam LED projector headlamps, LED DRLs, reworked grille and a sporty 16-inch alloy wheels. The interior features a newly designed instrument panel with soft-touch plastics on the dashboard and an updated 7.0-inch infotainment system. Moreover, safety is increased in the new model with the addition of reverse-linked ORVMs and seven airbags. It also got a new shade, Phantom Brown. Among the cars in its Indian portfolio, Toyota currently has the Etios Liva hatch, Platinum Etios sedan, Etios Cross, Corolla Altis sedan, Innova Crysta MPV, Fortuner SUV, Camry premium sedan, Prius hybrid sedan, Land Cruiser Prado SUV and the Land Cruiser SUV. Meggitt PLC designs and manufactures components and sub-systems in the United Kingdom, rest of Europe, the United States, and internationally. The company operates in four segments: Airframe Systems, Engine Systems, Energy & Equipment, and Services & Support. It offers ice protection products, radomes, and structures; air data and flight display products; brake control and tyre pressure monitoring systems, and wheels and brakes; engine health and vibration monitors, H2/O2 analyzers, and turbine monitoring and protection products; and aircraft cameras and security systems, and wireless aircraft systems. The company also provides ammunition handling, thermal, weapon scoring, and weapon training systems; energy storage, power conversion and distribution, and power generation systems; ducting systems, engine composites, and flow control valves; and fire protection and controls comprising bleed air leak detection products, cables, electronic control units, fire and overheat detection products, and fire suppression products. In addition, it offers ground fueling, and fuel systems and tanks; motion control actuators, electric motor drives, and electric motors; oxygen and specialty restraint systems; and accelerometers, ceramics, fluid sensors, magnetic and current sensors, position and inertial sensors, pressure sensors, speed sensors, and temperature sensors. Further, the company provides polymer seals; heat exchangers, printed circuit heat exchangers, thermal components, and thermal management systems; and live fire and virtual trainers, as well as aftermarket services. It serves aerospace, defense, and energy and equipment markets. The company was formerly known as Meggitt Holdings Public Limited Company and changed its name to Meggitt PLC in April 1989. Meggitt PLC was incorporated in 1947 and is headquartered in Coventry, the United Kingdom. Most Americans concerned about violence against Jews and Muslims A majority Americans are concerned about violence against Jews for the first time, according to a new poll. While the proportion worried about attacks on Jews just tipped over 50 per cent, three-quarters (76 per cent) of Americans said they were disturbed by violence against Muslims. The poll for the Anti-Defamation League found 80 per cent of Americans said it was important for the government to combat antisemitism a rise from 70 per cent on 2014. 'The good news in this research is that today a large majority of Americans do not subscribe to common antisemitic stereotypes,' said ADL CEO Jonathan A. Greenblatt. 'It's also encouraging that a record number of Americans are concerned about violence against the Jewish and Muslim communities, and are troubled at how intolerance has infected our politics.' Although most did not think Donald Trump was antisemitic himself, 49 per cent said he should have done more to discourage antisemitism during his campaign to be president. More than two-thirds (68 per cent) said they believed rhetoric in presidency campaign decreased tolerance and a respect for people of all religions and races. And while 76 per cent Americans as a whole were concerned about violence against Muslims, that figure rose to 89 per cent among US Muslims with 66 per cent said they feel less safe since Trump's election. The polls are based on 3,600 US interviews early in 2017 and another 1,500 interviews in October. West Jerusalem recognised as Israel's capital by Russia, in surprise statement In a surprise statement, Russia has said that it recognises west Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. No other country in the world recognises any part of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, and nor does the UN. The Russian announcement comes as US President Donald Trump is considering moving the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to west Jerusalem. The statement issued by the Russian Foreign Ministry read: 'We reaffirm our commitment to the UN-approved principles for a Palestinian-Israeli settlement, which include the status of east Jerusalem as the capital of the future Palestinian state. At the same time, we must state that in this context we view west Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.' The Jerusalem Post, which broke the story, said this marks a sharp shift in Russian policy, which until now has formally held that Jerusalem should eventually be under a permanent international regime. While officials in Jerusalem interpreted the statement to mean that recognition of west Jerusalem as Israel's capital will only come once east Jerusalem becomes the capital of a Palestinian state, The Jerusalem Post has reported that Moscow 'intends for this recognition to go into effect immediately'. While Israel considers Jerusalem its 'eternal, undivided capital', the Palestinians regard the east of the city occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War to be the capital of any future Palestinian state. Russia's Ambassador to Israel, Alexander Shein, intends to meet with Foreign Ministry officials in the coming days to discuss the implication of the decision taken in Moscow. However, reports said that there is currently no intention of moving Russia's embassy to Jerusalem. Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu has yet to respond to the Russian move, but a foreign ministry spokesman, Emmanuel Nahshon, said Israel is 'studying the statement'. The statement, entitled 'Foreign Ministry statement regarding Palestinian-Israeli settlement,' said that Moscow 'is deeply concerned about the situation in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Palestine and Israel have not held political negotiations for nearly three years, and the situation on the ground has been deteriorating.' It added: 'The stalling of the Middle East peace process has created conditions for unilateral moves that undermine the potential for an internationally accepted solution to the Palestinian problem, under which two states Israel and Palestine could live in peace and security with each other and with their neighbours.' Moscow reaffirmed 'its support for the two-state solution as an optimal option that meets the national interests of the Palestinian and Israeli people, both of whom have friendly relations with Russia, and the interests of all other countries in the region and the international community as a whole'. It added: 'The concrete parameters of a solution for the entire range of issues regarding the status of Palestinian territories, including Jerusalem, should be coordinated at the direct talks between the parties involved. Using its opportunities as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, a co-sponsor of the peace process and an active member of the Middle East Quartet of international intermediaries, Russia will continue to provide assistance to the achievement of Israeli-Palestinian agreements.' The statement also said that Moscow will 'focus on ensuring free access to Jerusalem's holy places for all believers.' A toolkit for charities on using digital has been launched today, following a report saying that lack of skills was a main barrier to using digital technology in the sector. The Charity Digital Toolkit was produced by the Skills Platform and Zoe Amar Communications, following the publication of the Charity Digital Skills Report last month. The toolkit aims to give charities a grounding in fundamentals by sharing expert advice, inspirational case studies and tips and tricks. It includes chapters from Martha Lane Fox from Doteveryone; Louise Macdonald from YoungScot and Simon Hopkins from Turn2Us; Steve Armstrong from Marie Curie; and digital experts Clare Bamberger and Matt Collins. It is said to be relevant for anyone working in the charity sector, from frontline staff through to experienced digital managers, senior leaders and trustees. Everyone has a role to play in successful digital transformation and can benefit from this free resource. It covers the basics of digital such as mapping your audience and developing your digital strategy; understanding the benefits of different marketing channels and measuring success. It also looks at leadership; fundraising; governance and risk. It is a sequel to the Charity Social Media Toolkit and showcases best practice, expert insight and practical tips to directly help charities navigate through digital transformation. See also Dave Evans, product marketing manager at Skills Platform, said: Digital is a growing area for many charities, from strategy to fundraising to communications. Yet we know from our work on The Charity Digital Report that digital skills across the sector must be raised if the sector is to become more sustainable and stay relevant and to its audience. Our experience has shown that charities need to be bold when tackling digital and make sure it is fundamental to how they operate right across their organisations. Whilst this may seem daunting, done well it will open up a realm of exciting possibilities. Zoe Amar, founder and director of Zoe Amar Communications, said: Digital transformation has been leading the way for many charities helping them to improve their processes and communication, increase productivity and ultimately drive growth. However, as our Charity Digital Report revealed last month, charities are at serious risk of being left behind if they cannot get to grips with digital. The toolkit can be found here. Civil Society Media is hosting its Charity Technology Conference on 9 November 2017. For more information, and to book, click here The Information Commissioner has published a discussion paper on profiling under the EUs General Data Protection Regulation and has called on stakeholders to submit feedback. The discussion paper, called Profiling under the GDPR: feedback request was published by the ICO yesterday. In an accompanying blog on the ICOs website, the data protection watchdogs interim head of policy, Jo Pedder, said the paper represented the organisations initial thoughts on this topic under the GDPR, which introduces stricter provisions to protect individuals from this type of data processing. Profiling can be a powerful tool for organisations and can benefit individuals, the economy and society generally. It can help organisations to understand and target audiences more effectively and is used to make decisions about people, but these can have a significant and sometimes detrimental effect on individuals, said Pedder. The paper deals with subjects including marketing, the right to object and data minimisation under future GDPR legislation. The ICO said it will accept submissions on this topic until 28 April 2017. Working party prioritised profiling for guidance In its request for feedback, the ICO said that the EU GDPR working party, in which it plays a role, identified profiling as an area of concern across the data protection landscape and has prioritised the issue for guidance. The ICO said this particular paper is not guidance, but is instead a request for feedback from various stakeholders, as well as a chance to provide examples of best practice. The paper addresses ten areas where existing legislation around profiling would change under GDPR, and sets out corresponding questions in regards to that change and how it will affect stakeholders. The paper also defines a number of sources of profiling, including the use of internet search and browsing history; education and professional data and financial and payment data, and reiterated that while organisations may perceive profiling to be beneficial that does not make it fair. Nor does it remove the requirement to inform an individual about the processing and how to exercise their rights. IoF say research beneficial to both charity and donor Issues around what does and does not constitute lawful profiling of data under the new GDPR legislation and the ICOs recent stricter interpretations of existing data protection law around the issue have proved contentious in recent months. In Fundraising Magazine The Institute of Fundraising recently published a survey of its members which found that 90 per cent of respondents believe that conducting research of donors prior to contacting them enabled fundraisers to enhance the experience offered to donors. At the time Mike Smith, head of media and public affairs, at the membership body also told Civil Society News that the IoF was working with the Information Commissioner to explain why doing research as part of fundraising is so important not just for the charity, but because it can improve the donor experience as well, which is vital. However, in the wake of this weeks rulings against 11 charities for breaches of the Data Protection Act, a number of sources in the data protection community have said the ICO has no intention whatsoever of backing down on their position about profiling and wealth screening, despite the case being made loudly by fundraisers that it really has a beneficial, rather than an adverse, effect on data subjects. Interested parties can read the paper in full here. Civil Society Media is hosting two breakfast seminars discussing the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) ahead of its introduction in May 2018. Booking is now open on both events: click here to book for May and click here to book for June. So, Diary forgot to put its iPhone on sleep mode and was woken this morning by news alerts that the United States had launched missiles at Syria. While trying to process this news, it switched on Radio 4 and found out that everyones still talking about the National Trusts much more dangerous war on Easter. Here we go again Theresa's hopping mad over Easter So, just in case you missed it earlier in the week, Theresa May took a few minutes out of her busy schedule of cosying up to the King of Saudi Arabia to lambast the National Trust for airbrushing the Christianity out of its annual Easter egg-hunt. Some further background: for many years now the National Trust has held various egg hunts around Easter time which it has called the Easter Egg Trail. However this year, the Trust and the events sponsor Cadburys, rebranded the event as the Great British Egg Hunt. The Great British Egg Hunt has quite a nice ring to it. It puts Diary in mind of Mel and Sue; copious Union Jack bunting; Mary Berry tucking into lovely slice of Victoria Sponge, and Paul Hollywood waggling his eyebrows while fingering at a soggy bottom. All the sorts of things, in other words, Diary figured would be right up the alley of an unelected Vicars daughter who once said on national radio that, were she trapped on a desert island and could only listen to eight songs ever again, chose an ABBA song, a 12th century Latin hymn (bloody Papists, right?) and an audio clip from Yes Minister Diarys been wrong in the past and, needless to say, Diary was wrong again. "Well, I think the stance they have taken is absolutely ridiculous and I dont know what theyre thinking about, frankly, May told an ITV reporter. "Easter's very important. It's important to me, it's a very important festival for the Christian faith for millions across the world. So I think what the National Trust is doing is frankly just ridiculous." On the same day, the Daily Telegraph aka the thinking Brexiteers newspaper ran the story on its front page, with copious levels of complaining from the Church of England, a spokesman for whom said the rebrand highlights the folly in airbrushing faith in Easter. Keep in mind, dear reader, at roughly the same time that this was going on, a former leader of the Conservative party was calling on the government to threaten Spain with a war over Gibraltar, and our Prime Minister was LITERALLY IN SAUDI ARABIA! A country which beheaded over 150 of its own citizens last year. This column, at the very least, took a crumb of comfort from the hope that Donald Trumps missile strike against the Assad regime in Syria this morning would recalibrate and refocus the news cycle. Yet, this morning Radio 4 was still banging on about it. What really irks Diary the most about all of this is the fact that (see picture above) THE PROMOTIONAL POSTER FOR THE GREAT BRTISH EGG HUNT LITERALLY HAS THE WORD EASTER ON IT! IN MASSIVE LETTERS! FOLLOWED BY THE WORD FUN! Jesus wept. Watch as the Charity Commission makes the charity disappear! Do you, dear reader, believe in magic? The answer of course is no. Its not real. However the boys from One Direction seem to believe in magic, at least believe in the magic of a charity called Believe in Magic. The 1-D lads raised over 5m for this relatively small charity over the years through various means singing, most likely, and the commoditisation of said singing. Look, Diarys going to level with you, this column doesnt know a lot about One Direction. Yes, theres a Harry and a Zayn and, well, Zayns not in the band anymore and Harry is, but hes sort of gone solo and another one of the group got arrested in an airport recently or something Anyway, Diarys asking that you just sort of fill in the gaps here, is what its saying. Do some of your own heavy lifting for once. Diary cant be across everything all of the time. Its just one theoretical entity, routinely emerging briefly at the weeks end to lampoon and satirise the charitable goings on of the preceeding days. It cant be all things to all people! GIVE DIARY A BREAK, WONT YOU? JUST THIS ONCE! Anyway the Charity Commission has frozen Believe in Magics bank accounts this week following indications of misconduct or mismanagement. Which is funny, in a sad kind of way. Diary contacted One Direction for a comment but has yet to receive one. Story of Diarys Life, really*. Still, thats What Makes this column Beautiful*. Always making the Same Mistakes* etc etc. *Crude takes on actual One Direction song titles if you think satire is so easy, you give it a try! SYRACUSE, N.Y. Upstate Medical University has named Dr. Julio Licinio senior VP and dean of the schools College of Medicine. The appointment is effective July 1, Dr. Danielle Laraque-Arena, president of Upstate Medical, said in a news release. Licinio assumes the role that Dr. David Duggan previously held before he stepped down as dean of the College of Medicine last Oct. 15 to take a six-month sabbatical before returning to the Upstate Medical faculty. Dr. Mantosh DeWan has been serving as the schools interim dean, according to the Upstate website. As dean, Licinio will oversee the academic activities of the basic and clinical-science departments, including education and research, in the College of Medicine. Upstates College of Medicine has an enrollment of about 640, the school said. He will also join the university executive committee in overseeing the leadership and management of the university, Upstate said. Dr. Licinio brings to Upstate a record of accomplishment in every aspect of academic medicine, Laraque-Arena said in the release. His experience as a physician-scientist with a broad international reputation, together with his successful career and critical understanding of administrative leadership, clinical care, research, education and policy, will move Upstate forward and broaden our research and academic enterprise. Laraque-Arena went on to say that his work in translational medicine and his broad global perspective is especially important to Upstate and positions him well to meet the challenges of academic medicine in this new century. About Liciano Licinios appointment to Upstate follows a nearly 30-year career in academic medicine. Hes led academic programs of training, research, patient care and community engagement, both nationally and internationally. Licinio currently serves as deputy director of translation strategy and process for the head, mind and brain theme at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute in Adelaide, Australia. He is also a professor at Flinders University in Adelaide. His work in building clinical and translational science institutes and programs included positions at UCLA from 1999 to 2006; the University of Miami from 2006 to 2009; and the National Australian University from 2009 to 2013, Upstate said. A native of Brazil, Licinio earned his medical degree from the University of Bahia School of Medicine in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil in 1982. He also completed a residency in internal medicine at the University of Sao Paulo Medical Centre in Brazil between 1982 and 1984. His medical education also included a research-track residency in psychiatry and service as a clinical associate and senior clinical associate in psychiatry at Cornell University Medical College, which is now known as Weill Cornell Medical College. Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com UTICA, N.Y. Mohawk Valley Community College (MVCC) and Cazenovia College have signed an agreement allowing MVCC graduates to more easily transfer credits to one of Cazenovias bachelors-degree programs. Randall VanWagoner, MVCC president, and Ronald Chesbrough, president of Cazenovia College, signed the agreement in the University Partners & Transfer Center (UPTC) at MVCCs Utica campus, the college said in a news release. Under the agreement, Cazenovia College will grant full credit to any MVCC student transferring with an associate degree who maintained a grade of C or better in his/her course work. Those students will enter Cazenovia with junior status. Per the agreement, the UPTC at MVCCs Utica campus will house Cazenovia College representatives to handle student enrollment; relationship management with MVCC; and to support grant initiatives and community-outreach activities. We are excited about this new partnership and the opportunity to have our representatives on the MVCC campus to assist students who are interested in Cazenovia College as a convenient and affordable option for continuing their education in pursuit of a bachelors degree, Chesbrough said in the MVCC news release. MVCCs UPTC seeks to help new and continuing students pursue their career and educational goals. The center helps students by offering programs and assistance related to transfer preparation and the transfer process. Its services include a specialized transitions computer lab, advisor-in-residence visits, transfer fairs, individual counseling and application assistance, college searches, and guidance in selecting a transfer school, MVCC said. Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com Photo caption: Ronald Chesbrough (left), president of Cazenovia College, and Randall VanWagoner, president of Mohawk Valley Community College (MVCC), sign an agreement allowing MVCC graduates to more easily transfer credits to one of Cazenovias bachelors-degree programs. (Photo provided by Mohawk Valley Community College) BINGHAMTON, N.Y. Binghamtons MetroCenter, an office building at 49 Court Street, has new owners. Justin and Bernard Marchuska of Marchuska Brothers Construction LLC purchased the property for $3.2 million in March, Pyramid Brokerage Co. said in a news release issued Wednesday. Pyramid Brokerage represented the seller in the transaction. The property record on the website of Broome County Real Property Tax Services lists the owner as CCMS 2005-CD 1 Bing LLC of Miami Beach, Florida. Pyramid describes the MetroCenter as a 116,000-square-foot, multi-tenant office building in Binghamtons central-business district. John Current, MetroCenters property manager, and William Colucci, associate real-estate broker, worked with the landlord for the last five years to turn the underperforming asset into a turn-key investment property, the release stated. Pyramid Brokerage was assigned the property-management project in May 2012, the firm said. The venue had 97 percent occupancy at the time of the sale. Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com PHOTO CAPTION: Pyramid Brokerage Company says Justin and Bernard Marchuska of Marchuska Brothers Construction LLC in March bought the 116,000-square-foot MetroCenter at 49 Court St. in downtown Binghamton for $3.2 million. Pyramid Brokerage represented the seller an ownership entity in Miami Beach, Florida. (Photo credit: Pyramid Brokerage) The products may be contaminated with Listeria monocytogeness A&M Farms of Lyons, Ga., is recalling select whole Vidalia onions packed on one pack line between June 20, 2022, and June 23, 2022. The products may be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes. No illnesses or adverse events have been reported to date. A list of the recalled products, sold at retail stores in five states, may be found here. Customers who purchased the recalled product should not consume it. Instead, they should discard or return it to the place of purchas... Marine operations, safety and newbuilding programs were focus topics on the final day of Passenger Ship Safety Southampton, rounding out a unique conference program with speakers from Carnival Corporation, Saga Cruises and various industry suppliers. One ambitious project under way has been man overboard detection. Several systems have been installed and tested, according to Mike Collier, research and project manager for Carnival. He noted there were no regulations in place for the systems yet, however, and that the project was still in an early phase. The main challenge is finding a reliable technology, whether it be radar, lidar or thermal, with testing under way on a combination of all three. Video analysis has been ruled out. Among the problems are false positives and weather interfering with the systems. Furthermore, the technology has to be linked to ECDIS (Electronic Chart Display and Information System ) to come up with the ships position at the time of an alarm. Lifeboat accidents still remain an occurring problem in the industry, usually attributed to davit issues. The UK MAIB attributes most incidents to over-complicated systems for lifeboat launching, leading to human error, saidDirk van Aarsen, head of safety and occupational health for Carnival Maritime. Thus, a new solution includes automatic controls of davit points as a kind of electronic check-list, presenting the operator with a green light for safe launching. Pilot projects are installed on both the AIDAprima and new Majestic Princess, and van Aarsen said retrofits would be relatively simple. Saga Cruises will take delivery of its first-ever newbuild in summer 2019, according to James Langley, vice president of marine operations for the British brand. He said the newbuild is a way for the company to move on from older vessels that bring technical and regulatory challenges. We want a new ship, which means there are no excuses, he said. Safety planning onboard has been driven by the companys passenger demographic (over 50), taking into account evacuation flows, life saving equipment, gangways, stairs and the elevators. The company is already preparing its training program for the new ship, including safety assessment and the modern facilities the ship will have, such as the move to pods from traditional propulsion. Modern life-saving appliances were a topic for Francesco Casarini, director of marine and safety for newbuildings at Carnival Corporate Shipbuilding. He said lifeboats had gotten bigger, and there were projects in place to continue to increase lifeboat capacity, which brings into question the time allowed for embarking and launching. With regulatory changes, he said the best lifeboat is now the vessel itself, with new Safe Return to Port regulations in addition to damage stability requirements. SOLAS is somewhat flexible on evacuation methods, as long as other methods bring an equivalent level of safety. In designing life-saving appliances for newbuilds, he said it was close to impossible to work with one view. Studies have to be carried out by ship by ship, even when they are sister ships, he said. Alternative fuels were another hot topic at Passenger Ship Safety, with Yves Bui, LNG Project Director for MSC Cruises, highlighting the companys LNG bunkering system development plans for upcoming newbuilds. Espen Kristiansen, vice president of business solutions at PEBS, discussed the potential of battery power in large-scale marine applications, which at this point are targeted at shorter routes. As battery technology evolves, this could change, however. Hurtigruten is among the first cruise lines to commit to battery power and will be able to sail for short periods on batteries on their two new ships, set for delivery in 2018 and 2019, respectively. Other presentations and topics included maintenance of high-pressure water mist nozzles, by industry specialist Ultra-Fog which supplies the nozzles, training and tools for the job. In addition was a presentation from class society Lloyds Register on fuel compliance in regards to upcoming Emissions Control Area regulations. The next Passenger Ship Safety event takes place in Florida in January 2018, stay tuned for details. Federal prosecutors alleged last week that a former teller stole more than $526,000 from member accounts at an Arizona credit union over four years. James Roy Entzminger, a former teller for the $57 million Banner Federal Credit Union in Phoenix, was charged with one count of embezzlement, four counts of fraud and four counts of aggravated identity theft, according to an indictment filed in Arizonas U.S. District Court on March 28. Entzminger allegedly took $526,999 starting in December 2009 through January 2014 from about a dozen individual and joint member accounts that had infrequent transactions. The former teller allegedly removed funds from accounts via cash withdrawals, issued unauthorized official checks from members accounts, forged their signatures and cashed the money out of his teller drawer, according to the indictment. If youre like most people today, you probably dont even remember the last time you used a map. Maybe you referred to one in a guidebook when you were last on vacation, but on a day-to-day basis, GPS rules. A voice tells you to turn left in 50 feet, and thats what you do. Its easy, convenient, and it works. For women seeking top credit union jobs, however, taking a GPS-style kind of approach could mean you never arrive. CUES member Carol Galizia, president/CEO of $360 million LA Financial Credit Union, Pasadena, Calif., puts it succinctly: Most important is creating the road map. Planning each step and turn in advance is important for men as well as women. But with fewer role models, the influences of society and, often, home considerations, mapping out a career routeand updating it oftenis an absolute must for women. States: Wyoming, Montana, Idaho Recreational visits (2016): 4,257,177 The granddaddy of all national parks, Yellowstone was signed into law by President Grant in 1872, making it the first national park in the world. Much has changed since then, but Yellowstone remains popular for its abundant wildlife and amazing geothermal features. Sfintii Mihail si Gavril 2022. Ce nu este bine sa faci de aceasta zi de sarbatoare Telenor is selling a 4% stake in Veon formerly VimpelCom for around $259 million. The Norwegian firm is looking to divest its minority holding in the Netherlands-based group, and is selling 70 million shares in Veon at an offer price of $3.75 per share. The offering is open until 12th April. Following the sale, Telenor will retain around 346.7 million shares in Veon, which constitutes a holding of 19.7% valued at $1.3 billion. In September, the Scandinavian firm sold 164 million shares in Veon a roughly 8.1% stake through a US public offering. Telenor has been steadily reducing its holding in Veon since October 2015, when it announced that it would look to pull out of its ownership arrangements with the group due to the challenging experience that it had presented. At the time, Telenor held a 33% stake in Veon. The challenges mentioned Telenor likely refer to its continued disputes with VimpelComs other key shareholder, Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman. Ownership arrangements between the parties precluded the possibility of Telenor assuming full control over Veon, which no doubt precipitated its decision to divest its holding. Anti-terrorism laws have prompted operators in Poland to disconnect around 12 million SIM cards across the country. The legislation was introduced by the Polish parliament last year, with the countrys ministry of digitalisation imposing a deadline of February 1st for prepaid SIM owners to register with their operators. Subscribers were warned that any SIMs not registered by this deadline would be disconnected. Regulator UKE confirmed that data provided by the countrys operators showed that 68.7% of Polands prepaid SIMs had been registered before the deadline, with around 12 million being disconnected. These figures are estimates generated from data gathered by the Polish electronic communications office. Data submitted by Virgin Mobile Poland was also used to calculate the estimates, with the operators president Grazyna Piotrowska-Oliwa confirming that it had disconnected 59,000 prepaid SIM cards, amounting to roughly 14% of its user base. Registering a SIM card provides the operator with the subscribers name and social security number for Polish nationals. Foreign nationals must disclose their passport or residence numbers. The new registration laws are aimed at making it harder for criminals and terrorists to use mobile phones anonymously. Similar measures have been introduced in several markets globally, with Nigerias one of the most prominent due to the dispute that arose between the countrys government and its market leader MTN. After being ordered in 2015 to disconnect unregistered SIM cards on the pain of financial penalties, the market leader was hit with a $5.2 billion fine after it failed to do so. It eventually managed to negotiate the fine down to $1.67 billion but has since complained of its harassment by the Nigerian government. Step aside, Denmark. After three years at number one, another Scandinavian country has ended Denmarks reign at the top of the annual World Happiness Report. The 2017 report named Norway the worlds happiest country. Norway is a rich economy that prosperously invested their abundant natural resources in long-term, sustainable growth as opposed to short-term gain, said a video accompanying the announcement. Other nations in the top 10 of this years worlds happiest countries list include Finland, Canada, Switzerland, and New Zealand. The first World Happiness Report was published in April 2012, in support of the High Level Meeting at the United Nations on happiness and well-being, chaired by the Prime Minister of Bhutan. The report aims to show that social and economic success is ultimately rooted in citizens happiness, which is ranked based on six key indicators: freedom, health, generosity, social support, income, and trustworthy governance. The World Happiness Report continues to draw global attention around the need to create sound policy for what matters most to people their well-being, said Jeffrey Sachs, the reports co-editor and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, in a statement. As demonstrated by many countries, this report gives evidence that happiness is a result of creating strong social foundations. Its time to build social trust and healthy lives, not guns or walls. Lets hold our leaders to this fact. This years report also looked at happiness in the workplace. Research showed that happiness differs considerably across employment status, job type, and industry sectors and that though people in well-paid roles are happier, money is only a piece of the happiness puzzle. Work-life balance, job variety, and their level of autonomy also played significant roles. #10 Sweden 1/10 #9 Australia 2/10 #8 New Zealand 3/10 #7 Canada 4/10 #6 Netherlands 5/10 #5 Finland 6/10 #4 Switzerland 7/10 #3 Iceland 8/10 #2 Denmark 9/10 #1 Norway 10/10 So if you want to go to your happy place, it sounds like the answer is to max out those vacation days and book a flight to Norway. Or Denmark, or Iceland, or view the full top 10 in the gallery above. State: Utah Recreational visits (2016): 4,295,127 Visitors are greeted by towering sandstone cliffs when they first enter Zion's main canyon. The southern Utah park is known for its canyoneering opportunities, including the famed Narrows -- where the canyon walls narrow to just twenty feet apart in places. Congress passed a surprising number of bills between 1981 and 2008 with bipartisan majorities large enough to withstand a presidential veto despite growing ideological divisions between Democratic and Republican lawmakers. A new Dartmouth - Miami University study demonstrates that legislative leaders used their increased control over procedures, a development that coincided with greater polarization, to create veto-proof bills. Presidents, in turn, gleaned useful information from such lopsided tallies to deploy their veto power strategically. The findings are published in Political Research Quarterly in an OnlineFirst manuscript ahead of the June print issue. (A pdf of the study is available upon request). "Members of Congress often seek veto-proof bills to protect constituency benefits or provide political cover on tough votes. As party leaders gained leverage over the legislative agenda in the wake of increased polarization, oversized coalitions became more likely," says Dartmouth Professor of Government and Frank J. Reagan Chair in Policy Studies, Emerita, Linda Fowler, co-author of the study. Most research on Congress focuses on how the majority party uses procedures to prevent minority obstruction. This study breaks new ground by examining the efficacy of legislative maneuvers in generating super-sized coalitions and by showing how the final vote tally signals the president about the costs of a veto. The study relies on a unique data set of over 3,400 bills to examine procedures that have received less attention from scholars, particularly combining multiple bills into a single package, and it develops new means for identifying politically salient bills based on a bill's policy content and its page length. The authors report positive statistical effects for procedural maneuvers on the probability of bills with a super-majority, which they define as an outcome with a recorded vote of 66 percent in one or both chambers. They also find that the watershed election of 1994, which was instrumental in promoting greater party influence on members' decisions, increased the likelihood of veto-proof outcomes. Presidents have several options when a bill reaches the Oval Office: sign the measure without comment, add a rhetorical or constitutional signing statement to flag the bill's positive or negative aspects, or reject it with a veto. Each of these options can influence public perceptions of the president and affect the executive's future relationships with the legislative branch. Will presidents be blamed for legislative failure or appear weak if they accept a bill that they previously opposed? A bill's legislative history and its final tally convey valuable cues about the likely congressional reaction and thus aid the president in evaluating the costs and benefits of signing, appending comments or rejecting a measure. From the Reagan years beginning in 1981 through 2008 with the George W. Bush administration, the authors find that presidents focused their veto power on bills that offered a chance for bargaining or on which they had issued veto threats. Citizens and pundits often assume that the White House dominates Congress but this study demonstrates that lawmakers can adapt their institution to circumvent the president's most formidable tool -- the veto -- when their political interests are at stake. ### Linda Fowler is available for comment at linda.l.fowler@dartmouth.edu. 1350 light years away, in the constellation of Orion (the Hunter), lies a dense and active star formation factory called the Orion Molecular Cloud 1 (OMC-1), part of the same complex as the famous Orion Nebula. Stars are born when a cloud of gas hundreds of times more massive than our Sun begins to collapse under its own gravity. In the densest regions, protostars ignite and begin to drift about randomly. Over time, some stars begin to fall toward a common centre of gravity, which is usually dominated by a particularly large protostar -- and if the stars have a close encounter before they can escape their stellar nursery, violent interactions can occur. About 100 000 years ago, several protostars started to form deep within the OMC-1. Gravity began to pull them together with ever-increasing speed, until 500 years ago two of them finally clashed. Astronomers are not sure whether they merely grazed each other or collided head-on, but either way it triggered a powerful eruption that launched other nearby protostars and hundreds of colossal streamers of gas and dust out into interstellar space at over 150 kilometres per second. This cataclysmic interaction released as much energy as our Sun emits in 10 million years. Fast forward 500 years, and a team of astronomers led by John Bally (University of Colorado, USA) has used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to peer into the heart of this cloud. There they found the flung-out debris from the explosive birth of this clump of massive stars, looking like a cosmic version of fireworks with giant streamers rocketing off in all directions. Such explosions are expected to be relatively short-lived, the remnants like those seen by ALMA lasting only centuries. But although they are fleeting, such protostellar explosions may be relatively common. By destroying their parent cloud, these events might also help to regulate the pace of star formation in such giant molecular clouds. Hints of the explosive nature of the debris in OMC-1 were first revealed by the Submillimeter Array in Hawaii in 2009. Bally and his team also observed this object in the near-infrared with the Gemini South telescope in Chile, revealing the remarkable structure of the streamers, which extend nearly a light-year from end to end. The new ALMA images, however, showcase the explosive nature in high resolution, unveiling important details about the distribution and high-velocity motion of the carbon monoxide (CO) gas inside the streamers. This will help astronomers understand the underlying force of the blast, and what impact such events could have on star formation across the galaxy. ### More information ESO is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world's most productive ground-based astronomical observatory by far. It is supported by 16 countries: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, along with the host state of Chile. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope, the world's most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory and two survey telescopes. VISTA works in the infrared and is the world's largest survey telescope and the VLT Survey Telescope is the largest telescope designed to exclusively survey the skies in visible light. ESO is a major partner in ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. And on Cerro Armazones, close to Paranal, ESO is building the 39-metre European Extremely Large Telescope, the E-ELT, which will become "the world's biggest eye on the sky". Links Research paper - http://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/eso1711/eso1711a.pdf (Bally et al., in the Astrophysical Journal ). ). Photos of ALMA - http://www.eso.org/public/images/archive/category/alma/ Contacts John Bally University of Colorado, USA Email: john.bally@Colorado.EDU Richard Hook ESO Public Information Officer Garching bei Munchen, Germany Tel: +49 89 3200 6655 Cell: +49 151 1537 3591 Email: rhook@eso.org Optomechanical devices, which simultaneously confine light waves and mechanical waves to permit interaction between them, can be used both to study fundamental questions in physics and to sense motion in a way similar to electromechanical accelerometers. In smartphones, these electronic components switch the touchscreen between portrait and landscape when they detect rotation by the user. According to experts in the field, however, the use of optomechanical devices to study macroscopic quantum phenomena - in which the large-scale properties of matter such as mechanical vibration are subject to the laws that govern atoms (quantum mechanics) - or to identify very subtle movements requires extremely high levels of interaction, or coupling, between light waves and mechanical waves. A group of researchers led by Thiago Pedro Mayer Alegre and Gustavo Silva Wiederhecker at the University of Campinas's Gleb Wataghin Physics Institute (IF-UNICAMP) in Sao Paulo State, Brazil, have developed an optomechanical device with a novel design that boosts the coupling between light waves and mechanical waves to higher levels than those reported for similar devices developed in the laboratory. Their work was part of research projects supported by FAPESP. The new optomechanical device and an experimental demonstration of its functioning are described in an article published in the Optical Society of America's journal Optics Express. "The way we designed the device allows the levels of interaction between light waves and mechanical waves to be increased," Alegre told. "This means the device can both have practical applications and assist us in our basic research by helping us answer certain questions, such as what happens in the transition between the quantum microscopic world and the classical macroscopic world." The device created by the researchers, based on a 24-micron silicon disk supported by a silicon dioxide central pedestal so that the disk can vibrate, has a similar shape to a bullseye at the center of a shooting target, with concentric circular grooves. Thanks to this shape, light waves and mechanical waves can be confined within the device by separate mechanisms. The light waves are confined only at the edge of the disk by total internal reflection, an optical phenomenon whereby light within a medium such as water or glass is completely reflected from the surrounding surfaces (such as the air interface) back into the medium, provided the angle of incidence is greater than a certain limiting angle called the critical angle. Light waves are therefore compressed near the disk edge and travel around the rings for a long time, whereas mechanical vibrations can propagate throughout the material. However, the concentric rings create frequency regions in which mechanical waves cannot propagate, so that they are confined to the outside edge of the disk, where they interact directly with the light waves. "Confining light waves and mechanical waves to the disk edge enables us to boost their interaction, which is useful for exploring quantum phenomena in macroscopic objects," Alegre explained. In devices developed by other research groups, the concentric circular grooves are used to confine light waves in the central region and not at the edge, as in the case of the device designed by the researchers at IF-UNICAMP. Based on the finding that, like optical vibrations, mechanical vibrations can be understood as waves, Alegre's group had the idea of using the concentric rings to confine mechanical waves at the edge of the device and make them interact more intensely with light waves in the same region. "The point of developing the disk with this bullseye design was to prevent the mechanical mode from 'seeing' the central pedestal that supports the disk and allow the entire structure to vibrate, eliminating mechanical losses," he said. The device is highly customizable, he added, and compatible with existing industrial fabrication processes, making it a solution for the enhancement of sensors that detect force and motion, for example. One of its potential applications is in telecommunications as an optical modulator, Alegre explained. Because the device can sense and excite mechanical vibration, it could be used as an optical switch, turning on or off a laser beam that passes through it far more efficiently than the modulating technologies used today in optical telecommunications networks. "It was fabricated according to current industrial processes, so any group in the world could reproduce it," he said. ### Published today in Science the team's findings have the potential to cheaply print a range of electronic devices from solar cells to LEDs with applications from interactive smart food and drug labels to next-generation banknote security and e-passports Graphene Flagship researchers from AMBER at Trinity College Dublin have fabricated printed transistors consisting entirely of layered materials. Published today in the leading journal Science* the team's findings have the potential to cheaply print a range of electronic devices from solar cells to LEDs with applications from interactive smart food and drug labels to next-generation banknote security and e-passports. Led by Professor Jonathan Coleman from AMBER (the Science Foundation Ireland-funded materials science research centre hosted in Trinity College Dublin), in collaboration with the groups of Professor Georg Duesberg (AMBER) and Professor Laurens Siebbeles (TU Delft, Netherlands), the team used standard printing techniques to combine graphene flakes as the electrodes with other layered materials, tungsten diselenide and boron nitride as the channel and separator (two important parts of a transistor) to form an all-printed, all-layered materials, working transistor. All of these are flakes are a few nanometres thick but hundreds of nanometres wide. Critically, it is the ability of flakes made from different layered materials to have electronic properties that can be conducting (in the case of graphene), insulating (boron nitride) or semiconducting (tungsten diselenide) that enable them to create the building blocks of electronics. While the performance of these printed layered devices cannot yet compare with advanced transistors, the team believe there is a wide scope to improve the performance of their printed TFTs beyond the current state-of-the-art. Professor Coleman, who is an investigator in AMBER and Trinity's School of Physics, said, "In the future, printed devices will be incorporated into even the most mundane objects such as labels, posters and packaging. Printed electronic circuitry will allow consumer products to gather, process, display and transmit information: for example, milk cartons will send messages to your phone warning that the milk is about to go out-of-date. We believe that layered materials can compete with the materials currently used for printed electronics." All of the layered materials were printed from inks created using the liquid exfoliation method previously developed by Professor Coleman and already licensed. Using liquid processing techniques to create the layered materials inks is especially advantageous in that it yields large quantities of high quality layered materials which helps to enable the potential to print circuitry at low cost. ### * All-printed thin-film transistors from networks of liquid-exfoliated nanosheets, Science, 7th April 2017 Catch it early. Those are watchwords in the battle against a host of illnesses, from heart disease to cancer to Type 2 diabetes. Early detection gives physicians a chance to minimize damage, to insert a stent and keep blood flowing to the heart, to remove a tumor before one becomes many, to urge crucial lifestyle changes: lose weight, eat better, exercise. But can the strategy work for Alzheimer's disease? Scientists are starting to think it might. The Harvard Aging Brain Study, a National Institute on Aging-backed project now in its seventh year, has shown that amyloid beta, the protein thought to cause Alzheimer's, accumulates in the brain a decade or more before symptoms occur. That finding has given new hope to researchers struggling to move beyond a rash of high-profile Alzheimer's failures in clinical drug trials. In February, just three months after Eli Lilly & Co. announced a trial failure, drug maker Merck & Co. halted a study. Several additional drugs are still in trials, but researchers are reconsidering their approach and wondering whether the problem is in trying to reverse, rather than prevent, dementia "I think we've failed in 11 phase 3 trials, which is not a good track record," said Reisa Sperling, a neurology professor at Harvard Medical School, a physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and co-director of the Harvard Aging Brain Study at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). "From a clinical point of view, it's a dismal failure." Now, the "catch it early" idea is being put to the test in a new study called A4, or Anti-Amyloid Treatment in Asymptomatic Alzheimer's Disease, led by Sperling and the University of Southern California's Paul Aisen. Researchers will try an anti-amyloid drug on people who show no signs of cognitive decline, but who do have abnormally high levels of amyloid beta in their brains. "I think this is a tremendously important trial," said Aisen. "It's the first trial in a population we refer to as 'preclinical Alzheimer's disease.' We believe this is identifying an early stage of the disease, not just 'at risk' [patients].... If we wait for people to have symptoms, there's already substantial neuro-degeneration." Alzheimer's is the sixth-leading cause of death in the United States, killing about 94,000 people annually, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. An estimated 5 million Americans are living with the disease, a figure expected to climb to 13.5 million by 2050, according to a report by the Alzheimer's Association. Costs of care are projected to rise from $226 billion in 2015 to $1.1 trillion by 2050, with Medicare and Medicaid paying 70 percent. Developing a treatment to delay Alzheimer's onset by just five years by 2025 could save an estimated $935 billion over the following 10 years, the report says. In recent decades, researchers have worked out what many believe is the step-by-step process through which Alzheimer's does its work. Amyloid beta, a naturally occurring protein whose normal function in the brain remains unclear, builds to unhealthy levels. The amyloid beta forms plaques, which in turn lead to tangles of a protein called tau inside nerve cells, killing them. This triggers inflammation, a natural infection-fighting response, which in this case makes things worse. A4 is screening 5,000 cognitively normal candidates, age 65 to 85, with the goal of enrolling about 1,150 who have elevated amyloid beta levels. The trial will test Eli Lilly's solanezumab, an anti-amyloid antibody that was proved safe, though judged ineffective, in patients with mild dementia due to Alzheimer's. The antibody targets soluble forms of the protein, not the plaques themselves. Though solanezumab has been tried in Alzheimer's patients without success, the data from that trial held indications of positive trends, said Sperling. The A4 study -- being conducted at 67 sites in the U.S., Canada, Japan, and Australia -- has already enrolled 875 people and is funded by the National Institutes of Health, Eli Lilly, and several philanthropic organizations. Much of the launch work -- signing up participants and managing data -- is being conducted by the Alzheimer's Therapeutic Research Institute at USC's Keck School of Medicine. The A4 study rests on a foundation laid by the Harvard Aging Brain Study, which began in 2009 and is headed by Sperling and Keith Johnson, a professor of radiology at HMS and MGH. The study, which has funding to run through 2019, images the brains of 60- to 90-year-olds to follow changes over time. By early 2013, it was clear that patients who started out with higher amyloid levels -- even those who were cognitively normal -- had a much faster rate of decline in cognitive ability, four to five times that of patients with normal levels of the protein, Sperling said. Those findings pointed to a far earlier beginning of the disease than scientists had grasped and led to the "catch it early" approach of A4. Sperling worries, however, that even the A4 design might be intervening too late, and that, though subjects are cognitively normal, their high amyloid levels mark a cascade ending in dementia a drug won't halt. And that isn't her only worry. Though the amyloid-tau-inflammation scenario has gained wide support, skeptics remain. In fact, there are enough exceptions in the Harvard Aging Brain Study to give Sperling pause: cases of people with high levels of amyloid beta who don't experience cognitive decline and others with lower levels who nonetheless progress rapidly. "I think there's still a lot of questions," she said. "We can still only account for 50 percent -- on a good day -- of the variance of what happens to people cognitively. I do worry, what if we're completely on the wrong track? What if it's all circumstantial? What if there's some giant X-factor we've missed?" Dorene Rentz, an associate professor of neurology at HMS and the Brigham and co-director, with Sperling, of the hospital's Center for Alzheimer Research and Treatment, is also working on the A4 study. For Rentz open questions in Alzheimer's include the relative roles of amyloid beta and tau. Though removing amyloid beta has been a major thrust of drug development, it could be that tau, which forms the tangles within neurons, has to be removed to see a clinical effect. And no tau-removing compounds have been developed. "But the argument in the community is we have to start somewhere," Rentz said. "All we've done is fail." The inflammation associated with the disease -- part of the process of clearing amyloid and tau proteins from the brain, but itself destructive to tissue -- amounts to another unanswered question, Sperling said. It's possible that inflammation has to be reduced or avoided entirely to avoid cognitive damage. Another possibility is that Alzheimer's is part of an underlying problem, an inability to handle waste proteins and, as Sperling put it, "empty the body's protein garbage can." Potentially pointing to a broader problem is the fact that other neurodegenerative diseases, such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and Parkinson's, are also related to abnormal protein accumulation. Despite these questions, Sperling, Aisen, and Rentz agree that there's a sense of hope in the Alzheimer's community, a feeling that progress in several areas has put science on the verge of a breakthrough. "I am very hopeful about the field in general," Aisen said. "There's a number of promising therapies. I believe we're going to be successful and I believe dramatically successful. This is an enormous world health problem and a major problem in this country's health." Should A4 fail, Sperling has a plan for trying to catch the disease earlier still. While A4 is targeting cognitively normal patients with high amyloid levels, she's designing A3, which would test interventions on people age 60 -- or even 50 -- who are cognitively normal and whose amyloid levels have yet to rise. "A3 is trying to get closer to primary prevention, pushing the envelope," Sperling said. For Sperling and Rentz, Alzheimer's is not just a clinical problem, but also a personal one. Rentz's husband has the disease and is currently participating in a drug trial, and Sperling's career sprang from her grandfather's Alzheimer's, which became apparent when she was applying to medical school. Her father, who was a chemistry professor at Lehigh University, was diagnosed with the disease six years ago and died last year. "I naively thought I could do something before it affected other members of my family," Sperling said. "I hope my kids don't have to take care of me that way and, hopefully, my grandchildren won't even know what Alzheimer's is." ### With two newly awarded Advanced Grants, the total number of ERC-funded projects at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria) has risen to 33. Biologist Carl-Philipp Heisenberg, who has made a name for himself with his discoveries in the field of embryonic development, is one of the two grantees. In his project "Interaction and feedback between cell mechanics and fate specification in vertebrate gastrulation", which will be funded for five years, he will study the interplay between the different mechanisms that determine the shape of an embryo. There are two types of processes that play important roles during embryonic development. First, there are the so-called gene regulatory networks. These determine the specific identity a given stem cell will acquire during development. Then, there are the physical processes that shape cells and tissues. These two types of processes must interact to ensure that the tissues and organs of the developing organism are shaped and arranged correctly, but currently very little is known about this important interplay. In his new ERC-funded project, Heisenberg will work to close this gap. Heisenberg and his group have recently announced several major breakthroughs in the study of the physical processes underlying embryonic development. First, they demonstrated that surface tension coordinates tissue shape changes during early zebrafish development in a process called "doming" (click here for more details). Moreover, in their latest Nature Cell Biology paper, they proved that mechanical forces such as friction regulate the formation of the neural plate (see press release). Now, they will take their research a step further and study how tissue mechanics feed back into the gene regulatory networks and vice versa. To accomplish this, Heisenberg will focus on a specific phase of embryonic development called gastrulation, a common and fundamental process in animal development. During this phase, an initially unstructured cluster of cells is transformed into an embryo consisting of three germ layers: the ectoderm, endoderm and mesoderm. Heisenberg and his group will combine an experimental approach involving genetic, cell biological and biophysical experiments with mathematical modelling -- an innovative approach that is not only perfectly in line with IST Austria's principle of interdisciplinarity, but which might also provide answers to an as-of-yet unresolved question in developmental biology: how cell mechanics, dynamics, and genetic aspects work together to give an embryo its shape. ### Carl-Philipp Heisenberg studied Biology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munchen, and obtained his PhD in 1997 at the Eberhard?Karls?Universitat Tubingen and the Max-Planck-Institute for Developmental Biology in Tubingen in the research group of Nobel laureate Christiane Nusslein-Volhard. After his postdoctoral studies at the University College London, he headed a research group at the Max-Planck-Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden as an Emmy-Noether Junior Professor. He joined IST Austria in 2010 as the third professor and moved on campus not long after the opening of the Institute in 2009. In 2015 he was elected member of the Leopoldina -- the German National Academy of Sciences -- and in 2016 he was elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO). Two further ERC Advanced Grants have been awarded to professors at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria). In total, 33 projects at IST Austria are now funded by grants from the European Research Council. Jiri Friml, who studies the development and cell biology of plants, is one of the two awardees at IST Austria. He has previously received an ERC Starting Grant. In his project "Tracing Evolution of Auxin Transport and Polarity in Plants", which will be funded for a duration of 5 years, Friml will study the transport of the plant hormone auxin from a novel perspective, looking at its evolution. While animals can move away when danger looms, plants are literally rooted at the spot. To adjust to changes in their environment, plants respond with flexible development -- such as growing towards light or water sources. One of the most crucial developmental mechanisms unique to plants that allow them to be so adaptive is the patterning of tissues by the plant hormone auxin. Auxin is unique among plant signaling molecules being distributed differentially within tissues, forming so called auxin gradients. Friml and his group have previously shown that these auxin gradients are formed by a polarized transport of the hormone within tissues. This transport crucially depends on transport proteins, the so-called PIN auxin transporters. In a cell, PIN transporters are typically located at one side. This determines the direction of the auxin flow in the tissue. PIN proteins, and the polar distribution of auxin that they set up, have been shown to play a role at various stages in a plant's life, such as the arrangement of leaves on a plant stem (phyllotaxis), growth of roots towards the source of gravity, or the formation and growth of all plant organs. Friml and colleagues have proposed that the dynamic regulation of PIN transporters is a major mechanism for plants to perceive signals and adapt accordingly. Although PIN transporters play a crucial role in plant development, the approaches currently used to study them, such as molecular genetics, developmental biology and cell biology, have been unable to solve long-standing questions regarding the structure and regulation of PIN transporters. In his ERC-funded project, Friml will use a novel evolutionary perspective to understand PIN-dependent auxin transport. Friml will seek answers to evolutionary questions such as when did the PINs evolve, what did early forms look like, how did new functions get added on and how do these correlate with increasing complexity in plant development during evolution. This will provide insights not only into the evolution of PIN transporters, but also into their structure, functional domains and regulation. ### Jiri Friml joined IST Austria in 2012. Previously, Friml was full professor at the Flanders Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) in Gent, Belgium (2007-2012), professor and Head of the Plant Cell Biology Department at Gottingen University, Germany (2006-2007), and group leader at the University of Tubingen, Germany (2002-2006). In 2012, Friml received an ERC Starting Grant to study polarity and subcellular dynamics in plants. Friml has received many international awards and fellowships, including the 2016 Charles Albert Shull Award by the American Society of Plant Biologists, the Erwin Schrodinger Prize in 2015, the EMBO Gold Medal in 2012, and the Korber European Science Award in 2010. IST Austria The Institute of Science and Technology (IST Austria) is a PhD granting research institution located in Klosterneuburg, 18 km from the center of Vienna, Austria. Inaugurated in 2009, the Institute is dedicated to basic research in the natural and mathematical sciences. IST Austria employs professors on a tenure-track system, postdoctoral fellows, and doctoral students at its international graduate school. While dedicated to the principle of curiosity-driven research, the Institute owns the rights to all scientific discoveries and is committed to promote their use. The first president of IST Austria is Thomas A. Henzinger, a leading computer scientist and former professor at the University of California in Berkeley, USA, and the EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland. In an article published in the April issue of "The Journal of Nuclear Medicine," researchers at Stanford University in California provide a template for assessing new positron emission tomography (PET) radiotracers that can accurately identify molecules in cancer cells that prevent the immune system from attacking the cancer. A drug that blocks a cancer's inhibitory checkpoint molecules is called an immune checkpoint inhibitor and this form of immunotherapy has emerged as a promising cancer treatment approach. However, the lack of imaging tools to assess immune checkpoint expression has been a major barrier to predicting and monitoring response to a clinical checkpoint blockade. "Because immunotherapies for cancer are expanding, methods to optimize them for an individual patient through molecular imaging are needed," explains Sam Gambhir, MD, PhD, at Stanford University. "Using animal models, this study shows the development of several new engineered PET tracers that can help image the immune system in action and be used to monitor checkpoint inhibitor therapy." The study assessed practical immunoPET radiotracer design modifications and their effects on human PD-L1 immune checkpoint imaging. The researchers sought to optimize engineering design parameters including chelate, glycosylation, and radiometal to develop a non-invasive molecular imaging tool for eventual monitoring of clinical checkpoint blockade. Gambhir points out, "This research will ultimately allow for translation to human imaging of the tracer that worked best in animal models. An effective immunoPET tracer will help patients receiving checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapy get optimal treatment and have the best chance for fighting their cancer." Molecular imaging is playing an increasingly integral role in immunotherapy and personalized medicine. Looking ahead, Gambhir envisions "a lot more use of PET/CT or PET/MR imaging for patients undergoing immunotherapy." He adds, "This and related research will also help us develop other imaging approaches for understanding the immune system in action." ### The authors of "Practical ImmunoPET radiotracer design considerations for human immune checkpoint imaging" include Aaron T. Mayer, Arutselvan Natarajan, Sydney R. Gordon, Roy L. Maute, Melissa N. McCracken, Aaron M. Ring, Irving L. Weissman and Sanjiv S. Gambhir, Stanford University, Stanford, California. Support for this study was provided by Kenneth Lau, Frezghi Habte, the Canary Foundation and the Ben and Catherine Ivy Foundation. This material is based upon work supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Grant (DGE-114747) and a NIH TBi2 Training Grant (2T32EB009653-06). MicroPET/CT imaging and Gamma Counter measurements were performed in the SCi3 Stanford Small Animal Imaging Service Center. Please visit the SNMMI Media Center to view the PDF of the study, including images, and more information about molecular imaging and personalized medicine. To schedule an interview with the researchers, please contact Laurie Callahan at (703) 652-6773 or lcallahan@snmmi.org. Current and past issues of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine can be found online at http://jnm.snmjournals.org. About the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging The Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) is an international scientific and medical organization dedicated to raising public awareness about nuclear medicine and molecular imaging, a vital element of today's medical practice that adds an additional dimension to diagnosis, changing the way common and devastating diseases are understood and treated and helping provide patients with the best health care possible. SNMMI's more than 17,000 members set the standard for molecular imaging and nuclear medicine practice by creating guidelines, sharing information through journals and meetings and leading advocacy on key issues that affect molecular imaging and therapy research and practice. For more information, visit http://www.snmmi.org. Liza Grandia, associate professor of Native American studies at the University of California, Davis, has received a $270,000 Mellon Foundation New Directions Fellowship. The fellowship will allow her to study toxicology and environmental epidemiology to become "a more productive interlocutor" between indigenous communities and the environmental health sciences. Her proposal, titled "Toxic Trespass," proposes ways to build cross-disciplinary bridges to provide data to indigenous people affected by human-made environmental hazards. The work builds on her collaborations with the Q'eqchi' Maya people of Guatemala and Belize on agro-environmental issues over the last two decades. "We have brilliant environmental health scientists at UC Davis, but they may not have cross-cultural training and perspectives, and scholars who work with indigenous populations that face all kinds of environmental threats," said Grandia, a cultural anthropologist. "At UC Davis, there is an aspiration to bring the humanities and social sciences together with the hard sciences, and I hope to do that," she said. "I don't think I would have conceived of this if I weren't at UC Davis." During her five years at UC Davis, students in her "Introduction to Native American Studies" and especially "Native Foods and Farming of the Americas" classes gave Grandia inspiration to begin building these cross-disciplinary linkages. "It is often students who make the introductions that lead to collaboration," Grandia said. "The Q'eqchi' confront many environmental conflicts from pesticide exposure and extractive industries through nickel mines, sugar cane and palm plantations, and oil pipelines," she said. "They need hard data about the environmental hazards in their territories." Those who protest environmental degradation have often suffered retaliation. In the area of Guatemala where Grandia worked, a schoolteacher was shot and killed after denouncing a palm oil plantation that had dumped pesticides into a river. "Land rights and environmental organizers are under constant death threats, but they rarely abandon their work." she said. "They inspire me to overcome my own fears and move forward with my research." Grandia's own battle with lymphoma nine years ago, which she believes may have been triggered by her exposure to pesticides during years of fieldwork in Central America, led indirectly to her Mellon-supported project. At the time of her diagnosis, she and Q'eqchi' leaders were working on ways to use the United Nations principle of the right to "free prior informed consent" to halt development of their territories. "Under the chemotherapy drip came an idea that I have been kindling ever since: the potential use of FPIC to challenge the nonconsensual presence of synthetic chemicals in the bloodstreams of indigenous peoples -- and virtually everyone else on the planet," Grandia said. "I spent seven years in rural Mesoamerica, but after cancer, I couldn't continue that kind of fieldwork," she said. "Now that I'm in remission, the Mellon Fellowship comes at the right moment for reinventing my research at a different scale." As part of the 18-month project, she will take classes and travel to conferences to enhance her ongoing research with Q'eqchi' communities. "This training will also jumpstart my next major ethnographic project on cultural perceptions of the risks associated with toxic chemicals in everyday life," she said. "It is my idea that until privileged people become more concerned about the trespass of synthetic chemicals into their bodies, little will be done to address the greater environmental injustices faced by indigenous and other marginalized peoples." ### Media contact(s) Jeffrey Day, Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies, 530-219-8258, jaaday@ucdavis.edu Karen Nikos-Rose, UC Davis News and Media Relations, 530-219-5472, kmnikos@ucdavis.edu UTSA entrepreneurs will travel to Boston this month to test their InfraVein invention on potential customers and explore how to market the device A student-led team from The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) is the beneficiary of a $50,000 grant to UTSA's CITE program from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support the continued development of their infrared medical camera, InfraVein, which makes simple work of finding veins. As a result of the grant, the team will be heading to Boston for the NSF I-Corps this month to test the business model of InfraVein and explore how to market the device. "With this opportunity in Boston, I hope to experience how to interact with different customer segments and to use their feedback in order to develop our technology further," said Sanjiv Patel, a team-member and masters student in biomedical engineering. The students will attend the NSF I-Corps seminar series, which supports entrepreneurship that leads to the commercialization of the technology previously supported by NSF-funded research. The original team of engineering and business undergraduate students included Kristen Hamalainen '16, Sanjiv Patel '16, Andrew Shiels '16, Kreg Zimmern '16, Rachel Loeffler '16, Cody Baker '16, Alexis Morales '16 and Ileana Gonzales '16. The group won the top prize at the UTSA Center for Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship (CITE) $100K Student Technology Venture Competition last spring is a collaboration between the UTSA College of Engineering and College of Business. "It's always exciting to see students who succeeded at the competition continue growing their ideas and expanding their business," said Cory Hallam, director of CITE and UTSA chief commercialization officer. "These are entrepreneurs who are getting their start as undergraduates, and this is just one of many examples of students taking advantage of a great opportunity and making the most of it." The idea to create a device that could help medics locate veins came about while the biomedical engineering students were working on their senior design project. The idea to help military medics came about because San Antonio has a strong connection to the military. The team discussed what would be possible and beneficial on the battlefield with doctors from the Institute for Surgical Research (ISR) at the San Antonio Military Medical Center (SAMMC) and Department of Emergency Medicine at UT Health San Antonio. The UTSA students have discovered that their device had many possible applications, from helping doctors insert needles in people with small veins or aiding in catheter insertion. The device can also be used by people who are obese or have darker skin pigmentations, or for babies whose tiny veins can be hard for medical professionals to find and access. "Our students have the true spirit of entrepreneurs and engineers," said Teja Guda, assistant professor of biomedical engineering and assistant director of CITE for the College of Engineering. "They saw a need and they created a tool to fill that need. It's been wonderful to see them continue to grow and develop their business." CITE is sending Zimmern and Patel to Boston in April to test InfraVein with 100 possible customer interviews. This will give them the chance to improve their product by defining issues users currently face and ensuring that their product checks all the right boxes. "The UTSA CITE program gives our students an interdisciplinary educational experience unlike most other universities," said Hallam. "They get a chance to patent their invention while they are still undergraduates and the opportunity to launch their company and incubate it on campus. By working with the CITE and challenging themselves they helped secure a $50,000 NSF grant to explore the marketability of their product. They represent the 10th UTSA team to be awarded one of these NSF grants in the past two years, a feat that reinforces UTSA's prominence as the regional hub for university-based innovation and entrepreneurship." Guda has mentored the team since the competition began. He and Hallam will be accompanying the young entrepreneurs on their trip to offer advice during the customer discovery process. "There are multiple teams of both undergraduates and graduates that have gone through the entrepreneurship and innovation core here at UTSA," said Guda. "It is a pipeline that is set up and brings about a change in the cultural in terms of contributing back to both the university and the San Antonio area. When these students' small companies are formed, they are not only contributing to the economy, but they are showing exactly what UTSA alums can achieve because that is what they have done as part of their training process." ### The CITE program was established in 2006 to create a pipeline for UTSA students, faculty and the surrounding business community to develop new technology ventures. Through a process including education, experience, resources and support, CITE is focused on fostering the growth of new technology-based ventures in the region. UTSA is ranked among the top 400 universities in the world and among the top 100 in the nation, according to Times Higher Education. ROCHESTER The village of Rochester Municipal Board of Canvass was nothing if not well prepared for the task at hand. The coin a quarter minted in 1980 came from clerk Betty Novys purse, the die from the Rochester Public Library next door, and the playing cards a previously unopened deck featuring 33rd President of the United States Harry S. Truman were discovered in a drawer in a kitchen. It was all part of an orchestrated event that would ultimately name Douglas Webb as village trustee, but not without pomp and circumstance. Gathered for the meeting of the Board of Canvass on Thursday evening at Rochester Village Hall, 300 W. Spring St., all of the items were waiting and ready to be put to use not for some secret municipal poker game, but to break a tie between two candidates vying for one of the villages three trustee seats. When the votes were tallied on Tuesday night following the election, poll workers learned that while incumbents Gary Beck and Nick Ahlers had both retained their seats with 351 votes and 340 votes, respectively, newcomers Robert Gerber and Webb had each received 256 votes, leaving a question as to who should rightfully take over the third seat that was up for election. The village consulted with the Wisconsin Election Commission, which suggested some sort of decision such as a coin toss in the presence of the five village election officials. After the decision, the loser could have the option to ask for a recount, Novy said, but a winner would need to first be declared before that could happen. Instead of just offering a coin to determine who that winner might be, the election officials decided to give the men a few options. Its up to them, Novy said. But at five minutes past 6 p.m., when Novy asked Webb and Gerber what they wanted, they said they would rather the Board of Canvass members decide. After some brief discussion, it was agreed that a card draw would be the way to go. Cards? Cards. Im agreeing with cards, was the chorus. Instead of drawing from the full deck, Novy took out 10 cards ace through 10 and had each board member have a go at shuffling them. Moments later Webb and Gerber drew their cards. Webb pulled the 10 of spades; Gerber, the five of spades. Im glad I drew the higher card, Webb said after the meeting, but Im sure there will be a recount. After the gathering, Gerber said he was still considering whether he would ask for that recount. I dont know yet. I still have to do some more research, he said. Humans are able to interpret the behaviour of others by attributing mental states to them (and to themselves). By adopting the perspectives of other persons, they can assume their emotions, needs and intentions and react accordingly. In the animal kingdom, the ability to attribute mental states (Theory of Mind) is a highly contentious issue. Cognitive biologists from the Messerli Research Institute of the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna could prove with a new test procedure that dogs are not only able to identify whether a human has an eye on a food source and, therefore, knows where the food has been hidden. They can also apply this knowledge in order to correctly interpret cues by humans and find food they cannot see themselves. This perspective taking ability is an important component of social intelligence. It helps dogs to cope with the human environment. The results have been published in the journal Animal Cognition. The so-called Theory of Mind describes the ability in humans to understand mental states in conspecifics such as emotions, intentions, knowledge, beliefs and desires. This ability develops in humans within the first four or five years of life while it is usually denied in animals. Indications that animals can understand mental states or even states of knowledge of others have only been found in apes and corvids so far. Dogs have been tested several times, but the results were poor and contradictory. With a new experimental approach, cognitive biologists from the Messerli Research Institute could now provide solid evidence for dogs being able to adopt our perspective. By adopting the position of a human and following their gaze, dogs understand what the human could see and, consequently, know. This ability to ascribe knowledge is only a component of a full-blown Theory of Mind, but an important one. Identifying the right informant The so-called Guesser-Knower paradigm is a standard test in research into the attribution of knowledge to others. This experiment involves two persons: a "Knower" who hides food, invisibly for the dog, in one of several food containers or knows where somebody else has hided it, and a "Guesser". The Guesser has either not been in the room or covered her eyes during the hiding of the food. A non-transparent wall blocks the animals' view of the food being hidden. After that, the two humans become informants by pointing to different food containers. The Knower always points to the baited container and the Guesser to another one. All containers smell of food. "To get the food, the dogs have to understand who knows the hiding place (Knower) and who does not and can, therefore, only guess (Guesser). They must identify the informant they can rely on if they have to decide for one food container," said principal investigator Ludwig Huber. In approximately 70 per cent of the cases the dogs chose the container indicated by the Knower -- and thus were able to successfully accomplish the test. This result was independent of the position of the food container, the person acting as the Knower and where the Guesser was looking. Dogs can adopt human perspectives The only aim of this test series, however, was to independently confirm a study carried out in New Zealand. Clear evidence of dogs being able to adopt our perspective and take advantage of it was provided in a new test developed by the team, the so-called "Guesser looking away" test. In this new experiment, a third person in the middle hides the food. This person does not give cues later on. The potential informants were kneeing left and right of this hider and looked to the same side and slightly down. Thus, one of the two persons looked towards the baiter, the other person looked away. "This means that the tested dogs, in order to get the food, had to judge who is the Knower by adopting the informants' perspectives and following their gazes," explained Huber. Even in this test, which is very difficult for the animals, approximately 70 per cent of the trials had been mastered. Adopting the human perspective leads to invisible food Being able to adopt the perspective of a human does, however, not require the ability to understand intentions or wishes. "But the study showed that dogs can find out what humans or conspecifics can or cannot see," explained Huber. "By adopting the positions of humans and following their gazes geometrically, they find out what humans see and, therefore, know -- and consequently whom they can trust or not." In similar experiments, chimpanzees and few bird species such as scrub jays and ravens were able to understand the state of knowledge and also the intentions of conspecifics and modify their own behaviour accordingly. For dogs, there have only been specualtions and vague indications so far. But dogs understand our behaviour very well, for example our degree of attention. They can learn from directly visible cues such as gestures or gazes. Thus, they are able to find food even if their view of it has been blocked. "The ability to interpret our behaviour and anticipate our intentions, which has obviously developed through a combination of domestication and individual experience, seems to have supported the ability to adopt our perspective," said Huber. "It still remains unclear which cognitive mechanisms contribute to this ability. But it helps dogs to find their way in our world very well." ### Service: The article "Dogs demonstrate perspective taking based on geometrical gaze following in a Guesser-Knower task" by Amelie Catala, Britta Mang, Lisa Wallis and Ludwig Huber was published in Animal Cognition. DOI: 10.1007/s10071-017-1082-x http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10071-017-1082-x About the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna The University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna in Austria is one of the leading academic and research institutions in the field of Veterinary Sciences in Europe. About 1,300 employees and 2,300 students work on the campus in the north of Vienna which also houses five university clinics and various research sites. Outside of Vienna the university operates Teaching and Research Farms. http://www.vetmeduni.ac.at About Messerli Research Institute The Messerli Research Institute was founded in 2010 with support from the Messerli Foundation (Sorenberg, Switzerland) under the management of the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna in cooperation with the Medical University of Vienna and the University of Vienna. The research is devoted to the interaction between humans and animals, as well as its theoretical principles in animal cognition and behavior, comparative medicine and ethics. Its work is characterized by its broad interdisciplinary approach (biology, human medicine, veterinary medicine, philosophy, psychology, law) and strong international focus. http://www.vetmeduni.ac.at/en/messerli/ Scientific Contact: Ludwig Huber Messerli Research Institute University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna (Vetmeduni Vienna) T +43 1 25077-2680 ludwig.huber@vetmeduni.ac.at Birds show an amazing diversity in plumage colour and patterning. But what are the genetic mechanisms creating such patterns? In a new study published today in PLOS Genetics, Swedish and French researchers report that two independent mutations are required to explain the development of the sex-linked barring pattern in chicken. Both mutations affect the function of CDKN2A, a tumour suppressor gene associated with melanoma in humans. Research in pigmentation biology has made major advances the last 20 years in identifying genes controlling variation in pigmentation in mammals and birds. However, the most challenging question is still how colour patterns are genetically controlled. Birds are outstanding as regards the diversity and complexity in colour patterning. The study published today has revealed the genetic basis for the striped feather characteristic of sex-linked barring. One example of this fascinating plumage colour is the French breed Coucou de Rennes. The name refers to the fact that this plumage colour resembles the barring patterns present in the common cuckoo (Cuculus canorus). The sex-linked barring locus is on the Z chromosome. (In chickens as well as in other birds the male has chromosomes ZZ while females have ZW). "Our data show that sex-linked barring is caused by two independent mutations that act together. One is a regulatory mutation that increases the expression of CDKN2A. The other changes the protein sequence and makes the protein less functionally active. We are sure that both mutations contribute to the sex-linked barring pattern because we have also studied chicken that only carry the regulatory mutation and they show a very pale plumage with only weak dark stripes. Thus, this represents an evolutionary process in which the regulatory mutation occurred first followed by the mutation affecting the protein structure. The combined effect of the two mutations causes an even more appealing phenotype for the human eye," says Leif Andersson, Uppsala University, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and Texas A&M University, who led the study. "The most important reason for the extensive colour variation among our domestic animals is that we appreciate this diversity, as long as the mutations underlying the variation are not causing health issues for the animals," says Leif Andersson. The study illustrates how useful domestic animals are as models for evolutionary processes in nature. Leif Andersson argues that a similar evolution of gene variants comprising multiple genetic changes affecting the function of a single gene is the rule rather than the exception in natural populations. CDKN2A is a well-studied tumour suppressor gene that takes part in the regulation of cell division and cell survival. Mutations that inactivate CDKN2A are the most common explanation for familiar forms of melanomas in humans. (However, the great majority of melanoma cases are not associated with a strong genetic risk factor.) "The gene variant underlying sex-linked barring has an opposite effect compared with the mutations causing melanoma in humans. Sex-linked barring is associated with a gene variant that makes CDKN2A more active leading to a cyclic deficit of pigment cells causing the white stripes during the development of an individual feather. It appears that pigment cells are particularly susceptible to changes in the function of CDKN2A as inactivating mutations in humans are associated with melanoma but rarely other cancer forms and activating mutations cause sex-linked barring in chickens but no other side effects are known," says Doreen Schwochow Thalmann, PhD student and first author of the paper. "It is fascinating that a large proportion of chickens used for egg and meat production around the world carry these mutations in a tumour suppressor gene. An example of such a breed is White Leghorn which is one of the most prominent breeds used for egg production, but sex-linked barring is not apparent in these breeds because they also carry the dominant white colour that eliminates all pigment production and masks the effect of sex-linked barring," says Leif Andersson. ### From: American Evaluation Association (AEA) For Immediate Release: Dateline: Washington , DC Friday, April 7, 2017 Veronica Olazabal of The Rockefeller Foundation and Alyna Wyatt of Genesis Analytics here to share our recent experience at the The challenges of the developing world have been exacerbated by multiple crises: the global recession, the food and fuel crises, and natural disasters. In response, the nature of development interventions targeted at African populations has changed. Interventions now often involve multiple components, multiple levels of implementation, multiple implementing agencies with multiple agendas, and long causal chains with many intermediate outcomes all of this reflecting the complexities of the world in which we live. Additionally, details of the intervention often unfold and change over time in ways that cannot be completely controlled or predicted in advance. To deepen evaluative thinking and practice in response to these trends, The Rockefeller Foundation funded Genesis Analytics ro organize a strand at the AfrEA Conference focused on innovations in evaluation across two main areas: 1) New Forces in Development and 2) New Frontiers in Evaluation Methodology. The New Forces in Development sub-strand highlighted the emergence of innovative finance in Africa, and how this new trend combines market forces with social goals in a traditional developmental context. A discussion on impact investing, hybrid funds, co-mingling funds, social impact bonds and public private partnerships brought attention to how these new forces are entirely compatible and complementary. Through four parallel sessions, participants explored innovative finance, complexity, market systems innovation and PPPs, and the measurement and evaluation thereof. While these developmental trends are emerging, and evolving, there is a growing recognition that conventional evaluation approaches may need to be rightsized for these types of designs, and that there is need for measurement and evaluation methods that take into account the multi-faceted and multi-stakeholder complex environment. The second strand, New Frontiers in Evaluation Methodology, focused on evaluation innovations that are evolving to suit the trends in Africa, while ensuring participation and cultural issues. The most exciting results emanating from the conference were the enthusiastic conversations had between African practitioners committed to continue to push the frontiers of measurement and evaluation in evolving the development landscape. Other upcoming international evaluation convening include the Rad Resources: Interested in learning more about AFREA? See here for additional detail. Stay connected to international evaluation by joining the ICCE TIG here. The American Evaluation Association is celebrating International and Cross-Cultural (ICCE) TIG Week with our colleagues in the International and Cross-Cultural Topical Interest Group. The contributions all this week to aea365 come from our ICCE TIG members. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the Jambo!of The Rockefeller Foundation andof Genesis Analytics here to share our recent experience at the 8th African Evaluation Association Conference (AFREA) held last week in Kampala, Uganda. This event happens roughly every two years and brings together more than 600 from across Africa.The challenges of the developing world have been exacerbated by multiple crises: the global recession, the food and fuel crises, and natural disasters. In response, the nature of development interventions targeted at African populations has changed. Interventions now often involve multiple components, multiple levels of implementation, multiple implementing agencies with multiple agendas, and long causal chains with many intermediate outcomes all of thisAdditionally, details of the intervention often unfold and change over time in ways that cannot be completely controlled or predicted in advance.To deepen evaluative thinking and practice in response to these trends, The Rockefeller Foundation funded Genesis Analytics ro organize a strand at the AfrEA Conference focused on innovations in evaluation across two main areas:Thehighlighted the emergence of innovative finance in Africa, and how this new trend combines market forces with social goals in a traditional developmental context. A discussion on impact investing, hybrid funds, co-mingling funds, social impact bonds and public private partnerships brought attention to how these new forces are entirely compatible and complementary. Through four parallel sessions, participants explored innovative finance, complexity, market systems innovation and PPPs, and the measurement and evaluation thereof.While these developmental trends are emerging, and evolving, there is a growing recognition that conventional evaluation approaches may need to be rightsized for these types of designs, and that there is need for measurement and evaluation methods that take into account the multi-faceted and multi-stakeholder complex environment.The second strand,, focused on evaluation innovations that are evolving to suit the trends in Africa, while ensuring participation and cultural issues.The most exciting results emanating from the conference were the enthusiastic conversations had between African practitioners committed to continue to push the frontiers of measurement and evaluation in evolving the development landscape.Other upcoming international evaluation convening include the EvalPartners Global Evaluation Forum in Kyrgyzstan (April 26-28) and the Evaluation Conclave in Bhutan (June 6-9) organized by the Community of Evaluators South Asia. Keep your eyes and ears out for the details that will be shared in coming months.The American Evaluation Association is celebratingwith our colleagues in the. The contributions all this week to aea365 come from ourmembers. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org . aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. Leading producer of Cornish Clotted Cream and the countys second largest processor of milk has received its first direct milk supply from a local farm. Over one year ago, Roddas announced its commitment to strengthening links with the farming community in West Cornwall, by introducing direct milk contracts to those within a 30-mile radius. The Jenkin family, who farm on the Lizard, are one of 44 farming families that have signed up to Roddas new milk scheme. Christina Savage, daughter of Roger and Dorothy Jenkin, began working at the family farm when she was 18 years old. Christina, 25 says: As a Cornish family business, to be supplying another Cornish family business is something to be proud of. For us, having genuine people at the end of the phone, who understand the trade and want to help wherever possible, is one of the biggest advantages of our new contract. She adds From the cream teas we serve guests at our farmhouse, to my mums famous Christmas cake recipe made with Roddas farmhouse butter, produce from the creamery has always played a big part in our family life. At Treworgie Farm we feel very proud to showcase proper Cornish hospitality using local ingredients, made with our very own milk. 53 million litres of local milk As part of the new scheme, Roddas will receive 53 million litres of local milk each year, and reward farmers for high butterfat and hygiene levels - ensuring mutual long-term security. The direct partnerships will also provide the creamery with a quality supply of Cornish milk perfect for making thick, unctuous clotted cream. Roddas family business started when Eliza Jane Rodda began making clotted cream in her farmhouse kitchen, in the heart of Cornwall, over 125 years ago. Roddas are still crafting it in the same way through family recipes and traditions, it has continued to be passed on from one generation to the next. A four year old boy has died at a farm in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. Police were called to the farm in the Maguiresbridge area at around 8.30pm on Thursday night (6 April) following a report of an incident involving a four year old child. Inspector Glen Latimer continued: The child was sadly pronounced dead at the scene. Local PSNI will work closely with the Health and Safety Executive as they investigate the circumstances. The Fermanagh and South Tyrone Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) said: This is devastating news and I wish to express my sympathy to the family. In the close knit farming community of Fermanagh, news of this untimely death has caused a great deal of shock. The family will be in my thoughts and prayers today and in the weeks to come, as they mourn the loss of a young life taken under such tragic circumstances. The details of the incident has not yet been confirmed, but it is being reported that the child was killed in an incident involving a JCB-type digger. In February, a three year old boy was killed after being hit by tractor on farm in Fife, Scotland. 'Make safety a priority' The farming sector has rallied around agricultural workers to be more careful and safety conscious. NFU Vice President and Farm Safety Partnership Chair Guy Smith said: We urge farmers to take some time to make safety a priority. It just might save you more time and money than you think - but more importantly keep you alive. Farmers can protect themselves by planning to keep people separate from tractors and other farm vehicles whenever possible. Following the Safe Stop procedure of hand brake on, controls in neutral, engine off and keys out is vital when working on machinery. Check, check and check again that vehicles are properly maintained. Something as simple as topping up brake fluid or repairing a load indicator light could mean the difference between life and death. As many farms are multi-purpose homes, businesses and leisure destinations, keeping a farm as safe as possible will safeguard everyones wellbeing. Workers at Bernard Matthews feel betrayed and let down after confirmation that 128 jobs are to be lost, a union has claimed. The new owners of turkey producer Bernard Matthews are to cut 114 production and managerial jobs. It is expected 69 chicken production and 59 managerial job losses will go ahead, with the union Unite saying workers felt "betrayed and let down" by the decision. Boparan Private Office said it would secure the jobs of 2,000 workers in Norfolk and Suffolk when it acquired the company in 2016. Unite said workers had been led to believe that when the company was purchased last September by the Boparan Private Office, owned by 2 Sisters food entrepreneur Ranjit Singh Boparan, more business for chicken production would be generated. A Bernard Matthews spokesman said: We have completed the process and explored all options available to us to mitigate job losses. After discussion with colleagues and union representatives the decision was taken to cease production of chicken and to restructure head office. These changes will enable the business to focus on what were best at and allow us to make things happen with agility and pace. 'Disappointed' Regional Unite officer Steve Harley said: We are obviously disappointed by the announcement that the new owners will cease all year round chicken production at Great Witchingham. Our members, who met senior representatives of the 2 Sisters Food Group during the transition period, feel very let down, as these representatives indicated that investment would secure existing jobs and there was also the opportunity to attract more chicken business to the site, so utilising existing spare capacity. This has clearly not happened and, therefore, many of those workers feel betrayed as they consider they were misled. After a disrupted opening practice session in Shanghai, the teams were unable to do any running at all on Friday afternoon as low-lying mist grounded the medical helicopter once more. Unlike in FP1, when the drivers combined for just 124 laps in between red flags stoppages, FP2 was never started, with race control monitoring conditions and hoping for a window in which to open proceedings. "At the moment the helicopter can't land at the hospital, explained FIA race director Charlie Whiting during the delay. It looks reasonable at the circuit but they can't land in downtown Shanghai. We get news from the airport every 10 minutes. "If it doesn't clear there will be no practice, we have a fixed end and if it does not clear by then there will be no P2." Sadly for teams, drivers and fans, a break in the weather never arrived, meaning the medical helicopter was unable to operate something which is imperative for every F1 session on safety grounds. It means the teams and drivers head into Saturday having done none of the set-up, qualifying or race simulation work theyd usually do on a Friday, raising the prospect of an extremely busy final practice session - and a mixed up and unpredictable qualifying. With poor weather limiting Fridays running in China, there was little to be learnt from the practice times. However, one thing seems clear: Pirellis 2017-specification intermediate tyre is significantly faster than its 2016 counterpart. The best lap of the day - set by Red Bulls Max Verstappen on inters in FP1 - was seven seconds quicker than last years intermediate time recorded on the equivalent tyre in similar conditions during FP3 in Shanghai. Today was the GP debut for our 2017-specification wet and intermediate tyres, explained Mario Isola, Pirellis Head of Car Racing. We also have a wet-weather tyre in a different compound with the target of providing more grip. Its test wasnt particularly significant due to the lack of running. However, we did see a fastest time from Max Verstappen that was seven seconds faster than the intermediate tyre in China last year. With both Pirellis wet and intermediate tyres being new this year, the crossover points - when its best to switch tyre types - are different, and FP1 saw the teams experimenting with those, before FP2 was cancelled due to the bad conditions. The weather forecast still seems uncertain for the next few days so it's hard to know what to expect tomorrow and for the race, added Isola. The 10 teams covered just 473km in China on Friday. That compares with 5,024km for the same day in Melbourne two weeks ago. RACINE A Racine man is facing charges after he allegedly stole a DVD copy of "The Bodyguard" from the library and caused a disturbance. According to the criminal complaint: George Kramer, 49, of the 900 block of Washington Ave., is charged with misdemeanor theft, disorderly conduct and bail jumping. On Tuesday, Kramer came to the Racine Public Library, 75 Seventh St., and asked to rent "The Bodyguard." He was told he could rent it with a library card or ID and was given permission to watch the film on his laptop at the library. After a library employee spotted an open beer can in Kramer's backpack and told him he could not drink in library, Kramer became upset and walked toward the library's exit, setting off an alarm. When he was asked to return because he was possibly in possession of library property, he refused and yelled obscenities before leaving. At around 4:30 p.m., officers were dispatched to the library for the theft. Police were told that the reported suspect was a man on an orange bicycle. Officers located Kramer on the 900 block of Center Street, and as he got off his bike, the library's DVD copy of "The Bodyguard" fell to the ground. Kramer was taken to the jail; however, officers reportedly smelled intoxicants. Kramer refused to take a breathalyzer, and jail staff stated he needed medical clearance before being taken into custody. After being transported to the hospital for clearance, Kramer began yelling obscenities at officers, doctors and nurses. After he was cleared, he was taken back to jail. A pre-trial conference is scheduled at 3:15 p.m. April 27 at the Law Enforcement Center, 717 Wisconsin Ave. RACINE A Racine teen is facing two attempted first-degree intentional homicide charges after he reportedly shot at a group of pedestrians during one of last weeks shots-fired calls. Trevell Beals, 15, of the 1600 block of Martin Luther King Drive, is facing two felony charges of attempted first-degree intentional homicide as party to a crime, two felony first-degree recklessly endangering safety charges, a felony charge of discharging a firearm from a vehicle toward a person and a misdemeanor possession of a dangerous weapon by a person under 18 charge for the incident. On March 28, police responded to the 400 block of Ninth Street after six to eight gunshots were reportedly fired. Police learned that a shootout had taken place between a white Ford Explorer, allegedly driven by 21-year-old Alondro Pratt, and a group of pedestrians, with Pratts ex and her new boyfriend in the group. While Pratt was allegedly driving the vehicle, a passenger in a pink or red hoodie allegedly began shooting. Last Sunday, at about 4:51 p.m., police went to the county Juvenile Detention Center to speak to Beals at his request. During the interview, Beals reportedly admitted to being the shooter from Pratts vehicle, and reportedly also admitted to dumping the gun, a .22-caliber handgun, and shell casings, into the Root River over the Marquette Street bridge after the shootout. When asked why he had the gun, Beals reportedly stated that he purchased the gun from someone on the street because they were after us. Pratt Jr., 21, of the 500 block of 3 Mile Road, is facing 19 charges, including disorderly conduct with the use of a dangerous weapon, discharging a firearm from a vehicle, and stalking with the use of a dangerous weapon, in connection to the incident. Darius Harris, 26, of the 900 block of Hamilton Street, was charged Thursday with felony possession of a firearm by a felon in connection to the incident. Beals next appearance is a preliminary hearing scheduled for for 9 a.m. Wednesday at the Law Enforcement Center, 717 Wisconsin Ave. Two-thirds of farmers and landowners are hit by fly-tipping each year, according to research by Keep Britain Tidy. Thats a staggering statistic, but sadly one which will not come as a surprise to many people. Items routinely dumped include old furniture, televisions, chairs, tyres, sofas, mattresses and building waste. See also: Fly-tipping reaches epidemic levels while prosecutions fall In England alone, nearly one million fly-tipping incidents were recorded in 2015-16, according to Defra statistics. Thats the worst figures ever recorded and a 4% increase on 2014-15. Farmers look forward to spring after a long winter. Its a joyous time for lambing, spring sowing and fields becoming more colourful and diverse. For many farmers, however, the lighter evenings mean lorry-loads of rubbish heading their way to be dumped in fields, gate entrances and lanes. Piles of fly-tipped waste can be costly and time-consuming to remove. It can be dangerous to human health and livestock, damaging to wildlife and, in some cases can pollute watercourses and contaminate land. Disjointed The response of the government, local authorities and the police to fly-tipping is disjointed and laws in this area are confusing. When a fly-tipping incident occurs on private land, under the Environmental Protection Act 1990, it is the landowners responsibility to remove the illegally dumped waste. It should not be the sole responsibility of the landowner to deal with this crime, but as the law stands, it is. Unless the landowner is insured, the clean-up bill can run into tens of thousands of pounds. Rogue traders who dump rubbish on farms to avoid paying a disposal fee at the council recycling centres is an ongoing problem, which appears to have escalated since councils started charging to dispose of items such as bricks, soil, rubble, plasterboard and asbestos. However, in recent months anecdotal evidence suggests large-scale, serious organised dumping on farms is increasing, especially on the fringes of urban areas with easy access to motorways. Criminal behaviour Last month, Shropshire farmer Andrew Nicholls fell victim to a fly-tipping gang at Hill End Farm in Claverley, near Bridgnorth. Waste criminals struck under the cover of night, dumping an estimated 100t of shredded waste in his farmyard. The brazen crooks cut the padlock and chain off his gate and dumped seven lorry-loads of shredded waste. They even had the audacity to secure the gate with a cable tie before they left. If the waste is dumped on your land, the authorities dont seem to care, says Mr Nicholls, 70. I reported the incident to the police and all they were interested in was the fact the lock and the chain had been cut off. I would have said it was aggravated trespass. The local council is not very sympathetic. Their attitude is: Its your property, its your problem. But its not my waste, I havent generated it. The Environment Agency sent out two enforcement officers to examine the mess and take photographs. I havent heard any more from that. Mr Nicholls estimates it will cost him up to 18,000 to remove the waste wiping out nearly all his single farm payment. If it happens again, it will ruin me. It really will, he says. Until it happens to you, you do not realise exactly whats involved. My warning to other farmers is: everyone is vulnerable. And they are getting away with it. Whats a 5,000 fine against me paying out 18,000? It beggars belief. Mr Nicholls says police believe organised criminals are shifting waste out of the Birmingham area and farms and woodlands are an easy target. Balaclavas and bolt cutters Three days after Mr Nichollss farm was hit, 15 miles away and over the border in Staffordshire, fly-tippers targeted Enville Estate, a 2,630ha estate near Stourbridge. Balaclava-clad raiders used bolt cutters to break a padlocked chain leading into Million Woods and dumped between 100t and 200t of pre-sorted rubbish, mainly plastic bags and bottles. Two men in a Vauxhall Astra kept watch a lorry dumped the waste. A passerby disturbed the men, who got out the car and chased him. He had attempted to take photos of the men swapping the number plates on the lorry. George Williams, assistant estate manager at Enville Estate, says: Its going to cost at least 20,000 to clear. Its an eyesore. Its bad for the environment and because the mound is in the wood, its a fire hazard as well. Farmers in the area have started to place wooden stumps and concrete barriers in front of gateways to prevent access by vehicles. If they need to get into fields, they need a telehandler to remove them, which means more man hours and disruption to their farming. Trash mafia In Essex, outside London, farmers and landowners feel under siege from fly-tippers, who they have dubbed the trash mafia. At the NFU Conference in Birmingham in February, farm leaders said there had been 116 cases of industrial fly-tipping since September. Anna Simpson, NFU environment policy adviser, confirms there has been anecdotal evidence of a recent increase in the severity of fly-tipping incidents on farmland. She says the union is concerned that 95% of the sentences handed out for convictions are fines of less than 1,000. The union is concerned courts are not using new powers, introduced in 2016, to impose unlimited fines and prison sentences up to five years for fly-tipping offences. The NFU has written to justice secretary Liz Truss, the National Police Chiefs Council and the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, to stress that much tougher action is needed. Ms Simpson says: We are not 100% sure if magistrates have been correctly informed to the changes in sentencing guidelines for this offence. We want to raise awareness of this with magistrates that they have increased powers when handing out prosecutions for fly-tipping offences. Punishment Andrew Gillett, legal adviser at the Country Land and Business Association (CLA), believes a couple of articles in the press about judges handing out punitive fines would make fly-tippers think twice. The balance is the wrong way around and thats why fly-tipping is increasing, he explains. If people feel that there is a low level of enforcement and they will save significant sums, then they will [fly-tip]. We need to see the police, Environment Agency, local authorities working together and taking stronger action. The law courts have decent powers to give these criminals hefty fines and long prison sentences. The deterrent is huge, but the law is not being applied. The CLA would also like to see more on-the-spot fixed penalties handed out for offenders and vehicles used to commit offences confiscated and crushed. The organisation also believes there is widespread under-reporting of fly-tipping incidents on farms and, it has urged farmers and landowners to report all incidents to help police and the authorities build a true picture of the scale of the problem. What to do if you witness or become a victim of fly-tipping Report cases of fly-tipping to your local authority. To find your local authority, visit www.gov.uk/report-flytipping and enter your post code Large-scale (such as lorries dumping rubbish) or hazardous fly-tipped incidents should be reported to the Environment Agency on 0800 80 70 60 Remember, fly-tipping is an illegal activity and should be reported to the police (non-emergency number 101) Farmers should also report waste crimes such as someone running a waste site without a permit, or not following the rules of a permit Most of the major war zones today are blanket censored in Google Earth, including Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Ukraine. Israel isnt completely censored, but due to a US law, has only low resolution imagery. Yemen, however, is not censored and we have had a look at bomb damage from the ongoing civil war a number of times in the past. Note that we have only been able to identify destroyed buildings and bomb craters. Other effects of war are not so easy to spot in satellite imagery unless you know where to look. Bomb craters on the runway at Saada. Before and after of some damaged buildings in Saada. Before and after of Sanaa airport showing further damage since we last looked at it. Before and after of some damaged buildings in the port of Mocha. The above are just a small selection of what can be seen. We found a lot more locations in a number of different cities, which we have marked in this KML file . Condition: New In Box Brand: STANDARD SHOTGUN UPC: 869481000103 Caliber: 12 Gauge Location: RI Trades Accepted: We do not take trades. Read More If you have any questions contact us 9AM-4PM EST Mon-Fri. Listing price reflects cash price. There is a 3% NON-REFUNDABLE fee for credit card purchases. Please have your transfer agent email their license to us at ffl@flintarmamentri.com. If we have no FFL on file, we will email you back explaining that you need an FFL, causing your order to be delayed. All firearm sales are final. NO RETURNS, Return to manufacturer for warranty service. While we will always do our best to accurately describe the items in our inventory, Flint Armament is not responsible for typos, etc. We reserve the right to end any sale at any time. Items are subject to prior sale at any of our other retail outlets. It is your responsibility to know whether the item(s) purchased is legal to posses in the state that you reside. If a purchased item(s) can not be shipped to your state, you will be charged a 25% restocking fee. If an item contains pieces or parts which can not be shipped to you state, they will be removed prior to shipment. **CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS: WARNING: SOME PRODUCTS MAY CONTAIN CHEMICALS WWW.P65Warnings.ca.gov Haiti - NOTICE : New addresses of ONI offices (metropolitan area) The General Directorate of the National Office of Identification (ONI) informs the public that some of its Communal Offices, especially those in the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince, have changed their address. "List and locations of Offices concerned - Port-au-Prince : 56 Lamarre Street, next to the Tribunal de Paix; - Port-au-Prince : Joseph Janvier street (main street) premises Viva Rio; - Cite-Soleil : premises Court of Peace of Cite-Soleil; - Petion-ville : premises OAVCT (delivery of National Identity Cards - CIN); - Petion-ville : premises DGI (registration of citizens and updates); - Carrefour : premises Town hall of Carrefour; - Tabarre : premises Town hall of Tabarre. In addition, pending the development of the new Delmas Reception and Delivery Center, citizens of the municipality can register, update their CINs or retrieve them to the premises of the ONI located at St. Joseph Janvier (Viva Rio) where they will be temporarily receive service. The Directorate General of the ONI reminds the population that it can now obtain a certificate of identity and make updates on their CIN in all ONI Communal Offices opened in the 145 communes of the country. The Directorate General of the ONI thank people for their patience and understanding while continuing to work to improve its services." HL/ HaitiLibre Haiti - Jacmel : Installation of the new Departmental Delegate of the South-East Wednesday, 5 April, Max Rodolph Saint-Albin, the new Minister of the Interior and local authorities has installed the engineer Pierre-Michel Lafontant as the new Departmental Delegate of the South-East. He replaces Alex Michel Leroy, who served for 12 months under the Provisional Government. The swearing-in ceremony took place in the morning at the Court of First Instance of Jacmel in the presence of numerous personalities, including members of the Jacmel Municipal Council, staff of the South East Delegation, of the Former Senator Edwin Daniel Zenny, directors from various deconcentrated branches in the region, friends and relatives of Delegate Lafontant. After the usual thanks, Pierre-Michel Lafontant who had held the post for five years under the presidency of Michel Martelly said he was ready to tackle the big problems the department is facing, citing as an example: electricity and the completion of the construction of the administrative complex in the locality of Monchil, in Jacmel. In his speech, Minister Saint-Albin expressed his hope that the new Delegate would ensure the implementation of the Government's policy by giving priority to the interest of the population in order to get the Haitian people out of poverty, urging the new Delegate to show "leadership" by giving good results. In addition, the Minister was open to receive from the delegation of the South-East the complaints that will be formulated by the population for the advancement of the department. HL/ HaitiLibre / Claudy Belizaire (Correspondant Jacmel) Haiti - Agriculture : FAO Veterinary Caravans Livestock is one of the agricultural sectors that have been most affected by the passage of Hurricane Matthew. In the Grand'Anse and South departments, nearly 50% of the livestock was decimated, which significantly affects the livelihoods of families mainly living in animal production. Some animals that survived Hurricane, including cattle and pigs, have been affected by external and internal parasites and have suffered from vitamin and mineral deficiencies due to malnutrition during the 3 months of drought post Matthew. This situation led the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Ministry of Agriculture, with the financial support of the Belgian Development Cooperation, to implement an assistance project to affected families, with particular emphasis on the livestock and fisheries sector. As part of this project, FAO and the Ministry are carrying out a first 140-day caravan of Mobile Animal Health Clinics (CMSA) to cattle of 2,500 families and provide fishing equipment assistance to 3,000 fishermen in the departments of the Grand'Anse and South. This first caravan stopped in the commune of Torbeck, in the localities of Govin and Saint Martin. For three days, two FAO veterinary practitioners and 22 community veterinary officers examined 380 animals (315 cattle, 33 sheep, 12 pigs, 26 goats and 1 horse) belonging to 330 households living from livestock and carried out internal and external deworming of animals, administration of multi-vitamins and minerals, and antibiotics to infected animals. This veterinary assistance has attracted a lot of interest among the breeders of the commune of Torbeck who are the first to benefit from it. Jovil Gilles belongs to the groups of breeders whose cattle have received the necessary care. "[...] This is the first time I have received this assistance to improve the health of my animals and my breeding techniques. Veterinary care is very expensive. Sometimes I spend up to 2,500 gourdes on a cow. What's more, there are no veterinary doctors in the community. That is why I am pleased with the support of the FAO which helps me to relaunch my livestock activities and take care of my livestock." In conjunction with Mobile Animal Health Clinics, FAO, with financial support from the Haiti Reconstruction Fund (HRF), is setting up community veterinary pharmacies in each of the 11 dairies that it accompanies in different departments of the country. This initiative aims to improve the situation of the livestock sector by facilitating access to medicines and veterinary care for livestock. These pharmacies will be managed (like small businesses) by breeders through the "Gwoupman Sante Bet" (GSB) and the veterinary agents. They aim to improve animal health and at the same time generate additional income for breeders and milk producers' associations. HL/ S/ HaitiLibre WATERFORD A woman is facing charges after she reportedly stabbed a man after the two got into a fight. According to the criminal complaint: Rhiannon Schmitz, 35, of the 500 block of Norton Street in Lake Mills, is charged with felony second-degree recklessly endangering safety with the use of a dangerous weapon and misdemeanor disorderly conduct and battery charges with use of a dangerous weapon. At approximately 1:47 a.m. Monday, police responded to the 300 block of St. Thomas Street in reference to a man and woman fighting in the street. Upon arrival, officers observed the woman, later identified as Schmitz, reportedly chasing a man and swinging her arms to hit the man as he stumbled backwards with raised arms and legs kicking to deflect Schmitzs advances. Schmitz then began taking off items of her clothing and throwing them on the ground in anger. Police yelled for Schmitz to get on the ground and the man reportedly yelled, She stabbed me! She has a knife! While an officer tended to the mans wound, another officer asked Schmitz where the knife was. She reportedly rolled over, revealing a 4-5-inch silver metal folding knife in the open position. A second 4-5-inch black and silver open folding knife was also found near the man. The man had an inch long, non-life threatening laceration to the lower right side of his back and was admitted to the emergency room at Froedtert Hospital in Wauwatosa. Schmitzs next appearance is a preliminary hearing at 9 a.m. Wednesday at the Law Enforcement Center, 717 Wisconsin Ave. Haiti - News : Zapping... Words of DG of the PNH "It is time for us to awaken our citizens' conscience to understand that the future of this country can only be built by its daughters and sons with a high sense of civic, patriotic and above all spirit of understanding" dixit Michel-Ange Gedeon, the Director General of the Haitian National Police (PNH) Student in Geology demonstrated On Tuesday, a demonstration by the students of the National School of Applied Geology (ENGA) was dispersed with tear gas by the police to the annex of the Ministry of Education, Nazon. The protesters demanded new premises and the allocation of an adequate budget for the functioning of ENGA. Towards the construction of the Legislative Palace ? Youri Latortue, the President of the Senate and Cholzer Chancy, the President of the Chamber of Deputies, ask the Government to give priority to the construction of the Legislative Palace among the major projects it intends to launch for the current fiscal year. They also want the government to hire another firm on this project, whose cost is estimated at about 30 million US dollars. Workers' union platform project Officials from the Ministries of National Education, Justice, the Environment, the National Old Age Insurance Office (ONA) and the Office of Vehicle Insurance Against Third Parties (OAVCT), among others... ae preparing to set up a trade union platform to better defend their interests. Towards an amendment to the Labor Code On Tuesday, a meeting was held between the Senatorsof the Commission, working on the amendment of the Labor Code and the heads of the Association des Industries d'Haiti (ADIH) in order to allow factories and plants to work 24/24 (3 vacation of 8 hours) which will create more jobs in Haiti. Strategic visits to the BLTS Wednesday, Michel-Ange Gedeon, the Director General of the National Police of Haiti (PNH), accompanied by the Police Commissioner of the Minustah (UNPol), and two representatives of the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Office (INL) of the American Embassy visited the local of the Brigade for the Fight against Trafficking Narcotic drugs (BLTS) in Lavaud (Port-de-Paix) and Turtle Island. These visits were highly strategic in the fight against narcotic trafficking in Haiti. HL/ HaitiLibre Haiti - Politics : Trade unions call for a 228% increase in the minimum wage Thursday, two trade union organizations in the textile subcontracting sector "Batay Ouvriye" and "Platfom sendikal izin tekstil" have launched an appeal to the Government to adjust the minimum wage in this sector upwards to take account of the increase in the cost of living. The trade unions demand that the minimum wage be set at 800 Gourdes per 8-hour workday instead of the 350 Gourdes fixed in the textile subcontracting sector, according to the presidential decree of Monday 23 May 2016 https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-17541-haiti-flash-full-details-on-the-new-minimum-wage.html . Unions threaten government to take the streets next May, if they do not get satisfaction of their claim. These unions, that plead for a grant of food, means of transport and housing for the workers, oppose the collection by the General Tax Directorate (DGI) of 13% taxes on the wages of workers in the private and public https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-20270-haiti-codevi-workers-refuse-to-pay-a-tax-to-dgi.html PI/ HaitiLibre The NIA has arrested an ISIS sympathiser, who was recently deported from Saudi Arabia, in connection with its probe into activities of the terror group and its affiliates in India. In a statement, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Thursday said Amzad Khan who operated online with a number of aliases was arrested on Wednesday after his deportation on April 4. 37-year-old Khan, a resident of Rajasthan, had emerged as a major suspect in the case against unknown and unidentified persons involved in ISIS-related activities in countries at peace with India. NIA had filed a charge sheet and a supplementary charge- sheet last year in the case but the probe is still on. The name of one Rajasthan resident Ayan Khan Salafi alias Muhammadi Ayan alias Al Wala Wal Bara (online identities) had surfaced as a major suspect in the case, it said. The agency claimed that he was working in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, since 2014. On preliminary questioning, it was ascertained that the said Ayan Khan Salafis actual name is Amzad Khan, 37 years, resident ofDistrict Churu, Rajasthan, it said. According to the NIA, Khan had emerged as one of the principal characters in the conspiracy hatched by the absconding accused, Yusuf-al-Hindi alias Shafi Armar who has already been charge sheeted and other members of the newly-formed organisation Junood-ul-Khilafa-Fil-Hind (JKH). The group had allegedly pledged their allegiance to the proscribed terrorist group Islamic State (ISIS) for carrying out subversive activities in India. During investigation it was established that he was also in regular online contact with accused Nafees Khan, Shafi Armar alias Yusuf-al-Hindi, Rizwan alias Khalid alias Azad Bhai and one more accused in the case who later turned approver, during November and December, 2015 and January, 2016, the NIA said. It said they were communicating with one another through online platforms like Facebook, Nimbuzz, Trillian and Telegram messaging applications. Khan had allegedly played a key role in motivating and linking members of the newly-formed JKH. Further, the said suspect was also in regular online contact on Nimbuzz chat application with Alamzeb Afridi during December 2015 to January, 2016, it said. Afridi was the main accused in the Bengaluru Church Street Blast Case. A native of Ahmedabad, Afridi is now lodged in Bengaluru jail, the NIA said. Source : Hindustan Times Company Wall of Fame that Boosts Productivity: General Availability Announcement Posted by Press Releases on Friday, 04-07-2017 2:14 am Currently 0.0/5 Stars. 1 2 3 4 5 0.0 from 0 votes The Wall of Fame feature provides a method where any employee or manager on the BizMerlin system can leave feedback notes for any other employee on an easily viewed common wall.RESTON, VA (PRWEB) APRIL 06, 2017Close on the heels of recent studies about organizational satisfaction and feedback, on Friday, BizMerlin announced the general inclusion of the Company Wall of Fame feature in its highly successful HR management solution. Over the past few months, we have seen the Company Wall of Fame evolve to be a real showcase of our customers employees and their achievements. As we ironed out any remaining kinks and saw its popularity soar, we knew the time was right to release it to the general market, explained Amrinder Arora, the co-founder and CEO of BizMerlin. The companys announcement stated, More and more organizations are building a feedback-oriented culture that translates into a positive environment for growth and high performance.The Wall of Fame feature provides a meth... Close Forgot Your Password? Enter in your email address and we will send it to you. Send Email An HR.com member profile provides you with access to a multitude of information and education along with the opportunity to network with the largest HR community on the web. If you need any help, call .877.472.6648 and ask for our Member Experience Co-ordinator. Hi Please check your email for an activation link. If you do not receive your activation email within a few minutes, check your spam folder or call our Help Desk at 1.877.472.6648 For faster assistance, dial extension 4. Thank you! Continue Hi Verification error - Please enter the correct code above. Verified Wow! You have successfully verified the account Continue Hi your HR.com account is ready Your Profile completion: 30% Complete your profile Enterprising Women Magazine Recognizes Rosa Santana with 2017 Enterprising Woman Award Posted by Press Releases on Friday, 04-07-2017 2:19 am Currently 0.0/5 Stars. 1 2 3 4 5 0.0 from 0 votes Santana Group CEO, Rosa Santana honored as Top Women EntrepreneurSAN ANTONIO, TEXAS (PRWEB) APRIL 06, 2017Texas-based entrepreneur, Rosa Santana, founder and CEO of Santana Group, was selected as a 2017 winner of the Enterprising Women Award from Enterprising Women Magazine. Santana received the prestigious award during the 15th Annual Enterprising Women of the Year Awards Celebration & Conference held from April 2 to April 4 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.Santana was chosen from hundreds of international nominees based on the financial success of her organizations, her steadfast commitment to mentoring and giving back to support other women in business, and the leadership she has shown in her communities.Its a tremendous honor to be included in such an elite group of women CEOs from around the globe, said Rosa Santana, One thing Ive learned as an entrepreneur is great things are rarely accomplished alone, Im thankful for the numerous mentors Ive had throughout my career. Payin... Close Forgot Your Password? Enter in your email address and we will send it to you. Send Email An HR.com member profile provides you with access to a multitude of information and education along with the opportunity to network with the largest HR community on the web. If you need any help, call .877.472.6648 and ask for our Member Experience Co-ordinator. Hi Please check your email for an activation link. If you do not receive your activation email within a few minutes, check your spam folder or call our Help Desk at 1.877.472.6648 For faster assistance, dial extension 4. Thank you! Continue Hi Verification error - Please enter the correct code above. Verified Wow! You have successfully verified the account Continue Hi your HR.com account is ready Your Profile completion: 30% Complete your profile KENOSHA The National Weather Service of Milwaukee and Kenosha County Emergency Management will offer a free severe weather safety and storm spotting training class, according to a release issued by the Kenosha Sheriff's Department Thursday morning. The class will be held from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 12, at Gateway Technical College's Kenosha Campus, Room T127, 3520 30th Ave. The first hour of class will focus on severe weather safety, including tornado and storm spotting safety, how to get information quickly, Wisconsin's tornado history and damaging wind, flash flood, lightening and hail safety. The second hour will focus on storm spotter training, including what, why, when and how weather should be reported, why the National Weather Service needs spotters, how to interpret weather radars, storm features and safety. The training will be led by a National Weather Service meteorologist and is open to the public, including all first responders and amateur radio operators. Those participating in the class are under no obligation to become a storm spotter. Advance registration is recommended for the courses, and attendees may stay for both hours of class. For more information or to register, call 262-605-7900. Fisher Phillips Website Wins Awards for Layout, Design and Interface Posted by Press Releases on Friday, 04-07-2017 2:57 am Currently 0.0/5 Stars. 1 2 3 4 5 0.0 from 0 votes ATLANTA (April 5, 2017) Fisher Phillips announced today its website, www.fisherphillips.com,, has won multiple awards for its layout, design, interface and overall functionality. The awards include: best in class in the legal category from Interactive Media Awards (IMA), the Web Marketing Associations 2016 WebAward for outstanding achievement in web development; the 2016 MarCom award for website design and development in the category of professional services; the 2016 W3 award for law and legal services websites; and the 2016 Summit International Awards emerging media award (EMA) leader award for website design and development in the B2B service category. Last year, Fisher Phillips rebranded from Fisher & Phillips, which was announced with the launch of the new website. The new logo and tagline, On the Front Lines of Workplace Law, were heavily integrated into the new website design. Our rebranding and redesign of the website were major steps forward for Fisher Phi... Close Forgot Your Password? Enter in your email address and we will send it to you. Send Email An HR.com member profile provides you with access to a multitude of information and education along with the opportunity to network with the largest HR community on the web. If you need any help, call .877.472.6648 and ask for our Member Experience Co-ordinator. Hi Please check your email for an activation link. If you do not receive your activation email within a few minutes, check your spam folder or call our Help Desk at 1.877.472.6648 For faster assistance, dial extension 4. Thank you! Continue Hi Verification error - Please enter the correct code above. Verified Wow! You have successfully verified the account Continue Hi your HR.com account is ready Your Profile completion: 30% Complete your profile New Software from Lexalytics Helps Human Resources Departments Design More Effective Voice of the Employee Programs Posted by Press Releases on Friday, 04-07-2017 2:25 am Currently 0.0/5 Stars. 1 2 3 4 5 0.0 from 0 votes Based on Lexalytics Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence Algorithms, The HR Industry Pack Analyzes Employee SatisfactionBOSTON, MA (PRWEB) APRIL 05, 2017Lexalytics, the leader in cloud and on-premise text analytics solutions, today announced its HR Industry Pack, which uses text analytics to improve corporate human resources (HR) operations and voice of the employee (VOE) programs.The HR Industry Pack uses Lexalytics machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies to analyze company reviews, internal company emails, message boards, employee surveys and other workplace data. With the resulting insight into employee sentiment about the organization, management teams can design programs to improve retention, productivity and satisfaction.With a strong economy and tight job market, its more important than ever for companies to retain and attract top talent, said Jeff Catlin, CEO of Lexalytics. The HR Industry Pack our latest industry-specific text and sentiment a... Close Forgot Your Password? Enter in your email address and we will send it to you. Send Email An HR.com member profile provides you with access to a multitude of information and education along with the opportunity to network with the largest HR community on the web. If you need any help, call .877.472.6648 and ask for our Member Experience Co-ordinator. Hi Please check your email for an activation link. If you do not receive your activation email within a few minutes, check your spam folder or call our Help Desk at 1.877.472.6648 For faster assistance, dial extension 4. Thank you! Continue Hi Verification error - Please enter the correct code above. Verified Wow! You have successfully verified the account Continue Hi your HR.com account is ready Your Profile completion: 30% Complete your profile TalentKeepers Releases "Workplace America: Employee Engagement and Retention Trends," its 13th Annual Report on Talent Management Practices Posted by Press Releases on Friday, 04-07-2017 5:41 am Currently 0.0/5 Stars. 1 2 3 4 5 0.0 from 0 votes Employee engagement is a priority for 74% of US organizations, yet a downturn in budgets is presenting a challenge for many organizationsTalentKeepers today announced the release of Workplace America, its 13th annual report of employee engagement and retention trends, now the longest continuously running study of engagement and retention in the US. Over 550 organizations participated for 2017, with 54% employing over 1,000 employees.Employee engagement is gaining respect as a key strategy for many organizations. For four years running, over 70% of US employers rank employee engagement as a strategic priority. Yet the number of organizations rating themselves as very effective in engaging employees dropped from 35% in 2016 to just 27% in 2017. This is a surprisingly large gap given the consequences of poor engagement."Morale and Culture" was cited as the top category impacted by poor engagement and turnover among employees. This number grew from 50% in 2014 to 72% in 2017 -- w... Close Forgot Your Password? Enter in your email address and we will send it to you. Send Email An HR.com member profile provides you with access to a multitude of information and education along with the opportunity to network with the largest HR community on the web. If you need any help, call .877.472.6648 and ask for our Member Experience Co-ordinator. Hi Please check your email for an activation link. If you do not receive your activation email within a few minutes, check your spam folder or call our Help Desk at 1.877.472.6648 For faster assistance, dial extension 4. Thank you! Continue Hi Verification error - Please enter the correct code above. Verified Wow! You have successfully verified the account Continue Hi your HR.com account is ready Your Profile completion: 30% Complete your profile We work towards an equitable, gender-just, self-reliant and sustainable fisheries, particularly in the small-scale, artisanal sector We work towards an equitable, gender-just, self-reliant and sustainable fisheries, particularly in the small-scale, artisanal sector We work towards an equitable, gender-just, self-reliant and sustainable fisheries, particularly in the small-scale, artisanal sector We work towards an equitable, gender-just, self-reliant and sustainable fisheries, particularly in the small-scale, artisanal sector RACINE Another candidate has announced interest in running to be Racines next mayor. Guadalupe Wally Rendon, a community activist and Educators Credit Union employee, told The Journal Times Thursday that he plans to run for mayor in the upcoming special election to replace the resigning Mayor John Dickert. Dickert has announced he is stepping down later this summer to become the president and chief operations officer for the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative. Rendon is the fifth candidate to publicly express interest in running for mayor. State Rep. Cory Mason, D-Racine, and Pastor Melvin Hargrove have announced they plan to run for mayor. Sixth District Alderman Sandy Weidner and Racine Police Chief Art Howell have also expressed interest in the position. Rendon, 71, was a Racine Police Department officer for 24 years and has served on numerous local boards, including United Way, Racine County Economic Development Corporation and the Racine Unified School Board. Rendon is a prominent figure in Racines Hispanic community and is the president and founder of Hispanic Business and Professionals Association, Inc. I would be a mayor that would really be able to communicate with the whole community, Rendon said. If you speak limited English, especially in the Hispanic community, youre left out of the loop. Rendon said he wanted to run for mayor in 2015, but said he deferred to Hargrove as a minority. Hargrove was one of the top two candidates in the primary before he eventually lost to Dickert. If you have a Hispanic and African-American (candidate) running, its going to split the vote, Rendon said. However, even though Hargrove has already announced his intentions to run again, Rendon believes the time is right for him to run as well. He didnt cite any specific change in circumstances, simply saying he felt compelled to throw his hat in the ring. Its just a decision Ive made this time, Rendon said. I feel like I can make a difference in bettering this community as a whole. Strong connections In the 18 years since he left the Police Department, Rendon said hes continued to make a difference, including providing financial education to under served communities through his job at Educators Credit Union. Last January, online magazine Madison365 named him one of the 48 most influential Latinos in Wisconsin. My activities have been such that Ive built a lot of good relationships with key people in the city, Rendon said. As for the citys controversial event center (arena) proposal, Rendon didnt express any strong opinions. He said the city could benefit from something like that, but placed greater importance on other priorities. I dont know about an arena, he said. But we also have to look at the City of Racines infrastructure. Our roadways are horrible. We have to look at some of that stuff before we spend millions and millions of dollars on projects that may not work. Rendon added that he will also prioritize attracting new businesses and retaining population, especially talented young people. With the condition the citys in right now, I dont think I would be able to say its a Belle City, he said. We need to restore Racine back to the Belle City it once was. Business Adviser: Actually, the Government Has Made Significant Strides on the Economy A jade sale in 2010. The jade industry is a source of expropriations, human rights abuses and despair and the government is seeking to make it instead the location of shared revenues according to economic adviser Sean Turnell. / The Irrawaddy Government economic adviser Sean Turnell has hit back against a barrage of recent criticism over the performance of the National League for Democracy (NLD)-led administration during its first year of office. The governments achievements on the economy were considerable and too often overlooked the adviser said. Daw Aung San Suu Kyis government has been bruised over the past week by a chorus of mainly negative judgments at home and abroad for its one-year performance, on everything from peace to human rights to the perceived slow pace of economic reform. Turnell suggested that much of the negativity on the economy was misplaced. The full extent of fiscal and other problems inherited by the current government was not widely understood, he said in a presentation to the Australian Chamber of Commerce (AustCham Myanmar) in Rangoon and in comments to The Irrawaddy. There was also widespread underestimation of the bad economic legacy that had been bequeathed by the previous government, he said. During its final year of office, the government under former President U Thein Sein had increased the budget deficit by more than three times the level of the year before, according to Turnell. The former government had also overseen a dramatic deterioration in Burmas trade deficit. In addition, according to the adviser, the NLD-led administration had inherited a number of very questionable loans, mostly from China, taken on by the U Thein Sein government. The loans added significantly to Myanmars debt burdens, on projects of very questionable value, Mr. Turnell said, without elaborating on the loan details. The economist, who has conducted research on Burma over a period of decades, provided a list of what he identified as significant achievements of the NLD government on the economy. For a start, the government had been fiscally responsible, he told The Irrawaddy. If we look around the world we observe a miasma of fiscal crises, sovereign defaults, currency demonetizations, drastic austerities, monetary gambles, and so on. The NLD inherited a budget deficit that, as a percentage of GDP, increased threefold across the last year of the Thein Sein government. Since then, and in the face of a slowing global economy, all the global headwinds noted, as well as the pent up demand of 60 years of spending misallocations, the deficit has barely moved. This showed that the fiscal extravagances of Burmas previous governments were not the practice of its newest one, Turnell said. The government had facilitated the easing of international sanctions, and the dividends for this were only now starting to come in, according to Turnell. Other achievements were that the administration had successfully initiated a bond tender as a critical foundation for fiscal reform, he said. This would be the basis for future budgetary increases in health, education, infrastructure and other useful social expenditures. Mobile financial services were promoted and the opening up of payment systems to international credit-card providers was making life easier for businesses and consumers and giving a boost to the tourism sector, he said. The liberalization of rules in the microfinance sector would greatly expand access to capital to smallholder farmers and other rural enterprise in the years ahead, Turnell said, adding that the upcoming foreign investment law would provide greater certainty to international investors and stimulate more investment. Burmas economy has been dominated for decades by the state and state-linked business interests. Mr. Turnells presentation suggested that the government had made headway in efforts to reduce the part played by legacy interest groups. An ambitious program of privatization of state-owned enterprises had been initiated, he said. Half of all state-owned factories are now public/private partnerships and we are currently inviting proposals for private partners for 17 more factories. Referring to the jade mining sector as currently the source of expropriations, human rights abuses and despair, the economist said that licenses had been suspended until the sector can be the location of shared revenues that could prove transformational. Other achievements on the part of the government included its work on restructuring state banks and turning them into the institutions the country needs to aggregate and allocate capital. The NLD-led government had supported entrepreneurs and small and medium enterprises as the engines for economic growth, Turnell said. Loans had been provided by the state to more than 450 entrepreneurs. The administration was working with the Japanese government to provide additional loans to almost 200 other businesses. A credit guarantee insurance system had been established to facilitate loans for entrepreneurs who could not provide collateral, he added. The economist emphasized the importance of enhancing the potential of Burmas long-neglected human capital. Calling the countrys population and its peoples potential the true and lasting capital for the 21st century, he pointed to government achievements on health and education. The NLD-led administration was improving health care through the introduction of the Myanmar National Health Plan, the rebuilding of Rangoon General Hospital, and through initiating anti-stunting programs through cash transfers to new mothers. A host of other initiatives were being tested and trialed, he said. The fully costed and initiated National Education Plan aimed to transform Burmas education system from pre-school to the universities, Turnell added. Finally, Mr. Turnell said the recently established donor coordination unit had been initiated to better align the priorities of international development partners to those of Burmas elected government. Taken together, the governments actions so far constitute a secure down-payment on the transformational measures that will follow in the years ahead, the adviser maintained. During a discussion period at the Chamber of Commerce event, audience members from the business community criticized existing restrictions on businesses and complained of challenges dealing with government bureaucracy. Turnell said it was important for government entities to move on from a command mindset and to see themselves instead as facilitators of growth. Burma Electricity Ministry Appeals to Public to Support Hydropower and Coal Electricity ministry press conference in Naypyidaw. / Pe Thet Htet Khin / The Irrawaddy NAYPYIDAW The Ministry of Electricity and Energy will appeal to the public to support hydropower and coal-fired power plants, said permanent secretary of the ministry U Htein Lwin. One year into the new administration, the ministry finds it difficult to generate sufficient power because of peoples strong opposition to hydropower and coal-fired power plants, the minister said. People oppose hydropower and coal power generation, saying that there are negative environmental impacts. But we have limited natural gas resources and it is difficult for us to generate more power, he told the media at the ministrys annual press conference. The ministry will establish hydropower and coal-fired power plants but will ensure minimal environmental impact, U Htein Lwin said, adding that the plans will be publicized in order to try to convince the public. Currently, the ministry, with the financial assistance of the French government, is implementing the Laymyo hydropower plantwith a capacity of 690 megawattsin Arakan State, as well as the Shweli hydropower plantwith a capacity of 1,050 megawattsin northern Shan State. The secretary said power generation from hydropower, natural gas and coal costs less than renewable energy from solar or wind power. We cant just sit by because people object. We will generate power from these sources and supply the people, said the secretary. However, it is up to Union-level commissions to decide whether to implement mega projects like the China-backed Myitsone Dam, which has faced strong opposition from the public. China, Thailand, and Australia have proposed plans to generate electricity in Burma, according to the ministry. At present, only 34 percent of the country has access to the electricity grid. The remaining 66 percent, mostly rural areas, still does not have access. Ministry officials restated a goal to provide universal access to electricity by 2030 at the press conference. Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko. Burma Kachin Political Prisoner Hospitalized Amid Calls For Release The wife of Lahpai Gam (right), who has been imprisoned for five years, holds a photo of him. / The Irrawaddy RANGOON Lahpai Gam, a 56-year-old Kachin political prisoner, is suffering from serious health problems including a stomach hernia, which may be due to the torture he endured at the time of his arrest in 2012. Lahpai Gam was working as a herdsman tending cows at the time of his arrest by the Burma Army in June 2012 in Kachin State. He was held incommunicado for almost a month before being transferred to Myitkyina Prison in the states capital. He was reportedly tortured by the military during interrogation. According to his lawyer, Mar Khar, this may be linked to his hospitalization for the past two months. I have visited him three times at the hospital, he told The Irrawaddy. He was very sick at first but he has got a little better in the last three days. Lahpai Gam told his lawyer that internal wounds he suffered during his torture still cause him pain, which, he said, had worsened since the last rainy season. His family who, along with Lahpai Gam, are from Npawn village in northern Shan State, told the lawyer they are worried about his health and the poor treatment he receives at the prison. Lahpai Gams wife Lashi Lu told The Irrawaddy in 2014 that her husband was tortured repeatedly and forced to engage in a sex act with another male prisoner. In addition to this, his legal team alleged he was beaten with an iron rod and had a bamboo stick rolled up and down his knees. He was also forced to stand in a Christ like pose and mocked for being a Christian, his legal team alleged. Amnesty International released a statement on Friday demanding his immediate and unconditional release and access to necessary health care. Suffering from anal bleeding and serious stomach problems, he has received several blood transfusions, according to the statement. Sources close to him say Lahpai Gam does not fully understand the serious health problems he faces, nor the treatment he requires; raising concerns that he does not have access to adequate medical care. Lahpai Gam was charged in 2012 with being a member of the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) under Article 17(1) of the 1908 Unlawful Association Act and with four counts under the 1908 Explosive Substances Act. He was sentenced to a total of 20 years imprisonment. However, due to insufficient evidence, the Supreme Court overturned the convictions for the Unlawful Association Act and two counts under the Explosive Substances Act. The two remaining charges under the Explosive Substances Act which relate to bombs that were planted near different bridges in Kachin State were upheld on the basis of a confession letter dated from the time he was tortured and held incommunicado. Lahpai Gam was sentenced to eight years imprisonment under these charges, however according to sources, he maintains that he is solely a farmer and not a member of the KIA and has never signed a confession letter nor planted the bombs. Lahpai Gam and his family fled to an internally displaced peoples camp in Waingmaw Township, Kachin State in 2011 when fighting broke out between the Burma Army and the KIA. Burma Mandalay to Increase Security During Thingyan Festival attendees enjoy Thingyan in Mandalay, April 2016. / Zaw Zaw / The Irawaddy MANDALAY Mandalays divisional minister of border affairs and security said on Thursday that 70 percent of the areas security forces would be utilized during the Thingyan water festival. We will use 70 percent of the police force to cover the entire Mandalay area during Thingyan, said Gen Myo Min Aung, the Mandalay border affairs and security minister. The police will be deployed especially around the old palace wall, Mandalay Hill, Kandawgyi Lake, U Bein Bridge and other crowded areas, during the day and at night, he added. The minister said warnings and notices regarding the use of drugs and alcohols were being distributed to the pavilions, and that a special team would be carrying out surprise checks during the festival. Some people use drugs during the festival. Some pavilions even sell drugs. Weve issued notices, however, and will take legal action if people are found in breach of the law, the minister said. Thousands of people travel to Mandalay for Thingyan, making it one of the most crowded areas in the country at that time. Weve also warned people not to wear masks or military outfits, or carry toy guns or swords, for security purposes. If found, we will seize these objects and return them after the festival, he added. This year, Mandalay will celebrate Thingyan with water pumps but also Burmese traditions, with a walkway along 26th Street featuring traditional Burmese dishes. Local authorities have said they expect hundreds of thousands of visitors in Mandalay at the festival this year, held from April 13-17. Commentary The Path to a New Country: Looking Back on One Year of NLD Rule Burmas State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi meets with the local community in San Pya Gyi village in Magwe Division's Pakkoku Township in January 2017 to discuss the area's economic development. / Zaw Zaw / The Irrawaddy As the first year of its tenure has come to a close, many continue to question whether Burmas elected civilian-led government has managed to accomplish its aims, or if in this regard, it has failed. One certain thing we have witnessed is that the government led by State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is still struggling to bring about peace, national reconciliation and create a democratic federal Union, as well as increase economic growth and development in the country, which has been left in disarray after more than 50 years of military dictatorship. I think that the most valuable thing that the majority of Burmese people can still appreciate within this governmentin comparison to former administrationsis that its ministers are still corruption-free one year on. Under the previous quasi-civilian regime led by ex-general U Thein Sein, a persistent fear was whether the reform processled by former military mencould potentially reverse at any given time. That nightmare vanished along with U Thein Seins administration after the National League for Democracy (NLD) government took office on March 30, 2016. Since then, the NLDs successes and failures have been explored concerning its capacity, policies, leadership style, inevitable legacies, and the continued existence of dark elements in the country. Unwanted Legacies Burma is still suffering from many of the problems inherited from the past. A 70-year civil war continues. The militarythe countrys most powerful institutionstill calls the shots on conflict with ethnic armed groups. In a recent interview with the BBC, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi said: They [the military] are free to go in and fight. And of course that is in the Constitution. Military matters are to be left to the army. Thats why we are trying to change the Constitution. Amending the Constitution is one of our aims. One of the biggest challenges for the NLD government is still the 2008 charter drafted by the previous military regime, which guarantees the political power of the military in the government with three key ministerial positionsdefense, home and border affairsand 25 percent of all legislative seats reserved for military appointees. Thats why one of the NLDs main aims is to adopt a Constitution which ensures that all the people of our country can live together in tranquility and security, according to its 2015 election manifesto. The NLD faces resistance on multiple fronts to their vision of change. The military, known as the Tatmadaw, is always in a position to fight the NLDs attempts to amend the current Constitution or adopt a new one. After all, the militarys main stated duty is to safeguard the Constitution, according to Chapter 1, the Basic Principles of the Union. This also states that the countrys consistent objectives include enabling the Defence Services to be able to participate in the National political leadership role of the State. Regarding the peace processa priority of the NLD governmentthe militarys offensives were disruptive, as the State Counselor told the BBC. But the current Constitution prevents the NLD from reining in the army at all. The NLD government has still not managed to convince the military leadership to collaborate with the government regarding armed conflict that has intensified since their administration came to power. There is also a certain persistence of unofficial or unlawful resistance to the NLD, which could be classified as dark elements likely comprised of radical groups or members of old establishments. Among them are those who assassinated NLD legal adviser U Ko Ni in broad daylight outside Yangon International Airport in January. U Ko Ni was strongly advocating for the amendment of the Constitution or the adoption of a new one. Most of those suspected of involvement in his murder are ex-military officials. Some critics think that the killing is a setback to the NLD government; others see it as an act of sabotage by those who have disdain for the NLDs political vision. The State Counselors policy to prioritize national reconciliation with the military and the old establishment has arguably incapacitated her government. When the NLD formed its government, it allowed high-ranking officials from the previous regime, like directors and permanent secretaries of the ministries, to retain their positions. Most of them are ex-military officials, and there have been reports that some have blocked mechanisms that the new government hopes to implement. Another particularly tragic legacy is the crisis surrounding the Rohingya in Arakan State. The problem dates back decades, and consecutive governments, including the administration headed by U Thein Sein, turned a blind eye to reports of abuse, rather than identifying solutions and responses. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has faced international criticism for failing to take action against government security forces for human rights abuses against the Rohingya. If Burmas security personnel committed the atrocities which rights groups have accused them of, her government must punish them according to the law. These are some of the most difficult obstacles that need to be overcome in order to bring radical change to the country. Political Missteps Yet these aforementioned challenges do not stand in the way of the NLD government improving the education, economic and legal sectors, if the political will is there. There are many areas where the government, as well as the NLD-dominated parliaments, can potentially make positive changes. Heres one political misstep which could serve as an important lesson for the NLDcall it a bridge lesson. The result of the by-election held on April 1 indicated how the ruling partys popularity had declined in ethnic constituencies. This differed from results of previous elections in 1990, 2012 and 2015 in which the NLD contested. In those elections, the NLD won by a landslide nationwide, including in most ethnic constituencies. Out of 18 constituenciesout of 19 available seatswhere the NLD contested in this years by-elections, it won only nine seats, two of which were in ethnic constituencies in Shan and Chin states. In the remaining nine seats in ethnic constituencies, the NLD was defeated. In Shan State, the Shan Nationalities League for Democracywhich was an NLD ally in the 1990 electionwon six seats. The victory of Arakanese politician U Aye Maung in Arakan States Ann Township was not surprising, as the NLD won a minority of seats in the state in the 2015 election. The Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), which was formed by the military and defeated by the NLD in the 2015 general elections, won two seatsone each in Mon and Shan states. The victory of the USDP in Chaungzon Township in Mon State was likely a result of the NLDs missteps in ignoring local peoples desires. The NLD took advantage of its position in the Union Parliament to name a bridge in the township after the late Burmese independence icon Gen Aung San, while many of local Mon people wanted it to be called the Salween Bridge (Chaungzon), referring to the river that it spans and the area in which it is located. The NLD was later defeated in this constituency, where it had won in the 2015 general elections. The NLD leadership believed that resistance against the governments move to name the bridge after Aung San was organized by its opponents and radical Buddhist monks. But even though it was true that the resistance was politically motivated by NLD opposition, the leadership should have understood that many locals viewed the NLDs tactics in naming the bridge as coercive measures. Thousands of ethnic Mon protested against the NLDs bringing of the issue to the national Parliament, rather than allowing it to be addressed locally. They argued that the NLD did not honor the autonomy of ethnic people even on the matter of naming a bridge. The defeat of the NLD in Chaungzon is therefore a great lesson for the NLD nationally, even though it is not a national issue. Camaraderie vs. Alienation Many of Daw Aung San Suu Kyis long-term supporters, including veteran activists from the 1988 pro-democracy uprising and ethnic forces, feel that she, her party and her government have intentionally or unintentionally politically alienated them. Some have described being marginalized, rather than treated with the camaraderie they had expected from an NLD-led administration. Thats one of the failures of the NLD and its governments stance regarding some of its key allies: one year on, she should have much greater support nationwide. Better relations with ethnic leaders, for example, would help in efforts toward achieving peace, as well. It is not wrong to treat friends as friends. On March 30, on the day marking the first anniversary of the NLD governments time in office, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi said in her State of the Union speech that she had changed her partys slogan from Time for Change to Together with the People. But the incident surrounding Chaungzon Bridge obviously contrasts with the message together with the people, as does the alienation she employs as part of her leadership style. The State Counselor admitted in her speech that some of her ministers have been inactive and some are not in the right positions. Regarding these cases, the government will make necessary changes, she added. As she said, one year is not a long period of time for a government to do its work. But it is now time for the NLD administration to fix their political missteps, unpopular policies and controversial leadership style. It is time for a reshuffle of the cabinet. The State Counselor must axe incapable ministers and high-ranking officials and replace them with those who can make her government more competent. The remaining four years of its tenure is not much time for a government to overhaul a country caught in such a great mess. The NLDs term from 2016 to 2021 is a time in which to build a foundation from which those in power can confront the unwanted legacies of military rule, and establish laws and regulations to forge a solid path for a new country. Kyaw Zwa Moe is the editor of The Irrawaddys English edition. Physics Students Research Wins Top Honor Andy Dings research poster was entitled Experimental Analysis of Lights Angular Momentum. April 7, 2017 BLOOMINGTON, Ill. Illinois Wesleyan University physics major Zhenghao (Andy) Ding has been honored with an outstanding undergraduate research award by the American Physical Society (APS) at its annual March Meeting. The APS March Meeting is the largest such meeting in the world over 10,000 physicists gather for groups annual event. The APS March Meeting is, for us, the big league, " said Ding, who was notified of the award this week. He was one of only 17 undergraduates from across the country to receive the Future of Physics Days Outstanding Undergraduate Research Presentation Award. Dings research poster was entitled Experimental Analysis of Lights Angular Momentum. Ding studies laser beams, which have been encoded with information in helical wavefronts. The number of intertwined helical twists in the beam determine the orbital angular momentum of the light, Ding explained. If this kind of beam hits one of the micron-scale spherical participles that I synthesized with the help of Professor of Chemistry Tim Rettich, the so-called angular momentum of light can be transferred to these small objects and really will make them move in rotation. Most of what Ive done has to do with optical communications, which is what powers the backbone of the internet. In the physics lab at Illinois Wesleyan, Ding and colleagues have cleanly encoded information in the form of superpositions of quantized angular momentum in the beam. We were also able to rapidly read out this information, using a special set of optics that perform a conformal mapping, Ding explained. The hope is that this research can help guide the way toward significantly boosting the information capacity of optical fibers. At the APS March Meeting, Ding presented a poster highlighting his work in a session lasting three hours. I introduced my research to over 60 people during that time, he said. A native of Zhengzhou, China, Ding will graduate in May after completing his IWU coursework in three years. He has just finished his honors thesis (123 pages) under the supervision of Ames Professor of Physics Gabe Spalding. The thesis includes his research on lights angular momentum and also includes his work on developing lab-on-a-chip technologies and on quantum optics. Spaldings special topics course this semester meant Ding could bring other physics majors into the lab, where they conducted hands-on experiments with single-photon quantum mechanics. Ive enjoyed that, and part of my thesis will, I hope, be used by future IWU students every year, for some time to come, Ding said. Thats pretty cool to think about. Reddit Email 79 Shares By Shahram Akbarzadeh | (Informed Comment) | Days before President Donald J. Trump ordered cruise missile strikes on Syria, his son-in-law Jared Kushner visited Iraq to learn first-hand how the Iraqi government assesses the security situation, more than a decade after the United States delivered regime change to that country. The issues facing Iraq are manifold and tend to have a transnational edge. It remains to be seen how Kushner, who serves as the presidential advisor at large, interprets the challenges and opportunities for the Trump administration. Iraq is struggling to gain back territory from the Islamic State (IS) which refuses to give up its prize winning: Mosul. The loss of Mosul with 1.3 million inhabitants to IS in June 2014 was a shock and a disaster for the credibility of Iraqs national army. After nearly three years, US military hardware and air support have helped Baghdad wrest eastern Mosul out of IS control. But these gains have also been aided by the Shia militia fighters, operating under the rubric of the Popular Mobilisation Force (PMF), widely believed to maintain links with Iran, and Kurdish fighters (Peshmerga) affiliated with the Kurdish regional government in Erbil. US generals have been sanguine about the speed of the operation in Mosul. The house-to-house gun fight puts the most battle-hardened troops to test. Thats why the Iraqi national army cannot afford to overlook the contribution of PMF and Peshmerga. But what kind of political price would the Trump administration have to pay for keeping this coalition together? Irans role is complicated by decades of hostility between Tehran and Washington. Irans staunch support for Bashar al-Assad in Syria has pitted Tehran against Western capitals as well as Riyadh and Ankara. The Iranian leadership, perhaps unwittingly, has contributed to the sectarian divide between Shia and Sunni. Despite President Hassan Rouhanis efforts to bring Iran out of the cold, the Iranian leadership is still very unpopular in its neighbourhood and the United States. Yet Iran has as much commitment to eradicate IS than the United States, if not more. Iran sees the IS threat as real and imminent, not just because IS is challenging Iran-friendly regimes in Syria and Iraq, but because it has the potential to spread to Sunni-populated outer provinces of Iran. A recent video by IS which targeted the Iranian leadership and warned of Gods punishment was made in Persian language. IS clearly sees Iran as its adversary in the region. And this gives some credibility to Iranian claims that their sponsorship of anti-IS forces is a matter of self-defence. We dont need to accept the Iranian justification to see that Iran is potentially a major regional ally for the US fight on IS. But would anyone in the White House admit that? Would Jared Kushner advise President Trump to reconsider US-Iran relations on this issue? Probably not; given that Trump, just like his Iranian counter-part, is a hostage of history and ideological boundaries. The United States and Iran may have a common enemy in IS but they also have too many points of divergence. Another challenge brewing in the horizon for the United States is the question of Kurdistan. As the most effective fighting force in Iraq, Kurdish Peshmerga have proven instrumental in thwarting the IS advance and famously helping the Yezidi community in Mount Sinjar escape capture or massacre in the hands of IS. In the absence of the national Iraqi army, the Peshmerga managed to seize Kirkuk ahead of advancing IS troops in 2014 and expand the authority of the provincial capital of Erbil. The oil-rich Kirkuk has been a disputed territory between Erbil and Baghdad in the post-Saddam era. Now, with a large swath of territory under their control, Kurds may be tempted to take the logical step and vie for statehood. Washington has developed direct links with the Kurds and invested in their fighting capability. Would Washington stick with Erbil if push came to shove? Would Washington see an independent Kurdistan as a natural ally in a turbulent and uncertain neighbourhood? The implications of such move would be profound for the neighbourhood not just Iraq. The Trump administration has inherited a region in crisis. Successive US administrations have sought to manage the Middle East, or make it better, only to discover that their actions have deepened divisions and exacerbated the challenges. Can the Trump administration arrive at creative solutions and avoid long-standing traps that have paralysed US policy in the Middle East? Professor Shahram Akbarzadeh is Chair of Middle East and Central Asian Politics at Deakin University, Australia. He most recent book is Iran in the World: President Rouhanis Foreign Policy, eds. Shahram Akbarzadeh and Dara Conduit (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). Related video added by Juan Cole: ABC News: Jared Kushner meets with Iraqs prime minister Reddit 9 Email 167 Shares By Rebecca Gordon | ( Tomdispatch.com) | When George W. Bush and Dick Cheney launched their forever wars under the banner of a Global War on Terror they unleashed an unholy trinity of tactics. Torture, rendition, and indefinite detention became the order of the day. After a partial suspension of these policies in the Obama years, they now appear poised for resurrection. For eight years under President Obama, this countrys forever wars continued, although his administration retired the expression war on terror, preferring to describe its war-making more vaguely as an effort to degrade and destroy violent jihadists like ISIS. Nevertheless, he made major efforts to suspend Bush-era violations of U.S. and international law, signing executive orders to that effect on the day he took office in 2009. Executive Order 13491, Ensuring Lawful Interrogations, closed the CIAs secret torture centers the black sites and ended permission for the Agency to use what had euphemistically become known as enhanced interrogation techniques. On that same day in 2009, Obama issued Executive Order 13492, designed unsuccessfully, as it turned out to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, the site of apparently endless detention without charges or trials. In 2015, Congress reinforced Obamas first order in a clause for the next years National Defense Authorization Act that limited permissible interrogation techniques to those described in the U.S. Army Field Manual section on human intelligence collector operations. All of that already seems like such ancient history, especially as the first hints of the Trump era begin to appear, one in which torture, black sites, extraordinary rendition, and so much more may well come roaring back. Right now, its a matter of reading the Trumpian tea leaves. Soon after the November election, Masha Gessen, a Russian emigree who has written two books about Vladimir Putins regime, gave us some pointers on how to do this. Rule number one: Believe the autocrat. When he tells you what he wants to do build a wall, deport millions, bring back torture he means what he says. Is Gessen right? Lets examine some of those leaves. Torture Redux It should come as no surprise to anyone who paid minimal attention to the election campaign of 2016 that Donald Trump has a passionate desire to bring back torture. In fact, he campaigned on a platform of committing war crimes of various kinds, occasionally even musing about whether the United States could use nukes against ISIS. He promised to return waterboarding to its rightful place among twenty-first-century U.S. practices and, as he so eloquently put it, a hell of a lot worse. Theres no reason, then, to be shocked that hes been staffing his administration with people who generally feel the same way (Secretary of Defense James Mad Dog Mattis being an obvious exception). The CIA was certainly not the only outfit engaged in torture in the Bush years, but its the one whose practices were most thoroughly examined and publicized. Despite his enthusiasm for torture, Trumps relationship with the Agency has, to say the least, been frosty. Days before his inauguration, he responded to revelations of possible Russian influence on the U.S. election by accusing its operatives of behaving like Nazis, tweeting: Intelligence agencies should never have allowed this fake news to leak into the public. One last shot at me. Are we living in Nazi Germany? He quickly appointed a new director of the CIA (as hasnt been true of quite a few other positions in his administration). He chose former Congressman Mike Pompeo, whose advice about torture he has also said he would consider seriously. A polite term for Pompeos position on the issue might be: ambiguous. During his confirmation hearings, he maintained that he would absolutely not reinstate waterboarding or other enhanced techniques, even if the president ordered him to. Moreover, he added, I cant imagine that I would be asked that. However, his written replies to the Senate Intelligence Committee told quite a different, far less forthright tale. Specifically, as the British Independent reported, he wrote that if a ban on waterboarding were shown to impede the gathering of vital intelligence, he would consider lifting it. He added that he would reopen the question of whether interrogation techniques should be limited to those found in the Army Field Manual. (If confirmed, I will consult with experts at the Agency and at other organizations in the U.S. government on whether the Army Field Manual uniform application is an impediment to gathering vital intelligence to protect the country.) In other words, as the Independent observed, if the law prohibits torture, then Pompeo is prepared to work to alter the law. If experts believed current law was an impediment to gathering vital intelligence to protect the country, Pompeo wrote to the Senate committee, I would want to understand such impediments and whether any recommendations were appropriate for changing current law. Unfortunately for both the president and him, there are laws against torture that neither they nor Congress have the power to change, including the U.N. Convention against Torture, and the Geneva Conventions. Nor is Mike Pompeo the only Trump nominee touched by the torture taint. Take, for instance, the presidents pick for the Supreme Court. From 2005 to 2006, Neil Gorsuch worked in the Justice Departments Office of Legal Counsel, the wellspring for John Yoos and Jay Bybees infamous torture memos. Gorsuch also assisted in drafting Bushs signing statement on the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act. That act included an amendment introduced by Senator John McCain prohibiting the torture of detainees. As the White House didnt want its favorite interrogation methods curtailed, Gorsuch recommended putting down a marker to the effect that McCain is best read as essentially codifying existing interrogation policies. In other words, the future Supreme Court nominee suggested that the McCain amendment would have no real effect, because the administration had never engaged in torture in the first place. This approach was the best strategy, he argued, to help inoculate against the potential of having the administration criticized sometime in the future for not making sufficient changes in interrogation policy in light of the McCain portion of the amendment. In his brief tenure at the Office of Legal Counsel, Gorsuch provided further aid to the supporters of torture by, for example, working on government litigation to prevent the exposure of further Darby photos. These were the shocking pictures from Iraqs Abu Ghraib prison that came into the possession of U.S. Army Sergeant Joe Darby. He then passed them up the chain of command, which eventually led to the public revelation of the abuses in that U.S.-run torture palace. Trumps new attorney general, Jeff Sessions, is also a torture enthusiast. He was one of only nine senators to vote against the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act. The Act limited the military to the use of those interrogation methods found in the Army Field Manual. In 2015, he joined just 20 other senators in opposing an amendment to the next years military appropriations bill, which extended the Field Manual rules to all U.S. agencies involved in interrogation, not just the military. Reviving the Black Sites? So far, President Trump hasnt had the best of luck with his executive orders. His two travel bans, meant to keep Muslims from entering the United States, are at present trapped in federal court, but worse may be in the offing. Trump promised during the campaign to reopen the CIAs notorious black sites and bring back torture. Shortly after the inauguration, a draft executive order surfaced that was clearly intended to do just that. It rescinded President Obamas orders 13491 and 13492 and directed the secretary of defense and the attorney general, together with other senior national security officials, to review the interrogation policies in the Army Field Manual with a view to making modifications in, and additions to those, policies. That would mean an end run around Congress, since it doesnt take an act of that body to rewrite part of a manual (and so reinstitute torture policy). It also called on the director of national intelligence, the CIA director, and the attorney general to recommend to the president whether to reinitiate a program of interrogation of high-value alien terrorists to be operated outside the United States and whether such program should include the use of detention facilities operated by the Central Intelligence Agency. In other words, they were to consider reopening the black sites for another round of enhanced interrogation techniques. As in so many such documents, that draft order included a cover-your-ass clause, in this case suggesting that no person in the custody of the United States shall at any time be subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, as proscribed by U.S. law. As we learned in the Bush years, however, such statements have no real effect because, as in a 2002 memo produced by John Yoo and Jay Bybee, torture can be redefined as whatever you need it to be. That memo certified that, to qualify as torture, the pain experienced by a victim would have to be like that usually associated with serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death. In other words, if he didnt die or at least come close, you didnt torture him. After the recent draft executive order on these subjects was leaked to the media and caused a modest to-do, a later version appeared to drop the references to black sites and torture. While no final version has yet emerged, its clear enough that the initial impulse behind the order was distinctly Trumpian and should be taken seriously. As soon as the draft order surfaced in the press in late January, the White House disclaimed all knowledge of it and no version of it appears on current lists of Trump executive actions since taking office. But keep in mind that presidents can issue secret executive orders that the public may never hear about unless the news spills out from an administration whose powers of containment so far could be compared to those of a sieve. Deja Vu, Rendition Edition Notably, neither of Obamas Inauguration Day executive orders addressed extraordinary rendition. In fact, this was a weapon he preferred to keep available. What is extraordinary rendition? Ordinary rendition simply means transferring someone from one legal jurisdiction to another, usually through legal extradition. Rendition becomes extraordinary when it happens outside the law, as when a person is sent to a country with which the United States does not have an extradition treaty, or when it is likely (or certain) that the rendered person will be tortured in another country. In the Bush years, the CIA ran an extraordinary rendition machine, involving the kidnapping of terror suspects (sometimes, as it turned out, quite innocent people) off the streets of global cities as well as in the backlands of the planet, and sending them to those brutal CIA black sites or rendering them to torturing regimes around the world. Rendition continued in a far more limited way during Obamas presidency. For example, a 2013 Washington Post story described the rendition of three Europeans with Somali roots in the tiny African country of Djibouti and of an Eritrean to Nigeria. The article suggested that, in part because of congressional intransigence on closing Guantanamo and allowing the jailing and trial of suspected terrorists in U.S courts, rendition represented one of the few alternatives to the more extreme option of simply killing suspects outright, usually by drone. Recently, there was news that a Trump associate might have been involved in planning a rendition of his own. Former CIA Director James Woolsey told the Wall Street Journal that, last September, Lieutenant General Michael Flynn discussed arranging an extralegal rendition with the son-in-law of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu. At the time, he was serving as an adviser to the Trump campaign. He later briefly served as President Trumps national security adviser. The target of this potential rendition? Fethullah Gulen, an Islamic cleric who has lived for decades in the United States. President Erdogan believes that Gulen was behind a 2016 coup attempt against him and has asked the U.S. to extradite him to Turkey. The Obama administration temporized on the subject, insisting on examining the actual evidence of Gulens involvement. Flynns foray may have been an instance of potential rendition-for-profit, a plan to benefit one of his consulting clients. At the time, Flynns (now-defunct) consulting firm, the Flynn Intel Group, was working for a Dutch corporation, Inovo, with ties to Erdogan. The client reviewed a draft op-ed eventually published in the Hill in which Flynn argued that Gulen should be extradited, because he is a radical cleric and Turkey is our friend. In addition to lying about his contacts with the Russian ambassador during the election campaign, it turns out that Flynn was probably working as an unregistered foreign agent for Turkish interests at that time. Mike Pompeo also appears to be bullish on renditions. In his written testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee, he indicated that under him the CIA would probably continue this practice. When asked how the Agency would avoid sending prisoners to countries known to engage in torture, his reply could have come straight from the Bush-Cheney playbook: I understand that assurances provided by other countries have been a valuable tool for ensuring that detainees are treated humanely. In most cases other countries are likely to treat assurances provided to the United States government as an important matter. Asking for such assurances has in the past given the U.S. government cover for what was bound to occur in the prisons of countries known for torture. (Just ask Maher Arar rendered to Syria or Binyam Mohammed rendered to Morocco about what happened to them.) Well Always Have Guantanamo Well always have Paris, Rick reminds Ilsa during their bittersweet goodbye in the classic film Casablanca. Our Guantanamo lease with Cuba (which reads, for use as coaling [refueling] or naval stations only, and for no other purpose) is a permanent one. So it looks like well always have Guantanamo, with its memories of torture and murder, and its remaining 41 prisoners, undoubtedly stranded there forever. As it happens, Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuchs fingerprints are all over the Bush administrations Guantanamo policy, too. While at the Office on Legal Counsel, he helped the administration fight a major legal challenge to that policy in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. In that case, the government argued that detainees at Guantanamo did not have the right of habeas corpus, that the president has the authority to decide not to abide by the Geneva Conventions, and that detainees could be tried by military commissions in Cuba rather than by U.S. courts. Given that history, its unlikely hed rule in favor of any future challenge to whatever use President Trump made of the prison. While on the campaign trail, Trump made it clear that he would keep Guantanamo eternally open. In a November rally in Sparks, Nevada, he told a cheering crowd: This morning, I watched President Obama talking about Gitmo, right, Guantanamo Bay, which by the way, which by the way, we are keeping open. Which we are keeping open and were gonna load it up with some bad dudes, believe me, were gonna load it up. In mid-February, Trump Press Secretary Sean Spicer reiterated his bosss affection for the prison, when he told the White House press corps that the president believes it serves a very, very healthy purpose in our national security, in making sure we dont bring terrorists to our seas. Perhaps Spicer meant our shores, but the point was made. Trump remains eager to keep the whole Guantanamo prison system including, we can assume, indefinite detention up and running as an alternative to bringing prisoners to the United States. It seems that the head of the Pentagon agrees. In December 2016, retired Marine General (now Secretary of Defense) James Mattis told the Senate Armed Services Committee that any detainee who has signed up with this enemy and is captured wherever the president, the commander-in-chief, sends us should know that he will be a prisoner until the war is over. Given that our post-9/11 military conflicts are truly forever wars, in Mattiss view, pretty much anyone the U.S. captures in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, or who knows where else will face at least the possibility of spending the rest of his life in Guantanamo. Reading the Tea Leaves As far as we know, President Trump has yet to green-light his first case of torture or his first extraordinary rendition, or even to add a single prisoner to the 41 still held at Guantanamo. All we have for now are his ominous desires and promises and those of his underlings. These are enough, however, to give us a clear understanding of his intentions and those of his appointees. If they can, they will resurrect the unholy trinity of torture, rendition, and indefinite detention. The future may not yet be inscribed in Trumpian gold anywhere, but on such matters we should believe the autocrat. Rebecca Gordon, a TomDispatch regular, teaches in the philosophy department at the University of San Francisco. She is the author of American Nuremberg: The U.S. Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post-9/11 War Crimes. Her previous books include Mainstreaming Torture: Ethical Approaches in the Post-9/11 United States and Letters from Nicaragua. Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, John Dowers The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II, as well as John Feffers dystopian novel Splinterlands, Nick Turses Next Time Theyll Come to Count the Dead, and Tom Engelhardts Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World. Copyright 2017 Rebecca Gordon Via Tomdispatch.com Reddit Email 176 Shares By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | The Syrian Civil War has a domestic, a regional and an international dimension. Domestically, it has become a fight between some largely rural Sunni Arabs (though some are urban as in Ghouta), mostly now of a fundamentalist cast, on the one hand; and on the other the Baath regime of Bashar al-Assad and those groups that support him (most Allawis and Christians, some secular Sunni Arabs) or are neutral toward him (Kurds, Druze). Regionally, Tunisia, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon and Russia have lined up behind the al-Assad regime, while Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council support the mostly fundamentalist Sunni Arab rebels. It is hard to tell exactly where the Israeli government of Binyamin Netanyahu stands. It appears to be mainly worried about increased capacity coming off the conflict for the Lebanese Hizbullah Shiite militia, and not to care a great deal which force rules Damascus. It is therefore no surprise that Saudi Arabia and Turkey were among the first governments to praise President Trumps Tomahawk missile strike on the small Khayrat air force base in Homs province. In fact, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said in an interview on Turkeys Channel 7 before the missile strikes that he appreciated Trumps statement that it is impossible to turn a blind eye to the Syrian governments use of chemical weapons, but that he needs to see actions, not just words. He said that if Trump swung into action, the Turkish people are ready to fulfill their responsibility. Erdogan also said that he spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin after the gas attack, and that Putin questioned whether Bashar al-Assad was really responsible. Erdogan said that if Putin still did not understand the situation after two days, that pains us. Russian media has been insisting that the gas was released at Khan Shikhoun when the Syrian Arab Air Force inadvertently struck an al-Qaeda sarin production workshop and released it. But The Guardians on-the-scene correspondent looked into the warehouse fingered by Russia and found nothing inside it. Saudi Arabia likewise expressed its support for Trumps cruise missile strike. Turkey and Saudi Arabia have been more or less defeated in Syria, with their clients among the fundamentalists, such as the Freemen of Syria (Ahrar al-Sham), having been defeated by the Syrian Arab Army, Hizbullah, Iraqi Shiite militias, and Russia air power. They therefore hope that Trumps Tomahawk strike might change the situation on the ground. If the regime is demoralized and the fundamentalist rebels take heart, Turkey and Saudi Arabia hope, it is possible that al-Assad could yet be overthrown. Both see al-Assad as a puppet of Iran and as responsible for the mass murder of Sunni Arabs in Syria. In contrast, the countries supporting al-Assad, some of whom hope for good relations with Trump, largely held their tongues. It may be that even they could not defend a sarin gas attack. It may be that they just dont want to speak out against Trump. Egypts President Abdulfattah al-Sisi is likely in this column. But the likelihood is that Trumps cruise missile attack was a one-off action rather than the beginning of a full-scale campaign, and that while it may slightly demoralize the Syrian regime, it wont significantly alter the forces on the field. As for Iran, it strongly condemned Trumps attack on the air base, saying that it will aid terrorism in Syria and will make the difficult Syrian situation even more complicated. - Related video: CBS News: President Trump Orders U.S. Airstrike on Syria TORONTO, CANADA--(Marketwired - April 7, 2017) - Banro Corporation ("Banro" or the "Company") (NYSE MKT:BAA)(TSX:BAA) is pleased to provide an update on the progression of the Company's recapitalization (the "Recapitalization") described in the Company's management information circular dated February 27, 2016 (the "Circular"). Banro reports that the Ontario Superior Court of Justice has issued the final order (the "Final Order") which, among other things, approves the plan of arrangement (the "Plan of Arrangement") under the Canada Business Corporations Act to implement certain transactions under the Recapitalization. Capitalized terms used in this press release not otherwise defined shall have the meaning ascribed thereto in the Circular. With receipt of the Final Order, substantially all material conditions precedent to the Plan of Arrangement are now satisfied and, as a result, the Company anticipates implementing the Plan of Arrangement and closing the Recapitalization on April 12, 2017. The Recapitalization contemplates, among other things, (a) the refinancing of the maturing US$175 million senior secured 10% notes due March 1, 2017 of the Company and US$22.5 million loan with new US$197.5 million senior secured notes with a 4-year maturity and new common shares of the Company, (b) the conversion of the outstanding exchangeable preferred shares of each of Twangiza (Barbados) Limited and Namoya (Barbados) Limited, gold-linked preferred shares of Banro Group (Barbados) Limited and Series A Preference Shares of Banro into common shares of the Company (the Series B Preference Shares of Banro will be cancelled for no consideration), (c) the execution of a gold forward sale agreement to raise US$45 million to be used by the Company for working capital and general corporate purposes, including to fund transaction costs and repay a US$6.5 million interim loan facility recently obtained by the Company, and (d) the extension of the maturity dates on an existing US$10 million loan from July 15, 2018 and September 1, 2018 to February 28, 2020. In addition, certain stock options of the Company with an exercise price equal to or in excess of Cdn$0.80 per share will be cancelled for no consideration. As a step to the Plan of Arrangement, the board of directors of Banro immediately prior to the Effective Time shall be deemed to have resigned and a new board of directors shall be deemed to have been appointed. It is expected that the new Banro board of directors will comprise Jiongjie Lu (an incumbent director and the director acceptable to RFW), Robert L. Rauch (the director acceptable to Gramercy), John Clarke (an incumbent director and the Chief Executive Officer and President of Banro) and the following individuals acceptable to all of the Requisite Consenting Parties: Richard Brissenden (an incumbent director), Derrick Weyrauch (an incumbent director), Peter Cowley (an incumbent director), Robert Alexander Rorrison and Michael Hankin Li. Banro Corporation is a Canadian gold mining company focused on production from the Twangiza mine, which began commercial production September 1, 2012, and on production at its second gold mine at Namoya, where commercial production was declared effective January 1, 2016. The Company's longer term objectives include the development of two additional major, wholly-owned gold projects, Lugushwa and Kamituga. The four projects, each of which has a mining license, are located along the 210 kilometre long Twangiza-Namoya gold belt in the South Kivu and Maniema provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. All business activities are followed in a socially and environmentally responsible manner. For further information, please visit our website at www.banro.com. Five school districts in south-central Wisconsin were placed in a soft lockdown Thursday after a felon suspected of stealing guns allegedly made threats against a school, a Rock County Sheriffs Office official said. Janesville, Edgerton, Evansville, Fort Atkinson and Milton school districts were locked down, according to the districts. Rock County deputies were present at five rural schools when students were released Thursday afternoon and none reported problems, according to Commander Troy Knudson. Classes are held during a soft lockdown but students arent allowed outside during recess and entry points to the school and classrooms are locked and bolstered, Knudson said. Joseph Jakubowski, 32, of Janesville, was identified by the Rock County Sheriffs Office as the suspect in the gunshop break-in and theft of guns and the person who allegedly made threats against an unspecified school. He was still at-large Thursday night. Were still tracking down leads, Knudson said. The Rock County Sheriffs Office received information early Thursday that Jakubowski has been highly agitated recently over a variety of political issues, Sheriff Robert Spoden said. It was further reported that he made threats to steal weapons and to use them against public officials or at an unspecified school, Spoden said. The Armageddon Supplies gun shop on Highway 14, west of Janesville, was burglarized Tuesday night, with 18 guns stolen. About 20 minutes later, a vehicle was found to be on fire on Pennycook Lane, a short distance from the gun shop. Evidence of arson was found at that scene, and it appears the burglary and vehicle arson are connected, Spoden said. Jakubowski, whose last known address is 811 Glen St. in Janesville, is the registered owner of the vehicle. Police said Jakubowski is 5 feet, 10 inches tall, with green eyes and brown hair. Online court records show Jakubowski was convicted in 2008 of a felony charge of attempting to disarm a peace officer. He also was convicted of a felony charge of possession of marijuana with intent to deliver that included a modifier for possession of a dangerous weapon. But since 2008, Jakubowskis had just one criminal conviction for disorderly conduct in 2014. He also has been cited more than 50 times for traffic offenses. School districts were notified of the information the police had received about the threats and that prompted the soft lockdown. The Janesville School District put a notice on Facebook at about 8:20 a.m. after the school day had already started and students were at school. Based on advice and information provided this morning by local law enforcement agencies, all School District of Janesville schools have been placed into soft lockdown as a precautionary measure, the message said. Also on Thursday morning, police were called to Lincoln Elementary School, 1821 Conde St. in Janesville, after a person saw a man get out of a car to pick up a long gun from the ground, on the north side of the school grounds near the street. The suspect was described as white, 6 feet tall with a thin build and facial hair, wearing round glasses, blue jeans and a green or blue hat. Police had no information if the gun retrieval was connected to the burglary or the threats. The FBI, ATF and state investigators joined in the investigation and search for Jakubowski. Madison police offered its help in the investigation, according to spokesman Joel DeSpain. We dont have any reason to believe hes coming here but everyone is on alert because nobody knows where he is, DeSpain said. Anyone with information is asked to call Janesville police, 755-3100. State Journal reporter Bill Novak contributed to this report. TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - April 6, 2017) - Atacama Pacific Gold Corporation (TSX VENTURE:ATM) ("Atacama Pacific") announces that it has received a US$1.8 million payment from a subsidiary of Gold Fields Limited ("Gold Fields") related to the sale of water assets in northern Chile. Under the terms of the 2013 agreement with Gold Fields, Atacama Pacific received a payment of US$60,000 per litre/second ("l/s") of water for the 30.6 l/s approved by the Chilean water authority for use by Gold Fields. A further 12.7 l/s of water are available for permitting; however, there are no assurances that further permits will be forthcoming. As announced in July 2013, Atacama Pacific entered into an agreement to purchase 80 l/s of water from Aguas Chanar S.A.'s Copiapo facility for the development of its Cerro Maricunga oxide gold deposit. Atacama Pacific also has the right of first refusal for any additional water from the facility. With a secure and sustainable source of water arranged for Cerro Maricunga, Atacama Pacific undertook to monetize it water exploration assets in Chile by entering into the Gold Fields agreement. Cerro Maricunga Oxide Gold Project The Cerro Maricunga oxide-associated, breccia-hosted gold deposit hosts total Proven and Probable mineral reserves of 294.4 million tonnes grading 0.40 grams per tonne for 3.74 million ounces of gold representing one of the largest undeveloped oxide gold deposits in the world. Before commencing a feasibility study, Atacama Pacific is reviewing development options for Cerro Maricunga with the goal of reducing capital and operating costs through the elimination of the secondary and tertiary crushers, by using valley fill leaching at a location adjacent to the open pit and by commencing operations at a lower production rate of approximately 40,000 tonnes per day over the first years of production ramping up to 80,000 tonnes per day. The project also will be re-examined in light of current lower input costs for items such as electricity, fuel, labour, metallurgical consumables, equipment, etc. National Instrument 43-101 Disclosure As defined by National Instrument 43-101 ("NI 43-101") of the Canadian Securities Administrators, the Qualified Person for the Cerro Maricunga program is Sergio Diaz, a resident of Santiago, Chile. Mr. Diaz is a Public Registered Person for Reserves and Resources N 51, in Chile, and is also registered in the Colegio de Geologos de Chile under N 315. Mr. Diaz has reviewed and verified the technical contents of this press release. Maria Leticia Conca Benito, Mining Engineer, Universidad de Chile, Registered Member of Chilean Mining Commission, CEO and Project Director, Alquimia Conceptos S.A., was the independent qualified person, as defined by NI 43-101, responsible for the overall compilation of the information and preparation of the 2014 Prefeasibility Study. VANCOUVER, April 6, 2017 /CNW/ - INCA ONE GOLD CORP. (TSXV: IO, Frankfurt: SU9.F, SSEV: IOCL) ("Inca One" or the "Company") announces that it is undertaking a non-brokered private placement for gross proceeds of up to CAD$500,000 (the "Private Placement" or "Offering"). The Company intends to close this Private Placement imminently. The Private Placement will consist of the issuance of 3,333,333 million units (the "Units") at a subscription price of CAD$0.15 per Unit. Each Unit will be comprised of one common share of the Company (a "Share") and one transferable common share purchase warrant (a "Warrant"). Each Warrant will be exercisable to purchase an additional Share of the Company at an exercise price of CAD$0.28 for a period of 36 months from the closing date ("Closing Date"). Inca One is pleased to announce that BWBI Corp. ("BWBI") will subscribe for 2,333,333 Units for gross proceeds of $350,000 in this Private Placement. BWBI will hold approximately 3.7% of the issued and outstanding common shares of the Company post Private Placement on an undiluted basis. "I am excited to welcome BWBI as a valuable and strategic investor dedicated to our vision for growth," commented Inca One President and CEO Edward Kelly. "This new relationship will further enhance our market presence and allow us to accelerate growth initiatives. Inca One views their investment at this time as a vote of confidence in our company and we look forward to working together to further grow our business and build shareholder value." BWBI's management further reports: "Inca One had a transformational year in which the Company re-structured its balance sheet and ramped up their milling facility to become one of the permitted companies for small scale miners in Peru. Under the leadership of President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, "PPK" Peru has given needed comfort to foreign investment in the resource sector. As investors we feel comfortable in Peru, and look forward to assisting Inca One as they move into positive cash flow and have the ability to create significant shareholder value moving forward." The proceeds from the Offering will be used for general working capital requirements. Insiders of the Company may subscribe for Units under the Private Placement. All securities issued in connection with the Private Placement will be subject to a statutory hold period of 4 months plus a day from the Closing Date in accordance with applicable securities legislation. No finder's fees will be paid in connection with this Offering. Closing of the Private Placement, is subject to the approval of the TSXV. The securities described herein have not been registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and may not be offered or sold in the United States unless registered under the Act or unless an exemption from registration is available. About Inca One Inca One is a Canadian-based mineral processing company. The Company's activities consist of the production of gold and silver from the processing of purchased minerals located in Peru. Peru is the 6th largest producer of gold in the world and the Peruvian government estimates the small scale mining sector accounts for a significant portion of all Peruvian gold production, valued at approximately US$3 billion annually. The Company purchases its minerals from government registered small-scale mining producers from various regions and processes it at its Chala One milling facility located in Chala, Southern Peru. About BWBI BWBI is a private family-owned investment firm that specializes in private and public small to mid-market companies. BWBI, or one of its subsidiaries or affiliates, has been an early-stage shareholder in resource, pharmaceutical and technology sector companies that have successfully created over $7 billion of market capitalization and $3 billion of equity and debt capital raises. By Kim Hyo-jin About two-thirds of Americans support their government's use of military force against North Korea if it is to protect its allies in Asia, according to a U.S. poll, Wednesday (local time). The poll conducted by the Pew Research Center showed that 64 percent of respondents said if an Asian ally, such as South Korea, Japan or the Philippines, were attacked by North Korea, the U.S. should use force to defend it. The poll also showed that 88 percent of U.S. citizens are concerned about North Korea having nuclear weapons, with 65 percent saying they are "very concerned" and 23 percent "somewhat concerned." The poll was released amid Washington taking a tough stance against Pyongyang over its nuclear ambitions. U.S. President Donald Trump mentioned earlier that the U.S. would consider unilateral action if China refuses to help address the problem, while increasing economic sanctions. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said military options were not off the table. The poll hinted that public sentiment in the U.S. is backing the Trump administration's approach. When asked about the best option for dealing with North Korea's nuclear issue, 61 percent favored increasing economic sanctions against the North while 28 percent favored opening ties. It also showed that three quarters of U.S. citizens hold a negative view of North Korea ruled by its young leader Kim Jong-un. A total of 78 percent said they have an unfavorable opinion, with 61 percent expressing a very unfavorable opinion. Only 12 percent replied they view the country favorably. There were no significant partisan divides on attitudes toward the North, unlike public opinion on other aspects of U.S. foreign policy, the pollster said. The poll was conducted on 1,505 Americans who were 18 years old and over between February 16 to March 15. It has a margin of error of 3 percent. By Jun Ji-hye South Korea has successfully test-fired a new ballistic missile with a maximum range of 800 kilometers that puts the whole of North Korea within striking distance, military sources said Thursday. The military intends to complete the development of the new missiles and deploy them by the end of this year in response to the North's nuclear and missile capacities. Once mass-produced and deployed, the nation's new strategic weapons will be used to attack the military leadership and key facilities in Pyongyang in the event of a war, the sources added. "A test-firing of a Hyunmoo-type ballistic missile with a range of 800 kilometers recently took place at the Anheung test site of the Agency for Defense Development (ADD) under the wing of the Ministry of National Defense," a source said, asking not to be named. "The test was assessed as successful." The ADD's Anheung test site is located near the western coastal city of Taean, South Chungcheong Province. The source said the ADD deliberately shortened the flight range due to space limits, adding that the latest test was instead focused on verifying the performance of the missile such as its accuracy. Defense Minister Han Min-koo reportedly observed the test. The sources added that this was not the first time for the new missile to be tested, indicating that the development is at an advanced stage. If fired from the southern resort island of Jeju, the missile is theoretically capable of reaching Sinuiju, a North Korean city bordering China. If fired from Pohang, North Gyeongsang Province, the missile can reach anywhere in North Korea. The military has been developing ballistic missiles with extended firing ranges since Seoul and Washington revised the guidelines on such weapons for the South in October 2012. The revision allowed Seoul to extend the maximum range of them to 800 kilometers from the previous limit of 300 kilometers. South Korea is currently operating Hyunmoo 2A and 2B short-range ballistic missiles with maximum ranges of 300 and 500 kilometers, respectively; and Hyunmoo 3 cruise missiles with a range of 1,000 kilometers. The comments about the successful test-firing of the new missile came a day after the North launched a ballistic missile into the East Sea. Ministry of National Defense spokesman Moon Sang-gyun refused to confirm the successful test-firing of the 800 kilometer-range missile, citing military confidentiality. But he did not deny it, either. "Such a missile is currently under development," Moon said. "The official name of the missile will be given once its development is completed." Observers expect the new missile to be named the Hyunmoo 2C. by Tanya Gazdik , April 7, 2017 VisitBritain is teaming with American Airlines and British Airways, supported by a $3.7 million campaign. This is the tourism groups first-ever three-way partnership with the two airlines. The campaign, from Ogilvy & Mather, is called British Famous and features British comedian Diane Morgan. It runs through 2017. The videos will be released across multiple platforms in the U.S. with the first two, featuring Morgan as a self-help guru in Wales and a rock star-wannabe in Manchester, England, launched earlier this week. Our media strategy is largely comprised of various formats (video heavy) on Facebook, Google and Buzzfeed, says VisitBritain Marketing Director Meredith Pearson tells Marketing Daily. We have worked closely with our media agency, Carat, and the teams at Facebook, Google and Buzzfeed to develop a specific targeting strategy to reach the consumers we are trying to speak to across the U.S. We are also launching an ambitious PR and organic social strategy to reach consumers through other channels and touch-points. advertisement advertisement The films will drive online traffic to BritishFamous.com which features destination content from VisitBritain and tactical fares and offers from American Airlines and British Airways, converting the inspiration to visit into bookings. Two more videos featuring Morgan will be rolled out in the coming weeks, Pearson says. She embodies the British Famous concept for us: A talented and well-known (in the UK) British comedian that is brilliant but hasnt cut-through in the States yet, Pearson says. She has been treasured on the Edinburgh Fringe circuit for years and is most well-known for her dim-witted character, Philomena Cunk on BBC 2. Her ability to play a version of herself that was so committed to the absurdity of this idea was crucial to this concept and we couldnt be more pleased with Dianes ability to bring this idea to life. She really embodies the beloved British wit and understated sense of humor. It is the first time that VisitBritain has partnered with American Airlines, the worlds largest carrier, on a marketing campaign of this scale. It is also the first time the three organizations, each contributing $1.25 million to the campaign, have worked together to promote travel to Britain. VisitBritain has been working in partnership with British Airways for many years and in the U.S., has worked with American Airlines on smaller scale PR and B2B projects but nothing at this level, Pearson says. British Airways and American Airlines have a joint business agreement. The U.S. is Britains most valuable visitor market, worth more than $3.7 billion annually to the UK economy. by Tanya Gazdik , April 7, 2017 MetLife is launching its first-ever broadcast spot for Brighthouse Financial, the new annuity/life insurance brand from MetLife. Separately, OppenheimerFunds, a global asset manager, is launching a new brand campaign. Brighthouse Financials Predictability was created by BBH NY and aims to both establish the brand and break out of the MetLife shadow. The campaign brings the strategy behind the Brighthouse Financial brand to life. As people live longer and assume more responsibility for securing their financial futures, Brighthouse Financial is focused on providing simple and transparent annuity and life insurance solutions that can play an essential role in a financial plan. Were on a mission to help people achieve financial security, and our brand embodies that mission, said Matt Quale, VP and head of marketing at Brighthouse Financial, in a release. Thats why our name is Brighthouse Financial -- because it combines optimism with stability. Our brand symbol incorporates a house to represent the protection products like annuities and life insurance can offer to a portfolio, with rays of light used to illustrate the confidence that comes from knowing youve planned for your future. advertisement advertisement Other agencies involved with the effort include Citizen, which created the Brighthouse Financial Web site; MODCo Media, which developed the media plan; MXM which created content for the Web site; Red Peak, which developed the brand identity including the logo and cg42, which developed target audience insights and the brand strategy and positioning. Separately, OppenheimerFunds brand campaign is themed Challenge the Index. The effort, from MRM//McCann and Havas Media, aims to build awareness of the firm, while focusing on specific product offerings, such as Revenue Weighted ETF strategies, and the firms International Growth, International Bond and Emerging Markets Local Bond Strategies. The campaign will be featured across digital media channels and focuses on the innovative and differentiated ways we look at the world, offering trusted, long-term investing opportunities for our clients and their end investors, said John McDonough, head of distribution and marketing, OppenheimerFunds. A Web site features a video of Krishna Memani, chief investment officer at OppenheimerFunds, who details the firms focus on finding new ways to challenge the status quo of investing by identifying opportunities that others may not see. The multifaceted media strategy is aimed at the firms target client segments, which include financial advisors, broker dealers, and high-net-worth and institutional clients. Creative presents stories that challenge investors perceptions. OppenheimerFunds also partnered with Future Colossal to create an immersive interactive window installation at 67 Wall Street in New York. From April 5 to May 3, visitors can experience what Wall Street looked like in 1957, when the S&P 500 began as an index. As part of the same installation, passersby can interact in augmented reality with animals symbolizing global and emerging economies, to remind them to challenge home market bias and perceptions about investing in these markets. The public can share their impression of the interaction on social media, including Twitter, Periscope and Snapchat using the hashtag #ChallengeTheIndex. by Adam Buckman , April 7, 2017 AMC Networks kicked off its spring ad sales efforts at an event Thursday night in New York that grouped all of its five networks under one upfront umbrella for the first time. They are: AMC, SundanceTV, BBC America, WEtv and IFC. The theme of this upfront was audience engagement and quality content. Scott Collins, AMCs EVP of national advertising sales, explained the impetus behind sharing its roster of networks and original programming in remarks to ad agency reps and press. We felt the time was right for a variety of reasons. There is so much respective strength with each of our networks, and theyre even made stronger together as a unified buying proposition. The emphasis was on the wide-ranging collection of programming on the five networks, with stars of dozens of the companys shows rotating from table to table during dinner. advertisement advertisement In some ways, the upfront season has turned into a little bit of a magic show, with each network bringing out its own bag of tricks, Collins said. Whether its data, advanced targeting, cross-platform or programmatic synergies, whatever the pitch. When you dont have the programming, you tend to talk about anything else. We think the best magic is content that people care about. In an extremely competitive environment, our networks have demonstrated their ability to deliver that combination of critical viewing and critical acclaim more than any other network group on television, he added. Some of the companys existing series talked about most at the upfront were The Walking Dead and Better Call Saul (AMC), Portlandia and the new Brockmire (IFC), the documentary Planet Earth II (BBC America), Hap and Leonard (Sundance), and Braxton Family Values and Mama June: From Not to Hot (WEtv). Presentations were given by Charlie Collier, president and GM of AMC and SundanceTV, Sarah Barnett, president and GM of BBC America, Jennifer Caserta, president of IFC, and Marc Juris, president and GM of WEtv. New shows promoted at the event included several AMC dramas: The Spy Who Came In From the Cold (adapted from the John le Carre novel); The Terror, set in Antarctica; and McMafia (pictured above), about organized crime in the U.K. On Sundance, new shows coming soon include Liar starring Joanne Froggett (Downton Abbey) and Top of the Lake: China Girl, starring Nicole Kidman. by Steve McClellan @mp_mcclellan, April 7, 2017 Omnicom Groups Red Urban has been appointed lead digital and social marketing agency for Heineken USA after a consolidation review, the brewing giant confirmed Friday. The agency, founded in Amsterdam (also the headquarters of Heineken) and acquired by Omnicom in 2006, will focus its digital and social efforts on the Heineken, Heineken Light, Dos Equis, Tecate and Strongbow brands. With the win, Red Urban is opening a New York office dedicated to servicing the account. The agency also has offices in Toronto, Dallas, London and Munich. The client described the appointment as a bespoke solution, which will also draw upon other Omnicom resources as needed. A number of agencies previously had handled parts of Heineken USAs digital and/or social efforts including We Are Social, Havas, Publicis, 360i and Nomades. Transition plans are in place with some being completed shortly while others will extend to the completion of contract terms, according to sources. advertisement advertisement Heineken USA CMO Nuno Teles cited Red Urbans fantastic track record for developing winning programming and we look forward to partnering together across our portfolio of premium import beers and ciders. Jonathan Nelson, CEO Omnicom Digital added, With Red Urban at the helm, and the ability to leverage Omnicom digital and social capabilities, we look forward to taking Heinekens consumer centric strategy to the next level. Other Red Urban clients include Subaru, Purina and Hudsons Bay Company. by Sara Guaglione , April 7, 2017 New York Post, has been tapped to oversee a new advertising platform to give brands access to large, high-quality audience of potential customers in a trusted environment, according to the company. News Corp has a new chief of digital advertising solutions. Jesse Angelo, CEO and publisher of thehas been tapped to oversee a new advertising platform to give brands access to large, high-quality audience of potential customers in a trusted environment, according to the company. Angelo will lead the platforms development and launch. He will also continue to serve his current roles at the New York Post. The ad platform is designed to sell inventory across News Corps brands, including The Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch, Barrons, Mansion Global, the New York Post, News America Marketing, Checkout 51 andrealtor.com. The goal of the platform is to connect digital assets across News Corps business units to offer advertisers a one-stop-shopping opportunity. advertisement advertisement The platform will launch in the U.S. market later this year. Each of News Corps businesses will continue operating their independent ad sales operations. The new platform will be offered as an additional promotional opportunity. Angelo will report to News Corp CEO Robert Thomson. Angelo is a familiar face to the Murdoch family and a rising figure within the News Corp ranks. Thomson called him the "ideal evangelist" for the ad community. Thomson stated the new platform is inspired by News Connect, an ad platform created at News Corp Australia in 2015, which combines audiences and data from different News Corp publications and businesses to provide brands with reach and engagement. Thomson added: With brands searching for trusted and transparent platforms to reach high-quality, engaged audiences, this is the perfect moment to launch an alternative to the digital platforms that have arbitraged ambiguity and compromised the integrity of advertising. Microsoft recently made a decision to reveal and outline the type of data it collects from its Windows 10 operating system and Edge browser in an effort to become more transparent and open with users as it prepares to roll out its Creators Update, scheduled for release Tuesday. The next big free update to Windows 10 offers a slew of new features and tools such as tab management in the Edge browser, as well as the ability to create 3D images and privacy updates. For the first time, along with the updates to its operating system, Microsoft has published a complete list of the diagnostic data it collects. The individual data points related to a specific item or event are collected together and called Events, and they are organized into diagnostic areas. Brian Lich, a technical writer at Microsoft, provides a detailed summary of the data collected. advertisement advertisement The collected data includes everything from device data to details about Web browsing, search and query activity in the Microsoft browsers and Cortana, and local file searches on the device. It specifically notes text typed into address bars and search box text selected for Ask Cortana searches, Browser ID, URL, page title, and more. Some of the data comes from specific device capabilities that people use such as cameras and whether the device has a front or rear-facing camera, or both. It collects the data on whether the device has a touchscreen, virtualization hardware, voice search or controls and wireless capabilities, and whether it supports face detection. Windows 10 also collects data on app use and the duration of the use, along with user settings, device name, update status and app store update settings -- and accesses device network information such as IP address types, hotspot detection, and whether it uses a hashed IP address. Most of this information can be used to target advertising. Microsoft also collects information on music and TV, reading, and photos, but the company notes that the content consumption data collected include "diagnostic details about Microsoft applications that provide media consumption functionality (such as Groove Music), and is not intended to capture user viewing, listening or reading habits." The document defines all events and information that can be collected. Although it is highly detailed, Microsoft says it aims to put users more at ease through transparency and alerting them to the data it collects in each category. by Josh Engroff , Op-Ed Contributor, April 7, 2017 The horror that unfolded Tuesday after the Assad regime dropped sarin nerve gas on the city of Khan Sheikhun, Syria, was like a nightmare from the past. Writing 100 years ago, the WWI poet Wilfred Owen described similar scenes of asphyxiating agony: But someone still was yelling out and stumbling, And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . . Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning .If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues. -- Wilfred Owen, Dulce et Decorum Est Those lines are hard to read. And the videos from Tuesdays attack are hard to watch, particularly if you have a personal connection to the region, as I do (I was born in Beirut). But they are facts, tragic entries in the global register of human-on-human atrocities. advertisement advertisement The events this week also provided a condensed view of the past, present and future of weapons technology. Assads attack on Tuesday used sarin gas, an old technology dating from 1938 (but no less horrible for being old). The U.S. response on Thursday used Tomahawk missiles, a tech dating from the 1970s. And the most instructive glimpse of what the future will hold came in the form of the (intended or unintended) symbolism of the timing of the U.S. announcement: right after President Trumps dinner with Chinese president Xi Jinping. The U.S. has accused China numerous times over the years of cyberespionage and hacking. In 2010, Google reported targeted attacks on its corporate infrastructure coming out of China. Since then, 34 other companies have been hacked in a similar manner, including Symantec, Yahoo and Adobe. China has also accused the U.S. of engaging in its own form of cyberhacking. The point is not that China is a lone bad actor in this new world of cyberwar, but that, going forward, technically sophisticated sovereign states will increasingly turn to hacking, rather than brute physical force, to achieve their aims. And cyber attacks can cause real physical damage. One example is the Stuxnet worm, allegedly co-developed by the U.S. and Israel, which damaged Irans sophisticated uranium enrichment centrifuges in 2010. Imagine that being a connected to a self-driving car, and the threat only gets more personal. Indeed, the proliferation of Internet-connected devices only increases the likelihood of such attacks. Gartner estimates that 6.4 billion IoT devices were in use last year, and by 2019 that number will be 21 billion. IoT devices, by nature, either hold or are connected to massive amounts of personal and corporate data. Despite this, IoT devices are notoriously insecure. Forrester Research noted that IoT security is in its creation phase and lacks established quality controls or standards. On October 21, 2016, the DNS provider Dyn suffered the largest distributed denial-of-service attack in history. The attack severely impaired hundreds of Internet services, including those run by technically sophisticated companies like Amazon and Netflix. The source of the attack was a botnet coordinated through 100,000 Mirai malware-infected ioT devices. It turned out that the chips in these devices, many of which were made by Chinese company XiongMai Technologies, had security vulnerabilities that left them open to attack. Whether this vulnerability was a bug or a featurewhether they were purposely designed to be hackablehas still not been determined. We live in a time of jarring contrasts, in which unprecedented human achievement shares the stage with common human barbarity. The irony is that, even while were busy inventing the future, were still dragging unwanted pieces of that past along with us. The lizard brain just wont let go. Perhaps this dilemma is best understood as a choice, one expressed by Elliot in the show Mr. Robot: I only need to press one key to run the exploit. Or I can press another and disable the entire plan. by Aaron Baar , April 7, 2017 Now that consumers are at least somewhat convinced IBMs artificial intelligence system isnt some real-life HAL-9000, its time to show how the system can tangibly help businesses. IBM is using its sponsorship of the Masters tournament to launch a new series of commercials under the theme, Watson at work. The spots position the A.I.-system as a super-efficient coworker that can do the job of analyzing all of the data that humans cant. More and more businesses are absolutely accepting A.I. as a technology that can help them, Ann Rubin, vice president of branded content and global creative, tells Marketing Daily. There is so much data in the world, a human literally cant keep up with it. advertisement advertisement The series of commercials (from agency Ogilvy & Mather) show off a number of different scenarios, from ordering an elevator repair before its needed (using sensor and maintenance data) to helping E&J Gallo Wineries manage irrigation to grow better grape crops. The spots continue to give Watson a personality, in one case having it mimic a missing Australian energy plant workers slang. Other spots showcase the systems work in security analysis, medicine, aviation, insurance, and sports. IBM initially introduced Watson with a series of commercials featuring celebrities such as Bob Dylan and Stephen King having conversations with the system. Since then, IBM has been showcasing the platform in business settings. This latest effort is the most tangible in showcasing how Watson helps specific businesses with specific problems, Rubin says. When we first started talking about Watson in a big way, people didnt know what it and cognitive systems could do in business, Rubin says. This is much more specific to [showing Watson] achieving this outcome in this industry. As one of only a few sponsors for the Masters tournament (with an audience of business leaders), IBM has a huge opportunity to showcase itself during the broadcasts, Rubin says. The television campaign will be supplemented with digital executions that go into greater depth about how Watson is helping the specific businesses showcased, she says. [The Masters] is a great platform for us to tell a broad story, where we can run a lot of spots, Rubin says. People who are interested will go online to look for more information. We find our web traffic spikes dramatically when we have big TV pushes. BlackRock, Inc. is a publicly owned investment manager. The firm primarily provides its services to institutional, intermediary, and individual investors including corporate, public, union, and industry pension plans, insurance companies, third-party mutual funds, endowments, public institutions, governments, foundations, charities, sovereign wealth funds, corporations, official institutions, and banks. It also provides global risk management and advisory services. The firm manages separate client-focused equity, fixed income, and balanced portfolios. It also launches and manages open-end and closed-end mutual funds, offshore funds, unit trusts, and alternative investment vehicles including structured funds. The firm launches equity, fixed income, balanced, and real estate mutual funds. It also launches equity, fixed income, balanced, currency, commodity, and multi-asset exchange traded funds. The firm also launches and manages hedge funds. It invests in the public equity, fixed income, real estate, currency, commodity, and alternative markets across the globe. The firm primarily invests in growth and value stocks of small-cap, mid-cap, SMID-cap, large-cap, and multi-cap companies. It also invests in dividend-paying equity securities. The firm invests in investment grade municipal securities, government securities including securities issued or guaranteed by a government or a government agency or instrumentality, corporate bonds, and asset-backed and mortgage-backed securities. It employs fundamental and quantitative analysis with a focus on bottom-up and top-down approach to make its investments. The firm employs liquidity, asset allocation, balanced, real estate, and alternative strategies to make its investments. In real estate sector, it seeks to invest in Poland and Germany. The firm benchmarks the performance of its portfolios against various S&P, Russell, Barclays, MSCI, Citigroup, and Merrill Lynch indices. BlackRock, Inc. was founded in 1988 and is based in New York City with additional offices in Boston, Massachusetts; London, United Kingdom; Gurgaon, India; Hong Kong; Greenwich, Connecticut; Princeton, New Jersey; Edinburgh, United Kingdom; Sydney, Australia; Taipei, Taiwan; Singapore; Sao Paulo, Brazil; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Washington, District of Columbia; Toronto, Canada; Wilmington, Delaware; and San Francisco, California. BT Group plc provides communications services worldwide. Its Consumer segment sells telephones, baby monitors, and Wi-Fi extenders through high street retailers, online BT Shop, and Website BT.com; and offers home phone, copper and fiber broadband, TV, and mobile services in various packages. The company's EE segment offers 2G, 3G, and 4G mobile network services; broadband, fixed-voice, and TV services; and postpaid and prepaid plans, and emergency services network. This segment also sells 4G mobile phones, tablets, connected devices, and mobile broadband devices from various manufacturers. Its Business and Public Sector segment provides fixed voice, mobility, fiber and connectivity, and networked IT services to retailers, utilities, public sector, healthcare, sports, construction, finance, and educational sectors. The company's Global Services segment offers business communications and ICT services comprising BT Connect, BT Security, BT One, BT Contact, BT Compute, BT Advise, and BT for financial markets. This segment serves approximately 5,500 customers in 180 countries. Its Wholesale and Ventures segment enables communications providers and other organizations to provide fixed or mobile phone services. Its ventures provide mass-market services, such as directory enquiries and payphones; and enterprise services comprising BT Fleet and BT Redcare. This segment also provides broadband and Ethernet, voice, hosted communication, mobile virtual network operator, managed solutions, machine-to-machine, roaming, and media services. The company's Openreach segment engages in the provision of services over the local access network; and installation and maintenance of fiber and copper communications networks that connect homes and businesses. The company was formerly known as Newgate Telecommunications Limited and changed its name to BT Group plc in September 2001. BT Group plc was incorporated in 2001 and is headquartered in London, the United Kingdom. Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Limited, a pharmaceutical company, develops, manufactures, markets, and distributes generic medicines, specialty medicines, and biopharmaceutical products in North America, Europe, and internationally. The company offers sterile products, hormones, high-potency drugs, and cytotoxic substances in various dosage forms, including tablets, capsules, injectables, inhalants, liquids, transdermal patches, ointments, and creams. It also develops, manufactures, and sells active pharmaceutical ingredients. In addition, it focuses on the central nervous system, pain, respiratory, and oncology areas. Its products in the central nervous system include Copaxone for the treatment of relapsing forms of multiple sclerosis; AJOVY for the preventive treatment of migraine; and AUSTEDO for the treatment of tardive dyskinesia and chorea associated with Huntington disease. The company's products in the respiratory market comprise ProAir, QVAR, ProAir Digihaler, AirDuo Digihaler, and ArmonAir Digihaler, BRALTUS, CINQAIR/CINQAERO, DuoResp Spiromax, and AirDuo RespiClick/ArmonAir RespiClick for the treatment of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Its products in the oncology market include Bendeka, Treanda, Granix, Trisenox, Lonquex, and Tevagrastim/Ratiograstim. Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Limited has a collaboration MedinCell for the development and commercialization of multiple long-acting injectable products, a risperidone suspension for the treatment of patients with schizophrenia. The company was founded in 1901 and is headquartered in Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel. Apollo Global Management, Inc. is a private equity firm specializing in investments in credit, private equity and real estate markets. The firm's private equity investments include traditional buyouts, recapitalization, distressed buyouts and debt investments in real estate, corporate partner buyouts, distressed asset, corporate carve-outs, middle market, growth capital, turnaround, bridge, corporate restructuring, special situation, acquisition, and industry consolidation transactions. The firm provides its services to endowment and sovereign wealth funds, as well as other institutional and individual investors. It manages client focused portfolios. The firm launches and manages hedge funds for its clients. It also manages real estate funds and private equity funds for its clients. The firm invests in the fixed income and alternative investment markets across the globe. Its fixed income investments include income-oriented senior loans, bonds, collateralized loan obligations, structured credit, opportunistic credit, non-performing loans, distressed debt, mezzanine debt, and value oriented fixed income securities. The firm seeks to invest in chemicals, commodities, consumer and retail, oil and gas, metals, mining, agriculture, commodities, distribution and transportation, financial and business services, manufacturing and industrial, media distribution, cable, entertainment and leisure, telecom, technology, natural resources, energy, packaging and materials, and satellite and wireless industries. It seeks to invest in companies based in across Africa, North America with a focus on United States, and Europe. The firm also makes investments outside North America, primarily in Western Europe and Asia. It employs a combination of contrarian, value, and distressed strategies to make its investments. The firm seeks to make investments in the range of $10 million and $1500 million. The firm seeks to invest in companies with Enterprise value between $750 million to $2500 million. The firm conducts an in-house research to create its investment portfolio. It seeks to acquire minority and majority positions in its portfolio companies. Apollo Global Management, Inc. was founded in 1990 and is headquartered in New York, New York with additional offices in North America, Asia , India and Europe. By Samuel Akapule, GNA Bolgatanga, April 6, GNA - The Northern Youth for Peace and Development Association (NYUPED) has appealed to government to apply similar pricing methods as is being done with cocoa to the shea nut and cotton sector. The group, which operates in the three northern regions, said this would raise earnings of farmers, bring uniform development and help bridge the development gap between the southern and the northern parts of the country. NYUPED made the call when they organized a press conference in Bolgatanga on Wednesday to launch the 2017 edition of the NYUPED National Achievers Awards slated for 28th October 2017 at the Jubilee Park in the Upper East Region. Prince Hardi Adams, the Executive Director of NYUPED, who read the statement on behalf of the Group, said the price paid to cocoa farmers was not determined by buyers and middlemen as it is with shea nut farmers. 'Cocoa prices are set and announced by the Ghana Cocoa Board and this policy has ensured the quality and quantity of the country's cocoa production, which has become the golden pod of our national economy. We equally call on Government to, without delay, establish a similar marketing board for shea nuts and cotton modelled on the Cocoa Board and its Cocoa Marketing Company'. The group said the value of shea nut is equally as important as cocoa and could contribute significantly to the growth of the economy if government attached equal attention to the sector. They also called on the Government to continue the mango plantation initiative embarked upon by the previous government and said the mango farms was one of the best non-traditional export commodities in the three northern regions and had the greatest potential of contributing to the reduction of unemployment. Whilst commending government for its announcement on a number of interventions such as the construction of a railway from Accra to Paga, the One Village One Dam; One Factory One District project and one million dollars for each constituency among others, the NYUPED said there is the urgent need for Government to speed up the process. 'These interventions will not only help curb rural urban migration, decongest our cities and reduce the unemployment rate among the youth, but will also help open up the country to our neighbouring countries like Burkina Faso, Togo, Niger to help boost the growth of the economy as well as arrest the negative effects of heavy trucks on our roads.' In all 24 distinguished and eminent personalities who have been nominated by the Governing Council and approved by the Youth Delegates Congress are expected to be honoured to serve as an inspiration to the youth to also aspire higher and contribute significantly to national development. GNA Alfred Woyome has petitioned the International Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) over the controversial GH51.2 million judgment debt he received from the state. A correspondence between the embattled businessman and the ICC reveals the International Court of Arbitration received the petition on March 20, 2017. The case, titled Alfred Agbesi Woyome (Ghana) vs/ REPUBLIC OF GHANA (Ghana) will be Mr Woyomes final attempt to defend the judgement paid to him by the state after the Supreme Court ruled last year that he received the money fraudulently. The apex court ruled that Mr Woyome received the money from the National Democratic Congress (NDC) government for an invalid contract between the state and Waterville Holdings Limited in 2006 for the construction of stadia for CAN 2008. Efforts by state officials to retrieve the money have not been successful as Mr Woyome insists the law has not been fair to him. Mr Woyome has, however, refunded GH4 million out of the total 51.2 million to state coffers. Although he subsequently promised to pay the outstanding balance by quarterly instalments of GH5 million from April 1, 2017, he has reneged on that promise. With the petition to the ICC, Mr Woyome is hoping that the quarterly instalments would be held off while he makes his case to the United Nations-backed court. Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | George Nyavor | [email protected] Majority Leader, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, has suggested that parliament calls Bank of Ghana officials to come and explain how far they have gone in resolving the microfinance crisis that hit the Brong Ahafo Region, particularly the one involving DKM, in which a lot of depositors lost their savings. We came to some determination; we invited them here; we do not know whether because matters are outstanding, it may be imperative for us to call them back to let us know where they are in the measures they themselves suggested to us, the majority leader said. Perhaps, it may be important or necessary to call them back or report to us where they are in the pursuit of those claims that existed and what measures they have put in place to pay back. "When they came, the initial response was that nothing could be done; it was from this House that we forced them to make some admissions and they said they were going to put in measures to repay those of them who were duly registered with the banks, he told Parliament," he adds. Members of Parliament are asking for a parliamentary probe into the micro-finance scam that rocked the Brong Ahafo Region last year leading to the loss of millions of depositors' money. The MPs want the Speaker, Prof. Aaron Mike Ocquaye, to treat the issue with the seriousness it deserves. DKM Microfinance, Little Drops Financial Services, God is Love Fun Club, Jaster Motors and Investment Limited and Care for Humanity Fun Club, took deposits from clients with the promise of huge returns. In the end, depositors neither saw the returns nor the actual amounts they deposited. A similar scam took place in the Volta, Upper East and Upper West Regions, with residents marching through the principal streets to petition the authorities. The issue was blamed on the failure of the central bank to regulate the activities of non-bank financial institutions in the country. Former President, John Mahama told Parliament the "negligence" on the part of Bank of Ghana led to the scam. As part of efforts to forestall similar scams in future, the previous government brought the Ghana Deposits Protection Bill, which was presented to Parliament for passage into law. The MPs are demanding full investigation into the matte,r with recommendations to forestall future occurrences. The Hague (AFP) - South Africa will on Friday seek to defend its failure to arrest visiting Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir who is wanted on charges of genocide, at an unprecedented hearing before international war crimes judges. It will be a humbling moment for Pretoria, one of the leading voices in the creation of the International Criminal Court, whose lawyers will be fending off accusations that it failed in its obligations to the tribunal. To the frustration of the ICC's prosecutors, Bashir remains in office and at large despite two international warrants for his arrest issued in 2009 and in 2010. He faces 10 charges, including three of genocide as well as war crimes and crimes against humanity in the western Darfur region. The deadly conflict broke out in 2003 when ethnic minority groups took up arms against Bashir's Arab-dominated government, which launched a brutal counter-insurgency. At least 300,000 people have since been killed and 2.5 million displaced in Darfur, the UN says. Several victims of the lingering conflict in the western Sudanese region, who now live in The Netherlands, will attend Friday's hearing which opens at 0730 GMT in the tribunal in The Hague. Long wait for justice The UN Security Council asked the ICC as long ago as 2005 to probe the crimes in Darfur where conditions remain "dire," according to Monica Feltz, executive director of the rights group, International Justice Project. Prosecutors issued international warrants for the arrest of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir -- seen here in 2009 -- over the deadly conflict that racked the western Darfur region The 10 Darfurians who will watch the hearing are "hoping to see that their story is told, and that their voices are heard, and that the international community still cares," Feltz told AFP. "They're been waiting for over eight years to see justice in this case," she added, voicing disappointment the victims were not granted permission to actually take part in the hearing. The issue is centred on South Africa's refusal to arrest Bashir when he attended an African Union summit in Johannesburg in June 2015, insisting he had "head of state immunity" and allowing him instead to slip out of the country. The judges will have to decide whether Pretoria violated its obligations under the court's founding Rome Statute by not arresting him and handing him over for trial. South Africa insists it was caught on the horns of a dilemma: between its obligations to both the ICC and to laws providing heads of state with immunity. 'No-one is above the law' The ICC's prosecutors have hit back, pointing out that in the past South Africa told Bashir he would be arrested if he set foot in the country. "No one is above the law, even heads of state," insisted Feltz. Friday's hearing is "a historic opportunity for the court to demonstrate that its charges must be taken with extraordinary seriousness," said Wanda Akin and Raymond Brown, two legal representatives of the victims, in a joint statement. They urged the court to send "an unmistakable message that open defiance of its writ will not be permitted." The judges will return their decision at a later date, and may decide to report South Africa to the UN Security Council for eventual sanctions. Although this is the first public hearing of its type, last year the ICC referred Chad, Djibouti and Uganda to the UN for also failing to arrest Bashir. So far no action has been taken against them. The Sudanese leader was a guest last month at an Arab League summit hosted by Jordan -- also a signatory to the Rome Statute. South Africa says it could not arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir when he visited the country for an African Union summit in June 2015 because heads of state have immunity South Africa moved this year to withdraw from the court, angered by the case against it. But it formally revoked its decision last month after its own High Court ruled in February that it would be unconstitutional. Although the date of the hearing was set late last year, it also comes at a moment of political tension in South Africa as embattled President Jacob Zuma faces growing calls to resign. Pious history Armenia is a small country in south-west Asia with a population of only 3 million people. But it has a sizable place in spiritual history: most historians believe that in 301 AD, it became the first country in the world to adopt Christianity. Today, around 95% of Armenians are Christian, and the countrys pious history can be traced back through some of its ancient sites and monuments. (Credit: Rodolfo Contreras) The spiritual leader According to legend , the first head of the Armenian Apostolic Church was Gregory the Illuminator, son of the nobleman named Anag who assassinated Armenias King Khosrov II. Gregorys father was executed for his crime, but Gregory managed to flee to Cappadocia, where he was raised by bishop St. Firmilian. As an adult, Gregory returned to his homeland in hopes of converting the Armenian king a' and, by extension, the Armenian people a' to Christianity. When he learned of Gregorys homecoming, King Tiridates III, son of the murdered King Khosrov II, had Gregory imprisoned. The king insisted that his prisoner renounce Christianity, but Gregory refused to. After around thirteen years of imprisonment, Gregory had managed to convince Tiridates of the power of faith, converting the king himself into the religion. And so in 301 AD, Tiridates III declared Christianity the state religion of Armenia. (Credit: Rodolfo Contreras) Traces of the past The fortress of Garni is perched on the edge of a cliff near the Garni village in central Armenias Kotayk Province. Built in the 1st Century AD by King Tiridates I, the temple within the fortress predates the spread of Christianity in Armenia and is said to have been built for a sun god in Armenian mythology. Many Pagan temples were destroyed when King Tiridates III declared Christianity the official state religion, but Garni is one of the few that survived. Today it stands as a symbol of Armenian Neopaganism, and receives more than 136,000 visitors annually, making it one of Armenias most popular tourist sites. (Credit: Rodolfo Contreras) Church of a saint West of the Armenian capital city of Yerevan is Vagharshapat, a city known as the countrys holy capital. Located here is St. Gayane Church (pictured); constructed in 630 and now a Unesco World Heritage Site, St. Gayane was built on the site of the execution of Abbess Gayane, who was killed by King Tiridates III for being Christian prior to his own conversion. Gayane was named a saint by the Armenian Church; her grave lies under St. Gayane. (Credit: Rodolfo Contreras) A former dungeon Khor Virap is a monastery located in the Ararat Plain in south-east Armenia, where Tiridates III imprisoned Gregory the Illuminator upon his return. The chapel of Khor Virap was first built in 642 over the dungeon to honour Gregory, and a larger chapel and monastery were added in 1662. Today, Khor Virap is one of the most visited sites in Armenia. Its chapel is a popular spot for marriages and baptisms. (Credit: Rodolfo Contreras) Cave prayers Northeast of Garni is the Monastery of Geghard. A Unesco World Heritage Site , the monastery was first founded in the 4th Century by Gregory the Illuminator following the Christianisation of Armenia, but other structures in the complex date up to the 13th Century. Previously named Airivank, or cave monastery, some of Geghards chambers extend into the adjacent mountain, giving them a cavernous look. According to the legend, the monastery was named Geghard (which means spear in Armenian) around this time, when the spear that allegedly pierced Jesus Christ on the cross was brought to the site. It is said to have been kept in Geghard for 500 years before being taken to Etchmiadzin Cathedral in Vagharshapat, where it remains on display today. (Credit: Rodolfo Contreras) Blessed in war Zorats Church in Yeghegis, a town in southern Armenias Vayots Dzor Province, was built in the 14th Century, when the country was under Mongol control and at war with the Syrian Mamluks. The church consists only of an elevated altar and two side vestries. Due to the altars height, historians believe the church was used to bless Armenian soldiers mounted on their horses before they left for combat. (Credit: Rodolfo Contreras) Cemetery of salvation Khachkars, or stones carved with crosses and floral motifs, were primarily seen as a symbol of salvation of the soul, either living or deceased. First created around the 9th Century, khachkars were often erected in converted Pagan temples as symbols of a new faith. Today, these stones are part of the Unesco list of Intangible Cultural Heritage . Noratus Cemetery (pictured) in Gegharkunik Province has the largest existing cluster of khachkars in the country: more than 800 stones, each with a unique design. The khachkars in Noratus are some of the earliest existing examples of the art, with some of them dating back to the 10th Century. (Credit: Rodolfo Contreras) An ancient graveyard Comparable in age and appearance to Englands Stonehenge, Karahunj is located in Armenias Syunik Province, south of Yerevan. It covers an area of approximately 70,000 sq miles and consists of tombs, a central ring and rows of megaliths that could date back 7,000 years. Historians believe Karahunj served as a prehistoric burial ground, as it was common for the dead to be buried in cists and covered with slabs of stone during the Bronze Age. The ring of megaliths has a diameter of up to 45m, with rocks as tall as 2.8m weighing up to 10 tonnes. Around a third of the 223 stones on the site have small, circular holes cutting through the rock, which some scientists believe could have been created for astronomical observation, which would likely make Karahunj the worlds oldest observatory. (Credit: Rodolfo Contreras) The Member of Parliament (MP) for Manso Nkwanta, Joseph Albert Quarm has revealed that he was almost arrested for trying to stop some Chinese who were into illegal mining activities. According to him, if anybody dares to go to any illegal Chinese mining site to stop their activities they will be arrested or worse because they are well guarded by soldiers and even if u report them to the authorities, nothing will be done about it. Narrating his ordeal to Akwasi Boateng, host of 'Maakye' on Hot93.9 FM, Mr. Quarm stated that in his quest to stop these illegal Chinese miners, he was summoned to the police headquarters and as a result of this, these illegal miners feel they have the right to operate because no body will do anything to stop them. He revealed that some large scale mining companies whom he refer to as "unpatriotic Ghanaians" are partly to blame for the rampant illegal mining activities popularly known as 'galamsey' in the country. He said " when these unpatriotic Ghanaians acquire their mining permits which is the recognisance and prospective licence to start their large scale mining, they then divide parts of their legally acquired concession into small scale mining and sell them to these Chinese illegal miners." Explaining further, he indicated that, "Each small scale mining is 25 aches of land and in all, they could get a total of about 100 small scale mining and when they sell each one to the Chinese from $50 to 100,000 per land, within four to six months, they [large-scale mining companies] gain about five million dollars because they do not pay tax thereby robbing the state". He backed the three weeks ultimatum given by the Minister of Lands and Natural resources John Peter Amewu to 'galamsey' operators to stop their activities or face the rigour of the law. He has also urged the ministry to revoke the licence of "these nation wreckers" who are the large scale mining companies in order to do a thorough investigation on the sale of their permits to illegal miners since that will be the best place to start the course of abolishing 'galamsey' in Ghana. This comes after experts at the Ghana Water Company warned of the country's risk of importing water for consumption if illegal mining activities are not stopped. The Writer 07.04.2017 LISTEN Dealers of sex toys rake in billions of dollars every year. Their products are so diversified and today are available in every part of the world. Now, it looks like this business of artificially or technologically satisfying sexual desires is in vogue. The single, married, old, young today patronize sex toy shops and the manufacturers, wisely too, are steadily churning out more alluring and sophisticated ones. It seems like there will be no end to their innovative ingenuity to inventing these new instruments of sexual pleasure. Today some of these toys act and behave exactly like opposite sex partners in the act. True. But here, we want to look at the origin, intentions, and effects of these toys on the users, especially the spiritual and psychological implications. Sex toys are not new. They have a long history that started with the use of carved objects that represented the penis. The ancient Roman, Greek, Chinese, Asian, Indian had these objects carved out of stones, iron, gold, wood and other materials that were used to drive masturbation. Some of them (like the Greek) also had worship of sex gods and goddesses were these objects are displayed, used and other sexually immoral acts were extensively promoted, including sex with demons and spirits. So, we can rightly say that the foundation of sex toys was that of the desire for unlimited pleasure and the worship of demonic gods. This invention metamorphosed into other objects and in the 20th century, we saw the first electric vibrator invented. Since then, it has been a deluge of these manual and later sophisticated instruments of sexual pleasure. Some of them winking and talking! Wow! Now, is sex toy in the original plan of God? And since sexual relationship is a physical, emotional and spiritual connection, does it have any spiritual and emotional side effect?? First, sex toys were not in the original plan of God. The word of God made it clear the God made them a man and a woman to relate, satisfy themselves and procreate. Everything we will need to sexually satisfy our partners has been put in place. Yes. But Satan introduced this (like all other sexual sins: homosexuality, anal sex, lesbianism, sex with demons, masturbation, etc) to corrupt and divert mans obedience to Gods word and wish. The bible said that those who crave for this kind of pleasure outside the will of God are dead. True. Walking corpses! Not all pleasurable practices are permitted. We must seek to please God before our own pleasure. Yes, God wants us to enjoy life, but it must be within the limits of His divine intentions and provisions. Sex toys were invented by demons and are totally against the word of God and the spiritual well-being of man. Using these instruments, masturbation and all other forms of sexual immorality as we earlier mentioned automatically opens one up to demonic possessions. You cannot use these toys without contacting the spirits behind them. It is not possible. Every sex toy and sexual immorality have a demonic spirit behind it. And this is why it is always very difficult to leave such acts or be free from bondage while practicing them. Will they ever tell you their encounters with those sex demons that visit them regularly in their dreams, and also those strange happenings around them, especially in their relationships?? When next you are tempted to indulge in this remember to see the demon standing behind that toy. We will elaborate more on this later. God bless! Agbo is the author of the books Power of Midnight Prayer, Sex Toys: Good or Evil, Breaking Generational Curses: Claiming Your Freedom Website: www.authorsden.com/pastorgabrielnagbo E-mail: [email protected] Tel: 234-8037113283 We are extremely shocked by the conduct of The Joe Ghattey Committee in violation of standing orders 191 and the 1992 Constitution of Ghana. The deliberate attempt to sacrifice Hon. Mahama Ayariga for the so-called reputation and integrity of parliament is far below the belt. He represents the good people of Bawku Central Constituency, on whose mandate he exposed the rot of bribery and corruption under the Nana Addo - led government. We, the Upper East Regional Youth Wing of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) want to simply sound a strong caution across the county that "any attempts to bring down the hard - earned integrity and respect of Hon. Mahama Ayariga would culminate into what might not be pleasant to the eye in the Upper East Region and the nation as a whole." First of all, the natural public court of opinion has rejected the shoddy work of The Joe Ghattey Committee with vivid outcry throughout the country. The Facts - Finding Committee ended up convicting innocent Mahama Ayariga without executing criminal processes in its work. Ghanaians all over the world and the international communities have seen for themselves the hidden truth behind this terrible situation created by Mr. Boakye Agyarko, the Energy Minister in his attempt to bribe the members of the Appointment Committee in parliament. The terms of reference for the investigation led by Hon. Joe Ghattey given to the Special Committee were: (a) To establish if the First Deputy Speaker Hon. Joseph Osei-wusu took money from the then Energy Minister-designate Hon. Boakye Agyarko and gave it to the Minority Chief Whip Hon. Alhaji Muntaka Mubarak. (b) To do an internal inquiry to find out whether there were attempts to bribe members of the Appointment Committee. (c) To look into the remit of the complaints and assertions made by the First Deputy Speaker about the matter. So, Rt. Hon. Prof. Aaron Mike Ocquaye, the Speaker of Parliament invoked Standing Order 191 for the Special Committee to find facts and not to wrongfully and selectively charge people with Contempt of Parliament. Standing Orders 30, 31, 32 clearly spelt out issues on Contempt of Parliament alongside what Article 122 of the 1992 Constitution established. It can be found from the Parliament Hansard that the Rt. Hon. Speaker never invoked the aforementioned Standing Orders but that was what the Committee actually applied. This major deviation in the work of the Special Committee was brilliantly exposed by the Harvard - trained lawyer, Hon. Mahama Ayariga. Another mind-boggling approach adopted by The Joe Ghattey Committee was its decision to probe into the CCTV footage in camera, when indeed, the whole process was to be conducted in the full glare of the public. Even the House of Commons in the United Kingdom released CCTV records publicly to aid investigations. The turn of event to block the public display of CCTV footages of Parliament of Ghana to help find facts compromised the decision of the Special Committee. Our outfit is terribly worried over that decision instituted by the Facts - Finding Committee. Hon. Okudjeto Ablakwa alleged in his memo that in the CCTV footage; you would see hands exchanging strange envelopes in the Job 600 building, State House. The questions therefore are, where from these envelopes, what was in them and what were they meant for? Most people have also asked, why Hon. Alhassan Suhuyini (Tamale North Constituency), Hon. Sampson Ahi (Bodi Constituency), Hon. Eric Opoku (Asunafo South Constituency), Hon. Edwin Nii Lantey Vanderpuye (Odododiodioo Constituency) and Hon. Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa (North Tongu Constituency) were not by default called to meet the Committee with their evidence in support of its work? These Hon. members attested to the fact that they received envelopes containing an amount of GHC3,000 each and later returned them upon knowing the source and purpose of the monies. Their claims of receiving such amount of money from the Minority Chief Whip never varied from what our Bawku Central MP said and in fact, they have been very consistent with their allegations. So, why were they not invited to help with the investigation? The Speaker of Parliament and the Special Committee must explain this basic legal violation to the ordinary Ghanaian. At this juncture, we the Youth Wing of the Upper East Region want to wholeheartedly salute Hon. Alhassan Suhuyini, Hon. Sampson Ahi, Hon. Eric Opoku, Hon. Edwin Nii Lantey Vanderpuye and Hon. Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa for supporting Hon. Mahama Ayariga in the expose that brought to bear the hypocrisy and lies of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) when it comes to matters of morality. The bribery and corruption campaign they used to convince Ghanaians for their votes against the NDC government is tormenting them since they assumed office. So they want to use Hon. Mahama Ayariga as a scapegoat. We are by this damming orchestration, sending a strong warning to the Minority Leadership in Parliament to be mindful of their utterances, and any persuasion to denounce the NDC at this critical hour in order to gain favour from NPP would only amount to destroying their own political dreams. We finally want to call on Ghanaians to give Rt Hon. Prof. Aaron Mike Ocquaye a briefing space to take a second look at the situation and apply his much - cherished wisdom to handle this issue once and for all in order to properly redeem the image and integrity of the August House of Parliament. Otherwise, we suggest that the rightful body, Commission of Human and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), takes up the issue and investigate it for Ghanaians to get fair view on the matter. The Youth Wing of the NDC in the Upper East Region vehemently standby and believe in Hon. Mahama Ayariga who has never misconducted himself in Parliament as ascertained by The Joe Ghattey Committee itself. We are convinced that our Senior Comrade would be exonerated at the end of the day if only the Special Committee would revisit its decision and allow appropriate procedures to take place for the realization of the truth. Thank you. We stand for Mahama Ayariga! We stand for Bawku People!! We stand for Upper East!!! We stand for NDC!!!! We stand for Mother Ghana!!!!! .....signed...... Robert Yeli - Oni, Upper East NDC Youth Organizer (0208864431 /0248498611) An eight-year-old girl has allegedly been raped by her schools gateman around Nyamekye, Tabora Alhaji in Accra. The minor is currently on admission at the Police hospital due to the injuries she sustained as a result of the act. She was rushed to the Lapaz Community clinic by school authorities after they noticed she was bleeding profusely. According to the mother of the girl, Mary Ackun, her daughter has been receiving blood transfusion since she was raped on Tuesday. She explained in a Citi News interview that doctors are demanding GHc 1,500 to have emergency surgery this morning or risk her daughter having some of her vital organs damaged. I have a five-month-old baby and I took her for weighing so whilst at the hospital, I received a call from the school that my daughter was bleeding profusely and had been rushed to the Lapaz Community Hospital. When I got there she was helpless and doctors asked me to buy blood for a transfusion or risk losing her. By: Zoe Abu-Baidoo/citifmonline.com/Ghana You do not need a security expert to tell you that our security establishment is broken and archaic. For many years we have undermined the power and authority of all security agencies except the Ghana Armed Forces and politicians, for their selfish needs, will continue to undermine such state institutions. To me, Kan Dapaah, the Minister of National Security, Ambrose Dery, the Minister of Interior and the Inspector General of Police David Asante Apeatu must be fired. The three have shown over the last two months, that they lack the requisite knowledge and skill to deal with any security threats to the country. After members of the so-called Invincible and Delta Forces begun their looting and violent seizures and attacks, the three have failed to institute a proper security plan to ward off these criminal attacks. What they have done, is to make some arrests, albeit questionable, and seek to use that as a sign of victory in the fight against the activities of these goons. How do you grant bail to thirteen people, who attempted to lynch a regional security coordinator? It would have made more sense to provisionally charge them and seek to place them in remand by appearing before the court. The video showed more than twenty people openly justifying their criminal actions and majority are walking free. How can you deploy only twenty police officers, who were all not drawn from the Formed Police Unit, to guard the court in such a sensitive case? There is a reason why only retired army Generals are selected for the position of National Security Minister or Advisor in most developed democracies. Security planning goes beyond the deployment of troops. To qualify as a National Security Minister, you should have acquired special knowledge in security and intelligence training and not just by reading books and deploying troops. The fact that Mr Dapaah served as a former Defense/Interior Minister doesn't necessarily make him the best person for the job. There are emerging security threats which are sophisticated in nature and require a Security-trained person to decipher. Mr Dapaah for me does not qualify. He may be a good accountant and advocate against corruption but if his plan to fight these Forces(assuming he has a plan) has not yielded any results in months then why is he there? Ambrose Dery is a fine lawyer and gentleman. He may have spoken out against these acts of violence but he hasn't been vociferous enough and hasn't been assertive enough in dealing with this menace. It has been the same cycle of holding press conferences whenever these attacks occur and nothing has changed with respect to strategies and achievable targets to the Police chiefs. It has been the usual fire fighting with laughable rhetorics and empty cautions. I don't expect him to publicly tell us his plan to quell this new phase of terror but the fact that these activities keep occurring, at a higher crescendo almost every week shows his plan, if any, is not working. In two months state properties have been vandalised and some citizens have been brutalized and the threat of violence still abounds and our Interior Minister appears confused in the handling of this matter possibly due to the involvement in this crime by some of his party members. David Asante Apeatu is our IGP and for me, he has done little or nothing against these goons. I know some arrests have been made but the delay in their investigations in most of the reported cases sends a wrong signal to the public. He has maintained and taken some bad decisions since becoming IGP. The Ashanti Region, due to its geographical location(almost at the center of Ghana) and its massive economic activities presents a different security threat than say the Central Region. For instance there are certain criminal activities which may occur frequently in Kumasi but not Cape Coast, that is, kidnapping, armed robbery, murder cases, political violence among others. The threat in the Ashanti Region require a more action-oriented commander who can gather credible intelligence and act accordingly. DCOP Ken Yeboah is not the man for the job. He is soft and unable to deal with violent crisis situations and his history in Tamale is clear on that. My interactions with colleague journalists in the Northern Region has reaffirmed my point that he barely makes any arrest in any political crime such as assault.Compare him to COP Kofi Boakye, who is seen as strict and action-oriented. DCOP Yeboah had intelligence on the possible attack on the regional security coordinator and he couldn't send enough men to quell that attack. He had intelligence about this latest court attack and still couldn't counter this attack. What is his business then as a commander if he can't anticipate such attacks and act accordingly? Still on the IGP, he needs to reshuffle COP Christian Tetteh-Yohuno as Director General Operations. The man is not cut out for the job, simple. I have covered demonstrations when he served as Accra Regional Commander and his operational strategies were always archaic. It was by luck that most of the AFAG and Let My Vote Count Demonstrations didn't turn violent under his leadership. He is not assertive enough and does not appear to be in control of national operations. For what reason will you keep two of your best senior officers, COP Dr. George Akuffo Dampare, COP kofi Boakye, COP Frank Adu Poku as Director Generals, ICT , Research and Planning and Technical respectively when other key operational departments need their leadership. The IGP must know, that being the topmost police officer goes beyond the purchase of vehicles, computers and weapons. it goes beyond receiving donations and creating more police departments. it requires deep thinking and modern strategies to fight crime. He hasn't exhibited that exceptional character to warrant his stay as IGP. He keeps placing square pegs in round holes and is yet to make a key strategic decision to save us from these hoodlums. all we hear are police transfers and the receipt of donations for the last two months. The president will do the usual. Summon the above three men to express his anger but he must go beyond them to fire them. He doesn't have to wait for a life to be lost before showing them the exit. they have so far failed woefully and he should save his administration from further embarrassment by appointing new competent men. For crying out loud why can't we have General J.B Danquah as a National Security Advisor? The President needs to act now before the security of the state is further threatened. By: Franklin Badu Jnr/citifonline.com/Ghana Gordon Offin-Amaniampong examines What did our governments clamp down in the past and were able to sustain it? Is it illegal logging by loggers? Is it squatters at Sodom and Gomorrah or those around Kwame Nkrumah Circle in Accra? Is it power cheaters who indulge in illegal power connection? Is it cocoa smuggling in our countrys borders by smugglers? Is it vigilante groups whore constantly terrorising people? Is it the activities of land guards? Or is it middle-men who swindle prospective travelers trying to obtain passports? The irony is that all of them have bounced back---operating vigorously. Their activities seemed emboldened! Inhabitants of Ghanas biggest slum, Sodom and Gomorrah are back: Theyre back to where city authorities evicted them from, less than two years ago. The squatters and hawkers are also back in the streets. And the key argument hasnt changed: they must earn their daily bread. The Kwame Nkrumah Interchange Area which not too long ago had a make-over is relapsing ---going back to its ugly and insane state. In fact, on Wednesday some hawkers held placards amidst inscriptions like this: We wont leave this area today or tomorrow. The stubborn amongst them all is illegal mining operators also known as Galamsey in Ghana. Their activities in recent times have reached an alarming proportion. No doubt about that, theyve stepped up their game. This followed the influx of the Chinese. I recall awhile back government deported number Chinese citizens who were in the country illegally. Today, theyre back in their numbers. And together with Ghanaians theyre degrading and destroying our ecosystem. Theyre poisoning and exterminating our water bodies. Our vegetation covers have been laid bare---raped and left naked. Theyre creating man-holes, producing sinkholes and setting up deathtraps. Theyre as dangerous as explosive mines. Over the last 10 years it appears the operators have sworn an oath-- basically to launch a deadly onslaught to our very existence. Is this the land of our birth? Is this the land we swore to protect? Is this the land (the greenbelt) our forebears bequeathed us? Where did our leaders go? Where are they? And whether its legal or illegal Galamsey has come to stay. That sounds crude or rather rude. But its the hard truth. Galamsey isnt going anywhere at least not for now. Maybe not until the lands have run out of those much-sought-after minerals. Until the gourd is down empty or tanked the drunk knows no stop. Backed by invisible hands they have succeeded in growing not an ordinary roots but giant roots, making it hard for authorities to deal with them. But what is Illegal mining? Writer Phillipe Dozolme defines illegal mining as: The absence of land rights, mining licence, exploration or mineral transportation permit or of any document that could legitimise the on-going operations. It can be operated on the surface (open cast) or underground. Its illegal because in most countries underground mineral resources belong to the state. The latter applies to Ghana too, but Galamsey has trespassed that. I must note thered been crack downs on illegal mining in the past but all to no avail. Question is: Are we at our wit end? The Minister of Lands and Natural Resources John Peter Amewu announced recently that hed placed a moratorium on licences for small-scale mining. This is part of activities to halt illegal mining operation in the country. The move, the sector minister also indicated was to help ensure saneness in the environment. I have not signed a single small-scale-mining licence, since I assumed office. This is an attempt to sanitise the system, Mr. Amewu said. Indeed Ghana is fighting an undying witch. Weve picked up a fight which portends to be a lifetime battle. You may not like the way Ive put it but thats the reality on the ground. I normally dont say things like that. I am a man full of hope, full of aspiration. I am an optimist and not pessimist. Obviously, the conditions on the ground leaves one to wonder whether our governments had been waging these fights with kids gloves or theyd condoned and connived with the operators or they didnt have long-term strategies or plans to do so. It could be that were at our wit end. Remember the father who brought his demon-possessed son (Mark 9:14-29) to Jesus disciples to be healed? Theyd no idea what to do and how to fight the demon. They lacked the firepower. Bottom-line they couldnt do it. Jesus rebuked them after healing the boy. I felt I had been wounded twice or three times this past few days. The images I saw---the photos and the videos on social media platforms grieved my heart. I couldnt understand whats going on. I struggled to make sense out of all that--the degrading state of our ecosystem is so graphic. It looks so atrocious so horrible and so terrible. The activities of these miners are out of hand. Sad though, we have to come this far to realise that were losing or have lost something that is so precious. Its so sad our leaders couldnt stop it at its nascent stage. It seems to me it was business as usual and politics at its best. It seems to me they went to sleep whilst the busy bees got busy to degrade, to destroy tad to pillage that which our forebears fought graciously to possess and passed it on. And perhaps whats left now is misery and hopelessness. World Bank report on Ghana had indicated, by the end of 1995 the total hectares of the land destroyed through the activities of Galamsey were approximately 150,000 hectares. That was then, over 20 years on the acclivities of illegal mining have picked up like never before .Thus your guess could be my best bet. Between 1994 and 2001 a study discovered that there were five major cyanide spillages and leakages. Five rivers in the Prestea area in the western region of Ghana suffered greatly. Last March, Minister of Environment Science and Technology Dr. Frimpong Boateng kind of raised the threat level. Whilst meeting staff of the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) during a working a visit in Accra Dr. Boateng hinted that our water bodies were under siege. He said the country risk losing the very existence of these precious water bodies if radical steps are not taken to resuscitate their lives. We know that our rivers are dead, some of them Some of the rivers are deadOffin, Ankobra, Pra, Oda, theres no fish in them, in most part of the rivers. And when you find animals and fish dying from our empty forests and dead rivers it is only a question of time that it will reach the human beings, Dr. Boateng said. According to the sector minister if we dont change our negative practices we would literally kill these rivers prematurely. We have to change our attitudes there must be a change like President Akufo-Addo said. We should not be spectators but be active participants. If you look at what is happening to the environment, it is something like a self-inflicted injury Certainly the danger has become imminent, so disturbing that if stringent measures are not taken we would end up as sore losers. The country that once boasted of its virgin forests, safe water bodies, rich soils, beautiful vegetation, and the picturesque landscape is gradually losing it all by the day. The ecological damage has been great. Bittersweet In Africa, Ghana is the second largest gold producer contributing to about 5.7 per cent of the countrys GDP. And the activities of illegal mining have tremendously contributed to the growth of the economy. The jobless youth have found jobs, crime rate has gone down. However the environmental impact of their activities is unparalleled. Galamsey depletes environmental resources such as water; soil, landscape, vegetation, the ecosystem among others. Also lives had been lost over the period and were still losing lives. In November 2009 a collapsed occurred in an illegal mine in Dompoase in either Ashanti/Western region. At least 18 workers were killed including 13 women who worked as porters for the miners. A similar incident occurred at Kyekyewere near Dunkwa-on-Offin in the Central region. Solution Perhaps the solution to this cancerous problem rests in the bosom of the new administrations One-District-One-Factory across country mantra. Its a long term project, but if implemented they would go a long to help bring the activities of illegal mining down. Remember, when there was Aboso Glass Factory, when there was Kumasi Jute Factory there was no Galamsey but there was gold. When there was Nsawam Cannery Factory, the Komenda Sugar Factory there was no Galamsey gold was there. When there was the Bonsa Tyre Factory, the Bolga Meat Factory and the Tomato Factory at Wenchi there was no Galamsey but there was gold. As a people our problem has always been not providing alternative measures. And not being proactive but reactive. You dont evict the Sodomites and the Gomorrahites if you havent made any provisions for them. Then when you provide the alternative, ensure the laws are implemented to the letter. Thats the way to goDont blame me, if you cant make the dogs bark and bite. The nuisance behaviour of the Delta Force is becoming unbearable and the leadership of Concerned Voters Movement (CVM) condemns such nuisance and despicable behaviour. It is very unethical and uncultured for the Delta Force to attack the integrity of the Judiciary. We dont have to allow and encourage Partys vigilante groups to undermine our evolving democracy. CVM equally condemns Hon. Kennedy Ohene Agyapong and Chairman Wontumi for openly pampering and defending the actions of the Delta Force in the media when they attacked the appointed Regional Security Coordinator for Ashanti Region. The pampering and defending posture by these two NPP stalwarts gave the audacity, moral support and power to the Delta Force to attack the Court. It was very irresponsible for Hon. Kennedy Ohene Agyapong to dares the National Security Minister and the Presidency over the nonsense behaviour of the Delta Force. It is very important for members of NPP and any Vigilante Groups affiliated to NPP to carefully note that the unprecedented 2016 electoral victory of President Akufo-Addo was Not By The Efforts of Any Individuals or Groups. President Akufo-Addo lost the 2008 & 2012 general elections with the full presence of Hon. Kennedy Ohene Agyapong, Delta Force and the Invincible Force. No single Person in NPP and outside NPP has the audacity to take the full or half credit for the 2016 electoral victory of President Akufo-Addo. All the credit must go to the Ghanaian Voters who decided to support the Right Vision of President Akufo-Addo by voting massively for him. Therefore, please Hon. Kennedy Ohene Agyapon stops your unnecessary bragging about your role and the role of Delta Force and Invincible Force as far as the Victory 2016 is concerned. You were not able to win 99.9% votes for President Akufo-Addo so please stop provoking Ghanaians with your dares shouting to Appointing Authority. You must always endeavor to show utmost respect, humility and collaboration to the Appointing Authority and the appointees as well. Let us show the maximum respect to the Ghanaian Voters and demonstrate good exemplary leadership to Ghanaians so that we dont destroy the GOODWILL we are enjoying now. Our unguided actions and inactions are fast destroying the beauty and Pride of the 2016 Victory. The Floating Voters who decided the 2016 Victory are keenly watching the conduct of NPP against 2020 general election. The National Security Minister, Interior Minister and the IGP has to be proactive in dealing with the issues of the various vigilante Groups. The Government and the leadership of NPP needs to strategically create jobs for the members of Delta Force, Invincible Force and other associated Vigilante Groups as soon as possible because they are Hungry and Angry. We dont have to forget that Neglect, Hunger and Anger of foot-soldiers gave 44.4% premature retirement to H.E. John Mahama. The nuisance behaviour of the Delta Force and Invincible Force is gradually undermining the credibility of the NPPs Government and the chance of NPP in future elections. Lastly, CVM want members of Delta Force and Invincible Force to note that, it is a very foolish adventure to help your Party to win Power and instantaneously send your Party into an early Opposition through your own unguided, uncultured, uncivilized and unethical behaviour. .Signed. Razak Kojo Opoku (Founder & President) The Party hierarchy must not countenance what is happening. What is going on should not be tolerated. The Party's internal sanctions against of offenders must be activated. These hoodlum calling themselves NPP security is usurping the authority of the state and must be rein in by the Nation Security Institutions before things get worse. Such impunity must not be tolerated. Allowing any further abuse have the tendency to destroy all the goodwill. They should be pursued and dealt with seriously. Bernard Antwi Boasiako and Kennedy Agyepong must be censored and reprimanded for the uncivilized consent to the barbaric engagement of the vigilante groups. We don't live in the jungle. Wontumi sarcastic attribution that the hoodlums paid only a visit is highly diabolic whilst Kennedy's outbursts very obnoxious, unbecoming of a Parliamentarian. Kennedy knows very well that such attitude is not countenance from where he came down from to pursue his political career. Yes, in the United States. The nonsense must be stopped! He should be made aware and to understand that we are civilized society therefore that gangsterism attitude of his belongs to the past. The advocators of the hoodlums should bear in mind that, those who take initiatives at work do so not because they are stupid, but because understand the concept of responsibility. The advocators of the hoodlums should bear in mind that, those who are willing to help you do so not because they owe you anything, but because they see you as a true friend. Those who often text you do so not because they have nothing better to do, but because you are in their heart. One day all of us will get separated from each other. We will miss the conversations of everything and nothing to hold onto except the dreams that we had. The days will pass by, months, years, until this contact becomes rare. One day our children will see our pictures and ask, Who are these people? At that time we will smile with invisible tears and you will say.IT WAS THEM I HAD MY BEST DAYS OF MY LIFE WITH. It is about time the Party did something to curb and nib in the bud the mushrooming of the vigilante groups. I think the approach must be on the scale as the Media is doing in response to the galamsey menace. They should not be treated with kid-gloves. We have responsibility to keep and ensure law works. To me, I think people who dont think its a big deal to toss a plastic bottle in the garbage are not only being irresponsible, but I think they are being disrespectful of all of us. The excuse been offered by some Partys Executives are inadmissible and tantamount to the sanctioning of criminal activities. They should wary of the hoodlums should tread cautiously else.hmmmmmm! There are many who worked for the Party who are unsung heroes and are hurt by prevailing events. The Party must stand up to its Moral values. It must not shield or be seen as condoning crime. It is brave to admit your mistake. You may be scared of being scolded. But it is the only way for you to be free from guilt. Impunity Must Not Be Tolerated. 7 April 2017 (GENEVA) Today marks the 2017 World Health Day highlighting the importance of addressing the effects of depression on peoples health. This years theme is a timely opportunity to shed light on an issue that has been neglected for decades despite that the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that more than 300 million people suffer from this malaise. It has in particular become a common challenge for victims of conflicts and terrorism in the Middle East, North Africa, Europe and elsewhere in the world that have recently been targeted by violent and extremist groups. The widespread violence and the imminent fear of terrorist attacks and fearmongering result in stress disorder that can in the long run turn into depression and mental illness. While we witness the destruction of physical objects and infrastructure in the media, the psychological injuries and traumas inflicted on humans remain invisible damages haunting people and societies for years and decades. According to a recent study initiated in 2015 by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), 79% of Syrian refugee children had experienced death, 45% displayed symptoms of PTSD and 44% reported symptoms of depression. In Iraq, recent estimates by the Iraq Body Count (IBC) suggest that 16,361 civilians lost their lives in Iraq owing to terrorism, sectarian violence and other related factors resulting from the volatile situation in Iraq. Only in 2016, Iraq witnessed 1,664 suicide attacks. That is equivalent to four attacks a day. Imagine living in daily fear of terrorism that could potentially strike you at any time. The list of Arab countries in which post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression have become a major area of concern can also be extended to include countries such as Tunisia, Libya, Yemen and Egypt that have recently experienced civilian upheavals and violent turmoil. The polarized situation in the Middle East, that has created mass-migration, displacement and inter-community strives, needs to give way to ever-broader recognition of equal citizenship rights for all. Owing to the recent terrorist attacks also in industrialised countries, these symptoms are also becoming of growing concern for civilian populations once considered as out of reach. Following the 7 July 2005 London attacks, 31% of Londoners reported a significant elevation in the stress level. Similar rises in stress levels related to incidents of terrorism were also reported in the case of the 11 September 2001 and the 11 March 2004 Madrid terrorist attacks. These disturbing figures show that depression and PTSD are becoming modern epidemics that require the worlds attention. Ignoring the psychological impacts of conflicts and violence will have long-term consequences for societies and generations to come. It can foster violence and other harmful practices that can further destabilize societies. Searching for the cure will require addressing the causes of disorder and restoring normality in peoples daily lives. Affected victims need to have a greater sense of security and support from society in addressing their plights. It is important to break the social taboos and stigmas associated with addressing mental-health problems. People experiencing psychological distortions, such as the Syrian refugee children and the victims of terrorism, deserve our full and unconditional support to address their psychological plights. Not only individuals need to be cured for their invisible ills, but also society itself is in need of urgent renewal. The long-lasting anxiety caused by the political stalemate concerning the right of the Palestinians to nationhood also has the potential of destabilizing the region if left unaddressed. Six team students from University For Development Studies UDS and Tamale Polytechnic have been selected to go through to the final stage of the Avnash Agric Technology Hackathon, in which they receive funding to build a working prototype of their innovation for the rice supply chain. Ghanas foremost agribusiness company with Kumasi Hive aimed to generate innovative ideas to enable the scale-up of rice production in Northern region and to develop the practical skills of the students to introduce them to the opportunities in the agric sector. According to Avnash, this initiative is in line with its core values of creating more employment opportunities, and helping the evolution of the industrial sector. Following training in Design Thinking, the participants formed teams and started to work on solutions to demonstrate their idea. Avnash CEO Jai Mirchandani said, A sustainable future for our investments depends on an inclusive approach with the communities in which we operate. Todays youth have demonstrated immense potential, creativity, and zeal, across the world; we must support their ambitions here in the North and for a critical sector such as agriculture. Poverty alleviation is at our doorsteps when we bring contextual solutions alive. Kumasi Hive CEO Jorge Appiah said We are very pleased to work with such a forward thinking company as Avnash, ready to invest in the innovativeness of our youth. We run many hackathons but we have been very impressed by the creativity of the students taking part in this one. The Ashanti regional police commander has said he takes full blame for Thursday's Delta Force attack on a Circuit Court in Kumasi. DCOP Ken Yeboah said the police committed an error by failing to anticipate the attack. He, however, said he would not resign over the incident because he has corrected the error. He spoke to Starr FM's Francis Abban on Friday. Meanwhile, the 13 Delta Force escapees have turned themselves in to the Kumasi Central Police Command in the Ashanti Region after they were aided to run away from police custody in the aftermath of a Circuit Court hearing in connection with an earlier mayhem they perpetrated. Saliu Akilu, Chairman of the pro-government security group, told Moro Awudu on Class91.3FMs Executive Breakfast Show on Friday, 7 April that all the suspects turned themselves in on Thursday shortly after their other colleagues aided them to bolt. The court siege followed a ruling by the judge to keep the 13, who were standing trial for assaulting the Regional Security Coordinator, in prison custody until 20 April. After the mayhem, Minister for the Interior, Ambrose Dery, warned the 13 to turn themselves in or get hunted. Inspector General of Police David Asante-Apeatu also told the media the police did not see the escape coming. The Ghana Bar Association also issued a statement condemning the attack, describing it as an attack on the rule of law. Meanwhile, an ardent supporter of the vigilante group, MP Kennedy Agyapong, has rescinded his support for them. 07.04.2017 LISTEN The former minister of defence erstwhile President John Mahama's Administration, Hon Benjamin Kunbuor has called for an early Congress to save NDC and blames the party's defeat on corruption. According to Cadres they want the current leadership of the party to call for an early Congress to forestall the despondency that is fast creeping in, to be exploited by adventurists "The NDC which had won four out of the six previous elections under the Fourth Republican Constitution on the platform of probity and accountability had no response to the numerous accusations of corruption and incompetence. This gave credence to the adage that it is the ruling government which loses elections and not the opposition party that wins elections", Cadres underscored. Below is a full Statement PRESS STATEMENT TO ALL MEDIA HOUSES Signed Hon.Benjamin Kunbuor...0509160990 Antwi Boasiako Sekyere ...0242261012 (Secretary) Mike Hammah....0244356397 Akuamoah Ofosu Boateng... 0247947484 A STATEMENT FROM THE CADRES AND NDC ACTIVISTS ON THE REORGANIZATION OF THE NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC CONGRESS AFTER THE 2016 ELECTION DEFEAT The National Democratic Congress (NDC), suffered a crushing defeat at the December 2016 Presidential and Parliamentary elections. The magnitude and spread of this defeat across the country is unprecedented. Yet there has been a deafening silence from the leadership of the party, giving the New Patriotic Party (NPP) an unchallenged political space to re-instate its dominance; while the rank and file of our party look on in despair. The leadership of the party was dump founded since they were over confident of a resounding victory and therefore could not provide appropriate response to the anger and bitterness expressed by the members of the party in the aftermath of the defeat. The NDC, as we are aware, was born out of a revolution and was crafted with the principles and values that were the main ingredients for the prosecution of the National Democratic Revolution. The National Democratic Revolution was proclaimed on 31st December 1981 with a view of creating a firm basis for the attainment of social justice grassroots participatory democracy, probity and accountability in public life, rapid national development and social progress. These were to be attained through mass mobilization, grassroots organization, discipline and hard work by the masses and patriots of this country. Indeed, the evolution of the contemporary multi-party democracy that we enjoy today, was based on the struggles of ordinary people for political space and voice. The NDC has long held the belief that the people of this country will not surrender their independence and abandon their struggle to restore hope and dignity to the common man. The NDC has been structured in such a way as to enlist the active support and participation of the people at the grassroots and in the communities. This is to unite effort, promote democracy and enhance discipline. There is no substitute for grassroots mobilization and organization for electoral victory. Let us be reminded of the axiom that elections are won long before election day. The election day is for pulling your members, supporters and sympathizers to the polling booth to cast their votes. They should have been identified, canvassed, accepted to be on your side and encouraged to turn out massively on polling day. There is no short-cut to this chain of activities. Serious grassroots mobilization at the communities to identify our allies and sympathizers to persuade and galvanize their support onto the NDC platform was a duty members needed to execute with commitment, pride and dedication. A closer and more critical examination of our own traditional values and principles of socio-economics and political governance reveals the same idealism as embedded in social democracy in the west. The mmbriddled apeing of pure capitalism has had the effect of alienating the overwhelming majority of people from participating actively in the economic development of our dear country. As a social democratic party, the NDC is the natural home of the Hard-working people of Ghana, including workers, farmers and fishermen, progressive students, the down-trodden, the disadvantaged and the socially-excluded. These were to be mobilized to the mainstream NDC for our electoral purpose. Contrary to this conventional wisdom, the NDC 2016 campaign was characterized by flamboyant rallies full of opulence and fanfare devoid of any political or ideological substance that did not resonate with the actual people on the ground. The structures of the NDC at the National, Regional and Constituency levels refused to work at the grassroots. The Branch executives were virtually sidelined when logistics and funds were provided from the higher levels. Members at the Branch level were frustrated and neglected. The NDC campaign in 2016 neither energized the base nor encouraged new people to join the party. About one million of our own people who voted for the NDC in 2012 felt excluded, alienated, disillusioned and abandoned by the party they have loved ever since its inception in 1992. They therefore decided to sit on the fence and watch the unfolding events. The cadres of the National Democratic Revolution, who had worked hard to unite their forces into the United Cadre Front (UCF) and had been accepted and endorsed by the National Executive Committee at a press conference organized at the National Headquarters of the party were deliberately sidelined and ignored in the whole campaign period. Indeed, before and during the 2016 elections, these Cadres were seen by some leaders of the party and former government appointees as a plaque to be avoided. The NDC government was seen to have abandoned the policies and programmes tailored to benefit the ordinary working people, but was happily pursuing projects that largely benefitted the elite and the privileged class in the society. It was misled by ideologically unclear and persons with dubious commitment to social justice into running an IMF austerity programme in an election year. They have certainly served their neo-colonial masters well and pawnedthe masses of the party and the country at large. The NDC which had won four out of the six previous elections under the Fourth Republican Constitution on the platform of probity and accountability, had no response to the numerous accusations of corruption and incompetence. This gave credence to the adage that it is the ruling government which loses elections and not the opposition party that wins elections. The NDC leadership did not only show clear signs of exhaustion from 8 years of government, it also displayed a lack of ideological commitment to social democracy if at all some of them understood it. Key operatives became businessmen and women with business proposals in their armpits as a past-time and therefore lacked the zeal and focus to drive a successful election. Yet, others were bankrupt of new ideas, while some appointees demonstrated arrogance, showed vulgar opulence and self-conceitedness in the mist of poverty and social deprivation. From the foregoing characterization, it became clear that the NDC was going to struggle to hold on to power in the 2016 elections. No wonder the NDC suffered a humiliating defeat never seen in the annals of the party's political history. It is therefore not an understatement that the party needs reorganization if it is to be relevant in the current political dispensation and to recover itself. In doing so it has to admit the bitter truth that the party has been contaminated by its government with the connivance of some of its leaders with a perception of corruption. This is the time for sober reflection on and a return to the party's core principles and values on our quest to recapture political power. We therefore need credible, committed, ideologically clear, and dedicated party cadres and activists who believe in grassroots mobilization and organization to offer themselves for the leadership of the party in the reorganization exercise. Our resolve should be to save the party and those leading members who can still be saved but not the bad cases. Let us tone down on some claims we make for our government because there is no scientific basis for a one-sided equation. Let us soberly reflect also on our deficits in governance and how that has brought us to where we are today. It would be in the interest of some of our party leaders to stop the infantile pontification now, as to who can lead us into victory in 2020. They seem not to know what is boiling beneath their comfortable feet. Victory in 2020 for who? We urge the current leadership of the party to call an early Congress to forestall the despondency that is fast creeping in, to be exploited by adventurists. But before doing so, the fraudulent party register that was hurriedly put together without first piloting it to access its integrity should be replaced. We call on well- meaning members of the party to challenge its use, if need be, in court. AKUAMOAH OFOSU BOATENG Secretary Long live the great NDC Long live all NDC Progressives Long live Ghana Signed Antwi Boasiako Sekyere ...0242261012 Ben Kunbuor ...0509160990 Mike Hammah....0244356397 Akuamoah Ofosu Boateng... 0247947484 Democracy in Ghana is increasingly breeding lawlesness because the top brass of our security services have allowed themselves to be use and be controlled by politicians to satisfy their own interests instead of national interest. The politicians are turning this country upside down whilst we look on because we have lost our sense of objectivity and fear to say the plain truth that hurt but heals. Too much abuse of political power and the centre is fast falling apart. The very first day that Barrack Hussain Obama, the immediate past president of the United States of America arrived in Ghana, the first thing he told us is to strengthen our institution if we really want our democracy to work effectively. Typical of Africans, we have since turned it into slogans at the least opportunity that our leaders get to talk at any public forum but have never shown commitment by taking the pragmatic steps to ensure that our institutions work particularly the security services and for that matter the police. Public institutions are empowered by actions not words of mouth particularly those from untrustworthy politicians. We are in a country that members of opposition political parties demonised every public institution and publicly denounce their trust and confidence in such institutions even though they are seeking to lead this country which cannot function without those institutions they have demonised. How on earth can certain individuals sit down and bring some youths together and train them in the name of private security under the guise that they do not have confidence in the state security and we condoned it? How sure were that these hoodlums were going to be regulated properly by security tenets? We are now seeing how we failed ourselves and how we are nurturing rebels in the name of vigilante groups. Nobody should tell me that we did not see this coming? We saw this lawlesness of the Delta Forces, Invincible Forces and all the other forces coming. We saw it with our naked eyes but we played politics with it to the convenience of the politicians because they have the monopoly to decide what happens in the security services and how they should operate at times. At that time, we played emotional games and sympathise with the NPP and made it appeared as if they were being persecuted by the security services particularly the police on the orders of the ruling government. We can conclude that the vigilante groups are causing more harm than good to the NPP which at the time of opposition could have just disassociated themselves from these hoodlums to save their image in order to enjoy the goodwill of Ghanaians. I am very sure that the lawless activities of these miscreants in the name of Delta Forces and other forces has started giving the president a headache because their activities are becoming increasingly lawless and uncontrollable and that is a campaign message to the opposition who are counting their loses from the massive defeat during the last presidential elections. We have reached the age where party foot soldiers threaten security officers with impunity particularly officers who are not allowing them to perpetuate their criminal activities just because their government is in power. It's happened during Rawlings, Kufour, Atta Mills, John Mahama and now it is getting worse under Nana Akuffo Addo. The NPP then in opposition approved the actions of the the Invincible Forces and other forces and claimed ownership that indeed they are their private security wing. Every one who had 6 months basic police training like I did should be able to envisage that the actions of the Invincible Forces and all the other forces will breed into lawlesness as we are seeing today. You don't need a security expert like Dr. Kwesi Anning to come from Kwesi Annan International Peace Keeping Center to tell you that we are breeding lawlesness. It's just a matter of common sense and not any philosophical thinking. I was shocked that time when people were brought from South Africa to train youths and of course we played politics with it and left it to die a natural death by deporting the South Africans in a very controversial circumstances. The NPP at that time kept saying they cannot trust the police service of which today they are controlling by virtue of the fact that they are in government and that should tell our politicians that they will all come and go but our institution will remain. Very soon the NDC in opposition will also start to say that they cannot trust the police service and other public institution and that has been the days of our lives in Ghana with our politicians who are evil and mischievous at times. Since the NPP won this election, we have seen how treacherous these vigilante groups have been and what they are capable of doing in future if not checked. From closing public offices and ceasation of toll booths, assault on police officer at the Flagstaff house, beating of government appointee and invading the court to free prisoners in lawful custody should fast send signals that these vigilante groups are gradually metamophosing into rebels and we should be ready for the worse if we don't tame them now. It is the the NPP which brought them and they have the machinery to tame them particularly now that they are in power. All the security apparatus is at their disposal to tame these guys if they really want to. What happened at the Kumasi Circuit court is an assault on the democracy but we allowed it because we saw it coming but we played politics with it. One day these vigilante groups will prevent a government which has lost elections to hand over power and trust me that our beginning to the end will start from there. I am just a police lance corporal airing my opinions and views in democratic Ghana so nobody should fault me but we should rather be worried about how our democracy is being assaulted under the watch of our security services. Ahanta Apemenyimheneba Kwofie III [email protected]il.com #Ahantadiaries_07_04_17 George Oduro 07.04.2017 LISTEN Deputy Minister-designate for Food and Agriculture, George Oduro, has denied involvement in any cocaine case that would have torpedoed his ministerial ambition. Mr Oduro, Member of Parliament (MP) for New Ebubiase in the Ashanti Region, was allegedly linked to cocaine deal that dates back to 2007. Based on this allegation, the NDC Minority in Parliament had called for the withdrawal of the nominee. According to Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu, there was a damning Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) report incriminating Mr Oduro and therefore his nomination should be withdrawn. However, the nominee dismissed the allegations, saying I am not aware of any report so in case they make it available, I will love to see it. The report said the nominee, George Oduro was on May 2008 mentioned as a principal suspect in a cocaine syndicate. The report suggested that he supposedly travelled on a Canadian passport and had an accomplice named Nelson Troy Edward. The BNI further recommended that the nominee be withdrawn to prevent future embarrassment to the country. It turned out that the drug suspect may not be the nominee but has similar name- George Kwame Oduro. Haruna had said on the floor of the House in the absence of the nominee, who was being vetted that the President should, for instance, consider withdrawing the nomination of one of their appointees by name George Oduro, because there is a damning BNI report on him and Mr. Speaker when we say we want to conduct due diligence, it is probably because of this. We have a responsibility here not to impugn the integrity of any calling, particularly when the person is a Member of Parliament but when the information comes to us, we have a duty to crosscheck the veracity or otherwise of that particular information Haruna alleged. But the Majority Leader, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu interrupted, saying the NDC MP was being unfair since the accused was absent and the minority had boycotted the vetting. The person whose issue the Minority Leader is raising is not part of this report so Mr. Speaker, I am surprised that he is talking about this. On the issue of relevance, the person is not being considered, the Minority Leader argued. BNI Misleading However, the Minority Leader later accused BNI of misleading Parliament in the cocaine allegation, saying that it was a case of mistaken identity. George Oduro told Joy Fm that he never dealt in cocaine neither has he travelled to Canada before in his entire life. He also stated emphatically that he does not know or ever met the supposed accomplice called Troy Edward. Even more dramatic, the nominee said his name is George Boahene Kofi Oduro and not George Kwame Oduro as the BNI report indicated. He wondered why the BNI would write such report without hearing from him. I have never ever travelled on any Canadian passport, neither have I ever dealt in any narcotics trade, he told Joy FM. BNI Indicted In a response, the Minority Leader indicted the BNI for misleading him and the Minority. This is more an indictment on the integrity and professional work of the BNI. As part of our work at the Appointments Committee, we normally will request for background information of the nominees from the BNI, Police, Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), he pointed out. He said his comments on the matter were informed by the report he received from the BNI in a letter dated 23rd March 2017. There is a strong speculation that the alleged BNI letter signed by one William Akwasi Appiah, BNI Director, was cooked with a view to embarrassing the president. It has been confirmed that embattled National Democratic Congress (NDC) financier Alfred Agbesi Woyome has filed a suit against the Government of Ghana at the International Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce Secretariat over the much-touted GH51.2 million he dubiously took from the state. He wants the court to stop the government from asking him to pay back the money which the Supreme Court said he took illegally from the state. The secretariat of the international court, in a letter of March 21, 2017 with reference JRF-CJ, acknowledged receipt of Mr Woyome's application for arbitration. The international body said it received the documents on March 20. ICC Rules He had filed the application on March 17, and the letter signed by Jose Ricardo Feris, Deputy Secretary General of the ICC International Court of Arbitration, said Pursuant to Article 4(2) of the ICC Rules of Arbitration in force as from 1 March 2017 (Rules), this arbitration commenced on that date. The case has the title, 'Alfred Agbesi Woyome (Ghana) vs/ Republic of Ghana (Ghana)' with case reference 22679/TO. Mr Woyome has been asked to include the accurate caption and reference in all future correspondences. On filing fee, the secretariat said, We have received a cheque for the non-refundable filing fee from Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP, who are representing Mr Woyome and was asked to confirm within five days from the day following receipt of this correspondence. Please be informed that should the confirmation not be considered as satisfactory by the bank pursuant to its legal obligations under french law, the payment received by ICC may be canceled and the lack of relevant information reported to the relevant authorities. Electronic Version The letter said that we have received an electronic version of the request and of the documents annexed thereto, adding that we note that four hard copies of the request and of the documents annexed thereto were sent to the secretariat by courier. The letter cited Mr Woyome's case management team as Tunde Ogunseitan (counsel), Anne de Mazieres and Rikee Kjeldsen, (all deputy counsel), as well as Ms Ingrid Materner and Clement Radosch as assistants. Your case management team will write to you concerning the notification of the request and other relevant information. AG Reaction A source at the office of the Solicitor General in the Attorney General's Department has confirmed that the government is aware of Mr Woyome's action but was not certain if the processes had been officially served on the AG. He indicated that the AG will not waste time in filing a response if the processes are served on the government. Payment Arrangement Before the crucial general elections, which the then ruling NDC lost massively to opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), the Mahama-led government made Ghanaians to believe that Mr Woyome had started paying back the GH51.2 million in installments. Mr Woyome himself at a news conference told Ghanaians that he had started making payments in installments which was authorised by then Attorney General Betty Mould Iddrisu and her deputy Ebo Barton-Odro against the directive of former President John Evans Atta Mills. First Installment In November 2016 in the heat of the election campaign, Mr Woyome announced that he had refunded GH4 million to the state, adding that it represented part payment of the GH51.2 million he owed. Woyome said his lawyers promised to pay the outstanding balance by quarterly installments of GH5 million, commencing April 1, 2017. Former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Mrs Marietta Brew Appiah-Opong, as a result, filed an application at the Supreme Court to discontinue the request for oral examination of Mr Woyome at the instance of former AG Martin ABK Amidu, who had been pursuing the embattled NDC financier to pay back the money. Cheque Receipt A letter dated November 7, 2016 and signed by a Chief State Attorney, Mrs Dorothy Afriyie-Ansah, acknowledged receipt of a cheque for GH4 million from Mr Woyome and the receipt was witnessed by the Solicitor-General, Mrs Helen Ziwu. On April 6, 2016, then Attorney-General initiated garnishee proceedings against the managers of the ADB, uniBank (Ghana) Limited and UT Bank, bankers of Mr Woyome. According to the former AG, the garnishee had yielded the following amounts GH966.58, GH29,515.95, GH1,008.70, US$98.17, US$32,779.68, US$223.08 and 1,226.72 which have since been paid into the bank account of the Attorney-General's Office at the Bank of Ghana (BoG). Amidu Factor Mr Woyome was being pursued vigorously by former Attorney General Martin ABK Amidu, known for his anti-corruption exploits, when it became clear that the NDC government was not willing to take the money from Mr Woyome. Mr Amidu, popularly called Citizen Vigilante, had secured judgement at the Supreme Court that the huge amount of money paid to Mr Woyome by the NDC government was illegally done. It was when the NDC lost the election to the NPP that Mr Amidu announced in court that he was withdrawing his case against Mr Woyome to allow the government to retrieve the money. By William Yaw Owusu A prosecution witness Hajia Zainabu Adams, wife of Adams Mahama, the Upper East Regional Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) who was murdered, continued with her evidence in chief at an Accra High Court yesterday after nine-month break. The case had stalled since July 19, 2015 when Hajia Zainabu first stepped into the box as the star witness in the case involving the murder of her husband. Led in evidence in by Matthew Amponsah, Chief State Attorney in a court, presided over by Justice L.L. Mensah, Zainabu stated that her husband envisaged his death as a result of the deadly substance 52-year-old Gregory Afoko and one Asabke poured on him. Hajia Zainabu told the court that the late Adams mentioned the two names to her on his sick bed. She said, I know I will die, when I die Gregory and Asabke are those who killed me; they poured a substance on me. Hajia Zainabu said that earlier, the late Adams had told one Mutallah, who sent him to the hospital, to take care of his wife and children when he (Adams) dies. She quoted the late husband as having told Mutallah that I know I will die, when I die, take care of my wife and children. The witness told the court that while at the hospital, the police came to pick her to their house where the incident occurred. At the house, Hajia Zainabu said the police retrieved the gallon containing the substance, a pair of shoes and dress of the deceased and drove to Gregory's house, where he was arrested. The case would continue today to enable the state to tender the said exhibits. Gregory has been charged with conspiracy to commit crime and murder of Adams Mahama in May 2015. The accused has pleaded not guilty to the charges. Adams Mahama died of extensive acid burns and shock lungs (acute respiratory distress syndrome), an autopsy report has indicated. Gregory's alleged accomplice, Asabke, is still on the run. By Jeffrey De-Graft Johnson [email protected] The Member of Parliament for Assin Central, Kennedy Agyapong, and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) chairman in the Ashanti Region, Bernard Antwi Boasiako (Wontumi), must be blamed and arrested for the attacks on a Kumasi Circuit Court allegedly by members of the Delta Force, a private security arm within the NPP, the Movement for the Kingdom Image (MFKI) has said. According to the group, these two personalities in the NPP have consistently defended and endorsed the actions of the Delta Force, a situation which has emboldened them to carry out attacks. A statement issued by its president, Osempakani Kaakyire Kofi, said: We, the Movement for the Kingdom Image (MFKI), want to express our deepest disappointment in the leadership of the NPP with regards to the lawless activities of the notorious Delta Forces in the country and want to state without fear that Kennedy Agyapong and Chairman Wontumi are the fertiliser to that unscrupulous actions and that they should be arrested first. On countless occasions these party vibrants have been defending the formation and activities of these vigilante groups in the party, which have motivated these notorious rebels to permeate the impermeable. Again we were highly disappointed that the NPP leadership, specifically the Minister for National Security, Kan Dapaah, saying he has made investigations and it shows that Delta Force and Invisible Forces are not registered entities. We are all aware that these groups belong to the NPP and the party recognises them as a party security agency, so whether or not they are registered is flawed and that the minister and his party bigwigs are responsible for this chaos in the country currently. Mr Kennedy Agyapong and Chairman Wontumi have always sounded like people who do not see anything wrong with the devilish activities of these forces and we think that has encouraged the young men to continue this lawlessness. The Akufo-Addo government must prove beyond all reasonable doubt that the NPP is not a violent party, because for now those who called them names are almost vindicated. Ghana needs peace and disciplined leadership, not cheap talkers. The Hague (AFP) - South Africa on Friday denied it had flouted international law by refusing in 2015 to arrest visiting Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir wanted by war crimes judges on charges of genocide in Darfur. At an unprecedented hearing at the International Criminal Court, Pretoria found itself fending off accusations that it had failed in its obligations to the very tribunal which it helped to found. South African legal advisor Dire Tladi argued there "was no duty under international law on South Africa to arrest the serving head of a non-state party such as Mr Omar al-Bashir." Despite two international arrest warrants issued in 2009 and 2010, Bashir remains at large and in office amid the raging conflict in the western Sudanese region of Darfur. He faces 10 charges, including three of genocide as well as war crimes and crimes against humanity in the western Darfur region. The deadly conflict broke out in 2003 when ethnic minority groups took up arms against Bashir's Arab-dominated government, which launched a brutal counter-insurgency. The UN Security Council asked the ICC in 2005 to probe the crimes in Darfur, where at least 300,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced, according to UN figures. 'Immunity' Pretoria, which had sought clarification from ICC judges about the case before Bashir's 2015 visit, argues the Sudanese leader has immunity as a head of state. There was "nothing at all" in the UN resolution which waived Bashir's immunity, said Tladi. Therefore Pretoria could not arrest him during his brief visit to South Africa in June 2015 for an African Union summit, despite its obligation to cooperate with the ICC. "The duty to arrest Mr Omar al-Bashir was not as clear as the office of the prosecutor would suggest," added Tladi. Several victims of the conflict, who now live in The Netherlands, were attending Friday's hearing in the tribunal in The Hague. Conditions in Darfur remain "dire," said Monica Feltz, executive director of the rights group, International Justice Project. Prosecutors issued international warrants for the arrest of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir -- seen here in 2009 -- over the deadly conflict that racked the western Darfur region The 10 Darfurians who will watch the hearing are "hoping to see that their story is told, and that their voices are heard, and that the international community still cares," she told AFP. Presiding judge Cuno Tarfusser said the aim of the hearing was to decide "whether South Africa failed to comply with its obligations ... by not arresting and surrendering Omar al-Bashir ... while he was on South African territory." 'Open defiance' The judges will return their decision at a later date, and may decide to report Pretoria to the UN Security Council for eventual sanctions. But Pretoria's lawyers argued such a move would be "unwarranted and unnecessary" and the "only purpose" of such a measure would be "to cast South Africa in bad light." Tladi warned the case will "have profound and far-reaching legal consequences far beyond" the Bashir case, saying it could call into question the very integrity of the ICC. The ICC's prosecutors have hit back, pointing out that in the past South Africa told Bashir he would be arrested if he set foot in the country. Legal representatives for the victims Wanda Akin and Raymond Brown, urged the court to send "an unmistakable message that open defiance of its writ will not be permitted." Although this is the first public hearing of its type, last year the ICC referred Chad, Djibouti and Uganda to the UN for also failing to arrest Bashir. So far no action has been taken against them. The Sudanese leader was also a guest last month at an Arab League summit hosted by Jordan -- also a signatory to the Rome Statute. South Africa says it could not arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir when he visited the country for an African Union summit in June 2015 because heads of state have immunity South Africa moved this year to withdraw from the court, angered by the case against it. But it formally revoked its decision last month after its own High Court ruled in February that it would be unconstitutional. Johannesburg (AFP) - Thousands marched through major South African cities Friday demanding the resignation of President Jacob Zuma after his sacking of the popular finance minister fuelled widespread public anger. Zuma, who came to power in 2009, has been battered by a series of corruption scandals during his time in office, while the country has suffered record unemployment, slowing growth and stubborn racial inequality. His removal of finance minister Pravin Gordhan last week unleashed a fresh bout of criticism, as Gordhan was seen by many ordinary South Africans as a bulwark against corruption. Large crowds gathered in the capital Pretoria, the economic hub Johannesburg and coastal cities of Durban and Cape Town. Several thousand people attended the Johannesburg protest organised by the opposition Democratic Alliance party, which hopes to make gains in 2019 elections under its leader Mmusi Maimane, 36. "We want Zuma to fall. He is too corrupt. Real people are struggling. I voted for Nelson Mandela, but Maimane has a lot of integrity and he's young," protester Vanessa Michael, 54, from East Rand, told AFP. The ANC party led the decades-long struggle against apartheid, and carried Nelson Mandela to power in the 1994 elections that ended white-minority rule. But the once all-powerful party has lost popularity in recent years and slipped to 55 percent of the vote in last year's local elections -- its worst ever result. Divided ANC? Zuma this week appeared to have quelled a rebellion within the ANC despite senior party figures, including Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, speaking out against Gordhan's sacking. On Friday, scores of camouflage-wearing members of MK, the former armed wing of the ANC, paraded at the party's headquarters in downtown Johannesburg in a show of loyalty to Zuma. The cabinet overhaul -- which was announced at midnight and including 10 ministerial changes -- cleared out many of Zuma's critics. It also led to a rapid credit ratings downgrade to junk status by Standard & Poor's. South Africa's trade union federation Cosatu this week joined many anti-apartheid veterans, civil action groups and business leaders calling for Zuma to resign. Zuma, 74, is due to step down as head of the ANC in December, and as president ahead of the 2019 general election. He is seen as favouring his ex-wife, former African Union chief Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, to succeed him. Zuma has been accused of being in the sway of the wealthy Gupta business family, allegedly granting them influence over government appointments, contracts and state-owned businesses. Parliament will vote on a motion of no confidence in the president on April 18, though he has easily survived previous such votes against him. Following the escape of 13 accused members of the New Patriotic Party-affiliated vigilante group, Delta Force, from the Kumasi circuit court, the Ashanti Regional Police command has revealed that its personnel at the court may have been blindsided by the route the Delta Force members used. According to the Ashanti Regional Polices Public Relations Officer, ASP Nketia Yeboah, the members of the vigilante group fled through a restricted area meant for judges and the police personnel were not expecting that. The 13 escaped after other members of the vigilante group monitoring the court proceedings sparked confusion on Thursday during the hearing. Speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show, ASP Yeboah explained that the Delta Force's escape route was through a restricted area where no one was allowed to go. There has not been a precedent of that in any country. But we learn from such incidents and we have taken notice it is not that we stood aloof or unconcerned. It is not the number [of police personnel] that determined the escape or anything of that sort if you were there, it will never occur to you that somebody will pass there, he explained. Maintaining law and order not beyond us The Ashanti Region has seen some of the more extreme instances of vigilante action in recent times, beginning with the Delta Force's raiding of the Regional Coordinating Council where they assaulted the Ashanti Regional Security Coordinator, George Adjei, and culminating the havoc at the Kumasi Circuit court. File photo: Delta Force members With growing concerns of the police's perceived laxity towards vigilante groups across the country, ASP Yeboah assured that the Ashanti Regional Police Comand was capable of ensuring law and order. It is not beyond us and the Ashanti Regional Police command can handle it we didn't just sit by. We want to prove that, contrary to the negative perceptions, we are up to the task, he said. My Regional commander was the Northern Regional commander for about three years and you can imagine some of the cases that came up during his tenure. All of us are proven police officers. There is no way we will let things go out of hand like that. Escaped Delta Force members in police custody ASP Yeboah was speaking after it was confirmed that the 13 accused members of the NPP-affiliated vigilante group reported themselves to Police and are in custody. The 13 Delta Force members were facing charges for besieging Ashanti Regional Coordinating Council and the judge had ruled that the 13 be remanded to reappear before the court on the 20th of April, 2017 after charges of conspiracy to assault a public officer and causing unlawful damage. The displeasure with the ruling sparked the confusion at the court leading to the escape of the 13. The Judge, Mary Senkyere was also almost assaulted by members of the vigilante group present. Following the confusion at the court, the Ashanti Regional Police Command also arrested eight members of the group who attacked the court. By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonmline.com/Ghana 07.04.2017 LISTEN Members of the United Cadres Front of Ghana have observed with dismay activities of vigilante groups, which have created fear and panic among the citizenry, especially, unsuspecting public and civil servants. The latest incident where a group, calling itself Delta Force, attacked a Sitting Judge in Kumasi can be considered an attack on the sovereignty of Ghana and exposition of the state to a regime of survival of the fittest. Members of the UCF are particularly disturbed by unguided statements by such persons as Hon. Kennedy Adjapong, a sitting Member of Parliament for Assin Central, and Lawyer Obiri Boahen, a Deputy General Secretary of the ruling New Patriotic Party, which are intended to justify the inactions of such groups and meant to goad them on to attack and seize state institutions all over the country as well as personalities going about their lawful duties. We shudder to state that such events, unimaginable after peaceful elections, have brought the good image of our dear nation into international disgrace, which questions the often-acclaimed position of Ghana as a bastion of democracy and rule of law. We urge the security agencies to effectively act to justify their employment as Officers-of-State rather than remaining docile and impotent in the face of obvious untoward acts against state interest. We call for the total ban and flushing out of members of such groups and their patrons whose activities are nakedly seen as confrontational and, thus, threat to national peace and security. In fact, history must be a guide, which presupposes that, a stitch in time saves nine. Signed: Co-Chairman, Shine Gaveh (027 7122442) 7th April, 2017 Co-Chairman, Kofi Aikins (054 9184679) 7th April, 2017 It is easy to start off with high moral standards, strong convictions, and determination to beat down corruption. But it is difficult to live up to these good intentions unless the leaders are strong and determined enough to deal with all transgressors, and without exceptions. We cannot afford to forget that public order, personal security, economic and social progress, and prosperity are not the natural order of things, that they depend on ceaseless effort and attention from an honest and effective government that the people must elect. Lee Kuan Yew 'Who told you that you are naked?' 'Have you eaten fruit from the tree I warned you about?' 'Yes' Adam admitted, 'but it was the woman you gave me who brought me some, and I ate it'. Then the Lord God asked the woman, 'How could you do such a thing?' 'The serpent tricked me', she replied' The Living Bible Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, has this to say about the Trojan Horse: The Trojan Horse is a tale from the Trojan War about the subterfuge that the Greeks used to enter the city of Troy and win the war. In the canonical version, after a fruitless 10-year siege, the Greeks constructed a huge wooden horse , and hid a select force of men inside. The Greeks pretended to sail away, and the Trojans pulled the horse into their city as a victory trophy. That night the Greek force crept out of the horse and opened the gates for the rest of the Greek army, which had sailed back under cover of night. The Greeks entered and destroyed the city of Troy, ending the war . Metaphorically a Trojan Horse has come to mean any trick or stratagem that causes a target to invite a foe into a securely protected bastion or place. As a leader, if the criminals do not get to you directly, they will get to you through your spouse or your children or the members of your close or distance family or your church leader or your traditional leader or your political appointees or your friends or even your enemies. One basic trick the IMF plays on poor third world countries which have been destroyed through the greed, mismanagement and corruption of their gullible leaders is the offer of supposedly free dinner. The IMF will come to you and take you to a posh restaurant and ask you to eat anything of your choice, free of charge, assuring you that your grandchildren will come and pay (so called conditionalities). After you have eaten enough and your stomach is full, the IMF will give you quick acting purgative for you to purge your bowels so that you can sit down and eat some more. When eventually you are fully satisfied, the IMF will lead you to the entrance of the restaurant and at that point, the IMF will give you a bill to pay. The IMF will tell you the bill is for the dinner your grandfather took. That is a typical Trojan Horse subterfuge. As the very famous saying goes: there is no free dinner. When Nana Akufo Addo, the president, inaugurated the Ghana @60 Committee, he promised the nation that virtually all the funds for the celebration would be coming from the private sector. When I heard him say that I told myself, hei, wait a minute, did I hear right. The private sector is not a Salvation Army involved in free humanitarian religious activities. The private sector is there to make maximum profit for its beneficial owners. So if a private businessman is going to contribute to a national assignment after he has paid all his legitimate taxes, then you can expect that the businessman will be placing a Trojan Horse at your doorstep at the least opportunity. That was why my heart missed a beat from shock when I read that a private sector financial institution was going to donate US$100nillion towards the NPP policy of one village one factory project. Then the shock I had turned into electrocution when I read it in the newspapers and also saw and heard President Akufo Addo waxing eloquence about the receipt of the best birthday gift of US$100 million as sponsorship for one of the pet projects of his NPP administration, the one village one factory project. As I sat down pondering over the issue, my mind went back to what I had heard sometime back about a famous religious personality who was reported to have said one time that she was not worried about the source of donation to her charity organisation so long as it is put to a good use. If somebody can give you free US$100 million, then it means he must have over one billion United States dollars waiting on call somewhere. But that is not what worries me. That financial institution must have hatched a well-oiled strategic plan to get that money and multiples of it back as soon as possible. But that still is a small worry to me. The NPP was voted into power on the gospel of change. The NPP was voted into power to use an effective and efficient broom to sweep away the criminals who constituted the evil satanic NDC looting empire and to dispatch then to the hottest part of hell. During the entire reign of the PNDC/NDC, the greedy bastards, the old evil dwarfs, the babies with sharp teeth, the liars, the leeches by whatever name the Godfather of the despicable organisation chose to call them, the constituent apparatchiks constituted themselves into a rainbow coalition of a Frankenstein monster, a Dracula blood sucking vampire bat that fed on the nation. The PNDC created a specialist thieving organisation called Divestiture Implementation Committee (DIC) which provided a looting machinery to sell cheaply all the state industries which constituted the jewels in the king's crown to members of the PNDC and their imbecile criminal local and foreign collaborators. When that was done, the NDC set up another stealing mechanism, soul sourcing, to reap off the nation through the awards of contracts to its members and cronies and family members and accomplices. E-mail: [email protected] By Kwame Gyasi A community empowerment group, AID Ghana, has made donations of various items, including stationery, and toiletries to the Autism Awareness Care & Training Centre (AACT) to mark this year's Autism Awareness Month of April. Speaking at a brief ceremony to present the items, president of the group, Richmond Adu-Worae, called for more sensitisation to combat the stigma that is associated with the condition. It is important that Ghanaians are made to understand that autism is never a curse and that persons with autism are only special and need to be cared for with patience and compassion, he stated. Mr Adu-Worae further stressed that organisations providing care for autistic children must be supported by the general public, corporate Ghana and other benevolent organisations. He also called on government to provide more care and training centres and resources to autistic people to enable them to participate effectively and meaningfully in society. On her part, Founder and Director of the Autism Awareness Care and Training Centre (AACT), Serwah Quaynor, expressed her profound gratitude to the group and made a clarion call on the public to shun all forms of stigmatisation against autistic children. She further called on other youth-based organisations to emulate AID Ghana and the gesture extended towards her organisation and other organisations committed to positive social causes. According to Ms Quaynor, When I returned to Ghana some 15 years ago, searching for autism services for my son proved rather difficult. Nortey was 16 years old with raging hormones, many challenging behaviours, ranging from self-injurious behaviours (Sib's), aggression, insomnia, to mention a fewat the time there was very little help for me and him so I started a rigorous awareness campaign which culminated in the starting of the Autism Awareness Care and Training Centre. The Autism Awareness Care & Training Centre which started in 1998 in Kokomlemle currently has about 40 children in its care, ranging from pre-school children to young adults. AID Ghana comprises a group of young professionals from various backgrounds who are committed to contributing their resources and skills towards ensuring positive social impact. The head pastor of the Soldiers of the Cross Ministries at Korle-Gono in Accra has been dragged before an Accra Circuit Court for indecent assault. The accused, Wisdom Kusorgbor, 24, is said to have inserted his finger into the vagina of the victim aged, 3. According to the prosecutor, Detective Inspector Kofi Atimbiri, the accused committed the act at about 6pm on December 28, 2016 at Santana Chorkor, a suburb of Accra. Appearing before trial judge Ms Marian Affoh, the accused denied the charge. He was subsequently granted bail in the sum of GH8,000 with three sureties. Hearing continues on April 11. The complainant is a business woman who lives at Santana Chorkor with her daughter while the accused person also stays in the same vicinity. The accused person's mother is a co-tenant to the complainant. Wisdom, who regularly visited his mother, usually gave his mobile phone to the victim to watch cartoons. At 6pm on the said day, the accused visited his mother who had gone to town and carried the victim into his mother's room to watch cartoons on his laptop. While the victim was watching the cartoons, Wisdom inserted his finger her vagina. He also used his penis to brush the victim's vagina but did not penetrate. The victim informed her mother after the incident and a report was lodged with the Mamprobi DOVVSU, which led to the arrest of the accused. [email protected] By Jeffrey De-Graft Johnson Sarah Adwoa Safo, the Minister for Procurement, who is also the Deputy Majority Leader, has cut the sod to commence the construction of a one-storey three-unit classroom block for Atomic Hills Cluster of Schools. The facility, when completed, will have a library, an ICT lab and KVIP. It is expected to be completed within 12 months. Hon. Safo, who doubles as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Dome/Kwabena constituency, told journalists that she was impressed with the school's academic excellence, despite the limited classrooms which has resulted in congestion in the school. With a population of 1,400, about 70 students occupy one classroom, a situation, which according Deputy Majority Leader, does not encourage good teaching practices. The Dome/Kwabenya lawmaker, apart from cutting the sod to commence the construction of the classroom block, also donated some textbooks to assist the students, especially those who will be writing the BECE this year to adequately prepare for the exams. The headmistress of the school, Felicia Obeng Boateng said due to the academic excellence of the school, most parents desire to bring their wards to the school, thereby putting pressure on the few existing facilities. This, she noted, has mounted pressure on management of the school to expand the facilities to accommodate the ever-increasing student population. She expressed gratitude for the gesture, but pleaded with the MP to help construct a fence wall around the school. According to her, the students have periodically come under attack by dogs and mentally challenged persons. THE COALITION of Domestic Election Observer (CODEO) has asked the Ghana Police Service to, in the interest of national security, disband all politically affiliated vigilante groups in the country. In a communique issued on Thursday in Accra after a two-day postmortem of the 2016 elections which cruised Nana Akufo-Addo to power, CODEO said they (vigilante groups) pose a mortal danger to Ghana's electoral politics and democratic development. According to the four-page communique signed by the two co-chairs of CODEO, Professor Miranda Greenstreet and Justice VCRAC Crabbe, the existence of political vigilante groups is illegal. CODEO's call is coming at a time when the National Security Minister, Albert Kan Dapaah has reportedly told lawmakers that there are no politically affiliated vigilante groups to be disbanded as there are no groups registered as such. There are no legally registered political vigilante groups in the country, and for that matter, there are no such groups to be disbanded, the Minister was quoted to have said while answering a question in Parliament posed by Member of Parliament for Asawase on what the ministry is doing to disband political vigilante groups. But CODEO charged that The leadership of the NPP and the NDC who are largely responsible for the emergence of these groups in the 4th Republic should own up to their responsibilities and work together with the police to disband all politically affiliated vigilante groups. The Azorka Boys of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) and NPP's Invincible Forces, have been a major source of worry to many Ghanaians, especially when their respective parties win power. Last month, police arrested leader of pro-NPP vigilante group Delta Forces after an attack on a security coordinator who had just been appointed. The vigilante groups reportedly terrorize members of the losing party, and destroy or seize public property. CODEO said in the medium to long-term, there should be a concerted effort amongst key election stakeholders to make the Inspector General of Police independent by insulating him/her from political interference by securing his/her tenure across regimes and ensuring such appointments are transparent and consultative. Other Concerns Meanwhile, CODEO has raised other concerns relating to the conduct of the 2016 general elections, calling for major reforms to be made by all election stakeholders particularly the Electoral Commission (EC) to ensure improvement on the organizations of future elections. According to CODEO in the communique, mistrust and suspicion still exist between the EC and some political parties. EC's lack of transparency and engagement with political parties and candidates on some electoral processes may be the cause for this. Issues of exclusion still remain in terms of opportunities for women in the political and media space during election, it said, lamenting that vote buying and selling bedevil Ghanaian elections. The continuous and uncontrolled abuse of incumbency during elections is of major concern. Furthermore, it said enforcement of electoral rules by the EC and political party accountability remains weak. It has therefore urged the EC, the Inter Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) and other stakeholders to work together to amend PNDC law 284 to set a six-month period for campaigning during each year of presidential and general elections, as part of efforts to minimize cost, check incumbency abuse and help regulate campaign financing. In the short term, the EC must consider an appropriate scientific and internationally acceptable methodology for auditing the current voter register to ascertain particular areas of challenge for redressing. BY Melvin Tarlue On February 10,2017,the Minister of Education ,Dr. Mathew Opoku Prempeh affirmed governments commitment to make the learning and speaking of French at the basic level education compulsory. He noted that although French was currently being offered in the Junior High Schools and was an option in the six programmes at the Senior High Schools, the results at the Basic Education levels remained a challenge. The Ambassadors Club, an educational organization of the Nucleus Plus company Limited who are noted for organizing English Competitions in High Schools in Cote Divoire for the past 3 years have taken the responsibility to support governments vision to promote the learning and speaking of French and also to equip French Teacher Trainees to be abreast with modern French language modules. On Saturday April 8,2017 the Ambassadors Club will host the first Regional French Competition for Senior High Schools in the University for Professional studies Accra. Some of the participation schools are Presbyterian Boys Senior High School, St.Thomas Acquinas Senior High, Accra Wesley Girls, West Africa Senior High School and many others. This competition will be held in the 10 regions of Ghana for 150 selected Senior High Schools. The aim of this event is to promote the integration of the French Language in Ghanaian Schools and also embrace the teaching and learning of French as the second foreign language studied in the educational institutions in addition to English, the official language, and the vernacular. There is the need to redefine the countrys relations with Francophone countries to promote the speaking and learning of French at the tender age. The nations favourite malt, Malta Guinness, has marked its third decade of brewing in Ghana with exciting activities that primarily engaged a number of its customers. The activities which focus on the celebration of the can-do attitude of Ghanaians, is expected to uplift the spirit of Ghanaians by experiencing the goodness of Malta Guinness. As part of these planned activities, Malta Guinness fuelled about a thousand Ghanaian when they joined famous faces like Geovanni Caleb and Berla Mundi, to climb the Aburi mountains- an activity dubbed Malta Guinness Goodness on the Hill, where most Ghanaians were refreshed with bottles of great tasting Malta Guinness as they climbed the mountain. The activity also created a platform for interactions among all participants present. Kweku Sekyi-Cann, Marketing Director for Guinness Ghana Limited said that, Malta Guinness is celebrating its third decade of goodness with you our consumers because you have brought us this far. By this we are giving you the chance to instantly win a colourful Malta Guinness Goodness Cup whenever you buy a six-pack of Malta Guinness. There are four stylish Goodness Cups to collect, each featuring the name of a popular Ghanaian dance style to encourage you to get up and move with the energy and vitality of Malta Guinness, he added. Kweku hinted to participants about the #Maltavators, the Malta Guinness squad roaming the length and breadth of Ghana and rewarding cherished consumers with free bottles of our best ever tasting Malt. So Ghanaians should be on the lookout and follow the Facebook page (@MaltaGuinnessGhana) for more details. He also said Our brand new re-sealable PET bottles of Malta Guinness are perfect for energy and vitality on the go! The bottles come with a refreshing liquid enriched with the rich satisfying flavour of Malta Guinness. He explained that Malta Guinness is brewed right here in Ghana through a unique process incorporating locally sourced natural ingredients like malted barley, maize, sorghum, and hops through the efforts of 1,200 employees who ensure quality results for Ghanaians. The company produces 50,000,000 litres of Malta Guinness each year. Malta Guinness, enriched with vitamins and irons has refreshed Ghanaians with goodness and vitality since 1989 and has being the most loved malt brand in Ghana. Guinness Ghana Breweries (GGBL) Ltd is a subsidiary of Diageo plc. a global company, with its products sold in more than 180 countries around the world. Diageo is the world's leading premium drinks business with an outstanding collection of beverage alcohol brands across spirits, beer and wine. These brands include Johnnie Walker, and Bushmills whiskies, Smirnoff, Ciroc and Ketel One vodkas, Baileys, Captain Morgan, Tanqueray and Guinness. The General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress(NDC) Johnson Asiedu Nketiah also known as 'General Mosquito' has called on the police to arrest the Member of Parliament(MP) for Assin Central Kennedy Agyapong. In an interview with Akwasi Boateng, host of 'Maakye' on Hot93.9FM, General Mosquito stated that, the best way to end the uncouth behaviour of the pro- government vigilante group Delta is to cut off their support system. "The way out of this situation is for the police to arrest Kennedy Agyapong and all those NPP executives who are behind the action of the group. Kennedy Agyapong publicly defended what the group did to the Ashanti Regional security coordinator and even dared the National Security minister not to touch the members of the vigilante group, declaring his unconditional support to them. Such a person should be arrested." "In which country will a Member of Parliament publicly warn the President not to touch people who are committing atrocities with the support of their National Youth Organizer? It shows you the kind of people they are. Delta Forces yesterday stormed the Kumasi circuit court to free their 13 colleagues who were facing trial for attacking the Ashanti Regional Security Coordinator last month Rwanda, an east-central African nation, is composed of two main ethnic groups, the Hutus in majority and the Tutsis, alongside a small number of Twa. Ethnic apprehension, like in any other African country, is nothing new in Rwanda. Unfortunately this situation was substantially exploited by the former colonizers to their advantage by applying divide-and-rule-policy in creating acute animosity between Hutus and Tutsis. In 1994, between April and July, Africas biggest genocide occurred in Rwanda with 800000 people slaughtered mostly Tutsis and moderate Hutus. That dastardly act, started by Hutu extremists, spread throughout the country with shocking speed and brutality. Sadly the International community decided to be spectators while the manslaughter was going on. It is important to recall that the United Nations set up a peacekeeping operation (UNAMIR) to aid with governmental transition under the Arusha accord. This force was withdrawn by a U.N. Security Council vote in April 1994. As the genocide was stretching and intensifying the U.N. Security Council voted in mid-May to supply a more robust force. Before the arrival of that force, the genocide came to an end. However, under the U.Ns auspices French troops entered Rwanda from D.R. Congo, then Zaire in late June and saved many Tutsi lives, but at the same time helped some of the genocides plotters- allies of the French during president Habyarimana regime- to escape. The after effects of the Rwandan tragedy pointed to the failure of the international community to act in order to prevent such atrocities taking place. Meanwhile the same international community was deeply involved in resolving the Yugoslavia crisis that was happening at the same time. Later, efforts were undertaken to remedy this indifference by bringing back the UNAMIR operation to Rwanda until March 1996 which was considered as one of the largest humanitarian relief efforts in history. In this same vein, the United Nation General Assembly adopted resolution (A/RES/58/234) on December 2003, designating 7 April, the start day of the 1994 Rwanda genocide, as the International Day of Reflection on the Genocide in Rwanda. As the world remembers and pays tribute to the victims of the genocide in Rwanda, Africans must draw all the lessons from that horrific period in our history and resolve to take all necessary measures to avoid such ugly occurrence in any part of the continent in the future. The causes of Rwanda genocide linked partly to the legacy of colonialism and the indifference of the international community during those dark days are enough reasons for African leaders to come to the realization that it is only Africans themselves who must stand in unison to resolve their problems. The All Africa Students Union (AASU) salutes the memory of the victims of the Rwanda genocide and says never again such abhorrent acts in any part of Africa; AASU hails the people of Rwanda under the leadership president Paul Kagame for their accomplishments after the genocide. Rwanda, with little natural resources and after this terrible past, has become a model for many other countries due to their determination, hard work and visionary leadership. All for African integration! All for African Unity! Peter Kwasi Kodjie (Secretary General) [email protected] ; +233(0)242879028 At a time government is considering plans to cede part of management of the Electricity Company of Ghana, some players in the industry have renewed appeals against the move. They argue that the plan if approved will have minimal impact in turning around ECGs inefficiencies. About US$350 million out of the total US$500 million compact is expected to be channeled into the modernization and reduction of commercial losses by the ECG. Though the NPP government is reviewing the deal, some energy experts want a complete cessation of any private sector participation in the power company. A member of the Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC), Dr. Steve Manteaw recently argued that the country should completely reject the MCC Compact II. In Dr. Manteaws view, the credibility of the whole concession arrangement has been shattered completely insisting that we should be rejecting it outright. However, the workers of the Electricity Company of Ghana have also registered their displeasure at the US Ambassador to Ghana, Robert Jackson, for claiming that it was too late to renegotiate the Millennium Compact II which seeks to privatize parts of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG). The workers further accused the US Ambassador of tacitly blackmailing the government of Ghana into implementing the compact. Mr. Jackson in a media interview claimed that its too late to renegotiate [the compact II] we are certainly willing to talk about how it will be executed. Im certain that the compact as its structured its great for Ghana. But the ECG workers insisted that, the comment seeks to tie the hands of government; a situation they argue breaches sections of the compact that provides for amendments. While decrying the silence of government over the matter, the General Secretary of PUWU, Michael Adumatta Nyantakyi, called on President Akufo-Addo to as a matter of urgency make good his campaign promise of engaging stakeholders on the matter. The United States Ambassador to Ghana, Mr. Robert Jackson reacted with remarks that it was too late for renegotiation so government should go ahead with the implementation of the compact. The US Ambassadors remark is viewed as unfortunate. Although Mr. Nyantakyi said PUWU was not against the Compact II, he explained that they are only opposed to the handing over of ECG to a private entity for 25 years. The union is against the single concession which is tantamount to creating a virtual drive monopoly in the electricity distribution, he added. The PUWU General Secretary further noted that, during the electioneering, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo promised to hold wide consultations before rolling out the Compact II, if elected into office. According to him, the President should fulfill the promise by taking a decision on the matter. In the course of the campaign, the then candidate, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in an answer to a question in this hall, promised that, should he be elected into office, he will undertake consultations with stakeholders including labour before taking any decision. PUWU believes that it is time for complex actions to be taken for the proposed dialogue to be initiated with labour and other stakeholders, so that views from the consultation will assist the President in taking the best decision on the matter, Mr. Nyanatakyi added. Also, the Campaign Coordinator for ISODEC, Dr Steve Manteaw explains that ECG could be efficient if issues of investments, efficiency and accountability are critically addressed. ECG has not been able to invest in its operations largely because of governments huge indebtedness. The company is today inefficient partly because of power theft and largely because of absolutely inefficient equipment and if it is not able or government does not pay what it owes ECG how on earth can ECG invest in its operations. Another major challenge according to Dr Steve Manteawis the interference of politics in appointing heads of the Electricity Company of Ghana. When you get into a situation where we politicize the appointments of heads of ECG, how else do you expect it to be accountable to Ghanaians? They become accountable to the political parties that appointed them and not Ghanaians so the question is whether concession is the way to address the problems confronting ECG and I say we have done it before and it did not work. In September 2016, MiDA announced that the Ghana Power Compact, also referred to as Compact II, has now entered into force. This means that the treaty signed on August 5, 2014 between the Republic of Ghana and the United States of America, represented by the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) has become effective and Ghana now has access to the program funds. Announcing the commencement of the Compact, the Chief Executive Officer of MiDA, Ing. Owura Sarfo said, I am happy to advise that yesterday we met all the conditions precedent to entry into force of the Compact and submitted all the required documentation in that respect. Under the Power Compact, six projects namely ECG Financial and Operational Turnaround Project, NEDCo Financial and Operational Turnaround Project, Regulatory Strengthening and Capacity Building Project, Access Project, Power Generation Sector Improvement Project and Energy Efficiency and Demand Side Management Project, will be implemented to address the root causes of the unavailability and unreliability of power in Ghana. Subsequently, some stakeholders have also registered their challenge with the MCC II. They have said that there were challenges with the $498 million MCC Compact II passed by Parliament under the certificate of urgency which did not allow for further reading. Vice President of think tank, IMANI Ghana, Kofi Bentle, presenting the report of the legal team of the coalition, said although the team supports the MCC Compact II, Article 7.1, which states that when the implementation process begins it shall not be subject to the laws of Ghana, restricts government and gives the investors- the US government, through the Millennium Development Authority (MiDA)- powers to do anything. The article, which is a stabilization clause, is normal with international agreement when someone is coming to invest so on the face of it there is nothing wrong about that. However, it is dangerous for it to remain as it is. What we need is another clause to tie it down to specific areas where it is applicable and not leave it as an omnibus clause, he said. Mr. Kwame Jantuah, Oil and Gas analyst, touching on the local content, also disclosed that the compact was not bad but revealed that its operational process poses some challenges. It is not overtly clear the role of indigenous local content companies in the compact, he said. Mr. Jantuah said the group recommended the incorporation of clear local content and guidelines and monitoring mechanisms and sanctions. Ken Ofori Atta, Minister of Finance 07.04.2017 LISTEN A new tax regime came into effect from March 31, 2017, following the amendment of some tax laws. Parliament approved all four tax cut bills presented by the Finance Minister in the 2017 budget. The bills are the Income Tax Bill, Special Petroleum Tax Bill, Special Import Levy Bill and Customs and Excise (Petroleum Taxes and Petroleum Related Levies) (Repeal) Bill. The passage of these bills give government the legal backing to implement its programmes enumerated in the budget. Though all four bills have been passed it is yet to receive Presidential assent before it can become a law. The Income Tax(Amendment seeks to amend the Income Tax Act,2015(Act 896)to exempt the gain on the realization of securities of companies listed on the Ghana Stock Exchange from income tax for the period 2017 to 2021 The Special Import Levy aims at removing levies payable on specific imported goods, while the Customs and Excise Bill seeks to repeal petroleum taxes and petroleum related levies. The Customs and Excise (Petroleum Taxes and Petroleum Related Levies) (Repeal) Bill, 2017, is to repeal custom and excise levies on petroleum products. The amendment of the bills will give the government the legal backing to reduce taxes for businesses as contained in the 2017 Budget Statement and Economic Policy. Parliament earlier on had approved the financial policy of the government of Ghana for the year ending 31st December, 2017. However, the former deputy minister of finance, Cassiel Ato Forson, has accused the Nana Akufo-Addo administration of "deceit" over the abolishing of the VAT tax. The budget, and the bill which was prepared by the government and laid before parliament seeks to abolish VAT on Financial services which includes non-life insurance and professional services in the nature of accountancy, investment and legal services. But, Hon Ato Forson explained that, the minister of Finance changed his position in parliament to exclude professional services in the nature of accountancy, investment, legal services and non-life insurance contracts from the exempted provisions. Simply put, it is only aspects of the VAT on financial services that have been abolished and not the entire provision, he wrote on his Facebook Wall. Financial services companies that perform functions like accountancy, investment, legal services and non-life insurance contracts will still be subject to Value Added Tax. He continued: What saddens me is that the budget statement stated categorically that government was abolishing the entire VAT provisions on all financial services. So, why this deceit? Mr Minister, who are you deceiving? Why change a policy document that has already gone through cabinet approval? He further accused the finance minister of inconsistencies in the reduction of the VAT rate from 17.5 percent to 3 percent. The new Act seeks to amend the Value Added Tax regime and to mandate a taxable person who is a retailer or wholesaler for tax payable to a flat rate of 3%. Yet again, the inconsistencies are glaring, he said. Contrary to previous commentaries by the minister of Finance during the Budget reading and debate that the government is going to give some tax relief by reducing the VAT rate from 17.1/2% to 3%, this has not reflected since a flat rate of 3% is numerically equivalent to the 171/2% VAT that allows the taxable person to net off his/her input and output VAT, he said. Although parliament has approved the removal of the levy, processes have not been completed by stakeholders to effect the change, hence spare part dealers who are expected to reduce their prices are unable to reduce prices. A statement by the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) directed officers at the ports and customs to adhere to the implementation of the 1 percent special import levy. Ampadu Siaw speaking in an interview said "Although the government has removed the import levy and that decision has also been approved by parliament, there is still some ongoing paperwork to ensure that the removal actually takes full effect, and so we are meeting with the Ministry of Finance and other relevant bodies and individuals to finalise everything. It is only after this that we will reduce the prices of spare parts." "As we speak, there is nowhere in this country that we have reduced the prices of spare parts because we have not finalised the process," he added. However, the Association of spare parts dealers at Abossey Okai in Accra says they do not feel betrayed if they do not enjoy the tax cuts announced in the 2017 budget immediately. The traders were thrown in a fix when it emerged that they may not enjoy any tax cuts due to the rules and regulations regarding the common external tariff of the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS. There were agitations from importers on Monday, April 3 after news broke that the spare parts dealers may not enjoy tax cuts as promised by government in the 2017 budget statement, at least not during the tenure of this government. A review of the tariff can only be made after a minimum of five years. But Chairman of the Association Joseph Paddy says they do not feel betrayed by this development. We do not feel betrayed; we know government has goodwill for us that was why it was even announced. We trust the government and we know that these kinds of reliefs go through processes before they are implemented, so we are not disturbed, he hinted. Mr Paddy added that his outfit is hopeful and will continue to engage government on a mutual agreement. We are too much hopeful, where we have gotten to. We are hopeful. We are still discussing with government to make sure both parties are covered. At the end of the day, its the consumer that has to be protected from abuse of these exemptions, he assured. Meanwhile, checks by 3FM Business also revealed that some dealers have already reduced the prices of some of their wares even before the implementation of the tax cuts, due to the open market policy. Apparently, the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) seeking a review of the tax retention policy captured in the 2017 budget and economic policy statement of government. The policy, requires all companies, including importers, who qualify for tax and duty exemptions to pay their taxes upfront to be refunded in 30days. Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC), Yofi Grant, speaking at a meeting with the members of the American Chamber of Commerce in Accra said the policy needs a rethink hence the high-level meeting. I must say here that, a recent policy or statement that came out of the budget presentation that makes things difficult at the ports and for businesses is the tax retention, where companies are being asked to pay taxes upfront to be refunded in 30days. We have had a big meeting about it, and the conclusion was that it was a bit of a difficulty because if you are business and you came into Ghana with a net worth of about US$500 million and you have to pay these taxes to be refunded to you later, it could be a major cashflow issue. And it will also significantly and negatively impact on your business. So, we need to look at it and take it off. The high-level meeting comes on the heels of a March 21, 2017 letter from the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), signed by Commissioner Kuudamnuru John Vianney of the Customs Division, to all ports stations in the country, directing the implementation of the policy as captured in the budget and approved by Parliament. The letter sighted by the B&FT states that: The government had put in a policy that requires all applicants who qualify for exemption from import duties and taxes to make prior payments and then make a claim for a refund of the amount paid. The letter further directed the tax officials to immediately implement the policy, adding: You are therefore to ensure strict adherence to the policy and report any problems for redress. Mr. Grant stressed the need for government to do more to make Ghana the investment hub and the first choice for any person thinking of investing in Africa. We also have to take off taxes on raw material for production, but before we do that, we need to clearly define what production and manufacturing is. That will let us know exactly who qualifies for these tax exemptions, he said. He was also of the view that; the business community will have to interact more with government in finding solutions to existing challenges and creating an enabling environment for businesses to thrive. There are still a lot of things that we ought to do, if we want to become an investment attractive country. Now, why the sudden real focus on investments? For those of you who have studied and followed the economy quiet closely. We inherited an economy that had a major fiscal challenge, because all our revenues were eaten up by recurrent expenditure, and so the government really has no fiscal space as we speak to do any development. But the governments purpose is to create an environment where the people are happy by attracting investments, Mr. Grant said. Meanwhile, an economist and investment banker, Mr Alhassan Yakubu-Tali, has lauded the governments decision to cut down or eliminate some taxes to enhance the growth of businesses in the country. According to him, the imposition of taxes on businesses was a way of stifling the growth of the private sector, noting that they were punitive to their operations. Mr. Yakubu-Tali who is also the immediate-past Chairman of the Germany Chapter of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) said the move by the government would yield the needed results in the shortest possible time. As a country, we have been preaching financial inclusion and with a checked banking record in the past, it did not make any financial sense to have imposed high taxes on financial services for instance. Therefore, the removal of taxes on financial services will give room for many people to access banking services and enhance financial inclusion, he said. 2017 Budget Mr Yakubu-Tali, who has wide experience in international banking, said the removal of taxes would encourage foreign investment. He indicated that whenever foreigners want to invest in any country, they considered the tax policy and how it favoured investors, hence the removal will pave way for a lot of them to come into the country. The best way to attract the needed investment is not to overtax but to blend taxation with incentivisation. I would urge the government to go further and reduce or eliminate other unproductive taxes to help bolster local and international investor confidence in the economy, he emphasised. Mr Yakubu-Tali said he was optimistic that the government would succeed if it was able to implement many of the policies it promised Ghanaians in the lead up to the 2016 general election. He said all that Ghanaians were looking for was a successful nation; therefore, everyone would be happy if the government succeeded. Finance Minister, Ken Ofori Atta has inaugurated an 11-member reconstituted board to spearhead the broader plan and objectives of the largest non-bank financial institution in the country, Social Security and the National Insurance (SSNIT). The Minister administered the oath of Secrecy and the Official oath to the board chairman, Dr. Kwame Addo-Kufour, a former Minister of Defense and brother of former President John Agyekum. The Board members who were sworn in include, Hon Abena Osei-Asare, Alex Frimpong, Daniel Acheampong, Joshua Ansah, Prince William Ankrah, Mahamadu Assibi Azonko, David Ofori Acheampong, Benjamin Odotei Asumang, Bearice Zakpaa Vib-Sanziri and Dr. John Ofori. Speaking at the swearing in ceremony held at the Finance Ministry in Accra, Ken Ofori-Atta charged the board to leverage on technology and automation to whip all potential contributors, adding that government is committed honoring their bit to ensure efficient operation of SSNIT. The newly sworn in board chairman and Former Defense Minister in the erstwhile Kufuor administration also noted that SSNIT will be subjected to an extensive review by reputable financial assessor to ascertain it performance and structure. Several challenges which bedeviled SSNITs operations listed as irregularities and improper practices, imprudent investment, and other external, sluggish payment of the contribution of government workers will be will be dealt with if the Fund is properly managed, Dr. Addo-Kufour assured. 07.04.2017 LISTEN The late South African Reggae Star, Lucky Dube, once made the following profound statements in one of his tracks: 'It takes a million people to build a record reputation, but it takes one stupid fool to destroy everything that has been done. The world knows your nation as a nation of drug lords, everyone blames your nation for the destruction of the world. The world knows your people as the most violent in the world, everyone around you will always keep his eye open. Take it upon yourself to restore your nation's dignity' The fight against illegal mining and the open destruction of our lands and water bodies has now taken a national character. Civil society operators have joined the fight albeit too late, the Media have taken the frontline. The voices of reason against this fight have been amplified and more sane minds have joined the fight. I was very happy when various sector Ministries met and engaged the Media to support the fight against this epidemic. I saw many of my former colleagues and seniors from the inky fraternity. I am very happy an eight member inter-ministerial committee has been set up to deal with the problem. I had suggested something to that effect in this column last week. I still think that the security Ministries of Interior and Defence should have been added to the committee. The situation at hand, in my view, should be considered as a national security issue. There is no way the eight named inter-ministerial committee members can on their own enforce whatever decisions they arrive at after careful and diligent assessment of the situation. We need to use the security agencies to swiftly and ruthlessly deal with this epidemic before it afflicts us all. I was very sad, however, when I read what Prof. Frimpong-Boateng, the Minister for Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation (MESTI) said at the meeting with the media practitioners. 'I went to Cote d'Ivoire last week only to be welcomed by the unpleasant news about how the effects of galamsey in Ghana have resulted in the pollution of some of their water sources.' They find it difficult to even treat the water to make it wholesome, and this is bad for us as a country because it paints a bad image about us.' I am just putting myself in the shoes of Prof. Frimpong Boateng. Imagine as a Minister from Ghana, visiting a counterpart Minister in a neighbouring country for whatever interactions and being told that as a result of the poor management of water resources back in his country, the host country is seriously challenged with the provision of healthy potable water for its citizens. Indeed, rivers meander to their final destinations through various countries. The sources of rivers, in this case the countries, have a right to the use of those rivers as much as the countries the rivers traverse during their long winding journeys into the seas eventually. International conventions oblige all nations that have common use of rivers to respect the rights of other nations in the use of this all important natural resources. Should the people of Burkina Faso decide to do anything to any of the tributaries or the main Volta River that will negatively impact on our lives, Ghana as a nation has the right to protest to an international body to address the situation. Over the past few years, the Volta River has not 'performed' very well in Ghana in terms of its flows. Consequently, Akosombo and the Kpong Dams have not been able to generate as much electric power as the nation expects from them. Ironically, Burkina Faso, which is more Sahelian than Ghana, gets more water into its Dam reservoir to the point that it almost every year spills excess water from its Dam to protect it. This exercise comes to us with its negative consequences though. What that means is that, Burkina Faso is better managing its 'portion' of the Volta Rivers than Ghana is doing. The various tributaries of the Volta River are more silted in Ghana because of unregulated human activities than in Burkina Faso, else one cannot fathom why the semi-Sahelian country would have more water in those rivers than us, in Ghana. The net effect is that our hydro sources of electricity generations are failing. There are reports also that the Bui Dam is in danger of functioning efficiently because of the damage being inflicted on the Bui river by the same galamsey operators. The open destruction of the Birim, Offin, Pra, Ankobra and Tano rivers among others by galamsey operators without thinking of their long term effects on this nation, simply beats my imagination. That we have a government entrusted with the powers to protect all the resources available to us as a people, use them to meet our needs but in a manner that allows future generations to also have them for their use; and that over the last eight years, the criminals and nation wreckers could openly use unorthodox methods to dredge our rivers and water bodies for gold without any consideration for the damning effect we are all suffering today. While admitting that galamsey did not begin with the eight year period of the Mills-Mahama administration, the operators did a deadly blow to this nation within the period of the Mills-Mahama era with such unadulterated impunity. The occasional efforts by the security agencies to clamp down on them were frustrated by politicians in high places. Equipment used by the operators which are seized by the security agencies during occasional swoops on them are quickly returned to the owners on the orders of some politicians from above. Indeed, that the reports indicate the involvement of some politicians in these heinous acts cannot be disputed. We sit down for a few people to arrogate to themselves the power to inflict such painful damage to our collective survival in the process of exploiting part of our natural resources for their survival. In the unregulated melee, not only have they caused havoc to our collective existence, but we have exported the result of our indiscipline to a neighbouring country. Today, Ghana's reputation in the eyes of our neighbours in Cote d'Ivoire has diminished on account of the fact that our irresponsible attitudes towards a collective natural resource, river, is making life difficult for them. They are blaming us for the 'unwholesome' potable water flowing into their homes. While the government of Cote d'Ivoire is very worried about the poor quality of water it is giving to its people, we in Ghana did not seem to be worried about this suicidal journey we embarked on so many years ago. The Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) kept on complaining about the turbidity of the raw water they had to treat for the consumption of the public, and there was dead silence. Their production costs rose and kept rising, and we took no actions. With no alternative, the poor Ghanaian had to use whatever quality of water that came his way. The national security did not see the situation as dire. The problem was left with the District Assemblies to deal with when they did not have the human resources and the material resources to manage it. In the process, everybody who matters in the areas of operations of galamsey became compromised. The operators had a field day. It is heartening that we have woken up and acting on it. We have our reputation as a nation to protect in the eyes of our neighbours. We have the responsibility to ensure that the people of this country are offered clean water to protect them from water related diseases. We have a responsibility to keep the rivers so serene and lively as we meet them and bequeath same to the next generation which also has the responsibility to bequeath same to the generation after it. This is the time to ride on the shoulders of public anger and displeasure to deal a deadly blow to this epidemic once and for all. The destruction of our waters is a siege that has to be repulsed with ruthless vigour. It does not matter those involved. What matters is protecting the future. Three tots, Daavi. [email protected] The minority in parliament have continuously registered their dissatisfaction with the tax cut policy announced by the President Akuffo Addos administration. The Deputy Minority Leader, James Klutse Avedzie, has said that governments decision to reduce aspects of the Energy Sector Levies will further delay the payment of the web of debt that entangles the energy sector. While the National Electrification Scheme Levy (NESL) goes down from 5% to 2%, the Public Lighting Levy (PLL) reduces from 5% to 3% per kilowatt hour of electricity charged on all categories of consumers, following Parliaments adoption of the amendment of the Energy Sector Levies law. In 2016 alone, the levies raked in GH3.3billion, higher than the GH3.2billion the erstwhile NDC government projected to receive that year. The reduction in the levies will cost government about GH308 million in revenue losses, which means 60 percent of monies collected under the NESL and 40% of monies collected under the PLL will no longer be available for payment into the Power Generation and Infrastructure Support Sub-Account. But justifying the need for the cuts on the floor of parliament, Chairman of the Finance Committee, Dr. Mark Assibey Yeboah, said the reductions will bring relief to electricity consumers. Government, as part of the 2017 budget statement and economic policy has proposed to reduce or abolish some taxes in order to bring relief to consumers. Pursuant to that commitment, government introduced this bill to amend the energy sector levies Act (2015, Act 899) as part of measures to reduce the energy sector levies imposed on consumers, Dr. Assibey Yeboah said. The Committee report further indicated that the reduction in the rates would not have any impact on the current obligations under the debt restructuring arrangements with the relevant creditor banks. Hon. James Avedzie, however, disagreed explaining that: The payment of the debt or recovery of debt will prolong. So, if it is supposed to take two years to pay back the legacy debt, because of the reduction in the levy, it will take a longer time to pay back. The owners of the debt have to bear with government, because of the policy government has taken, they are reducing the levy and so government will collect less and for that matter it will take long for government to pay back, he said. Introduced in 2015, the primary aim of the levies is to raise revenue to meet the increasing debts owed by major institutions in the energy sector, including the Volta River Authority (VRA), Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo) and the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG). The ranking Member of the Finance Committee also indicated that the delay could also have a hit on the economy. If you cant pay the debt within the shortest possible time and once you cannot recover the full cost of the product, the production of electricity, it will have negative effect on the economy and for that matter, it weakens the governments strength to pay the debt. Its the promise government gave to the people; lets see how much be reduced in the electricity bill from next month. There may be a positive impact but very minimal,he added. Already, the government has settled GH588 million of the GH2.4 billion indebtedness of the Volta River Authority (VRA) to local banks and its suppliers. This was after an initial deposit of GH250 million and two quarterly payments of GH169 million in the last quarter of 2016 and the first quarter of 2017. The government, last year, reached an agreement with the local banks to restructure the legacy debts in the energy sector. It still beats my imagination as to why some NPP folks are defending the action of the so-called Delta Force. Probably, those people don't understand the party they belong to as far as its ideology is concerned. The NPP respects the rule of law and it has "Development in Freedom" as its motto. Why should our members copy blindly and wrongly from a violent party like the NDC? Is the Delta Force fighting against the NDC or NPP? We were all in Ghana when four NPP supporters were butchered to death in daylight at Agobloshie in Greater Accra by NDC members. The atrocities caused by the Azorka Boys, Collins Dauda's younger brother at Sankore and even at polling stations cannot be recounted. But, where were the members of the Delta Force at the time to counter their counterparts? Seriously, I never heard from them. We can't live in a country where people are just removed from their positions because they are perceived not to have worked for the party during an election. We can't tolerate a situation where a vigilante group could set free, a person on remand and threaten judges under a democratic rule. How many votes at all did they give to Nana Akufo-Addo in 2016? Again, what written or formal contract did they sign with the then Presidential Candidate of our beloved party for them to use as a basis of their useless attacks? Could all political appointments be made within three months into office? In fact, the action of the Delta Force must be condemned in no uncertain terms by any rational Ghanaian. We all played key roles in Victory '16, but not all of us have been appointed into positions of trust. Let's exercise patience and give the president enough space to put things right for us. Some of these negativities put the name of the party into disrepute. We have a country to govern, and an election to win not only in 2020, but also 2024 and beyond. We must therefore be circumspect in any action we take today, for the Ghanaians that kicked the NDC out of power in 2016, will still be around to pass judgement on the NPP administration in 2020. Let's say no to Vigilante Groups. Katakyie Kwame Opoku Agyemang Asante Bekwai-Asakyiri 0202471070 Johannesburg (AFP) - Thousands of protesters marched through South African cities on Friday demanding President Jacob Zuma's resignation, as a second ratings agency downgraded the country's debt to junk status. Zuma's sacking of respected finance minister Pravin Gordhan last week has fanned public anger, divisions within the ruling ANC party and a sharp decline in investor confidence in the country. "Recent political events, including a major cabinet reshuffle, will weaken standards of governance and public finances," the Fitch ratings agency predicted as it announced the downgrade. The Standard & Poor's agency had also downgraded South African sovereign debt to junk status after Zuma made the dramatic move to change ten ministerial positions. Zuma, who came to power in 2009, has been battered by a series of corruption scandals during his time in office, while the country has suffered record unemployment, slowing growth and stubborn racial inequality. Ex-South African finance minister Pravin Gordhan was seen as a bulwark against corruption His removal of Gordhan unleashed a fresh bout of criticism, as many ordinary South Africans and international investors saw the former minister as a bulwark against corruption. Large crowds gathered at anti-Zuma rallies in the capital Pretoria, the economic hub Johannesburg and coastal cities of Durban and Cape Town. Several thousand people attended the Johannesburg protest organised by the opposition Democratic Alliance party, which hopes to make gains in 2019 elections under its leader Mmusi Maimane, 36. "We want Zuma to fall. He is too corrupt. Real people are struggling. I voted for Nelson Mandela, but Maimane has a lot of integrity and he's young," protester Vanessa Michael, 54, from East Rand, told AFP. The African National Congress (ANC) led the decades-long struggle against apartheid, and carried Nelson Mandela to power in the 1994 elections that ended white-minority rule. But the party has lost popularity in recent years and slipped to 55 percent of the vote in last year's local elections -- its worst ever result. Divided ANC? The reshuffle has caused huge political turmoil Zuma this week appeared to have quelled a rebellion within the ANC despite senior party figures, including Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, speaking out against Gordhan's sacking. On Friday, scores of camouflage-wearing members of MK, the former armed wing of the ANC, paraded at the party's headquarters in downtown Johannesburg in a show of loyalty to Zuma. The cabinet overhaul -- which was announced in a midnight statement -- cleared out many of Zuma's critics. "Tensions within the ANC will mean that political energy will be absorbed by efforts to maintain party unity and fend off leadership challenges," Fitch said in its statement. "The agency believes that the cabinet reshuffle will further undermine the investment climate." Junk status was likely to increase the cost of the government's debt and shrink public funds available for welfare, health, education and housing. South Africa's trade union federation Cosatu this week joined many anti-apartheid veterans, civil action groups and business leaders calling for the president to resign. Zuma, 74, is due to step down as head of the ANC in December, and as president ahead of the 2019 general election. He is seen as favouring his ex-wife, former African Union chief Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, to succeed him. Zuma has been accused of being in the sway of the wealthy Gupta business family, allegedly granting them influence over government appointments, contracts and state-owned businesses. Parliament will vote on a motion of no confidence in the president on April 18, though he has easily survived previous such votes against him. A former presidential staffer, Dr. Clement Apaak has described the raid at a Court in Kumasi by members of the vigilante group, Delta Force as an indictment on the democratic credentials of president Akufo-Addo. The invasion of the court presided by Mary Senkyire Thursday came barely a week after the president pledged to crack down on vigilantism when he visited the Ashanti region. This, according to Dr. Apaak who is also the Member of Parliament for Builsa North is an indictment on all of usbut particularly government and a slap in the face of the president. He added remember that the president himself had gone to the Ashanti region on his thank you tour, he interacted with various opinion leadersinteracting with Otumfuo where he gave assurance that he was not going to preside over a country where lawlessness will be the order of the day so if you look at all of these pronouncements and developments by government officials including the president and then you juxtapose that with what we saw yesterday it raises a lot of question as to who is in charge of our nations security. Because quite clearly it is a defiance of orders given by the commander in chief and lack of respect for our security agencies. Some members of Delta Force, a vigilante group affiliated to the ruling New Patriotic Party in the Ashanti region Thursday morning stormed a Kumasi Circuit Court to free 13 of their members who were facing charges for causing mayhem at the Ashanti Regional Coordinating Council. The irate group destroyed court properties and freed the suspects in the process. The 13 members were detained in connection with attacking the Regional Security Coordinator. The marauding group also attacked the presiding judge who had earlier ruled that the suspects be remanded to appear before court on April 20, 2017. The Inspector General of Police (IGP) David Asante Apeatu said the group associated with the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) overwhelmed the police at the Kumasi circuit court. they (police officers) were overwhelmed by the numbers that came to the court to beseech the court to enable these accused persons to escape, he said. Meanwhile, all the 13 members of the group who escaped from the court room have turned themselves in, a police statement said. According to the statement, the suspects reported to the police Thursday evening hours after they had escaped in such an unprecedented fashion from the court. The accused persons who were arraigned before the Kumasi Metropolitan assembly circuit court presided over by HH Mary Nsenkyire and had been remanded into custody for two weeks but escaped after pandemonium broke out at the court had reported themselves to the Police and are currently in police custody, the statement said. A former deputy Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Dominic Ayine, has described the invasion of a court in Kumasi Thursday by members of the dreaded vigilante group, Delta Force, as extremely worrying and disconcerting. When I got to know it was a true story, I was really shocked and disappointed, he stated on Morning Starr Friday. The Delta Force has done the unthinkable, he added, urging that members of the group should be treated as common criminals. According to Mr Ayine, who is also the deputy ranking member for the Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs of Parliament, when he heard the news of the raid, he thought it was one of those fake news until it was confirmed that it was a true story. I was really really shockedI wondered why a court of law could be attacked when usually the court should have police men.so I was really shocked, he told the host of Morning Starr Francis Abban. Some members of Delta Force, a vigilante group affiliated to the ruling New Patriotic Party in the Ashanti region Thursday morning stormed a Kumasi Circuit Court to free 13 of their members who were facing charges for causing mayhem at the Ashanti Regional Coordinating Council. According to information gathered by Starrfmonline.com, the irate group destroyed court properties and freed the suspects in the process. The 13 members were detained in connection with attacking the Regional Security Coordinator. The marauding group also attacked the presiding judge who had earlier ruled that the suspects be remanded to appear before court on April 20, 2017. The Inspector General of Police (IGP) David Asante Apeatu said the group associated with the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) overwhelmed the police at the Kumasi circuit court. they (police officers) were overwhelmed by the numbers that came to the court to beseech the court to enable these accused persons to escape, he said. Meanwhile, all the 13 members of the group who escaped from the court room have turned themselves in, a police statement said. According to the statement, the suspects reported to the police Thursday evening hours after they had escaped in such an unprecedented fashion from the court. The accused persons who were arraigned before the Kumasi Metropolitan assembly circuit court presided over by HH Mary Nsenkyire and had been remanded into custody for two weeks but escaped after pandemonium broke out at the court had reported themselves to the Police and are currently in police custody, the statement said. The elders of the Otuano Royal Family, the Kingmakers of the Effutu Traditional Area in the Central Region, have warned the Effutu Member of Parliament, Alex Afenyo-Markin to desist from actions that may disturb the upcoming Aboakyir with his political colours. They urged the Member of Parliament to restrain his supporters from fomenting troubles ahead of the 2017 peaceful Aboakyir Festival. Addressing a news conference at the Otuano Royal House at Winneba, the Head of the Family, Neenyi Bondzie Essiedu, appealed to the lawmaker and his assigns to stop introducing politics into a traditional festival, and respect the existing Aboakyir road map that has helped maintain peace for the past five years. The Member of Parliament for Effutu Hon. Alex Afenyo-Markin cannot be left out of the people who want to destroy the peaceful celebration with party colours. He is determined to do away with the roadmap which had been in existence for the past five years and had ensured virtually a peaceful Aboakyir. But if we hear utterances like 'our party is in power, my party is in power and my government is power. Wait a minute, is our MP who is also a legal brain drifting away from the constitution? he quizzed. Alexander Afenyo-Markin He said for the past five years, the MP has not been part of festival, but I cannot phantom why he is going round this time inviting people on television to this year's Aboakyir. He should be up and doing as a Member of Parliament for Effutuman. He entreated those who love Effutuman to join them with joy and open heart to peacefully celebrate the 2017 Aboakyir in style. He assured the public that this year's Aboakyir festival would be celebrated with the existing road map. Having met with the leadership of the two Asafo companies; Tuafo No 1 and Dentsifo No. 2, we have both unanimously resolved to peacefully celebrate this year's Aboakyir festival using the existing road map which has helped maintained peace and sanity needed for the past five years he added. 2017 Aboakyir Festival will be peaceful Paramount Chief assures In a related development, the Paramount Chief of the Effutu Traditional Area, Neenyi Ghartey VII, has assured the public that the impending 2017 Aboakyir Festival would be peaceful . The festival in the past years has been largely marred by violence as a result of a lingering chieftaincy dispute in the area. But the Chief explained that such things are a thing of the past, since for the first time in twenty (20) years, all the Asafo companies have agreed to participate in the celebration of the deer hunting. By: Akwesi Koranteng/citifmonline.com/Ghana One of the thirteen members of Delta Force, the Pro New Patriotic Party (NPP) vigilante group in the Ashanti Region, is yet to turn himself in to the police. This is according to a member of the group, Ernest Appiah Dankwa. Following the assault on a Kumasi court on Thursday where 13 Delta Force members standing trial were forcibly freed, twelve of those suspects have surrendered to the police. This was after eight of those who attacked the court were also arrested shortly for the incident. According to the Delta Force member who spoke to Citi News, one of the twelve is still at large, and his phone is off. This revelation contrasts the announcement by the Police that all the 13 fugitives had turned themselves in. Why Police arrested 13 Delta Force members Members of the Delta Force stormed a Kumasi Circuit court on Thursday, and vandalized some court property after freeing 13 of their members, who were facing trial for allegedly harassing the Ashanti Regional Security Coordinator, George Adjei. The 13 escaped after some members of the vigilante group monitoring the court proceedings, sparked confusion during the hearing. Appiah Dankwa explained among other things that, they vandalized and destroyed court property because the leadership of the NPP in the region had assured them that the court process was going to be a formality, and that their members would be released. He explained further that, they were angered when the judge remanded their colleagues to two weeks in prison against their earlier agreement. Appiah Dankwa also expressed their disappointment about the decision of the National Security Minister to cause their arrest when they had helped the party during the 2016 elections. We worked for the party [NPP] to come into powerthe boys stood up and fought to bring the party into power, places we were not supposed to go we went, and for eight years we left our work and laid down our lives for the party only for you Kan Dapaah, National Security Minister, to claim that you don't have anything to do with us, and that we should tender in our certificates. In 2008, when the party went into opposition, you claimed that you are done with politics. So who should suffer for the party to come into power for you to get a position and claim that you only work with verified certificates. So we have decided that Delta Force, if that is how they will deal with us, we will all cross carpet and join the NDC, and we shall see what will happen in 2020, he added. By: Godwin A. Allotey & Umaru Sanda Amadu/citifmonline.com/Ghana Follow @AlloteyGodwin The Ashanti regional chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) says he cannot condemn the attack on the Kumasi Circuit Court by members of the vigilante group Delta Force. Bernard Antwi Boasiako popularly known as Chairman Wontumi said members of the group are loyal servants who selflessly served the party and cannot be treated as criminals. He told Nhyira FM in Kumasi that Thursday's incident has been exaggerated. The vigilante group affiliated to the governing party attacked the court and set free 13 of its members who were facing prosecution for acts of vandalism. The attack, captured on video showed the group, numbering about 50, besieged the Kumasi Circuit court premises chanting. They broke into the court and freed their members who had only weeks ago chased out the Regional Security Coordinator appointed by the president. Joy News' Ashanti Regional correspondent, Nurudeen Mohammed reported that the police were outnumbered and caught between securing the suspects and protecting the judge, Mary Nsenkyire. This was after the judge had announced that the suspects were going to be remanded for two weeks pending further investigation, a move that did not go down well with the members of the vigilante group who were on the court premises. In anger, they charged at the judge and demanded the immediate release of the suspects, Nurudeen reported. At least 13 of the suspects were freed by the vigilante group and they are Kwadwo Fosu, Awal Sadat, Abubakar Siddique, Jamel Issah, Hamza Mohammed, Salou Issahak, Akwasi Wusu. Others are Kwabena Wusu, Kofi Kyei, Agya Baodu, Yussif Salou, Yussif Salou, Kwaku Awutwi. However, Chairman Wontumi said it is unfair for the public to judge the members of the Delta Force without hearing them. Speaking in Twi, he said despite the fact that they have been accused of doing something bad, the matter should be left to the court to make a pronouncement on whether they are culpable. He added that because he serves as a godfather to many of the members of the party in the Ashanti region, he does not know the much-lambasted members of the group to be evil. They are being vilified unjustifiably because I am close to them and I know them very well and the issue has been exaggerated, he said in his local dialect. According to him, it is fair that when something happens both sides are given a fair hearing. Meanwhile, the 13 suspects have turned themselves in. They are said to be slapped with another charge of escaping from lawful custody. Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Abubakar Ibrahim Banjul (Gambia) (AFP) - The Gambia's United Democratic Party (UDP) emerged from decades in opposition in the country's parliament to take its first absolute majority on Friday, as support for former leader Yahya Jammeh's party collapsed. Official results from Thursday's election, announced by the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), revealed the UDP won 31 of the 53 available elected seats in the country's National Assembly, while Jammeh's Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction (APRC) shrank from 43 elected seats to five. Five more seats are appointed by the president in the chamber to give a total of 58, leaving the UDP with a majority of two. "The results of these elections attest to the fact that Jammeh has never won an election in this country," UDP leader Ousainou Darboe said, accusing previous electoral commissions of rigging votes in the former leader's favour. Regarding Barrow's reform agenda, which envisages a massive overhaul of government and the security forces, Darboe said he and the president "are on the same page on virtually everything". Turnout was low at 42 percent, IEC Chairman Alieu Momar Njie said after reading out the results, saying more civic education was needed to persuade people to come out and vote in legislative polls. The UDP was one of seven parties who united to propel President Adama Barrow to power in December last year, but that coalition broke apart for the legislative election. The party has long considered itself a government-in-waiting, and Barrow was UDP treasurer until resigning to become the flagbearer candidate for the coalition. United Democratic Party (UDP) leader Ousainou Darboe poses for a photograph at his home in Serekunda on April 7, 2017 Lamin Dibba, a senior UDP official and current land minister, said the vote put the party in a strong position to make major changes in The Gambia. "Our first priority will be to look at the constitution, he said. "We will also ensure that the national assembly will give the nation the power to operate rather than the president," he said, referring to Jammeh's frequent use of executive orders to push through laws. Although the UDP has a presence in the cabinet, ministers are drawn from all seven coalition parties, meaning the parliamentary win has consolidated its power. Jammeh's regime imprisoned and intimidated UDP figures throughout his rule, with leader Darboe only recently released from jail after holding a protest against the death of a party member in custody that was deemed illegal. New era An expected surge for the Gambia Democratic Congress (GDC), an upstart party which did not join the coalition, failed to materialise, with the youth-led movement gaining just five seats. "For GDC I am very proud, being the youngest party. We fielded 52 candidates," said Ebrima Nyang, a GDC youth activist and a candidate who failed to win his seat. "But we were expecting more than this, it was surprising to many," he added. The Gambia's new President Adama Barrow had promised during his December election campaign to rejoin the ICC and the Commonwealth group of nations Smaller parties who joined the coalition took 11 more seats, and one independent candidate took a seat. The Gambia's National Assembly was long derided for acting as a rubber stamp for Jammeh's decisions, but hopes are high for a revitalised chamber with a raft of fresh faces elected. Commenting on the low turnout in what was a highly anticipated vote, Joseph Siegle, Director of Research at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies at National Defense University in Washington said the country's path to democracy was never likely to be smooth. "With memories of the 22 years of the highly personalised and repressive governance style of Yahya Jammeh still very fresh, citizens are wary of vesting too much authority in a single individual. Therefore the lack of enthusiasm may reflect this uncertainty," he told AFP by email. The Judicial Council has called an emergency meeting Friday over the raiding of a Circuit court in Kumasi where 13 suspects standing trial were freed. Joy News has learnt the decision-making body of the judiciary will discuss the circumstances that led to Thursday's attack and register its disappointment in the strongest possible terms. The Judicial Council is chaired by Chief Justice, Georgina Theodora Wood with membership from 17 state institutions, agencies and professional groups. Delta Force members after attack on Ashanti Regional Security Coordinator The attack on the court by pro-New Patriotic Party (NPP) vigilante group, Delta Force, has been widely criticised by Ghanaians, civil societies and political parties. Some bodily-built men numbering 50 stormed the court and resisted an order to hold 13 of their members in prison custody. The 13 are standing trial for violent behaviour and assault. The 13 were part of 21 men arrested by the police after they attacked the newly appointed Ashanti Regional Security Coordinator, George Agyei. The men had said Mr Agyei did not deserve the position because he played no role in the struggle to bring the NPP into power. Related Article: GBA condemns sickening, horrifying Delta Force attack They wanted President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to appoint their leader who was instrumental in the NPP's 2016 elections camapign. Out of the 21 men who were rounded up by the police and arraigned, only 13 showed up. This compelled Presiding judge, Mary M.E. Nsenkyire to direct the 13 men to be kept in custody to reappear on April 20. Dissatisfied with the judges decision, the men who were at the premises to sympathise with their colleagues, rushed into the court to free the 13. Related Article: Delta Force escapees: Turn yourselves in or be flushed out - Interior Minister IGP, David Apeatu The Inspector General of Police (IGP), David Apeatu, told the media Thursday the men used the backdoor of the court reserved for the judge. The leadership of the NPP, Ghana Bar Association (GBA), and National Democratic Congress (NDC) have all condemned the invasion, blaming it on the negligence of the police. Related Article: 13 Delta Force members report to police The Interior Minister, Ambrose Dery, entreated the escapees to turn themselves in or be smoked out by the police. However, the Ashanti Regional Police Command has said the 13 men have all reported to the police. Interior Minister, Ambrose Dery The incident has stoked an old debate about the need to beef up security of the country's judges and the various courts. The Police have offered to provide protection for Mary M.E. Nsenkyire after the attack, but reports say she has turned down the offer. The Association of Judges and Magistrates has scheduled a press conference on Friday to add its voice to the chorus of condemnation which has greeted the violent behaviour of the group. Meanwhile, Joy News has gathered the judge at the center of the invasion has signed the remand warrant for the 13 men who turned themselves in to be sent to the Central Prisons in Kumasi. They will be kept there until the April 20 hearing. Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Austin Brako-Powers | [email protected] 07.04.2017 LISTEN This person [Kennedy Agyapong] is supposed to be an honorable MP and consistently he comes up with statements, rantings and ravings that make us question how he got there in the first place (Angela Dwamena Aboagye, Executive Director of the Ark Foundation). KENNEDY AGYAPONG IS A MAJOR NATIONAL SECURITY THREAT Kennedy Agyapong, the present Member of Parliament for the Assin North Constituency, recently demonstrated another shameful act of gross unprofessionalism and unguarded thoughtlessness of cultural primitivism when he referred to the face of a television host as bofrot. Ken is indeed a classic case study in national disgrace. What is really wrong with this empty vessel, a creature whose own face looks like a leatherface-harmattan mask, a Halloween mask? A Trumpian political buffoon and slothful milquetoast, Kens tired and outworn and broken faces are a comical synonym for a congealed banana republic. This dated comedian who calls himself politician presents with a classic symptomatology of what the eminent economist, philosopher, mathematician, historian and writer Dr. Kofi Kiss Dompere appropriately calls mental murder, cognitive imbecility, and irreducible ignorance. How else could he be described? This comic exaggeration of a Zika-infested microcephalous public figure has reportedly insulted everyone in his party, the New Patriotic Party (NPP), calling party members stupid and fool. This blanket insulting descriptions covered the leadership of the party itself, including Akufo-Addo, who once respectfully addressed this existential anomaly of human clone as the redoubtable. Thus he says of Ken in part: Using the structures of the party to deal with the problems of the party is what we have to do. So I am asking everybody to respect that even senior members of the party like the redoubtable Kennedy Agyapong, I am pleading with him Pleading with him rather than petitioning the partys leadership to use the partys internal structures to sanction him? Monetization of Ghanaian politics has given this undignified grotesque caricature of a village champion a voice he will otherwise not have had amongst great, intelligent men and women of exceptional character. How multiparty democracy and politics and money have reduced members of the ruling class to prisoners of mediocrity and of the underserving political quackery of social animals like Ken, a political proband of sorts! This mad dog of a rabid politician, who is widely known for punctuating his public political communication with crude insults and unguarded buffoonery, asymptotically approximates our shameless though popular tendency to celebrate mediocrity. Only in Kennedy Agyapongs Ghana! Allegedly a big financier of the ruling party, Ken has stopped at nothing including holding this party and the nation to ransom on the basis of his privileged standing in this criminal political organization of ethnocentric hegemonists. Like an agitated and restive croaking frog, and a female dog in heat too, he hops from one local television and radio station to another just for the sake of making wild allegations, of casting memorable aspersions at his imagined political enemies, and in the process barking scandalously also like the public dog he is, he spreads saliva aerosol and corpse flies in studios. He reportedly claims to be in possession of a stash of incontrovertible evidence for some of the major instances of public corruption committed in the country yet, unlike the more intelligent and politically savvy and knowledgeable Martin Amidu, he sits his burning, tingling political hemorrhoids on this mountain of evidence and refuses to bring qui tam lawsuits against those suspected scheming, high-profile corruptocrats. Again, at one point he says the National Democratic Congress (NDC) reportedly has dispatched assassins to take his life when, in fact, this narrative could be a political dream of a schizo or a psycho, a narcissistic public dog running after its tangled tail in endless concentric circles of mental instability. Ken, Bob Marleys Crazy Baldhead, loves to do Azonto with Geto Boys classic rap song Mind Playing Tricks on Me and Gnarls Barkleys Crazy. This grossly unrefined Ken is a public nuisance, a professional pollutant, a disgusting liability to common sense. He is also a notably bad example to Ghanaian and African youth, a bad role model for that matterwho needs to be quarantined in an insane asylum for the safety of his colleague parliamentarians and Ghanaians at large. In one sense therefore, Ken is a patronizing catalyzer of internal colonialism via his angry, violent outbursts and schadenfreude politicsboth of which have no place in any civilized society. Wole Soyinka was right to note: the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it. In the main though, why Akufo-Addo cannot seem to clip the wings of this phallocentric misogynist, flightless dinosaur is all too clearas implied elsewhere. In other words Akufo-Addos hand is in the poisonous mouthparts of Ken, and he cannot bring himself to bite it. Akufo-Addo cannot bite the hand that is feeding him, model instantiation of political realism and convenience. Nevertheless, the president is not alone in this regard. Listen to what Osei Kyei Mensah-Bonsu too, an MP, also has to say about Ken: He has good content but it doesnt come across very wellunfortunately sometimes the way he comes across is not the best, so he should watch it Good content, like open defecation? What is good content in Ghanaian politicsextreme partisan politics, kleptomania or institutional corruption? Has there ever been good content in Kens microcephalus prosthetic head apart from his trademark rhetoric of vigilante vulgarity leveled against more intelligent and powerful women? Dont we all know Ken has a bofrot mind? And the grotesque face of a laughing hyena? Kens prosthetic head is a landfill of open defecation. No wonder the barking public dog hates nerd glasses with passion! Kens undisciplined, diarrheic tongue is partly because of the undue pampering he enjoys from the partys leadership and unenlightened Ghanaians. No intelligent person will see good content in this mans moral and political characterology. This man therefore represents everything that is objectionable in the character of the humanity of our post-Nkrumah politicians. Of course, we are not reducing our critique of Ken to the question of essentialism. It is more complicated than that, for he is his own enemy. Yet he, neither an astute or maverick politician, and Akufo-Addo inhabit a Machiavellian mutual space of vigilante violence and ethnocentric hegemonism. When one is not busy inciting Asantes to reduce the humanity of Gas and Ewes to the indictable ashes of the Rwandan Genocide and threatening national security officials, the other is preaching brimstone-and-fire Yen Akanfuo and All-Die-Be-Die on the bully pulpit of political theology. Both are the Frankenstein faces of the Invincible Forces and Delta Forcethe essence of vigilante violence in modern Ghanaian politics. And both are political Frankenstein monsters. While Akufo-Addo is promising to contain these vigilante groups, Ken has reportedly been daring the latter and his ministerial appointees to try it. Both have been using the same language to convey their intentions to the public nonetheless, the language of political deception. Ken, the kwashiorkor face of a broken piece of dilapidated furniture, and Akufo-Addo are the same then, the same in that the former has merely been repeating the latters policy position on the vigilante groupswhich is to leave them to operate freely in accordance with the partys secret All-Die-Be-Die Manifesto. Ken is indeed, a cannibalistic Trumpian wild boar. Ken, an apoptotic enemy of the state and its open-defecation democracy, is beyond the pale of moral passivation. And, of course, no one believed us when we once wrote that Akufo-Addo was a deadly political cannibal and his vigilante seeds, politically autosarcophagic. Political strategy, Bob Marley once aptly described this dangerous political trend on the track Ambush in the Night. Listen: See them fighting for power But they know not the hour So they bribing with their guns, spare-parts and money Cause every time they can reach us, through political strategy Your brother got to be your enemy The above notwithstanding, it does appear that at the end of the day Osei Kyei Mensah-Bonsu could still be right about Ken: He has good content but it doesnt come across very wellunfortunately sometimes the way he comes across is not the best, so he should watch it But Ken does not have to watch it! This is because his absolute, spirited defense of the Invincible Forces and the Delta Force and their vigilante intimation of Ghanaians probably enjoys Akufo-Addos imprimatur. Still, unlike Akufo-Addo though, Kens may not have come across the best way. Has he betrayed Akufo-Addo then? Yes! Political Siamese Twins both indeed are, diabolical hypocrites and moral, political fraudsto say the least. With such persons in positions of authority, no wonder Ghana is far below the dangerous depths of Down Under. Ask Australias rock band Men at Work! FOOD FOR THOUGHT: SOME CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES Vigilante groups such as Invincible Forces, Delta Forces and the rest were made to believe to hold the final authority in the scheme of internal affairs. He said, mark this down, the country will experience more violent attacks ahead of the appointment of Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives. I blame these acts on leadership failure which predates the electioneering activities and how the party used these boys in their internal disputes. Believe me, these attacks are just a tip of the iceberg and Im telling you to wait until we begin hearing announcement of MMDCEs in the next two or three weeks (Dr. Charles Marfo, Expect More Attacks in NPP SoonUniversity Dean, Ghanaweb, April 5, 2017) To the extent that Ken is even an MP and a legislator prompts one to wonder whether there are no respectable and respectful, tecnocratically and diplomatically knowledgeable, well-spoken, intelligent and decent men and women with well-rounded education and dignified carriage in his constituency. But then again, a closer look at the public profile of Ken provides an edifying vista of the Ghanaian parliament as a hopelessly useless, morally rotten and bankrupt arm of government. Ghanas continued arrested development is partly due to the continued existence of this non-august institution. Ken is an epitomic index case of institutional decay. This man whose policy rhetoric and knowledge of public policy is not informed by any deep, serious knowledge of polemology and the political history of Africa, also may not grasp the full spectrum of the national security implications of the vigilante threat which the Invincible Forces and the Delta Force represent in the Ghanaian body politic. He may have to closely read Soyinkas Of Africa and The Open Sore of a Continent to catch the faintest inkling of the complex issues we are discussing here. He has, most significantly, reportedly publicly admitted to administering financial and other logistical assistance to some of these vigilante groups during the 2016 general elections, in stark yet indirect contravention of one of the underlying pillars of the national constitution which says in part: The 1992 Constitution of Ghana, which is the supreme law of the land, stipulates in Articles 200 (2) and 210 (2) that no person or authority shall raise any private army, police force or militia except by or on the authority of an Act of Parliament. That is, providing logistical and financial assistance to these vigilante groups is as constitutionally objectionable as raising them. Nigerian politicians, intelligence and national security officials have done and continue to do somewhat similarly, with these unpatriotic men and women secretly supporting and hobnobbing with Boko Haram by providing it with intelligence reports on when the national army is going to attack it, while publicly denouncing the group. Also the United States, Paul Kagames Rwanda and Yoweri Musevenis Uganda have been playing similar tactics with M23, of the eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We see these seeming policy contradictions in the ideological conflation of Akufo-Addo and Ken. What this duo is in effect doing, is playing a tactical zero-sum politics between themselves and with Ghanaians. This convenient game theory of political deception will undo the government in power if the headship does not reverse the current instances of political and leadership inaction. Yet Ken keeps egging these vigilante groups on, while National Security Minister Albert K. Dapaah is playing ostrich, with the latter claiming these vigilante groups dont exist because they are not registeredas though armed robbers in the country are registered to operate. With a heavy heart, we condemn in no uncertain terms the wayward behavior of the Delta Force whose members allegedly stormed the Kumasi Circuit Court, freed those of their colleagues on trial, disturbed public peace, vandalized court properties, and nearly lynched the sitting judgeMary Senkyere. However, until Akufo-Addo puts his determined policy intentions to nip the vigilante groups in the bud in action, we will continue to take his public rhetoric in this sensitive national security matter with a grain of saltas a mark of Machiavellian superficiality. CLOSING REMARKS On the other hand to the extent that Ken is not demonstrating a deep intellectual understanding of, or even familiarity with, the dire policy implications of these vigilante groups for national security and political stability, is indeed cause for alarm in that his uninformed views on national security matters may tacitly be contributing to the foundational formation, or genesis, of a potential civil war. And whether naive realism or the curse of knowledge is the sole reason we cannot seem to get through the crude concreteness of Ken, is a serious experimental question for psychiatrists and cognitive psychologists to explore further. Even so to think of him as a legislator is both disheartening and frightening. This naked psycho who represents the face of a psittacine chatterbox, also of a broken gramophone record, threatened to end his life on national television by drinking the well-known Shakespearean cup of poison if he does not succeed in sending Ibrahim Mahama to prison, but after grossly misreading Albert Camus The Myth of Sisyphus he sends six of his own men to assassinate him. He ends up snuffing out the life of three of these euthanasic assassins and blaming it on his political opponents in the NDC. The next day it is members of his own party who want to kill him. Is it because he does not know how to commit suicide, how to hang himself? Has Ken ever heard of The Dog Suicide Bridge? This dangerous politician, who represents the true face of perseverative cognition, is the hopeful dream of a public dog infatuated with the clinical politics of Aspergers Syndrome. Ken is a sick public figure whose actions and inactions are causing problems for the country. The change Akufo-Addo promised Ghanaians is gradually turning out to be an elephantine hoax. These politicians are holding the nation to ransom for all the wrong reasons. In the meantime we have to admit that Ghana is dying slowly due to the actions and inactions of our politicians, more particularly so when, for instance, we have Kumasi-based village champions like Chairman Wontumi saying the useful and village idiots of the Delta Force and the Invincible Forces are good boys. Ghana is not for political thugs and gangs, not for men and women who see the country as their personal property and therefore they must do with it as they expressly wish, because for far too long we have allowed the elements of morose delectation and unsympathetic joy to eat away at the beautiful soul of this once great nation founded by none other than Kwame Nkrumah. Neither is Ghana Kens. Even his volte-face, condemnatory appraisal, and indictment of the Delta Force in the wake of its daring usurpation of authority are a complete hypocritical farce. His public praise for and endorsement of the group, his consistent attacks upon the professional integrity of our national security and public officials who dared to question the vigilante tactics and operational unofficiality of the group emboldened it, probably contributing to the groups most recent act of blatant usurpation of the peoples authority. Still, Ken should be arrested immediately, thoroughly debriefed and investigated for his possible ties to these criminal vigilante organizations as he may know more about their inner workings than he is letting out. In fact he may be in cahoots with them to sabotage, and therefore make unpopular, this government for having been passed over for a major cabinet position in the sitting government. Jealousy, personal rivalries, clash of egos, and intra-partisan settling of scores may be fueling this trendy political game of renewed, or intermittent, policy and ideological conflicts. Thus in this general regard, his undying love and confident expressions of filial piety for Akufo-Addo may all be strategic smokescreens. Ken could as well have been using the climate of fear to register his frustrations, something he may have gleaned from the mafia playbooks The Godfather and The Sicilian, both authored by Mario Puzo, and from Soyinkas 2004 Reith Lectures Climate of Fear. Ghana is teetering on the brink of social collapse, of political bankruptcy. Incompetent Ken is therefore a major threat to national security, not a mad genius but a clinically ill political cartoon, a schadenfreude moirologist whose crocodile tears the base instincts in the worst of human clones savors. Ken truly fits Max Romeos Chase the Devil. But all is not lost yet. Our dear good friend Dr. Dompere has excellent answers for these wayward and clueless politicians (see the following works of scientific, mathematical and philosophical profundity): The Theory of Categorial Conversion: Rational Foundations of Nkrumaism in Socio-natural Systemicity and Complexity. The Theory of Philosophical Consciencism: Practice Foundations of Nkrumaism in Social Systemicity. We shall return REFERENCES Ghanaweb. Kan-Dapaah Is A DisasterKennedy Agyapong. April 7, 2017. Ghanaweb. Delta Force Members Are Good BoysChairman Wontumi. April 7, 2017. Ghanaweb. BNI Warns Akufo-Addo To Withdraw Nominee. April 7, 2017. By Albert Futukpor, GNA Tamale, April 07, GNA - The Bank of Ghana (BoG) has reiterated that the new five Ghana Cedis commemorative banknote was a supplementary to the old five Ghana Cedis banknote being used currently in the country. Mr Edward Musey, Head of Currency Management Department of BoG, who stated this, said the new five Ghana Cedis banknote would continue to remain legal tender alongside the old five Ghana Cedis banknote adding the old five Ghana Cedis banknote would not be withdrawn. Mr Musey was speaking at a forum organised by BoG in Tamale to sensitise media practitioners in Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions on the commemorative five Ghana Cedis banknote and its security features. The new five Ghana Cedis commemorative banknote, printed in March to celebrate 60 years of central banking in the country, displays an engraved portrait of Dr James Kwegyir Aggrey, a famous educationist, missionary and teacher. The BoG was established on March 04, 1957. The new banknote is in a new smaller size for ease of handling and contains a host of modern security and information features including tactile marks to assist the visually impaired. Mr Musey said the new banknote was also a souvenir, which people could keep in remembrance of the 60th anniversary of the BoG. He emphasised that the new banknote was not printed at any significantly high cost compared to the cost of reprinting of existing currencies in circulation in the country. GNA A deep understanding of Africas geopolitical space, a change in mind-set as well as clarity of leadership vision are three key ingredients to reinvigorate Africas diminishing industrialization rate, concurred experts meeting in a preparatory session of the fourth Africa Think Tank Summit in Abidjan, Cote dIvoire. The Summit was convened by the African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF) in collaboration with the Government of Cote dIvoire, the Ivorian Think Tank CAPEC and other continent partners and began on April 6 to 8, 2017. In a keynote presentation made to the experts, Afreximbanks Chief Economist Dr Hippolyte Fofack said Africa must choose to do the right thing by taking advantage of the experience of exemplary developed countries that industrialized long ago, while taking into account the continents own geopolitical contexts. The volatility of growth and excessive dependence on aid by some countries of the continent, he said have not augured well for Africa in terms of its drive toward industrialisation. That is a good reason for African States to play a key role in setting up profitable industrial sectors by first understanding the continents own geopolitical and economic space to allow for the broadening of States fiscal spaces and to boost well-structured regional value chains, Dr Fofack mentions. ACBFs Director of Knowledge and Learning Dr Thomas Munthali further said, We have to make every effort to finance our development in Africa and industrialization should be a key area of focus. If Africa industrializes the right way, especially by focusing on labour-intensive resource-based industries, it would have found a solution to youth unemployment, he intimated while saying think tanks need growing partnerships to develop sustainable capacities while bringing these messages to governments on the continent. Several other points came out of the intense plenaries including the need to shape policies and build capacity for modernizing agriculture in Africa to make sure industrialization benefits the continents mainly agricultural population and the crucial role of think tanks in handling long term strategic and development issues to help Governments that are already under the weight of much political pressure. In the view of Dr Peter da Costa development specialist and Senior Adviser to the Africa Progress Panel, knowledge should be recognized as an asset of high value, with budgetary support from governments and the private sector to support policy mixes especially in the crucial area of industrialization. He said think tanks would make even greater contributions to African countries if governments opened up the data space especially on the specific economy-related information depository that telephony companies keep. We cannot rest in making the case about the centrality of industrialization for Africas renaissance and the ideas must now start coming from Africa itself, rather than from outside Prof Adebayo Olukoshi of International Idea, mooted, adding that it is up to us the think tanks to be able to get Africa into an ultra-radical shift to break out of the frameworks that have not worked. The Head of Cote dIvoires Economic Policy Analysis Unit of CIRES (CAPEC), that is collaborating with ACBF to host the Summit Prof Alban Ahoure who welcomed participants to the session, praised ACBF for its commitment in raising spearheading smart policies for capacity development in Africa and that his organisation will keep building on its relationship with ACBF to help stir policies and their implementation in his country. Sorry, we can't find the content you're looking for at this URL. Let me be straightforward here, the current activities of the Delta force and the invincible force believed to be offshoots of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) must be seen as some of the implications of constitutional drawbacks. In order to prevent such repugnant upheavals, the position of Inspector General of Police (IGP) must be devoid of presidential control. We must begin to come out with pragmatic ways of appointing IGP. When the police and its appendage institutions like Bureau of National Investigation (BNI) are neutral, they can enforce the law to the letter without fear or favor. One of the founding fathers of United States, James Madison, underscored the significance of checks and balances when he intimated that: you must first enable the government to control the governed, and in the next place oblige it to control itself. This means the main purpose of Checks and balances as espoused by Baron de Montesquieu is to prevent abuse of power and arbitrary rule by having the government restricts its own influence. Police is part of executive arm of government. However, we can begin to think of bringing the office of IGP either under parliament or Supreme Court in terms of law enforcement while ministry of interior will continue to supervise the police from administrative angle. The practice of quasi-executive or quasi-legislative powers given to judiciary and vice versa is not uncommon in the world. Checks and balances is the way to avert political unrest. It will not be fair to blame President Akufu-Addo for the activities of political vigilante group. Members of ex-presidents Mills/Mahama led National Democratic Congress (NDC) took the laws into their own hands by locking Municipal/District Chief Executives in their various offices. Of course, NDC government lost election 2016 because it failed to provide Ghanaians with the benefits of good governance. Therefore, it will be bereft of logic to keep on referring to NDC shortcomings. Every democratically elected government at its embryonic stage like President Akufu Addo led NPP will wish to establish both social and political gravitas in the eyes of the voters. Therefore, it does not make sense to think that the NPP government would encourage actions like the Delta Force operations at the court, which almost invariably embarrass the administration. At least, unlike the police and BNI which came to whitewash Montie 3 under the previous government, some arrests had been made regarding the Delta force manhandling of Mr. George Adjei, the Ashanti Regional security coordinator. NPP government must begin to clamp down intraparty indiscipline. One of the reasons why NDC became unpopular was the remission and release of the famous three contemnors from prison. Various political parties must begin to think of behavior modification plans relative to electoral success and defeat management. Such plans will save NPP from embarrassment and save NDC from unnecessary internal squabbles that follow electoral success and electoral defeat respectively. The 1992 constitutional lapses must be blamed for the current political crises in Ghana. Nevertheless, looking at the circumstances that compelled 13 members of the Delta force to appear before court, I think as Ayi Kwei Armah noted in his famous book, The Healers mosquitoes would have done better than what Ashanti Regional Police Commander did. Stringent security measures at the court could have curbed the second operation of the foregoing NPP vigilante group. I have really missed COP, Nathan Kofi Boakyi. Oh I guess you are too! We must try to separate the appointment of IGP from executive control. When a new government comes with a new IGP, the ruling party members at the grass root will feel that the incoming police chief is one of their own. On the other hand, any arrest of the opposition members will be tagged as political witch-hunt and vendetta. Every IGP announces his/her presence with transfer of officers. Let us empanel our legal and security experts, political scientists and other stakeholders and look into our laws. God Bless Our Homeland Ghana! By Nana Yaw Osei (Padigo), Minnesota, USA [email protected] Lagos, Accra, Nairobi, All-Africa, 7 April 2017 The 2017 Pan-African Reinsurance Journalism Awards winners were announced at a gala dinner in Dakar, Senegal, shining a spotlight on the excellent work of African media in the industry. In its second year, the Pan-African Re/Insurance Journalism Awards received entries from French and English speaking journalists from 13 countries across Africa. Mr Gareth Stokes of Commercial Risk Africa (South Africa) was awarded the Pan-African Reinsurance Journalist of the Year Award for his article Botswana in search of growth. In his article, he addressed the numerous challenges insurers and insurance brokers face in Botswana; not least of which the impact of the low commodity cycle and cyber-crime. Ms Josiane Kouagheu of Agripreneur dAfrique (Cameroon) was awarded Best Re/Insurance Industry Feature Article for her story In Cameroon, agriculture does not attract insurers. In her article, Josiane Kouagheu investigates why Cameroon, a country where more than 50% of its population works as farmers, does not offer agricultural insurance. It also explores a possible solution the development of Index Insurance. Mr Isaac Khisa of Independent Publications in Uganda was awarded Best Re/Insurance Industry Analysis and Commentary for his article Insurance industry tops Shs 700bn. In his article, Isaac Khisa highlighted that the insurance industry in Uganda is slowly growing as premiums continue to surge. To deepen insurance penetration, companies are identifying new opportunities, particularly in the area of micro-insurance, according to the journalist. Continental Reinsurance initiated the awards in 2015 to recognise and acknowledge the good work of media on the continent. Journalists were required to demonstrate how their articles raised awareness and understanding of the re/insurance sector in Africa. Dr Femi Oyetunji, Group MD / CEO of Continental Reinsurance Plc said: At Continental Reinsurance, we strongly believe that these awards inspire media to cover issues related to re/insurance and improve the overall quality of the reporting. After another successful edition, we have no doubt the Pan-African Re/Insurance Journalism Awards will continue to live up to its mission. Chair of the international judging panel Mr Afif Ben Yedder said: "This year, we were pleased to notice a remarkable improvement in the number and quality of contributions from francophone Africa. As a result the jury selected francophone finalists for the first time. The independent, international judging panel consisted of Mr Afif Ben Yedder, Ms Nadia Mensah-Acogny, Mr Michael Wilson, Mr William Wallis, Ms Julia Graham, and Ms Inga Thordar. A group sympathetic to the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) has described calls by workers of the National Insurance Commission (NIC) for the dismissal of the head of that institution as an attack on 'Northernhood' and womanhood. The Yaayi Group, which campaigns for the rights of girls and the advancement of women in the three northern regions, said allegations levelled against Ms Lydia Lariba Bawa is nothing but a premature smear campaign by 'vultures', who have circled around her position to undermine her work at the NIC. A statement issued in Accra and signed by the National Coordinator of Yaayi, Hajia Ramatu Mohammed, said the allegations against Ms Lariba Bawa are loads of lies by hired opportunistic personnel who do not only want to take advantage of the new political environment, but to also tarnish her hard won reputation. According to the statement, the workers are opportunists, who want to take advantage of the new political environment to witch hunt the 'golden mother'. "This won't and shall not work in this republic". "Ms Lariba Bawa is a role model to northern girls who look up to her for inspiration. Any attack and unreasonable witch hunt of her is an affront on all northerners, which we shall not sit and watch but take whoever is behind this on through the state institutions" the group warned. The statement concluded by reminding President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo of the need to maintain and give more roles to women which is congruent with the manifesto of the NPP. Some illegal miners in four districts of the Western Region, have pledged to suspend their activities in support of governments fight to end the menace. They however want the government to give them some additional time to enable them put an end to their operations. The illegal miners making the request are in Amenfi West, Amenfi East, Amenfi Central and Prestea Huni-Valley districts. The effects of illegal mining, also known as galamsey, have been well documented with basically all Rivers in the Western Region affected by the menace, which threatens water treatment plants and water supply to residents. These effects have even extended over the border to Ivory Coast with a water treatment plant in that country shut down. A spokesperson for the group, Nana Ntori Bonkyi Akomea, conveyed the illegal miners assurances when they met with the of Environment, Science and Innovation Minister, Professor Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng. According to Nana Ntori, the illegal miners require time to suspend operations and engage in negotiations with how best we could mine the minerals We are of the conviction that government is not against gold mining, but the means by which the activity is carried out is the issue of concern. Their appeal comes barely a week into a three-week ultimatum to all illegal miners, by the Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, to cease their activities or the face the law. The illegal miners, however did not state how much time they require from government. Decentralize licensing regime The miners also voiced out some concerns with the current licensing regime which they say is too centralized, thus deterring prospective miners from using legal means to engage in the trade. According to Nana Ntori, Yet another critical challenge has to do with the centralized licensing regime which deters most of the prospective small-scale miners. What we are therefore seeking from the government is that, the processes for licensing be decentralized to give the local authorities the power to regulate the issuance and monitor the activities of persons who would be granted permits. By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana Los Angeles (AFP) - Not long ago, the Egyptian heart surgeon-turned-comedian Bassem Youssef was hosting the most popular political satire television show in his country's history. Launched after the 2011 uprising ousted former president Hosni Mubarak from power, the groundbreaking "Al Bernameg" (The Show) drew as many as 30 million viewers per episode in a country of 82 million people -- until it folded and Youssef left the country. Now his story is chronicled in a documentary titled "Tickling Giants," which premieres on Friday in Los Angeles. He also has a new memoir out called "Revolution for Dummies." Dubbed Egypt's Jon Stewart, Youssef ignored all the rules governing the state-controlled media, lampooning politicians from across the spectrum and providing a much-needed dose of humor as the country was undergoing massive political turmoil. But his mockery proved too much for the country's new rulers -- first the Muslim Brotherhood-led regime of Mohamed Morsi, elected president after Mubarak's downfall, and then the current president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who ousted Morsi. After "El Bernameg" folded in 2014, Youssef left Egypt with his family, first heading to Dubai before settling in Los Angeles. "There are many people, especially Egyptians, who will watch this movie and they will consider it... a story of a very important period of history for them," the exiled 43-year-old comedian told AFP in an interview. He praised the film's director Sara Taksler -- a longtime producer on "The Daily Show," formerly hosted by Youssef's idol Jon Stewart -- for managing to use comedy and satire to capture the upheaval of the Arab Spring in Egypt and explaining it to Western audiences without lecturing. "Most importantly, this is a human story." Adjusting to America Egyptian anti-government demonstrators (bottom) clash with pro-regime supporters in Cairo's Tahrir Square during the 2011 revolt that deposed Hosni Mubarak Despite the silencing of his show, Youssef takes pride in knowing that "Al Bernameg" helped spur debate, offering a conduit through which viewers expressed their frustrations with the political system. "The show gave people a motivation to speak their mind through comic memes, funny sketches on YouTube or on the internet, so people kind of found their voice," he says. "I think we have opened the door to many people to come forward and do something that was not even imaginable before." As for his new life, Youssef acknowledges that it has been difficult to adjust, especially because his arrival in the United States coincided with one of the most acrimonious presidential campaigns ever. "You have all these jokes about me leaving a dictator for someone who is trying to become one," he said, referring to US President Donald Trump. "But however horrible Trump is, you still have faith in the institutions that can actually hold him back." An adventure Taksler says following Youssef for three years chronicling his story against the backdrop of the Arab Spring has given her a new sense of appreciation about the importance of free speech. "When we were making 'Tickling Giants,' I couldn't imagine what it would be like to have a president who was so sensitive to jokes and now we have the tiniest taste of that," she said. "I can't imagine what Bassem's team felt like dealing with the repercussions." Looking forward, Youssef says he is reviewing his options as he reinvents himself in America. "This is a very tough market, it's Hollywood and there are people who are even more experienced than I am who are struggling," he said. "It's an adventure, it is something that is interesting and terrifying at the same time." Still, he says he wouldn't trade the jokes for a return to heart surgery. Egytian political satirist Bassem Youssef (R) has been called "The Jon Stewart of Middle East" as Stewart's television program "The Daily Show" was the inspiration that led Youssef to begin his career as outspoken political critic "If I hadn't embarked on this journey, I wouldn't be sitting here with a big poster with my face on it and a documentary about me," he said. "All I did was crack jokes and I have more media attention than any heart surgeon in my field, which is a little bit unfair. But this is life." The Agona Swedru Division of the Motor Traffic Transport Department (MTTD) of the Ghana Police Service has schooled various transport owners and Union executives on road safety at Agona Swedru in the Agona West Municipality of the Central Region. MTTD Commander, Supt. Nicholas Antiri Addo said the meeting was as a results of the rate at which road accidents had risen in the Division from January to March, 2017. According to him, 86 cases of road accidents was recorded in that period adding that 104 cars were involved. He noted that 156 people were injured while 19 people lost their lives at separate accidents in the vicinity. The stakeholders in the transport industry who were drawn from the Ghana Private Road Transport Union (GPRTU), Progressive Transport Owners Association (PROTOA), Ghana Cooperative Transport Union, some transport owners and drivers attracted stakeholders in the driving industry. They used the occasion to discuss ways and means of reducing if not eradicating road accidents. Supt. Nicholas Antiri Addo tasked stakeholders to carry out intensive public education to ensure road safety. The MTTD Commander disclosed that the meeting was also to educate the drivers on defensive driving ahead of the Easter festivities. "Ghana Police Service and the various driver unions are partners in ensuring safety on our highways. Am happy at the massive turn out,an indication that today's meeting would be implemented fully. While educating drivers on defensive driving, I would like to say that the police would also ensure that the enforcement section of the Road safety regulations would be fully implemented to ensure accident free in the forthcoming Easter festivities" The Chairman of the Number seven (7) branch of GPRTU, Mr. Omar Adam Appiah on behalf of the other driver unions coomended the MTTD commander for the fruitful meeting pledging that they would observe road safety to reduce accidents in the division. Following their humiliated 2016 election defeat, the litigious, albeit non-performing NDC apparatchiks are vigorously elbowing their way through in a desperate attempt to convince their aggrieved supporters of their consuming desire to recapture power in 2020 election. With all due respect, it would appear that the NDC Party stalwarts are living in a denial. They have indeed lost touch with the reality. The fact of the matter is that their problems are deeper than what they are actually trying to portray to the whole world. Having said that, their party founder and former President J. J. Rawlings is well-aware of the enormity of the problems confronting his beloved party. He has however refused to live in a denial. Rawlings admits: Most people are yet to recover from the traumatic shock of the December 7th election results. But I will have to state that if we turn our backs to our history us a party, we cannot escape the responsibility for the result. I kept providing the warning whenever and wherever I could, and in public as well. But no, once again the uncouth and uncultured in our party and government chose to insult and disrespect some of us (Rawlings, 2016). Strangely, however, the General Secretary of the party, Asiedu Nketia and his cohorts are holding a phantom believe that they lost the 2016 election because their aggrieved supporters failed to cast their vote. In other words, the leadership are blaming the defeat on voter apathy. Somehow, the NDC apparatchiks ridiculous denial over the election defeat gave rise to a facts finding Committee to let the non-existent cat out of the bag. However the NDC apparatchiks disappointments amid numerous excuses over the election results, the founder of the NDC Party and former President J. J. Rawlings rather prefers to blame the leadership for their unobjectionable incompetence, corruption and shenanigans. It is however quite ironic that the brassbound NDC loyalists do not want to acknowledge the fact that Ghanas economy is in such a state because a large portion of the countrys resources went down the drain from the irreversible mismanagement and the wanton sleaze and corruptions committed by the officials of the erstwhile NDC administration. In fact, the erstwhile NDC government even managed to allocate judgement debt amount in the national budget (around GH600 million). It would be recalled that somewhere in 2010, it was reported that the late Mills warned some officials in his government not to effect payment to Woyome. Yet the conspiratorial plotters defied the good old Mills orders and doled out a staggering amount of GH51.2 to Wayome, who had no contract with the government of Ghana. Subsequently, however, in July 2014, the Supreme Court of Ghana ordered Businessman Mr Alfred Woyome to pay back to the state a Gh 51.2million dubious judgment debt paid him between 2009 and 2010. It must however be emphasised that the Supreme Courts ruling was as a result of a review of the court's earlier decision sought by former Attorney General Martin Amidu, who maintained that Woyome, like international firms, Waterville and Isofoton, had no valid contract to be paid any amount by the state in judgment debt. Rightly so, the Supreme Court ruled that Isofoton S.A. and Waterville Holdings BVI, must also refund the dubious judgement debt payments made to them by the erstwhile NDC government. According to the highest Court of the land, the Waterville Holdings BVI, which was allegedly involved in the construction of some stadia in Ghana, ahead of the hosting of the 2008 Africa Cup of Nations, was wrongfully paid 25 million and thus must refund the money. While the Court ordered Isofoton S.A. to refund US$325,472 it received as judgment debt from the Government of Ghana. Unfortunately, however, none of those monies were retrieved by the erstwhile NDC government, despite the Supreme Courts ruling. We cannot also obliterate from memory the scandalous corruption cases involving GYEEDA, AZONTABA, SADA, SUBAH, the purported $250million debt incurred on the faded STS housing deal, the dubious Embraer 190 Aircrafts and hanger for the Ghana Armed Forces and over a US$100 million oil revenue loss between 2011 and 2013 as reported by the Public Interest& Accountability Committee. It is indeed cumbrous for one to recount how Ghanas economy was sunk deeper and deeper into the mire under President Mahamas leadership. Thus, it is not surprising that while the Mahama loyalists are fighting tooth and nail to have him back as the partys next presidential candidate, the sceptics are insisting that Mahama was incompetent during his tenure in office and must thus be replaced with a more competent flagbearer. Consequently, the seeming squabbling has culminated in a tussle over the choice of a more competent flagbearer to lead them to recapture the elusive victory in the 2020 general election. Strangely, though, despite the fact that the sceptics carry the preponderance of the argument about former President Mahamas incompetence, the diehard supporters will somehow succeed in their quest to bring back Mahama as their flagbearer if he decides to accept their invitation. Indeed, the vast majority of the NDC Party loyalists are living in a denial about former President Mahamas much touted incompetence and will thus choose him any day over any other presidential aspirant. In this regard, it would be unfair for sceptics to tag a reflective forecaster as an irresponsible doom prophet for venturing to prognosticate that the NDC Party could split into uncountable parts before their flagbearership contest in 2018. K. Badu, UK. The Ashanti regional Chairman of the New Patriotic Party Bernard Antwi Boasiako popularly known as Chairman Wontumi has warned the National Security Minister, Kan Dapaah to be mindful of his treatment and utterances towards vigilante group Delta Force. According to Chairman Wontumi, Mr. Dapaah and other NPP members must stop demonising the group since they have been very loyal to the party. He added that members of the vigilante group dedicated themselves when the party was in opposition and finds it unfortunate that the National Security Minister who patronised their services suddenly describes members of the group as criminals. Members of Delta Force are not bad people, these are the same people who fought for us to come to power, they are not bad people, they turned themselves in and that shows they are not bad people. Today some NPP members have positions so they talk anyhowespecially Kan Dapaah, he didnt even campaign for the NPP. Where was Kan Dapaah when these boys were campaigning, today he describes them as criminals, Wontumi said in an interview on Ash FM in Kumasi. He added that If Mr. Dapaah is talking he should be carefulhe claimed he had retired from politics but now he has a position after we won the electionsI want to tell Kan Dapaah that if we have suffered for him to get a positionhe should be mindful how he treats us. But because of our love for Nana Akufo-Addo we will continue to support the partyas for Kan Dapaah God bless him. Wontumis comments come after Pro-NPP vigilante group, Delta Force on Thursday stormed a Circuit Court in the Ashanti region and freed some 13 of its members who were standing trial for disturbances at the regional coordinating council. The 13 Delta Force members are likely to be to be charged with escape from lawful custody after they turned themselves in last night. The incident has attracted widespread condemnation in the country. Many security analysts have faulted the police for not anticipating such a situation considering the delicate nature of the case. GN Bank has reassured the general public and its customers that things are "firmly under control" after a robbery at one of its branches. This comes after one of their branch locations near Potsin on the Accra-Winneba highway in the Central Region was attacked by armed robbers this week. According to the General Manager, Richmond Duke Keelson, the police have since mounted a serious search for the robbers. "Our bank's surveillance system has provided valuable information for the police to use," he added. He said things are now in order at the said branch and it is carrying on with normal daily business emphasising that "every deposit at the branch is safe and intact." He assured all that their security has been strengthened to guarantee the safety of staff, our customers and their deposits. Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Abubakar Ibrahim By Godwill Arthur-Mensah, GNA Accra, April 7, GNA - Mr Irbard Ibrahim, the Executive Director of IRBARD SECURITY CONSULT, on Friday, said the blatant mob attack on the Kumasi Circuit Court resulting in the escape of 13 Delta Force members standing trial amounted to an attack on the country's sovereignty. He therefore urged the President to give a biting teeth to his word by ensuring the heads of the security agencies operated freely devoid of any political consideration. ''No matter how small the court is, any attack on it is like an attack on the country's Supreme Court, therefore, an attack on the judiciary,'' he stressed. Mr Ibrahim, who said this in a telephone interview with the Ghana News Agency in Accra, said the President must show political will to clamp down all vigilante groups in the country. The security consultant said he wouldn't fault the Police for failing to deal with the rumpus, saying the security agencies must be given free hand to operate so as to enforce the country's laws without fear or favour, irrespective of the person or persons involved in the crime. Mr Ibrahim noted that Ghana had competent security forces in view of their vast experiences in keeping peace in war torn countries like Sudan, Liberia, Cote d'Ivoire and Lebanon. He warned that if the mayhem being inflicted by these vigilante groups affiliated to some political parties was not halted immediately, they would become 'security monsters' that would make the country ungovernable and a threat to peace. On Thursday, April 6, some members of the Delta Force, a vigilante group affiliated to the ruling New Patriotic Party attacked the Kumasi Circuit Court and freed the 13 members of the group who were facing charges for storming the office of the Ashanti Regional Security Coordinator, Mr George Adjei last month and threw him out of his office. The judge remanded them into prison custody to re-appear on April 20, 2017, however the decision by the judge infuriated them therefore sparking the attack on the court. GNA 07.04.2017 LISTEN By Christopher Arko, GNA Accra, April 7 GNA - Dr Sagre Bambangi, a Deputy Minister-Designate for Agriculture has called for the structural transformation of the agricultural sector in order to make it attractive to the youth. He also called for the application of the appropriate technology in order to bring the cost of production down in the sector. Dr Bambangi made the call when he appeared before the Appointment Committee of Parliament at Parliament House in Accra. The nominee who is the Member of Parliament (MP) for Walewale is among the last batch of four Ministers of State and 50 Deputy Ministers being vetted by the Appointment Committee. Dr Bambangi stressed the need for the ministry to link-up with the various research institutions to take advantage of the findings in terms of seed varieties to help farmers increase their yield. He called for the use of appropriate technology as well as extension officers who would disseminate these technologies to the farmers to make them competitive. He called for the use of extension officers to educate the farmers on new varieties and the appropriate irrigational technology that were less expensive for the farmers. He said the country was falling far short of the Food and Agriculture Organisation standards of one extension to 500 farmers. He announced that government as part of its manifesto pledge would roll out block farming to encourage the youth to go into agriculture. Major Derick Oduro (Rtd), Deputy Minister-Designate for defence who also appeared before the Appointment Committee debunked an allegation making rounds that he endorsed the beating of a freelance journalist by some military personnel who had an altercation with them. He said the notion from the public that military personnel are violent towards civilians was not true adding that the military were trained professionals who do their work with competence. Major Derick Oduro who is also the MP for Nkoranza North stated that to promote the cordial relation between the military and civilians, the Ghana Armed Forces had instituted 'Open Days' where the public are allowed to visit certain military facilities. He said the core mandate of the Ghana Armed Forces was to protect the territorial integrity of the country. He said the military had a strict code of discipline and any personnel who went against the law was punished. Mr George Boahene Oduro, a Deputy Minister-Designate for Food who also appeared before the Appointment Committee announced that government would subsidise fertilizers and provide extension officers to farmers. He said government's initiative of Planting for Food was to encourage the youth to get into agriculture as well as create employment. He said the government would create ready market for farmers by encouraging the secondary schools and universities to buy from them. GNA By Prosper K. Kuorsoh, GNA Bulenga (U/W), April 7, GNA - Naa Abdulai Seidu Nawologimo, Paramount Chief of Chakali Traditional Area has made a passionate appeal to government to prioritize the construction of steel bridges on the Kulun and Ambalaara Rivers. This, he said, would not only make the District easily accessible, but would facilitate the free movement of goods and services thereby, promoting development in the area. Naa Nawologimo, who is also the Bulenga Naa, made the appeal when Mr. Sulemana Alhassan, Upper West Regional Minister and his Deputy, Mr. Amidu Issahaku Chinnia paid a courtesy call on him at his palace in Bulenga. He said because of the two rivers, accessing the District capital, Funsi, was very cumbersome as one had to divert route back to Wa and going through Wahabu, a distance which could cover the entire day. The Paramount Chief said the situation was affecting business at the Assembly and also made citizens' participation in the development process less effective. Naa Nawologimo also raised concern about illegal mining in the District and appealed for an alternative means of providing livelihoods for the miners so that they do not become nuisance to people in the District. The Bulenga Naa appealed to government to provide a hospital for the District to cater for the health needs of the people, especially pregnant women. He said some needless maternal deaths had been occurring in the District owning to the lack of a district hospital, compelling patients to travel long distances to Wa for medical attention anytime they were sick. Naa Nawologimo also raised issues concerning disturbances of Fulani herdsmen as well as illegal logging of timber in the District and called for urgent measures to address those menaces. Mr. Alhassan assured Naa Nawologimo and his people of government's commitment to look into his concerns with the view to addressing them. He said government has recognised that a strong human resource base was the strength of every nation, hence its determination to work with all including traditional rulers to bring development to the people. GNA The Speaker of Parliament, Prof. Aaron Mike Oquaye has accepted the Member of Parliament for Bawku Central, Mahama Ayarigas apology for making what the Joe Ghartey Committee found to be false bribery claims against some members of the Appointments Committee. He asked the House to forgive Mr. Ayariga who was found guilty of contempt of Parliament for falsely accusing some members of bribery. The Speaker, while giving his final ruling on the matter cautioned Mahama Ayariga not to repeat his action in the future else will have himself to blame. Prof. Oquaye's ruling comes after he accepted an apology letter from the Mahama Ayariga on the matter which was made orally and written. The Bawku Central MP was charged with contempt for making unmerited bribery allegations against Members of the Appointments Committee and the Minister of Energy, Boakye Agyarko. A special committee, chaired by Joe Ghartey, the Essikado-Ketan MP that was constituted by the Speaker to investigate the matter concluded that Mr. Ayariga flouted Article 122 of the 1992 Constitution, Section 32 of the Parliament Act, 1965 (Act 300) and Orders 28 and 30 (2) of the Standing Orders of Parliament in his claim that the Chairman of Parliament's Appointments Committee, Joe Osei Owusu was used as a conduit by the Minister for Energy, Boakye Agyarko to distribute a GH3,000 bribe to minority members of the Appointments Committee to facilitate Mr. Agyarko's approval after his vetting. Prof. Oquaye reiterated his appeal to Joe Osei Owusu not to go to court but channel any challenge to the House for redress. Ayariga's letter Mahama Ayariga who was expected to apologize to the House when the Joe Ghartey Committee report was first read issued a reluctant one after which the House descended into chaos. He has however formally apologized in his letter to Prof. Oquaye. In the letter, he said, Pursuant to paragraph 141 of the Report of the Special Committee to investigate the Bribery Allegation and the decision of this Honourable House adopting the report, I hereby render an unqualified apology to this Honourable House of Parliament. Thank you. Hon. Mahama Ayariga By: Jonas Nyabor/citifmonline.com/Ghana Follow @jnyabor Kinshasa (AFP) - President Joseph Kabila on Friday named an opposition leader as prime minister for the Democratic Republic of Congo, honouring a pledge made as part of a stalled power-sharing deal agreed in December. Bruno Tshibala, a spokesman for the "Rassemblement" (Unity) coalition of parties opposed to Kabila's rule, will replace Samy Badibanga, who resigned as prime minister earlier Friday. But the party, formed by veteran opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi, has struggled to live up to its name. Tshisekedi was to have led the transitional watchdog overseeing the power-sharing accord, but his death in February threw the Unity grouping into turmoil. Tshibala in particular contested the push by Tshisekedi's son Felix to take over as leader, prompting his exclusion from the group as well as the UDPS party. While announcing his plan to name a new premier on Wednesday, Kabila urged the opposition "to overcome its internal squabbles" and hand him a list of candidates for the post of prime minister. The appointment of a new premier is part of the deal brokered by the influential Catholic church on New Year's Eve, which aimed to avoid a full-blown crisis in the central African country after Kabila refused to step down when his second and final five-year term ended in December. The agreement would allow Kabila, 45, to remain in office until elections in late 2017, ruling in tandem with a transitional watchdog and a new premier chosen from within the opposition ranks. Violence has flared across the central African country of 71 million people amid fears of a continued delay in this year's promised elections. The country, which suffered through two wars between 1996 and 2003, has not had a democratic transition of power since its independence from Belgium in 1960. John Arrowood, TCSO Booking Photo View Photos Sonora, CA A Tuolumne County man convicted in a domestic abuse case of causing great bodily harm and making criminal threats to his wife was sentenced to six years in state prison. John Arrowood received his sentence today after being convicted by a jury in early March. The case was prosecuted by Deputy District Attorney Stephanie Novelli, who shares, post-sentencing, It can be bittersweet. You know that justice has been done so I feel confident about that. But it is always hard for victims to come forward to go through, reliving the trauma. So having to go through a trial when a defendant will not accept responsibility for his actions and you always hope that they will accept responsibility in this case, he continues to deny that he had anything to do with causing her injuries. Back in January of last year, Tuolumne County sheriffs deputies responded to his victims 911 call. According to the case, she was able to mouth the words help me in the background as Arrowood, who had been drinking, belligerently answered the door. She later testified that he threatened to kill her, grabbed her by the hair and neck and threw her in to the kitchen wall, where her head struck first and caused a hole in the wall after which she lost consciousness and fell to the ground, causing further injury. A Serial Abuser In Denial According to the DAs office, Arrowood has multiple misdemeanor convictions for domestic violence related charges out of Nevada, two of which were against his spouse. During the trial, she and a family member described years of physical and emotional abuse she had endured at his hands. Novelli commends the jury for seeing through the defendants lies as he testified. Further commenting, she confides, It is pretty uncommon for someone who reports abuse when it has been going on for so long to actually stick with it. Longterm abuse victims who reach out to 911 because they need help often recant, according to Novelli. Afterwards, if there is an apology or a it was your fault or an I still love you they want to help that individual because they love them so much, she explains. As the attorney who handles many of the countys domestic violence cases, Novelli says in this one, the victim, who had been through so much, also had crucial family support as well as early and ongoing contact with the Victim Witness staff. Commending the woman, she states, She was onboard the whole timeso hats off to her forremaining strong and being able to tell the truth of what really happened. Are you tired of the present-day economic melt-down in our country? Do you know the level of progress and great significance of agriculture in Nigeria? We will make an analysis of the agribusiness in Nigeria for you. Let's consider the main difficulties impeding the progress of agriculture in the country, and reveal the ways of solving existing problems, as well as prospects for the agricultural economics. Agriculture in Nigeria Agriculture in Nigeria is a significant sector in the economy of Nigeria, providing employment for 70% of the population. Most of the farms are focused on production cocoa beans. The main crops grown in Nigeria are: cocoa beans; rice; rubber; cotton; yam; corn; sweet potato. Rural areas in Nigeria The country's livestock sector includes the breeding of pigs, cattle, donkeys, camels. Tree crop system and fishing are also developed. The processing of agriproducts in the Nigeria is growing and is more than 24% of the country's GDP. The country administration seeks to variegate the country's economy by supporting agriculture and rural areas development. Now, agriculture yields more profits than industrial manufacture and oil production. Another goal of the governmental authorities is to lower the import of products from other countries and simultaneously lower the unemployment rate in Nigeria. In terms of employment, agriculture is by far the most important sector of the economy in Nigeria. Agriculture can become the main and most reliable way to sustainable development and economic advance. It covers all aspects of human activity, and also serves as the basis of humanity; Therefore, wise nations around the world give it the first place, developing and exploiting this sector. Corn farming in Nigeria READ ALSO: auses of economic recession in Nigeria In 1960, before oil took the main position in the economy of the state, Nigeria was one of the most long-ranged agricultural producers in the entire world. In the period from 1962 to 1968, export crops were the major source of foreign exchange earnings in the country. Nigeria took the first place in the world for the export of palm oil, ahead of Malaysia and Indonesia, and also exported 47% of peanuts, supplying it to the US and Argentina. The status of Nigeria as an agricultural economy has dropped significantly. While Nigeria produced, and provided 18% of the world's cocoa production in 1960, now the share has fallen to 8%. Nigerian corn farming Current problems and their reasons First, low use of fertilizer The low level of fertilizer use is a strong obstacle to the progress of agricultural productivity in Nigeria. Since the beginning of 2000, there has been no manufacture of fertilizers in the country, as the largest company, NAFCON, the prime fertilizer manufacturer in Nigeria, was closed. Other problems affecting the domestic supply of fertilizers include high transportation costs, weak distribution infrastructure, lack of money for private sector participating in distribution, a significant part of the business is forced to import fertilizers. Agriculture in Nigeria: Can it help to overcome recession in Nigeria? Secondly, low access to agricultural loans for farming in Nigeria Access to agricultural credit has a positive impact on agricultural productivity. However, many small farmers in Nigeria do not have access to them, because there is a corruption component. When issuing loans, a key role is played by personal relationships or the existence of a special arrangement. Such an approach dominates in the southwestern part of Nigeria. Agriculture in Nigeria: Can it help to overcome recession in Nigeria? Third, low and unstable capital expenditures in agricultural research The participation of the private sector in agricultural research has remained insignificant up to the present. The low level of government spending on research of branches of agriculture related to a low increment of growth in agricultural productivity in other areas. When research is poorly financed, agricultural technologies cannot be improved, and there will be no increase in farm incomes, no creation of jobs in rural areas, no decline in food prices, no creation of agro-industries, and no economic growth. Agriculture in Nigeria: Can it help to overcome recession in Nigeria? Fourthly, the problem of land ownership and land degradation The communal system of landed property in the south of the country implies the ownership of land and its inheritance within the ethnic group. The communal ownership of land in Nigeria was associated with such difficulties as the restriction of guarantees of ownership, the restriction of the mobility of farmers and the inevitable fragmentation of holdings among future heirs. In addition, the group's property restricts the rights of other people who are not related to this ethnic group. Agriculture in Nigeria: Can it help to overcome recession in Nigeria? Fifth, limited access to the market and marketing Limited or low-quality rail transport prevents timely access to inputs, increases input costs and reduces access to markets. Expanding access to markets is likely to create demand for basic goods. High costs significantly limit the efficiency of agriculture, and also reflect the plight of transport infrastructure in the areas under investigation. Agriculture in Nigeria: Can it help to overcome recession in Nigeria? The rural economy as the "engine" of the world's economies must be rebuilt and improved. This is probable only when the government begins making a significant share of capital in the agricultural industry. Also, insurance companies, banks, cooperatives, corporate investors should be motivated to pump investments in this sector. Farmers should use these vision data that will help them succeed in a growth environment towards a sustainable private and government sector of the economy. Legislators should think about active ways of adopting economic laws that encourage and contribute to increasing agricultural productivity, as well as laws that make an enabling environment for its sustainability. Agriculture in Nigeria: Can it help to overcome recession in Nigeria? The leaders of our country support the position that agriculture can become a tool, with the help of which Nigeria can overcome the economic meltdown. Garba Shedu, the presidential spokesman, claims that agriculture can take the nation out of the todays economic challenges, and already positive results are obvious. For example, the production of rice saves our country a lot of money, and now is progressing. If to look of the figures of rice import from Thailand in 2014 and 2015, the number of tons has reduced in more than 200 times (in 2014 1.2 million, while in 2015 58,000). As per his words the government will continue to motivate and support the Ministry of Agriculture Nigeria, and such companies as WACOTT, Dangote, OLAM, and BUA Industries. Another support expected from the side of the administration of our country is the reduction of the price of fertilizers (from N9,000 for one bag to N5,500). Agriculture in Nigeria: Can it help to overcome recession in Nigeria? Hope it is only the very beginning and Nigeria in the closest future will successfully get out from the recession. In our opinion, Nigeria's economic growth is the only real way to fully resuscitate agriculture. Investing in Nigerian agriculture will create self-reliance, economic power and independence. The progress of the farm economy will encourage the collection of revenues and prevent excessive dependence of the country on oil and gas. The economic self-reliance that the agricultural industry can offer to Nigeria will undoubtedly lead to economic as well as political independence. READ ALSO: Stop begging, embrace agriculture - Group tells Muslims Source: Legit.ng There are various vegetation zones in Nigeria, all determined by the prevailing climatic conditions across different parts of the country. These zones have varying annual rainfall, temperature, atmospheric pressure, and predominant vegetation. Some of the zones are significantly larger than others, with some being more human-friendly than others. Rolling hills and lush forests. Cover Photo: pixabay.com, @Schwoaze Source: UGC The vegetation belt in Nigeria is divided into two: the forest and savannah ecological zones. These zones are further subdivided into three each, for a total of six vegetation zones. The different vegetation zones in Nigeria and their states Here is a look at the different Nigerian vegetation zones and their characteristics. Sahel Savannah A photo of the savannah. Photo: pixabay.com, @2017_Franziska Source: UGC PAY ATTENTION: Subscribe to Digital Talk newsletter to receive must-know business stories and succeed BIG! This is a semiarid region that extends from Senegal eastward to Sudan. It forms a transitional zone between the belt of humid savannas to the south and the predominantly arid Sahara Desert to the north. This zone is characterized by a short rainy season and a long, intensely dry season. One of the defining characteristics of the Sahel Savanna in Nigeria is its low precipitation. The annual rainfall in this zone is extremely poor, with the wet season lasting 3 to 4 months. As a result, the vegetation of the Sahel zone is largely comprised of short, hardy grasses. Other common plants include the African myrrh, Acacia, and Ngibbi. The states of Borno and Yobe are in this vegetation zone. Sudan Savannah The Sudan Savannah is a wide belt of tropical savanna running across Africa south of the Sahel, separated into east and west ecoregions by the Cameroon Highlands. The zone is slightly wetter than the Sahel Savannah and receives between 500 and 1000 mm of rainfall each year. The vegetation in this region includes dense but short grass, acacia trees, and baobab trees. In Nigeria, the main economic activities in this zone include cattle and sheep rearing as well as come crop farming. The states of Jigawa, Kano, Katsina, Zamfara, Sokoto, and Kebbi are found in this zone. Guinea Savannah This is the largest vegetation zone in Nigeria, covering almost half of the country's landmass. This zone is characterized by moist grasslands, with precipitation ranging between 1000 and 1400 mm per year. The grass in the wild areas of this zone is quite tall, often exceeding five feet. Some of the most common plants in Guinea Savannah include elephant grass, kaya, mitragyna, and isoberlinia. The states of Niger, Kaduna, Adamawa, Bauchi, and Gombe are found in the Nigerian Guinea savannah. Montane/rainforest vegetation A tropical rainforest. Photo: pixabay.com, @stokpic Source: UGC The montane vegetation area in Nigeria is a region where mountainous forests are quite prevalent. This is mostly on the eastern edge of Taraba State, close to the Cameroonian border. The Jos plateau, one of the highest points in Nigeria, is located in this zone. Montane vegetation in Nigeria is mostly found along the right bank of the lower reaches of the river Niger and in the valley of the River Cross. Trees in these rainforests can grow as tall as 45 meters and make up the largest parts of forest reserves in the country. Much of the montane region is covered by rainforests. The gently sloping areas of this region are perfect for cash crops since the area receives sufficient rainfall throughout the year. Some sections of the montane area are also utilized by commercial cattle farmers. A section of Taraba State is in this region. Mangrove swamp forest The Mangrove vegetation region is an ecological belt found in the Nigerian areas bordering the Atlantic Ocean. The vegetation in this zone largely depends on the coastal location of the region. Typically, the soil in the mangrove zone is extremely poor and contains huge amounts of salt. Mangrove shrubs are prevalent in the salty water sections, while other plants, including human-grown rice, can be found in the stabilized, non-saline areas. The mangrove swamp forest region occupies much of Nigeria's southern coast. The states of Akwa-Ibom, Rivers, and Delta are partly in this region. Freshwater swamp forest A swamp forest. Photo: pixabay.com, @bobmann Source: UGC A freshwater swamp forest is defined as a forest that is inundated with freshwater as a permanent, irregular, or seasonal condition. These forests are mainly found on the lower parts of a river or freshwater lakes in many different regions having a wide range of climate types. The freshwater swamp forest is the smallest vegetation region in Nigeria. It occupies most of the Niger Delta, between the lowland rainforests in the north and the mangrove swamps in Iguwhich. The Niger Delta is widely considered one of the richest ecosystems in the world. The states of Edo, Lagos and Cross River are partly in this ecological region. How many vegetation zones are in Nigeria? There are 6 vegetation zones in Nigeria. The six are split from the broader savannah and forest ecological regions. Which is the largest vegetation zone in Nigeria? The Guinea Savannah is the largest vegetation zone in Nigeria, covering almost half of the country's landmass. Nigeria has six vegetation zones, each with unique definitive characteristics. These zones are defined by the prevalent climatic conditions in the areas they occupy, with each being suitable for different economic activities. READ ALSO: What are the 10 economic problems that Nigeria is facing? Legit.ng recently explored the main economic problems plaguing Nigeria. Like other middle-income countries with emerging markets, the country has witnessed gradual expansion in communication, technology, finance, manufacturing, and service sectors. However, problems such as poor health facilities, high levels of crime, unemployment, and corruption continue to be pressing issues in the country's economy. Source: Legit.ng Toyin Adewale is a popular actress of modern Nigerian cinematography. She is a real star of Nollywood, a magnificent woman, faithful wife and caring mother. Do you know everything about this gorgeous lady? Keep reading to learn more interesting. Toyin Adewales biography Her parents have already dispatched. But she is not alone because she has got five sisters on her fathers side. As for acting, Toyin started actress career being a student. She attended courses of Dramatic Arts and studied Business. The creative work of Toyin Adewale officially started in the end of 1980 when she took part in stage performances with other famous actors. Her first film called Irepodun, where she played the lead role, was a real success. All her creative life she has been acting in the Yoruba section of Nollywood, no doubts, owing to this fact she is so loved by the audience, though this actress has won the affection of British people in soap operas too. Private life of Toyin Speaking about her personal life it should be mentioned that this beautiful woman is happily married. She met her future spouse being a student. Suday Adewale is her husband. Their marriage lasts for over 23 years. The couple has got a loving son Mayorkun. There are plenty of Toyin Adewale's family pictures in Interenet - so touching and sweet! READ ALSO: Pete Edochie wife and children Toyin is rather conservative concerning family relationships and her attitude towards break-ups is negative. In her opinion, even the cinema industry does not support divorces. She ponders that the main reason of growing break-ups in modern Nigerian society is not movies or shows but inability to listen to each other. Her credo is "love your partner sincerely and be faithful". It is very interesting to know that except acting career Toyin Adewale is a rather successful businesswoman. She has established her own catering firm. Thus, it may be concluded that this woman prospers in every sphere: acting, private and business. What are the secrets of Toyin Adewales success? Diligence; Purposefulness; Natural beauty and charisma; Hard work; Family values; Mutual love and respect to the audience. Toyin Adewale steals thousands of hearts not just because of her talented playing but also thanks to her personality. Wish all the best to this outstanding Nollywood actress and are awaiting for new movies with marvelous Toyin. READ ALSO: Mayorkun biography Source: Legit.ng - Wike says the ruling All Progressives Congress-led government only focuses its anti-corruption fight at members of the PDP - The governor said the recent arrest of former Governor Babangida Aliyu of Niger state is more political than people think Governor Nyesom Ezenwo Wike of Rivers state has said that Nigerians have suddenly realised that the ruling All Progressives Congress ( APC) has nothing to offer in terms of developmental projects, aside the circulation of lies that it has engaged in since 2015. APC will soon be consumed by the crisis it planted in PDP - WIke According to Wike, APCs fight against corruption is targeted at the intimidation of political opponents as the ruling party only prosecutes former PDP governors, while indicted former APC governors are allowed to roam freely. Speaking at the Government House, Port Harcourt on Friday, April 7, 2017 when he granted audience to the Abuluoma Council of Chiefs, Governor Wike said there is no sincerity in the fight against corruption by the APC. READ ALSO: Kayode Fayemi is a wanted person Ekiti Assembly He said: Nigerians have seen that the present ruling party has nothing to offer them except to tell lies. They claim they are fighting corruption, but how many APC former governors have been arraigned. Nobody is against the government fighting corruption, but it must be fought with sincerity. Even when an APC former governor is indicted by a judicial commission of inquiry, they fail to prosecute such a person. In a statement signed by Simeon Nwakaudu, the governors special assistant on electronic media, and obtained by Legit.ng, Wike added: I just heard that they have arrested the former Niger state governor after two years. Maybe because political activities are picking up and they want to intimidate him; that is why this is happening now. Governor Wike said that the crisis that the APC planted in the PDP will be the first thing that will consume it. On development projects, Governor Wike assured the community that his administration has awarded contracts for the construction and rehabilitation of roads in Abuluoma and Amadi Ama communities. He thanked the Abuluoma people for their massive support for him during the electioneering period, noting that he will keep all the promises he made to them. READ ALSO: Why I have been marked for assassination - Obasanjo's wife tells police Earlier, the Amanyanabo of Abuluoma, Brigadier-General Bright Ateke Fiboinumma lauded the governor on his achievements, especially in the area of infrastructural development across the state. Legit.ng recently came across a Nigerian who claimed to have supported the APC in the party's bid to win election. The man says he now regrets this. Watch the video: Source: Legit.ng Cement Assoc told to review price hike Cement factories has hiked up prices of cement by Rs20 to 25 per sack, prompting Industry Minister Nagendra Raj Joshi to summon the Cement Manufacturers Association for a price review discussion. The history of English language in Nigeria has started many years ago. But it managed to affect the Nigerian culture so much that people can still see its influence. Currently, English is the official language in most African countries, which are the former colonies of Great Britain. The variants of English in countries where it has the official status and is not native to any ethnic group is called World Englishes or New Englishes. In accordance with the constitution of the largest country in Africa and one of the largest countries in the world - the Federal Republic of Nigeria (more than 190 million people), English is the official language. By population, Nigeria is in first place in Africa, and in the eighth in the world. It is known that every seventh inhabitant of the African continent is a Nigerian. There is the largest number of black skin population in the country. Nigeria has one of the most advanced education systems in Africa (in 2017 there is more than 105 universities in the country, in which a significant proportion of scientists are concentrated). History of English language in Nigeria But how many languages are there in Nigeria? The ethnic composition of the country's population is extremely complex: more than 250 ethnic groups live in Nigeria, whose representatives speak 521 languages. The historical path of development of some peoples of Nigeria is thousands of years old. The country is rich not only with natural resources but also with ancient cultural traditions of its peoples. It is known that in the 5th century BC - 3 AD in Central Nigeria there was an ancient culture of Nok - the earliest culture of the Iron Age to the south of the Sahara. In the 9th century AD in South Nigeria, there was also the Igbo-Ukva culture. 70% of the population of Nigeria is composed by three peoples: Hausa - 29%, Yoruba - 21%, Igbo - 18%. 10% are Ijo, 4% - Kanuri, 3.5% - Tiv, 2% - Epic. Thus, 9 peoples of Nigeria account for 90% of the total population. It should be noted that 36 Nigerian states are heterogeneous in their ethnic composition: a lot of states are polyethnic, some states are populated by representatives of one ethnic community (monoethnic). It is not surprising that the linguistic situation in the country is very complicated. The official language, according to the Constitution, as we have already noted, is English, the language of the former metropolis, a non-autochthonous language that is not ethnically assigned to any social group. In Nigeria, the cultural and linguistic situation as a whole is common for the West African region, but in Nigeria, unlike, for example, Ghana, pidgin-English is more common, which is a stable mean of inter-ethnic communication. Nigerian languages are very heterogeneously used by their speakers: there are languages spoken by only a few thousand people, but there are languages spoken by several million. The leading place is occupied by the three largest languages not only in Nigeria but throughout West Africa: Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, used by half of the country's population. These languages are leading in the three regions of the country - North, West and East. It should be noted that if the states in Nigeria were formed taking into account the traditionally established historical-cultural and ethnolinguistic communities, the ethnolinguistic map of the country is much more complicated than the political-administrative one. In Nigeria ethnolinguistic situation is diverse and heterogeneous. The languages of Nigeria are from three of the four large families into which the continent's languages are divided: Afrasian, Niger-Kordofan, and Nilo-Sahara. There is no Khoisan family of languages in Nigeria. In the country, there is a huge disparity between imported and autochthonous languages. Thanks to the work carried out by Christian missionaries, the first attempts were made to create normative grammars and dictionaries of African languages and their introduction into the system of school education in the colonial period. By the time of independence, only a few African languages, such as Hausa, had a sufficient degree of codification, which allowed them to be used in schools and in the media. It is known that the character of colonial policy in Africa pursued by France (direct) and England (indirect) in the field of language and culture was as follows: the French colonies wanted to restrict the use of local languages only to the sphere of oral communal communication with the introduction of French into higher spheres. The local educated stratum of the elite was stimulated to further Francisation. In the English colonies, there was a tendency to distribute functions between local languages and English. Christian missionaries carried out some work on the modernization of the most important local languages. There even were translations of the Bible into many local languages; periodicals were also printed in local languages. In the English-speaking area, pidgins were distributed on the basis of English. There is a lack of this phenomenon in the French zone (this was affected by the degree of adequacy and relevance of local languages to modern communication needs). Nigerian language History of English language in Nigeria through civilization READ ALSO: States creation in Nigeria and their creators Assessing the consequences of the colonial policy of Great Britain in Nigeria, one should not, apparently, dwell only on the negative aspect. Of course, the national culture was infringed, and the Nigerians were cut off from age-old traditions. At the same time, the colonial policy of involving Africans in the Western educational system and other forms of Western civilization, the introduction of English in schools along with native languages, contributed to the fact that most of the population of Nigeria became bilingual. This, in turn, contributed to the acquisition of quality education in the universities of the country, as well as the successful socialization of the part of the Nigerians who speak English. These people can find well-paid, skilled work. Influence of Nigerian English The bicultural Nigerian autochthonous intelligentsia presented a huge stratum of English-language fiction, which was a manifestation of a new type of artistic consciousness. In the period of colonial rule, Nigerian writers used the English language to tell the world about their country, showed its originality, ancient culture. The English-speaking writers of Nigeria, thanks to the language of the former metropolis, which has become global in our day, could take a worthy place in the world literary process and actively expressed themselves. Among the largest writers of Nigeria, there are even the Nobel laureates: Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Siprian Ekvensi, Buchi Emecheta, Flora Nwapa, Akachi Adimora Ezeigbo, Ifeoma Okoye, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. These authors mastered Western European cultural values, not forgetting the spiritual traditions of their peoples, who had inhabited Nigeria for a long time. Nigerian writers, educated Africans, people of the two worlds, created works that have become the examples of the synthesis of two cultures - African (Nigerian) and European. Among the country's writers, there are also laureates of prestigious international literary prizes. In general, Nigerian writers made it possible to see the country and its historical past both before independence (1960) and in the postcolonial period, characterized by a complex socio-political situation. The English language, which became widespread in Nigeria in the colonial era, introduced in the education of the country, became the main language of fiction and national culture in general. The English language has a significant preponderance in the degree of adequacy over autochthonous with respect to their ability to express categories related to modern science and culture. It is impossible to overestimate the role of the English language played in the development of African social view. As for the local African languages, there are superior to English in terms of adequacy in reflecting the cultural and ethnic categories that have developed within the traditional autochthonous societies. European languages that have developed and are developing within the framework of European civilization adapt flexibly in order to transfer absolutely distinct culture. This is a brief history of English language in Nigeria. The English language in Nigeria reflects the uniqueness of African reality and African mentality in its own way and, in general, the linguistic picture of the world of Nigerians. Still, stylistic devices are painted with all bright national and cultural specifics. READ ALSO: Nigeria land mass by state Read Source: Legit.ng China Three Gorges seeks clarification before JV pact China Three Gorges Corporation (CTGC), the developer of the West Seti Hydropower Project, has asked its joint venture partner Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) to clarify several issues before it ratifies the agreement signed between the two. - Arinze Stanley is a super talented Nigerian artist whose drawings look so real - The 23-year-old artist did not have any form of art training but trained himself to become the professional he is today - He draws his inspiration from life experiences Arinze Stanley is an amazing artist whose art works speaks volumes. His drawings look so real you would think it was a photograph. Stanley's drawings are so real one would find it hard to believe that they are just pencil drawings Born on November 20, 1993, Stanley has been drawing for as long as he can remember. He is a pencil artist working in the genre of Hyperrealism. Speaking with Legit.ng, the engineering graduate from Imo state University said: I have been drawing virtually for as long as I can remember but everything changed when I decided to go the extra mile by taking my art career as a full time career in 2012 after coming across some artists on social media like Kelvin Okafor, Joel Rea and Emmanuele Descanio. I got really inspired so I picked up my pencils and started to train myself." This self-taught artist has always expressed himself through drawings for as long as he can remember The Imo state indigene who resides in Lagos never had any training in the art of drawing. He trained himself to become the amazing artist that he is today. READ ALSO: 6 ways every Nigerian can recognize a fake phone (photos) "I took a while to discipline myself in the craft as I spent sleepless nights training myself to become better at what I do. I never had any form of training from anyone. Stanley draws close-up portraits of human faces using both charcoal and graphite pencils. He also experiments with other techniques like cross hatching and scribbling. Stanley experiments with so many techniques like cross hatching and scribbling On how he gets the inspiration for his drawings, he said: "I draw inspiration from life experiences and basically everything that sparks a feeling of necessity, I also love to express deep and strong emotions as I find them most attractive." According to him, it just flows through him into the paper like energy transfer. It has not been an easy route as he has had several challenges especially trying to convince his family that art is profitable. READ ALSO: If you live in these states you are at the risk of meningitis (SEE FULL LIST) Also challenging are the sleepless nights which sometimes leaves him with serious headaches. Following his passion has also affected his relationship with his friends because he has to work all day and night. According to Stanley, a work takes between 200 to 300 hours for him to finish If you are thinking these drawing are a piece of cake, think again. These drawings take a lot of time. According to him, he spends like 200 to 350 hours working on a piece. Do the mathematics. It is quite profitable as this talented young man made his first million from selling his art. READ ALSO: This is what happens to your body when you take 2 bananas today For those who are aspiring to be pursue to passion, Stanley has this advice for them: I have a slogan I work with which are my 'Triple P's. They are, patience, practice and persistence.. These have guided me throughout the years and are still guiding me till now and no matter what craft you're in I believe it's the perfect remedy for success." Below are more of his works. Stanley says he draws inspiration from life experiences and basically everything that sparks a feeling of necessity According to him, he feels like he transfers his energy into a blank piece of paper through his pencils and it becomes art Stanley draws close-up portraits of human faces using both charcoal and graphite pencils The Legit.ng video below shows Polly Alakija, a British painter who is working on a project to beautify the state ahead of the Lagos @ 50 celebration. Source: Legit.ng Chinese envoy Yu calls on Prez Bhandari Chinese Ambassador to Nepal Yu Hong called on President Bidya Devi Bhandari at the latters office in Sheetal Niwas, Kathmandu, on Friday. The United States launched dozens of cruise missiles Thursday night at a Syrian airfield in response to what it believes was Syria's use of banned chemical weapons that killed at least 100 people, U.S. military officials told NBC News. Two U.S. warships in the Mediterranean Sea fired 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles intended for a single target: Shayrat Airfield in Homs province in western Syria, the Defense Department said. That's the airfield from which the United States believes the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad fired the banned weapons. The Syrian military said the strike killed at least seven people and wounded nine others, according to The Associated Press. Russia's foreign minister said no Russian servicemen were hurt. It was the first direct American assault on the Syrian government and Trump's most dramatic military order since becoming president just over two months ago. The strikes also risk thrusting the U.S. deeper into an intractable conflict that his predecessor spent years trying to avoid. Announcing the assault from his Florida resort, Trump said there was no doubt Syrian President Bashar Assad was responsible for the chemical attack, which he said employed banned gases and killed dozens. "Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children," Trump declared, deeming the strike in the "vital national security interest" of the United States. He called on "civilized nations" to join U.S. in "seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria." Some U.S. allies backed the move, while Russia called it "thoughtless" and promised to help fortify Syria's air defenses. Talal Barazi, the governor of Homs province, had earlier said a fire raged in the air base in Homs for over an hour following the barrage. U.S. officials told NBC News that people were not targeted and that aircraft and infrastructure at the site were hit, including the runway and fuel pumps. "We are assessing the results of the strike. Initial indications are that this strike has severely damaged or destroyed Syrian aircraft and support infrastructure and equipment at Shayrat Airfield, reducing the Syrian Government's ability to deliver chemical weapons," the Pentagon statement said. Ahrar Al Sham, the largest Syrian rebel group, released a statement backing the U.S. airstrikes. "The armed opposition welcomes any US intervention through surgical strikes that would deter the Assad regime capabilities to kill civilians and shorten the suffering of our people," the statement said. The Pentagon said the U.S. took careful precautions to avoid casualties, including the time of day they chose for the strike. Several members of Congress were also briefed on the administration's decision to strike the base, though some lawmakers were concerned by what they viewed as an "act of war" that "raised more questions that answers." Trump suggested that Assad may have to leave power, and his comments were strongly underscored by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who told reporters "there's no role for him to govern the Syrian people." Tillerson said late Thursday that Russia has "failed to deliver" on preventing chemical weapons attacks in Syria, adding that Russia has either been "complicit or simply incompetent." Support for the strikes from the U.S. poured in early Friday, including statements from Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Japan and Australia. Numan Kurtulmus, deputy prime minister of Turkey, welcomed the strike as an "important and meaningful" development but stressed that a continued tough stance is needed. He added that Assad's regime "must immediately be stopped." Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote on Twitter that Trump "sent a strong and clear message today," hoping it will resonate "not only in Damascus but in Tehran, Pyongyang & elsewhere." Russia and Iran condemned the U.S. missile strike on Syria. The Kremlin said Russian President Vladmir Putin sees the strike as an "aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law." "Washington's move impairs the Russian-US relations, which are in a deplorable state," spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. The Russian Foreign Ministry later announced it was suspending a deal with the U.S. on protecting Syria's airspace. Iran called it a "dangerous" and "destructive" act, one that "violates the principles of international law." Officials there also warned it would "strengthen terrorists" and further add to "the complexity of the situation in Syria and the region." The Trump administration has been put to the test this week amid an international outcry over the newly horrifying violence in Syria. Over the past seven years, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in the nation's civil war, triggering the worst refugee crisis since World War II. The strike came as Trump was hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping in meetings focused in part on another pressing U.S. security dilemma: North Korea's nuclear program. Trump's actions in Syria could signal to China that the new president isn't afraid of unilateral military steps, even if key nations like China are standing in the way. Trump has advocated greater counterterrorism cooperation with Russia, Assad's most powerful military backer. Just last week, the Trump administration signaled the U.S. was no longer interested in trying to push Assad from power. U.S. military officials sought to portray the strikes as an appropriate, measured response. But the assault still risks plunging America into the middle of Syria's conflict, complicating the safety of the hundreds of U.S. forces fighting a separate campaign against ISIS in the north of the country. If Assad's military persists in further gas attacks, the Trump administration has indicated it would pursue increased retaliation. Russia and Iran, Assad's allies, pose other problems. Russian military personnel and aircraft are embedded with Syria's, and Iranian troops and paramilitary forces are also on the ground helping Assad fight the array of opposition groups hoping to topple him. U.S. military officials said they informed their Russian counterparts of the impending attack. The goal was to avoid any accident involving Russian forces. Nevertheless, Russia's Deputy U.N. ambassador Vladimir Safronkov warned that any negative consequences from the strikes would be on the "shoulders of those who initiated such a doubtful and tragic enterprise." The U.S. also notified its partner countries in the region prior to launching the strikes. Trump's decision to attack Syria came three-and-a-half years after President Barack Obama threatened Assad with military action after an earlier chemical weapons attack killed hundreds outside of Damascus. Obama had declared the use of such weapons a "red line." At the time, several American ships in the Mediterranean were poised to launch missiles, only for Obama to abruptly pull back after key U.S. ally Britain and the U.S. Congress balked at his plan. He opted instead for a Russian-backed plan that was supposed to remove and eliminate Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles. Thursday night's strikes were launched from the USS Ross and USS Porter and landed in the early morning Friday in Syria. The world learned of the chemical attack earlier in the week in footage that showed people dying in the streets and bodies of children stacked in piles. The international outcry fueled an emotional response from Trump, who appeared to abandon his much-touted "America First" vision for a stance of humanitarian intervention, akin to that of previous American leaders. "I think what happened in Syria is a disgrace to humanity," he said Thursday. Trump seemed to rapidly reconsider his feelings about Assad, saying: "He's there and I guess he's running things, so something should happen." The show of force in Syria raises legal questions. It's unclear what authority Trump is relying on to attack another government. When Obama intervened in Libya in 2011, he used a U.N. Security Council mandate and NATO's overall leadership of the mission to argue that he had legal authority arguments that many Republicans opposed. Trump can't rely on either justification here. Unclear also is whether Trump is adopting any broader effort to combat Assad. Under Obama, the United States largely pulled back from its support for so-called "moderate" rebels when Russia's military intervention in September 2015 led them to suffer a series of battlefield defeats. Instead, Obama sought to work with Russia on a negotiated transition. Award-Winning Actor and NYFA Board Member Matthew Modine Holds Master Class for Acting for Film Students April 6, 2017 Award-winning actor and New York Film Academy Board Member Matthew Modine delighted Acting for Film students with his intimate master class, held at NYFAs theater in Battery Park. Modine says his loyalty to and friendship with the Academy sprang from his relationship with its founder, Jerry Sherlock, whom Modine says had a profound impact on his life. Perhaps best known for his performance as Private Joker in Stanley Kubricks "Full Metal Jacket," Modine made his feature film debut in John Sayles' "Baby it's You" (1983), soon becoming one of Hollywood's hottest young actors with his contributions to three Vietnam War-era films. The first was Robert Altman's "Streamers" (1983), in which he played a soldier preparing for decampment to battle. This was followed by a starring turn as the mentally unstable titular character of Alan Parker's "Birdy" (1984). Modine also starred as a high school wrestler in "Vision Quest" (1985), and as an FBI agent in "Married to the Mob" (1988). Re-teaming with Altman, Modine played Dr. Ralph Wyman opposite Julianne Moore in "Short Cuts" (1993), which won a Golden Globe for best ensemble performance. He earned Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for his portrayal of Dr. Don Francis in the HBO movie "And the Band Played On" (1993), and received another Golden Globe nomination for his role as Sammy Ayers in the Hallmark movie "What the Deaf Man Heard" (1997). Modine made his feature directorial debut with the crime drama "If ... Dog ... Rabbit" (1999), and earned recurring parts in the television series "The Bedford Diaries" and "Weeds" in subsequent years. He also became more active on the stage, portraying legendary playwright Arthur Miller in "Finishing the Picture" during the Goodman Theater's 2004-05 season, and tackling the iconic role of Atticus Finch in a Hartford Stage production of "To Kill a Mockingbird" in 2009. He made his Broadway debut in the revival of "The Miracle Worker" in 2010, and contributed supporting roles in "The Dark Knight Rises" (2012) and the Sundance darling "Jobs" (2013). Most recently, Modine won the SAG Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series award for the role of Dr. Martin Brenner in the Netflix original series "Stranger Things." He appears in the "Sicario" sequel "Soldado," the thriller "47 Meters Down," and the British comedy of manners "The Hippopotamus," which was directed by NYFA alumnus John Jencks. Modine says his acting aspirations began as a child when he would go to the drive-in movie theater where his father had worked. From there, Modine began telling his friends that he was an actor, until it actually became true when he got the leading role of George Gibbs as a sophomore in his high schools performance of "Our Town." From there he moved to New York City to study under Stella Adler. "There was something about New York that called me," said Modine. "I was taught by Stella Adler. She told me if I was only there to be a movie star, to just leave. She said, 'I dont teach you to be a movie star, I teach you to be a human being.'" This philosophy has remained true to the core of who Modine is, both as an actor and in his role in society. Admittedly a very liberal man, Modine doesnt shy away from sharing his political and spiritual beliefs, and believes all actors should act accordingly as it is their duty as artists. "What we do is very important," said Modine. "We tell stories that change people's lives." Modine kept the evening loose and was very inviting. In fact, he began by introducing each and every student to the audience, so that everyone was acquainted with one another. He stressed the fact that actors should have each others backs. "You don't want to be with another actor that doesn't have your back," he said. He also added to, "Find a scene partner that is better than you. It'll help your game. You'll learn from them." Once again stressing the importance of understanding each individual from a worldly perspective, Modine referenced "To Kill a Mockingbird," saying, "Youll never truly understand a person until you get into their skin and move around in it." Modine continued the evening by breaking down powerful scenes from his films, including "Birdy," "Full Metal Jacket," "Married to the Mob," "And the Band Played On," "Streamers," and others. One surprise to Modine came when it was announced during the master class that "Stranger Things" was nominated for a Peabody Award. To learn more about "Stranger Things" Season 2 and see the teaser trailer released at Comic Con, click here. Coca-Cola files law suit against its insurers The Coca-Cola Company has filed a suit in Georgia Federal Court against Lloyds of London and another insurer seeking for compensation worth $ 1 million to cover the loss caused during the 2015 blockade in Nepal. According to a website law360.com, the US beverage maker has stated that the company was ensured under a political risk policy it held with the insurer. More broadly, money flowing out of the hedge fund industry as a whole comes at a time when performance has been disappointing. The Hedge Fund Research Composite Index, the broadest gauge of hedge fund performance, has lagged the Standard & Poors 500-stock index this year, gaining 3.56 percent through the end of October compared with the indexs 4 percent gain over the same period, accounting for reinvested dividends. Frankly, we expect to see assets move from human managers to machine managers, Tony James, chief operating officer of Blackstone, told investors earlier this year. The Blackstone Alternative Asset Management arm, which manages $70 billion in hedge fund investments, is a big investor in quant-related hedge fund firms and has put billions of dollars toward these firms in recent years. The division now has $10 billion invested in quant-dedicated hedge fund firms, according to one person with direct knowledge of the firm; it has not publicly released the number. Some industry observers warn that hedge funds building out new quant arms may simply be trying to capture investor money that is flowing into the strategy. But veterans in the quant world see the trend as an indication that the industry is finally catching up to other industries in which technology has disrupted businesses. The portfolio investment industry has been relatively late to adopting technology, said Philippe Jordan, the president of Capital Fund Management, a 25-year-old quant hedge fund firm that manages $6.9 billion. Finance is deeply conservative in nature, he added. Capital Fund Management has 160 employees, including 40 scientists, most of whom hold Ph.D.s in physics; 75 employees are focused on information technology, 20 of which are in data management. Like other types of hedge funds, the firm has a research department. The only difference is that at Capital Fund Management, the analysts who conduct research approach the work more like academics, and ideas are peer-reviewed. With more investor money going toward firms that build models to trade on, there is some concern that these models will begin to look similar, potentially resulting in overcrowding. That could be a problem if there is a sudden event that drives everyone to start selling at the same time, something that happened during the quant crunch in the summer of 2007. Over one week in August, AQR Capital Management, D. E. Shaw and Renaissance Technologies were all hit with huge losses as the housing market began to show signs of collapse. With similar models and huge positions, the losses each firm suffered were amplified. Mr. Shen at BlackRock thinks there are fewer risks this time around. The diversity of data allows people to do a lot of different things, he said. Joanne Kyger, a prolific poet whose works, inspired by natural wonders and Zen Buddhism, distinguished her as one of the few women embraced by the Beat Generation writers fraternity, died on March 22 at her home in Bolinas, Calif. She was 82. The cause was lung cancer, her husband, Donald Guravich, said. Along with Diane di Prima, Anne Waldman and several others, Ms. Kyger made her mark not only as a writer, but also as a member of the male-dominated post-World War II cultural movement personified by William S. Burroughs, Lucien Carr, Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, Herbert Huncke, Gary Snyder and Jack Kerouac. (It was Kerouac who, to characterize his generation, appropriated the musical term, which he interpreted as nonconformist and upbeat.) The shape of the day, the words of the moment, whats happening around me in the world of interior and exterior space these are my writing concerns, Ms. Kyger explained in a statement to the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in New York in 2005. In her Night Palace, from 2003, she wrote: The best thing about the past is that its over When you die. you wake up from a dream thats your life. Then you grow up and get to be post -human in a past that keeps happening ahead of you Brenda Knight wrote in Women of the Beat Generation: The Writers, Artists and Muses at the Heart of a Revolution (1996) that Ms. Kygers poetry is exemplary of Buddhist consciousness in Beat writing, of a sensibility for which wisdom is the greatest beauty. President Trump has vowed to roll back financial regulation, saying that it is preventing banks from lending and businesses from growing. Wall Street, it would seem, has found its dream president. There is just one possible complication: His top advisers continue to float an idea that would not only hurt the nations largest banks, it would upend them. In a meeting on Wednesday with senators from both parties, Gary D. Cohn, Mr. Trumps chief economic adviser, said the administration was considering a proposal that would require separating retail banking from investment banking and trading. Mr. Cohn mentioned the idea to members of the Senate Banking Committee as one of several financial regulations on the table. He offered few specifics on how the proposal would work or when it could be carried out, according to people briefed on the matter. It was part of a wide-ranging discussion, reported earlier by Bloomberg, that also touched on the presidents tax policy. Robert S. Mueller III, the former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is set to oversee nearly $1 billion that the airbag maker Takata has agreed to pay to victims and automakers affected by its defective airbags. Takata pleaded guilty on Feb. 27 to fraud charges, acknowledging that it had provided false safety-test data to cover up a defect in its airbags. The defect causes its airbags to rupture violently when triggered, shooting metal shards toward the cars occupants, and has been linked to at least 11 deaths and more than 180 injuries in the United States. The company also agreed to pay a criminal penalty, set up a compensation fund for victims and pay restitution to automakers caught up in the recall of nearly 70 million airbags in 42 million vehicles in the United States, and millions more overseas. In this age of rage, Madison Avenue is finding itself on red alert. Advertisers are increasingly in the cross hairs of populist activists aided by the power and reach of social media who are demanding that brands quickly take sides on divisive social and political issues, posing a new challenge to corporations that usually prefer to stay out of the fray. After a groundswell of online anger over reports that Bill OReilly, the Fox News host, had settled with at least five women who accused him of harassment, more than 50 companies pulled their ads from Mr. OReillys popular prime time program. The exodus followed similar campaigns to pressure brands with ties to President Trump, like L.L. Bean, Uber and advertisers on The New Celebrity Apprentice. Americans are now demanding that their brands articulate their values and weigh in on political issues, and I think the degree to which they are expecting that is really quite new, said Kara Alaimo, who teaches public relations at Hofstra University and worked in communications for the United Nations, the Treasury Department in the Obama administration, and the administration of former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. What social media is doing is forcing companies to make these decisions much more rapidly. Ad boycotts are not new: provocateurs like Don Imus and Glenn Beck lost their cable news soapboxes in part because an angry public used petitions and letter-writing campaigns to force companies to drop their sponsorship. Mrs. Clinton made the remarks at the Women in the World conference in Manhattan, where she was interviewed by the New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof before an audience of about 3,000 people. It was her first extensive interview since her loss in November to Donald J. Trump. She did not stint on criticism of the Trump White House. I dont take any pleasure in seeing the kind of chaotic functioning of the current administration, Mrs. Clinton said. Heres what I dont understand I dont understand the commitment to hurt so many people that this administration, this White House, seems to be pursuing. Women in particular, she said, are under attack by Mr. Trumps policies. The targeting of women which is whats going on is absolutely beyond any political agenda, Mrs. Clinton said, pointing in particular to the State Departments move to defund the United Nations Population Fund, among other programs. She criticized efforts to strip maternity care and other treatments from Republicans failed bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. They had not a clue what that meant, she said. I dont know if any of them had ever even read the bill. She also noted that it was mostly men who were behind the push to curtail womens health benefits. The things that come out of some of these mens mouths like, Why do we have to cover maternity care? she said with a laugh. Well I dont know, maybe you were dropped by immaculate conception? Dear Diary: Every Christmas I travel from Philadelphia to New York to spend a couple of days on the Upper West Side with my sister, who is 82. I am 90. On Christmas Eve, we walked up Broadway to a little, hole-in-the-wall shop, Beard Papas, for coffee and cream puffs. I sat at a small table while my sister stood on line. I watched a much younger woman at an adjacent table struggling with an overladen shopping bag, from which a bouquet of long-stemmed roses threatened to fall out. The bag kept toppling but finally things were in order, and the roses were safe. I smiled at the younger woman and showed her my crossed fingers, and she crossed hers in return. A few seconds later, she put a beautiful rose on my table. The Assembly remained behind members have now been in Albany for 11 straight days and the gloom deepened. Perhaps aware of the damage being done to his carefully cultivated reputation as an efficient leader, Mr. Cuomo called a meeting at his office on Thursday to try to broker a compromise between the leaders of the Democrat-led Assembly and the Republican-led Senate on three issues that he identified as sticking points. The thorniest and most politically charged involves a proposal to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 18 from 16. (New York is one of only two states, along with North Carolina, to view 16- and 17-year-olds as adults in such matters.) While both sides have agreed to most of that proposal, disputes arose over whether corrections officers or the Office of Children and Family Services would monitor youthful offenders after they had completed their sentences. The governor has proposed establishing a panel made up of law enforcement personnel and social workers to evaluate and make recommendations on such cases. Another dispute centers on charter school funding and a law expiring in June that froze tuition increases for such schools. If lawmakers do not act, a $1,500 tuition increase kicks in, burdening local school districts. Democrats have opposed that increase, and Mr. Cuomo has suggested a one-year freeze, followed by annual increases received by traditional public schools. Savings from the freeze were estimated to be $100 million. President Trumps decision to remove Stephen Bannon, his chief political adviser, from his post as a principal on the National Security Council has led to no end of speculation in Washington, some of it inspired by Mr. Bannons rivals in the White House, that this is the beginning of the end of Mr. Bannons outsize influence and payback for his role in the administrations early missteps. But whatever the fallout bureaucratically, on a substantive level the move was a welcome course correction, removing a contentious and extremist political voice from a vitally important policy-making body and thus making it more likely that people with actual expertise will help an inexperienced president make tough choices. That need was driven home as reports came in that the administration had ordered air strikes in Syria in response to its use of chemical weapons. No presidential adviser in recent memory had so brazenly tried to consolidate power as Mr. Bannon, who moved quickly to establish himself not just as Mr. Trumps Svengali, but as a kind of de facto president. One sign was an executive order, framed by Mr. Bannon, and issued after the inauguration, that named him to the councils principals committee, which includes the vice president, secretaries of state and defense and other top officials. It is the primary policy-making body that decides national security questions that do not rise to the level of the president, and it frames the debate over matters that do. Previous presidents have decided that such decisions should be separate from politics; Karl Rove, George W. Bushs chief political adviser, was barred from council meetings. Mr. Bannons appointment was thus widely condemned, not only because he was a political adviser but also because he was a particularly combative one. Mr. Trump, angry he was not warned about the implications of the appointment, briefly considered rescinding it immediately, then did not, fearing even more furor. The new order has to be seen as a victory for Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, the new national security adviser and a respected professional who reportedly insisted on purging Mr. Bannon in an effort to ensure that profound decisions about the countrys security are made without regard to political calculation. WASHINGTON President Trump has targeted a wide range of Democratic adversaries in interviews, Twitter posts and news conferences, doling out names and insults with an auctioneers stamina. But when it comes to Representative Elijah E. Cummings, Democrat of Maryland, Mr. Trump has been slightly less pugilistic. Mr. Trump seems to view the congressman as something of a frenemy. Elijah Cummings was in my office and he said, You will go down as one of the great presidents in the history of our country, Mr. Trump said in an interview with The New York Times on Wednesday. But then, Mr. Trump said in the interview, he later watched Mr. Cummings on television evidently an appearance on MSNBCs Morning Joe program, in which Mr. Cummings said he was very skeptical of Mr. Trump and his ability to lead a divided nation. And I said, Mr. Trump told The Times, Was that the same man? It was the latest volley in a public back and forth between the two men, which centers on a single meeting between them in the Oval Office on March 8, when Mr. Cummings, according to Mr. Trump, made the comment about Mr. Trumps greatness. On Thursday, Mr. Cummings said, as he has before, that Mr. Trump had distorted his remarks. During my meeting with the president and on several occasions since then, I have said repeatedly that he could be a great president if if he takes steps to truly represent all Americans rather than continuing on the divisive and harmful path he is currently on, Mr. Cummings said in a statement. Cyber crimes of harassing women on rise On an evening in 2012, Uma Khadka (name changed) was out with her friends at a restaurant. She got a frantic call from her sister, who alerted her about the nude photos of women leaked from her Facebook page. Bewildered, Khadka checked her profile immediately and removed the posts. WASHINGTON Under intense pressure from President Trump, House Republicans took a small step Thursday to revive legislation to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, adding a $15 billion fund to help insurers pay claims for their sickest customers. Speaker Paul D. Ryan orchestrated a broad show of Republican support for the proposal, conceived as an amendment to the repeal bill that collapsed on the House floor two weeks ago. But Republicans said they still did not have enough votes to pass the bill, and with the House now on a two-week spring break, time is running out for their planned quick-strike repeal of President Barack Obamas health care law. Even so, Republicans said the amendment could help heal divisions in their conference and show progress to an impatient president, still smarting from a loss in his first showdown with Congress. By a party-line vote of 9 to 2, the House Rules Committee on Thursday gave its blessing to the proposal, devised by Representatives Gary Palmer of Alabama and David Schweikert of Arizona, both members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. WASHINGTON The Internal Revenue Service said on Thursday that the personal data of as many as 100,000 taxpayers could have been compromised through a scheme in which hackers posed as students using an online tool to apply for financial aid. The breach may be the most extensive since 2015, when thieves gained access to the tax returns of over 300,000 people by using stolen data and filed fraudulent returns to get refunds. The possibility of an attack became known in early March after the I.R.S. shut down its Data Retrieval Tool, which families used to import tax information to Fafsa, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, on the Education Departments website. The shutdown, at the height of financial aid application season, caused outrage among parents and students trying to fill out the complicated Fafsa forms. The I.R.S. has been struggling to overhaul its defenses against increasingly sophisticated cyberthreats as its budget shrinks and its staff dwindles. When Jared Kushner, President Trumps son-in-law and senior adviser, sought the top-secret security clearance that would give him access to some of the nations most closely guarded secrets, he was required to disclose all encounters with foreign government officials over the last seven years. But Mr. Kushner did not mention dozens of contacts with foreign leaders or officials in recent months. They include a December meeting with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, and one with the head of a Russian state-owned bank, Vnesheconombank, arranged at Mr. Kislyaks behest. The most treasured lore among the Monpa surrounds Tsangyang Gyatso, who in 1682 became the sixth Dalai Lama. People here make pilgrimages to his childhood home, where a stone is displayed with a faint footprint said to be his, and speak longingly of the possibility that it could happen again. That is the dream of many people here, that the next Dalai Lama should be born in Tawang, said Sang Phuntsok, Tawangs deputy commissioner. Tsering Tashi, a local legislator, said that, as a layman, he had no business commenting, but in the end he could not restrain himself. I wish that the reincarnation of the next Dalai Lama happens in Tawang, he said. Thats all I can say. The Dalai Lama has been enigmatic about how his successor will be chosen. In the past, monks have turned to visions and oracles to lead them to a child conceived just as the previous Dalai Lama died. Having identified a child, they administer tests seeking to confirm that he is the reincarnated lama, such as asking him to pick out objects belonging to his predecessor. But that method would leave Tibetan Buddhism without a leader for at least a year, allowing China to identify and promote its own candidate. The Dalai Lama has hinted that he may instead opt for a nontraditional selection process, selecting a child or an adult to succeed him while he is still alive. Aging Tibetan Buddhist lamas have, in some cases, visited places where they would later be reincarnated as babies, and the Dalai Lamas visits to Tawang and Mongolia seemed to fall into that pattern, said Robert J. Barnett, a historian of modern Tibet at Columbia University. This is a way of getting under the skin of the Chinese, of probing them, and reminding them that they have no control over where the next reincarnation occurs, he said. As the Dalai Lamas arrival in Tawang grew closer this week, Chinese statements grew increasingly bellicose, a tactic that has succeeded in pressuring officials of many countries to snub the Tibetan leader. Mrs. Mays government, Ms. Sturgeon said, did not give advance notice to leaders of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, the other components of the United Kingdom, when the British leader decided that March 29 was the day she would invoke the Article 50 clause of the European Union treaty, starting the withdrawal from Europe, known as Brexit. If I told you that not just the Scottish government, but the Welsh government and Northern Ireland found out the date of the triggering of Article 50 from the BBC, it probably gives you an insight, Ms. Sturgeon said. Representatives of Mrs. Mays government did not immediately respond to email requests for comment. But Mrs. May, the top advocate of Brexit, has said that she believes all constituents of the United Kingdom should now grow more unified, and that she strongly opposes Ms. Sturgeons push for Scottish independence. Now is not the time, Mrs. May said last month in public remarks that seemed to Ms. Sturgeon and her supporters patronizing and arrogant. Ms. Sturgeon, 46, leader of the Scottish National Party, has emerged as a formidable force in the independence effort, which failed in a 2014 referendum but found renewed energy after the Brexit referendum in June produced a victory for those who wished to leave the European Union. BEIRUT, Lebanon The diplomatic situation had been looking bright for President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. With the help of Russia, he had consolidated his power, the rebels were on their heels and the United States had just declared that ousting him was not a priority. So why would Mr. Assad risk it all, outraging the world by attacking civilians with what Turkey now says was the nerve agent sarin, killing scores of people, many of them children? Why would he inflict the deadliest chemical strike since the 2013 attacks outside Damascus? Those attacks came close to bringing American military retaliation then. And in a stunningly swift reversal, Tuesdays attack drew a response from President Trump: dozens of cruise missiles launched at a Syrian air base. One of the main defenses offered by Mr. Assads allies and supporters, in disputing that his forces carried out the strike on Tuesday, is that such an attack would be a crazy move, as one Iranian analyst, Mosib Naimi, told the Russian state-run news site Sputnik. Yet, rather than an inexplicable act, analysts say, it is part of a carefully calculated strategy of escalating attacks against civilians. For years, at least since it began shelling neighborhoods with artillery in 2012, then bombing them from helicopters and later from jets, the Syrian government has adopted a policy of seeking total victory by making life as miserable as possible for anyone living in areas outside its control. In a session on the challenges of running art businesses in London and New York, the British dealer John Martin spoke of soaring rental bills (in the case of his gallery, totaling 250,000 pounds, or about $310,000, a year) and highly popular fairs threatening the existence of smaller galleries. The New York art adviser Lisa Schiff talked about how the numbing saturation of the art world and the pressures of globalization had created an impasse in todays market. Its an endless cycle, Ms. Schiff said, referring to this years ever-more-crowded calendar of art fairs, exhibitions and other events. Theres simply too much now. I want to shut off the noise. The spring and summer are shaping up to be exceptionally noisy. A Mediterranean offshoot of the quinquennial Documenta survey opens on Saturday in Athens, and Damien Hirst makes a comeback on Sunday with Treasures From the Wreck of the Unbelievable in Venice. The 57th Venice Biennale opens next month, followed by bellwether auctions in New York, the Art Basel fair in Switzerland in June, and additional auctions and fairs in London. It remains to be seen how much a new desire among contemporary artists and curators to engage with political issues at events such as Documenta will percolate to the commercial realm. A hand-carved marble refugee tent pitched near the Acropolis by the Canadian artist Rebecca Belmore remains a world away from the investment-grade art of auctions and art fairs. At first glance, it doesnt seem like a performance. The stage is a meadow, and the score is a collection of sounds, including the commands of a dog handler and the pounding of hooves. A woman extends her arms while four sheep, trailed by a determined dog, trot in a circular formation. In quick cuts, we see bigger flocks a blur of curly wool and strong snouts race by. Moments later, a young man holds a sheepskin and spins, before collapsing onto the grass. Is it silly? Is it pretentious? Is it art? An early video sketch of Doggie Hamlet, a site-specific work by the choreographer and performance artist Ann Carlson, has recently become fodder for conservatives intent on eliminating federal funding of the National Endowment for the Arts. I cant defend this strangely chopped together video, which undercuts the scope and mysterious splendor of Ms. Carlsons vision. But as a dance critic, I will fight for Ms. Carlson, a multidisciplinary artist whose work poignantly explores social issues through the lens of performance. Ms. Carlson is no joke. But under the headline Taxpayers Foot Bill for Doggie Hamlet in the conservative online magazine The Washington Free Beacon, Ms. Carlson and her production were mocked in a piece subtitled: Actors in federally funded show yell and run at sheep in field for postmodern dance. Art is subjective to be sure, but judging a three-minute promo without context does no one any favors. Doggie Hamlet, it should be noted, has not received National Endowment money directly but has been funded by the New England Foundation for the Arts National Dance Project (2015) and Creative Capitals Map Fund (2014). While Creative Capital is an independent organization, the New England Foundation for the Arts is one of six regional arts organizations established with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts; Ms. Carlsons production grant was $45,000. JERUSALEM It took the good part of a year to find a new director for the Israel Museum in Jerusalem after James S. Snyder announced his decision early last year to step down after two decades. But weeks after Mr. Snyders successor, Eran Neuman, began easing into the role, he abruptly backed out. Now, the museums search committee will resume the search for someone to fill the prestigious post. And Mr. Neuman will return to his previous position as head of the David Azrieli School of Architecture at Tel Aviv University. There are competing narratives about the reason behind the pivot. After his appointment was announced in January, Mr. Neuman took up the post on a part-time basis Feb. 19. Yet, his discussions with the leadership about his salary and benefits, which are set by Israeli law, continued, according to the museum. Mr. Neumans turnaround was a result of differing perceptions regarding his role and terms of employment, the museum announced in a cryptic statement this week. Artworks that have never been seen outside Italy or even beyond the walls of a remote church near Venice will arrive in New York starting this fall for two exhibitions at the Frick Collection, the museum announced on Friday. The first, Veronese in Murano: Two Venetian Renaissance Masterpieces Restored, is slated to be on view from Oct. 24 through March 11, 2018. The exhibition features two newly conserved paintings by Paolo Veronese (152888): Saint Jerome in the Wilderness and Saint Peter Visiting Saint Agatha in Prison. Both paintings were commissioned in 1566 for a small chapel at Santa Maria degli Angeli, a church on the island Murano, part of the Venetian Lagoon and off the beaten path for tourists and scholars. Only Saint Jerome has been shown outside the church, and that was in 1939, at an exhibition in Venice. Duterte sends troops to South China Sea Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered troops to occupy uninhabited islands and reefs in the disputed South China Sea. To accept the main character as societal arbiter requires some degree of engagement with an unreconstructed sexual reprobate who at one point is seen being pleasured by one woman even as he chats up another. Mr. Tennant has charisma to burn and more runaway energy than I recall from a heavy-going Mr. Ifans in the same role. But no amount of swagger can forestall ones sense of the play as a theatrical exercise of Mr. Marber doing this because, as the expert writer of Closer and the director of the current (and wonderful) Travesties, he can, and not because the venture asks him to cut particularly deep. The shards of feeling that exist are saved (no surprise) for the guy time between D.J. and his ever-faithful sidekick, Stan, whom the invaluable Adrian Scarborough plays as a put-upon assistant who also happens to be his masters perpetual analyst: You fear being alone, Stan observes of D.J., who for all his daredevil frolics wants nothing more than a friend. Romance exists as a real possibility in The Lottery of Love, the 1730 Marivaux play that opened Monday night at the Orange Tree Theater in West London, in a previously unproduced English-language version by the novelist John Fowles, of The French Lieutenants Woman renown. (Fowless translation had a workshop production by the National Theater Studio in 1984, but it never received a full production.) A story of swapped identities intended to put two pairs of lovers to the test, this attenuated caprice has been displaced to Regency-era England, and the cover photograph on both the program and the published text might prompt the less keen-eyed to assume they were attending a little-known work by Jane Austen. In fact, Ive never felt that Austens social geometry is quite as rigid and exacting as the status-consciousness on view here, which finds a pair of societal swells changing places with their servants to better understand their putative soul mates: out of deception and disguise, you see, emerges truth. And while the eventual couplings are never in doubt, the preordained nature of the piece allows for ample comedy at the expense of that evergreen topic, class the subterfuge ramped up by the director, Paul Miller, so that unsuspecting playgoers become occasional confidants of a rambunctious ensemble of actors who might be more appealing if they tempered an exuberance bordering in some cases on egotism. Keir Charles, who plays the manservant Brass, is particularly overzealous, though one must commend a thicket of hair worthy of Prince. Break out of the box. Forgo the traditional concert hall, and present artists in intimate, alternative spaces. Such experiments have long been brewing in classical music, with performances in clubs, lofts and salons. Its hard to imagine a space further removed from a concert hall than the basement crypt of Church of the Intercession in Harlem. Yet there on Wednesday night, the prodigiously gifted pianist and composer Conrad Tao, 22, played a recital for an audience of 50 people, the maximum the room can accommodate. This was the latest program of the Crypt Sessions, a popular series that began in late 2015 with a recital by none other than the adventurous Mr. Tao. The Casa Italiana at Columbia University, designed in the 1920s by McKim, Mead & White, has a small, tastefully opulent concert hall inspired by Renaissance Rome. Sitting there just after nightfall on Wednesday for ensemble mise-ens program of music by the contemporary Italian composer Salvatore Sciarrino, my eyes at one point drifted from the players to the window. I blinked. I could have sworn I saw, across Amsterdam Avenue, a person standing on a window ledge, braced against the jambs, outline visible against the light within, ready to jump. I almost started Should I shout out? Disrupt the concert? when it became clear that the figure wasnt moving. I squinted: It was a bit of scaffolding. Toward the end of the new Netflix movie Burning Sands, five young pledges of a fictional fraternity make their way through a wooded area before older fraternity brothers stop them at the entrance to a barn. As the doors are opened, one fraternity brother welcomes them to hell night. They are then relentlessly shoved, hit and paddled until one pledge collapses and begins foaming at the mouth. Its a relatively rare depiction of hazing onscreen, though its not unusual for television and film to use collegiate life to dissect thorny subjects. As hazing injuries and deaths periodically make headlines, Burning Sands and The Quad, which just wrapped its first season on BET, are timely explorations of the real repercussions of the violent ritual. Set on the campuses of historically black colleges and universities, these two projects have also prompted discussions over their representation of storied black organizations and life at these schools. A forthcoming documentary, Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, by Stanley Nelson, will explore the place and importance of the institutions within the context of American history. Burning Sands follows a group of young men during the final week of pledging as they bond while doing community service and other tasks. Hazing also plays a prominent role as pledges are repeatedly struck the bruises both temporary physical marks and badges of honor of earning their membership. You have people who will try to do anything in order to become validated, and so theres a value in them pledging, Lawrence C. Ross Jr., author of The Divine Nine: The History of African American Fraternities and Sororities, said in a telephone interview. On the other side is the feeling and allure of power on the person who is the big brother or sister with this idea that hazing is transmitting some sort of values. Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown that lets you sleep and lets us get paid to watch comedy. What do you think of it? What else are you interested in? Let us know: thearts@nytimes.com. Lenos Back Jay Leno made a cameo appearance on his old show Thursday, zagging away from late nights standard bashing of President Trump. He was helping Jimmy Fallon cap off a week of hosting The Tonight Show in Orlando, Fla. None of the four parents involved the Rifkins, Larry and Carmelita; the Genzlingers, Neil and Donna can now remember why Leora and our 4-year-old, Emily, were playmates, but they must have met in a kiddie tumbling class or some such. So it was our house that Mr. Rifkin called when he needed to borrow a child for his mini-focus group. Emily has no memory of her first Barney exposure; her mother and I mostly remember that she stayed at the Rifkins for a long time. Long enough for Mr. Rifkin to confirm that he was looking at an opportunity. I saw a lot of things that were a little bit different, he recalled of his reaction to the video. Children leading the action. Music was driving it. There was a certain motif to this that I thought was very loving and caring. In a sense, the way I looked at this, it reminded me of Fred Rogers in a dinosaur costume. Mr. Rifkin went on to secure a production deal and, a little more than a year later, Barney & Friends made its national debut on PBS. The television exposure sent Barney-mania, which had already been building, into overdrive. Its tempting to here employ the cliche that the rest is history, but it almost wasnt. PBS, Mr. Rifkin said, had just switched to a model in which, rather than being affiliate-driven, decisions about what stayed on the air were to be made by an executive at the national level. And that executive apparently didnt get Barney or understand how fast the dinosaurs fan base was building; the show was scheduled to be axed after its first 30 episodes. That was ultimately prevented by a bit of lobbying, including, Mr. Rifkin recalled, a memorable appearance by Barney at the shops in the Hartford Civic Center. Thats the closest Ive ever come to feeling what Beatlemania was like, he said. The show stayed, and Barney became ubiquitous. He also quickly grew into an oddly polarizing figure. Someone started an I Hate Barney Secret Society. Parents bitched and moaned about that voice, those songs, the chirpiness. Mention Barneys name today, and youre likely to get an Ugh. American Playboy: The Hugh Hefner Story explores the life and times of Mr. Hefner, bunny ears, centerfolds and all. And the first season of Baz Luhrmanns The Get Down returns with more disco fever. Whats Streaming AMERICAN PLAYBOY: THE HUGH HEFNER STORY on Amazon Prime and Playboy.com. From the 1953 founding of Playboy magazine through six decades of bunnies, mansions, centerfolds and censorship, this 10-epsiode series chronicles Mr. Hefners wild ride through the sexual revolution, drawing on archival footage and dramatic re-enactments. It also dips into some of his more than 2,900 personal scrapbooks. Jesse Jackson, Gene Simmons and Bill Maher offer perspective. Americans perceptions of their own interest in the region have guided them, despite occasional blundering and backtracking, to maintain generally consistent approaches and policies. As Green and others have noted, Washington became an offshore balancer, adopting the view that the United States had to prevent any one power from dominating the Asian landmass and its adjacent waters. The goal was for the Pacific to serve as a conduit for American ideas and goods to flow westward, Green writes, and not for threats to flow eastward toward the homeland. Protection of the Pacific, therefore, became a paramount concern. American presidents, diplomats, admirals and analysts may have disagreed on strategy, but the disagreements were mostly about how far forward to draw Americas defensive line. As Walter Lippmann noted, the United States was never isolationist in the Pacific. The American effort over time is all the more remarkable because democracies are, by their nature, ill-suited to maintaining consistent foreign policies, something noted by Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America. As Green writes: The founders created a system that was designed to prevent precisely the kind of centralization of decision-making imagined by Thucydides, Clausewitz and other classical strategic thinkers. Yet America has been able to maintain consistency because its policy, he perceptively notes, always flowed organically from the Republics values and geographic circumstances. Those geographic circumstances two oceans did not insulate America. The United States fought two great wars in Europe in the last century, both to prevent one power, Germany, from seizing the continent. That same strategic imperative forced Washington to engage in two epic struggles in the Asia-Pacific, first a war with Japan and then a multidecade effort to contain Soviet power. Image Now, the United States finds itself involved in a third campaign to prevent a state from asserting hegemonic control in Asia. Green points out that Asia is defined in large part by the waxing and waning of the Sinocentric order. During the 19th and 20th centuries, Chinese weakness was the cause of instability as various powers rushed in to carve up the declining Qing dynasty and its war-torn successor, the Republic of China under Chiang Kai-shek. China today is no longer, as George Marshall put it, a lamb before the shearers, and it is Chinese assertion that is now roiling the region. SUNSHINE STATE Essays By Sarah Gerard 359 pp. Harper Perennial, paper, $15.99. Image As the title suggests, Gerards native Florida links the assembled eight essays, but the setting is just that a backdrop, against which Gerard exercises an admirable impulse for experimentation. BFF is an extremely intimate autopsy of a childhood friendship. The Mayor of Williams Park is an immersive profile, told in the quasi-detached first person, of G.W. Rolle, a minister who serves free weekend meals from the Trinity Lutheran Church in St. Petersburg; likewise Sunshine State, about Ralph Heath, the founder of the Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary in Pinellas County, which she often visited as a child. That Gerard is drawn to obsessive idealists seems no coincidence. As we learn in the heavily researched family history Mother-Father God and in Going Diamond, a personal essay that also includes fictionalized composite accounts, her parents have been enthusiastic members of both Amway and the New Thought Movement. This is Gerards second book. Her first, Binary Star, a novel about a pair of lost 20-somethings falling out of love, was praised for its intensity and simple prose. For all of this new books color and ambition, its curiously lacking in voice, emotion and even very many ideas, as if the stripped-down language of Gerards fiction doesnt quite translate to this hybrid genre and its different demands. At one point a source asks, Are you a journalist? and Gerard replies, Im more of a memoirist. In fact, she borrows from both disciplines without taking full possession of either. TOO MUCH AND NOT THE MOOD By Durga Chew-Bose 221 pp. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, paper, $15. Image umber of exquisite phrases in this debut collection could populate an entire review. Remembering her grandparents, Chew-Bose writes, is like watching fireworks backward: tinsel swallowed into the night sky. The sound of a bullet shattering a window is the loudest, most intense crinkle. Across all 14 essays, nearly each page contains at least one gemlike moment of visual-verbal synesthesia. Among Chew-Boses central concerns are family, friendship, self and identity. Born in Montreal to parents of Indian heritage, she grew up brown in mostly white circles, in a suburban home where Edward Saids Orientalism was often left lying about. First-generation kids, Ive always thought, are the personification of deja vu, she writes, and this experience shapes her writerly persona a discerning outsider suffused with the nostalgia of being one step removed from an irretrievable past. Chew-Bose is never not thoughtful, though the insights on offer are largely of the wayward-whimsical variety a personal memory that kindles an observation, then meanders along before stumbling, albeit gracefully, onto the next. This is particularly so in Heart Museum, which relies solely on free association to hold the readers attention for 90 pages. Presumably, linguistic maximalism is meant to stand in for the momentum of a well-built argument or narrative arc. But unlike her heroes Agnes Varda or Wong Kar-wai, she hasnt yet learned to make the idiosyncratic miasma of memory, feeling and observation sustainably cohere. Knotts lifelong obsession with mortality manifests itself in this volumes title, drawn from his short poem Death, which reads in its entirety: Going to sleep, I cross my hands on my chest./ They will place my hands like this./ It will look as though I am flying into myself. Sleep, death and desire turn up over and over across these pages, as does the introspection suggested by flying into myself. Knotts work is shot through with the pleasure that comes from thinking thoughts that amuse oneself, and colored with the originality and lyrical nimbleness that cause such thoughts to amuse others as well. Take the five-line thought experiment Alternate Fates: What if right in the middle of a battle across the battlefield the wind blew thousands of lottery tickets, what then? This book serves as a treasury of Knotts colossal talent a true treasury, which merits being treasured for the way it showcases the range and consistently high quality of his poetic output. To that end, the ars poetica To Myself reads like a mission statement: Poetry can be the magic carpet which you say you want, but only if you stand willing to pull that rug out from under your own feet, daily. Knott repeatedly achieves this objective, sometimes in free verse, sometimes in strict rhyme and meter; sometimes in 39 lines, as in the zany yet poignant sestina Hollywood Nightmare, and sometimes in just one, as in the grim critique History, which reads: Hope . . . goosestep. Knott counterbalances his impulses toward both romance and hilarity with terror, self-deprecation, philosophy or all of the above. A love poem called Poem begins as one might expect: I first loved you / Second to your gentleness. Then, before it ends, the poem takes an expansive and political turn: But better than your gentleness I love your harshness When you talk about that prison capitalism When you vow never to stop fighting Energy Minister presents Electricity Regulatory Commission Bill in House Minister for Energy Janardan Sharma has presented the Electricity Regulatory Commission Bill-2073 BS in a meeting of the Legislature-Parliament on Friday. MY JEWISH YEAR 18 Holidays, One Wondering Jew By Abigail Pogrebin 326 pp. Fig Tree Books. $22.95. According to the writer Leon Wieseltier, the greatest scandal among American Jews is illiteracy. We simply dont know enough not nearly enough about who we are and what Jews believe. During lunch at a Washington, D.C., steakhouse more than a decade ago, Wieseltier encouraged my own Torah study and efforts to deepen my faith by admonishing, Who are we to let this 4,000-year-old tradition slip through our fingers? The journalist Abigail Pogrebin, who interviewed Wieseltier for her book about Jewish identity, Stars of David, takes his cri de coeur seriously. In My Jewish Year, she becomes curious about how Jews search for meaning something tugged at me, telling me there was more to feel than Id felt, more to understand than I knew and decides to celebrate all the Jewish holidays of the calendar year, even the ones shes never heard of. She calls herself a wondering Jew, and her exploration is lively, funny and honest. It is a relatable, immersive experience that pays homage to The Year of Living Biblically, by A. J. Jacobs, who writes the foreword. She is a holiday pilgrim uninterested in journeying into Orthodoxy (she attends a Reform synagogue) but intent on reaching others like her, indeed like so many secular American Jews, who do not connect their Jewish identity to Judaism. Pogrebin lowers her shoulder and goes straight through the Jewish calendar with an emphasis on doing more so that she might feel more. Whether partaking in all-night study before Shavuot (when the Bible says Moses received the Torah at Mount Sinai) or blowing the shofar during Elul, the period of self-reflection and repentance before Rosh Hashana (the Jewish new year), she uncovers the small detail (single malt Scotch is the festive drink of choice for Simchas Torah, when Jews celebrate the annual completion of reading the Torah) and the erotic one: Sukkot is about shtupping (Yiddish for both pushing and having sex), one rabbi tells her, describing the sexual aspect of thrusting the lulav and handling the lemon-like etrogs. But according to the Northwestern professor and cultural critic Laura Kipnis, the opposite is true: Its now men who are the victims of a nationwide sexual panic, one seated more in traditional views of women as vulnerable and sexually passive than in a feminism that recognizes young women to be self-sufficient independent actors (who are also human enough to make, and learn from, stupid sexual blunders). Image Kipniss Unwanted Advances: Sexual Paranoia Comes to Campus focuses on one professor whose career was ruined by accusations of sexual assault and the ensuing Title IX investigation. Kipnis is drawn into this mans professional drama after she too was on the receiving end of two Title IX complaints stemming from an essay she wrote deploring her universitys policy of frowning on relationships between teachers and students. Her book is a look at the secretive and largely unaccountable processes by which campus sexual assault allegations are investigated and adjudicated, using a handful of real incidents to illustrate her broader argument that complex interpersonal relationships and dumb drunken mistakes are now the quasilegal purview of well-paid administrators more interested in protecting a universitys reputation even if it means ruining a few mens lives than seeking either truth or justice. The high-volume conversation about campus sexual assault, she says, is a kind of black-and-white gender traditionalism dressed up in feminist clothes, obscuring ambiguities and power plays inherent to human sexual desire, and instead casting adult women as innocent victims (or victims-in-waiting) and men as either rapists or potential predators. The book, per Kipniss style (this is the woman, after all, who wrote a book called Against Love), is polemical and often outrageous she writes, for example, that professors who date students are a newly outlawed sexual minority more or less where gays were pre-Stonewall. While the men in her book are often stumbling into male sexual stupidity, the women are scheming, vengeful and histrionic. Though she rightly points out the feminist hypocrisy of casting women as inherently sexually vulnerable, she falls into her own stereotypes of jilted lovers sinking their claws into bumbling, sex-drunk men. She seems to think the feminist directive to explain clear standards of consent (a yes, not just the absence of a no) and to shift male behavior is a pipe dream, but telling women to change their behavior to avoid being sexually assaulted (for example, to quit drinking to excess) is eminently realistic rape prevention. As a feminist writer and (nonpracticing) lawyer relatively well-versed in the details of Title IX and campus sexual assault, I couldnt help reading her book with pen in hand, furiously scribbling in the margins. And yet I loved reading it. Kipniss book is maddening; its also funny, incisive and often convincing. Her observations on the learned compliance of heterosexual femininity, how campus hookup culture remains organized around male prerogatives and the necessity of allowing ambiguity to exist in sexual relationships reframe feminist visions of consent, sex and male sexual entitlement. She unmasks the Title IX adjudication process as shadowy and baffling on many campuses, and not just in how accusers are treated; she also makes a powerful case that a student-led demand for intellectual safety has too often encroached upon academic freedom and even the work of teaching itself. Kipnis pushes her argument beyond the realm of whats reasonable in part, it seems, for professorial aims to force readers to really consider their position and to see if they can fully defend it, or at least to think beyond feminist platitudes. It is a discomfiting process, and surely many feminists will come away, as I did, deeply disagreeing with her; others will, as I did, nonetheless find her book a persuasive and valuable contribution to the continuing debate over how to deal with sexual assault on college campuses. HONG KONG China is investing in Silicon Valley start-ups with military applications at such a rapid rate that the United States government needs tougher controls to stem the transfer of some of Americas most promising technologies, a Pentagon report says. There are few restrictions on investing in American start-ups that focus on artificial intelligence, self-driving vehicles and robotics, the report contends, and China has taken advantage. Beijing, the report says, is encouraging its companies to invest for the purpose of pushing the country ahead in its strategic competition with the United States. In some instances, Chinese companies have made under-the-radar investments intended to dodge the oversight of a government agency, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, known as Cfius. If we allow China access to these same technologies concurrently, then not only may we lose our technological superiority, but we may even be facilitating Chinas technological superiority, the report says. RIO DE JANEIRO Azul Linhas Aereas Brasileiras, the Brazilian airline company started by the JetBlue founder David Neeleman, was cleared late Friday by the CVM, Brazils securities regulator, to proceed with an initial public offering. The offering had been suspended by the Brazilian regulator on Thursday, just as the company was planning to price its shares. The regulator cited Azuls use of marketing material for the offering that had not been approved. But the regulator said late Friday that the company had now satisfactorily addressed its concerns, including removing a presentation from a website. Azul expects to finalize pricing on Monday. Its shares will trade in Sao Paulo and on the New York Stock Exchange. He is the president whose administration is filled with Wall Street insiders. She is one of Wall Streets harshest critics. And yet, surprisingly, President Trump and Senator Elizabeth Warren could probably agree on at least one thing: breaking up the banks. It may seem incongruous with the presidents other policies on taxes and the environment, which would largely benefit corporations and the wealthy, but such a move could appeal to voters still smarting from the 2008 financial crisis. Gary D. Cohn, the presidents chief economic adviser, mentioned during a discussion with the Senate Banking Committee, earlier reported by Bloomberg, that the administration was considering a proposal to separate retail banking from investment banking and trading. For Delta Air Lines, the dark clouds started to roll in on Wednesday. It was the midway point in what turned into a challenging week for the airline one that saw about 3,000 flight cancellations and many more disgruntled customers. When thunderstorms descended there on Wednesday, air traffic controllers at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport put a hold on incoming air traffic. The delay, common during severe weather, lasted a few hours, but its effects lasted for days. The Atlanta airport is Deltas biggest and busiest hub, and the delays left the airline facing a sudden, heavy backlog not only of passengers, but of flight crews and it affected airports across the country. A Delta spokesman, Morgan Durrant, said the crews own disrupted transit schedules were the primary cause of the delays that lingered into Friday. Much more germane is the work hes done on Wall Street, much of it in the mortgage arena. According to regulatory records, Mr. Phillips has spent 38 years at an array of Wall Street firms, including Credit Suisse First Boston, Morgan Stanley and, most recently, BlackRock, the huge asset manager. While there, he headed the financial markets advisory and client solutions teams at BlackRock Solutions, the powerhouse advisory unit; he left in January. Perhaps most salient on Mr. Phillipss resume are his years at Morgan Stanley, where he led the firms mortgage securities unit. He started in the companys fixed income division in 1994 and rose to global head of securities products. He was also the chief executive of Morgan Stanley ABS Capital I Inc., signing mortgage securitization documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. As head of securities products, Mr. Phillips directed the unit of Morgan Stanley that packaged and sold billions of dollars of home loan bundles to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and other investors. Some of these securitizations blew up in the financial crisis, generating billions of dollars in losses to the investors who bought them. Although he left the firm in May 2006, when the mortgage securitization machinery was starting to sputter, he is identified in lawsuits filed by investors who bought the toxic Morgan Stanley loan bundles. Two of those investors were Fannie and Freddie, the companies he is now charged with fixing. In 2011, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the overseer of Fannie and Freddie, sued Morgan Stanley on their behalf, naming Mr. Phillips as a defendant. The F.H.F.A. contended that Morgan Stanley had misled Fannie and Freddie about the quality of the loans it had pooled and sold to them. (A subsequent version of the lawsuit dropped Mr. Phillips from the defendants list but still cited him and his role at Morgan Stanley.) SEOUL, South Korea The de facto leader of Samsung, one of the worlds largest conglomerates, rejected on Friday charges that he bribed South Koreas former president to keep control of his familys empire, in his first court appearance in a trial that is also putting a focus on the countrys business culture. Lee Jae-yong, the third-generation scion of the family that runs the conglomerate and the vice chairman of Samsung Electronics, was escorted into the Seoul courtroom by the police with his hands and arms bound. About 150 people, many of them journalists, packed the room to witness what the lead prosecutor had described as the trial of the century. Mr. Lee, who also goes by the name Jay Y. Lee in the West, was indicted in February on charges of offering bribes worth $38 million to the former president, Park Geun-hye, and her confidante, Choi Soon-sil. He also faces other charges, including embezzlement and perjury. Lawyers for Mr. Lee called prosecutors key evidence against him weak and based on presumptions, promising a spirited defense and setting the stage for a battle that could stretch into next year. This interview with Pedro J. Pizarro, C.E.O. of Edison International, the public utility holding company, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant. Q. What were your early years like? A. I had a great family kind of middle class to lower middle class, depending on the year. But I had a bad back as a kid. I had two surgeries and spent much of my junior and senior years in and out of school. Id be home for two months, and then Id get a little better and catch up with all the schoolwork in two or three weeks and go back into school. I was a nerdy kid anyway, so high school was very manageable for me. That must have been tough. Those are formative years. The pain did get in the way of doing a lot of things. I had to learn some flexibility and resiliency and to be creative about how I did things. That gave me confidence. Ever since then, my back has been pretty good, so Im just grateful. Tell me about your parents. They both grew up poor in Puerto Rico. My dad is an accountant, and my mom stayed home most of the time. Early on, they scrimped and saved to send us to private school. They would always say: This is your inheritance. Were focusing on trying to give you the best education we can. In order to explain our results, we pointed out the fact that the proportion of individuals who use Uber is quite small relative to the number of drivers in a given county, Mr. Brazil said. Teasing causation from correlation is tricky Most studies, like Ms. Pecks, have noted a correlation between Uber services and lower rates of alcohol-related accidents. A 2015 report from Temple University found that Uber was associated with a decrease in motor vehicle homicides in California. A report this year from researchers at West Carolina University also found that Uber service rollouts led to declines in fatal accident rates across the country. But none of these reports has been as unequivocal as the one Uber itself released in 2015. It stated that in several major cities, Uber ridership peaked at times when drunken driving accidents tend to happen. It also found that in Seattle, the introduction of services was associated with a 10 percent decrease in arrests for driving under the influence. And in places where Uber was launched in California, it reported, the number of alcohol-related crashes every month decreased by 6.5 percent among young drivers. Several independent studies have shown Ubers presence in cities can help reduce drunk-driving, a company spokeswoman said. Were glad to provide an alternative to drunk driving that helps people make safer, more responsible choices. Ms. Peck, whose research used collisions data from the New York Department of Motor Vehicles and the states Department of Transportation from 2007 to 2013, agreed that the growing body of research suggests ride-hailing services lead to less alcohol-related car accidents. Factional feud could hit UML in Kathmandu polls A factional feud in the Kathmandu district committee of CPN-UML is likely to affect the partys performance in the upcoming local level elections. The Trump administration is worried that Chinese investors might try to buy Westinghouse Electric, the troubled American nuclear power company that the Japanese conglomerate Toshiba has offered for sale. It is not clear if Chinese buyers might be interested in the business, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last week. But the worries highlight the new administrations stance on Chinas global acquisition strategy, and its plans to build up American industries. Why would China want Westinghouse? China is a rapidly expanding nuclear-energy power. It has more than 20 reactors under construction and is aiming to double the amount of electricity it can produce at its plants in the next three to four years. But it lags behind the West in technology. Advanced reactors in China are being built by foreign groups, including Westinghouse, which is installing its next-generation AP1000 units at two facilities in the country. Westinghouse is believed to have been targeted by Chinese spies. If a Chinese entity were to buy the company, China could obtain secrets without the cloak and dagger. Another week, another round of designer musical chairs in the creative studios of top-tier European luxury houses. On Thursday, Emilio Pucci announced the abrupt departure of Massimo Giorgetti, and Friday brought the appointment of the husband-and-wife team Luke and Lucie Meier as joint creative directors at Jil Sander. Pucci, owned by the luxury giant LVMH, said that after four seasons as creative director, Mr. Giorgetti would be leaving the company, effective immediately. Mr. Giorgetti, a maverick Italian designer and former D.J. who succeeded Peter Dundas at Pucci in March 2015, initially made his name in the industry with the contemporary label MSGM, which specializes in quirky digital graphic prints and bold colorful shapes. His efforts, perhaps too avant-garde for the average Pucci consumer, received a lukewarm response from retailers and the media alike. In her review of the fall 2017 collection, Vanessa Friedman of The New York Times called the show a look-at-me heave, adding that the clothes were a queasy-making mix of highlighter green and orange, hot pink and brown in a disco/loungewear fiesta that included, inexplicably, hats with fringe completely obscuring the face and hanging down to the waist in the front. Is the student staff of your schools newspaper allowed to publish the stories they want to? Or do the state laws or the school administration have ultimate editorial control? Tell us what you know, or dont know, about your schools newspaper and the power of its editorial staff. Then read High School Journalists Land a Scoop, and the Principal Resigns. The article begins: Four days after students at a high school newspaper in Kansas published an article that questioned the credentials of a recently hired principal, she resigned. The episode, which unfolded at Pittsburg High School in Pittsburg, Kan., about 125 miles south of Kansas City, garnered news coverage and won praise from journalism organizations for investigative reporting by student journalists. The story began to germinate on March 6, when the Pittsburg Community Schools announced it had hired Amy Robertson as the high school principal. In a statement, it said her diverse and extensive experience impressed district staff and leadership and repeatedly propelled her to the top of the list of candidates. She had decades of experience in education and was the chief executive of a consulting firm that advised companies on education, the statement said. Maddie Baden, a 17-year-old junior and a staff member of the student-run newspaper The Booster Redux, set out to write a profile. Emily Smith, a teacher and adviser to The Redux, said on Wednesday that she had not expected the reporting to lead to questions about Ms. Robertstons credentials. Were Midwesterners, she said. As soon as somebody puts something on paper, we think theyre honest about what theyre saying. But in multiple interviews over several days, Ms. Robertson provided details of her background that did not hold up, Ms. Smith said. Students: Read the entire article, then tell us: What do you think of these journalists and this story? Why? Could this happen at your school? Why or why not? What personal qualities and skills did the editorial staff of The Booster Redux and their faculty adviser have in pursuing and publishing the story about the new principal and her false credentials? Do you agree with Tom Rosenstiel, executive director of the American Press Institute, when he says, Theres a sense that significant journalistic investigations can come from anywhere now. Why or why not? What are the benefits of student journalists having autonomy over what they publish? Should more states pass laws like Kansass student publications act? Why or why not? What memorable stories has your high school newspaper published? Sweet Fern Productions - Mary Leakey and the Laetoli Footprints Rough Video Cut 09/03/15 Narrators: Meave Leakey, Stony Brook University Ian Tattersall, American Museum of Natural History Pat Shipman, Penn State Ron Clarke, University of the Witwatersrand Text Card: Animated Life: The Laetoli Footprints ML: Ive never really thought footprints are terribly interesting. Text Card: Ancient Laetoli Savannah. 3.5 Million years ago TEXT: Voice of Meave Leakey, Paleoanthropologist, Mary Leakeys Daughter-in- law, Stony Brook University ML: But those particular ones, because of their age, because of how well- preserved they are, theyre absolutely unique. You can imagine the people walking across the landscape 3.5 million years ago1 2. TEXT: Voice of Ian Tattersall, Curator Emeritus, American Museum of Natural History IT: We want to know about ourselves, we want to know where we came from. And we want to know what elements entered into our becoming human. Text Card: Leakey Camp, 1935 TEXT: Voice of Patricia Shipman, Paleoanthropologist, Pennsylvania State University PS: Mary and Louis Leakey were a couple who almost singlehandedly demonstrated that there was important early anthropology of humankind in Africa. 1 New Species of Man: Ancestors from Afar. Science News 115.3 (1979): 36. Web. 2 Agnew, N., Demas, M., & Leakey, M. (1996). The Laetoli footprints.Science (New York, N.Y.), 271(5256), 1651 ML: Most scientists in the west anyway didnt believe that humans evolved in Africa3 4. And it was Louiss persistence, cause hed grown up in Africa, hed seen stone tools lying around, and he always felt Africa was the home of mankind5 6. IT: Louis was the grizzled explorer who would produce fossils out of the pocket of his overalls with a flourish. ML: Oh yah, no, Mary was always the scientist behind the two of them. She was the one who was doing the fieldwork, and Louis the one who was raising the funds and drawing in the publicity and the popularity. Text card: Who was Mary Leakey? RC: I first met Mary in 1963. She was rather a formidable character to me. TEXT: Voice of Ronald Clarke, Paleoanthropologist, University of the Witwatersrand PS: She was one who did not suffer fools gladly. ML: She loved her cigars. She liked her whiskey. RC: She loved her dogs. One of the dogs might come up and look at you and shed say Ron, I think Sammy would like your potato skin. And somebody would give the dog a piece of potato skin. And shed say No, no, hes got to have butter on it. Meanwhile we were rationed on butter. (laughs) ML: There were very few women scientists when she began. RC: She ran the affairs there. ML: She just would not tolerate bad work. And shed, you know, go out to them and say What do you think youre digging? Youre not digging your garden and youre not digging potatoes. RC?: She was a meticulous excavator. ML: And thats what people do now and I think she was one of the first to use such exacting methods. 3 Waynman, E. (2012, June 12). Louis Leakey: The Father of Hominid Hunting. Web. 4 Morell, V. (1995). Ancestral passions : The Leakey family and the quest for humankinds beginnings. New York: Simon & Schuster, pg 188-189. 5Waynman, E. (2012, June 12). Louis Leakey: The Father of Hominid Hunting. Web. 6 Meredith, M. (2011). Born in Africa : The quest for the origins of human life(1st ed.). New York: PublicAffairs, 39 RC: The Leakeys made major contributions to the discovery of early human ancestors in Africa. TEXT: Proconsul africanus, 1948 Paranthropus boisei (Zinjanthropus boisei) 1959 Homo habilis, 1964 7 8 IT: They continued working in Olduvai Gorge right up into the early 1970s, when Louis died.9 10 PS: I think returning to the work she loved for Mary may have been a solace and not many years after Louis died she would discover something unprecedented. Text Card: THE DISCOVERY, 1976 ML: I think it was 76, wasnt it?11 12 IT: Thats right. Text: Rock hyrax, Procavia capensis IT: In the field, its very hard work and youre always looking for distraction. PS: People do all kinds of goofball things at the end of the day. The story goes that people were throwing elephant dung at each other. TEXT: (dung) PS: And upon missing the elephant dung Frisbee that had been tossed to him, Andrew Hill... IT: ...dove to the ground. And, uh, found himself face to face with a footprint. I think it was a giraffe or it was a large mammal.13 14 PS: There were elephant footprints15 16, there were guinea fowl17 18. 7 Pilbeam, D. (1998). Mary Douglas Leakey (19131996. American Anthropologist, 100(4), 988-990. 8 Hill, A. (1983). Digging up Mans Past. Ambio, 12(6), 313, 9 Hill, A. (1983). Digging up Mans Past. Ambio, 12(6), 312. 10 Leakey, M. (1984). Disclosing the past. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, pg 158 11 Leakey, M. (1984). Disclosing the past. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, pg 161. 12 Morell, V. (1995). Ancestral passions : The Leakey family and the quest for humankinds beginnings. New York: Simon & Schuster, pg 472-473 13 Leakey, M. (1981). Tracks and Tools. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences (1934-1990),292(1057), 95. 14 Leakey, M. (1984). Disclosing the past. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, pg 161 ML: Mary herself excavated them. IT: And it was incredibly arduous work. But, of course, in the back of the mind of every paleoanthropologist, the hope is to find hominid tracks. Text Card: Two years later19 20. IT: And its that that was realized at Laetoli. PS: There they were...ancient hominid footprints. ML: They were just spectacular. PS: It is a remarkable find. It gives a flash into the past. ML: The footprints were preserved by volcanic eruption21 22. IT: A nearby volcano puffed out a cloud of this carbonitite ash23 24.Then, it rained. And the rain turned this volcanic ash into a kind of a muddy slurry25 26. A bit like wet concrete. RC: While it was still wet, the animals came out again and walked over it, including the hominids. You wonder what was going through their mind, what did they think about this volcano? 15 Morell, V. (1995). Ancestral passions : The Leakey family and the quest for humankinds beginnings. New York: Simon & Schuster, pg 473 16 Leakey, M. (1984). Disclosing the past. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, pg 173 17 Leakey, M. (1984). Disclosing the past. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, pg 179 18 Jacobs, L. (1988). M. D. Leakey and J. M. Harris (eds.): Laetoli: A Pliocene Site in Northern Tanzania. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 8(4), 455 19 Agnew, N., Demas, M., & Leakey, M. (1996). The Laetoli footprints.Science (New York, N.Y.), 271(5256), 1651 20 Leakey, M. (1984). Disclosing the past. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, pg 174. 21 Pilbeam, D. (1998). Mary Douglas Leakey (19131996. American Anthropologist, 100(4), 988-990. 22 Leakey, M. (1981). Tracks and Tools. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences (1934-1990),292(1057), 98 23 Leakey, M. (1981). Tracks and Tools. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences (1934-1990),292(1057), 98. 24 Morell, V. (1995). Ancestral passions : The Leakey family and the quest for humankinds beginnings. New York: Simon & Schuster, pg 474 25 Leakey, M. (1981). Tracks and Tools. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences (1934-1990),292(1057), 98. 26 Leakey, M. (1984). Disclosing the past. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, pg 174-178 IT: These are our ancestors. These are the creatures that ultimately gave rise to ourselves27 28 and we want to know what they were like. TEXT CARD: Interpretation IT: As far as the number of hominids that, uh, made the trackways is concerned, theres a bit of dispute29 30. RC: Im convinced there were only two. ML: Mmm mmm. I would absolutely disagree with that. RC: Mary thought there were three3132. ML: You can see the, the individual walking behind has put his feet in the footprints of the individual in the front33 34. IT: (clears throat) That is still under active, uh, discussion. RC: Very few of us agree on every point of analysis. And this is how science progresses. ML: It is, yeah. IT: These footprints, what they did was to prove that hominids were up moving around on two feet 3.5 million years ago35 36. RC: We already had the skeletal remains (TEXT: Australopithecus afarensis) that showed us that the early hominids were upright walkers37 38. But here, for the first 27 New Species of Man: Ancestors from Afar. Science News 115.3 (1979): 36. Web. 28 Waynman, E. (2012, June 12). Louis Leakey: The Father of Hominid Hunting. Web. 29 Leakey, M. (1984). Disclosing the past. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, pg 177-178 30 31 Leakey, M. (1981). Tracks and Tools. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences (1934-1990),292(1057), 99. 32 Morell, V. (1995). Ancestral passions : The Leakey family and the quest for humankinds beginnings. New York: Simon & Schuster, pg 501-502. 33 Leakey, M. (1981). Tracks and Tools. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences (1934-1990),292(1057), 99. 34 Morell, V. (1995). Ancestral passions : The Leakey family and the quest for humankinds beginnings. New York: Simon & Schuster, pg 501- 502. 35 Pilbeam, D. (1998). Mary Douglas Leakey (19131996. American Anthropologist, 100(4), 988-990. 36 New Species of Man: Ancestors from Afar. Science News 115.3 (1979): 36. Web. time, we could see the actual footprints, showing the manner in which they walked upright. ML: Bipedal walking is considered to be one of the hallmarks of humanity. ML: If youre walking on four legs, your hands are not free to do all the things that we do with our hands. IT: Without our hands we could never have become human. RC: Thats of course only a small segment of the Leakeys contribution. RC: Mary demonstrated that dedication pays off. You, you dedicate yourself, and you achieve results. PS: I think she was to me and to many other women in this field, Mary was an inspiration. TEXT CARD: MARY LEAKEY 1913-1996 CREDITS Directed, Produced and Edited by Flora Lichtman and Sharon Shattuck Advisers Laura Bonetta Sean B. Carroll Dennis Liu Original Score Martin Crane Director of Photography Olga Abramson 37 Johanson, D. (2004). Lucy, Thirty Years Later: An Expanded View of Australopithecus afarensis. Journal of Anthropological Research, 60(4), 476 38 White, T. (1980). Evolutionary implications of pliocene hominid footprints.Science (New York, N.Y.), 208(4440), 175-6. Production Design Flora Lichtman Ruth Lichtman Sharon Shattuck Emma Wiseman Research Ruth Lichtman Transcriptions Davis Bynum Puppeteers (Sharon is double checking on these spellings) Ella Belenky Matt Carney Flora Lichtman Ruth Lichtman Spencer Lott Rowan Magee Andy Manjuck Ian Seim Sharon Shattuck Emma Wiseman I could not think of a better match for a graduation speaker given that so many things that she has talked about are incredibly important to the student population affordability, tuition, being able to avoid these ridiculous conversations about immigration, said Dr. Crew, whose college also serves a sizable number of Caribbean immigrants. I want our students to see strong women who are capable of being able to lead. For Mrs. Clinton, the speech promises to be another chance to, as she put it recently, come out of the woods since the election. She delivered a St. Patricks Day speech in Scranton, Pa., where her father and grandfather grew up. She is publishing a new book of personal essays in the fall. Then, on Thursday, in her most extensive interview yet, conducted before a conference audience in New York, she criticized President Trump and said she did not understand the commitment to hurt so many people that this administration, this White House, seems to be pursuing. She also said that Mr. Trumps attempts to implement travel bans on people from certain Muslim-majority countries really sent a chilling effect across the world to not just Muslims, but to all kinds of people who said, Wait a second, dont you still have Lady Liberty in the New York Harbor? Dr. Crew, a former New York City schools chancellor, said that he had known Mrs. Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, for years. He said that he first thought about inviting Mrs. Clinton to speak a year ago, after welcoming last years commencement speaker, Donna Brazile, a former chair of the Democratic National Committee. But it was only within the last few weeks that Mrs. Clinton agreed. And while Mrs. Clinton, a former United States senator from New York, has visited the Medgar Evers campus a number of times, Dr. Crew said, the graduation ceremonies will take place at Barclays Center, a short subway ride away from her 2016 campaign headquarters. David McInerney, 48, isnt just a founder of the food delivery service FreshDirect, which celebrates its 15th anniversary this year. He is also the companys chief food adventurer, a gig that has him canvassing the world to source seafood, meats, produce and other products. The exploring has apparently paid off. FreshDirect recently expanded to include delivery service in the Washington area. On Sundays, Mr. McInerney tends to keep his food adventures within New York City. I like to stay local and hang with my son, he said, referring to Jackson, who is 4. The two live together in Harlem. COLD BREW AND A PLAN No matter what day of the week it is, I am up at 5:30. On weekdays, I go to bed at 11, so I sleep for six-plus hours, but I usually have people over for dinner on Saturday nights, and by the time everyone leaves, its 1, so I havent gotten a lot of rest. Jackson isnt up yet, and I enjoy the silence while I gulp down a cold brew coffee from Gradys, a New York brand thats incredibly smooth and delicious. Jackson wakes up by 7 at the latest. The first question he asks me is, Whats the plan for the day? Masha Leon, who survived harrowing childhood escapes from grim pre-ghetto Warsaw and through Communist Siberia during World War II to mingle years later with New Yorks glitterati as the society columnist for the worlds oldest Yiddish newspaper, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. She was 86. Her death was confirmed by her daughter Karen Leon. Ms. Leon, who lived in Flushing, Queens, wrote her weekly On the Go column for the English-language version of The Forward from its founding in 1990 until last December. The Yiddish edition of The Forward was begun by immigrant Jewish socialists in New York in 1897. It appears online and is still published monthly in print. For all the boldface names that she encountered at charity events in the metropolitan area and the gossip that they generated for her column, few celebrities could match the literary grist of her own odyssey through war-torn Europe. Masha Bernstein was born in Warsaw on March 21, 1931, the daughter of Mordechai Bernstein and the former Zelda Goldin. Her father was a journalist. Her mother was a seamstress and later taught Spanish. President Donald J. Trump was right to strike at the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for using a weapon of mass destruction, the nerve agent sarin, against its own people. Mr. Trump may not want to be president of the world but when a tyrant blatantly violates a basic norm of international conduct in this case, the ban on using chemical or biological weapons in armed conflict, put in place after World War I the world looks to America to act. Mr. Trump did, and for that he should be commended. The real test for Mr. Trump is what comes next. He has shown a total lack of interest in working to end Syrias civil war. Now, the administration has leverage it should test with the Assad regime and Russia to restrain Syrias air force, stop any use of chemical or biological weapons, implement an effective cease-fire in Syrias civil war and even move toward a negotiated transition of power goals that eluded the Obama administration. At the same time, it must prevent or mitigate the possible unintended consequences of using force, including complicating the military campaign against the Islamic State. All this will require something in which the administration has shown little interest: smart diplomacy. That smart diplomacy starts with Russia. The administration reportedly previewed the strike with Moscow. Cynics might conclude the fix is in: The United States quietly warns the Russians, they give Mr. Assad a heads-up and tell him not to react, and everyone calls it a day. More likely, the administration wanted to make sure Moscow knew exactly what we were doing so that Moscow would not overreact or leave its forces in harms way. SANTA MONICA, Calif. With the decision last week by Venezuelas Supreme Court to usurp the functions of the democratically elected National Assembly, the country took yet another turn for the worse, even though the decision was partly rescinded a few days later. This move was just the latest example of the Venezuelan government cracking down on opposition and dissent. It has imprisoned some opposition political leaders and intimidated others; prevented a constitutional recall process; indefinitely postponed municipal and gubernatorial elections; and systematically overridden the separation of powers all while the countrys economic and social deterioration worsens. The governments assault on the National Assembly may help the opposition remobilize popular protest, but it is hard to know how long that will last and what it alone can produce. At this juncture, it is urgent for Venezuelans to consider whether and how external influence could help reverse the countrys free fall. International involvement can sometimes facilitate peaceful resolution of seemingly intractable national conflicts, but this requires a clear strategy and sustained effort. Democracy must be locally grown. But legitimate and trusted domestic leaders can import international support and experience to help achieve democratization. This was true of the anti-apartheid campaign in South Africa and of international support for democracy in Chile, Poland, Spain, Indonesia and the Philippines. Lenin Moreno, Ecuadors president-elect, has described being a paraplegic as a blessing. People who walk, he explained a few years ago, keep their gaze trained forward and upward. When you dont have legs, you look down, he said in 2012, when he was vice president, during a visit to the World Bank. Thats what I learned: that theres another life, another existence, that there are other human beings that need a lot from us. For me, this was a novel experience that I thank God for. When he assumes office next month, Mr. Moreno will be the only head of state who needs a wheelchair to get around. That will make him among the most powerful and visible champions of people with disabilities, and position Ecuador to continue setting an example on a human rights issue that has lagged as a global priority. There are reasons to question whether Mr. Moreno, who won a tight runoff contest on Sunday, will be a good president. The way he snapped at journalists during his first news conference does not bode well for Ecuadors press freedoms, which eroded sharply during the decade-long tenure of President Rafael Correa, who won his first election in 2006 with Mr. Moreno as a running mate. Critics also fear that the incoming president could shield former government officials suspected of corruption from prosecution. Female cop files assault complaint against DSP A female constable in the District Police Office, Dailekh, has lodged a complained stating that a senior police officer had misbehaved with her. President Trump has not been shy in saying the United States could go it alone in dealing with North Korea. Raising the alarming specter of a second Korean War, the president has effectively affirmed Secretary of State Rex Tillersons warning that unilateral military action to eliminate North Koreas nuclear arsenal has not been ruled out. North Korea is on the agenda as Mr. Trump hosts President Xi Jinping of China this week at his Florida estate. Could Mr. Trumps hints about his North Korea policy show that he plans to enlist Beijing in ousting the countrys leader, Kim Jong-un? And was the missile attack against a Syrian airbase, launched just after Mr. Xi and Mr. Trump met on Thursday evening, meant as a message to the Chinese that Mr. Trump is willing to use force unilaterally and suddenly against a tyrannical leader? Unilateral American military action against North Korea would be politically foolish and militarily disastrous. China would almost certainly intervene, setting up a fraught confrontation with the United States. Without collaboration with Beijing, Washington could not achieve a surgical strike to eliminate Mr. Kim or his nuclear arsenal. It may seem far-fetched to imagine the United States, with or without China, forcing out the regime in Pyongyang, especially while Washington is still dealing with the aftermath of ousting Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya. But after years of ineffective diplomacy, American strategists would be irresponsible if they failed to explore bringing about the end of the nuclear-armed North Korean regime. The Obama administration reportedly planned for such collapse scenarios. After muzzling a free press and shutting down civil society groups, the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary has trained its repressive sights on academic freedom. On Tuesday, the Parliament approved legislation designed to shut down Central European University, a private Hungarian-American graduate institution that has programs ranked among the top 50 in the world. The measure would require the university to set up a campus in the United States, making it impossible for Central European University to operate. The legislation now goes to President Janos Ader for his signature. This move is yet another rebuke to the European Union, and the rights it guarantees all citizens, from the increasingly autocratic Mr. Orban. It is also an ugly attack against the liberal Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros. Mr. Soros, who has spent some $12 billion through his Open Society Foundations to promote a liberal political and social agenda throughout the world, has become a lightning rod for resentment by Central and Eastern European populists intent on wresting their countries away from democracy. Central European University was founded in 1991 with a generous grant from Mr. Soros. In his weekly interview on Hungarian state radio last Friday, Mr. Orban preposterously called the respected university a fraud, and he added a clear jibe at Mr. Soros, saying, In Hungary, one cannot be above the law even if youre a billionaire. Mr. Orban may believe making a boogeyman out of Mr. Soros, a Holocaust survivor, will help his party win next years parliamentary elections by fanning loathsome anti-Semitic and xenophobic fears, but killing off one of Hungarys most important educational institutions is a spectacularly self-defeating move. Thousands of Hungarians have turned out to protest the legislation. LONDON Almost one-third of top-end property purchases in Americas biggest cities are suspect, according to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, the body at the Treasury Department whose task it is to protect the United States from money laundering. The government recently granted FinCEN authority to peek behind the veil of secrecy provided by offshore shell companies, and what the bureau has seen is disturbing: There is a flood of dirty capital pouring into United States real estate, and it isnt clear who owns it. Lately there has been substantial media interest in questionable Russian money invested in Donald J. Trumps development projects. But in terms of volume, Russia is something of a distraction. Miami realtors say that Russia isnt among the top 10 countries for investment in southern Florida, lagging far behind Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina and even the Dominican Republic. China was the leading investor in real estate in the United States by the end of 2015, with $350 billion in related investments and holdings, according to a 2016 Asia Society report. The numbers are necessarily approximate, however, since so much property is held offshore, through the kind of anonymous companies disclosed in the Panama Papers last year. Offshore is usually thought of as a place, somewhere palm-fringed and tropical, but thats a misconception. Offshore is an idea: a parallel legal system for corporations, kleptocrats, celebrities or anyone else who can afford it. Offshore gives the wealthy a way to avoid taxes and regulations and to obscure their identities, thus undermining the ability of governments to keep them in check. WASHINGTON Paul Ryan, the House speaker, is by all accounts a man of integrity and intelligence. When it came to the failed attempt by House Republicans to scrap President Obamas legacy health care law and replace it with something that better reflected their conservative values, Mr. Ryan did as well as could be expected given the sharp divisions within his partys ranks. But it may be time for him to quit his post as speaker. It is a position for which, thus far, he has proved remarkably unsuited and in which he has allowed the House to suffer a series of humiliations. As its central feature, the Constitution mandates a deliberate separation between the legislative and administrative, or executive, branches of government. This is not a matter of architecture, a quirk of structural whim. The separation is intended to ensure that no single person or branch of government will amass an excess of power and that the citizenry will retain a firm grip on the governments policy-making process. If the Congress cedes its independence, the entire constitutional framework, which depends on a system of checks and balances, is compromised. Maintaining that carefully constructed system is a particular duty of the speaker. Mr. Ryan, though pledged to uphold the Constitution, has taken to acting as though he and the Republicans he leads are members of the White House staff. Under Mr. Ryans leadership, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, in the midst of conducting hearings looking into possible wrongdoing by the president or his advisers, briefed the president on the progress and findings of the investigation. The chairman, Devin Nunes, facing ethics complaints over his conduct, has temporarily stepped down, with Mr. Ryans approval. But the speaker was under an obligation to have immediately removed Mr. Nunes from his chairmanship in order to assert the Houses independence from the White House. Instead, for days because he, too, apparently sees himself as one of Donald Trumps assistants Mr. Ryan continued to back Mr. Nunes. A study of Nobel physics laureates found that, since the 1980s, they have made their discoveries, on average, at age 50. The study also found that the peak of creativity for Nobel winners is getting higher every year. For many years, oddsmakers have predicted that Dr. Goodenough would win the Nobel Prize, but so far the call from Stockholm has not come. You might call him the Susan Lucci of chemistry. If he finally does prevail, he could be the oldest person ever to receive the Nobel, and a harbinger. The more I talked to Dr. Goodenough, the more I wondered if his brilliance was directly tied to his age. After all, he has been thinking about energy problems longer than just about anyone else on the planet. He grew up in the early days of the petroleum age, in a Connecticut farmhouse with a kerosene stove and an icebox for food. As a kid he rode in some of the early cars pioneered by Henry Ford. The first car the family owned was a Model A, he told me, with running boards and a lead-acid battery. In the 1970s, the energy crisis inspired him to imagine how one could store power in tiny packages. Today, were still using his lithium-ion technology in our laptops, phones and electric cars. But Dr. Goodenough has long been bothered by the shortcomings of his brainchild, and driven by the need to do better. One of the things thats important in the society is to wean ourselves from our dependence on fossil fuels, and if we could make an electric car that would be as convenient and as cheap as an internal-combustion engine, wed get CO 2 emissions off the road, he said. Image Credit... Roman Muradov He believes the lithium-ion battery is too liable to explode, too expensive and too weak to bring us into that future. Years ago, he decided to create a solid battery that would be safer. Of course, in a perfect world, the solid-state battery would also be low-cost and lightweight. Then, two years ago, he discovered the work of Maria Helena Braga, a Portuguese physicist who, with the help of a colleague, had created a kind of glass that can replace liquid electrolytes inside batteries. The agony of Donald Trump well, one of the many agonies is that there are times when he will actually do the right thing, or at least a defensible thing, and well be left wondering, even more than we did with other presidents, about what his motivations were, whether they fit into any truly considered plan or whether his actions amount to the newest episode of a continuing reality show. Such is the case with the strike against Syria, which is too big a risk in too complicated a place to be used for distraction, for diversion, for the pose he needs in the narrative du jour. Theres justification for it, absolutely. President Obama had advisers who wished hed done something similar, and there were Democrats aplenty Hillary Clinton apparently among them who found his restraint when it came to Syria and the regime of Bashar al-Assad to be infuriating, a surrender of Americas role and moral authority in the world. But Trumps military action makes little sense in the context of most of what he said in the years before he was elected and much of what he has done as president so far. Let me get this straight: Obama wasnt supposed to draw or be drawn across a red line, not even when the Assad regime used chemical weapons, but when the regime did that on Trumps watch, it crossed many, many lines, in his words, and compelled an American response? We know from an infamous Supreme Court ruling that corporations are people. They may be heartless, like the pharmaceutical company that jacks up the price of a lifesaving drug. Or clueless, like Pepsi with its latest ad solving racism by having a fashion model give a can of colored sugar water to a cop. But can a corporation also have a soul? If the answer is yes, that soul passed on to higher ground a few days ago, when Mary Anderson, a co-founder of the outdoor retailer REI, died at the age of 107. The wonder is not that she lived to triple digits. She loved clean air, a good fight and a well-told joke. The wonder is that someone born in 1909, when many veterans of the Civil War were still arguing over slavery, could live to see her common-sensical values flourish in an otherwise unrecognizable brave new world. The corporations of 2017 that strive to do well while doing good, the ones that want to step up as global citizens while the Trump administration steps back, owe a part of their enlightened self-interest to Mary Anderson. WASHINGTON President Trumps decision to launch nearly 60 Tomahawk cruise missiles against Al Shayrat air base, from which the Syrian air force flew to drop chemical weapons on the town of Khan Sheikhoun earlier this week, was swift and purposeful. No doubt, the horrific nature of the attack moved him. But the United States response was clearly about sending messages to President Bashar al-Assad and his allies, as well as the international community: Chemical weapons will not be used with impunity. To be sure, this American strike, which was targeted and designed to inflict significant damage on one air base in Syria, will also convey to the Iranians, and to the North Koreans, that they had better take the words of this administration seriously. It is probably not without significance that it took place as the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, North Koreas most important patron, was in Florida to meet with Mr. Trump. While our adversaries will undoubtedly note that the United States responses will not be limited to rhetoric when thresholds are crossed or American warnings are not heeded, our friends in the Middle East Arabs and Israelis alike will surely be heartened by this strike. Fairly or not, they had become convinced during the Obama administration that the United States was withdrawing from the region and its responsibilities there. They feared that the president saw Iran as part of the solution to the problems in the region and not a source of them. Those regional allies, too, will take the administrations words much more seriously, and may become more responsive to Americas requests. For friends and foes alike, then, this action will have an impact, particularly if it appears to be successful and affects Syrian, Iranian and Russian behavior. Time will soon tell whether Mr. Assad now chooses to test the United States by carrying out another chemical weapons attack. If he does so, he runs the risk of losing more of his air force and the major advantage it gives him over the rebels. Of course, Mr. Assad could decide not to use chemical weapons and, instead, to increase his use of barrel bombs to try to terrorize the population in Idlib Province. He may reason that this wont draw a response and yet might allow him to take more territory in an area where the opposition forces remain. To the Editor: Re U.S. Launches Missiles Into Syria (front page, April 7) and Striking Assad Poses Opportunities, and Risks, for Trump (news analysis, April 7): Since Donald Trump was sworn in as president, Democrats and most news media have been fixated on two story lines: his supposed disdain for Muslims, and his supposed obsequiousness (or worse) to Russias president, Vladimir Putin. With one decisive and necessary military strike in defense of Muslim civilian lives, against one of Mr. Putins closest allies those story lines have been called into question. This is not to absolve Mr. Trump of his often reckless and inflammatory language, or his many policy stumbles. It is, however, to recognize that Mr. Trump takes seriously the need to aggressively revise President Obamas hands-off approach to Syria, under which hundreds of thousands of civilians were slaughtered and Russias influence was permitted to grow. STUART GOTTLIEB, NEW YORK The writer, an international affairs professor at Columbia, has advised both Democrats and Republicans on foreign policy and national security. To the Editor: President Bashar al-Assads evil and miscalculated actions against innocent children and women gave President Trump the perfect opportunity to shore up his sagging approval ratings since taking office. The strikes on Syria have been swift and ferocious. Send any friend a story As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share. Himalaya Airlines starts daily flights to Dubai Himalaya Airlines on Thursday announced the launch of daily flights to Dubai, beginning from April 28. It happened. The Senate went nuclear. Will the unforeseen consequence of a historically divided Congress ultimately be unity? We navigate through a historic day in the Senate with Jennifer Steinhauer, calling once again from a Senate phone booth, as our guide. Background reading: An explainer on sarin, the chemical weapon used in northern Syria, which is referred to as the most volatile of nerve agents. Anne Barnard on the grim logic behind the Syrian governments chemical weapons attacks. More on the Senates deployment of the nuclear option to end the filibuster for Supreme Court justices. Tune in, and tell us what you think. Email us at thedaily@nytimes.com. Tweet me at @mikiebarb. And if that isnt enough, we can even text. How do I listen? If you dont see an audio player on this page or to subscribe to The Daily for free, follow the instructions below. A lot of Miami still has its original look intact, Mr. Michaels, who is know as @jokemichaels to his Instagram followers, said. There are not a lot of new buildings, and there is not a lot of overwhelming advertising. So I think it was interesting to see the past be present. He takes a measured approach to street photography. He often waits for a precise moment to snap a photograph, stalling in front of a wall or scene for the right person to walk by. I think essentially when people think of street photography, its almost this chaotic, shoot-from-the-hip, instantaneous moment, he said. I feel like my photographs are taking a step back and almost reviewing the scene before taking the photograph. This interview has been edited and condensed. Q. If you have an AT&T mobile phone with no landline and the service wont connect to 911, what should you do in the case of a medical emergency? I have a 4-year-old and worry about such things. A. Planning ahead can help save time in an emergency in the event that your mobile carrier is unable to connect your call to the 911 dispatcher. Immediate busy signals or calls that ring but never get picked up are two clues that your service provider is suffering a 911 failure. Glitches in the system are infrequent but do happen, so before they do, look up the emergency 10-digit direct numbers of your local police precinct, fire department, hospital or medical service and program them into your phones contact list. (Putting 911 and other emergency numbers in your speed-dial favorites may not be the best idea, however, as accidentally dialing them can place unnecessary calls and tie up the line.) Image For further reading, the Federal Communication Commission's website has detailed information about the 911 emergency response system. Credit... The New York Times You should be able to find these numbers in the local telephone directory for municipal services or on your town or citys local government website. (For those curious about the general process, New York Citys site includes an informational graphic showing what happens when you do call 911.) As you would when calling 911 on a cellphone, give the dispatcher your exact location and phone number as soon as you connect. For a number of years now, the federal government has been pressuring internet companies to provide information on their users. More often than not, they are obliged to cooperate by a court order and are told to stay quiet about it by a gag order. But on Thursday, Twitter drew a line on what it is willing to stay quiet about without a fight. The San Francisco-based social media company revealed in a federal court filing that it received a summons to reveal the identity of a Twitter account called @ALT_USCIS, one of several so-called rogue Twitter accounts run by people claiming to be dissident current or former employees of the federal government, as Mike Isaac writes. It is suing the federal government to block the unmasking of the anonymous user or users. The Twitter account frequently criticizes the Trump administrations immigration policies, and Twitter argues that the governments request represents a grave chilling effect on anonymous criticism, which is protected by the First Amendment. Over the past decade, cruise lines have been offering more opportunities to spend time on land. Now one is starting its own land-only tour company. Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. has just begun a subsidiary, GoBe.com, a global tour operator and the first noncruise venture for the company. Through the website, travelers can book day trips in 97 countries and nearly 900 cities. Management intends to triple its offerings in the first year. Though Royal Caribbeans cruise lines have established expertise in organizing shore excursions, the new company is building a new network of tour guides and operators and will focus on destinations well beyond ports. We want to be strong in Las Vegas and Madrid and the interior of India and China, said Billy Campbell, the managing director of GoBe. We are global and focused on interior destinations. Rates From $127 Basics At a towering 42 stories, the InterContinental Presidente has long been a Mexico City beacon. A renovation, completed in late 2015, with updates this spring and summer to some of its signature restaurants, adds a new burnish to this destination, just as Mexico City itself is becoming a must-go spot, especially for the international jet set. (The citys first Ritz-Carlton is scheduled to open in 2019, which makes the timing of the InterContinentals redo either smart or lucky.) Location Situated in Polanco, an upscale enclave, the hotel is a five-minute walk from a lively stretch of international restaurants and designer shops, popular with locals and expats alike, and bordered by pleasant greenways. Better still, its adjacent to Bosque de Chapultepec, the sprawling Central Park of the city, home to attractions like the National Museum of Anthropology, pre-Columbian ruins and Chapultepec Castle. A metro stop is also a five- to 10-minute walk away; buses run frequently along the neighboring Paseo de la Reforma, a main thoroughfare, and cabs are plentiful. The Room The view, the view, the view. Our 25th-floor Classic room, the lowest tier available, offered a sweeping vista of the sprawling city, extending all the way to on a clear day the mountain ranges that ring the metropolis. Watching the sunset over the colorful rooftops was mesmerizing and tranquil, offsetting the bustling streets below. (Park-view rooms are also available, and blackout blinds are standard.) Otherwise, the gray and dark-wood room was plushly functional, with a king-size bed, a desk, a small L-shape sofa under the picture window and ample storage space, including a useful if utilitarian coat tree. A single, bland black-and-white photo, of a hand painting a plate, hung on the wall; the decor could have used more local flourish. (Viva Mexico, but not with this look.) A Melita coffee maker, a 42-inch television and a somewhat outdated iPod dock were among the tech touches. On Monday, the Justice Department sought a 90-day delay so it could review all police reform agreements, including the one in Baltimore. But Judge James K. Bredar said Friday that he interpreted that request as the departments trying to determine whether it wants the court to enter the decree at all, or at least the current version of it. That opportunity had passed, he said. The parties have already agreed to the draft before the court, Judge Bredar wrote in his decision. It would be extraordinary for the court to permit one side to unilaterally amend an agreement already jointly reached and signed. Mr. Sessions said in a statement that the decree was negotiated during a rushed process by the previous administration and signed only days before they left office. While the Department of Justice continues to fully support police reform in Baltimore, I have grave concerns that some provisions of this decree will reduce the lawful powers of the police department and result in a less safe city, he said. He added that the agreement contained clear departures from many proven principles of good policing that we fear will result in more crime. The Justice Departments report found that the police in Baltimore, a city that is 63 percent black, disproportionately targeted black people, often for dubious reasons. The 2015 death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old African-American man, while in police custody led to violent riots. For decades, Harvard students and alumni have sung an alma mater that calls on them to be heralds of light and bearers of love till the stock of the Puritans die. University officials teach the refrain to freshmen on arrival and sing it again when the students graduate years later. But this week, a university steeped in tradition said the time had come for a change. To affirm Harvards commitment to inclusion in a time when college campuses are routinely finding themselves at the center of national debates on race and identity, university officials said they are seeking suggested rewrites of that disquieting final line. The contest is open only to members of the Harvard community. The line about Puritans concludes a sentence that is an exhortation to pursue the truth until a certain endpoint, said Danielle S. Allen, a professor and political philosopher on the Presidential Task Force on Inclusion and Belonging, which launched the competition. WASHINGTON When Donald J. Trump was crafting his campaign tax plan last year, one of his top economic advisers proposed an idea that would have made it harder for real estate moguls to use mountains of debt to make deals. Mr. Trump, who made his fortune as a property developer and earned the nickname the king of debt, scoffed at the suggestion. He hated that idea, said Stephen Moore, the Heritage Foundation economist who counseled Mr. Trump during the campaign. The proposal to scale back interest deductions for companies did not make the cut. As President Trump focuses his attention on overhauling Americas tax code, he has considered turning to the other side of the aisle to reach a bipartisan deal. But an obstacle has already surfaced, dimming the chances that a grand bargain will be achieved: Democrats are sounding the alarm that reshaping the tax code presents Mr. Trumps biggest conflict of interest yet. A tax code overhaul gives Democrats the chance to again bring up Mr. Trumps refusal to release his tax returns and to press for details of how his business deals are financed. That focus could also affect which tax code items, such as interest deductibility, are included in the overhaul. Mr. Trump posted dozens of tweets about the conflict in the years before he declared his candidacy for the White House, and frequently did so during the campaign as well. Channeling the same bluntness that helped fuel his political rise, he carved out a staunchly noninterventionist stance on the conflict and criticized as plodding Mr. Obamas approach. But he also made one thing clear: If he was in charge, any action would be swift and secretive to catch Mr. Assad off guard. We have sifted through Mr. Trumps account for the highlights: 2011-2012: Syria enters his radar screen It was several months after it began before the growing conflict in Syria appears to have attracted Mr. Trumps attention, and, even then, it was only a blip. Mr. Trump, at the time best known as a reality television personality, first weighed in on Syria in October 2011 to criticize the United Nations for its inaction after China and Russia had successfully blocked sanctions against the Assad government. WASHINGTON President Trump ordered the military on Thursday to carry out a missile attack on Syrian forces for using chemical weapons against civilians. The unilateral attack lacked authorization from Congress or from the United Nations Security Council, raising the question of whether he had legal authority to commit the act of war. Mr. Trump and top members of his administration initially justified the operation as a punishment for Syrias violating the ban on chemical weapons and an attempt at deterrence. But they did not make clear whether that was a legal argument or just a policy rationale. The strike raises two sets of legal issues. One involves international law and when it is lawful for any nation to attack another. The other involves domestic law and who gets to decide the president or Congress whether the United States should attack another country. Did Trump have clear authority under international law to attack Syria? No. The United Nations Charter, a treaty the United States has ratified, recognizes two justifications for using force on another countrys soil without its consent: the permission of the Security Council or a self-defense claim. In the case of Syria, the United Nations did not approve the strike, and the Defense Department justified it as intended to deter the regime from using chemical weapons again, which is not self-defense. WASHINGTON Judge Neil M. Gorsuch was confirmed by the Senate on Friday to become the 113th justice of the Supreme Court, capping a political brawl that lasted for more than a year and tested constitutional norms inside the Capitols fraying upper chamber. The moment was a triumph for President Trump, whose campaign appeal to reluctant Republicans last year rested in large part on his pledge to appoint another committed conservative to succeed Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in February 2016. However rocky the first months of his administration may have been, Mr. Trump now has a lasting legacy: Judge Gorsuch, 49, could serve on the court for 30 years or more. As a deep believer in the rule of law, Judge Gorsuch will serve the American people with distinction as he continues to faithfully and vigorously defend our Constitution, the president said. The final tally was 54-45 in favor of confirmation. The confirmation was also a vindication of the bare-knuckled strategy of Senate Republicans, who refused even to consider President Barack Obamas Supreme Court pick, Judge Merrick B. Garland, saying the choice of the next justice should belong to the next president. The United Nations Security Council met at 11:30 a.m. on Friday to discuss the American strikes in Syria. The meeting was requested by Bolivia, a temporary member of the Council and something of a thorn in the American side. The United States, which this month leads the Council, had little choice but to agree but not without a bite. The United States ambassador, Ms. Haley, said it would have to be a public session, and not behind closed doors, as she said Bolivia had wanted. Any country that chooses to defend the atrocities of the Syrian regime will have to do so in full public view, for all the world to hear, she said in a statement. Bolivias ambassador, Sacha Sergio Llorentty Soliz, vigorously disputed Ms. Haleys claim and said he welcomed an open briefing. He said the American strikes violated international law, and he criticized the United States for rebuffing efforts to negotiate a Security Council resolution to back an independent investigation into the chemical attacks. He accused the United States of acting as attorney, judge and executioner. Speaking to reporters before the Council meeting began, the French envoy, Francois Delattre, called the strike legitimate, while his British counterpart, Matthew Rycroft, said his government fully supported the American strikes. Somini Sengupta from the United Nations WASHINGTON President Trump ordered a barrage of missiles to strike an airfield in Syria on Thursday evening in response to the use of chemical weapons by Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria. Fifty-nine Tomahawk missiles were fired from American destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean at Al Shayrat airfield in Syria, from which officials said Mr. Assads chemical weapons attack originated this week. The Syrian Army says that the U.S. attack has killed six people. Mr. Trump ordered the strike after two days of intense deliberations that involved two meetings of his top national security advisers, including one that Mr. Trump conducted from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. In announcing the strikes on Thursday evening, Mr. Trump called the chemical attack very barbaric and said his decision would prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. The Russian military, which is active in Syria, was notified of the strikes in advance, though American officials did not personally inform President Vladimir V. Putin. In a briefing, Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson criticized Moscow for failing to live up to its promise in 2013 to destroy all of Syrias chemical weapons. Russia reacted harshly on Friday, maintaining its view that Mr. Assad had not bombed his people with chemical weapons. Iran, Russias main regional ally in buttressing Mr. Assad, also condemned the American attack. MONTGOMERY, Ala. Gov. Robert Bentley engaged in an inappropriate relationship with his chief adviser, then used intimidation tactics and deployed state law enforcement officials in an effort to cover it up, according to a bruising report released Friday in support of the effort to impeach him. The report also claims that the second-term governor tried to pin nonexistent crimes on a top law enforcement official. The release of the 131-page report by a special counsel to the state House Judiciary Committee is almost certain to further imperil Mr. Bentley, an avuncular physician and former Sunday school teacher. Mr. Bentley, a Republican, has vowed to fight to keep his office despite a steady drip of embarrassing and sometimes salacious details that have fueled a scandal that has embarrassed this conservative state and all but consumed its political culture for the last year. Despite mounting calls from members of his own party that he step down, the governor won a significant battle Friday afternoon when a local judge granted a 10-day temporary restraining order Mr. Bentley had sought. The order effectively blocks impeachment hearings that were set to begin Monday in the Legislature, which is dominated by Mr. Bentleys own party. In 2015, Nevada passed an empowerment scholarship bill that would have allowed any former public school student access to use an account, but last year, the State Supreme Court halted the program, saying its financing mechanism would harm public schools. The program is on much firmer legal ground in Arizona, where the states top court declared the accounts constitutional in 2014. This year, about 3,500 Arizona students, the majority of whom have special needs, are participating in the program. The average size of an account is $5,700 per year for children without disabilities and $19,000 for children with them. The funds are distributed via debit cards. According to a 2016 report on the program from EdChoice, an advocacy group that supports private school choice, 83 percent of E.S.A. funds are spent on private school tuition, 7 percent are spent on tutoring and less than 1 percent are spent on online education. A third of recipients are using their accounts to pay for multiple educational services. In legislative negotiations, skeptics of the expansion were able to secure several compromises. Although all public school students will be eligible to apply for an account, enrollment in the program will be limited to about 5,500 new students each year, eligible on a first-come-first-served basis. Total enrollment will be capped at 30,000 students in 2022. All private schools that accept E.S.A.s will be required to test account recipients annually, using a nationally recognized standardized test. But only schools serving over 50 scholarship students will have to report their students scores publicly. Unlike public schools, they will not have to report on the performance of subgroups such as racial minorities, low-income students or those learning English. Advocates for education savings accounts say they allow children from low-income families to escape failing public schools. But an investigation by The Arizona Republic found that 75 percent of current E.S.A. recipients in the state previously attended relatively affluent, high-performing public schools. The program has been especially popular with the parents of disabled students. The public school options are not working for those families, regardless of income, said John Schilling, chief operating officer of the American Federation for Children, a national advocacy group that lobbied for the Arizona expansion. Ms. DeVos is the groups former board chairwoman. An Arizona state senator who opposed the bill, Juan Mendez, a Democrat, said the amount of money in the accounts was too little for many of his low-income Latino constituents to afford a high-quality private education. He worries, he said, that affluent white parents will use the accounts to flee public school systems that are becomingly increasingly Latino each year. Some of President Trumps most ardent campaign supporters were among his most vocal opponents on Thursday after he ordered the missile strike against Syria, charging him with breaking his promise to keep the United States out of another conflict in the Middle East. Prominent writers and bloggers on the far right attacked Mr. Trump. They accused him of turning against his voters by waging an attack that he had for years said would be a terrible idea. They also criticized him for launching the strike without first seeking congressional approval something he said on Twitter in 2013 would be a big mistake. The most vocal in their outrage were leaders from the small but influential white nationalist movement. Paul Joseph Watson, an editor at the conspiracy theorist site Infowars, said on Twitter that Trump was just another deep state/neocon puppet. He added, Im officially OFF the Trump train. What is lunch shaming? It happens when a child cant pay a school lunch bill. In Alabama, a child short on funds was stamped on the arm with I Need Lunch Money. In some schools, children are forced to clean cafeteria tables in front of their peers to pay the debt. Other schools require cafeteria workers to take a childs hot food and throw it in the trash if he doesnt have the money to pay for it. In what its supporters say is the first such legislation in the country, New Mexico has outlawed shaming children whose parents are behind on school lunch payments. On Thursday, Gov. Susana Martinez signed the Hunger-Free Students Bill of Rights, which directs schools to work with parents to pay their debts or sign up for federal meal assistance and puts an end to practices meant to embarrass children. It applies to public, private and religious schools that receive federal subsidies for students breakfasts and lunches. The laws passage is a victory for anti-hunger activists, who have long been critical of lunch-shaming practices that single out children with insufficient funds on their electronic swipe cards or who lack the necessary cash. These practices can include making the child wear a wrist band or requiring the child to perform chores in exchange for a meal. Nepal Airlines seals deal to buy two Airbus A330 jets for $209.6m Nepal Airlines Corporation (NAC) has signed a $209.6 million deal to purchase two Airbus A330-200 long-range jets from US-based AAR Corp on Friday, marking the largest-ever jet purchase deal in Nepals aviation history. JOHANNESBURG In the largest protest in years, tens of thousands of people demonstrated in South Africas major cities on Friday to demand the resignation of President Jacob Zuma after his dismissal of a well-respected finance minister intensified concerns about government corruption. Marches in Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg and Pretoria brought together a mix of political opponents, civil society leaders and ordinary South Africans, united in their message that Mr. Zuma had lost the moral authority to lead the nation. Supporters of Mr. Zuma and his governing African National Congress held smaller counterprotests in Durban and Johannesburg. WASHINGTON Even days before he was scheduled to meet with President Xi Jinping of China, President Trump had yet to abandon his exaggerated election rhetoric on China and trade. Mr. Trump is still in the raucous campaign mode, said James Zimmerman, former chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China. Raising issues such as currency manipulation and the size of the trade deficit may play well to the underinformed base, but not to those that understand the issues. Heres an assessment of claims Mr. Trump has made about China and trade since his inauguration. Mr. Trump claimed on Sunday a $500 billion trade deficit with China. We have to do better because our deficit with China, as you know $504 billion. Thats a year. This is exaggerated. The United States imported about $463 billion in goods from China in 2016, but it also exported about $116 billion worth. Thats an overall goods deficit of about $347 billion in 2016, in addition to a services surplus of about $37 billion, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, for an overall deficit of $310 billion. Because were all siblings, she said. We have to always look out for one another. Nothing about Ms. Sintas early years predicted how high she would rise. Born in 1948 in the rural East Javanese town of Jombang, she was the eldest daughter and one of 18 children of a calligrapher father who had one wife. She was educated at a local Islamic boarding school for girls, where she impressed teachers with her religiosity and academic ambition. Mr. Wahid, a charismatic young teacher at the school whose father was the leader of Nahdlatul Ulama, Indonesias largest Muslim organization, fell in love with the outspoken and beautiful young woman, then only 13. He would visit her house after school to play chess with her father, eventually asking for permission to marry his daughter. But Ms. Sinta told her father she was not interested. I was too young, and love hadnt blossomed yet, she said. It was considered scandalous that a girl from an ordinary family would turn down Mr. Wahid, but her father left the decision to her. It was the unlikely start of a great romance. After Mr. Wahid moved to Cairo to study, and struggled in class, Ms. Sinta wrote him: Mankind shouldnt always fail in life. If right now youre failing in your studies, then you shouldnt also fail in love. He took the opening, writing then from Baghdad, where he had moved, to ask her to marry him. This time, she was ready, but because he would not come home from Iraq for three more years, his grandfather represented him at the marriage ceremony. SEOUL, South Korea If North Korea wanted to rattle the United States and China with its missile test this week, the launch itself was more fizzle than bang. Instead of showing off the Norths technological prowess just before President Trump was to host President Xi Jinping of China for their first summit meeting, the missile fired on Wednesday flew a mere 37 miles, according to the South Korean military. North Korea, which typically gushes over important missile tests especially those attended by its leader, Kim Jong-un has been silent about this one, indicating either that it was not important enough to merit Mr. Kims presence or that it was a failure. American and South Korean officials initially said they believed that the North had launched its Pukguksong-2, a newly developed, nuclear-capable intermediate-range ballistic missile that uses solid-fuel technology, which makes it easier for the country to hide its weapons and deploy them on short notice. BEIJING The missiles were being prepared even before the two men finished dinner, disrupting the carefully choreographed proceedings. The American attack on Syria on Thursday unraveled Chinas well laid plans for a summit meeting that would present President Xi Jinping as a global leader on par with President Trump, at once stealing the spotlight from Mr. Xi and putting him in a difficult position: choosing between condoning the kind of unilateral military action that China has long opposed, or rebuking his host. Mr. Xis dilemma was also acute because China has generally sided with Russia in defending Syrias president, Bashar al-Assad, and because it worries that Mr. Trump might be prepared to order a similar strike on North Korea, Chinese and Western analysts said. Xi cant fail to be impressed by Trumps resolve, said Alan Dupont, an Australian military analyst who worked for that countrys Defense Department. Xi will have to reassess what the Trump presidency means for Chinese interests in East Asia, particularly North Korea and the South China Sea. The house in which they were born eventually made its way to North Bay. But the small museum in it was closed, and the city was poised to ship the house off to a fairground in a village about 45 minutes away that had no connection to the quintuplets story. I went to North Bay to meet with local politicians as well as citizens who were pushing to keep the home there. And I traveled to Montreal for a rare interview with Annette and Cecile Dionne, the last two surviving quintuplets. The result was a story that retold their unhappy history and tried to figure out why North Bay was willing to abandon a connection to an important event in its past. One surprise from working on this story was how well Pierre Bertons 1977 book, The Dionne Years: A Thirties Melodrama, holds up as a good read. Amazingly, its still in print. The birth of the Dionne quintuplets remains a vivid memory for my mother, Helen Austen, who grew up in Dauphin, Manitoba, and who will turn 90 next month. She seemed enormously impressed that I had met Annette and Cecile. Because Cecile had injured her ribs in a fall, I had to interview the two sisters in a somewhat noisy long-term care and recovery hospital across the street from Montreals forbidding Bordeaux jail. Given their history with the news media, they appeared understandably wary at first. But they were soon unusually gracious and warm, and often challenged each other on their answers to my questions. Although their story is not a happy one, and they said there is much that they cannot forgive or forget, they were neither bitter nor complaining. It was a privilege to meet them. STOCKHOLM A man drove a stolen beer truck into a crowd of people in a popular shopping district in Stockholm on Friday afternoon and then rammed it into a department store, killing four people and injuring 15 others in an attack that unleashed bloodshed and panic on the streets of another European capital. Sweden has been attacked, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said in a televised news conference. This indicates that it is an act of terror. A nationwide manhunt conducted through much of the evening ended when the police caught one person of particular interest, said Jan Evensson, the chief of regional police. On Saturday, a spokesman for the police, Lars Bystrom, said the man in custody was believed to have driven the truck. Image A picture showing a man wanted in connection with the truck attack in Stockholm was released by the Swedish police on Friday. Credit... Stockholm Police The first emergency call came in around 2:50 p.m. local time as the truck mowed down pedestrians along Drottninggatan, a busy pedestrian shopping street. The truck, stolen just blocks away earlier in the day, came to a stop after slamming into the entrance of the Ahlens department store. Photos from the scene showed a billowing cloud of black smoke rising from the store. The attack struck the heart of a nation known for its peacefulness and tolerance, and turned a warm spring afternoon into a scene of terror. I saw hundreds of people running. They ran for their lives before the truck crashed into the department store, a witness identified only as Anna told the newspaper Aftonbladet. Katarina Libert, 32, a freelance journalist, was trying on clothes at the department store when she heard a boom and the walls shook. LONDON A 31-year-old Romanian architect who plunged into the River Thames when a terrorist plowed a vehicle into pedestrians in London became the fifth victim to die as a result of the attack last month, the police said on Friday. Image Andreea Cristea Credit... London Metropolitan Police, via European Pressphoto Agency The story of the Romanian woman, Andreea Cristea, captured the hearts of Londoners and many people around the world after the March 22 attack on Parliament, which also wounded more than 50 people. WASHINGTON In launching a military strike just 77 days into his administration, President Trump has the opportunity, but hardly a guarantee, to change the perception of disarray in his administration. The attack will also shape the meeting next week between Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia the first face-to-face encounter between the Russian leader and a member of the Trump administration. Before the strike on a Syrian air base on Thursday night, the meeting had been expected to be dominated by the investigation into Russias cyberattacks and the interference in the presidential election on Mr. Trumps behalf. But the Syria action gives the Trump administration an opportunity to demand that Mr. Putin either contain or remove Syrias leader, Bashar al-Assad, or else Mr. Trump will expand the limited American military action and quickly if the Russian president fails to do so. One held for extortion Police have arrested a man for his alleged involvement in extorting money from general public and businessmen. President Trumps decision to strike Syria has upended assumptions about American military involvement in the Middle East, angering adversaries and raising hopes among allies that it signals a new willingness by the United States to deploy force to help its friends and punish its foes. People are jubilant in the Gulf right now, said Mohammed Alyahya, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council who is from Saudi Arabia. What is clear is that Trump understands what American power can change and is willing to use it. The swift decision, by a president who had previously shown no interest in entering conflicts like Syrias, set Mr. Trump apart from his predecessors far more cautious approach to the war. The missile strikes on a Syrian airfield inflicted only minor damage and are unlikely to change the dynamics of a complex conflict that rages on local, regional and global levels. On the ground, it pits an array of rebel groups against the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. Supporting the rebels are nations like Saudi Arabia and Turkey, who oppose Mr. Assad and his ally, Iran. The war has also entangled Russia and the United States, and sent shock waves through Europe, which streams of Syrian refugees have fled to. Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson characterized the strike as an overwhelming success and said Americans should be proud of the overpowering force of the American military. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced that the United States would impose additional sanctions on Syria, but he did not discuss the timing or targets. But the strike inserted the United States, for a moment at least, into one of the worlds most intractable conflicts and demonstrated the potential dangers of Russian and American forces operating in proximity. As many as 100 Russian troops were believed to be stationed at the Syrian air base targeted on Thursday. An American official said the Russians on the ground had been given 60 to 90 minutes notice that the missiles were coming and had not been advised whether to take shelter or flee. Although Russia did not deploy its air defense system in Syria against the American missiles, it flexed its military muscles after the attack. Moscow said it would bolster Syrias air defenses, and the Russian news agency Tass reported that a frigate would enter the Mediterranean Sea on Friday and visit the logistics base at Tartus, a Syrian port. The Russian military said it would shut down a hotline established to prevent accidental clashes in the skies over Syria. While the two sides used the channel earlier on Friday, Russian officials said it would be cut off at the end of the day. The United States and Russia have other ways to track each others aircraft and avoid collisions, but American officials considered the hotline an important vehicle to ensure safety, as well as a valuable political connection. Even as Moscow protested, American officials pointed fingers back, faulting the Kremlin for not enforcing a 2013 agreement it brokered with Syria to eliminate its chemical weapons. Clearly, Russia has failed in its responsibility to deliver on that commitment from 2013, Mr. Tillerson said late Thursday night. So either Russia has been complicit or Russia has been simply incompetent in its ability to deliver on its end of that agreement. Russia, which sent armed forces to Syria in 2015 to bolster Mr. Assad against insurgents, denied that his government was behind the chemical attack on Tuesday in Idlib Province that left more than 80 people dead, calling that a pretext. Instead, Moscow said a conventional strike had hit a chemical weapons warehouse controlled by insurgents, an explanation dismissed in the West. MOSCOW Russia on Friday froze a critical agreement on military cooperation with the United States in Syria after an American military strike, warning that the operation would further corrode already dismal relations between Moscow and Washington. Syria, Russias ally, condemned the American strikes as a disgraceful act. In addition to suspending the pact to coordinate air operations over Syria, an accord that was meant to prevent accidental encounters between the two militaries, Russia also said it would bolster Syrias air defense systems, and was reported to be planning to send a frigate into the Mediterranean Sea to visit the logistics base at the Syrian port of Tartus. Dmitri S. Peskov, a spokesman for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, said that the point of the agreement had been to decrease danger in the air and that canceling it would not significantly increase that peril with missiles already flying around. Amid the missile strikes, it is hardly reasonable to talk about any more increase in the risk, as the risk has increased considerably, Mr. Peskov said at a news briefing. There must be consequences for such horrific actions, a reader of The New York Times wrote, responding to the news Thursday night of an American missile strike in Syria, carried out after the government of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, was widely accused of attacking people in a rebel-held northern town with chemical weapons. The reader, Campbell Dobbs in Huntsville, Ala., added, Although I thought Id never write this, Donald Trump did the right thing. The strikes ordered by President Trump led to an outpouring of comments by our readers. Many expressed skepticism about the presidents motivations, plans and ability to succeed. Brett in North Carolina wrote that the strike proved once again that Trump only pays attention to what he sees on TV. Others commended Mr. Trump for his leadership in the face of what many have denounced as an unthinkable attack that killed more than 80 people, including children. Here is a roundup of the comments, originally posted on our site and Facebook. They have been edited for clarity. The U.S. Needs a Real Plan Mr. President, Syria needs our help, especially the innocent children. It might involve a military intervention. I am sure Sen. McCain and Graham would like that not saving the kids part, but selling our arms part. But before you venture any further, please let us know what our day-after plan is .. at least this time we deserve to know that much. Bhaskar in Dallas Replace him with who? Are we to babysit another Middle East country? Elizabeth in Florida This Shows Strong Leadership The fact that the United States demonstrated to the world its willingness to take unilateral action after eight years of apologies was alone worth the cost of the Tomahawks. lwnieman in Cedarburg, Wis. I do not support Trump for various significant reasons. However, I applaud his actions against the Assad regime and its use of chemical weapons against civilians. Ive personally realized tonight that it is possible to strongly oppose a leader overall, yet support specific actions. Tonight, I proudly support the United States leadership, specifically POTUS, in our stand against Assad. Ellie in Chicago It Will Only Lead to More Deaths Its tough not to want to bomb the Assad regime into the stone age for all of the atrocities its committed. But we do have to remember that we are probably going to kill children too with a stepped up bombing campaign. There is never a 0 percent chance of civilian casualties. Chris R in Boulder, Colo. When President Trump ordered dozens of cruise missiles launched at a Syrian air base, he was, whether he knew it or not, testing a theory that has long drawn skepticism among scholars of war. That theory: that the United States can fundamentally alter an adversarys strategic calculus at little cost and with little risk of American deaths or a tit-for-tat cycle of violence with limited, symbolic and punitive strikes. In this case, the United States was seeking to change the reasoning that apparently led Bashar al-Assad, Syrias leader, to use chemical weapons and the calculus that leads Russia to support his moves. But political scientists say such low-cost, high-return military action may not be possible, particularly in the context of Syria. Mr. Assad has repeatedly demonstrated that he is willing to bear costs far greater than temporarily losing a single airfield and the Russian government has repeatedly demonstrated that it can compensate for far greater setbacks. PALM BEACH, Fla. It was not the most auspicious setting to discuss the first major military action of the Trump presidency: a cramped conference room in a seaside resort five miles south of Mar-a-Lago, the club where President Trump was meeting with President Xi Jinping of China. But when Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson and Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, the national security adviser, turned up here at 10 p.m. on Thursday to brief reporters about Mr. Trumps missile strike on Syria, it ended up being an uncharacteristically confident display. Major foreign-policy upheavals can be a crucible, propelling some administration figures to the forefront while others fade. But the Trump administration has faced a more basic challenge: persuading the world, after weeks of bureaucratic dysfunction, that it can handle fast-moving events. For an administration that has lurched from crisis to crisis, often seeming to make things up as it goes along, this was a chance for Mr. Tillerson and Mr. McMaster to offer a forceful explanation of Mr. Trumps thinking. For both men, who have struggled with personnel upheavals at their agencies and doubts about their place in Mr. Trumps turbulent orbit, it was a chance to show that they were wielding influence over critical national security decisions. BEIRUT, Lebanon For Syrians who have withstood years of unbridled assault and deprivation by the forces of President Bashar al-Assad, the American missile strike on a military airfield served as a short-term adrenaline shot of vengeful satisfaction, tinged with cynicism and fear. Residents in the city of Homs, near Al Shayrat airfield, which was hit with dozens of low-flying Tomahawk missiles in the predawn hours on Friday local time, praised the strike. So did residents of the northern rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun, the site of a deadly attack on Tuesday that used what was probably the nerve agent sarin an attack the United States said had been carried out by Syrian warplanes from the airfield. We will not kneel! We will not kneel! dozens of marchers in Khan Sheikhoun shouted in a video that activists posted on Facebook. Small children later joined the protesters, and the group was filmed standing silently in a circle, carrying pictures of the victims of the attack. The smell from the chemical assault lingered in the air in parts of Khan Sheikhoun on Friday, residents there said via telephone, Skype and internet messaging. Yea! she is apparently saying. T-Mobile is fixing the mess it made! After a nudge a few weeks ago from the Haggler, a representative at the company contacted Mr. Kelly and said the problem would be fixed in his next bill, which was scheduled to be posted this past week. By deadline, it had not yet appeared, so it is unclear whether T-Mobile has actually delivered on its promise. More info A.S.A.P. Now for some updates. In late January, the Haggler wrote about Brian Kelly, a wedding videographer in Greenville, S.C., who never delivered a video to the mother of a bride and refused to refund her $1,700. On Jan. 30, he wrote to the mother in question, apologizing and promising to deliver the video by Feb. 11. That deadline, like many others, has passed, with no video. Come now, Mr. Kelly. You can do this. Try again. Dont make the Haggler nudge you every few weeks in this space. It will get old. Two weeks ago, the Haggler wrote about the bilious sales tactics of OpticsFast, an online eyewear seller based in Brooklyn. The Haggler noted that the site was and may still be owned by Vitaly Borker, a man who did three years in prison for crimes that included threatening to maim and kill customers of another eyewear site he owned. Mr. Borker was released from the Big House in 2015, and many OpticsFast customers have complained about legal threats and bullying that sound very similar to the behavior that landed him in prison. Is it possible that Mr. Borker learned nothing behind bars and has returned to the business of enraging customers? The Haggler could not come to any conclusions. But he is apparently not the only one asking that question. A day after the column ran, he heard from several OpticsFast customers who said they had been contacted by a federal postal inspector. It was this very organization that perp-walked Mr. Borker out of his home in Sheepshead Bay one morning in 2010. These are not people you want to anger. As the investigation unfolds, take a moment to ponder a fund-raising project that Mr. Borker, who now prefers Vito to Vitaly, has posted to GoFundMe. It urges people to buy Mr. Borker a pair of $1,000 long skis because hes heading to Utah in April and, frankly, his short skis wont cut it in the powder hes expecting. She has asked for her servicers blessing on the eligibility of her nonprofit, and has not heard back yet. Since the legal filing, the Education Department has told reporters that it cannot comment on pending litigation. I didnt ask about that. Instead, I simply asked if its servicers letters about whether an employer was eligible were something that borrowers should believe. Its three spokesmen did not answer by my deadline for this article. Lets call the Education Departments refusal to clarify the matter exactly what it is: meanness. If the department has made mistakes with the litigants and misclassified their employers, it can fix them quickly and settle the suit without freaking out untold numbers of other borrowers. THE RIGHT KIND OF LOAN The Education Departments instructions, via another information page on its website, are pretty clear: You need to have what the agency refers to as a direct loan. As the site explains, if the word direct isnt in the title of your loan, it probably doesnt qualify. If you arent sure what kinds of loans you have or whether your statement from your servicer describes them correctly, you can log into the departments website and look them up. If youre making payments on, say, a Federal Family Education Loan (F.F.E.L.) or a Perkins loan, those are not counted toward your 120 payments, even if you work for a qualifying employer (though the Perkins loan has its own cancellation program). You can fix this by consolidating your loans into a direct consolidation loan. Be careful, though: If you consolidate direct loans with nonqualifying loans, any forgiveness-qualifying payments you made on that old direct loan wont count anymore. The count to 120 resets. When Dr. Darius Amjadi, a 49-year-old pathologist and Iraq war veteran in Portland, Ore., began his work with a veterans hospital, he thought he had a shot at loan forgiveness from the Veterans Affairs Departments own program. At the same time, his employer informed him that his loans would be eligible for public service loan forgiveness. But the departments forgiveness has not come through. And it turns out he had not been in the right kind of federal loan to qualify for forgiveness under the public service program, despite what his employer said. If anyone had said, Check your loans, it would have put me on notice, Dr. Amjadi said. Now, hes got a balance of $40,000 and has missed out on years of eligibility for forgiveness. Prez attends luncheon hosted by former king President Bidya Devi Bhandari on Thursday attended a function hosted by former king Gyanendra Shah in Kathmandu, ending speculations whether she would accept an invitation from the former monarch who is still considered the adversary by political parties that in 2008 ousted him from the Narayanhiti Palace. A walk in a garden wont soothe away all stress or subdue all sorrow, and neither will a good cocktail. But they can lift us up. Even simply garnishing a drink with fresh flowers (make sure they are edible grade and do avoid mums: in the name of research I learned the hard way how terrible they taste) makes a cocktail more beautiful, more special, more like a John Singer Sargent painting, more like a sunny even hopeful spring day in a glass. Tonights strike in Syria appears to be a proportional response to the regimes use of chemical weapons. If the President intends to escalate the U.S. militarys involvement in Syria, he must to come to Congress for an Authorization for Use of Military Force which is tailored to meet the threat and prevent another open-ended war in the Middle East. On Thursday, the United States launched an attack on Al Shayrat airfield in Syria. President Trump said the airbase was targeted for its role in a chemical weapons attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun that killed more than 80 civilians two days earlier. TURKEY Aleppo Idlib Raqqa Khan Sheikhoun Site of chemical attack Deir al-Zour Syria Mediterranean Sea Homs Al Shayrat airfield Target of strikes LEBANON IRAQ Damascus ISRAEL JORDAN TURKEY Aleppo Raqqa Idlib Deir al-Zour Khan Sheikhoun Med. Sea Syria Homs Al Shayrat airfield LEBANON Damascus IRAQ JORDAN TURKEY Aleppo Raqqa Idlib Khan Sheikhoun Deir al-Zour Mediterranean Sea Homs Syria Al Shayrat airfield LEBANON Damascus IRAQ ISRAEL JORDAN A total of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles were launched from two Navy warships in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. The missiles were aimed at Syrian fighter jets and other infrastructure, but did not target any areas that might have chemical weapons. Satellite images taken on April 7 by DigitalGlobe show buildings and airplane hangars that appear to have been damaged in the attack. Satellite images by DigitalGlobe The composite image below, from satellite images taken in 2014, shows the extent of the airfields runways and infrastructure. Al Shayrat airfield N 3,000 ft Al Shayrat airfield 3,000 ft Al Shayrat airfield N 3,000 ft The New York Times | Composite of images from DigitalGlobe and CNES/Astrium via Google Earth Shayrat airbase has two runways that are about two miles long. Russia also maintains a military presence there to assist government forces fighting the Islamic State and insurgents. A Pentagon spokesman, Capt. Jeff Davis, said Russian forces had been notified before the strike. On Friday, the Pentagon released images, including the one below, indicating damaged and destroyed aircraft shelters at the airfield. The airbase is about 20 miles outside Homs, in the heart of government-held territory. It has been used by Syrian government forces to launch attacks in Homs and Hama. Areas of control as of April 4 turkey Kurdish control Aleppo Idlib Raqqa Rebel control Deir al-Zour Site of chemical attack Government control ISIS control SYRIA Homs Al Shayrat airfield LEBANON IRAQ Damascus ISRAEL JORDAN turkey Kurdish control Site of chemical attack Government control ISIS control SYRIA Al Shayrat airfield Rebel control IRAQ JORDAN Source: IHS Janes The attack was meant to send a message to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria that the United States intends to respond with military force if he continues to use chemical weapons, according to a military official. Israels prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said in a statement: President Trump sent a strong and clear message today that the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated. Israel fully supports President Trumps decision and hopes that this message of resolve in the face of the Assad regimes horrific actions will resonate not only in Damascus, but in Tehran, Pyongyang and elsewhere. Protracted political transition Nepali youths have become aware that the course of progress can be expedited by adopting right policies Contempt of court case: SC issues show-cause notice to NC, Deuba The Supreme Court on Thursday issued a show-cause notice to the Nepali Congress and its President Sher Bahadur Deuba in a contempt of court petition. Silk Road, here we come The One Belt, One Road Initiative will expand Nepals trade horizons tremendously If it sounds to you like a whiney child is complaining about being mistreated, then this article may never resonate with you. If you are proud that you consider yourself an extreme progressive, with nothing but contempt for extremists on the right or if you are extremely conservative with nothing but contempt for progressives on the left, then take a breath, cool off a little. Sadly, I have found that both right and left wing fanatics seem to hurt their own followers even more than those of their so called "political adversaries." Our somewhat feeble attempts at well meaning legislation need to be written by centrists, most of whom have common goals, but different views of "how to skin a cat." Instead laws are usually authored by extremists with little or no self control, let alone any skill in writing laws. The best example of this seems to be "Affirmative Action," a program that was and is certainly necessary and "righteous." Why then would some lunkheaded group in Congress want to mandate the hiring of a lesser qualified minority member over a more qualified "non minority" member? Why would the incompetent authors violate the Fourteenth Amendment ("Equal Protection") in an attempt to somehow uphold it? Never mind that the precedent was already set, if not as obviously, by the inadequate way the "Civil Rights Act" seems to have been written. I don't recall meeting anyone on the "right" or "left" who will admit that the federal government actually has the right to tell someone whom he or she may or may not permit to enter a privately owned business establishment. This is something constitutional law professor Barack Obama appreciated, but wisely skirted as an issue when he eloquently explained how wealthy employers depend so heavily on not only their employees, but on the transporters of their products, the common citizens that pay for public utilities and public services, public roads, and the employer's day to day protection. Perhaps I am asking too much of our legislators' questionable talents, but if the Civil Rights Act were written such that all of these publicly financed services were to be withheld from restrictive business establishments, that buses forcing minorities to the back of the bus could not use public roads, I believe that many true conservatives and libertarians such as Barry Goldwater would have voted for it. Furthermore, individuals such as Ron Paul would not have to criticise the act, while saying that flawed as it may be, we definitely need it. The same is true for "Affirmative Action." And, who were the fools who came up with bussing, anyway. I was a school teacher at the time and I can still remember my initial reaction. Not only did I consider the idea to be asinine and misguided, I called it counterproductive which it still is to this day. I immediately suggested that the best teachers be "bussed," not the students! If nothing else, paying them more and moving the teachers, who are employees of the local government, is at least legal! What's more, if the schools were good enough, a significantly larger number of middle class families might even move into areas with the best schools, contributing a good deal more natural assimilation of culture and race into neighborhoods than would government force. On the other side of the aisle, even the "justices" of our Supreme Court can't seem to compose a cogent decision. We have conservative legislators and judges promulgating perhaps the worst ever violation of the First Amendment, masquerading as a phony attempt to save it. The Citizens United decision absurdly protects unlimited anonymous political donations as expression of opinion, but refuses to protect voting as an expression of the exact same opinion! No wonder that the Roberts Supreme Court is still the laughing stock of every judicial system in the entire free world, a fact that would actually be comical except that I can find no comic relief in the addition of Judge Gorsuch to an already corrupt Court. We are so used to accepting extreme views from both sides that we hardly realize when we have been hit in the head with the damned pendulum! As I have written so many times, those in the center seem more likely to look both left and right to try to find out what people actually need as opposed to what they want ! Meanwhile, their respect for an opponent's actual ideology no matter how much they disagree with it, very often leads to an actual dialogue. It is why even Bernie Sanders, as liberal as they come, dons his centrist mantle at his Town Hall meetings and is so popular, even with so many conservatives who did not, obviously, vote for him. Some of his solutions may be untenable, but he was the only candidate of either party who literally asked and still asks voters what it is that they really need. He simply did not consider their political leanings at all. He, unlike Trump or Clinton, pandered to no one. He alone portrayed "Obamacare" as a necessary stepping stone to a realistic national healthcare plan, leaving the door open for a dialogue about healthcare no matter how much he disagreed with Republican concepts. He alone actually asked people in West Virginia what they needed . Hillary didn't seem to give a damn and Trump lied to them by telling them what is they need and that the ultimate answer is to halt immigration and for them to die in the coal mines that he would soon reopen. Neither Hillary nor Trump ever asked them why they had actually lost their jobs. When Bernie actually did ask them, most answered that their jobs were forfeited to machines, not because of the mines being closed. Finding out what they needed, Bernie's solution was actually the same as President Obama's, to use federal funds already appropriated , to retrain coal miners in new, more permanent jobs, i.e. to address their long term needs, not just short term phony fixes. Oh, and how much of his presidency did President Obama spend in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia talking with real people about real needs? How much time did he spend with the same people explaining why and how they might benefit long term by the TPP or any worthwhile policies for that matter. It's pretty much like the difference between a physician examining a patient via telephone or TV monitor instead of an actual face to face, hands on physical examination. Better to stay in D.C. wasting time and political capital, I guess, trying to figure out the advantage of marriage over civil unions or the pros and cons of a woman having a late term abortion because of a bad hair day. Why should we concern ourselves with the needs of a centrist population when we can raise so much more money worrying about wealthy extremists on both sides of the political equation? And, if that be the case, why not further vilify the opposition's ideas since more disrespect means more money in each party's coffers. Hell, legitimate dialogue might get some answers, but it puts bupkis in the party's pocketbook. If Democrats want to be the representative party of the people, we must have candidates who actually talk to people in the center, whatever their party affiliation. I believe that considering the filthy mess handed to him by a world in turmoil and by his adolescent predecessor, President Obama deserves a great deal of credit for his accomplishments. He stabilized a worldwide economic crash and love it or hate it, he established the only form of national healthcare this country has ever had. What he did not bother to do, except on rare occasions, was to use his bully pulpit to talk to his actual constituents in the center, representing some 65-75 percent of our entire population. He rarely used his considerable talent to explain to the average person exactly what he was doing for them or what the opposition was doing to them! He never seemed to understand that what makes presidents really respected in their countrymen's eyes is standing up to your own party as well as the opposing party, nor did he seem to understand that what matters most to people is fairness and that no one in the center respected Eric Holder's unfair Justice Cartel any more than they could respect "W's" unfair pseudo Christian "Inquisition." When I see people such as Joe Biden passed over as a presidential candidate, I wonder where the soul of our party lies. And now, even though we have no presumptive presidential candidates in the Democratic party this early in the cycle, we need to designate people like Adam Schiff, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, even old Joe Biden and other soft spoken and articulate statesmen as spokespersons to the heart of America. However, If they do speak honestly and actually explain the issues to "We the People," they must realize that they may have to sacrifice popularity among their more corrupt colleagues on both sides of the aisle. Minutes ago I learned that the U.S. has done it again. On mere allegations of WMD use, without public debate or serious investigation, it has launched a barrage of missiles -- this time on Syria. The justification? The Syrian government allegedly used poison gas that killed women and children -- "Babies, beautiful innocent babies" as our president put it. Meanwhile, the United States itself: Is killing women and children every day in Iraq's Mosul, where it bombs hospitals and mosques. It is supporting and directly participating in a war on the Middle East's poorest country, Yemen, There, incessant bombings over the past two years have killed 10,000 civilians. In Yemen 17 million (!) people including innumerable "beautiful babies" are under threat of famine directly caused by the rich United States and its super-rich ally, Saudi Arabia. No word of reversing policy. We shed not a tear. None of this even takes into account the 30,000 children who die each day from absolutely preventable hunger. They will be as predictably dead tomorrow as if President Trump shot them one by one in their beautiful little heads. What does all of this mean? It means that on principle, the United States doesn't care about killing civilians or "beautiful babies." Somehow, it's the manner of killing them that is objectionable. If civilians starve to death, that's apparently O.K. If they are slaughtered by bombing, that's O.K. too. It's acceptable even if women and children are killed by the banned chemical weapon, white phosphorous (as they were in Iraq's Fallujah under Mad Dog Mattis -- our current Secretary of Defense) or by banned cluster bombs which end up killing and maiming children because unexploded, brightly-colored ordnance looks like toys. But poison gas is somehow different. Decapitation is somehow different. Barrel bombs are somehow different -- even though its civilian victims are just as numerous and dead as those killed by phosphorous or cluster bombs, or by Cruise Missiles. And where does all the bombing get us? Absolutely NOWHERE! NOTHING positive has been accomplished by these incessant acts of war committed by the country Dr. King described as the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. NOTHING positive has been served by the wars-without=end waged by our Amerika identified by most of the world as the greatest threat to its peace and security. How long can we endure the hypocrisy before we all rise up against the warmongers who pretend to lead us? By Dave Lindorff Shiekhun airbase after Trump-ordered Tomohawk cruise missile attack (Image by ThisCantBeHappening!) Details DMCA President Donald Trump campaigned last year making the sensible argument that the US should no longer engage in a policy of regime change, and should attempt to have friendly relations with other countries like Russia and China. Yesterday he blew those ideas out of the water by launching 59 Tomahawk missiles at Syria's Shayrat airbase (reportedly killing nine civilians and injuring more) and by calling for the removal of Syria's leader, Bashar al Assad. The pretext for the US cruise missile blitz, an alleged attack on a rebel-held town called Khan Shiekhun in Idlib province, where some 70 people, including children, were reported to have died from illegal Sarin-gas bombs said to have been dropped by Syrian planes, has yet to be investigated by any independent observers. US aircraft also recently killed over 200 civilians, mostly women and children, in bombings in Mosul in Iraq. Like many pretexts for war that have been used by the US to justify its illegal attacks on other nations over the years, dating back at least to the faked claim of a North Vietnamese attack on a US destroyer of the country's coast in the Gulf of Tonkin which led to an all-out US war against the peoples of Indochina, and the fraudulent claim that Saddam Hussein was building "weapons of mass destruction" that led to the US invasion of Iraq, there are many questions about who really used Sarin gas at Khan Shiekhun, a city under the control of an Al-Qaeda rebel group. All information about the attack has come from sources there, where no Western reporters or independent investigators are allowed, and from the so-called "White Helmets" -- a supposedly humanitarian volunteer organization that calls for the overthrow of the Syrian government and that openly backs Al-Qaeda rebels. (Critics have noted that photos of the dead appear staged, with White Helmet rescuers not using any protective clothing or even gloves, even though residue of Sarin, a nerve gas, can kill oir injure even those whose skin touches it.) We already know that the supposed Sarin gas attack on a neighborhood in Damascus, which nearly led to an all-out attack on Syria by the US under President Obama in 2013 -- a criminal war that was only prevented by Russia stepping in with a deal to supervise the removal and destruction of all of Syria's stocks of chemical weapons -- was actually a "false flag" attack conducted by Syrian rebels using Sarin supplied from Turkey -- the same rebels who now control Khan Shiekhun. But putting aside the question of who actually poisoned those victims in Khan Sheikhun, the reality is that international law, as codified in the UN Charter, a treaty which the US has signed, declares the supreme war crime to be for a country to attack another when it poses no imminent threat to the attacker. Absent such an existential threat, the only legal way one country may attack another is when that military action has been approved by a vote of the United Nations Security Council. No such UN resolution has been passed regarding international action in Syria, where the only legal foreign military actor is Russia, which was invited by the internationally recognized Assad government. And so yet another American president has joined the long list of war criminals who have made the US the world's leading rogue nation since at least 1953. Meanwhile the US media are cheering this illegal action by President Trump, while most Americans appear disinterested or ignorant about in the whole thing, or are supportive of an effort portrayed as being designed to "punish" Syrian President Assad for his alleged crime of poison-gassing civilians in his own war-torn country. (Shares in Raytheon, maker of the $1-million-a-shot Tomahawk missile were up almost 1.75% by early afternoon following the nighttime attack on Syria, and other arms industry stocks were also up on the likelihood of more war and deeper US involvement in the Syrian conflict.) The US corporate media are particularly craven, not even mentioning doubts about the veracity of reports attributing the attack to Syrian air force planes -- the leading one being why Assad would have resorted to use of chemical weapons (which he supposedly got rid of) and why Russia, which has enormous influence over Assad given its critical role in propping up his government militarily, would have permitted him to use them (if he even still had some to use), given that his military is already defeating the rebel forces arrayed against him. Such a move, which only opens the door to a larger US role in the Syrian civil war, defies logic. The New York Times, in a report by David Sanger, which was illustrated on line with a short video clip of Tomahawks being launched from a ship in the dark, began: In launching a military strike just 77 days into his administration, President Trump has the opportunity, but hardly a guarantee, to change the perception of disarray in his administration. Sanger concluded the piece by writing: The question now is whether [Trump's] new, untested team -- divided in their own definitions of how and when to use American power -- can turn the intervention in Syria into something more than a symbolic show of force. At no point in Sanger's article was the issue of the attack's blatant illegality mentioned. Nor was the issue raised regarding lack of evidence concerning who was actually responsible for the Sarin attack that the cruise attacks were supposed to be in retaliation for -- something any real journalist, as opposed to rank Pentagon propagandist, would at least mention, if not investigate. In contrast, Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose country was asked by Trump, along with others in Europe, to back the US attack, called for an investigation first into who was behind the Sarin attack in Idlib. He said, in response to a question from a Globe and Mail reporter about whether "some kind of military action" might be needed: "There are continuing questions...about who is responsible for these horrible attacks against civilians, and that's why I'm impressing on the United Nations Security Council to pass a strong resolution that allows the international community to determine first of all who was responsible for these attacks and how we will move forward." On Friday, the Times finally ran an article by Charles Savage, one of the few real reporters working at that newspaper, discussing the legality of Trump's order to attack Syria. Savage makes it fairly clear that the attack violates international law, and that it probably also violates the US Constitution by not having the backing of a war powers authorization by Congress. Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). (Image by commondreams.org) Details DMCA Until then, asking the tough questions seems wise, even as cruise missiles have already fallen on Syria. But reporters, even prior to Thursday's U.S. missile attack on Syria, weren't entertaining such questions. That was visible in a contentious exchange Wednesday between CNN host Kate Bolduan and Rep. Thomas Massie, who questioned what Assad's motive for launching the chemical attack would be. The Washington Post quickly followed up CNN's interview with a story portraying the Kentucky Republican's position as less than credible ("Massie could be increasingly a party of one on this issue"). Amidst the Post story's unflattering framing, Massie's quotes stand out. "Let me ask you this: Who benefits? Who benefits, if chemical weapons were used and America weighs in on the side of the rebels, or wades into a war against Assad?" Robert Parry, an investigative reporter with ConsortiumNews, asked a similar question. "Since Assad's forces have gained a decisive upper-hand over the rebels, why would he risk stirring up international outrage at this juncture? On the other hand, the desperate rebels might view the horrific scenes from the chemical-weapons deployment as a last-minute game-changer." Asking such questions doesn't mean "Assad's forces are innocent," writes Parry, "but a serious investigation ascertains the facts and then reaches a conclusion, not the other way around." However the U.S. media was already off to the races, pushing an unpopular president towards an escalation of hostilities, that led to Thursday night's bombing of Syria. 'We should stay the hell out of Syria' Previously Trump indicated he wouldn't push for Assad's ouster, but instead would work with the Syrian government's biggest backer, Russia, to fight the Islamic State. Back in 2013, after a prior chemical attack near Damascus, it was Trump, via Twitter, who counseled President Obama not to go after Assad. "We should stay the hell out of Syria, the 'rebels' are just as bad as the current regime," tweeted Trump. Now it's Trump, with the media's encouragement, who has launched a military attack on Assad. It's worth recalling that in regards to the 2013 chemical attack, in addition to Obama, The New York Times said it had proved Assad was responsible, only to later issue a quiet correction of sorts, which few noticed, Parry reported. Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). Pope Francis Wednesday (April 5) held a private audience with a delegation of four Imams from England who were accompanied by Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster. Pope Francis told the imams that listening to each other was essential for the common future of humanity as we walk together in our shared lives. "What we should do to make the human nature better, it's the work of the ear, the work of listening. To listen to one another amongst us. To listen to one another without making any haste to give a response. To listen to the voice of a brother or a sister and think about it before we give a response. But the most important thing is the capacity to listen." Moulana Muhammad Shahid Raza, Chairman, British Muslim Forum, told the Pope: "Today we are making history. We bring you on behalf, the message of peace and understanding and cooperation." Earlier, Cardinal Nichols greeted the pope, thanking him for receiving the audience. The cardinal said: "I also hope that this moment will help the voice of authentic Islam to be heard clearly. We look forward to our continuing promotion of collaboration at a local level at the service of all in society." The Rome Reports News Agency quoted Card Nichols as saying: "I think at this time that Christian-Muslim dialogue is particularly important and in a strange way, Catholic-Muslim dialogue in Britain is very important, because the history of the Catholic community in Britain is one of being a minority and of having lived with 400 years of anti-Catholic prejudice." The Agency said the goal of the visit was to engage in inter-religious dialogue with the Muslim community, allowing both religions to not only speak, but be heard by the neighboring party, both on the part of the Imams, and Pope Francis and Card. Nichols. The Rome Reports pointed out that the acceptance of others by Pope Francis is also practiced by Card. Nichols who believes that there is a pathway to be walked toward tolerance of religions in the UK and right now, Catholics want to share their story with the Muslim world. Cardinal Nichols was also quoted by the Rome Reports as saying that in the UK, Catholicism was originally a banned faith, then persecuted against, reluctantly given space, and now finally is an accepted faith and a major contributor to society. History has been made at the Vatican and there are many more opportunities for this to continue as the pope has trips to Egypt and Bangladesh planned this year, to carry on this dialogue with the Muslim community at large, says Rome Reports. It may be recalled that Pope Francis received in audience in the Vatican on May 23, 2016, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Sheikh Ahmed Muhammad Al-Tayyib. The Director of the Vatican Press Office, Fr. Federico Lombardi said that the Pope and Grand Imam noted "the great significance of this new meeting in the framework of dialogue between the Catholic Church and Islam." Later this month Pope Francis will travel to Cairo and will visit the Al Azhar University. Pope Benedict XVI Pope Francis Christian-Muslim dialogue is juxtaposition to his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI who in October 2007 rebuffed a massive outreach effort by 138 Muslim religious leaders and scholars who sent him a letter to in an attempt to improve Christian-Muslim relations. The letter, titled "A Common Word Between Us and You," which was also addressed to Christianity's other most powerful leaders, including the Archbishop of Canterbury and the heads of the Lutheran, Methodist and Baptist churches, sought to recognize similarities between Islam and Christianity as a way of fostering mutual understanding and respect between the two religions. Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). So, it was inevitable, not a question of if, but more a question of when he would push some buttons connected to military technology. He wanted tanks at his inauguration. Just like he loves giant letters on his buildings, Trump probably saw the firing of Tomahawk missiles as another exclamation point validating his clown presidency. Issuing the order was a way to make a statement-- you know, kind of like wearing a new color tie. Did Assad actually order the use of poison gas? I'd say that the finality of that claim should be put in the same class as Cheney's claims of WMDs in Iraq. The military has provided images showing flight paths of Syrian jets that overlap with the time the gas was released. But who knows how often those flights occur? Every day? Ron Paul doesn't think it makes any sense that Assad did this. Ron Paul on #Syria gas attack: 'It doesn't make sense. Zero chance Assad ... https://t.co/PLHiHHwwZz via @YouTube at https://t.co/PLHiHHwwZz Daniel Bryant (@Daniel_Bryant) April 7, 2017 In addition, I've come to believe that Trump is, perhaps worse than a chronic liar, even a compulsive liar. There are good reasons to question every statement, every claim he makes. Marco Rubio says that the firing of 59 Tomahawk missiles was essential to defending America. Really? He claims it was legal and did not require congressional approval. How? By some of the most twisted reasoning you can imagine. Tim Kaine brags that he voted to attack Syria after the 2013 poison gas attack. What a great way to not differentiate himself from Trump. We might wonder, would Hillary have waited as long as Trump to go after Assad. She's already crawled out of her hole to support Trump's action. I've been expecting Trump to start a few wars. After all, he thinks big. He's already started his 2020 campaign, and the meme, "Don't switch horses in midstream" is a common message Republicans use after they've started a war that created the stream. With his head deep up the butt of Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump has transitioned from saying he would expand military action into Syria to becoming an enemy of Assad, pretty much the same way Obama and Clinton were. This is complicated, because Assad has been the biggest fighter against ISIS. So, going after Assad sabotages the effort to fight Isis. But the Israel hawks like this. I flip to Fox news. Their talking heads are crowing over how wonderful, precise and powerful the million dollars a piece Tomahawk missiles are. They tie Hezbollah and Iran to Assad and suggest that today could be the most successful day of the Trump presidency. They cite someone on Twitter who said the attack was the "only way to send a message to Assad and others." They refer to the team in the White House as the "A team" "helping this decisive president to make decisions." Trump has a history of bankruptcies. He's going to do it to the USA, between his outrageous Secret Service costs, his wall, his soon to be multiple wars and, I assure you, the deals he secretly cuts with the corporations and billionaires who are backing him. Welcome to Psychopath nation. Speaker for ending ongoing House session As Legislature-Parliament meeting lingers without adequate business to perform, the Parliament Secretariat is pressing political parties for ending the current session. As I write this, two key questions remain unanswered, and a third mostly unasked, about a deadly daybreak attack on Khan Sheikhoun, a northwest Syrian city of (pre-war) 50,000. Hundreds were wounded and as many as 100 killed, apparently chemical weaponry (Turkey's health ministry believes the agent in question was the nerve gas sarin), on the morning of April 4. The two most obvious questions are who did this, and why? The US government (and unfortunately most American media, acting as stenographers rather than journalists as is too often the case in matters of war and foreign policy) have settled on the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad as the culprit. That claim seems very questionable, if for no other reason than that there's no plausible "why" attached to it. After more than six years of civil war, the Syrian government has (with Russian assistance) turned the tide. Assad is well on his way to defeating both the Islamic State and the "moderate rebels" (read: al Qaeda) backed by the US, restoring his control over the country. A chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun doesn't seem to fit into that scenario. Not only does it serve no obvious military objective, but it's precisely the kind of atrocity that American hawks will latch onto and use as an excuse to continue and escalate the US military intervention in Syria at Assad's expense. Cui bono ("who benefits?") doesn't always point to the true answer to a question, but in this case it's reasonable to ask. The Khan Sheikhoun attack may very well have been carried out by the rebels themselves, in an attempt to keep the US further in the war, on their side. Another plausible explanation is that Syrian regime aircraft bombed a rebel facility where the chemical weapons were manufactured or stored, accidentally releasing them. It's happened before. It's how a number of American troops, possibly including me, were exposed to sarin during Operation Desert Storm in 1991. Or maybe it was Assad behind the attack, for some reason beyond the ken of distant observers. But who and why are the wrong questions. The third question -- the right question -- is: Why is the US involved in this war? The Assad regime has not attacked the US, nor has Congress declared war on Syria. There's simply no defensive -- or for that matter even legal -- rationale for a US military presence in Syria. Whatever horrors the civil war there may entail, American military adventurism makes them worse, not better. It perpetuates instability rather than bringing peace. Donald Trump ran for president on a platform of reducing US military meddling in other countries' affairs. It's time for him to follow through and order a US withdrawal from Syria. Quicklink Not Found Sometimes, authors delete their quicklinks after publishing them. To see if the quicklink was renamed or re-published, please click here. My father grew up on a Kansas cattle farm in the early 20th Century. Times were tough, and so were parents. He recalled sitting on the porch steps at a neighbor's farm house when that farmer's young, barefoot boy approached and asked for a nickel. The boy's father answered, "What did you do with the last nickel I gave you?" It's much easier these days for America's military. Often it doesn't even need to ask. Elected officials sometimes send additional taxpayers' money its way for the weapons systems of major campaign donors, weapons the military would really rather not have, thank you. As for "the last nickel I gave you," the General Accounting Office has often just thrown up its hands in frustration and announced that the military's financial records are in a condition that simply makes audits impossible. So estimates vary, but most agree we are spending on our military more than the next seven nations combined -- much of which is used to make sure that we could win, should we ever have to fight World War II all over again. Unfortunately, there's little that the President Gerald Ford $8-to-13 billion aircraft carrier can do to defend us from cyber attacks or terrorists' random, homemade bombs. Throw in the cost of caring for the wounded (Veterans Administration), and other costs throughout the federal budget, and the military's share of federal discretionary spending is well over the 54% just going to the Pentagon. (Estimates of the costs of our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq alone, among the most difficult to audit, range between one and five trillion dollars.) It's hard enough for most of us to deal with things measured in the millions of dollars. We can't even imagine how we should evaluate costs in the billions and trillions of dollars. So let's just focus on the cost of one operation, during one day (yesterday, April 7), involving missile strikes on one Syrian Airforce base. It required 59 Tomahawk Cruise missiles. At $1.4 million per missile that's $82.6 million. So how much is $82.6 million? Think of it this way: Given the median income of Iowa's K-12 teachers, $82.6 million would be enough to pay the salaries of over 1700 additional teachers for one year -- roughly a 5% increase in the number of Iowa's 35,000 teachers. That's something we can imagine. Now multiply that by roughly 10,000 times and you'll have some notion of how much our military expenditures are denying us in healthcare, jobs programs, education, infrastructure improvements, and other pro-people social programs. Think about what President Eisenhower's military-industrial complex did with the last nickel you gave it. Think about it -- and act. [Note to commenters: This article is not intended to, and does not, address whether we should be involved in Syria, or what we should be doing there, nor does it argue that we do not need a military in these times.] Main Stream Media (Image by Alan Cleaver) Details DMCA 1. Chemical weapons are worse than other weapons. This is not the case. Death and dismemberment are horrific regardless of the weapon. No weapon is being used legally, morally, humanely, or practically in Syria or Iraq. U.S. bombs are no less indiscriminate, no less immoral, and no less illegal than chemical weapons -- or for that matter than the depleted uranium weapons with which the United States has been poisoning the area. The fact that a weapon has not been banned does not create a legal right to go into a country and kill people with it. 2. Chemical weapons use justifies the escalated use of other weapons. Does shoplifting justify looting? If a Hatfield poisoned a McCoy, would another McCoy be justified in shooting a bunch of Hatfields? What barbarism is this? A crime does not sanction another crime. That's a quick trip to hell. 3. Important people we should trust know who used chemical weapons. No, they do not. At least they do not know that the Syrian government did it. If they knew this, they would offer evidence. As on every past occasion, they have not done so. 4. The enemy is pure evil and will answer only to force. The U.S. government and its proxies have sabotaged peace negotiations numerous times over the past several years, maintaining that Assad would have to step down or -- preferably -- be overthrown by violence before anything could be negotiated. This does not make the U.S. government pure inhuman evil, much less does it make the Syrian government that. 5. If you don't want to bomb Syria with one enemy's name on your lips, you hold the firm belief that said enemy is actually a saint. This piece of stupidity gets people accused of loving and holding blameless the Syrian government, the Russian government, the U.S. government, ISIS, and various other parties. In fact, the reasonable thing to do is to hold all killers responsible for their killing because of the crime, not because of who commits it. 6. U.S. war-making in Syria is defensive. This is the opposite of reality-based thinking as war-making endangers us rather than protects us. Someone should ask Donald Trump to remember the Maine. You may remember that Spain wanted the matter brought to a neutral arbiter, but the United States wanted war, regardless of any evidence. That's been the typical move over the centuries: careful maneuvering into war, not away from it. Trump, by the way, is already up to his bloody elbows in several wars inherited from Obama -- wars no less immoral and illegal slaughters because of their connection to either of those presidents. The question of who blew up the Maine is, at this point a truly dumb one. The important point is that the U.S. didn't want to know, wanted instead to rush into a war before anyone could find out. Typically, the desire to avoid information, and not some other consideration, is the reason for the urgency in war-making. 7. Peace was tried in 2013, and it failed. No. What happened was that Obama and his administration tried to pull off the same stunt that Trump is trying now, and the public rose up and refused to allow it. So, instead of a massive bombing campaign, Syria got more weapons, more trainers, more troops, and a medium sized bombing campaign. That's very different from actually shifting direction and offering Syria diplomacy, aid, and disarmament. Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). The Washington Establishment has reasserted control. First Flynn and now Bannon. All that are left in the Trump administration are the Zionists and the crazed generals who want war with Russia, China, Iran, Syria, and North Korea. There is no one in the White House to stop them. Kiss good-bye normalized relations with Russia. The Syrian conflict is set to be reopened. That is the point of the chemical attack blamed by Washington on Syria despite the absence of any evidence. It is completely obvious that the chemical attack is a Washington orchestrated event. According to reports US Secretary of State Tillerson has warned Russia that steps are underway to remove Syrian president Assad. Trump agrees. The removal of Assad allows Washington to impose another Washington puppet on Muslim peoples, to remove another Arab government with an independent policy from Washington, to remove another government that is opposed to Israel's theft of Palestine, and for Exxon's Tillerson and the neoconservative hegemonists to cut Russian natural gas off from Europe with a US controlled gas pipeline from Qater to Europe via Syria. By ignoring all of these US advantages, the Russian government dithered in completing the liberation of Syria from Washington-backed ISIS. The Russians dithered, because they had totally unrealistic hopes of achieving a partnership with Washington via a joint effort against terrorism. This was a ridiculous idea as terrorism is Washington's weapon. If Washington can move Russia out of the way with threats or more Russian misplaced hopes of "cooperation" with Washington, terrorism will next be directed against Iran on a large scale. When Iran falls, terrorism will start to work on the Russian Federation and on the Chinese province that borders Kazakhstan. Washington has already given Russia a taste of US-supported terrorism in Chechnya. More is to come. If the Russian government had not dithered in cleaning out ISIS from Syria when Russia unexpectedly took the lead from the West, Syria would not face partition or renewed US determination to overthrow Assad for the reasons given above. But the Russians, mesmerized by dreams of cooperating with Washington, have put both Syria and themselves in a difficult position. The Russians grabbed the initiative and surprised the world by accepting the Syrian government's invitation and entering the conflict. Washington was helpless. The Russian intervention immediately turned the tide against ISIS. Then suddenly Putin accounced a Russian pullout, claiming like Bush on the aircraft carrier, "Mission Accomplished." But mission wasn't accomplished, and Russia reentered, still with the initiative but set back somewhat from the irrational withdrawal. If memory serves, this in and out business happened a couple of times. Then when Russia has the war agains ISIS won, they hold back on the finish in the vain belief that now Washington will finally cooperate with Russia in eliminating the last ISIS stronghold. Instead, the US sent in military forces to block the Russian/Syrian advances. The Russian Foreign Minister complained, but Russia did not use its superior power on the scene to move aside the token US forces and bring the conflict to an end. Now Washington gives "warnings" to Russia not to get in Washington's way. Will the Russian government ever learn that coopertion with Washington has only one meaning: sign up as a vassal? Russia's only alternative now is to tell Washington to go to hell, that Russia will not permit Washington to remove Assad. But the Russian Fifth Column, which is allied with the West, will insist that Russia can finally gain Washington's cooperation if only Russia will sacrifice Assad. Of course, Russia's acquiescence will destroy the image of Russian power, and it will be used to deprive Russia of foreign exchange from natural gas sales to Europe. Putin has said that Russia cannot trust Washington. This is a correct deduction from the facts, so why does Russia keep putting itself in a quandry by seeking cooperation with Washington? "Cooperation with Washington" has only one meaning. It means surrender to Washington. Putin has only part-way cleaned up Russia. The country remains full of American agents. Will Putin fall to the Washington Establishment just as Trump has? It is extraordinary how little of the Russian media understand the peril that Russia is in. By Ann Wright and Medea Benjamin Four years ago, massive citizen opposition and mobilization stopped a possible U.S. military attack on the Assad government of Syria that many predicted would have made the terrible conflict even worse. Once again, we need to stop an escalation of that dreadful war and instead use this tragedy as an impetus for a negotiated settlement. In 2013 President Obama's threat of intervention came in response to the horrible chemical attack in Ghouta, Syria that killed between 280 and 1,000 people. Instead, the Russian government brokered a deal with the Assad regime for the international community to destroy its chemical arsenal on a U.S.-provided ship. But UN investigators reported that in 2014 and 2015, both the Syrian government and Islamic State forces engaged in chemical attacks. Now, four years later, another large chemical cloud has killed at least 70 people in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun, and President Trump is threatening military action against the Assad regime. The U. S. military is already heavily involved in the Syrian quagmire. There are about 500 Special Operations forces, 200 Rangers and 200 Marines stationed there to advise various groups fighting the Syrian government and ISIS, and the Trump administration has been contemplating sending 1,000 more troops to fight ISIS. To bolster the Assad government, the Russian government has mobilized its largest military deployment outside its territory in decades. The U.S. and Russian militaries have daily contact to sort out airspace for bombing the parts of Syria each wants to incinerate. Senior military officials from both countries have met in Turkey, a country that has shot down one Russian jet and which hosts U.S. aircraft that bomb Syria. This recent chemical attack is just the latest in a war that has taken the lives of over 400,000 Syrians. If the Trump administration decides to escalate US military involvement by bombing the Syrian government's power centers of Damascus and Aleppo and pushing rebel fighters to hold territory for a new government, the carnage--and chaos--could well increase. Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). The Red Line (Image by sara biljana) Details DMCA Washington's military attack on Syria is unambigiously a war crime. It occurred without any UN authorization or even the fake cover of a "coalition of the willing." Washington's attack on Syria occurred in advance of an investigation of the alleged event that Washington is trying to use as its justification. Indeed, Washington's story of Syrian use of chemical weapons is totally implausible. All chemical weapons were removed from Syria by Russia and turned over to the US and its Euroean allies. Syria has no such weapons and has no reason to use them and every reason not to. Moreover, it is none of Washington's business whatsoever what weapons Syria uses against terrorist forces seeking to overthrow the Syrian government. Governments in Europe, Canada, Australia, and Japan have not condemned this war crime. Indeed, the UK Foreign Minister has declared the UK's support. Thus does the West reveal once again its hypocrisy. As Russia has made clear, the alleged chemical weapons attack has every hallmark of a Washington orchestrated event in order to launch a US military attack on Syria. As the Russian Defense Ministry explained, the US air attack had to have been planned in advance of the alleged chemical weapon event. The US air strike on Syria requires advanced planning, but followed immediately the event used as the excuse: http://eng.mil.ru/en/news_page/country/more.htm?id=12117678%40egNews In other words, it was an orchestrated event. Gilbert Doctorow says that the idiot Americans drowning in their own hubris have now crossed a Russian red line with consquences to follow. http://russia-insider.com/en/us-missile-strikes-syria-have-crossed-russian-red-lines-and-risk-serious-escalation/ri19479 Insane Washington is driving the world to thermo-nuclear war. And where are the protests? President of the United States, Donald Trump (and definitely NOT President Steve Bannon), staged one of the most obvious planted interviews you will ever see with the failing New York Times. It began with his new narrative on the biggest story, the meat of it consisted of his new legislative initiative (infrastructure!), and ended with a cliffhanger. Firstly, just to get a feeling for the room: in addition to Trumps chief economic adviser, an assistant to the president (formerly president of Goldman Sachs), Shifty Spice-r and Hope Hicks (longtime advisor), these two schlubs stumbled in. .@GlennThrush 2/ not a coincidence. Came days after @GlennThrush and I reported that some Pence allies question Priebus's chops Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) April 6, 2017 Before diving in to the highlights of the failing transcript, keep these talking points from Trump's recent speech in mind. There's a new line out of the White House and it rhymes with Saskatchewan. Trump wants everyone to start talking about his electoral college victory, Susan Rice acting within her legal rights to unmask Trump associates talking to Russians under surveillance, and a few other things that probably didn't happen. And he wants us to stop talking about the failure of the AHCA, the drip drip drip of the Russia investigation, his historically low approval ratings, or the fact that he is really regretting his change of plans from touring the country as shadow president to actual POTUS. HABERMAN: You talk to Democrats privately that will admit TRUMP: I do. HABERMAN: But do they admit to you that they don't actually have a huge objection to Gorsuch, they think that he's probably TRUMP: They do. They admit that. Interrupting a woman to push the conversation in his direction? We've already hit Peak Trump and this shitshow hasn't even begun. HABERMAN: Right. In private. TRUMP: Elijah Cummings [a Democratic representative from Maryland] was in my office and he said, You will go down as one of the great presidents in the history of our country. There's a pretty good chance that Trump mixed up Ben Carson and Elijah Cummings. HABERMAN: Really. TRUMP: And then he went out and I watched him on television yesterday and I said, Was that the same man? [Laughter.] TRUMP: But I said, and I liked him, but I said that was really nice. He said, in a group of people, You will go down as one of the great presidents in the history of our country. And then I watched him on television and I said, Is that the same man that said that to me? I'm just gonna leave this here. It's his pinned tweet. #POTUS denied any contacts between #Trump advisers and #Russians but the list keeps growing. What in the world is going on? pic.twitter.com/6wQttVDZ6O Elijah E. Cummings (@RepCummings) March 4, 2017 TRUMP: Well, I think that some of it had to do with the election. They thought they were going to win. You know, winning the Electoral College is, for a Republican, is close to impossible and I won it quite easily. And I think they are still recovering from that, but they are recovering now. I think the Susan Rice thing is a massive story. I think it's a massive, massive story. All over the world, I mean other than The New York Times. HABERMAN: We've written about it twice. TRUMP: Huh? HABERMAN: We've written about it twice. TRUMP: Yeah, it's a bigger story than you know. I think HABERMAN: You mean there's more information that we're not aware of? TRUMP: I think that it's going to be the biggest story. I think we've found the tenor of the Trump White House message. Sean Spicer treats the WH press corps like a bunch of kindergarteners pic.twitter.com/skjUKe4lJK M??? ?eg?i? (@MattNegrin) April 5, 2017 I also love how he said biggest storyalmost as if he was comparing it to another one currently dominating the news? TRUMP: I think it's one of the biggest stories. The Russia story is a total hoax. There has been absolutely nothing coming out of that. But what, you know, what various things led into it was the story that we're talking about, the Susan Rice. What's happened is terrible. I've never seen people so indignant, including many Democrats who are friends of mine. I've never seen them acting this way. Because that's really an affront on them, you know, they are talking about civil liberties. It's such an affront, what took place. Time for some shameless self-promotion. Wondering why he may have gone out of his way to bring up the total hoax that is the Russia story? Trump's businesses are flush with Kremlin cash (my favorite in the series).https://t.co/LOshDSXWG9 Jacob Weindling (@Jakeweindling) March 24, 2017 TRUMP: I think from the previous administration. THRUSH: How far up do you think this goes? Chief of staff? TRUMP: I dont want to say, but THRUSH: President? TRUMP: I dont want to say, but you know who. You know what was going on. You probably know better than anybody. I mean, I frankly think The Times is missing a big thing by not writing it because youre missing out on the biggest story there is. The only way Trump could be more obvious in his attempt to push the narrative in this direction is if he turned to the camera and said be vewwy vewwy qwiet, Im hunting wabbits. TRUMP: I think hes a person I know well. Hes a good person. I think he may, you know, I think he shouldnt have settled, personally, I think he shouldnt have settled. HABERMAN: How come? TRUMP: Because you should have taken it all the way. No, I know Bill. Bills a good person. HABERMAN: Yeah. TRUMP: I dont think Bill would do anything wrong. Resident pussy grabber endorses man hemorrhaging endorsements due to sexual harassment scandal. Toss in a Kardashian and its an American media bingo. TRUMP: No, you have a lot of information. No, you have so much information. HABERMAN: If you would have given it to us last week, we would have written it. Would you declassify some of the information so that TRUMP: I dont want to talk about that. HABERMAN: No? O.K. TRUMP: No. I just dont want to talk about that. Its such an important story for our country, for the world. What took place. Got that Trump voters? The President of the United States doesnt want to talk about such an important story for our country. HABERMAN: Why not talk about it then? With all due respect. TRUMP: At the right time, I will be. Just like how hes going to get Mexico to pay for the wall at the right time, right? THRUSH: One last thing on that. Have you actually seen intelligence that leads you to believe that people other than Susan Rice are involved. TRUMP: I dont want to comment on anything about other than to say I think its a I think its truly one of the big stories of our time. Nothing to see here folks, and definitely nothing to see in Russia. TRUMP: We want to do a great infrastructure plan, and on that side I will say that were going to have, I believe, tremendous Democrat support. We are also going to have some good Republican support, and I think its going to be one of the very bipartisan bills and its going to happen. I may put it in with health care. HABERMAN: Really? TRUMP: Yeah. I may put it in with something else because its a very popular thing. Weve spent $6 trillion in the Middle East, as of two months ago. Uh, $6 trillion. And yet we cant fix our own roads and our own highways. And our bridges, which are, in many cases, in very bad shape. And were going to have a very big infrastructure plan. And bill. And its going to come soon. And I think well have support from Democrats and Republicans. After being asked to provide any level of detail about one of the very bipartisan bills, Trump responded: TRUMP: Well, were working you know when people said, when you guys, because you know we have a very solid administration. We have some very, very good people. This man was the president of Goldman Sachs. I mean, he was, like, the president of Goldman Sachs. Was he like, the president of Goldman Sachs in the same way Trump is like, a smart person? HABERMAN: Im very familiar with his work. TRUMP: And believe me, they wanted him. But he wanted to do something more important. As he said, as big as Goldman Sachs are, it was HABERMAN: This is bigger. Habermans just playing Trump mad libs at this point. TRUMP: and is. The numbers here are staggering. He did the biggest deals in the world. They were, like, tiny deals. They were like peanut deals. But, but we just have a great group of people. I love the stealth honesty in statements like this. Its clear that hes genuinely shocked at how gigantic the federal government of the United States is. Weve got a Bushism folks! It doesnt hold up to the greats, but it still qualifies! (emphasis added) TRUMP: It is so bad. Its so out of whack. They had all of these different companies hired. Tremendous amounts of money was spent. TRUMP: Nothing is accurate now because we havent made a final determination. We havent made a determination as to public/private. There are some things that work very nicely public/private. There are some things that dont. The federal government, were doing very well you saw, a lot of good numbers coming out. You saw our imports. You saw what happened with China. And various other people that this country has been dealing with over the years. You saw the numbers come out today, theyre very promising. Lot of good numbers are coming out. We are borrowing very inexpensively. When you can borrow so inexpensively, you dont have to do the public/private thing. Because public/private can be very expensive. When you go equity, when you give equity to people who own your highways essentially for a 30-year period, who own your tollbooths for a period of time come on in, Mike! You know Mike and Reince? TRUMP: Uh, were working on health care. Can I just say, so when you called the health care bill, you know, that was just a negotiation. You didnt hear me say its over. That was a negotiation. You understand? A continuing negotiation. It may go on for a long time or it may go on until this afternoon. I dont know. Its a continuing negotiation. After asking about whether Democrats will support Trumps health care plan that he just brought up by busting the health care Kool-Aid guys through the wall, Trump interrupted: TRUMP: No, because they are desperate for infrastructure. Thats the thing that they want second to that would be their second number that would be their second request. HABERMAN: What do you think their first is? TRUMP: I know it, but I cant tell you it. The first thing that the Democrats want is to throw your ass in jail Donald. REED CORDISH: Per the presidents instructions, the infrastructure package is going to fix the broken permit system, the broken process. HABERMAN: Explain. CORDISH: We can give you the details of it, but thats such a big part of the story. Thats going to create benefit far beyond the federal dollars that were talking about. Thats whats really going on unleash the true revival of the infrastructure. We can give you the details of it, but thats such a big part of the story will also be the name of the documentary made about the unhinged #Russiagate tweetstormers. Referring to the recent atrocity via chemical weapons in Syria: THRUSH: What do you think it says about the role of Russia in Syria? TRUMP: Well, I think its a very sad day for Russia because theyre aligned, and in this case, all information points to Syria that they did this. Why they did this, who knows? Thats a level first of all, they werent supposed to have this. Obama said, Its all cleared away. Well, thats another thing he didnt do. This was a big moment, a big moment in the Middle East was when Obama drew the red line in the sand, and it was immediately violated, and did nothing. That was a big moment in the Middle East. I know youre not going to report it, but that was a big, bad moment in the Middle East. THRUSH: On the infrastructure stuff, a couple of quick things. Davis-Bacon [a law that regulates wages on federally funded projects]. Democrats have said that will be a poison pill. Are you going to touch Davis-Bacon? What are you going to do? TRUMP: Were going to make an announcement in two weeks HABERMAN: Really? TRUMP: on Davis-Bacon. HABERMAN: O.K. Can you give us a hint on where you are? TRUMP: No. I wrote everything except the conclusion last night, and I wake up to find out that Devin Nunes has recused himself from the Russia investigation. So much for Trumps feeble attempt to pivot the message away from the drip drip drip of the Russia story, which is picking up pace by the week. John Oliver dubbing this saga Stupid Watergate is perfect, as this interview with The Times is emblematic of the larger incompetence enveloping this entire administration. Jacob Weindling is Pastes business and media editor, as well as a staff writer for politics. Follow him on Twitter at @Jakeweindling. Syria war: US launches missile strikes in response to chemical 'attack' The US has carried out a missile attack against an air base in Syria in response to a suspected chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held town. Philadelphia Distilling has just debuted a project nearly four years in the makinga beautiful brand new distillery. Founded in 2005, Philadelphia Distilling was Pennsylvanias first craft distillery, and now a dozen years later, they have a larger, more viable home, with a beautiful on-site bar and lounge. The new facility allows for an increase in production capabilities, thanks to the addition of a 2,500-liter copper pot still to its existing 1,500 liter still, along with a new column connected to the larger pot. Further, the distillery itself also serves as a stunning attraction all of its own. On a recent visit just one month after the distillery debuted, co-founder Andrew Auwerda discussed all the need to know information about the new home of Philadelphia Distilling, its flagship Bluecoat Gin, and their other products and releases. Paste: What was the concept behind this amazing new space? Andrew Auwerda: Were looking to make brand fans; we dont want to be in the bar business. Were not trying to compete with our neighbors who support us [by stocking and serving their spirits]. Its a visitors center and its about education, and serving as a brand home. Were so excited to be here now. We were the first distillery in Pennsylvania but we have to stay ahead; you always have to up your game. Paste: When Bluecoat Gin came out, American gins werent really that well defined yet, were they? AA: We were the first distillery to call their spirit American Dry Gin but we didnt set out to start a new category. The juniper we use is softer and rounder, and that to us defines American. Our philosophy is more about the right balance. We were taking a risk by calling ourselves something nontraditional, but it defined us and it made sense. Paste: How do you describe your Bluecoat Barrel Finished Gin, whats that like? AA: We wanted to create a gin-sky, not a whiskey-gin. I like gin for gin. Then the people loved it so we made more. Paste: Especially with your new equipment then, does that mean youre taking steps to produce different products? Is a whiskey on the way? AA: This distillery was built to do more than Bluecoat. Were putting our toes in the water already. [They made a limited edition Tough Broad Whiskey in collaboration with Yards Brewing, and will release one new barrel of the initial six-barrel batch per year.] For our own whiskey, were looking at the 2020 zone for a potential release. Were not going to rush it. Paste: Theres been a great deal of movement in the craft spirits scene as of late, with brands being purchased by larger companies. Is that something youre considering? AA: The growth of craft has been great, but its also a very challenging industry. But this is my baby, and we love it and Im not that old yet! Its clear why Werner Herzog would be drawn to a story like Salt and Firesthough nothing else about Salt and Fire is. Regarding the iconic directors oeuvre, one could throw a dart gripped with ones buttcheeks and accidentally hit a film as similarly opaque and befuddling as his latest non-documentary excursion, but such is the thrill of loving Herzog: Whether hes lying or not (and he probably isor not), hes admitted to watching very few films over the course of his lifetime, and in turn the 74-year-olds movies gasp with the kind of breathless remove from the world of filmmaking that might come care of someone who owes no allegiance to any industry, aesthetic or tradition not entirely of his own making. If Herzogs work tends to dwell in the act of confrontationoften placing humans in front of the barreling indifference of Nature, then watching as Nature carelessly flattens themthen his narrative cinema especially seems to confront the nature of whatever we typically understand as cinematic. And so Salt and Fire, one of three movies Herzog premiered on the festival circuit last year, is poignant and dumb in equal measure, whipping between plot-like structures with little concern for sense, pace, logic, engagement or really anything else that would make anyone want to see this movie, besides that Werner Herzog made it. Par for the (obstacle) course, really. Much like its stars Hawaiian shirt at an awards ceremony, best to treat Herzogs latest Michael Shannon vehicle as some sort of off-putting joke. It begins with two ecologists, Dr. Fabio Cavani (Gael Garcia Bernal, charming and sleazy) and Dr. Laura Sommerfeld (Veronica Ferres, maybe not entirely sure of what kind of movie shes in) called to Bolivia on behalf of the UN to address an impending environmental disaster. Instead of finding their academic hosts waiting for them at the airport, theyre effortlessly kidnapped by a cadre of over-armed mercenariesthough Bernal is given a brief scene to freak out futilely in an airport bathroomand taken to the compound of Matt Riley (Shannon), whose otherworldly peepers we instantly recognize through the Im a Kidnapper ski mask. Stilted philosophies follow between Laura and Matt, Shannon in his element giving precise gravitas to the incomprehensible sentences hes saying, and unfortunately Bernal leaves the way he came in, literally shitting himself out of the movie. Properly perplexed, the audience then rides shotgun into Bolivias Salar de Uyuni salt flat, where Matt ditches Laura, forcing her to take care of two blind Bolivian boys Matt also ditches, leaving them the meagre cover of a rock oasis and enough food, water and camping gear to survive for a few weeks. There, Laura grows to love her wards, occasionally (and ironically) filming cursory video diary entries with her tablet, which, against all known technological fortitude, maintains a charge for the duration of her unexplained exile. Laura also grows to viscerally respect the foreboding landscape of this foreign land, even though Herzog never once implies that, as an internationally respected ecologist, she wouldnt respect it anyway. Oh, and then, in a hilarious denouement, Matt returns in the nick of time to explain to Laura why he did what he did, and Salt and Fire basically becomes Herzogs Overboard: Port of Call: Bolivia. Matt reveals himself to be the CEO of the company whose world-destroying business poisoned the river by the village where these two boys, now his adopted sons, were raised, and that he kidnapped Laura into serving as ersatz mother because there was no better way to get her attention about the impending supervolcanic eruption and man-made disasteror something. Ferres plays Lauras response much as Goldie Hawn did to her characters kidnapping in Overboard: Her heart full of Stockholm Syndrome, she understands the lengths Matts gone to in order to rectify the ills his companys wrought, and seems ready to bone down forever with Weird Uncle Dad, continuing to believe that endless tickle fights with two young boys suffices for motherhood. Fin. Herzog and co. seem totally tone deaf to how gross all of it is, which is much grosser than Gael Garcia Bernal screaming about diarrhea, which is actually pretty funny. Meanwhile, Herzog and his trusty cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger (this is their 14th film together) shoot the films first half like a standard action thriller, spinning the camera around tense tete-a-tetes, rarely resting, each frame color corrected in the teals and cyans weve come to expect from Michael Bay, Jaume Collet-Serra, Olivier Megaton and their ilk. Theres no real sign Herzog is interested in visually satirizing those filmsHerzog isnt the kind of director to waste his breath on subtly jabbing at other filmmakersso the result is as jarring and shallow as the films Salt and Fire resembles. Once were taken to the salt flats, though, the Herzog we know wakes from his glossy reverie, embracing the astounding vastness of Nature in long, sweeping shots perfectly calibrated to wrench the most grandeur from the only visuals Herzog seems to think are worth aggrandizing. All else falls away when Werner Herzog is studying a magnificent landscape. In fact, what may distinguish Salt and Fire from many of Herzogs previous films is not its thriller-ish leanings, but how, in the end, Nature doesnt really win. The doofus-y quirks of Man surpass the limitless scope of Planet Earths all-encompassing no-fucks-given toward the fate of its denizens, and the films final imagewhich will be the only thing here unspoiledallows for many interpretations, all of which leads to the inevitability that Man is running out of frontiers to discover. Which isnt to assume that Herzog has similarly lost his sense of cosmic curiosity, only that hes less concerned than ever in helping the audience feel the same way. And once that feeling is gone, then so is the thrill that compels us to watch him even at his worst. Director: Werner Herzog Writer: Werner Herzog (screenplay); Tom Bissell (short story) Starring: Michael Shannon, Veronica Ferres, Gael Garcia Bernal, Lawrence Krauss Release Date: April 7, 2017 Dom Sinacola is Sr. Assistant Movies Editor at Paste and a Portland-based writer. You can follow him on Twitter. In a word, no. When modern-day windmills, known as wind turbines, started popping up, they were attention grabbing. The huge, white propeller attached to a tall white pole was nothing like the iconic Dutch windmill with canvas blades attached to a house-like structure. As a sleek symbol of green energy, the wind turbine quickly became a popular example of diversifying energy sources to include renewable options. But many experts believe wind still has a long way to go. The earliest stages of wind-power research and development brought down the cost of infrastructure and the energy it produced. Commercial and residential wind energy installations provided 4.1 percent of all electricity in the U.S. in 2013, according to the Energy Information Administration. While that doesnt sound like much, the use of wind farmsinstallations of multiple wind turbines in a single locationare producing more energy at a lower cost. But there are problems. Wind farms, just like the farms that grow crops, need specific conditions,like flat land, particular soil composition, wind flow and a host of other variables, says Katherine Dykes, senior engineer with National Renewable Energy Laboratory. You may often see rows of turbines since this can simplify and reduce costs associated with infrastructure in terms of access roads and electrical cables as well as construction and installation, she says. The turbines are spaced relatively close together to minimize these costs. But they also have to be spaced far enough apart to make sure that one turbine doesnt interfere with the performance of another turbine. That makes finding ideal real estate a challenge. Not In My Backyard/View Corridor Anyone who lives near a wind farm can explain the unresolved problems. Noise and aesthetics are the biggest issues on the ground. And problems occur in the airbird and bat deaths due to collision and electromagnetic interference disrupting airplane radarsays Sameer Hameer, assistant professor at Energy Center of Bahir Dar University, Ethiopia. He believes these issues require attention in order to make wind farms better in the future. Photo by Slawomir One has to do a proper techno-economic environmental evaluation. One has to do a proper resource assessment to assess the potential of wind build capacity for the community in terms of green energy, creation of new jobs, Hameer says. The benefits are very clear in terms of reducing the carbon footprint, including lower cost. Equally important are the people affected by an installation. U.S. law imposes requirements on wind farms, including their proximity to residential areas. One possible solution is a location away from people, an ocean, sea or lake. In addition to taking advantage of the stronger, more consistent wind in the marine environment, strategic placement of wind turbines can means no people-related issues. The growing number of offshore wind farms will test this theory. The Ecological Cost of Green Energy Turbines need wind to generate electricity. Wind turns two or three blades around a rotor. That rotor is connected to a main shaft, which is connected to a generator. The moving shaft operates the generator, which creates electricity. Birds and bats use that same wind to fly. These two facts intersect with disastrous consequences when humans dont consider the placement of large, stationary objects with rotating blades. It can take 45 minutes to shut down a turbine and still longer for the blades to stop rotating. Birds and bats flying too close wont survive. An estimate of annual bird deaths from turbine collision in the U.S. is between 134,000 and 327,000 birds per year. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act make it its illegal to kill any bird protected by the Act. Even a death that is incidental, which means it was unintentional on the part of the wind farm, is illegal. Enforcement can include fines and operational changes, but the technology to prevent such deaths is experimental, according to the Audubon Society. Photo by Rheinland-Pfalz A wind turbine with radar, camera or GPS tracking system (some endangered species are fitted with GPS tracking devices) will, in theory, make it possible to identify incoming flocks of birds triggering a turbine shut down. This theory has yet to be proven consistently successful in research or real world applications. Other possible modifications include changing the color of the turbine blades (purple might reduce the number of bird strikes), using vertical turbines that circulate around a central pole (less dangerous to wildlife) and UV lights. Bat deaths arent as widely reported, and the reasons they crash into wind turbines arent clear. That makes it impossible to know if any of the collision prevention measures being tried will help this population. Some species of bats also migrate and are regularly found dead at the base of U.S. wind turbines in numbers that could reach as high as 650,000 per year, depending on how research studies are interpreted. Frequently, the numbers of birds killed annually by other human activity such as vehicle collisions (approximately 89 340 million on U.S. roads) and window collisions between 365 988 million annually), are cited to minimize the wind turbine deaths. But the fact remains that many of the turbine deaths are preventable by accommodating the animals who call the sky home when planning and building wind farms. There is still significant room to innovate in wind technology and reduce the cost of energy, Dykes says. Increased development of wind energy leads to cost reduction since it leads to learning and innovation. With every wind project built, companies develop lessons learned and better processes that can be applied to the next wind farm. Top photo by David Mark Margo is a science writer poking her nose into everything that piques her curiosity, from NASA and sea turtles to climate change and green tech. Ramon, any new crazy ideas about this years course design? Ramon Hunziker: Last year we received positive feedback from the riders about the course. Thats why we didnt want to change much regarding the obstacles. With that said, the 80s theme will play a role and will inspire some unique course details. Tell us more about whats new? We will create a hip-jump to wallride as a new technical feature, similar to the course design of Colorado Freeride Festival from 2015. The riders have to jump onto the wall and clear it nicely making sure not to lose any speed for the last part of the course. I think it will be quite technical and we are all excited to see what the riders come up with. And what about the 80s theme details? The riders can prove their street skills on the turntable quarter pipe at the end of the course. Particularly, Im pretty proud of the hot seat. It is sure to spin riders dizzy. Swatch Rocket Air course 2017 Nicholi front flipping the 2016 Swatch Rocket Air "Jungle theme" Emil, congrats on your 3rd place at Crankworx Rotorua, flare jeans or slim fit jeans? Thanks! I'll choose Slim Fit Jeans! Ghettoblaster over Spotify? Spotify! What do you think when you hear that Ramon created a ghettoblaster as an obstacle? A ghettoblaster?! That sounds freaky. Im super excited to finally be invited and I cant wait to give my best on the course! The ghettoblaster flat drop With only three weeks until the only Swiss Gold event of the FMB World Tour, the Flying Metal Crew is sharing some secrets from behind the scenes. The 2016 winner, Nicholi Rogatkin, returns once again, Ramon Hunziker reveals how he will incorporate a unique feature into the well loved course, and Emil Johansson, the 17-year-old newcomer, has to decide between wearing flare jeans or slim fit jeans. In the 80s, Paul Turner and Steve Simons began to develop suspension systems for mountain bikes. Because of their inventions mountain bikes and the sport of dirt jumping has been able to progress to what it is today. This is why Ramon Hunziker and the Flying Metal Crew want to pay tribute to the roots of mountain biking and celebrate the 80s with some modern day MTB action!Nicholi Rogatkin sure likes to think back on the throne from last year, It was a unique and unforgettable moment when I was riding through the ice rink sitting on a wooden chair with the crowd going nuts. The vibe is always amazing, I cant wait to be back and defend my title. In addition to the young American, other well-known names like Carson Storch from the USA, Matt Jones from Great Britain and Pavel Alekhin from Russia have already confirmed their attendance. One guy to watch is the young Swede, Emil Johansson, who wasnt in attendance last year due to few points in the FMB World Tour but smashed it at Crankworx Rotorua.The Flying Metal Crew is well on their way towards the big show. Subscribe to Flying Metal Crews newsfeed and @swatchrocketair on Instagram, Facebook, and Youtube to stay up to date. Dont forget your roller skates and secure yourself a ticket on the webpage 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 Acoustic Neurinoma Treatment Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2017-2027 Research Report By Future Market Insights Acoustic Neurinoma Treatment Market PR-Inside.com: 2017-04-07 06:38:23 Press Information Future Market Insights 616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018, Valley Cottage, NY 10989, United States T: +1-347-918-3531 F: +1-845-579-5705 Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.com press@futuremarketinsights.com Website: www.futuremarketinsights.com email Published by Abhishek Budholiya +1-347-918-3531 e-mail http://www.futuremarketinsights.com # 620 Words 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: www.futuremarketinsights.comAbhishek Budholiya+1-347-918-3531 Acoustic Neurinoma is a noncancerous growth that develops on the cranial nerve. Acoustic Neurinoma also known as develops on the vestibulocochlear nerve or the eight cranial nerve which connects the inner ear with the brain. The vestibulocochlear nerve has two parts, one helps in sending balance information and other involved in transmitting sound from ear to the brain. Acoustic Neurinoma also known by the name neurolemmomas or vestibular schwannomas. Although acoustic neurinoma do not invade the brain, they may push on it as they grow. But they may be deadly, if they become large enough to press on the cerebellum or stem.Acoustic Neurinoma Treatment Market: Drivers and RestraintsAcoustic neurinoma is expected to witness growth with the increasing number of government funding and also the introduction of new technologies. The UK government announced US$ 5.58 million funding to study the risk of brain tumor in relation to use of mobiles. As acoustic neurinoma is a rare disease, it has few market players, market expansion is the strategy used by the market players. For instance, Accuray Inc. signed an agreement with Christie InnoMed Inc. to market its CyberKnife and TomoTherapy System product portfolios in Canada.Request Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-3315 Acoustic Neurinoma Treatment Market: SegmentationAcoustic neurinoma treatment market is classified on the basis of treatment, end-users and region.Based on treatment the acoustic neurinoma treatment market is segmented into the following:Surgical removalTranslabyrinthineRetrosigmoid/sub-occipitalMiddle fossaRadiation therapyMulti-session fractionated stereotactic radiotherapySingle fraction stereotactic radiosurgeryEndoscopic resectionWith the growing preference towards minimally invasive surgeries, acoustic neuromas can now be removed by using total endoscopic resection. This procedure is offered at renowned medical centers.Based on end-users the acoustic neurinoma treatment market is segmented into the following:HospitalsClinicsAmbulatory surgery centersAcoustic Neurinoma Treatment Market: OverviewAcoustic neurinoma occurs in two forms, one is associated to a syndrome known by the name neurofibromatosis type II and other a sporadic form. Neurofibromatosis type II is characterized by the noncancerous growth in the nerve system. As this type is an inherited rare disease majority of the acoustic neurinoma occurs in the sporadic form. One of the reason of acoustic neurinoma is high exposure to radiation doses to the head and neck region. Acoustic neurinoma has three main courses of treatment: observation, surgical removal or radiation therapy.Request For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-3315 As acoustic neurinoma is non-cancerous growth, some doctors monitor the tumor with the periodic MRI scans and suggests other treatments if it grows a lot and may cause serious problem. Translabyrinthine, retrosigmoid/sub-occipital and middle fossa are the three main surgical approaches for removing acoustic neurinoma. In case of radiation therapy, one of the two ways can be used: multi-session fractionated stereotactic radiotherapy and single fraction stereotactic radiosurgery.Acoustic Neurinoma Treatment Market: Region-wise OutlookThe report covers market scenario for North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America and MEA. As the market is niche there are very few players in the market giving opportunities for emerging players for market entry. As North America is strong in terms of international company presence and also strong research and development investments, the market is highest in this region. With the increasing number of approvals for robotic radiosurgery therapies, Asia Pacific is expected to be the fastest growing region. Accuray received Japanese approval to market its CyberKnife M6 System.Acoustic Neurinoma Treatment Market: Key Market ParticipantsAccuray, Inc., Huiheng Medical, Inc., Elekta and Varian Medical Systems. The market is competitive in nature leading companies to focus on various new strategies such as, merger & acquisitions, new product development and expanding their operation in the new countries for maintaining their foothold in the market. Future Market Insights has announced the addition of the Automotive Ignition Coil Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2016-2026" report to their offering. Automotive Ignition Coil Market PR-Inside.com: 2017-04-07 06:12:26 Press Information Future Market Insights Future Market Insights 616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018, Valley Cottage, NY 10989, United States T: +1-347-918-3531 F: +1-845-579-5705 Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.com Website: www.futuremarketinsights.com email Published by Abhishek Budholiya +1-347-918-3531 e-mail http://www.futuremarketinsights.com # 698 Words 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: www.futuremarketinsights.comAbhishek Budholiya+1-347-918-3531 With the growing focus towards engine and component downsizing, lower fuel consumption, better efficiency, lower emissions and higher ignition voltage, the need for advancement of ignition coil is constantly increasing. The fuel- air mixture should be ignited at accurate timing with optimum energy so as to ensure proper combustion and hence proper functioning of the vehicle. Thus for a perfect ignition system, there is no scope for a faulty ignition coil. This brings the ignition coils to forefront and makes the automotive ignition coil market a hotspot for research and development. Despite being niche, the market is very opportunistic with increasing demand for novel ignition technology so as to increase efficiency and reduce fuel consumption.The automotive ignition system has evolved from the conventional magneto ignition system to the modern electronic assisted systems and the future is further anticipated to witness significant advancement in ignition coil technology, which will create new growth opportunities in the automotive ignition coil market. The global automotive ignition coil market is principally driven by healthy growth of global automotive production. The robust growth of automotive production in developing countries such as China, India and Mexico is expected to spur the global ignition coil market. Giant automotive markets such as North America and European Union are expected to create significant aftermarket demand in the automotive ignition coils market over the forecast period.Over the past years, there has been instances of vehicle recalls due to faulty ignition coils, this has been major challenge for the automakers as such instances could significantly hamper their brand image. Hence quality remains the major focus for OEMs. Furthermore, the market for ignition coil is highly fragmented and supply of counterfeit products remains the next most burning issue in the global automotive ignition coil systems market. Key players in the market are centering to increase their market share by availing diverse product portfolio to the OEMs and capitalizing opportunities through strategic alliances and partnerships with technology leader to develop new products.Request For Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-2055 GlobalAutomotive Ignition Coil Market Dynamics:Drivers:Increasing vehicle production particularly in emerging markets, is one of the key factors driving the demand for automotive ignition coils. Also rapidly increasing vehicle parc is anticipated to create significant aftermarket demand in the global automotive ignition coil market. Advancement in engine technology so as to achieve higher fuel efficiency and fewer emissions is expected to bring new and advanced products in the market, supplementing growth of ignition coil market.Restraints:A major force restraining the growth of automotive ignition coil market is the shift of industry towards EVs (electric vehicles). As pure electric vehicles will eliminate use of ignition system from an automotive.GlobalAutomotive Ignition Coil Market Segmentation:Global automotive ignition coil market can be segmented on the basis of vehicle type into:Passenger CarsLCV (Light Commercial Vehicle)HCV (Heavy Commercial Vehicle)Global automotive ignition coil market can segmented on the basis of sales channel into:OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer)AftermarketGlobal automotive ignition coil market can be segmented on the basis of product type as follows:Can-type Ignition CoilsElectronic Distributor CoilsDouble Spark Ignition CoilsPlug Shaft Ignition CoilsDual Coil Ignition CoilsGlobal Automotive Ignition Coil Market: Regional OutlookOn the basis of region, Asia Pacific is expected to witness high growth in the global automotive ignition coil market and is expected to maintain dominant share over the forecast period. The key market driving countries in the Asia-Pacific region are China and India, as these countries holds a significant share of new vehicle production and vehicle par. Japan, Latin America and Middle East & Africa are expected to grow at a steady rate over the forecast period. North America and Europe are expected to witness fast adoption of newer technologies, as compared to other markets.Request For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-2055 Global Automotive Ignition Coil Market: Key PlayersSome of the key market participants in the global automotive ignition coil market are:Robert Bosch GmbHBorgWarner Ludwigsburg GmbHDelphi Automotive LLP.DENSO CORPORATIONFederal-Mogul CorporationWings Automobile Products Pvt. Ltd.NGK Spark Plug Europe GmbHStandard Motor Products, Inc.Prenco Progress and Engineering Corporation Future Market Insights has announced the addition of the Baobab Powder Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2017-2027report to their offering. Baobab Powder Market Trends PR-Inside.com: 2017-04-07 08:45:47 Press Information Future Market Insights 616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018, Valley Cottage, NY 10989, United States T: +1-347-918-3531 F: +1-845-579-5705 Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.com Press: press@futuremarketinsights.com Website: www.futuremarketinsights.com email Published by Abhishek Budholiya +1-347-918-3531 e-mail http://www.futuremarketinsights.com # 639 Words 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: www.futuremarketinsights.comAbhishek Budholiya+1-347-918-3531 Baobab is also known as the Queen of Superfruits and its powder is obtained from the extraction of dried baobab fruit pulp by freeze drying method. Baobab powder contains various essential vitamins such as vitamin B and C and minerals such as calcium, potassium, phosphorus, and others. Baobab fruit is primarily found in Africa and some parts of Australia and India. Baobab powder helps in managing blood sugar level. Baobab powder is rich in antioxidants which help in eliminating the free radicals which contribute to diseases such as aging, cancer, and cardio-vascular disease. Baobab powder is a gluten free powder that can be consumed by gluten intolerant consumers. Baobab powder sales have been increased rapidly in the last few years as a result of increasing usage of baobab powder in various supplements. Many manufacturers are using baobab powder in a variety of beverages which is seen as a great opportunity for the manufacturers to expand their product portfolio. Baobab powder has a light and subtly tangy flavor which blends perfectly with other fruit flavors which can be used in the preparation of flavored waters, smoothies, sparkling beverages, and juices.Global Baobab Powder: Market SegmentationThe global baobab powder market is segmented on the basis of distribution channel, application and region. The baobab powder market is segmented on the basis of distribution channel such as online stores, supermarket/hypermarket, retail stores, and others. The global baobab powder market is segmented on the basis of application in which baobab powder is used in application such as pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, food and beverage, and others. Baobab powder is used as an ingredient in various products such as supplement powder, smoothies, juices, flavored waters, meal replacement drinks, and cold-pressed juices. Hence, the global baobab Powder market is expected to significantly increase the revenue contribution over the forecast period.Request Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-3333 Global Baobab Powder Market: Regional OutlookGeographically, the global baobab powder industry can be divided by major regions which include North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan and Middle East & Africa. Globally, among all regions, Middle East & Africa has developed as the dominant region in global baobab powder market followed by Asia Pacific. Increasing demand for baobab powder in various beverages, has strengthened the growth of global baobab powder market and hence is projected to significantly expand the revenue contribution of the market over the forecast period.Global Baobab Powder Market: Growth DriversThe global baobab powder market driving factors are increasing demand for baobab powder in various food products and as a specialty ingredient in various beverages worldwide. Increasing opportunities in bakery and cosmetics industries is also another factor in driving the global baobab powder market. Manufacturers are offering various flavored baobab drink mixes in many varieties such as pineapple-mint baobab, blueberry-baobab, and etc. which is responsible for increasing demand for baobab powder globally. Baobab Powder helps consumers in managing their blood sugar levels, which is another major factor for driving the baobab powder seed market worldwide. Growing population of gluten intolerance consumers is also a major factor which is driving the global baobab powder market. Hence, the global Baobab Powder market is expected to observe robust growth over the forecast period.Request For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-3333 Global Baobab Powder Market: Key PlayersSome of the key players identified across the value chain of the global baobab powder market include Baobab Fruit Company Senegal, Baobab Foods, Organic Herb Trading, Eco Products, TheHealthyTree Company, BI Nutraceuticals, BioessenceTrade, Organic Africa, Rawsome Foods, B'Ayoba, Simpli Ingredients are among others. The companies are expected to expand their business by enhancing their product portfolio in global baobab Powder market. The companies are projected to frame certain strategies in future in order to gain the competitive advantage in global baobab powder market till 2027. Thailand king signs constitution paving way for polls The king of Thailand has signed a new constitution that paves the way for a return to democracy but still gives the army an influential role in politics. Future Market Insights has announced the addition of the Caraway Seeds Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2017-2027report to their offering. Caraway Seeds Market Trends PR-Inside.com: 2017-04-07 08:46:54 Press Information Future Market Insights 616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018, Valley Cottage, NY 10989, United States T: +1-347-918-3531 F: +1-845-579-5705 Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.com Press: press@futuremarketinsights.com Website: www.futuremarketinsights.com email Published by Abhishek Budholiya +1-347-918-3531 e-mail http://www.futuremarketinsights.com # 616 Words 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: www.futuremarketinsights.comAbhishek Budholiya+1-347-918-3531 Caraway is also known as meridian fennel and Persian cumin which is a native plant to Western Asia and Europe, and North Africa. Caraway seeds are one of the dominant spices which is used in several savory dishes worldwide. Caraway seeds are split halves of the dried fruits of a plant which are used as a spice ingredient in various dishes globally. Caraway seeds are highly aromatic which have a distinctive earthy anise seed flavor. Caraway seeds are one of the most popular spices which are produced on a large-scale in European countries, the Middle East and the Mediterranean. Caraway seeds are used for producing edible oils that are used in various food products. Caraway seeds are best remedy for curing colds and congestion. Caraway seeds are used widely in medicinal formulations for the treatment of disorders such as eye infection, toothaches and rheumatism. Caraway seed oil is also used for treatment of fungus infections and the candida infections. Caraway seeds are used for treating digestive problems such as loss of appetite, bloating and mild spasms of intestines and stomach.Global Caraway Seeds: Market SegmentationThe global caraway seeds market is segmented on the basis of form, application and region. The caraway seeds market is segmented on the basis of forms such as whole seed and powder. The global caraway seeds market is segmented on the basis of application in which caraway seeds is used in application such as pharmaceuticals as a flavoring agent in mouthwash, in savory dishes such as soups, sauerkraut, pickles and salads. Caraway seeds are widely used to flavor biscuits, cakes, rye breads, meat dishes. Caraway seeds are used as a condiment in various savory dishes. Hence, the global caraway seeds market is expected to significantly increase the revenue contribution over the forecast period.Request Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-3334 Global Caraway Seeds Market: Regional OutlookGeographically, the global caraway seeds industry can be divided by major regions which include North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan and Middle East and Africa. Globally, among all regions, Europe has developed as the dominant region in global caraway seeds market followed by Asia Pacific. Increasing demand for spices and condiments in various food products, has strengthened the growth of global caraway seeds market and hence is projected to significantly expand the revenue contribution of the market over the forecast period.Global Caraway Seeds Market: Growth DriversThe global caraway seeds market driving factors are increasing demand for ready-to-eat snack foods coupled with the convenience of foods. Increasing opportunities in bakery industry is also another factor in driving the caraway seeds market along with rising in production of caraway seeds as a result of improved seed varieties. Manufacturers are focusing on providing healthier product offerings. Caraway seed oil helps in improving digestion problems, which is another major factor for driving the caraway seed market worldwide. Caraway seeds is also used as a flavoring agent in toothpaste and mouthwash. Hence, the global caraway seeds market is expected to observe robust growth over the forecast period.Request For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-3334 Global Caraway Seeds Market: Key PlayersSome of the key players identified across the value chain of the global caraway seeds market include SLEAFORD QUALITY FOODS LTD., Bishnoi trading corporation, Great American Spice Company, Lionel Hitchen Essential Oils, SMJ EXPORTS PVT. LTD., McCormick & Company, Inc., GIZA SEEDS & HERBS and Canadian Exotic Grains Ltd. The companies are expected to expand their business by enhancing their product portfolio in global caraway seeds market. The companies are projected to frame certain strategies in future in order to gain the competitive advantage in global caraway seeds market till 2027. Future Market Insights has announced the addition of the Carob Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2017-2027report to their offering. Carob Market Share PR-Inside.com: 2017-04-07 08:48:06 Press Information Future Market Insights 616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,, Valley Cottage, NY 10989,, United States, 3479183531 email Published by Abhishek Budholiya +1-347-918-3531 e-mail http://www.futuremarketinsights.com # 629 Words 616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,, Valley Cottage, NY 10989,, United States,3479183531Abhishek Budholiya+1-347-918-3531 Carob (Ceratonia siliqua) is a native plant to the eastern Mediterranean especially to the Middle East countries. Carob is also called as locust bean and is primarily cultivated for its edible pods in majorly Mediterranean region which includes Southern Europe, Northern Africa and the Canary Islands. Carob powder is also used as a substitute for cocoa powder in various bakery products. Carob based bars is consumed as an alternative to chocolate based bars worldwide. Carob do not contain caffeine and theobromine (which is intolerant to some animals) and therefore is widely used in chocolate flavored pet food for dogs and other animals. Carob pod meal is widely used as a rich source of energy for livestock, particularly for ruminants. Carob in food industry is used as a thickening agent, gelling agent, stabilizing agent or as a substitute for low-calorie food products. Carob is fat-free, rich in pectin and contains high amount of proteins. Carob is primarily used in the production of confectionery and bakery products and variety of beverages. Carob is also used for making flour, molasses and is a substitute for coffee.Global Carob: Market SegmentationThe global carob market is segmented on the basis of form, distribution channel, application and region. The carob market is segmented on the basis of form such as solid and liquid. The carob market is segmented on the basis of distribution channel which includes fitness stores, health stores, online and others. The carob market is segmented on the basis of application such as bakery products which includes cakes, cookies, pancakes, bread. Carob is also used in snack bars, cocoa based food products and beverages, cereals, dairy products and others. Carob pod meal is widely used for livestock. Carob syrup is used as a natural sweetener and is considered as a rich source of calcium. Hence, the global carob market is expected to significantly increase the revenue contribution over the forecast period.Request Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-3335 Global Carob Market: Regional OutlookGeographically, the global carob industry can be divided by major regions which include North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan and Middle East and Africa. Globally, among all regions, Europe has developed as the dominant region in global carob market followed by Asia Pacific. Increasing demand for carob powder in various bakery products and confectionery, has strengthened the growth of global carob market and hence is projected to significantly expand the revenue contribution of the market over the forecast period.Global Carob Market: Growth DriversThe global carob market driving factors are increasing demand for bakery products coupled with the convenience of foods. Increasing opportunities in bakery and confectionery industry is also another factor in driving the carob market along with rise in production of carob. Carob is also used for treating diarrhea, cancer, helps in reducing cholesterol level, and are some of the factors driving the global carob market. Carob powder is widely used as an alternative for cocoa powder due to its health benefits which is a major driving factor for the global carob market. Hence, the global carob market is expected to observe robust growth over the forecast period.Request For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-3335 Global Carob Market: Key PlayersSome of the key players identified across the value chain of the global carob market include Australian Carobs Pty Ltd., CAROB S.A., EURODUNA AMERICAS INC., CyberColloids Ltd., The Hain Celestial Group, Inc., Savvy Foods Ltd., Carobs Australia Inc., Creta Carob, Lewis Confectionery Pty Ltd and MADANARGAN. The companies are expected to expand their business by enhancing their product portfolio in global carob market. The companies are projected to frame certain strategies in future in order to gain the competitive advantage in global carob market till 2027. Future Market Insights has announced the addition of the Continuous Glucose Monitoring Systems Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment, 2015-2020"report to their offering. Continuous Glucose Monitoring Systems Market PR-Inside.com: 2017-04-07 09:23:12 Press Information Future Market Insights 616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018, Valley Cottage, NY 10989, United States T: +1-347-918-3531 F: +1-845-579-5705 Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.com Website: www.futuremarketinsights.com email Published by Abhishek Budholiya +1-347-918-3531 e-mail http://www.futuremarketinsights.com # 502 Words 616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: www.futuremarketinsights.comAbhishek Budholiya+1-347-918-3531 Future Market Insights (FMI) announces the release of its latest report titled, Continuous Glucose Monitoring Systems Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2015 - 2020. According to the report, the global continuous glucose monitoring systems market was valued at US$ 402.0 Mn in 2014 and is expected to reach US$ 788.4 Mn by 2020, registering a CAGR of 12.1% during the forecast period, 2015 to 2020.Global continuous glucose monitoring systems market is driven by increasing number of diabetic patients and growing number of geriatric people across the world. Moreover, usage of advanced technologies such as artificial pancreas in continuous glucose monitors and increasing awareness of people towards diabetes are driving growth of the continuous glucose monitoring systems market. However, high prices of continuous glucose monitors and inadequate reimbursement policies pose a challenge for growth of the global continuous glucose monitoring systems market.Request For Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-694 The global continuous glucose monitoring systems market is segmented on the basis of end use sector, components and geography. Moreover, company wise market share has also been indicated in the report. By end use sector, global continuous glucose monitoring systems market is sub-segmented into household and hospital & diagnostic centers. Household is a larger segment as compared to hospital & diagnostic centers and is expected to dominate the continuous glucose monitoring systems market throughout the forecast period exhibiting a CAGR of 11.9%. The household segment held 68.5% market share in 2014 and expected to account for US$ 538 Mn by 2020, owing to the convenience and ease of use offered by continuous glucose monitors at home. Hospitals & diagnostic centers sub-segment accounted for approximately 31.5% of the global continuous glucose monitoring systems market value share in 2014, and is expected to gain market share to account for 31.8% of the global market by 2020.On the basis of component, the global continuous glucose monitoring systems market is sub-segmented into transmitter & monitors, sensors and insulin pumps. Among the aforementioned sub-segments, transmitter & monitors is expected to dominate the global continuous glucose monitoring systems market with over 39% market share throughout the forecast period. Owing increasing trend of sedentary lifestyle in some developing and developed economies such as India, China and Japan, and increasing obesity rate globally, demand for continuous glucose monitoring is expected to increase significantly in the near future.Send An Enquiry@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/askus/rep-gb-694 Value wise share in the report has been provided for key players in the market, which includes Medtronic, Dexcom, Abbott and cumulative share of other players. Medtronic dominated the global continuous glucose monitoring systems market in 2014 and is expected to continue its dominance over the forecast period, expanding at a CAGR of 11.2%.Geography-wise, North America was dominant, accounting for over 50% of the global continuous glucose monitoring systems market in 2014 in terms of revenue. However, Asia Pacific Excluding Japan (APEJ) is foreseen to witness a relatively high CAGR during the forecast period.Competitive LandscapeKey players considered in the continuous glucose monitoring systems market include Medtronic, Dexcom, Abbott, OmniPod, Animas, Glysens, Roche, Ypsomed and Bayer.Browse Full Report@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/continuous-glucose-monitoring-systems-market PR-Inside.com: 2017-04-07 14:18:01 Helsinki/Berlin, 07 April 2017 - Ferratum Oyj (ISIN: FI4000106299, WKN A1W9NS) ("Ferratum") publishes this announcement pursuant to Chapter 8, Section 2 of the Finnish Securities Markets Act. Notification of transactions in own shares Person subject to the notification requirement Name: LL Capital Investments OU Legal Person Position: Member of the Board/Deputy member Initial Notification Reference number: 74370078YLPFWHE33716_20170407131700_2 Issuer Name: Ferratum Oyj LEI: 74370078YLPFWHE33716 Transaction details Transaction date: 05.04.2017 Venue: XETRA - REGULIERTER MARKT (XETA) Nature of the transaction: Disposal Instrument: Share ISIN: FI4000106299 Volume: 7045 Unit price: 19.64929 Euro Volume: 6706 Unit price: 19.52733 Euro Volume: 2938 Unit price: 19.50000 Euro Volume: 212 Unit price: 19.50000 Euro Volume: 99 Unit price: 19.30000 Euro Volume: 264 Unit price: 19.30000 Euro Volume: 91 Unit price: 19.30000 Euro Volume: 264 Unit price: 19.30000 Euro Volume: 1058 Unit price: 19.30000 Euro Volume: 261 Unit price: 19.30000 Euro Volume: 136 Unit price: 19.30000 Euro Volume: 177 Unit price: 19.30000 Euro Volume: 155 Unit price: 19.30000 Euro Volume: 250 Unit price: 19.30000 Euro Volume: 344 Unit price: 19.30000 Euro Aggregated transactions Volume: 20000 Volume weighted average price: 19.53076 Euro About Ferratum Group: Ferratum is an international provider of consumer and small business loans, distributed and managed by mobile devices. Founded in 2005 and headquartered in Helsinki, Finland, Ferratum is a pioneer in the fields of financial technology and mobile lending and has expanded rapidly to operate in 23 countries. Ferratum's customers utilize digital media to apply for consumer credit in amounts varying between EUR 25 and EUR 5,000 and small businesses instalment loans up to EUR 100,000 with a term of six to twelve months. Led by its founder, Jorma Jokela, Ferratum has more than 1.6 million active and former customers who have been granted one or more loans in the past (as at 31 December 2016). Ferratum Group is listed on the Prime Standard of Frankfurt Stock Exchange under symbol 'FRU.' For more information, visit www.ferratumgroup.com. Contacts: Ferratum Group Dr. Clemens Krause, CFO T: +49 30 88715308 F: +49 30 88715309 E: clemens.krause@ferratum.com Ferratum Group Paul Wasastjerna Head of Investor Relations T: +358 40 7248247 F: +358 20 741 1614 E: paul.wasastjerna@ferratum.com European media enquiries: Edelman.ergo, A Daniel J Edelman Company Alexander Schmidt | Andreas Martin T: +49 69 27 13 89 26 E: Alexander.Schmidt@edelmanergo.com E: Andreas.Martin@edelmanergo.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: FERRATUM OYJ via Globenewswire Hydrolyzed Oat Protein Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2017-2027 Research Report By Future Market Insights Hydrolyzed Oat Protein Market PR-Inside.com: 2017-04-07 06:30:42 Press Information Future Market Insights 616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018, Valley Cottage, NY 10989, United States T: +1-347-918-3531 F: +1-845-579-5705 Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.com press@futuremarketinsights.com Website: www.futuremarketinsights.com email Published by Abhishek Budholiya +1-347-918-3531 e-mail http://www.futuremarketinsights.com # 646 Words 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: www.futuremarketinsights.comAbhishek Budholiya+1-347-918-3531 Proteins are the molecular compound made up of chains of amino acids. Hydrolyzed proteins are the breakdown of protein bind into free amino acid. Hydrolyzed oat protein is a naturally derived soluble form of protein. Hydrolyzed oat protein is a water soluble natural humectant primarily used in cosmetics products. It also act acts as a natural co-emulsifier and enables in reducing the greasiness of oil/water emulsions. In cosmetics products it acts as a conditioning, softening and moisturizing agent. Rising awareness and increasing demand for cosmetics products containing plant based natural ingredient is expected to support the market growth over the forecast period.Market SegmentationHydrolyzed oat protein market is segmented on the basis of application which includes cosmetics, toiletries and detergents. Among all these segments cosmetics segment is expected to account for relatively higher value share in terms of value. Wide application of hydrolyzed oat protein in cosmetics products such as skin care or hair care products is expected to support the segmented growth over the forecast period. Cosmetics segment is further sub-segmented as skin care products and hair care products. Among both of these sub-segment skin care sub-segment is expected to have a major market share during the forecast period. Increasing usage of hydrolyzed oat protein in skin care moisturizing cream and sun care products is expected to fuel the growth of skin care sub-segment growth during the forecast period. Moreover, rising demand for ant-wrinkle cream and anti-aging cream with natural food ingredient across the globe is further expected to support the skin care segment growth over the forecast period. In addition, hair care sub-segment is expected to show a favorable growth in the near future. Hydrolyzed oat protein is gaining importance in terms of usage in hair treatment products and conditioning shampoo which is expected to support hair care sub-segment growth in the near future. Toiletries segment is expected to account for favorable growth in hydrolyzed oat protein market during the forecast period.Request Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-3306 Regional Analysis -:Geographically in hydrolyzed oat protein market Europe is expected to account for the major market share followed by North America during the forecast period. However these region is expected to account for moderate growth due to mature market. Among North American region U.S. is expected to be the major contributor in terms of revenue followed by Canada. Moreover Asia pacific is expected to show the favorable growth during the forecast period followed by Latin America. In Asia pacific region China and India is expected to account for the substantial growth due to increased demand for cosmetics products containing natural ingredient. Moreover in Latin America Brazil is expected to be the major contributor in terms of revenue followed by Mexico.Consumers across the globe are perceiving food derived or plant based ingredients in personal care products as a healthy and value added products. They giving high preference to the products which contains a composition of natural ingredient which is expected to support the market growth over the forecast period. Traditionally oats have been viewed as healthy food, however their popularity has expanded in recent years they are also increasingly recognized as an ingredient with very low allergenic potential, but very high, proven, therapeutic value which is expected to fuel its market growth during the forecast period. Oats are increasingly used for maintaining skin such as it enables to soothe and heal the skin, reducing inflammation and redness. In addition, hydrolyzed oat protein is increasingly used for manufacturing ant-aging and anti-wrinkle cream which is further expected to fuel the market growth over the forecast period.Request For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-3306 Key Players -:Some of the major key players operating in flavonoid market includes Croda International Plc, Lotioncrafter LLC, Provital Group, BioOrganic Concepts, Induchem companies, Lonza Group, and Sinerga S.p.A. among others. Two Nepali students die in India's Himachal Pradesh, three injured Two Nepali students pursuing Chartered Accountancy (CA) in New Delhi, India died due to heavy snowfall and avalanches in Kullu Manali area of Himachal Pradesh at around 8 pm on Wednesday. Industrial Agitators Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2017-2027 Research Report By Future Market Insights Industrial Agitators Market PR-Inside.com: 2017-04-07 06:41:30 Press Information Future Market Insights 616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018, Valley Cottage, NY 10989, United States T: +1-347-918-3531 F: +1-845-579-5705 Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.com press@futuremarketinsights.com Website: www.futuremarketinsights.com email Published by Abhishek Budholiya +1-347-918-3531 e-mail http://www.futuremarketinsights.com # 303 Words 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: www.futuremarketinsights.comAbhishek Budholiya+1-347-918-3531 The manufacturing industry is expanding rapidly due to increased industrial spending in developed as well as developing economies. Countries such as China, India and Brazil are some of the fastest growing economies which are constantly increasing their industrial spending, thereby driving the adoption of industrial machinery. This has led to increasing number of applications of industrial agitators. Further, these industrial agitators are also witnessing rapid technological changes including faster mixing and improved structure which is opening a plethora of applications in the industrial sector.The most common type of industrial agitator is top entry agitator which are used for numerous applications. Top entry industrial agitators can handle large-scale mixing applications, thus they find various usages in industrial processing, primarily in chemical industries.Industrial Agitators Market: Drivers and RestraintsOne of the important drivers for the growth of industrial agitators market is its rapid adoption in environmental engineering such as waste and wastewater treatment. Regulatory bodies such as Environmental Protection Agency promote the use of machines which help to reduce pollution and treat wastes, thereby preserving environmental balance. One of the most important end-user industry for industrial agitators is chemical industry where complex agitation is required for uniform mixing of fluids. These drivers help in the wider adoption of industrial agitators.Request Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-3323 However, one of the major challenges prevailing in industrial agitators market is high installation and maintenance cost. Industrial agitators require frequent servicing which increases the maintenance cost.Request For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-3323 Global Industrial Agitators Competitive LandscapeSome of the prominent players in the Industrial Agitators market include Dynamix Agitators Inc., EKATO Group, Mixing Solutions Ltd. (Wind River Holdings), Mixer Direct Inc., Philadelphia Chemineer Inc., Silverson Machines Inc., SPX Corporation, Sulzer Ltd, Tacmina Corporation and Xylem Inc., among others. PR-Inside.com: 2017-04-06 22:34:01 EL DORADO, Arkansas, April 6, 2017 - Murphy Oil Corporation (NYSE: MUR) today announced that Keith S. Caldwell, Senior Vice President and Controller, plans to retire later this year. In advance of Caldwell's retirement, effective June 1, 2017, Christopher D. Hulse, has been elected to Vice President and Controller. Caldwell will remain at Murphy until later in the year to assist with the transition. Hulse joined the company's wholly owned subsidiary, Murphy Exploration & Production Company in 2015 and is currently Vice President, Finance Projects. Prior to this assignment, Hulse served as Vice President Finance, Onshore with responsibilities over accounting for North American onshore operations. Before joining Murphy, Hulse worked for a large integrated global oil and natural gas company having over eighteen years of experience in accounting, finance, planning and strategy, including being a country finance controller. Preceding joining the oil and natural gas industry, Hulse worked for a major accounting firm and holds a bachelor's degree in Economics from the University of Bath, United Kingdom and is designated as a Chartered Accountant by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. Hulse will report to John W. Eckart, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. "Chris has many years of in-depth finance and accounting experience in the energy industry that will serve Murphy well. I look forward to his continued contributions," stated Roger W. Jenkins, President and CEO. "We are grateful to Keith for his many years of service and wish him the very best in retirement," Jenkins added. ABOUT MURPHY OIL CORPORATION Murphy Oil Corporation is a global independent oil and natural gas exploration and production company. The company's diverse resource base includes offshore production in Southeast Asia, Canada and Gulf of Mexico, as well as North America onshore plays in the Eagle Ford Shale, Kaybob Duvernay and Montney. Additional information can be found on the company's website at http://www.murphyoilcorp.com Investor Contacts: Kelly Whitley, kelly_whitley@murphyoilcorp.com, 281-675-9107 Nancy Perkins, nancy_perkins@murphyoilcorp.com, 281-675-9252 Emily McElroy, emily_mcelroy@murphyoilcorp.com, 870-864-6324 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: Murphy Oil Corp via Globenewswire Ninth Spring Lighting Fair Opens in Hong Kong PR-Inside.com: 2017-04-07 09:20:51 Press Information Published by ACN Newswire +65 6304 8926 e-mail https://www.acnnewswire.com/ # 919 Words ACN Newswire+65 6304 8926 New Zone Showcasing Smart Lighting & SolutionsHONG KONG, Apr 6, 2017 - (ACN Newswire) - The ninth Hong Kong International Lighting Fair (Spring Edition) opened today and continues through 9 April at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (HKCEC) featuring more than 1,300 exhibitors from 13 countries and regions.Organised by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC), the fair welcomes new exhibitors from Belt and Road countries such as the Philippines, Thailand and Turkey. Also new to the fair are three Chinese group pavilions - "Shunde Lighting Association", "China Henglan" and "Hunan Yiyang Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitor".- Global buyers sourcing in Hong Kong amid export rebound -HKTDC Acting Executive Director Benjamin Chau noted that Hong Kong exports are recovering amid improving consumer confidence in global markets. "Exports of lighting products reached HK$1.4 billion in the first two months of this year, up 4.7 per cent year-on-year. Increases were registered in such major export countries as the United States (+8.1%), the Chinese mainland (+8.9%), France (+17.5%), the United Arab Emirates (+288.2%), the Netherlands (+38.7%) and Poland (+212.4%)." He expects global buyers to find a diverse choice of innovative products at the Spring Lighting Fair.The HKTDC has organised 60 buying missions comprising more than 2,900 companies and representing importers and distributors. Swiss LED from the US, Roschi Technology GmbH from Germany, GE Lighting from the Chinese mainland, Wipro Enterprises (P) Ltd from India, JSC PALANTIR from Russia, and Skyelume FZC from the UAE are among the companies on hand bringing new business opportunities for exhibitors.- New Smart Lighting & Solutions zone -Mr Chau said that the Internet of Things (IoT) accelerated the development of smart lighting, and the industry is optimistic about the growth potential of this product category. "To respond to market needs, this year's Spring Lighting Fair features a new Smart Lighting & Solutions zone to showcase the latest smart lighting products, systems and solutions. These include an energy-saving citywide lighting management system that switches on and off automatically at pre-set times based on the city's longitude and latitude (Booth no: 3C-D06), and a smart-touch remote control with a wireless control range of 40 metres (Booth no: 3C-D38)."Meanwhile, due to environmental concerns, lighting products of higher energy efficiency are preferred and energy-efficient LED lamps and lighting apparatus are replacing incandescent light bulbs as mainstream products. Mr Chau also pointed out that LED & Green Lighting continues to be the largest thematic zone at the Spring Lighting Fair, attracting more than 450 suppliers presenting products that are both functional and decorative.- Renowned brands and unique products -The fair's Hall of Aurora attracted about 200 renowned brands, such as Viribright, Forest Lighting, SKY-LIGHTING, TCL and Jaykal, providing a wide range of lighting products and technologies with unique design and excellent functionality.Sourcing is further facilitated with various specialised product zones, including the World of Professional & Industrial Lighting, Commercial Lighting and Advertising Display Lighting.The fair features a myriad of unique products. These include "3Led" with exceptional colour rendering index (CRI) levels (Booth no: 1E-A02), a portable flood light suitable for military use, disaster relief and construction sites (Booth no: 3D-E21), a unique LED WiFi anti-mosquito bulb (Booth no: 1E-B26), a smart LED plant light with temperature, humidity, oxygen and illumination control (Booth no: 3D-B02), as well as a light with patented technology that can transfer five watts of energy through non-metallic materials and which can therefore operate without visible power cables (Booth no: 1E-D21).- Insights into market needs and product trends -At the fair's Asian Lighting Forum 2017 held today, professionals and experts from renowned market intelligence company IHS Markit, famous brands Phillips and Osram, certification agency DEKRA, Hong Kong's Electrical and Mechanical Services Department and Klaasen Lighting Design exchanged views on smart lighting trends, the latest technologies, cyber security and applications. There will also be a number of buyer forums during the fair period where representatives from various lighting associations as well as buyers from France, Japan, Poland and Russia will share the latest market insights and product trends.- Showcasing Hong Kong's design capability -The HKTDC organised the 10th Hong Kong Lighting Design Competition to recognise local design talent. Finalists' works are on display at Hall 1C Concourse during the fair period to promote Hong Kong's lighting design to global buyers. The award presentation ceremony will be held at tonight's networking reception.Links:Fair Website: http://www.hktdc.com/hklightingfairse/ Events Schedule: http://bit.ly/2nNr5Hl Finalists' entries of the 10th Hong Kong Lighting Design Competition: http://bit.ly/2oH11kM Photo Download Link: http://bit.ly/2o0maDK To view press releases in Chinese, please visit http://mediaroom.hktdc.com/tc About HKTDCEstablished in 1966, the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) is a statutory body dedicated to creating opportunities for Hong Kong's businesses. With more than 40 offices globally, including 13 on the Chinese mainland, the HKTDC promotes Hong Kong as a platform for doing business with China, Asia and the world. With 50 years of experience, the HKTDC organises international exhibitions, conferences and business missions to provide companies, particularly SMEs, with business opportunities on the mainland and in international markets, while providing information via trade publications, research reports and digital channels including the media room. For more information, please visit: www.hktdc.com/aboutus . Follow us on Google+, Twitter @hktdc, LinkedIn.Google+: https://plus.google.com/+hktdc Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/hktdc LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/hong-kong-trade-development-council Contact:HKTDCCommunication and Public Affairs DepartmentJoe KainzTel: +852 2584 4216Email: joe.kainz@hktdc.org Point-Of-Use Disposable Bag Testing Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2017-2027 Research Report By Future Market Insights Point-Of-Use Disposable Bag Testing Market PR-Inside.com: 2017-04-07 06:37:30 Press Information Future Market Insights 616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018, Valley Cottage, NY 10989, United States T: +1-347-918-3531 F: +1-845-579-5705 Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.com press@futuremarketinsights.com Website: www.futuremarketinsights.com email Published by Abhishek Budholiya +1-347-918-3531 e-mail http://www.futuremarketinsights.com # 741 Words 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: www.futuremarketinsights.comAbhishek Budholiya+1-347-918-3531 The point-of-use disposable bag testing is a procedure equipped to validate reliability and reproducibility of methodology used in pressure decay. The high growth in terms of value for media and time interval required to perform a cell culture process that demands a strict examination during the test. In a GMP facility bioreactor leakage may generate economic loss and affect the scheduled production. The point-in-use disposable bag testing is useful to quantify the risk in single-use production facilities. In a bioreactor including the tubing system for detecting leakages that have been introduced by the operator the pre-use disposable bag testing can be used. Numerous testing methods are proposed to detect any leakage that are based on various techniques such as sniffers, which is used for special gases that work as leak testing agents, flow measurement, thermal imaging, and change in pressure. Risk assessment favor the examination of a leak test prediction for single-use bioreactors that should be performed pre-use but after installation. This is because the process of test is usually done in a separate device for testing a single use bioreactor bag during the application of sniffer technology and then installing it into bag holder, this in turn will minimize the operating errors.Point-of-use disposable bag testing Market: Drivers & RestraintsPoint-of-use disposable bag testing is a novel and an important technique due to which it is getting widely accepted to determine leakage in biopharmaceutical processes. The Point-of-use disposable bag testing market is expected to gain traction on the backdrop of rise in demand for biopharmaceutical products globally. There are many factors that are responsible for the wide acceptance of the point-of-use disposable bag testing techniques such as accuracy and reproducibility, rest time, handling aspects, condition of the bags after testing, possibility of testing connections, investment costs for equipment and cost per test. However, there are few risks in using the technique as potential handling errors may erupt while installing single-use bioreactors into their holders. These factors are projected to hinder the market for the point-of-use disposable bag testing over the forecast period.Request Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-3314 Although, low competition due to strict entry barriers creates an opportunity for the existing players in the market, which in turn is expected to favor the monopolistic approach for market expansion in terms of market share in the near future.Point-of-use disposable bag testing Market: SegmentationPoint-of-use disposable bag testing Market is classified on the basis of test type and end-user.Based on test type, the point-of-use disposable bag testing market is segmented into the following:Integrity testForward flowWater intrusionBased on end user, the point-of-use disposable bag testing Market is segmented into the following:Biopharmaceutical IndustryRadiopharmaceutical IndustryBased on geography, the point-of-use disposable bag testing 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)Point-of-use disposable bag testing Market: OverviewSingle-use bags drastically reduce requirements for sterilization and validation as compared to glass material or stainless steel that saves time and other vital resources. Bags are pre sterilized and validated till they are introduced into the process train. After the initiation of the utilization of single use bags in biopharmaceutical industry has promoted the growth in the market and the other end users has become more confident for the adoption of single-use technologies.Request For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-3314 Point-of-use disposable bag testing Market: Region-wise OutlookGeographically point-of-use disposable bag testing market is segregated into seven key regions: North America, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific and Middle East & Africa.North America point-of-use disposable bag testing market is projected to expand with significant CAGR in the near future on the back drop of increasing demand for more biopharmaceutical products. Eastern and Western Europe point-of-use disposable bag testing market is expected to witness promising growth in the near future due to large demand radiopharmaceuticals. With rise in health care spending on economic manufacturing in Asia Pacific countries is projected to favour the market for point-of-use disposable bag testing.Point-of-use disposable bag testing Market: Key PlayersDechema, Pall Corporation, Biosan, Cellab GmbH, GE Healthcare Life Sciences,Integra Biosciences AG, Merck Millipore, Sartorius Group, are some of the participating global players in Point-of-use disposable bag testing market. Future Market Insights has announced the addition of the Psyllium Seed Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2017-2027" report to their offering. PR-Inside.com: 2017-04-07 12:12:17 Press Information Future Market Insights 616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018, Valley Cottage, NY 10989, United States T: +1-347-918-3531 F: +1-845-579-5705 Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.com Press: press@futuremarketinsights.com Website: www.futuremarketinsights.com email Published by Abhishek Budholiya +1-347-918-3531 e-mail http://www.futuremarketinsights.com # 589 Words 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: www.futuremarketinsights.comAbhishek Budholiya+1-347-918-3531 Psyllium is a form of fiber and comes under Plantaginaceae plant family. Psyllium is available in various forms such as psyllium seeds, psyllium husk, psyllium husk powder, psyllium industrial powder etc. Psyllium seeds can be consumed directly or in powdered form for medical purposes as it has various health benefits. Psyllium seed is a source of fiber, protein, and triglycerides. Psyllium seed also contains ascorbic acid, aucubin, beta-carotene, beta-sitosterol, potassium, riboflavin, selenium, sodium, chromium, cobalt, fiber, linoleic acid, magnesium etc. Psyllium seed can be marketed as whole seed or the husk or husk powder according to convenience of consumers. Psyllium seed is an intestinal cleanser and stool softener for both animals as well as humans therefore it is used as traditional medicinal herb in Asian countries.Market Segmentation:Psyllium seed market is segmented on the basis of application as therapeutics application, industrial application, animal feed etc. In therapeutics, Psyllium seed is used for constipation, diarrhea, high cholesterol, heart disease, blood pressure, obesity, irritable bowel syndrome and inflammatory bowel disease. In industry, Psyllium seed is used to prevent soil erosion, prevent landscaping, preventing crumbling of solid ingredients as a result of moisture retention. In animal feed, psyllium seed husk is used to move sand from animals digestive system without any harmful effect.Request Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-3282 Psyllium seed market is segmented on the basis of industrial applications as food industry, pharmaceutical industry, and cosmetic industry. In food industry, psyllium seed can be powdered and used in health drinks, ice creams, breads, biscuits and other bakery products. Psyllium seed is also used in cereal breakfasts by many athletes. In pharmaceutical industry psyllium is used as thickening agent for capsule formation. In cosmetics industry, psyllium seeds can be used in forms like paste or power in anti-aging herbal products for skin care.Psyllium seed market is further segmented on the basis of regions as North America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Latin America, Asia Pacific Excluding Japan, Japan, and Middle East and Africa.Market Regional Outlook:On the basis of regions, the Psyllium seed market has been segmented into North America, Latin America, Western and Eastern Europe, Asia-Pacific region, Japan, Middle East and Africa. Psyllium seed is originated from Iran and increased its travel from Asia to Europe. Production of psyllium seeds mainly comes from Arab world, Afghanistan, Egypt, North India, Sindh, Baluchistan etc. for medicinal purposes. Europe is emerging in psyllium seed market for consumption as well as production. Currently, India is the largest producer of psyllium seeds.Visit For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-3282 Market Drivers and Trends:Psyllium seed have number of health benefits such as constipation, diarrhea, high cholesterol, heart disease, blood pressure, obesity, irritable bowel syndrome and inflammatory bowel disease which is increasing demand for psyllium seeds in global market. Other applications of psyllium seed in various industries such as food industry, pharmaceutical industry, cosmetic industry is increasing which drives the market for psyllium seeds globally. Psyllium seed is used as an animal feed which is helping animals without any side effects, therefore the demand for psyllium seed as animal feed is gaining interest in global market which states that the psyllium seed market is expected to in forecast period.Psyllium seed Market Key Players:Some of the key players in the psyllium seed market include Keyur Industries, Atlas Industries, JYOT Overseas Pvt. Ltd., Abhyuday Indutries, Satnam Psyllium Industries, Rajganga Agro Product Pvt.Ltd ., Shree Mahalaxmi psyllium Pvt. Ltd., Ispasen Remedies, Jyotindra International, Shubh Psyllium Industries are among these. Future Market Insights has announced the addition of the Sarcoidosis Therapeutics Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2017-2027report to their offering. Sarcoidosis Therapeutics Market Value PR-Inside.com: 2017-04-07 08:53:07 Press Information Future Market Insights 616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018, Valley Cottage, NY 10989, United States T: +1-347-918-3531 F: +1-845-579-5705 Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.com Press: press@futuremarketinsights.com Website: www.futuremarketinsights.com email Published by Abhishek Budholiya +1-347-918-3531 e-mail http://www.futuremarketinsights.com # 654 Words 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: www.futuremarketinsights.comAbhishek Budholiya+1-347-918-3531 Sarcoidosis also known as Besnier-Boeck-Schaumann disease is an inflammatory disease characterized by formation of garnulomas. The autoagressive systemic disease affects the organs throughout the body where the nodules contains collection of inflammatory cells. In majority of the cases sarcoidosis is cured within a year or two and only 30% of the sarcoidosis develop chronic disease.The market for sarcoidosis therapeutics is expected to boom due to the number of research undertaking and funding to control the rising prevalence of this disease. NIH granted USD 8.3 million to the University of Pittsburgh to explore the relationship between lung bacteria, the gene activation process and sarcoidosis disease progression. For the sarcoidosis study the Genomics and Informatics Center would collect patient clinical data from seven clinical center and use advanced microbiome and genome profiling techniques to identify biomarkers. These biomarkers would help identify the current state of lung disease and further predict its progression. Such integration of microbiome, genome and clinical information for sarcoidosis disease would dramatically change its management.Sarcoidosis therapeutics market has been segmented on the basis of diagnosis, treatment and region.Based on the diagnosis, sarcoidosis therapeutics market is segmented into the following:X-rayCT ScanBiopsyLung function testsOthersThere is no blood test for diagnosis sarcoidosis. In order to negate some other infections, doctors always tests skin or lung sample during biopsy. In case where the patient chest x-ray is abnormal, bronchoscopy is performed. Small pieces of lung tissues are collected for testing.Based on the therapy, sarcoidosis therapeutics market is segmented into the following:CorticosteroidsImmunosuppressant DrugsTumor Necrosis Factor Alpha (Tnf-) BlockersOthersTreatment of sarcoidosis starts by limiting the initiation of granuloma formation by inhibiting antigen processing, preventing fibrosing processe, limiting inflammatory lesions causing organ interference, severe chronic fatigue, inhibiting constitutional manifestations like cough and exertional dyspnea.The number of clinical trials undertaken for sarcoidosis has increased past some years. The disease is highly undiscovered and hence offers a potential for industry players to mark their market presence. Some companies such as Auven Therapeutics have obtained rights from research universities to further carry out clinical trials on a new molecule. Auven Therapeutics obtained rights to futher develop KIACTA from the Icahn School of Medicine. The research is now carried as a collaborative effort between Auven Therapeutics and BELLUS Health. The companies are evaluating the potential use of KIACTA for the treatment of patients suffering from pulmonary sarcoidosis. They have developed a Phase2/3 protocol to evaluate the efficacy and safety of KIACTA in sarcoidosis.Request Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-3340 Geographically, sarcoidosis therapeutics market is segmented into regions viz. North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific excluding Japan, Japan, and Middle East and Africa. North America region is projected to dominate the sarcoidosis therapeutics marketover the forecast period. The amount of research undertaken by various companies, industry academia partnership and funding to encourage more research are some of the factors contributing to North Americas lion share. Europe is the second largest region in terms of revenue share as it also has number of clinical trials ongoing.Asia Pacific is expected to be the fastest growing region for the sarcoidosistherapeutics market. The region is expected to boom owing to the prevalence rate and grants received from various international associations. A professor from National Jewish Health, received USD 40,000 per for two years from the Foundation for Sarcoidosis Research (FSR) grant /American Thoracic Society. The Foundation for Saroidosis Research (FSR) is a non-profit organization dedicated to find a cure or improve care for sarcoidosis. The foundation has awarded USD 1 million for research and additional USD 1.2 million for funding to investigators.Request For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-3340 Key PlayersSome of the key players in sarcoidosis therapeutics market include Bellus Helath, FirstString Research Inc., Relief Therapeutics, Araim Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Merck & Co., Inc., Novartis AG, PharmaIN Corporation, Adaptimmune Therapeutics Plc, EpiZyme, Inc. and Advenchen Laboratories, LLC. PR-Inside.com: 2017-04-07 15:24:02 Skechers Performance UK Releases a GOwalk 4 Footwear Collection to support Breast Cancer Care Skechers Performance UK Division Partners with Breast Cancer Care Skechers Nicola Zachariades nicolaz@eu.skechers.com 01707 655 955 Skechers Performance UK Division, is thrilled to confirm their ongoing partnership with Breast Cancer Care, to help support women across the UK who are facing breast cancer. Skechers Performance UK will launch a month-long marketing campaign that includes in-store, print and social media activity. To re-launch the partnership, Skechers Performance UK are releasing a new, limited edition GOwalk 4 footwear collection marked with the iconic breast cancer awareness pink ribbon, which will be available in SKECHERS retail stores from the 7th April and online April 1st, 2017. We are extremely proud to announce our continued partnership with Breast Cancer Care, said Peter Youell, SKECHERS UK & Ireland Managing Director. It is an important charity that provides significant care and support for those affected by breast cancer. Following the success of our first campaign, we wanted to further our support for the charity, and with this new collaboration, we wish to continue building awareness surrounding all the incredible work that Breast Cancer Care does. We are pleased to play a role in supporting their incredible work providing care, support and information to help thousands of people to find a way to live with, through and beyond breast cancer. Lizzie Iredale, Head of Corporate Partnerships at Breast Cancer Care added, We are delighted that Skechers are continuing to support Breast Cancer Care. The funds Skechers raise will help us to continue to provide anyone affected by breast cancer with the best care, support and information when they need it most. Every year around 62,000 people are diagnosed with Breast Cancer in the UK, thats around one person every ten minutes, so theres never been such an urgent need for our support services. The Skechers Performance Breast Cancer Care collection is available in two Skechers GOwalk 4 styles, and will retail for 59.00. A donation of 5 per pair sold will be donated to the charity. The designs incorporate a black, white and charcoal colour pallet with the classic pink hue weaved in. Each style also features the iconic pink ribbon detailing on the heel. The Skechers GOwalk 4 shoes available in both slip-on and lace-up styles and features the new Skechers Goga Max insole for the most advanced walking experience ever. The shoe also has responsive flexibility for a more natural movement and incorporates Goga Pillars for added comfort and a tapering midfoot for improved arch support. The limited edition Skechers Performance Breast Cancer Care line is available at SKECHERS retail stores in the United Kingdom and online at Skechers.co.uk throughout April. The funds raised will help Breast Cancer Care continue to provide support for anyone affected by breast cancer. For more information about breast cancer and the charity visit www.breastcancercare.org.uk. To learn more about Skechers Performance visit www.skechers.co.uk and follow us on Facebook (facebook.com/SkechersPerformanceUK), Twitter (twitter.com/SKXPerformance) ABOUT SKECHERS USA, INC. SKECHERS USA, Inc., based in Manhattan Beach, California, designs, develops and markets a diverse range of lifestyle footwear for men, women and children, as well as performance footwear for men and women. SKECHERS footwear is available in the United States and over 160 countries and territories worldwide via department and specialty stores, more than 2,012 SKECHERS Company-owned and third-party-owned retail stores, and the Companys e-commerce websites. The Company manages its international business through a network of global distributors, joint venture partners in Asia and the Middle East, and wholly-owned subsidiaries in Canada, Japan, throughout Europe and Latin America. For more information, please visit skechers.com and follow us on Facebook (facebook.com/SKECHERS) and Twitter (twitter.com/SKECHERSUSA). This announcement contains forward-looking statements that are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements include, without limitation, the Companys future domestic and international growth, financial results and operations including expected net sales and earnings, its development of new products, future demand for its products, its planned domestic and international expansion and opening of new stores, and advertising and marketing initiatives. Forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking language such as believe, anticipate, expect, estimate, intend, plan, project, will be, will continue, will result, could, may, might, or any variations of such words with similar meanings. Any such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in forward-looking statements. Factors that might cause or contribute to such differences include international economic, political and market conditions including the uncertainty of sustained recovery in Europe; sustaining, managing and forecasting costs and proper inventory levels; losing any significant customers; decreased demand by industry retailers and cancellation of order commitments due to the lack of popularity of particular designs and/or categories of products; maintaining brand image and intense competition among sellers of footwear for consumers, especially in the highly competitive performance footwear market; anticipating, identifying, interpreting or forecasting changes in fashion trends, consumer demand for the products and the various market factors described above; sales levels during the spring, back-to-school and holiday selling seasons; and other factors referenced or incorporated by reference in the Companys annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2016. The risks included here are not exhaustive. The Company operates in a very competitive and rapidly changing environment. New risks emerge from time to time and the companies cannot predict all such risk factors, nor can the companies assess the impact of all such risk factors on their respective businesses or the extent to which any factor, or combination of factors, may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements. Given these risks and uncertainties, you should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements as a prediction of actual results. Moreover, reported results should not be considered an indication of future performance. About Breast Cancer Care When you have breast cancer, everything changes. Time becomes measured in appointments. The next scan. The next results. The next challenge. At Breast Cancer Care, we understand the emotions, challenges and decisions you face every day. So, from the day you notice somethings not right to the day you begin to move forward, well be here to help you through. Whether you want to speak to our nurses, download our specialist information or connect with volunteers who have faced what you are facing now, we can help you feel more in control. For care, support and information from day one, call us free on 0808 800 6000 or visit breastcancercare.org.uk ### View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/201704070053 Skechers Performance Partners with Breast Cancer Care Future Market Insights has announced the addition of the Squash (Drink) Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2017-2027report to their offering. Squash (Drink) Market Trends PR-Inside.com: 2017-04-07 08:43:47 Press Information Future Market Insights 616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018, Valley Cottage, NY 10989, United States T: +1-347-918-3531 F: +1-845-579-5705 Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.com Press: press@futuremarketinsights.com Website: www.futuremarketinsights.com email Published by Abhishek Budholiya +1-347-918-3531 e-mail http://www.futuremarketinsights.com # 624 Words 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: www.futuremarketinsights.comAbhishek Budholiya+1-347-918-3531 Squash is a concentrated syrup which is made up of fruit. Squash is generally non-alcoholic in nature as it is not fermented. Generally while manufacturing squash sugar is added, but now a days few company offers sugar free squash. In modern squash, food coloring and additional flavors are also added. In traditional squash some sort of herbal extract such as ginger extract and elderflower extract are also added to enhance the quality of the squash. Squash are also known as cordial. Squash are also used mixed with alcoholic drinks in order to make cocktails. Orange and lime base are the most commonly used squash in any social event. Squash has a large market share in the global market of fruit juices. Squash is very popular in Denmark, India, United Kingdom, Bangladesh, Argentina, Pakistan, Ireland,Indonesia, Israel, Norway, Sweden, South Africa, Cyprus, Kenya, Australia, Chinaand New Zealand.Market Segmentation:Squash marketis segment on the basis of type, distribution channel and region. On the basis of type the squash market is segmented into orange squash, lemon squash, blueberry squash and mixed fruit. Among all these application, orange squash segment accounts for significant share of total squash market. The demand for Squash is also more as it is very refreshing and is loved by children. On the basis of distribution channel the squash market is segmented into hyper/supermarket stores, departmental stores, grocery/retailers and online retailers. Hyper/supermarket is expected to hold a relatively higher share in the squash market, followed by grocery/retailers segment. As we all know online stores offers great discounts and easy delivery of the product at the doorstep, thus this segment is anticipated to grow enormously in the forecast period. On the basis of region the squash market is segmented into North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan and MEA.Request Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-3331 Market Regional Outlook:Regional segment for the market of Squash is divided into seven different regions: North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan and MEA. Among these segment Asia Pacific is expected to be the leader of squash market share globally, and is expected to be dominant in the forecaster period. In Asia Pacific region the countries like India, Bangladesh and China are the key market for squash. In terms of revenue Europe is the expected to be the second leading contributor in theSquash market, followed by North America.Market Drivers:The rising demand for non-alcoholic products among consumers is the major driver for the growth of squash market globally. The increasing adoption of natural fruit juices as an alternative to aerated drinks by health conscious consumers is anticipated to drive the growth of global squash market. The increasing growth of natural sweeteners market is expected to bolster the growth of global squash market. In order to carter to the rising demand of healthy drink , manufacturers are manufacturing squash that are sugar free and has no artificial color. The Squash market is also driven by the love for refreshing juice by the children. Children prefer chilled tasty drinks after doing any sort of physical activity and squash is a perfect answer to their demands. Squash which contains herbal ingredients are generally a rich source of vitamins which is another reason for the growth of squash market in the forecast period globally. However, the amount of fructose present in the squash which may cause some health issue can be a restrain to this growing market of squash.Request For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-3331 Market Key Players:Some of the major players in squash market includes Robinsons, Kissan, Britvic, Hamdard, Coca Cola, Rasna, Assis, Prigat, Primor, Suntory, Nichols and Sunquick among others. Future Market Insights has announced the addition of the Tempeh Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2017-2027" report to their offering. PR-Inside.com: 2017-04-07 12:12:24 Press Information Future Market Insights 616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018, Valley Cottage, NY 10989, United States T: +1-347-918-3531 F: +1-845-579-5705 Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.com Press: press@futuremarketinsights.com Website: www.futuremarketinsights.com email Published by Abhishek Budholiya +1-347-918-3531 e-mail http://www.futuremarketinsights.com # 615 Words 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: www.futuremarketinsights.comAbhishek Budholiya+1-347-918-3531 Tempeh is a type of fermented soy cake product which can be consumed with rice or as a snack.Tempeh is obtained from fermentation of soybean with Rhizopus oligosporus as a starter culture. Tempeh was originated in Indonesia and has been increasing its demand in global market as a competitor of tofu. Tempeh has many health benefits such as reducing cholesterol, increasing bone density, reducing menopausal symptoms, promoting muscle recovery, etc. Tempeh is a rich source of manganese, copper, fiber, protein, phosphorus, vitamins, magnesium, etc. which makes it popular in health conscious consumers globally. Tempeh is a better meat alternative of all fermented soy products. Tempeh contains high nutritional value and hence is used in various vegetarian cuisine worldwide, where it is used as meat analogue. Tempeh contains high levels of vitamins B6, B5, B3, and B2. Tempeh has the ability to have many textures and flavors which makes it a better substitute for meat and meat-based products.Market Segmentation:The global tempeh market is segmented on the basis of type, distribution channels, form, and region. The global tempeh market is segmented on the basis of type such as tempeh bacem, tempe bongkrek, tempe mendoan, and tempe semangit. The global tempeh market is segmented on the basis of distribution channel as supermarket/ hypermarket, retail shops, online shops etc. The global tempeh market can also be segmented on the basis of form such as organic tempeh and conventional tempeh. On the basis of form the demand for organic tempeh is growing worldwide as a result of increasing health awareness among consumers. Hence, the global tempeh market is expected to significantly increase the revenue contribution over the forecast period.Request Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-3283 Market Regional Outlook:On the basis of regions, the tempeh market has been segmented into North America, Latin America, Western and Eastern Europe, Asia-Pacific Excluding Japan, Japan, Middle East and Africa. Globally, among all regions, Asia Pacific has developed as the dominant region in global tempeh market followed by North America. Tempeh is originated in Indonesia which produces and consumes maximum amount of tempeh domestically. China is growing in producing tempeh to cater to consumer needs in global market. Japan, Korea and India are some countries which are gaining interest in producing fermented food products from soybean in turn growing tempeh market globally.Market Drivers and Trends:Tempeh is a healthy food containing probiotic which helps increasing antibodies, build stronger immune system, regulate appetite and reduces sugar. Tempeh is popular in health conscious consumers as it helps in reducing cholesterol levels naturally. Availability of tempeh in supermarket/ hypermarkets is also driving market for tempeh in urban countries. Increasing awareness of consumption of healthy food is driving market for tempeh globally. As a result of growing population of working professionals demand for ready-to-eat tempeh is increasing in urban areas driving market for tempeh globally. Manufacturers are focusing on providing healthier product offerings. Tempeh also has many health benefits such as its helps in muscle building, reduces risk of diabetes and treats inflammatory diseases which helps in growing global market for tempeh. Hence, the global tempeh market is expected to observe robust growth over the forecast period.Visit For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-3283 Tempeh Market Key Players:Some of the key players in the tempeh market include Lalibela Farm, The Cultered Bean Company, Nutrisoy Pty Ltd., Impulse Foods, ALIVE & HEALING INC., and American Soy Asia are among these. The companies are expected to expand their business by enhancing their product portfolio in global tempeh market. The companies are projected to frame certain strategies in future in order to gain the competitive advantage in global tempeh market till 2027. Future Market Insights has announced the addition of the Walnut Milk Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2017-2027report to their offering. Walnut Milk Market Value PR-Inside.com: 2017-04-07 08:50:03 Press Information Future Market Insights 616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018, Valley Cottage, NY 10989, United States T: +1-347-918-3531 F: +1-845-579-5705 Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.com Press: press@futuremarketinsights.com Website: www.futuremarketinsights.com email Published by Abhishek Budholiya +1-347-918-3531 e-mail http://www.futuremarketinsights.com # 644 Words 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: www.futuremarketinsights.comAbhishek Budholiya+1-347-918-3531 A walnut is technically a seed of a drupaceous fruit, hence it is not a botanical nut. Walnut comes from a tree which belongs to family jugladaceae. The walnut is a rich source of protein and as well as essential fatty acids. Commercially walnut milk are available in various flavors but neutral flavor is much loved by the consumers. Walnut milk can be prepared at home very easily, only need to combine few walnuts along with water into a mixer, then one can add flavors according to his preference. It is suggested to soak walnut before blending as it makes easier to blend the walnut and improve digestion. Walnut milk is a delicious alternative to traditional dairy which contains lactose, which may cause allergy to the lactose intolerant people.Market Segmentation:Red wineextract is segment on the basis of flavor, distribution channel and region. On the basis of flavor the market is segmented into chocolate, vanilla, unsweetened, original and others. Among all these segment original flavor is expected to grow enormously in the coming future as this flavor is loved by the consumers. The flavor which is second most popular among the consumers is the vanilla flavor. The demand for walnut milk is more as it is lactose free and does not cause any allergy, it is also in demand because of the health benefits it offers. On the basis of distribution channel the market is segmented into supermarkets/hypermarkets, convenience stores and online stores. Supermarkets/hypermarkets stores is expected to hold a relatively higher share in the walnut milk market. Walnut milk is also a rich source of serotonin, which is necessary for the proper development of the enteric nervous system (ENS). On the basis of region the walnut milk market is segmented into North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific, MEA and Japan.Request Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-3337 Market Regional Outlook:Regional segment for the market of Red wineextractis divided into seven different regions: North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific, MEA and Japan. Among these segment North America is expected to have the major market share globally, as it is the largest consumer of walnut milk. In Asia Pacific region the countries like China and India are generating the major revenue as these countries are one of the largest producers of walnut. In terms of revenue Asia pacific is the second prominent contributor in thewalnut milkmarket.Market Drivers:Walnut milkis a rich source of omega 3and it also has some special properties such as it acts as a helping tool to lose weight, it induces sleep as it contains a chemical called melatonin, walnut milk is considers as a good supplement to prevent hair loss as it contains vitamin B7, walnut milk prevent heart diseases as it is a rich source of antioxidant,prevents the oxidation of LDL cholesterol and reduces the risk of diabetes. It also helps in reducing obesity and slowing down the rate of aging. Walnut milk is suggested by the doctors as well, as it helps to improve the sperm quality in male and helps to make your skin feel rejuvenated. Research has found that walnut milk helps to cure pancreatic as well as breast cancer. Walnut milk and oil helps to fight stress as well, these versatile properties of walnut milk will defiantly drive the walnut milk market to a greater extent.The rise in demand for wrinkle free cream is expected to drive the growth of global walnut milkmarket. Moreover, the market is also driven by the increasing awareness among the consumers about the health benefits associated with walnut milk.Request For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-3337 Market Key Players:Some of the key players in Walnut Milk market areYili Group, China Mengniu Dairy Company Limited, Sanyuan group limited and Elmhurst Harvest. Future Market Insights has announced the addition of the Chocolate Syrup Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2017-2027" report to their offering. PR-Inside.com: 2017-04-07 12:12:00 Press Information Future Market Insights 616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018, Valley Cottage, NY 10989, United States T: +1-347-918-3531 F: +1-845-579-5705 Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.com Press: press@futuremarketinsights.com Website: www.futuremarketinsights.com email Published by Abhishek Budholiya +1-347-918-3531 e-mail http://www.futuremarketinsights.com # 643 Words 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: www.futuremarketinsights.comAbhishek Budholiya+1-347-918-3531 Chocolate has been traditionally used as a flavoring ingredient in various food products such as cakes, ice-creams, milk shakes and others. Chocolate syrup also known as chocolate flavored condiments, is a concentrated solution of chocolate primarily used as a topping or dessert sauce in various desserts. Cocoa powdered, sweetener such as sugar, corn syrup and others are some of the key ingredients for chocolate syrup. Increased usage of chocolate syrup as a flavor enhancer in coffee, tea, milkshakes, cakes and others is expected to support the market growth over the forecast period.Chocolate Syrup Market SegmentationChocolate syrup is segmented on the basis of type which includes organic and conventional. Among both of these segments conventional chocolate syrup has been estimated to account for major share in terms of value and expected to be remain dominant over the forecast period. Organic chocolate syrup is expected to create relatively higher CAGR over the forecast period. Due to increasing awareness among the consumers towards healthy lifestyle they are continuously switching towards organic products which is expected to fuel the segment growth over the forecast period.Request Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-3286 Chocolate Syrup market is further segmented on the basis of distribution channel which includes hypermarket/supermarket, convenience stores, specialty outlet, grocery stores and online retailing. Among all these segments hypermarket/supermarket is expected to account for major market share during the forecast period. Increasing penetration of retail industry especially in developing regions such as Asia Pacific, Middle East and others is expected to support the hypermarket/supermarket segment growth in chocolate syrup market during the forecast period. Online retailing segment in chocolate syrup market is expected represent favorable growth in the near future. Increasing internet penetration level and rising consumer influence towards online shopping is expected to support the segment growth over the forecast period.Regional OutlookGeographically in chocolate syrup market Western Europe is expected to account for the major market share followed by North America during the forecast period. Western Europe is one of the largest consumers for chocolate, which is expected to support of the market growth in the region. However these region is expected to account for moderate growth due to mature market. Among North American region U.S. is expected to be the major contributor in terms of revenue followed by Canada. Moreover Asia pacific is expected to show the favorable growth during the forecast period followed by Latin America. In Asia pacific region China and India is expected to account for the substantial growth due to increased demand for chocolate based or chocolate flavored products. Moreover in Latin America Brazil is expected to be the major contributor in terms of revenue followed by Mexico.Visit For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-3286 Chocolate Syrup Market Drivers & RestraintsIncreased used of chocolate syrup as a toppings or flavor enhancer in desserts such as ice-cream, pan cakes, coffee, pastries and others is expected to support the market growth over the forecast period. Coffee shops or cafes are of the largest consumer for chocolate syrup, thus increasing penetration of coffee shops in developing countries such as India, China, Brazil and others is further expected to fuel the market growth in the near future. However, increased lifestyle disorders such as obesity, diabetes and others in developed economies are leading to various health problems which may include respiratory disorders, heart ailments, anxiety and others. All these factors has led consumers to get inclined towards healthier food options and products containing low calorie or sugar level. Thus, this may restrain the market growth in the near future.Chocolate Syrup Market: Key PlayersSome of the major key players operating in chocolate syrup market includes Santa Cruz Natural Incorporated, AH!LASKA, THE HERSHEY COMPANY, The J. M. Smucker Company, Bosco Products, Inc, Walden Farms, and Nestle S.A.among others. PR-Inside.com: 2017-04-07 09:32:02 Oslo, 7 April 2017: Yara International ASA will hold its Annual General Meeting on Thursday 11 May at 17:00 CEST at Drammensveien 131, Oslo. The Board proposes that the existing share buy-back program is replaced by a new program, renewing the Board's authorization to acquire up to 5% of Yara's shares before the next Annual General Meeting. Shares may be purchased within a price range of NOK 10 to NOK 1,000. Any shares acquired under the proposed program shall be subsequently cancelled, and Yara has entered into a new agreement with the Norwegian State to redeem shares on a pro-rata basis so that the State's ownership is unchanged. The complete notice of the Annual General Meeting will be distributed to Yara's registered shareholders and is also available on Yara's website: http://yara.com/investor_relations/ The Board proposes that a dividend of NOK 10.00 per share is paid for the financial year 2016. The dividend is proposed to be paid to the Company's shareholders as of 11 May 2017 (as registered in VPS on 15 May 2017), and the share will then trade ex-dividend from and including 12 May 2017. If the Board's proposal is approved, the intention is to pay the dividend on 23 May 2017. Contact Thor Giver, Investor Relations Telephone: (+47) 24 15 72 95 Cellular: (+47) 48 07 53 56 E-mail: thor.giaver@yara.com About Yara Yara's knowledge, products and solutions grow farmers', distributors' and industrial customers' businesses profitably and responsibly, while protecting the earth's resources, food and environment. Our fertilizers, crop nutrition programs and technologies increase yields, improve product quality and reduce the environmental impact of agricultural practices. Our industrial and environmental solutions improve air quality by reducing emissions from industry and transportation, and serve as key ingredients in the production of a wide range of goods. We foster a culture that promotes the safety of our employees, contractors and societies. Founded in 1905 to solve emerging famine in Europe, today Yara has a worldwide presence, with close to 15,000 employees and sales to about 160 countries. www.yara.com This information is subject to the disclosure requirements pursuant to section 5-12 of the Norwegian Securities Trading Act. 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: Yara International ASA via Globenewswire For the New World Order, a world government is just the beginning. Once in place they can engage their plan to exterminate 80% of the world's population, while enabling the "elites" to live forever with the aid of advanced technology. For the first time, crusading filmmaker ALEX JONES reveals their secret plan for humanity's extermination: Operation ENDGAME. Jones chronicles the history of the global elite's bloody rise to power and reveals how they have funded dictators and financed the bloodiest warscreating order out of chaos to pave the way for the first true world empire. Watch as Jones and his team track the elusive Bilderberg Group to Ottawa and Istanbul to document their secret summits, allowing you to witness global kingpins setting the world's agenda and instigating World War III. to Ottawa and Istanbul to document their secret summits, allowing you to witness global kingpins setting the world's agenda and instigating World War III. Learn about the formation of the North America transportation control grid, which will end U.S. sovereignty forever. Discover how the practitioners of the pseudo-science eugenics have taken control of governments worldwide as a means to carry out depopulation. View the progress of the coming collapse of the United States and the formation of the North American Union. Never before has a documentary assembled all the pieces of the globalists' dark agenda. Endgame's compelling look at past atrocities committed by those attempting to steer the future delivers information that the controlling media has meticulously censored for over 60 years. It fully reveals the elite's program to dominate the earth and carry out the wicked plan in all of human history. Endgame is not conspiracy theory, it is documented fact in the elite's own words. Michael Jordan of Carrollton, TX has been accepted as an Associate Member of the Independent Educational Consultants Association Michael Jordan, IECA Associate Member Contact Michael Jordan (President, Michael Jordan College Prep) ***@mjprep.com 8774678886 Photo: https://www.prlog.org/ 12631727/1 Michael Jordan(President, Michael Jordan College Prep)8774678886 End -- The Independent Educational Consultants Association (IECA) today announced Michael Jordan of Carrollton, TX has been accepted as an Associate Member. IECA Associate Members are professionals in the process of transitioning to a career in educational consulting. To qualify as an Associate Member, a consultant must have established an educational consulting practice and have a minimum of one year's experience in educational placement, counseling, or admissions.In 2013, Michael left public school teaching and began tutoring the ACT and SAT full-time. Experience working for two national tutoring companies left him wanting more efficiency and direction for his students and better value for their parents. He knew from his experiences as a National Merit Scholar,and Honors college graduate, and full-time educator that the best results rarely come from out-of-the-box solutions. He began freelance tutoring to give students the one-on-one attention and personalization he knew was necessary to achieve the best outcomes. As test prep tutoring took off and Michael built his staff of tutors, he started focusing more on college guidance. Michael has been an independent educational consultant since 2014, when he established Michael Jordan College Prep (then known as Direction Tutors).The IECA was founded in 1976 as a nonprofit, professional association of established educational consultants. IECA member educational consultants are professionals who assist students and families with educational decision-making. Their educational backgrounds, specialized training, campus visitations, and professional experience equip them to help students choose schools, colleges, or programs that meet their individual needs and goals. Members must meet IECA's professional standards and subscribe to its Principles of Good Practice. Members continually update their knowledge and maintain skills through IECA sponsored meetings, workshops, training programs, and information exchanges with colleges, schools, programs, and other consultants. Contact Sarah McCall ***@curesma.org Sarah McCall End -- Cure SMA has awarded a $30,000 research grant to Remy Bordonne, PhD, at CNRS-Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, for his project, "Identification of the protective mechanism of an SMN modifier gene using S. pombe as a model organism".In SMA, actin, which is a protein that helps muscles to contract, doesn't work properly. The goal of this project is to discover genes that rescue defects in actin functioning, in cells with low SMN protein levels. These types of genes are often called SMN-modifier genes.To investigate this, Dr. Bordonne and his team will use the yeast, S. pombe, as a model organism to analyze the protective effect of an SMN-modifier gene on the formation and function of actin networks. The results from this study should provide insights into important pathways and targets that are able to compensate for actin defects induced by low levels of SMN.Meet Dr. BordonneWho are you?After obtaining a PhD from the University of Strasbourg in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, I did my postdoctoral training in Genetics at the University of California, San Francisco. I have interests in the function and maturation of RNAs and work at the Institute of Molecular Genetics in Montpellier where I am the Research Director at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS).How did you first become involved with SMA research?We initially characterized a protein important in splicing and found that it interacts with the SMN protein that plays an essential role in the assembly of splicing machinery. Splicing is the process by which the cell produces the final blueprint or instructions for making a particular protein, by removing unimportant chunks to produce what is called mRNA. Since that time, we have been interested in understanding the functional relationship between defects in splicing and spinal muscular atrophy.What is your current role in SMA research?Our goals are to identify defects associated with the loss of SMN protein. To do so, we use a number of disease models including human SMA induced pluripotent stem cells, mouse motor neuron-like cells, and yeast. We have also an interest in finding protective modifier genes using yeast genetic tools, because these genes could potentially reveal new therapeutic pathways to treat SMA.What do you hope to learn from this research project?We hope to learn how a particular SMN-modifier gene rescues defects in actin dynamics observed in SMA-like cells.How will this project work?We will use S. pombe, a yeast, to try to understand how a SMN-modifier gene protects the formation and functions of actin networks, which are critical for muscle contraction.What is the significance of your study?Understanding how this protective SMN-modifier gene protects actin networks could potentially lead to the development of therapeutics which improve muscle contraction in SMA.Basic Research FundingThis grant to Dr. Bordonne is part of $955,000 in new basic research funding that Cure SMA is currently announcing.Basic research is the first step in Cure SMA's comprehensive research model. Basic research investigates the biology and cause of SMA, in order to identify the most effective strategies for drug discovery. Cure SMA also directs this funding to develop tools that facilitate SMA research.For more information, visit www.curesma.org By: Southcoast Kitchen Designs Matt Arguin End -- Southcoast Kitchen Designs, an award-winning kitchen design and remodeling company serving eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island since 2005, won the coveted Excellence in Sales and Marketing PRISM Gold Award in the category "Best Showroom/Sales Center" for their Benjamin Ellis School Conversion at the recent PRISM Awards Gala, held at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel. Matt Arguin, president of Southcoast Kitchen Designs, accepted the award.The award recognized Arguin's efforts at renovating and repurposing the historic Benjamin Ellis School, located at 247 Tremont Street in Carver. Arguin purchased the building in 2015, and immediately set out transforming the two-story, 4,200 square feet of interior space, which dates back to 1932, into a new, expanded showcase for his business, while working hard to preserve the historic nature of the building. Southcoast Kitchen Designs moved from their original Middleboro showroom into the Carver space and celebrated its grand opening early last year.The two original first-floor classrooms now feature various kitchen layouts that highlight the multitudes of countertop surfaces and cabinetry lines they offer, including Plain & Fancy, Shiloh, Eastman Street, Schrock, Aristocraft, and others. The ground floor has been turned into classroom and workshop space for professional development courses and cooking demonstrations."It's very rewarding to receive this recognition, especially after the countless hours we put into the Benjamin Ellis School building, working to realize our vision of a more complete, engaging showroom that really allows visitors to experience how the styles work together and gives them a sense of how they might reimagine their own new kitchen," said Arguin. "We worked hard to preserve the feel and historic nature of the building, as it's very meaningful to the town of Carver and to the region, and we are proud to be members of this community."Hosted by the Builders and Remodelers Association of Greater Boston (BRAGB), the 2016 PRISM Awards Gala saluted the accomplishments and achievements of Greater Boston builders, developers, project owners, architects, land planners, marketing/advertising firms, interior designers, remodelers, and other professionals in the home building industry. BRAGB has represented the industry since 1944 as one of the leading trade associations in New England. For more information, visit www.bragb.org Southcoast Kitchen Designs is an award-winning kitchen design company, which for more than a decade has been helping homeowners throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island create kitchens that suit their home, their lifestyle and their budget. In addition to design and consultation services, Southcoast Kitchen Designs offers cabinetry options ranging from stock to custom. Their showroom at 247 Tremont Street, Carver, MA, carries numerous fine cabinetry lines such as Plain & Fancy, Shiloh, Eastman Street, Aristocraft and other quality brands. Visitors can also choose from a variety of countertop materials including granite, quartz, solid surface, and laminate. For a tour of the showroom, or to learn more about Southcoast Kitchen Designs, please call 508-465-1476 or visit www.southcoastkitchens.com An Endorsement by Marwane Ben Yahmed, Editor of Jeune Afrique Magazine of Dr. Tedros Adhanom For `World Health Organization' Director-General By: Dr. Tedros For World Health Organization DG End -- In May of this year, the 194 Member States of the World Health Organization (WHO) will meet in order to elect the future general director of the institution, who will officially succeed Margaret Chan on 1 July.They were six contenders on the starting line: Pakistani Sania Nishtar, Italian Flavia Bustreo, Frenchman Philippe Douste-Blazy, British David Nabarro, Hungary's Miklos Szocska, and Ethiopian Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.At the end of January, after a particularly long session, the WHO Executive Committee selected the final three finalists, Nabarro (18 votes), Nishtar (28 votes) and Adhanom (30 votes). We met and interviewed him in October 2016, then in late March.For many reasons, it seems to us to be that he is the man for the position - given his experience - including Minister of Health and Foreign Affairs of his country, and as Board Chair of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria. He also has a Ph.D. in Community Health and a Master of Science in Immunology and Infectious Diseases. The multitude of remarkable public health work he has accomplished is broad.If the organization is above all what its Member States want it to be, today it has a vital need to reform itself.An indispensable organization for the development of health standards and recommendations, WHO suffers from its stifling bureaucracy and too little responsiveness. It took an endless amount of time to respond to the Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa in 2014, which killed more than 11,000 people. And it struggled to raise the funds needed to fight the Zika virus.This funding gap - its budget is only $ 4.5 billion for 2016 and 2017, of which 80% comes from voluntary contributions and half from the United States, the United Kingdom and the Gates Foundation alone - is recurrent, and prevents it from putting in place the necessary emergency measures in the event of pandemics, such as health system development programs, which the neediest countries need.Finally, it will also have to deal with the issue of its global governance, which is at least erratic, since the Geneva headquarters is supposed to centralize and coordinate the action of the six regional offices.All of these challenges and unavoidable emergencies to deal with, which, while not denying the qualities of his competitors, seems to be within the reach of a man who has had to manage in his own country some of the most pressing health problems with limited resources when he held the Health Ministry chair between 2005 and 2012. This man is Dr. Tedros Adhanom, of Ethiopia. http://www.drtedros.com/ - and follow along with his campaign on social media at Facebook.com/DrTedros.Official and on Twitter at @DrTedros ( https://twitter.com/ DrTedros ). Contact Rabbi Nochum Kurinsky ***@chabadbeaches.com Rabbi Nochum Kurinsky End -- One fateful week in June 1967 redrew the map of the Middle East. Fifty years later, Israel continues to face numerous existential threats.BeginningatRabbi Kurinsky ofwill offer a fascinating new six-session course from the Rohr Jewish Learning Institute (JLI) calledCommemorating 50 years since the Six-Day War, the course invites participants to experience a captivating account of what was at the time considered by many to be the most improbable and astonishing victory in all of military history."Traditionally, Jews maintain a fervent allegiance to Israel and also lobby against human rights violations around the globe" said Rabbi Kurinsky of Chabad at the Beaches, the local JLI Instructor in Ponte Vedra Beach. "This course explores the compatibility of these two values, examining Jewish perspectives on controversial human rights accusations leveled against Israel."If Judaism is a religion of ideas, why do Jews care so much about land? Why does Israel perpetually raise the ire of the entire world? And what are the ethics of preemptive strikes and collateral damage? The course also inquires how Israel might protect itself against an enemy that uses human shields, and explores Jewish positions about Israel's moral obligation concerning territories captured in the Six-Day War."Inmodern history meets contemporary controversy,"explained Rabbi Zalman Abraham of JLI's Brooklyn headquarters, "The thrilling historic narrative raises questions about morality and the prospect of peace in the Middle East that began--or were highlighted during--the Six-Day war and remain unresolved."Like all JLI programs, this course is designed to appeal to people at all levels of knowledge, including those without any prior experience or background in Jewish learning. All JLI courses are open to the public, and attendees need not be affiliated with a particular synagogue, temple, or other house of worship.Interested students may call 904-543-9301or visit www.myJLI.com for registration and for other course-related information.JLI courses are presented inin conjunction withMembers of the local media are invited to observe a class and/or conduct an advance interview with the local course facilitator. Interviews with national facilitators and course creators also may be scheduled, upon request. Contact Rabbi Nochum Kurinsky, rabbi@chabadbeaches.com , and 904-543-9301 for additional media-related information.JLI, the adult education branch of Chabad-Lubavitch, offers programs in more than 800 locations in the U.S. and in numerous foreign countries, including Argentina, Australia, Belarus, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, Estonia, France, Finland, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, Panama, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, Uruguay, and Venezuela. More than 400,000 students have attended JLI classes since the organization was founded in 1998. Encore+ continues its recent run of acquisitions with the addition of the El Tormes shopping centre in Salamanca for 70 million. Encore+ is a pan-European open-ended Core+ fund, co-managed by Aviva Investors as Fund Manager and LaSalle Investment Management as Asset and Transaction Manager. The fund is currently enjoying significant [] The technology company Atos-Origin has now opened a new corporate head office in Barcelona. BNP Paribas Real Estate was engaged to advise the developer La Llave de Oro on the sale of a 5,900m building, bought by the insurer Plus Ultra (Catalana Occidente Group) for subsequent letting. The newly constructed [] Javascript Error Javascript is deactivated in your browser. To use all functions on this portal, for example the login, Javascript must be activated. Please activate Javascript in your browser settings. After its acquisition of 114 residential units in Hamburg in March , Round Hill Capital is further extending its presence on the German real estate market with the purchase of 770 apartments in Berlin. The residential portfolio is located in prime inner city neighbourhoods in Berlin, primarily in Mitte [] 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. Samsung Electronics and Rakuten Wuaki have announced the expanded availability of Samsungs TV PLUS service. Through the agreement, Rakuten Wuaki will become the first video-on-demand (VOD) service to deliver newly released, premium 4K HDR movies across Europe on a pay-per-view basis.Launched in South Korea in 2015 and gaining popularity in Asia and North America, TV PLUS landed in Germany in January. It will now be extended to Spain, France, Italy, Spain and United Kingdom with content tailored for consumers in each region.At Samsung, our goal is to help our consumers discover the content they want to watch, rather than make it difficult to find, said Heeman Lee, VP of connective TV services at Samsung Electronics . With this in mind, were proud to partner with Rakuten Wuaki to expand availability of TV PLUS in Europe.Samsung TV PLUS allows users to access contents, including 4K (and HDR), premieres, kids, action and comedy movies, through the IP-based TV channels and platforms run by Rakuten Wuaki.Through TV PLUS, Rakuten and Samsung have been able to come together to offer consumers a wide variety of content options from an assortment of different genres and interests. A complete offer for everyone in the family, said Jacinto Roca, chief executive officer of Rakuten Wuaki The announcement comes just after Rakuten started deploying a new global VOD that will see the rebranding of Wuaki in Europe, Viki in the US and Showtime in Japan. The government of Moldova has condemned a recent appeal by the de facto authorities in the country's breakaway Transdniester region asking Russia to recognize the region's travel documents. Parliament speaker Andrian Candu said on April 6 that such a move by Moscow would "constitute a crude violation of international law." De facto officials in Transdniester on April 5 held joint parliamentary hearings with Russian lawmakers at which they adopted a resolution asking Moscow to recognize the region's "passports." The request follows a controversial decision by Russian President Vladimir Putin to recognize documents issued by Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. The Transdniester resolution expressed support for Russia's proclaimed policy of "protecting" ethnic Russians and "consolidating the Russian world." Moldova's pro-European Prime Minister Pavel Filip said on April 6 that Russia has proclaimed its support for Moldova's territorial integrity and that he did not expect "the scenario applied in eastern Ukraine to develop in this region." Transdniester declared independence in 1992 and has received economic, political, and military support from Moscow ever since. Russia maintains a 1,200-strong military force in the region despite Moldova's repeated calls for it to be withdrawn and replaced with international peacekeepers. With reporting by Interfax MOSCOW -- Thousands of people jammed into a central Moscow square next to the Kremlin in a show of solidarity for the victims of this weeks deadly terrorist bombing in the St. Petersburg subway. The April 6 rally was one of dozens of demonstrations being organized by authorities around Russia over the next few days in the aftermath of the blast, which killed 14 and wounded dozens. Authorities have identified Akbarjon Jalilov, an ethnic Uzbek naturalized Russian citizen who was born in Kyrgyzstan, as the suspect in the April 3 explosion -- the deadliest terrorist attack in St. Petersburgs history. Jalilov was killed in the explosion. Law enforcement authorities in Russia and in Kyrgyzstan have rushed to try to figure out what led Jalilov to commit the bombing and whether anyone had assisted him. In a statement on April 6, the national Investigative Committee said eight men -- six in St. Petersburg and two in Moscow -- had been arrested in connection with the bombing. It said security forces had searched a St. Petersburg apartment where the men were living and seized a bomb, firearms, and ammunition. In Moscow, hundreds of police officers cordoned off Manezh Square where the rally took place, forcing long lines of people holding red carnations to wait to pass through metal detectors. Young men and women handed out green-and-olive-colored ribbons worn by St. Petersburg residents to commemorate the Siege of Leningrad -- St. Petersburgs Soviet name -- during World War II. Others handed out black balloons embossed with a picture of St. Petersburgs iconic Aleksandr Column and the date of the subway bombing. Sergei Dorenko, chief editor of the state radio station Govorit Moskva, tried to whip up the crowd with a message of patriotic unity. "I want to say [the bomber] counted on sowing terror, fear, panic. Instead, he got solidarity and the people have united," Dorenko said. "They have not left one another. The whole city lived like a single organism, like in old times. Mice get scared, rabbits get scared, but citizens do not show fear. This is important. Secondly, the terrorists must pay for this. They will have to pay" for the dead. "This is our home! This is our home!" he chanted from the stage. However, his calls prompted little reaction from the crowd of several thousand, mostly older people, but also some students. Many left quickly after the hourlong rally concluded. In contrast to last months opposition-organized anticorruption rallies, which saw a massive, buoyant turnout from young Russians, the atmosphere at the Moscow rally was more subdued. Many people declined to speak to RFE/RL about their reasons for attending. Opposition groups have accused the authorities of organizing the rallies and paying people to attend in order to distract from the national wave of anticorruption rallies held last month. Aleksandr Kondrakov, 25, a midlevel manager at an IT company, said he had traveled from St. Petersburg to Moscow for the event to show the terrorists he is not afraid. "If they wanted to scare us, then they didnt succeed," he said. "I approve of [President Vladimir] Putin and what he does in general. Im sure that hell find these people and will punish them." There were few signs or placards at the rally. One man, Aleksandr, held up an anti-immigrant sign that said: "You should have to earn your citizenship!" and that indicated that citizenship should not be given away lightly like a shwarma, a popular street food commonly associated with immigrants from Central Asia or the Caucasus. He said he was protesting because the man whom police have identified as the main suspect was an ethnic Uzbek born in Kyrgyzstan who was given Russian citizenship. "In any normal country, you have to wait five years to get citizenship. Here, thanks to a simplified procedure, citizenship is sometimes given out very easily. This boy was just given it," said Aleksandr, who declined to give his surname or his profession. "It turns out you can just hand out citizenship left, right, and center. This nourishes events like [the bombing]. Its not good and its not right." Not long after, he was confronted by three police officers who asked for his identification documents and then confiscated his placard. They did not detain him. A prominent Uzbek imam wants his predominantly Muslim country to prevent men from studying and practicing obstetrics, saying that having male doctors practicing in the medical field was an "embarrassment." During a recent sermon after crowded Friday Prayers in Tashkent's Mirzo Yusuf mosque, chief Imam Rahmatulloh Saifutdinov said that "being Muslim is not compatible at all with being a male obstetrician." "It's an embarrassment," the imam told the audience in Tashkent's Yunusobod district. "We should stop it." Saifutdinov pointed out that the Central Asian country "inherited" the practice of having male OB/GYNs from its Soviet past, when he said "men working as obstetricians was perceived as a normal thing." "But now we should stop it," the imam reiterated, urging Uzbek parents not to allow their sons to study obstetrics. "From now on, let's have our sons choose professions suitable for men and leave obstetrics to the women," said the popular Saifutdinov, who was named Imam Of The Year 2011 by the country's state-backed religious affairs department. However, just days later, Saifutdinov backtracked on the comments he made during his speech, which has since been posted on the Internet (below), sparking online debate. WATCH: Imam Rahmatulloh Saifutdinov delivers his controversial sermon The imam told RFE/RL's Uzbek Service on April 4 that his comments were "misinterpreted" and that he did not mean men should not work in obstetrics at all. "The speech only meant to encourage girls to study obstetrics. It called for creating jobs for women," Saifutdinov insisted. Saifutdinov also is a professor at the Tashkent Imam Al-Bukhari Islamic Institute and runs a website through which he promotes moderate Islamic values and posts his speeches and articles. Social-media reaction to his speech revealed mixed feelings among users, with some supporting his viewpoint and others arguing that the most important thing is the health of mother and child, not the gender of the physician. "We don't live in medieval times. When a woman is fighting for her life, does she care who is saving her -- a man or a woman? It's complete ignorance," commented Facebook user Fakhriddin Rahimov. In Uzbekistan, as in the rest of Central Asia, both male and female doctors practice obstetrics, although females significantly outnumber their male counterparts in the field. Rustam Rahimjonov, a chief specialist at the Tashkent Institute of Obstetrics and Gynecology, said maternity wards in Uzbekistan allow patients to weigh in on whether they will be treated by a man or a woman. "It often happens that women ask for a female physician...and we try our best to fulfill their request," Rahimjonov said. "However, there are situations when a patient needs a complicated surgical procedure and the surgeon might be male." Written by Farangis Najibullah based on reporting by RFE/RL Uzbek Service correspondent Khurmat Babajanov Whatever the situation be, often we wonder if cops are the right force to approach. This becomes more evident when we come across videos that clearly show recordings of ample bullying and misbehaviour by city cops. For some reason, theres plenty of policemen in India that have a crass and highhanded approach to trivial matters that can be resolved with a pat on the back instead of going for direct physical assault. Most its two wheeler riders that face the brunt of it. Its hugely possible that cops already view bikers as nuisance and mete out the same inhuman treatment to everyone. In a video filmed last week by Siddhesh Sawant, you can see the overall apathy, and how the cops will stand by each other when theres no need to gang up. Siddhesh was present at the cop station with his dad, and had the presence of mind to opt for a Facebook Live video. If youre going to care two hoots about the law, then its only right that youre questioned about it. Hopefully, Mumbai cops are paying attention and learn to stop cornering people because their ego got too big for them. Theres a way to go about in any followed system. File a charge sheet, follow up. Get the court involved. Under which section does it say you can start whacking people, and using bully tactics. As per Siddhesh, he was taken to the Police Station because he refused to pay fine of INR 210. The problem started when a traffic cop caught Siddhesh on a bike without license, which he claims he produced within four minutes as his house was nearby. Also see Traffic Cop assaults citizen for pointing a wrongly parked police vehicle (Video) In spite of producing license, the traffic cop asked Siddhesh to pay fine of INR 210, which Siddhesh refused. As is the case, the traffic cop had already taken Siddheshs bike keys, which he refused to return until the fine was paid. After much argument, Siddhesh was taken to a nearby Police Station, for reasons only known to the cops at Meghwadi Police Station. When things started getting out of hands, the cops told Siddhesh that his bike key was lost. Watch the full video below https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Znwc87OCHew Its not like theyre being threatened, physically assaulted or abused to begin with. Of course things tend to get out of hand in most such instances because noone in their right mind is okay with being shoved around, slapped, bullied, and abused. Too often, bikers are ill treated and nothing is ever done about it. No doubt, theres tonnes of bikers breaking rules and signals, riding with two pillions, speeding, not wearing a helmet and riding when underage, but these issues need be highlighted instead of beginning an ego war. people need to be alerted to dangers of riding and taught to respect laws. The process wont be easy, but whacking people isnt going to solve the problem either. Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center immunotherapy researchers Drs. Kristin Anderson and Philip Greenberg and their colleagues are working on ways to tweak their team's early successes with T-cell therapy for leukemia to apply to solid tumors. In a presentation on April 4 at the annual meeting of the American Association of Cancer Research in Washington, D.C., Anderson will describe preclinical research on T-cell therapy for ovarian tumors and the particular tumor microenvironment factors that any clinical version of this therapy will need to take into account. For some patients, certain forms of immunotherapy are showing promise in treating previously difficult-to-treat cancers. In the case of T-cell therapies, though, most of the early experimental successes have been seen in blood cancers. Solid tumors, like breast, lung, ovarian and pancreatic cancers, pose a tougher nut to crack for this new wave of cancer therapies. There are a number of additional hurdles T-cell therapy has to overcome to reach these cancers, which kill more people in the U.S. than blood cancers, according to the American Cancer Society. There's the simple issue of access -- patients with leukemia or lymphoma can receive an infusion of engineered T cells directly into their bloodstream, but it can be more difficult to tweak the cells to traffic to a tumor tucked away in the body. A major roadblock to adopting T-cell therapy to solid tumors is what's known as the tumor microenvironment, the local milieu of non-cancerous cells and molecules in and around the tumor. Anderson and her colleagues have identified proteins overproduced by ovarian cancer cells, known as WT1 and mesothelin, and have found that T cells engineered to specifically recognize these proteins can kill both human and mouse ovarian cancer cells in the lab. They've also found that the T cells significantly extend survival in a mouse model of the cancer, but there's a ways to go before this therapy is ready for clinical trials in humans, Anderson said. "Tumor microenvironment issues come hand-in-hand with working on solid tumors," she said. In her presentation, Anderson will describe three types of roadblocks to an effective ovarian cancer T-cell therapy -- and how the research team is working to overcome each. They are: Immunosuppressive cells and proteins in the microenvironment that can signal the engineered T cells to shut down or ignore tumors. Existing checkpoint inhibitor drugs could circumvent this problem, Anderson said, and the Fred Hutch team is also exploring engineering the therapeutic T cells to block those immunosuppressive signals. A "death signal" produced by both ovarian tumor cells and nearby blood vessels on their surfaces. This molecular signal causes T cells coming to the tumor from the bloodstream to commit suicide before they can fight the cancer. Dr. Shannon Oda in the Greenberg lab is working on a new type of fusion protein the engineered T cells will carry that will rewire their internal circuitry, causing the death signal to instead boost their anti-tumor activity. The tumors' low-sugar environment. Fast-growing ovarian cancer cells churn through the glucose in their environment -- the same energy source engineered T cells need to do their work. Researchers in the Greenberg lab are working to re-engineer the therapeutic T cells to process other sources of energy. Although her current work focuses on ovarian cancer, a particularly difficult-to-treat solid tumor, Anderson hopes the work will shed light on new therapeutic avenues for other solid tumors as well. "If we can solve some of the issues that really plague us with these hard ones, then we can more readily apply them to some of the cancers that have fewer of these hurdles," she said. Research conducted at the University of Adelaide has discovered that bees have much better vision than was previously known, offering new insights into the lives of honey bees, and new opportunities for translating this knowledge into fields such as robot vision. The findings come from "eye tests" given to western honey bees (also known as European honey bees, Apis mellifera) by postdoctoral researcher Dr Elisa Rigosi (Department of Biology, Lund University, Sweden) in the Adelaide Medical School, under the supervision of Dr Steven Wiederman (Adelaide Medical School, University of Adelaide) and Professor David O'Carroll (Department of Biology, Lund University, Sweden). The results of their work are published today in the Nature journal Scientific Reports. Bee vision has been studied ever since the pioneering research of Dr Karl von Frisch in 1914, which reported bees' ability to see colors through a clever set of training experiments. "Today, honey bees are still a fascinating model among scientists, in particular neuroscientists," Dr Rigosi says. "Among other things, honey bees help to answer questions such as: how can a tiny brain of less than a million neurons achieve complex processes, and what are its utmost limits? In the last few decades it has been shown that bees can see and categorize objects and learn concepts through vision, such as the concept of 'symmetric' and 'above and below'. advertisement "But one basic question that has only been partially addressed is: what actually is the visual acuity of the honey bee eye? Just how good is a bee's eyesight?" Dr Wiederman says: "Previous researchers have measured the visual acuity of bees, but most of these experiments have been conducted in the dark. Bright daylight and dark laboratories are two completely different environments, resulting in anatomical and physiological changes in the resolution of the eye. "Photoreceptors in the visual system detect variations in light intensity. There are eight photoreceptors beyond each hexagonal facet of a bee's compound eye, and their eyes are made out of thousands of facets! Naturally, we expected some differences in the quality of bees' eyesight from being tested in brightly lit conditions compared with dim light," he says. Dr Rigosi, Dr Wiederman and Professor O'Carroll set out to answer two specific questions: first, what is the smallest well-defined object that a bee can see? (ie, its object resolution); and second, how far away can a bee see an object, even if it can't see that object clearly? (ie, maximum detectability limit). To do so, the researchers took electrophysiological recordings of the neural responses occurring in single photoreceptors in a bee's eyes. The photoreceptors are detectors of light in the retina, and each time an object passes into the field of vision, it registers a neural response. advertisement Dr Rigosi says: "We found that in the frontal part of the eye, where the resolution is maximized, honey bees can clearly see objects that are as small as 1.9 -- that's approximately the width of your thumb when you stretch your arm out in front of you. "This is 30% better eyesight than has been previously recorded," she says. "In terms of the smallest object a bee can detect, but not clearly, this works out to be about 0.6 -- that's one third of your thumb width at arm's length. This is about one third of what bees can clearly see and five times smaller than what has so far been detected in behavioral experiments. "These new results suggest that bees have the chance to see a potential predator, and thus escape, far earlier than what we thought previously, or perceive landmarks in the environment better than we expected, which is useful for navigation and thus for survival," Dr Rigosi says. Dr Wiederman says this research offers new and useful information about insect vision more broadly as well as for honey bees. "We've shown that the honey bee has higher visual acuity than previously reported. They can resolve finer details than we originally thought, which has important implications in interpreting their responses to a range of cognitive experiments scientists have been conducting with bees for years. "Importantly, these findings could also be useful in our work on designing bio-inspired robotics and robot vision, and for basic research on bee biology," he says. Since most people who hold radical views do not become terrorists, what are the factors that drive some to violent extremism? Is there a connection between mental illness and terrorist involvement? And why do some interrogators resort to torture when the body of evidence shows building rapport with suspects is more effective? These questions and others are addressed in a special issue of American Psychologist, the flagship journal of the American Psychological Association. The articles look at such topics as how individuals become radicalized; how to predict who will become a terrorist; the progression from non-violence to radicalization to terrorism; and the role of community resilience in preventing youth from embracing violent extremism. "Terrorism is one of the most complex social problems of our time," said John G. Horgan, PhD, guest editor of the issue and a psychology professor at Georgia State University. "Efforts to understand terrorism abound in every academic discipline but many questions regarding how to predict and prevent it remain unanswered. There has never been a more pressing need for greater engagement from psychology." Among the articles in the special issue: "Understanding Political Radicalization: The Two-Pyramids Model," by Clark McCauley, PhD, and Sophia Moskalenko, PhD, of Bryn Mawr College. In this article, the authors propose that radicalization to extremist opinions is a different psychological phenomenon than is radicalization to extremist action. They describe an "opinion pyramid," consisting of people who share accelerating levels of extremist ideas, and an "action pyramid" with levels ranging from passivity to legal activism to political violence and terrorism. "The warrant for the two-pyramids model is the observation that 99 percent of those with radical ideas never act," they write. "Conversely, many join in radical action without radical ideas." Programs for countering violent extremism that do not distinguish extreme ideas from extremist actions will needlessly multiply the terrorist threat, they suggest. advertisement "Risk Assessment and the Prevention of Radicalization from Nonviolence Into Terrorism," by Kiran M. Sarma, PhD, National University of Ireland, Galway. Is it possible to identify those who will and will not become involved in terrorism in the future? This question is of central importance to those given the task of assessing the risk posed by individuals who may be on a trajectory toward violence. In this article, Sarma discusses the challenges of conducting risk assessment for terrorism. He describes some of the current tools for screening people who have come to the attention to the authorities as being potentially at risk, and who may be on a trajectory from radical thought to violent behavior. Sarma argues that while risk assessment for terrorism is fraught with both ethical and empirical challenges, progress can be made in the area of human judgment and decision-making and in particular the way that assessors gather, synthesize and make decisions about information. The emphasis, he stresses, should be on structured judgments rather than just adding up scores on lists of "red flag behaviors." "In practice, evaluators consider both the presence of factors and the relevance of risk factors," Sarma writes. "Building Community Resilience to Violent Extremism Through Genuine Partnerships," by B. Heidi Ellis, PhD, Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and Saida Abdi, PhD, Boston Children's Hospital and Boston University School of Social Work. Social connection is at the heart of resilient communities and strategies aimed at preventing youth from embracing violent extremism, according to this article. Acknowledging the enormous controversy surrounding existing initiatives, the authors maintain that healthy partnerships between government agencies and community members can, if done right, provide appropriate early warning systems for the prevention of violent extremism. This may require a paradigm shift, from a traditional top-down to a bottom-up approach, they write. Done wrong, top-down efforts to define and respond to the risk of violent extremism run the risk of undermining the very community assets that contribute to resilience. For instance, an overemphasis on one particular group as vulnerable to violent extremist ideology will lead to stigma and discrimination, which can undermine a positive sense of social identity for members of that group and degrade community resilience, according to the article. "Toward a Psychology of Humiliation in Asymmetric Conflict," by Clark McCauley, PhD, Bryn Mawr College. advertisement This article explores how humiliation (defined as a corrosive combination of shame and anger) is often a key growth factor for terrorist conflicts. Research on humiliation as a psychological construct has barely begun, according to McCauley. "When analysts discuss the role that humiliation plays in warfare, terrorism and genocide, they often speak as though we know what humiliation is and what it does," he writes. "But the fact is that humiliation will have to be better understood before it can help us understand intergroup violence." Research on humiliation is equally vital for understanding government reactions to terrorism -- something that has been little studied by those interested in terrorism, he writes. "Perhaps the most startling implication of this analysis is that it is not only the weak who can be humiliated," he adds. "The powerful can be humiliated by the weak if -- as is often the case in terrorist attacks -- the government targeted is unable to retaliate directly against the perpetrators." "There and Back Again: The Study of Mental Disorder and Terrorist Involvement," by Paul Gill, PhD, and Emily Corner, University College London. Summarizing the last 40 years of research on the connection between mental disorders and terrorist involvement, the authors conclude there is no common psychological profile for a terrorist. Rather, the evidence suggests that some types of terrorists may be more likely to possess certain psychological traits compared with the general population and that those terrorist subsamples with high rates of mental health disorders still fall below 50 percent. No single mental health disorder appears to be a predictor of terrorist involvement. They suggest that the experience of mental health disorders may be just one of many risk factors that push and pull an individual into terrorist activity. "Revenge Versus Rapport: Interrogation, Terrorism, and Torture," by Laurence Alison, PhD, and Emily Alison, PhD, University of Liverpool. The idea that generating helplessness, dread and fear would be a reliable strategy for eliciting information runs counter to the research, according to this article. Tactics such as sleep deprivation, exposure to heat and cold and stress positions actually impair recall, damaging the value of any information generated, the authors write. So why is torture still used? "At least part of the reason why torture continues to emerge may lie in our human nature to accept that it is only used when there is no alternative, and it appears to be for the greater good," they write. Rapport building, on the other hand, appears to be a more effective tactic, but has been both difficult to define and to measure. The authors developed a technique for analyzing audio and video interrogation footage to measure the effectiveness of interrogation techniques, and they applied it to a large data set of terrorist interrogations. They found that, among many other interpersonal skills, an adaptive authoritative manner on the part of the interviewer (characterized by being in charge, setting the agenda and advising) yielded more information that than a maladaptive manner (characterized by being demanding, dogmatic, pedantic and rigid). In their study published in Lithosphere this week, James Kessler and colleagues examine the geology of a scientific borehole drilled into the Snake River Plain, Idaho, USA, to investigate the potential for geothermal energy at depth. The site discussed in this paper is on the Mountain Home Air Force Base, where a drillhole in 1984 indicated that geothermal fluids were present at about 1.8 km depth. With ARRA funding for new energy research and a grant from the International Continental Drilling Program, Kessler and colleagues drilled three 2-km-deep holes in the region. The Snake River Plain is the track of the Yellowstone Hotspot, and consists of rhyolite and basalt. Volcanic rocks near Yellowstone are quite young, whereas at Mountain Home, Idaho, the rocks are three to five million years old. Despite the abundant evidence for heat, the Snake River Plain does not produce geothermal energy due to a cool water aquifer present in the upper 500 m of the rocks. The work reported in this paper is on the Mountain Home site, where waters of about 150 C were encounter at 1745 m depth. Kessler and colleagues report on the geology of the basaltic rocks of the borehole, including determining the distribution of the basalts, the presence of faults and fractures at depth, and evidence for older hydrothermal interactions. They also worked with geophysicists at the University of Alberta to determine the stresses at depth in the site. When holes penetrate rocks at depth, characteristic fractures form and their orientations can be used to determine the orientations of the stresses. The team reports that the maximum horizontal stresses here are at N 45E, which suggests a complex geology at depth that might contribute to the localization of the geothermal fluids. Kessler and colleagues posit that these stresses are similar to the stresses observed in northern Nevada. Another high point of this work is that this reports the results of James Kessler's Ph.D. work; it also included two undergraduates, Mikaela Pulsipher and Fallon Rowe, and master's student Jerome Varriale as co-authors. Imagine taking pictures of thousands of snowflakes from three different angles with a specialized instrument installed at an altitude of 2,500 meters. Then imagine using 3,500 of these pictures to manually train an algorithm to recognize six different classes of snowflakes. And, finally, imagine using this algorithm to classify the snowflakes in the millions of remaining pictures into those six classes at breakneck speed. That's exactly what researchers at EPFL's Environmental Remote Sensing Laboratory (LTE) did, in a project spearheaded by Alexis Berne. Their pioneering approach was featured in the latest issue of Atmospheric Measurement Techniques. "The scientific community has been trying to improve precipitation measurement and forecast for over 50 years. We now have a pretty good understanding of the mechanisms involved in rain," says Berne. "But snow is a lot more complicated. Many factors -- like the shape, geometry and electromagnetic properties of individual snowflakes -- affect how snow crystals reflect signals back to weather radars, making our task much harder. And we still don't have a good grasp of the equivalent liquid water content of snowflakes. Our goal with this study was to better understand exactly what's falling when it snows, so that we can eventually improve snowfall forecast at high altitudes." Berne also sees other applications for the team's findings, like a more accurate estimation of water equivalent stored in the snowpack for irrigation and hydropower. Identifying snowflakes and their degree of riming To reach their goal, the researchers acquired a Multi-Angle Snowflake Camera (MASC)- a sophisticated instrument composed by three synchronized cameras that simultaneously take high resolution (up to 35-micron) pictures of snowflakes as they pass through a metallic ring. In collaboration with the Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology MeteoSwiss and the Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research, they installed the MASC at a site near Davos, at an altitude of 2,500 meters, where it took pictures for an entire winter and at a site in coastal Antarctica, where it took pictures for an entire austral summer. They then ran their algorithm to classify the snowflake images into six main classes based on existing classification: planar crystals, columnar crystals, graupels, aggregates, combination of column and planar crystals, and small particles. The researchers used the pictures taken by the MASC to also determine the degree of riming of each snowflake based on its surface roughness (image 3). "Snowflakes change shape as they fall down the atmosphere -- especially through clouds," says Berne. "Some of them gather frost and become more or less rimed snow crystals [#3-5 in the image], while others remain pristin and have a very low riming index." Riming is important because it is the process that turns cloud water droplets into precipitation in the form of ice -- in other words, snow. advertisement Comparing Alpine and Antarctic snowflakes The next step was to compare the results obtained from the pictures taken near Davos in the Swiss Alps with those taken in Adelie Land on the coast of Antarctica. That revealed significant differences in how often every snowflake family appeared. Most of the snowflakes in the Alps are aggregates (49%), followed by small particles and graupels. However, in Antarctica, the majority were small particles (54%), followed by aggregates and graupels. According to Berne, these differences can be explained. "The fierce Antarctic winds continually erode the snowpack and result in the formation of tiny snow particles. What's more, Antarctic snowflakes have much less riming than Alpine snowflakes because the Antarctic air is a lot drier." Another of the researchers' findings that will perhaps disappoint purists is that the 'stellar dendrite' type of snowflake -- the one we typically associate with the 'ideal' snowflake -- turned out to be rare at both sites, making up only 10% of snowflakes in the Alps and 5% of snowflakes in Antarctica. Multi-instrumental approach To tackle the complexity of the multiple processes involved, scientists usually rely on several different instruments when making meteorological measurements and weather forecasts. The results obtained by Berne's team will therefore provide even more insights when combined with other instruments, such as weather radars, which collect data on clouds and precipitation across all layers of the atmosphere. As part of the international Solid Precipitation Intercomparison Experiment (SPICE), MeteoSwiss set up a rain gauge next to the MASC at the Davos site. The data have not been yet fully analyzed, but by comparing the type of snowflakes photographed by the MASC with the amount of water collected over a given period, the team will be able to test various hypotheses on snowflake liquid water content, which remains an enigma for atmospheric scientists. A measurement campaign during the 2018 Winter Olympics To bolster their findings, Berne's team needs to gather more data. They sent their MASC back to Antarctica for another data-collecting round this year; it will then head to the mountains of South Korea in 2018 for the Winter Olympics which will take place in Pyeongchang. "The more data we have, the more reliable our calculations will be," says Berne. This research project combines fundamental and applied research. It involves three scientists: Alexis Berne and Christophe Praz from EPFL's Environmental Remote Sensing Laboratory and Yves-Alain Roulet from MeteoSwiss (the Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology). MeteoSwiss has been working with EPFL for several years to improve its precipitation estimates and its numerical weather prediction model. The Tibetan Plateau in China experiences the strongest monsoon system on Earth, with powerful winds -- and accompanying intense rains in the summer months -- caused by a complex system of global air circulation patterns and differences in surface temperatures between land and oceans. These extreme weather patterns make this area an ideal location for climate scientists to study the delicate interconnected web of the global climate system. Carmala Garzione, a professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Rochester, and Junsheng Nie, a visiting research associate at the University, surveyed sediment samples from the northern Tibetan Plateau's Qaidam Basin and were able to construct paleoclimate cycle records from the late Miocene epoch of Earth's history, which lasted from approximately 11 to 5.3 million years ago. They recently published their findings in Science Advances. Reconstructing past climate records can help scientists determine both natural patterns and the ways in which future glacial events and greenhouse gas emissions may affect global systems. Based on previous research on ice core, marine, and sediment records, researchers determined that for the past 800,000 years, Northern Hemisphere ice ages -- in which vast areas of North America, Europe, and Asia are covered with thick sheets of ice -- occurred about every 100,000 years. Prior to that period, ice ages occurred more frequently, on cycles of 41,000 years, and scientists believed this was the norm. Using the sediment samples from the Qaidam Basin, Nie and Garzione show that the East Asian monsoon patterns in the late Miocene also follow similar 100,000 year cycles, with stronger monsoons peaking at 100,000 years and diminishing in the periods in between. This reveals a greater than 6 million earlier onset of these 100,000 year cycles than was previously documented. advertisement "People have been thinking that the 100,000 year cycle was a later Quaternary [present-day] climate anomaly," Nie says. "But from our results, we see that it's not an anomaly, it was present many years before." Several factors affect these cycles, but they are ultimately determined by orbital forcing -- the Sun's radiation received by Earth due to variations in Earth's orbit in the solar system. There are three types of variations that occur simultaneously, known as the Milankovitch Cycles: Eccentricity: How Earth rotates around the Sun -- the shape of Earth's orbit gradually changes from being more oval to more round over a period of 100,000 years. Axial tilt: Earth tilts toward the Sun at an angle that changes from an approximate 22-degree tilt to a 24.5-degree tilt over a period of 41,000 years. Precession of equinox: Earth slowly wobbles as it spins, much like a toy top, while at the same time, Earth's rotational axis -- the line from the north to south poles -- rotates. The interaction of these two processes results in cyclical movement of equinoxes over a period of approximately 23,000 years. "Each of these factors influences incoming solar radiation and how Earth is absorbing heat," Garzione says. Mysteries remain because eccentricity is the weakest cycle, so should logically not be the dominant cycle for climatic events. It is not only sunlight that plays a role in these cycles, but the influence of glaciers and atmospheric carbon dioxide. For the past one million years, the waxing and waning of Northern Hemisphere ice sheets -- mainly those in Canada -- have controlled the climate cycles, by affecting ocean currents, temperatures, and wind patterns. Southern Hemisphere ice in Antarctica has remained relatively fixed, without any major glacial melting to catalyze advances and retreats. During the late Miocene, this was the opposite, with ice in Antarctica in the Southern Hemisphere waxing and waning. Nie and Garzione suggest that the fluctuating Antarctic ice sheet in the late Miocene, at a time when there was minimal ice in the Northern Hemisphere, exerted the dominant control on the 100,000 year cycles observed in the Qaidam Basin record. "If one hemisphere sees major advances and retreats in ice sheets, that's when we get into this pattern of 100,000 year cycles dominating," Garzione says. "The question is, will we push carbon dioxide high enough in the future that the Northern Hemisphere remains ice free and the advances and retreats begin again with the Southern Hemisphere ice sheets." If so, the Southern Hemisphere ice sheets may once again exert dominant influence on climate cycles. A new study of Peruvian frogs living at a wide variety of elevations -- from the Amazon floodplain to high Andes peaks -- lends support to the idea that lowland amphibians are at higher risk from future climate warming. That's because the lowland creatures already live near the maximum temperatures they can tolerate, while high-elevation amphibians might be more buffered from increased temperatures, according to a study by University of Michigan ecologist Rudolf von May and his colleagues published online April 6 in the journal Ecology and Evolution. Previous studies have suggested that lowland reptiles and amphibians are especially vulnerable to climate warming. But in most cases, those conclusions were based on computer modeling work that incorporated a limited amount of field data. "Understanding how species respond to climatic variation is critical for conserving species in future climatic conditions. Yet for most groups of organisms distributed in tropical areas, data about species' critical thermal limits are limited," said von May, a postdoctoral researcher in the U-M Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. "I think the contribution of our study is that it focuses on a group of closely related frog species distributed along a single montane gradient and that it includes empirical data on species' tolerance to heat and cold, as well as air temperatures measured along the same gradient." In the process of conducting the study, which involved more than two years of fieldwork, von May and his colleagues identified three previously unknown frog species. Those newly discovered species will be described separately in a series of journal articles. advertisement The elevational-gradient study focused on the thermal ecology and evolution of 22 species of land-breeding frogs, which are also known as terrestrial-breeding frogs, in southern Peru's Manu National Park and surrounding areas. Sampled elevations ranged from the Amazon River floodplain, at 820 feet above sea level, to 12,000-foot Andes Mountains peaks. The region in and around Manu National Park is known for long-held records of biodiversity including more than 1,000 species of birds -- about 10 percent of the world's bird species -- and more than 1,200 species of butterflies. In addition, the park contains an estimated 2.2 percent of the world's amphibians and 1.5 percent of its reptiles. While most frogs lay eggs in water, terrestrial-breeding frogs use a specialized reproductive mode called direct development: A clutch of embryos hatch directly into froglets; there are no free-living tadpoles. Terrestrial-breeding frogs form a diverse group that can exploit a wide variety of habitats, as long as those locations contain sufficient moisture. In the study, the researchers looked at how closely related frog species differ in their elevational distribution and their tolerance to heat and cold in a region of the tropical Andes where temperature increase is predicted to be detrimental for most species. "These measurements were taken in order to determine whether tropical frogs could take the heat -- or cold -- predicted for tropical regions as a result of climate change," von May said. The researchers found that the frogs' tolerance to heat varied from 77 degrees Fahrenheit to 95 degrees and that, as expected, highland species tolerated much lower temperatures than lowland species. Frogs living in high-elevation grasslands tolerated near-freezing temperatures, which they experience during the dry season, as well as moderately high temperatures, which they may experience during sunny days. When considering the temperature of the microhabitats in which the frogs live, the results suggest tropical lowland species live close to their thermal limit. Amphibians living at high elevation might be more buffered from future temperature increases because the highest temperatures they can tolerate are farther away from the maximum temperatures that they regularly experience in the wild. Von May is the first author of the Ecology and Evolution paper, "Divergence of thermal physiological traits in terrestrial breeding frogs along a tropical elevational gradient." Birds show an amazing diversity in plumage colour and patterning. But what are the genetic mechanisms creating such patterns? In a new study published today in PLOS Genetics, Swedish and French researchers report that two independent mutations are required to explain the development of the sex-linked barring pattern in chicken. Both mutations affect the function of CDKN2A, a tumour suppressor gene associated with melanoma in humans. Research in pigmentation biology has made major advances the last 20 years in identifying genes controlling variation in pigmentation in mammals and birds. However, the most challenging question is still how colour patterns are genetically controlled. Birds are outstanding as regards the diversity and complexity in colour patterning. The study published today has revealed the genetic basis for the striped feather characteristic of sex-linked barring. One example of this fascinating plumage colour is the French breed Coucou de Rennes. The name refers to the fact that this plumage colour resembles the barring patterns present in the common cuckoo (Cuculus canorus). The sex-linked barring locus is on the Z chromosome. (In chickens as well as in other birds the male has chromosomes ZZ while females have ZW). "Our data show that sex-linked barring is caused by two independent mutations that act together. One is a regulatory mutation that increases the expression of CDKN2A. The other changes the protein sequence and makes the protein less functionally active. We are sure that both mutations contribute to the sex-linked barring pattern because we have also studied chicken that only carry the regulatory mutation and they show a very pale plumage with only weak dark stripes. Thus, this represents an evolutionary process in which the regulatory mutation occurred first followed by the mutation affecting the protein structure. The combined effect of the two mutations causes an even more appealing phenotype for the human eye," says Leif Andersson, Uppsala University, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and Texas A&M University, who led the study. "The most important reason for the extensive colour variation among our domestic animals is that we appreciate this diversity, as long as the mutations underlying the variation are not causing health issues for the animals," says Leif Andersson. The study illustrates how useful domestic animals are as models for evolutionary processes in nature. Leif Andersson argues that a similar evolution of gene variants comprising multiple genetic changes affecting the function of a single gene is the rule rather than the exception in natural populations. CDKN2A is a well-studied tumour suppressor gene that takes part in the regulation of cell division and cell survival. Mutations that inactivate CDKN2A are the most common explanation for familiar forms of melanomas in humans. (However, the great majority of melanoma cases are not associated with a strong genetic risk factor.) "The gene variant underlying sex-linked barring has an opposite effect compared with the mutations causing melanoma in humans. Sex-linked barring is associated with a gene variant that makes CDKN2A more active leading to a cyclic deficit of pigment cells causing the white stripes during the development of an individual feather. It appears that pigment cells are particularly susceptible to changes in the function of CDKN2A as inactivating mutations in humans are associated with melanoma but rarely other cancer forms and activating mutations cause sex-linked barring in chickens but no other side effects are known," says Doreen Schwochow Thalmann, PhD student and first author of the paper. "It is fascinating that a large proportion of chickens used for egg and meat production around the world carry these mutations in a tumour suppressor gene. An example of such a breed is White Leghorn which is one of the most prominent breeds used for egg production, but sex-linked barring is not apparent in these breeds because they also carry the dominant white colour that eliminates all pigment production and masks the effect of sex-linked barring," says Leif Andersson. 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To help you find what you are looking for: Enter Search Term(s): Still cant find what youre looking for? Send us a message using our contact us form. To report a broken link or other problems with the website, please include the URL. Thank you for visiting state.gov. India has still not signed a contract for desperately needed new ATGMs (anti-tank guided missiles). The army keeps complaining about this especially since procurement bureaucrats selected the Israeli Spike ATGM in 2014 and agreed to terms of the $525 million deal (for 8,356 Spike ATGMs and 320 control units.) The main competitor for this contract was the American Javelin missile which was rejected as being too expensive. This contract was almost signed 18 months earlier in 2013 but was withdrawn at the last moment when it was suspected that some bribery was involved. All this was very discouraging for troops who have been demanding a modern ATGM for over a decade. What apparently pushed the contract towards signing recently was a planned trip by the new India prime minister to Israel in June and the potential embarrassment if he showed up with another procurement disaster still unresolved. This ATGM disaster goes back a long way and demonstrates a major flaw in the Indian armed forces. After several years of testing and negotiation, in early 2013 the Indian Army decided on a supplier for a new ATGM for its 356 infantry battalions. The deal was about to be awarded to an Israeli firm when the entire process was cancelled over fears that corruption may have been involved. No one was accused of taking a bribe but so much of that had occurred in India that the politicians overruled the generals and ordered them to run the search again and come up with at least two finalists not tainted by any corruption. The politicians were under a lot of pressure to curb corruption, and this move made it look like someone was making an effort. The selection process was repeated and the results were the same. This time the contract went through, or so everyone thought. Another example was how the Indian army had originally wanted to buy the Javelin and the Americans were willing to allow production to take place in India. That deal fell apart because Indian procurement officials were unwilling to guarantee that U.S. technology would not be stolen. Israel pitched its similar Spike missile and did not consider potential technology theft to be a deal breaker. The Indian Army has grown despondent as new delays emerged. The ground forces need a replacement for their 1970s era Milan ATGMs. India has been building the French designed Milans since the 1980s but there had long been calls to replace it with a more modern design. There was also growing pressure to use Indian designed weapons. In the 1990s India decided to develop their own ATGM. Despite a two decade effort to develop an effective ATGM to replace Milan, the Indians came up empty. The Milan design was updated several times since it first appeared in 1972 but there are several other more recent designs that are more effective and army leaders wanted one of these. The first choice was Javelin. Introduced in 2002, it weighs 22.3 kg (49 pounds, with disposable launch tube and battery/seeker coolant unit) and is fired from a 6.4 kg (14 pound) CLU (command launch unit). The CLU contains a 4x day sight and a 9x heat sensing night sight. The missile has a tandem (two warheads, to blast through reactive armor) that can hit a target straight on or from the top. This latter capability enables the Javelin to use its 8.2 kg (18 pound) warhead to destroy any existing tank (including the U.S. M1). Maximum range is 2,500 meters. Best of all, the seeker on the missile is "fire and forget." That is, once the operator gets the target in the CLU crosshairs and fires the missile, the computer and seeker in the missile warhead memorizes the target and homes in on it. The infantry loves this because it allows them to take cover once the missile is fired and shows the enemy where they are. The Israeli missile closest to the Javelin was the Spike MR. This missile, in a container, weighs 14 kg (30.8 pounds), while the CLU (with thermal sight and battery) weighs 12.8 kg (28.3 pounds). Like Javelin, Spike MR has a range of 2,500 meters and is "fire and forget." France recently went looking for a MILAN replacement and the two finalists were Javelin and Spike MR. Javelin won. The result would have been the same in India were it not for inability to reach an agreement on technology transfer. Since the 1970s some 30,000 Milans have been produced in India, under license from European firm MBDA. India has also produced nearly 3,000 launchers. India believes that against Pakistan (the enemy that is most likely to use a lot of armored vehicles against India) Milan can still get the job done. But more modern ATGMs get the job done better and at the loss of fewer Indian infantrymen. This is a popular attitude, and the army was not happy with all the delays in selecting a new ATGM. Then there is China, which has more modern tanks and is actively developing new armored vehicles. Against China Milan had outlived its usefulness and China is the principal weapons supplier to Pakistan. The basic Milan is a 1.2 meter long, 125mm diameter, 7.1 kg (16 pound) missile. It has a minimum range of 400 meters and maximum range of 2,000 meters. At max range the missile takes about 13 seconds to reach its target. The missile is guided to the target by the operator via a thin wire. The launcher weighs 21 kg (46 pounds). The missile can penetrate about a meter of armor, making it effective against all but the most modern tanks (M-1, Challenger, Leopard II). That means Milan will still destroy all the tanks Pakistan currently has aimed at India. The Indians pay about $30,000 per Milan missile and have had good success with them in combat. The Javelins cost more than twice as much but are much more effective. Since the 1970s, over 350,000 Milan missiles and 30,000 launchers have been built worldwide. However the more modern ATGMs are wireless and require much less effort on the part of the operator. The main problems with the Milan are time in flight and the need for operator guidance. Since ATGMs first saw action three decades ago, operators quickly discovered that in the time it took (up to 15 seconds) for the missile to reach its target, enemy troops would often shower them with machine-gun fire and force the ATGM operator to miss the target. The most recent ATGM designs sought to deal with that. Another Javelin feature is "soft launch", where the missile is popped out of the launch tube by a small explosive charge, small enough to allow the Javelin to be fired from inside a building. Once the missile is about eight meters out, the main rocket motor ignites. The minimum range is, however, 75 meters. It takes about 20 seconds to reload a CLU after a missile has been fired, while Spike MR needs only 15 seconds. Indian troops got a chance to fire Javelins in 2010 and were very impressed. Not just because of its ease of use and accuracy but because the missile is combat proven and is known to be very effective at non-vehicle targets. The CLU also performs well as a night vision device, which is how many American troops used it in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Spike was tested as well and was considered a satisfactory alternative to the Javelin. India already has a lot of Israeli military gear and Indian users are pleased with it. There have been nearly a hundred terrorism (Islamic or tribal) related deaths so far in 2017. Islamic terrorist violence was up nearly 50 percent (to 257 clashes) in 2016 for Mali and its neighbors Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast and Niger. Yet the violence does not appear to be continuing its growth. So far in 2017 the incidence of Islamic terrorist violence is about the same in these countries. The local Islamic terror groups have responded by forming JNIM (Jamaah Nusrah al Islam wal Muslimin, or Group for the support of Islam and Moslems). In part this is a reaction to the growing threat from ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) which is hostile to everyone who is not ISIL and will attack or recruit from the JNIM members AQIM (Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb), Ansar Dine, FLM (Macina Liberation Front), and al Mourabitoun. The major player in this new alliance is AQIM which was formed in 2007 from several of the 1990s era Algerian groups. AQIM now operates throughout northern and west-central Africa. Because AQIM leadership still contains a lot of Algerians the Algerian government has been helpful to African nations where AQIM is operating. AQIM now spends most of its time smuggling drugs, people and whatever else pays (like kidnapping Westerners). AQIM carries out or sponsors (with money, weapons and advice) smaller groups to carry out attacks and share the credit. AQIM likes to stay in the headlines but concentrates on staying solvent. Two of the most active AQIM affiliates are in Mali, mainly because the government there has not yet resolved the ethnic feuds that have been a problem since the nation was formed in 1960. The oldest AQIM affiliate in Mali is Ansar Dine which was formed in the north near Timbuktu (because many of its leaders and members came from the area). Ansar Dine was unique in that it was the only Islamic terrorist group from Mali and was formed in 2012 by Tuareg Islamic radicals who were formerly secular rebels. Ansar Dine always saw itself as the only Malian group in AQIM, which many Malians consider a bunch of gangsters, dependent on its relationship with drug gangs (al Qaeda moves the drugs north to the Mediterranean coast) and kidnappers (who hold Europeans for multi-million dollar ransoms). All this cash gave AQIM a lot of power, both to buy weapons and hire locals. After France chased most Islamic terrorists out of the north in 2013 Ansar Dine became the main AQIM representative in Mali because it was not considered foreign and thus able to survive among kinsmen. In central Mali the FLM (Macina Liberation Front) was created in 2015 with the help, and example, of Ansar Dine. FLM is composed mostly of young Fulani men. The Fulani tribes of central Mali are producing a growing number of recruits for Islamic terrorists. FLM openly identifies with the Fulani (Macina are the local branch of the Fulani). FLM became active in early 2015 and since then has claimed responsibility for a growing number of attacks. It started out with calls for Fulani people to live according to strict Islamic rules. That in turn led to violence against tribal and village leaders who opposed this. That escalated to attacks on businesses and government facilities. FLM considers Ansar Dine their friend and ally mainly because Ansar Dine was inspired by al Qaeda but was always composed of Malians, mainly Tuareg, northern Arabs and some Fulani. Although most Malians are Moslem few want anything to do with Islamic terrorism. But the Fulani have always seen themselves as a people apart, an attitude common with the nomadic peoples from the Sahel (the semi-desert area between the Sahara and the much greener areas to the south). That makes joining FLM more attractive to young men, especially since the Fulani have also been involved with smuggling for a long time and that is seen as an acceptable profession. Another thing that sets the Fulani apart is that still think of themselves as nomadic and thus dont really believe in borders. Al Mourabitoun was formed in 2012 by Mokhtar Belmokhtar as a breakaway AQIM faction. Belmokhtar has survived numerous attempts to kill him and has a reputation for being elusive and effective at planning and carrying out major attacks. Belmokhtar is elusive within AQIM as well. He split from the organization in 2012 but rejoined during 2014 without disbanding Al Mourabitoun which he still leads. Since 2012 al Mourabitoun has been using bases in southern Libya and sometimes in northern Mali and Niger as well. The U.S. is offering a $5 million reward for information that would lead to the death or capture of Belmokhtar. One thing all JNIM members have in common is suffering losses as personnel defect to ISIL. This has become a growing problem since 2015. This sort of thing is happening all over the Islamic world as the more fanatic Islamic terrorists seek to identify with what appears to be the most successful (or at least most violent and media savvy) Islamic terrorist group at the moment. Given the many setbacks ISIL has suffered in the last year and small number now active in North Africa the threat to JNIM has diminished but not disappeared. ISIL attempted to establish a major base in Libya but was crushed by local groups in mid-2016 and the surviving ISIL members were apparently ordered to return home and seek to maintain an ISIL presence there. That means some of these Libya survivors are arriving in Mali and adjacent states. Even with that ISIL will apparently remain a minor threat to JNIM. ISIL and JNIM will continue trying to outdo each other in gaining media attention. This is done by launching attacks on Westerners, especially hotels where foreign journalists live. That guarantees massive headlines and lots of young Moslem men, especially in the West, encouraged to become active supporters. Solutions and Problems Since 2012 increasingly effective French-led counter-terror efforts in Mali and adjacent areas (actually just Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad and Burkina Faso) have kept Islamic terrorists weak and disorganized. The local governments, especially the one in Mali, have been particularly inept in dealing with Islamic terrorist groups and is dependent on foreign help. This is largely because Mali has worse corruption and ethnic disputes than the neighbors. For example the dry (desert and semi-desert) north contains more than half of the territory but only about 12 percent of Mali's 15 million people. In the southern third of Mali, where 88 percent of Malians live the population is quite different from the northerners. While most Malians are Moslem there are some sharp ethnic and tribal differences. The Tuareg are the majority in the north and are North African while over 80 percent of Malians are various black African tribes. Most Malians live south of the Niger River (the Nile of West Africa) in areas that are more prosperous because they have more water. The hostility between the army (almost entirely composed of black Africans from the south) and the Tuareg (a lighter skinned group related to Arabs and ancient Egyptians) goes back a long time. Before 2012 the rebellious Tuareg around Timbuktu tried something different and adopted Islamic terrorism as a promising tool to help their fight for autonomy or a separate Tuareg state. That has often failed in the past because the Tuareg have been unable to unite. Islamic radicalism has not solved that problem either. Islamic radicalism didnt work but it did encourage more violence. Until the French arrived in the 19th century and over the next 68 years created (for administrative purposes) a united "Mali", the black Africans in the south (along the Niger River) prospered and generally ignored the Tuareg in the desert north. But after the French left in 1960, and Mali became independent, the more populous south was forced to deal with the Tuareg dominated north they now owned and were not willing to give up. This has not worked out well for either side and JNIM is one result. Even among the black majority there are some fatal divisions. In central Mali (near the junction of the Niger and Bani rivers) violence between Peul (Fulani) and Bambara tribesmen has gotten worse in 2017. For example in February some Bambara attacked a Peul village and killed at least 30 people and wounded many more. More than 500 villagers fled their homes to avoid the violence. That violence has continued and so far this year has forced over 5,000 people from their homes. This tribal feuding has been going on for years but got worse since 2015 when the Peul became widely known as a source of recruits for Islamic terrorist groups and for generally supporting AQIM. The more numerous Bambara (who tend to be pro-government) live north of the Niger and are about a third of the Mali population. The Fulani (who tend to be more rebellious) are largely from south of the Niger. This is not just a Mali problem as Nigeria complains that armed Fulani herders from Mali have showed up in northeast Nigeria and joined local Islamic terrorist groups. All this ethnic and religious tensions has led to an increase in the number of families that obtain firearms to defend themselves. More AK-47s are showing up and this is the result of local traders responding to more requests for such weapons. The traders can obtain these weapons during their regular trips to Mauritania and Algeria and use bribes to help get the weapons across the border. This adds to the cost of the AK-47 (which used to go for under $100 in the 1990s) but locals are willing to pay $500 or more to get one. April 4, 2017: A court indicted four suspects in a February 8 kidnapping of catholic nun Gloria Cecilia Argoti. The four men being prosecuted were known to the kidnapped nun, who is still being held somewhere. The kidnapping occurred in the south (300 kilometers east of the capital near the Burkina Faso border) when four armed men kidnapped a Catholic nun (from Colombia) who provided health care from a clinic in a parish compound. At first it was feared the kidnappers were Islamic terrorists, who prefer to attack non-Moslems (especially clergy) and kidnap foreigners. The four men claimed to be Islamic terrorists. Police concluded (based on testimony of the other three nuns in the compound) that the attackers were probably just common criminals. The other nuns were not killed by the armed men but rather locked up in a closet as the compound was looted of all valuables and the attackers left with the one nun. The getaway car was later found abandoned. Police soon arrested at least twenty people in the area, killing one of them in the process. There has not yet been a ransom demand and it is feared that the criminals plan to sell their captive to Islamic terrorists, who often buy such captives from criminals. Thats because the criminals dont want the long term problems with police because they made the country look bad by kidnapping a foreigner. The Islamic terrorists, on the other hand, seek that kind of attention and generally can obtain a much higher ransom, or die trying. March 31, 2017: Down south parliament approved extending the state of emergency another ten days. This comes at the end of an eight month extension. The state of emergency has been in force since November 2015 and makes it illegal for crowds to assemble and demonstrations to take place without permission. The security forces can ignore some legal procedures when making arrests and holding people in custody. The state of emergency was first enacted, for ten days at a time, after the November 2015 terror attack but later extensions were longer. Before 2015 a previoust state of emergency ended in July 2013. March 25, 2017: In the north the main Tuareg factions refuse to attend a government conference next week to discuss how to implement the 2015 peace deal worked out with the Tuareg but not yet agreed to by everyone. The boycott is an effort to force the government to include some more Tuareg factions in the deal. March 13, 2017: In the north (near Timbuktu) French troops arrested eight AQIM members. Some 600 such arrests have taken place in the north since 2013 and most of them involved AQIM members. This includes those AQIM men smuggling drugs or other contraband north. Elsewhere in the north (near the Niger border) two soldiers were killed along with two civilians when Islamic terrorists attacked a village market in Fafa. The attackers fled after the initial gun battle. March 6, 2017: In the north (Timbuktu) local Tuareg militiamen surrounded government buildings and prevented southern officials from reestablishing government operations. The militias insist that should not happen until everyone agrees to the 2015 peace deal. March 5, 2017: In Central Mali near the Burkina Faso border Islamic terrorists attacked the Boulikessi army base, killing 11 soldiers and wounding five. March 2, 2017: A new Islamic terrorist coalition was announced. JNIM includes AQIM, Ansar Dine, FLM, and al Mourabitoun. The Syrian government is accused of using nerve gas in a recent attacks on a rebel village in Idlib province. This would be a clear violation of the 2013 Russian brokered deal where Syria surrendered all its chemical weapons in return for no foreign intervention (as the U.S. has promised) because chemical weapons were used. An August 21 2013 attack used nerve gas to kill over 1,400 people in a rebel controlled village outside Damascus. The evidence was overwhelming for the 2013 attack and this latest one in Idlib is equally incriminating. This time the United States quickly retaliated by launching sixty cruise missiles (from two warships in the Mediterranean) at the Syrian Shayrat air base in Homs province. Most of the Syrian air strikes in northern Syria are flown out of Shayat, which is now inoperable. Russia and Iran, the two major allies of the Assads, are under pressure to make a suitable response. Initially both nations simply condemned this violation of Syrian sovereignty and warned of serious consequences. This could be serious, or not. Iran has been calling for the destruction of the United States (and Israel) since the 1980s but so far, aside from a few terror attacks, its been mostly talk. Russia has become more hostile to the United States since a new government took power in 1999 and revived the old Cold War attitude that the Americans were out to destroy Russia in any number of devious ways and were responsible for most of the internal and external problems Russia faced. As with Iran, this attitude had more to do with local politics (keeping an unpopular ruler in power) than with reality. The blame America angle only works if you can convince your people that the U.S. will back off if confronted. Thats what happened when Iran (in 2012) and Russia (in 2016) openly intervened to support the Assads. The Russians were quite proud of themselves for how they get the Americans to back down in 2013 in the aftermath of the Assads using nerve gas. Neither Russia nor Iran want outright war with the United States, even though Russia has threatened to use nukes against the United States to discourage too much military support for Ukraine (which Russia is trying to annex parts of). Russia may be able to get some support (in forcing the Americans to back off) by appealing to the NATO countries that criticized the recent American cruise missile attack. In other words Russia and Iran dont have any good options here. Meanwhile Turkey, which has also been hostile to the United States since 2000, supported the American air strike, if only because the nerve gas attack took place about a hundred kilometers from the Turkish border and the Turks wont miss the Assads, who have caused problems for Turkey in the past and were considered unreliable. Turkey is actively helping care for the casualties of the nerve gas attack. Turkey also wants to prevent another wave of Syrian refugees trying to get into Turkey. In the last few weeks over 50,000 of these refugees returned to areas in northern Syria that Turkish and rebel troops had liberated from ISIL or Assad control. Chemical Warfare In Syria After the 2013 agreement there were still chemical weapon attacks in Iraq and Syria and the Assad government was always suspected of carrying out some of them but there was no conclusive proof. In 2015 it was believed that 69 attacks occurred and about the same number in 2016. Most of these attacks used toxic industrial chemicals (usually chlorine) rather than stuff designed to be a weapon (like mustard or nerve gas). It is believed that the Syrian Army used mustard gas in July 2015 but there was not enough proof that Syria had made that particular attack. Most of the incidents where Syrian artillery or aircraft were suspected of using chemical weapons were in rebel territory where collecting timely and convincing evidence was difficult. Most of the other attacks were apparently the work of ISIL, which appears to have used mustard gas during August 2016. The story going around was that this chemical weapon was part of some secret supply of mustard gas that the Assad government did not surrender and that ISIL captured. It is possible that someone stole some Syrian chemical weapons in 2013 and later sold it ISIL or even to someone who got it back to the Assads. Back then the UN was having a hard time getting some rebel factions to allow UN chemical weapons destruction teams to reach bases where some of these weapons were stored. In 2013 Syria appeared to have had 700 tons of nerve gas (sarin) and 300 tons of mustard gas and agreed to have them destroyed by the UN. This was completed by June 2014. Nerve gas was first used in combat during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88) and Syrian patron Iran was believed to have let the Syrians know details of how nerve gas worked in combat. In 2013 the Assads knew that once they defeated the rebels they could rebuild the plants that manufacture the nerve and mustard gas and rebuild their pre-rebellion stocks in a few years. It was believed that the Assads would not hold onto a secret stash of mustard and sarin as using it would get them in even more trouble. It is doubtful that the Assads would sell any secret stash because it would likely be used against them. But in late 2013 there were suspicions that some of the Assad chemical weapons were not accounted for. The Americans doubt that ISIL is having any success in manufacturing chemical weapons. It was already known that ISIL was creating primitive chemical weapons by filling 120mm mortar shells with potentially lethal industrial chemicals (like chlorine or grain fumigant). Chemicals like this can be lethal to humans in large quantities, but when used in a mortar shell or as part of a vehicle bomb the amounts victims might be exposed to only have temporary effects ranging from nausea to poor vision, problems breathing and so on. Nerve gas is different and the effects are unmistakable, gruesome and often fatal. Moreover the ability to accurately identify the composition or chemical weapons residue has improved greatly since the 1980s. Each batch of chemical weapons is a little different, especially rarely manufactured items like mustard or the various nerve agents (some are a gas some are an aerosol). Chemical analysis can quickly identify the type and identifying profile of the samples taken from a victim or the vicinity of the attack. This analysis was done to some of the Syrian stuff surrendered and destroyed in 2014. That means any use of chemical weapons leaves an informative data trail that can be read and followed. Raqqa And ISIL The current offensive to capture the ISIL capital of Raqqa began in November and moved towards the city from the east, north and west. Most of the non-Kurds in the attack force are local Sunni Arabs eager to get ISIL out of the area. These Sunnis are also hostile to the Assads. By the end of December advance was closing in on the Baath Dam which supplies electric power to Raqqa and surrounding areas. The dam also regulates the water flow to farmers along the Euphrates River and ISIL has threatened to damage or destroy the dam to punish the disloyal farmers. Thus the rebels, if they want to maintain the support of most of the Syrians in the area, have to capture the dam largely intact. That would put the advance within 22 kilometers of Raqqa. Several other Euphrates River dams, especially the nearby Tabqa dam, have to be freed from ISIL control first. Meanwhile a lot depends on what happens to the battle for Mosul across the border in Iraq and whether or not the Turks join the advance and the Kurds continue to. Finally there is the question of who will run Raqqa once ISIL is gone. The Assads have always claimed jurisdiction but have not been able to muster the forces necessary to take part in the battle for Raqqa, especially the bloody fighting inside the city. The Kurds are not eager to run Raqqa, which has traditionally been a Suuni Arab town. The Kurds are OK with letting Raqqa stay that way but unlike the Kurds (who are united) the Sunni Arab Syrians have fragmented into many factions, most of them fans of one Islamic terrorist group or another. The worst part of this is that these Sunni Arab Islamic terror groups all believe they are the ones who should be in charge. ISIL is the worst example of this we are the ones, the only ones mentality. Before that it was al Qaeda, which was willing to make compromises. This offended a lot of hard core Sunni Arabs and led to the creation of the ISIL, which gives priority to dealing with potential rivals and basically goes to war with every other Islamic terror group. But even with ISIL gone there are a lot of Sunni Arabs left who would join s similar but more effective replacement for ISIL. The Syrian rebels and their Western allies (especially the United States) consider the Syrian Kurds the most effective rebel force and key to driving ISIL out of Raqqa city and the rest of eastern Syria. To this end the U.S. has established seven bases in Kurdish controlled areas of northern Syria. This includes airstrips at Kobane and Rumelan that are long enough to handle large (C-17) transports. The U.S. still relies on the Turkish airbase at Incirlik in eastern Turkey (150 kilometers north of Syria). Most (1,500 of 2,200) of the Americans (military and contractors) in Turkey are at Incirlik. A small, but important, number of air strikes (against ISIL targets) come out of Incirlik. This is in addition to a larger number of reconnaissance and surveillance missions. Incirlik is where NATO warplanes have operated for decades and has been a major base to attacks against Islamic terrorist targets in Syria as well as Turkish attacks on Kurds in Syria and Iraq. In August 2015 American warplanes began operating out Incirlik against ISIL targets in Syria. In late 2014 the U.S. announced an agreement with Turkey to use Turkish bases (including Incirlik) to support the fight against ISIL. The next day the Turkish government denied that this was the case. While the Turkish parliament had approved such cooperation, the anti-American Turkish president Erdogan had to agree to implement these new rules and until the PKK (Kurdish separatist rebels) broke their ceasefire with the Turks in July 2015 (and reignited the three decade old war between Turkey and its Kurdish minority) the Turkish leader had refused to do so. Erdogan relented once PKK was once more a threat. Technically Turkey is not considered a war zone, but Incirlik is located in an area where secular Kurdish separatist terrorists as well as Islamic terrorists are increasingly active. Incirlik is also one of the six air bases in Turkey where American nuclear bombs (for NATO aircraft) are stored. The base normally has about 5,000 personnel in residence, about 60 percent of them civilians (workers and service personnel families). The number has since been greatly reduced. Incirlik is located in an area long dominated by conservative Moslems. U.S. Air Force personnel have long considered Incirlik a hardship posting because it was so difficult to get a drink, or a date, off base. Turkey and the Assads oppose these American bases in northern Syria but the bases remain because the Americans, and most of the world, no longer consider the Assads legitimate rulers of Syria. The Assads and their allies Iran and Russia disagree. As long as the American bases were there to support the fight against ISIL Iran and Russia did not make an issue of these bases or the thousand or so U.S. troops in Syria. But now that the U.S. has, for the first time, carried out a major military attack on the Assad forces and may continue to do so, a suitable response is necessary. There is not much the Assads can do. They have not been able to prevent regular Israeli air attacks (to prevent Iranian advanced weapons from being moved to Lebanon) and it is no secret that the U.S. and Israel are close allies. The Russians have already made it clear that they will side with the Israelis if forced to decide between the Assads and Israel. This has put Iran in a difficult position and the latest American move makes that worse. All foreign forces operating in Syria are supposed to be there to deal with ISIL but Iran and Russia only pretended and were often criticized because most of the military activity in Syria was to weaken rebels (mainly non-ISIL) fighting to overthrow the Assads. This even applied to NATO member Turkey. The Turks are, on paper, the strongest military force in the area. But all Syrians, both the Assad government and the rebels oppose the Turkish air and ground intervention. The Turks are mainly doing this because of domestic politics in Turkey. The Kurdish separatists in Turkey (the PKK) are again openly fighting the government and often use bases in Syria. While the Kurds of northern Iraq will cooperate with the Turks in controlling the PKK, some of the Syrian Kurds (the YPG) have worked closely with the PKK before and the Turks do not trust them to behave like the Iraqi Kurds. In the past Turkey was willing to work with Kurdish militias not associated with the YPG but that pragmatism was dropped in August 2016 when Turkish ground forces entered Syria with the stated intention of driving all Kurdish forces away from the Turkish border. The Turks have been blocked by the American from carrying out that program. The Kurds have backed off from some areas in northern Syria but are stubbornly holding onto most of it, backed by their American allies. In large part this American support is because the Kurds are largely responsible for the continued (since last November) advance on ISIL-held Raqqa. Meanwhile ISIL Fades Worldwide In February American intel analysts estimated ISIL had only about 12,000 armed members in Syria and Iraq. This means ISIL has lost at least half the armed personnel it had in early 2016. That number has since shrunk to 10,000 or less and most (at least 6,000) are in Syria and most of these are in or near Raqqa and preparing for a final battle. ISIL forces in Iraq are in worse shape. Only about a thousand are left in downtown Mosul and about 2,000 are operating in smaller concentrations along the border trying to keep roads open to Syria. A thousand or more are in still smaller groups in or near cities to plan, prepare and carry out terror attacks. Most of the ISIL fighters left in Mosul (and Raqqa) are young men from other countries. These would stand out to anyone guarding a checkpoint and would not withstand interrogation. So these foreigners are inclined to fight to the death. At the same time ISIL leaders have been trying to get their key personnel (and their families) out of Iraq and Syria. Many of the lesser known ISIL personnel are advised to return to their homeland and establish more of an ISIL presence there. Efforts to establish another base area for ISIL have, so far, failed (in Libya. Pakistan, Afghanistan and Egypt) so the disperse and raise hell at home seems to be the official plan. In response the Iraqis fighting in Mosul and the Kurdish led forces closing in on Raqqa are resigned to a slow, methodical advance. Nevertheless ISIL is expected to lost both Mosul and Raqqa by the end of 2017. Stranger Things While Russia is officially in Syria to defeat ISIL and keep the Assads in power they (semi-officially) also want to maintain good relations with Israel while doing it. This annoys Iran. Israel has made it clear that there can never be peace in Syria if Iran tries to establish a permanent presence there. The Iranians say they are in Syria to stay and the Russians (so far) have said they oppose that. Iran wants to stay in Syria as part of its decades old effort to destroy Israel and a centuries old effort to make the Shia form of Islam dominant in the Islamic world (that is over 80 percent non-Shia). Meanwhile Israel says it can live with the Assads as long as Iran is not maintaining a military presence in Syria. Many Turks agree with Israel on that point and newly elected U.S. government has come out strongly against any permanent Iranian presence in Syria. The Americans still want the Assads gone but despite that the U.S., Israel and Turkey agree on some key goals. Turkey is also having problems with Iran because senior Turkish leaders openly accuse Iran of attempting to destabilize Syria and Iraq in order to increase Iranian influence in those countries. While many people in those countries, both pro and anti-Iran, would agree, the official Iranian line is that their military efforts in Syria and Iraq are simply to help fight ISIL. Turkey is largely Sunni and has been trying to improve its relations with all Moslem majority nations in the region since 2000. That is proving difficult with the growing struggle between Shia (led by Iran) and Sunni (led by Saudi Arabia). Turkey has tried to stay out of this conflict but that is proving impossible. The Russian intervention appears to be permanent (as far as the Russians are concerned) and the Assads agree. Turkey and Iran are not so sure and Iran is openly opposed to Turkish troops being in Syria at all. At the same time Iran is demanding the right to establish a naval base in Syria. This is not a new idea. In 2011 Iran pledged to pay for the construction of a naval base on the Syrian Mediterranean coast. That proposal was put aside as the rebellion against the Assads grew but now Iran wants some payback for playing a key role in maintaining the Assads in power. All these overlapping and often contradictory goals and alliances may seem odd to an outsider but this is the Middle East, where such complex arrangements are the old normal. April 4, 2017: In the northwest (Idlib province) Syrian warplanes apparently used chemical bombs to attack a rebel controlled village. The attack killed 85 people, most of them civilians, including 20 children. The victims showed symptoms of nerve gas being used. The Syrian government accused the rebels of making the attack or having stored chemical weapons in one the buildings the bombs hit. But the U.S., NATO and Israel soon confirmed that it was the Assad forces who delivered the nerve gas. April 1, 2017: In the northeast (Raqqa province) Kurdish led rebels have surrounded the town of Tabqa. ISIL has held Tabqa since August 2014. Tabqa is 50 kilometers west of Raqqa city and next to the Tabqa dam. Tabqa was the last government controlled military base ISIL seized in Raqqa province. With rebels in control of Tabqa city and the nearby dam the next objective will be Raqqa itself. March 31, 2017: In the east, on the Iraqi border, Iraqi warplanes attacked an ISIL convoy near the town of al Qaim and killed Ayad al Jumaili (the ISIL War Minister) along with several other senior ISIL leaders. Jumaili was believed to be next in line to replace ISIL founder Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, whose health status has been a mystery for months. Baghdadi appears to still be alive but may have been badly injured in one of the many airstrikes directed at ISIL leadership. Al Qaim is the main border crossing between Iraq and Syria and is often the scene of battles and airstrikes. Compound in area are often used to shelter convoys of vehicles carrying the ISIL personnel between Raqqa and Mosul. March 27, 2017: In the northeast (Raqqa province) Kurdish led rebels captured the Tabqa airbase as part of their effort to surround and take the nearby town of Tabqa from ISIL. March 25, 2017: In the east, on the Iraqi border, a coalition airstrike destroyed a vehicle carrying Ibrahim al Ansari, the ISIL propaganda minister and at least four key members of the ISIL propaganda team. These men were responsible to maintaining the ISIL recruiting and propaganda efforts. This operation has been a frequent target of airstrikes and casualties among known members of the propaganda ministry have been high even though none of these radicalized Internet geeks is expected to serve in combat or as a suicide bombers. March 24, 2017: The United States imposed sanctions on 30 companies and individuals for illegally transferring weapons technology or weapons to Iran, North Korea or Syria. Those sanctioned were from China, North Korea or the UAE (United Arab Emirates). Iran responded by imposing sanctions on fifteen American companies. March 21, 2017: Iranian military officials accuse Russia of providing Israel with technical information about Russian made air defense radars and air defense control systems used by Syria and Iran. Iranian experts say that this explains how Israeli aircraft always manage to avoid being spotted or effectively fired on by Russian made Syrian air defense systems. Specifically Iran accuses the Russians of providing IFF (Identification, Friend or Foe) codes to the Israelis. The IFF beacon every combat aircraft carries broadcasts a coded message to friendly aircraft and anti-aircraft systems. The Iranians say they can prove this because they secretly helped the Syrians change some of their IFF codes without the Russians knowing and suddenly the Israeli aircraft were being spotted. Russia denies the accusation and Israel has no comment. March 20, 2017: Russia is setting up a base in northwestern Syria to train members of YPG Kurdish militia. This will cause problems with Turkey. Since late 2016 Turkish troops in northern Syria have been seeking to avoid conflict with the Russians while attempting to intimidate some of the Kurds who have long controlled much of northern Syria. What complicates this is that the Syrian rebels and their Western allies (especially the United States) consider the Syrian Kurds the most effective rebel force and key to driving ISIL out of Raqqa city and the rest of eastern Syria. The Turks are, on paper, the strongest military force in the area. But all Syrians, both the government and the rebels oppose the Turkish intervention. The Turks are mainly doing this because of domestic politics. The Kurdish separatists in Turkey (the PKK) are again openly fighting the government and often use bases in Syria. While the Kurds of northern Iraq will cooperate with the Turks in controlling the PKK, some of the Syrian Kurds (the YPG) have worked closely with the PKK before and the Turks do not trust them to behave like the Iraqi Kurds. Meanwhile Turkey is willing to work with Kurdish militias not associated with the YPG. Russia and Turkey are allies at the moment, but very confrontational with each other about it. The YPG has long been sheltered by the Assad government and used for annoying the Turks. March 19, 2017: Israeli aircraft hit another Hezbollah convoy inside Syria during the night in an operation the Israelis would not take credit for. The Israelis did warn the Syrian government that, if necessary, they would destroy the Syrian air defense systems (bases, radars and missile launchers around Damascus and in other areas the government has retained control of since 2011) if the Syrians tried to again use their antiquated anti-aircraft missiles against Israeli aircraft. Syrian ally Russia felt compelled to publicly chastise Israel and ordered the Israeli ambassador to explain this bad behavior. Israel and Russia are also allies and do not want to fight each other. That would be expensive for Israel and probably embarrassing for Russia. Despite this public demonstration of anger Russia understands that Israel has a legitimate need to protect itself from Iranian attack via Hezbollah or similar Assad forces. March 18, 2017: Russia announced that in Syria the government forces had completely cleared ISIL forces from the town of Palmyra and that this effort was made possible by Russia military assistance, primarily air support. For the first half of March Russian warplanes and armed helicopters carried out about 60 sorties a day in support of Syrian troops. Most of this air effort was against ISIL forces defending Palmyra. March 17, 2017: A n Israeli Arrow 3 anti-missile missile was used to shoot down a Syrian SA-5 anti-aircraft missile that had been fired at four Israeli jets bombing a target (new weapons for Hezbollah) in eastern Syria near Palmyra. Apparently several SA-5 SAMs (surface-toair) missiles missed the Israeli jets and instead of detonating anyway (as these missiles are built to do) were headed into Israeli air space and Arrow 3 was fired just in case it was a ballistic missile. The implication was that Syria might have deliberately modified some of their SA-5 missiles to operate as a surface-to-surface missile. This has been done before with Russian SAMs, usually as an unofficial (and crude) modification by Arab users. But there have been some modern SAMs with a built-in surface-to-surface mode. This was done for the U.S. Nike-Hercules system used during the 1960s and later. Other users of the Nike-Hercules (like Taiwan and South Korea) have made this modification and produced an accurate, if expensive, surface-to-surface short range ballistic missile. The Nike-Hercules was designed to be used in surface-to-surface mode. In American service that meant the standard anti-aircraft warhead was replaced with a nuclear one set for air burst over a distant surface target. While the SA-5 is a 1960s design it is one that Russia has updated and Syria received the latest S-200 version of the missile in 2010. This seven ton missile has a range of 300 kilometers but Israel has apparently developed effective countermeasures. In 2016 Russia sent in an SA-10 (S-300) anti-aircraft system to protect their troops in Syria. These missiles have about the same range as the SA-5 but are more accurate and resistant to jamming. They may also have a surface-to-surface mode installed, just in case. Mainly the Russians are trying to arrange peace deals in Syria. Israel believes Iran was responsible for persuading the Assad government to fire its SA-5s at Israeli aircraft today. March 16, 2017: A company (150 men) of Russian Army engineers arrived in Syria. These troops are trained and equipped to remove mines and other explosives safely. They were immediately sent to Palmyra, a recently liberated area that ISIL has planted a lot of landmines in. March 15, 2017: The pro-Assad coalition of Russia, Turkey, Iran and the Assad government ended two days of peace talks with each other about how to settle the Syrian mess. This took place in the Central Asian city of Astana (the capital of Kazakhstan). Nothing was achieved, in large part because all the rebels refused to attend. In January there was another two days of peace talks in Astana with some rebels present and nothing could be agreed to. The major powers involved congratulated each other for getting this far. Another two days of peace talks in Astana are to begin on May 3rd with or without any rebel participation. The ceasefire each of these meetings proclaim has had no impact on the fighting because few rebels will even participate in the talks and the pro-government groups that will do not observe the terms of the ceasefire agreements they sponsor. March 12, 2017: Russia announced that work had resumed on the new Russian naval base in Syria. At the end of 2016 Russia revealed a recent agreement with the Assad government to expand the current Russian navy facility at Tartus. Before 2011 Russia was building a small, but technically permanent naval support facility in Tartus. By 2012 the several hundred Russians who there working on the project were largely gone from Syria and the Tartus project suspended until the war was over. That changed in mid-2015 when Russia intervened with several thousand air force, special operations and support troops. Russian construction personnel returned to Tartus but work was not resumed in a big way. The current Russian Tartus facility can handle only four medium-sized (under 100 meters long) vessels. Thats because the Russian base only has two 100 meter (325 foot) long floating piers inside of the northern breakwater of the Tartus port. The non-military port activities have been very busy since Russian troops arrived in mid-2015 along with a need to be regularly supplied by sea. A lot of those supplies were actually for Syrian military and Iranian mercenaries in Syria. Recent satellite photos show that work has indeed resumed on the Russian naval facility in Tartus. March 11, 2017: In Damascus two bombs went off near a popular Shia shrine, leaving at least 40 dead and over a hundred wounded. Most of the casualties were Iraqi pilgrims and either al Qaeda or ISIL was believed responsible. Swedish Company Offers Free Microchip Implants To Its Employees While it may be a good practice for a company to keep a watch on their employees activities, this Swedish company has gone a step further. Epicenter, a company in Stockholm, Sweden, implants chip into their employees, so that their bosses can monitor toilet breaks and how long they work. In other words, they are turning their employees into cyborgs by embedding them with tiny microchips. For those unfamiliar, Cyborg (Victor Vic Stone) is a fictional superhero appearing in American comic books, who is used by scientists as a test subject for various intelligence enhancement projects. The biggest benefit I think is convenience, said Patrick Mesterton,, co-founder and chief executive of Epicenter, an innovation and technology company. The RFID (radio frequency identification chip) which is about the size of a grain of rice is inserted into employees hands of those who have volunteered for the chip implantation. It allows them to open doors of the company automatically, use electronic devices more efficiently and much more. You can do airline fares with it, you can also go to your local gym, so it basically replaces a lot of things you have other communication devices for, whether it be credit cards, or keys, or things like that. Its an implant in the hand that enables them to digitize professional information and communicate with devices both personal and within Epicenter. Once chipped with this technology, members can interact with the building with a simple swipe of the hand. Chips can also be programmed to hold contact information and talk to smartphone apps, said Patrick Mesterton. So, what about issues related to ones security and privacy once the chip is implanted? Of course, putting things into your body is quite a big step to do and it was even for me at first, said Mesterton, remembering how he had doubts about it in the beginning, which carry information that can be transmitted to other devices via electromagnetic waves, but cannot receive information themselves. However, Mesterton doesnt consider this as a real problem. I mean, people have been implanting things into their body, like pacemakers and stuff to control your heart, he said. Thats a way, way more serious thing than having a small chip that can actually communicate with devices. So, how does the process work? The implants are injected into the fleshy area of the hand of the employee, just next to the thumb, by using pre-loaded syringes. The process barely lasts for a few seconds with hardly any screams or barely a drop of blood. Epicenter, which has more than 100 companies and has around 2,000 workers, began implanting workers in January 2015. While getting chipped isnt mandatory, it has become popular amongst Epicenters employees, with about 150 workers now implanted with the devices. The company even hosts monthly events where participants can get the implants for free, as well as parties to celebrate those who got implanted. Sandra Haglof, 25, who works for Eventomatic, an events company that works with Epicenter, has already had three piercings before. I want to be part of the future, she laughs while being implanted. Accused Yahoo hacker owned Lamborghini, a Porsche 911, an Aston Martin and earned $7500 a month in hacking businesses Yahoo was at the receiving end of a major hack in 2014 that compromised details of roughly half a billion users. Now, one of the four accused has been brought to trial with some shocking details becoming public. Russian Links Karim Baratov is the person in question, currently residing in Canada. He has been accused of hacking into the Yahoo accounts on behalf of the Russian government. He appeared in court today seeking bail ahead of a court hearing which will determine his extradition to the U.S. The 22 year old is one of 4 individuals indicted by the US over working with Dmitry Dokuchaev on the hack. Dmitry Dokuchaev on the other hand is known to be a hacker for the Russian FSB the successor agency to the KGB. Ontario Superior Court Justice Alan Whitten in Hamilton didnt rule on the bail request Wednesday saying it would hear closing submissions from the lawyers on April 11. Its still unclear if the 22 year old Baratov was aware that he was working for the FSB. The Trial Canadian based Baratov born in Kazakhstan brought into the courtroom dressed in black sweatpants, black t-shirt, with his ankles chained. He told the court he lived with his parents until 2015 and had his own business protecting web servers from hackers since 2014. He said earned C$10,000 ($7,500) a month that year, less in the ensuing years. At 20, Baratov said he moved into a C$642,000 home, and over time added a C$155,000 Lamborghini, a Porsche 911, an Aston Martin and another BMW to his car collection. Although he said, it was his parents who helped pay for these. He said he had no money in his personal account and around C$5000 in the business account at the time of his arrest. The police also recovered C$ 31,000 in cash when they searched his residence. According to the US, he was paid to hack into 80 email accounts in all, including 50 Gmail accounts of Russian bureaucrats and politicians. The hackers were allegedly on the prowl for people of political interest vulnerable to financial fraud. The list of victims include the White House and its diplomatic and military corps. According to the Justice Department, He used spear-phishing attacks to target his victims, using fake emails to compel them to provide sensitive information, and would then sell their passwords to Dokuchaev for $100 each. They managed to steal information to nearly 6,500 accounts in an attack the company has termed state sponsored. Baratovs father, Akhmet Tokbergenov, said through an interpreter that his son didnt work for any Russians or any government. My son knows about my attitude toward Russian special authorities and its absolutely negative, Tokbergenov told the judge. He knows why we moved to Canada. I didnt want to live in that environment. He has offered up C$845,000 equity in his home as surety to the courts. I will create such conditions that maybe even jail will look like paradise to him, Tokbergenov said. Looks like the hacker might have a happy homecoming. Source: bloomberg Wells Fargo & Company, a diversified financial services company, provides banking, investment, mortgage, and consumer and commercial finance products and services in the United States and internationally. It operates through four segments: Consumer Banking and Lending; Commercial Banking; Corporate and Investment Banking; and Wealth and Investment Management. The Consumer Banking and Lending segment offers diversified financial products and services for consumers and small businesses. Its financial products and services include checking and savings accounts, and credit and debit cards, as well as home, auto, personal, and small business lending services. The Commercial Banking segment provides financial solutions to private, family owned, and certain public companies. Its products and services include banking and credit products across various industry sectors and municipalities, secured lending and lease products, and treasury management services. The Corporate and Investment Banking segment offers a suite of capital markets, banking, and financial products and services to corporate, commercial real estate, government, and institutional clients. Its products and services comprise corporate banking, investment banking, treasury management, commercial real estate lending and servicing, equity, and fixed income solutions, as well as sales, trading, and research capabilities services. The Wealth and Investment Management segment provides personalized wealth management, brokerage, financial planning, lending, private banking, and trust and fiduciary products and services to affluent, high-net worth, and ultra-high-net worth clients. It also operates through financial advisors. Wells Fargo & Company was founded in 1852 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. 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. Vote View Results When a car refused to stop for a routine check in northern Vietnam on Wednesday night, cops knew something was wrong. They started chasing the vehicle, firing a shot into the air as a warning - and still the car kept speeding away. That's when cops decided to shoot the tires of the car, and finally it came to a crashing halt. Two men jumped out of the car and started to run. Cops managed to catch the driver but are still searching for the other man. When the officers inspected the vehicle they found 118 critically endangered pangolins wrapped up tightly in bags piled on top of each other and with no access to food or water - 113 of them were still alive. This browser does not support the video tag. Save Vietnam's Wildlife "We lost five pangolins right on the rescue scene," Phap Nguyen Cong, communications officer at Save Vietnam's Wildlife (SVW), the organization that was called in for emergency help for the animals, told The Dodo. "And the 113 left are under care of our staff." Dodo Shows Foster Diaries Guy Falls In Love With His Little Meatball Of A Foster Dog Save Vietnam's Wildlife Pangolins are shy nocturnal animals who curl up into a ball when scared - and they are the most trafficked animal in the world. Many of these rare animals are smuggled through Vietnam and other places in southeast Asia on their way to be killed in the far East. Roughly every five minutes, a wild pangolin is captured in Asia or Africa to be sold in East Asia for his meat or scales, which are believed to have medicinal properties. Save Vietnam's Wildlife Traffickers often inject the animals with water or force-feed them corn powder to make them weigh more, so they sell for more. About a million pangolins were traded illegally in the last decade. Between 2011 and 2013, an estimated 235,000 pangolins were killed. Rescuers worked quickly to unwrap the 113 pangolins and put them in wooden boxes for transport. By the time rescuers were done, it was 2 a.m. They drove the pangolins back to the rescue center. Save Vietnam's Wildlife When the 113 pangolins arrived, they were given water to drink and their first meals in days: frozen ant eggs, which they ate hungrily. Save Vietnam's Wildlife Now there are a total of 139 rescued pangolins currently recovering at SVW. When they are strong enough, they will all be released back into the wild. "They require around 35kg of food everyday," the group wrote, which adds up to about $135 per day. "$10 helps us to buy a kg of food to feed our pangolins." For the first time in her life, Cecilia is feeling the grass beneath her feet - and learning what it means to be free. Facebook/AFADA Up until recently, the chimpanzee had been trapped inside a cramped enclosure at the Mendoza Zoo, in Argentina. For the past several years, Cecilia was without a companion, following the deaths of the two chimps who once shared the small space with her. The barren confines in which she lived, as well as the psychological toll taken by her solitude, drove her into a deep depression. But hope was on the way - in the form of a legal case of historic proportions. Dodo Shows Dodo Heroes Woman Devotes Her Life To The Stray Dogs Of Bali Great Ape Project Three years ago, a legal team from Lawyers for Animal Rights (AFADA) and the Great Ape Project (or Proyecto Gran Simio) filed a case on Cecilia's behalf - arguing that, under the writ of habeas corpus, keeping the chimpanzee imprisoned at the zoo was unlawful. Though it wasn't the first time such an argument has been made in hopes of freeing a captive great ape, this is the first time it worked. Great Ape Project Last November, Argentine Judge Maria Alejandra Mauricio ruled that Cecilia isn't a thing - but is instead a being who is "subject to nonhuman rights." She follow that up by ordering that Cecilia be released from the zoo, and be allowed to live out her days at a chimpanzee sanctuary in Brazil. Never before had a habeas corpus case for an ape resulted in such a move. "We're not talking about the civil rights enshrined in the Civil Code," Mauricio told the journal Los Andes, clarifying her decision, "but instead the species' own rights: to development, to life in their natural habitat." Cecilia's life was about to change - and this week, it did. Great Ape Project On Tuesday, Cecilia was freed from her cage at the zoo and flown north to a lush, sprawling sanctuary operated by the Great Ape Project. There, the lonely chimp would finally have the chance to live in peace, in the company of several other chimpanzees who were retired from lives of confinement. Great Ape Project On Wednesday, Cecilia arrived to her new home. Though she will spend her first weeks in a quarantine area, even that is a huge step up from anything she's ever known - and it's already transformed her. "It was incredible," the Great Ape Project's executive director, Pedro Pozas Terrados, told The Dodo. "Before, she was in a small concrete cage, unable to even see the sky. Now, she is touching the grass. Her appetite has returned; she is doing very well. The change has been from night to day." When Thomas died, Noel approached his lifeless body and sat with him for a very long time. Thomas had been like a son to the female chimpanzee. After Thomas' own mother died four years ago, Noel had adopted Thomas as her own. But now that Thomas was dead, too, Noel was deeply grieving. St. Andrews University With her own adolescent daughter Nina watching, Noel, who lives at the Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage in Zambia, selected a hard piece of grass, tucked it inside her mouth and gently opened Thomas' mouth. Then she took the grass and used it to clean Thomas' teeth, almost as if she were preparing his body for a funeral. This is first time wild chimpanzees have ever been documented using a tool to clean the body of a family member, according to a study published by Scientific Reports. Dodo Shows Adopt Me! Scared Little Dog Is So Full Of Joy Now And Looking For A Family St. Andrews University Edwin van Leeuwen, lead scientist of the study, believes that Noel's attention to Noel's body demonstrates her deep affection for her adopted son. "It indicates once more that the human species is not the only one capable of compassion," van Leeuwen told New Scientist. The orphanage caregivers actually tried to use food to lure Noel away from Thomas' body, according to van Leeuwen, but even this didn't pull her away from her son. St. Andrews University "The fact that she chose to be near Thomas and clean his teeth over receiving abundant and delicious food from the caregivers indicates that she was motivated to stay with him," van Leeuwen told The Dodo. While it's hard to generalize about chimpanzees' behavior from a single case study, van Leeuwen said, Noel's actions are certainly significant. Not only can it help us understand chimp emotion, behavior and social interactions, but it may also help us figure out the evolutionary origins of human funeral rites. Of course, chimpanzees aren't the only animals who appear to mourn their dead. Elephants have been known to remain with the dead bodies of their loved ones for hours. Dogs have mourned the loss of their human companions by following funeral processions or lying on graves. Recently, a horse grieved for his dead owner by resting his head on the owner's coffin. St. Andrews University While Noel's act of grief is the only scientifically documented case of its kind, it is possible that other chimps have acted in a similar manner, especially with the frequency of chimpanzee deaths in the wild. While Thomas is thought to have died from a viral and bacterial lung infection, wild chimpanzees regularly die at the hands of poachers. The meat from adult chimps is then sold as a food source, and baby chimps are often sold as pets - both baby chimps and other apes have demonstrated grief over losing their parents. Chimps are also threatened by habitat destruction and the spread of diseases like ebola, which has led the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to list chimpanzees as an endangered species. St. Andrews University A tiny baby pangolin's life was in danger - even before she was old enough to open her eyes. This week, the baby was brought to Phnom Tamao Wildlife Rescue Center (PTWRC) in Cambodia by someone who found her in Phnom Penh, the country's capital, so she could get help. Dodo Shows Faith = Restored Woman Tries Every Day For A Month To Rescue This Dog No one knows for sure how such a tiny baby pangolin became separated from her mom, but her story certainly isn't unusual, considering pangolins are the most trafficked mammal on the planet. Native to parts of Africa and Asia, the shy, nocturnal animals are critically endangered because of incessant demand in the Asia for their meat, considered a delicacy, and scales, believed to have medicinal properties. Roughly every five minutes, a wild pangolin is captured to be shipped, sold and killed in East Asia. In all likelihood, this is why this little pangolin was found without her mom. Normally, in the wild, she would be riding around on her mom's back for her first few months. "We have never had to hand-raise a baby pangolin, and few places have raised one so young," PTWRC wrote. After one night at the rescue center, the baby opened her eyes for the first time. Luckily, the place she found herself in was a safe one. "She is drinking well and is already a very strong climber," PTWRC wrote. "Please send her your love and strength." Things would have been tragically different had Chris Lynch arrived even just a few minutes later. Lynch, a conservation officer with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, was on patrol in the state's rural north peninsula late last month when something caught his eye. There, on a private off-road trail through the wilderness, he spotted a vehicle parked and a man with a little dog running at his side. Something about the scene just didn't feel right, evidently; Lynch decided to stop. And it's a good thing that he did. As Lynch approached the vehicle, he noticed the man slip a loaded rifle back into its case. Wikipedia As the officer got closer, he saw a second man a short way off who was digging a hole. Lynch asked the men what they were up to, and was told that they were burying their dog. When he looked inside the hole and found it contained just an empty box, the officer realized they were about to kill and bury the playful pup at his feet. Since the dog appeared to be healthy, Lynch asked them why. One of the men reportedly told him they were going to shoot the dog because she is old. Dodo Shows Foster Diaries This Pregnant Pittie Foster Story Is The Happiest Thing Ever Delta Animal Shelter The officer proceeded to inform the men that they were on private property, and the owner would likely not consent to what they were about to do, but he didn't stop there. After taking law enforcement action against them for illegally having a loaded rifle in their vehicle, Lynch convinced the men to hand the dog over to him. Lynch then drove the dog to the nearby Delta Animal Shelter himself. Staff at the no-kill shelter were shocked by how close the dog, who is named Tunzy, had come to losing her life especially since they allow people to surrender unwanted pets for no cost. Delta Animal Shelter "It's kind of an odd request," Mrs. Peterson, of Shorewood, Minnesota, told 911 emergency services over the phone on Sunday. Barry Peterson and his wife had just come home from a trip to find the front window of their home bashed in. "I don't know if I should call you or what," Mrs. Peterson explained, "but we just came home from being gone - and a wild turkey flew through our front window and is now in our house." Dodo Shows Faith = Restored Rescued Animals Melt Into This Woman's Arms When She Sings To Them The wild turkey looked pretty comfortable there on the sofa. He watched the couple as they filmed him. He didn't even budge when Mrs. Peterson called the police. "A Shorewood resident came home to find a broken out window to their residence. Shortly after they located an unusual guest lounging on their sofa," South Lake Minnetonka Police Department wrote on Facebook. "He identified himself as Tom." The couple tried opening the door leading to the deck, but after briefly hopping down from the sofa, Tom didn't seem to want to leave. And he went ahead and hopped back onto the couch. He walked over the cushions and perched on the plush arm. Then they opened a window for him. "You've got two ways out now." Nothing. Finally, a police officer arrived, and came in through the front door, starting to ask more about the intruder, until he saw Tom and the situation pretty much just explained itself. "Oh there he is, sure. OK." This browser does not support the video tag. YouTube/Barry Peterson "We've got two ways for him to go out and he just won't go either way," Peterson explained. "OK, you mind if I snap a picture or two as well?" "Sure." "Hey, buddy," the cop said, snapping some pictures before putting on his gloves. Despite the shattered glass and inconvenience, everyone had a good sense of humor about the intruder. "Out the door, buddy," the cop said, gesturing toward the door. But Tom wouldn't budge. Two more cops came in to help out. One of the officers flashed a light at Tom, who took this as a signal that his squatting rights had come to an end. So Tom hopped down from the couch and went out the door, jumping up to perch on the railing for a last glance back at his weekend home before heading into the woods. Not just for laughs. Frankly, shares Deborah Belcourt, if it had existed 35 years ago, I would have saved a fortune in therapy and a stint in rehab. It being the Comedy Girl workshop that she found herself in about a year ago a class that the Rosedale mom calls so much more than a standup class. Rather, its a master class in self-esteem, creativity and finding your voice. Could it be the latest thing for women of a certain vintage to be doing besides sweating up storms at SoulCycle and/or getting in a workout at the Five Thieves, that infamous row of uppity shops in her circle of Toronto? Oh, possibly. Poking at a fish laid in a little rowboat of parchment paper during a lunch at Chabrol in Yorkville, the 47-year-old recently took the time to fill me in on her you-go-girl yuks. Having fantasized for years about being a comedian but having long drifted into various corporate jobs currently shes the vice-president of A&C, a boutique communications agency she finally got her Amy Schumer on by signing up for a free-ranging course courtesy of Dawn Whitwell, a successful standup comic whose background includes the CBC show Baroness Von Sketch. For Belcourt, the dream further became reality via a weekly Monday-night series at the Comedy Bar on Bloor St. W. called Dawn Patrol, during which Whitwell gives up the night to up-and-comers (including her students), as well as established comic boldface trying out new material, including the likes of Chris Rock and Scott Thompson. As the mother of a 4-year-old, and someone who looks more partial to cashmere than camo indeed, her father-in-law was the long-time president of Polo Ralph Lauren Canada the extra-tall Belcourt suddenly found the groove that had always eluded her. The power of a microphone. The sink-or-swimmery of one person on a stage asking begging? for laughs. Ive never been better in a boardroom, ever, because of doing standup. I use standup every single day, she says, adding, Im braver than Ive ever been, too. And, honestly, Ive spent my whole life worrying about what other people think of me. And though Whitwell teaches the whole tool kit of comedy gestures, timing, the ability to gauge audience reaction when asked, shell tell you it comes down to writing. It takes a lot of work to get a premise from idea to joke, she says. Level 1 is a lot of breaking down the process . . . listening for laughter. Invariably, since it does all start on the page, and the old adage write what you know never not applies, its probably unsurprising that Belcourts own act hitherto has focused on her experience in the Rosedale/Summerhill wilds. Embedded in the world of Big Little Lies mommies, as it were, and Tiffany-blue-ablaze socialites, shes milled much of it for comedy. Indeed, the first big laugh Belcourt remembers getting and one that continues to draw guffaws is a roundabout joke she makes comparing the experience of motherhood to dying. Another setup delves into a young mom acquaintance getting into the business of gender-neutral baby clothes. Get her further on the subject now and shes . . . off! People take having a kid way too seriously these days, she insists. Having had her only child at 43 whereupon she found herself with women maybe 10 or 15 years younger than her at the playground she noticed how much motherhood had become a cottage industry . . . how being a mom had become all about being a mom and being competitive with other moms. One reason why even she gave up on Instagram a few months back: watching those curated lifestyles play out on the popular social-media platform where there can be a kind of performance of mothering she says, I was beginning to feel bad about myself . . . and one day, I found myself beginning to take a picture of an avocado toast . . . and I quit that day! I said to myself: Who am I? Im not a 36-year-old Instagram-mom. Im an angry almost-50-year-old with a toddler and a business. I said: Im out. Hashtag Blessed? No thanks. Asked about Belcourts trajectory, Whitwell informs, Deb actually took to the process quite quickly. I think it suited her direct, no-nonsense nature . . . I think when students start out in the class, theyre kind of trying to guess what part of their lives people want to hear about and over time they realize its all worthy of becoming material. Indeed, the rapport between the two women has grown to the point that Belcourt is helping to hype a one-off comedy fundraiser on April 24 at Berkeley Church, an attempt to broaden Whitwells efforts with Comedy Girl on a national level. Already, shes extended what she does to a class that focuses on First Nations women, using comedy as social mojo. Meanwhile, back at Chabrol, when our interview-lunch was wrapping up and I was readying to turn off my recorder, Belcourt sighed. Then she asked, Howd I do? Pretty good, I told her. I was really nervous. Well, I snapped back, thank God for your standup training, in that case. SHARE: CHICAGOAn actor on the television show Empire has been arrested on a misdemeanour domestic battery charge in Chicago. Police say 46-year-old Morocco Omari was arrested Wednesday afternoon. They say officers were called to the Hyde Park neighbourhood on Chicagos South Side by a 24-year-old woman who identified herself as Omaris girlfriend. She told officers Omari pushed her to the ground several times during an argument, causing scratches on her neck and chest. The Cook County States Attorneys Office says Omari appeared in court Thursday. His next court date is April 20. A representative for Omari did not immediately return a call for comment. On the show thats filmed in Chicago, Omari plays FBI Agent Tariq Cousins. Hes the half-brother of Lucious Lyon, whos played by Terrence Howard. SHARE: Unsurprisingly in a matter of life and death, a war of words is at play: Medical suicide versus death with dignity. Lowering the temperature, the authorities have settled on a more antiseptic acronym: MAID, or Medical Assistance in Dying. There is no anodyne phrase, no easy right or wrong when both sides believe themselves to be on side of the angels. Or view the other side as being angels of death. Lets stick to the more clinical terminology of MAID for those who want to control their own destiny: the timing of an untimely death. Someone contacted me last year seeking an outlet for his story about the obstacles to dying on his own terms. We corresponded for some time, and I gave him the journalistic referrals he sought. As it turned out, he found what he was looking for. I do not know how it ended, only that 365 Ontarians have ended their lives with medical help since it became legal last June. But I confess that even dealing with his request was not easy. And so one can only imagine the gravity of what a doctor faces in such circumstances not just helping someone in articulating their thoughts, but acting on them. Against that backdrop, I feel enormous empathy for physicians who entered the medical profession to save lives, not to take them, nor even facilitate the taking of them. Doctors must balance their ethical obligations to patients against matters of personal conscience . No one can imagine coercing doctors to perform MAID, any more than one can fathom requiring them to perform an abortion if they believe it, rightly or wrongly, to be the taking of a human life. The more difficult question is whether a doctor should be required to refer a patient to another physician who will carry out the patients wish. Beyond that, what about religious (yes, Catholic) hospitals or hospices for whom an assisted death would be anathema? A parliamentary committee last year conceded the conscience rights of individual physicians, but argued in effect that religious institutions dont have them. These are big questions of public policy and private morality. How can we force the provinces 21 publicly funded Catholic hospitals to do what we know they cannot? Cutting off government money would surely be a Pyrrhic victory and morality play, not to mention a false economy. For it is no accident that faith institutions are among the most motivated and irreplaceable providers of palliative care. No one expects St. Michaels Hospital to perform abortions in Toronto, from which it is already exempt. By that same logic, why would anyone realistically expect St. Mikes to allow MAID on its premises? Equally, some Ontario doctors are in a quandary because the College of Physicians and Surgeons, which regulates their practice, has ruled that if they refuse to act on a MAID request, they must provide a referral to another practitioner who will. This seems an abuse of authority. It behooves doctors to help patients, notably young women, who seek contraceptives. If a physician cannot bring himself to distribute the pill, or refer to someone who will knowing that this has always been among his duties he should opt for pathology instead of family practice. But to abruptly demand that a doctor now do the precise opposite of what he believes he was trained to do crosses a line. That doesnt mean that patients, as a practical matter, cannot get what they want or need. It could mean additional steps, but where there is a will to die, there is now a way. No right is absolute, and matters of conscience should not be arbitrarily circumscribed if reasonable compromise and accommodation is possible. Digital technology has made the matter of referrals less daunting than before: Belatedly, Ontarios ministry of health is now promising a referral service to access willing doctors via telephone hotline or online, reducing the need to compel holdouts. There is no perfect solution to the challenge of MAID, only the recognition that the perfect is the enemy of the good. There are, however, good and practical solutions that have been found. Other provinces have found workarounds through online or hotline referrals, mobile teams of physicians and simple hospital transfers a daily fact of life and death without compelling doctors or institutions to do what they cannot or will not do. Coercion is a solution in search of a problem, a dead end given that we have other pathways to get people where they want to go. To die. It is possible to accept dying with dignity, while also embracing the principle of live and let live for doctors and hospitals of faith. Martin Regg Cohns political column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. mcohn@thestar.ca , Twitter: @reggcohn SHARE: Under threat of a lawsuit, the federal government has started releasing thousands of long-sought internal documents that could explain why it withheld police records of horrific abuse from survivors of the notorious St. Annes residential school. Survivors of the school in Fort Albany, Ont., say they were the victims of appalling treatment including sexual abuse, being shocked by an electrified chair and being forced to eat their own vomit. The Ontario Provincial Police investigated the abuses in the 1990s, conducting interviews with more than 700 survivors and creating thousands of records about the abuse. Five former employees at the church-run school were convicted. But when survivors of the school like one woman referred to in court documents as K-10106 applied for compensation under the residential schools settlement process, those critical police records were withheld even though the government was duty-bound to provide them. In the case of K-10106, her sexual abuse claim was rejected by the court. The reams of police records could have vindicated her. What happened at St. Annes is a horror story, said NDP MP Charlie Angus (Timmins-James Bay). The justice officials had thousands of pages of police evidence outlining the perpetrators, the torture, the rapes, and they lied and suppressed that. The police records themselves were eventually ordered released in 2014 by Ontario Superior Court Justice Paul Perell. K-10106s claim was upheld on appeal, but Angus wanted to know how such a failure of the justice system could have happened in the first place, and what the minister at the time knew about it. In 2013 his office filed access to information requests seeking media responses, briefing notes and advice to then-minister Peter MacKay about the missing St. Annes police records. What was it about St. Annes residential school and the crimes committed there that the justice department would go so far towards denying the truth and interfering with the rights of survivors? Angus said. Hopefully these documents will begin to reveal that. What followed was a four-year battle with the justice departments access to information gatekeepers as the government sought to keep the briefing notes and advice secret. Anguss office said that under McKay, the department said it would begin processing the request but that it would need an 800-day delay to compile and vet all 72,000 requested briefing notes, advice and other documents according to the Access to Information Act. When the Liberals took over government in 2015, the justice department refused to disclose any of the briefing notes or advice at all, saying their release could violate a 2014 court order protecting information related to residential school settlement cases, called the Independent Assessment Process. As the definition of IAP Documents as stated in the order is quite broad, the access to information office will not take the risk of being found in contempt of Justice Perells order, wrote a justice department access to information advisor in an email from March 2016 shared with the Star. Angus says he wasnt after actual IAP documents at all, just the government briefing notes, memos and media responses showing what political advice the department gave the minister about the case and any information about why the police records were withheld in the first place. Anguss office appealed to the federal information commissioner, who earlier this year ordered the government to begin releasing the documents or face a lawsuit. The department agreed, and settled on a schedule of interim releases as the mountain of briefing notes, media responses and advice is processed. The first deadline was March 16, 2017. It has until March 2018 to finish releasing all the documents. Justice department spokesman Ian McLeod confirmed the department is working to vet and release everything on schedule. It is also awaiting a Supreme Court ruling on Perells 2014 decision that should help clarify exactly what constitutes an Independent Assessment Process document. Until the case is heard and a decision rendered, there remains uncertainty regarding the application of the Access to Information Act to IAP records, McLeod told the Star. Meanwhile the information commissioners office is keeping its investigation file open. This will enable us to go to court faster if Justice Canada falls behind schedule in its processing of the requests, an investigator with the information commissioners office wrote in an email to Anguss office and shared with the Star. Anguss office confirmed it received the first batch of briefing notes, advice and other documents Thursday. While hes pleased the information has finally begun to flow, Angus said hes skeptical of the governments behaviour throughout the four-year ordeal. Theres absolutely no way one could look at this issue of St. Annes residential school and write it off to just a broken access to information system, Angus said. The fact that we had to threaten court action with Canadas justice department to find out who provided the political advice to the minister . . . speaks to something profoundly wrong in the justice department and the St. Annes residential school case, he said. SHARE: It took Justin Trudeau more than 12 hours to issue a definitive statement on U.S. President Donald Trumps surprise missile strikes on the Syrian regime, but in the end he made a black-and-white choice. Just a few hours before the U.S. strikes, the prime minister was still insisting that the international community had to do more to investigate this weeks deadly Syrian chemical weapons attack. But in a communique issued by his office early Friday Trudeau stated that Canada fully supports Thursdays strikes, albeit as a limited and focused action to reduce the regimes ability to launch chemical attacks on civilians. He repeated as much and not very much more in the House of Commons. On the need to deter Bashar Assad from using chemical weapons on his people there is unanimity among U.S. allies, but on Trumps decision to strike a regime-controlled air base Thursday, there were shades of grey. Read the latest news on U.S. President Donald Trump No major ally blamed the U.S. president publicly for taking action against the Syrian regime in potential defiance of international law, but French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel stopped short of explicitly backing the strike. In a joint statement, France and Germany declared Assad had brought the strikes upon himself. In a separate statement, the German foreign office described the U.S. move as understandable but stressed the need for the United Nations to facilitate a political resolution to the conflict. The tone of Trudeaus statement aligns Canada more closely with Australia, the United Kingdom and Israel, to name some of the other countries that have fully approved the Trump strikes, than with the two leading European powers. It is unequivocal. And although it restates Canadas wish for a diplomatic resolution of the Syrian conflict, it makes no mention of the (deadlocked) UN. The prime ministers stance amounts to a rare but clear break from the longstanding Liberal doctrine of insisting on a demonstrated measure of multilateralism before endorsing or participating in military action against another country. Part of the rationale for Jean Chretiens refusal to sign Canada up for the U.S.-led offensive on Iraq in 2003 was based on the contention that it was not approved by the UN nor conducted under the auspices of NATO. Neither organization had a say in Thursdays strikes and no U.S. ally took part in the operation. At best, most of them got a heads-up in the hours before it took place. There was not even the semblance of a multilateral umbrella. None of the above seemed to temper Trudeaus public support for a unilateral U.S. military intervention. In that, the prime minister will probably be supported by a majority of Canadians. Some though may find his foreign policy logic hard to follow. This is after all a leader who in opposition, as in government, has professed doubts as to the merits of conducting air strikes against Daesh in the same region. Just last year Trudeau pulled Canadas fighter jets from that battle. Read more: U.S. investigates Russias role in Syrian chemical weapons attack Missile strike opens new opportunity to push for Syria ceasefire: DiManno Be that as it may, the many Canadians who are still reeling from the horror inflicted on Syrian civilians this week will for the most part agree that in the face of barbaric state-sanctioned acts, the right thing to do is for Trudeau to back Trumps decision to punish the regime militarily. Supporting the U.S. president on this also happens to be the path of least resistance. Canadas trade relationship with the U.S. is at a crossroads with the future of NAFTA up in the air. Again this week former prime minister Brian Mulroney warned that Canada was not in for an easy ride at the trade negotiation table. This is not a time when Trudeau can easily afford to let much light shine between his government and an unpredictable White House. But with that unpredictability also comes the risk that the Trump administration will treat the support of its allies for this weeks strike as a licence for more unilateral military action. Many in the international community, in particular at the UN, have been hoping that Trudeau, inasmuch as he seems to have gotten off on the right foot with Trump, would manage to use his influence to bring the U.S. administration in the multilateral loop. Less than 100 days into his mandate, it is Trump who has drawn Trudeau out of Canadas multilateral comfort zone. Read more about: SHARE: Sexual assault survivors in Peel Region face a wait of up to nine months to get counselling at the local sexual assault centre. And the delay is about to get longer. The centre in Brampton has cut staff hours and will start closing on Fridays for the first time in 23 years. The problem is continued underfunding by the Ministry of the Attorney General as both the demand for services and the population increases, says executive director of Hope 24/7, Laura Zilney. We are desperate now, she says. Zilney notes that there are 132 people on the waiting list for counselling and sessions are being scheduled for January 2018. The waiting times are longer than they have ever been, and their staff is on the verge of burnout, she says. I really feel like we are waiting for a catastrophe to happen, adds Jaipaul Massey-Singh, the president of the Hope 24/7 board. The reality is that given the vast geography of what constitutes Peel, we really should be expanding, we should be multi-location, we should be able to reach out to more individuals and yet we are always struggling, he says. Unless (the province) is prepared to step up in a meaningful way we are really in a situation where we are going to fail our community. One sexual assault survivor who was referred to Hope 24/7 after she spent a week in the hospital because of suicidal thoughts told the Star, in an interview, that having to wait even a few months after deciding to seek help was very difficult. She was 16 at the time and had been struggling with depression and anxiety since being sexually abused by her uncle as a child. When I reached out, I wanted help immediately and I didnt want to go back (to the hospital), the now 17-year-old said. I kept thinking Im going to go back, Im going to go back. My brain was telling me, you are going to fail, you are going to fail . . . you are not going to make it to your first appointment. After a seven-per-cent funding increase in 2015, Hope 24/7 receives $459,000 in funding from the province. It gets the sixth-highest funding allocation of the 42 sexual assault centres in Ontario, the Ministry of the Attorney General said in an email statement. We know that Hope 24/7 does important work throughout Peel region, which is why we have provided them funding for over 20 years, the statement said. It added that sexual assault centres can offer emergency appointments and refer eligible people to the Victim Quick Response Program for emergency short-term counselling. Zilney says Hope 24/7 serves a population of 1.4 million people from Brampton, Mississauga and Caledon, and that the funding works out to about 34 cents per capita, the second-lowest funding per capita of all the sexual assault centres in the province. (Toronto, with the largest population, has the lowest funding per capita at 21 cents. York Region gets 44 cents). Zilney would like to see their funding increased to about $1 per capita ($1.4 million) which would allow them to expand outside Brampton and do more outreach and prevention work. It would also allow them to keep using additional funds from Peel region and United Way to make their services available to children as young as 12 and to anyone regardless of gender. The ministry funding is ear-marked for female-born clients over the age of 16, she said. Zilney says the centre has been focused on mental health needs, partnering with a group called Psychotherapy Matters, to get its clients access to provincial psychiatrists. That cuts down the waiting time for access to a psychiatrist from several months to two weeks. But it makes little difference when the centres waiting list is several months long. We have all these programs and resources in place, but we dont have the funding to move that wait-list forward, she says. The centre remains concerned about people who will be deterred from seeking help because of the long wait-lists. Massey-Singh says this problem can be more acute in a diverse community, such as Peel region, where populations of new Canadians may not have much trust or faith in authorities or institutions. When your first experience is that you are turned away, or there isnt anyone to help you, or you are told, OK, come back in six months and we will talk to you then, youve lost that person forever, he says. The Ministry of the Attorney General did not respond to questions about how the ministry allocates funding to sexual assault centres and whether it is considering providing additional funding to address the long wait-lists. At Hope 24/7s location in Brampton where they have three full-time counsellors and one part-time, the Star spoke with two teenage sexual assault survivors who began sessions at the centre last year. The Star agreed not to name them at their request and in accordance with the Stars policy not to identify victims of sexual assault unless they choose otherwise. It took one of the young women a week to decide she was ready to get help and contact the centre, she said. The 18-year-old was living in transitional housing and had been sexually and physically assaulted many times during her life. In her four months on the wait-list before her counselling sessions began in October, she fell victim to human trafficking, she said. As she described how she escaped after three days, she grasped a small shoe figurine part of a coping technique she has learned. This feels safe, she said recalling how she felt when she first came to the centre. Safety is huge for me. I came in here and . . . for the first time in months, in a year, things feel safe. Things feel like they might be OK. And that was something I didnt have before. She says she had thought about seeking help in the past, but the prospect of waiting several months made it seem pointless. But she wishes she had, and encourages others to reach out for help when they need it. She urges the province to make sure the supports will be there when they are needed. She credits Hope 24/7 for helping her tackle her drug and alcohol addictions, and says she has been clean for three months now. Ive changed so much; Ive taken big leaps. To some people something as simply as getting up in the morning and going for a walk is simple, but for me its huge. Its progress. SHARE: Holocaust survivor Stefania Sitbon was among 300 Jewish men, women and children who found safe haven during the Second World War in the unlikeliest of places: the Warsaw Zoo. The extraordinary true story of a Polish couple whose zoo served as a refuge during the German occupation has been translated in the new film The Zookeepers Wife, starring Jessica Chastain, which is now in theatres. Its based on the book of the same name by Diane Ackerman, which includes references to Sitbons family. Sitbon, 78, relocated to Canada from Israel in 1989. She and her older brother, Moshe, are said to be the only known living survivors of the Warsaw Zoo rescue effort. Sitbon was born in February 1939, seven months before the start of the war. Her father, Shmuel Kenigswain, was a Jewish freedom fighter who fought against the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1943. Prior to taking part in the act of Jewish resistance, Shmuel urged his wife, Regina, to find refuge elsewhere. He said: I know we will die. We all will die. What we have is some guns, some rifles, and they come with tanks and airplanes and they will destroy the ghetto . . . But I want you and the kids to survive, Sitbon said in a phone interview from her Toronto home. Sitbons grandfather used to bring fruits he couldnt sell to the Warsaw Zoo, which is how her mother knew of the couple who oversaw the property: Jan and Antonina Zabinski. Sitbons father had learned about the Zabinskis through the underground resistance movement and had heard that the couple could shelter his family until they could find safety elsewhere. With many of the zoos animals killed in bombings, by soldiers, or transported to the Berlin Zoo, some of the pens and cages that typically housed them sat empty. They became life-saving shelters for hundreds of Jews seeking safety. For 2 months, the zoo served as Sitbons home. During the day, those in hiding would stay tucked away to steer clear of the zoos other staffers and soldiers who patrolled the property. We could go out from the basement only after 5 p.m. after the staff left because nobody knew that we were there, she recalled. Chastain, a two-time Oscar nominee, portrays Antonina Zabinski in The Zookeepers Wife, and several key elements depicted onscreen mirror Sitbons own recollections from her time at the zoo. As showcased by Chastain in the film, Zabinski would play piano to either signal that it was safe for those in hiding to come out, or that there was potential danger lurking. When (Antonina) got a sign from the gate that the Germans came because from time to time theyd come to check shed sit down by the piano and start to play. And we kids knew when we heard the playing wed run like (mice) to hide ... Nobody said to us: Go hide. But we knew already when she played, we had to hide. When the zoos kitchen staff became suspicious as to why so much excess food was being consumed, concerns surfaced that they may talk and that the Germans would come. Read more: Zookeepers Wife a familiar account of wartime heroism: review Sitbon and her mother went to a nearby village while her brother was sent to a convent. The family was able to reunite after the war, including with her father, but it was short-lived. Sitbons father died in 1948. She relocated to Israel from Poland in 1957 before coming to Canada a few decades later. In 2014, Sitbon was joined by her daughters on an emotional pilgrimage back to Poland, which was documented in a film produced by The March of the Living Archive Project. While there, she met with the Zabinskis daughter, Teresa, and was able to see the same place that served as a sanctuary during the war. The Zabinskis have been recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center. The honour is bestowed upon non-Jewish people who risked their lives to help Jews during the war. They were very, very nice people, Sitbon said of the couple. They hid 300 Jews during the war. Not only us 300 Jews. Do you imagine what they did for us? Not many people did what they did. SHARE: When is a job not a job? When is it a gig? When will all jobs be gigs? The gig economy spreads internationally like butter on toast. Ask Foodora, Roadie, Grubhub, Saucey or Favor, all delivery services with cutesy names and very few employees. Ask Deliveroo, invented in 2013 in London by an American investment banker and now operating in 140 cities in 12 countries. Will Shu wanted food delivered when he worked late nights at Morgan Stanley, but London couldnt live up to New York standards. Deliveroo! Shu raised nearly US$500 million from investors, as reported by The Guardian, a newspaper that regularly and politely asks readers for donations lest it have to build a paywall that shuts out poor readers, such as Deliveroo riders. People who worship the god of cheap will not buy journalism or cook food or go to a restaurant. They value speed above all. The gig economy chips away at other peoples benefits, pay, delivery charges. It works beautifully up to a point, when companies cut costs so hard that they find themselves sanding through wood. In small ways, jobs may increasingly resemble those of Deliveroo independent suppliers. The Guardian published a list on Wednesday of Deliveroo managers vocabulary dos and donts. The intent is to keep cyclists and drivers as self-employed contractors, not employees, so it can pay a pittance. According to Deliveroo, a courier is not a courier, but an independent supplier. He is not an employee, worker, staff member or team member, because he was not hired; he was onboarded at a supply centre. He works with Deliveroo, not for Deliveroo, as part of the Roo community. He doesnt start a shift; he logs in. He doesnt earn wages, salary or pay; he operates on a fee-per-delivery payment system that allows [him] to earn more at busy times. Deliveroo riders are fighting back, and may win because even Theresa Mays Conservative government sees its losing revenue here. Gig workers dont earn much, dont pay much tax and can buy very little. The government wants the self-employed to pay in, so that one day theyll have pensions based on their employment history, which Deliveroo calls non-existent. If a gig walks like duck and quacks like a duck, its doing a ducks job. But that will wreck Deliveroo because customers wont pay more for food delivery. Lets extrapolate. A small fascinating story in the The Globe and Mail on Thursday reported that TD Bank was requesting ad agencies to help TD avoid taxes on their fees if they were bidding for the banks business. They were to redefine services in a way that would exempt the services from tax. After agencies contacted their industry association, TD backed off, saying the suggestion had been poorly worded. Indeed, its all in the wording. What if ad agencies were suddenly a guy on a bike and the bank was Deliveroo? At some point TD Bank may be on the bike and who knows who their Deliveroo will be. Morgan Stanley? Its a brilliant system, if a miserable one, but at what point is government so diminished that the system crashes? We might become more like booming China, with a vast layer of poors to do the dirty gigs. I recall Peter Hesslers story, in his 2011 book Country Driving: A Chinese Road Trip, of a hastily constructed factory in an isolated city far south of Shanghai. It made items that go unnoticed: bra components. Bra rings hold cups to vertical straps. Most bras have four steel rings and two underwires. In Boss Wangs pop-up factory, the favoured hires were young uneducated country girls without job experience. Girls have more patience (and are paid less), Wang told Hessler. Men are more trouble; they start fights or cause some other problem . . . . I want someone who can eat bitterness. Hessler met Tao Yufeng, 15, who made underwires, a step up from rings, earning 1/20th of a U.S. penny for each set. She was so fast, she made 80 cents an hour, double the minimum wage, doing Deliveroo-style piecework. But weirdly, she was better off than a London Deliveroo rider. There was a minimum wage, her work was highly valued and she and Wang didnt skate around words. Tao Yufeng was happily eating bitterness because it was better than starving in her village. She would eventually wreck her eyesight, but she was temporarily prospering. When we buy Chinese-made goods and order food by courier because its cheap, were behaving like little Deliveroos. But one day we and our children might have to become Tao Yufengs on a bike. So might the company we work for. Canadians worship the god of cheap, always have, and this is where we landed. Cheap clothing, fast food, free journalism, it all leads to a Deliveroo economy. We may like it, we may not. But we chose this. hmallick@thestar.ca SHARE: Kevin OLeary cited a trying childhood ordeal as the event that shaped his attitude toward financial security during a speech to the Empire Club of Canada in Toronto on Friday. OLeary, a leadership candidate for the Conservative party, told a story of fleeing to Europe with his mother and stepfather after his birth father threatened to take his brother and him away from his mother. The trip, which involved waiting for weeks in a foreign hotel room, dipped into his mothers emergency savings. My mother broke down, OLeary said. I will never forget my mothers fear, the look on her face when she finally realized that eventually the money would run out and she might lose her children. This did not happen as his birth father died of a heart attack at the age of 37, he said. But the money spent throughout the ordeal left his family in a precarious financial situation. And my mothers panic about it moved through my bloodstream, it changed my DNA forever. I remember thinking, I never want to feel this frightened and powerless again. Speaking to the event for Canadian business leaders, job creators, and innovators, OLeary promised to wipe away Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus mismanagement within his first 100 days in office, should he be elected the next prime minister. OLeary outlined a plan he says will grow the economy at 3 per cent and create jobs. To do so, he plans to significantly cut taxes, attract and retain top talent, invest in productive infrastructure, reduce regulatory drag, and unbridle Canadas national resource sectors. He promised to cut federal taxes so that combined federal and provincial taxes are competitive with U.S. tax rates. OLeary also said he would introduce federal taxpayer protection legislation ensuring that no Canadian has to spend more than 50 per cent of their salaries on combined federal and provincial income taxes. To ensure his tax cuts are effective, he said, his government would use its leverage of equalization and transfer payments to make sure provincial governments dont increase their taxes. I dont want some provincial premier like Kathleen Wynne to come swooping in behind me, and raise their provincial taxes, he said. That would defeat the purpose. When an OLeary government cuts taxes, I will make sure they stay cut. OLeary also promised to accelerate immigration for those in key sectors by working with employers and HR executives, to recruit the best candidates for the Conservative party, and to prioritize infrastructure investments that will drive domestic and trade growth. Outlining steps he would take to boost the Canadian economy, OLeary spoke about stopping any global protest groups and Hollywood celebrities who protest against projects of national importance forcibly, if need be. Dont come up here to Canada and chain yourself to a pipeline construction fence. If Im driving the bulldozer, you might just get run over, he said. OLeary emphasized the need for the balance of the stewardship for our future around the environment and the demands of an economy that supports people. We have to focus on our economic growth, he added. But his bulldozer would probably stop if it was Jane Fonda, he said. Id give her a chance to unchain herself. Just kidding. SHARE: It sounds like heresy to my own ears but President Donald Trump got it right. In a pivotal moment, he . . . pivoted. Away from the isolationist America First which amounts to America Only of campaigning days, of Inauguration Day, to a man of morality, however narrowly and situational. Launching a tactical Tomahawk missile strike against Syria, specifically the Shayrat airfield with its hardened aircraft shelters, radar equipment, warhead bunkers, fuel storage and defence system, disrupting the tyrannical regimes ability to deliver and deploy chemical weapons was an action to be commended. As, indeed, it has been, in capitals around the world, including Ottawa. It was clearly punitive, a shot across the bow of Syrias wretched state of ship, enforcing the red line on chemical weapons that his predecessor so tragically ignored after drawing his pretend line in the sand. Read the latest news on U.S. President Donald Trump Punitive, retaliatory, a warning blow the linguistics doesnt matter. What does matter is that America finally woke up to the atrocities being committed in Syria, even as President Bashar Assad clearly had the gaggle of opposition on the run after the fall of Aleppo. There was nothing strategic or war-room purposeful in the horrific gas attack earlier in the week dozens of children among the victims who perished in gruesome, suffocating deaths. That was a war crime, the vile act of a regime that long ago parted ways with any minimally countenanced rules of engagement in a civil war that has already claimed at least 400,000, left a million homeless and triggered a refugee crisis that has slopped over into just about every corner of the planet. Trump, to his own disgrace, hadnt been moved by any of that, bringing down the hammer even harder with executive orders aimed at blocking the dispossessed from breaching Americas shores. Only a week ago, the Trump administration indicated that Washington could live just fine with Assad, who in December described Trump as a natural ally for Syria, if he held fast to his hard position on thwarting terrorism. Where president Barack Obama had made the removal of odious Assad by stepping down, as if a key component of American policy in the region, Trump seemed poised to reverse that posture. So maybe it was the effect of those ghastly photos of baby corpses and parents kissing their dying children goodbye that lodged in Trumps soul. Just as the world convulsed in horror at images of 3-year-old Alan Kurdi, his small body washed up on shore after most of his Syrian family perished attempting to reach Europe across the sea in 2015. The sincerity of Trumps revulsion following the chemical attack on the northern town of Khan Skeikhoun seemed genuine enough to me. Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children, Trump told reporters Thursday night. It was a slow and brutal death for so many. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror. Yet we, the international community, have allowed it. Obama allowed it when government forces shelled a Damascus suburb with poison gas four years ago, killing at least 1,400 and maiming thousands. Rather than taking any military action beyond delivering some small arms to anti-government rebels, Obama limited his response to a demand that Syria turn over its chemical weapons stockpile for destruction. Assads claimed acquiescence always beggared belief and, in the bloody years since, Syria has shelled civilians with chlorine gas on several occasions before this weeks atrocity. The airfield struck is believed to be where the planes which dropped the chemical bombs on Khan Sheikhoun launched, a base where Russian forces are also hunkered. Was Moscow complicit? Some on Trumps Republican far right and the Democrat left immediately condemned the missile strike. Hell, they fulminated, he promised to get the U.S. out of foreign wars. Democratic Congressman Ted Lieu, an air force veteran, tweeted: His actions in Syria, Iraq & Yemen show he is acting like a warmonger. Read more: Trumps Syria strike intensifies tensions with Russia, highlights questions of his foreign policy U.S. investigates Russias role in Syrian chemical weapons attack Trudeau takes path of least resistance in backing Trump: Hebert Thats how far some have wandered from due north on their moral compass. But others, including impassioned Trump critics Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, and Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi supported the presidents strike authorization, describing it as proportional and measured. Mere hours before the Tomahawks blasted away from destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean, Hillary Clinton, in an interview with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, called for Trump to take out Assads airfields. I really believe that we should have and still should take out his airfields and prevent him from being able to use them to bomb innocent people and drop Sarin gas on them. Any further military force against Syria clearly requires a debate and vote in Congress: What next? Everybody wants a diplomatic solution to the seven-year grotesquerie in Syria, complicated by colliding interests, regional tensions and death cult Daesh forces straddling the Syria-Iraq border and the pushback being waged against the ersatz Daesh caliphate in northern Iraq. But diplomacy has had no traction with Assad, emboldened as he has been with Russia as an ally. A limited missile strike wont put Assad on the run. But something has changed profoundly, an operational and geopolitical shift. Instead of cosying up to President Vladimir Putin and the whole Russian meddling in the election is a separate issue thats not going away Trump should manoeuvre to induce the man hes professed to admire into pressuring Damascus for a ceasefire, political settlement and negotiated transfer of power. Putin cannot have Assads back anymore. Hes got influence use it. Most immediately, and without any military escalation, no-fly zones should be established as was done in Kurdish Iraq to provide civilians safe refuge from bombing and so they dont take desperately to the sea. And Trump, after opening the Tomahawk tubes, should also open Americas borders to vagabond humanity. Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Read more about: SHARE: A family-owned bike rental business on Torontos Centre Island is desperately trying to appeal the citys decision not to renew its contract after 32 years in the business. Priya Rao has fond memories spending summers on the island with her family and helping with the Toronto Island Bicycle Rental, but after over three decades serving tourists and Torontonians, the business has been forced to leave the island by Apr. 24 after the contract was awarded to another bidder. Its a pleasure to be there and its very, very sad to think that I will not have that pleasure again, said Rao, whose parents took over the business from another family when she was nine years old. I just loved it so much I continued to go there every summer even though I have my own career now but I just like to be there to meet all the tourists and the people from Toronto, she added. The city is negotiating an agreement with the new bidder, which it chose after two bids were received, said Matthew Cutler, the spokesperson for Toronto Parks, Forestry and Recreation, in an email. Cutler wouldnt provide the name of the new provider until the new five-year agreement is signed on May 1. As a result of this competitive bid process, the City anticipates a significant increase in revenue to support Toronto Island Park, and visitors to the Park will be able to access a brand new fleet of bicycles for rent, along with an overall refresh of the bike rental facility at Centre Island, he said. The decision comes down to money, says Rao. The bid that (the other bidder) made is, to us, not financially sound or reasonable based on the income of the business. So even if we were able to match it we would not because wed be basically working for free or even paying to operate the business, she said. Renting bicycles is weather dependent and profit can fluctuate greatly, said Rao. For example, during the garbage strike in 2009, they didnt make much money. Last year, however, was their best year yet and they made $435,000 before subtracting money for staffing, fees to the city, revitalizing and purchasing new stock. This isnt the first time Raos family, who now co-owns the business with Gordon Chhor, has been in this situation. Some time ago, there was another company that outbid them, but they were able to successfully appeal the decision. They hope theyll be able to again this time. If not, Raos elderly parents retirement will be in jeopardy. Both her parents are in their 70s and were counting on the business to support them through their retirement. Its hard for them to imagine moving forward for themselves because now their retirement fund has been basically pulled out from underneath them, said Rao. There is no contingency plan at this point. The sale will run over the Easter weekend from April 14 to 16 and the family hopes to be able to liquidate as much of their inventory as possible. They have over 100 single bikes, over 40 two-seaters and four-seaters, 15 tandem bikes, and tools and parts for sale. The outpouring of support from the community has been overwhelming, said Rao, adding many people were upset with the citys decision. Theres been really beautiful stories of people sharing memories, sharing times of having a two-seater take them to their wedding ceremony. Just beautiful moments over the years, she said. I think we are just greatly disappointed that our service to the city was so easily dismissed, said Rao, adding it has put two families hers and co-owner Chhors out of business. SHARE: Police are searching for two suspects they believe tossed a stink bomb onto the subway Friday, causing a partial shutdown and the evacuation of Museum Station during rush hour. Two men were caught on security cameras throwing the stink bomb onto a train at St. George Station just as the doors closed at about 4:30 p.m., said Toronto police Const. Craig Brister. When the train reached Museum station, the noxious smell of rotten eggs had already been unleashed. The TTC immediately halted subway service between St. George and Union stations and evacuated Museum, forcing disgruntled commuters to try and find alternate, less pungent routes home. Toronto Fire Services Capt. David Eckerman said reports suggested a passenger may have kicked the apparent stink bomb onto track level at that time. The smell was bad enough that someone onboard the train pulled the emergency alarm, Toronto Fire Services Capt. David Eckerman said. Though police said one person was being treated at the scene for minor injuries, paramedics said they hadnt transported anyone from the scene, located near Queens Park and Charles St. W. That time of day on a crowded train, it couldve been much worse, said Brister. Unfortunately, things like this are beyond our control and we wanted to ensure safety was the top priority, said TTC spokesperson Jessica Kosmack, who also said investigators are treating the incident as an act of mischief. Kosmack said the TTCs decision to halt subway service was made out of an abundance of caution, since crews didnt immediately know if the smell was harmful or not. We do understand its extremely frustrating, especially during rush hour, and we thank customers for their patience, she said. Hazardous materials crews gave the all clear at about 5:20 p.m., saying the foul odour was not dangerous. The TTC resumed service about 10 minutes later. Commuters sense TTC problem The TTC said it didnt have information on how many customers may have been affected by the shutdown, or how many commuters typically use that portion of the system during the Friday evening rush hour. Brister said Toronto police have identified the two suspects, and will release their photos as soon as possible. If caught, Brister said the pair will likely face mischief charges. SHARE: WASHINGTONOn the use of military force, there were two distinct campaign Donald Trumps. There was, first and foremost, the America first non-interventionist. That version of Trump decried war spending in the Middle East as a hopeless waste of money better spent rebuilding U.S. infrastructure. That version of Trump would tolerate dictators like Syrias Bashar Assad as long as they fought terrorists. But there was also Trump the bellicose militarist. That version complained that the U.S. had grown soft and weak, its squishy leaders now mocked by foreign powers, its armed forces decrepit. That Trump would tolerate not even little snubs from adversaries, would lavish money upon the troops, would bomb the hell out of terrorists. The two Trumps were irreconcilable. It was not at all clear what would happen when he faced a real test in the Oval Office. Well, the test just happened: Trump the militarist won, and what happened to the other guy is a mystery. With his Thursday order to launch airstrikes against the Assad regime, the president has abandoned much of his previous rhetoric without a coherent explanation as to why. After four years explicitly demanding inaction on Syria, even after other chemical attacks by Assad, he has now declared the deterrence of such attacks in the vital national security interest of the United States. And after two years casually waving aside pleas to protect Syrian children by accepting them as refugees, he has now cited the protection of those same children to justify an attack. Read more: No child of God should ever suffer such horror: Read Trumps remarks on Syria Trudeau offers little hint about Canadas role against Syrias Assad Say goodbye, baby: Syrian father tearfully bids farewell to twins after chemical attack The strike was squarely in line with one firm Trump promise: speed and surprise in matters of war. It heralds the end of the painstaking use-of-force deliberations of the Obama era and the dawn of an era, it appears, where the American public gets almost no warning even about bombings that are not in response to direct threats. As rapid military interventions go, the strike was conventional: a limited response to the banned use of a horrific weapon. It was strongly endorsed by American allies, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and by Democratic leaders in Washington. Obamas inaction in response to Assad brutality dismayed even some senior members of his foreign policy team, and many Democrats have pushed for a more forceful response; Hillary Clinton herself called for airstrikes at an event earlier on Thursday. Yet Trumps decision, and the speed with which he ditched his oft-repeated warnings against attacking Syria, has left a host of big questions unanswered. Trump told Americans over and over that he would not explain his military plans in advance, lest the enemy gain an advantage. Smart or not, his silence has left his goals unknown to the public. The assurances of anonymous officials aside, it is not at all evident what the president himself is seeking to accomplish or whether he has thought about an endgame. Rex Tillerson, his marginalized secretary of state, said Thursday night: You should not in any way extrapolate that (the strikes) changed our policy or posture on Syria in any way. The world, though, does not know what that policy or posture is any longer. For the time being, the U.S. is involved in what amounts to two different wars in a fiendishly complex hot zone. Trump had already deployed more than 400 troops to Syria in preparation for a future assault on Raqqa, Daeshs self-proclaimed capital. Now he is challenging the Syrian dictator his administration said last week it was not interested in ousting. For the moment, the strike appears to be intended to send a specific message to Assad to stop using chemical weapons it laid down a marker, a senior administration official told CNN rather than signal the beginning of a genuine attempt at regime change. Trump, who had forcefully urged Barack Obama not to enforce his chemical weapons red line, now appears to be enforcing it himself. But any defiance by Assad may well compel Trump into the kind of escalation supposedly limited Middle East interventions frequently spiral into. In other words: America may be one or two Assad moves from a broader Syria conflict led by an impulsive, erratic and unpopular president who has shown no penchant for long-term strategic thinking. Trump biggest worry now: what if Assad defies him and uses chemical weapons again? Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, wrote on Twitter. Even if Assad does not, Trump is on a crash course with the very Russian administration that allegedly used nefarious hacking to help him into power. Vladimir Putin is Assads key patron. Trumps move escalates tensions with another nuclear power conducting its own airstrikes in Syria in support of the regime and that has the capacity to shoot down U.S. planes there. Trump faced immediate criticism from Democrats and from the more libertarian-leaning members of the Republican caucus for declining to ask Congress for authorization to conduct the strikes. Any further intervention risks severely alienating a significant portion of his own supporters, many of whom believed him when he said he would avoid the kinds of wars Clinton supported. Two of his most famous backers on the online far right, including one Trumps son was promoting on Twitter earlier in the week, expressed immediate fury on Thursday. I guess Trump wasnt Putins puppet after all, he was just another deep state/Neo-Con puppet, wrote Paul Joseph Watson, a prominent editor at the conspiracy website InfoWars. Im officially OFF the Trump train. All of a sudden, the outcome in Syria may say a lot about whether the train gets derailed entirely. Read more about: SHARE: In a decision that could have far-reaching implications in Canadian courts, a Guatemalan judge acquitted a former security guard employed by a subsidiary of a Canadian mining company of murder on Thursday. Mynor Padilla, 53, had been charged in the shooting death of Adolfo Ich, a Mayan Qeqchi, at a Sept. 27, 2009 protest on contested land at Fenix nickel mine in El Estor, eastern Guatemala. At the time, Padilla was employed by Compania Guatemalteca de Niquel (CGN), then a subsidiary of HudBay Minerals Inc., based in Toronto. Padilla, a former high-ranking member of the military, was also acquitted in the shooting of another man, German Chub, who was left a paraplegic with one functioning lung. The case is being watched closely in Canada, as the events that led to Ichs death are being contested in three landmark negligence lawsuits launched in Ontario Superior Court. The suits were filed by Ichs family, Chub and 11 other Qeqchi. If HudBay is found liable in Canada, the case could establish corporate behaviour guidelines for Canadian mining subsidiaries overseas, which have a long history of human rights and environmental complaints. Scott Brubacher, HudBays director of corporate communications, said the company is pleased with Padillas acquittal. We always believed in his innocence, he said. Ichs widow says she is disappointed, but not surprised, by Judge Ana Leticia Pena Ayalas verdict, issued in the Caribbean port city of Puerto Barrios. We never expected justice in Guatemalan courts, said Angelica Choc. But we will continue fighting the case in Canada. Read more: HudBays Guatemalan lawsuits to proceed in Canada The judge also announced that criminal charges would be brought against the prosecutor in the case, as well as witnesses for the prosecution, including Choc, for allegedly obstructing justice and falsifying information. Murray Klippenstein, the Guatemalans Canadian lawyer, called such retaliatory charges bizarre and said they underscore concerns about Guatemalas dysfunctional justice system. This decision is likely to have little effect on the lawsuits in Canada. If anything, it helps by confirming the inability to obtain justice in Guatemala, he said. In total, the plaintiffs are seeking $15 million in compensatory damages and $64 million in punitive damages. Corruption within Guatemalas justice system, combined with intimidation against judges and prosecutors, contributes to high levels of impunity, noted a 2017 Human Rights Watch report. The U.S. State Department found that the countrys judicial system fails to provide fair trials due to inefficiency, corruption and intimidation. In 2008, an international body backed by the UN was created to support the prosecution of security forces and clandestine organizations embedded in Guatemala. The criminal case against Padilla was tried with the assistance of this body, known as the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG). Padilla was arrested in 2012, three years after his arrest warrant was issued. At the time he was still a CGN employee. Rights Action, a Toronto-based human rights group that has worked with the victims in the trial, said they have suffered harassment and intimidation. It is no small thing for impoverished, discriminated Mayan villagers to publicly tell the truth about the mining repression and human rights violations they have suffered, said Grahame Russell, the organizations director. HudBay sold the mine in 2011. Read more: How a Guatemalan murder trial could forever change Canadian overseas mining Francisco Palomo, one of Padillas lawyers, was well-known in Guatemala for defending former politicians, most notably Jose Efrain Rios Montt, an ex-army general who was charged with genocide for the death of 1,771 indigenous people during his 1982-83 presidency. Palomo, 63, was shot 12 times and killed on June 3, 2015 months after Padillas trial began by two men on a motorbike while driving his car in Guatemala City. SHARE: BEIRUT World leaders rallied around the United States after it launched a missile strike early Friday on a Syrian airbase in response to this weeks chemical attack, while Russia condemned the move as aggression and suspended crucial co-ordination with Washington in Syrias congested skies. The overnight missile attack, which marked the first time the U.S. has directly targeted Syrian President Bashar Assads forces, was condemned by his allies in Russia and Iran but welcomed by the Syrian opposition and its supporters, who expressed hope it signalled a turning point in the devastating six-year-old civil war. The bombing represents U.S. President Donald Trumps most dramatic military order since taking office and thrusts the U.S. administration deeper into the complex Syrian conflict. The Obama administration threatened to attack Assads forces after previous chemical attacks, but never followed through. Read More: What the attack on Syria says about Donald Trump, militarist president: Daniel Dale About 60 U.S. Tomahawk missiles hit the Shayrat airbase, a small installation with two runways, where aircraft often take off to bomb targets in northern and central Syria. The U.S. missiles hit at 3:45 a.m. local time Friday and targeted the bases airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, U.S. officials said. They were fired from two warships in the Mediterranean Sea, in retaliation for Tuesdays deadly chemical attack, which officials said used chlorine mixed with a nerve agent, possibly sarin. Assads office called the U.S. missile strike reckless and irresponsible. The Syrian military said at least seven people were killed and nine wounded in the strike. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition monitor, also put the death toll at seven, including a general and three soldiers. The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin believes the U.S. strike is an aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Washingtons move deals a significant blow to the Russia-U.S. relations, which are already in a deplorable shape, and poses a serious obstacle for creating an international coalition against terrorism. Russias Foreign Ministry said it is suspending a memorandum with Washington signed after Russia began an air campaign in support of Assad in September 2015 under which the two countries exchange information about sorties over Syria. The Kremlin said just 23 of 59 cruise missiles reached the airbase, destroying six Syrian jets but leaving the runway intact. A U.S. official said all but one of the 59 missiles struck their intended targets, hitting multiple aircraft and hardened air shelters, and destroying the fuel area. The official, who was not authorized to discuss initial reports, spoke on condition of anonymity. Syrian state-run television shows the aftermath of U.S. air strikes that hit an airbase near the Syrian city of Homs. A U.S.-led coalition has been bombing Daesh, also known as ISIS or ISIL, in Syria since 2014, while Russias air force has been striking both extremist groups and Syrian rebels in order to aid Assads forces. Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which support the Syrian opposition, welcomed the missile strike, with Riyadh calling it a courageous decision by Trump. Iran called it a dangerous unilateral action that would strengthen terrorists and further complicate the conflict. The British government says it was informed in advance about the strike and firmly supports the American action. Prime Minister Theresa Mays office says the action was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, and is intended to deter further attacks. France, Italy and Israel also welcomed the strikes. The opposition Syrian Coalition said the U.S. attack puts an end to an age of impunity and should herald the start of a larger campaign against Damascus. Maj. Jamil al-Saleh, a U.S-backed rebel commander based in the area where the U.S. attack took place, told The Associated Press he hoped the strike would be a turning point in the six-year-old war, which has killed an estimated 400,000 people. Assad had been under mounting international pressure after the chemical attack on the northern town of Khan Sheikhoun, which killed 87 people, including 31 children. Even Russia has said its support is not unconditional. Russia says a U.S. strike on a Syrian airbase poses a threat to international security but Britain and Turkey back the action. Syria rejected the accusations, and blames opposition fighters for stockpiling the chemicals. Russia has said the toxic agents were released when a Syrian airstrike hit a rebel chemical weapons arsenal, and that blame should not be apportioned until a full investigation has been completed. Russias military intervention in Syria has turned the balance of power in Assads favour, and Moscow has used its veto power at the Security Council on several occasions to prevent sanctions against Damascus. The U.S. had initially focused on diplomatic efforts, pressing the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution drafted with Britain and France that would have condemned Syrias suspected use of chemical weapons. But the vote was cancelled because of differences among the 15 members. The Security Council plans to meet at 11:30 a.m. local time for a briefing on the U.S. strike. In Geneva, the UN envoy for Syria told the AP his office is in crisis mode after the strike, and that he would soon convene an urgent meeting of a Syrian ceasefire task force chaired by the United States and Russia. Staffan de Mistura said Russia requested the meeting, which was agreed upon by the United States. The envoy has been spearheading peacemaking efforts for nearly three years, with little progress. Trump had said the chemical attack crossed many, many lines, and put the blame squarely on Assads forces. Speaking Thursday on Air Force One, Trump said the attack shouldnt have happened, and it shouldnt be allowed to happen. A survivor of the chemical attack said he hopes the U.S. missile attack puts an end to government airstrikes, creating a safe area for civilians. Alaa Alyousef, who lost 25 relatives in the chemical attack, said the U.S. missile strike alleviates a small part of our suffering, but he worries it will be an anesthetic that merely numbs the pain while allowing the international community to save face. Read more about: SHARE: PALM BEACH, FLA.The United States is looking into whether Russia participated in the Syrian chemical weapons attack that provoked U.S. President Donald Trumps airstrikes against the Assad government, a revelation that could have dramatic implications for relations between Washington and Moscow. On Friday, senior U.S. military officials said a drone belonging to either Russia or Syria was seen hovering over the site of the chemical weapons attack after the assault earlier this week. Russia is one of Syrias most important patrons and has long resisted U.S. efforts to push President Bashar Assad from power. The Trump administration sent conflicting messages on what the strikes signalled for the overall U.S. policy in Syria. White House officials said the assault was not a step toward deeper involvement in Syrias civil war, though Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Washington was prepared to take further military action. Read the latest news on U.S. President Donald Trump We are prepared to do more, but we hope that will not be necessary, Haley said at an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council. The president approved the strike while in Florida for a two-day summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. He did not respond to shouted questions about the assault from reporters as he opened meetings with Xi on Friday. The strikes 59 missiles launched from the USS Ross and USS Porter hit the government-controlled Shayrat airbase in central Syria, where U.S. officials say the Syrian military planes that dropped the chemicals had taken off. The U.S. missiles hit at 8:45 p.m. in Washington, 3:45 Friday morning in Syria. The missiles targeted the bases airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, officials said. A spokesman for Vladimir Putin said the strike deals a significant blow to the Russia-U.S. relations, which are already in a deplorable shape, and poses a serious obstacle for creating an international coalition against terrorism. But there was widespread praise from other nations, including Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which support the Syrian opposition. British Prime Minister Theresa Mays office said the action was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, and is intended to deter further attacks. France, Italy and Israel also welcomed the strikes. In Washington, Republican leaders applauded Trumps actions, despite the president launching the strike without congressional authorization. Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell called Trumps decision entirely correct. I think the president had the authority to do what he did, and Im glad he did it, McConnell said. Democrats were muted in their response. Sen. Dianne Feinstein said the strikes were a limited but necessary response and called on Trump to develop a comprehensive strategy to end Syrias civil war. The United States has launched its first direct assault on Syrian government forces, blaming it for the brutal April 4 chemical attack that killed more than 80 civilians. The Syrian military said at least 7 people were killed and several were wounded in the strikes on the airbase. The U.S. assault marked a striking reversal for Trump, who warned as a candidate against the U.S. being pulled into the Syrian civil war that began six years ago. Advisers said he was moved to act in part by the gripping images of young children killed in the attack. Read more: Syria condemns U.S. missile strike as aggression What the attack on Syria says about Donald Trump, militarist president: Daniel Dale Canada not part of U.S. strike on Syria but backs efforts to stop atrocities U.S. officials were blistering in their condemnation of Russia, which has brokered a 2013 agreement with Washington to strip Syria of its chemical weapons stockpiles. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in Florida with Trump, said Moscow had failed to live up to its obligations. Either Russia has been complicit or Russia has been simply incompetent in its ability to deliver on its end of the agreement, Tillerson said. Trump had advocated greater counterterrorism co-operation with Russia, Assads most powerful military backer. Just last week, the Trump administration signalled the U.S. was no longer interested in trying to push Assad from power over his direction of a conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and led to the worst refugee crisis since World War II. White House officials said Trumps actions sent a clear message to Assad, though they continued to avoid explicitly calling for him to leave office. The president believes that the Syrian government, the Assad regime, should at the minimum agree to abide by the agreements they made to not use chemical weapons, presidential spokesman Sean Spicer said. U.S. officials portrayed the strikes as an appropriate, measured response and said they did not signal a broader shift in the Trump administrations approach to the Syrian conflict. But there could be other problems. Russian military personnel and aircraft are embedded with Syrias, and Iranian troops and paramilitary forces are also on the ground helping Assad fight the array of opposition groups hoping to topple him. Before the strikes, U.S. military officials said they informed their Russian counterparts of the impending attack. The goal was to avoid any accident involving Russian forces. Nevertheless, Russias Deputy UN ambassador Vladimir Safronkov warned that any negative consequences from the strikes would be on the shoulders of those who initiated such a doubtful and tragic enterprise. The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin believes that the U.S. strike on a Syrian airbase is an aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law. Irans foreign ministry also condemned the strike and called it a violation of international law. Spicer said the U.S. notified its partner countries in the region prior to launching the strikes. Vice-President Mike Pence called key congressional lawmakers in both parties after the cruise missiles were launched. Trumps decision to attack Syria came three-and-a-half years after president Barack Obama threatened Assad with military action after an earlier chemical weapons attack killed hundreds outside Damascus. Obama had declared the use of such weapons a red line. At the time, several American ships in the Mediterranean were poised to launch missiles, only for Obama to abruptly pull back after key U.S. ally Britain and the U.S. Congress balked at his plan. He opted instead for the Russian-backed plan that was supposed to remove and eliminate Syrias chemical weapons stockpiles. The world learned of the chemical attack earlier in the week in footage that showed people dying in the streets and bodies of children stacked in piles. The international outcry fuelled an emotional response from Trump, who appeared to abandon his much-touted America First vision for a stance of humanitarian intervention, akin to that of previous American leaders. The show of force in Syria raises legal questions. Its unclear what authority Trump is relying on to attack another government. When Obama intervened in Libya in 2011, he used a UN Security Council mandate and NATOs overall leadership of the mission to argue that he had legal authority arguments many Republicans opposed. Trump cant rely on either justification here. Read more about: SHARE: PALM BEACH, FLA.U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday he has developed an outstanding relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping after meeting with the leader of a nation Trump has criticized as a menace to the United States. The widely anticipated meeting of the leaders of the worlds two largest economies was largely overshadowed by the U.S. missile strikes at Syria. Those strikes added weight to Trumps threat last week to act unilaterally against North Koreas weapons program. Trump said in a brief appearance before reporters that he and Xi made tremendous progress in their first face-to-face talks and that he believe lots of very potentially bad problems will be going away. He did not elaborate on the progress or the problems. But the two days of talks at Trumps private estate in Florida were expected to focus on what Trump has described as Chinas unfair trade practices and inadequate efforts to halt North Koreas nuclear weapons and missile program. Read the latest news on U.S. President Donald Trump Xi said the delegations covered important topics and have established a good friendship and working relationship. He said he believes the U.S. and China can continue to develop the relationship, noting that its the historic responsibility of both countries to work toward peace and stability. The U.S. announced the missile barrage shortly after Trump and Xi wrapped up dinner Thursday. The strikes were retaliation against Syrian President Bashar Assad for a chemical weapons attack against civilians caught up in his countrys long civil war. Read more: U.S. launches cruise missile attack against Syria China has sided with Russia at the United Nations in opposing condemnation of Assads government but has not become directly involved in the conflict. On Friday, Chinas Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said China opposed the use of chemical weapons by any party under any circumstances but didnt comment on the U.S. attack. The timing of the attack could send a message to the Chinese. Trump told the Financial Times in the days before Xis arrival that he is prepared to go it alone on North Korea if China doesnt work with the U.S. to crack down on North Koreas nuclear program Military options against North Korea are much riskier than those against Syria. It has already tested nuclear weapons and South Koreas capital, Seoul, is in range of North Korean artillery. U.S President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping were seen taking a walk and shaking hands as they spent part of Friday in talks at Trump's estate in Florida. Taking action against North Korea has been a sticking point in U.S. talks with the Chinese. China is North Koreas most important ally and trading partner. Read more: North Korea fires ballistic missile into the sea ahead of U.S.-China meeting Before Thursdays dinner, Trump said he and Xi already had had a long discussion and had developed a friendship, and then joked, I have gotten nothing, absolutely nothing. However, Xi apparently got something out of dinner. Chinese state media reported late Thursday that Trump has accepted Xis invitation to visit China this year. The official Xinhua News Agency said Trump will travel to China at an early date in 2017, but gave no details. The White House downplayed expectations for a breakthrough on issues like trade and tariffs, insisting that the 24-hour summit is mostly an introductory meeting for the two leaders. Within Trumps administration, divisions remain over how to approach China. As a candidate and president, Trump has taken an aggressive posture toward China, labelling Beijing a tremendous problem and arguing that lopsided trade deals with China shortchange American businesses and workers. Last week, the president tweeted that his meeting with Xi would be very difficult. Read more: Trump kicks off Florida meetings with Chinese president Xi Jinping He also last week signed a pair of executive orders focused on reducing the U.S. trade deficit, an apparent shot at China, which accounted for the vast bulk $347 billion of last years $502 billion trade deficit. Speaking to reporters while travelling to Florida, Trump suggested a link between terrible trade agreements the U.S. has made with China and Pyongyangs provocations. He said the two issues really do mix. While Trump would not say what he wants China to do specifically, he said he thinks China will want to be stepping up on the North Korea issue. Xi was expected to seek assurances that Trump will not interfere in the territorial dispute over the South China Sea or question the One China policy by reaching out to Taiwans leader again, as Trump did during the transition. Read more about: SHARE: When Donald Trump was elected U.S. president, it seemed big things were in store. His most ardent supporters saw him as a revolutionary who would, in his own words, drain the swamp that is Washington. His most ardent critics saw him as a mad buffoon bent on undoing everything that is good in America. So far, he has been neither. His rhetoric remains that of an incendiary. But most of his actions to date have been strikingly conventional. From the war in Syria to the North American Free Trade Agreement, Trump has deviated little from standard U.S. practice. Even his proposed wall along the Mexican border, a trademark Trump policy during last years election campaign, has been whittled down. On Wednesday, Homeland Security chief John Kelly told a Senate committee that a wall from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific is unlikely. Rather, he said physical barriers, including extensions to existing border fences, will be built where necessary. That, by the way, isnt much different from statements made in 2006 by Democrats like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton when they supported fencing parts of the Mexican border. Trump is certainly not an Obama clone. But neither is he a rebel against Republican orthodoxy. Domestically, the new president seems keen to push the mainstream Republican agenda of low taxes, fewer environmental rules and small government. He has enthusiastically started to dismantle Obamas climate change measures and, after failing once, is preparing again to take apart Obamacare, his predecessors health-care scheme. But in foreign affairs, Trumps actual policy as opposed to his rhetorical policy has strayed little from Obamas. Like Obama, Trump expresses horror at the atrocities allegedly committed by Bashar Assads government in the Syrian civil war including the latest use of chemical weapons against civilians. Trumps administration, like Obamas, blames Russia for supporting Assad. How many more children have to die before Russia cares? Nikki Haley, Trumps ambassador to the United Nations, said this week. Her words echoed those of Samantha Power, Obamas ambassador to the UN who, following the Assad regimes relentless bombing campaign in Aleppo last year, asked Russia: Is there no execution of a child that gets under your skin? Is there literally nothing that shames you? Yet, like Obama, Trump is willing to co-operate with Russia to end the war even if that means leaving Assad in place. When Haley said last week that the U.S. is not focused on removing Assad, she was articulating a policy that, in practical terms, began with Obama. As a presidential candidate, Trump delighted in badmouthing China for its alleged trade sins. In power, Trump recognizes that Chinas help is crucial in pressuring North Korea to abandon its nuclear missile ambitions and that it doesnt pay to insult Beijing essentially Obamas policy. NATO? As a candidate, Trump questioned its usefulness. As president, and like every other U.S. chief executive since 1949, he says he strongly supports the alliance. Trump does want other NATO members to spend more on armaments. But so did Obama, who famously tweaked Canada for its military parsimony when he addressed Parliament last year. Russia? Trumps desire for a thaw in U.S.-Russia relations has been the stuff of scandal in Washington. But so far, Americas approach to Russia has changed not a whit. The U.S. still has troops in Poland facing Russia. It still opposes Russias annexation of Crimea. It still imposes economic sanctions on Russia. Trade? Trump did kill the Trans-Pacific Partnership attempt to create a 12-nation trade bloc. But Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent in the presidential race, promised to do the same. Trump is planning to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada. But thats a step back from his original pledge to scrap it. Early indications are that the U.S. will want serious concessions from the other two parties. But it appears that many of these will echo traditional American demands. Finally, there are Trumps border protocols. Since he became president the media has been chock-a-block with stories detailing the difficulties some Muslim Canadians have faced entering the U.S. The implication is that Trumps campaign diatribes against Muslims affected the way U.S. border agents do their job. But as the Stars Daniel Dale has reported, the statistics dont back this up. In February of this year, 1,200 Canadian residents were turned back at the border. In February 2016, under Obama, the number was 1,700. Thomas Walkom appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. SHARE: If you had asked me beforehand what I was going to be doing at 3 a.m. on Nov. 11th, 2014, I probably would have said sleeping. But on that fall morning, I was instead sitting on a bench in rural France catching my breath. Needless to say, it was a Remembrance Day I will not forget. This story starts in Calais, on the northern French coast. After visiting a friend in London I had decided to take the ferry across the English Channel. My goal was to make it to the Vimy Ridge monument for the morning of Remembrance Day. For Canadians, this is a well-trodden pilgrimage, and I was eager to add my name to the list of those who had made the journey. Upon arrival at the Calais train terminal, I began to realize that my trip may not have been as well planned out as I had thought. Instead of a train going directly to Vimy, the only option would be to travel to Hazebrouck, a town in the same vicinity. I figured once I arrived in Hazebrouck, further transportation would be easy to come by. In line with my faulty itinerary, I arrived in Hazebrouck only to discover that no trains would be running to Vimy until late the next day. At 10 p.m., with no other transportation methods on the table and the sole Hazebrouck hotel closed, the only logical thing I could think of was to start walking. I left the town of Hazebrouck and everything was peaceful. I followed a long, winding road that took me through farmers fields, valleys and small villages. The sights and sounds were breathtaking, and it gave me a chance to think a lot about the soldiers, whose footsteps I was following. I couldnt help but remember how lucky I was to have grown up far away from the reaches of war. The soldiers who fought at Vimy, and other battles close by, such as Beaumont-Hamel, Amiens, and the Somme, were my age and younger. What unthinkable brutality had they faced? How did they possibly continue on as their colleagues and friends died beside them? The perseverance and fortitude they showed is unimaginable. At the five-hour point in my journey, I decided to take a rest. At the side of the road was a bench, so I sat down. For the next few minutes I began to contemplate whether I should continue on or not. I was exhausted, and my reliable cellphone, carrying the directions to Vimy, had died nearly an hour before. The one thing I couldnt get out my head, however, was the need to finish this journey. If young teenagers could make this trek in the direst of circumstances, surely I could on a calm night such as this. With that thought in my head, I got up and kept walking. After many hours of walking, the sun began to rise. I had finally made it. When I arrived, I looked up and was awestruck by the Vimy monument. It seemed as if it were almost naturally apart of the landscape, its ivory towers piercing the bright blue morning sky. I walked along the ground that had been displaced by shelling, I walked through the cemeteries that marked the many soldiers who had fallen, and I stood for the moment of silence where many soldiers had fought and died. For me this is an important story to tell in the lead up to the 100th anniversary of Vimy Ridge. This battle took place a long time ago and thousands of kilometres away. It is easy to feel disconnected from it. However, taking this unexpected journey, along the very path many soldiers took 100 years ago, led me to realize that these soldiers were not much different from myself, or any other Canadian. They travelled from Canada to a place they did not know, in the most brutal of circumstances, to protect their way of life, to protect the peace we now take for granted. It is so important that we always remember the sacrifices they made. Jay Fallis lives in Ottawa and is passionate about Canadian politics. He recently graduated with a master's degree in political science from the University of Toronto. He can be reached at jjmfallis@gmail.com . Read more about: SHARE: In the cold light of day, here are seven observations on the U.S. missile attack against Syria. First, it was illegal. Russian President Vladimir Putin makes that point and in this instance he is correct. Short of invoking the right of self-defence, it is a breach of international law to attack a state unless that attack is authorized by the United Nations Security Council. President Donald Trump did not have such authorization. Nor did he try to obtain it. Second, that doesnt much matter to America and its allies. Even Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a staunch defender of the UN, gave his unequivocal support to the attack. It is not the first time Canada has backed an illegal international action. In 1999, Canada took part in a NATO attack against Serbia that was launched without UN approval, citing what it called the right to protect a vulnerable population from its own government. Foes of Syrian President Bashar el-Assad argue that Russia would have vetoed any UN motion to authorize a strike against Syria. And they are doubtless correct. But that, of course, is the point of this particular international law to make war difficult. Third, with this strike Trump has completed his metamorphosis from Fortress America isolationist to international interventionist. He used to share Barack Obamas reluctance to involve the U.S. in foreign adventures. He has reversed himself. Think of it as Trump channelling his internal Hillary Clinton. Had she won last years presidential election, she would have wasted no time in ratcheting up military action against Assad. Trump is doing her work for her. Here, he follows a long line of U.S. presidents, both Democrat and Republican, who couldnt resist making use of Americas formidable military power. In some cases, like the 1983 invasion of tiny Grenada, this worked out well for the U.S. In other cases, such as Afghanistan and Vietnam, it didnt. Fourth, there is a certain amount of hypocrisy involved in all of this. The strikes were ostensibly to punish Assad for a chemical attack that killed more than 80 in northern Syria, including, as Trump said Thursday, beautiful babies. But Assads forces have killed countless more beautiful babies with barrel bombs and conventional weapons. Why act against him now? The standard answer is that chemical weapons are illegal under international law, which is true. Yet this law is enforced selectively. The U.S. famously did nothing to curtail Iraqs use of chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. Indeed, in some instances it helped Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. But in that war, America was siding with Iraq. Fifth, in terms of domestic U.S. politics, the missile strike was an inspired move. The videos of children choking on nerve gas are compellingly horrible. It is not just that Trump was moved by these images. It is that he knew many Americans would be moved and would welcome the idea of their president delivering stern justice to the villains responsible. Even Democratic lawmakers felt the need to praise a man who, until late Thursday evening, they had treated as public enemy number one. As an added bonus, now that Trump has faced down Russia, it will be harder for his critics to paint him as Putins accomplice in the alleged dirty tricks scandal of the 2016 presidential campaign. Sixth, the attack shows the world that America remains willing to use brute force. But this can have perverse results. North Korea, for instance, will probably not be deterred from continuing apace with its nuclear missile program. Quite the opposite. For Pyongyang, the lesson from this weeks airstrike is likely to be that when dealing with the U.S. only the threat of overwhelming retaliatory force works. Put simply, if Assad had nuclear weapons Trump would have been more cautious. Seventh, we dont know where this will end. So far, the Trump administration is painting the strike as a one-off warning rather than the beginning of something bigger. But wars have a habit of growing. The U.S. already has close to 1,000 combat troops on the ground in Syria fighting Daesh (also known as the ISIS and ISIL) terrorists. Republican Sen. John McCain is calling on Trump to set up and enforce no-fly zones to counter Assad. If this missile strike proves popular, Trump may find the prospect of more war irresistible. Thomas Walkom appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Read more about: SHARE: Early in the morning of a hot July day in 2013, 2-year-old Eva Ravikovich was left in a parked car by her unlicensed daycare provider. At the end of the day Olena Panfilova realized she had left the toddler behind. But it was too late. Eva was already dead from heat stroke. Panfilova finally admitted what she had done in court this week as she pleaded guilty to criminal negligence causing Evas death. But its not just Panfilovas actions that should be under scrutiny. Ontario also failed Eva by not strictly enforcing rules for unlicensed day cares. At the time of Evas death, for example, Panfilova was legally allowed to care for five children in her home. But on that day she was watching 35, as well as 14 dogs. There had been reports of overcrowding in her daycare but investigators hadnt followed up. And when they did follow up in 2012 they simply sent her a letter telling her to reduce the number of children in her care. A letter. Indeed, a report by former Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin would later find a bureaucracy that shied away from inspections and investigations and preferred to use soft tools of encouragement. Two years ago Ontario tightened the rules governing unlicensed daycares to make them safer and increased penalties for infractions. That should help if the rules are enforced. But it doesnt address the issue of why parents must turn to unregulated daycares in the first place. While three-quarters of mothers of young children are in the workforce, there are licensed spots available for less than a quarter of children under 5. In its recent budget the Trudeau government announced $7 billion over the next decade to ease the shortage by creating up to 40,000 new spaces. But that isnt enough to meet the demand. As Marin asked in his report, What could be more pressing, more urgent, than protecting children? The answer is nothing. While Ontario must be sure to enforce its new rules for unregulated daycares, Ottawa and the provinces must tackle the national child care crisis by building a national, affordable licensed system. SHARE: Last year, the Special Investigations Unit, one of three police oversight agencies in Ontario, cleared an unnamed Toronto officer in the death of Andrew Loku, a mentally ill South Sudanese man. Witness accounts cast doubt on whether the shooting was indeed justified, yet the public was given no explanation for the SIUs decision. (The watchdogs reports are not made public.) The case sparked intense protest, eventually leading the province to release a heavily redacted version of the report. While the published document left many questions unanswered, the uproar was not fruitless. It focused attention on growing and legitimate discontent among certain communities with how police use their extraordinary powers and the secrecy in which oversight agencies do their work. In response, the Wynne government commissioned Justice Michael Tulloch to investigate how to improve the transparency and accountability of the provinces police watchdogs. The resulting report, released Thursday, contains 129 recommendations, from creating a regulatory body for police officers to setting limits on how long watchdogs can take to complete their investigations. The province should carefully consider Tullochs ambitious suggestions and move quickly to enact three that the Star and other critics have long advocated. The SIU should publicly release all future reports on cases of injuries or deaths involving police where, as in the Loku case, the watchdog determines no charges should be laid. The secrecy around police oversight, particularly in ambiguous cases, can do enormous damage to the public trust, feeding the appearance of cover-ups and corroding the relationship between police and the communities they serve. This measure, perhaps more than any other, would go a long way toward ensuring, in Tullochs words, not only that justice be done, but also be seen to be done. That depends, however, on whether the reports are heavily edited, as in the Loku debacle. Tulloch writes that enough information should be included for the public to carefully examine the decision. But he stops short of calling for the names of the police involved to be released, as some critics want. The report strikes the right balance. Very few jurisdictions publish the names of police involved in "justified" shootings and the benefits of doing so have not been established. Meanwhile, the risks of retraumatizing people who, through no fault of their own, have endured a terrible event seems clear. That said, if the province is truly committed to transparency, it must ensure the rules around redaction are clear and highly restrictive. Give the SIU the power to charge an officer for failing to cooperate with their investigations. Police do not always alert the watchdog in a timely manner to cases that require their involvement, nor do they always live up to their legal duty to co-operate with the SIU once it is involved. The Star recently reported on a dozen cases over a three-year period in which the SIU director complained of active interference with the watchdogs investigations. Yet there is currently little the SIU can do about such behaviour. In 2014-15, a mere 5.1 per cent of the cases referred to the SIU resulted in charges, a rate quite likely driven down by recalcitrant police. Tulloch is right that the SIU should have the power to do something about this, and the province should ensure that police who undermine the watchdogs independence face serious punishment, including possible jail time. Police oversight bodies should collect demographic data, including on race, ethnicity and mental health status. With rare exceptions, police have been reluctant to undertake such data collection, worrying that it will create political headaches. Thats why its important for the province to lead the way and demand collection and publication of statistics that could shed light on racial and other profiling by police. Given persistent concerns about discrimination, and the vast overrepresentation of black, indigenous and mentally ill people in Ontarios prisons, collecting data is crucial not only for transparency, but also for evidence-based policy-making. We cannot know where discrimination exists or what remedies are working without tracking the numbers. Modern policing, Tulloch writes, is founded on public trust. Yet that trust has been eroded in recent years, in the case of Andrew Loku and beyond. Rebuilding it will require openness and accountability. The province now has the road map; it should waste no time in following it. SHARE: In one place where the trench had been blown in and it was very narrow, I came on a poor fellow lengthwise of the trench and everyone had been tramping right over him till he was almost buried in the mud. Of course he was dead so I suppose it didnt inconvenience him any. But imagine the sensation of having to tramp on dead bodies. In another place I came on one of my own company lying with both legs blown off at the knees, but still alive and conscious. I stopped and talked to him a few minutes. Scenes like this are not uncommon in war. This was the reality of Vimy Ridge for Stuart C. Kirkland, a 33-year-old lieutenant with the Canadian Corps who went over the top in the dawning hours of April 9, 1917, a century ago on Sunday. Kirkland survived with just a slight wound to his left arm. (It was a lucky scratch, he wrote home to his brother in Dutton, Ont. The bullet went through clean as a dollar.) Famously, though, 3,598 Canadians did not return after fighting for four days at Vimy. It was the bloodiest episode in Canadas military history. Four days of battle followed by a century of contestation over the meaning and symbolism of Vimy. After 100 years, writes the military historian Tim Cook, Vimy remains a site of mass killing and myth-making. Certainly, the significance of Vimy to the (mostly English) Canadian imagination by now well exceeds the actual impact of the battle at the time. It was, at most, a tactical victory at a time when the rival armies were stuck in a bloody stalemate. It was just one engagement in a wider British offensive that ultimately fell short. Vimy was in no sense the turning point of the First World War, as some of its most enthusiastic chroniclers have asserted. Still less was it the birth of a nation, as various historians and politicians have argued on and off over the decades, and as may be claimed yet again this weekend at the centenary ceremonies in Flanders. At best, that formulation is a lazy shorthand for the outsized impact of the First World War on Canada, at the time a country of just 8 million people only just starting to push back against its junior status in the British Empire. Those who contest the birth-of-a-nation claim point out a number of inconvenient facts that dont fit that narrative. Most of the Canadian troops were actually British-born, hardly motivated by a specifically Canadian patriotism. Other actions by the Canadian Corps (such as that at Ypres two years earlier) were also cited at the time as the moment this country was supposedly born as a full-fledged nation. And most importantly, French Canada bitterly resisted participation in the war. If a nation was being forged, it was just an English-Canadian one, not a truly united Canada. The iconic monument that now dominates Vimy Ridge was certainly not erected to glorify military victory or promote nation-building. Its designer, Walter Allward, explicitly stated that he intended it to be a sermon against the futility of war. He included a symbolic figure breaking a sword, and the mouths of guns covered by olive and laurels. This would be a monument to peace, not victory, an homage to loss and death, and a call to remembrance, writes Cook in his new work, Vimy: The Battle and the Legend. Still, Vimy survives. If anything, the legend is stronger now than it was at many points in the last century, when it seemed its memory was being guarded only by aging veterans and history buffs. What accounts for the enduring power of the event and the myth? In part, the sheer scale of the killing or the sacrifice in the preferred vocabulary of such matters. On the Vimy monument are inscribed the names of 11,285 Canadians who died in the war but have no known grave. They were simply blown to pieces or, like the soldier trampelled by Stuart Kirkland, disappeared into the mud. Nowhere else are so many Canadian deaths commemorated. Whatever one thinks of war in general, or the First World War in particular, simple decency commands a respectful remembering of so much loss. We can debate the meaning of Vimy, but not the fact that the soldiers memorialized there were an essential part of what makes this country. Vimy also endures, perhaps, precisely because of the pointed debates over its significance. Nations need creation myths not because everyone agrees on what they mean but often because they give rise to extended arguments over whats most important to the country. The Americans, for example, argue endlessly over what really went on in their Civil War; the French are still debating the ultimate meaning of their revolution. For Canada, Vimy provides such a terrain for debating how we got to be the country we are. How did Canada get out from the colonial shadow and become its own master? Is it a nation of warriors, peacekeepers, or both? How can unity between English and French be maintained when values and loyalties so often diverge? Even those who attack excessive reverence for the Vimy victory as so-called Vimyism pay their own sort of tribute to the battle. By devoting so much rhetorical firepower to tearing down the myth of Vimy as the essential nation-building moment in Canadas history, they implicitly acknowledge its enduring influence. In the end, its the debate that matters, not the conclusion. After a century, writes Cook, Vimy is still a contested space and idea. In that lies its importance to constructing our sense of our own nation. Broadcast coverage for the anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge: CTV: On Sunday, April 9, Lisa LaFlamme anchors an anniversary special beginning at 9 a.m. on CTV, CTV News Channel and the CTV News GO app. Shell be joined by CTV Newss Paul Workman, Daniele Hamamdjian and Todd Battis in France. CBC: On April 9, CBC News will broadcast a live special hosted by Peter Mansbridge, 9 a.m.-1 p.m. from the Vimy memorial. The special will be livestreamed on cbcnews.ca. CBC Radio One will have coverage hosted by Susan Bonner of the commemorative events, 10 a.m.-noon. GLOBAL: Jeff Semple, Global Nationals Europe bureau chief, is in France to cover the April 9 ceremonies. SHARE: Updated from 11:40 a.m. with additional information. Comcast (CMCSA) on Thursday outlined its plan to break into the mobile phone market business through a partnership with Verizon (VZ) . The cable operator, which had indicated last year that the service would begin in 2017, touted the combination of Verizon's 4G network with its 16 million WiFi hotspots and the latest phones from Apple (AAPL) and Samsung (SSNLF) . "We get it," said David Watson, the CEO of Comcast's cable business. "Wireless is a very hyper-competitive marketplace." Wireless will support the cable business, he said. Comcast expects to make money on wireless, but Watson said the company will measure success by customer loyalty and retention. Customers of Comcast's premier cable and broadband services will pay $45 per month for its Xfinity Mobile phone and unlimited data packages. Verizon recently introduced its own unlimited wireless data plans for $80 a month. Comcast customers with less-expensive broadband packages will pay $65 per month for unlimited mobile plans, while other customers can pay $12 per gigabyte of data per month. The company said the new service will launch sometime in the second quarter and will be preceded by an employee trial. Comcast's wireless ambitions have been the subject of great speculation with recent years, with the options ranging from a gradual roll-out of the Verizon partnership to a bolder alternative such as acquiring T-Mobile USA (TMUS) or Sprint (S) . For now at least, Comcast is taking the more cautious route. "The strategic/financial rationale was clear: protect their core cable business rather than compete with the Big-4 [wireless carriers]," Macquarie analyst Amy Yong wrote in a Thursday report. Comcast has staked out a conservative approach that involved slowly growing the wireless base by selling to its cable and broadband subscribers, which Yong described as a "crawl, walk, and run," approach. "In our view, this approach diminishes the likelihood of a wireless acquisition near term," she noted. Comcast and other cable operators have been trying to get into the wireless business since the 1990s, at first through partnerships with Sprint. Comcast, Cox Enterprises Inc. and Tele-Communications Inc. formed a wireless pact with Sprint in 1994, with Comcast holding 15% of the venture. The partnership eventually unwound, but Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox and Bright House Networks later joined with Sprint in 2006 to buy wireless spectrum licenses in a government auction. The cable operators also took stakes in wireless broadband provider Clearwire, which Sprint later rolled up. Comcast eventually dropped Sprint, and struck a mobile pact with Verizon in 2011. As part of a larger deal Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks sold wireless spectrum licenses to Verizon for $3.6 billion. Comcast and Verizon also struck the commercial agreement that underlies the Xfinity Mobile service. "While execution is still an unknown given the history of cable providers trying to enter wireless, we believe this time around the company is likely to persist more and invest more seriously relative to past efforts," Barclays analyst Kannan Venkateshwar wrote. The market will get an indication of Comcast's investment in wireless when the FCC releases the results of a wireless spectrum auction in which Comcast is a participant. Bidding concluded recently, and the government will announce winners in the coming weeks. Comcast said it could not discuss the auction because of a quiet period, but the cable operator could deploy its new spectrum as part of the Verizon joint venture to boost its mobile capacity. Comcast's cable boss Watson likened wireless to other non-cable TV businesses that the company has entered, including broadband, wireline phone services, business telecom services and home security. "These are big categories," he said. "In everyone of these ones we were not first in these categories. I would also say we have had success in each of them." Xfininty Mobile President Greg Butz said the service would provide customers with a better wireless service and popular phones. "You're not credible in this space if you don't have Apple and the iPhone...Samsung and the Galaxy," Butz said. Most customers who buy other Comcast services would save on their mobile bills, he added. Shares of Comcast rose 2.1% to $38.13 on Thursday, and are up about 10% so far this year. Comcast is a holding in Jim Cramer's Action Alerts PLUS Charitable Trust Portfolio. Want to be alerted before Cramer buys or sells CMCSA? Learn more now. Read More: Comcast Launches Wireless Service With Unlimited Data Plan A new study shows that traditional car companies Ford (F) and General Motors (GM) are beating out high-tech companies like Tesla (TSLA) , Uber and Alphabet's (GOOGL) Waymo in the self-driving car space because they have the manufacturing capabilities to support a commercially successful autonomous car business. In the study conducted by Navigant Research, 18 companies with a self-driving car division were ranked based on 10 factors: visions, go-to-market strategy, partners, production strategy, technology, marketing and distribution, product capability, quality and reliability, product portfolio and staying power. While a number of partnerships and investments in the self-driving car sector were announced in 2016, it's become clear that not every original equipment manufacturer (OEM) has the expertise or resources to manufacture fully autonomous vehicles in-house, the research firm wrote. The winners in the space will be determined by which company is able to lock up the best experts, innovation expert Jim Carroll claimed. "There's a race for skills and that, more than anything, will determine who wins," he said. The most recent talent acquisition is Ford agreeing in February to invest $1 billion in artificial intelligence startup Argo AI to help it compete in the autonomous space. Based on the results seen in the chart below, Ford and General Motors landed in the top-tiered "leaders" category, meaning they scored 75 or above in both strategy and execution. Meanwhile, Tesla landed in the second tier titled "contenders" with an overall score of 64.5 and Uber landed in the third tier titled "challengers" with an overall score of 54.5. Editors' pick: Originally published April 7. Innovation expert Jim Carroll said that while all the companies are thinking big in terms of self-driving cars, those big ideas have to be scalable. "(Tesla CEO) Elon (Musk) is learning that while it's easy to conceive these big ideas, it's harder to manufacture them," he noted. The company has experienced problems matching its manufacturing capabilities with the demand for its Model 3 vehicle. Futurist.com founder Glen Hiemstra said that he's recently spoken to engineers at Ford and General Motors at different conferences that said there was more research going on behind the scenes than the public knew about. "They may have even better technology that just isn't in the cars yet," he said. Waymo scored just below what would qualify it in the "leader" tier, coming in number 12 out of 18 companies. Navigant said that Waymo is largely hailed as the leader in the autonomous sector by the media because of its transparency, as well as its move to hire a number of top engineers and researchers from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Grand Challenge, which is a competition for U.S. autonomous vehicles. Waymo wants to lend its technology to ride-sharing platforms, rather than become a vehicle manufacturer or auto industry supplier. This shouldn't be hard, considering Alphabet's venture capital arm, GV, is an investor in Uber and Google owns navigation app Waze, which is working on a car-pooling service in San Francisco. As previously stated, Tesla had the highest score for "vision," but it scored poorly on product quality and reliability, as well as with customer service due to long waiting periods. In addition, Tesla doesn't have the same global reach as Ford or General Motors. Tesla is also going to have trouble reaching the highest level of autonomy. According to the Society of Engineering (SAE), levels 0 through 2 are automated vehicles where the human driver monitors the driving environment, while levels 3 through 5 have the automated driving system monitoring the driving environment. Achieving level 5 autonomy requires the car to be able to operate on its own in any type of roadway and environmental conditions that could be managed by a human driver. Musk wants to achieve level 5 on the SAE scale without using LiDAR sensors, which industry experts say is impossible. "Everyone says it can't be done -- except for Elon," Abuelsamid pointed out. Hiemstra said that he was very surprised to see Tesla ranked number 12 out of 18 companies. "I would be skeptical of a study that puts Tesla that far down the list when they are seen as successful in that space," he cautioned. But while Tesla may be behind Ford in self-driving cars, it did manage to surpass Ford in market cap earlier this week at $47 billion, vs. Ford's $45 billion. This information came out in spite of the fact that Ford sold nearly 7 million vehicles in 2016, vs. Tesla's 80,000. Uber, which ranked number 16 out of 18 companies, simply lacked the self-driving capabilities seen at other competitors. "Their system needs a lot of work," Abuelsamid said. But while Uber's efforts look slim compared to Ford, it will still play a part in the space. Non-OEM companies like Uber and Waymo will most likely provide OEMs like Ford and General Motors with a vehicle platform to install their systems into, thus providing quality self-driving car rides to an already installed base of customers, Abuelsamid explained. Ride-sharing services are the way most people will access autonomous cars, as opposed to owning an autonomous vehicle, because of issues like liability, cost, maintenance and the need to update the vehicles. A key issue with self-driving cars is safety. Last May, a Tesla Model S driver died because the car's autopilot system didn't detect a tractor-trailer in front of it. Then last month, an Uber self-driving car was involved in a high-speed crash after it ran a yellow light, although no serious injuries were reported. "These crashes gave us a hint as to the capability of their systems," Abuelsamid said. In addition, when Uber started testing out its autonomous cars in San Francisco, complaints immediately came in about the cars running red lights, he added. Although Apple (AAPL) is reportedly working on an ultra-secretive self-driving car project, the company has yet to confirm anything and thus it was left out of the study. From the reliable information available, Apple is working on something in the space, although it recently scaled back its efforts in the area and seems to be focusing more on the software behind the technology, Abuelsamid said. "And that's all we know," he added. Abuelsamid said it's worth noting that this in-depth study of the autonomous car sector is just a snapshot of what the market looks like at this moment. Developments can change drastically over time. The research firm first published this report in the 2015 third quarter but so much has changed since then, that they released this updated report. In addition, Silicon Valley is blooming with startups that are working on interesting technology for autonomous cars, but they have limited resources. These companies will probably license their technology to other companies or get acquired. U.S futures were trading down Thursday night after the U.S. government confirmed it had carried out a missile strike on Syrian government-controlled air bases. Dow futures had been down more than 120 points shortly after reports of the military strike, but pared those losses to trade down about 45 points at 20,560. Gold was up more than 1.22% and crude rose about 2%. Meanwhile, Asian markets reversed their early rally by following news of the missile strikes, but by late afternoon Friday were mixed. Japan's Nikkei was up 0.46%, while the Hang Seng was down 0.57%. Jim McCaughan, CEO of Principal Global Investors was quoted in an interview with Bloomberg TV Thursday night: "The move to safe havens is more just in case anything goes wrong. If this turns out to be pretty surgical strike against the Syrian military, I think the market will get over it and recover again." CNN, citing U.S. officials, reported U.S. warships launched up to 60 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Syrian government airbase where the warplanes that carried out the earlier chemical attacks were based. "Tonight, I ordered a targeted military strike on the air field in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched," CNN quoted Trump as saying during short remarks to reporters at Mar-a-Lago. "It is in the vital national security of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons." He added: "There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention and ignored the urging of the UN Security Council. Years of previous attempts at changing Assad's behavior have all failed and failed very dramatically." Trump is in Floriday Thursday and Friday for a meeting with with Chinese President Xi Jinpeng. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary James Mattis, and national security adviser H.R. McMaster went to Florida with Trump. Tillerson told reporters "We feel that the strike itself was proportional because it was targeted at the facility that delivered this most recent chemical weapons attack. "We coordinated very carefully with our international partners in terms of communicating with them around the world. I would tell you that the response from our allies, as well as the region and the Middle East has been overwhelmingly supportive of the action we taken,"Tillerson said. Read the full statement from the White House. Defense stocks, including Lockheed Martin (LMT) and Raytheon (RTN) had been a mixed bag in after-market trading Thursday, ahead of news of the missile strikes, but they could feel a bump Friday after President Donald Trump demonstrated his first decisive act of military force as commander-in-chief. The New York Times reported that the missiles hit Al Shayrat airfield in Syria, citing an undisclosed senior military official. The Times further reported that no Russian planes were at the airfield and that the attack did not target any Russian facilities, according to the official. CNN quoted an unnamed U.S. defense official as saying the strike was targeted on runway, aircraft and fuel points. The missiles were launched from warships in the Eastern Mediterranean. Strikes are over "until another decision is made," the official told CNN. Oil hit its highest price since early March following the U.S. airstrike on Syrian government-controlled air bases. West Texas Intermediate was up 1.59% at $52.52 a barrel at 6:31 BST and Brent Crude gained 1.4% to $56.66. These were the highest prices since March 7. Oil prices surged as traders priced in a Middle East risk premium. Although Syria is not a big oil producer it borders Iraq, the second-biggest OPEC producer. Oil prices had been hit over the past week due to concerns of surging U.S. supplies. CNN, citing U.S. officials, reported U.S. warships launched up to 60 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Syrian government airbase where the warplanes that carried out the earlier chemical attacks were based. "Tonight, I ordered a targeted military strike on the air field in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched," CNN quoted President Donald Trump as saying during short remarks to reporters at Mar-a-Lago. "It is in the vital national security of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons." He added: "There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention and ignored the urging of the UN Security Council. Years of previous attempts at changing Assad's behavior have all failed and failed very dramatically." Trump is in Florida Thursday and Friday for a meeting with with Chinese President Xi Jinpeng. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary James Mattis, and national security adviser H.R. McMaster went to Florida with Trump. The Russian government has issued a strong statement on the U.S. airstrikes in Syria. The Kremlin condemned the U.S. calling the move an "aggression against a sovereign nation," the Guardian is reporting. Russia said the strikes were carried out under an "invented pretext" and said the Syria government does not have chemical weapons. The strikes, the Guardian is reporting, would do "significant damage to U.S.-Russia ties" and has created a "serious obstacle" to creating a coalition to defeat Isis. President Donald Trump on Thursday night ordered airstrikes in Syria following a deadly chemical weapons attack this week in what is the first significant foreign policy test of his new administration. Trump said the strikes were in the "national security interest", focused on an airfield and were launched from the USS Porter and the USS Ross just after midnight European times. Around 59 Tomahawk missiles hit multiple targets, according the Pentagon. "It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons," Trump said in a statement. "There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention, and ignored the urging of the U.N. Security Council." Crude oil prices rose Friday morning after U.S, missiles struck an airbase in Syria, but the increase should be short lived and could actually lead oil lower in the medium-term. Brent crude settled up 0.6% Friday at $55.24, while the U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate had climbed nearly 2% during the trading session but settled flat at $51.70. The price to watch there is WTI. At anything above $51 a barrel U.S. shale producers are on average profitable, according to Goldman Sachs. A spike in oil thus enables U.S. shale operators to hedge prices and lock in profitable barrels, which based on recent trends will encourage more production. "Assuming no major disruption, a geopolitical risk premium raising oil prices may actually be bearish for supply demand balances, potentially opening up another opportunity for U.S. E&Ps to hedge & increase activity," noted Goldman. "With (the) credit market once again fully open to them (US shale operators) risk to activity remains skewed to the upside." The U.S. onshore oil rig count has more than doubled since bottoming in May 2016, rising alongside oil prices to stand at near 800 at the end of March. Increased U.S. output would matter less if it was offset by a decline in the global oil supply, but that is unlikely to be a result of the strike on Syria. The war torn country provides nearly none of the world's oil - or more precisely about 0.05% based on its estimated 2016 output of about 35,000 barrels per day. To put that in context, Syria produces less oil than noted non-oil producing nations such as Spain, New Zealand and Peru. Furthermore the U.S. missile strikes targeted a single airbase, which the Pentagon identified as the source of a chemical weapons attack that killed Syrian civilians in a rebel held area earlier this week. The attack did little to degrade Syria's wider air defenses, suggesting it isn't a precursor to a wider incursion by the U.S. The Pentagon on Friday effectively confirmed that by noting that the attack did not mean that its Syria policy, which remains a basically hands off approach, had changed. There remains a possibility that tensions could escalate resulting in unforeseen outcomes. It is clear that the one-off strike has angered Russia and Iran, two of the world's biggest oil producers and allies of the Syrian regime, both of which condemned the attacks. Yet that is unlikely to fundamentally alter key supply relationships - European countries, which buy oil and gas from Russia and Iran were not part of the U.S. action so remain at arms length from possible recriminations. The U.S. buys no oil from either country due to longstanding sanctions. Watch:U.S. Launches Missiles from USS Porter & USS Ross The risk of wider instability in the region also appears limited so long as tensions can be contained. Syria sits next to Iraq, which is OPEC's No.2 oil producer. In normal circumstances escalating conflict in Syria might risk spilling over the boarder, though given the already parlous state of security along the countries' divide it is hard to imagine how that would manifest in a way that would tangibly hurt Iraq's production. One point of possible political conflict remains within OPEC itself. Saudi Arabia on Friday lent its support to the U.S. airstrikes, putting it in opposition to Iran and Russia. With OPEC's oil production cuts, which are supported by Russia, due to be renegotiated ahead of expiring at the end of June, regional tension could yet scupper a new deal. Once again the risk is on the downside for oil prices. Related News from TheStreet: Shares in Europe's biggest supermarket operator Carrefour (CRRFY) fell 2.6% Friday to 21.07 ($22.40) after UBS and Goldman Sachs published negative notes ahead of the group's first quarter sales report next week. UBS cut Carrefour to "neutral" from "buy" on concerns about the group's margins in its home market of France, where it saw signs of renewed erosion due to an escalating price war with rivals such as Casino (CGUSY) and co-operative E.Leclerc. UBS cut its stock rating despite increasing its price target to 24.50, up from 19.50. Goldman maintained its neutral rating on the stock but lopped about 2% of its earnings per share estimates for the period from 2017 to 2019 and cut its 12-month price target by 0.40 to 21.60 to reflect "recent trading and FX" movements. Carrefour, sometimes referred to as Europe's Walmart (WMT) , is due to release its first quarter sales figures on April 13. Investors will be hoping for signs that the company has managed to stem declining profits in its home market and that the company's forecast rebound in Asian sales is underway. Carrefour's French margins slid 80 basis points over the second half of 2016, their biggest half year decline since the start of 2011, due to pressure from rivals and despite a massive overhaul of the group's biggest supermarket outlets and a shift toward higher-margin convenience formats. Carrefour CFO Pierre-Jean Sivignon has promised improvements in 2017, claiming that the 2016 results were hurt by the cost of transforming the recently acquired, and loss making, network of 400 Dia supermarkets. CEO Georges Plassat, meanwhile, promised that a decline in Asian sales would begin to rebound as "China is now bouncing back." Sales in Brazil will also come under the spotlight. The Brazilian real has strengthened against the euro this year, and should provide a boost to earnings so long as Carrefour has maintained sales growth that topped 16% over 2016. The Brazilian real has traded at nearly 0.3 of a euro for most of this year, up from lows of 0.23 in early 2016. Carrefour should post total revenue for 2017 of about 83.6 billion, up 6% year on year, and a EBITDA of 4 billion, up 5.9%, according to Goldman Sachs. Carrefour shares are down 8% year to date, compared to a 10% gain in France's CAC 40 index. Six years ago, a scandal involving phone hacking at U.K. newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch forced 21st Century Fox (FOXA) to withdraw efforts to acquire the portion of European satellite TV and internet provider Sky that it didn't already own. Earlier this week, some Fox observers speculated that the emergence of new allegations of sexual harassment at the company's Fox News Channel could similarly upset Murdoch's second attempt to take full control of Sky. But on Friday, the European Commission approved Fox's $14.2 billion proposal to combine its 39% stake in Sky with the rest of the company. Yet to close the transaction, Murdoch still needs the approval of U.K. regulator Office of Communications, or Ofcom, which oversees the communications industry. Sky needs a license from Ofcom to operate in the U.K., and to acquire that license it needs to demonstrate that "a person is fit and proper" to hold it. Six years ago, Fox CEO James Murdoch was in charge of the Murdochs' U.K. newspaper group when numerous journalists were arrested, and some high-ranking editors convicted, for hacking into the phones of celebrities including Princes William and Harry as well as a 13-year-old girl, Milly Dowler, who was abducted and killed in 2002, an incident that shook the country. With such a backdrop, analysts including Brian Wieser of Pivotal have speculated that the new allegations against Bill O'Reilly could upset the Sky acquisition once again. Earlier this week, The New York Timesuncovered sexual harassment claims that hadn't been made public against Fox News' biggest star, the tempestuous host of the most popular hour of cable TV news, The O'Reilly Factor. The report, published Sunday, alleged five women who worked at the network received payouts totaling $13 million either from O'Reilly or Fox News in exchange for agreeing not to pursue litigation. The latest allegations against Fox News prompted a rash of advertisers to withdraw their support for O'Reilly's show. Fox, in an emailed statement, said that those ads would be redeployed to other shows on the network. At least 33 companies have pulled ads from The O'Reilly Factor including Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Hyundai, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) , AllState (ALL) , Wayfair (W) , Rollins' (ROL) Orkin, TrueCar (TRUE) and T. Rowe Price (TROW) . The European Commission announcement is sure to prompt a sigh of relief for the elder Murdoch, 86, who took charge of Fox News in July after Roger Ailes, its longtime chairman who co-founded the network with him in 1996, was forced out of the company following a lawsuit alleging sexual harassment. The suit, filed by former fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson, was withdrawn after Fox agreed to a settlement of $20 million. Ofcom in 2012 said that the Murdochs' News Corp. (NWSA) was "fit and proper" to own Sky but scolded James Murdoch, charging that his actions "repeatedly fell short" of expectations for his role as president of the newspaper group at the time of the scandals. Regardless of that statement, the Murdochs withdrew their bid to acquire Sky in July 2011. Further complicating matters this time around, though, are accusations by Fox News on-air commentator Andrew Napolitano, who repeatedly charged, without evidence, that the U.K. government last year had wiretapped Trump Tower, home of President Donald Trump. "We don't know how much weight may be placed on the O'Reilly matter or others which may arise from the U.S. Attorney's investigation," Wieser said in an investor note Tuesday. "However, it would be unsurprising if these items, along with the decision to bring back on-air Fox News personality Andrew Napolitano (who has made repeated claims on air that the U.K. government wiretapped Trump Tower; those claims are disputed both by the U.K. government and Fox News itself) were included in Ofcom's considerations regarding the fitness of Fox's management." Time will tell if this latest scandal is enough to scuttle the acquisition once again. European stocks were a mixed picture at the close Friday following what was a turbulent trading session. An overnight missile strike against Syria, authorized by U.S. President Donald Trump, sent markets reeling early in the morning. Although benchmarks pared losses in relatively good time, tension hung in the air throughout much of the session as Russia described the attack as a violation of international law and called for a U.N. Security Council meeting. A terror attack in Stockholm, Sweden, the third in as many weeks for Europe, added to the prevailing mood of caution in afternoon trading. London proved the exception to Friday's rule in Europe as a hefty exposure to commodities helped to lift both FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 benchmarks. The FTSE 100 closed the session 0.63% higher at 7,349 while the FTSE 250 gained 0.54% to close at 19,229. In Paris, the CAC 40 gained 0.27% before coming to rest at 5,135 while the DAX slipped 0.05% in Frankfurt to close at 12,225. Stocks were mixed in southern Europe with the IBEX in Madrid down by a fraction and the FTSE MIB in Milan up by a fraction. The spot price for gold was quoted at $1266.20, up 1.16%, by the time stock markets closed while the European Brent crude oil benchmark was 0.67% higher at $55.27. In individual stocks London's biggest pure-play gold mining company, Randgold (GOLD) , was at the top of the FTSE 100 with a gain of more than 4% for the session. Retailers Tesco (TSCDY) , Sainsbury (JSAIY) and life insurer Standard Life (SLFPF) were also big gainers. Grocery retailers Sainsbury and Tesco both benefited from an upgrade at UBS (OUBSF) . BAE Systems (BAESY) and other defense stocks rose in response to the overnight strike in Syria, with BAE notching up a gain of nearly 3%, placing it close to the top of the FTSE 100. Additionally, manufacturers Meggitt (MEGGF) , Cobham (CBHMF) and Rolls Royce (RYCEY) all posted gains in London. In Frankfurt the DAX was weighed down by losses at Lufthansa (DLAKY) and Deutsche Bank (DB) , which were down 2% and 1% respectively. Lufthansa lost ground in response to the day's terror incident, which risks further harming tourist flows to European countries from other regions of the world, as well as travel between European countries. Deutsche Bank reversed early morning gains to close the session around 1% lower Friday, the first day of trading following its capital increase. The German lender said in the early hours that its 8 billion ($8.4 billion) capital increase was successful, with 98.9% of the rights subscribed to, and the other 1% due to be sold on the market. In Paris, earlier losses for the CAC 40 index were offset by gains at Air Liquide (AIQUY) , Safran (SAFRY) and oil titan, Total (TOT) , which closed between 1% and 1.9% higher Friday. For many months, Samsung (SSNLF) has been embroiled in a wave of bitter controversies ranging from corruption charges waged at senior management to the widespread Galaxy Note 7 recall. But neither of those issues appear to be weighing on the South Korean tech giant's fortunes. Quite the opposite, in fact, as Samsung last Thursday said it expects to report an operating profit of $8.7 billion for the first quarter, which is higher than analysts' expectations of $8.4 billion, and would represent its best-ever profit since the third quarter of 2013. Samsung will report fiscal first quarter results on April 26 after the market close. What's more, Samsung's stock is up more than 40% over the last year and was recently trading at close to an all-time high. The bright first quarter outlook came just hours before Samsung's vice chairman and de facto leader Jay Y. Lee was due in court on Friday, marking his first appearance in a trial where he and four other company executives face charges of bribery, embezzlement, perjury and hiding assets overseas, among others. The charges are linked to an influence-peddling controversy that has already cost South Korea's president Park Geun-hye her job. Lee, who was indicted on Feb. 28, could face more than 20 years behind bars if he's convicted. The verdict is expected to be delivered by the end of May. If Lee is convicted, it could throw a temporary wrench into Samsung's succession plans, but if history is any guide, he will most likely be able to run the company behind bars and return to his leadership role once he's released. Several leaders of prominent chaebols, or family-run companies like Samsung in South Korea, have faced similar situations, including Lee's father, Lee Kun-hee. The elder Lee was arrested and convicted for tax evasion, bribery and price-fixing in 2008 and later returned to lead the company in 2010. The management shakeup, so far, has had almost no effect on Samsung's finances, and appears to have done little to erode consumer confidence in the company, say analysts. "I would venture to say that 98 out of 100 consumers don't know this is going on," said Jack Gold, president of technology research advisory firm J. Gold Associates. "The bigger deal was the problems with batteries exploding. That's the kind of stuff that consumers pay attention to." Editors' pick: Originally published April 7. But even the Note 7 fiasco, where a slew of phones exploded due to battery design flaws, seems to have been erased from consumers' minds. One factor that's helped Samsung achieve that is the release of the Galaxy S8 smartphone, which goes on sale in the U.S. on April 21, Gold added. Jeff Fieldhack, research director at Counterpoint Research, said he expects Samsung will ship more than 50 million of the devices in 2017, compared to the 48 million Galaxy S7 units it reportedly sold in 2016. Samsung seems to have been able to bring consumers back to the brand with an extensive marketing campaign highlighting the extensive safety precautions and testing processes the company has taken in light of the Note 7 issues, Fieldhack said. "They bought their way out of the problem, but I think it goes to show you that a device launched in March was still so competitive vs. the other Android models out there," Fieldhack noted, referring to the fact that Samsung marketed the larger size S7 and S7 Edge, both released last March, once it recalled the Note 7. "They did the best they could with an [older] smartphone." Samsung now has a new premium phone to push that boasts its largest-ever screen and biometric screening, among other features. The S8 also puts Samsung months ahead of its largest rival, Apple (AAPL) , whose 10th anniversary iPhone isn't due out until September, or possibly even later. Samsung's forecast for a stronger-than-expected first quarter isn't due to its smartphones, however. The positive guidance stems from the company's components segment, where profits have been driven higher as a result of strong pricing environments in memory chips and organic LED screens. Samsung has a growing lead in these areas, as it manufactures screens for Apple and several other major smartphone makers, and also runs semiconductor fabrication plants using Qualcomm (QCOM) chips that supply the top mobile companies. "They're the leader in the pack right now," Gold explained. "Not only do they make money on what they sell, but also what their competitors sell, and that's a pretty good position to be in." Several analysts predict that things will continue to look good for Samsung over the next several quarters. Morgan Stanley believes that the newly launched S8 could become one of Samsung's best-selling phones, with the S8 contributing 50% of Samsung's mobile profits. "This, coupled with a strong market position in components, underpins a higher valuation, in our view," the firm wrote in a recent note to clients. Aramark (ARMK) shares were down nearly 1% Friday after the NFL's Tennessee Titans fired the company as the food, beverage and concession vendor at its 69,000 seat Nissan Stadium. The Titans cited reports of long lines and running out of food on game days as the reason for the change. A judge dismissed a breach of contract lawsuit brought by Aramark earlier this week after the Titans informed Aramark that it would be terminating its contract with the company early. (What will move markets this quarter and how should investors position themselves ahead of time? Jim Cramer sat down with four of TheStreet's top columnists recently to get their views. Click here to listen to his latest Trading Strategies roundtable with them and read their advice for stocks, bonds, forex and gold.) GSK plc, together with its subsidiaries, engages in the creation, discovery, development, manufacture, and marketing of pharmaceutical products, vaccines, over-the-counter medicines, and health-related consumer products in the United Kingdom, the United States, and internationally. It operates through four segments: Pharmaceuticals, Pharmaceuticals R&D, Vaccines, and Consumer Healthcare. The company offers pharmaceutical products comprising medicines in the therapeutic areas, such as respiratory, HIV, immuno-inflammation, oncology, anti-viral, central nervous system, cardiovascular and urogenital, metabolic, anti-bacterial, and dermatology. It also provides consumer healthcare products in wellness, oral health, nutrition, and skin health categories. The company offers its consumer healthcare products in the form of nasal sprays, tablets, syrups, lozenges, gum and trans-dermal patches, caplets, infant syrup drops, liquid filled suspension, wipes, gels, effervescents, toothpastes, toothbrushes, mouthwashes, denture adhesives and cleansers, topical creams and non-medicated patches, lip balm, gummies, and soft chews. It has collaboration agreements with 23andMe; Lyell Immunopharma, Inc.; Novartis; Sanofi SA; Surface Oncology; Progentec Diagnostics, Inc.; Alector, Inc.; and CureVac AG., as well as strategic partnership with IDEAYA Biosciences, Inc. and Vir Biotechnology, Inc. The company was formerly known as GlaxoSmithKline plc and changed its name to GSK plc in May 2022. GSK plc was founded in 1715 and is headquartered in Brentford, the United Kingdom. Militants launched 48 attacks on positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in ATO area in Donbas over the past day. This is reported by the ATO press center. The tensest situation was observed in Mariupol direction, where the enemy used 120mm mortars, grenade launchers of different systems and infantry fighting vehicles to shell Novotroitske (32km south of Donetsk). Ukrainian positions near Krasnohorivka (29 km west of Donetsk) came under 82mm mortar, grenade launcher and heavy machine gun fire. In Donetsk direction, militants launched the largest number of attacks on Avdiivka (18km north of Donetsk), using 120mm mortars, grenade launchers of different systems and heavy machine guns. In addition, terrorists used 82mm mortars and heavy machine guns to fire at ATO troops in Pisky (12km north-west of Donetsk). In Luhansk direction, Ukrainian positions outside Krymske (42.5km north-west of Luhansk) came under grenade launcher fire. ATO troops in Stanytsia Luhanska (16km north-east of Luhansk) came under heavy machine gun fire. ol Ukraine is ready to continue defending Europe from aggressive Russia, but it needs help. Defense Minister of Ukraine Stepan Poltorak stated this, an Ukrinform correspondent reports. "Ukraine is ready to defend its borders. We are ready to defend Europe. Unfortunately, not everyone understands this, because a few countries in the world are ready to defend their lands Ukraine needs help and support," Poltorak said. In his opinion, NATO countries were not ready for aggressive actions of Russia. According to the defense minister, the Kremlin will try to destroy NATO, as it tries to destroy the EU. ish A total of 700 Ukrainian military doctors have completed a special NATO medial training program. Deputy Secretary General of NATO Rose Gottemoeller stated this during the Kyiv Security Forum, an Ukrinform correspondent reported. According to Rose Gottemoeller, this is a certain massage for Ukrainians that the Alliance continues to support Ukraine in this difficult time. NATO does not, and will not, accept Russias illegal and illegitimate annexation of Crimea. And we condemn Russias ongoing destabilization in eastern Ukraine, she stressed. iy Since the start of the anti-terrorist operation (ATO) in eastern Ukraine, servicepersons of the Ukrainian Armed Forces received money rewards totaling over UAH 155 million for the performance of military tasks. Defense Ministry Spokesman Maksym Prauta stated this at a press briefing, an Ukrinform correspondent reported. As of today, Ukrainian servicepersons have received payments worth UAH 155 million 130 thousand. Also, defenders of Ukraine continue to receive rewards for the courage and selflessness shown during the anti-terrorist operation, Prauta said. iy President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko held a meeting with Prime Minister of Estonia Juri Ratas, the presidents press service reported on Thursday evening. The Head of State emphasized Ukraines interest in the expansion of trade-economic cooperation with Estonia and noted a significant potential for increasing the volume of Estonian investments, reads a report posted on the presidents website. President Poroshenko thanked Estonia for a solid political support for Ukraines sovereignty and territorial integrity, as well as consistent stance on condemnation and non-recognition of the annexation of Crimea. He also expressed gratitude to the Estonian partners for a resolute position in support of the policy of sanctions against Russia and their preservation until the full implementation of the Minsk agreements. The parties also discussed further involvement of the Estonian experience in the development of e-governance in Ukraine. iy US actions against Syria should be supported to prevent further war crimes of the Bashar al-Assad regime, in particular those against the civilian population. This is said in the statement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine. "The US actions should be supported to prevent new war crimes of the regime, in particular those against the civilian population," the statement reads. As noted, any use of chemical weapons as one of the types of weapons of mass destruction is a flagrant violation of international law and a war crime. The perpetrators must be unconditionally brought to justice. Impunity of a violator of international law that uses chemical weapons leads to new crimes on its part, the Foreign Ministry stresses. Russias consistent blocking of the UN Security Councils work is an inappropriate practice that requires proper assessment, the statement reads. The Foreign Ministry of Ukraine emphasizes that sponsors and advocates of the criminal Syrian regime also bear responsibility for the use of the weapons of mass destruction and for the casualties among civilian population in Syria. ol April 6, 2017, the meeting in the Normandy format at the level of diplomatic advisors of leaders of Ukraine, Germany, France and Russia took place in Minsk.In the course of the consultations, the parties discussed key aspects of the Minsk agreements implementation and highlighted the priority of fulfilling their security components. This is reported by the press service of the Head of State. The Ukrainian, German and French parties decried violation of ceasefire regime, introduced on April 1, 2017 pursuant to the decision of the Trilateral Contact Group of March 29, 2017, by Russia-backed militants. The parties stand for immediate consolidation of ceasefire in Donbas. Proper implementation of the arrangements as regards withdrawal of heavy weaponry was also discussed, the statement reads. As noted, special emphasis was laid on ensuring security of the OSCE SMM in Donbas and unhindered access to all occupied territories. The Russian side was urged to take every necessary effort to prevent militants from intimidating the Missions observers. It was underscored that the SMM must have every opportunity to fulfill its mandate completely. Ukraine, Germany and France called on Russia to unblock the process of liberation of hostages in Donbas, particularly on the eve of Easter. It was once again emphasized that the liberation of hostages requires immediate solution, the statement says. ol After living through three years of conflict near the contact line in eastern Ukraine, many children and teenagers in the city of Mariupol need psychosocial support. Learn how four youth clubs are giving these children the resources they need to begin to heal their emotional wounds. MARIUPOL, Ukraine, 7 April 2017 The emotional wounds and trauma of living through more than three years of conflict are an everyday reality for hundreds of thousands of children and teenagers in eastern Ukraine. Mariupol is one city that has seen much of the violence. Located in eastern Ukraine on the Sea of Azov, Mariupol is about 25 kilometres from the contact line, which divides the government and non-government controlled areas where the fighting is most intense. Life has drastically changed for children and young people in the eastern part of the city. Anastasiya Kashyra is a child and youth psychologist in one of four UNICEF-supported youth clubs run by the Mariupol Youth Union. Here the children see soldiers on the streets, there is a military checkpoint just around the corner behind the local school and of course, the sound of the shelling can be heard almost every night and sometimes also during the day, says Ms. Kashyra. UNICEF estimates that at least 1 in 4 children some 200,000 girls and boys in the two regions most severely affected by conflict in eastern Ukraine, Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, are in need of urgent and sustained psychosocial support. The Chilean government will grant asylum to a Venezuelan opposition politician who is currently in its ambassador's residence in Caracas if he asks for it, Chile's foreign minister said on Thursday. Venezuelan opposition COPEI party members Roberto Enriquez and Eduardo Vetancourt on Wednesday walked into the Chilean ambassador's residence in Caracas and asked for protection from the government. Earlier in the week, vice president of the ruling Socialist Party, Diosdado Cabello, accused the pair of conspiring to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. COPEI said the two had been arrested by military intelligence agents under accusations of "rebellion" and "treason." "If he asks for political asylum, we'll give it to him... It's a humanitarian situation," Chilean foreign minister, Heraldo Munoz, said in a recorded statement to journalists. It was not immediately clear if he was referring to Enriquez, Vetancourt, or both. In a controversial move last week, Venezuela's Supreme Court ruled that it was assuming functions of the opposition-led National Assembly, a move that was partially reversed. Critics viewed the ruling as a step toward dictatorship by Maduro's Socialist Party, which has ruled for 18 years, and the court ruling brought unusually strong condemnation from leaders throughout Latin America. On Wednesday, Cabello transmitted, via a weekly television program he hosts, a tape of alleged conversations between Vetancourt and an undercover intelligence agent. In the tape, Vetancourt is heard talking of possible armed attacks in Caracas that would precipitate a U.S. invasion. According to the recording, which has not been verified by any independent party, the plot would have had the blessing of U.S. Senator Marco Rubio. Opposition politicians and activists in Venezuela say the Maduro government frequently fabricates evidence in order to jail opponents for political reasons, while the government claims it is under constant attack from imperialist foes. Chung Young-chul takes a drag on his cigarette and watches as wild ducks fly across rice fields and land on a reservoir in this remote farming village. He's among nearly 2,000 people ex-gangsters, ex-convicts, former prostitutes, orphans who were once held here, forced to work without pay for years and are now largely forgotten. "Some died after they were beaten and got sick. Others died of malnutrition or in accidents," said Chung, 74. "It was worse than a prison camp ... We were starving slaves." They were victims of social engineering orchestrated in the 1960s by dictator Park Chung-hee, late father of just-ousted President Park Geun-hye. His 18-year rule was marked by both a dramatic economic rise and enormous human rights abuses. He cleared city streets of so-called vagrants and put them to work on land and road projects as free labor to help rebuild the country after the 1950-53 Korean War. The victims say they've never received a proper investigation or compensation. In Chung's village in Seosan city, about 130 kilometers (80 miles) south of Seoul, about 1,770 people were made to work without pay in land reclamation projects. They lived in army-style barracks. Some were ordered to marry female inmates, mostly ex-prostitutes sent from government-run shelters, in two rounds of mass weddings. Ex-workers say local officials told them repeatedly that they would be given some of the land they reclaimed, but that never happened. Only about a dozen of the workers, mostly in their 70s, still live in this village; the rest left or have died. Those remaining pay rent to authorities to farm rice on the land they reclaimed. After repeated legal defeats, some have accepted a recent government proposal to buy the land at market prices in installments over 20 years, though they know they'll probably die before they complete the payments. They've always been poor and falling rice prices have made them poorer. Deeply in debt, Chung said he and others are pushing to file joint petitions with as many government offices as possible to appeal for help again. "We have no money to hire lawyers," he said. "We are the only ones abandoned by South Korea's legal system." Past media reports during Park Chung-hee's rule, which ended with his assassination in 1979, largely portrayed the people here as making a fresh start with government help. The true nature of their story has been shielded from the public; official records are limited and many workers won't talk about what they believe were their dark past. "Governments in South Korea have been very indifferent to them," said Kim Aram at the Seoul-based Institute for Korean Historical Studies, one of the few experts on the issue. "Now, it's important to let the people know about the truth of this story because it's completely unknown to them." Chung was left alone at an early age. A North Korean bomb killed his mother in the Korean War, and he was separated from the rest of his family when he fell off the roof of a train carrying refugees. He worked as a shoeshine boy with other orphans in the southeastern port city of Busan, then became a member of the "Apache" gang, collecting protection money from bars and teahouses. "We felt strange when we spent a day without fighting" other gangsters, he said. Chung's life changed after Park seized power in a 1961 coup and attempted to "purify" society by rounding up people deemed vagrants and putting them to work. In 1962, Chung said marines carrying rifles smashed down his shack door and took him to a rehabilitation center where hundreds were detained. They were told they were now members of the Republic of Korea Juvenile Pioneering Group. Chung was sent to a land reclamation site in southern South Korea. About six months later, he volunteered to move to Seosan because he hoped he'd have a better chance to escape. But that was virtually impossible. His supervisors, senior inmates working under a civilian leader, stood guard every 30-50 meters (100-160 feet) and watched inmates even when they went to the toilet. Each day they used shovels, pickaxes, carts and their bare hands to cultivate reclaimed land. They built waterways and a reservoir. Most meals were only a bowl of rice and a thin soup made of dried Chinese cabbage leaves. They caught and ate frogs, snakes and rats. At night, they were often ordered to recite Park's lengthy "revolution promises." Those who stammered were beaten. Chung likened his experience to the horrible accounts by escapees from North Korea's notorious political prison camps. "Some don't believe what they've testified but we trust their testimonies by 100 percent because that's what we had endured, too," he said. Some of the South Korean inmates died, through illness, beatings or accidents, but there is no official data on fatalities. Local officials reached by The Associated Press said they have no information on the operations, and many of them acknowledged they have never heard about the ROK Juvenile Pioneering Group. But a handful of experts like Kim Aram and local villager Kim Tae-young, who works with remaining inmates on land disputes, said the suffering was tense. By the time the pioneering group was dissolved which came as Park's government shifted to export-driven industrialization control had loosened and many inmates had already left. Ex-inmates said they had cultivated about 357 hectares (882 acres), but that it was too salty and uneven. Seosan officials "tentatively" distributed the land to the roughly 300 remaining inmates and other poor people in the village between 1968 and 1971, according to farmers and villagers in Seosan. Some simply sold their parcels for as little as a sack of potatoes, Chung says but others cultivated the land. By the time ex-inmates began harvesting rice, the government imposed rent for using state-owned property, Chung and other villagers said. They staged a legal fight, but a local district court ruled against them in 2000 in a verdict upheld by higher-level courts. In 2011, the state-run Anti-Corruption & Civil Rights Commission recommended that the government lower the prices of the land to reflect ex-inmate's previous labor but a ministry in charge of government-owned land used the market rates. There are 278 families who farm the reclaimed land in Seosan, including about a dozen ex-inmates, including Chung and Sung Jae-yong. "It's really shameful ... but I'm paying the installments with the help of my children," said Sung, who lowered his head and wept. "I've been enduring it until now because I wanted my hard work to pay off. But things have become terrible." Chung called Park Chung-hee a "gangster" who ruined his life. "He captured us and put us here. So he should have taken responsibility for our lives to the end," he said, tears rolling down his cheeks. Twenty-nine South Sudanese students on a government-sponsored scholarship to study at Zimbabwe's Harare Institute of Technology were forced to leave school a week ago after Juba officials failed to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for their tuition and fees over three semesters.. A letter from the Harare institute, seen by VOA South Sudan in Focus and addressed to South Sudan's Cultural and Educational Attache, said the school was owed $241,894. South Sudanese officials did not meet the March 31 payment deadline, and the students said they had no option but to leave campus and live in the embassy while they appealed to the government to pay the bill. Students have since complained of living in cramped spaces with little food, in an embassy that has no kitchen and one shower with a broken spout and light fixture. Giir Salfa Deng, 25, a biotechnology student in his second year at the institute, said the education he's been receiving is much needed in his country. "We are doing all the sciences, so it could have been an advantage for the country," he said. "The only service that I could offer to my people is through my degree. If I could get a degree today, then this is the same degree that would be able to uplift the upcoming generation." Sleeping on the compound Gaaniko Bangoye Michael, 23, who is studying electronic commerce at HIT, said the embassy was so small that "students are just sleeping around the compound, under the trees, because we are not given rooms." There are 147 South Sudanese students spread across other universities in Zimbabwe under the same South Sudan-sponsored scholarship program, according to the students in Harare. They said the government had not paid their fees either, and they expected the others to reach the embassy in the coming days. But Agheer Marial, 25, studying electronic engineering, said the embassy is struggling to host the students already there. "Me, personally, I have been sleeping in a chair in the reception room. So I think I spent about five days in that chair sleeping, somehow," said Marial. He said that for him, the interruption was more than just a financial shock; the situation has taken an emotional toll. Marial said it was "heartbreaking" to come so far in the four-year program and not know what will happen. "We have actually spent, like, two years already in the university, so we are almost to the last part of our courses," he said. "But unfortunately, it has happened that we have been kicked out of the university." Up in the air Rebecca Achok, a biotechnology student and one of five women in the group, said she was hoping to take her degree back home, but so far the government has not been responsive to their calls. Students are "not yet sure if they will take us back or if they will pay our school fees," said Achok, who added that it had been difficult not knowing what would happen to them. The students said the South Sudanese ambassador to Zimbabwe and the cultural attache were urging their government to pay the fees promptly. Bangoye said they were in a situation that "we can't control by ourselves," and they urged Juba to look into their issue "as fast as possible" so that they can take exams in a couple of weeks. Email and phone call requests for comment to the Harare Institute of Technology have gone unanswered. The government of South Sudan did not return a request for comment. A Pakistani lawmaker and deputy leader of a conservative religious party, accused of links with militant groups, has invited the Pakistani Taliban to join his Islamist political party. As a three-day gathering of religious devotees and political followers got under way Thursday, the secretary general of Pakistani's Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F), Abdul Ghafoor Haidari, called on the Taliban in Pakistan to lay down arms and pursue its objectives through political means. Speaking to reporters the previous day in the northwestern restive city of Peshawar, Haidari said, "We invite them [Pakistani Taliban] to join JUI-F and achieve their objectives with the help of a peaceful and political struggle." Over a quarter million people, including foreign guests, were expected to attend the gathering in Naushera, near Peshawar, which began to celebrate the centenary of the conservative party. "We have sent invitations to 52 countries and have also invited ambassadors from Muslim and European Union countries," Jalil Jan, a spokesperson for JUI-F, told VOA's Deewa service. "Guests from 20 countries have already arrived. More guests are arriving today and tomorrow morning." The guest list also includes the deputy Imam of the Kaaba the Muslim holy place in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Headed by Maulana Fazal-ur-Rahman, JUI-F is an offshoot of a Muslim Sunni clerics' political movement founded in British India by the Deobandi madrassa in 1919, which opposed the formation of a separate homeland for Indian Muslims today's Pakistan. Rahman's father, Mufti Mahmoud, was one of the leading members who parted ways with the party in 1945 and supported the creation of Pakistan. The party has been a strong advocate of Sharia law in the country and has opposed liberal initiatives in the parliament. According to Haidari, the gathering is being held to demonstrate to the world that there is no space for extremism in Islam, Pakistani media said. "Islam's revered beliefs cannot be made controversial. It clearly states that the killing of one person means the murder of all humanity," said Haidari, who is also the vice chairman of Pakistan's senate. Taliban agreement seen as unlikely Analysts say the Islamist party's message is unlikely to appeal to Taliban members. "This will not make TTP [Pakistani Taliban] surrender their arms or leave their movement and ideology," Amir Rana, a security and political analyst in Islamabad, told VOA. "Those who have joined the Taliban might not come back." Peshawar-based political analyst Khadim Hussain said the Taliban does not believe in Pakistani government institutions or its constitution, nor do they accept democracy. "How can Taliban join the political scenario of Pakistan while having such ideologies against the state?" Hussain told VOA. Hussain added that unless the Islamist party condemns all forms of terrorist groups, including those that are fighting to topple the government in neighboring Afghanistan, its message would fall on deaf ears. JUI-F has historically supported the Taliban in Afghanistan. "Fazal-ur-Rahman believes that Afghan Taliban are fighting for freedom or imposing Sharia in Afghanistan and it's justified," Hussain said. "But on the other hand, he has a completely different stance on Taliban active against the state in Pakistan. For JUI, if Taliban is used against Afghanistan, that's right, but if they fight against the state of Pakistan, it's wrong." JUI-F has strongly opposed American drone strikes targeting militants in Pakistan's tribal areas, viewing it as a violation of Pakistan's sovereignty. Following the 2011 U.S. raid in Abbottabad that killed al-Qaida's leader Osama bin Laden, the JUI-F condemned the drone strikes, calling on the government to stop the passage of supplies to U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan through Pakistan. Hungarian charities on Thursday criticized a draft law that would require them to declare foreign funding, saying it would clamp down on freedom of speech and undermine their work with migrants and other vulnerable groups. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Viktor Orban's Fidesz party said it would present a bill to parliament this week requiring nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) with a yearly foreign income of 7.2 million forints ($25,000) to register with authorities. The bill said "foreign interest groups" could use their funding of local NGOs to "pursue their own interests" in Hungary, threatening the country's political and economic interests. "This is an attempt to discredit NGOs in the eyes of the public," said Anika Bakonyi, project manager at the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, a human rights watchdog group. The Fidesz announcement came a day after parliament approved a law that could force out a university founded by Hungarian-born financier George Soros, despite protests against the move and condemnation abroad. Orban, a critic of liberal civil organizations that receive grants from Soros' Open Society Foundation, said last week that Central European University had violated regulations in awarding diplomas, an allegation the college rejected. European lawmakers have demanded disciplinary action against Hungary over the crackdown on foreign universities, the latest step by Orban to subdue independent institutions including the judiciary, central bank, NGOs and media. Goran Buldioski, the Hungarian-based director of the Soros-funded Open Society Initiative for Europe, said he expected small civil society organizations would suffer the most. This "long-term policy" of the government was designed "to eradicate all voices that speak freely," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "We find it totally unnecessary, stigmatizing and discriminatory." People suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, may eventually be helped by a low-cost antibiotic. Early studies show the drug, doxycycline, may be beneficial in the treatment of the psychiatric condition. People who have lived through a traumatic experience like war, natural disaster or rape will sometimes relive the experience in their minds to a disabling degree. They experience hyper-vigilance, flashbacks and nightmares. Psychological therapy is usually the treatment of choice to ease the symptoms. Now, scientists think they may be on to something else that works, an antibiotic called doxycycline. It is an old, extremely cheap drug that is normally used to fight bacterial infections. Here's how it works: To form memories, studies have shown that our brains need proteins called matrix enzymes. They are found all over the body and when they're overactive they contribute to some immune diseases, even some cancers. Drugs, including doxycycline, block these enzymes. Because of their association with memories, researchers wondered if the antibiotic might also weaken the mechanism that forms negative memories. For a memory to persist, according to Dr. Dominik Bach, it has to be reconsolidated or altered in some way. A clinical psychiatry researcher at University of Zurich and the Institute of Neurology at University College London, Bach has been conducting experiments with doxycycline. He suggested it prevents reconsolidation of memories. I believe if it works, it could be a treatment that is much simpler and much shorter than a psychotherapy, and I guess it could be very beneficial. Bach helped conduct a study involving 76 healthy participants, half of whom were given the antibiotic while the other half received a placebo. They were then exposed to the colors red or blue on a computer screen, each volunteer receiving a mild electric shock when they saw one of the colors and not the other. Each volunteer came to associate pain with a particular color. A week later, the participants were brought back into the lab. But instead of receiving a shock, they heard a loud noise when they saw the color that was previously associated with the shock. The volunteers who were under placebo had a stronger reaction when they saw the color that predicted the electric shock. It wasn't much, a slight increase in the body's reflexive eye blink response to threat. But that increase, Back said, "was reduced in the people that initially took the doxycycline. The increased blink response in the placebo group signaled they were more startled and fearful of the noise than the doxycycline group. The fear response was 60 percent lower in those who received the antibiotic. A startling noise often sets off an episode in people with PTSD. The finding was published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry. The goal, Bach says, is not to delete traumatic memories, but to use the calming effects of doxycycline to reimagine them in a way that stops scaring the patient. If the tests continue to show positive results, Bach says doxycycline could be ready to treat PTSD in a few years. Tuesday's alleged chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun, Syria, which has left dozens dead, was the latest outrage in a conflict marked by human rights violations carried out on an industrial scale, rights activists say. From the start, the conflict saw a disregard of the rules of war the world has tried to establish since World War II. The warning signs came quickly. A series of massacres occurred in spring 2012 in three districts of Homs involving government soldiers and members of the notorious Shabiha militia, ultra-loyal enforcers of the regime drawn from President Bashar al-Assad's minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam. First came a siege, then homes were raided by assailants who raped and killed, according to locals interviewed by VOA shortly afterward and rights organizations. Dead bodies were burned, corpses were mutilated and rights activists documented the killing of at least 224 civilians, including 44 children and 48 women. Months later, this correspondent interviewed Saima, a 38-year-old woman who had survived the massacre. Brandishing her scarred hand, she said she'd been shot in it, seen her husband's first wife slain by Shabiha and a neighbor raped. She and her three daughters escaped only because an Alawite militiaman took pity on them. Other girls weren't so lucky. A mound of death "They raped teenagers," Saima told me almost in a whisper, claiming that the day after the massacre she saw naked girls in a hospital piled up dead. A 2015 report by the the U.N.'s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic concluded the war had been "characterized by a complete lack of adherence to the norms of international law." From medieval-style torture in jails and detention centers, to the imposition of "surrender or starve" sieges aimed at denying whole communities food and medical supplies, to indiscriminate artillery bombardments and airstrikes on towns and villages, including the dropping of earth-shaking barrel bombs on residential areas, to the release of sarin and chlorine gases, the war has plumbed the depths of depravity. Since World War II, few conflicts have come close to matching what's been happening in Syria. Rights experts and historians mention the conflicts in Biafra, the Congo, the Balkans and the 1994 Rwanda genocide as competitors in infamy. The list of authoritative reports into rights abuses and war crimes in Syria is long. They include a 2014 U.N. report; a 2015 independent report on the credibility of allegations about torture and executions in Syrian jails; and a 2013 U.N. report on allegations of the use of chemical weapons. As early as 2013, then-U.N. human rights commissioner Navi Pillay warned that the scale of viciousness "almost defies belief." She accused Assad of being implicated in war crimes. Assad and his top officials have denied responsibility for rights violations. In an interview with the BBC in 2015, Assad denied his forces dropped barrel bombs. "I know about the army. They use bullets, missiles and bombs. I haven't heard of the army using barrels, or maybe, cooking pots," he said. Atrocities in plain sight What makes the Syria conflict different from Biafra, the Balkans or Rwanda is that war crimes have been happening in plain sight for the world to witness in real time, thanks to the internet, social media, cellphones, satellite imagery and digital cameras, say analysts. And some of the armed groups have been all too happy to brag about their barbarity especially the Islamic State terror group, which has used videos of the beheadings of Western journalists and aid workers, the hurling of gay men off roofs, and the fatal burnings and stonings of foes to scare opponents and recruit foreign fighters. For those looking at Syria's six-year conflict from the outside, the slaughter appears to have had little or no pattern. U.N. investigators monitoring human rights abuses have accused rebel militias as well as jihadists of grave crimes, too. Rebel war crimes have included recruitment of child soldiers, shelling of civilian-populated areas and hostage-taking, as well as the slaughter of members of religious minorities. A May 2013 U.N. report confirmed that rebel groups had used sarin gas. But U.N. panels have been adamant that despite the killings by IS, the Syrian government has been responsible for many more deaths. In 2015, a survey by the Syrian Network for Human Rights, a nonprofit based in Britain whose reports are considered highly reliable, broke down the details of 56 major massacres displaying obvious sectarian or ethnic-cleansing traits since the start of the war. Of those, 49 were carried out by forces linked to the Syrian government, undermining the narrative crafted by the regime, which has depicted itself as a bulwark against extremism. U.N. investigators have compiled a list of government officials they say have been implicated in war crimes, and they have called on the Security Council to refer human rights violations to the International Criminal Court at The Hague. A growing number of Western politicians have called also for an ICC referral, peaking in 2014 when 55,000 photos of detainees' bodies taken by a forensic photographer, code-named Caesar, who worked in Assad jails were published. Veto from Russia, China Syria isn't a signatory to the treaty that set up the ICC. The court would have legal authority to investigate and prosecute war crimes in Syria only if directed to do so by the Security Council, but in 2014 Russia and China vetoed a proposal to involve the ICC. In December, the U.N. General Assembly voted to establish an independent panel to assist in the investigation of those responsible for war crimes in Syria. The resolution was approved by 105 member countries; 15 voted against the resolution's adoption, and there were 52 abstentions. But a single prosecution mechanism still remains elusive for war crimes committed in Syria. An option Western diplomats have discussed is setting up a U.N. tribunal like those established for the Cambodia and Rwanda genocides, but few hold out hope that such a tribunal would escape a Russian veto. In the meantime, individual European states, including France, Germany and Spain, have been exploring ways to prosecute war criminals when they can, if only piecemeal, and are conducting investigations. All states have universal jurisdiction rights when it comes to war crimes. In 2015, two rebels who fled to Sweden were sentenced for crimes they committed in Syria. "Six harrowing years on, there's no excuse for allowing the horrific crimes under international law that are being committed in Syria to go unpunished," Amnesty International's Samah Hadid said last month. But it will likely be some time, if ever, before senior Syrian officials see the inside of a courtroom. PHARMACEUTICALS FDA allows 23andMe to market genetic tests The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday agreed to allow genetic testing company 23andMe to market tests directly to consumers to assess their predisposition to develop 10 diseases, including Parkinsons, Alzheimers and Celiac disease. The FDA said the tests are intended to provide genetic risk information but cannot determine a persons overall risk of developing a disease or condition. In addition to the presence of certain genetic variants, there are many factors that contribute to the development of a health condition, including environmental and lifestyle factors, the agency said in a statement. The companys genetic-health-risk reports work by testing saliva samples for more than 500,000 genetic variants whose presence or absence may be associated with the conditions approved by the FDA. Reuters RETAIL More deliveries mean more dog attacks Booming online retail sales are good news for the U.S. Postal Service, but its carriers are incurring a cost: more dog bites. Dog attacks on postal workers rose last year to 6,755, up 206 from the previous year and the highest in three decades, as Internet shopping booms and consumers increasingly demand seven-day-a-week package delivery and groceries dropped at their doorstep. Los Angeles topped the 2016 list with 80 attacks on postal workers, followed by Houston with 62 and Cleveland with 60. The Postal Service released its annual figures Thursday as part of National Dog Bite Prevention Week, which begins Sunday. Its always on your mind as a carrier, Is there a dog in the area and is it a threat? said James Solomon, a 17-year postal carrier. He said every carrier he knows has a dog experience to tell, from outrunning to cajoling a territorial pet. Associated Press AUTO SAFETY Judge eyes Mueller to oversee Takata funds A federal judge in Detroit said Thursday that he plans to name former FBI director Robert Mueller to oversee nearly $1 billion in Takata restitution funds as part of a Justice Department settlement. In January, Takata agreed to plead guilty to criminal wrongdoing and to pay $1 billion to resolve a federal investigation into its air-bag inflaters linked to at least 16 deaths worldwide. Takata agreed to establish two independently administered restitution funds: an $850 million fund to compensate automakers for recalls, and a $125 million fund for individuals physically injured by Takatas air bags who have not already reached a settlement. Associated Press Also in Business Long-term U.S. mortgage rates fell this week for a third straight week. Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday that the rate on 30-year fixed-rate home loans declined to 4.10 percent from 4.14 percent last week. The benchmark rate stood at 3.59 percent a year ago and averaged 3.65 percent in 2016, the lowest level dating to 1971. The rate on 15-year mortgages eased to 3.36 percent from 3.39 percent. Aetna will exit Iowas Obamacare-compliant individual insurance market in 2018, amid uncertainty over which insurers will sell plans and at what price as Republicans seek to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. Citing financial risk and the uncertain outlook, the insurer said Thursday it is evaluating other remaining individual insurance markets, which include Delaware, Nebraska and Virginia. The company exited about a dozen markets this year. Frances PSA Group, the maker of Peugeot, Citroen and DS cars, said Thursday it has begun offering a car-sharing service in Los Angeles, marking its return to the United States. PSA said a new division, PSA North America, will be led by Larry Dominique, a U.S. auto industry veteran. The automaker is offering the car-sharing service via its Free2Move brand and its partner Travelcar. The service is being offered to travelers from Los Angeles airport, ahead of a wider U.S. rollout, PSA said. From news reports Coming today 8:30 a.m.: Labor Department releases employment data for March. 10 a.m.: Commerce Department releases wholesale trade inventories for February. 3 p.m.: Federal Reserve releases consumer credit data for February. Getting pulled in by fake news can cost you. (Joshua Lott/AFP/Getty Images) Ive been tricked more times than I care to admit. Youve probably been misled as well. Does this ring a bell? Youre reading a real news story online, and below it or embedded within it is an interesting headline that captures your attention. Click. Then bam! Youve been fooled by fake news. Perhaps you skipped right over a line that said Paid Promoted Stories or Sponsored Content. Next thing you know, youre reading what you thought was a real news story about how to ease your fatigue, but its really an ad for a vitamin supplement. Or you might be enticed by a headline that says, The IRS Cheat Code to Move Your IRA/401(k) to Gold. I would know not to click on that one, but undoubtedly some people fall for it. With the uncertainty hovering over the stock market, might you be tempted to move all your retirement money to precious metals? The shady outfit pitching this highly risky investment strategy sure hopes so. There was a lot of criticism last week about Pepsis ad featuring Kendall Jenner and how the beverage company appropriated recent social and political protest movements to sell soda. At least it was obvious that Pepsi was pushing a soft drink. The outrage about Pepsis blunder was warranted, but theres a situation that has been trending for some time that we need to be equally concerned about ads masquerading as genuine media-generated stories. On the home pages of legitimate news sources The Washington Post, the New York Times and other publications are articles that may not immediately be recognized as advertiser-driven content. The news organizations need the ad revenue. And it helps keep the free press affordable. April is Financial Literacy Month. Its an annual effort by consumer advocacy groups to highlight the need for all of us to be better informed. As part of this years campaign, the FoolProof Foundation has rolled out a Fake News resource page on its website (foolproofme.com/topics/fake-news ). Here is some of the trickery they spotlight: Native advertising. Because consumers have become more adept at skipping or blocking advertising, marketers have become more creative and covert, said Mara Einstein, a professor at Queens College at CUNY and author of Black Ops Advertising. Native advertising refers to any paid product pitch thats designed to resemble a publications editorial content. Because it looks like content that readers trust, they are more apt to let down their guard, Einstein said in an interview. In the digital space, advertisers are able to hide, she added. You dont know you are reading something with a sponsor behind it. Einstein recommends limiting notifications from legitimate news sources, especially on your smartphone, which, in turn, will reduce the time you spend online and reduce your exposure to ads pretending to be news. She also suggests using browser plug-ins like Ghostery and Disconnect to block websites from tracking you. Listicles. These are articles that are nothing more than lists. BuzzFeed is masterful at these. It recently published 23 Things That Will Make You Feel Like An Adult In April: Tips, tricks, and products that are not too taxing (you know, because your taxes are due April 18). Catching on to the popularity of list-type stories, advertisers sometimes sponsor hollow albeit entertaining listicles. Clickbait. Watch out for headlines that are cunningly written to reel you into an ad as with the headline mentioned above purporting to reveal a cheat code for the Internal Revenue Service. FoolProofs site also has a number of good videos. Two that Id recommend especially for children are Most Young People Dont Know When News Is Fake. Do You? and Fake News Targets Your Pocketbook and Your Welfare. A Stanford University study found that more than 80 percent of middle-school students, many digitally literate, believed that an advertisement that was identified as sponsor content was a real news story. When it comes to evaluating information that flows through social-media channels, they are easily duped, the Stanford report said. We all need to protect ourselves from a one-sided sales pitch that is designed to look like a balanced and trustworthy story, said Will deHoo, executive director of FoolProof. One tip from FoolProof is to do some sleuthing. Youre online anyway, so take the time to see if what you are viewing is legit. And certainly do it before you share anything with friends and family. Understanding the evolving strategies by marketers and advertisers will ultimately save you real money and real time. Read more: A bad Pepsi ad, and the cost of obesity 8 reasons you could end up with a surprise tax bill this year How this millennial saved $1 million by age 30 Write Singletary at The Washington Post, 1301 K St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071 or singletarym@washpost.com. To read more, go to http://wapo.st/michelle-singletary. 5 Andrew Medichini/AP A 40-day period before Easter is a special season in the Christian calendar. Some people fast, or stop eating certain foods, while others give up particular items or practices, such as drinking soda or eating chocolate. What is this period called? Hello, gorgeous. Somewhere thats what the brain purrs when confronted by glamour. It locks up. It adores and desires, envies and craves. Thats the allure of celebrity and the armor of celebrity, if youve got it. Because then you can say this: Hello, suckers. Winning is what celebrity is, and the streamlined, indestructible musical satire Chicago has been making the cynical point and laughing all the way to the bank for two decades now. Its at the Kennedy Center for the first time since establishing itself as a Broadway fixture in 1996, where the revival of director-choreographer Bob Fosses 1975 show continues to churn its nasty, scantily clad hips to tell the tale of two sexy murderesses, a corruptible justice system and sensation-minded newspapers. After a tired turn at the National Theatre two years ago, its back maybe not with a vengeance, but with R&B pop star Brandy Norwood as Roxie Hart, and at least now brandishing a smile on her lips as she blows smoke in your eyes. If youve seen the show half a dozen times, this iteration will fall in the middle of the pack. The old gals not as alarmingly lifeless as the last time she took a spin through town. But shes not as razor-sharp as she can be when her practiced dancers panthers, really, prowling in their sheer black lingerie are precisely knifing the air with rigid legs and writhing midsections, and when all her jokes are ham-free and laced with arsenic. If youve ever seen Chicago when its completely flush with aces . . . wow. Too bad, pal. Youre wrecked for life. Brandy Norwood as Roxie Hart in CHICAGO. (photo: Jeremy Daniel) Terra C. MacLeod as Velma Kelly. (Photo: Paul Kolnik.) [Brandy Norwood explains why she loves Chicago] What Brandy brings is her smoky, singular, Grammy-winning voice. Youd take her sultry, dead-accurate crooning over plastic Broadway belting any day; thats the asset. She moves better than youd expect during her long fantasia about fame, the slow-vamping Roxie, and she can be funny (as long as she keeps her speaking energy up), unleashing a deliriously skillful string of notes as a witty, lusty response to one of the muscled chorus boys sidling her way. The dance-driven ironic happy ending? Not her strong point. But there are customers at the Kennedy Centers Opera House specifically for her: Shes famous. Chicago can do that with its Roxies, who over the years on Broadway have included Melanie Griffith, Christie Brinkley, Robin Givens and Brooke Shields none of whom has Brandys musical gift, and none of whom would remotely crowd out the memory of the 1996 Roxie, Ann Reinking, who also choreographed this revival in the style, as its billed, of her longtime lover, Fosse. Roxies jailhouse rival for trial-of-the-year attention, Velma Kelly, has demanding dances that cant be fudged, so the role tends to be cast with trained dancers who can wow a crowd simply by partnering with a chair. (See the acrobatically comic I Cant Do It Alone.) Terra C. MacLeod measures up from the moment she enters, with sharp shoulders that look like they could chip granite. Shes a real dancer, and she also gets the shows wry verve. One of the funniest bits at the Kennedy Center is MacLeods Velma jealously mocking the attention-getting vocal trills of Brandys Roxie. Chemistry! And only here, folks Brandy, who admirably calls theater the real show business, is on tour just for this two-week D.C. stop. Overall the show feels less dense with intoxicating dance than you may remember. Some years the chorus has been stunningly good, a pack of rock-hard bodies moving smooth as honey, knocking you sideways with impeccably measured wiggles and thrusts, bowler hats tilted low over the eyes. When it cuts out the mugging, keeps the humor knowing and rigorously frames its untouchable talent, you feel that performance-wise, Chicago really could kick forever. Whats clear 20 years on is that the laughing spirit and corrupt heart captured by the jaunty John Kander-Fred Ebb vaudeville songs really is America, now and always. Is truth getting trammeled by spin? Buzz? Misdirection? Is some shameless flimflam artist riding high? When this revival opened in 1996, comparisons were quickly drawn to the 1995 O.J. Simpson trial, with a celebrity skating away as the term Kardashian entered the lexicon. Lately, SNL knew it could slip Kellyanne Conway under showbiz lights, into Roxie Hart-esque little dress and atop of raft of chorus boys, and it would make sense. Its a razzle-dazzle nation. Somebodys always getting away with murder. The play about Roxie, Velma, Roxies dim husband, Amos, slick lawyer Billy Flynn and prison matron Mama Morton actually dates to 1927, and some of its wiseguy dialogue endures in the musical. Playwright-journalist Maurine Watkins based the script on her 1924 reporting of lurid jazz-booze-murder trials, stories featuring headlines such as Demand Noose for Prettiest Woman Slayer, Beulah Annan Awaits Stork, Murder Trial (yes, the wily Roxies fake pregnancy is drawn from real life) and Dancer Faces Jury in Fashions Latest (fashions latest what, it does not say). So of course by now, this sexy, seedy celeb-fest feels like a national monument, a ravishing grand canyon where ethics go to die and American Dream opportunism prances and gloats. No clever director will ever need to reinvent Chicago. The question, always, is whether the next cast has the chops to slay us all over again. Chicago, book by Fred Ebb and Bob Fosse, music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb. Re-creation of original production direction, David Hyslop. With Brent Barrett, Roz Ryan and Paul Vogt. About 2 hours 30 minutes. Through April 16 in the Kennedy Centers Opera House. Tickets $49-$149. Call 202-467-4600 or visit kennedy-center.org. You can learn a lot from the label of a mezcal bottle, but you should still know what questions to ask. (Deb Lindsey /For The Washington Post) The wall behind the bar at Espita Mezcaleria, where Josh Phillips serves as general manager, is lined with mezcal. Every bottle is a source of pride for Phillips a certified master mescalier and beverage director Megan Barnes, who, he says, spends an ocean of time researching the producers. Phillips moves from the flavor notes in tepeztate mezcals (almost all of them have some note of pepper) to the cultivation of tobala, an agave that grows largely in the wild. At one point, he smiles sheepishly and tells me to open the list of WiFi networks on my phone, to figure out which one belongs to his cantina in the Districts Shaw neighborhood. I scan networks of nearby places before I spot it: MezcalDOisStupid, a reference to the Denominacion de Origen rules that define mezcal. Sign of an agave nerd, I think. Happily, those nerds are increasing in number. Consumers have become more informed about agave spirits, says David Suro-Pinera, president of Siembra Spirits and owner of Tequilas restaurant in Philadelphia. When I opened the restaurant 30 years ago, people were looking for the worm in the bottle, he says. People thought there was a cactus in the desert of Sonora and someone was extracting the tequila ready-made out of that plant. Now, he says, more people are engaged not just in spirits, but they want to know how their craft beer is made, where the lettuce and the chickens are coming from, how the textiles in their clothes were made. These origin questions are at the heart of the agave spirits category. But do consumers know what to ask? Where can they get good information about the production processes that affect the flavor of the spirit, fair pay for agave crop workers, the pressures on particular agave varietals? Sustainability is a big part of the discussion right now. Unlike grapes or grain, agave plants take years to mature. The agave tequilana, or blue agave plant, required for tequila matures fastest, but even that can take five years; espadin, the most common in mezcal, takes up to eight years. Other species can take decades, and some of those rare, wild, hard-to-get are highly sought after in the growing mezcal market. Once an agave is harvested, thats it. Mezcal is an old spirit being buffeted by contemporary market forces. Young entrepreneurs from Mexico and elsewhere and big multinationals are dipping toes into the category. The new players are sure to spur changes, and not everyone is excited about the possibilities of change. To ensure mezcal doesnt become a victim of its own success, advocates want to see producers become more transparent and consumers become more demanding. If the spirit and its makers are to flourish, and if agave species are to do the same, more consumers need to become agave nerds. Or, barring full-blown nerddom, at least develop a deeper understanding of how to choose from among the latest enticing bottles from Mexico. The tequila example The D.O. that Phillipss WiFi network references is a set of rules that define mezcal, much like those that define Champagne as unique to a region of France. The rules specify that mezcal can be made only in Mexico, in nine Mexican states. The D.O. for tequila, mezcals best-known offspring, is even narrower, allowing production in fewer states and using only tequilana Weber; mezcal allows use of multiple agave species. Most agave nerds wouldnt quibble with the D.O.s definition of mezcal as uniquely Mexican. Some, including Phillips, would disagree with its state restrictions; after all, agave distillates have been made for centuries across Mexico. But the rules protecting mezcal omit many states that share that heritage. Beverage director Megan Barnes does extensive research on all the mezcals carried at Espita Mezcaleria in the Districts Shaw neighborhood. (Rey Lopez/Espita Mezcaleria) Agave spirits lovers spend a lot of time keeping an eye on the regulations that govern the category. To understand why, you have to understand the history of the most famous one, tequila. Technically a kind of mezcal, tequila has changed over the decades due to market forces. Its popularity and the capital that poured into the category drove most distillers making the spirit to do so faster, using more industrial processes to meet demand, altering the very nature of the spirit. While some tequilas are still made in traditional ways, many are now made using industrialized processes that, critics argue, minimize the unique characteristics of agave spirits. Such bottlings are sometimes dismissed as aga-vodkas: smoother, softer, their agave nature muted, some adulterated with sweeteners or flavorings. The majority of mezcals are made much as they have always been: by small, family producers, the agave hearts roasted in underground pits, crushed by mallet or a tahona (a stone wheel) and distilled in clay or copper stills. As interest in mezcal grows, theres an ongoing battle to define what it is and to shape what it might become. Many mezcal lovers want to make sure that it doesnt go the way of tequila. Agave spirits should be understood as what they are: a cultural element, not a merchandise, says Pedro Jimenez, director of Mezonte, an organization in Guadalajara devoted to the preservation of agave spirits, via email. He fears that entrepreneurs eager to capitalize on the trend see mezcal as if it was a Coke or pizza. A commodity. And mezcals are nothing near to that. . . . The essence of them is the contrary. Its diversity, its tradition, time, culture, local identity. Others would argue that tequila is a massive success story worth more than $1 billion to Mexico and have fought to ensure that any regulation of the category protects the distillers making more industrialized versions of mezcal and producers who may want to expand and modernize. Small producers protection Over the past several years, two proposed regulations seen as particularly threatening to smaller producers appear to have been defeated. And in February, a new regulation establishing three categories of mezcal passed, designating categories for mezcal, artisanal mezcal and ancestral mezcal. By codifying traditional mezcal practices, the new rule supports the ability of small producers (who already use processes that qualify as artisanal or ancestral) to stand out, marketing their mezcals as special, heritage spirits in a liquor market thats been shifting toward just such higher-quality, more expensive products. That marks a big shift, says Sarah Bowen, author of Divided Spirits: Tequila, Mezcal and the Politics of Production. In years of studying the issue, she found that laws that regulate tequila and mezcal had always gone in one direction allowing for more industrialization . . . and theyve always been pushed by the big distilleries and the multinationals. Bowen views the proposal as a break in the other direction. Though many say setting the classifications is a good step, it wont cover every component that needs protection. Its complicated: Theres mezcal itself, a traditional spirit with a deep cultural history. There are the agave species, some of which, if the boom grows, may be depleted. Finally, there are the jimadors harvesting the agaves, the mezcaleros making mezcal and their communities, who live at poverty levels unimaginable to the affluent (mostly American) consumers snapping up their products. In protecting authentic mezcal, there may be danger, Bowen says, of locking people into museums of production. She says its critical that U.S.-based advocates work to amplify the voices of Mexican farmers and producers, allowing them to define their own processes. Labels matter At bars specializing in agave spirits, customers can ask the staff about how they select stock. Phillips will vouch for everything Espita carries; he has an extensive list of conditions a bottle has to meet to make it onto the bars wall. Suro-Pinera is pushing the agave spirits industry toward greater traceability and transparency, and he wants consumers to push as well. A Siembra Spirits label lists not only the distillery and the kind of agaves used, but the mezcalero, the strain of yeast used in fermentation, where the agave was grown and how it was cooked, down to the name of the lead jimador and the type of cut he made preparing the pina, or heart. The juice inside this bottle should taste like this technical data, he says. In fact, much can be gleaned from many mezcal labels. To make use of this data, though, consumers need to understand it, or at least do some on-the-spot googling. The average consumer, after all, wont know that certain agaves have more sustainability issues, or that a certain producer doesnt pay its agave suppliers fairly. This transparency-without-comprehension factor has caused some to criticize the approach as over-labeling; one tequila maker sniped in a Facebook discussion that its gobbledygook. Several sources, though, argued that more data on a label is inherently better, telling consumers that the producers are not trying to hide anything. Steve Olson is a wine and spirits educator and cooperating partner in the Del Maguey line of mezcals, one of the earliest brands to make a splash in the U.S. cocktail scene, and one that is focused on sustainability and conditions in the producers communities. He says that in the past there has been discussion of ratings that might simplify the issue. Imagine a 12- to 15-point system where everything a producer does right is a point: responsible waste disposal, humane use of working animals, use of organic and sustainable agaves, and so forth, he says. Each bottle would get a numerical score, so a consumer who cares about these issues could do better than guess without having to do hours of research. A system like this could be implemented by mezcals regulatory council, the Consejo Regulador del Mezcal, Olson says, or voluntarily by producers who want to steer the industry in the right direction. In the meantime, savvy consumers can help by asking questions of producers and bartenders and demanding transparency before the growing demand for mezcal pushes the spirit into a shape that may not be authentic or sustainable. If we dont take a look at it now, Olson says, it may already be too late. Allan is a Hyattsville, Md., writer and editor. Follow her on Twitter: @Carrie_the_Red. This review appeared in The Washington Posts 2017 Spring Dining Guide as No. 4 on a list of the years 10 best new restaurants. The duck bomba rice dish at Arroz packs layers of flavor and texture into a nod to paella thats designed for sharing. (Dayna Smith/For The Washington Post) 4. Arroz Not yet rated For his latest restaurant, in the Marriott Marquis in Washington, Mike Isabella takes us on a tour of Morocco, Spain and Portugal. Diners reach their tables via an azure foyer and a long, carpeted hall; the lucky ones are shown to keyhole-shaped booths that overlook the party but still give recipients a bit of privacy. Arroz is Spanish for rice. Head, then, for one of several bombas, nods to paella that layer both crisp and fluffy rice with different toppings; brined aged duck is heady in combination with dollops of yogurt and charred cucumber. To start, there are dynamite sweetbreads dappled with orange marmalade tweaked with lime and fish sauce. To finish, theres a towering rum baba in a moat of vanilla custard sauce. Servers can be scary in their enthusiasm, but you have to appreciate a place that gives you a tag to claim leftovers at the front door rather than making you sit with them. Previous: Ambar (Best new restaurant No. 4) | Next: Bindaas ( Best new restaurant No. 7 ) 901 Massachusetts Ave. NW. 202-869-3300. arrozbymic.com. Open: Dinner daily. Prices: Plates $12 to $26. Sound check: 72 decibels / Must speak with raised voice. More of Tom Sietsemas top 10 new restaurants 10. Colada Shop 9. Kobo 8. Fish by Jose Andres 7. Bindaas 6. Tiger Fork 5. Ambar 4. Arroz 3. Himitsu 2. Sfoglina 1. Mirabelle -- The following review was originally published April 7, 2017. Arroz finds a flavorful niche in Mike Isabellas growing D.C. dining empire Practice makes perfect, or something approaching it. Just look at the efforts of Mike Isabella, whos done an increasingly impressive job over the years of feeding us Greek food, starting with Kapnos in Washington, followed by other accents, including Japanese and Korean at Yona in Arlington. His ninth restaurant (not including concessions), Arroz in the Marriott Marquis, looks to Spain, Morocco and Portugal for inspiration. Spain, Isabella says, was the first country he visited in Europe 15 years ago. As for Morocco, I love the flavors and spices. With no similar themes nearby to compete with his idea, Isabella figures Arroz (Spanish for rice) is a good fit for the neighborhood. [Is Mike Isabella the next Jose Andres?] Definitely, the restaurant is easy to look at. The approach an azure foyer followed by a long, carpet-paved hall is especially dramatic. Lucky twosomes are shown to one of the cozy, keyhole-shaped booths opposite the front windows. Semiprivate, the seating nevertheless lets you feel part of the party. The elm tables? Credit Isabellas father-in-law, Charlie Nemeth, for the sleek touch. Two-person booths provide a semiprivate setting while allowing diners to feel like theyre part of the party. (Dayna Smith/For The Washington Post) Isabella recruited Michael Rafidi from the well-regarded RN74 in San Francisco to head up the kitchen at Arroz. A Rockville native, Rafidi, 32, returned to the East Coast in January with the ultimate goal of opening his own restaurant, most likely an homage to his Lebanese background. For now, hes doing food thats likely to keep tables in demand. Dinner starts with a snack from the kitchen, one night baby carrots the size of a pinkie finger with a potent garlic crumble for dipping. From there, diners might move on to sweetbreads, fried so they crackle and dappled with orange marmalade tweaked with lime juice and fish sauce. (Try it, youll like it.) Smoked as if in a bonfire, burnt eggplant gets pureed with tahini, black garlic, honey and sherry vinegar to make a tar-colored but delectable spread for warm, sesame-seeded Moroccan flatbread. Among early strong sellers are a host of spring vegetables some raw, some charred arranged in a salad dressed with a vinaigrette coaxed from calamansi, a fruit with a sour citrus note. [At Ruta del Vino, refreshing takes on Latin food with nary a small plate in sight] In a nod to paella, theres bomba rice served with a choice of vegetables, crab, suckling pig or duck. I can vouch for the last and cant wait to try the others. Designed for sharing, the signature dish shows up with crusty rice on the bottom, fluffy rice in the center and more crisp textures on top, alongside duck meat made succulent from brining and aging, charred cucumber and dollops of yogurt. Texture is part of the bombas appeal; rice enriched with sofrito, house-made harissa and fennel kimchi compels you to keep digging, too. Chef Michael Rafidi, 32, center, returned to the East Coast to lead the kitchen at Arroz. (Dayna Smith/For The Washington Post) Crisp Sweetbreads are served with orange marmalade, lime and fish sauce. (Dayna Smith/For The Washington Post) The bar keeps pace, by the way, with novelties such as the vodka-fueled, apricot-flavored Kasbah, its cap of crushed ice drizzled with an oil spiked with ras el hanout, the Moroccan spice blend. And desserts include a tower of rum baba in a moat of vanilla custard sauce, fragrant with orange blossom. [This is what L.A. restaurants do better than any other citys] Can a server be too enthusiastic? He can, as my waiter at Arroz repeatedly demonstrated. Passion for ones job is typically an admirable trait, but when every taste is previewed for you (The kitchen is finishing your amazing sweetbreads!) and every motion comes with an explanation (This will make cutting the cake easier, he said, leaving a dessert knife on the table), dinner becomes a comedy routine. Nowhere else have I experienced more crumb sweeping than at Arroz. Thank you so much, a companion told Mr. Excitable after the third sweep of the night. Thank YOU so much! he felt compelled to reply. For the most part, however, Arroz brims with intriguing flavors and good ideas, the most thoughtful of which is a tag for any food you want to take home. Instead of returning leftovers in a bag to your table, the restaurant stows them at the coat check: No more walking through the dining room with tonights midnight snack or tomorrows lunch in tow. 901 Massachusetts Ave. NW. 202-869-3300. arrozbymic.com. Plates, $12 to $26. A pizza comes out of the oven at a Dominos in Kentucky in 2013. (Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg) On May 5, more than seven years after it was signed into law, calorie labeling on menus will take effect. Unless, with just weeks remaining, Congress delays and dramatically weakens the provision at the behest of the pizza industry. The law, which passed as part of the Affordable Care Act, was intended to help beat back the obesity epidemic by requiring chain restaurants with more than 20 outlets to clearly label the number of calories contained in each item: 1,400 calories in Applebees Oriental Chicken Salad, for instance, and 350 in a slice of a medium Dominos Meatzza pan pie. Since then, chains such as Panera, Starbucks and McDonalds have complied with the law and posted calories prominently on menu boards. But the pizza industry, led by the American Pizza Community, has continued to fight implementation. It has pushed for an alternative bill, the Common Sense Nutrition Disclosure Act, that would postpone and gut some provisions. [A simple tweak makes calorie labeling more effective] Under the bill, restaurant chains that receive at least 50 percent of their orders from off-premises, via, say, phone or an app, would not have to post calories in their stores. In other words, takeout restaurants would get a pass. Even if they did disclose calorie counts, they would no longer have to list the total calories, only those in a single serving, the size of which would be determined by the restaurant. A McDonalds drive-through menu in New York displays calories in this 2008 photo. (Ed Ou/AP) The Common Sense Nutrition Disclosure Act has not gotten a vote in either chamber this session. Supporters, however, are working to slip it into the 2017 appropriations bill, which must pass by April 28 to keep the government running. The pizza industry has fought this at each step of the way, and here we are four weeks away from when the law takes effect, and theyre still lobbying to keep this information from their customer, said Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a nonprofit advocacy group that supports menu labeling. [A pioneer of humanely raised meat is betting the farm on Blue Apron] Pizza companies are not big political donors. In 2016, the industry made only about $650,000 in contributions, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, with most of that going to Republicans. But the American Pizza Community (APC) motto: Promoting pizza as a shared meal in communities everywhere is a persistent presence on the Hill. Formed in 2010, the coalition represents some 20,000 pizza restaurants, including Dominos, Papa Johns and Little Caesars. APC is concerned with issues such as franchising regulations and promoting pizza goodness, but spokeswoman Christy Moran said the organizations driving force is to make menu labeling more flexible. Each year, the APC hosts a meeting with members of Congress. In late March, , a delegation visited the offices of Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, one of four elected officials who introduced the Common Sense Nutrition Disclosure Act, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), among others. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) is a co-sponsor of the Common Sense Nutrition Disclosure Act. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) The APC does not object to menu labeling. In fact, it supports a national standard. But the one-size-fits-all solution doesnt fit everyone, says Tim McIntyre, APC chair and executive vice president of communications and legislative affairs for Dominos. Pizza, he argues, is special because of the number of toppings and possible combinations. Dominos, for example, offers five types of crusts (hand-tossed, gluten-free, thin, handmade pan and Brooklyn), five levels of cheese and 30 toppings, making it difficult to list calories on an in-store menu board and pointless considering that 90 percent of orders come in over the phone or online. According to the APC, updating and maintaining menu boards with calorie counts would cost a store between $3,500 and $5,000 a year. Putting calories on the Internet makes far more sense, says McIntyre. Dominos, he notes, has posted calorie information on its site for more than 13 years. What we are trying to do is provide a common-sense solution by putting the information where most of our customers are. [This is what L.A. restaurants do better than any other citys] But the Food Drug Administration, which will enforce menu labeling rules, says a pizza chain is only required to provide calorie counts on menus the chain currently has, whether its menu is paper or some other format; there is no requirement for a chain to create a menu or have in-store menu boards. FDA spokeswoman Deborah Kotz also disputed the pizza industrys claim that it would not be able to advertise as it currently does on billboards without posting calorie information. In response to the pizza industrys charge that employees who put too much pepperoni on someones order could be held criminally liable or fined, as the industry claims given the made-to-order nature of pizza, Kotz said, The regulations allow a range of calories to be placed on the menu to address precisely this situation. Additionally, the agency plans to spend the first year on education and outreach, not on enforcement. Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, opposes industry attempts to change menu labeling requirements. (April Greer/For The Washington Post) Nutrition advocates allege that industry objections are a bogus attempt to wriggle out of labeling requirements that offer customers a chance to make healthful food choices outside the home. According to the USDA, 13 percent of Americans, or 41 million people, eat pizza on any given day. Among adults in that group, pizza contributes 29 percent of their daily calories and 38 percent of their daily sodium intake. That pizza goodness that the APC promotes is not as good as they would like people to think, says CSPIs Wootan. Its white flour, salty sauce and fatty cheese. Pizza restaurants already have extracted a concession from the FDA that allows them to show the calories of a slice, rather than the whole pie. Posting the calories of an entire pizza, the agency agreed, might cause sticker shock or confusion, since few people eat an entire pizza in one sitting. [Our messed-up relationship with food has a long history. It started with butter.] But the Common Sense Nutrition Disclosure Act goes further, allowing chains to list the calories by serving size set at their discretion. This means that, at least in theory, a chain could decide that a high-calorie item has multiple servings to lower calorie count: A bakery, for example, could list the calorie count on a cookie as 200 calories per serving without disclosing that the serving is half a cookie. A pizza chain could calculate the calories in an eight-slice pizza based on 10 servings. When asked, Dominos McIntyre said his companys intention is to list calories by the slice or the serving, which according to its own research is around 2.2 slices. The companys online Cal-o-Meter lists calories by the slice. But its sandwiches and pasta-in-a-bread-bowl entrees are labeled as two servings with calorie counts given for just one of those servings even though many people would typically view a single sandwich or entree as a portion for one. Workers add toppings at a Papa John's in Herndon, Va., in 2005. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post) There is some debate about whether menu labeling works. A number of reports have suggested that posting calories results in little or no change in consumer choices. But a study in New York City, which in 2008 became the first jurisdiction to mandate calorie labeling, found that 15 percent of customers reported using menu labeling and purchased items with 106 fewer calories in a fast-food lunch than those who did not see or use the calorie information. An analysis of 100 million transactions at Starbucks, which introduced calorie labeling nationwide in 2013, showed that when calories were posted prominently, the average number of calories per transaction fell by 6 percent. [Study: After menu labeling, healthier menu options] Moreover, menu labeling affects corporate as well as consumer behavior. Eighteen months after King County, Wash., mandated menu labeling, a study found that entrees at 37 chain restaurants had fallen by an average of 41 calories. That may not sound like a lot, but experts estimate that the obesity epidemic is attributable to the per-person consumption of about 100 extra calories a day. If we can take some calories out from changes in consumer behavior and some from reformulations, well be on our way, Wootan said. But that will only happen if companies give this information to their customers. This story was produced in collaboration with the Food & Environment Reporting Network, a nonprofit investigative journalism organization. View their work at thefern.org. Malala Yousafzai, shown in 2015, will become a United Nations Messenger of Peace, the organization announced Friday. Yousafzai was shot by the Taliban at age 15 for promoting the education of girls in Pakistan. (Andrew Gombert/European Pressphoto Agency) Malala Yousafzai, the youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, is to become the youngest United Nations Messenger of Peace, the organizations chief said Friday. Yousafzai, 19, will be appointed on Monday by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and will help promote girls education around the world as part of her new role. The Pakistani education activist came to prominence when a Taliban gunman shot her in the head on her school bus in 2012 as punishment for campaigning for girls to go to school. The militant Islamic group had banned education for girls and women. Yousafzai has since continued campaigning on the world stage and in 2014 became the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner. Even in the face of grave danger, Malala Yousafzai has shown an unwavering commitment to the rights of women, girls and all people, Guterres said in statement. Her courageous activism for girls education has already energized so many people around the world. Now as our youngest-ever U.N. Messenger of Peace, Malala can do even more to help create a more just and peaceful world. Yousafzai, who received medical treatment in Britain where she has since studied, has also set up the Malala Fund to support girls education projects in developing countries. A regular speaker on the global stage, Yousafzai visited refugee camps in Rwanda and Kenya last July to highlight the plight of refugee girls from Burundi and Somalia. This is a non-stress environment. We give them the permission to be a young person, said LaShelle Richmond, program director at Sasha Bruce Youthwork. The organization operates the Sasha Bruce House in Northeast Washington. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post) Their dreams are scribbled on colorful sticky notes in the houses recreation room. I aspire to be great, reads one. A lawyer, says another. I plan to achieve a sense of maturity, a teenager wrote. These are the aspirations of the children living at the Sasha Bruce House in Northeast Washington a place where some of the citys most vulnerable teenagers go when they have nowhere else. Some have run away from home, others have no homes to run back to and almost all feel this teenage shelter is their only safe option. This is a non-stress environment. We give them the permission to be a young person, said LaShelle Richmond, program director at Sasha Bruce Youthwork, which operates the Sasha Bruce House. Theyre smart, theyre creative, theyre leaders, but how do we get to them early enough where they dont end up in the juvenile justice system? [No, there is no spike in missing girls in D.C.; how tweets created a crisis] The Sasha Bruce Youthwork has provided resources and beds to teenagers and young adults in crisis for more than 40 years long before a string of missing D.C. teens recently thrust the issue into a larger spotlight. About 190 juveniles go missing each month in the District, and some find their way here. At the house, children scribbled on colorful sticky notes their hopes and dreams. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post) Late last year, a D.C. police official decided to publicize every missing child in the city on social media. News outlets and celebrities on Twitter took notice, calling attention to a perceived epidemic of missing teenage girls in Washington. The Congressional Black Caucus called for an FBI investigation. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) and interim police chief Peter Newsham tried to assuage public concerns during a news conference, saying there was no uptick in missing teenagers, only a change in how cases were publicized. D.C. police say 99 percent of people who go missing are eventually found. Bowser said the issue is especially acute in the citys poorest communities, where some think it is safer to run away than stay at home. She announced a plan that would, in part, dedicate more resources to social services that help teens who run away. Sasha Bruce Youthwork could stand to receive more city grants from the plan. [Bowser creates a task force on missing children after a public outcry] Ive been in this business a long time, said Deborah Shore, founder and executive director of Sasha Bruce Youthwork. Its very gratifying to me that people are finally talking about a system that ties it all together. A message on a door at the Sasha Bruce House. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post) Deborah Shore, founder and executive director of Sasha Bruce Youthwork. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post) The District allocates $2.41 million annually to homeless youth services. The city gives about $200,000 to the Sasha Bruce House each year and about $500,000 to the Sasha Bruce Youthworks drop-in center on Barracks Row, where children can eat, shower or just talk to someone between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. Bowser lauded Sasha Bruces efforts to make stints of youth homelessness more brief and rare in the District. They work with some of the most vulnerable young people in our city reuniting them with their families, connecting them to educational and employment opportunities, and ensuring they have a safe place to turn when in need of shelter or other services, she wrote in an email. Richmond, who has been with the organization for nearly 20 years, helps to oversee the house near the H Street NE corridor. Over the past three years, 345 children ages 12 to 17 have stayed in the 10-bed facility. The average stay is about three weeks, a time when staff members work through a childs problems and determine whether its safe to reunite the teen with family. The house provides structured days to teenagers often facing turmoil. There are rides to school, art classes and a house dinner each evening before early curfews. On weekends, there are trips to museums. On birthdays, celebrations at Dave & Busters. When teens walk through the door, a staff member greets them with pajamas and offers to wash their clothes. The first thing we want to do is provide them with the feeling theyre safe, Richmond said. They can always have a safe place here, but what we really need to do is to get to the root of the problem. The exterior of the Sasha Bruce House, which provides a place for teenagers who are homeless or have run away. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post) Richmond hangs their artwork around the house like a proud parent and talks with them about their days. She recalls success stories of teens who returned to improved environments back home. She said some teenage girls think they are in relationships with older men but unknowingly are trading sex for a place to live. Others come from abusive homes. Sometimes, parents dont have stable homes of their own and cant provide a roof for their teenagers. In other situations, pregnant and gay teenagers say they cannot turn to their families, so they turn to the Sasha Bruce House. Our young ladies have the most troubling cases, because most of them are trying to find their identity and how to express themselves and fit in with their families, Richmond said. The friction builds up with their families, and they turn to the streets. For Richmond, her dedication to the mission of Sasha Bruce is personal. She was born in the Districts Petworth neighborhood to a single, 13-year-old mother, raised by her grandmother and mother with the support of neighbors. If she hadnt had that support system, she said, she might have needed services like those she provides. I could have been any one of these young people coming through these doors, but I had the resources to take me through that journey she said. My dad didnt support me, but look at me now. Your circumstances dont have to define who you are. THE DISTRICT Man is charged with sex abuse at museum A Southwest Washington man was charged with five counts of second-degree sexual abuse and three counts of assault in connection with the alleged assaults of seven teenage girls Tuesday in the Smithsonians National Museum of Natural History. Authorities say Devone L. Foote, 35, walked up to a group of 13- and 14-year-old girls from California and touched their buttocks as the teens toured the museums butterfly exhibit. Prosecutors say Foote also pressed his groin against one of the teens buttocks. The girls chaperon reported the incident to a museum security office. Minutes later, Foote was arrested outside the museum as he sat on a bicycle after the girls noticed him when they left the museum. Foote was ordered to remain in D.C. jail until a hearing Friday in D.C. Superior Court. Keith L. Alexander Do you have enough to make ends meet? A financial website has good news: Its still not as tough to make ends meet in the District as in San Francisco, New York or San Jose, according to a new study. But you will still need to earn $80,273 per year to live comfortably in our nations capital. The website GoBankingRates conducted the study, scrutinized the cost of living in the United States 50 most-populous cities and came up with the $80,000 figure and a working definition of comfortable. A good way to gauge whether you can live a comfortable financial life is to apply the 50-30-20 budgeting rule, in which 50 percent of income covers necessities, 30 percent covers discretionary items and 20 percent is for savings, the website wrote. Digging further into the data, GoBankingRates found D.C. residents needed: 50 percent for necessities: $40,136; 30 percent for discretionary spending: $24,082; 20 percent for savings: $16,055. Justin Wm. Moyer MARYLAND Tractor-trailer, car crash into each other A tractor-trailer and a car crashed into each other early Thursday along River Road in Bethesda, and at least one person had to be extricated from the wreckage, according to tweets from Pete Piringer, a spokesman for Montgomery County Fire. One person was transported to a hospital with injuries. There were no immediate details on what caused the crash at River Road and Landy Lane. Dana Hedgpeth Federal marshals are protecting Education Secretary Betsy DeVos at a cost to her agency of nearly $8 million over nearly eight months, according to the U.S. Marshals Service. The Education Department has agreed to reimburse the marshals $7.78 million for their services from mid-February to the end of September, said a marshals spokeswoman an average of about $1 million per month. Marshals will continue providing security for the education secretary for the next four years, or until either agency decides to terminate the arrangement, under an agreement signed last week. There was no information immediately available about what that would cost beyond September. While the department is spending the additional money on DeVoss security, members of the in-house security team that guarded previous secretaries remain on the payroll. But they are not guarding DeVos and have not been assigned new duties, said a department employee who was not authorized to speak to a reporter and asked for anonymity. A department spokesman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said he could not comment on personnel decisions. He said the agency deferred to the federal marshals threat assessment and determination about what would be necessary to keep the secretary safe and able to do her job. The spokesman disputed the $1 million estimate for a monthly average, saying that the contract with the marshals includes one-time fixed costs. Recurring monthly costs are lower, he said, without giving more specifics. The spokesman also said that the $7.78 million is a projected maximum reimbursement and that the final cost could be less. The new outlay is a tiny fraction of the departments budget, but comes as the Trump administration has proposed slashing the spending plan by $9 billion, or 13.5 percent. [Betsy DeVos is being guarded by U.S. Marshals Service] DeVos is the only Cabinet secretary under the protection of the marshals, law enforcement officers who are generally responsible for protecting federal judges, transporting prisoners, apprehending fugitives and protecting witnesses. They also guard the deputy attorney general and Supreme Court justices when they travel. The last Cabinet member protected by marshals was a director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, which ceased to be a Cabinet-level position in 2009, said marshals spokeswoman Lynzey Donahue. Previous education secretaries have been protected by a team of department employees, many of whom were Secret Service veterans. That team was replaced by marshals on Feb. 13, a few days after DeVos encountered protesters who briefly blocked her from entering a D.C. middle school. [Protesters briefly block DeVos from entering D.C. school] DeVos was narrowly confirmed after a bruising confirmation process, during which she morphed from a quietly powerful Republican donor and school voucher advocate into a polarizing household name. A U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that she had received more threats than previous education secretaries. The Marshals Service is hiring nearly two dozen people to guard her, according to a person briefed on the arrangements, who was not authorized to speak publicly. The jobs include 20 positions at the GS-13 level ($95,000-$123,000 annual salary, depending on experience), and 2 positions at the GS-14 level ($112,000 to $146,000 annual salary). Donahue declined to say how many people are guarding DeVos and whether they are protecting her around the clock, citing concern for operational security. The agency said it has determined that a threat to DeVoss safety exists, but declined to describe the nature or intensity of that threat. THE DISTRICT Driver jailed until trial in Capitol Hill incident A 20-year-old woman whose car was fired on by police near the U.S. Capitol after she allegedly nearly ran down officers and struck two police vehicles while fleeing a traffic stop pleaded not guilty to an array of charges Friday. Mia Keyshia Hill, who also goes by the name Taleah Michelle Everett, according to court files, was ordered by U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson to remain in custody until her trial. U.S. Capitol Police said two officers fired at Hills car March 29 after she allegedly ran a red light and refused to stop, and after several subsequent attempts to block her path by officers during the morning rush-hour incident. She was indicted on counts of assaulting, resisting or impeding a federal police officer with a dangerous weapon and one federal count of destruction of U.S. property. The indictment includes three District charges: fleeing a law enforcement officer; reckless driving; and destruction of property. Prosecutors said in a court filing that Hill has no convictions for offenses as an adult and that her behavior in recent weeks had grown increasingly erratic, aggressive, and assaultive. Spencer S. Hsu MARYLAND Woman shot to death in Capitol Heights A woman was fatally shot late Thursday in Capitol Heights, police said. The shooting occurred about 11 p.m. in the 200 block of Zelma Avenue in Prince Georges County. Officers investigating a report of a shooting found a woman shot and lying in the roadway. She was taken to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead. She was identified as Jan Cotto, 51, of Capitol Heights. Police said the shooting does not appear to have been random. A reward is being offered for information in the case. Those who know anything further about the case are asked to call 866-411-TIPS. The fatal shooting is among 67 homicides in the D.C. region this year, according to tracking by The Washington Post. Of those, 21 have been in Prince Georges County. Justin Wm. Moyerand Dana Hedgpeth VIRGINIA Bus strike in Fairfax appears to be averted The Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1764, which represents about 600 Fairfax Connector bus drivers and mechanics, said it has reached a tentative labor agreement with the contractor that runs the bus operations, likely averting a strike. The agreement signed early Friday after 20 hours of bargaining with MV Transportation is likely to prevent a work stoppage that would have affected thousands of commuters in Northern Virginia. We will be recommending ratification to our members, who will decide in a vote on Saturday whether to accept or reject the terms of the agreement, said Sesil Rubain, the trustee with ATU Local 1764. They more than anyone except their riders understand the seriousness of strike action. Workers had threatened to walk off the job as early as Monday, citing months of stalled negotiations with MV, the company that Fairfax County contracts to run the service. A pension plan, wages, and lunch and bathroom breaks were among the main issues in the negotiations. Union leaders said details of the contract will be released once a deal has been ratified. But they said MV agreed to some of the unions demands, leading to a 3 a.m. conclusion of the negotiations. Union leaders said they expect transit services to continue, pending a ratification vote to be held Saturday. Luz Lazo A bill that would have resurrected the bail system in Maryland will not get a vote in the House of Delegates, a top aide to House Speaker Michael E. Busch said late Thursday, after Democratic leaders concluded it would not have enough support to pass. Alexandra Hughes, Buschs chief of staff, said the speaker made the decision after Democratic members polled their caucus to see how members would vote. Allowing the bill to die in the House effectively leaves in place a recent Court of Appeals rules change that greatly limits the use of bail and instructs judges to use the least onerous conditions when setting bail for a defendant who is not considered a danger or a flight risk. Buschs decision was first reported by the Baltimore Sun. Progressive advocates and lawmakers tried for years to abolish bail for poor defendants, saying it unfairly discriminates against them and can leave defendants who are not flight risks languishing in jail before trial simply because they lack the money to post bond. Del. Cheryl Glenn chairs a meeting of the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland where lawmakers voted to oppose a pro-bail bill. (Doug Kapustin/For The Washington Post) But the Court of Appeals decision was strongly opposed by the bail bond industry, who said it took away judges discretion and would mean more criminals on the street and fewer showing up in court for trial. The industry campaigned against the change on social media and was highly visible in Annapolis during the current legislative session, urging lawmakers to pass a bill sponsored by Sen. Anthony Muse (D-Prince Georges) that would reestablish the option for judges to set bail even for poor defendants. The bill was approved in the Senate, but it was opposed by the powerful Legislative Black Caucus, one of the largest blocs in the legislature. The Hispanic and Asian caucuses, and the entire Montgomery County delegation, subsequently decided to oppose the bill as well. Im ecstatic, said Cheryl Glenn, chair of the Maryland Legislative Black Caucus, which voted against the bill. I was very happy to hear its not going to the floor. This not only sends a message to the leadership in Maryland but to people across the country about what can be accomplished when African American legislators stand together. Maryland could become the first state to give its attorney general the power to take legal action against drug companies that dramatically increase the price of off-patent or generic drugs under a measure that is moving through the General Assembly. Attorney General Brian E. Frosh (D) proposed the legislation, which received final approval in the Senate on Friday. The House passed the measure last month, and now the two chambers must reconcile the differences in the bill before the General Assembly adjourns Monday at midnight. The vote on the price-gouging bill was among a flurry of activity in the legislature during the final days of its session. A Senate committee broke through a logjam and voted unanimously to advance portions of the Trust Act, a bill to limit police cooperation with federal immigration enforcement efforts. After debating the legislation for more than two weeks, the 11-member panel decided to tuck the least-controversial parts into a separate immigration-related measure that will move to the full Senate on Monday. The surviving proposals would bar local and state police from stopping or questioning individuals solely to determine their immigration status or country of origin, and from creating registries based on factors that could be used for discrimination, such as race and religion. The committee dropped sections that would prohibit jurisdictions from detaining undocumented prisoners past their release date on behalf of immigration authorities. It doesnt go as far as some would like it to go, and it goes further than others would like, and that is a good compromise, said Sen. Robert A. Zirkin (D-Baltimore County), who chairs the panel. Gov. Larry Hogan (R) has vowed to veto the Trust Act, which was passed by the House last month two votes shy of a veto-proof majority. It was unclear whether the governor would also reject the alternative legislation that was advanced by the Senate committee Friday. The price-gouging bill is part of a national response to soaring drug costs. Last year, the U.S. Senate opened an investigation into the dramatic spike in EpiPens price, which has increased more than fivefold since 2007. Frosh said Friday that he hopes the legislation will address what has become a life-or-death situation for some Maryland residents. We hope it will stop price-gouging of drugs that people are dependent on to stay alive or to function normally, he said. The legislation is limited to generic and off-patent drugs that experience unconscionable price increases. The attorney general would be authorized to take action if a manufacturer raises the cost of a drug to a level considered unjustifiable. A 2016 study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that nearly a third of about 1,400 generic drugs had at least one extraordinary price increase of 100 percent or more between 2010 and 2015. Under the bill, the attorney general would be able to take legal action if the price is not justified based on the drugs manufacturing and distribution costs. A manufacturer would have 45 days to respond to a complaint from the attorney general, who would be required to meet with the company before filing suit against it. Caitlin A. Carroll, a spokeswoman for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, which represents the countrys leading drug companies, said in a statement that the bill goes too far. Maintaining a competitive marketplace for generic medicines is critical for ensuring more patients can ultimately access innovative medicines at lower costs, Carroll said. While PhRMA is committed to addressing egregious behavior that stems from a lack of competition, we continue to have concerns about the broad and ambiguous powers this bill grants to the Office of the Maryland Attorney General. Sen. Robert G. Cassilly (R-Harford), who voted against the bill, said the measure exceeds the attorney generals authority. Im not in favor of price-gouging, but I am in favor of the Constitution, Cassilly said, explaining his vote on the floor. This puts an excessive amount of power in one man. Also Friday, the Senate approved a bill designed to make the states ethics laws stronger. Hogan and lawmakers have pushed for bills to increase financial-disclosure requirements and expand the definition of a conflict of interest. Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert) amended the bill Friday to increase the penalty for bribery, raising it to a $10,000 fine and a 12-year prison sentence. The amendment came on the same day that Sen. Nathaniel T. Oaks (D-Baltimore) was charged in a bribery scheme. In the House, lawmakers unanimously passed a job creation bill from Hogan that would provide a property and income tax credit to new manufacturing businesses in high-unemployment areas such as Baltimore, Western Maryland and the lower Eastern Shore for 10 years. The House also gave preliminary approval to an overdose-prevention bill that would create a new felony category punishable by up to 10 years in prison for distributing fentanyl, a highly potent synthetic opioid. Fatal fentanyl overdoses have skyrocketed over the past several years. The latest data from the state health department shows that the number of Maryland overdose deaths related to the drug surged to 738 from January through September of last year, compared with 22 during the same period in 2013. The D.C. Councils judiciary and public safety committee voted Thursday in favor of acting chief Peter Newham's nomination to the permanent job. (Clarence Williams/The Washington Post) In a split vote, a D.C. Council committee voted Thursday in favor of elevating acting police chief Peter Newshams nomination to become the departments permanent chief, a key step toward assuming the post. Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), who chairs the Judiciary and Public Safety Committee, and council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) led a committee vote of 4 to 1 in support of Newsham, while council member Vincent C. Gray (D-Ward 7) voted present. Several other council members said that their support is incumbent upon an independent review that would focus on the departments handling of protests during the presidential inauguration weekend. Council member David Grosso (I-At Large) cast the lone opposition vote, saying he seeks a department that promotes nonviolence and deep collaboration with neighborhoods. Allen and Mendelson cited the importance of improving community partnerships in areas facing violent crime, for victims of sexual assault and with LGBTQ residents. As far as I can tell, Peter Newsham has good community relations, Mendelson said. I think this will be good for the city and the department. Council members Anita Bonds (D-At Large) and Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3) also voted for Newsham, and urged a review of arrests and police tactics on Jan. 20. Allen said after the hearing that he also supports a review, but added that it should include what D.C. police got right, as well as wrong, during that weekend. I take very seriously the concerns of the opposition, Allen said in an interview. [But] I have been convinced that he is the right guy for the job. Gray said he has withheld his support because many of his constituents oppose Newsham. Gray added that he has different points of view with the chief, particularly on the number of officers that are needed in the department. Grosso said he wants a culture of intervention, in which officers police each other to create a department with a spotless record of internal accountability. Our constituents are hungry for a chief of police who is visionary and transformative, he said. Unfortunately, I do not believe this nominee fits that profile. Thursdays vote followed three public hearings held by the committee. Newshams nomination faces a full vote before the council. I am pleased it made it out of committee, Newsham said in a statement. I want to thank Council Member Allen for conducting a very thorough and inclusive process, and . . . I look forward to the full councils consideration in May. D.C. police officials revoked the police powers of an officer Thursday after he was arrested in Anne Arundel County on multiple offenses, including armed robbery, assault and prostitution, according to a department statement. Officials said Chukwuemeka Ekwonna, a 2nd District officer who has been on the department for 14 months, was arrested by Anne Arundel County police for offenses that occurred on Jan. 9. County police arrested him on a warrant that charged him with counts including armed robbery, firearm use, sex offense, reckless endangerment and prostitution, the statement said. Police released no information on the incident that prompted the charges. D.C. police placed Ekwonna on non-contact status, and revoked his police powers as the incident is investigated by Anne Arundel police and D.C. police internal affairs. A federal judge on Friday approved a plan to overhaul the Baltimore Police Department, an action that rebuked arguments from the new administration at the Justice Department which had spent a week asking the court to delay proceedings on the plan. U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar ruled on the consent decree signed by the federal government and city officials in the final days of President Barack Obamas tenure. Bredar said in his ruling that the need for oversight was urgent and noted the number of residents who had testified at a hearing before him Thursday about their loss of faith in the police force. It would be extraordinary for the court to permit one side to unilaterally amend an agreement already jointly reached and signed, the judge wrote. Now it is time to enter the decree and thereby require all involved to get to work on repairing the many fractures so poignantly revealed by the record, he wrote. [Read Judges ruling approving Baltimore police consent decree] In a response to the judges action, the Justice Department issued an initial statement saying the agreement had been rushed and would make Baltimore a less safe city at a time when it is plagued by a rash of violent crime that shows no signs of letting up. That was followed by a sharper addendum from department spokesman Ian Prior, who said, One thing should be eminently clear. The Department of Justice under this administration will never negotiate or sign a consent decree that could reduce the lawful powers of the police department and result in a less safe city. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has contended such decrees constrain police officers and in a memo released Monday ordering a review of all police consent decrees wrote that local, not federal, control is needed for effective community policing. [Read Attorney General Sessionss memo] Proponents of the overhaul, including Baltimores mayor, hailed the approval as a model for how the transformation could work, but also worried about the commitment to follow through by the Justice Department. [Baltimore, Justice Department announce consent agreement on police reform] Baltimore Mayor Catherine E. Pugh said Friday that rebuilding trust and lowering crime are not mutually exclusive. The mayor said she will take the Justice Department at its word that it will work with her city. I know they want us to reduce crime, and I know they want us to have the best police department we can have, Pugh said. The decree approval by Bredar--a former public defender who was appointed to the bench by Obama--allows Baltimore to move forward and work with the Justice Department to hire an independent monitor to oversee how the decree is implemented and followed. The choice of a monitor is subject to approval by the judge, but Pugh said the city hopes to have the monitor in place by fall. A scathing report from the Justice Department last year found that Baltimore engaged in widespread discriminatory and unconstitutional policing practices. [Justice department finds Baltimore policing discriminatory] Sherrilyn Ifill, president and general counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, called the Justice Departments recent statements proof that they have lost interest in addressing the issue of unconstitutional policing in Baltimore. Ifill said residents have been waiting for this for what seems like forever, adding she now fears the government will not vigorously participate in this case. [Attorney General Jeff Sessions orders review of police consent agreements] Vanita Gupta, who led the Justice Departments civil rights division under Obama from 2014 through the end of his term, urged Sessions to join the court, the mayor . . . and the people of Baltimore in improving policing. She said the judges approval puts Baltimore on the path to reform and rebuilding community-police trust that is so vital to public safety and police legitimacy in communities that need fair policing the most. The Justice Department under Obama opened 25 investigations into law enforcement agencies and has been enforcing 14 consent decrees. In his memo, Sessions urged a review of orders already in place and those pending to ensure they do not work against a primary goal of fighting crime. Sessions has often criticized the effectiveness of consent decrees and has vowed in recent speeches to more strongly support law enforcement. Unlike in Baltimore, which had already signed an agreement with Justice officials, other cities under review, including Chicago, are not that far along, and the government could conceivably pull out of negotiations. Baltimore entered into its decree after the 2015 death of Freddie Gray following an injury while in police custody. His death ignited riots and a string of protests. Since the civil unrest, crime in Baltimore has soared. As of April 1, 80 people have been killed in the city this year, up 43 percent from this time in 2016. The pace exceeds that of 2015, when Baltimore recorded 344 homicides, the highest per-capita in history. Fridays statement from the Justice Department said that the decree will be expensive and onerous, requiring a highly paid monitor to govern every detail of how the Baltimore Police Department functions. Baltimore anticipates the first year will cost about $10 million, budget estimates show. Jim Pasco, senior adviser to the president of the National Fraternal Order of Police, also called consent decrees onerous and said in many cases the agreements restrict officers beyond what they are allowed by law to do in areas such as detentions and searches. Pasco said he believes Sessions will be more selective in seeking consent decrees. I dont think this administration is going to take action that would unnecessarily impede law enforcement from doing their job, Pasco said. A longtime Maryland lawmaker was charged in federal court Friday, accused of using his official position to help a phony real estate development in exchange for thousands of dollars in bribes. Investigators say state Sen. Nathaniel T. Oaks (D-Baltimore), a member of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, misused his State House letterhead and introduced legislation for the fake real estate project of a businessman who gave the lawmaker more than $15,000 in cash last year. The businessman was actually working for the FBI. Oaks, who served more than two decades in the House of Delegates before becoming a senator in February, was scheduled to appear before a judge Friday afternoon in U.S. District Court in Baltimore. He faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, according to the office of the Maryland U.S. attorney. The accusations filed Friday make Oaks the third current or former Maryland lawmaker charged criminally since January, the start of the 90-day legislative session. Del. Michael L. Vaughn (D-Prince Georges) resigned minutes before the start of the session in January and was later charged for alleged involvement in a wide-ranging bribery scheme. Former Del. William A. Campos (D-Prince Georges) was also accused of accepting bribes in the federal investigation. [Former delegate charged with selling his vote in bribery scheme] Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller, Jr. (D-Calvert) said he was very disappointed and shocked and had urged Oaks to turn himself in when they met privately Friday morning. Oaks, 70, was appointed to fill a Senate seat vacated by Lisa Gladden, a Democrat who retired in January. She has multiple sclerosis. Oakss attorney, Stuart O. Simms, declined to comment on the allegations. According to the criminal complaint charging Oaks with honest services fraud, the state legislator attracted the attention of federal authorities through a cooperator who was the subject of a separate FBI investigation. In a meeting at a Ruths Chris Steak House in a Baltimore suburb in 2015, Oaks was introduced to an FBI source who portrayed himself as a businessman looking to obtain contracts in Baltimore through a minority-owned company, court records show. In the months that followed, Oaks had an assistant type up two letters on his House of Delegates stationery at the businessmans request in support of what Oaks thought was a Department of Housing and Urban Development project, according to the court filing. Investigators assert Oaks knew the letters contained false statements about his involvement and knowledge of the project. Oaks later introduced state legislation at the businessmans request to fund up to $250,000 for the project, according to the court filing. Throughout the investigation, Oaks expressed concern about his calls being monitored by law enforcement, court records state. He and the FBI source agreed to use the code word lollipop to represent $1,000, the records say. Last June, investigators say, the source bought Oaks a prepaid phone to use for their conversations. Oaks has been in legal trouble before. In 1988, he lost his House seat after being convicted of stealing thousands of dollars from his reelection fund. He received a five-year suspended sentence. In 1994, he made a comeback, rejoining the House, He served there until he was appointed in February to the Senate seat. Gov. Larry Hogan (R) has pushed this legislative session for stronger ethics laws following the federal investigation that led to the arrests of Vaughn and Campos. The measure, which received final passage in the Senate on Friday, would increase financial disclosure requirements and expand the definition of what constitutes a conflict of interest. People who hold public office have to be held to a higher standard than everybody else, Miller said of the ethics law. They are the ones that are making the laws, and they cant be the lawbreakers. [Nearly 1 in 3 Marylanders say corruption is a big problem in state government] A recent Washington Post-University of Maryland poll found that nearly a third of Maryland residents see corruption as a major problem in state government. A man allegedly connected to a number of car break-ins at national parks across the Washington region was arrested last week, authorities said Friday. On March 30, a white Jeep in Marylands Carderock park was stopped for a traffic violation, and the Jeeps three occupants were arrested in connection with possession of heroin and possession of drug paraphernalia, the U.S. Park Police said in a statement. One of the passengers, 20-year-old Charles Allen Fry Jr. of Lothian, Md., was found to be in possession of a car-opening device known as a slim jim, and the Jeep contained items reported stolen from another vehicle in the area, the statement said. Fry was also charged with theft from auto and was linked to five other theft-from-auto cases in National Park areas along the Potomac River, including Great Falls, Widewater and Lock 10, according to the statement. He is also a person of interest in theft-from-auto and fraud cases in Montgomery, Baltimore and Fairfax counties, police said, and was found to have multiple outstanding warrants from Anne Arundel County. Police said anyone with information about these cases should contact them at 202-610-8731. The National Rifle Association(NRA) headquarters is seen March 14, 2013, in Fairfax, Virginia. AFP Photo/Paul J. Richards (Photo credit should read PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images) (PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images) A National Rifle Association employee accidentally shot himself at the organizations shooting range in Virginia, police said. The 46-year-old man was injured Thursday at NRAs headquarters in Fairfax County. Officer Megan Hawkins, a county police department spokeswoman, said the employee had a minor wound on the lower part of his body and was taken to an area hospital for treatment.[Sadness and anger at an overnight vigil outside the NRAs main office] The mans pistol accidentally discharged as he holstered it at the range on Waples Mill Road. According to authorities it occurred during firearms training around 3:30 p.m. A police officer marks a car's position on the road with paint after the incident with police near a checkpoint on Capitol Hill March 29. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images) A 20-year-old woman whose car was shot by police near the U.S. Capitol after she allegedly nearly ran down officers and struck two police fleeing a traffic stop pleaded not guilty to an array of charges Friday. Mia Keyshia Hill, who also goes by the name Taleah Michelle Everett according to court files, was ordered held until trial by U.S. Magistrate Deborah A. Robinson. [Woman charged in federal court in Capitol Hill police shooting after traffic stop] U.S. Capitol Police said two officers fired at Hills car on March 29 after she allegedly refused to stop after running a red light and after several subsequent attempts to block her path by officers on foot and in cars during the morning rush-hour incident. [Woman fled traffic stop near U.S. Capitol, nearly struck officers, police say] A grand jury on Monday returned an eight-count indictment against Hill, including four federal counts of assaulting, resisting or impeding a federal police officer with a dangerous weapon and one federal count of destruction of U.S. property. The indictment included three District charges of fleeing a law enforcement officer, reckless driving, and destruction of property. [Woman fled traffic stop near U.S. Capitol, nearly struck officers, police say] Prosecutors said in a court filing Tuesday that although Hill has no adult convictions, her behavior in recent weeks had grown increasingly erratic, aggressive, and assaultive, and she was barred at least three times from an apartment complex in Maryland for allegedly loitering, trespassing, threatening an officer and stealing her mothers car. spencer.hsu@washpost.com A foreign national being arrested in Los Angeles on Feb. 7, 2017, during an immigration sweep. (Charles Reed/U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement via AP) Yintang Cao, a Chinese national who served time for hawking counterfeit designer purses, was freed from immigration detention March 31 after the United States failed to win permission from China to deport him. Emil Al Seryani, a Jordanian citizen convicted of burglary and drug dealing, was released March 7, again after deportation efforts failed. Their quiet return to their lives in the United States contradicts one of President Trumps signature campaign promises: to deport criminals who are not U.S. citizens, even to countries that do not want them back. As a candidate, Trump excoriated the Obama administration and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton for releasing thousands of criminals who he said might have been deported had the United States imposed sanctions on their uncooperative homelands. Day One, my first hour in office, those people are gone, Trump said last year in Arizona. But as president, Trump is confronting the same diplomatic and legal challenges as his predecessors, including whether to jeopardize national security and economic interests so that a nation such as China will accept all Chinese citizens that U.S. authorities want to deport. (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post) A former immigration official said it is ironic that Trump and his GOP supporters are stymied by the same issues they insisted could be solved quickly. Its very difficult when you have recalcitrant countries that typically will not take those individuals back, said John Sandweg, a lawyer who during the Obama administration served as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which oversees deportations. Im not at all surprised to see that the Trump administration is having to release people. The White House said Trump is doing what he can, including signing an executive order in January that instructed the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department to deny visas to nations that do not cooperate with deportations. The ball is in their court, said Michael Short, a White House spokesman. But the State Department said it has not acted on that part of the executive order. Denying visas to another country is a powerful tool that we have, that is usually not something that we would jump to very quickly, said Will Cocks, a spokesman for the State Departments Bureau of Consular Affairs. There are other tools that we have that we can use to try to get countries to issue travel documents and accept their nationals back. Washington has only imposed visa sanctions twice, preferring to negotiate with countries to persuade them to accept deportees. In 2001, the Bush administration restricted visas for Guyana, which then agreed to take back Guyanese being deported. Last year, Obama denied visas to Gambian government officials and their families, a sanction that remains in effect. The Obama administration successfully removed tens of thousands of noncitizens with criminal records during Obamas eight years in office, but it also released more than 86,000 criminals in the United States from fiscal 2013 to 2015. After their release, some committed violent crimes, reports of which infuriated Obamas critics in Congress. Some detainees were freed because of a 2001 Supreme Court ruling that bars ICE from jailing immigrants indefinitely. If their home countries will not take them back, the court said, U.S. officials have to release them. Other criminals were released on bond or for discretionary reasons. ICE would not say how many criminals have been freed since Trump took office, and because immigration records are secret, it is difficult to know how his administration has handled those cases. But it is possible to track some cases through federal lawsuits that immigrants have filed asking judges to order ICE to release them because their homelands wont take them back. Both Cao and Seryani filed such lawsuits, and ICE freed them before court rulings were handed down. Others who have sued for their release, according to court records, include Osarhieme Obayagbona, a Nigerian convicted of wire fraud and tampering with government documents, and Krunal Patel, from India, who has burglary, marijuana and drunken-driving convictions. Theres a lot of things Trump thinks he can do because hes Trump, said Jay Stansell, a retired assistant federal public defender in Seattle who has filed federal lawsuits on behalf of immigrants. But it turns out that, no, we have a judiciary, and you cant legislate immigration law from the White House. Deporting someone can take years, and this applies especially to those who no longer have up-to-date citizenship papers from their home countries. Under international law, countries are supposed to accept their citizens, but they have to issue travel documents, such as passports, before the United States can put deportees on airplanes. Some countries cannot find the records. Other countries, such as the Soviet Union, no longer exist. And some drag their feet on cases involving individuals with criminal records or otherwise troubling pasts. ICE spokeswoman Sarah Rodriguez would not release the administrations latest list of countries that refuse to accept deportees; in 2016, there were 23. Trump supporters say they did not expect the shift in deportations to be as swift as the president promised on the campaign trail. From our perspective its early on in the process, said Chris Crane, president of the pro-Trump ICE union. Its pretty unrealistic to think that the administration can get all of these things taken care of in the first month or first 100 days. Theyve got a million priorities, and this is just one. Seryani, 39, was freed after Jordan twice refused to accept him. Given that the agency had no significant likelihood of removing Mr. Al Seryani in the near future, he was released, Rodriguez said, adding that ICE will keep trying to deport him. Seryanis criminal defense attorney, Glen T. Jonas, described his client as a computer dork who has lived in the United States for so long he speaks English without a foreign accent. In his federal lawsuit, Jonas said, Seryani said he was wrongly convicted of drug possession with intent to sell and is seeking a new trial. Jonas also said ICE failed to transport Seryani to hearings in connection with his request for a new trial while he was in the agencys custody. Some countries have responded to Trumps pressure to take back their citizens. In March, Trump said that Iraq agreed to accept people with final deportation orders. Later that month, officials in India said the Trump administration was pressing their government to resolve more than 270 outstanding deportation cases, a sign that the administration was using behind-the-scenes diplomacy, for now, to try to achieve its goals. Mariam Masumi, an immigration lawyer in Arlington, said the administrations threat to deny visas may be having some effect. One of her clients, a Jamaican citizen who also had filed a federal lawsuit to get out of immigration detention, was deported in February after Jamaica produced his passport number, which the U.S. government had been seeking for years. Somehow, magically, after some time, they ended up issuing a travel document, Masumi said. At that point, I couldnt do much to fight it. But other observers say that unless the Trump administration intensifies pressure on countries to take back their citizens, ICE agents will have no choice but to release more criminals in the United States. Threats may work. But theyre not going to work on everybody, because some countries are going to refuse to do it, said Ames Holbrook, a former immigration agent who wrote a book about the release of foreign criminals in the United States. And then if we dont answer those countries that still refuse, then the countries that bought the threat are going to realize that its not a threat. The presidents son Eric Trump in the vineyard at Trump Winery on July 20, 2011. It has sought 29 temporary immigrant workers since December 2016 to help prune its vineyards. (Jack Looney) The vineyards and fields of Virginia are busy in spring, as farmworkers prepare the seeds, soil and seedlings for the growing season ahead. About 3,300 of those laborers are foreign seasonal workers, who arrived on a temporary visa with the bureaucratic name of H-2A. The number of H-2A visas granted nationally has doubled in the past five years as farmers have sought reliable labor for jobs that they say are shunned by Americans. Farmers complain that the program is expensive, cumbersome and essential to their enterprises. But the visa programs future is unclear as the Trump administration considers how to reform national immigration policies. One factor in its favor: The Trump Winery in Charlottesville has sought 29 temporary immigrant workers since December to help prune its vineyards. When news of the applications first broke, the outrage expressed by those who remembered the presidents pledge to hire American was predictable. But the winery, whose manager did not respond to requests for comment, was just doing what thousands of other agricultural enterprises have done: using a well-established 31-year-old visa system to find people willing to do the grueling work necessary to plant, grow and harvest crops. I dont know what wed do without it, said Linda Clark, general manager of the Grace Estate Winery in Crozet, Va., which employs five H-2A visa workers this season, four of whom have come from Mexico every year for the past five years. The Americans she has hired over the years leave after a week or a month, and in the past two or three years, no American has applied for the jobs she has, she said. I want the public to know these workers are not taking Americans jobs. Other winemakers agree. We are proud that 85 percent of our team members are from Virginia, Dave Kostelnick of Early Mountain Vineyard in Charlottesville, said in an email. The other 15 percent are seasonal workers, most of whom have been with us for multiple growing seasons, who come through the H-2A visa program. Ive had good success with it in the last 20 years, said Sharon Horton of Horton Vineyard in Gordonsville, Va. She and her husband employ 18 H-2A workers on their property, and she said she hopes the visas remain, because if they dont, Im in big trouble. President Trump did not suggest changes to the H-2A visas in a draft executive order dealing with foreign worker visas that circulated in late January. His familys businesses, including the Mar-a-Lago resort, have hired about 500 temporary foreign workers under a similar visa program for nonagricultural temporary foreign workers. Daniel Costa, director of Immigration Law and Policy Research for the Economic Policy Institute, said he is skeptical that Trump will take any action regarding low-wage worker visas, and might even deregulate them. The administration seems more focused on the high-skilled H-1B visas that bring foreign technology workers into the United States, he said. Its not easy to get H-2A visas. Farmers are required to prove that they have repeatedly advertised locally for U.S. workers. Theres a multistep and multiagency process to get certified for the visas before they are issued, and then a farmers representative also has to work with the embassy of the country from which the workers come. The U.S. farmer then must provide transportation to and from the United States, as well as local transportation, meals and housing. The jobs usually pay between $10 and $13 per hour. Last year, some farms had two to four weeks of delays because of a backlog in federal processing of the applications, a delay that can be devastating for time-sensitive farming tasks. The American Farm Bureau estimates that H2A visas provide about 10 percent of the nations farm workforce. It also notes that about 80 percent of farm laborers are foreign-born and about half are undocumented workers, who may be at risk if the Trump administration follows through with its plans to crack down on illegal immigration with a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. In our minds, the best [border] wall is a functional guest worker program, said Kerry Scott, program manager for Mid Atlantic Solutions, the nations largest private provider of H2 workers. Were certain our program will be one of those that survives and thrives. Although the program has been in place since 1986, its not without opposition. Adrienne DerVartanian, director of immigration and labor rights for the advocacy group Farmworker Justice, said its illegal for foreign brokers to require recruitment fees from workers, but the practice persists. Workers are sometimes exploited but are intimidated into keeping quiet when they want to speak out, for fear of losing their jobs, she said. We have a lot of concerns because we think this program is fundamentally flawed in ways that harm both farmworkers and Americans, she said. If wages and working conditions improved, that would help. But we dont believe our country should rely on guest worker programs. If workers are needed, they should be able to come into this country as immigrants . . . and become citizens through the normal process. Del. Dave Albo (R-Fairfax) waves after a retirement speech on the floor of the House of Delegates in Richmond on April 5. (Steve Helber/AP) Until this week, the Virginia House of Delegates district held by Del. David B. Albo for 23 years seemed like a lock in November for Republicans working to hold their solid majority in Richmond amid what Democrats hope will be a voter backlash against President Trump. But Albo (R-Fairfax) surprised his party by announcing Wednesday that he wont seek a 12th term a move that has Republicans scrambling for a replacement in a vulnerable Fairfax County district where Democrats are ready to pounce. Its going to be really difficult for Republicans to retain that district, said Quentin Kidd, director of Christopher Newport Universitys Wason Center for Public Policy. There is going to be a lot of headwind coming out of Trumps White House, Kidd said. In the two and a half decades Ive been watching Virginia politics, I havent seen Democrats as energized or organized for General Assembly races as Im seeing them get now. Albo said he decided against seeking reelection for financial reasons. Taking time off from his work as a criminal defense lawyer in Northern Virginia for as many as 100 days per year to attend to business in Richmond eats into his ability to earn money for retirement and for his 11-year-old sons college fund, Albo, 54, said in an interview. Its been a struggle, he said. Im not saying Im going to be thrown out of my house or anything. But Ive got to make money to properly care for my family. Since he took office in 1994, Albos 42nd District stretching from West Springfield southeast to Mason Neck has become increasingly Democratic. Hillary Clinton won 57 percent of the vote there in last years presidential election. President Barack Obama, Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Sen. Mark R. Warner, all Democrats, also won their contests in the 42nd. Former Republican governor Robert F. McDonnell took 54 percent of the vote there in 2009. Republicans say Albo has been able to hold his seat because hes a strong voice in Richmond for Northern Virginia, helped by his stature as chairman of the House Courts of Justice Committee. In 2013, Albo helped write the legislation that eventually became Virginias transportation funding law, which steers $6 billion toward highways, bridges and other projects that seek to lighten road congestion. About $1.9 billion of that money is meant for Northern Virginia. Albo was also instrumental in finding money for the 2005 construction of South County High School in Lorton, and in 2002 he was behind one of the countrys first state anti-terrorism laws after six people from his district were killed in the 9/11 attacks. That law requires anyone arrested to be checked for immigration status. Dave has won by comfortable margins in a difficult district because he knows his community well, said Fairfax County Supervisor Pat Herrity (R-Springfield), who has known Albo since they were students at West Springfield High School. People like him because he tells it like it is. Whether Albos departure will affect the 66-34 Republican majority in the House of Delegates is uncertain. But Democrats smell blood in the water. House Democratic leader David J. Toscano (Charlottesville) characterized Albos decision to step down as part of a rising tide of . . . resistance in Virginia. Delegate Albo is now the eighth Republican incumbent in the House of Delegates to announce that he will either retire or seek other office, Toscano said in a statement, which also called Albo a wonderful friend who has made substantial contributions during his legislative career. Meanwhile, we have 77 Democrats running in 49 districts currently held by Republicans, including all 17 that Hillary Clinton won, the statement said. This news speaks both to the strength of our candidates and the rising tide of the resistance. Albo conceded that his district is now vulnerable. He has yet to meet with anyone interested in stepping in, he said. Its going to be a hard seat for Republicans to win, to be honest with you, he said. But the right Republican could win. If someone is a more community-minded Republican like I tried to be, I think thats the right formula. Matt Ames, chairman of the Fairfax County Republican Committee, said there are several potential candidates in the district, though he declined to offer names. Well find a candidate that can win it with guidance and support from Dave, Ames said. Its winnable. The two Democrats vying to compete for Albos seat in their partys June 13 primary say Albos departure improves their chances in November. Tilly Blanding, 66, a retired Fairfax County social worker, has been campaigning to oust Albo among other things, highlighting his unwillingness to fight for Medicaid expansion in Virginia and calling him weak on womens rights. She vowed to stick to her message with the powerful incumbent out of the picture. Im not going to work any less hard, Blanding said. Kathy Tran, a former U.S. Labor Department deputy administrator, praised Albo and said shes the best candidate to fill his shoes albeit with a progressive bent. I think hes been someone who cares very deeply about this community, said Tran, 38. Weve been given the opportunity for people in this district to vote for someone who has the same progressive values they share and who will stand up for them. Tran said she entered the race believing it could be a close election. But now its really competitive, she said. Im really excited to be in the race. Lawyers for Kentuckys governor have halted efforts to shut down the states last abortion clinic pending the outcome of a lawsuit aimed at preventing the closure. The latest development came as lawyers for Gov. Matt Bevin (R) and the Louisville clinic submitted an agreement to U.S. District Judge Greg Stivers, who had not yet signed it. In it, Bevins administration agreed to renew the license for EMW Womens Surgical Center until the lawsuit is resolved. We are open providing the service, and people wont have to leave their community to get the rights the Supreme Court has determined they have, Donald L. Cox, an EMW lawyer, said Friday. The legal wrangling started recently when the state told the clinic it was out of compliance with state laws related to its agreements with a hospital and ambulance service. That spurred the federal lawsuit claiming the states move was unconstitutional and accusing the state of violating Kentucky law by not giving proper notice of action against the clinics license. Stivers issued a restraining order last week to prevent the state from revoking EMWs license. The two sides on Thursday submitted their agreement to Stivers that would keep the clinic open pending the outcome of the lawsuit. The state never intended to shut down the EMW facility immediately, since it had the right to a due process hearing, Doug Hogan, a spokesman for the state Cabinet for Health and Family Services, said in a statement Friday. The cabinet is confident the statutory requirement for transfer agreements, which dates back to 1998 and has never been questioned by EMW for 19 years, is necessary to protect the health and welfare of women, he said. The clinics attorneys likened the states efforts to politically motivated compliance enforcement in other states that have sought to close abortion clinics. We dont believe that these transfer agreements that theyve been insisting upon are medically necessary and are simply adopted to restrict a womans right to make her own decisions about her own health, Cox said. Similar crackdowns over licensing regulations have occurred in Alabama, Mississippi, Texas and Wisconsin, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which has joined in defending the Kentucky clinic. Valerie Scott, with daughter Jazz, 15, tours the unfinished basement at the DuBois Community Center in Mount Sterling, Ky. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post) Jolene Jouett took a short puff from her cigarette and looked out the window at the neighborhood she has known her entire life. She spoke aloud to herself, repeating the question: How had it changed these past 60 years? Nestled around the boarded-up DuBois Community Center, this predominantly black neighborhood is just a short distance from the rest of timeworn Mount Sterling, a Kentucky town of several thousand people. Just 3 percent of the towns population is African American, and many of them live along the hilly streets of this particularly frayed neighborhood, where the houses collapsing on their wood frames betray the rural countys deep poverty, which is even more pronounced among the minorities here. The community center once a segregation-era school for black students for years had a chronically leaky roof, rotting bleachers and crumbling walls until, in 2010, it, too, succumbed to disrepair and was closed for safety reasons. Its closure jolted the neighborhood, whose history is closely tied to the building. The federal government provided hope for a path toward recovering the historical landmark and community pillar. With $600,000 in federal funding announced in 2014, the DuBois restoration council brought the building back up to code. The center is scheduled to reopen next month with a new gym on the main level to host children, tutoring events, job retraining programs and special programs for black youths. A park across the street from the DuBois Community Center that is part of the revitalization in Mount Sterling. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post) But the center remains unfinished. President Trumps proposed budget cuts would end the grant programs that residents hoped would help fund the rest of the restoration. On the campaign trail, Trump had asked African Americans what they had to lose if they voted for him. Here, that question has tangible answers. Jonikka Garrett, Jouetts daughter, said she believes many of Trumps critics have gloated that rural Americans voted for Trump only to see his administration release a budget that would hurt rural voters particularly hard and ignoring the reality that one-fifth of rural Americans are minorities who probably did not support the president. Theyre saying, Those people are getting what they deserve. And I dont think theyre taking into account that a lot of people here didnt vote for him, and were suffering, too, said Garrett, 37. Personally, I think its about being okay with taking another persons assistance without realizing theyre going to take away yours as well. The same year DuBois closed, downtown Mount Sterling began a years-long revitalization and redevelopment effort, and vibrant new shops are opening where shuttered ones once languished. The result presents a striking contrast between the white and black parts of town, separated by just two roads and a short drive uphill. Has the neighborhood changed from how it was 60 years ago? Jouett says the area around it always has been blacker and poorer than the rest of town; and African American families such as hers could buy and afford houses in the neighborhood even when segregation was the law of the land. Exterior of the DuBois Community Center. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post) She remembers attending the DuBois School when it was an all-black Rosenwald school teaching kindergarten through 12th grade one of the last in Kentucky to integrate. When a fire burned the school down in 1964, she and her friends initially felt unwelcome at their new school, and they yearned for their own community space. I can remember when we first went to the white schools. Its like they were scared of us, and we were scared of them. They kept their little cliques, and we kept ours, she said. But you know how kids are. Eventually kids are just kids. Valerie Scott, who is on the board overseeing the DuBois revitalization, said she thinks children would benefit from structured programming after school and during the summers, when schools are out of session, to give them the tools they need for success. A lot of things come down to networking. A lot of these kids parents dont have a network, they dont have the right circle to get into these certain programs, Scott said. This grant allows us to give that opportunity to these kids in this community. I dont think its discrimination, I really dont. I think it comes down to networking and access. Valerie Scott with husband, Glen Scott, and daughter Jazz at left, admire the just-completed basketball court at the DuBois Community Center. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post) Scott and the rest of the board hope to receive more grant funding to fix up the downstairs, a hollowed-out space full of dirt and debris that they envision transforming into classroom areas where they can teach black history, host arts projects and stock a library. Perhaps they could create a neighborhood clinic, part time, which Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson has proposed as part of his holistic approach to housing redevelopment. She also said the room could serve as a center for police officers to interact with community members beyond responding to complaints. For now, the windows remain bricked up to prevent break-ins, and mounds of debris cover the floor. An old scoreboard sits in a corner, and stacks of old school chairs sit in an empty room. Were going to keep all that, clean it up, Scott said. Carmela Green, 49, grew up in Mount Sterling and attended events and camps at the DuBois Center when she was a child. Those memories were at the top of her mind as she assisted with the grant-writing process that secured the redevelopment funding. A physician assistant by trade, she is also a member of several Mount Sterling community boards and is the vice president of the DuBois revitalization. Green said she has seen significant improvements in community race relations during her lifetime, and she points to local white business leaders who have taken an interest in DuBois and have volunteered their time to help with the project. But she also acknowledged that young black children see few role models in town, few visages of upward mobility. Those individuals who do get a college education often move away to cities. We dont see African American people in our city council, in leadership in our town, Green said. And so when they become educated and get their degree, theyre going to go to where the opportunity is best for them. Green hopes that the area will qualify for community development grants in the future, which could help revitalize the blighted parts of the neighborhood. Its about having someone believe in you. Most of the people in this area work, they work hard. But sometimes youre trying to put your kid through school, and you just dont have enough money, she said. Were all the same. We all strive to have a successful, prosperous life. I think with time, as long as those grants dont go away, its going to happen. WISCONSIN Police hunt for suspect in gun thefts, threats A manhunt was underway Friday for a man suspected of stealing firearms from a southern Wisconsin gun store, threatening an unspecified attack that prompted several schools to close, and sending an antigovernment manifesto to President Trump. More than 150 law enforcement officers were searching for Joseph Jakubowski, 32, Rock County Sheriff Robert Spoden said. Investigators believe Jakubowski stole a large quantity of handguns and rifles from a gun shop Tuesday night in Janesville, about 70 miles southwest of Milwaukee. Authorities said he also has acquired a bulletproof vest and helmet. A burned vehicle registered to him was found near the store. Spoden said an associate of Jakubowski told authorities he had been agitated by national politics and recently verbalized a plan to steal guns and use them in an unspecified attack. The associate also said Jakubowski had made nonspecific threats toward schools and public officials, the sheriff said. Public schools in Janesville and nearby Milton canceled classes Friday as officers combed the surrounding county. The University of Wisconsin at Rock County and Blackhawk Technical College were also closed. Dava Allgire, visiting from Savannah, tries to get the attention of Omar, a 15-year-old dromedary camel, during the University of Georgia's Veterinary School open house in Athens. (John Roark/AP) Spoden said Jakubowski recently sent a 161-page antigovernment manifesto to the White House and gave a copy to one his associates, who turned it over to police. Jakubowski has had several run-ins with law enforcement over the years. Most were for traffic violations, although he has previously resisted arrest and once tried to disarm an officer, Janesville Police Chief David Moore said. Associated Press NEBRASKA State high court blasts anti-gay foster policy The Nebraska Supreme Court says a former state policy banning same-sex couples from serving as foster parents or adopting wards of the state was akin to hanging a Whites Only sign on a hiring-office door. The court on Friday ruled that a judges 2015 ruling striking down the policy will stand. The decision came in a lawsuit filed by three same-sex couples in 2013. A judge ruled in the couples favor, declaring as unconstitutional the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services policy. The states high court rejected state attorneys arguments that Lancaster County District Judge John Colburns finding should be reversed because DHHS had quietly stopped enforcing the ban in 2012, making the matter moot. Its ruling slammed the 1995 administrative policy, which remained on the agencys website until February 2015, as evidence that heterosexuals only need apply to be foster parents. It is legally indistinguishable from a sign reading Whites Only on the hiring-office door, Justice John Wright wrote. The court also upheld an order for the state to pay nearly $174,000 in plaintiffs legal fees. Associated Press 4 inmates found dead at S.C. prison: Four inmates were found dead Friday morning in a dorm at one of South Carolinas maximum-security mens prisons, authorities said. The inmates were found at Kirkland Correctional Institution in Columbia, Department of Corrections Director Bryan Stirling said. He did not say how they died or release any further information. Last year, three corrections officers at Kirkland were fired after officials said they tried to kill an inmate in their care. Associated Press IRAQ Islamic State is killing civilians, witnesses say Islamic State militants have killed dozens of civilians attempting to flee Mosul in recent days, hanging several bodies from power poles as Iraqi forces fight to retake the city, witnesses said. Troops are meeting fierce resistance as militants retreat into the Old City, where street fighting is expected in the narrow alleyways and around the mosque where the Islamic State declared its caliphate nearly three years ago. A man who spoke to a reporter via telephone said he had found the mutilated body of a relative hanging from an electricity pole in the Tenek district along with the bodies of three other young men caught trying to flee by the militants. The Kurdistan Region Security Council said as many as 140 people were killed by the militants Monday and Tuesday. In the Old City, more than 40 civilians were killed when the militants caught them trying to escape, a resident of the Farouq district said. A resident of the Old Citys Shahwan district said a family of six, including an elderly woman, was killed for the same reason. Reuters MALI Militant claims attack on French soldier Malian Islamist militant Iyad Ag Ghali claimed an attack in southern Mali that killed a French soldier this week, Frances foreign minister said Friday. The minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, was addressing journalists in the capital, Bamako, after visiting French troops in the northern city of Gao. Islamist groups linked to Ag Ghali, a longtime Tuareg rebel, have claimed dozens of attacks on Malian, U.N. and French troops in Malis desert north, including the one Wednesday that killed the French soldier. France intervened in 2013 to push back al-Qaeda-linked militants who had hijacked an ethnic Tuareg uprising to seize northern Mali the year before. It has since deployed some 4,000 soldiers, known as the Barkhane force, across the region to hunt down Islamists. A claim by Ag Ghali to have killed the soldier is likely to harden Frances position that holding talks with the Islamists is not an option. A peace conference in Mali on Sunday concluded with calls for the government to start talks with two Islamist groups, including Ag Ghalis. Reuters FRANCE Poll predicts Macron will win presidency A BVA opinion poll Friday showed that the first round of Frances presidential election is becoming harder to call, but centrist Emmanuel Macron was seen easily beating far-rightist Marine Le Pen in the second. The BVA-Salesforce poll showed Macrons first-round share of the vote down two percentage points in a week, at 23 percent, with Le Pen also at 23 percent, having lost a point. Leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon gained four points to reach 19 percent, on a par with conservative Francois Fillon, whose score was unchanged. Macron was seen winning the second round with 61 percent, up a point, vs. Le Pens 39 percent. Reuters High-speed train hits Polish truck; 19 hospitalized: An intercity train hit a flatbed truck at an unguarded railway crossing Friday in southwestern Poland, sending 19 people to hospitals, including seven with life-threatening injuries, officials said. A number of other people suffered less severe injuries in the partial derailment. The accident occurred about 3 p.m. in the village of Schodnia when a Pendolino high-speed train carrying about 300 passengers hit the vehicle, said Pawel Fratczak, the national firefighters spokesman. Mexico opens up heroin fight to U.S., U.N. observers: For the first time in at least a decade, Mexicos army is allowing the United States and the United Nations to observe opium poppy eradication, a step toward deeper cooperation to fight heroin traffickers, three sources in Mexico said. The opening could bring Mexico more in line with drug-producing countries such as Afghanistan, Colombia and Peru, which have been heavily involved with the United Nations in cultivation studies and eradication efforts. U.N. mission says it cant ferry Haiti humanitarian supplies: The U.N. stabilization mission in Haiti says its helicopters and other vehicles will soon no longer be able to transport supplies by the humanitarian community or schedule special flight requests. A Friday statement said that air and land transport resources previously available . . . will be drastically reduced in the very near future as part of the ongoing transition process within Haitis U.N. operations. There could be allowances in the case of an exceptional lifesaving situation. The announcement comes as U.N. chief Antonio Guterres is recommending that Haitis U.N. stabilization mission wrap up with the departure of all 2,370 military personnel by Oct. 15. He said a smaller operation should be established. The Security Council is expected to discuss Haiti operations next week. Congos president names opposition figure as premier: Congo President Joseph Kabila has named Bruno Tshibala as the countrys prime minister in a move unlikely to placate the countrys opposition. Under a political agreement reached in December, the opposition coalition known as the Rassemblement was to pick a prime minister. But divisions within the coalition complicated efforts to choose a candidate. Other key provisions of the peace deal call for elections to be held before the end of the year, without Kabila as a candidate. From news services James Gray Pope is a professor of law at Rutgers University. Ganesh Sitaraman wrote his new book, The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution, before voters went to the polls in November. But he saw enough in the Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders primary campaigns to assess the significance of the election. After thirty years of a collapsing middle class, he writes, after thirty years of an economy designed to stack the deck in favor of the big guys; after thirty years of a political and constitutional system increasingly rigged to work for economic elites after all this, the people revolted. To Sitaraman, this peoples revolt sounds a clarion call to all Americans: Do something about economic inequality, or face nothing less than the decline and fall of the American republic. In a wonderfully concise and well-documented chapter, How Economic Inequality Threatens the Republic, he explains the dynamics of rising inequality and its impact on the political system. Many of the raw facts are familiar for example, that the 20 wealthiest Americans own more than the bottom half of the population, or 152 million people. So are many of the mechanisms by which wealth is parlayed into political power: campaign contributions, lobbying and the proverbial revolving door. But Sitaraman goes deeper to show how inequality is dividing Americans on the level of psychology and culture. Surrounded by the evidence of their success, the wealthy come to believe that they are fundamentally better than other Americans and that working people deserve their declining fortunes. They trumpet meritocracy while ensuring that their children enjoy crushing advantages from birth. They have unprecedented access to politicians and use it to push policies that swell their wealth while defunding institutions, such as public education, that sustain opportunities for less-fortunate Americans. [Why Americas middle class is lost] "The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution: Why Economic Inequality Threatens Our Republic," by Ganesh Sitaraman (Knopf ) What does the Constitution have to do with all this? Two things. First, its part of the problem. Shortly before his appointment to the Supreme Court in 1972, Lewis Powell Jr. recommended that business interests launch an effort to influence the courts. And they did, with a vengeance. Money flowed into public interest litigation campaigns promoting corporate rights and undermining consumer and labor protections. The Supreme Courts ruling in Citizens United, striking down limits on corporate political spending, is but one of many recent decisions invalidating restrictions on corporate power. Far more important, however, Sitaraman argues that the Constitution can indeed must be part of the solution. He suggests that extreme economic inequality conflicts with the Constitution. This is the books main contribution, and it is more than worth the read. To make his point, Sitaraman, an associate professor at Vanderbilt Law School, takes us on an entertaining tour of constitutional history from ancient times to the present. Economic inequality, it turns out, has been a central concern of constitutionalism from the outset. By the end of the tour, we see our Constitution in a different light; provisions that we never thought about before emerge from the shadows and assume a new importance. The story begins in ancient Athens, with Plutarch complaining that the disparity between the rich and the poor had put the republic in an altogether perilous condition. From one side, the wealthy elite struggled to replace the republic with an oligarchy; from the other, the poor flirted with demagogues and would-be tyrants. (Sound familiar?) The same problem afflicted all of the ancient republics, including mighty Rome. After less than two decades of life under the republic, the Roman plebes were already so disgusted with patrician domination that they abandoned the city in the midst of a war and refused to fight. What to do? The solution, in Rome and elsewhere, was to enact what Sitaraman calls class warfare constitutions. Ancient constitutionalists conceded the inevitability of class conflict but sought to defuse it by giving both rich and poor representation in government. In Rome, for example, this took the form of the tribunate, an elected council of plebes endowed with veto power. Sitaraman concludes that, although the ancient republics were in part built on the backs of women and slaves, their class warfare constitutions did foster relative equality among citizens. Fast-forward more than a millennium, and we see the next great wave of republics, in medieval Italy, following the same pattern. Then came a huge shift in thinking and a new kind of constitution. Looking back on the fall of the ancient and medieval republics, 18th-century political philosophers concluded that republican government could not survive without a measure of economic inequality. But instead of constitutionalizing class warfare, they sought to prevent the concentration of wealth that gave rise to class antagonisms in the first place. The English political philosopher James Harrington, for example, urged strict limits on the size of estates. When the United States entered the picture, it produced the first real middle class constitution in history. The founders of the American republic agreed with Harrington that equality of estates fostered republican liberty, but they proposed no serious measures to limit property accumulation. Instead, they proclaimed that America was blessed with conditions that guaranteed equality, namely an open frontier and an abundance of land. Many in the founding generation had internalized Harringtons lessons, Sitaraman contends, and they believed that the American republic was built on Americas exceptional economic conditions on the foundation of the middle class. [From belief to outrage: The decline of the middle class reaches the next American town] We might wonder whether Sitaraman is overstating his claim. How can a constitution that contained no provisions to ensure middle-class power nevertheless be considered middle class? Sitaraman offers two answers. First, it is a middle-class constitution because, in practice, it has survived only by operating as one. In a series of dramatic confrontations over more than two centuries, Americans have repeatedly defended their republic against the twin dangers of plutocratic oligarchy and tyranny. Each time, Americans mobilized to restore what the framers had identified as the middle-class precondition for republicanism. Jacksonian Democrats abolished property qualifications for voting and slew the national bank. Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party terminated not only chattel slavery but also its downward pull on free working people. The populists and progressives subdued the trusts and robber barons of the Gilded Age by enacting the progressive income tax, regulating business and curbing the flow of money into politics. Roosevelts New Dealers restrained Depression-era economic royalists with more economic regulation, enforced by administrative agencies. So successful were these reforms that America entered a glorious period of relative equality from 1945 through the 1970s, during which some women and people of color began to share in the nations prosperity. Second, each of these struggles was framed in constitutional terms, and each produced constitutional change. Jackson vetoed the national bank on constitutional grounds. The 13th Amendment outlawed slavery and involuntary servitude, the 16th authorized the progressive income tax, the 17th ended the purchase of Senate seats, and the 24th abolished the poll tax. The New Deal yielded transformative Supreme Court decisions upholding business regulation and labor legislation. Put all this together, and you end up with a strong tradition of middle-class constitutionalism. So how do we stave off the threat of plutocracy today? Sitaraman provides a useful catalogue of measures, most of them familiar. His main point is that we need long-term structural reforms, including breaking up the banks and rejuvenating industrial democracy, and not merely incremental policy shifts, such as returning to a more progressive tax structure or reviving campaign finance restrictions. Given that the wealthy currently dominate politics, how do we get there? Sitaraman points to the mobilization of social movements and less happily the possibility that a national emergency of some kind might disrupt politics-as-usual and create an opening for change. Like any pathbreaking exploration of a topic, the book invites challenges from many directions. One wonders, for example, why Sitaraman chose a class schema (upper, middle, lower) that omits the working class. Given the choice, about 47 percent of Americans self-identify as working class, compared with 42 percent middle class. The most successful anti-oligarchical social movement of the industrial era the workers movement was not an undifferentiated middle-class movement; it thrived on the solidarities and power flowing from a structural position in the economy. (The same could be said of the populist movement, which arose out of agrarian distress.) One might also wonder whether we actually had something of a class warfare constitution during Sitaramans glorious years of the 1940s through the 1970s. Although the law did not give unions a direct role in government, it did co-opt them into a system of industrial relations that assumed conflict between employees and employers. According to a study cited by Sitaraman, the decline of unions accounts for about half the increase in net income inequality from 1980 to 2010. On the whole, however, the book succeeds in its central objective: presenting a strong case that economic inequality isnt just a matter of fairness or economic efficiency; its about the survival of our constitutional order. Americans who value the republic can only hope that judges, legislators and we the people take heed. Jessica Ashooh is a scholar at the Atlantic Council and a former senior analyst in the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs. On Aug. 21, 2013, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad used sarin gas to kill 1,429 of his own people, including 426 children, in the town of Ghouta. I watched these horrific events unfold from an unusual perch for an American: At the time of the attack, I was working as a technical adviser to the United Arab Emirates special envoy for Syria. The work entailed accompanying my boss, a former Emirati air force general, to meetings in Turkey and elsewhere to coordinate with the Syrian opposition and the ambassadors of the countries including the United States that were assisting them. Five days after the attacks, we were in Istanbul for an emergency meeting with the Syrian opposition leadership and the group of Western, Arab and Turkish ambassadors known as the London 11. The topic of the discussion was the potential international response to the massacre the deadliest use of chemical weapons since Saddam Hussein gassed the Kurds in the 1980s. It would have been an emotionally trying meeting under any circumstances being confronted with the pleas of good, decent Syrian women and men whose relatives had been gassed in full view of the international community. But what made this meeting especially difficult was the realization that no one was coming to help. Although the United States and Britain were at the time contemplating punitive airstrikes against Assads regime as a consequence for breaking President Barack Obamas red line, the more seasoned diplomats in the room instinctually knew that the justice the opposition hoped for would not be forthcoming. Watching Robert Ford, the courageous and principled U.S. envoy for Syria at the time, prepare the Syrians for disappointment was painful and showcased the human consequences of what happens when the American Atlas shrugs. Experiencing the episode purely as a spectator was like a distressing dream. This week, Assad again apparently used nerve gas against his people years after claiming to have given up all his stocks to the United Nations for destruction. At least 70 are dead, once again including children. For their part, Iran and Russia, the self-appointed guarantors of Assads behavior, are now running scared. Understanding the seriousness of the charges, they are doing all they can to distance themselves from the events or provide desperately implausible explanations. They are worried for the first time in years about what the international consequences might be for their client now that Obama and his laxity are out of office. (Sarah Parnass,Julio Negron/The Washington Post) The young Trump administration is at a decision point that will define how the world views the untested president. While the White House and State Department rightly condemned the attacks, U.S. presidents are judged on their actions. President Trump has a rare opportunity to quickly and forcefully right one of the most consequential failings of the Obama administration and restore U.S. credibility. Trump should order targeted, punitive strikes against the Assad regime to degrade his capability to harm his own people. It is important to understand, however, that this action would not entail operations targeted at overthrowing Assad. That would be both impractical and unnecessary. Instead, regime military assets such as runways and airfields should be targeted. These targets are away from civilians and pose little risk of further casualties or suffering to the Syrian people. While their loss would be costly to Assad, they would not topple him. Furthermore, while considerations of the Russian response are prudent, the reality is that Russia is unlikely to retaliate militarily against the United States on behalf of Assad, an unruly client whose intransigence has time and again embarrassed the Russians on the global stage. Such strikes could also be an important force for leverage in the stalled peace process. After that fateful Istanbul meeting in 2013, the second most frustrating experience of my career was sitting in the Geneva II negotiations of 2014, trying to reach a peace deal with no military leverage to speak of. Assad, with the connivance of Russia, simply stonewalled the talks and ran down the clock, secure in the knowledge that there would be no consequences for his behavior. Dictators do not come to the negotiating table out of the goodness of their hearts. They come because they believe they can get a better deal there than on the battlefield. As a consummate dealmaker, Trump should understand this and do what is necessary to create the leverage that sets the table for real peace. This in turn can only come through a sincere political solution in which the Syrian government acknowledges and accommodates the legitimate aspirations of its people, including the right to choose their leader. In his inauguration speech, Trump promised that carnage stops right here and stops right now. Syria presents an urgent opportunity for him to turn his words to action. PRESIDENT TRUMPS decision to strike a Syrian air base in response to a chemical weapons attack by the regime of Bashar al- Assad was right as a matter of morality, but it could also yield a host of practical benefits. The Assad regime may be deterred from again using deadly gas on civilians a heinous war crime that, if tolerated, would make not just Syria but the world more savage. Russia and Iran should have new cause to consider whether they will continue backing the blood-drenched Damascus dictator, or cut a deal to get rid of him. Other rogue regimes and their sponsors will have to recalculate how the United States might respond to their provocations. How convenient that Chinese President Xi Jinping, who props up North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un while conducting a slow campaign of aggression in the South China Sea, had a ringside seat in Mar-a-Lago as Mr. Trump boldly acted. Perhaps most importantly, U.S. allies now have reason to hope that Mr. Trump could fill the leadership vacuum, in the Middle East and beyond, left by President Barack Obamas decision not to enforce his own red line on Syrias use of chemical weapons. It is little wonder that Mr. Trumps action was cheered from Britain to Germany and from Israel to Japan and by congressional Democrats as well as Republicans. Even the snarling response from Vladimir Putins Kremlin looked skin-deep, particularly as the Pentagon took care to warn Russias forces in Syria in advance. Whats unknowable is whether Mr. Trumps decision represents a change in his conception of U.S. foreign interests or a one-off response to wrenching televised pictures of suffocating children. In 2013, Mr. Trump strenuously opposed U.S. retaliatory action following a much more deadly sarin gas attack by the Assad regime; just Tuesday, he repeated in a speech that Im not, and I dont want to be, the president of the world. Yet on Thursday night Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spoke of taking action on behalf of the international community to preserve international norms about chemical weapons, and Mr. Trump said that as long as America stands for justice, then peace and harmony will, in the end, prevail. Americas allies can only hope that Mr. Trump will truly embrace that sentiment, rather than his long-standing isolationist instincts, as his presidency evolves. For now, Mr. Trump must devise a Syria policy that responds to this weeks events. The administration now appears to understand that the civil war and the fuel it provides for the Islamic State and other extremists can never be ended while the Assad regime remains in power. The chemical attack signaled the regimes intention to assault rebel-held Idlib province with the same scorched-earth tactics it has employed elsewhere in the country, which would trigger a massive new wave of refugees in addition to thousands more civilian deaths. The United States should make clear to Damascus that any further chemical attacks as well as other blatant assaults on civilians will be met with more military retaliation. (The Washington Post) The administration should, meanwhile, make another effort to draw Russia and Syrias neighbors into a negotiation on the countrys future, using the new leverage provided by Mr. Trumps demonstrated willingness to use force. It should seek bipartisan congressional support, including the authorization of military force in the event of further atrocities even if the White House has, as we believe, the constitutional leeway to act without it. Mr. Trump has created an opportunity for the United States, and for his presidency, in Syria. Its ultimate value will depend on how well he follows up. Editors note: An earlier version of this column was published Thursday before news of President Trumps decision to strike a Syrian air base. This version has been updated. There is much to applaud in President Trumps decision to attack the Bashar al-Assad regime this week. It punished a regime that has engaged in war crimes against its own people. It upheld an international norm against chemical weapons. It ended Trumps strange flirtation with Vladimir Putin on the Middle East. And, most significantly, it seems to reflect a belated recognition from Trump that he cannot simply put America first that the president of the United States must act on behalf of broader interests and ideals. Trump, as candidate and as president, had avoided the language of global norms and international order. Yet in explaining his actions Thursday night, he invoked both and ended his remarks with a prayer that President Barack Obama would never have dared to make: God bless America and the entire world. But as former defense secretary William Cohen pointed out Friday, One strike doesnt make a strategy. U.S. policy on Syria remains unclear. The Trump administration had repeatedly announced that it had shifted away from the Obama administrations calls for regime change in Syria. In fact, Trump had indicated that he was happy to leave the country to Assad as long as this would help defeat the Islamic State. Last week, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson basically affirmed that approach. On Tuesday, the day of the chemical attack on Idlib, White House press secretary Sean Spicer reiterated it. The missile strike appears to have reversed that policy. If so, it is a major shift and raises important questions: Is the United States now engaged in the Syrian civil war? Will it use military force to help oust Assad? Do these actions help the Islamic State and al-Qaeda which are fighting against the regime? And what happens next in the overall war against the Islamic State? Many of our allies have expressed support for the strike. But in an increasingly complicated global system, these countries look to the United States for a consistent strategy that can be relied upon over time. Trumps foreign policy seems to change with every meeting, event or crisis. Having bashed Japan during his campaign, he invited its prime minister, Shinzo Abe, to his first Mar-a-Lago summit and extolled him as a true friend and ally. Having threatened to upend the one-China policy, Trump wound up meekly affirming it in a phone call with President Xi Jinping. Trump does not deny his changes of mind. In fact, he embraces them as a virtue, describing himself as flexible. Im proud of that flexibility, Trump said this week, adding that he also likes to be unpredictable. But there is a difference between unpredictability and incoherence. This weeks strike does leave one with the impression that foreign policy in the Trump administration is not being made by carefully evaluating a situation, assessing various options, weighing costs and benefits, and choosing a path. Instead, it is a collection of reflexes responding instinctively to the crisis at hand. Trumps military advisers provided him with a tactically brilliant option a small air base, whose destruction would produce fairly little physical or diplomatic fallout. But the strike will have minimal impact on the balance of power. Assad will remain in place, as will his opposition. If anything, the strike might embolden some opposition forces to fight on rather than surrender, and the bloodshed will intensify. The long-term prospects for peace in Syria remain gloomy. No matter the complications, in the short term the president struck a blow against evil, for which I congratulate him. And if he was moved to this action because he saw heart-rending pictures of children, thats fine. I would only ask that he look again at those images. Perhaps they would move him not simply to drop bombs, but also to provide more aid to those war-torn people. Perhaps they would even move him to let some of those people escape their misery and find a home in the United States. Read more from Fareed Zakarias archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. Imagine that a foreign leader, in a country allied to the United States, runs an extraordinary press campaign against a university founded by an American philanthropist. He falsely accuses the university of fraud; one of his ministers cites phony national security considerations that require its closure; his supporters in the media launch an open attack on the philanthropist. He passes a law that is disguised as a general measure but is in practice aimed at that university alone. But he isnt worried about American objections, because he is counting on support from American politicians. Sound shocking? It has already happened. This week, Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, pushed a law through the Hungarian parliament which could remove the independence of and even shut down the Central European University, a graduate college founded more than a quarter-century ago by a group of anti-communist intellectuals. Originally funded by Hungarian American philanthropist George Soros, the CEU stands out in the region both for its unusually multinational student body particularly its students from the former Soviet bloc and the high quality of its faculty. Its mission is to promote the values of open society and self-reflective critical thinking; Nobel Prize laureates and distinguished academics are sending letters and petitions in its support from all around the world. But in Orbans nationalist and increasingly illiberal Hungary, open society is an insult, critical thinking is a suspicious activity, and support from Nobel laureates will be cited as unacceptable foreign interference. Indeed, to anyone who follows Orban, the tactics he has employed against the university are familiar: whip up anger and hatred over an issue, exaggerate its danger and significance and then announce a dramatic solution, thus pleasing his political base. This was how Orban dealt with the arrival of Syrian refugees in his country, few of whom even wanted to remain there. His governments crusade against critical Hungarian academics, all falsely accused of embezzlement, followed a similar pattern. The philosopher Agnes Heller, one of the targets of that hate campaign, described the tactic in 2013: They make these kinds of accusations, spread them all over their loyal media outlets and thus blacken the names of their opponents. To students of history, this is all eerily familiar: These are exactly the kinds of campaigns that the Hungarian communist party once ran against its ideological enemies (Heller, ironically, among them) and that autocratic states such as Russia and Iran run against their ideological enemies, or perceived enemies, even today. Indeed, Soros himself is a favorite target of those regimes, both of whom use him a Jewish financier as a convenient scapegoat. But there are some new elements to this old story. In the past, an assault on a U.S.-backed academic institution, one set up to promote American democratic values and free speech, would have been universally opposed in the United States itself. After all, the CEUs board members include George Pataki, the former Republican governor of New York, as well as the president of Bard College and the chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley. But because Soros also gives money to the Democratic Party and affiliated causes, a part of the Republican Party has bought into the Russian-Iranian-Hungarian-nationalist paranoia about him, too. Some in Congress and the populist media seem convinced that all of the causes he champions in Europe, which include support for independent institutions, academia and media in autocratic countries one of which provided an academic scholarship to a much younger Viktor Orban are also left-wing. The New York Post has even reported, with suspicion, his foundations support for young Iranian democrats. This change in tone may well have inspired Orban, one of the few European leaders to openly embrace President Trump, to launch his crusade against the CEU. In Budapest, some think that this whole exercise is a Hungarian test of the new administration: Orban wants to see if he can get away with it. So far, the State Department spokesman has expressed concern about the new law and admiration for the CEUs academic excellence and many contributions to independent, critical thinking. But this story has just begun. Orban has friends in this White House Breitbart is one of his champions and there are a lot of members of Congress who see the world through glasses heavily tinted by American political partisanship. Does the United States still support the ideal of academic freedom around the world, or does the election of Trump mean weve given up on all that? Were about to find out. Read more from Anne Applebaums archive, follow her on Twitter or subscribe to her updates on Facebook. A member of the Iraqi forces stands guard over a building in the eastern part of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, as smoke rises from the old city in the western part across the Tigris River, during the offensive by Iraqi forces to retake it from Islamic State fighters. (Ahmad Gharabli/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images) In his March 24 Washington Forum commentary, Iraq needs more help, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi urged the United States to cooperate across the board with Iraq, from reconstruction to investment after the Islamic State is defeated. The United States should. Iraq likely has two-thirds of the hydrocarbon reserves of Saudi Arabia, a functioning democracy, and with U.S. support could block a resurgence of the Islamic State or Iranian expansion. But to avoid yet another emergency U.S. military intervention, the United States should link assistance to stationing a U.S. military contingent there. It would train Iraqi forces and help keep Baghdad independent of Iran. But as seen in 2011, Iran would likely pressure Baghdad against U.S. troops. The United States could overcome this, however; in fighting the Islamic State, the Iraqis learned how weak their military is without the United States, and the U.S. presence could be made palatable to most Iraqis (small size, international cover, no separate bases or formal legal immunities). To counter Iranian resistance, Iraqis must understand that cooperation in other realms depends on a serious security relationship. James Jeffrey, Washington The writer, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey and Iraq, is a fellow with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. No majority leader wants written on his tombstone that he presided over the end of the Senate, the minority leader said. He continued: Breaking the rules to change the rules is un-American. I just hope the majority leader thinks about his legacy, the future of his party, and, most importantly, the future of our country before he acts. Are these the words of Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) as the Republican majority changed Senate rules this week to do away with filibusters of Supreme Court nominations? Actually, they were uttered in 2013, by then-Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), when Democrats pushed through a similar filibuster change for lesser nominations. That McConnell did a 180 on the topic going from the institutional defender of the filibuster to the man who destroyed it is unsurprising. He has frequently shifted his views to suit the needs of the moment. But in this case McConnell was correct in 2013, and what he just did this week was even more ruinous than what he accused the Democrats of doing then. By rights, McConnells tombstone should say that he presided over the end of the Senate. And Id add a second line: He broke America. No man has done more in recent years to undermine the functioning of U.S. government. His has been the epitome of unprincipled leadership, the triumph of tactics in service of short-term power. After McConnell justified his filibuster-ending nuclear option by saying it would be beneficial for the Senate, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said this: Whoever says that is a stupid idiot. McConnell is no idiot. He is a clever man who does what works for him in the moment, consequences be damned. Back in 1994, McConnell lamented to the conservative Heritage Foundation that Republicans hadnt used the filibuster enough: I am a proud guardian of gridlock. I think gridlock is making a big comeback in the country. For the next quarter-century, he made sure of it. Back then he was fighting all attempts at campaign-finance reform and spending limits, championing disclosure of contributions as the antidote. But when the Supreme Court allowed unlimited dark money in campaigns without disclosure, McConnell reversed course and has fought all attempts to enact disclosure. McConnell famously declared in 2010: The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president. ProPublicas Alec MacGillis, author of a McConnell biography, The Cynic, reports former Republican senator Robert Bennetts account of what McConnell told fellow Republicans after Obamas election: Mitch said, We have a new president with an approval rating in the 70 percent area. We do not take him on frontally. We find issues where we can win, and we begin to take him down, one issue at a time. We create an inventory of losses, so its Obama lost on this, Obama lost on that. And thats what he did. By 2013, for example, 79 of Obamas nominees had been blocked by filibusters, compared with 68 in the entire previous history of the Republic. After Justice Antonin Scalias death was confirmed last year, it took McConnell less than an hour to say that the vacancy should be filled by the next president. He called keeping Obamas nominee off the court one of my proudest moments. While other Republicans have at times been willing to criticize President Trumps outrages, McConnell has been conspicuously quiescent. Although his predecessors at least attempted collegiality, McConnell practices no such niceties (recall his nevertheless, she persisted silencing of Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren). But most characteristic of McConnell is his tendency to shift his views to suit current exigencies (on the minimum wage, withdrawal from Iraq, earmarks, abortion, labor and civil rights) and his adroitness at gumming up the works: forcing clerks to spend hours reading a bill aloud on the floor; opposing immigration legislation hed encouraged; asking for a vote on a debt-ceiling proposal and then trying to filibuster it; urging the Obama administration to support a bipartisan debt commission and then voting against it. Now comes the filibusters demise. In the current cycle of partisan escalation, its only a matter of time before the filibuster is abolished for all legislation, killing the tradition of unlimited debate in the Senate dating back to 1789. The Founders did this so minority rights would be respected and consensus could be formed and McConnell is undoing it. Two years ago, when a Democrat was in the White House, McConnell said he would only abolish filibusters of Supreme Court justices if there were 67 votes for such a change. This week, he employed a maneuver to do it with 51 votes. It suited his momentary needs, but the damage will remain long after McConnells tombstone is engraved. Twitter: @Milbank Read more from Dana Milbanks archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. Ellie Hollander is president and chief executive of Meals on Wheels America. As you read this, Murel Johnson is probably driving. For the past 16 years, the 93-year-old has delivered fresh, hot meals to older Americans and people with disabilities across Lake Oswego, Ore. She knows that for the 20 people she will visit during the course of her route, she is a lifeline likely providing the only companionship and nutritious meal they will have all day. Johnson is exactly the kind of unpaid volunteer President Richard Nixon imagined when he signed an amendment to the Older Americans Act 45 years ago. He established the nations nutrition program for seniors 60 years and older with the faith that if the federal government helped fund the meals, an army of volunteers would provide the wheels. The new administration recently shined a curious spotlight on that work when it proposed cutting a handful of federal programs that fund Meals on Wheels in communities across the United States. Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, suggested that Meals on Wheels sounds great , but that it along with other social programs referenced is ineffective. That doesnt square with the experience of local communities or the outcomes of dozens of studies, which have found that the program is already stretching inadequate funds to get results. Were grateful for the outpouring of support including a surge in new volunteers since the president announced his budget blueprint. In fact, were so certain of the difference Meals on Wheels is making that Id like to extend a public invitation to President Trump and members of his administration to experience it firsthand: Come ride with us. Go on deliveries with our volunteers and see our work with your own eyes. Mr. President, come to Oakland and Macomb counties, Mich., and ride with Diane and John, who have delivered meals for decades. They will introduce you to a few of the 4,900 people served across both counties each day. You will see how a nutritious meal and friendly visit can reduce expensive and unnecessary visits to the emergency room, admissions to hospitals and premature placement in nursing homes because Meals on Wheels helps people live independently. Thats why one 2013 study found that if every state increased the number of older Americans who received meals by just 1 percent, it would have saved Medicaid more than $109 million a year. Come to Alexandria, Va., and ride with Gerry, who has delivered meals for nine years on a route organized through his church. He will introduce you to the seniors on his standard run the average recipient being a single 75-year-old woman living alone with little or no mobility and multiple chronic conditions. You will see how daily visits reduce loneliness, depression and falls which alone cost the United States more than $31 billion a year. Come to San Mateo County, Calif., and ride with Glenda and Gordon, who for five years have served a full days worth of nutrition to some of the 600 local residents who receive Meals on Wheels. These are people who otherwise wouldnt have something to eat including a number of vulnerable veterans without families. Over the past four-and-a-half decades, volunteers have delivered more than 8 billion meals, leveraging an additional $3 in private, state and local funding for every $1 invested by taxpayers. We know this work helping 2.4 million seniors every year is among the wisest and most efficient uses of tax dollars anywhere. But this is about more than meals. This is about dignity. This is about the kind of country we want to be. Meals on Wheels is already serving 23 million fewer meals than we did in 2005. At a time when another 10,000 Americans will turn 65 every single day until 2030, we must renew our commitment to this program, which delivers an entire year of service for less than it costs to stay in a hospital for one day. As Nixon knew, sometimes investing a dollar on the front end saves many, many more dollars and lives on the back end. In 2014, one American who studied the work of Meals on Wheels concluded that the program is well targeted towards the low-income elderly and to those with increased risk for nutrition and health problems. That American is House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), who wrote those words in his War on Poverty report. Ride with us, and youll see why. While County Executive Steve Schuh has lived in Anne Arundel County, hes enjoyed the many things our bountiful bayside region has bestowed upon us. He probably also enjoys seafood brought to us by a robust population of undocumented immigrant workers. Theres a lovely winery in Davidsonville Schuh seems to like that depends on migrants to pick succulent grapes. Im guessing the landscaping company he trusts to keep the yard on his million-dollar-plus mansion neat and tidy is staffed with some undocumented workers. He has most likely driven one of his cars through an Annapolis carwash and had undocumented immigrants shine his rims. Maybe he grabs burgers from a smiling Latina worker. Im told he loves a breakfast place in Severna Park. I wonder if hes ever looked in the back to see whos making his omelets and coffee. Im sure he knows, because Schuh is a restaurant owner himself. With a couple of partners, including Anne Arundel County Council member Derek J. Fink, Schuh owns GT Mid-States, which operates Roy Rogers, Green Turtle and Blackwall Hitch locations. In almost all restaurants in Anne Arundel County (and around the country), undocumented workers, working using other peoples Social Security numbers and paying payroll tax but getting nothing in return, do everything from clean bathrooms to make your omelets on Sunday morning. All restaurant owners know this. In fact, President Trumps first nominee for labor secretary, fast-food mogul Andrew Puzder, admitted that up to 40 percent of his workers were undocumented. Forty percent. One would think Schuh would appreciate all the good things that our robust immigrant labor force has brought to our county. Apparently, what overrides his appreciation is his love for the White Houses economically ill-advised and inhumane policies. Schuh is ready to tear apart families, terrify communities and attack the very businesses and companies he is supposed to serve. Even worse, hes using my tax dollars and yours to do so. Schuh is one of only a few county executives in the nation who turned their peace officers on their own nonviolent residents by deputizing some county corrections officials to act as federal immigration officers. I have lived in Anne Arundel County since 1998. I have never had a problem with an undocumented member of our community, nor has anyone I know. On the contrary, I appreciate the roads they build as part of construction teams. I enjoy the food that comes from our great restaurants kitchens. I love the delicious seafood coming from the fisheries of Maryland. This is a labor force we need here in Anne Arundel County. We like our way of life just fine. We should find a way to keep our awesome workforce healthy and here, not to deport them. Erin Robinson, community cat program manager from the Humane Rescue Alliance, prepares traps for feral cats in Washington on March 22. (Astrid Riecken/For The Washington Post) Regarding Grant Sizemores April 2 Local Opinions essay, Do not throw cats at the D.C. rat problem: The Blue Collar Cats program is designed to provide another option for feral cats, which cannot be adopted because they are not behaviorally suited to be pets. These cats are released through our Cat Neighborhood Partnership Program as directed under D.C. code. Mr. Sizemore said participating businesses are the owners of these cats. Feral cats live in our community with no owner. Participating businesses act as caregivers that provide food, water and shelter for the cats. The cats are free to roam, like any other feral cat, and are meant to deter rodents, not solve the citys rodent problem. They are not pets, and the businesses do not pay for these cats. Mr. Sizemore overstated the concern of Toxoplasma gondii infection. According to Deborah L. Ackerman of the University of California at Los Angeles, Feral cats pose even less risk to public health than pet cats because they have minimal human contact. The Blue Collar Cats program makes no promise of these cats efficacy in deterring rodents. However, our partners report that the program is working, with results similar to those of programs elsewhere. The Blue Collar Cats program is another option for cats who cannot be adopted and cannot live in a home. Through programs such as Blue Collar Cats, feral cats can live healthy, happy lives that may be beneficial to their human caregivers. Lisa LaFontaine, Washington The writer is president and chief executive of the Humane Rescue Alliance. Jean-Marc Ayrault is Frances minister of foreign affairs and international development. Climate change is already disrupting the environmental, economic and political balance across the world. We must face up to this reality. We did this in December 2015, when 195 countries adopted the Paris agreement on climate change an unprecedented world-level consensus made possible thanks to the commitment of each nation, including the largest greenhouse-gas emitters, and of course the United States, which played a key role in making this remarkable outcome possible. Since then, 141 parties have ratified the Paris agreement, including the United States, France, the European Union as a whole, China and India, and the agreement entered into force in November 2016. Now is the time to implement it to actually reduce our greenhouse-gas emissions, to ensure that policies match national commitments. It is time to develop and market clean technologies, and to seize new national and international economic opportunities, which many U.S. companies will be able to do. It is also time to demonstrate solidarity with countries that are in vulnerable situations, have played a lesser role in bringing about climate change and are less well-off but have nevertheless pledged to join the common effort to curb the changes. These major changes are already underway. The efforts we make today will allow our children and grandchildrens world to remain livable. These efforts may be considered sacrifices. I prefer to see them as an investment in our future. And this is also how economic actors around the world perceive the drive to modernize our cities, to transition toward more sustainable energy, to adapt our production technologies in all sectors to our carbon-emission reduction goals and to the constraints of global warming. Policies that lead to a low-carbon economy also lead to enhanced competitiveness and innovation. Opting out of this effort may well satisfy short-term interests in specific sectors, but it would ultimately harm long-term interests. On the contrary, those who invest sooner, including individual companies, will reap the greatest benefits. Such policies also bring social benefits, first and foremost in the field of health, because they contribute to curbing atmospheric pollution while also creating local jobs, for example in renewable energy. This global fight cannot succeed if all parties are not fully on board and if they dont assume their share of the burden or seek to capitalize on the opportunities. It is time to call on all stakeholders to mobilize. We are counting on the U.S. presidential administration, on Congress, on states and on cities, as well as on businesses and civil society as a whole, to keep the United States committed, along with the rest of the world, to this ambitious goal. Even for a president who advertised his coldblooded pragmatism, the moral dimensions of leadership find a way of penetrating the Oval Office. In the case of President Trump, the emotional distance seems to have been shattered by simple, indelible images of suffering children in Idlib, Syria. When you kill innocent children, innocent babies babies! little babies . . . that crosses many, many lines. Beyond a red line, many, many lines, Trump said Wednesday, his voice high and stretched, after pictures surfaced of lifeless infants choked to death by poison gas. The recognition: The Syria slaughter is now my responsibility. And the admission: I do change. With that conviction, Trump took military action Thursday night, ordering retaliatory missile attacks on a Syrian air base. (The Washington Post) American interventionism is our best and worst national trait. Historically, until 1941, the United States was a reluctant warrior, fearful of foreign entanglement. Thursday marked the 100th anniversary of Americas entry into World War I, a conflict that still drips with senseless, dutiful killing. The young men of Europe had been slaughtering each other since 1914, but on the other side of the Atlantic it was America First until Congress backed Woodrow Wilson and declared war on April 6, 1917. Trumps wariness on Syria had been like President Barack Obamas: He said repeatedly, over the past six years and during the campaign, that he opposed more headlong U.S. military actions in quests that might be morally urgent but strategically fuzzy. Republican hawks such as Sens. John McCain (Ariz.) and Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) had blasted Obamas reluctance to intervene, but not Trump. Back in 2013, hed argued against calls to bomb Syria in retaliation for President Bashar al-Assads use of chemical weapons. Given that Trumps view of Syria was so similar to Obamas, his attempt to blame the latest chemical attack there on his predecessors alleged weakness was especially dubious. It displayed his embattled, defensive self-image: He is a victim of someone elses bad decisions. A similarly immature blame-shifting troubled many military leaders after Navy SEAL William Ryan Owens died in a Special Operations forces raid in Yemen. This was something . . . they wanted to do the generals, who are very respected. . . . And they lost Ryan, Trump said. Why did Assad use nerve gas in Idlib? Its impossible to know. Maybe it was a signal to an increasingly aggressive Israel that he still had chemical weapons, or maybe it was a warning to Russia that he wasnt a pawn to be traded in a grand bargain with Trump. But most likely, it was a reaction to the free hand he was seemingly given when Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said a few days earlier during a visit to Turkey that Assads future will be decided by the Syrian people meaning that the United States no longer demanded his departure. Trump has now taken a decisive step that Obama resisted, but he still faces a dilemma of how to bring political change to a Syria shattered by six years of civil war. The irony is that Trump faces the same bad military options for pressing the attack in western Syria beyond this initial strike that Obama did. U.S. military commanders have focused on the battle against the Islamic State in eastern Syria. The Pentagon has a plan for a relatively rapid conquest of Raqqa, the de facto capital of the caliphate of the Islamic State, with a force led by Syrian Kurdish fighters. U.S. troops will augment this assault with heavy artillery, Apache helicopter gunships and forward-deployed advisers. Its a pragmatic plan for ending the Islamic State terrorist threat quickly, even at the risk of offending Turkey and leaving Assad and the political muddle in Damascus. This plan had all the pieces except a final White House stamp of approval. Then came those pictures of the Syrian children. With Thursday nights action, Trump reached one of those unforeseen tipping points on which decisions of war and peace so often rest: the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915, the Zimmermann telegram of 1917, Pearl Harbor in 1941, the Gulf of Tonkin attack in 1964, the Iraqi WMD delusion in 2003. What all these triggers for war have in common is that people didnt see them coming. The World War I centennial is especially haunting as we think about the choices Trump still faces in Syria. A century later, that conflict is still unfathomable, more like a mystery than a settled narrative. Historians who gathered at the National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, Mo., debated Thursday why it began and why the treaty that ended the conflict proved so unstable. Trump might study the example of Harry S. Truman, another president who came to office radically unprepared for the global responsibilities he faced. World War I had made Truman. He commanded an artillery battery in the Argonne Forest. Like so many people caught up in war, he didnt know what he could do until he was tested. Trump now better appreciates the truth of Trumans famous line: The buck stops here. Read more from David Ignatiuss archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. It is either a turning point or a welcome aberration that President Trump found the cruelly extinguished lives of Syrian children to be compelling (or at least contributory) in his decision to use force in Syria. The nerve gas attack by the Bashar al-Assad regime, he said, crossed a lot of lines for me . . . innocent children, innocent babies babies, little babies. Much of Trumps appeal during his presidential campaign was based on dehumanization the characterization of migrants as criminals and refugees as terrorist threats. This is the first instance I can recall of Trump showing public empathy for the lives of foreigners. It was jarring in its humanity. Trump engaged in the humanization of Syrian war victims. And that merits praise. In one moment the president also did something that President Barack Obama could not manage in five years to be provoked or revolted enough to act decisively in Syria. Obamas tolerance for mass atrocities for the Assad regimes use of weapons of mass destruction, torture, forced starvation and barrel bombs was rooted in a tendency rather than a doctrine. At every point of decision during years of Syrian protest and civil war, Obama magnified the risks of action and miniaturized the prospect of gain. This series of indecisions fit Obamas inherent cautiousness. But it also added up to a bad case of Iraq War Syndrome a fear of inalterably escalating engagement. Until a few days ago, Trump was firmly in the same camp. Before becoming president, he did something of ambitious irrationality accusing his predecessor of being too engaged on Syria, too tempted by involvement. What will we get for bombing Syria, he tweeted during Obamas red-line crisis in 2013, besides more debt and a possible long-term conflict? So how do we explain Trumps head-snapping inconsistency on this issue? It is worth noting that Trump did leave himself an out of sorts a possible basis for action buried in his old tweets on Syria. We dont have the leadership to win wars or even strategize, he argued, raising the possibility that a different president might possess such skills. Trump clearly views himself as the change he has been waiting for. This, however, is probably too cynical. Seeing the corpses of Syrian children as a private citizen may provoke feelings of anger and helplessness. When a president sees the corpses of Syrian children, he is by no means helpless. When some moral norms are violated, it is not only the perpetrator who incurs responsibility; it is the bystanders as well. It seems that Trump felt this burden. And it is a sign that maybe, just maybe, the office has begun to shape the man. Whatever his motivation, Trumps military actions have moved beyond the Iraq War Syndrome. And they represent a defeat for global Bannonism the search for stability through the cultivation of despots and strongmen. We still have no idea whether Trumps military response was a moral impulse alone or a policy change. A symbol or a strategy. We know that Trump is capable of impulsive ad hockery. There is less reason to be confident he is thinking three, four or five steps down the road. Does this signal a new attitude toward Russias expanded role in the Middle East or to the status of Assad in Syrias future? Will every future mass atrocity gain such treatment? And why, when you think about it, is the crime of using nerve agents against civilians more heinous than killing them with forced starvation or barrel bombs? The specter haunting U.S. foreign policy is not so much the Iraq War as the Libya debacle. The imminent destruction of Benghazi provoked a moral and military response from Obama an air campaign that worked well in its initial stages. But little thought and fewer resources were devoted to the follow-up. And what resulted was a jihadist playground. The problem with Obamas Syria response was not just its moral bankruptcy or its lack of credibility. It was a woefully inadequate response to the largest strategic and moral challenge of our time the collapse of sovereignty at the heart of the Middle East, with radiating effects throughout the region, Europe and beyond. And this failure would not have been rectified by a few dozen guided missiles. Our current president will find that a Tomahawk missile is not the equivalent of a particularly nasty tweet. It is the conduct of war against a foreign power. And it demands a strategy of equal seriousness. Read more from Michael Gersons archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook . THE LAST time the United States held a constitutional convention was in 1787. That one turned out pretty well. The next one could have far more doleful results. And the nation is much closer to convening such a convention than many people realize. It would take the votes of 34 state legislatures to call a constitutional convention to order. A majority of legislatures already have voted to do so. Such calls remain valid indefinitely until 34 states have joined in a particular cause or the states rescind their appeals. Therefore we congratulate Marylands House of Delegates, which on Tuesday rescinded its call for a federal constitutional convention decades after approving it. Same to Nevadas Senate, which voted, also Tuesday, to rescind a resolution in that state. But a number of states have recently passed or are close to passing measures calling for a convention. The possibility was mostly dormant from the 1980s until a few years ago, when some blue states began calling for a convention to undo the Supreme Courts Citizens United ruling and conservative groups began pressing red-state legislatures to pass convention resolutions on a variety of pet causes, including a balanced-budget amendment. Though each state might have a single issue in mind, once a convention is convened its delegates would not be bound to any particular issue. Gun control could be banned entirely or its constitutional limits loosened; gay marriage could be eliminated or the Equal Rights Amendment could be passed. Though it seems unlikely that the required three- fourths of states would subsequently approve major changes drawn up at a runaway convention, it is already amazing that so many states have taken the initial step of calling for one. It is not even certain that three-fourths of the states would have to approve the conventions work for it to become the law of the land, as the Constitution currently prescribes. The 1787 constitutional convention ditched preexisting ratification rules; who is to say a 2018 convention could not? In fact, nearly everything about this powerful process would be uncertain. Convention rules, which would be written ad hoc, could be manipulated to favor one party, region or interest group over another. Minority protections, so central to the Constitutions guarantees, could be trampled upon. Sparsely populated states could impose their will on the majority of Americans who live in densely populated ones. Many of us can point to one constitutional provision or another that we believe we could improve upon if given a chance. But a convention could do great damage to a charter that, on balance, has worked pretty well for a pretty long time. To take such a risk on behalf of a stupendously unworthy cause such as a balanced-budget amendment would be foolhardy in the extreme. Stephen K. Bannon the combative architect of the nationalistic strategy that delivered President Trump to the White House now finds himself losing ground in an internecine battle within the West Wing that pits the Bannonites against a growing and powerful faction of centrist financiers led by the presidents son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Less than 100 days into Trumps chaotic presidency, the White House is splintering over policy issues ranging from taxes to trade. The daily tumult has created an atmosphere of tension and panic around the president, leaving aides fearing for their jobs and cleaving former allies into rivals sniping at one another in the media. The infighting spilled into full view this week after Trump removed Bannon from the National Security Councils principals committee, a reshuffling that left the presidents chief strategist less fully involved in the administrations daily national security policy while further empowering Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, Trumps new national security adviser. Bannon, an unkempt iconoclast, has generally chafed at the transition from firebomb campaigning to more modulated governing and for weeks has vented about the possibility of quitting, one person close to him said. This account of the latest West Wing turmoil comes from interviews with more than 20 White House officials and people close to those in the administration, many of whom requested anonymity to offer candid assessments. 1 of 13 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad 13 things you may not have known about Stephen K. Bannon View Photos Trumps chief strategist served in the Navy, has a daughter in the Army and once referred to himself as a Leninist. Caption Trumps chief strategist served in the Navy, has a daughter in the Army and once referred to himself as a Leninist. He served in the Navy According to Bloomberg, Bannon signed up right after college, serving from 1976 to 1983. He spent four years at sea working as an auxiliary engineer and a navigator aboard a destroyer. Courtesy of the Bannon family Wait 1 second to continue. Despite the demotion, Bannon attended Wednesdays National Security Council meeting, and his friends and allies say the position on the Cabinet-level security committee was always supposed to be temporary a way for Bannon to keep watch over retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the controversial former national security adviser who was fired in February after he misled Vice President Pence about his contacts with Russian officials. But the benign explanation for Bannons removal belies the growing strife among Bannon, Kushner and Gary Cohn, the National Economic Council director. A registered Democrat who previously was president of Goldman Sachs, Cohn is close to Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, the presidents oldest daughter and adviser. [Inside Trumps White House, New York moderates spark infighting and suspicion] Fairly or unfairly, Bannon has borne the blame for several specific policy and political failures, including the scattershot drafting and implementation of Trumps first travel ban and the strategy and approach to dealing with the conservative House Freedom Caucus, which helped tank the Republican health-care bill by failing to support it. The clash over control of a pro-Trump outside group also pitted Bannon, Republican super-donor Rebekah Mercer and her father, Robert Mercer, against Kushner. And Bannon has felt the brunt of general frustrations surrounding the security council. In the early days of the administration, he elevated himself, without Trumps knowledge, to the principals committee, a move that infuriated the president. Bannon insisted, along with Kushner, on keeping certain staffers over the objection of McMaster. But the ultimate argument against him, said one person with knowledge of the situation, is that Bannon isnt making Dad look good. (Bastien Inzaurralde,Dani Player/The Washington Post) As Kushner has expanded his portfolio and consolidated his already vast power the 36-year-old adviser has been called the Trump whisperer, with a direct line to the president he has surrounded himself with a small group of outsiders who largely hail from the ranks of business and Wall Street. The group includes Dina Powell, an Egyptian-born former Goldman Sachs official who served in George W. Bushs administration. Both she and Cohn are part of Kushners newly announced Office of American Innovation, an internal team devoted to streamlining government. Bannon and his populist allies view Kushners circle with growing suspicion, worrying aloud that the group whom they dismiss as the Democrats, the New Yorkers or, simply, Goldman are pushing Trump in a Democrat Lite direction. Kushners allies, meanwhile, label Bannons crowd as the Bannonites, the Nationalists or Breitbart, the name of the incendiary conservative website he previously ran. Bannon, grousing to friends, has cast the tensions as a confrontation between the nationalists and the liberal Democrats, who he worries are eager to undercut the populist movement that helped lift Trump to victory. Looming over him daily on his office walls are the promises that Trump made during the campaign, which he methodically checks off. Cohn has met with Democrats on several occasions and appears much more comfortable offering lawmakers olive branches than does Bannon, who during the health-care fight argued in favor of forcing a vote on the doomed bill to establish a public list of Republican traitors. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich cast the disagreements as important and weighty policy debates. Its not about petty soap-opera stuff, Gingrich said. Bannon represents a very fundamental change in how we think about economic policy, taking us back to the era from Alexander Hamilton up through the 1920s when we were a much more national economy. Gary represents the New York international worldview and is a very competent and smart guy. Theres a natural tension. I think its very helpful to have the tension and the arguments, he added. I think presidents are much better served if they have different sources of information. The president, asked by reporters Thursday on Air Force One if a staff shake-up is looming, said he thought the administration had already shaken things up. I think weve had one of the most successful 13 weeks in the history of the presidency, Trump said, wrongly referring to the 11 weeks he has been in office. Some friends of both Bannon and Kushner, who talk daily and still have a cordial rapport, say the tensions are mostly driven by policy. [White House disavows two controversial tax ideas hours after officials say theyre under consideration] In February, for instance, a group of former Republican Cabinet secretaries met with Cohn to pitch him on the idea of a carbon tax, arguing it would help reduce fossil fuel emissions while also addressing budget issues. Some left the meeting believing Cohn was open to the idea. Bannon was furious when he caught wind of the proposal, saying the White House was veering too far from Trumps core nationalist principles as it molded its economic policy. A meeting last week at the White House at the behest of Kushner and Cohn to discuss health care with Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and one of the architects of President Barack Obamas health-care bill, was another fault line. The mere existence of the staff-level discussion with Emanuel who had previously met with Trump three times raised concerns among conservatives that the president was serious about his threat to work with Democrats after his initial health-care proposal failed. Bannon, allies said, still has the presidents ear, especially on key issues such as immigration, where he and Trump are in a complete mind meld. But the chief strategist has struggled to adjust to the more regimented mores of the White House. One friend said he hates attending meetings, bemoans the need to frequently wear suits, and finds the government bureaucracy stifling. While living in Los Angeles, Bannon would sometimes participate in Breitbart conference calls before showering and in a T-shirt or bathrobe; his D.C. staff would joke about the last time he got a haircut. Some of those who resent Kushners rising power have compared him to Icarus, the youth in Greek mythology who flew too close to the sun and melted his wings. But because Kushner holds so much clout, many of his rivals fear bad-mouthing him and train their ire on his deputies instead. When you complain about Gary or Dina, youre really complaining about Jared and what hes doing, because youre not able to complain about Jared around here, said one senior White House official. But one administration official warned that Bannon was playing a dangerous game because it is not a smart strategy to go up against the president and his family. Thats a game Steve will never win. Patrick J. Caddell, a veteran pollster who advises Breitbart and is friends with Bannon, said that an outsider administration is vulnerable to these kinds of cracks. Steve is taking the slings and arrows, but I hope Trump understands that the attacks on Bannon are an attempt to undermine Trump, Caddell said. Thats the crucial point. Steve is essential to him, the only person who has a clue why the president was elected and why hes there. Regardless, the ongoing drama has taken a toll on West Wing operations, where aides continue to jockey for power and worry about their job security. One senior official pointed to Trumps interview Wednesday with the New York Times, during which at least five senior White House staffers, as well as Pence, crowded into the Oval Office. Why were they there? asked the official, saying they should have been working on other tasks. Now the expectation is you have to be in every picture and every meeting. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a White House spokeswoman, dismissed reports of palace intrigue. There are many serious issues at hand, which the president has been totally focused on, and the only conflicts his advisers are concerned with are those that are impacting the lives and safety of Americans, as well as the citizens of the world, she said. Trump, for his part, enjoys a somewhat chaotic management style and so far hasnt aligned entirely with either camp. Aides say one moment the president will praise Bannon and sound out nationalist themes. The next, hell see a headline about President Bannon and grimace. Tom Hamburger, Rosalind S. Helderman and Damian Paletta contributed to this report. Newly confirmed Neil M. Gorsuch is likely to have an immediate impact at the Supreme Court, weighing in as early as next week on whether to consider expanding the breadth of the Second Amendment. He could play a decisive role this spring in determining how voting rights should be protected and in a major case on the separation of church and state. The Senate voted 54 to 45 on Friday to confirm Gorsuch, ending more than a year of bitter partisan conflict over the ideological balance of the nations highest court. Gorsuch will be sworn in Monday, allowing him to join the court for the final months of its term, which ends in June. A private ceremony at the court, overseen by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., will be followed by an event at the White House. There, Gorsuchs former boss, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, will preside, marking the first time in the courts history that a justice will serve alongside one of his former clerks, President Trumps pick of Gorsuch to be the nations 113th justice will restore a conservative-leaning, Republican-nominated majority to a court that has either deadlocked or drifted to the left since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016. [Trump makes his pick, but its still Kennedys court] Gorsuchs nomination has been a rare, unalloyed victory for Trump, winning unanimous support from Senate Republicans. But it required a brutal fight with Democrats, who are still incensed that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) refused to even hold a hearing for President Barack Obamas nominee, Judge Merrick Garland. The political clash ended only when Republicans voted as a bloc to eliminate the ability of the Senate minority to filibuster Supreme Court nominees. In the end, only three Democrats, from conservative states Sens. Joe Donnelly (Ind.), Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.) and Joe Manchin III (W.Va.) joined 51 Republicans to support Gorsuch. Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), who is recovering from recent back surgeries, was absent. Gorsuchs arrival at the court as the replacement for another conservative jurist will not immediately alter the majority that has edged the court in a more liberal direction of late, upholding affirmative action, striking down laws restricting access to abortion and declaring same-sex marriage to be protected by the Constitution. And it is unknowable exactly how the lifetime appointment of the 49-year-old Coloradan will affect the court in the decades to come. Gorsuch has a well-deserved reputation as a conservative on the Denver-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, even if he has not ruled on many of the high-profile issues that form the publics image of the Supreme Court. But reaction to the Senates vote the closest margin since it approved Clarence Thomas more than 25 years ago makes clear the expectations. Gorsuch was hailed by gun rights activists, antiabortion organizations and business groups, and denounced by environmentalists, feminists and unions. They will not have to wait long to see where Gorsuch fits in. [Trump chooses Colorado appeals-court judge Gorsuch] Within the week, Gorsuch will join his new colleagues in considering whether to hear two lower-court defeats being appealed by gun rights organizations. A case about whether business owners may refuse to offer their wedding services to same-sex couples awaits resolution. Soon, the justices will take up North Carolinas request that they overturn a decision tossing out as unconstitutional its tightened voting restrictions. And heading toward the court is Trumps revamped travel ban on refugees and certain immigrants, a case that Senate Democrats said will test Gorsuchs independence from the man who chose him for the high court. One notable difference between this nomination and those past is that Trump had clear, stated litmus tests for his nominee, said Elizabeth Wydra, president of the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center, which opposed Gorsuchs confirmation. Gorsuch will have the opportunity almost immediately to demonstrate just how closely he fits within two of President Trumps stated litmus tests for his high-court nominee guns and religion. It seems likely that Gorsuch holds the key to a long-delayed case that is the courts most important of the term regarding separation of church and state. A church-affiliated school in Missouri is challenging that states refusal to let it participate in a grant program that provides playground safety materials. Trinity Lutheran Church says religious institutions are unfairly excluded from such state programs. The state points to a clause in its constitution that says no money shall ever be taken from the public treasury, directly or indirectly, in aid of any church, sect, or denomination of religion. [Justices agree to hear playground case that raises church-state separation] The court accepted the case nearly 15 months ago, when Scalia was still alive. But it delayed scheduling the case for oral argument until now. That might be an indication that the court has been divided on the issue from the beginning and needs a ninth vote to break the tie. Gorsuch was an outspoken supporter of religious objectors in two cases involving the Affordable Care Act. In Hobby Lobby v. Sebelius and Little Sisters of the Poor v. Burwell, Gorsuch wrote that a requirement that employers provide contraceptive coverage for their employees could make the religious complicit in what they consider a sin. The court is also considering a petition from a Denver baker who was found to have unlawfully discriminated against a gay couple by refusing to sell them a wedding cake. Lower courts ruled that Jack Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, violated Colorados public accommodations law, which prohibits refusing service to customers based on factors such as race, sex, marital status or sexual orientation. The Supreme Court has listed the case as under consideration for weeks, without announcing whether it is accepting the case or turning it down. That has led to speculation that the justices have decided not to take the case and that one of the conservative justices is writing a dissent against that decision. But it could also be that three justices want to take the case and are hoping Gorsuch will provide the fourth vote required to accept a case. It seems likely, in light of his past votes in cases like the Little Sisters and Hobby Lobby, that Gorsuch would be a vote to grant in that case, said John Elwood, a Washington lawyer who closely watches the courts deliberations on accepting cases. On the other hand, Elwood said, its hard to predict how Gorsuch might vote on whether to take issues like the gun cases and voter-ID cases. Two gun issues await at Gorsuchs first private conference with his new colleagues Thursday, when the court meets to decide whether to accept a long list of cases for the term that begins next fall. The most important is a petition from gun rights activists asking the court to find for the first time that the Second Amendment right to keep a gun for self-defense extends to carrying firearms outside the home. In cases from California, the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled that it did not. Any prohibition or restriction a state may choose to impose on concealed carry including a requirement of good cause, however defined is necessarily allowed by the [Second] Amendment, it said. A strongly worded dissent said any fair reading of the Supreme Courts 2008 decision finding a constitutional right to gun ownership for self-defense compels the conclusion that the right to keep and bear arms extends beyond ones front door. [Supreme Court strikes down D.C. gun ban, finds right to gun ownership] A second case involves whether those convicted of certain crimes can be barred indefinitely from possessing firearms. On a different subject, the court must soon decide what to do about North Carolinas request that the court review a decision striking down its voting law. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit said the law was unconstitutional because it was drawn to target African Americans with almost surgical precision. The case already has divided the Supreme Court. In August, the justices split 4 to 4 on whether the decision should be stayed so that the law would be in effect for the November elections. The lack of a fifth vote meant the restrictions did not govern voting in last falls election. Gorsuch may have an impact on cases that already have come before the court. Normally when the court is deadlocked, it issues a one-paragraph statement that affirms the decision of the lower court, without setting a national precedent. This term, however, there may be cases that the eight justices have already considered in which they reached an impasse but decided to hold back any announcement, awaiting Gorsuchs confirmation. In that scenario, the court would order new oral arguments to allow Gorsuch to join the deliberations. One case that seemed to divide the justices at oral argument, for instance, concerned whether the Mexican parents of a boy killed in a cross-border shooting could sue the Border Patrol agent who fired the shot. Until there is another change on the court, Gorsuch will be likely to reestablish the basic arithmetic of the Supreme Court under Roberts four consistent liberal justices, four fairly consistent conservatives, and Kennedy providing the deciding vote when there is a deadlock. But Wydra said the addition of Gorsuch does more than simply replace Scalia with a like-minded justice. Substituting Gorsuch for Scalia extends the conservative life of that seat for another few decades, she said. Congress offered a mix of reactions on Friday to President Trumps military action in Syria, with many lawmakers welcoming the airstrikes, some lambasting Trump for failing to seek congressional approval, and nearly all calling for more information and collaboration from the White House. Fridays operation, the first direct U.S. assault on the Syrian government in six years of bloody civil war, surprised members as they prepared to leave Washington for a two-week recess and reignited a debate over the legality of U.S. military actionthat lacks explicit approval from Congress. Divisions quickly emerged on this question between Republican leaders and rank-and-file conservatives, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) arguing no formal approval by Congress known as an Authorization for Use of Military Force, or AUMF was necessary for the initial round of airstrikes. It was a measured response to a chemical weapons attack, McConnell said in an interview. I dont believe [the president] needed authority from us to do what he did. Prominent conservatives, however, pointedly criticized Trumps decision to act without buy-in from lawmakers. (Jayne Orenstein/The Washington Post) The President needs Congressional authorization for military action as required by the Constitution, and I call on him to come to Congress for a proper debate, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said in a statement, arguing that the intervention would do nothing to make us safer. [Russia condemns U.S. missile strike on Syria, suspends key air agreement] Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), one of the most vocal libertarians in the House, said it was unwise to base military actions on emotional responses. We have to think about all the consequences, he said Friday. Its critical under our system of government that these types of actions have congressional approval, because they are acts of war, and what begins as a set of strikes on one night can quickly escalate into a much broader conflict. Vice President Pence is expected to provide an explanation for the airstrikes to Congress within a few days, lawmakers said. The mix of reactions from Capitol Hill underscored the delicate situation facing Trump after the first major military operation of his presidency. Once again, Trump is receiving blowback from his right flank while Democrats seek ways to capitalize on the Republican infighting and maintain pressure on an unpopular president. Democrats on Friday criticized Trump, who has long opposed military intervention against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, for suddenly changing his mind after a deadly chemical attack on civilians this week. (Erin Patrick O'Connor/The Washington Post) Three days ago he was effectively giving Syria back to Assad, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said of Trump. Two days later, admittedly after a serious chemical weapons attack, were launching unauthorized military strikes. . . . There is no strategy on Syria. Murphy also called for Congress to debate an AUMF that would govern U.S. actions against the Islamic State and any further intervention against Assad. If Mitch McConnell really is an institutionalist, then he shouldnt be so willing to cede war-making authority to the executive, Murphy said. The strongest support for the airstrikes came Friday from Republican leaders, who praised Trumps decisiveness and said he was well within his powers. The chemical weapons attack committed by the Assad regime was a flagrant violation of international standards, and preventing a deepening of the humanitarian crisis and instability in Syria is clearly in the United States national interest, said AshLee Strong, a spokeswoman for House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.). As such, last nights response was fully within the presidents authority, she said. The question of what new AUMF , if any, is necessary for U.S. military operations in the region has been debated for years. The Obama and Trump administrations have carried out strikes against the Islamic State under AUMFs adopted in the early 2000s for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, though many lawmakers are skeptical about that argument. Neither of the current authorizations address potential hostilities against the Syrian government. Rank-and-file Republicans and Democrats were eager Friday to assert lawmakers constitutional ability to authorize force, though few are in agreement about what a new proposal should cover. In the House, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) promised to reintroduce an AUMF proposal against the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, while Sens. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.) are renegotiating a proposal to address such extremists within and outside of Syria. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is working on an even broader proposal that he said would be more of a policy than an authorization on [a] specific issue. [Syria strike adds awkward twist to high-stakes China-U. S. summit] Asked if the AUMF would be global in breadth, McCain said, It applies to everything. Some Republicans were less convinced a new AUMF is necessary. McConnell said he would be interested in taking a look at a proposal if the president feels like he needs it. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said that the Constitution does not require the president to get congressional approval to use military force. And Corker said that an AUMF might be necessary only if Trump decides to launch several more airstrikes against the Syrian regime. Conservatives like Paul argue that Congress should be able to consider whether to authorize force. Im sure there will be ongoing discussions with the administration and Congress concerning last nights attack, the legal justification, and any proposed military action going forward, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) said. Ill wait to assess the administrations argument. If the United States is to increase our use of military force in Syria, we should follow the Constitution and seek the proper authorization from Congress, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said. Senators huddled Friday afternoon with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph F. Dunford Jr. for a briefing on Syria and what might come next. Murphy, who was in the room, said Dunford essentially punted on the question of whether the administration needs congressional authorization for strikes against Syrian military targets. Paul, who said he has not been contacted by anyone at the White House about the airstrikes, called the briefing a day late and a dollar short. Its unconstitutional, he said of the airstrikes. It might work, but its not constitutional to do it the way we have done it. The two-week spring recess will prevent Congress from immediate action, and Republican leaders showed no sign they planned to call lawmakers back to Washington because of the airstrikes. Nonetheless, a bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation Friday designed to increase pressure on Assad by tracking war crimes in Syria and supporting investigations and other credible transitional justice efforts, such as an international tribunal, to hold the regime accountable. Some lawmakers also called for further action to punish Russia, Assads chief ally. McConnell on Friday suggested that he would look favorably on a proposal to step up sanctions against Russia, Iran and others who support the regime in Syria. Such a measure passed in the House last year, but was never taken up in the Senate. Mike DeBonis, Sean Sullivan, Ed OKeefe and Dave Weigel contributed to this report. Read more at PowerPost The U.S. Senate confirmed Neil M. Gorsuch to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, capping more than a year of bitter partisan bickering over the ideological balance of the nations highest court. On a vote of 54 to 45, senators confirmed Gorsuch, 49, a Denver-based judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. He will become the 113th person to serve on the Supreme Court and is scheduled to be sworn in Monday. Gorsuch replaces former justice Antonin Scalia, whose sudden death in February 2016 sparked a year-long partisan fight over the ideological balance of the court. Gorsuch will be thrust into the final weeks of the Supreme Courts term. The last round of oral arguments for the term is scheduled to begin April 17, and the term ends in June. Gorsuchs confirmation is a marquee accomplishment for President Trump and his young administration, capping a momentous week for the White House that included the first military airstrikes authorized by the president. In a statement, Trump called Gorsuchs confirmation one of the most transparent and accessible in history, and his judicial temperament, exceptional intellect, unparalleled integrity, and record of independence makes him the perfect choice to serve on the Nations highest court. Trump added later that Gorsuch will serve the American people with distinction as he continues to faithfully and vigorously defend our Constitution. (Bastien Inzaurralde,Jayne Orenstein,Whitney Leaming/The Washington Post) Trump also thanked Scalia and his wife, Maureen, for their immeasurable service to this country. The vote also is a significant legislative win for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who refused to even consider President Barack Obamas nominee after Scalia died, leaving the seat open for Trump to fill. Before the vote, McConnell said that as he reflected on his career, the most consequential decision Ive ever been involved in was the decision to let the president being elected last year pick the Supreme Court nominee. Gorsuch will be sworn in Monday by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who will administer the constitutional oath in a private ceremony at 9 a.m. at the Supreme Court. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy will administer the judicial oath at a public ceremony at the White House later that day. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. is the most recent justice to have been confirmed during a Supreme Court term. He was sworn in the same day as his confirmation, and a ceremonial event with President George W. Bush was held the next day. On the Supreme Court, Gorsuch could hold the deciding vote on several important issues. The justices will meet privately Thursday to accept or reject cases for next term. Among them: a petition from gun rights activists asking the court to find for the first time that the Second Amendment right to keep a gun for self-defense extends to carrying firearms outside the home. There is also a plea on behalf of business owners who want to be able to refuse their wedding services to same-sex couples. View Graphic Vote count: How the Senate changed its rules and confirmed Gorsuch In the coming weeks, the court is likely to decide whether to intervene in a lower courts decision that voting-law changes in North Carolina were passed by the Republican-controlled legislature to diminish the influence of minority voters. And when the justices gather for their last round of oral arguments this month, Gorsuch stands to hold the deciding vote in the terms major case involving the separation of church and state. Missouri cited a clause in its state constitution barring any government support for any religious group to eliminate a church-affiliated schools application to a program to improve playground safety. The case was accepted when Scalia was alive, and the delay in scheduling it for oral argument might indicate the court is divided. Gorsuchs confirmation was all-but-assured Thursday, when Republicans cleared the way for him by overcoming a historic Democratic blockade and changing the rules of the Senate. The long-anticipated rules change now means that all presidential nominees for executive branch positions and the federal courts need only a simple majority vote to be confirmed by senators. The GOP decision to ram through the rules change and their decision last year to block consideration of Judge Merrick Garland, Obamas choice to succeed Scalia is also likely to further divide an increasingly partisan Senate. Several senators openly fretted that eliminating the minority partys right to block high-court nominees could lead to the end of filibusters on legislation effectively transforming the Senates traditional role in the legislative process as the slower, more deliberative chamber. [McConnell: Nuclear option helps Senate. McCain: Whoever says that is a stupid idiot.] Gorsuchs nomination was announced by Trump in late January and earned immediate, widespread praise from Republican lawmakers excited by the prospect of maintaining the courts previous ideological balance and relieved by how well the White House orchestrated the nomination. Drawing from a list of 21 names first released during the presidential campaign, Trump introduced Gorsuch to the country in a slickly produced prime-time address from the White House East Room, attended by GOP senators who eagerly sang Gorsuchs praises to television cameras shortly after Trump left the room. In the past four months, Gorsuch met with 78 senators and sat for three days of confirmation hearings last month, answering nearly 1,200 questions and submitting another 70 pages of written responses. But his repeated refusal to engage on specific Supreme Court cases or policy issues frustrated Democrats concerned that his lighter judicial record on matters, ranging from abortion rights to environmental protection and campaign finance law, coupled with his refusal to denounce Trump personally for his attacks on federal judges, made it difficult to determine his judicial philosophy and potential to be an independent check on the White House. [The Daily 202: The legislative filibuster will be at risk now that the Senate has gone nuclear] Republicans, determined to restore the conservative tilt of the Supreme Court since Scalias unexpected death, worked in lockstep throughout the months-long fight. They united on the three votes needed to set Gorsuch on a glide path to confirmation on Thursday and on Fridays final confirmation vote. Among Democratic senators, three moderates Joe Donnelly (Ind.), Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.) and Joe Manchin III (W. Va.) who have faced a barrage of television ads in their home states to support Gorsuch, joined with the 51 Republicans who voted on Friday. Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), who is recovering from recent back surgeries, was absent on Friday. Sean Sullivan, David Weigel and Kelsey Snell contributed to this report. Read more at PowerPost Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) listens during a hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on July 29, 2015, in Washington. (Astrid Riecken/Getty Images) Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a progressive Democrat seeking reelection next year in a Rust Belt state won by President Trump, knows what she is up against. Republicans hold their strongest statehouse majority in decades here, and hundreds of small communities flipped to Trump after voting for Barack Obama in 2012. Then theres Gov. Scott Walker (R), who fires volleys of accusatory tweets at Baldwin and appears likely to seek a third term, putting polar opposites on the same ballot in November 2018. Baldwins answer is to echo the hard-luck economic message that propelled the candidacies of Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), assert a Democratic vision that takes account of the little guy and outwork all prospective challengers. The common thread is economic populism and how we get ahead, Baldwin said here after a public discussion of prescription drug pricing. Its just that Walker and Trump pit one group of Americans against another, rather than taking on the real villains. Baldwin is one of 10 Democrats defending Senate seats next year in states won by Trump. Their races are critical to the partys hopes of overcoming a 52-48 GOP Senate majority in a year when only nine Republican-held seats are in play. They are betting on Trumps unpopularity and the midterm bounce that typically goes to the party out of power in the White House. Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), left, Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), center, and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), right, await the arrival of President Trump at a reception for senators and their spouses in the East Room of the White House on March 28. (Ron Sachs/Picture-alliance/Deutsche Presse-Agentur/Associated Press) Races in Wisconsin and across the country will test Democratic messaging and the partys ability to harness anti-Trump energy evident in the Jan. 21 womens marches, as well as protests at Republican town hall meetings and opposition to GOP efforts to eliminate the Affordable Care Act and social programs that help blue-collar Americans. Baldwin, for one, is also learning from mistakes that helped make Hillary Clinton the first Democratic presidential nominee to lose Wisconsin in 32 years. She aims to rebuild the 2012 coalition that first got her elected to the Senate, including farmers and working-class voters who turned to Trump. No prominent Republican has yet entered the Senate race to challenge her. The intensity flipped on Nov. 9. The light switch went on our side, said Rep. Ron Kind, a moderate Democrat whose western Wisconsin district includes Eau Claire. The best thing that happened to Tammys reelect was Trump winning the White House. All the focus is on them now, and their agenda and how bad it is and what a rough start theyre off to. Election Day is still 19 months away in an administration where a week is a lifetime, said Wisconsin Conservative Digest editor and Trump supporter Bob Dohnal. If the economy is doing well, that will help Republicans across the board, said GOP political consultant Bill McCoshen, ex-chief of staff to former governor Tommy Thompson, who lost to Baldwin in 2012. Yet Republicans must live up to their promises and show they can govern, McCoshen added. If they cant get things done, theyre probably going to be sent home. Baldwin, 55, covered more than 1,300 miles on Wisconsin roadways in the past three weekends, holding events in 13 towns. A veteran of almost 20 years in Washington and six years in the state legislature, she emphasizes themes familiar to many working-class voters who supported Trump and gave Sanders a 13-point victory over Clinton in the April 2016 primary. She talks of a policy of buy American when it comes to purchasing such goods as steel and paper. She calls for improvements in trade deals and advocates measures to make prescription drugs less expensive. Voters, she said in an interview, need me standing up to [corporations], not allowing them to rig the rules. Were fighting for a whole series of policies that would make a true difference and a direct difference in peoples lives, she said. And you cant just assume people know that. At a recent White House reception, Baldwin told Trump she wants to work with him on a buy American policy. His answer? I know he said the word great several times, she laughed. It was encouraging. After losing the 2016 primary, Clinton did not return to Wisconsin. In November, she received 238,449 fewer votes than Obama did four years earlier. Trump received about 3,000 fewer votes than Mitt Romney did in 2012, but defeated Clinton by 22,748 votes. Compounding the Democrats dismay, Sen. Ron Johnson, a conservative GOP incumbent seen as vulnerable, beat former senator Russ Feingold (D) by 100,000 votes, and Republicans achieved historic dominance in the state legislature. Walker, meanwhile, has won three consecutive statewide elections. The reeling state party held an 11-stop listening tour and added seven staffers. Five are regional organizers, one is a statewide organizing coordinator and one is a staff member assigned to connect with communities of color. They will listen to voters, support fledgling grass-roots groups, argue an affirmative case for Democrats and help recruit down-ballot candidates. Beyond wooing voters who voted Republican, Democrats are seeking to channel the anti-Trump energy of Eau Claire residents like Bill Hogseth, who knocked on hundreds of doors for Obama in 2008, but felt very uninspired by Clinton and sat on the sidelines in 2016. After Trump won, Hogseth concluded that he needed to act. He looked ahead 15 years and imagined how he would answer questions from his children, now 5 and 3. I didnt want to tell my kids, Well, I was busy, said Hogseth, a wildlife biologist for the state of Wisconsin. I wanted to say I carved out time in my life to be part of the resistance. Hogseth read from front to back a political manual written by a group of former congressional aides called the Indivisible, and he started a Facebook group. In a few weeks, it went from me to 1,500 people, he said. The group started monitoring Wisconsins federal lawmakers, including Baldwin. They hand-wrote and delivered 80 letters to Johnson demanding the release of Trumps tax returns, and theyre planning a three-hour training session on political organizing. Not just to move the needle on the Trump administration, but this is an opportunity to pull more people into political engagement because theyre terrified. Show them what citizenship means, said Hogseth, who calls the effort coordinated citizenship. Hogseth joined a meeting with Baldwin arranged by Becca Cooke, a former Democratic fundraiser who recently opened an Eau Claire shop called Reds Mercantile. Cooke created the 715 Group, named for the local area code, to push progressive policies, in part by pooling donations from young voters. The 35 members of Cookes group, who range in age from 21 to 40-ish, pledge to contribute $75, $125 or $250 per quarter for two years. The beneficiary of the first $6,000 was Baldwin. Its important that we keep her there, Cooke explained. In a big city this might be small beans, but its an approachable way for people to pledge. And committing for the two-year cycle keeps people engaged. At the annual Eau Claire Democratic Party dinner, Kind said Democrats must find a candidate to beat Walker and make sure that Baldwin wins, because they will be gunning for her. When it was Baldwins turn, she spoke about the dignity of work and offered details of her economic agenda. She said she takes heart from Progressive Party leader Robert M. La Follettes defiance of the robber barons a century ago. La Follette was a Wisconsinite, and when Baldwin reached the Senate, she requested his old desk. Mindful that political energy waxes and wanes, Baldwin asked the 180 people in the audience not to treat their activist vows like a New Years resolution, where you pledge to run five days a week and by April 1 cant even find your running shoes. You have to see it through. This is not something you can participate in only occasionally, Baldwin said. Stick with it. They gave her a standing ovation. Read more at PowerPost To find a bright spot on Afghanistans political horizon, one must travel to the edge of the capital, follow a pitted road to a half-constructed building with no sign, and walk up four flights of stairs to a large office where an eager man in a new suit is still arranging the furniture. Im fired up, exclaims Nader Nadery, the recently named head of Afghanistans civil service commission. His goal, he says, is to turn a power center of political favors into an institution that offers all candidates a fair chance, rather than finding sinecures for C-average nephews of legislators and ex-warlords. Nadery, 42, a former human rights activist, says that if he succeeds in building a merit-based job system, it may help revive public confidence in Afghan democracy. Otherwise, he says, I will be failing all those who believe in fighting for reforms, in the vision of a new generation, in the future of the country. At the moment, though, this promising appointment feels like a small, belated footnote in a long and grueling war that is going badly on most fronts, leaving many Afghans fearing that the future they once hoped for is slipping away. Halfway through a presidency that promised to bring reform and modernization, the country is still struggling with the same problems that have plagued it through 16 years of flawed democratic rule, subsidized by billions in foreign aid: a determined Taliban insurgency; pervasive public corruption; desperate poverty; and leaders consumed by political quarrels. And while some Afghans are keenly awaiting supportive signals from the new administration in Washington, others have already lost faith in the international community, even questioning whether a new influx of foreign military and economic aid is what their country really needs. Weve been hearing about reforms for 16 years, but we still see the same mind-set, where the leaders try to manipulate everything, said Davood Moradian, director of the Afghan Institute for Strategic Studies. Things are far more polarized and dangerous now. If I had to choose between getting another 20,000 American troops or a real government commitment to reforms, I would choose the latter. The protracted conflict with the Taliban and other insurgents continues to dominate Afghans concerns about the future. The guerrillas persistence on the battlefield continues to force larger and better-equipped Afghan forces into tactical retreats, and their stealthy invasion of Kabuls military hospital last month stunned the public and nearly got three security ministers impeached. With spring fighting season about to begin and the prospect of peace talks virtually nil, Afghan and U.S. military officials predict that 2017 will be another year of hard combat, territorial setbacks and heavy casualties. Military morale has been undercut by corruption, and a devastating new report from the U.S. Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction described officers selling food and supplies intended for troops. The economy has been moribund since most NATO troops withdrew two years ago, taking away contracts and cottage industries that created a false sense of prosperity. The World Bank reported a dramatic drop in growth, just 1.6 percent last year. The government has focused on long-term development projects, including dams and regional trade, but unemployment has soared to 40 percent, with the capital full of beggars, addicts and returned refugees. Already one of the worlds poorest countries, with a per capita income of $1,800, Afghanistan still has extremely low literacy rates and poor health. In the countryside, violence has scared off investors in mining, while the U.N. reports that opium production soared by 43 percent in the past year, becoming a major source of financing for the insurgents. We are fighting on three fronts at once terrorism, poverty and corruption and they are all interconnected, Hanif Atmar, the national security adviser, said in an interview. It is not easy, but we are making progress on all three, and those who paint a grim and hopeless picture are not right. We are struggling, but we are determined. It is no longer a matter of political will. It is a matter of capacity, and that will be increased. Asked what Afghanistan needs most from the United States, Atmar made only one specific request: for expanded air combat support, which he said would transform a war effort that Afghan forces are fighting virtually alone. We appreciate your efforts to help rebuild our country, he said, but the more important thing is that we are partners fighting a common enemy. But it is not the international community that President Ashraf Ghani and his team most need to convince. The depth of domestic disillusionment is evident everywhere, from parliamentary debates to radio talk shows to corners where jobless men sit and wait. The feeling that many Afghans express is intense frustration; a sense that democracy has failed to take root, that powerful people can still get away with anything, and that leaders who pledged to solve the nations problems have become consumed by their own. Much of the criticism focuses on the president, who has never made himself popular in public and is notorious for flying off the handle in private. But the rap on the ex-World Bank official is changing. For the past two years, Ghani was accused of being too aloof and wonky, relying on a small circle of trusted technocrats rather than reaching out to other leaders in the large, ethnically diverse society. Now, by making an effort to become more political as he eyes the 2019 election, Ghani has ended up acting less presidential, cutting deals with unsavory ethnic bosses and offering senior posts to outside critics. This has sidelined Abdullah Abdullah, his embittered partner in the National Unity Government, which was brokered by the Obama administration after a fraud-plagued contest in 2014. This government is no longer about principles and reforms, it is about accommodation, said Anwar Haq Ahady, a former cabinet minister. Ghanis focus is now on reelection, and he is moving the pieces around the board, but the whole game could backfire. We need fresh elections, transparent ones, to build a democratic state, but Im getting worried the next one will be as fraudulent as the last. With elections offering the promise of deliverance or the specter of disaster, Afghans are torn between wanting to speed up the much-delayed electoral process and wanting to make sure it produces a credible result. Local and parliamentary elections were supposed to be held by November, but that seems unlikely. Experts are debating proposals to introduce electronic voter ID cards, ballots and result tabulations, but that could take many months. Meanwhile, as the sense of disappointment deepens and the prospect of another violent spring looms, more and more Afghans are looking for an exit. Officials have sent dependents abroad, business executives are buying property in Turkey, and students exchange tips with cousins overseas on how to get visas to Germany or sneak into Canada. Some, though, say they are committed to staying and pushing for reforms. Nadery, for one, says he is confident of Ghanis support and invigorated by the strong demand from ordinary Afghans for a responsive, honest government. The public has high expectations, and Afghan troops are sacrificing their lives in battle, but if we cant make our institutions serve the people, those sacrifices are in vain, Nadery said. Already flooded with calls from prominent people seeking favors, he is practicing various polite ways of saying no. Read more Afghanistan wooed a fugitive warlord, aiming to lure the Taliban, too. Now the deal is stuck. There is nothing here but dust: What Afghan deportees face after years as refugees in Pakistan How long do we have to die? Terrorist attacks in Kabul put a human face on violence in a remote war. Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news Russia on Friday condemned a U.S. missile strike against Syrian government forces as an attack on its ally and said it was suspending an agreement to minimize the risk of in-flight incidents between U.S. and Russian aircraft operating over Syria. Even as Russian officials expressed hope that the strike against Syrian President Bashad al-Assads forces would not lead to an irreversible breakdown in U.S. relations with Moscow, the Kremlins decision to suspend the 2015 memorandum of understanding on the air operations immediately raised tensions in the skies over Syria. [Assad condemns U.S. missile strike as arrogant aggression ] President Vladimir Putins spokesman said the risk of confrontation between aerial assets of the U.S.-led coalition and Russia has significantly increased after President Trump ordered the launch of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian air base in retaliation for a chemical attack that killed scores of civilians. Later Friday, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that it has officially informed the United States that it is suspending its obligations under the memorandum at midnight. (Sarah Parnass,Julio Negron/The Washington Post) Under the pact, the two countries have traded information about flights by a U.S.-led coalition targeting the Islamic State and Russian planes operating in Syria in support of the Assad government. Moscow was taking its action, the Defense Ministry said, because it sees the U.S. strike as a grave violation of the memorandum. During a special U.N. Security Council session on the airstrikes Friday, Russias United Nations envoy condemned what he called an illegitimate action by the United States. The consequences of this for regional and international stability could be extremely serious, Deputy Ambassador Vladimir Safronkov said. The U.S. has often talked about the need to combat international terrorism, he said, yet it attacked the Syrian air force, which he claimed is leading that fight in Syria. Its not difficult to imagine how much the spirits of terrorists have been raised by this action from the United States, Safronkov said. Earlier in the session, the British representative had mocked Russia, saying that Assad is making a fool of his backers by committing war crimes and rebuffing Moscows effort to negotiate. Russia sits here today humiliated by its failure to bring to heel a puppet dictator, said Matthew Rycroft, Britains ambassador to the United Nations. The session was requested by Bolivia, which wanted to hold it behind closed doors. The United States, which holds the rotating leadership of the Security Council this month, instead insisted that the discussions be open. 1 of 14 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad Photos show U.S. missile strikes in Syria View Photos U.S. forces launched more than 50 cruise missiles at a Syrian military airfield in the first direct assault on Bashar al-Assads government. Caption U.S. forces launched more than 50 cruise missiles at a Syrian military airfield. April 7, 2017 The USS Porter launches a Tomahawk missile in the Mediterranean Sea. The operation was authorized by the Trump administration in retaliation for a chemical attack killing scores of civilians. Ford Williams/U.S. Navy via Associated Press Wait 1 second to continue. The council has set aside for now a separate discussion of whether to condemn the Assad government for Tuesdays chemical attack. Russia is expected to veto a resolution supported by the United States, Britain and France. Putins spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, earlier claimed that the Syrian government had no chemical weapons and dismissed the Trump administrations explanation as an excuse to enter the conflict. President Putin considers the American strikes against Syria an aggression against a sovereign government in violations of the norms of international law, and under a far-fetched pretext, Peskov told reporters. This step by Washington is causing significant damage to Russian-American relations, which are already in a deplorable state. Of course, Syria is our ally, considering that we are helping the Syrian armed forces at the Syrian leadership's request, Peskov said. The strike creates the possibility of a direct confrontation with Russia, which has forces on the ground and advanced air-defense systems capable of shooting down U.S. aircraft and missiles. The so-called "deconfliction" channel that Russia suspended was established in 2015 to prevent mishaps, including collisions, after Russia deployed aircraft to a base along Syrias Mediterranean coast and began carrying out strikes on behalf of the Syrian regime. It calls for a U.S. colonel at an air base in Qatar and a Russian colonel to man a phone hotline and inform each other of where their countries planes are flying. The arrangement has been far from ideal, however, and U.S. military officials have called in recent months for an expansion of deconfliction talks as Russian and U.S. military aircraft fly in increasingly close quarters over Syrian cities such as Manbij. [Why U.S. generals want elevated talks with Russia over aerial collision fears] Senior U.S. military officials have said they have resorted to flying advanced F-22 Raptor jets at the top of the stack formations used to carry out airstrikes in part because they can better keep track of incoming aircraft and direct other coalition planes to shift out of the way of incoming Russian aircraft. Two U.S. military officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Friday morning that they were aware of Russias stated intention to suspend the channel, but it was not yet clear how losing it may affect air operations. The Pentagon was still assessing the situation, they said. One said Friday that communication through the hotline has continued, including after the attack. Theres someone who is on the other end who is talking to us, one official said. Before the missile strike, a Pentagon spokesman, Capt. Jeff Davis, said in a statement, U.S. military planners took precautions to minimize risk to Russian or Syrian personnel located at the airfield. There have been no reports of Russian casualties in Fridays strike, but Syrian officials claimed that civilians, including children, were killed in the attack. In Moscow on Friday, a Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, said Russia would help strengthen Syrian air defenses to protect the most sensitive Syrian infrastructure facilities. Konashenkov said the attack destroyed a warehouse, classrooms, a cafeteria, six Mig-23 fighter jets that were being repaired and a radar station. The runway and other aircraft were not affected, he said. Therefore, the military effect of the massive American missile strike on the Syrian air base was extremely small, he said. Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for Russias Foreign Ministry, also dismissed the U.S. assertion that the attacks were a response to this weeks chemical weapon attack in northern Syria, which left scores dead in a village in Idlib province one of the last strongholds of anti-Assad factions. It is obvious that the strike by U.S. cruise missiles was prepared well in advance, Zakharova said on Russian state television. It is clear to any specialist that the decision to deliver the strikes was made in Washington before the Idlib events, which were simply used as a pretext for demonstrating force. Putins spokesman said the Russian president considered the attack an attempt to distract attention from the heavy civilian casualties caused by a U.S.-backed offensive to capture the northern Iraqi city of Mosul from the Islamic State group. Under a 2013 Russia-U.S. agreement, Syria agreed to dismantle its chemical weapons stockpile. A U.N. mission in 2014 confirmed that most of Assads declared chemical arsenal had been eliminated. But this weeks attack in Idlib raised questions about whether some arms were held back. [How the Middle East responded to the U.S. strikes on Syria] Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who is due to arrive in Moscow next week, said the attack on Idlib meant that clearly, Russia has failed in its responsibility to deliver on that commitment. Putin carefully orchestrated a peace process that brought together Turkey and Iran regional powers that have backed opposing sides in the civil war. At the same time, the chemical weapons attack suggested that Assad and his Iranian allies have no intention of being party to a power-sharing agreement with the opposition, indicating that Putins deal is all but dead. U.S.-Russian relations are at their lowest point in decades, over Moscows annexation of Crimea and its proxy war in eastern Ukraine, as well as allegations that the Kremlin interfered in the U.S. presidential election last year. Following the election of Trump, Russian leaders expressed measured optimism for an improvement in relations, but Peskov and others have said that so far there has been minimal dialogue. Dan Lamothe and David Nakamura in Washington and Andrew Roth in Moscow contributed to this report. Read more: U.S. strikes in Syria: How did we get here? The hospitals were slaughterhouses: A journey into Syrias secret torture wards Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news A minivan drives past a portrait of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus on April 7, 2017. U.S. warships fired a barrage of cruise missiles at a Syrian air base in response to what President Trump called a barbaric chemical attack he blamed on Assads government. (Louai Beshara/AFP/Getty Images) Just a few days ago, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad looked like he had little to fear. After six years of war, his army had penned what remained of Syrias armed rebellion into shrinking swaths of territory, and European leaders were preparing for a conference that could fund the reconstruction of his war-shattered country. That sense of security appeared shaken Friday after the U.S. military launched a raft of missile strikes at a Syrian military airfield in retaliation for a chemical attack that killed scores of civilians on Tuesday. The images of lifeless bodies splayed across the ground drew international condemnation and dragged the Syrian armys tactics back into the spotlight. The difference between now and one week ago is that Assad and his backers had reasonably concluded they could fight their war however they wished, with impunity, and that the United States was a nuisance but not a threat, said Faysal Itani, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a think tank based in Washington. The missile strikes, authorized by President Trump, marked a significant escalation of American engagement in Syria, broadening the U.S. role beyond the fight against the Islamic State militant group. (Louisa Loveluck, Jason Aldag/The Washington Post) [Deadly nerve agent sarin used in Syria attack, Turkish Health Ministry says] The operation contrasted sharply with the Obama administrations policy toward Syrias crushing war, which was characterized by strong rhetoric but little political appetite to back words with force. Now, we can say that when the United States takes an official position on an issue . . . in this conflict, its rivals will have to factor that into their plans, Itani said. Forces backed by the Syrian government recaptured the northern city of Aleppo in December, dealing a heavy blow to what remained of the non-jihadist armed opposition and leaving Assads troops in control of every major urban center. Although international outrage has largely focused on the governments use of chemical weapons, monitoring groups say deadlier still are its crudely fashioned barrel bombs that continue to shatter opposition-held areas, despite a notional cease-fire that was meant to have taken hold across the country. The missiles struck the Shayrat air base in the western province of Homs about 3:40 a.m. local time, officials said, killing 13 people in the military facility and its surrounding areas. Syrian military aircraft are believed to have flown from the base on sorties during which they dropped a nerve agent on the opposition-controlled town of Khan Sheikhoun on Tuesday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, said a general was among those killed in the missile strikes, which caused extensive damage to more than a dozen hangars and a fuel depot. Witnesses described ambulances racing toward the airfield, where a huge fire was blazing. Video aired later Friday on Syrian state television showed several large hangars at the base, with their entrances singed by fire. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, shown speaking during an interview in Damascus on April 3, 2017, called the U.S. strikes on a Syrian military base unjust and arrogant aggression. (Sana Handout/European Pressphoto Agency) But by nightfall, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that two jets had left the air base to bomb Islamic State positions. The Pentagon could not confirm the reports, but said it would have no reason to doubt reporting from the region. [A journey into Syrias secret torture wards] Talal al-Barazi, the governor of Homs province, where the air base is located, said in a phone interview that the attack would not cause the Syrian government to change course in the war. The war on terrorism is sustained, and the protection of the people is our priority, he said. He asserted that the U.S. strike was aimed at weakening the Syrian army and allowing the Islamic State to launch attacks on areas near the air base. In unusually forceful comments, Assad called the U.S. strike unjust and arrogant aggression that would only increase his governments determination to crush militant groups in Syria, according to the state news agency. But Assads opponents appeared to scent vulnerability in the Syrian leader for the first time since Russias 2015 military intervention turned the tide of the war in the governments favor. God bless Trump, but the story does not end here, said Bayan al-Qalamumni, a former civil servant from the Damascus suburbs now living as a refugee in southern Turkey. Mahmoud al-Hadi, a spokesman for the U.S.-allied Raqqa Revolutionaries Brigade, said the strike was welcome but not sufficient. The Syrian air force, he added, should be neutralized completely, and Syrian rebels should exploit the chance of international community support to unite themselves against the regime, and terrorist and extremist groups as well. The Syrian government has denied responsibility for the chemical attack, insisting it would never use chemical weapons. That claim is now likely to be subjected to a fresh round of scrutiny. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, a global watchdog, said Thursday that it had initiated contact with Assads government and that it was investigating reports that the attack likely involved sarin, a nerve agent so deadly that it can kill in minutes. The U.S. military operation might deter the use of chemical weapons in future attacks, experts said, but it is unlikely to shift the balance of power in a war that Assads military has all but won. At the very least, though, Assad may now face increased pressure to return to a peace process that has repeatedly broken down. Despite its strong public defense of the Syrian governments actions, Moscow is now fashioning itself in the role of peacemaker, overseeing a stuttering set of negotiations between rebel groups and Assads government in the Kazakh capital, Astana. The most significant consequence of these strikes will be to push Russia to apply more pressure on the regime to join the peace talks in Astana, said Hilal Khashan, a professor at the American University of Beirut. Russia is committed to that process now, so they have to make it work. Suzan Haidamous in Beirut and Thomas Gibbons-Neff in Washington contributed to this report. Read more: Russia condemns U.S. missile strike on Syria, suspends key air agreement U.S. strikes on Syria unsettle Europes attitudes toward Trump Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news Protesters carry symbolic coffins with victim's pictures and shout anti-Russia slogans for the country's alleged role in a chemical attack in Idlib province, Syria, in front of the Russian Embassy in Ankara, Turkey, April 7. (Tumay Berkin/EPA) U.S. airstrikes against Syria unsettled Europes political landscape Friday, drawing praise from leaders who have been skeptical of President Trump and criticism from one of his closest British allies. The United States first direct attack on the Syrian government in the six-year-old civil war upended European assumptions about Trumps robustly noninterventionist approach toward Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, days after the Syrian government is believed to have used chemical weapons against civilians. [Which chemical weapon was used in Syria? ] In the Middle East, meanwhile, reaction to the intervention broke along long-standing fault lines in a region split by the Syrian conflict, with some calling it a valid response to the use of the banned weaponry and others warning that the airstrikes could further inflame the region. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande backed Trumps actions even though both leaders have been cautious about his approach to foreign policy. The use of chemical weapons demands a response, they said. 1 of 14 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad Photos show U.S. missile strikes in Syria View Photos U.S. forces launched more than 50 cruise missiles at a Syrian military airfield in the first direct assault on Bashar al-Assads government. Caption U.S. forces launched more than 50 cruise missiles at a Syrian military airfield. April 7, 2017 The USS Porter launches a Tomahawk missile in the Mediterranean Sea. The operation was authorized by the Trump administration in retaliation for a chemical attack killing scores of civilians. Ford Williams/U.S. Navy via Associated Press Wait 1 second to continue. President Assad holds the sole responsibility for this development, the leaders said in a joint statement. They gave no sign that they plan to join in any anti-Assad airstrikes, nor did they say they had been invited to do so. France has been readier to confront Assad militarily than the United States in recent years: Hollande was in the middle of battle preparations in September 2013 when President Barack Obama scuttled plans to go after Assad following a sarin nerve-agent attack in a rebel-held area of the Damascus suburbs. But the unpopular Hollande will remain in office only until next month, and he is now likely to defer significant military decisions to his successor. Merkel, who leads the strongest economy in Europe, has been among the most forceful voices to push Trump to hold to a values-based foreign policy, although she has been careful not to criticize him outright. Early Friday, the U.S. military launched 59 cruise missiles from two ships stationed in the Mediterranean Sea, targeting a Syrian air base. The assault, authorized by the Trump administration, was in response to a chemical attack that killed scores of civilians, many of them children, this week in the northern Syrian province of Idlib. [Map: Where the U.S. bombed Syria] In a sign of how polarizing Trump remains in Europe, the U.S. intervention was condemned by Merkels leading challenger in Germanys upcoming election, slated for September. (Louisa Loveluck, Jason Aldag/The Washington Post) This is the time for talks not for bombs, center-left Social Democratic leader Martin Schulz wrote on Twitter. Britain also offered its backing to the U.S. military attack but said it would not be participating. We fully support what the Americans have done, British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon told the BBC. Fallon called on Russia to use its leverage with Assad to end the Syrian war, and said that we will all be working much harder to achieve a political settlement. Fallon said that the United States had not asked Britain to participate in the strikes and that any British decision to get involved would require the consent of Parliament. He suggested that the government would not seek that approval. In 2013, the House of Commons blocked British participation in an anticipated U.S.-led air campaign against Assad, a move that contributed to Obamas decision to nix those plans. But Trumps biggest backer in Britain populist firebrand Nigel Farage broke with the U.S. president on the latters first major military decision. In a tweet, Farage said that many Trump voters will be worried about this military intervention. Where will it end? [Russia condemns U.S. missile strike on Syria, suspends key air agreement] For the United States Middle East allies, Fridays operation has been long awaited. Saudi Arabia a major supplier of weapons and financial assistance to several Syrian opposition groups, including some radical Islamists has long called for a no-fly zone to protect civilians. The Sunni kingdoms leaders were disappointed, even angered, by the Obama administrations decision not to carry out airstrikes after the 2013 chemical attack. On Friday, Riyadh said it fully supports the U.S. strikes and applauded Trumps decision to launch them as a brave response meant to hold the Syrian government accountable. In Turkey, home to more than 3 million Syrian refugees, officials described the airstrikes that struck the Shayrat air base in Homs, Syria, as a positive response. The air base is believed to be where chemical weapons were loaded onto aircraft that carried out the bombing in Idlib. The Syrian government claims that its airstrikes hit a rebel factory where chemical weapons were being made, releasing the toxins. But U.S. military officials are convinced that the Assad regime carried out the massacre. The destruction of Shayrat air base marks an important step to ensure that chemical and conventional attacks against the civilian population do not go unpunished, said Ibrahim Kalin, spokesman for Turkeys president. Israeli leaders also embraced the U.S. move. In both word and action, President Trump sent a strong and clear message today that the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement. Israel has long opposed Assads regime. Iran, which along with Russia has backed Assad in his attempt to crush his opponents, denounced the U.S. airstrikes. The Shiite theocracys state news agency quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman describing the attacks as dangerous, destructive and a violation of international laws to use it as an excuse to take unilateral actions. Iran strongly condemns any such unilateral strikes, spokesman Bahram Qasemi was quoted as saying. Such measures will strengthen terrorists in Syria . . . and will complicate the situation in Syria and the region. Raghavan reported from Cairo. Griff Witte in London, Ruth Eglash and William Booth in Jerusalem, Erin Cunningham in Kabul, Heba Mahfouz in Cairo and Louisa Loveluck in Beirut contributed to this report. Read more Syria outraged over U.S. strikes, labeling them an aggression aiding terrorists U.S. strike against Syria: How did we get here? Trumps GOP antagonists support assault in Syria Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news For President Trump, choosing targets and launching cruise missiles to punish the Syrian regime for using chemical weapons this week may have been a relatively clear-cut decision. The big problem is what comes next. The military had been preparing options for a strike against President Bashar al-Assad since well before 2013, when the Syrian dictator killed more than 1,000 of his own people in a devastating nerve gas attack. A chemical attack Tuesday blamed on the Assad regime killed scores of civilians and triggered a response from the Pentagon, which launched approximately 50 cruise missiles at a Syrian military airfield late on Thursday. [Why these missiles are the most likely option for a strike in Syria] The basic questions havent changed, said Phil Gordon, a senior official in the Obama White House who took part in many earlier debates about how to punish Assad. Is there a set of military strikes that you can use to degrade the Syrians ability to deliver chemical weapons and, if you do that, what do they do in response? (The Washington Post) The biggest difference between 2013, when President Barack Obama last threatened airstrikes against Assad, and today is that the risks of widening the conflict are much greater. The initial American war plans to punish Assad in 2013 were aimed largely at his chemical weapons capability, said former U.S. officials involved in those deliberations. A direct strike on the Assad regimes chemical weapons storage facilities was seen as too risky to civilians, because it would have produced a plume of noxious gas. [Which chemical weapon was used in Syria? Heres what investigators know.] Instead military planners drew up a target list that included Assads chemical weapons units and the aircraft and artillery that the regime would need to deliver the ordnance. The intent was to strike the various chemical weapons units, said a former U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss military planning. We had postured our intelligence units to give us bomb damage assessments and if we didnt get the effect we were looking for, we would have hit them again. The biggest difference that Trump and his commanders confront now is the presence of Russian troops on the battlefield and Russian air defense systems that are capable of shooting down U.S. planes. Today, Russian troops are intermingled with Syrian forces, and any strike on a Syrian military target could also produce Russian military casualties. Retired Gen. John Allen, who coordinated the campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria during the Obama administration, said that the military strikes could have had a decisive impact on the war had they been launched in 2013. He described Obamas decision not to strike as devastating. It is much harder now, Allen said. The United States has to ask itself a question: How angry do we want to be on this issue? Are we enraged enough morally that we are ready to take action even with the possibility of dead Russians? 1 of 14 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad The scene in Syria after a chemical attack killed dozens View Photos At least 72 are reported dead after a chemical attack on a town in northern Syria. Caption The White House said it had evidence of preparations for another chemical attack in Syria and warned the Syrian regime against it. Earlier this year, dozens died after a chemical attack in a northern town. April 4, 2017 A man is helped by Syrian Civil Defense workers following a toxic gas attack in Khan Sheikhoun, a rebel-held town in the northwestern Idlib province. Mohamed Al-Bakour/AFP via Getty Images Wait 1 second to continue. [Trump and his America First philosophy face first moral quandary in Syria] The other big worries are the Syrian and Russian air defense systems that have not targeted U.S. planes because the American aircraft are largely focused on fighting the Islamic State, a common enemy of the United States and the Syrian regime. Both the Syrians and Russians can act as a spoiler, said Andrew Exum, a former senior defense official in the Obama administration. American and coalition aircraft have flown around and through their air defense systems for the last two years. If you launched a strike against the regime, it would have every excuse to start lighting up coalition planes with antiaircraft systems. At a minimum, such a move by the Syrians and Russians could spook some U.S. coalition partners and cause them to pull out of the fight, Exum said. If U.S. aircraft were shot down or forced to fire back at the Syrian and Russian radar, the United States could get pulled into the middle of Syrias messy civil war. Such an outcome would not only put American lives at further risk, it would make the U.S. war against the Islamic State, which Trump has declared his top foreign policy priority, far more difficult. Trump could mitigate some of those risks by assuring the Russians that the strikes are designed solely to punish Assad for using chemical weapons and not to tip the balance in the broader civil war. It is also possible that the strikes could give the United States added leverage to broker a compromise with the Russians that would end the civil war, some analysts said. The political message a strike would send is that you are using an approach that is completely different than the previous administration, said Andrew Tabler, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute. Such a move would probably induce anxiety inside the Syrian regime that the United States could use to its advantage. Creating uncertainty and being unpredictable might get you a lot more than what the Obama administration was willing to do, which was nothing, Tabler said. Even as they acknowledged the big risks of a strike and their concerns about Trumps erratic nature, some Obama administration officials urged action. If you dont act, you are effectively telling Assad and the regimes backers that you can use as much sarin as you want, said Gordon, who served as a senior director for the Middle East in the Obama White House. Assad tested Obama. Now there is an early test for Trump. Read more: Deadly nerve agent sarin used in Syria attack, Turkish Health Ministry says Trump condemns Syria chemical attack and suggests he will act Trump loves a conspiracy theory. Now his allies in the fringe media say hes falling for one in Syria. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad reacted with outrage on Friday to U.S. cruise missile strikes on a Syrian military air base, calling them an unjust and arrogant aggression that would only increase his governments determination to crush militant groups in Syria, according to the state news agency. At least 13 people were killed in the missile strikes, including five soldiers on the base and eight civilians in areas surrounding the facility, according to Talal al-Barazi, the governor of Homs province, where the air base is located. The figures could not be independently confirmed. American officials said the early morning strikes were carried out in retaliation for a chemical attack in northern Syria that killed scores of civilians earlier this week. But Syrian officials asserted that the strikes would hamper their ability to fight extremist militant groups. In a statement carried by the Syrian state news agency, Assad called the military action disgraceful and accused the United States of trying to dominate the world. Authorized by President Trump, the strikes against the Syrian government marked a significant escalation of American engagement in Syria and a broadening of the U.S. role beyond the fight against the Islamic State militant group. The missile strikes, which appeared more symbolically punitive than realistically damaging to Assads government, potentially exposed U.S. forces and proxies across the region to retaliation by Syrian allies, including Iran. [U.S. strikes Syrian military airfield] The missiles struck the Shayrat air base in the western province of Homs at about 3:40 a.m. local time, officials said. Syrian military aircraft are believed to have departed from the same base before dropping a nerve agent on the opposition-controlled town of Khan Sheikhoun on Tuesday. The base is an important hub for airstrikes on territory held by rebel groups as well as the Islamic State, according to opposition activists and Syrian officials. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, said a general was among those killed in the American attack, which caused extensive damage to more than a dozen hangars and a fuel depot. Witnesses described ambulances racing toward the airfield, where a huge fire was blazing. Video aired later Friday on Syrian state television showed several large hangars at the base, with their entrances singed black by fire. Trump said the strikes were in the vital national security interest of the United States and called on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria. And also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types. (Sarah Parnass,Julio Negron/The Washington Post) As rumors swirled Thursday of an impending American attack, there were unconfirmed reports that members of the Syrian government had spirited their families across the border to the Lebanese capital, Beirut. The Syrian government has denied responsibility for the chemical attack, insisting it would never use chemical weapons. On Syrian state television Friday, presenters condemned the mercenaries of the U.S. and their allies and praised the Syrian army for protecting the country. [Deadly nerve agent sarin used in Syria attack, Turkish Health Ministry says] Barazi, the governor of Homs province, said in a phone interview that the attack would not cause the Syrian government to change course in the six-year civil war. The war on terrorism is sustained, and the protection of the people is our priority, he said. He asserted that the U.S. strikes were aimed at weakening the Syrian army and allowing the Islamic State to launch attacks on areas near the air base. Syrian opponents of Assad, many of whom have spent years prodding the United States to intervene militarily in the conflict, praised the missile strikes. Some called on Trump to go further. God bless Trump, but the story does not end here, said Bayan al-Qalamumni, a former civil servant from the Damascus suburbs now living as a refugee in southern Turkey. The Syrian people have tasted too much bitterness to be happy that one airport was struck. The criminal must be brought to justice before the entire world, he said. Capt. Mohanad Jnied, head of external relations for Jaish al-Nasr, a rebel group, wrote on Twitter that the American airstrike was limited militarily but represents a significant turnaround in how America and the world will treat the Syrian people and their revolution. Mahmoud al-Hadi, a spokesman for the U.S.-allied Raqqa Revolutionaries Brigade, said the strikes were welcome but not sufficient. The Syrian air force, he added, should be neutralized completely, and Syrian rebels should exploit the chance of international community support to unite themselves against the regime and terrorist and extremist groups as well. Habib reported from Stockholm. Suzan Haidamous in Beirut contributed to this report. Read more: Russia condemns U.S. missile strike on Syria, suspends key air agreement A journey into Syrias secret torture wards A rebel push on Damascus shows that Syrias war is far from over Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news Rupert Cornwell, an award-winning British journalist who covered financial scandals at the Vatican, the fall of the Soviet Union and the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States and who was the half brother of renowned spy novelist John le Carre, died March 31 at a Washington hospital. He was 71. The cause was colon cancer, said his wife, Susan Cornwell, a journalist with the Reuters news agency. Mr. Cornwell began his career in Europe with the Financial Times and then joined the London-based Independent newspaper at its founding in 1986 as its Moscow correspondent. It was an exciting and hopeful time, Mr. Cornwell wrote March 2 in one of his final columns for the Independent. The young and charismatic Mikhail Gorbachev had become leader two years before, with the explicit mission of revitalising the country after a succession of geriatric leaders and the age of stagnation over which they presided. Instead of a revival of the Soviet Union, Mr. Cornwell found himself chronicling its collapse, as voices for democratic changes began to be heard. His coverage won him Britains Foreign Correspondent of the Year award in 1989. Mr. Cornwells journalistic approach, combining deeply sourced reporting with a confident analytical voice, helped define the tone of the fledgling Independent. (Since 2016, it has been published only in an online format.) Rupert understood in real time the meaning of the events he was covering, Andreas Whittam Smith, the papers founding editor, said in a statement released by the Independent. He knew the relevant history so he could provide illuminating context. And he wrote an impeccable English prose. In 1991, Mr. Cornwell came to Washington for the first of two stints for the Independent. After four years in London from 1997 to 2001, he returned to Washington, where he spent the rest of his career. On Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists flew hijacked jetliners into the Pentagon and New Yorks World Trade Center, Mr. Cornwell worked at breakneck speed to compose a 2,200-word story summarizing the attack and its potential reverberations in the future. You struggle for historical comparison, he wrote. The closest surely, in the American experience, was Pearl Harbor in 1941, another sneak attack that sent thousands to their death, and briefly overwhelmed those who had to cope with it. But Pearl Harbor happened on a remote Pacific island, not at the very nerve centres of US government and business. And just like the Japanese attack on Hawaii, this was an act of war but a war conducted by unseen assassins, who have inflicted a shattering blow. Earlier in his career, when Mr. Cornwell was based in Rome for the Financial Times, he happened on a case of international intrigue that could have been taken from the pages of one of his half brothers novels. In 1982, the body of Italys most powerful private banker, Roberto Calvi, was found hanging from Londons Blackfriars Bridge. In Gods Banker, a book first published in 1983, Mr. Cornwell explored the financial scandal surrounding Calvis bank, which had deep links to the Vatican and Italian political figures and was billions of dollars in debt. Among other details, Mr. Cornwell suggested that Calvi may have been murdered, possibly in a ritual fashion. The banker belonged to a secretive Masonic lodge whose members called themselves frati neri, or black friars. Were there not masonic trimmings to his death the stones in the pockets, the choice of the bridge of Blackfriars, Mr. Cornwell wrote in his book, the washing of Mr. Calvis feet by the river tide? Calvis death was initially ruled a suicide, but in 2005 23 years after he died five people were accused of killing him and put on trial. All were acquitted. The case remains unsolved. Rupert Howard Cornwell was born Feb. 22, 1946, in London. His father, Ronnie Cornwell, was a charming con man who had been imprisoned for embezzlement. He saw no paradox between being on the wanted list for fraud and sporting a gray topper in the owners enclosure at Ascot, his son David Cornwell, better known as John le Carre, wrote in a 2016 memoir. A reception at Claridges to celebrate his second marriage was interrupted while he persuaded two Scotland Yard detectives to put off arresting him until the party was over and meanwhile, come in and join the fun, which they duly did. Rupert Cornwell, nearly 15 years younger than David Cornwell, was from a later marriage that ended in divorce. His mother worked for the BBC. Mr. Cornwell graduated in 1968 from the University of Oxford, where he studied modern Greek. He worked for Reuters for a few years before joining the Financial Times, which assigned him to bureaus in Paris, Rome and Bonn, then the capital of West Germany. He became proficient in multiple languages, including Greek, German, French, Italian and Russian. His first marriage, to Angela Doria, ended in divorce. Survivors include his wife of 29 years, the former Susan Smith, of Washington; a son from his first marriage, Sean Cornwell of London; a son from his second marriage, Stas Cornwell of Alexandria, Va.; a sister, actress Charlotte Cornwell of Devonshire, England; two half brothers, David Cornwell (le Carre) of London and Cornwall, England, and Tony Cornwell, a retired advertising executive, of Seattle; and two granddaughters. Mr. Cornwell continued to write for the Independent until shortly before his death. His columns on the political rise of President Trump had a particularly sharp edge. Theodore Roosevelt was right when he pointed to the bully pulpit power of the office, Mr. Cornwell wrote in November. The soon to be 45th president most certainly is a bully. But for the pulpit part to work, you need a clear majority of the country behind you. Which, right now at least, is manifestly not the case with Donald Trump. Swedens capital became just the latest major European city to transform into a scene of vehicle-borne carnage Friday as a stolen beer truck slammed into a crowd of pedestrians outside an upscale shopping center, killing four in an assault that the prime minister denounced as a terrorist attack. The driver apparently escaped the smoky and blood-streaked scene, police said. Throughout the afternoon and evening, he was the subject of an intensive manhunt as helicopters searched from the skies, heavily armed officers were deployed through normally tranquil neighborhoods and security at borders was tightened. For hours, the citys transit system was shut down and streets in the central district were sealed off. Police said Saturday they had arrested a man who is likely the driver of the truck, according to the Associated Press. A person has been formally identified as a suspect of terrorist offenses by murder and should face a pre-trial custody hearing before midday Tuesday or be released, Swedish prosector Hans Ihrman told AP. In addition to the four people killed, police said that at least 15 had been injured. Authorities did not speculate as to the attackers motives and offered no details about the man they had arrested. But Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said that the midafternoon rampage had been an act of terrorism and that the government would do whatever it takes for the public to feel safe. Terrorists want us to be afraid, to not live our lives normally, he said in an evening news conference. Terrorists can never defeat Sweden, never. Behind the tough words, however, was an acknowledgment from security officials that attacks like Fridays so similar in means and execution to other assaults carried out with vehicles over the past year in the French city of Nice, and in Berlin and London are nearly impossible to stop. There is no way to really prevent this kind of thing, said Stefan Hector, an official with Swedens national police. Until Friday, Sweden had been spared the sort of mass-casualty attacks that have afflicted other countries across Europe in recent years. The attack was the first major apparent terrorist strike in Stockholm, a peaceful city set among peninsulas and islands near the Baltic Sea. It underscores a growing vulnerability that Sweden had long ignored, said Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism researcher at the Swedish Defense University. Sweden had been somewhat like an ostrich, Ranstorp said. People were reluctant to talk about it and admit there was a problem. That has changed recently as the country has become more aware of the threat, he said. Just in the past week, police had even conducted training on a scenario much like the one that unfolded in reality Friday. Previous attacks in Europe have been claimed by the Islamic State terrorist group. Although the groups involvement in such attacks has often been tenuous at best, authorities in several cases have said they think the attackers were inspired by extremist Islamist propaganda. 1 of 10 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad The scene in Stockholm after a truck crashed into a store, killing four people View Photos An apparently stolen truck crashed into a department store, killing four people in what the countrys prime minister called a terror attack. Caption An apparent stolen truck crashed into a department store, killing at least three people in what the countrys prime minister called a terror attack. April 7, 2017 A truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm, Sweden. Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images Wait 1 second to continue. Ranstorp said that Sweden has a problem with Islamist extremism and far-right extremism, and that Fridays attack will inflame tensions no matter who was responsible. Now its not something far away, in Nice or in Berlin. Its come home, he said. That will have consequences. The mood in Stockholm on Friday night remained tense even as trains and subways resumed their normal schedules, with police warning the public to be vigilant. The arrest of the man later identified as the driver followed the distribution of a grainy surveillance photo showing a man in a hoodie. We have arrested a person who is of interest to us. We also released an image of a person we were looking for. The person arrested matches this description, said Jan Evensson of the Stockholm police. But police are still on the alert. The assailants rampage apparently began with an idling truck. Rose-Marie Hertzman, a spokeswoman for the Swedish brewery company Spendrups, said the truck used in the attack was stolen from one of the firms drivers about 2:30 p.m. about a half-hour before the rampage. The driver was unloading, and a man came running and took the truck and drove away, she said. [How vehicles became a tool of terrorism] Minutes later, the force of the truck crashing into the upscale Ahlens City retail hub sparked a fire and sent smoke billowing above one of the citys premier shopping districts. One witness described seeing a woman with a severed foot and people either running in panic or staying to help amid pools of blood. Gahangir Sarvari, 56, an Iranian refugee, was about 50 yards from the attack and said he initially thought it was a traffic accident. Then he saw the trail of carnage, which included a young woman whose legs were severed. I can never forget when we made eye contact, he said. I was screaming at people why they didnt call the police and screaming at people who were taking photos with their phones. I didnt know what to do. The attack occurred on a mild spring afternoon, when the citys central district is customarily buzzing with shoppers, office workers and bicyclists. Its impact quickly rippled across the city. Shoppers were locked inside stores after businesses triggered their automatic security systems. Police evacuated Stockholms central train station and shut down the subway. In a sign of the expanding dragnet, Swedish authorities requested limits on traffic flow to better scan vehicles crossing the Oresund Bridge connecting Sweden and Denmark and the route into the continent with its many open borders under the European Unions free-movement treaty. The attack comes just a little over two weeks after a man plowed an SUV into a crowd of pedestrians on a London bridge, then stabbed a police officer at the gates of Parliament. That assailant killed five, including a woman who died Thursday of injuries she received when she was knocked off the bridge and into the River Thames. Last year, trucks were also used in deadly rampages through crowds at a Berlin Christmas market and along Nices waterfront during Frances Bastille Day in July. As news of the Stockholm attack spread, there were expressions of resolve from across Europe but few concrete ideas for how to stop the wave of deadly assaults. We stand in solidarity with the people of #Sweden, wrote European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on Twitter. An attack on any of our Member States is an attack on us all. Witte reported from London. Brian Murphy in Washington and Karla Adam in London contributed to this report. Read more: Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news Andreea Cristea, 31, of Romania, with her boyfriend, Andrei Burnaz. Cristea died of injuries sustained in a London terrorist attack last month. (London Metropolitan Police via AP) A 31-year-old woman who fell into the during the London terrorist attack has died, London police said Friday. Andreea Cristea and her boyfriend, Andrei Burnaz, were crossing Westminster Bridge on March 22 when the British attacker Khalid Masood plowed his rental car through a throng of pedestrians. Her death brings the number of victims who died as a result of the attack to five. Masood was fatally shot by officers outside the Houses of Parliament. Cristea, an architect from Romania, fell into the river during the deadly rampage, in which Masoods vehicle mounted the sidewalk and reached speeds of 76 mph. She was pulled out of the river alive and taken to a hospital, where she was diagnosed with a blood clot in the brain. She died Thursday afternoon after her life support was withdrawn. Her boyfriend, who has a broken foot, has been released from the hospital. The Romanian couple were in London celebrating Burnazs birthday. He had been planning to propose to Cristea on the day of the attack. In a statement released Friday, her family and Burnaz described Cristea as a shining ray of light that will forever keep on shining in our hearts. After fighting for her life for over two weeks, our beloved and irreplaceable Andreea wonderful daughter, sister, partner, dedicated friend and the most unique and life loving person you can imagine was cruelly and brutally ripped away from our lives in the most heartless and spiritless way, they said in the statement, released by the London Metropolitan Police. They said that the money raised for her recovery would be donated to charity: She would not have it any other way. Sadiq Khan, Londons mayor, tweeted: Deeply saddened to hear of the death of Andreea Cristea. Londoners hold her & her loved ones in our thoughts today. Video footage taken during the attack showed Cristea falling from Westminster Bridge. Utah resident Kurt Cochran, 54, and Londoners Aysha Frade, 44, and Leslie Rhodes, 75, died after being struck on the bridge. Keith Palmer, a 48-year-old police officer, was fatally stabbed inside the gates of Parliament. (Jason Aldag,Victoria Walker/The Washington Post) Read more What we know about the victims of the London attack Four killed in assault near Londons Houses of Parliament In the aftermath of the London attack, Britons praise their strict gun laws Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news The Papua New Guinea government of Prime Minister Peter ONeill is moving to intensify its massive police and military operation against villagers in Hela province, where the $US19 billion ExxonMobil liquefied natural gas (LNG) is based. In January, the government deployed 150 troops and police near the ExxonMobil site in response to what it claimed was a spike in tribal violence that had left dozens of people dead. Security forces were ordered to seize and destroy illegal weapons after police raised concerns about a build-up of high-powered guns. Police Commissioner Gari Baki proposed last month that the government recruit 500 retired ex-servicemen to help enforce law and order in Hela. Baki said the former police, soldiers and warders would be on a six-year contract to train new police officers. Baki announced the plan while overseeing the destruction of over 500 firearms, mostly home-made, surrendered by locals during an amnesty that started in January. Hela Governor Francis Potape admitted that the amnesty, which was extended twice into March, was largely unsuccessful. Police commander Samson Kua told the media on March 7 that hundreds of weapons still remain unaccounted for. Security forces would be ordered to take tough measures to recoup the guns and arrest the owners, Kua declared. The actual purpose of the police-military buildup, which will involve 300 people, including public servants from the law and justice sector, is to protect the giant LNG project, which has been subjected to protests and blockades by traditional landowners. Chief Secretary Isaac Lupari said securing the LNG site was a critical aim of the operation. Weve got a very important project that is located there, he said. It supports the economy, employs thousands of Papua New Guineans, so weve got to restore law and order. Construction of the ExxonMobil operation was originally bankrolled by the US Export-Import Bank. The project is viewed as economically vital by the major Wall Street shareholders that have backed it. In February, the Singapore-based InterOil Corporation announced a $US2.5 billion deal approving ExxonMobils acquisition of the company. It includes interests in six licenses covering four million acres of the PNG highlands. One undeveloped gas field, Elk-Antelope, is among Asias largest and will be used to vastly expand ExxonMobils footprint. Landowners in Hela are meanwhile still waiting for royalties, development levies and dividends from the project to be paid. In February, more than 1,000 protesters from four villages gathered at the ExxonMobil site to demand the payments, estimated at over 1 billion PNG kina ($A400 million). A spokesman said the government had promised to pay royalties but never kept its promises. It was the second major protest affecting the LNG project. In August 2016, landowners blockaded the entrance to the plant and disrupted gas supplies over the lack of payments. Michael Main, a PhD student at the Australian National University, told ABC Radio on March 10 that after four years of operation and windfall profits for the projects joint venture partners, the project had delivered almost nothing of benefit to landowners. In fact, Main declared, it has, in important ways, made life worse for the majority of people living in the project area. Under the LNG Project Umbrella Benefits Sharing Agreement, signed in 2009, ExxonMobil agreed to pay 700 Kina (US$216) per hectare per year for land occupied by the project. The government promised specific additional development programs, such as road sealing and township development. Landowners were told they could expect, according to Main, the project to deliver tangible improvements to their lives and to the lives of their children. However, during the seven months Main conducted fieldwork in the province, he witnessed a life of immense frustration, disappointment and palpable anger at the absence of benefits. What I encountered was abject poverty situated alongside one of the largest natural gas extraction operations in the world, he explained. Rampant corruption is a major issue. Main cited the township of Komo, near the LNG plant, which contained a newly built hospital that stood empty with no beds, no staff and no fuel for its generator. This was one of several white elephants built at inflated prices by companies owned by PNGs politicians. Promised developments, including road sealing, power supply and schools, had all failed to materialise, Main said. The complex clan-based society of the highlands region, with a history of disputes over land and possessions that can be traced back over many generations, has been made worse, according to Main, by the frustrations of a population hammered by the broken promises of the nations largest resource development project. He described constant outbreaks of fighting by heavily armed clans, young men gunned down by military assault rifles, and many dozens of houses shot through with holes and razed to the ground. Main noted that since the beginning of the ExxonMobil project, PNGs ranking on the UNs Human Development Index has fallen by two places to 158, having been overtaken by Zimbabwe and Cameroon. Far from enhancing development indicators, the largest development project in PNGs history, has coincided with an unprecedented downgrade in the countrys development status, he concluded. PNG still has one of the lowest levels of GDP per capita in the region. Real GDP growth has dropped from 11.8 percent in 2015 to a forecast 2.8 percent in 2017. Government revenue has fallen sharply due to the precipitous decline in global commodity prices. LNG prices are less than half what they were in early 2014. The price in 2016 dropped as low as $US6.45 per million British thermal units (Btu) from a peak of $19.70 in 2014. Asias LNG market fared worse than slumping oil markets, plummeting by 67 percent. The ONeill government has responded by slashing spending, targeting health and education, by up to 40 percent. Austerity is fueling explosive social antagonisms and anti-establishment sentiment. Sections of the working class are becoming more restive over the governments vicious attacks on jobs, living standards and basic rights. Early last month, National Civil Registry office workers in Port Moresby stopped work and locked the premises, demanding overdue wages. Workers alleged that they had not been paid for over two years. The government is increasingly mobilising the police and armed forces to suppress deepening unrest. On March 28, armed police intervened to disperse a large crowd outside the provincial assembly in the East Sepik capital Wewak as Governor Michael Somare, PNGs first prime minister under formal independence in 1975, was preparing to retire from official politics. The crowd had gathered to demand payments for various projects, activities and past loyalty to Somare. The author also recommends: Papua New Guinea troops to protect huge Exxon-Mobil gas project [19 December 2016] Papua New Guinea nurses union calls off nationwide strike [15 September 2016] The way forward after the PNG police shootings [20 June 2016] Last summer, Philadelphia made history by becoming the first major city to implement what so many states and cities have long considered: a soda tax. The sugary drink tax has already had an impact: It has cut soda sales in half , and PepsiCos Philadelphia headquarters have downsized after soda... Last summer, Philadelphia made history by becoming the first major city to implement what so many states and cities have long considered: a soda tax. The sugary drink tax has already had an impact: It has cut soda sales in half, and PepsiCos Philadelphia headquarters have downsized after soda purchases plummeted. Now Big Soda is fighting back. The American Beverage Association and the Pennsylvania Food Merchants Association presented oral arguments contesting the legality of the tax on Wednesday in a Pennsylvania appeals court in Pittsburgh. One of the arguments Big Soda has made is that the beverage tax conflicts with the Pennsylvania sales tax, according to NPR. The opposing side argued that the tax is not duplicative because it is distributors not consumers who bear the brunt of the tax. However, to compensate for the extra taxes being levied on their product distribution, retailers are often required to increase prices. The tax has also impacted local businesses: "Overall, my business is down by 15 percent an unsustainable drop in an industry with tight margins," Jeff Brown, a franchise owner of six ShopRite supermarkets in Philadelphia told NPR. "This tax has also forced me to cut thousands of hours each week from my union employees. During the court proceedings, the city will hold off on expanding many of the programs that the city has proposed will be funded by the tax revenue the measure currently funds 2,000 pre-K spots for poorer families, but a planned expansion of that program will not go forward. Empire actor Morocco Omari was arrested this week in Chicago and accused of misdemeanor domestic battery after a woman claimed he shoved her to the ground, police tell PEOPLE. Omaris publicist dismissed the allegation as blatantly false and said he was extremely confident that the actor will be completely vindicated in this matter. Chicago police say they responded to a call about 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday, where a 24-year-old woman told officers that Omari had allegedly pushed her down to the ground multiple times during a verbal argument. The woman said she suffered scratches to her chest and neck, according to police. She was identified by police as Omaris girlfriend, though his publicist disputes that. Omari, 46, was arrested Wednesday and charged with misdemeanor domestic battery, police said. They said he was scheduled to appear in court on Thursday, but his publicist tells PEOPLE that Omari has not appeared before a judge to enter a plea. Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter. In a statement, Omaris publicist said the actor would like to thank his fans for their support, adding, [Omari] was brought up by his mother and grandmother and is the proud father of two minor daughters. He has long been an advocate of anti-violence against women. He has never displayed any hint of violence toward women and never will, the publicist continued. Violence against women simply isnt in Omaris DNA. Omari plays Empires Tariq Cousins, an FBI agent and the half-brother of Terrence Howards Lucious Lyon. He has previously appeared on Homeland and Person of Interest, among other series. This article was originally published on PEOPLE.com President Trump announced Thursday that the United States had attacked a Syrian air base with cruise missiles. These air strikes were in retaliation for this weeks gruesome chemical weapons attack against innocent Syria civilians. According to the president, the targeted military strike was on an air base in Syria where 59 Tomahawk missiles were launched. Trump addressed the media about the airstrikes from his weekend home at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Trump said of the airstrike, It is in the vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. As with any Trump announcement, many celebrities took to social media to share their thoughts. Comedian Patton Oswalt shared photos of Syrian President Bashar Assad and Trump with his thoughts on what they should be responsible for. These two damaged creeps are committing mass murder and they shouldn't even be allowed to own fish as pets. pic.twitter.com/BZFGCNxXNh Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) April 7, 2017 Kerry Washington always has a response to political scandals on her ABC show, but the normally well-spoken actress had trouble coming up with words to describe her feelings on the airstrikes. Girls creator Lena Dunham has been a longtime critic of the president, but her reaction was focused on peace and safety. Hadnt seen the news. The only thing to tweet right now is a prayer for peace and safety. Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) April 7, 2017 Finally, Cher showed off her strong emoji game while also voicing her displeasure we think. Story continues ????Bombing Syria Will,???????? Stop Assad Gassing His Ppl,BUT????Has NO Strategy,Or,Diplomacy TURKEY & RUSSIA WINNERS????IN HORNETS NEST,OVER HIS???? Cher (@cher) April 7, 2017 Yahoo Movies took you live as father and son Carl Reiner and Rob Reiner were honored during the eighth annual TCM Classic Film Festival with a hand- and footprint ceremony at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood on April 7. Watch a replay of it right here. Iggy Azalea and Nick Young are selling the home they once shared; check it out here: Read more from Yahoo Celebrity: An actor on the television show Empire has been arrested on a misdemeanor domestic battery charge in Chicago. In a news release, police say 46-year-old Morocco Omari was arrested Wednesday afternoon. They say officers were called to the Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side by a 24-year-old woman who identified herself as Omari's girlfriend. She told officers Omari pushed her to the ground several times during an argument, causing scratches on her neck and chest. According to the Cook County Sheriff's Office, Omari was scheduled to appear in court on Thursday. A representative for Omari did not immediately return a call for comment. On the show that's filmed in Chicago, Omari plays FBI Agent Tariq Cousins. He's the half-brother of Lucious Lyon, who's played by Terrence Howard. Vast, impenetrable reams of aphoristic waffle are spouted by the characters in Salt and Fire, but minutes from the end of Werner Herzogs thoroughly peculiar new narrative outing, the protagonist finally, plainly speaks for the audience. Are you kidding me? she yells in bewildered response to the last of several random story swerves in the film, though its tempting to imagine the camera simply caught actress Veronica Ferress spontaneous reaction to the bonkers script. Either way, by this point, shes only half as perplexed as most viewers will be by this awkwardly shoehorned fusion of ecological thriller, ideological romance and meditative landscape ode only the last mode of which appears to have the veteran auteurs full attention. Its no surprise, given Herzogs recent dedication to the documentary form, that Bolivias Salar de Uyuni salt flats should emerge as the true star of Salt and Fire, despite the earnest efforts of Ferres and Michael Shannon. As in 2009s My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?, the latter proves he has a measure of the gonzo intensity that once made Herzog and Klaus Kinski kindred spirits, though the late, tortured German thesp never had to wrestle with material quite this ragged. Immediately preceding Herzogs inert, long-languishing Nicole Kidman vehicle Queen of the Desert in U.S. theaters despite quietly premiering a year later on the festival circuit Salt and Fire likewise does little to suggest the helmers hiatus from narrative filmmaking between 2009 and 2015 was a restorative one. Even the virtues of both films are ones more satisfyingly expanded in his recent nonfiction work: a poetic engagement with the physical world, articulated in the directors singularly eccentric rhetoric. When Shannons corporate mystic figure goes off on a loopy cod-philosophical rant (Is it possible theres something all-pervading around us that your data cant analyze, that only prophets and birds can express?), its no slight to the actor to say such plum-purple nonsense would sound slightly more persuasive in Herzogs characteristically halting Teutonic tones. Well before proceedings turn quite so florid, however, the first third of Salt and Fire unspools on surprisingly straightforward genre terms, setting viewers up for a mundanely efficient hostage drama right down to the done-to-death ploy of opening mid-crisis before a mostly redundant this is how we got here flashback. Environmental scientist Prof. Laura Somerfeld (Ferres) is called to Bolivia on a high-stakes U.N. research mission, concerning the ecological disaster of a parched lake swallowed by El Diablo Blanco, a rapidly expanding salt flat. Joining her are two male colleagues (Volker Zack Michalowski and a neurotically mugging Gael Garcia Bernal) so extraneous to proceedings that even the film tires of them halfway through, sidelining the men with a grisly case of diarrhea. Points for redressing decades of cinematic gender imblance, then, if not for tidiness of storytelling. Once they arrive at a strangely deserted airport, viewers will pick up that an abduction is under way even before the black balaclavas and machine guns are whipped out. Herzog stages key moments of tensions and panic with some of his old urgency, even as his script adapted from Tom Bissells short story Aral remains stubbornly pedantic, laden with lumpy exposition (of the are you not blessed with a beautiful eight-year-old daughter variety) and self-evident exclamations. So this was all a plan from the beginning! Somerfeld cries, not exactly making excessive demands on her professorial smarts. Less obvious is the precise motivation behind the kidnapping, information that grows only more elusive once the interventions mastermind, Matt Riley (Shannon), reveals himself. A shadowy but supposedly seductive CEO of a consortium known, helpfully enough, as The Consortium, his tangled explanation of the situation only carries the film into a radically contrasting second act. Politics and life-or-death practicalities fall by the wayside as Riley and a curiously rapt Somerfeld engage in a grandiloquent verbal volleyball match on matters of love, communication and anamorphic art. This mealy-mouthed mini-chamber piece is mercifully short-lived; hazy near-dream logic dictates a segue into spartan survival drama, with Somerfeld stranded in El Diablo Blanco with two winsome Bolivian boys for company. Only in this baffling but beautiful interlude does Salt and Fire achieve a kind of grace, thanks largely to cinematographer Peter Zeitlingers understandable love affair with the sweeping, swan-white, naturally tessellated expanses of the salt flats; Ferres performance, hitherto stiff and flustered, gains an earthier physicality in line with her bleakly rapturous surroundings. (Even Ernst Reijsegers quivering score, parts of which sound like theyve been played on a single squeaky floorboard, relaxes in the salty, sunny glow.) Just as the film appears to drawing to a strange, peacefully elemental close, however, Herzog breaks the silence with a manic reveal that is somehow ludicrous and anticlimactic at once. This most defiantly rule-resistant of filmmakers certainly hasnt lost his capacity to surprise. Salt and Fires punchline, however, only enhances the sense of a shaggy-dog tale dashed off on the back of a postcard its the scenery on the other side that holds our attention. Ivanka Trump has landed in Palm Beach. The first daughter traveled with her father, President Donald Trump, and first lady Melania Trump, to meet with President of the People's Republic of China Xi Jinping and his wife, Peng Liyuan, at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. . @IvankaTrump and kids, minus Jared Kushner, descend AF1 steps in Palm Beach. pic.twitter.com/lOTdDi2UR3 - Kate Bennett (@KateBennett_DC) April 6, 2017 Upon landing, Ivanka descended Air Force One wearing a layered long-sleeve Giambattista Valli turtleneck and a thigh-grazing blue skirt. Though she kept it conservative on top, the bottom portion was questionable at best considering it felt more weekend-getaway than formal meeting with a head of state. She paired her odd ensemble, perhaps styled by Cat Williams, with white pointy pumps. Meanwhile, Melania Trump stepped out in a sleeveless, polka dot, tea-length dress with Christian Louboutin pumps, of course. NOW: Pres Donald Trump, FLOTUS Melania Trump, Ivanka Trump and kids just landed at PBIA @CBS12 pic.twitter.com/byAeA1mLFt - Greg Angel (@NewsGuyGreg) April 6, 2017 Ivanka was recently named an official government employee, serving as an unpaid adviser with the official title of assistant to the president. On Wednesday, she sat down with CBS This Morning's Gayle King and noted that her father is aware when she disagrees with him, adding that she expresses herself with "total candor." However, she's still unable to define "complicit." From Popular Mechanics Four days after President Woodrow Wilson called for a special session of Congress in early April 1917, the U.S. officially declared war against the German Empire, becoming an associated power with the Allied Forces and entering into one of the bloodiest conflicts to ever grip Europe. It would still take more than two months for the first troops to arrive in the fields of France, but the U.S. had finally chosen a side. Although often overshadowed by the heroics and horrors of World War II, "The Great War" was a major turning point in American history and its relationship with European powers. Even to this day, World War I continues to influence our lives in obvious and subtle ways. Here are some Popular Mechanics covers and their corresponding stories during the "The War to End All Wars." "War Under the Sea" - March 1915 When the three British armored cruisers "Aboukir," "Hogue," and "Cressy" were all sunk within the space of about an hour by one German submarine, the world was given a startling demonstration of the possibilities of this type of underwater fighting craft. In the subsequent fighting at sea, these vessels have played such an important part as to give considerable justification to Admiral Sir Percy Scott's prediction that when submarines have been fully developed they will entirely displace the great dreadnaughts that form the principal fighting strength of the navies of the present time. "Fighting With Poison Gas and Liquid Fire" - July 1915 The primitive warrior who used poisoned arrows when he did not intend to eat his victim could never have given the modern fighter any lessons in savagery. Poisoned arrows are not being used in the European war, but apparently only for the reason that they are out of date and do not destroy life on a sufficiently large scale to meet the requirements of a twentieth-century war. To get satisfactory results the modern science of chemistry has been called into service. Poison gasses are used, and if the wind is not right for this, liquid fire is thrown into the enemy's trenches. With the conditions favorable, a dense volume of poison gas that follows the found in a cloud fifteen feet or more in depth is sent down on the wind to the enemy's position. Story continues "Meeting War's Emergencies with Ingenious Inventions" - November 1915 Since Europe has been merged in hostilities, scarcely a month has passed unmarked either by the development of some new agent of destruction, or the introduction of some new medium of defense. The creative genius of half the world has been concentrated in an effort to make war more terrible on the one hand, and safer on the other. And first, one belligerent and then the other has met crucial emergencies by ingenious, no to say startling, inventions. The apparent deadlock on the western frontier has presented a perplexing situation. For months the armies have fought battles more sanguinary than Waterloo without making progress except in terms of yards. Trench warfare has been responsible for this. Any kind of an offensive movement has meant heavy losses. To make the trench less secure for the enemy is an object which each of the belligerents is striving to accomplish. A step in this direction is found in the work of a British inventor who has developed a wheeled body shield that affords immunity from rifle bullets and shrapnel when advancing upon fortified positions. "War-Zone Children Wear Gas Masks to School" - May 1916 Pupils of one of the primary schools at Rheims wearing respirators to protect themselves against the asphyxiating gasses blown back from the battle lines. Hundreds of school children and other non-combatants don masks of this type. In many villages, families are supplied with respirators and the community warned when gas clouds approach. "Phonograph Replaces Military Band and Drills "Tommies" - June 1917 Several striking uses have been made of the phonograph in England during the course of the present war. Before the British resorted to conscription, the talking machine was frequently employed in different ways to attract recruits. Owing, doubtless, to the lack of officers at that time, and also for the purpose of attracting curiosity seekers, recruits drilling in the public squares and thoroughfares were occasionally given their commands by phonographs. The novelty of seeing a squad of soldiers responding to orders called out by a cabinet gramophone that had been carried into the street never failed to draw the attention of passers-by, and that was what was wanted. "The One-Man Tank" - June 1918 "Mosquito" tanks, which essentially are diminutive replicas of the powerful armored land dreadnoughts used with great effect by the British on the western front, represent the latest type of fighting machine that has been developed to harass the Hun. These are one-man devices that mount three guns and are built to amble turtlelike across shell holes and mud. Little is known of them except that the controls are so arranged that a lone driver can pilot one of the craft and keep the rifles talking business too. Being speedy, they would serve a big tank as destroyers serve a cruiser in a naval battle. "Flying Hospital Was Last Great War Innovation" - January 1919 One of the most interesting of the innovations in military aeronautics introduced before the war's collapse, was the flying hospital. The marked success that attended the development and use of aerial ambulances, employed for quickly conveying seriously wounded soldiers to surgical stations, suggested that feasibility of reversing the scheme by conveying surgeons to patients in the field. Like the first aerial ambulance, the flying hospital was a French invention. It is not known whether or not a complete squadron of machines, as planned, had actually been commissioned before the truce was signed. One of the specially outfitted units, however, is described as carrying, in addition to the pilot, a surgeon, and an x-ray operator. Its equipment consisted in part of a folding x-ray table, supplied with the Mondain cap for daylight work and the Nemirovsky compass for locating shell fragment and bullets; a folding combination lavatory and instruments stand, and an electric sterilizer. When the plan was first broached, it was thought that one or possibly two of the flying hospitals could serve a front approximately125 miles. It was reasoned that at periods of emergency, when advance posts with x-ray and operating equipment were overwhelmed, a flying hospital could be dispatched in response to a telephone call for assistance. If need be its equipment and staff could be delivered at the post and the machine returned to headquarters to pick up another outfit and its operators. How the scheme actually worked out in practice yet remains to be told. You Might Also Like President Donald Trumps decision to authorize a cruise missile strike against a Syrian airbase late Thursday may prove pivotal in his administrations slow and rocky transition. While the strike was clearly reactive in some ways an abrupt shift from the non-interventionist rhetoric that characterized his Syria policy of just a few days ago it nevertheless has the potential to reset the strategic table in the region. If the administration follows up and embeds these strikes in a systematic strategy for the region, then historians may look back on this as the week the Trump administration finally started to find its foreign policy footing. The administration will need to answer at least three questions as it builds out its larger strategy: 1. What will Trump do with his renewed credibility and coercive leverage over Assad? Beyond whatever immediate damage the airstrikes inflicted on Syria, the most important short-term consequence of the attack is that it finally restored some U.S. credibility and coercive leverage. Ever since the Syrian civil war began, United States has suffered from an acute credibility deficit. President Barack Obama made many threats and issued many warnings to Syria, but his failure to impose real military penalties on the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad rendered those threats null and void. Obamas botched red line crisis of 2013 made the credibility gap acute demonstrating for the entire world just how far Obama was willing to go to avoid military action inside Syria. Trumps early rhetoric on Syria aligned with Obamas actions, and set the expectation for more of the same. Now Trump has done something Obama never did, and with that has forced Assad to readjust. But to what end? For what purpose will Trump use the somewhat enhanced leverage he has today that he did not have earlier in the week? The minimum demand would be no more use of chemical weapons by Assad a demand presumably backed up by the willingness to strike Assads military again if he defies Trump. The maximum demand would involve some form of accommodation that relaunches peace talks with the rebels. Trump probably has enough new leverage to expect the former, but not yet the latter. But he may be tempted to go for the latter. If so, he will quickly find that his options depend on what others do, which brings us to Story continues 2. How will Trump manage the Russia-China fallout from the strike? His response, of course, will depend on house much fallout there is. One of the most deleterious consequences of Obamas failed Syria policy was that it created a power vacuum that brought the Russian military into the region. At the grand strategic level, this was a profound setback to a decades-long bipartisan foreign policy goal of ensuring that the Soviet Union (and later Russia) not be the great-power holder of the balance in the Middle East. At the operational level, Russias military involvement in Syria greatly complicated any possible U.S. military option raising the risk that even minor tactical moves by the United States might result in a direct confrontation with a nuclear-armed great power. These constraints had the effect of checkmating the United States into strategic paralysis, at least under the Obama administration. Trump has showed that he has a higher appetite for risk, striking a Syrian airbase even though there were Russian forces stationed there, albeit after first alerting Russia to the attack. Trump thus made a reasonable tradeoff, mitigating the risks of escalation at the cost of accepting some lower degree of operational effectiveness of the strikes themselves. How much mitigation of risk depends on what Russia does next. Russias immediate reaction was to express outrage and to suspend the cooperative arrangements the two sides had worked out to deconflict military operations in the region not retaliating, but making any future U.S. military action that much riskier. But Russia has many other cards to play, and Trumps options depend on how Russian President Vladimir Putin plays them. Trumps Russia policy was already a work in progress, whipsawed by the daily melodrama of the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Now we all, Putin included, will learn a bit more of how Trump actually views U.S.-Russian relations. During the campaign, Trump seemed to indicate that he thought Russia could be a meaningful partner in counterterrorism in the region. Many specialists, myself included, were skeptical that Russia could be counted on to be helpful. But no one doubted that Russia could play a spoiler role. One of Trumps most urgent priorities now is to dissuade Putin from going too far down that path. At the same time, Trump will have to manage the Asian aftershocks of the attack. The timing of the strike in the middle of Trumps dinner with Chinese President Xi Jinping at Trumps Mar-o-Lago resort in Florida puts U.S.-China relations in play more directly than they otherwise might have been. China historically does not support these kinds of unilateral uses of force and will likely view the decision to strike during the summit as a direct diplomatic challenge. And that may well have been part of Trumps calculation that it will knock China on its hind feet a bit and perhaps off of whatever script it came into the summit prepared to follow. Trump famously prizes surprise as a negotiating tactic and he probably achieved it in the short run, since it is doubtful Chinas summit playbook had a what to do if the United States attacks Syria during dinner preplanned script. But Chinas reaction will matter because China can play a spoiler role in the United Nations, which matters because 3. How will Trump work with U.S. allies and partners and the U.N. to manage the next phase of the conflict? Trump did not need the allies to launch a one-off salvo of cruise missiles. But he will need allies and partners to translate that strike into more lasting political and strategic benefits. Those allies, in turn, will want more international legal top cover than U.S. unilateral action alone provides. Trumps lawyers may be right that he had sufficient constitutional and international legal cover for the initial salvo, but Americas European allies will surely want a wider legal authorization in the form of U.N. authorization. Achieving that now will be very difficult because of the Russian and Chinese vetoes (see question two). This is the familiar problem of U.S. leadership that every president in the post-Cold War era has had to solve. International problems do not get resolved without U.S. leadership. But U.S. action, by itself and without additional international partnership, does not produce lasting results. U.S. leadership is a necessary condition for mobilizing Americas partners, but it is not sufficient. They usually demand additional steps that provide legitimacy for U.S. action. In particular, they demand authorization from multilateral organizations at minimum an alliance organization like NATO, but preferably the U.N. Thus, every U.S. president has found it desirable to work through the U.N., NATO, and other regional, multilateral organizations in order to mobilize friends and partners to augment U.S. action. So far, Trump has not seemed to think of U.S. allies and those multilateral organizations in that way. He has viewed them through a much narrower, transactional lens that has discounted, if not ignored entirely, their broader function. I expect the next days and weeks will be something of a tutorial for the Trump team on what works and does not work in alliance management. Candidate Trump repeatedly promised that he would not simply conduct American foreign policy in the way Obama did. By punishing Assad for his brazen violation of international law and basic human decency, Trump took a significant step forward in fulfilling that campaign promise. But Trump also promised that his approach would produce more lasting success than Obamas. Whether he fulfills that promise will depend on what comes next, not on what happened Thursday. Photo credit: JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images Associated Press Concerns over the Buffalo Bills troubling loss to the New York Jets were quickly overshadowed by even bigger worries regarding the status of Josh Allens throwing elbow on Monday. Suddenly, the entirety of the organization and its fanbase is holding its collective breath while awaiting the results of medical tests to determine the severity of Allens injury sustained in the final minutes of a 20-17 loss to the Jets and what impact it will have on the second half of the season and the franchises Super Bowl aspirations. The reality, however, is bracing for the potential of having to turn over a very Allen-centric offense to journeyman backup Case Keenum to keep the AFC-leading Bills (6-2) afloat in the interim. HARRISBURG, Ore. (AP) A plane crashed in western Oregon as high winds swept the region Friday, killing four people. Linn County Sheriff Bruce Riley said the plane plowed into a field about 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of Portland. Federal aviation and transportation investigators were en route to the scene, Riley said, adding that he did not know what caused the crash, or if weather or mechanical problems might have played a part. The plane was approaching the Eugene Airport when it crashed near the town of Harrisburg about 10 miles (16 kilometers) north of the airport, the Register-Guard newspaper reported. Marty Nill, who with his brother operates a private airfield near Harrisburg, said in a phone interview that conditions were very windy and that flying conditions could have been dangerous. Expectations for this weeks Mar-a-Lago summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping are anything but great; simply getting through the 25 hours without incident would represent a significant foreign policy success. But there are plenty of obstacles ahead. Here are the biggest: 1. Trade Lets start with the elephant in the room. On the campaign trail, Trump proposed a 45% tariff on Chinese goods. The proposal provoked headlines and riled up Trumps base, but then economists began to weigh in on the damage that would inflict. By the time Trumps transition began, his team had swapped the proposal for a 10% tariff on imports across the board, one thats not even China-specific. Since taking office, Trumps team has de-emphasized this message altogether. U.S. sanctions targeting specific sectors would be the more likely gambit Trump would try. Still, that hasnt stopped the brash rhetoric; as late as January, Trump aides insisted that the U.S. would win a trade war with China. While very few people take these comments seriously, there are numbers out there that support that theory: Using Trumps most extreme proposal, a 45% tariff would be expected to knock as much as 3% off Chinas economy. But the move would also cause the cost of Chinese-made goods to surge 10% for U.S. consumers. This gets to the heart of the matter-while the U.S. may still have economic leverage over China, an authoritarian system of government can withstand a lot more economic pain than a fickle democratic one. Call it mutually assured economic destruction. 2. North Korea Trump began this week by telling the Financial Times that if China is not going to solve North Korea, we will. If only it were that simple. For years, U.S. foreign policy toward North Korea has been anchored on the premise that Beijing is best placed to keep its ally in check. After all, North Korea gets 80% of its consumer goods and 45% of its food supply from China. Story continues Thats why the U.S. is unlikely to corner North Korea without active Chinese support. But Trump wont have much success at persuading Xi to shift his cautious approach, given that Korean turmoil represents a much threat to China than to the United States. A 2007 study estimated that if the DPRK imploded, as many as 3 million North Korean refugees would cross into China. Yet Trump sees North Korea as an opportunity to prove his mettle in an area where his predecessors failed-with or without China. That, along with his comments this week in response to Pyongyangs most recent missile launch, shows that Trump hopes to win some leverage on this issue ahead of the meeting with Xi. 3. Territorial disputes The only subject more politically explosive than North Korea for the U.S.-China relationship is the future of Taiwan. Trumps decision to accept a congratulatory call from the Taiwanese president shortly after winning the election is among the greatest threats the U.S.-China relationship has endured in nearly four decades; Xi refused to accept Trumps call until the latter reaffirmed his commitment to Beijings long-standing one China policy. A surefire way for Mar-a-Lago to turn into a disaster is for Trump to openly question that in any way. Xi will probably look for Trump to reconfirm his commitment to one China. There are plenty of other territorial disputes to get into, most notably in the South China Sea, where Chinas expansive territorial claims at the expense of its smaller neighbors have drawn sharp U.S. criticism. Nearly one third of all maritime traffic passes through the sea, as does $1.2 trillion of bilateral trade with the U.S. If the U.S. cedes control of the South China Sea, Beijing will have tremendous economic leverage over it. But the U.S. is treaty-bound to defend the Philippines, a rival claimant, in any conflict with China should push come to shove between them. The two sides will continue to watch one another warily. 4. Cyberattacks Given whats transpired the past few months, its easy to forget that China, not Russia, was Americas principle cyber foe not too long ago. The April 2015 hacks of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) are some of the most devastating hacks on record-an estimated 22.1 million Americans, 7 percent of the population, had personal records stolen. These records went well beyond social security numbers-the personal and romantic lives of millions of federal employees, documented for clearance purposes, are now thought to be in the hands of the Chinese. Thats a serious national security threat. The threat will continue for as long as those people work for the federal government. As a businessman, Trump will also be concerned about state-sponsored corporate espionage. The U.S. loses some $400 billion from economic espionage through hacking annually-90 percent of that is believed to come from China. While there are more than enough geopolitical challenges for Trump and Xi to tackle, there are also significant bilateral challenges that make the prospect of any real breakthrough at Mar-a-Lago that much dimmer. 5. Their clash of personalities Plenty has been written about how the vast differences between Trump and Xi in personality, experience, training, temperament, and worldviews make them a particularly odd couple. Trump speaks off the cuff. Xi measures his words with care (he has to, given that his comments are approved and monitored by Communist party officials back home). Trump speaks in Twitter bursts. Xi prefers 20-minute monologues. If you thought Trump looked uncomfortable while trying to listen patiently as other leaders speak, you havent seen anything yet. This article was originally published on TIME.com Kabul (AFP) - A martial arts bout in Afghanistan was billed as a bare-knuckle duel for supremacy, but it has become a lightning rod for long-simmering ethnic rivalries that threaten to tear the country apart. Ahmad Wali Hotak, a Pashtun, last month threw down the gauntlet to his longtime Tajik rival Baaz Mohammad Mubariz on Facebook, in what was expected to be an electrifying contest between two of Afghanistan's finest athletes. Instead, the mixed martial arts challenge devolved into a maelstrom, with fans from both sides spewing ethnic vitriol on social media, prompting it to be cancelled Thursday after pleas from top officials. "This is a peaceful match, but even my supporters see it as a Pashtun versus Tajik fight," Hotak told AFP, before the decision to abort it with the mediation of lawmakers and tribal elders. "Facebook has become a battleground. Non-Pashtuns attack me and non-Tajiks attack Baaz. That is scary." Hotak had called the fight in late March, posting a message saying "Open#challenge#to#baz#mohammad#mobariz" on Facebook. Both vowed to knock each other senseless, calling the other a "fake champion", and pledged $200,000 each towards the prize money -- an amount which had been expected to rise further as egos collided. The victory could have been pyrrhic. "Your fight will be followed by another fight," said one Facebook user, echoing a deluge of similar warnings. "There will be bloodshed among supporters." The threat of violence was so real that President Ashraf Ghani's advisors, intelligence and security officials, and multiple lawmakers had been among those imploring the sportsmen to cancel the fight. "This is a contest between two Afghan athletes and not two ethnic groups and it shouldn't be construed as such," said Javid Ahmad, a fellow at West Point's Modern War Institute. "The event creates an ideal environment for insidious external forces to stage attacks, stoke ethnic divides, and create security problems." Story continues - Disunited - That a sporting contest could become a flashpoint for ethnic warfare offers a glimpse into the soul of the fractured and war-riven country. Ethnicity is a powder keg in Afghanistan, home to Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks and about a dozen other minorities. Memories of the brutal civil war of the 1990s, which broke out largely along ethnic lines and left more than 100,000 people dead, are still raw. The Pashtun-dominated Taliban seized power in 1996 and ruled until they were ousted in 2001 by a US-led coalition and its Afghan allies, comprising mostly ethnic Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras. Sectarian violence has largely spared post-Taliban Afghanistan, but disunity is arguably the country's biggest threat as it bristles with armed factions belonging to different ethnic and tribal groups. "I long for a pluralistic society where people won't say 'We are Pashtun' or 'We are Tajik'," said a 34-year-old Kabul doctor who requested anonymity. "Instead everyone will say 'We are Afghan'," the doctor, of mixed Pashtun-Tajik parentage, told AFP. The government's recent introduction of national ID cards has catalysed a debate about what it means to be Afghan. Many non-Pashtuns wanted their own ethnicity to be displayed, not just the word "Afghan", which has long been synonymous with Pashtun, the largest ethnic group. The government caved to that demand, in what experts call a "disastrous" move in a nation with deep ethnic fissures. - Tumult on Facebook - The rift is visible in the Afghan capital, where many formerly mixed neighbourhoods have become segregated into ethnically homogenous areas. It is also evident in the nation's parliament, where Pashtun lawmakers this week called for the "stoning to death" of a Tajik MP who demanded that the Durand line border between Pakistan and Afghanistan be recognised. The disputed colonial-era frontier separates Pashtun families on both sides of the border. Meanwhile, Mubariz and Hotak appear to have reached a sort of forced detente, with a lawmaker raising their arms together in a symbolic draw in Kabul Thursday. In separate interviews with AFP they appeared calm and even-keeled, a contrast to the tumult that broke out on their Facebook profiles. On Hotak's profile, fans warned him against the possibility of his rival lacing his food with poison. Photoshopped images of a bare-torsoed Mubariz accosted by lions adorned his page. "Presumably a draw between the two would symbolise harmony and balance in the universe," said Scott Guggenheim, an advisor to Ghani. The Hague (AFP) - South Africa on Friday denied flouting international law in 2015 by failing to arrest visiting Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted for trial by war crimes judges on charges of genocide in Darfur. At an unprecedented hearing at the International Criminal Court, Pretoria disputed accusations it had broken its obligations to the very tribunal it helped found. There "was no duty under international law on South Africa to arrest the serving head of a non-state party such as Mr Omar al-Bashir," Pretoria's legal advisor Dire Tladi argued. Despite two international arrest warrants issued in 2009 and 2010, Bashir remains at large and in office amid the raging conflict in the western Sudanese region of Darfur. He has denied the ICC's charges, including three accusations of genocide as well as war crimes and crimes against humanity. The deadly conflict broke out in 2003 when ethnic minority groups took up arms against Bashir's Arab-dominated government, which launched a brutal counter-insurgency. The UN Security Council asked the ICC in 2005 to investigate the crimes in Darfur, where at least 300,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced, according to UN figures. - 'No immunity waiver' - Pretoria, which had sought legal clarification from ICC judges before Bashir's 2015 visit, argues that the Sudanese leader has immunity as a head of state. There was "nothing at all" in the UN resolution which waived Bashir's immunity, Tladi said. Therefore Pretoria could not arrest him during his brief visit to South Africa in June 2015 for an African Union summit, despite its obligation to cooperate with the ICC as a signatory of the tribunal's founding Rome Statute. "The duty to arrest Mr Omar al-Bashir was not as clear as the office of the prosecutor would suggest," Tladi said. But prosecutor Julian Nicholls shot back that South Africa "had the ability to arrest and surrender him and it chose not to do so," allowing Bashir and his delegation to fly home unimpeded from a military air base. Story continues In the end the only reason Pretoria did not arrest him was "that South Africa disagreed with the court's jurisprudence, the law as set out... so it did not comply." Several victims of the conflict, who now live in The Netherlands, attended the daylong hearing at the tribunal in The Hague. "We know that Bashir will come to the ICC one day, if he's alive," Yousif Fasher, 30, told AFP. "It will take time, five years, 10 years, two years, six years. But one day he has to come and stand in front of the ICC. That's our message to South Africa." Presiding judge Cuno Tarfusser said the aim of the hearing was to decide "whether South Africa failed to comply with its obligations... by not arresting and surrendering Omar al-Bashir... while he was on South African territory." - 'Most serious crimes' - The prosecution argues that since the ICC does not have its own police force it relies on member states to help execute arrest warrants. Without such help, "the court's going to be unable to carry out its most basic function: putting on trial persons charged with the most serious crimes," Nicholls said. Tarfusser said at the end of the hearing that he hoped the judges would return their decision before the court's summer recess, and would do so in another public hearing. The judges may decide to agree with the prosecution's request to report Pretoria to the UN Security Council for non-compliance and eventual sanctions. But Pretoria's lawyers said such a move would be "unwarranted and unnecessary", aimed only at casting South Africa "in a bad light". Although this is the first public hearing of its type, last year the ICC referred Chad, Djibouti and Uganda to the UN for also failing to arrest Bashir. So far no action has been taken against them. The Sudanese leader was also a guest last month at an Arab League summit hosted by Jordan -- also a signatory to the Rome Statute. South Africa had moved to withdraw from the court, angered by the case against it. But it formally revoked its decision last month after its own High Court ruled it would be unconstitutional. Johannesburg (AFP) - South Africa's ANC party, the celebrated political force that ended white-minority rule and ushered in democracy, had hoped its dominance of national politics might last for generations. But deep concerns over the country's post-apartheid direction and President Jacob Zuma's unpopularity have raised the sudden prospect of the African National Congress failing to win the next election in 2019. Zuma's recent sacking of respected finance minister Pravin Gordhan brought to a head a nationwide crisis over record unemployment, stagnant growth and corruption, 23 years after Nelson Mandela led the ANC to power. Zuma will complete his maximum two terms in office in 2019, and is seen as backing his ex-wife, former African Union chief Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, to take over. Dlamini-Zuma inspires little public support in South Africa, while the ANC was already dealt a sharp shock in last year's local elections when it suffered its worst-ever results. "If they push leaders who do not have credibility and you add to that the extent of the scandals they have faced, they stand a very good chance of losing their majority in 2019," political analyst Ralph Mathekga told AFP. The party still commands 249 of 400 seats in parliament having secured 62.15 percent of the national vote in 2014 -- but it slipped to 55 percent in last year's polls. South Africans' increasing rejection of the ANC is a far cry from the party's history as the liberation movement founded in 1923 and which operated underground during the apartheid regime. Lauded across the globe for its moral authority and long fight for black rights, the ANC's path to power was crowned by Mandela's inauguration as president in 1994. - Faded glory - But the realities of decades in office have taken their toll, as many poor South Africans feel the party has failed to tackle inadequate housing and education, stark racial inequality and scarce opportunities. Story continues "The prospect of losing South Africa has never been one the ANC has had to face up to," Karen Heese, an analyst at Municipal IQ data specialists, wrote in the Business Day newspaper this week. "Trend lines... suggest that even before the current crisis faced by the ANC, the party was likely to face difficult polls in 2019." Negative sentiments towards the ANC mean that opposition parties are itching to take advantage. Under its first black leader, Mmusi Maimane, the main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) party climbed to 24 percent in the 2016 vote. Now the party, promoting a liberal, equal-opportunity message, is pushing hard to draw in disaffected ANC voters ahead of 2019. But it has struggled to shed its image as a party for middle-class whites. Its challenges were laid bare when former party leader and premier of the Western Cape region Helen Zille sparked a furious backlash last month by saying that colonialism had brought some benefits for South Africans. - Well-placed opposition? - Attacking the ANC from the other flank is the radical Economic Freedom Fighters under former Zuma protege Julius Malema, a firebrand populist. Formed in 2013 following Malema's expulsion from the ANC, the EFF is a revolutionary socialist party that wants to overturn the post-apartheid consensus. It taps into frustration in the poverty-stricken townships, and inspires horror in the elite by encouraging black communities to seize land at will. Declining support may force the ANC to seek a coalition with one or more opposition parties -- but linking up with either the EFF and DA looks unlikely to be effective. "The route by which the ANC could retain power by coalition is going to be predicated on which ANC faction is indeed in power," independent analyst Daniel Silke told AFP. "If the faction is more populist, left-of-centre, they may be looking to make deals with the EFF. If the faction is a more centrist, market-friendly faction then the DA becomes more attractive." The run-up to the election could be traumatic for the ruling party, with some experts predicting that opponents of Zuma's faction could split away to re-claim what they see as the spirit of the "real ANC". "The Zuma faction is currently positioned to retain control of the ANC," wrote Eurasia consultancy analyst Darias Jonker this week. Jonker added the fall-out from Gordhan's sacking "is very likely to see the ANC itself fail to win 50 percent of the vote in 2019". Despite such dire predictions, Zuma remains bullish that loyal South Africans still hold the ANC dear to their hearts for ending apartheid. As he likes to predict, the party will rule "until Jesus returns". Amazon announced it will add 30,000 part-time U.S. jobs over the next year, the company announced Thursday. The hiring spree includes 5,000 part-time work-from-home positions for Amazons Virtual Customer Service program. There are lots of people who want or need a flexible jobwhether theyre a military spouse, a college student, or a parentand were happy to empower these talented people no matter where they happen to live, Amazon Vice President for Worldwide Customer Service Tom Weiland said in a statement. Amazons workforce, one of the biggest in the country, currently employs 40,000 part-time workers. Most of those part-time jobs are appealing to students and stay-at-home parents. The Virtual Customer Service jobs, which the company will add positions in, are particularly attractive to military spouses and wounded, injured or ill military veterans, Amazon said. For part-time jobs, employees working 20 hours or more a week are eligible for benefits. Those benefits include a career program that pre-pays 95 percent of tuition for courses in high-demand fields. Other benefits, include life and disability insurance, dental and vision insurance with premiums paid in full by Amazon, and funding towards medical insurance, the company said. The announcement comes after Amazon unveiled in January plans to add 100,000 new full-time, full benefit jobs in the U.S., with most of the positions located at new fulfillment centers. At the time, President Donald Trump tried to take credit for the new jobs Amazon announced. On Wednesday, Trump released a Fox News clip on social media bragging about the number of jobs since Trump got elected. The video lists numerous big-name companies, including Amazon, Ford, GM and Alibaba. Related Articles BEIRUT (AP) President Bashar Assad took an enormous gamble if his forces were behind the chemical weapons attack that killed dozens in northern Syria: committing an overt war crime just as the Trump administration and most Western leaders had made clear they are no longer seeking his immediate removal. Although Assad can count on the backing of his top allies, Russia and Iran, the attack has revived international outrage at a time when U.S. President Donald Trump is still formulating his policy on Syria. So why do it? Especially when Syrian government troops have the upper hand in the six-year-old civil war? There is a military rationale, as well as a political one, analysts say. Politically, Assad may have been emboldened to act to crush his opponents, thinking he could do so with impunity after recent statements from Washington, along with Trump's inclination to align with Russia. On a visit to Turkey last week, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Assad's future was up to the Syrian people to decide, while Nikki Haley, the American ambassador to the United Nations, said the United States isn't ruling out cooperation with Assad to defeat the Islamic State group. Militarily, Tuesday's attack took place in an area of Idlib province where rebels recently launched a large offensive, bringing them to within miles of the key, government-held city of Hama. Khan Sheikhoun, the town targeted in Tuesday's attack, is right up the road from Hama, and although Syrian forces have since launched a counter-offensive and regained some ground, there is a clear government incentive to rid the area of insurgents. "These weapons are frightening and disorienting to the targeted populations, and they also highlight to the local population and the rebels that there is no international limitation on regime behavior and that resistance is therefore futile," said Faysal Itani, a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council's Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East. Story continues Still, a chemical weapons attack of this magnitude carries significant risk. The images of lifeless children and others gasping for breath were reminiscent of the 2013 attack near Damascus that killed hundreds of civilians. That assault triggered denunciations by world leaders and organizations, who urged the U.S. to commit to a Syria solution. Trump's condemnation of Tuesday's attack has been surprisingly strong, even if he did not give any clear indication about how the U.S. might respond. On Wednesday, Trump denounced the attack as an "affront to humanity" and blamed Assad, saying it "cannot be tolerated." At the U.N., Haley threatened unilateral U.S. action if the world body failed to act. Trump has not drawn a public "red line" concerning chemical weapons, as his predecessor did, and he spoke out against military action against Assad before his presidency. But the scale of the chemical attack may force him to change course, or take stronger action to prove he's tougher than Barack Obama. Trump said Obama's "weakness" after the 2013 chemical attack was also to blame for Tuesday's assault. The attack has caused sparring between the U.S. and Russia over who was responsible. The Syrian government has strongly denied involvement, accusing the opposition of trying to frame it to make up for military losses. The Russian Defense Ministry said a Syrian government airstrike hit a rebel chemical weapons factory, causing the disaster. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem said Thursday that among the goals of the renewed campaign and "lies" against the Syrian government is to force Trump to change his position on Assad and to put pressure on Russia. Part of the equation, for any perpetrator, is the difficulty of proving anything in the aftermath of such attacks, largely due to the lack of immediate access. In the complex terrain of opposition-held northern Syria, which is closed off to investigators and journalists, various scenarios cannot be completely discounted. A Syrian lawmaker, Omar Osse, suggested Wednesday that the attack on Khan Sheikhoun was "fabricated" to abort the recent change in U.S. policies toward Syria. Assad may be betting on further deniability by striking in an area where extremists hold sway, expanding the cloud of confusion over the attack. Idlib province, which is packed with rebels and civilians alike, is dominated by an al-Qaida-linked group. Some analysts suggested Assad may be signaling he wants quicker action to end the war on his own terms. "Rather than making concessions or political gestures, the regime is further raising the stakes and the political cost for the West of not cooperating," said Jihad Yazigi, editor-in-chief of The Syria Report. Assad, he wrote in an op-ed Wednesday, knows he is unlikely to pay a major price for Tuesday's attack. "Since former U.S. President Barack Obama's 'green light' in September 2013, Assad knows that a large-scale attack against its civilians is a short-term public relations liability but a long-term political asset," he said. ___ Karam is the AP's news director for Lebanon and Syria and has covered Syria since 1997. An AP News Analysis Aknalich (Armenia) (AFP) - A gleaming white structure topped with seven domes, set to be the world's biggest Yazidi temple, is being built in a tiny village in Armenia. Long persecuted, most recently by Islamic jihadists in Iraq, the Kurdish-speaking, religious minority hopes the new temple will prove a symbol of strength as it tries to preserve its unique blend of faiths. Yazidis, adherents of an ancient religion rooted in Zoroastrianism, number around 35,000 in Armenia today but currently have just one tiny temple in the Caucasus country. The new edifice, called Quba Mere Diwane, is being constructed in Aknalich, a village 35 kilometres (22 miles) from the capital, Yerevan, thanks to funding by a wealthy Moscow-based Yazidi businessman Mirza Sloyan, who was born nearby. Aknalich is home to 150 Yazidis, as well as the existing temple, built in 2012 which only holds up to 30 people. Created from granite and marble, the new 25-metre-high (82-foot) structure will include a large prayer hall, religious school and museum. Its seven domes represent seven angels revered by the Yazidis. - 'Glimmer of hope' - Of the world's 1.5 million Yazidis, the largest community is in Iraq where they have long been one of the country's most vulnerable minorities. Persecution by Saddam Hussein forced thousands of families to flee. In August 2014, Yazidis were brutally targeted by Islamic State jihadists when their bastion Sinjar in northwestern Iraq was seized. They suffered crimes which the United Nations has described as genocide. "We suffered terrible losses in Sinjar and are extremely depressed, but this temple gives us a glimmer of hope for revival," said Sheikh Hasan Hasanyan, the spiritual leader of the Armenian Yazidis. "If we can build such a splendid temple, that means Yazidis withstood, they didn't give up," he told AFP by telephone. - An old prayer - The ex-Soviet country's largest minority group, Yazidis are well integrated into Armenian society, enjoy freedom of religious belief, and publish Yazidi-language newspapers and textbooks. Story continues But widespread poverty and unemployment have sent a wave of migrants to Europe, Russia and the United States in search of work. "I hope that the new temple will motivate my children -- who are living in Europe -- to come back to Aknalich, remind them that they are Yazidis," said local resident Misha Davrshyan. Yazidis worship one God, who, they believe, created the world and entrusted it to seven Holy Beings, the most important of which is Melek Taus, or Peacock Angel. Their unique beliefs -- which over time integrated elements of Judaism, Christianity and Islam -- have often been misconstrued as satanic. Orthodox Muslims consider the peacock a demon figure and refer to Yazidis as devil-worshippers. Fearing assimilation, Yazidis discourage marriage outside the community and even across their caste system, and strictly follow traditional customs -- some refrain from eating lettuce or wearing the colour blue. "We have no state and, as a vulnerable minority, we risk imminent assimilation if we stop protecting our traditions," said Hasanyan. He said he hoped that the new temple, expected to open this year, "will become a major spiritual centre for Yazidi pilgrims from all over the world." "There is an old Yazidi prayer asking God to give peace and happiness first to the world's other nations and then to our tormented people," he said. "That's what we will be praying for in the new temple." Wall Street stocks finished modestly lower Friday following a disappointing US jobs report, while Pentagon missile strikes on Syria lifted defense shares and oil prices. Gold prices, a traditional safe haven in times of turbulence, also rallied following the Syria action, while global stock markets were mixed. The Labor Department reported that the US added just 98,000 jobs in March, far below the expected amount, while unemployment fell to 4.5 percent, its lowest level in nearly 10 years. But the report was upstaged by President Donald Trump's move on Syria, which came as Trump met his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping for the first time in a closely watched summit at the president's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Trump's decision to order military strikes on Syria plunges Washington deeper into the country's tragedy, although officials said it does not mark a new strategy to oust President Bashar al-Assad by force. US stock futures fell sharply on the news, but then recovered somewhat as the market viewed the US strikes "as an isolated incident without any meaningful economic impact," Briefing.com analyst Patrick O'Hare said. "The message of the market was that the attendant risks related to Syria are still within acceptable tolerance levels," he said. But others saw lingering effects, with gold prices hitting a five-month high and oil prices also rising. "A strong sense of unease infiltrated the financial markets, with investors staying clear of riskier assets," said FXTM analyst Lukman Otunuga. "The possible threat of geopolitical tensions heightening from the airstrikes has created a risk-off trading atmosphere." Oil prices reached one-month highs as the attacks led to concerns about supplies in the Middle East. That helped shares in energy firms rise around the world and pushed London's commodities-heavy FTSE 100 index into positive territory. The dollar gained on the euro and other major currencies as traders bet that the US jobs report, while disappointing, would not derail a plan by the Federal Reserve to lift interest rates again this year. Story continues "The key takeaway was that it was keeping the Fed on track with the current pace of tightening," said Eric Nelson, analyst at Wells Fargo. "Overall, the report was supportive of our story of dollar strength." Defense shares were boosted by Trump's action on Syria, with missile maker Raytheon gaining 1.5 percent. Lockheed Martin climbed 1.2 percent, Northrop Grumman 0.9 percent and Boeing 0.8 percent. - Key figures at 2045 GMT - New York - Dow: DOWN less than 0.1 percent at 20,656.10 (close) New York - S&P 500: DOWN 0.1 percent at 2,355.54 (close) New York - Nasdaq: DOWN less than 0.1 percent at 5,877.81 (close) London - FTSE 100: UP 0.6 percent at 7,349.37 (close) Frankfurt - DAX 30: DOWN 0.1 percent at 12,225.06 (close) Paris - CAC 40: UP 0.3 percent at 5,135.28 (close) EURO STOXX 50: UP 0.1 percent at 3,492.52 Tokyo - Nikkei 225: UP 0.4 percent at 18,664.63 (close) Hong Kong - Hang Seng: FLAT at 24,267.30 (close) Shanghai - Composite: UP 0.2 percent at 3,286.62 (close) Euro/dollar: DOWN at $1.0602 from $1.0642 Pound/dollar: DOWN at $1.2375 from $1.2465 Dollar/yen: UP at 111.07 yen from 110.76 yen Oil - Brent North Sea: UP 35 cents at $55.24 per barrel Oil - West Texas Intermediate: UP 54 cents at $52.24 per barrel burs-jmb/bbk BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said there is no "option except victory" in the country's civil war in an interview published on Thursday, saying the government could not reach "results" with opposition groups that attended recent peace talks. The interview with Croatian newspaper Vecernji List appeared to have been conducted before U.S. President Donald Trump accused Assad of crossing "many, many lines" with a poison gas attack on Tuesday. Assad was not asked about the chemical attack in the northwestern Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun, a text of the interview published by the Syrian state news agency SANA showed. The government has strongly denied any role. More than six years into the Syrian conflict, Assad appears militarily unassailable in the areas of western Syria where he has shored up his rule with decisive help from the Russian military and Iranian-backed militias from across the region. The interview published on Thursday underlined Assad's confidence as he reiterated his goal of dealing a total defeat to the insurgency. He also reiterated his rejection of federalism sought by Kurdish groups in northern Syria. "As I said a while ago, we have a great hope which is becoming greater; and this hope is built on confidence, for without confidence there wouldnt be any hope. In any case, we do not have any other option except victory," he said. "If we do not win this war, it means that Syria will be deleted from the map. We have no choice in facing this war, and thats why we are confident, we are persistent and we are determined," he said. More than 70 people, including at least 20 children, were killed in the chemical attack on Tuesday. The Russian allies say the deaths were caused by a leak from an arms depot where rebels were making chemical weapons, after it was hit in a Syrian air strike. Rebels deny this. Rebels have in recent weeks launched two of their boldest offensives in many months, attacking in Damascus and north of the government-held city of Hama. The army says both assaults have been repelled. Assad, citing recent rebel offensives in Damascus and near the northern city of Hama, said "the opposition which exists is a jihadi opposition in the perverted sense of jihad". "That is why we cannot, practically, reach any actual result with this part of the opposition (in talks). The evidence is that during the Astana negotiations they started their attack on the cities of Damascus and Hama and other parts of Syria, repeating the cycle of terrorism and the killing of innocents." The Russian-backed Astana talks were launched with support from Turkey, a major backer of the opposition to Assad. They sponsored a ceasefire between the government and rebels which has been widely violated since it was declared in December. A new round of indirect peace talks concluded in Geneva in late March without any major breakthrough towards ending the conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and created millions of refugees. The Syrian government views all the groups fighting it as terrorists with agendas determined by foreign governments including Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United States. (Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Hugh Lawson) The United States has launched a Tomahawk cruise missile attack on an airfield in Syria in retaliation for this week's deadly chemical attack by the Syrian military against civilians in the war-torn Middle East country. Syria reports at least seven people killed in the 59-missile barrage. Here are the latest things to know: 1. Why the strike was ordered: President Trump cast the attack on the Syrian air base as vital to deter future use of poison gas. He called on other nations to join in seeking "to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria." 2. Protest in Philly: Anti-war and anti-Trump protesters are planning to march against the missile attack outside Philadelphia City Hall at 4:30 p.m. Friday. The protest is being organized by the local branches of the International Action Center and the Workers World Party and is expected to be one of various protests held Friday in the country. 3. Russia condemns attack: Russia, whose troops are on the ground in support of Syrian President Bashar Assad, said President Vladimir Putin believes the U.S. strike is an "aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law." Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin believes the U.S. launched the strikes under a "far-fetched pretext." Russia's military said it would strengthen air defenses in Syria. 4. Before the strike: U.S. military officials informed their Russian counterparts of the impending attack in an effort to avoid any contact involving Russian forces. The Pentagon has released footage showing the US military strike in Syria https://t.co/rddRpyG0DO pic.twitter.com/R70G0cv3iF CNN (@CNN) April 7, 2017 5. What Syria, its allies and others in the Middle East say: Syria called the attack an "aggression." Iran, another close ally of the Syrian government, condemned the strike, describing "unilateral action" as "dangerous." Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which support the Syrian opposition, welcomed the missile strike, with Riyadh calling it a "courageous decision" by Trump. Story continues 6. Israel voices support: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement supporting the military action and saying that "President Trump sent a strong and clear message . . . that the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated." 7. Mixed response from Congress: Initial reaction in Congress, including among lawmakers from Pennsylvania and New Jersey, was divided with Republicans and some Democrats voicing support for the action while other Democrats and libertarian-leaning Republicans said Trump should have sought congressional approval for the attack. 8. What it means for U.S.-Russia relations: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is still scheduled to meet next week with his Russian counterpart in Moscow despite renewed tensions between the two countries over the attack on the air base. Most Popular on Philly.com Nathan Wylie was just 3 years old when he started calling his fathers sister his "Big Bad Aunt Penny." The title seemingly came out of nowhere, a funny nickname blurted out by a little boy prone to wise cracks, and he stuck with it when the moniker garnered laughs. Ten years later, the title has taken on new weight, as his "Big Bad Aunt Penny" fights for answers to learn how and why her nephew died April 1 in a suspected heroin overdose at just 13 years old. "The Lord knows what our life is going to be like, and he knows when hes going to take us from this Earth, so the only way I can find comfort and peace in this... is God implanted that in Nathan. He knew, once something happened, I was going to become his voice. And thats what Im going to do, Penny Jo Bilbrey, 50, told InsideEdition.com. Last Tuesday, Nathans father, Robert Wylie, and a co-worker discovered the teen unconscious at a mechanics lot in Dayton, Ohio. The pair carried him to a fire station next door and allegedly indicated that Nathan had gotten into his fathers drugs, according to reports. Medics administered four milligrams of Narcan, but Nathan remained unresponsive and was rushed to a nearby hospital. Nathans father was arrested after his son's suspected overdose on previous drug warrants. He is currently in custody at Montgomery County Jail and expected to appear in court next week. Read: Boy, 13, Dies of Suspected Heroin Overdose After Allegedly Getting Into Dad's Drugs: Reports It could take up to eight weeks for the toxicology report to be completed to determine what Nathan accessed, officials said. Bilbrey said she learned of her nephews suspected overdose on social media. "We all found out that way, what had happened," she said. "The hell I had to go through to even find out where he was. And then a social worker told me, 'Its a grim situation. I wasnt allowed to stay with him; I had to keep coming back to the hospital every day, so thats what I did." Story continues She said she went to the hospital every day to be by Nathans side, determined to spend time with the nephew she had lost track of three years ago. He died Saturday. "I told Nathan as I stroked his hair, I apologized I feel guilty. I feel a ton of guilt," she said. "People want to know 'where the family was at, where was the family?' My brother didn't want to be found. Thats what addiction does; it takes people from their families." Shed come to learn that her brother and his children were living 25 minutes away from her Xenia home, but it was a world apart in an area of Dayton she described as unsafe and severely affected by the heroin epidemic. Bilbrey said that in 2008, she had custody of Nathan and his brother, but Wylie was able to get his children back. In the years that Wylie had lost contact with his family, Bilbrey said shes learn Nathan had been forced to grow up quickly to take care of himself and his little brother. "Circumstances made him have to be a survivor and street-smart," she said of Nathan. He was a protector. But she questioned who was protecting him, saying that neither Nathan nor his brother had been enrolled in school for the last three months. "Childrens services had been called... You can just take your child out of school, and nobody is concerned? So many people did an injustice to both boys." According to reports, cops had found drug paraphernalia in the Wylie home in February 2016, after obtaining a photo a child who lived there sent to a relative of a bag of white power and a razor blade on a plate. At the time, Wylie and his girlfriend were arrested for child endangerment, possession of drug paraphernalia and drug abuse instruments. And in December, police reportedly said they found Wylie with a needle, syringe, heroin and crack cocaine during a traffic stop of his girlfriend. He had been charged with possession of heroin, possession of cocaine and advertising and possessing in that case, online records show. That case is pending in court. "There are a lot of people who knew those boys over the last couple of years and they knew what was happening and did nothing," Bilbrey said. "But Im going to get answers. Im going to be Nathans voice and no stone is going to go unturned." She noted other relatives are now watching over Nathans little brother, who is struggling to come to terms with the death of his protector. "Hes shut down," Bilbrey said. "They were best friends. Children should not have to go through this." Read: 9-Year-Old Girl Saves Her Parents' Lives From Heroin Overdose By Calling 911 Officials with Dayton police told InsideEdition.com that the incident was under investigation and could not confirm any specific details of the case. Childrens Services told InsideEdition.com that the agency had an open case with the Wylie family at the time of Nathan's death, and has taken steps to ensure the safety of his sibling, but declined to provide further details due to confidentiality. Bilbrey has spent the days since her nephews death planning his funeral and fundraising to afford a burial and a headstone expenses she never imagined shed one day incur. Ive been in survival mode," she said. "Its a nightmare to be living through. Im so furious, but Im focused on what needs to be done. Its just not fair." Shes taken solace in making sure Nathan is not forgotten, she said, coming up with a plan to help other children in similar situations. "I was just sitting here, trying to make sense of everything if you can and it just came to my heart, and even the name, 'Nathans Place,'" she said. "I want to start a center and its going to be for children who have been affected by heroin. There are so many of them. Thats not something children should have in common, but they need to know theyre not alone. These kids have to grow up a lot faster than they should. They dont get to be kids. They need a place to come in and be children." Its a daunting task that Bilbrey said she needs to accomplish for Nathan, for his brother and for all other children suffering as a result of addiction. "These two boys are not the only ones who live that life. Addiction is a real problem, she said. It is prominent in our area." On average, seven Montgomery County residents a day were treated for overdoses by emergency departments in 2016, according to a public health report obtained by the Dayton Daily News. The numbers show the grip drugs, and in large part, heroin, has on the community, the News wrote. I know what people think 'This would never affect by family.' Wrong," Bilbrey said. "Do your research, this is affecting so many. "Do I even know where to get started on Nathans Center? No," she continued. "But I have faith that its going to come together. Through Nathans short life, we can help others. Nathan was full of laughter, he was a protector and he was a good kid. He just loved life and his heart was so big. I think under all that roughness and toughness, he was a gentle soul. He just wasnt given a fair chance." Watch: 5-Month-Old Girl Starves to Death After Parents Overdose on Heroin: Cops Related Articles: London (AFP) - The Basque separatist group ETA has confirmed it will disarm on Saturday, in a letter published by the BBC. "'Disarmament day' is tomorrow and we want to warn that still the process can be attacked by the enemies of peace," the group said in a letter published in English and Spanish and dated April 7. In the note, addressed to the international community and published by the BBC late Thursday, ETA said it had given up "all its weaponry (arms and explosives) to Basque civil society representatives" and described itself as a "disarmed organization". The group said Bayonne, a city in the French Basque region, will be the focal point of the disarmament process where it expected thousands of people to gather on Saturday. ETA's confirmation comes after the head of the regional Basque government, Inigo Urkullu, said last month that the separatist group planned to fully lay down its weapons by April 8. Urkullu at the time called on the Spanish and French governments to "show ambitious vision and open direct lines of communication" with ETA. But Madrid, a strong opponent of ETA, rebuffed the plea and instead demanded the group "dissolve" and never reappear. In its newly-published letter, ETA said the process of disarming has been "a hard and difficult task", praising the Basque authorities while accusing Spain and France of being "stubborn". ETA, founded in 1959 and considered a terrorist group by the European Union, is blamed for the deaths of 829 people in its campaign of bombings and shootings for an independent Basque homeland in northern Spain and southwestern France. It gave up its armed struggle in 2011 but has been seeking to negotiate its dissolution in exchange for amnesties or improved prison conditions for roughly 350 members of the group being held in Spain and France. Around 100 are serving sentences of more than 10 years. MADRID (AP) The armed Basque separatist group ETA, inactive for more than five years, is to hand over its arms Saturday, a finishing touch to a 43-year violent campaign that claimed 829 lives, mostly in Spain. Disarmament is the second-to-last step demanded by France and Spain, which want ETA to formally disband. The organization hasn't said if it will do that. While disarmament is a crucial step to ending the Basque conflict, it remains to be seen whether the gradual fade-out on one of the Europe's last standing violent nationalist conflicts can help heal the decades-old social divisions it caused in Spain and its northern Basque region. There's also an issue of what to do with the hundreds of jailed ETA members and the handful still on the run. Hundreds of killings also remain unsolved and the arms could help lead to some of the perpetrators. Here's a glance at the conflict and the disarmament plan. ETA AND ITS AIMS ETA's name is a Basque-language acronym for Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, meaning Basque Homeland and Freedom. It emerged in the late 1950s during the dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco, which repressed Basque and other cultures in Spain. The group's stated aim was to form an independent state from Basque areas on both sides of the Pyrenees. Basques have a distinct culture and an ancient language, Euskara. ETA's first victim was a Civil Guard police officer killed in 1968. The second was a police commissioner. ETA later began to target politicians, civil servants and journalists, as well as business representatives who refused to pay the "revolutionary tax" demanded to finance the group. In 1973, ETA killed Franco's designated successor, Adm. Luis Carrero Blanco, by bombing his car in central Madrid. Democracy formally returned to Spain in 1978, three years after Franco's death, but ETA's campaign intensified. One of its most notorious attacks killed 21 people in a supermarket bombing in Barcelona in 1987. Story continues Shadowy death squads, meanwhile, killed more than 60 people in what was known as the Spanish government's "dirty war" against the group. While ETA may have enjoyed some support during the Franco dictatorship, social rejection increased over the years and then erupted massively in 1997 following the kidnapping and brutal slaying of Miguel Angel Blanco, a 29-year-old small town-councilor. THE FRENCH CONNECTION ETA carried out most of its attacks in Spain while using southwestern France as a hiding place for its members and arms stashes. Increased cooperation by French authorities in the 1990s helped Spain's police and judiciary go all out against ETA and its supporters, leading to the closure of newspapers close to the militants and the banning of political and social groups seen as speaking for ETA. Over the years there were cease-fires and some fruitless negotiations with the Spanish government, only for the bombings and shootings to resume. Depleted by arrests and wracked by divisions among its members and political allies, ETA announced a definitive cease-fire in December 2011. Its hope of beginning negotiations with France and Spain was rebuffed. Both countries also rejected ETA's suggestion that an independent commission of experts should verify the decommissioning of its arms, which would have shielded the weapons from police investigating more than 200 unresolved killings. THE HANDOVER ETA says it has now placed the disarmament in the hands of intermediaries that call themselves "peace artisans." By Saturday, this group has pledged to provide the International Verification Commission with the means to locate the arms under ETA's control, which will then be confiscated by French authorities. Some stashes could be missed because the group's current leaders may not have records. The Basque regional government, which has helped mediate the process, says "ETA's disarmament will be complete, definitive and carried out in one single act." Experts view the disarmament as symbolic, saying ETA's arsenal is already diminished and much of it obsolete. Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, the former Spanish interior minister who directed the police crackdown that led to the 2011 cease-fire, estimates that ETA had fewer than 200 guns at the time. He believed that materials to build explosives could be expired by now. VOLUNTARY ACT OR RENDITION? Saturday's weapon handover will not be public and no Spanish or French government representatives with participate. In the afternoon, thousands of supporters of Basque independence supporters are expected to join in a demonstration in the French town of Bayonne to cap the event. Spain has accused the organizers of trying give the impression that the arms are being handed over voluntarily when in reality, it argues, this is surrender. By Sonya Dowsett and Isla Binnie MADRID (Reuters) - Basque militant group ETA is to surrender its weapons to authorities on Saturday, drawing a line under more than four decades of armed struggle that gained it notoriety as one of Europe's most intractable separatist movements. The orchestrated handover in the French city of Bayonne will not dissolve the group, which declared a ceasefire in 2011 after killing more than 850 people during a campaign for an independent state in northern Spain and southwest France. But it will sever a link with an era of political violence in Western Europe, just as democratically-driven nationalism is stirring across the continent. Scotland and the Spanish region of Catalonia are seeking referendums on independence, while Ireland's Sinn Fein has urged a vote on taking Northern Ireland out of Britain. Anger among Basques at political and cultural repression under General Francisco Franco led to the founding of ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna - Basque Country and Freedom) in 1959. Following Spain's return to democracy in the 1970s, the Basque region gained more autonomy and the group's continued bombings and assassinations caused public support to wane. ETA said in a letter to the BBC it had handed over its weapons and explosives to civilian go-betweens who will deliver them to authorities on Saturday. But it is not clear how the process will be carried out or if it will receive the backing of the Spanish and French governments. The Basque parliamentary spokesman for Spain's ruling People's Party, which has refused to negotiate with ETA and called for its full dissolution, said the handover was a final surrender after six years of broken promises. "The ETA we've known up to now has gone forever," said Borja Semper outside the legislature in Vitoria-Gasteiz. "What remains to be done is to wipe out the hatred that ETA embedded in a large part of Basque society." The group's surrendered arms may yet come to embody that challenge. A government source said Madrid did not believe the group would hand over all its arms, while Spain's state prosecutor has asked the High Court to examine those surrendered for murder weapons used in unresolved cases. Popular revulsion at the scale of violent attacks carried out by Islamist militants like ISIS, and effective crackdowns by Spanish and French police have also helped make ETA's brand of activism untenable, says Paddy Woodworth, journalist and author of 'Dirty War, Clean Hands', a book about ETA. "It had ceased to be an attractive organization to join," he told Reuters. "The whole left nationalist armed strategy that goes back to the 1960s ... has been shown to be bankrupt." VIOLENT PAST ETA's first known victim was a secret police chief killed in San Sebastian in 1968. Its last was a French policemen the group shot in 2010. A year later it chose not to disarm when it called its truce, but has been severely weakened in the past decade after hundreds of its members were arrested in joint Spanish and French operations and weapons were seized. In a symbolic gesture in 2014, ETA released a video showing masked members giving up a limited weapons cache to verifiers. The remaining arsenal, while difficult to keep track of, probably contains hundreds of guns and much more explosive material, "maybe 20, 100 times more" than was consigned in the symbolic handover, Woodworth said. The group's first revolutionary gesture was to fly the banned 'ikurrina', the red and green Basque flag, before the campaign escalated in the 1960s into violence that was brutally reciprocated by the Franco regime. In 1973, ETA targeted Franco's heir apparent Luis Carrero Blanco by digging a tunnel under the road that he drove down daily to attend Mass. They packed the tunnel with explosives and blasted Blanco's car over a five-storey building, killing him instantly. The assassination changed the course of history, as the removal of Franco's successor led to the exiled king reclaiming the throne and Spain's progress to a constitutional monarchy. At the peak of the violence, attacks including a 1987 car bomb at a Barcelona supermarket, which killed 21 including a pregnant woman and two children, horrified Spaniards and drew international outrage. ETA called a permanent ceasefire in March 2006, but it was shattered by a massive bomb attack at a parking lot at Madrid airport that December which killed two Ecuadorian immigrants. ETA victim Gorka Landaburu, who lost his thumb and was left blind in one eye after a letter bomb detonated in his home in 2001, welcomed the disarmament and said lessons had been learned. "This must never happen again in our country," he said, standing by the sea in the Basque resort of San Sebastian. "I hope no one ever picks up pistols and bombs to defend an ideology ever again." (Editing by Julien Toyer and John Stonestreet) Bayonne (France) (AFP) - The Basque separatist group ETA says it will disarm on Saturday, bringing to an end decades of violence that have claimed hundreds of lives. In a letter addressed to the international community, ETA -- which has waged a bloody campaign of bombings and shootings -- said it was giving up all of its weapons. "'Disarmament day' is tomorrow and we want to warn that still the process can be attacked by the enemies of peace," the group said in the letter in English and Spanish published by the BBC and dated April 7. In the note, ETA, which is still considered a terrorist group by the European Union, said it had abandoned "all its weaponry (arms and explosives) to Basque civil society representatives" and described itself as a "disarmed organization". The group said Bayonne, a city in the French Basque region, will be the focal point of the disarmament process where it expected thousands of people to gather on Saturday. ETA's announcement comes after the head of the regional Basque government, Inigo Urkullu, said last month that the separatist group planned to fully lay down its weapons by April 8. Urkullu at the time called on the Spanish and French governments to "show ambitious vision and open direct lines of communication" with ETA. But Madrid, a strong opponent of ETA, rebuffed the plea and instead demanded the group "dissolve" and never reappear. In its newly-published letter, ETA said the process of disarming has been "a hard and difficult task", praising the Basque authorities while accusing Spain and France of being "stubborn". Earlier Thursday there had been doubts over the final handover of arms, with arrangements for the event remaining sketchy. So-called "peacemakers" drawn from French civil society were supposed to hand over an inventory of the weapons on behalf of ETA on the sidelines of a "big popular gathering" in Bayonne. Story continues But a source close to ETA said that negotiations were still under way with French authorities and that the actual handover of the arsenal -- which experts say consists of 130 handguns and two tonnes of explosives -- would take place outside Bayonne to ensure that it is "total and verifiable". "This disarmament is essential to definitively turn the page on violence in the Basque Country, but must nevertheless be carried out in full respect of the rule of law", French Socialist party senator in the region Frederique Espagnac told AFP. Spanish Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido said on Wednesday there "would be no negotiations nor concessions" to ETA members in exchange for disarmament. Berlin (AFP) - It may seem an unlikely venue for an art gallery -- an old bank building in the centre of a busy shopping district and about to be torn down. But in Berlin, arguably Europe's urban art capital, some 165 like-minded street artists have filled the five-storey space with their work. And the result is a burst of colour and myriad of styles, with murals and installations covering 10,000 square metres (108,000 feet), all on public view at no charge -- but only until the demolition crew moves in. "We're open here for two months, then everything will disappear for all eternity," said Joern Reiners of Die Dixons (The Dixons), the group behind the project called The Haus (The House). It approached property developers Pandion for temporary use of the block before it makes way for luxury condominiums, and got the keys last October. "There was so little time, we didn't have any big plans, we just got our telephones out and rang everyone we know," said Timo von Rekowski, another Dixons member. Artists from 17 countries joined the project, with Berlin-based ones making up the majority. Each was assigned a space -- be it an office, the corridor, stairwell or even the toilet. - 'Make it an experience' - The gallery that sprung up includes a room covered from floor to ceiling with personal ads usually seen pasted on Berlin lampposts or walls, another room with a huge pair of clay legs like a giant just landed through the ceiling, and a darkened room with wall murals that are only revealed with the help of a torch. Some artists may not be household names, but others are well-established in Berlin's urban art scene, like El Bocho, whose cartoon-like "Little Lucy" series and "Citizens" portraits are part of the German capital's landscape, or Emess, whose works often involve political figures. "What we have here is the space to realise their vision... while not having to think about the business of it all like entrance fees, but really just concentrating on the art -- to experiencing it and to making it an experience," said Reiners. Story continues "And that's the essence of what makes us different from other projects." If there is one regret, it is "that we will not be able to show to visitors the energy that was generated here while the house was being set up," von Rekowski said. To ensure that visitors etch the images in their heads, no photography is allowed. The group also keeps a tight leash on the images circulating of the works, with media outlets only allowed to photograph details and not wide shots. - 'Now or never' - The transient nature of the show helped attract a crowd on its opening weekend of April 1-2, with a queue snaking down the street. One visitor, Juliana Lang, who queued for more than half an hour with her partner, said: "It was well worth it, there was more variety than I expected. And it'll all be gone soon, so it's now or never." Artist Anne Bengard, who painted a tortured-looking man with a contraption stretching over his teeth as fake banknotes spewed from his mouth, said she appreciated the photography ban. Too many people today just view art on the internet, without really experiencing it in person, she said. "I think it's great that this is done in this manner so everyone who wants to see it has to come personally to view it," she added. Despite the effort that went into getting her work right, Bengard is not bothered that her art will soon be reduced to rubble. "This is my first wall painting in a bank and I find it rather cool also that this first work will soon no longer exist, that no one can buy it and it's really something for this moment in time." At least 20,000 people have been killed and more than 2.6 million made homeless in northeast Nigeria since the start of Boko Haram's Islamist insurgency in 2009 (AFP Photo/) Maiduguri (Nigeria) (AFP) - Boko Haram jihadists have killed four soldiers in an ambush in northeast Nigeria, where they torched an army base a day after killing seven civilians, a soldier and witnesses said. "Our men came under attack near Gubdori village yesterday," the soldier told AFP, asking not to be named. "We lost four men in the ambush. Five were injured and four are still missing." The Islamists opened fire on an army convoy heading to the small town of Gulumba in Borno state, he added. Military reinforcements came from the town and the attackers "were forced to withdraw after suffering heavy casualties". The assailants came from the Boko Haram faction headed by Abu Musab Al-Barnawi, son of the sect's founder Mohammed Yusuf, the soldier added, in an account confirmed by two vigilantes. Barnawi was appointed last year by the Islamic State group to replace veteran Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau. Jihadists also attacked the military base in Wajirko village, 150 kilometres (90 miles) from Maiduguri, capital of Borno state, forcing the soldiers to flee. "The gunmen arrived in pickups and engaged soldiers in the base just outside the village in a heavy shootout," Wajirko resident Bukar Maduye told AFP. "The soldiers were outgunned and forced to withdraw from the base and allowed the gunmen, who were from Mamman Nur faction, to take over the base which they looted and set on fire," he said, adding that villagers were not attacked. Barnawi's right-hand man Mamman Nur, the alleged mastermind of a 2011 bombing of a UN building in Nigeria's capital Abuja, is believed by many to be the real leader of the faction. A vigilante assisting the military in its fight against Boko Haram confirmed the incident, adding that the soldiers had moved to a military base 40 kilometres away (25 miles). "There were no reports of casualties from either side but the (military) base was completely burnt by the Boko Haram terrorists and the soldiers fled," Mustapha Karimbe said. Story continues In a previous attack, scores of Boko Haram fighters rode on motorcycles Wednesday into Abbati, a farming community outside Maiduguri, where they killed seven men and stole 360 livestock. "They slaughtered the two men they had forced to lead them to the community and shot dead the five owners of the cattle herds who had confronted them with bows and arrows," said vigilante Babakura Kolo. Barnawi and Mamman Nur have previously promised residents in areas under their control they would not be harmed as long as they did not cooperate with Nigerian troops fighting Boko Haram. But in recent weeks the Islamist fighters have intensified raids in areas near Lake Chad, stealing food from residents. They have also killed several civilians they accused of cooperating with the military. BOSTON (AP) The Boston Bruins are going to be without leading scorer Brad Marchand for the rest of the NHL's regular season. The Bruins forward who has 85 points (39 goals, 46 assists) was suspended for two games by the league on Thursday for a spearing incident against Tampa Bay defenseman Jake Dotchin in a 4-0 Bruins win on Tuesday. Boston clinched a berth in the Stanley Cup playoffs with that win. Marchand was given a five-minute major penalty for spearing and a game misconduct at 19:20 of the first period Tuesday after he lifted his stick with force into Dotchin's groin area while battling in front of the Lightning net. "It was definitely very, very selfish and undisciplined," Marchand said. "But you can't do anything about it now, and the most important thing is we're in the playoffs and regardless of who we have to play, we have to do the job. So a couple games here and we're still a very capable team on the ice." In issuing the suspension the league said in an explanatory video that Marchand's history affected its decision. Marchand was suspended four times for 12 games total prior to this punishment. He was also fined three times. Marchand will lose $109,756.10 based on his annual salary. For more than 15,000 students across the country, Wednesday marked the first day of Resistance School - a program where the educational focus is mobilizing against President Donald Trumps administration. Each one of us has people in our lives who were disturbed by the outcome of the election and saw it as a call to action, said Joe Breen, one of the Resistance School co-founders. Hes a third-year student in a joint degree program at Harvard Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School. We recognized that we had the opportunity to help them develop the skills that they would need to get involved in political action. Resistance School organizers - a group of Harvard graduate students - said a couple hundred people participated in the first lesson in person at the Ivy League campus in Boston on Wednesday, while about 15,000 people of all ages tuned in via livestream from 50 states and 20 countries. They estimated the total participation was even larger because students were encouraged to host watch parties in groups. The school - which is offering lessons on mobilizing activists and sustaining long-term resistance - has inspired comparisons to Dumbledores Army, the student group that united against Voldemort in the Harry Potter series. Breen said he is embracing the comparison as long as it means the schools message is resonating with people. The group also reached out to Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, a vocal Trump critic, to invite her to participate, but they havent heard back yet. It feels like the start of something quite significant, said Harvard Kennedy School lecturer Tim McCarthy, who describes himself as both a Resistance School student and teacher. I told the students last night that I havent felt this kind of energy on campus in a while. McCarthy taught Wednesdays lesson on communicating effectively for change. He said he was absolutely thrilled to see the Resistance School emerge from deep despair over the U.S. presidential election. Story continues I was also relieved to know that there are people in this generation coming up who refuse to get stuck in the pit of despair, he said. They refuse to be paralyzed by the monumental train wreck that I mentioned in my speech. Resistance School leaders said they hope their lessons will give people the tools to continue the momentum of recent anti-Trump protests like the post-inauguration Womens March on Washington. Universities have played a really critical role throughout history in progressive mobilizing and organizing, said Yasmin Radjy, one of the Resistance School co-founders and a second-year student in the Harvard Kennedy School. Even with folks who may not be progressive here, theres been a lot of enthusiasm and excitement about students actually doing something together that has an impact on the world beyond the walls of our institution. This article was originally published on TIME.com Last month, a group of Democratic lawmakers introduced a far-reaching bill designed to combat the rising cost of prescription drugs. One provision would allow Americans to import qualifying medicines that are manufactured at FDA-inspected facilities from licensed Canadian sellers and, after two years, from OECD countries that meet standards comparable to US standards. This is hardly the first time such legislation has been introduced, but the idea appears to be gaining some momentum now that President Trump has voiced support for importation. But would this be as simple as it sounds? We spoke with Timothy Squire, an attorney who co-chairs the international life sciences group at the Fasken Martineau law firm in Toronto. He suggests there could be some hiccups. This is an edited version of our conversation Pharmalot: This idea has been kicked around for a while and went nowhere. Maybe this time, something comes of it. Will it be as easy as the lawmakers believe? Read the rest... A Labrador named Yoda was found wet, shivering, and frightened after spending three days alone following a boating crash that killed one man in California. Read: Stray Dog Covered in Mange, Fleas and Open Sores Is Unrecognizable After Rescue Authorities in Marin County discovered Yoda offshore on Thursday, days after a boating accident that left 47-year-old San Jose resident Brian Phidat Ho dead. Ho was aboard the boat on a fishing excursion with Yoda, another man and another dog when, according to authorities, the boat was capsized by waves. The second man and another dog were recovered shortly after the tragedy. Yoda was presumed dead. On Thursday, Marin County Fire Department Chiefs were scouting locations for a rescue orientation when they noticed Yoda offshore on a beach. When they went to her, they said she was shivering and was wet. They said she had no visible injuries and matched the description of the dog from Monday's boating accident. The Chiefs put a lifejacket on her and brought her to Marin Humane, a dog adoption facility, to get checked out. After given the all clear, the Chiefs took her back to the fire station where they contacted Ho's family. We called the family and we happened to reach them during the funeral," Battalion Chief Bret McTigue said in a statement. "We gave them the update and they were able to make the announcement about the dog at the funeral, which was nice." Read: Puppy Riddled With Mange Makes Incredible Recovery After Being Left for Dead Before the family could get Yoda, they posted a series of photos of the dog on Twitter as she recovered. Marin County Fire Surf Rescue Operations class rescues dog after tragic loss on Monday. Dog survives four days stranded. Dillon Beach pic.twitter.com/r7cgvoAV0d Marin County Fire (@marincountyfire) April 6, 2017 On Thursday evening, family came to collect Yoda and told firefighters that she was adopted a year-and-a-half ago from the pound after having been abused. They said Yodas tail goes between her legs until she gets to know you. Story continues Yoda reunion with owners pic.twitter.com/sTAiGbjSzB Marin County Fire (@marincountyfire) April 6, 2017 A member of the fire department told the family that "she was definitely feisty" at first, but eventually warmed up to everyone. The family said they were going to be bringing Yoda to Ho's services and he will be buried Saturday. Watch: 57 Dogs That Were Rescued From Kill Shelters Meet Their New Families for the First Time Related Articles: BEIJING (Reuters) - China on Friday urged all parties in Syria to try to find a political settlement in the six-year-old war after a U.S. military strike on a Syrian airfield, which came as China's president met with U.S. President Donald Trump. China also hoped that "relevant parties stay calm, exercise restraint and avoid doing anything that might raise tensions", Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said. "The latest developments in Syria again speak to the urgent need for a political settlement to resolve the Syria issue," Hua Chunying told reporters at a regular briefing. "We call on all relevant parties to resolutely stick to promoting a political settlement and not abandon efforts to find a political settlement." U.S. officials said the military launched dozens of cruise missile strikes against an airbase controlled by Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad's forces in response to the chemical attack on Tuesday in a rebel-held area. Facing his biggest foreign policy crisis since taking office in January, Trump took the toughest direct U.S. action yet in Syria's civil war, raising the risk of confrontation with Russia and Iran, Assad's two main military backers. China has routinely sided with Russia in blocking action by the U.N. Security Council on Syria, and Beijing's special envoy for the Syrian crisis has praised Russia's military role there as effective in combating international terrorism. While relying on the region for oil supplies, China tends to leave Middle Eastern diplomacy to the other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, namely the United States, Britain, France and Russia. But China has urged that a diplomatic resolution to the violence there be found and has hosted Syrian government and opposition figures. While showing no interest in getting involved militarily, China's Defence Ministry said last year that it had been providing medical equipment and training for Syria. Beijing has its own security concerns about violence in the region, worried that Uighurs, a mostly Muslim people from western China's Xinjiang region, have been fighting with militant groups in Syria and Iraq. A group purporting to be affiliated with the Islamic State issued a bloody video in late February, showing ethnic Uighur fighters training in Iraq, killing prisoners, and vowing to plant their flag in China. (Reporting by Christian Shepherd; Writing by Michael Martina; Editing by Nick Macfie) Beijing (AFP) - China on Friday warned against "further deterioration" of the situation in Syria, just hours after a US air strike on a Syrian airbase in response to a suspected chemical attack. The warning came as Xi Jinping met with US President Donald Trump at his Florida resort in Mar-a-Lago, where the Chinese leader had just hours earlier extended an invitation to the billionaire politician to pay a state visit to China later this year, according to the official Xinhua news agency. China was "concerned" by the recent events in Syria, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters at a regular press briefing, adding: "What is urgent now is to avoid further deterioration of the situation. "We oppose use of chemical weapons by any country, organisation or individual in any circumstance, for any purpose," she said. The massive strike -- the first direct US action against President Bashar al-Assad's government and Trump's biggest military decision since taking office -- marked a dramatic escalation in American involvement in Syria's six-year civil war. Six people were killed and serious damage caused, according to the Syrian army. News of the air strike overshadowed a two-day tete-a-tete between the Chinese president and his US counterpart, which concludes Friday. The meeting is the first face-to-face encounter between the leaders of the world's two largest economic and military powers since a US election that featured frequent barbs at China's "rape" of the American economy. Shortly after his dinner with Xi, Trump announced the strike in a brief televised address delivered hours after the UN Security Council failed to agree on a probe into the suspected chemical attack. During the meetings, Trump agreed to visit China "with pleasure", saying he hoped to visit at an early date, according to Xinhua, citing officials. Trump had personally informed the Chinese head of state of the Syrian strike, a White House official told AFP. Story continues China is a veto-wielding permanent member of the UN Security Council, and consistently says the crisis needs a political solution. But it has six times voted alongside Russia to veto UN Security Council measures aimed at addressing the conflict -- including one in 2014 seeking the investigation of war crimes in the country. Declaring it in America's vital national security interest to prevent the spread of chemical weapons, Trump accused Assad of a "very barbaric attack" in which "even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered." The attack followed days in which images of dead children and victims suffering convulsions from the suspected sarin gas attack in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhun shocked the world. Syria's regime has denied any use of chemical weapons and state media on Friday described the US strike as an "act of aggression". BEIJING (AP) Chinese state media say U.S. President Donald Trump has accepted an invitation from his Chinese counterpart to visit China later this year. The official Xinhua News Agency reported late Thursday that Trump will travel to China at an "early date" in 2017 but gave no details. Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are holding their first meeting this week at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. During last year's election campaign and afterward, Trump talked tough about extracting better trade deals out of China and pressuring Beijing to do more to deter North Korea's nuclear program. Trump joked at a formal dinner with Xi on Thursday that he had "gotten nothing" in long talks with the Chinese president but said they had developed a friendly rapport. In her first public interview since she lost the presidential election to Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton discussed Thursday various issues including Russia's interference in last year's election, WikiLeaks' theft of emails from her campaign chairman and misogyny. In the interview at Tina Brown's eighth annual Women in the World Summit in New York City with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, Clinton said she will never run for office again. In the latest interview, she also said she's writing a book, which would reflect on her last year's defeat. When asked whether she would return to political office, she said: "I am looking at doing interesting things. ... I dont think that will ever include running for office again." The revelation from the former secretary of state comes amid rumors of a run for mayor of New York in 2018. Read: Will Former Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton Ever Return To Clinton Foundation After Her Loss In Elections? Although Clinton now intends to relax and write a book, simultaneously she wants an independent investigation into the hacking of the Democratic Party leaders emails, which she believes, were carried out by Russia under President Vladimir Putin's orders last year. I didnt fully understand how impactful that was, she said. "It is something that Putin has used inside Russia, outside Russia to great effect." Last year, shortly after the presidential election result, there were reports of analyses by private cybersecurity firms, jointly with the FBI, the NSA and other government agencies, which said Russian hackers were behind the Democratic National Committee hack. One of the cybersecurity firms, CrowdStrike, was called by the DNC to analyze the hacking. CrowdStrikes co-founder, Dmitri Alperovitch, suggested two Russian hacker groups, Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear, were behind the DNC hack. Story continues Apart from her future plans and the DNC hacking, Clinton also discussed about Trump's policies that she deemed anti-women. The targeting of women which is whats going on is absolutely, beyond any political agenda, she said. Clinton pointed out at the State Departments move this week to defund the United Nations Population Fund, among other programs. Clinton also condemned Tuesday's chemical attack in Syria and called for a strong military response to confront President Bashar Assad. Related Articles SPRINGDALE, Ark. Thousands of people in this northwestern corner of Arkansas, many of them working poor, are from a faraway constellation of islands, the most famous of which is known as Bikini. They can live and work here without visas. Their children attend local schools. They pay federal and state taxes, just like the rest of the community. But in all but the fewest cases they will never be able to qualify for Medicaid or Medicare under current law. The large community of people here from the Marshall Islands, located roughly halfway between Australia and Hawaii, fall into a peculiar gap of the US health care system and it has left a great many of them in the most precarious of limbos. Read more: A boy who cant speak depends on Medicaid. What happens to him if its cut? While some have health insurance through their work, those who arent working or are elderly do not. Many dont see a doctor unless its an emergency a risky approach in a community where type 2 diabetes is startlingly common. Most, by the time they see us their chronic conditions are way out of control or they have other things that could have been caught by health care maintenance, like cancers. By the time theyre seen, its advanced, explained Dr. Sheldon Riklon, a family medicine doctor who is one of only two Marshallese doctors in the US and who was recently recruited to practice in northwest Arkansas. The special status of the Marshallese is conferred by a treaty called the Compact of Free Association, commonly known as COFA. (It also covers the nations of Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia.) It was struck when the Marshalls, formerly under a US trusteeship, gained their independence in 1986. Some see the treaty as a debt payment of sorts. For a dozen years after World War II, the US used the Marshall Islands as a nuclear testing ground; 67 nuclear tests were conducted there. Some parts of the country whose islands have a combined landmass about the size of the District of Columbia, but stretch over 4,500 square miles of ocean remain uninhabitable. Story continues To this day, the US maintains control over the waters of the Republic of the Marshall Islands and retains a naval base there. Arkansas happens to be home to the largest community of Marshallese in the continental United States. Many work in Springdales ubiquitous factories, where they process chickens or make candles or package baby wipes. But they arent US citizens and so dont legally qualify for social safety net programs. Some states Washington, Hawaii, and California among them have amended their Medicaid and Medicare programs to extend coverage to Marshallese residents. But Arkansas has not, and in Springdale, people will tell you that if a family member gets really sick, theyll head out of state. If their health deteriorates and they know their health condition is deteriorating, they will leave us to go to Seattle because they know that they can have better health coverage in Seattle, said Robin Thomas, administrator of a community clinic in Springdale that serves the Marshallese community. As long as they can work and make money, they want to be here. Michael Duke is an anthropologist at the University of Memphis who is studying the health needs of the Arkansas Marshallese. As he sees it, theres inequity in their situation. They pay federal income taxes but they dont get back a lot of these services that citizens get, Duke told STAT. It would be one thing if they didnt pay into the system. But they are paying into the system and subsidizing Americans, and not being able to benefit from those [services] themselves. Some in the community need health services badly. Riklon splits his time among several clinics in cities that are strung along Interstate 49 like beads on a necklace. Fayetteville, Springdale, Lowell, Rogers, and Bentonville, the corporate home of Walmart. Read more: Mumps outbreaks are spiking and raising questions about vaccine effectiveness One of those clinics cares for Marshallese diabetes patients; it is operated with grant funding by the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, at its Fayetteville campus. When I treat them and I know that they have no insurance, I do my best to keep them off insulin. Because insulin is very expensive, Riklon said. Melisa Laelan knows that too well. Laelan, 38, is the director of the Arkansas Coalition of Marshallese, a group that advocates for the community. She is also a court translator, the first certified Marshallese court translator in the country. Marshallese Arkansas Marshallese women prepare dinner at the Marshallese Tabernacle Church in Springdale. (Eric Gay/AP) A few years ago she was working at a baby wipes factory. Her mother, who was living with Laelan, had diabetes. She did not have insurance, and she didnt qualify for Medicaid. She died of complications of diabetes. Her insulin was costing me $300 a month. There were times that we had to go without those, Laelan admitted. Jirkai Tatak, 52, is also a diabetic. He works as a pressman, printing the local issue of the Democrat Gazette. To avoid the penalty the Affordable Care Act levies on people without health insurance, Tatak purchases the cheapest plan available to him. It covers little, he said. Tatak cannot afford to buy insurance for his wife and their two children who live with them; the premiums would leave the family nothing to live on. What does he do if he gets sick? Thats the question, Tatak replied. Thats the question. Its a question the Marshallese here have been asking for years, one echoed by local health service providers who struggle to cope with the communitys health needs. Local lawmakers appear to have heard their concerns. In mid-March the state Legislature passed a resolution calling for the inclusion of Marshall Islands-born children in ARKids First, Arkansass Medicaid program for children under 19. Read more: Crushed by defeat, patients and providers vow to fight on to expand Medicaid in Kansas The state health department is drafting the rules change that will be submitted to the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services for approval. Backers of the resolution hope the change can be implemented by the end of the year, if not sooner. Sandy Hainline Williams, a nurse coordinator for the Marshallese and Latino communities at a Springdale clinic, said getting the Marshallese children into ARKids is a good place to start. Trying to get the state to change its Medicaid and Medicare rules to allow low-income Marshallese adults to qualify is a tougher challenge. Its been difficult to ask to put this population into our Medicaid program as adults because we dont have a firm grasp on how many there are. So were asking for an unknown sum, she said. Some people estimate there are between 8,000 to 10,000 Marshallese in Springdale and the surrounding area. Others say the figure may be approaching 14,000. Whatever the actual number, the city has a good-sized chunk of the global Marshallese population, estimated to be around 85,000. Outreach workers from the Arkansas Coalition of Marshallese have been signing up members of the community for the Affordable Care Act if they can. Not everyone can afford it. The Marshallese could qualify for Medicaid or Medicare if they become US citizens, but the path to citizenship is difficult, if not impossible, for many. The size and makeup of Marshallese families contribute to the dilemma. People tend to live in multigenerational households a great-grandmother and grandmother might be living with two related families in the same dwelling. A Marshallese man with a job might be helping to support his sisters children. But insurance policies dont typically allow people to add on grandmothers or nieces and nephews. Even if they did, the costs would be out of reach for these families. Some of the newcomers speak little English, and dont understand how health care delivery works in the US. In the Marshall Islands, people who need care go to a clinic, where the consultation, tests, and medicines prescribed will typically cost about $5. They arrived here and they did what they know how to do. They went to the emergency rooms. You cant hit an emergency room just to be triaged for under $280 anymore. So they were mounting up $1,000 bills for nothing and just got overwhelmed financially, Hainline Williams said. A number of Springdales hospitals have charitable programs. But the application process is complex, often requiring documentation that the Marshallese dont have. If you hand them a packet of papers 30 to 70 pages long, they dont get them completed. So a lot of them didnt make applications, Hainline Williams said. Jebe River, 61, a slender woman who is looking after her 12-year-old grandson, finds the situation bewildering. Through a translator, she explained that she tried to apply for the ACA, but missed the enrollment period. Its a lot easier in the islands, she acknowledged. By Aaron Ross DAKAR (Reuters) - Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila named a former member of the largest opposition party as prime minister on Friday, a move likely to further divide Kabila's opponents after talks to negotiate his exit from power broke down. A statement from the presidency named Bruno Tshibala as prime minister in a new transitional government meant to organize a presidential election by year-end following Kabila's refusal to step down when his mandate expired in December. Opponents of Kabila, who has ruled Congo since his father's assassination in 2001, suspect he intends to repeatedly delay elections until he can organize a referendum to let himself stand for a third term, as his counterparts in neighboring Congo Republic and Rwanda have done. Kabila denies those charges, saying the election delays are due to challenges registering millions of voters and budgetary constraints. Security forces killed dozens of civilians in protests over election delays last year. Worsening militia violence in recent months has meanwhile raised fears of a backslide toward the civil wars of the turn of the century that killed millions. Under a deal struck with the opposition in December, Kabila can stay in office until after an election required to be held by the end of this year. But negotiations to implement the pact collapsed last week and Tshibala's nomination is almost certain to weaken fledgling efforts to make Kabila abide by it. Tshibala's nomination escalates tensions ahead of a mass march his former party, the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS), has called for next Monday in the capital Kinshasa to protest delays implementing the deal. Tshibala was expelled from the UDPS last month after he and other prominent opposition leaders contested the designation of successors to veteran leader Etienne Tshisekedi, who died in February. Tshisekedi's son, Felix, who replaced his father as president of the main opposition bloc, said Kabila violated the deal by not naming a candidate of the alliance's choosing. "We continue to demand the application of the Dec. 31, 2016 accord," he told Reuters. "The nomination of Bruno Tshibala is a departure from the accord." Tshibala will be confronted immediately with stern security and economic tests. Congo's franc currency has lost nearly half its value since last year and militia violence has worsened across the country in the wake of Kabila's decision to stay on. (Additional reporting by Amedee Mwarabu Kiboko in Kinshasa; Editing by Tim Cocks and XX) The United States fired 59 tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airbase on Thursday in response to a chemical weapons attack in northwestern Syria earlier this week that killed more than 80 people. Launched from two U.S. Navy destroyers in the Mediterranean Sea, the strikes are the first direct military assault by American forces on the Syrian government of Bashar Assad. President Donald Trumps decision to launch a missile attack on Syria, which was not announced in advance, drew mixed reactions from members of the U.S. Senate and Congress. Referencing Assad and Russia directly, Arizona Sen. John McCain said the strikes sent an important message. McCain had previously voted in favor of a 2013 Obama Administration bill that, if it passed, would have authorized the U.S. to use military force against the government of Syria in response to the use of chemical weapons. Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton and Missouri Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler were among many Republicans that issued messages in support of the move. Hartzler said that she hoped the Presidents decision would prevent further bloodshed. My statement on The U.S. military strikes in Syria: pic.twitter.com/S4wxwAhYXo - Rep. Vicky Hartzler (@RepHartzler) April 7, 2017 Republican Senator Bob Corker, the current chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations - who also voted in favor of the 2013 authorization of military force bill - said in a statement that: It is critical Assad knows he will no longer enjoy impunity for his horrific crimes against his own citizens. Story continues My statement in response to U.S. missile strikes in #Syria: pic.twitter.com/8oL0QlpIeS - Senator Bob Corker (@SenBobCorker) April 7, 2017 But Republicans did not unequivocally support the strikes. In a series of tweets, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said that the President should have congressional approval for military action and wrote that prior interventions in the region had done nothing to make us safer and Syria will be no different. Paul was considered one of the leading figures in the intervention against the 2013 authorization bill. Our prior interventions in this region have done nothing to make us safer and Syria will be no different. - Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) April 7, 2017 Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin from Illinois, who voted in favor of the 2013 bill, called the strikes a measured response to the Syrian nerve gas atrocity. But he cautioned that further action or escalation beyond airstrikes would require close scrutiny by Congress and engaging the American people in that decision. My statement on tonight39;s U.S. missile strikes in Syria pic.twitter.com/nLcHq6jS01 - Senator Dick Durbin (@SenatorDurbin) April 7, 2017 New Jersey Democrat Bonnie Watson Coleman condemned Trumps intervention in Syria as insane and dangerous. If vital to national security- why wasnt Congress made aware? she tweeted. Watson Coleman also retweeted a statement made by Trump in 2013, in which he said it would be a big mistake if then-President Obama did not get Congressional approval before attacking Syria. Democratic Congressman Ruben Gallego from Arizona - an Iraq war veteran - questioned the timing and strategy behind the operation. What is the strategy here? What is our end goal? Why did we have to strike today? This is not how you conduct a military strike. https://t.co/owJc9Nz8GC - Ruben Gallego (@RubenGallego) April 7, 2017 There were more voices of dissent from Calif. Congressman Ro Khanna, who criticized the U.S. for not learning from Iraq and Libya. Every time we have attacked since 2001, terrorism has spread, he tweeted. Calif. Rep. Barbara Lee, a vocal critic of the war in Iraq and the only member of either house of Congress to vote against the authorization of the use of force following the 9/11 attacks, called the strikes an act of war. This is an act of war. Congress needs to come back into session & hold a debate. Anything less is an abdication of our responsibility. https://t.co/GvHML3ByeI - Rep. Barbara Lee (@RepBarbaraLee) April 7, 2017 This article was originally published on TIME.com April 7 is a day celebrated nationally by beer lovers as a big anniversary near the end of Prohibition in 1933 when legal beer sales returned in the United States for the first time in 13 years. beerisback Prohibition was one of the great constitutional experiments of the 20th century. Between 1919, when the 18th Amendment banned the sale, making and transportation of booze, and late 1933, when the 21st Amendment repealed the 18th Amendment, Americans found many ways to keep drinking with the help of a few unsavory friends and some resourceful home brewing techniques. With the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in November 1932, Prohibition was dealt a fatal blow. The new Congress made it a priority to repeal anti-alcohol statutes, but even at a fast pace, it would take months to draft a constitutional amendment to cover all intoxicating spirits. The Roosevelt administration faced a thirsty American public that also dealt with a crippling Depression. As a compromise or interim solution, the President and Congress found a way to bring beer and wine back until the 21st Amendment could legalize all forms of liquor. Roosevelt signed the Cullen-Harrison Act on March 22, 1933. It amended the much-hated Volstead Act of 1919, which was the act of Congress that enabled the 18th Amendment and Prohibition. Back in 1919, some of the politicians who voted for Prohibition assumed that beer and wine sales wouldnt be banned just hard liquors until Prohibitionists used the Volstead Act to broaden the booze ban. The Cullen-Harrison Act allowed people to buy and drink low-alcohol content beer and wine in public, but it didnt go into effect until April 7. On that fateful day, large headlines in newspapers across the nation said the beer was back as the taps opened in 19 states. In St. Louis, the Budweiser Clydesdales made their first public appearance as they pulled a beer wagon through the city. In Washington, the owner of the Abner-Drury Brewery ordered a guarded truck to depart at 12:01 a.m. for the White House, with two cases of beer for President Roosevelt. The shipment arrived along with a local press contingent, only to discover that Roosevelt was asleep. The Marine who was guarding the beer opened the first symbolic beer bottle and drank it so that the press could get photographs. Later, the President sent the beer cases to the National Press Club. In Chicago, an estimated $5 million in beer sales happened on April 7, 1933. There were few reports of arrests. In Hollywood, actress Jean Harlow christened a beer delivery truck. The Cullen-Harrison Act didnt have a long lifespan. It was voided when Utah became the 36th state to ratify the 21st Amendment in December 1933. The spotlight will be on Ed Nygma (Cory Michael Smith) as he transforms into the villain Riddler in Gotham Season 3, and one of the things that fans should look out for is his incredible costume. Smith told Screener that he was admittedly not a fan of the Riddlers costume at first. When he saw the bright, glittering jacket on the rack from the corner of his room, he thought to himself, That cannot be on my body. That is a sparkly green thing that is not the suit. Please tell me. READ: Why Butch and Tabitha have no plans to kill Nygmayet But his opinion changed after he tried it on. When I put it on, we used the same tailors that make all my suits. It was just beautiful, with the black velvet. We have these gorgeous black shoes with just a hint of a purple/maroon thing, just on the shoes. I got really excited, because it was shocking on the rack, but then it was on my body and I was like, This feels so right. In the comic books, the Riddler also carries a cane around, but Smith said his character wont be brandishing it around yet. To give you some inside scoop, I do not have a cane yet, but I want one so badly for a few different reasons. I won't tell you all of them so I don't spoil anything, but I'm pitching very hard for a cane, he told Cinema Blend. So maybe in the future, there will be a cane. But I want him to be someone who deserves a [expletive] cane. He needs to be someone that's just begging for a cane. The Riddler wont be the only villain terrorizing Gotham City when the show returns. Alexander Siddig has been cast as Ras al Ghul, the head of the League of Shadows. He will be introduced when young Bruce Wayne (David Mazouz) tries to unravel the mysteries being kept hidden by the Court of Owls. Siddig told Digital Spy that Ras al Ghul will be a difficult character to pin down because no one knows for sure what his motives are. You're really not sure if he's good or bad no-one knows whether he's a demon or a saint, or a ghost, that's a line from the script, he said. Story continues Gotham Season 3, episode 15, titled How the Riddler Got His Name, will air on April 24. Gotham Photo: Fox Related Articles London (AFP) - Oil prices rallied on Friday after the United States launched a missile strike against Syria, sparking fears that an escalation of the conflict in the crude-rich Middle East could disrupt supplies. Both main contracts jumped more than two percent to their highest levels in a month after US President Donald Trump ordered an assault in retaliation for a chemical attack in Syria that Washington blamed on Damascus. After benchmark contract Brent struck $56.08 per barrel and WTI $52.94, gains were pared through the day. By 1100 GMT, Brent North Sea crude for delivery in June was up 35 cents at $55.29 per barrel compared with Thursday's close. The US benchmark West Texas Intermediate for May won 48 cents at $52.18. "The situation remains fluid in Syria at the moment as the implications of the massive cruise missile strike from the United States get digested," said Oanda senior market analyst Jeffrey Halley. "Among the most pressing questions will be: is this a one-off attack and are other nations going to join in? What will be the response of Iran and Russia -- two of the world's largest oil producers and staunch allies of the Assad regime?" Sukrit Vijayakar of Trifecta Consultants said the crude oil market is likely to hold on to gains over the next few months. "For now, early this morning they have been given a fillip as news of the US firing missiles at Syria has propelled prices higher by over one dollar a barrel," he said. The military strike ordered by US president Donald Trump targeted radars, aircraft, air defence systems and other logistical components at a military base south of Homs in central Syria. The attack comes two days after a suspected sarin attack ordered by President Bashar al-Assad, which Trump has described as "very barbaric". While Syria is not a major oil producer, it borders Iraq, OPEC's second-largest crude producer. Oil prices have struggled to hold above $51 a barrel owing to concerns about an OPEC-led output cut put in place in January as part of a drive to address a global supply glut and overproduction. Story continues There are worries also that prices above $50 will encourage US shale producers to ramp up production as it becomes more cost-effective. "With the oversupply concerns still a dominant theme in the oil markets, extreme upside gains may be limited," said FXTM research analyst Lukman Otunuga. A world supply glut of crude hammered prices from highs of more than $100 per barrel in June 2014 to near 13-year lows below $30 in February 2016. The Dalai Lama will Saturday address devotees at the monastery near India's border with China where he took shelter on his flight from Tibet, drawing protests from Beijing which claims the Himalayan area as its territory. Huge crowds are expected to turn out for the 81-year-old monk on what may be his last-ever visit to Tawang, a remote, high-altitude corner of northeast India that is home to one of the holiest sites in Tibetan Buddhism. But even before he arrived at the monastery in the disputed state of Arunachal Pradesh on Friday evening, the exiled spiritual leader was at the centre of a diplomatic row between China and his adopted homeland, India. Beijing this week lodged an official protest with the Indian ambassador, accusing New Delhi of arranging a platform for the Dalai Lama to "hold anti-China and separatist activities". The Indian government has insisted the visit is purely religious and pointed out that the Dalai Lama has been to Tawang before, accusing China of creating an "artificial controversy". But some analysts say New Delhi has adopted a firmer approach to China since Prime Minister Narendra Modi took power in 2014 and invited the head of the India-based Tibetan government-in-exile to attend his swearing-in ceremony. "The Dalai Lama has always been welcome to travel wherever he wants in India. But this government has been a bit firmer on issues of sovereignty," said Jayadeva Ranade, head of the Delhi-based Centre for China Analysis and Strategy. New Delhi is currently pushing to expand its infrastructure in Arunachal Pradesh, building new roads and conducting a feasibility study for a railway. India and China fought a border war in 1962 over the region, which has a large ethnic Tibetan population. En route to Arunachal, the Dalai Lama was reunited with the Indian border guard who escorted him into the country after he fled his native Tibet following a failed uprising nearly 60 years ago. Story continues Speaking to reporters a few days later, the Dalai Lama said the meeting had been "very emotional", bringing back memories of his dramatic flight across the Himalayas disguised as a soldier. Ranade said the visit to Tawang -- birthplace of an earlier incarnation of the Dalai Lama -- had also raised Chinese concerns over the ageing monk's succession. The Dalai Lama has stated that his reincarnation may be found outside Chinese Tibet, and Arunachal, with its rich Tibetan culture, is an obvious contender. Under Tibetan Buddhist tradition, senior monks identify a young boy who shows signs he is a reincarnation of a late leader. But China's officially atheist Communist rulers maintain that they have the sole authority to decide reincarnation. "The Chinese reaction has been very elevated, they've been using tough language," Ranade told AFP. "This indicates Chinese anxiety about the reincarnation." NASA astronaut John Glenn wore many hats during his long life, one of which was a space helmet. Glenn, famed for being the first American to orbit Earth, lead a full life until his death on Dec. 8, 2016. Thursday he was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia after a procession and private ceremony for his family. A look back at Glenn's life shows just how accomplished he really was. Before becoming an astronaut Glenn fought in WWII and became a marine pilot who trained other pilots. He also served in the Korean War as an airplane test pilot. In 1957, he set a speed record, flying from Los Angeles to New York in less than three and a half hours. John Glenn NASA Mission Photos john glenn plane Photo: NASA Glenn was a member of the "Mercury Seven," the first group of astronauts NASA ever selected in 1959. Glenn is in the front row, second from the right, between Donald K. Deke Slayton and Scott Carpenter. The seven of them piloted the Mercury missions. mercury seven Photo: NASA In 1962, Glenn made his trip around the Earth in the "Friendship 7," his spacecraft, in about five hours. He made history as the first American to orbit Earth. Friendship 7 is on display at the National Air and Space museum in Washington, D.C. john glenn friendship 7 Photo: NASA The rocket that carried Glenn and his spacecraft to space took off from Cape Canaveral on the morning of Feb. 20, 1962. john glenn rocket Photo: NASA The automatic control system in Glenn's craft failed, but his training had prepared him to manually control the spacecraft and orbit and land safely. While in space, he took photos of the Earth from above. His time in space helped NASA experts learn more about the final frontier, but what it does to the human body, vital information for extending the amount of time humans could spend in space. Story continues john glenn photo from space Photo: NASA During flight the heat shield on Friendship 7 became loose and the possibility that the craft would burn up upon re-entry became a concern. Glenn left the retrorocket pack in place to help steady the heat shield in that hopes that it would be enough to protect the craft, and him. While re-entering Earth's atmosphere the rocketpack burned up and flew past Glenn's window. john glenn practice Photo: NASA Once Glenn left NASA after his mission, he went on to serve as a United States Senator for his home state of Ohio. He became a Senator in 1974 and a 25 year long career in government before returning to space. john glenn senator Photo: NASA In 1998 Glenn returned to space, this time to help NASA learn more about what space travel does to the aging body. Glenn was 77 at the time, the oldest person to ever travel to space and he went aboard the Discovery shuttle, he spent nine days in space during this second mission. john glenn 1998 mission Photo: NASA In 2012 Glenn was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. President Barack Obama awarded Glenn the medal for his accomplishments as a Marine Corps pilot, an astronaut and a U.S. Senator. john glenn obama Photo: NASA Glenn died on Dec. 8, 2016 at the age of 95. His wife, Annie Glenn, and children Carolyn Ann Glenn and John David Glenn remembered him and the spectacular life he lived at his burial Thursday morning. john glenn family Photo: NASA Related Articles By Nick Tattersall, Humeyra Pamuk and Orhan Coskun ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish calls for tough action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad after U.S. missile strikes on one of his airbases may overestimate Washington's appetite for deeper involvement in Syria's war and threaten Ankara's fragile rapprochement with Russia. Within hours of the U.S. cruise missile strikes, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan described the action as a "positive and concrete step against the war crimes of the Assad regime" and said the international community must do more. The first direct U.S. assault on Syria's government in six years of war appeared to vindicate Erdogan's long-standing calls for Assad's overthrow. It comes at an opportune moment for the Turkish leader, as he campaigns ahead of a closely fought referendum on constitutional changes to increase his powers. But it highlights the rudderless nature of Turkish policy in Syria, as Ankara tries to forge stronger relations with both Moscow, Assad's main backer, and Washington, a NATO ally hitherto reluctant to confront the Syrian leader head-on. "I think Erdogan can spin this into a win, but it really isn't one. The U.S. strike is one-off and limited," said Aaron Stein, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council think-tank. "Turkey can't enact regime change with Russia in Syria, and neither can the United States. The (U.S.) strikes are tactics without strategy, leaving Turkey sandwiched between its only powerful ally, the United States, ... and Russia." Turkish policy in Syria is in disarray. Assad remains in power despite Turkey's long-standing determination to see him ousted, Kurdish militia fighters it sees as a hostile force are making gains with U.S. support, and Turkey has been increasingly targeted by Islamic State jihadists from across the border. Turkey has more recently appeared to accept a transitional role for Assad as it adjusts to the realities on the ground and tries to rebuild ties with Moscow, shattered after it shot down a Russian warplane in 2015, sparking a diplomatic row which cost it billions of dollars in lost trade and tourism. "There is a struggle for power between Russia and the United States over the future of Syria and Turkey is stumbling back and forth between the two," said Metin Gurcan, a former Turkish military officer and an analyst at the Istanbul Policy Center. "Sometimes we are extremely pro-Washington and sometimes pro-Moscow. That could lead to Turkey being perceived as an inconsistent, unpredictable and therefore unreliable actor." "DISCONNECT MORE OBVIOUS" The U.S. missile strikes targeted an airbase from which President Donald Trump said a deadly chemical weapons attack on Idlib province, near the Turkish border, had been launched. At a rally in the southern province of Hatay, which borders Idlib, Erdogan urged the international community to go further. "Is it enough? I don't find it enough. It is time to take serious steps for the protection of innocent Syrian people," he said of the U.S. action. His foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, was more explicit, saying Assad's administration should immediately be removed. "If he doesn't want to go, if there is no transition government, and if he continues committing humanitarian crimes, the necessary steps to oust him should be taken," Cavusoglu told reporters. That stance sets Turkey at direct odds with Russia less than four months after the two powers brokered a ceasefire in Syria and peace talks in the Kazakh capital Astana. Moscow, which has military advisers on the ground supporting Assad's forces, denounced the U.S. action as illegal. "Despite differing statements from Turkey and Russia on the U.S. strike, there's still a communication channel between us and efforts to solve the Syria problem will continue," said one senior Turkish official, vowing the Astana process would go on. A second official said Turkey's disconnect with Russia had "become much more obvious" after the missile strikes, but also said it did not want its partnership with Moscow to be damaged. "NO GOOD OPTIONS" Can Acun, a researcher at the SETA think-tank in Ankara, said Russia and Turkey had been moving apart over Syria for some time, pointing to Moscow's readiness to work with Kurdish militia fighters in Syria and its failure to prevent ceasefire violations by Assad's forces. "The chemical attack in Idlib, and Russias silence and attempts to defend the Syrian regime, was the drop that filled the glass," he said. "This will strain Turkey's ties with Russia and Iran, but in the end, the determining factor will be how decisively the United States acts." Despite its quick endorsement of the U.S. action, Ankara has been deeply at odds with Washington in other areas of Syria policy. It has been incensed in particular by U.S. support for the Kurdish YPG militia, which it views as a terrorist group and an extension of Kurdish militants fighting on its own soil. Just a month ago, Ankara was ruling out compromise with Washington over the involvement of YPG fighters in a planned assault on Raqqa, one of Islamic State's two de facto capitals along with Mosul in Iraq. The YPG is a key part of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance which is receiving U.S. military support. Erdogan has said Turkey, which hosts warplanes from the U.S.-led coalition in its southern Incirlik airbase, would be ready to support further U.S. action in Syria. But it remains to be seen what that role would be. "I don't expect there to be a role for Turkey, other than to continue to host coalition strike assets at Incirlik," said Stein from the Atlantic Council, pointing out that those assets were primarily used to support the SDF not fight Assad. "Turkey is where it was on April 6, 2017. A major player in northern Syria, albeit with no good options to escalate." (Writing by Nick Tattersall; editing by Giles Elgood) Former rap mogul Suge Knight's ex-wife Sharitha Golden has denied claims that she was responsible for the killing of rapper Tupac Shakur. Golden dismissed the allegations just a day after Knight revealed that his ex-wife and Reggie White Jr., a former CEO of Death Row Records, masterminded the drive-by shooting that killed Shakur instead of Knight in Las Vegas in September 1996. Golden told TMZ Wednesday that this is not the first time she has been hearing the allegations of her playing a role in Shakur's killing, but the claims are not true. In a new documentary, the producers claimed White Jr. and Golden wanted to kill Knight but Shakur came in the crossfire. The documentary indicates Golden and White wanted to target Knight in order to take control of his production house, Death Row Records. This week Knight confirmed the allegations, according to an affidavit signed by co-directors Michael Douglas Carlin and Richard Bond for the new documentary, "Tupac Assassination: Battle for Compton." Read: Suge Knight Exposes Masterminds Behind Rapper's Murder However, Golden slammed the allegations saying that this is now affecting her children, one of whom is Knight's daughter. Her lawyer also told TMZ that Golden could file a lawsuit against the false claims. "Knight has known for many years that Reggie Wright Jr. and his ex-wife Sharitha were behind the murder of Tupac and attempted murder of Knight," Knight's lawyer Thaddeus Culpepper wrote in a statement. The documentary also features Culpepper's signed affidavit, which was taken by former Los Angeles Police Department Detective Russell Poole on July 18, 2015. "Suge wasn't divorced yet and if he died in that hit, she'd get most of everything," Poole reportedly said. "So she went to Wright Jr., who was in charge of Death Row and ran it while Suge was in prison. [Wright Jr.] has gotten away with it this whole time. They floated a whole lot of propaganda to former LA Times reporter Chuck Phillipscalling in hundreds if not thousands of fake clues." Story continues Knight has always denied he was behind the shooting but it's unclear why the 50-year-old waited all of these years to release the names of those who he says orchestrated Shakurs killing. Related Articles On Thursday, President Donald Trump ordered the U.S. forces to launch a missile attack on a Syrian air base he believes played a part in a chemical warfare attack. The move has re-started an old debate about presidential military powers. It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons, Trump said in a statement about the military strike. Two Senators, Rand Paul and Tim Kaine, were quick to criticize Trumps action, which they believe required congressional approval under a 1973 act. But if Donald Trump acts like previous presidents, his administration will argue the attacks were under his constitutional powers and not subject to prior congressional approval. In recent years, the debate over U.S. military intervention has focused on the statute, called The War Powers Resolution, and one direct part of the Constitution. Article II of the Constitution spells out that the President shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states. The War Powers Resolution, passed by Congress in 1973 over President Nixon's veto, requires that a President must report to Congress within 48 hours after introducing military forces into hostilities and must end the use of such within 60 days unless Congress permits otherwise. In the ensuing 44 years, most Presidents have ignored parts or all of the War Powers Resolution, considering it illegal or unwarranted. Back in 2011, President Barack Obama ordered a military intervention in Libya without asking for congressional approval. Forces were engaged there for about eight months as the Obama administration argued that its military presence didnt fall under the Resolution. In 2013, President Obama took the unusual step of asking Congress to approve intervention in the Syrian civil war, after he initially indicated he had the constitutional powers to order limited military strikes without its approval. Congress then deferred to take action in Syria. Story continues At the time, the Obama administration argued that it didnt need congressional authorization to expand air strikes in Iraq and Syria. It cited the Authorization for Use of Military Force against Iraq Resolution of 2002, also known as the AUMF of 2002. (The first AUMF was passed right after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.) The AUMF of 2002 specifically says, the President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq. That didnt stop several members of Congress, including Paul and Kaine, from calling for President Obama to formally ask for approval before expanding the attacks beyond the 60-day window required in the War Powers Resolution. On Friday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said President Trump was able to order the missile attack on Syria under the AUMF of 2002. "I think that this is not a situation that requires an AUMF, authorization for the use of military force," McConnell told radio host Hugh Hewitt. The previous president thought that it authorized what we were doing in that part of the world, and I expect this president thinks the same," McConnell said. For now, Congress will continue to debate the AUMF, as it related to ISIS, after it returns from its unofficial recess, which starts on Monday. The Senate started discussing a new AUMF last month, reportedly with the support of Trump administration officials. The Syrian situation will add a new dimension to those talks. Sign up to receive Constitution Weekly, our email roundup of constitutional news and debate, at bit.ly/constitutionweekly First lady Melania Trump wore a sleeveless red daisy-applique crepe midi dress by Valentino to greet Chinese President Xi Jinping and first lady Madame Peng Liyuan Thursday for a formal dinner at Mar-a-Lago. Earlier in the day, Melania arrived with her husband, President Donald Trump, at the Palm Beach, Florida resort, to welcome their Chinese counterparts. On Thursday morning, Melania stepped down from the jet wearing a black and white polka-dot dress but had a change in the palette when she greeted the Chinese president and first lady for the formal dinner, which is part of a two-day summit. Melania chose to wear the color red as it is symbolic of good luck and celebration in China. Melania stunned in the red Valentino dress, which, according to People magazine, is estimated to be worth $4,000. Many speculate that Melania is working around fashion diplomacy by choosing the right kind of colors to wear during her public appearances. Melania Trump Photo: Reuters/Carlos Barria Read: What Melania Trump Wore In Her First Official White House Portrait On Wednesday, Melania wore an emerald green dress when she met with the royals of Jordan. The reason behind the first lady picking the color green could be because it is one of the colors on the Jordanian flag, and is an important hue in the Islamic faith. It is also seen as a deliberate reference to greens symbolic associations in the Muslim world. Before arriving at Mar-a-Lago Thursday, Melania appeared by Donald Trump's side during his speech about the Wounded Warrior Project Soldier Ride at the White House. The WWP has been hosted at the White House since 2008, when the practice was started by former President George W. Bush, and continued with former President Barack Obama. For over a decade, Wounded Warrior Project has worked with our nation's leaders to improve the lives of wounded veterans and connect them with services that will empower them to live their lives on their own terms, WWP CEO Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Mike Linnington said in a press release Tuesday. I am excited that the warriors we serve will have the chance to ride through our nation's capital and be hosted by the president at the White House. It's a tremendous honor, and we're incredibly grateful for the opportunity to continue this amazing tradition. Related Articles As the latest attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act unraveled on Wednesday, two Republican lawmakers stood a couple hundred feet apart in the Capitols marble hallways and blamed each other. The effort to repeal Obamacare failed because of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, said the moderate Republican Rep. Chris Collins of New York. We moved to what I thought was a very good compromise, only to have them move the goalposts again, said Collins. This is the Freedom Caucus saying they want to get to yes - but their actions dont show that. The most conservative lawmakers had repeatedly made impossible demands for the Republican bill, Collins added. I think theyre looking in the mirror and know exactly whos standing in the way, he said. Meanwhile, a few paces away, Republican Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama, a member of the conservative Freedom Caucus made the same accusation of the moderate Tuesday Group, of which Collins is a member. The problem is that the Tuesday Group has decided they dont want to repeal Obamacare, Brooks added, accusing the moderates of not going far enough in repealing former President Obamas signature law. Now all of a sudden people have not only moved the goalposts, theyve taken them out of the stadium, chopped them up and burned it. This is not your usual intra-party dispute. For years the GOP has been a raucous conference, divided between moderates and the hard-right, with internal tensions leading to government shutdowns and debt ceiling scares. But the divisions within the Republican Party are now perhaps worse than ever, and the fault lines in the current fight over Obamacare have made the partys challenge painfully apparent. The Obamacare fight has led to Republicans taking potshots against their own members to reporters in the halls, spilling their grievances over failed efforts to govern into the press. Closed-door meetings have yielded simmering resentment between members. Leaders in the party are increasingly frustrated. The President has attacked members of his party on Twitter and bullied them behind closed doors. And it has led to deep uncertainty within the Republican conference over whether the party can effectively legislate. Story continues When youre in the minority, its easy to be unified, because you dont have much leverage, said Republican Rep. Joe Barton of Texas. Its tougher to be unified today. Last month the dysfunction within the Republican conference came to a head when members of the conservative Freedom Caucus and the moderate Tuesday Group abandoned the Obamacare repeal bill and negotiations collapsed. The disagreements came out of different views about how to repeal Obamacare. Conservatives have called for nothing less than a full repeal of the bill, though there are differences within the Freedom Caucus over what a full repeal would actually entail. Many asked for an earlier rollback of the Medicaid expansion, which provided insurance to people above the poverty line, and then later called for a more far-reaching repeal of Obamacare regulations. Moderates, meanwhile, objected to removing protections for the insured and defunding Planned Parenthood, as well as cutting subsidies to the elderly and lower-income earners. But the divisions are broader, and speak to bigger problems for the Republican Party in the coming years. There are profound disagreements about tax reform, infrastructure spending and entitlement reform that will threaten to jam up major pieces of legislation. Republicans disagree about when and how much to work with Democrats, and how much to compromise on their campaign promises. Much of the antipathy within the conference began with the rise of the Tea Party in 2009 and 2010. Indeed, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas in 2015 accused Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of telling a flat-out lie over the U.S. Export-Import Bank, and Arizona Sen. John McCain of Arizona in turn called Tea Party lawmakers including Cruz and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul wacko birds. But now that the Republican Party controls both chambers of Congress and the White House, the divisions are causing more strain within the party and threatening to derail the partys agenda. Weve been dysfunctional for a while, said Republican Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma. We were able to stay relatively united against President Obama. But we have not been able to be united as a governing party, and thats got to be worked through. One of the coming fights will be over tax reform. Many Republicans in the House, including Rep. Kevin Brady, chair of the key Ways and Means Committee, and Speaker Paul Ryan, want to impose a border adjustment tax of 20% on imports that and cut corporate tax rates. But Republicans like Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Sen. David Perdue of Georgia strongly oppose it. And members of the Freedom Caucus, most of whom were elected in staunchly Republican districts, are under pressure from their constituents to get the most conservative outcomes, whether on defunding Planned Parenthood, finding funding for the border wall or reforming entitlements. Its a charged environment all over the country. Its not unique to Congress, said Republican Rep. Tom MacArthur, a moderate from New Jersey. We sort of represent whats happening across the country there are a lot of fault lines in the country overall. Meanwhile, the fights over health care continue. In recent days, concerted outreach to both moderates and conservatives by Vice President Mike Pence and top White House officials have failed to reconcile the differences in the conference. A cross-sectional meeting of the partys leaders on Tuesday, which included moderates and conservatives, brought no compromise. On Thursday morning the House Rules Committee met to try to hash out some agreement. The Freedom Caucus has called for giving states the option to opt out of the core tenets of Obamacare, including protections for those with preexisting conditions and essential health benefits that every insurance plan has to offer. Their proposals have pushed away many moderate Republicans. Rep. Patrick McHenry, the chief deputy whip in the House and one of the chambers top-ranking Republicans, called the demands from the Freedom Caucus a bridge too far. This is not the Tuesday Groups fault, Ill tell you that, and Ill leave it at that, said Republicans Study Committee Chair Rep. Mark Walker of North Carolina, a conservative who has played a role in mediating between moderates and the Freedom Caucus. Youve got to take some ownership here. At the same time, outside conservative groups who helped support the rise of the Tea Party in Congress blamed moderate Republicans for breaking campaign promises over Obamacare. I think the Tuesday Group clearly wants to keep Obamacare in place, Heritage Action CEO Mike Needham said in a call with reporters on Wednesday morning. Each one of these members of Congress is standing in the way of compromise. And as for Collins, the moderate from New York, and his vociferous criticism to reporters of the Freedom Caucus? This bill got better because of what the Freedom Caucus has brought to the table, said Rep. Paul Gosar, a Freedom Caucus member, standing just outside the House of Representatives chamber, waiting for an elevator. What I would challenge the gentleman from New York is please look in the mirror, he said. This article was originally published on TIME.com BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union and countries across the continent offered Sweden support and solidarity on Friday following what the Swedish government said appeared to be a terrorist attack using a vehicle in central Stockholm. "An attack on any of our member states is an attack on us all," said President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker. "One of Europe's most vibrant and colourful cities appears to have been struck by those wishing it and our very way of life harm. "We stand shoulder to shoulder in solidarity with the people of Sweden and the Swedish authorities can count on the European Commission to support them in any which way we can." "My heart is in Stockholm this afternoon," President of the European Council Donald Tusk tweeted. "My thoughts are with the victims, and their families and friends, of today's terrible attack." German government spokesman Steffen Seibert also reacted to the news. "Our thoughts are with the people in Stockholm, the injured, relatives, rescuers and police. We stand together against terror," he said in a tweet. The French government said President Francois Hollande expressed his horror and outrage at the attack. "France expresses its sympathy and solidarity with the families of the victims and all Swedes," the Elysee Palace said. Sweden's Nordic neighbours also expressed their horror. "Terrible news from Stockholm. Our thoughts are with our neighbours and friends in Sweden," Finland's Prime Minister Juha Sipila wrote in Swedish on his Twitter account. "It hurts deep into my heart that our Swedish brothers and sisters have been exposed to such an abominable attack," said Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen in a statement. "A cowardly attempt to subdue us and our peaceful way of living in Scandinavia. It is a day of mourning. But it is also a day of will ... A will to fight the darkness. For every attempt to bend us we move closer. We move closer around our Swedish neighbours," the Danish leader added. "Shocked over the terrible attacks in the middle of Stockholm. Our brothers and sisters are hit and we share their sorrow," Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg said in a tweet. (Reporting by Alastair Macdonald in Brussels, Francois Murphy in Vienna, Ingrid Melander in Paris, Gwladys Fouche and Terje Solsvik in Oslo, Stine Jacobsen in Copenhagen, Tuomas Forsell in Helsinki; Editing by Andrew Bolton) Valletta (AFP) - Eurogroup chief Jeroen Dijsselbloem on Friday said he refused to step down over his comment that southern European countries blew their money on "drinks and women". "Certainly not," Dijsselbloem said in Malta when questioned whether he would resign over a controversy that has refused to die down. Last month's gaffe by Dijsselbloem, who is also Dutch finance minister, and the resulting backlash exposed simmering north-south tensions within the European Union's single currency zone. The flare-up has weakened Dijsselbloem, already reeling after his party lost heavily in last month's Dutch election, a result that puts his future as finance minister and Eurogroup chief in jeopardy. Dijsselbloem, 51, holds one of Europe's most influential positions, chairing the meetings of finance ministers from the 19-country eurozone. Dijsselbloem told reporters he "brought the issue up myself" at Friday's meeting in Malta, "saying that I regret that my choice of words has upset and insulted people because it was never my intention to insult people." "No ministers took the floor after that... no one called for my resignation," he said. In an interview with Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on March 20, Dijsselbloem said that while coming to the aid of eurozone partners was important, "I can't spend all my money on drinks and women and then ask for help." The words caused an uproar in the southern European countries of Portugal, Greece and Cyprus that have all received eurozone bailouts in recent years, with Spain's banks also receiving support. Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos, also in Malta, offered a vigorous defense of Dijsselbloem, who plays a leading role in Greece's massive bailout negotiations. "I think when somebody says that he has hurt people and that he never intended to insult the people, people should be willing to draw a line on that," Tsakalotos said. "He was honest... and I think that this issue should be finished," he said. Valletta (AFP) - Greece gave in and accepted a tough set of reforms with its eurozone creditors on Friday in hopes of unlocking bailout cash in time to avert a looming debt default. Eurozone finance ministers meeting in the Maltese capital of Valletta said Athens agreed in principle to the new reforms and technical teams would visit Greece as soon as possible to seal the deal. "The big blocks have now been sorted out and now we just have the final stretch," Eurogroup head Jeroen Dijsselbloem said after the talks. Heavily-indebted Athens and the EU and IMF which handle the bailout, have been deadlocked over reforms for months amid disagreements on debt relief and budget targets. The deal is needed in order to prevent the country defaulting on its creditors as early as July, when Athens owes about seven billion euros ($7.4 billion) in debt repayments. The eurozone is under heavy pressure to end the feud in order to avert a chaotic default and inflicting damage on an already stalled Greek recovery. Despite projections for growth, the Greek economy actually stalled in 2016 and recent data show that after some stabilisation, it has begun to falter again amid uncertainty triggered by the row. "Greece needs this; we must end the uncertainties that are scaring investors," EU Economic Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici said. Dijsselbloem said the Greek government accepted to reduce pensions in 2019 and lower tax breaks in 2020 in return for a bailout payment despite widespread public opposition to the new measures. Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos said the commitments would pass through parliament as soon as possible, although the gamble relies on his Syriza party's razor-thin majority. - 'Before summer' - Tsakalotos said his eurozone counterparts had also agreed that Greece could boost social spending if budget targets were met, and that debt relief would also come back to the table. "We will be ready for all the pieces of the puzzle to fit in for the discussion on debt," said Tsakalotos, for whom debt relief is a key demand. Story continues "I think we will have (a solution) well before summer," he added. The accord was a victory of sorts for Dijsselbloem who visited Brussels and Berlin ahead of Friday's talks in hopes of finding a compromise. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras had until now refused to accept reforms beyond the term of Greece's current bailout that is due to end in 2018. The impasse has held up the latest instalment of Greece's 86-billion-euro ($92-billion) bailout, agreed in 2015 with the 19 countries that use the single currency. Without a deal in Malta, Tsipras had said he would ask for a eurozone leaders summit later this month, and made his case in a phone call to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Europe's most powerful leader. - 'Credible strategy' - Also pressing matters is a desire by eurozone ministers to present a united front to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) later this month at the fund's annual meetings in Washington. The Europeans have been at loggerheads with the IMF over the Washington-based lender's demands for more realistic budget targets and firm commitments to reduce Greece's mountain of debt. An agreement among eurozone ministers would go a long way towards getting the IMF on board as a financial partner in the bailout, a major demand of Germany, Greece's biggest lender. The IMF, which has so far stayed out of the current rescue, praised the progress made, but warned that Greece's huge debt pile remained a big problem. Eurozone ministers must "ensure satisfactory assurances on a credible strategy to restore debt sustainability, before a programme is presented to the IMF executive board," said IMF spokesperson Gerry Rice. By Gabriela Baczynska BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union said on Friday it understood the aim of U.S. missile strikes in Syria as an effort to deter any more chemical attacks there, but highlighted political solutions as the only way to end the war. The nuanced line taken by the bloc's 28 states reflects their disgust at a chemical attack that killed scores of people in a rebel-held area this week, but also a worry about any more escalation in the conflict following the unilateral U.S. move. "The U.S. has informed the European Union that ... (it) launched a strike on Shayrat Airfield in Syria with the understandable intention to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons," the bloc's top diplomat, Federica Mogherini, said in a statement on behalf of all member states. "The U.S. also informed us that these strikes are limited and focused on preventing and deterring further use of chemical weapons atrocities," the statement read. She added that the use of chemical weapons was a war crime and perpetrators of such acts "should be sanctioned within the framework of the United Nations." The bloc supports Syrian opposition rebels and some moderate rebels negotiating under U.N.-mediated talks with representatives of Damascus. The talks have long been stalled and the war, which is in its seventh year, has killed more than 400,000 people and sent millions from their homes. "The EU firmly believes that there can be no military solution to the conflict," the joint statement said. "Only a credible political solution... will ensure peace and stability." While France and Britain have led calls for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to go, some other EU states, including the Czech Republic, Hungary, Spain and Italy, are more dovish. But the bloc's role in international peace efforts has been largely marginal as it lacks influence on the ground, where Russia's military intervention has given Assad the upper hand. The EU is the largest aid donor in Syria, and has threatened it will not pay for reconstruction of the country if Assad and his allies take full control by wiping out the opposition. The EU says a "credible political transition" must start first with the aim of giving the opposition and Syria's various ethnic and religious groups political representation. The chairman of EU leaders Donald Tusk, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, the Polish foreign ministry as well as a British government spokesman supported Washington. "U.S. strikes show needed resolve against barbaric chemical attacks. EU will work with the US to end brutality in Syria," Tusk said on Twitter. But German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, Belgium's Didier Reynders and the head of the EU's executive arm stuck to a more cautious line, saying they "understood" the aim of the strikes, but highlighting more strongly the need for a negotiated end to the war. "There is a clear distinction between air strikes on military targets and the use of chemical weapons against civilians," said the head of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker. "Efforts to stem the spiral of violence in Syria and work toward a lasting peace should be redoubled. Only a political transition can lead to such an outcome." (Editing by Jeremy Gaunt) (Reuters) - Former Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara took several shots at the administration of President Donald Trump on Thursday, calling for "facts not falsehoods" as the basis for political discourse and a more welcoming stance towards immigrants in his first public speaking event since being fired one month ago. Bharara sprinkled the hour-long speech with humor, including a joke about the size of the crowd clearly aimed at Trump. But Bharara also made a series of thinly veiled criticisms of the new administration, referring multiple times to Trump's campaign pledge to "drain the swamp" in Washington. "You don't drain a swamp with a slogan. You don't drain it by replacing one set of partisans with another. You don't replace muck with muck," Bharara, 48, said at the Cooper Union in New York. "To drain a swamp you need an army corps of engineers, experts schooled in service and serious purpose. Not do-nothing, say-anything, neophyte opportunists who know a lot about how to bully and bluster but not so much about truth, justice and fairness." Bharara was fired by Trump on March 11 after refusing to step down. While he was among 46 U.S. attorneys told to submit their resignations, his dismissal was a surprise because Trump had asked him in November to stay in the job. Bharara has said it was not made clear to him at first whether or not he was being dismissed. He joked about that initial confusion with a reference to Trump's TV reality show in which he regularly fired people on the spot. "I don't really understand why this was such a big deal, especially to this White House. I had thought that was what Donald Trump was good at," Bharara said. As the chief federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, Bharara oversaw several notable corruption and white-collar criminal cases, as well as cases involving national security. He said he was equally proud of the less high-profile work his office did to combat gangs and consumer fraud. Bharara said he expected his successor to carry on with the office's reputation for independence. He did not comment on who his possible successor. As for his own future, Bharara ruled out running for public office. "I don't have any plans to enter politics just like I have no plans to join the circus. And I mean no offence to the circus." (Reporting by Nathan Layne in New York; Editing by Michael Perry) (Reuters) - President Donald Trump faces his biggest test as a world leader when he meets Chinese President Xi Jinping Thursday and Friday for a summit that will set the tone for perhaps the most consequential of U.S. foreign relationships. The two leaders are expected to struggle to find common ground on the main issues that divide them when they meet at Trumps Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. The main agenda items are: NORTH KOREA North Korea is perhaps Trump's most pressing national security challenge. Pyongyang has been working to develop nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles capable of reaching the United States. Trump is expected to repeat his call for China to do more to rein in its ally and neighbor and has warned that Washington might deal with Pyongyang's weapons programs alone if need be. China says it is doing all it can and has said it is up to the United States to de-escalate with Pyongyang. A White House strategy review focuses on options for pressuring Pyongyang economically and militarily. Among measures under consideration are secondary sanctions against Chinese banks and firms that do the most business with Pyongyang. A long-standing option of pre-emptive strikes remains on the table, but the review de-emphasizes direct military action, a senior U.S. official said. Any military action would likely provoke severe North Korean retaliation and massive casualties in South Korea and Japan and among U.S. troops stationed there. TRADE Trade is one of the biggest hot-button issues, given Trumps charges in his presidential campaign that Chinese trade practices were killing U.S. jobs and his vow to impose 45 percent tariffs on Chinese imports. The administration has not acted on unilateral tariffs but is targeting a reduction in China's $347 billion goods trade surplus through tougher enforcement of trade laws and anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has also demanded "reciprocity" in the U.S.-China economic relationship, saying that U.S. companies do not enjoy the same access to China's vast market as Chinese firms get in the United States. China says Washington should create better conditions for Chinese investment in the United States if it wants to correct the imbalance. Neither side wants a trade war, but it may be hard to do much more than lower the temperature in Mar-a-Lago. Some analysts believe Xi may bring a package of job-creating Chinese investments and the prospect of a more open services sector that Trump could tweet as tangible achievements. SOUTH CHINA SEA Relations are also clouded by China's expansive claims in the disputed South China Sea, where Beijing has been building artificial islands and installing military facilities on them. U.S. officials see this as part of a long-term Chinese bid to deny U.S. forces access to the strategic sea, a key global trade route. They say Washington plans more robust naval operations to challenge Chinese claims and assert the right to freedom of navigation, though months have passed since the last one in October under Trump's predecessor Barack Obama. The situation in North Korea has appeared to push the South China Sea issue onto the back burner for now, but Trump is expected to air U.S. concerns. CURRENCY Trump has repeatedly charged that China manipulates its yuan currency to keep its exports cheap, and he is likely to raise the issue with Xi. But Trump did not make good on his promises to formally declare China a currency manipulator on the first day of his presidency. While economists believe China pushed down the value of the yuan in the past, China's central bank for much of the past two years has been working to prop up the yuan amid capital outflow pressures, spending more than $1 trillion in the process. This would make it very hard to justify a manipulator designation under the U.S. Treasury's current foreign exchange analysis, due one week after Xi's visit. ONE CHINA AND TAIWAN The summit would not be happening if Trump had not reaffirmed the one China" policy that has underpinned bilateral relations for decades. Trump infuriated Beijing when, as president-elect, he took a call from Taiwans president and suggested he might not abide by the policy. He backtracked in a call with Xi in February. Xi may now be looking to head off a big new weapons package to Taiwan that U.S. officials have told Reuters is being crafted. For its part, Taiwan will be watching anxiously for any sign that Trump is using it as a bargaining chip. (Reporting by Matt Spetalnick, David Brunnstrom and David Lawder; Editing by James Dalgleish) A Michigan community is rallying around the grieving family of a young boy who killed himself after allegedly falling victim to a cruel internet prank. Police in Marquette County believe Tysen Benz hanged himself March 14 after his mother said he saw posts on social media that indicated his 13-year-old girlfriend had committed suicide. Watch: Mom Says 11-Year-Old Son Took His Own Life After Being Pressured to Sell Drugs Tysen, 11, died Tuesday. On Thursday, authorities announced charges have been filed against another juvenile who Marquette Police said Tysen had been "engaged in communication" with prior to his suicide. A GoFundMe account was created in Tysen's name days after he was found hanging by the neck in his room. As of this writing, the fund has raised nearly $35,000 of a $50,000 goal. On the page, Tysen's mother Katrina Goss called her late son an "athlete, comedian, friend, brother, charismatic and all around amazing child." "On Tuesday March 14th he impulsively chose to end his own life as a result of a horrific act of a social media prank which is under investigation by authorities. He clung on with the help of life support until Tuesday April 4th. He has now been set free and can Rest In Peace," Goss wrote. In addition to the fundraiser, the community has reached out to both Goss and to young people at risk of suicide everywhere with a message of love and support. That message has even gone international as Tysen's story and the "Together for TYSEN" Facebook campaign extends its reach. "Katrina. Words can't express my condolences. I teach 11 year olds in Barranquilla, Colombia. We have been having a lot of problems with cyberbullying at our school, so I decided to tell the story of your son," a teacher wrote on the "Together for TYSEN" page. So moved were the teacher's students in Colombia that they posted a photo of themselves making 'T' for Tysen with their fingers as a photo of the 11-year-old was displayed on a screen above. Story continues "Thanks for sharing you story and God bless you and your amazing son," the teacher told Goss. As Goss's network of support has grown, so has the investigation into what led to her son's shocking suicide. Goss told The Associated Press that no one involved with the prank told an adult after her son announced his intention to kill himself. "The whole thing happened in about 40 minutes," Goss said. "He was fine and then I found him. I don't know what she said she did to herself." Watch: Bernie Madoff Ponzi Scheme Victim Kills Himself by Leaping From Building On Thursday, Marquette police announced that county prosecutors had authorized charges of telecommunications services - malicious use and computers-using to commit a crime. Police have not identified who was facing the charges, identifying the suspect only as a juvenile. Watch: Couple Charged After Allegedly Staging Fake Murder Related Articles: Surgeons in Philadelphia recently removed a tumor from what may be the tiniest heart ever to undergo surgery. The heart belonged to a 21-week-old fetus, still inside the womb. "The fetus was just about 6 inches [15 centimeters] in total length, and his heart was the size of a peanut, perhaps a centimeter or less," said Dr. Jack Rychik, director of the Fetal Heart Program at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). Doctors at CHOP have performed more than 1,400 fetal operations since 1995, according to the hospital's officials. Most of those procedures have been done to remedy cases of spina bifida, a birth defect of the spine. Operating on a fetus's heart, however, is extremely risky and rarely done, Rychik said. He told Live Science the CHOP team undertook the procedure only because it was a matter of life or death for the fetus. The tumor was the size of a walnut, larger than the heart itself, and was squeezing the tiny organ, Rychik said. The mother, Cecilia Cella, lives in Uruguay. She had gone to see a pediatric cardiologist there, Dr. Roberto Canessa, who texted Rychik with video of a strange mass he saw on Cella's sonogram. [7 Baby Myths Debunked] "He sent it to me and said, 'What the hell is this?'" Rychik said. Rychik said he recognized the mass as an extremely rare, rapidly growing tumor called an intrapericardial teratoma. Such tumors grow on the sac surrounding the heart and can place deadly pressure on a fetus's heart if left unchecked. Fortunately, Cella and her partner, Pablo Paladino,were able to fly to Philadelphia in a matter of days, and the CHOP team readied for surgery. "Had we waited another day, I think it would have been too late," Rychik said. "The tumor was just too large." To operate on the fetus, the doctors first placed the mother under general anesthesia, which anesthetizes both mother and the fetus. The operating team included lead surgeon Dr. Holly Hedrick, Rychik and three other surgeons. Story continues Then, the surgeons made an incision into the mother's uterus and drained the amniotic fluid (it was later replaced with artificial amniotic fluid). At this point, the fetus, a male, was further anesthetized, to ensure it would remain still for the procedure. Then, it was a matter of gaining access to the fetus's heart. To do this, Rychik explained, the team delicately lifted the fetus's arms out of the uterus, leaving the head and rest of the torso inside the womb. "By bringing the arms out and the chest up, [we ensure that] the chest is available to the surgery," Rychik said. "Then, an incision is made into the chest and the ribs are cut as they would be in an adult." The doctors were able to excise the tumor from the fetal heart's sac. They then sewed up the incisions in the fetus, put it into the womb and sewed up the uterus, so the pregnancy could continue. Cella was then sewn back up. While the procedure was underway, the team constantly monitored the fetus's heart through images projected by a very tiny ultrasound probe, which Rychick guided. The live sonogram images helped the surgeons avoid compressing the heart during the procedure and blocking blood flow. The 3-hour procedure was mostly a success, but the surgeons weren't able to cut away all of the tumor, Rychik said. About 2 percent of the tumor was "too intimately attached" to the heart, he said. "We worried if we removed that last bit, it may have caused damage to the heart," he said. Three weeks after the surgery, the tumor had started to grow and appeared again on sonograms. Nonetheless, Rychik said the surgery bought the fetus vital additional weeks inside the mother's womb. The baby, named Juan, was born on Dec. 11, 2016, at 31 weeks. Two weeks later, Juan underwent another surgery to remove all remaining traces of the tumor. He is now nearly 4 months old, back home in Uruguay and reportedly doing well. Before Juan, the CHOP team had previously performed an in utero heart surgery like this just once, on a 24-week-old fetus, who is now a healthy 3-year-old thriving at his home in Vermont. [Social Surgery: Images of Live-Tweeted Operations] The doctors wrote about that case, along with seven other fetal heart-tumor cases that they saw from 2009 to 2015 in a report they published in December 2016 in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. In six of those cases, the doctors could not operate and the fetuses died. In one case, the doctors were able to deliver the baby early and perform the surgery after delivery. The one case that involved a successful in utero surgery was that of the now-3-year-old Tucker Roussin, who loves sandboxes and monster trucks, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported at the time. Juan and Tucker are now the only two known fetuses to have undergone the procedure. "Until now, we've only been able to watch these tumors grow and inform the mother that the fetus probably would not be able to survive," Rychik said. "Now, we're showing that a different result is possible." Originally published on Live Science. Editor's Recommendations By John Irish NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania (Reuters) - France said on Friday it had been informed by the United States before the U.S. military strikes on Syrian military positions and that Russia should use this "warning" to push for a political solution to the Syrian conflict. France, a key backer of rebels opposed to President Bashar al-Assad, has repeatedly called on him to step down and this week said a suspected chemical attack by Assad's forces was a test for U.S. President Donald Trump. "The United States has started clarifying its position because over the last few days we heard one thing and then another," Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault told Reuters and France Info radio in the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott, where he was on a diplomatic visit. "Here, we have an action that is a sort of condemnation, through military strikes on a military base, of what this criminal regime is doing." In Paris, President Francois Hollande confirmed French backing for the U.S. action, saying France had been seeking U.S. missile strikes in 2013 after a previous chemical attack. Assad bore "full responsibility for this development," Hollande said in a joint statement with Germany from the Elysee after speaking with Chancellor Angela Merkel. He said France and Germany would continue efforts through the United Nations to achieve the best response to chemical attacks. The U.S. missile strikes came in response to a suspected chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held town in northern Syria earlier this week which killed at least 70 people. Ayrault, who was informed ahead of the strikes by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, said he did not believe Washington wanted to continue its strikes and that the escalation of the U.S. military role in Syria, in which two U.S. warships fired dozens of cruise missiles at an Assad-controlled airbase, was a "warning." France, a NATO ally, has been a vocal critic of Washington's policy in Syria since the previous administration of Barack Obama pulled back from launching strikes against Assad following the 2013 chemical attack that killed hundreds of people. French planes had been minutes away from taking off when Obama backed down. "A signal was sent, because yet again a red line was crossed by Assad," Ayrault said. "The use of chemical weapons is appalling and should be punished because it is a war crime," Ayrault said. He said Paris's only military role in Syria at present was its part in the coalition fighting Islamic State and that it had no intention of entering the conflict between Assad and rebels. The conflict is now in its seventh year and has killed more than 400,000 people and displaced millions. "We are not seeking any confrontation, but Russia and Iran must understand that backing the Assad regime makes no sense," he said, urging Moscow to now fully back a UN Security Council resolution that sets out the path for a transition to peace in the country. "Peace negotiations (are going on) for a political transition, to rebuild the country and enable the return of refugees and that will not happen with Bashar al-Assad," he said. "I will tell the Russians: 'Stop playing. Stop hesitating and pretending. Play your role and implement resolution 2254'(the UN resolution that sets out a roadmap for peace talks)". (Reporting by John Irish; Writing by Andrew Callus; Editing by Richard Balmforth) By Adrian Croft and Jean-Baptiste Vey PARIS (Reuters) - French centrist Emmanuel Macron sought to establish his presidential credentials on Thursday by calling for international military intervention against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad if he is proved to have used chemical weapons. The former economy minister is favorite to win France's presidential election but faces criticism from his opponents that he is too inexperienced for the top job. Macron, 39, interviewed for 2-1/2 hours on France 2 television, took a tough stance on the top foreign policy issue of the day, calling for military intervention against Assad if his government was found to have carried out a suspected chemical attack that killed at least 70 people on Tuesday. "An international intervention is needed ... My preference is that there should be an intervention under the auspices of the United Nations. A military intervention," Macron said. However, he said a military operation must be part of a "diplomatic and political roadmap." Russia has repeatedly used its veto in the past to protect the Syrian government from U.N. Security Council action. Polls show Macron and far-right leader Marine Le Pen each winning about a quarter of the vote in the April 23 first round of the election, with Macron tipped to easily defeat Le Pen in the May 7 runoff. (GRAPHIC - French presidential election http://tmsnrt.rs/2lPduBG) Scandal-hit conservative candidate Francois Fillon is holding on to third place in the latest polls, followed closely by 65-year-old Jean-Luc Melenchon, a veteran far-left maverick, who has moved up fast in the ratings. Macron, a pro-European former banker who has never held elected office, aims to transcend the traditional left-right divide in French politics and boost economic recovery by reducing public spending and cutting taxes. Le Pen wants to curb immigration, ditch the euro and bring back the franc, and hold a referendum on European Union membership. CANDIDATES Macron sought to answer questions on Thursday about how he would govern, if elected, since the En Marche! (Onwards!) political movement he created a year ago has never taken part in an election. That has prompted opponents to cast doubt on his ability to win a majority in the lower-house National Assembly, which would hamper his ability to push through planned reforms. Macron presented on Thursday the first 14 candidates who will represent his party in June legislative elections, headed by Jean-Michel Fauvergue, 60, a former director of an elite police counter-terrorism unit. A Harris Interactive poll of a sample of viewers of the France 2 interview with Macron found 51 percent thought he would make a good president, compared with 38 percent who thought the same of Le Pen and 33 percent in the case of Fillon. Fillon, whose campaign has struggled as he seeks to defend himself from nepotism allegations, was hit by flour on Thursday thrown at him by a young man before a rally in Strasbourg. Fillon has alleged he is the victim of a government-orchestrated smear campaign and has urged prosecutors to investigate outgoing Socialist President Francois Hollande over allegations made in a new book by three journalists that the results of judicial wiretaps were sent to Hollande's office. But, in a letter to six Fillon allies who had demanded an investigation into Hollande, prosecutor Eliane Houlette said there was insufficient evidence to open such a probe. (Additional reporting by Michel Rose, Sarah White and Leigh Thomas) Banjul (Gambia) (AFP) - The Gambia's United Democratic Party (UDP) emerged from decades in opposition in the country's parliament to take its first absolute majority on Friday, as support for former leader Yahya Jammeh's party collapsed. Official results from Thursday's election, announced by the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), revealed the UDP won 31 of the 53 available elected seats in the country's National Assembly, while Jammeh's Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction (APRC) shrank from 43 elected seats to five. Five more seats are appointed by the president in the chamber to give a total of 58, leaving the UDP with a majority of two. "The results of these elections attest to the fact that Jammeh has never won an election in this country," UDP leader Ousainou Darboe said, accusing previous electoral commissions of rigging votes in the former leader's favour. Regarding Barrow's reform agenda, which envisages a massive overhaul of government and the security forces, Darboe said he and the president "are on the same page on virtually everything". Turnout was low at 42 percent, IEC Chairman Alieu Momar Njie said after reading out the results, saying more civic education was needed to persuade people to come out and vote in legislative polls. The UDP was one of seven parties who united to propel President Adama Barrow to power in December last year, but that coalition broke apart for the legislative election. The party has long considered itself a government-in-waiting, and Barrow was UDP treasurer until resigning to become the flagbearer candidate for the coalition. Lamin Dibba, a senior UDP official and current land minister, said the vote put the party in a strong position to make major changes in The Gambia. "Our first priority will be to look at the constitution, he said. "We will also ensure that the national assembly will give the nation the power to operate rather than the president," he said, referring to Jammeh's frequent use of executive orders to push through laws. Story continues Although the UDP has a presence in the cabinet, ministers are drawn from all seven coalition parties, meaning the parliamentary win has consolidated its power. Jammeh's regime imprisoned and intimidated UDP figures throughout his rule, with leader Darboe only recently released from jail after holding a protest against the death of a party member in custody that was deemed illegal. - New era - An expected surge for the Gambia Democratic Congress (GDC), an upstart party which did not join the coalition, failed to materialise, with the youth-led movement gaining just five seats. "For GDC I am very proud, being the youngest party. We fielded 52 candidates," said Ebrima Nyang, a GDC youth activist and a candidate who failed to win his seat. "But we were expecting more than this, it was surprising to many," he added. Smaller parties who joined the coalition took 11 more seats, and one independent candidate took a seat. The Gambia's National Assembly was long derided for acting as a rubber stamp for Jammeh's decisions, but hopes are high for a revitalised chamber with a raft of fresh faces elected. Commenting on the low turnout in what was a highly anticipated vote, Joseph Siegle, Director of Research at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies at National Defense University in Washington said the country's path to democracy was never likely to be smooth. "With memories of the 22 years of the highly personalised and repressive governance style of Yahya Jammeh still very fresh, citizens are wary of vesting too much authority in a single individual. Therefore the lack of enthusiasm may reflect this uncertainty," he told AFP by email. Berlin (AFP) - The German government on Friday announced steps to choke off state campaign finance for the far-right NPD party, after a failed court bid to outlaw the xenophobic fringe group. The initiative aims to deprive the National Democratic Party of Germany of taxpayers' money, to which German political parties are generally entitled, before September elections. Handing government funds to the NPD amounted to "a direct state subsidy for far-right hate speech," said Justice Minister Heiko Maas. Germany's highest court had in January rejected a bid by the parliament's upper house to ban the NPD, ruling that although it held a similar ideology to the Nazis, it was too small to endanger German democracy. The NPD, with some 6,000 members, was founded in 1964 as a successor to the neo-fascist German Reich Party, rails against foreigners and campaigns with the slogan "Germany for the Germans". Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said his ministry had prepared changes to the constitution and to other laws that would have to be adopted by parliament with two-thirds majorities in both chambers. He said the idea that a party hostile to the democratic order receives official funding "is a situation that is hard to take". German political parties receive state campaign finance funds if they have won at least 0.5 percent of the popular vote in the latest general or European elections, or one percent in a poll in one of Germany's 16 states. The NPD garnered just above one percent in Germany's last elections in 2013, insufficient for it to win representation in parliament. It has also lost ground to the right-wing populist and anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD), which currently polls at between eight an 11 percent. While U.S. President Donald Trump bans Muslims at home and bombs them abroad, an innovative partnership between the leading private media group in the Middle East MBC and top television writers and showrunners from the United States is taking a different approach: tackling the war of narratives. It might sound strange, or even frivolous, in the midst of an all-out war against the Islamic State in both Syria and Iraq. But, in fact, it makes perfect sense, given the cultural, ideological nature of the larger battle against extremism. Indeed, as the Islamic State loses territory, it increases its vitriolic propaganda, with catastrophic results most recently, the London attack perpetrated by Khalid Masood. Not only did Islamic State online propaganda urge targeting London, but now new videos have emerged leveraging the London attack as a recruiting tool. Targeting Muslims at home or abroad will do nothing to thwart online recruitment; in fact, the opposite may be true. Fighting extremist narratives with compelling stories that embed what the Islamic State opposes tolerance, plurality, meritocratic systems, participative democracy, human rights and that expose the groups hypocrisy and inhumanity is a much more effective strategy. And the first steps are taking place right now on the small screen. Creating compelling TV is a craft, and what we look to Hollywood for is to teach us the craft of storytelling, not to produce for us ideas of their own, explained Ali Jaber, the director of TV programming for MBC Group and a key driver of the project. Leveraging local voices in Arab media seems infinitely more promising than soliciting ideas to counter extremist narratives from middle-aged, white, mostly male studio executives as Richard Stengel, the then-undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, and then-Secretary of State John Kerry did a year ago. The State Department deserves credit for changing failed counterextremism strategies and for developing over time a collaborative approach that applies Hollywoods ability to make good television to powerful stories from the Arab- and Muslim-majority world. After the Think Again Turn Away slogan that Stengel first promoted was roundly condemned as ineffective, State partnered with the Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands, then led by media-savvy Geoffrey Cowan, to organize a series of meetings with content providers from the Arab world to strategize on how best to develop effective narratives to counter Islamic State propaganda. Story continues The breakthrough came when the Sunnylands meetings moved from California to Dubai and brought with them more than 20 top writers and showrunners, including the masterminds behind hit shows such as Black-ish, Silicon Valley, and King of the Hill. Jaber, who funded the meeting, described the seismic shift, using an acronym for the Islamic State: For the first time, we sensed that the heart of Hollywood was opening up to the Arab world; for the first time, Arabs and the U.S. have an enemy in common in ISIS. Both Hollywood creatives and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson recognize the importance of fighting the Islamic State online as aggressively as we would on the ground to prevent a digital caliphate from replacing the groups territorial domain. New administrations dont always continue their predecessors programs, but to his credit Tillerson signaled his support for the U.S.-Arab media project by inviting Jaber to keynote the Ministerial Plenary for the Global Coalition Working to Defeat ISIS, held last month at the State Department. Jaber succinctly explained the key role of media in the fight against the Islamic State: For us at MBC, we look at ISIS as an idea, a narrative a dangerous one. We believe that the only way to beat that idea is to create another one that is better, more appealing, and progressive. He spoke about the wildly popular satire Selfie, which critiques not only the Islamic State but also Saudi Arabias arcane religious rules and regulations (even as it airs on MBC, a Saudi-owned network), and the much soberer Black Crows, about women in the Islamic State, which will be featured this year during Ramadan. Recognizing the challenge of creating another, more appealing narrative to beat the Islamic State on the psychological, emotional battlefield populated by vulnerable, often dissatisfied Muslims and Arabs around the world, Jaber has turned to Hollywoods master storytellers. Great Arab productions done in the American way. That will be a coup, he told me. And with control of MBC, the largest media platform in the Arab world, reaching 150 million viewers every 15 minutes, Jaber stands ready to deliver the fruits of its collaborations. The first step involved embedding Shereen el-Meligi, who oversees dramatic programming for MBC, for five weeks with The Last Tycoon, a series in development for Amazon. If F. Scott Fitzgerald seems an odd choice for an Arab programmer, Christopher Keyser, the showrunner, is not. Keyser oversaw the third and final season of Tyrant, the first U.S. television series based in the Middle East. Having advised Tyrant through MOST (Muslims on Screen and Television), which I co-direct, I witnessed Keysers deep interest in the contemporary Arab world and his desire to portray it authentically. When Jaber called for showrunners to host Arab counterparts on their Los Angeles-based shows, Keyser volunteered. Noting that Meligis stay was a really good first step, Keyser explained that he and the shows staff which includes several Tyrant alumni gave Meligi open access to the complete process, with the strong support of Sony and TriStar Television. He hopes that she will come away with a sense of how to construct a season, and how to employ writers to get the best story, as well as other tricks of the trade. But the biggest trick of all may be in making sure the United States stays committed to programs like this. On the one hand, Secretary Tillerson and even President Trump, with their private sector background, would seem likely to recognize the value of enlisting Hollywoods talent in crafting the best stories to counter Islamic State propaganda. But will these State Department-funded programs survive Trumps budget cuts? As more and more individuals are incited to violence by the Islamic State, much more than quality television is at stake. To quote Ali Jaber, This is the only solution. Photo credit: AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP/Getty Images WASHINGTON (AP) After weeks of turmoil, the Senate confirmed Trump nominee Neil Gorsuch as the Supreme Court's youngest justice Friday, filling a 14-month vacancy after the death of Antonin Scalia and restoring a rightward tilt that could last for years. Gorsuch will be sworn in Monday and will quickly begin confronting cases of consequence, including one involving separation of church and state that the justices will take up in less than two weeks. At 49, he is decades younger than several of the other justices two are in their 80s and one is 78 raising the possibility that President Donald Trump will have a chance to appoint more conservatives to a court that has been somewhat balanced in recent years. Vice President Mike Pence was presiding as the Senate voted 54-45 in favor of Gorsuch, a veteran of Denver's 10th U.S. Circuit of Appeals whose conservative rulings make him an intellectual heir to Scalia, who died in February 2016. Republicans blocked Barack Obama from filling the seat all last year. The outcome was a major victory for Trump, his first big congressional win. And it was cause for celebration for conservatives, who have often seemed willing to forgive various Trump failings next to the chance to win this lifetime appointment to the most important court on the land. "As a deep believer in the rule of law, Judge Gorsuch will serve the American people with distinction," Trump said in a statement. The judge won support from 51 of the chamber's Republicans as well as three moderate Democrats up for re-election in states Trump won last fall: Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Donnelly of Indiana. GOP Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia, who has been recovering from back surgery, did not vote. Gorsuch's name was on a list of potential choices Trump produced during the campaign, and was vetted by conservative groups including the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation. That unusual external review omitted consultation with Senate Democrats, contributing to bitter Democrat complaints about the way the whole process was handled. Story continues Gorsuch is expected to join a conservative-leaning voting bloc of justices, making five on the nine-member court. As soon as April 13, he could take part in his first private conference, where justices decide whether to hear cases and some of them could involve gun rights, voting rights and a Colorado baker's refusal to design a cake for a same-sex couple's wedding. Friday's Senate vote was the final act in a corrosive political confrontation that began with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's decision immediately after Scalia's death to hold the seat open for the next president to fill, rather than convene hearings for Obama's nominee, Judge Merrick Garland. Democrats seethed for months over Garland's treatment, and under pressure from liberal activists fuming over the Trump presidency they mounted a filibuster Thursday to block Gorsuch. McConnell, R-Ky., immediately responded, as expected, by leading his Republicans in a unilateral rules change to lower the vote threshold for Supreme Court nominees from 60 to a simple majority in the 100-member Senate. That paved the way for Gorsuch's confirmation vote Friday, but left lawmakers of both parties bemoaning the undoing of comity in the Senate and warning that the 60-vote filibuster barrier on regular legislation, a key tool to force bipartisan cooperation, could be next to go. McConnell vowed that would not happen on his watch. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said of the rules change that won approval: "It will make the cooling saucer of the Senate considerably hotter, and I believe it will make the Supreme Court a more partisan place." But McConnell and some of his allies argued that they were simply returning to a time not long ago when judicial filibusters were rarely practiced and Supreme Court filibusters essentially unheard of. "The practical result of where we are now is we're back to where we were as late as 2000," said McConnell, pointing out that even Clarence Thomas got onto the court without a filibuster, despite highly contentious confirmation hearings regarding sexual harassment claims from Anita Hill. McConnell's decision last year to hold the Supreme Court seat open was seen as a gamble, questioned even by some in his party, but it's now viewed by Republicans as a political master stroke. McConnell told reporters Friday he viewed it as "the most consequential decision I've ever been involved in." Some Republicans even credit the Supreme Court vacancy as one reason Trump won the November election. In exit polls, 21 percent of voters called Supreme Court appointments "the most important factor" for their votes, and among those people 56 percent voted for Trump. Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma said of McConnell's tactic: "No. 1, it's courageous. No. 2 it's genius, in that order, because he knew how much criticism he would get." ___ Associated Press writers Mark Sherman, Mary Clare Jalonick, Stephen Ohlemacher and Matthew Daly contributed. If you have been diagnosed with cancer, or you're dealing with a rare disease or have lived through a suicide attempt, you might have found inspiration from fellow survivors you've met in person or followed online -- people who seem to have risen above the disease you share and are not only thriving, but speaking out and offering support. Unfortunately, being an advocate for a physical or mental health condition doesn't necessarily lift people out of its reach. When leaders and role models die from the disease they'd taken on, it can be chilling and discouraging for those who looked to them for hope. Even so, survivors can move forward past their initial sadness and grief. [See: 10 Lessons From Empowered Patients.] When the annual Breathe Deep DC 5K walk kicks off from the Washington Monument in November, Jerry Sorkin won't be there, but his presence will be missed. Last October, Sorkin, the lung cancer advocate who spearheaded the initiative for the LUNGevity Foundation, and later became vice chairman of the board, died of the disease. Sorkin, a nonsmoker, was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer in 2007 at 42. But he dealt with cancer in several guises, as a young person with recurring Hodgkin disease, to much later, when he underwent treatment to remove cancer that had spread to his brain. Sorkin seemed like a consummate survivor and his passing left a shocked and grieving community. "When Jerry passed away, I received calls from many patients who were worried," says Katie Brown, LUNGevity's vice president for support and survivorship programs. "Their anxiety levels were really high. They started to feel uncertain about whether or not their cancer is going to come back." There are no easy answers for survivors. "They want assurances that we really can't provide," Brown says. "Other than to let them know we're working very hard to fund more research and there are more treatment lines in the pipeline. They just want to be reassured that they still have options out there." Story continues Brown feels a special connection to Sorkin. After she lost her father to lung cancer, she left her previous career to volunteer at LUNGevity. She recalls how Sorkin listened to, encouraged and mentored her as a budding advocate, even as he coped with lung cancer himself. When someone dies, other patients may experience survivor guilt, Brown says: "We really encourage people to talk about how they feel and turn that frustration and sadness into positive action, in terms of reaching out and advocacy, or supporting someone else." [See: 7 Things You Didn't Know About Lung Cancer.] Jill Feldman of Deerfield, Illinois, misses Sorkin on many levels. Cancer haunts her family history, taking her grandparents, parents and other relatives. After losing several loved ones to lung cancer, she decided to become an advocate with LUNGevity, in its early grassroots stage at the time. Then, Feldman became the patient. "I was 39 years old," she says. "I had four kids." Being diagnosed herself was "surreal," she says. Yet it felt right to continue as an advocate: "It allowed me to choose the role that lung cancer was going to have in my life." Feldman and Sorkin were the first LUNGevity board members who were patients as well. Sorkin helped move the Chicago-based nonprofit in a national direction, she says. "Between his personality, his passion, his connections, he was ready to jump in and provoke change," she says. They remained friends who kept in touch as he did his work in Washington. When Sorkin died last fall, it jarred Feldman. "He was a brother in the fight, so to speak," she says. "That piece of it also forces you, as a patient, to face your own mortality, too. A lot of emotions come up." The loss of a peer hits advocates hard, Feldman says. A few will say, "I can't do this." Among those who carry on, she says, "you find incredible support from the community. From being involved. You realize lung cancer is so much bigger than your personal story." Advocacy Lives On When Amy Bleuel, founder of Project Semicolon, took her own life in March, her death at 31 shook those in the mental-health community . Bleuel's project had adopted the punctuation mark as a symbol of continuing a life, just as a semicolon continues rather than ends a sentence. The idea resonated for many people struggling with issues such as depression and suicidal thoughts, inspiring many to get semicolon tattoos. It's a delicate situation when a suicide-prevention advocate ends his or her own life. Presenting a safe, thoughtful message to the public poses a challenge for mental health experts and media outlets. It's a matter of recognizing the person's life but not glorifying; acknowledging the cause of death without dramatizing; and keeping vulnerable people from losing hope. A real concern is avoiding suicide contagion or copycat attempts, a proven risk. "In the world of suicide prevention many of the advocates, especially over the last couple of decades, have primarily been loss survivors," says Dr. Christine Moutier, chief medical officer with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, or AFSP. "Now that the stigma is going down, we actually have more and more people with their own lived experience -- meaning that they've had their own suicide attempt -- who have come out to be part of the advocacy movement. Which is fantastic and probably a game-changer for the field." However, Moutier notes, both of those groups are at higher risk of suicide, by nature of their genetic inheritance, experience of traumatic loss and for those with lived experience, the underlying risk factors that have already shown up. "Suicide is a complex result of health and life factors that converge at one moment in time," she says. The experience of losing an AFSP volunteer to suicide is relatively rare, Moutier says. Far more common is hearing from volunteers about the feelings of family and connection they gain from their shared mission, along with an acquired sense of purpose and meaning from working toward the goal of helping other families never have to go through what they have. [See: 9 Things to Do or Say When a Loved One Talks About Taking Their Life.] Sarah Schuster is the mental health editor at The Mighty, an online storytelling community for people who live with chronic illnesses, mental illnesses and disabilities. Schuster never met Amy Bleuel in person, but they had exchanged emails through their professional relationship. When Schuster wrote several pieces about Bleuel's passing, she knew it would be difficult to take. "It was hard to see people's reactions," she says. "They were shocked." The response was a mixture of positive messages, she says, as well as people questioning, "If this is a suicide, what does it mean for us? If she can't make it, can we make it?" Schuster believes it's time to fine-tune the message to people at higher risk for suicide and expand it beyond words of inspiration alone. "We don't [and need to] talk about: There's research going on about how to prevent suicide. We need more funding. We need more means restriction." ("Means restriction" refers to limiting access to lethal methods used for suicide.) Rather than predict that Bleuel's death will spur advocates to do even more, Schuster keeps it low-key: "I would say: We will just continue." Lisa Esposito is a Patient Advice reporter at U.S. News. She covers health conditions, drawing on experience as an RN in oncology and other areas and as a research coordinator at the National Institutes of Health. Esposito previously reported on health care with Gannett, and she received her journalism master's degree at Georgetown University. You can follow her on Twitter, connect with her on LinkedIn or email her at lesposito@usnews.com. (Reuters) - Highlights of the day for U.S. President Donald Trump's administration on Thursday: U.S. MILITARY OPTIONS IN SYRIA Facing his biggest crisis since taking office, Trump says "something should happen" with President Bashar al-Assad after a deadly poison gas attack in Syria, as the Pentagon and the White House study military options. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spoke by phone with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov about a poison gas attack in Syria that the United States blames on the Russia-backed Syrian government, a senior State Department official says. "NUCLEAR OPTION" ON SUPREME COURT NOMINEE Senate Republicans crush a Democratic blockade of Trump's U.S. Supreme Court nominee in a fierce partisan brawl, approving a rule change dubbed the "nuclear option" to allow for conservative judge Neil Gorsuch's confirmation by Friday. HOUSE RUSSIA PROBE CHAIRMAN The Republican head of a congressional inquiry into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election says he will temporarily step aside from the probe because he is under investigation for disclosing classified information. TRUMP MEETS CHINA'S XI Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping sit down together to dine on pan-seared Dover sole and New York strip steak, spending some social time before digging into thorny bilateral security and trade issues. Trump promised to label China a currency manipulator on his first day in office but after 77 days, his administration is touting a new term: "currency misalignment." NORTH KOREA'S NUCLEAR PROGRAM Trump says he will be ready to act unilaterally to address North Korea's nuclear program if China does not step up to help with the matter. Diplomatic and economic measures taken to rein in North Korea's missile program have not had the desired effect, a senior U.S. military commander says after the North's latest test triggers a flurry of calls among world leaders. COHN BACKS REVIVING GLASS-STEAGALL White House economic adviser Gary Cohn says he backs bringing back the Glass-Steagall Act, a Depression-era law that would revamp Wall Street banks by splitting their consumer-lending businesses from their investment arms. TWITTER PRIVACY LAWSUIT Twitter Inc files a federal lawsuit to block an order by the U.S. government demanding that it reveal who is behind an account opposed to Trump's tough immigration policies. ADMINISTRATION The White House says Trump plans to nominate Lyft Inc executive Derek Kan as undersecretary of transportation for policy. (Compiled by Steve Orlofsky, Jonathan Oatis and Peter Cooney; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli and Tom Brown) (Reuters) - Highlights of the day for U.S. President Donald Trump's administration on Friday: U.S. STRIKES SYRIA Russia warns that U.S. cruise missile strikes on a Syrian air base could have "extremely serious" consequences, as Trump's first major foray into a foreign conflict opens a rift between Moscow and Washington. U.S. lawmakers from both parties back Trump's strikes on Syria, but demand he spell out a broader strategy for dealing with the conflict and consult with Congress on any further action. Many Trump voters interviewed by Reuters say his decision to attack the Syrian airfield was a decisive show of strength and resolve - just what they voted for in November; some far-right supporters of his candidacy condemn the strikes. Allies around the world express support for the strikes, calling them a proportionate response to Syrian forces' suspected use of chemical weapons, while Syria and its allies, Russia and Iran, denounce the attack. Israeli leaders welcome the U.S. strikes in Syria, saying they send a strong message that the Trump administration would not accept the use of chemical weapons and are a warning to other hostile states, including Iran and North Korea. SENATE CONFIRMS GORSUCH The Republican-led Senate gives Trump the biggest triumph of his young presidency over stout Democratic opposition, confirming his Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, and restoring a conservative majority on the highest U.S. judicial body. Gorsuch will have an immediate impact on cases already pending before the Supreme Court, including those touching on religious rights, employee lawsuits and other issues. TRUMP-XI SUMMIT Trump presses Chinese President Xi Jingping to do more to curb North Koreas nuclear program and help reduce the gaping U.S. trade deficit with Beijing in talks, even as he tones down the strident anti-China rhetoric of his election campaign. COUNCIL OF ECONOMIC ADVISERS Trump intends to nominate Kevin Hassett, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and fiscal policy expert, as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, the White House says. MEXICAN DRUG WAR For the first time in at least a decade, Mexico's army is allowing the United States and the United Nations to observe opium poppy eradication, a step toward deeper cooperation to fight heroin traffickers, three sources in Mexico tell Reuters. TWITTER CASE Twitter Inc drops a lawsuit it filed on Thursday against the U.S. Homeland Security Department, saying the government had withdrawn a summons for records about who was behind an account critical of Trump. (Compiled by Jonathan Oatis; Editing by Leslie Adler and Tom Brown) Hillary Clinton's 22-year-old nephew found his own way of changing the world: by taking off his shirt. On Wednesday, Tyler Clinton, a recent college graduate, announced on his Instagram that he would be signing onto IMG models, the same agency that reps Karlie Kloss and Gigi and Bella Hadid. SEE ALSO: Donald Trump-inspired app counts how often men interrupt women Well hello there, Tyler Clinton. THANK YOU @imgmodels for the incredible representation !!! Looking forward to much more work together #IMGstars A post shared by Tyler Clinton (@tclint) on Apr 4, 2017 at 3:30pm PDT Be somebody A post shared by Tyler Clinton (@tclint) on Mar 27, 2017 at 7:32am PDT this Cavs / Rockets game tho A post shared by Tyler Clinton (@tclint) on Mar 12, 2017 at 7:54pm PDT shout out @tcss for the clean crew || thanks guys A post shared by Tyler Clinton (@tclint) on Mar 15, 2017 at 2:20pm PDT A post shared by Tyler Clinton (@tclint) on Mar 29, 2017 at 2:23pm PDT Tyler is reportedly 5 feet, 11-and-a-half inches tall, with a 30-inch waist. His look can best be described as "Hollister bad boy" or "2017 New Kids on the Block" or "Kind Justin Bieber." A post shared by Tyler Clinton (@tclint) on Mar 4, 2017 at 7:31pm PST He's also a master at Instagram captions. I particularly liked this one, which reads:"fresh outta insta jail." fresh outta insta jail A post shared by Tyler Clinton (@tclint) on Apr 2, 2017 at 5:04pm PDT Not sure what that phrase entirely means (Is Tyler Clinton part of the #FreeTheNipple campaign?) but it sure sounds like something sexy people say. Kudos for staying on brand, Tyler! WATCH: This device will fix your nasty slouching habit over time Just a few hours before President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. had launched 59 cruise missiles on an airfield in Syria, his former campaign rival Hillary Clinton suggested doing just that. In an interview with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof at the Women in the World conference in Manhattan, Clinton responded to a deadly chemical attack in Syria earlier this week that intelligence agencies have blamed on the countrys President Bashar Assad. Assad has an air force, and that air force is the cause of most of these civilian deaths, Clinton said. And I really believe that we should have and still should take out his air fields and prevent him from being able to use them to bomb innocent people and drop sarin gas on them. In the first direct American assault against the Assad regime, Trump ordered the launch of 59 Tomahawk missiles Thursday targeting the Shayrat airfield in Homs, western Syria. The decision was made in response to the chemical attack that killed at least 80 people, many of whom were children. Read More: What to Know About the U.S. Missile Attack on Syria The chemical attack, for which Assads government has denied responsibility, was the worst such strike in years and elicited outrage from the international community. Experts and U.S. officials believe the chemical used was sarin. Clinton, who served as Secretary of State under former President Barack Obama, has long spoken in support of increased intervention against the Assad regime. Trump has often demonstrated a less coherent strategy, first opposing intervention, and later criticizing Obama for failing to enforce what he called the red line crossed by the use of chemical agents. Just hours before the chemical attack on Tuesday, Trumps Ambassador to the U.N., Nikki Haley, told reporters that the U.S. did not support regime change in Syria, a position that has shifted in the wake of this weeks fatal events. This article was originally published on TIME.com Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton may not return to the Clinton Foundation after her loss to President Donald Trump in the 2016 election, The Hill reported Wednesday, citing sources close to the Democrat. During the run up to the presidential election last year, Clinton and the family-run foundation faced criticism over possible conflicts of interest. After her loss, the former first lady has been taking her time to decide what is next on her agenda. There has been a lot of speculation over whether she will choose to run for president again in 2020 or whether she will run for New York Mayor this year. Read: All The Times President Donald Trump Has Attacked Hillary Clinton Since Taking Office However, sources told the publication that Clinton is attempting to gauge how she can help the Democratic Party after the recent debacle. Shes taking a look at her life and wants to try some different things, an aide, who is reported to have spoken with Clinton recently, told The Hill. Shes not tying herself to something thats always been an option. She wants to figure out what she wants to do. There is still a shadow of doubt over her association with the Clinton Foundation, which she joined after leaving the State Department in 2013, and left shortly before she announced her presidential campaign. I am thrilled to fully join this remarkable organization that [former President] Bill [Clinton] started a dozen years ago, and to call it my home for the work I will be doing, she said at the Clinton Global Initiative in 2013. The former first lady continued to work on women and children related issues during her time with the foundation, which was underplayed in the controversies marring her campaign. While the foundation is still referring calls to her office, The Hills sources maintain that she will not be taking on an active role in the foundation. However, this does not mean complete distance. Everyone knows theyll have access to her whenever they need her, a source told the publication. This has really become President Clinton and Chelseas thing. Related Articles In her first interview since the presidential election, Hillary Clinton said Thursday that while she has mostly recovered from her devastating loss, she continues to feel apprehensive about the countrys direction under President Trump. As a person, Im OK, she said. As an American, Im pretty worried. The New York Times Nicholas Kristof interviewed Clinton in front of a packed theater at New Yorks Lincoln Center to close out Day 2 of the annual Women in the World Summit. Following a brief but affectionate introduction by comedian Samantha Bee (It should have been you, the Full Frontal host told Clinton), the former secretary of state unpacked her thoughts on her November defeat, reported Russian interference in the election, and the Trump administrations chaotic kickoff. Urging a bipartisan investigation into the Kremlins role in the election, Clinton warned that Russia was probably emboldened by the outcome of its meddling. Because of the success the Kremlin has had, theyre not going to go away, Clinton said. If we dont take action to hold whoever was involved accountable, they will be back, time and time again. Having dealt with Russian President Vladimir Putin during her tenure as secretary of state, Clinton cautioned that his loyalties despite Russias alleged role in trying to help elect Trump lie solely with advancing his own interests. This is somebody who plays the long game, she said of Putin. He plays three-dimensional chess. Hes always trying to figure out how to advantage himself, his oligarchic companions, and his country in that order. Hillary Clinton onstage at the Women in the World Summit in New York on April 6, 2017. (Photo: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters) In response to a question about how the U.S. should deal with Syrian President Bashar Assad, she said, I really believe that we should have and still should take out his airfields and prevent him from being able to use them to bomb innocent people and drop sarin gas on them. Clinton emphasized the importance of understanding the deep roots of Assads commitment to the brutal legacy of his father and predecessor, Hafez al-Assad. He is absolutely a prisoner of his familys expectations, his dead fathers looming presence, and his delusion that I believe he could now probably pass a lie detector about it that everyone who opposes him is a terrorist. Story continues Turning to her onetime opponents turbulent first months in office, Clinton said, I dont take any pleasure in seeing the kind of chaotic functioning in the Trump White House. Specifically, she cited a weak transition effort as the reason for the administrations public growing pains. She also expressed incredulity at what she characterized as a malicious Trump administration agenda, particularly toward women. I dont understand the commitment to hurt so many people that this administration, this White House, seems to be pursuing, Clinton said. The targeting of women, which is whats going on, is absolutely beyond any political agenda. Theres something else happening here. Clinton also pointed to the GOPs failed legislation to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, which she called somewhat gratifying, as proof of the partys hostility toward women. The things that come out of some of these mens mouths, like, Why do we have to cover maternity care? Well, I dont know, maybe you were dropped by immaculate conception, she said to rousing applause. In addition to writing a book reflecting on her election loss, Clinton said her plans include recruiting young people, specifically young women, to run for office. Acknowledging the intense scrutiny women in politics face, Clinton advised: Be ready. It is not a new phenomenon, but it feels new and painful every time it happens to you. Despite all that, Clinton insisted, not only is [public service] a worthy and very satisfying way to make a living, but we really need you. Los Angeles (AFP) - Father and son filmmakers Carl and Rob Reiner were honored Friday for a combined 130 years in show business when they sunk their hands and feet into wet cement on Hollywood Boulevard. The celebration marked the first time in the 90-year history of the imprint ceremonies at the TCL Chinese Theatre -- originally Grauman's Chinese Theatre -- that a father and son had been honored together. The event was part of the TCM Classic Film Festival. "Few fathers and sons are as accomplished as Carl and Rob, and none are as funny," Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz said. Carl Reiner, 95, started out as a Broadway performer, getting his television break when he joined Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca on the live variety series "Your Show of Shows." He shot to fame as the creator of hit situation comedy "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and went on to direct iconic Steve Martin features "The Jerk," "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" and "The Man with Two Brains," as well as John Candy's "Summer Rental." More recently, he appeared in "Ocean's 11" and its sequels, and still appears regularly on television shows such as "Boston Legal," "Family Guy" and "Hot in Cleveland." Rob Reiner, 70, rose to fame portraying Archie Bunker's notoriously liberal son-in-law Michael "Meathead" Stivic on CBS sitcom "All in the Family," created by veteran producer Norman Lear, who attended Friday's ceremony. But he went on to make a greater impact as a director, hitting it big with the 1984 mockumentary "This is Spinal Tap," in which he also starred -- a movie still considered a milestone in comedy cinema. - 'My idol' - The younger Reiner followed that with coming-of-age drama "Stand By Me," storybook fantasy "The Princess Bride" and "When Harry Met Sally," which went on to inspire generations of rom-com writers and directors. Story continues His other directing credits include "Misery," "A Few Good Men," "Ghosts of Mississippi," "The American President" and "The Bucket List." Among the Reiners' well-wishers at the Chinese Theatre were Hollywood star Billy Crystal and Emmy Award-winning television host Tom Bergeron. Crystal recounted being discovered by Carl Reiner and Lear when he was performing stand-up as a naive young comedian in 1975, and being handed a part in "All in the Family." Crystal had a small role in "This is Spinal Tap" and went on to star in "The Princess Bride" and "When Harry Met Sally," still two of the younger Reiner's most iconic movies. "It was a brilliant concept, Rob's concept: Can men and women be friends when the sex part gets in the way?" Crystal said of "When Harry Met Sally" (1989). "It was Rob's ear -- how do we tell the jokes right, how do we make it effortless, the music of the writing?... He always has the perfect answer as a director: Let's try it." Carl paid tribute to his son's directing skills, revealing that "The Princess Bride" (1987) remains one of his three favorite movies. "My father was my idol. I looked up to him. He stood for everything I wanted to be in life," added the younger Reiner. As active as ever, he has two political movies coming out this year: "LBJ" and "Shock and Awe." A never-before-seen type of radioactivity could explain why matter, including humans, exists today. And now a team of physicists has launched an experiment to find the oddball phenomenon. When the universe first formed some 13.7 billion years ago, current theories say that equal amounts of matter and its bizarre cousin, antimatter, should have been produced during the Big Bang. Physicists know that when the two come into contact, they annihilate each other poof. If that were the case, though, nothing should exist except photons and neutrinos. And yet, here we are. Calculations show there was a tiny bit more matter than antimatter enough so that things exist but why? One way to explain this matter-antimatter asymmetry is to look for some difference between the two, besides charge, that could explain matter's advantage. It's a big question in contemporary physics, because otherwise matter and antimatter should, per contemporary theories, behave the same way. [The 18 Biggest Unsolved Mysteries in Physics] Weird neutrinos In this new study, physicists are seeking so-called neutrinoless double-beta decay. Normally, some radioactive atoms' unstable nuclei will lose a neutron via beta decay the neutron transforms into a proton by releasing an electron and a tiny particle called an electron antineutrino. A mirror image can also occur, in which a proton turns into a neutron, releasing a positron and an electron neutrino the normal-matter counterpart to the antineutrino. Double-beta decay happens when two electrons and two antineutrinos (the antimatter counterparts of neutrinos) are released: basically, the beta decay happens twice. Scientists have long theorized a neutrinoless version of this process something that would suggest that the two neutrinos annihilated each other before being released from the atom. Essentially, the neutrino behaves as its own antimatter sibling. (Particles of matter that are their own antiparticles are called Majorana fermions, after the Italian physicist Ettore Majorana, who hypothesized their existence in 1937.) If neutrinos and antineutrinos behave differently from each other, that could help to explain why all matter wasn't annihilated at the instant the universe formed. [5 Elusive Particles That May Lurk in the Universe] Detecting decay Finding this odd event though, is hard to do, because there's so much background "noise," said Bernhard Schwingenheuer, the spokesman for the GERmanium Detector Array (GERDA) collaboration. The background "noise" comes largely from cosmic rays. In the experiment, physicists had to account for background noise, mostly from cosmic rays. So they covered the inner walls of the water tank surrounding the liquid argon with a reflecting foil to improve light detection and allow for the identification of cosmic muons (formed when cosmic rays interact with Earth's atmosphere). K. Freund/GERDA collaboration So the physicists turned to GERDA. Nestled in an underground lab in Italy, the GERDA experiment consists of detectors in a bath of liquid argon that is enriched with the isotope germanium-76, which is mildly radioactive. It has a half-life of 1.78 x 1021 years (or 1.78 billion trillion years) meaning that it takes that amount of time for half of its atoms to turn into selenium, which is many orders of magnitude longer than the universe's 14-billion-year age. Usually, germanium will emit two electrons and two electron antineutrinos the ordinary double-beta process when it transforms via its slow decay. The physicists wanted to see if this ever happens without releasing the neutrinos: the long-sought neutrinoless double-beta decay. With such a long half-life, one might think it would take too long to see this happen, but a half-life is a probabilistic phenomenon. This is why the experimenters used some 84 lbs. of germanium mixed with the liquid argon: that yields about 4.5 x 1025 (or 45 trillion trillion) atoms, which means at least a few of them should undergo the decay while scientists are watching. The GERDA team gathered data for about seven months, from December 2015 until June 2016. They didn't find the decay, but they could put a lower limit on how often the decay happens: It has a half-life of 5.3 x 1025 years, which means you'd have a 50-50 chance of seeing a single atom do it in that amount of time. Extending the Standard Model If they find it, that would mean that neutrinos are their own antiparticle, like photons the neutrinoless decay couldn't happen unless that were the case. It also means that this kind of radioactive decay is not symmetrical. Recall that beta decay has a mirror image either electrons and antineutrinos or positrons and neutrinos are emitted. If the double-beta decay isn't symmetrical, that means that neutrinos and antineutrinos behave differently. This isn't true of other kinds of particle-antiparticle pairs, as far as anyone knows. This phenomenon would affect the Standard Model, which has been a wildly successful way to describe particle physics, but it's clearly incomplete. The model predicted the existence of the Higgs boson particle. However, Schwingenheuer noted that there is evidence that neutrinos have a tiny mass (only discovered in 1998, which won the Nobel in 2015) and that dark matter exists indicating that the Standard Model isn't the last word. "If neutrinoless double-beta decay is observed, it helps solve a couple of problems," said Philip Barbeau, an assistant professor of physics at Duke University in an email to Live Science. "For one, it helps to explain the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe. It also helps explain why neutrino masses are so surprisingly small. We would also get an idea of the neutrino masses as well, as the decay rate is related to the mass scale of the neutrinos." The question then becomes what kind of physics lies beyond it. The GERDA experiment has yet to reveal the decay that the researchers seek, but that doesn't mean it won't in the future, Schwingenheuer said. And it would be difficult to rule it out entirely, because it's possible that the timescale is just longer than they think. Right now, they've set a lower limit on the half-life for this decay, but further experimental runs could push that number up. As for what happens if they don't see the odd decay after many runs, Barbeau said it might not be a deal breaker for new models. "We don't go back to the drawing board from the point of view of the underlying theories. We just won't know whether neutrinos are Majorana or not." The research is detailed in the April 6 issue of the journal Nature. Original article on Live Science. Editor's Recommendations Pets require a lot of attention when you first get them. Like, a lot. Sometimes you, as an adoptive parent, are compelled to bunk work and tend to your fur babies. Very few workplaces though understand this need to allow "pawternity" time. But, now there's one from India, and possibly the country's first. SEE ALSO: Petcube Lets You Play With Adoptable Animals With Your Smartphone Publishing giant HarperCollins India has announced pawternity leave for its pet-adopting employees. Starting this year, they will be entitled to a week's or 5 working days' paid leave if they have just adopted a pet, HuffPost India reported. This is aimed at encouraging responsible adoption of pets who need as much love, attention and a caring environment as human babies. Or perhaps more. In addition, the publishing house will also let its employees bring their pets to office and keep them in designated animal-friendly areas. "We want the very best of work-life balance for our colleagues, and that includes being mindful about their family needs," HCI chief Ananth Padmanabhan was quoted as saying. Time off for pet-adoption is a novel concept still. Some years ago, Petplan, the UK's largest pet insurance provider, found that 1 in 5 pet-owners were willing to sacrifice up to three weeks holiday time for their puppies. However, only 5 percent of employers offered them 'pup-ternity' leaves. India, which recently altered its maternity leave policies too, had never seen pet adoption in this light. Until now. People on social media have hailed HarperCollins for the move. @jilpanz @HarperCollinsIN There hasn't been a more Pawsome news! Please accept a job application from a single parent of 15 rescued and spl needs cats ;) Everything MEOW (@IndiaMEOWS) April 6, 2017 Isn't it awwdorable that @HarperCollinsIN now has a #Pawternityleave for when they adopt pets? Way to go! https://t.co/IzaQXL8zaM Tanvi Juwale (@pinchofsalt_23) April 7, 2017 Pawww! Great move, I say. Take a bow! :) @HarperCollinsIN will grant 'pawternity leave' to employees adopting pets https://t.co/9FlB60SPqO Sherry Mary Jacob (@SherryJPhillips) April 7, 2017 @SherryJPhillips @HarperCollinsIN Awwww. Now I know where I want to work. BookBear (@MyBookJacket) April 7, 2017 @baradwajrangan Adorable. We need more such thoughtful companies chandni suresh babu (@ChandniBabu) April 7, 2017 @HarperCollinsIN Will Grant 'Pawternity Leave' To Employees Adopting Pets. Heartwarming policy this! Well Done!https://t.co/lkHicg8b1R Hata (@Brahmachaari) April 6, 2017 Paaawwww! WATCH: Why get a puppy when you can have a snuggly lizard instead? India will buy nearly $2 billion worth of weapons technology from Israel in what's being described as the "largest defence contract" ever signed by the military exporting giant. The deal will see state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries provide India with an advanced defence system of medium-range surface-to-air missiles, launchers and communications technology, the company said in a statement Thursday. The "mega" missile agreement is "considered to be the largest defense contract in Israel's defense industries' history", the company said. The Israeli firm will also supply a naval defence system including long-range surface-to-air missiles for India's first aircraft carrier, which is still under construction. Comment was not immediately available from India's defence ministry. Israel Aerospace Industries said some components will be assembled in India, in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's push to reduce reliance on costly imports. Modi's government has raised the limit on foreign investment in the defence sector and encouraged tie-ups between foreign and local companies under a 'Make in India' campaign. India -- the world's largest defence importer -- has been investing tens of billions in updating its Soviet-era military hardware to counter long-standing tensions with regional rivals China and Pakistan. India has signed several big-ticket defence deals since Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party stormed to power in 2014. Israel is a top weapons exporter, with sales last year surging to $6.5 billion. India is a top market for its arms, as New Delhi has turned increasingly away from traditional ally Russia for its military hardware. Last year India signed a contract to buy 36 Rafale twin-engine fighter jets from France for 7.9 billion euros ($8.8 billion) after major delays and obstacles over the cost and assembly of the planes in India. A China-backed trade deal meant to cement the Beijings dominance in Asia has veered off course because India is hesitant to open its borders to cheap Chinese goods. Without the participation of India, the third-largest Asian economy, the free-trade zone China hoped to create might still happen, but it wont carry the same economic heft, depriving Beijing of the chance to set the trade rules for the region. The missed opportunity puts China on much the same footing as the United States, as Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump continue their first face-to-face meeting Friday at Trumps Palm Beach, Fla. club, where the trade tensions between their two countries will be a major point of discussion. Trump withdrew from the sprawling Trans Pacific Partnership with 11 other countries as one of his first acts in office, squandering a chance for the United States to steer trade in Asia. Now China looks like it may lose its chance as well, over Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modis refusal to open its borders. India is reasons one, two and three why the deal might not get done, said Douglas Paal, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former adviser to Taiwan on trade. Theres a strongly-held belief that this will bring in unwanted competition. The China-backed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership is currently being negotiated between the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), plus six other Asian nations Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand. If approved, it would cover 46 percent of the worlds population and 24 percent of global GDP. It would also leave the United States on the sidelines, as Washington is not a signatory on the deal. India, though it is participating in the trade talks, is balking at opening its market to Chinese products. Like the United States, Indias trade deficit with China is big: $52 billion. Modi doesnt want lower cost imports to compete with ones made in India even if it means opening foreign markets to Indian companies. Story continues The Modi government one of the most pro-business in Indias history is not necessarily pro-trade, Rick Rossow, the Wadhwani Chair in U.S.-India Policy Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said. Hes still very uncomfortable with really deep trade integration. The Indian prime minister has made growing his countrys manufacturing sector a priority. In September 2014, he launched the Make in India initiative in an effort to expand manufacturing after growth there fell to its lowest level in a decade. The goal is to make the sector more efficient and attractive for foreign investment. And it appears to be working. GE, Siemens, HTC, Toshiba, and Boeing have either established or are in process of setting up manufacturing operations in India, according to the Indian Brand Equity Foundation. Modis hope is to grow manufacturing to represent 25 percent of Indian GDP by 2025. Right now, it accounts for 16 percent. Still, the RCEP is likely to be agreed to in some forms, multiple trade experts said. ASEAN, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, has pledged to finalize the deal before the end of the year to mark the occasion. The next round of negotiations are set to take place in the Philippines in May. RCEP is a diplomatic exercise, said Derek Scissors, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who studies the Indian and Chinese economies. Its gotten more attention since TPP died, but diplomatically its important to agree to something by the end of the year. Any deal will be a watered-down version of the original plan to create a free-trade zone, which is something India would never agree to, Ross said. The current deal also lacks the protections for labor, human rights and the environment that were contained in the TPP. Its a low grade deal as it is, said Andrew Small, a China expert at the German Marshall Fund. Whatever results form this is not going to be a free trade agreement that we would have seen with TPP. For India to agree, there would have to be even a lower bar than there is right now. Edmund Sim, a trade lawyer who has worked throughout Asia, said its misleading to compare the two deals because the regulatory, environmental, and worker standards were so much tougher in the TPP. RCEP had lower ambitions. Completing it will be less of a milestone that TPP would have been, Sim, who is a partner at the Washington law firm Appleton Luff, said. Photo credit: LINTAO ZHANG/Getty Images (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday he ordered a targeted military strike against an airfield controlled by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces. A deadly chemical attack was launched this week from that base. COMMENTS: HOUSE SPEAKER PAUL RYAN "This action was appropriate and just." "Resolving the years-long crisis in Syria is a complex task, but Bashar al-Assad must be held accountable and his enablers must be persuaded to change course. I look forward to the administration further engaging Congress in this effort." REPUBLICAN SENATORS JOHN MCCAIN AND LINDSEY GRAHAM "Building on tonights credible first step, we must finally learn the lessons of history and ensure that tactical success leads to strategic progress. That means following through with a new, comprehensive strategy in coordination with our allies and partners to end the conflict in Syria." SENATOR BOB CORKER, CHAIRMAN SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS "It is critical that Assad knows he will no longer enjoy impunity for his horrific crimes against his own citizens, and this proportional step was appropriate. As we move forward, it will be important for the administration to engage with Congress and clearly communicate its full strategy to the American people." REPRESENTATIVE ED ROYCE, CHAIRMAN HOUSE FOREIGN AFFAIRS "Assad was warned, repeatedly, by the U.S. and the U.N. that the intentional targeting of innocent men, women and children is intolerable. Now Assad has been caught red-handed carrying out another abhorrent chemical attack, and the administration has taken a measured response." REPRESENTATIVE ADAM SCHIFF, RANKING MEMBER, HOUSE INTELLIGENCE "I will be reintroducing an authorization for use of military force against ISIS and al Qaeda when Congress returns to session. Congress cannot abdicate its responsibility any longer and should vote on any use of force not made in self defense. This is necessary whether action is taken against terrorist groups or, as here, against regime capabilities." SENATE DEMOCRATIC LEADER CHUCK SCHUMER Making sure Assad knows that when he commits such despicable atrocities he will pay a price is the right thing to do. It is incumbent on the Trump administration to come up with a strategy and consult with Congress before implementing it." SENATOR BEN CARDIN, TOP DEMOCRAT ON SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS "I cannot emphasize this enough, any longer-term or larger military operation in Syria by the Trump administration will need to be done in consultation with the Congress. Furthermore, it is the presidents responsibility to inform the legislative branch and the American people about his larger policy in Syria, as well as the legal basis for this action and any additional military activities in that country." SENATOR MARCO RUBIO, REPUBLICAN ON SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS "What must follow is a real and comprehensive strategy to ensure that Assad is no longer a threat to his people and to U.S. security, and that Russia no longer has free rein to support his regime." REPUBLICAN SENATOR RAND PAUL "While we all condemn the atrocities in Syria, the United States was not attacked. The president needs congressional authorization for military action as required by the Constitution, and I call on him to come to Congress for a proper debate. Our prior interventions in this region have done nothing to make us safer, and Syria will be no different." SENATOR DICK DURBIN, DEMOCRATIC WHIP "My preliminary briefing by the White House indicated that this was a measured response to the Syrian nerve gas atrocity. Any further action will require close scrutiny by Congress, and any escalation beyond air strikes or missile strikes will require engaging the American people in that decision." DEMOCRATIC SENATOR CHRIS COONS "While Im encouraged that the Trump administration has felt compelled to act forcefully in Syria against the Assad regime, Im gravely concerned that the United States is engaging further militarily in Syria without a well-thought-out, comprehensive plan. Frankly, the presidents actions today generate more questions than answers." (Reporting by Patricia Zengerle and Roberta Rampton; Editing by Lisa Shumaker) When saving for retirement is the order of the day, you may think your options are limited to stocks and bonds. Investing in a self-directed individual retirement account, however, can open up new possibilities. Self-directed IRAs allow you to invest in alternatives like real estate, precious metals and an asset class that's typically the domain of the uber-wealthy: private equity. From an investment perspective, private equity can be lucrative. According to the Private Equity Growth Capital Council, private equity outperformed the Standard & Poor's 500 index by 5.2 percent during the 10-year period ending in 2015. Private equity investments are not without certain risks, though, and they may not be appropriate for every investor. Hunter Unschuld, president of Albuquerque-based Fractal Profile Wealth Management and founder and CEO of the American Society of Fiduciary Education, cautions that investing in private equity is the epitome of all or nothing. [See: 10 Tips to Boost Your IRA Balance.] "It's a home run or a strikeout in investing," Unschuld says. "The main advantage is if you hit the home run, all of those gains are much bigger than what you would get in the stock market and they grow in your account tax-free." On the other hand, the big disadvantage of investing in private equity via a self-directed IRA comes if you strike out. "If you take a loss, you can't write that off on your taxes like you can with a loss in a regular investment," Unschuld says. If you're considering an investment in private equity through a self-directed IRA, here are some best practices to observe. Get familiar with the self-directed IRA guidelines. Self-directed IRAs share the same tax advantages as a traditional or Roth IRA but the Internal Revenue Service imposes certain restrictions on the management and use of these accounts. Adham Sbeih, CEO and founder of Socotra Capital in Sacramento, California, says investors sometimes have a tendency to overlook the importance of these rules. Story continues "I think the one that's broken most frequently is that you can't personally benefit from your self-directed IRA -- only your IRA can benefit," Sbeih says. The IRS specifically prohibits self-directed IRA investors from conducting transactions that result in an indirect benefit. For example, you're not allowed to lend yourself money from the IRA or use IRA funds to purchase a vacation home. These kinds of activities fall under the umbrella of self-dealing, which is a major no-no in the eyes of the IRS. Jeffrey Kelley, senior vice president and chief operating officer at Equity Institutional in Westlake, Ohio, says investors should also be aware transactions involving certain individuals are verboten. That includes transactions between an IRA and disqualified persons, which covers fiduciaries, certain family members, and businesses that are controlled by the investor who owns the IRA or another disqualified person. If your investment activity moves beyond the scope of what's allowed by the IRS, the result could be damaging to your bottom line. In the worst-case scenario, your IRA could lose its tax-advantaged status and you may incur taxes or penalties on prohibited transactions. That could wipe out any gains you've made by investing through the IRA in the first place. Understand the risks associated with private equity investments. Private equity can add diversification to your investments but it's important to understand where it fits in terms of your risk tolerance. "Investing in private equity through a self-directed IRA will raise an investor's risk profile," Unschuld says. "There's a higher risk, but also a higher reward and to offset that, the investor should be more conservative with other investments in his or her portfolio." Erik Davidson, chief investment officer for Wells Fargo Private Bank in San Francisco, says investors should take a holistic view when introducing private equity investments through a self-directed IRA. "It's very important to look at investments in the context of the entire portfolio," Davidson says. [See: 12 Great Things About Retirement.] Davidson says investors should be focused on balancing private equity with investments that offer greater liquidity and a different risk-and-return profile. He also encourages investors to consider their broader timeline until retirement. "Investors who need liquidity soon, as well as those who lack substantive other assets for diversification, wouldn't be appropriate for this strategy," Davidson says. He says that investors who are pursuing private equity investments through a self-directed IRA should perform exhaustive due diligence beforehand. Davidson further recommends diversifying within private equity investments to avoid significant deal-specific exposure. Sbeih says investors should consider diversifying into an investment that counterbalances any weaknesses a particular private equity investment may bear. Investors also need to understand how the investment winds down, as well as the process and timeline involved to make an exit, he says. Compare the costs to any potential upside of investing in private equity. Anthony Glomski, principal and founder of Los Angeles-based AG Asset Advisory, says the cost of private equity in a self-directed IRA can be prohibitive for some investors. "Many private equity investments that our firm would advocate require the investor to be a qualified purchaser (QP)," Glomski says, meaning an individual with at least $5 million in investable assets. "As you go down the food chain, away from investments that do not require an individual to be a QP, fees and expenses are increased and performance can be compromised," Glomski says. If you're planning to invest through a private equity fund, venture capital fund or funds of funds, scrutinize the fee schedule carefully so you have a realistic picture of what the investment will cost on an annual basis. You can then compare that to the fund's performance to determine whether it's worth any gains you anticipate over the long term. Beyond that, you'll also need to consider the tax implications. "Returns from a self-directed IRA investment can be tax-deferred or tax-free, depending upon the account type," Kelley says. "However, some investments made using self-directed IRAs, such as limited partnerships, limited liability companies and other entities, may also generate unrelated business taxable income." Don't assume that your IRA custodian will do the legwork of managing your tax burden. "If you're in a self-directed IRA, it's your responsibility to be aware of tax liabilities," Unschuld says. "For example, if you invest in private equity in a manufacturing business that generates income and it's not paid out as a dividend, you have to pay tax on that income or face a penalty." Even if the money is in your IRA in that scenario, it's still subject to tax in the year it's distributed. It's advantageous to know beforehand how private equity could reshape your tax outlook. [See: 10 Steps to Max Out Your IRA.] "The potential tax implications that can come with private equity can be a big problem for some people," Unschuld says. Rebecca Lake is a freelance Investing & Retirement reporter at U.S. News & World Report. She's been reporting on personal finance, investing and small business for nearly a decade and her work has been featured on The Huffington Post, Business Insider, CBS News and Investopedia. You can connect with her on LinkedIn and Twitter or email her at rlake0836@gmail.com. (Reuters) - U.S. allies expressed support on Friday for Washington's missile strikes on Syria, calling them a proportionate response to Syria's suspected use of chemical weapons. The strikes were denounced as illegal by Syria and its allies Russia and Iran. Iraq criticised "hasty interventions" in an apparent comment on the U.S. action. But a wide range of U.S. allies from Asia, Europe and the Middle East expressed support, if sometimes cautiously, in similar terms. "The U.K. government fully supports the U.S. action, which we believe was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime and is intended to deter further attacks," a British government spokesman said. Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters: "Many innocent people became victims from the chemical attacks. "Japan supports the U.S. government's determination to prevent the spread and use of chemical weapons," he said. Turkey viewed the strikes positively and the international community should sustain its stance against the "barbarity" of the Syrian government, Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said. In an interview with Turkish broadcaster Fox TV, Kurtulmus said Assad's government must be punished in the international arena and the peace process in Syria needed to be accelerated. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said Russia and Iran needed to understand that supporting Assad made no sense and that the escalation of the U.S. military role in Syria was a "warning" to "a criminal regime". "Use of chemical weapons is appalling and should be punished because it is a war crime," Ayrault told Reuters and France Info radio. French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel issued statements saying Assad was solely to blame for the air strikes. The Dutch government said: "The United States has given a clear signal that the use of poison gas crosses a line." It also labelled the strikes a "proportionate" response. "U.S. strikes show needed resolve against barbaric chemical attacks. EU will work with the US to end brutality in Syria," the chairman of the council of EU leaders, Donald Tusk, said on Twitter. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the strikes sent "a vitally important message" that the world would not tolerate the use of chemical weapons. "The retribution has been proportionate and it has been swift," he told reporters in Sydney. "We support the United States in that swift action." Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which back rebels fighting Assad, said they supported the U.S. strikes and held only the Syrian government responsible for the attacks. Other Gulf countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait, also expressed support for the attacks. Some countries expressed reservations about the U.S. decision to launch strikes without authorisation from the U.N. Security Council. Indonesia, home to the world's largest Muslim population, condemned the use of chemical weapons in Syria. "At the same time, Indonesia is concerned with unilateral actions by any parties, including the use of Tomahawk missiles, in responding to the chemical weapon attack tragedy in Syria," Foreign Ministry spokesman Armanatha Nasir said in a text message. "Military actions, undertaken without prior authorisation of the U.N. Security Council, are not in line with international legal principles in the peaceful settlement of disputes, as stipulated in the U.N. Charter." (Additional reporting by Kanupriya Kapoor in Jakarta, Parisa Hafezi in Ankara, Guy Faulconbridge in London, Andrew Osborn and Jack Stubbs in Moscow, John Irish in Nouakchott, Mauritania, Colin Packham in Sydney, Tulay Karadeniz in Istanbul, Maher Chmaytelli in Erbil, Aziz El Yaakoubi and Sami Aboudi in Dubai and Marcin Goettig in Warsaw; Writing by Nick Macfie; Editing by Clarence Fernandez, Sonya Hepinstall and Giles Elgood) (Reuters) - U.S. allies expressed support on Friday for Washington's missile strikes on Syria, calling them a proportionate response to Syrian forces' suspected use of chemical weapons. The strikes were denounced as illegal by Syria and its allies Russia and Iran. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani called on the world "to reject such policies, which bring only destruction and danger to the region and the globe". (Graphic locator map on attack - http://tmsnrt.rs/2nm68H0) Iraq criticized "hasty interventions" in an apparent comment on the U.S. action. But a wide range of U.S. allies from Asia, Europe and the Middle East expressed support, if sometimes cautiously, in similar terms. "The U.K. government fully supports the U.S. action, which we believe was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime and is intended to deter further attacks," a British government spokesman said. Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters: "Many innocent people became victims from the chemical attacks. "Japan supports the U.S. government's determination to prevent the spread and use of chemical weapons," he said. Turkey viewed the strikes positively and the international community should sustain its stance against the "barbarity" of the Syrian government, Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said. In an interview with Turkish broadcaster Fox TV, Kurtulmus said Assad's government must be punished in the international arena and the peace process in Syria needed to be accelerated. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said Russia and Iran needed to understand that supporting Assad made no sense and that the escalation of the U.S. military role in Syria was a "warning" to "a criminal regime". "Use of chemical weapons is appalling and should be punished because it is a war crime," Ayrault told Reuters and France Info radio. French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel issued statements saying Assad was solely to blame for the air strikes. The Dutch government said: "The United States has given a clear signal that the use of poison gas crosses a line." It also labeled the strikes a "proportionate" response. "U.S. strikes show needed resolve against barbaric chemical attacks. EU will work with the US to end brutality in Syria," the chairman of the council of EU leaders, Donald Tusk, said on Twitter. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the strikes sent "a vitally important message" that the world would not tolerate the use of chemical weapons. "The retribution has been proportionate and it has been swift," he told reporters in Sydney. "We support the United States in that swift action." Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which back rebels fighting Assad, said they supported the U.S. strikes and held only the Syrian government responsible for the attacks. Other Gulf countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait, also expressed support for the attacks. Some countries expressed reservations about the U.S. decision to launch strikes without authorization from the U.N. Security Council. Indonesia, home to the world's largest Muslim population, condemned the use of chemical weapons in Syria. "At the same time, Indonesia is concerned with unilateral actions by any parties, including the use of Tomahawk missiles, in responding to the chemical weapon attack tragedy in Syria," Foreign Ministry spokesman Armanatha Nasir said in a text message. "Military actions, undertaken without prior authorization of the U.N. Security Council, are not in line with international legal principles in the peaceful settlement of disputes, as stipulated in the U.N. Charter." (Additional reporting by Kanupriya Kapoor in Jakarta, Parisa Hafezi in Ankara, Guy Faulconbridge in London, Andrew Osborn and Jack Stubbs in Moscow, John Irish in Nouakchott, Mauritania, Colin Packham in Sydney, Tulay Karadeniz in Istanbul, Maher Chmaytelli in Erbil, Aziz El Yaakoubi and Sami Aboudi in Dubai and Marcin Goettig in Warsaw; Writing by Nick Macfie; Editing by Clarence Fernandez, Sonya Hepinstall and Giles Elgood) Jerusalem (AFP) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he supports the "strong and clear message" sent by a US strike on neighbouring Syria on Friday in retaliation for a suspected chemical attack. The Israeli military said it had been informed in advance of a massive cruise missile strike on a Syrian airbase, the first US operation against the Damascus regime in six years of civil war. "In both word and action, President (Donald) Trump sent a strong and clear message today that the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated," a statement from Netanyahu's office said. "Israel fully supports President Trump's decision and hopes that this message of resolve in the face of the Assad regime's horrific actions will resonate not only in Damascus, but in Tehran, Pyongyang and elsewhere." Trump said the strike on the Shayrat airbase with 59 Tomahawk missiles fired from warships in the eastern Mediterranean was in retaliation for what he said was a "barbaric" chemical attack on a rebel-held town in northwestern Syria by the Damascus regime. Israeli President Reuven Rivlin said the "clear and determined steps" taken "constitute a fitting and appropriate response to such unthinkable brutality." There had been international outrage over Tuesday's suspected attack that killed dozens of civilians but Moscow stood by its Damascus ally and warned of the negative consequences of any military action. As a result, a UN Security Council debate on a Western-drafted resolution was again delayed on Thursday amid Russian insistence that the chemical weapons that caused the deaths had been stockpiled by jihadists on the ground and released by a conventional strike. Washington said it had given advance notification of its military action to both Russia, and its Western and Arab allies in a coalition fighting the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq. - 'Message to allies' - Story continues Israel has repeatedly struck alleged weapons convoys in Syria they claim are bound for Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah. However it has been reluctant to be dragged into the civil war and has rejected calls for a more substantial intervention. After Russia entered the war in support of its ally President Bashar al-Assad in late 2015, Moscow and Israel agreed to coordinate on their actions to avoid accidents. Last month, Syria fired missiles at Israel after the Jewish state struck a number of sites in the country, in the worst flare-up between the two governments since the civil war began in 2011. Netanyahu said at the time that the Israeli strikes targeted Hezbollah and warned the army would do so again if necessary. On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin called Netanyahu and slammed "unfounded accusations" by the Israeli premier that Assad was responsible for the alleged chemical attack. Moscow has said repeatedly that Tuesday's deaths of dozens of civilians in Khan Sheikhun in northwestern Syria were the result not of a regime chemical attack but of toxic substances that had been stockpiled by jihadists on the ground and released by a conventional strike. Former Israeli security adviser Yaakov Amidror said US regional allies would take the strike as a sign Trump would be more willing to use force to protect their interests than his predecessor Barack Obama. He said it was also a message to Assad and its allies Russia and Iran that "America is back." "I think that the chances for an attack initiated by either Syria or Hezbollah is even less today than before because now it's understood that if they violate the interests of the United States of America... unlike the previous administration, this administration is ready to take action." BALTIMORE (AP) A federal judge on Friday approved an agreement negotiated under the Obama administration to overhaul the troubled Baltimore police force, sweeping aside objections from the Trump Justice Department. President Donald Trump's attorney general, Jeff Sessions, promptly warned that the agreement may result in "a less safe city." U.S. District Judge James Bredar signed the so-called consent decree one day after a hearing to solicit comments from Baltimore residents, calling the plan "comprehensive, detailed and precise." He denied a request to delay the signing to give the Trump administration more time to review the agreement. At Thursday's hearing, a Justice Department attorney expressed "grave concerns" about the plan, aimed at rooting out racist practices. The consent decree was negotiated during the closing days of the Obama administration after a federal investigation found rampant abuse by Baltimore police, including unlawful stops and use of excessive force against black people. The investigation was prompted by the 2015 death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man whose neck was broken during a lurching ride in the back of a police van, where he had been left unbuckled, his hands and legs shackled. Gray's death touched off the worst rioting in Baltimore in decades. In a memo made public earlier this week, the Trump Justice Department signaled that it may retreat from the consent decrees that have been put in place in recent years in such cities as Cleveland; Ferguson, Missouri; Miami; and Newark, New Jersey. Sessions said in a statement Friday that the Baltimore agreement shows "clear departures from many proven principles of good policing that we fear will result in more crime." "The decree was negotiated during a rushed process by the previous administration and signed only days before they left office," Sessions said. "While the Department of Justice continues to fully support police reform in Baltimore, I have grave concerns that some provisions of this decree will reduce the lawful powers of the police department and result in a less safe city." Story continues The Justice Department can appeal the judge's decision, but it would have to show the judge made an error or abused his discretion. That would be difficult to prove, said Jonathan Smith, a civil rights attorney in the Obama Justice Department who oversaw negotiations with troubled police departments. Justice Department lawyers also could try to modify the consent decree, but the burden is high, requiring them to show there has been a substantial change in the facts or the law, Smith said. City officials, including Police Commissioner Kevin Davis, have voiced their support for the agreement. Mayor Catherine Pugh disputed the notion the decree will hurt the fight against crime. "I believe that it makes Baltimore safer," she said. "I think by building and training our police officers in ways to de-escalate violence, to work with our communities, to have cultural diversity training and have the right kind of tools they need to know what they can do in certain areas of our community ... I think it's improved policing." The homicide rate in Baltimore immediately spiked after the riots over Gray's death, leading some residents to accuse officers of taking a hands-off approach for fear of increased scrutiny. The soaring crime rate has not relented. In the first three months of 2017, the city recorded 79 homicides, compared with 56 for the same period the year before. Baltimore's agreement calls for additional training for officers and discourages them from arresting people for minor offenses such as traffic infractions or loitering. It also says officers can no longer detain someone simply for being in a high-crime area. Following Gray's death, the department began undertaking some reforms, including outfitting officers with body cameras and updating the use-of-force policy. Gene Ryan, president of the Baltimore police union, has complained that the agreement was rushed and that the union wasn't involved enough in the negotiations. The national Fraternal Order of Police said it was disappointed by the judge's decision to move forward. "But Baltimore officers will endeavor to give the citizens of Baltimore the best public safety service possible given the constraints imposed upon the department by the decree," said Jim Pasco, the senior adviser to the group's president. ___ Associated Press writer Sadie Gurman contributed to this report from Washington. (Reuters) - Kansas lawmakers on Friday approved legislation that would tighten regulations of amusement rides following the death of a state representative's son last year on the world's tallest water slide. Legislation approved by the Republican-controlled Senate on Friday would require qualified inspectors to check amusement park rides every year, as opposed to allowing park owners to do the checks. The bill was created after Caleb Thomas Schwab, 10, died in August 2016 at the Schlitterbahn waterpark on the Verruckt water slide that sent riders plunging down 17 stories at up to 50 miles an hour (80 kph). The bill also includes a provision requiring people who are injured on rides to report the injury to the park before leaving. Parks must then report these injuries to authorities. The bill heads to Republican Governor Sam Brownback's desk for final approval. Brownback will carefully review the legislation, his spokeswoman, Melika Willoughby, said by telephone. The governor has told local media he would follow the lead of Caleb's father, Scott Schwab, a Republican representative from Olathe, a Kansas City suburb. Schwab spoke in support of the bill last month on the House floor, local media reported. "This bills really not about Caleb. I think we understand that," the Topeka Capital-Journal quoted him as saying. "Its the next kid that goes someplace in Kansas for a fun weekend." Officials at the Schlitterbahn waterpark closed the slide after Caleb's death and said the ride would be demolished. (Reporting by Timothy Mclaughlin in Chicago; Editing by Leslie Adler) By Carolyn Crist (Reuters Health) - - Creating kidney transplant vouchers for future transplants could reduce the long waiting list for organs in the United States, a new study suggests. In particular, a voucher program could help with chronological incompatibility, when the donor wants to provide a kidney but the patient doesnt need it yet. Innovative solutions to increasing living donation are always needed because of the high level of need for living donor kidneys, said study author Amy Waterman, director of the Transplant Research and Education Center at the University of California at Los Angeles. More than 100,000 patients are on the waiting list in the United States, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing. Living donors are rare and very valuable for improving the health of recipients, Waterman told Reuters Health by email. Strategies to allow more living donors to overcome practical challenges to help another should be supported. In a report in the journal Transplantation, Waterman and colleagues described three voucher cases that allowed donors to overcome chronological incompatibility for recipients who didnt yet need a kidney but might need one in the future. The three cases also triggered a donation chain that allowed 25 transplants to occur across the U.S. In the first case, a four-year-old with chronic kidney disease was projected to need a renal transplant in 10 to 15 years. His 64-year-old grandfather wanted to donate a kidney when his grandson needed it but didnt want his candidacy as a donor to disappear as he aged. The National Kidney Registry Medical Board allowed the grandfather to donate his kidney now for his grandson to receive priority for another kidney in the future when he needed it. The board stipulated that the voucher had no monetary value, could only be used for his grandson, couldnt be transferred to another patient, and couldnt guarantee that a kidney would be available. In December 2014, the grandfather donated his kidney, which triggered a transplant chain with three recipients who were able to discontinue dialysis. The grandson hasnt needed the voucher yet. This began developing based on requests from patients, said Stuart Flechner of the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, who wasnt involved with this study. Flechner studies kidney-paired donations. This is a way to capture donors who might otherwise not have donated if it went through the usual sequencing, he told Reuters Health. Its based on an individuals desire to donate now so a loved one can receive another kidney later. In the second case, a 10-year-old girl underwent a kidney transplant in 2007. Although it went well, her 52-year-old father wanted to donate a kidney several years later as a back-up in case she needed it. He wanted to use a voucher to donate the kidney before he got too old. In 2015, he donated a kidney, which triggered a chain of eight transplants. The third case involved the same patient from the second case. Her doctors believed she might require a third transplant in the future to avoid dialysis, so the girls 60-year-old aunt also donated a kidney in 2016. The donation initiated a chain of 14 kidney transplants and provided a second voucher for her niece. When adopting use of vouchers, transplant centers must consider the effects of redemptions and guard against the potential for gaming the system, the study authors say. For example, if recipients dont need the transplant or die first from other causes, the voucher can't be sold or traded. At the same time, a voucher system could motivate family members to donate out of altruism now rather than hold back in case their loved ones need a kidney in the future. The more transplants we can arrange, the more people we can help, said Blake Ellison of Harvard Law School in Boston, who wasnt involved with this study. Ellison has researched kidney-paired donations and the U.S. model. Vouchers remove some of the barriers to donation . . . as a result, donated kidneys will not only be more plentiful, but healthier, too, he told Reuters Health. Matching systems are such that increasing the number of kidneys to be matched results in more matches and better matches. SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2oKMoxx Transplantation, online March 22, 2017. Mounting evidence is pointing towards the nerve gas sarin as the chemical behind the attack that killed more than 80 people, including at least 27 children, in Syrias Idlib province earlier this week. Early assessments by U.S. intelligence officials, Doctors Without Borders and the U.N. health agency suggested that chlorine gas and traces of sarin were used in the bombing, which President Donald Trump called an affront to humanity. Abdel Hay Tennari, a doctor working in an Idlib hospital, told TIME that he was sure the attack was the result of sarin or a highly similar gas. On the day of the bombing, his hospital treated 22 patients, who showed clear signs of being affected by a nerve agent and responded almost immediately when they were provided with Pralidoxime, a Sarin antidote. But what exactly is sarin, and why is it so dangerous? What is sarin? Sarin, also known as GB, is clear, colorless, tasteless and has no odor in its pure form. It is described as a human-made chemical warfare agent classified as a nerve agent, by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC). It is generally a liquid, however it can evaporate into a gas and spread into the environment, according to the CDC. What are the symptoms of sarin exposure? Because sarin is odorless and tasteless, its difficult for people to know when theyve been exposed to it. Symptoms may include a runny nose, eye pain, drooling, excessive sweating, rapid breathing, coughing, increased urination and nausea, according to the CDC. More extreme exposure may lead to a loss of consciousness, paralysis, convulsions and respiratory failure, all of which could result in death. Pralidoxime and Atropine work as antidotes for sarin. But Dr. Tennari said following Tuesdays attack, the hospital was only able to secure a limited number of doses of Pralidoxime due to its high cost and the difficulty of obtaining it. Atropine, which is far cheaper, can be used to moderate cases of sarin poisoning. Story continues When was sarin first produced? Sarin, along with the nerve agents tabun and soman, was first produced by chemist Gerhard Schrader and his team in Germany in the late 1930s. The name is an acronym of the four scientists who created it: Gerhard Schrader, Otto Ambros, Gerhard Ritter, and Hans-Jurgen von der Linde. The group actually created the potent substance by accident while working on a pest control project. Dr. Schrader was effectively rendered blind by the development and lost most of his muscular coordination, as did his assistants. Adolf Hitler was said to be interested in using sarin as a weapon against the allied forces during World War Two, but never did, according to the American Chemical Society. Has sarin been used as a chemical weapon before? Yes. In 2013, a team of U.N. chemical weapons inspectors confirmed that sarin had been used in an attack that killed as many as 1,400 men, women and children in Ghouta, a suburb on the outskirts of Damascus, Syria. The Syrian government denied responsibility for the attack, as they did for the most recent incident. That 2013 attack was the most lethal use of chemicals in global warfare since the 1988 Halabja massacre, where Iraqi forces led by dictator Saddam Hussein killed thousands of their own civilians by using the gas. Sarin was also used in the 1995 Tokyo subway attack by Shoko Asaharas cult, which killed 12 and sickened thousands. Members of the cult used the tips of their umbrellas to puncture plastic bags filled with liquid sarin on five crowded subway cars before hurrying off - leaving their fellow riders trapped with the toxic gas. Does the Syrian government have sarin stockpiles? Following the 2013 Damascus attack, Syria joined the international Chemical Weapons Convention under a U.S.-Russian deal and agreed to hand over its stockpile of about 2.8 million pounds of toxic weapons as well as disable its chemical weapons program. In 2014, Syria handed over the remaining 220,462 metric tons of toxic material it had reported to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which was set to be destroyed at sea. However, OPCW chief Ahmet Uzumcu told Reuters at the time that he could not confirm that that was the last of Syrias chemical weapons. All declared chemical weapons have left Syria (but) clearly we cannot say as the secretariat of the OPCW that Syria doesnt possess any chemical weapons any more, he said. The Trump administration blamed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for the most recent chemical attack, an accusation the government has categorically denied responsibility for, as it did with the bombing in 2013. This article was originally published on TIME.com By Fatos Bytyci PRISTINA (Reuters) - Kosovo President Hashim Thaci bowed to pressure from traditional allies the United States and NATO on Friday by putting off plans to establish an army strongly opposed by the country's minority Serbs. Nearly two decades after the Kosovo war, relations between Serbia and the ethnic Albanian-majority government in Kosovo remain strained. Serbia continues to regard Kosovo, which declared independence in 2008, as a renegade province. Thaci last month found a way to bypass Serb opposition in parliament to constitutional amendments required for an army by drafting changes to an existing law on the Kosovo Security Forces that would allow the KSF to acquire heavy weapons. This would effectively turn it into a military force. But Washington and NATO, which has kept forces in Kosovo since intervening in 1999 to stop Serbia's killings of ethnic Albanian civilians in a counter-insurgency campaign, voiced concern that the move could unravel Kosovo's fragile peace. The Pristina government ordered the creation of a national army in 2014 but minority Serb deputies said they would block the required constitutional amendments. On Friday, Thaci - a former Kosovo guerrilla commander - sent a letter to parliament asking it not to vote on his amendments so as to allow Western diplomats more time to convince Serbs to approve the amendments. "The representatives of the Serb community should not think for any single second that Kosovo will not create its armed forces," Thaci told a conference in the capital Pristina attended by the U.S. ambassador and other West European envoys. The KSF is currently a lightly armed, 2,500-member force trained by NATO and tasked with crisis response, civil protection and disposal of ordnance from the 1999 conflict. NATO and the United States do not oppose the creation of an army in principle but say the constitution must be changed first, which would require the votes of 11 Serb deputies in the 120-seat parliament. "We do not expect the people of Kosovo to wait forever on this (formation of the army), nor do we believe any party should veto," U.S. Ambassador Greg Delawie said. "Kosovo needs a legitimate capability to defend itself before KFOR (NATO mission) can consider leaving." KFOR retains around 4,500 troops in Kosovo. (Reporting by Fatos Bytyci; editing by Ivana Sekularac and Mark Heinrich) The Kremlin wasted no time in condemning the U.S. missile strike Thursday night on the Syrian airfield used to launch a chemical weapons attack by President Bashar al-Assads regime just days before. The U.S. strike was an act of aggression against a sovereign nation in violation of international law and executed on a false pretext, Dmitry Peskov, Russian President Vladimir Putins spokesman told reporters Friday. He added that the move substantially damages Russian-U.S. relations, which are already in a deplorable state. Meanwhile, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a strongly worded statement accusing the United States of fighting on the side of terrorists in Syria and asserting the 59 Tomahawk-missile strike was already in the works before Tuesdays chemical attack. Any expert can tell that the decision to strike was made in Washington before the events in Idlib, which were used as a pretext for a demonstration, the ministry said. U.S. President Donald Trump announced the U.S. strikes in a televised address Thursday night from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. He strongly condemned the chemical attack, which, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, killed at least 86 civilians in the Syrian town of Idlib. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack, he said. Trump pinned the blame on Assad, saying there can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons. While Washington did not notify the Kremlin directly about the strike, which was launched off the Syrian coast in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, the Pentagon said that the Russian military was informed about the attack through a so-called deconfliction mechanism meant to prevent clashes between the two countries. However, in reaction to the U.S. strike, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced that it was withdrawing from the deconfliction agreement (though some say that was little more than a move to save face, since the extent to which the agreement affects how Russia and the United States navigate airspace is arguably quite limited). It then called for an urgent session of the United Nations Security Council to discuss the missile attack. Story continues Speaking at a press conference for a summit held in the capital of Uzbekistan, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov compared the military action approved by U.S. President Donald Trump to Washingtons invasion of Iraq in 2003. This reminds us of the 2003 situation, when the U.S. and the UK, along with their allies, intervened in Iraq without approval from the U.N. Security Council, which was a blatant breach of international law, Lavrov said. Russian Defense Ministry spokesperson Major-General Igor Konashenkov took a somewhat different tack, saying the move was an altogether ineffective one. The combat effectiveness of the U.S. massive missile strike on Syrias airbase was thus very low, he said. He asserted that only 23 out of the 59 missiles reached the Syrian airbase. Its unknown where the other missiles fell, he said. Konashenkov also reportedly said that his ministry was waiting for incontestable proof that the chemical weapons were used by the Syrian army. Russia has maintained that Syrian air strikes hit a depot where anti-Assad rebels were building chemical weapons, a claim the US has vigorously disputed. Russian state-backed media wasted no time in chiming in. US Destroys Syrian Armys Major Outpost in Anti-Terror Fight by Hitting Airfield, ran one Sputnik headline. US Missile Strike Killed People Fighting Terrorists, Assads top advisor reportedly told RT. Russian state television reported there are killed and wounded at the air base. Moscow is one of Assads most important allies, and its military has been targeting all rebel groups in Syria, including opposition forces that the United States and other Western countries have been supporting, but also jihadis like the Islamic State. Since Russias first intervention in Syria in September 2015, it has run interference for its client state in Damascus projecting power in the Middle East for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Thursdays U.S. strike, which was launched from two Navy destroyers, is likely to be seen as a threat to Russias newfound status in the region. On Friday, the Russian news service TASS reported that the Russian Black Sea Fleets frigate The Admiral Grigorovich is to enter the Mediterranean and will stop at the Russian logistics base in Syrias port of Tartus. Russias interest in the port is widely believed to be the driver behind ts strategy in Syria. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, speaking just after the strikes were announced, said Russia had failed in its responsibility to deliver on a 2013 deal it helped broker to destroy Syrias chemical weapons arsenal. If nothing else, that should give him something to talk about with Lavrov. The two are set to meet in Moscow next Wednesday. Photo credit: PAVEL GOLOVKIN/AFP/Getty Images Johannesburg (AFP) - Tens of thousands of protesters marched through South African cities on Friday demanding President Jacob Zuma's resignation, as a second ratings agency downgraded the country's debt to junk status. Zuma's sacking of respected finance minister Pravin Gordhan last week has fanned public anger, divisions within the ruling ANC party and a sharp decline in investor confidence in the country. "Recent political events, including a major cabinet reshuffle, will weaken standards of governance and public finances," the Fitch ratings agency predicted as it announced the downgrade. The Standard & Poor's agency had also downgraded South African sovereign debt to junk status after Zuma's dramatic ministerial shake-up. Zuma, who came to power in 2009, has been battered by a series of corruption scandals during his time in office, while the country has suffered record unemployment, slowing growth and stubborn racial inequality. His removal of Gordhan unleashed a fresh bout of criticism, as many ordinary South Africans and international investors saw the former minister as a bulwark against corruption. In the biggest political protests for several years, large crowds gathered in the capital Pretoria, the economic hub Johannesburg and coastal cities of Durban and Cape Town. Several thousand people attended the Johannesburg protest organised by the opposition Democratic Alliance party, which hopes to make gains in 2019 elections under its leader Mmusi Maimane, 36. "We want Zuma to fall. He is too corrupt. Real people are struggling. I voted for Nelson Mandela, but Maimane has a lot of integrity and he's young," protester Vanessa Michael, 54, from East Rand, told AFP. Mabefw Malega, a 38-year-old undertaker who had travelled three hours from Limpopo province to march said "people just want Zuma gone". One young woman in a wheelchair held a banner that said "I love my country, not my government". Story continues Johannesburg was thronged with the DA's signature blue while Luthuli House, the nerve centre of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), was surrounded by its veteran anti-apartheid fighters, dressed in camouflage, in a show of loyalty to Zuma. The ANC led the decades-long struggle against apartheid, and carried Nelson Mandela to power in the 1994 elections that ended white-minority rule. But the party has lost popularity in recent years and slipped to 55 percent of the vote in last year's local elections -- its worst ever result. - Divided ANC? - Zuma this week appeared to have quelled a rebellion within the ANC despite senior party figures, including Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, speaking out against Gordhan's sacking. The cabinet overhaul -- which was announced in a midnight statement -- cleared out many of Zuma's critics and placed loyalists in key positions. "Tensions within the ANC will mean that political energy will be absorbed by efforts to maintain party unity and fend off leadership challenges," Fitch said in its statement. "The agency believes that the cabinet reshuffle will further undermine the investment climate." Junk status was likely to increase the cost of the government's debt and shrink public funds available for welfare, health, education and housing. South Africa's trade union federation Cosatu this week joined many anti-apartheid veterans, civil action groups and business leaders calling for the president to resign. "We must move forward with the South Africa of our dreams -- not South Africa that will enrich a few cronies," Solly Mapaila, of the South African Communist Party, told the rally in Pretoria. Zuma, 74, is due to step down as head of the ANC in December, and as president ahead of the 2019 general election. He is seen as favouring his ex-wife, former African Union chief Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, to succeed him. Zuma has been accused of being in the sway of the wealthy Gupta business family, allegedly granting them influence over government appointments, contracts and state-owned businesses. Friday's marches were mainly peaceful, though police used stun grenades to disperse rival groups of protesters outside the Guptas' main residence in Johannesburg. Outside Cape Town, retired archbishop Desmond Tutu, who is in frail health, made an appearance to support the protests. Parliament will vote on a motion of no confidence in the president on April 18, though he has easily survived previous such votes against him. BEIRUT (AP) The Latest on events in Syria (all times local): 6:25 p.m. Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said the U.S. insisted that an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council on the U.S. missile attack on Syria be held in the open so that "any country that chooses to defend the atrocities of the Syrian regime will have to do in full public view, for all the world to hear." The Security Council has called an emergency meeting at 11:30 a.m. to discuss the developments in Syria. ___ 6 p.m. Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group says the U.S. missile attack on a Syrian air base is "a new crime" by the American administration that will increase tensions in the Middle East. Hezbollah warned in a statement Friday that this "foolish step by the Trump administration will be the beginning of a great and dangerous escalation in the region." Hezbollah, which sent thousands of its fighters to Syria to back President Bashar Assad's forces, said the missile attack will complicate the situation worldwide. ___ 5:50 p.m. Syrian state TV says opposition fighters have fired shells at a government-controlled neighborhood of the capital Damascus killing one person and wounding 20. The TV says Friday's shelling of the Jaramana district occurred in the afternoon. The attack on the capital came at a time when opposition activists reported airstrikes north of the country. ___ 5:30 p.m. Hundreds of protesters performed a funeral prayer in Istanbul for the victims of the Syrian regime's chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun. Ahmet Camurluoglu, the head of Istanbul Platform consisting of Islamic-leaning NGOs, blamed the west for the creation of chemical weapons used in Syria. "In this massacre, imperialist West, especially Russia, the U.S. and Iran are accomplices of cruel Assad," he said. Calling the U.S. "the great devil," Camurluoglu said the country "can't escape the curse of hundreds of martyrs with a few bombs," referring to the U.S. missile strikes. Story continues The protesters chanted "murderer America, get out of Syria" and "murderer Russia, get out of Syria" after the prayer. ___ 5:10 p.m. The U.N. envoy for Syria tells The Associated Press that his office is in "crisis management mode" following a U.S. strike on a Syrian air base. Staffan de Mistura said he was convening an "emergency meeting" later Friday of the International Syria Support Group's cease-fire task force. He said Russia requested the meeting, which was "agreed upon" by the United States. The two countries are the co-chairs of the multi-country panel that meets regularly in Geneva. In a text message to the AP, de Mistura said: "We currently are in full operational crisis management mode," without elaborating. The acknowledgement marked the biggest sign yet that the first intentional U.S. military action against President Bashar Assad's forces could affect nearly three years of peace-making efforts by the U.N. envoy. ___ 5 p.m. Syria's Foreign Ministry is calling the chemical attack that killed scores in northern Syria a "premeditated action that aimed to justify the launching of a US attack on the Syrian army." The ministry described the U.S. missile attack that heavily damaged the Shayrat air base in the central province of Homs "a flagrant aggression." It said in a statement Friday that the real objective of the U.S. attack was to "weaken the strength of the Syrian army in confronting terrorist groups." ___ 4:45 p.m. The United Nations Security Council will meet at 11:30 a.m. EDT for a briefing on the U.S. air strike on Syrian targets, according to the U.S. Mission spokesman. ___ 4:35 p.m. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Canada fully supports what he called the United States' "limited and focused action" in carrying out a missile strike on Syria. Trudeau said in a statement Friday the Assad regime's use of chemical weapons against its own people cannot be ignored. He says these gruesome attacks cannot be permitted to continue operating with impunity. He also says this week's attack in southern Idlib is a war crime. The U.S. blasted a Syrian air base Thursday night with a barrage of cruise missiles in fiery retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. President Donald Trump cast the United States assault as vital to deter future use of poison gas. ___ 4:25 p.m. The U.S. military says 58 of the 59 missiles struck their intended targets in the strike on a Syrian air base. A U.S. official says the initial assessment suggests one of the missiles malfunctioned. The official says the missiles hit multiple aircraft and hardened aircraft shelters and destroyed the fuel area. The official says information is still coming in from the site of the strike. The official is not authorized to discuss initial reports and spoke on condition of anonymity. Lolita Baldor in Washington, D.C. ___ 4:10 p.m. Turkey's president says the U.S. missile strike on a Syrian air base is a "concrete step" but argues that it's not enough. Speaking at a rally in the southern province of Hatay, which borders Syria, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the U.S. has recently made positive initiatives in Syria and that Turkey supports all efforts to ensure the safety of the Syrian people. Referring to the U.S. strikes against Shayrat air base, Erdogan said, "I want to express from Hatay that we evaluate this concrete step against the Assad regime's war crimes using chemical and conventional weapons as positive." "But I don't see this as enough," Erdogan said, and repeated Turkey's calls for a "terror-free zone" to be established. "Let us declare a safe zone in northern Syria on the Turkish border, which can be 4000 or 5000 square kilometers, let us build homes there and settle our Syrian citizens," he said. ___ 3:15 p.m. The Russian military says its facilities in Syria are reliably protected by cutting edge air defense weapons, a statement that follows a U.S. missile strike on a Syrian air base. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Friday that the S-400 and Pantsyr air defense systems offer a "guaranteed protection" to Russian warplanes stationed at Hemeimeem air base in Syria's province of Latakia. He added that a Russian navy outpost in Syria's Mediterranean port of Tartus is protected by S-300 air defense systems. Konashenkov has previously said that the Russian military would help the Syrian military beef up its air defenses following the U.S. strike. ___ 3:05 p.m. The Kremlin says the presidential Security Council has voiced regret over the damage to U.S.-Russia ties inflicted by the U.S. strike on a Syrian air base. The Kremlin said in a statement carried by Russian news agencies that the senior Russian officials who attended Friday's meeting described the U.S. action as an "act of aggression in violation of international law." It added that the meeting's participants discussed "various issues related to the continuation of Russian air force operations in support of the Syrian army's anti-terror actions." The Kremlin said those who spoke at the meeting voiced a "deep concern over inevitable negative consequences of such aggressive actions for joint efforts to fight terrorism." ___ 2:50 p.m. Dozens of members of a Turkish trade union, carrying coffins, have demonstrated in front of the Iranian and Russian embassies in protest of this week's chemical weapons attack that killed more than 80 people in northern Syria. The group of some 250 members of a pro-government union held funeral prayers for the victims of the assault in front of the Iranian embassy in the Turkish capital on Friday before marching to the Russian embassy. They were carrying dozens of black-painted coffins with images of the attack's child victims attached. Iran and Russia are Syrian President Bashar Assad's strongest supporters. ___ 2:30 p.m. Two Arab countries in the Gulf are backing the U.S. missile strike on Syria. The United Arab Emirates, which hosts some 4,000 American troops, said Friday the U.S. had its "full support." Anwar Gargash, minister of state for foreign affairs, praised Trump's "courageous and wise decision." That mirrored earlier language used by Saudi Arabia. The tiny island nation of Bahrain described the U.S. missile strike on Syria as "needed to stop the bloodshed" in that country's war. That island kingdom hosts the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet. Rulers in both countries long have been suspicious of Iran and its influence in Syria and the greater region. Both have opposed the rule of embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad. ___ 2:30 p.m. Iran's parliament news agency, ICANA.ir is reporting that the country "won't be quiet" after the U.S. missile attack that hit a number of military targets in central Syria. The Friday report quotes Allaeddin Boroujerdi, head of parliamentary committee on national security and foreign policy, as saying "Russia and Iran won't be quiet against such acts which violate interests of the region." He said serious consequences would follow the U.S. action. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif took to Twitter on Friday to denounce the strikes, saying: "Not even two decades after 9/11, U.S. military fighting on same side as al-Qaida & ISIS in Yemen & Syria. Time to stop hype and cover-ups." The U.S. strike came in fiery retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. ___ 2:15 p.m. The office of Syria's President is calling the U.S. missile strike against one of its air bases in central Homs "reckless" and "irresponsible." The statement Friday said the strikes were "shortsighted" and reflect a continuation of policy regardless of which administration that is based on targeting and "subjugating people." The statement said the dawn attack on the Shayrat air base near Homs was not based on true facts. The U.S. strike followed Tuesday's gruesome chemical attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, where more than 80 people were killed. ___ 2:05 p.m. A Syrian official says a U.S. missile strike on an air base in the country's center has killed seven people. Talal Barazi, the governor of the province of Homs where the base is based, says the Friday dawn attack has also wounded nine. Initial reports said six were killed. The attack also caused extensive damage to the air base. The Syrian military called the attack a "blatant aggression" that would undermine its war on terror. ___ 1:55 p.m. The Kremlin says Russian President Vladimir Putin will chair a meeting of his Security Council to discuss the U.S. strikes on Syria. Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov wouldn't say if Russia could use its military assets in Syria to protect Syrian facilities in case of new U.S. strikes. He also wouldn't speculate on whether Russia's move to cut a hotline with the U.S. military in Syria could provoke collisions in the crowded skies over Syria. Asked if Russia sees Syria as a military ally, Peskov answered positively. He argued Friday that the U.S. attack has "de facto served interests of the Islamic State and other terrorist organizations ___ 1:45 p.m. Top European Union officials are supporting the U.S. missile strikes on military targets in Syria as a means of deterring further chemical weapons attacks by Damascus. EU Council President Donald Tusk said in a tweet Friday that the "U.S. strikes show needed resolve against barbaric chemical attacks. EU will work with the U.S. to end brutality in Syria." European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said in a statement that he "understands efforts to deter further attacks." He said "there is a clear distinction between airstrikes on military targets and the use of chemical weapons against civilians." ____ 1:35 p.m. Syrian opposition activists say warplanes have carried out their first airstrike since a U.S. missile attack damaged a major air base in the central province of Homs. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the airstrike struck the northern edge of the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun where a chemical attack killed more than 80 people earlier this week. The Observatory and Turkey-based activist Ahmad al-Ahmad said Friday's airstrike caused material damaged but no casualties. They said it was not immediately clear if the warplanes were Syrian or Russian. ___ 1:25 p.m. The Russian military says it will help Syria beef up its air defenses after the U.S. strike on a Syrian air base. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Friday that a "complex of measures" to strengthen Syrian air defenses will be done shortly to help "protect the most sensitive Syrian infrastructure facilities." Konashenkov said "the combat efficiency of the U.S. strike was very low," adding that only 23 of the 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles reached the Shayrat air base in the province of Homs. He said it destroyed six MiG-23 fighter jets of the Syrian air force which were under repairs, but didn't damage other Syrian warplanes at the base. Konashenkov added that the base's runway also has been left undamaged. ___ 1:15 p.m. The U.N. coordinator for humanitarian affairs says it has no sign that U.S. military strikes against a Syrian air base have had "any direct consequence" on overall aid operations in Syria. Jens Laerke of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said such violence "is not a new feature" of Syria's war, and cited continued U.N.-led efforts to reach people in besieged and hard-to-reach areas of the country. The United States launched cruise missile strikes against Shayrat air base in Homs province following a chemical attack in a northern village that U.S. officials and others have blamed on President Bashar Assad's forces. U.N. human rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said Friday at a U.N. briefing that use of chemical weapons, if confirmed, would amount to a war crime. ___ 12:40 p.m. Italy says the U.S. strikes on Syria were "proportionate" given the "war crimes" committed by the Assad regime in using chemical weapons against its own people. It says the U.S. strikes would serve as a deterrent for any possible future chemical attacks. Premier Paolo Gentiloni says: "Against war crimes, for which the Bashar Assad regime is responsible, I believe the images of death and suffering that we have seen in recent days after the use of chemical weapons are images that we cannot accept seeing again." Italy urged Russia to use its influence with Damascus to enforce a cease-fire, and expressed hope that renewed U.S.-Russia talks could result in a U.N.-guided political transition in Syria. Italy is a close U.S. ally and has participated in U.S.-led military coalitions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Italy's largest opposition group, the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, condemned the U.S. attack and demanded Italy not get drawn in. The opposition center-right Northern League party called the strikes a "gift to ISIS," the Islamic State group. ___ 12:30 p.m. Denmark's Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen has tweeted: "Good that coward assaults on women, men and children has consequences. The United States has clearly indicated that (Syrian President Bashar) Assad's atrocities do not go unpunished." Denmark's Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen said in a live television interview Friday that a "line needs to be drawn in the sand" when it comes to the use of chemical weapons, adding that Denmark was not briefed in advance. Former NATO secretary-general and ex-Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen also tweeted: "US drew a red line on chemical weapons. Failure to enforce again would have emboldened Assad & others. On balance, strikes were justified." ___ 12:20 p.m. The British government says it was informed in advance about U.S. missile strikes on a Syrian air base, and firmly supports the American action. Prime Minister Theresa May's office says the action was "an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, and is intended to deter further attacks." Defense Secretary Michael Fallon says British officials have "been in close contact with the American government over the last couple of days," and that Defense Secretary James Mattis informed him late Thursday that the U.S. planned to take military action in response to a chemical attack in Syria. Fallon said Britain, part of an international coalition against the Islamic State group in Syria, had not been asked to participate in the action. ___ 12:15 p.m. Turkey's foreign minister has called for the removal of President Bashar Assad's regime in Syria, while urging supporters of the regime to stop legitimizing it and to help establish a political solution. In a televised statement Friday, Mevlut Cavusoglu expressed Turkey's support for the U.S. missile strike on Syria. "This regime must be removed from leading Syria as soon as possible and the best way to do that is by starting the transitional process," the minister said. Cavusoglu said steps to remove Assad must be decided upon as he refuses to leave while "continuing crimes against humanity." Pointing to the possibility of new refugee flows, Cavusoglu reiterated the need for widening safe zones __ 11:55 a.m. French President Francois Hollande is convening an emergency defense meeting to discuss next steps in Syria after U.S. airstrikes targeting President Bashar Assad's government. Hollande said he will hold the meeting with top security officials in Paris on Friday, as France tries to relaunch international peace negotiations for Syria. He called the U.S. airstrikes a response to a chemical weapons attack that Western powers blame on Assad's forces. French warplanes are active in the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State extremists and France has long called for Assad's departure, but French diplomats have pushed this week for resumed peace talks instead of international intervention. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said the U.S. bombing was a warning to Assad's allies Russia and Iran. ___ 11:45 a.m. Russia's foreign minister says no Russian servicemen have been hurt in a U.S. strike on a Syrian air base. Sergey Lavrov said Friday that he was unaware of any Russian military casualties at the air base hit by U.S. cruise missiles. Lavrov, speaking on a trip to Uzbekistan, strongly condemned the U.S. strike saying it violates international law. Russian state TV aired the footage showing the damage from the U.S. strikes at the Syrian air base. It showed craters and pockmarks left by explosions and said that nine Syrian air force jets have been destroyed in the attack. ___ 11:35 a.m. Syria's state TV is showing footage of the U.S. missile strike on a Syrian air base in the country's center, showing a fast sequence of orange flashes that lit the dark sky in the distance before the crack of dawn. The shaky footage, apparently filmed with a mobile phone camera and aired Friday, came hours after about 60 U.S. Tomahawk missiles hit the base in Homs province, causing extensive damage to the base. In a different sequence after day break, the Syrian TV station al-Ikhbariyah showed another short clip of smoke billowing in the distance, hovering over a raging fire, the tip of which emerges and a forest of trees is in the foreground. The Syrian government said at least six people were killed, and several wounded in the attack. Activists say the air base, hangars, fuel depot and aircraft were badly damaged. A government official said a fire raged for over an hour. The attack is the first by U.S. aircraft against the Syrian army since the war began. The U.S is also leading an international coalition against Islamic State group militants in Syria. ___ 11:25 a.m. Israel's president says the U.S. strike on Syria was an "appropriate response" to the "unthinkable brutality" of the chemical attacks in Syria this week that killed dozens of civilians. Reuven Rivlin said Friday the U.S. "serves as an example to the entire free world" to support steps to end atrocities in Syria. Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said President Trump sent a message that "war crimes" by Syrian President Bashar Assad will not be tolerated. The country's opposition leader Isaac Herzog told Channel 10 TV that he doesn't believe the strike will impact Israel. Israel has repeatedly warned against "game-changing" weapons reaching Hezbollah in Lebanon from Syria, which along with Iran supports the militant group. It has carried out a number of airstrikes on suspected weapon convoys en route to Hezbollah. ___ 11:20 a.m. The leaders of Germany and France say President Bashar Assad brought American missile strikes upon himself by using chemical weapons. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande said in a joint statement Friday after talking on the phone that "President Assad alone carries responsibility for these developments" with his "repeated use of chemical weapons and his crimes against his own people." The two leaders said their countries would continue to work with United Nations partners in "efforts to hold President Assad responsible for his criminal acts." They called upon the international community to "join forces for a political transition in Syria" in accordance with the U.N. resolution. ___ 11:05 a.m. Turkish officials continue to voice their support for the U.S. missile strike on Syria. Turkey's foreign ministry welcomed the U.S. missile strike on Shayrat air base following the chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun as "very positive." In a written statement Friday, the ministry said steps to ensure that war crimes do not go unpunished and are held accountable "will have Turkey's full support." Presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin also called the strike "an important step," according to Turkey's state-run Anadolu news agency. Kalin repeated Turkey's calls for a no-fly zone and safe zone in Syria so that "similar massacres do not happen again." ___ 10:55 a.m. French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen says U.S. President Donald Trump is trying to be the "world's policeman" with airstrikes on Syria and is suggesting that it could backfire. Le Pen has expressed support for Syrian President Bashar Assad in the past, and said on France-2 television Friday that she was "surprised" by Trump's sudden move. Le Pen said that Trump indicated he would not make the U.S. "the world's policeman, and that's exactly what he did yesterday." She warned that past international interventions in Iraq and Libya have led to rising Islamic extremism. Le Pen appeared to be distancing herself from Trump. The two have similar views and Le Pen is hoping to ride a wave of protectionist, anti-immigrant sentiment to the presidency next month. ___ 10:45 a.m. Russia says it's suspending a deal with the U.S. to prevent midair collisions over Syria in response to the U.S. strike on a Syrian air base. The Russian Foreign Ministry said in Friday's statement that Moscow is suspending a memorandum with the U.S. to prevent incidents and ensure flight safety. Under the memorandum, signed after Russia launched an air campaign in Syria in September 2015, Russia and the U.S. had exchanged information about their flights to avoid incidents in the crowded skies over Syria. Russia has several dozen warplanes and batteries of air-defense missiles at its base in Syria. ___ 10:35 a.m. Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressed support for the U.S. missile attack on a Syrian government-controlled air base. Abe on Friday said Japan understood and supported the U.S. strategy, saying the strikes were "a means to prevent further deterioration of the situation" referring to the suspected chemical attack earlier in Syria this week. About 60 U.S. Tomahawk missiles hit the Shayrat air base, southeast of Homs, a small installation with two runways, where aircraft often take off to bomb targets in northern and central Syria. ___ 10:35 a.m. Indonesia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs says it's concerned by unilateral foreign actions in Syria including the U.S. attack on a Syrian government air base on Thursday night. Ministry spokesman Arrmanatha Nasir said Indonesia rejects the use of chemical weapons for any purpose and condemns a chemical weapons attack in Syria earlier this week that killed dozens of civilians. But it did not praise President Donald Trump's retaliation against the government of Syria's President Bashar Assad. Nasir says, "We are also very concerned by unilateral actions that have been taken by many parties including the recent launch of Tomahawks in response to the use of chemical weapons." ___ 10:35 a.m. NATO's chief was warned that the United States was to launch missile strikes in Syria and is making no comment on the incident. Jens Stoltenberg's office said Friday that "we can confirm that NATO Secretary-General was informed by the US Secretary of Defense prior to the strikes." But it said "we refer you to the US authorities regarding the strikes in Syria." ___ 10:25 a.m. Syrian military says the U.S. missile attack on one of its air bases in central Syria has killed six and caused extensive damage, calling it an aggression that undermines Damascus' counter terrorism operations. The statement read on TV Friday came hours after the U.S. sent nearly 60 Tomahawk missiles into the Shayrat air base, southeast of Homs, the first American attack against the Syrian army since the war started in 2011. Ali Mayhoub, Syrian army spokesman, said Washington has used the chemical attack in the northern town of Khan Sheikhoun earlier this week as a "pretext" to carry out the "blatant aggression" , without knowing what really happened. Syria blames the opposition fighters of stockpiling chemical weapons. ___ 9:40 a.m. A communication link between the U.S. and Russia used to protect their pilots flying sorties over Syria was used ahead of an American missile strike on the country. The so-called "deconfliction line" is operated by the U.S. military's Central Command at the sprawling al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar. It serves as a crucial link to make sure the increasingly crowded Syrian airspace doesn't see any accidental collisions or attacks on each other. Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis says: "U.S. military planners took precautions to minimize risk to Russian or Syrian personnel located at the airfield" targeted in Syria's Homs province. U.S. Central Command did not immediately respond to an Associated Press query on specifics of how the line was used. About 60 U.S. Tomahawk missiles launched early Friday hit the Shayrat air base, southeast of the city of Homs, a small installation with two runways. The attack came in response for a chemical weapons attack Tuesday in Syria. ___ 9:35 a.m. Turkey has welcomed the U.S. missile strike on Syria, saying it was an "important and meaningful" development but called for a continued tough stance against President Bashar Assad that would render him "no longer able to harm his people." Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said in a live television interview Friday: "It is imperative that the Assad regime is fully punished by the international community." "We see the (air strikes) as positive, but we believe that this should be completed," Kurtulmus said. "The Assad regime's barbarism must immediately be stopped." Kurtulmus added that he hoped the U.S. action would help accelerate peace efforts in Syria. Turkey is a strong opponent of Syrian President Bashar Assad and has backed the Syrian opposition fighting against him. ___ 9:20 a.m. The Kremlin says President Vladimir Putin believes that the U.S. strike on a Syrian air base is an "aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law." Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in Friday's statement carried by Russian news agencies that Putin believes that the U.S. has dealt the strikes under "far-fetched pretext." Russia has argued that the death of civilians in the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun on Tuesday resulted from Syrian forces hitting a rebel chemical arsenal there. Peskov said that the U.S. has ignored past incidents of the use of chemical weapons by Syrian rebels. He argued that the Syrian government has destroyed its chemical weapons stockpiles under international control. ___ 9 a.m. A survivor of the chemical attack in a northern Syrian town says he hopes the U.S. missile attack could help put an end to Syrian government airstrikes, creating a safe area for civilians. Alaa Alyousef, a 27-year old resident of Khan Sheikhoun, said Friday the U.S. missile attack "alleviates a small part of our sufferings," but he worries it will be like "anesthetics," to save face. AlYousef said the U.S. is capable of "paralyzing" Syrian warplanes . "What good is a strike on Shayrat air base alone while we have more than 15 other air bases," he said. Alyousef lost at least 25 relatives in this week's gruesome chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun. The Syrian government denies it was behind the attack, believed to have deployed chemical weapons. ___ 8:50 a.m. A Syrian official tells The Associated Press that the U.S. missile attack that hit military targets in central Syria has killed three soldiers and two civilians. Talal Barazi, the governor of Homs province, said seven others were wounded in the early Friday attack. He had earlier said a fire raged in the air base in Homs for over an hour following the barrage of missiles. A Syrian opposition monitor said the attack killed four soldiers, including a general. The attack came in fiery retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. ___ 7:45 a.m. Iran has condemned the U.S. missile strike on Syria, saying the "unilateral action is dangerous, destructive and violates the principles of international law." That's according to Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi. He made the comments in a report carried Friday by the semi-official ISNA news agency. Iran is one of the biggest supporters of embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad. Its hard-line paramilitary Revolutionary Guard is deeply involved in the war. America's Sunni Arab allies in the Gulf view Syria as a proxy conflict between it and Shiite power Iran. Ghasemi described Iran as "the biggest victim of chemical weapons in recent history," referencing Iraqi use of the weapons during its 1980s war with the Islamic Republic. He said Iran condemned the missile launch "regardless of the perpetrators and the victims" of Tuesday's chemical weapons attack in Syria. He also warned it would "strengthen terrorists" and further add to "the complexity of the situation in Syria and the region." ___ 8:25 a.m. Saudi Arabia is praising the "courageous decision" by U.S. President Donald Trump to launch missile strikes on Syria over a deadly chemical weapons attack. A statement carried by the state-run Saudi Press Agency on Friday firmly blames the government of embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad for the chemical weapons attack. The Saudi Foreign Ministry said the missile launch by Trump was the right response to "the crimes of this regime to its people in light of the failure of the international community to stop it." Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia is a longtime opponent of Assad and has supported the rebels fighting against him. It also views the long-running war as a proxy conflict between it and its Middle East archrival, the Shiite power Iran. ___ 8:20 a.m. A senior Russian lawmaker says that U.S. strike on Syria likely has put an end to hopes for Russia-U.S. cooperation in Syria. Konstantin Kosachev, the head of the foreign affairs committee in the Kremlin-controlled upper house of parliament said on his Facebook that the prospective U.S.-Russian anti-terror coalition has been "put to rest without even being born." Kosachev added that "it's a pity," suggesting that Trump had been pressured to act by the Pentagon. He added that while "Russian cruise missiles strike the terrorists, U.S. missiles strike Syrian government forces who are spearheading the fight against the terrorists." ___ 8:10 a.m. A Syrian opposition monitor says the U.S. missile attack on an air base in the country's center has killed at least four Syrian soldiers, including a general, and caused extensive damage. The head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the early Friday missile attack damaged over a dozen hangars, a fuel depot and an air defense base. About 60 U.S. Tomahawk missiles hit the Shayrat air base, southeast of Homs, a small installation with two runways. A Syrian official the attack caused deaths and a fire, but didn't elaborate. The U.S. attack came in fiery retaliation to Tuesday's deadly chemical attack that officials said used chlorine mixed with a nerve agent, possibly sarin. More than 80 were killed in that attack that drew wide international condemnation. ___ 8 a.m. Israel's ambassador to the U.N. says the U.S. sent a "significant message" to the region and beyond with the attack on a Syrian air base. Danny Danon told Channel 10 TV "it was a moral decision that delivered a triple message." He said it told the Syrians to stop using chemical weapons and sent a message to Iran and North Korea. He said it also told the international community that "if the U.N. is incapable of acting in these situations it will lead." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier "this message of resolve in the face of the Assad regime's horrific actions will resonate not only in Damascus, but in Tehran, Pyongyang and elsewhere." Israel's military says it was notified ahead of the strike. ___ 7:55 a.m. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says the "Australian government strongly supports the swift and just response of the United States" in launching a rocket attack on a Syrian air base. He tells reporters in Sydney on Friday: "This was a calibrated, proportionate and targeted response. It sends a strong message to the Assad regime, and ... has been struck at the very airfield from which the chemical attack was delivered." "But we are not at war with the Assad regime and the United States have made it clear that they are not seeking to overthrow the Assad regime," he added. ___ 7:45 a.m. Russia's Foreign Ministry says it is preparing a statement regarding U.S. strikes on a Syrian base. Shortly before the strikes, the head of information policy commission in the upper house of Russian parliament, Alexei Pushkov, said on Twitter said that if Trump launches a military action in Syria it would put him in "the same league with Bush and Obama." Russian deputy envoy to the U.N., Vladimir Safronkov, said Russia had warned the U.S. to "think about what military actions have led to in Iraq, Libya and other countries," according to the Interfax news agency. ___ 7:30 a.m. A Syrian official tells The Associated Press that the U.S. missile attack that hit a number of military targets in central Syria has left a number of dead and wounded. Talal Barazi, the governor of Homs province, didn't say how many were killed in the early Friday attack. He said a fire raged in the air base in Homs for over an hour following the barrage of missiles. Barazi says the evacuation and transfer of casualties is ongoing. He called the air base, which is about 45 kilometers (28 miles) east of the city of Homs, a "supporting base" for Syria's fight against terrorism. Islamic State group militants operate in the central Homs province. Activists and rebels say the base serves as one of the government's most active launching pad for airstrikes on all rebel areas in central and northern Syria. Syria's government calls all armed groups "terrorists." The attack came in fiery retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. ___ 5:50 a.m. Israel's prime minister has welcomed the U.S. attack on a Syrian air base saying he "fully supports" President Trump's decision. Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday in a statement that "In both word and action" Trump "sent a strong and clear message" that "the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated." Israel's Channel 2 TV said Israel along with other allies was notified about the U.S. strike. The attacks in neighboring Syria have worried Israel, which has warned against "game-changing" weapons reaching Hezbollah in Lebanon from the country, which supports the militant group. Last month Israel shot down an anti-aircraft missile fired at its planes as they struck a suspected Hezbollah weapons convoy. Israel also has treated several thousand Syrians wounded in fighting and provided humanitarian aid to some Syrian communities near the Israeli frontier in the Golan Heights. TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP) The Latest on the police response to a bomb threat at a western Indiana high school (all times local): 5:15 p.m. A western Indiana police chief says a caller who made threats against a high school claimed he had explosives and would start shooting students if he didn't receive a ransom. Terre Haute Police Chief John Plasse (PLAS'-ee) says a male called the police department Friday morning saying he was in a bathroom at Terre Haute North High School with a firearm and a bag of explosives. The caller said he'd start shooting students if he didn't receive a ransom within 10 minutes, or if students left the building. Plasse says the caller made other threats when he was transferred to police dispatch. No bombs or weapons were found inside. Plasse asked for the public's help finding the caller, who he says "put a lot of people in fear today." ___ 3:43 p.m. Students at a western Indiana high school are being sent home hours after police responded to a bomb threat at the school. Terre Haute police spokesman Officer Ryan Adamson says Terre Haute North High School's 1,800 students were allowed to leave just before 3 p.m. Friday after a bomb-sniffing dog finished searching the school and found no bombs. He says the threat remains under investigation and authorities hope to prosecute whoever is responsible. Adamson says the threat "isn't funny and it's left a lot of people in anguish." __ 1:30 p.m. Police say a bomb-sniffing dog is searching a western Indiana high school that received a bomb threat. Terre Haute Police Chief John Plasse (PLASS-ee) says the dog was checking Terre Haute North High School as a precaution Friday. He says there's no evidence that there are actually any explosives inside, "but we're going to check." He says the school's 1,800 students grades nine through 12 were moved from classrooms to the gym while the dog conducted its search. Story continues Plasse spoke to a group of agitated parents outside the school asking why their children had not been dismissed. He told the parents the students would be released once the dog's search is completed and the students can return to classrooms to collect their belongings. ___ 12:55 p.m. A district official says students and faculty are in no imminent danger following a bomb threat at a western Indiana school. Vigo County School Corp. spokesman Mick Newport says students and faculty were told to shelter in place at Terre Haute North High School after the school received a call Friday morning from someone making a bomb threat. Newport says no one has been injured and "there is no imminent threat" to the 1,800 students, grades nine through 12. Newport did not comment on a Terre Haute Tribune-Star report that officers entered the school with weapons drawn. Terre Haute is about 75 miles (120 kilometers) southwest of Indianapolis. ___ 12:45 p.m. Police say about 50 officers are involved in the investigation of a bomb threat at a western Indiana school. Terre Haute Police Chief John Plasse spoke to reporters Friday outside the Terre Haute North High School. Plasse declined to provide details of the search and did not comment on a Terre Haute Tribune-Star report that officers stormed the still-occupied school with guns drawn. He says students are being held in classrooms under safety protocols and that he wouldn't let them stay if he believed they were in danger. Vigo County School Corp. spokesman Mick Newport says there was no imminent threat at school with about 1,800 students in grades 9-12. __ 12:05 p.m. An Indiana State Police spokesman says a threat that led to a lockdown at a western Indiana school is believed to be hoax. Capt. David Bursten says "all indications are that this is a hoax call" that Terre Haute North High School received about a possible threat Friday. He says he doesn't have any details about the nature of the threat. Bursten says there's been no shooting or explosion at the school, and no one has been injured. He says there have been many similar threats against schools in the state recently and those were found to be hoaxes, likely made by students. Bursten says Terre Haute police are leading the investigation into the incident. ___ 11:55 a.m. Police officers are searching a western Indiana high school following a gun threat, and the students and faculty have been told to shelter in place. Indiana State Police Sgt. Joe Watts says officers have found nothing so far following the threat Friday morning at Terre Haute North High School. The Terre Haute Tribune-Star reported that officers entered the school with weapons drawn. Watts told the Associated Press that officers from city, county and state police agencies are responding to the threat. He says the school followed its own policy by having students shelter in place and announcing the potential danger. Terre Haute is about 75 miles (120 kilometers) southwest of Indianapolis. WASHINGTON (AP) The Latest on the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court (all times local): The White House is praising Neil Gorsuch following his confirmation as the next Supreme Court justice. President Donald Trump says in a statement that Gorsuch's "judicial temperament, exceptional intellect, unparalleled integrity, and record of independence" will make him "the perfect choice" to serve on the court. Trump says in the statement that Gorsuch will serve "with distinction" and continue to "vigorously defend our Constitution." Gorsuch was confirmed Friday by the Senate. The White House says he will be sworn in Monday during a private ceremony at the Supreme Court, followed by a public ceremony at the White House later in the morning. Justice Anthony Kennedy will administer the oath at the White House ceremony. ___ 12:10 p.m. The Supreme Court says Neil Gorsuch will be sworn in as the 113th justice on Monday in separate ceremonies at the court and the White House. Justices take two oaths, one required by the Constitution and the other set by federal law. Chief Justice John Roberts will administer the constitutional oath to Gorsuch in a private ceremony in the justices' conference room at 9 a.m. Later Monday, Justice Anthony Kennedy will ask his former law clerk and new colleague to take the second oath in a public ceremony at the White House. The court did not give a time for the White House event. Gorsuch will officially be a member of the court once he takes the two oaths. ___ 12:05 p.m. The Senate has confirmed Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, bringing a contentious 14-month partisan battle to a close after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. The vote was 54-45 on Friday. The victory gives President Donald Trump's 49-year-old nominee a lifetime spot on the court and his party a much-needed political win after failing to pass legislation on health care and other issues. The final confirmation vote came after Senate Republicans rewrote the rules, voting to eliminate the 60-vote filibuster threshold on Supreme Court nominees. The change allows the Senate to proceed to the final vote with a simple majority. Democrats opposed Gorsuch in part because Senate Republicans blocked former President Barack Obama's nominee, Merrick Garland, last year. PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) The Latest on President Donald Trump's summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping (all times EDT): 10:50 p.m. Chinese President Xi Jinping (shee jihn-peeng) is getting a quick view of America's Last Frontier. Xi landed in Alaska for a refueling stop following his meeting with President Donald Trump earlier Friday in Florida. Alaska Gov. Bill Walker welcomed Xi during a ceremony on the tarmac at the Anchorage airport. They then set off on a short sightseeing tour of Alaska's largest city. Later, they plan a business meeting and dinner at a downtown Anchorage hotel before Xi returns to the airport for the 4,000-mile trip to Beijing. China is Alaska's leading trade partner, buying more than $1 billion in Alaska products in 2016. It's a two-way street, with Alaska's imports from China only lagging behind trade with neighboring Canada. ___ 6:50 p.m. The anticipated showdown between the United States and China over trade and North Korea has ended with little sign of confrontation or concrete progress in resolving differences. U.S. officials say President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping have agreed to increase cooperation on trying to get North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program, and China has acknowledged the need for more balanced trade with the U.S. The most powerful message for the Chinese leader may have been Trump's decision to launch missile strikes at Syria, adding weight to Trump's threat to act unilaterally against North Korea's weapons program. A much heavier risk would be required to take military action against the nuclear-armed North, which has its artillery and missiles trained on a key U.S. ally, South Korea. ___ 5 p.m. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says the U.S. and China have agreed to increase cooperation on trying to get North Korea's to abandon its nuclear weapons program. Tillerson was briefing reporters Friday after President Donald Trump's two-day summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago. Story continues Tillerson said the two leaders noted the urgency of the threat of North Korea's weapons program. They reaffirmed their commitment to a denuclearization of the divided Korean Peninsula. On trade issues, Trump also called for China to "level the playing field" for American workers, stressing the need for reciprocal market access. Trump also noted the importance of protecting human rights, and asked China to adhere to international norms in the seas of East Asia. ___ 1:15 p.m. First lady Melania Trump and Peng Liyuan (puhng LEE'-yoo-en), the wife of Chinese President Xi Jinping (shee jihn-peeng), visited a seventh-grade civics class at a Florida middle school. They toured Bak Middle School of the Arts in West Palm Beach and mingled with students as they made posters about international conflicts, including the Cuban missile crisis, the Korean War and World War II. Mrs. Trump said it was "great" when one student said she wanted to be "a senator, and perhaps then president." A girls' chorus sang "Astonishing," from the musical "Little Women." Peng is a Chinese contemporary folk singer and performing artist. Choral director Connie Drosakis says she chose the song because of its message about "the power of being a woman" and "making dreams come true." ___ 11:45 a.m. President Donald Trump says it's been "very interesting" to spend time with Chinese President Xi Jinping and his delegation. Trump and Xi are spending part of Friday in talks at Trump's estate in Florida. Officials have said the leaders are expected to discuss North Korea's nuclear ambitions and trade, among other issues important to the world's two biggest economies. Trump says they made "tremendous progress" over dinner Thursday, and he's predicting that even more progress will be made before Xi departs later Friday. He says their relationship is "outstanding." Xi said a few words afterward in Chinese, but no translator was president. Trump jokingly said he agrees with whatever Xi said. ___ 3:30 a.m. The U.S. missile strikes on Syria are overshadowing the second day of talks between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (shee jihn-peeng). When the leaders meet Friday, North Korea's nuclear ambitions and the U.S-China trade imbalance as well as other points of tension are expected to be discussed. Trump and his wife, Melania, hosted Xi and his wife for dinner Thursday night at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in south Florida. Not long after dinner the U.S. announced the missile barrage on an air base in Syria in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack against civilians. The White House has downplayed expectations for a breakthrough on U.S-China issues like trade and tariffs, insisting that the 24-hour summit is mostly an introductory meeting for Trump and Xi. The challenging start to President Trumps term in office appears to be taking a toll on the very voters who helped elect him: white men. According to polls taken over the last few weeks, support for the President among white men is eroding. Since March, the percentage of white males who say they back the President has dropped from 58% to 47%, according to polling by Quinnipiac University. Similarly, an IBD/TIPP poll conducted in March and released earlier this week showed that the Presidents support among white men fell from 58% earlier in March to 49%. That poll also showed a decline in support among rural Americans from 56% earlier in March to 41%. Those figures come as the Trumps overall approval ratings remain in the 30s, historic lows for a new president. Declining public support could hinder the President as he attempts to usher in sweeping tax reform and a potential $1 trillion infrastructure bill. The first few months of Trumps administration have largely been defined by infighting at the White House, allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, and a health care bill that failed to pass Congress, all of which could be weakening support among Trumps most ardent backers. It could be that a candidate who built himself as a winner took a huge loss [on health care], says Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac poll. It could be that a candidate who built himself as a leader is presiding over a White House that to the minds of a lot of people is in chaos. For many of Trumps supporters, the Presidents election victory came in part because they saw him as a winner and in their minds tough and a closer, Malloy says. And Americans have not seen that side of Donald Trump and not any kind of victory lap yet. This article was originally published on TIME.com By Lisa Rapaport (Reuters Health) - - Women with breast cancer who sleep at least nine hours a night may be more likely to die from their tumors than patients who get just eight hours of rest, a recent study suggests. Compared to women sleeping eight hours a night, women who slept at least nine hours were 46 percent more likely to die of breast cancer, the study found. After up to 30 years of follow-up, the women who got more sleep were also 34 percent more likely to die of other causes. Sleep duration, but also changes in sleep duration before versus after diagnosis, as well as regular difficulties to fall or to stay asleep, may also be associated with mortality among women with breast cancer, said lead study author Claudia Trudel-Fitzgerald of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. Given that long sleep duration has been associated with mortality among cancer-free individuals, as well as among breast cancer patients in recent studies including ours, it is possible that the relationship of sleep duration with survival also exists for other types of cancer, Trudel-Fitzgerald said by email. However, further research is warranted. For the study, researchers examined data on post-diagnosis sleep duration for 3,682 women with breast cancer. They also examined pre-diagnosis sleep duration in a subset of 1,949 women and post-diagnosis sleep difficulties in a subset of 1,353 women. At diagnosis, women were 65 years old on average and most had whats known as stage one or two tumors, meaning malignancies hadnt spread beyond the breast or nearby lymph nodes. At least half the women in the study were still alive 11 years after their diagnosis. During the study, there were 976 deaths, including 412 caused by breast cancer, researchers report in the British Journal of Cancer. Among the subset of women who had data on pre-diagnosis sleep duration, sleeping longer after their diagnosis was associated with 35 percent higher odds of death from all causes and 29 percent greater likelihood of death from breast cancer. For the group of patients who had data on sleep difficulties, researchers found women who regularly struggled to fall or stay asleep were 49 percent more likely to die from all causes than women who rarely or never had these issues. The study wasnt a controlled experiment designed to prove that time spent sleeping directly influences survival after a breast cancer diagnosis. Other limitations of the study include its reliance on women to accurately recall and report on their own sleep duration and quality, the authors note. Its also possible that breast cancer contributes to sleep problems rather than sleep difficulties increasing the odds of mortality after a cancer diagnosis, researchers point out. People who are sicker are more likely to be fatigued from their illness, be it breast cancer or other cause, and thus sleep more, said Cheryl Thompson, a researcher at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, who wasnt involved in the study. In the current study, patients who reported getting more than nine hours of sleep were also more likely to be obese and have more advanced cancer, Thompson said by email. Some patients might sleep more because they get less physical activity, spend more time in bed, or experience more social isolation or depression, said Kristen Knutson, a researcher at the Center for Circadian and Sleep Medicine at Northwestern Universitys Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. When patients do notice changes in how long or how well they sleep, it is worth discussing with their doctor, Knutson, who wasnt involved in the study, said by email. Sleep should be considered a vital sign, Knutson said. Changes in sleep and excessive sleepiness are important signs that physicians can use to help care for their patients. SOURCE: http://go.nature.com/2pasqsh British Journal of Cancer, online March 30, 2017. The last free opposition leader in the Maldives has been arrested as part of a major government crackdown on rival politicians who narrowly failed to seize control of parliament in the honeymoon islands. Qasim Ibrahim, who ran for president in 2013 and currently heads the Jumhooree Party (JP), was one of four signatories of an opposition unity deal aimed at toppling President Abdulla Yameen. The bid failed after Yameen ordered troops to remove the dissenting MPs from the floor of parliament, causing chaotic scenes and prompting the US to urge the Maldives to restore faith in democracy. Ibrahim was taken into custody on Thursday night after police questioned him about allegations he bribed legislators, according to a coalition of dissidents known as the Maldives United Opposition (MUO). "With the arrest of Qasim Ibrahim, every opposition leader in the Maldives has now been arrested and is under some form of detention," the MUO said in a statement. There was no immediate reaction from the Maldives government, but the president's office repeated a statement denying accusations of intimidation. Since coming to power, President Yameen has presided over a general crackdown on political dissent in the nation of 340,000 that has raised fears over the country's stability and dented its image as a tourism paradise. In 2015, former leader Mohamed Nasheed was sentenced to 13 years in prison on terrorism charges that were widely seen as politically motivated. Nasheed, who heads the main opposition Maldivian Democratic Party from London where he lives in exile, became the country's first democratically elected president in 2008, but was narrowly defeated by Yameen in a controversial 2013 election run-off. He was slapped with fresh terrorism charges last week after leading the opposition move in parliament remotely. The new charges against him stemmed from when Yameen was briefly detained in 2010, allegedly under orders from Nasheed, who was president at the time. Nasheed, who has pledged to return to the honeymoon islands to contest the 2018 election, said last month's incident in parliament exposed the government's shaky majority. Americas neighbor to the north is fast moving toward legalizing recreational marijuana nationwide, which would make Canada the second country in the world to do so. And the impact of having weed legalized on such a big scale, so close to home, may affect the future of pot in the United States. There are those who sometimes regard Canada as the 51st state. It would be an important signal about the movement coming of age. It would add to the critical mass, says Oregon Rep. Earl Blumenauer, a member of Congress newly-formed Cannabis Caucus who is pushing to change the way the federal government treats the substance. And, he says: It would shift the center of gravity. When Colorado voters legalized marijuana in 2012, it became the first jurisdiction in the world to regulate and tax pot like alcohol. By the time Election Day was over in 2016, eight states had legalized pot for adult use, covering a population more than double the size of Canadas. (Nearly 30 states have comprehensive medical marijuana laws.) Uruguay became the first nation to legalize marijuana several years ago but has been sluggish in setting up a market. That means that while American states have been blazing the trail, Canada will likely be taking the baton. Some see that as a missed opportunity, as Sam Kamin, a marijuana law expert at the University of Denver, puts it. Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus liberal government plans to announce legislation around April 10. And Kamin believes that the model set to be announced - wherein the national government sets big-picture standards but important factors like how to distribute and sell the product are left to the provinces - would have and could work here in the U.S. But we see them passing us in that regard. In Kamins view, the upsides America is missing out on include eliminating the costs, financial and personal, of jailing people for selling and possessing pot; driving out the black market through competition; and giving people transparency about what theyre buying. But going first could also give Canada a leg up when it comes to the business of pot, drawing capital-flush investors who have been wary to spend their money in the U.S. so long as the federal government views marijuana as a drug on the same legal footing as heroin. Story continues Some Canadian companies are already investing in the U.S. marijuana market and looking to license products that have become popular here, says Troy Dayton, CEO of Arcview Group, which runs a network of investors and publishes an annual report on the size of the legal marijuana industry. Assuming legalization comes to pass, its the Canadian companies that have the best shot of building the biggest portfolios of U.S. companies, he says. He also believes that Canada will be in a good position to set up a lucrative export business, as populous countries like Germany have legalized medical marijuana as a nation and others consider relaxing their laws. According to Arcview, North Americans spent $6.7 billion on legal pot in 2016, up more than 30% from the year before. And if recreational markets come online as planned in places like Canada, California and Massachusetts, that could more than triple in the next five years, according to the companys estimates. Canada moving forward will create some market pressure for the U.S. to step up in areas like innovation and investment as well as policy, says John Hudak, a marijuana policy expert at the Brookings Institution. There may also be costs to going first, as Colorado knows well. The lessons that Canada will likely learn while setting up the market - like how and when it matters when rules vary among provinces that share borders - will be ones that the United States can learn from, just as states like Oregon and Washington have had the benefit of learning from Colorados growing pains on issues like edibles. Canadas own recreational marijuana task force consulted with Washington and Colorado to prepare for legalization. Theres all of these ways that the U.S. market is nascent and clunky and inefficient, says Arcviews Dayton. Its an opportunity to see an efficient market. Canada may also, for example, work through how to deal with treaties that contain international commitments to suppress marijuana. Whatever happens in Canada is more likely to affect conversations about how to deal with marijuana in the U.S. than happenings in countries farther away, experts say. Canada is a country the U.S. tends to trust, tends to see as a peer, tends to see as similar, says Brookings Hudak, whereas politicians would be more likely to write off action in a place like Uruguay as some odd Latin American policy experiment. And if legalization takes hold without the sky falling, as it has in U.S. states, lawmakers pushing for reform on the federal level will definitely hold it up as a model and something that informs the policy conversations, he adds. But its unlikely to tip any scales in terms of major reform. Blumenauer and fellow members of the Cannabis Caucus recently introduced a robust package of marijuana-related legislation, ranging from an ambitious bill that would regulate marijuana like alcohol on a federal level to measures aimed at making it easier for veterans to access medical marijuana through the Department of Veteran Affairs. Despite the mixed messages that President Donald Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions have sent on marijuana, some suggesting that the federal government may step up enforcement, Blumenauer says hes optimistic that theyll get traction in three areas: changing a 1980s-era tax provision that seriously hampers legal marijuana businesses; securing banking services for an industry that is forced to perilously operate in cash; and easing restrictions on marijuana-related research. Legalization in Canada would be helpful in pushing for reform, Blumenauer says, but only incidentally so. He says that what is happening on the ground in America is much more profound - how big the congressional delegation now is representing states where marijuana is legal, the fact that Americans now support legalizing marijuana at historically high rates, the stories of families who have uprooted their lives to move to places where they can access marijuana-as-medicine for children with seizure disorders or for retired soldiers with PTSD. If a nation like Canada approves it, sets up a regimen, provides a living laboratory of people right across the border that are a lot like us, it might help change the perceptions of some skeptics, says the Oregon congressman. But what is most compelling is the experience people have in their own lives and families. This article was originally published on TIME.com Sen. John McCain praised President Trump for the missile strikes launched against Syria on Thursday, saying the president has an opportunity to reboot with the American people after his tumultuous first months in office. The United States fired at least 50 missiles on a Syrian airfield in retaliation for a suspected sarin gas attack that killed 87 people, including 31 children, earlier this week. The targeted airfield is believed to be the point of origin for that attack. Slideshow: U.S. attacks Syrian airbase >>> Appearing on both MSNBCs Morning Joe and NBCs Today, the senator, who has long advocated for military action in Syria as well as for arming the Syrian rebel army and removing Assad from power emphasized further action would have to be taken, and warned against any celebratory sentiments in Washington. I think there is a little too much euphoria here this morning, McCain said on Today. Paraphrasing Winston Churchill on Morning Joe, he said, Its the end of the beginning, not the beginning of the end. Sen. John McCain on Capitol Hill. (Photo: Joshua Roberts/Reuters) McCain has been a frequent Trump critic, including the presidents previous policy towards Syria. Earlier this week, the 2008 Republican nominee said the failure of the U.S. to intervene in Syria marked a disgraceful chapter in American history. But on Friday, McCain repeatedly lauded the White House national security team, emphasizing their role in Trumps decision to strike. The question was, Would the president listen to this team? McCain said on Morning Joe. Obviously, he did. Thats whats most encouraging to me, he added. McCain characterized the unfolding situation in Syria a test for the new president, noting that while chemical weapons have only accounted for a small percentage of the deaths in the Syrian civil war, Assads use of them is symbolic. While McCain said the decisive action was a chance for Trump to reboot, he acknowledged some of the presidents freewheeling behavior was unlikely to change. I would love to see the tweeting stop, but Id also like to see pigs fly, McCain told the Morning Joe panel. I just think its in his DNA. Perhaps there could be more restraint. I would hope that would happen. Meek Mill is turning 30 this year, and hes decided to celebrate the special day with his fans in the Bahamas. The Heaven or Hell rapper even dropped some teasers for his four-day show/birthday bash in the tropical country. On Thursday, Mill took to Instagram to share the promo material for his show, MeekEND, in Nassau, Bahamas. He is set to perform in the Caribbean island of New Providence for four days, starting on May 5. Mills birthday is on May 6, and since he will be staying in the Bahamas until May 8 or even longer, he opted to make his show there his birthday bash. One of the promos shows a woman wearing a one-piece swimsuit that has $avage written on it, so fans are speculating that he could be teasing a new track that will serve as his response to Drakes Free Smoke and Lose You. Other fans are also urging Mill to promote his collaboration with Lil Durk during his concert in the tropical island. The songs music video was released just this Wednesday, so it makes sense that many want Mill to perform it live. READ: Meek Mill asks God to protect him from haters Ahead of his concert, Mill is working on his new music. Early this week, he dropped snippets for three tracks that hes bound to release soon. One of the tracks features Maybach Music Group boss Rick Ross. The three new songs are expected to be part of either Mills third solo studio album or his Dreamchasers 4 mixtape, according to Hip Hop DX. Nicki Minajs ex previously announced that he is dropping his new mixtape any day after 2016. However, he may have made some changes to the compilation since it has yet to see the light of the day even though its already April. As for his next album, Mill teased before that this is going to be his best work by far. Many are hoping that it will live up to expectations, considering his previous album, Dreams Worth More Than Money, was a huge success, as per XXL Mag. Meek Mill Photo: Reuters/Kevork Djansezian Related Articles Former first lady Michelle Obama has kept a relatively low profile since her family left the White House earlier this year. However, the African-American icon may be returning to the public eye with a speaking engagement at an architecture conference in Orlando, Florida, later this month. The American Institute of Architects (AIA) will hold its 2017 Conference on Architecture from April 27-29. According to an announcement by the organization, Obama is scheduled to sit down for a conversation on April 27, between 12:50 p.m. and 1:45 p.m., but no more details were revealed. Michelle Robinson Obama served as First Lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017, transforming the position and becoming a role model, champion, and inspiration for women, families, and young people across America and around the world, the events website reads. Giving a brief outline of her achievements, the organization added that the former first lady worked tirelessly to champion a number of important initiatives designed to make our world a better place. Four of Obamas initiatives Lets Move!, Joining Forces, Reach Higher and Let Girls Learn were highlighted by the AIA. However, there were no specifications over what the conversation would entail or whether it was a paid engagement. The Obamas have stayed out of the limelight since former President Barack Obama left office in January this year. The family is staying in Washington, D.C., at a house in the posh Kalorama neighborhood, at least till their younger daughter Sasha finishes high school. President Donald Trumps daughter Ivanka Trumps family also lives in the same locality. The couple took a short vacation after leaving office, and the two have been spotted making appearances at museums and brunches as they take some time off after eight years in the public eye. Both have signed book deals and reports say that the former president is currently penning his memoir in French Polynesia. Related Articles Kelly O'Reilly was angry at her brother, Michael McGovern, when he died. In February, their mother called to let her know that he was sick. But O'Reilly thought, "here we go again with the cycle," a cycle of doctor visits, pain prescriptions and self-medicating overdoses. The next time O'Reilly and her mother would talk it would be over video chat showing a coroner and emergency medical team taking McGovern's body away. That night, McGovern's overdose had turned fatal. The siblings were close friends; McGovern moved to Ireland to help O'Reilly raise her two daughters, and the two would joke and fight and watch movies together. But the family's fun-loving "Peter Pan" turned into a monster when he was not high. McGovern was prescribed his first opoid pill after his back was injured in a fight at the bar he worked. By the time he died, he had collected more than 250 bottles of OxyContin prescribed by multiple doctors. He kept them in his room along with his journal that had entries marking periods of anger and frustration when doctors wouldn't prescribe pills and others of pain and depression that came from embarrassment with his addiction. McGovern's case underscores a growing challenge for public health care specialists: the substantial rise of opioid-related deaths among young adults around the world. Individuals between 20 and 29 years old in high-income countries are between three and four times more likely to die due to opioid use disorders than they were 20 years ago, according to data from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, an independent research center at the University of Washington. In countries where abuse of the drug is worst -- including Norway, Greece, Denmark and the U.S. -- up to 30 percent of deaths in that age range are opioid-related. Opioids encompass all natural, synthetic and combination versions of drugs from opium, an active ingredient in the poppy flower, including morphine, heroin and codeine. The compounds bind to receptors throughout the body, including the brain, relieving pain and creating a high. Story continues Dr. Marla Kushner, medical director of the New Hope Recovery Center in Chicago, links the opioid abuse to the introduction of OxyContin, a brand-name oxycodone narcotic used to treat moderate to severe pain. OxyContin hit the market in 1996 and by 2001, the year it w as prescribed to McGovern, it was the best-selling narcotic pain reliever in the U.S. "OxyContin is great for pain relief, but the doctors prescribing it did not realize how addictive it could be," Kushner says. "Addiction needs to be viewed like any other potentially fatal disease, like cancer or diabetes, and doctors need to be even more careful with what they're prescribing." Often, as with McGovern, dependence on opioids starts with a prescription to treat acute pain and, due to tolerance build-up, leads to overdose. A study on prescription drug use in the European Union found that 16 percent of individuals using opioids without a prescriber's authorization obtained them fraudulently from a doctor, by exaggerating pain symptoms, for example. More than half of those surveyed received or bought the prescription pills from a friend or family member who were prescribed them. The U.S. is by far the largest market for prescription opioids. But prescriptions for OxyContin have fallen 40 percent since 2010, according to an in-depth study by the Los Angeles Times, and its drugmaker is turning its gaze abroad. An opinion piece from the Washington Post warns "the opioid epidemic could turn into a pandemic if we're not careful." A combination of factors create a "monster" that young adults are most susceptible to, says Jason Shiers, a psychotherapist with Addiction Helper in the U.K. and former addict. "When you grow up with the internet, you know you can find anything on there," he says. "It's easy to hide behind a computer," and if caught, prescription opioids carry less stigma than many other drugs; it's socially acceptable to say you're struggling with pain or sleeping. But it also comes down to biology. The prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that governs judgment and rational decision-making, isn't fully developed until about age 25. This leaves young adults looking for "quick fixes," says Kushner, in both using drugs and treatment. "Young adults are lots of times still under support of their family members, so getting them to be more independent and do the things they need to do [to curb the addiction] can be very challenging," she says. Access to opioids and various treatment options for addiction can differ greatly between country borders. In the U.S., "doctor hopping" is common among individuals who use opioids. A disjointed health system makes it difficult for doctors to review their patients' comprehensive medical history and easy for addicts to collect a large number of prescriptions in a short period of time. This is less common in Europe, where universal health-care systems cater to better electronic record-keeping and stricter access to medications. The "doctor hopping" methods McGovern had relied on in the U.S. were impeded while he was living with his sister in Ireland. In that country, each patient has a unique identification number that links all of their doctor visits, prescriptions and other health records together in one place. But there is little evidence to show that limiting the supply of opioids reduces use of the drugs. Global opium production was nearly cut in half between 2014 and 2015 and more than 600 tons of opioids were seized, according to the United Nations 2016 World Drug Report, but the number of opioid-users has remained steady and kept market demand high. While in Ireland, McGovern raided his uncle's veterinary practice where he kept ketamine in doses large enough to tranquilize horses. The key to curbing use, advocates say, lies in support from public officials who actively build awareness of the issue and fund treatment programs. Instead of focusing on the criminalization of illegal trade across borders and individual possession of opioids, they say better solutions lie in reforming addiction treatment options and attitudes toward them. "It entails a lot of effort and, politically, is not always popular, but there has to be an effective evidence-based continuum of care that is supported by government officials and leaders," says Gregory Bunt, president of the International Society of Addiction Medicine. This integrated effort includes dedicated funding, modifying laws and personally directing individuals toward treatment options. In the 1980s and '90s, the spread of HIV among heroin users had become a large problem in France. Prime Minister Alain Juppe made finding a solution to reduce associated harms a "very political issue," encouraging policymakers to dedicate time and effort to productive discussions, says Jean-Michel Delile, senior clinical consultant with the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction. Juppe and his budget minister, Alain Lamassoure, met with prominent addiction researcher Dr. Charles O'Brien , who convinced them to try something new. By 1996, France became the first country to offer opiate substitution treatment on a large scale by providing the opioid inhibitor buprenorphine. Rates of opioid-related deaths have stayed below 5 percent in France, as its neighbors have watched them rise dramatically. In Greece, it wasn't until 2010 that access to opiate substitution treatment programs was expanded under the Greek National Drug Action Plan. The Organisation Against Drugs, or OKANA, is the only group with legal permission to operate these programs, and there can be up to a three-year wait to enroll in the program in Athens, which is home to most of the country's opioid users. Before 2010, opioid use disorders in the country accounted for nearly 20 percent of deaths among those between 20 and 29 years old. In any case, experts are eager to shift the perception of addiction from a criminal issue to a medical one. "Addiction is not willful misconduct," Bunt says. "The addiction is so powerful it hijacks the individual's mind, body and soul." Deidre McPhillips is a data reporter at U.S. News. You can find her on Twitter or email her at dmcphillips@usnews.com. Thursday night's missile strike against Syria came as after President Trump and his Chinese counterpart sat down for a formal state dinner at Mar-a-Lago. Read: Secret Weapon? Why 'Goddess' Ivanka Trump Is Adored in China The missile launch came as the heads of state dined on pan-seared sole and New York strip steak with members of the Trump family around them, the missile launch came. A barrage of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles was launched from the Navy destroyers USS Ross and USS Porter, 150 miles off the Syrian coast. The missiles hit the Syrian airfield in the Idlib province town of Khan Sheikhoun, where chemical attacks two days prior killed more than 80 civilians, including many children. Thursday night's attack lasted 35 minutes. "Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children," Trump said while addressing the nation from the tea room at his Florida estate. "Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror." Trump also called Assad a "dictator" who "launched a horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians." The U.S. Embassy in Damascus, Syria's capital, tweeted video of the rockets being launched. #_ .. pic.twitter.com/AzhQ7vFNTH U.S. Embassy Syria (@USEmbassySyria) April 7, 2017 "We are assessing the results of the strike," the U.S. Defense Department said in a statement Thursday night. "Initial indications are that this strike has severely damaged or destroyed Syrian aircraft and support infrastructure and equipment at Shayrat Airfield, reducing the Syrian Government's ability to deliver chemical weapons. The use of chemical weapons against innocent people will not be tolerated. Story continues Following the strike, Russia slammed Trumps decision to launch a missile attack in a Middle Eastern country. The Russian government called it "act of aggression against a sovereign Syria." Read: Trump Defends O'Reilly Amid Sexual Harassment Allegations: 'I Don't Think Bill Did Anything Wrong' Syrias president, Bashar al-Assad, a man who reportedly has ties to Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, also had strong words for the U.S. government. "The presidency of the Arab Syrian republic asserts that what America carried out was an irresponsible act that only reflects short-sightedness, a narrow perspective and political and military blindness toward reality," Assad said in a statement Friday. He added: "The fact that the United States of America has committed this shameful act by targeting an airport of a sovereign state clearly demonstrates, once again, what Syria has said and continues to say - that changing administrations doesnt change the deep policies of this government, namely, the targeting of countries, the subjugation of people and an attempt to dominate the world." Watch: Dad Says Goodbye to Twin Sons After Syria Gas Attack Killed 19 Family Members Related Articles: MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Mortar shells fired into homes in the Somali capital of Mogadishu has killed three people and wounded five, police and ambulance services said on Friday, a day after the government changed heads of security agencies. Police said they suspected al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab were behind the attack, in which mortar rounds landed on homes in Wadajir district, in the vicinity of Mogadishu airport. "We have carried three dead women and five others injured, including a woman and children. Mortars landed on their home today," Abdikadir Abdirahman, the director of Amin ambulance services, told Reuters on Friday. "Mortars believed to be fired by al Shabaab killed three people of the same family and injured several others. We are still investigating where they were fired from," Osman Mohamed, a police officer, told Reuters on Friday. Al Shabaab were not immediately reachable for comment. In the past, the group, which aims to impose its own harsh version of Islam in Somalia, has taken responsibility for blasts and gun attacks in the capital and elsewhere in Somalia. On Thursday, President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, replaced his security chiefs and called on al Shabaab fighters to surrender within 60 days in return for education and jobs. Al Shabaab is carrying out increasingly deadly bombings despite losing most of its territory to a 22,000-strong African Union peacekeepers supporting the Somali government. (Reporting by Abdi Sheikh; Writing by George Obulutsa; Editing by Larry King) A pair of geese became parents migrating north and straight to a Nebraska hospitals maternity ward. Read: World's First Goose to Receive 3D-Printed Beak Hatches 2 Goslings After Finding True Love "They picked a flower pot outside the emergency entrance and below the maternity ward," said Inglish Camero, vice president of patient care services at Alegent Creighton Health Lakeside Hospital in Omaha. Camero told InsideEdition.com that the Canadian geese, named Ralph and Alice after the characters in the hit 50s sitcom The Honeymooners, have nested near their hospital every spring for the last 12 years. While they nest in a different location on the property every year, Ralph and Alice aptly found a spot near the maternity ward to lay their eggs. "Alice and Ralph started laying eggs last week," Camero said. "Shes laid six eggs sextuplets in our driveway." Despite not getting a spot inside the hospital's maternity ward, the pair appears to be doing fine. Read: Pregnant Golden Retriever Poses In Maternity Photos as She Awaits First Litter of Fur Babies "We are full [and they] didnt make a reservation," Camero joked. It will be another several weeks before the eggs hatch, but in the meantime, Ralph appears to already be looking after the goslings. "Their dad is so protective," she said. "He hisses at people when they walk by and they get too close." Sometimes, Ralph even makes it hard for human patients at the hospital to get by. "Weve had to distract the [geese] so people can get out of their cars," joked security officer Tom Stock. Camero, whose office is right above the nesting site, added, "I watch for people to be nice to them and make sure theyre nice to people. We dont want anyone bit by them." Read: Momma Goose Asks Officer for Help Untangling Baby From Balloon String And, despite the perfect match, hospital staff said the couples relationship is not without its flaws. Story continues "We can see them bickering once in a while, which is why we named them Alice and Ralph, Camero said. She explained they did call the citys wildlife department when the pair started nesting, but decided not to move the family. Instead, the goose family will be raised on hospital grounds, where traffic will be diverted so the goslings can have a safe path from their nest to the pond every day. Watch: The Odd Couple: Meet the Goose That Follows Her Owner Around Like a Dog Related Articles: Sometimes, you can spot the "bad guys" in movies just by looking at their skin they may have dark circles under their eyes, or multiple scars. But now, some dermatologists are taking issue with Hollywood's tendency to depict villains with such features, saying it may cause the public to stereotype people with skin diseases. In a new study, researchers analyzed the dermatological features of 10 classic movie villains, and compared them with those of 10 classic movie heroes. They found that 60 percent of the villains had noticeable dermatological features, compared with none of the heroes. Moviemakers' use of skin features to contrast good and evil characters "may foster a tendency toward prejudice in our society directed at those with skin disease," the researchers, from the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, wrote in the April 5 issue of the journal JAMA Dermatology. [Top 10 Scariest Movies Ever] Moviemakers have depicted villains with distinctive skin features since the silent film age, the researchers said. In recent years, the National Organization for Albinism and Hypopigmentation has protested against the use of albino characters as movie villains, including the portrayal of an "evil albino" character in the 2006 movie "The Da Vinci Code." In the new study, the researchers used the top 10 film heroes and villains from the American Film Institute's 100 Greatest Heroes and Villains List. The top villains included Dr. Hannibal Lecter ("The Silence of the Lambs," 1991), Darth Vader ("The Empire Strikes Back," 1980), The Queen ("Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," 1937), Regan MacNeil ("The Exorcist," 1973) and The Wicked Witch of the West ("The Wizard of Oz," 1939). The heroes included Atticus Finch ("To Kill a Mockingbird," 1962), Indiana Jones ("Raiders of the Lost Ark," 1981), James Bond ("Dr. No," 1962) and Rocky Balboa ("Rocky," 1976). Story continues If the characters were in a black-and-white movie, the researchers evaluated the colorized version of the original film, and if no such version was available, they used the color theatrical release poster, according to the study. The researchers found the following dermatologic conditions among villains: Alopecia (hair loss) in three villains Periorbital hyperpigmentation (dark circles under the eyes) in three villains Deep wrinkles on the face in two villains Multiple facial scars in two villains Verruca vulgaris (warts) on the face in two villains Rhinophyma (a bulbous or "ruddy" nose) in one villain Besides subtle facial scars in two of the top 10 heroes, none of the heroes had significant dermatological features. None of the top 10 villains had albinism, but a previous study found that 68 movies made between 1960 and 2006 featured an "evil albino" character. "The results of this study demonstrate Hollywoods tendency to depict skin disease in an evil context, the implications of which extend beyond the theater" and contribute to misunderstanding of skin diseases among the general public, they said. Original article on Live Science. Editor's Recommendations An official working for Aung San Suu Kyi's government was sentenced to six months in jail by a Yangon court Friday for criticising Myanmar's army chief in a Facebook post. It is the latest verdict to highlight lingering limits on free speech in the young democracy, where the military remains a powerful player despite the end of junta rule. Myo Yan Naung Thein, a researcher for Suu Kyi's ruling party, was arrested in October for urging the head of the army to resign over deadly raids on police posts in the north of Rakhine State. The attacks, by a militant group claiming to represent Myanmar's stateless Rohingya Muslims, sparked an army crackdown so brutal UN investigators believe it may amount to crimes against humanity. In a Facebook post just days after the October raids, Myo Yan Naung Thein said Senior General Min Aung Hlaing was "shameless" for allowing the raids to happen and called for his resignation. The 43-year-old appeared calm as he heard the verdict read out in Yangon's Kamayut township court on Friday, flanked by military officers. But he struck a defiant note as he left the court, criticising the army's continued grip on power even after Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) won the first free elections in half a century in 2015. Under a junta-era constitution the military still controls a quarter of parliament seats and the ministries of home affairs, defence and borders. "It's obvious that we have two groups ruling Myanmar, not only our (elected) government," he told journalists. Myo Yan Naung Thein has been held in jail since his arrest and will be able to walk free in a few weeks because of time served. Prosecutions under a controversial online defamation law have soared since the NLD took power in March 2016, targeting both those who have criticised the army and the new civilian administration. The law was originally passed by the previous military-backed government as part of a raft of measures designed to attract foreign investment in Myanmar's telecoms sector. Story continues But activists say it is increasingly being used to stifle free speech and criticism of the government, dashing hopes the NLD would usher in a new era of openness after half a century of repressive military rule. At least 46 cases have been brought over the past year, compared to just seven between when the legislation was passed in 2013 to when the NLD took power. They include cases against two officials from one of the country's biggest media groups, a man who called the president 'crazy' on Facebook and another who wrote curses about the army on his car. Last month a mother launched proceedings against her own son for writing insulting comments about her relationships on Facebook. Washington (AFP) - A brilliant conservative judge with a prestigious resume, Neil Gorsuch is a proponent of traditional values, a strict reading of the Constitution and protections for the role of religion in American society. The elegant, silver-haired 49-year-old on Friday became the youngest justice confirmed to the US Supreme Court in a quarter-century. Little known until recently, the Colorado native with an Ivy League education survived an unusually rugged obstacle course between his nomination by President Donald Trump and his confirmation by the Senate 66 days later. Grilled over some 20 hours by Democratic senators -- still steaming over the refusal by Republicans last year to consider Barack Obama's nominee for the same high-court opening -- Gorsuch maintained an Olympian calm. Known as unfailingly polite, he has drawn praise for his diplomatic skills and a certain intellectual rigor. An 11-year veteran of the federal Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Denver, Gorsuch promised during his Senate confirmation hearings to resist any political influence. He insisted he would not hesitate to judge a case involving Trump himself, should it come to that. He ultimately offered few personal opinions, saying he needed to maintain the untarnished independence required of one hoping to fill one of the nine seats in the high court. - Fans and detractors - Still, many of Gorsuch's convictions are known, particularly among conservative groups. The National Rifle Association, for one, did not hesitate to spend nearly $1 million on ads lobbying on his behalf. He was also backed by right-leaning groups like the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation, which favor a conservative evolution of US law. Gorsuch authored a book on the moral and legal arguments against euthanasia and assisted suicide, and backed companies that refused to provide contraception to their employees, as Obama's health care reform called for. Story continues His pedigree will clearly reassure most Trump supporters, with some comparing him to the late justice Antonin Scalia, whose seat he will now fill. But many Democrats found Gorsuch's judicial history troubling. In a 2009 case, he sided with the owner of a trucking company who had fired a driver for abandoning his trailer when its brakes froze in subzero temperatures. The man had unhitched the trailer and driven away in search of shelter after waiting several hours for help. Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat, said Gorsuch seemed to have a troubling habit of siding with the powerful over the powerless, and with companies and big donors over those who worked for them. - Originalism - Gorsuch's traditionalist views and incisive opinions have fueled comparisons with Scalia, the towering conservative justice who died at age 79 in February 2016. Like Scalia, Gorsuch favors what is known as originalism -- the idea that judges should interpret the US Constitution by studying the intent of those who wrote it, with no modern filters. The Columbia and Harvard grad says he is flattered by the comparisons. He said when he learned of Scalia's death, he was on the ski slopes. "I am not embarrassed to admit that I couldn't see the rest of the way down the mountain for the tears," he said in a speech. By nominating Gorsuch, Trump sent a positive message to the so-called flyover states -- those you fly over to get from the East Coast to the West Coast -- that they have not been forgotten. Those states largely voted for the Republican billionaire, but none of the current eight Supreme Court justices hails from that part of the country. - East Coast education - Gorsuch says he remains attached to his native Colorado, where he likes to go fly-fishing and where, with his wife Louise and their two daughters, he raises horses, chickens and goats. But the judge, who comes from a relatively affluent family, is no stranger to the East Coast. He moved to Washington as a teenager, when his mother was named to head the Environmental Protection Agency under Ronald Reagan. He earned an undergraduate degree from Columbia University in New York and a law degree from Harvard -- shortly after a certain Barack Obama got his. He then headed across the Atlantic to study at Oxford -- perhaps explaining his penchant for quoting Churchill. Gorsuch knows his way around the Supreme Court building -- he was a clerk for the late Byron White and also for Anthony Kennedy who, at 80 years old, will now be his colleague. He then worked as a litigation attorney for a Washington firm before taking a job in the Justice Department under George W. Bush. It was Bush who nominated him for the federal court position in Denver. On the high court, Gorsuch will join: -- Elena Kagan (56) and Sonia Sotomayor (62), appointed by Barack Obama -- Chief Justice John Roberts (62) and Samuel Alito (67), appointed by George W. Bush -- Stephen Breyer (78) and Ruth Bader Ginsburg (84), appointed by Bill Clinton -- Clarence Thomas (68), appointed by George H.W. Bush -- Anthony Kennedy (80), appointed by Ronald Reagan The Trump administrations cruise missile strikes against Syria were targeted to impose a cost for the Assad regimes chemical weapons attack against its own citizens and aimed at shaping the Syrian governments future actions. But the attack opens the door to more risks and the White House needs a sharp focus on preventing a wider escalation while continuing the progress in the fight against the Islamic State along with efforts to deter Iran destabilizing actions in the region. One vital next step for the United States is to leverage cooperation with partners in the region to protect U.S. troops and prevent a wider escalation that could destabilize and undercut the anti-Islamic State campaign. For every action, there is a reaction and the Middle East today remains a dangerous tinderbox. The Syrian conflict has grown into a regional and geopolitical vortex sucking in many outside powers. Nearly four years after the Assad regime gassed and killed 1,400 of its own people, the costs have been tremendous. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have died and millions more have been pushed out of their homes. Terrorist groups including the Islamic State and al Qaeda affiliates acquired a new haven. The fiction that Syrias conflict could be contained ignores the global reality of the impact of instability in the heart of the Middle East including the effect on the politics of fear in Europe and the United States. Now that the Trump administration has taken a military step, it is important not to get lost in the weeds of tactics and political dimensions of the debate. One key part of maintaining a strategic focus is anticipating the actions of others with a stake in Syria, on three key fronts. First, center stage is Russia which intervened in Syria in September 2015 and has a military presence on the ground. Russias condemned Trumps strike, suspended an agreement with Washington aimed at preventing conflict between the U.S. and Russian militaries, and has reportedly moved more military assets into the region. Story continues The quiet backchannel discussions between Russia and the United States, rather than the public statements and gestures, are essential for preventing a wider escalation. U.S. military planners took care to ensure that last nights strikes did not kill Russian military forces, which would have introduced even more unpredictability in Syria. This discussion with Russia might also provide an avenue for making a new attempt to shift the diplomacy on Syria but the United States should not be naive about the possible courses of action, as it has been in the past. The Assad regimes most recent chemical weapons attack starkly demonstrates that Russia is neither a reliable counterterrorism partner nor a force for stability in Syria. Moscows consistent backing of the Assad regime has prolonged Syrias civil war, encouraged Assad to commit war crimes, and facilitated the rise of the Islamic State and other terrorist groups. Its scorched-earth counterterrorism tactics both violate the laws and norms of war and fail to defeat terrorist groups on the battlefield A second key front is managing the threats and risks from the Syrian regime and its backers, including Iran and the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah. For the past few years, Israel has carefully managed and dealt with threats emanating from Syria and Lebanon, and the United States needs to continue to coordinate closely with Israel to protect itself from any reactions. The United States should also work closely with other partners like Jordan, with whom Trump recently met, to ensure their stability in the face of possible blowback from these moves. Last by not least, the ongoing fight against the Islamic State remains a core interest. Working with coalition partners, the United States should seek to continue the recent progress against the group while safeguarding the protection of U.S. forces. Nearly 1,000 American troops are already on the ground in Syria and could be vulnerable to regime retaliation; the roughly 6,000 U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq could be targeted by Iranian-backed militias as well. These risks should also be considered by military planners and policymakers as they move forward. Last night, the Trump administration made the decision to go it alone, acting without much consultation with Congress or notice to the American people. The shift is a dramatic change from the signals it was sending just earlier in the week and has produced a sense of whiplash. The sad irony of President Trumps newfound interest in protecting Syrian civilians while also banning desperate Syrian refugees from entering the United States is duly noted. But now that the United States has taken action, it should take robust steps to ensure that these strikes, which come at a time of operational and tactical military escalations in Iraq and Yemen, are nested in a wider regional strategy that places a high premium on working closely with our partners in the region to prevent a wider escalation. This requires an investment in diplomatic tools which Trump has proposed undercutting in his budget and it requires an integrated strategy to make sure that America is not just adding fuel to a fire that has led to the collapse of states across the region. Photo credit: FORD WILLIAMS/U.S. Navy via Getty Images Nicki Minaj is now ready to release the music video for her response to Remy Mas shETHER and Another One diss tracks. Queen Barbz just took to social media to share a teaser clip for No Frauds, a song she made with the help of her fellow Young Money artists, Drake and Lil Wayne. On Thursday, Minaj uploaded the teaser clip on Instagram and asked her fans if they are ready for the official No Frauds music video. The video features Minajs line that accuses Remy Ma of having her husband Papoose write her raps for her. The Anaconda hitmaker also rocked the look she had when she visited London two weeks ago in the short video. Minajs Barbz quickly showed the multi-awarded rapper some love for dropping the teaser clip. I was born ready for anything u got for me! U [sic] are my world Nicki, one fan wrote. Stop playing around and drop this thing already. I know ur [sic] going to slay, another commented. READ: Is Nicki Minaj going after Cardi B next? The Trinidadian-born rapper also shared another teaser-like clip on Instagram, but this time shes just making fun of her lyrics for Remy Ma. In the video, Minajs crew could be seen making some last-minute touchups before Onika resumes filming another scene for the music video. However, Meek Mills ex appears to be in high spirits as she jokingly sings the I took my price line from No Frauds before losing it and ending up laughing in front of the camera. Meanwhile, the newly signed Wilhelmina model was honored at The Daily Front Rows Fashion Los Angeles Awards early this week for being a fashion rebel. While accepting her award, Minaj candidly spoke about insecurities in front of the star-studded crowd. We all have insecurities. I want to say, shout-out to all of the women, not only in this room, but all around the world. You know what, we win and fail in the public eye. That's not easy to do. People think they know what it requires. People think they can do it. Everybody wants to walk in your shoes, until you put them in your shoes. Story continues Minaj also grabbed the opportunity to pose for the camera with some of the biggest stars at the event, including Fergie, Kim Kardashian and Lee Daniels. She even joked about the kissy face she did while having her pictures taken. Nicki Minaj Photo: Reuters/Danny Moloshok Related Articles By Libby George LONDON (Reuters) - Nigeria will increase quality standards for its imported gasoline, diesel and kerosene from July 1, a change health campaigners have long said is necessary to protect citizens from toxic fuel. All imported diesel from July 1 can contain a maximum of 50 ppm sulphur, while gasoline and kerosene can contain a maximum of 150 ppm, according to an environment ministry official and information from the Standards Organization of Nigeria, the body responsible for setting requirements for imported goods. Nigeria's current import standards are 3,000 ppm on diesel and 1,000 ppm on gasoline. West African nations had promised higher quality fuel late last year as part of a United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), but details on the timeline and precise implementation had been unclear. Ghana had targeted an even earlier deadline, but sources said it had not yet finalised its new fuel requirements or issued a fresh timetable. Several groups, including UNEP and the African Refiners Association, have been pushing West Africa for years to mandate higher quality fuel and ban fuels that are illegal in Europe and the United States due to what experts say are calamitous effects on respiratory health - particularly in dense urban areas such as Lagos. Late last year, the Swiss-based campaign group Public Eye blamed international traders for using the continent as a dumping ground for toxic fuels that are banned elsewhere. Other African nations, including Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Morocco have also increased fuel quality requirements. But there was some concern in Nigeria, currently struggling with an economic recession, over the substantial up-front cost of demanding higher standards. International oil traders said the proposals would cost at least $10-15 per tonne, or more than $250,000 for each cargo of gasoline. (Additional reporting by Alexis Akwagyiram and Ron Bousso; editing by David Evans and Jason Neely) ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigeria's senate will debate a long-awaited oil industry reform bill after receiving the draft law on Thursday, the latest step in efforts to overhaul the energy sector in Africa's largest economy. The legislation is part of proposed reforms that make up the sprawling Petroleum Industry Bill, which has been in discussion for over a decade and redrafted many times but has yet to be passed into law. President Muhammadu Buhari, who took office in May 2015, made passing the legislation a priority as part of an attempt to crackdown on the mismanagement and corruption that has held back the country's energy sector. Oil sales account for two-thirds of government revenue in the OPEC member state. The bill's acceptance into the upper house marks the closest it has yet come to becoming law, said Senate President Bukola Saraki. "I think we are all proud that we have gone this far and we have finally broken this jinx," he said. Once the senate has approved the bill, it will be sent to the lower chamber of parliament. With the approval of both, the final version will be sent to the president to be signed into law. Its backers say Nigeria's oil sector is in dire need of change, with power currently concentrated in the state oil company Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and the petroleum ministry. (Reporting by Camillus Eboh; Writing by Paul Carsten, editing by David Evans) The threat posed by North Koreas nuclear-weapons program is getting worse much worse. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, meeting Thursday and Friday at Trumps Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, face an urgent and growing problem that is more severe today than ever before. Through 2015, Pyongyang likely had enough fissile material for only a small number of weapons, probably fewer than 20, which constrained North Koreas nuclear options. North Korea, however, is busy increasing both its stocks of weapons-grade material and its capacity to make more. Last month, International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Yukiya Amano reported that North Korea had doubled the size of its Yongbyon uranium enrichment plant. The Institute for Science and International Security credibly estimates that the Norths known uranium enrichment and plutonium production facilities are capable of producing enough material for four to six weapons in 18 months, and that if Pyongyang operates a second, covert uranium enrichment facility (as many analysts believe they will), the production capacity could be 50 percent higher. Any estimate of North Koreas nuclear capabilities is subject to considerable uncertainty because of the regimes extreme secrecy and isolation. It nonetheless appears that under a worst-case scenario, and if left unchecked, North Koreas arsenal could approach 100 nuclear weapons by 2024; even if those fears are not realized, the arsenal would be substantially larger than it is today. This would change the nature of the Norths nuclear-weapons threat along five dimensions. First, North Korea would likely alter the deployment, doctrine, and posture of its nuclear force. Today, with a small arsenal, nuclear weapons are likely a last-ditch defense, without a sophisticated doctrine. With a more sizable arsenal, we can expect that the North would develop its doctrine, adopt a more aggressive posture, and even potentially pursue day-to-day deployments of nuclear weapons on alert. This would materially increase the threat of nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula. Moreover, Pyongyang might see a larger nuclear-weapons capability as cover to conduct more destabilizing conventional or terrorist attacks, such as the ROKS Cheonan sinking and Yeonpyeong island shelling, or more bombings and assassinations. This dynamic has already occurred elsewhere. Story continues Second, larger stocks of fissile material will facilitate advances in North Korean weapons and delivery system capabilities. Each nuclear test consumes a weapon from the Norths arsenal, but as fissile material stocks grow, the relative cost in military capability becomes less important. Hence, the North is accelerating its nuclear testing, conducting two tests last year, while previous detonations were separated by about three years. More testing will enable the North to pursue smaller, lighter, and more powerful weapons designs, which in turn will increase the range of its ballistic missiles. Recent reports of a North Korean capability to produce lithium-6 are another indication of Pyongyangs progress toward more advanced nuclear weapons. Third, a more abundant supply of fissile material increases the risk of nuclear sales. North Korea has sold a wide range of dangerous things to dangerous people, including missiles to Libya and a plutonium production reactor to Syria. As with testing, the constraint of relatively small fissile material stocks makes sale of such material or a weapon relatively costly in terms of military capability. With a larger arsenal, that concern is eased. Moreover, if Pyongyang is facing tighter sanctions, the temptation to sell valuable nuclear weapons or materials may grow. Fourth, if the North uses its increased arsenal to pursue day-to-day deployment of nuclear weapons on alert, the risk of accidental or unauthorized launch will increase. It is difficult to quantify this risk. Such an event has never occurred, despite decades of deployments by a handful of countries, but the North has little experience with this problem, and the risk would undoubtedly be higher than it is today. Fifth, the risk of nuclear theft will become more acute. As fissile material production grows, and especially as more of it is handled in bulk processing facilities where it is most vulnerable to gradual theft over time opportunities for diversion will grow. North Korea is the most vicious police state on earth, but it is also deeply corrupt, coming in 174 out of 176 countries ranked by Transparency International. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un just fired his security chief for corruption. Moreover, as with the Soviet Union, the security apparatus might not survive political instability. For decades we have lived with a relatively small North Korean nuclear threat. The United States and its allies tried policies ranging from bribes to coercion, but under Chinas aegis, the North has flouted international law with impunity. As Pyongyangs fissile material stocks grow, the urgency and nature of the threat is changing. Patience, strategic or otherwise, is no longer a viable option for Presidents Trump and Xi. Photo credit: North Koreas Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) via KNS/AFP/Getty Images Oslo (AFP) - Norway's sovereign wealth fund, the world's largest, on Friday called for a cap on executive pay and fiscal transparency at the companies in which it invests, further buffing its reputation as an ethical investor. In every company, "the board should... disclose a ceiling for total remuneration for the coming year" for the chief executive, Norway's central bank, which manages the fund built on the country's oil revenues, said in a new policy document. In an era of fat-cat salaries that have drawn widespread criticism, the stance is all the more significant given that the fund holds stakes in about 9,000 companies worldwide, representing 1.3 percent of the global market capitalisation. With its weight, and its often-praised management requirements on ethics and transparency, the Scandinavian fund often sets the bar for investment funds worldwide. The shift comes as challenging a company's remuneration policies has proven increasingly succesful. Last year, BP chief executive Bob Dudley saw his overall pay cut by 40 percent after a rebellion by shareholders. Volkswagen decided last month to cap salaries for members of its board of directors, a hot topic in Germany. And on Sunday, under pressure from politicians and unions, six top executives at the Canadian engineering group Bombardier agreed to have their promised pay increase reduced by half. - 'Say on pay' - For many years, the Norwegian wealth fund had little to say about executive pay, but recently it has begun to play a more active role. Last year, it voted against the executive pay policies at companies including Alphabet (the parent of Google), Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Sanofi, according to The Financial Times. "We are not in a position any longer as investors to say that this is an issue we are not going to have a view on," the fund's director, Yngve Slyngstad, told the newspaper, noting that the principle of "say on pay" was now spreading in a number of countries. Story continues The fund's policy document said that in order to align a CEO's interests with those of shareholders, "a substantial proportion of total annual remuneration should be provided as shares that are locked in for at least five and preferably 10 years, regardless of resignation or retirement," and without any conditions based on a company's performance. In another document published Friday, Norway's central bank also called on companies to implement fiscal transparency. "Taxes should be paid where economic value is generated," it said, expressing clear opposition to so-called fiscal optimisation, where companies declare their profits in countries with lower taxes. In Europe, giants like Apple, Starbucks and Fiat have in recent years been at odds with the European Commission over their fiscal opportunism, which is technically legal. The Norwegian fund, worth around 7.87 trillion kroner (859 billion euros, $912 billion) at the end of March, grew by 298 billion kroner in the first quarter, its third-best quarterly performance in its 20-year history. The fund invests in stocks, bonds and real estate. The policies announced Friday are a signal it wants to set the bar for investor responsibility even higher. Ethical rules already prohibit the fund from investing in companies accused of serious violations of human rights, the use of child labour or serious environmental damage, as well as in tobacco companies and manufacturers of "particularly inhumane" weapons. And in line with a 2015 vote in Norway's parliament, the fund cannot invest in mining or energy companies where coal represents more than 30 percent of their business -- a somewhat paradoxical stance for a fund bankrolled by Norway's oil revenues. Photo credit: U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Steven Galimore. From Popular Mechanics On the heels of the Marine Corps' desire for a new rifle for its infantrymen, the U.S. Army now says it is contemplating a dramatic switch in rifles. The service is considering going back to battle rifles-heavier rifles that can hit targets at longer ranges. The last time the Army fielded such a rifle was in the 1960s. The story, broke by Soldier Systems Daily, says that U.S. Army troops feel they're "in a street fight with a guy with longer arms." That longer arm is the 7.62x54R cartridge, the cartridge used by the PK machine gun and Dragunov SVD sniper rifle. The PK squad machine gun is extremely common; it's in use by the Taliban, the Islamic State, and most insurgent and terrorist groups worldwide. Longer and heavier than the 7.62x39-millimeter round used in the AK series of assault rifles, a PK with the 7.62x54R round has an effective range of 800 to 1,000 yards, versus only about 350 yards for an AK-47. Photo credit: Patrick AVENTURIER/Gamma-Rapho / Getty On the Army side, the maximum effective range of an M4 carbine against man-sized targets is about 500 yards, depending on the skill of the rifleman, and 700 yards for the M249 squad automatic weapon. Both fire the same cartridge. That leaves a dead zone of roughly 500 to 1,000 yards where the bulk of a nine person infantry squad can't engage individual enemies. In a platoon of 40 soldiers, on average only about six soldiers armed with M249s, marksman rifles, and M240 machine guns have the range to engage an enemy in the dead zone. U.S. Army troops may have an edge on paper, but guerrilla groups don't adhere to a bureaucratic equipment roster that says each unit can have a certain number of weapons. Taliban and IS groups routinely have a large number of heavier machine guns, and what they lack in skill they often try to make up in firepower. The Army says it wants a heavier, longer-range bullet in the 7.62x51-millimeter weight category, from which it would later transition to an even more exotic, modern caliber. The Army did once have a rifle that fired the 7.62 round: the M14 battle rifle. Adopted in the 1950s, the M14 was problematic. In addition to manufacturing and accuracy issues, the M14 weighed 10.7 pounds fully loaded. The 7.62-millimeter ammunition also weighed twice as much as the 5.56 millimeter ammunition of the M16 rifle that replaced it, meaning M16 users could carry twice as much ammo into battle. It was also long and unwieldy, making it difficult to use in close quarters combat. Story continues If the Army does go forward with an interim battle rifle, as Soldier Systems Daily suggests, the Army will gain range. With decent optics, a modern 7.62 rifle can reach out to 700 to 800 yards. However, soldiers will once again find themselves up against ammunition weight and length issues. The rifles will be heavier: Properly outfitted with the same optic and a laser/light combination on virtually every M4 carbine, a 7.62 rifle would weigh about 12 pounds. The new rifle will also be more difficult to use in urban terrain, as the longer barrel (which imparts bullet velocity and range) will be hard to handle in caves, inside buildings, trenches, and rough terrain. Photo credit: Department of Defense photo. Down the road, the Army would rebarrel the rifle for a new round, according to SSD, likely a 6.5-millimeter bullet. That could result in a lighter round, but a longer, heavier rifle is an inevitability to get the desired range. Although well intentioned, the adoption of a new rifle and round could open up a Pandora's Box of development, cost, and practical issues sealed more than 50 years ago by the M16. One alternative is supplying more infantrymen with better, more accurate ammunition and higher power optics. The relatively new 5.56-millimeter Mk 262 round paired with an 18" barrel (the M4's barrel is 14.5" inches long) would make the M4 effective to 700 yards in the hands of a trained rifleman. While the Army's project could result in an amazing new rifle that satisfies everybody, that's unlikely as tradeoffs are inevitable. It may just be that the Army is better off modifying its existing weapons and accepting known shortcomings than wandering into new ones. You Might Also Like Former President Barack Obama is scheduled to make his first visit to Scotland to attend a charity fundraiser in Edinburgh next month, U.K.-based The Hunter Foundation announced Thursday. Obama, who left the White House earlier this year after President Donald Trump took office, has maintained a low profile after eight years in the public eye. Despite taking numerous trips abroad during his tenure, he did not have the opportunity to visit Scotland. Read: Barack Obama, Wife Michelle Photographed Visiting National Gallery Of Art The Hunter Foundation, which describes itself as a grant-making institution aimed at supporting community-based organizations, will be hosting the event at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre on May 26. Obama will be addressing business leaders and attending a dinner, where he is expected to take questions from the audience. According to BBC, a table of 10 at the dinner is expected to fetch the foundation approximately 5,000 pounds (about $6,230). Some seats, however, will be reserved for local youngsters. From the South Side of Chicago to the White House has been an epic, historic journey and it will be a true honour to hear that story from the man who made that journey, Sir Tom Hunter, the founder of the charity, said in a news release Thursday. We are both truly proud and delighted to be hosting the 44th President of the United States in Scotland at this event. All the proceeds from the fundraiser will be divided between charities working with children in Scotland and the nonprofit set up by the former president and his wife Michelle, the Obama Foundation. Were always looking for really inspiring speakers to come along to Scotland, and really inspire and inform, Hunter told the Press Association. To be able to get president Obama, were really chuffed. He also indicated that there may be a surprise in store for the former president, and went on to hint at what it may be. Hunter said, President Obama loves his music, so were getting some interesting guests. Story continues The Obamas have been making the most of their time out of office with a vacation in the British Virgin Islands, where they joined Richard Branson, visits to museums, and brunches with friends. With both Obama and Michelle having signed book deals, the former is reportedly taking some time off to pen his memoir in French Polynesia. Related Articles U.S. oil prices rose to their highest levels in a month Friday following a U.S. missile strike on a Syrian airbase. Oil exchange-traded funds such as the United States Oil Fund LP (ticker: USO) and the United States Brent Oil Fund LP ( BNO) were also higher on Friday after WTI crude prices pushed above $52 a barrel and Brent oil prices traded at more than $55 a barrel. The U.S. attack on Syria comes just several days after a poison gas attack in Syria, which the U.S. government believes involved the use of nerve agent sarin, killed 70 people. "Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack," President Donald Trump said of the poison gas attack. "No child of God should ever suffer such horror." [See: Oil ETFs: 8 Ways to Invest in Black Gold.] Even former Trump rival Hillary Clinton supports the U.S. air strikes. "I really believe we should have and still should take out [Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's] air fields and prevent him from being able to use them to bomb innocent people and drip sarin gas on them," Clinton said in an interview at the Women in the World Summit this week. While Syria isn't a major oil producer, its Middle East location and alliances with other oil producers have investors concerned about the potential fallout from the U.S. strikes. Russia, the second-largest global oil producer, has already condemned the U.S. strikes as illegal aggression. Investor concerns about conflict escalation in Syria and rising tensions between the U.S. and Russia could drive oil and other commodity prices higher in coming days. From a fundamental market perspective, U.S. oil prices have also been supported by a production outage in Canada following a plant fire. WTI crude oil prices broke back above $50 per barrel in recent weeks for the first time since renewed oversupply fears drove prices from a 2017 high of around $55 a barrel to as low as $47 in March. GasBuddy analyst Dan McTeague says the U.S. missile strike "brings forth risk and uncertainty on a global scale." Story continues [See: The 10 Best Energy ETFs for an Eventual Bounce.] "Oil's rise ... is based on geopolitical circumstance, and as a benchmark commodity and a hedge, it is likely its value will rise in proportion to developments," he says. 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. Republicans and some Democrats from the Philadelphia area backed President Trumps airstrikes targeting Syria, saying they sent a key message after a brutal chemical attack. But several Democrats questioned his long-term strategy, and members of both parties urged congressional input into any prolonged military action. Some also questioned how Trump could project such sympathy for Syrian victims while trying to bar refugees from the country. The strikes Thursday night sent a message to President Bashar al-Assad and to the world that using chemical weapons to slaughter innocent civilians is a gross violation of international law that will have consequences, said Sen. Bob Menendez (D., N.J.), a hawkish member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But in a dig at Trump, he added that the United States must also look at those actors complicit in [Assad's] years of carnage, including Vladimir Putin in Russia, and should also have a humane refugee policy as this humanitarian disaster continues to unfold. Another committee member, Sen. Chris Coons (D., Del.), praised the action but said, Im gravely concerned that the United States is engaging further militarily in Syria without a well-thought-out, comprehensive plan. Frankly, the presidents actions today generate more questions than answers. Sen. Pat Toomey (R., Pa.), meanwhile, called the missile strikes decisive action that sent a message that barbaric attacks will not go unpunished. He called for a comprehensive plan that lays out U.S. objectives and risks. Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.) was among those saying the administration should seek a new authorization for the use of force if it planned further military action. Rep. Brendan Boyle, a Philadelphia Democrat and Foreign Affairs Commitee member, urged Congress to immediately return to Washington to debate the use of force. Boyle said he was deeply concerned about President Trump undertaking military action without any clear authorization from Congress. Our Constitution makes clear that these decisions must come before Congress. Congress must not abdicate this responsibility. Story continues I do not approve of the Assad regime, but @POTUS must seek approval from Congress before ANY military strikes toward #Syria Dwight Evans (@RepDwightEvans) April 7, 2017 Rep. Donald Norcross (D., N.J.) called the action an appropriate, proportional response to Assads use of chemical weapons against civilians and children. And in a neighboring South Jersey district, Rep. Frank LoBiondo (R., N.J.) wrote on Twitter that the response was justified and the U.S. must no longer lead from behind. Frank LoBiondo (@RepLoBiondo) April 7, 2017 Some Democrats used the incident to bolster their criticism of Trumps executive order temporarily banning refugees and immigrants from six primarily Muslim countries. To borrow @POTUS phrase, No child of God should ever be shunned from ou shores after fleeing civil war & murderous Assad regime, Rep. Bill Pascrell (D, N.J.), wrote on Twitter, quoting a phrase Trump used in announcing the strikes. Seeing how @POTUS did a 180 shift on the utility of striking #Syria, I hope he will also shift his thinking on Syrian refugee ban. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (@BillPascrell) April 7, 2017 To borrow @POTUS phrase, "No child of God should ever" be shunned from our shores after fleeing civil war & murderous Assad regime. #Syria Bill Pascrell, Jr. (@BillPascrell) April 7, 2017 .@realDonaldTrump There's clear hypocrisy in that you will condemn Assad's crimes but won't allow his victims to seek asylum in our country. Bonnie WatsonColeman (@RepBonnie) April 7, 2017 Most Popular on Philly.com WASHINGTON House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., asked Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., to immediately call the House back into session and debate whether to authorize the use of force in Syria. Congress must live up to its Constitutional responsibility to debate an Authorization of the Use of Military Force against a sovereign nation, Pelosi wrote in the letter sent Friday morning. The American people are owed a comprehensive strategy with clear objectives to keep our brave men and women in uniform safe and avoid collateral damage to innocent civilians in Syria. Congress is about to embark on a two-week recess, when Washington empties out and many members of Congress return to their home districts. That could mean the debate over President Trumps decision to launch dozens of cruise missiles into Syria on Thursday night in retaliation for Syrian President Bashar Assads use of chemical weapons and whatever potentially happens next could be put on hold until late April. The Authorization of the Use of Military Force, or AUMF in D.C. jargon, means congressional approval for using military force against another nation. Presidents dont always seek this before taking military action, however. Former President Barack Obama never secured congressional authority for his war on the so-called Islamic State, also known as ISIS. His administration at first argued that, because that terrorist army began as an offshoot of al-Qaida, the 2001 AUMF covering the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks also covered the conflict with ISIS. He later sought an AUMF but failed for largely political reasons, with Democrats uneasy about the documents deliberately vague restrictions on ground troops and Republicans refusing to sign on to Obamas strategy. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., at her weekly press conference on April 6, 2017, in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images) Slideshow: U.S. attacks Syrian airbase >>> Members of Congress can often be wary of voting either way on war, since the long-term political fallout of those votes can be grave. Hillary Clinton, for example, was still defending her 2002 vote for the Iraq War during her 2016 campaign. Story continues Ryan spokesman Doug Andres said in a statement that Thursday nights attack did not need Congress sign off but that the president should consult with Congress on any future action in Syria. The chemical weapons attack committed by the Assad regime was a flagrant violation of international standards, and preventing a deepening of the humanitarian crisis and instability in Syria is clearly in the United States national interest, Andres said. As such, last nights response was fully within the presidents authority. It is now appropriate for the administration to consult with Congress as it considers next steps to resolve the long-running crisis in Syria. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in a press conference Friday that the strike was a limited retaliation for Assads use of chemical weapons and will not necessarily lead to additional action. He said there were no plans to alter the Senates two-week recess to debate an AUMF. Its unclear if other Democrats will back Pelosis call. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., released a statement Thursday night asking Trump to consult with Congress about a larger strategy in Syria, but he did not specifically mention an AUMF or a timeline. It is incumbent on the Trump administration to come up with a strategy and consult with Congress before implementing it, Schumer said. Some longtime proponents of seeking congressional authorization for war on both sides of the aisle have demanded Trump seek their approval. Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Rand Paul, R-Ky., said Trump must receive Congresss buy-in for strikes on foreign nations. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., also called on Trump to get congressional approval. Olivier Knox contributed to this report. Read more from Yahoo News: Washington (AFP) - The United States has been fighting the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria since 2014, so has amassed a huge military presence and an array of capabilities in the region. If President Donald Trump decides to launch strikes against Syrian regime targets in response to Tuesday's suspected chemical attack, the Pentagon has many ways with which to do so. - US Navy - Any strike against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is likely to be conducted remotely to avoid putting US pilots in harm's way. The US Navy's Sixth Fleet, headquartered in Naples, has two destroyers -- the USS Porter and the USS Ross -- in the eastern Mediterranean that could shoot a barrage of Tomahawk cruise missiles into Syria. In September 2014, US ships launched 47 Tomahawk missiles during the first night of strikes against IS in Syria. These missiles can also be launched from attack submarines, but the location of these vessels is secret. A barrage of Tomahawks could overwhelm any air defenses. Assad's systems are weakened after six years of war but Russia has deployed state-of-the art systems to Syria. Over in the Persian Gulf, the Navy's Fifth Fleet can quickly respond to military requests in the region. The USS George H. W. Bush aircraft carrier is also in the Gulf, currently supporting operations against IS. - Air power - The bulk of US efforts against IS in Syria has been conducted from the air, with about 7,500 coalition jet and drone strikes since 2014. The United States has multiple air bases at its disposal in the region, including Incirlik in southeastern Turkey, just 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the Syrian border. Among the many air assets available to the United States are its high-tech F-22 Raptors, F-16s and even B-52 heavy bombers. The F-22, which cost about $360 million apiece, is considered the world's most advanced fighter currently operating, thanks to its ability to evade radar. It can fly faster than Mach 2 and launch laser-guided bombs from miles away. Story continues The Air Force also has at its disposal a fleet of armed Reaper and Predator drones, which use Hellfire missiles to strike targets. - Military advisors - The United States has about 900 troops in Syria -- mainly special operations forces -- to help train and advise an Arab-Kurdish alliance fighting IS. A Marine artillery unit is helping local forces near Raqa and US forces have expanded a runway at a northern Syria air base to accommodate the huge C-17 military plane, which can bring in armored vehicles and equipment. The US also has Apache gunships in neighboring Iraq to support local troops on the ground. The U.S. military struck an airfield in central Syria on Thursday night in what the Trump administration described as a retaliatory strike for the Syrian governments use of chemical weapons earlier this week. In Washington, congressional reaction was mixed, with some lauding Trumps swift action, and others questioning the legal and constitutional basis for the strikes. Florida Senator Marco Rubio praised the strike as a tactical action that furthers an objective. I think this is an important, decisive step that was taken, he told CNN. It is a degrading of the capability of the Syrian regime to carry out further chemical attacks against innocent civilians. This will degrade their capability to launch those attacks from the air, and I think it was an important step, and hopefully it's part of a comprehensive strategy. Arizona Senator John McCain and South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, two of the Senates more hawkish members, also commended Trump for using military force against Syrian President Bashar al-Assads forces after the Obama administrations previous refusals. Unlike the previous administration, President Trump confronted a pivotal moment in Syria and took action, they said in a joint statement. For that, he deserves the support of the American people. Building on tonights credible first step, we must learn the lessons of history and ensure that tactical success to strategic progress. Recommended: What If the Allies Had Lost World War I? Speaker Paul Ryan called the airstrikes appropriate and just, also drawing an implicit contrast with Barack Obamas 2013 decision to not pursue airstrikes against Assad after a similar chemical-weapons attack by his military. These tactical strikes make clear that the Assad regime can no longer count on American inaction as it carries out atrocities against the Syrian people, Ryan said in a statement. Resolving the years-long crisis in Syria is a complex task, but Bashar al-Assad must be held accountable and his enablers must be persuaded to change course. Story continues Some Democrats joined the praise for the Trump administrations move, including Florida Senator Bill Nelson. I support the admins strike on the air base that launched the chemical attack. I hope this teaches Assad not to use chemical weapons again. Bill Nelson (@SenBillNelson) April 7, 2017 But Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, a Republican, raised concerns about the strikes legality. While we all condemn the atrocities in Syria, the United States was not attacked. Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) April 7, 2017 The President needs Congressional authorization for military action as required by the Constitution. Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) April 7, 2017 Our prior interventions in this region have done nothing to make us safer and Syria will be no different. Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) April 7, 2017 Michigan Representative Justin Amash, a Republican who shares Pauls libertarian streak, also questioned the strikes constitutionality. Airstrikes are an act of war. Atrocities in Syria cannot justify departure from Constitution, which vests in Congress power to commence war. Justin Amash (@justinamash) April 7, 2017 Democratic members of Congress echoed those sentiments in even stronger terms. California Representative Ted Lieu described the strikes as unconstitutional. If true, this is UNCONSTITUTIONAL. Congress never authorized @POTUS to engage in war on #Assad in #Syria. https://t.co/Q39BSgaFYq Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) April 7, 2017 Virginia Senator Tim Kaine was even blunter on the issue. President waging military action against Syria without a vote of Congress? Unconstitutional. Senator Tim Kaine (@timkaine) April 7, 2017 Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, a member of the Senate Democratic leadership, also urged future congressional involvement, but took a more measured tone. Recommended: What Is al-Shayrat Military Airfield? My preliminary briefing by the White House indicated that this was a measured response to the Syrian nerve gas atrocity, he said. Any further action will require close scrutiny by Congress, and any escalation beyond airstrikes or missile strikes will require engaging the American people in that decision. Most top Democrats took a similar approach, balancing support for Thursdays airstrike with caution against leaving out congressional leaders in future military decisions. Making sure Assad knows that when he commits such despicable atrocities he will pay a price is the right thing to do, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said. It is incumbent on the Trump administration to come up with a strategy and consult with Congress before implementing it. Other Democrats, like Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton, took aim at the presidents dissonant response to the victims of the chemical-weapons strike earlier this week and the Syrian refugee crisis as a whole. So @POTUS cares enough about the Syrian people to launch 50 Tomahawks but not enough to let the victims of Assad find refuge & freedom here. Seth Moulton (@sethmoulton) April 7, 2017 Read more from The Atlantic: This article was originally published on The Atlantic. By Andrew Osborn and Jack Stubbs MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin believes that U.S. cruise missile strikes on a Syrian air base broke international law and have seriously hurt U.S.-Russia relations, Russian news agencies cited the Kremlin as saying on Friday. The Russian leader, a staunch ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, regarded the U.S. action as "aggression against a sovereign nation" on a "made-up pretext" and as a cynical attempt to distract the world from civilian deaths in Iraq, Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, was cited as saying. The United States fired dozens of cruise missiles at a Syrian airbase earlier on Friday from which it said a deadly chemical weapons attack was launched this week. Moscow had been hoping to cooperate with new U.S. President Donald Trump to jointly fight the Islamic State militant group in Syria, a move it was banking on to improve battered U.S.-Russia ties which are languishing at a post Cold War low. But the U.S. action caused consternation in Russia, angering the Kremlin and pro-Kremlin lawmakers who suggested it had dealt a significant blow to any hopes of doing business with Trump. "Putin views the U.S. strikes on Syria as aggression against a sovereign state in violation of the norms of international law and on a made-up up pretext," Peskov was cited as saying. "Washington's step will inflict major damage on U.S.-Russia ties." Peskov was also quoted as saying that Russia did not believe that Syria possessed chemical weapons and that the U.S. move would inevitably create a serious obstacle to creating an international coalition to fight terrorism, an idea that Putin has repeatedly pushed. Russia would now call for an urgent meeting of the U.N. Security Council to discuss the matter, the RIA news agency cited Viktor Ozerov, the head of the upper house of parliament's defence and security committee, as saying. No Russian citizens had been hurt in the strikes, another lawmaker said, while Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the upper house's international affairs committee, said it looked like Trump may have been bounced into approving military action by the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies. Story continues "One way or another, Russian cruise missiles are continuing to strike terrorists and American ones government troops who are heading the war against the terrorists," Kosachev wrote on social media. "I fear that with these approaches the hoped-for U.S.-Russian anti-terrorism coalition in Syria ... is breathing its last before it is even born." (Additional reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin; Editing by Sujata Rao/Alexander Winning) President Trump called on all civilized nations to help end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria as he announced that the U.S. had launched a military strike. Speaking from his Mar a Lago club in Florida, Trump told reporters that he had approved a targeted military strike on an airfield in Syria from which a chemical attack was launched on civilians earlier this week. It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons, he said. Read a full transcript of his remarks. My fellow Americans,On Tuesday, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad launched a horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians. Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror.Tonight I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched. It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention and ignored the urging of the U.N. Security Council.Years of previous attempts at changing Assad's behavior have all failed and failed very dramatically. As a result, the refugee crisis continues to deepen and the region continues to destabilize, threatening the United States and its allies.Tonight I call on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types. We ask for God's wisdom as we face the challenge of our very troubled world. We pray for the lives of the wounded and for the souls of those who have passed and we hope that as long as America stands for justice, that peace and harmony will in the end prevail.Good night and God bless America and the entire world. Thank you. This article was originally published on TIME.com Washington (AFP) - President Donald Trump's decision to strike the Syrian regime in retaliation for a chemical attack comes four years after his predecessor Barack Obama faced a similar challenge from Damascus -- and chose to back down. There was no doubt among the international community on August 21, 2013: Obama's "red line" had just been crossed in Syria with a chemical weapons attack outside Damascus that was almost certainly the work of Bashar al-Assad's regime. Two years earlier, Obama had vowed that the use of such weapons would "change my calculus" to justify military intervention in Syria. Britain and France agreed, embracing the president's rhetoric. So when the massacre took place in Ghouta, an eastern suburb of the Syrian capital where US intelligence said some 1,400 were killed by a sarin gas attack, all eyes turned toward Washington. Two days later, Obama said he was ready to strike. But to surprise in the United States and around the world, he said he would put any decision over military action in Syria to a vote in Congress, essentially ruling out any immediate attack. Then his ally British Prime Minister David Cameron -- who had also submitted a decision over military action to his country's lawmakers -- backed out after parliament voted against taking part. In the end, Obama's White House would never directly intervene militarily against the Assad regime, anxious to maintain the region's crumbling geopolitical and military balance. Washington instead agreed to a last-minute deal with Damascus brokered by Moscow to dismantle Syria's chemical weapons arsenal and ship it to Russia starting in October 2013. Under the aegis of the United Nations Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) -- awarded the Nobel Peace Prize that year -- the operation theoretically ended the Syrian government's ability to use chemical weapons against its own citizens or anyone else. Story continues - 'Proud' - Obama's controversial decision precipitated an avalanche of criticism in the United States and abroad for his paralysis over Syria. On Tuesday, following a new suspected chemical weapons attack that killed least 86 Syrian civilians -- including 27 children -- that Washington attributed to Assad's regime, Trump said his predecessor bore some responsibility. "These heinous acts are a consequence of the past administration's weakness and irresolution," he said in a statement. Obama had issued a "blank threat," Trump followed up on Wednesday, which "set us back a long ways." This week's attack, he said, "crosses many, many lines." On Thursday, Trump ordered a massive military strike against Syria in retaliation for the attack that Washington said involved a sarin-like nerve agent. Fifty-nine precision-guided missiles hit Shayrat Airfield in Syria, where the United States believes Tuesday's deadly attack was launched, targeting aircraft and runways at the base. - Tough decision - Obama's decision not to attack Syria upset Washington's allies, including French President Francois Hollande, whose relations with the US leader were permanently damaged. For his part, Obama said before stepping down in January that he was "proud" of his decision to refrain from military action in Syria. "The perception was that my credibility was at stake, that America's credibility was at stake," he told The Atlantic magazine. "And so for me to press the pause button at that moment, I knew, would cost me politically." "The fact that I was able to pull back from the immediate pressures and think through in my own mind what was in America's interest, not only with respect to Syria but also with respect to our democracy, was as tough a decision as I've made," he added. "I believe ultimately it was the right decision to make." After Tuesday's suspected attack on the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhun, Trump was standing in Obama's shoes from almost four years ago -- and he decided to step in a different direction. Remy Ma has revealed on social media that she has a new inspiration just two days after she slammed Nicki Minaj during an Instagram Live session. On Thursday, Remy Ma took to Instagram to share a selfie of herself holding a book by her newest inspiration, Claire Sulmers. The Love & Hip Hop star revealed in the caption that shes inspired by Sulmers new book, titled The Bomb Life. She also gushed about how the Fashion Bomb Daily founder and style influencer gave her a copy of the book, even though she initially told the latter that she wanted to buy it to show her support. Remy Mas latest Instagram post just comes days after she did an Instagram Live session to send a strong message to her trolls and bashers. In the process, the Terror Squad member threw some major shade at her biggest enemy these days. She apparently labeled Minaj as a dumb and wack rapper in her curse-filled rant. READ: Is Nicki Minaj going after Cardi B next? Remy Mas nasty remark was triggered by someone who joined the Instagram Live session to comment about Minaj. Clearly, this irritated the All The Way Up rapper so she told that user presumably a Minaj fan she doesnt care about whatever the Young Money artist is achieving. Remy then decided to block the troll since she just wanted to talk to her fans during the live stream. DJ Akademiks recorded Remy Mas Instagram Live session, and hes also shared a copy of it on the photo-sharing platform. Check out how Remy Ma handled the troll below. Meanwhile, Remy Ma has finally reunited with her husband Papoose early this week after spending time apart last weekend due to some working and personal engagements. Papoose even shared on social media the sweet gesture Remy Ma did for him while waiting at the Palm Springs International Airport. In the video clip he uploaded on Instagram, Papoose pokes fun at his wife for flashing a sign for him just like what drivers do in airports. Papoose then laughs while approaching Remy Ma. He also used the hashtag #gottaloveher in his caption for the post. Story continues Remy Ma Photo: Reuters/Danny Moloshok Related Articles Addis Ababa (AFP) - The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) called Friday for the "immediate and unconditional release" of opposition party members arrested last month in the Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti. Police detained 19 members of the Movement for Democratic Renewal and Development (MRD) in a move the Paris-based rights group said was a sign of the growing authoritarianism of President Ismail Omar Guelleh's government. While 10 people were later released without being charged, nine were accused of "illegal banking activity", which the FIDH said was related to a microcredit programme operated by the party that provided business financing to about 30 people. Five people were also charged with "illegal political activities" and incarcerated in the country's main prison. The FIDH said their attorney was not allowed to visit them in detention and was threatened with arrest during a meeting at the prosecutor's office. "Political repression has once more befallen Djibouti, where arrests of political opponents are now the norm," FIDH Vice-President Drissa Traore said in the statement. "The continued degradation of human rights remains a source of concern for the stability of the country." Guelleh has held power for 18 years in the country, strategically positioned on the Red Sea and home to several foreign military bases. He won a fourth term in April 2016 with more than 86 percent of the vote in an election that opposition parties denounced as an "electoral masquerade". By Abdi Sheikh and Feisal Omar MOGADISHU (Reuters) - A roadside bomb killed 10 people in a minibus in southern Somalia on Thursday, a military officer and residents said, blaming Islamist militants who denied planting the device. The blast in Golweyn village occurred hours after Somalia's president replaced his security chiefs and called on al Qaeda-affiliated al Shabaab militants to surrender within 60 days in return for education and jobs. "We have confirmed from residents there that at least 10 civilians died and 10 others were wounded," Colonel Hassan Mohamed, a military officer in a nearby village, told Reuters. "...al Shabaab controls Golweyn village and they planted bombs in all those roads." Al Shabaab governor for the Lower Shabelle region, Mohamed Abu Usama, said its fighters were not at the village, and put the number of dead at eight. "We do not control Golweyn village and its surroundings. It is a battlefield between our mujahideen (jihadist fighters) and the so-called government forces," he told Reuters by phone. Residents said earlier in the day that government and African Union peacekeeping troops (AMISOM) had conducted an operation in the area near where the blast occurred. Osman Ali, a shopkeeper in Bulamarer district where the minibus began its journey, said it had set off mid-afternoon. "This evening we are told it got burnt in Golweyn... We called the phones of the passengers but none gets through. My cousin was also on board," he told Reuters by phone. The group has been driven out of its strongholds in Somalia by AMISOM and Somali army offensives, although it still controls some towns and rural areas and often launches guerrilla-style assaults and bomb attacks in the capital Mogadishu. (Writing by George Obulutsa; Editing by Louise Ireland) London (AFP) - A Romanian woman who fell into the River Thames during last month's terror attack outside the British parliament has died in hospital, police said Friday, bringing the toll to five. Andreea Cristea, 31, was visiting London with her partner Andrei Burnaz, who intended to propose to her later that day, according to Romanian ambassador Dan Mihalache. She was knocked from Westminster Bridge as the attacker ploughed through pedestrians on March 22. Life support for Cristea was withdrawn on Thursday, the police said. "There are no words to even begin to describe the crushing pain and emptiness that is left in our hearts," her family and partner said in a statement. Khalid Masood, a 52-year-old convert to Islam known to the security services, drove at high speed into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge before launching a frenzied knife attack on a policeman guarding the parliament building. The rampage killed Leslie Rhodes, 75, a retired window cleaner; Aysha Frade, 44, a school administrator; Kurt Cochran, 54, an American tourist, and now Cristea. Masood fatally stabbed 48-year-old policeman Keith Palmer outside the House of Commons before being shot dead himself by an armed officer in the forecourt. - 'Brutally ripped away' - "Our beloved and irreplaceable Andreea -- wonderful daughter, sister, partner, dedicated friend and the most unique and life-loving person you can imagine -- was cruelly and brutally ripped away from our lives in the most heartless and spiritless way," Cristea's family and partner said. "She will always be remembered as our shining ray of light that will forever keep on shining in our hearts. "Andreea is now unfortunately not able to have part of the money that was raised for her recovery, so we would like to donate it to charity. She would not have it any other way." London Mayor Sadiq Khan said he was deeply saddened by Cristea's death. "Londoners hold her and her loved ones in our thoughts," he said. Story continues Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, England's highest cleric, tweeted: "Let us pray hope and comfort for her family". - Partner's rose tribute - Footage of the attack, in which around 50 people were injured, showed Masood's hire car speeding into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge and Cristea falling into the river below. Witnesses reported seeing a body lying face-down in the Thames in the wake of the assault. After being taken from the water and rushed to hospital for treatment, Cristea underwent surgery for a blood clot on the brain. Her partner had an operation on a broken foot but has since been discharged and attended a vigil on Westminster Bridge last week. Burnaz was pushed in a wheelchair to the scene of the attack where he placed a single rose. Britain's Prince William, his wife Kate and his brother Prince Harry spoke with survivors and the families of those killed in the attack at a memorial service on Wednesday. The royals joined those affected by the assault for a "Service of Hope" at Westminster Abbey, just across Parliament Square from the scene of the attack. Witnesses and emergency service workers involved in the response effort were among the 1,800 people who attended, along with the speakers of both houses of parliament. All 12 people arrested in connection with the attack have been released and face no further police action. Saint Petersburg (AFP) - The Russian authorities on Friday charged eight people with terrorism offences following the bomb attack on the Saint Petersburg metro which killed 13 people on Monday. A court in Saint Petersburg said six suspects, aged 20 to 39, would be held until June 2 while the investigation into the attack continued. They were arrested Thursday, and investigators said they found in one of the suspects' residences an explosive device "identical" to the one found at a metro station that was discovered shortly before another device exploded in a tunnel. They also recovered firearms and ammunition from the suspects' residences, according to Russia's Investigative Committee. They face charges of terrorism and accessory to terrorism. Two other suspected accomplices, a man and a woman, were arrested in Moscow on Thursday and have also been charged with terrorism, the TASS news agency said. One of those, a 24-year-old, had admitted to being in contact with the suspected bomber, 22-year-old Akbarjon Djalilov, according to local press reports. Djalilov's remains were found at the site of the blast and traces of his DNA were also discovered on a bag containing the bomb at another metro station that was successfully defused, investigators said. They have not yet determined any motive for the attack, and are looking into possible links with the Islamic State group, though it has not claimed responsibility for the attack. Security forces also arrested Wednesday in Saint Petersburg seven citizens from Central Asian countries who are suspected of recruiting "terrorists". But the arrests are not linked to Djalilov "for the moment", the authorities said. China's President Xi Jinping (R) and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin attend a welcoming ceremony at the Xijiao State Guesthouse, before the fourth Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) summit in Shanghai May 20, 2014. Trade between China and Russia is expected to reach $100 billion by 2015, Xi said on Tuesday, after meeting with Putin. The US on Thursday (April 6) launched dozens of missiles at a Syrian military airfield, in retaliation for the Assad regimes alleged use of chemical weapons that killed dozens of civilians earlier this week. US officials have said they have no doubt Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was responsible, although Syria has denied using chemical weapons. On the same day as the US strike, the UNs top decision-making body failed to do anything about the suspected toxic gas attack. In general, the body has been unable to act on Syria, mainly due to vetoes by Russia and China. Amnesty International said in February that the two nations displayed a callous disregard for the lives of millions of Syrians by vetoing a resolution at that time over Syrias suspected use of chemical weapons. Over the past six years, Russia has voted seven times against UN Security Council resolutions on Syria and the fighting raging there. A Russian ally, China has wielded its veto power six times. After this weeks chemical attack, Russia and China took similar, but slightly different stances about what should happen next. The latest chemical attack is reported to have taken place early Tuesday (April 4) in a rebel-held area in northwestern Syria, and killed some 70 people, including children. Both nations said a thorough investigation of the attack was needed before any party takes action. On April 6, Kremlin said in a statement that it is unacceptable to make groundless accusations against any party until a thorough and objective international investigation has been conducted. Russia has also suggested that the deaths occurred as a result of gas being released from an airstrike on a chemical weapons factory operated by terrorists, CNN has reported. Chinas Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, has stressed its position against the use of chemical weapons by anyone under any conditions for any purposes, and called for an objective and impartial investigation to identify those behind the attack in Syria. In a speech at a Security Council emergency meeting, Chinas UN ambassador Liu Jieyi said China was deeply shocked (link in Chinese) by the use of chemical weapons in Syria, adding that after an investigation by an independent body, the perpetrators should be brought to justice. Liu also accused his UK counterpart of distorting the solemn position of other countries by blaming the latest gas attack on Russia and Chinas previous vetoes in February. Story continues In the Thursday meeting, AFP reported, the UN Security Council discussed three separate draft resolutions relating to a full investigation by an independent Hague-based body which monitors the implementation of a UN convention against chemical weapons. But it didnt vote on any of them. According to AFP, Britain, France and the US proposed a draft resolution that calls for Syria to hand over information to investigators about its military operations on the day of the attack. Russia suggested it could veto the measure, and instead proposed a rival draft that doesnt demand the regimes cooperation. Ahead of the Thursday meeting, a spokeswoman with the Russian foreign ministry said that the US, France and Britain had planted an anti-Syrian draft resolution at the UN Security Council, using exclusively fake news and fabricated reports planted in the media. Russias deputy UN ambassador Vladimir Safronko echoed that line at a Security Council meeting. The third draft, from non-permanent Security Council members, is a compromise resolution that has met a cool response from the US but has won support from China, perhaps because Beijing fears the fallout of supporting ally Russia on its resolution, but also doesnt want to sign on to the US-proposed one. The US airstrike, in stark contrast to president Donald Trumps earlier non-interference stance over the Syria issue, was likely a major surprise to both Russia and China. The Pentagon said it had notified Russia shortly before the bombing, but it is unclear when Chinese president Xi Jinpingwho was having a dinner with Trump during the attackwas made aware of the action. The Kremlin said on Friday (April 7) that the US strike on Syria is an act of aggression against a sovereign country violating the norms of international law. The countrys foreign minister drew a comparison with the military invasion of Iraq in 2003, according to the Interfax news agency. This should make US Secretary of State Rex Tillersons visit to Moscow next week intense, especially if these questions come up (if the visit isnt postponed, that is). China, whose leader will be having a second day of talks with Trump on Friday, repeated on April 7 that it is opposed to any use of chemical weapons and again called for an investigation. Sign up for the Quartz Daily Brief, our free daily newsletter with the worlds most important and interesting news. More stories from Quartz: By Polina Nikolskaya and Denis Pinchuk ST PETERSBURG (Reuters) - Russian authorities raided a residential building in St Petersburg on Thursday and found explosives similar to those used by a suicide bomber who this week blew up a metro carriage killing 14 people, two security sources said. The discovery of the explosives raises the possibility that a string of bomb attacks was being planned in the city involving a group of plotters. The explosives were discovered when security officials raided an apartment building in the city. They detained several people, according to a neighbor who saw the detentions taking place. Russian investigators said they had detained several suspected accomplices of Akbarzhon Jalilov, born in mainly Muslim Kyrgyzstan, who is the suspected bomber in Monday's metro blast. It was not immediately clear if the suspected accomplices were the same people detained at the apartment building. Security officials searching the apartment complex where the men were detained also found an explosive device there. Bomb disposal experts made the device safe after evacuating people living in apartments on two stairwells. "We were told: the house is mined, get out quickly," one woman, who only gave her name as Tatiana and lives in the building, told Reuters. Another resident, who gave his name only as Anatoly, said he had seen police detain four young men occupying an eighth floor apartment next to his own. Vasily, another neighbor, said that "many people" had lived in the apartment and the detainees looked to be around 30. The two security sources said that the explosives discovered at the building, in the east of the city, bore similarities to a bomb which was found on Monday inside a fire extinguisher at St Petersburg's Ploshchad Vosstaniya metro station. That bomb did not detonate. State investigators said they believed the device had been left at Ploshchad Vosstaniya by Jalilov before he went on to another part of the subway network and detonated another bomb he was carrying. One of the security sources said the explosives found in the apartment building on Thursday was "was exactly like" the unexploded bomb found at the metro station. A second security source said that the quantities of explosives at the apartment and in the unexploded bomb were similar. HUNT FOR ACCOMPLICES Russian is still reeling after the Monday attack which took place on the day Russian President Vladimir Putin was visiting St Petersburg, his home city. The attack has put renewed focus on the large number of emigres from mostly Muslim central Asian states, who have moved to Russia to work. Russia's state investigative committee, a body with sweeping powers that is looking into the bomber's background, said in a statement it was looking into the backgrounds of people it suspected of being accomplices. It said it had identified several people of central Asian origin who had been in touch with Akbarzhon Jalilov, the main suspect. A search of the suspects' homes had turned up objects that were important for the investigation, it said. Russian news agency Interfax reported that investigators had detained several people suspected of being Jalilov's accomplices. It was unclear if those detained at the site of Thursday's bomb scare were the suspected accomplices identified by the investigative committee. None of the detainees' neighbors said they had ever seen Jalilov, who was born in Osh, southern Kyrgyzstan but held a Russian passport. Kyrgyz authorities have so far failed to turn up evidence of links between Jalilov and Islamist radicals, sources in the capital, Bishkek, and in Osh told Reuters. They said they could not confirm a report by Russian agency Interfax, that Jalilov had tried to cross into Syria via Turkey in February after a visit to Osh. Jalilov's relatives told Reuters the young man had spent about 10 days with his family during his visit and had not gone out much. (Additional reporting by Maria Tsvetkova and Alexander Winning in Moscow, Olzhas Auyezov in Almaty, and Hulkar Isamova in Osh, Kyrgyzstan; Writing by Sujata Rao; Editing by Andrew Osborn and Christian Lowe) Seoul (AFP) - Embattled Samsung Electronics said Friday it expects profits to jump by half in the first quarter, despite a smartphone recall fiasco and the arrest of its de facto head. The forecast will come as welcome news to the South Korean giant after a torrid period in which it had to ditch its flagship Galaxy Note 7 after several battery fires. The debacle cost the company billions of dollars in lost profit and hammered its global reputation and credibility. Its vice-chairman Lee Jae-Yong, heir to the parent Samsung group, has since been arrested and indicted for bribery, along with four other senior executives, in connection with a graft scandal that saw ex-president Park Geun-Hye impeached. On Friday, the world's largest memory chip and smartphone maker said it expected its operating profit in the January-March period at 9.9 trillion won ($8.8 billion), up 48.2 percent from a year earlier, thanks to strong sales of memory chips and display panels. It would mark the second-highest quarterly operating profit ever posted by Samsung. Its largest-ever quarterly operating profit was 10.1 trillion won, recorded in the third quarter of 2013. The jump in operating profits came despite Samsung sales only increasing by 0.44 percent to 50 trillion won on-year. Shares in the company were down 0.57 percent, closing at 208,000 won on heavy profit-taking. Kim Yong-Gu of Hana Financial Investment Co. said investors were also concerned that IT and automakers would be most affected if the US report on foreign currencies due next week adds to US pressure on South Korea to reduce its trade surplus. South Korea's top automaker Hyundai Motor also shed 2.36 percent Friday. - Margins - Analysts put the solid results down to fat margins in chips and OLED display panels. "This is better than expected", Greg Roh, an analyst with HMC Investment Securities told AFP. Semiconductor chips were estimated to have brought in some six trillion won profits amid strong chip prices, he said. Story continues "In the second quarter, Samsung's operating profit is expected to hit an all-time-high 12 trillion won", he said. For the whole of 2017, operating profits will be a record 47 trillion won, he added. Samsung holds back details about each business division's performance until it posts the finalised earnings report later this month. But analysts said the company was recovering fast from the recall fiasco, which caused operating profits in the IT and mobile segment to plunge. IBK Securities Co. Lee Seung-Woo said Samsungs earnings will further improve down the road as its revamped Galaxy S8 smartphone hits the market this month. "The second quarter sales are likely to grow 13 percent on-year to around 57.6 trillion won as operating profits are expected to be 12.1 trillion won, up 49 percent", Lee said. At its unveiling in New York last month, the large-screened Galaxy S8, which incorporates a native virtual assistant, won widespread praise. Analysts also said Samsung was likely to continue benefitting from the strong global demand for memory chips, especially NAND flash chips used for long-term data storage, throughout this year. Sales of OLED display panels for mobile devices will also remain strong, keeping Samsung's bottom line solid, they said. By Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Republicans on Thursday crushed a Democratic blockade of President Donald Trump's U.S. Supreme Court nominee in a fierce partisan brawl, approving a rule change dubbed the "nuclear option" to allow for conservative judge Neil Gorsuch's confirmation by Friday. With ideological control of the country's highest court at stake, the Republican-led Senate voted 52-48 along party lines to change its long-standing rules in order to prohibit a procedural tactic called a filibuster against Supreme Court nominees. That came after Republicans failed by a 55-45 tally to muster the 60-vote super-majority needed to end the Democratic filibuster that had sought to deny Gorsuch confirmation to the lifetime post. The Senate's action cleared the way to confirm Gorsuch by simple majority on Friday, with a final vote expected by late morning. Republicans control the Senate 52-48. The rule change was called the "nuclear option" because it was considered an extreme break with Senate tradition. Trump had encouraged Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to "go nuclear." Confirmation of Gorsuch would represent Trump's first major victory since taking office on Jan. 20, after setbacks on healthcare legislation and the blocking of his order that sought to ban travelers from several Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States. Senate confirmation of Gorsuch, a Colorado-based federal appeals could judge, would restore the nine-seat court's 5-4 conservative majority, enable Trump to leave an indelible mark on America's highest judicial body and fulfill a top campaign promise by the Republican president. Gorsuch, 49, could be expected to serve for decades. "This will be the first and last partisan filibuster of the Supreme Court," McConnell said on the Senate floor, accusing Democrats of trying to inflict political damage on Trump and to keep more conservatives from joining the high court. "In 20 or 30 or 40 years, we will sadly point to today as a turning point in the history of the Senate and the Supreme Court, a day when we irrevocably moved further away from the principles our founders intended for these institutions: principles of bipartisanship, moderation and consensus," Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor. Schumer ridiculed McConnell's contention that the Democratic action was unprecedented. He noted that the Republican-led Senate refused last year to consider Democratic former President Barack Obama's nomination of appellate judge Merrick Garland for the same seat that Trump selected Gorsuch to fill. With three of the court's justices 78 or older, Trump told reporters he hoped to appoint as many as four Supreme Court justices, a move likely to make it overwhelmingly conservative. "In fact, under a certain scenario there could even be more than that," Trump said aboard Air Force One en route to a meeting with China's president in Florida, adding that the Senate rule change would not alter how he picks court nominees. CONSERVATIVE INFLUENCE A conservative-majority court is more likely to support broad gun rights, an expansive view of religious liberty, abortion regulations and Republican-backed voting restrictions, while opposing curbs on political spending. The court also is likely to tackle transgender rights and union funding in coming years. A 60-vote threshold giving the minority party power to hold up the majority party has forced the Senate over the decades to try to achieve bipartisanship in legislation and presidential appointments. In the final procedural vote that paved the way for confirmation, three Democratic senators up for re-election in 2018 in states won by Trump last year - Indiana's Joe Donnelly, West Virginia's Joe Manchin and North Dakota's Heidi Heitkamp - broke with their party and voted with Republicans to bring about a confirmation vote, although they opposed the rule change. A fourth Democrat, Michael Bennet, who represents Gorsuch's home state of Colorado, voted with Republicans on Thursday's first procedural vote to bring debate to a close. But he stuck with fellow Democrats in opposing the final vote to end the filibuster, the one that succeeded following the rule change. Republicans have called Gorsuch superbly qualified and one of the nation's most distinguished appellate judges. Democrats accused him of being so conservative as to be outside the judicial mainstream, favoring corporate interests over ordinary Americans in legal opinions, and displaying insufficient independence from Trump. What Republicans did to Obama's nominee Garland was worse than a filibuster, Schumer said. Schumer said Republicans denied "the constitutional prerogative of a president with 11 months left in his term." "The nuclear option was used by Senator McConnell when he stopped Merrick Garland," Democratic Senator Richard Durbin said on the Senate floor. "What we face today is the fallout." McConnell blamed the escalation of fights over judicial nominees on the Democrats and their opposition starting three decades ago to nominees made by Republican former Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. Experts said eliminating the filibuster for Supreme Court appointments could make it more likely that presidents, with little incentive to choose centrist justices who could attract support from the other party, will pick ideologically extreme nominees in the future. Ending the filibuster also would make it easier for future Supreme Court nominees to be confirmed when the president and Senate leadership belong to the same party. The filibuster in one form or another dates back to the 19th century but assumed its current form in the 1970s. While Democrats opposed the rule change and accused Republicans of a power grab, it was their party that first resorted to the nuclear option when they controlled the Senate in 2013. In the face of Republican filibusters of Obama appointments, they barred filibusters for executive branch nominees and federal judges aside from Supreme Court justices but still allowed it for Supreme Court nominees and legislation. The Republican-backed rule change maintains the ability to filibuster legislation. (Reporting by Richard Cowan, Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung; Additional reporting by Steve Holland aboard Air Force One; Editing by Will Dunham and Bill Trott) WASHINGTON When it came time Thursday morning for Democratic senators to force the hand of their Republican colleagues, compelling them to employ the nuclear option to blow up the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, Sen. Chris Coons looked physically ill. As the senator from Delawares name was called during a vote to end debate on Judge Neil Gorsuchs nomination to the high court, Coons grimaced before voting no, along with all of his Democratic colleagues. On the other side of the aisle, 52 Republicans proceeded to vote in favor of doing away with the judicial filibuster, clearing the way for Gorsuch to be confirmed with a simple majority vote. When the procedural dust had settled, Republicans had, in effect, successfully scrapped the 60-vote requirement for Supreme Court nominees. As I look around at what has just happened on the Senate floor, I am sick with regret, Coons said. But many Republicans didnt seem inclined to celebrate. At the end of the day, you have a binary choice, and you have to make a decision as to which is worse. Youre either empowering a bad move by [New York Sen. Charles] Schumer or youre empowering a bad move on the Republican side. Neither one of them are good options, Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., told reporters afterward. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., also voted to blow up the filibuster, despite telling Yahoo News on Wednesday that a shift to House of Representatives-style majority rule was not democracy. On Thursday, a resigned McCain explained his vote by saying the move to end the filibuster was not going to be stopped, whether I voted for it or against it. Opposing his own partys contribution to the problem, McCain said, would have been the right thing to do if it would have made a difference. If there was bipartisan agreement on the Senate floor Thursday, it was with the fact that the worlds most deliberative body had been made less so, and Coons drove that point home in a floor speech just after the vote by reading the words of former Vice President Adlai Stevenson. Story continues The rules governing this body are founded deep in human experience. They are the result of centuries of tireless effort to conserve, to render stable and secure the rights and liberties which have been achieved through conflict, Coons said, quoting Stevenson. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., leaves the Senate chamber. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images) Coons admitted that he himself bore some of the blame for the dissolution of the filibuster on Supreme Court nominees and said he regretted voting in 2013 with then-Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to abolish the filibuster for lower court judges. He pledged to work with Republicans to try to preserve the filibuster for legislative votes, for which it now remains intact. Republicans are leery of such pledges. Democrats, after all, took partisan warfare over Supreme Court nominees to new levels in the late 80s and early 90s during the hearings for Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. Using the nuclear option in 2013, when Republicans filibustered many of then-President Obamas judicial nominees, only upped the ante. To be sure, not every senator in the chamber Thursday was equally upset about scrapping the judicial filibuster. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., in remarks before the voting began, went through the many years of history that brought the Senate to this point and made clear that he and many other Republicans felt they had too often responded moderately to years of Democratic aggression. Could we have Borked [President Bill Clintons] nominees? McConnell said. Sure. But we didnt. We resisted the calls for retribution. To hear McConnell tell it, the filibuster of Gorsuch was the latest escalation in the lefts never-ending judicial war, the most audacious yet, and it will not stand. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., was even more pointed this week in expressing how determined he and other Republicans were not to be, in their view, taken advantage of again. Dont expect to hear regret from me about it, Cotton said Tuesday in a floor speech. I am not racked with guilt. I am not anguished. I am really not even disappointed. The Republicans are prepared to use a tool the Democrats first abused in 2013 to restore a 214-year old tradition the Democrats first broke in 2003, and we are supposed to feel guilty? Please, Cotton said. Democrats complained that Republicans have played filibuster games as well, no more so than a year ago, following the death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. McConnell enraged Democrats by refusing to even allow Merrick Garland, Obamas nominee for the high court, to receive a hearing, much less a vote. Schumer called the move even worse than a filibuster. Whatever version of events best explains Thursdays decision to cast off a Senate tradition, it was clear that there was no shortage of blame to go around. Coons said he and the other 99 senators could not evade responsibility for what they had just done. We sometimes talk about the dysfunction of this body as if it is external to us, as if we bear no accountability for it. But at the end of the day, here we are, Coons said. In many ways, we have all let [the American people] down today. Read more from Yahoo News: NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) A young teenager saved her little sister's life in an overnight house fire that killed their parents and three siblings, a Tennessee sheriff said Friday. The fire was reported before midnight Thursday in Buchanan, along the Kentucky state line about 100 miles (160 kilometers) northwest of Nashville. At a news conference, Henry County Sheriff Monte Belew identified the girls as 13-year-old Lilly Pollack and 8-year-old Rose Pollack. Lilly woke up coughing in her bed in a smoky room and was able to get outside, said her family pastor, Randy Stephens of Sulphur Well Church of Christ. Lilly then heard someone calling from inside the home, so she stepped in, got Rose out and they ran to their grandmother's house next door and called 911, the sheriff said. "We are calling both of those individuals heroes," Belew said. Lilly tried to rescue the rest of her family, but couldn't get back inside again because of the intense flames. Paris Landing Volunteer Fire Department Chief Reggie Coles said the home was already two-thirds engulfed when firefighters arrived. The victims were likely already deceased, he said, and firefighters couldn't get into the house because of the raging fire. Afterward, officials couldn't find any smoke detectors in the charred home. Coles called it the "worst tragedy I've ever seen in my 40 years in the fire service." Belew said parents Jimmy Pollack and Carrie Pollack, and their children, 14-year-old Jimmy Dale Pollack Jr.; 3-year-old Callie Pollack; and 4-year-old Ivy Pollack died in the fire. Rose had minor burns to the neck, face and arms and was taken to the hospital, Belew said. Officials don't view the fire as suspicious. They are still investigating the cause, which could be faulty wiring or a wood stove. Stephens, who has talked with Lilly after the fire, said she's an "outstanding young lady" who is going to be OK, even though she'll struggle with the loss of her family. Story continues "She's still in shock, very much so, I think," Stephens said. "And she's just doing what she feels like she has to do to help grandmother, and also to try to get ready for her little sister to come home." Lilly and Rose will be living with their grandmother. The sheriff's office set up a donation account in the grandmother's name at a local bank. "We're a small rural, west Tennessee county, and that's kind of what we do, is we help each other," Belew said. "It's a tough day in Henry County. I can't think of any time that we've lost five Henry Countians in such a tragic event." But it could've been a completely different story if the family had smoke detectors, the sheriff said. "There's some things that we need to just take care of," Belew said. ___ An earlier version of the story incorrectly said the fire was reported early Friday. It was actually reported late Thursday. With Adam Rawnsley Strike one. President Donald Trump performed an abrupt about face from previous policy statements decrying foreign wars and promoting cooperation with Russia Thursday night by launching 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at an airbase in Syria, deepening American involvement in the civil war there while infuriating Russia, a country he had long said he wanted to find common ground with in fighting the Islamic State. The strikes came in response to a chemical weapons attack the Syrian government launched against civilians on Tuesday, which killed 70 people and sickened hundreds more. The Syrian Ministry of Defense said Friday that six people were killed in the American bombardment, which also damaged several Russian-made aircraft, according to initial reports. What does this mean? As of Friday morning, its not clear exactly what the administration seeks to achieve in Syria, FPs Paul McLeary writes. Just a week ago, it signalled a willingness to let Assad continue in power or why a limited strike on a single airfield would somehow change the calculus of the Syrian leader, who has deployed every weapon in his arsenal to crush the uprising that began in 2011. But shifting the ongoing U.S. military effort in Syria to target the regime of Bashar al Assad and his forces, rather than the Islamic State, would be legally and operationally tricky, FP notes in another analysis. Syrias air defenses are robust, existing legal authorities to fight Islamist terrorists likely wouldnt apply to a sovereign state like Syria, and Syrian, Iranian, and other forces backed by Tehran could make life difficult for the 1,000 U.S. troops on the ground in northern Syria. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters Thursday night that there has been no change American policy on Assad. But he went after Moscow hard, charging, either Russia has been complicit or Russia has been simply incompetent, in keeping the Syrian government to its promise to destroy all of its chemical weapons. Tillerson is due in Moscow next week for a planned visit with top Kremlin officials. Story continues From Russia with Tillerson also called the strike on the airbase, from which the chemical weapons attack was launched, proportional. But Russian President Vladimir Putin disagrees. A Kremlin spokesman said Friday that the Russian leader considers the American strikes against Syria an aggression against a sovereign government in violations of the norms of international law, and under a far-fetched pretext. U.S. Defense officials have confirmed that the U.S. military communicated with their Russian counterparts in the hours before the attack, warning them off since Russian troops and helicopters are based at the airfield. On Friday, Moscow cancelled its involvement in a critical hotline that U.S. and Russian military officials have maintained since 2015 which allows officers from both countries to speak on a daily basis to ensure their fighter jets stay away from one another over Syria. Russian response. The Russian frigate Admiral Grigorovich, entered the Mediterranean on Friday, according to Russian news outlet TASS, and is heading toward Tartus, the Russian port in Syria. The ship is armed with Kalibr cruise missiles, a government official said. A Kremlin official added that Moscow is undertaking a number of measures aimed at strengthening and improving the effectiveness of the Syrian air defense systemin order to protect the vital parts of the Syrian infrastructure. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also slammed the attack on Friday, calling it an act of aggression under a completely far-fetched pretext. He compared it to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, when the US and the UK, along with some of their allies, invaded Iraq without the consent of the UN Security Council and in violation of international law. From the ground. Syrian state TV has been broadcasting what is says is amateur footage of the impact last night. A Russian reporter from Russia 24 visited the airfield Friday morning, and posted pictures and video to his social media accounts showing damaged runways and burned out fighter planes sitting in their bunkers. A longer clip is available on YouTube. And heres more from Russian television that shows footage of the base taken by a Russian drone after the attack. Welcome to SitRep. Send any tips, thoughts or national security events to paul.mcleary@foreignpolicy.com or via Twitter: @paulmcleary or @arawnsley. Xi has landed. Chinese President Xi Jinping is in the U.S. and at Mar-a-Lago for his first visit with President Trump. The two leaders spoke over a dinner but so far appear not to have made any headway on the issues facing Beijing and Washington. At a press conference, Trump quipped that so far Ive gotten nothing, absolutely nothing to report on discussions between the two leader but that the two had developed a friendship. Issues like North Koreas provocative ballistic missile tests, Chinas territorial claims in the South China Sea, and trade are on the agenda for the meeting, but Trump has struck a noticeably milder tone towards Xi than the strident rhetoric hes traditionally used to describe China. Island chess. Meanwhile, in the South China Sea, China has sent a fighter jet to an island in the South China Sea also claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan. The Center for Strategic and International Studies Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative obtained satellite imagery showing a Chinese J-11 fighter parked on Woody Island in the Paracel Island. China has sent military aircraft to the island before on a rotational basis, but the J-11s appearance marks the first known appearance during the Trump administration. Marines United with Russian cybercriminals. A Russian cybercrime forum has obtained a cache of revenge porn shared by Marines on social media, raising questions about potential blackmail of U.S. military personnel. Military Times reports that AlphaBay, a Russian dark web cybercrime forum accessible only through the Tor anonymity service, is now offering pornographic images of American civilians and troops previously shared by the Marines United, a Facebook group of active duty and retired Marines currently under investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Investigations. The FBIs investigation of the Trump campaigns possible connections to Russian intelligence dates as far back as the summer of 2016, the New York Times reveals in a new scoop. The intelligence community began briefing congressional leaders in late August, with former Director of Central Intelligence John Brennan saying that members of the Trump campaign may be working to facilitate Moscows covert involvement in the election. The FBI, however, had begun an investigation into the issue a month earlier but did not brief Congress at the time. FBI officials initially didnt share the CIAs analysis that Russia was trying to help the Trump campaign win the election, but came around to the conclusion shortly before the election. Theyll be back. The formed head of the Justice Departments National Security Division warns in a new opinion piece that Russian hackers will be back again to meddle in the 2020 presidential election. Over at Politico, John Carlin writes that the Russian hacking that took place against the 2016 election might just be the opening salvo of even more sophisticated attacks, pointing to statements from FBI Director James Comey NSA Director Adm. Mike Rogers indicating they expect Moscow will reprise their role in the 2016 election. In response, Carlin argues that the U.S. should beef up its cyber defenses and create a less politically fraught process lead by career Justice Department officials to provide warning about foreign interference attempts. And finally. Thursday was the centenary of Americas entrance into World War I. To mark the occasion, the Washington Post put together a series of heretofore unpublished photos of American troops in Europe during the war. SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) - Six people were killed and two were reported missing in India's northern region of Kashmir on Friday, after heavy rain and snowfall swept the region, setting off avalanches and turning mountain rivers into raging torrents. Helicopters were deployed to rescue people cut off by flash floods that revived memories of 2014, when the Jhelum River flowing through the region's main city, Srinagar, burst its banks, swamping homes and killing 200 people. Snowfalls triggered multiple avalanches, defense spokesman Rajesh Kalia told Reuters. "A post in Batalik sector was buried," he added. "Two out of five soldiers have been rescued. A rescue operation for three soldiers was in progress and three bodies have been recovered." In the Poonch region, an Indian Air Force helicopter was guided by a soldier holding a flare toward a group of villagers stranded on the far bank of a river. They climbed a rope ladder into the craft, which then flew them to safety. Rajiv Pandey, senior superintendent of police in Poonch, said 17 people were evacuated from the area. In Srinagar, the summer capital of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, some low-lying districts along the Jhelum were swamped but residents said the river was starting to recede. "We are relieved as the water level is receding and the rains are reducing," said one resident. "We are praying that rain should stop." (Reporting by Fayaz Bukhari and Reuters Television; Writing by Douglas Busvine; Editing by Clarence Fernandez) By Chris Kahn and James Oliphant NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republicans generally agree that politicians should not enrich themselves while running the country. Yet most think it is okay for President Donald Trump to do so. Democrats largely support the idea of government-run healthcare. But their support plummets when they learn that Trump once backed the idea. At a time of already deep fissures among American voters on political, cultural and economic issues, Trump further polarizes the public as soon as he wades into the debate, according to the results of a Reuters/Ipsos poll. The poll suggests any effort to reach a consensus on key policy issues could be complicated simply by Trump's involvement. The survey from Feb. 1 to March 15 of nearly 14,000 people asked respondents to consider a series of statements Trump has made on taxes, crime and the news media, among other issues. In many cases, the data showed that people will orient their opinions according to what they think of Trump. Republicans, for example, were more likely to criticize American exceptionalism the notion that the United States holds a unique place in history - when told that Trump once said it was insulting to other countries. They were more likely to agree that the country should install more nuclear weapons, and they were more supportive of government spending for infrastructure, when they knew that Trump felt the same way. Democrats moved in the opposite direction. They were less supportive of infrastructure spending, less critical of the judiciary and less likely to agree that urban crime was on the rise when they knew that those concerns were shared by Trump. For a graphic on the poll results, see http://tmsnrt.rs/2o5nbfF Im basically in disagreement with everything he says, said Howard House, 58, a Democrat from Jacksonville, Florida, who took the poll. Ive almost closed my mind to the guy. Trump is not the first president to polarize the public. A 1995 poll by the Washington Post found that Democrats appeared to favor legislative action when they thought it was then-President Bill Clintons idea, and a 2013 survey by Hart Research Associates showed that both positive and negative attitudes about the 2010 Affordable Care Act intensified when called by its other name, Obamacare. But previous presidents were more popular than Trump at this point, according to the Gallup polling service, and they may have been better positioned to address the public divide because of it. Gallup had Trump at a 42 percent approval rating on Tuesday. He was as low as 35 percent last week. That leaves Trump facing a largely disapproving electorate, even as the White House signals that in the coming months it wants to pass a sweeping tax-reform package, a large infrastructure plan, and perhaps try again to supplant the Affordable Care Act. The White House said that Trump has tried to reach out to those who did not support him during the campaign in an attempt to build political consensus. The door to the White House has been open to a variety of people who are willing to come to the table and have honest discussions with the President about the ways we can make our country better, a White House spokeswoman wrote in an email. THE HYPER-PARTISAN ERA OF TRUMP Poll respondents were split into two groups. Each received nearly identical questions about statements Trump has made in recent years. One group, however, was not told the statements came from Trump. The poll then asked if people agreed or disagreed with those statements. In a few cases, Trump made little to no impact on the answers. But most of the time the inclusion of his name changed the results. A series of questions about conflicts of interest produced the biggest swings. Some 33 percent of Republicans said it was okay if an official financially benefits from a government position. However, when a separate group was asked the same question with Trumps name added in, more than twice as many Republicans 70 percent said it was okay. When interviewed afterward, some respondents said they knew they were making special exceptions for Trump. Susie Stewart, a 73-year-old healthcare worker from Fort Worth, Texas, said it came down to trust. While most politicians should be forbidden from mixing their personal fortunes with government business, Stewart, who voted for Trump, said the president had earned the right to do so. "He is a very intelligent man, Stewart said. Hes proved himself to be one hell of a manager. A builder. I think he has the business sense to do whats best for the country. On the other side of the political spectrum, House, the Democrat from Florida and a Hillary Clinton supporter, said he also made an exception for Trump. But in this instance it meant that House disagreed with everything Trump supported. If Trump said the sky was blue, Im going to go outside and check, he said. It is impossible to say exactly what motivates people to answer a certain way in a political poll, said John Bullock, an expert in partisanship at the University of Texas at Austin. Some respondents may have looked past the question and answered in a way that they thought would support or oppose Trump, Bullock said. But he said it was also likely that others simply have not thought deeply about the issue and are looking to Trump as a guide for how to answer. They think of him either as a man who shares their values or someone who manifestly does not, Bullock said. (Editing by Jason Szep and Paul Thomasch) Whether you have to move or you want to move, settling into a retirement community can be a major adjustment. "It's more than picking furnishings," says Monique Eliezer, chief officer of sales, marketing and strategy for Ingleside retirement communities. To make a successful transition, senior living experts recommend spending less time worrying about floor plans and more time doing the following: [Read: 8 Things Your Retirement Community Won't Tell You.] Consider your future needs. As seniors age, they often need more services. Patrick Simasko, principle of Simasko Law in Mount Clemens, Michigan, urges his clients to think long term. That means having a plan to pay for more intensive care in the future or selecting a community where different levels of care are offered on the same campus. He also encourages people not to write off the idea that they might someday need advanced care. "Every nursing home is full of moms who were never going into a nursing home," Simasko says. Take more than a tour. Vassar Byrd, CEO of Rose Villa Senior Living, says seniors need to be doing more than talking to the marketing staff before selecting their new home. "A lot of places have similar services, but they feel totally different," she says. Instead, ask to participate in community activities and talk to as many current residents as possible. Then, once seniors have decided on a community, they should begin to integrate with it immediately. "The relationship should start as soon as they reserve their apartment," Eliezer says. Stopping by for meals is one common way many people get to know a community and its residents prior to the date they physically move in. Read the fine print. Carefully read the contract and residential agreements. Understand the services offered, your obligations and the bottom-line costs involved before signing anything. Understand how your routine will change. Moving into a retirement community often means sharing spaces with other residents and adapting to new routines. For instance, rather than eating whenever you'd like, there may be scheduled meal times. Byrd says these changes can be an adjustment for people who are used to living on their own. Story continues Socialize your dog. Not only do people need to be prepared for lifestyle changes, but their pets may, too. Dogs, in particular, may need some extra help to act appropriately in a communal setting. Byrd notes Rose Villa has about 50 dogs on its campus, and a pet owner support team is available to help these animals successfully settle into their new environment. [Read: 10 Factors to Consider Before Moving to a Retirement Community.] Don't sell the house too quickly. Simasko says children often sell the family home after mom and dad move into a retirement community. That could be a mistake. It's not because the parents might want to move back, but because "you just converted a protected asset," Simasko says. Seniors who need nursing home care and can't afford it can apply for Medicaid coverage. While a home is excluded from assets when determining Medicaid eligibility, cash and other investments are not. That means a family would have to deplete all proceeds from the sale of the house before Medicaid coverage could begin. If the house has already been sold, Simasko says it may be possible to use the money to purchase a new home and reestablish residency. Don't try to squeeze all your stuff into a new space. Showing up to your new -- and likely smaller -- space with everything from your old home is a mistake. However, don't look at downsizing and decluttering as a negative. "The opportunity to rethink your lifestyle and living space can be a fun thing," Byrd says. Get your paperwork in order. Everyone should have a power of attorney and a health care designee in place, but it is especially important before moving to a senior living community. Make sure the management knows who you've named so they can contact that person in the event of an emergency. Simasko says many people choose an adult child for these roles, and seniors should make their decision carefully. "You want a good, trusting kid," he says. A durable power of attorney will have access to all your finances. "If it's the bad kid, there goes all the money." [See: 10 Retirement Hot Spots in the U.S.] Move sooner rather than later. Senior living experts say the best way to ensure a smooth transition is to make the move early. "It's horrible when someone has to move after a traumatic experience," Eliezer says. If people wait until a hospitalization, illness or injury forces them out of their home, they may find they have limited options or don't have time to fully explore the available communities. By starting early, people can move on their own terms into a community that is the best fit for them. By Stephanie van den Berg THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court urged judges on Friday to report South Africa for defying an arrest warrant for Sudan's president, saying failure to do so could render the court unable to perform its most basic duties. South Africa told the International Criminal Court it believed it was under no obligation to arrest Omar Hassan al-Bashir during a visit to South Africa two years ago even though he was wanted by the permanent war crimes court. The ICC's warrant did not outweigh a South African law that grants sitting heads of state immunity from prosecution, South African legal representative Dire Tladi told judges at a hearing to discuss Pretoria's failure to arrest al-Bashir in 2015. "There is no duty under international law and the Rome Statute to arrest a serving head of state of a non-state-party such as Omar al-Bashir," Tladi argued. Prosecutors said judges should refer South Africa to the United Nations Security Council or the court's assembly of member states for defying its arrest warrant. "Without cooperation from the state parties in the arrest and surrender (of suspects) the court will be unable to carry out its most basic function," said prosecutor Julian Nicholls. The row between South Africa and the ICC over its failure to arrest al-Bashir, who is accused of genocide and war crimes, led to Pretoria's notifying the United Nations last year that it would withdraw from the court. Earlier this year, a South African court blocked the move over procedural issues, but the government has said it will push ahead with the withdrawal. Al-Bashir denies the charges against him. Though Sudan is not a member of the ICC, the court has jurisdiction by virtue of a 2005 U.N. Security Council resolution referring the conflict to the Hague-based permanent war crimes court. Friday's hearing was called so that the court could gather information on whether it should report South Africa either to the ICC's governing body, the Assembly of State Parties, or to the U.N. Security Council for non-compliance with the court. (Reporting by Stephanie van den Berg, editing by Thomas Escritt and Ralph Boulton) By Mfuneko Toyana JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's African National Congress "closed ranks" around President Jacob Zuma after two key allies of the ruling party called for his resignation following a cabinet reshuffle that cost the country one of its investment-grade credit ratings. The rand fell more than 1 percent and bonds weakened after ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe told a news briefing on Wednesday that the ANC would not support removing Zuma, whose party leadership role ends in December. Zuma's presidential term will finish in 2019. Last Thursday's dismissal of finance minister Pravin Gordhan, a totem of policymaking stability for many foreign investors, was criticised by unions, civil society groups and the opposition, and has revived pressure on Zuma to quit. Since taking office in 2009, the 74-year-old president has repeatedly denied accusations of corruption, and senior ANC officials have backed him. S&P Global Ratings cited Gordhan's departure as one reason for its downgrade of South Africa to "junk" in an unscheduled credit rating review on Monday, a move that is set to push up the country's borrowing costs. Mantashe said the ANC had accepted the "irretrievable breakdown of the relationship" between Zuma and Gordhan as the reason the finance minister was sacked. Gordhan's removal has deepened a rift within the ruling party, with Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, a leading candidate to replace Zuma as ANC president, describing it on Friday as "totally, totally unacceptable". The South African Communist Party (SACP) and the country's biggest trade union, Cosatu, both historic allies of the ANC, have called on Zuma to step down following the sacking. CLOSE RANKS Mantashe had also openly criticised Zuma's actions but he painted a different picture on Wednesday, saying the ANC would "close ranks" around the president and the party would iron out its differences with Cosatu and SACP. The events that unfolded after the reshuffle had "created anxiety and undue confusion as a result of the discordant views, in particular of the National Officials of the ANC," Mantashe said, referring to the criticism directed at Zuma. "The officials ... have further acknowledged that their public dissonance on the matter was a mistake that should not be committed again." Half of the ANC's "Top Six" group of officials, including Ramaphosa and Mantashe, had expressed disquiet at Gordhan's sacking. But Zuma, also one of the six, has the support of two other members and influential groups in the ANC, sources say. Analysts said Zuma remains in favour among grassroots members and can count on the backing of large sections of the party, including the youth and women's leagues. Zuma is a charismatic figure who has dodged one political minefield after another. He has successfully portrayed himself as a man of the people, loves to sing and dance at public rallies and enjoys wide support from the ANC rank-and-file. A former member of the ANC's Umkhonto we Sizwe military wing, Zuma rose to become head of intelligence, a post that gave him leverage with allies and opponents alike. Zuma has used his network to sideline opponents to shore up his position, critics who worked with him have said. Zuma said on Tuesday in his first public comments since the reshuffle that people should remain calm. The main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) party said it had filed an urgent court application to have Zuma's decision to remove Gordhan and deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas set aside on the grounds that it was unlawful. The DA has planned a march on Friday against Zuma in the commercial hub Johannesburg, saying his decision to reshuffle the cabinet is likely to hurt the economy and cost yet more jobs. The party's no-confidence motion against Zuma in parliament will be held on April 18, parliament said. The ANC has a commanding majority in the national assembly. Similar votes have failed in the past. "There is no ANC member who will vote for an opposition motion," Mantashe said. Political analysts were not surprised by the ruling party's stance on Wednesday. "Zuma stays. Rand drops," political analyst Daniel Silke said, while another political commentator, Nic Borain, said Zuma had reasserted his authority. "Quite frankly he still controls the decision-making organs of the ANC," he said. INTELLIGENCE REPORT Deputy Secretary-General Jessie Duarte said Zuma had told top ANC officials in December of his decision to dismiss Gordhan, but that they had persuaded him to delay the action. Duarte told the news briefing Zuma would meet the party's integrity commission on April 9, but gave no details. The ANC formed the commission in 2013 to help protect its image and deal with members of the party alleged to have behaved improperly. Mantashe said the ANC had confidence in new Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba, who would retain policies set under Gordhan. Mantashe denied that Gordhan was fired solely because of an intelligence report that accused him and Jonas of plotting with banks in London to undermine the South African economy, saying it was not the only reason for Gordhan's removal. Ramaphosa had accused Zuma of removing Gordhan on the basis of a "spurious" report and local media have also reported its existence. "If the relationship has broken down ... you go for a divorce," Mantashe said. (Writing by James Macharia; Editing by Janet Lawrence) South Korea test-fired a nearly 500-mile range ballistic missile capable of reaching anywhere in North Korea, Yonhap News Agency reported Thursday, citing, defense sources. This comes after Pyongyang launched a ballistic missile off its east coast Wednesday. "There was a test-firing recently of a Hyunmoo-type ballistic missile with a range of 800 kilometers [497 miles] at the Anheung test site of the Agency for Defense Development under the wing of the defense ministry," an unidentified source told Yonhap. "It's assessed that it was successful." The Souths Defense Minister Han Min Koo supervised the launch, according to the report. If fired from South Koreas southernmost province of Jeju, the missile can reach northernmost North Korean city of Sinuiju, the South Korean news agency added. On Wednesday, North Korea fired a KN-15 ballistic missile also known as Pukguksong-2 triggering criticism from South Korea and Japan. The missile flew about 37 miles with maximum altitude of over 117 miles before splashing in international waters, according to South Koreas Joint Chiefs of Staff. The missile test also came ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinpings official trip to the U.S. on April 6 and April 7 to meet President Donald Trump. China has consistently urged Washington for a negotiation to settle the conflict with North Korea . Pyongyangs missile test also came days after it warned it will "mercilessly smash the enemy's [South Korea and the U.S.] moves with its own style of special operation and preemptive attack" in response to the joint drills by South Korea-U.S. special operations teams in Seoul that began March 1. "The ill-famed units is mainly aimed at carrying out the 'beheading operation' for 'removing the headquarters of the North' and the 'preemptive attack' operation for blowing up the nuclear and rocket bases," the Kim Jong Un-led regime said at the time. Related Articles Tune in live with Yahoo News at 3 p.m. ET Friday as our panel offers insight and analysis and answers your questions about Thursday nights U.S. missile strike in Syria. Yahoo Global News Anchor Katie Couric will be joined by Chief Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff, who interviewed Syrian leader Bashar Assad in Syria in February; Washington Correspondent Olivier Knox; and Yahoo News Anchor Bianna Golodryga, who has covered U.S.-Russia relations extensively. The panel will talk about what the military assault means for President Trump moving forward and we want to hear from you. Please add your questions for the group in the comments section below and the experts will answer some of them during our live show. By Deborah J. Nelson and Ryan McNeill WASHINGTON(Reuters) - Sage Products has been generous to science, and science has been kind to Sage Products. This happy relationship blossomed more than a decade ago, when Sage funded a study at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago to test the efficacy of the companys new antibacterial wipes on hospital patients. Researchers published their findings in 2006: Used daily, they said, Sages wipes, soaked with a powerful germ-killing chemical called chlorhexidine, were more than twice as effective as sponge baths at preventing the spread of vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus. Thats a group of drug-resistant bacteria that infect thousands of hospital patients every year, killing hundreds. Shortly after, Rush received a $1 million donation from the family foundation of Sages founder, Vincent W. Foglia. The money was earmarked for research by the senior scientist on the study, Dr Robert A. Weinstein, an infectious-disease specialist at Rush. Since then, Sage has provided funding and millions of dollars in wipes for studies by Weinstein and his colleagues. And in that time, Weinstein and his colleagues have published 11 articles on six trials that endorse daily washing of patients with Sages patented wipes an off-label use, as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the wipes only for cleaning patients before surgery. Relationships like the one between Sage and researchers are common in the infection-control business. Such ties have helped propel the popularity of chlorhexidine products in hospitals and other healthcare settings where drug-resistant superbugs are a chronic problem. In 2014, sixty-three percent of hospitals surveyed by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said they routinely bathed patients with chlorhexidine. But as use of chlorhexidine products has grown, so have concerns about their effectiveness and safety and about the role of industry-backed research in promoting them. The industry money funding chlorhexidine research muddies the message of the results, in the view of many health experts. Dr Martin Blaser, a professor in New York Universitys Department of Microbiology and chair of the Presidential Advisory Council on Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria, said its still impossible to tell whether washing patients daily with such a potent biocide is wise or effective. Indiscriminate use could trigger resistance in harmful bugs or kill off beneficial bacteria, with dangerous consequences, he said. We know antibiotic-resistant infections are out of control. We need something that works, Blaser said. But we want to know it works. Weinstein sits on the same presidential advisory council that Blaser chairs. SEVERE REACTIONS Chlorhexidines potential risks came to the fore in February, when the FDA issued a warning after registering a jump in reports of allergic reactions, including a couple of deaths, and other adverse events linked to the chemical. And even chlorhexidine isnt contamination-proof. In 2008 and again last year, Sage issued massive recalls of its chlorhexidine cloths that were tied, ironically, to dozens of infections by Burkholderia cepacia, a pathogen that wreaks havoc on hospital patients. The 2008 recall forced a temporary shutdown of a Sage-funded study, but not before six patients participating in the trial contracted the infection as a result of the contamination. A 2013 article on that study, co-written by Weinstein and published in the New England Journal of Medicine, referred to the recall as a treatment interruption and concluded that the cloths were safe and effective without mentioning the six B. cepacia infections. References to the infections were removed from the original manuscript for brevity and because they didnt directly relate to the wipes effectiveness in reducing drug-resistant infections, said Dr Michael W. Climo, lead author of the study and a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. Despite all the promising study results, the number of hospital-acquired drug-resistant infections has remained stubbornly high. In 2009, the federal government launched a campaign to reduce bloodstream infections by the notorious superbug methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in hospital patients 25 percent by 2013. That failed. The new goal: Halve infection rates by 2020. A Reuters analysis of federal data found that after a small decline in the rate of MRSA infections in hospital patients from 2013 to 2014, the rate increased slightly the following year. The CDC confirmed the increase and said it is being followed closely as new data become available. It could be a one-year anomaly in a longer-term decline rather than a meaningful increase, said CDC spokeswoman Melissa Brower. As Reuters reported last year in its series The Uncounted, the United States has no reliable means of tracking all superbug infections and deaths. In its own analysis, Reuters found that, taken together, more than a dozen superbugs the CDC has labeled grave threats to public health continue to kill tens of thousands of people every year -- in addition to hundreds of thousands of nonfatal infections. BIG SOLUTIONS Hospitals are understandably eager to find ways to beat back the infections, which waste time, money and lives. But hospitals tend to like these mass-produced, one-size-fits-all solutions, said Blaser. Dr Didier Pittet, director of the World Health Organizations Collaborating Centre on Patient Safety, said that in the United States, the marketing behind the use of chlorhexidine is huge. Scientists who receive industry funding insist their research is not swayed by their patrons, and point out that industry funding is essential, absent more support from government. Weinstein said Sage has had no involvement in his work and hasnt influenced his conclusions. The $1 million from the Foglia foundation was used for fellowships and studies, including one involving Sages wipes, Weinstein said. Foglia, through his foundations attorney, said that the gift had no strings attached and that Weinstein was directed only to do the most he could for the most people with this. Weinstein said Sages support hasnt deterred him from publishing negative results about its products. He has produced one such critique, he said. It involved a small trial at Rush in 2006, which appeared as a brief report in a European journal in 2010. The report said daily bathing with the wipes was no better than soap and water at reducing infections from central-line catheters in a surgical intensive care unit. Weinstein also noted that the CDC co-sponsored many of his studies, so I had someone looking over my shoulder. From 2000 to 2004, Weinstein served as chair of the Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee, which advises the CDC on infection-prevention guidelines. Besides providing funding and products for studies, companies often pay researchers directly for consulting and speaking engagements. Weinstein said he received a few thousand dollars from Sage but stopped accepting speaker fees a decade ago. Corporate ties to infection-control research extends beyond chlorhexidine. Manufacturers of diagnostic tests have financially supported scientists whose studies found that testing and treating patients upon hospital admission significantly reduced MRSA infections. Hospital garment makers have helped to fund scientists who found gowns and gloves highly effective in combating MRSA. Researchers involved in those studies have said that the companies were not involved in the trials and that their support did not influence the results. Europe has been faster to recognize chlorhexidines potential risks. Studies from the region single out potentially fatal allergic reactions to the chemical as a serious, under-reported threat. Britains Medicines & Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency issued a warning about the dangerous reactions, called anaphylaxis, in 2012. The number of adverse events related to chlorhexidine reported to the agency increased from 14 in 2007 to 117 in 2016. ADVERSE EVENTS In the United States, the FDAs chlorhexidine warning in February came after a similar spike in incidents reported to the agencys Federal Adverse Event Reporting System. Under the system, drug manufacturers are required to report when their products are suspected of causing illness or injury. A Reuters analysis of FDA data found that chlorhexidine was listed as the primary suspect in an average of 85 adverse events a year reported from 2007 through 2014. Then, in 2015, the number jumped to 183, and then to 226 in 2016. The FDA said that a reported event is not necessarily due to the product, and that the agency does not receive reports for every adverse event that occurs. Anaphylaxis or shock was cited in the FDAs adverse event reports 120 times. Skin irritation, rashes and burns were mentioned 325 times. The tally included 48 life-threatening events and seven deaths. About a third of the serious allergic reactions were attributed to ChloraPrep, a pre-surgical chlorhexidine applicator previously marketed by CareFusion and now by Becton, Dickinson & Co. A spokesman for BD, which acquired CareFusion for $12.2 billion in 2015, said in an email that adverse events like anaphylaxis are rare occurrences compared to the BILLIONS of uses of the product since it entered the market in 2000. In 2014, the U.S. Justice Department announced that CareFusion had paid $40.1 million to settle allegations that it gave $11 million in kickbacks to Dr Charles Denham to promote its ChloraPrep applicator. The company admitted no liability. Denham was co-chair of the safe practices committee of the National Quality Forum, a nonprofit healthcare industry group that endorses standards of care. CareFusion allegedly paid him to influence the organizations 2010 endorsement of an antiseptic formulation for surgical sites that described ChloraPreps patented mix, according to federal records. After a competitor complained, the National Quality Forum conducted a review and removed the reference to a specific preparation. Denham in 2015 agreed to pay a $1 million settlement, without admitting liability, according to federal records. He declined to comment for this article, as did the National Quality Forum. The organization later said it had strengthened its conflict of interest policies and severed its relationship with Denham. The investigation of CareFusion included allegations that the company generated enormous growth in sales by illegally marketing ChloraPrep as a product that could prevent infections, federal records say. The FDA-approved label says only that ChloraPrep reduces the number of bacteria present, not the number of infections. The BD spokesman said the company acquired CareFusion in 2015, after the settlements. CareFusion took great care to address the potential concerns raised in the settlement and this continues at BD, he said. WARNING ADDED In response to the FDAs new guidance on chlorhexidine, Sage will add an allergy warning to labels on its wipes, according to a spokeswoman for Stryker Corp, which acquired Sage Products last year in a deal valuing the company at $2.78 billion. Stryker does not break out Sages sales. It told analysts this year that it expects Sage to continue to show exponential sales growth. Products like chlorhexidine wipes are big business. Global sales of antiseptics and disinfectants were an estimated $5.6 billion in 2015, according to BCC Research. And the total is projected to grow about 40 percent to $7.9 billion by 2020. Stryker bought Sage from Madison Dearborn Partners, a Chicago private equity firm that had acquired the privately owned company only four years earlier for $1.06 billion, according to a report by the Illinois Venture Capital Association. Madison Dearborn declined to comment further. Just before Madison Dearborns investment, a market analysis predicted healthy growth for medicated wipes, citing Weinsteins influential 2006 study and a 2011 Sage-supported study by Brown University researchers. A few months after the purchase, the 2013 New England Journal of Medicine article, co-written by Weinstein, reported a dramatic decrease in drug-resistant cultures in patients bathed with Sages wipes. And a few months after that, Weinstein co-wrote a study published by the journal that found Sages wipes reduced MRSA cultures in intensive care units. The study, known as the REDUCE MRSA trial, was at the center of a federal whistleblower lawsuit brought against Sage in 2014. Cindy V. Salgado claimed Sage fired her from her job as a medical liaison in 2014 after she objected to the companys tactics to market its chlorhexidine wipes. The federal lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of California, accused Sage of spending a considerable amount of resources to influence speakers and researchers to promote universal daily bathing of patients. The FDA approved the wipes only for cleansing skin before surgery. Sage is prohibited from marketing them for off-label uses, including universal daily bathing. Its even required to include a warning on the product label against using the cloths as a general skin cleanser. However, Sage is not prohibited from informing medical professionals of scientific studies that tout the virtues of its wipes for off-label uses, leaving it up to the customer to decide whether or not to use them. The lawsuit alleged that, in exchange for free Sage products for two large studies, Dr Susan S. Huang of the University of California Irvine agreed to arrange for instructions on daily chlorhexidine bathing to be posted on the website of the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) after publication. A Sage manager then told sales staff to direct customers to the AHRQ website, the lawsuit alleged. After Stryker acquired Sage last year, the company settled with Salgado. Terms werent disclosed. Salgados lawyer declined to comment. In a written statement, Stryker said: Sage denied and continues to deny the allegations brought forth in the suit. It noted that the federal government did not pursue Salgados allegations of off-label marketing. POSTED BY AGREEMENT Huang said the instructional "toolkit" was posted on the website as part of an agreement between the researchers and AHRQ. "The allegations about any relationship between the AHRQ toolkit and Sage are entirely false," she said. A spokeswoman for AHRQ, which provided $2.4 million for the study, said the agency was unaware of the lawsuit. Posting instructions on the website was suggested solely by the study investigators and AHRQ, she said. Sage had no role in the decision. Weinstein said he wasnt aware of the lawsuit. Huang said Sage did not supply free wipes for the REDUCE MRSA study but has contributed them to another major study she is now leading, with Weinstein as a co-investigator. That study looks at whether daily bathing should be expanded from intensive care units to general medical and surgical floors. Unless the government starts to fund some of the larger trials, this is the only way wed be able to do infection prevention trials, she said. Almost all involve contributed product. The REDUCE MRSA study was one of the most comprehensive of its kind to date and continues to be debated in the infection-control community. The randomized controlled trial was done in partnership with Hospital Corp of America, a for-profit chain of 171 hospitals. The aim was to determine whether daily bathing of all adult intensive care unit patients with Sages wipes would reduce the incidence of MRSA. The most impressive finding showed that daily washing reduced by 37 percent the number of patients testing positive for MRSA including those on whom the bacteria was present but not necessarily a source of active infection. But that comes with a caveat: Patients bathed daily with the wipes also received a dose of mupirocin, an antibacterial ointment, twice a day for five days. The researchers couldnt say how much one or the other contributed to the outcome. And the study was inconclusive on the most important question: whether daily washing reduced the number of MRSA bloodstream infections. "DOESN'T MAKE THE CASE" Daily wipedowns, the study said, reduced infections by 44 percent not just MRSA infections, but all bloodstream infections by any pathogen, drug-resistant or not. It really doesnt make the case, said Dr Kevin Kavanagh, a patient safety researcher whose objections to the study were published in a 2013 article in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy. When you look at data, the vast majority of the effect on preventing infections was on the more benign skin bacteria and yeast. An editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association co-authored by Pittet of the World Health Organization said the study failed to adequately document the benefits of daily chlorhexidine use or its risks. And the risk for promotion of resistance is quite high, Pittet said in an interview. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria have shown the ability to develop resistance to chlorhexidine itself, he said. Recent studies found that Klebsiella pneumoniae, a lethal superbug, developed resistance to the antibiotic colistin after being exposed to chlorhexidine in laboratory experiments. Colistin is considered a last line of defense against many drug-resistant infections. In March, a large study published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons found an increase in wound infections among patients bathed with chlorhexidine prior to a hernia operation, the most common surgery in the United States. Coupled with increasing concerns for antimicrobial and possibly even emerging antibiotic resistance related to the widespread use of CHG [chlorhexidine], the indiscriminate use of CHG in absence of supportive evidence should be discouraged, the authors of that study wrote. In Europe, healthcare providers place greater emphasis on basic infection-control measures like consistent hand-washing and stringent housekeeping. That behavioral approach recently received dramatic support from a U.S. Veterans Administration initiative paid for with federal funds. Since 2007, the agency has combined active surveillance of patients for MRSA and strict staff adherence to basic infection-control protocols throughout the VA healthcare system. In January, the agency published a study showing an 80 percent drop in MRSA infections systemwide since the program began. The reason weve had the success weve had is because everybodys engaged, said Dr Martin E. Evans, lead author of the study. Even though its more work and more expense, its a benefit to the patients. Weinstein, the Rush infectious-disease specialist who received Sage support, dismissed the criticisms of the REDUCE MRSA study. Plenty of studies show chlorhexidine works, and millions of people are benefiting from reduced risk of infection, he said. As long as people are benefitingyou use it, Weinstein said. If resistance emerges, well, maybe there'll be a new product. (Reporting by Deborah J. Nelson and Ryan McNeill. Edited by John Blanton.) COLOMBO (Reuters) - An island-wide protest on Friday by Sri Lankan doctors demanding closure of a private medical college crippled the health services, leaving thousands of patients unattended and threatening the investment climate. Hundreds of doctors and thousands of medical students protested on Friday after the government refused to close the island's only private medical college, despite months of agitation by doctors and undergraduates. Doctors trained at the state-run medical colleges have long been demanding the closure of the school, which the privately owned South Asian Institute of Technology and Medicine (SAITM) was allowed to open in 2008. The authoritarian government at the time barred any protests against it. Since a new government came to power in 2015, doctors and medical students have taken advantage of their new freedom to hold protests and demand that SAITM be closed. The protesters on Friday blocked a main road in Colombo for several hours, creating a huge traffic jam, and waved banners saying the private university sold education for profit and should be nationalized. Normally busy outpatient units were quiet and some patients who had arrived from far away were spieling on lonely benches at Colombo hospitals. Sunil Abeyratne, a patient who had visited Colombo's main hospital from Ambalangoda, 50 kilometers (32 miles) away, said the protest was unfair and doctors has made his life difficult. The Government Medical Officers Association (GMOA) warned there could be more strikes. "If the government does not respond positively, we will have to consider more strong trade union action in the future," said Nalinda Herath, the secretary of GMOA. Analysts said the delay in resolving the issue will dent the island's investment climate. "How long this issue will prolong and the government's inability to resolve (it) will certainly impact the investors' confidence and investment climate," said Anushka Wijesinghe, chief analyst at Ceylon Chamber of Commerce. The government said on Friday that it proposes to take over a hospital run by SAITM and to allow its students to train at state hospitals, but did not say if they would stop SAITM from admitting new students. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe's center-right United National Party (UNP), which is in a coalition with President Maithripala Sirisena's center-left Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), has promised to revive the economy with major foreign direct investments. These investments slumped by 54 percent last year to what the government called "extremely low by any standard" as inconsistent tax and economic policies discouraged foreign businesses from putting their money into the country. (Reporting by Ranga Sirilal; Writing ny Shihar Aneez; Editing by Tom Heneghan) Guatemala City (AFP) - Thousands of university students paraded through the capital of Guatemala on Friday in a traditional march to criticize and mock political issues, including this year US President Donald Trump. "Trump: a racist and fascist gringo," read one of the placards held up, depicting the US leader dressed as the devil. The annual parade, held by students of San Carlos University, is a 119-year-old tradition meant to satirically foreshadow more conventional marches held a week later, during the pre-Easter Semana Santa holiday period. In recent years, it has focused on corruption and pervasive violence in Guatemala, and on President Jimmy Morales's government. A tragic fire in a children's shelter last month that killed 41 girls was one major theme among a slew of complaints this year. But Trump was a favored target. "Poverty and joblessness can't be held back with walls," another placard read, combining domestic complaints with Trump's plan to build a wall along the US-Mexican border to keep out undocumented migrants. Sweden and its neighbors around the world are reeling after Fridays terror attack in Stockholm, with one local resident describing a city frozen in shock. Read: Stolen Truck Plows Through Crowded Stockholm Street and Slams Into Store in 'Act of Terror' A maniac hijacked a giant truck and rammed it straight into a major department store. Three people were killed in the attack and nine others were injured, authorities said. Swedish police say the suspect is still at large. Swedish citizen Sean Skantze spoke told Inside Edition that residents of Stockholm have been struck by the attack. "The mood is very somber, there is a lot of people walking on the streets trying to get home because the traffic is totally still and they shut down the subway," he said. "People on the streets [are] very quiet [and in] a very weird mood that I have not experienced here at all ever." Spendrups, the company that owns the beer truck used in the attack, said the vehicle had been hijacked earlier in the day as its driver was making deliveries. Read: 'Last Photo' of PC Keith Palmer Taken Just 45 Minutes Before London Terror Attack: Tourist The outrage follows similar ISIS-inspired attacks through European cities like London, Berlin and Nice, when vehicles were used as weapons of terror. "It is really hard to detect someone who is going to drive a truck into a crowd of people," Security expert Robert Strang told Inside Edition. "So it really is worrisome and that is why intelligence is so important." Watch: Honeymooners Stuck on London Eye Describe Watching Attack Unfold Beneath Them Related Articles: Damascus (AFP) - Six people were killed and serious damage caused by a US missile strike on a Syrian air base in the centre of the country early Friday, Syria's army said. "At 3:42 am (0042 GMT) the United States carried out a flagrant aggression with missiles against one of our airbases in the central region, killing six people and wounding a number of others, and causing significant damage," a spokesman said, reading from a statement on state television. He did not specify whether the casualties were civilian or military, and gave no further details on the damage caused by the attack on the Shayrat Airfield in Homs province. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, said seven Syrian military personnel had been killed in the strike. The attack was the first direct US military action against President Bashar al-Assad since the start of Syria's war in March 2011. It came after a suspected chemical attack against a rebel-held town that killed at least 86 people and left dozens more suffering convulsions, vomiting and foaming at the mouth. Syria's government and army denied any use of chemical weapons or involvement in the incident. "The high command of the army and armed forces confirms that its response will be further determination to pursue its national duty in the defence of the Syrian people and to crush terrorism wherever it is," the statement added. It accused Washington of being allied with jihadist groups like the Islamic State group, and said it was seeking to "justify this aggression" by pointing the finger at Damascus for the suspected chemical attack "without knowing the truth." The Syrian Civil War began in March 2011 after anti-government protests against President Bashar al-Assad's human rights abuses. But the rebels' efforts to oust Assad were unsuccessful, leading to a brutal war between government forces and opposition supporters. The war became even more complex when the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, took parts of Syria in 2014 a third army that was opposed to both Assad and the rebels. Read: What Is Sarin? Chemical Attack In Syria Used Nazi Nerve Gas The U.S. intervened in 2013, providing $1 billion annually to the rebels. One of the Obama administration's main grievances with Assad was his regimes use of chemical weapons to kill civilians a brutal method brought back into international headlines Tuesday after a chemical attack killed at least 58 people. Read: Why Is Russia In Syria? Here's Why The Kremlin Got Involved In Another Country's Civil War Although Syria claimed it was not responsible for the attack, many international intelligence agencies doubted the claim and said the attack was conducted by the Assad regime. Below is a timeline of events concerning Syrias use of chemical weapons. July 23, 2012 Syrias possession of chemical weapons was confirmed by a Syrian Foreign Ministry official but he said the weapons would only be used against external aggression, not against the Syrian people. Any stock of W.M.D. or unconventional weapons that the Syrian Army possesses will never, never be used against the Syrian people or civilians during this crisis, under any circumstances, said Foreign Ministry spokesman, Jihad Makdissi, according to a New York Times story from 2012. These weapons are made to be used strictly and only in the event of external aggression against the Syrian Arab Republic. Aug. 20, 2012 President Obama drew a red line on chemical weapons. If Assad did utilize the weapons, Obama announced, he would consider significant intervention into Syria. Story continues Dec. 23, 2012 Syria used chemical weapons against civilians for the first time, according to reports from opposition activists. At least six rebel fighters were killed by a poisonous gas, the activists said. March 19, 2013 At least 26 people were killed in gas attacks in two Syrian cities. Both the Syrian government and the Syrian opposition accuse each other over the attack. A United Nations investigation later found that the victims were killed by the poisonous sarin nerve gas, but the report did not conclude who triggered the attack. March 20, 2013 Obama said the use of chemical weapons in Syria was a game changer. June 13, 2013 The U.S. intelligence community had high confidence that Assad had attacked rebels with chemical weapons multiple times, the White House announced. Aug. 21, 2013 More than 1,000 people many of them civilians were killed by suffocating from a gas attack in suburbs where the Syrian government had been attempting to drive out rebels. A U.N. report found that many were asleep when the attack occurred, and they suffered from convulsions and foaming at the mouth. Syrian Gas Attack 2013 Photo: Reuters Aug. 30, 2013 A U.S. government assessment was released, stating that intelligence agencies had a high level of confidence that the Assad regime was responsible for the attack, along with many others. Aug. 31, 2013 Obama announced he would ask Congress for authorization to strike Syria. Sept. 20, 2013 Syria declared its chemical weapons stockpile to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in accordance with demands from the U.S. and Russia. Sept. 27, 2013 The U.N. Security Council ordered Syria to destroy its chemical weapons and said it would authorize the use of force if Syria did not cooperate. Oct. 6, 2013 After officials from the U.N. and the OPCW arrive in Syria to facilitate the destruction of Syrias chemical weapons stockpile, its announced that the destruction of the weapons has officially begun. Oct. 14, 2013 Syria signs on to the Chemical Weapons Convention and provides details for its plans to destroy its chemical weapons. June 23, 2014 The OPCW announced that all of Syrias weapons were removed. Syrian rebels, however, were not convinced they believed the Assad regime had stockpiles of the weapons that were not fully accounted for. May 8, 2015 The OPCW found traces of sarin and other chemical weapons at a Syrian military facility that were not declared, Reuters reported. Aug. 7, 2015 After about half a year of reports about the Syrian government using chlorine gas attacks which are not as toxic as some other weapons, but are still considered chemical weapons against civilians, the U.N. Security Council authorized an investigation into the Syrian governments use of chlorine weapons. Aug. 10, 2016 Hospital officials reported a chlorine gas attack in Aleppo. Aug. 24, 2016 A panel from the U.N. and the OPCW announced the Syrian government used chlorine gas in civilian areas at least twice in 2014 and 2015. Sept. 7, 2016 Syrian opposition activists reported a chlorine gas attack in Aleppo that killed two civilians. Nov. 11, 2016 The OPCW once again condemned chemical weapons use in Syria and called on the Assad regime to stop the attacks. The organization also called for additional investigations and inspections into Syrian military facilities. Feb. 28, 2017 The U.N. votes on a resolution to authorize sanctions against the Syrian government for their chemical weapons attacks, but China and dedicated Syrian ally Russia veto it. April 4, 2017 A sarin gas attack killed at least 58 people and possibly up to 100 people, including many civilians, in Syrias Ibid province. Intelligence officers believed the Assad regime was responsible for the attack based on the planes flying over the area at the time the attack was carried out. The Syrian government denied responsibility for the attack. April 5, 2017 The U.N. Security Council called for an emergency meeting concerning the Ibid attacks. President Donald Trump condemned the attack in a press conference and said: I will tell you that attack on children yesterday had a big impact on me big impact. My attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much Youre now talking about a whole different level. Syrian Gas Attack Photo: Reuters Related Articles For the first time since President Barack Obama declared in August 2012 that the use of chemical weapons constituted a red line, the United States has responded militarily to the Syrian governments use of these weapons. On the night of April 6, the U.S. military fired a salvo of 59 cruise missiles at Syrias Shayrat air base, in response to a deadly chemical attack launched from that base earlier in the week. The chemical attack on the northwestern Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun, according to first responders on the scene, caused at least 84 deaths and injured more than 500 more. In announcing the strike, President Donald Trump said, It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. While the strike on Khan Sheikhoun was the deadliest chemical attack since the Syrian government launched rockets filled with sarin nerve agent into the Damascus suburb of Ghouta in August 2013 killing more than 1,400 men, women, and children it is far from the first attack since that massacre. Since 2014, rebel-held sections of Idlib, Hama, Aleppo, and elsewhere have been subjected to at least 120 chemical attacks, mostly by helicopters armed with barrel bombs filled with the toxic chemical chlorine. While these attacks were terrifying for the local populace, they rarely caused mass fatalities. The attack on Khan Sheikhoun was significant not only for the high number of deaths but also for its use of a far deadlier type of chemical weapon. According to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the United States has very high confidence that sarin was used in the strike. Although this has not yet been independently confirmed, the victims symptoms and autopsies are consistent with poisoning by a nerve agent such as sarin. If the chemical agent used in this attack was indeed sarin, it would either confirm suspicions that the Syrian regime did not destroy its entire chemical weapons stockpile as promised when it joined the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) in 2013 or that it has resumed production of these weapons in violation of the treaty. Either way, this latest attack vividly demonstrates that Syria, despite being a member of the CWC, maintains a well-organized capacity to conduct multiple types of chemical attacks in support of the regimes tactical and strategic objectives. Story continues While the U.S. cruise missile strike targeted one link in the Syrian chemical weapons kill chain, it did not break the chain. National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster recognized as much when he told reporters in the aftermath of the strike: Obviously, the regime will retain a certain capacity to commit mass murder with chemical weapons beyond this airfield. Syrias chemical weapons attacks are not the work of a mere handful of people an entire political, military, and scientific apparatus is responsible for orchestrating them. As Samantha Power, Obamas ambassador to the United Nations, put it, While their names may be unfamiliar, their brutality is infamous, so they should be as well. Based on information released by the U.N., the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), nongovernmental organizations, and the U.S. and European governments, it is possible to construct a picture of the Syrian governments entire chain of command involved in the research, production, weaponization, planning, and delivery of chemical weapons. The Syrian chain of command for chemical weapons is composed of four tiers: the senior leadership, which is responsible for authorizing the use of these weapons and providing strategic guidance on their employment; the chemists, who produce, transport, and prepare the chemical weapons for use; the coordinators, who provide intelligence on targets and integrate chemical weapons with conventional military operations; and the triggermen, who deliver the weapons to their targets. Together, these individuals and organizations form a chemical weapons kill chain that has so far claimed roughly 1,500 lives and caused more than 14,000 injuries. The leadership Given the sensitive nature of using illegal weapons while under international scrutiny, decisions to use chemical weapons are likely made at the highest levels of the Syrian government. At the apex of Syrias chemical warfare chain of command is President Bashar al-Assad, who has ruled Syria since the death of his father, Hafez al-Assad, in 2000. The United States describes Assad as the ultimate decision maker for the chemical weapons program. According to French intelligence, only Assad and some of his closest advisors are able to order the use of chemical weapons. Maher al-Assad, Bashars younger brother, has likely been granted that authority by dint of his close relationship with the president, his prominent role in leading the crackdown on the uprising, and his position as commander of the powerful 4th Armored Division. There is also circumstantial evidence that Maher was directly involved in the planning of the 2013 chemical attack on Ghouta, as his forces spearheaded an assault on the area shortly after the sarin attack, suggesting these attacks were planned in conjunction. In addition, the 155th Missile Brigade, which was responsible for launching the sarin-filled rockets used in that attack, is subordinate to the 4th Armored Division and reports directly to Maher. The Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) created by the U.N. Security Council to identify the perpetrators of chemical attacks in Syria has reportedly included both Assad brothers on a list of Syrian officials responsible for these attacks. A number of the regimes most senior officials have also been implicated by the United States and European governments in planning these attacks. Given the insular nature of the Assad regime, it is inconceivable that these officials were not acting with the approval of the president. Indeed, according to Western intelligence officials, President Assad has delegated day-to-day decision-making on chemical weapons use to his senior commanders. These officials include Maj. Gen. Rafiq Shihadah, the former director of Military Intelligence who still serves as an advisor to the president on strategic affairs; Maj. Gen. Muhammad Mahmud Mahalla, the current director of Military Intelligence; Maj. Gen. Jamil Hassan, the director of Air Force Intelligence; and Maj. Gen. Muhammad Khalid Rahmun, the head of the Political Security Directorate. These officials are likely also members of the crisis cell established by Assad at the outset of the uprising to coordinate the regimes response. Another notable high-ranking regime official linked to Syrias use of chemical weapons is Brig. Gen. Bassam al-Hassan, a commander in the Syrian Republican Guard and Assads advisor for strategic affairs. In this latter capacity, Hassan acts as the presidential representative to Syrias Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC) the government agency responsible for producing the countrys chemical weapons and ballistic missiles. Thus, Hassan serves as a vital link to the next tier of Syrian officials in the chemical weapons chain of command. Workers in protective clothing unload a dummy grenade during a press day at the GEKA facility that assisted with the disposal part of Syria's chemical weapon arsenal on March 5, 2014 in Munster, Germany. (Photo credit: NIGEL TREBLIN/Getty Images) The chemists The SSRC is the heart of the Syrian chemical weapons program. The organization has its headquarters in the Barzeh neighborhood of Damascus, another branch in Jamraya, and used to oversee a network of chemical weapons production facilities until they were dismantled under the OPCWs supervision. The SSRC was responsible for the design and production of the short-range improvised rockets, called Volcanoes, that were used in the sarin attack on Ghouta. As the Syrian government agency responsible for developing and producing nonconventional weapons and the means to deliver them, the organization probably also developed the chlorine-filled barrel bombs in use since 2014. The director of SSRC is Amr Najib Armanazi, a computer scientist by training. Among his duties was overseeing a facility that produced sarin, the same chemical used in the attack on Ghouta. Brig. Gen. Ghassan Abbas is the head of the SSRC branch near Jamraya responsible for what the U.S. Treasury Department terms chemical weapon logistics. This is probably a veiled reference to Unit 450, an all-Alawite unit within the SSRC that is responsible for guarding and transporting Syrias chemical weapons and preparing them for use by military units. The commander of Unit 450 receives orders to prepare and deploy chemical weapons directly from the regimes senior leadership. According to the European Union, Abbas has played a key role in organizing the regimes chemical attacks, including the one on Ghouta. The United States has sanctioned five more SSRC officials Brig. Gen. Samir Dabul, Brig. Gen. Ali Wanus, Col. Firas Ahmad, Col. Habib Hawrani, and Col. Zuhayr Haydar for conducting research or providing logistics in support of the regimes chemical attacks. The United States, Britain, and the EU have also sanctioned more than a half-dozen entities that serve as front companies for the SSRC. These front companies play a vital role in helping the center acquire foreign technology for its weapons programs in spite of international sanctions or provide technical expertise to the SSRC. For example, one of those front companies, Business Lab, attempted in 2009 to purchase 500 liters of pinacolyl alcohol, which can be used in the preparation of the nerve agent soman. Although Syria initially denied working on soman, the OPCW found traces of pinacolyl at a SSRC facility. Civil defense rescue workers try to reduce the effects of chlorine gas as they search for survivors after an attack by government forces in Idlib, Syria, on April 4. (Photo credit: FIRAS FARHAM/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images) The coordinators Several of the Syrian governments key military institutions serve as liaisons between the SSRC, the individual units that conduct the attack, and regime forces operating in areas where chemical attacks are taking place. The Republican Guard, Military Intelligence, and Air Force Intelligence have likely identified promising targets and helped de-conflict the chemical attacks to prevent friendly fire incidents. For example, the Assad regimes chlorine barrel-bombing campaigns in northwestern Idlib province in the spring and summer of 2014 and the spring of 2015 coincided with heavy fighting in that province between the government and rebel groups. Maj. Gen. Talal Shafiq Makhluf, the commander of the Republican Guard, was sanctioned by the United States for his role in coordinating military operations with chlorine barrel bomb strikes. The Republican Guard is one of Assads elite military units, is manned mostly by Alawite officers and soldiers, and has been deployed to some of the most important battles of the civil war. Brig. Gen. Yasin Ahmad Dahi from Military Intelligence has also been linked to the Syrian regimes use of chemical weapons. The primary mission of Military Intelligence is to ensure the loyalty of the military, but it also collects and analyzes intelligence and conducts covert operations. Two Air Force Intelligence officers have been identified as playing key roles in carrying out the regimes chemical strikes. Col. Muhammad Nafi Bilal was stationed at SSRC headquarters to serve as a liaison between the center and Air Force Intelligence to ensure proper coordination and was also involved in the transport of chemical munitions. Col. Suhayl Hasan al-Hasan is a pro-regime militia commander who coordinated military operations in Idlib during a period when chlorine attacks were occurring. It is not surprising that Air Force Intelligence has been deeply implicated in coordinating the regimes chemical attacks. The organizations mandate extends far beyond matters related to the Syrian Arab Air Force and has long been used by the Assad family to conduct the regimes most sensitive and covert operations at home and abroad. The Air Force Intelligence branch in Harasta likely served as the staging area for the Volcano rockets that rained sarin nerve agent on Ghouta in 2013. A mother and father weep over their child's body who was killed in a chemical weapons attack on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta in Syria on Aug. 21, 2013. (Photo credit: NurPhoto/Corbis via Getty Images) The triggermen At the end of the Syrian chemical weapons kill chain are two military organizations in charge of delivering the weapons: the Syrian Artillery and Missile Directorate and the Syrian Arab Air Force. The Syrian Artillery and Missile Directorate was responsible for conducting the 2013 chemical strike on Ghouta. That attack involved approximately eight to 12 Syrian-made 330 mm Volcano rockets, each carrying approximately 50 liters of sarin nerve agent, and at least two Soviet-era M-14 140 mm artillery rockets filled with sarin. The EU has sanctioned four senior leaders in the Syrian missile force for their role in this attack: Maj. Gen. Tahir Hamid Khalil, the commander of the unit; Brig. Gen. Adnan Aboud Hilweh, a commander in the 155th and 157th Missile Brigades; Maj. Gen. Ghassan Ahmed Ghannan, the commander of the 155th Missile Brigade; and Maj. Gen. Jawdat Salbi Mawas, a senior-ranking officer in the missile force. The 155th Missile Brigade, which is equipped with Scud missiles and is based in the Qutayfa area outside of Damascus, reports to Maher al-Assad through his role as commander of the 4th Armored Division. Syria is believed to have developed chemical warheads for a range of missiles, including Scuds. The 155th Missile Brigades experience operating Syrias chemical-armed missiles would have been invaluable for deploying and launching the sarin-filled rockets used in the Ghouta attack. The Syrian Arab Air Force is the other key player in delivering Assads chemical weapons. The air forces primary role has been in using helicopters to conduct more than 100 chlorine barrel-bomb attacks against rebel-held towns in 2014 and 2015, with dozens more attacks occurring in 2016 and 2017. The JIM definitively linked three of these attacks on towns in Idlib to helicopters operating out of the Hama and Humaymim air bases, which are home to the 253rd and 255th squadrons of the 63rd Helicopter Brigade and the 618th naval helicopter squadron. All three of these units are equipped with Mi-8 helicopters or related models, which have played a well-documented role in conducting conventional and chlorine barrel bomb attacks. The United States has confirmed reports by local activists that the April 4 attack on Khan Sheikhoun was conducted by an Su-22 aircraft based at Shayrat air base. This base is home to the 50th Air Brigade, which contains two squadrons of Su-22s: the 677th and 685th. Shayrat was also one of at least seven Syrian air bases that had the capability to load sarin or its precursors into bombs before these sites were dismantled by the OPCW. According to French intelligence, Syria had a stockpile of aerial bombs designed to deliver 100-300 liters of sarin. These bombs were designed as binary chemical weapons that contain two separate nontoxic precursor chemicals that could be mixed within the bomb shortly before takeoff to produce sarin. Syria may have retained as many as 2,000 of these munitions after joining the CWC. The type of munition used in the attack on Khan Sheikhoun has not yet been determined. The United States and EU have imposed sanctions on the entire chain of command of the Syrian Arab Air Force for their role in chlorine barrel bomb attacks, including Maj. Gen. Ahmad Ballul, the commander of the air force; Maj. Gen. Saji Jamil Darwish, who oversaw air operations in northern Syria as commander of the 22nd Air Division; Brig. Gen. Badi Mualla, the commander of the 63rd Air Brigade, which was responsible for the helicopters based at Hama air base; and Brig. Gen. Muhammad Ibrahim, the deputy commander of the brigade. Since Shayrat air base is part of the 22nd Air Division, Darwish would also have been involved in planning the attack on Khan Sheikhoun. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley holds up photos of Syrian victims of a chemical weapons attack during an April 5 meeting of the Security Council at U.N. headquarters in New York. (Photo credit: DREW ANGERER/Getty Images) A path to justice? This list of Syrian officials and entities that have played a role in chemical attacks during the Syrian civil war is no doubt incomplete. For example, the identities of the commanders of the 50th Air Brigade and subordinate squadrons that were involved in the attack on Khan Sheikhoun are not publicly known. Hopefully, further investigations by the United Nations and nongovernmental groups into war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Syrian regime will bring to light a fuller list of those who should be held accountable for using chemical weapons. None of these individuals from the leader of the country to the pilot who pulled the trigger should be immune to the consequences of their actions. Bringing these criminals to justice, however, will be a long, slow, and difficult process. Many individuals who comprise Syrias chemical weapons kill chain were listed in a U.N. Security Council resolution that was vetoed by Russia and China on Feb. 28. Syrias lack of membership in the International Criminal Court, and the veto by Russia and China of a Security Council resolution to refer Syria to the court, means that this venue is likely off limits for the foreseeable future. So far, the only concrete steps to hold these individuals accountable for their actions are financial sanctions and travel bans imposed by the U.S. and European governments. Although the sanctions themselves are largely symbolic, by identifying these individuals and specifying their role in the chemical attacks, the United States and its European allies are laying the groundwork for future prosecutions once Assad is no longer in power. In the case of Iraq, it took almost 20 years for Saddam Hussein and Ali Hassan al-Majid, nicknamed Chemical Ali, to stand trial for ordering the use of chemical weapons against the Kurds in 1988. Nonetheless, naming names, even when the ability of the international community to punish these perpetrators in the near-term is limited, has value. Identifying and punishing the perpetrators of these heinous crimes is not only to right past wrongs but to prevent future harms. As Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., explained after the Russian veto of the first sanctions resolution, None of us should hesitate to impose consequences for these attacks. No one else should get the idea that they can use chemical weapons. Attribution is the first step to accountability, which forms the basis for deterrence. But attribution without consequences will only embolden the perpetrators, demonstrate to other dictators that the use of chemical weapons is tolerable, and badly damage the global norm against the use of these barbaric weapons. Hopefully, the cruise missile strike on Shayrat air base will deter future Syrian chemical attacks. At the same time, we should not confuse limited military strikes on infrastructure that can be easily repaired as having the same lasting value for deterrence and justice as holding individual government officials and military officers accountable. In the aftermath of the attack on Ghouta, I co-wrote an article arguing: [A]n effective effort to reduce the long-term risk of chemical weapons must also include legal and economic steps to deter further chemical attacks, including by holding individual perpetrators accountable. In 2017, as in 2013, the use of military force is just one part of a comprehensive strategy to enhance deterrence, bring justice to the victims of chemical attacks, and reinforce the norm against chemical weapons. Top photo credit: Getty Images/Foreign Policy illustration BEIRUT (AP) - Syria decried a U.S. missile strike early Friday on a government-controlled air base where U.S. officials say the Syrian military launched a deadly chemical attack earlier this week. Syria called the operation an aggression that killed at least six people. Rebels welcomed the U.S. operation. The U.S. strike drew quick reactions from the friends and foes of the Syrian government. They also appeared to cause a deeper dent in already strained U.S.-Russian relations. Saudi Arabia, which supports the Syrian opposition, welcomed the attack, calling it a courageous decision by Trump. Iran, which supports the other side of the six-year war, condemned the strike, describing unilateral action as dangerous. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi warned the strikes would strengthen terrorists, further complicating the situation in Syria. Shiite Iran and majority Sunni Saudi Arabia have been locked in a power struggle over influence in Syria and elsewhere in the region. The bombing represents Trumps most dramatic military order since taking office and thrusts the U.S. administration deeper into the complex Syrian conflict. The Obama administration threatened to attack Assads forces for previous chemical weapons attacks, but never followed through. Trump called on all civilized nations to join the U.S. in seeking an end to the carnage in Syria. About 60 U.S. Tomahawk missiles hit the Shayrat air base, southeast of Homs, a small installation with two runways, where aircraft often take off to bomb targets in northern and central Syria. The U.S. missiles hit at 3:45 a.m. Friday morning and targeted the bases airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, U.S. officials said. They were fired from two warships in the Mediterranean Sea, in retaliation for Tuesdays deadly chemical attack that officials said used chlorine mixed with a nerve agent, possibly sarin. The Syrian military said at least six people were killed and several wounded. A Syrian opposition monitor put the death toll at four, including a general and three soldiers. Story continues The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin believes the U.S. strike is an aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law. Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in Fridays statement carried by Russian news agencies that Putin believes the U.S. dealt the strikes under far-fetched pretext. Washingtons move deals a significant blow to the Russia-U.S. relations, which are already in a deplorable shape, Peskov said. He added that the attack creates a serious obstacle for creating an international coalition against terrorism. Israels prime minister welcomed the U.S. attack. Benjamin Netanyahu said that In both word and action Trump sent a strong and clear message that the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated. A Syrian opposition group, the Syrian Coalition, welcomed the U.S. attack, saying it puts an end to an age of impunity and should be just the beginning. Major Jamil al-Saleh, a U.S-backed rebel commander whose Hama district in the countrys center was struck by the suspected chemical weapons attack, told AP he hoped the U.S. attack would be a turning point in the war that has left more than 400,000 dead. President Bashar Assads government had been under mounting international pressure after the chemical attack, with even key ally Russia saying its support is not unconditional. Syria rejected the accusations, and blames opposition fighters for stockpiling the chemicals. Moscow had warned against apportioning blame until an investigation has been carried out. Russias Defense Ministry said the toxic agents were released when a Syrian airstrike hit a rebel chemical weapons arsenal and munitions factory on the eastern outskirts of Khan Sheikhoun. Russia has provided military support for the Syrian government since September 2015, turning the balance of power in Assads favor. Moscow has used its veto power at the Security Council on several occasions since the civil war began six years ago to prevent sanctions against Damascus. Trump had said the attack crossed many, many lines, and put the blame squarely on Assads forces. Speaking Thursday on Air Force One, Trump said the attack shouldnt have happened, and it shouldnt be allowed to happen. A survivor of the chemical attack told AP he hopes the U.S. missile attack could help put an end to the government airstrikes, creating a safe area for civilians. Alaa Alyousef, a 27-year old resident of Khan Sheikhoun, said the U.S. missile attack alleviates a small part of our sufferings, but he said he worried it would be anesthetics that numbs their pain and only saves face for the international community. AlYousef said the U.S. is capable of paralyzing Syrian warplanes. What good is a strike on Shayart air base alone while we have more than 15 other air bases, he said. Alyousef lost at least 25 relatives in this weeks gruesome chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun. Earlier, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had said he hopes Trump will take military action, adding that Ankara would be prepared to do whatever falls on us to support possible military action. At the United Nations, the U.S. had hoped for a vote Thursday evening on a Security Council resolution it drafted with Britain and France that would have condemned Syrias suspected use of chemical weapons - but it was canceled because of differences among the 15 members. The chemical weapons attack happened in Syrias Idlib province, which straddles the Turkish border. The Turkish government - a close ally of Syrias rebels - set up a decontamination center at a border crossing in Hatay province, where the victims were treated initially. Turkish officials said nearly 60 victims of the attack were brought to Turkey for treatment and three of them died. Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said autopsies determined that a chemical weapon was used. The Turkish Health Ministry said later that according to the results of the first analysis, there were findings suggesting that the patients were exposed to chemical substance (sarin). ___ Associated Press writers Albert Aji in Damascus and Jon Gambrell in Dubai contributed to this report. This article was originally published on TIME.com Beirut (AFP) - Syrian rebels on Friday welcomed a US strike on a government airbase, but urged additional action, with one powerful faction saying a single strike was "not enough." The US attack on the Shayrat base in central Syria was Washington's first military action against the regime in the six-year civil war. "Hitting one airbase is not enough, there are 26 airbases that target civilians," a key figure in the Army of Islam faction, Mohamed Alloush, said on his Twitter account. "The whole world should save the Syrian people from the clutches of the killer Bashar (al-Assad) and his aides." Other rebel groups welcomed the US strike and called for continued military action against the regime. "The American strike against the killing tools used by Bashar al-Assad is the first step on the correct path to combating terrorism and we hope it will continue," said Issam Raes, spokesman for the Southern Front rebel faction. "In my opinion, the message is political, and the message has arrived to Russia and been understood," he told AFP. Colonel Ahmed Osman, of the Turkey-backed Sultan Murad rebel group said: "We welcome any action that will put an end to the regime that is committing the worst crimes in history." Mohamed Bayrakdar, another leader of the Army of Islam, which operates mainly around the capital Damascus, described the strike as "a bold and correct step." "We welcome any response to the crimes of the regime," he told AFP. Zagreb (AFP) - From cashiers and farmers to drivers and travel agents, tens of thousands of people are fearful for their jobs linked to the Balkans' biggest food producer and retailer, as it struggles with crushing debt. The financial woes of Croatian group Agrokor have dominated headlines in recent weeks after global agencies began slashing its credit rating. That has rattled Agrokor's 60,000 employees in the region, two-thirds of whom are in Croatia making it the country's largest employer. Agrokor's debts were estimated in September at six billion euros ($6.3 billion) -- an alarming sum for a company whose revenue of 6.7 billion euros accounts for 15 percent of Croatia's gross domestic product (GDP). The group's leading business is the supermarket chain Konzum, but it has acquired a wide range of companies including in agriculture, food production, tourism and distribution. Also anxiously watching developments are Agrokor's small suppliers, who after months of waiting for payments now wonder if they will be paid at all -- and to whom they will sell in the future. "It is hard to continue production without money, but it is also difficult to enter a new market," said Zvonimir Belic, a leading regional tomato producer who currently sells around a third of his goods to Agrokor. "It's not only about saving Agrokor, but about saving Croatian firms. We are running out of time... Decisions need to be taken," Belic said. The impact goes beyond the Balkan country of 4.2 million people. Agrokor has businesses in neighbouring Bosnia, Serbia and Slovenia, while its network of suppliers means tens of thousands more are affected in a region where unemployment runs high. "I am afraid that Agrokor will be a very difficult issue in Serbia too," Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said this week in Bosnia, where he discussed the crisis with his Croatian counterpart Andrej Plenkovic. Story continues - Too big to fail? - Analysts say Agrokor, whose main creditors are Russian state-owned banks Sberbank and VTB, accumulated debt through aggressive expansion and expensive borrowing -- a snowball that eventually turned into an avalanche. In January, Agrokor withdrew from a loan deal with international creditors, triggering a surge in its bond yields. Some companies within the group had their accounts frozen due to unpaid state taxes and obligations towards suppliers. "Financing was short-term, under unfavourable conditions... while expansion was too fast on very fragile financing sources," economic analyst Luka Brkic told AFP. Owned by Croatian businessman Ivica Todoric, Agrokor is almost as important as tourism to Croatia, which emerged from a six-year recession in 2015 and is one of the European Union's poorest-performing economies. "A collapse of Agrokor would lead Croatia into recession, push it back into 2008," warned Vladimir Nisevic, editor-in-chief of the Poslovni dnevnik business newspaper. Croatia's Chamber of Agriculture has urged the government to make suppliers' payments a priority issue, warning of the threat of farm closures and a "further exodus from rural areas". Faced with a company that may be too big to fail, Croatia's parliament on Thursday adopted an emergency law aimed at saving troubled giant firms like Agrokor and shielding the country's economy through a restructuring process. Opposition lawmakers argued however that the law would not protect employees and small suppliers but rather management. - 'Acute' situation - Separately, Agrokor and its board of creditors have signed a "standstill agreement" freezing its repayment of debts to banks, while naming an independent expert as chief restructuring officer. "There is no guarantee we will succeed," restructuring expert Antonio Alvarez told reporters Monday, describing the situation as "pretty acute". Trade unions echoed his view, saying members were contacting them daily with fears about their wages and future. "Easter and the tourist season are approaching. If that is missed, it would be impossible to compensate for," commercial union leader Zlatica Stulic told AFP. Todoric, 66, who rarely makes media appearances and is known locally as "The Boss", has not made any public comments on the crisis himself. The entrepreneur started in the flower business in the 1970s and founded Agrokor just before communist Yugoslavia fell apart in the 1990s, leading to the privatisation of state-owned companies. Todoric was initially seen as a role model who helped Croatia's post-war economy recover with his successful business empire. He became one of the wealthiest and most influential men in the Balkans, but critics accuse him of abusing his monopoly position and becoming untouchable. Todoric's employees now say they are scared. "Eventually us ordinary folks will pay for all this, in one way or another," said Josipa, a cashier in a Konzum store in Zagreb, who didn't want to give her full name. Several thousand people gathered in Moscows Manezh Square on April 6 to remember the victims of the attack at a metro station in St Petersburg at the start of the week. Fourteen people were killed and almost 50 more injured in a suspected suicide bombing that investigators blame on a young man from Kyrgyzstan. People attending what was widely referred to as an anti-terrorism rally had to pass through metal detectors to enter the square. Credit: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty via Storyful The U.S. attack on a Syrian air base came after years of heated debate and deliberation in Washington over intervention in the bloody civil war. Chemical weapons have killed hundreds of people since the start of the conflict, with the U.N. blaming three attacks on the Syrian government and a fourth on the Islamic State group. One of the worst yet came Tuesday in rebel-held northern Idlib and killed dozens, including women and children. That attack prompted President Donald Trump, on day 77 of his presidency, to dramatically shift U.S. policy, with the first direct U.S. attack on the Syrian government. Trump blamed Syrian President Bashar Assad for the attack and called on the international community to join him in trying to end the bloodshed. A timeline of events in Syria leading up to Tuesdays attack: March 2011: Protests erupt in the city of Daraa over security forces detention of a group of boys accused of painting anti-government graffiti on the walls of their school. On March 15, a protest is held in Damascus Old City. On March 18, security forces open fire on a protest in Daraa, killing four people in what activists regard as the first deaths of the uprising. Demonstrations spread, as does the crackdown by President Bashar Assads forces. April 2011: Security forces raid a sit-in in Syrias third-largest city, Homs, where thousands of people tried to create the mood of Cairos Tahrir Square, the epicenter of protests against Egypts autocrat Hosni Mubarak. Aug. 18, 2011: President Barack Obama calls on Assad to resign and orders Syrian government assets frozen. Summer 2012: Fighting spreads to Aleppo, Syrias largest city and its former commercial capital. Aug. 20, 2012: Obama says the use of chemical weapons would be a red line that would change his calculus on intervening in the civil war and have enormous consequences. March 19, 2013: The Syrian government and opposition trade accusations over a gas attack that killed some 26 people, including more than a dozen government soldiers, in the town of Khan al-Assal in northern Syria. A U.N. investigation later finds that sarin nerve gas was used, but does not identify a culprit. Story continues Aug. 21, 2013: Hundreds of people suffocate in rebel-held suburbs of the Syrian capital, with many suffering from convulsions, pinpoint pupils, and foaming at the mouth. U.N. investigators visit the sites and determine that ground-to-ground missiles loaded with sarin were fired on civilian areas while residents slept. The U.S. and others blame the Syrian government, the only party to the conflict known to have sarin gas. Aug. 31, 2013: Obama says he will go to Congress for authorization to carry out punitive strikes against the Syrian government, but appears to lack the necessary support in the legislature. Sept. 27, 2013: The U.N. Security Council orders Syria to account for and destroy its chemical weapons stockpile, following a surprise agreement between Washington and Moscow, averting U.S. strikes. The Security Council threatens to authorize the use of force in the event of non-compliance. Oct. 14, 2013: Syria becomes a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention, prohibiting it from producing, stockpiling or using chemical weapons. June 23, 2014: The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons says it has removed the last of the Syrian governments chemical weapons. Syrian opposition officials maintain that the governments stocks were not fully accounted for, and that it retained supplies. Sept. 23, 2014: The U.S. launches airstrikes on Islamic State group targets in Syria. Aug. 7, 2015: The U.N. Security Council authorizes the OPCW and U.N. investigators to probe reports of chemical weapons use in Syria, as reports circulate of repeated chlorine gas attacks by government forces against civilians in opposition-held areas. Chlorine gas, though not as toxic as nerve agents, can be classified as a chemical weapon depending on its use. Aug. 24, 2016: The joint OPCW-U.N. panel determines the Syrian government twice used helicopters to deploy chlorine gas against its opponents, in civilian areas in the northern Idlib province. A later report holds the government responsible for a third attack. The attacks occurred in 2014 and 2015. The panel also finds that the Islamic State group used mustard gas. Feb. 28, 2017: Russia, a stalwart ally of the Syrian government, and China veto a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing sanctions against the Syrian government for chemical weapons use. April 4, 2017: At least 58 people are killed in what doctors say could be a nerve gas attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun in the rebel-held Idlib province. Victims show signs of suffocation, convulsions, foaming at the mouth and pupil constriction. Witnesses say the attack was carried out by either Russian or Syrian Sukhoi jets. Moscow and Damascus deny responsibility. April 4, 2017: President Donald Trump issues a statement saying that the heinous actions of Assads government are the direct result of Obama administrations weakness and irresolution. April 5, 2017: Trump says Assads government has crossed a lot of lines with the suspected chemical attack in Syria. April 6, 2017: The U.S. fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria Thursday night in retaliation for this weeks gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians, U.S. officials said. It was the first direct American assault on the Syrian government and Trumps most dramatic military order since becoming president. Trump said strike on Syria in the vital national security interest of the United States. This article was originally published on TIME.com In many ways, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman personifies the glib id of the American foreign-policy establishment. Like most members of the foreign-policy Blob, he thinks almost everything that happens anywhere is a vital interest of the United States, and is therefore something for which American blood and treasure should be spilled if necessary. Like most Americans, he thinks our country always acts from noble motives, even if the results are (repeatedly) ignoble. Like many U.S. leaders, he rarely acknowledges his own mistakes. If his advice gets followed and things go wrong, then somebody else must have screwed up (like those incompetent Bushies who bungled the occupation of Iraq, or those ungrateful Iraqis who didnt realize what a wonderful gift we had given them). And instead of learning from experience, he makes the same analytical mistakes over and over again. Hmm. Sounds like some very powerful countries I know. Case in point: his column in Wednesdays New York Times discussing the dilemmas President Donald Trump faces in Syria. Friedman correctly points out that a chemical attack by forces allied with President Bashar al-Assad has exposed Trumps naivete about the Syrian conflict. And he may even be right in suggesting that the Trump administrations poorly orchestrated statements about tolerating the Assad regime made devoid of any diplomatic context or as part of a genuine quid pro quo may have encouraged Assad to think he could escalate the war with impunity. In criticizing Trump, Friedman is on firm ground. Now that Trump has ordered cruise missile strikes on the airbase from which the chemical strikes were launched, you might think the president has learned quickly and shown how flexible he is (a point Trump emphasized in his own remarks to the press on Thursday). The problem is that these attacks are a purely symbolic act devoid of real strategic significance. They are the Trumpian equivalent of Bill Clintons cruise missiles strikes in Sudan and Afghanistan: full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. They might deter Assad from further chemical weapons use, but they dont alter the situation on the ground, dont make Syrian civilians significantly safer, and dont move us closer to a solution. Story continues Friedman, however, has the answer. His advice surprise, surprise! is straight from the same Establishment playbook that has done so much to screw up the Middle East over the past two-plus decades. Typically, Friedman blames Russia and Iran for all the trouble, including the emergence of the Islamic State, conveniently omitting the far more important role played by the 2003 Iraq War that he helped sell to the American public. He also ignores the destructive part the United States has played in the Syrian tragedy: by prematurely demanding Assad must go, excluding Iran from the early diplomatic efforts to stop the war, and backing assorted proxy forces and client states whose arms shipments have helped keep the war going and contributed to the ever-deepening morass. The United States is hardly the only outside power that bears responsibility here, but suggesting it has not been involved is simply false. Having whitewashed the U.S. role in helping create this mess, Friedman then writes: The least bad solution is a partition of Syria and the creation of a primarily Sunni protected area protected by an international force, including, if necessary, some U.S. troops. That should at least stop the killing and the refugee flows that are fueling a populist-nationalist backlash all across the European Union. It wont be pretty or easy. But in the Cold War we put 400,000 troops in Europe to keep the sectarian peace there and to keep Europe on a democracy track. Having NATO and the Arab League establish a safe zone in Syria for the same purpose is worth a try. To be clear: Friedman is telling Trump to send a substantial body of U.S. ground troops into Syria for the purposes of keeping the sectarian peace. To his credit, hes not offering bogus solutions like no-fly zones, but he is telling Trump that the only way to solve the problem is for the United States to invade Syria. The temptation to embrace this proposal is obvious. What is happening in Syria is awful to behold (even without the use of chemical weapons), and we would all like to wave a magic wand and make it stop. It seems wimpy and irresponsible for the worlds most powerful country to be mostly (but not entirely) on the sidelines, while Russia or Iran are working hard on behalf of Assad. Unfortunately, many of the groups fighting Assad are no better than he is and deeply hostile to the United States. Every time we try to back Syrian moderates we end up unwittingly funneling more arms to dangerous jihadis. What else is wrong with his idea? Let me count the ways. For starters, Friedman never explains why fixing Syria is a vital U.S. interest (that is, something worth for which one would send U.S. troops to fight and die). The best he can do is link it to the refugee problem that has roiled European politics over the past couple of years, but Europes political malaise goes well beyond the refugee issue and wont end when the Syrian crisis finally comes to a close. And at the risk of sounding Trumpian, is it Americas responsibility to send troops to Syria in order to preserve European liberalism? One can argue for intervention on purely humanitarian grounds, of course, but that justification will rarely, if ever, carry the day in American politics. Indeed, its hard to find any case where the United States expended significant amounts of blood or treasure for purely humanitarian reasons. Friedman approvingly quotes his friend and co-author Michael Mandelbaum, who thinks intervention would help but says, The American public simply does not want to spend the blood and treasure to produce what would probably be a less awful but still not good outcome in Syria. Yet it is hardly a failure of democracy when the government declines to do something the population strongly opposes. Or is Friedman (and Mandelbaum) telling Trump to ignore what the American people want? Nor is there any guarantee that intervention would make things better. Second, the catalyst for this latest episode (and Trumps apparent change of heart about Assad) was the regimes latest use of chemical weapons. As I wrote back when the original red line was crossed, our obsession with this particular means of killing people makes little sense. The vast majority of Syrian deaths are the result of conventional high explosives, barrel bombs, bullets, famine, etc. yet publics, presidents, and pundits obsess about this one particular category. Assad didnt need to use chemical weapons to convince me he was a brutal dictator who was willing to do just about anything to retain power. The fact that his forces have used them on several occasions shouldnt alter our calculus about the pros and cons of intervention in the slightest. Third, Friedmans proposal assumes that the United States can quickly assemble a militarily effective coalition of NATO and/or Arab forces to enter Syrian territory and enforce peace. If necessary, he writes, we might have to send some U.S. troops. Who is he kidding? Does he seriously believe NATO and some Saudis, Egyptians, Jordanians, or Turks are ready and willing to enter the Syrian maelstrom, operate effectively there, and stay the course? Their collective temptation to shirk and pass the buck will be enormous, and Uncle Sucker will end up holding the bag in Syria, just as it has in Afghanistan and Iraq. Once the peacekeepers arrive, what then? Friedman writes vaguely of a primarily Sunni safe zone, but where does that leave Syrias non-Sunni population and where exactly does he propose to locate it? Does Friedman believe the various anti-Assad forces including the Islamic State, Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, and other assorted jihadi groups, many of whom are Sunni will welcome the occupiers with open arms? Will Russia and Iran simply fold their hands and cut a deal, and what might that deal be? If Assad falls, what would prevent a retributory bloodbath against innocent Alawis who were not complicit in Assads crimes? How will the occupying force figure out whom to support, whom to oppose, and who should be entrusted with the long-term future of Syria? Lets not mince words. What Friedman is really proposing is a foreign invasion of Syria. Isnt such an action more likely to deepen the Hobbesian state of anarchy that already exists there, with the intervening force arrayed on one side? Putting an effective lid on the sectarian conflict in Syria would require a massive military occupation involving several hundred thousand troops (at least), and even that might not be enough. Weve seen this movie several times in recent years, and the results have been uniformly disappointing. Oh, one more thing: Whats the exit strategy? Friedman never offers one, or gives any indication of his anticipated timeline. How long does he expect the United States and its coalition partners to be bogged down in Syria? If Iraq and Afghanistan are any guide, the answer is approximately forever. Make no mistake. In the guise of benevolent humanitarian intervention, Friedman is calling yet again! for the United States to wage another war in the Greater Middle East. It has done so five times since 1990: in Iraq (twice), in Afghanistan (still underway), in Libya, in Somalia, and weve intervened on a smaller scale in Syria and Yemen. With the exception of the first Iraq War in 1991, none of these interventions has ended well. Or as former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen put it last year, Were zero for a lot. It is also worth remembering that the first Iraq War was successful because it was a purely conventional war (i.e., the kind we are good at fighting), did not involve seizing foreign territory, and did not lead to regime change, an American occupation, or the kind of elaborate social engineering that nation-building necessarily entails. Syria remains a tragedy because there are no good options. Friedman knows that, I suspect, but he judges his proposal to be the least bad and says it is worth a try. Ask yourself: Would you want to tell that to a young U.S. soldier about to deploy, or to a foreign government whose help you were trying to enlist? Hey, its worth a try. Im sure Winston Churchill told his associates the disastrous assault on Gallipoli was worth a try, and Ill bet German naval officials said the same thing about the unrestricted submarine warfare campaign that brought the United States into the war in 1917. Gen. Hideki Tojo probably thought the attack on Pearl Harbor was worth a try, and thats what Friedman thought about invading Iraq back in 2003. By now, youd think hed know better. Photo Credit: Photo by John Moore/Getty Images President Donald Trump's decision of using the Tomahawk missiles in its attack in Syria on Thursday night is apparently not surprising as this cruise missile has been the backbone of the U.S. warfare for more than 20 years, reports said. The long-range cruise missiles have been used by the U.S. since the 1990s because of its accuracy. When the U.S. raided Iraq in 1993, the military relied on an unmanned Tomahawk cruise missile because of its accuracy and its non-requirement of sending a piloted aircraft, which the U.S. didn't want to send in Baghdad as it was heavily defended, according to a New York Times report. Read: Was The US Attack On Syria Legal? A Tomahawk missile's accuracy can be gauged from the fact that it can be launched from ships or submarines into heavily defended areas even more than 1,000 miles away and it can still maintain its precision. It can also destroy entire buildings as each missile usually carries a 1,000-pound warhead that can cause immense damage. The manufacturer of Tomahawk missiles, Raytheon, on its website, describes the missile as a "modern, mature, powerful weapon capable of precise strikes on high-value targets with minimal collateral damage. Its accuracy and GPS-enabled precision enable the missile to be used by the U.S. Navy in its attacks against threatening nations. The missile has been used over 2,000 times in combat and flight-tested more than 500 times. In 2011, when a multi-state NATO-led coalition started a military intervention in Libya to protect the civilians against the regime of Muammar al-Qaddafi, Tomahawk missiles played an important role in the operation. More than 112 Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired over 20 targets in Libya in the opening phase of the operation, according to reports. The latest upgrade to the Tomahawk series is Tomahawk Block IV, which has enhanced qualities than its previous models. Block IV was tested in January by the U.S. Navy. Related Articles President Donald Trump says he thinks China will "want to be stepping up" in trying to deter North Korea's nuclear ambitions. Trump spoke to reporters on Air Force One on his way to a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. While Trump would not say what he wants China to do specifically with regards to North Korea, he suggested there was a link between "terrible" trade agreements the U.S. has made with China and Pyongyang's provocations. He says the two issues "really do mix." The president has said that if China doesn't exert more pressure on North Korea, the U.S. will act alone. PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping opened their high-stakes summit at Trump's Florida beach resort Thursday, with the urgent threat of North Korea's nuclear ambitions and tensions over trade on the agenda. Xi's visit was overshadowed, though, by a U.S. missile barrage on an air base in Syria in response to this week's chemical weapons attack against civilians, which the U.S. blamed on President Bashar Assad. The U.S. announced the missile attack shortly after Xi and his wife left the Mar-a-Lago estate Thursday night. Trump appeared lighthearted earlier Thursday as he greeted Xi at Mar-A-Lago, gesturing and pointing to journalists as they tussled to get a shot of the two leaders together for the first time. BEIJING (AP) Chinese state media say U.S. President Donald Trump has accepted an invitation from his Chinese counterpart to visit China later this year. The official Xinhua News Agency reported late Thursday that Trump will travel to China at an "early date" in 2017 but gave no details. Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are holding their first meeting this week at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. During last year's election campaign and afterward, Trump talked tough about extracting better trade deals out of China and pressuring Beijing to do more to deter North Korea's nuclear program. Trump joked at a formal dinner with Xi on Thursday that he had "gotten nothing" in long talks with the Chinese president but said they had developed a friendly rapport. Story continues BEIJING (AP) China has condemned this week's deadly chemical weapons attack in Syria and says it supports an independent investigation under the United Nations. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Friday that China opposed the use of chemical weapons by any party under any circumstances. "We condemn the recent chemical attack in Syria, and we support the independent and comprehensive investigation conducted by the relevant U.N. agencies into ... the use or suspected use of chemical weapons so as to reach a conclusion that stands the test of history and facts on the basis of solid evidence," Hua said. "We have noted the latest developments. BEIJING (AP) Norway's prime minister began a visit to China on Friday as part of a restoration of full contacts between the two countries, more than six years after Beijing froze Oslo out over the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to an imprisoned Chinese dissident. Following a welcoming ceremony Friday, Erna Solberg was told by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang that, "Your visit symbolizes the normalization of China-Norwegian relationship." Solberg, who was accompanied by Foreign Minister Borge Brende and a trade delegation, replied that the normalization process would help the countries "find a lot of common areas of shared interests to work together." "China is playing a key role in the efforts to combat climate change, and I welcome the fact that this is high on Premier Li's agenda," a Norwegian government statement quoted Solberg as saying. PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) So you believe sports is a path to peace? If so, Pyongyang was the wrong place to be Friday, as the two Koreas technically at war for nearly 70 years faced off in a rare soccer match. On the field, Korean women fought to a 1-1 draw. But in the stands, more than 40,000 fans made clear the game didn't reflect a thaw in deeply troubled inter-Korean relations. There was the sound of tens of thousands of voices singing in praise of the North Korean fatherland. There were Pyongyang university students shouting slogans in near-perfect unison. UNITED NATIONS (AP) The Security Council on Thursday strongly condemned North Korea's latest ballistic missile launch and demanded a halt to all missile tests, stressing again that they violate U.N. sanctions and "are significantly increasing tension in the region and beyond." A press statement agreed to by all 15 members expresses "utmost concern" at North Korea's "highly destabilizing behavior and flagrant and provocative defiance of the Security Council" by conducting the latest launch less than three weeks after the previous test. Council members said they "deplore" all North Korean ballistic missile activity, stressing that it contributes to the country's development of nuclear weapons delivery systems and diverts resources from the needs of its people. YANGON, Myanmar (AP) A ferry boat capsized in Myanmar's Ayeyarwaddy delta, killing 20 people and leaving more than a dozen missing, police said. Thirty people were rescued after the ferry capsized in the Ngawun river at around 7:30 p.m. Friday, police officer Nay Lin Tun said. About 66 people were on the ferry, which capsized after colliding with a boat carrying gravel. The ferry was going from Pathein to Yakhinekone village. Most of the ferry's passengers were returning from a wedding ceremony. Boat accidents are fairly common in Myanmar, where many people travel by boat and government oversight is lax. COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) Police in the Maldives have arrested an opposition party leader on a charge of plotting to overthrow the government and remanded him for six days, a move the joint opposition condemned Friday as intensifying a crackdown on political opponents. Jumhooree Party leader and lawmaker Qasim Ibrahim had signed an agreement with others last month to try to restore democracy in the archipelago nation, and the joint opposition said his arrest was aimed at obstructing the work of the alliance, which it said has threatened the power of President Yameen Abdul Gayoom. Qasim was arrested Thursday evening on the charges of "attempting to influence no-confidence motions against the speaker of Parliament and deputy speaker" through bribing lawmakers and "plotting to overthrow the government and attempting to influence national security forces," according to the joint opposition's statement. UNITED NATIONS (AP) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has selected Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai to be a U.N. messenger of peace, the highest honor bestowed by the U.N. chief on a global citizen. U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric announced Friday that the 19-year-old education advocate will focus worldwide attention on the need for all girls to go to school. She will be officially designated at a ceremony on Monday and then hold a conversation with Guterres and youth representatives from around the world on girls' education, he said. Yousafzai became the youngest-ever Nobel laureate in 2014, when she was recognized for her advocacy of the right of all children to education. The pharmaceutical industry has enriched the tapestry of American TV characters with amorous bees, jaunty bowels, and a family of mucasoid Honeymooners, all of them cheerily pushing prescription drugs. But amid growing concern over the cost of medicines and a scramble to reform the US tax code, consultants are warning the industry that that lawmakers from both parties could turn their swords on Gut Guy. A drug advertising conference this week in Boston was packed with self-congratulatory sessions celebrating inspiring campaigns. But there was an undercurrent of unease about the prospect of a federal crackdown on pharma commercials. The US and New Zealand are the only two developed countries to allow TV ads for prescription drugs. The US is unlikely to ban ads outright. But the economics for pharma could well change: Democrats in Congress are proposing to strip drug companies of their right to write off advertising expenses, and theres a newfound worry that Republicans might join the cause as part of an ambitious tax overhaul. Read more: Get ready for more drug ads: Facebook is making a bid for pharma dollars Anything that moves in tax reform and I do believe there will be a substantial effort to move it always means that the deduction for pharmaceutical advertising is at risk, said Jim Davidson, an attorney at the national corporate law firm Polsinelli. The drug industry spends about $5 billion a year on direct-to-consumer advertising, or DTC. And forcing pharma to pay taxes on that expense could raise $50 billion in federal revenue over 10 years, Davidson said. That could be tempting for Republicans who are scrambling for ways to pay for a large corporate tax cut. It could also score a political victory against an industry finding little quarter in Washington of late. Pharma has been derided as getting away with murder by President Trump and dubbed the biggest bunch of crooks in this country by Senator Bernie Sanders. Story continues Last week, nearly two dozen lawmakers all of them Democrats except for Sanders, an independent introduced identical bills in the House and Senate aimed at curbing drug prices. Among the provisions: Killing the tax deduction. The idea has been pushed almost exclusively by liberal Democrats who want to punish pharma for being profitable, said John Kamp, who heads the Coalition for Healthcare Communication, a group of ad agencies and medical publishers. But when they failed to repeal Obamacare, Republicans gave up billions in savings that they had planned on using to offset the budgetary impact of big tax cuts. So they need new sources of revenue. Read more: The untold story of TVs first prescription drug ad Theres a risk, Kamp said, that both parties might come together around across-the-board changes to tax breaks for marketing costs, affecting more than just pharma. The fight over DTC drug ads is hardly a new one. For years, pharma was all but kept off of TV by a wary Food and Drug Administration, which required any ad to list all of a drugs risks alongside its benefits, making a 30-second clip virtually impossible. But in 1997, the FDA softened its stance, allowing commercials to summarize side effects and then refer viewers to a website or long-form print ad. And thus opened the door for the likes of Viagra, Vioxx, and Lipitor to blanket the big games and the nightly news on the way to becoming household names. In the years since, pharmas DTC efforts have blossomed well beyond TV. The industry now pushes drugs through games, celebrity Instagram accounts, and apps. Synergy Pharmaceuticals, maker of a treatment for constipation, just unveiled a fleet of scatalogical emojis with names like Runny Ron and Plugged-Up Paulie, promising to change forever how patients communicate about bowel movements. Opposition to DTC has risen as TV advertising has become ever more aggressive. The American Medical Association has long criticized the practice and in 2015 called for an outright ban. Democrats in Congress have tried and failed to get pharma off TV numerous times over the past two decades. The most recent effort, from Representative Rosa DeLauro, sought to to force companies to wait three years after getting approval to sell a new drug before marketing it to patients. Read more: Inside the $100 million ad blitz for a $1,100-a-pill drug for hepatitis C Critics say putting drugs on TV contributes to escalating health care costs, stuffing patients heads with questionable ideas and leading to diagnoses of diseases that in some cases dont really exist. But pharma says its rush to the airwaves has benefited society. Weve always said proposals to prohibit the tax deductibility of advertising expenses ignores the value of informing patients of new, innovative therapies, said a spokesperson for PhRMA, the drug industry trade group. Before the dawn of DTC, conditions like depression, incontinence, and erectile dysfunction were taboo topics, the industry argues. Putting them on TV helped reduce the shame factor, empowering patients who might otherwise have gone untreated, the industry says. And theres some truth to that, according Dr. David Kessler, who fought to keep drug ads away from television in his time as FDA commissioner. But it doesnt absolve pharma of its other sins, he said at the conference. The problem is youre not just changing social norms; youre also selling more drugs, and we have drug price issues, Kessler said. Thats why the promotional budgets are sitting there as a target, and theyre going to continue to be a target until we get drug pricing under control. A truck rammed into a crowded street in Central Stockholm Friday afternoon, killing two to three people and injuring a large number, according to police. Sweden has been attacked. Everything indicates an act of terror, Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said in a press conference shortly after the attack. The incident took place on Drottninggatan, one of the citys busiest pedestrian streets near major shopping centers. Witnesses say they saw a large truck plough through a crowd and slam into a department store. I was on my way to the exit and just saw the wall coming towards us like an avalanche, said one witness, Christoffer as TheLocal.se reported. People turned in panic and fled towards the exits. Then the main thing was to get away from the scene as quickly as possible. My first thought was that a bomb had exploded, he said. Local reporters captured footage of the immediate aftermath of the incident and crowds fleeing the scene: Ekots reporter fangade kaoset efter att en lastbil kort in i folkmassa i centrala Stockholm https://t.co/i3Ij9rgcW7 pic.twitter.com/0saPOiWuCC SR Ekot (@sr_ekot) April 7, 2017 Police cleared the area and set up barriers around the scene of the incident. Flera polisfordon med blaljus passerade just Sergels torg. Stora avsparrningar och forvirring bland forbipasserande @sr_ekot @SR_utrikes pic.twitter.com/YmpFd5Yu8v Katja Magnusson (@MagnussonKatja) April 7, 2017 We are still trying to determine who the attacker was, if the attack was carried by one or more people, and the number of injured, Swedish security service (Sapo) spokesperson Nina Odermalm Schei said in a statement. The chief of Sapo, Anders Thornberg, said they were investigating a person of interest in the case. Authorities shut down Stockholms subway system and evacuated several shopping locations and the citys main railway station after the incident. On March 22, an extremist in London rammed a car through crowds on Westminster bridge and attacked police with a knife, killing five and injuring 50. Terrorists also carried out deadly attacks by driving vehicles into crowds in Berlin and Nice last year. The company that owned the truck in the Stockholm incident, brewery company Spendrups, say the truck was stolen Thursday. Its one of our distribution vehicles which runs deliveries. During a delivery to the restaurant Caliente someone jumped into the drivers cabin and drove off with the car, while the driver unloads, company spokesperson Marten Lyth told Swedish TT news outlet. The incident took place in the same area as a 2010 suicide bomb attack during Christmas shopping season. Only the bomber died in that attack. Stay tuned for updates to the story here. This article was updated to include new developments on the story. Photo credit: ANDREAS SCHYMAN/AFP/Getty Images After about 100 people were killed in a chemical attack on Syrias Idlib province Tuesday, President Donald Trump on Thursday ordered missile strikes on the air base in Syria from which the chemicals were launched. The U.S. fired around 60 Tomahawk missiles late Thursday, aimed at the Shayrat air base in Syria, which is controlled by Syrian President Bashar Assad. In his address elaborating upon the decision to conduct the airstrike, Trump referred to Assad as a dictator. Read: Syria Chemical Weapons Timeline- A History Of The Assad Regime Attacking Civilians Read the full text of the remarks made by the president at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida below: My fellow Americans: On Tuesday, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad launched a horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians. Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women, and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror. Tonight, I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched. It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention, and ignored the urging of the U.N. Security Council. Years of previous attempts at changing Assad's behavior have all failed, and failed very dramatically. As a result, the refugee crisis continues to deepen and the region continues to destabilize, threatening the United States and its allies. trump syria Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria Tonight, I call on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria, and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types. We ask for God's wisdom as we face the challenge of our very troubled world. We pray for the lives of the wounded and for the souls of those who have passed. And we hope that as long as America stands for justice, then peace and harmony will, in the end, prevail. Story continues Goodnight. And God bless America and the entire world. Thank you. Related Articles In China, political events proceed with clockwork choreography, especially state visits. So President Donald Trumps decision to attack the Assad regime while in the middle of his summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping came as a shock the equivalent of holding a fancy dinner party for your boss and getting into a yelling match with a neighbor in the middle of it. And as so often with the Trump administration, theres a smorgasbord of bad motivations to pick from. Its easy to imagine the murine sniggers of anti-Asian racist Stephen Bannon still skittering around Trumps entourage despite his recent removal from the National Security Council at the prospect of slapping the Chinese down, or that Trump himself thought it would be the best way to seem like a big man in front of his guest. Several U.S. commentators have been impressed by the strength demonstrated by the strikes in Syria and the implicit messaging that, hey, we might just get a little crazy with North Korea next. But I doubt thats how Beijing reads things. China is perfectly well aware of the military might and global reach of the United States; its not like they cant count aircraft carriers. What its continually and pleasantly surprised by is how stupidly the United States uses that strength. For Xi, the strikes might have been a sign of disrespect but they were also a reminder of the fundamental dumbness, from a Chinese strategic perspective, of U.S. foreign-policy decisions. Sure, Syria is friendly with China though more by transitive properties, of being a Russian client state at a time when Moscow is Beijings most consistent ally, than by any real ties. But its not an important market or a vital friend; its a distant, small country embroiled in a war far removed from China. (Syrias 22 million people are a little less than the official population of Beijing.) Chinese citizens are just as moved by the murder of innocents as anyone else, when they know about it, but theyre not going to protest in the street about it, so the government doesnt care. Beijing likes to throw around the term core interests. Sometimes this is just rhetorical bullying, as when the term was redefined to include every inch of the South China Sea. But its also a reminder of Beijings steady, relentless focus on its key issues, both at home or abroad: Communist Party dominance, economic development, and territorial integrity. Taiwan matters, Syria doesnt. The overshadowing of Xi by Syria on foreign news probably stung a little, especially for Chinas weak, beleaguered Foreign Ministry, ever eager to prove to its bosses how much shine its putting on their image abroad. But on Chinas domestic channels the ones that really matter to the leaders it was all Xi, all the time. The presidential glad-handing in Mar-a-Lago led the news broadcasts, not the Syria strikes. Trump might have thought he was signaling a bold willingness to use force to his visitor, but China regards U.S. military might as early U.S. statesman Elbridge Gerry once did the prospect of standing army: Like a standing member; an excellent assurance of domestic tranquillity, but a dangerous temptation to foreign adventure. Chinas happy to gradually extend power elsewhere, especially in its own neighborhood. But it hasnt gone to war for 38 years, since the last spasms of the Maoist era produced a blundering invasion of Vietnam in 1979. (In that time frame, the United States has gone to war in well over a dozen countries, and Russia in close to a dozen.) Beijing views Washingtons scatter-shot, flip-flop approach to foreign policy especially in the post-Cold War era as destabilizing, foolish and useful. Iraq, any Chinese decisionmaker will tell you, bought us a decade. Before 9/11, it looked as though the United States was moving to seriously contain China. Afterward, the Asia-Pacific languished as American lives and money bled out in Fallujah and Kandahar. While the United States was mired in the Middle East and Afghanistan, China was building factories, economic alliances, and artificial islands. As much as the Chinese publicly decry U.S. strategists suspicions about Chinas rise to the forefront of the global stage, in private they see these concerns as both logical and inevitable hence the popularity among Chinese international relations theorists of the Thucydides Trap, the idea that an emerging power will always clash with the existing hegemon. The United States went into Iraq for no good reason, spent a trillion dollars, and came out with nothing. From the Chinese perspective, theyd just started a chess game when their opponent spotted them a queen. China will lightly beat the drum about the rights of sovereign states and Western interference not least to do its duty by its actual ally and neighbor, Russia. It already used one of its relatively rare U.N. Security Council vetoes to block past sanctions on Syria as a signal of good faith to Russia, although it usually relies on Moscow to take the heat and abstains. But a United States that sticks its hand in the bear trap of Syria is a United States with fewer resources to devote to areas and issues that actually matter to China. Chinas approach has plenty of its own weaknesses. The narrow focus on domestic needs, without an international vision or moral crusade that others can latch on to, is one of the reasons its soft power is so cripplingly limited. Its lack of commitment elsewhere also makes it difficult to build the sort of alliances that have let the United States maintain a Washington-led global order for decades. Xis One Belt, One Road project, envisaging China-led initiatives spanning Eurasia, may go some way to balance that but given his growing absolutism at home, and the increasing inability of anyone to say no to him, it could also entangle China in the quagmires it has skillfully avoided for decades. For the moment, though, its America that, yet again, is getting ready to jump feet-first into the mud. Photo credit: JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images By Steve Holland PALM BEACH, Fla. (Reuters) - Chinese President Xi Jinping urged cooperation with the United States on trade and investment on Thursday, inviting President Donald Trump to visit China in a cordial start to their first meeting likely to broach sensitive security and commercial issues. Trump has said he wants to raise concerns about China's trade practices and press Xi to do more to rein in North Korea's nuclear ambitions during his two-day visit to the Spanish-style Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, though no major deals on either issue are expected. The two sides should promote the "healthy development of bilateral trade and investment" and advance talks on a bilateral investment agreement, Xi said, according to a statement on China's Foreign Ministry website. "We have a thousand reasons to get China-U.S. relations right, and not one reason to spoil the China-U.S. relationship," Xi told Trump. Trump accepted Xi's invitation to China later this year, state news agency Xinhua news agency cited officials as saying on Friday. Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, joined Trump and his wife, Melania, at a long table in an ornate candle-lit private dining room festooned with red and yellow floral centerpieces, where they dined on pan-seared Dover sole and New York strip steak. Trump, a New York real estate magnate before he ran for office, joked before dinner: "We've had a long discussion already, and so far I have gotten nothing, absolutely nothing. But we have developed a friendship - I can see that - and I think long term we are going to have a very, very great relationship and I look very much forward to it." The fanfare over the summit on Thursday was overshadowed by another pressing foreign policy issue: the U.S. response to a deadly poison gas attack in Syria. As Trump and Xi were wrapping up dinner, U.S. forces fired dozens of cruise missiles at a Syrian airbase from which it said the chemical weapons attack was launched this week, an escalation of the U.S. military role in Syria that swiftly drew sharp criticism from Russia. In Beijing, China's Foreign Ministry urged all parties in Syria to find a political settlement. Trump and Xi were expected to get into more detailed discussions about trade and foreign policy issues on Friday, concluding their summit with a working lunch. Trump promised during the 2016 presidential campaign to stop what he called the theft of American jobs by China and rebuild the country's manufacturing base. Many blue-collar workers helped propel him to his unexpected election victory in November and Trump wants to deliver for them. "We have been treated unfairly and have made terrible trade deals with China for many, many years. That's one of the things we are going to be talking about," Trump told reporters ahead of the meeting. The bilateral investment treaty mentioned by Xi, talks on which began during former president George W. Bush's administration and resumed under Barack Obama, has received little attention since Trump took office. Trump is still finding his footing in the White House and has yet to spell out a strategy for what his advisers called a trade relationship based on "the principle of reciprocity." He brought his top economic and national advisers to Florida for the meeting, including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. "Even as we share a desire to work together, the United States does recognize the challenges China can present to American interests," said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, also in Florida for the meeting. Trump's daughter, Ivanka, and her husband, Jared Kushner, who both work at the White House, also were among the dinner guests. DIFFERING PERSONALITIES The summit brings together two leaders who could not seem more different: the often stormy Trump, prone to angry tweets, and Xi, outwardly calm, measured and tightly scripted, with no known social media presence. What worries the protocol-conscious Chinese more than policy clashes is the risk that the unpredictable Trump could publicly embarrass Xi, after several foreign leaders experienced awkward moments with the new U.S. president. "Ensuring President Xi does not lose face is a top priority for China," a Chinese official said. The most urgent problem facing Trump and Xi is how to persuade nuclear-armed North Korea to halt unpredictable behavior like missile test launches that have heightened tensions in South Korea and Japan. North Korea is working to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting the United States. Trump has threatened to use trade to try to force China to exert influence over Pyongyang. "I think China will be stepping up," Trump told reporters on Thursday. Beijing says its influence is limited and that it is doing all it can. The White House is reviewing options to pressure Pyongyang economically and militarily, including "secondary sanctions" against Chinese banks and firms that do the most business with Pyongyang. A long-standing option of pre-emptive strikes remains on the table, but despite the tougher recent U.S. talk, the internal review "de-emphasizes direct military action," the U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Analysts believe any military action would likely provoke severe North Korean retaliation and massive casualties in South Korea and Japan and among U.S. troops stationed there. NO GRAND BARGAIN ON TRADE On trade, U.S. labor leaders say Trump needs to take a direct, unambiguous tone in his talks with Xi. "President Trump needs to come away from the meeting with concrete deliverables that will restore production and employment here in the U.S. in those sectors that have been ravaged by China's predatory and protectionist practices," said Holly Hart, legislative director for the United Steelworkers union. A U.S. administration official told Reuters that Washington expects to have to use legal tools to fight for U.S. companies, such as pursuing World Trade Organization lawsuits. "I don't expect a grand bargain on trade. I think what you are going to see is that the president makes very clear to Xi and publicly what we expect on trade," a U.S. official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. Trump has often complained Beijing undervalues its currency to boost trade, but his administration looks unlikely to formally label China a currency manipulator in the near term - a designation that could come with penalties. (Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom, Matt Spetalnick, Roberta Rampton, Ayesha Rascoe and Mohammad Zargham in Washington, Gui Qing Koh in New York, Michael Martina in Beijing and William Mallard in Tokyo; Editing by Lisa Shumaker, James Dalgleish and Nick Macfie) ((This story published on April 5th corrects typographical error in paragraph 8)) WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he thinks Susan Rice, a former top adviser to President Barack Obama, committed a crime by seeking the identities of Trump associates mentioned in intercepted communications, but he declined requests for evidence, the New York Times reported. In an interview, Trump declined to tell the New York Times whether he had reviewed intelligence to bolster his claim about Rice but said he would explain himself "at the right time." Rice said she had no immediate comment on the president's remarks when contacted by Reuters. Later on Wednesday, Erin Pelton, a spokesman for Rice, said in an email to Reuters: "I'm not going to dignify the President's ludicrous charge with a comment." Trump and his allies have focused on unsubstantiated reports that Rice, who served as Obama's national security adviser, disclosed the names of Trump aides swept up in U.S. surveillance of foreign targets. Rice dismissed the reports as "absolutely false" in an interview with MSNBC on Tuesday. According to five U.S. intelligence officials, Rice followed standard procedure in requesting the National Security Agency to reveal to her the names of American citizens who had been in contact with Russians whose communications were monitored by U.S. intelligence. It is unlikely she would have known that any unidentified American had a connection to Trump, the officials said. As White House national security adviser, Rice could not order the NSA to reveal the identities of any Americans. Instead, she could only request it to do so. Such requests, which a number of senior officials are authorized to make, trigger a legal and intelligence review by the agency to determine whether revealing the name has potential intelligence value and could expose a security threat to the United States, said one of the officials, who is familiar with the process and spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal intelligence procedures. There is nothing unusual, much less suspicious, about any request by Rice, said another intelligence official, especially since it could have revealed Russian intelligence contacts or agents operating in the United States. This official and two other intelligence officials said the NSA often receives dozens of such requests in a month. John Culhane, a professor at Widener University Delaware Law School, said he thought Rice could have a credible libel lawsuit against Trump. Though public figures like Rice face a higher standard in bringing such claims, Culhane said she could contend Trump demonstrated a reckless disregard for the truth. But the president typically enjoys immunity from civil lawsuits over official acts, Culhane noted, and a court could find that Trumps interview with the newspaper was within the scope of his official duties. (Reporting by Susan Heavey, Mark Hosenball and John Walcott; Additional reporting by Jan Wolfe; Editing by Tim Ahmann and James Dalgleish) Of the straw men President Barack Obama so enjoyed arguing against on national security policy, one of the most exasperating was that there was no alternative to his hesitance other than an invasion with hundreds of thousands of troops and an endless counterinsurgency to fight. He was derisive about limited uses of force to achieve limited political objectives. He saw endless vulnerabilities in our position and none in those of our adversaries so no action should be taken against, say, Iranian harassment of shipping in the Strait of Hormuz because Tehran might retaliate, as though we had no escalation options, when in many instances the United States possessed escalation dominance. The approach served to defang U.S. threats and undermine the deterrence of adversary action on which so many U.S. security commitments rely. As Gen. Ulysses Grant said of Union Secretary of War Edward Stanton, He could see our weakness, but he could not see that the enemy was in danger. So it was with Obama. The punitive military strikes President Donald Trump ordered on Thursday night against the Syrian airbase from which the forces flew that dropped chemical weapons on Syrian civilians and then bombed the hospitals treating the victims of the attacks are not only a valuable reinforcing of the norm against the use of weapons of mass destruction, they are also a reminder that the United States can, in fact, use military force in limited but effective ways. The Tomahawk missile strikes on the Shayrat Airbase look like a pretty well-thought- through and well-executed operation. The president took seriously his responsibility to explain Americas actions to the world and sounded properly pious and grave. The Defense Department came up with a sensible approach that mitigated the substantial geopolitical risks. The Russians though certainly not pleased with the attack were clearly consulted, and effort was taken to skirt the locations of their forces on the ground in Syria. Not only was war with Russia avoided, but the limits of Moscows support for President Bashar al-Assad was also demonstrated. Russias subsequent dissembling about the source of the attack was dismissed by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. The Israeli Defense Forces have acknowledged they were also informed in advance, as they ought to have been, given the risks of retaliation against Israel. Story continues The Trump administration evidently didnt consult with the Congress before the attacks, which is a glaring oversight they may pay for later. But Congresss glaring deficiencies in running from a vote to authorize the use of military force make that a draw. In sum, at this early hour, the administration looks to be leaving Assad in place in an excess of concern about post-Islamic State stability, but while constraining his behavior. Meanwhile, its a lesson about where Trump is willing to go. American allies far afield of the Middle East fretted about our reliability when Obama declined to enforce his Syrian red line. They may be relieved to see Trump is not so chastened by the associated risks to enforce his. This may yet turn out badly for the United States. The Russians may be more committed to Assad than their removal of planes and personnel from the airfield suggest. Tillersons questioning both their honesty and competence may rankle. Syrian military and intelligence forces may target Americans operating in Syria and Iraq; the Iranian Quuds forces may do the same. The Iranian navy may seek to provoke incidents with U.S. forces operating in the Persian Gulf. And, its possible that Iran may break out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and restart its nuclear program in the hopes it will negate our conventional force advantages or prevent further attacks through fear of nuclear retaliation against the United States or Israel. Hezbollah and Hamas may strike Israel, or attempt to take the Golan. Moreover, the legal basis may prove contentious (as Jack Goldsmith has argued), and Congress may prove fickle in its support. It leaves the United States in the morally awkward position of permitting the killing of Syrian children, but only seeming to object to the weapons they are killed with hardly a winning argument on the Arab street. The biggest risk coming out of the attack, though, may be the ease and speed with which the commander in chief flipped his position. Horrible as the Khan Sheikhoun attack was, the Assad government has used chemical weapons dozens and dozens of times, and has committed numerous other war crimes. The regime has killed a half million people and made refugees out of 5 million more. This weeks attack was a difference of degree, not of kind. Yet Trump was moved to reverse himself on involvement in the Syrian civil war. Al Qaedas success on 9/11 was not only the murder of 2,996 people in a shocking atrocity, but the subsequent redirection of U.S. national security interests. Trump has now allowed his national security priorities to be similarly hijacked, which could incentivize other adversaries to try to provoke similar redirections. (In the presidents defense, however, he managed to keep the visit with Chinas president on track.) But the indiscipline that has characterized the Trumps actions may lead him to emotional reactions without corresponding strategy. National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, too, described a big shift in policy, but its not clear whats beyond the punitive strike in this new policy toward Syria. Trumps comments sounded an expansive tone: Tonight I call on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria, and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types. While the president may have laudably enforced the red line against chemical weapons use and demonstrated that the United States is willing to use its immense power for good, he still needs to develop and explain a policy. Photo credit: JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images UPDATE: 1:58 a.m. EDT Iran and Russia strongly condemned Thursday night's U.S. airstrikes in Syria, which targeted an airbase near Homs in retaliation to a chemical gas attack Tuesday. Russian President Vladimir Putin called the airstrike an "aggression against a sovereign nation" and saw it as an "attempt to distract the world from civilian casualties from U.S. military action in Iraq." He also said the military action did "significant damage to U.S.-Russia ties," his spokesman Dmitry Peskov told BBC News. UPDATE: 1:39 a.m. EDT The governor of the Syrian city of Homs, Talal Barazi, said the U.S. airstrike at the Shayrat airbase caused civilian casualties in a village nearby. Five people were killed and another seven injured. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told Reuters the airbase was "almost completely destroyed" after the attack and at least four Syrian soldiers were killed. UPDATE: 12:34 a.m. EDT U.S. airstrikes on an air force base in Syria killed a number of people and left some wounded, a Syrian official told the Associated Press. Talal Barazi, governor of Homs, where the airbase is located, did not give a number for the deaths, but he said there was an ongoing fire following the missile attack. It is possible that the death count is low because Russia, an ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad, had been informed about the missile attack in advance. Russia is also reportedly calling for a U.N. Security Council meeting to discuss the bombing. UPDATE: 11:42 p.m. EDT The U.S. missile strike on the Shayrat air base near Homs in Syria did not cause "big human casualties" but led to "material damage," Homs Governor Talal Barazi said. Story continues "I believe - God willing - that the human casualties are not big, but there is material damage. We hope there are not many victims and martyrs," Barazi told Reuters over phone. Fire fighting and rescue operations have been going for two hours, the governor added. UPDATE: 11:37 p.m. EDT Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement late Thursday night, supporting President Donald Trump's authorization of U.S. missile launches into Syria. About 60 Tomahawk missiles were fired at a Syrian airbase in retaliation against the use of a chemical attack against civilians in Idlib province, allegedly carried out by the regime of President Bashar Assad. Meanwhile, Bolivia requested an urgent meeting of the United Nations Security Council to discuss the airstrike conducted by the U.S. Original story: The United States fired about 60 Tomahawk missiles Thursday night into the government-controlled Shayrat air base in Syria, after President Donald Trump order the attack. The move was in retaliation to the deadly chemical gas attack against civilians in Idlib province Tuesday that claimed the lives of over 100 people and left 300 wounded. "Tonight I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched," the president announced Thursday from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, where he was meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. "It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons." "It crossed a lot of lines for me. When you kill innocent children, innocent babies babies, little babies with a chemical gas that is so lethal people were shocked to hear what gas it was that crosses many, many lines, beyond a red line," Trump said at a joint news conference he held with King Abdullah of Jordan on Wednesday, referring to the chemical attack, allegedly carried out by the Bashar Assad regime. Russian forces in Syria were informed earlier that the airstrike will take place at the Shayrat base and not in the areas where the Russian forces were believed to be present, according to U.S. officials. However, after Trump's White House speech stating the possibility of conducting the airstrike on Syria, Russias deputy UN envoy Vladimir Safronkov said: "Think about negative consequences." "We have to think about negative consequences, negative consequences, and all the responsibility if military action occurred will be on shoulders of those who initiated such doubtful and tragic enterprise," he added. The Pentagon issued a formal statement about the U.S. airstrike. The president was said to have authorized the strike after negotiating with the National Security Council members in Florida and Washington D.C., according to National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster. Speaker Paul Ryan had said earlier the president needed Congressional approval to carry out the airstrike. However, he issued a statement later saying that the "action was just and appropriate." Related Articles WASHINGTON Four years ago, Donald Trump insisted that then-President Barack Obama needed congressional approval for military strikes inside Syria after a chemical attack blamed on Bashar Assads government. Top Democrats and some Republicans in Congress say it is now President Trumps duty to seek similar war-making authority. In August 2013, Trump delivered his blunt message on Twitter. What will we get for bombing Syria besides more debt and a possible long term conflict? Obama needs Congressional approval, the entrepreneur said. Nearly four years later, some lawmakers are sending a similar message to the new commander in chief after he rained missiles on a Syrian airbase thought to be the point of origin for a regime chemical attack earlier this week. Syrias government has rejected blame for the atrocity, which killed dozens of civilians, including children, in an area near Turkeys border mostly controlled by anti-Assad rebels, and drew global outrage. Slideshow: Suspected Syria gas attack kills dozens, including children >>> Apart from Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., who branded the missile strikes unlawful because Congress had not authorized them, most top lawmakers of both parties have welcomed Trumps decision and are now focusing on him getting formal authority only if he plans to widen the conflict. Tonights strike in Syria appears to be a proportional response to the regimes use of chemical weapons, Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said late Thursday. If the president intends to escalate the U.S. militarys involvement in Syria, he must to come to Congress for an Authorization for Use of Military Force which is tailored to meet the threat and prevent another open-ended war in the Middle East. Pelosi followed up on Friday by writing Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan to say he should call Congress back to work to debate and vote on Trumps approach. Related: U.S. attacks Syrian air base >>> Story continues A spokesman for Ryan, Doug Andres, responded that the chemical weapons attack committed by the Assad regime was a flagrant violation of international standards, and preventing a deepening of the humanitarian crisis and instability in Syria is clearly in the United States national interest. Andres continued: As such, last nights response was fully within the presidents authority. It is now appropriate for the administration to consult with Congress as it considers next steps to resolve the long-running crisis in Syria. For the moment, top Trump aides have signaled that Thursdays strikes were purely in response to the chemical atrocity two days earlier, not the first salvo in a military campaign to remove Assad an escalation that could bring the United States in direct conflict with Russia, his regimes patron. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Thursday described Washingtons goals as first, defeat the so-called Islamic State; second stabilize Syria and end its civil war; third, rally a global coalition behind the idea of ousting Assad through a political process. President Trump delivers a statement about missile strikes on a Syrian airfield. (Photo: Carlos Barria/Reuters) Its not clear what it will mean to consult Congress, as a practical matter. A senior administration official told reporters on Friday that the president acted pursuant to his authority under Article 2 of the Constitution, which makes him commander in chief. And, the aide said, top officials including Vice President Mike Pence are in constant contact with congressional leaders. On Thursday night, Trump laid out conventional U.S. rationales for unilateral military action in a way that suggests he does not see a need for formal authority from Congress. The president said it is in the vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. Continued chaos in Syria, and the resulting refugee flows and regional tensions, are threatening the United States and its allies. Trump made a humanitarian case, citing the beautiful babies seen gasping or dead in images from the attack, and declared that Syria violated the Chemical Weapons Convention. Whatever happens in Congress, its virtually certain not to result in a declaration of war, a task the Constitution reserves for the legislative branch. The United States has declared war formally against 11 nations in just five wars in its history: The War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War, World War I and World War II. Technically, Americas longest war the Afghanistan operation launched after Sept. 11 isnt a declared war. Neither were Korea, Vietnam, Panama, nor Iraq. The far more common legal tool has been an Authorization for Use of Military Force, better known in Washington as an AUMF. Congress passed two under George W. Bush, including one in 2002 to authorize the invasion of Iraq. The first one, approved shortly after the 9/11 attacks, has proved more far-reaching. For years, Obama resisted seeking an AUMF against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, because that group grew out of al-Qaida and was arguably covered under the 2001 resolution. (Kaine, who has long called for an AUMF against ISIS, at one point rejected that as an Alice in Wonderland argument.) But Trump is unlikely to seek an AUMF for this sort of one-off military action, in which American soldiers are not directly in the line of fire. Presidents dont often seek formal authorization for covert raids or missile strikes, and its unclear whether Congress could craft language that would earn a bipartisan majority. I would be glad to get an AUMF for Congress, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., told reporters on Friday. But I am not going to have the lack of this specific AUMF preventing the president of the United States from reacting to blatant war crimes that kill innocent men, women and children. Battle damage at Syrias Shayrat Airfield is seen in this DigitalGlobe satellite image released by the Pentagon. (Photo via Reuters) Political polarization helped doom Obamas AUMF request for ISIS, which was dead on arrival when he finally sent it to Congress in February 2015. The proposal reflected Obamas national security aides desire that it not tie his hands. The document would have authorized airstrikes in Iraq and Syria over the following three years. It would have forbidden the use of American ground troops in enduring offensive ground combat operations a term the Obama White House described as deliberately vague. It also would have allowed strikes against individuals and organizations fighting for, on behalf of, or alongside ISIL anywhere in the world. Democrats have balked at supporting such a sweeping measure. Republicans have pointed to the three-year limit and the ground combat language to argue that the AUMF binds the hands of Obamas successor. The truth of the matter is that both sides saw political peril in the presidents proposal. The role Hillary Clintons support for the Iraq War played in her 2008 defeat haunted Democrats. And Republicans, who could have voted to remove the language they describe as objectionable, preferred to criticize Obamas handling of the conflict without taking any steps that might make them co-owners of the strategy. A lawmaker truly hell-bent on forcing a debate on authorizing military action against Assads forces could try to use the 1973 Wars Powers Resolution, a law born of congressional anger at the way successive presidents expanded the bloody conflict in Vietnam. The law requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of introducing U.S. armed forces into conflict or into situations in which conflict is imminent. It also requires the withdrawal of U.S. forces after 60 days, with one 30-day extension, absent a declaration of war or an AUMF. Theres a catch: This would also require congressional action. And while presidents have cooperated with the reporting requirements, not one has formally endorsed the law as setting constitutionally valid restrictions on the commander in chief. Read more from Yahoo News: President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping opened their high-stakes summit at Trumps Florida beach resort Thursday, with the urgent threat of North Koreas nuclear ambitions and tensions over trade on the agenda. Xis visit was overshadowed, though, by a U.S. missile barrage on an air base in Syria in response to this weeks chemical weapons attack against civilians, which the U.S. blamed on President Bashar Assad. The U.S. announced the missile attack shortly after Xi and his wife left the Mar-a-Lago estate Thursday night. Trump appeared lighthearted earlier Thursday as he greeted Xi at Mar-A-Lago, gesturing and pointing to journalists as they tussled to get a shot of the two leaders together for the first time. Ahead of the dinner, Trump said he and Xi already had had a long discussion and had developed a friendship, and then joked, I have gotten nothing, absolutely nothing. The White House said the location was selected to give the two days of discussions a more relaxed feel. A number of Trumps top advisers were in attendance, including his daughter, Ivanka Trump, and son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Outside the dining room where the two delegations gathered for a lavish dinner, Mar-a-Lago club members packed the patio for dinner. Trump and first lady Melania Trump greeted Xi and his wife at Mar-a-Lago before making their way to dinner. On Air Force One on the way to Florida Trump pointed to the crisis in North Korea as a top priority in the meetings with Xi. He said he thinks China will want to be stepping up in trying to deter North Koreas nuclear ambitions. While Trump would not say what he wants China to do specifically, he suggested there was a link between terrible trade agreements the U.S. has made with China and Pyongyangs provocations. He says the two issues really do mix. The President has said that if China doesnt exert more pressure on North Korea, the U.S. will act alone. Both as a candidate and President, Trump has taken an aggressive posture toward China, labeling Beijing a tremendous problem and arguing that lopsided trade deals with China shortchange American businesses and workers. Last week, the President predicted in a tweet that his meeting with Xi would be very difficult. Story continues The White House has downplayed expectations for a breakthrough on issues like trade and tariffs, insisting that the 24-hour summit is mostly an introductory meeting for the two leaders. And within Trumps administration, there are still divisions over how to approach China. According to U.S. and foreign officials, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and economic adviser Gary Cohn are leading the charge for boosting ties and exploring the potential for greater economic cooperation. But economic adviser Peter Navarro, author of the book Death by China: Confronting the Dragon - a Global Call to Action, prefers trying to isolate China, in keeping with Trumps America First mantra. Patrick Cronin, a China expert with the Center for a New American Security, said the Trump administration does not have a reconciled trade and economic policy yet, and the differing views on China in the White House underscore that. Ahead of the summit, Trump signed a pair of executive orders focused on reducing the U.S. trade deficit. The moves appeared to be a shot at China, which accounted for the vast bulk - $347 billion - of last years $502 billion trade deficit. Chinese exports to the U.S. totaled some $388.1 billion last year. Anthony Ruggiero, an East Asia expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said China may be more willing to accommodate Trump on trade and economic issues than on regional security issues, including North Korea. Xi, a shrewd political operator, is unlikely to want to rock the boat ahead of a Communist Party conclave later this year that will install new leadership. Xi is also expected to seek assurances that Trump will not interfere in the territorial dispute over the South China Sea or question the One China policy by reaching out to Taiwans leader again, as he did during the transition. The move infuriated Beijing, leading Trump to eventually reiterate his commitment to the decades-old policy. Previous White Houses have held China accountable for its human rights record, something this administration has made very little mention of, whether in China or elsewhere. It also remains to be seen whether the Obama administrations deal with Beijing to curb Chinese cybertheft for economic gain and its hacking of U.S. companies will be addressed. This article was originally published on FORTUNE.com By Michelle Nichols, Andrew Osborn and Tom Perry UNITED NATIONS/MOSCOW/BEIRUT (Reuters) - Russia warned on Friday that U.S. cruise missile strikes on a Syrian air base could have "extremely serious" consequences, as President Donald Trump's first major foray into a foreign conflict opened up a rift between Moscow and Washington. The warships USS Porter and USS Ross in the Mediterranean Sea launched dozens of Tomahawk missiles at the Shayrat air base, which the Pentagon says was involved in a chemical weapons attack this week. (Graphic locator map on attack - http://tmsnrt.rs/2nm68H0) It was Trump's biggest foreign policy decision since taking office in January and the kind of direct intervention in Syria's six-year-old civil war his predecessor Barack Obama avoided. The strikes were in reaction to what Washington says was a poison gas attack by the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that killed at least 70 people in rebel-held territory. Syria denies it carried out the attack. They catapulted Washington into confrontation with Russia, which has advisers on the ground aiding its close ally Assad. "We strongly condemn the illegitimate actions by the U.S. The consequences of this for regional and international stability could be extremely serious, Russia's deputy U.N. envoy, Vladimir Safronkov, told a meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Friday. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev charged that the U.S. strikes were one step away from clashing with Russia's military. U.S. officials informed Russian forces ahead of the missile strikes and avoided hitting Russian personnel. (Graphic explaining kind of missile used in attack - http://tmsnrt.rs/2nkJYWa) Satellite imagery suggests the base houses Russian special forces and helicopters, part of the Kremlin's effort to help Assad fight Islamic State and other militant groups. Trump has frequently urged improved relations with Russia, strained under Obama over Syria, Ukraine and other issues, was hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Thursday night when the attack occurred. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, in Florida with Trump, said on Friday the United States would announce additional sanctions on Syria in the near future but offered no specifics. Russia's Defense Ministry responded to the attack by calling in the U.S. military attache in Moscow to say that at midnight Moscow time (5 p.m. EDT) it would close down a communications line used to avoid accidental clashes between Russian and U.S. forces in Syria, Interfax new agency said. U.S. warplanes frequently attack Islamic State militants in Syria and come close to Russian forces. "PREPARED TO DO MORE" U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said on Friday the Trump administration was ready to take further steps if needed. "We are prepared to do more, but we hope that will not be necessary," she told the U.N. Security Council. "The United States will not stand by when chemical weapons are used. It is in our vital national security interest to prevent the spread and use of chemical weapons." Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who also was in Florida with Trump and is scheduled to go to Moscow next week, said he was disappointed but not surprised by the Russian reaction because it showed continued support for Assad. Iran, which supports Assad and has been criticized by Trump, condemned the strike, with President Hassan Rouhani saying it would bring "only destruction and danger to the region and the globe." U.S. officials called the intervention a "one-off" intended to deter future chemical weapons attacks and not an expansion of the U.S. role in the Syrian war. U.S. allies from Asia, Europe and the Middle East expressed support for the attack, if sometimes cautiously. The action is likely to be interpreted as a signal to Russia, and countries such as North Korea, China and Iran where Trump has faced foreign policy tests early in his presidency, of his willingness to use force. The United States is now likely to be more aggressive in pursuing intelligence about Syria's suspected chemical weapons program. The Pentagon has also signaled interest in determining any Russian complicity. "At a minimum, the Russians failed to rein in the Syrian regime activity," a senior U.S. military official told reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity. The official also said the United States had been unable to determine if a Russian or Syrian aircraft bombed a hospital that was treating victims of the chemical attack. Russia joined the war on Assad's behalf in 2015, turning the momentum in his favor. Although Moscow supports opposing sides in the war between Assad and rebels, the United States and Russia say they share a single main enemy, Islamic State. Tillerson said the strike took out about 20 percent of the seventh wing of the Syrian air force and hit a fueling facility. The base's runway was still in use. Assad's office said Syria would strike its enemies harder. Damascus and Moscow denied Syrian forces were behind the gas attack but Western countries dismissed their explanation that chemicals leaked from a rebel weapons depot after an air strike. The Syrian army said the U.S. attack killed six people and called it "blatant aggression" that made the United States a partner of "terrorist groups" including Islamic State. There was no independent confirmation of civilian casualties. U.S. lawmakers from both parties on Friday backed Trump's action but demanded he spell out a broader strategy for dealing with the conflict and consult with Congress on any further action. The U.N. Security Council had been negotiating a resolution, proposed by the United States, France and Britain on Tuesday, to condemn the gas attack and push the Syrian government to cooperate with international investigators. Russia said the text was unacceptable and diplomats said it was unlikely to be put to a vote. MOSCOW WANTS EXPLANATION Russia expects Tillerson to explain Washington's stance when he visits Moscow next week, Interfax news agency cited a Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman as saying. Washington has long backed rebels fighting Assad in a multi-sided civil war that has killed more than 400,000 people and driven half of Syrians from their homes since 2011. The United States has conducted air strikes against Islamic State, which controls territory in eastern and northern Syria, and a small number of U.S. troops are helping rebel militias. Asked whether the strikes set back any efforts to work with Russia to defeat Islamic State, sometimes known as ISIS, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said: "There can be a shared commitment to defeat ISIS and also agree that you cant gas your own people. Tuesday's attack was the first time since 2013 that Syria was accused of using sarin, a banned nerve agent it was meant to have given up under a Russian-brokered, U.N.-enforced deal that persuaded Obama to call off air strikes four years ago. (Chart of cumulated reported deaths from chemical gases in Syria - http://tmsnrt.rs/2o5Xbz6) Video depicted limp bodies and children choking while rescuers tried to wash off the poison gas. Russian state television blamed rebels and did not show footage of victims. The U.S. strikes cheered Assad's enemies, after months when Western powers appeared to grow increasingly resigned to his staying in power. But opposition figures said an isolated assault was far from the decisive intervention they seek. Neither the Trump administration nor its predecessor has laid out a policy aimed at ending the Syrian conflict. (Additional reporting by Phil Stewart, Idrees Ali, Roberta Rampton and Patricia Zengerle in Washington, Steve Holland in Florida, Roselle Chen in New York and Denis Pinchuk in Moscow; Writing by Alistair Bell and Bill Trott; Editing by James Dalgleish and Lisa Shumaker) Washington (AFP) - Donald Trump's cruise missile strike on a Syrian air base drags Washington deeper into the country's tragedy but does not mark a new strategy to oust Bashar al-Assad by force. The new US president has been an outspoken opponent of US military intervention in Middle East conflicts and until this week, his administration had insisted that removing the Syrian strongman was not a priority. But Assad's alleged use of a banned nerve agent to massacre scores of civilians moved Trump to act, which in turn encouraged those who have long hoped that the United States would help depose him. They may well be disappointed. Trump's cautious chief diplomat, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, was quick to pour cold water on the idea that the cruise missile salvo heralded a change in strategy. "I would not in any way attempt to extrapolate that to a change in our policy or our posture relative to our military activities in Syria today. There's been no change in that status," Tillerson said. Nevertheless, he added, Washington would support the UN-led negotiations "to resolve Syria's future in terms of its governance structure. "And that ultimately, in our view, will lead to a resolution of Bashar al-Assad's departure," he said. - Regime overthrow - James Jeffrey, who held senior national security positions under former president George W. Bush and advised Tillerson when the secretary was head of oil giant ExxonMobil, does not see a change in tack. "I think the administration clearly is in a different place with Assad than it was a week ago, but I don't think its primary intent is to use military force to directly overthrow this regime," Jeffrey said. But could the strike hasten Assad's fall by forcing him or his backers Russia and Iran to take the UN-mediated effort to negotiate a political solution to the civil war more seriously? The idea is not new. Former US president Barack Obama famously backed away from a threat to punish Assad's chemical weapons use in 2013, agreeing instead to allow him to surrender his arsenal. Story continues It now seems clear that the Syrian autocrat cheated on that deal and kept at least some of his banned nerve agents -- as well as carrying out frequent attacks with mixed-use substances like chlorine. In June last year, dozens of dissident US diplomats signed a "dissent cable" protesting Obama's policy and urging "a judicious use of stand-off and air weapons" to get Assad's attention. Then secretary of state John Kerry was loyal to Obama in public but has let it be known that he sympathized with the view of his colleagues, feeling US action might force Assad to the table. Thursday night's cruise missile attack was exactly the kind of raid the diplomats wanted. So might Assad now see the UN peace track in Geneva as a way out of the conflict? - Punishment strikes - Observers say that even if Assad believes he can hang on without seriously engaging in the peace process, Russia may be running out of patience with him, especially after the latest atrocity. Andrew Tabler, a veteran regional expert who founded Syria's first English-language news magazine and is now a fellow of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, thinks so. "In a way the strikes are not necessarily a bad thing for Russia," he told reporters. "Russia's had a very hard time getting president Assad to come to the negotiating table in any kind of meaningful way." If Washington remains prepared to punish any further chemical strikes -- as US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley insists is the case -- Assad may back down and negotiate. "How you get there, though, is the real question," Tabler added, suggesting that Tillerson's planned trip to Moscow next week could be key to turning the strikes into a strategy. Russia has accused Washington of violating international law by attacking Assad's air base, but US officials argue they are covered by a 2013 UN Security Council resolution. Under UNSCR 2118, passed in September 2013, Assad agreed to surrender his declared stockpile of chemical arms and to abide by the international convention banning their use. "The question is: Can you get Assad off of this course where he thinks that the only solution to the war is a military solution, that there is a political solution?" Tabler said. "I think you can, but I think it's going to take a strategy that has to include the likelihood that the regime could use strategic weapons again in the future and that an international response would have to be looming." Any new strategy, just like Obama's before it, will need Russia's support -- reluctant or otherwise -- and the key to that may be Tillerson's Moscow talks with President Vladimir Putin next week. "If the Russians don't cancel the visit, and I hope they don't, that will be a sign that they're willing to live with this strike," Jeffrey suggested. PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) What was billed as a showdown between the leaders of the United States and China over trade and North Korea ended with little sign of confrontation Friday or of concrete progress in resolving their differences. President Donald Trump had predicted a "very difficult" meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. After their first face-to-face at the Mar-a-Lago resort, he trumpeted they had developed an "outstanding" relationship. U.S. officials said the two sides agreed to increase cooperation on trying to get North Korea's to abandon its nuclear weapons program, and China acknowledged the need for more balanced trade with the U.S. But the two days of meetings appeared heavier on optics than substance. The most powerful message for the Chinese leader may have been Trump's decision to launch U.S. missile strikes at Syria. Those strikes added weight to Trump's threat last week to act unilaterally against North Korea's weapons program although a much heavier risk would be required to take military action against the nuclear-armed North, which has its artillery and missiles trained on a key U.S. ally, South Korea. The U.S. administration's first recourse is very likely to be economic pushing China to crack down on Chinese banks and companies said to provide North Korea access to the international financial system. In a possible harbinger of the kind of punishments Washington could inflict, a leading Chinese telecoms company, ZTE, was fined nearly $900 million in March for shipping sensitive U.S.-made technology to Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions. "They recognize that shows our clear determination to crack down on this sort of activity," Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told reporters. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the U.S. and China "agreed to increase cooperation and work with the international community to convince the DPRK to peacefully resolve the issue and abandon its illicit weapons programs." DPRK stands for North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Story continues Tillerson said Trump and Xi noted the urgency of the threat of North Korea's weapons program and that they reaffirmed their commitment to a denuclearization of the divided Korean Peninsula. On trade issues, Trump called for China to "level the playing field" for American workers, stressing the need for reciprocal market access. He also noted the importance of protecting human rights, and asked China to adhere to international norms in the seas of East Asia, Tillerson said. As a candidate and president, Trump has taken an aggressive posture toward China, labeling Beijing a "tremendous problem" and arguing that lopsided trade deals with China shortchange American businesses and workers. Some $347 billion of the $502 billion trade deficit recorded by the U.S. last year was with China. Trump said in a brief appearance before reporters Friday that he and Xi made "tremendous progress" in their talks and that he believes "lots of very potentially bad problems will be going away." He did not elaborate. For Xi, who is entering a twice-a-decade Communist Party congress in the fall, the meeting with Trump was more about stabilizing the critical U.S.-China relationship and burnishing his foreign policy credentials than achieving a breakthrough. The only other foreign leader to be hosted at Mar-a-Lago during Trump's presidency so far is Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a close U.S. ally. Speaking alongside Trump, Xi said the two delegations discussed important topics and established a good friendship and working relationship. He noted the historic responsibility of both countries the world's largest economies and emerging military rivals to work toward peace and stability. The visit was overshadowed by the missile barrage aimed at Syria, announced shortly after Trump and Xi wrapped up dinner Thursday night. The strikes were retaliation against Syrian President Bashar Assad for a chemical weapons attack against civilians caught up in his country's long civil war. China's response was muted. Its U.N. ambassador, Liu Jieyi, never mentioned the suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria, or the U.S. airstrikes, at an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Friday. Liu focused instead on the need for a political solution to the six-year Syrian conflict. ___ Pennington reported from Washington. Follow Vivian Salama at http://twitter.com/vmsalama Fareed Zakaria and Brian Williams. (Photos: Kathy Willens/AP, Mitch Gerber/AP) Longtime critics of President Trump suddenly and dramatically reversed their assessments of him after he authorized Thursday nights missile attack on a Syria airbase. CNN host Fareed Zakaria, who had called Trump a cancer of American democracy, praised him Friday morning following the strikes. I think Donald Trump became president of the United States, said Zakaria of the man who had legally assumed the office on January 20. (In the opinion of another CNN commentator, Van Jones, Trump had actually become president of the United States on February 28, with his emotional tribute to the widow of a Navy Seal killed in action during his joint address to Congress.) Zakaria continued: I think this was actually a big moment because candidate Trump had said that he would never get involved in the Syrian civil war, he told President Obama you cannot do this without the authorization of Congress, he seemed unconcerned with global norms. President Trump recognized that the president of the United States does have to act to enforce international norms, does have to have this broader moral and political purpose. Slideshow: U.S. attacks Syrian airbase >>> I think whats interesting is the way in which he justified his actions, added Zakaria. For the first time as president, he talked about international norms, international rules, Americas role in enforcing justice in the world. Its the kind of rhetoric weve come to expect from American presidents since Harry Truman. Theres been an interesting morphing and a kind of education of Donald Trump. MSNBC host Brian Williams, who had criticized other journalists for their favorable coverage of the president, was resoundingly positive in his coverage of the military operation, being overcome by the beauty of the missiles. Brian Williams refers to this Pentagon video of missiles going to kill people as "beautiful" 3 times in 30 seconds pic.twitter.com/KBb3tP8qHT Trevor Timm (@trevortimm) April 7, 2017 We see these beautiful pictures at night from the decks of these two U.S. Navy vessels in the eastern Mediterranean, said Williams Thursday night. I am tempted to quote the great Leonard Cohen: I am guided by the beauty of our weapons. Story continues New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof who called the Trump administration breathtakingly incompetent two weeks ago has been praising the strikes, although hedging with his general mistrust of the president. Trump is right to make Syria pay a price for war crimes, and taking out airfields is the best approach, wrote Kristof. I do worry about his execution. I support Trumps strikes on Syria. But a challenge is that he has lied so often about so much that in a crisis he has little credibility. In an interview with CNN Friday morning, Kristof called the strikes the right thing to do, while admitting they were legally dubious and hypocritical. MSNBCs Morning Joe has been a frequent critic of Trump since his inauguration, with co-host Mika Brzezinski calling his presidency fake and banning White House counselor Kellyanne Conway from the show. Friday morning, the show was more positive discussing the reaction to the strikes. Brzezinski mentioned the new dynamic of Trump being in a foxhole with his national security team, agreeing with Sen. John McCain when he said of Trumps military advisers, Ive never seen better people. Brzezinski then asked about the psychological reset that was happening following the strikes and how Trump had an opportunity for a reboot with the American people. Conservative columnist Matt Lewis of the Daily Beast has not been a vociferous Trump critic, but his tweet from Thursday night offered a typical reaction to the presidents statement on the strike. This seemed like a very different Donald Trump, wrote Lewis. More serious and clearly moved emotionally. Frequently invoked the Almighty. Ankara (AFP) - Turkey on Friday welcomed a US missile strike on a Syrian regime airbase in retaliation for a suspected chemical attack and called for a no-fly zone in the country to prevent further bloodshed. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said the strike against the Sharyat airbase in Homs, northern Syria, was "a positive response" to the "war crimes" of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. "In order to prevent similar massacres from happening again, it is necessary to enforce a no-fly zone and create safe zones in Syria without further delay," he added in a statement. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said safe zones in Syria were "now important more than ever". Kalin said: "The destruction of the Sharyat airbase marks an important step to ensure that chemical and conventional attacks against the civilian population do not go unpunished." US President Donald Trump ordered the strike in retaliation for what he said was a "very barbaric attack" on Tuesday, when dozens were killed in Khan Sheikhun, northwestern Syria. The Turkish health ministry on Thursday said initial analysis suggested victims were exposed to the deadly nerve agent sarin. Cavusoglu said the coalition formed against the Islamic State group were informed about the US strike and that he had spoken to his French and German counterparts. - 'Oust regime' - Kalin said the incident in Idlib demonstrated the regime's "complete disregard" for a political transition and efforts to enforce a ceasefire agreed late last year and sponsored by Russia, Turkey and Iran. Earlier, the Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said Turkey believed that "the Assad regime must be punished completely in the international arena" in comments quoted by state-run news agency Anadolu. "The Assad regime's barbarism must be stopped at once," Kurtulmus said, saying the peace process should hasten a "fair" and "lasting" peace for the people. Story continues "I hope that this United States operation will contribute to securing peace." Turkey has repeatedly called for Assad to go while Russia and Iran remain the president's most important allies in the more than six-year war. "This regime should be ousted from leading Syria at once. The best way to do this is to start a transition process as soon as possible," said Cavusoglu. "We need to establish a transition government." There were protests outside the Russian and Iranian embassies in Ankara on Friday, with hundreds of demonstrators carrying 100 black coffins with images of children killed in Tuesday's attack in Idlib, an AFP photographer said. The coffins had "murderer Assad" and "tyrant Putin" written on them. In a statement, the Turkish foreign ministry said Ankara would give its "full support to steps taken to ensure that similar crimes do not go unpunished and (that there is) accountability". By David Ingram SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Twitter Inc on Friday dropped a lawsuit it filed the previous day against the U.S. Homeland Security Department, saying the government had withdrawn a summons for records about who was behind an account critical of President Donald Trump. A lawyer for the social media company, Mark Flanagan, wrote in court papers that a U.S. Justice Department lawyer told Twitter about the withdrawal of the summons on Friday and that the demand "no longer has any force or effect." (http://tmsnrt.rs/2oKlWnk) It was not immediately clear why the government had withdrawn the summons, or whether it had closed an investigation it said it was conducting. The Justice Department, which defends federal agencies in court, declined to comment. The Homeland Security Department, which issued the summons, had no immediate comment. The abrupt end to the dispute may indicate that Justice Department lawyers did not like their chances of succeeding in a fight about speech rights, said Jamie Lee Williams, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which advocates for digital rights. "It seemed like a blatant attempt to censor or chill the people behind this account, or to retaliate against people who are speaking out against this administration," Williams said. "This could have been a huge loss for the administration in court," she added. Twitter cited freedom of speech as a basis for not turning over records about the account, @ALT_uscis. The people behind the account have not disclosed their identities, but the use of "ALT" with a government agency acronym has led many to assume government employees are behind such tweets. The lawsuit said the account "claims to be" the work of at least one federal immigration employee. (http://tmsnrt.rs/2p6CnXp) The acronym U.S. CIS refers to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and the account describes itself as "immigration resistance." Trump has vowed to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico and has promised to deport millions of illegal immigrants. Following Trump's inauguration in January, anonymous Twitter feeds that borrowed the names and logos of more than a dozen U.S. government agencies appeared to challenge the president's views on climate change and other issues. They called themselves "ALT" accounts. A Twitter spokesman declined to comment beyond the court papers, and the company has declined to say whether it has received demands about other anti-Trump accounts. Social media companies frequently receive requests from governments under seal, though the requests are typically about a criminal proceeding or national security matter. This summons came from an office that investigates employee corruption, misconduct and mismanagement. Lawmakers of both parties questioned the propriety of the summons. Republican senators Cory Gardner of Colorado and Mike Lee of Utah sent a letter on Friday to Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, asking what protocols existed to protect free speech in agency investigations. Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, sent a separate letter on Friday to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which is part of Homeland Security, requesting an investigation into why and how the summons was issued. (Reporting by David Ingram; Additional reporting by Dustin Volz in Washington; Editing by David Gregorio and Lisa Shumaker) By Steve Holland and Koh Gui Qing PALM BEACH, Fla. (Reuters) - President Donald Trump pressed Chinese President Xi Jinping to do more to curb North Koreas nuclear program and help reduce the gaping U.S. trade deficit with Beijing in talks on Friday, even as he toned down the strident anti-China rhetoric of his election campaign. Trump spoke publicly of progress on a range of issues in his first U.S.-China summit as did several of his top aides but they provided few concrete specifics other than China's agreement to work together to narrow disagreements and find common ground for cooperation. As the two leaders wrapped up a Florida summit overshadowed by U.S. missile strikes in Syria overnight, Xi joined Trump in stressing the positive mood of the meetings and at the same time papering over deep differences that have caused friction between the worlds two biggest economies. Trumps aides insisted he had made good on his pledge to raise concerns about Chinas trade practices and said there was some headway, Xi agreeing to a 100-day plan for trade talks aimed at boosting U.S. exports and reducing Chinas trade surplus with the United States. Speaking after the two-day summit at Trumps Mar-a-Lago resort, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson also said that Xi had agreed to increased cooperation in reining in North Koreas missile and nuclear programs though he did not offer any new formula for cracking Pyongyangs defiant attitude. Trump promised during the campaign to stop what he called the theft of American jobs by China. Many blue-collar workers helped propel him to his unexpected election victory on Nov. 8 and Trump is under pressure to deliver for them. The Republican president tweeted last week that the United States could no longer tolerate massive trade deficits and job losses and that his meeting with Xi "will be a very difficult one." On Friday, the unpredictable Trump not only set a different tone but also avoided any public lapses in protocol that Chinese officials had feared could embarrass their leader. "We have made tremendous progress in our relationship with China," Trump told reporters as the two delegations met around tables flanked by large U.S. and Chinese flags. "We will be making additional progress. The relationship developed by President Xi and myself I think is outstanding. And I believe lots of very potentially bad problems will be going away," he added, without providing details. 'AGREE WITH YOU 100 PERCENT' Xi also spoke in mostly positive terms. We have engaged in deeper understanding, and have built a trust," he said. I believe we will keep developing in a stable way to form friendly relations ... For the peace and stability of the world, we will also fulfill our historical responsibility. Well, I agree with you 100 percent," Trump replied. But in a sign that rough spots remained, Tillerson afterwards described the discussions as very frank and candid. After the meeting, Trump took Xi on a walk around the manicured grounds of his lavish Spanish-style complex. Trump could be seen chatting and gesturing to Xi, who did the same. Tillerson said Trump had accepted Xis invitation to visit China and that they also agreed to upgrade a U.S.-China dialogue by putting the two presidents at the head of the forum. U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the Chinese had expressed an interest in reducing Chinas trade surplus as a way of controlling their own inflation. Thats the first time Ive heard them say that in a bilateral context, he said. The highly anticipated U.S.-China summit was upstaged by U.S. missile strikes overnight against a Syrian air base from which Trump said a deadly chemical weapon attack had been launched. It was the first direct U.S. assault on the Russian-backed government of Bashar al-Assad in six years of civil war. The swift action in Syria could be interpreted as a signal especially to defiant nuclear-armed North Korea and by extension, its ally China as well as other countries like Iran and Russia of Trumps willingness to use military force. North Korea is developing missiles capable of hitting the United States. Tillerson said Xi agreed with Trump that North Korea's nuclear advances had reached a very serious stage. He said Trump also raised U.S.concerns about China's activities in the South China Sea. Beijing is building and fortifying islands in pursuit of expansive territorial claims in the strategic waterway. (This story corrects spelling of Jinping in first paragraph, removes reference to "this year" in 16th paragraph) (Writing by Matt Spetalnick and David Brunnstrom in Washington; Editing by Howard Goller) By Jonathan Stempel (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Friday approved an agreement to overhaul Baltimore's beleaguered police department, including changes in training and the use of force after officers were found to have routinely harassed minorities. The consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice won approval two years after the death of Freddie Gray, a black man who died while in Baltimore police custody, plunged the city into unrest and led to a surge in murders and other violent crime. U.S. District Judge James Bredar in Baltimore wrote that the 227-page decree, hammered out in the waning days of President Barack Obama's administration, was "comprehensive, detailed, and precise" and served the public interest. He ruled two days after rejecting a Trump administration request to delay implementation, which the Justice Department said could hinder efforts to fight crime in Maryland's largest city. "There must be effective and constitutional policing in order for the City of Baltimore to thrive," Bredar wrote. U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said his department "stands ready" to work with Baltimore to fight violent crime, but the "rushed process" in which the decree was negotiated left it with "clear departures" from how police should do their jobs. "While the Department of Justice continues to fully support police reform in Baltimore, I have grave concerns that some provisions of this decree will reduce the lawful powers of the police department and result in a less safe city," Sessions said in a statement. The attorney general had on Monday ordered a sweeping review of similar decrees with police departments nationwide. That alarmed civil rights advocates worried that Sessions and Trump, who emphasized law and order in his White House run, might retreat on efforts to curb police abuse. Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh in a statement said her city's decree will aid in "building the bond of trust that must exist between the community and our police officers." The decree followed Justice Department findings that Baltimore's 2,600-member police department regularly violated African-Americans' civil rights, including through strip searches, unlawful stops and excessive force. Close to two-thirds of Baltimore's roughly 615,000 residents are African-American. Gray's death was one of several incidents in the last few years in U.S. cities, such as Ferguson, Missouri, that sparked racial tensions and a nationwide debate about law enforcement. Baltimore's police chief at the time of Gray's death was dismissed by Pugh's predecessor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. Six officers were charged in the death, but none was convicted. (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel and Joseph Ax; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and James Dalgleish) (WASHINGTON) - The United States blasted a Syrian air base with a barrage of cruise missiles Thursday night in fiery retaliation for this weeks gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. President Donald Trump cast the U.S. assault as vital to deter future use of poison gas and called on other nations to join in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria. It was the first direct American assault on the Syrian government and Trumps most dramatic military order since becoming president just over two months ago. Announcing the assault from his Florida resort, Trump said there was no doubt Syrian President Bashar Assad was responsible for the chemical attack, which he said employed banned gases and killed dozens. Assad choked out the lives of innocent men, women and children, Trumped declared. The U.S. strikes hit the government-controlled Shayrat air base in central Syria, where U.S. officials say the Syrian military planes that dropped the chemicals had taken off. The U.S. missiles hit at 8:45 p.m. in Washington, 3:45 a.m. Friday morning in Syria. The missiles targeted the bases airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, officials said. Syrian state TV reported a U.S. missile attack on a number of military targets and called the attack an aggression. The surprise U.S. assault marked a striking reversal for Trump, who warned as a candidate against the U.S. getting pulled into the Syrian civil war, now in its seventh year. But the president earlier in the week appeared moved by the photos of children killed in the chemical attack, calling it a disgrace to humanity that crossed a lot of lines. About 60 U.S. Tomahawk missiles, fired from warships in the Mediterranean Sea, targeted an air base in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack that American officials believe Syrian government aircraft launched with a nerve agent, possibly sarin. The president did not announce the attacks in advance, though he and other national security officials ratcheted up their warnings to the Syrian government throughout the day Thursday. Story continues I think what happened in Syria is one of the truly egregious crimes and shouldnt have happened and it shouldnt be allowed to happen, Trump told reporters traveling on Air Force One to Florida, where he was holding a two-day summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The strike came as Trump was hosting Xi in meetings focused in part on another pressing U.S. security dilemma: North Koreas nuclear program. Trumps actions in Syria could signal to China that the new president isnt afraid of unilateral military steps. even if key nations like China are standing in the way. Trump has advocated greater counterterrorism cooperation with Russia, Assads most powerful military backer. Just last week, the Trump administration signaled the U.S. was no longer interested in trying to push Assad from power over his direction of a conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and led to the worst refugee crisis since World War II. U.S. military officials sought to portray the strikes as an appropriate, measured response. But the assault still risks plunging America into the middle of Syrias conflict, complicating the safety of the hundreds of U.S. forces fighting a separate campaign against the Islamic State group in the north of the country. If Assads military persists in further gas attacks, the Trump administration might logically pursue increased retaliation. Russia and Iran, Assads allies, pose other problems. Russian military personnel and aircraft are embedded with Syrias, and Iranian troops and paramilitary forces are also on the ground helping Assad fight the array of opposition groups hoping to topple him. Before the strikes, U.S. military officials said they informed their Russian counterparts of the impending attack. The goal was to avoid any accident involving Russian forces. Nevertheless, Russias Deputy U.N. ambassador Vladimir Safronkov warned that any negative consequences from the strikes would be on the shoulders of those who initiated such a doubtful and tragic enterprise. The U.S. also notified its partner countries in the region prior to launching the strikes. Trumps decision to attack Syria came three-and-a-half years after President Barack Obama threatened Assad with military action after an earlier chemical weapons attack killed hundreds outside of Damascus. Obama had declared the use of such weapons a red line. At the time, several American ships in the Mediterranean were poised to launch missiles, only for Obama to abruptly pull back after key U.S. ally Britain and the U.S. Congress balked at his plan. He opted instead for a Russian-backed plan that was supposed to remove and eliminate Syrias chemical weapons stockpiles. Thursday nights strikes were launched from the USS Ross and USS Porter and landed in the early morning Friday in Syria. The world learned of the chemical attack earlier in the week in footage that showed people dying in the streets and bodies of children stacked in piles. The international outcry fueled an emotional response from Trump, who appeared to abandon his much-touted America First vision for a stance of humanitarian intervention, akin to that of previous American leaders. I think what happened in Syria is a disgrace to humanity, he said Thursday. Trump seemed to rapidly reconsider his feelings about Assad, saying: Hes there and I guess hes running things, so something should happen. The show of force in Syria raises legal questions. Its unclear what authority Trump is relying on to attack another government. When Obama intervened in Libya in 2011, he used a U.N. Security Council mandate and NATOs overall leadership of the mission to argue that he had legal authority - arguments that many Republicans opposed. Trump cant rely on either justification here. Unclear also is whether Trump is adopting any broader effort to combat Assad. Under Obama, the United States largely pulled back from its support for so-called moderate rebels when Russias military intervention in September 2015 led them to suffer a series of battlefield defeats. Instead, Obama sought to work with Russia on a negotiated transition. Trump and his top aides had acknowledged in recent days the reality of Assad being in power, saying his ouster was no longer a priority. But the chemical weapons attack seemed to spur a rethink. In Florida on Thursday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said of Assad: Theres no role for him to govern the Syrian people. This article was originally published on TIME.com The inertia of institutional Washington tends to stretch out major decisions for days, weeks, even years. Yet in the span of 48 hours, the Trump Administration shrugged off those constraints, reversing its foreign policy and launching a fusillade of missiles at the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad for once again turning chemical weapons on his own people. In the predawn hours Friday morning, a rain of Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles fell on a Syrian airfield believed to be the source of Tuesdays chemical-weapons attack. Two senior government officials said at least 50 of the missiles were launched from U.S. battleships. The Pentagon briefed reporters that it had tracked the aircraft involved in the chemical strike back to the base on radar. Delivering remarks to the nation one hour after the strike, Trump said the strike was in the vital national security interest of the U.S. He said he ordered the strike on the airfield from which the chemical strike originated, and called on allies around the world to work to end atrocities in Syria. Tonight I call on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria, and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types, Trump said. Earlier this week, at least 72 people, including many children, died in the town of Khan Sheikhoun and intelligence agencies blamed the Syrian regime. The World Health Organization said the victims symptoms were consistent with a nerve-agent exposure. Asked by reporters aboard Air Force One on Thursday whether Assad should no longer rule Syria, the President hinted at the potential for a forceful U.S. response. I think what happened in Syria is a disgrace to humanity, Trump said. What Assad did is terrible. What happened in Syria is truly one of the egregious crimes and it shouldnt have happened. And it shouldnt be allowed to happen. Hours later, on his orders, American missiles were screaming toward Syria. Story continues The President has long distanced himself from Barack Obamas insistence that Assad leave power in Syria. Last week in Turkey, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that Assads fate should be decided by the Syrian people. But on Thursday, Tillerson said there was no doubt that Assad was responsible for the deaths and that as a result, it would seem that there would be no role for him to govern the Syrian people. Trump made clear to his advisers and the world Wednesday that he was not going to sit on the sidelines, saying the attack crosses many, many lines. Aides say the Syrian incident has shaken the new President in a deeply personal way. Trump told the New York Times he first learned of the strike on television Tuesday morning, but he received a more extensive - and graphic - briefing later by his national security team. Two people who have spoken to Trump in recent days say he was disturbed by the images and kept returning to them in conversations. No longer were the victims of Assad merely children of a distant country. Some were the same age as his youngest, 10-year-old Barron. I will tell you, its already happened that my attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much, Trump said Wednesday in a rare moment of public self-examination. He made that statement standing next to the leader of Jordan, King Abdullah II, whose country has taken in more than 650,000 Syrian refugees. For Trump, its the first test of his commitment to his nationalistic America First rhetoric, which prioritizes the needs of the American people over those in other countries. The outlook Trump championed on the campaign trail places little utility in humanitarian interventions, and restricts American intervention overseas. Trump has questioned the cornerstone alliances of American foreign policy, including the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and U.S. military cooperation with Saudi Arabia, Japan and South Korea. An intervention in Syria would add a major humanitarian caveat to his stated worldview. Ahead of the strikes, there were some mixed messages coming from Trumps orbit, suggesting rhetoric and actions were not yet gelled. On Wednesday, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Nikki Haley, warned an emergency Security Council session that if the U.S. may go it alone, possibly with another international coalition, if the U.N. doesnt respond. To make her point, the mother of two held up photographs of Assads victims. How many more children have to die before Russia cares? she asked her diplomatic colleagues. White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Trump is being presented with a lot of options, which officials said spanned the range of diplomatic to military responses and were the subject of discussion of a Wednesday National Security Council meeting. A follow-up session was slated for Thursday evening at Trumps Florida estate. Defense Secretary James Mattis circulated to fellow members of Trumps national security team proposals like firing cruise missiles into Syria from U.S. Navy ships. The retired four-star Marine brought with him decades of experience in such dicey conversations and lawmakers from both parties on Capitol Hill found comfort that Trump was taking advice from the respected tactician. America is unmatched when it comes to its arsenal of powers. But there are limits to what the military alone can accomplish. Assad and his inner circle have had years to prepare for any American attack. Syrias rudimentary antimissile shield may have stopped a few from the volley, and the targeted base has hardened shelters for the countrys attack aircraft. Authoritarian regimes seldom forget to game out threats, both foreign and domestic. After six years of warnings to knock off its oppressive tactics, the bunkers outside of Damascus are likely well fortified and prepared for the worst. A short blitz of Assads military headquarters alone wont force him to end his familys absolute rule, which dates back to 1971. And any civilian victims of a U.S. mission would undercut its moral claims. Russia warned Thursday that that its support for Assad was not unconditional, though it has made similar threats in the past to no avail. A U.N. Security Council vote was slated for Wednesday, but was delayed to allow for negotiations with Russia, which has veto power on the council. Syria provides Russia its only deep-water port with a military foothold outside of Russia and the former Soviet states. The American salvo into Syria complicates President Trumps efforts to build a more constructive relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. At the same time, deference to Moscow could flame suspicions that Russian interference in the 2016 election has been rewarded with Trump in power at the White House. Faced with the choice, Trump decided to go with his gut - that attacking children could not be left unanswered - and that instinct has served him well for decades. Left unanswered so far is a central question: What does Trump administration envision for Syria after Assad? He is a brutal leader who has consolidated power. But he is aligned with the West in a fight against Islamic extremism. This is one reason Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia maintained support for Damascus. If Assad falls, it could create a power vacuum, further drawing the U.S. into an international conflict that Trump promised the American people he could quickly solve if elected. This article was originally published on TIME.com By Dustin Volz WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. congressional committee on Friday asked the Trump administration to disclose an estimate of the number of Americans whose digital communications are incidentally collected under foreign surveillance programs, according to a letter seen by Reuters. Such an estimate is "crucial as we contemplate reauthorization," of parts of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that are due to expire at the end of the year, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, a Republican, and John Conyers, the panel's top Democrat, wrote in a letter addressed to Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats. The request comes as some Republican lawmakers, many of whom have stridently defended U.S. surveillance programs in the past, express sudden interest in considering additional privacy safeguards to how U.S. spy agencies collect and share intelligence that contains information about Americans. That interest has been sparked by evolving, unsubstantiated assertions that the Obama White House used surveillance powers to improperly spy on the incoming Trump administration. Privacy advocates have for years demanded that the U.S. government share an estimate of how many Americans are ensnared by programs authorized under a certain part of FISA, known as Section 702, that allows for the collection of vast quantities of internet communications from foreigners believed to be living overseas. Some experts and lawmakers have said they believe data on millions of Americans could be caught under such surveillance, exposing them to warrantless searches by federal investigators. "It is clear that Section 702 surveillance programs can and do collect information about U.S. persons, on subjects unrelated to counter-terrorism," wrote Goodlatte and Conyers, who requested a response by April 24. "It is imperative that we understand the size of this impact on U.S. persons as our committee proceeds with the debate on reauthorization." Story continues In a separate letter sent last December to the outgoing Obama administration, members of the House Judiciary Committee said they were given assurances by officials that an estimate would be provided, likely by January of this year. Richard Ledgett, the deputy director of the National Security Agency, said "yes" when asked by a Reuters reporter last month whether an estimate would be provided before year end. He also said about 20 "vignettes" would be publicly released that show the important national security value of Section 702, which officials have described as among the most important intelligence tools at their disposal. Section 702 will expire on Dec. 31, 2017, absent congressional action. (Reporting by Dustin Volz; Editing by Steve Orlofsky) By Michelle Nichols (Reuters) - The United Nations Security Council will not vote on Thursday on a draft resolution to condemn a deadly gas attack in a rebel-held area of northern Syria, but will continue negotiations, a British diplomat said. Western countries have blamed President Bashar al-Assad's armed forces for Tuesday's attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in a rebel-held area of northern Syria hit by government air strikes. Syria's government has denied responsibility. The United States, Britain and France proposed a draft resolution on Tuesday to condemn the attack and press Syria to cooperate with international investigators. Russia said the text was unacceptable and proposed a rival draft. The elected 10 members of the 15-member council proposed a third draft resolution, based on the text by Western powers, on Thursday evening in a bid to reach consensus. "U.N. Security Council will no longer vote on the (resolution) on Syria this evening. Consultations among Council members are ongoing," British diplomat Stephen Hickey posted on Twitter. In February, Syrian ally Russia, backed by China, cast its seventh veto to protect Assad's government from council action, blocking a bid by Western powers to impose sanctions over accusations of chemical weapons attacks. China has vetoed six resolutions on Syria. A Security Council resolution needs nine votes in favor and no vetoes by the United States, Britain, France, Russia or China to pass. "Efforts continue to reach unity on a strong (Security Council) resolution w/ strong condemnation, immediate independent investigation & accountability," Swedish diplomat Carl Skau posted on Twitter. (Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Toni Reinhold) WASHINGTON President Trump unleashed airstrikes on Syria on Thursday to punish its strongman, Bashar Assad, after a chemical attack this week that killed dozens of civilians, including children. The barrage amounted to the most significant military operation ordered by Trump, a newcomer to governing who had warned, before taking office, against escalating Americas involvement in the Middle East. Tonight, I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched, Trump said in Palm Beach, Florida. It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. The operation the first known direct American strike on Syrian government assets since the start of the countrys civil war rained at least 50 cruise missiles from U.S. Navy ships in the Mediterranean on a Syrian airfield thought to be the point of origin for the chemical attack, U.S. officials said. The attack took place at 8:40 p.m. Eastern time. Slideshow: U.S. attacks Syrian airbase >>> The decision risked confrontation with Russia, Syrias patron, which reportedly had troops stationed at the air base, and could mean increased dangers for hundreds of U.S. troops now in Syria to prepare for the assault on Raqqa, the capital of the Islamic State militant group. But it also sent a dramatically different message about Washingtons willingness to use force in Syria after Barack Obama shied away from enforcing his self-imposed red line. President Trump speaks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., on April 6, 2017, after the U.S. fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria. (Photo: Alex Brandon/AP) The decision to dramatically escalate Americas role in a conflict that has left some 500,000 dead, according to human rights groups, was arguably the new presidents biggest decision yet, with many unknown consequences. At home, the early response from Congress suggested strong bipartisan support for the strikes but deep concern about the way forward. Some in Congress, including Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, said Trump should have sought authorization from Congress for a military operation that was not in response to an attack on the U.S. Story continues Trump explained his decision by describing the horrific images from Tuesdays chemical weapons strike in a mostly rebel-controlled area near the Turkish border, saying there can be no dispute that Assads forces were responsible. Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad launched a horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians, he said. Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. So tonight I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched, Trump said. It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. The president also urged all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria. Congressional Democrats offered measured support for the onslaught but warned that lawmakers would need to weigh in on any sustained escalation of the conflict. Some of the lawmakers delivering that message stood idly by while Barack Obama escalated Americas role in Iraq and Syria. The top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Ben Cardin of Maryland, said in a statement that any longer-term or larger military operation in Syria by the Trump administration will need to be done in consultation with the Congress. Cardin also pressed Trump to inform the legislative branch and the American people about his larger policy in Syria, as well as the legal basis for this action and any additional military activities in that country. Trump had huddled with top advisers, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary James Mattis and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster in Palm Beach, Fla., where he was to hold meetings Friday with Chinese President Xi Jinping. In a sign of how quickly events were unfolding, White House officials had said just a day earlier that McMaster would not travel with Trump. Tillerson told reporters that the president had begun a long, difficult and potentially fruitless effort to push Assad from power. The process by which Assad would leave is something that I think requires an international community effort, both to first defeat ISIS within Syria, to stabilize the Syrian country, to avoid further civil war, and then to work collectively with our partners around the world through a political process that would lead to Assad leaving, he said. Pressed on whether he and Trump were working to assemble an international coalition to achieve that goal, Tillerson replied: Those steps are underway. The secretary of state also had tough words for Moscow, Assads patron. It is very important that the Russian government consider carefully their continued support for the Assad regime, he said. And he reaffirmed what senior U.S. officials have said since the world first saw footage and photographs of gasping, dying or dead children in Khan Sheikhoun in Syrias northwestern Idlib province: Assad is to blame. There is no doubt in our minds and the information we have supports that Syria, the Syrian regime under the leadership of President Bashar al-Assad, are responsible for this attack, Tillerson said. By Katie Paul and Asma Alsharif RIYADH/CAIRO (Reuters) - U.S. strikes on Syria in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack marked a sharp escalation in the country's civil war but were not viewed in the Arab world as a gamechanger in a six-year conflict that has divided the region. Two U.S. warships fired cruise missiles at a Syrian air base controlled by President Bashar al-Assad's forces early on Friday in response to the poison gas attack which killed at least 70 people in a rebel-held area. U.S. officials said the strike was a "one-off" intended to deter future chemical weapons attacks, and not part of a wider expansion of the U.S. role in the war. The reactions were predictable from Damascus' ally Iran and foe Saudi Arabia, two regional powers waging proxy wars in Syria and other Middle Eastern countries. Saudi Arabia hailed the strike as a "courageous decision" by President Donald Trump, and Saudi ally the UAE, a member of the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamist militants in Syria, also expressed its support. Iran denounced the "unilateral strikes". "Such measures will strengthen terrorists in Syria ... and will complicate the situation in Syria and the region," the Students News Agency ISNA quoted foreign ministry spokesman Bahrem Qasemi as saying. It was the toughest direct U.S. action yet in Syria, but Arab political analysts were skeptical it would make much difference in the direction of the conflict in Syria or in efforts to find a political solution. It did, however, indicate how far Trump was willing to go, possibly with his domestic audience in mind, even if it risked contradicting previous positions as well as confrontation with Assad's other main military backer, Russia. Trump had repeatedly said he wanted better relations with Moscow, including to cooperate with Russia to fight Islamic State, and has so far focused his Syria policy almost exclusively on that effort. But he also criticized his predecessor Barack Obama for setting a "red line" threatening force against Assad if he used chemical weapons, only to pull back from ordering air strikes in 2013 when Assad agreed to give up his chemical arsenal. Russian President Vladimir Putin has condemned the missile strikes as an illegal move that would hurt U.S.-Russia ties. "This kind of strike will not bring down the Syrian regime," said Abdulaziz al-Sager, a Saudi academic and chairman of the Jeddah-based Gulf Research Center. "But it shows a new attitude from the U.S. administration in the region which is to take initiatives individually if needed." Over the past few months, many Western countries have been backing away from long-standing demands that Assad leave power, accepting that rebels no longer had the power to remove him by force. After the chemical weapons attack on Tuesday, however, several countries said Assad must go. Among the countries strongly backing the strikes and calling for Assad to be removed from power was Turkey. Long one of Assad's principal foes, Turkey had in recent months reached a rapprochement with Russia and had been co-sponsoring Syrian peace talks with Moscow. Mustapha Kamel Al-Sayyid, professor of political science at Cairo University, doubted that the attacks would undermine these kinds of efforts. "I don't consider this a change in the United States policy toward Syria but rather a limited strike, which Trump probably aimed to use in order to strengthen his position inside the United States," he said. Iraq has been put in the difficult position of balancing its interests between its two key allies, the United States and Iran. Officials have so far maintained silence on the strikes. "The Iraqi side will not rush into a reaction that could backfire," said Baghdad-based analyst Fadhel Abu Ragheef. On the streets of the Iraqi capital, Trump's actions were seen as just another sign that the United States wants to dominate the Middle East. "He (Trump) wants to isolate Iran and build American military bases in Iraq," said Qassim, a shopkeeper, giving only his first name. (Additional reporting by Sami Aboudi and Aziz El Yaakoubi in Dubai, Maher Chmaytelli in Erbil, Maher Nazeh in Baghdad, Daren Butler and Humeyra Pamuk in Istanbul; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall) The U.S. attacked a Syrian air base with dozens of cruise missiles Thursday, in response to a chemical weapons attack in the countrys northwestern Idlib province earlier this week that killed more than 80 people, including children. According to the Pentagon, a total of 59 Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles were launched from the USS Porter and USS Ross, two Navy destroyers in the east of the Mediterranean. The missiles targeted aircraft, air defense systems and other strategic equipment in the Shayrat airfield in Homs, western Syria. Aircraft believed to be involved in Tuesdays chemical attack were traced to that air base, the Pentagon said. The Tomahawk had already been floated as the likely weapon of choice for a potential Syria strike in 2013, when then-U.S. President Barack Obama was exploring military options for intervening in the countrys long-running civil war. Weighing 2,900 pounds (1,315 kg) and measuring at over 18 feet (5.56 m) in length, the missile is capable of carrying a 1,000-pound conventional warhead over a range between 700 and 1,350 nautical miles, according to the U.S. Navy. Launched from the sea, the missile is designed to fly at extremely low altitudes at high subsonic speeds - up to 550 mph (880 km/h) - and has several on board navigation systems that guide the missile to its target. Flying at low altitude and high subsonic speed makes the missile difficult for radar to detect, or for the enemy to shoot down, TIME reported back in 2013. Another major advantage of the Tomahawk is that it doesnt require a pilot to be close to the target, minimizing risks to the crew. TIME has described the missile as a non-reusable drone. First used in combat during the Persian Gulf War in 1991, the Tomahawk has since been a mainstay of U.S. warfare. Other notable conflicts that saw the missile in action include the 1998 bombing and 2003 invasion of Iraq, as well as the 2011 Libya military operation that ultimately toppled Muammar Gaddafi. The Tomahawk was also among the catalog of arms the U.S. used to attack ISIS and the Khorasan group, an alleged al-Qaeda offshoot, in 2014. Prior to Thursdays Syria mission, the cruise missile saw action most recently in October, when the U.S. fired multiple missiles at radar sites in Yemen. This article was originally published on TIME.com By Alexandria Sage SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Uber Technologies Inc [UBER.UL] said on Friday its self-driving sensor technology was "fundamentally different" from Waymo's, blasting the Alphabet Inc unit's claim that it profited from stolen files in the race to roll out the first driverless car. Uber said in a federal court filing that 14,000 of Waymo's computer files on autonomous technology never ended up on its servers, despite Waymo's claim that its former executive, Anthony Levandowski, stole them before joining Uber. Waymo sued Uber in February, seeking a preliminary injunction to stop it from using trade secrets and other intellectual property at the centre of the case. Waymo said Uber was able to quickly scale up its autonomous programme after Levandowski downloaded the files before his departure to form a company that Uber then acquired. Levandowski leads Uber's self-driving programme. The rivals are vying to bring self-driving cars to the masses in a field that includes established carmakers, little-known start-ups and major technology companies. "The record shows that Uber never possessed - and never used - any information Mr. Levandowski allegedly took from Waymo," Uber wrote in its filing. Levandowski, the central witness in the case, has sought his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and will not testify, over concerns about the possibility of a criminal case being filed. Levandowski has not handed over the allegedly stolen documents and Uber, which has never denied that Levandowski took the files, claims it cannot force him to do so. U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco has ordered Uber to do a more thorough search of its computer systems to see if the documents are in its possession. "You haven't searched well enough," he told Uber's lawyer at a hearing on Wednesday. Alsup has also suggested that Uber had leverage over Levandowski it had not used, such as threatening to fire him should he not hand over the documents. "If you cannot find them in your files there is going to be a preliminary injunction. You're not denying it, no one is denying he has the 14,000 files," Alsup said. "You keep on your payroll someone who took 14,000 documents and is liable to use them." (Reporting by Alexandria Sage; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Richard Chang) New York (AFP) - The United States should "take out" Syrian government air fields, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton said Thursday as Washington threatened military action in the wake of a suspected chemical weapons attack. "I still believe we should have done a no-fly zone, I think we should have been more willing to confront (President Bashar al-) Assad," she told the Women in the World Summit in New York. Assad's air force, said the defeated Democratic presidential nominee, was "the cause of most of the civilian deaths, as we have seen over the years and as we saw again in the last few days." "I really believe that we should have and still should take out his air fields and prevent him from being able to use them to bomb innocent people," added Clinton to loud applause. She made the remarks in her first public interview since her shock election defeat to Donald Trump in last year's US election. Trump on Thursday warned "something should happen" following a suspected chemical attack in rebel-held northern Syria earlier this week that killed at least 86 and provoked global outrage. Washington (AFP) - US Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Friday blasted an agreement to rein in Baltimore's notorious police department, saying it would lead to more crime. He criticized a federal judge's approval of a consent decree that requires Baltimore police to implement sweeping reforms. The agreement -- which followed riots in the East Coast city after the 2015 death in police custody of 25-year-old Freddie Gray -- forces the police to respect the rights of citizens, end harsh patrol tactics in black neighborhoods and use body cameras. The Baltimore government and police agreed on the decree last year, but the new administration of President Donald Trump, promising to empower police to crack down on crime, sought to delay and modify it. "Today, a federal court entered a consent decree that will require the court and a highly paid monitor to govern every detail of how the Baltimore Police Department functions for the foreseeable future," Sessions said. "While the Department of Justice continues to fully support police reform in Baltimore, I have grave concerns that some provisions of this decree will reduce the lawful powers of the police department and result in a less-safe city." Consent decrees are essentially contracts police departments enter into with the Justice Department to implement reforms under federal oversight, and usually arise from rampant corruption and rights abuses in the police. Around a dozen metropolitan police departments were pushed into such agreements during the previous administration of president Barack Obama, amid a surge of police shootings of unarmed black men. Those included the cities of Cleveland, Ohio and Ferguson, Missouri, where police shootings prompted local protests and a national outcry. Baltimore's police came under scathing criticism after the death of Gray, who suffered a severed spine while being transported in the back of a police van with his hands and feet bound. Story continues Police said his death was an accident. Six officers were charged in the case, but all got off after prosecutors failed to provide enough evidence to convict them. Despite such cases, Sessions has said that US police are too tightly controlled to halt what the government claims is a sharp surge in murder and violent crime. Although down steadily over the past two decades, crime numbers ticked up in 2015, the latest nationwide data available. But crime has steadily risen in Baltimore. Sessions said violent crime was up 22 percent in 2016 and murders rose 78 percent, and have continued to gain pace this year. "Meanwhile," he said, "arrests in the city fell 45 percent based on some of these ill-advised reforms." "There are clear departures from many proven principles of good policing that we fear will result in more crime." Washington (AFP) - Senior US lawmakers from both parties expressed support for President Donald Trump's ordered military strike on a Syrian air base, but some rank-and-file members warned against further action without congressional authorization. Trump told the American people he ordered air strikes on Syrian forces in retaliation for a "barbaric" deadly chemical attack on civilians that he blamed on the country's strongman President Bashar al-Assad. "Making sure Assad knows that when he commits such despicable atrocities he will pay a price is the right thing to do," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the country's top Democrat and a frequent critic of the nascent Trump administration, said in a statement. Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan called the action "appropriate and just," adding that the strikes "make clear that the Assad regime can no longer count on American inaction as it carries out atrocities against the Syrian people." Senator John McCain, a national security hawk who for years has advocated a more muscular policy against the Syrian regime, hailed the strike as a "credible first step." "Unlike the previous administration, President Trump confronted a pivotal moment in Syria and took action." Several lawmakers, including Ryan and Schumer stressed the need for Trump to consult with Congress on forging the appropriate US military strategy against Syria. Senator Ben Cardin, the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said the targeted bombings "send a clear signal" of US resolve. "However, and I cannot emphasize this enough, any longer-term or larger military operation in Syria by the Trump administration will need to be done in consultation with the Congress," he said. Democratic congressman Adam Schiff is among several lawmakers who have long sought a new, more narrowly defined congressional authorization for US military action in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks of 2001 and the fight against terrorism. Story continues "I will be re-introducing an authorization for use of military force against ISIS and al-Qaeda when Congress returns to session" after its two-week recess which begins Friday, Schiff said. Democrat Barbara Lee, part of an anti-war coalition along with some isolationist Republicans who opposed president Barack Obama when he sought approval for intervention in Syria in 2013, was more blunt. "This is an act of war," she wrote on Twitter. "Congress needs to come back into session and hold a debate. Anything less is an abdication of our responsibility." Senate Republican Rand Paul added that "while we all condemn the atrocities in Syria, the United States was not attacked." Trump "needs congressional authorization for military action as required by the Constitution," he said, adding that intervention in Syria would do "nothing to make us safer." House Democrat Ted Lieu agreed that Trump needs approval for his military action. "Congress authorized (the president) to use force on terrorists. We NEVER authorized force to enforce chemical weapons treaty," he tweeted. Washington (AFP) - The US government dropped its effort to force Twitter to identify the owner of an anti-Trump account purported to voice dissent from federal employees, court documents showed Friday. In a court filing, Twitter sought the dismissal of the lawsuit it had filed just a day earlier that claimed the government had overstepped its authority in seeking to unmask the account owner. Twitter's filing said the summons requesting the name or names of the account holder had been withdrawn. A Justice Department official confirmed the investigation -- details of which had not been disclosed -- had ended. The lawsuit revealed that the Department of Homeland Security and US Customs and Border Protection had sought the unmasking of the @ALT_USCIS account holder who has been criticizing President Donald Trump's administration. The American Civil Liberties Union welcomed the government's decision to back down, tweeting: "Big victory for free speech and right to dissent." Twitter's lawsuit in California could have touched off a contentious battle with the government over digital privacy and the right to anonymous free speech. The account in question is purportedly run by one or more current employees of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), a unit within Homeland Security. It is one of several "alternative" handles apparently created by government workers after Trump's inauguration in January that have sometimes revealed data the new administration sought to suppress or remove from official websites. "The rights of free speech afforded Twitter's users and Twitter itself under the First Amendment of the US Constitution include a right to disseminate such anonymous or pseudonymous political speech," the lawsuit said. Twitter's lawsuit noted that "those who speak through these 'alternative agency' accounts do so pseudonymously, often going to considerable lengths to avoid disclosing their real identities" for fear of retribution. United Nations (United States) (AFP) - The United States warned Friday it is ready to hit Syria again after a missile strike that infuriated Moscow and fueled calls for a push to end the six-year war. US Ambassador Nikki Haley delivered the warning at an emergency session of the UN Security Council called after the US strikes, which were launched to punish an alleged chemical weapons attack by Bashar al-Assad's regime. Assad's ally Russia, meanwhile, declared President Donald Trump's first strike against the Damascus regime a violation of international law and an "act of aggression." "The United States took a very measured step last night," Haley told the council. "We are prepared to do more, but we hope it will not be necessary." Haley said the strike destroyed an air field from which Washington believes Damascus launched the attack on rebel-held Khan Sheikhun, where 86 people including 27 children died this week. Rights monitors warned, however, that Syrian jets were already flying sorties from the base again as night fell Friday. The United States fired 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles from warships in the Mediterranean at the Shayrat airfield near Homs in central Syria. Assad's office called the strike "foolish and irresponsible," and Moscow announced a series of retaliatory steps including plans to strengthen Syrian air defenses. "The United States will no longer wait for Assad to use chemical weapons without any consequences," Haley said. "Those days are over." - Russia accuses US - The United States did not seek UN Security Council authorization for the military action that followed days of global outrage at images of dead children from the suspected sarin gas attack. It was Trump's biggest military decision since taking office and marked a dramatic escalation in American involvement in Syria's protracted war. "The United States attacked the territory of sovereign Syria," Russian Deputy Ambassador Vladimir Safronkov told the council, denouncing a "flagrant violation of international law and an act of aggression." Story continues US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in Florida to attend a summit between Trump and China's Xi Jinping, is due in Moscow next week for talks with President Vladimir Putin. "I'm disappointed in that response from the Russians because it indicates their continued support for the Assad regime," said Tillerson. "In particular," he said, the response showed the Kremlin's "continued support for a regime that carries out these kinds of horrendous attacks on their own people. "I find it very disappointing but -- sadly, I have to tell you -- not all that surprising." In Washington, a senior US official said Syria may have had help carrying out the alleged chemical attack, but stopped short of accusing Russia of complicity. "We are carefully assessing any information that would implicate the Russians knew or assisted with this capability," he said. - A new phase - While threatening further strikes, Haley also said it was time to press on with diplomatic efforts to achieve a political solution to end the war. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres urged restraint and a renewed push for peace in Syria, saying "there is no other way to solve the conflict than through a political solution." Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Japan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey all supported Washington, with Ankara also calling for a no-fly zone in Syria. The Kremlin warned the US military action would inflict "considerable damage" on US-Russia ties. It immediately suspended a deal with the United States aimed at avoiding clashes in Syrian airspace, though the foreign ministry did not scrap Tillerson's visit. - 'Low' impact - Trump announced the strike in a brief televised address. "Tonight I call on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end this slaughter and bloodshed in Syria and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types," he said. Fired from the USS Porter and the USS Ross, the cruise missiles targeted radars, aircraft, air defense systems and other logistical components. The Syrian Observatory said the US strike on the base killed eight Syrian military staff, including an army doctor. Syria's army had earlier said six people were killed in the strike, without specifying if they were military personnel or civilians. Russia's military said the strike had an "extremely low" military impact, with fewer than half the missiles reaching the base. It destroyed six planes under repair and several buildings, including a storage depot and radio station, it said. US officials said Russia's military in Syria was informed of the strike beforehand in order to avoid casualties. A Syrian military source said its armed forces had also received advance warning. Russia has stood by Damascus despite the global uproar, insisting the chemical weapons that caused the deaths in Khan Sheikhun had been stockpiled by "terrorists" and possibly released by a conventional strike. - Syrians welcome US strike - In the blighted town itself, residents mourning their dead welcomed the US strike as a way to pressure Damascus. "God willing, these strikes will be a clear warning to Bashar al-Assad, to tell him: Bashar, enough killing and injustice against these people," said Abu Ali, a man in his 40s. Opposition and rebel fighters, who have for years urged more direct US military action in support of their uprising, hailed the strike and called for more. Paris (AFP) - From strong messages of support to fierce condemnation, here are the main global reactions to a US strike on a Syria air base in response to a suspected chemical attack. - Against - : Unsurprisingly, the main ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was robust in its opposition to the strike. The strikes were an "aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international norms," the Kremlin said in a statement. The action has inflicted "considerable damage" to already "lamentable" US-Russia ties, it added. As a first practical response, Moscow said it would "halt" its deal with the US to avoid clashes in Syrian airspace. Russia's military said the Syrian forces' air defences will be boosted following the US strike. "To protect Syria's most sensitive infrastructure, a complex of measures will be implemented in the near future to strengthen and improve the effectiveness of the Syrian armed forces' air defence system," said spokesman Igor Konashenkov. Russia also called for an urgent UN Security Council meeting following the strikes. : The Iranian regime, another Syrian ally, "strongly condemned" the strike, just as it condemned "all unilateral military action". It said the US action was taken under the "pretext" of the chemical strike. - For - Syria is to blame for the US missile strikes NATO head Jens Stoltenberg said. "The Syrian regime bears the full responsibility for this development," Stoltenberg said in a statement. "Any use of chemical weapons is unacceptable, cannot go unanswered, and those responsible must be held accountable," he added. EU President Donald Tusk said in a tweet that the "US strikes show needed resolve against barbaric chemical attacks. EU will work with the US to end brutality in Syria." : In a joint statement, President Francois Hollande and Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Assad bore "sole responsibility" for the US strike following the suspected chemical attack. Story continues : The close American ally said it "fully supported" the strikes, judging them an an "appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack". It said the strikes were "intended to deter further attacks." : NATO ally Turkey, which is a key player in the Syria conflict and has endured choppy relations with Washington recently, welcomed the strikes as "positive." The deputy foreign minister added: "We believe that the Assad regime must be punished completely in the international arena." Turkey called for a no-fly zone in Syria in the wake of the US strike. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu repeated Ankara's call for Assad to be removed from power, stressing: "This regime should be ousted from leading Syria at once." : A foreign ministry official hailed US President Donald Trump as "courageous" for taking action when "the international community has failed to put a halt to the regime's actions." : Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel "fully supports" the "strong and clear message" sent by the air strikes. He added that the message should "resonate not only in Damascus, but in Tehran, Pyongyang and elsewhere." : Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that Japan "supports the US government's resolve that it will never tolerate the spread and use of chemical weapons." : A leading Syrian rebel group said one strike was "not enough", adding that there were "26 airbases that target civilians." - Others - : Beijing offered a nuanced reaction, saying it was "urgent" to avoid "further deterioration of the situation." A foreign ministry spokeswoman added: "We oppose use of chemical weapons by any country, organisation or individual in any circumstance, for any purpose." burs-ric/ri/msp Washington (AFP) - The missile strike against a Syrian airbase marks the first time the United States has directly attacked the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Here is what we know so far about the target and the outcome of the strike. - The target - At around 3:40 am Syria time on Friday (0040 GMT) the US military fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at the Shayrat airfield near Homs in central Syria. According to the Pentagon, as well as hosting Syrian aircraft the facility was used to store chemical weapons. The Tomahawks targeted aircraft, hardened aircraft shelters, petroleum and logistical storage, ammunition supply bunkers, air defense systems and radars, the Pentagon said. Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain Jeff Davis said the strike lasted "a couple of minutes." US intelligence agents believe aircraft from Shayrat conducted a suspected chemical weapons attack on April 4. National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster said measures had been put in place to avoid hitting sarin gas stored at the airfield. "So that would not be ignited and cause a hazard to civilians or anyone else," McMaster said. - How it was launched - The strike was launched from the destroyers USS Porter and USS Ross in the eastern Mediterranean. A Russian air unit was based at the airfield, a US military official said, with anywhere from 12-100 personnel. The Pentagon warned these forces ahead of the strike using a special military-to-military hotline. Davis said the strike was designed to avoid casualties. "Every precaution was taken to execute this strike with minimal risk to personnel at the airfield," he said. - The result - According to the Pentagon, initial indications showed the strike had severely damaged or destroyed Syrian aircraft, infrastructure and equipment at Shayrat. The Syrian army in a statement said six people were killed at the base and that the attack caused "significant damage". The SANA state news agency said four children were among nine civilians killed in surrounding villages. Story continues US officials stressed the strike was a direct reaction to the chemical attack, and not the beginning of a broader military campaign against Assad. "The strike was a proportional response to Assad's heinous act," Davis said. The Pentagon said approximately 20 Syrian planes were destroyed at the base, but that the runway was intact. US officials said the runways themselves and any Russian planes were not targeted. - Legal concerns - The strike was launched at the order of President Donald Trump and was a "proportional response," Davis said. But critics questioned whether the action amounted to a declaration of war and said Trump should have gone to Congress first. America is currently hitting the Islamic State group in Syria under a 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force. Damascus government ally Russia said the strike constituted an "aggression against a sovereign state" and suspended a bilateral agreement to help avoid clashes in the skies over Syria. Washington (AFP) - The Syrian regime may have had help conducting a chemical strike in Syria, US officials said Friday, but they stopped short of accusing Moscow of complicity. "We suspect that they had help" in Tuesday's attack on a rebel-held town on Tuesday widely blamed on the Damascus regime, a US senior official told reporters. "At a minimum, the Russians failed to rein in the Syrian regime activity," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "We know the Russians have chemical expertise in country. We cannot talk about openly any complicity between the Russians and the Syrian regime in this case, but we are carefully assessing any information that would implicate the Russians knew or assisted with this capability." US forces fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at the Shayrat airfield near Homs in western Syria early Friday local time in what it said was a proportional response for the attack in Khan Sheikhun. The Pentagon says the base was used by the plane that launched the attack, and that it was known historically to have been a chemical weapons facility. A second senior military official described how Russian personnel were closely enmeshed in the day-to-day operations at Shayrat, although he could not say if the Russians knew for sure that the Syrian jet that unleashed the attack was carrying a chemical payload. The Russians "would have some type of information of any flight operation going out of that airfield on a daily basis," the official said. US officials also said a small Russian or Syrian drone had been spotted surveilling a hospital that was subsequently destroyed after the initial chemical attack. "We don't know who struck that," the first official said. "But the fact that somebody would strike the hospital, potentially to hide the evidence of a chemical attack... is a question that we are very interested in." Paris (AFP) - A truck was rammed into a crowd in central Stockholm on Friday, the Swedish intelligence agency Sapo said, killing and injuring an unknown number of people. Here are previous attacks of this kind: - London - On March 22, 2017, a 52-year-old British convert to Islam, Khalid Masood, mowed down pedestrians on a bridge near parliament and stabbed a policeman, killing four people before he was shot dead by police. The death in hospital of a fifth person, a Romanian woman who was knocked into the River Thames, was announced on Friday. The attack was claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group. - Berlin - On December 19, 2016, Tunisian national Anis Amri, 24, hijacked a truck and slammed into a crowd of people at a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 people. Amri was shot dead by Italian police in Milan four days later after travelling through several European countries. The rampage was claimed by IS. - Nice - On July 14, 2016, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, a 31-year-old Tunisian, ploughed a 19-tonne truck into a Bastille Day crowd leaving a fireworks display in Nice on the Promenade des Anglais, killing 86 people on the famous beachfront street. IS later claimed Bouhlel as one of its followers. - Montreal - On October 20, 2014, Muslim convert Martin Couture-Rouleau, 25, from Quebec, used his car to mow down two soldiers near Montreal, killing one of them. Couture-Rouleau was shot dead by police as he climbed out of his wrecked vehicle brandishing a knife. Stockholm (AFP) - A massive manhunt was underway for the driver of a stolen truck that ploughed into a crowd outside a busy department store in central Stockholm Friday, killing four and injuring 15, Swedish police said. A national police chief, Stefan Hector, said the police's "working hypothesis is that this is a terror attack." One man was arrested in connection with the attack but the driver remained at large, police said. According to the Aftonbladet newspaper, the arrested man is a 39-year-old of Uzbek origin and a supporter of the Islamic State (IS) group. Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said he had strengthened the country's border controls. "Terrorists want us to be afraid, want us to change our behaviour, want us to not live our lives normally, but that is what we're going to do. So terrorists can never defeat Sweden, never," he said. If confirmed as a terror attack, it would be Sweden's first such attack with a deadly outcome. Pictures taken at the scene showed a large blue truck with a mangled undercarriage smashed into the Ahlens department store. Witnesses described scenes of terror and panic. One witness identified only as Dimitris told the Aftonbladet the truck came "out of nowhere." "I couldn't see if anyone was driving but it was out of control. I saw at least two people get run down. I ran as fast as I could away from there," he said. - 'Like a bomb' - Another shopper, 66-year-old Leander Nordling, was at Ahlens when he suddenly heard a loud bang. "It sounded like a bomb exploding and smoke starting pouring in through the main entrance," he told the Aftonbladet. He and fellow shoppers took refuge in a storage room inside the department store. "After that the building was evacuated ... There were a lot of guards who took care of us outside and they urged us to leave the scene immediately," Nordling said. Video footage taken from above showed scores of people streaming down the street in terror. Story continues A spokeswoman for beer company Spendrups told AFP that the truck involved "had been stolen during a delivery to a restaurant." Friday's attack was the latest in a string of similar assaults with vehicles in Europe, including in London, Berlin and the southern French city of Nice. - 'Attack on us all' - The attack occurred just before 1300 GMT at the corner of the store and Drottninggatan, the city's biggest pedestrian street, above ground from Stockholm's central subway station. Thick smoke billowed from the scene, while the area was blocked off by police and crowds gathered around the police cordon. Police vans circulating in the city using loudspeakers urged people to go straight home and avoid large crowds. The centre of the usually buzzing city was put on lockdown, with the central train station evacuated and other stores quickly emptied of shoppers. The Stockholm metro was also completely shut down for several hours before resuming in the early evening, with the attack taking place at T-Centralen station, through which all the city's lines pass. Cinemas, shopping malls and other public buildings were also evacuated. The area around the attack was cordoned off, but other streets in the city were packed for hours with pedestrians trying to find a way home. Another section of Drottninggatan was also the scene of Sweden's only other terror attack, in 2010, when a suicide bomber blew himself up, killing himself and slightly injuring several others. European politicians expressed solidarity, with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker saying that it was an "attack on us all." A spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said: "Our thoughts go out to the people in Stockholm, to the injured, their relatives, rescuers and police. "We stand together against terror." US State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Washington was ready to provide any help it could to investigate "this brutal and senseless attack". "Attacks like this are intended to sow the seeds of fear, but in fact they only strengthen our shared resolve to combat terrorism around the world," he added. - Trucks as weapons - It followed a string of similar attacks in Europe by people using vehicles as weapons. The deadliest came last year in France on the July 14 Bastille Day national holiday, when a man rammed a truck into a crowd in the Mediterranean resort of Nice, killing 86 people. Last month, Khalid Masood, a 52-year-old convert to Islam known to British security services, killed five people when he drove a car at high speed into pedestrians on London's Westminster Bridge before launching a frenzied knife attack on a policeman guarding the parliament building. And in December, a man hijacked a truck and slammed into shoppers at a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 people. In 2014, IS called for attacks on citizens of Western countries and gave instructions on how they could be carried out without military equipment, using rocks or knives, or by running people over in vehicles. On Friday, hours after a violent clash between protesters and security forces, Venezuelan authorities confirmed 19-year-old university student Jairo Ortiz had been shot dead. His death is the first in the protest waged by thousands on the streets of Caracas against the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, demonstrations that began after last weeks Supreme Court decision to usurp the functions of the legislature, largely seen as the last stronghold as the opposition. Coming at a time of deep political and economic malaise in what was once one of Latin Americas richest democracies, the judicial overreach was met with mass outrage even from Venezuelas attorney general, a long time Maduro supporter. The court mostly reversed its decision over the weekend, but protests nevertheless continued. On Thursday, as Adm. Kurt Tidd of the U.S. Southern Command with responsibility for Latin America was warning the Senate Armed Services Committee of economic instability in Venezuela, protesters and security forces clashed violently in Caracas. Protesters threw stones. Security officials used tear gas. Thousands blocked a highway. Maduro said on television that authorities detained 30 people. Opposition leader (and former presidential candidate) Henrique Capriles called on the state ombudsman, who is, in theory, charged with defending human rights in Venezuela, to protect the people, not the government. The human rights advocate has to stop being the Socialist Party advocate!, Capriles said in an online broadcast. Socialist Party official Freddy Bernal accused Capriles of trying to ignite the country, and said, Dont then come like a sissy saying that youre a political prisoner. Dont then come crying that youre being persecuted. But Capriles, it seems, is being persecuted. On Friday, he said on Twitter that he had been barred from holding public office for 15 years. This would mean he could not run in the next presidential elections, scheduled for 2018, which the opposition has been trying to move them up. Story continues It seems just the latest confirmation that Maduros beleaguered government is trying to emasculate the opposition. With Capriles out of action, and his fellow opposition leader, the imprisoned Leopoldo Lopez, out of commission, Maduro is steadily thinning the ranks of any serious rivals. But if the public reaction to the Supreme Courts power grab is any indication, however, even a fractured and fractious opposition will dig in its heels at what it considers government abuses. Photo credit: JUAN BARRETO/AFP/Getty Images By Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When Donald Trump started thinking during his campaign for the presidency last year about filling a Supreme Court vacancy, he turned to a group of Washington insiders at the controls of a well-oiled machine that puts conservative judges on the bench. That disciplined network of operatives, shepherded by judicial activist Leonard Leo, on Friday delivered for Trump his first major accomplishment as U.S. president: the confirmation of conservative Neil Gorsuch as a Supreme Court justice. Unlike the chaotic rollouts of other Trump policy initiatives, the Gorsuch nomination went relatively smoothly. Democrats put up a fight in the Senate, but they lacked the votes to block the Republican majority and they lost. Other key players included experienced Washington hands such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, former Senator Kelly Ayotte and White House Counsel Don McGahn. "It worked because it was all planned out before the nomination. We know what works, what doesn't work, what resources we need. We know the other side's arguments and how to answer them. It's like war," Leo told Reuters on Friday. The only surprise stumble in the effort came when Trump attacked judges who blocked his order banning U.S. entry by people from certain Muslim-majority countries. Gorsuch distanced himself from the president's Twitter messages. Other than that, discipline was maintained from the first of five meetings that Leo, a veteran of Bush-era judicial confirmation battles, attended with Trump. The two met twice before the election. Leo helped compile a list of potential nominees for Trump. That helped win over conservative activists unsure of Trump's ideological compass at a time when he was still fighting for the Republican presidential nomination. A second, longer list came in September. It included Gorsuch, a federal judge. BLOCKING GARLAND The campaign for Gorsuch's confirmation would not have happened without McConnell, who stopped former President Barack Obama, a Democrat, from filling the high court vacancy created when conservative icon Antonin Scalia died in February 2016. After Trump won the election, he named McGahn, a Washington-based campaign finance lawyer at Jones Day, as White House counsel. Known by his colleagues as "The Quiet Man," McGahn managed the nomination from inside the administration. Leo, who reported to McGahn, pushed back against Democrats' claims that Trump basically out-sourced the nomination process to outside groups. Leo said McGahn carefully scrutinized the lists of nominees and was not simply a rubber stamp. The Gorsuch campaign got heavy marketing and promotion backing from the Judicial Crisis Network (JCN), a coordinating body for conservative and grassroots groups. It launched $10 million in pro-Gorsuch advertising, targeting in particular Senate Democrats facing re-election contests in 2018. The JCN was born during the administration of former President George W. Bush, when Republicans realized a strong outside campaign was critical to getting conservatives on the court. Carrie Severino, the groups chief counsel, said the fact Trump agreed to stick to the nominees list made her job easier. We were prepared for several possibilities, and we had ads, websites, research packets, and much more ready to launch the moment a name was confirmed, she said. Leo said conservatives have borrowed techniques from the liberal coalitions that worked to defeat the nomination of Robert Bork by Republican then-President Ronald Reagan in 1987. The JCN also tapped social media and communications professionals. Washington public relations heavyweight Ron Bonjean played a role, reporting to White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer. At the White House, McGahn and a team in his office held "murder boards" where Gorsuch was bombarded with questions senators might ask. Legislative Affairs Director Marc Short and his team organized visits with senators and worked with Ayotte. Asked to accompany Gorsuch around Capitol Hill, Ayotte accepted, she said in an interview. Ayotte had lost her re-election bid in November and had criticized Trump. But she helped arrange meetings for Gorsuch with almost 80 senators. In the end, said sources close to the Gorsuch effort, it worked because it was highly regimented. Leo said the machine that got Gorsuch on the bench is here to stay although he will return to his job as executive vice president of the Federalist Society, a conservative lawyers' group. Leo hopes Trump will tap that machine for a possible second nomination during his presidency. Supreme Court confirmations have become full-blown political campaigns, he said. (Reporting by Lawrence Hurley, Andrew Chung, Richard Cowan and Ayesha Rascoe; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Lisa Shumaker) By Panarat Thepgumpanat and Patpicha Tanakasempipat BANGKOK (Reuters) - Bomb blasts were among 23 coordinated attacks that rocked Muslim-majority southern Thailand early on Friday, a security officer said, just hours after King Maha Vajiralongkorn signed a new constitution as a step towards ending military rule. Police reported no casualties in the region, site of a recent upsurge in a decades-old Muslim separatist insurgency that had voted the most strongly against the new constitution at a referendum last year. "The incidents are aimed to create disturbances," Pramote Prom-in, a spokesman for regional security forces, told Reuters. "They want to destroy the government's credibility and create fear among people." There was no immediate claim of responsibility and security forces said they could not yet identify which insurgent group was to blame. The attacks were scattered across 19 districts in the southern region, grouping the provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat, and the nearby province of Songkhla, he said. A large number of co-ordinated attacks in the region is unusual. Complete details were not immediately available, but they ranged from bomb explosions at 52 electricity poles, triggering widespread regional power cuts, to several tire-burning incidents, Pramote added. On Thursday, Thailand's king signed into law a military-backed constitution, an essential step towards an election the ruling junta has promised will restore democracy after the 12th successful coup in little over 80 years. The new constitution is the Southeast Asian country's 20th since the end of absolute monarchy in 1932, and critics say it will still give the generals a powerful say over Thai politics for years, if not decades. Voters in the most heavily Muslim parts of Thailand were among the few to reject the draft constitution in last year's referendum. The timing of the attacks just hours after the constitution was proclaimed was curious, said Defence Minister Prawit Wongsuwan, but there was no conclusive evidence it was a motive. A Malay Muslim separatist insurgency in the three southern provinces has killed more than 6,500 since it escalated in 2004, independent monitoring group Deep South Watch says. On Monday, police reported what they called the biggest insurgent attack in the south in years, when about 30 people fired more than 500 shots into a police booth. In February, the government of the Buddhist-majority country struck a deal with MARA Patani, an umbrella group that says it speaks for the insurgents, but other separatists rejected it. (Reporting by Panarat Thepgumpanat and Patpicha Tanakasempipat; Writing by Matthew Tostevin; Editing by Clarence Fernandez) Nearly two dozen arson and bomb attacks erupted across Thailand's insurgency-torn south shortly after midnight, the army said Friday, causing widespread blackouts but no casualties in the Muslim-majority region. The violence, which saw tires set alight and dozens of electricity poles damaged by explosives, struck only hours after Thailand's king Maha Vajiralongkorn signed a new military-backed charter into law. "There are 23 simultaneous incidents in three southern provinces and four districts of Songkhla," said Colonel Pramote Prom-in, an army spokesman for the south. The region has sizzled with violence for over a decade as ethnic Malay rebels battle Thai troops for more autonomy, claiming more than 6,800 lives. The border region was one of few areas to reject the ruling junta's constitution in a referendum that saw the document approved last year. The new charter curbs the power of elected lawmakers and will bolster the army's role in government even after the junta steps down following elections which are expected in late 2018. However Don Pathan, a Thai analyst based in the far south, said Friday's wave of attacks did not appear to be linked to the charter's signing. The violence was most likely revenge for the killing of two suspected rebels by security forces last month, he told AFP. "There has been a small spike of violence since then. My gut feeling is that last night was a retaliation for that alleged extrajudicial killing," said Pathan. Thailand has been hit by a string of suspected rebel assaults since that fatal shooting on March 29, including one that saw around 30 militants open fire on a police checkpoint in Yala province, injuring 12 officers. The junta, which seized power in 2014, has held several rounds of talks with a group that claims to represent the insurgents. But the negotiations have failed to make headway and many doubt the rebel negotiators have clout over fighters on the ground. Cosmetic surgerys popularity continues to grow with over 15 million procedures performed last year, but not all of them go well. The Doctors meet Carol whose face was severely disfigured after she got injectable fillers. Carol first began with Botox and then started getting fillers. Just a few months after the injections, she began to notice the shape of her face drastically changing. When I looked into the mirror, I was not looking at Carol. My face was blowing up and my forehead protruded out like an alien. My forehead was becoming so heavy that it started to affect my ability to see. I began to have to tape my eyes open to walk, Carol shares, explaining that she then underwent corrective procedures, but those only made her condition worse. She retreated from the world and avoided friends or family for over 3 years. To hide her face, she always wore hats, glasses, and scarves and has not been seen in public without wearing glasses until appearing on The Doctors. Watch: When Injections Go Wrong After an extensive search for help, craniofacial surgeon Dr. Reza Jarrahy from UCLA performed corrective surgery on Carol, who says that he gave her a new chance at life. Carol, her daughter Sofia and Dr. Jarrahy join The Doctors to discuss her remarkable transformation. Dr. Jarrahy performed 3 major surgeries and numerous revision surgeries on her, including taking tissue and fat from Carol's back to completely resurface her forehead. I want to make sure this didnt happen to me in vain. So, I will work tirelessly to [never] allow this to happen to anyone again, Carol, who now works with Saving Face Initiative, tells The Doctors. Watch: Woman Who Received Illegal Facial Injections Warns of Dangers Plastic surgeon Dr. Andrew Ordon explains that everyone will react to fillers differently and in the case of silicone injections they often become an inflammatory problem for patients. The Doctors caution anyone considering any type of cosmetic surgery to make sure to see a board-certified plastic surgeon. Find out more here on the Saving Face Initiative, which offers resources and a support network to individuals dealing with disfigurement. Watch TV shows, movies and more on Yahoo View, available now on iOS and Android. Could your next cool pic send you to the emergency room? A woman fell 60 feet this week while trying to take a selfie on Californias tallest bridge. Although she was expected to survive, local police were not fond of her idea, writing, "You can lose your life and none of that is worth a selfie!" on its Facebook page Wednesday. The unidentified Sacramento woman was walking with a group of friends on the girders underneath the 730-foot-tall Foresthill Bridge the highest in California and the fourth highest in the U.S. when she "attempted to take a selfie and fell," making her land "on a trail below, the Placer County Sheriff's Office said. Read: Danielle Bregoli, 'Cash Me Outside' Girl, Gets In Bar Fight After Charging $10 For Selfies The woman was then airlifted to a nearby hospital. "She was knocked unconscious, suffered a deep gash to her arm and fractured bones that will require surgery," her friend Paul Goncharuk told KOVR. Police said the public is not allowed on the walkways under the bridge. Trespassers can be arrested. "Be safe and tour the bridge from the sidewalks above," the sheriff's office wrote on Facebook. "This young lady is very lucky to be alive, and the consequences could have been worse for her, her friends and her family." The woman survived Tuesday's fall only because she landed on a trail close to the tip of the bridge. "One misstep and there is no surviving a 730-foot fall. (The daredevils) are not just out there walking they are getting braver," police spokesperson Dena Erwin told KCRA. "Theres peer pressure, so when they are out there, they are doing stupid things. We really want this to stop before someone dies." Despite what authorities have said about the bridge, people still risked their lives as they uploaded images of themselves posing on the catwalk. Story continues Since the bridge opened in 1973, roughly 100 people have been killed due to accidentals falls and jumping suicides, according to the Express Tribune. Related Articles Photo credit: Getty / Great RepliKate From Redbook Photo credit: Getty / Great RepliKate There are a lot of people out there trying to copy Kate Middleton's style on the cheap, but no one can compete with Kate Urbanksa, who wears the exact same high-end pieces as KMid, but buys them at a fraction of their cost. Urbanska, a 29-year-old beautician who lives in Berkshire, runs a very punny blog called Great RepliKate and told the Daily Mail that she emulates the Duchess of Cambridge because she likes that her style is more modest and classic compared to other celebrities these days. She added, "Her designer clothes are such good quality that she is able to wear them time and time again." Urbanska's secret to scoring Kate's luxury items at half the cost is actually pretty simple - she scours eBay for deals on the exact outfits Middleton has worn, then has them tailored to her body. "Kate does don a lot of expensive clothes," she conceded, "but by being selective and tenacious anyone can recreate the duchess's closet without breaking the bank. ... I check eBay and online auctions daily. ... It doesn't matter weather I'm on the bus or waiting in line for something, whenever I have a spare moment, I'm always checking the different sites." That mentality got her Kate's $400 L.K.Bennett "Addison" dress (pictured above), which the duchess wore while greeting the Obamas at Kensington Palace a year ago, for just $187. In total, she's spent just over $8,700 copying Kate's styles. She doesn't just blindly purchase anything the duchess has worn, however. "You have to be realistic about which of Kate's outfits you'll actually be able to wear in reality," she explained. "You might be dazzled by a full-length gown [she] wore, but if your lifestyle doesn't require a couture dress, then don't buy it!" So far, the only item she's bought at full price was a pair of Gianvito Rossi heels in the color praline: "Sadly, they never seem to go on sale!" Sigh. Story continues Follow Redbook on Facebook. You Might Also Like President Donald Trumps abrupt missile attack on Syria won immediate plaudits from U.S allies around the globe, some of whom had grown weary of former President Barack Obamas reluctance to act forcefully against Syrian President Bashar Al-Assads bloody regime. Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Britain, France and Israel all praised Thursdays U.S. attack on a Syrian airfield, retaliation for Syrias chemical weapons attack on Tuesday that killed 86 civilians in the Syrian town of Idlib. Washingtons allies characterized the strikes as a justifiable response to Syrias use of chemical weapons, but they also emphasized the need to pursue a diplomatic strategy at the United Nations for ending the six-year-long conflict. The crimes the Syrian regime has committed against its own people cannot go unanswered, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in a statement from Ottawa. Canada fully supports the United States limited and focused action to degrade the Assad regimes ability to launch chemical weapons attacks against innocent civilians, including children. French President Francois Hollande and German chancellor Angela Merkel, issued a joint statement, saying that Assad is wholly responsible for provoking the U.S. strike. The two leaders said they were informed by the United State in advance of its intention to strike the The Shayrat airbase, which the U.S. alleges was used as a launching pad for the chemical attack on the town of Khan Sheikoun. Trump sent a strong and clear message today that the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement. The expressions of support cames as the U.N. Security Council met today in an emergency session to debate the U.S. military intervention. During the meeting Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, characterized the missile attacks a very measured step, but warned that the U.S. could take more military action. We are prepared to do more, she added. But we hope that will not be necessary. Story continues Despite expressions of sympathy for U.S. action from key allies, some council members voiced concern about the legality of U.S. action. With regard to the US air strike, said Swedens U.N. ambassador Olof Skoog, Last nights missile attack also does raise questions on its compatibility with international law. In Moscow, Russian officials denounced the U.S. intervention as an illegal provocation aimed at driving President Bashar al-Assad from power. President Putin considers the American strikes against Syria an aggression against a sovereign government in violations of the norms of international law, and under a far-fetched pretext, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in Moscow Friday. Washingtons action, he added, is causing significant damage to Russian-American relations, which are already in a deplorable state. Russia also called for an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council. President Donald Trumps first foray into armed conflict against Syrias Russian-backed leader, Bashar al-Assad, underscored the presidents willingness to change course quickly and make decisions about war and peace without a long deliberative process, a tendency that might keep allies and potential foes off balance. Still, some allies were nervous that U.S. strike might presage the U.S. deepening its military role in Syria. Frederica Mogherini, the European Unions Foreign Policy chief, expressed sympathy for the U.S. action, describing as an understandable response to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. But she urged Washington to go back to the U.N. to pursue efforts to hold Syria accountable for its alleged crimes. The EU firmly believes that there can be no military solution to the conflict, she said. Before Fridays council meeting, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said he was abhorred by the chemical weapons attack and highlighted the need for accountability for such crimes. But he offered an implicit criticism of Washingtons attack on Syria without U.N. authorization, noting that any effort to hold perpetrators accountable should be taken in line with existing international norms and Security Council resolutions. At the meeting, Russias U.N. envoy Vladimir Safronkov angrily denounced the United States, saying that the American missile strike constituted a flagrant violation of international law that has only raised the spirits of Syrian terrorist groups whom, he claimed, have been emboldened to step up attacks against Syrian government targets. Haley fired back, saying that Assad used deadly chemical weapons against innocent men, women and children because he knew he could get away with it.He knew Russia would have his back. The Trump administration insisted Friday that the strikes do not represent a major shift in American policy toward Syria or Assad. Shortly after the chemical weapons attack, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson suggested that Assad would have to step down from power at some stage, saying there would be no role for him to govern the Syrian people. But military officials, meanwhile, told FP this does not appear to be the start of a longer military campaign to drive Assad from power, and instead was a specific reaction to the chemical attack. The U.S. attack was met with broad support on Capitol Hill, but an influential group of lawmakers also called for congressional approval if the campaign were to continue. The President needs congressional authorization for military action, said Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky. Senators will get a closed-door briefing on the strikes on Friday, in which administration officials will explain their rationale and outline what, if any, steps might be taken next. Others questioned if the president had a long-term strategy in Syria. We cannot stand by in silence as dictators murder children with chemical weapons, said Reps. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) and Steve Russell (R-OK), in a joint statement. Both members are veterans of the Iraq war. But military action without clear goals and objectives gets us nowhere. Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee added that hes encouraged by the action to hold Assad accountable for his treatment of civilians, but remains gravely concerned that the United States is engaging further militarily in Syria without a well-thought-out, comprehensive plan. On Friday, Moscow signaled it would ramp up its military support for the Assad regime, moving its most advanced ship in the Kremlins Black Sea fleet to Tartus, the Russian navys port in Syria. The ship is armed with long-range land attack Kalibr cruise missiles, and will take up position near the two American ships that carried out Thursdays strikes, the USS Porter and USS Ross in the eastern Mediterranean. Moscow is undertaking a number of measures aimed at strengthening and improving the effectiveness of the Syrian air defense system in Syria in order to protect Syrian infrastructure, a Kremlin official said. Moscow had already deployed S-300 and S-400 air defense systems to the country, but they did not fire at the incoming U.S. missiles on Thursday. A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad confirmed that Russia had initially pulled out of a hotline staffed by military officers from both countries, set up in 2015 to avoid misunderstandings in the crowded airspace over Syria. We encourage its continued use, said Col. John Dorrian, and we will continue monitoring the situation in Syria. Photo Credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images BEIRUT (AP) The U.S. missile strike on a Syrian air base was widely welcomed as a response to this week's chemical weapons attack, but condemned by Syria's government and its allies Russia and Iran, which said the move would complicate efforts to fight terrorism. The following is a sample of the reactions from the international community, the parties to Syria's six-year-old civil war and victims of the chemical attack. RUSSIA A spokesman for Vladimir Putin said the strike "deals a significant blow to the Russia-U.S. relations, which are already in a deplorable shape," and poses a "serious obstacle" for creating an international coalition against terrorism. The Kremlin responded by suspending a crucial line of communication with the U.S. set up in 2015 to prevent confrontations in Syria's crowded skies. SYRIA Syrian President Bashar Assad's office denounced the U.S. strike as "reckless, irresponsible behavior." The Syrian military called the attack a "blatant aggression" that would undermine Syria's "fight against terrorism." The government refers to all groups fighting against it, including mainstream rebels, as terrorists, and has denied any involvement in the chemical attack. SYRIAN REBELS Jamil al-Saleh, a rebel commander in the central Hama province, called for more strikes, saying "Bashar's regime only understands force." He said he hoped the missile attack "is a turning point and not a passing thing." The Syrian Coalition, an opposition group, said the U.S. attack puts an end to an age of "impunity" and should herald the start of a larger campaign. CHEMICAL ATTACK VICTIMS The victims of Tuesday's chemical attack in the northern town of Khan Sheikhoun, which killed more than 80 people and wounded dozens more, welcomed the strike but feared it would be a one-off. Alaa Alyousef, a 27-year-old survivor, called for a no-fly zone to protect civilians. Khaled al-Khaled, whose 16-year-old son is struggling to recover from the attack, said he rejects foreign intervention, but "the regime has forced us to join hands with enemies... No one is supporting the Syrian people. Only God is on our side." Story continues SAUDI ARABIA A foreign ministry official praised "the courageous decision by U.S. President Donald Trump to respond to the (Syrian) regime's crimes against its people in light of the failure of the international community to stop the regime from brutalizing its people." Saudi Arabia is a leading supporter of the rebels fighting to overthrow Assad. OTHER GULF COUNTRIES The United Arab Emirates, which hosts some 4,000 American troops, said the U.S. had its "full support" and praised Trump's "courageous and wise decision." The tiny island nation of Bahrain said the U.S. strike on Syria was "needed to stop the bloodshed" in that country's war. That island kingdom hosts the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet. Both governments long have been suspicious of Iran and its regional influence, and both have opposed Assad. TURKEY Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu expressed Turkey's support for the U.S. strike. "This regime must be removed from leading Syria as soon as possible and the best way to do that is by starting the transitional process," he said. Pointing to Assad's "continuing crimes against humanity," he also warned of further refugee flows from the conflict. IRAN Iran's Foreign Ministry said the U.S. strike was "dangerous, destructive and violates the principles of international law," adding that it would "not only complicate the situation in Syria but in the entire region." Allaeddin Boroujerdi, the head of a parliamentary committee on national security and foreign policy, said "Russia and Iran won't be quiet against such acts." HEZBOLLAH The Iran-backed Lebanese group, which has sent thousands of fighters to Syria to bolster Assad, said the "foolish" strike would lead to a "dangerous escalation in the region." BRITAIN The British government said it was informed in advance about the U.S. missile strikes, and firmly supports the American action. Prime Minister Theresa May's office called it "an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime," saying it was "intended to deter further attacks." FRANCE French President Francois Hollande said the strikes were a response to the chemical attack, and planned an emergency defense meeting to discuss next steps in Syria. France has long called for Assad's departure, but French diplomats have pushed this week for resumed peace talks instead of international intervention. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said the U.S. bombing was a warning to Assad's allies Russia and Iran. ITALY Italy said the U.S. strikes on Syria were "proportionate" given the "war crimes" committed by the Assad government in using chemical weapons against its own people. It said the U.S. strikes would deter future chemical attacks. The country's largest opposition group, the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, condemned the U.S. attack and demanded Italy not get drawn in. The opposition center-right Northern League party called the strikes a "gift to ISIS." SWEDEN Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom said the missile attack "raises questions about how this could be compatible with international law," and said the U.N. Security Council "must take responsibility for reaching a lasting political solution" in Syria. The Scandinavian country a non-permanent Security Council member currently holds its presidency. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg says "the Syrian regime bears the full responsibility" for the U.S. missile strike. He said that "any use of chemical weapons is unacceptable, cannot go unanswered, and those responsible must be held accountable." ISRAEL President Reuven Rivlin said the U.S. strike on Syria was an "appropriate response" to the "unthinkable brutality" of the chemical attack. He said the U.S. "serves as an example to the entire free world" in supporting steps to end atrocities in Syria. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman also welcomed the strikes. JAPAN Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a close U.S. ally, said he supported "the resolve of the U.S. government of never tolerating the proliferation and use of chemical weapons." In a veiled reference to North Korea, Abe added that the threat of weapons of mass destruction is becoming increasingly serious in East Asia as well. London (AFP) - Acclaimed British conductor John Eliot Gardiner is "extremely worried" as he prepares for a world tour. Brexit is looming and he sees his two passions -- music and organic farming -- as under threat. Gardiner shares the concerns of many leading lights in the music industry that European musicians coming to Britain may need visas and work permits once it leaves the European Union as expected in 2019. A pioneer of Britain's Baroque music revival going back to the 1960s, Gardiner is also an accomplished farmer and fears that Brexit will usher in genetically modified crops from the United States. "Brexit will have a bad impact on my activity," the 73-year-old told AFP as he prepares for a series of performances celebrating his lifelong love for Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi's music. "I am extremely worried," he said, lamenting the election of US President Donald Trump as "very troubling" and warning that victory for far-right leader Marine Le Pen in the French vote would be "a real disaster". - 'Beginning of everything' - On Monday, Gardiner and his Monteverdi Choir and Orchestras will be in Aix-en-Provence in southern France to celebrate the 450th anniversary of the hugely influential composer's birth, kicking off a tour that will end in the United States in October. Gardiner is credited as being one of the first conductors to restore the original emotion in Baroque music by using period instruments, starting from when he first created the Monteverdi Choir in 1964. In 1990, he created a group called the "Romantic and Revolutionary Orchestra" that, similarly to his Monteverdi one, plays with period instruments. On this tour he will be staging three Monteverdi operas: "Orpheus", "The Coronation of Poppea," and -- a first for the conductor -- "The Return of Ulysses". "Monteverdi to me is the beginning of everything," he said, describing him as "the forefather of all the great music that followed over the next four centuries". Story continues "He has occupied a very special place in my life because I first heard his music when I was six years old... I could barely read music and I was enchanted". - 'Retrace my roots' - Gardiner splits his time between music and farming in Dorset, a rural region in southern England. During a break from rehearsals at London's Sadler's Wells theatre, he spoke to AFP about his early morning start to watch the birth of four lambs. "After that, I checked on my 148 cows and calves, and then I took the train for London," he said. The farm, which he inherited from his parents, is a necessity for Gardiner, who described the music industry as "completely stressful". "I find after a certain amount of touring, I desperately need to retrace my roots back to my own farm, and the company of animals," he said. Although he is best known for Baroque music, Gardiner conducts a variety of composers -- except for Wagner. "I don't feel an affinity with him," the conductor said, deploring the composer's political beliefs, his personality and his negative influence. "I don't like the idea of Wagner and I certainly don't like how his music sounds". Serving as one of Michigan's key cultural resources, the Lansing Art Gallery & Education Center inspires and ignites passion for the visual arts, and provides a place for self expression and community engagement. "Lansing Art Gallery was founded in 1965 by a handful of local artists," said Barb Whitney, Executive Director at Lansing Art Gallery & Education Center. " In 1975, 10 years later, we worked with a whole community team to develop funds and raise dollars for an art center where we were housed for decades." Whitney is pleased that the Yes! Grant will help the Lansing Art Gallery be available to everyone in the Mid-Michigan area. "The cash portion of the Yes! Grant will be dedicated to helping us better promote our mission and share our news with the community, that Lansing Art Gallery & Education Center is for everyone, all the time." FOX 47 Community Affairs Director, Kevin Brown, presented the Yes! Grant to Whitney and Board President, Rich Sneary. Our congratulations go to the Lansing Art Gallery & Education Center! We'd like to encourage your favorite non-profit to apply for a Yes! Grant. For more information, visit fox47news.com/yesgrant. New Zealand Prime Minister Bill English defended his love of pizza topped with tinned spaghetti and pineapple on Friday after the recipe sent fans of the Italian treat into an outraged frenzy. English posted pictures of his unorthodox tastes on Facebook this week, saying he prepared the dish for his family. The Internet melted down faster than buffalo mozzarella as purists poured online scorn on his spaghetti speciality. "Why on earth would you promote such garbage? Would you serve this stuff to your international guests??," one user posted. Another said: "Sorry Bill, any man who puts spaghetti on a pizza is not fit to run my country, you cannot count on my vote come election time." Even US talk show host Jimmy Kimmel got in on the act, urging New Zealanders "impeach that man immediately!". "That is so offensive. That is an act of war. I think he just declared war on Italy, and maybe Hawaii too," Kimmel told his audience. Italy's embassy in Wellington declared a vendetta, or blood feud, over the desecration, tweeting a picture of New Zealand's beloved pavlova dessert covered with salami. "Vendetta for PM's pizza with tinned spaghetti and pineapple," it said. English was unfazed by the criticism, saying his recipe may have cooked up strong opinions but plenty of people were on his side. "Everywhere I go now I meet people who put spaghetti and pineapple on their pizza," he told NewstalkZB. "They come up to me spontaneously when I'm walking through the airport and tell me." The culinary kerfuffle comes after Iceland President Gudni Johannesson revealed in February that he hated pineapple topping on pizzas and would ban it if he could. English was unaware of that controversy but admitted he had been puzzled recently about how many times he had been asked whether he liked pineapple on pizzas. "We answered the question, the nation was clearly interested, but they'll probably move on pretty quickly now," he said. Donna and Alex this year (Photo: Donna Freydkin) April 7 marks the five-year anniversary, if it can be called that, of my husbands death from a stage IV malignant brain tumor. He died in hospice, alone, at roughly 3 a.m., while I was home sleeping with our son, Alex, then a year old. The ensuing months were a haze of gut-punching grief, eviscerating fear of the future, and too many bleak moments of drunkenness in a misguided attempt to deal with the above. Within a year of my new life as a widow a word I still cant process I had moved us from filthy, crowded Midtown to a bucolic Brooklyn home with a backyard, near a playground, in an area with a stellar school district. Where before our street reeked of stagnant exhaust, now we lived within minutes of Prospect Park, a 585-acre urban oasis, on a wide, quiet street where my son could ride his scooter for hours. And within two years, I had switched jobs, weathered a layoff, and landed back on my feet, professionally speaking. Id cut back on the booze and taken up barre classes an activity that actually cut through the maddening, emotionally kneecapping thoughts that had raced through my head, instead making me focus, and greatly easing the crushing back pain Id been living with. Donna Freydkin and Justin Williams in May 2015, at our wedding. (Photo: Derick Rhodes) Meanwhile, my son and I have become a team; we hang and eat roast duck and discuss the pros and cons of Nexo Knights and hit the farmers market so he can pick out his own produce. Ive also formed an ad-hoc family in Brooklyn a support group of sorts, made up of smart, strong, inspiring women (and a few dudes) who helped us move into our new place and step in when I need help, offering to grab Alex from school if I have to stay late at work. Our weekends are brimming with playdates and dinners and birthdays. His life is rich and engaging. My life? Sure. Maybe. At times, at least. I say all of this not to brag, but to make the point that my existence is far from being a wasteland of loneliness and forlorn isolation. Some days I even allow myself a moment of emotional swagger: I never planned on raising a kid alone, but, tantrums and meltdowns and freakouts notwithstanding, Im doing it. And, at times, even killing it. Story continues And yet none of this matters, apparently, because I still have yet to go out on a single date. Friends, all of them well-meaning, come over for a drink. Some of them I havent seen in months, or even years. And the first (or, for the more reticent ones, second) thing they ask is this: So, are you dating yet? Donna and Justin in 2011 with a newborn Alex (Photo: Justin Williams) I try to keep my frustration in check, answer in the negative, and change the subject. And I know. I know. Theyre just trying to help. But somehow my value lies not in being a stable, responsible, loving parent a working mom who relies only on herself to pay rent and save for Alexs college. A woman who carves out time during a nutty week to work out, just for her own well-being. To those around me, those who are just as often mired in their own dysfunctional and broken relationships, my value lies only in whether or not Im involved with a man. I get it. Were all conditioned to be part of a couple. And according to the Pew Research Center, theres a major gender gap in remarriage: Of those whose first unions ended in divorce or widowhood, 64 percent of men say I do again, compared to 52 percent of women. Similarly, the Pew Center found, men want to remarry more than women, as 29 percent are into it, versus 15 percent of ladies. What this tells me: Men need to be in a partnership more than women. And women are fine flying solo. I can relate. One is, after all, the loneliest number. Or so were told. And a woman who hasnt found her mate after a while is still an old maid. Then theres the unwritten sell-by date for women, especially moms. Im 43, which means that mine is racing towards me, if not already here. But the thing is, my husband was, hokey as it is, the love of my life, the peanut butter to my jelly, the soy sauce to my sashimi, the Tom to my (wishful) Gisele. I have pictures of our outdoor Texas wedding hanging up in my hallway, and a relative recently gazed at them and said how unbelievably giddy and glowing I had looked, like an entirely different human. Looking at those pictures fills me with an explosive sense of joy and of devastation over burying not just my husband, but all of our dreams and goals and aspirations. Together, wed planned on teaching our son to ski. On taking him to a wine crush in Italy. Wed eventually retire to our place in the Hill Country of Texas and maybe open a wine bar while we were at it. And theres the more prosaic stuff: Alex doesnt have a dad to teach him to ride a bike or help him put together those intricate, maddening Lego sets he loves; mommy, sadly, is failing in those areas. Then theres the reality of actually dating someone else making small talk over drinks, and retreading superficial territory that I covered with Justin 10 years ago. Plus the thought of taking my clothes off for another person terrifies me, and makes me feel itchy all over, as Justin knew my post-C-section body, with its scars and little rolls and imperfections, and he loved it. Theres also the inherent strength and satisfaction I get from not having to answer to anyone but myself. And if Im entirely honest, there is the deep fear of rejection: You cant be dumped if youre never picked up in the first place. So, about that dating thing? No, thank you. Please ask me in another year. Or not at all. Read more from Yahoo Beauty + Style: Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day. For Twitter updates, follow @YahooStyle and @YahooBeauty. Melania Trump truly took things up a notch on Thursday with her latest look many inches up. Alongside President Donald Trump, the first lady feted Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife, Peng Liyuan, in Palm Beach, Fla., for a lavish steak and potatoes dinner at Trumps exclusive private club, Mar-a-Lago. For the occasion, the hostess paid tribute to China with a nod to its flag and favorite color a red dress by Valentino, an Italian brand. And the international tributes continued down to her shoes, which honored France with pumps by her go-to brand, Christian Louboutin. (Photo: Getty Images) Valentinos sleeveless crepe midi dress featured a bold red color with matching daisy applique. The outfit was originally measured around 40 inches long down the center back, but Melania seemed to have shortened the skirt hem just below the knee better to show off her legs and pumps. The dress retails for $5,490 at Neiman Marcus, but its on sale for $4,019 on Matchesfashion.com. Theres little to wonder why she edited the dress. She had on the kind of heels that really put a spring in her step floral designs on a white graphic python mosaique upper. Louboutins So Kate pumps feature a pointed-toe silhouette and a 4.75-inch stiletto heel. A similar design is incorporated on the labels Pigalle Follies style, which is currently available for $715. Guests at President Trumps Mar-a-Lago property, his go-to working weekend luxury retreat, enjoyed Caesar salad and a choice of either pan-seared Dover sole or dry-aged prime New York strip steak, and chocolate cake with vanilla sauce. His daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner who are both now official White House employees joined the dinner alongside other political figures. Related: Hillary Clinton Recycled Her Shiny Coat for Her First Big Post-Election Interview The Biggest Challenges for 'Made in America' Under the Trump Administration Vice President Pence's Daughter Plugs Ivanka Trump's Glitter Pumps -- And Now They're Only $40 Blue Origip President Rob Meyerson shows off a concept for the companys Blue Moon lunar lander during a session at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colo. Other members of the panel include Jonathan Arenberg, chief systems engineer for NASAs James Webb Space Telescope; former astronaut John Grunsfeld; and Mary Lynne Dittmar, executive director of the Coalition for Deep Space Exploration. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle) COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. Blue Origin, the space venture backed by Amazon billionaire CEO Jeff Bezos, is providing a first look at the design for the Blue Moon lander it wants to use for deliveries to the lunar surface in the 2020s. Its been more than a month since Blue Origins plan for sending payloads to the moon for a permanent settlement came to light but the companys president, Rob Meyerson, lifted a veil a bit higher by showing off an artists conception of the lander here at the 33rd Space Symposium. As the four-legged lander design was displayed on screen, Meyerson told the crowd that the spacecraft could be launched on NASAs own heavy-lift Space Launch System rocket, or SLS, which is currently under development. It could also go on United Launch Alliances existing Atlas 5 rocket, or on Blue Origins New Glenn rocket which is due to start flying by 2020. NASA hasnt yet signaled whether it will widen its plans for lunar exploration. But Meyerson said Blue Moon could ship cargo to the lunar surface to complement any plan that NASA develops for crewed Orion missions to lunar orbit, or for settlements on the lunar surface. We believe that the lunar surface offers valuable resources, with valuable science return that can serve as a location to demonstrate key technologies and serve as an appropriate location for that long-term permanent settlement, Meyerson said. We also believe the moon is in sequence for long-term exploration of the solar system, including Mars. Meyerson said Bezos was even willing to put some of his own money into the program. Were willing to invest in its development as part of a private-public partnership with NASA, he said. The more NASA flies SLS, the more they will need commercial logistics delivery services. New Glenn and Blue Moon complement SLS and Orion, enabling NASAs return to the moon, and this time to stay. Story continues The Trump administration has signaled that its considering a refocusing of Americas space program on lunar exploration as a step along the road to Mars. As a result, journeys to cislunar space that is, the moon and its orbital vicinity have attracted lots more interest. Blue Origin isnt the only commercial venture taking a closer look at the moon: Boeing, Lockheed Martin, United Launch Alliance and Orbital ATK are among the space heavyweights proposing grand designs for NASAs cislunar operations. SpaceX and its billionaire founder, Elon Musk, are focused on Mars rather than the moon but even Musk has said hes working on a plan to send a Dragon capsule on a round-the-moon mission, potentially within the next couple of years. During todays panel, Michael Wood, Boeings chief engineer for the SLS program, said he welcomed Blue Origins interest in lunar operations. All of our capabilities are complementary, Wood said. Its an and proposition, not an or.' More from GeekWire: In February, Google subsidiary Waymo filed a lawsuit against Uber, claiming that the ridesharing company had stolen Waymos intellectual property for its work on self-driving cars. The Waymo lawsuit contained bombshell allegations about widespread theft of files, and sought an injunction to prevent Uber from using any of the technology in its self-driving program. If the courts side with Waymo, it will set Ubers program back months or years, time the company cannot afford in the competitive race to win the self-driving car battle. So in addition to fighting Waymo in court, Uber is fighting a vicious battle of public opinion with statements that are decidedly non-corporate. Don't Miss: This is your last chance to get T-Mobiles best promo for free Waymos case centers around Andrew Levandowski, a former Waymo employee who left to found Otto, an autonomous vehicle startup that was quickly acquired by Uber. Levandowski downloaded 14,000 Waymo files before leaving the company, including plans for Waymos circuitry and LIDAR design. Ubers defense doesnt dispute that Levandowski stole the files; it just says that those files never made it to Ubers servers, and didnt influence the design of Ubers LIDAR. It also says that if Waymo was so concerned, it shouldnt have waited for five months to file an injunction. Waymos injunction motion is a misfire: there is no evidence that any of the 14,000 files in question ever touched Ubers servers and Waymos assertion that our multi-lens Lidar is the same as their single-lens LiDAR is clearly false, Ubers associate general counsel Angela Padilla said in a statement. If Waymo genuinely thought that Uber was using its secrets, it would not have waited more than five months to seek an injunction. Waymo doesnt meet the high bar for an injunction, which would stifle our independent innovationprobably Waymos goal in the first place. Uber claims that a search of all company-owned devices has not found any evidence of the files stolen from Waymo, and as such, Uber shouldnt be subject to an injunction. But Waymo contends that Levandowski probably has the files on a non-company device, which Waymo has not been able to search. Story continues Ubers assertion that theyve never touched the 14,000 stolen files is disingenuous at best, given their refusal to look in the most obvious place: the computers and devices owned by the head of their self-driving program, a Waymo spokesperson told Business Insider. Were asking the court to step in based on clear evidence that Uber is using, or plans to use, our trade secrets to develop their LiDAR technology, as seen in both circuit board blueprints and filings in the State of Nevada. Trending right now: See the original version of this article on BGR.com MARIBOR, Slovenia (Reuters) - A firm in Slovenia are giving tombstones a 21st-century makeover, with 48-inch interactive screens that can show pictures, video and other digital content. The Pobrezje cemetery on the outskirts of Maribor, Slovenia's second largest city, recently set up a prototype of a weather-proof and vandal-proof digital tombstone that can interact with visitors. At first glance, it looks like any other but standing in front of it for a few seconds activates its sensors and brings it to life, turning it into an interactive screen capable of playing just about any kind of digital content. "This tombstone makes it possible to put anything next to the deceased person's name and surname, you can write an entire novel if you like. You can put pictures, or a film there," Saso Radovanovic, head of the company Bioenergija which sells the tombstones, told Reuters. "The tombstone has a sensor so that when nobody is around it only shows the person's name and the years of their birth and death... This saves energy and the screen itself, and helps extend the tombstone's lifetime," he added. The tombstone was developed with the help of Milan Zorman, a professor of computing at the University of Maribor who said that they are working on a special smartphone application, which will further increase the tombstone's interactivity. "We intend to bring the sound to earphones connected to a mobile phone running the app. That way visitors would be able to listen to videos displayed on the screen," said Zorman, adding that speakers would be too loud for the cemetery. The cemetery claims the 48-inch-screen version they put up is the first digital tombstone in the world. Radovanovic said they have already received a few orders for the product which costs 3,000 euros ($3,189). ($1 = 0.9406 euros) (Reporting by Gasper Lubej, writing by Marja Novak; Editing by Toby Davis) Mama June Shannon shocked the world this year with her astounding body transformation, after dropping down from 460 pounds to a super-skinny size 4 in just a few months. But the journey was a difficult one, filled with emotional turmoil and painstaking surgical procedures. While Mama June seemed to shed the pounds rather quickly, the transformation didn't happen overnight. The reality star has been working on getting healthy and fit for years, suffering numerous setbacks and facing many obstacles. For a better appreciation of Mama June's long, arduous battle for a fit physique, we've compiled a comprehensive timeline of her weight loss transformation. WATCH: Mama June Reveals Exactly How Much She Weighs Today After Stunning Transformation August 8, 2012 -- Here Comes Honey Boo Boo Debuts While the world was first introduced to Mama June and her daughter, Alana "Honey Boo Boo" Thompson, on the TLC reality series Toddlers in Tiaras, the family was really thrust into the spotlight -- and the public consciousness -- when their spin-off series debuted in the summer of 2012. The show followed Mama June's day-to-day activities as the mother of Honey Boo Boo and her three sisters -- Lauryn "Pumpkin" Shannon, Jessica "Chubbs" Shannon, and Anna "Chickadee" Shannon -- as well as her relationship with boyfriend Mike "Sugar Bear" Thompson -- who is the father of Honey Boo Boo. The show aired for four seasons before it was cancelled. (For a comprehensive primer on Mama June's extensive family, check out our breakdown of the Honey Boo Boo family tree.) WATCH: Inside Mama June's New Life: Exercise, Eating and Dating Following Total Body Transformation! FilmMagic September 2014 -- Mama June and Sugar Bear Call It Quits Though the pair took part in a commitment ceremony on an episode of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, one month after the final episode of the reality show aired on TLC, the network released a statement on behalf of Mama June and Sugar Bear announcing that they had decided to "take some time apart to figure out some things." Story continues Mama June would later cite her split from her longtime boyfriend as the catalyst for her weight loss transformation. Speaking with ET earlier this week, the reality star shared, "I wanted to also show Sugar Bear He really made me feel like s**t [and] I wanted to show him, 'Hey, I can do [whatever] I want to do' I wanted to show him, like, I am actually worth it." WATCH: Mama June Shocks Sugar Bear With Her Weight Loss Transformation: 'Oh Sh**!' July 2015 -- Mama June's Weight Loss Journey Begins Mama June first made headlines when she lost 60 pounds after committing to the idea of getting healthy and beginning work with a celebrity trainer. To showcase her weight loss, she hit beach in Panama City, Florida, decked out in a bright red Baywatch-inspired one-piece swimsuit. November 2015 -- Mama Junes Makes Some Big Strides Mama June started shedding pounds following the conclusion of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, and by the end of 2015, the reality star had dropped from a size 28 to a size 16. Speaking with In Touch at the time, Mama June opened up about how she lost the pounds, explaining, "Honestly, when I first started losing weight, it was just being more active, being busy with the show and doing more things with Here Comes Honey Boo Boo I'm just walking through the neighborhood three miles a day, and just keeping up with that and just keeping up with the kids and just kind of being on the go all the time." WATCH: Mama June Reveals the Toughest Part of Her Weight Loss Journey FilmMagic December 2015 -- Mama June and Sugar Bear Go to Boot Camp After Mama June began losing weight, she and Sugar Bear tried reconnecting -- allegedly in an effort to save their relationship -- for the WE tv reality series Marriage Boot Camp: Reality Stars. Their season premiered in December 2015, and after it ended, the pair didn't stay together. WATCH: Mama June Picks Out Skin-Tight Size 4 'Revenge Dress' for Sugar Bear's Wedding on 'From Not to Hot' May 2016 -- Mama June Turns to Surgery for Help After working out and exercising for months, Mama June eventually hit a wall, and turned to surgical options to help her shed the pounds she was still struggling to lose. Last month, Honey Boo Boo and Pumpkin sat down with ET to dish on their mom's various procedures -- beginning with a gastric sleeve in May 2016. "The reason she got the gastric sleeve was because she hit a plateau -- she couldn't lose any weight," Pumpkin explained. "And then it came to a point where [the trainer] had to step in because she hit another plateau with the gastric sleeve, and wasn't losing any more weight." August 2016 -- The World Gets a First Look at Mama June's Dramatic Transformation After losing "about 150 pounds in a year," Mama June turned to doctors Terry Dubrow and Paul Nassif from E!'s Botched for help removing excess skin, a result of her rapid weight loss, and a build-up of scar tissue from her four C-sections. WATCH: Mama June Reveals She Lost 150 Pounds in a Year, Turns to 'Botched' Doctors to Help With Extra Skin The reality star recently revealed to ET the true extent of how much excess skin she had to have removed. "It was nine pounds on my stomach, and a pound apiece on my arms, and then maybe a half a pound of my neck," she shared. Around the time her episode of Botched aired, Mama June shared a number of photos on Twitter and Instagram, showing off how different she looked. She even snapped a beaming selfie with ET's Kevin Frazier. Look who was on my flight @real_honeybooboo_mamajune31054 #mamajune she's in town to shoot an episode for the show @botched ... She has lost so much weight she is now gonna get the extra skin removed .... #goodluck A post shared by Kevin Frazier (@kevinfrazier) on Jan 17, 2016 at 12:50pm PST November - December 2016 -- Here Come All the Other Surgeries Following her excess skin removal, Mama June went under the knife yet again for a breast lift and tummy tuck in November 2016, followed by operations on her arms, her neck and her chin in December. All the while, the WE tv cameras were rolling, documenting her various procedures for a new reality show, Mama June: From Not to Hot. Mama June said the hefty price tag for all of her various operations and procedures was "well over $50,000," and she's adamant that she footed the bill herself. PHOTOS: Mama June's Plastic Surgeries Could Have Cost Her More Than $50K "I had to pay for the surgical [procedure], the equipment, the building, you have to pay for the doctor visits, you have to pay for the medication, so it's not cheap at all," she told ET adding that she's "very happy" to have paid the exorbitant price, because "I got what I wanted." January 22, 2017 -- Sugar Bear Gets Remarried As seen on Mama June: From Not to Hot, Sugar Bear tied the knot with his fiancee, Jennifer Lamb earlier this year. Sugar Bear invited Mama June to the ceremony -- despite his bride's vocal protests -- and she shocked her ex with her dramatic transformation at his own wedding. Mama June later described the event to ET as "awkward." January 25, 2017 -- Mama June: From Not to Hot Releases First Promo The world got their first glimpse at the reality star's much slimmer figure when WE tv released the first teaser for the docuseries in January 2017.During some of the early promos, fans learned the true extent of Mama June's weight loss, and how she went from 460 pounds down to a size 4. PHOTOS: Shocking Celebrity Weight-Loss Transformations February 24, 2017 - From Not to Hot Premieres Mama June's new docuseries premiered on WE tv in February 2017, touting the reality star's jaw-dropping journey as nothing short of a miracle. "In the past year, we have seen the impossible become possible," a booming voice-over narration intoned during the first episode, citing the Chicago Cubs' World Series win and Donald Trump's presidential victory. "But can Mama June actually be a size 4?" WATCH: Mama June Seen for the First Time Since Size 4 Reveal -- See the Pic! March 16, 2017 -- Chickadee Slams Her Mom's Motivations Mama June's estranged daughter spoke out to E! News in March about how she feels her mom underwent surgery "just to be more famous." "I don't think she did it just for her because she never mentioned anything ever before about getting plastic surgery," Anna explained. "I don't think she did it or anything for herself. If she would have done it for herself, she would have tried to lose the weight a long time ago." March 31, 2017 -- Mama June's Full Transformation is Finally Revealed The reality star showed off her new, shockingly skinny physique on the penultimate episode of From Not to Hot, which finally showed the end result of her surgeries. To keep her new look a secret, Mama June had to remain in hiding for months leading up to the big reveal. However, that proved to be easier said than done, according to Pumpkin, who told ET, "It is very hard because Mama, she is a very stubborn person, and she wants to do everything. She's like, 'All right, I've got to go to the store,' and we're like, 'Mama, no, you need to stay in the house because if somebody gets a picture with you...'" WATCH: Mama June Shows Off Shockingly Slimmer Figure as She Heads to Gym April 2, 2017 -- Mama June Spotted For the First Time Since Weight Loss Reveal Two days after the big reveal, Mama June was photographed in public for the first time since showing off her transformation, returning to her home in Georgia on Sunday. Decked out in exercise tights, sneakers and a maroon hoodie, she looked nearly unrecognizable. Rob Kim/Getty Images April 4, 2017 - Mama June Sits Down With ET to Talk About Her New Lease on Life Mama June sat down with ET's Jennifer Peros on Tuesday, and opened up about every aspect of her journey, admitting that she feels like a different person in her new body. "I mean, sometimes I do feel a little bit tired at times, but for the most part, I feel really good," she notes. "I'm able to get around more, I'm able to do more and stuff like that, so for me, it's got its advantages and its disadvantages." WATCH: Mama June Opens Up About Her Current Relationship With Sugar Bear: 'He Pisses Me Off' Mama June also opened up about her current relationship with Sugar Bear, and admitted that -- while their split might have been the original motivation for her to get in shape -- she now doesn't care what he thinks about her new look. She also swore that she's committed to working hard to maintain her new weight, and said she never wants to fall back into the unhealthy habits that lead to her unhealthy weight in the first place. "I will never go back to what I look like I will do whatever it takes," Mama June said, although she stressed that she never wants to undergo cosmetic surgery again. Mama June: From Not to Hot airs its season finale Friday at 9 p.m. ET/PT on WE tv. WATCH: Mama June Reveals Weight Loss Surgery Scars, Talks New Clean Diet Related Articles : , , , , - 28 . Andy Foster is the director of Inspiration Ministries of Auburn, a nonprofit organization to assist men and women transitioning out of prison and being reintegrated back into society and the work force. Foster runs a coffee shop downtown, The Cupbearer Cafe, that helps sustain the ministry. No Yes, a light case Yes, two or more light cases One serious case Two or more serious bouts Vote View Results Hispanic students are majority now in the Arcadia School District, the Justice Department requires a bilingual ballot, and downtown business owners celebrate a new vibrancy. Read about the Trempealeau County city's transformation in Sunday's Tribune. The twisted canopy of the verdant, tropical rainforest loomed ahead as Dr. Evan Nelson and his wife Maggie bounced along in the back of a pick-up truck. Spirits were high during the 2008 tripthe Nelsons first as leadersas their missions team headed for the mountain region of western Panama and their first encounter with the Ngobe tribe. After a while, the truck veered off onto nothing more than an overgrown footpath, jostling the passengers back and forth. Suddenly it hit a rut. The front end of the truck lurched what seemed like three feet into the air, slamming back down and hurling the passengers around like billiard balls. It hit several more ruts with the same result. Soon the volunteers were out of the truck, making their way on foot through the oppressive humidity of the rainforest. The Nelsons looked at each other. Were not coming back, Evan recalled saying, somebodys going to get killed. But plans with a divine touch relentlessly succeed. The Nelsons were part of a divine appointment that spanned over a decade and brought together a church and three people from two different countries, resulting in an increased standard of living for a tribe that UNICEF has declared the poorest indigenous group in the Americas. Growing up Panama City, Sammy Gondola, then 19, was searching for a group to help him grow in his faith. In 1996, Gondola who now lives in Onalaska, found what he was looking for in Youth With A Mission. Through YWAM, Gondola met Pastor Mike Breininger of Richland Center who had come to Panama for short-term missions. The pastor invited Gondola to the U.S. but Gondola declined, unsure about his English skills. But Breininger was persistent and two years later Gondola took up residence in Richland Center where he studied music at the University of Wisconsin campus there, while leading worship at Breiningers church for five years. Gondola then transferred to UW-La Crosse to finish his degree, also assuming a new role of worship pastor at First Free Church in Onalaska. But Panama was never far from his mind. Burdened for his people, Gondola approached First Frees then senior Pastor David Holt and in 2006 they took 30 people on a vision trip back to his homeland. On a second trip the next year, Gondola met Evan and Maggie Nelson of French Island. The Nelsons were touched by the amount of need in Panama, and their ability to make a difference. Meanwhile, YWAM of Panama began to explore what could be done to help the Ngobe Indian Tribe and invited First Free Church to partner with them. In response to YWAMs proposal, the Nelsons and their team of volunteers paid $1,400 each to make the trip. But things didnt quite go the way the Nelsons envisioned. As they were to discover, on their ill-fated, (and almost fatal) truck ride in 2008, the Ngobe live remotely, some 12-14 hours from Panama City. From the Nelsons resolute, Never again, it looked as if the Divine appointment might be cancelled. They were a forgotten people, said Maggie. There were no roads to get to them. When the team finally did arrive, the village was almost as shocking as the truck ride. They found that the Ngobe live in shacks made of sticks with dirt floors on which they built fires for cooking. Roofs were made from coconut tree branches or tin. Malnourished stray dogs roamed freely. There was no running water or electricity. They also discovered that they had entered the cultural dark ages. A witchdoctor led the animistic style religion mingled with the Mamatata cult. Women were treated as property and could be beaten for a seemingly insignificant offense and 12-year-old pregnancies were common. Most people living in the village had less than a fourth-grade education. Medical care was next to nothing. It was a fear-driven culture, said Maggie, with anger as a predominant emotion and no word for forgiveness. Yet, the Nelsons were resolute, Never again! But as is often the case with a divine appointment, something unforeseen happened. The Panamanian government discovered copper in the mountains near the Ngobe. To extract the metal required a road, and soon government machinery was hacking out a road and making the forgotten people accessible. So the Nelsons decided to try another trip. Building trust was a slow process, but random and purposeful acts of kindness persuaded the villagers that the visitors would be serious friends. On one occasion, villagers vainly tried to reach a clinic with a one month old boy dying from a respiratory illness, but returned because it was closed. The Nelsons who had just arrived, brought the baby back down the mountain to a hospital in Panama City where doctors saved its life, saying that if they had been one day later, the baby would have died. On another occasion, the Nelsons provided a grieving family with $200 worth of food following a funeral. Ngobe tradition requires the family of the deceased to feed people who have come to mourn and this particular family already lived in poverty. This was nothing like they ever received, said Maggie. They even asked Evan to pray. In the ensuing years with the help of First Free volunteers and YWAM, things began to change. Funding from the Coulee Region to help keep kids in school paid off as 25 students graduated from college. Subsequent teams built a church education building that doubles as a community center and a home for single mothers, as well as several homes for villagers. Were developing projects and training them how to live a different life. And transformation is happening. Over the past decade, the local pastor has baptized nearly 900 people. People who were first opposed to the church now want to work with us because theyre seeing transformation, Maggie said. She remembered that one village woman confessed, This is first time Ive ever said my opinion out loud. News of the changes got back to the Panamanian President and he made an official visit to check out the changes. So the Nelsons kept their Divine appointment, not once, but to date 17 times, becoming group leaders and taking over 100 people on short term mission trips to Panama. And Sammy Gondola whose love for Panama fueled the vision has found a new home as missions pastor at Mount Pleasant Church in Winona. He still leads mission trips to Panama, but is overwhelmed with the Nelsons commitment. Without the Nelsons, it wouldnt have gone beyond me, he said. Im grateful theyve chosen to continue. Dwight Swenson lives in the Town of Curran. His home used to be virtually sand free, but today sand piles up on his window sills due to a neighboring sand mine. There is a noticeable increase in silica grit in the atmosphere and that was evidenced by the material that ends up on your windows, any type of glassware that is outside and patio furniture. During the growing season, you want to be out on the deck, so you can wipe off the patio furniture and as soon as you wipe it off, you can go right back and do it again, Swenson said. Residents that live next to sand mines, especially those that are downwind, often complain about having visible sand buildup on their homes. While this is concerning, what some people are more worried about is the sand that is in the air that you cant see, also commonly referred to as silica dust. Silica dust comes from sand or dirt. It has been known to cause health problems including silicosis and lung cancer(1). While silica dust can be found on a sand mine, it can also be found on a construction site, while tilling the soil and really any profession that creates dust. Silica dust is the primary concern the CDC has while mining because silica dust is a serious health concern(1). These concerns have been brought up by those living next to sand mines, especially when neighbors can visibly see sand that builds up on their homes. These concerns are what prompted Wisconsin and Minnesota to begin testing the air quality near the perimeter of sand mines. To test the amount of sand in the air, Minnesota used a monitor that tests for various levels of particulate matter. We look for several sizes of particulate matter, which is a regulatory term that describes what some people think of as dust, said Jeff Hedman, who is one of those leading the regulatory measures for sand mines at the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. Hedman said monitoring is being used to test the potential impacts for the local community, using local weather data, specifically wind direction and speed, to help assess how weather affects their results. So far we have found concentrations that have been lower than national ambient air quality standards, which is a good thing, Hedman said generalizing the data collected so far. However, Hedman did say that the monitors near one sand mine, Jordan Sands in Mankato, Minn., did measure exceedances of the states secondary daily total suspended particles (TSP) standard on its North monitor once and South monitor three times. The other two sand mines that Hedman has been monitoring have not had any events like this one. Hedmans findings include monitoring for PM10, PM4, PM2.5 and TSP. Air quality testing has also been conducted near sand mines in Wisconsin for PM10 with similar results. Sand mines are not currently routinely tested for PM2.5 or PM4, which are considered more dangerous to peoples health and can travel further distances. The 2016 Health Impact Assessment of Industrial Sand Mining in Western Wisconsin report, which was conducted by the Institute of Wisconsins Health, Inc., helped to lay out the results of various air quality tests being conducted on sand mine facilities in Wisconsin. All of the PM10 measurements collected at the 14 different industrial sand mine monitoring locations have been below the primary standard, according to the report. Please note these findings did not provide vast research on PM2.5-sized particulate matter. A study conducted in Trempeauleau County by the University of Iowa did test for PM4 near homes that were near a sand mine. According to the letter the University sent to residents, Of the 17 collected samples, 13 have been analyzed, revealing low respirable mass concentrations as follows: (mean = 10 g/m3; standard deviation = 2.8 g/m3; range = 6 to 15 g/m3). Crystalline silica (-quartz) was detectable in 6 of the 13 samples but represented only 2% to 4% of the mass, indicating very low concentrations. In this case, PM4 was indicated at very low concentrations near these homes that were located near sand mines. PM10 is the size of the particle the monitors are testing for. Particles larger than PM10 are generally too large to remain suspended for great distances and so should not enter into your lungs easily. The smaller the particle, the more damaging it is to your health because it can travel further into your lungs, which causes more damage. To try and combat the amount of sand that gets carried by the wind, the best practice is to use water to reduce the amount of sand drifting off of a sand mines piles. We are just trying to minimize the dust on a terrible day like today by actually having water cannons trying to spray some of the sand to try and reduce the dust, said Jack Mitchell, owner of Wisconsin Proppants, LLC. We try to do the best we can to reduce that dust. In Wisconsin Proppants case, on a really windy day they use a combination of trucks and a sprayer system over their sand piles to put water on the sand. While Wisconsin Proppants takes these precautions, not all sand mines do follow best practices, so there are some variances in the amount of effort a sand mine takes to minimize the silica dust being expelled. If you are interested in information for a sand mine near you, the air quality data used in the 2016 Health Impact Assessment report is also available to the public, and the data is currently still being collected on many sand mines across the state and in Jackson County. To view a sand mine near you, go to www.dnr.wi.gov/topic/Mines/AQSandMap.html. You can get PM10 air quality data on Hi-Crush near Taylor, Taylor Frac, LLC near Taylor and Wisconsin Proppants near Hixton. All of these facilities have stayed below the PM10 primary standard while being tested. PM2.5 or PM4 data is not currently availabe. If you would like to report problems with blowing dust or sand from a sand mine near your home, the DNR encourages you to contact the local mine or your regional DNR office. 1. According to one of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health pages on the CDC website. https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/mining/topics/RespirableDust.html BLACK RIVER FALLS Eugene R. Wesho, 28, of Black River Falls died Wednesday, April 5, 2017, at University of Wisconsin-Hospital, Madison. Services will be noon Saturday at Ho-Chunk District One Community Center, Black River Falls, with visitation 3:30 to time of service. Burial will follow in Decorah Cemetery, Black River Falls. Buswell Funeral Home of Black River Falls is assisting the family with arrangements. WASHINGTON (TNS) As Californias top energy regulator, Michael Picker has an absurdly busy job. So it was a little surprising to find him recently near a Washington, D.C., metro stop, randomly handing out help-wanted fliers in the middle of a workday. But with morale plummeting at the Environmental Protection Agency since President Donald Trump took office, Picker saw in that patch of sidewalk near its headquarters an opportunity and perhaps a publicity stunt to lure top-shelf talent that never before would have considered bolting from the agency. The dim outlook at the EPA is weighing heavily on its 15,000 scientists, engineers, investigators and other employees, many of whom perceive their lifes work to be under assault from within. The Trump administration is moving as quickly as it can to diminish the place, with plans to cripple the EPA science office, stop the agencys climate change work, cut its Superfund program in half and outright eliminate 50 programs, down to the voluntary Energy Star stickers that help consumers locate efficient appliances. It all has Jared Blumenfelds phone ringing off the hook. The number one call I get everyday is, Jared, can you help us find work somewhere else, said Blumenfeld, who ran the regional office of the EPA encompassing California, Nevada and Arizona until last May. His advice? Dont quit, fight. I try to tell people that staying and doing your job at this point in history is an act of resistance, that if they leave, we will wind up with gaps in the system. That message is not always well received from employees now working for an administration that has openly accused the agency of producing junk science, pursuing a political agenda and abusing its authority. It is very hard to be here right now, said a senior EPA official who has been with the agency for 30 years. The Trump administration is battling with basic scientific facts. There might have been slow progress on things like climate change under Bush-Cheney, but this is outright turning things over completely on their head. I have never seen anything like it. Agency scientists watched in dismay last week as EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt rejected their finding that a pesticide called chlorpyrifos must be removed from the market because exposure to high doses could inhibit the brain development of children. The day before, Trump was at agency headquarters to pillory its yearslong work on climate change and sign an order killing the signature global warming programs that agency employees had invested tens of thousands of hours developing. On Capitol Hill, the House was passing a law that doctors and public health officials warn would cut EPA scientists off from medical data they need to protect the public from toxic pollutants. Climate skeptics from far outside the scientific mainstream dominated the witness panel at a House committee hearing the same day, during which they encouraged lawmakers to assemble teams of researchers within the federal government whose job would be to raise doubts about the scientific consensus on global warming. Even Bill Ruckelshaus, who was appointed by Richard Nixon to be the first EPA chief and then recruited by Ronald Reagan to restore it when the public grew angry that clean air and water were slipping away on Reagans watch, said he had never seen anything like the tumult the agency faced now. It is going to set us back in ways we cant even predict, he said. Ruckelshaus is among those beseeching longtime employees to ride out the chaos. My advice is easy to give and hard to take, said Ruckelshaus, who worries the important government work of those experts decamping to the less stressful environs of academia, nonprofits or even state government will just stop. Hang in there. The concerns of old-timers extend far beyond the climate work under attack. Even in the best of times, Blumenfeld said, staffing the teams that do specialized work like detect radioactive fallout or respond to oil refinery explosions can be exceedingly tough. Now people in key positions, he said, are packing up at the same time the administration is looking to shrink its workforce by 3,000, and there is no guarantee any job will be filled. Under Trumps budget blueprint, the EPA took the biggest hit, losing nearly a third of its funding. Among those who quit the agency recently was Mustafa Ali, who launched the EPAs Office of Environmental Justice in 1992 and has served under Democratic and Republican administrations. Trump is proposing to eliminate that office altogether. Some of the actions going on now are mind-boggling, Ali said. Legions of data wizards and archivists have joined an independent effort to preserve what they can of the work produced by the agency in recent years. They worry it will be erased. The nonprofit Environmental Data and Governance Initiative is holding events across the country where coders are working to save every byte of scientific data they can. The group is also tracking changes on the EPAs website, where it was among the first to discover the word science had been removed from the mission statement of the agencys Office of Science and Technology Policy. Workers at EPA headquarters in Washington, in an act of defiance, fished out of storage a 1980s T-shirt memorializing how they helped force out Reagans first EPA chief, Anne Gorsuch, who was at war with her workforce for her entire short tenure. Now her son, Neil M. Gorsuch, is Trumps nominee for the Supreme Court. EPA employees have been heartened by the cookies some well-wishers have sent, including individual notes written by scores of Americans appreciative of their work and unhappy to see them under siege. But there is little optimism that Trump is going to reconsider his approach, as Reagan did. I am really concerned that because of all the rhetoric and because of the tone of the politics now, that we dont have the public support we had in the 1980s, said Tom Burke, who headed the EPAs Office of Research and Development until inauguration day this year. I dont think in 1982 the polluters were quite as well organized and quite as influential as they are now. Employees still at the agency hold onto what hope they can. Some have taken note of the endurance of the EPA climate change page, which has remained online long after the one on the White House website disappeared. We have people constantly checking to see if it is still up, said a mid-level EPA employee in California, whose department head has not yet been replaced by a Pruitt hire. People will know when things here are changing based on the information on that website. But while the climate page was still up, the employee said a group of workers in California focused on climate change adaptation decided not to wait for the next shoe to drop. Soon after the election, they changed the name of their program. It no longer mentions climate change. Prosecutors Tuesday will file criminal charges against three men arrested after a shooting and police standoff Wednesday on La Crosses South Side. Damon Taylor, 35, and Ontario Lowery, 37, both of La Crosse, and Trevongh Martin, 21, of Mount Horeb, Wis., each face a charge of first-degree recklessly endangering safety as party to the crime when they appear in La Crosse County Circuit Court. All three men are on supervision and jailed on $10,000 cash bonds. Taylor and Martin also face gun charges. The La Crosse Police Departments tactical team was en route to 2612 S. 17th St. to search for Taylor, wanted on a probation warrant, when investigators watching the apartment building saw Jonlazaire Burch and Martin arrive at 5:38 p.m., according to police. Someone inside shot Burch in the leg, and Martin returned fire as both men fled, according to police. Police arrested Martin in the 2800 block of South Avenue, while Burch was transported and treated at Gundersen Health System. Lowery, who lives at 2612 S. 17th St., fled his apartment and was arrested at 15th Street and Castle Place. Police arrested Taylor inside the apartment early Thursday after he failed to surrender during negotiations and the deployment of tear gas. A group of University of Wisconsin-La Crosse communications students hopes to start a discussion about feminism in all its forms during their Feminist Fest at 6 p.m. Monday in the Bluffs Room of the Student Union. Cara Henney, Jenna Ives, Leah Martin, Hannah Boettcher and Kate Bromley took on the project as part of professor Mike Tollefsons Advocacy and Persuasive Campaigns course, reaching out to representatives from the Pride Center, ALANA (Asian-American, Latino, African-American and Native American) and WSSA (college feminists) for diverse perspectives. We want this to be very inclusive, Ives said. About feminism for everyone anyone can be part of the movement, no matter how big or how small. Scheduled activities include trivia about women in government from College Democrats, button-making with WSSA and exploring inter-sectional feminism with ALANA. Wisconsin Assembly Rep. Jill Billings will offer her perspective as a female member of the Legislature, and restaurant owner Adrian Lipscombe will touch on her unique position as an African-American female business owner in La Crosse. Having the position as a minority and female business owner ... its a different world, Lipscombe said. There isnt a lot of me out there. Its a difficult and very risky position. Its important for all of us to speak freely ... feminism is highly important all around, for all genders and races. As a political science major, Henney will enter a male-dominated field herself, and has experienced being one of only two females in a classroom. Its important not to have your voice drowned out as a women, Henney asserted. Im hoping were paving the way for other women in the future. I have two nieces, and Im thinking about them a lot. The organizers hope to broach sexual assault on college campuses and non-binary feminism as well, the latter with the help of the UWL Pride Center. Community members and students alike are encouraged to attend. Its about showing support, Henney said. There are people out there who do care and want to empower women in everyday life. Participants in the annual La Crosse County Health Summit eschewed discussion of the leading causes of death Friday, focusing instead on the elements that infuse life into the Coulee Region. The causes of life are more complex than the causes of death, keynote speaker Matthew Bersagel-Braley told the nearly 150 health care representatives, county health workers, social services personnel attending the summit at Western Technical College. What we need is here, said Bersagel-Braley, an associate professor and chairman of the masters in Servant Leadership Program at Viterbo University in La Crosse. Seeking to bend the arc of the summit to create an epidemic of good health, Bersagel-Braley said communities extend beyond the traditional ideas of health into assets found in areas where people live, work and play. Bersagel-Braley outlined key points of the Leading Causes of Life, a trademarked program and book by Gary Gunderson and Larry Pray, with the subtitle of Five Fundamentals to Change the Way You Live Your Life. Speakers at the summit, which the La Crosse Medical Health Science Consortiums Population Health Committee sponsors each spring, detailed initiatives that illustrate the five fundamentals, which are: Intergenerativity, an awareness of your relationships with those who have preceded you and those who will follow. It includes concern for those beyond your family. Connection, seeking life through the complexity of social relationships and connections to create communities. Coherence, referring to methods people use to make sense of life in an often nonsensical world. Agency, which involves choosing to move toward life, even if you feel disconnected. Hope, which does not mean optimism or merely wishful thinking but rather, imagining a different, healthier future and acting to bring that future into being. Catalytic instead of paralytic Previous paradigms of building community often were paralytic rather than catalytic, Bersagel-Braley said. One program that breaks through the paralysis is Project Proven at WTC, program coordinator Tonya Van Tol said as she detailed the effort to help people emerging from the criminal justice system join the workforce. We are able to give people connections and realize they are not criminals, Van Tol said. We are really, really in the business of hope. Hope is huge, and so is that connection. Van Tol presented a video of Jordan Holters transformation from a drug addict into a winner of a Wisconsin Job Honor award in December to salute his overcoming his demons to become gainfully employed after participating in Project Proven. The La Crosse man traced his descent into addiction to methamphetamine, being jailed several times with a long juvenile delinquency record and 15 convictions over 11 years and becoming so distanced from his family that he skipped going to its Christmas gathering one year out of fear his parents would have him arrested. Worry about his fate routinely propelled his mother to check with police, court records hospitals and friends to determine where he was, he said. Project Proven saved my life, Holter said. My mom slept better when she saw me on the jail roster, because she knew I would be safe for the night. On his first day at Western, he said, Tonya handed me my welding boots and helmet, and I went from jail to college in 24 hours. I want to be light for other addicts Now a respected apprentice maintenance technician at Great Lakes Cheese in La Crosse, I want to be a light for other addicts, Holter said in the video. Another cause of life has emerged from the La Crosse Collaborative to End Homelessness, which was launched last year and was able to house 16 veterans during a 100-day deadline it set to find them homes by Christmas, said collaborative Chairwoman Kim Cable and Mary Jacobson, assistant executive director of Catholic Charities who chaired the collaboratives design committee. The group intends to begin its next step tackling chronic homelessness on April 20. It has identified between 45 and 50 people classified as chronically homeless, which includes people who have been solidly homeless for a year or those who have been homelessness on four different occasions during the past three years that total a year of homelessness. Housing first is the key to success, Jacobson said, noting that people who have a place to stay then are able to focus on other needs and be connected with services to get back on their feet. Providing homes has far-reaching implications, Cable said, adding that a 2012 study found that a communitys costs for one homeless person can cost nearly $64,000 a year, including additional services needed, ranging from the potential for jail, relief, food stamps, emergency room visits and mental health services, to name a few. By comparison, getting a homeless person into housing costs only about $17,000, she said. Perhaps the most touching stories of the day judging by many participants glistening eyes and trickling tears came from La Crosse Police Neighborhood Resource Officers Tyler Rampach and Dan Ulrich, who told of their life-changing encounters with youths and their families in the Washburn Neighborhood. The main difference between regular patrol duty and Neighborhood Resource shifts is that an officer on regular patrol often is able to see only the surface of an incident, such as a domestic violence case, Pond said. In contrast, working from the Neighborhood Resource officer perspective often with youngsters at the Boys and Girls Club of Greater La Crosse Amie L. Mathy Center at Viterbo they build relationships with some of the same children they had seen on domestic calls. Its sad to see kids and you want to reach out, but cant in volatile situations where they often are afraid of police, Rampach said. Focus on families, prevent problems As neighborhood officers, we can focus on the family as long as it takes ... , to discover underlying issues, he said. We try to prevent things before them happen. He told of one girl he befriended, to the extent that he sometimes helps her with her homework. Once, as Rampach was leaving Mathy Center after an event where he hadnt noticed the girl, all of a sudden she ran up to him and demanded, Where do you think youre going without giving me a hug? Ulrich recalled feeling intimidated the first time he walked into the club because, when youre a police officer and you walk in, everything stops. But once it gets past three minutes, they say, youre an officer, you care, youre cool, said Ulrich, whom the youths call Officer Dan. He told of the time a young boy was having a bad day at the center and was pouting, with his head down and refusing to look up. When a social worker encouraged him to lighten up, the boy continued to stare at the floor, insisting, I dont want to talk to anybody, adding after a pause, Say hi to Officer Dan. After the officers wrapped up their presentation, the task of summing up the day fell to keynote speaker Bersagel-Braley, who was so visibly touched that he choked back tears. He recalled his earlier days, when he used to drive children around and take many of them home. If Id have known police like Dan and Tyler, he said, his voice trailing off as he fought to regain his composure before he just sighed and gave up. Move over Uber, a group of University of Wisconsin-La Crosse students has what they think might be the next big mobile app. Founder Tony Volk, co-founder and software engineer Steven Lee and Chief Marketing Officer Leah Laliberte presented their groups pitch for SIPP, a mobile app they are designing that would connect thirsty patrons with local bars in cities across the Midwest. The SIPP proposal was one of six business ventures local high school and college students pitched as part of the UW-L Eagle Eye Business Competition Thursday night. The program started with 30 students meeting on Sundays starting in January and forming into different teams to develop their ideas. Each team worked with the guidance of UW-L Small Business Development Center instructors and mentors from local businesses. The competition is part of the Innovation Generation Program at UW-Ls Wisconsin Small Business Development Center which is supported by Merchants Bank and other local businesses. Unlike many student business competitions, most if not all, of the business ideas are being pursued with the intention of being implemented in the near future, SBDC Director Anne Hlavacka said. We want our community to be a welcoming one for entrepreneurship and innovation, she said. Along with SIPP, other business pitches included an idea for a Door County-based natural beauty products company, Waste Equals, an exchange for companies to buy and sell waste and byproducts and WeWork.biz, a matchmaking service that would connect businesses to young adults aged 18 to 24. Judging the competition was a panel consisting of Onalaska Mayor and UW-L marketing lecturer Joe Chilsen, Merchants Bank Vice President Dustin Hundt and Wisconsin Womens Business Initiative Corporation consultant Julie Emalie. The three probed each groups presentation, asking questions about aspects not touched on such as marketing strategies or the risks involved. At the end of the competition, the winners were announced, with SIPP winning the peoples choice award and $100 from Merchants Bank as well as taking first place and over $2,000 in financial support and services from local businesses. Second place and over $1,000 in support went to Waste Equals with WeWork.biz taking third place and $500 in support. This isnt the only accolade for the five-member student team, which will be competing at the Wisconsin Big Idea Tournament on Saturday, Apr. 22 in Madison. The first place winner will receive a $2,000 cash prize, a free one-hour consultation with the Law & Entrepreneurship Clinic at the UW Law School, up to $25,000 in funding, and paid travel to Silicon Valley and an opportunity to present at the International Business Model Competition in California. The idea for the app originated with Volk, whose first idea was to create a mobile app for ordering drinks at bars so customers could spend more time with their friends and less time waiting in line. After speaking with local businesses about the idea as part of the program, Volk said he learned the idea wouldnt be practical as bar owners werent interested in upgrading their payment systems in order to connect with an untested product. Instead, the group has been focusing on connecting bars with patrons through social media and a buy-in program. Bars could pay for different tiers of service and presence in the app, which would allow them to reach potential patrons through a map interface and push notifications about local specials as well as providing users access to their menus, hours and estimated wait times. Users would be able to find friends at the establishments through social media connections to the app, which also includes a connection to ride-share app Uber allowing patrons to request a ride to an establishment or to home with the push of a button. The app is currently in a testing phase with about 25 users, Lee said, and the group hopes to launch in August in both Madison and La Crosse The Innovation Generation Program has been a big boon to the three students, who never thought they would be this far along on a viable business idea. The regular Sunday meetings helped keep them focused and on task, as well as giving them the resources and direction needed to iron out all of the details needed to go from concept to reality. To still be in college and at this point is pretty surreal, Volk said, with Laliberte adding, We wouldnt be here without the program. It forced us to keep the ideas flowing. After giving their presentation, the trio was peppered with questions from the judges, who stressed just how critical planning would be for the business. If it takes off as expected, Volk said they could expect a user base of 30,000 people by the end of the first year, and Chilsen and Hundt asked them if they were prepared for the business to take off faster in regards to expanding the company or pursuing potential venture capital investments. I think I would be very prepared to scale this thing in a hurry, Chilsen said. You have to get this right right off the bat. A University of Wisconsin-La Crosse police dispatcher has been given a clean slate at work, despite behavior that resulted in disciplinary action months before her firing and subsequent rehiring. Kimberly Dearman who was fired in March after a Feb. 2 incident with a student employee and subsequently was given her job back has had her personnel record cleared of that incident. And a performance improvement plan imposed before that incident was also erased from her employment record. According to records released by the UW System on Friday, the campus police chief put Dearman on the improvement plan in October in response to several workplace performance problems, including being late to work, playing games on her work computer and poor completion of her duties. In a follow-up letter sent to UW-L Human Resources Director Madeline Holzem during the time Dearman was off the job in March, UW-L Police Chief Scott McCullough also highlighted problems that had come to light about Dearmans ability to complete required paperwork for grant programs and properly handle documents containing privileged information. McCulloughs letter said these concerns apparently surfaced before she was placed on the performance-improvement plan and he suspected they were behind fears she vocalized at the time that she was going to be fired. These serious mistakes show a carelessness and poor performance that goes to the heart of the reason that Kim was put on a PIP in October, McCullough wrote in the March 20 letter. Dearman was fired on March 13 after a student employee she supervised resigned from her position and submitted a complaint that said Dearman told the student who is of Asian heritage that all immigrants should go back where they belong. Later that week, UW-L offered Dearman her job back after officials said due process was not followed during the investigation into the incident, such as providing Dearman the opportunity to have a hearing. The dispatcher was back at her job the week of March 20, but her lawyer, Lee Fehr, continues to pursue a settlement from the university as well as voicing criticism of UW-L Chancellor Joe Gow, who Fehr claims stifles free speech on campus. Fehr asked the university for a $250,000 settlement, while Gow has been adamant the university will not pay a penny. Fehr ramped up the rhetoric with a letter to the UW-L student newspaper, in which Fehr compared Gow to former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. Since he sent his first missive about the incident to the UW System Board of Regents on March 13, Fehr has tied Dearmans firing with Gows conduct, including emails the chancellor sent to students and staff about President Donald Trumps first proposed travel ban, even though Gow had no hand in her investigation or the determination to fire Dearman. When a government official can fire a government employee because of her free speech without due process, it should be extremely frightening to all UW-L students, employees and taxpayers, whether liberal or conservative, Fehr wrote to the student paper in March. A government officials control of your free expression of speech is perhaps the greatest form of terrorism any citizen can encounter. According to the performance improvement plan both Dearman and McCullough signed on Oct. 24, Dearman had 90 days to come to work on time, complete assigned tasks and properly use university technology and equipment. According to a memorandum sent to Fehr by Holzem on March 20, all of the materials regarding the performance improvement plan and the Feb. 2 incident were removed from Dearmans personnel file. Fehr declined to comment on the issue, only saying the university has closed the door to a fair and just settlement for his client. Holzem declined requests for more information about why the materials were removed from Dearmans personnel file. Friday was a day for family as the Viterbo community honored its next leader. Glena Temple was inaugurated as the ninth Viterbo president and the first laywoman to hold the position at a ceremony on campus Friday afternoon. Temple first came to Viterbo as a professor of biology in 2001, and took over the role of president Jan. 1, succeeding the 10-year term of Rick Artman. Students, faculty, alumni and friends packed the hundreds of seats in the Fine Arts Center Main Theatre after a short processional march from the campus nursing building to the theater. Along with the San Damiano cross that represents Viterbos Franciscan heritage and identity, more than 50 national flags were displayed in the procession, honoring the different countries students, faculty and alumni call home. Sister Laura Nettles, a religious studies professor at Viterbo, addressed those gathered to Temple, whom she called an inspirational leader. Temple always sees the good in people, Nettles said, and has a knack for drawing those qualities out into the open. Viterbo is a family, Nettles said. That is what makes todays celebrations so special. Sister Karen Lueck, president of the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, led the invocation, calling for blessings for all in attendance and for Temple. She asked God to provide Temple with the wisdom and grace she will need as president as well as creativity to turn challenges into new opportunities. Board of Trustees Chair Kent Handel and Lueck were the ones to formally invest Temple with the position of president, laying the seal of the office over her shoulders. All in attendance affirmed the investiture, calling on Temple to uphold and promote the Catholic and Franciscan mission of the university. This is a celebration of the next chapter in the universitys history, Handel said. The board is confident Glena is the right leader to move us forward. With the mild temperatures and sunny skies, only one shadow cast its pall over the celebrations, the recent death of a Viterbo student. During her inaugural address, Temple offered her condolences to the family of Erin Rud, a 19-year-old nursing student at Viterbo who died earlier this week after falling out of a moving truck near New Albin, Iowa, and asked for a moment of silence and continued prayers for the family. This loss is a reminder to all of us how precious life is, Temple said. During her inaugural, Temple spoke of how humbled, honored and grateful she was for the trust she had been given by the Viterbo community and the assistance she has received from mentors such as Artman. She also thanked the sisters, who intimidated her as a layperson when she first came to Viterbo, but who had a large impact on her life and career. This is a family, she said, echoing Nettles earlier statement. We share the happy days and the sad days. And constructively disagree on a regular basis. She also laid out more of her vision for the university and how she was planning to attack the challenges facing Viterbo and other liberal arts universities. Private universities are not immune to the debate over college affordability, she said, and Viterbo also attracts many students interested in service fields that provide personal and spiritual fulfillment but arent as lucrative as other professions. Viterbo also needs to do more to retain and engage students, as graduation rates are one of the places the university suffers. Education is about more than earning potential, GPA and standardized test scores, Temple said, connecting students with professions and passions that are fulfilling is what Viterbo does best. The world is changing, she said. We need to prepare students for life, not just their first jobs. But the university will need to continue expanding its relationship with alumni as well as the La Crosse community, and mentioned work between Viterbo and Western Technical College to create a new engineering program as just one example. With a pioneering spirit, Temple predicted the university would continue to thrive. We cannot do this alone, she said. We are stronger together. The world is changing. We need to prepare students for life, not just their first jobs.Glena Temple, president of Viterbo University WASHINGTON (TNS) President Donald Trumps plan to slash federal funding for medical research will go nowhere, thanks to opposition from powerful Republican lawmakers. Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt and Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole, who chair key committees that set funding levels for the National Institutes of Health, will push instead for Congress to increase the institutes annual $32 billion budget, they told McClatchy. The two veteran GOP lawmakers hope to convince the White House to join their efforts to boost NIH spending by at least $20 billion over 10 years. The total annual budget for NIH by the end of that period would then be about $50 billion. If they succeed, it would represent a complete reversal of Trumps position last month, when he asked for nearly $6 billion in cuts to the NIHs fiscal 2018 budget, a 19 percent decrease. Trump also recommended an additional $1.2 billion cut in NIH research grants in fiscal 2017 to help offset spending hes requested for defense and his promised border wall. That proposal will not be well received in the Congress, Blunt said. I just dont think you want to argue that were doing X almost no matter what X is as opposed to cancer research or Alzheimers research. We can give you other places to cut, Cole said. The White House Office of Management and Budget vigorously defended the proposed cuts. Fighting disease and helping patients is a central function of NIH, OMB spokesman John Czwartacki said in a statement. We need to ensure that every tax dollar is spent to achieve those goals and not wasted on unnecessary administrative costs that dont advance us closer to eradicating illnesses and improving the lives of Americans. Two years ago, Blunt and Cole ensured that a major spending bill passed by Congress grew the NIHs fiscal 2016 budget by $2 billion, or 6.5 percent, after 12 years of flat funding. Institutions in Blunts home state of Missouri received $509 million in NIH grants that fiscal year. Research projects in Coles district got $8.8 million. Blunt touted the legislative achievement during his hard-fought re-election campaign in Missouri last year as evidence of his ability to overcome partisan gridlock in a bitterly divided Congress. This year, Blunt said, he and Cole are in agreement with the panels top Democrats Rep. Nita Lowey of New York and Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state in support of another $2 billion increase in NIH funding, with a goal of adding at least $20 billion to the institutes budget over a decade. Blunt told McClatchy hed reached out to Chief of Staff Reince Priebus after Trumps budget was released last month. There have been meetings with the White House about NIH in recent weeks, Blunt said, and the president and his staff have been responsive. I know the administration over the last couple of weeks has spent more time looking at what is happening at NIH and asking questions about what they do and why they do what they do, Blunt said. Ive encouraged that, and I think that will produce a good result. In addition to Priebus and other top-level White House staff, Cole said, he and Blunt have spoken with Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price. Look, theyre smart people, Cole said. Theyre having to produce a budget without people in the official positions they want to increase defense and theyre right about that so it was a little slapdash. And thats OK . Its not like Roy Blunt and I are dangerous liberals. At a House of Representatives hearing last week, Price defended the administrations proposed cuts to NIH as a way of making the agency more efficient by eliminating overhead costs and waste. Price told lawmakers that 30 percent of the grant money distributed from NIH is used for indirect expenses, which, as you know, he said, means that money goes for something other than the research thats being done. Price, a physician, said he supported medical research but the administrations goal was to get a larger return for the investment (of) the American taxpayer in this area which is vitally important. Other Republicans who serve on crucial committees that dole out taxpayer dollars to federal agencies say they staunchly oppose the presidents proposal to cut NIH funds. Republican Rep. Kevin Yoder of Kansas told researchers in the audience at a Beau Biden Cancer Moonshot event in Washington on Monday that Congress is committed to the NIH. Were moving in opposite directions (from the White House) when it comes to funding for medical research, Yoder later said in an interview. The University of Kansas Cancer Center in Yoders district receives roughly $40 million in NIH funding annually. Researchers at the cancer center are studying how tumor cells interact with adjacent cells and are working on developing new chemotherapy agents. Roughly 600,000 Americans die from cancer every year, the congressman said, and if there were 600,000 deaths from terrorism, there would be unlimited public support for investment in our defenses. Sen. Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican who serves on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said reducing money for medical research makes no sense. Moran promoted NIH funding at a town hall in Dodge City this past weekend. He said NIH grant money was important for small or rural states because the program ensured that funding for medical research was spread nationwide instead of being concentrated in coastal cities. More than 200 research projects in Kansas received more than $91 million worth of NIH grants in fiscal 2016. Still, despite Blunt and Coles determination to seal a bipartisan deal that would raise spending on the NIH this year, Democrats caution there wont be a final agreement until its clear no so-called poison pill provisions will be attached and contingent on any other issues that need to be negotiated at the full committee level. I am hopeful we can reach a final deal, Murray said in a statement, and I am certainly glad to see Republicans and Democrats rejecting President Trumps proposed budget, which is nothing less than an attack on workers and families and would devastate critical investments in medical research that have strong bipartisan support. Roughly 600,000 Americans die from cancer every year, said Republican Rep. Kevin Yoder, and if there were 600,000 deaths from terrorism, there would be unlimited public support for investment in our defenses. Friday, April 7, 2017 A lawyer convicted in a high-profile criminal matter has consented to disbarment in Illinois. [The crime] involved Movant aiding and abetting her husband, Illinois attorney Andrew Gilbert Schmuhl, taking a partner in Movants former law firm, and the partners wife, hostage and attacking them in the couples McLean, Virginia, home... Counts I and III of the indictment charged that on or about November 9, 2014, Movant abducted Leo Fisher ("Fisher") and Sue Duncan ("Duncan"), with the intent to gain pecuniary benefit, in violation of Section 18.2-48 of the Code of Virginia.1 Counts II and IV charged that Movant caused bodily injury to Fisher and Duncan with the intent to maim, disfigure, disable or kill them, thereby severely injuring and causing them to suffer permanent and significant physical impairment, in violation of Section 18.2-51.2 of the Code of Virginia. Count V charged Movant with entering Fisher and Duncans dwelling in McLean, Virginia, in the nighttime, while armed with a dangerous weapon, with the intent to commit an abduction, in violation of Section 18.2-91 of the Code of Virginia. Count VI charged Movant with driving her motor vehicle in a willful and wanton disregard of a visible or audible signal from a law enforcement officer to bring her motor vehicle to a stop, in violation of Section 46.2-817(B) of the Code of Virginia. On September 19, 2016, Movant signed pleas of guilty to Counts I (abduction with the intent to extort money), II (aggravated maiming), III (abduction with the intent to extort money), IV (aggravated maiming), and V (burglary) of the indictment in case number FE-2015-465... On January 24, 2017, the court in case number FE-2015-465 sentenced Movant to incarceration with the Virginia Department of Corrections for a term of life on each of Counts I, II, III, IV and V, with the sentences to run concurrently. The court further ordered that all but 45 years of the sentence be suspended. As conditions of the suspended sentence, the court ordered that upon her release from incarceration, Movant be of good behavior and be placed on probation for life. (Mike Frisch) https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/legal_profession/2017/04/a-lawyer-convicted-in-a-high-profile-criminal-matter-has-consented-to-disbarment-in-illinois.html Friday, April 7, 2017 The Kansas Supreme Court has censured an attorney who in 2005 had been arrested for marijuana possession while in law school and falsely characterized the incident when he ran for judicial office. He was unaware of the charges when he relocated to Kansas and applied for bar admission Unbeknownst to the respondent, on July 1, 2005, the Ingham County, Michigan, prosecutor filed a complaint, charging the respondent with one count of misdemeanor possession of marijuana. A warrant for the respondent's arrest was issued that day. In the Kansas application process In November 2005, the respondent filed his petition for admission to the bar of the State of Kansas. According to the respondent, while the respondent's application was pending, the respondent's attorney sent the respondent a letter. In the letter, the respondent's attorney informed the respondent that no charges had been filed and the attorney was closing the matter. The respondent cannot recall the name of the attorney and did not retain a copy of the letter. The respondent took the Kansas bar examination in February 2006. He was admitted but In 2014, the respondent ran for a district court judge position in the Sixteenth Judicial District of Kansas. The respondent faced competition in the Republican primary. The election was scheduled for August 4, 2014. On July 15, 2014, a Dodge City Daily Globe reporter contacted the respondent and told him that an anonymous source had informed the newspaper that the respondent had an outstanding arrest warrant in Ingham County, Michigan. The attorney late responded to disciplinary counsel and resolved the criminal matter with a disorderly persons offense but On July 22, 2014, the respondent falsely stated, to a Dodge City Daily Globe reporter, that he was not the person stopped during the March 20, 2005, incident. The respondent stated that his identification had been stolen a short time before the incident... The respondent's statements to the Dodge City Daily Globe reporter were published on the Dodge City Daily Globe's website and republished by the Associated Press and the Witchita Eagle. On July 23, 2014, while speaking at a judicial candidate forum, the respondent publicly misrepresented that he was not the individual stopped during the March 20, 2005, incident. On July 24, 2014, the respondent posted in the Dodge City dodgeboard.com, an online forum. The respondent's post contained false statements. He admitted the misconduct in the bar proceeding The only remaining issue before us is the appropriate discipline for respondent's violations. At the panel hearing, at which the respondent appeared, the office of the Disciplinary Administrator recommended that the respondent be suspended for a period of 1 year. Respondent recommended published censure. The hearing panel also recommended public censure. At the hearing before this court, the office of the Disciplinary Administrator again recommended a 1-year suspension, and the respondent asked us to follow the hearing panel's recommendation of public censure. While a minority of this court would impose a more severe discipline, a majority of the court agrees with the hearing panel's recommendation that published censure is the appropriate remedy in this case. Video of oral argument linked here. (Mike Frisch) https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/legal_profession/2017/04/the-kansas-supreme-court-has-censured-an-attorney-who-in-2005-had-been-arrested-for-marijuana-possession-while-in-law-school.html Friday, April 7, 2017 The Kansas Supreme Court affirmed findings of judicial misconduct against a former judge. This is an original disciplinary proceeding against Honorable Timothy H. Henderson, former District Judge of the Eighteenth Judicial District, sitting in Sedgwick County (Respondent). This is a correlate case to a 2015 proceeding against the Respondent that resulted in a 90-day suspension imposed by this court. See In re Henderson, 301 Kan. 412, 343 P.3d 518 (2015). The present case involves Judicial Code charges that he was dishonest to the tribunal in responding to the violations in the earlier case. In 2014, a panel of the Kansas Commission on Judicial Qualifications (Commission) initiated an investigation of the Respondent under Docket No. 1197. Following an evidentiary hearing, a separate panel (Panel B) found that the Respondent had violated the Kansas Code of Judicial Conduct and recommended to this court that it discipline him by public censure. The panel specifically confirmed misconduct set out in three counts: a pattern of engaging in inappropriate, sexually themed discourse with members of the Sedgwick County District Attorney's office; exhibiting bias or prejudice against an attorney based on socio-political outlooks, as well as engaging in ex parte communications involving an impending legal action; and abusing the power of his office in communications regarding employment of his wife as a public school teacher. The facts are recited in detail in Henderson, 301 Kan. 412. After the Respondent filed no exceptions to the factual findings of the hearing panel, this court upheld those findings and imposed a 90-day suspension without pay. 301 Kan. at 427. The court rejected his contention here that he cannot be sanctioned further since he is no longer a judge The duty to protect the public from malfeasance by judges does not terminate the moment a judge steps down from office. A judge may not evade public responsibility and our jurisdiction based on the misconduct simply by stepping away from the bench when the misconduct is revealed. As the Alaska Supreme Court noted in Johnstone, the purpose of judicial discipline is the protection of the public... The conduct of which the Respondent is accused, including lying to the hearing panel, took place while he was occupying a position of judicial authority. In his response to the findings of the hearing panel and even after he resigned from his office, the Respondent refused to acknowledge wrongdoing. It would be disrespectful both to the public and to the witnesses whose reputations he impugned if we were to abdicate our responsibility of judicial supervision by dismissing the complaint merely because the Respondent walked away from his responsibilities. And it did not violate his rights to bring a fresh case It would have been improper to include the new charges in the earlier proceeding. Because the charges arose out of the Respondent's testimony in that proceeding, the Commission could not have given him meaningful notice of the new charges. Remedy Here, the Respondent's misconduct undermines the public's faith in the very judicial office he took a sworn oath to uphold. Because the Respondent is no longer serving as a judge, the sanctions of suspension or removal are not available. We conclude the findings of the panel are supported by clear and convincing evidence. IT IS THEREFORE ORDERED that this opinion shall be published in the official Kansas Reports. Video of the oral argument linked here. (Mike Frisch) https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/legal_profession/2017/04/the-kansas-supreme-court-this-is-an-original-disciplinary-proceeding-against-honorable-timothy-h-henderson-former-district.html Thursday, April 6, 2017 The Nevada Supreme Court denied a petition for relief filed when the trial court declined to disqualify counsel. We conclude that the Nevada Rules of Professional Conduct operate to disqualify a lawyer only when that lawyer, while employed at his former firm, gained actual knowledge of information protected by rules of confidentiality. In particular, if a lawyer acquired no confidential information about a particular client while at his former law firm and that lawyer later joins another firm, neither the lawyer nor his current firm are disqualified from representing a different client in the same or related matter even though the interests of the former and current clients conflict. We therefore deny the petition. The story In 2007, the law firm Hall Jaffee & Clayton (HJC) defended petitioner New Horizon Kids Quest III, Inc., in a tort action, namely Robann C. Blue, a Minor, by and through her Guardian ad Litem, Sandi Williamson v. New Horizon Kids Quest III, Inc. (Blue). Only two attorneys at HJC participated in HJC's representation of petitioner in Blue. Ultimately, the district court dismissed Blue with prejudice through stipulation and order. For about the last half of HJC's representation in Blue, Jordan P. Schnitzer worked as an associate attorney at the firm. However, Schnitzer never represented petitioner in Blue or obtained confidential information regarding petitioner while employed at HJC. In 2011, Schnitzer left HJC to join the law firm Kravitz, Schnitzer & Johnson, Chtd. (KSJ). In 2014, Martin J. Kravitz from KSJ filed a tort action on behalf of real parties in interest Isabella Godoy, a minor, by and through her mother Veronica Jaime, against petitioner. After accepting this case, Kravitz discovered that HJC defended petitioner in Blue. He knew that Schnitzer previously worked at HJC and further inquired into Schnitzer's involvement in Blue. Schnitzer told Kravitz that he "had absolutely no knowledge about the Blue case" and confirmed that he had not gained any confidential information concerning petitioner while at HJC. Thus, Kravitz determined screening was not required and permitted Schnitzer to assist on this case. In 2015, petitioner also discovered that Schnitzer worked at HJC during part of its representation in Blue. Petitioner then filed a motion to disqualify real parties in interest's attorneys, Kravitz and Schnitzer. Based on Schnitzer's affidavit denying obtainment of any confidential information concerning petitioner, and an affidavit from an attorney at HJC who participated in Blue confirming that Schnizter had not worked on that case, the district court concluded that Schnitzer never obtained confidential information from Blue. The court further concluded that the cases cited by petitioner in support of its position were distinguishable. Ultimately, the district court denied the motion. Petitioner then filed the instant petition for a writ of mandamus seeking review of the district court's order. Real parties in interest filed a timely answer, and oral argument was held. Resolution ...petitioner argues that a presumption of imputed knowledge applies, and thus, Schnitzer and KSJ are disqualified based upon HJC's prior representation of petitioner in Blue. In contrast, real parties in interest argue that such a presumption of shared confidences does not apply due to the absence of evidence indicating that Schnitzer acquired confidential information regarding petitioner while employed at HJC. We agree with real parties in interest and conclude that petitioner's interpretation of the RPC is too strict in light of the lack of evidence showing that any confidential information was gained... The plain language of RPC 1.9(b) requires that a lawyer be disqualified if (1) the current representation is materially adverse to the attorney's former firm's client, and (2) the attorney acquired confidential information about the client that is material to the current representation, unless the attorney's former firm's client gives informed consent. The requirement that the attorney actually acquire confidential information about his former firm's client is not a presumption; rather, it is a factual matter for the district court to resolve. In the absence of an attorney acquiring such confidential information, it follows that the attorney is not disqualified, and imputed disqualification pursuant to RPC 1.10 does not apply. Therefore, we conclude that the district court appropriately ended its inquiry when it determined that Schnitzer never obtained any confidential information. (Mike Frisch) https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/legal_profession/2017/04/the-nevada-supreme-court.html Britain officially informed the European Union (EU) of its plans to leave the group last week. The move came at a time when Britain is involved in a heated dispute with the EU and Spain over the future of the British territory of Gibraltar. Many people think of Gibraltar as just a mountainous piece of land on Spains southern coast. For years, it has been known as "The Rock." Once part of Spain, Anglo-Dutch forces captured Gibraltar during the War of Spanish Succession in the early 1700s. Spains rulers gave Britain control of the area in the Treaty of Utrecht. The Rock has been a source of tension ever since. Last week, the European Union published guidelines for negotiations between EU and British officials. The document states that any deal between the two sides wont affect Gibraltar, unless Spain agrees to it. The EUs inclusion of Gibraltar angered many British lawmakers, but there is little they can do. That is the opinion of Andrew Canessa, a Gibraltar expert at the University of Essex. "Now that the UK (United Kingdom) is not in the EU the EU will now defend its members' interests," he said. "And in this case, the members' interests are Spain. And so Britain really doesn't have much of a way into that discussion." Last weekend, Britain held events to mark the 35th anniversary of the Falklands War. In 1982, Britain, under then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, fought off an Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic. To Argentinians, the islands are known as the Malvinas. Michael Howard is a former leader of Britains Conservative Party. During the anniversary events, he said current Prime Minister Theresa May is prepared for a fight over Gibraltar. "Thirty-five years ago this week, another woman prime minister sent a task force halfway across the world to defend the freedom of another small group of British people against another Spanish-speaking country, and I'm absolutely certain that our current prime minister will show the same resolve in standing by the people of Gibraltar," Howard said. Yet on Monday, Prime Minister May chose calmer words to describe the situation. She told reporters, "What we are doing, with all EU countries in the EU is sitting down and talking to them." May added that British policy on Gibraltar would not change. Spain's Foreign Minister Alfonso Dastis expressed surprise at the comments from Britain. "Bringing into the debate events from the past like the Malvinas Islands is completely out of context, he said. Someone in the United Kingdom is losing their calm, and there is no reason for doing that." The future of Gibraltar's 30,000 occupants is not clear. Ninety-six percent voted to stay in the European Union in Britains vote on EU membership last June. The economy of Gibraltar is mainly financial services and the gambling industry. The economy depends on membership in the EUs Single Market. "It's not so much that Spain will take Gibraltar over, or have a much more serious threat on British sovereignty in Gibraltar, but rather that the economic basis of Gibraltar is threatened," says Andrew Canessa. Spain created another problem for Britain on Monday by suggesting it would not veto any effort by an independent Scotland to join the European Union. This raises the possibility that Britain could split after it cuts ties with the EU. In the past, Spain had been opposed to Scottish EU membership. Spain feared that such a move would aid Catalonian separatists in the north of Spain to separate as well. They will be holding their own independence vote by October. Im Phil Dierking. Henry Ridgwell wrote this story for VOAnews.com. Phil Dierking adapted his report for Learning English. George Grow was the editor. Do you think Gibraltar should stay with England or stay in the European Union? We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page. _____________________________________________________ Words in This Story guidelines n. rules or orders that explains how something should be done gambling - n. the practice of risking money in a game or bet sovereignty n. self-rule; controlling influence; freedom from outside influences source n. cause; root absolutely adj. completely or totally resolve n. a set purpose; something that is resolved or settled This is Whats Trending Today. The National Zoo in Washington, D.C. has a lot of cute animals. The giant pandas from China are among the zoos most popular animals. They receive thousands of visitors every year. Many people were sad when Bao Bao, one of the most well-known pandas, left for China in February. But there are other pandas living in Washington, and many other cute animals. The National Zoological Park is part of the world-famous Smithsonian Institution. This week, Smithsonian officials announced that 12 cheetahs were born last month at the zoos research center in Virginia. They were born to two adult cheetahs, named Miti and Happy. Miti actually had seven cubs, but two did not survive. Each mother now has two male and three female cubs. The Smithsonians Conservation Biology Institute in Virginia is not caring for cheetahs as a way to guarantee the arrival of more cute animals. The institutes researchers are hoping to diversify the genetic code of cheetahs. The Cheetah Conservation Fund and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature say a large number of cheetahs died about 10,000 years ago. Those that survived eventually helped the population recover. But that caused what scientists call a population bottleneck. Of all the cheetahs alive today, many have the same or similar genetic qualities. That means many of the cheetahs suffer from the same problems. If there is a disease that spreads among the animals, many may die. That is why the Smithsonian and other organizations are breeding cheetahs. They are choosing mates with diverse genes. The effort is part of the Cheetah Species Survival Plan from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. The zoo released a video of the 10 surviving cubs. Some were lying next to each other and breathing loudly. They have light faces with dark markings. The fur covering their small bodies is a mixture of light brown and dark brown, and it looks soft. The cubs will visit an animal doctor for the first time in just a few weeks. Until then, scientists are using a camera to observe their condition. Many people were excited to see them. On Twitter, the cheetah cubs were called adorable, awesome, and little cutie-pies. Cheetahs are also making news in Australia. A week earlier, five other cheetah cubs were born at a zoo near Adelaide. And thats Whats Trending Today. Im Dan Friedell. Dan Friedell adapted this story for Learning English based on reports from the Smithsonian. George Grow was the editor. What do you think of the new cheetahs? We want to know. Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page. _____________________________________________________________ Words in This Story cute adj. having a pleasing and usually youthful appearance attraction n. something interesting or enjoyable that people want to visit, see, or do diversity n. the quality or state of having many different forms, types, ideas, etc. conservation n. the protection of animals, plants, and natural resources bottleneck n. a section of road or highway where the traffic moves very slowly characteristic adj. the special qualities or traits of a person, thing, or group breed v. to keep and take care of animals or plants in order to produce more animals or plants of a particular kind species n. a group of animals or plants that are similar and can produce young animals or plants huddle v. to come close together in a group adorable adj. very appealing or attractive : very lovable cutiepie n. an attractive person : cutie often used as an informal way of addressing a lover, a small child, etc. genetic code n. the rules or structures relating to genes passed along from previous generations The congressman leading an investigation into reported Russian interference with last years presidential election has temporarily stepped down from the investigation. Congressman Devin Nunes, a California Republican, said his decision follows the announcement of an investigation Thursday by the House Committee on Ethics. The committee is looking into whether Nunes gave out classified information. Nunes called the charge entirely false and said it came from liberal activists. Democrats have been asking Nunes to give up the chair of the House investigation into Russian interference. They are angry that he went to the White House on March 22 to give information to President Donald Trump. He told Trump that American intelligence agencies had recorded discussions by Trump aides. The information from Nunes led Trump to say he felt somewhat vindicated about his claim that he had been wiretapped by former President Barack Obama. Democrats objected that Nunes gave the information to the president and reporters before telling members of the House Intelligence Committee. They said the information came from the presidents own staff. And the information did not support Trumps claims he had been wiretapped by President Obama. Replacing Nunes as leader of the House Russia investigation will be Congressman Mike Conaway of Texas. Like Nunes, Conaway is a Republican. The investigation centers on reports from U.S. intelligence officials that Russia hacked into Democratic Party computers and released information to hurt Hillary Clintons presidential campaign. Several people in President Trumps administration and his campaign have faced questions about their Russian ties. Michael Flynn Michael Flynn was Trumps national security adviser. He was fired after 23 days for misleading Vice President Mike Pence. Officials said Flynn had discussed sanctions with the Russian ambassador but he told the vice president that he had not. Flynn has offered to talk to congressional committees in return for immunity. Immunity means a person cannot be charged with a crime for anything he says to Congress -- while under immunity. Paul Manafort Paul Manafort is a longtime Republican adviser who served as campaign manager for the Trump campaign. He stepped down three months before the election after questions were raised about his work for pro-Russian interests, particularly in Ukraine. Jared Kushner Jared Kushner is President Trumps son-in-law, and an important White House adviser. He agreed to talk to Senate investigators. He is likely to be questioned about his meeting with a Russian banker connected to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Jeff Sessions Jeff Sessions was an early supporter of Trumps presidential campaign. He was selected by Trump to be attorney general -- the top federal law enforcement job. Sessions announced he will not oversee the federal governments Russia investigation. He made the announcement after admitting that he failed to tell senators considering his nomination for attorney general about a meeting with the Russian ambassador. Roger Stone Roger Stone is described as a long-time friend of President Trump. During the 2016 presidential campaign, he predicted correctly that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange would release documents that would hurt Democrats. Im Mario Ritter. Bruce Alpert reported on this story for VOA Learning English based on reports by the Associated Press, Reuters and other sources. Hai Do was the editor. We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section and share your views on our Facebook Page. _________________________________________________________ Words in This Story classified - adj. information that is supposed to be secret vindicate - v. to show someone who has been criticized or doubted is correct wiretap - v. a device that allows someone to secretly listen to phone conversations replace - v. to take over a job from another person hack - v. to secretly get access to the files on a computer or network in order to get information sanctions - n. an action that is taken or an order that is given to force a country to obey international laws by limiting or stopping trade with that country particularly - adv. more than usually The United States-based group Freedom House says democracy dropped in more than half of the countries it studied last year. Freedom House rated the health of democracy in 29 countries in Central and Eastern Europe as well as in Central Asia. All 29 were once under Communist Party rule. The findings are part of a new report called Nations in Transit 2017. This is the second-largest drop in democracy ratings in the 22-years Freedom House has produced the report. The group blames the drop on the rise of populism. It noted that leaders in some countries are openly attacking democracy. Concerns about Hungary and Poland The report says Hungary, led by Prime Minister Viktor Orban, now has the lowest rating of any country in Central Europe. Nate Schenkkan works for Freedom House in New York. He spoke to VOA on Skype. When we talk about populism in Central Europe, Orban is the first name. He has created a kind of model for member states, even of the European Union, to reject democracy. There were pro-democracy protests in Hungary last Sunday. Two days later, Hungarys government press office reacted to the Freedom House report. It said freedom of the press fully prevails in Hungary. Every political opinion can find room and be published in the Hungarian press. And it said, Hungarian citizens can exercise their democratic rights in free elections. The report also criticized the leader of Polands ruling Law and Justice Party, Jaroslaw Kaczynski. It said that populist leaders in both Poland and Hungary had attacked constitutional courts and sought to weaken the system of checks and balances. The Freedom House said the spectacular breakdown of democracy in these countries should serve as a warning about the fragility of the institutions that are necessary for liberal democracy." Health of democracy in Russia Russia had one of the reports lowest ratings. Yet Freedom House says a highly developed civil society continues to exist there, along with some independent media. But a former Russian central bank official disagrees. Sergey Aleksashenko now works at the Brookings Institution, in Washington, D.C. He spoke to VOA on Skype. We say that there was some freedom of Internet. But if you move that 80 percent of (the) Russian population that receives news from television, and there is no, any television news station that is not controlled by the government, then OK, you may argue there is some freedom. Of course, there is. But its not the freedom, its not the freedom of information and in my personal view, its a serious misjudgment of whats going on in Russia. Democracy in other areas In the Balkans, the democracy scores for four countries dropped over the past year. Two improved: Montenegro and Croatia. Sergey Aleksashenko said Balkan countries should not be compared to Western Europe. He noted they have had to create systems, governmental and state cultures since the end of Communist rule. He said that is not an easy process. Freedom House once again described Kyrgyzstan as a Consolidated Authoritarian Regime. The country had been removed from the classification after competitive parliamentary elections in 2011. The report said corruption in Eurasia dropped in five of the 12 countries, but reached new lows in Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Freedom House pointed to progress in Ukraine, Romania and Kosovo. It said the Romanian government dealt with problems in the voting process during its 2015 elections. And it said both Ukraine and Kosovo enacted minor structural reforms. But the group said the two countries face obstacles that could stop the progress. Im Anne Ball. VOAs Mariama Diallo reported this story from Washington. Christopher Jones-Cruise adapted her report for Learning English. George Grow was the editor. We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section, or visit our Facebook page. _______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story prevail v. to be or become effective checks and balances n. a system that prevents one part of the government from controlling too much power spectacular adj. causing wonder or excitement fragility adj. something easily broken or destroyed norms n. average; normal value shallow adj. having little depth tap into v. to use something in a way that leads to good results obstacle n. barrier What Others Say The curious case of the sacked EQC board When I think back to my earliest travels, like when my sister and I went on our first European adventure, it seems like my travel pace was inexhaustibly fast. We would flit from one city to the next, walking each day until we literally couldnt take another step, doing everything on the cheap, often only spending one night in each destination as went along. I still travel this way sometimes, but, as I recently discovered in Australia, even when time is short, there will come a time when I need a complete change of pace. Chris and I had been driving our Britz campervan nicknamed Hippo all the way from Adelaide. We stopped in the major cities for a few days at a time, but, inbetween those main hubs, we were doing one-night stays at multiple destinations along the coast. We were driving up to six hours a day and, by the time we passed Sydney, we had started to feel extremely tired. Our route between Sydney and Brisbane had already been plotted out: one night in Coffs Harbour and then another two along the Gold Coast. Byron Bay had only been pencilled in as a lunch stop. When we arrived in the little beach town, however, catching glimpses of the cute shops, independent eateries and the beach, I knew that we needed to change our itinerary. Within an hour there, we extended our stay to two nights and what followed were 48 hours of relaxation and rest something we hadnt really allowed ourselves to do up until this point in the trip. Before we left for Australia, fellow travellers had all said how much they loved Byron Bay and, after spending two wonderful days there, I can now see why. Byron Bay has gone on to be one of my favourite Australian destinations and, in this post, Ill be sharing why this special spot stopped me in my tracks. The chance to relax and unwind Im fully aware that Byron Bay may be more well known for its nightlife than its relaxation opportunities; nonetheless, I feel like this town can suit whichever form of unwinding you prefer. If youre after cocktails, live music and all-night parties, Byron Bay can deliver, but, equally, if youre looking for relaxation activities like yoga and beach time, it caters for this as well. For us, the focus of our time in Byron Bay was steered by the location of our campsite. We chose to stay at First Sun Holiday Park, which was easily one of the most expensive campsites we opted for during our entire road trip, but the main perk of staying here was immediately apparent. Just a few steps away from our campervan, a path led us straight from the campsite and onto the beach. And, in my opinion, some beach time is an excellent way to start each day. Even away from the sand and the water, Byron Bay encourages a slower pace of life. Judging by the stories we kept hearing from the locals, the town seems to be filled with people who had just been passing through, like us, but never managed to leave. Having lived in London for going on five years, I can definitely recognise the appeal of calling a chilled-out beachside town like Byron Bay home. Everyone seemed to be out and about every day, enjoying the sunshine, taking a stroll or riding their colourful bicycles with no one appearing to be in any rush whatsoever. If taking it easy all day doesnt appeal to you, theres still plenty to do and see in Byron Bay. You can visit the local craft beer brewery, peruse the wares at the shops and art galleries or walk up to the towns lighthouse. Once you tick off all of that, you can also take a road trip to nearby Nimbin. This quirky little town is known for its hippie vibe, as well as its pro-cannabis stance; youll see many visual clues for the latter scattered throughout the town. Its a colourful place filled with street art and roadside cafes, and Id recommend a visit here if youd like to see a town that is so unlike any other Australian destination you would normally stumble upon on a road trip. Beach time Even if you do try to pack your Byron Bay time with sightseeing opportunities, do not, under any circumstances (ok, barring thunderstorms and rain maybe) neglect to put aside some time for the beach. Byron Bay is home to long expanses of uninterrupted beaches and, without really meaning to, I felt like we were here for most of our time in the town. We were either working on our non-existent tans, hoping that wed add a few shades of colour to our ghostly complexions, swimming in the water or strolling at length along the sand. For those into watersports, there are surfboard rental companies in town, as well as surf schools offering lessons to beginners. I never thought I could be the sort of person who could spend hours and hours on the beach but, after our days of driving and always trying to get to our next campsite before dark, I felt like I couldnt get enough of this down time, where the only thing I needed to do was to pick a spot on the beach and soak up the warmth without worrying about anything else for that day. The food scene Oh my. One thing I did not expect about Byron Bay was just how good its food scene could be. For most of our Australian road trip, Chris and I had been really restrained in our food spending, opting to cook up something in our campervan instead of going to a restaurant. In Byron Bay, we couldnt resist we splurged. Even though its a small town, youll be able to find a large variety of cuisine types in the form of takeaways or sit-down eateries. Thanks to the bohemian/hippie feel of Byron Bay, when it comes to breakfast, there are plenty of organic hipster cafes to choose from. We had two amazing breakfasts in Byron Bay. There was the healthiest version of eggs benedict Ive ever had complete with cashew nut hollandaise sauce from beachside Warung Bagus. This colourful cafe specialises in healthy meals (dont forget to check out their smoothies) with Indonesian flavours. The second breakfast came from Bay Leaf, which is a short drive/walk away from the beachfront. This place can get really busy, so you may have to wait a while before youre seated, but the wait is completely worth it. The coffee is brewed perfectly and I couldnt stop raving about my meal choice, the Dukkah eggs. Poached eggs, marinated tomatoes and the generous amount of Dukkah it was a surprisingly refreshing start to my morning. For lunch or dinner, theres a big temptation to stay near the beach. On one occasion, we stumbled upon Japonaise Kitchen; attracted by the counter-style seating arrangement and the number of people in this tiny restaurant, we were happy that our hunt for sushi brought us here. The sushi is delicious, the beer is cheap plus there are heartier options, like ramen, on the menu too. On one evening, we decided to go further afield by walking all the way up Byron Bay beach, which eventually brought us to Treehouse on Belongil. This restaurant is home to the best pizzas I ate while in Australia. Thanks to the warm weather, most of the diners were sitting outside in spaces that all seem to be quirkier than the next. My favourite was the old-school lounge area, which featured red velvet sofas, fairy lights and a retro TV set. Treehouse on Belongil also has a great drinks list, with wines showcasing all of the countrys best wine regions. If youre also travelling in Australia by campervan or are on a strict budget, I couldnt emphasise this enough: eat out when in Byron Bay. The above only represents the tiniest fraction of the towns foodie offering but everything we tried was top notch and I would love to go back to Byron Bay to sample more. A place to celebrate the sunset and sunrise Enjoying a drink in our camping chairs outside our campervan, we heard the sound of drums and, glancing at each other, confirmed that it wasnt a figment of our imagination. We quickly stowed everything away and followed the drumming sound, which was soon accompanied by trumpets, guitar chords and cheering. All along the paved promenade just off the beach, people were either standing or sitting with a drink in their hand; on an extended platform, others had put their drinks aside and started dancing. Musicians stood among the revellers, with some drumming and the others yielding an array of musical instruments. Even now Im not sure whether this was an organised event but there was an impromptu feel to this gathering to honour the particularly spectacular sunset Byron Bay was experiencing. The sky was lit up with pastel pinks, blues and purples, with glints of bright orange illuminating the edges of the clouds. It was a surreal moment, with those colours and the sheer joy of the crowds gathered to watch it all, but I fell hard for the idea that, somewhere in the world, there will always be a place where a sunset is worthy of so many people stopping and watching for a while. When Chris came up with the idea to witness Byron Bays sunrise as well, I was far less enthused. I am and probably never will be a morning person, instead needing to be coaxed into human form with copious amounts of coffee. But, after showing me photos on Instagram and saying things like you only live once and Ill let you go back to sleep afterwards (the more important utterance for me), I agreed. The alarm sounded, and off we drove up to Byron Bay Lighthouse. This is undoubtedly the most popular place to take in the sunrise, so be prepared to have a parking struggle during the warmer months. Finally finding a spot, we marched up the final leg of the hill and chose our vantage point. Of course, the whole experience was breathtaking, with the sky slowly lighting up and the bright red of the sun first making its appearance as a dot on the horizon. I doubt Ill ever be a morning person, but, in the future, I hope I can be persuaded to wake up for other sunrises; it was one of my most memorable moments out of our entire Australian stay. *** Writing this post was a lot more difficult than I thought, primarily due to the fact that every photo made me want to teleport straight back to Byron Bay. When it comes to travel, I know that I almost always tend to overplan but Im so, so happy that we made the decision to change our road trip itinerary to fit in Byron Bay. We didnt realise it straight away, but we desperately needed those few days in Byron Bay. In 48 hours, our crazy road trip pace slowed down, we had the chance to breathe and we got to spoil ourselves with some outrageously delicious food. Byron Bay stopped me in my tracks, and if I ever find myself in that part of the world again, Ill make sure that itll do so all over again. Have you ever arrived in a destination and changed your itinerary to spend more time there? Id love to hear about your experiences in the comments below. * Pin it for later: * Best Western Hotels & Resorts has signed a brand new hotel that will be ideal for shoppers, business travelers and guests wanting to immerse themselves in authentic Thai culture. Located within walking distance of Chatuchak Market - the largest of Thailand's many markets with a staggering 8,000 stalls - and adjacent to Kampang Phet MRT subway station, Best Western Chatuchak will become a magnet for visitors seeking an attractive alternative destination in Bangkok. Scheduled to open in early 2020, this new-build midscale hotel will be designed in an environmentally-friendly style, with 168 contemporary rooms all featuring free Wi-Fi and modern in-room amenities. As well as being next to the MRT, the hotel will be located close to Mo Chit BTS skytrain station and Bangkok's elevated highway network, making Best Western Chatuchak accessible from all areas of the city. Don Mueang International Airport, Bangkok's low-cost terminal, and Central Ladprao shopping mall are also just a short distance away, making the hotel perfect for affordable weekend shopping breaks. The new hotel is being developed by JJ Siam Pattana Co., Ltd, the newly-formed Thai real estate company. "Chatuchak Market has long been one of Thailand's most popular visitor attractions and a thriving retail hub for locals and tourists alike," said Olivier Berrivin, Best Western's Managing Director of International Operations - Asia. "Until now however, the thousands of visitors who flock to Chatuchak every weekend had no reputed local place to stay. "We are delighted to be able to change all that! In partnership with JJ Siam Pattana, we are creating an exceptional hotel that will suit the needs of both domestic and international travelers. Perfectly located, modern, stylish and environmentally-friendly, Best Western Chatuchak will provide an ideal base for business travelers, shopaholics or those seeking to discover a new side of Bangkok. "We are excited to work with JJ Siam Pattana to bring this hotel to life, and we look forward to welcoming the first guests to Best Western Chatuchak in March 2020," Olivier added. The new hotel forms part of a broader development strategy for Best Western in Bangkok. The company is currently developing its first Vib hotels in the Thai capital, as well as two upscale properties: Best Western Premier Montien Riverside Hotel and Best Western Premier Montien Bangkok. These, and Best Western Chatuchak, will join the company's existing portfolio of four hotels in the city. About BWH Hotel Group BWH Hotel Group is a leading, global hospitality network comprised of three hotel companies, including WorldHotels Collection, Best Western Hotels & Resorts and SureStay Hotel Group. The global network boasts approximately 4,500 hotels in over 100 countries and territories worldwide*. With 18 brands across every chain scale segment, from economy to luxury, BWH Hotel Group suits the needs of developers and guests in every market. WorldHotels WorldHotels Collection is a privately held hotel soft brand within the BWH Hotel Group global network. Founded by independent hoteliers dedicated to the art of hospitality, and celebrating its 50th year anniversary in 2021, WorldHotels offers one of the finest portfolios of independent hotels and resorts around the globe, expertly curated to inspire unique, life enriching experiences that connect people and places. WorldHotels is comprised of four unique collections, each with its own personality and style to appeal to the needs of today's traveler. The collections include: WorldHotels Luxury, WorldHotels Elite, WorldHotels Distinctive and WorldHotels Crafted. For more information visit WorldHotels.com. *Numbers are approximate, may fluctuate, and include hotels currently in the development pipeline. Australia and New Zealand warned yesterday that extremists may be planning an attack on the commemoration of a World War I campaign that is being held in Turkey this month. Australian Veterans Affairs Minister Dan Tehan urged the nearly 500 Australians and New Zealanders registered to travel to Gallipoli, Turkey, to mark ANZAC Day on April 25 to exercise a high degree of caution amid the warning, but offered no specifics about the alleged threat. ANZAC Day is an annual holiday commemorating the April 25, 1915, landings in Gallipoli the first major military action fought by the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps during World War I. Australian Federal Police deputy commissioner Mike Phelan declined to release details of what prompted the warning, saying only that the government had received information that extremists may attack the services being held on the Gallipoli peninsula. Phelan said there was no specific plot linked to the alert. It is just that terrorists may indeed try to carry out a terrorist attack during the celebrations, Phelan told reporters in the nations capital, Canberra. That is all we have got at this stage. Tehan said Australia and New Zealand were working closely with Turkish authorities on security arrangements and the commemoration was scheduled to continue as planned. This years Macau Myanmar Overseas Chinese Water Festival will take place in Casas-Museu da Taipa, according to a report by Macao Daily News. Last year, the Secretary for Cultural and Social Affairs, Alexis Tam, suggested the association to relocate the event for this years edition, with the associations leadership accepting it. Earlier this week, during a meeting with the association, Tam expressed that it is a good change and that the festival will attract many tourists. This years water festival will feature the festivals photographs, food quarters, among other events. Compatriot Permit equals passport The Public Security Police Force (PSP) announced that, starting from April 10, Taiwan residents can enter Macau with their Compatriot Permit (a travel document issued by the Ministry of Public Security of China, which does not acknowledge the Taiwan Passport). The document holders will be granted a maximum 30-day stay in the territory. Currently, there are approximately one million visitors from Taiwan visiting the territory every year, meaning that the group represents the third largest source of tourists in Macau. Money supply continues to grow According to statistics released by the Monetary Authority of Macau, the broad money supply continued to grow in February. At the same time, resident deposits and loans rose from a month ago. Resident deposits increased 0.9 percent from the previous month to MOP536.4 billion while non-resident deposits grew 2.5 percent to MOP255.4 billion. Total deposits within the banking sector, including from public investment, increased 2.2 percent month-on-month to MOP962.2 billion. Meanwhile, domestic loans to the private sector increased by 0.6 percent compared with January, while external loans rose 2.2 percent. At the end of the month, the loan-to-deposit ratio for the resident sector dropped 0.9 percentage points from the previous month to 59.1 percent. IC announces animation subsidy deadline The Cultural Affairs Bureau (IC) has announced the deadline for applications for the 2016 Subsidy Programme for the Production of Original Animation Short Films as April 12 at 5 p.m. The bureau invites all interested parties to apply. The subsidy is part of the Subsidy Programme Series for Macaus Cultural and Creative Industries, and aims to encourage the development of Macaus animation industry. Moreover, the IC noted in a statement its hopes that the subsidy will nurture local talents in animation creation and promote participation in exhibitions, public screenings and online promotion of short animations. More information on the subsidy and the relevant application forms can be accessed on the ICs website. The annual report from the activities of the Commission Against Corruption (CCAC) for 2016 released this week shows a rise in complaints of 15 percent year-on-year. As the Times reported yesterday, the number of criminal cases concluded in 2016 went down by 29 percent year-on-year, at a total of 182 resolved cases. This shows that out of a total of 910 complaints, only one out of five complaints presented to the anti-graft agency were resolved. As in the previous years, the commission, led by Andre Cheong, was driven almost exclusively by citizen complaints, which represent 92.2 percent of all the cases handled in 2016, at a total of 839 cases. Meanwhile, investigations initiated by the CCAC were accountable for only 3.2 percent at 29 cases. Although small, this figure represents year-on-year growth of about 146 percent, as the number of cases initiated by the CCAC comprised only 1.3 percent of the total in 2015. The report mentions that in 2016, most of the criminal cases investigated concerned crimes committed by public officials, most notably the case involving former public prosecutor general Ho Chio Meng the first involving a high-ranking official in the judiciary sector. Following the investigation, it was found that the accused, in collusion with private companies, would have been awarded for a long period of time and to certain undertakings, the works and the provision of services of the to obtain illicit benefits, the CCAC stated. Despite several difficulties encountered in the investigation, namely the limited time, the long timeframe of the unlawful practices and the number of cases to analyze, the CCAC concluded the case. The report also refers to cases such as those involving workers from the Civic and Municipal Affairs Bureau (IACM), the Health Bureau (SSM), the Social Welfare Bureau (IAS) and the Housing Bureau (IH). It also referred to further cases involving other public departments for severe impact [on] society and that, according to CCAC, gave rise to similar complaints. This includes cases involving the Transport Bureau (DSAT) and car park management companies. The CCAC added that most of the cases investigated in 2016 involved fraud, document forgery and abuse of power, with the majority being related to obtaining fraudulent subsidies by the government, such as allowances related to the Fund for Environmental Protection and Energy Conservation, Education Development Fund and the Continuous Education Program. These incidents resulted in reports urging the authorities to strengthen supervision and to strengthen the verification processes for subsidy applications. RM Slight growth in cases involving private sector While the number of cases involving the private sector registered a slight increase in 2016, the CCAC believes that this increase is due to a greater awareness of the right to complain about corruption crimes by private entities. As an example, the report cited some complaints related to building management companies, owners and building administration boards of directors. This highlighted the existence of complex conflicts, resulting in the acknowledgement that the legal regime on land management needs to be improved urgently. Ombudsman role now increasingly complex In addition to the fight against corruption, the Commission Against Corruption (CCAC) also acts as an ombudsman office. The commission said in its annual report that it had analyzed a total of 658 cases of alleged administrative infractions to date, as well as 649 information requests. In recent years the cases investigated by the CCAC have been increasingly complex, difficult to uncover and occurring over a very long period of time, states the report, which calls for an adjustment in human resources so the staff can focus their efforts and use diversified investigative measures in order to enable ombudsman actions to be carried out in an optimal way. In this chapter, the two major enquiries performed in 2016were related to the Iec Long Firecracker Factory land swap case in Taipa and the research report on the award of public car park management services by Transport Bureau (DSAT). In both cases, the CCAC found that the government departments involved had acted unlawfully and failed to protect public interests, and included suggestions for the settlement of such cases. Regarding other activities, the CCAC also highlighted the proactive participation of the commission in the revision of the Election Law of the Legislative Assembly, where they made several suggestions based on previous experience in fighting electoral corruption and other illegal acts related to the elections. International donors pledged USD6 billion in aid for war-ravaged Syria as the U.N. Security Council held emergency talks over a suspected chemical attack that killed dozens in a rebel-held province. Donors from more than 70 countries meeting at a conference on Syria in Brussels made a collective pledge of $6 billion for this year alone, EU Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Christos Stylianides said. Stylianides described the pledge which appeared to approach the conference hosts target as an impressive figure. Syrias needs are massive. Our conference is sending a powerful message, he said. We are not letting down the people of Syria. However, the good will at the meeting was shadowed by the chemical attack Tuesday in Idlib that killed 75 people. Responding to the grim news, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appealed for Syrias warring factions and government backers such as Russia and Iran to bring an end to a six-year conflict that has taken the lives of almost 400,000 people. Nobody is winning this war, everybody is losing, Guterres said. It is having a detrimental and destabilizing effect on the entire region and it is providing a focus that is feeding the new threat of global terrorism. Nearly half the Syrian population has been displaced by the violence, with millions seeking sanctuary in neighboring Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, or heading further west to Europe. U.N. agencies estimate war damage across Syria so far at $350 billion, including physical destruction and the loss of economic activity. Four out of five people are living in poverty. Behind these figures lies a gradual draining of hope and a turn toward despair that we must reverse, Guterres said. While it was unclear who was responsible for the chemical attack, many fingers at the Brussels conference pointed toward Syrian President Bashar Assad. The world should not be shocked because its letting such a regime do what it is doing. What should shock us is the increase of children dying and that the whole world is watching, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri said. Everyone is coming to Brussels to make a statement, and the regime made its statement in Syria. Hariri said Lebanon has been overwhelmed by the arrival of some 1.5 million Syrian refugees and cannot sustain this issue anymore. The international community has to do something. German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel noted that with the European Union divided over the refugee emergency, the bloc has failed to share responsibility for even a quarter of the 160,000 refugees that member countries promised to relocate from Italy and Greece. By contrast, Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey as shining examples, he said. Theyve taken in an unbelievable number of refugees and they are relatively poor countries, Gabriel said. Sometimes Im ashamed looking at the European debate going on. The aim of the conference, hosted by the EU with the United Nations, Britain, Germany, Kuwait, Norway and Qatar, was to drum up funds for Syria and the region and to support efforts to secure a lasting political solution to the war. The long and onerous task of rebuilding Syria was also on the table, but no action will be taken until a political solution to the conflict is found. Amid concerns about donor fatigue, the EU hoped the event would generate financial support at the same levels of recent years. Last years conference in London raised more than $12 billion in pledges $6 billion for 2016 and a further $6.1 billion for 2017-20. According to U.N. relief coordinator Stephen OBrien for the immediate needs of 2017, we need about $8 billion, but he said that aid cannot reach those in need without a cease-fire. You have to have access, you have to have security, he said. Once we have the funds we can deliver the programs that save lives and help to seek to protect civilians. EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said the bloc aims to remain the top humanitarian donor and is to provide 560 million euros in 2018 for Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. It is also providing up to six billion euros over the next few years to Turkey for Syrian refugees there. We can start preparing the post-conflict. I know it sounds surreal, especially today. But if you want peace, you have to start building, she said. In a statement to the conference, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said the gathering was critical for the Syrian people, for the greater Middle East, and for the entire international community. Pence said Washington stands ready to do our part to provide humanitarian resources to those impacted by the conflict in Syria. Lorne Cook, Brussels, AP China canceled a visit by Australian lawmakers to meet law enforcement officials after Australia joined 10 other countries in signing a letter questioning Beijings treatment of human rights lawyers. Craig Kelly, chairman of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement, said yesterday he had not been given details of why he could not lead his three committee colleagues on the trip. The journey to Beijing, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Hong Kong was to have started on Wednesday. The Chinese said they cant accommodate us at this time, Kelly told the AP. The reasons for that are not clear. Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported the weeklong trip was cancelled because Beijing was offended by Australia signing a letter to Chinese Minister for Public Security Guo Shengkun that questions Chinas treatment of human rights lawyers. Damien Kingsbury, a Deakin University expert on international politics, described the cancellation as a fairly blunt message and agreed that the human rights letter was the most likely trigger. The controversy comes during tense diplomatic times in the Sino-Australian relationship. Premier Li Keqiang visited Canberra last month and asked the government to ratify an extradition treaty so that Chinese fugitives from Chinas anti-corruption campaign could no longer use Australia as a safe haven. The treaty was shelved a week later because it was doomed to be blocked in the Senate over human rights concerns. Australian law enforcement authorities fear the diplomatic setback could damage cooperation with their Chinese counterparts on stopping illicit Chinese drugs such as methamphetamine from reaching Australia. Justice Minister Michael Keenan on Wednesday praised Australias cooperation with Chinas National Narcotics Control Bureau, which he said had stopped 7.5 metric tons (8.3 U.S. tons) of drugs from reaching Australian streets. Kelly said his trip could not have been affected by the treaty dispute because he was told of the cancellation around the time Keqiang landed in Australia. I really dont like to speculate on it, Kelly said. We were meeting with Chinese politicians and law enforcement officials to see what they were doing to crack down on methamphetamine shipments to Australia, he added. The Chinese Embassy in Canberra did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday. Around the time Keqiang arrived in Canberra, Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail reported that Australia, Canada, Japan, Switzerland and seven European Union countries had signed a diplomatic letter to Guo. The letter, dated Feb. 27, expressed growing concerns over recent claims of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment in cases concerning detained human rights lawyers and other human rights defenders, the newspaper said. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying accused the countries of violating the spirit of the rule of law with the letter. We strongly oppose any country disrupting Chinas judicial sovereignty and independence with the excuse of human rights, Hua told reporters. Human rights issues have caused friction in the bilateral relationship recently. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop gave a speech in Singapore last month in which she said China can only reach its full economic potential if it embraces democracy. Her department also made representations to Beijing over Sydney academic Feng Chongyi, who was not allowed to leave China for several days after a three-week trip researching human rights lawyers. Australian National University international relations expert Michael Clarke said the canceled trip would seem to be not coincidental to recent issues between Australia and China. Rod McGuirk, Canberra, AP For years, cutting carbon emissions to stave off the worst impacts of climate change was routinely near the top of the agenda at talks between the leaders of the United States and China. Not anymore. As President Donald Trump hosts President Xi Jinping at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida this week, the worlds two largest economies and carbon polluters are taking dramatically divergent paths on climate policy. The Chinese government recently canceled construction of more than 100 new coal-fired power plants and plans to invest at least USD360 billion in green energy projects by 2020. It is a building boom expected to create an estimated 13 million jobs. China already leads the world in total installed solar and wind capacity. Trump, who has said global warming is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese to hurt the U.S. economy, signed an executive order last week that aims to roll back Obama-era policies regulating carbon emissions. He has pledged to reverse decades of decline in coal mining, which now accounts for fewer than 75,000 U.S. jobs. Clean energy is the next, largest global market, said Barbara Finamore, Asia director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a U.S.-based environmental group. The U.S. risks losing out. With Trump threatening to pull out of the Paris climate accord negotiated by the Obama administration, Xi is poised to become the worlds foremost leader on climate change. Signed by nearly 200 nations, the 2014 agreement calls for holding global temperature increases to no more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) in hopes of preventing devastating droughts, storms and sea level rise. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January, Xi called the Paris accord a hard-won achievement and urged signatories to stick to it. The White House declined to comment Wednesday on whether climate change will even be mentioned at Mar-a-Lago. U.S. officials are instead expected to focus on enlisting Chinas cooperation on curbing the North Korean nuclear threat. While China eclipsed the United States as the worlds top carbon polluter more than a decade ago, it is also now outpacing the U.S. in transitioning to a cleaner energy portfolio. China is currently generating about 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources, compared to about 13 percent in the U.S. China still burns more coal than any other nation, but its consumption of the dirtiest fossil fuel fell in 2016 for a third consecutive year. An analysis by Greenpeace of data from the Chinese National Energy Administration showed an expected corresponding decrease in Chinas carbon dioxide emissions of 1 percent in 2017, in what would be the fourth straight year of zero growth or a decline. That puts China on track to meet its 2030 target under the Paris accord as much as one decade early. Given the absolute lack of leadership from the Trump administration, China is seeing a stronger role both in its self-interest as a country threatened by the impacts of climate change, and also as a diplomatic opportunity in the vacuum left by Trumps retrograde position, said Lauri Myllyvirta, a senior coal campaigner for Greenpeace in Beijing. In Chinas capital, Trumps public statements doubting that human activity is the primary cause of global warming are greeted with a mixture of bemusement and worry. As China has burned gargantuan amounts of coal to accelerate the development of its economy, residents of its mega cities have had to deal with choking smog at levels not seen in the United States since passage of the Clean Air Act in 1970. In the past, some Chinese officials and ordinary people even believed that climate change was something created by developed countries to curb Chinas economic growth, said Teng Fei, a vice professor at Tsinghua Universitys Institute of Energy, Environment and Economy in Beijing. He said Trumps claim that climate change is a hoax might erode public support for taking action reducing the countrys reliance on coal. Wang Ke, a professor at the School of Environment and Natural Resources at Renmin University in Beijing, agreed: Sometimes we joke that all our efforts are no use against one word from President Trump. Even as Trump suggests global warming is mostly made up, climate scientists predict the issue will someday arrive literally at his doorstep. Mar-a-Lago, the site of his summit with Xi, is located in one of the most vulnerable regions in the United States to sea level rise. Some streets in Palm Beach County already flood on sunny days during high tides, and recent studies predict Trumps prized resort will be underwater by the end of the century. Michael Biesecker & Louise Watt, Washington, AP Trump presses on North Korea; dismisses Taiwan Warning the U.S. could act alone, President Donald Trump has vowed to deliver an ultimatum to Chinese leader Xi Jinping to rein in North Korea when the two men come face-to-face for the first time this week. But Trumps early retreat on Taiwan already has chipped away at his standing with Beijing, and another bluff could leave him looking the way he hates most: Weak. While Trump enters first U.S.-Chinese summit short on foreign policy experience, he may have advantages to help him succeed where past presidents have failed. Trumps candor and unpredictability, combined with his veiled threats of possible sanctions on Chinese banks and even U.S. military action against North Korea, could provide him new leverage with Beijing. But if hes bluffing, and Xi calls him on it, that might prove damaging in future negotiations with China or in building a united front against North Koreas nuclear and missile programs. The two-day meeting at Trumps Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, starts Thursday after yet another North Korean provocation: the latest test-launch of a ballistic missile. Although U.S. officials said the launch was a failure and didnt threaten North America, it underscored North Korean leader Kim Jong Uns intent to advance his weaponry in defiance of international law. The North may also be preparing for another nuclear test. Trump warned this week, If China is not going to solve North Korea, we will. He didnt elaborate, but his administration is looking at sanctions against Chinese banks and companies that provide North Korea access to the international financial system, a move strongly backed by Congress. And on a recent trip to Asia, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reminded the region that the U.S. also retains the option of pre-emptive military force. Trump discussed the issue Wednesday with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The White House said Trump made clear that the United States will continue to strengthen its ability to deter and defend itself and its allies with the full range of its military capabilities. Susan Thornton, the top U.S. diplomat for East Asia, yesterday called North Korea an urgent and global threat. And its no longer one that just affects U.S. allies like South Korea and Japan, and the tens of thousands of American forces stationed in each. North Korea could develop a nuclear-tipped missile that can strike America within a few years. As that danger nears, Trumps diplomacy with Xi will only grow in importance. Trump is making it seem like we are prepared to go to war or use military action and I dont think that is going to be viable, said Kurt Campbell, top U.S. diplomat for the region during former President Barack Obamas first term. The devastation could be dramatic. South Koreas capital, Seoul, lies within retaliatory range of North Korean artillery and missiles. In his two-and-a-half-months in office, Trump has backed off on one sensitive issue with China: Taiwan. As president-elect, Trump said he didnt feel bound by existing U.S. policy toward the self-governing island that China considers part of its territory, demanding concessions from Beijing in trade and other areas. Within weeks, Trump reaffirmed Washingtons commitment to the 4-decade-old one China policy, smoothing the way for a February phone call with Xi. Asked if Taiwan was up for negotiation, Thornton said: We have basically moved on from there. AP The Dalai Lama consecrated a Buddhist monastery yesterday in Indias remote northeast, amid Chinese warnings that the exiled Tibetan spiritual leaders visit to a disputed border region would damage bilateral relations with India. Nearly 10,000 people, some of them from neighboring Bhutan, greeted the Dalai Lama at the Thubchok Gatsel Ling Monastery in Tawang district in the state of Arunachal Pradesh, Indian official Jemba Tshering said. The visit to Arunachal Pradesh, which China also claims as its territory, has raised tensions between the nuclear-armed Asian neighbors. Chinas Foreign Ministry has said the visit severely harms Chinas interests and the China-India relationship, while India has cautioned Beijing to stay out of its internal affairs. China considers the 81-year-old monk, who fled to India in 1959 amid an uprising against Chinese rule in Tibet, a separatist seeking Tibets independence. The Dalai Lama says he merely advocates substantial autonomy and protection of the regions native Buddhist culture. The 81-year-old monk reiterated Wednesday that he as well as his people were not seeking Tibets independence, but are struggling to secure meaningful autonomy for the region from China. Firstly, we are not seeking independence. We are very much willing to remain within China, The Telegraph newspaper quoted him as saying. At the same time the Chinese government must give us meaningful self-rule, autonomy and must take full care of the environment. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying on Wednesday rejected arguments that the trip was solely religious in nature, and said China would lodge a formal protest with New Delhi. The top elected official of the state of Arunachal Pradesh, Pema Khandu, accompanied the Dalai Lama as he addressed young monks on Wednesday. Khandu said China had no business telling India what to do and what not to do, the Press Trust of India news agency reported. The visit is the Dalai Lamas seventh to Arunachal Pradesh and his first since 2009. China has criticized previous visits, but they did not spark any major rift between the two countries. AP Donald Trump, domes and minarets are out. Rock n roll and guitars lots of guitars are in as the Hard Rock chain re-does Atlantic Citys former Trump Taj Mahal casino. The company owned by Floridas Seminole Indian tribe on Wednesday unveiled its USD375 million plan for the shuttered casino resort, which it bought last month from billionaire investor Carl Icahn, and plans to reopen by summer 2018. It will draw on the worlds largest collection of music memorabilia to help brand the new resort, with a decided New Jersey slant. Few things are more New Jersey than the mob and Bruce Springsteen, and Hard Rock rolled out someone who embodies both to help reintroduce the resort. Steven Van Zandt of Bruce Springsteens E Street band and Sopranos TV fame, said hell periodically broadcast his radio show, Little Stevens Underground Garage from there, and will help organize beach concerts. Its a timeless place where you can come, and for the younger generations that feel like they missed the rock n roll era when it first came along, we make sure that they get the experience, said Van Zandt, who plays guitar with Springsteen and portrayed mobster Silvio Dante on the HBO mob series. The spirit of rock n roll is still alive; you didnt miss it. Now-President Donald Trump built the Taj Mahal in 1990, but lost control of it and two other Atlantic City casinos in a series of bankruptcies that happened before Icahn scooped it up last year from yet another bankruptcy. Icahn shut the casino in October after a crippling strike that sought to restore workers health insurance and pension benefits that were eliminated in bankruptcy court. Its literally over-the-top decor of Indian-inspired domes and minarets soon will be a thing of the past; the purple carpet that Trump loved was ripped out long ago. There will not be one and underscore the word one piece of design, architecture, minaret or anything left over from the Taj Mahal, Hard Rock CEO Jim Allen said. We are removing it all. It its place will be items from the worlds largest music memorabilia collection. Hotel guests will even be lent Fender electric guitars to play in their rooms. Republican Gov. Chris Christie, whose administration seized Atlantic Citys assets and major decision-making power last November, said Hard Rocks investment in Atlantic City shows that the states tough love is working in the cash-strapped city. Hard Rocks willingness to come in and invest in Atlantic City shows you that they appreciate the hard things that have been done to restructure the city and make it a place where investing makes sense, Christie said. Since the takeover, Christies administration has negotiated a tax settlement with the Borgata casino that will save the city nearly $100 million. It also is seeking drastic cuts to the police and fire departments. Others feel that recent encouraging developments such as the Hard Rock purchase, the planned reopening of the former Atlantic Club casino as a water park, and the rebirth of the former Showboat casino as a non-gambling hotel, are due more to market forces in a less competitive environment than to anything Christie has done. Allen resisted getting drawn into a political debate, but he did say that if Atlantic City had declared bankruptcy something that loomed as a real threat before the state takeover Hard Rock would not have invested there. Assemblyman Chris Brown, a fellow Republican, was less reticent. Tell me something the governor has done to make Atlantic City better, he said. Off the top of my head, I cant think of anything. Wayne Parry, Atlantic City, AP The days of President Xi Jinpings austerity drive in China are rapidly fading. Homes in Shenzhen now cost more, per square meter, than they do in Japan. Kweichow Moutai Co., maker of the most-prized brand of baijiu sorghum liquor, looks set to overtake Diageo Plc soon as the worlds biggest distiller by market value, despite having less than one-third the revenue of the maker of Smirnoff and Johnnie Walker: Sales of luxury cars hit a record last September, and high-end brands in Europe have noticed a surge in domestic spending as Chinese start doing more of their conspicuous consumption in local stores and online, rather than opening their wallets only when traveling to Japan, South Korea or Hong Kong. Sales in China rose 14 percent in the six months through December, LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE Chief Financial Officer Jean-Jacques Guiony said on an investor call in January. Theres been a much higher appetite for our industry generally since the second half, Hermes International SCA Chief Executive Officer Alex Dumas told reporters in February. Thats hard to square with an austerity drive. A crackdown on lavish spending by Chinese officials might drive consumption toward less visible products, such as overseas real estate and private wine cellars but its hard to conceal your ownership of Louis Vuitton luggage or Birkin bags. The new gilded age has been making its presence felt in Macau in the nick of time for the territorys casinos. Just 18 months ago, the industry was in turmoil. After spending billions building resorts to service a wave of high-rolling mainland gamblers, moguls were told that Macau wanted to develop a mass-market clientele of families and conference delegates instead, and would be approving fewer table games as a result. Steve Wynn, whose Bellagio hotel helped drive Las Vegas to new heights of luxury, was driven to impolitic rage by the situation, describing the activity of the territorys regulators as outrageous and ridiculous. The table cap is the single most counterintuitive and irrational decision that was ever made, he told investors on an October 2015 call. The reason that these extraordinary non-gaming attractions exist is because the damn casino is the cash register. That hasnt altogether changed. Macau had 30 percent more hotel rooms at the end of December than it did two years earlier, but only 10 percent more gaming tables. Still, the money has come flooding back. Revenue from casino games in March rose 18.1 percent from a year earlier, the fastest pace since February 2014, when Lunar New Year wagers drove it to an all-time record of 38 billion patacas ($4.75 billion). The top end of town is outperforming, too. After tracking close to mass-market revenues for the past two years, high-rolling VIP gamblers are pulling ahead, according to Bloomberg Intelligence estimates. Shares of Wynn Macau Ltd. are trading HKD1.55 above analysts target price, the biggest such premium since January 2014. All six of Macaus casino companies are now among the top 10 most richly valued large casino businesses on a price-earnings basis, and Macau businesses take the top four places if you adjust for indebtedness by comparing Ebitda to enterprise value. That leaves Wynn Macau little scope for slip-ups when it reports first-quarter earnings. Those who heeded Gadflys prediction of a revival last July have done pretty well over the past nine months, but every good gambler knows to quit while theyre ahead. The territorys future looks more sustainable now than it has in three years. For astute players, thats probably a good time to trim positions. David Fickling, Bloomberg The director of the Judiciary Police (PJ), Chau Wai Kuong, revealed that 150 residents fell victim to telephone fraud between March 14 and April 5. Chau was speaking to journalists yesterday before a seminar where PJ officials shared the latest anti-cybercrime methods with representatives from different schools. Seventeen of the aforementioned victims lost money to the cons, totaling nearly MOP11 million. Chau explained that the 150 reported cases of telephone fraud represent an increase compared to the past month. However, in the long term, the number of telephone fraud cases is decreasing. The recent surge of reports indicates that the police should ramp up communications regarding the crimes, Chau observed. When asked about ways for the police authority to help reduce these incidents, Chau expressed hopes that residents will pay more attention to advertisements issued by the police. I hope that the residents can understand the nature of these crimes a little bit more through our publicity work, in order to prevent themselves from falling for such scams, said Chau. Chau noted that many local residents had reported cases of telephone fraud to the police even if they had not fallen victim to them, as they simply wished to inform the authorities about the spread of such crimes. He also stated that non-residents should be more aware of these scams, claiming that the police authority will step up their publicity work. According to Chau, many of the victims opened bank accounts in Zhuhai to transfer money to the criminals. In order to raise local students awareness of phone fraud, PJ handed out educational booklets to more than 70,000 students in Macau. A total of 68 primary schools, 49 middle schools, eight universities and ten night schools have joined the polices anti-cybercrime communication network. First, the schools and the parents should care more about their students and children, said Chau, explaining that the parents and the schools should play the primary and secondary roles in educating children on how to avoid falling victim to cybercrime. PJ has been inviting students in middle schools to play the role of anti-crime pioneers. Previously, PJ enrolled 105 students as pioneers, and will recruit an additional 150 students in 2017. PJ hopes these students will spread this information among their peers. Investing in a property involves not only the purchase price of the property itself, but also the associated costs of the purchase. In this 3 part series, we break the cost of purchasing a property into 3 categories, and have outlined the details in each one. However, be warned that these costs do fluctuate, and whilst the figures themselves may change, you will at least know what you are looking for. The categories are: Purchase Costs The cost of the property itself Legal & Administration Costs Taxes, notary, registration fees etc Property Costs Renovation, improvements and furnishing Property prices in Macau are in HKD, so for the sake of consistency please assume that all prices here are in HKD. For the purpose of this article, we are going to look at a property that is purchased for HKD 6,000,000. Purchase Costs The purchase cost is the price of the property itself, and the amount of cash you will need to buy the property. Initial Deposit $100,000 The initial deposit is a token amount that is paid upon the signing of the Provisional Sales & Purchase Agreement. This amount can vary, but is usually between $100,000 to $500,000. Second Deposit $500,000 The second deposit is paid upon the signing of the Promissory Sales & Purchase Agreement, the agreement put together by the lawyers and signed in the lawyers office, normally within 30 days of signing the original document. This deposit can vary, but is usually the amount required to bring the total deposit paid to 10% of the purchase price. In this example, since the purchase price is $6,000,000, then 10% is $600,000. As we have already paid an initial deposit of $100,000 then there is a remaining balance to pay of $500,000. Balance $5,400,000 The balance is paid upon the signing of the Sales & Purchase Agreement during the final part of the process, and is conducted in the presence of a Public Notary usually within 60-90 days of signing the original agreement. The balance will usually consist of a Bank Loan plus the additional cash required. In this case we are going to assume that the bank loan represents 70% of the purchase price ($4,200,000), and the total cash required represents the remaining 30% ($1,800,000). As we have already paid $600,000 and the bank will pay $4,200,000 then the remaining balance payable at the signing is $1,200,000. This balance is usually paid with a cashier order. So the breakdown of our Purchase Costs looks like this; Cash Required $1,800,000 Bank Loan $4,200,000 Next Week: Part 2 Legal & Administration Costs Tenancy Management Services: Service available immediately including bill payment, rent payment, maintenance support, property related translation services and more. Bill Paying Service For Tenants & Owners: Utility bill set up and payment service available; e-mail Admin@JMLProperty.com for details Juliet Risdon is a Director of JML Property and a property investor. JML was established in 1994 and offers Investment Property & Homes. It specializes in managing properties for owners and investors, and providing attractive and comfortable homes for tenants. Juliet Risdon is a Director of JML Property and a property investor. JML was established in 1994 and offers Investment Property & Homes. It specializes in managing properties for owners and investors, and providing attractive and comfortable homes for tenants. For further information please call me on +853 2835 2699, E-Mail Juliet@JMLProperty.com or visit our website Www.JMLProperty.com, or Facebook Www.Facebook.Com/JMLRealEstate . All feedback on this column is welcome, and if you have a property related question please e mail it us at: info@JMLProperty.com and we will respond to you in this column or by return E mail. Disclaimer Legal, investment and other advice offered in these articles are the opinion of the individual author. Readers should consult with qualified and experienced lawyers familiar with Macau Law on legal matters, and independent investment advisors on financial matters. Chung Young-chul takes a drag on his cigarette and watches as wild ducks fly across rice fields and land on a reservoir in this remote farming village. Hes among nearly 2,000 people ex-gangsters, ex-convicts, former prostitutes, orphans who were once held here, forced to work without pay for years and are now largely forgotten. Some died after they were beaten and got sick. Others died of malnutrition or in accidents, said Chung, 74. It was worse than a prison camp We were starving slaves. They were victims of social engineering orchestrated in the 1960s by dictator Park Chung-hee, late father of just-ousted President Park Geun-hye. His 18-year rule was marked by both a dramatic economic rise and enormous human rights abuses. He cleared city streets of so-called vagrants and put them to work on land and road projects as free labor to help rebuild the country after the 1950-53 Korean War. The victims say theyve never received a proper investigation or compensation. In Chungs village in Seosan city, about 130 kilometers south of Seoul, about 1,770 people were made to work without pay in land reclamation projects. They lived in army-style barracks. Some were ordered to marry female inmates, mostly ex-prostitutes sent from government-run shelters, in two rounds of mass weddings. Ex-workers say local officials told them repeatedly that they would be given some of the land they reclaimed, but that never happened. Only about a dozen of the workers, mostly in their 70s, still live in this village; the rest left or have died. Those remaining pay rent to authorities to farm rice on the land they reclaimed. After repeated legal defeats, some have accepted a recent government proposal to buy the land at market prices in installments over 20 years, though they know theyll probably die before they complete the payments. Theyve always been poor and falling rice prices have made them poorer. Deeply in debt, Chung said he and others are pushing to file joint petitions with as many government offices as possible to appeal for help again. We have no money to hire lawyers, he said. We are the only ones abandoned by South Koreas legal system. Past media reports during Park Chung-hees rule, which ended with his assassination in 1979, largely portrayed the people here as making a fresh start with government help. The true nature of their story has been shielded from the public; official records are limited and many workers wont talk about what they believe were their dark past. Governments in South Korea have been very indifferent to them, said Kim Aram at the Seoul-based Institute for Korean Historical Studies, one of the few experts on the issue. Now, its important to let the people know about the truth of this story because its completely unknown to them. Chung was left alone at an early age. A North Korean bomb killed his mother in the Korean War, and he was separated from the rest of his family when he fell off the roof of a train carrying refugees. He worked as a shoeshine boy with other orphans in the southeastern port city of Busan, then became a member of the Apache gang, collecting protection money from bars and teahouses. We felt strange when we spent a day without fighting other gangsters, he said. Chungs life changed after Park seized power in a 1961 coup and attempted to purify society by rounding up people deemed vagrants and putting them to work. In 1962, Chung said marines carrying rifles smashed down his shack door and took him to a rehabilitation center where hundreds were detained. They were told they were now members of the Republic of Korea Juvenile Pioneering Group. Chung was sent to a land reclamation site in southern South Korea. About six months later, he volunteered to move to Seosan because he hoped hed have a better chance to escape. But that was virtually impossible. His supervisors, senior inmates working under a civilian leader, stood guard every 30-50 meters (100-160 feet) and watched inmates even when they went to the toilet. Each day they used shovels, pickaxes, carts and their bare hands to cultivate reclaimed land. They built waterways and a reservoir. Most meals were only a bowl of rice and a thin soup made of dried Chinese cabbage leaves. They caught and ate frogs, snakes and rats. At night, they were often ordered to recite Parks lengthy revolution promises. Those who stammered were beaten. Chung likened his experience to the horrible accounts by escapees from North Koreas notorious political prison camps. Some dont believe what theyve testified but we trust their testimonies by 100 percent because thats what we had endured, too, he said. Some of the South Korean inmates died, through illness, beatings or accidents, but there is no official data on fatalities. Local officials reached by The Associated Press said they have no information on the operations, and many of them acknowledged they have never heard about the ROK Juvenile Pioneering Group. But a handful of experts like Kim Aram and local villager Kim Tae-young, who works with remaining inmates on land disputes, said the suffering was tense. By the time the pioneering group was dissolved which came as Parks government shifted to export-driven industrialization control had loosened and many inmates had already left. Ex-inmates said they had cultivated about 357 hectares, but that it was too salty and uneven. Seosan officials tentatively distributed the land to the roughly 300 remaining inmates and other poor people in the village between 1968 and 1971, according to farmers and villagers in Seosan. Some simply sold their parcels for as little as a sack of potatoes, Chung says but others cultivated the land. By the time ex-inmates began harvesting rice, the government imposed rent for using state-owned property, Chung and other villagers said. They staged a legal fight, but a local district court ruled against them in 2000 in a verdict upheld by higher-level courts. In 2011, the state-run Anti-Corruption & Civil Rights Commission recommended that the government lower the prices of the land to reflect ex-inmates previous labor but a ministry in charge of government-owned land used the market rates. There are 278 families who farm the reclaimed land in Seosan, including about a dozen ex-inmates, including Chung and Sung Jae-yong. Its really shameful but Im paying the installments with the help of my children, said Sung, who lowered his head and wept. Ive been enduring it until now because I wanted my hard work to pay off. But things have become terrible. Chung called Park Chung-hee a gangster who ruined his life. He captured us and put us here. So he should have taken responsibility for our lives to the end, he said, tears rolling down his cheeks. Hyung-Jin Kim, Seosan, AP Taiwan said yesterday that it is confident its relations with the U.S. wont be harmed when President Donald Trump holds his first summit with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping this week, citing assurances from the U.S. side. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Eleanor Wang said at a news conference that the government was in close contact with Washington and was assured the islands interests would not be harmed. We are deeply concerned with the Trump-Xi meeting, prior to which we have been in full communication with the U.S. side to ensure that the interests of the Republic of China are not affected, Wang was quoted as saying by the official Central News Agency. The Republic of China is the formal name of Taiwans government, which was transplanted to the island amid the Chinese civil war in 1949. While Trump earlier said he didnt feel bound by existing U.S. policy toward the self-governing island that China considers part of its territory, he later reaffirmed Washingtons commitment to the 4-decade-old One China policy, smoothing the way for a February phone call with Xi. That back-down and Trumps unpredictability have raised concerns among some China watchers that he might use Taiwan as a bargaining chip in seeking concessions from China. In her comments, Wang referenced recent remarks by State Department and White House officials that they would hold to their assurances to Taiwan under a U.S. law that established strong unofficial relations following the severing of diplomatic ties in 1979. Along with providing political backing, the U.S. is also Taiwans main source of arms and military assistance to defend against Chinas threats to use force to bring the island under its control. The meeting between Trump and Xi comes amid a sharp downturn in relations between Taiwan and China that followed the election last year of independence-leaning Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen. In June, Beijing severed government-to-government contacts between the sides in response to Tsais refusal to endorse the principle that the island and mainland China were part of a single nation and would eventually reunify. The troubled state of ties was reinforced by the detention of Taiwanese pro-democracy activist Lee Ming-che during a personal trip to China last month. AP BEIRUT (AP) World leaders rallied around the United States after it launched a missile strike early today (Friday) on a Syrian air base in response to this weeks chemical attack, while Russia condemned the move as aggression and suspended crucial coordination with Washington in Syrias congested skies. The overnight missile attack, which marked the first time the U.S. has directly targeted Syrian President Bashar Assads forces, was condemned by his allies in Russia and Iran but welcomed by the Syrian opposition and its supporters, who expressed hope it signaled a turning point in the devastating six-year-old civil war. The bombing represents Trumps most dramatic military order since taking office and thrusts the U.S. administration deeper into the complex Syrian conflict. The Obama administration threatened to attack Assads forces after previous chemical attacks, but never followed through. Trump called on all civilized nations to join the U.S. in seeking an end to the carnage in Syria. About 60 U.S. Tomahawk missiles hit the Shayrat air base, southeast of Homs, a small installation with two runways, where aircraft often take off to bomb targets in northern and central Syria. The U.S. missiles hit at 3:45 a.m. (0045 GMT) Friday morning and targeted the bases airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, U.S. officials said. They were fired from two warships in the Mediterranean Sea, in retaliation for Tuesdays deadly chemical attack, which officials said used chlorine mixed with a nerve agent, possibly sarin. The Syrian military said at least seven people were killed and nine wounded in the missile strike. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition monitor, also put the death toll at seven, including a general and three soldiers. The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin believes the U.S. strike is an aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin believes the U.S. launched the strikes under a far-fetched pretext. Washingtons move deals a significant blow to the Russia-U.S. relations, which are already in a deplorable shape, Peskov said. He added that the attack creates a serious obstacle for creating an international coalition against terrorism. Russias Foreign Ministry said it is suspending a memorandum with Washington signed after Russia began an air campaign in support of Assad in September 2015 under which the two countries exchange information about sorties over Syria. The Kremlin later moved to diminish the attack, saying that just 23 of 59 cruise missiles reached the air base, destroying six Syrian jets but leaving the runway intact. Moscow also confirmed it had been informed of the attack in advance. ZEINA KARAM, Associated Press SARAH EL DEEB, Associated Press A Las Vegas man who has been free on bail for three months while fighting explosives and firearms charges was arrested late yesterday [Macau time] on counts of terrorism and possession of weapons of mass destruction, authorities said. Nicolai Howard Morks defense attorney, Nicholas Woolridge, expressed shock at the two new charges against his 40-year-old client in Nevada state court, and the USD8 million bail amount set by a judge who issued a warrant for his arrest. Mork had posted $220,000 bail following his arrest in December. Mork was taken into custody at one of his homes in a southern Las Vegas neighborhood after police evacuated residents from several nearby homes, police Sgt. Jeff Clark said. He called the evacuations a precautionary move. Mork legally possessed materials commonly used for targets that can explode when shot during firearms target practice, his lawyer said, Woolridge said similar devices are commercially available and not prohibited under federal law. Deputy Las Vegas Police Chief Chris Jones declined to specify the materials that police seized Dec. 29 with a search warrant at Morks home. Mork was arrested at the time on charges that he illegally possessed explosives, a silencer and a gun with a serial number removed. The manner in which this individual was using these materials was not for legal purposes, Jones said. These substances could be used in the manufacture of powerful explosive devices. The more you use, the larger the device, the more destructive its going to be. Chief Deputy Clark County District Attorney Jacob Villani said the chemicals were strong enough to penetrate a military tank, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported (bit.ly/2nFaXqJ). Woolridge disputed the newspapers characterization of Mork as a theoretical mathematics graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Woolridge said his client had a masters in business administration from the school. An FBI spokeswoman in Las Vegas said the bureau wasnt involved in the case. Officials at several gun stores and a public gun range in Las Vegas declined to comment about the commercial availability of explosive targets. Jones, who heads the police departments Homeland Security unit, said the investigation arose after several explosions in two neighborhoods where Mork lived, and complaints by neighbors about damage to their property. Devices had either exploded or were found unexploded, Jones said. They clearly were not being used for legal purposes. Clark County District Court Judge Douglas Herndon ruled that because of the seriousness of the charges, Mork will have to show the source of money used for his bail. AP In 2009, two flu vaccines manufactured by the same company did not equally protect against the circulating H1N1 flu virus. A study published Wednesday in the journal Science Translational Medicine examines the question: Why did one vaccine offer 35% less protection against the flu? The less-effective vaccine failed to activate dendritic cells, which are key to the immune system's defense, the researchers discovered, and it failed to stimulate an early immune response. Vaccine effectiveness for any given season varies, in part, based on how well the vaccine matches the circulating virus strains. Sometimes, a vaccine corresponds to the predominant virus and yet its effectiveness is not what scientists would hope. Trying to determine which element of the vaccine failed is a challenge. For the new study, Shruti Athale, first author and a researcher at the Baylor Institute for Immunology Research, investigated the interferon responses to the two vaccines. "Vaccines work by eliciting an immune response. In order to do this, they have to be recognized as foreign material," said Dr. Matthew Collin, a professor of hematology at the Institute of Cellular Medicine at Newcastle University. "One of the key responses to pathogens or foreign material is the production of chemicals called interferons." The cells that produced this essential interferon are dendritic cells, noted Collin, who was not involved in the research. What are dendritic cells? Although dendritic cells are found in most tissues of your body, they are most abundant in the parts that traffic with the external environment, such as your skin, your lungs and your gastrointestinal lining. These immune cells work as sentinels, initiating the first response to pathogens entering the body. Among their duties, these cells release interferon, a signaling chemical that assists in mounting an immune system defense against foreign substances. For the study, Athale and her co-researchers measured the production of interferon induced by the stronger trivalent vaccine and compared this to the effects of the weaker monovalent vaccine, neither of which contained adjuvants: substances added to a vaccine formula to increase its power. Monovalent vaccines protect against a single flu virus strain, whereas trivalent formulations protect again three strains. The study accounted for these differences when comparing the vaccines. The team discovered that both vaccines activated one set of dendritic cells, yet only the trivalent vaccine aroused an interferon response in other dendritic cells. Athale and her colleagues also found that the monovalent vaccine inhibited the secretion of interferon. The researchers concluded that their results may help explain vaccine underperformance that is not due to a mismatch of viral strains. Additionally, they suggest that for any nonadjuvant vaccine, dendritic cell activation might be crucial for generating a more robust immune response. The future of vaccines The strength of the study, said Collin, "is that it figures out a potential explanation for why two very similar flu vaccines had a dramatic difference in efficacy." That said, more research would be needed to understand the exact mechanism of why one vaccine triggered more interferon than the other. Understanding a greater level of detail about a vaccine's effects "open the possibility of specifically targeting the interferon-producing dendritic cells to improve vaccine efficacy," he said. "In particular, the production of a high level of interferon may be sufficient to avoid the use of non-specific inflammatory vaccine enhancers or 'adjuvants.' " Adjuvants, which are usually irritant chemicals, have been shown to promote vaccine efficacy, but they can produce unwanted side effects, Collin said. "Dendritic cells are the basis of many new advances in medicine, including some cancer vaccines," he said. Various intensities of flu pandemics have occurred throughout history. The 1918 pandemic, commonly referred to as "Spanish flu," claimed the lives of an estimated 50 million to 100 million people worldwide. Two decades later, Jonas Salk and Thomas Francis developed the first flu vaccine. Today, the production of flu vaccines is a global endeavor. The process begins each year with the World Health Organization consulting laboratories around the world to make a recommendation on what virus strains should be included in the vaccine for the upcoming season. In the United States, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a group of medical and public health experts, then decides which virus strains will go into vaccines. Finally, manufacturers produce formulations with the selected strains. Although progress has been made over time refining the flu vaccine, the holy grail remains a "universal" vaccine. "The ideal influenza vaccine would be one that is safe, elicits ... responses identical to those triggered by a natural infection, provides long-lasting and cross-strain protection, and can be manufactured rapidly in large amounts under well-controlled conditions," wrote Linda C. Lambert, a researcher at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the institute, in a 2010 New England Journal of Medicine article headlined "Influenza Vaccines for the Future." Optimism about the ability to develop a universal vaccine is based on studies using two-step vaccination strategies in animal models, Lambert and Fauci wrote. Though a truly universal vaccine providing lifelong protection against any strain of flu may not be achievable, some variant of this concept should be considered. "For example, the strategy of periodic vaccinations, given every few years, with a product that ... would induce full or partial protection against drifting strains, as well as against newly emerging pandemic strains, is certainly a goal that is worth pursuing," Lambert and Fauci concluded. TWIN FALLS Electric customers can expect to see some small savings on their bills right away. The Idaho Public Utilities Commission has approved a request from Idaho Power Co. to decrease a bill rider that funds demand-side management programs beginning April 1. Its a small change: a decrease from 4 percent to 3.75 percent will save the typical residential customer using 1,000 kilowatt-hours about 22 cents a month. But soon, customers will also benefit from a $13 million refund from excess money the company collected previously. As we have previously held, it is illogical to allow the company to recover DSM revenues from customers that far exceed DSM expenses, the commission said of its decision. The refund will begin June 1 and be accounted for in the Power Cost Adjustment filing Idaho Power plans to send April 15. The commission also allowed the company to stop its annual $4 million transfer from energy efficiency rider funds to the PCA. That transfer occurred to reconcile an over-collection of funds from customers. BURLEY A Burley man was arrested after a deputy kicked in an apartment door and found a pregnant woman severely beaten. Juan Antonio Rebollozo, 37, was charged Monday with felony battery domestic violence for inflicting traumatic injury. Cassia County deputies were called to a Burley apartment Saturday in response to a woman who called 911. The woman said her daughter was inside the residence and she could hear her daughter screaming. The officer said there was loud music coming from the apartment, and after the second time he knocked and announced that he was a deputy from the sheriffs office, he heard the woman screaming. The officer kicked in the door and drew his gun and found Rebollozo and a woman who needed serious medical attention. The deputy lowered his weapon and the woman immediately ran past him and out of the apartment. The woman had severe swelling on her face and bruising on her arms. The woman told deputies that Rebollozo smashed her head against the bathtub and that she was kicked. She said he also stepped on the back of her neck. I think he would have killed me this time, she told the deputy. The woman said she was five weeks pregnant and she was taken the hospital. The deputy said the some of the living room blinds were torn down, and an obvious altercation had occurred at the residence. The woman told deputies Rebollozo was drinking beer before he started beating her. She said he beaten her before because he thinks there is someone else inside her body. Rebollozo is being held at the county jail on a $250,000 bond. He has pleaded not guilty to the charge. A preliminary hearing is set for April 14 in Cassia County magistrate court. TWIN FALLS National Book Award winner Timothy Egan will give a free lecture next week in Twin Falls. Egan, author of The Immortal Irishman: Thomas Francis Meagher and the Invention of Irish America, will speak at 1 p.m. April 13 at the College of Southern Idaho Fine Arts Theater. The event is open to the community, CSI announced Thursday. CSI and the Idaho Humanities Council are sponsoring the event. Its the third year of the Magic Valley Distinguished Humanities Lecture. Egan is an acclaimed writer and veteran chronicler of the West. He is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, a popular New York Times columnist and award-winning author. His latest book, The Immortal Irishman, is a New York Times bestseller about Thomas Francis Meagher, a 19th-century Irish rebel who was banished to Tasmania by the English, but escaped to America and fought in the American Civil War as union general of an Irish Brigade. Egan is the author of several other bestselling books, including The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America and The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl. Egan will also give an evening presentation April 13. General tickets are $45. Benefactor tickets are $75, offering an invitation to a pre-event private reception with Egan at 5 p.m., and preferred seating at the dinner and lecture. The evening will begin with a no-host reception at 6 p.m. at Canyon Crest Dining & Events Center. Dinner will be served at 7 p.m., with Egans talk to follow. Egans books will be available from Barnes & Noble onsite and hell be available for signing after the presentation. Tickets are available by calling the Idaho Humanities Council at 208-345-5346 or by visiting idahohumanities.org. TWIN FALLS A Twin Falls school nurse is in the running for the Americas Greatest School Nurse online competition. Jona Ward is the finalist representing Idaho, according to an announcement from contest organizers. The contest organized by Childrens Advil, Childrens Robitussin and Childrens Dimetapp runs through April 16. Nominations were collected from across the country and now finalists are in the running to win the grand prize: an ultimate summer vacation, according to the announcement. Ward covers half the Twin Falls School District's campuses, including Canyon Ridge High School, Magic Valley High School, Robert Stuart Middle School, Bickel Elementary School, Harrison Elementary School, Lincoln Elementary School, Rock Creek Elementary School, I.B. Perrine Elementary School, developmental preschool and two Newcomer Center classrooms. Votes can be cast online at AmericasGreatestSchoolNurse.com. FAIRFIELD The Idaho Department of Fish and Game announced Friday its investigating a fish winterkill at Mormon Reservoir in Camas County. Likely factors behind the winterkill include a combination of thick ice, deep snow and low storage conditions, a statement said. The 1,500-acre reservoir is south of Fairfield. Winterkills occur when sunlight is blocked for extended periods limiting photosynthesis which provides oxygen in the water, regional fishery manager Doug Megargle said in the statement. Decomposing bacteria use up the available oxygen to break down vegetation leaving none for other aquatic organism, like fish. Fish and Game hasnt determined whether its a partial or complete winterkill. This is very disappointing, Megargle said in the statement. Camas County had worked hard to restore public access to the fishery last year rebuilding bridges that had been condemned for safety reasons. A pair of unsafe bridges had cut off the only motorized public route to Mormon Reservoir for three years right as Camas County was making progress against a weed problem that killed off the reservoirs fish population each winter. We had stocked last fall hoping we could begin to rebuild the fishery, even though stocking conditions werent ideal, Megargle said in the statement. We took the chance stocking in better than average water levels for that time of the year, but we did not anticipating such a heavy snowfall winter. Another Magic Valley reservoir was also recently affected by a winterkill. In late March, a winterkill at Wilson Lake Reservoir near Hazelton caused tens of thousands of fish to die: an estimated 16,000 carp, 10,000 largescale suckers, 4,000 bullhead and hundreds of yellow perch and Utah chubs. The Idaho Department of Fish and Game will start over trying to rebuild the Camas County fishery this spring. It expects a significant improvement in water storage this year. About 3,000 12-inch trout are scheduled to be stocked in late April. Plus, 100,000 fingerling-sized trout will arrive in September, if conditions allow. Its not the first challenge within the last year for Mormon Reservoir. In August 2016, test results showed a very high level of a liver-damaging toxin in the water due to a cyanobacteria bloom. It prompted a health advisory from the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality and South Central Public Health District. TWIN FALLS Idahos two senators and the congressman who represents the Magic Valley support President Donald Trumps missile attack on a Syrian airbase, while Idahos other congressman thinks Congress needs to debate and authorize any further action. I support the Presidents action against the Assad regime, said U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson, who represents the eastern part of the state including the Magic Valley. The United States of America took a strong stand tonight against the unfathomable act Bashar al-Assad conducted this week by murdering innocent men, women and children with a chemical attack. But U.S. Rep. Raul Labrador, who represents the western part of the state from the Canadian border to Owyhee County, says that while he was appalled and heartbroken by Syrian President Bashar al-Assads use of chemical weapons in an attack that killed dozens of civilians, the action that led to the U.S. strike against the airfield from which that attack was launched, the response must be in the best interests of the American people and approved by Congress through the deliberative process outlined in our Constitution. The House was not scheduled to vote on anything Friday, and both the House and Senate are scheduled to recess until the last week of April. Labrador urged the leadership to call them back to debate whether further military action may be necessary. President Trump needs to have an active dialogue with Congress about not only yesterdays attack but also any further engagement in Syria, Labrador said. I agree with many of the points President Trump has made about Syria, but his policy will be more effective when it has strong, informed, and bipartisan support in Congress. The American people would benefit from a more active debate about the possible risks and benefits of U.S. intervention in Syria. Talking to CNNs Kate Bolduan Friday morning, U.S. Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, who is on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, acknowledged the legal questions surrounding when the president has authority to order an attack. The Founding Fathers, he said, envisioned Congress would make this decision, but presidents from both parties have played a role in eroding this tradition. You can get a battalion of lawyers on each side of this issue, he said. Risch said a kinetic, surgical strike like what Trump ordered is authorized under the War Powers Act. If Trump had asked Congress Thursday for authorization, Risch said, wed still be talking about it at Christmastime. Risch said the strike would lead countries such as North Korea, Iran, Russia and China to reevaluate their views of the United States and what the country might do. I think this has demonstrated for us as Americans and for the world that this president is committed and that hes not afraid to act, Risch said. I think the big story here is this is going to have impact worldwide. U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo also said he supports Trumps decisive actions to prevent further use of chemical weapons against innocent women, men, and children and from allowing those from falling into the hands of terrorists. I send my gratitude to the men and women of Americas armed forces fighting our enemies abroad, he continued. Let us also keep in our minds the memory of the victims of al-Assads attacks as the United States and our allies fight the spread of terrorism. The responses of Idahos all-Republican D.C. delegation to Trumps strike contrast with 2013, when former President Barack Obama asked Congress for authority for military action against the Assad regime after a chemical weapons attack. Labrador opposed intervention then, while Simpson was strongly leaning against it. Crapo called it a very dangerous step for the president to be taking in a television interview. Risch was the most vocal against military action, voting in committee against the proposed strike and holding a news conference in Boise to explain his thinking. Trump himself was against strikes in 2013, tweeting several times that it was a bad idea. Risch said on CNN Friday that in 2013 he listened to Obamas plans and people didnt have confidence in them or how they would play out moving forward. Risch said there are discussions going on between the Trump administration and Congress right now as to what happen next. The senator said he would keep an open mind. A lot of this has to do with the confidence you have in the commander-in-chief, he said. TWIN FALLS Idaho officials are still waiting to find out if 11 counties, including six in the Magic Valley, will qualify for federal help to rebuild from flood damage caused by this winters rain and snowmelt. In late March the Federal Emergency Management Agency rejected a request for a major disaster declaration to provide help to some southwestern Idaho counties that were hit hard by snowstorms from late December to mid-January, saying the damage was not of such severity and magnitude as to be beyond the capabilities of the state, affected local governments, and voluntary agencies. The state plans to appeal the decision. On March 30 the state submitted a second, separate federal disaster declaration request, this time for help for Bingham, Cassia, Elmore, Franklin, Gooding, Jefferson, Jerome, Lincoln, Minidoka, Twin Falls and Washington counties to recover from flooding, said Jon Hanian, spokesman for Gov. C.L. Butch Otter. Hanian said April 4 that the state will likely hear FEMAs decision in a week or two. In the meantime, he said, the Idaho Office of Emergency Management is gathering information for a third request for federal help to deal with flooding, landslides and avalanches in northern and north-central Idaho. It remains to be seen what the final impact will be there was more flooding in some areas this week, including in the Wood River Valley. In Blaine County, West Magic Road, the only paved road in and out of West Village, reopened April 6 after being closed for almost a week, as did roads northeast of Carey that had been closed due to flooding. However Spud Patch Road, near Picabo, remained closed because of flooding and a soft base. The water has mostly receded in Gooding County for now, county Emergency Coordinator Missy Shurtz said Thursday. The flooding went down a whole lot just today, she said. Today they were going to check and look and open up all the roads. But there is a possibility water could start to rise again on Sunday, depending on the rain and how warm it gets, she said. Water has also receded in Lincoln County, said Disaster Services Coordinator Payson Reese, but there, too, they are preparing for the possibility of more flooding if it warms up and rains over the weekend and the river rises again. The county just got a new delivery of sand bags in preparation. Right now its all kind of come down, he said. But were keeping it in the back of our mind. No roads were closed this week in the county, Reese said. Obviously this is an evolving event, and we are dealing with each new issue and disaster declaration and/or request as they arise, Hanian said in an email. We are also awaiting determinations on other counties, and as this spring flooding continues to impact our communities we are adding communities and requesting additional major disaster declarations from FEMA as those thresholds are met. If there is a federal declaration, the feds would cover three-quarters of the cost of eligible projects, with the state covering 15 percent and the local applicants (generally cities and highway districts) covering 10 percent. Regardless of whether federal funding becomes available, state lawmakers this year approved $50 million to fund emergency repairs to roads and bridges damaged this winter. Local governments would be expected to pay 10 percent of the cost of approved projects with the state paying the rest. The bill passed both chambers unanimously after being held up in the House for a couple of weeks because of a larger transportation funding fight, and Otter signed it Thursday. The bill contains an emergency clause, meaning the money will be available as soon as Otter signs. The adjutant general of the Idaho National Guard would appoint a review panel to prioritize project applications and set the criteria. Normal maintenance or road decay due to neglect would not be eligible for the state money, and federally owned and private roads wont be eligible either. While there will be some money for roads regardless of whether the federal declaration granted, a federal declaration would mean some public money would be available to help property owners who suffered damage such as flooded basements and crop losses, Jerome County Emergency Manager Clint Blackwood said. We had considerably more than what Id received applications from, he said. I have over a dozen applications of damage that had been submitted to my office. Meanwhile, city and county officials in the Magic Valley are waiting to see when the state money will become available and what the application and approval process will look like. Weve got a list of projects that really need some attention, and were doing our best to fund that with our budget and reserves the best we can, Jerome City Administrator Mike Williams said. But its nowhere near the funding for improvements wed like to see. The list of roads that need overlays adds up to $3.35 million and includes South Lincoln, 100 West, 16th Avenue East and South Tiger Drive. Patching potholes and filling cracks will no longer suffice (on these roads), Williams said in an email. Some of these roads were in tough shape before, but we were hoping to get at least (three to five) more years out of them. The rough winter coupled with the flooding, however, moved them all the way to the state of need for immediate attention. Editor's note: This story has been updated to say Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter signed the emergency road repairs bill. This appeared in the Lewiston Tribune: Idaho Gov. C.L. Butch Otter already knows why he should veto the Legislatures bill lifting the 6 percent sales tax from food. It costs almost $80 million the state does not haveand would undermine everything else in the budget, including the final rounds of Otters five-year public education reform package. But at his press conference Monday, Otter wavered. If the governor does lose his nerve and allows the legislative handiwork to take effect, you can assume it was this argument he found irresistible: I think its immoral, said House Assistant Majority Leader Brent Crane, R-Nampa. I think its wrong to tax people on their food. Thats not exactly what the legislative proposal would do. Not all food purchases would be exemptjust those that currently qualify for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or food stamps. In other words, Crane would say its immoral to force people to pay sales tax on the milk they purchase for their children. But its perfectly legitimate to compel those parents to add 6 percent sales tax to the price of cough drops they buy when their kids have a cold. Crane says its immoral to force you to pay sales tax on a deli sandwich you purchased at the grocery store. Buy the deli sandwich at a sub shop, however, and paying sales tax is just fine. Taxing the soda you purchased in a can is immoral. Buy the same soft drink from a fountain of a fast-food restaurant? Pay the tax. Forcing you to pay sales tax on beer, wine and liquor is absolutely the correct thing to do. But not if you buy mixers for alcoholic drinks in a grocery store. Candy? Cookies? Junk food? Its food. So as far as Crane is concerned, those are morally sanctioned purchases. Vitamins? Detergent? Toilet paper? Pay the sales tax. Its the moral thing to do. Of course, unless you repeal the sales tax entirely, someone has to decide whats exempt and whats not. In this case, the politicians and the bureaucrats put a stamp of approval on individual choices. Whatever its flaws, the current system leaves you in charge. Whether you spend your money on junk food or filet mignon, you get $100 back on your state income taxes to compensate for the sales tax you paid. Lets not forget: More than half of retail transactions are exempt from Idahos sales tax. So while youre paying 6 percent on a new battery for your car, a farmer purchasing a replacement battery for his tractor gets a break. Why is it ethical for the state to tax you on a new set of tires while others can cite a business exemption and avoid the tax on equipment they buy? As a matter of fact, why is it that virtually any industry capable of hiring lobbyists and building legislative coalitions is likely to escape the sales taxwhile you are required to pay? Moral questions dont stop there. As far as anyone can tell, this whole notion of taking the sales tax off food came from Idahos politicians, not from the grass roots. Polling shows taxes among the least of Idahoans concerns. Theyd rather see the money spent on education. In fact, in 1984, the last time anyone asked Idahoans their opinion of the idea, people voted against a ballot measure that sought to lift the sales tax from food. Then as now, the state couldnt afford such a tax break without wrecking public school budgets. If youre going to talk about morality, whats the greater sin? Taxing someone on the purchases they choose to makeor notor taxing them on the value of their homes? Property taxes do not make allowances for the percentage of the home you own. You pay taxes on debt. If you get too far behind on those taxes, you could wind up on the street. If you think thats an ethically challenged way to pay for government, what about income taxes? Why is it that people who work harder, strive more and create jobs are forced to pay more taxes than those who dont? From a moral point of view, how can you justify it? You cant. You can apply a lot of standards to taxation. Is it fair? Is it applied equally? Is it balanced? Is the money spent as taxpayers intended? But its hard to see how one tax embodies morality while another is corrupt. Either way, its compulsory confiscation. Thats how the tax-exempt cookie crumbles. The United States launched a military strike Thursday on a Syrian government target in response to their chemical weapons attack that killed dozens of civilians earlier in the week. On President Donald Trump's orders, US warships launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian government airbase where the warplanes that carried out the chemical attacks were based, US officials said. The strike is the first direct military action the US has taken against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the country's six-year civil war and represents a substantial escalation of the US military campaign in the region, which could be interpreted by the Syrian government as an act of war. "Tonight, I ordered a targeted military strike on the air field in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched," Trump said during short remarks to reporters at Mar-a-Lago, where he ordered the strike just hours earlier. "It is in this vital national security of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons." He added: "There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention and ignored the urging of the UN Security Council. Years of previous attempts at changing Assad's behavior have all failed and failed very dramatically." Shift in policy Trump's decision marked a dramatic shift in his position on whether the US should take military action against the Syrian President's regime -- which Trump opposed during his campaign for president -- and came after the President was visibly and publicly moved by the images of this week's chemical weapons attack. The strike took place at 8:40 p.m. ET (3:40 a.m. local time), when there would be minimal activity at the base, and targeted aircraft, hardened aircraft shelters, petroleum and logistical storage, ammunition supply bunkers, air defense systems, and "the things that make the airfield operate," Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis told reporters. The missiles were launched from warships in the Eastern Mediterranean. "Initial indications are that this strike has severely damaged or destroyed Syrian aircraft and support infrastructure and equipment at Shayrat Airfield, reducing the Syrian Government's ability to deliver chemical weapons," the Pentagon said in a statement. Briefing reporters late Thursday night, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that the strike did not represent a "change in our policy or our posture in Syria," even though the Thursday night strike marked the first time the US had decided to take military action against the Syrian government. "There has been no change in that status," he said. "It does demonstrate that President Trump is willing to act when governments and actors cross the line ... and cross the line in the most heinous of ways." Tillerson said the administration felt the strike was "proportional because it was targeted at the facility that delivered this most recent chemical attack." The US military also showed reporters Thursday night an image of the radar track of a Syrian airplane leaving the airfield and flying to the chemical strike area Tuesday. A second image of bomb damage craters at the airbase was also shown to reporters at the Pentagon. Tillerson said the US has a "very high level of confidence" that the Syrian regime carried out at least three attacks in recent weeks -- including on Tuesday -- using Sarin and nerve gas. The strikes represented not only an escalation of the US role in Syria, but could have a ripple effect on the US' relations with the Syrian regime's powerful backer, Russia. Russians were present at the base the US struck Thursday night, a US defense official said, though the role of those Russians was not immediately known. Tillerson confirmed that the US military contacted their Russian counterparts about the attack ahead of time, in accordance with deconfliction policies between the US and Russia over military activities in Syria. Russian officials said the strike will undermine the war on terror and warned they may halt cooperation with US forces. "Russia will demand an urgent UN Security Council meeting after the US airstrike on a Syrian aviation base," said Viktor Ozerov, head of the Russian Federation Council's defense committee, according to state news agency RIA. "This is an act of aggression against a UN member," Ozerov said. "Cooperation between the Russian and US militaries may be shut down after the US strike." Congressional reaction Lawmakers generally supported Trump's decision to strike back against Assad Thursday night, but cautioned the President against unilaterally starting a war without first consulting Congress. A pair of defense hawks -- Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham -- who have frequently been critical of Trump, roundly praised his decision Thursday night. "Acting on the orders of their commander-in-chief, they have sent an important message the United States will no longer stand idly by as Assad, aided and abetted by Putin's Russia, slaughters innocent Syrians with chemical weapons and barrel bombs," McCain and Graham said in a joint statement. But Sen. Rand Paul called on Trump to consult on Congress. "While we all condemn the atrocities in Syria, the United States was not attacked," Paul said. "The President needs congressional authorization for military action as required by the Constitution, and I call on him to come to Congress for a proper debate." The US began launching airstrikes in Syria in September 2014 under President Barack Obama as part of its coalition campaign against ISIS, but has only targeted the terrorist group and not Syrian government forces. The order Trump met with his national security team before his dinner with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Mar-a-Lago Thursday, where he made the decision to pull the trigger on the biggest military action of his presidency, national security adviser H.R. McMaster said. He sat through dinner with Xi as the action was under way. The decision came two days after he was "immediately notified" of the chemical attack in Syria and asked his team to determine who was responsible. After it became clear Assad was responsible, Trump asked his team to develop options -- and settled on one Thursday after "a meeting of considerable length and far-reaching discussion," McMaster told reporters. Defense Secretary James Mattis has been updating Trump about the missile strikes in Syria following his dinner with Xi, according to a US official. Mattis, Tillerson and McMaster were with Trump at Mar-a-Lago at the time. Vice President Mike Pence remained in Washington, where he returned to the White House after dinner. Trump's order to strike the Syrian government targets came a day after he said the chemical attacks -- whose grisly effects were broadcast worldwide where videos captured in the immediate aftermath -- "crossed a lot of lines for me" and said he felt a "responsibility" to respond. "I will tell you it's already happened that my attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much," Trump said. "When you kill innocent children -- innocent babies -- babies -- little babies with a chemical gas that is so lethal, people were shocked to hear what gas it was, that crosses many, many lines. Beyond a red line, many, many lines," Trump said. 'Red line' Trump's decision to launch the strikes, the most significant military action of his young presidency, came nearly four years after the US first concluded that Syrian forces had used chemical weapons in Syria. The Obama administration concluded that Syria had violated the "red line" Obama had set a year earlier in discussing the use of chemical weapons, but ultimately decided against military action against Syria in favor of a Russian-brokered deal to extricate the country's chemical weapons stockpile. Trump at the time said the US should "stay the hell out of Syria" and urged Obama on Twitter to "not attack Syria" in the wake of the 2013 chemical attack. "There is no upside and tremendous downside. Save your 'powder' for another (and more important) day," he tweeted in September 2013. Trump repeatedly criticized Obama during his presidential campaign for not acting on his "red line" threat, but the real estate mogul also argued against deepening the US' military involvement in Syria, particularly as it related to Assad. Trump argued last May in a TV interview that he would "go after ISIS big league," but said he did not support targeting Assad's regime, arguing the US has "bigger problems than Assad." Syria's six-year civil war has claimed the lives of at least 400,000, according to a United Nations estimate released a year ago. More than 5 million Syrians have fled the country and more than 6 million more have been displaced internally, according to UN agencies. 2016 rhetoric But guided by his "America First" ideology and rejection of the US' propensity for "nation-building," Trump did not argue in favor of stepped-up US intervention during his campaign for president. Instead, he signaled the opposite: He argued that the US should remain laser-focused on defeating ISIS and vowed to try and partner with Russia, which has heartily backed Assad's regime, in order to defeat ISIS and bring the conflict to an end. Those views appeared steeped in his longstanding criticism of the Iraq War, which he called a "stupid" decision, lamenting the billions of dollars funneled toward that war effort instead of on domestic programs, like infrastructure spending. While Trump rejected the isolationist label some placed on him during the campaign, he made clear that his preference was for limiting the US footprint around the world and refocusing US foreign policy around core national security interests. Russias foreign ministry has issued a diplomatic note expressing concerns about the stalling of the Middle East peace process which has contributed to unilateral moves that undermine the potential for an internationally accepted solution to the Palestinian problem. Israeli and Palestinian authorities have failed to reach an agreement after several negotiations and peace talks over the past decades. Kremlin has limited its role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but wants the solution to the conflict to be supported by the international community and backs the establishment of two states that could live in peace and security with each other and with their neighbors. As part of efforts to promote the said solution, Russia renewed its support to the UN-approved principles for a Palestinian-Israeli settlement, which include the status of East Jerusalem as the capital of the future Palestinian state. At the same time, we must state that in this context we view West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The statement is being reported in the Israeli media as the first recognition of West Jerusalem as the Jewish states capital since the declaration made by Israeli authorities in 1950. Jerusalem is considered as an international city and that has stopped the international community from attributing it to Israel. Embassies in the country are based in Tel Aviv. The city has been a dividing issue and there have been clashes between Jews and Muslims over it. Russia stated that it will focus on ensuring free access to Jerusalems holy places for all believers. Based on the statement, Russia seems to be supporting the idea of dividing the historic city between Palestine and Israel as it underlined that it was studying the matter. It is also requesting concrete parameters to end the conflict through coordinated direct talks. The last talks between Palestine and Israel date back to 2014 and efforts to revive them have failed. The statement noted that the situation is deteriorating and that Russia is deeply concerned about it. Abu Anas al-Ghandour, a commander in Hamass military wing, has been categorized as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SGDT) by the US State Department and consequently listed among those targeted by the economic sanctions. The Gaza-based group swiftly reacted to the announcement stressing that the real terrorist is the one who furnishes the arms of the occupier (Israel) to kill the children of Palestine. The US State Department took the decision on Thursday under a 2001 executive order that targets foreigners who committed terrorist attacks or are considered to pose a significant risk in relation to terrorism. Hamas claimed that Washington is attempting to invert the real situation by suppressing the reality. Spokesman Abdullatif al-Qanou said the decision gives the green light to the Israeli occupation authorities to persist in committing more crimes against the Palestinian people. He added that the true terrorists are Israel as they continue to inflict human and material damage on the occupied territories. Al-Ghandours classification as a SGDT will lead to his assets in the US being frozen and also bar him from doing business with US citizens. The U.S. claims that he is leading a brigade in the Ezz Eddin El-Qassam brigades. Hamas is determined to show solidarity to the commander by calling for a mass rally in front of his home in the Jebalia refugee camp. Ghandour has held political positions in Hamas before becoming an active member of the military wing. He is reported to have been involved in many terrorist operations amongst which is the 2006 attack on an Israeli military outpost that left two soldiers dead and four wounded. That attack resulted in the kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who was released in 2011 in exchange of 1,027 Palestinian prisoners detained in Israeli jails. The US military has intentionally targeted the Shayrat air base of the Syrian military with 59 tomahawk missiles launched from its USS Porter and USS Ross warships stationed in the Mediterranean Sea. President Donald Trump said he ordered the attack in the vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons as he claimed that this weeks horrible chemical attack was launched from the airbase. No party has claimed responsibility for Tuesdays chemical attack as the opposition and Damascus trade accusations. The early morning Friday airstrike has generated mixed feelings. President Putin of Russia described it as an aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law and as a serious obstacle in the fight against the Islamic State group, according to his spokesperson Dmitry Peskov. He added that Washington is trying to divert attention away from the civilian deaths in Iraq with US airstrikes. Washingtons step will inflict major damage on US-Russia ties, Peskov stated. Saudi Arabia applauded the airstrike as a courageous decision and renewed its support to US actions in Syria while Turkeys Deputy Prime Minister, Numan Kurtulmus, described it as a significant and important move against the barbarity of President Assads government. Israel also hailed the airstrike as a strong and clear message against the use of chemical weapons that will resonate not only in Damascus, but in Tehran, Pyongyang and elsewhere. Tehran condemned Washingtons unilateral strikes as a move likely to help strengthen terrorists amid the complexity of the situation in Syria and the region. Ahead of the attack, US Ambassador to the UN stated that we are compelled to take our own action when the UN consistently fails in its duty to act collectively. A draft resolution drafted by the US, France and Britain to condemn the chemical attack was vetoed by Russia due, it said, to the provocation in its wording by its irresponsible authors. Morocco was ranked on top of North African countries as a tourism destination and third in the continent by the World Economic Forum, which has just issued its 2017 Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index. Although Morocco lost three ranks over 2015 global report on Travel and Tourism competitiveness, from 62 in 2015 to 65 in 2017, it still features among African top destinations. The North African country ranks 65th out of 136 countries in the 2017 report compared with its 62nd position in the 2015 report. At the level of North Africa, Morocco came ahead of Tunisia (87th) and Egypt (74th). Algeria took the very last position in the report (136th), which offers an in-depth analysis of the Travel and Tourism competitiveness of 136 economies across the world. At the level of the continent, Morocco ranks right behind South Africa and Mauritius as top African destinations. Even though the Moroccan Tourism Authority is robbing hands for a successful 2017 season, the report however points out shortages and a number of elements to improve in view of attracting larger numbers of tourists. Considering the insecurity plugging several countries, Morocco was ranked the 20th safest destination in the globe. Despite an unfavorable regional context marked by turmoil and instability as well as increasing amalgams due to terrorist attacks in Europe, Morocco managed to maintain its position in the global ranking. In the WEF ranking, Spain came first followed by France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. The WEF biannual report reveals that the global travel and tourism sector accounts for 10 percent of global GDP and provides one in 10 jobs worldwide. 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. Algerian President has suspended five cabinet members running for May 4 legislatives. The announcement of their suspension was made by the Presidency citing the constitution. The decision will go into force as of Saturday April 8; the eve of the electoral campaign. Ministers of Water Resources and Environment; Higher education and Scientific research; Relations with Parliament; Public Works; and War Veterans; all candidates for May 4 elections will be replaced by caretakers all from current government. Algerians are called to the polls for the legislatives on May 4 to renew the parliament. Over 12,500 candidates have registered for elections, on 1,088 electoral lists. 63 political parties and 163 independent candidates have joined the race, according to Algerian interior Minister. Rwanda government on Thursday announced the replacement of the CEO of its state-run airline without any reason, Reuters reports Accoring to the cabinet statement, the government had named Chance Ndagano as RwandAirs acting chief executive officer, replacing John Mirenge. Mirenge had been at the helm of RwandAir since 2010 and is credited with steering an ambitious expansion plan. It is unclear why he was replaced by the government. However, as a reminder, when Mirenge took on the responsibility as CEO of RwandAir, the airline was little more than a virtual carrier, with not one plane owned and few routes to impress the market in Eastern Africa. Under his leadership, RwandAir is banking on the delivery of a new aircraft, a Boeing 737-800, in May to bolster its long-range route plan to destinations like Mumbai in India, and also achieve increased passenger numbers. Mirenge said the new wide body aircraft is the biggest milestone for Africas fastest growing airline and opens up opportunities in terms of expanding the airlines footprint. Currently, RwandAir flies to eighteen destinations across Africa. In the face of the competitive and challenging business environment, RwandAir continues to post an annual average growth of 40 percent. Thousands of South Africans took to the streets demanding the resignation of scandal-tainted Zuma, who for now retains the support of the ruling ANC. According to local media, Members of the ruling African National Congress party assaulted several protesters participating in a Johannesburg march organized by the Democratic Alliance, South Africas biggest opposition party. Some veterans of the ANCs armed wing, which dates back to the anti-apartheid struggle, have gathered outside the partys headquarters in Johannesburg, British Broadcaster, BBC reported. About 30,000 protesters marched in Johannesburg, Pretoria and other big metropolitan areas. In a statement, the government appealed for calm and said it respects the right of South Africans to protest peacefully, a legacy of the struggle against white minority rule that ended in 1994. Zuma, 74, has faced similar protests in the past.South Africas biggest trade union has called on President Zuma to quit after his cabinet reshuffle cost the country one of its investment-grade credit ratings and deepened splits within the ruling ANC. The union, allied to Zumas ANC, said it no longer believed in his ability to lead, and that it wanted to restructure its alliance with the party. However, the ANC on Wednesday rejected calls for Zuma to quit. Analysts doubted marches would shake the president. Gambias electoral commission chair on Friday indicated that the party of new President Adama Barrow has won a majority of seats in parliament. More than 880,000 Gambians have voted for members of their one-chamber parliament in the first polls since Yahya Jammeh left power after more than 22 years. Independent Electoral Commission Chair Alieu Momarr Njai described the vote as free and fair. He said Barrows United Democratic Party won 31 seats in the 53-seat National Assembly. The former ruling Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction party now holds five seats. Thursdays vote outcomes assure that Barrow can move ahead with promised transitions toward greater freedoms and economic development of the tiny nation. He has pledged to carry out political, security and media reforms. The reforms include a truth and reconciliation commission to investigate abuses committed under Jammehs rule. Barrow will appoint five additional members to bring the total number of MPs to 58. Gambia has come under spotlight since its rocky political transition in December which triggered ECOWAS military intervention following Yahya Jammehs refusal to cede power. Ombudsman speaks about vicious practice by police By Messenger Staff The Public Defender Ucha Nanuashvili said at the presentation of the report at the Parliament session that the safety of citizens is not protected during the vicious practice of so-called interviews between police officers and citizens in a police car or at police station.These issues have been mentioned in the Parliament previous report in 2015 as well.He stressed the targets of similar practices are mainly newly released people from prison, who are described by police as a "risk group" because of their criminal records or other reasons, using drugs.The safety of citizens is not protected during the so-called interviews, Nanuashvili claims.We can bring as an example the case of someone we will only identify as D.S., who committed suicide. In a letter which was found after his death and which was likely written by him, he talks about psychological abuse by the police. Thorough and effective investigations need to be carried out in order to ascertain the truth," said the Nanuashvili.He also stressed another worrying trend: the fact that nearly half of the detainees did not have lawyers in the reporting period.It can be said that currently, Georgia has one of the best police forces in the region, mentioned Ombudsman.However, there are some drawbacks that must be addressed.The police shoul attempt to control people who potentially create threats to the public - as it happens in all developed countries - but this shouldnt lead to the overuse of force.It is still a problem which causes question marks as crimes allegedly committed by police officers in many cases are not properly investigated and those guilty adequately punished, especially with regards to police officials.The police must feel protected by the state, but this protection and appreciation must not encourage crimes by police staff with the hope that they will not be punished. The News in Brief U.S. Senators Initiate Resolution on Georgia Senator Roger Wicker (Rep.) and Senator Ben Cardin (Dem.) introduced a resolution in support of Georgias territorial integrity on March 30. The non-binding resolution, which was referred to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, urges the United States Government to declare unequivocally that the United States will not under any circumstances recognize the de jure or de facto sovereignty of the Russian Federation over any part of Georgia, its airspace, or its territorial waters, including Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali region/South Ossetia. The resolution refers to the Stimson Doctrine non-recognition of territorial changes effected by force and recalls that the doctrine was also applied in 1940 to three Baltic states and every Presidential administration of the United States honored this doctrine until independence was restored to those countries in 1991. The draft resolution urges the U.S. President to deepen cooperation with the Government of Georgia in all areas of the United States-Georgia Charter on Strategic Partnership, including Georgias advancement towards Euro-Atlantic integration and urges the President to place emphasis on enhancing Georgias security through joint military training and providing self-defensive capabilities in order to enhance Georgias independent statehood and national sovereignty. The Russian Federations policy vis-a-vis Georgia and the alarming developments in the region illustrate that the Government of the Russian Federation does not accept the independent choice of sovereign states and strives for the restoration of zones of influence in the region, including through the use of force, occupation, factual annexation, and other aggressive acts, the document reads. The draft resolution condemns the military intervention and occupation of Georgia by the Russian Federation and its continuous illegal activities along the occupation line in Abkhazia and Tskhinvali region/South Ossetia and calls upon the Russian Federation to withdraw its recognition of Georgias territories of Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali region/South Ossetia as independent countries, to refrain from acts and policies that undermine the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia, and to take steps to fulfill all the terms and conditions of the August 12, 2008, Ceasefire Agreement between Georgia and the Russian Federation. The resolution also stresses the necessity of progress on core issues within the Geneva International Discussions, including a legally binding pledge from the Government of the Russian Federation on the non-use of force, the establishment of international security arrangements in the occupied regions of Georgia, and the safe and dignified return of internally displaced persons and refugees to the places of their origin. Senator Roger Wicker, who co-sponsored the resolution, said that it is time for the United States to make it clear once again that we do not recognize Russian land grabs within its neighbors borders. Russia should adhere to the cease-fire agreement it signed in 2008, withdraw its troops from Georgia, and allow international monitors and aid workers access to occupied regions. Russias violation of the territorial integrity of Georgia is a blatant breach of one of the guiding principles of the Helsinki Final Act by Russia. This reflects a broader pattern of disregard by Putins regime for transatlantic security norms and democratic values, which the United States and our allies must stand against with resolve, said Senator Ben Cardin, who is a Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Georgia is a strong partner of the United States and continues to take important steps to further integrate with the transatlantic community, he added. A similar document was endorsed by the House of Representatives in September 2016. (Civil.ge) Rustavi 2 web domain hijacked by former owners Georgias embattled opposition TV company Rustavi 2 has lost control over its web domain and has had to switch to a different web address to stay online. In a statement posted online on its new address, Rustavi 2 blamed former owner David Dvali of having hijacked their most used link, rustavi2.com. Without warning, [he] switched off the television stations online platform, Rustavi 2 wrote in the statement which is posted on its backup address Rustavi2.ge. The switch-off happened right before the start of the talkshow P.S. at 9pm Sunday night. The primary domain rustavi2.com contained an open letter from Dvali and business partner Jarji Akimidze claiming that the domain had always belonged to them. Besides the letter, the domain, which is one of the most popular in Georgia, now points to various debates and news items about the controversy surrounding the TV station, posted on yet another address, Rustavi2.info. According to the statement by Rustavi 2s management, the person who owns the domain Rustavi2.com is a friend of Davit Dvali and that is what allowed him to take control over the .com domain, which has been the companys primary domain in recent years. According to the latter statement, Akimidze and Dvali will try to balance the propaganda and disinformation flow, which is being spread from Rustavi 2 TV. The hijackers are a different set of former owners from the one who has been in the news lately. Kibar Khalvashi sued Rustavi 2 and won in the Supreme Court, threatening to wrest control over the station from the current director Nika Gvaramia, a former justice minister and education minister and activist for the National Movement, the political party which held power in 2004-2012. However, the European Court of Human Rights suspended the implementation of the Supreme Court ruling until further notice. Dvali and Akimidze predate Khalvashi as owners of Rustavi 2, dating back to the early 2000s. They ceded control in 2004; a transfer of ownership which is not described in detail in the formers open letter. The case has been fully documented with the supporting evidence, including the witness accounts, and was later filed to the prosecutors office, the letter states. The two founders sided with Khalvashi in the lawsuit against Rustavi 2s current owners, the brothers Levan and Giorgi Karamanishvili. The brothers are regarded as aligned with former President Mikheil Saakashvili who lives in exile in Ukraine. Apart from rustavi2.com and rustavi2.ge, the current owners also appear to control a third domain, rustavi2.com.ge which dates back as far as 1998 and is also updated with todays content. Rustavi2 was founded in 1994. (DF watch) THE TRUE COST OF ALL THAT 'CHEAP' LABOR THAT DESTROYED AMERICA THE BIG SECRET DEMOCRATS DO NOT WANT YOU TO KNOW: Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute has testified before a Congressional committee that in 2004, 95% of all outstanding warrants for murder in Los Angeles were for illegal aliens; in 2000, 23% of all Los Angeles County jail inmates were illegal aliens and that in 1995, 60% of Los Angeless largest street gang, the 18th Street gang, were illegal aliens. @PatriciaMazzei Miami Rep. Carlos Curbelo better get used to that political target on his back. The sophomore congressman might be the single most vulnerable Republican in the country going into the 2018 election, according to a new analysis of partisanship in congressional districts. The Cook Political Report, which has been publishing its Partisan Voting Index since 1997, found that Curbelo represents the most Democratic of districts held by Republican members of Congress. Floridas 26th district, which extends from Westchester to Key West, performed an average of 6 percentage points more Democratic than the nation did as a whole between the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections, Cook Report editor David Wasserman found in his report, released Friday. In the modern era, it takes considerable personal appeal to win a House election in a district that fundamentally favors the opposite party, Wasserman wrote. There are several members on both sides who have successfully run against the grain. However, these members are also likeliest to be among the top targets for the opposite party in 2018 and beyond. No. 3 on the list of the 10 Republicans in the most Democratic districts is Miami Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, whose 27th district a stretch of coastal southeastern Miami-Dade County performed on average 5 points more Democratic at the presidential level than the rest of the country. More here. Photo credit: Jose A. Iglesias, el Nuevo Herald @PatriciaMazzei President Donald Trump authorized missile strikes against Syria on Thursday evening, when he was beginning a two-day summit at his Palm Beach estate of Mar-a-Lago with Chinese President Xi Jinping. "My fellow Americans," Trump said in brief remarks late Thursday. "On Tuesday, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad launched a horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians. Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women, and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror." Trump said he ordered a "targeted military strike" on a Syrian airfield "from where the chemical attack was launched." "It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons," he said. Here's what Florida politicians had to say: Republican Sen. Marco Rubio I salute the bravery and skill of the men and women of our Armed Forces who conducted this mission. Tonight's strike against the Assad regimes Shayrat Air Base will hopefully diminish his capacity to commit atrocities against innocent civilians. By acting decisively against the very facility from which Assad launched his murderous chemical weapons attack, President Trump has made it clear to Assad and those who empower him that the days of committing war crimes with impunity are over. What must follow is a real and comprehensive strategy to ensure that Assad is no longer a threat to his people and to U.S. security, and that Russia no longer has free reign to support his regime. Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson I support the administrations strike on the air base that launched the chemical attack. I hope this teaches President Assad not to use chemical weapons again. The complaint filed by a Massachusetts attorney stemmed from scrutiny last year over a $25,000 campaign contribution Bondi received from Trump in 2013. Bondi asked for the donation near the same time that her office was being asked about a New York investigation of alleged fraud at Trump University. Florida Gov. Rick Scott handed the case to a southwest Florida prosecutor after another prosecutor said he could not investigate the case because Bondi used to work him. A prosecutor working in State Attorney Stephen Russell's office concluded that there is no reasonable suspicion that Trump or Bondi broke Florida's bribery law. More here. Photo credit: Pedro Portal, Miami Herald staff @PatriciaMazzei Miami Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen welcomed news earlier this week that President Donald Trump had removed chief strategist Steve Bannon from the National Security Council. But should Trump go further and kick Bannon out of the White House? That was the question local Democratic pollster and radio host Fernand Amandi posed the congresswoman Friday morning, after several reports that Bannon is increasingly isolated inside the White House. "I think it will be welcome news for the nation" if Bannon leaves the administration, Ros-Lehtinen said on Amandi's WIOD-AM (610) show. "His views are not in line with our country. We are an inclusive country that welcomes different points of views. His ties to certain groups are very worrisome." "I think his days are numbered in that administration," continued Ros-Lehtinen, a frequent Trump critic who represents a Democratic-leaning district and doesn't have close White House ties. "And I think profound changes will be coming in the shakeup in the White House in the coming months." Listen to Ros-Lehtinen here. Photo credit: Matias J. Ocner, Miami Herald For picture posts from 2010 and earlier, see the Earlier Picture Posts Page Several weekends ago, Jacob Godbey and Alex Tait donned mime make-up and mime costumes and staged a mime turf war near the railroad tracks on Missoula's Northside. Inadvertently, they mildly resembled the ominous get-ups of Alex and his droogs in "A Clockwork Orange," rendering the scene slightly "terrifying" Tait said. As the mime battle escalates, their silent gestures become more and more vulgar. Oddly, no one on the Northside seemed to mind too much, this being Missoula. "No one said anything," Godbey said. "Out of all the towns to pull this off in, this town would probably be the most OK with it," Tait said. The two redheaded undergraduates from the University of Montana were shooting a pilot for "Gingers on Ice," the two-person comedy act they've pursued for the past three years. They said it mimics the form of "Key and Peele," in which the two perform stand-up and improv with sketches interspersed. During a shoot for another sketch, one that builds into a parody commercial for a sharpening implement, they found little response in another public spot. "We even filmed with a guillotine out in Pattee Canyon and no one said anything," Godbey said. "We had one guy look very concerned, but he didn't stop us." When Godbey originally generated the idea for the sketch, Tait suggested they change the guillotine to an ax for practical reasons. "Where are we going to get a guillotine?" Tait said. "And one day his father is like, 'I'll make you guys a guillotine.' " Indeed, Godbey's parents stepped in to support their son's comedy pastime. "My dad made the guillotine and my mom painted it," Godbey said. *** The pilot is Godbey's senior project for the digital filmmaking degree he's finished up at UM's School of Media Arts. Tait is a junior in photojournalism, and neither really has a background in performing arts, even though they're lifelong fans of comedy. Last year, Tait's mother found a school paper from second grade. Students had to write down their career of choice. He wrote "stand-up comedian," he said, "which I think is really weird for a second-grader to put down." Godbey concurred. "How did you even know what a stand-up comedian is?" he said. Tait tried his hand at stand-up when he was attending the University of Wyoming in his hometown of Jackson. After he moved to Missoula, he signed up for an improv class at the now-defunct Stensrud Playhouse, where he met Godbey. Eventually, they decided to split off into their own duo under the memorably self-deprecating "Gingers" moniker. Before and after the Stensrud closed, the two did well filling seats, enough that they went on a self-booked regional tour last summer. "We played small crowds and we played to medium-small crowds," Godbey said. With a caveat; "It's not like it's been easy going the whole time, Godbey said. "Our first show outside of Montana was in Richland, Washington. We were in the newspaper, we were on one of the popular radio shows, and zero people showed up." Tait called his mother after the show. "She went 'How did the show go?' And I said 'no one came,' and she was like 'Oh, so like four or five people came?' and I was like 'No, no. Zero people came,' " he said. They had better luck at the Zootown Fringe Festival last summer, where they drew a standing-room only crowd and earned an audience award. After a seven-month hiatus, they're returning to the Roxy Theater this weekend, with a slate of new material, plus some clips from their pilot. One of those clips refines a previous introductory sketch, one that explicitly refers to the rarity of being a redhead. They ask someone what they'd do if they got on a bus filled with members of another race. Then they ask what they'd do if it was filled with redheads, just like them. Godbey and Tait admit they'd get right off that bus. Sheila Miles dove into the method of automatic painting for some 30 years before she had to change. "It started to get dark," she said. "The imagery, the palette, the mood got really dark." The results weren't what she wanted to either create or present to the world. "I want to focus on beauty, light and shadow," she said. Her motto was to "respect the inner voice" by recording "what would come out and validate it," she said in a phone interview from her current home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The resulting work, often surreal in nature, combined with her prolific output, made her one of the most well-known members of the Montana arts community. She curated the Yellowstone Art Museum for several years, and in 1999, she earned a Gottlieb Foundation Fellowship for $20,000. In 2003-04, Miles had her second showing of work at the Missoula Art Museum, titled "In the Neighborhood." The canvases drew on personal and internal narratives to create surreal scenes of homes and the lives they contain. It followed a statewide traveling mid-career retrospective, "Inside Out," another in a series of high marks for a contemporary artist in the rural state. A few years later, Miles relocated in Santa Fe, where she teaches art at the Desert Academy, an international baccalaureate school, while maintaining a prolific work schedule. Several years ago, relying too heavily on that inner voice for her content and imagery became too much, and that darkness edged in. To change courses, she zeroed in on another part of her work. She always had been interested in painting houses and homes the Purdue University BA and MA graduate has been making art since she was 10. She began a series of paintings of houses and structures, about 15 of which comprise her new exhibition at the MAM, "Light and Shadow." True to the title, the paintings explore the possibilities of light and dark, while drawing on her background in formal art training and background in abstraction. She uses her subject matter houses and scenes around the Southwest as an "entry point into painting for the sake of painting," said John Calsbeek, the MAM's associate curator. "They're not abstract paintings, but she's using the conventions and the methods to break something down and break up the picture plane, flatten it out, create illusions, but also totally respect the flat surface," he said. *** Miles sees similarities with automatic paintings. She and her husband go on long drives, where she can shoot hundreds of pictures of potential scenes. The photos might have imperfections, such as out-of-focus portions, that she can use to her advantage. When it's time to create a new painting, she combs through that trove of images, asking herself questions not so different from her automatic painting days. " 'Who am I today? Or how do I feel today?' So it is still that intuitive process," she said. She takes an "optimistic view" of many these places, even if they're a bit run down, by editing out some of their flaws. It's more important that they have something quirky or mysterious. "That preciousness, for an artist is how you see the world," she said. "I'm really reporting how I see those houses." Viewers may notice that Miles breaks the scenes up into flat shapes of color with organic shapes. Before she began making these paintings, she worked on a series of collages using her own materials she created with abstract markings on paper and she then cut into shapes, whether she was making a face or a figure. These paintings are similarly shape-driven in that respect, she said. In "Snow Melt on Leaves," a house is situated in the upper-right corner of the canvas, with a muted pink roof brightening a gray sky. The foreground is dominated by organic shapes of gray, orange and brown that pop out of a plain white foreground without any gradient between them. Calsbeek noted that she uses "very little value to create the volume. Traditionally you create volume and depth with value, but she's doing it with blocks of single color," he said. She's particularly interested in the shadows. "The shapes become their own subject and own reality instead of being secondary to the tree," she said. That's particularly true in "Yellow House with the Crazy Fence," a scene of the front of an adobe house. In the bright light, the roof over the front porch casts a dark shadow with repeated triangular shapes, complemented by the varying shades of darkness from a tree in the front yard. You might not consciously notice those subtleties, but you'll feel them, Calsbeek said. "Those are the things that create successful images." Meanwhile, Miles painted the white fence which wasn't finished when she took the photo as a finished white fence in flat white with no rendering. They're not direct records of the scenes. She edits them judiciously to create the best composition: removing trash cans, light poles or even other buildings if the composition if necessary. She said she's learned to fight the Midwestern work ethic she grew up with that back-fires within the context of a painting: that more is better, especially details. If there's too many details, she feels it slides into cliche. She's prolific enough she's not afraid to abandon a piece. "I make a lot of work, but I also destroy a lot of work," she said. She works quickly, painting wet on wet straight-through until the works are finished. (Her teaching schedule usually doesn't allow for oil painting on the weeknights.) She sees them as narrative pieces, albeit an abstract and unfinished one that viewers can complete. She doesn't paint en plein air, but she compared it to the Impressionist idea of "trying to beat the light" by painting in the moment. "I want the paintings to look effortless," she said, like the paint just landed on the canvas, the same way the light breaks through the trees onto the roof a house on the side of the road. For Los Angeles indie-pop quintet Local Natives, every album is a reflection of the music they're interested in at a given moment in time. During the writing and recording of their latest record, "Sunlight Youth," released in September on Loma Vista, that happened to be hip-hop and electronic music. In a phone interview, vocalist-keyboardist Kelcey Ayer said they're always "chasing some momentum on anything we're excited about" during the writing and recording. That meant less guitar playing from the five members, who all play multiple instruments. Ayer is joined by Taylor Rice (vocals, guitar), Ryan Hahn (vocals, guitar, synths), Nik Ewing (bass) and Matt Frazier (drums). The new music still emphasizes their vocal harmonies, but with a different production angle: electronic and acoustic percussion, samples and synth beds, plus some minimal guitar work. To give an idea of their current versatility, in the past year the group released two cover songs on Spotify: Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk" and Kanye West's "Ultralight Beam." Their 2014 album "Hummingbird" landed on many year-end best-of lists. It was co-produced by Aaron Dessner of The National, who shared some co-writing credits. The album's somber and pained tone came out of personal difficulties for many of the band members, then only in their 20s. In Ayer's case, his mother died of breast cancer. After "Hummingbird," Ayer said they felt relieved and ready to "move to external things that were happening around us." "We went through some stuff and came out the other side," he said. *** Work on the follow-up included writing and recording stints on several continents. After a show in Malaysia in 2014, they headed to a studio in Thailand for two weeks of work. It was productive enough that it "made us feel like getting more outside of L.A. could be a good thing for the record," Ayer said. "I think we got really excited about switching things up constantly to see what would happen." They also traveled to Joshua Tree and Ojai, California, for a writing session. While all the band-members contribute, they have three main songwriters: Rice, Ayer and Hahn. At Joshua Tree, they brought some gear but ended up working on lyrics mostly. "We've given input on other people's lyrics before," he said, but it's often been rushed. "We spend so much time on the songs and the music that sometimes the lyrics get pushed to the 11th hour on the last couple of albums," he said. The different options in different places stirred creativity. In Joshua Tree, they had a minimal set-up. In Thailand, it was a full studio. "I think being in a situation where you can't do everything you want to do" can create a "cool set of limitations to see how that dictates what happens" he said. Ayer's voice can be heard on "Coins," a hybrid pop-blue-eyed soul tune that Hahn began writing after D'Angelo released "Black Messiah." Ayer was particularly excited that "Everything All at Once" made the cut at the last minute. A plaintive vocal and piano are backed by staggered drum machines and massed vocal harmonies. At a few moments, a surprising, shoegaze note emerges. Ayer said that Hahn ran a demo vocal track distorted and compressed a vocal track until it sounded almost like a synth part. The song seemed to struggle to come together, but re-emerged during mixing. "It was a cool lesson in not stressing out too hard on any one song," he said. If it's good enough, it will revive itself. *** In Nicaragua, they wanted to write as many new songs as they could, resulting in 10 songs in 10 days. One song, "Masters" ended up on the record. "Then there's a bunch of other ones that didn't totally feel like B-sides," he said. They weren't ready to be included on the album, but they revisited them after "Sunlit Youth" was complete. Last month, they released a single, "I Saw You Close Your Eyes" with a (one-note guitar) line and string flourishes. They'll likely release a few more songs, perhaps a new model for the band. "We've been excited about the model of releasing songs more," he said. It's standard practice in hip-hop and pop, but Local Natives have so far adhered to the indie model of an album every few years. Regarding any future directions, Ayer said they have too many band members to predict where it's going to go. "If you ever try to plan something out, it's going to change." Tom Morrison enrolled at the University of Montana with his eye on a forestry degree. It wasn't long before he transferred to the School of Music, where he graduated in 2014 with a degree in music composition. Now Morrison, 24, is finishing his master's in music composition at the prestigious Juilliard School and returning to his old alma mater to premiere a new composition, "Big Sky Music." The Long Island native said he'd always wanted to write a piece for the String Orchestra of the Rockies, the statewide professional ensemble that will perform it on Sunday. He worked for them as a stage manager while he was an undergraduate and arranged pieces for them as well. "It was about my experiences in Montana and my love for Montana," he said. The 10-minute, one-movement composition employs elements of classical minimalism, such as a repeating musical figure through the first half that resurfaces in the second. He noted that it's not the uber-repetitive minimalism from early Philip Glass or John Adams. The piece is generally tonal and is "supposed to sound really open," he said. Fern Glass Boyd, the SOR's director and cellist, said Morrison is "creating his own style and finding his own voice." She said it's rhythmically complex and driving, with an accomplished level of craft. Morrison said the piece was also inspired by Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, one of his favorite composers. "I don't think there's any composer who captures nature quite like he does," Morrison said. Morrison was set to fly in Thursday night to work with the orchestra. They'll rehearse Friday, Saturday and Sunday in preparation for Sunday's premiere. He said there's always some nervousness before debuting a piece some nuances are never clear until you hear the music played by an orchestra. While he's in Missoula, he'll also participate in the UM Composers Showcase next week on campus. (See calendar for event listings.) *** Morrison grew up on Long Island. His parents weren't musicians, but they exposed him to folk icons like Bob Dylan from an early age. He developed his love contemporary classical in the reverse order from most people. While some kids start playing Bach while they're quite young, he said, "I went the opposite track." He didn't start playing with an orchestra until high school. He discovered contemporary composers like Nico Muhly and Christopher Rouse. When was 17, he convinced a young composer and Juilliard student, Adam Schoenberg, to give him lessons. "He really had to start me from square one," Morrison said. (Schoenberg's music is now played by major symphonies around the U.S.) Despite that serious training, he decided to enroll at UM in the forestry school. "I was young," he said. "I didn't really know what I wanted to do." Very quickly, his sister convinced him to go to the music school and see what he thought. He clicked with the professors and the atmosphere, which had the right "laid-back" feel for him, in addition to the quality of instruction. "UM has a very, very strong composition program," he said. Plus, he loved Missoula. After graduating, he enrolled at Juilliard School, where he's had the chance to work with Rouse, a Pulitzer Prize-winner and one of his heroes. The two meet 15 times a semester for one-on-one sessions to review his music. "It's really surreal having worked with him and getting to know him as a human and not just this huge artistic figure," he said. After graduating, he'll enroll at Princeton University in a five-year doctoral program in composition. He said it's a progressive and forward-thinking program. Regarding future career plans, he said it's an unusual and interesting time for the field. Composers like Muhly cross over into mainstream audiences, and indie-rock artists like Sufjan Stevens and Bryce Dessner of The National cross over into classical composition. (Dessner studied composition at Yale.) Doors like that weren't as open in the 1960s or '70s, he said, when composers were expected to focus on a single aesthetic. Some young composers pursue their craft professionally, either through purely artistic work or commercial gigs, and others go into academia. "Right now I'm just trying to see what's available for me," he said. The stories of some of Montanas abused and neglected children will be on display Friday. To commemorate National Child Abuse Prevention Month, the kids of Watson Childrens Shelter have created masks to help people outside the shelter get to know them. The art will be on display during First Friday. The project, titled The face behind the mask was in part the brainchild of the shelters Executive Director Mike Boehm. Each child was given a basic mask and asked to decorate it in a way that would convey something about them to the Missoula community. Watsons Program Director Deboruah Madonna has helped run Watson's two shelter buildings for just under 30 years. During that time, the community has always helped the shelter survive. If the kids want to do a sport, someone in the community will help pay for it, Madonna said. If a couch goes out, someone is ready to donate a new one, she said. However, the public cant really see what is being done for the kids there. And people dont always want to hear about what is happening to these kids, because it is horrible, Madonna said. We cant promote what we do because of the privacy of these kids, Madonna said. The names and faces of children staying at Watson must be kept confidential, Boehm said. Even the ages attached to the masks will be changed, to help prevent anyone from recognizing the children who created the masks. But through the art and through the quotes attached to the art, Boehm hopes people will make a connection with the children. By the time kids reach Watson, it is almost never a simple neglect case. Many of these kids have suffered profound abuse, Madonna said. One child made a mask with no mouth, Boehm said. When he pointed this out to the girl, she told him she didnt want a mouth, because she doesnt like yelling or screaming. I can only imagine the home environment she came from, Boehm said. Missoulas child abuse and neglect cases have more than doubled since 2011, according to a 2016 judicial filing review. In the last six months of 2016, the shelter had to turn away 71 kids because it was full. The two shelters are only licensed for at most 32 kids at a time, Boehm said. Watson is a third resort when the authorities are looking to place a child they have removed from a home. First, authorities look for next of kin, then a foster home, and then Watson, Boehm said. If Watson is full, the kids may have to go to therapeutic group homes, which might have more structure than the child needs, Boehm said. What Watson provides is a bed, warmth and security. This is often enough for a child after being removed from a home and before authorities can find a permanent placement, Boehm said. Boehm doesnt think what the community needs is more beds and more shelters. People must become more conscientious of child abuse and support prevention measures that help families before a removal occurs, Boehm said. The shelter has organized fundraising events in the past, but when Boehm started at the shelter about two years ago, he began to have the shelter participate in National Child Abuse Prevention month. The masks are part of that effort. The art project for the kids was created with the help of local artist Carolyn Maier, the executive director for the Bill and Rosemary Gallagher Foundation. The Gallaghers help fund both of the Watson shelters and the foundation has a close partnership with Watson. Buying art supplies and volunteering her time with the kids was a no-brainer for both the foundation and Maier, she said. She and fellow local artist Stoney Sasser worked with the children over two days to create the masks. As Maier mixed the papier-mache for the masks, some of the kids wanted to touch the mixture, Maier said. Some said it looked too gross. The kids at Watson need acceptance, Boehm said. He wants people to realize they are still kids, and they are all resilient. One of the masks a girl made was covered in feathers and all sorts of things, Boehm said. The girl told Boehm she sees herself as very pretty, he said. The community should get to see that, Boehm said. Its one thing to hear statistics, another to see a physical thing a child created, Boehm said. The masks will be on display at the Red Bird Restaurant and Wine Bar, 111 N. Higgins Ave. during First Friday. The event is not meant to be a fundraiser, and wine and pizza will be provided. BUTTE A Helena legislator introduced a bill Thursday that would create a committee to study the effects of legalizing recreational marijuana in Montana for presentation to the 2019 Legislature. House Joint Resolution 35, introduced by Rep. Mary Dunwell, D-Helena, would request the legislative committee, which oversees interim committees to form one to examine the legalization, regulation, taxation, and public health and safety aspects of recreational marijuana in Montana. According to the proposed legislation, the interim committee would examine whether the states liquor control system would make a good model, how legalization would affect the states medical marijuana program, and how legalization in other states has affected tax revenues, spending on public health and safety and child drug use. The study would be completed by Sept. 15, 2018, and include input from the Departments of Public Health and Human Services, Justice, Revenue and Agriculture, as well as local police, the district courts, schools and lobbying groups. Committees often propose legislation based on the result of their studies. Dunwell said marijuana legalization is not a question of if but when, and that taking the time between sessions to get the science ready for whenever the day comes is smarter than trying to cram legalization through a 90-day session. You dont have time to do good research, Dunwell said. If HR 35 passes, House and Senate leaders on the bipartisan Legislative Council will appoint an interim committee which will meet for 20 months between the 65th and 66th sessions that is if legislators vote the bill as one of the top 20 proposed interim committees. Legislation creating 40 other interim committees has already been introduced, with another several dozen unintroduced proposals languishing in various draft states. While the states medical marijuana industry does not oppose Dunwells resolution, it doesnt see it as its fight. The lobbyist group for Montanas medical marijuana growers and providers, the Montana Cannabis Industry Association, has not prioritized legalizing recreational marijuana for the legislative session. Embroiled in a five-year lawsuit to preserve patient access to medical marijuana that ended with a citizens initiative in the 2016 election and further court battles, the MTCIA 2017 legislative agenda is to solidify the medical program. Spokesperson Kate Cholewa said all the MTCIAs energy now is behind passing Senate Bill 333, which would regulate the states medical marijuana program to be more in line with whats seen in other states. According to the MTCIAs white paper on its 2017 legislative goals, building a better medical marijuana program is best done piecemeal. When medical marijuana was first legalized in 2004, some saw the law as lax, leading to abuse of the system and blowback in the form of the 2011 Legislatures quasi-repeal. While 2016s I-182 restored access for patients, the program itself isnt that efficient of a machine, and SB 333 adds provisions like seed-to-sale tracking and defining marijuana cultivation caps by canopy size, not plant quantity, the paper said. Despite some problematic holdovers from the 2011 law, the initiatives provisions can maintain the program. However, we do not wish to see the same mistakes made in 2017 that were made in 2011 and the years leading up to it, the paper read. HELENA Butte's Orphan Girl won't be getting kicked to the curb after all. In the flurry over changes this week that Montana's breweries said would have forced them to stop production of some of the state's most famous and popular beers, KettleHouse Brewing Co.'s Coldsmoke for one, an alteration that could have killed off one of the most popular liquors in the state was overlooked. Distilleries came into this legislative session asking for something that sounded simple an extra hour for people to drink cocktails ordered in their tasting rooms before 8 p.m. Both breweries and distilleries can serve alcohol until that time, but breweries are allowed what's called a consumptive hour, an extra 60 minutes for people to finish their drinks. Distilleries can't do that. But a bill to give distilleries that consumptive hour was changed Tuesday in a way that would have not allowed one of the state's most popular liquors to be sold in its distillery's tasting room. House Bill 474, carried by Rep. Ray Shaw, R-Sheridan, was amended to require 90 percent of a liquor sold out of a tasting room, whether for on-site consumption or a bottle to go, to be distilled on the premises. That presented a problem for Orphan Girl Bourbon Cream Liqueur, sold by Headframe Spirits in Butte. The liqueur is incredibly popular, outselling Baileys Irish Cream by double in Montana. It's the eighth-most popular product sold in a 750 milliliter bottle in the state. But Headframe has to import the cream it uses to make Orphan Girl from Wisconsin because there's not a dairy in Montana that can provide the product, said Cassandra Sunell, chief marketing and sales officer. Its a very common practice for cream liqueurs, she said. About 80 percent of distilleries in Montana would have no longer been able to sell at least one of their products in their tasting rooms if the bill had passed, said Sen. Tom Facey, D-Missoula, who brought an amendment to get rid of the 90 percent requirement. That amendment failed to pass, but the Senate voted to kill the bill, with 36 senators voting against it and 14 for it. Sunell said Headframe has approached dairy farmers in Montana about buying cream, but it hasnt worked out. There is no one who has the facilities to provide as much cream as we need in that form of having it stabilized," she said. Sen. Ed Buttrey, R-Great Falls, who said he owns a liquor license, spoke against the amendment and said distilleries need to be selling products that are made in Montana. "We bought a license to be able to carry products we are not making ourselves," Buttrey said. "How much percent of the liquor do you think should actually be distilled on the premise for someone to operate a tasting room without a license? Would you support them selling spirits in their tasting room that were just 1 or 2 or 3 percent distilled and everything else was just bought off the shelf? Would that be considered Montana-made?" John Iverson, who is a lobbyist for the Montana Tavern Association, echoed the senator. "The association is in full support of craft distilleries, but consumers want to know: 'Is the product you buy in your craft distiller's tasting room even made in Montana?' " Sunell praised the Senate for killing the bill. "The good news is that we'll still have the ability to sell Orphan Girl and make it the way we do now. The only thing we won't be able to have is the extended hour," she said. Distilleries will continue to do last-call around 7:30 p.m., she said, and might have some anxiety about bringing a bill in 2019 to get a consumptive hour. "There's going to be a lot of anxiety," she said. "We may be a sitting duck." WASHINGTON It's a rare and momentous decision one by one, seated at desks centuries old, senators will stand and cast their votes for a Supreme Court nominee. It's a difficult political call in the modern era, especially for the 10 Democrats, including Montana Sen. Jon Tester, facing tough re-election next year in states that President Donald Trump won. "Resist" is the rallying cry for the Democratic Party's liberal base, and that applies to all Trump nominees, even Neil Gorsuch, a mild-mannered jurist who won unanimous Senate backing to the appellate court in 2006. Democratic voters have flooded lawmakers' offices with calls, protested outside state offices and tweeted vulgarities if senators even hint at being conciliatory with Trump and the GOP. "I come from a state that no matter how I vote, 50 percent of the people are mad," says Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, who will oppose Gorsuch when the Senate votes on his confirmation Friday. "So I'm kind of used to this. The only difference is that the ones who are happy are really happy." Already in the minority, Democrats face tough political odds in next year's midterms, defending 25 seats for caucus members to the GOP's eight. The looming question for the 10 Democrats is whether a Supreme Court vote will still resonate with voters in 19 months or whether Trump's standing, the economy, jobs or health care will be greater concerns. Trump won McCaskill's state by almost 20 percentage points and conservative groups are running ads against her. On Tuesday, a handful of people stood in front of the Missouri capitol and held up pro-Gorsuch signs. "I wish they would realize that the Democrats really did lose the election," said Joyce Campbell of Versailles, Missouri. But liberals are also fired up. The January evening Gorsuch was nominated, McCaskill tweeted that there should be a hearing and vote on "ANY nominee" a reference to last year's Republican blockade of former President Barack Obama's nominee for the same seat, Merrick Garland. She got more than 700 replies, some using curse words and threatening a primary. Montana Sen. Jon Tester also will oppose Gorsuch, even though his state similarly supported Trump by 20 points. Tester said he's concerned about how Gorsuch would rule on privacy issues and women's health, and whether he'd support working people over corporations. "I think that Montanans have always expected me to have a reason for why I voted, and I have plenty of them on Judge Gorsuch," Tester said. Marlene Johnson, 65, of Helena, said she hopes Tester's opposition will hurt him politically. She is closely following the debate and called Gorsuch a decent person who is qualified to sit on the Supreme Court. She says Tester is "letting Montana down." Tester has never won with more than 50 percent of the vote. But Republicans are lacking a strong challenger, with their best chance, former Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke, now serving as Trump's interior secretary. Indiana Sen. Joe Donnelly, North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin had a different calculus they're all supporting Gorsuch. Trump won Indiana by 19 points, North Dakota by 36 points and West Virginia by 42 points. Still, some Democrats are angry. About 20 protesters marched to Donnelly's downtown Indianapolis office Tuesday, chanting: "No, no, Joe." North Dakota Democrat Dan Spiekermeier is more understanding of Heitkamp. The farmer said he's upset that Republicans did not allow a vote on Garland, but said "some people among the Democrats need to be centrists, so I think she made the right call." In swing states where Trump had narrower victories, the decision may have been easier. Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey, Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow are all opposing Gorsuch. Trump won their states by a point or less. It's unclear if their eventual opponents will use the issue against them in 2018 or if voters will even remember the Supreme Court fight. Florida Gov. Rick Scott, viewed as a likely challenger to Nelson, has so far avoided any direct criticism, though he supports Gorsuch. In Wisconsin, though, Republican Gov. Scott Walker, who is also up for re-election next year, tweeted to Baldwin in February that "pandering to liberal special interests in Washington is more important to you than listening to WI residents." On Thursday, the Wisconsin Republican Party asked supporters to come to field offices to organize opposition to Baldwin. In Ohio, where Trump won by 8 points, Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown says he didn't consider the political consequences when he made his decision to oppose Gorsuch the night he was nominated. Most Democrats waited until after his March hearings. Brown has been the target of a steady stream of attack ads over Gorsuch. And Republican Josh Mandel, making a repeat try at unseating Brown, told supporters in a fundraising email that Brown's decision was "uninformed, out of touch, knee-jerk politicking." Brown says he believes Gorsuch will favor corporations over workers and he gets "a lot of pushback on both sides on everything." As for whether voters will still support him, he says: "I guess we'll see, won't we? I think so." Associated Press writers Matthew Daly in Washington; David Lieb and Katie Kull in Jefferson City, Missouri; Gary Fineout in Tallahassee, Florida; Matt Volz in Helena, Montana; Dave Kolpack in Fargo, North Dakota; Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin; Ivan Moreno in West Allis, Wisconsin; Julie Carr Smyth in Columbus, Ohio; and Tom Davies in Indianapolis, Indiana, contributed to this report. HELENA Sen. Jon Tester says he believes Montana voters will understand his opposition to Judge Neil Gorsuch's nomination for U.S. Supreme Court, though he may be taking a gamble in a state that elected President Donald Trump by a 20-point margin. Tester is one of 10 Democrats up for re-election in 2018 in states that Trump won, forcing them into a difficult political position when choosing to support or oppose the president's choice to replace Antonin Scalia on the nation's highest court. But in the case of Tester, who has spent more than a decade representing Montana in the Senate, most voters made up their minds about him long ago and his decision to oppose Gorsuch only reaffirms their views. To Tester supporters, his opposition to Gorsuch shows that the state's senior senator votes his conscience without regard for how it will affect his election chances. To his opponents, the decision on Gorsuch confirms that Tester toes the Democratic Party line and that he is out of touch with the state's voters who elected Trump by a 20-point margin in November. Marlene Johnson, a 65-year-old Helena resident, said she hopes Tester's opposition to Gorsuch will hurt his 2018 re-election bid, but she herself is already an entrenched Tester opponent. She has been glued to Fox News to track the confirmation of Gorsuch, whom she called a decent person who is qualified to sit on the Supreme Court. "He's definitely letting Montana down, he is letting our nation down with his decision," Johnson said of Tester. But for Barbara Wetherill of Helena, who opposes Gorsuch's confirmation, Tester's opposition will factor positively for Tester in her decision in 2018, she said. "I like to look at what people have done in the past," Wetherill said of how she will evaluate Tester in the voting booth. Tester told reporters Sunday that he doesn't believe that Montanans want a Supreme Court justice who believes corporations are people, who would loosen search-and-seizure restrictions and who would seek to influence women's health care decisions. Tester said those are the conclusions he drew about Gorsuch after studying the judge's past decisions and hearing from his own constituents. "I think that Montanans have always expected me to have a reason for why I voted and I have plenty of them on Judge Gorsuch," Tester said. David Parker, a political science professor at Montana State University, said outside groups trying to unseat Tester may try to make Gorsuch a campaign issue with television ads and fliers, but he doesn't believe it will be important to most voters. "We're going to hear about it, without a doubt," Parker said. "But is it going to resonate? Unless you're an activist or really politically engaged, I don't think it will." Tester does not yet have a Republican challenger next year after Trump plucked former U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke to become Interior Department secretary. Republicans in the state and in Washington have been courting Attorney General Tim Fox, and State Auditor Matthew Rosendale is also a potential challenger. A deconstruction crew from Home ReSource in Missoula has completed the portion of work they can do by hand inside the historic Missoula Mercantile downtown, clearing the way for the big machines to finish it off. A demolition crew will move in the machines next week to systematically dismantle the rest of the building, including the exterior walls, while salvaging as much of the remaining timber, steel, brick and other materials as possible. The pharmacy building portion of the Merc will be preserved, and will be the only thing left standing by the time the site is excavated, cleared and backfilled by June 1. Construction of a new, 150-room Marriott hotel, with 23,000 square feet of ground floor retail space, will begin immediately after. Jason Nuckolls, the deconstruction manager at the non-profit Home ReSource in Missoula, said his crew was able to save the historic copper awning on the west exterior of the building. That will be featured in the new hotel. The deconstruction portion of the interior of the building is wrapping up, he said. We salvaged everything we can by hand. Nuckolls said that he hopes the success of dismantling this historic, large building rather than hitting it with a wrecking ball and taking everything to the landfill will show other developers that salvaging old buildings is both cost-effective, relatively straightforward and provides benefits to the community. One of the big, exciting things about this project and deconstruction is that this shows that deconstruction can be done on a large-scale level with large buildings, he said. Missoulas lucky to have folks that are able to do this and preserve these materials in our community. We hope that this project spotlights and shows that this can happen in other communities, as well.'' The historic copper awning will be reused in the hotel, where a Missoula Mews area a public indoor alleyway will feature artifacts from the building. The Merc was built in stages starting in the late 1870s. Nuckolls said his crew found it challenging because there were at least four different portions that were built at different times, with different materials using different methods. However, he estimated that his crews found 25 percent more salvageable material than they originally anticipated. That includes huge quantities of rough-cut lumber, which he said is extremely valuable. The lumber, timber beams and other materials will be stored at the Home ReSource site on Russell Street, where it will be sold to the public. A brick giveaway is planned in the future, but a site and date hasnt been determined yet. The Missoula Mercantile is listed on the National Register of Historic places and was the economic hub of western Montana for many decades. HomeBase Montana, led by Bozeman developer Andy Holloran, is the buildings current owner. HomeBase will donate everything they cant use to the Historical Museum at Fort Missoula. Holloran has said the hotel will create jobs and bring a spark of economic activity to the downtown area in the form of tourists who will be looking to shop and dine. The project was opposed by the citys Historic Preservation Commission, but that panels decision to deny a demolition permit was later overturned by the City Council and a judge. A company called Spirtas Wrecking from St. Louis, Missouri will be doing the systematic demolition with heavy equipment. What theyll be doing is pulling the building apart piece by piece with those machines, Nuckolls said. Theyll salvage any of the big beams and timbers we werent able to get. The Higgins Avenue brick wall will be taken down more by hand, Nuckolls said, to keep it from spilling onto the street. Oh, and Nuckolls said people need not worry whether there will be enough bricks to go around. There will be enough for everybody who wants bricks, Nuckolls said. His crew also found old bricks in an awning in the basement carved with names starting in the 1880s, which they salvaged. Those will be used in the new building or donated to the museum. Teacher Megan Hasquet was thrilled to take her Anaconda High School honors government class to see the state Supreme Court in action. That the case affected her students home ground was an unexpected bonus. Some of them have family involved in this case, Hasquet said on Friday after oral arguments wrapped up in Atlantic Richfield Co. vs. Silver Bow County Judge Katherine Bidegaray. Weve spent a lot of time studying state, federal and local government. To find out the courts topic is right in their backyard was perfect. Its something that affects not only them, but generations to come. The students joined a packed theater at the University of Montana to watch the Supreme Court during one of its rare out-of-Helena appearances. This one was the highlight of UMs Law Week activities. Fridays argument considered a weird bit of Montana procedural law that holds up a much bigger question. One-hundred residents of Opportunity want to make the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency clean up their yards, which bear toxic waste from a century of copper smelting at nearby Anaconda. ARCO and the EPA asked the high court for a writ of supervisory control that would short-circuit the residents case before it could come before a jury. Their attorneys argued that the company and the agency already had a cleanup plan in place, and federal law prohibited state lawsuits from interfering with the ongoing project. Attorneys for the residents countered that the federal law did allow for state challenges, especially if the federal cleanup wasnt doing a complete job. They also claimed ARCO and EPA were challenging cleanup facts that were better put before a jury than handled in a Supreme Court procedural hearing. Using the federal Superfund laws, EPA has required ARCO to restore thousands of acres of smelter-contaminated ground between Butte and Missoula over the past 30 years. But much of the decision-making process on that work has been private between the agency and the company. The Opportunity residents say contamination in their yards wasnt properly considered, even though testing shows levels of arsenic and other toxins far above federal health standards. The residents have asked that the cleanup be expanded to remove the top two feet of soil from their yards, amounting to about 650,000 tons of dirt. That material would be taken to a waste repository in Spokane, while the yards would be re-filled and covered with new sod. They also want an underground barrier to prevent arsenic-contaminated groundwater from reaching their properties. ARCO officials estimated the cost of the project at between $38 million and $101 million. In the hearing, the justices often barely let an attorney complete a sentence before firing questions. Afterward, acting Chief Justice Beth Baker, Justice Laurie McKinnon and Justice Dirk Sandefur took questions from the students. Id never heard of this trespassing concept before, Anaconda senior Kyra Moreni said of an attorneys claim that having someone elses pollution in your yard constituted illegal entry. For landowners, that could really make a difference for them. Theyve been fighting this for almost a decade. While practicing lawyers werent invited to the question-and-answer session, many gathered outside to discuss the testimony theyd witnessed. Its always educational for lawyers to watch oral arguments, said Bruce Spencer, president of the State Bar of Montana. You pick up ideas for how to conduct your own argument, and you also see now the justices interact with the parties. Its also a chance for the court to interact with the public in a favorable way, so people have faith they have a good justice system. The crime of rape is a sensitive issue today. Much of that is due to the he said, she said narratives of the incident. How can a jury decide which side is telling the truth, particularly if there is little physical evidence the incident was non-consensual? According to the Missoulian (editorial, March 29), Senate Bill 29 will help clarify to juries exactly what constitutes a criminal act by clarify the term consent. Yet, we have already a statute which deals with the issue SB 29 is supposed to fix. MCA 45-5-511 (5) states, Resistance by the victim is not required to show lack of consent. Force, fear, or threat is sufficient alone to show lack of consent. SB 29 does not even address or look at this statute! Are juries that confused on this issue? The answer is yes and no. It might help if the statutes of Montana dealing with this issue actually used the term "rape." Juries have what has been called common sense. Most of them can sift through the socalled rape myths and see the facts for what they are. But no matter how many rape myths they dismissed, still many rape cases come down to he said versus she said. Does SB 29 clear up that issue? No, it does not. Even the now-popular defense of freezing relies on the womans testimony, which can be rebutted by testimony to the opposite. Common sense does indicate that people can freeze out of fear, but while this does occur in the human experience, how does the jury factually determine this in a rape case of "he said versus she said?" Should we presume always that the woman is telling the truth? Is the defendant actually innocent until proven guilty in a rape case today? This leads to the so-called myth of false reports or allegations of rape. Whenever someone uses the word myth it implies there is no truth to the claim. False reports of rape are true, it is not a myth, and some studies suggest it is as high as 10 percent. The famous one in the Bible is the false reporting of Potiphars wife, which landed Joseph in prison. Then there is the famous incident of Atticus Finch in the movie "To Kill A Mocking Bird" who defends a black man falsely accused of rape. Recently, we had a movie, "Gone Girl," where the woman goes to great lengths to falsely accuse two individuals of rape. Finally, the Duke lacrosse team case of 2006, in which three members were falsely accused of rape, shows us the damaging effects of the false reporting of rape. So, yes, juries are confused and conflicted. Their common sense requires them to ask who is telling the truth, since there is no strong physical evidence, and is this an example of false reporting? Those questions will still remain despite SB 29. Dear U.S. Sens. Jon Tester and Steve Daines: As current and former justices of the Montana Supreme Court, we write to express our deep concern with the proposal to eliminate funding for the Legal Services Corporation and the Corporation for National and Community Service. These programs are critical partners in ensuring that the Montana justice system meets the Constitutions command to establish Justice .. and secure the Blessings of Liberty to all Montanans. For 50 years, the Montana Legal Services Association (MLSA) has provided civil legal aid to Montanans with basic human needs. MLSA helps protect domestic violence victims and obtain support for their children; secure housing for veterans; relieve seniors from consumer scams; and obtain access to justice in rural Montana where few, if any, other legal services are available. And for nearly a decade, dozens of AmeriCorps members have devoted a year or two years of service to Montanas Court Help Program, giving tens of thousands of Montanans legal information to help understand and navigate the court system to resolve their own legal issues when they cannot afford an attorney. Together, these programs help meet a vital need in a Montana court system that is simply overwhelmed with record-setting caseloads, self-represented litigants, and alarming increases in time-intensive cases involving abused and neglected children. When people show up in court unprepared and with their lives in crisis, the system becomes inefficient and hurts all court users. Because children and families in crisis take the courts priority, other cases move to the back of the line, and justice waits. The plain truth is that MLSA and AmeriCorps Justice For Montanans Program are an incredibly effective use of a small amount of federal dollars that deliver results to Montana every day. Our justice system depends on them, as partners with the courts, the private bar, and non-profit community organizations to address the demands on Montana courts and to achieve our nations promise of justice for all. We encourage your leadership and strong support for current-level funding of the Legal Services Corporation and the Corporation for National and Community Service. Forty years ago, the Montana Legislature enshrined renters rights in state code by passing the Residential Landlord and Tenant Act of 1977. Now, those rights are being threatened. A group of bills have been introduced in the Montana Legislature that, if passed, would erode renters rights and swing the carefully erected balance of power between renters and landlords towards the landlords. Taken separately, these bills have varying effects. Some are fairly innocuous - House Bill 350, for instance, allows for the use of electronic fund transfer for paying rent - while others are more sinister. But taken together, these bills represent something worse: a coordinated attack on renters rights, led by landlords and their lobbyists. Seeking to ram piecemeal legislation through the Legislature, with little input from renters, is the wrong way to address the Landlord-Tenant Act and will cause renters to face discrimination and unfair rental practices at nearly every turn. Thankfully, in response to hard work by a coalition of interests, some of the worst bills have been rejected. But many remain. Senate Bill 276, which revises retaliation laws regarding landlords and tenants; SB 176, which alters the rules for putting locks on doors; and HB 348, which modifies when landlords can enter a rental without notice, are all still under consideration by the Legislature, and would all fundamentally alter the balance of power between renters and landlords. This cannot happen. With the number of renters growing nationwide, Montana should be focused on helping renters maintain their rights, not erecting a legal framework designed to work against them. Renters are already vulnerable, and these bills would create an environment that makes it harder to find and keep safe, affordable housing. We are calling on the Legislature to vote "no" on these unfair bills. Instead, we advocate for another option: Rep. Kathy Kelker, D-Billings, has introduced a resolution, House Joint Resoolution 29, calling for an interim study to examine the Landlord-Tenant Act with input from all interested parties, not just landlords. This study will take a broader, more holistic look at the Landlord-Tenant Act, and will foster discussion and help all sides find a fair and equitable solution to the issues at hand. There is room for improvement in our tenant-landlord laws, and fixing them will be a massive undertaking. Only by hearing from all sides, and considering all options, can a solution which finds the right balance be struck. Lets take our time and do it the right way. U.S. Sen. Jon Tester's reasons for failing to support the confirmation of the more-than-qualified Judge Neil Gorsuch are insulting. The fact that he chooses to follow the filibuster idea by his "snowflake" Democratic cohorts is equally insulting. Tester has strayed far from his Montana roots in that he has settled in with the Democratic Washington political views, refusing to allow anything proposed by President Trump to be considered, much less "approved." So much for working together. The blatant disregard for "all things Trump" has gone beyond the pale. Trump is now President Trump and the Democrats need to quit whining, "man up" for the sake of our country and be supportive. J.C. Wilkinson, Alberton The Historical Museum at Fort Missoula is accepting applications for the annual Preserving Missoula County History grant program. This program is open to all Missoula County nonprofit organizations involved in historic preservation and interpretation projects in Missoula County. Missoula voters made funding these grants possible when they approved the two-mill levy for the Historical Museum in 2002. A total amount of $10,000 is available for one-time projects with a demonstrable long-term impact for local history; individual projects are limited to a maximum grant of $5,000. Capital improvement funds are available for projects such as: structural improvement, structure and site restoration, physical access (ADA), interpretive facilities and collections, and adaptation to meet health and safety requirements. Interpretation funds are available for contributions to local history in the areas of site investigation and interpretation, long-term exhibits and publications. The primary emphasis must be on the demonstrable long-term impact of the project on the preservation, interpretation, dissemination and/or enhancement of local history. The grants may not be used for routine maintenance, programs, publicity, general operations, personnel or personal research, and they must be related to the mission of the Historical Museum at Fort Missoula the preservation and interpretation of: Missoula County history, the military history of Fort Missoula, and the history of the timber industry in western Montana. HELENA Gov. Steve Bullock vetoed a bill that would have banned Sharia and other foreign laws from being used in Montana courts, saying Thursday that the measure would "upend our legal system and debase what we stand for as Montanans and Americans." Montana was one of the 13 states considering legislation seeking to prevent the use of foreign law in state courts. While the bill's focus was not on Sharia law, some supporters specifically spoke out against the religious law used in some parts of the Islamic world. Some Republicans sided with Democrats in opposing the measure but could not block it from going to the governor. "There is absolutely no need for this bill," Bullock wrote in his veto message, adding that the proposal could add to the "nationwide surge in hate crimes." The bill was one of five on which the governor took action Thursday, and the only to get a veto. Including that measure, the governor has vetoed five bills outright - with an additional 50 waiting on his desk for action. Bullock said he was disturbed that the ban, if he had signed it, could have been seen as an "endorsement for anti-Muslim sentiments and activity." "I don't see how affirming our Constitution does that. I disagree with him," said Sen. Keith Regier, a Kalispell Republican. He and other backers argued that the measure aimed merely to declare support for U.S. and Montana law, which some Republican lawmakers say is under assault. They rejected contentions that the bill was anti-Islamic or xenophobic. The governor saw it differently. "It cannot be seriously denied that the bill is drawn from 'Sharia law bans' that have been tried in other states," Bullock wrote. "The intent of these bills is to target a particular religion and group of people for disfavored treatment." WASHINGTON -- It was half past noon Monday when Chuck Grassley, the genial chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, asked for a show of hands: Did senators debating the Neil Gorsuch nomination to the Supreme Court want to break for lunch? Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., interjected with a parliamentary inquiry: Could the majority cater this lunch? Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, spoke in the affirmative: I vote for plowing right through, Mr. Chairman. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., gave the proposition bipartisan support. The Republican chairman was flummoxed. Actually the people who wanted to adjourn for half an hour had the most votes, he reported. The committee dissolved into confusion and side conversations. Observed Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the panel: We cant even agree on lunch. These are indeed grim times for the committee -- which approved Gorsuchs nomination on a party-line vote Monday -- and for the Senate, for Washington and for America. This week, the problems are going to get noticeably worse. The government has in many ways ceased to function, because of a cycle of partisan rancor and retaliation culminating in the ascent of Donald Trump. Now Democrats, justifiably furious that Republicans essentially stole a Supreme Court seat by refusing for nearly a year to consider President Barack Obamas nominee, are threatening to block President Trumps nominee. And Republicans are threatening to respond with worse -- abolishing the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees (and before long, most likely everything else). That nuclear option would destroy whats left of the Senate as a deliberative body, eliminating a staple of American democracy that has existed in some form since 1789 to forge consensus. The damage done to the Senate is going to be real, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told his colleagues Monday, saying it would undermine the traditions that have been in existence for 200 years. Judges are going to be more ideological, presidents will be able to appoint justices only when their party controls the Senate, and every Senate election will be a referendum on the court, he said. Graham, a frequent Trump critic and the rare Republican who voted for both of Obamas Supreme Court nominees, found culpability on both sides. We can all look in a mirror, find some blame, he said -- and hes right. Though Republicans conversion into a far-right, anti-government party is responsible for most current dysfunction, the Democrats opened the door to ending the filibuster, changing the chambers rules in 2013 to abolish filibusters for lower court appointments. I wrote at the time that Democrats eventually would deeply regret what they have done. True, GOP obstruction had been intolerable: Half of the filibusters of executive and judicial nominations in the nations history up to that point had occurred during the Obama presidency. But, predictably, chipping away at the filibuster -- an institution that has existed in some form since the founding -- now haunts Democrats. Worse, there seems to be no solution, no talk of a compromise that might, say, let Gorsuch through with a majority vote but restore the 60-vote threshold if Trump gets the chance to replace a liberal justice. During four hours of statements before Mondays vote, the bickering judiciary-panel members generally agreed on only one thing: They are about to do something very bad. I wish, said Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, an anti-Trump Republican, that we would instead change the behavior of senators rather than change the rules of the Senate. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., noting that his 42 years in the chamber made him dean of the Senate, lamented that I cannot vote solely to protect an institution, because the Senate I would be defending no longer exists. And Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., offered an emotional appeal to all combatants. The reality we are in requires us to consider what both Republicans and Democrats have done to erode the trust that has long lasted between us and consider whether we can stop the undeniable momentum toward abolishing the traditions that make the Senate unique and important. But can they? Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the body and a 20-year veteran, didnt sound hopeful. It breaks my heart to find us in this position, he said, recalling what it used to be like and the pride we took in the Senate. Senate traditions will change this week. In honesty they started changing a long time ago. I hope, I just hope, at the end of the day we can resurrect what this institution was all about. Follow Dana Milbank on Twitter, @Milbank. (c) 2017, Washington Post Writers Group LEWISTOWN A coroner's jury determined the death of an inmate at a central Montana jail was not caused by a criminal act. An inquest was held Thursday in the death of 36-year-old Terry Randal Cox II, who was found dead in his cell at the Fergus County jail on July 22, 2016. Coroner Richard Brown oversaw the inquest in which two medical examiners testified that Cox died with a lethal level of methamphetamine in his blood. Investigators testified that they believe Cox had ingested a package containing a large amount of meth before his arrest. Jurors deliberated for about 20 minutes before returning their verdict. An inquest is required by state law if someone dies in law enforcement custody and the death is not caused by a terminal illness. HELENA A 17-year-old student who was expelled after authorities found guns, ammunition, alcohol, and drug paraphernalia in his parked car outside Broadwater High School has returned to class. Officers found a shotgun, a .22 caliber firearm, and the other items during a sweep of the area with a drug dog March 20, Broadwater County Sheriff Wynn Meehan said. The car was parked on school property outside the school in the rural community of Townsend. Meehan said the student failed to remove the firearms from his vehicle after gopher hunting with his friends, and he doesnt believe the boy intended to harm anyone. No charges related to the guns were filed. Hes a good kid, said Meehan, who added that he has known the student for many years. Hes had to learn a pretty valuable lesson. Authorities believe the alcohol was left over from a party held before the schools prom, Meehan said. The boy was charged with possession of alcohol and drug paraphernalia and released to a parent, he said. Townsend School District Superintendent Erik Wilkerson said the student was immediately expelled, and the school board unanimously approved the administrations recommendation to extend the expulsion through March 20, 2018. However, the student returned to school March 29 through a deferred expulsion program that allows him to remain in class as long as he adheres to several conditions, such as counseling. The student is enrolled right now, conditionally, Wilkerson said. Sheriff Meehan said he does not believe the student will make a mistake like this again. Commissioners have agreed to spend up to $17,820 for a Billings firm to market the old NorthWestern Energy building the county took on as part of an agreement to keep the utilitys Montana headquarters in Uptown Butte. We dont have the experience in pushing this out on a national scale to a national audience, Community Development Director Karen Byrnes told council members Wednesday night. We need partners. Commissioners Jim Fisher and Cindy Perdue-Dolan suggested more be done locally to find buyers for the vacant, 110,000-square-foot complex at 40 E. Broadway St., but they were easily outnumbered on a voice vote to hire Billings-based NAI Business Properties to market it. Byrnes said Thursday that several people who have shown interest in the complex including some from Bozeman and Helena will meet with her and other county representatives on Friday to discuss the proposal process, possible uses for the building, timelines, and joint-ownership possibilities. We are hoping we can foster some partnerships between them, she said. The aim is to find a buyer or buyers who will provide the highest and best use for the building and be successful in it, she said. The complex is actually five buildings joined together over many years. Eric Fulton, chief executive officer of a Helena-based company called Treasure State Internet that provides internet services, said he planned to be among those meeting with Byrnes on Friday. He said it was "a spectacular building" but was so massive it might take a group of people to put it to use. The county took ownership last September as part of a 2014 agreement with NorthWestern to stay in Butte. The company built a $25 million office building at Park and Main streets, keeping more than 200 employees here and pumping new property tax revenue into a special Uptown taxing district. In return, the county gave up land for the new building, is building a parking garage where some NorthWestern employees can park, and agreed to take ownership of the old building at 40 E. Broadway if the company couldnt find new owners within 18 months. NorthWestern hung onto it longer than 18 months, but early and repeated claims of optimism by the company and county officials that it would sell have not panned out. The county has been paying to keep the lights and heat on so the building can be shown on short notice, but utility bills were $6,000 to $7,000 per month this winter, Butte-Silver Bow Chief Executive Dave Palmer said this week. Byrnes told commissioners that NAI is the premiere business real estate firm in Montana with offices in Billings and Missoula. It approached the county about marketing the building, she said, because it is doing the same for other properties in Butte. The firm has national outreach, she said, and that should increase chances of getting good offers. Money to pay NAI is coming from revolving grant funds, she said. Commissioner Brendan McDonough suggested that structural engineers or contractors examine the complex first to see if it could be broken down into smaller buildings first. That might make it easier to find buyers, he said. Byrnes said NorthWestern determined it could be separated into three buildings, but that would require major electrical upgrades. And Commissioner John Morgan said that should only be considered if a prospective buyer shows great interest in doing that. Fisher said there were ample people in our community including the Butte Local Development Corp., Headwaters RC&D, and the county officials that could network and seek buyers first. I just think we need a more concerted effort between the people in our community before we go spending money for an out-of-town firm from Billings, he said. Byrnes said those talks and efforts had been made, and Commissioners Sheryl Ralph, John Sorich, and Cindi Shaw all said the professional marketing push was a good idea. I think we need to have someone with new ideas, Sorich said. On Thursday, U.S. President Donald Trump ordered a missile strike on the Shayrat air base, southeast of Homs, over a chemical weapons attack he blamed on Syria's government. The U.S. used the "deconfliction line" to warn Russia ahead of time that the strike was coming. In the aftermath of the attack, which Syria said killed at least seven people, Russia announced it would suspend its cooperation in the information-sharing campaign, the first time the line has been severed. Russia still has several dozen warplanes and batteries of air defense missiles at its base near Latakia, Syria. MUSCATINE Jodi Hansen's love of Muscatine runs deep, from the "small town camaraderie" to the organizations and businesses that contribute to the city and its economy. Recently named director of the Muscatine Convention and Visitors Bureau, Hansen will continue to promote the town she has worked to better through her position as the Blue Zones Community Lead and at other agencies around town. After graduating from Muscatine High School and then University of Iowa, Hansen moved to Chicago where she stayed for 13 years. She has been back in her hometown, she said, for about seven years. Being in a position where she will help promote her hometown, she said, has been special as a former resident who was able to begin rebuilding her connection to Muscatine and its people "from the ground up." "It's truly amazing," she said. "Moving back to Muscatine, I was able to see it from a different perspective, because growing up here, you know, it's your hometown and once you leave sometimes you don't think about what it would be like to come back or if you're coming back." As she became more involved, Hansen said she realized there were many organizations for residents to become involved in and work to transform the community. "And it has a special meaning for me because it is a community that I live in. It's also a community that I grew up in, and to have the ability to help make positive change is really amazing," she said. In Chicago, Hansen was the associate producer of the Jerry Springer Show, and worked on Soundstage with PBS. While she held other jobs in television and the communication industry, Hansen said she felt everything has helped her find her niche in Muscatine. "I think that everything that I've done thus far and been involved with, it seems like when I put it all together it makes sense," she said. The small-town aspects of Muscatine, she said, have helped her make connections she otherwise might not have made. "The opportunities that I have gotten in Muscatine are amazing," Hansen said. Hansen said she hopes to help grow and promote events like Second Saturday, the Muscatine Soapbox Derby and the Melon City Criterium as director of the CVB. "I really look forward to reaching out to our hospitality industry and maintaining and growing those relationships so everybody can be on the same page," she said. Her position, she said, will give her the opportunity to promote the community in many different ways. Hansen is especially looking forward to the new hotel being built near downtown Muscatine, as it will help accommodate some larger groups. "We want to be able to showcase our beautiful, historic downtown Muscatine with all of its unique shops and restaurants," she said. MUSCATINE When she received her social work degree in 2003, Jodi Royal-Goodwin never thought shed work to resolve homelessness. Over the next decade, she would work in homelessness prevention in Reno, Nevada, as the community experienced the aftermath of the 2008 recession. Royal-Goodwin watched renters lose their homes to the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression, coming face-to-face with the hardship of homelessness. It was difficult but she also found joy in helping people find their way to a stable life. We had tent cities, she said. We watched children that would get to (homelessness prevention) services who would start to enjoy going to school, their parents could get a job and the parents felt rewarded. Now, Royal-Goodwin, who is a housing administrator for the city of Muscatine, will get a chance to work on the bigger picture of homelessness prevention in Iowa. This past week, Gov. Terry Branstad appointed her to serve on the Iowa Council on Homelessness, a body that develops homelessness policies and manages federal grants to homeless prevention and other services. Royal-Goodwin said shes been attending the Iowa Council on Homelessness meetings for a while, and when she heard a position on the council opened, she applied. After a vetting process, she received a letter informing her that she would serve on the board. In her new position, Royal-Goodwin hopes to influence policies at the state level. One of her goals, she said, is to attract other jurisdictions across Iowa to the council, and begin a conversation on how the cities do get impacted by the issue and how they can impact the issue. The new role may also bring in some federal dollars to homelessness prevention programs in Muscatine. The Iowa Council on Homelessness allocates federal funds through grants to municipalities across the state, but these grants are competitive. The citys involvement in the council could put it in a more favorable position to receive some of those grant dollars. The need for stable housing, she said, is so visceral to her because it is so basic. When people are experiencing homelessness, they cant focus on tomorrow. Its about today, she said. The instability that homelessness creates can affect a childs ability to learn and a parents ability to stay employed. If many people in the community experience such instability, the community may lose out. Its important to me to do something not a lot of people can or will, she said. You can provide social services in terms of case management or therapy all you want, but what I do is so much more basic than that, and I can understand peoples needs enough to understand that this is what they need and help them find ways to keep stabilized. Providing stable homes, either through rent assistance or public housing, can save communities money in other services. Housing people is actually much cheaper than providing housing through the emergency room, through the jails, she said. Charla Schafer, executive director of MCSA, who works closely with Royal-Goodwin said the appointment will help Muscatine. Its going to improve the success of our entire community, but especially those who struggle with housing, she said. In mostly measured tones, lawmakers representing the Quad-Cities got behind President Donald Trump's decision to launch missile strikes against Syria. But there also were warnings, mostly from Democrats, about the prospect of a deeper commitment there. The strikes, which came late Thursday, also rekindled calls in some corners of Congress for lawmakers to come up with an authorization for use of military force in the event there was to be further action. Rep. Dave Loebsack, D-Iowa, said Friday that Trump should have come to Congress before launching Thursday's strikes. Republicans said Trump showed resolve, and that this represented a break from the Obama administration. "Assad's actions follow a policy under President Obama that lacked any consequences for heinous crimes against Syrian civilians," Grassley said. "The action taken by President Trump to prevent further use of chemical weapons by Assad or anyone else was appropriate." Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, praised the strikes Thursday night. "Unlike the Obama administration, the Trump administration is showing global leadership and we must work to find an end to the root causes of this crisis," Ernst said in a statement. Republicans have long criticized Obama over Syria. In 2013, he raised the prospect of military action after government forces launched a chemical attack. The year before, Obama had said chemical weapons would cross a red line. Obama decided ultimately against launching an attack on his own and went to Congress for authorization. But Congress took no action, either. As for the region's Democrats, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, called Thursday's strikes a "measured response." Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Illinois, said they sent a "clear and measured message" to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Rep. Cheri Bustos, D- Illinois, called Thursday's action a "proportional response." However, they also said Trump needs to lay out a strategy before any further action is taken. Duckworth raised concerns about heightened tensions with Russia. "After weeks of sending dangerously mixed signals on Syria, the president owes it to our troops, who are now in greater danger, to clearly and unequivocally outline the long-term strategic end-state he is seeking to achieve in Syria and the region," she said. Bustos said the president "must present the American people and Congress a clear and transparent strategy to ensure we do not rush into another open-ended conflict in the Middle East." Loebsack, meanwhile, also called for a "comprehensive plan." He did not weigh in specifically on the propriety of Thursday's missile strike but said it was important that the U.S. and the world "ensure that Assad is held to account for war crimes committed against his own people." Grassley also called on the president to "develop a comprehensive strategy with respect to ending the six-year-long crisis in Syria." State: Colorado Recreational visits (2016): 4,517,585 With over 300 miles of trails, Rocky Mountain National Park is a paradise for hikers and backpackers. If visitors time their trip right, they can be greeted by hundreds of different wildflower species in the park. 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 [] The government has taken a crucial step towards tackling Nairobis traffic nightmare. The Cabinet on Thursday approved the creation of the Nairobi Metropolitan Area Transport Authority, key to removing the capitals traffic gridlock and unlocking its vast economic potential. The Cabinet, chaired by President Uhuru Kenyatta at State House, Nairobi, was first briefed on the Nairobi Metropolitan Transport Authority Bill, 2016, which will provide relevant laws to run the authority. Transport Cabinet Secretary James Macharia sought approval for the formation of the authority through the Executive Order issued by President Kenyatta in February. The authority will address the transport challenges that have hampered the economy of the wider Nairobi Metropolitan Area covering the city, Muranga, Kiambu, Kajiado and Machakos. The functions of the authority will include developing a coherent transport policy supportive of the development of the Nairobi Metropolitan Area. It will oversee the implementation of an integrated transport master plan and will also manage the development of a sustainable, integrated Mass Rapid Transit System strategy. Upgrading of the transport system of the metropolitan area will have huge benefits for the countrys economy, which is estimated to be losing more than Sh100 billion annually due to Nairobis inefficient transport system. Studies show that Nairobi has a sleeping population of about 4.2 million people and a day population of 7 million people who mainly come from the surrounding counties of Kiambu, Machakos, Muranga and Kajiado. The Ministry of Transport has already entered into an agreement with the Five Counties the authority will cover for the development of an integrated transport system. In February, President Kenyatta issued an Executive Order directing the establishment of the agency. The Nairobi Metropolitan Area Transport Authority Bill provides for a council that will oversee the running of the metropolitan transport authority. The Nairobi Metropolitan Area Council will be headed by a chairperson to be appointed by the President. The functions of the council will include receiving the annual budget estimates of the authority and approve external funding and bilateral agreements in line with the national financial and fiscal policies. Gwada Ogot, the man behind a petition to legalize planting, sale or trade in cannabis sativa on Thursday appeared before The Senate Health Committee to defend his proposal. Ogot, a resident of Siaya county, argues in his petition that the plant has a myriad of documented benefits. I pray the House recommends amnesty for all people jailed for possession, usage, sale, cultivation and transportation of cannabis sativa. Criminalising cannabis creates criminals where none existed, Mr Ogot said. If his proposal goes through, bhang will be deleted from the list of narcotic drugs in the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act of 1994. He is also advocating for the establishment of a Cannabis regulatory body-Cannabis Sativa Board of Kenya (CSBK), to oversee the sector to ensure planting, trade, and consumption of the drug. The committee, chaired by Migori Senator, Dr Wilfred Machage, will seek public views on the matter before preparing a report about the viability of the proposal. The first public proponents of the petition have come from Kenyans on Twitter who took to the social media platform to air their views. Using the hashtag #BhangPetition, below are some of their reactions: #BhangPetition was it ever illegal? Its all over.. ? ? Duke Kamanda (@Kamandah_Duke) April 6, 2017 #BhangPetition Its only illegal on Paper. In the streets, its easily available than Water in most Nairobi households. Mr. Kinangop (@SK_Njoroge) April 6, 2017 I dont wanna drink and drive, I wanna smoke weed and fly #BhangPetition Son Of The West? (@vincentjared1) April 6, 2017 2 committees to be chosen. Those for to smoke it while those against to remain sober we see wholl come up with better points #BhangPetition IamConstato (@ConstatoAsirvex) April 6, 2017 Cannabis oil has been proven to cure asthma and many cancer types #BhangPetition Chris Kabata Kahwai (@kaduck69) April 6, 2017 kuenda class nikiwa high alafu nascore the highest this is beyond human understanding hamuezi prove na science #BhangPetition newton atkings (@NewtonAtkings) April 6, 2017 Cigarettes are more harmful than weed. Scientifically proven#BhangPetition Martin kirimi (@Martoh101) April 6, 2017 Is marijuana really illegal in Kenya, how comes its easy to get than the legal things #BhangPetition vincent baraza (@vincentbaraza) April 6, 2017 Legalization will make Kenya the first African Destination globally, good for our dwindling tourism and opening new ops #BhangPetition eddy mo (@eddy7mo) April 6, 2017 #BhangPetition nice petition in kisii there are no tractors to farm but bhang is the only fuel that powers people to farm like tractors justin orangi (@justin_orangi) April 6, 2017 Seriously ? what should be banned in kenya ? #BhangPetition pic.twitter.com/fdVtIIwSp1 Towett (@TowettKE) April 6, 2017 #BhangPetition I dont smoke weed I only burn plants and breathe DANCAN SHIUNDU (@muyokani_) April 6, 2017 Well, weed will eventually become legal. And if Kenya wants to dominate the market it should start now. #BhangPetition Jeff (@JEFFXJAMLICK) April 6, 2017 #BhangPetition ikiwa legal the government will start taxing us for itshash will be 100 n bush fifty??? jacqueline ngabo (@ms_ngabo1jay) April 6, 2017 #BhangPetition I have seen people Ive never seen on twitter for the 1st time on Twitter on this hashtag. Im not pointing fingers ??? Njoki James (@Jaymoestan) April 6, 2017 The problem with running a flashy campaign with eye-catchy texts and images and big dreams, is that it will all come back to haunt you if you fail to deliver. Sometime back, images from Jubilees campaign manifesto showing what looked like a modern electric train, were revisited when the ancient-looking locomotives from China finally arrived. Read: Jubilee Manifesto Photo Returns To Haunt Them After Delivery of Ugly SGR Locomotives Now yesterday, the person handling the Presidents Twitter thought it wise to tweet a quote from the President about what seems like a broken campaign promise. While receiving the Queens Baton for 2018 Commonwealth Games at KICC yesterday, Uhuru reiterated his governments pledge to construct new stadiums across the country. I want us all to be perfectly clear on that matter: three major stadia will soon be constructed in Nairobi, Mombasa and Eldoret, in line with the manifesto promise that we made, the President said. Well, to be perfectly clear, Jubilee promised 5 not 3 new stadiums. But this promise has been very elusive. Im surprised Uhuru had the guts to bring it up. Since the last election, there have been a few renovations in stadiums, but most of these have been conducted by county governments. Were yet to see a single stadium constructed by the national government from the ground up. As expected, KOT were quick to call out the president on this one. Heres are some tweets. @UKenyatta Dude please, why do you have to lie every time? Mister H (@githaka_) April 6, 2017 @UKenyatta Oh! Lord where did we go wrong as country ? Bonface Osano (@bonfaceosano) April 6, 2017 @kwintah1 but this guy @UKenyatta is becoming a pathological liar! Bonface Osano (@bonfaceosano) April 6, 2017 @UKenyatta NP Liar | Wahu aleckie ronald (@SirAlexas) April 6, 2017 @UKenyatta ???? Bra bra bra ndo sitaki kusikia M..W..IT. .I (@bmwiti1) April 6, 2017 @UKenyatta Nye nyenye nyenye nyenye nyenye nyenyenyenyenyenyenyenye.. fatscrumhalf (@AGathiri) April 6, 2017 @UKenyatta Classic case of starting the assignment the night before its due Stringer Bell (@CuntBeBothered) April 6, 2017 @UKenyatta Define soon Does the construction start before, during or after the general elections coz you cant promise us the same thing twice.? Fujo Makelele (@Jokersmokr) April 6, 2017 @UKenyatta Im with you on this one. I too used to seriously read 3 days to exams na nilikua napita bado. khamis athman (@khamisathman) April 6, 2017 @UKenyatta *Googles how to build a Stadium in four months.* Boss, feasibility studies, concept drawings na geophysical studies pekee will take longer. Mohamed Komora (@mohamedkomz) April 6, 2017 @UKenyatta The mad man of Mobatha has built this at Uwanja wa Mbuzi and he never promised us pic.twitter.com/ViEOallPv5 Fauz Khalid (@FauzKhalid) April 6, 2017 A 25-year-old man suspected of robbing the US Bank in American Canyon last month has been arrested in Marin County, according to American Canyon Police. Dandre Chandler Lee Young of Berkeley was arrested on suspicion of attempted robbery, burglary and possession of a controlled substance just one week after allegedly slipping a note to a teller at the US Bank and claiming to have a gun and pipe bombs. Young fled the scene after getting an undisclosed amount of cash from the teller, police said. Police were dispatched to the bank at 6:55 p.m. March 8, but Young was already gone, police said. The next day, police asked for help identifying the suspect, describing him as a black male age 30-35 who was wearing black clothing with a red flannel shirt underneath, dark sunglasses and a black hat. Young was arrested during a traffic stop in Fairfield on March 15, Bay City News reported. When the California Highway Patrol stopped Young for speeding, he was arrested on a warrant out of Marin County. Young was previously identified as a suspect in an attempted bank robbery that occurred at the First Community Bank inside the Safeway store in the Corte Madera Town Center on Feb. 28. When officers searched Young's home, they located the vehicle used in a Corte Madera attempted robbery, according to Bay City News. Young, a security guard, is being held in Marin County jail on $255,000 bail. He is scheduled to appear in Marin County Superior Court on April 26. One of the most distinctive flourishes of the Archer Napa, the citys newest and tallest building, has land-use planners stamp of approval. The Planning Commission on Thursday signed off on a pair of vertical marquees facing east and west that will spell out ARCHER HOTEL in lighted, 2-foot-tall letters of white-painted aluminum, near the southwest corner of the six-story, 183-room hotel going up on downtown First Street. The top-down signage each letter column will be up to 36 2/3 feet tall, spanning three upper floors will be the largest advertisement on the skin of the Archer, a $70 million project being developed by LodgeWorks Partners LP of Wichita, Kansas. Built on the site of the former Merrills drugstore, the Archer, which is scheduled to open at midyear, is an eclectic but mainly modernist exercise in metal, glass and stone including the corner tower facing the Randolph Street crossing, where the marquee will be mounted although the structure also incorporates part of the Merrills columned terracotta facade along First Street. Six smaller, rectangular signs will identify shops that will fill the Archers ground floor, with a maximum 12-inch letter height, according to plans filed with the city. Four of the storefronts will face west, away from First and toward the former Napa Town Center, which is being redeveloped into the First Street Napa pedestrian mall. Planners on Thursday also approved designs for the Archers food and beverage services, including a rooftop lounge equipped with beer-making equipment producing five barrels per batch. The brewing equipment, which would use liquid malt extract instead of the raw grain and hops used by conventional breweries, qualifies LodgeWorks for a Type 75 license, which the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control grants to eateries making their own beer to allow them to serve liquor as well. Charlie Palmer Steak, the Archers main restaurant, will be on the hotels ground floor along with its bar, city plans indicate. The permit will allow the steakhouse, bar and rooftop lounge to stay open nightly until the 2 a.m. closing time set by California law, although it is likely that the bar/lounge areas will not remain open this late every day, Associate Planner Michael Allen wrote in a memorandum to planners. No alcohol will be served after 1:30 a.m. At 65 feet, the Archer Hotel is Napas tallest structure, exceeding the Andaz hotel farther west on First. The Archer will enter a downtown hotel scene that appears primed for more growth and competition. In March, the local developer James Keller struck a $2 million deal to buy the earthquake-damaged Second Street post office, a 1930s Art Deco landmark, for conversion into an 80-room hotel. Other lodging projects floated for central Napa include a four-story mixed-use complex in the Oxbow District with 27 rooms, and a 74-room inn with condominiums that would be built across the street. In addition, a multistory hotel on part of the Napa City Hall property is one element of the citys plan to build a new headquarters. The hotel is a way to generate room taxes to help cover construction costs. Doctors are on the cusp of launching the first new male contraceptive in more than a century. But rather than a Big Pharma lab, the breakthrough is emerging from a university startup in the heart of rural India. Years of human trials on the injectable, sperm-zapping product are coming to an end, and researchers are preparing to submit it for regulatory approval. Results so far show its safe, effective and easy to use-but gaining little traction with drugmakers. Thats frustrating its inventor, who says his technique could play a crucial role in condom-averse populations. A new birth control method for men has the potential to win as much as half the $10 billion market for female contraceptives worldwide and cut into the $3.2 billion of annual condom sales, businesses dominated by pharmaceutical giants Bayer AG, Pfizer Inc. and Merck & Co., according to estimates from the last major drug company to explore the area. Indias reversible procedure could cost as little as $10 in poor countries, and may provide males with years-long fertility control, overcoming compliance problems and avoiding ongoing costs associated with condoms and the female birth-control pill, which is usually taken daily. It could also ease the burden on the 225 million women in developing countries, who the World Health Organization says have an unmet need for contraception. Yet so far only a U.S. non-profit has taken up development of the technology abroad. For Sujoy Guha, 76, the biomedical engineer who invented the product, the challenge is to find a company that wants to sell it. But male contraception is an area Big Pharma has so far shown little interest in. The fact that the big companies are run by white, middle-aged males who have the same feeling-that they would never do it-plays a major role, said Herjan Coelingh Bennink, a gynecology professor who helped develop the contraceptives Implanon and Cerazette as head of research and development in womens health for Organon International from 1987 to 2000. If those companies were run by women, it would be totally different. Guhas technique for impairing male fertility relies on a polymer gel thats injected into the sperm-carrying tubes in the scrotum. The gel, which has the consistency of melted chocolate, carries a positive charge that acts as a buffer on negatively charged sperm, damaging their heads and tails, and rendering them infertile. The treatment, known as reversible inhibition of sperm under guidance, or RISUG, is reversed with a second shot that breaks down the gel, allowing sperm to reach the penis normally. The expected launch of RISUG over the next two years will contribute to the Indian contraceptive markets 17 percent growth through 2021, according to a report last year from Pharmaion Consultants, based near New Delhi. The procedure is 98 percent effective at preventing pregnancy-about the same as condoms if they are used every time-and has no major side effects, according to R. S. Sharma, head of reproductive biology and maternal health at the Indian Council of Medical Research. About 540 men have received it in India, where it continues to prevent pregnancies in their partners 13 years after treatment, he said. A submission to regulators this year will seek approval for RISUG as a permanent method of birth control. That will be appended with clinical data supporting reversibility, Sharma said. India has more married women with an unmet need for family planning than any other country, and social stigma and a lack of privacy in stores has kept condom use to less than 6 percent.Read More: Durex Wants to Break Indias Condom-Buying Taboo Globally, men tend to take a back seat in matters of contraception. Almost 60 percent of women in spousal relationships used the contraceptive pill or some other form of modern contraception worldwide in 2015, according to a United Nations report. In contrast, 8 percent relied on their male partner using a condom. A new option for male birth control could garner as much as half the female contraceptives market, according to research by Organon in the 1990s, when the Dutch drugmaker partnered with Germanys Schering AG on the last major effort to develop a male birth control pill. Demand would come from couples in long-term relationships looking to share family-planning responsibilities and single men looking for an alternative to condoms to prevent an unintended pregnancy from casual sex, Coelingh Bennink said. Still, there were questions at Organon about whether it would be worthwhile financially to develop a new entrant in the low-margin contraceptives market, and the project was eventually shelved, he said. Efforts on a hormone-based male contraceptive continued in 2008 in a study co-funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and UN agencies that was published in October. While the injected regimens efficacy was relatively good compared to other methods, the study was terminated early after a safety review. The authors noted a relatively high frequency of mild to moderate mood disorders, sparking a media uproar over perceived double standards in the development of contraceptives because the side effects seemed similar to those women experience on the pill. Bayer, which bought Schering in 2006, stopped all research and development activities around male fertility control about a decade ago, said Astrid Kranz, a company spokeswoman. Although an earlier clinical trial involving the administration of hormones via injection and an implant was efficient, with a tolerable side effect profile, Kranz said, the Leverkusen, Germany-based drugmaker wasnt convinced this inconvenient regimen would find sufficient market acceptance. Male contraception isnt an area of active research for Pfizer and Merck either, representatives said. Both companies sell products for female fertility control. Side effects aside, it would take about $100 million and 10 years to bring a hormone-based male birth control pill to market-a low-priority undertaking for pharmaceutical executives, Coelingh Bennink said. Thats now the dilemma Indian inventor Guha faces. In doing anything abroad, quite substantial money is required, and that can only come from the pharmaceutical industry, Guha said, surrounded by dusty stacks of paper, books and prototype inventions that bury every surface in his office at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) west of Kolkata. In the face of disinterest from the pharmaceutical industry, Guha licensed the technology to the Parsemus Foundation, a U.S.-based non-profit, to help establish a market for it outside India, he said. Parsemus is working on its own version, called Vasalgel, that it plans to manufacture and distribute at near cost-or potentially $10 to $20 per person in low- and middle-income countries-and $400 to $600 per person in wealthier markets, Elaine Lissner, the foundations founder, said in an email. The foundation, based in Berkeley, California, is seeking donations to fund costly human trials starting next year after a study in 16 rhesus monkeys published last month showed Vasalgel was successful in preventing conception while the primates fraternized with females for 5 to 24 months. Guha meantime has registered a startup in India called IcubedG Ideas Pvt. Ltd. through which he is pushing ahead with introducing the technology in his home country. He leased space in a New Delhi industrial zone in January after developing a method of mass production using a government grant. Three couples who participated in the clinical trials gathered in his Kharagpur office in February to attest to the need. Kinkar Ari, 39, a day laborer from a nearby village, said that when he and his wife decided they didnt want more children they had a choice between tubal ligation for her or vasectomy for him, but neither could afford the time off to recuperate from the surgery. When a public health worker told the couple about Guhas promising alternative, Ari decided to enroll in the study. The injection took 15 minutes with local anesthesia, and after half an hour of observation at the clinic, he said, he was able to walk the 2.5 kilometers home. Two days later, he was back at work. Ari was so enthused by the procedure he convinced two other couples to have it done, he said. Such stories encourage Guha to persist, he said, even though patents on his invention have long since expired and he wont see any personal financial gain even if it takes off worldwide. Why should the burden be borne by the female only? he said in his office after the three couples had left. There has to be an equal partnership. PARIS A political party that would abolish same-sex marriage one whose founder wanted AIDS patients rounded up and branded homosexuality "a biological and social anomaly" is now winning LGBT votes in France. Motivated in part by the deadly Islamic extremist attacks at home and at a Florida gay nightclub, a growing bloc of traditionally left-leaning gay voters has embraced far-right French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, leader of the once-fringe National Front party. "Faced with the current threats, particularly from radical Islam, gays have realized they'll be the first victims of these barbarians, and only Marine is proposing radical solutions," said Kelvin Hopper, 25, a gay artist who lives in a hipster district of Paris and plans to cast his ballot for Le Pen. While nobody knows how far Le Pen's supporters will carry her in the April 23-May 7 vote, several years of polls have shown the National Front is now more popular with the LGBT voters who make up 6.5 percent of the French electorate than it is with straight voters. That the constituency once reviled by the party is buoying it suggests populism has taken root in France more deeply than previously thought. The embrace goes both ways. Since taking over the National Front in 2011, Le Pen has worked to soften the racist, homophobic reputation of the party co-founded by her father who was twice-prosecuted for Holocaust denial. Surrounding herself with gay advisers, a strategy known as "pinkwashing," has been a key part of these efforts that have put her within striking distance of the presidential Elysee. Jean-Marie Le Pen, 88, once declared "there are no queens" in the National Front and, in a sulfurous assault on the gay community in the 1980s, compared AIDS-sufferers to lepers whom he advocated keeping in isolation centers. To "de-demonize" the party and give it wider appeal, his daughter publicly shunned him. In a stark irony of history, Marine Le Pen's National Front has more top aides who are publicly known to be gay than any other French political party. The unusual distinction prompted commentators to give Le Pen the epithet "Pink Marine." The most prominent of the party's gay operatives is her No. 2, Vice-President Florian Philippot. He came out after being unwittingly photographed by a gossip magazine on a private weekend away in Vienna with a man in 2014. The mass shooting at the Pulse gay club in Orlando, Florida, in June also boosted Le Pen's standing with LGBT voters. Shortly after recordings emerged in which the U.S.-born attacker who killed 49 people pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, Le Pen declared "how much homosexuality is attacked in countries that live under the Islamist jackboot." Although some critics have accused her of opportunism, the rebranding work has paid off. French polling firm IFOP says its surveys show a "constant progression of the National Front among the gay electorate" since Marine Le Pen took over. At 16.5 percent, the proportion of gay, lesbian and bisexual people supporting the party last fall was 2 percentage points higher than its share of straight voters, according to the firm's research. "There is a large risk that the Orlando killing exacerbates an anti-Muslim sentiment among sexual minorities, all the more so because they have shown for several years to be more and more responsive to the security and anti-immigrant discourse of the National Front," the study says. Surprisingly, research of voting patterns also shows that one-third of gays who wed after France legalized same-sex marriage in 2013 voted for National Front candidates in the 2015 regional elections even though the party would scrap the marriage equality law. Courting LGBT voters, "pinkwashing" the far-right, has been a delicate dance for Le Pen. She was noticeably absent from divisive nationwide protests against the same-sex marriage law introduced by the Socialist government of outgoing President Francois Hollande. Yet she can't afford to alienate the party's old guard as she tries to broaden its base. Buried in her election manifesto is a pledge to abolish gay marriage, a position aimed at appeasing the National Front's extreme-right flank. National Front Chief Campaign Strategist Sebastien Chenu, who is the most open about his sexual orientation among the party's gay top officials, disagreed that the plan was homophobic during an interview with The Associated Press. In its place, Chenu explained, would be a bolstered civil unions law providing same-sex couples with "the same duties, the same obligations" as marriage, he said. Chenu agrees that the National Front has seen a spike in support because of fear from the extremist attacks France has endured in recent years. The number of gay men in prominent positions within the party is a much less significant factor, he said. "Those who want to fight against freedoms are Islamic radicals," Chenu said. "They put bombs in gay night clubs in the United States. So obviously, it creates an anxiety for a certain number of gays." France is not the only place where far-right rhetoric conflating Islam with radical jihad has been used to shake up long-standing political alliances. In the Netherlands, Party for Freedom leader Geert Wilders said that his party, which is hostile to Muslims and wants to halt immigration, should hold natural appeal for LGBT voters. "We were always one of the top parties that were supported by (the gay) community. We believe that like Christians and Jews and women and journalists, gay people are also one of the first to pay the price of ... Islamization," Wilders said. In the United States, President Donald Trump, too, has used rhetoric expressing solidarity with gays as a means of attacking some Muslim-majority countries claiming during the presidential debates last year that they "push gays off of buildings." The lurch to the far-right by LGBT voters called homonationalism deeply shocks those who see the nationalist sentiments sweeping Europe as a threat that could erode hard-fought freedoms, not protect them. "It is true that terror attacks and religious extremists brought huge publicity to Marine Le Pen. And she profits from this. She profits from people's fear," Yannick Fredefon, a gay Paris resident, said. One factor that explains the new wave of LGBT support is that many Le Pen voters are millennials like Hopper who are too young to remember the National Front's neo-fascist roots or the acid anti-gay sentiments openly expressed by her father. Others, especially gay men, are in awe of the blond, blue-eyed, 48-year-old former lawyer's persona they see an audacious, strong-willed woman writing the rules in a world of men. If elected, Le Pen would be France's first female president. "Marine is a strong, combative, honest woman," Hopper said. Experts say the wooing strategy works best on gay people who see the fight for equality as over and no longer feel obligated to support the liberal politicians who traditionally defend their rights. "Having recently acquired the right to marry and adopt children, an important part of the gay electorate is turning to the extreme right because they do not need to support the left anymore on these issues," IFOP pollster Francois Kraus said. But gay rights groups in France warn against complacency. "The simple idea of reversing (the marriage equality) law is in itself a homophobic act as it is to want discrimination again," said Clemence Zamora Cruz, a spokeswoman for Inter-LGBT, a coalition of French LGBT rights groups. PROVIDENCE, R.I. A yearslong fight over letting a cockatoo named Tootsie onto Rhode Island campgrounds might have finally reached a compromise. A proposal to let some exotic pets onto state-owned campsites was vetoed in 2012 by then-Gov. Lincoln Chafee. Another attempt stalled in the legislature in 2015. Now, Democratic state Rep. Evan Shanley said he's found a way to make it work after meeting with the state veterinarian and environmental officials. His bill would allow cockatoos, parakeets and other birds in the parrot family onto campgrounds but not gerbils, turtles and goldfish, which a previous version of the bill sought to allow. "I have no idea why gerbils, turtles and goldfish were included," Shanley said. The House Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing on the bill Thursday. The proposal would allow up to two birds in the parrot family per campsite, so long as the birds stay inside a recreational vehicle or camper. Warwick resident Tom Wharton has been fighting for permission to let his 23-year-old cockatoo accompany him to campgrounds around the state, as dogs and cats are allowed to do. "She loves the outdoors," Wharton said. "There's no logical reason why she can't accompany me." Shanley, a Warwick Democrat, took up Tootsie's cause this year. It was originally championed by his Republican predecessor, former Rep. Joe Trillo. Wharton said he used to like to take Tootsie to a campsite near the ocean, but they were kicked out following complaints. "She's safe, she's quiet, she loves children," Wharton said. "She's not a nuisance in any way. She's just a bird." Political expert to discuss 2016 presidential election by Pete Rosenbery CARBONDALE, Ill. -- Southern Illinois University Carbondale next week will host John Sides, an associate professor of political science, author, and popular blogger, to offer his perspective on the 2016 presidential election. Sides will present Donald Trump: How Did He Win and What Does It Mean? at 7 p.m., Wednesday, April 12, in Student Center Ballroom B. Sides presentation is part of The Morton-Kenney Public Affairs Lecture Series presented by the Department of Political Science and the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute. Anyone who wants to know why Donald Trump won should listen to John Sides, J. Tobin Grant, a professor in the Department of Political Science, said. He's not just an expert on political campaigns. He's someone who excels at knowing what the public wants to know and communicating it clearly. The event is free and the public is invited. Media Advisory Reporters, photographers and news crews are welcome to cover the lecture. To arrange for interviews or for more information on the event, contact Carol Greenlee, assistant director, Paul Simon Public Policy Institute, at 618/967-2816 or cgreenlee@siu.edu. Sides is an associate professor of political science at George Washington University. He is co-author of a forthcoming book about the 2016 presidential election. Sides also co-authored The Gamble: Choice and Chance in the 2012 Presidential Election, a textbook on campaigns, along with scholarly articles on campaign strategies, attitudes toward immigration, and other topics. John Sides is amazingly adept at blending academic expertise and practical insights in his writings for the Washington Post and the Monkey Cage political blog, Jak Tichenor, interim institute director, said. Hes equally at home dissecting Donald Trumps complex relationship with the nations media during last years Presidential contest to predicting the difficulty the new chief executive would have in repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act. I think people are really going to enjoy hearing what he has to say about the news of the day. While on campus, Sides will have a roundtable discussion with graduate students in political science, present a guest lecture in an Introduction to American Politics class, and meet with student ambassadors in political science and the Simon Institute. Sides is the 41st lecturer in the series that began in 1995. The Morton-Kenney lecture series brings speakers to campus in the spring and fall of each year. Jerome Mileur, originally from Murphysboro, is a professor emeritus in political science at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, retiring in 2004 after a 37-year teaching career there. Mileur established the series in 1995 in honor of two of his political science professors -- Ward Morton and David Kenney -- who inspired him as a student. Mileur earned his bachelors degree in speech communication in 1955, and a doctorate in government in 1971, both from SIU Carbondale. New Delhi [India], Apr.7 (ANI-Businesswire India): Surging ahead in its endeavor towards creating sustainable ecosystem, India's largest multinational flexible packaging materials and solution company Uflex Limited has extended its existing partnership with Fiinovation (a global CSR consulting company) for natural resource conservation and optimization initiatives in Bhind District of Madhya Pradesh. Earlier last year Uflex in conjunction with Fiinovation had successfully rolled out rain water harvesting and plantation interventions at two villages of Gautam Buddha Nagar District of Uttar Pradesh through the implementation agency AROH Foundation. This year, Uflex in association with Fiinovation shall be replicating the success story at a village near Malanpur in Bhind District of Madhya Pradesh through 'Bal Mahila Vikas Samiti', a non-profit organization and a leading Micro Financing Institution of Madhya Pradesh that has been working towards rural development, child rights promotion, poverty alleviation, water, sanitation, hygiene, environment and natural resource management. Notably, Uflex manufactures PET Chips (raw material for polyester film) at its plant in Malanpur with a production capacity of 72,000 Tonnes Per Annum. The initiative in Bhind District will be replication of the ongoing intervention in the identified villages of the Gautam Buddha Nagar District in the National Capital Region that was recently acknowledged by ABP News CSR Leadership Award Jury as the 'Best Environment Friendly Project'. The initiative quite like the one in NCR aims to build capacity of the community to conserve and optimize the natural resource base. This would particularly include construction of carefully planned ex-situ rainwater harvesting structures for arresting rain water and charging the aquifers; organic and inorganic mulching to protect soil cover and focused plantation drives in a village near Malanpur. The initiative shall further entail plantation of 2400 saplings at individual and community owned land parcels in a bid to enhance the green cover, provide fodder for the livestock throughout the year while also supplementing farmers' income. Around 100 farmers will stand to benefit from the intervention over a period of next three years. The initiative underscores active participation of all stakeholders like village panchayat, farmers, local administration, social workers, schools, men and women. This will lead to the improvement of ground water level due to percolation resulting in better availability of water for domestic and agricultural use; reduced soil erosion and overall enhancement of the air and water quality leading to improved health quotient of village inhabitants. Mr. Soumitro Chakraborty, CEO - Fiinovation upon extending ties with Uflex said, "Our engagements with Uflex Ltd. have been one of the most successful ones and are effectively directed towards environmental sustainability at a time when the nation is reeling under a massive environmental crisis, especially droughts and ground water depletion. The natural resource conservation initiatives are aligned with sustainable development goals and aim to inspire other businesses for plantation drives and rainwater harvesting thereby helping India to achieve its intended national targets." Soon after initiating the programme, Mr. Ashok Chaturvedi, Chairman and Managing Director, Uflex Limited said, "I am glad to see the replication of good practices that we amassed while working at the villages in Gautam Buddha Nagar District. It is not necessary to re-invent the wheel every time. Sustainable environmental interventions that are tried and tested become reckoner for others to benefit from the same thereby promoting the larger good. Our on-ground experiences in the villages of NCR will significantly help us in rolling out the initiative near Malanpur in Madhya Pradesh." (ANI-Businesswire India) Politicians, when they fly, should keep in mind that they are equal to others on-board and must follow instructions by the airlines operator, said well-known aviation historian P. Anuradha Reddy on Friday. She said a member of Parliament or any other politician is no different from others on-board. Though the ban imposed by Air India on Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad has been lifted with his apology for assaulting the airline's staff member last month, Reddy feels this is a lesson for all politicians. "The politicians who travel at the cost of public, should keep in mind that when they misbehave with an airline employee, they are disturbing the duty of a professional organisation," she told IANS. "People don't realise that on flight the pilot, the co-pilot supported by the crew are final authority on anything and are responsible for safety of the aircraft and all passengers," said Reddy, author of the book 'Aviation in the Hyderabad Dominions'. She hailed the firm stand taken by Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapati Raju in backing Air India. Stating that Air India had got a good Chairman and Managing Director in Ashwani Lohani, Reddy said he should be allowed to carry on his work and there should be no political interference. Reddy blamed the interference by the elected politicians for the present condition of Air India. "It's not the same Air India that JRD Tata gave to the nation. It's important that the airlines is allowed to be operated professionally and should not be interfered with politically. That is what will bring Air India back to the kind of position it once had on world aviation platform," she added. --IANS ms/lok/vt ( 289 Words) 2017-04-07-17:10:08 (IANS) As news of Don Rickles's death spread, stars including Tom Hanks, Bob Saget and Amy Schumer, took to social media to pay their respects to the legendary comedian. Rickles died of kidney failure on Thursday at his home here, his publicist Paul Shefrin said. He was 90. The master of the comic insult, Rickles rose to fame in the 1950s through his association with the Rat Pack. Although he was widely known as an "insult" comic, stars, especially those in the comedy world, refuted that with stories about his kindness. In a statement, Bob and Ginnie Newhart expressed their shock and condolences regarding Rickles' death, reports variety.com. The statement read: "He was called The Merchant of Venom' but in truth, he was one of the kindest, caring and most sensitive human beings we have ever known. We are devastated and our world will never be the same. We were totally unprepared for this." Rose Marie, co-star of "The Dick Van Dyke Show", also said: "One of my dearest friends is gone. What a talent! He was remarkable and one of our favourites to work with on The Dick Van Dyke Show'. I have known him since he came to California. I will miss him something terrible." Dick Van Dyke also paid tribute to the late comic. "Those were the days, my friend Don. We thought they'd never end. We loved you so," Van Dyke tweeted. David Letterman said of the late comic: "Don coming on our show was always a highlight for me. Just endless mischief and nonsense, and a guy who would make the audience go completely crazy. Such a professional, such a gentleman. I already miss him." Director Martin Scorsese, whom Rickles worked with in his 1995 crime drama "Casino", appreciated the fact that he was able to see the "evolution" of Rickles's comedy. Tom Hanks tweeted: "A God died today. Don Rickles, we did not want to ever lose you. Never. Hanx." Jimmy Kimmel also posted: "90 years with Don Rickles weren't enough. One of the sweetest and most lovely people I had the pleasure of knowing. We miss you already." He was later a frequent and outrageous guest on "The Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts," which ran on NBC from the mid-1970s to the mid-'80s. The comedian, sarcastically nicknamed "Mr. Warmth," starred in "Pajama Party" and "Kelly's Heroes" among other films, and was the voice of Mr. Potato Head in the popular "Toy Story." Mel Brooks tweeted: "Don Rickles. One of the bravest, funniest, and sweetest guys that ever performed. A dear pal that we will all sorely miss." Mark Wahlberg said "Don Rickles was an absolute legend, my favourite comedian, and also my friend. Rest in peace." David Arquette said death won't stop Rickles from doing what he does best. --IANS sug/rb/bg ( 478 Words) 2017-04-07-14:16:07 (IANS) You may want to gift a dog to your baby as a recent study has suggested that a pet early in life may alter gut bacteria in immune-boosting ways. The University of Alberta study showed that babies from families with pets--70 per cent of which were dogs--showed higher levels of two types of microbes associated with lower risks of allergic disease and obesity. But don't rush out to adopt a furry friend just yet. "There's definitely a critical window of time when gut immunity and microbes co-develop, and when disruptions to the process result in changes to gut immunity," said pediatric epidemiologist Anita Kozyrskyj. The latest findings from Kozyrskyj and her team's work on fecal samples collected from infants registered in the Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development study build on two decades of research that show children who grow up with dogs have lower rates of asthma. The theory is that exposure to dirt and bacteria early in life--for example, in a dog's fur and on its paws--can create early immunity, though researchers aren't sure whether the effect occurs from bacteria on the furry friends or from human transfer by touching the pets, said Kozyrskyj. Her team of 12, including study co-author and U of A post-doctoral fellow Hein Min Tun, take the science one step closer to understanding the connection by identifying that exposure to pets in the womb or up to three months after birth increases the abundance of two bacteria, Ruminococcus and Oscillospira, which have been linked with reduced childhood allergies and obesity, respectively. "The abundance of these two bacteria were increased twofold when there was a pet in the house," said Kozyrskyj, adding that the pet exposure was shown to affect the gut microbiome indirectly--from dog to mother to unborn baby--during pregnancy as well as during the first three months of the baby's life. In other words, even if the dog had been given away for adoption just before the woman gave birth, the healthy microbiome exchange could still take place. The study also showed that the immunity-boosting exchange occurred even in three birth scenarios known for reducing immunity, as shown in Kozyrskyj's previous work: C-section versus vaginal delivery, antibiotics during birth and lack of breastfeeding. The study suggested that the presence of pets in the house reduced the likelihood of the transmission of vaginal GBS (group B Strep) during birth, which causes pneumonia in newborns and is prevented by giving mothers antibiotics during delivery. It's far too early to predict how this finding will play out in the future, but Kozyrskyj doesn't rule out the concept of a "dog in a pill" as a preventive tool for allergies and obesity. "It's not far-fetched that the pharmaceutical industry will try to create a supplement of these microbiomes, much like was done with probiotics," she said. The study appears in the journal Microbiome. (ANI) Yet, a recent research co-authored by a Michigan State University business scholar found nearly 1,800 occurrences of large data breaches in patient information over a seven-year period. According to the study by Xuefeng "John" Jiang and colleagues from Johns Hopkins and Ball State universities, the data breaches occurred in health care facilities ranging from UC Davis Medical Center in California to Henry Ford Hospital in Michigan. "Our findings underscore the critical need for increased data protection in the health care industry," Jiang said. "While the law requires health care professionals and systems to cross-share patient data, the more people who can access data, the less secure it is." The researchers examined Department of Health and Human Services data for the period October 2009-December 2016. By law, hospitals covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPPA, must notify HHS of any breach affecting 500 or more individuals within 60 days from the discovery of the breach. They found that healthcare providers reported 1,225 of the 1,798 recorded breaches, while business associates, health plans and healthcare clearinghouses reported the rest. 257 breaches reported by 216 hospitals, while 33 hospitals experienced more than one breach - many of which are large, major teaching hospitals. This research reinforces the critical trade-off patients face: healthcare systems having access to information they need, versus a hacker planning to spend your savings at Best Buy. The study is published in JAMA Internal Medicine. (ANI) Turns out, warding off the side effects of radiation treatment in prostate cancer patients is as simple as doing twice-weekly yoga. Men who attended a structured yoga class twice a week during prostate cancer radiation treatment reported less fatigue and better sexual and urinary function than those who didn't, according to a clinical trial led by the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. It is the first randomized trial to look at the effect of twice-weekly yoga on the side-effects and quality of life issues caused by prostate cancer treatment. All of the patients in the trial underwent between six and nine weeks of external beam radiation therapy for prostate cancer. The patients were randomized into two groups: one arm participated in a yoga class that met twice a week and the other arm served as a control group. Patients who already practiced yoga on their own were not eligible for the study, nor were patients with a history of prior radiation therapy or those with metastatic disease. Only two instructors led classes for this study, with the lead instructor teaching 75 percent of the classes. Each session lasted 75 minutes, beginning with five minutes of breathing and centering techniques and ending with five minutes of Savasana, a common yoga position. Typical sessions incorporated sitting, standing, and reclining positions that were modified using props to adapt to each patient's needs and restrictions. Patients were primarily evaluated on their level of fatigue. Each man filled out a nine-item questionnaire assessing fatigue severity and impact on daily life. The first questionnaire was given between two and three weeks before the start of radiotherapy, then twice a week while receiving radiotherapy, with a final survey filled out within a week of their last yoga class or last radiation treatment, depending on the assigned study arm. "At their baseline, before patients started treatment, patients in both groups were on the lower end of the scale, meaning they reported lower amounts of fatigue," said the trial's principal investigator Neha Vapiwala. "But as treatment went on, we observed a difference in the two groups." Patients in the yoga group reported lower fatigue scores over time, as they attended more yoga sessions, relative to where they started. Patients who did not participate in yoga trended in the opposite direction, reporting greater fatigue as treatment progressed. "Levels of patient-reported fatigue are expected to increase by around the fourth or fifth week of a typical treatment course, but that did not happen in the yoga group," Vapiwala said. "Both the severity of the fatigue as well as the patients' ability to go about their normal lives appeared to be positively impacted in the yoga group." Researchers also evaluated both groups in terms of their sexual health. Sexual dysfunction - including but not limited to erectile dysfunction (ED) - is reported by up to 85 percent of radiation therapy patients during treatment, often due to the concurrent use of androgen deprivation therapy (ADT). The study utilized the International Index of Erectile Function (IIEF) questionnaire, in which scores range from 0-25. Scores greater than 21 are considered normal and scores below 12 indicate moderate to severe ED. Both groups started out with scores of around 11, and were balanced in terms of ADT exposure; but while the yoga group's score ended up largely unchanged from baseline, the non-yoga group saw a decline over the course of treatment. "Yoga is known to strengthen pelvic floor muscles, which is one of several postulated theories that may explain why this group did not demonstrate declining scores, as seen in the control group," Vapiwala said. "That may also explain the yoga patients' improved urinary function scores, another finding of this trial." Vapiwala pointed out that the findings on improved or stable urinary function are consistent with other research on the effects of physical therapy on pelvic floor muscles. The trial also found that while the emotional well-being of both groups increased as patients progressed through treatment, the evaluation scores in the yoga group rose more rapidly than in the control group. An evaluation of physical well-being showed a similar pattern. The study appears in International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology, Physics. (ANI) Reacting sharply to the Alwar lynching case, in which five men were assaulted by a group of cow vigilantes leading to the death of a Muslim man, Union Minister Sanjeev Baliyan on Friday said that people shouldn't take the law into their own hands. "No one has the right to take law in one's hands. If anyone is doing illegal work then actions will be taken against him. Killing somebody cannot be justified. Law will take its own course," Baliyan told ANI. The Alwar lynching case, yesterday stalled both the Houses of the Parliament. As a united opposition in the Rajya Sabha slammed the government for doing nothing against cow vigilante groups beating up people in order to protect cows from smuggling, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi denied the occurrence of any such incident and said that it did not happen. "This is a sensitive issue. A message should not go that we are supporting cow slaughter! Such an incident did not happen on the ground. The state governmnet has denied the report. But let this House not send a message that it supports cow slaughter," Naqvi said. Reacting to this, Leader of Opposition, Ghulam Nabi Azad said that even the New York Times had carried a report on the lynching. "I am extremely sorry that the minister is so ill-informed. Even the New York Times knows and the minister doesn't know," Azad said. Senior Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge raised the matter in the Lok Sabha and said that the Rajasthan Government failed to act on the issue, adding that this was the fifth such incident in Rajasthan. Kharge also demanded an immediate reaction from Home Minister Rajnath Singh. Congress MP Madhusudan Mistry said that there is a breakdown of constitutional machinery in Rajasthan. After the members from both the sides raised their voices, Deputy Chairperson P.J. Kurien asked the government for the facts in the case. Terming the matter serious in nature, Kurien said he was not convinced by both sides and asked Naqvi to ask Home Minister Rajnath Singh to submit a report to the House. "I cannot go by media reports," Kurien said. To which, Rajnath Singh told the Lower House that the state government is taking cognizance of the matter. Meanwhile, Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi expressed his anguish and called the lynching a failure of law and order in Rajasthan. "When government abdicates responsibility and allows lynch mobs to rule, tragedies of immense proportion follow. Shocking breakdown of law and order in Alwar. All right thinking Indians must condemn this blind brutality. We expect the governmnet to take strict action against those responsible for this brutal and senseless attack," he added. (ANI) This festival is most popular among the Galo community. Dressed in their traditional attires, Galo men and women, young and old alike came out in large numbers to celebrate their annual harvest festival. Assam Agriculture Minister Atul Bora, who was the chief guest, greeted the people of Arunachal in general and the Galos in particular and said that the festivals fostered love, harmony, brotherhood and peace. Bora stated the age-old relations between the two neighbouring States - Assam and Arunachal Pradesh - and opined that all the people of North East should unite to build a strong, vibrant and self-reliant NE. He said that all the differences, if any, should be hammered out though meaningful dialogues. Bora later participated in the Popir dance and witnessed the traditional ritual including Mithun sacrifice and cultural competitions. The guest of honour Tado Ete, a senior citizen from the community, passionately appealed the Galos, especially the youth to spare no effort to jealously safeguard the rich traditional culture and heritage of the Galos. (ANI) The campaign to the Apri 12 bye-election to the high profile R K Nagar Assembly constituency, hit an all timelow, when the rebel AIADMK camp canvassing votes with a dummycoffin with late CM J Jayalalithaa's figurine mounted on the bonnet,drawing criticism from various quarters. Last evening, while canvassing votes for AIADMK Puratchi ThalaiviAmma's candidate E Madhusudhanan, fielded by the rebel camp headed by O Panneerselvam, its Spokesperson Azhagu Tamil Selviin the presence of former Minister Ma Foi K Pandiarajan, placed a dummy coffin on the campaign vehicle with Jayalalithaa's figurine mounted on the bonnet seeking "justice" for her death. The coffin, with a figurine of Jayalalithaa and the national flag draped on it, had the party's symbol 'Electric Pole' (modelled on twin lamps) on it. About an hour into the campaign, which went viral in the social media, the coffin was removed by the police on the directions of the Election Commission In her address, Tamil Selvi, pointed to the 'coffin' and told the voters "this is our Amma. All of you promise on her 'dead body' that you will not vote for those who were responsible for her death", even as several women, who thronged the campaign vehicle, moved to tears. MORE UNI GV 1115 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0275-1219870.Xml As thousands of Indians, battling numerous complicated diseases, die every year because they cannot get an organ in time for transplant, the gift of life through organ donation needs to become a nationwide movement.The present regulations as well as social milieu in the country must change. Organ donation from living donors is constricted by several stringent rules that restrict the eligibility to only close relatives of the patient. Cadaver organ donation, which is a more desirable option, is extremely rare in India, as it is the next of kin that decide if organs of the deceased are to be donated or not. There has been almost no improvement in the organ donation situation. People are not ready to part with organs of their loved ones even after death.While in the West, around 70-80 per cent of people pledge their organs, in India only about 0.01 per cent of its population does so.India is also the diabetes capital of the world. People with diabetes in India doubled from 32 million in 2000 to 63 million in 2013 and the number is projected to rise to 101.2 million in 15 years, according to World Health Organisation (WHO). In India, around 75,900 males and 51,700 females in the age group of 30-69 years died due to diabetes in 2015, whereas 46,800 males and 45,600 females above 70 years of age died of the disease, according to WHO. However, the agency maintains the mortality data is uncertain in the absence of national monitoring. To add to the woes is the increasing rates of obesity. Obesity in India has reached epidemic proportions in the 21st century, with morbid obesity affecting 5 per cent of the country's population. There were 20 million obese women in India in 2014 compared with 9.8 million obese men. Severe obesity was observed in an additional 4 million Indian women. There were less than 800,000 obese women in India in 1975 compared with 400,000 obese men. There is an increasing prevalence of obesity even in school children. This increasing prevalence has implications for diabetes, cardiovascular disease and chronic kidney disease. And, in a worrying fallout of the rising diabetes and hypertension cases in urban India, 17 out of every 100 people suffer from kidney disease. Of this, 6 per cent have Stage III kidney disease which necessitates medical attention and, in some cases, costly treatment like dialysis or transplants, according to the largest screening study of kidney disease in the country. The rising incidence of the disease among children is specially worrisome. Of the 1,50,000 new patients who need dialysis annually in the country, 1,35,000 people die without any kind of treatment due to financial constraints. Of the remaining 15,000 patients who are started on dialysis, 9,000 patients discontinue dialysis treatments within a month due lack of resources. Moreover, with dialysis not being a long-term option, patients have no option but to undergo transplants. A huge gap persists between demand and supply of organs in India. The country has a donation rate of 0.5 per million one of the lowest in the world. In contrast, Spain has a donation rate of 36 per million while numbers for Germany and the United States are 11 and 26 respectively. Around 1.6 lakh patients are waiting for organs in India while a mere 12,000 donors are available. With the Health Ministry estimating that the annual requirement for donor kidneys ranges between 1-2 lakh with only 5,000 transplants occurring, the demand-supply gap is huge.The Spanish model of 'opt-out' cadaver donation, where organs of all cadavers are automatically donated unless the deceased has voluntarily opted out, can be emulated. India needs such a system that pushes cadaver donation, especially as accident deaths are high in the country. The Iranian model of patients enlisting with an NGO that matches donors without allowing any interaction between the patient and donor is another model that can be studied.Dr Sanjeev Gulati, Director and Head, Nephrology and Kidney Transplant at Delhi' Fortis Hospital is of the opinion that the Spanish model must be emulated and public awareness would encourage cadaver organ donation. The Spanish organ donation model is regarded as the best in the world. After choosing an opt-out system, Spain dramatically emerged as the undisputed world leader in organ donations. The opt-out system is the presumed consent system where the deceased person's consent to organ donation is presumed unless his/her name is on the nation's refusal registry. The opt-in system demands the prior consent of the deceased person for the organ donation.The opt-out system sees more organ donations and donors. Germany, which uses an opt-in system, has an organ donation consent rate of 12 per cent while neighbouring Austria, which has an opt-out system, has a consent rate of 99.98 per cent. In countries which changed from an opt-in system to an opt-out system, the number of donors increased by 20 to 30 per cent.France is the latest country to adopt the opt-out system. France ushered in the New Year by joining the list of countries which have made organ donation mandatory after the death of a person. The new 'presumed consent' law assumes that the deceased person agrees to have his/her organs donated, even if the individual's immediate family is against it. Those who do not wish to donate their organs can put their name on a national 'refusal register' whereby their consent will not be presumed, and their organs will not be donated after their demise. For the global best practices in organ donation to succeed in India, people's attitudes must change. ''India definitely needs cadaver donations but so many things need to be organised for the system to be successful and, at present, we are far from that,'' says Dr Sanjay K Agarwal, Professor & Head, Department of Nephrology, AIIMS, New Delhi. The Spanish model of opt-out cadaver donations, he says, is unlikely to be emulated in India with the current structure of society. ''We will have to work towards changing society's mindset,'' he adds."As someone who had to have a kidney transplant in 2009 after 10 months of dialysis following kidney failure," says senior journalist Amitava Sinha Roy, "I have experienced the trauma and emotional, physical and financial costs first hand. Hence, my fervent plea for India to move towards cadaver donations on the European model and save the lives of millions." He was lucky to get a donor in his wife. UNI VT SV SB 0942 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0364-1219317.Xml This comment of his came a day after he denied the incident ever occurred. The opposition raised the issue in the Rajya Sabha amid noisy scenes for the second day in a row, seeking an apology from Naqvi for misleading the House on Thursday. Naqvi assured the House that Home Minister Rajnath Singh was likely to make a statement over the incident on Monday. "A criminal, a murderer, a hooligan should not be looked at as a Hindu or a Muslim. A criminal is a criminal," Naqvi told the House. Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad demanded Naqvi's apology for "misleading the House" and also sought action against the self-styled "gau rakshaks" who were harassing and killing people in the name of cow protection. Congress MPs gathered near the Chairman's podium, demanding adjournment. However, Deputy Chairman P.J. Kurien, presiding the proceedings, rejected the demand. "One gets 14-day remand for slapping. But in this Rajasthan case, the accused was freed after a day. This government should take this House seriously," Azad said. "This is undermining the position of the Rajya Sabha. Since the Alwar issue was raised yesterday (Thursday), the Home Minister should have come today (Friday)." The lynching incident occurred on Saturday when a group of self-styled cow vigilantes allegedly attacked dairy farmer Pehlu Khan in Behror area of Alwar. Khan was travelling in a truck with two cows and two calves. The attackers accused Khan of illegally smuggling cows for slaughter. However, his family said he had bought the animals for his small dairy business. --IANS sar/in ( 305 Words) 2017-04-07-12:12:07 (IANS) Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today said the Government was studying recommendations for advancing the financial year from January 1 so as to factor in the impact of the monsoon in the budget estimates. However, since the issue involved both the state governments and local bodies, it needed wide application of mind, and so very wide consultations, Mr Jaitley said replying to supplementary questions in the Lok Sabha during Question Hour. The questioner had asked why the country was continuing the 150-year-old British practice which did not factor in the Indian conditions, and not taking action on the recommendations of various committees, including the Shankar Acharya Committee on the subject. The Finance Minister said the Government had partly addressed the problem by advancing the conclusion of the Budget business before April 1, so that the money could be transferred to departments, states etc for expenditure. When asked why the financial year was not defined in the Constitution, Mr Jaitley said it was an administrative decision, not needing inclusion in the Constitution. UNI NAZ RSA 1213 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0091-1219913.Xml A joint team of Special Task Force (STF) and district police arrested two dreaded criminals with a carbine looted from the police and other firearms from Gobrahi riverine belt under Kursaila police station area in this district in the wee hours today. Police said here that STF personnel from the state capital in a join operation with district police arrested two dreaded outlaws - Mataru Mehto and Bhadru Mahto from their hideout following a tip off. One carbine looted from the police, double barrel gun and country made pistol each and large number of live cartridges were recovered from their possession. Criminals had unleashed a reign of terror in Gobrahi riverine belt and were involved in several unlawful activities. An intensive interrogation of nabbed outlaws is on to nab other members of their gang.UNI XC DH RL -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0214-1219982.Xml Unidentified gunmen shot dead a murder case witness at Jahaj bank of Ganga river under Sultanganj police station area in this district late last night. Police said here that the murder case witness Prabhash Yadav (36), also an auto rickshaw driver was shot dead by outlaws at Jahaj bank of the river. Prabhash was a native of Balu Ghat locality, police added. The body had been sent for autopsy. A massive manhunt is on to nab criminals.UNI XC DH BM -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0214-1219989.Xml Claiming innocence that he had donenothing wrong, Tamil Nadu Health Minister Dr C Vijayabaskartoday said the IT officials had not found anything from hishouse during the raids, which were continuing since thismorning in the city and at his residential, business premises and educational institutions in other parts of the State. ''Not even Rs 10,000 found at my House'', the Ministertold the media from inside his house, even as severalof his supporters thronged in front of his official residenceat Greenways Road in the city and picked up argumentswith the CRPF personnel, who were deployed in view of the raids and denied entry to them. Alleging that the raids were politically motivated, he said he had not done anything wrong and that all his family members, including his parents and wife, were Income-Taxassessees and have paid the taxes regularly. ''I do not know why the IT officials are conducting searchesat my House'', he said, adding, he was a doctor and know all the rules. Alleging harassment by the IT officials and the CRPF personnel, Dr Vijayabaskar, along with his daughter, saidthe officials were not letting his children to go to school. He said as a Minister he was scheduled to take a flightto New Delhi to receive an award from the President atVigyan Bhavan for the State's best performance in thehealth sector. ''I was invited to receive the award as the Health Ministerof Tamil Nadu. I was to take a flight to New Delhi at 0845 hrs.But I was not allowed to go and was confined in my house by the officials'', he added. Meanwhile, tension prevailed in front of his house in thecity, as some of his Cabinet colleagues and a large number of his supporters thronged on hearing about the IT raids. The Ministers were initially not allowed entry into the House, resulting in heated arguments with the CRPF security personnel. They insisted that they were Ministers and wanted to enter the House to know what was happening inside. However, after intense arguments, the Ministers werelater allowed entry, even as supporters of Vijayabaskar shouted slogans denouncing the raids. UNI GV 1250 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0275-1219965.Xml ''Delighted to welcome Sheikh Hasina, the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, on her State Visit to India,'' he said in a tweet on the micro blogging site twitter. The Bangla PM was received at the airport by Mr Modi on her arrival on a four-day official visit to India during which at least 25 bilateral agreements will be signed by the two countries.UNI SD RSA 1336 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0005-1220023.Xml The Lok Sabha today witnessed a witty exchange between Minister for Road Transport, Highways and Shipping Nitin Gadakri and Congress members over BJP success in forming the government in Goa providing some lighter moments during the serious discussions over the Motor Vehicles Amendment Bill. Congress member KC Venugopal, who initiated the discussion on the Bill placed by Mr Gadkari in the House, showered praise on the Minister describing him a the best performing member of the Modi Cabinet, but said, ''he proved to be villain in Goa'' referring to his role in managing the numbers in the state to form the government despite the Congress emerging as the single largest party. ''Why are you making me a villain. It is your hero who slept overnight, otherwise your film would have been a success,'' (Mujhe kyun villain banate hain, Aap ka hero saari rat sota raha, nahin to aap ki film chal jaati) , Mr Gadkari said much to the amusement of the whole House, in obvious reference to Congress incharge of Goa Digvijaya Singh, who was criticised for not acting swiftly to stake claim to form government. ''We don't believe in horse trading,'' Mr Venugopal quipped. Leader of the Congress in the House Mallikarjun Kharge also lauded the performance of Mr Gadkari as Minister, but did not miss the opportunity to take a dig at the Modi government by pointing to the empty treasury benches behind the Minister. ''We are appreciating his performance. There is no doubt that he is a good minister, but see there is no quorum,'' he said.UNI NAZ RSA/AE 1411 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0091-1220072.Xml The personnel of Assam Rifles have apprehended two NSCN-K cadres in Lungwa village under Mon district. According to a release issued today by the PRO of the Inspector General of Assam Rifles (North), based on specific input, troops of 35 Assam Rifles under the aegis of HQ IGAR(North) carried out an search operation in Lungwa village under Mon district on April 4. During the search operation, two cadres of NSCN (K), Self Style Sergeant, a resident of Lungwa and Self Style Corporal, also a resident of Lungwa were apprehended alongwith two pistols, one Radio Set and assorted ammunition. The apprehended cadres alongwith recoveries were handed over to Police Station of Mon, the release added. UNI AS BM -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0214-1220002.Xml Nagaland Government has apprised Indian Ambassador to Myanmar Vikram Misri over the construction of fence along the international boundary between India and Myanmar in Pangsha area by the Myanmar Government According to official sources today, Misri, who was on a one-day visit to Kohima on Tuesday, held a meeting with the Home Commissioner, Chief Secretary, DGP Border, MLAs P Longon and Yitachu among others. The ambassador is en-route to all other Northeastern states bordering with Myanmar. Sources said during a one and half hour meeting, important issues concerning Nagaland and fencing work along the border was thoroughly discussed. He said members present at the meeting have apprised Misri on how the people at the border areas feel about the fencing work, which has disturbed the traditional and social relations among the Nagas living on both sides of the border. Sources said the members have also apprised the Ambassador on the efforts being made by Nagaland Government for connectivity to the border areas at Avangkhu, Pangsha and Longwa, where International Trade Centers are being set up. Misri was quoted to have understood the concerns of the Nagaland Government and assured that he would meet the Government of India to understand the issue so that the whole idea of fencing will be dropped altogether. He was of the view that cordial and fraternal relations amongst the Nagas living on both sides of the border should not be disturbed in any way. The Ambassador is said to have held a meeting with the representatives of Eastern Nagaland Peoples Organization, sources added. UNI AS BM -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0214-1220011.Xml A young woman was thrashed to death by her husband and in laws for dowry at Karma Satuahi village under Jamhaur police station area in this district last night. Police said here that Preeti Kumari (22) who was married to Lokesh Kumar in 2015 was beaten to death by her husband and in laws at the village. The victim, a native of Simra Line village in the district was being tormented for dowry for the last several days. An FIR had been lodged against the woman`s husband and five others on the statement of victim`s father Jitendra Singh. All accused were absconding after the incident. The body had been sent to Aurangabad Sadar Hospital for autopsy, police added.UNI DH BM -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0214-1220046.Xml Union Minister of State for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises and BJP MP from Nawada, Giriraj Singh, today staged dharna outside the Circuit house here in protest against alleged denial of a room in the house. Mr Singh, who represents this parliamentary seat, had arrived here to participate in Ramnavami Shobha Yatra. Angry over denial of the room, Mr. Singh along with Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly Dr Prem Kumar and large number of supporters sat on dharna outside circuit house. Mr. Singh alleged that he was scared of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's intention as he apprehended that he might be killed at his instruction. The curtains fell on the high voltage drama outside the circuit house after senior district civil and police authorities persuaded the union minister to end his dharna. Later, Mr. Singh participated in the 'Shobha Yatra' in the district town, which was gripped by tension when some miscreants tore posters related to Ramnavami festival last Tuesday. The shobha yatra is being taken out amid tight security arrangements in presence of senior civil and police officers.UNI DH-IS KK -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0212-1220158.Xml Acknowledging the fact that the broadband quality services in the country remains a matter of concern, telecom regulatory body TRAI's Chairman RS Sharma today said there is a need of broadband labeling which would empower consumer choices. Speaking at the event organized by CUTS International on 'Designing a Nutrition Label for Broadband Services in India, Mr Sharma said, "The Indian telecom industry has 1 billion consumer bases, but the transaction value of products and services is low. If a consumer suffers call drop or poor data connectivity, the consumer may not take the route of consumer courts as the model and processes are too complex and unfeasible to justify the low transaction value. Hence, with consumers having less choices and complex grievance redressal mechanisms, the idea of having a broadband label is significant, path-breaking and will help consumers in making an informed choice."In his opening remark he also stated that the broadband infrastructure growth is as low as 1.5 per cent with no further growth in wired connectivity since last 15-20 years. However, wireless connectivity has experienced stupendous growth of almost 90 per cent in recent times.The chairman also urged the internet service providers to disclose a minimum average speed for consumers. "With other parts of the world already implementing such labels, the time is right for India to also consider such a mechanism. The deliberations and recommendations today will help TRAI to prepare an appropriate consultation paper for future stakeholder discussions," Mr Sharma added.Hem Pande, Former Secretary, Department of Consumer Affairs said, "Consumers must be united and aware in these times. The Department of Consumer Affairs represented by P V Rama Shastry, Joint Secretary has recommended amendments via the Consumer Protection Bill 2015, which is expected to be discussed in parliament soon."UNI ASH SB 1417 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0388-1220012.Xml India and the Asian Development Bank have signed a 175 million dollars loan agreement to support construction of high voltage transmission systems to evacuate power generated from new mega solar parks to the interstate grid and improve reliability of the national grid system.The loan will be given to the Power Grid Corporation of India Limited (POWERGRID) and will include subprojects in various locations in India. As an innovative feature, the project is designed to adopt the country systems on both safeguards and procurement at the agency level. This will be the ADB's first breakthrough of the country system's application to a specific project, the Power Ministry said in a statement. Raj Kumar, Joint Secretary (Multilateral Institutions), Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance signed the agreement on behalf of the Government of India while Kenichi Yokoyama, Country Director of ADB's India Resident Mission signed for ADB. Speaking on the occasion, Mr Kumar said by supporting the construction of interstate transmission systems for the mega solar power projects, the project will enable transmission of surplus solar energy from States with surplus power to power-deficit states. After signing the loan agreement, Mr Yokoyama said the project will support the continued expansion of solar energy in India in line with the government's objectives, and contribute to climate change by increasing share of clean energy in the power mix besides increasing overall efficiency of the power system. UNI ASH SW -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0388-1220104.Xml Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama arrived at the Tawang monastery in Arunachal Pradesh on Friday, the high point of a visit that has angered China. Buddhist monks at the monastery, the biggest in India and second only to the world's largest -- the Potala Palace in Tibet, and scores of devotees received him warmly and with piety. The Nobel peace laureate will stay at the monastery. Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu accompanied the Tibetan leader, who has lived in self-imposed exile in India since he fled Tibet in 1959. Nestled among snow-covered mountains and perched at a height of 10,000 feet, Tawang is home to Monpa people who follow Tibetan Buddhism. The town was decked up to welcome the 81-year-old. Tawang was decorated with colourful prayer flags, besides Indian and Tibetan flags and flowers. The roads were repainted and the drains cleared. The Dalai Lama was to start his week-long religious visit to Arunachal Pradesh from Tawang on April 4. But bad weather forced him to take to the road as his helicopter couldn't take off from Dibrugarh in Assam. Hundreds of people lined along the winding road to Tawang, holding traditional ceremonial scarves and burning incense, to see the Dalai Lama and receive his blessings, a government official told IANS Thousands of people from as far as Ladakh and neighbouring Bhutan flocked to Tawang for a glimpse of the Dalai Lama. "We have been preparing for the last two months. Everybody wants to see him, talk to him and get his blessings," said the monastery Secretary, Lobsang Khum. The Tawang monastery belongs to the Gelugpa school of Mahayana Buddhism and had a religious connection with Lhasa's Drepung monastery that continued during the British rule. Beijing refers to this connection to claim Tawang as part of China after invading and taking over Tibet in 1950. The Dalai Lama had stayed in the Tawang monastery for some days before he reached Assam after fleeing his homeland in 1959. The Dalai Lama first arrived in Bomdila, the district headquarters of West Kameng in Arunachal, and delivered religious discourses. He then drove to Dirang valley, about 50 km from Tawang where he consecrated the Thupsung Dhargyeling monastery on Thursday. Earlier on Friday, he left Dirang for Tawang by road. Security forces kept a vigil, particularly at Sela Pass, which was wet because of melting snow, muddy and slippery. This will be the Dalai Lama's first visit to Arunachal after eight years. His first visit to the state was in 1983 and the last trip was in 2009. China has strongly opposed the Dalai Lama's visit to Arunachal Pradesh, which Beijing considers a part of Tibet. --IANS rrk/mr/py ( 456 Words) 2017-04-07-16:10:07 (IANS) "On receiving a tip-off that a Nigerian national would come to supply cocaine near Som Bazar Chowk in Uttam Nagar area, a trap was laid and one Kennedy Dominic was apprehended along with 210 gram fine quality of cocaine," a police official said today. He said that during sustained interrogation, the accused disclosed that he used to sell and supply cocaine on higher price after obtaining the same from another Nigerian national at cheaper rates. The official said that at Kennedy's instance, Anayo Godswill was also arrested from his rented house located in the area and 282 gram cocaine was recovered from him. He said that further investigation into the case was in progress.UNI DS RSA/AE 1549 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0177-1220243.Xml The Supreme Court had directed the closure of all liquor shops on national and state highways and accordingly, the Puducherry administration had closed 164 liquor shops. However, the liquor shops on the ECR, Kalapet and Vazhudavur road were not closed. Demanding that the territorial administration fully implement the Supreme Court directions, more than 100 PMK workers held a demonstration in front of the excise department. They shouted slogans against the government. PMK Puducherry in-charge Dhanraj led the agitation. He told media persons that the administration should come forward to remove the shops from the vicinity of schools and worship places, failing which the agitation would be intensified. They also submitted a memorandum to the Deputy Collector (Excise).UNI PAB JW SW 1615 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0364-1220308.Xml The outcome of the recently concluded Panchayat elections in Odisha will indicate that the BJP will come to power in the state in 2019 Assembly election dislodging the Naveen Patnaik-led BJD government, party's national spokesperson Sambit Patra said here today Mr Patra and BJP national media convenor Anil Baluni who reviewed the preparation for the National Executive Committee meeting of the party scheduled to be held here on April 15 and 16 next said the the lotus will blossom on the feet of Lord Jagannath and there would be Nabakalebar of the government in 2019. Reacting to Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik's statement that BJP's claim to form the government in Odisha in 2019 is only a wishful thinking, Mr Patra said the poll pundits had predicted that the BJD would not come to power. He said after the Uttar Pradesh Election Prime Minister Narendra Modi while addressing the party activists at the party headquarter had said about the formation a new India. The National Executive scheduled to be held here after the Uttar Pradesh election result has assumed importance as the first step for the creation of new India Mr Patra said the BJP government would work for the poor, oppressed and the farmers. Taking a potshot at the BJD government, Mr Patra said the state government had done nothing for the people of the state during its 17 years rule. Even after 17 years of rule of the BJD government people are not getting potable water. What could be more painful than this ? he asked. Commenting on Chief Minister's statement that the meeting of the BJPnational Executive would have no impact in Odisha, the BJP spokesperson said it has already caste its impact otherwise why the Chief Minister said it would have no impact. When asked about the allegation that the BJP is planning to divide the BJD Parliamentary party, Mr Patra said BJP does not believe in destruction and division.The objective of the party is '' sabka sath sabka vikash.''. Mr Baluni said a positive vibration is prevailing throughout the country.People are talking about progress and development after the BJP won elections in four of the five states. He said people in Odisha want BJP and Narendra Modi. They want the vision of Mr Modi to be implemented in Odisha. Mr Baluni said Mr Modi wanted the Eastern Regions of the country particularly Odisha to develop at par with their western counterpart adding that Odisha would develop only if BJP comes to power.UNI BD DP SJC -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0212-1220377.Xml "I don't think there will be any effect on Odisha," Patnaik, who is also the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) President, told the media before leaving on a five-day visit to Delhi. Patnaik would attend the Inter-State Council meeting and meet Union Ministers while in the national capital. The BJP's National Executive meeting is scheduled to be held here on April 15 and 16. The meet would be attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP President Amit Shah and several other senior leaders, including chief ministers from the BJP-ruled states. The BJP, however, said "the upcoming meeting is already having its impact on the people". "Had that not been the case, Patnaik would not have reacted," said party spokesperson Sambit Patra. The BJP also asserted it would win the 2019 assembly elections in Odisha. "Lotus will bloom on Lord Jagannath's feet in 2019 elections and BJP will come to power in Odisha," said Patra. Reacting to the allegations that the BJP is engineering a split in the BJD, Patra said his party believed in building and not breaking. "We believe in 'Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas'," he said. BJP national media in-charge Anil Baluni said there is a positive vibration in the country in favour of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the massive mandate in Uttar Pradesh has proved that. "In Odisha also, people want BJP and Modi," he said. --IANS cd/pgh/vt ( 271 Words) 2017-04-07-17:42:07 (IANS) Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama arrived here in Arunachal Pradesh on Friday, the high point of a visit which has angered China. Buddhist monks and scores of devotees at the Tawang monastery, the biggest in India and second only to the world's largest, the Potala Palace in Tibet, received him warmly and with piety. The Nobel peace laureate will stay at the monastery. "He has arrived after a strenuous seven-hour road journey from Dirang. He is in the monastery praying," said the monastery Secretary, Lobsang Khum. Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu accompanied the Tibetan leader, who has lived in self-imposed exile in India since he fled Tibet in 1959. Nestled among snow-covered mountains and perched at a height of 10,000 feet, Tawang is home to Monpa people who follow Tibetan Buddhism. The town was decked up to welcome the 81-year-old. Tawang was decorated with colourful prayer flags, Indian and Tibetan flags as well as flowers. The roads were repainted and the drains cleared. Thousands of people from as far as Ladakh and neighbouring Bhutan holding traditional ceremonial scarves and burning incense queued up on both sides of the road for a glimpse of the Dalai Lama. Security forces kept a vigil in Tawang, about 25 km from the McMahon Line, an imaginary border known as the Line of Actual Control separating the Sino-Indian border. The Dalai Lama was to start his week-long religious visit to Arunachal Pradesh from Tawang on April 4. But bad weather forced him to take to the road as his helicopter couldn't take off from Assam. The Tawang monastery belongs to the Gelugpa school of Mahayana Buddhism and had a religious connection with Lhasa's Drepung monastery that continued during the British rule. Beijing refers to this connection to claim Tawang as part of China after invading and taking over Tibet in 1950. The Dalai Lama had stayed in the Tawang monastery for some days before he reached Assam after fleeing his homeland in 1959. The Dalai Lama first arrived in Bomdila, the district headquarters of West Kameng in Arunachal, and delivered religious discourses. He then drove to Dirang valley, about 50 km from Tawang where he consecrated the Thupsung Dhargyeling monastery on Thursday. On Friday, he left Dirang for Tawang by road. This will be the Dalai Lama's first visit to Arunachal after eight years. His first visit to the state was in 1983 and the last trip was in 2009. China has strongly opposed the Dalai Lama's visit to Arunachal Pradesh, which Beijing considers a part of Tibet. The Dalai Lama has lived in India since 1959. India is also home to some 100,000 Tibetan exiles. --IANS rrk/mr/ ( 458 Words) 2017-04-07-18:46:07 (IANS) Advocate Manibhushan Pratap Sengar has filed the case seeking directives to the Bihar government and Central government to ensure fair inquiry into purchase of soil worth Rs 90 lakhs without inviting tender from the plot owned by family members of Mr Prasad. State Environment and Forest Minister Tej Pratap Yadav, the eldest son of Mr Prasad, had apparently misused his authority to influence the authorities concerned for purchase of soil for PatnaZoo in the name of beautification.MORE UNI KKS IS AD1841 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0108-1220709.Xml Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed, who arrived here on her first official bilateral visit to the country under the Narendra Modi Government, will hold formal talks with the Prime Minister tomorrow, after which over two dozen key MoUs, including two on Defence cooperation, were expected to be signed. A five billion dollar Indian Line of Credit and another of 500 million dollar for Defence purchases by Bangladesh from India are on the cards. Ms Hasina will also jointly launch the Kolkata-Khulna bus and train services, besides honouring the Indian heroes of 1971 Bangladesh War of Liberation at two separate functions here. An agreement on civil nuclear cooperation, and finalisation of an agreement on long-term supply of high speed diesel are other expected take aways from the visit. Combating terrorism and radicalisation, besides trade and investment and border management would also be the main elements of the talks. The visit is happening nearly two years after Mr Modi's visit to Dhaka. During the June 2015 visit of Mr Modi, the two countries had signed a joint declaration 'Notun Projonmo-Nayi Disha'. The two leaders will also review the implementation of the decisions announced in the declaration. Earlier this afternoon, Mr Modi, setting aside the protocols, travelled to the Indira Gandhi International Airport to receive his Bangladeshi counterpart. On their arrival, officials from Bangladesh, including Ms Hasina's entourage, also took selfies with Mr Modi. Later in the evening, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj called on her. Ms Hasina will start her official engagements tomorrow with ceremonial reception at Rashtrapati Bhawan. After that, she will visit Rajghat to pay floral tribute to Mahatama Gandhi. This will be followed by talks with Mr Modi at the Hyderabad House. She will launch the bus and train service at the same venue In the afternoon, Ms Hasina will participate in the "Sommanona Ceremony" to honour Indian Martyrs in the Liberation War, followed by call on Vice President Hamid Ansari. The Bangladesh Prime Minister will visit the Dargah of famous Sufi saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti at Ajmer on April 9, and come back to the national capital the same evening to attend a dinner hosted by President Pranab Mukherji at Rashtrapati Bhawan. Ms Hasina will be joined by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerji at the Prime Minister's lunch and other programmes at the Hyderabad House tomorrow, and the President's dinner on April 9. She will leave for her home country in the afternoon of April 10, after attending a business event jointly organised by the three Chambers of Commerce and Industry.UNI NAZ RJ 2002 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0091-1220894.Xml The Thalassery District Sessions Court (Adhoc 1) today rejected the bail plea of Kottiyoor rape case prime accused priest Robin Vadakkancheril, who was arrested on February 27, for impregnating a 16-year-old school student of Kottiyoor, who later gave birth to a baby boy.Judge Sreekala Suresh rejected the bail plea, citing that the investigation was going on in the case and the accused would influence the witness and others and it would affect the court procedures, if he got the bail.The hearing from prosecution and the counsel of Robin Vadakkancheril was completed on April 5. The prime accused is in judicial custody till April 9 at Special sub jail.Police conducted the DNA test of the baby boy and priest Robin at State Forensic Science Laboratory and confirmed the priest as biological father of the child.But, the counsel of Robin said that investigation was completed and police had arrested all 10 accused in this case, so Robin deserved bail.Meanwhile, all the nine co-accused, who were arrested by police, have been released on conditional bail.Peravoor Circle Inspector N Sunil Kumar-led team, probing this case booked 10 persons, including two doctors, hospital staff and officials of orphanage under the POCSO and Juvenile Justice Act for cover up, negligence, shifting the baby from mother on the date of delivery and conspiracy over the delivery of the minor girl. On February 27, Fr Robin Vadakkancheril alias Mathew Vadakkancheril (48), who was the parish vicar at St Sebastian Church, Neendunoki, near Kottiyoor in the district, which is under the Manathavady diocese was held from Chalakkudy, when he was preparating to flee to Canada after the case was registered against him. UNI AK RJ 2148 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0098-1221107.Xml Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejaswi Yadav today defended his elder brother and state Forest Minister Tej Pratap Yadav in soil scam saying that the charges being levelled by BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi were baseless and he had no parallel in spreading rumours. Mr Yadav told media persons here that Mr Modi has the habit of spreading rumours and levelling baseless charges against his political opponents. It was not the first time that Mr Modi indulged in such act as he had been practicing negative politics for long, he added. "My elder brother Mr Yadav, also state forest minister, is an honest person and his image is being dented by Mr Modi," the deputy chief minister said, adding that Mr Modi should wait before making any statement until the ongoing inquiry into the issue was completed. Mr Yadav said Mr Modi had also levelled charges against another Minister Vijay Prakash but it was found to be false during inquiry. It was now known to all that Mr Modi had defended BJP MLC Lalbabu Prasad who had misbehaved with an woman MLC, Nutan Singh, he said, adding that what could be the credibility of such a person in politics. The deputy chief minister said it was surprising to note that Mr Modi remained silent on reports of Prime Minister Narendra Modi receiving money as was mentioned in the Sahara diary. "If the BJP leaders levelled charges, it had worth but issues raised by leaders of other parties had no values in the eyes of saffron party leaders," he pointed out making oblique reference to double standards of BJP leaders.UNI KKS AD2153 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0108-1221114.Xml A group of Shia Muslims on Friday formed a 'Shia Gau Raksha Dal' in Uttar Pradesh stating they would work towards educating the people on this issue. Earlier on Wednesday, the All India Shia Personal Law Board (AISPLB) issued a fatwa against cow slaughtering and consumption of beef. During its executive committee meeting in Lucknow, AISPLB member Maulana Yasoob Abbas said that the fatwa has been issued after consultation with top Shia cleric from Iraq, Ayatollah Sheikh Basheer Najafi. "We wrote to Ayatollah Sheikh Basheer Najafi, who is in Iraq and raised concern over the issue and in response to that he said not to slaughter cows or eat beef. He has granted fatwa against it," Abbas told the reporters here. He added that the reason behind the fatwa is that the cow slaughter often triggered communal tension in the country. The AISPLB also joined the force demanding strict law on the practice of Triple Talaq and requested the Centre to come up with restriction to refrain people from its misuse. "In Islam equal rights has been given to both men and women. So, giving talaq through Watsaap and phone is not acceptable. We have decide to get a severe law against this like it has been done in Sati-pratha," said Abbas. The board even raised concern over the Babri Masjid issue and welcomed the Supreme Court proposal to mediate between both the communities to solve the issue. "All India Shia Personal Law Board wants this matter to be resolved through table talk as suggested by the Supreme Court. This matter cannot be solved just by raising slogans," he said. Earlier, the Dewan of Ajmer Dargah and an influential Sunni Islamic spiritual leader said that the practice of triple talaq is un-Islamic and against the Holy Quran. The Supreme Court is set to hear multiple pleas challenging the validity of triple talaq, 'nikah halala' and polygamy practices among Muslims community on May 11 by a Constitution bench during the summer vacation. (ANI) Shiv Sena in Goa today demanded that traders affected by the Supreme Court order to ban the sale of liquor along the highways within a specified area should be rehabilitated and the government should file a review petition in the apex court, seeking exemption on the lines of Sikkim and Meghalaya. Addressing a press conference at the party office in the city, Shiv Sena Goa unit Chief Shivprasad Joshi said, ''Shiv Sena urges the government to take steps for the rehabilitation of the traders, who have been affected by the Supreme Court's recent order of banning sale of liquor along highways. Because of the order, many people have become jobless. Those engaged in traditional business should be rehabilitated.'' He criticised Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar for inducting former Congress MLA from Valpoi Vishwajit Rane into the BJP. ''BJP is in the hands of Congress people. Yesterday, a person, who was criticised by the BJP earlier, joined the party. A person who speaks against Shivaji Maharaj has joined BJP. The party, which has been getting votes in the name of Shivaji Maharaj, has accepted Mr Rane as its member. Even BJP is planning to make Mr Rane Health Minister. It indicates that there is no able MLA in the BJP, who can become a Health Minister,'' he alleged. He demanded that the expenditure incurred by the government on the election in Valpoi should be borne by Mr Rane.UNI AKM RJ 2323 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0098-1221180.Xml Butchers in Meghalaya is mulling to form its own vigilante group to stop cattle smuggling to Bangladesh. "We will be forced to create our own vigilante group to stop cattle smuggling to Bangladesh if the state government doesn't take pre-emptive measures," the Khasi Jaintia Butchers Association (KJBA) warned. Today, the KJBA took out a procession to protest against the government's inability to check movement of cattle from the state towards Bangladesh. KJBA Vice-President G Warlarpih said cattle meant for domestic consumption is making way to Bangladesh due to lackadaisical mechanism of the government. "The available cattle meant for domestic consumption from the Baridua market should not be a problem in the domestic market but the smuggling activities of the masquerading butchers has added to the woes of the sellers and the consumers as a whole," Mr Warlarpih said. He also held the government for being solely responsible to this issue confronting the state. With cattle smuggling to Bangladesh reaching a new threshold that would affect the domestic market, the KJBA functionary said, "Don't be surprised when we set our own vigilant group to stop,apprehend and deter these smugglers who procured cattle from the legal market for smuggling purpose." The shortage of cattle within the hinterland of Meghalaya has reached to an extent that the domestic butchers has to compete with the masquerading butchers of the state southern slopes (albeit-alleged smugglers). The domestic butchers have to pay at a higher price ,a reason that led to price escalation in the past three years. With the month of Ramzan coming, the demand for cattle's at a higher price is tempting for the cattle dealers cum smugglers in east Khasi Hills and West Jaintia hills. The KJBA has out rightly accused that a couple of traditional heads in the border areas are hands in gloves with the smugglers. "We are aware about these inputs based on the interaction with our members," Mr Warlarpih stated.UNI RRK AD2201 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0108-1221123.Xml Union Minister for Women and Child Development Maneka Gandhi said today said that Beti Bachao Beti Padhao programme has failed to be successful in Jammu and Kashmir as bringing daughters into the world is the last thing on the minds of people in the conflict-prone areas. Speaking at Goafest 2017, advertising, media and marketing convention, being held near the city, she said "We failed in a few districts. We did not get a 100 per cent success. But the ones we failed in, were for different reasons. We failed in Kashmir for instance. It didn't make a jot of a difference. No matter what we did. Why, because we discovered, that anybody who believes they are at war or in a situation where there's fighting anticipated or going on, the last thing they want to do is bring daughters into the world. Because they believe that they will be the first victims." However, the union minister said the programme had worked very well, in the 100 districts which had the poorest sex ratio. "That resulted in one year, it went to from the worst which was 890 to 910 (per 1000 males)," she said. She said the programme failed in Bihar because of administrative reason as district magistrates were rarely posted in one place for more than three months. "Bihar, because their DMs (District Magistrates) got posted every three months, so nobody was willing to take any ownership or this campaign so as a result the campaign did not happen," she said.UNI AKM 1529PJI 5HEALTH-GOA-OFFICIALIt's time to strategise to deal with new health challenges: Health Secretary Panaji, Apr 7 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0098-1221168.Xml Law enforcement and intelligence officials in Lahore, capital of Pakistan's Punjab province, are coming around to the view that there is a Pathan link to Wednesday's suicide terror attack on a census team that claimed the lives of six persons, including four Pakistan Army soldiers and an off-duty airman in the Bedian Road area of the city according to a report in 'Dawn '. The census process in Pakistan is facing a lot of resistance from the Pathan community as they see the exercise as an attempt to isolate the Pathans in Pakistani Society and to label them as ' terrorists '. At least 19 persons were also injured in the blasts, the responsibility for which was claimed by the Pathan-dominant Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan. The injured are being treated at the Combined Military Hospital and the General Hospital, and at least three were said to be critical. The terror strike in Lahore has not come as a surprise to observers and experts, as the Pakistan government is holding a census after a gap of 19 years, and according to them, this exercise has become a highly politicised issue as it seeks to reinforce Punjabi domination of Pakistan. Door-to-door counting began in the second week of March, with women's rights groups, smaller provinces, ethnic and religious minorities voicing concerns over the entire process as serving the majority Punjabi community. One report said that representatives of ethnic Baluch and Pashtun political parties, who have been demanding both empowerment and autonomy, have expressed fears that officials in Punjab will manipulate the census figures to maintain the province's large share of national resources and political clout. Punjab currently holds 183 seats in the 342-member National Assembly, which means it can elect a prime minister at will. Lawmakers in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) are on record as saying that their population will be undercounted as many of the inhabitants have moved out owing to counter-terrorism operations and U.S.-engineered drone strikes on suspect militants. Lawmakers in Baluchistan have reportedly filed a lawsuit to halt the census over fears that thousands of Pashtuns, a majority of whom are refugees from neighbouring Afghanistan and living in Pakistan for several decades, will be mistakenly included in the census count. It is all very well for Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Chief of Army Staff General Bajwa to express their condolences over the incident and their determination to carry on with the census, but it is a well known fact that the federal government has no mechanism to collect accurate census figures due to the forced migrations that have taken place across the length and breadth of Pakistan. For the record, this year's census is expected to cost the Pakistan exchequer a monumental 178 million dollars. (ANI) Pakistan wanted to jeopardise the 136th Inter Parliamentary Union (IPU) Assembly to be held in Dhaka, Bangladesh, by boycotting the event. In an article that has been published by the Dhaka Tribune, Nadeem Qadir, Press Minister of the Bangladesh High Commission in Britain, writes that Pakistan wanted to jeopardise the mega conference by pulling out at the last moment, but the other participants from around the world did not play along. Qadir terms this as 'a major achievement for Bangladesh'. He also speculates that the militant attacks that took place in Bangladesh just before the conference may have been the doing of pro-Pakistani elements to scare off the participants. He rationalises that Pakistan wanted to boycott the IPU Assembly as a tit-for-tat measure against Bangladesh for boycotting the SAARC Summit that was scheduled to be held in Islamabad in November last year. A total of 1,348 delegates, including 650 parliament members, 53 speakers, deputy speakers, and 209 women parliamentarians of 131 countries, attended the mega event. Dhaka gained more from the event, as the world community agreed that interference by Islamabad in the internal affairs of Bangladesh had crossed all limits. Qadari further writes that every time a 1971 war criminal was and is executed, Islamabad took up the issue in parliament, proving that those executed were indeed "important, celebrity collaborators" of the Pakistani Army. He also speculates that another reason for Pakistan to boycott the IPU Assembly could have been the mandatory visits to the National Martyrs' Memorial and the museum dedicated to the memory of Bangladesh's first Prime Minister Sheikh Mujibur Rehman. He adds that even though former president Pervez Musharraf had laid a wreath at the memorial in Savar and had "regretted" the "incidents" of 1971, the military and top politicians felt embarrassed. The Dhaka Tribune quotes him, as saying that Pakistan can fix this situation if its leadership listens to its people, who want the government to seek forgiveness for their crimes against humanity in 1971 and stop patronising anti-liberation forces like the Jamaat-e-Islami and pro-Pakistani political elements. "My experience in Pakistan says the majority now know the true history of 1971, thanks to the Internet, and Islamabad should respect the voice of its own people, he adds. The five-day long 136th Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) Assembly ended yesterday with the declaration of "Dhaka Communique" that called for strengthening efforts to open parliaments to all people and better representing the most impoverished community. The declaration also urged to take measures to enhance transparency and to protect the political system from the influence of money and organised lobbies. The IPU, established in 1889 with its headquarters in Switzerland, is the focal point for global parliamentary dialogues for peace, development and cooperation among peoples, and for the safeguard of representative democracy. Earlier, while boycotting the conference, Pakistan had cited continued malicious and uncalled for propaganda and unfriendly attitude of the Bangladesh government against the people and the state behind this move. In his statement, Speaker Ayaz Sadiq said that members of the National Assembly have noted with dismay and disappointment the continuing actions and negative public statements of the leadership, public officials and the media of Bangladesh despite Pakistan's restraint and overtures to that country. He said that Bangladesh also boycotted all international parliamentary moots, organised by the parliament of Pakistan during the last two years despite personal requests by the highest parliamentary leadership to the speaker of the Bangladesh Parliament. This included invitations to attend the SAARC Young Parliamentarians Conference in August 2016, the International Women Parliamentarians Conference 2017 and the Asian Parliamentary Assembly in 2017, it said. (ANI) The US air strikes on a Syrian airbase could undermine efforts to fight terrorism, RIA news agency quoted Viktor Ozerov, the head of the defence and security committee at the Russian upper house of parliament, as saying today.He also said that Russia would call for an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council."This (the attack) could be viewed as an act of aggression of the US against a U.N. nation," he was quoted as saying.Reuters cj GC1059 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0400-1219818.Xml Thai police today reported 22 attacks, including at least five small bomb blasts, in Muslim-majority southern Thailand only hours after King Maha Vajiralongkorn signed a new constitution as a step towards ending military rule.There were no immediate reports of casualties in the attacks in the region where there has been a recent upsurge in a decades-old Muslim separatist insurgency. Parts of the region voted against the new constitution at a referendum last year."The incidents are to create disturbances. They want to destroy the government's credibility and create fear among people," said Pramote Prom-in, spokesman for local security forces.There was no immediate claim of responsibility and security forces said they did not know who was to blame.Thailand's king signed a military-backed constitution into law yesterday, an essential step towards an election the junta has promised will restore democracy after the 12th successful coup in little over 80 years.The new constitution is the Southeast Asian country's 20th since the end of absolute monarchy in 1932 and critics say it will still give the generals a powerful say over Thai politics for years, if not decades.Voters in the most heavily Muslim parts of Thailand were among the few to reject the draft constitution in last year's referendum.Security forces said five bombs had exploded on electric poles, causing local power cuts, and there had been a number of tyre-burning incidents.Details were not immediately available of all the attacks. A large number of co-ordinated attacks in the region is unusual.A Malay Muslim separatist insurgency in the provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat has claimed more than 6,500 lives since it escalated in 2004, according to independent monitoring group Deep South Watch.On Monday, police reported what they described as the biggest attack by insurgents in the south in years. They said about 30 insurgents had fired more than 500 shots into a police booth.In February, the government of the Buddhist-majority country struck a deal with MARA Patani, a long-standing umbrella group that claims to speak for the insurgents, but other separatists rejected it. REUTERS SDR 0748 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0431-1219755.Xml The US military launched 59 Tomahawk missiles from two U.S. Navy destroyers at a Syrian airfield and targets included aircraft and air defense systems, a Pentagon spokesman said."These missiles targeted aircraft, hardened aircraft shelters, petroleum and logistical storage areas, ammunition supply bunkers, air defense systems, and radars," Pentagon Captain Jeff Davis spokesman told reporters.REUTERS SDR -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0431-1219768.Xml Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov, citing the opinion of Russian President Vladimir Putin, termed the air strike as an act of "aggression" against a sovereign state, TASS news agency reported. Peskov also said that Putin considered the strike "an attempt to distract attention from numerous civilian casualties in Iraq". "Washington's move impairs the Russian-US relations, which are in a deplorable state, substantially," Peskov said. The strike on Thursday night targeted the Shairat military base in Homs province that left four Syrian soldiers dead, a monitor group said. The US fired 59 Tomahawk missiles, causing huge damages to the airbase, Homs Governor Talal Barazi said. "Putin believes that this step does not bring us closer to the ultimate goal in the fight against international terrorism... It creates serious obstacles to efforts to forge an international coalition to fight against it and effectively counter this global evil," the Kremlin spokesman said. According to the US, the strike was in response to the Syrian government's chemical weapons attack that killed dozens of civilians in Khan Sheikhoun area of Idlib province. --IANS py/rn ( 221 Words) 2017-04-07-12:58:12 (IANS) A senior Syrian rebel official called for international air strikes against all Syrian air bases today after a US missile attack on an air base near Homs city."We call for there to be joint (international) strikes ... in all the airports" from Syrians were being targeted, he told al-Hadath TV.REUTERS CJ GC1252 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0400-1219942.Xml Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe voiced support today for US military strikes against Syria after it launched deadly chemical weapons on a rebel-held area earlier this week."Many innocent people became victims from the chemical attacks. The international community was shocked by the tragedy that left many young children among the victims," Abe told reporters."Japan supports the US government's determination to prevent the spread and use of chemical weapons," he said.In an escalation of the US military role in Syria, two American warships fired dozens of cruise missiles from the eastern Mediterranean Sea at an airbase controlled by President Bashar al-Assad's forces that the Pentagon says was used to store chemical weapons.Reuters CJ GC1315 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0400-1219957.Xml China's Foreign Ministry on Friday said it hoped the Philippines could continue to properly manage maritime disputes with China, after reports the Philippines president had said troops would occupy uninhabited shoals it claims in the disputed South China Sea.Philippines defence and military officials have subsequently clarified President Rodrigo Duterte's comments, saying the Philippines will upgrade existing facilities on its inhabited islands and reefs in the South China Sea and not occupy new territories.REUTERS CJ GC1320 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0400-1219996.Xml The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) wants the Teesta water sharing agreement to be signed between New Delhi and Dhaka during Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina ongoing four-day visit to India. Dhaka Tribune quoted BNP spokesperson Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir as saying that they would not accept any treaty or agreement with India except for the long-pending Teesta water sharing deal. He said the Teesta water sharing issue is at present the country's main problem, adding the BNP has already clarified its stance about the Prime Minister's India visit. The BNP had earlier said that they were not in favour of signing a deal or agreement on defence cooperation during the visit. India is likely to offer USD 500 million Line of Credit to Bangladesh for defence exports from the country during Hasina's visit. Fakhrul said the people of Bangladesh will not accept a defence deal or agreement as the two countries have many unresolved issues including border killings and trade gap which cannot be left aside. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had during his visit to Bangladesh in 2015 expressed confidence of finding a "fair solution" to the long-pending Teesta and Feni river water sharing issue. The waters of the Teesta river is crucial for Bangladesh, especially during the lean period between December and March, when the water flow temporarily comes down to less than 1,000 cusecs from 5,000 cusecs. The Teesta River originates from the Pahunri Glacier and flows southwards through gorges and rapids in the Sikkim Himalayas. The river flows through Sikkim, West Bengal and Bangladesh where after coursing through about 45km of irrigable land, it merges with the Brahmaputra River. In 1983, an ad-hoc water sharing agreement was reached between India and Bangladesh, whereby both countries were allocated 39 percent and 36 percent of the water flow respectively. However, the deal fell through when the then newly elected Chief Minister of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee, refused to approve the treaty, fearing that the loss of higher volume of water to the lower riparian would cause problems in the northern region of state, especially during drier months. (ANI) Iran, one of the biggest supporters of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and its hardline paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, has condemned the U.S. military strike on the Syrian Government airbase in response to Tuesday's chemical weapon attack. Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi said the "unilateral action is dangerous, destructive and violates the principles of international law", in a report carried Friday by the semi-official ISNA news agency. Ghasemi described Iran as "the biggest victim of chemical weapons in recent history", referencing Iraqi use of the weapons during its 1980s war. He said Iran condemned the missile launch "regardless of the perpetrators and the victims" of Tuesday's chemical weapons attack in Syria. He also warned it would "strengthen terrorists" and further add to "the complexity of the situation in Syria and the region". China's Global Times, a nationalist Communist party-controlled tabloid, has published an online editorial criticising Trump's military strike against Syria. The newspaper said the attack was likely to spark conflict between the U.S. and Russia and "took place despite no definitive results from the investigation by an international organization, and was carried out in the absence of a UN Security Council resolution." "Trump's decision to attack the Assad government is a show of force from the US president," it added. "He wants to prove that he dares to do what Obama dared not. He wants to prove to the world that he is no 'businessman president' and that he will use US military force without hesitation when he considers it necessary." "This is Trump's first major move in international affairs, and it leaves an impression that the decision was made in haste." "The Syrian civil war is entering a new phase. More refugees will flee the region and Europe may have to pay the price," it concluded. The attack has drawn differing reactions across the world with most inclining in favour of Trump's move. Nations including the United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, Turkey and Saudi Arabia have supported Trump in his endevaour to put an 'end to chemical attacks.' Hours after launching the strike, Trump called on all 'civilised nations' to stop the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria. He also asserted that Assad "choked out the lives of innocent men, women and children." "Tonight I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched. It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the chemical weapons convention, and ignored the urging of the UN security council," he said. "Years of previous attempts at changing Assad's behaviour have all failed and failed very dramatically. As a result the refugee crisis continues to deepen and the region continues to destabilise, threatening the United States and its allies. Tonight I call on all civilised nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria, and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types," he added. On Trump's orders, U.S. warships launched between 50-60 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Syria Government airbase where the warplanes that carried out the chemical attacks were based, U.S. officials said. Trump had famously said the chemical attack on Syria's Idlib province affected his deeply and tranformed his thinking about Assad. Dozens of people, including at least ten children, were killed and over 200 injured as a result of asphyxiation caused by exposure to an unknown gas on Tuesday. The death toll is said to be at least 67, according to activist al-Diab, while the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has reported it to be 58. The High Negotiations Committee claimed the death toll could be as high as 100 with up to 400 injured. (ANI) The US air strike led to deaths of nine civilians and six soldiers besides causing huge damage, at the Shairat airbase in Homs province. The air strikes took place as President Donald Trump was meeting with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Florida. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hua Chunying said China hoped that "relevant parties stay calm, exercise restraint and avoid doing anything that might raise tensions". Beijing supported the UN in launching an independent and comprehensive probe on the issues in order to come to a conclusion, Xinhua news agency quoted the spokesman as saying. President Donald Trump said the strikes were a response to Tuesday's chemical weapons attack in Idlib province that killed dozens of civilians. Washington accused Damascus of the toxic gas attack but the Bashar al Assad government has termed it a "lie". Hua said China opposed the use of chemical weapons by any country, organisation or person for whatever purposes, and Beijing's position will remain consistent. Beijing, an ally of Russia, called "on all relevant parties to resolutely stick to promoting a political settlement and not abandon efforts to find a political settlement". China has routinely sided with Russia in blocking action by the UN Security Council on Syria, and Beijing's special --IANS py/rn ( 244 Words) 2017-04-07-18:36:10 (IANS) Three people were killed when a truck drove into a crowd on a shopping street and crashed into a department store in central Stockholm today, police said.Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said everything indicated the crash was a terrorist attack, according to the national news agency TT. Part of central Stockholm was cordoned off and the area was eavcuated. Large numbers of police and emergency services were at the scene."I saw at least three dead, but probably more," Radio Sweden reporter Martin Svenningsen said.TT reported that police confirmed the three deaths.A Reuters witness saw a number of body-like forms covered by blankets at the scene of the incident.Several attacks in which trucks or cars have driven into crowds have taken place in Europe in the past year. Al Qaeda in 2010 urged its followers to use trucks as a weapon.In London on March 22 this year, a man in a car ploughed into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, killing four, and then stabbed a policeman to death before being shot by police.Islamic State claimed responsibility for both an attack in Nice, France, last July, when a truck killed 86 people celebrating Bastille Day, and one in Berlin in December, when a truck smashed through a Christmas market, killing 12 people.REUTERS PS 1954 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0421-1220897.Xml US allies around the world expressed support today for Washington's missile strikes on Syria, calling them a proportionate response to Syria's suspected use of chemical weapons.The strikes were denounced as illegal by Syria itself and its allies Russia and Iran.But a wide range of US allies from Asia, Europe and the Middle East expressed support, if sometimes cautiously, in similar terms."The UK government fully supports the US action, which we believe was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime and is intended to deter further attacks," a British government spokesman said.Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters: "Many innocent people became victims from the chemical attacks. The international community was shocked by the tragedy that left many young children among the victims."Japan supports the US government's determination to prevent the spread and use of chemical weapons," he said.Turkey viewed the strikes positively and the international community should sustain its stance against the "barbarity" of the Syrian government, Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said.In an interview with Turkish broadcaster Fox TV, Kurtulmus said Assad's government must be fully punished in the international arena and the peace process in Syria needed to be accelerated.French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said Russia and Iran needed to understand that supporting Assad made no sense and that the escalation of the US military role in Syria was a "warning" to "a criminal regime"."Use of chemical weapons is appalling and should be punished because it is a war crime," Ayrault told Reuters and France Info radio in the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott, where he is on a diplomatic visit.French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke by telephone. Both issued statements saying Assad was solely to blame for the air strikes.The Dutch government said in a statement: "The United States has given a clear signal that the use of poison gas crosses a line." It also labelled the strikes a "proportionate" response."US strikes show needed resolve against barbaric chemical attacks. EU will work with the US to end brutality in Syria," the chairman of the council of EU leaders, Donald Tusk, said on Twitter.Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the strikes sent "a vitally important message" that the world would not tolerate the use of chemical weapons."The retribution has been proportionate and it has been swift," he told reporters in Sydney. "We support the United States in that swift action."Some countries expressed reservations about the US decision to launch strikes without authorisation from the UN Security Council.Indonesia, home to the world's largest Muslim population, said it also strongly condemned the use of chemical weapons in Syria. "At the same time, Indonesia is concerned with unilateral actions by any parties, including the use of Tomahawk missiles, in responding to the chemical weapon attack tragedy in Syria," Foreign Ministry spokesman Armanatha Nasir said in a text message."Military actions, undertaken without prior authorisation of the UN Security Council, are not in line with international legal principles in the peaceful settlement of disputes, as stipulated in the UN Charter."REUTERS RJ PM2133 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0098-1221083.Xml Police in Norway's largest cities and at Oslo's airport will be carrying weapons until further notice following an attack in Stockholm today, Norwegian police said in a tweet.Police officers in Norway, which borders Sweden, do not usually carry guns on them.In Finland, police increased patrols in the capital Helsinki.REUTERS RJ PM2125 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0098-1221086.Xml A truck ploughed into a crowd on a shopping street and crashed into a department store in central Stockholm today, killing three people and wounding eight in what the prime minister said appeared to be a terrorist attack.Swedish police said no-one had been arrested in connection with the attack. They showed a picture of a man wearing a grey hoodie and said they were looking for him. They did not rule out the possibility that other attackers were involved.There was no immediate claim of responsibility."I turned around and saw a big truck coming towards me. It swerved from side to side. It didn't look out of control, it was trying to hit people," Glen Foran, an Australian tourist in his 40s, told Reuters."It hit people, it was terrible. It hit a pram with a kid in it, demolished it," he said."It took a long time for police to get here. I suppose from their view it was quick, but it felt like forever."Part of central Stockholm was cordoned off and the area was evacuated, including the main train station. All subway traffic was halted on police orders. Government offices were closed."Sweden has been attacked. Everything points to the fact that this is a terrorist attack," Prime Minister Stefan Lofven told reporters during a visit in western Sweden. He was immediately returning to the capital.Many police and emergency services personnel were at the scene, said a Reuters witness who saw policemen put what appeared to be two bodies in body bags. Bloody tyre tracks on Drottninggatan (Queen Street) showed where the beer truck had passed.The truck had been stolen while making a delivery to a tapas bar further up Drottninggatan, Spendrups Brewery spokesman Marten Lyth said. A masked person jumped into the cab, started the truck and drove away."We were standing by the traffic lights at Drottninggatan and then we heard some screaming and saw a truck coming," a witness who declined to be named told Reuters."Then it drove into a pillar at Ahlens City (department store) where the hood started burning. When it stopped we saw a man lying under the tyre. It was terrible to see," said the man, who saw the incident from his car.Police confirmed three deaths and eight people injured, including the truck driver, who had tried to stop the hijack.Several attacks in which trucks or cars have driven into crowds have taken place in Europe in the past year. Al Qaeda in 2010 urged its followers to use trucks as a weapon. Islamic State claimed responsibility for an attack in Nice, France, last July, when a truck killed 86 people celebrating Bastille Day, and one in Berlin in December, when a truck smashed through a Christmas market, killing 12 people.Magnus Ranstorp, head of terrorism research at the Swedish Defence University, told Reuters the attacker's appproach was similar to those in Berlin and Nice: "Hijacking a truck, that has happened before.""And this is a pretty cunning modus operandi. To drive to Ahlens (department store) and stop ... There is a way down to the subway just a few metres away from there, and then you ... can jump on any train you want and quickly disappear."With the perpetrator still on the loose, "the risk for further attacks is still there," Ranstorp added.Police confirmed three deaths and eight people injured."Our thoughts are going out to those that were affected, and to their families," Sweden's King Carl Gustaf said in a statement.Stockholmers opened up their homes and offered lifts to people who were unable to get home or needed a place to stay.The attack was the latest to hit the Nordic region after the 2015 shootings in Copenhagen, Denmark, that killed three people and the 2011 bombing and shooting by far right extremist Anders Behring Breivik that killed 77 people in Norway.Sweden has not been hit by a large-scale attack, although in December 2010, a man blew himself up only a few hundred yards from the site of the latest incident in a failed suicide attack.In February US President Donald Trump falsely suggested there had been an immigration-related security incident in Sweden, to the bafflement of Swedes.Swedish authorities raised the national security threat level to four on a scale of five in October 2010 but lowered the level to three, indicating a "raised threat", in March 2016.Police in Norway's largest cities and at Oslo's airport will carry weapons until further notice following the attack. Denmark has been on high alert since the February 2015 shootings."An attack on any of our member states is an attack on us all," European Union chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker said in Brussels."One of Europe's most vibrant and colourful cities appears to have been struck by those wishing it -- and our very way of life -- harm.Neutral Sweden has not fought a war in more than 200 years, but its military has taken part in UN peacekeeping missions in a number of conflict zones in recent years, including Iraq, Mali and Afghanistan.The Sapo security police said in its annual report it was impossible to say how big a risk there was that Sweden would be targeted like other European cities, but that, if so "it is most likely that it would be undertaken by a lone attacker".REUTERS SDR 0003 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0431-1221201.Xml LJUBLJANA, April 6 (Xinhua) -- Slovenian Foreign Minister Karl Erjavec hosted a meeting here with his Hungarian counterpart Peter Szijjarto on Thursday to discuss the planned construction of a second rail track serving the Slovenian port of Koper. Addressing a joint press conference, Szijjarto said Port Koper was the key port for Hungary so its development and the development of the rail link serving it was in the country's interests, the Slovenian Press Agency (STA) reported. "It is in the interest of the Hungarian economy that Hungarian companies reach the port of Koper as soon as possible," Szijjarto said. "Hungarian exports have been growing year by year. Last year, and the year before, we beat all records and a big portion of these exports has been delivered through the port of Koper," Szijjarto said. Szijjarto, who is also responsible for trade, said Hungary was willing to contribute to the project financially, but listed three conditions, one of them being that Hungarian companies are involved in the construction of the rail track. Hungary's other two conditions are access for Hungarian rail cargo companies and priority access to the port for Hungarian companies, such as through a long-term lease of port facilities. He confirmed that Hungary was considering investing around 200 million euros (213 million U.S. dollars) in the project. The country is still conducting an analysis into the profitability of the project, the STA report said, but has sent a letter of intent to the Slovenian government enabling it to apply for EU funds. CAPE TOWN, April 6 (Xinhua) -- The ruling African National Congress (ANC) on Thursday distanced itself from radical ANC members who threatened to take up arms in self-defence as a national shutdown approached. The party made the statement ahead of the national shutdown scheduled for Friday. Opposition parties and civic organizations are planning nationwide protest actions against President Jacob Zuma, including a march to the ANC headquarters in Johannesburg, prompting radical ANC members to threaten to take up arms in defence of the organization and Zuma. "We condemn in the harshest possible terms reports of people seeking to take up arms in the name of the ANC. Such behavior has no place in a democratic society," the party said. The ANC also denied reports that it has organized pro-ANC marches to counter the protests. Organizers of Friday's planned national shutdown have appealed to ANC leaders to join their action aimed at persuading President Jacob Zuma to step down. Leaders from civil society, religious bodies and even ANC stalwarts have called on Zuma to quit, following the cabinet reshuffle last week, which saw the dismissal of Pravin Gordhan as Finance Minister. The ANC said it is concerned at reports of sporadic violence and intimidation in the run-up to the planned so-called "day of action" on Friday. "Such actions have no place in democratic South Africa and threaten to turn the country back to a time where civic activism by citizens was stifled in the name of 'preserving law and order'", the party said. As the planned day of protests approaches, the ANC calls on all South Africans to organize in a calm and measured fashion, ANC acting national spokesperson Khusela Sangoni said. "We should not allow inflammatory rhetoric from certain elements, including on social media, to damage our fragile social fabric and turn South Africans against each other," said Sangoni. The ANC encourages all South Africans to report any incidents of illegality, intimidation or coercion to the relevant law enforcement authorities, both in the days leading up to the demonstrations, and on the day, he said. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 04:21:47|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close UNITED NATIONS, April 6 (Xinhua) -- The UN Security Council on Thursday strongly condemned the most recent ballistic missile launch conducted by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). On Wednesday, the DPRK test-fired a ballistic missile into eastern waters, according to the Republic of Korea defense ministry. In a press statement issued here, the 15-nation council said that the launch is in grave violation of the DPRK's international obligations under UN Security Council resolutions. The council members deplored all DPRK's ballistic missile activities, noting that "such activities are contributing to the DPRK's development of nuclear weapons delivery systems and are significantly increasing tension in the region and beyond." "The members of the Security Council reiterated the importance of maintaining peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in North-East Asia at large, expressed their commitment to a peaceful, diplomatic and political solution to the situation and welcomed efforts by Council members, as well as other States, to facilitate a peaceful and comprehensive solution through dialogue," said the statement. The most powerful UN body also demanded the DPRK to refrain from further actions in violation of the relevant Security Council resolutions and comply fully with its obligations under these resolutions. "The members of the Security Council emphasized the vital importance of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea showing sincere commitment to denuclearization and stressed the importance of working to reduce tensions in the Korean Peninsula and beyond," it added. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 04:36:49|Editor: ZD A picture taken on April 6, 2017 shows 40-year-old Hassan Youssef, a victim of the April 4, 2017 suspected toxic gas attack in Khan Sheikhun, receiving medical care in a hospital in the nearby northwestern Syrian city of Idlib. (Xinhua/AFP PHOTO) WASHINGTON, April 6 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. government on Thursday called for ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while considering military options as response to a recent chemical attack in Syria. Speaking to reporters onboard the Air Force One, U.S. President Donald Trump signaled that the U.S. would do "something" to respond to the attack, which he called "a disgrace to humanity." "I think what Assad did is terrible. I think what happened in Syria is one of the truly egregious crimes," Trump said. When asked if Assad should leave power, Trump said: "What happened is Syria is a disgrace to humanity and he's there and I guess he's running things, so something should happen." He did not elaborate, but reports said that the Trump administration is considering options, including military strikes, in response to the use of chemical weapons. Speaking at the White House Wednesday, Trump said the attack crossed a lot of red lines, and his attitude toward Assad has changed much. Not long ago, U.S. officials indicated that the Trump administration's priority on Syria is not removing Assad from power as the previous Obama administration did. Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Thursday that steps "are already underway" to remove Assad from power. He told reporters at the Palm Beach International Airport that "no doubt" that the Assad regime was responsible for the Tuesday gas attack in Syria's northwestern province of Idlib, which reportedly killed over 70 people and wounded scores of others, most of them civilians. Tillerson said the U.S. is considering "appropriate response" to the chemical attack. At the same time, Tillerson urged Russia, a major supporter of Assad, to "consider carefully their continued support for the Assad regime." U.S. officials were quoted by U.S. media as saying Thursday that the Pentagon had presented its options to strike Syria's chemical weapons capability to the Trump administration. But so far no decision has been made yet. The top-level consultations about military options involve Defense Secretary James Mattis and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joesph Dunford, as well as military officers at the U.S. Central Command, the New York Times revealed in a report Thursday. Mattis will travel to Florida to discuss the crisis in Syria with Trump, the report said. Syrian army on Tuesday strongly refuted the accusations against it as completely baseless, saying it had not used, nor would use such weapons in the future. It also held "terrorist groups" responsible for using chemical weapons. The Syrian Foreign Ministry also said that the Syrian army doesn't possess any kind of chemical weapons. In Moscow, Russian Defense Ministry said Wednesday that the deadly contamination in Syria was caused by the explosion of chemical weapons produced by the rebels. The United Nations Security Council held an emergency meeting on Wednesday to discuss the suspected chemical attack in Syria. The UN has already begun gathering information to confirm the use of chemical weapons. ROME, April 6 (Xinhua) -- Some 1,350 migrants and refugees were saved in the Central Mediterranean in the last 24 hours, the Italian coast guard said on Thursday. Overally, 12 operations were carried out by ships from Italy's navy and coast guard, along with vessels from two humanitarian groups. All of the people were rescued while sailing aboard one barge, five inflatable crafts and six small boats, the coast guard said in a statement. One body was also found aboard one of the inflatable crafts, rescuers added. Italy has remained on the frontline of Europe's migration crisis throughout 2016, and the inflow of people seeking refuge from the African coasts have kept growing this year, according to the latest data. In fact, some 24,280 migrants and refugees arrived in Italy from Jan.1 to March 31, marking a 29.3 percent increase against the same period of 2016, the Interior Ministry recently stated. Compared with arrivals registered in the first three months of 2015, the figure marked a 138.9 percent rise. The latest rescue missions in the Mediterranean Sea included some 480 people saved on April 1, and another 295 saved in the following days and brought to Italian ports on April 4. Currently, Italy hosts 176,523 migrants and asylum seekers, according to the ministry. The majority of them -- or 137,855 people -- are housed in temporary facilities. Some 23,800 are hosted in shelters managed by municipalities within the national asylum seekers protection network, while another 13,385 asylum seekers are in first accommodation centres. A remaining group of about 1,400 migrants are hosted in hotspots across the country, where they would go through the identification process. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 05:52:03|Editor: Mengjiao Liu Video Player Close BERLIN, April 6 (Xinhua) -- Borussia Dortmund and defender Lukasz Piszczek agreed on a contract extension, both sides confirmed in an official statement on Thursday. After the extension with midfielder Gonzalo Castro, the "BVB" have bound with Piszczek another key player, as the Polish international has put pen to paper on a new deal until June 2019. "I am very delighted that Dortmund put trust in me, and I am proud to play for at least another two seasons in the black-and-yellow jersey," the 31-year-old defender told the club' s official homepage. Piszczek joined from league rivals Hertha Berlin in 2010 to become a key player. Since his arrival he made 176 appearances and provided 14 goals and 32 assists. With the "BVB" he lifted the Bundesliga title in 2011, and the German domestic double in 2012. Besides that, he played in the UEFA Champions League final 2013 which Dortmund lost 2-1 to Bayern Munich. "Piszczek is an absolute model professional and therefore a perfect example for young players. During his time here he developed into a highly respected leader," Dortmund's sporting director Michael Zorc said. Borussia Dortmund sit currently on the 4th place of the standings. They clash with front-runners Bayern Munich at the 28th round of Bundesliga on Saturday. KHARTOUM, April 6 (Xinhua) -- Sudanese authorities on Thursday announced that 51 civilians have been killed and 28 others injured in tribal clashes in Kordofan region, declaring a one-month state of emergency in the area. Violent tribal clashes broke out last Sunday between Hamar and Kababish tribes in Sudan's Kordofan region. Governments of North and West Kordofan States issued a temporary decree declaring a one-month state of emergency prohibiting assembling and arms carrying in the two states. Tribal confrontations spread in Sudan due to several reasons including banditry activities and disputes over pastures, besides spread of vengeance among the tribes. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 06:02:05|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close QUITO, April 6 (Xinhua) -- Colombia's government and National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas on Thursday announced they have agreed to deescalate fighting. To "protect non-combatants and the civilian population from the effects of the armed conflict," both sides agreed to "decrease the intensity of the fighting," according to a joint statement. The statement was issued in Quito, Ecuador, where negotiators for the government and rebel group concluded the first round of peace talks aimed at ending five decades of fighting. Negotiators will take a month-long break and resume talks on May 3. "In the next round, we will work on a process to develop a pilot program for humanitarian demining," they said. At a press conference, Juan Camilo Restrepo, chief negotiator for the government, said "international humanitarian rights are ... the beacon that will guide the efforts of this negotiating table." Talks with the ELN, Colombia's second-largest guerrilla group, began in early February, not long after the administration of President Juan Manuel Santos signed a definitive peace deal with the country's largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), following four years of negotiations. The FARC are currently in the process of transitioning from an armed group to a political movement, but there have been hiccups in the process, due to continued violence from paramilitary groups, and a lack of preparation and funding on the part of the government. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 06:22:08|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close by Hummam Sheikh Ali DAMASCUS, April 7 (Xinhua) -- It seems like the chemical weapons are always the fastest pretext to ensure a military action against a certain country, and Syria is no exception. In Iraq in 2003, the United States invaded the country on the pretext of Iraq having weapons of mass destruction, which was later proved to be wrong "intel." A wrong intel has brought woes on Iraq, which has been unstable since 2003, with the rising of extremism, sectarianism and weak economy. On Tuesday, the Syrian opposition groups accused the Syrian warplanes of firing toxic gas on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun in the countryside of Idlib province in northwestern Syria. The attack allegedly killed over 70 people. On the same day, the United States and the rest of the western orchestra hurled accusation on the government of President Bashar al-Assad of being behind the attack. The U.S. administration, which was showing a subtle attitude toward Assad just a week ago, is now reportedly mulling over military action against the Syrian government just two days after the alleged attack. It's astonishing how a big attack like this attracted war without being investigated, observers said. The Syrian government acknowledged carrying an attack on Khan Sheikhoun, but denied firing toxic gas. Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said Thursday that the airstrikes struck an arm depot belonging to the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front. He said it's not logical to use chemical weapons at a time when the Syrian government was optimistic that the international community was becoming more close to realizing the size of conspiracy on Syria. The minister repeated that "the Syrian army forces haven't, and will not use chemical weapons" and that the forces are no longer in possession of such weapons. Al-Moallem said that al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front and likeminded groups have been storing chemical materials, which they brought into Syria from Iraq. Analysts said that there is no logic in accusing the government of carrying a chemical attack at a time the situation of the Syrian army is very good that there is no reason for resorting to such an attack to make gains. Osama Danura, a Syrian political analyst, told Xinhua that the anti-Syrian government campaign seemed like it was already prepared by the United States and the Western powers. In his press conference Thursday, al-Moallem said there are several reasons behind the chemical attack allegations: the first is to change the opinion of Trump, who said after the attack that his opinion toward the Syrian government has changed, after previous remarks by the U.S. administration that toppling President al-Assad was no longer a priority. The second reason, al-Moallem said, is to practice pressure on Russia, adding that it has failed after Moscow said it will continue to aid the Syrian army in the fight against "terrorist groups." The third reason is also to practice pressure on Damascus, which he said also failed as the Syrian government will not change its approach in fighting terrorism and working on political solution at the same time. Now, news coming from the United States suggest that the administration there is mulling over military action, whose nature is still unknown. Still, Danura, the analyst, said that launching a war on Syria from the United States or Western countries sounds like "committing suicide." "I say it will be like the Western powers are committing suicide because it would be a third world war," he said. But the question is whether the United States really wants to step into a deep, muddy quagmire in Syria and face the Russians, and the Iranians, or just to pressure Russia and the Syrian government into making concessions. Analysts said that the current situation is a reminder of what happened in 2013 when then U.S. President Barack Obama threatened military action against Damascus over chemical substance use in the Syrian war. The military campaign didn't take place, as Russia and the United States reached a last minute deal which was dismantling the chemical arsenal of the Syrian government under the supervision of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. The chemical weapons of Syria were all dismantled, according to the deal, and Syrian government officials, mainly al-Moallem and his deputy, Faisal Mekdad, said that the government no longer possess such weapons. So, dismantling the chemical arsenal of Syria was the price for halting the first would-be U.S. military campaign in 2013, but what could be the price, or the gain, behind the new escalation? Analysts believed that the United States will work toward creating safe zones, or safe areas, in northern Syria with the no-fly zone for the Syrian army over such areas. In the meantime, a fact-finding mission is also expected to be formed to investigate the attack, which returned Syria back to the first years of crisis, where the political solution seemed like a far-fetched dream amid all the chaos and the international wrangling. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 06:57:12|Editor: Mengjiao Liu Video Player Close Photo provided by Colombia's Defense Ministry shows children play next to tents at a shelter in Mocoa, Putumayo department, Colombia, on April 6, 2017. At least 306 people have died and 362 more have been injured by the landslide that hit the Colombian town of Mocoa on Saturday. (Xinhua/Mauricio Orjuela/MINDEFENSA) BOGOTA, April 6 (Xinhua) -- At least 306 people have died and 362 more have been injured by the landslide that hit the Colombian town of Mocoa on Saturday. The Minister of Defense and the man in charge of Mocoa's reconstruction efforts, Luis Carlos Villegas, told the press Thursday that 220 bodies had been handed over to their families after being identified, including 92 children. "We have 362 injured people, of which 19 are still in hospital. Another 100 have been sent to specialized treatment centers...I have been inspecting the shelters and government food supplies are being delivered there. The population in the shelters is being well-fed," he added. The minister also explained that, in recent days, there had been a sharp rise in demands for vaccinations by a great number of people seeking to avoid diseases. According to instructions from President Juan Manuel Santos, daily supplies for the displaced will continue to arrive until at least April 16th. The city of Mocoa is crisscrossed by the Mocoa, Mulato and Sancoyaco rivers, all of which burst their limits last Friday due to intense rain. The landslide hit early Saturday morning, when most of 43,700 people in the town was fast asleep. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 06:57:12|Editor: Zhang Dongmiao Video Player Close HAVANA, April 6 (Xinhua) -- Venezuela's ambassador to Cuba Ali Rodriguez said on Thursday his country would not "abandon international forums" such as the Organization of American States (OAS) despite alleged "aggressions" against Caracas by its secretary-general, Luis Almagro. At a press conference in the Venezuelan embassy, Rodriguez said most OAS members reject Almagro's stances against President Nicolas Maduro and his government. "There is a principle to abide by and we cannot leave a forum where we are a legitimate member and we have a voice," he added. Last Monday, the OAS held a special session regarding Venezuela and its crisis, spearheaded by its secretary general Luis Almagro, to declare the South American nation as being in violation of democratic norms. Almagro has requested Maduro free alleged political prisoners, allow humanitarian aid to enter the country and call for general elections within 30 days. However, regarding a recent impasse that occurred between that nation's Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) and the Attorney General's Office, Rodriguez considered it was "corrected in time." Last week, the Supreme Court stripped legislative powers from the opposition-led National Assembly amid a long-running economic and political crisis. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 07:02:13|Editor: Yamei Video Player Close UNTIED NATIONS, April 6 (Xinhua) -- The UN General Assembly on Thursday adopted a resolution to designate June 27 as Micro-, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises Day. The resolution was adopted to recognize "the crucial role of small businesses in achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development," a set of 17 targets to be achieved by the year 2030, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said at a daily news briefing here. The resolution was spearheaded by Argentina with support from the International Council for Small Business (ICBS), and was co-sponsored by over 45 UN member states representing over five billion people in the world, he said. "These enterprises can in fact become the engines that sustain growth for long-term development in developing countries," Argentina's representative said, thanking the contribution made by the ICSB to the creation of the Day. The ICSB held its 61st Annual World Conference here at the United Nations last year, in which authorities from over 55 countries participated. ] In that occasion, the ICSB made a declaration about the urgent need to have a day to recognize the important role of micro-, small, and medium-sized enterprises in the development of economies as a whole. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 07:12:15|Editor: Zhang Dongmiao Video Player Close UNTIED NATIONS, April 6 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday called for "sustainable, predictable and sufficient" funding for the UN relief agency working for Palestinian refugees. In a report presented here Thursday, the secretary-general urged all UN member states to be more active in rendering financial support to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). The report said that member states widely value the indispensable role that UNRWA plays in the provision of essential services to the Palestine refugees and the impact it has had in the context of the unresolved Arab-Israeli conflict. The secretary-general notes in his report that recurring financial crises threaten to disrupt service provision to as many as 5.3 million Palestine refugees. For his part, Pierre Krahenbuhl, the commissioner general of UNRWA, said that the importance of the report lies both in its renewed focus on the plight of Palestine refugees and in the determination to improve the resourcing of UNRWA's vital services. UNRWA is funded almost entirely by voluntary contributions from UN member states. The UN agency also receives some funding from the regular budget of the United Nations, which is used mostly for international staffing costs. The UN agency's services encompass education, health care, relief and social services, camp infrastructure and improvement, microfinance and emergency assistance, including in times of armed conflict. Following the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict, UNRWA was established by the United Nations General Assembly on Dec. 8, 1949 to carry out direct relief and works programs for Palestine refugees. The agency began operations on May 1, 1950. In the absence of a solution to the Palestine refugee problem, the General Assembly has repeatedly renewed UNRWA's mandate, most recently extending it until June 30, 2017. CANBERRA, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The Australian government has overnight issued a warning to travelers heading to Anzac Day commemorations at Gallipoli in Turkey, with Foreign Minister Julie Bishop saying she received information that a possible terror attack could be planned for the site. Anzac Day, which is a day recognizing the sacrifices made by Australian and New Zealand defence force personnel in all wars, is commemorated on April 25 each year, and thousands of Australians make the pilgrimage to Gallipoli in Turkey annually. Anzac troops first fought together in World War 1, when they landed at the Turkish site on April 25, 1915. Overnight, Australia's Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop issued a warning to those heading to the Turkish peninsula, appealing to those who hadn't pre-planned travel to the region to reconsider the need. "The Australian government has received information to suggest terrorists may seek to target Anzac Day commemorations on the Gallipoli Peninsula," she said in a statement released overnight. "Turkish authorities are aware of this information and traditionally provide a high level of protective security around Anzac Day commemorations on the peninsula. "We advise travelers to 'reconsider their need to travel' to Ankara and Istanbul, the advice has been updated to reflect that there is new information." Bishop said it was likely that many Australians had pre-planned their visit to Gallipoli, and added that if that was the case, Australians should "minimize transit time spent in Istanbul and Ankara". "Travel advice for Turkey continues to recommend that travelers avoid large crowds and minimize time spent around potential targets for attack, including tourist sites," she said. "The Australian Government does not provide this advice lightly. The travel advice for Turkey, like all travel advisories, remains under close review and represents our best assessment of the safety and security environment that Australian travelers will experience in Turkey. "We are conscious of the effect of this on the many Australians planning to attend this year's Anzac Day commemorations at Gallipoli. In the current global environment, major events attract threats of varying degrees of credibility. Regrettably Anzac Day is not immune." SYDNEY, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has thrown his support behind a rail link between Melbourne's international airport and the CBD. News Limited reported on Friday that Turnbull will include funds in May's Federal budget for the construction of the long-awaited rail link. Turnbull refused to confirm the reports that the rail link would be supported in the budget but acknowledged it was a plan that had been studied by previous Victorian governments. "The (Former Premier Dennis) Napthine government took steps towards a rail line to Tullamarine and it's always been something that's been seen as an omission in Melbourne not to have a rail line out to the airport," Turnbull told Melbourne radio station 3AW on Friday. "There is no doubt as our cities become bigger and more densely settled, you need to have more mass transit." Jacinta Allan, Victoria's Public Transport Minister, said Federal interest in the project was welcome but a rail link would not be possible until the 8.3 billion U.S. dollar Metro Rail Project was completed in 2026. "(We) would look forward to working with them to advance the business case on the project because that's what needs to be done first and foremost," Allan told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). "We already have a public transport system that has significant challenges because there's not the space to run extra trains. "The Metro tunnel unlocks that capacity and that's why we're working very hard to deliver that right now." The operators of the Melbourne Airport have warned that if a rail link is not built the Tullamarine Freeway, the only access road for the airport, would become gridlocked within a decade. The cost of building the link has been estimated at 3.75 billion U.S. dollars. SRINAGAR, Indian-controlled Kashmir, April 7 (Xinhua) -- At least three troopers went missing, while as two were rescued after multiple avalanches triggered by snowfall hit army post in Indian-controlled Kashmir, officials said. The post was hit in Batalik sector near Kargil district of Ladakh division in Kashmir. "Today unprecedented snowfall triggered multiple avalanches, during which a post in Batalik sector was buried along with five troopers," Indian army spokesman Col Rajesh Kalia told Xinhua on Thursday. "Two out of five troopers were rescued, while as search for remaining ones is going on." According to Kalia, the military has employed specially trained and well equipped avalanche rescue teams in the area to carry out searches. Earlier this year, 14 Indian troopers were killed after avalanches hit them in Tulail of Gurez area in Bandipora district. Incessant rains and snowfall are going on in Indian-controlled Kashmir for the past three days. On Thursday water level in rivers and streams surpassed the danger mark, triggered fear of floods among residents. Kashmir has a rugged terrain. Landslides and avalanches are often triggered from its mountains during frequent rains and heavy snowfall, the region receives. CANBERRA, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Australia is well-placed to play a major part in India's burgeoning economy, the nation's Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull has said. Ahead of his first official trip to India on Sunday, Turnbull said he would be discussing opportunities for both nations to work closely in a number of fields, such as in trade and energy. Australia and India are currently in negotiations to sign a free trade agreement (FTA) and Turnbull said his visit could help speed things along. "Alongside China, India is a land of immense opportunity for Australia," Turnbull said at a forum overnight. "India is undergoing a dramatic economic transformation and our close partnership creates opportunities for both nations. "My first visit to India as Prime Minister is a chance to further co-operate across a wide range of sectors including energy, education and trade. "But there are many more opportunities. India wants to provide energy security through a range of technologies, including nuclear, clean coal, natural gas and renewable energy. Australia is well placed to provide many of the raw materials, and some of the latest technology." Turnbull said that bilateral trade with India had grown to be worth more than 15 billion dollars in the last decade, and with a population of 1.2 billion people, it's expected that India's growing middle class will begin to desire more Australian products. The Prime Minister said Australia could not fall behind in taking advantage of opportunities to attract overseas business to Australia, especially in such a globalizing world. "Globalization means we compete with the whole world for investment. We cannot expect to attract more businesses and more jobs if our tax rates are considerably higher than those in other countries especially when our competitors around the world are looking to cut their rates further," Turnbull said. "We want Australian businesses to aspire not just to a local market of 24 million Australians, but to a worldwide market of 7.4 billion people." Negotiations for a free trade deal between Australia and India have been ongoing since 2011, with the most recent talks occurring in 2015. Turnbull leaves for India on Sunday with Education Minister, Simon Birmingham. Enditem Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 10:52:43|Editor: Zhang Dongmiao Video Player Close BRUSSELS, April 6 (Xinhua) -- The European Commission decided on Thursday to impose anti-dumping duties on hot-rolled flat steel products from China. The European Commission, or the European Union (EU)'s executive arm, said these products had been sold in Europe at heavily dumped prices. The new anti-dumping duties range between 18.1 percent and 35.9 percent and will be in place for an initial five years. A Chinese Ministry of Commerce statement on Thursday quoted Wang Hejun, head of the ministry's trade remedy and investigation bureau, as saying that the EU continued the use of the unfair and unreasonable "surrogate country approach" in the investigation, which resulted in artificially-determined high anti-dumping duties for Chinese products and thus seriously undermined Chinese enterprises' interests. Wang said the EU's conclusion lacks factual grounds, urging the EU to correct wrongdoings. He said China will take necessary measures to protect the interests of Chinese enterprises. Hot-rolled flat steel is commonly used in construction, gas containers, cars, pressure vessels and energy pipelines. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 10:52:43|Editor: Zhang Dongmiao Video Player Close by Raimundo Urrechaga HAVANA, April 6 (Xinhua) -- Cuba has embarked on an aggressive campaign to attract foreign investment in offshore and deep-sea oil exploration in its Gulf of Mexico waters. The timing could be better, given that the low price of oil isn't much of an incentive these days to invest in oil exploration, but the outlook has improved. FOCUS ON OIL FOR DAILY USE In late 2014, global oil prices saw sharpest drop in a decade -- as a result of a U.S. strategy to flood the market with shale oil to deal a blow to producing nations and to benefit its own economy -- causing the industry to struggle. Almost three years later, the situation has stabilized somewhat, thanks to an agreement in December by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to cut back on oil output to shore up prices, which are currently at around 50 U.S. dollars per barrel. That development -- along with technical and technological help from China -- has given hope to Cuban organizers of the VI Oil and Gas Congress scheduled for Friday in Havana. "The Cuban strategy is to focus more on the area that produces oil for our everyday use, which is less risky and open to foreign investment in those regions that require more extensive and expensive studies," Oswaldo Lopez, director of exploration at Cuba's state oil company Cupet, told Xinhua. SOLICITING FOREIGN INVESTMENT Lopez said it is "urgent" for the island to carry out a new "oil campaign" in deep waters, where exists promising evidence of large oil reserves, specifically in the 59 blocks of Cuba's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in the Gulf of Mexico. "We are estimating from the data we have today that there might be about 15 billion barrels of oil in that area that can be extracted," Lopez said. To sustain and make those future investments more viable, Cuba is carrying out research in oil exploration on a scale that is unprecedented in its history. Using new, high-definition technologies and software, more than 25,000 km of 2D seismic studies will be mapped out around the island by leading Chinese geophysicial service company BGP Inc., part of China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC). "The survey is being done with a 12-kilometer-long cable that will allow us to know more geological data at greater depths, and finally obtain important information about the enormous oil potential in the Gulf area we have already identified," Lopez said. The study will be finished later this year and ready to hit the market by mid-2018. In 2012, four exploratory wells were drilled in Cuban waters, and Mexican oil finds were obtained at a certain depth. However, in Cuban waters, the studies and drilling revealed "discrete oil findings" at that depth, indicating exploration should be done deeper, according to Lopez. "That means the next exploration and drilling campaigns must be carried out in deeper wells that allow us to reach those levels where we know oil and other minerals are being generated," he said. DEEPER-WATER EXPLORATION IN FUTURE More than 80 percent of Cuba's international waters are considered deep and ultra-deep, which means most oil wells will have to be drilled at more than 3,000 meters below the sea. "That is very expensive and it can cost around 200 to 250 million U.S. dollars. It is an investment with a lot of risk that can only be undertaken with the help of large foreign oil companies," Lopez said. In February, Australia-based Melbana Energy ratified its interest in exploring Block 9 along the northern coast of the island, an area Cupet calls the North Belt of Cuban Oil Exploration. Melbana Energy plans to start drilling in the area in 2018, if the technical and financial conditions are ready. Other major oil firms, including Venezuela's state oil giant PDVSA, Sonangol of Angola, and Sherritt of Canada, have also shown their interest. Cuba currently produces 45,000 barrels of oil per day and more than 3 million cubic meters of gas, both almost entirely used to generate electricity. Those resources supply approximately half of the country's energy needs, and the other half is supplied by Venezuela through a very flexible deal. However, Venezuela's economic and political crises have led Havana to turn to new partners and hasten foreign investment in the energy sector. Official data indicates that by the end of 2016, 15 percent of the energy generated in the Caribbean nation was from natural gas and 45 percent from national oil. But Lopez warned that the area where they obtain most of oil has been exploited for a long time and production has declined over the last two years. Since 1999, Cupet, in conjunction with foreign companies, has tried four times to strike oil in Cuban waters, but has not succeeded yet. A fifth attempt at deep-sea oil exploration is about to start with an unknown foreign partner. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 11:37:49|Editor: Yamei Video Player Close BUENOS AIRES, April 6 (Xinhua) -- Ties between China and Latin America are hugely mutually beneficial and are sure to get stronger, James Li, executive president of E. J. McKay, an investment bank in Shanghai, said Thursday. During an interview with Xinhua on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum on Latin America here in the Argentine capital, Li said: "China benefits tremendously from the relationship with Latin America." "For the past 10 years, China has imported large quantities of natural resources, raw materials and agricultural products from Latin American countries," he said. In his opinion, Latin America played an indispensable role in China's rapid economic growth. Li, a former investment banker for Merrill Lynch in New York and Hong Kong, predicted that "links between both sides will become closer in the years to come. China's growth in infrastructure has slowed down but it has also accumulated capital for which it is seeking opportunities." "(Chinese investments) could help create local opportunities, such as jobs and markets, as well as manufacturing to help local people," he added. Li, who is also an associate professor at Tsinghua University and Zhejiang University in China, said: "China's new normal is for growth to slow down a bit while being more focused on quality and technology." "Another element is that technology brings us together. China needs to find new paths of green technology, which are friendly to the environment. The 'new normal' will lead to mutually beneficial results," he said. Asked for what advice he had for Asian companies considering expansion into Latin America, Li encouraged them first "to think as locals, to come here and do business locally. You must learn Spanish, speak the language and hire local people." China stands as the region's second-largest trading partner and third-largest source of investment, while Latin America is China's seventh-largest trading partner. HANOI, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has agreed to support construction of the North-South Highway with an investment of some 55 trillion Vietnamese dong (2.4 billion U.S. dollars) sourced from government bonds during the 2016-2020 period. The highway will be constructed under the Public Private Partnership (PPP) model, local Vietnam News newspaper quoted the government office's announcement as saying on Friday. A consultancy firm will be selected through a bidding process to plan and design the highway construction while the final selection will be based on cost and feasibility of their technical designs. Meanwhile, the Vietnamese Ministry of Finance was also asked to review and adjust the plan on developing Vietnam's expressway network until 2020 (with a vision to 2030), towards expanding the North-South Highway into 6-10 lanes from four lanes, as originally proposed. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 11:57:51|Editor: ZD Video Player Close RIO DE JANEIRO, April 6 (Xinhua) -- The Brazilian government is preparing a large-scale international campaign to attract tourists from both home and abroad, said an official. The campaign to be organized by the Brazilian Tourism Institute is expected to attract foreign visitors as well as 40 million more domestic tourists, said Brazilian Tourism Minister Marx Beltrao. The government would take measures, including allowing private companies to run key airports, to boost the number of foreign tourists, Beltrao added. "With better civil airlines and airport infrastructure, we will see more Brazilians travelling around the country," he said. According to the minister, a mobile app introducing Brazil's rich tourism resources to people across the world will soon be launched. The campaign conform to the three recommendations of the United Nations World Tourism Organization, namely better flight connectivity, the promotion of tourism packages and the improvement of visa policies, said the minister. "Last year, we saw a 5-percent rise in international tourists. We hope the number will increase this year," he said. In 2016, Brazil saw a tourism spike due to the 2016 Summer Olympics held in Rio de Janeiro. Enditem Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 11:57:51|Editor: ZD Video Player Close RIO DE JANEIRO, April 6 (Xinhua) -- Brazilian President Michel Temer Thursday denied having backed off on the social security reform that his administration has been trying to approve. The government has agreed to negotiate some points of the social security reform bill with the Congress, which led to rumors that the government does not have sufficient Congress votes to approve the bill as it is. But according to Temer, the government's willingness to change some points of the reform cannot be considered a step back. "Obeying the Congress cannot be considered backing off. We are working together," said the president. Temer agreed to discuss five points of the controversial reform with the Congress. The bill, proposed by the administration, has been severely criticized as the changes it might bring would allegedly affect poorer workers in a disproportionate manner. However, one of the key points of the reform -- the minimum retirement age of 65 -- is regarded as non-negotiable by the government. One of the reasons cited by critics of the minimum age is that life expectancy in Brazil's poorer states is lower, and that poorer citizens would not even live long enough to enjoy retirement. In addition, opponents of the reform argue that by establishing a minimum retirement age, regardless of how many years citizens have worked, people with more physically demanding jobs, such as construction or rural workers, would be more affected, as they would have to work for more years and pay more tax. U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG 78) conducts strike operations against Syria on April 7, 2017. (Reuters photo) DAMASCUS, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. missile strike that targeted a Syrian airbase in Homs province at dawn Friday left big damages, Homs governor Talal Barazi told Xinhua. The governor said that rescue operations have started at the facility over an hour and a half ago. He added that he thinks there are no big number of casualties, but huge damage to the airbase. Barazi said the airbase is located east of Homs, and was a key backer to the Syrian army in the war on the Islamic State (IS) group, noting that the airbase played a significant role in liberating the ancient city of Palmyra from IS. At dawn Friday, the U.S. struck the Syrian airbase in Homs with tens of Tomahawk missiles, a Syrian military source told Xinhua. The attack targeted the Shairat military base in the central city of Homs, the source added, asked not to be named. Meanwhile, the state TV also confirmed the attack, saying it was an "American aggression." The military source told Xinhua that the army general-command awaits the reports from Homs to precisely assess the damage. The attack marks the U.S. response to the alleged chemical attack on rebel-held town in northwestern Syria this week. Washington accused the Syrian army of being behind the toxic attack, an allegation totally denied by Damascus. Barazi accused the U.S. and Israel of being backers of the terrorist groups in Syria, and partners in destroying the infrastructure of the country. Meanwhile, Maher Ihsan, a Syrian political expert, said that the U.S. targeted the airbase, which contains air defense systems that fired at the Israeli warplanes that have infiltrated the Syrian airspace last month and carried out airstrikes on Syrian military positions. At the time, the Syrian army said it downed one of the Israeli jets, which it said crashed over Israel, a claim the Israelis denied, but didn't hide their resentment nonetheless. "I think that the whole chemical attack allegations were just a smoke screen for retaliating against the firing on downing of Israeli warplane," he said. Even Syria's Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said at a press conference Thursday that Israel is the only beneficiary of the allegations of the chemical attack, denying that the Syrian army fired toxic gas. The minister said the army struck an arm depot which belongs to the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front, adding that the depot contained chemical materials the terrorists were bringing in from Iraq. Activists of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said over 70 people were killed in Khan Sheikhoun by the toxic gas. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 12:32:57|Editor: Zhang Dongmiao Video Player Close DAMASCUS, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The United States struck a Syrian airbase in the country's central region at dawn Friday and caused losses, a Syrian military source said. The attack targeted the Shairat military base in the central Homs province, the source told Xinhua. The state TV called the attack an "American aggression." The extent of losses remained unknown, the source said, adding that the army's general command is awaiting reports from Homs. The attack marked the U.S. response to the alleged chemical attack on rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun in the countryside of Idlib province in northwestern Syria, reports said. Washington accused the Syrian army of being behind the toxic attack, an allegation totally denied by Damascus. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 13:03:00|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close MUMBAI, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Indian markets opened lower Friday on weak global cues after the U.S. fired dozens of cruise missiles into Syria. The benchmark S&P BSE Sensex opened at 29,777.35, 149.99 points or 0.5 percent down compared to its previous close at 29,927.34. Enditem Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 13:13:02|Editor: Zhang Dongmiao Video Player Close BEIJING, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping extended congratulations to former Ecuadorian Vice President Lenin Moreno on Wednesday on his election as the country's head of state. In a congratulatory message, Xi said China and Ecuador share a profound traditional friendship and enjoy close high-level exchanges and ever deepening cooperation in various fields. In 2016, the two countries established a comprehensive strategic partnership and their relations entered a new phase of development, Xi added. Xi said he attaches great importance to the development of China-Ecuador relations and hopes to work together with Moreno to further develop the relationship and bring more benefits to the two peoples. Moreno won the presidency with a pledge to deepen social welfare programs initiated by his predecessor Rafael Correa. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 13:48:07|Editor: Mengjiao Liu Video Player Close Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong arrives for a trial at the Seoul Central District Court in Seoul, South Korea , on April 7, 2017. A South Korean court on Friday held the first trial on Samsung heir over bribery charge involving impeached President Park Geun-hye and her longtime confidante Choi Soon-sil. (Xinhua/Lee Sang-ho) SEOUL, April 7 (Xinhua) -- A South Korean court on Friday held the first trial on Samsung heir over bribery charge involving impeached President Park Geun-hye and her longtime confidante Choi Soon-sil. Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong, dressed in the dark, gray suit and handcuffed, appeared in the Seoul Central District Court. The grim-faced Lee attended his first trial as a criminal suspect together with senior executives of Samsung Group, the biggest family-controlled conglomerate of South Korea. Lee is charged with donating tens of millions of U.S. dollars to two nonprofit foundations controlled by Choi, who is at the center of the corruption scandal embroiling former President Park. Choi and Park, who are now in custody, have been identified by prosecutors as accomplices. Park was impeached on March 10 and taken into custody three weeks later. Samsung's donation to the Choi-controlled foundations is suspected of being made in return for getting support in the merger of two Samsung affiliates in July 2015. The merger between Samsung C&T and Cheil Industries was extremely important to the Samsung heir apparent to inherit management control from his ailing father Chairman Lee Kun-hee who has been hospitalized for almost three years. Samsung also provided financial assistance for an equestrian training of Choi's daughter, while offering millions of euros to a German company owned by Choi. Lee's legal team has claimed no quid pro quo in the donations, saying the bribery charge was based on bias and guesswork. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 13:53:08|Editor: Zhang Dongmiao Video Player Close DAMASCUS, April 7 (Xinhua) -- At least four Syrian soldiers were killed by the U.S. missile strike that targeted an airbase in central Syria on Friday, a monitor group reported. The U.S. missile strike against the Shairat airbase has destroyed the airbase almost completely, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. At dawn Friday, the U.S. struck the Syrian airbase in the center province of Homs with tens of Tomahawks missiles. The state TV said the attack was an "American aggression." The attack marks the U.S. response to the alleged chemical attack on rebel-held town in northwestern Syria last Tuesday. Washington accused the Syrian army of being behind the toxic attack that targeted the town of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province, an allegation totally denied by Damascus. Activists of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said over 70 people were killed in Khan Sheikhoun by the toxic gas. Syria's Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem denied at a press conference Thursday that the Syrian army fired toxic gas on Khan Sheikhoun town in Idlib province. The minister said the army struck an arm depot which belongs to the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front, adding that the depot contained chemical materials the terrorists were bringing in from Iraq. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 13:58:09|Editor: Zhang Dongmiao Video Player Close SYDNEY, April 7 (Xinhua) -- A team of veterinarians at a zoo in the Australian city of Perth have used matchsticks and glue to repair the wings of an endangered Carnaby's cockatoo. The bird was injured after coming into contact with a power line last month, and while another bird in the same incident blew up, the bird suffered severe burns and was rushed to the Perth Zoo for treatment. Veterinarians at the zoo performed a technique called "imping", which involves using superglue and matchsticks to construct new wings, while removing the burnt tissue, in an attempt to ensure the bird can fly. One of the vets, Dr. Peter Ricci, told local media on Friday that the method of fixing the wings is quite common for wild birds and those who have had their wings clipped too short by overzealous owners. "It's a pretty basic procedure, we use pretty basic tools. The trick is to get the feather in the right place and the right angles before the glue dries, so there's a little bit of tricky work to getting the features in place, but it's not rocket science," Ricci said. "We have got dead tissue that was once alive and that the body has produced, and we are trimming that and just regluing it onto another part of the dead tissue...so in essence, it's just like hair extensions on people." The bird once recovered will be moved to a black cockatoo sanctuary, with hopes of it being re-released into the wild. KABUL, April 7 (Xinhua) -- A Taliban shadow district governor was detained by Afghan security forces in northern province of Samangan, said the National Directorate for Security (NDS) on Friday. "The Special Operation Forces of NDS detained Esmatullah alias Jalali following a gunfight in surrounding areas of Samangan province recently," NDS, the country's national intelligence agency, said in a statement on its official Facebook page. Jalali, who served as Taliban governor for Hazrat-i-Sultan district, was injured during the clash before being captured, the statement noted. An AK-47 gun and a motorcycle were also confiscated after the clash in the province with Aybak as its capital, 215 km north of Kabul, according to the statement. The captured militant was responsible for several subversive activities and he tried to organize suicide attacks, roadside bombings and targeted attacks against local influential figures, the statement said, adding that the arrest of the man has foiled major terror attacks and saved the province from expected tragedies. The Afghan security forces have beefed up security operations against militants recently, as spring and summer known as fighting season, are drawing near in the Central Asian country. The Taliban militant group has yet to make comments. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 15:08:20|Editor: Mengjiao Liu The United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres (C) speaks during the Security Council thematic debate "Peacekeeping Operations Review" at the UN headquarters in New York, April 6, 2017. The UN Secretary-General has called for clear mandates and right strategies within the organization to support peacekeeping operations. (Xinhua/Li Muzi) UNITED NATIONS, April 6 (Xinhua) -- The new United Nations (UN) Secretary-General has called for clear mandates and right strategies within the organization to support peacekeeping operations. "UN political strategies, management systems and administration are not set up to support peace operations effectively. We must plan for diversity across time and geography, creating flexibility without additional costs," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said when addressing the Security Council thematic debate "Peacekeeping Operations Review" Thursday. He said the United Nations needs a comprehensive strategy that "supports the diverse range of our missions and takes account of the entire peace continuum, from prevention, conflict resolution and peacekeeping to peacebuilding and long-term development." He proposed nine areas for reform, including improving peace and security architecture and increasing efficiency and accountability. "Too many of the rules and regulations of the UN Secretariat seem designed to hinder rather than facilitate our work," he said, adding that "I am committed to changing this, and I hope member states will support me." Guterres also stressed the importance of making women play "a far more active role in peace operations as troops, police and civilian staff." "This is not only because gender parity is essential for its own sake, but also because the involvement of women is proven to increase the chances of sustained peace and to reduce incidences of sexual abuse and exploitation," he said. The UN chief said the organization has already made some reforms, including decentralizing key functions and strengthening performance management and accountability. "These reforms have reduced per capita cost of uniformed peacekeepers by 18 percent since 2008, and have decreased the number of civilian staff significantly," he said. SEOUL, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Samsung Electronics logged a near-record operating profit in the January-March quarter despite the absence of Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong, who has been in custody for bribery charges. Samsung's operating profit reached 9.9 trillion won (8.7 billion U.S. dollars) in the first quarter, the second-biggest quarterly profit in the company's history, a regulatory filing showed Friday. It was up a whopping 48.2 percent from a year earlier. From the previous quarter, the profit gained 7.38 percent. The first-quarter profit beat market consensus of about 9.4 trillion won. Expectations for the second-quarter profit are running high on the release of its new flagship smartphone Galaxy S8. The discontinuation of the fire-prone Galaxy Note 7 smartphone in October last year weakened Samsung's mobile phone business in recent months, but the company seemed to have overcome the debacle. The first-quarter revenue was 50 trillion won, up 0.44 percent from a year earlier. Compared with the prior quarter, the revenue was down 6.24 percent. Indicating Samsung's improved profitability, the ratio of operating profit to revenue came in at 19.8 percent in the quarter, up 6.5 percentage points from a year earlier. Net income and detailed profits in each business units would be unveiled later this month. The better-than-expected earnings for Samsung came amid the absence of Vice Chairman Lee, who had in effect headed the country's biggest tech company before his arrest for bribery charges. His father Chairman Lee Kun-hee has been hospitalized for heart attack for almost three years. The younger Lee attended his first trial earlier in the day in a South Korean court for his alleged involvement in a corruption scandal embroiling impeached President Park Geun-hye and her longtime confidante Choi Soon-sil. The heir apparent of Samsung Group, the country's biggest family-controlled conglomerate, is accused of offering tens of millions of U.S. dollars in bribes to Choi, who was branded by prosecutors as a criminal accomplice to the impeached president. The bribes are suspected of being given to Choi in return for getting support in the 2015 merger of two Samsung affiliates, which is seen as extremely crucial to the younger Lee to inherit Samsung's management control from his ailing father. Lee's arrest had raised concerns among conglomerates, called chaebol here, about the possible negative effect on Samsung's businesses, but it proved to be an unnecessary anxiety as seen in the better-than-forecast first-quarter earnings result. It indicated the effective management of Samsung by professional executives, rather than the heir of the founding family. Samsung shares have gained ground despite the younger Lee's detention. Samsung's earnings are believed to have been led by robust demand for semiconductors, especially used for new smartphones manufactured by rival companies. Samsung is the world's biggest memory chip producer. Operating profit in the chip-making unit of Samsung is estimated at a range of 5-6 trillion won in the first quarter. The unit posted its record quarterly high of 4.95 trillion won in operating profit in the previous quarter. Enditem Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 15:23:22|Editor: Lu Hui Video Player Close MAR-A-LAGO, United States, April 6 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday extended an invitation to his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump to pay a state visit to China in 2017. Trump accepted the invitation with pleasure, and hoped to make the trip at an early date, according to officials. South African President Jacob Zuma addresses a business meeting in Harare, Zimbabwe, Nov. 3, 2016. (Xinhua) CAPE TOWN, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The African National Congress (ANC) in Parliament said on Thursday it will vote against a motion of no confidence in President Jacob Zuma. The motion, submitted by opposition parties, has been scheduled for April 18 amid growing calls for Zuma to resign after he reshuffled the cabinet, affecting 10 ministers and 10 deputy ministers, notably Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan. "As members of the ANC in Parliament, we have been inundated with mischievous calls, text messages and emails by faceless individuals and organizations lobbying us to disregard the party line and vote in accordance with our individual taste as dictated by our conscious and lobby groups in the upcoming motion," the ANC Chief Whip Office said in a statement. These calls are not only disingenuous, but also highly unfortunate as they seek to suggest that ANC MPs are free agents open to all sorts of mischievous lobbying and manipulation by the opposition and other forces, said the office. The very same opposition making these calls have always voted along party lines yet they expect ANC MPs not to be guided and directed by their political party, said the statement. "We reiterate that as ANC members of parliament we derive our political mandate from the organization. We will abide by the decision of the ANC National Working Committee as announced by ANC Secretary General comrade Gwede Mantashe that the ANC does not and will not support this motion," the statement said. The ANC also rejects calls by opposition parties for a secret ballot in the motion of no confidence. "The Constitution of the Republic is clear that a secret ballot in the House applies only in the process of electing the President, the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker. There is no provision in the rules of the National Assembly for such a call," the statement said. This call is therefore in violation of the laws of parliament as an institution and the Constitution, said the statement. Some ANC MPs reportedly voiced fear that they would be removed if they vote in support of the motion. For a vote of no confidence motion to be successful, it requires 201 of the 400 National Assembly MPs to vote in favour. If the motion is successful, then the president, his deputy, cabinet ministers and all their deputies must resign as provided for in section 102 of the Constitution. In 2016, Zuma survived two no confidence motions in Parliament which is dominated by ANC MPs. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 15:38:25|Editor: ying Video Player Close SHIJIAZHUANG, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Xu Qin was appointed vice governor and acting governor of north China's Hebei province on Friday. The decision was announced at a morning session of the standing committee of the provincial legislature, which also accepted the resignation of governor Zhang Qingwei Xu, who was born in 1961, graduated from the Beijing Institute of Technology with a major in optoelectronics, according to an introduction from the official website of the Hebei provincial government. He had worked with the National Development and Reform Commission and earned a doctorate from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University before moving to south China's Shenzhen in 2008, where he served as the mayor from June 2010 to March 2017. NEW DELHI, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Friday arrived in India on a four-day visit, officials said. Hasina was received by India Prime Minister Narendra Modi at New Delhi airport. During Hasina's visit, India and Bangladesh would sign a series of bilateral agreements including a civil nuclear energy accord. Hasina, during her four-day stay, will be holding meetings with her Indian counterpart Modi, Indian President, Vice President and other leaders. The two countries would also be launching bus and train services connecting two cities of India and Bangladesh. Hasina, along with Modi, is scheduled to launch a few cross-border initiatives on Sunday. The trade between the two countries is currently about 6.5 billion U.S. dollars, of which Indian exports are approximately 5.7 billion U.S. dollars. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 15:38:25|Editor: ying Video Player Close MAR-A-LAGO, United States, April 6 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping said here Thursday that he is ready to work with his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump to push forward China-U.S. relations from a new starting point. "There are a thousand reasons to make China-U.S. relationship work, and no reason to break it," Xi told Trump. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 15:53:27|Editor: Mengjiao Liu Video Player Close MANILA, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte will embark on a state visit to the Middle East from April 10 to 16, a government official said on Friday. Duterte will meet with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Qatar, as well as overseas Filipino workers in those countries, Foreign Assistant Secretary Hjayceelyn Quintana of the Office of Middle East and African Affairs at the Department of Foreign Affairs told a news conference. The trip aims to "strengthen efforts for the protection of the rights and promotion of the welfare of the more than 1 million of our people working in those three countries," Quintana said. It is also aimed at "inviting investors to the Philippines and usher in progress here at home," and to "forge stronger partnerships by elevating our political and economic cooperation with these countries to new heights," Quintana said. Quintana said the Middle East remains an important region for the Philippines despite the economic challenges that region is facing due to reducing revenues amid low oil prices. There are 760,000 Filipinos in Saudi Arabia, 60,000 in Bahrain and about 200,000 in Qatar. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 15:58:28|Editor: ying Video Player Close SHANGHAI, April 7 (Xinhua) -- After 20 years of doing business in China, U.S. medical technology firm Medtronic chose Shanghai as the site for its first bioprosthetic heart valve manufacturing site outside the America. "The manufacturing site represents... a positive collaboration between Medtronic and our local business partners to increase healthcare access," said Omar Ishrak, chairman and CEO of Medtronic. The Shanghai site opened at the end of March. Ishrak said the 13 million-U.S.-dollar plant in Shanghai is one of Medtronic's most advanced facilities for processing and production of bioprosthetic valves. It produces bioprosthetic valves, which are used for treatment to restore heart's normal blood flow. Medtronic's heart valve manufacturing site in China is the company's another development plan deepening footprint in this market. This follows other important investments including the blood dialysis systems and insulin pumps projects in Chengdu. U.S. companies expect better U.S.-China economic ties to benefit their businesses. Joe Mastrangelo, president and CEO of GE Power's Gas Power Systems, has followed the development of China's electricity industry closely. In March, the U.S. company teamed up with Harbin Electric Corporation to establish a joint venture, each holding a 50 percent stake. The joint venture, with a registered capital of 667 million yuan (97 million U.S. dollars), produces the world's advanced gas turbines and parts. The new firm will be based in Qinhuangdao City, Hebei Province, north China. Mastrangelo said they are confident in the joint venture, in cooperative partners and in the China market. In addition to furthering investment, established U.S. firms like Apple are also looking to China's abundant talent pool. Apple announced in March it would establish two additional R&D centers in Shanghai and Suzhou, joining centers previously announced in Beijing and Shenzhen. "By expanding our plans for R&D centers in China, we look forward to working collaboratively with even more local partners and academic institutions," said Dan Riccio, Apple senior vice president of Hardware Engineering. "The talent and entrepreneurial spirit in China is incredible, and we are fortunate to be working with these developers and suppliers as we grow our presence here," said Riccio. China has been loosening the grip on the inflow of foreign capital as part of efforts to facilitate its opening up, reducing restrictive measures and opening more sectors. In 2016, laws on foreign investment were amended, and measures were unveiled to simplify the approval procedure for foreign companies. According to the Ministry of Commerce, China utilized some 126 billion U.S. dollars of foreign investment in 2016, a year-on-year increase of 4.1 percent, while global foreign direct investment plummeted. By the end of 2016, U.S. companies had invested nearly 80 billion U.S. dollars in 67,000 projects in China, accounting for 7.8 percent of China's approved foreign-funded enterprises and 4.5 percent of its actualized foreign investment. Around 90 percent of U.S. companies in China have been profitable, according to a report released October by the U.S.-China Business Council based Washington. JAKARTA, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Indonesian police's anti-terror squad arrested three terrorist suspects in East Java province's city of Lamongan on Friday morning, a senior police officer said here. A further investigation against them was underway at present following the operation of the Special Detachment (Densus) 88. The terrorist suspects were identified as ZA, HE and H, arrested in the city's subdistrict of Paciran without retaliation, Police headquarters Spokesperson Martinus Sitompul said. He said that the initial arrest was conducted against ZA and HE when they rode on a motorbike around 9.30. a.m. local time. "The following arrest was conducted against H around an hour later in Jetak hamlet, still in the same subdistrict," Martinus said in his office. Earlier last month, Densus 88 arrested seven and killed one terrorist suspect in Jakarta outskirt areas, who was planning to establish a militant camp in eastern region of Halmahera. Part of those arrested last month has close links to militant groups operating in Southern Philippines. Enditem TOKYO, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Three pandas born at a zoo in western Japan will be returned to China to breed, the zoo said Friday. Officials at the Adventure World zoo amusement park in Shirahama, Wakayama Prefecture, said that twin pandas aged six, and a 4-year-old sibling, will be returned to the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding. The zoo officials said that the pandas will leave for Chengdu on June 5 as they have reached maturity. The zoo has been serving as a branch of the breeding facility, based in Sichuan Province, and the success rate of pandas returning to China and breeding has been high, said the zoo's officials. The zoo's director, Koji Imazu, said he would miss the three pandas, but has high hopes for them to go on and breed. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 16:38:34|Editor: ying Video Player Close BEIJING, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Li Yunfeng, former vice governor of east China's Jiangsu Province, has been expelled from the Communist Party of China (CPC) and dismissed from public office for violating the Party's code of conduct, the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) announced Friday. In May 2016, the CCDI announced it had began an investigation into Li, who was also a member of the standing committee of the CPC Jiangsu Provincial Committee. Li was found to have breached the Party's code of conduct and refused to cooperate with an organizational investigation, according to a CCDI statement released Friday. In violation of the CPC's eight-point rules on austerity, Li used public funds to pay for expensive dinners and frequented private clubs, the statement said. The statement outlined a litany of violations, including not disclosing his personal affairs, accepting bribes, taking advantage of his post to seek profits for others, and allowing his family to accept gifts. His illegal gains will be confiscated and his case transferred to the judiciary, the statement said. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 16:46:44|Editor: Mengjiao Liu People dressed in red gather to form a shape of blood drop during World Health Day in Marikina City, the Philippines, April 7, 2017. The event aimed to urge public to donate blood. (Xinhua/Rouelle Umali) Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 17:08:39|Editor: ying Video Player Close SEOUL, April 7 (Xinhua) -- South Korean presidential archrivals had a close race in recent opinion polls with just a month left before the election. According to a Gallup Korea survey released Friday, Moon Jae-in of the biggest Minjoo Party gained 38 percent of support, narrowly beating Ahn Cheol-soo of the center-right People's Party who garnered 35 percent. It was based on a poll of 1,005 voters conducted between Tuesday and Thursday. The results have 3.1 percentage points in a margin of error. Much of support for Moon's rivals in the primaries of the Minjoo Party moved to Ahn, the founder of the People's Party composed of defectors from the Minjoo Party. Ahn's support jumped 6 percentage points compared with the previous week, while Moon's approval rating shed 2 percentage points. Ahn, the software tycoon-turned-politician, threw his support behind Moon in the 2012 presidential election after abandoning his run for presidency. Moon was the runner-up to impeached President Park Geun-hye in 2012. The primaries of five major political parties were wrapped up earlier this week. The presidential by-election, which was caused by Park's impeachment on March 10, is scheduled for May 9. Hong Joon-pyo of the former ruling Liberty Korea Party gained 7 percent of support, trailed by Yoo Seong-min of its splinter Righteous Party who won 4 percent in approval scores. Sim Sang-jung of the minor progressive Justice Party recorded 3 percent in her approval rating. The prediction for the upcoming election results got much harder to make as Ahn rapidly absorbed support from conservative voters. Conservative voters turned their backs from the traditionally conservative Liberty Korea Party, with which Park was affiliated, over her corruption scandal that led to her impeachment and arrest. Support for the People's Party increased in accordance with the growing popularity for Ahn, according to the poll. The People's Party earned 22 percent in support scores this week, up 6 percentage points from the previous week. The Minjoo Party kept its top post with 40 percent of support, but it was down 5 percentage points from a week earlier. The Liberty Korea Party and the Righteous Party garnered 8 percent and 4 percent each in approval scores, while the Justice Party won 4 percent. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 17:33:45|Editor: ying Video Player Close ANKARA, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The United States informed Turkey before it attacked a Syrian base at Friday dawn, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told a local media on Friday in Antalya. "U.S. Ambassador to Ankara John Bass contacted our (Foreign Ministry) Undersecretary Umit Yalcin," Cavusoglu said. Information on the attack was also diffused through the coalition members fighting against the Islamic State (IS), Cavusoglu said. Cavusoglu also said he had spoken with the French and German foreign ministers by phone, without specifying when. He also said contacts had been initiated with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. The minister also called for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's immediate removal, saying a transitional government must be established. He added that safe zones for civilians in Syria were now more important than ever. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 17:53:49|Editor: ying Video Player Close BEIJING, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Ecological protection, clustered urban layout and coordinated development shall be priorities throughout the establishment of Xiongan New Area, a new economic zone near Beijing, an expert told Xinhua on Friday. A circular issued by the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and the State Council described Xiongan New Area as a "major historic and strategic choice" that would be "crucial for the millennium to come." About 100 km southwest of downtown Beijing, Xiongan will sit in the center of a triangle formed by Beijing, Tianjin and Shijiazhuang, and its significance has been compared to Shenzhen Economic Zone and Pudong New Area, the testing beds for the country's reform and opening up. The proposed area currently spans three counties of Xiongxian, Anxin, Rongcheng, and is known for Baiyangdian, one of the largest freshwater wetlands in north China, which has more than 140 lakes. "Ecological protection and green development must be put first," said Li Xiaojiang, member of the expert committee advising the coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region (Jing-Jin-Ji) and former head of China Academy of Urban Planning and Design. Urban planning must be of the highest standards, and the architecture should fully reflect Chinese culture. Regional collaboration and rural-urban integration will be some of the core concepts that will guide the planning and design of the new area, Li said. "Xiongan New Area will advance integration with Beijing, Tianjin and other cities in Jing-Jin-Ji region," Li said. "It will also strengthen the coordinated development of urban layout, transport, infrastructure and other public services, in the three counties and surrounding countryside." Li pointed out that the planning of the new area shall take the economy, society, land and ecology into consideration, while talent from home and abroad will be encouraged to help make the area a leader of innovation, science and technology. "The new area will usher in a brand new state-level economic zone and urban development model in China," he said. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 17:58:50|Editor: ying Video Player Close SINGAPORE, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Singapore shares closed 0.05 percent higher on Friday, as investors shrugged off news of the U.S. missile attack against an air base in Syria. The latest attack raised the risk of U.S. confrontation with Syrian backers Russia and Iran, but a U.S. official reportedly called the attack a "one-off," with no plans for escalation. Singapore's benchmark Straits Times Index inched up 1.68 points to 3,177.27 points. Trading volume was 3.22 billion shares worth 1.25 billion Singapore dollars. Advancers outnumbered decliners 271 to 205. Triyards Holdings closed flat at 25 Singapore cents. It reported a loss after tax of 4.2 million U.S. dollars and 6.3 million U.S. dollars in first half and second quarter of fiscal year 2017 ended February after making a total allowance of 8.4 million U.S. dollars in doubtful receivables. But its revenues increased 9 percent to 161.8 million U.S dollars in first half from a year ago, on the back of contributions from new product offerings related to the diversification strategy, and contribution from Strategic Marine Group for the construction of liquefied natural gas powered aluminum catamarans ferries. Among top gainers, Great Eastern Holdings rose 1.6 percent to 21.62 Singapore dollars, whereas Jardine Strategic became one of the top losers by falling 1.6 percent to 41.19 U.S. dollars. (1 U.S. dollar equals to 1.40 Singapore dollars) Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 18:08:52|Editor: Tian Shaohui Video Player Close SHANGHAI, April 7 (Xinhua) -- While Shanghai Disneyland offers a fantasy world for guests, it has also brought a new reality for those who work and live nearby. During his Wednesday visit to the Shanghai International Tourism and Resorts Zone, where the Disney Resort is located, Shanghai mayor Ying Yong said Disneyland's influence will expand and industrial clusters will form in the zone. Tourism facilities, transportation and dining will also be improved in the zone, located in Pudong New District, according to the mayor. Shanghai Disneyland received some 8 million visitors in the first nine months since opening in mid-June 2016, said Bob Iger, Walt Disney chairman and CEO at the company's annual meeting of shareholders last month. The figure is expected to reach 10 million by the park's first anniversary in June, according to Iger. During this year's Spring Festival holiday, which lasted from Jan. 27 to Feb. 2, major tourist spots in Pudong received nearly 1.6 million tourists, up by 60 percent from the same period last year. Sales revenue of the district's commercial enterprises reached 642 million yuan (93 million U.S. dollars), up by over 32 percent annually. Pudong's Chuansha area, where Disneyland is located, has been nicknamed "Chuan-lifornia" by Disney employees. The park's opening has offered brand new opportunities to people in the area. Once a factory worker, 49-year-old Chuansha local Du Weiping is now a cleaner at the theme park. Besides her daily duty of keeping the main entrance clean, she often voluntarily helps and guides tourists in need. "The visitors, both Chinese and foreigners, have all kinds of questions about which programs are the most interesting, how to get a fast pass, and where the toilet is," she said. With the help of her younger colleagues, Du, who previously didn't speak a word of English, can now freely communicate with foreign visitors in simple English. Shanghai Disneyland has not only offered opportunities to locals but also to people from across the world. Ntsepa Pitjeng, from South Africa, is an actress in Disney's Chinese version of the "The Lion King" musical. Despite her experience performing in different countries in the English version of the musical, her new role posed a big challenge. Learning to deliver her lines in Chinese took her almost two months. She recalled that once she went blank and suddenly forgot her lines on stage, until her Chinese colleague kindly gave her a cue. Dong Xiaoling, an official with the Shanghai International Tourism and Resorts Zone, said that besides the growth in tourism, Shanghai Disneyland has also brought business experience and innovation to China. Cooperation between China and the United States is bringing more benefits to the country, she said. US President Donald Trump delivers a statement on Syria from the Mar-a-Lago estate in West Palm Beach, Florida, on April 6, 2017.(AFP Photo) DAMASCUS, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Syria's Information Minister Ramez Turjman said his government is consulting with its allies about the response to the U.S. missile strike that targeted a Syrian air base earlier on Friday. The minister said the Syrian leadership is consulting with Russia and Iran on the response to the "American aggression," adding that there will be a political movement soon. Earlier in the day, the United States launched missile attack on the Shayrat Air Base in the central province of Homs, in retaliation to the alleged chemical attack on a rebel-held town in the northwestern province of Idlib. Nearly 60 Tomahawk missiles struck the air base, nearly destroying it completely, killing six Syrian soldiers and destroying nine Syrian warplanes. The U.S. administration said the attack comes in retaliation to the strikes by the Syrian air force on the town of Khan Sheikhoun. Activists accused the Syrian army of firing toxic gas on the town, killing 70 people, while the Syrian army said the strike targeted an arm depot containing toxic gas, blaming the rebels for storing such materials. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 18:44:02|Editor: ying Video Player Close JAKARTA, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Indonesia ranks 42nd in World Economic Forum (WEF)'s Travel and Tourism Competitive Index (TCCI) in 2017, up from its rankings in 2016 and 2015 of 50th and 70th respectively, according to official announcement on Thursday. "This is because of strong supports and commitments of President Joko Widodo who puts tourism as an ultimate priority, making it the nation's core economy," Tourism Minister Arief Yahya said on Friday. The latest rating is essential to further spur the nation's confidence in competing with world-class rivals in tourism industry, he added. "In 2019, we set a target to see our rating among the best 30 in the world," the minister said. To attain the target, Indonesia must take herculean efforts in addressing the 14 pillars and four sub sectors monitored in TCCI, the minister said. Among the 14 pillars were business environment, health and hygiene, international openness, travel and tourism prioritization, environment sustainability, air transport infrastructure, ground and port infrastructure, tourism service infrastructure and natural resources. Indonesia is now striving to develop tourism sector as it has been set as the nation's core business, replacing oil and gas, coals and palm oil in the past. Ten new tour destinations were now developed across the country, expected to add more destinations other than resort island of Bali which has been favored by foreign visitors. Indonesia has set a target to welcome 20 million foreign visitors and earnings of more than 24 billion U.S. dollars from the sector by 2019. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 18:59:05|Editor: Tian Shaohui Video Player Close Foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying (Source: fmprc.gov.cn) BEIJING, April 7 (Xinhua) -- China condemned the chemical attacks carried out in Syria recently and supports the United Nations in launching an independent investigation, a foreign ministry spokesperson said Friday. Hua Chunying said China always opposes the use of chemical weapons by any country, organization or person for whatever purposes, and China's position will remain consistent. China condemned the chemical attacks in Syria on Tuesday, which killed more than 70 people and wounded scores of others, most of whom were civilians in Syria's northwestern province of Idlib. The United States accused the Syrian army of being behind the toxic attack targeting the town of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province, an allegation denied by Damascus. In response to the chemical attacks, the United States on Friday struck the Syrian air base in Homs with 59 Tomahawk missiles. Hua said China supports the United Nations in launching an independent and comprehensive investigation on the issues in order to come to a conclusion that stands the test of history and reality. China called on all sides to prevent the deterioration of the situation in order to ensure the political solution in the Syria crisis, the spokesperson said. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 18:59:05|Editor: Yamei Video Player Close Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan attend a welcome banquet hosted by U.S. President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump in the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, the United States, April 6, 2017. (Xinhua/Lan Hongguang) MAR-A-LAGO, the United States, April 6 (Xinhua) -- Visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday called on China and the United States to bring the two peoples more benefits as the world's two biggest economies develop ties. Addressing a welcome banquet hosted by U.S. President Donald Trump and his wife Melania, Xi said he and Trump held good talks earlier in the afternoon, reaching important consensus for the development of China-U.S. ties. The two countries are willing to expand cooperation in trade and investment, diplomacy and security, law enforcement and cyber security, cultural and people-to-people exchanges on the basis of mutual respect and benefit, said Xi. He also urged the two countries to manage differences and address sensitive issues in a constructive way. During the speech, Xi expressed his readiness to lead, together with President Trump, people who have good wishes and passion to upgrade China-U.S. relations. Trump congratulated Xi on his achievements in leading China's development, and the international respect Xi earned in the process. Trump said he had a good discussion with Xi in their first meeting, exchanged opinions on a wide array of topics, and established a warm personal rapport. Xi arrived in the southeastern U.S. coastal town of Palm Beach on Thursday afternoon, starting his first meeting with Trump in a bid to push forward China-U.S. relations from a new starting point. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 19:04:06|Editor: ying Video Player Close BANGKOK, April 7 (Xinhua) -- A wave of attacks including bomb explosions and assaults on power grid hit Thailand's deep south early Friday, but causing no casualties, local media reported. According to Thairath Newspaper, the spring of attacks were scattered across 19 districts in the country's southernmost areas, namely Yala, Pattani, Narathiwat and Songkla provinces. A total of 52 power poles were destroyed, plunging the area into darkness for hours. Local reports said a series of bombing rocked Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat at midnight. Pattani was seriously affected as 11 small bombing were found there. Military officials confirmed to local media that there were no attacks on military targets and no injuries nor deaths in the attacks. Pattani, along with Yala and Narathiwat are the three southernmost provinces that were haunted by explosions. The attacks happened just few hours after Thai King Maha Vajiralongkorn signed the country's 20th constitution on Thursday. The draft charter, overwhelmingly approved in a referendum in August last year, was strongly opposed by the three border provinces. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 19:14:07|Editor: Tian Shaohui Video Player Close SHANGHAI, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Deng Beixi, is no stranger to the arctic region, and has visited the region almost 10 times. The first time Deng, now 28 years old, went to the Arctic was back in 2008 for a two-week workshop in Norway. "From the very first moment I set foot in the Arctic Circle, I knew my future was polar research," said Deng, who is a researcher with the Polar Research Institute of China (PRIC). In 2013, he joined the China-Nordic Arctic Research Center (CNARC), which had been established in Shanghai earlier that year. It is an expansion of a previous cooperation mechanism between China and Iceland. The CNARC, as a transnational platform, groups institutions from China, Iceland, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. It focuses on arctic climate change, arctic resources, cooperation of shipping and economy, arctic policies and legislation. "The center aims to increase awareness and understanding of the Arctic and its global impact," said Deng. Although Shanghai is thousands of miles away from the Arctic Circle, Deng said it was chosen as it was "the gateway and departure place of China's polar research." "Many Chinese universities and research institutes that focus on polar and social sciences are also based in Shanghai, providing support to such activities," he said. The center runs annual workshops and hosts round-table meetings on China-Nordic Arctic cooperation, and provides grants to those involved in research. Finland leads the field of polar research, with extensive experience of ice-breaking, harbor planning, shipping, mining, coordinated search and rescue, and submarine optical cables. "The opening of new arctic shipping route will make China and Nordic countries closer and create opportunities for China-Finland cooperation," Deng said. He said CNARC is confident that the future will feature more scientific cooperation. In May this year, Finland will assume the rotating presidency of the Arctic Council. Bilateral cooperation is expected to be stressed in sustainable development, building ice-breakers, basic infrastructure in polar region and polar projects. "China's polar research icebreaker uses techniques developed by Finnish company Aker Arctic," Deng said. "Cooperation on polar projects between the two sides also has huge potential." Experts analyzed that China could benefit from the Nordic countries' experience and advanced technologies, while the Nordics, with relatively small populations, could benefit from China's investment and market. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 19:14:08|Editor: ying Video Player Close RABAT, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Morocco continues to attract green funds as the first Green Climate Fund (GCF) agreed to contribute to the financing of a new water conservation project in Morocco worth 207 million US dollars, local media reported on Friday. The program is also financed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) with 127 million US dollars and the Moroccan government with 47 million U.S. dollars. It consists of building a 135 km primary transmission pipe from the Mdez dam to the Saiss plain in Northern Morocco. The project's objective is to replace water abstraction from the local aquifer and water resources of the Saiss plain, which is currently overexploited. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 19:19:09|Editor: ying Video Player Close MOSCOW, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Moscow considers the U.S. missile strike on a military airfield in Syria as an "aggression against a sovereign state" under a far-fetched pretext, saying it violates international law, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday. The strike is an attempt to divert international community's attention from civilian casualties in Iraq and could aggravate tension between the United States and Russia, the spokesman said. "This step by Washington is causing significant damage to Russian-U.S. relations, which are already in a deplorable state," Peskov was quoted as saying by Russian news agency Interfax. He added that the action is also crating a serious obstacle to the cooperation of Russia and the United States in fighting international terrorism. According to media reports, U.S. warships launched over 50 Tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian military airfield in the center province of Homs at dawn Friday. A monitor group said at least four Syrian soldiers have been killed. Citing unnamed source, Russia's Sputnik reported that the U.S. strike claimed the lives of four children from families living nearby the Syrian airbase. It is reported that no Russian citizens have been injured so far. U.S. President Donald Trump said earlier that he had ordered the strikes and called the operations in the nation's "vital interest." "The U.S. missile strike on a Syrian military base in the Homs province fully steps outside the framework of international law and will lead only to a further escalation in Syria," said Leonid Slutsky, chairman of the Russian lower house of parliament's international affairs committee. Victor Ozerov, chairman of the Russian Federation Council's Committee on Defense and Security, also noted that the U.S. missile strike will likely worsen the already clouded relations between Moscow and Washington and hurt bilateral military cooperation as the United States failed to communicate properly on the matter. "Russia will first of all demand an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council," Ozerov was quoted as saying by the RIA Novosti news agency. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 19:34:11|Editor: ying Video Player Close PARIS, April 7 (Xinhua) -- French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad bore "full responsibility" for the U.S. military action. The U.S. military on Thursday launched a targeted missile strike at a Syrian military airfield in its first direct assault on al-Assad's army since the Syria crisis began six years ago. A total of 59 Tomahawk Land Attack missiles were launched from the destroyers USS Porter and USS Ross in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea at about 8:40 p.m. EDT (0140 GMT Friday). Syrian aircraft, hardened aircraft shelters, fuel points, air defense systems, and radars were targeted, according to a Pentagon statement. The two European leaders said in a phone conversation that Paris and Berlin had been informed of the U.S. strikes on Syrian military positions in response to Damascus' suspected use of toxic gas in a rebel-held town in the country's northwestern province of Idlib. "Al-Assad bears full responsibility for this development. His continued use of chemical weapons and mass crimes can not remain unpunished," they said in a joint statement released by the French presidency. "France and Germany will pursue their efforts with their partners within the framework of the United Nations to punish with the most appropriate way the criminal acts related to the use of chemical weapons," they added. A report by the Syrian Observatory for Human Right said 86 people were killed, among them 30 kids, on Tuesday in a toxic gas attack by Syrian warplanes in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib. Damascus has repeatedly denied possession of any chemical weapons. Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that the U.S. missile strike was an "aggression against a sovereign state" under a far-fetched pretext in violation of international law and an attempt to divert the international community's attention from civilian casualties in Iraq. He said the strikes could aggravate tensions between the United States and Russia, according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 19:34:11|Editor: ying Video Player Close PHNOM PENH, April 7 (Xinhua) -- A bull elephant that trampled its owner to death three days ago was shot dead early Friday after it rampaged through villages, smashing two houses and frightening villagers in northeastern Cambodia's Mondolkiri province, an environment official said. "A police officer fired on the elephant's legs to stop him from attacking houses and people at 1 a.m. and the animal died an hour later," Keo Sopheak, director of Environment Department in Mondolkiri province, told Xinhua, adding that the mammoth had destroyed two houses and a fire truck. He said that a team with tranquilizer guns took too long to respond, so the authority decided to shoot the elephant. "We regret that this endangered elephant was killed; however, this was the authority's decision to ensure security and safety for the villagers," he said. The bull elephant trampled its owner to death on Wednesday when it was in rut. Shortly after the attack, the animal had fled into the forest, but later came out of the jungle and rampaged through villages. Cambodia is home to over 500 wild elephants, most of whom live inside the Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary in Mondolkiri province, according to the Forestry Administration. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 19:49:14|Editor: ying Video Player Close BUCHAREST, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Romanian Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu on Friday confirmed the passing away of the Romanian woman injured in the London attack. The death brings the number of victims of the attack to five. The woman, Andreea Cristea, 31, was in London on a trip with her boyfriend when the two got caught up in last month's terror attack on Westminster Bridge as a man drove over pedestrians. She was thrown into the Thames after being hit by the car. She was soon pulled from the river and rushed to the hospital in a critical state. The woman remained unconscious in hospital until life support was withdrawn, according to media reports. The woman and her boyfriend were in London to celebrate the latter's birthday and were about to get married. Her partner suffered a broken foot after being mowed down. Romania's Ambassador in London Dan Mihalache also confirmed the death on Friday. "She died late last evening," the ambassador said, official Agerpres news agency reported, "We will provide necessary assistance to repatriate the body." On March 22, a man drove his car into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge in London, after which he managed to fatally stab a police officer and attempted to storm the Houses of Parliament, before being shot dead by security. Two of the people injured in the attack also died. A fourth victim died of his wounds in hospital a day after the attack. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 20:19:18|Editor: ying Video Player Close JERUSALEM, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Israeli leaders hailed Friday the U.S. missile attack on a Syrian army air base. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a statement saying that "in both word and action, President Trump sent a strong and clear message today that the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated." He added that Israel fully supports the decision to launch the attack, adding that he hopes "this message of resolve in the face of the Assad regime's horrific actions will resonate not only in Damascus, but in Tehran, Pyongyang and elsewhere." President Reuven Rivlin echoed him, saying that "in the face of the terrible use of chemical weapons against innocent civilians, the clear and determined steps of the U.S. administration ... constitute a fitting and appropriate response to such unthinkable brutality." The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Friday it was informed by the United States ahead of the military strike, which saw at least 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from two U.S. naval destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean strike the Shayrat Airfield north of Damascus at approximately 4 a.m. local time (0100 GMT) Friday. The IDF said in a statement it expressed support for the strike in talks with U.S. officials. Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman called the Tomahawk missile strike "an important, necessary and moral message by the free world, led by the United States." Opposition leader Isaac Herzog on Friday also hailed the strike, saying it came at the "right time and in the right place." A string of high-level Israeli officials have condemned Tuesday's chemical attack and urged international action. The attack on the Syrian airfield shows that the world "will not tolerate the war crimes of the horrific regime of Bashar Assad," Liberman said. The attack came days after reports of a chemical weapons attack emerged from the battleground in Syria, for which the West said the Syrian government should be blamed. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 20:29:21|Editor: ying Video Player Close MADRID, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The Spanish separatist group ETA on Friday said in a communique that it is a "disarmed" organization after giving up all its weaponry. The group said on March 17 that it would complete its disarmament process by April 8, handing over its weapons to "groups in civil society." In the communique released to the BBC, the ETA criticized the Spanish and French governments for placing "obstacles" in the way of the disarmament process. Although it no longer has weapons, "the disarmament process is not completed," said the group. The Spanish government has not made any comments so far, but its stance has long been to ask for the total dissolution of the ETA, rather than what it regards as symbolic gestures. Madrid has also made it plain that there will be no concessions made to the group and that the hunt for the few ETA members thought to remain at large will not be halted. The ETA's 50-year armed struggle for the independence of the Basque region has caused the loss of 829 lives and more than 20,000 injuries. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 20:44:23|Editor: ying Video Player Close NEW DELHI, April 7 (Xinhua) -- India's national carrier Air India Friday lifted the travel ban it imposed on a senior lawmaker of ruling Bharatiya Janata Party's ally Shiv Sena over two weeks back. The travel restrictions were lifted after receiving the order from India's Civil Aviation Ministry, a day after lawmakers of the western state of Maharashtra-based Hindu fundamentalist Shiv Sena party created ruckus in the Parliament over the ban by Air India and other private airlines. The Shiv Sena lawmaker, Ravindra Gaikwad had bragged about beating an employee of Air India two weeks back multiple times with his slippers as he was refused a business-class seat in a flight to Delhi that only had economy class. Despite the ruckus, Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapati Raju Thursday stood his ground, saying the "law should take its course. Aircraft are machines where people fly and safety is important. Safety will not be compromised." The Home Minister, however, later said that the Civil Aviation Minister would talk to all stakeholders to reach an amicable solution at the earliest. Earlier that day, Gaikwad presented his version of the Air India incident and said he had only shoved the manager when he insulted parliamentarians. "I apologise for my behavior but not to the Air India official who abused and manhandled me," Gaikwad told the Parliament. Some two weeks back, all Indian airlines -- in a first in the country -- banned the lawmaker from their flights in the wake of him beating the Air India employee with his slippers multiple times and later bragging about the incident. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 20:59:26|Editor: ying Video Player Close ATHENS, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Britain and the European Union can reach an agreement on Brexit which will work for both sides, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said during a two-day visit here which ended Friday. The British official held talks with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Friday and Greek Foreign Minister Alexis Kotzias on Thursday. According to the Greek premier's office, the dialogue focused on bilateral relations, Cyprus peace talks and the course of negotiations between Britain and EU on Brexit as well as developments in the region, in particular the Syrian crisis. "We may be leaving the European Union but we are not leaving Europe. I believe we can get a deal that works for both sides," Johnson said during a joint press briefing with Kotzias on Thursday after their meeting. "With goodwill and imagination it could be done as fast as in two years. We do not want to close doors," the British official stressed when asked about the timetable of Brexit. Britain wants to control immigration flows, not close the door on talented people who are helping the British economy and will examine the conditions of free movement of EU citizens during Brexit's implementation, Johnson said. "We respect the decision of the British people and we want to form the best possible deal between the EU and the UK which will serve both sides with friendship, not vindictiveness," Kotzias said on his part. "We want Britain's exit from the EU to be orderly and with a plan, in a way that the UK will remain as close as possible to the EU and with the best possible relations with other countries such as Greece. We want to minimize the losses from Britain's departure and maximize our opportunities," the Greek foreign minister underlined. In the light of the latest developments in Syria, the two ministers urged for an end to the war. "We are against unjust wars and terrorism and both countries have condemned in statements the deadly attack in Syria," Kotzias said referring to the recent alleged toxic gas attack with 80 casualties in Khan Sheikhun. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said early on Thursday that the Syrian airstrike on a rebel-held town in Idlib Province struck a rebel depot containing chemical materials, denying that the air force fired toxic gas during the attack. The British Foreign Secretary and Greek officials ended their talks in Athens without commenting on the launch of a targeted missile strike by the U.S. military at a Syrian military airfield in the first direct assault on the army of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad since the Syrian crisis began six years ago. The strike was ordered by U.S. President Donald Trump, according to a Pentagon announcement. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 20:59:26|Editor: ying Video Player Close NAIROBI, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The United States has warned its citizens living in or planning to travel to Kenya to be very vigilant over possible outbreaks of violence before the country's Aug. 8 general elections. In a travel alert issued on Thursday evening, the State Department said political rallies, demonstrations, and protests may occur with little notice and even those intended to be peaceful can escalate into violence. "As with all large events, there is also the opportunity for criminal elements or terrorists to target participants and visitors," says the State Department. The Al-Qaeda-allied militia group, Al-Shabaab, has threatened Kenya with retaliatory attacks, saying it considers the forces' crossborder incursion in pursuit of the militants, an affront to Somalia's sovereignty. The travel alert warns Americans to avoid areas of gatherings, protests, and demonstrations, and exercise caution if unexpectedly in the vicinity of any such events. "U.S. citizens are urged to exercise caution and remain abreast of the security situation. Monitor media and local information sources and factor updated information into personal travel plans and activities," the State Department says. It also cautions Americans to avoid crowds and remain alert when using public transportation as well as report specific safety concerns to local law enforcement authorities. "Restrictions on traffic circulation, either imposed by the authorities or caused by political rallies, could occur during the elections period," reads the alert. The East African nation plans to hold the general elections on Aug. 8 and various political parties are carrying out selection for national and county offices throughout the country this month, followed by nationwide campaigning. Analysts had also warned that the warnings are a blow to Kenya's already troubled tourist industry which relies on foreign visitor, many of whom combine safaris with beach holidays in Mombasa. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 21:04:27|Editor: Tian Shaohui Video Player Close Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) meets with his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump in the latter's Florida resort of Mar-a-Lago in the United States, April 6, 2017. (Xinhua/Lan Hongguang) MAR-A-LAGO, the United States, April 6 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping said here Thursday that he is ready to work with his U.S. counterpart, Donald Trump, to push forward China-U.S. relations from a new starting point. While meeting with Trump at the latter's Florida resort of Mar-a-Lago, Xi said there are "a thousand reasons to make the China-U.S. relationship work, and no reason to break it." Since the normalization of China-U.S. relations 45 years ago, the bilateral relationship, even though experiencing ups and downs, has made historic progress and brought enormous and pragmatic benefits to the two peoples, Xi said. The Chinese president said it takes political resolve and historical commitments from leaders of both countries to enhance the bilateral relations in the 45 years to come. Xi also invited Trump to pay a state visit to China in 2017. Xi said he has maintained frequent contacts with Trump through phones and letters for some time, and is glad to meet Trump here as his guest. A sound bilateral relationship will benefit not only the two countries and peoples, but also the world at large, he stressed. He added that cooperation is the only right choice for China and the United States, saying that the two countries are capable of becoming great cooperative partners. The Chinese president also underlined the role of four newly-established high-level mechanisms for dialogue and cooperation between China and the United States in such areas as diplomacy and security, economy, law enforcement and cyber security, as well as social and people-to-people exchanges. Xi urged the two countries to set up a cooperative priority list for early harvest, advance negotiations on the bilateral investment treaty, and explore the pragmatic cooperation in infrastructure construction and energy, among other areas. He also said the two sides should properly handle sensitive issues, manage and control differences in a constructive manner, and strengthen communication and coordination in major international and regional affairs. China and the United States should expand their cooperation in addressing global challenges, such as non-proliferation and the fight against cross-border crimes, Xi said. Xi called on the two counties to strengthen communication and coordination in such multilateral mechanisms as the United Nations, the Group of 20 and APEC, so as to jointly safeguard world peace, stability and prosperity. For his part, Trump accepted the invitation for a state visit to China with pleasure, and hoped to make the trip at an early date. The United States and China bear heavy responsibilities as major countries in the world, he said, adding that he is full of expectations for the meeting and hopes to establish a sound working relationship with Xi for the greater development of bilateral relations. The two heads of state also informed each other of their current priorities in domestic and diplomatic agenda, and exchanged views on regional hot-button issues. Upon their arrival at Mar-a-Lago, Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, were greeted by Trump and U.S. First Lady Melania. Before the in-depth, friendly and long-time conversation between Xi and Trump, the two couples also enjoyed the singing of a traditional Chinese ballad and the recitation of Chinese ancient poems by Trump's grandchildren. Xi arrived in the southeastern U.S. coastal town of Palm Beach earlier in the day for the first meeting with Trump, in a bid to chart the course of bilateral ties in a new era. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 21:09:28|Editor: Tian Shaohui Video Player Close GUANGZHOU, April 7 (Xinhua) -- A man convicted of extortion had his conviction overturned by a court in south China's Guangdong Province Friday, nine years after his daughter became sick from tainted milk formula. The Guangdong Provincial Higher People's Court overturned Guo Li's conviction and allowed him to apply for state compensation, said the court. "I just want to say, after nine years of waiting, the truth is always there and justice will always come," said Guo. In 2008, Guo requested compensation from milk producer Scient after his daughter was diagnosed with a kidney problem after consuming the company's baby milk formula. The formula was later confirmed to contain melamine, a chemical raw material that can lead to reproductive damage and bladder or kidney stones. In 2009, the milk producer granted him 400,000 yuan (58,000 U.S. dollars) on the condition that he waive his right to demand further compensation. After seeking help from the media, Guo requested further compensation of 3 million yuan and was brought to court for extortion later that year. Guo was sentenced to five years in jail for extortion by Chaoan County People's Court in January 2010. His appeal was rejected by the intermediate court of Chaozhou City in December 2010. After requests by Guo's parents, Guangdong Provincial Higher People's Court reheard the case. Nie Lize, a law professor at Sun Yat-sen University, said claiming compensation is the lawful right of consumers who buy flawed products, and the correction in the case shows China's judicial progress in ensuring human rights. The melamine scandal in 2008 led to the death of at least six babies and caused illness in 300,000 others on the Chinese mainland. Dairy producer Sanlu Group was at the center of the scandal, which dealt a heavy blow to China's dairy industry and consumers' confidence. A dairy farmer and a milk salesman were executed in 2009 for their roles in the Sanlu case. Sanlu's general manager, Tian Wenhua, was given a life sentence the same year on charges of producing and selling fake or substandard products. Altogether 21 people related to the brand were convicted in connection with the scandal. Enditem Accident scene in Harare-Masvingo highway near Chaka Town in the border of Midland and Masvingo province, Zimbabwe, April 6, 2017. (Xinhua/Zhang Haiman) HARARE, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Zimbabwean police have tallied the number of people who died on Wednesday night to 20 in an accident involving a South Africa-bound bus and a haulage truck about 220 km from Harare, with the driver of the haulage truck now facing culpable homicide charges. Police spokesperson Charity Charamba told The Herald newspaper Friday that the truck driver was believed to have encroached into the lane of the bus, resulting in the collision which left both vehicles up in smoke about 90 km from Masvingo. "The truck driver is going to be charged with culpable homicide because he is the one who encroached into the land of the bus, resulting in the side-swipe," she said. The bus driver also survived the accident. The dead were burnt beyond recognition and police forensic experts are now trying to identify them with help of DNA matches from relatives. At least 40 other passengers were taken to hospital for treatment. A 29-year-old woman survived and also saved her 11-month-old daughter by jumping through the window of the burning bus while holding her in one hand. She is now nursing some burns and a broken leg after landing badly, according to the newspaper. Meanwhile, the government will give bereaved families 200 U.S. dollars for each victim to help meet funeral expenses. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 21:23:46|Editor: Tian Shaohui Video Player Close TAIPEI, April 7 (Xinhua) -- A passenger ship became stranded on the open waters about eight nautical miles off Budai Township in southwest Taiwan's Chiayi County at around 6 p.m. Friday, local media reported. Over 70 people have been rescued so far, and about 300 others are still awaiting rescue. Four ships have been dispatched to join the rescue work. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 21:39:35|Editor: ying Video Player Close JUBA, April 7 (Xinhua) -- South Sudan police said Friday that at least six civilians were killed and 13 others injured on Thursday afternoon in separate gun attacks on commercial vehicles. Police spokesman Daniel Justine Bolo told Xinhua that gunmen fired randomly at a convoy carrying internally displaced people to the eastern town of Pibor, killing four people on spot and injured 13 others about 10 Kilometers east of the capital, Juba. The attack happened on the same road where six humanitarian workers were ambushed and killed two weeks ago. Bolo added that two more passengers were also killed following an attack on two commercial vehicles along the busy Juba-Nimule road, the only remaining major route linking land-locked South Sudan to its Southern neighbor Uganda. "A commercial car carrying displaced people was ambushed on Thursday at Sirikat and four people lost their lives and 13 others were wounded. We are still investigating and no arrest has been made despite the scene being near to Juba," Bolo said. Targeted killings along major roads across war-torn South Sudan have increased since renewed fighting erupted in July 2016. The government said in October 2016 that at least 95 people were killed in road ambushes in two months. More than three years of conflict have taken a devastating toll on the people of South Sudan. The UN estimates that the conflict has forced 1.5 South Sudanese into neighboring countries and another 7.5 million people across the country are in need of humanitarian assistance and protection and localized famine has been declared in northern parts of the world's youngest nation. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 21:39:35|Editor: Tian Shaohui Video Player Close BEIJING, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Mongolia has vowed to provide support enhancing the China-Europe freight trains route. "We will help shorten the transit time of China-Europe freight trains via Mongolia and provide fast customs clearance services," said B.Tsogtgerel, deputy minister of the Mongolian Road and Transport Development Ministry, Friday. In 2016, Chinese authorities announced the freight train route, which starts in Erlianhaote in northern China's Inner Mongolia and travels through Mongolia before linking to Russia and other European countries. "There were 167 China-Europe freight trains travelling through Mongolia in 2016 and that is expected to reach 400 in 2017," said Tsogtgerel at the "Transit Mongolia 2017" forum in Beijing. "The train route via Mongolia will help develop the rich resources in Mongolia and promote the common development of countries along the route." In 2011, China launched the China-Europe freight train service, which has witnessed rapid growth with high operation efficiency. A total of 1,881 China-Europe freight trains, including 502 inbound trains, have been launched as of June 2016. The number is estimated to reach 5,000 by 2020. China-Europe trade value over the route hit 17 billion U.S. dollars during the period. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 21:44:36|Editor: Tian Shaohui Video Player Close PHNOM PENH, April 7 (Xinhua) -- China and Cambodia pledged on Friday to further develop bilateral relations and enhance strategic mutual trust. When meeting with Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen, Sun Chunlan, head of the United Front Work Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, said the two countries are "good neighbors, friends, brothers and partners." China appreciates Cambodia for its support on China's core interest issues, she said. "China is willing to join hands with Cambodia to enhance strategic mutual trust, deepen exchanges on governance of nation and party, and strengthen cooperation on the Belt and Road Initiative," Sun added. The Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road Initiative, known as Belt and Road Initiative, was proposed by China in 2013 with the aim of building a trade and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along ancient trade routes. Hun Sen said the Cambodian government has viewed China as its true friend, and given priority to the development of ties with China in the country's foreign policy. The prime minister thanked China for its help and support to Cambodia's socio-economic development, expressing willingness to exchange experience on the governance of country and party. Sun, who is leading a CPC delegation to Cambodia, arrived here Thursday for a four-day visit. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 21:44:36|Editor: ying Video Player Close NAIROBI, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The Central Bank of Kenya on Friday warned of pyramid schemes in the country masquerading as savings and credit societies. The entities are taking cash from the public by asking them to save or invest with them so that they can get higher interest or buy houses/land only to go under after few months. At least three such outfits have been reported to have collapsed with members' money since the beginning of the year leaving many distraught. "The Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) and the Sacco Societies Regulatory Authority (Sasra) wish to draw the attention of members of the public to the re-emergence of unlicensed deposit-taking entities and Ponzi/pyramid schemes," said the CBK in a statement Friday. The regulator noted that the entities were asking citizens to invest with them, promising quick and abnormally high returns on their money or acquisition of non-existent properties. "Members of the public should exercise caution and ensure they place their funds with credible and duly licensed deposit-taking institutions. The list of licensed deposit-taking financial institutions can be obtained from CBK's website," said the bank. Kenyans have a long and bad history with Ponzi schemes, which over five years ago swindled citizens reportedly 800 million U.S. dollars, which to date has not been recovered. The losses destroyed families and led to several deaths as some people invested their lifetime savings or gratuity after quitting work. Analysts noted that while Kenya has a vibrant financial sector, there are thousands of many people who cannot access financial services making them vulnerable to such schemes. Besides that, citizens are conned due to desire for quick riches. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 21:49:37|Editor: ying Video Player Close NAIROBI, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Kenya accepted a record 230 million U.S. dollars from two Treasury bills it auctioned this week amid swelling domestic debt. The amount is one of the highest the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) has accepted from bidders of the 91-day and 364-day Treasury bills in weeks, having suspended sale of 182-day bill. As in the previous week, the CBK had put up for sale 91-day and 182-day Treasury bills worth 194 million dollars, 97 million dollars from each. "The total number of bids received amounted to 121 million dollars representing 125 percent subscription for the 91-day bill and 169 million dollars representing 174 percent subscription for the 364-day bill. Bids accepted amounted to 110 million dollars for 91 days and 120 million dollars for the 364 days bills," said the CBK in auction results Friday. The weighted average rate of accepted bids, which will be applied for non-competitive bids, was 8.77 percent for the 91-day and 10.9 percent for 364-day bills, a rise of 0.013 and 0.006 respectively. The 230 million dollars raised this week have pushed up the East African nation's domestic debt, which currently stands at 19.1 billion dollars. A spike in domestic borrowing particularly through weekly Treasury bills and monthly bonds for budgetary support and infrastructure projects has raised the domestic debt from 18.6 in the third quarter of last year. Internal borrowing is now at the highest level as the East African nation struggles to meet its financial demands amid low revenue collection. This week, the country's world first mobile-based Treasury bond targeting low income earners raised 1.5 million dollars, with the paper being snapped up in just days. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 21:54:38|Editor: ying Video Player Close MANAMA, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Bahrain's parliament will vote next week to penalize cross dressing with jail term and fine, Al Ayam local online news reported on Friday. The penalty will be included in the penal code law and it will be up to one year in jail or/and no more than 1,000 Bahraini dinars (2,652 U.S. dollars) fine. While the concerned committee was reviewing the proposal, various government officials rejected it, describing it as unclear and lack clarification on certain acts that should be penalized. The public have been criticizing parliamentarians for focusing on unimportant matters rather than serious issues like the delayed state budget of 2016 that the government is yet to refer to the parliament for approval. The delay suspended many government projects and promotion of many public employees. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 21:59:39|Editor: ying Video Player Close ANKARA, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Turkish authorities have detained a Syrian air force pilot whose plane crashed on Turkish territory last month on charges of espionage and violating border security, Turkish state-run Anadolu Agency reported on Friday. Syrian national Mehmet Sufhan, 56-year-old pilot, was found alive after ejecting safely when the aircraft was allegedly shot by the opposition group as it took off from Lattakia to strike Idlib on March 4. The judicial source, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to restrictions on talking to the media, said the pilot was detained on charges of espionage and violating border security. The pilot was found in Hatay province of southeastern Turkey after the local government had received a report of plane crash near the village of Yaylacik in central Antakya, 35 kilometers (22 miles) from the Syrian border. Rushed to Hatay State Hospital, the pilot had suffered a broken backbone as well as face and leg injuries, but had not been in a critical condition. Syrian opposition Ahrar al-Sham announced last month that it shot down the Syrian government's aircraft in Northern Idlib. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 22:09:42|Editor: ying Video Player Close JUBA, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The UN refugee agency expressed concern Friday over the deterioration of the security situation in South Sudan, especially the recent attack in the town of Pojok in the Eastern Equatoria region, forcing more refugees to flee for safety. According to the UNHCR, people fleeing the recent incident claimed that the town came under an indiscriminate attack by the South Sudan armed forces. "Ongoing fighting is also reported in the districts of Magwi and Oboo, towns also close to the border. This spreading of violence signifies a worrying development," the UNHCR said in a statement. Around 4,000 refugees immediately fled South Sudan in the aftermath of the horrible attack on Pajok town, which has an estimated population of up to 50,000, the UNHCR said. It said Uganda's northern Lamwo district has received over 6,000 South Sudanese since Monday as refugees report witnessing their loved ones shot dead at a close range, with many arrested or slaughtered, including children. "Families fled in different directions; the elderly and disabled who could not run were shot dead. Many people are still hiding in the bush trying to find their way to Uganda, while homes and properties were looted and burned. Main roads out of the town are reportedly blocked by armed groups," the UNHCR said. Uganda currently hosts more than 832,000 refugees from South Sudan. Some 192,000 have arrived in 2017 with an average of 2,000 refugees fleeing insecurity, violence and famine every day. Over 62 percent of the new arrivals are children. The conflict has taken a devastating toll on the people of South Sudan as around 7.5 million people are in need of relief and protection, and the humanitarian crisis has deepened further with localized famine declared in parts of the country. According to the UN, some 1.7 million refugees have fled the world's youngest country and the continuing brutal conflict, compounded by the limited availability of food could displace thousands more into South Sudan's neighbourhood. Within South Sudan itself, over 1.9 million people are internally displaced, from a population of under 12 million. The UNHCR said its funding appeal for South Sudan situation of 781.8 million U.S. dollars is only 11 percent funded. It appealed to the international community for urgent and massive support for the thousands of South Sudan refugees in Uganda, Sudan (380,000), Ethiopia (356,000) and elsewhere in the neighbourhood. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 22:14:43|Editor: Tian Shaohui Video Player Close MACAO, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Macao officially started its application for a member of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network, a City of Gastronomy, the special administrative region's local media quoted Macao social and cultural chief in its report on Friday. Macao Daily reported that Macao's Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture Tam Chon Weng as saying that the government has officially apply to become one of the most popular choice for food and restaurants, which will add another reputation to the city trying to become a global tourism destination. Macao's Tourism Office listed the UNESCO "City of Gastronomy" application as one of four major goals in 2017. The SAR government even set up a special committee in charge of this issue. Tam also said earlier this year that it is one of the SAR government's major endeavors in 2017, when attending a meeting convened by this committee on Jan. 19. If Macao is successfully designated as a UNESCO gastronomy city, it will add a significant international brand for Macao with far-reaching significance and a powerful impetus to Macao's transformation into a world tourism and leisure center, as well as adequate diversification and sustainable development of Macao's economy, Tan commented in that meeting. Macao also organized the "International Gastronomy Forum" in November 2016 as a warm-up before it officially applies for the brand. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 22:19:44|Editor: ying Video Player Close NAIROBI, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The UN World Food Program (WFP) said Friday it has resumed providing full food rations to refugees in Dadaab and Kakuma camps in northern Kenya thanks to new donor funding. WFP Country Director for Kenya Annalisa Conte said the full rations which resumed on April 1 after more than a year of ration cuts will continue from April to July. The UN food agency however clarified that the funding currently available for cash transfers -- which make up 30 percent of the refugees' food assistance -- will last only until May. "We are urging our donors to continue making new resources available to enable us to carry on providing this much-needed food assistance for 420,000 people," Conte said in a statement issued in Nairobi. The UN agency was in December 2016 forced to make new cuts by 50 percent in food rations for refugees in Kenya amid a severe funding shortage as the UN agency rapidly ran out of resources to feed mainly Somali and South Sudan refugees in the two camps. However, WFP said new contributions from China which provided 5 million U.S. dollars, Canada (2.2 million dollars), Germany (2.7 million dollars as part of a multi-year contribution), Japan (2.2 million dollars), Sweden (1 million dollars), and Britain (5.1 million dollars as part of a multi-year contribution) enabled it to resume full rations. "A 22.5 million dollars in-kind contribution from the United States has arrived in the country and is available for distribution," WFP said. Each month, WFP provides each refugee with a mix of food items -- cereals, pulses, vegetable oil, and nutrient-enriched flour -- and a cash transfer equivalent to a third of the minimum food requirement. The cash, sent through mobile telephones, allows refugees to buy food products of their choice from local markets. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 22:24:45|Editor: ying Video Player Close KHARTOUM, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Sudan has issued a decision obliging Egyptian citizens seeking to enter its territories to obtain entry-visas, namely the ones aged between 16 to 50 years old. "The decision stipulates that Egyptian nationals aged between 16 and 50 years old must obtain entry-visas to Sudan. The decision excludes women, children and those above 50 years old," Gen. Omer al-Mukhtar, Spokesman of Sudan Police, told Xinhua. It is to be noted that the Egyptian authorities apply the same condition for entry of the Sudanese nationals to Egypt. In 2004, Sudan and Egypt signed an agreement of the four freedoms, which avails the citizens of the two countries freedoms of work, movement, residence and ownership. Khartoum said it has fully implemented the agreement since it was signed, while Cairo imposes entry-visa on Sudanese aged between 18 and 50 years old. Recently Khartoum complained over an Egyptian decision increasing the stay fees on foreigners, including the Sudanese. Khartoum's decision imposing entry-visas on Egyptians came two days ahead of convocation of the joint political consultations committee between Sudan and Egypt at level of foreign ministers, scheduled for coming Sunday in Khartoum. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 22:29:46|Editor: ying Video Player Close NICOSIA, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Tempers ran out of control and anti-riot police were called in on Friday to eject heckling supporters of a fascist party during an unprecedented session of the Cypriot parliament in a debate of a controversial law. After a four-hour acrimonious high-pitched debate, right-wing ruling DISY party and left-wing main opposition AKEL party joined forces to pass a law by a majority of 30 to 20, in the 56-member chamber. Five MPs were not present and the speaker did not cast a vote. The law reverses a previous parliamentary decision to commemorate in school classes a 1950 referendum in which Greek Cypriots had voted in favor of "enosis" or union with Greece. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 22:34:47|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (R) meets with President of WorldSkills International Simon Bartley in Beijing, capital of China, April 7, 2017. Bartley is in China to evaluate the bidding work by Shanghai for the 46th WorldSkills competition in 2021. (Xinhua/Li Tao) BEIJING, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang Friday met with visiting President of WorldSkills International Simon Bartley, and expressed support for Shanghai's bid to host the 46th WorldSkills competition in 2021. Li said that Chinese government would take the bidding work as an opportunity to enhance cooperation with WorldSkills International to improve the skills of hundreds of millions of workers in China and contribute to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Noting that China treats labor as the biggest resource in maintaining medium to high-speed growth, Li said that China highly values the spirit of craftsmen, and works to cultivate more skilled people with enterprising ability to upgrade economic development. Bartley, who is in China to evaluate Shanghai's bidding work for the competition in 2021, expressed the will to maintain close coordination and cooperation with China. He appreciated China's willingness and advantages in bidding for the competition, which is held every two years for competitors from around the world to demonstrate their excellence in skilled trades and technology contests. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 22:44:49|Editor: Mengjie Video Player Close Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli meets with Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn of Thailand in Beijing, capital of China, April 7, 2017. (Xinhua/Pang Xinglei) BEIJING, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli met with Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn of Thailand Friday. Zhang expressed his appreciation for Sirindhorn's work on strengthening China-Thailand friendship. "Amongst ASEAN nations, Thailand is taking the lead in developing ties with China, which is due to the Thai royal family's attention and efforts to promote," he said. He believed that under the leadership of Thai King Maha Vajiralongkorn, the nation-building of Thailand would gain greater achievements. "China is ready to synergize development strategies and deepen pragmatic cooperation with Thailand, so as to achieve mutual benefit and common development," Zhang said. Sirindhorn thanked China's long-term support for Thailand in various sectors, and hoped that the two sides would enhance cooperation in science, education and agriculture. The princess said she would continue to make efforts in boosting mutually beneficial cooperation between the two countries. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 22:44:49|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close BRUSSELS, April 7 (Xinhua) -- NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Friday said the Syrian government "bears the full responsibility" for the U.S. strike in Syria. Stoltenberg said in a statement that the United States launched a strike on the Shayrat Airfield in Syria "following this week's horrendous chemical weapons attacks in Khan Shaykhun." "Any use of chemical weapons is unacceptable, cannot go unanswered, and those responsible must be held accountable," he said. Stoltenberg also reaffirmed that NATO supports all international efforts aimed at achieving peace and a political solution in Syria. The U.S. military on Thursday launched a targeted missile strike at a Syrian military airfield in its first direct assault on the army of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad since Syrian crisis began six years ago. The strike was ordered by U.S. President Donald Trump, said a Pentagon statement, adding that the assault was in response to the alleged Syrian government's chemical weapons attack on Tuesday in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun, which killed over 70 people and wounded scores of others, most of whom were civilians. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said early on Thursday that the Syrian airstrike on a rebel-held town in Idlib Province struck a rebel depot containing chemical materials, denying that the air force fired toxic gas during the attack. Moscow considers the U.S. missile strike as an "aggression against a sovereign state" under a far-fetched pretext, saying it violates international law, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday. The Syrian presidential office slammed the U.S. missile attack on a Syrian airbase as "reckless and irresponsible." In a statement, the presidential office said the attack reflects the "narrow vision and political and military blindness by the United States regarding reality." Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 22:49:50|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close BEIJING, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping and King Abdullah II of Jordan exchanged congratulatory messages Friday on the 40th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Jordan. Over the past 40 years, bilateral relationship between China and Jordan has kept growing, as evidenced by ever-strengthening political mutual trust and frequent high-level exchanges, Xi said in his congratulatory message. The two countries have maintained good communication on regional and global affairs, and bilateral cooperation in such areas as trade and economy, culture and education has yielded fruitful results, Xi said. China and Jordan announced establishing the strategic partnership in 2015, Xi noted, adding that looking into the future, he has full confidence in the prospects of China-Jordan relations. Xi added that he highly values the development of the China-Jordan relations, and is ready to work with King Abdullah II to deepen the strategic partnership between China and Jordan, so as to bring more benefits to the two countries and peoples. King Abdullah II said in his congratulatory message that the bilateral relations between Jordan and China have grown increasingly closer since the two countries established diplomatic ties, and have yielded fruitful results. He added that he is proud of the profound friendship between the two countries and peoples. The King also noted that China and Jordan signed a milestone strategic partnership agreement in 2015. He added that trade and economic cooperation is a priority in the development of the Jordan-China relations. Jordan is willing to continue carrying out cooperation with China under the Belt and Road Initiative, with an aim to create greater benefits to the peoples of the two countries, said the King. NEW DELHI, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Police in northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh have rescued a young girl around 10 years old living with a troop of monkeys, health officials said Friday. The girl was found living inside Katraniaghat forest area of Bahraich district, about 195 km northeast of Lucknow, the capital city of Uttar Pradesh. "The girl was rescued from jungle and brought to hospital here by policemen some two months back," Dr. D K Singh, chief medical superintendent Bahraich district hospital told Xinhua. "She used to move around using all her fours like animals and used to eat food by spreading it on bed and thereafter lifting it directly with mouth." The girl, according to health officials, was apparently brought up by monkeys and used to move away on seeing humans. "She was unable to communicate and used to screech like monkeys," Singh said. "She was brought here malnourished but in these two months she has become healthy and is able to walk now." Feral children like the girl exist in fictional works and legends. The girl seems to have resemblance with Mowgli, a character in Rudyard Kipling's novel -- The Jungle Book. Health officials attending the girl told Xinhua she was showing signs of improvement. "She had injuries on her body, featured long tangled hair and sharp unkempt nails," an attendant said. "She is showing an gradual improvement and now her hair is being washed and nails clipped at regular intervals." Locals believe she might have been abandoned by her parents because of being a female child. Police, meanwhile, have started a search to trace the parents of the girl. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 23:39:58|Editor: Mengjie Kenyan Principal Secretary of Ministry of Devolution and Planning Josephta Mukobe (3rd R) and Chinese Ambassador to Kenya Liu Xianfa (4th R) attend a food donation ceremony in Nairobi, Kenya, on April 7, 2017. The Chinese community residing in Kenya on Friday donated 144 tonnes of cooking oil, maize and wheat flour to boost humanitarian interventions for drought victims in nine Kenyan counties. (Xinhua/Pan Siwei) NAIROBI, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese community residing in Kenya on Friday donated 144 tonnes of cooking oil, maize and wheat flour to boost humanitarian interventions for drought victims in nine Kenyan counties. The Kenya-China Economic and Trade Association, in collaboration with the Chinese Embassy in Kenya and the Kenya Overseas Chinese Association, extended the donation worth 160,000 U.S. dollars in aid of Kenya's national drought relief campaign. Speaking at the flagging-off ceremony for the food donation by Chinese nationals, Principal Secretary of Ministry of Devolution and Planning Josephta Mukobe lauded Beijing for timely response to the country's drought which has affected an estimated 3 million people. "We appreciate the kind gesture by Chinese community toward people affected by drought. It is my hope that we will continue to cooperate not just in drought intervention but also in technology and other areas that can help the country develop," Mukobe said. Mukobe noted that the Chinese community living in Kenya was quick to respond to a presidential appeal for emergency food aid for drought victims. She added that Kenya is ready to borrow expertise from China to find long-term solution to recurrent droughts that are linked to climate change. "Our relationship should be a two way traffic, Kenya can learn some lessons from China on how to deal with drought and China can also pick some lessons from our experience on the issue," said Mukobe. Chinese Ambassador to Kenya Liu Xianfa and executives from the Chinese companies operating in Kenya attended the flagging-off ceremony for the latest food donation. Chinese firms and nationals living in Kenya have made a series of food donations to Kenya's drought victims in line with the spirit of solidarity and friendship. Liu said China is committed to lending material and technical assistance to enable Kenya and other African countries deal with drought and other natural disasters effectively. "China is always willing to share its experience and knowhow with African brothers, helping you to develop modern agriculture, upgrade your anti-disaster facilities and build your capacity," said Liu. He added that China will lend support toward development of irrigation, water and grain storage infrastructure in Kenya in a bid to tackle the country's growing food insecurity for the long haul. The Chinese government in March announced donation of 21,366 tonnes of rice, worth 21.8 million U.S. dollars, to alleviate hunger and malnutrition among Kenya's drought victims. Liu said earlier that the rice would be shipped to Kenya soon and would support 1.4 million drought-affected people for one month. Liu disclosed the Chinese government has also contributed 5 million dollars through the World Food Program to Somali and South Sudanese refugees in Kenya. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-07 23:44:59|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close Police officers stand guard on a street after an attack in central Stockholm, capital of Sweden, on April 7, 2017. A truck rammed into people on a central Stockholm street before crashing into a department store on Friday, with police and witnesses saying three people had died and eight others injured in the incident. (Xinhua/Rob Schoenbaum) STOCKHOLM, April 7 (Xinhua) -- A truck rammed into people on a central Stockholm street before crashing into a department store on Friday, with police and witnesses saying three people had died and eight others injured in the incident. "Sweden has been attacked. Everything indicates that this is a terror attack," Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven told a press conference. Police have urged people to stay indoors, the SVT news reported, adding that the Parliament building, the Riksdag, has been cordoned off. All metro services in the Swedish capital city have been suspended following the incident, Radio Sweden reported. The truck involved in the incident was hijacked earlier on Friday from outside a restaurant in central Stockholm, according to Radio Sweden. According to witnesses and sources, a man has been taken into custody by police at Olof Palme street a short distance from where the truck drove into the store Ahlens on Drottninggatan street in central Stockholm, Aftonbladet reported. "It is one of our distribution vehicles running deliveries. Someone jumped into the driver's cabin and drove away with the car while the driver was unloading," the SVT reported, quoting sources. An attack on any of the European Union (EU) member states is an attack on the bloc all, said European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker following the Stockholm attack. Extending condolences to the families of the victims, Juncker said, "We stand shoulder to shoulder in solidarity with the people of Sweden and the Swedish authorities can count on the European Commission to support them in any which way we can." Danish politicians have condemned the attack in Stockholm on Friday and expressed condolences to the victims. Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen said in a statement that the attack was "a cowardly attempt to subdue us and our peaceful way of life in Scandinavia." "It is a day of mourning. It is also a day of will to fight the darkness," Rasmussen said. "For each attempt to bend us, we are moving closer together," the prime minister added. "My thoughts are with the victims and their relatives." In his twitter account, Rasmussen said shortly after the attack that he was "horrified by the terrible accident." The Danish authorities are closely monitoring the situation in Stockholm, according to the statement. Danish Minister of Foreign Affairs Anders Samuelsen also expressed his support to Swedish people on twitter. "My deepest condolences to our Swedish friends and neighbors after Stockholm (attack). We think of you and stand together (with you)," Samuelsen said. PARIS, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Emmanuel Macron, the once upstart candidate now turned favorite for the French presidency, set a new record for the number of viewers for "L'Emission Politique," an evening talk show in which he on Thursday revealed details of his political platform. Some 3.6 million viewers tuned in on Thursday night to watch the founder of the "En Marche" (EM) political movement, a record for the show which represented 16.5 percent of overall viewers. Launched a year ago, his political movement has received more than 230,000 endorsements and employs 80 staff. Beyond the presidential elections on April 23 and May 7, the challenge for Francois Hollande's former economy minister will be to assure continuity. "Since the launch of the movement, there have been more than 30,000 events or ground actions which were created on our activist mobilization platform by our 3,900 local committees in France and abroad, EM said Thursday, adding "This week, a new record was set with close to 3,300 events launched and 2,400 ground actions." In one year, things have changed for the former economy minister, who resigned from his position last August. The 39-year-old former banker has a good chance of occupying the Elysee palace, according to opinion polls. With an undeniable charisma, meetings which attract crowds, numerous activist supporters and a series of rallies, the "Macron bubble" evoked by numerous observers has not burst. However, it is difficult to measure the real strength of the Macron phenomenon. Advertising his movement -- with an acronym the same as his own initials -- Macron evoked a certain curiosity. "The most paradoxical thing regarding his experience as a civil service graduate and banker is that he would come to incarnate a political alternative," said political scientist Vincent Martigny from Cevipof and Sciences Po Paris. The creation of his movement and his personal ascension "resembles a start-up," that speaks to young people. "It's a marketing where the form counts as much as the content," he suggested. Macron still uses the expression "political movement" but now also evokes that of a party. "We are in between," said EN secretary general Richard Ferrand. The party, which has a non-profit status, has begun to structure itself like a traditional political party with different local sections and committees. Presidential candidate Francois Bayrou from Democratic Movement pledge allegiance to Macron and the two men will hold a meeting on April 12. With no elected officials in its midst, EM receives no public subsidies. It relies on private donations apart from a loan of 8 million euros (8.4 million U.S. dollars) taken out by Macron. But EM has declared its submission, like a traditional party, to electoral finance regulations, opening a special campaign account. It announced it will respect the same financing rules for political activity for the next series of elections. To succeed in the legislative elections is vital for the future of the movement. The dynamic could be halted if Macron fails to win the presidency, warn several political scientists. With less than three weeks before the first round of presidential voting, even if EM supporters make a show of confidence, they will be careful not to declare victory prematurely. ADDIS ABABA, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The African Union (AU) on Friday marked the 23rd anniversary of the Rwanda Genocide at the headquarters of the pan-African bloc in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa. In collaboration with Rwanda's Embassy here in Addis Ababa, the commemoration was held under the theme of "Remember the Rwanda Genocide - Fight Genocide Ideology - Build on our Progress." The commemoration is held to remember the lives lost during the Genocide of 1994 in Rwanda, show solidarity with the survivors and unite to ensure it never happens in Rwanda or elsewhere in Africa and beyond, said the AU. Speaking on the occasion, Thomas Kwasi Quartey, Deputy Chairperson of the AU Commission, reiterated that the Rwanda Genocide commemoration is held on annual basis to remember the victims and renew Africa's collective commitment to protect human rights. The event at AU has involved activities including, Flame of Remembrance ceremony, screening of documentary movie on Rwanda Genocide, poem recitation, and musical dramas by school children, among others. The commemoration of the Rwanda Genocide is annually organized by the pan-African bloc following the AU policy organ decision to recognize the 7th of April as a day of remembrance of the victims of the genocide and reaffirmation of Africa's resolve to prevent and fight genocide on the continent. The purpose of the commemoration is to continuously awaken greater awareness of the African peoples and the international community about the value of life and humanity, and to renew Africa's collective commitment to protect and uphold fundamental human rights, said the AU. BERLIN, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Germany's Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere is seeking to halt the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany's (NPD) access to state funding. All political parties in Germany receive state funding in proportion to factors such as their success in state, federal and European elections. The NPD currently has no seats at state or federal level but has one seat in the European Parliament. In 2015, the party received 1.3 million euros from the German state. In January, Germany's constitutional court -- the nation's highest -- ruled against banning the NPD. The court did find that the NPD has unconstitutional aims, specifically that of overthrowing the existing order by replacing democratic rule with authoritarianism. However, since it also found that the extremist party was incapable of realizing this objective, a ban was not justified. But the court did indicate the NPD could be excluded from government funding. A Federal Council resolution in February said that parties pursuing "anti-constitutional aims" and "disregarding human dignity" should not receive government funds with which to achieve their goals. De Maiziere, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Party (CDU), is now initiating a legislative process to exclude further funding. He said he was working closely with colleagues in the Justice and Treasury ministries to secure his goal. The process is complicated as it requires changing the constitution, making a two-thirds majority in both houses of the German parliament, the Bundestag and the Bundesrat, necessary. KATHMANDU, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Nepal's national flag carrier Nepal Airlines Corporation (NAC) is all set to purchase wide-body aircraft for the first time in its history. The NAC on Friday signed a purchase agreement with U.S.-based AAR Corp, the American aviation support company for the supply of two airbus planes A320-200. The U.S.-based company was awarded contract in January after it quoted the lowest amount in a bidding process. NAC Managing Director Sugat Ratna Kansakar and AAR's representative Deepak Sharma signed the agreement on Friday. Based on the agreement, the AAR will supply both aircraft in the second quarter of 2018 at the combined cost of 209.6 million U.S. dollar, the NAC said in a press release. Kanskar told Xinhua that the first ever acquisition of wide-body aircraft would help the national flag carrier conduct direct flight to far away destinations. "We had conducted flights to European destinations like London in the past with narrow-body aircraft but we had to stop mid-way for refueling," said Kanskar. After acquiring these aircraft, the NAC has planned to conduct flights to destinations such as South Korea, Japan, Australia, Saudi Arabia. Kansakar said that after acquiring the two wide-body aircraft, the NAC targets to secure 15-16 percent market share from among the international airlines which carry passengers from and to Kathmandu. Currently, its market share is around 11 percent as of 2016. Currently, NAC has been conducting international flights with its one Boeing 757-200 and two Airbus 320-200. by Huang Haimin COLOMBO, April 7 (Xinhua) -- With Jun Hai 1, Asia's largest trailing suction hopper dredger joining the construction fleet, the land reclamation of Colombo Port City, as a future city and long awaited by Sri Lankans, has been proceeded rapidly. The 1.4-billion-U.S. dollar project, which is currently under construction near the Colombo Harbor, is Sri Lanka's largest foreign direct investment (FDI). "As a Sri Lankan, I feel so proud that I can be participating in the project and really look forward to the completion of the project as early as possible, so that it would bring new opportunities to our people and our motherland which has just recovered from a 30-year civil war," Chandana Gunawardena, deputy project manager of the Colombo Port City Project, told Xinhua on Thursday. This brand-new "financial city" is taking shape gradually from the sea area right beside the Colombo International Container Terminals, which is being operated by the China Merchants Ports Holdings. Because of Colombo Port City, Chandana now has a stable job and a good outlook in his career. He said the mega-project would boost the country's economic development via spurring FDI and the private sector's growth. "By making Colombo a better city, Colombo Port City will attract more and more Sri Lankan diaspora back to their homeland," he said. Chandana believed that the project is going to transfer Colombo to an important commercial hub in South Asia and "a shining pearl of the Indian Ocean." Invested and developed by the China Communications Construction Company Limited (CCCC), Colombo Port City is the largest project between China and Sri Lanka under the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative, especially the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. The Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, known as Belt and Road Initiative, were proposed in 2013 with the aim of building a trade and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along the ancient trade routes. Most of local construction and technical employees at the Port City project told Xinhua that the China-funded project has brought about jobs, higher salary and a better life, making them to be confident with their future careers. "Colombo Port City is a key project in South Asia under the Belt and Road Initiative and it has well matched Sri Lanka's Western Megapolis development strategy," CCCC Chairman Liu Qitao told Xinhua. "With investment of 1.4 billion dollars, Phase 1 project has land reclamation of 269 hectares, out of which there will be 178-hectare developable land for commercial developments," he said. "The total Gross Floor Area (GFA) will come up to 5.65 million sq meters, including residence, hotel, office and retail mall among others. Other iconic developments in the project include theme park, yacht marina, central park, medical center, international school and sand beach ect," Liu said. "These will attract further 13 billion dollars investment of property developments within the city." Liu belived the construction of Colombo Port City will not only contribute to Sri Lakan's socio-economic development, but also play an exemplary role in attracting foreign investment, and furthermore, it will attract international high-end professionals and introduce world's advanced technology so as to promote the competitiveness of local enterprise. The construction of the Port City will also create job opportunities for the locals, with a total of 83,000 jobs expected in the 20 years from implementation to completion of the project, he claimed. "As a father, I expect my kids to work in this city with a promising future, make contributions to the country while achieving their own career goals," Chandana said hopefully. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-08 00:35:08|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close UNITED NATIONS, April 7 (Xinhua) -- More than 200,000 children, or one in four, in the two regions most severely affected by ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine require urgent and sustained psychosocial support to address the trauma of living through more than three years of violence, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) said on Friday. Those 200,000 children live in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, within 15 km of each side of the "contact-line" that divides government and non-government-controlled areas and where fighting is most intense, the UNICEF said in a press release. "The world has forgotten about this invisible crisis in eastern Ukraine, but hundreds of thousands of children are paying a heavy price, one that could last a lifetime without adequate support," said UNICEF Ukraine Representative Giovanna Barberis. "We urgently need funds to reach these traumatized children." Children nearest the "contact-line" have been living in chronic fear and uncertainty due to sporadic shelling, unpredictable fighting and dangers from landmines and other unexploded ordinance. Many risk their safety to get an education. Seven schools were damaged during the most recent escalation of violence in February and March 2017, and more than 740 schools -- one in five in eastern Ukraine -- have been damaged or destroyed since the conflict began in 2014. Parents, teachers, school directors and psychologists continue to report striking behaviour changes in children as young as three years old. Symptoms include severe anxiety, bed-wetting, nightmares, aggressive behaviour and withdrawing from families and communities. Dedicated social workers, psychologists and specially trained teachers are working around the clock. However, as the conflict drags on, additional investments are required to meet these children's needs. UNICEF is appealing for 31.2 million U.S. dollars to support children and families affected by the conflict in eastern Ukraine. This includes 5.5 million U.S. dollars for child protection services and psychosocial support. So far, UNICEF has received less than a third of its funding requirements and child protection is critically underfunded. "Children should not have to live with the emotional scars from a conflict they had no part in creating. Additional support is needed now so that young people in Donetsk and Luhansk can grow into healthy adults and rebuild their communities," said Barberis. "Children and their families urgently need peace. We call on all sides of the conflict to recommit to the ceasefire signed in Minsk to end this senseless violence." Last year, UNICEF reached approximately 200,000 children with psychosocial support through community protection centres, mobile teams, teachers and school-based psychologists. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-08 00:35:08|Editor: Mengjie Joseph Edward Yawson, a student of the University of Ghana, performs Peking Opera in the "Chinese Bridge" language proficiency competition in Accra, capital of Ghana, on April 7, 2017. The Ghanaian preliminary round of the 16th "Chinese Bridge" language proficiency competition for college students took place on Friday at the University of Ghana in Accra. Yawson won the overall prize after three rounds of contest in writing examination, spoken Chinese, knowledge about China and Chinese cultural talent. (Xinhua/Shi Song) ACCRA, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The Ghanaian preliminary round of the 16th "Chinese Bridge" language proficiency competition for college students took place on Friday at the University of Ghana, Legon, in Accra. The Chinese proficiency competition is held annually for non-Chinese college students in various countries to arouse their enthusiasm in learning Chinese and strengthen the world's understanding of Chinese language and culture. This year's competition, organized by the Confucius Institute, attracted 10 students selected from three universities in Ghana. Joseph Edward Yawson, a student of the University of Ghana, Legon, won the overall prize after three rounds of contest in writing examination, spoken Chinese, knowledge about China and Chinese cultural talent. For his prize, Yawson received a paid-trip to represent Ghana at the international finals of the competition to be held in China later this year and a six-month Confucius Institute scholarship. The first runner-up, Benjamin Hayfron-Walker, will also visit China to observe the world contest. Yawson was very excited after the contest and told Xinhua that he had set his eyes on the world crown. "Over the years, there have been my seniors who have represented Ghana in that competition in China and they did very well. You talk of someone like Ignatius he was able to get a very good position. So I will set this as a target that I have to be able to bypass him," he said. Hayfron-Walker said he would use the opportunity in China to support Yawson. The Political Counselor of the Chinese Embassy, Jiang Zhouteng, urged the students to serve as bridges to deepen China-Ghana cooperation. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-08 00:40:09|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close KATHMANDU, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The annual Chinese Film Festival started in Kathmandu on Friday. Nepalese State Minister for Culture Parashuram Tamang, Chinese Ambassador Yu Hong, senior Nepalese government officials, diplomats, media persons among others attended the opening ceremony of the week-long film festival held at the Russian Culture Center in the Capital. Addressing the function, Tamang said that Nepal and China have been enjoying a cordial relation for centuries adding that such kind of programs help further enhance the cultural and familial cooperation between the two countries. While praising the progress made by China in the field of culture, the state minister said that Nepal can learn many things from Chinese experiences. The state minister expressed gratitude to the Chinese government for extending support in preservation of cultural heritages in Nepal. "I believe that this Chinese Film Festival will provide more information to the Nepalese people about the Chinese culture, society and film style," he added. Chinese Ambassador Yu Hong said that peoples of both countries are more eager to deepen mutual understanding about each other's culture as bilateral relations between China and Nepal moved forward. "Film exchanges are important parts of culture and educational exchanges," she said. The ambassador said that the Chinese Embassy in Kathmandu has held the Film Festival once a year since 2000 aiming to provide a channel for Nepalese people to understand Chinese culture through Chinese films. "We are glad that Nepalese films began to take part in the Silk Road International Film Festival in China since 2014," she said. "Some Nepalese films such as Bal Krishna Sam and The Necklace had won awards during the festival in that year which deepened the Chinese people's understanding of the Nepalese films and culture," she added. The film festival will witness the screening of eight movies over the course of a week, President of the World Cultural Net, Dipak Sarkar, who is the main organizer, told Xinhua on Friday. The inaugural ceremony was followed by the screening of the Chinese movie Hua Mulan on Friday. This movie was shot in 2009. It tells a widely known story in about 5th century's China, where a Chinese girl named Hua Mulan joins the military service replacing her ailing father. The movie had won the Best Feature and Best Actress of Hundreds Followers Awards of China in 2010. According to the organizer, eight Chinese movies will be screened in various halls around the Kathmandu Valley hoping to reach to a wider audience. KATHMANDU, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Nepalese government on Friday started implementing the provision of newly introduced Industrial Enterprise Act that the industries need to allocate at least 1 percent of their annual profit for social welfare. Clause 48 per the Industrial Enterprise Act 2016 states, big or medium scale enterprises as well as small enterprises having annual turnover over 150 million Nepalese Rupee (1.45 million U.S. dollar) have to allocate at least 1 percent of their annual profit for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) purpose. The allocated amount should be spent in the specific projects as incorporated in annual program for CSR. Nepal's Industry Minister Nabindra Raj Joshi announced on Friday that the state-owned Hetauda Cement Industry and Udayapur Cement Industry would allocate 1.45 U.S. dollars and 1.94 U.S. dollars per 100 sacks respectively. "The announcement will be implemented from April 16," he said. Nepalese Industry Ministry said that the collected amount from these two industries would be spent in health, education and nutrition of disadvantaged children. Nepal's enterprises have been spending certain amount in social causes. But, it is the first time that legal provision has been made ensuring that enterprises must spend certain amount of their profits for social causes. WARSAW, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The Polish Foreign Ministry has extended its sympathies to Sweden on Friday, following the tragic incident when a lorry rammed into crowd. "The Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs received with concern the reports of the tragic incident in central Stockholm," the statement published on Friday said. "Our thoughts go out to the victims' families and we offer our heartfelt sympathies to the people and authorities of the Kingdom of Sweden. We call on Polish nationals in Stockholm to take special precautions and follow orders from local services." A truck rammed into people on a central Stockholm street before crashing into a department store on Friday, with police and witnesses saying three people had died and eight others injured in the incident. "Sweden has been attacked. Everything indicates that this is a terror attack," Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven told a press conference. CAIRO, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Egypt expressed deep concern on Friday over repercussions of Tuesday's allegedly toxic bomb attack on the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun, which killed and injured scores of civilians, state-run MENA news agency reported. The Egyptian Foreign Ministry called for stepping up efforts to end military conflict in Syria and maintain the Middle East security, MENA said. The ministry urged all Syrian parties to abide by the cease-fire decision and start negotiations under the auspices of the United Nations. "Egypt calls on the United States and Russia to take effective steps to reach a comprehensive and final settlement of the Syrian crisis," the ministry said. Earlier on Friday, the U.S. targeted a Syrian air base in Homs Province with nearly 60 Tomahawk missiles, killing six Syrian soldiers and nine civilians, including four children, and destroying nine Syrian warplanes. The U.S. government said the attack on the air base came in retaliation for the strikes by the Syrian air force on the town of Khan Sheikhoun. Activists accused the Syrian army of firing toxic gas on the town, killing 70 people, while the Syrian army said the strike targeted an arms depot containing toxic gas, blaming the rebels for storing such materials. MOSCOW, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The Russian Defense Ministry said Friday it will reinforce the effectiveness of the air defense system in Syria, following a U.S. missile strike on a Syrian military airfield late Thursday. "In order to cover the most sensitive objects of the Syrian infrastructure, a set of measures will be taken in the near future to strengthen and improve the effectiveness of the air defense system of the Syrian armed forces," the ministry said in a statement. According to the ministry, only 23 out of the 59 cruise missiles launched by the United States late Thursday (early Friday in Syria) reached the targeted Syrian military airfield in the central province of Homs, with the whereabouts of the other missiles remaining unknown. Four Syrian servicemen were killed, two others were missing and six received burns while fighting the fire, the statement said. Citing an unnamed source, Russia's Sputnik reported that the U.S. strike killed 10 people. No Russian citizens have been reportedly injured so far. U.S. President Donald Trump said earlier that he had ordered the strike and the action was in the nation's "vital interest." According to a Pentagon statement, the assault was in response to the alleged Syrian government's chemical weapons attack on Tuesday in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun. The attack killed over 70 people and wounded scores of others. The Russian Defense Ministry, calling the accusation "groundless" and a pretext used to justify the latest U.S. action, reiterated that the Syrian troops did not use chemical weapons. "It is clear to any specialist that the decision to launch the missile strike against Syria was made by Washington long before the events in Khan Sheikhoun settlement, which served only as a formal occasion, and the demonstration of military force is dictated exclusively for internal political reasons," the ministry said. It stressed that Moscow is waiting for explanations from the United States on evidence of chemical weapons used by the Syrian army in Khan Sheikhoun. Russia has suspended the memorandum of understanding on the prevention of flight safety incidents in Syria with the United States, which was signed in 2015, and called for a meeting of the UN Security Council in the wake of the U.S. missile strike, the Russian Foreign Ministry has said in a statement earlier. "The United States, without bothering to investigate the situation, opted for a demonstration of force, and for a military opposition to a country which is fighting international terrorism," the ministry said. It added that such a thoughtless approach only aggravates the existing problems and creates a threat to international security. "We call upon the UN Security Council to hold an emergency meeting to discuss the situation," the ministry said. Earlier in the day, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the U.S. missile strike an "aggression against a sovereign state" under a far-fetched pretext, saying it violates international law. "This step by Washington is causing significant damage to Russian-U.S. relations, which are already in a deplorable state," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was cited as saying by Russian news agency Interfax. He added that the action is also creating a serious obstacle to the cooperation between Russia and the United States in fighting international terrorism. The latest missile strike was the toughest direct action in Syria taken by the United States so far, increasing the risk of its confrontation with Russia and Iran. U.S. officials said they had informed Russian forces ahead of the missile strike and that they had tried to avoid hitting Russian troops at the base, to which Moscow responded that the warnings should have been given at least 24 hours in advance instead of merely two hours beforehand. "The U.S. missile strike fully steps outside the framework of international law and will lead only to a further escalation in Syria," Russian State Duma International Affairs Committee Chairman Leonid Slutsky said. LAGOS, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The Nigerian government on Friday said vaccination for meningitis is free throughout the country and asked Nigerians not to pay for it. The Executive Director, National Primary Healthcare Development Agency (NPHCDA), Faisal Shuaib, said this in a statement sent to Xinhua in Lagos, Nigeria's economic hub. Shuaib advised citizens to report any health center or health worker who extorts money for the on-going meningitis immunization to the nearest law enforcement agency after reports of money extortion practices by some health workers and civil society organizations. He added that some health workers were alleged to have extorted money and other forms of incentives from members of the public before being vaccinated against Cerebro Spinal Meningitis (CSM). Shuaib said the vaccination against CSM, like other vaccination in the National Immunization schedule, is free. Others are Diphtheria, Pertussis and Tetanus toxoid (Pentavelent vaccines), Haemophilus influenza type B, Pneumococcal vaccines, Inactivated Polio virus vaccines, Measles, Yellow Fever. The federal government had made available 500,000 doses of meningitis vaccines, and is still expecting the delivery of additional 823,000 doses to curtail the outbreak. Meanwhile, the Nigerian House of Representatives has resolved to investigate government's handling of the recent outbreak of Meningitis in parts of the country. The lower chamber mandated its Committee on Healthcare Services to invite the Minister of Health, Isaac Adewole, to brief it on the ministry's efforts combating the scourge. The committee was also mandated to ensure there was no scarcity of the vaccine to treat patients and report back to the house within two weeks. The number of states affected by the outbreak of cerebrospinal meningitis, an acute inflammation of the meninges of the brain and spinal cord, has increased to 17 states across Nigeria. The outbreak has so far claimed more than 330 lives across Nigeria, the most populous African country, according to the Nigeria Center for Disease Control. JUBA, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Authorities in South Sudan's Jonglei state said Friday they have registered nearly 200 new cholera infections and 29 deaths since health workers confirmed outbreak of the acute diarrhea disease in February. Angok Gordon, Jonglei State Minister of Health told Xinhua that official figures from health partners show that 198 cholera cases and 29 deaths have been reported. Gordon said most of the affected came from remote fishing villages along the River Nile and from rural cattle- keeping communities. Gordon attributed the rise to lack of clean drinking and poor sanitation in rural communities. War-torn South Sudan has declared cholera outbreak for the third year in a row since 2014. According to a World Health Organization (WHO) bulletin of March, a cumulative 4,401 cholera cases including 81 deaths have been reported in South Sudan in 9 states since the outbreak was declared in July 2016. The agency said partners have put efforts together to control the outbreak by increasing social mobilization and medical supplies. BANGKOK, April 7 (Xinhua) -- No political party is being allowed to do any political activity for the time being, said Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwan on Friday. Though the constitution of 2017 was promulgated under approval of King Maha Vajiralongkorn on Thursday, the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) is not as yet allowing any party to do political activity, said Prawit at the headquarters of the Ministry of Defense where he is concurrently in charge. "Persistent calls from the political parties to resume political activity have to be denied because the overall situation has not returned to normal as yet," said Prawit but did not elaborate. The deputy premier called on the political parties to give government units in charge of national security affairs some more time to carry out their tasks instead of insisting on their demands to do political activity from now. KIEV, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The number of Ukrainians travelling to the European Union (EU) countries will see a multifold increase after a visa-free regime comes into force, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said on Friday. "Last year, we have witnessed about 15 million trips to the EU. My ambition -- this number could reach between 100 million and 150 million of trips," Klimkin told local media. On Thursday, the European Parliament approved by overwhelming majority a deal that will allow Ukrainian citizens to enter the EU without visas for short stays. Under the new law, Ukrainians who hold a biometric passport will be able to enter the EU without a visa for 90 days in any 180-day period. The deal applies to all EU countries, except Ireland and the UK. Ukrainians will also be able to access non-EU countries Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland without a visa. The agreement still needs to be formally adopted by individual EU member states. The Ukrainian foreign minister voiced hope that the legal procedures to grant Ukraine the visa-free travel would be completed within two months. DAR ES SALAAM, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The Zanzibar archipelago off the Indian Ocean coast in east Africa on Friday marked 45 years of the assassination of the founding President Abeid Amani Karume. Karume was Zanzibar's president from 1964 to April 7, 1972 when he was gunned down by assassins. Speaking at Zanzibar's headquarters of the ruling party Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM) at Kisiwandui where Karume was buried, Tanzanian Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa said the revolution which was led by Karume in 1964 was aimed at liberating and uniting Zanzibaris and Tanzanians in general. Zanzibar merged with Tanganyika in 1964 to form the United Republic of Tanzania. The deal was witnessed by Karume and Tanzania's founding President Julius Nyerere. "Let's commit this day to be more united," said Majaliwa, adding: "Its high time people shun cheap politics that are likely to break the unity among the people of Zanzibar and mainland Tanzania." Majaliwa said the current Zanzibar government was working hard to ensure that the union between Zanzibar and mainland Tanzania thrived for the interests of both sides. Zanzibar's Minister for Agriculture and Livestock, Hamad Rashid, said Karume will always remain endeared in the hearts of many people because he always fought for the betterment of poor people. He said Karume's exemplary leadership made Zanzibaris to have a sense of belonging. "Whoever goes against the vision of this Union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar, must know that he/she is downplaying the efforts that were invested by our former great leaders,'' said Rashid. Rashid asked all political parties to use the platform of multiparty democracy to defend the interests of the union and add value to it instead of tearing it apart. Zanzibar President Ali Mohammed Shein led government leaders and residents of Zanzibar during a special prayer to commemorate the death of Karume. Shein laid a wreath on the late Karume's grave in recognition of his efforts in extricating Zanzibar from the hands of colonialists. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-08 01:30:17|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close by Fatima AbdulKarim Ramallah, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The annual spring festival concluded on Friday with an end of two-day activities for children in the West Bank city of Ramallah, themed the 30th anniversary of the first popular uprising, the intifada of 1987. The spring festival carried the symbolic name "Blossoms of April" and the logo "Children of Our Neighborhood" which was a famous song and a slogan during the first intifada, highlighting the collective social values people shared then. Member of Ramallah municipal council Omar Assaf said "it is a song and a call, it is our idea to revive the memory of the first intifada because the alleys and the neighborhoods were the confrontation battlefields with Israeli soldiers, also with the principles of the intifada and its social concepts, where there was collaboration, protection, popular agriculture and independence used against the occupation." The event was organized by the Ramallah municipality and several cultural and educational institutions in the West Bank, and hosted over 500 visitors over the two days in the center of Ramallah. Director of Cultural Department at the Ramallah Municipality Saly Abu Baker explained that the slogan and the location selected for this year is meant to allow visitors, mainly children to relive the social atmosphere of the first intifada. "This year marks the 30th anniversary of the first intifada, and that we chose the location of the old city for all activities is directly linked to the place and its history, which was one of the first intifada icons," she said. She went on elaborating that "the festival offers a long program of two days and though being intense and tiring to us as organizers, it is nice that children see many different things in the same time." As part of the activities, posters from the first intifada were used as puzzle games for children, most of which highlighted the importance of education and children rights, and talented story tellers spoke about the land and agriculture and social ties. Collectively, the townships in the first intifada responded to calls from the Unified National Leadership to take on tasks that guaranteed self-sufficiency, besides the major political role they played in leading the course of the intifada until the peace process was announced in the Madrid Conference in 1991. The first intifada broke out in December 1987, sparked by the death of four Palestinian workers who were run over by an Israeli military vehicle in Gaza. Angered demonstrations led to wide spread popular protests that were met by excessive Israeli force. Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank were unarmed, but used stones and Molotov cocktails and other non violent forms of resistance. The iconic images showing children and youth, men and women hurling stones at Israeli tanks gained worldwide solidarity. Despite the pain inflicted by the loss of lives and tough economic conditions that lasted throughout the months of the uprising, people focused on social bonding, sharing what was available and protecting each other in order to protect the revolution. Children who listened to stories about the first intifada showed signs of mixed joy and affection. They told Xinhua they enjoyed the different activities and tales. Eleven-year-old elementary student Lama Khoury said sharing the real stories of people deeply affected her. Walking out of a storytelling activity, she said the story is " very impressive and affected all of us." Her classmate Ayman Abu Hmeid said that it was important to learn about the history of the occupation and how it dealt with the Palestinians over the years. This festival first started in 1996, and has been focusing on youth and children featuring folkloric dance, storytelling, artistic practices and performances, scientific experiments and galleries. LONDON, April 7 (Xinhua) -- A fifth victim of last month's attack on British Houses of Parliament has died in hospital, the Metropolitan Police said here on Friday. Romanian tourist Andreea Cristea, on a visit to the British capital, died Thursday, detectives investigating the March 22 incident confirmed. After being hit by a truck crossing Westminster Bridge towards parliament, she fell into the River Thames and was later rescued from the water. Khalid Masood drove at high speed across the bridge and then stabbed a police officer at the parliament estate. He was then shot and killed by armed police. In a statement, the Metropolitan Police said Cristea had been receiving medical treatment in hospital following the attack, but life support was withdrawn on Thursday. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-08 01:45:19|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close Students from Houston Independent School District read a poem of Tang Dynasty during the opening ceremony of the 10th National Chinese Language Conference of the United States in Houston, Texas, the United States, on April 6, 2017. The 10th National Chinese Language Conference (NCLC) of the United States on Thursday kicked off in Houston, with the participation of about 1,300 teachers, administrators and policymakers from the nation and the world. (Xinhua/Zhong Jia) HOUSTON, April 6 (Xinhua) -- The 10th National Chinese Language Conference (NCLC) of the United States on Thursday kicked off in Houston, the largest city in the U.S. state of Texas, with the participation of about 1,300 teachers, administrators and policymakers from the nation and the world. Co-organized by the College Board and Asia Society, the theme of this year's three-day conference is "A Decade of Progress," which recognizes both the 10-year anniversary of the conference and the tremendous growth of Chinese language and culture education in the United States over the past decade. In a congratulatory message to the conference, Liu Yandong, China's Vice Premier and Chair of Council of the Confucius Institute Headquarters, said that this conference coincides with Chinese President Xi Jinping's trip to the United States during which he meets with his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump. This meeting will chart the direction and open a new chapter for the future of China-U.S. relations, Liu said. She spoke highly of Chinese language learning, saying that "language serves as a bridge connecting hearts. Language learning and cross-cultural exchanges bring significant meaning and far-reaching impact of enhancing mutually beneficial and comprehensive collaborations between China and the United States, as well as building a prosperous, well-being, and peaceful world." "The National Chinese Language Conference (NCLC) is not merely an important platform for sharing the best practices in Chinese language teaching and learning from each other. More importantly, it is a highly recognized brand for China-U.S. public interactions and people-to-people exchanges," she said. Liu added that "this year marks a milestone to carry forward the great achievement in 10 years, and pave the way ahead into the bright future." Jing Wei, deputy director-general of Hanban and deputy chief executive of Confucius Institute Headquarters, told the conference that China and the United States have their merits in education, and that they can learn from each other and grow together. "In education, the two countries can learn from each other and provide opportunities for more teachers and students to share the best practices, improve teaching methods and effectiveness," she said. "Learning each other's language will help enhance mutual respect, work for inclusive and mutual benefits, and minimize misunderstanding." Former U.S. President George H. W. Bush and his son George W. Bush, the 43rd U.S. president, also sent their congratulatory messages to the conference. "Serving as one of our first envoys to the People's Republic of China in 1974, Barbara and I have a great appreciation of the critical importance of U.S.-Sino relations. Upon our arrival in Beijing, we also very quickly gathered an appreciation of the importance of speaking Mandarin," George H. W. Bush, the 41st U.S. president, said. "Your mission of educating the next generation of global citizens as to the importance of speaking Mandarin in order to enhance our U.S. bilateral relations abroad is more important today than ever before," he said. Sylvester Turner, Mayor of Houston, said that this conference provides a high-profile platform for sharing new ideas and best practices in the fields of Chinese language teaching and learning, Chinese arts and culture and U.S.-China educational exchange. As the largest annual gathering in the United States of teachers, administrators, and policymakers engaged in the teaching of Chinese language and culture, the NCLC is dedicated to enhancing the nation's capacity for the teaching and learning of Chinese language and culture by sharing cutting-edge practices and examples with educators and policymakers. Named after the ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius (551-479 BC),Confucius Institute, a non-profit public educational organization affiliated with the Chinese Ministry of Education, is committed to promoting Chinese language and culture, supporting Chinese teaching internationally, and facilitating cultural exchanges. The Confucius Institute program began in 2004 and is overseen by Hanban, officially the Office of Chinese Language Council International. Currently, there are 513 Confucius Institutes and 1,074 Confucius Classrooms in 140 countries across the world. The United States enjoys 110 Confucius Institutes and 500 Confucius classrooms. TALLINN, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Estonian Prime Minister Juri Ratas on Friday offered condolences to Sweden after at least three people were killed when a truck rammed into crowd on a street in downtown Stockholm before crashing into a department store. "Condolences to the loved ones of those lost in the abhorrent attack in Stockholm. Our thoughts are with Sweden," Ratas wrote on social media. Estonian Foreign Minister Sven Mikser also expressed his condolences to the families of the victims, wishing a speedy recovery to those who were injured. "Our thoughts are with the loved ones of the victims, the injured, and the people of Sweden at this sad time," Mikser said in a statement. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-08 01:55:20|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close BEIRUT, April 8 (Xinhua) -- Four people were injured Friday when clashes rocked the south Lebanon Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp before the deployment of a new Palestinian security force in the camp. The National News Agency (NNA) said that members of the Bilal Badr extremist group opened fire on the Palestinian security force as they preparing to deploy in the camp. The newly formed Palestinian joint security force includes members of Fatah Movement, Hamas, Osbat al-Ansar and other nationalist and Islamist Palestinian groups. Ain al-Hilweh is Lebanon's largest Palestinian refugee camp, and is, according to a long standing agreement, off limits for the Lebanese security forces. The camp has repeatedly witnessed skirmishes between Fatah, extremist groups and refugees. TUNIS, April 7 (Xinhua) -- On an official visit here on Friday, the French Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve declared that the U.S. strike on Syria proved that France's reaction since the sanctions in 2013 on Damascus for use of chemical weapons was "visionary." "The American strike proves that our line in 2013 was the right one," assured Cazeneuve. "Since 2013, we have called for firm sanctions against the use of chemical weapons by the government of Bashar al-Assad," said Cazeneuve, just after his meeting with the Tunisian Head of Government Youssef Chahed. Earlier on Friday, the U.S. targeted a Syrian air base in Homs Province with nearly 60 Tomahawk missiles, killing six Syrian soldiers and nine civilians, including four children, and destroying nine Syrian warplanes. The U.S. government said the attack on the air base came in retaliation for the strikes by the Syrian air force on the town of Khan Sheikhoun. NAIROBI, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The Maasai market which is located at the heart of Kenya's capital, Nairobi has stood the test of time to remain the country's premier bazaar where cultural artifacts that are sold by hundreds of traders always cause a sensation to visitors. Similar to its name sake, the Maasai market has withstood natural hazards, assault by foreign cultures and numerous dislocation attempts by city planners to remain a haven for art lovers from all walks of life. African artifacts and curios are the main items traded in the market which is a favorite destination for tourists and Kenyans with significant disposable income. In addition to selling Kenya's cultural artifacts to the entire world, the market has been a source of income to thousands of families while women have been the engine behind its resilience and survival. Beatrice Mwende, a 56 year old female trader, has eked out a living at the famous market since becoming an adult at a time when Nairobi was sparsely populated. Mwende took over the curio business from her grandmother who was among the market's pioneers several decades ago and hopes her daughters will continue the legacy. "I have been doing this curio business for the last 38 years and I would never sacrifice it for anything else, what I love most about the market is the fact that you get to meet so many people from all over the world and during such interactions, you get to learn a lot," she told Xinhua in an interview at the market. "Culture is one of the things that differentiate every individual from the other but all that matters is what we do with this God-given identity," Mwende added. The affable business lady says Maasai market's traders have survived numerous upheavals thanks to their ability to innovate and constantly improve their wares to reflect changing consumer tastes. "Some of us have embraced diversification to include products like leather wallets, shoes and locally manufactured candles to attract more customers. The artifacts are also more refined," said Mwende. Her female peers had kind words for the expansive market that has provided them a platform to earn decent wages and forge lasting friendships. As for Nana Leshan, a 40 year old curio trader, Maasai market offered a life line to a pastoralist girl who narrowly escaped from the snares of conniving relatives who had arranged a marriage with an old suitor. At the Maasai market, Leshan started with casual jobs to earn a modest wage but she has now graduated to a proprietor of a thriving curio business. "I was in my preteen when I visited this market for the first time and found a place where I could earn a living doing odd jobs instead of marrying an old man,"Leshan told Xinhua. She has been dealing with elephant carvings that are popular with foreign tourists. Her colleague, Grace Saitoti retains sunny optimism despite undergoing travails while trying to establish a strong footprint in Maasai market. The mother of three has managed to educate her sons up to university level thanks to proceeds of curio business. "I cannot regret venturing into curio business that has fed and educated my three children who are now independent and thriving in their careers," Saitoti mused adding that young women admire her tenacity and business acumen. PRAGUE, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Czech politicians condemned the attack on Friday in Stockholm in which a lorry drove into crowd, killing at least three. They also expressed sympathy to the victims of the incident. Czech President Milos Zeman said at a press conference that he would not be surprised if the incident turned out to be a terrorist act. Zeman said the behavior that driving a lorry (into a crowd) strikingly reminded people of other attacks, adding that he would like to wait for reports of the Swedish police to see what happened there. Czech Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek wrote on his twitter that the horrible attacks on the innocent must end. The perpetrators must be caught and put on trial. Czech Chamber of Deputies Chairman, Jan Hamacek, condemned the attack as repugnant and cowardly. He expressed sincere sympathy to the families of the victims and said that people must not let terrorism scare them. Czech Interior Minister Milan Chovanec said his office has no information about any connection of the attack with the Czech Republic or Czech citizens. MOGADISHU, April 7 (Xinhua) -- About 536,000 Somalis have been displaced from their homes since November 2016 due to severe drought ravaging parts of the Horn of Africa nation, the UN humanitarian agency said on Friday. The UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said around 70,000 Somalis have arrived in Baidoa and around 72,000 in Mogadishu in March alone, in search of food and water. "The humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate at an alarming rate, with massive displacement and diseases continuing to spread, causing extensive human suffering and deaths," OCHA said in its drought situation report released in Mogadishu. The UN agency said 52 percent of overall drought-induced displacement (536,000) occurred in March. The drought is also pushing people across borders, with at least 2,000 new arrivals reported in Dadaab refugee settlement in northeast Kenya between December 1, 2016 and March 2017, according to UNHCR. Preliminary information received so far suggests that more may already be on their way, mainly from Sakow, Buale, Jamame, Baidoa/Bay region and Jilib. "Close to 100 of the arrivals in Dadaab were among those assisted through the voluntary returns program initiated in December 20, 2016," OCHA said. Failure of two consecutive rainy seasons, Gu (short) and Deyr (long) has brought severe drought to Somalia since 2015. The continuous failure of rain throughout 2016 has made the situation even worse. While severe food insecurity and malnutrition is chronically widespread across the country, aid agencies say drought in Puntland and Somaliland has deepened and expanded to Southern and Central regions increasing need to pre-2011 drought levels. The UN said projections for the coming six months are not encouraging, with continued deterioration foreseen for the coming three months till the end of June, and only a slight improvement during the following three months from July through September. The food security situation has further deteriorated in the month of March, which is usually the peak of the pastoral lean season, according to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS Net). Food security is expected to only improve slightly from July through September following the Gu harvest and improvement in livestock conditions, says FEWS Net, the famine early warning system that monitors food insecurity. The UN said national and international NGOs and UN agencies have worked together to reach more than 1.1 million people with safe water in March alone. According to OCHA, donors have moved quickly to generously support scale-up of response and over 558 million dollars has been made available or pledged for humanitarian assistance since January. PARIS, April 7 (Xinhua) -- A truck attack in a shopping street in central Stockholm on Friday showed that "relentless fight against terrorism must be a priority of European solidarity," said French President Francois Hollande. Expressing "dismay and indignation," Hollande sent sympathy and solidarity message to families' victims. In a joint statement with his German counterpart Sigmar Gabriel, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said they were "distressed by the fact that Sweden may have been the victim of such an act of terrorism." "In these difficult times, we stand alongside our Swedish friends. We hope that all the light will be be shed on this horrible act," they added. Earlier on Friday, a truck crashed into a crowd on a shopping street and a department store in central Stockholm, killing at least four people and wounding many others in a likely terrorist attack, according to Swedish officials. The incident came just two weeks after a man drove a car into the crowded Westminster Bridge in London, killing four, and then stabbed a policeman to death before being shot dead by police. The recent attacks in main European capitals reminded people of Nice attack last summer when a 31-year-old delivery man drove his heavy truck into revellers of Bastille Day in French Rivera city of Nice, leaving 86 people killed. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack. NICOSIA, April 7 (Xinhua) -- When tempers ran out of control during a parliamentary debate in Cyprus over a controversial law, anti-riot police were called in on Friday to eject heckling supporters of an extreme right-wing party. After a four-hour acrimonious debate, the ruling right-wing DISY party and left-wing main opposition AKEL party joined forces to pass a law by a majority of 30 to 20, in the 56-member chamber. Five Members of Parliament (MPs) were not present and the speaker did not cast a vote. The law reversed a previous parliamentary decision to commemorate in school classes a 1950 referendum in which Greek Cypriots had voted in favor of "enosis" or union with Greece. The previous decision led to the breakdown in UN-brokered negotiations attempting to reunify the divided island of Greek and Turkish Cypriots. The law passed at Friday's session was a precondition by Turkish Cypriots, who pulled out of talks on Feb. 16, to return to negotiations with Greek Cypriots. That point was taken up by the extreme right-wing ELAM party to hammer home its charge that the two largest parties in parliament had bowed to the demands of the Turkish side. ELAM deputy Linos Papayiannis cast MPs supporting the law as "traitors," prompting DISY deputies to walk out and AKE MPs to demand a retraction. But Papayiannis, instead of retracting, left the podium and walked menacingly toward an AKEL deputy, claiming that he had called him a bum and a nazi. Other deputies blocked his way as he was trying to enter into the AKEL seating area. At that point, ELAM supporters in the gallery, wearing black T-shirts with emblems of the party, booed deputies and called them traitors, prompting Speaker Demetris Syllouris to recess the session for 10 minutes and meanwhile called the riot police to evict the hecklers. The police remained in the chamber for the rest of the debate and later had to offer protection outside parliament when ELAM supporters threatened AKEL Secretary General Andros Kyprianou. It was the first confrontation inside the parliament since the 1960 declaration of independence and the first time that police had to be called inside the chamber to restore order. The high-pitched tone of the debate is an indication of sensitivities and strong sentiments over the ongoing negotiations to reunite Cyprus. Though the two largest parties, which muster 65 to 70 percent of popular support, have almost identical views on the federal solution being discussed, a medley of six smaller, but vocal parties are fiercely opposed to it. SKOPJE, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The head of the Social Democratic Union party (SDSM) Zoran Zaev Friday once again urged Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov to mandate his party to form a government, saying democratic processes are the only solution to divisions. In a press release, Zaev said President Ivanov ought to enable a peaceful transfer of power, calling on the president to respect the wish of the majority of citizens and pave the way for the formation of the new government. Zaev said the SDSM has secured parliamentary majority with 67 seats after it formed a coalition with ethnic Albanian parties. Therefore, the SDSM party leader expressed the confidence in a functional assembly and a new reform-oriented government. After the statement from SDSM, however, the head of the rival VMRO-DPMNE party Nikola Gruevski told reporters that swift elections are the best possible solution to the crisis. According to Gruevski, citizens in Macedonia didn't vote for the platform that Zaev has presented to them after the elections. And President Ivanov also cited the so-called Tirana platform, drafted by ethnic Albanian parties and made public in Albanian capital, as a major reason not to mandate Zaev. According to President Ivanov and Gruevski, such platform threatens the country's sovereignty and unity. "VMRO-DPMNE and the people will not allow the Tirana Platform implementation, the country's redefinition, the ultimate goal being a name change, according to the script of SDSM and the Albanian parties," Gruevski said. ZAGREB, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Former Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader on Friday was sentenced to imprisonment for four and a half years for a corruption case. He was accused of taking 17 million kunas (about 2.5 million U.S. dollars) bribes after government bought a building from a private company in 2009 when he was prime minister. According to the law, Sanader will not go to prison until the verdict becomes final as the sentence is shorter than five years. Sanader denied guilty, claiming the witness, the owner of the building, had a deal with the prosecution in return for a lighter sentence. Sanader, who was the prime minister from 2003 to 2009, was accused in several corruption cases, but had not been convicted in any of the cases. In 2014, he was preliminarily sentenced to nine years in prison for siphoning money from state institutions through Fimi Media marketing agency, but later the Supreme Court quashed the verdict as the reason of procedural errors and asked for retrial. Croatian Constitutional Court in 2015 quashed the final ruling against him in two corruption convictions, Hypo Bank and INA-MOL cases, for procedural errors and ordered for retrial too. Sanader, who stepped down as prime minister in July 2009, was arrested in late 2010 in Austria and was extradited to Croatia in July 2011. He was released after paying bail. CAIRO, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. surprise missile strike that targeted an air base in central Syria at dawn Friday sparked world's mixed reactions. In a statement, the general command of the Syrian army said the missile attack on the Shayrat Air Base in the central province of Homs was a flagrant aggression against the Syrian army. "The condemned American aggression stresses the wrong American strategy and undermines the efforts exerted by the Syrian army against the terrorist groups," the statement said. The Syrian presidential office slammed the U.S. missile attack as "reckless and irresponsible." The United States was "naively driven by a frantic, fake propaganda campaign which fueled the arrogance of the U.S. administration to carry out such political and military orgy," the presidential office said in a separate statement. Iran, fazed by U.S. President Donald Trump's threat to re-negotiate the nuclear deal reached in 2015, also strongly condemned the U.S. missile attack on Syria, calling it a "dangerous" action. The U.S. missile attack in Syria is a "pretext for unilateral action, dangerous, destructive and violation of peremptory principles of international laws," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi said Friday. Russia, Assad's staunch ally, considers the U.S. missile strike an "aggression against a sovereign state" under a far-fetched pretext, according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. In Turkey, however, the U.S. missile strike against Syria was viewed positively and significantly. "The regime should be punished in the international field. I hope the U.S. operation will contribute to peace. The UN should impose sanctions on the al-Assad regime until it is unable to harm its own people anymore," Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said in an interview with private broadcaster Fox TV on Friday. Ankara launched Operation Euphrates Shield in northern Syria on Aug. 24, 2016, aiming at clearing its border with Syria of terrorists, including the Islamic State and Syrian Kurdish militants, and announced the end of it in late March. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also hailed the U.S. missile attack. "In both word and action, President Trump sent a strong and clear message today that the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated," Netanyahu said in a statement. In Tunisia, visiting French Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve expressed his country's support for the U.S. missile attack on Syria, saying it echoes France's consistent posture against Assad's use of chemical weapons since 2013. "Since 2013, we have called for firm sanctions against the use of chemical weapons by the government of Bashar al-Assad," said Cazeneuve, just after his meeting with Tunisian Head of Government Youssef Chahed. In response to the U.S. missile attack, Egypt highlighted security and peace in the Middle East. Egyptian Foreign Ministry called for stepping up efforts to end military conflict in Syria and maintain the Middle East security, state-run MENA news agency reported. "Egypt calls on the United States and Russia to take effective steps to reach a comprehensive and final settlement of the Syrian crisis," the ministry said. Lebanon, the largest host of Syrian refugees, said the use of weapons of mass destruction by "any party" is prohibited. "Lebanon has signed all the international agreements and conventions that prohibit the use of weapons of mass destruction," Lebanese President Michel Aoun said during a meeting with World Health Organization Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean Region Mahmoud Fikri on Friday. Earlier on Friday, the United States targeted a Syrian air base in Homs Province with nearly 60 Tomahawk missiles, killing six Syrian soldiers and nine civilians, including four children, and destroying nine Syrian warplanes. The U.S. government said the attack on the air base came in retaliation for the strikes by the Syrian air force on the town of Khan Sheikhoun. Activists accused the Syrian army of firing toxic gas on the town, killing 70 people, while the Syrian army said the strike targeted an arms depot containing toxic gas, blaming the rebels for storing such materials. BANJUL, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The observers of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) said Friday the Gambia's parliamentary elections held on Thursday were transparently conducted. "In the polling units visited, polls closed at the stipulated time of 5 p.m. The vote counting and tallying processes were carried out in a transparent and professional manner, in full view of party agents, observers, and security agents," ECOWAS said in its preliminary findings. ECOWAS recommended mass voter education by political parties ahead of polls, adding that despite "smooth conduct of the exercise, the mission however observed a relatively lower turnout". "Furthermore, it may be expedient in the future to consider holding both legislative and presidential elections on the same day in order to minimize the cost of organizing elections and addressing the issue of low voter turnout," the regional bloc said. Gambians went to polls on Thursday and four of the seven political parties backing Barrow have won 42 out of 53 seats in the country's National Assembly. The West African grouping ECOWAS had been boycotting elections in the Gambia in numerous occasions citing lack of playing field for the stakeholders during former President Yahya Jammeh's 22 year rule. Other observers, including the European Union and the African Union, are releasing their findings on Saturday. Women take pictures with their phones next to a magnolia tree in central Kiev, Ukraine, April 4, 2017. (REUTERS PHOTO) KIEV, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The number of Ukrainians travelling to the European Union (EU) countries will see a multifold increase after a visa-free regime comes into force, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said on Friday. "Last year, we have witnessed about 15 million trips to the EU. My ambition -- this number could reach between 100 million and 150 million of trips," Klimkin told local media. On Thursday, the European Parliament approved by overwhelming majority a deal that will allow Ukrainian citizens to enter the EU without visas for short stays. Under the new law, Ukrainians who hold a biometric passport will be able to enter the EU without a visa for 90 days in any 180-day period. The deal applies to all EU countries, except Ireland and the UK. Ukrainians will also be able to access non-EU countries Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland without a visa. The agreement still needs to be formally adopted by individual EU member states. The Ukrainian foreign minister voiced hope that the legal procedures to grant Ukraine the visa-free travel would be completed within two months. LUSAKA, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The Zambia government says it is not in support of plans by some civil society organizations to start distributing condoms in secondary schools as one way to tackle unwanted pregnancies. This follows reports in some local media that some civil society organizations involved in reproductive health plan to start distributing condoms and contraceptives to pupils in secondary schools to curb teenage pregnancies and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Minister of Religious Affairs and National Guidance Godfridah Sumaili says the government is opposed to the distribution of condoms in schools because it is currently battling the problems of early marriages and teen pregnancies. She told reporters that organizations planning to distribute condoms in schools will have no blessing from the government because doing so would be encouraging children to engage in immorality and sex before marriage. Zambian President Edgar Lungu has been clear about the importance of upholding morals in the country and this was highlighted during his recent address to lawmakers when he called for stakeholders to take leading roles in inculcating high standards of morals in young people. Stakeholders have since condemned plans to distribute condoms in schools as this may erode morals of pupils. The Basic Education Teachers of Zambia (BETUZ), one of the teacher unions in the country, said distribution of condoms in schools amounted to indirectly inciting sexual indulges among pupils. Kakunta Kabika, the union's spokesperson said it is unfortunate that the country's cultural values were being diluted by modern trends being championed by some civil society groupings. The distribution of condoms and contraceptives in schools will only arouse indecent curiosity among pupils and lead them into practicing sex, he added. According to him, instead of distributing condoms and contraceptives to pupils, the organizations should come up with more decent ways of teaching teenagers about sexuality and dangers of sexually transmitted diseases. The views have also been supported by the National AIDS Council (NAC), a government agency that coordinates HIV/AIDS programs in the country, which believes young people should be equipped with knowledge and behavioral change instead of giving them condoms. The organization said there is need to promote behavioral change among young people through sensitization programs on sexual reproductive health. The promotion of comprehensive sexuality education to schools will empower adolescents to be aware of the dangers of indulging in sex. Some parents in Lusaka, the Zambian capital, have since experienced shock that some organizations would be contemplating the idea of distributing condoms in schools, saying it was a recipe for increased sexual immorality. "This is unheard of and whoever wants to do this should think twice because it will destroy our children. There are certain things that children are not supposed to be exposed to," Jane Banda, a 40-year-old civilian said. Stewart Lungu, a 39-year-old teacher said introducing condoms in schools is not the best solution to tackle teen pregnancies or fight sexually transmitted diseases. Zambia has one of the highest HIV/AIDS prevalence rates in sub-Saharan Africa with 1.2 million people currently living with the HIV, according to health authorities. The government has rolled out a number of programs to tackle the spread of HIV/AIDS, among them the distribution of condoms. According to figures, unprotected heterosexual sex drives the country's HIV epidemic, with about 90 percent of new infections recorded as a result of not using a condom. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-08 04:00:37|Editor: Zhang Dongmiao Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras (R) shakes hands with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier during their meeting at prime minister's office in Athens, capital of Greece, on April 7, 2017. The European Union (EU) is facing a crisis which goes beyond Brexit and will not blow over in a few months or years. As such, it should start offering people solid answers to their problems to overcome a climate of political indifference, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said here Friday. (Xinhua/Marios Lolos) by Maria Spiliopoulou ATHENS, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The European Union (EU) is facing a crisis which goes beyond Brexit and will not blow over in a few months or years. As such, it should start offering people solid answers to their problems to overcome a climate of political indifference, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said here Friday. The German leader began a two-day visit on Friday to the Greek capital to discuss bilateral ties and regional issues, and to inaugurate the Greek-German international contemporary art exhibition Documenta 14 in Athens. "It is important to provide real answers today on questions that have not been answered yet, such as migration, growth, and employment," Steinmeier said during a joint press conference with Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos after their meeting, according to the Greek presidency. Regarding migration, the German president acknowledged the disproportional burden Greece was shouldering due to its geographical position at the frontline of the refugee-migrant route. Responding to this, Pavlopoulos said, "it is the EU's mission to face the refugee crisis with humanism." Concerning the economic crisis, Steinmeier said he supported a swift solution to the current issues so that Greece could return to growth and prosperity. Steinmeier's visit to Athens coincided with the latest Eurogroup meeting in Malta which ended with the positive news that Greece and its international creditors were closing the second review of the third Greek bailout. "I believe that as soon as possible -- and I mean that -- there should be a comprehensive deal and conclusion of the assessment to bring an end to this uncertainty," the German leader said. "I am glad about the outcome of today's Eurogroup. All sides should be certain that Greece will meet in full its obligations, provided that its partners do the same," Pavlopoulos said, pointing to the pledge for debt relief. Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said of the progress made on debt relief: "Greek people have been through a big adventure in the past seven years and I believe that the time has come for the feeling of anxiety and pain to be replaced by hope," Greek national news agency AMNA reported. Commenting on developments in Syria, the Greek president urged for an immediate end to war. "The EU must actively contribute to help end the war in the Middle East," Pavlopoulos said. Referring to the exhibit Steinmeier is to open on Saturday, Tsipras said art was a strong bridge which unites people. STOCKHOLM, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Sweden will not be cowed by "these heinous murderers," Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said on Friday after a truck attack in the country's capital killed four. "Today we have been subjected to a terrible attack at the heart of our capital. We know that four people are dead, more are injured and a whole country are gathered in grief, anger and determination," Lofven said in a press conference. Sweden will not let themselves be cowed by "these heinous murderers," asserted the prime minister, adding that Sweden is strong in a difficult situation. According to Lofven, the purpose of the attack is to spread fear and sow discord. But he said "Our message will always be clear: You can not subjugate us, you can not control our lives, you can never win." "We have also decided tonight to strengthen border controls," announced Lofven. Death toll of Stockholm attack rises to four, after one victim died in hospital in wake of the Stockholm truck attack in the afternoon. Swedish Television quoted hospital sources at Karolinska Institutet as saying that the number of the injured from the attack had risen to 15. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-08 04:40:43|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close UNITED NATIONS, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The World Food Programme (WFP) has been able to resume providing full food rations to refugees in Kenya's Dadaab and Kakuma camps starting on April 1, thanks to new donor contributions, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters here Friday. "This comes after more than a year of ration cuts," Dujarric said at a daily news briefing here. "However, WFP stresses that the funding currently available for cash transfers, which make up 30 percent of the refugees' food assistance, will last only until May," the spokesman said. Each month, WFP provides each refugee with a mix of food items -- cereals, pulses, vegetable oil, and nutrient-enriched flour -- and cash, sent through mobile telephones, allowing refugees to buy food products of their choice from local markets. "We are pleased to announce that can resume full rations for the refugees thanks to new donor contributions," said Annalisa Conte, WFP's country director for Kenya. "However, we are urging our donors to continue making new resources available to enable us to carry on providing this much-needed food assistance for 420,000 people." Dadaab is the world's largest refugee camp, which is located near Kenya's borders with Somalia, while Kakuma takes in mostly Sudanese refugees, bordering near South Sudan and Uganda. Both camps are run by the Kenyan government. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-08 04:50:44|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close LIMA, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Peru's President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski said Friday his government is working hard to strengthen its humanitarian response capacities after the floods that recently affected 11 Peruvian regions. According to Kuczynski, the country needs to improve its transportation infrastructure system and protect rivers from natural disasters which occur in the country's highly complex geography. The president announced that a new state policy was needed to fight such disasters, including updated prevention measures, in order to offer greater levels of protection to Peru's 31 million people. "The best defense for the country is internal defense, which allows citizens to feel protected," said Kuczynski during an inspection of new planes for the Peruvian Air Force, which will help cover the blighted areas. Peru recently began a full evaluation of the material damage and reconstruction costs of all the infrastructure affected by the combined fury of floods and landslides in the 11 regions. The country's National Emergency Operations Center (COEN) said that these disasters, sparked by the El Nino weather phenomenon, had damaged 210,000 buildings, 5,796km of roadways and collapsed 258 bridges. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-08 05:00:45|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close UNITED NATIONS, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that displacement from west Mosul in Iraq continues, a UN spokesman said here Friday. More than 9,000 people were recorded as displaced from west Mosul in north Iraq on Thursday, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said at a daily news briefing here. "This brings the number of people displaced from west Mosul to over 264,000 since the start of the west Mosul military operation on 19 February," he said. An estimated 334,000 people are currently displaced in total as a result of fighting in both east and west Mosul, according to the Iraqi authorities. Mosul witnessed a fighting between the Iraqi government forces and Islamic State terrorists. The Iraqi government force's advance toward Mosul came after the Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced on Feb. 19 the start of an offensive to drive the extremist militants out of the western side of Mosul, locally known as the right bank of Tigris River which bisects the city. Late in January, Abadi declared the liberation of the eastern side of Mosul, or the left bank of Tigris, after more than 100 days of fighting against the Islamic State militants. However, the western side of Mosul, with its narrow streets and a heavy population of between 750,000 and 800,000, appears to be a bigger challenge to the Iraqi forces, according to the United Nations estimates. Mosul, 400 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, has been under IS control since June 2014, when Iraqi government forces abandoned their weapons and fled, enabling IS militants to take control of parts of Iraq's northern and western regions. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-08 05:30:48|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close MEXICO CITY, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Mexico was joined by the governments of Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay on Friday to express their "deepest concern" at the escalation of violence in Syria. The joint statement was released by the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with all seven Latin American nations condemning "the inhumane use of chemical weapons in that country against the civilian population, especially children." "The use of chemical weapons is a crime against humanity and a war crime, forbidden by international treaties," read the statement. "The actions to prevent this type of atrocities must be supported by the entire international community." Finally, it said that the governments of Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay "issue a call on all involved parties, including the actors with influence in the region, to exercise the greatest caution to avoid an escalation of tensions and to find a political solution to the highly complex and dramatic situation in Syria, under the charges of the United Nations." The results of autopsies of victims show that chemical weapons were used in an attack on Idlib in Syria, the Turkish Justice Minister, Bekir Bozdag, announced Thursday. Bozdag declared this analysis was carried out on the bodies of three people taken from Idlib to Adana in Turkey. More than 100 civilians were killed and 500 others, mostly children, were injured in Tuesday's attack in Idlib, according to the Syrian opposition Health Minister Firas Jundi. U.S. President Donald Trump blamed the government of Syria's Bashar al-Assad for the attack and launched a targeted missile strike against a Syrian airbase on Thursday. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-08 05:35:49|Editor: Mengjie Moldovan President Igor Dodon shakes hands with Zhang Chunxian, member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, during their meeting in Chisinau, Moldova, on April 6, 2017. Moldovan President Igor Dodon and Prime Minister Pavel Filip met on Thursday and Friday respectively with a delegation of the Communist Party of China (CPC) headed by Zhang Chunxian, member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee. (Xinhua/Chen Jin) CHISINAU, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Moldovan President Igor Dodon and Prime Minister Pavel Filip met on Thursday and Friday respectively with a delegation of the Communist Party of China (CPC) headed by Zhang Chunxian, member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee. Zhang said this year marks the 25th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Moldova, and the consensus of the top leaders of the two countries has provided political leadership and injected powerful driving force for the development of bilateral ties. He said the CPC is willing to deepen the exchange with political parties in Moldova. According to Zhang, under the new situation, the two sides should jointly grasp the major opportunity offered by the Belt and Road Initiative to deepen the pragmatic cooperation and to play an important role in promoting the stable and healthy development of the bilateral relations. Zhang also introduced the new strategies and the new concepts of governance since the 18th National Congress of the CPC. Dodon and Filip said Moldova attaches great importance to developing relations with China and admires the remarkable achievements in economic and social developments made by China since the 18th CPC National Congress. And all the political parties in Moldova are friendly to China and hope to further strengthen exchanges with the CPC. According to the Moldovan leaders, Moldova and China share strong economic complementarities and enjoy promising prospects of cooperation. They said Moldova will actively participate in the Belt and Road Initiative and welcomes more and more Chinese enterprises to invest in Moldova, to participate in the construction of agriculture, infrastructure and other fields in Moldova. Heading the CPC delegation, Zhang started his visit to Moldova on Thursday at the invitation of the Democratic Party of Moldova. During the visit, Zhang also met with Democratic Party leader Vlad Plahotniuc, as well as Communist Party leader Vladimir Voronin, exchanging views on the deepening of inter-party cooperation. MINSK, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Six new Russian Mi-8 MTV-5 helicopters arrived in Belarus, Belarusian Defense Ministry said on Friday in a statement. The helicopters that have landed at the Machulishchi aerodrome near Minsk, the capital of Belarus, are the second batch of the contract for the supply of 12 military Mi-8 MTV-5 helicopters, the military department said. The Mi-8 MTV-5 equipped with a modern complex of flight navigation and radio communication equipment, as well as special night vision equipment and a parachute dropping system, which make it possible to use the helicopter to solve both combat and transport tasks. The Defense Ministry added that the flight and technical staff had already been retrained to operate this type of helicopter in Russia. Belarus had received six Russian Mi-8 MTV-5 helicopters in November 2016, which can be used in health care, search and rescue missions as well as for transportation operations. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-08 05:45:51|Editor: Mengjie Liu Jieyi (C, front), China's permanent representative to the United Nations, addresses a Security Council emergency session on the situation in Syria at the UN headquarters in New York, on April 7, 2017. Liu Jieyi said here on Friday that political solution is the only way out for the Syrian issue and military means will not work. (Xinhua/Li Muzi) UNITED NATIONS, April 7 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese envoy said here on Friday that political solution is the only way out for the Syrian issue and military means will not work. Liu Jieyi, China's permanent representative to the UN, made the remarks at a Security Council emergency meeting that convened after the United Sates launched missile attacks on a Syrian military airfield on Thursday. Liu said military actions will only worsen the suffering of the Syrian people and make the situation in Syria and the region more complicated and turbulent. "This is not in the common interest of Syria, regional countries and the international community," said Liu. "The most urgent issue at present is that all parties work together to prevent the situation in Syria from further deterioration," he said. Liu said China calls upon all relevant parties to persist in diplomatic efforts, stick to dialogue and consultation and support the role of the United Nations as the main channel of mediation and good offices. He also asked the international community to support the efforts of UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura to maintain the hard-won momentum for the political solution to the Syrian issue. On Thursday, the United States launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Shairat military base in central Syria as its response to an alleged chemical attack on Tuesday in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun in the country's northwestern province of Idlib. The United States believed that Syrian planes based at the Shairat airbase carried out the chemical attack which killed over 80 people and wounded scores of others. The Syrian government denied the accusation. It explained that its air strikes hit an arms depot containing toxic gas and blamed the rebels for storing such chemical materials. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-08 05:50:06|Editor: Zhang Dongmiao Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi (R) meets with French Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve in Tunis, Tunisia, April 7, 2017. (Xinhua/Adele Ezzine) TUNIS, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Visiting French Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve expressed on Friday his confidence on Tunisia's fight against the terrorist threat. "The fight against terrorism remains a shared concern between France and Tunisia," said Cazeneuve. According to the prime minister, the two countries have so far carried out 190 anti-terror joint actions with 130 more to come. For his part, Tunisian Prime Minister Youssef Chahed said "this visit was an opportunity to discuss the future of the Tunisian-French bilateral cooperation and to initiate fruitful consultations on the promotion of common relationship and the tools of its development." On Friday, the two leaders signed four memorandums of understanding, covering the financing of infrastructure projects, water transfer and the development of the light rail in Tunis. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-08 05:55:55|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close RIO DE JANEIRO, April 7 (Xinhua)-- Brazilian police on Friday killed six men suspected of robbing banks who opened fire on federal agents, official sources announced. The violent firefight took place on Friday morning in Alvorada do Sul, in the southern state of Parana, after a chase, the federal police said in a report. The report indicated the group of criminals had set off explosive devices at two banks in Cruzalia, in the interior of the state of Sao Paulo, before robbing them. The band was well-known to police for being specialized in robbing banks in the states of Sao Paulo and Parana. An investigation by police is being conducted. VALLETTA, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Greece and its euro zone creditors Friday reached an agreement on key elements of a reform package, which will enable the release of new loans to the debt-ladden country, said Eurogroup President Jeroen Dijsselbloem in the Eurogroup meeting held in Malta on Friday. "We had intensified talks to, first of all, reach an agreement between the institutions and the Greek government on the key elements, the overarching elements, of the policy package," said the Eurogroup president. The reform package includes measures involving 2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), with 1 percent in 2019 mainly based on pensions and the other 1 percent in 2020 mainly based on personal income tax. The Greek authorities have been invited to reach a full Staff Level Agreement as soon as possible. Once the full Staff Level Agreement is achieved, the Eurogroup will come back to the issue of the medium-term fiscal path for the post-program period and debt sustainability, in order to reach that overall political agreement. "The big blocks have now been sorted out and that should allow us to speed up and go for the final stretch," said Dijsselbloem. DUBLIN, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Ireland offered Sweden its solidarity and support on Friday following what the Swedish government said appeared to be a terrorist attack in Stockholm. In a statement, Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny said: "We stand with Sweden, and the rest of Europe, in united determination that our values will not be defeated," Kenny said. "The cowards who perpetrated this attack place no value on our freedom and way of life here in Europe and their view has no place in our society," the Irish prime minister said. Meanwhile, Irish Foreign Minister Charlie Flanagan said he was shocked and saddened by the incident in Stockholm that resulted in a number of fatalities. "I wish to offer my sincere condolences to the families and loved ones of those killed and injured in this horrific incident," he said. Earlier on Friday, a truck drove into a crowd on a busy shopping street before crashing into a department store in central Stockholm, killing at least four people and wounding many others in what Swedish officials said was likely a terrorist attack. The incident came just two weeks after a man drove onto the pavement of the crowded Westminster Bridge in London, killing four, and then stabbed a policeman to death before being shot dead by police. The recent attacks in main European capitals recall the Nice attack last summer when a man drove a heavy truck into crowds on Bastille Day, killing 86 people. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack. BRATISLAVA, April 7 (Xinhua) -- New low-cost airline Blue Slovakia is close to obtaining its official permit to provide domestic air transport, the company's managing director Lubomir Kolarik announced on Friday. "We've submitted our request to obtain an air operator's certificate (AOC) to the Slovak Transport Authority and now we have to wait for the request to be approved. We're planning to launch the first domestic flights within Slovakia in early May," Kolarik said. The company has two small aircraft that can carry up to 19 passengers, and is planning to expand the fleet with aircraft that can seat up to 78 passengers. According to Kolarik, Blue Slovakia would like to interconnect the biggest Slovak airports in the country. HELSINKI, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Finnish President Sauli Niinisto said that both the U.S. missile strike on early Friday and the gas attack on Tuesday should be investigated carefully and immediately. Niinisto told the media on Friday that the international community should act now really fast. He said that the matter has been discussed at the United Nations and no agreement was reached before the U.S. strike. Niinisto said Finland condemns the gas attack of April 4, and is prepared to help investigate the events. Niinisto talked to the media following a meeting of the cabinet foreign and security policy ministerial committee. The president usually attends its meetings. The presidential attendance reflects the current Finnish constitutional requirement that the president handles foreign and security policy "in cooperation with the cabinet". Prime minister Juha Sipila is the chairman of the committee. Earlier on Friday, Finnish Foreign Minister Timo Soini said that violence and use of force will not ultimately solve the conflict in Syria, but talks are needed and a peace process should start. Soini said the world expects measures now from the permanent member countries of the United Nations. He warned of risks in case the situation escalates. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-08 06:26:04|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close ANKARA, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged on Friday the international community to declare a safe zone in war-torn Syria, private NTV channel reported. Turkey sees U.S. military strikes on chemical weapons sites in Syria as "positive concrete steps" but not enough, Erdogan said at a rally in the border province of Hatay, adding "I hope this operation marks a beginning." The Turkish president stated Turkey's assertion that a safe zone should be established in Syria. "Our Syrian brothers and sisters in Turkey could live there on their own soil," he said. On the same day, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim also called for a safe zone to be established in Syria. Addressing a crowd at an inauguration ceremony in Turkey's southeastern province of Hakkari, Yildirim said a safe zone in northern Syria must be formed and Syrians fleeing from the war should be secured there. "We reiterate our proposal to the international community, and we are also making preparations on the issue in our own capacity," he said. Earlier, Turkish Presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin stressed the need to "enforce a no-fly zone and create safe zones in Syria without further delay." Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu also said safe zones in Syria were "now more important than ever." At down Friday, the United States targeted a Syrian air base with nearly 60 Tomahawk missiles, killing six Syrian soldiers and nine civilians, including four children. Source: Xinhua| 2017-04-08 06:31:04|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close PALM BEACH, United States, April 7 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said on Friday the United States would soon announce new sanctions against Syria after the Syrian government allegedly used chemical weapons early this week. "We will be announcing additional sanctions on Syria as part of our ongoing effort to stop this kind of activity," said Mnuchin here at a briefing, calling the sanctions forthcoming while giving no further details. "We view sanctions as being a very important tool," said Mnuchin. "These sanctions are very important and we will use them to the maximum effect." A total of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles were launched from U.S. destroyers USS Porter and USS Ross in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea Thursday night, and Syrian aircraft, hardened aircraft shelters, fuel points, air defense systems, and radars were targeted, according to the Pentagon. The assault, ordered by U.S. President Donald Trump, was the first direct U.S. assault on the army of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad since Syrian crisis began six years ago. Also speaking at the same briefing, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said future actions would be guided by Syrian response to the strike. Meanwhile, the Russian government has condemned missile strikes by the U.S. on a Syrian airbase, saying Washington's move as "aggression against sovereign state in violation of international law." GENEVA, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Since the start of the year, some 192,000 South Sudanese have fled to neighboring Uganda, a country currently hosting 832,000 refugees from South Sudan, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) reported Friday. As the situation in South Sudan continues to deteriorate, UNHCR said that since April 3 alone over 6,000 South Sudanese have fled their homes to seek relative safety in Uganda's northern Lamwo district. Uganda has received on average 2,000 South Sudanese refugees every day since January the year as reigning insecurity, clashes between rival factions and famine continue in the world's youngest nation. The Geneva-based agency reported that almost two thirds of new arrivals are children. Since the conflict in the African country began in December 2013, some 1.7 million people have sought refuge in neighboring nations including Uganda, Ethiopia and Sudan. A further 1.9 million people are internally displaced within the country, which boasts a population of less than 12 million. by Alessandra Cardone ROME, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Major uncertainties loom over the forthcoming meeting of foreign ministers of the Group of Seven (G7) scheduled in Italy on April 10 and April 11, Italian experts have said. "I expect the G7 ministerial meeting to support the decision of the Unites States to launch the strike (in Syria)," Riccardo Alcaro, senior research fellow with the Institute for International Affairs (IAI) in Rome, told Xinhua. "It is likely they will consider it as a proportionate response to a war crime," he added. It was widely believed that the latest developments in Syria, and especially the U.S. missile attack launched on a Syrian airbase on Friday, are expected to overshadow the agenda of the foreign ministerial meeting in Italy, at least partially. As Italy holds the G7 rotating presidency this year, the officials will gather in the Tuscan city of Lucca, and their two-day round of talks will represent a relevant prelude for a major summit of the seven countries' leaders in late May. The meeting will also be attended by the European Union (EU) High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Federica Mogherini. Crucial topics "concerning global peace and security" -- such as terrorism, Libya, Ukraine, and the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue -- were already waiting to be addressed, according to a statement by the Italian Foreign Ministry earlier this week. However, the U.S. missile strike added uncertainty to the world situation. The strike was launched in retaliation to a suspected attack with chemical weapons, which hit a rebel-held city in northwest Syria on April 4. Some 80 people, including many children, were believed to have died in the alleged nerve gas attack, for which the U.S. and other Western governments blamed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces, without convincing evidence. "It will be interesting to see whether the G7 foreign ministers would keep pressing for a negotiated solution (of the Syrian conflict), as Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni suggested," Alcaro pointed out. On Friday, Gentiloni expressed his backing to the U.S. air strike in response to the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Syrian forces. Yet, he also reiterated that Italy considers negotiations as the only way to reach a long-lasting solution to the six-year civil war in Syria. The conflict should be solved through "negotiations including all rebel and regime forces" and taking place "under the aegis of the United Nations, and with Russia playing a crucial and constructive role", Gentiloni stressed. He told reporters the U.S. missile strike should not be intended as a first step in a military escalation, but as a "limited action". France and Germany would share such position, Gentiloni added after holding phone talks with the French President and the German Chancellor. Security would also be high in the agenda of the G7 foreign ministers on Monday, also following the attack occurred in the Swedish capital Stockholm, where a lorry truck smashed into the crowd on a shopping street Friday afternoon, killing 4 people and wounding eight others. The Swedish government said it appeared to be a terrorist attack. On the terror threat, as well as on the other major topics to be addressed, however, no relevant changes seemed to be expected from the G7. "I do not think there will relevant shifts in the G7's position on these issues at the ministerial meeting," Alcaro said. The issue related to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) "is likely to be another major focus, and the G7 countries' position on that is clear, since they all see the DPRK's nuclear program as a possible threat to global peace and security, and all of them support negotiations as the best solution," he explained. It would not mean the G7 countries share a full consensus on all of the global topics, however. "We should bear in mind that the G7 -- besides rare exceptions in the past -- is not meant as a body taking operational decisions," Alcaro warned. It was rather designed to allow the seven big countries to reach as much consensus as possible on major global issues, and such approach does not mean "the consensus would stretches to every kind of issue, or that the position of each single country is fully comprised in it", he said. CHISINAU, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Depression is becoming a major health problem in Moldova, and as many as 25 percent of the population suffers from different degrees of depression, a local expert told a roundtable meeting on Friday on the occasion of World Health Day. Depression becomes more spread among children, teens and young people in Moldova, stated Nicolae Rosca, head of the Control and Prevention of Noncommunicable Diseases Division of the Chisinau Public Health Center. "If no measures are taken at world level during the next few years, depression will rank first. Currently, depression affects 5 percent of the global population," he added. "Depression affects mainly people aged between 25 and 45. This means that the disease affects young people able to work. It is regrettable that in almost half of the cases, depression is not detected on time and is overlooked," Ghenadie Caraus, associate professor at Chisinau Medical University, was quoted as saying by local IPN news agency. "Among the factors that cause depression are poverty, serious diseases, social environment of the person, cases of disability, discrimination, unemployment, alcohol and drug abuse," Aurelia Esanu of the Chisinau Health Division told the Round Table. Esanu warned that according to the estimates of the World Health Organization, depression will be the second cause of disability worldwide by 2020, immediately after cardiovascular diseases. According to the experts at the Round Table, in Moldova, the number of women who suffer from depression is two times higher than men. World Health Day has been marked since April 7, 1948. Each year, the day's themes are different and center on an area of concern for the WHO. This year's theme is depression, which affects people of all ages and becomes more accentuated. LOME, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The ambassador of China to Togo has on Friday granted financial incentive reward to best Chinese language learners of the Confucius Institute of the University of Lome. At least 28 students are granted the prize for their hard and successful work during the semester for Chinese language acquisition at the Confucius Institute. This is part of a program of the ambassador Liu Yuxi purposed to encourage, every year, best students of the Lome Universty's Confucius Institute. The grant handing ceremony occurred in the embassy of China to Togo and gathered students of Confucius Institute, principals and the teaching staff of the Institute, the president of the University of Lome, Professor Kokoroko Dodzi, and staff members at the Chinese embassy. It has been coupled with the presentation of about twenty students from Confucius Institute who are gearing to leave within some days for summer holidays in Sichuan province in China. On the occasion, ambassador Liu Yuxi congratulated both groups for their hardworking to disserve the incentive prize and the holidays to China. "I wish them to be ambassadors of the friendship with Togo in China and to hold the opportunity to visually discover Chinese people way of life" , said the Chinese ambassador in a short address to the audience. Professor Kokoroko Dodzi, on his part, hailed the fruitful relationship between the University of Lome and the Chinese embassy to Togo. "China has its rightful place at our level" , the president of University of Lome said, adding that the collaboration with China is going smoothly under best auspices. He pointed out the necessity for Togolese students visiting China to return home as scheduled but soaked with the dynamism of Chinese people to support the new momentum of development in Togo. Moussodou-Koumba Jean-Jacques, 23 years old with nearly two years of Chinese language learning at Confucius Institute is part of the group to visit China. The summer holidays in China are exceptional opportunity to better his Chinese language acquisition, Moussodou-Koumba with Bachelor degree in biology and animal physiology from University of Lome told Xinhua. bpTT not building Angelin platform They were upset over their removal last weekend from the Rowan EXL II rig, located off Trinidads east coast. The action was taken pursuant to a court order after the workers, on Wednesday last, ceased operations aboard the citing safety concerns. All of bpTTs platforms since Cannonball; which was commissioned in 2005, have been constructed at TOFCO. However with Juniper, the most recent bpTT platform, work stoppage due to industrial action affected its completion timeline. This was partly why bpTT ended up constructing the jacket in the USA while the topside was built by TOFCO. BPs website states that after the commissioning of Cannonball, four platforms Mango, Cashima, Savonette and Serrette were also locally designed and constructed with more than 80 percent of the labour performed by Trinidad and Tobago nationals. Regarding the need for a continued supply of natural gas to TTs energy companies, bpTT yesterday said ensuring gas supply volumes can be maintained in 2019 and beyond is a priority. While bpTT and the NGC continue to progress the completion of a gas sales agreement as a prerequisite to the sanction of Angelin, bpTT continues to pursue all options to maintain the project schedule and first gas goal of early 2019. This is a priority to ensure that gas supply volumes can be maintained in 2019 and beyond. Woman on arms, ammo charge Nadine Shah, of Jamadar Street, San Fernando, pleaded not guilty to the three charges as well as Barry Brown and Kendell McIntosh. However, McIntosh pleaded guilty to the cocaine possession charge which has a street value of $20. Senior Magistrate Margaret Alert heard from the police prosecutor Sgt Denzil Alexander, that at about 11.30 am on Monday, Police Constable Trevor Rampersad of the San Fernando CID and other police officers, were on patrol at Gulf View, La Romaine, when on reaching Pizza Hut, they stopped a vehicle and searched it. They found the cocaine in a compartment by the handbrake. The magistrate reprimanded and discharged McIntosh on the cocaine charge on the ground that it was his very first offence and he was entitled to that opportunity, given also the fact that the street value was minimum such that if multiplied by three, would be $60. McIntosh, however, pleaded not guilty to the gun and ammunition charges. Shah and Brown pleaded not guilty to the gun, ammunition and cocaine charges. Attorney Subhas Panday pleaded that Shah was a passenger in the vehicle. The magistrate granted her own bail in the sum of $20,000, Brown was granted $75,00 and McIntosh - $50,000. They are to reappear on May 4. Accused arrested in a camp The evidence about Baboolals arrest was read to the jury from a document which both the State and the defence agreed to. The prosecution last week closed its case and Baboolal, 41, of Mayaro, was on Wednesday called upon to make his defence in a trial in which he is alleged to have murdered Ria Ramlochan, 26, and her 18-month-old baby, Ishmael Timothy Ragbir between August 10 and 13, 2005, at Solomon Street, Mayaro. When the trial resumed yesterday before Justice Althea Alexis-Windsor in the San Fernando High Court, attorney Rekha Ramjit, who is defending Baboolal, called Dr Maniram Rampaul, a general medical practitioneer in Rio Claro. He testified that on August 17, 2005, he had attended to Baboolal at his office and found there were no injuries. It is the States case that on that day, the accused was charged with the murders. The Judicial Support Officer then read the document to the judge and jury that on Sunday August 14, 2005, Inspector George, Sgt Hamid and Cpl Garcia, went to Torib Trace, New Grant, Tabaquite, where they met accused Baboolal in a camp behind a sawmill. They arrested him on an outstanding warrant relating to non-payment of fines, the court heard. Alexis-Windsor told the jury that today when the trial resumes, attorney Ramjit will begin her address to them. On Monday, Senior State Shabaana Shah, who is leading State Attorney Chantal Hospedales, will address them and on the following day the judge will sum up the case. If the judge completes her summation on that day, the jury will be requested to retire to consider a verdict Bypassed for promotion, public servant wins lawsuit Justice of Appeal Prakash Moosai on Wednesday declared that Audine Mootoos right to equality of treatment from a public authority was contravened. He ordered that she was entitled to a compensatory award for any loss of earnings occasioned by the PSCs failure to consider her for promotion to the posts as well as for the distress and inconvenience she suffered as a result of the breach of her right. The sum of the compensatory award will be assessed by a Master of the Court. Justices of Appeal Alice Yorke- Soo Hon and Rajendra Narine also presided over Mootoos appeal in which she contended she was discriminated against when she was bypassed for promotion to four different offices between August 2004 and March 2006. The four positions for which Mootoo, who is due to retire from the Public Service shortly, was bypassed were, acting deputy director, extension training and information services; technical officer (horticulture) in the same ministry; deputy director, agricultural services division (crop production); and acting director horticultural services in the Ministry of Public Utilities. Mootoo, in 2007 when she filed her lawsuit, was a biochemist II in the Ministry of Agriculture and was represented by Senior Counsel Anand Ramlogan at the appeal. Senior Counsel Russell Martineau represented the PSC while Neil Byam appeared for the Attorney General. She claimed that in one of the positions full consideration was given to another officer while in another, the PSC wrongly held that she was not eligible for promotion despite her seniority. She also contended that she was admittedly bypassed for promotion on two occasions to one of the positions she applied for and that the PSC failed to consider her for one of the posts, claiming she never applied for the position. In his ruling, Moosai held that equality of treatment demanded that decision-makers must be consistent with the procedure and criteria they apply. He pointed out that the cumulative effect of the treatment meted out to Mootoo was not confined to a singular post but extended across a broad spectrum of acting appointments. Its effect thereof smacks of unfairness and arbitrariness and constitutes prima facie evidence of unequal treatment contrary to section 4(d) of the Constitution, Moosai held. Even more startling is the fact that she was bypassed for consideration for the post in her own area of expertise (horticulture), Moosai noted. He said although she was senior to the persons appointed to the positions for which she applied, she never had the benefit of being lawfully considered under the PSCs regulations. This differential treatment is such as to call upon the PSC to explain and justify the difference in treatment, the judge said. He noted that no explanation was given by the PSC as to why she was not considered for appointment to the posts. MYSTERY Dwayne Hovell, an employee of the Tobago Regional Health Authority left home last week Friday saying he was, going down the road. He has not been seen or heard from since. Police said they are working on reports that he struck up a conversation with a Trinidad woman via social media website Facebook and is believed to have journeyed to Trinidad to meet her. However, Hovells wife Christiana yesterday insisted their marriage is strong, they had no major disagreements and he would not go after another woman. Hovells disappearance was reported to the Old Grange Police Station and calls to his cell phone have gone unanswered. Police said they have information that Hovell was supposed to meet up with the woman who is either from Beetham or Sea Lots. Hovell was last seen by his family at 5 pm last Friday. Yesterday, Christiana said the last time she saw her husband was on Friday last when he was leaving a pharmacy in Scarborough at 3 pm. She said that Hovell, 38, whom she married five years ago, spent all of the Shouter Baptist holiday with her at their Mount Grace home and last Friday, when he was leaving for work, he told her she would not be seeing him for the weekend because he had to do some work on a house he was building in Bethel. According to Christiana, she did not find anything strange when her husband did not call her last weekend or even on Monday and Tuesday. When Hovells mother contacted Christiana on Wednesday and asked about his whereabouts, Christiana said, she was surprised to learn that he was missing. She said she too tried contacting him on his cellphone. I am worried about him because he has never done this before. As far as I know, we have an excellent relationship and I do not know him to be a person on Facebook and I doubt very much that he went to Trinidad to meet another woman. If that is so then it will be very surprising to me. Right now all I want to know is that he is all right and not in any harm or danger, she said. Christiana told Newsday her husbands disappearance is a mystery. Mindful of the rampant crime situation and the fact that several missing persons have turned up dead, she is begging members of the public who may have seen him or know of his whereabouts, to contact the nearest police station or 639-8888. MINISTER WORRIED Minister of Tourism Shamfa Cudjoe yesterday described Hovell as a quiet and church-going individual, but added, he likes his little lime. The Tobago West MP said it was highly unusual Hovell would stay away from his family for such a long period. I met him in 1994, when I was in Standard Three. We went to the same church and I am very familiar with his family...his mother, sister, grandmother. I spoke with his aunt yesterday and I am very familiar with him. We are very worried at this point in time. We are hoping he is found alive. There is no confirmation that he made it to Trinidad. His sister said he came from work and took a shower, put on a grey t-shirt, red pants and some shoes and said he was going down the road to come back. That is the information that I got from the family, Cudjoe said. Cudjoe said she and Hovell attended the Montgomery Moravian Church in Bethel Village. He was supposed to meet with his wife with whom he has one child, but she has other children from a previous relationship. Somebody said they saw him on a flight going to Trinidad on Friday last, Cudjoe said. She added that several calls had been made to his cell phone, some went straight to voice mail, others were picked up, but not answered. When contacted yesterday evening, communications officer with Caribbean Airlines (CAL) Dionne Ligoure said she could not reveal whether Hovell had booked a flight to Trinidad from Tobago, last Friday, citing regulations regarding CAL customer confidentiality. Army boats for sea bridge? The military transport vessels were purchased from Dutch firm Damen by the previous administration. Sinanan made this known at the post-Cabinet news briefing yesterday. Also speaking at the briefing, acting Prime Minister Colm Imbert said if this option is agreed on, the army vessels would be manned and operated by military personnel. But Imbert hastened to add, It is one of several options. Sinanan said Cabinet approved the purchase of a new inter-island ferry so as to prevent a repeat of the current uncertainty around the Galicia which is being withdrawn from service at just 14 days notice. He said Cabinet is now drawing up the specifications for such a vessel. Sinanan gave an overview since the Government on March 30 had received a letter from the charterers announcing the Galicia would be pulled out from TT on April 14 (Easter Friday), a date since extended to April 18 by a follow-up letter. He said the Port Authority and Ministry immediately drafted a tender document for Cabinet approval to to acquire a replacement vessel by purchase and/or a lease of three years. At this point in time we are looking at all the options to ensure there will be no shortfall in the transportation of cargo to and from Trinidad and Tobago. We feel very confident that for the Easter weekend everything will be in place. Subsequent to the Easter weekend and until a new ferry is located we have several options of contingency that will be in place. Sinanan said one option is the TNT Spirit, a semi-cargo vessel that can convey 7,000 kilogrammes of vehicular cargo. Another option is a barge to transport construction materials including sand, gravel and cement. We also have the use of two military vessels, that we are looking at the options of bringing them into service as and when required. Former national security minister Gary Griffith, has welcomed the use of the two Damen vessels to service the sea bridge. This is an excellent idea by Government, a very proactive approach and thinking outside of the box, Griffith said, adding the two vessels were originally acquired as a support to six Damen medium-range patrol vessels. The two were to be used to send supplies so as to allow the six patrol vessels to remain at sea for extended periods. TCL surprised by OWTU protest In a media release issued yesterday by TCL Group public relations manager Michelle Langton, the company said it had been providing employees with regular updates regarding both settlement of negotiations and share allocations. Further, the bargaining unit would also be aware that both matters are presently undergoing due process, TCL stated adding that on several occasions employees had been offered cash in lieu of shares to expedite settlement. However this has been rejected several times by representatives of the Union. The company reiterated its commitment to open constructive dialogue and engagement with its employees and the OWTU towards the earliest finalisation of outstanding matters in the best interest of all concerned. Over the past twenty-four months, the company has made significant positive strides and recognises the vital role played by our people at every level of the TCL Group towards attaining the critical goals of Competitiveness and Sustainability that are in the interest of all stakeholders, the company and the country, TCL said. Both parties were expected to meet at the Trinidad Hilton yesterday evening to continue discussions. NP meets dealers NP said the March 15 meeting was also part of its ongoing strategy to enhance the relationship between the two parties. NP added that its Chairman, Sahid Hosein, reiterated that although NP and its Dealer network shared a symbiotic relationship, the dealers also needed to be cognizant of their roles in ensuring the success of their businesses and more importantly, their responsibilities to provide excellent customer service, and to follow the procedures which are meant to safeguard both them and their customers. Colm defends Dillon in Krysis meeting Initially, Dillon said he didnt understand Newsdays question nor the nature of the allegation. Pressed, Dillon said, We cannot shut down anybody who wishes to speak. As a matter of fact, we invited the gentleman if he has information to bring it to our attention, and to do so in a manner in which we can use it to the benefit of the TT Police Service. He has not come forward as yet. Acting Prime Minister Colm Imbert supported Dillon by saying the dialogue had gone awry when Dillon had sought a reply as to whether Krysis had posted controversial Facebook postings. I actually saw that video. I thought that Minister Dillon did give the guy an opportunity to talk. I did not see any intimidation on the part of Mr Dick, Imbert said. What I did see is Minister Dillon ask the individual a question. It was with respect to that particular question and the response to that question that the conversation became a bit convoluted. A particular question was asked of the individual with respect to the making of a video and the individual was a bit evasive in his answer, so Minister Dillon asked him several times, were you the one who was in that particular video? The guy didnt want to answer that question. He wanted to say something else. So that might have given the impression that Minister Dillon was being a bit firm with him... Young: More gas coming Young also boasted that through negotiation, Government had settled without any cost to this country some $250 million worth of claims made against the National Gas Company (NGC) by downstream firms over the curtailment of gas-supply. He said he and Rowley met BP, Shell, Exxon and EOG executives in Houston and The rounds of discussion were very fruitful for TT. BP will launch its Angelin field in 2019 and its gas supply is expected to take up the slack when BPs Juniper Field supply starts to taper off, he said. Young said he and Rowley told BP they want jobs for local workers in the Angelin field, and that any extra gas found presumably outside of contracted quantities - should be supplied to this countrys downstream sub-sector, not to the liquefied natural gas (LNG) sub-sector. BP has agreed on both counts. He said BPs seismic results look very positive. As the firm is poised to invest up to US$6 billion locally, Young said BP appreciated re-building their relationship with this country. Regarding Shell, Young pointed to seismic results as indicating a very, very positive outlook for the continuation and the building of the gas industry. There were discussions about the cross-border Loran/Manatee field, plus a gas-supply from Venezuelas Dragon Field which he said is proceeding very positively. He said Exxon is a 45 percent partner in the recent Guyana oil find, for which this country hopes to sign an MOU with Guyana to lend its expertise. Saying Exxon is very interested in a deep water harbour in Trinidad, Young said company US$300,000 paid to lobbyist Imbert, who is also acting Prime Minister, gave this answer in response to a question from Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Moonilal in the House of Representatives. Imbert said Cabinet decided to hire the firm and the process was done through sole selective tendering. He said the terms of reference of the firm could be found on the US Department of Justices website and provided the link at which it could be found. In response to further questions from Moonilal, Imbert said Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley has spoken on this issue at length in Parliament. According to the October 2016 agreement which outlines the terms of the firms engagement, collaboration with the Government to deal with TT citizens recruited as foreign terrorist fighters with the Islamic State terrorist group (ISIS/ISIL); assisting Governments efforts to diversify the economy and increasing this countrys profile amongst leading figures in the United States Senate and House of Representatives, are some of the initiatives the DC Group will be undertaking on the Governments behalf. Speaking in the House on March 6, Rowley said it was necessary to hire this firm because certain behaviours of the former Peoples Partnership administration, put TT in a very bad situation with our largest trading partner (US). Dillon: Interdictions up 350 percent Dillon, a former TTDF Chief of Staff, said there is a heightened maritime domain presence by the Coast Guard with aerial support from the TT Air Guard. In addition, he continued, the TTDF uses a broad range of intelligence mechanisms such as the National Coastal Surveillance Radar System which enhances the TTDFs situational awareness. Dillon cited ongoing alliances with local, regional and international security partners, togethet with joint land based patrols with the Police Service, have also increased the number of interdictions by the TTDF. Earlier in the sitting, Dillon indicated that a total of 1,793 persons were deported from the United States to TT over the last decade. The highest number of deportees sent to TT in this period was 325 in 2008 while the lowest number as 77 in 2015. Bhoe: Gaps in Plea Bargain Bill Tewarie wanted to know exactly who will have oversight of the plea bargaining process, even as he noted that many inducements are listed from the very start of the Bill. Who is to manage this and ensure that these inducements are not a part of the process? he asked. I am concerned how the system will be managed and monitored. He suggested that the prosecuting attorney may have too much power in the plea bargaining process, such as not being obliged to disclose to the accused all the evidence, witnesses or the identity of the accuser. It puts leverage in the prosecutors hands, Tewarie argued, saying the procedure lacked equity. Tewarie was worried that the proposed plea bargaining is an extremely complicated process that is about to be introduced into a dysfunctional justice system. Although saying the intention behind the bill is good, he again lamented its insertion into a dysfunctional system, saying, This is madness. In a minor tiff with Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi whom he told not to talk down to him just because he (Tewarie) has no law degree Tewarie said that logic (and not a law degree) dictates that you cant reform a dysfunctional system. Recalling overseas cases where plea-bargaining had gone terribly wrong, he said, I want to urge caution. Minister in the Ministry of Education, Dr Lovell Francis, chided Tewaries critique of the justice system as cynical and sarcastic towards TT, and questioned whether Tewarie was truly a patriot. Earlier Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Moonilal also queried plea bargaining by noting that while this procedure had been used to convict in record time those American citizens involved in the Piarco Airport scandal, it had also seen them let out from jail in record time. He suggested that the bill not allow plea bargaining to be accessed by persons accused of major white collar crimes or murder. Whats the protection so a cold-blooded killer wont enter a deal? We could limit what could be negotiated. Moonilal also queried provisions for allowing the relatives and friends of an accused person to also be covered in a plea bargain deal. He asked how does one define family and friends? He added, Why give this incentive to co-conspirators?. Debate on this bill continues next Wednesday at 1.30 pm, plus the Marriage (Amendment) Bill and Fire Services (Amendment) Bill. Problems have always arisen when it comes to Election Day whether it be voting fraud, the location of the voting precinct or just simply registering to vote. For the upcoming 2022 election, Nebraska is facing one of the toughest choices for the voting process: Voter IDs. While some believe Since launching the migrant regularization campaign, Morocco has steadily become a destination of choice for several Sub-Saharan migrants, pushing them to give up the risky idea of joining Europe by sea, says the Irish Times. Once merely a stepping stone for those desperately chasing their European dream, the North African country has now become the destination of choice for many migrants, said the paper citing testimonies from several Sub-Saharan nationals working and living in Morocco. The Moroccan government has implemented two legalization programs, in 2014 and again last year, encouraging sub-Saharans to apply for residency papers, said the Irish times. The paper added that nearly 20,000 migrants applied as part of the second phase of the regularization campaign. Besides benefiting from official-resident status, some sub-Saharans are also receiving direct professional backing. In Rabat, the Moroccan Association for the Support of the Promotion of Small Businesses (or Amappe) is funding, training and advising self-employed migrants, including many sub-Saharans, highlighted the paper. In 2014, Morocco adopted a set of measures in favor of the aliens and launched a large-scale regularization operation that enabled some 25,000 migrants to get residence and work permits. Following the success of this first phase of the regularization campaign, the King recommended the launch of the second phase of the process at the end of 2016, as it was already planned, under the supervision of the National Commission in charge of Illegal Immigrants Regularization. In a speech last August, the King had said that Morocco was one of the first countries of the South to adopt a genuine solidarity-based policy regarding sub-Saharan migrantsThis integrated policy, which is rooted in humanitarian values, is designed to make sure migrants rights and dignity are safeguarded. The migrants flocking to Morocco are mostly from Sub-Saharan Africa but some also come from Syria and other war-torn countries. A man who just lost the Infobattle. Donald Trumps rebrand of American conservatism was largely aesthetic. The mogul was far from the first Republican to dress up the one percents agenda in populist garb; or to pin blame for the middle classs decline on a conspiracy between rootless elites and an undeserving minority; or to shore up a fragile sense of national esteem and identity by defining it against an evil, foreign other. Like most pop-culture phenoms, Trump added a few idiosyncratic touches to a tried-and-true formula, and, thus, generated a sound both reassuringly familiar and thrillingly new. Specifically, the candidate traded the partys decades-old racial dog whistles for foghorns, while revitalizing the genre of right-wing demagoguery by borrowing flourishes from the domains of professional wrestling and reality television. Still, Trumps innovations werent entirely stylistic. Nor were they all merely amplifications of inherited themes. His anti-trade diatribes were genuinely new for a Republican nominee, at least for the past half-century. And, occasionally, he directed his populist fury past the bureaucrats and cultural elites whom Nixon so reviled, and up to the owners of capital (albeit, strictly the international, implicitly Jewish sort). But Trumps most radical and persistent break with convention came on foreign policy. No candidate, in either major party, spewed venom more acidic on the subject of the Iraq War. And Trump shot it straight into the face of George W. Bushs brother, in a South Carolina auditorium packed with Jebs well-wishers. Over 18 months of campaigning, the geriatric demagogue maintained a consistent line on very few things. But the hypocritical horrors of humanitarian intervention was one of them. The Trump doctrine on the Middle East was, in many respects, evil, impractical, and illegal. But it offered coherence, and a cathartic acknowledgment of the oft-ignored trauma of Iraq: If we drop bombs over there, lets do it kill terrorists and their families, or to confiscate natural resources, but not to save a bunch of Muslims from a secular dictator who kills jihadists. Of course, this posture was not Trumps own invention. It was broadly similar to the brand of isolationism preached by Pat Buchanan and the long-marginalized, paleoconservative wing of the Republican Party. Which made Trumps primary victory its own kind of regime change: The foreign-policy elite was the one segment of the GOP coalition to abandon its standard-bearer in large numbers and loud tones. When Trump won anyway, the neo-paleocons (a.k.a. the alt-right) collected the keys to the kingdom. Or so they thought. On Tuesday, heartrending images of children murdered by toxic gas emerged from Syria. Two days later, Trump was excoriating Bashar al-Assad for murdering beautiful babies the very babies he spent his entire campaign vowing to keep out of our country. No child of God should have to suffer such horror, the president said, shortly after American planes dropped 59 Tomahawk missiles on a Syrian airfield. Less than four years earlier, after an apparent chemical attack by the Assad regime killed 1,400 Syrians, Trump implored the president to save his powder. What I am saying is stay out of Syria. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 4, 2013 Now, following a chemical attack that killed 70 people, Trump had committed an act of war against the secular dictator whose terrorist-killing skills he had previously praised all in the name of human rights. While both he and other members of his administration were already making noises about regime change. And all this came one day after the Buchananites champion in the West Wing Breitbart mastermind Steve Bannon was evicted from the National Security Councils principals committee, a demotion that his allies attributed to Jared Kushner, the White Houses most powerful Jewish lifelong Democrat. As of Friday morning, the alt-right was not alright. Mike Cernovich the reactionary blogger and nootropics evangelist who recently won Donald Trump Jr.s praise for breaking the Susan Rice story started the hashtag #SyriaHoax Thursday afternoon, claiming that the chemical attack was a false-flag operation by jihadist rebels hoping to attract American air support. When it became clear that Trump did not accept this alternative fact, Cernovich tweeted his grief. Trump's base of support is gone if he goes to war with Syria, the same people who betrayed before election will betray him again. Mike Cernovich (@Cernovich) April 7, 2017 Infowarss Paul Joseph Watson broke with Trump more decisively. I guess Trump wasn't "Putin's puppet" after all, he was just another deep state/Neo-Con puppet. I'm officially OFF the Trump train. Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) April 7, 2017 It's been fun lads, but the fun is over. I'll be focusing my efforts on Le Pen, who tried to warn Trump against this disaster. Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) April 7, 2017 Alt-right Twitter personality, and self-described good Christian boy, Baked Alaska offered similar sentiments: People praising the Syria attack: -Hillary -McCain -Lindsay Graham -Paul Ryan -Leftists People against the attack: -Real Trump Supporters Baked Alaska (@bakedalaska) April 7, 2017 Ann Coulter, a longtime fixture in far-right media, who has tightly aligned herself with her partys populist-nationalist wing, asked, in so many words, Wont somebody please think of the Christians? Trump campaigned on not getting involved in Mideast. Said it always helps our enemies & creates more refugees. Then he saw a picture on TV. Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) April 7, 2017 Christians who live in Syria are terrified of what will happen if Assad is gone. Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) April 7, 2017 Alex Jones dipped into his emergency stash of dank Voltaire memes. It seems doubtful that principled isolationists make up a large portion of Trumps voting base. While the mogul did win new voters to his party in a few critical regions, the overwhelming majority of his coalition were the same people who pulled the lever for two terms of Bush, McCain, and Romney. Its quite possible that the president will gain more supporters by diverting focus to a display of American military might than hell lose by betraying the foreign-policy vision he campaigned on. But if committed opponents of neoconservatism make up a small part of the conservative electorate, they make up a good portion of the audience for niche right-wing media enterprises like Infowars and Breitbart. And both those outlets built their brands, in no small part, by cultivating the paranoid rage of conservatives who felt betrayed by elites in both parties. Trumps win was an enormous boon to these sites, but it was also a challenge. Maintaining an antiestablishment ethos and an adulatory attitude to the president of the United States is no easy task. Ambivalence makes for much weaker copy than unadulterated outrage. So, alt-right media has something to gain from reassuming its role as the reactionary opposition. But it also has plenty to lose. The far-right fever swamp has never enjoyed such intimate access to the halls of power. And its various news outlets and media personalities have supplemented their core audiences with devotees of the Trump personality cult. For now, expect most on the alt-right to try to square this circle by blaming the presidents treachery on Jared Kushners nefarious influence and calling on all red-blooded patriots to take their White House back, and make Trump great again. It took Senate Republicans more than 13 months and a lot of rule-breaking to get the successor they wanted for Antonin Scalia. Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images In a vote foreordained by Senate Republicans use yesterday of the nuclear option, which changed the upper chambers rules and allowed cloture on Supreme Court confirmations by a simple majority, Neil Gorsuch won the seat on the Supreme Court that has been vacant since Antonin Scalias death over 13 months ago. After preventing Barack Obama from filling the opening with his appointee Merrick Garland, and giving Donald Trump a sweet plum to offer Court-obsessed conservative ideologues, Republicans for once hung together. All 51 GOP senators present (Johnny Isakson was out recovering from surgery, though he did make it to the crucial nuclear option vote) voted to elevate the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals judge. Democrats from three very red states Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota also voted for Gorsuch. A fourth Democrat who voted against filibustering his home-state judge, Michael Bennet, in the end voted against his confirmation. And so, abetted by a lot of rule-breaking, Gorsuch will join the Court as soon as he can be sworn in, and will likely be present when all nine Justices hold a crucial conference next week to determine which cases they will hear during the fall term. Theres also one more round of oral arguments scheduled for April 17 on cases already pending. There will be three separate types of fallout from the Gorsuch-confirmation fights to watch in the days just ahead. The first will be determining his impact on the Court, particularly in cases where SCOTUS has been deadlocked by 4-4 votes. The second involves the other big shoe that will drop if there is a second opening on the Court during Trumps first (and possibly last) term. And the third is the continued erosion of Senate traditions, with the filibuster now gone for all Executive and Judicial confirmations, while remaining for regular legislation. Will the Senate hold the line on rules changes, or could the filibuster be killed altogether in the near future? Preoccupation with the missile strike on Syria may displace some post-Gorsuch speculation. But the confirmation fight remains an important long-range development, and for the time being, the only tangible accomplishment of the GOP trifecta regime elected last November. President Trump delivers a statement on Syria from Mar-a-Lago on April 6, 2017. Photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images We learned last night a little more about how President Trump views the use of force. He is willing to use it with no notice, and narrowly. He chose to retaliate against Assads obscene recent use of chemical weapons against civilians, including children, to crush the remaining resistance to his sectarian dictatorship. Trump did so very swiftly but he chose not to decimate Assads entire air force, as Clinton, McCain, and Graham wanted, and as the Pentagon proposed, according to the Intercept. So what to make of it? On the surface, it seems to follow NSC flak Michael Antons view that the best foreign policy is neither interventionism nor isolationism but something he once described as enhanced whack a mole. He elaborated this idea in a blog-post in the now defunct Journal of American Greatness (but replicated here): Stop flattering hostile regimes. Aggressively attack our enemies in ISIS and al-Qaida. Do not try to control territory for the long term. Try to win hearts and minds, but with minimal effort and low expectations. Seek alliances from which we can gain basing arrangements to project power. The idea is to keep al-Qaida, ISIS and whoever else may crop up forever on their back heel and forever being forced to rebuild the mound. The U.S. military has decisively decisively won every battle its fought since 9/11, with only three exceptions: Fallujah in 2004 and Kunar in 2007 and 2011. It can defeat ISIS and al-Qaida easily and endlessly now, so long as defeat is defined rationally. It means: beat them. Win decisive, kinetic and very public military victories. Decisive, kinetic, very public. You can see how that appeals to Trump. The paleo-con John Derbyshire once called the strategy Rubble Doesnt Cause Trouble. He defined it thus: (1) Go there in force. (2) Break their stuff and kill their leaders. (3) Tell them loud and clear: If you host our enemies again, well be back. (4) Go home. (5) Lather, rinse, repeat. Except, of course, the strike on one air-force base in Syria last night is nowhere near as coherent as that. It followed exactly what Anton warned against flattering hostile regimes. Only a little over a week ago, Secretary of State Tillerson used a Russian formulation that the future of Syria will be decided by the Syrian people to place the U.S. for the first time in favor of Assads remaining in power. If thats not flattering a hostile regime, I dont know what would be. More to the point, I dont think it was a coincidence that Assad felt emboldened after that American rhetorical retreat to use serious chemical weapons for the first time in years. The missile launch is also not about attacking ISIS. It actually attacks one of ISISs direst foes. It represents a complete U-turn from Trumps previous position that Obama should never have intervened in Syria at all a position he believed in so strongly, he tweeted endlessly about it at the time. The attack risks our becoming more involved in a Middle Eastern civil war another position Trump constantly derided for years and in the campaign. It will disrupt Trumps hope for a rapprochement with Russia (although he pointedly avoided a wider attack that would almost certainly have killed Russians as well as Syrians) another turn on an emotional dime. It follows his decision to increase the U.S. involvement in Yemens Shiite-Sunni civil war, involvement that was never even presented to the Congress, and that killed, among many other civilians, ten children. The candidate who promised to avoid military conflict in the Middle East has reversed himself and become an interventionist if only from a safe distance. But coherence was never Trumps strong point, as we have discovered with his support for a health-care bill that would have thrown 24 million people off health insurance after he had explicitly promised to cover everyone. And he believes in surprise. Unpredictability and incoherence seem to be the mark of Americas foreign policy now, it appears. Look: I dont think theres any reason to doubt that his revulsion at the gassing of children was the prompt for this dramatic and sudden use of military power. But there will doubtless be a rally in popularity at the precise moment he is sinking in the polls, appears increasingly stalled in Washington, and is desperate for a distraction. But quite what follows from this sudden impetuous drama in the Middle East remains, of course, to be seen. The one thing we know about Trump is that he hasnt carefully thought it through. While were on the subject of Trumps foreign policy, I cant get out of my head two recent White House pressers with two foreign leaders. The first showed a petulant, scowling child seated next to the leader of the free world, Angela Merkel. He pouted; he pursed his lips; and he refused pointedly to shake her hand, even after she suggested it. By many accounts, his private conversation revolved around Germanys financial contribution to NATO, insisting, as if the alliance were a shakedown racket, that the Germans repay the U.S. countless billions for defense over the years. It was as if the Second World War had never happened. Now watch the public meeting with the Egyptian dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Trump was almost as fawning, excited, and thrilled as the Egyptian leader himself. We agree on so many things, the president said. He praised the tyrant for his fantastic record; he nodded and beamed when Sisi noted that he hadnt been allowed in the White House under Obama. And then the handshake except this time, it was markedly un-Trumpy. There was no sudden pull, no endless glad-handing, merely a brief, affectionate normal handshake. And a giant beam on both faces. The contrast sickens. I completely understand the realist belief that the U.S. needs Egypt for strategic purposes. For all the foulness of its current regime, which overthrew a democratically elected government, theres a reasonable case that developing a good relationship with the leadership there is important. Im not a purist in these matters. But what I cannot fathom are the supine paeans of praise for a dictatorship, and the obvious thrill Trump got from sitting down with another thug in a suit. After Sisis military coup, the Egyptian leader was elected by a Soviet-style 96.1 percent of the vote. Tens of thousands of people are currently political prisoners. Torture is commonplace. Coptic Christians are persecuted. The press has been completely cowed by threats, violence, and imprisonment. Freedom House argues that civil society in Egypt has been crushed. Sisis brutal repression of Islamism has, moreover, led to a surge of terror attacks in the last few years. As a giant cherry on the shit sundae, the U.S. gives Egypt aid of, on average, $1.3 billion a year well over $35 billion since 1978. Why, one wonders, would Trump harangue democratic Germany, which receives no direct aid, while fawning over a dictator of a country that is one of the top recipients of American tax-payers dollars? Yes, I know he has a soft spot for tyrants. But squeezing a democracy for hundreds of billions while rhetorically fellating a dictator who actually does suck the Treasury dry seems, well, as coherent as his policy on Syria. Im inclined to dismiss the current red herring in the Trump administrations claim of an unprecedented unmasking of various American citizens by Susan Rice. This process happens all the time were told. If there are Americans incidentally caught talking with Russian spies, a senior security official can ask, if its a serious national security matter, who the American citizens are. So far, so understood. And no big deal. What troubles me, however, is the leaking of those names to the press. Rice categorically denies she did such a thing. So who did? Who exactly was the senior U.S. government official who gave David Ignatius his scoop about Mike Flynn back in January? Whoever it was in the Obama administration committed a crime. And not just an ordinary crime. A government official leaked the names of Americans incidentally caught up in surveillance. No charges have been brought; investigations have yet to be completed; the U.S. government is barred from spying on American citizens and yet some Americans have already been tainted by an accusation of treason. I find myself worrying that Eli Lake is right. Effectively leaking the names of alleged traitors is a tactic right out of a police state. I understand why the Obama peeps tried to make sure the information about possible collaboration between Trumps campaign and a foreign government was embedded throughout the government, for fear that Trump would erase it. But using surveillance to publicly accuse Americans of treason is a tactic J. Edgar Hoover would have enjoyed. Its a form of McCarthyism. Strike that. Its a definition of McCarthyism. I want the worries about Russian interference in our election to be thoroughly looked into. But someone in the Obama administration did something that will inevitably provide a distraction and rightly so. In the nature-versus-nurture debate about sexuality, nature seems to be gaining. This will come as a bit of a shock to the blank slaters who view everything human as a product of social construction to be remolded by politics. Even gender, we are now absurdly instructed, is a choice. Much of the transgender movement, for example, insists that gender is a completely fluid idea, while paradoxically using testosterone and estrogen to change their bodies from male to female and vice-versa. Now comes a new Danish study on bisexuality. It finds evidence that bisexual orientation is affected by progesterone during pregnancy: Men and women whose mothers were treated with progesterone were significantly less likely to describe themselves as heterosexual. Compared to an untreated group, the chances were significantly greater that by their mid-20s the progesterone-affected had already engaged in some form of same-sex sexual behavior, and that they were attracted to the same or to both sexes. Both exposed males and females also had higher scores related to attraction to men. Ive long been an agnostic about the causes of sexual orientation. But the idea that hormones in the womb can affect a developing baby now deserves to be taken more seriously. And the fact that we now often treat pregnancies with progesterone to avoid miscarriage suggests we may even be creating more gay or bisexual people than before. (Dont tell the Christianists please.) Sure, everything in human society is in part socially constructed. But almost everything is also rooted in genetics and biology. Quite why we resist this obvious fact is a mystery to me. I guess we dont want to limit our own sense of self-mastery. We want to believe that human nature is entirely under our control. But it isnt. Increasingly, the mysteries of the human condition will be dispelled by science. It will not only be those on the religious right who reject the mounting evidence; there are so many orthodoxies on the left that will become more rigidly held the less evidence there is behind them. Emergency workers on Stockholms busiest shopping street. Photo: Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images A hijacked beer truck plowed down Stockholms busiest pedestrian street and crashed into a storefront Friday afternoon, killing at least three people and injuring dozens more. Many things point to this being a terror attack, Swedish prime minister Stefan Lofven said. Lofven added that one person had been arrested, but subsequent reports from Swedish police contradict that. They do, however, have a suspect they wish to question and have begun a manhunt to find him. Police in Stockholm release pic of suspect. Manhunt underway pic.twitter.com/8E8JNPyKR7 Julian Druker (@Julian5News) April 7, 2017 After careening down the shopping street Drottninggatan, the truck crashed into the Ahlens department store. It left pools of blood and mangled bodies in its wake. People are lying mowed down along the whole route. CPR is being given and rubbish bags are being used to cover the lifeless bodies, one witness told the Telegraph. The truck, which belongs to a local brewery, was hijacked earlier in the day. Photo: Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images The truck, which belongs to the Swedish brewery Spendrups, said it was stolen while a driver was making a delivery earlier in the day. The city came to halt after the attack. The subway was shut down and train services in and out of the Swedish capital were halted. Police told residents to stay away from the center of the city. This is at least the third vehicle attack in Europe in recent months. Last December, 12 people were killed by a hijacked truck in Berlin, and last month a British man killed five people in a car and knife attack on Londons Westminster Bridge. Photo: Getty Images/Getty Images Last week, the Trump administrations U.N. ambassador, Nikki Haley, announced that Americas priority in Syria is no longer to sit and focus on getting Assad out. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson also expressed openness to the preservation of Bashar al-Assads regime, saying that the longer-term status of President Assad will be decided by the Syrian people. This position was consistent with Trumps years-long public stance on the subject. Shortly after Assads government killed 1,400 Syrians with sarin and VX gas, the mogul implored Obama to save his powder. President Obama, do not attack Syria. There is no upside and tremendous downside. Save your "powder" for another (and more important) day! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 7, 2013 What I am saying is stay out of Syria. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 4, 2013 AGAIN, TO OUR VERY FOOLISH LEADER, DO NOT ATTACK SYRIA - IF YOU DO MANY VERY BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN & FROM THAT FIGHT THE U.S. GETS NOTHING! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 5, 2013 Throughout the 2016 campaign, Trump touted his opposition to regime change in Syria. At the second debate, the Republican nominee boiled his thoughts on the Syrian civil war down to a single sentence: I dont like Assad at all, but Assad is killing ISIS. But apparently, when Trump and his top aides took these positions, they were unaware that Bashar al-Assad is war criminal who routinely butchers his own people. On Tuesday, war planes dropped toxic gas on a rebel-held city in northern Syria, killing 70 people, according to witness accounts. The Syrian opposition does not have war planes. The Syrian government does. On Thursday, Trump declared that something should happen in response to Assads apparent human rights violation. Initially, many observers assumed that this would mean, at most, a few limited strikes, aimed at punishing the regime for its use of chemic weapons and/or putting on a show of toughness for American cable news viewers but not at changing the outcome of the Syrian civil war. After all, if the administration believed that regime change in Syria would do more harm than good last week when Assad had already murdered thousands of civilians why would the slaughter of 70 more change that basic strategic judgement? And yet, according to The Intercept, the Trump administration is now at least considering making a 180-degree turn in its Syria policy: The Pentagon has developed plans for an airstrike against Syrian government targets in response to this weeks apparent chemical attack by Syrian government forces, according to two U.S. military officials. Secretary of Defense James Mattis will present the proposals to Donald Trump later today at the presidents Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. One of the proposals drawn up is a saturation strike using dozens of cruise missiles designed to hit Syrian military targets including military air fields in an effort to limit future Syrian Air Force attacks on rebel positions, according to the two U.S. military officials. According to both U.S. military officials, the current proposal would likely result in Russian military deaths and mark a drastic escalation of U.S. force in Syria The Bashar al-Assad government placed many of its air defense systems in civilian areas, putting Syrian civilians at risk, according to the U.S. military and intelligence sources. Four days ago, the White House believed that removing Assad should not be a priority of the American government. Now, it is weighing a plan to bring the United States into direct military confrontation with a nuclear weapons state, so as to limit the Syrian governments capacity to attack rebel positions. Whatever ones view of this issue, it is difficult to see how the events of this week could justify a change of policy this drastic. And if the change isnt motivated by new facts, then we may be about to go to war because the president sees such a move as the right plot twist for this episode of his reality show. Donald Trump welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinping to his Mar-a-Lago retreat on Thursday, where the two are expected to talk about trade policy and tensions over North Korea. But if Trumps past comments on China are any indication, things could get awkward. The USS Porter fires a Tomahawk land attack missile at a Syrian airfield on April 7, 2017. Photo: U.S. Navy/Getty Images The United States attacked a Syrian air base on Thursday night in response to the governments chemical attack on civilians in Idlib Province earlier this week. This is the first time the U.S. has taken direct military action against Syria during the countrys six-year civil war. Tonight, I ordered a targeted military strike on the air base in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched, Trump said on Thursday night. It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. The U.S. Air Strike Two U.S. warships the USS Ross and USS Porter fired 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Al Shayrat airfield in Homs Province in western Syria. Thats believed to be the site from which Syrian President Bashar al-Assads forces launched the chemical attack that killed at least 100 people on Tuesday. The strike began around 4:40 a.m. local time (8:40 p.m. ET) and lasted for three or four minutes. Al Shayrat airfield. Photo: DigitalGlobe/ScapeWare3d/DigitalGlobe/Getty Images The strike targeted hardened aircraft shelters, petroleum and logistical storage, ammunition supply bunkers, air defense systems, and radars. The U.S. military avoided hitting a suspected sarin gas storage facility because they feared it would disperse the deadly gas. Of the 59 cruise missiles fired, all hit their targets except for one, a source told the AP. The Kremlin disputed this, estimating that less than half about 23 cruise missiles hit their targets. WH photo (ed for security): @potus receives briefing on #syria military strike fr Nat Security team, inc @vp , SECDEF, CJCS via secure VTC pic.twitter.com/aaCnR7xomR Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) April 7, 2017 National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster told reporters late on Thursday night that the strike was limited, and Syria is still capable of carrying out sarin gas attacks, like it did on Tuesday. However, Captain Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said, Initial indications are that this strike has severely damaged or destroyed Syrian aircraft and support infrastructure and equipment at Shayrat Airfield, reducing the Syrian governments ability to deliver chemical weapons. Russian and Syrian state TV also broadcast some footage that apparently shows the destruction to the al Shayrat airfield. Russian military officials downplayed the strike and called its effects on the Syrian base extremely small. Russian forces were notified prior to the strike, but Secretary of State Rex Tillerson stressed that Trump did not discuss the attack with Russian President Vladimir Putin before or after it occurred. Tillerson blamed Russia for failing to ensure that Assad upheld his 2013 agreement to get rid of his chemical weapons stockpiles. Clearly, Russia has failed in its responsibility on that commitment, he said. Either Russia has been complicit or has been incompetent on its ability to deliver. Military planners tried to minimize risk to Russian or Syrian personnel located at the airfield, according to Davis. U.S. forces avoided hitting the Russian military area at the airfield, and they believe no Russian planes were present during the attack. Nine people were killed, including four children, according to Syrian state TV. The victims were reportedly from al-Shayrat and al-Hamrat villages, which are close to the base. The attack puts the hundreds of U.S. troops already stationed in Syria to assist in the fight against ISIS at greater risk. The U.S. launched air strikes in Syria in September 2014 as part of the coalition campaign against the terrorist group, but Syrian government forces were not targeted in those attacks. Map of Syria locating a chemical attack blamed on Damascus that killed dozens of civilians and the airfield hit by US missiles pic.twitter.com/2icglN20ee AFP news agency (@AFP) April 7, 2017 President Trump's Remarks Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women, and children, President Trump said during a brief press conference at Mar-a-Lago about an hour after the strike. It was a slow and brutal death for so many. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should suffer such horror. Trump called for all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types. Heres exactly what the president said about the strike. President Trump is at Mar-a-Lago for his meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping. McMaster, Tillerson, and Defense Secretary James Mattis are with Trump at his Florida resort. Vice-President Mike Pence was at the White House on Thursday evening. The Decision to Attack Syria Theres been much confusion about the Trump administrations position on Syria. Throughout the campaign, Trump said he was opposed to regime change in Syria, declaring during a debate, I dont like Assad at all, but Assad is killing ISIS. In 2013, Trump tweeted more than 20 times that President Obama should not attack Syria in response to Assad killing 1,400 of his people with sarin and VX gas. Though Assad crossed Obamas red line by using chemical weapons, the president sought authorization from Congress to use military force against the regime. It appeared Obama did not have the support of Congress, but before a vote was taken a diplomatic solution emerged, with Syria promising to destroy its stockpile of chemical weapons. In the past week, several Trump administration officials said removing Assad from power was no longer a priority. But then hours before Thursdays strike, Tillerson said steps to oust Assad were already underway. Trump said the chemical attack had changed his stance on Syria, but he did not elaborate on what that meant. I will tell you that attack on children had a big, big impact on me, he said on Wednesday. That was a horrible, horrible thing. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer characterized the presidents decision as a 72-hour evolution. Planning for a military response began in earnest just after Trump adviser Steve Bannon was booted from the National Security Council on Wednesday, a possible hint of Bannons waning influence. That same day, military aides presented Trump with three options for responding to Syrias use of chemical weapons. The Intercept reported that one option involved a saturation strike, launching dozens of cruise missiles in an effort to limit future Syrian Air Force attacks on rebel positions. This involved attacks on Russian air defense systems used by the Syrians, which would have killed Russians. That would have been a drastic shift in U.S. policy, and theres no word on how Trump responded. According to the New York Times, he told his aides to focus on two of the proposals. Trump arrived at Mar-a-Lago Thursday afternoon, and huddled for a meeting of considerable length with his top national security aides. Some, including McMaster and Mattis accompanied Trump to his Florida resort; others, including Vice-President Pence, were looped in via video-conference from Washington, says Bloomberg. Trump ultimately decided to launch a far more limited strike at around 4 p.m., and then met with and dined with President Xi, where he informed the Chinese leader of the strike. The USS Porter fires a Tomahawk land attack missile at a Syrian airfield on April 7, 2017. Photo: U.S. Navy/Getty Images The U.S. Response Members of Congress generally supported the strike. According to Bloomberg, the White House began quietly informing lawmakers of a possible plan to use force in Syria before Trump took his trip down to Mar-a-Lago, but before the administration finalized its strategy. The White House began official outreach to individual Congress members after the attack had been launched, reports CNN. Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who have been clamoring for more aggressive U.S. action against Assad for years, said it sends an important message the United States will no longer stand idly by as Assad, aided and abetted by Putins Russia, slaughters innocent Syrians with chemical weapons and barrel bombs. But, as in 2013, lawmakers have broken into several bipartisan factions. A White House official said more than two dozen Republican and Democratic members of Congress were briefed prior to the strike, but Trump did not seek formal congressional authorization. Liberal Democrats like Senator Brian Schatz and Representative Ted Lieu joined with libertarian-leaning Republican Senators Rand Paul and Mike Lee in condemning Trumps decision not to seek congressional approval. While we all condemn the atrocities in Syria, the United States was not attacked. Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) April 7, 2017 Our prior interventions in this region have done nothing to make us safer and Syria will be no different. Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) April 7, 2017 I agree w/ #GOP Sen @RandPaul. @POTUS can use military force in defense of US. But attacking #Assad regime requires congressional approval. https://t.co/cnv4qKamXq Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) April 7, 2017 Trump sent US ground troops to Syria last month purportedly to fight ISIS. Now our troops are at risk of being attacked by #Assad forces. Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) April 7, 2017 This is an act of war. Congress needs to come back into session & hold a debate. Anything less is an abdication of our responsibility. https://t.co/GvHML3ByeI Rep. Barbara Lee (@RepBarbaraLee) April 7, 2017 Assad is a brutal dictator who must be held account for atrocities. But the President's failure to seek congressional approval is unlawful Tim Kaine (@timkaine) April 7, 2017 Congressional leaders from both parties took the middle ground, applauding Thursdays strike while suggesting that they should be consulted before further action is taken. Making sure Assad knows that when he commits such despicable atrocities he will pay a price is the right thing to do, said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. It is incumbent on the Trump administration to come up with a strategy and consult with Congress before implementing it. House Speaker Paul Ryan called the strikes appropriate and just, but added, I look forward to the administration further engaging Congress in this effort. It was perfectly executed and for the right purpose, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Friday, adding that Trumps actions didnt require congressional approval. I support totally what the president did a precision strike to make it clear to Assad that the use of chemical weapons is unacceptable behavior. In a report last month, the Congressional Research Service noted that its not uncommon for presidents to commit U.S. armed forces into potential hostilities without consulting Congress, but there is still controversy over whether the president is constitutionally authorized to send forces into hostile situations abroad without a declaration of war or other congressional authorization. The Response The attack significantly increases the risk of a direct U.S. confrontation with Russia, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. Russia is backing Assad with the help of Iran. Putin believes the U.S. attack is an aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law, according to spokesman Peskov. He also said the strikes were carried out under a far-fetched pretext. Russia claims that the civilian deaths on Tuesday were the result of Syrian forces hitting a rebel chemical arsenal. A statement from the Kremlin added that the U.S. committed the strike as an attempt to distract from the mounting civilian casualties in Iraq, an apparent reference to the Mosul bombing that killed as many as 200. Viktor Ozerov, head of the Russian Federation Councils defense committee, said the strike may undermine the war on ISIS. This is an act of aggression against a U.N. member, Ozerov said. Cooperation between the Russian and U.S. militaries may be shut down after the U.S. strike. On Friday, Russia suspended a 2015 agreement with the United States over Syrian airspace. The memorandum required Moscow and Washington to share flight details on their air campaigns in the country and keep open the lines of communication to minimize the risk of in-air collision or catastrophe as the two countries flew missions over Syria. The United States had warned Russia about the impending air strike, but the Russian Defense Ministry said America was in grave violation of the memorandum. The Pentagon was unclear about the immediate consequence of Russias decision to cast aside the agreement. A Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, Mayor General Igor Konashenkov, said that Moscow would help shore up the most sensitive Syrian infrastructure, another clear sign that Russia is refusing to distance itself from Assad. Tillerson is set to travel to Moscow next week to meet with Russian officials. Iran condemned the attack regardless of the perpetrators and the victims, according to Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi. He said the U.S. operation will strengthen terrorists and add to the complexity of the situation in Syria and the region. President Bashar al-Assad blasted the air strike as foolish and reprehensible on Syrian state TV. The leader said the United States took an illegal action and pointed to it as further evidence of Americas dirty war against our people. The Syrian rebel group Ahrar al-Sham told NBC News it welcomes any U.S. intervention through surgical strikes that would deter the Assad regime capabilities to kill civilians and shorten the suffering of our people. Alaa Alyousef, a 27-year-old resident of Khan Shaykhun who lost at least 25 relatives in the chemical attack, said the U.S. strike alleviates a small part of our sufferings, but hes worried its only a face-saving measure. What good is a strike on Shayrat air base alone while we have more than 15 other air bases, he said. The United States allies have been mostly supportive of U.S. action, particularly the United Kingdom, Australia, and Israel. What's Next? Less than 24 hours after the strike, aircraft either Syrian or Russian warplanes took off from bombed-out airfield for a mission near Palmyra, reports the AFP. JUST IN: Syrian warplanes take off from air base hit by U.S., carry out strikes in Homs countryside - Syrian observatory for human rights Reuters Top News (@Reuters) April 7, 2017 Syrian or Russian aircraft have carried out strikes on at least eight towns since the U.S. intervention, including airstrikes Friday and Saturday on the same town, Khan Sheikhoun, which was struck with chemical weapons on Tuesday. The Trump administrations overall policy toward Syria remains unclear and a bit muddled. Following the strike, Tillerson offered this baffling statement: I would not in any way attempt to extrapolate that to a change in our policy or posture relative to our military activities in Syria today. There has been no change in that status. It does demonstrate that President Trump is willing to act when governments and actors cross the line and cross the line in the most heinous of ways, he added. A senior administration official told CNN that the presidents strike should not be viewed as a full-on campaign to remove Assad from power, and that defeating ISIS remains Trumps top priority. The official described the strike as a response to the unacceptability of the Syrian strongmans use of chemical weapons. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, who last week said the White House accepted the political realities of Assad staying in power, called Trumps actions decisive but was evasive about Assads future. The Syrian government and the Assad regime should, at a minimum, agree to abide by the agreements they made not to use chemical weapons, Spicer said. I think thats where we start. Yet United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley used more forceful language. The United States took a very measured step last night, she said. We are prepared to do more. But we hope that will not be necessary. It is time for all civilized nations to stop the horrors that are taking place in Syria and demand a political solution. LIVE: U.S. ambassador Haley makes remarks on Syria strikes https://t.co/uQpdNIHYUn pic.twitter.com/hw8OnnRgJI Reuters Live (@ReutersLive) April 7, 2017 Senior Pentagon officials are reportedly investigating whether Russia participated in any way in the apparent chemical attack in Syria on Tuesday. The Associated Press reports that a drone was spotted near the site of the chemical attack in Idlib province earlier that day; it is unclear if it belonged to Russian or Syrian forces. This post has been updated throughout. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley holds up photos of victims of the Syrian chemical attack, during a meeting of the United Nations Security Council at U.N. headquarters, April 5, 2017, in New York City. Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images Late on Thursday night, Donald Trump launched the first military strike of his presidency, hitting a Syrian government air base with 59 missiles. It was the same air base from which Syria had dispatched a chemical-weapons attack against its own people earlier this week. Foreign-policy experts are only now beginning to debate whether the U.S. is at war with Syria; what happens next remains totally unclear. However, one thing is certain: Syrias chemical weapons were supposed to be gone as of 2014, thanks to a removal plan the U.S. and Russia had brokered with the United Nations. For an explanation, we spoke with Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Washington, D.C.based Arms Control Association, immediately after the attack was announced. What are your early thoughts and questions about President Trump choosing to launch a missile strike on Syria as a response to Assads apparent use of chemical weapons? One reaction is that its absolutely stunning how Donald Trumps view of the use of chemical weapons in Syria and the drawing of red lines has altered in such a short time. A week ago, he and his team signaled that the removal of Bashar al-Assad was not a high priority for the United States. That may have even given Assad a green light to launch this attack. But now, just days later, Trump has said this is unacceptable, and has decided apparently without a broader, longer-term plan for how this should play out, he has launched this missile strike. Its not clear from the statements I have read, from the president or the Pentagon, what the purpose of the attack was. Was it simply to deter further chemical-weapons use? Was it to destroy chemical-weapons stockpiles that might still exist? Was it to strike the one particular airfield where we think an earlier chemical-weapons strike was launched? The other thing thats striking is that in 2013, President Obama sought congressional authorization for the use of military force. Donald Trump has not. He consulted members of Congress as the strike was happening, and its not clear whether this is the last cruise-missile strike. Finally, there have been many atrocities in the Syrian civil war chemical weapons among the worst. But will President Trump now seek to retaliate militarily to every atrocity? We are now, in some ways, on the hook hes on the hook to respond to the other atrocities that will certainly continue. I mean, Assad is certainly not going to stop killing civilians; hes not going to stop bombing hospitals; and Russia is not going to stop cooperating. These are questions that I think the administration needs to try to answer in the days ahead. If they dont have the answers, they need to find them fast. Do you have any sense of where we go from here? Were in uncharted territory here. This could go in a lot of different directions. What were the results on the ground? Were there any Russian, Syrian, or Hezbollah personnel killed? What does Russia do in response? What does Assad do in response? Well have to see. Theres a risk of escalation. The expectation of further punitive military strikes will still be there, on Trump. But the other interesting question is, how does the rest of the international community respond? The U.N. Security Council was in the process of trying to come to some agreement on a path forward. I think its unfortunate that President Trump did not let that process play out, because he cannot claim that that process was exhausted that this was a measure of last resort, which he only pursued when other options were exhausted. So it will be interesting to see how and whether the U.N. Security Council picks up this debate. I think this strike will shatter the possibility for any agreements on the council. You mean the possibility of Russia and China signing on, in particular. Yeah. All day I was following the debate, and I think what they were heading toward was U.N. investigators going in, verifying exactly what happened, and providing an independent assessment rather than just one government undertaking this and then coming back to discuss and decide what an appropriate response should be. Now, it might have been that Russia would have blocked any appropriate response, but if that were the case, then if Trump had wanted to pursue military action, it would have been more justifiable. As it is, he has difficulty claiming that was the case. There were reports in 2014 that we had removed all the chemical weapons from Syria. But then U.S. government officials, among others, have said more recently that it wasnt true Assad still had chemical weapons in his possession. Could you explain why the initial accounts were wrong? First of all, prior to the civil war, it was well known that Syria had a large, clandestine chemical-weapons arsenal. They had not joined the chemical-weapons convention, which prohibits the possession, manufacture, and use of chemical weapons. There were a number of small-scale incidents of chemical-weapons use beginning in 2012, in various parts of Syria that were starting to raise suspicions that Assad was using his arsenal against the rebels. And then there was the massive sarin-gas attack on the outskirts of Damascus in 2013. That led, of course, to the threat of cruise-missile strikes on a more massive scale by Barack Obama. His threat forced the hands of the Russians, who told Assad, Look, the only way that we can avoid U.S. military strikes is if you agree to hand over your chemical-weapons arsenal which is what they did. So 1,300 tons of chemical weapons sarin, mustard gas, and all the precursor chemicals were verifiably removed. But after that, there were questions raised time and again at the meetings of the enforcement group: Did Assad provide a complete declaration of his stockpile? Did he retain some capacity to produce? And obviously, the answer here is that he did retain some capacity. Either he did not make a complete declaration, or he manufactured some precursor chemicals to make sarin in the two or three years after this operation was over. We also have to remember that there were chlorine barrel-bomb attacks by Syrian-army helicopters in various places over the past two or three years. The U.N. Security Council debated and debated how to respond. Just in February, the Russians and the Chinese vetoed strong actions that the rest of the council wanted to take to stop those attacks. So this, in many ways, is shocking, but its not surprising. I see this as the failure of Russia, in particular, to enforce its own principles, its own standards, with its client regime. Because it was Russia and the United States who partnered to force Assad to we thought eliminate his chemical-weapons stockpile. So thats my best explanation for why were seeing this now. Russia helped broker the deal, but the groups responsible for actually carrying it out were the U.N. and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which is based in the Netherlands, right? Correct with the support of Russia and the United States and other countries, who supplied technology and equipment to make it happen. So after that big haul in 2014, did we become lax in the monitoring? What happened there? Well, it is very difficult to verify the absence of chemical-weapons-production capacity, and its very hard to verify that the OPCW was told about the complete stockpile, and that they got the whole stockpile. It wasnt for lax monitoring, because the secretary-general of the OPCW warned its member states that Syria had not provided information in some key areas. They were denying access to one particular known chemical-weapons site, which happened to be in a contested area. So there were warnings. The U.S. government also assessed that the Syrian declaration was not complete. So we knew there was a possibility that Assad had held back some portion; and if he was going to hold back some portion, it was likely that he was going to hold back the most deadly portion, which is the nerve agents the sarin gas. Thats what was used earlier this week. The purpose of this past attack, apparently, was to shock and awe and demoralize the civilian population and the regime to the point where they give up. It does not have great military value, but it is literally a mass-terror weapon, designed to basically overwhelm and demoralize the opposition. Theyre going for a psychological effect which is the definition of terrorism, actually. Exactly. When you say Russia failed, what do you mean? What should they have done that they didnt do? What Russia has been doing since the massive international operation to remove the chemical-weapons stockpile is, Russia has shielded the Assad regime from any subsequent attacks involving chlorine. Even in the past two or three days, they have been coming up with extraordinary excuses for why this was not Assads fault. I think the smarter move for Russia would have been to allow the council to take unified action against any further chemical-weapons use, and to basically draw the line with their own client state and say, This is just not allowed. I mean, Russia has been providing enormous military support and assistance for Assad. They did not have to tolerate this; they did not have to make excuses. It has further undermined Russias credibility as a responsible international actor. They have continued to deny, in the face of reality and evidence from independent investigators, that Syrian-army helicopters are dropping barrel bombs with chlorine gas in them. Youre saying Russia has a relationship with Assad that no one else has, which gives them unique leverage to make sure the agreement is enforced, and they werent using it. Yeah. And they did more than that they actively shielded Assad from blame, when it was clear that he continued to use chlorine barrel bombs and sarin gas. Even up to this very afternoon. Yes. When the agreement was made in 2013, it sounded pretty sound. There were mechanisms to help ensure Assad wasnt holding out on us. But if it left Assad with ways to squirrel away his deadliest weapons, then it seems in hindsight like quite a poor agreement, doesnt it? Its a fair question, but I would respectfully differ. The arrangement was remarkable in 2013, in that, without a shot being fired, the worlds second-largest chemical-weapons arsenal was removed but for, we now know, a small quantity. And that was always a risk. But today, the region faces a far lesser threat from Syrian chemical weapons than it did in 2013. I think the real failure is not so much with that agreement but with the follow-up enforcement by the U.N. Security Council. And once again, that council is hobbled by the veto. A single member of the council can veto an action, and it has been Russia, and in some cases China, shielding Assad: not just on chemical weapons, but on bombing civilian areas, not cooperating with diplomatic overtures. Im sure that in the coming days and weeks, well hear people criticizing, or reassessing, the Iran nuclear deal in light of our experience with Syria. Theyll be saying, We tried this peaceful removal process and these accountability mechanisms, and look where it got us. How would you respond to a remark like that? I can see why the question would come up, but these are two very different things. In 2013, in Syria, there was a clear incident where the government used a prohibited weapon against its own people a terrible weapon. The Iran nuclear deal was an agreement to limit Irans capacity to acquire enough material to make a nuclear weapon, and so far, that agreement is working extremely well. Iran is complying with the terms of the agreement. There are arguments about whether the United States is complying with our commitment to lift the sanctions, but this is not like the Syria situation, in which there have been repeated documented incidents in which the Syrian government was violating the terms of the overall 2013 agreement. They retained some chemical weapons and were using them. The problem, fundamentally, comes back to the fact that unlike the 2013 agreement, when the U.S. and Russia were cooperating now theyre not cooperating. Therein lies the reason there has been a failure to prevent Assad from continuing to use chemical weapons. It requires leadership from the key countries, and when you dont have Russian cooperation, its very hard to enforce the rules. We have to put blame where blame belongs, which is not with the agreement that got 1,300 tons of chemical weapons out of Syria. Its with the Kremlin, which failed to enforce that agreement with its client government. Photo: Mike Coppola/Getty Images for Lyft The Trump administration has chosen Lyft manager Derek Kan to serve as undersecretary of Transportation, focusing on policy. Kan currently serves as the general manager for the San Francisco ride-share start-up and Uber competitor. According to Reuters, Kans policy work will mostly focus on self-driving cars, which Transportation secretary Elaine Chao is looking into. In February, she said she would review Obama administration guidance on the quickly expanding technology sector. From Reuters: The guidelines, which were issued in September, call on automakers to voluntarily submit details of self-driving vehicle systems to regulators in a 15-point safety assessment. Automakers have raised numerous concerns about the guidance, including that it requires them to turn over significant data, could delay testing by months and lead to states making the voluntary guidelines mandatory. Last year, Lyft partnered with GM on autonomous vehicles, entering a space also filled by the rest of the auto industry, Uber, and Alphabets Waymo. Now theyve got a man on the inside. Kan was previously a policy adviser to Senator Mitch McConnell, Chaos husband, and has also worked for Bain. Lyft recently experienced a rise in users, after Uber customers protested CEO Travis Kalanicks advisory role on a Trump business initiative. Lyft also pledged $1 million to the ACLU and, just last week, their president would not stop describing the company as woke. Now, an executive is going to join the Trump administration. Maybe its possible to be too woke. Yes, I am now a globalist cuck. No questions. Photo: JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images Last night, left-of-center Twitter was mostly aghast at Donald Trumps decision to launch air strikes on a Syrian air base. It is, after all, scary how quickly his administration did a complete 180 on the question of intervention in Syria perhaps the most dramatic data point yet suggesting that the White House is inhabited by someone who should have never been entrusted with these sorts of life-and-death experiences. One silver lining, though, came from watching alt-right personality after alt-right personality theatrically renounce Trump for having taken an action thats very much in line with the entrenched Washington ideology of, well, cuck globalism that the alt-right hates so passionately reckless foreign-policy engagement largely driven by a desire to do whatever Israel wants. It felt like all the big names were coming out to slag Trump: I'm done with my support for Trump if he allows Tillerson to ensnare the west in another Middle Eastern quagmire. https://t.co/eTkL5gWq70 Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) April 6, 2017 I'm one of the biggest Trump supporters on the planet. Hands down. But to agree with 100% of what anyone says is complete lunacy. Baked Alaska (@bakedalaska) April 7, 2017 Hey @realDonaldTrump - Americans didn't vote for you to intensify Hillary's disastrous foreign policy. https://t.co/NWFhj2SVNg Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) April 7, 2017 There was a lot of gleeful liberal and #NeverTrump conservative retweeting, a lot of, See? These idiots have been bamboozled (I may have partaken). There was even a video: Heartbreak of the Trolls This may be the greatest political music video everpic.twitter.com/EFDhQ98JTR by @ReaganBattalion Peter W. Singer (@peterwsinger) April 7, 2017 But all of this should be seen not as a shocking parting of ways, but as a sensible move for the media personalities of the alt-right. Renouncing Trump, and eventually abandoning him, might actually be the most advantageous play for alt-right celebrities trying to maintain their peculiar online kingdoms, while handling the weird ramifications of having won. The incentives for the alt-right, of course, differ from the incentives for the mainstream right. In the days to come, it is very unlikely that Fox News will be devoting much airtime to criticism of Trumps decision. Rather, the most likely narrative will be that Trump has replaced Obamas weakness with strength, that finally someone has punished Bashar al-Assad for his brutal inhumanity (left unmentioned will be the fact that until early yesterday, the Trump administration had taken a very similar line to the Obama administration). So while its popular to conflate the alt-right and the mainstream right say, the core GOP base they really are two different beasts. The mainstream right will continue to support Trump because it is vested in the future of the GOP, and Trump is a GOP president. The alt-right, on the other hand, has different goals and allegiances in mind. Here are three main reasons its tactically smart for the alt-rights big names to renounce Trump, if not ditch him entirely. 1. It gets them attention. One thing all the biggest alt-right accounts have in common is that they view virality as the most important goal. They are constantly growing their brands, growing their followers, and trying to poke their way into every conversation. Figures like Mike Cernovich and MicroChip openly acknowledge that theyre not concerned with whether what they tweet is true they just want those retweets and likes. Suffice it to say, it is hard for them to resist tweeting opinions that will be widely shared not just by fellow alt-righters, but by mainstream journalists who are scratching their heads and saying, Hmm, there is a mutiny afoot. 2. It allows them to stay in the opposition. Those on the alt-right are, like Trump, not particularly sophisticated policy thinkers. Theyre more into resentful grunts about how immigrants are bad, migration is a cancer on Western (read: white) society, and how cucks control everything. From this stance, it is much easier to criticize powerful politicians than to support them. This angle is particularly relevant when it comes to foreign policy, because its simply laughable for anyone to have thought Trump wasnt going to engage in foreign misadventures. Anyone who didn't see it was trying not to see it. The man was talking about an undistinguished war vs Islam & is doing what he said he'd do https://t.co/9ApgCeyo9u Spencer Ackerman (@attackerman) April 7, 2017 Trump not only treated the entire Muslim world as potential enemies of the U.S., he also openly called for the murder of terrorists families. Its very hard to hold these stances while also being an isolationist. The alt-right simply ignored this during the campaign, aggressively painting Trump as a noninterventionist alternative to a hawkish Hillary Clinton. So from the point of view of the alt-right, supporting Trump during the campaign but renouncing him now that hes in office allows them to maintain a stance of general disdain for, again, those globalist cucks who run foreign policy a stance that is vital for their brand. 3. More specifically, denouncing Trump allows the alt-right to continue fueling conspiracy theories about how globalists (read: Jews) control everything. Anti-Semitism is a cornerstone of the alt-rights beliefs, particularly on foreign policy. Sometimes, this is explicit, as in the case of Baked Alaska tweeting openly about the Jewish question. Other times, it is ever-so-thinly veiled in the form of the alt-rights obsession with the globalists and neocons who ostensibly control everything behind the scenes. Now, there are obviously legitimate critiques to be made of neoconservatism and its disastrous legacy, but it simply doesnt take much time mucking about in the alt-right swamplands to see that there is a lot of coded anti-Semitism going on there. If youre the sort of person who wants to believe that a cabal of Jews control the U.S. military arsenal, or for whom its brand-convenient to spread those beliefs, Trumps decision to attack Syria is great news. It can be quite effectively framed as, Well, we wanted to believe Trump was a true reformer, but unfortunately the (((foreign-policy establishment))) got to him, too. It allows you to enjoy the benefits of being a provocateur who supported Trump when it appeared unlikely he would win, and then who criticized Trump once he was in power all despite the fact that there was never any reason to think Trump had any interest in a Ron Paulian foreign policy. In fact, versions of this are already popping up: I warned weeks ago Trump had been surrounded by neo-cons. This proves it. https://t.co/XL7010f9Ik Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) April 6, 2017 The outsiderism really is key here. Remember that despite the noxious anti-Semitism and racism of the alt-right, the movement has always tried to maintain a pranky, anti-establishment feel. Its much more difficult to retain that feel when your man is in charge, running everything and bombing other countries. Much as the GOP itself learned that in certain ways its less fun to hold power than to criticize power, the alt-right, in its own way, seems to be internalizing the same lesson. 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If you buy something through our links, New York may earn an affiliate commission. filming political thriller political thriller political politics post? :/ Reply Thread Link Lol literally why I came in Reply Parent Thread Link i wish he would post more on his instagram like he does with weibo. that shirtless bathroom pic is everything Reply Thread Link considering the comments he gets on insta I understand why he doesn't. also it's probably embarrassing for him since he uses that accounts for his friends too lmao Reply Parent Thread Link True Reply Parent Thread Link sorry, OP , but is there someplace we can discuss the beginning of WW3? Reply Thread Link YES! Please. omg I JUST SAW Reply Parent Thread Link i need to discuss Reply Parent Thread Link If there were Russians at that base, we're fucked. My coworker is leaving for Seoul to visit family this weekend and I am like, "Noooo, find out where the nearest bomb shelter is and get a direct line for the embassy, because you know Kim has an itchy trigger finger." And now this. Reply Parent Thread Link nah they forewarned the russians to get out (knowing that the russians may well then forewarn the syrians) Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I remember being absolutely shocked and terrified on 9/11. Now I'm basically expecting something like that to happen again. It's such a weird, surreal feeling to have. Reply Parent Thread Link any other night i'd be all over this post. he's so damn fine. But tonight's just too tense and depressing. and idk the movie had political overtones, so that'll probably be a pass from me. for now. Reply Thread Link yay Seb! my solace in these dark times Reply Thread Link So someone inform me? Is what Trump did a good thing or a bad thing for him to do? I know its a humanitarian crisis but Im just trying to understand what it means in the grand scheme of things, if it was just a message? I feel like he is desperately grasping for a win from anywhere. Reply Thread Link imo i don't believe it was really a good thing. all of syria (and surrounding areas too, i suppose) is going to suffer, even if the target was the proprietor of those awful attacks. Reply Parent Thread Link he's so full of it. he's grasping for straws with his approval rating imo. he criticised the heck out of obama for obama's initial indications he would conduct a strike after the first chemical attacks in syria, and then had no huge problem with assad for killing little "children of god" then but NOW he has a problem with it?? NOW he's all good with military intervention in syria? Reply Parent Thread Link It seems very...impulsive Reply Parent Thread Link it's prolly gonna be iraq all over again tbh. Reply Parent Thread Link No. The US needs to get the fuck out of the middle east, and that includes all their proxy war funding. SICK of them. Reply Parent Thread Link The Associated Press is now reporting that Syrian State TV is claiming that the US attack lead to casualties. Oh this is gonna be so fucking bad. Reply Parent Thread Link He doesn't give a damn about those people, those are the same people that he wants to ban from the country. He just wants to go to war so bad. He's such an asshole, I hate him so much. Reply Parent Thread Link ughhhhhhhhh it's barely been 2 months whyyyyyyyy Reply Thread Link on a tiny lighter note..that selfie he posted last night on weibo is the definition of soft ffs the orange turd had to start ww3 tonight..this is all around depressing i cannot phantom what the people from Syria are going thru right now #PrayforSyria :(on a tiny lighter note..that selfie he posted last night on weibo is the definition of soft Reply Thread Link Hey if Chris Pratt can do it I'm sure Seb will be fine. Reply Parent Thread Link I think it'll depend on the director/character and his supporting cast. Reply Parent Thread Link jfc the whole syria thing. it's gonna be iraq all over again, and i'm like 99.9% sure that ........... erdogan will drag us into this as well. whyyyyyyyyyyy also lol @ morons who were all against hillary bc they believed she'd start a war and trump wouldn't and here we are... i hate to say i told you so, but i fucking told you so. Reply Thread Link i mean... hillary last thursday recommended this exact cause of action (taking out assad's airbases with airstrikes in retaliation for the chem attacks) so they were right that she would tbh Edited at 2017-04-07 03:23 am (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Link Oh no, i didn't mean in the "hillary would NEVER" sense. I'm sure she would do the same thing (more diplomatically, but same) People around me just claimed trump wouldn't do this & he'd pull USA from middle east, and i always told them USA's foreign policy does not depend on the presidents *that* much, and they'd still be in the middle east. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Fuck cheeto dust. Pretending to care about Syrian refugees to justify this missile strike. Asshole. Reply Thread Link He's been itching to start a war since before he was elected. He doesn't give a shit about those people and everything he has done since he has taken office proves that. I am so scared. :'( Reply Parent Thread Link Seb<3 the dorkiest bright light when there is shit going down in the real world (that squash video cracks me up). Reply Thread Link So..the most horrifying thing about what's happening tonight is that I was talking to a friend in Canada over skype and paying attention to news sites and going 'I'm calling it now just like I did years ago with Bush and Iraq..something's gonna happen with Syria.' ..I just didn't expect to be proven right less than an HOUR after I said that. Holy impulsive Batman, what the hell Edited at 2017-04-07 02:29 am (UTC) Reply Thread Link Marry that friend and get up here pronto, girl. Things look bad. Reply Parent Thread Link She's female and I'm not a lesbian or bi but..y'know what, it's a tempting offer tbh Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I recently found out that Alison is the singer behind A Fine Frenzy Reply Thread Link Yes, I love her. I am glad she is getting more projects after Fantastic Beasts. Edited at 2017-04-07 02:48 am (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Link what! i didn't know that. i love her voice so much. Reply Parent Thread Link What really? I loved them Reply Parent Thread Link I found that out after I saw Fantastic Beasts and it BLEW MY MIND. One Cell in the Sea was my jam in high school! ...er, college. I just looked it up and I'm not as young as I thought, oop. Edited at 2017-04-07 03:36 am (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Link Omg I love their music Reply Parent Thread Link I second this emotion. Reply Parent Thread Link I hope so. If they shove Coppola in UCR again I'm going to be annoyed. Reply Parent Thread Link i love colin so much. which just bums me out more that he won't be in the entire beasts series Reply Thread Link Don't remind me Reply Parent Thread Link yeah, no chance of my watching after i heard that. Reply Parent Thread Link Seriously. Ultimate downgrade. Reply Parent Thread Link Same. They should just retcon that the 'reveal' never happened, they just realized who he is and Depp was never a part of it. Albus in love with Colin, obviously. Albus in love with Depp, lol no. Reply Parent Thread Link "Male directors want to shoot it from every angle." weirded out but not surprised Reply Thread Link sex scenes are so unnecessary tbh also this movie is rly??? it sounds like it boils down to women tearing each other down for a guy w/ a hint of Misery. like...pass Reply Thread Link from my understanding it's the opposite. It begins that way, but it's really about a group of women banding together to take down a man. Reply Parent Thread Link Yep. The ending is crazy, lol Reply Parent Thread Link Ooh, now I care! Reply Parent Thread Link lol that sounds like a wayyy better movie than how its described on wiki Reply Parent Thread Expand Link That actually sounds interesting. Reply Parent Thread Link Colin seems like a good dude. Must've been even more awkward shooting the love scene with Elle, lol Reply Thread Link tbh i hate sex scenes 'cause all i can think during them is "this was probably uncomfortable to film..." and it throws me out of the movie Reply Thread Link Same. I'm always looking for the dick sock tbh Reply Parent Thread Link lmao! i always laugh when i see an accidental peak of undies Reply Parent Thread Link I do too. I find lead up scenes and flirtations much hotter. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link the older I get the more pointless they seem Reply Parent Thread Link yeah, same here. I just imagine the crew standing like, 2 feet away lol. Reply Parent Thread Link lol same Reply Parent Thread Link they make me so uncomfortable now. I just get grossed out when I think about the fact that men get boners while watching them. It's so gross. Men are so gross. Reply Parent Thread Link Most of the time they're completely unnecessary. A passionate kiss is enough for us to understand the characters are hot for each other/in love. We don't need to see thrusting to get the point. Plus, I hate watching movies with sex scenes with either my mom or my friends. What are you supposed to say during those scenes? It gets even more awkward. Reply Parent Thread Link Lol yep. I love seduction scenes and kissing scenes but the moment it gets to supposed penetration, usually in that missionary position that makes white people look like a plucked chicken, then it gets uncomfortable Reply Parent Thread Link Colin Farrell honestly keeps going up in my estimation. I like seeing and hearing the differences between female directors and male directors in terms of how they handle this sort of thing. Reply Thread Link It seems like the biggest basic difference is that female directors treat their actresses with respect, as equals, and male directors treat actresses as 'art' to be molded and captured. Reply Parent Thread Link Can't wait for this Reply Thread Link i love colin farrell sfm. cannot wait for this. Reply Thread Link oh Colin, why are you so great? when can I suck your dick? Reply Thread Link i'm so bored of nepotism queen sofia coppola and her obsession with doe eyed blonde white women Reply Thread Link Yupp Reply Parent Thread Link same Reply Parent Thread Link It really is aggravating. I want to support her work, but I really can't stand by her love affair with whiteness. Reply Parent Thread Link Her movies really are aggressively white. Indies in general. It's why I prefer television. Reply Parent Thread Link Oh. He used the word female, you guys Reply Thread Link He used it correctly Reply Parent Thread Link nah Reply Parent Thread Link lol i forgot liberals and ontd dont like that word. so stupid. Reply Parent Thread Link lol you know colin farrell means that Reply Thread Link I have met Colin Farrell and he is honestly super chill. Seems like a very nice, humble guy. Reply Thread Link build your cases for Conscientious Objection, he's itching for war. Reply Thread Link osp is trying to get us all killed Reply Thread Link orange suppressive person? orange satanic pope? orange sauce packet? Reply Parent Thread Link orange shit pile Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Hahaha, orange sauce packet is a creative one. That gave me a good laugh in light of this horrible news. Thanks bb. Reply Parent Thread Link hopefully someone will use banned chemicals on him and only him in return Reply Parent Thread Link I like to read it as Orange Shit Piece Reply Parent Thread Link The Senate has confirmed Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, ending a yearlong standoff over Antonin Scalia's seat https://t.co/a7wZUc9cLk The New York Times (@nytimes) April 7, 2017 Fucking miserable, sniveling cowards. And then there's this:Fucking miserable, sniveling cowards. Reply Thread Link Wouldn't even hold a hearing for Merrick Garland and they confirmed the pick of a man under numerous investigations. Edited at 2017-04-07 03:58 pm (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Link Absolutely shameful. Reply Parent Thread Link We are so fucked. I have my thoughts on the filibuster but I hope come 2018 and 2020 everyone makes turtle man McConnell regret what he did. We're stuck with Gorsuch for a long time. Got help us. Fuck this stolen seat. Reply Parent Thread Link This bitch is young as fuck, he's gonna be fucking us all for a very long time. Reply Parent Thread Link If Gorsuch had any integrity he wouldn't have accepted this but lolol when has any white man ever turned down power Reply Parent Thread Link Lolololol not ever. Integrity is hard to come by. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Mfte Reply Parent Thread Link I hope they die slowly and painfully Reply Parent Thread Link Pardon my ignorance but can a President fire/remove a Supreme Court justice? Reply Parent Thread Expand Link booo. This sucks. The perjury alone should have sunk him. Reply Parent Thread Link hope he dies soon idgaf Reply Parent Thread Link our country is a joke at this point Reply Parent Thread Link I can't believe Republicans just changed the rules so they could vote him in, imagine if Obama did that for him nominee. Shit would have hit the fan. Reply Parent Thread Link Oh god, I only just heard about Sweden. So fucking awful. Reply Parent Thread Link I was just thinking that I'm not a religious person but Jesus needs to take the fucking wheel yesterday. Reply Parent Thread Link Srsly. This is out of fucking control. Reply Parent Thread Link Saint Petersburg bomb in the metro too...i have a friend she was ok but it was at the station near her house Reply Parent Thread Link #BREAKING: Syria's armed forces were warned about US military action hours before strike on Shayrat, military source tells @AFP Maya Gebeily (@GebeilyM) April 7, 2017 Reply Thread Link They didn't destroy airstrips though, I'm pretty sure they deliberately avoided them Reply Parent Thread Link There's a good piece here on why it will do very little. First, you don't just "knock out Assad's air force." This is a poor description of the air campaign that will be needed to truly neuter his aerial war fighting abilities, and even then Russia could just resupply him with deadlier equipment. It's true that cratering Assad's runways would keep his fixed-wing air force from flying temporarily, but that air force is a miserable hodgepodge of dated Soviet-era fighters and trainers. The main airborne weapons delivery system Assad's forces prefer to use are helicopters, and the improvised "barrel bombs" that they chuck out the back of them. Helicopters don't need runways and they can be dispersed throughout the countryside instead of being concentrated at a handful of airfields. Also, when it comes to chemical weapons, artillery shells can be just as effective as air dropped weapons. Finding and destroying every piece of large caliber artillery in Assad's possession is an all but impossible task. As for where his chemical weapons are hidden, nobody seems to know. Then there are Assad's air defense capabilities, which will be turned against coalition aircraft if they were to attack. Many of them are installed at fixed positions, but others are road-mobilesuch as the SA-6, SA-11 and highly modern Pantsir-S1and far harder to find and destroy than their stationary counterparts. These systems pose the greatest threat to coalition air power as they can "pop up" unexpectedly at any time. http://time.com/4730822/syria-airstrike-assad-retaliation/?xid=time_socialflow_twitter Not to mention most Syrians are not killed strictly by chemical warfare. This will do very little, if anything to stop Assad. And this will do nothing to weaken Assad or remove him - which the WH said themselves last night.There's a good piece here on why it will do very little.Not to mention most Syrians are not killed strictly by chemical warfare. Reply Parent Thread Link Bombing an empty airfield doesn't actually accomplish anything other than escalating the situation. Reply Parent Thread Link Syrian news said 7 people died including children from the strike so they failed. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link what the fuck is happening in Stockholm? Another terrorist attack? what the fuck Reply Thread Link WW III is happening isn't it? I'm scared. Reply Thread Link Not when the rest of the world is like NOPE NO THX Reply Parent Thread Link well it usually only takes one asshole to ruin it for everyone else. Reply Parent Thread Link this is basically why its called war Reply Parent Thread Link starting with duterte and china too Reply Parent Thread Link It's been heading there for years, but I hope not Reply Parent Thread Link Oh dear. Reply Parent Thread Link omg Reply Parent Thread Link lol I love that Coulter of all people retweeted this. Reply Parent Thread Link I'm currently reading a book about living on wartime rations and at first it was just a book about the past but now it's vital information for the future. Time to start planning for the future. Reply Thread Link Weight loss as a silver lining? Reply Parent Thread Link I need more Toby gifs, he just represents my feelings on everything so often. Reply Parent Thread Link I wish you were in this Whitehouse Toby! Reply Parent Thread Link This country is a fuckin joke Reply Thread Link All the republicans that opposed Obama using force in 2013 (Ryan, Cruz, Rubio, Chaffetz, Hatch, etc) are now calling Trump heroic. I fucking hate them all. Reply Thread Link That's because it was a game of 'who hates the black man most?' Reply Parent Thread Link "The panel gets heated when they discuss if the military strike on the Syrian airfield was a good decision by 45." Of course it wasn't, you have to be blind, dumb, ignorand or all of them to believe the contrary, my god, US intervention has never been the answer, specially with this president, putos gringos. Like the good sis yim_yames said, gringos gonna gringuear. Reply Thread Link When has US intervention ever been a good idea? Never. This country is so in love with war and fucking over other countries. Our government is unstable at the moment and 500+ jobs haven't even been filled but lets go try to stabilize the Syrian government! Reply Parent Thread Link Not never because there have been a few rare cases where it did help a lot of people but the vast majority of the time, it doesn't and you usually have to get involved really early on which is always unpopular. There's virtually no chance of US intervention being positive with this administration though. Reply Parent Thread Link An emotional John Ridley engaged in a heated debate about race at last night's premiere of his new series #Guerrilla https://t.co/LTsxmdh9Pv pic.twitter.com/S0wpZc9hbE Screen International (@Screendaily) 7 avril 2017 [ the only prominent black woman character ] the only prominent black female character in episode one is an informer against the movement for a racist, white police officer. John Ridley (12 Years A Slave) faced some tough audience questioning at last nights premiere of his new Sky Atlantic series Guerrilla (premieres April 16 on Showtime)Indian actress Freida Pinto stars as Jas Mitra, an Asian woman at the centre of the conflict who drives much of the narrative.My parents were a part of that movement [black power]. I want to understand why you decided [to make] an Asian woman the main protagonist.I understand the contribution of Asians to this, but having an Asian protagonist making all the big decisions does that get explained in subsequent episodes? We cant ignore that,To me, everything that youre saying is exactly why that decision is so important. The fact that its difficult to accept someone, even though they are of colour, of being with usI dont find it difficult to accept, Im just trying to understand,If everybody understood racism, oppression there would be no reason to be doing this show. We would be doing Dancing With The Stars,If there are things that are difficult to understand, accept, rationalise, despite the fact that if you understand the struggles of that time period those elements are not made up, those are real,If there are any aspects of my show that are difficult to understand or accept, I feel I have done my job. It is an incredibly valid question, but please accept that my answer is equally as valid.Im not sure you quite answered the question - why are there no black women at the forefront of the struggle? That doesnt necessarily accurately reflect what happened in the 70s in the UK.(one of the male leads)Wow, really? You know this because you read about it?No, we know this because our parents were a part of it,the erasure of black womenI said previously, I think the characters in this story are complicated across the board, so the concept that any one person is somehow better, or more elevated, or more appropriate than any other individual, Im sorry, I dont accept that."I dont want to make this overly personal, but part of why I chose to have a mixed race couple at the centre of this is that Im in a mixed race relationship. The things that are being said here, and how we are often received, is very equivalent to whats going on right now [in the wider world]. My wife is a fighter, my wife is an activist, and yet because our races our different there are a lot of things we have to still put up with.This is one of the proudest moments of my entire life. This cast, this crew, the people involved in this show are the most reflective cast and crew that you will find anywhere. Im sorry I cannot entertain a dialogue about whether the lead character in this show should be black or Asian the lead character in this show should be a strong woman of colour,(photographer)I am probably the only person [here] that was in the Black Panthers, and what John [Ridley] did was exactly spot on. We had an Asian woman, and she was extremely active, theres absolutely nothing wrong with what Ive seen today.(at the premiere, not during the Q&A)What I understood after speaking to John [Ridley] was that black was not just the colour of the skin. It was political blackness, the oppressors and the oppressed, they were from former colonies and India was one of them."When we talk about diversity, not just here but in America, I find it non-inclusive when we dont talk about the other people from other parts of the world, including the Asian population, Also if anyone is interested there's the full quote here about defending eligibility here "I find it amusing partly because the intention was very pure from the get-go," Edelman said. "I wanted to make a very long movie and so that it was funded and was commissioned by a television network, okay, so does anything that Netflix does, so does anything that Amazon does, its no different. The only thing thats different about this is its long. So for me, that it aired on TV and its almost eight hours long, its hard if youre a commercial television company to air something that is eight hours straight, so thats why it aired the way it did. I think its a little bit of a mischaracterization or somewhat unfair because the movies the movie, the intent was very pure. By the away it was released in theaters before it was ever on TV. It was built as a theatrical experience." Edited at 2017-04-07 08:01 pm (UTC) Ezra Edelman got that Oscar just in time lol.Also if anyone is interested there's the full quote here about defending eligibility here http://www.businessinsider.com/oscar-rule-change-documentaries-2017-4 Reply Thread Link Multi part documentaries / "limited series" are not eligible for nomination NOW you think of this?! Why wasn't this always a rule?! Made in America is great, but it's horseshit that it was even allowed to be entered, let alone that it won. That little qualifying theatrical run doesn't count, imo. I swear, they always do this -- they do a dumbass thing and then come up with a new ~rule way after the fact that only messes things up more, like that wretched "up to 10 BP nominees" thing after TDK was shut out. when will these old white men get it together (jk that's an oxymoronical question) NOW you think of this?! Why wasn't this always a rule?! Made in America is great, but it's horseshit that it was even allowed to be entered, let alone that it won. That little qualifying theatrical run doesn't count, imo. I swear, they always do this -- they do a dumbass thing and then come up with a new ~rule way after the fact that only messes things up more, like that wretched "up to 10 BP nominees" thing after TDK was shut out.when will these old white men get it together (jk that's an oxymoronical question) Reply Thread Link How come? That documentary was amazing IMO. One of the best things I've seen in a very long time Reply Parent Thread Link It is amazing. But it's a TV miniseries, not a movie. It deserved to scoop up a bunch of Emmys and not an Oscar. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Because a regular 1.5-2 hour documentary can't compete with an 8 hour extravaganza set into distinct parts. OJ:MiA had significantly more time and space to build the story, explore the period and focus on each moving part. It's really great and interesting, but it's a television series. Reply Parent Thread Link Well given the quote right above you, the director obviously feels differently. I don't blame him either tbh /shrugs Reply Parent Thread Link interesting bit about the campaigning Reply Thread Link I'm happy at the campaigning rule, maybe now we'll finally have the acting categories in particular finally go to the deserving performances (of course this sadly won't stop the make-up awards). Reply Thread Link interesting Reply Thread Link The animation category, judging is so fucked up. Always taken as kiddy cartoons and let's be honest if it is from Disney it will win no matter what Reply Thread Link It could go either way, I feel. Especially in a year like this, where it's plain that Coco will be the only award-worthy animated movie to come out unless we are all extremely surprised. Reply Parent Thread Link Ugh last year was so GOOD for animated movies. Should have saved some for this year Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Kimi no Na wa, tho. Reply Parent Thread Link I like the campaigning rule Reply Thread Link i love your icon lol Reply Parent Thread Link Ha, thanks! With Naruto ending (I'm not acknowledging Boruto), I got nostalgic and remembered how much I enjoyed these two goofs Reply Parent Thread Link some parts of film twitter were super pissed about OJ last season, so that rule change doesn't surprise me Reply Thread Link "For best picture, two producers can now count as one if they are part of an established partnership" What does this mean? Reply Thread Link I was thinking like married couples or pairs like the Coen Bros. Though I guess maybe something like Brian Grazer & Ron Howard where they're long time partners comes to mind also Reply Parent Thread Link To add to the other response, a lot of times on independent productions, in order to get all of the money needed to actually complete the film, there will be an insane number of producers/production companies coming on board. But the Academy limits how many producers can be listed on the submissions for awards. So I guess this rule addresses that to a certain extent by saying that producers who run a single company together can be counted as one entity. Edited at 2017-04-07 08:27 pm (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Link It's annoying that best animated movie always goes to Disney/Pixar. Reminds me of that anonymous voter who said that animated movies were for kids so he didn't bother watching them and just voted for Disney. Do they have to vote in all categories? Because that guy shouldn't vote in animated feature. Edited at 2017-04-07 08:06 pm (UTC) Reply Thread Link No, they can just vote in one category if they want. They should seriously recuse themselves if they haven't seen at least half of the noms in a category. Reply Parent Thread Link Trying to stop the mad campaigning: "Prior to nominations, Academy members may not be invited to attend any lunch, dinner or other catered affair that promotes an eligible film for awards consideration that is not associated with a screening. Good! It's become insufferable. Reply Thread Link How is it insufferable to anyone that's not an academy member considering they're the ones who have to deal with it? Reply Parent Thread Link How do you know I'm not an academy member? Reply Parent Thread Link agreed Reply Parent Thread Link I had no idea what it even was. It'd come up on TV and I'd go "Wow, they show this movie an awful lot". Reply Parent Thread Link Melissa Leo's Oscar campaign still remains something so glorious I'm still not sure it didn't just leap from a Christopher Guest film. Reply Thread Link no no, it was "CONSIDER...." Reply Parent Thread Link OJ Made in America deserved that idc what people say Reply Parent Thread Link This Reply Parent Thread Link International oil markets could be heading towards a new war, as leading OPEC and non-OPEC producers are vying for increased stakes. The unexpected cooperation between OPEC and non-OPEC countries, instigated by the full support of Saudi Arabia (OPEC) and Russia (non-OPEC) has brought some stabilization to the crude markets for almost half a year. The expected crude oil price crisis has been averted, it seems, leaving enough room when looking at the fundamentals to a bull market in the coming months. As long as Saudi Arabia, Russia and some other major producers (UAE, Kuwait), are supporting a production cut extension, financials will be seeing some light at the end of the tunnel. The effects of the 2nd shale oil revolution, as some have stated, have been mostly mitigated by a reasonably high compliance of OPEC and non-OPEC members to the agreed upon cuts, while geopolitical and security issues have prevented Libya, Iraq, Venezuela and Nigeria, from entering with new volumes. Stabilization in the crude oil market, as always, is not only fundamentals but also geopolitics and national interests. The latter now could also be the main threat to a successful extension of the OPEC production cuts in the coming months. Related: China Just Became The No.1 Buyer Of U.S. Crude Fears are growing that OPECs leading producer, Saudi Arabia, is no longer happy with the overall effects it is generating by taking the brunt of the production cuts, while at the same time, other OPEC members, such as Iran and Iraq, are looking at production increases. Saudi Arabias other main rival Russia is also not sitting idle. Even if Moscow is still fully behind the official production cuts, Russian oil companies have been aggressively fighting for additional market share in Saudi Arabias main client markets, China, India and even Japan. Iraq and Iran, in contrast to what was expected, have been cutting away share in Europe. Threatened by its own successful agreement, Saudi Arabia is now feeling the heat on all sides. Some analysts are even proponing a doomsday scenario, implying that Riyadh has lost its grip on the largest oil markets. U.S. shale oil is increasing its market share, while addressing European options at the same time. Russia, Iran and Iraq have been pushing for market share in Asia, while taking up Saudi share in Europe. Until now, Saudi officials such as minister of petroleum, Khalid Al Falih, and Aramcos Nasser, have been keeping quiet. No real hardline stance has been publicized until now by the OPEC leader. This could however change dramatically if recent indicators are correct. In an unexpected move, Saudi Arabia has reported that it will try to regain some market share in one of its former main markets, Europe. In a move to increase the attractiveness of taking Saudi crude, the Kingdom has plans to change the way it prices oil for Europe from July. The new pricing plans could be effective from July 1, mainly to increase the appeal of Saudi crude by making it easier for customers to hedge. Media sources have stated that Aramco will introduce its European exports price against the ICE settlement for the Brent benchmark after years of pricing its oil against the Brent Weighted Average (BWAVE). Both price references are part of the Brent benchmark used to price much of the worlds crude. Clients at present find it difficult to hedge the BWAVE. This development has partly been snowed under as Aramco also has lowered prices for the Mediterranean and some Asian clients. U.S. clients will however be looking at higher prices. Taking a birds eye view, the Saudi move could indicate a new market approach in the coming months or years. After a full focus on Asian markets and investment opportunities, as also shown by Saudi King Salman bin Abdulazizs month long visit to Asia, and Aramcos multibillion spending spree, a sudden reorientation of part of the companys future approach appears to be underway. Russia has always had a very comfortable position in the European oil markets, as it is the largest supplier (around 32 percent in 2016). Moscows dominance in European energy is undeniable. This is now under pressure if Aramco, in addition to Iraq and Iran, is really entering the European market in a serious manner. In a more stabilized oil market, this would not really have a direct impact on price scenarios, but looking at the current volatility, a confrontation between Russia and Saudi Arabia in Europe could destabilize not only the market but also lead to a new price war. Until 2015, Russian oil supplies had been dominating European markets, as most OPEC producers had no interest in European demand. Due to new players entering Asian markets, and the lower demand in the U.S., the Oil Kingdom is now looking for a confrontation. The Aramco move indicates that times are changing, and Europe could be the first new battleground. The Kingdom has a lot to gain (in volumes and share) as it is currently ranked 4th on feedstock supplies to European OECD countries in 2016, behind the former Soviet Union, Norway and even Iraq. The Russian-Saudi oil war is already planned and partly implemented, as Russian oil company Rosneft indicated in 2015, accusing Aramco of dumping oil in Europe. The need for stabilization in the market in 2015-2016, and Aramcos IPO, were reasons not to proceed with the conflict. Rosneft lately indicated that a European price war could force parties not to extend the output cut agreement for another six months. Related: Are Mexicos Oil Reserves Almost Depleted? The conflict is brewing, but has not yet come to surface. Saudi Aramcos first moves to re-enter Europe, however, clearly show that they are not willing to keep picking up the bill for others. Asia has been partly consolidated for Saudi Arabia. Money will talk as additional outlets (refinery projects) were acquired by Aramco the last month. Europe, a very stable and surprisingly growing crude oil market, is now the stage for a possible price war scenario. Riyadhs decision to change its European price setting is, however, a clear signal that there is a red line for the Oil Kingdom. No more market share will be lost without being confronted by a more aggressive and powerful Aramco establishment. Both main parties, Russia and Saudi Arabia, are unwilling to risk a real price war. Putins future will be decided in the next 12 months, as elections are coming up, while the future of the young Saudi elite depends on an Aramco IPO. When taking a smarter approach, both nations could redirect their aggressive market strategies to the new incumbents in Europe. Iraq and Iran have been very smart by attempting to sneakily take market share from both sides. Combining Moscow and Riyadhs power, a price war against the Iran-Iraq axis would be both more sustainable and feasible. The latter would also have the added advantage of not threatening the OPEC and non-OPEC production cut. Registration of Crude Oil Imports and Deliveries in the European Union (EU28) 2016 (Click to enlarge) By Cyril Widdershoven for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: International oil prices spiked to a one-month high after President Trump ordered missile strikes against Syrian military infrastructure in response to a chemical weapons attack for which security sources held responsible the Bashar Assad government. The strikes hit a military airport and related targets, killing six. The strikes comes just a week after U.S. ambassador to the UN said that removing Assad from power was no longer a priority for the U.S. The Syrian side has denied responsibility for the attack, calling the air strikes an aggression. Assads main allies in the region, Russia and Iran, have also condemned the move, with Russias President Putin saying that it violated international laws and would worsen relations between the U.S. and Russia. The Western world has welcomed the direct U.S. involvement, as have Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Israel. All markets reacted immediately to the strikes, with crude oil the obvious big winner: WTI jumped over $52 a barrel, and Brent passed the $55 mark. Although Syria itself is not a major oil producer, especially in the last few years while the civil war has been raging, it neighbors Iraq; any increase in tension within Syria is likely to reverberate across the Middle East and beyond, especially now that the latest events have put the U.S. and Russia at odds. Related: Obliterating ISIS May Hamper Iraqi Oil Production The chemical weapons were released after an airstrike by the Syrian army over rebel-held Khan Sheikhoun, in the province of Idlib. Examination of some of the victims in Turkey has suggested that they were exposed to sarin, a neurotoxin that the Assad government has a history with. The Syrian government claims that the weapons were released accidentally when its air strikes hit a storage facility of the rebels. The situation in Syria is becoming increasingly complicated, which is bound to continue to reflect on oil prices, most likely keeping them higher for longer, until the main actors in the play mull over their next moves. By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: In a visit to the United States this week, Mateusz Morawiecki, who is also Poland's minister of economic development, met with U.S. Energy Secretary RIck Perry to discuss purchasing U.S. gas and got a "very positive response," he told reporters. Morawiecki told Reuters on April 5 that he reached an "understanding" with Perry to work toward a deal. Poland, a NATO member, currently gets about two-thirds of its gas from Russia, and has been striving to find alternative sources for national security reasons. The purchase of gas from the United States would diversify Poland's energy supplies and increase its energy security, Morawiecki said. "I am very much concerned. I think that what Russia is doing since invading Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014, it is clearly against international public law," he told Reuters. "We strongly oppose this expansionary and aggressive policy by Russia. Cyberthreats to the Baltic States and Poland are difficult to overestimate. I believe this is a real threat," he said. Poland has a liquefied-natural-gas terminal in the Baltic Sea that opened last year. Morawiecki said U.S. gas from Texas is currently more expensive than liquefied gas the country could import from Algeria or Qatar, but he believes a lower price can be negotiated with U.S. suppliers. A fracking revolution in the past decade turned the United States into a natural-gas superpower, rivaling Russia and other major suppliers around the world. The United States started exporting some of its abundant gas only a year ago and has not as yet sent any to Northern Europe Poland's contract to buy gas from Russia's state-owned Gazprom expires in 2022. By RFERL.org More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate said on Friday that it had granted two new drilling permits, one to Statoil to drill in the Barents Sea and another to Aker BP to drill in the North Sea in Norwegian waters bordering the UK shelf. The Petroleum Directorate issued a permit to Statoil to drill a wildcat well in a production license in the Barents Sea. Statoil is operator of the license and holds 50 percent of the interest, with Eni Norge AS owing 30 percent and Petoro AS the remaining 20 percent. The well will be drilled about 25 km (15.5 miles) southeast of the Snhvit field, which was the first offshore development in the Barents Sea, according to Statoils website. The new drilling permit issued to Statoil is contingent upon the operator securing all other permits and consents required by other authorities prior to commencing drilling activities, the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) said. In a separate statement, the NPD said it granted Aker BP a drilling permit to drill a wildcat well in a production license in the central part of the North Sea bordering the UK shelf. This permit also hinges on operator Aker BP, which holds 65 percent of the license, securing all other authorizations. The other shareholder in the North Sea license is Lundin Norway AS with 35 percent. Statoil and Lundin have recently decided to allocate more funds to Arctic drilling, especially since the oil price rise has been accompanied by a major discovery for Lundin and a likely future major discovery for Statoil. Related: Are Mexicos Oil Reserves Almost Depleted? Last month, Norway announced initial plans to open a record number of oil exploration blocks in the Barents Sea. The Ministry of Petroleum and Energy is proposing 102 blocks in the 24th licensing round, of which nine blocks are in the Norwegian Sea, and a record-high 93 blocks are in the Barents Sea. A considerable number of the blocks proposed in the Barents Sea are located north of the northernmost oil discovery in Norway. By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Lukoil, Russias second-biggest oil producer, will discuss later this year the possible sale of its Ukhta refinery and one-third of its filling stations in Russia, according to Vladimir Nekrasov, the companys first vice president for refining. Lukoil is expected to make a final decision on the possible sale in the fall, Nekrasov told reporters, as quoted by Reuters. Lukoils investment committee will review the proposal in July, and the final decision is expected to be made in October or November this year, Russian media quoted Nekrasov as saying. Last week, Russian news outlet RBC reported that Lukoil is looking for a buyer for its Ukhta refinerywhich has an annual capacity of 4 million tonsand is reportedly ready to sell it at a discount to its market price. Lukoil is ready to sell Ukhta refinerytogether with the filling stations or separatelyand would invest the proceeds in upstream projects in Russia, a source at Lukoil told RBC. The profitability of the Ukhta refinery has shrunk due to higher taxes and the general downturn in the industry amid the oil price crash. Some analysts reckon the refinery could cost no more than $50 million, but RBC analysts believe that the price of the asset would greatly depend on additional terms of a possible deal such as supply of oil or obligation to supply oil products. Related: Tanker Traffic Points At Much Tighter Oil Markets According to RBC sources, the most likely candidates to buy the refinery include Russian companies Russneft (not to be confused with Rosneft), ForteInvest, and New Stream Group. In June last year, Lukoils chief executive Vagit Alekperov told Reuters in an interview that the company might consider spinning off or selling its downstream assets in Europe to focus on exploration. Lukoil is shifting its focus to upstream assets and development both in Russia and abroad, Alekperov noted back then. By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: When Sun TV's net profit went up by 17.6 per cent in 2015/16, its Executive Chairman Kalanithi Maran's annual compensation also rose 16.6 per cent. With Apollo Tyres' net profit rising 32.2 per cent in 2015/16, Chairman and Managing Director Onkar S. Kanwar got a raise of 28.2 per cent. Ramco Cements' net profit increased a staggering 130.4 per cent in 2015/16; accordingly, Chairman and Managing Director P.R. Ramasubrahmaneya Rajha got a whopping 92.5 per cent increase in yearly emoluments. The list of the highest-paid executive heads of BSE 500 companies in India includes seven promoter-executives - those of Sun TV, Hero MotoCorp, Apollo Tyres, Divis Laboratories, Lupin, Amara Raja Group and Ramco Cements - and three professionals: A.M. Naik of Larsen & Toubro, C.P. Gurnani of Tech Mahindra and Vishal Sikka of Infosys. With the former group, the correlation is straightforward - their average emoluments increased 0.69 per cent against every 1 per cent rise in bottom lines of their companies in 2015/16. Promoters vs. Professionals This is hardly surprising, considering promoter-CEOs are in a position to decide their own remuneration. "All directors on a company's board - which has to endorse executive salaries - owe their presence on it to the promoter, even when they are independent directors," says an HR head of a global workforce management solutions company who did not want to be named. "Mostly, they do not question the promoter-CEOs' compensation." This is true even when promoters, as in some of the above seven seven cases, while retaining their positions, have largely passed on effective control of their companies to their sons and daughters. For different reasons, no similar link can be established for professional CEOs in the top 10 list. Vishal Sikka joined Infosys only in 2014, so no comparison with previous years is possible. Gurnani's income dropped 72.6 per cent in 2015/16, compared to the previous year even though Tech Mahindra's net profit rose 42.7 per cent, but that was only because he had exercised a part of his stock options in 2014/15, resulting in his total income that year going up a massive 539 per cent. Again, A.M. Naik's income spiked 142.3 per cent in 2015/16 compared to the previous year, even though L&T's net profit that year rose just 5 per cent, mainly because he got a one-time "perquisites compensation" of Rs38.85 crore. HR experts maintain that there is no direct correlation between a company's profits and its professional CEO's total compensation. "A significant amount of compensation is linked to the individual's potential in the eyes of the company's board, how it views his/her ability to turn around the company and lead it in the future," says Rituparna Chakraborty, President, Indian Staffing Federation. "But the size of salary packages shows that the new-age companies are compensating their CEOs well." "It is also because companies want the top executives to be happy," says J.K. Agrawal, Managing Director, BTI Consultants. "If the company is doing well, credit goes to the CEO. If it isn't, they still get a pay increase because the company doesn't want their motivation to get impacted." However, if bonuses or commissions paid to CEOs are looked at separately, and the list of highest-paid professional CEOs expanded from three to eight - including Aditya Ghosh of Interglobe Aviation (Indigo Airlines), N. Chandrasekaran of TCS (in 2015/16, before taking over as Chairman of Tata Sons), D. Bhattacharya of Hindalco Industries, Y.C. Deveshwar of ITC and Sanjiv Mehta of Hindustan Unilever, a clear connection does emerge. In seven cases out of eight, if the CEO's variable pay has risen, so has the company's profit after tax (PAT) and total income. "The rationale of variable pay ensures that CEOs get properly paid only if they deliver," says Suresh Raina, Managing Partner, Hunt Partners, an executive search firm. The exception is Hindalco's Managing Director D. Bhattacharya, whose variable pay (performance bonus) rose to Rs6.87 crore in 2015/16 from Rs6.34 crore in 2014/15, even though his company's PAT declined to Rs607 crore from Rs925 crore the previous year. The reasons could be two-fold: first, all companies dealing in metals - Hindalco is a global leader in rolling aluminium - have suffered lately due to a global price crash and are only slowly recovering, and second, Bhattacharya has spent 13 years with the company, during which its market cap rose from Rs9,026 crore to Rs27,557 crore. "Earlier, a professional CEO's relationship with his company's promoter was much stronger and he would stay much longer with a company," says Raina. "Businesses were smaller and CEOs were paid a lot more in kind, such as company accommodation and gifts." Overall, in the top 100 companies by market cap, compensation of CEOs - promoter-CEOs and professionals lumped together - has risen at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18 per cent between 2011/12 and 2015/16. (See Perks Rule.) But separate statistics also show that the rise has been mainly in variable pay - while variable pay increased in the range of 150-300 per cent in the same four-year period, the CEOs' fixed pay rose a mere 7-20 per cent. While the variable pay component of the CEOs' salary was earlier between 20 per cent and 40 per cent, it is now 40-60 per cent in large-cap companies, according to Aon Hewitt data. Even promoter-CEOs earn most of their salary from bonuses and commissions - bonus/ex-gratia comprised 81.6 per cent of Kalanithi Maran's remuneration in 2015/16, 77.15 per cent of Onkar Kanwar's. Short-term vs Long-term Variable pay is of two types: short-term incentives (STIS) such as bonuses and commissions and long-term incentives (LTIS) like stock options, restricted stock (which can be transferred only after prescribed time conditions are met) and performance shares (which can be transferred only after prescribed time and performance conditions are met). "Increasingly, and more so in large-cap companies, the LTI component of the variable pay has been increasing and is now between 30 per cent and 50 per cent," says Anubhav Gupta, Head, Executive Compensation and Governance, Aon Hewitt. "The division between STI and LTI ensures that CEO compensation is not just driving quarter-on-quarter performance, but is also linked to long-term value creation." Companies that have an objective to get listed or raise funding and are seeing a certain growth spurt use LTIs to share wealth, says Sonu Iyer, People Advisory Services, Partner & Leader - India Region, EY. Not surprisingly, within LTI, too, restricted stock options and performance shares are gaining ground. According to Aon Hewitt data, the prevalence of these two has gone up to 37 per cent and 29 per cent, respectively. Compared to stock options, restricted stock and performance shares are a more equitable means of compensation, since stock price is often temporarily affected by factors which have nothing to do with the CEO's performance. Indeed, some HR experts feel that the nature of incentives provided to CEOs, short term or long term, should be regularly re-examined. In fact, another important factor that is closely being watched is the metric on which variable pay is to be paid out. The key defining metrics of business performance vary for each sector and CEO's incentives should reflect the progress on company's objectives, rather than only absolute outcomes, says Iyer of EY. The overall idea, she says, is that the executive's pay should reflect the company's performance. "Sink and sail with the organisation is the spirit with which executive pay is being structured." As compensation increases in coming years, its variable component is likely to get even bigger. In the West, the variable component of a CEO's pay is as high as 89 per cent (STI and LTI combined) in really large companies. (See Performance Is All.) Indian companies are trending in the same direction. However, with increased focus on pay for risk, the caveat here is that it is fine now as the economy is growing, but if any of macroeconomic factors worsen, there will be a very different dip that will happen because of variability in pay, says Iyer of EY. Some Are More Equal But while CEOs are prospering, there has been no commensurate trickle-down effect. Average salaries in even highly prosperous companies are not increasing the way CEO emoluments are. "The rise in CEO salaries is creating a disproportionate disparity with the median wage of the company," says Shelly Singh, Chief Business Officer, PeopleStrong, a HR services firm. The salaries of company employees, both executive and non-executive, have been rising at a much slower pace. Growth in non-executive employee remuneration across companies has been 8 per cent to 10 per cent in the last two years, while that of executives has been around 20 per cent. Worryingly enough, for the former category, salary growth has been slowing, falling to 8 per cent in 2015/16 from about 17 per cent in 2012. For executives, it has increased from 9 per cent in 2012 to 23 per cent in 2015/16. The current ratio of total emoluments of the top 10 executives of a company to its median salary is a staggering 700:1. Among professional CEOs, the ratio is around 500:1; for promoter CEOs, it is 900:1. In comparison, in the US, the CEO-to-worker ratio at 168 companies with revenues over $1 billion was 70:1, according to a report by US board intelligence solutions provider Equilar. Indeed, in many Indian companies, the gap is even higher - Jayadev Galla, promoter-MD of the Amara Raja Group, earns 2,448 times the median salary of his company's employees, while Onkar Kanwar of Apollo Tyres gets 1,425 times, and Desh Bandhu Gupta of Lupin, 1,317 times. (See Staggering Gap.) "It shows promoter-CEOs are brazenly taking care of themselves," says an HR consultant, who prefers not to be named. "They pay themselves whatever they feel they can get away with. A company's success depends on teamwork. No one drives growth all by himself, especially in large conglomerates. But India has borrowed the US concept that a great CEO makes all the difference - an erroneous idea that arose after Jack Welch as CEO transformed GE." Raina of Hunt Partners, however, suggests that the additional pressures on Indian CEOs - compared to their Western counterparts - justify their high remuneration. "There are only two or three top players in most sectors, which put great pressure on CEOs of these companies to maintain their leadership position," he says. "These companies are also expected to grow much faster than those in the West, because India is a growing economy." Hindustan Unilever, for instance, is growing at 8-10 per cent in India, whereas globally the company's revenue is increasing at only 3-4 per cent. "A company's function also determines the median wage of its employees and in turn its ratio to the CEO's income," says Raina. A company such as Infosys has to employ a large number of coders and software engineers, whose market value is relatively modest - hence the gap between the median wage and the CEO's salary would be high. In contrast, Tata Communications, for instance, which builds communications infrastructure, would have fewer but more highly-paid specialists, reducing the salary gap. Besides, having brought in a global CEO - Vishal Sikka was formerly with SAP in the US - his earlier salary had to be surpassed. A number of other Indian companies - such as Tata Motors, currently headed by Guenter Karl Butschek, formerly with Airbus in the US - have also appointed global CEOs who have to be compensated accordingly. Some HR leaders also feel that a company's median salary depends on numerous factors such as the percentage of workforce on rolls and on contract, and the percentage based in India and outside. T. Muralidharan, Chairman, TMI - a recruitment agency, strikes the middle path. "A CEO's contribution to his company's profitability is much more than that of the average employee," he says. "His salary increase could be two or three times that of the company average, but beyond that it isn't quite right." Future Trends The market cap of the top 100 BSE companies is growing at a slower pace than the total remuneration of its executives, which shows that companies are paying more than before to retain top talent. Job creation and employee headcount are reducing as large companies increasingly turn to automation. "In fact, it is themid-sized companies which are creating more jobs," says Raina. There is also the possibility that the widening gap between CEO (and top executive) remuneration and that of the average employee may lead to shareholders asking uncomfortable questions. It has happened in the US. In India, too, a start was made by Infosys founder N.R. Narayana Murthy recently, when he questioned the rationale behind a 55 per cent increase in Vishal Sikka's compensation. But HR experts are sceptical about the trend catching on. "It happened only because Murthy is now a shareholder," says Muralidharan. "Usually, as long as they get their dividends, shareholders don't raise any such concerns. Perhaps the financial institutions, which are these companies' biggest creditors, should begin to raise questions." Data inputs by Niti Kiran The deadline to sign up for this free community event that is open to all is Nov. 16. 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." Democratic congressional candidate Patrick Nelson on Friday issued the following statement regarding U.S. military air strikes on Syria. "First and foremost, I condemn the actions of the Assad regime for their crimes against humanity. The use of chemical weapons has been banned for nearly a century and anyone who authorizes their use should be placed before a war crimes tribunal. "I commend the President for his concern for the well being of innocent civilians caught in a war zone and hope this will lead to his reconsideration of the suspension of the refugee program. However, President Trump's unilateral actions in Syria are unacceptable. He has acted outside the bounds of his authority and should have had Congress weigh in on this decision before moving to strike. History has shown us over the last 15 years that unilateral intervention makes the situation worse and leads to more deaths of innocent civilians. An example would be the disastrous war in Iraq which helped precipitate this current crisis. "We do not want to continue on the path of endless war in the Middle East which strains our economy, threatens our national security, and costs the lives of Americans and civilians abroad. "The United States should not try to solve this problem alone. We must work in concert with our allies in the Middle East and around the world to find solutions that can work. Unilateral military action does not work. "I am calling on Congress to stay in session to debate this important matter of national security and demand the President refrain from further unilateral action until such time as Congress authorizes it should they choose to do so." Nelson, a political activist and Bernie Sanders delegate to the 2016 Democratic National Convention, is seeking the Democratic nomination to challenge U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-Willsboro, in the 21st Congressional District in 2018. The Senate must reject Trumps Supreme Court nominee. Following a hearing in which Neil Gorsuch steadfastly refused to answer many of the questions presented to him, he lacks the 60 votes required for confirmation. He lacks those votes for good reason. First, his nomination is illegitimate, as it comes following the Senates failure to even consider the previous nominee selected by President Obama in March 2016. In fact, even before Obama revealed Merrick Garlands nomination, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced he would not permit a Senate hearing that year for any nominee, despite the Senates constitutional obligation and historical precedent. Gorsuch also failed to meet the 60-vote threshold because his judicial opinions demonstrate how his personal ideology pollutes his judicial integrity. Finally, Trump is under investigation by the FBI, as well as the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. Its public knowledge that Russia interfered with our election to favor Trump, but we dont yet know whether Trump and his team actively participated in the Russian scam. If Mitch McConnell persists in ramming Gorsuchs nomination through the Senate this week by changing the Senates procedural rules to permit a mere majority vote for lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court, he will not only compromise the integrity of the Senate and the Court, but he will stand complicit with Trumps treachery should it be learned that Trump colluded with Russia to win the presidency. GLENS FALLS The success of last falls Adirondack Film Festival has spurred filmmakers to consider the area for upcoming film projects and city leaders to find ways to promote it as a great place to make and see films. The arts community raved about the success of the film festival, said Dan Hall, president of the Glens Falls Common Council, councilman-at-large and co-chairman of the Downtown Revitalization Initiative Committee. The large amount of support for a first-year festival led community leaders to consider forging more relationships with filmmakers. The formation of a film commission is in the plan, said Andrew Meader, president of the Adirondack Theatre Festival board, who has been working with EDC Warren County. We are in talks with someone about a short film here this summer ... next week we are meeting with the film producer to look at the Glens Falls Civic Center. The Civic Center is a state-qualified film facility. To collect New York tax credits, filmmakers must shoot at least some scenes in a qualified facility so, as Meader said, having one is Glens Falls is a big draw. When Glens Falls was awarded $10 million from the states Downtown Revitalization Initiative, earmarking a portion of those funds for expanding the film initiative topped the list of proposed uses for the state award, Hall said. It was a high priority to help move it (the film festival) along, Hall said, explaining that the initiative money is to be used for projects the city would not be able to do without it. According to Meader, bringing filmmaking to a region can boost the economy. Even a low-budget film can bring in $15,000 to $30,000 per day of filming, he said. Its heads in beds, they hire caterers, they buy coffee. Its much like tourism. The DRI spending plan for film expansion in Glens Falls has two components: Expand the Adirondack Film Festival, with $75,000 for capital improvements and $60,000 for staffing and marketing; and create a Glens Falls Film Commission, with $50,000 for recruitment and promotion as a filming location and $25,000 for staffing. Meader said the capital improvements would include things like projectors, screens, computers and other things that would help the festival expand. City leaders submitted at the end of February the final DRI spending plan to the state-appointed committee for review. Once it makes its way through the committee, the plan goes to the governor for approval, expected to come sometime this summer. Meader said a film commission would be responsible for attracting filmmakers to the area and assisting them on location. It could help with finding locations, looking at buildings, getting crew, he said. It could have a database of crew available. Its shocking how many people who live here who have worked in films. Last year, Meader and Ed Bartholomew, president of EDC Warren County, got a taste of working with filmmakers as several films were shot here, at least in part. It was quite by chance that the filming of Radium Girls came to Warren County. But after Emmy-award winning filmmaker Lydia Dean Pilcher was invited to a Meryl Streep screenwriting retreat at Wiawaka Center for Women in Lake George, she knew this was the place. The film, based on a true story, explores the lives of two fictional teen sisters, who, like the real-life radium girls, paint glow-in-the-dark watch dials for the American Radium Company in the 1920s and 1930s. Other film crews spent a few days last year filming at the battlegrounds in Lake George for the film Derailed. The Adirondack Film Festival drew filmmakers from Mexico, Vancouver and several states to Glens Falls, a first visit for many. Meader said all of them fell in love with Glens Falls. According to Chad Rabinovitz, the festivals director, many expressed interest in coming back. Its exciting, multiple filmmakers who came to the film festival have already approached us about coming here to shoot a film, Rabinovitz said. Thats really cool. People loved seeing the town. The missing piece is a film commission, he said. The 2017 Adirondack Film Festival is set for Oct. 20 and 21, and as Rabinovitz said on Thursday, organizers are already in the thick of it, securing films and talking to filmmakers. GLENS FALLS The New York Civil Liberties Union is adding its voice to a Hudson Falls political activists push to correct population inequity in the city of Glens Falls ward representation system. The distribution of population among the citys five wards differs by more than the 10 percent difference allowed under the U.S. Constitution, wrote John Friedman, a lawyer for the Capital Region chapter of New York Civil Liberties Union, in a letter that was being mailed to Mayor Jack Diamond on Friday. We look forward to learning what actions the city plans to take to remedy this situation in the most responsible way possible, Friedman wrote. The city Common Council will discuss the concern once the city receives the letter, said Councilman at-Large Dan Hall, speaking on behalf of Diamond, who was away from City Hall on Friday. Its not something thats been on our radar, Hall said. Christopher Schmidt, the Hudson Falls political activist, posted a copy of the letter on Facebook and contacted The Post-Star on Thursday evening, before the letter was actually mailed. The inequity affects the citys representation on the Common Council and the Warren County Board of Supervisors. Generally, there are three actions a municipality can take to correct the inequity: Redraw ward boundaries Establish a weighted voting system Restructure representation to an at-large basis for all offices. At least one of those options would require a revision of the City Charter. Earlier this year, Diamond announced 5th Ward resident Jeff Flagg would head a volunteer City Charter review commission, if the city is successful in getting a state government efficiency grant to pay for legal consulting, clerical work and printing and publishing of documents. Friedman, the Civil Liberties Union lawyer, wrote Diamond at the request of Schmidt, the acting chairman of the Washington County Libertarian Party, said Melanie Trimble, director of the regional Civil Liberties Union chapter. Schmidt has long been an advocate for equitable representation and was among those who pushed for the town of Queensbury to redraw its ward boundaries, a multiyear process that was completed this winter. This is not the first time the Civil Liberties Union has urged the city to address its ward system, and the latest letter was not as strongly worded as a letter the New York Civil Liberties Union wrote the city in 2007, threatening litigation if the disparity was not remedied. The (latest) letter was just to start a discussion just to open up discussion, said Trimble, of the Civil Liberties Union. We are not at all considering litigation at this time, but we are not ruling it out down the road. The citys voting ward boundaries and representation system have not been updated since the system was established in 1963. Population shifts since then have resulted in wide population disparities among the five wards. The city does not have a recent breakdown of population by ward, said Wayne Wright, a clerk in the City Clerks office. In 2003, population ranged from 1,829 in the 4th Ward to 3,843 in the 3rd Ward, making the 4th Ward about 36 percent over-represented and the 3rd Ward about 34 percent under-represented, then City Attorney Scott Reid said at the time. The topic has been raised numerous times in the past, including in 2009 by then 3rd Ward Councilman Scott Watson and by 4th Ward Supervisor candidate William Loeb; in 2007 by a group of city business leaders and government officials; and in 2003 by then Councilwoman at-Large Kay Saunders, lawyer Martin Meyer and then city Republican Chairman Stephen Rice. QUEENSBURY A life sentence for murder isnt enough for Robert M. Henry, according to Warren County prosecutors. The county district attorneys office has filed paperwork in Warren County Court seeking to have Henry declared a persistent violent felon, which would allow for Judge John Hall to impose life sentences for his lesser convictions in the Kevin Jenks murder case. Henry was convicted of second-degree murder and lesser counts of robbery, burglary and grand larceny in connection with the July death of Jenks in Glens Falls. He and co-defendant Kevin Chapman went to Jenks home to rob him, and Jenks, 58, was choked to death after he was bound. Henry, 46, of Ilion, faces up to 25 years to life for the murder charge, but because of his extensive criminal record, could receive life sentences for the lesser charges as well if he is deemed a persistent felon. Those sentences could be imposed consecutively to the murder sentence. Hall canceled Henrys sentencing that had been set for next week and instead scheduled a hearing on the persistent felon issue for May 5. That has resulted in Henrys sentencing, scheduled for Thursday, being postponed for a third time since his conviction. Court records filed this week by the district attorneys office highlight Henrys criminal record that stretches back more than three decades and includes four felony convictions and three prior stints in state prison. The three prison sentences stemmed from felony robbery convictions in New York City between 1991 and 2007. He appears to have spent fewer than three years between 1991 and 2014 out of state prison, based on state corrections records. It is clear that lengthy periods of incarceration and multiple state prison sentences have not deterred the defendant from committing violent acts against innocent victims, Warren County Assistant District Attorney Matthew Burin wrote. Henrys lawyer, Tucker Stanclift, said he was reviewing the documentation on Henrys record to determine how to proceed. The sentencing issues in this case are complex, he said. Chapmans sentencing is set at 11 a.m. Thursday in Warren County Court. The 50-year-old Herkimer resident agreed to a plea deal that includes a prison sentence of between 15-to-life and 18-to-life when he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder last fall. He testified against Henry and blamed him for Jenks killing. A former Saratoga County man who has been jailed in North Carolina since early 2015 for allegedly killing his girlfriends young son will likely stand trial later this year with a plea deal looking unlikely, a prosecutor said Friday. Albert Dave Morgan II, 37, remains in the county jail in Brunswick County, North Carolina, charged with first-degree murder for the January 2015 beating death of 15-month-old Brayden Ray. Morgan, who was on parole, was living with Braydens mother, Angel Ray, at the time, and allegedly killed the boy when the mother was not home. Angel Ray was charged because she lied to police as they investigated her sons injuries. She pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact to child abuse, a felony, in September 2015, and agreed to testify against Morgan. There has been no trial date set in Morgans case, but the Brunswick County District Attorneys Office was ready for trial when the court directed that the case be tried, said Lee Bollinger, the Brunswick County assistant district attorney who is prosecuting the case. Morgans lawyer, Michael Ramos, is one of just a few court-appointed lawyers in eastern North Carolina who has been designated to handle first-degree murder cases, and he has been assigned a number of them around North Carolina, Bollinger said. That caseload has, in part, resulted in the delays to bring Morgans case to trial, Bollinger explained. He said there had been no recent discussions to resolve the case without a trial. If we were trying to resolve it by plea, we wouldnt be setting a trial date, Bollinger said. We are committed to get this case done later this year. The case has not been weakened by the delays, Bollinger said. She (Ray) has pleaded and is ready to testify, and his video statements arent going to change, Bollinger said. Ray, who also is a former resident of the South Glens Falls area, was released from jail after her guilty plea and remains in North Carolina. Morgan is charged with first-degree murder, which in North Carolina can bring the death penalty. Prosecutors have not publicly disclosed whether they will seek to have him executed if he is convicted. Ramos has not returned phone calls for comment since Morgans arrest, including one Friday. Morgan has a long history of violent offenses in New York. He had been paroled from the New York state prison system in September 2014, after serving the fourth state prison term for his fifth felony conviction. He served at least 7.5 of the past 13 years in state prison before that release, state corrections records show. At least three of his prior felony arrests involved violence or threats toward others, including a June 2007 attack on two women one of them his mother, the other his girlfriend in the victims South Glens Falls home. Before the North Carolina killing, Morgan had accrued at least five felony convictions, from at least six felony arrests in Warren and Saratoga counties, since he was 18 years old. Register for more free articles. Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading. Get Government & Politics updates in your inbox! Stay up-to-date on the latest in local and national government and political topics with our newsletter. Sign up! Already a Subscriber? Already a Subscriber? Sign in Terms of Service Privacy Policy By one count, state Sen. Robert Ortt of Niagara County became the 40th New York state legislator to face legal or ethical charges since 2000. Ortts predecessor, George Maziarz, would have been No. 41 on the Legislatures wall of shame had he not retired from public office in 2014 under an ethics cloud. Ortt faces three felony counts of filing a false instrument, for allegedly arranging a no-show job for his wife and funneling payments to her through a pass-through entity. Maziarz faces five felony counts of filing a false instrument, for allegedly hiding $95,000 in campaign payments to a former Senate staffer who resigned over sexual harassment charges. Both men pleaded not guilty and vow to fight the accusations. The charges against Ortt and Maziarz, brought by Attorney General Eric Schneiderman after an investigation by the state Board of Elections, got scant attention as the battle raged in Washington over health care legislation. Compared to the bloodletting going on there, corruption in Albany is a dull toothache a nagging pain that New Yorkers seem resigned to live with. Clearly, voters arent up in arms over the lack of progress on ethics reforms. For the seventh year in a row, Gov. Andrew Cuomo proposed an ethics package in his State of the State address. He included it in his proposed state budget, the starting point for negotiations with the Senate and Assembly. It included such chestnuts as closing the LLC loophole (the spigot through which vast sums of money flow into political campaigns), public campaign financing, a cap on legislators outside income, expansion of the Freedom of Information Law to cover the Legislature, among others. The Legislature seems to have little appetite for it. The Democrat-controlled Assemblys one-house budget adopted most of Cuomos ideas (closing the LLC loophole, for example) but did not go along with others. The Republican-controlled Senates one-house budget included none of Cuomos ethics proposals. Only the Senate Independent Democratic Conference, a group of eight breakaway Democrats who share power with the Republicans, offered unqualified support for Cuomos reform package. To legislators reticence, add the complications of negotiating a budget when Congress and the Trump administration is about to pull the rug out from under state finances. The prospects for a meaningful agreement on ethics and voting reforms by the April 1 budget deadline are dim. What are the chances Albany will take them up after the budget? Dimmer, unless the public makes a stink. Which it never does. Even as the list of politicians brought up on charges grows ever longer. If you cant muster any more outrage at corruption in Albany, heres one concrete action you can take. On the back of Novembers ballot, you will find a constitutional amendment that would reduce or strip the state pension from public officials convicted of a felony related to their official duties. Vote yes. Provided by Clem Richardson Clem Richardson is a mental health counselor. Last December, he participated in a two-day summit on black male youth at the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee. How many of you feel violence is always necessary to resolve conflict? Clem Richardson asked a room full of black middle-school-aged boys. None raised their hands. What about sometimes? Richardson, 51, a mental health counselor, asked next. This time, five of the 40 boys raised their hands. I think some people feel as though its either them or me, one boy said. That drew laughter from some of the other participants in a summit at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Young people often laugh during Richardson's seminars because its hard for them to carry the emotional wounds that result from their constant exposure to violence, he said. Black children are more likely than whites to experience beatings, shootings, robberies, sexual assaults and other types of violence, but are less likely to get treatment for it, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. And as the Journal Sentinels A Time to Heal project reported last month, untreated traumatic stress, exacerbated by the broken dreams of a depressed economy, can have devastating consequences on the community and society. A Time to Heal describes how violence affects every aspect of life from generation to generation until someone breaks the cycle. *** Richardson speaks from personal experience, not just the perspective of a counselor. He grew up in the 3800 block of N. 21st St. in Milwaukees 53206 ZIP code, which has the highest black male incarceration rate in the country. Hes had a gun pointed at him several times by gang members, has seen friends shot, has lost friends to gun violence and prison, and has seen family members victimized. Its a feeling of hopelessness, he said. Imagine seeing violence and being around violence all the time. Its enough to make anyone not care if they live or die. He had no one to turn to for help everyone he knew was going through the same experience. This is whats going on in our community, and we need to address it, he said. Richardsons father had 21 children with 10 different women. Richardson was number 20. My pops was a rolling stone. he was emotionally unavailable to me for most of my childhood, he said. Richardsons mother raised him and his brother the best she could. It was hard on her because she didnt want to be on welfare. She worked as a custodian with Milwaukee County, and we were latchkey kids, he said. When Richardson was 10, one of his teenage sisters was beaten and held hostage by her boyfriend. Another teen sister was shot in the arm with a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun in a nightclub, requiring more than 150 staples. By the time he was 13, Richardson was numb to violence. In junior high school, he started selling marijuana at school. When one of his homeboys was fatally shot, Richardson figured he would be next. *** Fellowship in Public Service Journalism Reporting on this project is supported by a fellowship in public service journalism sponsored by the Greater Milwaukee Foundation, which aims to inform and foster civic engagement around building healthier communities. The Foundation has no involvement in the reporting, editing or presentation of this project by the Journal Sentinel. A lot of young black boys today are dealing with the same conditions Richardson faced growing up. It may be worse, he said. We know poverty is worse. In 2016, Milwaukee was the seventh most distressed city in America, with half of the population considered economically distressed, according to a study by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers. Living in a violent community can cause children the same type of post-traumatic stress experienced by war veterans, according to mental health experts. In Milwaukee, thousands of African-American children who have grown up in warlike conditions never have received mental health treatment. In the hood, you can be labeled crazy or dangerous but you dont want to be labeled weak. Thats how some people view seeking mental health care, Richardson said. In 1989, after graduating from Vincent High School, Richardson was arrested for possession of a controlled substance and sent to the House of Correction. Being locked up gave him time to think. In 1996, he checked himself into rehab and turned his life over to God. By then, he was a father, and he finally had something to live for: His three children. *** While in drug treatment at the Matt Talbot Recovery Center at N. 27th St. and W. North Ave., Richardson felt free to talk about the violent life he had experienced without fear of being judged. By the time he completed his stay, counselors had grown impressed by how good he was at motivating others by sharing his story. Two years later, they offered him a job working with other young men. I knew what most of them were going through and where they had come from because I lived it, too, he said. A counselor convinced him to go to college. In 2004, he earned a bachelors degree in human services and social work from an Upper Iowa University satellite campus in West Allis. Five years later, he earned his masters degree in professional counseling from Concordia University in Mequon. Hes now a counselor at Project Return, a nonprofit agency that helps people being released from jail or prison. Richardson works with men and youths. Instead of hustling for street cred, hes working to save one of the most vulnerable populations in Milwaukee black boys. A 2014 study by the Annie E. Casey Foundation ranked Wisconsin last in educational and financial achievement for African-American children. To reach that conclusion, the foundation examined factors such as premature birth rates, reading scores, teen pregnancy, the number of students graduating from high school on time and the number of children living in poverty. Getting black boys to talk openly and honestly about their pain is a start, said Richardson, who is married and now has five children. He shares his story with young people to let them know theyre not alone and that they can survive if they get help. He tells them that six of his mothers seven kids were incarcerated or on drugs. He tells them he sold and used crack cocaine for 10 years to dull the pain. He tells them they can be more than the gangbangers or drug dealers they see on TV. What Richardson sees as the biggest difference with city children today compared with when he was growing up is these kids are afraid to live, where we were afraid to die. Our kids dont see enough black men walking around in business suits and briefcases unless that person has drugs, Richardson said. So many black men are locked up here that our children have already planned their own funerals. They know what they want to wear when they are in their caskets. When Richardson was growing up, black men were telling him that he could be more and to stop selling drugs. Today, men are encouraging young people to keep banging and selling. Changing this negative mentality is the main reason Richardson works so hard. Getting them to look beyond right now wont be easy, Richardson said. But if we dont at least start, then we will lose this generation. James E. Causey is a columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Email: james.causey@jrn.com. Twitter: @jecausey. What Happened to Us? A Community Conversation James Causey has been examining a series of issues that plague Milwaukee through the experiences of his third-grade classmates from Samuel Clemens Elementary School. That project "What Happened to Us?" begins April 30 in the Journal Sentinel. The Journal Sentinel and the Greater Milwaukee Foundation will sponsor A Community Conversation about the project and the issues it raises at 6 p.m. May 4 at the Washington Park Senior Center, 4420 W Vliet St., Milwaukee. Registration required. Welcome Guest! You Are Here: Gabbard said Trump "acted recklessly" in authorizing the strikes on Shayrat airfield and nearby military infrastructure controlled by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The operation was a response to a chemical weapons attack that killed at least 80 civilians in northwestern Syria earlier this week. Gabbard said: "It angers and saddens me that President Trump has taken the advice of war hawks and escalated our illegal regime change war to overthrow the Syrian government." The Democrat congresswoman made similar remarks after returning from a "fact-finding trip" to Syria and Lebanon days after Trump's inauguration. The congresswoman, an early supporter of Bernie Sanders, met with President-elect Donald Trump in late November to discuss how to avoid "the drumbeats of war" that may lead to US intervention in Syria, among other national-security concerns, Business Insider's Natasha Bertrand reported in January. Gabbard on Thursday night called the strike "short-sighted," and said it would lead to "more dead civilians, more refugees ... and a possible nuclear war between the United States and Russia." Her statement represents one of the strongest condemnations of Trump's strike order, and a departure from a bipartisan group of congressional lawmakers who cautiously applauded the commander-in-chief's action late Thursday night. The contacts included meetings with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak and the head of a Russian state-owned bank, Vnesheconombank, both of which took place in December. The security clearance questionnaire leaked to The Times requires that those applying for access to top-secret national security information report all communications with foreign government officials over the previous 7 years. Kushner's lawyer, Jamie Gorelick, called the omissions an error and said that Kushner told the FBI the day after he submitted the form on January 18 that he would provide the agency with additional information. According to Gorelick, Kushner told the FBI: "During the presidential campaign and transition period, I served as a point-of-contact for foreign officials trying to reach the president-elect. I had numerous contacts with foreign officials in this capacity. I would be happy to provide additional information about these contacts." Kushner has been granted an interim security clearance Gorelick says Kushner will provide the FBI with complete information regarding his contacts when the agency interviews him. While the security questionnaire states that "withholding, misrepresenting, or falsifying information" could lead to the loss of clearance, denial of a job, or prosecution, applicants are often permitted to amend the forms and avoid adverse consequences if the omissions are determined to be unintentional. The fact that Kushner failed to report meetings with Russian officials is notable given the ongoing congressional and FBI investigations into relations between Trump associates and Russian officials. The Senate Intelligence Committee announced in late March that it is planning to question Kushner about the meetings with Kislyak and the bank head as part of its broader investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and the possibility that Trump's associates colluded with Russia. Vnesheconombank is under US sanctions imposed by the Obama administration following Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea and attacks in Ukraine. This is not the first time Trump's top advisers have failed to report their communications with Russian officials. Earlier this year, Trump's national security adviser, Michael Flynn, resigned when it became clear he had discussed sanctions with Kislyak and misrepresented those conversations to Vice President Mike Pence. The question for US President Donald Trump now becomes: How deeply does the US want to get involved in the most complex situation in the Middle East? The Tomahawk missiles, launched from the USS Ross and the USS Porter at dawn local time on Friday, are the first US strikes on the Assad regime, according to a statement from the Pentagon. The strikes have received broad approval from more mainstream Republicans, such as House Speaker Paul Ryan and Rep. Jason Chaffetz, and cautious approval from Democrats. Hours before the US launched the missiles, Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee and former secretary of state, said the previous administration "should have been more willing to confront Assad" after previous chemical attacks killed thousands of innocent civilians. There are conflicting reports about how much damage the strikes caused. The BBC has reported that the Syrian airbase is "now out of service" and that "all jets seem to be destroyed." And Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis said that the strike "has severely damaged or destroyed Syrian aircraft and support infrastructure and equipment at Shayrat airfield, reducing the Syrian government's ability to deliver chemical weapons." ABC News, however, the effectiveness of the US strikes was "extremely low" and that only 23 of the 59 missiles hit their targets. In any case, many Syrians are jubilant. "This is the happiest news I have heard in my life," a resident of Khan Sheikhoun, where the chemical attack took place, told reporter Richard Hall. "It was absolutely the right decision," Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, told Business Insider on Friday morning. "For the first time in six years, the dictator Assad understands that if he uses chemical weapons against kids he will be punished and there will be consequences." Others used Facebook and Twitter to express their relief that Assad had finally been held accountable. "Never again" must not become "Well, maybe just this once" Military and national-security experts broadly agreed that the strikes were a good move. But they also said the attack was largely symbolic a focused strike on a narrow target and wouldn't complicate the Assad regime's ability to carry out large-scale massacres in the future. "The American strike on Shayrat air base in Syria is an appropriate response to [Assad's] mass homicide," said Fred Hof, the director of the Atlantic Council's Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East and former US special adviser on Syria. It "will either be a one-time, one-off, fire-and-forget retaliation for a heinous chemical-weapons assault on civilians, or it will serve as a signal to the Assad regime and its allies that the free ride for mass murder in Syria is now over," Hof said. If the strikes were meant as a message, the Assad regime and its allies have not taken it sitting down. The Syrian army immediately accused the US of "blatant aggression," saying the strikes killed six people and caused "big material losses." The army also said it would respond by continuing to "crush terrorism" an indication that it will continue to attack areas held by rebels, who have long been characterized by the Assad regime as terrorists. Meanwhile, Iran and Russia, two staunch Assad allies, are slamming the US for the strikes and doubling down on their efforts to defend the regime. On Friday morning, the Kremlin condemned the US "aggression against a foreign state," saying it broke international law. Russia then redirected a ship armed with cruise missiles to the eastern Mediterranean and vowed to bolster its air defenses at Syrian air bases. "Washington's step will inflict major damage on US-Russia ties," Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, said on Friday. The popular mood in Russia appears to be different from the government's knee-jerk reaction, however. "There will be many screams on the Russian television with people condemning the strikes, but everybody understands that this is just a symbolic act meant for Trump to look different from Obama," Vladimir Frolov, a foreign-affairs analyst, told The New York Times. "There won't be any tangible reaction," he said. "This was a one-off strike." Russia's dedication to protecting Assad is a major reason "the distinction between one-off retaliation and complicating mass homicide in a sustained manner is critical," Hof said. "There is no administration interest in violent regime change, invasion, or occupation," he added. "There may, and should be, interest in getting Assad out of the mass-homicide business altogether." Speaking to reporters on Thursday night, however, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that "obviously, the regime will retain a certain capacity to commit mass murder with chemical weapons beyond this airfield," but that Americans "should not in any way extrapolate" that the strikes "changed our policy or posture on Syria in any way." "Through the Geneva process, we will start a political process to resolve Syria's future in terms of its governance structure," Tillerson said. "That ultimately, in our view, will lead to a resolution of Bashar al-Assad's departure." Hof cautioned against this approach, arguing that "with civilians on Assad's bull's-eye, there can be no sustainable peace talks or political compromise in Geneva or anywhere." Thanks for signing up for our daily insight on the African economy. We bring you daily editor picks from the best Business Insider news content so you can stay updated on the latest topics and conversations on the African market, leaders, careers and lifestyle. Also join us across all of our other channels - we love to be connected! The Tomahawk missiles, launched from the USS Ross and the USS Porter at dawn local time on Friday, represent the first US strikes on the Assad regime, according to a statement from the Pentagon. US President Donald Trump, initially resistant to the idea of becoming involved in Syria, said it was in the vital national security interest of the US to prevent the use of chemical weapons. "No child of god should suffer such horror," Trump said in an address to reporters after the cruise missile strikes. It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons." The governor of Homs, a city roughly 160 kilometers north of the capital Damascus, said at least five people were killed and seven were wounded in the US strikes, Reuters reported. Autopsies have confirmed that the chemical attack earlier this week involved sarin gas, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said there can be "no doubt" that Assad's forces carried out the attack. Both Syrian and Russian forces have denied responsibility for the attack, with Russian forces claiming a conventional airstrike hit a cache of chemical weapons owned by rebels in Syria. International experts have dismissed this as an "infantile argument." National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said "there were measures put in place to avoid hitting what we believe is a storage of sarin gas there," CNN's Josh Rogin reports. Though the US strike targeted infrastructure and runways, a large volley of cruise missiles carries the risk of collateral damage to troops stationed nearby. Initial reports from Syrian military sources say the strikes "led to losses," as Reuters notes. Rep. Adam Schiff, ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, told MSNBC that the airfield had been vetted by US forces to ensure civilians weren't endangered and Russians in the area were aware. The Trump administration said key US allies had prior warning to the strikes. Several reports in recent days have detailed the brewing conflict. The Daily Beast reported Thursday that Bannon had called Kushner a "cuck" behind his back. Bannon also told his associates, "I love a gunfight," according to an Axios report, which said that "the hatred between the two wings" in the White House was "intense and irreconcilable." The stories of civil war in the White House started rolling out in earnest this week after the White House announced Trump was reorganizing the NSC and that Bannon would no longer be on it. In January, Trump signed a controversial memorandum that removed some of the nation's top military and intelligence advisers as regular attendees of the NSC's principals committee and elevated Bannon. Bannon quickly went into damage-control mode, with his allies selling the NSC demotion as a "natural evolution" rather than a sign of his waning influence, according to The New York Times. The Times also reported that despite his efforts to play it cool with the media, Bannon resisted his removal from the NSC and at one point threatened to quit over it. Axios reported, however, that Bannon had been telling associates that such stories were "100% nonsense." In any case, tensions clearly are running high. The civil war might not have started with the decision to remove Bannon from the NSC New York Magazine reported that it started with the failed effort by Republicans to pass a healthcare-reform bill but now that the narrative about Bannon has shifted to one of him losing power, the infighting has become more public. The Daily Beast reported that fighting had been nonstop between Bannon and Kushner for weeks and that the two often clashed face-to-face. One official told the news outlet that Bannon said Kushner was trying to "shiv him and push him out the door." They said Bannon recently vented about Kushner "being a 'globalist' and a 'cuck.'" "He actually said 'cuck,' as in 'cuckservative,'" they said. A senior official told The Daily Beast the friction between the Bannon and Kushner camps boiled down to policy. They said there was tension "on trade, health care, immigration, taxes, [terrorism] you name it." Bannon is frequently described as a populist and a nationalist, and Trump embraced some of these sentiments on the campaign trail as he appealed to voters with an "America First" message. Kushner, the husband of Trump's daughter Ivanka, is seen as a more moderating force on Trump. CNN reported that Bannon's removal from the NSC signaled a power shift in the White House and Trump moving away "from the more hard-line ideological bent of Bannon." And sources told Politico that Bannon felt as though Kushner and his allies were trying to undermine his populist approach. A person familiar with Bannon's thinking told Politico that the "big fight is between nationalists and the West Wing Democrats." It seems that, for now, the latter wing is coming out on top. As Bannon is marginalized, Kushner's star is rising. Kushner recently went on a high-profile trip to Iraq and has found allies in Gary Cohn, the National Economic Council director, and Dina Powell, the deputy national security adviser for strategy, who have become more influential. Bannon can count Attorney General Jeff Sessions, policy adviser Stephen Miller, and presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway among his allies, according to Axios. But Trump has been known to keep his family close, and that would include Kushner. Trump might also have political reasons to reign in Bannon. Media outlets have reported that Trump has been annoyed with the credit Bannon has received for the Trump administration's agenda, illustrated by a "Saturday Night Live" skit portraying Bannon as a puppet master. The fighting between Bannon and Kushner has had a trickle-down effect, according to Politico. It was called the Kowloon Walled City. With a population of 33,000 squeezed into a tiny lot, the city at its peak was 119 times as dense as present-day New York City. Although it faced rampant crime and poor sanitation, the city was impressively self-sustainable until its demolition began in 1993. In the late '80s, the Canadian photographer Greg Girard found his way into the windowless world. He shared photos and thoughts about his time in Kowloon Walled City with Business Insider. You can check out the rest, along with essays and work from the photographer Ian Lambot, in "City of Darkness: Revisited." Though Hong Kong had been under British rule for decades by the time construction began, a clause in an 1842 treaty meant China still owned the property that would become Kowloon. Caught in legal limbo, it was effectively lawless. By 1986, the Walled City had caught the attention of the photographer Greg Girard. Girard would spend the next four years in and out of the city, capturing daily life inside its teetering walls. The Lego-like city was built over decades as residents stacked rooms on top of one another. The end result "looked formidable," Girard told Business Insider, "but who knows?" At night, the city's lawlessness became truly apparent. Crime was rampant, and anyone who knew better wouldn't trespass near the city's walls. Even though the area wasn't terribly dangerous by the time Girard visited, he said local children were still told by their parents not to go near Kowloon. Kowloon had just about every business imaginable, for better or worse. At night, schools and salons were converted into strip clubs and gambling halls. Trafficked drugs mostly opium made frequent appearances. One woman, Wong Cheung Mi, worked as a dentist. Like many of the Walled City's dentists, Wong could not practice anywhere else in Hong Kong. This type of arrangement drew hordes of working-class citizens to visit the city for affordable healthcare and services. Stacked housing blocks meant virtually no sunlight could pierce through. Even during the day, Girard says, "it was nighttime all the time in there." The one place of respite from the dampness was on the roof, though Girard said this was the most unsafe "there were a lot of additional things sticking out and spaces between buildings that had been combined." In-house manufacturing was a huge part of the Walled City's infrastructure. Dog-meat butchers, entrepreneurs, and noodle makers enjoyed zero oversight inside the walls. Hui Tuy Choy opened his noodle factory in 1965, free to ignore codes about health, fire, and labor. Some of the most common products manufactured in the city were fish balls, which Kowloon producers sold to local restaurants. Sanitation was of minimal importance, Girard said "it was an intensely difficult place to function, with no laws governing health or safety." Law enforcement typically intervened only for serious crimes, Girard says, though rumors were always swirling that Hong Kong's government preferred to turn a blind eye. One law that was consistently enforced was that the Walled City could be no higher than 14 stories. Otherwise, low-flying airplanes would have trouble meeting the nearby runway. Despite its seedy reputation, the Walled City offered a sense of togetherness to thousands of people who had no community, Girard says. "Its physical reality kind of belied this community that it was," Girard says, adding that people's attitudes toward him changed around 1990 when they learned the structure was to be knocked down. People began living increasingly quiet, traditional lives. Though he entered as a threatening outsider, Girard eventually left having formed genuine relationships. After the city was torn down in 1994, a park was built in its place. Today, Kowloon Park attracts photographers, bird-watchers, and tourists looking to relax in scenic Hong Kong with plenty of room. "Hong Kong is kind of a surreal place," Girard said. "The Kowloon Walled City was one of its more surreal mutations, but Hong Kong evolves, and Kowloon evolves." This facility seeks to privatize parts of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG). PUWU is also accusing the US Ambassador of tacitly blackmailing the government of Ghana into implementing the compact. PUWU insists that, the US has tied the hands of government, a situation they argue breaches sections of the compact that provides for amendments. General Secretary of PUWU, Michael Adumatta Nyantakyi, is therefore calling on President Akufo-Addo to engage stakeholders on the matter. He spoke to Citi news The United States Ambassador to Ghana, Mr. Robert Jackson reacted with remarks that it was too late for renegotiation so government should go ahead with the implementation of the compact. The US Ambassadors remark is viewed as unfortunate. Mr. Nyantakyi said his outfit is not against the Compact II, but he opposes the handing over of ECG to a private entity for 25 years. The union is against the single concession which can create drive monopoly in the electricity distribution. The Compact II agreement Ghana and the Millennium Challenge Corporation of the US government signed the second Compact in October 2016. The agreement brought to total $1.4 billion received by the government of Ghana to be injected into the countrys energy sector geared towards making the ECG more efficient. READ ALSO:ECG Concession PUWU warns of high electricity tariffs if ECG is privatised The project under the compact includes the ECG Financial and Operational Turnaround Project, NEDCo Financial and Operational Turnaround Project, Regulatory Strengthening and Capacity Building Project, and Access Project. READ MORE: University of Education students on rampage Among personalities present at the event were Charlotte Osei (Chairperson of the Electoral Commission of Ghana), Honourable Edwin Nii Lante Vanderpuye Member of Parliament of the Odododiodoo constituency, Roshi Motman, CEO of TigoGH, Sarkodie, Yvonne Okoro, Sandra Ankobia and many others. Launching the Raising Readers Ghana Initiative, Madam Charlotte Osei who was the special guest of honour advised school kids present at the event to develop habit of reading, adding that a nation without readers is a nation of doom. She also donated her childhood books to the foundation. READ ALSO: Newly trained teachers express disappointment in government Speaking at the launch, Nana Aba Anamoah, CEO of Raising Readers Ghana Initiative advised parents not to compromise the education of their kids. She added that the Initiative will soon be inaugurated in most schools in Ghana. School pupils who participated in various reading competition were given prizes. Comics & Something has held twice in Lagos and was tagged COMICS & COFFEE drawing an audience of over a 1000 people collectively, the first in Ghana will be tagged COMICS & SMOOTHIES featuring Local industry such as LETI ARTS, CREO Concepts, ANIMAX FYB and many more of Ghanas finest talents and brands. The theme FORWARD inspired by Kwame Nkrumah famous quote focuses on the collective growth of the Ghanaian and African industry through collaboration and strategic partnerships. Topics such as funding, distribution, marketing and fan base development would be shared by key industry players. The environment would attract key stakeholders and investment interest as entrepreneurs who have shaken the creative landscape in the past 5 years would all be present. The MP, Salihu Adamu was tricked into attending a fake emergency meeting, an avenue for his unfriendly hosts to deal with him. An eyewitness mentioned that two heavy hits from some youths sent Adamu to the ground. After this, others were encouraged to direct more physical attack on the man, the Daily Post News reports. One of the youths first slapped him and another hit him in the stomach making him to fall to the ground. It then became a free for all as every youth there tried to take their pound of flesh from the politician, the witness recounted. ALSO READ: Gay expat beaten to a pulp while meeting Facebook friend for sex Also, the lawmaker who reportedly traveled from Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory had his vehicle damaged. The intervention of men of the Niger State Police Command saved the MP from further assault. According to the Central Bank, it does not make economic sense for the nation to engage in such needless venture. Catherine Ashley, Advisor to the Governor, BoG, who made this known, said the time and cost involved in printing new banknotes were enormous, and that the Central Bank was not considering such a move. She made the remarks at a sensitisation seminar in Kumasi on the new GH5 commemorative banknote issued recently by BoG to celebrate 60 years of central banking in the country. It was attended by bankers and media practitioners in the Ashanti Regional capital, Kumasi. Mrs Ashley disclosed that both banknotes would circulate simultaneously and would remain equally valid, adding that the new GH5 has various security features with the latest technology on the market. It is one-off commemorative note print which will not be replaced once it is pulled out of circulation. Its legal tender and collectors item. And the banknote displays an engraved portrait of Dr James Kwegyir Aggrey and seaborne oil-drilling rig in the TEN offshore field, she noted. Integrity Issue Mrs Ashley denied reports that the new government, led by President Akufo-Addo, ordered the Central Bank to print the GHC 5 commemorative note, asserting that it does not take less than one year to print new currency. Currency printing is not just like ordering tomatoes from the market. It is a high security activity that goes through tender process. Even the printers account for the waste currencies, she said, whiles eulogising the integrity of the staff at the central bank. The transactions were lead arranged by Barclays Bank Ghana and subscribed by offshore investors. This issuance constitutes the largest such transaction in sub-Saharan Africa and will be instrumental in Governments liability management strategy of extending debt tenors, reducing short-term rollover pressures, lowering interest cost, and shoring up foreign exchange reserves, which will further enhance the strength of the Ghana Cedi. Barclays Bank acknowledges the overwhelming success of this transaction within a remarkably short deal period as a signal of investors confidence in Ghanas medium-to-long term economic outlook. This transaction is undoubtedly a strong indication of the investor communitys renewed confidence in Ghanas economy. It is a very bold historic trade and should represent a turning point for good in Ghanas economy noted Kobla Nyaletey, Director & Head, CIB Markets at Barclays Bank Ghana. Mrs. Patience Akyianu, Managing Director of Barclays Bank Ghana, speaking on the deal said Barclays Bank Ghana is delighted to have played a pivotal lead arranger role in this transformational transaction. It is a testament of our continued readiness to put our capabilities and unmatchable access to the international markets at the disposal of the Government and our clients. We remain committed to partnering the Government and people of Ghana towards greater economic advancement. We are proud of our 100 years of progressive partnership in Ghanas economic development, and we remain excited about our commitment to supporting Ghana to prosper. Barclays Bank Ghana is the market leader in Treasury Bonds distribution in Ghana. A leading Primary Dealing Bank and a major market-maker in the secondary market for bonds. Pastor Wisdom Kusorgbor pleaded not guilty after he was charged with indecent assault. Pastor Wisdom Kusorgbor who is the Head pastor of Soldiers of the Cross Ministries, located at Korle-Gonno in Accra stays at Korle-Gonno but got to know the victim through his (Kusorgbor's) mother who lives in the same compound house with the complainant. The prosecutor, Detective Inspector Kofi Atimbire, presenting the case said the complainant is the mother of the three-year-old girl adding that Pastor Kusorgbor gives his phone to the victim to watch cartoons anytime he visits them. Detective Inspector Kofi Atimbire said "Pastor Kusorgbor carried the three-year-old child to his mothers room to watch cartoons on his phone. While she was watching the cartoons, he inserted his finger and used his penis to brush her vagina but did not penetrate." READ ALSO:Rubbish collector rapes disabled woman He said the girl later informed her mother about her ordeal at the hands of Pastor Kusorgbor. "The mother lodged a complaint at the Mamprobi DOVVSU where a police medical form was issued to her to send the girl to the hospital for examination and treatment. Pastor Kusorgbor was subsequently arrested and charged with the offence," he added. Haruna Iddrisu had warned the president to withdraw the Deputy Agric Minister nominee George Oduro following a report by the BNI which linked the nominee to a drug-related offence in 2007. A letter from the Bureau to the President dated March 23, 2017, indicated that Mr Oduro was on May 19, 2008, mentioned as a principal suspect in a cocaine case in Geneva, Switzerland where he is declared wanted. According to the BNI, Mr Oduro arrived at the the Kotoka International Airport in Accra on May 17, 2008, on a Canadian passport numbered LJ557784 aboard Royal Air Maroc. He is believed to be an accomplice of Nelson Troy EDWARD, a Ghanaian arrested in Geneva on 13th July, 2007 for possessing three thousand and fourteen (3,014) grams of cocaine, the BNI letter stated. The Minority Leader subsequently said on the Floor of parliament on Thursday In respect of the nominees I am compelled to request that the president should consider withdrawing the nomination of one of the appointees named George Oduro because there is a damning BNI report on him. But appearing before the Appointments Committee of Parliament, George Oduro said the issue is one of a mistaken identity. According to him, the letter served on him by the BNI had the name George Kwabena Oduro which is completely a different person. In a response, the Minority Leader accused the BNI of misleading the Minority. "This is more an indictment on the integrity and professional work of the BNI. As part of our work at the Appointment Committee we normally will request for background information of the nominees from the BNI, police, Ghana Revenue Authority," he said. He made the appeal while he was being vetted at the Appointments Committee of Parliament on Thursday April 6. My advice to government, ministries, departments and agencies and key government functionaries, is that we cannot run away from the social media phenomenon, we have to embrace it and get ahead of it so that its ills are cured. READ ALSO: Police arrest eight vigilante members who stormed court to free suspects on trial This has left the door open for fraudster to create fictitious online accounts using the identities of politicians. Some members of the Appointments Committee said their identities had been used to dupe unsuspecting members of the public. The former radio show host, Oppong Nkrumah, advised his colleague legislators to get onto social media themselves, like he is, and have their accounts verified as a means of averting such scams. One of the best ways to avoid some of these things happening, is to have a social media account that is verified. This is a process by which technical companies that put up these social media platforms give you an opportunity to directly engage with them and submit your details based on which they would put a specific verification feature on your account. It is usually a blue tick and what it does is that, anybody who goes to that account knows that this is an account that Twitter or Facebook has verified as validly belonging to you. You are also able to report when someone puts up a cloned account. According to him, the government was going to roll out a programme that would make social media presence a requirement for ministries and district assemblies compulsory. ...as part of efforts to strengthen government communication, MDAs and key government actors must have social media accounts (and) we will go through a process to make sure they are verified so people know and can believe the information they send out." Analysis Many of Ghanas ministries, departments and agencies are yet to fully explore the opportunities modern communication presents in the quest to deliver government services. Websites of these agencies either do not exist or have not been update with current information for many months. Every competent security person should anticipate that those on trial, they are likely to attract some fanatics who will try to beat the police, so they anticipate that and they take measures to deal with it. The day Tsatsu Tsikata was sent to court and jailed, the whole security apparatus was deployed around the High Street area there to prevent anything untoward from happening because of the sensitive nature of the case, he told Accra-based Radio Gold. This is a case involving assault on a security officer. The president has ordered that these people should be dealt with and then a Member of Parliament and senior member of the party come out to dare the president that nobody can touch anybody in the Delta Force Even me, a non-police officer, cant I anticipate that the day they will be sent to court the other members of the force will mobilise and go there the same way they attacked the regional administration? Background Some members of Delta Force, a vigilante group associated with the governing New Patriotic Party, besieged the Kumasi Circuit Court and freed its members who were facing charges for attacking the Ashanti Regional Security Coordinator. Reports suggest that the group nearly assaulted the Judge, Mary Senkyire and also destroyed some court properties. Thirteen (13) members of the group were detained after the group assaulted the newly appointed Ashanti Regional Security Coordinator, George Adjei. Reports say only two police officers were on duty at the court at the time, with one of them being pregnant. However, they managed to get judge Mary Nsenkyire to safety, while Delta Force members vandalised property at the court. Tema Police Public Relations Officer (PRO), ASP Juliana Obeng said Ibrahim Baidoo was shot at close range at T-Havana while returning from a constituency meeting of the National Democratic Congress (NDC). According to her, the armed robbers, numbering about three shot him at close range with the bullet hitting a spot right below his eye. She said the armed men were on a motor bike with locally made pistols. The attack happened at 7:45pm Wednesday after the meeting involving five constituencies in the Greater Accra Region. His Chrysler vehicle with registration number, GN 2016 16 was snatched from him as well. Ibrahim Baidoo who survived the attack was rushed to the Tema General Hospital but was later transferred to the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital where he is receiving treatment. READ ALSO: She appealed to the public to provide the police with timely information that will lead to the arrest of the armed robbers. READ ALSO: 13 Delta Force escapees report themselves to police Thirteen (13) members of the group were detained after the group assaulted the newly appointed Ashanti Regional Security Coordinator, George Adjei. Reports say only two police officers were on duty at the court at the time, with one of them being pregnant. However, they managed to get judge Mary Nsenkyire to safety, while Delta Force members vandalised property at the court. The 13 escapees have since reported themselves to the police. Many have since condemned the group for their actions. But speaking on Accra-based Okay FM on Friday, the Ashanti regional chairman said members of the group released their colleagues because they feared for their lives. Members of a vigilante group Delta Force, on Thursday, April 6, 2017 besieged the Kumasi Circuit Court and freed its members who were facing charges for attacking the Ashanti Regional Security Coordinator. READ MORE:Police arrest eight vigilante members who stormed court to free suspects on trial The group nearly assaulted the Judge, Mary Senkyire and also destroyed some court properties. Thirteen (13) members of the group were detained after the group assaulted the newly appointed Ashanti Regional Security Coordinator, George Adjei. READ ALSO: Delta Force Leader apologises to Nana Addo for his actions A statement issued and signed by Mr Benson Nustukpui and Mr Justin Amenuvor, President and National Secretary, the GBA said: "It is sickening and horrifying to watch the said videos of persons using violence as a means to defy the Courts orders." The GBA "condemns in no uncertain terms this blatant disregard for the orders of a duly constituted court of law and attack on the judge in the discharge of her lawful duties. This is an affront to the independence of the Judiciary and an attack on the rule of law." Welcome to the Pulse Community! We will now be sending you a daily newsletter on news, entertainment and more. Also join us across all of our other channels - we love to be connected! He said, the NDC in its quest to elect a flagbearer for the 2020 election must be guided by ethnic preference, hence the party must shift their focus from electing a Fante or Northerner. Speaking on Accra-based Kasapa FM, he said "Since 1992, a Fante has always been on the ticket of the NDC. In 1992, it was Rawlings/Ackah, 1996 it was Rawlings/Mills, 2000, it was Mills/Martin Amidu, 2004 was Mills/Mumuni, 2008-Mills/Mahama, 2012-Mahama/Amissah Arthur, 2016-Mahama/Amissah Arthur. "For me NDC towards 2020, if John Mahama is not contesting, they should exclude Fantes and Northerners for the ticket. Western, Central and the three Northern regions should be excluded. "If Mahama will contest again, and get the bid as Flagbearer, Its fine. But if hes not contesting, the three Northern regions and Fantes should be excluded," he added. Earlier, Ben Ephson has advised former President John Mahama not to lead the party for election 2020. Peskov added Peskov's comments came as President Donald Trump indicated he was prepared to retaliate against Assad for allegedly launching the worst chemical weapons attack on Syrian civilians since 2013. But experts are skeptical that Putin is really prepared to relinquish his support for an ally he has consistently defended throughout more than six years of brutal civil war. In late September 2015, Moscow went as far as to intervene in the conflict on Assad's behalf, waging a scorched-earth campaign on rebel-held enclaves and ultimately winning back Syria's largest city, Aleppo that remains ongoing. Some observers viewed Peskov's statement Thursday as a signal that Russia is willing to use its leverage in Syria not to remove Assad, but to negotiate some kind of deal with the US that would, at least temporarily, deter American military action. The posture struck some as eerily reminiscent of Russia's last-minute offer to dispose of Assad's chemical weapons stockpile in 2013 as the Obama administration threatened a military response to a gas attack that left more than 1,000 civilians dead. Ian Bremmer, president of the political risk firm Eurasia Group, agreed that it was "very unlikely" that Russia was ready to throw Assad under the bus. "But [Peskov's] statement does put some pressure on Assad to both rein him in on his military activities" and push for "eventual diplomatic outcomes," Bremmer said. "Russia is one of two key external players here Iran being the other and it needs to assert itself with Assad, not just with the international community." Three defense officials told Yousseff that Assad may have used the chemical weapons to "test" how the US would respond especially since, last week, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, suggested removing Assad from power was no longer a priority. Faced once again with the threat of military action against one of his closest partners, Putin appears to be staging a test of his own. But, because Putin has never been known to bend to the US's will, it is unclear what will happen if Trump fails it. Trump said. "It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons." "There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the chemical weapons convention, and ignored the urging of the UN security council," Trump added. "And we hope that as long as America stands for justice that peace and harmony will in the end prevail." . He suggested in a press conference Wednesday that the attack had changed his calculus on the situation. The cruise missiles impacted their targets reportedly runaways, aircraft, and fuel points for the aircraft at 8:45 p.m. ET, in what was the first intentional attack on Syrian government targets since its civil war broke out six years ago. US officials also said that there would be no further strikes " according to CNN. "Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror," Trump said. In a world where bottom lines are shrinking and fashion brands are losing market share to activewear companies like Nike and Lululemon, fashion shows are increasingly being seen as an unnecessary expense. In 2016, The Atlantic provocatively asked: "Is this the end for Fashion Week?" The fashion show is "definitely incurring challenges," Ketty Maisonrouge, a Columbia BusinAess School professor and the head of the luxury marketing agency KM and Co., recently told Business Insider. Brands both big and small are skipping years, skipping either the fall/winter or spring/summer shows, or skipping some cities on the fashion-show circuit altogether. In February, 12 brands skipped New York Fashion Week, including Tommy Hilfiger, Tom Ford, Vera Wang, and DKNY. One issue is the long lead time that clothing takes as it moves from show to shelf. That gives fast-fashion brands a chance to copy the styles at a lower production cost before the originals even hit stores. In other words, "The only people who benefit are the people who copy it," designer Diane von Furstenberg told WWD in December 2015. To combat this, some brands like Rebecca Minkoff, Tom Ford, and Burberry are trying to make the most out of their runway shows with a "see now, buy now" model, in which consumers can buy new products as soon as they hit the runway. Unfortunately, these pieces are far out of season when they're shown, and people often still wait to buy them until they need them. Because of the massive expense of elaborate fashion shows, many fashion brands are deciding to do cheaper presentations that highlight certain aspects of the clothing and allow spectators to get up close. Others are diverting their budget to social-media marketing, which allows them to go directly to consumers without passing through buyers and the media. This could have a leveling effect for fashion brands, as smaller brands will no longer need to put forth the up-front cost to stage an elaborate show to reach buyers and customers. "I don't know if it's a trend that will stop," Maisonrouge said. Ultimately the fate of the fashion show rests on the reaction the brands get from skipping. Excerpts below: On what triggered her depression, "Insomnia and Menopause! This is something women dont talk about but the reality now is that people go into menopause as early as 37. I went into menopause on the other side of 50 but the depression came later. It wasnt diagnosed in time. I was simply told I was under severe pressure and was advised to close down or take two years off. I lost a lot of weight and people thought it was intentional. Thisday Glitterati wrote I was anorexic. After two years of going back and forth on the root cause, one day I asked my doctor if it was menopause related. He was surprised I was 50 and admitted that it was likely to be menopause. I suffered depression for years until I made the decision to get out of it. In the morning I didnt want to open the blinds. I did not socialise for two years and the depression took its toll on my skin as well as my emotions. I would be having a conversation and randomly burst into tears. People were insensitive and made comments about me losing weight because I wanted to stay young but it was all based on ignorance. I am sharing this because we hide what could be helpful to others." On overcoming depression, "Family Support, Will Power! Change of outlook towards everything. I woke up one day and decided to get out of it. I decided to fight and get my life back. I didnt like where I was and I realised no one could get me out of this dungeon except me. I didnt like the effect it had on my family so I began to fight back. I fought against the dominance of overwhelming negative emotions. I began to find reasons to be happy. I lived in the NOW. I looked for joy in everything around me and started to read the bible again. I travelled. I went to both London and New York fashion week and stayed abroad for a while. I took time off and went to health farm outside London. The minute I stepped into my room I just zoned out. I slept for 4 hours straight, the first time in nearly 18 months. Before then I was sleeping 2 hours a night. At the farm, I got to read The Battlefield of the Mind by Joyce Meyer and I could see that I had been in a battlefield which only a change of mindset and prayers could deliver me from. I blanked out negative thoughts. I listened to praise songs and danced. I fought for my sanity through positive affirmations, I also had my familys support which is priceless! I began to see a counsellor back in Nigeria and gradually we began to make a headway. We worked on my sleep hygiene and a more holistic approach to treating depression." On meeting her husband Soni Irabor, "It wasnt love at first sight. I remember when I was at the University of Lagos, Soni would come around Matthews buttery and every girl wanted to talk to him and be seen with him and I used to think; who does he think he is? Years later when I was working as a public relations officer, I needed to put together an event and I was clueless as to how to go about it. I spoke to the companys Singaporean receptionist about it and she promised to introduce me to a man who could help me; a man she described as Robert Redford. When he walked into the office days later I was like Is that not the celebrity radio and TV guy? Anyway he put me through the event and I rewarded him with a date and we were married 9 months later." On turning 60, "Hello 60! Give me a hug!! I feel great, fulfilled, I feel blessed on all fronts though a while ago I found myself hyperventilating about turning 60. I looked at my life and thought, What have I achieved? I was told that it was the burden of an over-achiever. That didnt placate me but digging deep into the recess of my soul provided some answers. I began to look at success from the perspective of the impact made and lives touched in anyway shape or form. Dr Bilali Camara, the Country Director, UNAIDS Nigeria, made the call in an interview with News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Thursday. Camara urged the governors to commit themselves more to the MNCH week, adding that the event is one of the critical events that help in the prevention of mother to child transmission HIV. He added that UNAIDS would leverage on the event to widen the access to HIV and AIDS response services. He said the UNAIDS would use the week to enhance access to HIV and AIDS services and ensure that it yielded more results by reaching out to many people through the pregnant women. When you identify one child or a pregnant woman living with HIV and AIDS during the week, it may also lead other people within the family, he said. He also encouraged national decision makers to implement task shifting and task sharing policy, to bring HIV and AIDS services more closer to people. Camara added that UNAIDS would also partner with the governors forum to decentralise the treatment of HIV and AIDS under the task shifting and task sharing policy of the government. He explained that task shifting and task sharing policy allow key stakeholders to decentralise the treatment of HIV and bring the services closer to people. It also enables nurses to treat people leaving with HIV and AIDS. Beides, Camara appealed to national decision makers to improve the HIV and AIDS data situation in the country, and believe that the scourge can be eliminated in the country. In a statement by the anti-graft agency's spokesman, Wilson Uwujaren, which was published in Punch on Thursday, April 6, 2017, the claims were described as solely untrue and falacious. The EFCC described the report as malicious saying: The allegations are not only unfounded but evil, as all the properties recovered from the former governor have been returned to the Bayelsa State Government. For the record, Olukoyede was not seconded to the EFCC by Falana and he has never worked in Femi Falanas Chambers. He was head-hunted based on his pedigree. Even if he had worked for Falana it may not have mattered as working for Falana is not a criminal offence in the nations statute." Continue, the statement reads: It is also important to state that Falana, SAN, is not a counsel for the EFCC and has never interfered in the operations of the agency. ALSO READ: Femi Falana resigns from ThisDay Newspaper Editorial Board The author of the mischievous and misleading information went ahead to give the telephone number of the CoS and asked members of the public to call and enquire if he was indeed a former staff of Femi Falanas Chambers. He has therefore been bombarded with unsolicited calls by members of the public. A recent publication by ThisDay Newspaper alleged that the Chief of Staff to the EFCC Chairman, Ola Olukoyede, was a former employee of the Chambers of Femi Falana. It was earlier reported that the fire was caused by sparks on electricity cables when the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) restored power to the area. But according to a statement signed by the company's Head of Public Relations and Media, Mr. Ahmed Shekarau, a preliminary investigation carried out by a fact-finding team on Monday, April 3, 2017, revealed that the fire was caused by an explosion from a fuel container taken into the children's room. The statement explained that the mother of the five deceased children had sent one of her kids to buy petrol for use in their generator because, at that time, the area had no power supply due to load shedding. ALSO READ: Nigerian breweries in Iganmu gutted by fire The child was said to have taken the fuel into the room where the five children were sleeping. "Because of the saturation of petrol fumes in that room, when the woman lit up a match stick in order to light up a mosquito coil in a bid to wade off mosquitoes, the flame ignited an explosion which engulfed the room," the statement added. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) had charged a former Minister of Petroleum Resources, Diezani Allison-Madueke and three officials for money laundering. Allison-Madueke, who was described in the charge as still at large, is charged alongside the three officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission on a seven-count charge bothering on money laundering. The INEC officials are Christian Nwosu, Yisa Olarenwaju and Tijani Bashir. When the officials were arraigned, Nwosu entered a guilty plea, while Adedoyin and Bashir denied the charges. The court had adjourned the case for sentence of Nwosu until Friday, April 7. However, Justice Mohammed Idris could not proceed with the judgment following the absence of the accused in court as they were said to have been held up in traffic. He then reserved the judgment for April 27. Nwosu was remanded in the EFCC custody, while the other accused persons were granted N50 million bail each. Earlier, the Prosecutor, Mr Rotimi Oyedepo, informed the court that Nwosu had entered into plea bargain with the EFCC. He added that Nwosu had already made a refund of N5 millon, and also surrendered the title documents of a landed property he purchased for N25 million in Delta. Reacting, Nwosus lawyer, Mrs Adeku Nbangba, confirmed the position and pleaded with Justice Idris to temper justice with mercy in deciding the fate of the accused. The prosecution alleged that the accused committed the offences on March 27, 2015 by accepting bribe from the former Petroleum Minister. They were alleged to have conspired to take possession of the sum of about N264 million which sum they reasonably ought to have known formed part of the proceeds of an unlawful act of gratification. The accused were also said to have made cash payments of the sum of about N235 million which sum exceeded the amount authorised by law without going through a financial institution. The anti-graft body alleged that Bashir (the fourth accused) also made cash payment of about N70.1 million to Adedoyin (third accused) without going through a financial institution and which sum exceeded the amount authorised by law. According to the prosecution, Bashir also directly took possession of the sum of about N165 million which he ought reasonably to have known formed part of an unlawful act of gratification. Nwosu was also alleged to have directly used the sum of N30 million which he ought to have known formed part of an unlawful act of gratification. Most jobs get poorly handled because the supervisors are bribed to look the other way while specifications are being ignored and quality compromised. Contractors handling road projects are the worst culprits in this respect; we have told them that we shall not accept any shoddy job from anyone, Shahuri told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), on Friday in Minna. Mrs. Obasanjo had filed a motion before an Ikeja High Court, asking the court to postpone her son's wedding to Adebutu's daughter to any other date after May 30, 2017. In the originating motion on notice, she said the wedding invitations were sent out without her involvement in the preparations. She, therefore, wants the court to declare that as the mother of the groom, she has parental rights to take part in the deliberations, decisions and activities leading to the wedding. Mrs Obasanjo also said in the motion that prior to the fixing of the wedding date, she had a premonition regarding her son who will turn 34 on June 1. According to ThisDay, ex-President Obasanjo and father of the bride, are the respondents to the suit filed before Justice Lateefa Okunnu. Mrs Obasanjo has now petitioned the Commissioner of Police, Lagos State, alleging that her twin brother Chief Kenny Martins, her future daughter-in-law, Tope Adebutu and the bride-to-be's mother Ms. Rosemary Dacosta, have contracted some persons to kill her. She said: "I was reliably informed that the three persons mentioned above have perfected plans to assassinate me because I requested the court to shift the wedding date of my son from the month of May to June 2017. "They also have a plan to start a smear campaign against my person using various media platforms such as newspapers, internet etc. "Their third plan is to frame me on false charges and get me arrested and detained by the police from the 10th-14th May, 2017 and also to involve the military police to achieve their plans. "Sir, this issue reported here is neither a small matter nor a figment of my imagination because sometime during the time of late Head of State, Gen. Abacha, when Daddy Obasanjo was in prison, the late Stella Obasanjo got the military through Frank Omenka to detain me at DMI Apapa on false charges. "Sir, what is unfolding now is not a wedding preparation but a desperate attempt to kill me because I told Rosemary Dacosta and her daughter, Tope Adebutu to allow the wedding to hold after the month of May 2017. "Chief Kenny Martins is the leader of the planned assassination on my life. Sir, I am reporting this issue so that you can please use your good office to step in because there is a deep strange desperation attached to the wedding of my son which is now a do-or-die wedding ceremony for them." When contacted by the newspaper, Mrs Obasanjo's twin brother, Kenny Martins, the former coordinator of the Police Equipment Fund, was said to have declined to comment on the petition. "I dont have any petition from the police on my table so I dont react to what is not before me," he said. The mother of the bride also said, "I dont want to listen to anybody. I have nothing to say about what is happening because I dont know anybody. Thank you so much and bye bye." According to a report by Daily Trust, Rowaye was imprisoned by Justice Adebukola Banjoko of an FCT High Court sitting in Gudu. It was further reported that the judgment which lasted over five hours, saw Justice Banjoko convicting Rowaye along with his company, Brilla Energy Limited and another firm, Alminnur Resources Limited, to which the permit to import 10,000metric tonnes of Premium Motor Spirit (petrol) into Nigeria was issued in 2011. While interacting with journalists, the nation's number two citizen expressed confidence that the airport will soon be reopened on the scheduled date of April 19. The Abuja airport was closed to traffic on March 7, 2017, for repair of a fast eroding runway. Here's the exchange between Osinbajo and members of the press: Q: What are your observations after the tour? I have looked round and I think that what I've seen and also from the information from the contractors, from the consultants, things are going very very well. ALSO READ: Acting President signs 7 bills into laws We are told that we are nearing completion and we are clearly on schedule and we expect to see that this will be completed well on schedule. I dont think we should expect any delays whatsoever. We have assurances from the consultants that we are clearly on schedule, so by the 19th of this month, a new runway should be settled. Q: Do you have any reservations? I have no reservations. I think that by just looking at all of this myself, inspecting it and listening to the consultants, listening to the contractors, listening to the personnel from FAAN and the Ministry of Transport, I think that a lot of work has gone in here. The contractors are doing 24 hour shifts, working round the clock. I think they have taken the job very seriously and we expect to see that this will be done and completed by the 19th as they have promised. Q: Your Excellency, are we expecting any work at the terminal building; because we have been hearing also over time that they are going to do some work at the terminal building in respect of upgrading it to standard? THE GUARDIAN Modu Sheriff storms out of Jonathans truce meeting In protest against not being allowed to address the opening session as the court-recognised National Chairman of the crisis-ridden Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Senator Ali Modu Sheriff yesterday walked out of a meeting called in Abuja by former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan. Oil production to boost Nigerias economic recovery by 0.8% In protest against not being allowed to address the opening session as the court-recognised National Chairman of the crisis-ridden Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Senator Ali Modu Sheriff yesterday walked out of a meeting called in Abuja by former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan. Outrage as Buhari sidelines minister, names culture tourism officials There is outrage in the nations culture and tourism sector at the manner President Muhammadu Buhari appointed new heads of agencies and parastatals last weekend. THE NATION NEWSPAPER Court de-freezes Patience Jonathans account Federal High Court in Lagos yesterday de-freezed a bank account belonging to wife of former President Goodluck Jonathan, Patience, with over $5,842,316.66 (about N1.7 billion) lodged in it PDP Crisis: Sheriff walks out on Jonathan, governors Efforts to find a political solution to the festering leadership crisis in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) yesterday suffered a major setback. Monarchs, priests storm court for Nnamdi Kanu Justice Binta Nyako of the Federal High Court in Abuja has fixed April 25 for ruling on whether or not to review her earlier order allowing the shielding of the prosecutions witnesses in the trial of four Biafra agitators, including Nnamdi Kanu. VANGUARD NEWSPAPER Why court ordered final forfeiture of N1.825 bn seized from ex-Naval chief Ezeoba A Federal High Court sitting in Lagos, yesterday, ordered the permanent forfeiture of N1.825 billion linked with a former Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral Dele Ezeoba (retd). N10m bribe: How Osinbajo was used against me Bamaiyi Former Chief of Army Staff, COAS, Lt. Gen. Ishaya Bamaiyi (retd), has dragged Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo into a bribery allegation in which the retired General accused him of having protected Justice Ade Alabi, who was accused of demanding a N10 million bribe from the accused persons standing trial before his court. Nigeria needs $139/pbl oil price for balanced budget Fitch International agency Fitch Ratings yesterday said that Nigeria needs crude oil price of $139 per barrel to achieve balanced budget in 2017, adding this makes the country worst in oil break-even point among 14 top oil exporters __________________________________________________ THE PUNCH NEWSPAPER Court unfreezes Patience Jonathans $5.9 million account The Federal High Court in Lagos, on Thursday, vacated its order which late last year froze the Skye Bank account of Mrs. Patience Jonathan, the wife of ex-President Goodluck Jonathan. Jonathans PDP peace meeting ends in disarray The peace meeting convened by former President Goodluck Jonathan to end the crisis in the Peoples Democratic Party ended in disarray in Abuja on Thursday. Tears as Queens College orphan pupil is buried Adewale also denied reports that he was planning to remove Fayose and replace him with his predecessor, Kayode Fayemi. He made the denial in a statement released on Thursday, April 7. The statement reads: My attention has been brought to a spurious claim in a publication, purporting that I, Otunba Segun Adewale (Aeroland) is plotting to unseat the governor of Ekiti state, Ayodele Fayose, in order to install former governor, Kayode Fayemi, by bribing Supreme Court judges with a N150 million. Ordinarily, I would not have dignified such porous reasoning feigned as publication with a response, as the entire public can verify or vouch that I will never partake in questionable conducts, more else, engage in what is not only against the Nigeria constitution but foully against humanity. May I again dismiss abundantly the claims in the said publication, which are not only entirely false, but show the writers lack sense to even think as human beings. It is an aberration for a sitting PDP governor of a state, Ayodele Fayose, to be acting a mole in a party that got him into office, a glaring case of biting the fingers that fed him. Contrary to the fictitious publication, which was carved in a vendetta scheme against me for rightly exposing governor Fayose on his romance with All Progressives Congress (APC) leadership, I must emphasize that I do not know Kayode Fayemi nor have I met him. I am an unrepentant believer in the ideology of the PDP especially under the current leadership of senator Ali Modu Sheriff as the national chairman. I refused to leave the party when it was very easy to do so as an unrecognized member. Is it not worrisome that a governor and leader in our party speak from both sides of the mouth on issues that relate to the ruling party? At one point, the governor Fayose is busy abusing the President Muhammadu Buhari, alleging former governor Fayemi of corruption but at the same time praising Asiwaju Bola Tinubu who was instrumental to the election of both men into office at every opportunity. His open romances with leaders of the ruling party like governor Rauf Aregbesola of Osun, visiting governor Akeredolu of Ondo and praising Asiwaju Bola Tinubu are major discouragements that dampen the morale of our members. A supposed leader of our party in the southwest but sells out on values and proposition of our party for his selfish personal interests. Whoever dares stand against his attempt to destroy the party is immediately under the attack of his propaganda machinery to the detriment of the party. Fayose also said that he would be a better president than President Muhammadu Buhari if elected into office. The governor made the comments on Thursday, April 6, during an interview on AITs People, Politics and Power program. Normally I speak to Nigerians on the court of public opinion. Fayemi called to congratulate after I won the election, he invited me to his office and said we were going to work together. Few days after he started playing to the gallery, they did everything possible to make sure I was not sworn-in, Fayose said. They said I slapped a judge, I have always said they should allow the judge tell the public if I slapped him. If Fayemi feels like coming back, it is a legitimate decision, let him do that by first getting the ticket of his political party. If APC wins one local government in Ekiti come 2018, I will concede that election. I was part of Fayemis victory in 2010, I was in exile then but spoke with teachers on phone to vote him, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu begged me at Bourdillion to work for Fayemi. The Supreme Court said it cant reverse itself when Segun Oni approached it to do so. I am not a member of Tinubus party and I will never be but Tinubu has paid his due, he is a Yoruba leader that must be appreciated. I have never met the Supreme Court justices who said Fayemi begged them to give judgment against me in his favour, such should not be taken for granted. I immortalized Fayemis deputy by erecting a befitting edifice in her name, we did this for posterity. I dont have ambition to be president but I can be president of Nigeria and I will perform better than they are doing. My name is Peter The Rock, you hit me, you die, I hit you, you die. They will meet me in Ekiti, they should forget about hijacking Ekiti, the power of the people is greater than those of us in power. The people are on my side, he added. Both of you are victims of the Niger Delta struggle. You brought our people together to ensure fiscal federalism, resource control and other issues. You did very well, Dickson said. You and your late brother were victims in the struggle. He was harassed and hounded to his untimely death. But the Ijaw nation cannot be intimidated. We will work with allies and friends to stand up for the right causes. We lost him at a most difficult time. Nobody in this nation will build and sustain leaders for us. Lets learn from others. Can we say their leaders are better than ours? They were celebrating when he died. Their calculation was to intimidate us and make southern Ijaw a battleground. With the resilience of our people, we won. You are not just a leader of Delta State. You are our leader. Niger Delta cannot stand in isolation, he added Ibori, on his part, said he was in Yenagoa, to commiserate with the people and Government of Bayelsa State over the loss of my dear friend, brother, comrade and soul mate, who died a year ago. The solemnity of listening to the word of God, the joy that comes with meeting friends and exchanging peaceful greeting give Friday prayer the spiritual and ceremonial feel we can't ignore. So, to enjoy this feeling and the rewards that come with going to Jumu'ah and listening to the sermon, you just have to rise to the occasion. Have you forgotten how to go to Jumu'ah the right way? Let me remind you about the five things you should ALWAYS do as a Muslim to catch the feeling that makes you thank God it's Friday the Islamic way. 1Cut your nails. One of the rituals of attending Jumu'ah service is cutting your nails in obedience to the Sunah (ways) of prophet Muhammad (SAW) We don't go to Jumu'ah with fingernails that look like a fork. So neatly cut your finger and toe nails. 2 Performing ghusl. This is very important on Fridays before we set out for Jumuah. Ghusl is a ritual bath done to purify our body. It is the same Ghusl we take for Janabah. The prophet said, " O gathering of Muslims, Allah has made this day an eid for you, so make ghusl and use the miswak." 3Beautifying one's self. Friday is a festive day for Muslim according to prophet Muhammad, so you are expected to go to mosque wearing your best dress. It is not only improper to wear your workshop clothes to the mosque, it is also unwise to purify your body by performing Ghusl and then wear a dirty dress to the house of Allah. If you will be going to Jumu'ah from your workshop, take another clothes along. On wearing the best of clothes, the prophet said: "It would do no[harm] to anyone if he were to buy two gowns for Friday other than his work clothes." 4 Using the miswak: Islam is a religion that prioritises cleanliness and this is why brushing your mouth before you go for Jumuah is advised. In fact, the prophet used to brush his mouth with miswak five times daily before every prayer. So, brush your mouth and smile at the world on your way to Jumuah. 5Using perfume: The use of perfume often makes us feel good about ourselves right? Good. Use perfume and go to Jumu'ah with that mindset. Feel good, be happy and swing into a festive mood. All these are permitted within the ambit of Islam. So feel free to enjoy your religion. Salman al-Farsi reports that the Prophet (SAW) said: "A man who performs ghusl on Friday, purifies[himself] and uses dye [for his hair] or perfumes himself in his house, goes to the mosque, and does not cause separation between two people [who are already seated], prays what Allah has prescribed for him, and then listens quietly while the imam speaks, all his sins between that Friday and the next Friday will be forgiven." This Russian online security firm didn't just talk about the mass attacks. He also added that perhaps, this could be the biggest bank heists in world history. But this is not the first mention of it. Banks and security researchers previously identified cyber-heists in Financial institutions in Bangladesh, Ecuador, the Philippines and Vietnam. This might be vague, but Kapersky has some pretty disturbing specifics. The "Lazarus" Op. That's what Kapersky is calling this operation. According to them, there have been attacks in Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Gabon, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Poland, Taiwan, Thailand, and Uruguay. The investigation began one year ago, when the 'Lazarus' hacking group were allegedly responsible for an $81million theft from the Central Bank in Bangladesh. While hacking is a threat disturbing enough by itself, the fact that North Korea might have their hands in this makes it the more disturbing. CNN for example, believes North Korea is behind Lazarus. But how do they know it's the North Koreans? According to Kaspersky, hackers typically launch cyber attacks from computer servers far from home to hide their location. The Lazarus hackers routed their signal through France, South Korea and Taiwan to set up that attack server. But Kapersky spotted a mistake: a connection that briefly went through North Korea. North Korea is a very important part of this equation, said Vitaly Kamluk, who leads Kasperskys Asia-Pacific research team. The North Korean government has of course, reportedly denied allegations of the hack. Kapersky is still giving North Korea the benefit of doubt. According to them, this is not enough proof to provide definitive attribution given that the connection session could have been a false flag operation. When Nigeria Communications Week spoke to Isaac Okorafor, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Acting Director, Corporate Communications, this is what he said: We have not had anything like that in Nigeria. I am not aware of any such attacks on Nigerian banks. Twitter announced this on their blog on Thursday and the reasons they went liter is pretty obvious: "...slow mobile networks, expensive data plans, or lack of storage on mobile devices. While smartphone adoption grew to 3.8 billion connections by the end of 2016, 45% of mobile connections are still on slower 2G networks." Take Nigeria for example, half the time we talk about Internet service providers, we're complaining about how slow the Internet is. Another problem with apps is storage. The mass of smartphones used in Africa have low storage space to accommodate apps. So there's a tendency for people to only use apps that are very essential for them. Don't worry, Twitter's got you. Now, Twitter didn't design a new mobile app as you know it (the current app is almost 90mb on Android by the way). They designed it into their web. What this means is that when you open mobile.twitter.com, you're in fact opening the app, on your browser. How cool is that? HOW DID THEY DO THAT? It's this technology called Progressive Web Apps. It's type of innovation where it feels like you're on your app, but infact you're on a browser. This is what the actual heavyweight app looks like; But this is what it looks like on your browser. Just a few differences, as the app itself is stripped down to the most essential. This is the power of Progressive Web Apps. Why is Twitter doing this now? It's the Scramble for Africa, and Twitter is not alone. Remember we said Facebook is pressing buttons to increase their 170 million membership in Africa. We also said Google is investing in making data cheaper in Africa. If data is cheaper, more people come online. Everybody wins. Twitter made a small video to help you figure this out. Haley said in a statement that the current peacekeeping operation in Mali had become dangerous, and urgently needed the support of other governments and organisations to achieve peace in the country. This is the worlds most dangerous peacekeeping mission. We are putting troops in harms way asking them to patrol deserts where Al Qaeda thrives. Peacekeepers in Mali operate in very challenging circumstances. But, their mission is essential. These peacekeepers put their lives on the line every day to help Malis people. Countries have pledged to give more equipment to Malis peacekeepers. The United States urges these countries to follow through as quickly as possible. By working together, this Council, troop contributors, and supporters in the international community can help this peacekeeping operation make real progress toward supporting peace in Mali, she said. According to her, there is currently no government presence in parts of the country, thereby reducing the number of Malians that have access to humanitarian assistance. Haley added that violence was getting worse, as armed groups had refused to lay down their arms, with terrorist groups deepening their cooperation with each other in perpetuating their terrorism. So we currently have peacekeepers on the ground to support a peace agreement that is not gaining traction. Syria, Russias ally, condemned the U.S. strikes as a disgraceful act. In addition to suspending the pact to coordinate air operations over Syria, an accord that was meant to prevent accidental encounters between the two militaries, Russia also said it would bolster Syrias air defense systems, and was reported to be planning to send a frigate into the Mediterranean Sea to visit the logistics base at the Syrian port of Tartus. Dmitri S. Peskov, a spokesman for President Vladimir Putin of Russia, said that the point of the agreement had been to decrease danger in the air and that canceling it would not significantly increase that peril with missiles already flying around. Amid the missile strikes, it is hardly reasonable to talk about any more increase in the risk, as the risk has increased considerably, Peskov said at a news briefing. A statement from the office of President Bashar Assad of Syria said the U.S. missile strikes, which President Donald Trump said were a response to a chemical weapons attack in Idlib province on Tuesday that left more than 80 people dead, was the result of a false propaganda campaign. Syria has denied that it possesses chemical weapons and Russia held to its view that Assad had not bombed his own people. The U.S. attack left six people dead, according to the Syrian army, and a military spokesman described the missile strikes as an act of flagrant aggression. Peskov said that the cruise missile strikes on Friday represented a significant blow to American-Russian ties, and that Putin considered the attack a breach of international law that had been made under a false pretext. The Syrian army has no chemical weapons at its disposal, Peskov said. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told newsmen in the southern town of Alanya in comments broadcast live. It is necessary to oust this regime as soon as possible from the leadership of Syria. If he doesnt want to go, if there is no transition government, and if he continues committing humanitarian crimes, the necessary steps to oust him should be taken, he said. Cavusoglu said safe zones for civilians in Syria were now more important than ever. He said the coalition had been informed of the U.S. missile strike and that he had spoken by phone with the French and German foreign ministers, although he did not say when. It will be a humbling moment for Pretoria, one of the leading voices in the creation of the International Criminal Court, whose lawyers will be fending off accusations that it failed in its obligations to the tribunal. To the frustration of the ICC's prosecutors, Bashir remains in office and at large despite two international warrants for his arrest issued in 2009 and in 2010. He faces 10 charges, including three of genocide as well as war crimes and crimes against humanity in the western Darfur region. The deadly conflict broke out in 2003 when ethnic minority groups took up arms against Bashir's Arab-dominated government, which launched a brutal counter-insurgency. At least 300,000 people have since been killed and 2.5 million displaced in Darfur, the UN says. Several victims of the lingering conflict in the western Sudanese region, who now live in The Netherlands, will attend Friday's hearing which opens at 0730 GMT in the tribunal in The Hague. Long wait for justice The UN Security Council asked the ICC as long ago as 2005 to probe the crimes in Darfur where conditions remain "dire," according to Monica Feltz, executive director of the rights group, International Justice Project. The 10 Darfurians who will watch the hearing are "hoping to see that their story is told, and that their voices are heard, and that the international community still cares," Feltz told AFP. "They're been waiting for over eight years to see justice in this case," she added, voicing disappointment the victims were not granted permission to actually take part in the hearing. The issue is centred on South Africa's refusal to arrest Bashir when he attended an African Union summit in Johannesburg in June 2015, insisting he had "head of state immunity" and allowing him instead to slip out of the country. The judges will have to decide whether Pretoria violated its obligations under the court's founding Rome Statute by not arresting him and handing him over for trial. South Africa insists it was caught on the horns of a dilemma: between its obligations to both the ICC and to laws providing heads of state with immunity. 'No-one is above the law' The ICC's prosecutors have hit back, pointing out that in the past South Africa told Bashir he would be arrested if he set foot in the country. "No one is above the law, even heads of state," insisted Feltz. Friday's hearing is "a historic opportunity for the court to demonstrate that its charges must be taken with extraordinary seriousness," said Wanda Akin and Raymond Brown, two legal representatives of the victims, in a joint statement. They urged the court to send "an unmistakable message that open defiance of its writ will not be permitted." The judges will return their decision at a later date, and may decide to report South Africa to the UN Security Council for eventual sanctions. Although this is the first public hearing of its type, last year the ICC referred Chad, Djibouti and Uganda to the UN for also failing to arrest Bashir. So far no action has been taken against them. The Sudanese leader was a guest last month at an Arab League summit hosted by Jordan -- also a signatory to the Rome Statute. South Africa moved this year to withdraw from the court, angered by the case against it. But it formally revoked its decision last month after its own High Court ruled in February that it would be unconstitutional. At an unprecedented hearing at the International Criminal Court, Pretoria fended off accusations it had failed in its obligations to the very tribunal it helped found. There "was no duty under international law on South Africa to arrest the serving head of a non-state party such as Mr Omar al-Bashir," argued Pretoria's legal advisor Dire Tladi. Despite two international arrest warrants issued in 2009 and 2010, Bashir remains at large and in office amid the raging conflict in the western Sudanese region of Darfur. He has denied the ICC's charges, including three accusations of genocide as well as war crimes and crimes against humanity. The deadly conflict broke out in 2003 when ethnic minority groups took up arms against Bashir's Arab-dominated government, which launched a brutal counter-insurgency. The UN Security Council asked the ICC in 2005 to probe the crimes in Darfur, where at least 300,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced, according to UN figures. 'No immunity waiver' Pretoria, which had sought legal clarification from ICC judges before Bashir's 2015 visit, argues the Sudanese leader has immunity as a head of state. There was "nothing at all" in the UN resolution which waived Bashir's immunity, said Tladi. Therefore Pretoria could not arrest him during his brief visit to South Africa in June 2015 for an African Union summit, despite its obligation to cooperate with the ICC set out in the tribunal's founding Rome Statute. "The duty to arrest Mr Omar al-Bashir was not as clear as the office of the prosecutor would suggest," added Tladi. But prosecutor Julian Nicholls shot back that South Africa "had the ability to arrest and surrender him and it chose not to do so." "All the reasons for not arresting Mr al-Bashir, in the end, simply boil down to that South Africa disagreed with the court's jurisprudence, the law as set out..., so it did not comply." Several victims of the conflict, who now live in The Netherlands, were attending Friday's hearing in the tribunal in The Hague. Conditions in Darfur remain "dire," said Monica Feltz, executive director of the rights group, International Justice Project. The 10 Darfurians who will watch the hearing are "hoping to see that their story is told, and that their voices are heard, and that the international community still cares," she told AFP. Presiding judge Cuno Tarfusser said the aim of the hearing was to decide "whether South Africa failed to comply with its obligations ... by not arresting and surrendering Omar al-Bashir ... while he was on South African territory." 'Most serious crimes' The prosecution argues that since the ICC does not have its own police force it relies on member states to help execute arrest warrants. Without such help, "the court's going to be unable to carry out its most basic function: putting on trial persons charged with the most serious crimes," said Nicholls. The judges will return their decision at a later date, and may decide to agree with the prosecution's request to report Pretoria to the UN Security Council for non-compliance and eventual sanctions. But Pretoria's lawyers argued such a move would be "unwarranted and unnecessary," aimed only at casting South Africa "in a bad light." Although this is the first public hearing of its type, last year the ICC referred Chad, Djibouti and Uganda to the UN for also failing to arrest Bashir. So far no action has been taken against them. The Sudanese leader was also a guest last month at an Arab League summit hosted by Jordan -- also a signatory to the Rome Statute. South Africa had moved to withdraw from the court, angered by the case against it. President Donald Trump ordered the strike following this week's chemical attack that killed dozens of people including women and children Tuesday, April 4. According to a statement by Dmitry Peskov, President Vladimir Putin spokesman, the U.S. has dealt the strikes under "far-fetched pretext." Russia has argued that the death of civilians in the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun resulted from Syrian forces hitting a rebel chemical arsenal there. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Thursday that "either Russia has been complicit (in the attacks) or Russia has been simply incompetent." Addressing the media shortly after reports of the airstrike began to spread, Trump said the action was "in the vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons." "The United Kingdom fully supports the United States' action overnight, which was an appropriate response to such a heinous crime, a war crime," British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft said as he headed into the meeting. US President Donald Trump on Thursday ordered cruise missile strikes on a Syrian air base in response to a suspected chemical attack on a rebel-held town that killed 86 people and shocked the world. The strike -- the first direct US action against President Bashar al-Assad and Trump's biggest military decision since taking office -- marked a dramatic escalation in American involvement in Syria's six-year war. Describing the US strikes as "appropriate," French Ambassador Francois Delattre expressed hope the US action would be a "game changer and help boost the political negotiations." The council meeting was called by Bolivia, which branded the US strikes a violation of international law. Bolivian Ambassador Sacha Lorenti said the United States had behaved like "investigator, attorney, judge and executioner" in Syria. "This is not what international law is all about," he told reporters ahead of the meeting. Russia angrily denounced the military action as an "aggression against a sovereign state." Push for political talks UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres urged restraint and a renewed push for peace in Syria, saying in a statement that "there is no other way to solve the conflict than through a political solution." "It is it is time now to focus on the political process," Rycroft echoed. Eighty-six people including at least 27 children died in the suspected attack in Khan Sheikhun. Results from post-mortems performed on victims point to exposure to the deadly sarin nerve agent, according to Turkish health officials. Guterres called on the council to unite and agree on a way forward on Syria. "For too long, international law has been ignored in the Syrian conflict, and it is our shared duty to uphold international standards of humanity," he said. "This is a prerequisite to ending the unrelenting suffering of the people of Syria." jpegMpeg4-1280x720The Security Council failed during a meeting Thursday to agree on terms for an investigation of the suspected sarin gas attack in Khan Sheikhun. Russia's Deputy Ambassador Vladimir Safronkov on Thursday warned of "negative consequences" from the US military action, which he described as a "doubtful, tragic enterprise." Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said the strike against the Sharyat airbase in Homs, northern Syria, was "a positive response" to the "war crimes" of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. "In order to prevent similar massacres from happening again, it is necessary to enforce a no-fly zone and create safe zones in Syria without further delay," he added in a statement. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said safe zones in Syria were "now important more than ever". Kalin said: "The destruction of the Sharyat airbase marks an important step to ensure that chemical and conventional attacks against the civilian population do not go unpunished." US President Donald Trump ordered the strike in retaliation for what he said was a "very barbaric attack" on Tuesday, when dozens were killed in Khan Sheikhun, northwestern Syria. The Turkish health ministry on Thursday said initial analysis suggested victims were exposed to the deadly nerve agent sarin. Cavusoglu said the coalition formed against the Islamic State group were informed about the US strike and that he had spoken to his French and German counterparts. 'Oust regime' Kalin said the incident in Idlib demonstrated the regime's "complete disregard" for a political transition and efforts to enforce a ceasefire agreed late last year and sponsored by Russia, Turkey and Iran. Earlier, the Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said Turkey believed that "the Assad regime must be punished completely in the international arena" in comments quoted by state-run news agency Anadolu. "The Assad regime's barbarism must be stopped at once," Kurtulmus said, saying the peace process should hasten a "fair" and "lasting" peace for the people. "I hope that this United States operation will contribute to securing peace." Turkey has repeatedly called for Assad to go while Russia and Iran remain the president's most important allies in the more than six-year war. "This regime should be ousted from leading Syria at once. The best way to do this is to start a transition process as soon as possible," said Cavusoglu. "We need to establish a transition government." There were protests outside the Russian and Iranian embassies in Ankara on Friday, with hundreds of demonstrators carrying 100 black coffins with images of children killed in Tuesday's attack in Idlib, an AFP photographer said. The coffins had "murderer Assad" and "tyrant Putin" written on them. The Pakistani education activist came to prominence when a Taliban gunman shot her in the head on her school bus in 2012 as punishment for campaigning for girls to go to school, which defied the militant groups ban on female education. Yousafzai has since continued campaigning on the world stage and in 2014 became the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner. Guterres said in a statement that even in the face of grave danger, Malala Yousafzai has shown an unwavering commitment to the rights of women, girls and all people. Her courageous activism for girls education has already energised so many people around the world. Now, as our youngest-ever UN Messenger of Peace, Malala can do even more to help create a more just and peaceful world. The Pakistani girl who received medical treatment in Britain where she had since studied, had also set up the Malala Fund to support girls education projects in developing countries. A White House official said 59 precision-guided missiles hit Shayrat Airfield in Syria, where the United States believes Tuesday's deadly attack was launched. The official had earlier given the number of missiles involved as 70. The missiles were blasted from the USS Porter and the USS Ross, which belong to the US Navy's Sixth Fleet and are located in the eastern Mediterranean. A US official said the missiles targeted aircraft and runways at the base. "This site was associated with the Syrian regime's chemical weapons program and directly linked to the horrific chemical weapons attack April 4th," the White House official said. "We assess with a high degree of confidence that the chemical weapons attack earlier this week was launched from this site by air assets under the command of the Assad regime," the official added. "We also assess, with a similar degree of confidence, that the Assad regime used a chemical nerve agent consistent with sarin in these attacks." Inhaled or absorbed through the skin, sarin gas kills by crippling the respiratory center of the central nervous system and paralyzes the muscles around the lungs. Sarin was used by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime to gas thousands of Kurds in the northern town of Halabja in 1988. Trump told the American people he ordered air strikes on Syrian forces in retaliation for a "barbaric" deadly chemical attack on civilians that he blamed on the country's strongman President Bashar al-Assad. "Making sure Assad knows that when he commits such despicable atrocities he will pay a price is the right thing to do," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the country's top Democrat and a frequent critic of the nascent Trump administration, said in a statement. Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan called the action "appropriate and just," adding that the strikes "make clear that the Assad regime can no longer count on American inaction as it carries out atrocities against the Syrian people." Senator John McCain, a national security hawk who for years has advocated a more muscular policy against the Syrian regime, hailed the strike as a "credible first step." "Unlike the previous administration, President Trump confronted a pivotal moment in Syria and took action." Several lawmakers, including Ryan and Schumer stressed the need for Trump to consult with Congress on forging the appropriate US military strategy against Syria. Senator Ben Cardin, the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said the targeted bombings "send a clear signal" of US resolve. "However, and I cannot emphasize this enough, any longer-term or larger military operation in Syria by the Trump administration will need to be done in consultation with the Congress," he said. Democratic congressman Adam Schiff is among several lawmakers who have long sought a new, more narrowly defined congressional authorization for US military action in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks of 2001 and the fight against terrorism. "I will be re-introducing an authorization for use of military force against ISIS and al-Qaeda when Congress returns to session" after its two-week recess which begins Friday, Schiff said. Democrat Barbara Lee, part of an anti-war coalition along with some isolationist Republicans who opposed president Barack Obama when he sought approval for intervention in Syria in 2013, was more blunt. "This is an act of war," she wrote on Twitter. "Congress needs to come back into session and hold a debate. Anything less is an abdication of our responsibility." Senate Republican Rand Paul added that "while we all condemn the atrocities in Syria, the United States was not attacked." Trump "needs congressional authorization for military action as required by the Constitution," he said, adding that intervention in Syria would do "nothing to make us safer." House Democrat Ted Lieu agreed that Trump needs approval for his military action. Turning the ship before it hits the iceberg Thousands of young Iowans in search of a gobbler will hit the woods this weekend for the states annual youth spring turkey hunting season. In preparation for the nine-day season, which runs April 8-16, Jason Schwartzhoff of Davenport and his two sons practiced their aim the past few weeks at indoor and outdoor shooting ranges in the area. The trio, along with Schwartzhoffs father, Jeri, planned to leave Friday for Keokuk County, where they will hunt on a friend of a friends property near Sigourney, Iowa. Its just about getting out in Gods creation and enjoying Mother Nature, said Schwartzhoff, 39. If we can get a turkey, thatd be cool, too. Jasons sons, Jacob, 12, and Joshua, 7, accompanied their father this past fall when he harvested a turkey. Jacob, who has been hunting with his father for a few years now, killed his first deer this past fall with a .50 caliber muzzleloader. He will use his compound bow on this turkey hunt. He called turkeys a "beautiful bird." No matter what happens during their outings, he said, "You always have a story to tell." This weekend will mark Joshua's first time out as a licensed hunter. He will take aim with a youth-model shotgun. While the father of two knows some people may question his judgment for arming his 7-year-old son with a firearm, he stressed safety remains his top priority. I teach him (Joshua) to act as if a gun is always loaded, said Schwartzhoff, a safety supervisor at MidAmerican Energy. Hes not going to be holding it until its time to shoot, and even then, Ill be right next to him. Schwartzhoff, who also educates his boys about the conservation aspect of hunting, said the same rules and teachings apply to Jacob with the bow. They know these are weapons, not toys," he added. Iowas window for the 5,500 or so expected hunters under the age of 16 precedes the states four regular seasons that begin April 17, and continue through most of May. While the Iowa Department of Natural Resources regularly issues about 50,000 turkey licenses for the upcoming seasons, the agency estimates just 20 percent of hunters will find success harvesting the elusive eastern wild turkey. Different from deer hunting, turkeys have home-field advantage, said Jim Coffey, forest wildlife technician for the DNR. Theyre out there every day, and were only out there playing on their turf for a few days every year," Coffey said. "Theyre a bird with a small brain, but they have a lot of knowledge and power." Last spring, turkey hunters reported harvesting almost 12,200 birds during a 44-day stretch in Iowa, the highest total since the state began requiring hunters to register their harvest in 2007. During their hunt this weekend, the Schwartzhoffs will set out a faux flock of turkey decoys to attract gobblers while they make calls from a nearby ground blind. Heres how it works: In the timber, a hen will answer the male turkeys call when she wants to breed. Turkey hunters will try to position themselves in between the breeding birds and replicate hen calls to lure a male turkey, also known as a tom. Schwartzhoff said his sons will shoot if, and only if, a turkey comes within 10 to 15 yards of their blind. Usually, you only have one shot, he said. They can see every little movement. Iowa's youth season, Coffey said, gives novice hunters a chance to test the sport with fewer hunters around, therefore fewer distractions. It doesnt give them a greater chance of success, but it gives them a better experience, said Coffey, who noted there typically are extra toms out this time of year. Getting a bird is always a goal, but that experience of just being out in the woods is what we want people to enjoy. On Thursday, Schwartzhoff sent the boys to grandpa's house so he and his wife could have a "date night" before his weekend away. The family man emphasized that both his sons earned their spots on this guys' trip by performing well in school. Earlier in the week, during target practice at B&B Shooting Supplies in Bettendorf, Jacob, the older brother, said he prefers adventures in "peaceful rural areas," over busy urban settings. "This is my sport," he said. "I hope this is the year I get my first turkey." Prosecutors cannot present evidence of Stanley Liggins prior sex abuse conviction when he is tried a third time in the death of a Rock Island girl, a Scott County judge ruled this week. However, Seventh Judicial District Chief Judge Marlita Greve ruled in a 10-page written order that the issue may be raised again at trial if prosecutors want to reassert its arguments based on the evidence presented at trial. This is not a final ruling, the judge said in her written order. Prosecutors say Liggins, now 55, strangled Jennifer Ann Lewis, 9, and burned her remains on near a Davenport school playground on Sept. 17, 1990. She also was sexually abused, according to prosecutors. He was tried and convicted twice in the girl's death in the 1990s and sentenced to life in prison. The Iowa Supreme Court overturned the first conviction, and on Nov. 6, 2013, the Iowa Court of Appeals reversed the second conviction. A month before Jennifers death, he was charged in Rock Island County with sexually abusing a 9-year-old girl. He was convicted in May 1991 and sentenced to seven years in prison, according to court records. He already had been charged in Jennifer's death at the time of that trial. Assistant Scott County Attorney Julie Walton argued at a Feb. 20 hearing that prosecutors want the girl and her mother from the Rock Island County case to testify at Liggins third trial to prove identification, motive and intent in relation to Jennifers murder. The mother of the girl in the Rock Island County case testified during that hearing that she and her daughter both testified at the sex abuse trial. As she was leading her daughter out of the courtroom, "Stanley Liggins threatened to kill my daughter," the woman testified. Walton argued that the girl in the Rock Island County case "screamed, ran for help" and was able to identify Liggins to police, leading to his arrest. He wasnt going to let that happen again with Jennifer, she argued. Walton further argued that the girls were similar in age and appearance and both lived in the same county. Defense attorney Derek Jones argued that the evidence is not relevant to motive or intent and that the evidence is irrelevant to identity because it is not similar enough under the law. In her written ruling, Greve wrote that it is a stretch to claim that because Defendant sexually abused [a] 9-year-old girl in Rock Island who looked similar to Jennifer Lewis on month prior to Jennifer Lewis murder, that he must have sexually abuse and murdered Jennifer Lewis. Other than the age and the resemblance of the girls, there is nothing strikingly similar or unique about the crimes committed against them. There is no evidence of a signature-type crime where the act committed was the same or some type of evidence was left or taken to indicate a signature-type crime. Greve further wrote that although the abuse of the first girl was not as severe as the abuse to Jennifer, evidence of the sex abuse most certainly will enrage, disgust, and prejudice a jury against Defendant. The court finds even if motive, intent or identity could be found to be relevant issues, the probative value of this evidence is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice to Defendant and would be inadmissible. Liggins is slated to be tried May 22 in Black Hawk County after Greve approved a defense motion to move the case out of Scott County due to heavy publicity. However, the trial could be postponed if she grants a motion filed Thursday by Liggins to fire Jones and co-counsel Miguel Puentes. That motion will be heard April 20. Over the last month, Greve has ruled on a number of pretrial motions that were argued in February. Among those rulings, Greve has denied a defense motion to dismiss the case against Liggins and granted prosecutors motion to allow the testimonies of 13 prior trial witnesses to be read to the jury at Liggins upcoming trial. DES MOINES He never thought it would be easy, but Iowa House Appropriations Committee Chairman Pat Grassley is learning just how difficult it can be to overhaul tax credits. The New Hartford Republican set the ambitious goal of overhauling the states tax credit system that includes $427 million for everything from adoption to wind energy. On Thursday, he acknowledged he may have to reform the system of credits available to Iowa businesses, industries and individuals in small bites. I still believe it should be the goal of the Legislature to have a cap on tax credits, Grassley told an Appropriations subcommittee looking at House Study Bill 187. I dont see any reason why when the Legislature walks into this building we dont know the amount of money that is spent each year on tax credits. I think it is a little bit silly we dont have that number. Rather than pushing for a cap on tax credits, Grassley plans to look at the individual credits to determine whether they should be capped, adjusted or eliminated. Refundable and transferable credits will be on the agenda, he said, adding the Earned Income Tax Credit, designed to provide tax relief for low- and middle-income working families, and the 260E credit for community college retraining programs wont be part of the overhaul. Thats a smart move, said Rep. Chris Hall of Sioux City, the ranking Democrat on Appropriations. Both of those programs are very effective at what they do, he said. The Earned Income Tax Credit, makes a difference in what they have available to them and has proved to be of the most effective programs to getting people to work and also providing something that hopefully helps them. He said community colleges, the business community and economic developers like the 260E credit because it gives them a great degree of flexibility and ... it really works well. Democrats, Hall said, welcome a discussion on tax credits. It is an acknowledgment of what theyve been saying about tax credits growing exponentially over the past few years (and are) unsustainable compared to the growth of the state economy and revenues. Hall warned that Democrats are interested only so long as the end goal is making the budget work better for working families. Some tax credits are growing in ways that are taking tax dollars from normal working people and sending them out of state. Thats not something that most people would agree is smart budgeting, Hall said. Grassley hopes to get committee approval of HSB 187 next week and hasnt given up bringing it to the House floor before the Legislature adjourns, perhaps later this month. United Neighbors, Inc. has filed an appeal with the Iowa Finance Authority over its decision to terminate the HOME grant that has funded the nonprofit's rental assistance program. Besides suspending any future funding of the $502,560 grant, the state also has demanded repayment of the $235,600 in grant funding administered thus far to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Due process granted in Iowa Administrative Code afforded United Neighbors 15 days from notice of noncompliance to file an appeal that will be decided by Finance Authority Executive Director David Jamison. In its response letter asking the Finance Authority to withdraw the notice of default and termination, United Neighbors said "to terminate the contract and require a full refund a this point penalizes UNI for its proactive efforts in notifying IFA of the issues and seeking to cure the deficiencies with the grant where possible." On March 22, the Finance Authority issued a notice of default and termination for cause to the social services organization on the basis that it violated five sections of the grant. Those sections included general noncompliance, noncompliance for not providing certification of no lead-based paint for tenant properties, misspending, failure to provide enforcement and failure to comply with federal rules and regulations after a review of five random tenant files. The notice of termination punctuated a five month period in which the Finance Authority suspended payments to United Neighbors after being alerted of compliance issues by Executive Director Evelyn Nelson, who was only eight days into her new leadership role. All of the funds disbursed, with the exception of payment of $41,573 in October 2016, came under the watch of staff that is no longer with organization, including former Executive Director Ida Johnson, who was removed from her position during the last week of September. While Nelson was in the process of taking over for Johnson, she did not authorize the payment from the Finance Authority that was disbursed in October. A Freedom of Information Act request revealed that the authorization came from Tonya Williams, who like Johnson is one of the four former employees suing the organization and Nelson after being fired. United Neighbors contends that "the default and termination notice is unreasonable because it is based on only five files and does not take into account the grant funds that were provide to qualified TBRA (tenant-based rental assistance) recipients and used for their intended purpose." In reviewing the five tenant files it submitted, United Neighbors has also acknowledged some fault in overpaying clients, but not to the extent the Finance Authority contends. For three out of the five clients, United Neighbors said it was prepared to refund $1,716 total. The Finance Authority has stated $10,373 were overpaid. United Neighbors has requested an in-person meeting with Finance Authority representatives. Communications Director Ashley Jared said that no decision has been made regarding a hearing as of yet. If the appeal is unsuccessful, United Neighbors treasurer Frank Berka has said the organization intends to submit a claim to its insurance company to cover repayment. 1. Great weather for the weekend A good Friday to all. We begin our push to the weekend with patchy frost this morning, then welcome sunny skies and temps near 60 degrees. The weekend? Expect sunny skies with temps in the mid 70s. It will definitely be time to dust off the lawn mower. Area rivers still remain near flood stage but are expected to fall over the weekend. Here are the weather details from the National Weather Service. Today: Patchy frost is possible before 8 a.m. Otherwise, skies will be sunny with a high near 59 degrees and a low around 39 degrees. Saturday: It will be mostly sunny with a high near 73 degrees. South winds will gust as high as 25 mph. The overnight low will be around 57 degrees. Sunday: There's a slight chance of showers after 1 p.m. Otherwise skies will be mostly cloudy with a high near 75 degrees and a low around 55 degrees. Meanwhile flood warnings continue for the Rock River at Moline until Sunday morning and the Iowa River at Wapello until Saturday. The Rock is expected to rise above flood stage (12 feet) tonight and rise to 12.1 feet Saturday morning before falling below flood stage on Sunday. The Iowa is expected to rise above flood stage (20 feet) today and continue rising to 20.1 feet tonight, then fall below flood stage Saturday. 2. Trump defends attack on Syrian air base; demands 'end the slaughter' President Donald Trump cast the United States assault on a Syrian air base as vital to deter future use of poison gas and called on other nations to join in seeking "to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria." 3. Hotel Davenport preps for auction while addressing violations Got a million bucks to spare? That's the starting bid for the Hotel Davenport and Conference Center, which will be up for auction from May 8-10. The auction comes at a time when the lodging establishment has come under scrutiny for a number of fire, life safety and health codes violations that have lingered over the past few months. Read more. 4. Local stock car season revs up 5. Davenport man sentenced in groping case A Davenport man was sentenced Thursday to up to eight years in prison for groping several women, including an undercover police officer, last year. John P. Benavidez, 35, filed a written plea of guilty to four counts of assault with intent to commit sexual abuse, an aggravated misdemeanor, through his attorney, Steven Stickle. Read more. 6. National Beer Day Time to hoist a cold one and toast good old FDR. It's National Beer Day. On this date in 1933 President Franklin Roosevelt took the first step to ending Prohibition by signing a law that allowed people to brew and sell beer, in the United States, as long as it remained below 4% alcohol. Beer drinkers rejoiced as they were able to buy beer again for the first time in thirteen years. And I'll drink to that, too. My favorite beers? Free and cold, served in a frosty mug. Enjoy your weekend. "I inherited a mess!" President Trump complained at a news conference with Jordan's King Abdullah II on Wednesday afternoon. For the second day in a row, he blamed the Obama administration for Tuesday's chemical weapons attack by Syria's Assad regime and, for good measure, he blamed his predecessor for "one of the worst deals I have ever witnessed," with Iran. "Whether it's the Middle East, whether it's North Korea, whether it's so many other things, whether it's in our country, horrible trade deals -- I inherited a mess," he repeated. No, Mr. President, we're the ones who inherited a mess. Problems are piling up quickly, and Trump is pointing his finger everywhere but inward. President George W. Bush years ago spoke of ushering in a new "era of personal responsibility." Now, Trump has ushered in his own era of personal responsibility: Everything is the responsibility of other persons. Much has been said of Trump's attempt to blame this week's attack in Syria on Obama, because Obama didn't enforce his 2012 "red line" against the Assad regime using chemical weapons. This blame shifting might have worked better if the attack hadn't happened on Trump's watch and if Trump himself hadn't strenuously and repeatedly opposed military action against Assad. This was just the latest item on a long and growing list of Trump's problems that he blames on others. Here is a partial compilation of his buck-passing since taking office: He blamed the failure of the GOP health care bill on Democrats, moderate Republicans, conservative Republicans in the House Freedom Caucus, the Heritage Foundation, the Club for Growth and, indirectly, Paul Ryan. He blamed a Yemen counterterrorism raid that didn't go according to plan both on his generals and on Obama. He blamed airport protests of his travel ban on a Delta Air Lines systems outage and on "the tears of Senator Schumer." He pre-emptively blamed future terrorist attacks on the judge who blocked the travel ban and on the court system. He blamed his own decision to remove national security adviser Michael Flynn on the intelligence community, the media and Democrats "trying to cover up" Hillary Clinton's loss. He blamed his loss of the popular vote on voter fraud. He blamed Democrats for the long-running investigation into his contacts with Russia. He blamed the intelligence community for leaking information about his contacts with Russia, comparing their actions to those seen in Russia or Nazi Germany. He blamed the media for inventing a narrative that he criticized the intelligence community. Trump blamed Obama and "his people" both for leaks and for widespread public protests against the administration. He blamed Obama for a nonexistent wiretap of Trump Tower. His aides blamed British intelligence for being involved. Trump then blamed Fox News for falsely implicating the British. Trump aide Kellyanne Conway blamed Australia for leaking a transcript of their prime minister's contentious phone call with Trump. Trump himself suggested that an unidentified somebody might be to blame for anti-Semitic vandalism and threats as part of a false-flag operation. He blamed Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., for failing to schedule a meeting with him on the cost of prescription drugs. He blamed Senate Democrats for failing to confirm his nominees; the New York Times noted this week that nominees to 21 out of 28 Treasury Department posts haven't been named. Trump blamed his staff for giving him bad information when he falsely claimed that he had the largest electoral victory since Ronald Reagan. He blamed Nordstrom for treating Ivanka Trump "so unfairly" by dropping her fashion line. And, of course, he has blamed the media for everything: for playing down the crowd size at his inauguration, for portraying him (accurately) as sympathetic to WikiLeaks, for not telling the truth about Obamacare and for failing to report that the White House is running "so smoothly." All presidents, to some extent, try to blame predecessors. But never has the office been occupied by such a prodigious blame-shifter. On his way to the White House, Trump blamed Clinton for starting the "birther" movement, blamed Mexico for exporting criminals, blamed his failure to release tax returns on an audit, blamed China for problems with North Korea and blamed George W. Bush for the 9/11 attacks. The harsh response to Trump's Syria statement this week suggests the buck-passing may be losing its charm. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told CNN that Assad had been "encouraged" by Trump's hands-off attitude toward the regime, calling it "another disgraceful chapter in American history." Tough words -- but who could blame him? Up or down: give it a vote. Few cases of legislative inaction would be more craven than denying the school equity bill a floor vote in the Iowa House. Not a single member should leave Des Moines until going on-record and owning their support -- or lack thereof -- for legislation that would end funding discrimination for hundreds of Iowa public schools. The school equity bill is turning green in the Iowa House Appropriations Committee. It's no surprise. Iowa's GOP-run government faces mounting revenue shortfalls, self-imposed wounds resulting from years of tax cuts that disproportionately favor the well off. Gov. Terry Branstad reacted by proposing deep cuts to important programs. Lawmakers responded Wednesday by driving the scalpel into bone. The Legislature's draft budget is almost $39 million short of Branstad's already draconian figure. And so, Senate File 455, which would finally right the systematic classism in state school funding, sits there turning stale. It's just as predicted by a slew of House members representing the Quad-Cities. It's precisely the kind of gutlessness and commitment to ideological dogma that got Iowa into this mess in the first place. Some House members blamed the state Senate, including Davenport Republican Roby Smith, for sending the 10-year, $204 million moral imperative to the House without a funding stream. Others said they support SF 455 in principle, but not in practice. Democrats have lampooned its 10-year roll-out, a recipe for repeal, they say. Everyone's looking for political cover. But thousands of students -- in places like Davenport and Maquoketa -- don't care about the rhetoric and finger pointing. Their sole interest is equal treatment under the law, one that now values their education less than neighboring districts. No doubt, there's significant political motivation for letting SF 455 rot in Appropriations. There it could languish without action. There it could die without much notice. There it could sit and no House member would have to vote against basic fairness. The legislative session is rocketing toward its scheduled April 18 end. Republicans, now in total control of Iowa, have wasted metric tons of oxygen on so-called "moral" issues. They've fast-tracked ideologically acceptable bills far more complicated than the school funding fix, such as the collective bargaining overhaul. And yet, they'd rather let student equity die on the vine out of political expedience. On Sunday, Davenport Community School District Superintendent Art Tate called for an up-or-down vote in an op-ed. Tate, the man who's put his career on the line for this cause, highlighted the widespread effects of 40-year-old policy that funds some schools around $170 more per-student than others. But it's Tate that's now under a Iowa Education Department ethics violation. It's Tate who, somehow, violated a moral code for simply seeing his students receive the same funding as more wealthy districts. We've lamented the vicious cycle that created Iowa's unjust educational funding structure. Middle-class families take their property tax dollars elsewhere because districts such as Davenport can't compete. It's state-sanctioned white flight that, for too long, has exacerbated a pre-existing culture of haves and have-nots. Smith's short-term fix, essentially legalizing Tate's budgetary maneuver, languishes in the Senate. Iowa Farm Bureau has long opposed anything that permits schools to spend-down their rainy day funds. And, in the House, a compromised but attainable long-term solution rots because lawmakers lack the courage to go on-record and give it the vote it deserves. Morals, indeed. The call to activism may have been born into Nick Tilsen, literally as part of his DNA. Tilsen's parents met during the 1973 standoff at Wounded Knee, where Oglala Lakota Sioux people and American Indian Movement activists challenged the federal government over treaty and civil rights during a protracted and sometimes violent clash in western South Dakota. Early on, according to Tilsen, his parents had a unique way of speaking to their son about the future. "They wouldn't ask, 'What are you going to be when you grow up?' but more of 'What are you going to do?'" Tilsen recalled on Thursday before a group of 60 people who attended the latest installment of the Morning Fill Up series held at The Garage meeting space in Rapid City. What Tilsen, 34, has done is lead a veritable revolution in thought and deed on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation that he heads has spent the past decade developing a new model for systemic change and improvement on the reservation with the massive yet manageable goal of reducing or ending poverty there. Founded on principles of Lakota culture and spiritualism, the community Tilsen and his 46 full-time and roughly 60 part-time employees have created focuses on improving housing and infrastructure, preserving Lakota culture and language, instilling hope through education of young people, preserving families, developing sustainable agriculture, training people for meaningful employment, and creating a crucible in which future Native American leaders can emerge and develop. Based at its headquarters near Rockyford Elementary School just south of Badlands National Park on the Pine Ridge reservation, the group now has built six homes at a housing development off Big Foot Trail north of Sharps Corner. The group is also educating hundreds of children and aiding scores of families with a roster of eight programs all aimed at ending the cycle of poverty in the region through education, health and workforce training. Summing up the goals of Thunder Valley, Tilsen said the group seeks to create "an eco-system of opportunity" for residents of Pine Ridge, so they can "achieve mobility and to move forward to accomplish what they want in their lives." That path to self-determination is one that Tilsen a father of four who lives with their mother in Porcupine has charted in his own unique way. After growing up periodically in Pine Ridge and Minneapolis, Tilsen said he experienced the virtues and challenges of life in both Native American and majority populations. During his formative years, he would travel frequently to Alaska to fish for salmon, which he said developed a strong work ethic but also taught him about subsistence living. After attending Oglala Lakota College, he immediately found a home in the nonprofit world, which set him on a course to push for change and to challenge authority and the status quo. What he learned along the way, he said, was that the most effective leaders and change agents in America tended to be people who are "most grounded in the communities where they were from." For Tilsen, that meant returning to Pine Ridge to launch his dream of obtaining the funding and support for a project that would attack poverty on many fronts. He soon discovered that leading such change would not come easily. Tilsen said he saw that Native peoples exhibited a strong and unmovable soul during cultural and spiritual rituals, but did not sustain those positive attributes or actions when they resumed their daily lives. That knowledge developed within himself and others a desire to help people break out of the "poverty mentality," in which they await help from others and in turn lose their identity and their will to create their own destiny. "How long are you going to let other people dictate the future for your children?" was a question Tilsen would ask. He also came to the realization that if Lakota adults wanted a positive future for their children, that "we better damn well do some things to make things better." When Thunder Valley launched 10 years ago, Tilsen said his first goal was to hold listening and visioning session. One such meeting taught him the power that resides, often suppressed, in even the most oppressed of peoples. Tilsen told of a 91-year-old woman who approached him after a listening session, which he felt had not gone well, and praised the meeting concept. She told him: "I've lived my whole life on the reservation and in those 91 years, nobody ever asked me what I wanted for my future. Nobody ever asked me what I wanted for my community, what job I wanted for myself." Fostering that sense of empowerment, and creating avenues to change society to allow for a positive path forward, is at the heart of how Tilsen sees Thunder Valley and himself. Before he was a leader who has obtained national recognition, including honors directly from former President Barack Obama, Tilsen said he had to muster the strength to persevere. He and his team saw support of their big dream at first, but then felt resentment and questioning on the reservation once they began to obtain grants and loans and the funding to make change happen. "Being a leader is totally overrated," Tilsen joked. "I start out a meeting and I say, 'Can someone pull all those knives out of my back?' People don't see all the scars of leadership." Tilsen's easygoing nature and propensity for humor belie a deep determination and commitment to cause that in part led him to chain himself to construction equipment and be arrested last year during the extended Native-led protest against the Dakota Access pipeline in North Dakota. Now back home, Tilsen said a chief goal of Thunder Valley is to change the narrative that poverty cannot be undone in Pine Ridge, or that the reservation is a place destined for hopelessness, or that philanthropic investment has been overdone and led to only limited results in improving lives. "People say, it's too complicated, the poverty there seems overwhelming," Tilsen said. "I come to the table and say, 'Man, I see nothing but opportunities,' and that narrative becomes contagious." Tilsen said his goals for the next 10 years are to keep doing Thunder Valley's work but also to "scale up" what has been successful so it can translate to other impoverished areas of America. He urged South Dakota residents to visit Thunder Valley and experience for themselves the spirit of change and growth occurring there. And he urged those same people to look at Pine Ridge in a completely new way. "When you talk about Pine Ridge and Pine Ridge poverty, check it," he said. "Check how you talk about it, and try to see things through the lens of opportunity." On April 6, 1917, the United States entered "The Great War" on a U.S. House of Representatives vote of 373 to 50. A century later, a small group of veterans and residents came together at Black Hills National Cemetery to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the U.S. entering World War I. In front of a pine-stubbed ridge line, a man played "Taps" on a bugle, the sound drifting into the distance. A volley of gunshots from the Sturgis Volunteer Honor Guard rang through the otherwise quiet cemetery. During the event, Black Hills National Cemetery Director Adriene Benton spoke about the sacrifice that all veterans make. The U.S. suffered more than 100,000 casualties during World War 1, which ended on Nov. 11, 1918. Benton said she hopes people who visit the cemetery come away with "one humble lesson." "The price of freedom is visible here," Benton said. At the end of the ceremony a wreath was placed near the flagpoles at the west end of the cemetery. PIERRE | The South Dakota Game, Fish & Parks Department plans to close boat launches on 25 lakes and sloughs in 11 counties, officials announced Thursday. The news comes in the wake of the South Dakota Supreme Courts recent decision on non-meandered bodies of water, Duerre v. Hepler. The decision affects: Caseys Slough, Cottonwood Lake GPA, Dry Lake #1, Dry Lake #2 and Swan Lake in Clark County. Deep Lake and Goose Lake in Codington County. East Krause Lake, Lynn Lake, Middle Lynn Lake and Reetz Lake in Day County. North Scatterwood Lake in Edmunds County. Three Buck Lake in Hamlin County. Bullhead Lake, Cattail-Kettle Lake and Cottonwood Lake in Marshall County. Keisz Lake in McPherson County. Grass Lake, Loss Lake, Scott Lake and Twin Lakes in Minnehaha County. Twin Lakes in Sanborn County. Cottonwood Lake and Mud Lake in Spink County. Dog Ear Lake in Tripp County. Officials said additional water bodies could be added later. Under this Supreme Court decision, GF&P cannot facilitate access to non-meandered waters for recreational purposes, GF&P Secretary Kelly Hepler said. Hepler said that, according to the Supreme Court, the South Dakota Legislature must determine whether and how the public may use non-meandered waters for recreational purposes. PIERRE | Otter Tail Power Co. filed notice of intent Thursday to construct an energy conversion facility generating 250 megawatts of electricity approximately 1.5 miles northwest of Astoria in Scandinavia Township, Deuel County. The company told the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission that the estimated construction cost is $165 million including transmission interconnection and escalation costs. Otter Tail is based in Fergus Falls, Minn. A four-year discretionary formula has been offered by Deuel County for property taxes. After that the property taxes will be about $1 million per year. The taxes will depreciate over time. The natural gas-fired plant will feature at most a 1,000-foot connection to the Northern Border Pipeline and up to a one-mile tie to the 345-kilovolt transmission line between Big Stone and Brookings. The addition of this natural gas generation will provide a reliable, economic and environmentally responsible source of energy to South Dakota and the Upper Midwest, project manager William Swanson said in the filing. Otter Tail has asked to defer prefiling of testimony and hold a pre-hearing conference. Pennington County's head prosecutor informed the 7th Circuit Court on Thursday that the state intends to seek the death penalty against two defendants in the Jessica Rehfeld murder case. Jonathon Klinetobe, 27, and Richard Hirth, 36, are charged with multiple felonies in Rehfeld's death, including first-degree murder, punishable by life in prison or death. Authorities accuse Klinetobe of masterminding the killing of his ex-girlfriend Rehfeld in May 2015, and of hiring Hirth and another man to stab her to death then bury her in the woods south of Rockerville. About 10 months after Klinetobe and Hirth pleaded not guilty to their charges, State's Attorney Mark Vargo told the court that his office has filed a notice of intent to seek the death penalty should the men be convicted of their murder charge. When Judge Heidi Linngren asked the defendants if they understood the prosecutor's declaration, each answered yes. Linngren reminded them that during their arraignments in June, they were informed the state could seek the death penalty on first-degree murder. The defense attorneys objected to Vargo's notice, and said they will submit written responses to the court. Joseph Kosel, one of Hirth's two lawyers, said also that they learned about the notice at the last minute. "I was given less than a minute to talk to my client about it," Kosel said, visibly upset. "I object, very much so." Klinetobe, of Sturgis, will return to court on June 7 and Hirth, of Rapid City, on June 14 to take up various pretrial matters. The men are detained at the Pennington County Jail on bonds of $2 million apiece. The court files for Klinetobe, Hirth and David Schneider, the other man charged in Rehfeld's killing, have been sealed since around February. The records had previously been accessible to the public, like most cases that do not relate to juvenile hearings. The Journal was unable to get an explanation from the courthouse or the State's Attorney's Office before the hearing Thursday on the files' sealing; Vargo cited the gag order against discussing case facts. Judge Linngren said Thursday that the files were sealed "because of the ongoing nature of the investigation, not to leave people out." With the state now intending to seek the death penalty against Klinetobe and Hirth, she said it was also a way to preserve the defendants' rights to a fair trial. According to Journal archives, the last time the death penalty was handed down in Pennington County was in 2011, for a murder case that was transferred from Lawrence County. Briley Piper, who pleaded guilty to participating in the killing of Chester Allan Poage in Spearfish in 2001, is one of the three South Dakota inmates currently on death row, according to the Attorney General's Office. The two others are: Rodney Berget, convicted of killing State Penitentiary guard Ronald Johnson during an escape attempt in 2011; and Charles Rhines, convicted of fatally stabbing Donnivan Schaeffer during a Rapid City burglary in 1992. The last state inmate to be executed was Eric Robert, who died by lethal injection in 2012, for participating in Johnson's killing. PINE RIDGE | Tribal, state and federal authorities are taking the first steps toward forging a partnership to combat gun violence on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. To that end, Randolph Seiler, U.S. attorney for the district of South Dakota, said at a news conference Thursday that he is opening an office in Pine Ridge. Lets beat this! Seiler shouted in his closing remarks at the Su Anne Big Crow Center, slamming his open palm on the lectern. If you know the top five drug dealers on Pine Ridge, tell me! Well go after them. Starting next week, Seiler's attorneys will staff the office at the Criminal Justice Center in Pine Ridge and be available every Wednesday to answer questions and take reports about crimes. "We're calling it walk-in Wednesdays," Seiler told an audience of about 70 people that included members of Oglala Sioux tribal government and agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Representatives from each of those groups voiced a commitment to cooperate with Seiler and the administration of Oglala Sioux Tribal President Troy Scott Weston to reduce gun violence on the reservation. We can make the Pine Ridge reservation a safer place to live and raise a family, Seiler said. I pledge as long as I am U.S. attorney, I will stand with you in this effort. The news conference was purposefully held during National Crime Victims' Rights Week. The joint initiative between his office and Seiler's, Weston said, has been one of his top priorities since he stepped into the role of tribal president in November. We are too territorial in everything we do, Weston said. We have tribal law, we have federal law, we have state law. And were bound by it. It doesnt let us do what we need to do. So my intent when I got into this office was to break down those barriers. There were 17 homicides on the reservation in 2016, compared to nine in 2015. "In the overwhelming number of cases, Seiler said of the killings over the last two years, both the perpetrator and the victim were (Native American). In the overwhelming number of cases, both the victim and the defendant knew each other. The majority of homicides were not drug related. I can tell you in every instance that they're being investigated. With one or two exceptions, they've all been solved, the responsible parties are being prosecuted, and some are having court appearances in Rapid City as we speak. Seiler also noted that there hasn't been a single homicide on the reservation so far this year, a fact that Weston isnt willing to trumpet as a sign of victory. Im going to leave that alone, he said. I dont want to take credit for something only to have it come back and bite me. The three-hour news conference highlighted the stories of several survivors and victims of violent crime, including Cheryl "Renee" Bourque, a victim specialist with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, who narrowly survived a shooting during a routine residential check-in. "We get so caught up on the justice, which is important," she said. "But what we forget about is the healing part." Recovering from violent trauma requires help from a strong community, Bourque said. Mike Poindexter is the sheriff of Modoc County in northeast California, a poor and sparsely populated area of the state that covers 4,200 square miles and five Native American reservations. Poindexter was once shot at with an AK-47 in the course of his duties as sheriff, something that would have been unheard of when he took the job in 1987. During a 20-year period from 1987 to 2007, Poindexter said his county only saw a single homicide. Since 2007, weve had six or seven, including the first officer killed in the line of duty, he said. It's an epidemic. It's not just happening here. Poindexter recounted for the audience what he saw in the aftermath of a mass shooting in the winter of 2014. "A young woman came running into the city building covered in blood stating that there'd been a shooting at the tribal office," Poindexter recalled. Four people were shot to death. Another woman was stabbed repeatedly. Poindexter found her bleeding in the parking lot outside the tribal office. Inside, he could hear the sound of a baby crying somewhere amid the carnage. It was just the most horrific crime we've had in the history of our county, Poindexter said. Bridging the cultural gap between tribal police and predominantly white law enforcement entities can be difficult at times, Poindexter said, but he urged those at the news conference to communicate and do their best to help each other, whether they live on the reservation or off it. Frank Kelsey, an agent with the ATF, shared that sentiment and joined in Seilers pledge to offer whatever help his office can to fight the violence on Pine Ridge. Violence lives in the dark, Kelsey said. If you don't admit that you have a problem, if you dont tackle that problem head-on, you're letting violence live in the dark. The best way to combat a crime is to shine a light on it. Our response to any violent crime has to be unified, he added. It needs to be as one, and it needs to be stronger than the crime. Both Kelsey and Seiler urged those in attendance to speak up about violence in their communities and to call them directly if they have something to report. Seilers office number in Rapid City is 342-7822, and anonymous tips about crimes can be made toll-free to the Bureau of Indian Affairs Office of Justice Services hotline at 888-668-0661. Calls to the ATF can be directed to 782-8200. We need to retrain our thoughts, Weston said, adding that he hopes the partnership with Seilers office will be the beginning of a more aggressive approach to dealing with violence on the reservation. Russian court puts eight suspects in abetting terrorism in detention ST. PETERSBURG, April 7 (RAPSI, Mikhail Telekhov) The Oktyabrsly District Court in St. Petersburg has ruled to place all eight suspects in abetting terrorism in detention until June 4, the United press service of St. Petersburg courts told RAPSI on Friday. On Friday, the court ordered detention of Kyrgyzstan native Iskander Nurbayev. Seven other suspects were detained on Thursday. Eight natives of several Central Asian republics were arrested after searches conducted by the police, Russian National Guard and Federal Security Service (FSB) on April 5 and April 6. According to investigators, from November 2015 till present, they were recruiting new members of Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist organizations banned in Russia and other illegal militant groups for committing crimes of a terrorist nature. Recruits were predominantly natives of Central Asian republics. Searches were conducted at the suspects places of residence; law enforcement officers seized extremist literature, documents and other items significant to the case. Currently, investigators do not have information on their acquaintance with alleged St. Petersburg metro bombing suspect, Russias Investigative Committee said earlier. On April 3, at around 2:40 PM Moscow time, an unknown device exploded in a train between St. Petersburg metro stations Technological Institute and Sennaya Ploshchad. According to the most recent information, 14 people died in the blast, over 50 were wounded. Investigators claim that the suicide bomber is the Kyrgyz Republics native Akbarzhon Dzhalilov, born in 1995. MOSCOW, April 7 (RAPSI) Russian opposition activist Leonid Razvozzhayev, who had been sentenced to 4.5 years in prison for participation in 2012 rallies in central Moscow, served his time and left a penal colony in the Krasnoyarsk Region, RIA Novosti reported on Friday citing a source in Russian security services. Razvozzhayev was released after the time served and put under administrative supervision for two years. Over 400 people were arrested and scores injured in the Bolotnaya Square protests that turned violent in May 2012. Dozens were later charged with inciting riots and assault on law enforcement officers. Riot organizers Razvozzhayev and Sergey Udaltsov were sentenced to 4.5 years in prison each based partly on testimony by Konstantin Lebedev, who was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison but released on parole. Other convicts in the riots case received punishment ranging from suspended sentences to four years in prison. Several defendants were pardoned; one is undergoing compulsory mental treatment. From the beginning of this nation, presidents have had a love-hate relationship with the press. President Donald Trumps so-called war on the media has the mainstream press atwitter that freedom of the press itself is under attack. This criticism has been voiced by the media and politicians on both sides of the aisle. They claim that the Presidents crusade against the press is unprecedented and the absolute worst in all of American history. The President has not backed away from his stance, saying, As you know, I have a running war with the media. They are among the most dishonest human beings on the earth. However, Trump can take some comfort from past presidents. John Adams was so concerned about foreign influence on our press, he signed into law the Sedition Act of 1798, which made publishing anything critical of the government illegal. Theodore Roosevelt despised the press so much that he called them a bunch of muckrakers for their sensationalism and false reporting. The liar, Roosevelt said of the media, is no whit better than the thief, and if his mendacity take the form of slander, he may be worse than most thieves. Roosevelt even tried (unsuccessfully) to sue newspapers whom he felt printed false coverage regarding the Panama Canal. After Franklin Roosevelt was elected president in 1932, he embarked on a series of fireside chats. These radio conversations were broadcast in the evening to reach the maximum audience. He spoke in a conversational, friendly tone with his messages listened to by millions of Americans. At the time, Roosevelts opponents had control of most of the major newspapers in the 1930s. Roosevelt was able to use the radio to better explain his policies without the message being filtered or distorted by newspapers. The accepted perception is that John Kennedy had an excellent relationship with the press. While his presidency began with friendly bantering with the press, that would not endure. In fact, many in the press would come to accuse Kennedy of undue secrecy. He justified his secrecy during a speech in which he stated, Every newspaper should now asks itself, with respect to every story: Is it news? All I suggest is that you add the question: Is it in the interest of the national security? The media was aghast, accusing the president of imposing voluntary censorship. In fact, the Baltimore Suns Mark Watson penned an article titled New Censor Rules Recall Goebbels In 1963, Lyndon Johnson occupied the oval office. After assuming the office after Kennedys assassination, he and the press experienced a period of goodwill. However, by 1967, many members of the media were turned off by Johnsons tactics. They accused the president of trying to manipulate the media and punishing those who opposed his policies. More and more stories about a credibility gap began to appear. Richard Nixon, who followed Johnson as president, called the press the elites. He even threatened to fire his press secretary if he didnt keep media out of the White House. He reportedly said, I want it clearly understood from now on, no reporter from the Washington Post is ever to be in the White House. Is that clear? Sounds pretty clear to me. George W. Bush brushing aside the notion that the press is neutral and unbiased called them just another special interest group. HELENA Gov. Steve Bullock revived debate over mail-only voting on Friday when he used his veto power to rewrite a routine bill to allow counties to conduct the May 25 congressional election by mail. The governor's action caught Secretary of State Corey Stapleton off guard. His fellow Republicans in the House, who had killed the bill last month, were scrambling to see if there was a way to prevent the governor's changes from being debated and getting a floor vote. They might be able to run down the clock, as time ticks for county elections officials to prepare for the election. Elections officials from across the state found themselves caught in the developing political drama in the state Capitol, as time runs short for them to print ballots, arrange polling sites and assemble thousands of poll workers. The 11th-hour political maneuver might be too late for some counties, who are already planning to set up polling places for in-person voters. "At this point, many of us clerks can't keep fighting the battle in Helena. Our focus has to be on the election at hand," said Regina Plettenberg, the chief elections officer for Ravalli County. "At this point, we are planning on running this election at the polls." Fewer than seven weeks remain before the special election to fill the state's only congressional seat, which was left vacant when Ryan Zinke resigned to lead the U.S. Interior Department. Republican Greg Gianforte, Democrat Rob Quist and Libertarian Mark Wicks are contesting for the post. Other potential candidates have a lawsuit pending that could throw the timing of the election in doubt. Since the special election coincided with Hamilton High Schools graduation, Plettenberg was forced to move that polling place to the fairgrounds floral building. Its not great, but thats par for the course in this election, Plettenberg said. Bullock, in a press release, said, "I take seriously my responsibility to strengthen our democracy by helping make sure that more eligible citizens can participate in that democracy, not fewer. And what is better for democracy than to put a ballot in the hands of every registered voter?" Using his veto pen, Bullock rewrote a bill sponsored by Democratic Rep. Bryce Bennett of Missoula that mostly addressed mundane election rules such as noticing requirements, clarifying deadlines for local elections. The governor's amendatory veto inserted an entirely new section into Bennett's 22-page bill, specifying that "the 2017 special election to fill the vacancy in the office of the United States representative for Montana may be conducted by mail." In addition to signing and vetoing bills, the governor is allowed by state law to issue so-called "amendatory vetoes" to bills he generally supports but will only sign with his suggested changes. An overwhelming number of county elections officials have been pushing lawmakers to allow the election to be conducted by mail. They argued that it could save them as much as $750,000 and would save them from the logistical nightmares of setting up polling places and hiring workers on such short notice. It's uncertain what Republican lawmakers can do to prevent a vote on the proposal, which would need simple majorities from both chambers to send the bill back to the governor for his signature. The Senate had already consented to the mail-only ballot, but House Republicans successfully blocked the measure from a floor debate. Most thought the effort had died last week when the House rejected a bid to revive the bill sponsored by Sen. Steve Fitzpatrick, a Republican from Great Falls. County clerks face a Monday deadline to present their election plans to the Secretary of State's Office, but it's unclear what kind of leeway exists in state election laws that would allow them to pursue a mail-only election beyond the current schedules already outlined. While some counties are already moving forward to conduct elections at the polls, Plettenberg said there could be time for some to switch to mail-only voting. "If by next week, by some miracle in Helena things get switched to a mail ballot, then I can easily switch," she said. As the president of the Montana Association of Clerks and Recorders, Plettenberg said 40 counties have already printed their ballots. Depending on the results of a lawsuit requesting other names be added to the ballot, those counties may be forced to reprint those. Everything is up in the air, Plettenberg said. Were still waiting for the results of that lawsuit. Its nerve wracking. The only thing she can tell Ravalli County voters with certainty is that those who have signed up for absentee ballots will receive them in the mail as usual. We have heard from a lot people who think that the entire election will now be held at the polls, she said. Thats not the case. Its been confusing for everyone. While Plettenberg said she appreciates all the support the counties have received on this issue, including from the governor, the reality is that time isnt on their side. The clock is ticking down every day, she said. Ravalli Republic reporter Perry Backus contributed to this story. Two Hamilton women who pleaded guilty earlier to driving drunk while children were in their car will get another chance to set their lives right. On Wednesday, Brandi Lea Wollam, 33, and Kimberly Renee Franz, 42, had their sentences deferred for three years following hearings in Ravalli County District Court. The women will be required to follow probationary terms for the three years. If they do that, the charges will be dropped. Wollam was charged with felony criminal endangerment and driving while under the influence in August 2016. According to an affidavit, Wollam drove to pick up her husband from work with her two young children in car. When her husband noticed the smell of alcohol, the couple argued before stopping alongside the road. That was where Ravalli County deputies found them. The affidavit said the deputies noted that Wollams speech was slurred and she was unsteady. She told them she had one beer before driving and nothing else. A breath test resulted in .165 breath alcohol content level. In Montana, a person is considered impaired with a .08 BAC. Franz was arrested in June 2016 after a sheriffs deputy pulled over a vehicle suspected of being involved in a hit and run accident at Lake Como. According to charging documents, Franz admitted to being in a fender bender at the lake. She told deputies that she had one drink several hours prior to the traffic stop. The deputy noted there were three juveniles in the car, including a 6-year-old and two 14-year-olds. An initial breath sample resulted in a .169 breath alcohol content. After Franz indicated she didnt trust that first sample, she provided a second on a different deputys instrument. That sample resulted in a .171 BAC. For politicians who talk a lot about creating jobs and growing the economy, the members of the Senate Business, Labor and Economic Affairs Committee sure have some explaining to do. On Tuesday, instead of supporting a burgeoning industry, they gutted a bill aimed at allowing Montanas breweries to meet the growing demand for craft beer. The amendment, in fact, might force one of Missoulas breweries to close one of its taprooms. The original version of the bill was a sterling example of bipartisan cooperation from two Missoula legislators: Republican Rep. Adam Hertz and Democratic Rep. Ellie Hill. It would have raised the allowable production limit for breweries that operate a taproom from 10,000 barrels to 60,000 barrels. The representatives of the House found the original version of House Bill 541 reasonable, and approved the bill 85-14 on its third reading. The Senate Business, Labor and Economic Affairs Committee, unfortunately, had other ideas, and voted 7-3 for an amended version that would raise the limit by just 2,000 barrels a pittance that offers no incentive at all to growing breweries. The arbitrary limits on Montanas breweries is a discussion well leave for another day. Suffice to say to say that they operate under much stricter rules than bars and restaurants. Breweries, for example, must undergo complex machinations to purchase a license to sell beer and wine; they have curtailed hours and must stop serving by 8 p.m.; and they even have limits on how much they can serve (48 ounces per customer per day). The laws seem expressly designed to stifle the growth of this one industry. Nevertheless, the popularity of craft beer has soared over the past decade, and new breweries and taprooms have sprouted throughout the state. In fact, at last count, the Brewers Association ranked Montana No. 3 in the nation for its number of craft breweries per capita. Missoula alone counts at least eight. With so many craft beer fans drinking up their product, its little wonder that some of most well-established breweries are bumping up against their 10,000-barrel production cap. Unfortunately, under current law, if they exceed this number they must close their taprooms. Why does Montana have any cap at all? Doesnt that just stifle competition? Does a law that forces growing breweries to lay off their taproom employees make any sense? The Montana Tavern Association seems to think so, and has taken every opportunity to oppose legislation that would allow breweries to grow. Its worth noting here that the Senate Business, Labor and Economic Affairs Committee chair, Sen. Ed Buttrey, owns a bar. Perhaps thats why the amendment to House Bill 541 feels almost like punishment a message to breweries that if they dare try to grow, they will be slapped down. It might actually punish one brewery in particular. Missoulas KettleHouse Brewing sent out an urgent message to its customers on Facebook, alerting them to the possibility that the new rules could force the business to shut down its Northside taproom. KettleHouse is the maker of Coldsmoke, and operates from two locations in Montana under a complicated ownership system designed to work around the restrictions on beer production and licensing. The new version of HB 541 adds language that would make such workarounds untenable. It should be clear that the current limits or even a 2,000-barrel increase are not working for Missoulas most popular breweries. Big Sky Brewery, the makers of Moose Drool, makes a lot more than 10,000 barrels of their beer, and therefore is not allowed to sell beer on its premises. So it gives beer away for free in its tasting room. Not only has this cost the company an estimated $4 million, it has cost the state tax revenue it could have collected had the business been allowed to sell its product on-site. Missoulas Bayern Brewing, too, is limiting its production to less than 10,000 barrels because it doesnt make sense financially or from a customer loyalty standpoint to make more and close its taproom. The amended version of HB 541 will now go to the Senate floor. The original version of the bill made a lot of sense. The amended version is a job-killing, competition-stifling, anti-business bill. Every craft beer fan in western Montana should contact their state senators and tell them so. The spigot is wide open, lots of bills getting thru both chambers, amendments placed and agreed with, some back to the appropriations committee for a final review and then on to the governors office. As of March 31st, he has signed 123 and vetoed three. One of which, on Friday, I sponsored on behalf of the Montana State Pharmacy Association. Pretty cool to attend a signing, complete with pictures and even the signing pen. This bill deserves a big shout out to Governor Bullock for staying the course and standing up for the rural pharmacies. Just like we legislators, he, too, was being pressured by the big guns who were trying hard to defend and protect their shaded and shadowy turf. Heres a quick look at the rest of the story and how the drama played out right up to the next to last day. You may recall from earlier posts that this bill was to give the pharmacies some relief and a method of opting out, under certain conditions, from being forced to fill prescriptions when doing so put them in a negative position of losing hundreds of dollars sometimes filling one prescription. What creates this predicament is their contract with the Pharmacy Benefit Management groups, whose role is to be the middle man between the drug manufacturer, the insurance companies, and the retail pharmacy. They control the drug cost, the amount the insurance company can pay and then the amount the pharmacy will be charged. Rural and small pharmacies are losing money and finding difficulty in being able to survive. This story is a classic David and Goliath situation. The PBMs are making obscene profits off the backs of us the tax payer and us the insured, placing small pharmacies at risk of survival. They do not want transparency. The layers of bureaucracy are so complex that in testimony at hearings they could not even unravel it themselves. The first hearing was in the House Business and Labor committee, the room was full of rural pharmacies, like Florence Community Pharmacy, and others all across the state. The opponents were lobbyists and insurers like Blue Cross/Blue Shield. The committee passed the bill. The hearing at the Senate committee brought bigger guns from the opponents. Executives and attorneys from Chicago and Philadelphia. This was hard ball and yet the committee kept trying to get past the top layers with their probing questions. I was excited. The lobbyist for the State Pharmacy Association reminding me cautiously, theres a long way to go yet. As I watched the lead attorney for the PBMs stand at the podium, I couldnt help but notice the difference in his suit, haircut and shoes compared to mine. His shoes likely cost more than my entire get up. The folks supporting the bill kept up their contact with the senators. The bill passed out of the Senate with strong support and a week ago was sent to the governor for his signature. As a bill sponsor we can ask to be present for a photo op when the bill is signed. I was given a date of Friday morning. Then it happened. Early Wednesday the corporate jet landed. Top executives and attorneys from the PBMs had arranged for a private meeting with the governor. We got wind of it around noon and knew immediately how much importance they were placing on doing and spending whatever it took to have a last minute effort asking the governor to stop or veto the bill. Nervously I approached the scheduling person in the governors office Thursday afternoon: Uh, Im scheduled for a signing at 9:30 tomorrow, just wanting to make sure I had the time correct? Yes Rep Greef you are second up at 9:30. Wow. Could it be that we made it? I was somewhat comforted, but knew I was not going to relax until I actually sat down beside the governor. Thank you Governor Bullock for standing with us for the small and rural pharmacies all across the state. HB-276 is now law. Ed Greef, Rep HD-88, Florence Thank you Senator Jon Tester for voting against the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Sen. Tester did the necessary research into Judge Gorsuchs court decisions and found that he ruled in favor of a trucking corporation over the health (and possible death) of one their workers. This worker was threatened with either death by freezing or driving an unsafe semi. For choosing the publics health and his own survival, the worker was fired by the company. This decision to support a company over the very life of an individual worker was upheld by Judge Gorsuch. Senator Tester also cited Gorsuchs ruling in the Hobby Lobby case affirming the companys denial of health care for their workers based on a religious tenet. I did not know that corporations could hold religious beliefs. Do they kneel to pray? Judge Gorsuch may eventually be seated on the Supreme Court, but now we have ample proof of Senator Testers commitment to the rule of law and to Montana. As Senator Tester so aptly testified on the floor of the Senate: commonsense Montanans know a corporation aint a person. I concur. Pam Erickson, Hamilton His amendatory veto will need approval from both chambers of the Legislature. The Senate had already consented to the mail-only ballot, but House Republicans successfully blocked the measure from a floor debate. An overwhelming number of country elections officials have been pushing lawmakers to allow the election to be conducted by mail. They argued that it could save them as much as $750,000 and would save them from the logistical nightmares of setting up polling places and hiring workers on such short notice. MISSOULA A heralded director at the University of Montana is under investigation by the Montana Human Rights Bureau for allegations of discrimination based on gender and disability. Mark LoParco, subject of the investigation, is retiring in May after 25 years as head of UM Dining Services. LoParco denied this week that UM asked him to retire or that his coming departure is linked to allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination. UM spokeswoman Paula Short said the university respects the privacy of its employees and cannot comment on personnel issues. "The University of Montana has denied the allegations in the complaint filed with the Human Rights Bureau, though we cannot comment further while the matter is still pending," Short said in an email. In September 2016, former UM Dining staff Kathleen "Kate" Slack and Rebecca "Becca" Shern filed a complaint against LoParco. In it, the women allege LoParco, their ultimate supervisor, bullied and belittled them and other women, subjected them to misogynistic and sexist treatment, and unfairly promoted and compensated men while denying advancement to women. Slack and Shern declined to comment through their attorney, Matthew Lowy, of Lowy Law in Missoula. However, the document alleges UM had ample opportunity to remedy their concerns and those of other staff. The complaint alleges discrimination, constructive (that is, forced) discharge, and a hostile work environment, and it asks for expedited mediation and compensation. "A legend has grown around Mark LoParco," said the complaint. "The University's awareness of these problems is documented through exit interviews, EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) complaints, union grievances, and whatever HR collected but was not destroyed." UM is a top employer in Missoula, hiring thousands of students, faculty, staff and administrators. In an email, President Sheila Stearns noted that challenges are inherent with personnel. "Like all employers, we occasionally receive complaints about workplace issues," Stearns said. "We address them with respect and diligence. "We can never address particular complaints through the media because of personnel privacy of all involved. The basic fact is that we take all concerns raised about improper behavior seriously and address them in accordance with our policies and procedures. *** The complaint pending with the Human Rights Bureau of the Montana Department of Labor and Industry notes numerous examples, including the following allegations: LoParco's behavior included "commenting on women employee's bodies, describing an employee as 'Eeyore' for her appearance and demeanor, dancing with a 'g-string' on his head at a national conference, complaining about the amount he had to pay female employees, and telling female students at the omelet bar that he was making them an 'orgasm on a plate.'" In 2011, Slack discovered she had vision problems and could not drive at night, and UM Dining accommodated her "mild disability," the complaint said. But Slack had a foot surgery in December 2015, and when she returned to work in February 2016, her supervisor told her that her job had changed, and she would be doing tasks such as waitressing and cooking, "problematic because she would still be in a boot." Slack learned her schedule also had changed to end at 7 p.m., "even more problematic since she has night blindness and cannot see to drive in the dark." When she met with LoParco, he told her he actually wanted her to work until 9 p.m., and he said "she had to choose to either take the job the way it is or to quit." Several department reorganizations left Shern performing three separate jobs director of health and professional development, registered sanitarian, and registered dietitian "accomplishing more than the male associate directors." When Shern presented LoParco a plan to pay her fair wages, he "countered Becca's request with a demotion," making her a contract employee and stripping key responsibilities. The complaint also discussed treatment against other staff. "Kate witnessed horrible treatment by Mr. LoParco of his former assistant, Christina Voyles," said the document. "Voyles was given a higher position at a lower wage than some of the people she then supervised." Shern and Slack both left UM Dining last spring. On Slack's departure: "March 9, 2016, was Kate Slack's last day of work at UM Dining," the complaint said. "The stated reason her firing occurred was her position had been eliminated. This was a pretext. Two weeks to the day after being told the position as assistant director of retail was being eliminated and there was no place left in UM Dining for Kate to work, (a man) was asked by (Slack's supervisor) if he would please consider applying for the position of assistant director of retail." On Shern's departure: "April 8, 2016, Becca notified Mr. LoParco that in response to his offer of a demotion, she was resigning her position of nine years, effective April 22, 2016," the complaint said. "In effect, his sexist, misogynistic, contemptible behavior was too much for her. Like (four former staff), and other former employees who have not yet been unearthed or want to put the terrible chapter of employment under LoParco behind them, Becca was constructively fired from her position by Mark LoParco." The complaint notes men in the department also disapproved of the director's acts. "Many male employees have expressed discomfort with Mr. LoParco's behavior as well," the complaint said. "They have voiced concerns ranging from his poor management, egregious treatment of subordinates, and misogynistic treatment of his female employees." *** Last month, UM officials suggested the Missoulian feature retiring employee LoParco, a "dynamo" who has earned many awards and been "sort (of) an over-sized figure on campus." LoParco has been honored by UM for his work in sustainability and by a national association for his leadership in the collegiate food industry. Last week, the Missoulian published a profile of LoParco noting his accomplishments in food service at UM and his contributions to the industry. Voyles, who previously worked at UM Dining, read the story and wrote a letter to UM in response and copied the Missoulian. In the lengthy correspondence, Voyles described her own experience with LoParco and her disappointment with UM's "administrative incompetence." She worked seven years for UM Dining and said she watched LoParco "get away with poor, unethical management and financially questionable behavior." "UM's continued drop in enrollment is a culmination of the poor choices UM makes: from covering up a variety of inexcusable behaviors by ingrates like LoParco to punishing the wrong people, it affects everything,'' she said. "From the student who wants out of their meal plan because they are tired of being harassed by 'an old, balding, fat guy in tights,' at omelet bars. To staff whose careers were ended by LoParco simply because he decided he no longer liked them ... "Perhaps what I find most disappointing is that there have been women every step of the way that have been made aware of LoParco's behavior and have done nothing to stop it." *** In 2012, the U.S. Department of Justice investigated UM for failing to properly handle reports of sexual assaults and doing so in a manner that has a disparate impact on women. Under former President Royce Engstrom, UM fired staff, changed policies, mandated training, and completed an agreement with the federal agency to address gender bias. In the complaint, Slack and Shern suggest more training is needed for UM Dining. "Managers, supervisors, and the human resources department at UM Dining Services appear to require additional training and commitment to the fact that gender and disability are protected by federal law, must not be the reason for formal criticism, denied opportunities, or informal complaining. "Disabilities and gender cannot be held against an employee." UM didn't directly address whether a culture shift must still take place on campus. Spokeswoman Short said the following: "The university seeks out best practices involving personnel management, including training in sexual harassment/equal opportunity, discrimination prevention, drug-free workplace, diversity, safety, mandatory reporting on sexual misconduct and supervision. "The university follows its policies and processes in addressing every complaint, and we do it respectfully and fairly for all parties. "There will be individuals who are dissatisfied with the outcome, and they will take further steps as is their prerogative, be it engaging in other processes, appealing to the media or other actions,'' Short said. 2016 began with difficult start for Nepal. Shortly after the massive earthquake and the disaster that followed, there was a shortage of fuel and essential supplies due to the economic blockade imposed by Madhesis to pressurise the government to address their demands related to the newly promulgated constitution. To add to the woes, the economic blockade took place during the winter months when the country was struggling to recover from the earthquake that had claimed thousands of lives. Despite this, the then Prime Minister of Nepal, KP Oli, refused to address the demands of Madhesis, Janajatis and Tharus through amendments in the constitution. With the prime ministers reluctance to pay heed to the demands, the blockade was lifted after the 134 days long protest, without any result. The first quarter of 2016 was also a period of despair as Nepal lost its former Prime Minister and senior Nepali Congress leader, Sushil Koirala. It was also around the time when India-Nepal relations were at a low because the KP Oli-led government had accused India of supporting the economic blockade imposed by the Madhesis. To improve the New Delhi-Kathmandu relationship, Oli was invited for a six-day visit to India. However, nothing remarkable was achieved through his visit. Within few weeks, Oli paid a week-long visit to China. He tried to challenge India by signing an agreement on trade and transit with Beijing. However, the Oli-led government could not last long. It collapsed within 10 months, following the withdrawal of support by the Maoists as the Oli government had failed to address the demands of the Madhesis, Tharus and Janajatis. Subsequently, Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda, Chairman, Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Center) became Nepals prime minister for the second time with the support of Nepali Congress, the largest party in the parliament. Both the Nepali Congress and the Maoists agreed to equally share the remaining 18-month term between themselves. Prime Minister Dahal was able to garner the support of the Madhesi parties as well, because he assured them that he would address their demands. While 2016 was a mixed bag, 2017 comes with several challenges. Nepal has to implement the newly promulgated constitution by taking the Madhesis on board by addressing their demands. The government also needs to hold the three-tier elections (local, provincial and federal) by January 2018, as mentioned in the constitution. Delivering on these would be a herculean task for both the incumbent and the upcoming government led by Nepali Congress in 2017. Failing to address these challenges will plunge Nepal into crisis. Prachandas Promise Prachanda promised the Madhesis, Janajatis and Tharus that their demands will be addressed through a constitutional amendment as he was in need of their support to become the prime minister for the second time. However, despite his attempts, he has failed to do so. Though he tabled the amendment proposal in the parliament, he could not garner the two-third majority required for the amendment. Moreover, under the pressure of the main opposition, the Communist Party of Nepal [Unified Marxist Leninist] (CPN-UML), he announced that local elections will be held on 14 May. The newly promulgated constitution requires holding of three-tier elections by January 2018. In this context, the Election Commission of Nepal had asked the government to agree on election dates at the earliest to facilitate conducting all three elections within the stipulated time. Following the strong reaction and warning of withdrawing support to the Maoists government, Prachanda reiterated that he would address the demands of the Madhesis, Janajatis and Tharus through amendments before the local polls. Local Elections If the local body election takes place on the announced date May 14 Nepal will have a democratically elected local body after two decades. But the Madhesi political parties are agitating and have demanded that the government should first address their concerns regarding Madhesis, Janajatis and Tharus through constitutional amendments and then announce the poll dates. Meanwhile, the CPN-UML had demanded that the government should hold the elections and had rejected the proposition of constitutional amendments. Following the announcement of the election date, Madhesi parties announced a series of protests in Madhes. They declared that they would not partake in the election and would instead foil the process unless their demands are addressed via a constitutional amendment. With this declaration, unfortunately, five Madhesis became the target of brutal extra judicial killing by the security forces in eastern Nepal when the United Democratic Madhesi Front (UDMF) cadres tried to disrupt the CPN-UMLs Mechi-Mahakali campaign. Conducting the election without the participation of Madhesi parties is not possible and neither does it serve any purpose. It will further increase the rift between the Madhesi parties and the government, which will further complicate the existing issue. There are also chances of serious clashes between people of different communities in Madhes, which could spiral into instances of large-scale ethno-centric violence that will worsen the situation. As experienced in the past, it has the potential to escalate further with the mobilisation of security forces and the Nepal Army. The possibility of another economic blockade at the India-Nepal border and similar implications cannot be ruled out. Frustration among the Madhesis, Tharus and Janajatis is already rising. The radicalised Madhesi youth, may raise a demand for a separate Madhes, like CK Rauts group. Together, all these issues might create an environment for the formulation and organisation of armed insurgents like it did in the past. Under such circumstances, conducting the election is possible only if the government strikes a deal with the Madhesi parties, addresses their demands, and brings them on board for holding the election in a timely manner. Economy Nepal has faced an acute power crisis for over a decade. Nepalese people were subjected to power cuts that lasted as long as 18 hours a day during peak seasons. This impacted the economy and normal lives severely. However, with electricity imported from India and the increment in domestic electricity production and some strong bureaucratic action, the power crisis has almost been resolved. Hence, it is highly probable that in 2017, Nepals economy will thrive. India-Nepal Relations India and Nepal share deep historical, political, geographic, economic and socio-cultural ties. The two countries share an 1850-kilometre long open border and cross-border marriages are common. Under the provisions of the 1950 Indo-Nepal Treaty of Peace and Friendship, citizens of both countries enjoy special privileges. Given this level of engagement between the two countries, any change in government or policy in Nepal or India cannot negatively impact the relations heavily. Yet, the bilateral has witnessed ups and downs at times. The tension in the Nepal-India relationship during the Oli government tenure was rectified as soon as Prachanda took over. Though Nepalese president Bidhya Devi Bhandaris India visit could not take place during Olis tenure, Indian President Pranab Mukherjee paid a three-day visit to Nepal the first by an Indian president to Nepal in 18 years. Additionally, there were several other high level visits between leaders of the two countries. India is Nepals largest trading partner and contributes significantly in the countrys development. New Delhi has played a crucial role in Nepals major political transitions, be it the overthrow of the autocratic Rana regime; introduction of democracy; restoration of democracy in 1990; abolition of Monarchy; or mainstreaming the Maoists. It will continue to play an important role in days to come. However, with the thumping victory of Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) in Uttar Pradesh an Indian state that shares borders with Nepal there are apprehensions in Nepal that India might impose Hinduism on secular Nepal or might attempt to revive monarchy. But, these are highly unlikely in the present context. Even if India plans for such adventurism, it will not succeed; instead, it would be counterproductive and would have lasting implications for India-Nepal relations. India should pay special attention in Nepal to consolidate its influence, as there are speculations that China would have proactive diplomacy and engagement in Nepal in days to come. New Delhi was already alarmed since Oli tried to bring China to counterbalance India. Hence, in 2017, India must pay special emphasis on improving connectivity; bringing the political parties together to resolve their internal differences in the constitution for peace and stability; and support Nepal in improving and consolidating its economy. Overview 2017 is full of challenges for Nepals government as well as the political parties. The first and major challenge is to address the demands of Madhesis, Janajatis, Tharus and other marginalised groups. This will create an environment conducive for free, fair and credible elections. It will also pave way for implementing the constitution, which will gradually create peace and stability in Nepal. Failing to conduct all the three elections by January 2018 will lead the nation into another constitutional crisis and prolong the transition. Prime Minister Dahal also has to hand over the prime ministerial role to the Nepali Congress after the local election, to meet the terms of the agreement. If the political parties fail to overcome these challenges, Nepal is bound to face a series of protests, violence and demands for a separate Madhes, and the constitutional gains of the past would be at stake. Any instability and chaos in Madhes will impact the security of its neighbouring regions, especially India. * Pramod Jaiswal Senior Fellow, IPCS E-mail: pramod.jaiswal@ipcs.org Guwahati, April 6 : The sleuths of Assam police on Thursday grilled the suspended Special Superintendent of Police (CID) who leaked the information of the investigation process of the All Assam Students Union (AASU) office in Silapathar on March 6. Guwahati city police commissioner Hiren Nath and other top officials on Thursday had interrogated SSP (CID) Dr N Rajamarthandan for several hours at the CID office in Guwahati, who was suspended by the state government after proving of leakage of investigation process information through RTI. Guwahati city police commissioner Hiren Nath said that, R Rajamarthandan has committed his illegal activities and investigation is going on. The SSP (CID) had provided investigation process information of the Silapathar case to the secretary of Nikhil Bharat Bangali Udbastu Samanvay Samiti (NIBBUSS) through RTI. Assam police had already arrested mastermind of the incident Subodh Biswas who is the national president of NIBBUSS. The Assam government had already notified that, CID organization is exempted from providing information under RTI Act as per government notification no PLA.384/2005/54 dated March 8, 2006 and no details of investigation can be divulged to anyone without the permission of the competent court. Meanwhile, the advocate of NIBBUSS has filed a bail petition of Subodh Biswas before the Gauhati High Court. (Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath) Guwahati : Manipur police had apprehended three hardcore militants including the president of United Kuki Liberation Army ( UKLA) from Senapati district on Wednesday, officials said on Thursday. Manipur DGP LM Khaute said that, based on intelligence input, a joint team of Senapati and Kangpokpi police had launched operation at Hotel Serena at Senapati and nabbed the militants who were lodged at the hotel. UKLA Chief Thangkhosei Guite carries a Rs 1 lakh reward on his head, who was nabbed along with his two associates. Other two militants identified as Seigoulen Doungel and Lenkhomang Kipgen. Security personnel had recovered various incriminating documents in possession from them. (Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath) Guwahati : Amidst uproar over beef in the country, three Muslims including a minor were arrested by police in Upper Assam's Jorhat district on Tuesday night on charges of by carrying beef openly which hurting religious sentiments. It is the first incident in Assam as police arrested someone who carrying beef for consumption. According to the reports, Shah Jamal Haque, Abdul Rahman and a minor boy were arrested by Jorhat police on charges of carrying beef openly in Jorhat town. On Wednesday, two accused were sent to 14-day judicial custody while the minor accused sent to an observation home by the Jorhat CJM court. Police had seized nearly half kilogram of beef from the accused persons, who had brought it from a slaughterhouse in the upper Assam town for consumption. According to the reports, the accused persons who engaged as workers at a private industrial training institute in the town were booked under section 295 (A) of IPC and section 568 of the Assam Cattle Preservation Act, 1950. Meanwhile, Jorhat police has initiated a probe concerning the legal status of the slaughterhouse. Assam become the first saffron state in north east India after BJP emerged in last assembly poll in the state in 2016 by winning 60 seats alone in the 126-member state assembly. (Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath) via Facebook 5 April 2017 What I have written for the next issue of Mangalore Today by Narendra Nayak With the rise of intolerance and attacks on all forms of dissent, it is a difficult task indeed to pursue the calling of oneas conscience, writes Prof. Narendra Nayak A couple of weeks ago when two strangers on a motor bike pointed out to the front tyre of my car and said there is no air, the first reaction of any sane person would be to stop and check whether it was so. But, since I do not come under that category and have been facing threats, I did not stop but drove straight to the nearby petrol pump to check and the boy who was at the air pump told there was no need for me to get out of the car as he could make out clearly that all four tyres were inflated properly. Later after a day or so when I had gone to check the blow it was perfectly all right. Giving a thought to the incident, I later realised that it was the favourite modus operandi of the gang that had brutally murdered Vinayak Baliga a year ago. They had stopped him under the pretext of asking for someoneas address and attacked him from the back. That seems to be a good method as one would naturally get out of the car to check and would be distracted into looking down at the wheels when the attack could be from the back. Anyway complaint has been filed and the police are investigating the case and I am quite sure that the culprits would be apprehended soon. Anyway, when that happened my mind went back to all those years that I have been facing threats and attempts to finish me off. Being in the rationalist, consumer and human rights movements for more than four decades would naturally earn a lot of enemies. The first time I received such threats was nearly three decades ago when I had moved the High Court of Karnataka along with several others challenging the grant of land to a mosque at Mangalore Harbour. As a rationalist I had felt that this would open the flood gates for a number of such demands and it would be better to nip the move in the bud. We had made a mass petition signed by thousands of people and handed it over to the then chairman of the Port Trust. Since no action was being taken on that we had obtained a stay order from the high court. Since it was alleged that quite a good amount had exchanged hands for this, those who had wanted the land were furious about me and were out to get me. But, nothing happened. Later on I started working for the Consumer movement and we started the Consumers Education Trust of Mangalore and started taking on quite a few vested interests. There were supposed to be gangs of the gas distributors, the road contractors and a host of such whom we had exposed. But, one aagenta of the weights and measures took the cake! We had exposed a nexus at the Department of Weights and Measures where a process of averification of weights and weighing machinesa has to take place every year. One can never get this done if a direct approach is made. It has to go through agents who hang around the premises. If someone goes directly they are asked to come through these people, who even give receipts as service charges. We had exposed one such wheeler dealer and had written about him. I had forgotten about it till I was reminded by a technician in the college. It seems this man had gone for aluncha to a local made liquor shop where he met the proprietor of this enterprise who showed him a knife and said that it was reserved to stick into my chest! The technician had to climb the stairs that day as there was no lift and since he was tired after the strenuous lunch during which he had liberally imbibed spirits, took rest at each landing and told all those who were within earshot that someone is coming to stab Nayak sir! Since our department was on the third floor by the time he had reached there was a crowd of half a dozen following him and occasionally looking behind their backs to see where the will be stabber was! But nothing happened and since I was one of directors of Karnataka Consumer Protection board, the incident was taken seriously and the man was arrested and warned! Paradoxically he was a Muslim and he confessed that he had a drop too much to drink- probably the unaccustomed to consumption of alcohol might have caused a unusual reaction! A very ingenious attempt to get rid of me was made twice. One day when I was riding my two wheeler and came out of my house early in the morning I heard a ping like a wire getting cut. Getting down, I looked all around. The scooters of old had innumerable cables for changing gears, accelerator, two brakes etc. I could not feel anything in those. But, always on the cautious side I looked at the rear brake cable and there it was! The thickest cable for two wheelers running under the chassis and nearly three times as thick as the other cables was hanging by a few strands. I took it to the garage and the mechanic said it was not due to wear and tear but an attempt at sabotage. They had not cut the cable through and through which I would have realized immediately but kept it on few strands so that it would get totally cut when applied with some force as in an emergency or at a high speed! They also told me that in all the decades of their service none of them had seen any rear brake cable getting cut by wear and tear. They said the replacement has been always by checking at servicing time. They replaced it. They advised me to check it every time it has been parked for a long time unattended. Lo, it happened again after a few months. Then they put a rubber tubing over the exposed portion where it could be cut and strongly advised me to check it every day. It did not happen afterwards. In 1992 we had a miracle exposure program at Town Hall, Mangalore. It was our 125th program and my anti guru late B.Premanand had been invited too. It went on a for a long time and sometime during the Q-A session one person came and asked me whether there was bhoota. I said I have not seen so far. He then said in that case what is this? He started shivering and jumping around and tried to damage the sound system. I came down from the stage and asked him to come over. I gave him a tight slap and asked where is it? He said I am ok now and ran off! After an hour or so he came back with a mob who started attacking me and wanted me to say that I believe in god and one exists. I flatly refused, the police had to be called and the crowd was dispersed not before they threatened that no program of mine will be ever held in Mangalore again. Of course hundreds of them have happened and no one could stop them is another matter. Another time I was seriously attacked was in 1995. Though it seemed that the attack was a reaction against offending areligious sentimentsa the motive was something different. The motive was to avenge the exposure of a sexual exploitation racket at an orphanage run by the Arya Samaj which had rubbed quite a few of the exploiters on the wrong side. The raid and the subsequent publicity had caused an outrage and the forces behind the same wanted to extract revenge. They got the opportunity in September, 1995 when the famous amiraclea of Ganesh idols adrinking milka went viral. I was demonstrating to people how it was due to a phenomenon called as surface tension with various models. A mob gathered and threw stones at me and I had a scalp wound. The perpetrators were identified and convicted too. An attempt was made to acompromisea by offering to pay for the damage but I put my foot down and refused the same. The latest attempts had started after the assassination of Narendra Dhabolkar though he was the vice president of Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations and they should have started with the president, they chose to eliminate him! He had been offered police security which he had refused. Then came the turn of Pansare and Kalburgi. During that time a list of the persons on the hit list was made and I was the seventh. Number one on it was Prof. K.S.Bhagvan and when I joked with him that I was relieved to be no 7 and they had to finish six before getting to me, he retorted as to how I could be so sure of their integrity that they would abide by the order in the list! Any way with the increase of intolerance and attacks on all forms of dissent, it is a difficult task indeed to pursue the calling of oneas conscience. But some like me refuse to learn for it is better for us to be swift rather than die inch by inch putting up with all the injustices and the like. Perhaps these are not the times for the likes of us. But, in the sands of time one would like to go with the message that he tried his best for a change. As the eminent parliamentarian Edmund Burke said -There is a courageous wisdom; there is also a false reptile prudence, the result, not of caution, but of fear. And also aThe only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.a But mind you the second one is not what he actually said what he said was this -when bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle. So, to all of you if you do not protest against injustice fearing the consequences you too are a part of the problem and not the solution. (Selected editorial commentary from the Indian Media in march and early April 2017) Going overboard with cow protection (livemint) Whether in UP or Northeast, BJP should not dictate peopleas eating habits (Hindustan Times) Man slaughter (The Indian Express) Barbarism unlimited: On cow protection and Alwar attack (The Hindu) Murder in Alwar: Dairy farmer Pehlu Khan becomes the latest casualty of cow vigilantism (The Times of India) Cow is an excuse - Rajasthan murder more than a vigilante action (The Tribune) livemint.com - 4 April 2017 Editorial Going overboard with cow protection Draconian punishments add to the irrationality of cow slaughter bans that burden farmers who own cattle and beef bans that attack citizensa constitutional rights Vinayak Damodar Savarkar had attracted the ire of traditionalists when he wrote more than once that the cow is not a divine mother but only a useful animal. aA substance is edible to the extent that it is beneficial to man. Attributing religious qualities to it gives it a godly status. Such a superstitious mindset destroys the nationas intellect,a he wrote in 1935. Recent events have not been a good advertisement for the national intellect. The party that pays homage to Savarkar has never come to terms with his modernist rationalism. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Gujarat has amended a state law so that anybody found guilty of cow slaughter will be awarded a life sentence. The chief minister of Chhattisgarh has said that those who kill cows in his state will be hanged. Even acts of homicide or sexual assault do not usually result in the hanging of the guilty. Meanwhile, there is a massive crackdown on abattoirs by the new state government in Uttar Pradesh, ostensibly targeted at illegal establishments, but clearly trying to hurt the Muslim community that dominates the meat trade. Congress leaders such as Digvijaya Singh have said his party will back a nationwide beef banaa useful reason to remember that the original laws against cow slaughter were introduced in many states when the Congress was the hegemonic force in Indian politics. This also opens up the possibility of competitive cow politics. And footloose vigilantes have taken it upon themselves to attack any person they believe is harming the sanctity of the cow, even by just throwing a stone at an animal. There have traditionally been two main arguments in favour of cow protection. First, the cow is the pivot of an agricultural economy. Second, it is central to Hindu religious beliefs. Neither of these two arguments can justify the harsh punishments that are rather casually being talked about. The economic argument does not survive an empirical test. First, as farming in India becomes increasingly mechanized, the demand for draught cattle in the fields is falling. Second, as milk-producing cows grow old and become unproductive, they become a financial burden on farmers. If farmers cannot sell them off to slaughterhouses, they either abandon the animals or starve them to death. Third, the rational response by farmers to the ban on cow slaughter has been to prefer buffaloes to cows, as is evident from both the official cattle census as well as price trends in cattle auctions across the country. The economics of an asset totally changes when its terminal value suddenly comes down to zero. Economists such as V.M. Dandekar and K.N. Raj showed many years ago that the factors determining cattle population are not slaughter bans or religious sentiments but the demand for livestock products such as milk and meat as well as the levels of technology used in agriculture. Indeed, the directive principle of state policy that says cow slaughter should be prohibited is itself derived from the economic argument. Article 48 of the Indian Constitution needs to be read in full: aThe State shall endeavour to organise agriculture and animal husbandry on modern and scientific lines and shall, in particular, take steps for preserving and improving the breeds, and prohibiting the slaughter of cows and calves and other milch and draught cattle.a The issue of religious sentiments is a more tricky one. There is ample proof in old religious texts that beef-eating was not uncommon in ancient India. However, that does not necessarily mean that the current generation of Hindus should not worship the cow. There is also the undeniable fact that cow slaughter was one of the flashpoints in medieval India under Muslim rule. The real issue right now is that the state has no right to send someone to jail for killing an animal. It is also important to remember that beef is one of the cheapest sources of protein. Some 80 million Indians eat either beef or buffalo meat, including 12.5 million Hindus, as shown in an article by Roshan Kishore and Ishan Anand in this newspaper in October 2015, based on their detailed analysis of sample data. This does not mean that devout Hindus who worship the cow should not voluntarily devote themselves to its protection by setting up gaushalas, or cow shelters, though there simply arenat enough of these to cater to the growing number of abandoned cattle. The problem lies elsewhere. Bans on the killing of cows are in effect a burden on farmers who own cattle. Punishment for consumption of beef is an attack on the basic Constitutional right of every citizen to live the life she wants to. o o o Hindustan Times, March 28, 2017 Editorial Whether in UP or Northeast, BJP should not dictate peopleas eating habits A closed meat shop in Ghaziabad. The sooner this issue of illegal abattoirs and meat consumption is resolved, the quicker both UP and other states can get on with the real and far more important task of development (Sakib Ali/HT Photo) The BJPas clarification that there would be no beef ban in the three northeastern states which go the polls next year if the party were to come to power is welcome but given what is happening on the meat issue in Uttar Pradesh where the it won handsomely, raises some questions. The assurance is based on the fact that the Christian majority in Meghalaya,Mizoram and Nagaland eat beef but for the party to employ different yardsticks for different communities and different states is questionable. The Muslims too have no taboos about eating beef but this is not permitted in many states including UP where meat sellers in general are facing problems from over-zealous vigilantes and the police. If the premise on the part of the Hindutva brigade is that the cow is sacred and, therefore, cannot be slaughtered, geographical location and eating habits should not make a difference. But the more reasonable thing to do for the party which is on the ascendant would be to leave well alone when it comes to peopleas eating habits. Across India, minorities and even some Hindus eat beef though many states do not permit cow slaughter. By and large, in the north, the beef consumed is that of the buffalo but that too is under attack today. Indiaas vast tribes and communities have differing and eclectic eating habits and to try and impose a cookie cutter prototype on them would amount to depriving them of their fundamental rights. The northeastern states going to the polls will be keenly observing the problems that meat eaters and sellers are facing in UP where not just illegal abattoirs but legal ones too are facing problems leading to a protest from traders. The trade benefits both Hindus and Muslims and in states like the northeast, Kerala and Goa the Christians as well. o o o The Indian Express - April 7, 2017 Editorial Man slaughter The lynch mob can get away with it, in the name of the cow. Thatas the message from Vasundhara Rajeas Rajasthan Speaking at a public event in August 2016, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had condemned cow vigilantism. They were anti-social elements, he said, who had set up shop in the name of the cow. At that time, it had seemed that the PMas rebuke, entirely welcome, had come a little late. In July, the flogging of Dalits in Una by a group of gau rakshaks had sparked anger and outrage across the country. A year earlier, in September 2015, Mohammad Akhlaq was lynched at Dadri on the suspicion of storing beef. The incidents at Dadri and Una had deepened fears that the BJPas large electoral victory in 2014 had emboldened those lumpens who would use gau raksha as a cover for taking the law into their own hands, against Muslims or Dalits. Even though belated, the PMas reprimand last year held out the assurance that such violence and vigilantism would not go unchecked. Now, the attack by gau rakshaks on a group of men on National Highway 8 in the Behror area of Alwar last week is a reminder that his message is not being heeded and respected by a government led by his own party. By all accounts, the Vasundhara Raje-led government in Rajasthan has much to answer for in the incident at Alwar, in which a group of Muslim men was accosted and assaulted by a band of gau rakshaks a one of them, Pehlu Khan, a dairy farmer, died later a for allegedly smuggling cows for slaughter. The police arrived late at the scene of the crime. As this paper has reported, even though the victims had receipts to show they had purchased the cows, it was quick to register FIRs against them for illegally transporting cattle for slaughter under the Rajasthan Bovine Animal Act 1995. It is yet to show similar alacrity or efficiency in nabbing all the accused and moving against them under the IPC. On Wednesday, Rajasthan Home Minister Gulab Chand Kataria claimed that aboth sides are at faulta a in effect, and in a grotesque parody of his own responsibility as a minister, blaming the victims. The Rajasthan government must be held answerable for the incident at Alwar, for the apparent climate of impunity in which such an attack became possible. But there is a wider accountability, too. It is bizarre that Union minister of state for parliamentary affairs and minorities Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi all but denied the incident in Rajya Sabha on Thursday. It does not behove the governments, at the Centre and in the state, to do anything less than accept the enormity of the outrage and commit that the guilty would be brought to book. Tragically, this basic assurance of a constitutional democracy a that action would be taken in accordance with the law against vigilantism of any kind a seems imperilled in a climate in which BJP chief ministers, in UP, Chhattisgarh and Gujarat, compete with each other to sound more muscular and to bring in the more draconian legislation on the cow. o o o The Hindu - April 07, 2017 Editorial Barbarism unlimited: On cow protection and Alwar attack A man has been murdered by cow vigilantes. The murderers must be brought to book The death of a man from injuries at the hands of acow protectiona vigilantes in Rajasthanas Alwar district rightly animated Parliament. The details of the violence inflicted by a mob on Saturday are chilling and vividly caught on mobile phone video, and demand an assurance from the government that justice will be done. It is unfortunate that as the opposition raised the issue, the response from the treasury benches was anything but satisfactory. In fact, coupled with comments from spokespersons of the BJP and even the Rajasthan Home Minister, the message from the authorities indicates that an outrageous equivalence is being sought to be made between the lynch mobas actions and the victimsa alleged a simply aallegeda a actions. The facts are these. Pehlu Khan, the deceased, and four others were on their way back to Haryana after buying cattle in Jaipur. A mob set itself upon them in Behror on the Jaipur-Delhi National Highway. The violence was explained as an attempt to prevent the aillegala transportation of cattle. Instead of condemning the violence and stating that nobody has the right to attack individuals no matter what they may and may not have been doing, all that has emanated from ministers at the Centre and in Rajasthan is evasive prevarication. State Home Minister Gulab Chand Kataria said no one had the right to take the law into his own hands, but added it was aall righta that those illegally moving cattle were nabbed. In the Rajya Sabha, Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi implied that no incident of such cow vigilantism had occurred. Over the last three years, governments in different States, most of them ruled by the BJP, have tightened existing laws against cow slaughter. It is no accident that the period has been attended by an aggressive vigilantism. From the killing of a man in Dadri in Uttar Pradesh in 2015 on suspicion that he had beef in his possession, to the flogging of a group of Dalit men who were skinning a dead cow in Una in Gujarat last year, cow vigilantes, in the guise of being gau rakshaks, have created an atmosphere of fear. It is disturbing that legislative initiatives and mob violence have been moving in step. It is also true that while distancing organisations of the Sangh Parivar from the incidents, individuals affiliated to these organisations, including the BJP, have played down the instances of violence by focussing on how the alleged crimes had offended believers. And in this constant din of pledging support to the larger effort to protect the cow, there is little official deliberation on the actual implementation of anti-cow slaughter laws, let alone a recognition of the incentives these laws create for the illegal movement of animals across jurisdictions. By failing to condemn lynch mobs for murder and bring vigilantes to book, the government only diminishes Indian democracy. o o o The Times of India April 7, 2017 Editorials Murder in Alwar: Dairy farmer Pehlu Khan becomes the latest casualty of cow vigilantism When an elderly dairy farmer, returning home with a cow purchased in Jaipur, is beaten up so brutally by an Alwar mob that he canat survive the injuries, there can be no justification for his murder. Yet, the death of Pehlu Khan was followed by Rajasthan home minister Gulab Chand Kataria intoning, aThe problem is from both the sides. People know cow trafficking is illegal but they do it. Gau bhakts try to stop those who indulge in such crimes.a This is dangerously false equivalence. Identifying and punishing crimes is the job of police. In any case there isnat much evidence that Khan was a cow trafficker. Rajasthan government should severely punish his murderers instead of valorising them as gau bhakts. During the discussion on the incident in Rajya Sabha yesterday, parliamentary affairs minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi spoke about being asensitivea to the aemotionsa of crores of people. But after a murder, facts have to take priority over emotions and hysteria if India is to have a semblance of good governance. India is the largest producer of milk in the world, with around 85% of its dairy workforce being small farm holders. This necessarily involves buying, selling, transporting milch animals. If this transporting is endangered it hurts the dairy, leather and allied businesses which employ millions of people a alongside social harmony. If in one place an administration is seen to be either passive or supportive of cow vigilantism, it will stoke similar fires elsewhere in the country. Signs are already ominous from Dadri and Una to Alwar. Union minister Nirmala Sitharaman speaks of gau raksha being part of the Indian freedom struggle. But what about the bigger legacy of ahimsa and justice? Itas these inheritances that Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje must champion. o o o The Tribune, 9 April 2017 Editorial Cow is an excuse - Rajasthan murder more than a vigilante action ANOTHER vigilante action, another Muslim dead. This time in Rajasthan. But the beating of five persons transporting milch cows, leading to the death of a 55-year-old man, Pehlu Khan, was not surprising even if it was shocking. Circumstances of the case make it obvious that it was not part of any attempt to prevent smuggling of cows. It was an assault on a particular religious identity. For one, anyone familiar with cattle a especially those who claim to be passionately devoted to it a should be able to tell condemned cattle from a milch cow, as was the case here. Then, the man who died had documents to show he purchased the cows for milk as he ran a dairy. The more pertinent bit, however, is that one Hindu driver was let off by the gang, even though he was as much a part of the crew transporting the cattle. The disturbing aspect is that this is not an action of afringe elementsa , if there is still any distinction to be made within the communal monolith called the aSangha . The police were as quick as the agau rakshaksa to accuse the cattle buyers of being smuggles, and booked them too without even preliminary inquiries. The Rajasthan Home Minister defended the police action, and even the need for agau rakshaksa to prevent cattle smuggling. Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said in the Rajya Sabha that the incident had been misreported. It is becoming increasingly difficult for the BJP to deny that it supports such vigilante action, given the systematic persecution of meat traders in certain states. UP has also seen aanti-Romeo squadsa and instructions for teachers on how to dress adecentlya . The fast evolving cultural tyranny needs to be recognised for what it is a a devious ploy at sustaining animosity on communal lines. The motives for this are as much political as a sincere faith in a medieval ideology, not very different from the extreme Islamic intrusion seen in all public institutions in Pakistan. Unless this is understood, and no less than the top leadership of the BJP moves to put a stop to the moral policing, the consequences also may be very similar to as in Pakistan. PEOPLEaS UNION FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES, RAJASTHAN Jaipur 6th April 2017 Ms. Vasundhara Raje Chief Minister, Government of Rajasthan Jaipur: 302001 Subject: IInd murder in Rajasthan by Cow vigilantes Madam, On the 1st of Aprol, 2017, 55 year old Pehlu Khan, s/o Mohhamedan and Azmat Son of Suleiman Khan along with 2 milch cows and 3 calves were travelling back home from Jaipur after having bought the cows from the Ramgarh, Hatwara. They had collected the aRavanna receipt of Rs. 700 from the Jaipur Municipal Corporation. Close on the heels of their vehicle was a second truck carrying 6 vehicles cows and calves, with Irshad and Arif both sons of Pehlu and Rafiq son of Mahtu. They took the NH 8 from Jaipur to travel to Nuh, Mewat district, Haryana. At about 6.30pm when they very close to the Jaguwaas crossing near Behror they were stopped by a big crowd of cow vigilantes and before they knew they were all pulled out of the vehicle, their vehicles smashed and with stones, sticks and iron roads Pehlu Khan and others were chased and beaten with the same sticks, iron rods and stones for the next 30 mins, till Pehlu Khan became unconscious. The tragedy is that this attack happened in the presence of the police and other security men like home guards, the highway patrol and other responsible citizens, who came into action only after the fainting of Pehlu khan. The so called Gau Rakshaks were led by Hukam Chand, Jagmal, Omprakash, Sudhir, Rahul Saini, Navin Saini and others who are also active members of the VHP and Bajrang Dal. Pehlu Khan and Azmat Khan were badly injured and along with the other three were admitted in Kailash Hospital, located on the Highway in Behor, a hospital run by The Kailash charitable trust of Union Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma. For 4 days neither did the administration, the police, nor the hospital transfer Pehlu Khan and Azmat Khan to a multi-speciality hospital either in Jaipur or Gurgaon so that they could save his life instead, the family members of the injured alleged that they were not treated with dignity but like criminals. However, all the agencies came into action soon after the death of Pehlu Khan, which also got the SP to reach the spot of the crime the next day on the 5th and monitor the investigation. On the 4th itself two FIRs were lodged against the 5 dairy farmers of Nuh by Behror police, charging them with having violated Section 5 and 8 of the Rajasthan Bovine Animal (Prohibition from Slaughter and Regulation of Temporary Migration and Export), Act, 1995, as they did not have the permit issued from the Jaipur District Collectoras office in order to take the cows to Nuh. The FIR lodged by one so called Damodar Singh claimed that they were cow traffickers and were carrying cows to their village Nuh simply to slaughter and eat beef and had no papers on them. Whereas Pehlu Khan and his family and associates had a Rs 45000 receipt and a JMC seal receipt of serial number 88942 dated 1st April. On behalf of Pehlu Khan too an FIR was lodged and despite serious injuries, the police applied sections 323, 143, 341,147 and 379 all bailable sections for simple assault, unlawful assembly, illegal confinement and theft along with section 308 of the IPC alleging attempt to culpable homicide non-bailable but punishment between 3 years and seven years maximum. According Irshad the son of Pehlu Khan he had 75000 rs which were stolen and 35,000 from the others. The Behror and Alwar district policeas partisan attitude is obvious as they brazenly applied lesser degree punishment sections, rather than 307, after seeing their injuries were serious. Only after the death of Pehlu Khan that Sec 302 was applied. Arrests were only made in the evening of the 5th and that too the police is refusing to arrest those who have been named in the FIR as their contention is that Pehlu Khan being an outsider couldnot have known the names so his list of accused is suspect. It is important for you to know that Azmat Khan is still very seriously ill in the Nuh Civil hospital of Haryana. It is shocking to know that despite the seriousness of the crime of the cow vigilantes the Home Minister of Rajasthan, Gulab Chand Kataria, has lauded the effort of the hoodlums stating that they were doing good by protecting cows and that both sides had wronged, Pehlu Khan and others were at fault and that the Gau Rakshaks ought not to have taken law into their hands and beaten the Cow traders so brutally. Madam, It is important to raise a few questions here, Has the law and order machinery been now handed over by the police to these cow vigilante groups. Suppose Pehlu Khan and others had violated the law, then the police should have followed due procedure to handle the crime. Is not the statement of the Home Minister glorifying the cow vigilante groups tantamount to State support and sponsorship of such attacks including murder. The role of SHO Behror police station and SP Alwar is suspect. Initially there was silent support and now they are actively trying to save them. Is not the lodging of an FIR against Pehlu Khan and others a form of harassment of them. Pehlu Khan was beaten to death, the post mortem report also states it. However, as part of the never ending voices of support for this vigilantism, the latest is BJP MLA Gyan Dev Ahuja who brazenly said that the 55 year old died of an heart attack all the allegations of attack are just fiction. In the Pehlu murder case we demand Immediate arrest of all the attackers that led to the death of Pehlu Khan and all be prosecuted in the murder case SHO Behor Police Station, be suspended with immediate effect and the SP of Alwar be thrown out of the district and be made APO. There was a failure of due diligence. Home Minister Gulab Chand Kataria , should resign on moral and ethical grounds for openly glorifying and lauding the criminals. Azmat Khan be shifted to a good hospital in the vicinity in Gurgaon. Rs. One Crore be compensated to nearest kin of Pehlu Khan All the injured be provided with Rs. 10 lakh for rehabilitation and recovery. All FIRs against Pehlu Khan and others be closed Madam, You are well aware that this is the second case of murder caused by Cow Vigilantes. On the 30th of May 2015, Abdul Ghaffar Querishi was murdered in Birloka village of Khimsar Tehsil, Nagaur district. The 60 year old was lynched by a mob for no fault of his. Simply because the RSS network of organisations spread a false story that more than 200 cows had been slaughtered by Muslims and they had consumed the beef. Basically the local animal bone contractor of the Municipality had left the carcasses of dead cows, in an empty plot in Kumhari village and started shouting slogans that Muslims had slaughtered and feasted on 200 cows. These rumours spread fast through social media. Thousands of people started attending the meetings that were taking place at Kumhari, led by these so called Gau Rakshaks and before all knew what would happen, Abdul Ghaffar Qureshi who had nothing to do with the incident was attacked with rods in the market of Birloka and killed for no fault of his. Despite several of his Hindu friends trying to help him he could not be saved. The hate speech had provoked the neighbourhood to just kill the man as they wanted a Muslim free village. Almost every other day we read about attacks on farmers who are trading with cows. Both sellers and buyers are at risk. And if you are a Muslim and Dalit buyer your right to life is at risk. This atmosphere is criminalising all Muslims, that on the 19th of March 2017 a group of cow vigilantes which had its nexus with the police and the Jaipur Mayor Ashok Lahoti, raised baseless charge of Gau mata being fed with beef by the owner and staff of Hotel Rabbani and before we knew, the hotel staff was beaten up, the hotel residents were made to vacate the hotel and with the support of the JMC the hotel was sealed well before midnight. Was this not a conspiracy to close a well-run hotel and attack the livelihood base of a middle class Muslims. Such is the control of the so called Gau Rakshaks over instruments of governance and law and order. You are well aware that since time immemorial cattle trade fairs are held all over the State. Some of the fairs in Pushkar, Parbatsar are renowned world over. These are nothing but spaces where buyers come to trade in cattle. Rich and poor farmers all come to buy milch cattle. The future of these fairs are under serious threat with business on the decline. Every time farmers are returning from a fair, the Cow vigilante groups catch them somewhere and not only do they poach on the precious cattle bought but are extremely lawless and violent and cause injuries and harm to the farmers in particular if they are Muslims, Banjaras and Dalits and end up criminalising them. This raises serious questions on the attack on the economy of a state which has the highest number of cattle, livestock and camels in the country, where revenue from rearing cattle, milk, sheep and wool and tourism is high. Please know that the best bullocks the Nagauri bael, the rathi cow of Bikaner and Tharparker, Barmer were reared by ordinary farmers who were Hindu, Muslims and Dalits. It is our appeal that you urgently intervene and stop this lawlessness and free run being given to the cow vigilantes with the support of many people in high places, including the Home Minister, the Mayor of Jaipur and the police. If this is not stopped now then lawlessness will prevail the streets, the foundation of the economy will be attacked and the attack on the Muslim community will destroy the harmony of the State which has long term repercussion. With the hope that you will urgently intervene, With regards, Kavita Srivastava ( President), Aruna Roy, DL Tripathi, Radha Kant Saxena, Mamta Jaitly, Sawai Singh, Nishat Hussein, Ramesh Nandwana, Bhanwar Meghwanshi ( All vice Presidents), P R Sharma ( Treasurer), Kailash Meena, Harkesh Bugalia (Joint Secretaries), Dr Meeta Singh, Kapil Sankhla, Prem Krishan Sharma and others. Address: 76, Shanti Niketan Colony, KisanMarg, Tonk Road, Jaipur 302015 E-mail:pucl.rajasthan@gmail.com, kavisriv@gmail.com Contact No. : 9351562965, 9887158183, 0141-2708917 Thank you for reading! Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription to continue reading. You have permission to edit this html. Edit Close You have permission to edit this collection. Edit Close Okay, kitty collectors, as we mentioned a while back the hugely popular game app Neko Atsume - in which you leave out food and toys for neighborhood cats to make friends with them as they visit your digital home - has been made into a movie. It has an admittedly marginal story revolving around a writer moving away from it all to deal with a case of writer's block but, more importantly, it also has cats. Lots and lots of cats. And now it also has a trailer. I have played more hours of this game than I care to admit and it pleases me to no end to see my digital friends in real life. You can watch the teaser below. Just watch out for Tubbs. That greedy bastard eats all the food. If you are currently a print subscriber but don't have an online account, select this option. You will need to use your 7 digit subscriber account number (with leading zeros) and your last name (in UPPERCASE). Split Sixth Circuit panel uphold injunction blocking Ohio lethal injection protocol | Main | "Who are the Punishers?" April 6, 2017 Federal district judge declares unconstitutional Arizona law requiring defendant to prove lack of sexual intent for contact with child A helpful reader alerted me to this new Slate article, headlined "Federal Judge Rules Arizonas Diaper Changing Child Molestation Law Is Unconstitutional," reporting on a notable new federal district court ruling concerning a remarkable Arizona criminal law. The start of the Slate article provides the background and links to relevant rulings: Last September, the Arizona Supreme Court issued a stunning decision interpreting the states child molestation law to criminalize any contact between an adult and a childs genitals. In a 32 decision, the court found that the law encompassed entirely innocent conduct, such as changing or bathing a baby. Arizona, the court held, could convict an adult for touching an infants genitals which carries a prison sentence of five years without proving sexual intent. Instead, under the law, the accused had the burden of proving that he had no sexual intent to a jury and by a preponderance of the evidence. As the dissenters noted, the ruling turned parents and other caregivers in the state into child molesters or sex abusers under Arizona law. Reason, however, has now prevailed. Last week, a federal judge ruled that the Arizona statute, as interpreted by the state Supreme Court, is unconstitutional. In a lengthy decision, U.S. District Judge Neil V. Wake cogently explained why the law violates the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment, vindicating the two justices who dissented on those grounds in September. He also reminded Arizona that parents have a constitutional right to care for their children a right the state may not interfere with by criminalizing hygienic care. The basic flaw in the Arizona law is pretty conspicuous. According to the statute, an individual is guilty of child molestation if he intentionally or knowingly touch[es] any part of the genitals, anus or female breast of a child under fifteen years of age. Notice something strange there? Despite calling itself a child molestation statute, the law does not require the touching to be sexual. Thus, a caregiver who intentionally or knowingly touches an infants genitals while changing his diaper is clearly guilty of violating the law. No other state save Hawaii does not require sexual intent for a child molestation offense. Arizona defended its statute by noting that the defendant could still assert lack of sexual motivation as an affirmative defense at trial requiring him to prove his benign intent by a preponderance of the evidence. The Arizona Supreme Court was satisfied with this loophole, holding that it rendered the law constitutional. Wake was not so easily fooled. Under the Due Process Clause, Wake noted, the government carries the burden of proving each element of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt. Yet the Arizona law shifts the burden onto the defendant, forcing him to disprove the very thing that makes child molestation child molestation. That requirement, Wake explained, violates the Fourteenth Amendments guarantees of due process and of proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Due process does not permit Arizona to remove the essential wrongfulness in child molestation and place the burden of disproving it upon people engaged in a wide range of acts, the vast majority of which no one could believe the state meant to punish. Indeed, Arizona cannot lawfully punish the vast majority of conduct swept up by the statute. The U.S. Supreme Court has found that the Due Process Clause protects the fundamental right of parents to make decisions concerning the care, custody, and control of their children. Therefore, Wake concluded, Arizona may not criminalize constitutionally protected innocent conduct such as diapering and bathing infants. April 6, 2017 at 07:01 PM | Permalink Comments But who will think of the children. Posted by: Fat Bastard | Apr 6, 2017 9:00:03 PM Further evidence of the critical role the federal courts play in regulating the administration of criminal law. What's the CEFL on on this? According to SCOTUS, the requirement originated "at least from our early years as a Nation." Posted by: John | Apr 6, 2017 11:12:01 PM The feminist lawyer and its male running dogs are out of control. Posted by: David Behar | Apr 6, 2017 11:17:12 PM Behar, I'm not sure what you think you are contributing to the dialogue (here or elsewhere on this blog). It'd be a welcome change if you refocused your comments to being even remotely about the substance of the post. Best of luck to you. Posted by: Supremacy Clause | Apr 7, 2017 12:49:44 AM Interesting decision. Doug, can you post the opinion from PACER? I'd be interested in your take. Posted by: federalist | Apr 7, 2017 9:18:59 AM Supie. I am the ambassador to the lawyer profession from earth. You assholes know shit about nothing. Your profession is the stupidest group of people in our country. You are stupider than Life Skills students, learning to tie their shoes, and to eat with spoons. See the law described above. Would a Life Skills student have voted for that law? No. Only the stupidest people in our country did. Posted by: David Behar | Apr 7, 2017 10:03:59 AM So true. They put my son in prison for being a parent. Posted by: LC in Texas | Apr 7, 2017 11:34:21 AM I should have explained the situation better, his unfaithful girlfriend used the child to get out of the relationship they had, so she could keep her son. My son was a Mister Mom because he worked at home and she had no maternal instincts. She even had a paternity test to find out who the father of her son was. Posted by: LC in Texas | Apr 7, 2017 11:43:56 AM I'm not sure this case is correct under Patterson v. New York. Under Winship, the prosecution does have the burden to prove all elements beyond a reasonable doubt, but the state is free to define those elements and any affirmative defenses. If the state isn't required to prove that contact was sexual in nature, that's not an element of the offense and doesn't have to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Also, was this an AEDPA case? Don't get me wrong, I think this statute is overly criminalizing, but I'm not sure it's unconstitutional. Posted by: Erik M | Apr 7, 2017 3:20:23 PM Erik M. Here it is very slowly. Try to follow. The terms, element, mens rea, intent, reason, reasonable. Any legal term in Latin. Each is from the 13th Century catechism, a Catholic Church book, no more acceptable to patriotic Americans than any legal term taken from the Sharia in Arabic. I actually read the Sharia, and liked 90% of it. It represents a far superior basis for a legal system than the Catechism. But there is one problem. We are a secular nation. Your statement represents an insurrection against our constitution. Your stupid lawyer gibberish referencing other stupid lawyer gibberish. That is a type of fraud, taught to the British lawyer by the French. Your stupid lawyer gibberish is a form of stealing and misappropriation of the chattel of the tax payer, the rule of law. Posted by: David Behar | Apr 7, 2017 6:57:13 PM "Arizona defended its statute by noting that the defendant could still assert 'lack of sexual motivation' as an 'affirmative defense' at trial requiring him to prove his benign intent 'by a preponderance of the evidence.' So, the government no longer has to prove it's case beyond a reasonable doubt? All it need do is assert, whatever, then stand back as the accused attempt to prove his innocence? We now all live in Bizarro America. .... Posted by: Huh? | Apr 8, 2017 6:00:16 PM Eric makes a good point re Patterson, which is probably why the judge also relied on substantive due process grounds. This brings me back to a point that Eric highlighted which I was trying to note in my original post: there's a non-trivial argument under AEDPA that although quite wrong, this state decision should stand, highlighting fundamental problems with AEDPA deference. Posted by: John | Apr 9, 2017 9:36:04 AM What about the thousands of males during infant circumcision or in certain jewish traditions of Metzitzah B'peh (google it yourself), are they prosecuted or held to the same standard? Posted by: ash | Apr 16, 2017 1:28:55 AM Post a comment "Who are the Punishers?" | Main | "Cruel Techniques, Unusual Secrets" April 7, 2017 Now that we have Justice Neil Gorsuch, what will be his first notable sentencing vote or opinion? As reported here by the Washington Post, this morning, the "U.S. Senate confirmed Neil M. Gorsuch to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, capping more than a year of bitter partisan bickering over the ideological balance of the nations highest court." Here is more about what comes next: Gorsuch is expected to be sworn-in in the coming days, allowing him to join the high court for the final weeks of its term, which ends in June. Its likely he will want to be sworn-in quickly even if a ceremonial event is held later so that he can get to work. The court is scheduled to meet Thursday for a private session to decide whether to accept or reject a long list of cases that would be heard next term. And the last round of oral arguments for this term is scheduled to begin in just 10 days, on April 17. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. is the most recent justice to have been confirmed during a Supreme Court term. He was sworn-in the same day as his confirmation, and a ceremonial event with President George W. Bush was held the next day. I do not believe there are any sentencing cases on the SCOTUS docket for its last round of arguments later this month, but there are a few notable criminal procedures case including a couple involving ineffective assistance of counsel issues. It will be interesting to see how Justice Gorsuch approaches oral argument and decision-making in these early cases. April 7, 2017 at 12:02 PM | Permalink Comments What seems likely is that he will only participate in cases where he is present at oral argument or as necessary to break a tie. Posted by: federalist | Apr 7, 2017 1:06:21 PM I preferred an even number of Justices to reduce those 5-4 decisions, and to have lower court decisions hold, but without infecting national policy with toxic stupidity. Gorsuch will be another Kennedy, another Roberts, a turncoat to avowed and advertised principles. He is from Colorado. He will soon acculturate to our Babylon, gayer than San Fran, and the rent seeking capital of our nation. Posted by: David Behar | Apr 7, 2017 2:04:07 PM Gorsuch seems to be less statist than Roberts. Posted by: federalist | Apr 7, 2017 2:50:07 PM A list of the cases still to be heard: http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/terms/ot2016/ There are a few with a criminal justice aspect; see, e.g., Davila v. Davis. Not overly surprised about any justice in recent years (even Souter really). Gorsuch's agency sentiments have been cited, but he will (surely by merely following the law) likely more often than not find the conservative argument wins. Some exceptions will apply. He will also join Roberts and Alito regarding executive power over enemy combatants and similar questions. The conservative support of less government on certain questions has been noted on this blog. The net lesser 'statism' will remain to be seen. My overall sentiment is that his primary supporters know their business. They rooted for him for a reason. Posted by: Joe | Apr 7, 2017 3:03:03 PM Overall I believe that Gorsuch will be more in line with Souter than Scalia when it comes to legal views and legal interpretation. Where he will be more Scalia-like is issues surrounding the culture wars. That's what I think based upon his past case decisions. But if life has taught me anything it is that there is not a one-to-one correspondence between what the underling does when he/she is an underling and what he/she does when they become the boss. Put differently, it is one thing to follow precedent it is another thing to make it. As for criminal law my instincts are that he is likely to favor the criminal defendant on constitutional issues but not so much on sentencing issues. I don't think he is any friend of the guidelines, though. Posted by: Daniel | Apr 7, 2017 3:41:52 PM @federalist I think the idea of Gorsuch as less statist than Roberts depends on how one defines that term. When I perused his opinions the overall impression I was left with is the Gorsuch is what I would call a "judicial maximalist". He views the judiciary, not Congress, as the primary bulwark against an encroaching executive. This does not mean, of course, that he sees executive encroachment at every turn and @joe may be right about his views on executive power in the circumstances @joe mentions. What it does mean is that when Gorsuch does see executive encroachment he is not likely to be content to leave it up to Congress or to the state legislatures to push back, he will very much be an "activist judge". One thing that is perfectly clear about his writings up to this point is that he is no fan of state's rights in the way that conservatives typically define that term. So in my view it is not a question of more or less statist but rather that Gorsuch simply wants a different balance of power among the various players. How that will play out in specific cases I don't dare guess from this distance. Posted by: Daniel | Apr 7, 2017 3:54:49 PM WEll I guess we will see. LOL. Posted by: federalist | Apr 7, 2017 6:54:18 PM All Harvard grads are assholes. All are statists. Example? George W. Bush. Blew up the size of government, of the Register of Federal Regulations, of taxes, of federal departments. Went on a nation (state) building rampage. Dick Cheney came from U of Wyoming. However, he was admitted to Yale University, thus is an honorary statist asshole. Posted by: David Behar | Apr 8, 2017 12:03:44 PM "Souter than Scalia when it comes to legal views and legal interpretation" In a broad sense, yes, but I would replace Alito. Alito and Sotomayor, curious as it might be to some, sort of have the same general approach. One liberal, one conservative. Still, there is a reasonable call to think Gorsuch will be more assertive in his judicial approach, especially once he gets comfortable. (For example, Souter seemed a bit more conservative in his first year or two.) Posted by: Joe | Apr 8, 2017 12:06:48 PM Hello, Joe. Can you tell the class the fraction of your income that comes from the state? Posted by: David Behar | Apr 8, 2017 12:54:46 PM Post a comment An amazing pooch by the name of Yoda managed to swim ashore and survive following a boating accident at the mouth of Tomales Bay on Monday that claimed the life of her human caretaker. The dog, believed by the man's family to have drowned along with him, was found, cold but uninjured, hunkered beneath a rock outcropping on a rocky beach north of Dillon Beach in Marin County by two firefighters Thursday morning, as CBS 5 reports. The Marin County Fire Department tweeted photos of Yoda, post-rescue, and of her reunion with the family of 47-year-old Brian Phidat Ho of San Jose, whose funeral was today. Ho was out fishing Monday with a partner and two dogs when they encountered rough surf at the mouth of Tomales Bay that caused their 13-foot Boston Whaler to capsize. Ho's fishing partner and the other dog survived and were picked up by Sonoma County Sheriffs Office personnel shortly after the accident. But it wasn't until the two fire battalion chiefs, Chris Martinelli and Graham Groneman, were out on a boat this morning and spotted Ho's female yellow lab, Yoda, on a rocky beach. The dog was "was wet and shivering after a few days out in the elements," they said, but they brought her into the fire station and warmed him up, and fed her. One of Ho's relatives said that Ho adopted Yoda from a shelter a year and a half ago, and she was previously abused, so often will have her tail between her legs when she greets someone new. Below, the rest of the pictures, and a video of the reunion with Ho's family. In 2013, 23andMe founder Ann Wojcicki received a warning letter from the FDA asking her popular company to halt services that told customers they were at genetic risk of disease. "You are marketing the 23andMe Saliva Collection Kit and Personal Genome Service without marketing clearance or approval in violation of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act," that document read. "23andMe must immediately discontinue marketing the PGS until such time as it receives FDA marketing authorization for the device." That time is now, as the FDA announced today, making 23andMe the first direct-to-consumer test no doctor required that provides information on genetic predisposition to medical diseases or conditions. While 23andMe worked to gain FDA approval, it marketed itself as an ancestry testing service. But now the company, named for the 23 pairs of chromosomes in the human body and funded by Google/Alphabet, will notify users who spit into their test kits and send them back if they are genetically predisposed to Parkinson's disease, late-onset Alzheimer's disease, celiac disease, and 7 other conditions or diseases. This is an important moment for people who want to know their genetic health risks and be more proactive about their health, 23andMe CEO and co-founder Anne Wojcicki said in a statement shared with the Business Times. The FDA has embraced innovation and has empowered individuals by authorizing direct access to this information. It is a significant step forward for 23andMe and for the adoption of personal genetics. 23andMe began offering tests for a genetic condition called Bloom Syndrome in 2015 with FDA approval, a step toward the approval the company's device enjoys today. Going forward, the Verge writes, the FDA won't need to perform additional reviews for every new genetic health risk report 23andMe would like to add to its service. That decision also paves the way for more genetic testing kits along the lines of those created by 23andMe: They too will likely proceed through a one-time test and iterate without need of more approval Consumers can now have direct access to certain genetic risk information, Dr. Jeffrey Shuren, director of the FDAs Center for Devices and Radiological Health, said in a press release. But it is important that people understand that genetic risk is just one piece of the bigger puzzle, it does not mean they will or wont ultimately develop a disease. Related: Theranos Offers More Shares To Investors Who Pinky Swear Not To Sue The Sunset District man who allegedly attempted to abduct and rape a 13-year-old girl has pled not guilty, even though his attorney has said that the suspect will not request to be released on bail. 26-year-old Lee Mason Eigl, a graduate of SF's Galileo High School and San Diego State, was thrust into the public eye on March 23, after he allegedly attempted to drag the girl from a West Portal street and into his car "with intent to commit rape," the San Francisco Police Department said at the time. Witnesses to the attack, which took place at 5 p.m., thwarted the kidnapping. Surveillance video led investigators to the Inner Sunset home of Gail Eigl, the mother of the suspect, that same day. She called her son, who reportedly still lived with her, and he was arrested near SF State as he left the home of a friend. Lee Eigl has been held without bail in San Francisco County Jail ever since. I have never seen him do anything like this, Gail Eigl told reporters the day after the arrest, as officers searched their home at 10th Avenue and Lincoln Way He has a loving girlfriend." That said, The only thing I can think of is the Brock (Turner) case. I dont want to be one of those parents, like, Oh hes such a special boy. Of course, I love him dearly and I hope that theyre wrong. It's unclear if those hopes have faded in the period between her son's arrest and his appearance in court Wednesday, during which Lee Eigl entered a plea of not guilty. Speaking with ABC 7, Lee Eigl's attorney Megan Burns says that she "is looking at all aspects of the case including what [Eigl's] mental state was at the time of the incident." A private attorney and former San Francisco deputy public defender, Burns appeared to choose her words most carefully when she spoke with ABC 7, saying "We recognize that this was a very scary incident for this young woman and her family and so there is not going to be a request for Mr. Eigl to be released from custody at any time in the near future." It's a matter on which San Francisco District Attorneys Office spokesperson Alex Bastian appears to agree. Speaking with the Ex, Bastian says that We feel very strongly about making sure this particular defendant remains in custody." "At this point there's no additional information as to any other victims but we are working with our law enforcement partners to determine whether there's anything additional that needs to be looked into," Bastian told ABC 7. According to ABC 7, "investigators took boxes of evidence from Eigl's home after he was arrested" during their March search of the residence, and between that evidence and witness reports of the incident, prosecutors charged Eigl with "six felony counts including assault with intent to commit a felony on a minor, kidnapping with intent to commit a felony, lewd acts on a child, second-degree robbery and criminal threats," the Ex reports. I think hes very scared, to be frank, Burns told the Ex. Hes never been in this position before, hes never been arrested for anything in his life, and hes here on charges that are very serious and I dont think that is lost on him or his family. According to the DA's office, Eigl's next appearance in court is scheduled for May 9. Previously: Inner Sunset Man Identified As Suspect In Teen's Attempted Kidnapping Model output showing the strong storm moving to the west coast. Wind and gusty winds across our region later. #bayarea #cawx pic.twitter.com/rDtL0piqf6 NWS Bay Area (@NWSBayArea) April 6, 2017 You likely saw or felt it this morning, a web of drizzle that slickened your commute (in my case, my back stairs) and dampened your shoulders. But that was just a taste of the rains to come, forecasters say, promising showers that won't end until sunset falls on the weekend. According to the Associated Press, the Bay Area should brace for "a strong, wind-packed spring storm" later today, with even heavier rain Friday and still more showers Saturday. KRON 4 reports that a wind advisory will go into effect for the entire Bay Area from 8:00 p.m. Thursday through 5:00 a.m. Friday, with gusts as high as 60 miles per hour. "The winds will likely topple trees and down power lines before the storm moves on Friday," CBS 5 reports. The rain is also expected to "snarl this evening's commute, and possibly again Friday morning," ABC 7 reports. "Heavy seas" are also in the forecast, with 17-foot waves and 45 mph winds expected off the coast. The US Coast Guard is advising seagoers "to boat with caution or avoid the water altogether." San Francisco and Oakland can expect 1 to 1.5 inches of rain, but the real action will be in the upper elevations of the Sierra Nevada, where the storm is expected to drop 1 to 4 feet of snow, "the biggest storm the Sierra has seen in April in a decade." "The rain should stop at the end of the weekend," the Chron reports, but the respite will brief. According to the the National Weather Service, Bay Area residents should forecasters expect a similar cycle next week, with a dry M-F and a wet Saturday and Sunday. San Francisco Animal Care and Control has received a spike in calls from citizens reporting coyote sightings, and so last night called a meeting with SF Rec and Parks, community members, and wildlife expert Keli Hendricks. KTVU was on hand at the gathering at the Golden Gate Park County Fair Building, where most people just wanted to know what to do if they encounter a coyote. The answer to that is basically nothing, give the animal space, and if you've got a dog, it should be on-leash and kept from interacting with coyotes. "There's nothing to be scared of," Hendricks reportedly told the assembled. "They're very shy animals." More coyotes are being seen, Hendricks reckons, because they're in new places. "[Coyotes] are expanding their ranges," she said. "We're finding them in more places than before....Our cities offer great habitat for wildlife, which is a good thing because they do a great job of controlling rodents." In fact, an uptick in rodents could also explain the increased coyote sightings: Rains have brought the rodents out, and they're primarily what coyotes eat. Animal Care and Control estimates that San Francisco is home to dozens of coyotes, though their number is likely fewer than 100. That's figure, though, could be changing as we speak. It's pupping season, another possible cause of the increase in sightings. The urban environment isn't without its dangers for coyotes. In February, one was found dead in Noe Valley's Douglass Park, KTVU and Bay City News report, likely poisoned to death by eating rats who had been killed by rodenticide. "These poisons are everywhere, and ironically, they are killing the very animals nature provides to control rodent populations, WildCare director of Advocacy Kelle Kacmarcik observed. Janet Kessler, a photographer and advocate of SF's coyotes who's behind the website Coyote Yipps, documented the Bernal Heights Park coyote recently. That animal is relatively well known and accustomed to people, which has become a problem: People who feed it are unintentionally endangering it, experts say, by encouraging it onto streets where it could be hit by cars. Flipping the concerns of many dog owners, rather than threatening to off-leash dogs, the coyote is actually threatened by them (unless of course the dogs are tiny, in which case the coyote thinks they are food). Kessler shared with Bernalwood an account of a golden retriever chasing down a coyote recently. Unscathed, it escaped by jumping into a thicket. Afterward, Kessler captured video of the frightened coyote, which can be seen shaking and barking below. Related: Behold The Coyotes Of Buena Vista Park In March, Twitter received a US Department of Homeland Security summons asking it to help identify the user or users behind one of the many "ALT" or resistance Twitter accounts that proliferated to criticize President Trump after he took office. Twitter says ordering it to identify users would break the law, and it filed a lawsuit against the US government in the Northern District of California today for trying to compel it to do so. The suit, which The Intercept reported on this afternoon, is here. It names as defendants the Department of Homeland Security and its leadership. The account Homeland Security wanted unmasked is @ALT_uscis or '"ALT Immigration," which identifies itself as "Immigration resistance... Not the views of DHS or USCIS" and tweets criticism of Trump and his administration. Similar accounts popped up in early January after the National Park Service's official Twitter account began sending out a succession of climate science facts, which was interpreted as an implicit criticism of Trump, and was seemingly silenced for doing so. ALTUSNatParkService popped up to take its place and continue the tweets, and so on. The irony that the Trump administration would want to crack down on anonymous Twitter accounts is that a large portion if not a significant majority of the bots and trolls on the platform support the President. But Twitter, for better or worse, seems interested in defend the internet practice of semi-anonymity for all of its users. A time-honored tradition of pseudonymous free speech on matters of public moment runs deep in the political life of America, Twitter argues in the court filing. These First Amendment interests are at their zenith when, as here, the speech at issue touches on matters of public political life. The ACLU's Esha Bhandari spoke to the LA Times on behalf of the user or users behind the ALT Immigration account, whom she is representing. Receipt of a summons like this can have a chilling effect on a wide range of people who speak anonymously or pseudo-anonymously on the Internet, so its important to fight, she told the paper. Were going to fight for this users right to remain anonymous." In response to the breaking news story, the ALT Immigration account has received a major spike in followers: 33000 followers added in under an hour. Where have you been since we started!!! #NoBanNoWall ALT Immigration (@ALT_uscis) April 6, 2017 To unmask an anonymous speaker online, the government must have a strong justification, another ACLU attorney involved in the case, Nathan Freed Wessler, told the New York Times. But in this case the government has given no reason at all, leading to concerns that it is simply trying to stifle dissent. Related: Activists Calling Twitter The 'Mouthpiece Of Fascism' To Protest Outside Company's HQ Thursday Enormous house fire on 23d Avenue in San Francisco pic.twitter.com/ok5k7GZosC divaesq (@divaesq) April 7, 2017 San Francisco police say that a candle was behind fire in the Richmond District this morning that burnt several buildings and caused multiple injuries. According to tweets from the San Francisco Fire Department, the blaze began at around 1:46 a.m. at a three-story building at 453 23rd Avenue, which is between Anza Street and Geary Boulevard. Soon, the fire had spread to multiple adjoining three-story buildings, bearing the addresses 451, 455, and 457 23rd Avenue. A third alarm was declared at 2:02 a.m. #040717WF1 UPDATE 451 453 455 457 23rd Ave three physical bldgs all 3 story 25 displaced City Services and @RedCrossBayArea on scene for 1/2 pic.twitter.com/a12X9YT9pr San Francisco Fire (@sffdpio) April 7, 2017 According to the SFFD, 31 fire units reported to the scene at the height of the blaze, with 96 firefighters fighting the flames. Adding to the challenge for firefighters, CBS 5 reports, when responders entered the burning building, "they were confronted by hallways and stairs cluttered by hoarded possessions." The SFFD says that two adult residents were injured in the blaze, and were transported to St. Francis Hospital for treatment of burns and smoke inhalation. According to the San Francisco Police Department, both were men, one aged 62, the other aged 75. As of publication time, they remain in critical condition. According to the Chron, a child was also hospitalized with minor injuries, and a firefighter was hurt during the blaze, but has been released from the hospital following treatment this morning. 2/2 1 Fire fighter was injured w/ a laceration and has been released from the hospital in good condition https://t.co/GZ2Bm8r0Bn San Francisco Fire (@sffdpio) April 7, 2017 A cat was also rescued from the flames, according to the SFFD. He or she appears to be fine. By 3:15 a.m., the fire was under control, the SFFD says. ABC 7 reports that 25 residents were displaced in the fire, and are being supported by city services and the Red Cross. The SFPD said this morning that the fire began when one of the hospitalized adult victim's "blanket caught on fire by a lit candle," but SFFD says the blaze remains under investigation -- and according to KRON 4's Will Tran, "Power was still on so investigators don't suspect it was candle." Breaking-San Francisco fire. 3 homes. Power was still on so investigators don't suspect it was candle. @kron4news pic.twitter.com/89h9qu2rpj Will Tran (@KRON4WTran) April 7, 2017 One witness to the blaze concurs with that assessment: @KRON4WTran @kron4news No way it was a candle -- loud pop then everywhere immediately divaesq (@divaesq) April 7, 2017 As of Friday morning firefighters remained on scene ensure the fire does not reignite, and, presumably, to come to a final decision on the cause of the blaze. 2/2 After Under Control SFFD remains on scene for undetermined time to ensure fire does not re start and to investigate https://t.co/b4IBfqd9mI San Francisco Fire (@sffdpio) April 7, 2017 Related: Candle Blamed For Deadly West Oakland Fire Solidarity can be as simple as eating pizza, or so a lighthearted protest organized for today seems to suggest. The action comes in response to a police officer who gave an elderly homeless man a citation for eating a slice of pizza in a Muni shelter recently, a so-called "quality of life" enforcement action. A senior came to the office for citation defense because he received a ticket for eating pizza at a bus stop. #qualityoflife #citation #sf pic.twitter.com/I9jonnCFDm Kelley Cutler (@NutCheese) March 31, 2017 "In solidarity with our homeless neighbors, I am encouraging everyone to stand up to the oppressive authorities of the SFPD who dare to dampen our civic enjoyment of municipal infrastructures while consuming the greatest food known to humankind," reads a Facebook event post for the protest, which self-deprecatingly advertises "potentially DOZENS" of participants. They're encouraged to "take pics and video of your pizza fueled civil disobedience and be sure to tag the SFPD's social media with #LegalizePizza." It bears noting that eating in Muni shelters isn't exactly against the law. Food prohibition doesnt necessarily extend to bus shelters Muni spokesperson Paul Rose told the Chronicle, explaining that while eating on buses could land passengers a citation, he frankly doesn't know if the prohibition extends to shelters, too. In one sense, that could make the arbitrary nature of the citation even more galling. This is a real waste of police services, Kelley Cutler from the Coalition on Homelessness told the Chron. Whose quality of life are you talking about? Shaun Osburn is the #LegalizePizza organizer, the Examiner gleans: The activist is the one half of S&M Letterpress, and in January 2016 was behind a crowdfunding campaign to buy tents for homeless people who had set up camp on Division Street but whose makeshift structures were being removed at the time. The current #legalizepizza protest is set to begin at 11 a.m. today and continue into the evening. For those looking to get involved in an, I don't know, less symbolic, more substantive way, Osburn is encouraging donations to the Coalition Homelessness to pay for the homeless man's citation. It seems possible the #legalizepizza movement could be overshadowed by a more pressing global protest: The ANSWER coalition is organizing a demonstration against President Trump's attack on Syria yesterday for this evening at Powell and Market Streets from 5 to 7 p.m., according to an Indybay listing. Already got an email for an anti-war protest pic.twitter.com/DxWCRvHjpP Jim Dalrymple II (@JimDalrympleII) April 7, 2017 Related: Amid Storms And Super Bowl Displacement, Crowdfunding Campaign Launched To Buy Tents For Homeles PIERRE, S.D. | The South Dakota Supreme Court has denied ABC's request to reverse a lower court's ruling that paved the way for Beef Product Inc.'s $1.9 billion defamation lawsuit against the network to go to trial later this year. ABC had appealed Circuit Judge Cheryle Gering's order in which she said a jury might find that ABC implied the product was not safe and that the network acted with malice in its reports. ABC contended that in her February ruling, Gering misapplied South Dakota Supreme Court precedents pertaining to actual malice and South Dakota's Agricultural Food Products Disparagement Act. In a one-page order filed Monday, Chief Justice David Gilbertson denied ABC's petition for appeal. The order gave no opinion on the appeal's merits. The trial is scheduled to begin June 5 in Union County Circuit Court and could last up to eight weeks. BPI, based in Dakota Dunes, sued ABC, its correspondents, federal officials and a former employee in September 2012 and will attempt to prove that a series of stories and broadcasts that began in early March 2012 defamed the company's Lean Finely Textured Beef. BPI alleges the "prolonged disinformation campaign" caused a backlash against the product, which critics repeatedly referred to as "pink slime," and led to a loss of $400 million in business, forcing the family-owned business to close all but its South Sioux City plant and lay off more than 700 workers. In her February ruling, Gering dismissed former "World News Tonight" anchor Diane Sawyer from the case, saying that Sawyer's role as an anchor limited her involvement in doing research and was not enough to establish defamation. The ruling left American Broadcasting Companies Inc., the parent of ABC News, and correspondent Jim Avila as defendants. ABC, Sawyer and Avila had sought the suit's dismissal in October. BPI lawyers last summer voluntarily dismissed ABC News, David Kerley, Gerald Zirnstein, Carl Custer and Kit Foshee as defendants in the lawsuit. BPI estimates that the reports did $1.9 billion in actual damages to the company and is seeking a jury award in that amount. If BPI wins at trial, its claim could be tripled to $5.7 billion under provisions of South Dakota's Agricultural Food Product Disparagement Act. Catholic Daughters meeting SIOUX CITY | Catholic Daughters Court Ave Maria #269 will meet for mass at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at St. Joseph Parish, 1112 Eighth St. A potluck dinner, served by the A-L members, and a meeting will follow mass. Sunday service at First Unitarian SIOUX CITY -- The congregation of First Unitarian Church will hear The Baha'i Electoral System: A Principle-based Alternative to Partisan Politics by speaker Marie Schafer at 11 a.m. Sunday at First Unitarian Church, 2508 Jackson St. Whitfield United Methodist Women brunch SIOUX CITY | Whitfield United Methodist Women, 1319 W. Fifth St., will meet for brunch at 10 a.m. Saturday. Program: Pledge Service, prayer and self denial. Executive board will meet at 9:30 a.m. Good Friday Men's Prayer breakfast ORANGE CITY, Iowa | The Orange City Community Good Friday Men's prayer breakfast will hold their annual event at 6:30 a.m. April 14 at the Rowenhorst Student Center on the campus of Northwestern College. Tickets for the event are available at all Orange City churches or by calling 712-737-4909. This year's speaker will be Dave Bartlett from Cedar Falls, Iowa. He will speak about his and his family's journey of grief and pain. 'The Last Supper' performance LE MARS, Iowa | The United Presbyterian Church of Christ, in partnership with Calvin Christian Reformed Church, will host a performance of The Last Supper at 7 p.m. Sunday at the UPCC, 858 Seventh St. Communion will be celebrated as part of the service, followed by a time of refreshments and fellowship. Free will offering will be collected. 712-546-6624. Holy week services SIOUX CITY | Messianic Passover Seder will be held at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Glendale Baptist Church, 1600 Glendale Blvd. Tickets are $15 and are available for purchase with Ron McLay, 712-258-4300, at Midtown Furniture, Seventh and Pearl St. 712-277-3970. SIOUX CITY | Holy Week services at Augustana Lutheran Church, 600 Court St., will begin with Palm Sunday services with procession with palms at 8 and 10:15 a.m. 712-255-7694. Maundy Thursday services with holy communion will be held at noon and 7 p.m. A stripping of the altar will be held at the evening service. Good Friday services at noon and 7 p.m. will feature the passion of Jesus according to St. John, bidding prayers, procession of the cross and solemn reproaches. Vigil of Easter will begin at 7 p.m. April 15 with an entrance into the dark tomb, traditional readings and first communion of Easter. Sunday Easter services will be held at 8 a.m. and 10:15 a.m. Spoken holy communion will be given at the 8 a.m. service, festival holy communion with organ and brass quartet will be at the 10:15 a.m. service. SIOUX CITY | Bethany Lutheran Church, 1201 Dubuque St., will hold a Palm Sunday service at 10 a.m. Sunday. The service will feature skits performed by the Bethany Choir. An Easter egg hunt and free brunch will follow the service. 712-255-4900. SERGEANT BLUFF, Iowa | The United Methodist Women of Community United Methodist Church, 101 Baker St., have sponsored a Palm Sunday ham dinner from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sunday. The dinner will include ham, au gratin potatoes, a salad bar and dessert. 712-943-5488. SIOUX CITY | The Diocese of Sioux City will hold several gatherings for Holy Week at the Cathedral of the Epiphany, 1000 Douglas St. The Most Rev. R Walker Nickless will preside over all Holy Week celebrations. Palm Sunday service will be held at 10 a.m. Sunday. A multi-lingual Mass of the Lord's Supper will be held at 7 p.m. Thursday. Good Friday and Passion of the Lord service will begin at 5:30 p.m. April 14. A multi-lingual Easter Vigil will be held at 8:30 p.m. April 15. Several people will be fully initiated into the Catholic Church through reception of Baptism, Confirmation and Eucharist.712-255-1637. SIOUX CITY | Faith Lutheran Church, 3101 Hamilton Blvd., will hold the following Holy Week services: Palm Sunday service at 9:15 a.m. Sunday; 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. services on Maundy Thursday; 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. services on Good Friday. 712-258-4820. SIOUX CITY | Palm Sunday services at Faith United Presbyterian Church, 4327 Morningside Ave., will begin at 10:30 a.m. The choir will sing Palm Sunday processional. Prayer services will be held at 8 a.m. Monday through Thursday in the chapel. A communion service will be held at 7 p.m. Thursday. A community worship service will be held at 6:30 p.m. on Good Friday in the sanctuary. 712-276-3121. SIOUX CITY | Holy Week at Grace United Methodist Church, 1735 Morningside Ave., will include: 7 p.m. Maundy Thursday service; a 7 p.m. Good Friday Taize Service; 11 p.m. Easter Vigil on April 15; 10 a.m. Easter Sunday worship; 5:30 p.m. Praise service on April 16. 712-276-3452. AKRON, Iowa | New Horizons United Church of Christ, 141 Reed St., welcomes the community to Holy Week services. Palm Sunday service will be held at 9 a.m. Sunday. Maundy Thursday Tenebrae service will be held at 7 p.m. Easter Sunday services will be held at 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. Brunch will follow the 9 a.m. Easter Sunday service. 712-568-3446. The Akron Community Good Friday service will begin at 5:30 p.m. April 14 at Immanuel Lutheran Church, 251 Main St. SIOUX CITY | The Peace Reformed Church choir will lead the congregation with their cantata and Tenebrae service at 7 p.m. on Maundy Thursday at Peace Reformed Church, 4100 Outer Drive N. "We Remember Calvary" is a Lenten cantata that uses traditional hymns, praise songs, scripture readings and narration. Easter brunch will be held from 8:30 to 9:15 a.m. on Easter Sunday, followed by an Easter worship service at 9:30 a.m. 712-258-0486. SIOUX CITY | The community is invited to Palm Sunday services at 7:45, 9:15 and 10:45 a.m. Sunday at Redeemer Lutheran Church, 3204 S. Lakeport. Palm branches will be scattered with a children's parade and special music. Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services will be held at 11:30 a.m. and 7 p.m. on their respective day. 712-276-1125. SIOUX CITY | St. Paul's Lutheran Church, 612 Jennings St., is sponsoring its 14th annual Easter Egg Hunt at 10:30 a.m. Saturday. Activities, snacks and prizes will be provided. Please bring your own basket. 712-252-0338 Maundy Thursday services with holy communion will be held at 12:15 and 6 p.m. on Thursday. SIOUX CITY | Westminster Presbyterian Church, 2915 Glenn Ave., will celebrate Palm Sunday with a celebration worship service at 10:30 a.m. Sunday. The service will feature the Procession of Palms by the children and the choir. The Rev. Mark Volkers will present the morning message entitled "Victory in Jesus." 712-276-3613. SIOUX CITY | Palm Sunday service at Whitfield United Methodist Church, 1319 W. Fifth, will be held at 8:45 a.m. Sunday. The processional will feature the Chancel Choir, children singing and waving of palm branches. Pastor Liz Tucker will bring the message "Triumph and Tragedy." Fellowship time will follow the service. HOUSTON Sitting in his office in a converted bank across from a suburban strip mall, Isa Parada methodically thumbed through scripture as he recalled the contrasting moments of his first month leading one of the citys newest and most unusual houses of worship. There was the undocumented Mexican congregant who was arrested by immigration officers, leaving his wife and child behind. There was the Syrian-American worshipper who wondered after the presidents travel ban if shed ever see her relatives again. There was the young Mexican-American near tears after he converted to join the congregation, part of a stream of newcomers. There were the emails and calls thanking Parada for being there at a time when the countrys leader broadly painted immigrants and Muslims as being prone to violence. Man, hes changed everything, Parada, a stocky, bearded Salvadoran-American, said of President Donald Trump. In some ways, hes turned our world upside-down. Parada is the first full-time imam at Centro Islamico, the nations only Spanish-speaking mosque. The congregation, which counts among it dozens of Mexican-Americans and other converts, serves one of the fastest-growing segments of Islam in the United States: Latinos. Now, with the presidents sweeping immigration changes through his travel ban and deportation push, those at Centro Islamico have been affected in ways few imagined when it launched just over a year ago on the far western edge of Houston. Theyve also come to play a unique role as a bridge between the nations Muslims and Latinos, two groups in the crosshairs of some of the most controversial administration moves. Representatives of both have taken to the streets and courts to battle the White House. What I try to tell people is that Donald Trump becoming president for us is giving us more confidence as Latino Muslims. Its an opportunity for us to talk about Islam, to talk about our immigrant stories, said Parada, 39. But we also have to be realistic. You hope it never gets back to what happened to the Japanese. According to the Pew Research Center, there are more than 100,000 Latino Muslims in the U.S. They make up a sliver of the nations 3.3 million Muslims and a smaller portion of its 57 million Latinos. Theyre concentrated in areas with large Latino populations such as California, Texas, Florida and New Jersey. But the heart of the community is Houston, where occasional Spanish-language services have taken place at traditional mosques for years under the guidance of Islam in Spanish, an educational nonprofit that largely focused on producing online videos and distributing Spanish-language Qurans until it launched Centro Islamico. Here, the Muslims are immigrants and those born in the U.S. to parents who crossed the border, as well as people whose families trace their lineage south of the Rio Grande but have lived in the U.S. for generations. The mosque spans 5,000 square feet, including a prayer hall, social room, gift shop, a small exhibit on Islamic history and a studio where sermons and classes are streamed online. A white concrete building with dark, tinted windows, it comes to life inside where walls are decorated with red and white striped patterns reminiscent of the Mezquita de Cordoba, the famed 10th century Spanish mosque. Arab Muslims ruled Spain for centuries beginning in the Middle Ages, leaving an Islamic influence on culture and language that remains today. Its a legacy the centers Muslims point to as part of their shared history. The Latino Muslim community in Houston now tops 1,000 Muslims. Dozens show up for Friday congregational prayers, and hundreds come for holiday services at Centro Islamico. Trumps name has been said perhaps only less than Allahs and the Prophet Muhammads at the mosque since its grand opening and has become a constant if silent backdrop to part-English, part-Spanish sermons. But only recently has the president had a measurable impact as his campaign promises turned into policy. After Trump signed his first executive order pausing refugee resettlement and travel from seven majority-Muslim countries, concerns grew among women married to Middle Eastern and African Muslim men. Some in the community rallied at Houstons airport as travelers were detained in a shaky first rollout of the travel ban. Others headed to Austin in February for Texas Muslim Capitol Day to plead with lawmakers to aid Muslims such as those whose mosque in Victoria, two hours from Houston, burned to the ground in January. When the Department of Homeland Security announced it would make it easier for immigration agents to arrest and deport those living in the country illegally, stories spread at Centro Islamico of traffic checkpoints and raids at grocery stores. One man is in proceedings to be deported to Mexico. Younger members who are Dreamers people who enrolled in a program under former President Barack Obama that halted deportations of certain immigrants brought to the country as children are praying their status continues. Its hard to be as strange and different as Latino Muslims, Parada who converted 21 years ago from Catholicism after reading about Malcolm X told a few dozen congregants during a recent sermon. Its hard, he said, to be asked by relatives why he doesnt drink anymore, or be looked at by uncles as if something is not normal with you. But Allah knows this he is watching and knows everything Islam began as something strange, he said, telling the crowd to be patient with their friends and relatives, and with the nation. The Latinos in the room could be an example to the city and their workplaces, Parada said, of how in Islam women are equal to men, of how Islam is a faith of peace and justice. (EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE) Afterward, members lingered in a hallway to commiserate over their place in America. They encouraged each other to be steadfast in faith and spirit. They were newer Muslims, ones who long ago converted from Christianity, and those born into the religion. They talked of the pride and sorrow, the joy and pain and the humor in sitting at the nexus of maligned faith and ethnicity. I went to get a car wash today and I saw a lady I could tell she was Latina and she had henna on her hands, said Monica Morales, a Mexican-American who also goes by Noor. So Im like, in Spanish, Oh my, is that tattoo henna? And she was like, I didnt know you speak Spanish. I say, Yes, Im Mexican. She said, Oh, wow, I thought you were from over there. Morales gestured to her yellow hijab, mimicking the woman. She had only begun covering her head the day after Trumps election, partly in an act of defiance. (EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE) Susan Barrientos, a 28-year-old Bolivian-American who grew up in Houston, chuckled and chimed in. But Trumps also brought out the opposite in people. Ive seen non-Muslim people go out of their way to be nicer, said Barrientos, who converted when she was 18 and is married to a Puerto Rican Muslim. As a hijab-clad woman with six kids, shes gotten used to sneers and snide remarks while out shopping, she said. But she was surprised recently at Costco when two elderly white women came up to her to tell her she had a beautiful headscarf. These days, if they dont like you they wont say anything. Theyll just kind of look at you, maybe they give you the stink-eye. For us, I think its helpful because it really changes your behavior in public because you want to represent Islam in the most positive way, she said. Juan Pablo Osorio, a 30-year-old who immigrated from Colombia when he was 11 and runs the centers YouTube channel, replied to Barrientos. Were used to the struggle, man. All of us have had some type of family thats illegal, had to struggle and figure some way to get papers. So thats like, nothing new to us, being marginalized, being looked at as different, said Osorio, who converted after meeting Iraqi Muslims as a Marine. I remember when I didnt know English, the way people used to treat me. So now that it is happening to the Muslim community, we can help them, right? Because weve been through it. Barrientos cautioned her brothers and sisters in faith not to overplay the dangers faced by Muslims. I think of Sept. 11. Being Muslim during Bush and the Patriot Act, that was far scarier. I feel nothing but love now. I see people who would not normally not be on my side be like, You know what? We are all one, she said. Everything thats bad, theres always something good thats coming out of it, you know? One by one, the crowd replied in Arabic. Mashallah, they said. God willed it. Alhamdulillah, they said. Praise God. This week on the podcast the reporters discuss what issues Democrats who come from Des Moines have faced in state-wide elections. They also talk about the new "Motorcycle Caucus" that Sen. Joni Ernst is a part of. 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, Erin Murphy, Christinia Crippes, Todd Dorman and Ed Tibbetts. This week's show was produced by Richard Pratt and the music heard in the podcast is courtesy of Still Tickin'. Chat with us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter @OnIowaPolitics, and subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher. Know an Iowa musician who should be on our show? Send their band sound files to oniowapolitics@gmail.com SIOUX CITY | A teacher with more than three decades of tenure with the Sioux City School District has been honored as the district's 2018 Teacher of the Year. Susan Jordan received the honor in a surprise ceremony at Morningside Elementary School, which is a STEM specialty school. Jordan currently teaches second grade at Morningside Elementary, and has taught in the district for 33 years. Jordan received several accolades from fellow teachers, in a district press release. One person who nominated Jordan for the honor said, She goes above and beyond every day, usually without notice. Throughout her teaching career, Susan has taken on numerous tasks and volunteered for positions when her plate was already full. She spends many late nights and weekends at the school working to ensure her students are receiving the best education she can possibly provide. One other colleague wrote, Students come back to visit her long after their years in elementary school, because she is such a memorable part of their academic journey. On hand for the award were Superintendent Paul Gausman and Principal Dawn Stansbury. In the prior year, East High School social studies teacher Jeff Washinowski was named the districts 2017 Teacher of the Year. COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa | A Council Bluffs man has been sentenced to more than 11 years in federal prison for selling methamphetamine in Sioux City and Council Bluffs. Ramon Cisneros Aguilera, 33, a Mexican citizen living in Council Bluffs, was sentenced Thursday in U.S. District Court in Council Bluffs to 135 months in prison on one count of possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine. According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, Aguilera admitted during a November plea hearing that he had possessed more than 1 kilogram of meth. The charge was the result of an investigation of drug trafficking in Sioux City and Council Bluffs. SIOUX CITY | A Storm Lake, Iowa, man has been taken into custody on an outstanding felony drug charge. The Storm Lake Police Department in a Friday release said Maban Lieth, 18, came to the police station Thursday in an attempt to retrieve some property. Lieth was wanted on several misdemeanor drug charges and the felony charge of possession with intent to deliver marijuana, so police arrested him at the station. He was booked into the Buena Vista County Jail on $5,000 bond. SIOUX CITY | The Clay County (Iowa) Sheriff's Office on Friday is continuing to investigate a possible child abduction, one day after a man reportedly spoke on a street with a middle school student. The sheriff office in a release said the attempted abduction occurred Thursday morning in Everly, Iowa. The release said a man in his 30s in a 2010 Dodge Ram pickup reportedly spoke with a Clay Central-Everly female student, attempting to convince her to let him drive her to school. The sheriff's office said a woman interceded and told the man to leave the 13-year-old alone. The girl did not enter the vehicle, and the man drove away from the area. SIOUX CITY | A woman charged with driving a vehicle involved in a pursuit after which a Woodbury County Sheriff's deputy traded gunfire with one of the passengers has been sentenced to 90 days in jail. Brittney Hood, 27, of Sioux City, pleaded guilty in Woodbury County District Court to eluding, an aggravated misdemeanor, and interference with official acts, a simple misdemeanor. District Associate Judge John Nelson sentenced Hood to jail on the eluding charge and fined her $250 for the interference charge. Other traffic violations were dismissed. Authorities have said that Hood sped away from a deputy who attempted to stop her on 260th Street near Port Neal Road south of Sioux City on Feb. 26. A chase ensued until Hood stopped the car at 235th Street and fled on foot into a field, where the deputy apprehended her. Melvin Spencer, 24, of Sioux City, then drove off in the car, and Deputy Mike Lenz, who was responding to the pursuit, spotted it turning onto 225th Street and followed it as it turned north on Allison Avenue, where it got stuck in a ditch at a dead end. Prior to Lenz exiting his vehicle, authorities said, Spencer leaned out of the driver's side window of the car and exchanged gunfire with the deputy. At least five rounds struck Lenz' vehicle. A male passenger was struck by the gunfire, and Spencer then fled on foot while Lenz administered first aid to the shooting victim, who sustained non-life-threatening wounds. Spencer was spotted three hours later and arrested. He has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder. SIOUX CITY | Woodbury County Attorney P.J. Jennings fears his office employees will be under increased danger if Gov. Terry Branstad signs an expanded firearms rights bill. Both chambers of the Iowa Legislature have approved a bill that expands firearm rights, which proponents said would protect Iowans and their constitutional rights, while opponents worry it will escalate gun violence. Jennings said if the bill becomes law, he'll request more security in the Woodbury County Courthouse to protect his team of lawyers and other personnel on the third and fourth floors. Jennings painted a picture of disgruntled people coming to extol revenge for court decisions they don't like. "We need to protect our employees. We receive threats almost every day. We received two (Tuesday)," Jennings said. By a 33-17 vote Tuesday, the Iowa Senate approved House File 517, which has a controversial "stand your ground" provision that a law-abiding citizen does not have a duty to retreat in a public place before using deadly force when confronted with danger to life or property. Sen. Pam Jochum, D-Dubuque, voted against the bill. Jochum said Second Amendment rights are important, but asserted the bill would take away the ability of government officials to regulate weapons in public buildings. When the bill was being weighed in March, Iowa law enforcement officials said they worried it would allow people to sue local governments that prohibit the possession of guns in public buildings, such as county courthouses. The Woodbury County Courthouse first got a security program with a metal detector and personnel at the sole entrance in 2014, in part spurred by admonitions from Jennings about the strong need for it. Jennings said if the guns bill becomes a law, he'll ask the county board of supervisors to expand the security measures, which would result in additional labor and other costs. "It should be concerning to you guys," Jennings told the supervisors Tuesday. The Iowa Judges Association, Iowa Clerks of Court Association and Iowa State Bar Association opposed the bill, saying it would make it difficult to keep guns out of courtrooms. The measure passed in the House in March on a 58-39 vote. Two Democrats Reps. Bruce Bearinger, of Oelwein, and Scott Ourth, of Ackworth voted with majority Republicans for the bill. On the other hand, Republican Reps. Michael Bergan, of Dorchester, and David Heaton, of Mount Pleasant, voted against it. Heaton opposed the bill because it would deny local governments the ability to ban weapons in their buildings. Bill sponsor Rep. Matt Windschitl, R-Missouri Valley, said the changes are indicative of what Iowans need, deserve and have not been acknowledged for many, many years" for gun rights. The bill was amended in the Senate on some stand your ground pieces, so it must go back to the House for another vote. Once that happens, the bill will go to Branstad's desk, and the Republican governor has indicated he will sign it. The Iowa House accepted a Senate amendment clarifying House File 517 that includes a controversial stand your ground provision that states a law-abiding citizen does not have a duty to retreat in a public place before using deadly force when confronted with danger to life or property. I believe this a good addition to the bill, said Rep. Matt Windschitl. R-Missouri Valley. It enhances Iowans freedoms. It does not remove anything of the major provisions we were pushing for. I think this is an advancement of Iowans freedoms, restores their individual responsibility and allows them to make decisions for themselves. However, opponents argued Iowans already have protections for defending themselves in deadly situations that balance the rights of gun owners with public safety. The bill, with the Senate amendment, was approved 57-35. The Senate passed HF 517 33-17 after the House passed the original version, 58-39. Problem gamblers In other legislation, the House also approved a change in state law that allows problems gamblers to enter into a voluntary lifetime exclusion from gaming areas. Under Senate File 442, as amended by the House, a person could choose either a lifetime ban or a five-year exclusion, Rep. Kevin Koester, R-Ankeny, said. A five-year exclusion could be renewed for another five years or for life. Rep. Mary Mascher. D-Iowa City, offered amendments to provide more information and require problem gamblers who decided they are ready to return to the gaming area to attend a session on gambling treatment to identify whether they still need help. There are more than 29,000 problem gamblers in Iowa, Mascher said, but only 8,500 on the lifetime ban. Of those, 693 sought treatment for gambling addiction and 299 were admitted to treatment programs. This is an enormous issue, she said. If they want to go back to gambling, lets have them go through a session to determine whether they can handle that. Her amendment was defeated on a voice vote. The bill was approved 74-20 and will return to the Senate. Health bill Representatives also voted 94-0 to approve a bill that aims to prevent the harmful effects of Cytomegalovirus, or CMV. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CMV afflicts one in every 150 children born in America and is passed onto a child from the mother during pregnancy. In Iowa, that works out to be 260 babies per year. According to the CDC, CMV can cause premature birth, liver, lung and spleen problems, small body size at birth, small head size and seizures. The bill would create a public education and awareness campaign. Parents could opt out of the screening when it is recommended. The bill now goes to the governor. Bank of America has a rich history dating back to 1800 and even earlier. It was begun by immigrants as a group of separate and unrelated banks that, over the years, merged and grew together. One such is the Bank of Italy which was founded in 1904 by Amadeo Giannini to serve Italian immigrants that were facing discrimination. He later buys out the Banca de America e de Italia (Bank of America and Italy) which was also located in San Francisco. Over the years additional mergers and changes in Federal banking legislation, as well as the boom brought on by WWI and then WWII, helped boost the bank to national prominence. Things turned sour, however, in 1998 with a major bond default that led to yet another merger, this time with Charlotte, NC-based Nations Bank to officially become the Bank of America that exists today. At the time, the merger was the largest bank merger in history and the company has only grown in the time since. Other additions to the new Bank of America include MBNA (a major credit card operator), Fleet Boston (then the US 7th largest and one of its oldest banks), and Merril Lynch, now Merril, which was added to the group in 2008 to provide an investment banking branch. Together the company dominates as one of the Big Four Banks in America. Bank of America lays claim to nearly 11% of all US deposits which ranks in line with its peer group and Bank of America Securities is listed as the worlds 3rd largest investment bank. Today, Bank of America Corporation provides banking and financial services for individuals, small businesses, institutions, corporations, and governments worldwide. The bank operates in three segments Consumer Banking, Global Wealth & Investment Management, and Global Banking bringing in a combined revenue greater than $90 billion in 2022. As of 2022, Bank of America serves approximately 67 million consumer and small business clients with approximately 4,200 retail financial centers. The bank also operates more than 16,000 ATMs and digital banking platforms with approximately 41 million active users. Its Consumer Banking segment offers traditional banking and investment products for retail clients. These range from deposit accounts to savings, credit cards, consumer loans, and IRAs. The Global Wealth & Investment Management segment offers investment and wealth management solutions including, brokerage, banking, and trust and retirement products. The Global Banking segment provides lending products and services, including commercial loans and leases for businesses of all varieties. The Global Markets segment offers market-making, clearing, settlement, and custody services, as well as risk management, derivatives, and FX exchange services. Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. provides investor communications and technology-driven solutions for the financial services industry. The company's Investor Communication Solutions segment processes and distributes proxy materials to investors in equity securities and mutual funds, as well as facilitates related vote processing services; and distributes regulatory reports, class action, and corporate action/reorganization event information, as well as tax reporting solutions. It also offers ProxyEdge, an electronic proxy delivery and voting solution; data-driven solutions and an end-to-end platform for content management, composition, and omni-channel distribution of regulatory, marketing, and transactional information, as well as mutual fund trade processing services; data and analytics solutions; solutions for public corporations and mutual funds; SEC filing and capital markets transaction services; registrar, stock transfer, and record-keeping services; and omni-channel customer communications solutions, as well as operates Broadridge Communications Cloud platform that creates, delivers, and manages communications and customer engagement activities. The company's Global Technology and Operations segment provides solutions that automate the front-to-back transaction lifecycle of equity, mutual fund, fixed income, foreign exchange and exchange-traded derivatives, order capture and execution, trade confirmation, margin, cash management, clearance and settlement, reference data management, reconciliations, securities financing and collateral management, asset servicing, compliance and regulatory reporting, portfolio accounting, and custody-related services. This segment also offers business process outsourcing services; technology solutions, such portfolio management, compliance, fee billing, and operational support solutions; and capital market and wealth management solutions. The company was founded in 1962 and is headquartered in Lake Success, New York. Cabot Corporation operates as a specialty chemicals and performance materials company. It operates through three segments: Reinforcement Materials, Performance Chemicals, and Purification Solutions. The company offers reinforcing carbons used in tires as a rubber reinforcing agent and performance additive, as well as in industrial products, such as hoses, belts, extruded profiles, and molded goods; and engineered elastomer composites. It also provides specialty carbons used in inks, coatings, plastics, adhesives, toners, batteries, and displays applications; masterbatch and conductive compound products for use in automotive, industrial, packaging, infrastructure, agriculture, consumer products, and electronics industries; inkjet colorants used in the inkjet printing applications; fumed silica used in adhesives, sealants, cosmetics, batteries, inks, toners, silicone elastomers, coatings, polishing slurries, and pharmaceuticals; fumed alumina used in various products, including inkjet media, lighting, coatings, cosmetics, and polishing slurries; and aerogel, a hydrophobic, silica-based particle for use in various thermal insulation and specialty chemical applications. In addition, the company offers activated carbon products used for the purification of water, air, food and beverages, pharmaceuticals, and other liquids and gases; and activated carbon solutions for activated carbon injection in coal-fired utilities, mobile water filter units, and carbon reactivation services. The company sells its products through distributors and sales representatives in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia Pacific. Cabot Corporation was founded in 1882 and is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. 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. For this column and the next, we are going to take a slight but related diversion from our annual exposition on community. This week I want to talk about two matters that popped up in the news and on my Facebook feed in the last couple days. In the next issue, Im going to give some First Quarter 2017 pricing and sales data, fresh off the presses (or out of my analytical software anyway) for those who might have an interest in the current market situation. But today, lets talk a little bit about trust. First, about who we trust with our money. Perhaps we dont like to think about it too much, but we do trust politicians at various levels with our tax dollars, and that they will spend them on the purposes for which they were intended by means of enacted legislation. In the early 1990s the Florida state legislature determined that a worthy objective was increasing the stock of affordable housing here, and passed a bill (later signed) that earmarked a portion of the transfer tax on real estate deeds (one of those pesky closing costs that Realtors and mortgage brokers have to explain to people) to affordable housing projects. All well and good, except that over the years this honeypot of money has proven irresistible to the legislature and various governors. Since the start of the housing bust in 2007, more than $1.3 billion (yes with a b) of this affordable housing trust money has been swept up by our friends in Tallahassee and spent on other projects. Now, as you know from prior columns in this series, the affordability of housing stock here in WilMa and East Broward generally is a huge issue. Wouldnt it be nice if we could trust elected officials to do what they promised? The Realtors, both locally and at the state level, have been lobbying the legislature on this for years. If you happen to see East Broward state legislators Gary Farmer and George Moraitis skulking about town, you might want to ask their opinions on this, as the legislature is in session and the budget is being discussed now. (Use the words Sadowski Trust for bonus points.) The second issue is a little more sensitive. What happens when there is a reciprocal currency of trust and good faith, that ends up getting broken? Admittedly this may end up getting a little philosophical, but its important and maybe related to the first issue. Its something that happens all the time in the real estate and mortgage brokerage business. A mortgage broker friend worked on a complex transaction with a difficult client (no they are not all just done by a rocket) to have the customer, at the eleventh hour, move to another service provider. What happens in a world where the foundations of trust have been compromised? You work, you develop relationships in what you assume is an environment of mutuality, only to discover that in reality there is no mutuality. Maybe it begins (or at least is fueled by) decisions by politicians at various levels when they break their word to us by sweeping up affordable housing trust money to spend on other pet projects. If no one complains and they get re-elected, there are no consequences. So there is no penalty. Perhaps some Realtors and mortgage brokers shot themselves in the foot, by not clearly demonstrating their value added. Or did a handful of bad apple Realtors and mortgage brokers do the damage to the whole industry? Did it happen slowly, subtly? And now, when really skilled counsel might be needed more than ever in special situations, can it be rebuilt before the next crisis occurs? James Oaksun, Broward's Real Estate Geek(SM), is Broker-Owner of New Realty Concepts in Oakland Park. In addition to having degrees from Dartmouth and Cornell, he is a Graduate of the Realtor Institute (GRI). 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. Ceres NASA Scientists have long thought that Ceres may have a very weak, transient atmosphere, but mysteries lingered about its origin and why its not always present. Now, researchers suggest that this temporary atmosphere appears to be related to the behavior of the sun, rather than Ceres proximity to the sun. The study was conducted by scientists from NASAs Dawn mission and others who previously identified water vapor at Ceres using other observatories. We think the occurrence of Ceres transient atmosphere is the product of solar activity, said Michaela Villarreal, lead author of the new study in the Astrophysical Journal Letters and researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles. Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt that lies between Mars and Jupiter. When energetic particles from the sun hit exposed ice and ice near the surface of the dwarf planet, it transfers energy to the water molecules as they collide. This frees the water molecules from the ground, allowing them to escape and create a tenuous atmosphere that may last for a week or so. Our results also have implications for other airless, water-rich bodies of the solar system, including the polar regions of the moon and some asteroids, said Chris Russell, principal investigator of the Dawn mission, also at UCLA. Atmospheric releases might be expected from their surfaces, too, when solar activity erupts. Before Dawn arrived in orbit at Ceres in 2015, evidence for an atmosphere had been detected by some observatories at certain times, but not others, suggesting that it is a transient phenomenon. In 1991, the International Ultraviolet Explorer satellite detected hydroxyl emission from Ceres, but not in 1990. Then, in 2007, the European Southern Observatorys Very Large Telescope searched for a hydroxide emission, but came up empty. The European Space Agencys Herschel Space Observatory detected water in the possible weak atmosphere, or exosphere, of Ceres on three occasions, but did not on a fourth attempt. As Dawn began its thorough study of Ceres in March 2015, scientists found ample evidence for water in the form of ice. The spacecrafts gamma ray and neutron detector (GRaND) has found that the uppermost surface is rich in hydrogen, which is consistent with broad expanses of water ice. This ice is nearer to the surface at higher latitudes, where temperatures are lower, a 2016 study published in the journal Science found. Ice has been detected directly at the small bright crater called Oxo and in at least one of the craters that are persistently in shadow in the northern hemisphere. Other research has suggested that persistently shadowed craters are likely to harbor ice. Additionally, the shapes of craters and other features are consistent with significant water-ice content in the crust. Because of this evidence for abundant ice, many scientists think that Ceres exosphere is created in a process similar to what occurs on comets, even though they are much smaller. In that model, the closer Ceres gets to the sun, the more water vapor is released because of ice sublimating near or at the surface. But the new study suggests comet-like behavior may not explain the mix of detections and non-detections of a weak atmosphere. Sublimation probably is present, but we dont think its significant enough to produce the amount of exosphere that were seeing, Villarreal said. Villarreal and colleagues showed that past detections of the transient atmosphere coincided with higher concentrations of energetic protons from the sun. Non-detections coincided with lower concentrations of these particles. Whats more, the best detections of Ceres atmosphere did not occur at its closest approach to the sun. This suggests that solar activity, rather than Ceres proximity to the sun, is a more important factor in generating an exosphere. The research began with a 2016 Science study led by Chris Russell. The study, using GRaND data, suggested that, during a six-day period in 2015, Ceres had accelerated electrons from the solar wind to very high energies. In its orbital path, Ceres is currently getting closer to the sun. But the sun is now in a particularly quiet period, expected to last for several more years. Since their results indicate Ceres exosphere is related to solar activity, study authors are predicting that the dwarf planet will have little to no atmosphere for some time. However, they recommend that other observatories monitor Ceres for future emissions. Dawn is now in its extended mission and studying Ceres in a highly elliptical orbit. Engineers are maneuvering the spacecraft to a different orbital plane so that Ceres can be viewed in a new geometry. The primary science objective is to measure cosmic rays to help determine which chemical elements lie near the surface of Ceres. As a bonus, in late April, the sun will be directly behind Dawn, when the spacecraft is at an altitude of about 12,300 miles (20,000 kilometers). Ceres will appear brighter than before in that configuration, and perhaps reveal more secrets about its composition and history. The Dawn mission is managed by JPL for NASAs Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorates Discovery Program, managed by NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital ATK Inc., in Dulles, Virginia, designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Italian Space Agency and Italian National Astrophysical Institute are international partners on the mission team. For a complete list of mission participants, visit: http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission Additional imagery Four divisions of the Delaware Standardbred Breeders Fund Series went postward Thursday at Dover Downs for three-year-old pacing colts and geldings, with Henry The Dragon turning in the fastest performance in the second leg of the event. Jim Morand hustled Henry The Dragon to the lead from Post 4 and together they sliced out splits of :27.2, :55.4 and 1:24 before sailing home in :28.4 to win by three-quarters of a length over stablemate Daiymir in 1:52.4. The Clyde Francis trainees were followed under the line by third-place finisher Art Of Fire. The son of Custard The Dragon-Surveille Hanover, who is now 3-for-3 this season, has racked up eight wins and more than $140,000 in his career for George Teague Jr Inc of Harrington, DE. James Isaac was a popular winner in the second division for driver Tony Morgan, who guided the Jim King, Jr. pupil to a facile victory in 1:53.3. Second to the quarter pole in :28.3, Morgan had his charge on top through middle panels of :58.2 and 1:26.3 before getting him to sprint home in :27 en route to the win by 5-1/4 lengths over Rivers Crest. Whispering Witch was third. Daniel Keeler of Smyrna, DE owns the son of Roddys Bags Again-Slide Home. The lightly-raced colt is now 1-for-2 this season and 2-for-7 in his career. Never worse than third, the pacer has banked close to $47,000. Bags To Riches came through as the 1-9 favourite for the tandem of driver Tim Tetrick and trainer Jason Skinner in the third division. Tetrick got away second with the pacer before rushing to lead past the quarter pole. The publics top choice led his foes through middle fractions of :56.2 and 1:25.2 before rocketing home in :28.2 to win by 8-1/2 lengths over Hallies Comet in 1:53.4. Olivias Grand Slam rounded out the Trifecta ticket. The homebred son of Roddys Bags Again-Paint The Sky Blue has put together a 3-1-0 record from four trips postward this season for Only Money Inc and trainer Skinner. The seven-time winner has stashed away more than $115,000 to date. Wake Up And Go got up in the final stride to capture the fourth and final division in 1:53.1 for the team of driver Corey Callahan and trainer Robert White. Automatic Dragon and Stay In Your Place took turns on the lead through fractions of :27.3, :56.4 and 1:25.1, but Wake Up And Go rallied from a ground-saving trip to win by a nose over race favourite Automatic Dragon. Stay In Your Place was a lapped-on third. Sent off at odds of 6-1, the son of Roddys Bags Again-Ima Early Riser won for the second time this season and for the third time in his career. The winner of $65,804 is owned by Charles Wimbrow and James Lunn, Jr. Major Uptrend was a wire-to-wire winner in the $30,000 Open Preferred Handicap for pacers in a time of 1:49.4. Tony Morgan had the 3-2 favourite chop out splits of :26.4, :56 and 1:22.2 before unleashing a :27.2 closing quarter en route to posting the win by 1-1/4 lengths over Jet Airway. Third prize went to Limelight Beach. Tim Crissman trains the 31-time winner who pushed his winning streak to three-in-a-row with the sub-1:50 score. It was his sixth win from his last seven outings. The six-year-old son of Somebeachsomewhere-Tricky Tooshie, who is owned by Crissman Inc and Niss Allen Inc, has more than $343,000 in his card. Poisonous also turned in a sub-1:50 triumph thanks to his 1:49.4 tally in the $27,500 Delaware Special Handicap for pacers. Ross Wolfenden rallied him to the win by a length over Sweet Rock. Blazing Bobby Sox took home the bronze medal. Pulling off a mild upset to the tune of 5-1, the five-year-old son of Art Major-Shes Poison is an eight-time winner to date and a three-time winner this year for owner/trainer Josh Green of Milford, DE. President Donald Trumps missile attack on the Shayrat Airfield in Western Syria was a poorly planned display of imperial muscle-flexing that had the exact opposite effect of what was intended. While the attack undoubtedly lifted the morale of the jihadists who have been rampaging across the country for the last six years, it had no military or strategic value at all. The damage to the airfield was very slight and there is no reason to believe it will impact the Syrian Armys progress on the ground. The attack did however kill four Syrian servicemen which means the US troops in Syria can no longer be considered part of an international coalition fighting terrorism. The US is now a hostile force that represents an existential threat to the sovereign government. Is that the change that Trump wanted? As of Friday, Russia has frozen all military cooperation with the United States. According to the New York Times: In addition to suspending the pact to coordinate air operations over Syria, an accord that was meant to prevent accidental encounters between the two militaries, Russia also said it would bolster Syrias air defense systems and reportedly planned to send a frigate into the Mediterranean Sea to visit the logistics base at the Syrian port of Tartus. Dmitri S. Peskov, a spokesman for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, said that the cruise missile strikes on Friday represented a significant blow to American-Russian ties, and that Mr. Putin considered the attack a breach of international law that had been made under a false pretext. The Syrian Army has no chemical weapons at its disposal, Mr. Peskov said. (New York Times) The missile attack has ended all talk of normalizing relations with Russia. For whatever the reason, Trump has decided that identifying himself and the United States as an enemy of Moscow and Damascus is the way he wants to conduct business. That, of course, is the Presidents prerogative, but it would be foolish not to think there will be consequences. Russias Minister of Defense Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov issued a statement saying: All the accusations against Damascus that it violated the Chemical Weapons Convention of 2013 given by the USA as reasons for the strike are groundless. The Russian Defence Ministry has repeatedly explained that the Syrian troops had not used chemical weapons. It is to be stressed that in the years 2013-2016 the Syrian government undertook all measures to eliminate chemical weapons, its delivery systems, production facilities. All chemical weapons stocks have been eliminated. The components for their production have been transported from the Syrian Arab Republic to the enterprises of the United States, Finland, Great Britain, and Germany where they have been destroyed. This is a hotly contested issue and one that requires greater clarification. The rational approach would be for the UN to send a team of chemical weapons and forensic experts to the site of the bombing to try to figure out what really happened. Trump decided he couldnt be bothered with such trivialities as a formal investigation. He was more interested in projecting the image of a strong and decisive leader which is why he decided to shoot first and ask questions later. His action was applauded by leaders around the world including Angela Merkel, Francois Hollande, Recep Erdogan of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Israel none of who believe that the United States should have to get the nod from the UN Security Council before bombing a sovereign country. I dont know who is responsible for the chemical attack at Khan Shaikhoun, but there is an interesting interview on Thursdays Scott Horton show that suggests that things may not be what they seem. In a 14 minute interview, former CIA officer and Director of the Council for the National Interest, Philip Giraldi, explains whats happening behind the scenes in the Middle East where military and intelligence personnel, intimately familiar with the intelligence, say that the narrative that Assad or Russia did it is a sham. I have transcribed a 5 minute segment of the interview here not because it provides conclusive evidence one way or the other but because curious readers will find it intriguing. (Any mistakes in the transcript are mine.) Philip Giraldi I am hearing from sources on the ground, in the Middle East, the people who are intimately familiar with the intelligence available are saying that the essential narrative we are all hearing about the Syrian government or the Russians using chemical weapons on innocent civilians is a sham. The intelligence confirms pretty much the account the Russians have been giving since last night which is that they hit a warehouse where al Qaida rebels were storing chemicals of their own and it basically caused an explosion that resulted in the casualties. Apparently the intelligence on this is very clear, and people both in the Agency and in the military who are aware of the intelligence are freaking out about this because essentially Trump completely misrepresented what he should already have known but maybe didntand theyre afraid this is moving towards a situation that could easily turn into an armed conflict. Scott Horton Tell me everything you can about your sources or how you are learning about this? Philip Giraldi Okay. These are essentially sources that are right on top of the issue right in the Middle East. Theyre people who are stationed there with the military and the Intelligence agencies that are aware and have seen the intelligence And, as I say, they are coming back to contacts over here in the US essentially that they astonished at how this is being played by the administration and by the media and in some cases people are considering going public to stop it. Theyre that concerned about it, that upset by whats going on. Scott Horton So current CIA officers are thinking about going public right now? Philip Giraldi They are, because theyre that concerned about the way this thing is moving. They are military and intelligence personnel who are stationed in the Middle East and are active duty and they are seeing the intelligence the US government has in its hands about what happened in Syria, and the intelligence indicates that it was not an attack by the Syrian government using chemical weapons There was an attack but it was with conventional weaponsa bomb and the bomb ignited the chemicals that were already in place that had been put in there by the terrorist group affiliated with al Qaida. Scott Horton You say this thing is moving really fast. How fast is this thing moving? Philip Giraldi Its moving really fast. Apparently the concern among the people who are active duty personnel is that the White House is anticipating doing something to take steps against the Syrian government What that might consist of nobody knows. But Trump was sending a fairly clear signal yesterday and so was our ambassador to the UN. about the heinousness of this act. Trump talked about crossing numerous red lines and they are essentially fearful that this is going to escalate . Now bear in mind, Assad had no motive for doing this. If anything, he had a negative motive. The Trump said there was no longer any reason to remove him from office, well, this was a big win for him. To turn around and use chemical weapons 48 hours later, does not fit ant reasonable scenario, although Ive seen some floated out there, but they are quite ridiculous. (T he Scott Horton Show I think youll find that listening to the whole show is worth the time. Giraldis observations are persuasive but not conclusive. There needs to be an investigation, that much is certain. (The show was taped before the missile attack, which does show that Giraldi was right about how fast things were moving.) Media analysts appear to be surprised that Russia hasnt responded militarily to Thursdays attack. Some even see it as a sign of weakness. But Moscows approach to Washingtons impulsiveness has been fairly consistent for the last decade or so. With as little fanfare as possible, Moscow goes about its business and works discreetly to protect its interests. Unlike Trump, Putin is not a man who likes to attract a lot of attention to himself. He likes to operate off the radar. Even so, Russia has a coherent policy in Syria (fighting terrorism and preserving the sovereign government) and its not going to veer from that policy. Most Americans dont seem to understand that. Russias not going to budge, which is why the Kremlin cut off cooperation with Washington, shored up its missile defenses in Syria, and moved a frigate to the Mediterranean. Moscow does not want a broader conflict, but it will be prepared if one breaks out. The Russians are concerned about Trumps sudden escalation, but theyre not surprised. They have spotted a pattern in US war-making and theyre able to comment on it quite calmly despite its terrible implications. Here more from the Russian Minister of Defense: The US administrations have changed but the methods for unleashing wars have remained the same since bombardments of Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Libya. Allegations, falsifications, grandstand playing with photos and test-tubes with pseudo results in international organizations became the reason for initiating aggression instead of an objective investigation. Lie, bomb, kill, repeat. Konashenkov doesnt sound surprised at all, does he? Its a pattern, a deadly, frightening pattern. The only thing that changes is the names of the victims. And heres another thing readers might find interesting: The Russians have an impressive grasp of Washingtons global strategy, in fact, their analysis is vastly superior to anything youll read in either the western journals or the establishment media. Heres a short clip from a recent speech by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov: The concept of managed chaos appeared long ago as a method of strengthening US influence. Its basic premise is that managed chaos projects should be launched away from the United States in regions that are crucial for global economic and financial development. The Middle East has always been in the focus of politicians and foreign policy engineers in Washington. Practice has shown that this concept is dangerous and destructive, in particular for the countries where the experiment was launched, namely Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and AfghanistanIn Iraq, Syria and Libya, this chaos was created intentionally. Responsible politicians have come to see that the managed chaos theory is destroying life in many regions. Some parties can benefit in the short term from fluctuations on the raw materials markets provoked by the revolutions orchestrated by external forces, but this theory ultimately backfires at its engineers and executors in the form of massive migration inflows, which terrorists use to enter these countries. We can see this in Europe. Terrorist attacks have been staged even in the United States. The Atlantic Ocean has not protected it from the terrorist threat. This is the boomerang effect. (Lavrov) Managed chaos. Brilliant. Thats Washingtons foreign policy in a nutshell. Thats why theres been no effort to create strong, stable, secular governments that can provide security for their people in any of the countries the US has destroyed in the last 16 years, because this long string of failed states that now stretches from North Africa, through the Middle East and into Central Asia (The arc of instability) create a permanent justification for US military intervention as well as strategic access to vital resources. So why waste money and time on nation building when nation building runs counter to Washingtons strategic objectives? Instead, decimate the nation state wherever you go, and leave the people to scratch out a miserable hardscrabble existence for themselves while fending off the relentless violence and persecution of tribal elders or local warlords. Is that a fair assessment of US foreign policy? Indeed, it is. And the Russian leadership understands the far-reaching implications of that policy. They know that Washingtons ambitions could result in a war between the two nuclear-armed adversaries. They fully understand that. Even so, theyre not going to budge. Theyre not going to let Syria become another Iraq. Theyre not going to let that happen. So, its all coming to a head. The unstoppable force is fast approaching the immovable object. Theres going to be a collision. More than 60 businesses have benefitted from the program, which was extended through May 1 while a permanent program is in the works. The annual Kids Fish-In event takes place from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. April 29 at Martin Dock at Lake Sacajawea. The statewide program was created to provide more fishing opportunities for youngsters in Washington state, according to a press release from the city of Longview. Children from 5 to 14 years old can participate. The fishing area will be netted with 2,500 trout. Each child who participates will receive a rod and reel to keep, a hot dog and a goodie bag. The cost is $10 per child for a 45-minute session. Sessions are held every hour beginning at 8 a.m. The last sessin begins at 2 p.m. The event is conducted by Longview Parks and Recreation, the Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Cowlitz County Game and Anglers club, the Mount St. Helens Bassmasters group, the Lower Columbia Fly Fishers organization and the Cowlitz Fly Anglers. Along with experienced fishermen, people from these groups will instruct and help the participants. Space is limited to the first 420 children who sign up. Registration forms are available at the Parks and Recreation office, 2920 Douglas St. or online at www.mylongview.com/recreation. Registration will not be accepted at the event. For details, or to register by phone, call 360-442-5400. All residents of Southwest Washingtons 3rd Congressional District can participate and ask questions or make comments about any issue. Residents can also call in to join the telephone town hall at any point during the event by calling 1-877-229-8493 and using the passcode 116365. They also can contact Herrera Beutlers Vancouver office in advance to be placed on a call list. That number is (360) 695-6292. The Kelso Payless Shoe Source store at Three Rivers Mall was included in the latest closure list made public by the national retailer as it struggles in bankruptcy. The company announced on Tuesday it was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and that it was immediately closing about 400 stores. According to the companys closure list, three other Washington stores were slated for closure in Burlington, Poulsbo and Marysville. This latest announcement spells more bad news for Three Rivers Mall. In January, Macys announced it was closing its mall location as part of it plan to close 68 stores and eliminate more than 10,000 jobs. Payless plans to reduce its debt by almost 50 percent. The company says some of its lenders have agreed make available up to $385 million to keep the stores running. Payless employs approximately 22,000 people and has 4,000 stores in 30 countries. It is headquartered in Topeka, Kansas. According to a Bloomberg article, Payless had initially considered closing about 500 stores in the weeks before the bankruptcy filing. Tanner Catlin got the win, striking out four and allowing just two hits in three innings, and Colton Titus threw 3 1/3 innings of no-hit ball as Castle Rock defeated defending Class 2B state champion Toledo 6-3 Thursday at Castle Rock High School. Titus also went 2 for 3 at the plate, Kaleb Carroll was 2-2 and Dakota Golden had two RBI and a double. The Rockets moved to 3-4 on the year while the Indians dropped to 2-7. Softball Clatskanie 9, Astoria 7: Sage Miller was 4-4 with two RBI, Maris Jackson finished 3-4 with an RBI triple and Carmen Lindblom was 1-3 with three RBI as the Tigers overcame five errors and a 4-1 deficit in the nonleague win. m In total, the Tigers finished with 14 hits, including two apiece from Olivia Warren and MacKenzie Mitchell. Trailing 4-1 after three innings, the Tigers clawed back with eight runs over the next three to take a 9-4 lead. Astoria fought back to make it close but Mitchell closed the door. S She finished with three strikeouts in seven innings in the circle. Track and field Lewis and Clark League preview meet: The Rainier boys finished first with 100 points, outlasting Clatskanie with 96 while the Portland Christian girls captured the team trophy with 107.5 points, leaving Clatskanie and Rainier to finish sixth and seventh, respectively. The Rainier boys only event win came from its 4x100 team (Jacob Bruce, Cooper Blodgett, Crew Blodgett and Darian Guerr), which narrowly topped Portland Christian with a time of 46.06 seconds. Clatskanie, too, just had one winner in Nathaniel Strong, who led the discus field with a heave of 117 feet, 7 inches. On the girls side, Rainiers Rusti Gates won the 300 hurdles with a time of 53.21 seconds, Breana Edwards won the high jump with a 4-11 and Julia Patterson led the triple jump with a 29-9.5. Clatskanie had multiple second-place girls, including Emma Carver in the 1,500, Madeline Moravec in the discus and Hallie Blodgett in the javelin. College baseball Lower Columbia 14, Green River 1: The Red Devils scored 13 runs in the final four innings to earn the West Region contest over the Gators at the RAC in Lacey. Cameron Campbell connected on his fourth home run of the year with a three-run shot in the ninth inning. Nick Tabura picked up the win, striking out three in 5 2/3 innings. Jared Akin, Zac Horne and Travis Paynter all tossed scoreless innings. Tied 1-1 in the sixth, Ricky Muzzy broke the tie by scoring on a wild pitch before JT Strickler scored on a sacrifice fly by Jordan Barchus to make it 3-1. The Red Devils piled on from there before unloading for six runs in the ninth. Muzzy and Strickler were 2-6, Barchus finished 2-4 and the Red Devils tallied 11 hits. hidden By Asheeta Regidi Facebook on Wednesday announced that is launching tools to prevent the upload and reupload of revenge porn. This refers to the upload of any private or intimate photographs, or even fake images, of a person without their consent. This is usually used as a means of revenge by former partners, jilted lovers, and the like. Facebook has now provided the ability to specifically report such images, and uses tools similar to PhotoDNA to prevent the reupload or sharing of such images. While this is a welcome move towards tackling revenge porn, more needs to be done. Changes are needed in not only encouraging victims to take action, but also speeding up judicial processes in cases of online publication. Additionally, imposing more responsibility on social media companies should be considered. Get a court order for removal of the image within 36 hours The first step is to have the images removed from Facebook. Normally, under Indian laws, to have an intermediary like Facebook remove such illegal content, the request must be accompanied by a court order or an official government request (As per Section 79 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 and the Shreya Singhal judgment of 2015). While Facebook has not committed to a time frame for the removal of the image in its blogpost, it can be assumed that action will be taken quickly even without a court order. Despite this, if a victim wants the image removed within the statutory time frame of 36 hours, it is best to get the court order. This draws attention to the need for speeding up judicial processes, particularly where online crimes are concerned. Suing the perpetrator Usually, the emotional distress, combined with societal censure, of the victim is so great, that most dont take action. Taking action is crucial not only to punish the perpetrators but also to deter future incidents of revenge porn. Revenge porn in multiple forms is covered by Indian laws: Images taken with victims consent: It makes no difference if the image was captured with the victims consent. If the publication was without consent, it is punishable. Uploads, reuploads and sharing are punishable under Section 66E of the IT Act, 2000 and Section 354 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860. First time offenders are punishable with 3 years imprisonment and 2 lakhs fine. It makes no difference if the image was captured with the victims consent. If the publication was without consent, it is punishable. Uploads, reuploads and sharing are punishable under Section 66E of the IT Act, 2000 and Section 354 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860. First time offenders are punishable with 3 years imprisonment and 2 lakhs fine. Images without consent: For images captured without consent, the mere capture is punishable. Both capture and publication are punishable under Section 66E of the IT Act and Section 354 of the IPC with 3 years and a fine. For images captured without consent, the mere capture is punishable. Both capture and publication are punishable under Section 66E of the IT Act and Section 354 of the IPC with 3 years and a fine. Sexually explicit images: If the image is sexually explicit, it attracts a bigger punishment of 5 years and Rs 10 lakhs under Section 67A of the IT Act. If the image is sexually explicit, it attracts a bigger punishment of 5 years and Rs 10 lakhs under Section 67A of the IT Act. Childrens images: Publication of sexually explicit images of children, i.e., anyone under the age of 18, is punishable under Section 67B of the IT Act with 5 years and Rs 10 lakhs. This is also punishable under Section 11 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012, which applies to an image of even a part of the childs body. Publication of sexually explicit images of children, i.e., anyone under the age of 18, is punishable under Section 67B of the IT Act with 5 years and Rs 10 lakhs. This is also punishable under Section 11 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012, which applies to an image of even a part of the childs body. Fake/ photoshopped images: Fake or photoshopped images, such as images where a real persons face is superimposed over another picture, are also punishable under these sections. Action may also lie for defamation under Section 500 of the IPC, and for criminal intimidation under Section 503 of the IPC, such as when the images are published to tarnish the reputation of the victim, or where the victim is threatened by the perpetrator. Blocking revenge porn websites Today, any image uploaded online can be reshared and republished in multiple sites within minutes. Dedicated revenge porn websites can also be found. While more progress in technology is needed to effectively tackle this, action can be taken against websites where such images are found. Google gives people the ability to prevent the revenge porn images for turning up on a Google search of their name. This is relevant particularly when the revenge porn is accompanied with the victims name. This alone is not enough, since the website itself remains. The website can be blocked under Section 69A of the IT Act, where any person can approach a Nodal Officer for this purpose. Do lawsuits trigger action by social media companies? Another issue with tackling revenge porn is whether more responsibility can be imposed on intermediaries like Facebook and YouTube. Such a case is pending against YouTube before the Supreme Court of India. The question arises whether lawsuits trigger quicker action by social media companies. For example, a few months ago, as per a report in The Guardian, Facebook was sued in the UK by a minor for failing to prevent the reupload of revenge porn under UKs Data Protection Act, 1998. Facebook reportedly attempted to have the case dismissed, but the judge refused. This refusal led to fears that this case would open up floodgates of litigation against Facebook from other revenge porn victims. This perhaps has served as the trigger for Facebooks move to tackle revenge porn using technology. A similar situation was seen before YouTubes Content ID system was launched, where a 1 billion dollar copyright infringement suit against YouTube (which YouTube won) triggered fears of further suits. Imposing greater responsibility on intermediaries? It is true that requiring social media companies to police content not only imposes a huge burden on them, but can also result in unwarranted internet censorship. At the same time, the fact that these companies are making hundreds of million in revenues from the people using their sites, they should have greater responsibility towards the content hosted on their site. This is more so when these sites are becoming a hub for illegal activity. While absolutely liability at this stage may be unfair, certainly a duty of care and liability for negligence should be imposed. Technological innovations like PhotoDNA and YouTube ID show that greater responsibility on the part of the social media companies is certainly possible. The author is a lawyer with a specialisation in cyber laws and has co-authored books on the subject tech2 News Staff There have been rumours around the Nubia Z17 mini smartphone and finally it has been made official. The Z17 mini was announced in China sporting a dual rear camera setup and yes, Cristiano Ronaldo is the brand ambassador. The smartphone features a metal unibody design with thickness of 7.45 mm. It also features slim bezels on the sides of the display. Speaking of which, the handset comes with a 5.2-inch FullHD (1920x1080 pixels) display with a 2.5D curved glass. It is being offered in two processor and memory options, a Snapdragon 652 with 4 GB RAM (standard edition) and a Snapdragon 653 (high edition) with 6 GB of RAM. Both the processors are octa-core and come paired with an Adreno 510 GPU. Storage is 64 GB on both the variants with an option to expand it further using a microSD card. One of the most prominent feature is the dual 13 MP rear cameras. One of the cameras shoot monochrome pictures while the other shoots RGB. It has an f/2.2 aperture and features OIS (optical image stablisation) and can shoot 4K videos. At the front there is a 16 MP camera with an 80-degree wide-angle lens. Other features include a fingerprint sensor at the back, Nubia UI 4.0 based on Android 6.0 Marshmallow and a neat looking red circular haptic home button sitting below the display. Connectivity features include 4G LTE with VoLTE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.1, GPS/GLONASS, NFC and USB Type-C port. It comes in a dual-SIM variant and has a hybrid tray. A 2,950 mAh battery with fast charge support. The handset comes in four colours including Elegant Black, Black with Gold, Champagne Gold and Red (Yes, the colour is catching on). The 4 GB RAM variant has been priced at CNY 1,699 (Rs 17,000 approx) and CNY 1,999 (Rs 20,000 approx) for the 6 GB RAM variant. The smartphone will go on sale in China on 13 April. Sheldon Pinto After the launch of the Samsung Galaxy C9 Pro, which was Samsung's idea of a premium, mid-range phablet, comes the C7 Pro, its premium idea of a mid-range smartphone. Launched today with a price tag of Rs 29,990, the Samsung Galaxy C7 Pro does look and sound a bit too pricey at first. It packs in mid-range hardware with a price tag that comes eerily close to mid-range Chinese offerings like the OnePlus 3T, the Vivo V5 Plus and even some budget busters like the Moto G5 Plus and the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4. But during my short hands-on time with the smartphone, I discovered that it does indeed make for something special that few currently have on offer. Build and Design The Samsung Galaxy C7 Pro indeed falls perfectly in line with the Vivo V5 Plus, the Oppo F3 Plus, a segment of smartphones that offer a premium-looking smartphone with internals that would today be considered budget (save for the cameras). In short, an interesting smartphone design would be Samsung's only chance to stand out among the competition. And from short hands-on time, it seems to have hit the sweet spot. The device is not massive like the Oppo F3 Plus, but packs in an-all metal body that is not just the slimmest in its category, but also feels lighter than others. It's taller, but its 7.7mm slim waistline makes for a confident grip which is great from a design standpoint, a detail I missed in this year's F3 Plus (the F1 Plus was smaller and lighter). The front features a 2.5D rounded glass, that's actually rounded and makes for a seamless feel when you slide your fingers over the edges. The fingerprint reader sits on the front, unlike the Galaxy S8 (thank God for that!). The back is made of aluminium and feels solid with no ugly-looking plastic gaps for the antennas. Samsung indeed follows the same design philosophy as on the bigger C9 Pro with a triple-band antenna design towards the top and bottom ends of the device. Display The Samsung Galaxy C7 Pro features a 5.7-inch Super Amoled display with a Full HD (1920x1080 pixels) resolution. The display is bright and has no problems in outdoor lighting. Sporting a Full HD resolution spread out on a 5.7-inch display I did not notice any pixellation either. Text and images looked sharp and the colours were well-saturated in a way that we have come to expect from Samsung's Super Amoled displays. An addition out here is Samsung's Always On Display, that lets users quickly glance at notifications without the need to unlock or power up the lock screen or the smartphone. The feature that is usually reserved for Samsung's premium smartphones, made its way on to the Galaxy A5 and A7 and is now also available on the C7 Pro as well. Chipset, Storage and RAM The chipset inside the Samsung Galaxy C7 Pro is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 625. The 625 is built using the 14nm process and uses low powered Cortex-A53 cores that sips on power very, very efficiently. The 625 is paired with 4GB RAM and 64GB of internal storage. The internal storage can be expanded and accepts microSD cards of up to 256GB. OS and Software As always, Samsung goes with its improved TouchWiz software skinning. The OS surprisingly uses Android 6.0 Marshmallow as its base, instead of current day Nougat. Samsung's customisations go pretty deep into its software and while they are pretty functional, they do include plenty of bloat. In the short amount of time I got to use the smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy C7 Pro did not stutter nor showed signs of any lag. But we should get a better idea once it is loaded with apps an games, something that I will be able to tell you only after thorough testing. Camera Samsung's gone in with identical 16MP camera modules on the back and front of the Galaxy C7 Pro. The cameras feature an f/1.9 aperture and the rear camera gets a dual LED flash along with PDAF. The images shot using the C7 Pro looked decent enough and I do think that the Super Amoled display had a part to play in making them look a bit vivid. However, you will have to wait a bit until I can give my verdict on it, that will be available only after I have tested the device thoroughly in the full review. Battery and connectivity A 3,300mAh battery for a smartphone that features a mighty 5.7 display does not sound like it would last through a day of use. But with the power-efficient Snapdragon 625 chipset inside, the possibilities with the right optimisations should be limitless as we have seen with the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 in the past. One good feature that Samsung has included is fast charging and it should play well with a 3,300mAh battery. Connectivity options include 4G LTE connectivity, dual SIM support, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.2, NFC, USB Type-C port. Oddly, there was no sign of Samsung Pay on the device even though it features NFC. While MST completes the package, I could not find the Samsung Pay app installed on the device. Conclusion In my short hands-on time, I found that Samsung Galaxy C7 Pro has some potential in the design department and will appeal to some as an overall package. While I was not impressed by the specifications versus price debate initially, using the smartphone for a while changed that initial impression. It is a premium looking-device that comes with capable hardware at an attractive price, that you will begin to like once you try it out. But with the smartphones like the OnePlus 3T (raw power and performance), Vivo V5 Plus (dual selfie camera), Oppo F3 Plus (dual camera) that offer a little more at a hardware level, its just the design and software that currently sets it apart from the crowd. Will it work in Samsung's favour? Or will that 16MP camera come to Samsung's rescue? Find out in our full review. IANS The government should remove transaction charges on e-payments for the faster adoption of digital payments in the country, the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) said on Thursday. "Transaction charges are one of the major deterrents in adoption of digital payments in the country. It is urgently required for the government to do away with the transaction charges so that neither the traders nor the consumers are burdened," CAIT National President B.C. Bhartia said in a statement. "On the other hand, the government may levy a nominal ATM usage surcharge in order to discourage people to withdraw cash from ATMs and motivate them to pay directly by cards," Bhartia added. The CAIT said the government should subsidise transaction charges levied on e-payments to the banks directly for faster adoption of digital payments. The confederation also called for implementation of the drafted proposal floated by the government in August 2015 for incentivising traders who are willing to accept digital payments. The CAIT said the government should subsidise transaction charges levied on e-payments to the banks directly for faster adoption of digital payments. The confederation also called for implementation of the drafted proposal floated by the government in August 2015 for incentivising traders who are willing to accept digital payments. The confederation had organised a conference on "Digital Payments-Importance & Adoption for future business India" here extending support to the government's mission of increased digital payment adoption in the wake of fast approaching Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime. "CAIT also announced its partnership with HDFC Bank to provide banking solutions to trading fraternity and help them achieve maximised business growth and expansion by way of championing into digital business operations," the statement said. The CAIT launched a national campaign this year in association with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) to persuade non-corporate business sector for amplified adoption of Digital Payments, it added. PTI As the Cellular Operators' Association of India (Coai) awaits a reply from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on a letter claiming that some 4G/LTE smartphones slow down network quality owing to sub-standard chipsets, leading smartphone maker Xiaomi has denied any such quality issue with its devices. In the letter sent to Trai last week, Coai said that on the basis of tests conducted by individual telecom operators, some 4G/LTE devices, especially those housing MediaTek processors, deteriorated the network quality. The letter mentioned devices from Lenovo, Xiaomi, Motorola (a Lenovo brand), Oppo, Micromax, Samsung and Intex, among others. "The analysis in the report specifically points out a degradation in network quality of service (QoS) for handsets that have a MediaTek chipset. All our smartphones are shipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon processors in India and are optimised for India-specific bands for the most efficient usage of 4G/LTE," a Xiaomi India spokesperson told IANS on Wednesday. Lenovo, however, refused to comment. Other smartphone makers were given calls which went unanswered. The devices that went through tests were Lenovo A7000 and K4 Note, Xiaomi Redmi 3S and Note 3, Motorola Moto G4, Oppo A35 and Samsung Galaxy J7, among others. "Trai is yet to respond to our letter. Neither has Department of Telecommunications (DoT) got back to us. Trai has informally asked us to submit some additional information on the testing and indicated that they would like to call an industry meeting to discuss the matter," Rajan S Mathews, Director General, Coai, told IANS. According to the Coai letter, "it is estimated that MediaTek is present in more than 35 percent of smartphones in the country". "It was observed that placing a SIM (which has only 4G/LTE capability) in the number 2 slot (2G-only) significantly deteriorates the throughput of any other operator's 4G SIM present in the main slot, by as much as 40 percent," the letter further read. The analysis so far points to a chipset-specific implementation by MediaTek. All the devices that have the MediaTek chipsets are likely to have the issue, it said. In the letter, COAI urged the authorities to mandate an Over The Air (OTA) update within four weeks' time to fix the issue. "The devices to be taken off the market in case of non-compliance," the letter read. This suggests that the glitch may be software-related and not a hardware one. "We have asked the government to ensure that quality phones enter the Indian market and we also want consumers to be careful when they purchase a phone," Mathews told IANS. NO DOUBT Donald Trump was keen to emphasise his decisiveness, in contrast with his predecessors dithering. There were hints earlier in the week that the president was thinking of doing something. After a nerve-gas attack by the Syrian air force killed more than 85 people in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun on April 4th, he said that Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian dictator, had crossed many, many red lines. In the early hours of April 7th, Mr Trump took action. American ships fired 59 cruise missiles at the al-Shayrat airfield, from which planes carrying the chemical bombs are believed to have taken off. The strike was limited and targeted. Even so it debunked the idea that the use of any kind of force in response to the barbaric behaviour of the Assad regime was no longer possible because of fears that it would mean confrontation with his Russian ally, which has been operating in Syria since September 2015. The Russians were informed of the strike in advance, but they were not, apparently, consulted over it. It is not clear whether any Russians would have been at the base. But the warning, doubtless passed on to the Syrians, seems to have given the latter enough time to evacuate at least some of their planes. In military terms, therefore, the operation will make little difference to the Assad regimes capabilities. Mr Trump will rightly win praise for his willingness to make more than a hand-wringing statement about the Syrian regimes flouting both of international norms and its own obligations since becoming a reluctant signatory in 2013 of the convention against the use of chemical weapons, following its last major outrage of this kind. In the past, Mr Trump has appeared indifferent to the idea of humanitarian intervention. But faced with such a vile and provocative act perpetrated on his watch, he asked his generals for an appropriate response, which they provided. The professional national-security team that he now has in place in the shape of his defence secretary, James Mattis, and his national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, deserves credit for this, but the final decision was of course the presidents. After Bashar Assad's regime in Syria attacked civilians with poisonous gas missiles, Donald Trump's administration had a good idea to send a message They say the Obama administration staff will regret not taking similar action, but I doubt it. This was the same government that ran through a terrible deal with Iran's totalitarians, one more serious problem that has to be dealt with in the middle east itself. The Trump staff have done considerably better than the predecessors.As noted, Iran's still going to have to be dealt with, as is any and every Islamofascist regime on the planet. In fact, even the totalitarians of Venezuela and Cuba will too. Labels: iran, islam, jihad, military, syria, terrorism, United States, war on terror About me I'm Avi Green From Jerusalem, Israel I was born in Pennsylvania in 1974, and moved to Israel in 1983. I also enjoyed reading a lot of comics when I was young, the first being Fantastic Four. I maintain a strong belief in the public's right to knowledge and accuracy in facts. I like to think of myself as a conservative-style version of Clark Kent. I don't expect to be perfect at the job, but I do my best. My profile Archives - Archives - July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 December 2007 January 2008 February 2008 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008 July 2008 August 2008 September 2008 October 2008 November 2008 December 2008 January 2009 February 2009 March 2009 April 2009 May 2009 June 2009 July 2009 August 2009 September 2009 October 2009 November 2009 December 2009 January 2010 February 2010 March 2010 April 2010 May 2010 June 2010 July 2010 August 2010 September 2010 October 2010 November 2010 December 2010 January 2011 February 2011 March 2011 April 2011 May 2011 June 2011 July 2011 August 2011 September 2011 October 2011 November 2011 December 2011 January 2012 February 2012 March 2012 April 2012 May 2012 June 2012 July 2012 August 2012 September 2012 October 2012 November 2012 December 2012 January 2013 February 2013 March 2013 April 2013 May 2013 June 2013 July 2013 August 2013 September 2013 October 2013 November 2013 December 2013 January 2014 February 2014 March 2014 April 2014 May 2014 June 2014 July 2014 August 2014 September 2014 October 2014 November 2014 December 2014 January 2015 February 2015 March 2015 April 2015 May 2015 June 2015 July 2015 August 2015 September 2015 October 2015 November 2015 December 2015 January 2016 February 2016 March 2016 April 2016 May 2016 June 2016 July 2016 August 2016 September 2016 October 2016 November 2016 December 2016 January 2017 February 2017 March 2017 April 2017 May 2017 June 2017 July 2017 August 2017 September 2017 October 2017 November 2017 December 2017 January 2018 February 2018 March 2018 April 2018 May 2018 June 2018 July 2018 August 2018 September 2018 October 2018 November 2018 December 2018 January 2019 February 2019 March 2019 April 2019 May 2019 June 2019 July 2019 August 2019 September 2019 October 2019 November 2019 December 2019 January 2020 February 2020 March 2020 April 2020 May 2020 June 2020 July 2020 August 2020 September 2020 October 2020 November 2020 December 2020 January 2021 February 2021 March 2021 April 2021 May 2021 June 2021 July 2021 August 2021 September 2021 October 2021 November 2021 December 2021 January 2022 February 2022 March 2022 April 2022 May 2022 June 2022 July 2022 August 2022 September 2022 October 2022 November 2022 Nikki Haley gets heckled at World Women Summit Nikki Haley was booed and heckled on several occasions during the Women in the World Summit. PTI, New York : Nikki Haley, the tough-talking and blunt US Ambassador to the UN, was heckled during an annual summit on women in New York as she spoke about President Donald Trump and Russia. Ms Haley was talking during the 'Women in the World Summit', an annual gathering of influential women leaders, politicians and activists organised by Tina Brown in association with the New York Times. As she was answering questions during a session, 'Trump's Diplomat: Nikki Haley', Ms Haley was booed and heckled on several occasions. At one point someone in the audience shouted "what about refugees". During the nearly 22-minute session, a woman in the audience shouted "when is the next panel," to which the 45-year-old exclaimed "wow" as the audience tried to shush the heckler. She was heckled again when asked how America deals with some of the world leaders who are dictators. "You call them out when they do something wrong and you work with them when you can find ways to work with them." At the end of the day, Ms Brown commended Ms Haley for attending the event even as she got a "boisterous reception" and for remaining gracious as she was heckled. "We often complain and sneer and say Republicans never want to come on any kind of forum except Fox News or places where they can be asked questions that are soft," Ms Brown said, adding that Haley did not put on any pre-conditions and sat very "graciously" while the audience heckled. "She didn't get agitated about it, and she's in the middle of a lot of world crises. So I feel that we should really applaud the fact that she did come," Ms Brown added. When asked why the world has not heard much from President Trump about Russia, Ms Haley said, "First of all, keep in mind that I work for the Trump administration," a response that generated boos and heckles from the audience. Ms Haley added that she has "hit Russia over the head more times than I can count. It's because if they do something wrong we are going to call them out on it. If they want to help us defeat terrorism, fine. But the things they have done with Crimea and Ukraine, the things they have done with how they have covered up for (Syrian President Bashar) Assad, we are not going to give them a pass on." "I have had conversations with the president where he very much sees Russia as a problem," she said, the hecklers growing progressively louder. May holds first talks with Tusk since Brexit launch British Prime Minister Theresa May and EU President Donald Tusk meet to discuss Brexit negotiating guidelines. AFP, London : British Prime Minister Theresa May and EU president Donald Tusk on Thursday held their first face-to-face talks since she triggered the process for leaving the bloc as Brexit negotiations loom. The visit follows an outcry in Britain over Tusk last week outlining draft negotiating guidelines which say that Spain should have a veto on any trade deal agreed with Britain being extended to Gibraltar. And it comes a day after the European Parliament approved a series of Brexit demands, including calling for "substantial progress" to be made on an exit deal before talks on future trade relations can begin. "The PM reiterated the UK's desire to ensure a deep and special partnership with the EU following its exit, and noted the constructive approach set out by the council in its draft guidelines," said a spokesman for May's Downing Street office. "She said the UK looked forward to formally beginning negotiations once the 27 member states agreed guidelines," he said. The spokesman said May told Tusk that Britain would seek the best possible Brexit deal for Gibraltar, its internally self-governing territory attached to the south coast of Spain. May stressed that the sovereignty of the Rock, ceded to Britain in perpetuity by Spain in 1713, was not up for negotiation in the Brexit talks. For his part, Tusk said the meeting was to make sure that the Brexit talks "get off to good start". A European Union source told AFP that the two-hour meeting went well and was friendly in tone. The source said they agreed to keep a constructive approach and "seek to lower tensions that may arise, also when talks on some issues like Gibraltar inevitably will become difficult". EU leaders are holding a special summit in Brussels on April 29 to decide a negotiation strategy based on Tusk's draft guidelines. The actual talks on Britain leaving the EU are therefore not expected to start until May at the earliest. Britain last week formally notified the EU of its intention to quit the bloc-the first member state ever to do so-following a shock referendum vote on June 23 last year in favour of leaving. When announcing Britain's intention to leave the EU, May called for the divorce and future trade deal talks to proceed in tandem, but she was rebuffed by Tusk who said that there should first be progress on the exit agreement before trade negotiations can begin. Asked about this divergence of views on the timing of the negotiations during her trip to Jordan and Saudi Arabia this week, May hinted at a compromise. "At the end of this negotiation, will we have looked at both withdrawal and the future relationship? That's what's important," she said. Baishakhi Offer on Walton laptops Customers get LED TVs, smartphones free Economic Reporter : Walton announced special offer on laptops on the occasion of Pahela Baishakh, the first day of Bangla New Year. Under the offer, customers are getting LED televisions and smartphones free on buying selected models of Walton brand laptops. The special offer is valid throughout the month of April, says a press release. Under the 'Baishakhi Offer', customers who buy any Core i5 laptop of Passion or Tamarind series on cash, are given a smartphone free. A 19-inch LED television or a smartphone is given on any Core i7 laptops of the two series. A 20-inch LED Boom Box television is available on cash buying of any Core i7 laptop of Karonda and Waxjambu series. The offer and cash price are also valid for the two series on 3-month instalments. The customers have the option of receiving cash discount as well. 2-year warranty is available in all models of Walton laptop. Besides, customers can buy any model of Walton laptop from Walton Plaza and Sales Points across the country at the minimum down payment of Tk. 4,966 on 12-month easy installment facility. Special discounts are also available for students. Sources said, Walton Laptops are brought to market with the joint collaborations of Walton, Intel, Microsoft and Bijoy Bangla. The most attractive feature of Walton brand laptops is the inclusion of Bangla fonts along with English fonts on key-boards. Built-in Bijoy Bangla software and Bangla fonts on key-boards are available only in Walton brand laptops in Bangladesh. Unified with smart design, attractive color and latest features, a total of 22 models of Walton brand laptops under four series - Passion, Tamarind, Karonda and Waxjambu - are available on the market. Among them, 10 models under Passion series starting from Tk.23,990 to Tk.55,550 are available for customers. BD nominated Co-Chairperson of Beijing Call for Action BSS, Dhaka : Bangladesh has been nominated as the co-chairperson of the 'Coordinating Committee on the South-South Cooperation in Population and Development' for implementing the 'Beijing Call for Action' on population and development in the South-South Cooperation countries. The unanimous decision to nominate South Africa as the Chairperson and Bangladesh as the Co-Chairperson was taken at a meeting held at the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) headquarters in New York on April 6. Representatives of the South-South Cooperation countries like Bangladesh, Indonesia, India, China, Kenya, South Africa, Uganda and Tunisia, among others, were present at the meeting, according to a release received here on Friday from Bangladesh mission in the UN. State Minster for Health and Family Affairs Zahid Maleque led the Bangladeshi delegation at the meeting. Officials of the Bangladesh Permanent Mission to the United Nations also attended the meeting. The Beijing Call for Action aims to accelerate and outline key actions to further promote South-South cooperation in the field of population and development, including population dynamics, sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights, and gender equality for the next five years. On March 18, 2016, Beijing Call for Action was adopted at the Ministerial Strategic Dialogue on South-South Cooperation for Population and Development jointly organized by National Health and Family Planning Commission of the People's Republic of China (NHFPC), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), and the Partners in Population and Development (PPD) in Beijing, China. At the meeting, the representatives of the member countries under the South-South Cooperation stressed on mutual cooperation and coordination for taking forward the population and development issues. Trump`s bombing Syria is welcome: West can`t fight ISIS and save Assad THE United States Navy fired 59 cruise missiles on Friday at a Syrian airbase from which it said a deadly chemical weapons attack was launched this week on unarmed civilians killing dozens of people and rendering many seriously sick. It is the first direct US assault on the government of Bashar al-Assad in six years of civil war. That catapulted the United States into a confrontation with Russia, which has military advisers and air defense system in the ground assisting its close ally Assad." Years of previous attempts at changing Assad's behaviour have all failed and failed very dramatically," Trump said as he announced the attack from his Florida resort meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The swift action is likely to be interpreted as a signal to Russia, and also to other countries such as North Korea, China and Iran where Trump has faced foreign policy tests early in his presidency. The Syrian army said the US attack killed six people at its air base near the city of Homs. It called the attack "blatant aggression" and said it made the United States a "partner" of "terrorist groups" including the Islamic State. Homs Governor Talal Barazi told Reuters the death toll was seven. A spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin said the strike had seriously damaged ties between Washington and Moscow. Putin, a staunch ally of Assad, regarded the US action as "aggression against a sovereign nation" on a "made-up pretext", spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. Russian television showed craters and rubble at the site of the airbase and said nine aircrafts had been destroyed. We appreciate this action of US President Donald Trump that his predecessor Barack Obama never took: directly targetting Assad's air defence area. But if Trump stops here and does not further target Assad then nothing will change. The message should be that Assad could not be tolerated anymore and he must go. If the ISIS has to be ended then the Syria's President Assad has to be ended first. It is wrong for the West to think that Assad is fighting ISIS. He is the cause of ISIS and ending Assad will be a decisive action against the so-called Islamists in the Middle East. Therefore these US military actions must continue making Assad the main target. President Assad who is a mindless killer of children must not be allowed time, he must leave Syria or die. He is the major source of Muslims' anger all over the world. ISIS is taking advantage of the crisis in Syria. It is deceptive to fight ISIS and save Assad. We hope that the US will continue to press on with more military actions in Syria making openly for the knowledge of all that President Assad, a relentless killer, is the target of the attack. To Russia, killing is politics. It is hopeful to see the Western powers have supported the air attack launched by President Trump. But the job must be finished to save Syrian people and diminish ISIS. Farmers in flood hit haors need help to overcome losses HEAVY rain and gushing water from the upstream have washed away thousands of hectares of Boro fields in haor areas of Sunamganj, Habiganj, Kishoreganj and Netrokona districts at a time when farmers were about to start harvesting of paddy from mid-April. Farmers also lost fish stocks as the floodwater has washed away ponds and water bodies that were cultivated by individual farmers. As immediate affect of flood loss of Boro paddy, rice price has already shot up in the market by Tk 5 to 6 per kg. It appears that like floods the government also has no control over rice market as traders started exploiting consumers. We must say it is not acceptable. As per report, over 1.50 lakh hectares of Boro fields have been destroyed rendering farmers to lose their entire crops; which give them both food and cash for family maintenance. Loss in fisheries is yet to be estimated. Report said at least one farmer died from heart attack at a village in Austagram upazila of Kishoreganj district as he saw his entire crop being washed away. The cries of farmers in haor areas are thickening the air. Rain was pouring in last week in some northeastern districts before arrival of monsoon. At many places river embankments were destroyed by gushing water inundating low lying areas and endangering human life and safety of cattle heads. Heavy down pour in the hilly Meghalayan districts across the border caused the flash flood in Sunamgonj haors and adjoining districts. Flood water from Silchar district of Assam in the Indian side of the border also aggravated the situation. It goes without saying that common river management with India is very important to protect Bangladesh; but Indian non-cooperation is making it almost impossible. Meanwhile gushing water continues flooding the haors as big embankments in Habiganj and Kishoreganj districts remained unprotected and widening of gap in broken embankments is further spreading the flood. The situation continues to deteriorate as the concerned authorities of the government find it difficult to take up repair work when water is running high. We must say untimely flood has left the people of haor areas almost ruined from destruction of Boro crop, which grow only once a year. They are counting difficult time ahead how to live a year without harvest. In our view the government must take up a special funding scheme to help the helpless farmers how to grow some other crops at high land to overcome some losses. They may be given loans, seeds and other inputs on easy term. Meanwhile, Water Development Board must take up urgent repair work to contain the damage that the floods have caused to environment and human life. We want to see real development in the ground without tall talks about development. People must get help to return to normal life from this disaster. Xi urges trade co-op with Trump US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump welcome Chinese President Xi Jinping and first lady Peng Liyuan at Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. Reuters, Palm Beach, Fla. : Chinese President Xi Jinping urged cooperation with the United States on trade and investment on Thursday, inviting President Donald Trump to visit China in a cordial start to their first meeting likely to broach sensitive security and commercial issues. Trump has said he wants to raise concerns about China's trade practices and press Xi to do more to rein in North Korea's nuclear ambitions during his two-day visit to the Spanish-style Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, though no major deals on either issue are expected. The two sides should promote the "healthy development of bilateral trade and investment" and advance talks on a bilateral investment agreement, Xi said, according to a statement on China's Foreign Ministry website. "We have a thousand reasons to get China-U.S. relations right, and not one reason to spoil the China-U.S. relationship," Xi told Trump. Trump accepted Xi's invitation to China later this year, state news agency Xinhua news agency cited officials as saying on Friday. Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, joined Trump and his wife, Melania, at a long table in an ornate candle-lit private dining room festooned with red and yellow floral centerpieces, where they dined on pan-seared Dover sole and New York strip steak. Trump, a New York real estate magnate before he ran for office, joked before dinner: "We've had a long discussion already, and so far I have gotten nothing, absolutely nothing. But we have developed a friendship - I can see that - and I think long term we are going to have a very, very great relationship and I look very much forward to it." The fanfare over the summit on Thursday was overshadowed by another pressing foreign policy issue: the U.S. response to a deadly poison gas attack in Syria. As Trump and Xi were wrapping up dinner, U.S. forces fired dozens of cruise missiles at a Syrian airbase from which it said the chemical weapons attack was launched this week, an escalation of the U.S. military role in Syria that swiftly drew sharp criticism from Russia. In Beijing, China's Foreign Ministry urged all parties in Syria to find a political settlement. Trump and Xi were expected to get into more detailed discussions about trade and foreign policy issues on Friday, concluding their summit with a working lunch. Trump promised during the 2016 presidential campaign to stop what he called the theft of American jobs by China and rebuild the country's manufacturing base. Many blue-collar workers helped propel him to his unexpected election victory in November and Trump wants to deliver for them. "We have been treated unfairly and have made terrible trade deals with China for many, many years. That's one of the things we are going to be talking about," Trump told reporters ahead of the meeting. The bilateral investment treaty mentioned by Xi, talks on which began during former president George W. Bush's administration and resumed under Barack Obama, has received little attention since Trump took office. Trump is still finding his footing in the White House and has yet to spell out a strategy for what his advisers called a trade relationship based on "the principle of reciprocity." He brought his top economic and national advisers to Florida for the meeting, including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. "Even as we share a desire to work together, the United States does recognize the challenges China can present to American interests," said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, also in Florida for the meeting. Trump's daughter, Ivanka, and her husband, Jared Kushner, who both work at the White House, also were among the dinner guests. The summit brings together two leaders who could not seem more different: the often stormy Trump, prone to angry tweets, and Xi, outwardly calm, measured and tightly scripted, with no known social media presence. What worries the protocol-conscious Chinese more than policy clashes is the risk that the unpredictable Trump could publicly embarrass Xi, after several foreign leaders experienced awkward moments with the new U.S. president. "Ensuring President Xi does not lose face is a top priority for China," a Chinese official said. 4 children among 9 dead in US strike AFP, Damascus : A U.S. missile strike targeting an airbase in central Syria killed nine civilians, including four children, Friday, state news agency SANA reported. The news agency said five of the civilians, among them three children, were killed in the village of Shayrat just outside the base of the same name. "An American missile also hit the village of Al-Hamrat, which killed four civilians including a child," it added. "Another seven civilians were wounded when a missile hit homes in Al-Manzul, four kilometers (two and a half miles) away from the Shayrat air base," it added. World reaction to US attack BBC Online : World leaders have been responding to US President Donald Trump's overnight missile strikes on a Syrian government air base suspected of launching a chemical attack on a rebel-held town on Tuesday. President Bashar al-Assad's office has spoken out against the US airstrikes. "What America did is nothing but foolish and irresponsible behaviour, which only reveals its short-sightedness and political and military blindness to reality," it said. Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for the Russian President Vladimir Putin, described the US air strikes on the Shayrat airbase as "an act of aggression against a sovereign state delivered in violation of international law under a far-fetched pretext". His statement said Washington's actions had "dealt a serious blow to Russian-US relations, which are already in a poor state". The strikes would "create a major obstacle to the establishment of an international counterterrorist coalition", it added. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called it "an act of aggression under a completely invented pretext". "Everything resembles the situation of 2003, when the USA, the UK and several of their allies invaded Iraq without the UN Security Council's approval - a grave violation of international law - but at that point they at least tried to show some material evidence." The UK government said it fully supported the strikes and had been in close contact with the US government beforehand. Defence Secretary Michael Fallon told the BBC: "The Americans believe they've exhausted all possible diplomatic and peaceful ways of dealing with the use by the regime of chemical weapons and they have been determined to try to prevent future attacks like this so they've taken this action today." He said the US "hasn't declared war" on Syria and the UK had not been asked to get involved. The President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, tweeted his reaction to the unilateral airstrikes. Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission, said in a statement: "The US has informed the EU that these strikes were limited and seek to deter further chemical weapons atrocities." "The repeated use of such weapons must be answered." Jens Stoltenberg, Secretary General of defence alliance Nato, said in a statement: "The Syrian regime bears the full responsibility for this development. "Any use of chemical weapons is unacceptable, cannot go unanswered, and those responsible must be held accountable." Modi breaks protocol to receive Hasina Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was welcomed by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on her arrival at the Palam Station of Indian Air Force in New Delhi on Friday on a state visit to the neighbouring country. UNB, New Delhi : Breaking the protocol, Indian Prime Minster Narendra Modi on Friday noon received his Bangladesh counterpart Sheikh Hasina when she arrived here on a four-day official visit that will see her signing a host of bilateral deals between Bangladesh and India. A VVIP flight of Biman Bangladesh Airlines, carrying the Prime Minister and her entourage, arrived at Air Force Station, Palam, New Delhi at 12:05 pm (local time). On her arrival, the Indian Prime Minister along with Indian State Minister for Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises Babul Supriyo and High Commissioner of Bangladesh to India Syed Moazzem Ali welcomed the Prime Minister there. Modi welcomed Hasina with a bouquet. Earlier, Modi made the personal gesture beyond protocol for a few world leaders, including then US President Barack Obama and the Saudi King, they visited India. The Prime Minister was taken to Rashtrapati Bhavan in a ceremonial motorcade where she will be staying during the visit. Earlier, the VVIP flight of Biman left Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport at 10:10 am (local time). Ministers, Advisers to the Prime Minister and high civil and military officials saw the Prime Minister off at the airport. Liberation War Affairs Minister AKM Mozammel Haque, Water Resources Minister Anisul Islam Mahmud, Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Anisul Haque , Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali, PM's Economic Affairs Adviser Dr Moshiur Rahman and State Minister for Foreign Affairs M Shahriar Alam are accompanying the Prime Minister during the tour. On Friday afternoon, Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj will call on Sheikh Hasina at the Rashtrapati Bhavan. Later, she will attend a reception at Bangladesh High Commission at Chanakyapuri and have her dinner there. On Saturday morning, the Prime Minister will attend the ceremonial reception by her Indian counterpart Narendra Modi at the Forecourt of Rashtrapati Bhavan. After the reception, she will go to Rajghat to pay respect to Mahatma Gandhi through laying wreaths at the Memorial for Mahatma Gandhi. Rajghat Samadhi Committee secretary will receive her there. She will observe a one-minute silence and sign the visitors' book. The Prime Minister will go to Hyderabad House at 11:30 am (local time) to hold a tete-a-tete at Deccan Suite with Narendra Modi and bilateral delegation-level talks at the Conference Room of the Hyderabad House. After the meeting, the Prime Minister will release the Hindi translation of Bangabandhu's 'The Unfinished Memories'. The programme will be held at the Ball Room of the Hyderabad House. Later, the two prime ministers will deliver joint press statements. Sheikh Hasina will attend the banquet to be hosted by the Indian Prime Minister at the Banquet Hall of the Hyderabad House. In the afternoon of the same day, the Prime Minister will attend the Sommanona programme at Manekshaw Center to honour the war martyr heroes of India who fought for Bangladesh independence in 1971 and made supreme sacrifice. In the evening, the Prime Minister will meet Indian Vice President Mohammad Hamid Ansari at his residence. On April 9, the Prime Minister will go to Jaipur by Air India Special Flight to perform Jiarah at Ajmer Sharif. In the evening, Congress President Sonia Gandhi will call on Sheikh Hasina at Rashtrapati Bhavan. After that, the Prime Minister will call on Indian President Pranab Mukherjee at North Drawing Room of the Rashtrapati Bhavan. She will witness a cultural programme at Ashoka Hall of the Rashtrapati Bhavan and attend dinner hosted by the Indian President at Banquet Hall. On Monday morning, after attending a reception by India Foundation, Sheikh Hasina will attend a business event at the Shahjahan Hall of Hotel Taj Palace. The Prime Minister will fly from Delhi back to Dhaka by a VVIP flight of Biman at 4 pm and reach Dhaka airport at 7:20 pm (local time). Briefing journalists on the Prime Minister's visit here on Tuesday, Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali said there are possibilities to sign 33 memorandums of understanding (MoUs) or agreements with India on various issues. He said the MoUs and deals may include border haat establishment, information and broadcasting, civil nuclear cooperation, science and technology, ICT, satellite and space research, geological science, defence cooperation, third Line of Credit (LoC), community clinic installation and cooperation on power sector. Hasina upbeat on Teesta deal UNB, New Delhi : Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Friday expressed her optimism about the long-pending Teesta water-sharing deal with next-door neighbour India. "I'm very much optimistic," she said responding to a query from an Indian journalist at a reception hosted by Bangladesh High Commission in honour of the Prime Minister. PM's Press Secretary Ihsanul Karim briefed reporters after the programme. Mentioning that Chief Minister of West Bengal Mamata Banerjee is now in New Delhi, Sheikh Hasina said, "I'll talk to her regarding the matter." She also said Bangladesh wants to build the Ganges Barrage taking assistance from India. "It'll be beneficial for both the countries," she said. Responding to another question on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi receiving her at the airport breaking the protocol, Sheikh Hasina said she was very much impressed with such gesture from her counterpart. "He (Modi) came here to receive me although he had numerous engagements," she said. Diplomats from various countries and eminent Indian citizens attended the reception. Earlier, Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj paid a courtesy call on the Prime Minister at the Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi in the afternoon. Briefing reporters after the meeting, Ihsanul Karim said Sheikh Hasina recalled the memories of her stay in New Delhi after the brutal assassination of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman along with most of his family members on August 15, 1975. She also presented a copy each of the two autobiographies of Bangabandhu-The Unfinished Memoirs and Karagarer Rojnamcha-to Sushma Swaraj. Earlier on Friday noon breaking the protocol, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi received his Bangladesh counterpart Sheikh Hasina when she arrived here on a four-day official visit that will see her signing a host of bilateral deals between Bangladesh and India. A VVIP flight of Biman Bangladesh Airlines, carrying the Prime Minister and her entourage, arrived at Air Force Station, Palam, New Delhi at 12:05 pm (local time). On her arrival, the Indian Prime Minister along with Indian State Minister for Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises Babul Supriyo and High Commissioner of Bangladesh to India Syed Moazzem Ali welcomed the Prime Minister there. Modi welcomed Hasina with a bouquet. Earlier, Modi made the personal gesture beyond protocol for a few world leaders, including then US President Barack Obama and the Saudi King, when they visited India. UN Security Council meets Reuters/Sky News : The United Nations Security Council will meet at 1130 EDT (1530 GMT) on Friday to discuss Thursday's U.S. cruise missile strikes on Syria, diplomats said. The meeting of the 15-member council will be public, diplomats said. America fired dozens of missiles at a Syrian airbase overnight in retaliation for this week's chemical weapons attack on civilians, including babies. President Donald Trump said the US military action was vital to deter future use of poison gas and called on other nations to join in to help "end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria". The strikes - the first US intervention against President Assad's forces in Syria's six-year war - drew immediate condemnation from staunch ally Russia, with Vladimir Putin calling the raids an "aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law". The Kremlin said the action would damage ties between Moscow and Washington and was a "serious obstacle" to the creation of an international coalition to fight terrorism. Moscow called for the UN Security Council meeting. The Kremlin also said a "complex of measures" would be put in place to strengthen Syrian air defences and help "protect the most sensitive Syrian infrastructure facilities". Senator John McCain told Sky News that US defence secretary General James Mattis and national security adviser H R McMaster acted swiftly and "took advantage of those dreadful images of dead babies". Sen McCain said the strikes were about both sending a message and the beginning of a campaign that could lead to the partition of Syria. Fifty-nine Tomahawk missiles were fired from two warships - the USS Porter and USS Ross - in the Mediterranean Sea, targeting the government-controlled Shayrat airfield near the city of Homs. Mr Trump said the strikes targeted the airbase from which the chemical attack on a rebel-held town in the north of Syria was launched on Tuesday. The missiles struck their targets, which also included Syrian aircraft and fuel stations, at 4.40am local time on Friday. Syrian state TV described the US missile attack as "American aggression", and the state news agency said at least nine civilians, including four children, were killed. Russia, however, said four Syrian soldiers were killed, two were missing and six wounded. The US action comes days after at least 80 people, many of them children, were killed in a poison gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, in Idlib province, that has been blamed on the Assad regime. Shortly after the US campaign, airstrikes hit Khan Sheikhoun again, according to a witness and a war monitoring group. Downing Street said the UK Government "fully supports" the military action, calling it "an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack" which "is intended to deter further attacks". Mr Trump had said during the campaign that he would not be drawn into Syria's conflict. But the chemical attack changed his view on the situation, he said, as haunting images of harmed children shocked the world. He called the attack "one of the truly egregious crimes" that "shouldn't have happened and it shouldn't be allowed to happen". Experts against haste in signing defense deal with Delhi Special Correspondent : Bangladesh and India, are going to sign an umbrella agreement to increase defense cooperation during Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's four-day visit to India, which begun on Friday. Many security experts, however, are very much skeptical about the proposed defense deal saying that Bangladesh would not reap benefit from it; rather it could even go against the interest of the country. Experts said India is very much anxious over the 'pearl string theory' of China and for that reason New Delhi wants 'total support' from its old friend Bangladesh. The defense cooperation deal is nothing but getting full-fledged cooperation from the closest neighbour Bangladesh. "I do welcome the proposal. I also think that it is positive. But I don't think, there is any reason for such a hurry," former Foreign Secretary Shamsher Mobin Chowdhury said. On the other hand, eminent security expert Major General [retd] Muniruzzaman said: "I also welcome the deal. But I like to warn that, Bangladesh can become a scapegoat following the arms race between the two super powers [India and China]." At present, China is stepping forward with its 'pearl string theory' to get control of the Indian Ocean region along with the Bay of Bengal. If the theory is implemented, the Chinese military and commercial facilities along its sea lines of communication, which extend from the Chinese mainland to Port Sudan, will be taken under a single command. Apart from covering the entire Bay of Bengal, the sea lines run through several major maritime choke points such as the Strait of Mandeb, the Strait of Malacca, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Lombok Strait as well as other strategic maritime centers in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the Maldives and Somalia. China wants to hook all the countries and other islands in this region [pearls] in one string. Rejecting the Indian initiatives, another former diplomat Serajul Islam told the media yesterday: "Bangladesh does not need a defense pact with India, or for that matter with any other country, because it does not face any threat of external aggression from any of its neighbours." Expressing caution, he further said: "With China, a sworn enemy of India, Bangladesh has been in defense-related cooperation for decades. If Bangladesh signs such a defense pact [with India], it would be viewed by Beijing as a deal directed against it." Direct US attack on Syria Trump's first major foreign policy change: Cruise attack on airbase an act of aggression, denounces Russia Reuters, Palm Beach, Fla./Moscow/Beirut The United States fired cruise missiles on Friday at a Syrian airbase from which President Donald Trump said a deadly chemical weapons attack had been launched, the first direct U.S. assault on the government of Bashar al-Assad in six years of civil war. In the biggest foreign policy decision of his presidency so far, Trump ordered the step his predecessor Barack Obama never took: directly targeting Assad's military as punishment for the chemical weapons attack which killed at least 70 people. That catapulted the United States into a confrontation with Russia, which has military advisers on the ground assisting its close ally Assad. "Years of previous attempts at changing Assad's behavior have all failed and failed very dramatically," Trump said as he announced the attack from his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, where he was meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping. "Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack," he said of Tuesday's chemical weapons strike, which Western countries blame on Assad's forces. "No child of God should ever suffer such horror." The swift action is likely to be interpreted not only as a signal to Russia, but also to other countries such as North Korea, China and Iran where Trump has faced foreign policy tests early in his presidency. The Syrian army said the U.S. attack killed six people at its air base near the city of Homs. It called the attack "blatant aggression" and said it made the United States a "partner" of "terrorist groups" including Islamic State. Homs Governor Talal Barazi told Reuters the death toll was seven. A spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin said the strike had seriously damaged ties between Washington and Moscow. Putin regarded the U.S. action as "aggression against a sovereign nation" on a "made-up pretext", spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. Russian television showed craters and rubble at the site of the airbase and said nine aircraft had been destroyed. U.S. officials said they had taken pains to ensure Russian troops were not killed, warning Russian forces in advance and avoiding striking parts of the base where Russians were present. Western allies of the United States spoke out in support of the decision to launch the strikes. Several countries said they were notified in advance, but none had been asked to take part. Iran, Assad's other main ally, denounced it. U.S. officials described the attack as a one-off that would not lead to wider escalation, and Syrian officials and their allies also said they did not expect the attack to lead to an expansion of the conflict. "No doubt this will leave great tension on the political level, but I do not expect a military escalation. Currently I do not believe that we are going toward a big war in the region," a senior, non-Syrian official in the alliance fighting in support of Assad who declined to be identified told Reuters. For years, Washington has backed rebel groups fighting against Assad in a complex multi-sided civil war under way since 2011 that has killed more than 400,000 people. The war has driven half of Syrians from their homes, creating the world's worst refugee crisis. The United States has been conducting air strikes against Islamic State militants who control territory in eastern and northern Syria, and a small number of U.S. troops are on the ground assisting anti-Islamic State militias. But until now, Washington has avoided direct confrontation with Assad. Russia, meanwhile, joined the war on Assad's behalf in 2015, action that decisively turned the momentum of the conflict in the Syrian government's favor. Trump's decision to strike Syrian government forces is a particularly notable shift for a leader who in the past had repeatedly said he wanted better relations with Moscow, including to cooperate with Russia to fight Islamic State. However, Trump had also criticized Obama for setting a "red line" threatening force against Assad if he used chemical weapons, only to pull back from ordering air strikes in 2013 when Assad agreed to give up his chemical arsenal. Russian media long portrayed Trump as a figure who would promote closer relations with Moscow. At home, Trump's opponents have accused him of being too supportive of Putin. On Friday, a warplane hit the town of Khan Sheikhoun where Tuesday's chemical attack took place. An activist working at an air raid warning service in opposition areas told Reuters it caused only material damage. Tuesday's attack was the first time since 2013 that Syria has been accused of using sarin, a banned nerve agent it was meant to give up under the Russian-brokered, U.N.-enforced deal that persuaded Obama to call off air strikes four years ago. The Syrian government and Moscow have denied that Syrian forces were behind the attack, but Western countries have dismissed their explanation - that chemicals leaked from a rebel weapons depot after an air strike - as beyond credibility. Video and pictures of the aftermath of Tuesday's chemical attack were shown around the world this week, depicting limp bodies and children choking while rescue workers hosed them down to try to wash off the poison gas. In Russia, state television blamed rebels and did not show footage of victims. Tomahawk missiles were fired from the USS Porter and USS Ross around 0040 GMT, striking multiple targets - including the airstrip, aircraft and fuel stations - on the Shayrat Air Base, which the Pentagon says was used to store chemical weapons. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the strike did not mean the wider U.S. policy on Syria had changed. iStock/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) -- FBI and Homeland Security officials are consulting with national security leadership to determine how Thursday's U.S. airstrike in Syria could affect Americans domestically. The precise response is still unclear, according to counterterrorism sources, but officials have a sense of what the retaliation concerns for such a strike have been in the very recent past. Counterterrorism sources tell ABC News there are specific threats to consider, but that plans have been made to deal with those potential threats. First, the Syrian government might have operatives and sympathizers in the U.S. In 2013, when the Obama administration was considering a military strike following a chemical attack in Syria, the FBI stepped up domestic surveillance and conducted a series of interviews with Syrian nationals to deter any potential acts of violence. Supporters of Iran -- including Hezbollah -- might have operatives inside the U.S., as well. Aside from physical attacks, there is also worry about the potential of cyberattacks from Iran and Syria. Additionally, home-grown radicals could respond to an attack on the Muslim country, which was a major concern after the U.S. bombed ISIS in Syria in 2014. Then, Homeland Security officials issued bulletins to local police to be on the alert for such activity. Expanded security -- especially in major cities like New York and possibly transportation hubs like airports -- should be expected in the aftermath of the strikes as a result. Copyright 2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. A plan to provide high-speed internet access to Louisiana's public school districts at no cost to them has died because local educators showed too little interest. Louisiana's Board of Regents offered to make the upgrade happen for free for the school districts but only 11 of the state's 69 districts signed up by last week's deadline. The Advocate reports that Commissioner of Higher Education Joseph Rallo said that level of interest is "far below the critical mass needed to proceed with the initiative." So, the proposal has been scrapped. Asked why local educators passed on a seemingly no-strings-attached offer, Rallo said: "I cannot answer the question." State education leaders say they're stunned that local school districts passed on the offer. "It looked like a slam-dunk to me," said Richard Lipsey, chairman of the Board of Regents. The idea behind the plan was to have the public schools piggyback off a high-speed network used by colleges and universities, called the Louisiana Optical Network Initiative. It would have allowed high-speed internet capabilities to rural school districts that have limited access. Regents officials said the offer involved leveraging the state's 10 percent match to obtain 90 percent in federal funding for an estimated $85 million in construction expenses. Hollis Milton, president of the Louisiana Association of School Superintendents, said his West Feliciana Parish School District was one of the 11 that signed up, but he cited "the timeline and the amount of questions" as reasons the initiative didn't gain statewide traction. Scott Richard, executive director of the Louisiana School Boards Association, said part of the problem stemmed from poor communications and a short deadline set by Regents. "As with any proposal of this magnitude, lack of detailed info and the level of uncertainty at the federal level regarding funding streams that local districts receive directly likely factored into apprehension," Richard said in an emailed statement. Rallo said he met with Milton and members of the superintendents' organization in Alexandria in January and New Orleans in February to spell out details. State Superintendent of Education John White said what local school districts were offered "was on a par with the system that colleges have today." "This was going to be world-class cable that would allow speed in schools previously unheard of so that kids could process content at a rate faster than anything that most schools have ever imagined," White said. Lipsey said the death of the plan is especially puzzling since some school districts, especially in northeast Louisiana, lack any kind of internet access. "I just don't understand it," he said. "There was no hidden agenda." The best bang for your buck! This option enables you to purchase online 24/7 access and receive the Sunday, Tuesday & Thursday print edition at no additional cost * Print edition only available in our carrier delivery area. Allow up to 72 hours for delivery of your print edition to begin. Print edition not available for Day Pass option. The Little Grassy Literary Festival is again bringing poets and writers to the Southern Illinois University Carbondale campus for three days of readings, discussions and book signings. Writers from around the country will read excerpts from their work and discuss their creative processes, challenges in writing, and how to become a professional in the field. This year's festival features: Carl Phillips, the author of eight books of poetry, including "Speak Low," which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and "Double Shadow," which was also a finalist for the National Book Award and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Brian Barker, an award-winning poet whose book "The Black Ocean" was published by SIU Press in 2011. He is a poetry editor of "Copper Nickel" at University of Colorado Denver. Aja Monet is a Cuban-Jamaican poet, performer, singer, songwriter, educator and human rights advocate who Harry Belafonte called "the true definition of an artist." David Winter is the award-winning author of poetry collection "Safe House." Bonnie Jo Campbell is the author of three short story collections and two novels, and has been a finalist for the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award. Abby Geni is a short-story writer who teaches in Chicago. All festival events will take place in Guyon Auditorium in SIU Carbondale's Morris Library. At 6 p.m. Wednesday, April 12, Campbell and Winter will read. Geni takes the stage at 11 a.m. Thursday, April 13, followed by Allison Joseph and Charif Shanahan at 2 p.m., a book signing at 3 p.m., and Monet and Phillips at 4 p.m. Barker appears at 10 a.m. Friday, April 14, and the festival ends with a discussion panel at 11:30 a.m. According to a news release, around 11:22 a.m. Thursday, deputies responded to a call of a man acting irrationally and making threats after barging into 3ABN Television Studio-Church offices. They arrested Phillip Menckowski, 51, and charged him with two counts of misdemeanor battery, one count of aggravated battery (a class three felony) and for resisting a peace officer. AVA The U.S. Department of Agricultures Forest Service has a plan to restore a vast swath of woodland near Kinkaid Lake devastated by a violent tornado earlier this year. On Feb. 28, an EF-4 twister tore a 50-mile path from Perryville, Missouri, to Christopher. Along its trail of destruction, it clipped about 275 acres of the Shawnee National Forest. At the northeast corner of that devastation, on a bluff overlooking Little Kinkaid Creek, scores of hundred-year-old trees are snapped like toothpicks. The canopy once formed by mature oaks and hickories is completely gone. Some of the old giants were totally uprooted their soil-packed root wads lie exposed to the elements. Sedimentation in Kinkaid Lake, which supplies 2.1 million gallons of drinking water per day to Carbondale and the surrounding areas, has been a concern for years. Its vital that we protect it from the sedimentation, because if it continues to fill up, we wont have the water anymore, said Scott Wilmouth, manager at Kinkaid-Reeds Creek Conservancy District. And the damage caused by the Feb. 28 tornado only increases the risk of siltation and water quality issues, said Forest Service silviculturist Justin Dodson. When a torrential downpour hits the exposed root wads of tipped-over trees, all that soil will wash into the streams that feed into the lake. Whats more, the fallen trees arent able to absorb some of the impact of falling rain. So you have a large forested area, and when you have trees, trees intercept rainwater, slowing its impact from hitting the soil. It slows the energy of the rain and allows it to soak into the soil and replenish groundwater, Dodson said. When there are no trees, theres nothing to intercept it, so rain can hit directly on the soil, starting its movement downhill. That process creates gullies and erodes stream banks, leading to further sedimentation and reducing water quality. Thousands of downed trees in the Shawnee could lead to other problems. As the wood cures and dries out, it will increase the risk of wildfire. Blowdown areas also have a tendency to turn into breeding grounds for disease and insects that could harm the surrounding healthy forest. The Forest Service plans to embark on a commercial salvage logging operation to remove the fallen trees. It will use the funds generated from the harvest to restore the forest by planting more trees and improving growing conditions for oak and hickory species. The district ranger of the Hidden Springs/Mississippi Bluffs Ranger District will decide whether to move forward with the proposal. If its approved, harvest operations could start in June, Dodson said. Its fairly common across the nation when (theres) a disaster, whether it be a hurricane, tornado, whatever, to move fairly rapidly to move into trying to salvage (trees), to utilize them, because otherwise they just sit there and rot when they could go to the economy and go to goods and services, Dodson said. Once the reforestation project is underway, it could take 15 to 25 years to get the canopy back to what it was. It took them 100 years to get to the size they are now, and then overnight, Mother Nature takes them out, Dodson said. BENTON Even after protectors intervene, children in Illinois too often end up being abused again, and in some cases they wind up dead. But efforts are afoot to attempt to reverse this troubling trend. Franklin County has been chosen as one of four counties in Illinois to pilot a more formalized team-based approach to child abuse cases. Franklin County States Attorney Evan Owens said the goal of the program scheduled to begin July 1 is to build upon the collaboration that already exists between partner agencies in the county and to identify areas where the response network can be strengthened. Franklin County joins Cook, Lake and McLean counties in piloting the formalized approach, he said. The locations were chosen for their diversity, and Franklin County is intended to represent the child abuse response models that exist throughout rural parts of downstate Illinois. The pilot project stems from a February 2016 report titled The Urgent Need in Illinois for Unit-Based Multidisciplinary Teams to Investigate Child Abuse. That report came on the heels of a Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ Chicago Public Radio investigative series, which began in 2013, examining more than a decade of data from the Department of Children and Family Services concerning child deaths. The media reports revealed that child abuse deaths were on the rise, as were cases where children died of child abuse even after the child-welfare system intervened to investigate complaints made on their behalf, and/or to monitor their care. In response, Sen. Julie Morrison, D-Deerfield, the chairwoman of the Senate Human Services Committee, called upon the Illinois Childrens Justice Task Force, of which Evans is a member, to come up with a comprehensive plan to address the disturbing findings highlighted in the Chicago Sun-Times/WBEZ reports. Owens, who has served on the task force since 2008, said the agencies that make up the local response network, including his office, are always looking to improve and do a better job. He has served as the states attorney in Franklin County since 2010, and prior to that, he served as the states attorney in Pope County, and as an assistant states attorney in White and Franklin counties, all rural areas. Owens said that while Southern Illinois agencies are highly attuned to the child abuse problem throughout the region and working together to combat it, the people on the front line also know they cannot afford to sit back and assume they have it all figured out. Fighting child abuse and neglect is an ongoing, evolving and complicated process, he said. Owens said the committee was tasked with how do we keep going forward to improve the response system, especially where areas of weakness are identified. The multidisciplinary teams the report identifies as an immediate need throughout the state are defined as a formalized collaboration of the professionals in a particular area that could be called to intervene in child abuse cases. Specifically, the report calls for strengthening the response to these three targeted types of allegations: physical harm/injury of a child younger than the age of 3; neglect involving medical concerns for children younger than the age of 18; and sexual abuse and exploitation for children younger than the age of 18. It is well known within the professional community intervening with child abuse that a collaborative response between child protection services, law enforcement, child maltreatment medical experts, courts and childrens advocacy centers is necessary to protect children from further harm, the report states. Unfortunately, formalized collaboration is not a standardized response in all areas of the state, resulting in inefficient and sometimes incorrect decisions. The report further states that although there are multiple examples of multidisciplinary teams operating across the state, they are not all created equally some operate with less efficiency and access to expertise than others. It makes a critical note of the fact that, to date, there is no statewide formalized system of accountability. Owens said he is excited about the overall potential for the Franklin County pilot project. The partners include the Franklin-Williamson Child Advocacy Center, law enforcement, the states attorneys office, DCFS and others, he said. Owens said he is especially excited about the medical piece that is coming together through this pilot project, which represents a new partnership with the Childrens Medical and Mental Health Resource Network, the Southern Illinois University School of Medicines Telehealth Department, and Franklin Hospital in Benton the additional partners joining the Franklin County multidisciplinary child abuse investigative team. Through telemedicine, were confident that every child that needs to be examined through telemedicine will have a pediatric specialist an abuse and neglect specialist review their case, Owens said. But as the report notes, medically-directed child abuse programs are far and few between in Illinois. In Southern Illinois, there is one doctor who is board certified in child abuse pediatrics. That is Dr. Kathy Swafford, the medical director of the Childrens Medical and Mental Health Resource Network, housed under the SIU School of Medicines Department of Pediatrics. Because of her rare focus, Swafford keeps a busy schedule at her clinic in Anna. She said that through discussions about how to structure the collaboration in Franklin County, the idea was hatched to use telemedicine technology to allow her to quickly lend expertise when medical professionals at Franklin Hospitals emergency room suspect a child patient has been abused. Swafford said that through a telehealth cart equipped with imaging technology and other medical tools, she can guide medical professionals on the ground on what images to take to preserve evidence, and what further exams to conduct if abuse or neglect is suspected. Preserving evidence, and documenting signs of abuse correctly, is critical to holding offenders accountable and making sure children have the treatment they need, Swafford and Owens said. Swafford said most medical doctors are comfortable and skilled at diagnosing likely physical abuse in a child age 3 and older. But diagnosing abuse in infants, and identified child sex abuse victims, is often trickier, requires a higher level of expertise and training, and is something not many general practitioners or emergency room doctors are comfortable with, she said. But its not only the ability to quickly identify abuse that is important. Swafford also noted that her ability to respond to cases quickly could result in an unsounding of the suspected child abuse alarm. It can be highly distressful for a family with an injured child to have to face questions about child abuse. Swafford said that there are times when she also is able to rule out child abuse as a cause of what has brought the child in for treatment. Swafford said she is enthusiastic for the project to begin in Franklin County. She said it should lead to preventing or at least lessening false accusations, improve investigations and prosecutions of offenders, and aid child welfare workers in responding more effectively in cases where child abuse or neglect is suspected, and a child needs to be removed from a home, or other monitoring and education efforts need to be established within the home to protect the child. SESSER The budget President Donald Trump released last month put several organizations on notice. In the first part of his preliminary 2018 budget, Trump proposed the elimination of federal funding for 19 independent federal agencies, including the Delta Regional Authority, a federal-state partnership with a major footprint in Southern Illinois. In the Major Agency Budget Highlights chapter, the report makes the announcement that the White House plans to make good on the promise of infrastructure spending Trump made throughout his campaign. For instance, the president has emphasized that one of his top priorities is modernizing the outdated infrastructure that the American public depends upon, the report said. However, just paragraphs down, it lists cutting all funding for both the Appalachian Regional Commission and the Delta Regional Authority, both doing heavy lifting in building infrastructure in their regions. The report indicates the cuts listed were made after consulting experts about how to make policy changes to maximize taxpayer dollars. The budgets language suggests the elimination of such programs are to take the role of the federal government back to what the administration believes it should be less involved with state issues. However, in Illinois, where state funds are scarce, federal dollars can make a difference. In Illinois, the Delta Regional Authority serves the counties of Alexander, Franklin, Gallatin, Hamilton, Hardin, Jackson, Johnson, Massac, Perry, Pope, Pulaski, Randolph, Saline, Union, White and Williamson and others throughout Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee. According to its website, the DRA, founded in 2000, focuses on bolstering job creation and retention, specifically through new business incubators and workforce training programs as well as encouraging infrastructure and industrial development. Jason Ashmore, Sesser mayor and Illinois co-chair for the Delta Leadership Network Advisory Committee, said he has personally seen the difference the DRA has made in the area. He said he believes if it were to disappear, the region would be worse because of it. We just dont generate enough money at the local level to pay for all these projects, Ashmore said. Ashmore said without federal dollars, the next place to turn to would be the state, and with the current budget woes in Springfield, that could be a problem. Until the state gets their house in order, federal government is the only place for us to look toward, he said. Ashmore said he understands the need to trim waste from taxpayer-funded programs, but he doesnt see the DRA as a wasteful program. Theres a lot of waste that needs to be taken care of. Thats in every level of government, Ashmore said. This agency in particular is not a waste of taxpayer money. Ashmore pointed out that the DRA not only puts up its own money, but also helps leverage private dollars in order to help as many people as possible. Their return on investment is great, he said. According to its fiscal year 2016 review, for projects proposed in the state of Illinois, the DRA's investment leverage ratio was 3.03 to 1; in addition to federal DRA monies spent on projects, funds are also leveraged from other public and private entities. In its FY 2017 budget justification, the DRA asked for $15.9 million. It notes that in FY 16, it asked for $14.9 million and was awarded $25 million. In a March 16 statement in response to the budget proposal, DRA Federal Co-chairman Chris Masingill said the organization's funding partnerships add value to the budgets passed each year by Congress. "You cannot advocate for infrastructure development and economic security in rural America without also supporting the mechanisms, such as DRA, that make those projects a reality," Masingill said. In December 2016, the DRA announced it would spend $4 million in Illinois. It listed seven Southern Illinois counties and towns that would receive funding for infrastructure and job development projects. In Harrisburg, the DRA would purchase diesel engines to be used in classrooms at Southeastern Illinois College, a total investment $167,303, with $47,303 coming from DRA funds. In Carbondale, the DRA planned to invest a total of $199,249 $159,312 from DRA funds in the Southern Illinois Research Park to help spur entrepreneurship in the area. In Evansville, DRA funds were set aside to repair Broad Street and replace waterlines, an all-in investment of $206,060 with $180,000 coming from DRA funds. Southern Illinois elected officials said not to worry, at least not yet. U.S. Rep. John Shimkus said in an emailed statement to The Southern that the budget is more of a representation of an administrations agenda and should not be taken as gospel. The presidents budget proposal is a statement of his administrations priorities and deserves careful consideration by Congress, Shimkus said. While much media attention is also given to this annual budget exercise, rarely does that coverage note that Congress, not the president, is responsible for authorizing and appropriating all federal spending. U.S. Representative Mike Bost echoed this sentiment in an email. Congress has the constitutional responsibility to set specific spending levels, Bost said. He said he has been a big supporter of the DRA and said he wont give up on it. I will continue working in Congress to support the DRA and its mission, Bost said. CARBONDALE On a technicality, one board member stopped the Southern Illinois University Board of Trustees on Thursday from taking up a proposal to allow the Carbondale campus to borrow money from the Edwardsville campus. System President Randy Dunn said that means the board likely will have to reconvene for a special meeting in May to try again. Around that time, the board also is expected to move forward with hiring a chancellor for the Carbondale campus, so both matters may be able to be addressed at once, Dunn said. The proposal that came before the board would have allowed Carbondale to tap Edwardsvilles unrestricted reserves on paper only, without an actual transfer of cash to keep it from dipping into the red, Dunn said. Carbondale has already burned through its own unrestricted reserves and what it can responsibly utilize of those associated with the SIU School of Medicine, and it cannot operate in deficit spending. Without the borrowing agreement, Carbondale could find itself in that position within six weeks, give or take, depending on cash flow, which is hard to predict, Dunn said. Based on the statements of board members during the open portion of an executive session meeting the day prior, it appeared the proposal likely would have passed if it was called for a vote, though not unanimously. But because the item was added to the agenda late, it required a unanimous vote of the board to bring it up for discussion and a vote. Trustee Shirley Portwood, a professor emeritus at SIU Edwardsville, where she taught for 30 years, voted no after several representatives from the SIU Edwardsville campus spoke against the measure during the public comments section of the meeting. The most stinging rebuke of the deal came from Kim Archer, an associate professor in the Music Department at SIU Edwardsville, and the president of the campus newly formed Faculty Association union. Archer said it seems to be a raw deal for the Edwardsville campus, where she said tough financial sacrifices have been made in order to weather the budget impasse in Springfield and to avoid dipping into reserves. She said it was troubling to learn that the payoff for that sacrifice would be bailing out the Carbondale campus, which she accused of failing to make cuts and adjustments to the degree it should have in the face of declining enrollment and a shifting political climate. The medical school will tell you that its ethically questionable to give an addict a new kidney without first requiring some treatment, she said. The SIU Edwardsville faculty are asking you to recognize that Carbondale seems to be an addict to its own traditions, to its own ways, to its own reputation." Those things are changing, and so must SIUC," she continued. "So before we give up a kidney at SIUE and trust me, it will feel like that at SIU Edwardsville we must pledge to our own educational communities, to our students, to their families, to the people who live in the Metro East area, that this is a safe investment, and that it is minimal risk and that were not trading away what we worked so hard for to bail out another school that didnt work that hard. After the meeting, Archer said that she appreciated Portwoods vote that at least buys some time to further study the ramifications of the proposal. Archer said the Faculty Association wants to be supportive of its colleagues in Carbondale, but cannot endorse a borrowing proposal that has no defined limits or an outlined repayment structure. SIU Interim Chancellor Brad Colwell said that he wanted to emphasize that the Carbondale campus has made painful cuts including $21 million recently, and that another $30 million in cuts must be identified for implementation by July 1. Also speaking after the meeting, Colwell said the Carbondale campus took it on the chin a couple of times during public comments, but he said its not true that Carbondale hasnt shared in the painful cuts as was implied. Many of the structural changes that need to take place on campus, such as rightsizing program offerings to reflect the smaller campus population, are not items that can be implemented overnight because of obligations to currently enrolled students, faulty contracts and other issues, Colwell said. But difficult decisions have been made, and will continue to be made into the foreseeable future, Colwell said. Portwood did not provide any explanation for her vote to sideline discussion on the borrowing proposal during the meeting; she declined comment to the media afterward. Trustee Joel Sambursky said he was disappointed by the action that prevented a discussion and vote. He said that while nobody enjoys having to make cuts, the Carbondale campus does recognize that it must make structural reforms to position itself for long-term financial sustainability. Still, he said that the board must act in the best interest of the entire system, and he believes this plan reflects that duty. We have a fiduciary responsibility as trustees to do whats best for the system, so I think it was a mistake the discussion wasnt had at the board level, and that the item wasnt moved forward, he said. SIU Edwardsville Chancellor Randy Pembrook said that there are a variety of opinions on campus about the proposal, some stronger than others. As well, Dunn noted that he held a town hall meeting on the Edwardsville campus last week. He said that while there are many people uncomfortable with the proposal, he felt as though there was some softening of opposition after he was able to put into perspective the minimal risk the campus faces, and the structural changes underway in Carbondale. Dunn said the proposal does not define an amount to be borrowed because it's difficult to say how long the budget stalemate may last, and he does not think it makes sense to have to make this request more than once. But he guaranteed that borrowing would stop well before Edwardsville's reserves were drawn down to a point that made the campus vulnerable, as the same cautionary borrowing policy has been implemented with regards to the School of Medicine. Pembrook said some of the frustration on the Edwardsville campus has been about whether the Carbondale campus has had to endure cuts to the same degree as the Edwardsville campus. Attempts to draw comparisons about how much pain one side has shouldered versus the other is natural in difficult times, he said. Its kind of that comparative thing thats going on and everybody has a different perspective, he said. Pembrook said there are also long-time campus employees in Edwardsville who are more open to the plan, as they remember times not that long ago when Carbondale loaned money to Edwardsville to build dorms and to implement a new operating system. SIU Carbondale Faculty Association President David Johnson said he sympathizes with the anger expressed by his colleagues in Edwardsville. I am morally certain that if the shoe were on the other foot, and SIUC was called upon to support SIUE, there would be angry voices raised in Carbondale, he told the board. But Johnson went on to say that when the budget crisis began in Springfield, Dunn, who was also serving as interim chancellor of the Carbondale campus, was forced to choose between painful cuts in Carbondale and betting that the state would eventually come to its senses and provide public universities with some decent amount of funding. He chose to bet, Johnson said, adding that he doesnt blame Dunn for making that decision, as no one could have predicted then that Illinois would today be in its 21st month without a state budget. Still, Johnson said that because the bet was made by Dunn, it is now his responsibility to be working creatively to find a way to help SIUC pay off the money the campus owes thanks to a bet made on our behalf, but without any choice on our part, by the SIU System. Trustee J. Phil Gilbert said on Wednesday that approving the borrowing deal will not be pleasant. Its going to be a bitter pill for me to swallow to support borrowing money from Edwardsville. I think its just kicking the can down the road, Gilbert said. But while Gilbert said he was going to have to take a Tums in order to stomach the vote, he also said, echoing a sentiment shared by some of his fellow board members, that he does not see another way around it. This editorial appeared in Thursday's Washington Post: There is reason for concern that President Donald Trump, who will begin a two-day summit Thursday with Chinese President Xi Jinping, is not prepared to inaugurate what will probably be the most important foreign relationship of his presidency. Xi will arrive with a polished list of Chinese demands; Trump, who has yet to staff most of the senior Asia positions in his administration or conduct a review of China policy, appears to be improvising. The danger is that he, like Secretary of State Rex Tillerson during his recent visit to Beijing, could be drawn into China's conception of a "new form of great power relations" before he has had the chance to formulate one of his own. The confusion about administration policy is partly the result of a positive development: Trump has retreated from some of the counterproductive China-bashing he promoted during the presidential campaign and immediately afterward. He did not designate the Xi regime as a currency manipulator on "day one" of his presidency; he told the Financial Times this week that he would postpone any talk of punitive tariffs on Chinese goods. He assured Xi during their first substantial phone call that he supported the one-China policy, reversing a hint that he might not. These necessary adjustments have been accompanied by less explicable retreats. Since Trump took office, U.S. naval forces reportedly have not received administration permission to challenge Chinese claims in the South China Sea through "freedom of navigation" exercises. And Trump handed Beijing a major geopolitical coup by withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a step that left Xi with the opportunity to set the economic rules for the region. If the administration has focused on an issue for the summit, it would appear to be North Korea, which a White House briefer says is "a matter of urgent interest for the president." Trump appears to be betting that he can, unlike the three presidents before him, persuade the Chinese leadership to bring serious pressure to bear on the Pyongyang regime, which is racing to develop the capability to strike the United States with nuclear-armed intercontinental missiles. The president is right to push Xi on the North Korean threat; he should make clear that the United States will proceed with the deployment of the THAAD antimissile system in South Korea in spite of China's objections. But it is not certain that Trump can deliver on his threat that "if China is not going to solve North Korea, we will." Rather than tempt Xi to call his bluff, Trump should be offering assurances that change on the Korean Peninsula can be managed in a way that protects Beijing's legitimate interests. The stick Washington can credibly wield is not the threat of unilateral military action, but steps to punish Chinese banks and companies that fail to observe U.N. sanctions. Administration officials suggest the summit discussions will span a variety of issues; one of these should be human rights. Xi has presided over the most aggressive crackdown on dissent in China in decades, and he is in the midst of stifling Hong Kong's relative freedom. By raising these issues, Trump can not only side with those in China who believe in democratic values, he can also make clear to Xi that their "great power relations" will not be exclusively on Beijing's terms. "I can't wait for these people to get and open their food packs. They are going to be so happy!" said 11-year-old Marybeth Flake, one of the 76 volunteers from First Baptist Church of North and neighboring churches who participated recently in Operation Food Aid. More than 21,000 meals were packaged, boxed and are now awaiting shipment for children in Haiti, a country that can only provide enough food for 40 percent of its population. According to Chris Leeder, CEO of Food Aid International who attended, the effort will feed 58 children for an entire year. "We as an organization will package between 2 million and 5 million meals a year," Leeder said. The meals are a mix consisting of rice, solid soy protein, nine essential vitamins and dehydrated vegetables. Leeder said the meals can be consumed by people in any culture. "We work with schools providing them with meals, education and our curriculum. Children who are malnourished cannot concentrate and therefore only 4 percent graduate out of secondary schools," he said. Food Aid partners with Kids Against Hunger to fulfill its mission. Kids Against Hunger packaged 55 million meals last year, serving 80 countries. As a non-profit organization, Food Aid has provided meals to Haiti, Cuba, the Phillipines, India, Mexico and the United States. "We gain a city's favor by providing much needed food," Leeder says. "In return, they use our Christian curriculum in their orphanages." "Worldwide, 2.1 billion people have never heard the name Jesus. We don't have a banner of Christianity -- we have to be wise about how we do what we do," he said. Orangeburg physician Dr. Lucious Craig and his family participated in the relief effort. Craig's wife, Nedra, said, "When we read about this event in the paper, we saw this as an excellent cause in which to participate. We wanted to give back. We are the hands and feet of Christ." Cold cases of the Orangeburg Department of Public Safety dating back to 2009 are being solved thanks to the city's Automated Fingerprint Identification System. In November last year, ODPS received an update to the system that searches for matches through state and national databases. The efficiency of the system is outstanding, Lt. Carl Shultz said at Tuesdays Orangeburg City Council meeting. Its a blessing that we have it and are able to do this. A lot of agencies do not have this capability so these burglaries are going unsolved. Shultz said it was difficult to search thumbprints from crime scenes in the national database because there were a lot of hoops to jump through. The update came with a picture scanner, which is top quality, Shultz said. It allows us to scan in those prints that were not very good and pull the detail out of them, where before we could not, he added. Since 2000, ODPS has accumulated 775 latent print cards. I went through and pulled all those that I couldnt run before or that I didnt think was good enough to run and ran them," Shultz said. He said 347 cards so far have been re-examined, "and 67 on cold cases have been a hit. ODPS has been able to match fingerprints on burglaries at Mirmow Field, a stolen Department of Public Utilities trailer and an office burglary at Probation, Parole and Pardon Services. They have also been able to help on five major cases of the North Police Department, the Beaufort Police Department and the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources. In North, the fingerprint identification system helped identify the suspect who had broken into 16 cars. ODPS has also assisted the Orangeburg County Sheriffs Office and the Calhoun County Sheriffs Office in matching fingerprints on nine cases going back before 2015. We just want to thank the department for taking the time to show council and the public all of the time that you put into planning and working, City Administrator John Yow told Shultz. We need to tell the crooks that youre going to catch them, Councilman Charles Jernigan said. In other business: Candice Roberson, Downtown Orangeburg Revitalization Association director, delivered her first quarter report on DORAs progress. DORA has appointed six new members to its board of directors who will serve three-year terms and held a workshop to train them, she said. Roberson said 2017 membership revenue is up 25 percent compared to 2016. In the area of promotion and events, DORA held a St. Patricks Day festival on the downtown square, which Roberson said was attended by more than 1,000 people, she said. From surveys of 133 attendees, DORA determined it attracted visitors from Bamberg, Gaston and Denmark as well as some from Panama City, Florida, Roberson said. A total of 92 people signed up to be a part of DORAs email list to be notified about future events planned, she added. More recently, DORA held its fifth annual car show. Downtown restaurants served as food vendors for both events, Roberson said. I would like to thank you for what youre doing, Councilman Richard Stroman told her. That was one of the best car shows weve ever had in Orangeburg. Youre doing an excellent job." Roberson also noted that DORA has been pushing to get people into downtown businesses and in an effort to do so, it placed 14 "bunnies" downtown as part of the Bunny Hop Scavenger Hunt, which will run from April 3 to April 12. Bunnies have been hidden inside 14 participating businesses downtown including The Music Doctor, Edisto Creamery and Thelmas on Main. People who manage to locate 10 or more bunnies are entered to win prizes. To participate, cards can be picked up at Orangeburg City Hall or the Orangeburg County Chamber of Commerce. Go out and spread the word about this, Councilwoman L. Zimmerman Keitt said. People say theres nothing to do. Theres 50 million things to do in Orangeburg. They just do not go. Concerned citizen William Green made an appearance to speak about downtown building renovations. The character is not being maintained of when the building was built, Green said. Windows being put in, doors that are being put in -- it doesnt represent the character and the age of the building," he said. Council passed a resolution declaring April as Fair Housing Month. Council proclaimed "virtue" the character trait for April. Council went into closed executive session to discuss three economic development projects: Project Halo, Project Columbus and a matter related to the State Infrastructure Bank. Claflin University will host an international conference on environmentally sustainable entrepreneurship on April 11-13 in Ministers' Hall. The conference is a joint venture between Claflin and the University of Calcutta, one of India's oldest research universities. The theme of this year's conference is "Women Eco-Entrepreneurs Across the World." The conference is supported by a grant from the U.S.-India 21st Century Knowledge Initiative awarded to Claflin and the University of Calcutta, India. The sessions are free and open to the public. The purpose of the conference is promote research and public awareness about the environmentally friendly small and micro-business programs and opportunities for women entrepreneurs in the United States and internationally. Courtesy Management Inc. CEO Hema Patel will be the keynote speaker for the conference luncheon on April 12. Courtesy Management Inc. is a hospitality company that manages and develops hotels in South Carolina. Patel was named the 2013 South Carolina Hotelier of the Year by the South Carolina Restaurant and Lodging Association. Following a career first in biochemical research and later a 14-year teaching career, Patel began the pursuit of a lifelong passion for entrepreneurship with her husband. She soon established herself as one of the first leading female South Asian hoteliers in the United States. Tickets to the luncheon are $15 per person and must be reserved in advance by contacting Dr. Harpal Grewal at 803-479-8906 or hgrewal@claflin.edu. Grewal can also be contacted for more details on the conference. The gasoline tax is the best way to repair South Carolina roads, Bowman Sen. John Matthews told Orangeburg County Council. Matthews on Monday briefed the elected county leaders about the status of bills in the state Legislature, including the proposal to raise the gas tax. Everybody I talk to wants to fix these roads, but not everybody wants to pay for it, the lawmaker said. In fixing highway construction, youve got to have reliable and predictable revenue over a period of time so you can plan. The only way to do that in this state is to do it through a gas tax." Matthews said if the state tries to pay for road improvements through the budget, that really means that 100 percent of those taxes will come from the citizens that live in this state. If we do it by a gas tax, 30 percent of that will come from people who live outside, he said. Tourists passing through South Carolina will contribute to this fund as well as truck drivers, Matthews said. He noted that diesel fuel in South Carolina is roughly 16 cents cheaper a gallon than in North Carolina and Georgia. "You dont pay the tax where you buy it, you pay the tax where you burn it, Matthews said in reference to truck drivers using the roads. Were losing money, and then weve got to send money to other states because the tax on our diesel fuel is not competitive with our surrounding states, he said. Legislation that would incrementally raise the gas tax has passed the S.C. House, but a gas-tax proposal in the Senate failed to get enough votes to advance to the floor for consideration. And Gov. Henry McMaster is saying now that he would veto an increase in the tax. Matthews also told the council that his Port Enhancement Zone bill passed unanimously in the Senate, saying he expects it to be taken up in the House during the week of April 17. He requested that a letter of endorsement of the bill be submitted on behalf of the county and that a council member attend the hearing when a date is scheduled. The Port Enhancement Zone encompasses a 25-mile radius at the intersection of I-95 and I-26. It enhances any particular manufacturer or shipper or supplier who will locate in that Port Enhancement Zone if theyre shipping products through the Charleston Port, Matthews said. He noted that the state currently has incentives for businesses that invest $100 million or more. In the Port Enhancement Zone, this amount is reduced to $20 million, Matthews said. We took all the enhancements and just reduced it to a smaller bracket so that small communities, small investments will have a chance to get that, he said. Matthews said he expects the Jasper Port to be completed by 2025, which is projected to create roughly a million new jobs. I think it will have a significant economic impact and opportunities for growth, the senator said. The April 18 deadline for filing income-tax returns is less than two weeks away. This years deadline comes against the backdrop of Republicans in control of Congress and the White House promising tax reform. The call for tax changes is not new, but in few years has either political party been in position to forge the necessary votes to deliver, particularly on major restructuring of the system. As Congress weighs changes, leaders should know how Americans see things. Here are five findings from across surveys over the past five years from Pew Research Center: Americans have several complaints about the federal tax system, most notably the impression that some corporations and wealthy people dont pay their fair share. Almost two-thirds (64 percent) say they are bothered a lot by the feeling that some corporations arent paying whats fair in federal taxes, and 61 percent say the same about some wealthy people. While four-in-10 (40 percent) say they pay more than their fair share considering what they get from the federal government, 53 percent say they pay about the right amount. Just 4 percent say they pay less than their fair share. Not everybody dreads Tax Day. The most common reason that people gave for their enjoyment was the expectation of a refund. The IRS gets mixed reviews from the public, in contrast to the favorable ratings given to many public agencies. Just 45 percent of Americans have a favorable rating of the IRS, compared with 48 percent who rate it unfavorably. Only 6 percent of Americans think it is morally acceptable for people not to report all their income on their taxes. The vast majority of the public (71 percent) says this practice is morally wrong, while 19 percent think failure to report income isnt a moral issue. Its hard to predict the course of change in the way we finance government. Politicians want to be popular -- and thats difficult when dipping into a persons pocketbook. South Carolina is an example. Our people want repairs to bridges and highways. And even conservative Republicans in the House have decided that infrastructure is such a top priority as to approve of increasing the states gasoline tax. They contend the tax is the best way to get help in paying for the repairs via contributions from out-of-state motorists. Their argument isnt enough to sell a sizable block of state senators. And now the governor has weighed in opposing the gas tax. And after the experience that President Donald Trump had with health care legislation and the failure of Republicans to unite behind a plan, no one is betting on taxes being any easier a mountain to climb. It may prove to be impossible to find consensus in Columbia and Washington, meaning that in this April and probably others to come, a reasonable bet is that the certainty of death and taxes (as we know them) will remain. Left:Senior Prosecutor Adolphus Delpleche pointed to a single question for the court, i.e. whether the exhibits were found at the defendants abode and in their presence.Right:Defence attorney Grant Connell sought to highlight a number of inconsistencies in evidence presented by state witnesses. The defence is expected to call its own Firearms Expert in a major gun and ammunition trial at the Serious Offences Court. Attorney Grant Connell, representing Randy Shallow and his girlfriend Friekesha Douglas, both of Lowmans Leeward, informed the Court of their intention, after Chief Magistrate Rechanne Browne overruled his no case submission on Monday. Connell indicated that he needed time to make the arrangement, and the matter was adjourned to April 24, when the defence is expected to open its case. Connell has also made a request for entries from the station diary and exhibit book, in relation to the matter. Basis for charges Shallow and Douglas are charged jointly with eight counts of possession: a prohibited weapon, to wit, an SMG submachine gun, and having a component part of a prohibited weapon, to wit, a magazine of a AK47 rifle; and a .38 revolver, a glock pistol, 14 rounds of .40 ammunition,42 rounds of 9mm ammunition, one round of .38 ammunition, and one round of 7.62 ammunition, without licences issued under the Firearm Act. The prosecutions case is based on the discovery of the above items, on a window ledge of a bedroom of an apartment on the lower floor of a house at Lowmans Bay, when a party of police officers executed a search warrant on January 18 this year. According to the evidence, the couple was renting the apartment from Daniel Johnson, who lived on the upper floor of the 2-storey building, which also had a storeroom on the lower floor, adjacent to where the couple was staying. A case of inconsistencies When the prosecution rested its case on Monday, Connell submitted that his clients could not have been in possession of the items, since three police officers the arresting officer Constable Philbert Chambers, Corporal Kirt King and Constable Asursha Miller had said in their evidence, that the guns, ammunition and magazines were found on a ledge located on the outside of a bedroom window of the apartment, and that the burglar bars were fixed outside the window, which was in the storeroom, to which the landlord has access without having to pass through the defendants apartment. Connell argued that the officers gave different versions as to how the items were found, as to who were in the room when they were found, and whether the window was met open or not. What was disturbing, he argued, was that an electronic interview was donewith his clients on January 19, 2017, but an exhibit tag which the arresting officer told the Court he created after January 19, bears the signature of Acting Commissioner of Police Renold Hadaway, and was dated January 18, 2017. This, Connell said, was physically impossible. The lawyer also noted that two masks which were before the Court bore the initials R.H, though, the Acting COP was clear in his evidence, that he did not initial two ski masks. Connell further proffered that, if the evidence was to be accepted, then there was no glock pistol before the Court. He said Corporal King, a gazetted Firearms Expert, testified that glocks are made in Austria, while PC Chambers said the one before the Court was made in Italy. Connell contended that there was nothing on the gun to show that it was a glock, adding that an incorrect number was initially quoted as the serial number of the submachine gun. That number was subsequently amended at a previous calling of the matter. A travesty of justice Connell said that when the couple had made their first Court appearance on January 20, he showed the Court the front page of THE VINCENTIAN newspaper dated January 20, which highlighted a police news conference held on January 18, during which the firearms, ammunition, magazines and masks were displayed. He said the police, recognizing that they were wrong, then sought to hastily patch up their mistakes, thats why there were so many inconsistencies and questions. "This does not send a good signal for justice, this cannot be right. You do not compromise the integrity of exhibits, because you could compromise justice, he argued, and noted that seven of the nine exhibits were tainted. Connell described the situation as a travesty of justice. He lamented that what was before the Court was police confusion, not a case. "If this is allowed to happen, what else can police do in this country call it justice and get away? he questioned. No travesty of justice But Senior Prosecutor Adolphus Delpleche in his response, said the question the Court had to answer at this stage was whether the exhibits were found at the defendants home and in their presence. On the evidence of Chambers, King and Miller, they were, Delpleche posited. "All of them said they were found on a window ledge. The discrepancy is whether the ledge is between the burglar bar and the window, he continued. He admitted that King said that Chambers opened the window while Chambers said the window was met open, but described these as minor inconsistencies for a jury to decide. In this case (summary), the Magistrate is both Judge and Jury. The prosecutor also assessed the questions raised about the exhibits as being trivial. According to him, the important thing was that they were examined and marked by the Firearms Expert, along with PC Chambers who had taken them to him. Delpleche reminded the Court that Sergeant Julian Caine was the only witness to have testified as a Firearms Expert. Other witnesses were also qualified Firearms Experts, but did not give evidence in that capacity. "There is no travesty of Justice. It might be the other way around. A prima facie case is made out, and the defendants ought to be put on their defence, he concluded. Left:ONeal Johnson admitted his son had some problems with the law, but is saddened how certain persons rejoiced at his death.Center:The alleyway leading to Glasgows home is not used by vehicles.Right:Amin Glasgow, the latest gun- related victim. ONeal Johnson, the father of a Greiggs man who was gunned down within walking distance of his home last week Friday between 10 and 11 p.m, said that, despite the fact that his son served prison time on a number of occasions, he had begun to change his life since finding a partner. However, Amin Glasgows death was met with a sense of relief by many persons in the South Central Windward village. Amin Glasgow, 31, was making his way home in the company of his girlfriend last Friday night, when he was cornered and shot to death by an unknown assailant. His body was discovered in an alleyway leading to his home. He was the fifth and only son of six children for his father. In an interview with THE VINCENTIAN at his home in Greiggs, Johnson said that he was a distance away from his home when he learned that his son had been shot. When he arrived on the spot where his son had fallen, his son was already dead. "When me come and me see me cant do nothing, me just watch and see what them do him, said Johnson, who also took issue with the length of time that elapsed between notifying the police and the arrival of a party of officers. A sense of joy Johnson lamented that there was a sense of joy among people in the community, over his sons death. He admitted his son had a history of run-ins with the law, but was saddened, "..dat de whole ah Greiggs ah rejoice, and he is not the baddest boy in ya (in the village). If yo look at his skin when he was alive, it just as if he was in a war from the mount ah licks people give him and he never do back somebody anything. Johnson continued, "He never get arrested for any violent crime, because if it lef to me alone, I would ha tek action, but he go say no, leave them alone. Glasgow had his schooling at the Lowmans Windward Government School, and his father said his son was brought up as a "good boy, but as he grew older things began to change, and persons started accusing him of being a thief. This led, he said, to his son spending a number of years in jail. "People call his name sayin he tief and all them thing dey. All de tief he ah tief he never get ketch yet, but everything somebody missing dem ah say is he. He did plenty time in prison for what de say he do and way he na do, said Johnson. The father confirmed that his son had recently met his girlfriend, and it appeared that he was changing. "He start working with the SVG Cocoa Company, said the grieving father, adding that besides going to work, Glasgow spent a lot of time at home with "his fiancee. On the occasions when he did venture out of his yard, it was to walk his girlfriend to her home. Johnson told THE VINCENTIAN. "And dem say he ah thief. If he was tiefing and somebody ketch him and kill him, me na would ah feel like how me feel now, Johnson confessed. He also dispelled rumours that his son was killed in a drive-by shooting. "Na no drive-by. Watch wey arwe live; drive by what? People ah spread too much ah news. The man was almost home, he and his woman, explained Johnson. It must be noted that the area where Johnson lived and met his death, cannot accommodate vehicles. Persons in the community said that the assailant may have hidden, awaiting Glasgow. Some persons recall hearing three gun- shots, though reports are that Glasgow showed signs of having received two gunshot wounds. No autopsy report was available up to press time, to confirm this. Whoever the assailant was, he/she is said to have made a swift and safe escape from the scene. Glasgows relatives have since held a candle- light vigil at the spot where he lay dead. The deceased, the sixth homicide for the year, was the father of one boy. The police are continuing their investigations. Robert Montague, Jamaicas National Security Minister, gave the assurance that his government was taking the terrorist threat very seriously. (Credit: jis.gov.jm) For those who think the CARICOM region is immune from terrorist attack, the Jamaican government has a message for you. Jamaicas National Security Minister Robert Montague said last week that his country is on constant alert for terrorists. So much so, Jamaican immigration and security officers at the countrys ports of entry are using a watch list provided by the international criminal police organization (INTERPOL), as part of their daily routine. "Our immigration officers are on alert. We have the software and backup systems to check passengers before they land, and when they land were cued into Interpol, the Minister told the Jamaica Information Service (JIS) in a recent interview. Montague is reported to have given the assurance as he alluded to the recent suspected case of terrorism at the British Parliament in London, England, on March 22. The Security Minister also revealed that between last year and February this year, more than 412 travellers were denied entry into the island. "These are persons whose names are on the watch list. There is intelligence, which suggests that they were not coming for sun and sea alone, but for other things. Some may also have been in transit to go elsewhere, he said. The National Security Minister also emphasised the importance of protecting the countrys borders, which he says is being done by the Passport Immigration and Citizenship Agency and immigration officers, who are doing a "phenomenal job. Trinidadian on terrorist list Following on the heels of the news of Jamaicas stepped up security at its ports of entry, news broke that a Trinidadian national Shane Crawford has been categorised by the USA as a global terrorist. Crawford, also known as Abu Sad at-Trinidadi, Asadullah, Shane Asadullah Crawford and Asad , is believed to be one of close to 100 Trinidadian nationals/citizens who have joined ISIS, also known as the Islamic State (IS) group. Crawford made headlines across the region last year, when he admitted to killings in his homeland, and made an open appeal to fellow nationals to wage a jihad (Holy War) in the twin-island republic. Crawford is "believed to be a foreign terrorist fighter in Syria carrying out terrorist activity on behalf of ISIS, including acting as an English language propagandist for the group, the US State Department said. He has, therefore, been declared a real threat to the security and safety of US nationals both home and abroad. In the face of this announcement by the US government, the government of Trinidad and Tobago has since moved to freeze the assets of Crawford. (Source: jis.gov.jm and Caribbean 360) The Dr. Keith Mitchells New National Party (NNP) government in Grenada, has come in for commendation by Andrew Holness, Prime Minister of Jamaica. Delivering the feature address at last week Sundays convention of the NNP, Holness praised Grenadas fiscal discipline, as it implements a home-grown structural adjustment programme with the support of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Holness, said further, that reducing the debt to gross domestic product (GDP) ratio from 108 to 72 per cent in three years is a feat that has to be commended. "From what I have read, and what has been reported, the fiscal discipline of your government has been exemplary, he told Dr. Mitchell and the large gathering of NNP members and supporters. The Jamaica Prime Minister also highlighted Grenads economic performance saying, "When we see that you are getting five per cent average growth seven per cent on the high level and this year it is reported that you will get 4.2 per cent, your economy is doing well and you should be proud. The structural adjustment programme, which was backed by the IMFs Extended Credit Facility (ECC), has just ended, with the international lending agency complimenting the government on turning the economy around and recognizing growth of 3.9 per cent with a projection of 2.5 in 2017. The Jamaican leader said it is never easy for any country to go through a structural reform of its economy, but encouraged Grenada not to give up on those reforms. Prime Minister Dr Keith Mitchell agreed that the countrys current economic success did not come on a whim, calling the lowering of the debt to GDP ratio a miracle. "The growth that we have, did not come about just so. The payment of unpaid claims did not come about just so. It was the sacrifices of a lot of people; and the leadership of the team of the New National Party your cabinet that you gave us sisters and brothers. "And therefore, sisters and brothers, to move from 108 per cent Debt to GDP ratio to 72 per cent was miraculous, Mitchell told party supporters gathered at the St. Andrews Anglican Secondary School grounds. Other regional politicians who attended the convention included Dr. Godwin Friday, political leader of the main opposition New Democratic Party of St Vincent and the Grenadines, and the deputy political leader of the ruling Team Unity of St Kitts and Nevis Jonel Powel. (Source: CMC) Dianne Browne, OAS Administrative Technician, explained the process leading up to the Summit. The April 2018 Eighth Summit of the Americas scheduled for Peru might be one year away, but staff of the Organisation of American States are not leaving anything to chance. Information regarding that event was highlighted last week Wednesday afternoon at Frenches House, in capital city Kingstown. The gathering heard about plans from the secretariat based in Washington. The exercise was beamed simultaneously to audiences in Grenada, Dominica, and St. Lucia. OAS Administrative Technician Dianne Browne welcomed the Vincentian delegates, which included representatives from Civil Society Organisations and social activists. Browne projected on the process leading to the Summit, and assured that recommendations from the member states will be put into the negotiations. The Summit of the Americas culminates a three-year process which is highlighted by a meeting of the Heads of Government of the member territories. Joseph Burns Bonadie - orrepresenting the National Labour Congress; Anesia Baptiste - Thusian Institute for Religious Liberty, Lawyer Mandela Campbell, President of the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Teachers Union Oswald Robinson, were among delegates making presentations at the session. Mark Sardine was emotional about the state of affairs surrounding the Lewis Punnett Home and the persons housed there. Despite his frustration, Mark Sardine said he does not intend to give up on his drive to keep certain social issues on the national agenda. Sardine has been the team leader on a number of kayak ventures, all done to raise awareness of "social ills. His most recent task was kayaking a total of 24 miles back in January, to bring awareness to the situation, as it currently exists at the Lewis Punnett home in Glen. His original plan to journey to Mustique had to be scrapped due to adverse weather conditions, causing him and his team to change to a course that took them along the Leeward and then back to Brighton. Sardine said also that since that effort, he was successful in his effort to secure solar power panels, to allow for the residents of the Lewis Punnett home "to have access to a warm shower. But on Tuesday, an emotional Sardine visited the offices of THE VINCENTIAN to express his disgust in the seemingly slow manner in which the authorities were dealing with the issue of the refurbishment of the Home. Back in January, Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves announced that EC$1.1 million had been earmarked for the refurbishment of the existing facility. He went on to say that the Ministry of Health was considering two areas for the temporary relocation of the residents the facility at Orange Hill that was used to house the residents of the Mental Health Centre and the former nurses hostel at New Montrose. However, a frustrated Sardine said that he and his team were also not pleased with the present situation. "Its going nowhere I mean you out there, you did 24 miles in the hot sun, we did not beg anybody for anything, just for our people to get better living conditions. These are people who have already paid their dues to the country, they are not animals and today the filth that they are still living in, the conditions that they are still living in, as a Vincentian I cannot sit down, he said. He said that he was told that it was not uncommon practice for female residents to be administered baths in front of their male counterparts, and made a call for these peoples dignity to be restored. "I will not go away, my people have to get justice, he said. (DD) We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking Accept, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. By Azernews By Amina Nazarli Estonias Minister of Public Administration Mihhail Korb, who is on a working visit to Baku, holds meetings with the countrys leadership to discuss the bilateral relations. During the Baku visit, Korb, who is also the head of the Azerbaijani-Estonian Intergovernmental Commission, met with Prime Minister Artur Rasizade on April 6. Praising the political ties between Azerbaijan and Estonia, Rasizade stressed the necessity of expanding the economic relations. The Premier pointed out good potential in various areas, including technology, telecommunications, agriculture and trade. The PM highlighted the opportunities of the North-South Transport Corridor and Azerbaijan`s work under the project. The North-South Corridor will connect the railways of Azerbaijan and Iran, which in turn will provide a wider transport connection between India, Iran, Azerbaijan, Russia, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. Due to its location on the corridor and role as a transit country, Azerbaijan stands to gain substantially from the North-South project. Touching upon the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Rasizade stressed that the conflict must be resolved on the basis of Azerbaijan`s territorial integrity and inviolability of borders. In turn, Korb noted that during the visit he conducted very fruitful discussions with Azerbaijani counterparts. He said there are favorable opportunities for Azerbaijani and Estonian businessmen in both countries. A delegation headed by Korb also met with Azerbaijan`s Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov. The sides discussed cooperation between Azerbaijan and Estonia in various areas, and hailed the activity of the Intergovernmental Commission. The two ministers also stressed the importance of the next meeting of the Commission in terms of developing trade and economic relations between the two countries. They pointed out favorable opportunities for the cooperation in the fields of transport, information technologies, agriculture, tourism and medicine. The two also noted the significance of expanding trade turnover and exploring export opportunities between Azerbaijan and Estonia. President Ilham Aliyev also received a delegation led by the Minister, and hailed the importance of the Estonian delegation`s visit to Azerbaijan in expanding the bilateral cooperation between the two countries. Pointing out the activities of the Azerbaijani-Estonian Intergovernmental Commission, the head of state underlined the significance of another meeting of the Commission in terms of discussing the issues on how to further develop trade and economic relations between the two countries. Korb, for his part, pointed out the experience of cooperation between the two countries, saying this experience covers mostly the service sector. He said although trade with Azerbaijan is not so great, there are development trends in this field. The Estonian public administration minister praised the fact that compared to last year the bilateral trade has increased almost 2.5 times. By Azernews By Sara Israfilbayova Khasan market, one of the largest markets of Saint Petersburg, is ready to provide places to Azerbaijani producers desiring to do business in Russia. St. Petersburg Governor Georgy Poltavchenko held a meeting with Deputy Minister of Economy of Azerbaijan Sahib Mammadov this week to discuss the opportunities to increase imports of Azerbaijani agriculture products. He noted that imports from Azerbaijan increased by 14 percent to $8.1 million in 2016. Petersburg imports from Azerbaijan mainly vegetables, root crops, fruits, nuts and ferrous metals. At the same time, Poltavchenko marked with regret that the trade turnover between the Northern capital and Azerbaijan has recently fallen. Last year, trade turnover decreased by 24 percent compared to 2015 and amounted to $69.5 million. In turn, Mammadov stressed the necessary for strengthening and expanding cooperation in the pharmaceuticals given the fact that Petersburg is picking up steam in field. Poltavchenko assured that specialists from St. Petersburg can visit Azerbaijan to exchange experience with local doctors and carry out consultations for the population. Azerbaijan began deliveries of tinned goods to St. Petersburg, Russia, in mid-March 2016. Some of the goods from Azerbaijan have become a popular brand in Russia. For example, in Russia they say the most delicious tomatoes are coming from Azerbaijan. The real delivery of goods between Azerbaijan and Russia rose by more than 50 percent in the first half of 2015, despite a slight drop in turnover, reaching a historical height of $4 billion in late 2014. By Azernews By Rashid Shirinov The skies will soon be flocked with small planes as the Georgian airline Aviator will launch flights to Azerbaijan. Air taxi services will be set up aiming for a convenient mode of transportation for locals and tourists following the increase in the number of travels between Georgia and Azerbaijan. "The cost of the air taxi services en route Tbilisi-Baku-Tbilisi, provided by the airline, is $6,930 regardless of the number of passengers," a source in the company told Trend. Aviator is the first Georgian Airline by Adjara Group Hospitality offering Air Taxi services flying both, domestic and international routes. Based in Tbilisi International Airport, brand new King Air C90GTx will be offering flights to all airports in Georgia and Caucasus Region, including Baku, Trabzon, Istanbul and others. The flights will be performed with brand new Beechcraft King Air C90GTx. Equipped with 5 seat business class interior and latest technologies, aircraft provides comfort and safety during the flight. We get a relevant permission before each flight. Moreover, we have no restrictions. The cost of the permit is 100 euros," the company said. Speaking about the possibility of opening flights to other cities of Azerbaijan, the source said that the maximum flight range of the aircraft is 1,700 kilometers; therefore, the company can fly to any city in this range. Today, tourism in Azerbaijan is one of the most promising economic sectors. Compared to 2015, last year there was an 11.7 percent growth in the number of tourists, and the figure hit 2,242,783 people. A significant part of them 22.5 percent were the visitors from Georgia. As for the travels to Georgia, more than 1.5 million citizens of Azerbaijan visited the country in 2016. Thus, Azerbaijan led the top countries, representatives of which visited Georgia in past year. By Azertac Vice-President of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation Leyla Aliyeva visited special boarding schools No 12 and No 2 for physically disabled children in Baku on April 6. Leyla Aliyeva met with children and viewed conditions at the boarding schools. Children at the boarding school No 12 performed dances and recited poems. Leyla Aliyeva then visited the special boarding schools No 2, where she enquired about children`s studies. Children presented sketches and performed dances. Leyla Aliyeva viewed exhibitions of children`s handiwork at both boarding schools. Starting its activity since 2004, the Heydar Aliyev Foundation has been actively participating in building a new society and contributing to the social and economic development of Azerbaijan, by implementing various projects in spheres such as education, public health, culture, sports, science and technology, environment, and social and other spheres. The major mission of the Foundation is to support socio-economic and humanitarian development within the country and abroad. By Azertac President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko has hailed his country`s relations with Azerbaijan in his letter to President Ilham Aliyev on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries, Azertac reported. Dating back to the times of the Ukrainian People's Republic and Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, our relations mark successful cooperation based on strong friendship and mutual understanding between our historic states. It is with great pleasure that I emphasize that over the course of these 25 years of the modern stage of our bilateral ties the cooperation between Ukraine and the Republic of Azerbaijan has reached the level of strategic partnership. Our state are demonstrating eagerness to achieve high dynamics of political dialogue, deepen the bilateral cooperation and add pragmatism to relations in all areas of mutual interest, Petro Poroshenko said. Current challenges unite us more tightly as regards the issues of protection of independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the two states. We in Ukraine feel and highly appreciate the relevant position of Azerbaijan. For our part, we have always supported and will continue to support the people of Azerbaijan. In particular, we are ready to increase mutual support through speeding up joint efforts on the international arena. I am confident that your visit to Ukraine will be an important stage in the relations between our states and that Ukraine-Azerbaijan cooperation will continue to strengthen on the basis of mutual confidence, respect and sincerity in the best interests of the peoples of the two countries, the Ukrainian leader added. By Azertac Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany Angela Merkel has sent a letter to President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev as the two countries celebrate the 25th anniversary of the founding of diplomatic relations, Azertac reported. Twenty-five years ago our countries established diplomatic relations. Our bilateral ties have an ancient history. Swabian immigrants resettled in the territory of Azerbaijan two hundred years ago. Your visit to Germany in June of 2016 unambiguously proved that our relations are lively and multi-faceted, she said in her letter. Germany welcomes your readiness to maintain close cooperation with our country and your will to join the European community of values. You can be rest assured that Germany will remain your reliable partner in modernizing your country and developing democracy and constitutional state. I am confident that like the entire region Azerbaijan will be able to fully develop its potential only after regional conflicts are resolved. As a member of the OSCE Minsk Group, Germany will contribute to peaceful resettlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and support the efforts of the co-chairs, Angela Merkel said. As we celebrate the 25th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations, please accept my wishes for peace and prosperity of Azerbaijan, and for successful continuation and expansion of reliable cooperation between our countries, the German Chancellor added. By Azernews By Rashid Shirinov Independent French journalist Roman Mielcarek has visited the Armenian-occupied Azerbaijani territories, observing the laws of Azerbaijan, Foreign Ministrys Spokesman Hikmat Hajiyev said on April 7. The journalist asked the Foreign Ministry of Azerbaijan for accreditation and permission to visit the occupied territories for journalistic activities. In his letter, Mielcarek noted that he respects the territorial integrity, sovereignty and laws of Azerbaijan, and guaranteed that he wont illegally visit the occupied territories in the future. Given the journalists appeal, his name wasnt included in the list of undesirable persons of the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry. During March 3-7, the French journalist visited Azerbaijan, the frontline zone, met with refugees and internally displaced persons, received information about the position of the Azerbaijani side, and on March 19-20 he visited the occupied territories, Hajiyev said. Unauthorized visits to Nagorno-Karabakh and other regions of Azerbaijan occupied by Armenia are considered illegal, and any individuals paying such visits are included in the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry's "black list". Azerbaijans Foreign Ministry and diplomatic missions pay special attention to the illegal activity in the occupied areas of Azerbaijan. Baku has repeatedly warned foreign officials and diplomats of illegality of visits to its territories that are occupied by Armenia, calling them contradictory to international law. The work is constantly carried out to prevent such illegal actions. 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. By Azernews By Amina Nazarli China attaches great importance to Azerbaijan`s geographical advantages in an important transport hub in Eurasia, said Wei Jinghua, Chinese ambassador to Azerbaijan. Jinghua, in his interview to Azertac, recalled that this year marks 25 years since the establishment of diplomatic relations between Azerbaijan and China. The ambassador said that over the 25 years since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Republic of Azerbaijan and the People's Republic of China, regardless of various events that took place both on the international scene and in both countries, the Azerbaijani-Chinese ties have always developed normally, maintaining their activity. In the political sphere, China always supports independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, respects the development of the course chosen by the Azerbaijani people on the basis of their national values, he said, noting that the Azerbaijani side strongly supports the position of Beijing in issues related to Taiwan, Tibet and Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous areas of China. The envoy stressed that the high-level ties between the two countries continue today, and mutual trust from the political point of view is gradually deepening. Jinghua pointed out that currently the Chinese-Azerbaijani relations have entered a stage of dynamic development. Recalling the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding on the joint promotion of the Economic belt of the Silk Road during President Ilham Aliyevs visit to China in 2015,he said that this further strengthened the relations between the two countries. Cooperation between China and Azerbaijan in the economic sphere is developing steadily. In 1992, trade between the two countries was $1.5 million, in 2016 this figure increased 500 times, reaching $770 million. Despite the slowdown in the world economy and falling oil prices, the volume of trade between China and Azerbaijan increased by 15 percent. At present, China is one of the five major trade partners of Azerbaijan, the ambassador said. The diplomat emphasized that for 25 years humanitarian ties have also been developing steadily between the two countries. He said that there are two Confucius institutes functioning in Azerbaijan and interest in the Chinese language is rapidly growing. Jinghua said that after the state visit of President Aliyev to China, bilateral cooperation between the two countries is expanding comprehensively. In the future, the number of companies investing in Azerbaijan will increase. Cooperation between Azerbaijan and China in the field of transport, agriculture, communications and many other areas grows, he said, adding that Azerbaijan has also supported the Silk Road Economic Belt initiative and has great potential to become a valuable partner in this project. Geographically, Azerbaijan is a very important country for the Silk Road project. The Chinese side highly appreciates the initiative and direct participation of Azerbaijan in transport infrastructure projects, he said. Speaking about the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway, which is expected to be commissioned this year, the ambassador said that China attaches great importance to the geographical advantages of Azerbaijan in an important transport hub in Eurasia. In February of 2017, with the support of the Chinese side, Azerbaijan successfully organized a presentation of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars rail transit route project and the Trans-Caspian international transport route in Beijing. I hope that the economic cooperation between China and Azerbaijan and other countries along this route will be further developed, he said. Touching upon the prospects of the Azerbaijani-Chinese relations in the field of ICT, agriculture and tourism, the Chinese ambassador said that China, as a large agrarian country, has extensive experience in agriculture and many other branches of agriculture and is interested in establishing ties with the Azerbaijani side in this field. Rich natural resources, favorable soil and climatic conditions of Azerbaijan are very effective for the development of agriculture. High-quality fruit and vegetable products and wines are produced in Azerbaijan. The Chinese side supports local enterprises in the import of these products from Azerbaijan and mutual investments in agricultural sector, in the field of economic and technical cooperation, he pointed out. The ambassador said that China is also interested in the participation of Chinese enterprises in various investment projects that are being implemented in the territory of industrial parks in Azerbaijan. By Azernews By Amina Nazarli The strengthening of economic relations and improving the interaction between businessmen of the two countries were the key topics of the third meeting of the Azerbaijan-Estonia Intergovernmental Commission in Baku on April 7. The meeting chaired by Estonias Minister of Public Administration Mihhail Korb and Azerbaijans Minister of Transport, Communication and High Technologies Ramin Guluzade ended with the signing of a protocol on trade and economic cooperation. Korb, following the signing ceremony, said that the protocol was prepared with participation of specialists from various ministries of the two states, and envisages many different areas of cooperation from energy, tourism and trade to culture, Trend reported. Apparently, certain steps have been outlined in all areas that will help to bring the relationship between the two states to a new level of cooperation, noted the Estonian minister. We sign such protocols once in two years and the fulfillment of the tasks envisaged in them falls on both sides, he added. Korb further said that officials of Estonian and Azerbaijani railway administrations, as well as an Estonian port signed a protocol on cooperation in creation of a new South-North logistics corridor. The corridor will allow transporting cargo between Azerbaijan and Estonia, as well as to the Scandinavian countries, according to the minister. He also touched upon the necessity of expanding the trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Estonia, adding that the figure may be increased, first of all, by increasing mutual supplies of agriculture products. We can offer products that are not manufactured in Azerbaijan, and Estonia will, in turn, be able to purchase the needed agriculture products, Korb said. Of course, we talked [during the meeting of the intergovernmental commission] about the spheres of woodworking, metalworking and mechanical engineering, which are more developed in Estonia. Korb mentioned that Estonia also has several projects in the energy sector, namely the projects on gas and oil products. He added that these projects will be discussed by members of the Estonian business delegation and their Azerbaijani partners on April 7. During the Baku visit, the Estonian delegation led by Korb was received by President Ilham Aliyev, Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov and Prime Minister Artur Rasizade. At the Azerbaijan-Estonia Business Forum held on the same day Rufat Mammadov, Head of the Azerbaijan Export and Investments Promotion Foundation (AZPROMO) said that Azerbaijan is interested in investment cooperation with Estonia. "We are very interested in the presence of Azerbaijani goods in the Estonian market, Mammadov said. We are also very interested in investment cooperation with Estonia. We invite Estonian companies to take advantage of this business forum and expand ties with Azerbaijani enterprises. AZPROMO Head said that currently the volume of mutual investments is at a very low level. To date, the volume of Azerbaijani investments in Estonia is only about $300,000-400,000. In turn, Estonia has invested about $1 million in the economy of Azerbaijan. This is a very low rate, he said. He also noted that the trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Estonia does not reflect the existing potential of bilateral relations. "Last year, the volume of trade between our countries amounted to just over $3 million. This is an unsatisfactory indicator, as there is a great potential between our countries to expand trade ties," Mammadov said. Trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Estonia amounted to $541,130 in January-February 2017, according to Azerbaijans State Customs Committee. The figure has increased by 2.2 times as compared to the same period of 2016. Meanwhile, a source in the telecommunications market of Azerbaijan told Trend that "Azerkosmos" is preparing to provide remote sensing services to the state structures of Estonia. The source said that the Estonian company Reach-U will act as an intermediary in the provision of the services in the Estonian market, negotiations with which are currently being conducted. The contract with Reach-U will be signed in the near future, which will allow it to sell images received from the Azersky satellite to the Estonian Defense Ministry, Agriculture Ministry and the Executive Power of Tallinn. Earlier, Azercosmos and Reach-U signed a contact which envisaged transfer of satellite images received from Azersky to the University of Tartu. Also, the postal operator of Azerbaijan - Azerpoct sent a contact project to the Estonian postal administration for the launch of electronic money transfers through the STEFI system (Secured Transfer of Electronic Financial Information). The document is expected to be signed in the near future, said the source. As of today, Azerpoct offers money transfer services through this system to Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Russia, Kazakhstan, Lithuania and Kazakhstan. By Azernews By Laman Ismayilova Azerbaijan will host a congress of the European Federation of Psychology Students' Associations (EFPSA) for the first time. Co-organized by ASAN Volunteers and Azerbaijan Young Psychologists Association, the congress will take place in Gakh city on April 23-30 April, Trend Life reported. The 31st congress will bring together three hundred young psychologists and twenty academics from thirty three countries. The event, which will be held under the motto Humanity today, will be dedicated to the psychological consequences of wars and terrorist attacks, the problems of intercultural relations, crisis of refugees and internally displaced persons. The congress will also highlight the psychological consequences of Islamophobia, religious and racial intolerance. The media partners of the event are Trend.az, Day.az, Milli.az, Azernews.az. EFPSA, the European Federation of Psychology Students Association, was established in 1987 with the first International Congress of Psychology Students in Portugal and now consists of 33 psychology students organisations of 33 European countries and regions. Stimulated by its mission, vision and values, EFPSA attracts more and more students every year, with the number of its members increasing and so far represents approximately 300.000 psychology students across Europe. EFPSA is a multicultural and colorful network of European psychology students associations, run on a voluntary basis by and for psychology students of Europe. Why Politics Matter Politics, the crooked timber of our communal lives, dominates everything because, in the end, everything high and low and, most especially, high lives or dies by politics. You can have the most advanced and efflorescent of cultures. Get your politics wrong, however, and everything stands to be swept away. This is not ancient history. This is Germany 1933. Charles Krauthammer Leading South Korean group Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction Company said it has secured a 470 billion won ($422.05 million) construction contract for a seawater reverse osmosis desalination (SWRO) plant in Saudi Arabia. The contract for building the nations largest SWRO plant in Shuaibah, 110 km south of Jeddah, on the coast of Red Sea, was awarded by Saudi Arabia's Saline Water Conversion Corporation (SWCC), reported Business Korea. As per the deal, Doosan Heavy will complete the construction of the plant as the engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contractor. Once the facility is completed, it will process 400,000 tonnes of sea water into fresh water a day, to meet the requirements of 1.3 million people, and supply it to western Saudi Arabia. With the latest deal, the Korean group has re-entered the Saudi Arabian seawater desalination market after five long years, stated the report. The company had last worked on the desalination plant project at Ras Al Khair in 2010 and Yanbu seawater desalination plant Phase Three deal in 2012, it added. Bahrains value of imports reached nearly BD333 million ($883.2 million) in February this year, while the value of national origin exports reached BD177 million ($469.5 million). The top 10 countries accounted for 64 per cent of the imports value, according to the Foreign Trade Report of February 2017 issued by Bahrains Information & eGovernment Authority (iGA). It covers balance of trade, imports, exports and re-exports (national origin) goods. According to the report, China topped the list of exporters to Bahrain with BD40 million ($106.1 million) worth goods. The UAE came second with BD34 million ($90.1 million) and Saudi Arabia ranked third with BD24 million ($63.6 million). Saudi Arabia ranked first among the countries importing from Bahrain, with the value of imports touching BD45 million ($119.3 million). The US came second with BD35 million ($92.8 million) and the UAE too the third spot with BD20 million ($53.05 million). As for exported products, aluminium wires emerged as the top product exported with BD26 million ($68.9 million). Agglomerated iron ores and concentrates were positioned second with a value of BD23 million ($61.01 million); and jewellery of gold stood third place for exported products with BD16 million ($42.4 million). Meanwhile, the value of re-exports reached BD47 million ($124.6 million). Saudi Arabia ranked top in re-exports from Bahrain with BD17 million ($45.09 million), China came second with BD11 million ($29.18 million) and the UAE was third with BD8 million ($21.2 million). Four-wheel drive cars emerged as the top product re-exported from Bahrain with BD11 million ($29.18 million), cigarettes came second with BD5 million ($13.2 million) and vessels for the transport of goods took the third spot with BD4 million ($10.6 million). The trade balance -- difference between exports and imports -- declined with the value of the deficit reaching BD109 million ($289.1 million) in February, the report stated. TradeArabia News Service Jaxport CEO Eric Green said the $23.5 million grant marks a milestone in our initiatives to build the port of the future and move cargo in the most efficient and eco-friendly way possible. Baker McKenzie, a global law firm, advised its long standing client Alliance Holding Company on the sale of a 51 per cent stake in Ink Products Company to Sun Chemical. Ink Product Company is a regional leader in the manufacture of printing inks for the packaging industry. The joint venture, which will operate under the name Sun Chemical Saudi Arabia Ltd, combines two of the leading ink suppliers to the packaging and publication market in the region, said a statement from the firm. Sun Chemical is the world's largest producer of printing inks and pigments and a leading provider for packaging and publication materials, amongst others. We are excited by the opportunities that joining Sun Chemicals global organization will bring to our customers in the region, said Abdullah Al Hobayb, president of Alliance Holding Company. Being able to tap into Sun Chemicals global resources will bring many great options to our customers and were pleased to join a company that shares our values of working for you, he said. Riyadh partner Karim Nassar led the team, assisted by Omar Iqbal and Christiana O'Connell-Schizas. Nassar said: We are delighted to advise our client, Alliance Holding Company, on yet another joint venture with an internationally renowned group. Sun Chemical will own the majority of the share in the new joint venture, and the transaction will be subject to closing conditions and regulatory approvals, it stated. TradeArabia News Service The United States launched a major missile attack against an air base in Syria in response to a chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held town earlier in the week which killed scores of people. Fifty-nine Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired from two US Navy ships in the Mediterranean, the Pentagon said. The attack is the first direct military action Washington has taken against Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad's regime and could escalate the US military campaign in the region, a CNN report said. President Donald Trump said they hit a base from which the Syrian government launched Tuesday's chemical attack. Russia has condemned the US strike. Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, called it "an act of aggression against a sovereign nation". The Pentagon said the Russian military, which supports Syrian government forces, had been informed ahead of the US action, a BBC report said. It said missiles fired from Navy destroyers USS Porter and USS Ross had targeted aircraft, aircraft shelters, storage areas, ammunition supply bunkers, air defence systems, and radars at Shayrat airfield in western Homs province. The Pentagon added that the strike was intended "to deter the regime from using chemical weapons again". "Initial indications are that this strike has severely damaged or destroyed Syrian aircraft and support infrastructure and equipment at Shayrat Airfield, reducing the Syrian Government's ability to deliver chemical weapons," the Pentagon said. In a statement, Trump said Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad launched a horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians. "Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror," he said justifying the missile attack. "Tonight I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched. It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention and ignored the urging of the UN Security Council. "Years of previous attempts at changing Assad's behaviour have all failed and failed very dramatically. As a result, the refugee crisis continues to deepen and the region continues to destabilise, threatening the United States and its allies. "Tonight I call on all civilised nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria, and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types," he said. Rixos Bab Al Bahr in Ras AL Khaimah brought home the top spots in four separate Top 100 World's Best Hotels lists, namely Travelers Choice Awards, Flight Network, Coral Travel Starway Tourism Awards and Satur Travel. The ranks were secured by Rixos Bab Al Bahr after demonstrating excellence in its performance and for the dedication displayed in guests services for the year of 2016. The world-class resort has maintained excellent performance reviews across key platforms and has integrated product improvement into the brands core principles. Sami Kaplanci, general manager, said: We are honoured to be recognised in top spots on such prestigious lists. The entire team has embraced our values that ensures the Rixos Bab Al Bahr offerings are the best in the market. The recognition is a testament to our commitment to providing exceptional guest services and ensuring every guest has a memorable stay with us. The award follows Rixos Hotels win at the anticipated Tez Tour Awards where the group bagged Partner of the Year. It is really humbling to make a splash right at the beginning of the awards season. Rixos Hotels will continue to provide the best of the best for our guests and focus on consistently being innovative and unique in our products and luxury offerings, concluded Kaplanci. - TradeArabia News Service A new report shows that Wyomings technology industry occasionally heralded as a way to diversify the states economy lags far behind almost every other state in the country. Growth in Wyomings technology industry has remained mostly flat for the last six years, falling slightly in 2016. The Cyberstates report from CompTIA, released last week, ranked Wyoming 51st out of all states and D.C. in tech employment and 49th in average wage for tech workers. Led by telecommunication and computer engineering sectors, the technology industry makes up 2.2 percent of the state economy, according to the report, and accounted for 4,820 jobs last year. The most common tech jobs in the Cowboy State were decidedly different from the software developer gigs common in areas like Silicon Valley. Instead, tech workers in Wyoming are likely to offer direct support as computer user specialists, network administrators or telecommunications equipment installers. One bright spot in the report is the states innovation rank of 17th. That ranking relies on a per capita measurement of the number of technology patents filed by state and the number of new technology companies that opened in 2015, the most recent year for which reliable data was available. Wyoming filed for 35 technology-related patents in 2015, a 30 percent decrease from the year before but still placing it squarely above Montana, South Dakota and eight other states. Ninety-four technology startups opened in Wyoming in 2015, up five from 2014. When it came to gender parity, the state was in the middle of the pack ranked 32nd with women making up just 21.2 percent of technology employees. Steven Ostrowski of CompTIA, which created the report, said that while tech centers are starting to move away from traditional areas like San Francisco, Seattle and Austin, they still havent significantly penetrated rural states like Wyoming. Its dispersing to metro areas that have the infrastructure in place and the population in place to serve a workforce, Ostrowski said. But he noted that may change in the coming years as rural industries like agriculture begin relying more on high-tech solutions. Its something on the horizon, Ostrowski said. Its probably something to watch in the next couple of years. Casper City Manager V.H. McDonald will retire on June 1, the city announced Thursday. The decision comes two days after members of the City Council called for an investigation into problems at the police department and complaints that city management did not adequately address the issues. Mayor Kenyne Humphrey was expected to meet with McDonald on Thursday morning to discuss options for responding to the police issues. She did not immediately respond to a call seeking comment Thursday afternoon. McDonald also did not immediately respond to a text message seeking comment. McDonald, whos served as city manager since November 2015, announced his retirement in a letter presented to the City Councils leaders. His resignation comes one day after Casper City Council member Todd Murphy also stated he would leave his post, effective Monday. Murphy cited personal reasons for his departure. The council will begin recruiting a new city manager immediately, the city said in an announcement. Assistant City Manager Liz Becher will serve as interim city manager during the transition. McDonald began working in Casper in early 1999. He spent much of the next decade serving former Casper City Manager Tom Forslund, now director of the Wyoming Health Department. Forslund told the Star-Tribune last year that he was surprised McDonald went for the citys top job. While Forslund said he knew McDonald was qualified, the longtime city employees quiet personality was an asset for his past jobs as Caspers administrative services director and later as assistant city manager. In McDonalds relatively short tenure as city manager, he oversaw plans to revitalize downtown and build a new public plaza in time for the August eclipse. His term came after his predecessor, John Patterson, became embroiled in legal and personal battles with community members and a former city council member. Patterson served as city manager for four years. The litigation continues. Some hoped McDonald would bring calm to city government after the turmoil of Pattersons four years as city manager. We will probably still be picking up and sweeping up from our previous city manager for quite awhile, Rep. Pat Sweeney, R-Casper, told the Star-Tribune in April 2016. V.H., I think in this downturn economy, will help steer us in the right direction, be able to keep us on a good footing to direct those efforts. While downtown Casper has enjoyed an upswing, McDonalds tenure hasnt been free of controversy. Casper Fire Chief Kenneth King announced his retirement after a Star-Tribune investigation found hed emailed a subordinate asking him to get rid of video evidence shot during the Cole Creek Fire, which destroyed 14 homes in October 2015. King said the email was a joke. McDonald became city manager at the beginning of Wyomings oil and gas bust, which hit Casper particularly hard. The citys budget was cut by nearly 40 percent, and McDonald worked on a plan to draw down the citys reserves over the next decade. The council offered 53 employees early retirement packages in mid-2016 and suspended capital projects. McDonald prioritized maintaining services. The downturn continued into 2017. Sales tax numbers were more than $400,000 below projections for the fiscal year in January. McDonald requested earlier this year that the City Council move up its annual budget session by about six weeks, though he said it was unrelated to the drop in sales tax. The fiscal year ends in June. The Star-Tribune reported in January that the draft budget would likely be presented to council in April and finalized in early May. Forslund served as Caspers city manager for 22 years before Patterson assumed the helm. The felony child abuse case alleging a Casper police officer used harsh punishment and failed to meet the mental health needs of her adopted son will move forward, a Natrona County Circuit Court judge ruled Thursday. Judge Steven Brown moved Officer Laura Wells case to District Court after a four-hour preliminary hearing, despite arguments by Wells attorney that the allegations may constitute bad parenting but do not rise to the level of a criminal charge. Prosecutors and investigators alleged that Wells, a former school resource officer at Centennial Middle School, inflicted a mental injury on the boy by not following therapists treatment plans and by using extreme punishment to discipline the teenager. Before announcing his decision, Brown compared not following counselors treatment plans to not obeying a doctors orders for a physical illness. If you dont fill the prescription, are you negligent? he asked hypothetically before issuing the ruling to bind over the case. Wells husband and the childrens adoptive stepfather, Casper police Sgt. Todd Wells, was also charged with a misdemeanor count of child endangerment in connection to the allegations. Both were placed on administrative leave in November after the police department learned that the case had been referred to the Natrona County District Attorneys Office. The boy, who has now been a teenager, and his sister have both been removed from the Wells custody. The boy is doing much better now, the prosecutor said. More details about the case emerged at the preliminary hearing Thursday. Family background Laura Wells adopted the boy and his sister from an abusive household in Colorado when the children were small, Tonya Yelton, a licensed counselor, said at the hearing. The sheriffs office, which led the investigation, contracted Yelton to complete a case review of the familys history. Yelton said she collected hundreds of pages of documents and conducted more than 40 interviews of counselors, family friends and others who knew the family to compile her 250-page report. Parts of that report were included in the arrest warrants for the Wellses. Although early records arent specific, she said, they indicate that the children were removed from their mother, who was addicted to drugs. The children were then placed in two or three foster care homes, where there were allegations of abuse. Before they were adopted by Laura Wells and her former husband, the children were diagnosed with reactive attachment disorder and the boy, who was 6 years old at the time, was being treated for depression. Yelton described reactive attachment disorder as a condition that prevents children from developing healthy, trusting relationships due to past traumas. Kids with the disorder need intensive family and individual counseling to improve, she said. The key thing that we know now, because of what we know about brains, is that these kids need gentleness, Yelton testified. Case against Wells However, thats not what the children adopted by Laura Wells received, according to court documents and testimony Wednesday. Laura Wells and the children consulted with several therapists and psychiatrists, court documents show, yet Wells never implemented their recommendations and repeatedly ended contact with the mental health professionals without notice. You can go to 50 counselors, but if you never do what they recommended, theres a deficit youre giving your child, Yelton said. Along with the lack of consistent counseling, Wells discipline methods negatively affected the boy by shaming him and isolating him, according to the testimony. Some of the methods recorded in court documents included making the boy walk miles to and from school, forcing him to sit at the kitchen table with no activities for entire days and ordering him to write tens of thousands of sentences. The boy also told investigators that Wells had slapped or hit him a few times. The punishments only further compounded the boys illnesses including diagnoses of depression, ADHD, post-traumatic stress disorder and other behavioral disorders and created an atmosphere of fear in the house, Yelton said. Counselors told investigators that they never saw signs of affection between Wells and her son. You have a gentleman who is not connecting to human beings and then you take all the human beings away from him, she said. Defense response Later in the hearing, Wells defense attorney, Tom Fleener, pushed Yelton to describe what she identified as child abuse in the case. You dont think she has the right to punish her child? he asked. Not in the manner she did, no, Yelton responded. Not for a child with (reactive attachment disorder). Sgt. Aaron Shatto of the Natrona County Sheriffs Office described a series of strict rules the boy had to follow in the home, including that he had to stay within Wells sight and was monitored by cameras in the home. Shatto said the boy told him that the only time Wells touched the boy was when she slapped him. At the end of the hearing, Wells attorney asked the judge to dismiss the case because prosecutors did not prove that Wells injured the boy and that the allegations did not constitute a crime. Apparently in the state of Wyoming, punishing your child is a crime, Fleener said. Its not a crime to be bad at counseling. Assistant District Attorney Brett Johnson argued that Wells created a hostile, nasty, shame-based situation that seriously affected the boy. At the hearing, Judge Brown did not have to determine whether a crime was committed but did determine there was enough evidence to move the case to district court. In district court, prosecutors will have to prove that Wells caused a mental injury to the boy. As defined by state law, a mental injury is an injury to the psychological capacity or emotional stability of a child as evidenced by an observable or substantial impairment in his ability to function within a normal range of performance and behavior with due regard to his culture. If convicted of the single felony charge, she could face up to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Wyoming officials gave preliminary approval to $3 million in state funding Thursday morning for an Interstate 25 interchange in Bar Nunn. The Wyoming State Loan and Investment Board unanimously approved $1 million in a Wyoming Community Readiness Grant. Additionally, the SLIB is authorizing Natrona County officials to work with the Wyoming Department of Transportation to reprioritize other highway projects in the area to free up an additional $2 million for the interchange. Supporters of the Westwinds Road project said all $3 million in state money was needed for construction to begin next spring, before costs inflate beyond initial estimates. SLIB is composed of Gov. Matt Mead, Secretary of State Ed Murray, State Auditor Cynthia Cloud, State Treasurer Mark Gordon and Superintendent of Public Instruction Jillian Balow. The board also approved $500,000 for Caspers David Street Station public plaza. The money will be used to construct a 4,000-square-foot building for maintenance, storage, equipment, guest services and restrooms, according to a statement from the Wyoming Business Council. Members of the Business Council last month recommended that SLIB fund the David Street Station project. They recommended against the state chipping in money for the two Bar Nunn freeway entrance and exit ramps. Members called the project worthy. But under current financial conditions they said they could not recommend it, considering it wasnt designated as a high priority by the Wyoming Transportation Commission. Bar Nunn Mayor Patrick Ford said $9 million of the projects estimated $12 million costs had been lined up. Bar Nunn, Natrona County and local governments that are part of the Casper Area Metropolitan Planning Organization had committed money. Only $3 million was unfunded, and Ford is grateful the state was able to come through, he said. This project was really make-it-or-break-it for Bar Nunn, as far as the future of development and growth, the safety aspect everything, Ford said after SLIB approved the funding. This was really our last best chance to get this project to move forward. Drivers reach the town primarily through Salt Creek Highway. They can also exit I-25 at Howard Street, which is in unincorporated Natrona County, and backtrack south into town. Salt Creek Highway can get busy with traffic and bottlenecked when there are emergencies, such as wildfires. The highway lacks an emergency lane for ambulances to bypass passenger cars. On a good day, travel time to reach the town is around 10 minutes, longer than ambulance services prefer. Bar Nunn has been one of the states fastest-growing communities, bursting from 900 residents in 2000 to 2,800 in 2015. Ford and other project supporters argued before SLIB that future development and population growth hinges on the project. Furthermore, there is no direct freeway access to Casper/Natrona County International Airport, which is used by travelers across central Wyoming. But there is a long-term plan to build a connector between the Westwinds Road interchange and the airport and a surrounding industrial area. Bar Nunns original request was for all $3 million to come from a state grant. SLIB funded the project with the mix of the grant and WYDOT money through reprioritizing Natrona County projects. The state is in a financial crunch due to lower energy revenues. If money flows as planned, contractors can bid to work on the project in the fall, ahead of the spring groundbreaking, Ford said. Certainly we appreciate the way they put that together to make sure Bar Nunn could get the funding to move forward with our project, he said. Typically at this time of year the Bighorn River below Yellowtail Dam in Montana is running at about 3,200 cubic feet per second. Right now the river is at 9,000 cfs with plans to bump it up to 10,000 cfs as snow continues to fall in the mountains. Weve probably released more water in March than we have historically, said Steve Davies, Montana area manager for the Bureau of Reclamation, which oversees operation of Yellowtail Dam. Its very unusual to have a release that high this early. The impetus to draw down Bighorn Reservoir, which is created by Yellowtail Dam, is heavy snowpack in the Shoshone River drainage. As of April 3 the drainage had snowpack that was 154 percent of average, said Lyle Myler, deputy area manager of the Wyoming Bureau of Reclamation. Above Buffalo Bill Reservoir were forecasting 1.1 million acre feet of runoff from April through July, Myler said. Thats like 165 percent of average. The average runoff between 1985 and 2016 is 667,000 acre feet. Already in March, runoff into Buffalo Bill averaged 66,000 acre feet, whereas the average is usually around 20,000, Myler added. Thats the most since the Bureau of Reclamation began keeping records in the 1920s, he said. Targets The Bighorn River drainage in Wyoming has built up snowpack thats 119 percent of average. The Bighorn and Shoshone rivers feed Bighorn Reservoir, prompting the Bureau of Reclamations high releases from Yellowtail Dam so early in the year. Davies said Bighorn Reservoir is dropping almost a foot a day to reach a target elevation of 3,600 feet. The reservoir is full at 3,640 feet. Because the reservoir is being drawn down, the likelihood that Horseshoe Bend boat launch, at the southern end of the lake, will have enough water to be usable by Memorial Day weekend is unlikely. Fast float High water in the Montana section of the Bighorn River at this time of the year has a couple of different impacts. For the world-renowned fly-fishing destination, such runoff can push juvenile brown trout that are hatching in March and April downstream, said Mike Ruggles, a Fish, Wildlife and Parks fisheries biologist. In the past it hasnt been an issue, Ruggles said. The brown trout have been doing pretty good. Another concern is that high flows now could mean that rainbow trout will lay their eggs in places that could be dewatered as the river flows drop. The peak of the rainbow spawn is in May. For rainbows this is not good, Ruggles said. Rainbow trout numbers are already lower than what FWP would like to see in the fishery, although strong brown trout recruitment is filling in the gap so theres no shortage of trout. High water also typically means good aquatic insect production for the next few years, Ruggles said, meaning there will be plenty to eat for the fish that remain. Sakakawea Releasing larger volumes of water down the Bighorn River also means more water is running into the Yellowstone River, which feeds Lake Sakakawea, just over the Montana border in North Dakota. The Army Corps of Engineers, which operates Sakakaweas Garrison Dam, saw runoff hit 125 percent of normal thanks in part to the additional water from Bighorn Reservoir along with low elevation snowmelt, according to Jody Farhat, chief of the Corps Missouri River Basin Water Management Division. Were seeing pretty high inflows to Garrison already, she said, referring to the dam that creates Sakakawea. Were just capturing it at Garrison right now. We try to keep (Sakakawea and Fort Peck reservoirs) steady to rising during the forage fish spawn, which is key to a healthy sport fishery. Fort Peck Fort Peck Reservoir, which is fed by the Missouri River, saw runoff of 124 percent of normal in March, Farhat said. According to NRCS data, the mainstem Missouri River drainage was sitting at 91 percent of normal at the end of March. Snowpack in the Jefferson, Madison and Gallatin drainages, which combine to create the Missouri, were sitting at 97, 107 and 93 percent of normal, respectively. The reservoirs elevation is at 2,236.3 feet, good enough to cover the bottom of all the lakes boat ramps. The current elevation is higher than the lake reached all of last year, but far below the 2,252-foot June elevation the lake reached in the record-setting high water year of 2011. The Yellowstone Its up in the air as to whether the Yellowstone River, a section of which was closed to all recreation for a portion of last summer due to the outbreak of a fish-killing parasite, will fare better this summer considering that its snowpack is 119 percent of average in Montana and 137 percent of average in Wyoming drainages. That will all depend on how fast the mountain snowpack melts. Last years runoff peaked earlier than usual in June and the water temperature was climbing dangerously high by early July. Meanwhile on the lower Yellowstone River, the Powder and Tongue rivers which flow from central Wyoming have snowpacks that are 99 and 116 percent of average, respectively. The bigger snowpacks in Wyoming are farther west, where several drainages are more than 150 percent of average and the Sweetwater drainage is at 194 percent of normal. Runoff could also be augmented by rainy weather or more snow piling up in the mountains. The National Weather Services three-month outlook is showing a potential for above average precipitation in the area associated with Buffalo Bill Reservoir, Myler said. Thats not great news for his staff. When rain starts falling, things come at you a lot faster than in a snowmelt situation, he said. That makes things more interesting. The governing body for Arizonas public universities will launch an online open records portal in an effort to to streamline processing requests. Arizona Board of Regents President Eileen Klein announced the launch at a board meeting at the University of Arizona Thursday. Through the portal, members of the public and journalists can submit public records requests through an online form, the information from which would feed into a database, Klein said. It will help ABOR staff members to keep better track of requests and keep those seeking information informed. We see this as an effort to be more responsive, Klein told the regents at the meeting. While the law does not require those requesting records to use any specific form provided by an agency, using online forms makes sense for administrative convenience, said Dan Barr, a media law expert with the First Amendment Coalition of Arizona who has represented the Star. In fact, if someone wants to make the request verbally, the absence of a written request cannot be the basis for denial, the law says. However, making a written request is generally best practice, Barr said. Journalists largely make requests via email, which can get lost and come in large volumes, Klein said. Cost is another issue that the portal can tackle, she added; it will help ABOR better analyze costs associated with producing records for the public and media. If it were up to Greg Patterson, president of the regents board, members of the public and media would have to pay for the full cost of producing records in response to requests. He previously advocated for a law that would allow that. Public records requests take a tremendous amount of time, he said. Staff members can spend a lot of time making sure the records they provide to the public dont violate any statutory requirements on privacy. The portal will help the regents board be deliberate about processing and responding to public records requests, he said, and make sure that those with the squeakiest email do not get the fastest response. Arizona open records law says agencies can only ask for a reasonable price for copying the records, but public agencies have wanted to pass along the cost of producing records on to requesters for a long time, Barr said. Especially in a time where agencies are strapped for funding, more public bodies around the country have gone to their Legislatures to make that happen, he added. However, should the cost of producing records be passed on to requesters, like journalists and members of the public, the question becomes whether asking for records becomes prohibitively expensive, Barr said. If it becomes prohibitively expensive, then people wont see the records, he said. If journalists and other people are not exercising public records rights, then the public loses out in access to public information. We've collected a few front pages from newspapers.com to give you a look at some April 7 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. Arizona Sens. John McCain, Jeff Flake as well as U.S. Reps. Martha McSally and Tom O'Halleran have backed the Trump administration's decision to launch roughly 60 Tomahawk missiles at the Syrian airbase used in recent chemical attacks against civilians. McSally called the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime "evil" and said military action was necessary. "The use of banned and deadly chemical weapons to murder innocent men, women, and children is evil and deserves a just response," McSally said. McSally said she was proud to have successfully advocated in Congress to keep the Tomahawk missile line at Raytheon in Tucson, which were used in the attack. In a joint statement from Sens. McCain and Lindsay Graham, R-South Carolina, the pair said the military action sends an important message the United States will no longer stand idly by as Assad slaughters innocent Syrians with chemical weapons. "President Trump confronted a pivotal moment in Syria and took action. For that, he deserves the support of the American people," McCain and Graham said in a statement to the press. The two called for a new strategy to end the conflict in Syria. "The first measure in such a strategy must be to take Assads air force which is responsible not just for the latest chemical weapons attack, but countless atrocities against the Syrian people completely out of the fight," they said. OHalleran said the retaliation against the Assad regime in Syria was an appropriate response. "Bashar al-Assads use of chemical weapons on his own people is barbaric, and we must work to prevent future attacks like this. They have no place in this world," he said. A member of the House Armed Services Committee, O'Halleran said there is constitutional obligation to immediately begin debating the use of future military force against Syria. "I call on Speaker Ryan to bring Congress back to Washington to develop an Authorization for Use of Military Force in Syria," he said. Flake told The Arizona Republic in a telephone interview that he supported the attacks. "I assumed it was coming, and I'm glad that it has," Flake said. Rep. Raul Grijlava stated that the Trump administration needs to consult Congress before the situation escalates. "If President Trump believes that US military actions should be utilized against the Assad regime, he should immediately call the House and Senate back into session to debate and vote on the use of military force," he said . His comments come from a statement made by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which Grijalva is a co-chair. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema said the U.S. strike sends "a clear message" holding the Syrian regime accountable for the chemical weapons attack, which she called immoral. Getty Images/Kevin Voelker Photography(WASHINGTON) -- Reaction from both sides of the aisle was swift following news that the United States had launched a military strike on an airbase in Syria. In a statement, Sens. John McCain, R-Arizona, and Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, praised President Donald Trump for taking action. "Unlike the previous administration, President Trump confronted a pivotal moment in Syria and took action. For that, he deserves the support of the American people," they said in part. House Speaker Paul Ryan called the action "appropriate and just." "Earlier this week the Assad regime murdered dozens of innocent men, women, and children in a barbaric chemical weapons attack. Tonight the United States responded," he said in a statement. "... These tactical strikes make clear that the Assad regime can no longer count on American inaction as it carries out atrocities against the Syrian people." On Tuesday, a chemical weapon attack on a Syrian town killed at least 86 civilians. Blame for the assault has landed on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad despite the Syrian government's condemnation of the attack and insistence that rebels fighting in the country's civil war were at fault. The Turkish Health Ministry later determined that sarin gas was used in the attack, based on autopsies of some of the victims. Thursday evening's airstrike, which targeted Shayrat Air Base in Homs Province where a chemical attack was initiated earlier in the week, struck multiple targets with missiles launched between 8:40 and 8:50 p.m. ET from the destroyers USS Porter and USS Ross in the Mediterranean Sea Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, called the strike an "important decisive step." "It is not a message," he said. "It is a degrading of the capability of the Syrian regime to carry out further chemical attacks against innocent civilians." Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, said, "Making sure Assad knows that when he commits such despicable atrocities he will pay a price is the right thing to do." He added: "It is incumbent on the Trump administration to come up with a strategy and consult with Congress before implementing it. I salute the professionalism and skill of our Armed Forces who took action today." Some criticized Trump's response. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, tweeted, "While we all condemn the atrocities in Syria, the United States was not attacked." He continued: "The President needs Congressional authorization for military action as required by the Constitution." Rep. Ted Lieu, D-California, said, "This was done with no debate in Congress & no explanation to the American people," he wrote on Twitter. "Assad is still in power. What was purpose of strike? How much did this cost? Was Assad a threat to US homeland? How does this achieve peace?" Lieu added that Trump "campaigned to get US out of foreign wars. His actions in Syria, Iraq & Yemen show he is acting like a warmonger." Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Massachusetts, hit Trump over his refugee stance. "So @POTUS cares enough about the Syrian people to launch 50 Tomahawks but not enough to let the victims of Assad find refuge & freedom here," he tweeted. Sen. Chris Coons, D-Delaware, said he was "encouraged that the Trump administration has felt compelled to act forcefully in Syria against the Assad regime," but added that he was "gravely concerned that the United States is engaging further militarily in Syria without a well-thought-out, comprehensive plan." "Frankly, the presidents actions today generate more questions than answers," he added. Following the strike, Trump gave a statement, offering harsh words for Assad and speaking about the cruelty of seeing innocent children tortured. "It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons," he said in part. "There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the chemical weapons convention and ignored the urging of the UN Security Council." Copyright 2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. Rep. Todd Clodfelter and Rep. Drew John entered the Legislature this year with reputations as moderate Republicans. Clodfelter snuck a seat in a Democrat-dominated area, Legislative District 10 covering Tucsons east side, and John edged out more conservative Republicans in southeast Arizonas Legislative District 14. But on one of the most divisive issues of the session so far, the two Southern Arizona freshmen stayed in step with the party and big-money interests. Both have voted in favor of efforts to make it harder to put voter initiatives on the ballot, a top priority of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and legislative Republicans. I was disappointed with Clodfelters position on this. Then came the voucher votes. This week, John and Clodfelter have been the subject of high-pressure influence campaigns because they signaled their intention to vote against a bill that would expand again the availability of Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, or vouchers. These allow an increasing number of public school students to take the taxpayer money that would be used to teach them in a district or charter school and put it instead toward a private school. For good reason, all the Democrats and some Republicans view it as the next step in dismantling Arizonas public education system. But Gov. Doug Ducey made it a top priority, paradoxically in my view, considering that the main thrust of his State of the State speech was fortifying the states public education system. On Wednesday morning, Ducey met individually with several House Republicans planning to vote against the voucher bill, including Clodfelter and John. Ducey didnt offer any particular deals but encouraged him to vote for the bill, Clodfelter said, with the implication left that he could get more help in the future with his own priorities. On Thursday morning, Americans For Prosperity was delivering literature in Clodfelters district, pressuring him to vote for the voucher bill. He wasnt having it and he was getting lots of support from voucher opponents for his no vote. I dont think its going to do the system any good, he told me. We need to fund public schools appropriately. When individuals start to say, I need to take my money out of the system, it could cause harm to the public education, he added. John wasnt answering my calls Thursday as he received lots of pressure from parents groups, public-education interests and fellow legislators. In the end, after saying he opposed the bill, John changed his mind and voted yes. It shocked people from the Vail Parents Network Vail and far eastern Pima County are part of Johns district who had supported him because of his stated views on education. We are stunned today. Up until today, even days ago, he promised us he would stand strong and vote against these ESAs. We are devastated, said Stacy Winstryg, a founder of the Vail network. We felt like between him and Clodfelter that we had two good guys in there on the Republican side. Border Patrol union unhappy The National Border Patrol Council, staunch supporters of candidate Trump during the campaign, is showing signs of unhappiness with President Trump. First there came the unions mild disapproval of the presidents emphasis on funding for a border wall, rather than more agents, in his proposed budget. But more recently, there are signs of a serious split over the appointment of the new Customs and Border Protection commissioner, Kevin McAleenan. Brandon Darby of Breitbart Texas, who has served as an unofficial spokesman for the union, reported that union leaders are unhappy that Trump nominated for commissioner a man seen as a holdover from the Obama era. This is the guy who was picked by Barack Obama to enact Barack Obamas open border policies, Darby said on a radio program, citing conversations with agents. This guy for some reason has been picked by Trump to be the boss of the Border Patrol agents who did so much and believed so much in Donald Trump. Union officials have not released a statement on the pick and did not make a statement when I called Thursday. Sonoran ex-official arrested The corruption investigation that has embroiled much of the last Sonoran administration led to an arrest this week in the Phoenix area. Homeland Security Investigations officials arrested Carlos Villalobos Organista Tuesday on suspicion of staying too long in the United States after arriving in July 2016 with his border-crossing card. Hes being held at the immigration detention center in Eloy. An immigration judge with the Department of Justices Executive Office of Immigration Review will determine if Mr. Villalobos has a legal basis to remain in the U.S., ICE spokeswoman Yasmeen Pitts OKeefe said in a written statement. The backstory is that hes facing criminal charges in Mexico for diverting hundreds of millions of pesos in public money. An arrest warrant had been issued by Interpol, Mexican news outlets reported. However, if the U.S. officials find he committed an immigration violation, he wont need to be formally extradited on the criminal charges. McSally to White House U.S. Rep. Martha McSally was one of seven moderate Republicans who visited the White House on Monday to meet with Vice President Mike Pence and other high officials over a possible new health care bill. McSally supported the American Health Care Act, which failed in the House March 24. Earlier this week, before foreign tensions took over the news, Republicans made an effort to assemble a new bill that might pass the House. McSally and company were in the White House for an hour and a half, Huffington Post reported. McCain an idiot? On Wednesday, Sen. John McCain chastised other senators who thought it was a good thing to eliminate the filibuster in order to allow Neil Gorsuch to be confirmed as a Supreme Court justice. Whoever says that is a stupid idiot, who has not been here and seen what Ive been through and how we were able to avoid that on several occasions, he said. Then Thursday came and he voted to end the filibuster. With the idiots. It's official, Dr. Robert C. Robbins is the next University of Arizona president. Robbins' three-year contract, approved by the Arizona Board of Regents, will pay him $988,000 in salary and benefits. He is the highest paid state university president in Arizona history, though he will be taking a pay cut from the $1.2 million-plus salary he earns as CEO of Texas Medical Center. "Im very enthusiastic about getting started on this very important leadership position," the new UA president told the regents during Friday's meeting. Robbins will assume the UA presidency June 1, clearing the way for current President Ann Weaver Hart to leave the top job more than a year early while still receiving her $670,000 presidential pay package until June 2018. As a result, the UA will spend more than $1.6 million on presidential compensation next school year the combined total for Robbins and Hart. Hart's presidency was riddled with controversy over her role on the board of the for-profit education firm that runs DeVry University. The private college was subject to lawsuits claiming the school deceived its students. Hart, who announced that she would resign last year, was given a Regent's Medal Thursday for her tenure at UA. Interstate 19 northbound at Irvington re-opened after a two-vehicle crash blocked the freeway, authorities said Thursday night. Traffic was flowing shortly after 10 p.m., according to the Arizona Department of Transportation. It was not immediately known if anyone was injured in the crash, said an Arizona Department of Public Safety official. The crash occurred at about 9 p.m. No further information was immediately available. Michigan Boy, 11, kills self after girlfriend fakes suicide DETROIT Charges are pending against a juvenile after a Michigan mother said a social media prank in which her 11-year-old sons girlfriend faked her own suicide led the boy to take his own life. Katrina Goss said Thursday that she found her son, Tysen Benz, hanging by the neck March 14 in his room after seeing social media posts and texts that his 13-year-old girlfriend had killed herself. Goss said the girl and some of her friends orchestrated the prank. It was not clear who faces charges. She had pranked her own death, Goss, 41, said of her sons girlfriend. I dont know what possessed her to do such a weird prank. Its a twisted, sick joke. California Murder suspect posts bail of $35 million REDWOOD CITY A Chinese real estate scion charged with orchestrating the murder of her childrens father was released from a San Francisco Bay Area jail Thursday after posting $35 million bail, a highly unusual financial transaction that startled and angered the victims family and friends. Tiffany Li will remain out of custody after family, friends and business associates of her mothers raised $4 million cash and pledged San Francisco Bay Area properties valued a combined $62 million to post her bail. Courts require double the bail amount when property is pledged instead of cash. Nothing about this seems right, said Angela Dunn, a close friend of the victim who shared her home with him in the six months before his death. Dunn said the victims mother is taking Lis release especially hard. New York 40 OReilly advertisers gone; others remain NEW YORK While dozens of brands have said theyre pulling ads from Fox News Channels The OReilly Factor because of harassment allegations against its host, others remain to court the biggest audience on cable television news. An ad boycott against Bill OReilly quickly took shape following The New York Times story last weekend that five women had been paid a total of $13 million to settle their accusations of sexual misconduct or abusive behavior against him. On Thursday, more than 40 companies had said they werent running commercials on OReillys show, according to CNN, which has maintained a count. Utah Great Salt Lakes rise brings the boats back SALT LAKE CITY Dozens of beached sailboats that spent two years on the shore of Utahs drought-stricken Great Salt Lake were hoisted on cranes back into the briny waters Thursday after winter storms raised lake levels. Mother Nature has been very kind to us, said Janet Robins, the commodore of the 140-year-old Great Salt Lake Yacht Club, comprised of the self-proclaimed worlds saltiest sailors. Robins and other sailors watched and helped on the docks Thursday as sailboats, one at a time, were raised from their high and dry purgatory in the marina parking lot, carried across the sky on a crane and lowered into the water. The Great Salt Lake is about three to five times saltier than the ocean. Its a harsh environment for most creatures outside of salt-loving brine shrimp, but the mineral-packed lake is a sailing haven. The dense water isnt easily whipped up by wind, keeping it calm for sailboats gliding across. Its just like sailing across glass, Robins said. Venezuela Venezuela opposition keeps up pressure CARACAS Tens of thousands of Venezuelans shut down much of the capital Thursday and clashed with police to protest what they call an attempted coup by the socialist administration. It was the largest opposition demonstration the country has seen in half a year. Many protesters carried signs reading No More Dictatorship as they crowded the principal highway that cuts from Caracas wealthy eastern section to downtown. Later in the day, a smaller group confronted lines of riot police who turned the crowd away from the city center with tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons. Some young protesters covered their faces with bandanas and threw rocks and spent tear gas canisters. Opposition leaders said more than a dozen protesters were injured in the clashes. CAnada Mock explosive device found at airport TORONTO A 58-year-old American man has been charged with mischief after officials found a mock improvised explosive device inside his suitcase at Torontos main airport, police said Thursday. Peel Regional Police Constable Harinder Sohi said its not terrorist related. Police identified the man as Joseph Galaska but didnt identify where in the U.S. he is from. Constable Mark Fischer said officials are investigating the possible motivation behind the incident, such as a trial run, but Fischer said the mans age makes him believe that is not the case. The gentleman was arrested and has been charged with mischief and will appear for a bail hearing, Fischer said. Russia 4 gunmen hunted, shot dead by police MOSCOW Police in southern Russia on Thursday hunted down and killed four suspects following the killing of two police officers. The Investigative Committee said the National Guard in the city of Astrakhan found the suspects, who refused to surrender and fired back at officers. In the ensuing gunbattle early Thursday, all four gunmen were killed and three National Guard officers were wounded. The shootout followed Tuesdays attack, in which two of the alleged suspects shot two traffic police officers dead at point-blank range and seized their weapons. The Islamic State group claimed Thursday it was responsible for both the Tuesday attack and the Thursday gunbattle. Three are arrested in subway bombing case ST. PETERSBURG Russian security agents on Thursday arrested three people suspected of links to a suicide bomber accused of attacking the citys subway and deactivated an explosive device in the apartment where the suspects lived. The Investigative Committee said the suspects are residents of the former Soviet Central Asia region like the bomber, 22-year-old Akbarzhon Dzhalilov, a native of Kyrgyzstan. Dzhalilov blew himself up on a busy subway line Monday, killing himself and 13 others and wounding more than 50 people. Opposition leader to keep campaigning MOSCOW Alexei Navalnys campaign chief says Russias popular opposition leader will keep campaigning for authorities to cancel an election ban. Navalny, who organized nationwide anti-corruption protests last month, plans to run against Russian President Vladimir Putin in the 2018 election. Yet Navalnys February conviction in a retrial of a fraud case formally barred him from running for president. The March anti-corruption protests that rocked Russias 11 time zones were stunning for Putins authoritarian rule. The rallies, the largest in years and previously contained to the countrys cosmopolitan cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg, spilled over to provincial towns that rarely see political protests. 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Anthony Bourdain says, Explore Parts Unknown is the next step, a logical step, and a deeply enjoyable one for me in collaboration with CNN and Roads & Kingdoms. Im not a journalist, and never claimed to be one. Im an essayist and storyteller. But the people at Roads & Kingdoms ARE journalistsand very good ones. This venture serves my insatiable curiosity and gives us the opportunity to go further off the beaten path, tell more stories, enrich and elaborate on existing ones, and go deeper into the locations that I travel to for the TV series. Explore Parts Unknown is an editorial partnership between CNN and Roads & Kingdoms an independent journal of food, politics, travel and culture based in New York and Barcelona. Together, we have built a digital universe for the Bourdain super-fan, enabling you to learn what Tony knows, go where he went, eat what he ate, and drink what he drank. Born from Bourdains contagious passion for culture, food, travel and adventure, Explore Parts Unknown highlights our shared obsessions: authentic food, culture, people, travel; continuing the conversations Tony starts beyond the TV screen. The site will launch with destinations like Hanoi, Las Vegas, Koreatown (LA), Manila, Buenos Aires, London, Punjab, Montana, The Greek Islands, Senegal, Madagascar, Istanbul, New Jersey, Colombia and South Korea. New destinations will roll out weekly with original content. The site will include digital features like: Exclusive Videos: The site will launch with a 7-episode digital series called Catalunya: The Return featuring Bourdains road trip across Spain. Bourdains Field Notes: First person notes from Bourdains travels. The Perfect Day: Timestamped blueprints for a perfect 12 hours in a given destination, including notes on restaurants, bars and random detours. Hotel Bar Diaries: Short personal, voice-heavy dispatches from hotel bars around the world. Recipes: Recipes of dishes from episodes from Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown with accompanying articles that gives context to the dish, its origins and importance. Destination Fact Sheets: Fact sheets that allow you to Travel like Bourdain with local lingo, travel tips, and restaurant recommendations. www.explorepartsunknown.com Help India! By Siddhant Mohan, TwoCircles.net Over the past few years, a number of political forums and parties have experimented with uniting Dalits and Muslims, given their shared history of being Indias marginalised and downtrodden communities. This begs an important question: did Dalit-Muslim unity ever materialise outside parliamentary politics and if yes, then when? Support TwoCircles The answer lies in the 1850s when the first chapter of Dalit-Muslim unity was written by Jyotiba and Savitribai Phule along with Fatima Sheikh, who took charge of spreading education among the downtrodden communities. While Jyotiba and Savitribai Phule started teaching women and those from the oppressed castes, they were threatened by the locals. Their families were targeted too and were given the choice of either stopping all their activities or leaving their home. They obviously chose the latter. Neither their caste nor their family and community members stood for what they fought for. Abandoned by everyone around, the duo searched for shelter to live in and to fulfill their educational dreams for the oppressed section of the society. During their search, they came across a Muslim man Usman Sheikh, who was living in Ganj Peth of Pune (then known as Poona). Usman Sheikh offered his home to the Phule couple and agreed to run a school in the premises. In 1848, a school was opened in the house of Usman Sheikh and her sister Fatima Shiekh. It was no surprise that almost everyone from the upper caste of Poona was against the practices of Jyotiba and Savitribai, and there were even attempts to murder Jyotiba. It was Fatima Sheikh who helped and supported their cause in every possible manner. Fatima Sheikh started teaching in the same school with Savitribai Phule. Savitribai and Fatima were accompanied by Saguna Bai, who later became another leader in the education movement. Usman Sheikh, the brother of Fatima Sheikh, was also inspired by the movement of Jyotiba and Savitribai Phule. According to archives from that period, it was Usman Sheikh who encouraged her sister Fatima to spread the education in the society. When Fatima and Savitribai started going to schools which were established by Jyotiba, people from upper caste community used to harass them and abuse them. They were stone pelted and sometimes cow dung was thrown at them as it was unimaginable for the upper-caste community to see lower castes of the society getting educated. Fatima and Savitribai didnt pay attention to these hindrances and continued their work. The journey was even tougher for Fatima Sheikh, as she was opposed by both the Hindu as well as Muslim community both for what she was doing. However, as we now know, she never gave up and continued to go door to door, encouraging families and parents especially those from the Muslim community. As several writings say, Fatima used to spent hours counselling parents who did not wish to send their girls to schools. Fatima Sheikh is now widely regarded as the first Muslim woman teacher of the 19th century and it is a badge which Indian Muslim community wears with pride. Although there isnt much literature available over the lives and works of Fatima Sheikh, there have been attempts made by the government to acknowledge her role. In 2014, Fatima Sheikhs brief profile was included in the school Urdu textbooks of Bal Bharati Maharashtra State Bureau along with the likes of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, Zakir Hussain, Abul Kalam Azad. Although some from the Maratha community objected to the same, it goes without saying that she was a Marathi too, as she was born in the region and propagated the idea of education in the same region. On the occasion of Dalit history month being celebrated April, an internet archive Dalit History writes about Fatima Sheikh The friendship between Fatima and Savitri was one of respect, compassion and synergy. Throughout their time together, Savitri would often mention her in her letters to Jyotirao with affection and concern. Their friendship lives today in the form of the work they have done in creating both foundation will and actual structures for uplifting of the marginalized. Relationships between Muslims, Dalits, Adivasis and Bahujans have a long history of struggle against Brahminical oppression that is often erased or misrepresented by todays political agendas. It remains undeniable that the association of Savitribai, Jyotirao, Fatima and the Dalits, Adivasis and Bahujan they worked with, represents a line of solidarity continuing into the contemporary call for Unity of The Oppressed. A call that seeks to merge the struggles of SC/ST/OBC and Religious Minorities. Help India! By Irony of India BJP under Modi government had pushed its core Hindutva agenda to the limits, the veteran LK Advanis main agenda of Ram Mandir was not enough for NDA II, Cow politics was raised vehemently and cow vigilantes groups were backed by BJP and grew since as early as 2009. The then Gujarat Chief minister Narendra Modi not only talked about cow protection but he went further ahead and started campaign against Buffalo Meat (Pink Revolution) . MS Golwalkar, the RSS chief between 1940 and 1973, was the brain behind the cow protection movement in the 1960s. The government set up a committee to consider the demand of a nationwide ban on cow slaughter. The committee lasted twelve years. In that period, Golwalkar became friends with one of the committee members, Verghese Kurien, known as the Milkman of India. Support TwoCircles Kurien opposed the ban on cow slaughter for economic reasons the dairy business needs to get rid of old and unhealthy cows. In his autobiography, Kurien revealed Golwalkars real reason for the cow protection movement. Kurien quoted Golwakar as saying he started the cow protection movement only to embarrass the government. He went around India collecting a million signatures for his petition, and saw in a village in UP a woman who went from house to house in the scorching heat to get more signatures. Kurien quotes Golwalkar, This is when I realized that the woman was actually doing it for her cow, which was her bread and butter, and I realized how much potential the cow has I saw that the cow has potential to unify the country she symbolizes the culture of Bharat you agree with me to ban cow slaughter on this committee and I promise you, five years from that date, I will have united the country. What Im trying to tell you is that Im not a fool, Im not a fanatic. Im just cold-blooded about this. I want to use the cow to bring out our Indianness, So please cooperate with me on this. How few Gau Rakshaks turn vigilantes into extortion business Critics accuse these vigilante groups of targeting people, mostly from the Muslim community. Its a business, says Noor Mohammad, a social activist who works with Meo-Muslims in Rajasthans Mewat region, a hotbed of cow smuggling and slaughter. The gau rakshaks want money. If you pay them, they let you go. Otherwise they snatch it from you and lodge police complaint against you for cow smuggling, he says. Rajasthans crime statistics appear to buttress Mohammads claim. In 2015, police closed 73 cases registered under the Rajasthan Bovine Animal (Prohibition of Slaughter and Regulation of Temporary Migration or Export) Act, 1995, after they were found to be fake. In 2016, 85 such cases were closed and until February this year, five have been dropped. Nearly 11 months after a mob lynched Mohammed Akhlaq in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh on suspicion of having killed a cow, Prime Minister Narendra Modi , finally broken his silence on the violence that gau rakshaks cow protectors have unleashed in different parts of the country on 6th August 2016. I feel really angry at the way some people have opened shops in the name of cow protection. I have seen that some people commit anti-social activities through the night, but act as cow protectors by day, the prime minister told an audience at a town hall style interaction with an invited audience in Delhi It will be found that 70 to 80% are people who commit the kind of bad deeds which society does not accept. To hide their bad activities, they don the mantle of cow protectors, he said. Timeline of BJPs Cow Politics and effects after coming to power March 4 2015: Maharashtra banned beef; anyone found in possession or sale would face five years of jail and a 10,000 fine. While a 1976 law prevented the slaughter of cows in Maharashtra, the new Act banned the slaughter of bulls as well as bullocks. March 16 2015: Haryana passed a stringent bill banning the sale of beef. The law mandated five years of rigorous imprisonment for selling beef same as that in Maharashtra and a fine of up to 50,000. May 30 2015 : Abdul Ghaffar Qureshi, 60, was killed in Birloka , in Khimsar tehsil of Nagaur district, Rajasthan after rumours spread that he had killed 200 cows for a feast. Pictures of carcasses were spread on social media. Young men gathered in the thousands in the fields of Kumhari village and brutally murdered him. August 29 2015: Residents of Chilla village, near east Delhis Mayur Vihar, clashed with four truck drivers night who were reportedly transferring buffaloes to a slaughter house in Gazipur. September 28 2015: A mob lynched Mohammed Akhlaque in Bisada village, Dadri, on allegations of killing a cow and consuming its meat on Eid. October 1 2015: Six students of Sree Kerala Varma College in Thrissur, Kerala, were suspended for organising a beef fest on campus to protest against the Dadri lynching. October 6 2015: A cattle trader in Karnataka had a narrow escape after Bajrang Dal activists attacked him with metal rods on a rumour about a stolen cow. October 9 2015: A mob went on a rampage following rumours that a cow had been slaughtered in Mainpuri district in UP. October 9 2015: A petrol bomb attack on a Srinagar-bound truck left three men two Kashmiris and a policeman battling burn injuries (one of them died later). The truck was set on fire allegedly by rightwing activists in Jammus Udhampur district. October 16 2015: A village mob lynched a man in Sirmaur district of Himachal Pradesh for alleged cattle smuggling. October 19 2015: Hindu hardliners threw black ink at J&K MLA Engineer Rashid in Delhi. He was thrashed earlier for holding a beef party in Srinagar. December 3 2015: Violent clashes broke out in Haryanas Palwal district when villagers stopped a truck allegedly carrying cow meat. January 13 2016: Cow protection group attacked a couple at Khirkiya railway station in Madhya Pradesh over allegations that they were carrying beef. March 18 2016: Two Muslim cattle-traders, including a 15-year-old, were beaten and hanged from a tree in Jharkhands Latehar district. Five suspects, including a member of a local gau raksha vigilante group, were later arrested. April 2 2016: Mustain Abbas was killed, allegedly by Gau Raksha Dal members in Kurukshetra, Haryana while he was transporting a buffalo. The High Court of Punjab and Haryana ordered CBI to probe the murder on May 9. May 6 2016: The Bombay High Court ruled that it will no longer be illegal to consume or keep imported beef but upheld the Maharashtra governments ban on slaughter of cows and bullocks. June 2 2016 : A mob of cow protection activists brutally assaulted alledged cattle smugglers in Rajasthans Pratapgarh, they took pictures of his naked body after he fell unconscious from brutality. June 10 2016: Two beef transporters were beaten up and force-fed cow dung allegedly by the Gurgaon Gau Raksha Dal in Haryana. July 10 2016: Bajrang Dal members brutally attacked a Dalit family in Koppa in Karnataka, claiming there was beef inside their house. July 11 2016: Seven members of a Dalit family were beaten up by about 35 gau rakshaks for skinning a dead cow in Una, in Gujarats Gir Somnath district. July 26 2016: Two Muslim women were beaten up at Mandsaur railway station in Madhya Pradesh on suspicion of carrying beef. July 30 2016: A mob attacked the house of a Muslim family on suspicion of cow slaughter in UPs Muzaffarnagar district. August 5 2016: Two Dalits thrashed for refusing to remove dead bodies of cows in Lucknow. The Dalit workers were on protest against the growing attacks on community since Una, Gujarat attack. August 18 2016 : BJP worker Praveen Poojary Killed by Hindu right-wing organisation over cow smuggling suspicion in Udupi, Karnataka. August 24 2016 : In Mewat, Haryana 10 members of Gau Raksha killed a Muslim couple in their 30s, Rasheedan and Ibrahim, Two other members of their family, Ayesha and Jafruddin, were seriously injured, A 21-year-old woman and 16-year-old girl from the family were gang-raped for allegedly eating beef. September 18 2016 : Mohammad Ayub Mev 25-year-old was thrashed brutally by cow vigilantes after his pick up truck carrying bullock and calf met with an accident in which the calf died. He later died in hospital due to critical injuries. March 18 2017 : Hotel Hayat Rabbani in Jaipur sealed by Nagar Nigam after one Kamala Didi of Gau Raksha Dal accused they were feeding beef to cows and organizing beef party in Hotel , they thrashed Qasim ,19 year old helper who was later arrested by Police. March 22 2017 : Several Meat shops torched and vandalised by cow vigilantes group in Hathras District of U.P. right after BJP coming into power . March 24 2017 : 12 Slaughterhouses sealed alleging to be without permit across Uttar Pradesh after Yogi Adityanath took the charge as Chief Minister of UP. April 1 2017 : Chhattisgarhs Chief Minister Raman Singh claimed will hang those who kill cows in his state. April 4 2017 : 55 years old Dairy Farmer Pehlu Khan died in Alwar, Rajasthan after brutally beaten by cow vigilantes belonging to Hindu Right Wing organisations along with 5 other companions. He was transporting milch cows bought from Jaipur Animal fair to his home town Mewat District in Haryana. The content was originally published here Help India! TCN News Delhi : Fatima Nafees, mother of missing JNU student Najeeb Ahmed, has sent legal notices to Times of India (TOI) and other prominent electronic news media outlets for falsely reporting that her son, Najeeb Ahmed, has ISIS links, or was looking for ways to join ISIS. Support TwoCircles The issue pertains to a baseless front page report by TOI in its national edition dated March 21, 2017 that made various damaging assertions regarding Najeeb Ahmeds Google and YouTube search history all of which were categorically refuted by the Delhi Police on the same day, that is March 21, 2017. On March 22, 2017, Fatima Nafees held a press conference in Delhi asking the media outlets which reproduced this news to apologize unconditionally. She slammed TOI for defaming her familys reputation with such deliberate and malicious reportage. In the press conference, Ms. Fatima Nafees made some observations on the role of the media. She said that while the job of the media was to help me find my son by raising awareness about the issue, they are, instead, spreading false propaganda. She appealed to the media to withdraw the story and apologize. However, there was no response from TOI. On March 22, 2017 itself, the DCP of Delhi Police wrote a rejoinder in TOI, which was published on page 5 of its Delhi edition in a small box. In the rejoinder, the Delhi Police clearly said that the investigating authority that is probing Najeebs disappearance never even sought Najeebs search history from Google, and that there is no basis to the reports that he viewed content related to ISIS!. Despite all this, TOI did not apologized for the fake story, nor has any action been taken against the reporter who planted the fake story. The fake story continues to be on the TOI website and is being widely shared by BJP and RSS leaders across social media platforms. The story itself does not even contain a note that the story is false and unfounded. A petition asking the TOI to apologize on the front page has recorded more than 7,500 signatures Fatima Nafees, through her counsel, Vrinda Grover has now sent legal notices to Times of India, Times Now, Zee News and Delhi Aajtak asking them to: Apologize for the damaging and defamatory reportage for one week, prominently through their channels. The legal notice to TOI demands that an apology be carried on the front page for seven continuous days. Retract the story and ensure that it is taken down from all of their portals, social media accounts, websites, etc. Issue one tweet every two hours for seven days from Twitter accounts, apologizing for the false story and admitting that it was baseless. If the media houses fail to take these corrective measures, Fatima Nafees will initiate criminal proceedings against them. Mohit Pandey, JNUSU President,said, We reiterates these demands, we also demand that proper action be taken against the journalist, Rajshekhar Jha who planted the fake news. We also demand that TOI should monetarily compensate the poor family which has been fighting the case against the disappearance of their son, without any monetary support from any quarter. Help India! By Siddhant Mohan, TwoCircles.net Lucknow: All India Shia Personal Law Board(AISPLB) has passed a Fatwa against cow slaughter and beef eating, a move to ban triple talaq practice and early resolution of Ayodhya dispute. Support TwoCircles AISPLB issued a Fatwa banning the cow slaughter in the country during its executive committee meeting in Lucknow. The Fatwa came after seeking a clarification from Ayatollah Sheikh Basheer Hussain Najafi, a top Shia cleric from Iraq. The Fatwa said that communal tensions arise often in the country over cow slaughter. Seventy-five-year-old Hussain Najafi is one of the five Grand Ayatollahs in Iraq and is entitled to issue a fatwa for the community members. Talking with TwoCircles.net, the spokesperson of AISPLB Maulana Yasoob Abbas said that the fatwa is issued after all the possible consultation with the higher bodies. He said, to bring the harmony and peace with the Hindu community, Muslims of India have to give up beef. For us (Shias), the horse is a pious animal. If anyone cuts the horse, the community will run after them for revenge. Same is with cows, Hindu brethren feel same for this figure. Why cant we just ban few things to resolve the conflict? he added. When asked if the AISPLB consult with other Islamic bodies of India, Maulana Abbas said, We had a talk with All India Muslim Personal Law Board(AIMPLB) and they have agreed to extend their support to this matter. However, when Twocircles.net called AIMPLB over the same issue. Zafaryab Jilani, a member of Muslim Personal Law Board, said that the AIMPLB holds or endorses no such fatwa. Zafaryab Jilani said, AIMPLB deals with the personal law and cow slaughtering or beef consumption does not come under personal law. Lynching or killing are serious events but they do not come under the personal law. Moreover, he said, If I talk about the Triple Talaq, everyone knows what our view is. Shia body should not talk about Triple Talaq because Triple Talaq is not in practice among Shia Muslims. AIMPLB doesnt endorse demands of AISPLB. Over the Triple Talaq, Abbas from AISPLB said, We are moving an application in the SC in next couple of days and will request the court to make us a party. Maulana Abbas said that he wants such a strong law against triple talaq that a man thinks thrice before divorcing his wife. The fatwa from the Shia body came a day after when Dewan of Dargah Ajmer Sharif called for a constitutional ban over triple talaq and asked Muslim community to give up on beef. AUBURN An Auburn man was sentenced to prison Thursday for attacking and robbing a man in Cayuga County. Junnell Copes, 30, of 110 Fitch Ave., was arrested in August 2016 after a robbery near Auburn Correctional Facility. According to the Auburn Police Department, three people were walking near State and Wall streets at around 2:30 a.m. Aug. 20 when Copes and co-defendant Vann MackNail got out of a car and assaulted them. Police said a corrections officer at ACF called 911 after witnessing the robbery from a guard tower. APD officers then found one of the victims unconscious at 140 State St. The other two victims suffered minor injuries, but did not require hospitalization. Copes and MackNail were arrested soon afterward when officers found the victim's wallet inside their vehicle during a traffic stop, APD said. Both were charged with second-degree robbery and fourth-degree criminal possession of stolen property. In February, Copes pleaded guilty to possessing stolen property, a class E felony. And on Thursday, Judge Thomas Leone sentenced him to 1 1/2 to three years in prison. "This defendant has a long history of violence," Cayuga County District Attorney Jon Budelmann said, noting that Copes was previously convicted of second- and third-degree robbery in 2004. In addition to time in prison, Copes was ordered to pay more than $250 in restitution to cover the victim's medical bills. Leone also issued orders of protection for the three victims and the corrections officer who witnessed the attack. MackNail, 32, of 14 James St. Apt. 2, Auburn, is scheduled to be sentenced April 13. Also in court: An Auburn man has denied possessing and selling drugs in Cayuga County. Brandon Tape, 28, of 5 Parsons St., was arraigned on a sealed indictment Thursday in Cayuga County Court. Tape pleaded not guilty to six felonies: three counts of criminal possession of a controlled substance and three counts of criminal sale of a controlled substance. Tape has also been charged with first-degree criminal contempt, second- and third- degree criminal possession of a weapon, third-degree aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle, forcible touching and third-degree assault in a separate incident. According to the Auburn Police Department, Tape was arrested during a traffic stop in February after he assaulted a 24-year-old woman for refusing his sexual advances. During the traffic stop, officers allegedly found a loaded .38 caliber handgun in his pocket. Tape was arraigned on that incident in Auburn City Court and remanded to Cayuga County on $5,000 cash, $10,000 bond. However, on Thursday, Judge Leone increased Tape's bail to $30,000 cash, $60,000 bond due to the seriousness of the charges. Tape could face up to 27 years in prison if convicted of possessing and selling drugs. He is scheduled to be back in court on those charges June 7. A Baldwinsville woman was sentenced to prison Thursday for burglarizing three homes in Cayuga County. Ashley Tremaine, 27, of 255 Cedar Court, was one of four people charged with committing more than a dozen residential burglaries in Cayuga and Onondaga counties. Tremaine pleaded guilty in January to three counts of second-degree burglary in Cayuga County Court. During her plea, she admitted to acting as a lookout for her co-defendant Steven Clark while he broke into three homes last summer. On Thursday, Tremaine was sentenced to five years in prison and 2 1/2 years post-release supervision. That will run concurrent to any sentences she receives in Onondaga County. A Union Springs woman admitted possessing heroin in her home while a 7-year-old and 15-year-old were present. Heather Farrell, 40, of 1281 Route 326, pleaded guilty Thursday to one count of third-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance a class B felony and endangering the welfare of a child, a misdemeanor. According to Budelmann, Farrell was arrested Jan. 15 for selling heroin to a person who suffered a near-fatal overdose the night before. Farrell's husband, John Farrell, 45, was also charged with two counts of endangering the welfare of a child in connection with the case. During her plea, Farrell admitted there was at least one child present in the home where she had around a dozen bags of heroin that she intended to sell. Farrell could face up to nine years in prison. However, Leone agreed to sentence her to two years in prison plus one year post-release supervision with a shock camp order. Sentencing has been scheduled for June 1. Help India! By Siddhant Mohan, TwoCircles.net Maharajganj/ Gorakhpur: Members of the Hindu Yuva Vahini (HYV), a Hindu extremist organisation led by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, stopped a religious meeting in a Church in Maharajganj district of Uttar Pradesh. The HYV were aided by the local police in their attempts to stop the meet, which was attended by 9 US nationals. Support TwoCircles On Friday morning, a group of around 150 people, including 9 US nationals from the Christian community gathered at a church in Dadhauli village, which comes under Kothibhar police station of Maharajganj district. While the group was praying, some members of Hindu Yuva Vahini reached the place and saw US nationals in the prayer meeting. Members of Hindu Yuva Vahini reached Kothibhar police station, alleging that the priest and US nationals were involved in a religious conversion in the church premises. Anand Kumar Gupta, SHO Kothibhar station, accompanied them to the church and stopped the prayer. Police found no such practice was being carried out. But Police did check the passports and Visas of every US national and let them go after finding everything was fine and proper. While talking with TwoCircles.net, Anand Kumar Gupta said, They (HYV activists) came to us with the complaint that US nationals were carrying out the religious conversion in the church. We responded to the complaint and found no such thing was happening on the ground. But we did check their papers. Witnesses report that the whole fiasco lasted for more than five hours. Police, along with the Local intelligence unit checked and questioned US nationals. While the on-site investigation was still on, Hindu Yuva Vahini member kept insisting about filing a case against and the arrest of Church priest Yuhanna Adam. The situation got serious after Police let the US nationals leave the place. HYV activists created a chaos and questioned the police why they let them go. Angry members of HYV, which included Krishnanandan Puri aka Pappu Puri, Ganesh Kharwar, Manish Sharma and Sheshmani Yadav and others, intensified their demand to arrest the Church priest Yuhanna Adam. However, the police declined all of their demands. SHO Anand Gupta informed that they were demanding the arrest of priest and US nationals and to investigate the matter thoroughly. But investigating a simple prayer meeting would mean creating a hindrance in the religious freedom of the individual, added Gupta. A source also informed that police intervention was necessary as members of HYV had vandalised a church and beaten people in Belwa village a few weeks ago. A person related to the local church, who was present at the meeting on Friday morning, said on the condition of anonymity, We were just praying there. No such conversion was being carried out but goons came and tried to disrupt a peaceful event with the help of the police. Help India! New Delhi, (IANS): Taking suo motu cognizance of the lynching of a Muslim man by cow vigilantes in Alwar district of Rajasthan last week, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) on Friday issued notice to the Rajasthan government demanding a detailed action report. The Commission has issued a notice to the Chief Secretary, Rajasthan calling for a detailed report in the matter along with action taken against the culprits, NHRC said in a statement. Support TwoCircles Calling the incident a serious case of human rights violation, NHRC said: Self-proclaimed volunteers creating an atmosphere of fear in society by taking law in their hands are required to be dealt with strictly as per law. The state has a responsibility to remain vigilant to prevent such activities, it added. The commission also issued a notice to the Union Home Secretary, calling for a response on what steps have been taken or proposed to be taken by the Centre to deal with such incidents in the country. The response is expected within four weeks. The commission observed that this incident is not the first of its kind and in a similar incident, four Dalit boys, possessing beef, were severely beaten up in the Gir Somnath district of Gujarat in July, 2016. The lynching incident occurred on Saturday when a group of self-styled cow vigilantes attacked dairy farmer Pehlu Khan in Behror area of Alwar. Khan, hailing from Haryana, died on Monday night in hospital. He was travelling in a truck with two cows and two calves when the attackers accused him of illegally smuggling cows for slaughter. However, his family said he had bought the animals for his small dairy business. Chinese President Xi Jinping has visited Mar-a-Lago to talk shop with billionaire US President Donald Trump at his resort. Trump said that he and Xi have developed a friendship that will lead to a very, very great relationship with China, to which Xi politely clapped. However, one expert has spoken out to the contrary of this friendship. Anti-Trump University of Sydney academic made the claims Ashley Townshend, a University of Sydney academic who recently wrote an exposing report about Trumps plans for Asian territories, says the US President is not quite as friendly with China as he publicly claims to be. The Trump administration is deeply distrustful of China, she says. Townshend claims that Trump and his White House see China as a strategic competitor" that requires input from the US under the guise of a "friendship," but it's really a backhanded attempt to influence a superpower that could be greater than theirs, ensuring that America comes out on top either way. She also says that Trumps team believe that China is taking advantage of the United States, adding that these beliefs run deep in the administration among senior White House officials. These are bold claims, but not unbelievable. The internet rules China as well apparently According to China's people of the internet, Xi has gotten more out of the summit at Mar-a-Lago than Trump has (which isn't surprising, considering Trump says he's gotten "absolutely nothing" out of it), because apparently the Internet users carry the most weight in a Communist nation as well as in our western democracies. One user of Weibo (which is kind of China's version of Twitter) posted that he could see Trump's "lips quivering" as he awaited Xi's arrival, showing how "nervous" he was for the summit. Over the course of yesterday and today, Chinese President Xi Jinping has been staying at US President Donald Trumps Florida resort to discuss everything from trade to North Korea. However, the recent cataclysmic chemical attack on a town in Syria threatens to overshadow their discussions, as Trump has ordered 60 missiles to be launched at Syria, a move Xi will surely disapprove of (although UN resolution-opposing China hasnt yet publicly responded to the attack). Without a response from China, we have to look to foreign policy experts If China arent going to respond to the Syria attack, we have no choice but to look to experts in Chinese foreign policy to predict their thoughts on it for us. Bonnie Glaser is an expert on such a topic, and she says that the fact that Trump ordered the strike while Xi was in the United States visiting him is quite telling. The way Glaser sees it, none of this is planned. However, it is her opinion that this missile strike is typical Trump behaviour, and it sends a signal to Xi Jinping, and by extension, all of China, that this is a President that means business. She believes this strike is a prime example of how Trump is going to act as President: very decisively. Trump isnt going to sit around and spend an enormous amount of time weighing through things. She believes that because of this, China will view him with respect. Donald Trump once called Assad a stable ruler and spoke out strongly against military involvement in Syrias civil war. During the presidential campaign, he said that Hilary Clinton would increase US role in Syria and start WWIII. For several years he advocated against any US action in Syria and as recent as a day ago, Sen. John McCain criticised Trumps policy of non-intervention calling it "another disgraceful chapter in American history." This was in response to the president's decision to stop prioritising the ending of the Syrian civil war. The Policy Shift News reports and graphic images of men women and children killed and suffering as a result of a chemical attack allegedly carried out by Bashar Assads regime has led President Trump to change his views on Syria. He had hinted at action against Syria calling the chemical attack horrible and a disgrace to humanity. He expressed the view that something should be done even though he didnt specifically mention what action would be taken. Strike on Syria Following two days of deliberations, president Trump chooses military strikes on Syria. He authorised the military to launch some 50 cruise missiles at the Shayrat Air Base in Syria. Speaking from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Thursday night, Trump said that the strike was vital national security interest and called on other nations to join the US to stop the bloodshed and slaughter in Syria. According to a report in the Washington Post, the strikes were in retaliation to the chemical weapon attack in Syria. The Assad regime has denied any involvement in the chemical attack What to expect after the strikes The strike on Syria is a unilateral one and it is unknown at this time whether the US has any legal justification for attacking an independent country, But it is sure to cause some rift with Russia and Putin who is a strong supporter of the Assad Regime. What will Russia do? Trump was strongly against any Syrian intervention and even Syrian refugees are not welcome in Trumps America. Will this action strain the relationship between Putin and Trump? The strike could also lead to Syrian retaliation on US Targets in Syria. The latest results of the Strike Reports from the US military suggest that the missile strikes caused severe damage to Syria's support infrastructure and aircraft. The Syrian State TV has also reported what they described as "American aggression" using a number of missiles to target Syria. Twitter is suing the Trump organisation after it squeezed the social media giant to unmask the personality of an unknown anti-Trump account. The claim, documented in government court in the Northern District of California, cases the U.S. Bureau of Homeland Security, U.S. Traditions and Border Protection (CBP), Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly and CBP acting chief Kevin McAleenan in March requested Twitter to uncover the individual or individuals behind the record @ALT_USCIS. USCIS is the truncation for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, which has an official Twitter account at @USCIS. The @ALT_USCIS account, which surfaced in January on Twitter, is condemning of the Trump organisation. Twitter vs the government Twitter lawyers portrayed it as an "alternative" account that contradicts government activities and said the posters appear to view and depend on the preservation of their anonymity as crucial to their ability to express information and ideas that are contrary to the policies and objectives of the Administration and its agencies. Government specialists have been setting up such Twitter accounts to discharge data and scrutinise government organisations since Trump was inaugurated. In mid-March, CBP requested Twitter to deliver usernames, account logins, telephone numbers, street numbers and IP addresses related to the @ALT_USCIS account, as indicated by the suit. In any case, the demand constitutes an "unlawful" utilisation of government powers and undermines the privilege to free speech of Twitter users, the suit said. Twitter declined further remarks past the 32-page claim. Throughout Trumps campaign Trump every now and again debilitated lawful activity against productions and commentators, including the New York Times, which distributed some of his tax returns, and a few women who accused him of sexual assault. None of those claims materialised, however, he has kept on pursuing a logical war against the free press, calling them an enemy of the people. Trump has seemed, by all accounts, to be especially delicate to suggested feedback on Twitter or from inside the legislature. After a Twitter account for the National Parks Service retweeted a post that ominously analysed the extent of the group at Trump's inauguration with the turnout for Barack Obama, Trump reportedly called the National Park Chief to complain. The National Weather Service in Buffalo has issued a * Flood Warning for... Cayuga County including the Seneca River and Cross Lake in central New York... * Until noon EDT Saturday. * At 1157 AM EDT, the USGS reporting gauge on the Seneca River near the Route 38 bridge in Port Byron has reached 80.02 feet with a slow rise. This is a result of recent heavy rainfall. Minor flooding impacts are occurring in yards and property along the river with flooding also likely along the river near the Route 34 bridge and low lying areas adjacent to Cross Lake. River levels may continue to rise some before slowly falling. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... Turn around, don`t drown when encountering flooded roads. Most flood deaths occur in vehicles. A Flood Warning means that flooding is imminent or occurring. All interested parties should take necessary precautions immediately. On Monday, Republicans in the House of Representatives finally released their long-awaited replacement to the affordable care act, or "Obamacare." The bill quickly came under fire from Democrats, with even some Republicans and conservative news pundits speaking out. Fox News on GOP After eight years in the White House, Barack Obama might be best remembered for changing the entire American health care system. With Obamacare in place, the uninsured rate has dropped to new lows, despite push back from critics. While far from perfect, the Affordable Care Act has helped millions of Americans gain much-needed health insurance for the first time. Republicans have vowed to replace the signature piece of legislation, which Donald Trump included as one of his major campaign talking points. With Trump in office for less than six weeks, his promise turned into action as the GOP rolled out the America Health Care Act. The roll-out received heavy criticism, which was on display during a March 7 segment on Fox News. Joining Fox News host Shepard Smith was Republican Rep. Buddy Carter, as the two spared over the proposed health care law. Carter did his best to defend the timing of bill's release, but Smith hit back at the GOP for attempting to rush it to the House floor. "It's the CBO's job as a nonpartisan group to look at a bill that Congress is trying to pass, work through it, figure out what it's going to cost, and report back," the Fox News host said. Familiar battle lines are being drawn as the GOP's Obamacare replacement plan encounters headwinds in party ranks https://t.co/5iV6no94X1 pic.twitter.com/pJAeS5Jo1c CNN (@CNN) March 8, 2017 "You're pushing this through," Shepard Smith continued, accusing Republicans of attempting to push the bill into law without even knowing how many people will lose coverage. Buddy Carter attempted to highlight how important it was to revamp the health care system, but Smith quickly asked, "You can't wait one week for the Congressional Budget Office to score this?" The conversation continued, with Smith continuing to ask how many Americans will lose coverage, but Carter was not able to give him a straight answer. Moving forward In addition to Shepard Smith's criticism, Democrats came out hard against the Republican alternative, predicting that the implementation of the bill could be devastating to the American people. Republican Sen. Rand Paul even voiced his opposition, though his criticism came from the political right, where the senator labeled the bill "Obamacare light." Rumors swirled throughout the day Thursday that President Trump's Executive was considering military action against Syria, in response to the use of chemical weapons by Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. During Thursday evening prime time television broadcasts, NBC's Lester Holt broke into regular broadcasting to report that missile strikes had, in fact, begun by the U.S. military. At least 50 cruise missiles directed toward Syrian airbase According to NBC's breaking news, and repeated on the network's social media accounts, the U.S. military launched a targeted missile attack on a Syrian airfield in the country's largest province of Homs. It is believed that the Ash Sha'irat airbase was the origin of the chemical attack on civilians earlier this week. That chemical attack is believed to have killed at least 100 people, with at least 23 of the victims being children. Governments around the world have been discussing how to react to the attack since Tuesday, as the use, production, or storage of chemical weapons is illegal under the United Nations' Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). While there is no confirmation of casualties in the missile strike, officials have told NBC that aircraft and infrastructure on the base were the intended targets, not people. BREAKING: The U.S. has launched a missile strike on a Syrian military airfield where the gas attack is believed to have originated NBC News (@NBCNews) April 7, 2017 No word from President, Trump at Mar-a-Lago Earlier on Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was clear in his assessment of Al-Assad and the Syrian government's alleged use of illegal sarin gas. Saying this is the third use of chemical weaponry by the Al-Assad government over the course of the last month, Tillerson told reporters, "It is clear that this is how Bashar Al-Assad operates: with brutal, unabashed barbarism." As the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons continued to look into Tuesday's attack for those responsible, it would seem that the evidence gathered by Tillerson has been enough to sway Trump's previously held views on military action against Syria. In 2013, the President tweeted against former-President Obama's plans for a military strike against Al-Assad after the Syrian government allegedly used chemical gases against civilians in a suburb of Damascus: AGAIN, TO OUR VERY FOOLISH LEADER, DO NOT ATTACK SYRIA - IF YOU DO MANY VERY BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN & FROM THAT FIGHT THE U.S. GETS NOTHING! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 5, 2013 As of 10 p.m. Eastern time, Trump has yet to issue a statement in regard to Thursday's military action. The President and members of his inner circle traveled to his Florida resort, Mar-a-Largo earlier today in order to meet with President Xi of China. On Thursday night the United States carried out a swift and confident #missile strike in Syria, a response to the chemical weapons attack that took place earlier in the week, killing dozens of civilians, many of them babies and children. President Trump's rapid, risky and seemingly instinctive response to the Syrian chemical weapons attack has upended years of US diplomacy doctrine that aims to keep America out of messy international conflicts. An emotional response The way in which President Trump responded, from the moments the #Syrian attack occurred, spoke of a man with feeling but also lack of clarity between foreign policy and personal sentiment. This was a man was understandably emotionally effected by the images of young children and babies dying and gasping beneath the cruel toll of chemical weapons. But critics pointed out on Thursday that this man has the power of the world's largest military behind him. He told reporters in the #White House on Wednesday that the seeing the children being attacked had a big affect on him, and he repeated the phrase "big impact". The next day when he spoke to the press at his Mar-a-Lago estate his language became more impartial and more colored. He used words like 'choked', 'slow and brutal death'. He even talked of 'beautiful babies' that were 'cruelly murdered' in the horrible and barbaric assault. "No child of God should ever suffer such horror," the affected President Trump said finally. The strikes carried out by Tomahawks Fifty-nine #Tomahawk cruise missiles struck the Al Shayrat airfield in #Syria according to a senior military official who was briefed on the attack. The United States aimed the flying missile toward Syrian fighter jets and other equipment and structures within Assad's military, but no chemical weapons were aimed for. The United States also made sure to brief Russia on the event through a special established cable communication line, called the deconfliction channel, so that no Russian personnel or planes were hit. Trump speaks to the nation Trump announced to the nation on Thursday night that he had ordered a targeted military attack on the air base in #Syria from where the Syrian chemical attack originated. He spoke to the press from his residence at Mar-a-Lago in Florida where he was meeting the Chinese President Xi Jinping. It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. The Pentagon, in alerting #Russian military personnel to the attack minutes before it happened, understood that the Russians would alert the Assad regime. This would have given the Syrians a chance to remove some of their planes and equipment. The swiftness with which Trump acted, however, sent out a clear and confident message to #Assad: that his use of chemical weapons against the people of Syria would not be tolerated by the international community. Also, if Assad continues to use chemical weapons then the United States of America will respond with unabashed military force. The American missiles arrived at the Syrian airfield around eight o'clock on Thursday night, EST, and the airstrikes lasted for around five minutes. No Russian planes or facilities were hit by the strikes and the Syrian and Russian operations had had warning to clear out all personnel from the bases too. An American official told the New York Times that the military action that Trump pursued was the more restrained option that he was given when briefed earlier in the day by his leading team of military and international security experts and also by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. The swift action shocked many in the House and Senate and it remains to be seen how Syria will respond. It's not a secret that Donald Trump and the mainstream media are not on the same page and haven't been for some time. After just over two months in the White House, the president is continuing his attack on the media. Trump on MSNBC When Donald Trump first announced his campaign for president, he quickly received backlash from the press after referring to illegal immigrants from Mexico as "murderers" and "rapists." Almost two years since that day, the former host of "The Apprentice" has engaged in a heated war of words with various news outlets and journalists, routinely referring to reporters as "terrible" and "the most dishonest people" he's ever met. The feud between both sides increased following Inauguration Day, which was evident after the White House banned several well-respected news outlets from taking part in a press briefing at the White House earlier this year. In an attempt to turn the tables on the press and deflect from his own scandals, Trump and the right-wing media have been pushing the baseless claim that former Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice took part in the alleged "unmasking" of Trump transition team members. During an interview with the New York Times published on April 6, the president took a shot at Rice, while also making another allegation about a top cable news host. Earlier this week, MSNBC host and NBC News corespondent Andrea Mitchell conducted an interview with Susan Rice, and Donald Trump was not happy about. The president suggested, without evidence, that Rice may have committed a "crime," though no proof was given to back up his statement. At this point, Trump directed his attack onto Mitchell. Trump on Mitchell "Take a look at what's happening," Donald Trump told the New York Times in reference to the Rice unmasking conspiracy. "I mean, first of all her performance was horrible yesterday on television," Trump said, before adding. "even though she was interviewed by Hillary Clinton's P.R. person, Andrea Mitchell." This isn't the first time that Trump has targeted MSNBC and NBC talent, as the commander in chief has made it clear that any reports that put him in a negative light will be criticized by the White House and often labeled as "fake news." Next up While most of the media are looking past the allegations made against Susan Rice, the story appears to have legs in conservative circles. With Donald Trump, Fox News, and others harping and promoting the issue, it's unknown how much longer it will continue to linger in the press. When President Trump said on Wednesday that the #chemical attack in #Syria had "crossed a lot of lines for me" nobody imagined that this seemingly impromptu remark could actually inspire a whole #Syria military strategy, one that looks to be gaining momentum by the hour. Indeed late on Thursday, foreign policy experts said that President Trump may risk appearing to be weak, temperamental and ineffective if he doesnt actually do anything after such a strong reaction. And so now the highest ranking Defense Department officials are brainstorming and tabling options for a #military strike in a heated response to the deadly attack that killed dozens of young, old and unarmed civilians in the small town in the embattled part of northern Syria on Tuesday, as told by officials to the New York Times. Rex Tillerson talks As the war machine is potentially getting ready to roll into action, Secretary of State #Rex Tillerson is also talking about the devastating chemical weapons attack in Syria, sending a solid and angry message to Syria by saying that there would be absolutely no reason for #Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to remain as the leading power of his country. But with all the messaging being communicated on Wednesday, officials said that researching and devising military opportunities for the President didn't actually mean that Donal Trump or his advisors had actually made a decision to escalate US military participation in #Syria. Developing such military operations is one of the core responsibilities of the #Pentagon, and is an activity that the organization carries out even during times of peace. According to high-level US intelligence sources and operatives, the US is confident that the chemical attack was implemented by a #Syrian government aircraft, this as a senior official told the New York Times. The attack, carried out in a part of northern #Syria held by rebels, involved the deadly and illicit nerve agent called Sarin, this as explained by a Turkish Government statement that was broadcast on Thursday to the world. This Turkish statement was the most comprehensive and detailed description of the presumed Assad attack so far, and many of the injured and effected Syrians were in fact taken to Turkey after the offensive. Getting reliable and solid data and research out of the beleaguered country can be difficult since there are so many factions and organizations working - and fighting - within the hot zones. This, and the large scale destruction of infrastructure and other necessities also pose a huge problem for Western leaders trying to get an accurate picture of what is going on. Critics doubt that military action can do much But critics voiced on Thursday their doubts about the Oval Office's growing predilection for another #complicated war. They claim that if attacking Syria was such a fait d'accompli, then #President Obama would have carried out such an operation in his tenure in the White House. These same critics are saying that Trump won't be able to resist the pull of an increased war machine in Syria. #President Trump now has a range of choices if he chooses to escalate the conflict with Syria. And now the rest of the world is watching with baited breath to see what direction the United States of American moves in. At one end would be cruise missile strikes launched from American warships in an effort to retaliate and to destroy Syrian radar equipment which helps them navigate many elements; another option would be more severe actions that fall just short of an outright declaration of war, with days of airstrikes to take out the Assad governments integrated air defense systems which are placed in strategic positions. Hillary Clinton came out of the woods on Thursday to speak at the Women in the World conference in New York. In her first interview since losing the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump, Clinton attempted to rationalize her defeat by blaming everything and everyone from FBI Director James Comey to misogyny to her success as a female. "I think it is fair to say that the outside intervention, the combination of the Comey letter on October 28th-- WikiLeaks, which played a much bigger role than I think many people understand yet-- had the determinative effect," she said to interviewer Nicholas Kristoff of the New York Times on Thursday. Hillary can't make up her mind Kristoff, throwing impartiality and journalistic integrity out the window, opened his interview with Hillary Clinton by saying that he wasn't sure whether he should offer Clinton his condolences or whether she should "offer them to us." When asked by Kristoff what she thought about Comey's decision to investigate Trump's alleged ties with Russia, Clinton replied lightheartedly that it was "one of the high points" of her week. The statement drew raucous applause and laughter from the audience. Clinton then hinted that she is currently working on a book about her failed presidential bid, although she wasn't quite finished trying to make up her mind about who to blame for her stunning upset loss. After pinning the blame on WikiLeaks and James Comey, she then told Kristoff that misogynists were also at fault. "Certainly misogyny played a role. That just had to be admitted," she added. She might have lost because she's just too successful Later, while discussing her unfavorable ratings in public opinion polls, Clinton suggested that the reason why she was so intensely disliked was that she's just too successful, explaining that there's an "inverse relationship" with success and likability when it comes to women. "The more successful men are, the more well-liked they are," said Clinton, "while women are disliked for their success." Although she took blind swings at the several parties she felt were responsible for costing her the White House, she forgot to blame white supremacists, unlike her campaign aides did earlier this year. In January, a post-election discussion at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government turned into a shouting match between Trump and Clinton campaign aides after Hillary Clinton's communication staffer, Jennifer Palmieri, stated, "If providing a platform for white supremacists makes me a brilliant tactician, I am proud to have lost. 40-year-old Nicolai Howard Mork was free on bail of $220,000 from an arrest last December on firearms and explosives charges. Authorities now state the Las Vegas resident was again arrested late on Wednesday on further charges, including terrorism and the possession of weapons of mass destruction. According to Sgt. Jeff Clark, police evacuated several nearby homes before arresting Mork at his Las Vegas home. Clark said the evacuations were a precautionary move due to the nature of the charges. Powerful enough to blow up a military tank Morks lawyer, Nicholas Woolridge, was reportedly shocked at the new charges laid against his client, an MIT theoretical mathematics graduate, by the Nevada court. ABC News reports that when Mork was first arrested the charges involved his possession of illegal explosives, along with a gun with the serial number removed and a silencer. According to his lawyer, the explosives were legally obtained to be utilized during shooting practice as explosive targets. According to Woolridge, devices similar to these are available commercially and not illegal. However, according to Chris Jones, the Las Vegas Deputy Police Chief, it was the way in which Mork was using the materials that was of concern. He said the substances can be used to manufacture dangerous explosive devices. According to a report by the Las Vegas Review-Journal Jacob Villani, the Clark County Chief Deputy District Attorney said the substances were capable of penetrating a military tank. Villani also said Mork was linked to around eight Molotov cocktails which had been discovered near what seemed to be random homes in the neighborhood where he resided. MIT grad faces terrorism, other charges in Las Vegas - An MIT theoretical mathematics graduate has been indicte... https://t.co/bo3fMJgCCX Las Vegas News (@LasVegas_NV_USA) April 5, 2017 Explosions in Las Vegas neighborhoods prompted arrest According to Jones, who is in charge of the LVPDs Homeland Security Unit, the latest investigation was launched after there were a number of explosions Las Vegas neighborhoods close to Mork's residence. Neighbors had complained to the police about property damage. Jones added they found devices that had exploded, and others that were unexploded, and it was clear they were not utilized in a legal manner. Due to the serious nature of the charges, Judge Douglas Herndon stated on Wednesday that it will be necessary for Mork to reveal the sources of any money used to pay his bail which is set at $8 million. Whilst Donald Trump has scorned the recent Syrian attack, #Rex Tillerson has scorned President Assad. He was in a meeting with President Xi Jinping of China and President Trump on Thursday, and he said that there was 'no doubt in our minds' that Assad and his clerics in the government were surely responsible for the chemical attacks that killed many adults and children in northern Syria. After witnessing the devastation of those attacks he said that there was no role or reason for Assad to govern the #Syrian people, who he had left choking and dying in that northern Syrian town. Tillerson also added that President Assads exit would need to eventuate after a due political process, but he also, strikingly, opened up to the possibility of military payback by America as a response to the Assad's government use of chemical weapons. Sean Spicer doesn't expand on the topic Max Tillerson declined to elucidate what such a response might look like, as did Sean Spicer, the #White House press secretary, when discussing what President Trump was contemplating and brainstorming after seeing the shocking images from the Syrian chemical attacks that shocked the world. What we do know is that war could be on the horizon. At least 80 people were killed this week in a horrific chemical weapons attack in Syria, which many have blamed on the government of Bashar al-Assad. After Donald Trump responded by putting partial blame on former President Barack Obama, one host on MSNBC decided to speak out. MSNBC on Trump Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has been known as a killer by critics in the West, which appeared to be on display following the aforementioned chemical attack in the city. The BBC reported on Wednesday that the United Kingdom's foreign secretary, as well as a weapons expert and rebel commander have all presented evidence that points to the government of Syria being behind the attack where at least 20 of the causalities were children. After the Russians appeared to downplay what took place, United States officials pushed back, but Donald Trump's official statement took the time to criticize Barack Obama for not enforcing his so-called "red line." As seen on the April 5 edition of "Morning Joe" on MSNBC, host Joe Scarborough was not pleased. Joe Scarborough Slams Trump Carping Statement on Syrian Holocaust https://t.co/9kVEEZPMZT pic.twitter.com/FPI1XPJedw Mediaite (@Mediaite) April 5, 2017 In the statement released by the White House on Tuesday, Donald Trump said "President Obama said in 2012 that he would establish a 'red line' against the use of chemical weapons and then did nothing." In response, "Morning Joe" co-host Joe Scarborough voiced his thoughts. "His carping at the past president's failures is unbecoming," Scarborough said of Trump. "You're criticizing Barack Obama for what he did not do in 2012?" Scarborough noted, before rhetorically asking, "What are you doing to do five years later...Now you're the President of the United States?" "He (Trump) can't criticize Barack Obama on one hand for turning a blind eye to Assads chemical weapons in 2012 and then allow it to happen in 2017 and do absolutely nothing while this holocaust unfurls before our eyes," Joe Scarborough continued, putting Donald Trump on the spot. The former host of "The Apprentice" is now in a difficult position, as he is expected to come down hard on the Syrian government, however, due to Russia's support of Assad, it's unknown how Trump will play his hand. Sean Spicer said that the chemical attacks in Syria were "a consequence of the last administrations weakness https://t.co/Cp6OQMIDl5 The New York Times (@nytimes) April 5, 2017 Trump's dilemma The ongoing scandal surrounding Russia and the Donald Trump administration will be put to the test depending on how the president handles the current situation in Syria. By Trump not offering criticism of Russia's role in supporting the Syrian leader, many have said that his reaction only adds fuel to the fire of speculation in regards to the link between the White House and the Kremlin. Today marked the day Judge Neil Gorsuch made US history. In a 54-45 Senate vote, a report from the NY Times states the 49-year old Neil Gorsuch was officially confirmed as the 113th US Supreme Court Justice. Gorsuch is now the first Justice to not receive 60% of Senate vote Gorsuch, a native of Colorado, became the first Justice to enter the lifelong seat by "unconventional means." In an unprecedented move, Republicans superseded Democratic opposition and erased decades of protocol by triggering the so-called nuclear option to confirm the judge. This option allowed Republicans to ignore a rule stating any Justice had to be accepted by 60% of the Senate, instead allowing Gorsuch's appointment to proceed with only a simple majority vote. The nuclear option altered the course of American politics Somewhat ironically, many may remember that current president Donald Trump also entered office without claiming the majority of the nationwide vote. While Republicans cheered the conservative judge's confirmation as a victory, the steps they took in propelling him to the seat altered the course of American politics forever. By bypassing a rule as old as the Constitution itself, Republicans opened the door for future politicians to control the judicial branch as well. The idea of separation of powers was created by the Constitution's founding fathers in an effort to ensure no one branch of government could become too powerful, but by giving the Senate majority the authority to force a Supreme Court nominee to the seat without any opposition, the legislative branch can now have its theoretical cake and eat it too. Many are concerned about the implications behind Gorsuch's atypical confirmation Understandably, Democrats (whose filibuster was the reason for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's decision to trigger the nuclear option) are upset by Gorsuch's appointment, but reports claim that even those who supported his confirmation are concerned by the way it came about. Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine was one such individual. A statement by Collins after the hearing today revealed that she considered the events "part of a profoundly sad day." Further reports indicate that the reputation of the Supreme Court may also be at stake, as the lone branch designed to be as far removed from politics as possible has instead found itself thrust into the center of a very unstable political landscape. As for Trump, his first executive appointment of a Justice means he will play a part in America's social arena for years to come, as Gorsuch's relatively young age means he could serve on the Supreme Court for quite some time. In other news, growing tension in Syria after the US launched its first missile attack late last night means the Trump administration won't have time to bask in its relatively victorious day. Cayuga Lake has approximately 27 acres of hydrilla mapped off the shore of Wells College in the village of Aurora, but there's no money to do anything about it. Found in September and estimated at about four or five years old, the hydrilla is precariously close to the Wells College water intake pipe. So far experts with the Finger Lakes Institute at Hobart and William Smith Colleges have found the invasive in the bay area from the Wells College dock to north of Little Creek, extending about 250 feet from the shore, according to a release from the Cayuga County Health Department. If it made it up to the north end, Hilary Mosher told members of the Cayuga County Water Quality Management Agency on Thursday, the lake would be done for. Mosher is the coordinator for the Finger Lakes Partnership for Regional Invasive Species Management. "It would be a great incubator for the rest of the Great Lakes Basin, and we would never get rid of hydrilla should it inhabit the north end," she said. Hydrilla is a particularly nasty invasive species as it grows quickly and is known to choke out lakes. The health department said in its Friday release that if left unchecked, it can form a thick vegetative mat inhibiting swimming and boating and causing fish populations to decline. One solution, Mosher said Thursday, is benthic matting that acts as barriers to weed growth. But to cover that size swath is estimated to cost $10 million. Chemical treatments would cost around $134,000. "So you can see there's a couple of zeros that we're missing," Mosher said. "We don't have any funding at this point." While Mosher has requested and received letters of support to get rid of the patch of invasive species from state representatives, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is helping with non-financial resources, Mosher and a newly created Cayuga Lake hydrilla task force are still pulling up empty pockets for any kind of treatment. The task force, according to the health department, includes representatives from the Finger Lakes Partnership for Regional Invasive Species Management, Wells College, the village of Aurora, the Inns of Aurora, the county health and planning departments, the Cayuga County Legislature, the state Department of Environmental Conservation, the Cayuga Lake Floating Classroom and the Cayuga Lake Watershed Network. Mosher said she and other task force members have applied for funds through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The health department added in its release that the group will develop a Hydrilla Management Plan specific to Aurora. Once that is developed, the public will be able to provide comments on proposed strategies sometime in the late spring. "We're also looking for statewide support, which we haven't been able to secure at this point," Mosher said. "So at this point, nothing is being (done). There's no treatment available, but we will be looking to secure permits in case we all of a sudden get funding really quickly." The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has an EPA-funded hydrilla collaborative in the Great Lakes Basin. Mosher has been working with that group, getting recommendations on which kind of chemical treatments may work best. Steve Lynch, director of the county's planning and economic development department, thanked Mosher for getting everything she could in line to attack the problem. In the meantime the county's Water Quality Management Agency passed a resolution Thursday requesting financial and personnel support from the state of New York to address hydrilla found in the village of Aurora. The health department said the task force plans to hold a public forum on a proposed hydrilla management plan in the future. It turns out Kendall Jenners recently withdrawn Pepsi ad has had an effect after all, but probably not in a good way. Carlos Enrique attended a City Council meeting in Portland, Oregon Wednesday night, wishing to protest the way the city handles protesters. Enrique spoke up during a debate about a proposal to amend the citys parking codes and went a little off subject. He introduced himself to Mayor Ted Wheeler, saying he is a journalist who formerly worked for the Boston Herald. He then launched into a speech about how he had attended many city council meetings where people had objected to various stances being taken by the city management. Enrique said that he had never seen quite so many objections as he has in the Portland City Council meetings. He added that despite objections, he always saw the mayor going ahead and signing the ordinance anyway. Protester hands a Pepsi to the mayor As the mayor tried to interrupt Enrique and called for order in the meeting, the protester continued to speak, finally telling Mayor Wheeler that he realized the language of resistance had not been properly translated to him. He then stood and walked up to the bench were the mayor was sitting with other city officials, saying, So this is for you. He then reached into his jacket and pulled out a can of Pepsi, handing it to the mayor. Wheeler immediately admonished Enrique telling him this was not a smart move, before thanking him, as the security team removed the protester from the room. Wheeler appeared to be a little shaken as he told the audience that for their own safety, people shouldnt do that kind of thing. He did add that if that had been the Boston City Council, maybe it would have ended a little differently. Young journalist not employed by the Boston Herald However, despite Enriques claim that he was employed by the Boston Herald and covering many city council meetings, SFGate reports that the newspaper has no record of him being employed there. That report also mentions that city council meetings in Portland often suffer from interruptions by the public and the city has reportedly brought in new regulations in an attempt to reduce incidents of this nature. Man hands Portland mayor a Pepsi, police take him away, mayor tells him not to do that "for your own safety": https://t.co/v1m3nMPYkp Geoffrey Thomas (@geofft) April 6, 2017 Pepsi withdraws its controversial ad As reported by CNN, this incident happened on the same day that Pepsi withdrew its controversial ad in which Kendall Jenner decided to skip a photo shoot to join in a street protest and ended up giving one of the cops on duty a can of Pepsi. The ad instantly drew outrage, with some critics saying the company was using the Black Lives Matter movement and other human rights protests to sell their soda. The objections naturally spawned many memes. The only good thing to the kendall jenner pepsi ad are the memes. Keep em comingggg pic.twitter.com/vSEUx21k2Q ryan nicole (@ryannicolem) April 7, 2017 After pulling the ad, Pepsi apologized, saying they were attempting to project a global message of peace, understanding and unity, adding that they didnt mean to make light of serious issues. They said they had clearly missed their mark. However, it turns out one young Boston journalist may have made his mark in the process. Readers can watch the incident in the video included below. This mornings Attack on the Syrian government controlled Shayrat airbase was the American response to the Al-Assad regimes gas attack on the rebel held town of Khan Sheikhoun in Iblid province that killed 70 civilians including many children earlier this week which was launched from the base. Reactions As can be expected from such an action by President Donald Trump, the reaction from the Capitol was swift and support for a response to an attack by Dictator Bashar Al-Assad that shocked and outraged the world. In a show of support for the Oval Office the reaction of Republican House Leader Paul Ryan was to label the military action as appropriate and just. While this was an expected for a Republican President not all members so the GOP reacted in the same way. Other Republicans such as Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, recognized hawks of the GOP also supported the White House in its decision to punish the Al-Assad regime for its gas attack this week, but not all the Republicans are wholeheartedly behind the military action by the United States. In what is swiftly becoming the favoured means of making announcements Republican Senator Paul Rand used Twitter to state that Our prior interventions in this region have done nothing to make us safer and Syria will be no different. This comment makes us remember the results of American interventions in Iraq and Libya that led to the growth of ISIS in the region. Naturally the reaction of the Democrats, while not totally condemning the actions of the military have expressed doubts about the aim of this mornings missile launches against Syria. Congressman Ruben Gallego tweeted What is our strategy here? What is our end goal? Why did we have to strike today? That is not how to conduct a military strike. In the same vein Democrat Ro Khanna reflected Paul Rands comments in tweeting Have we still not learned from Iraq and Libya? Now #Syria? Every time we have attacked since 2001, terrorism has spread. In a reminder of the reason for the missile launch Democrat Congressman Seth Moulton said on Twitter, So POTUS cares enough about the Syrian people to launch 50 Tomahawks but not enough to let the victims of Assad find refuge and freedom here. A sentiment shared by fellow Democrat Beth Watson Coleman who tweeted Theres real hypocrisy in how you (President Donald Trump) will condemn Assads crimes but wont allow his victims to seek asylum in our country. These words explain well the reason for the protests against Donald Trumps attempts at banning Moslem immigration from seven at risk countries in the Middle East, including Syria. Authorization One common theme amongst Republicans and Democrats was that of authorization for the launch. This theme has some importance as it must be remembered, as did Huffington Post overnight that previously Congress had denied permission for the Barack Obama Administration to launch military actions on Syria. In a tweet Democrat Barbara Lee said This is an act of war. Congress needs to come back into session and hold a debate. Anything less is an abdication of our responsibility. This sentiment was shared by Republican Joaquin Castro who quoted himself in a tweet which said in part ...but Congress plays an important role in authorizing military force. I continue to believe that Congress must authorize any additional use of force against the Syrian government. No doubt the next few days will be ones of intense debate amongst and between Republicans and Democrats in regards to this mornings missile attack on Syria. This is natural and necessary for a Democracy but this selection also shows that President Donald Trump cannot assume unconditional support for his actions. In any case, Republicans and Democrats both have shown that in the future the Oval Office must not only act, but must do so within the bounds that had been set in the past for previous Administrations. The next step is now once more in the hands of the Oval Office. Overnight the Trump Administration launched a missile attack on the Syrian air force base from which the Bashar Al-Assad regime launched this weeks gas attack on Khan Sheikhoum in the countrys Iblid province. The deaths of 70 civilians and particularly children from the Syrian attack caused worldwide outrage. Line The 59 missiles launched against the Shayrat Air Force base tonight was Americas answer to an action that President Donald Trump had defined as crossing the line by the Syrian Dictator. Despite that denials from #Syrias ally Russia, Turkish and other sources have reported that the deaths and injuries in this weeks attack was caused Sarin and other forms of gas weapons. In the immediate aftermath of the attack earlier this week a UN Security Council motion condemning the attack moved by the United States, France and Britain had been vetoed by Russia. Missile Attack On Thursday President Trump instructed the National Security Council to prepare recommendations for an American military response to the act of Syrian aggression. As a result of the recommendations, at 3.45am Syrian time the United States warships the USS Ross and Porter launched 59 Tomahawk missiles on the airbase from which the gas raid was launched. In his statement reported by the Guardian and the world press, President Donald Trump said that There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under chemical weapons convention, and ignored the urging of the United Nations Security Council. Years of attempts of changing Assads behaviour have all failed and failed very dramatically. Russia There are contradictions on if and when the United States advised Russia of the impending attack. Although the Pentagon announced that the Russian forces were notified in advance of the strike using the established deconfliction line. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson stated that Russia had not been advised. As we await further explanations on this matter, the difference in announcements may be explained by the different channels the two branches of the American Administration use with the Russians. Policy on Syria The attack of Khan Sheikhoun also had other effects on United States policy on Syria. Last week Secretary Rex Tillerson stated that the removal of Syrian Dictator Bashar Al-Assad was not a priority for America but as reported by the BBC on Thursday the Secretary stated that Al-Assad should have no role on the future of Syria. The attack on Syria effectively marks the debut of the Trump Administration in military interventions as the previous commando raid in Yemen authorized by the White House had originally been prepared by the Obama Administration. The speed of the reaction by the Oval Office has surprised many and only time will tell if it has been too swift as the request to the NSC for recommendations and the decision to launch the attack took less than a day. It is too early to predict the consequences of the action, both in terms of the situation in Syria and also the response from Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin of an attack on one of his allies. It must be remembered that Russia undertook a military mission in Syria last year in support of the Al-Assad regime. Summit In announcing the launch from his Mar-a-Lago resort President Donald Trump stated that Assad has choked the lives of helpless men, women and children and that the intention was to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria. The President is in Florida in preparation for hosting Chinas President Xin Jinping and the attack on Syria will now be a priority item on the agenda. The presence of the Chinese President with President Trump may also dictate the Russian response to this mornings military action by the United States. As with all military actions the missile strike on the Syrian air base will have effects both short and long term that will be hard to predict. The key will be how Vladimir Putin will respond to what Russia will consider American aggression. This missile attack will also mark changes in the direction of the Trump Adminstration as not all Republicans were happy that the attack was launched without authorization from Congress and some members of the House have asked for a sitting to address the issue. In addition, Russia is sure to ask for an urgent session of the United Nations Security Council on what it will surely consider an unjustified attack on an ally. The world today entered another phase of the New Cold War between the United States and Russia. A week that began in expectation of the US-Chinese Summit is now looking at a probable new crisis between the world's two biggest superpowers. We have had concrete proof that a week is truly a long time in politics. As the world waits the official reaction from the Kremlin to the United States attack on Russias ally, reaction has been swift from inside and outside #Syria. The shock of the images of the children killed by gas weapons on the anti government stronghold of Khan Skeikhoum in Iblid province by the Bashar Al-Assad regime is now being replaced at worry and speculation at the consequences of the military action ordered by united states president #Donald Trump . Syria The first reactions from within the country wracked by a civil war against the Al-Assad Dictatorship are naturally mixed. The governor of Homs province in which the airbase is situated, Talal Barazi, told Reuters that the human cost of the attack was limited but that the base was devastated. Furthermore, in a statement on Syrian state television that no doubt repeated what will be the official government line, Talal further stated that the attack was support for armed terrorist groups, and it is an attempt to weaken the capabilities of the Syrian Army to combat terrorism. The words closely reflect the phrases used by American president Donald Trump to justify his attempted ban on Moslem immigration from at risk countries in the Middle East, including the Syria. According to the British based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights quoted by Reuters four soldiers were killed in the attack and the airbase was almost completely destroyed. At the time of writing the official response from Dictator Bashar Al-Assad has not been released. In the other hand Reuters also reports the reaction of a major opposition group in Syria, the Syrian National Coalition that welcomed the American strikes at the Syrian air base and expressed hopes that the strike would not be one off and they will continue to stop Syrian government air strikes and use of internationally banned weapons. Moscow At the same time as we await the reaction from the Syrian Dictator, the world is even more interested in the reaction from Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin. Russia is an ally of Syria and last year President Putin sent a Russian military force to that country on a mission against anti government rebels. The only comment to so far come from Moscow was by Viktor Ozerov, the head of the Russian parliaments Defence and Security committed who said, according to Reuters, that this (the attack) could be used as an attack of the U.S. Against a U.N. nation and then proceeded to say that Russia will request an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council on the matter. In anticipation of the official Kremlin statement on the American missile attack Reuters also reported the service by Irans Students News Agency INSA that quoted a foreign ministry spokesman that Iran strongly condemns such unilateral strikes...such actions will strengthen terrorists in Syria and the region. So far no official statements have yet come from Americas allies who are probably also waiting for the official statement from Vladimir Putin. The Florida Summit between United States President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jiping will now be even more the centre of the worlds attention as the Middle East will now play a more important role in the meeting than previously expected. Ariana Madix and Tom Sandoval won't be having children anytime soon. In fact, judging by Monday night's new episode of "Vanderpump Rules," they won't be having kids at all. Although many fans have weighed in on the topic, claiming Madix will likely have a change of heart once she gets a bit older, Madix is making it perfectly clear on Twitter that she doesn't see a pregnancy in her future -- nor does she want to be hounded about the issue. On Monday's show, Madix visited Lisa Vanderpump and her horse to do some riding, and during the ladies' outing, the topic of children came up. However, while Vanderpump wasn't convinced that Madix would truly never be open to the idea of reproduction, she insisted that kids were gross and said she had no desire to be a mother. Following the show, Ariana Madix told fans that she did not want to be sent any baby-related tweets. "Stop tweeting me about how you didn't want kids, and then you had one and omg you're so stoked," she wrote to her fans and followers, "or just stop tweeting me about babies at all." Ariana Madix and Tom Sandoval live together in Los Angeles After splitting from Kristen Doute during "Vanderpump Rules" season two, Sandoval began dating Madix and the pair quickly became exclusive. From there, as they continued to film "Vanderpump Rules" with their many co-stars, Madix and Sandoval began living together in Los Angeles, where they both work as bartenders at Lisa Vanderpump's hotspot, SUR Restaurant, where the Bravo reality series is filmed. Ariana Madix may not be sold on marriage, either In addition to her lack of desire for children, Madix has made it clear that she doesn't feel the need to get married. While the idea may be a slight possibility for her and Sandoval, she's said that she hopes to one day take another step with her longtime partner and buy a home together. To see more of Ariana Madix, Tom Sandoval and their co-stars, including Lisa Vanderpump, tune into "Vanderpump Rules" season five on Monday nights at 9 p.m. on Bravo TV. Sheree Whitfield of "The Real Housewives of Atlanta" is not very happy about the fact that there is mold in her home and she is blaming the Insurance Company for letting it happen. Sheree is actually back in court now because of this claim. She says that the damages to her home were unfairly appraised by the insurance company. Sheree fights against the insurance company She actually says that the contractors caused mold and decay in her home, she calls Chateau Sheree, and she is not happy about it at all. She says this all went down around the end of 2013. Sheree revealed that they did some drywall work in her home and then left the house 85% done to take a break for the new year. A water line froze and broke during this time causing a lot of problems for Shree Whitfield at her home. There was water in the home and basement after this went down and she filed an insurance claim for the damages. This star of "The Real Housewives of Atlanta" is not holding back at all. Sheree Whitfield said that her house ended up staying wet for about three weeks, which of course, is considered a really long time. The complaint explains a few things going on. Here is what it reveals. The Umpire wrongfully became involved throughout the appraisal process instead of dealing with only differences as required by the policy. These acts resulted in an unfair conclusion to the appraisal as to the amount of the loss. She is asking for $279,940.56 and a jury trial for the damages that were done to her home. Sheree Whitfield has had several lawsuits filed against her for this house as well. It has been one thing after another the entire time. It will be interesting to see if Sheree Whitfield can win this lawsuit or not. She obviously feels like she is right or she would have never filed the lawsuit. Are you shocked to hear that Sheree Whitfield as filed a lawsuit against her insurance company? Do you feel like she will win this one? Sound off in the comments section below on your thoughts, and don't miss new episodes of "RHOA" on Bravo. The Donald Trump administration wished to learn about an anti-Trump Twitter account, or more precisely the person behind it. But Twitter, faithful to its policy of confidentiality, stands up to the American authorities. Donald Trump (or rather @realDonaldTrump ) loves Twitter and even believes that this blue bird has helped him win the elections. But, Twitter Inc. on Thursday just filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government that demands it reveals the person behind the anti-Trump account reported Reuters. The account is named "ALT Immigration" and the the bio of the account is quoted: "Immigration resistance... Not the views of DHS or USCIS. Old fellow drank Russian soup #altgov [sic]." Twitter intends to protect @ALT_uscis. "The freedom of expression given to Twitter and its users by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution includes the right to disseminate this kind of anonymous or pseudonymous political speech," the social network wrote in its complaint. Twitter revels in role of free speech defender as it sues Trump administration https://t.co/kZsbXtqDDB pic.twitter.com/8sSA5IeLsd Reuters Top News (@Reuters) 7 April 2017 The U.S. government versus data protection According to Twitter, there is no legal basis for the U.S. government to make such request. "The defendants did not even try to fulfill this requirement," notes the microblogging site in its lawsuit. For this and the following reasons, Twitter "respectfully asks the federal court to declare the order to be illegal and to prohibit its implementation." Soon after the lawsuit news broke, @ALT_uscis pinned the tweet of a copy of the First Amendment and an image of part of the lawsuit. The account's followers have raised in a huge number. But Twitter with such incidents reminds us of how it works; every user targeted by the government is directly notified by the social network and it does not transmit data to the authorities without the consent of the owner of the account. An unchanged privacy policy This is not the first time that Twitter defends the rights of its users. In 2014, Twitter sued the government after restrictions imposed on the publication of national security-related surveillance requests. After leaking NSA documents by Edward Snowden in 2013, Twitter refused to cooperate with the government on data transmission after several months of negotiations. The proposals of the American authorities did not fulfill the transparency of the social network. In 2014, the little blue bird did not prefer to see Google, Facebook, Yahoo, LinkedIn and Microsoft sign an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice, committing to sending regular data to the government. This typical privacy policy earned the company more admiration in the tech community and in pressure groups. Twitter also said in its latest transparency report that "As soon as possible, Twitter attempts to restrict requests for account information or rejects them entirely because of a wide variety of circumstances." View of the building of China Communication Construction Company in Beijing, Jan 31, 2012. [Photo/VCG] NAIROBI - Chinese construction firm, China Communication Construction Company (CCCC) is on course to complete the first berth of the Lamu port in mid 2018, Kenyan officials said on Thursday. Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia-Transport (LAPSSET) Corridor Development Authority Director General Sylvester Kasuku told a media briefing in Nairobi that dredging works began in October 2016 and the work is currently 20 percent complete. "China Communication Construction Company is expected to complete construction of the three berths by the year 2020 at a cost of $480 million," Kasuku said. The East African nation has so far spent $120 million for the construction of the port with another $100 million earmarked for the next financial year. Lamu port will have a total of 32 berths and is part of the LAPSSET Corridor Program which will cost over $26 billion to complete. Kasuku said that the Kenya government will fund construction of the first three berths while the rest are expected to be funded by private sector under a public private sector framework. The South African government has already signed a Memorandum of Understanding to develop the first three berths in the Lamu port. "The South Africans are currently in the phase of submission of proposals and are undertaking discussions with relevant government agencies before commencing construction works," Kasuku said. The port has also received inquiries from ten private firms seeking to invest in the infrastructure project. Kasuku said that Lamu port is expected to surpass Mombasa port to become the largest port in Kenya in the next ten years. The Director General said that the Mombasa port currently handles 1.2 million Twenty Foot Equivalent Units (TEUs) annually and has a maximum capacity of 2.5 million TEUs. The first three berths of Lamu Port will be able to handle 1.2 million TEUs and when fully operational will handle 20 million TEUs. BISHKEK - Representatives of Chinese companies doing business in Kyrgyzstan met here on Thursday with the country's First Deputy Prime Minister and co-chairman of the Kyrgyz-Chinese intergovernmental commission Muhammetkaly Abulgaziev. The meeting was also attended by Chinese Ambassador to Kyrgyzstan Xiao Qinghua, the Kyrgyz Government's press service reported. Xiao said China highly values good-neighborly relations with Kyrgyzstan and is committed to strengthening relations in all areas of cooperation. "We are ready to develop bilateral cooperation in all areas of the economy, particularly in the fields of agriculture, transport and infrastructure." "China is ready to discuss proposals for investment, implementation of joint major projects. China is interested in bringing our cooperation to a higher, new level. We are not going to stop on what has been achieved, we intend to boost our cooperation," the Ambassador said. Speaking at the meeting, Abulgaziev said that China is a friendly neighbor for Kyrgyzstan, a reliable partner. "Kyrgyzstan is open to foreign investors and is interested in attracting investments in the national economy of the country. We are trying to create favorable conditions for doing business in our country, including for foreign entrepreneurs. Our good-neighborly relations with China are based on mutual understanding and respect, and we intend to develop them, particularly in the economic sphere," Abulgaziev said. Representatives of Chinese companies talked about the achievements in the implementation of their projects in Kyrgyzstan, especially in the mining industry, energy and transport infrastructure. The two sides also discussed further joint work aimed at the effective development of partnership in the trade and economic sphere. The Kyrgyz official stressed Kyrgyzstan always supports investors and is open for their suggestions in improving the conditions for doing business in the country. Every day, Zhuang Ji moves around the city to remove fake QR code stickers or unauthorized advertisements on shared bicycles and reports offences such as improper parking, traffic violations and malicious damage to these bikes. In bike sharing circles, Zhuang is known as a "hunter", the anti-thesis of the black sheep within the community who misuse or damage shared bikes. His actions are voluntary and he is not hired by any of the bike sharing startups. According to a People's Daily report, there were 19 million shared bike users in the country as of the end of last year. There are currently about 20 shared bike operators across the nation, including the pioneers such as Mobike and Ofo. To discourage users from parking in prohibited zones and damaging the bikes, Mobike rolled out a system that deducts credit points from offenders - lower credit ratings mean more expensive rides for users - while rewarding those who abide by the rules or whistleblow. For example, all Mobike users start with 100 credit points. Every ride they make earns them a point. Reporting a bike that is damaged or improperly parked earns them a point too. On the other hand, those who park Mobikes in a compound are slapped with a 20-point penalty. Riders who use their private locks on the bikes have their credit reduced to zero immediately, which results in their accounts being frozen. Zhuang made his first report to Mobike in May 2016. He later created a group for fellow hunters like himself. Around 3,500 people from 33 cities, including Singapore which Mobike recently entered, have since joined this group. Zhuang said that each person reports an average of six errant riders daily. The most prolific hunter in the group has made 4,000 reports. He believes that the group is akin to an intelligence network. Each city in this network has its own WeChat group that allows members to share their experiences with one another. "The members are very active. Once, it took them just 20 minutes to trace the user who threw nine Mobikes into the Huangpu river," he said. Zhuang said people are motivated to be a hunter because they simply like the thrill of the hunt. After all, Mobike credits cannot be redeemed - having many points in one's account only serves as a cushion for offences. "I don't expect any return from being a hunter," he said. Zhuang has even managed to combine his hobby with his job as the curatorial assistant at the Power Station of Art, having introduced parking spaces for shared bikes at the museum's front door. He noted that all the hunters in the group only report errant Mobike users as the bike operator has the most sophisticated reporting system. He called for other operators to launch similar systems so as to better regulate the shared bike scene. Zhuang is currently preparing to hold a "hunters convention" in May or June for members in the group. He is also planning to invite representatives from bike sharing companies. "I hope executives from Mobike, Ofo and other bike sharing companies can join in the discussion and listen to our opinions of how the market can move forward," he said. He Qi in Shanghai contributed to the story. Register for more free articles. Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading. Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! Already a Subscriber? Already a Subscriber? Sign in Terms of Service Privacy Policy A staff holds the Xuande Bowl. [Photo provided to China Daily] A 15th-century blue-and-white bowl that fetched HK$229 million ($29.5 million) at Sotheby's auction on Wednesday will appear at an upcoming exhibition in Shanghai. According to the Shanghai billionaire and collector Liu Yiqian, the bowl will be on loan from its current Asian owner for display at the Long Museum, which was founded by Liu and his wife, Wang Wei, and it will be shown as part of an exhibition dedicated to the artworks of the Yongle and Xuande periods of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), scheduled to open on April 28. Standing 23 centimeters high, the bowl exemplifies the magnificence of porcelain making that reached climax during the Ming era, especially the Xuande period the bowl dates from. It had been kept in a private Japanese collection for some 50 years before it appeared in Sotheby's salesroom. Related: 'Fish Pond' bowl of Ming Dynasty auctioned for $29.5 million 'Pink Star' diamond sparkles in $71.2 million record sale in HK [Photo/Xinhua] Macao can have a big share of the Chinese mainland tourism market and promote its development into world tourism and leisure center, China's tourism administration vice chief said in a work meeting held here on Thursday. Representatives from Macao Social Affairs and Culture authorities, China National Tourism Administration (CNTA) and other related departments from the Chinese mainland and Macao attended the 2017 annual work meeting of the Joint Working Committee on Tourism to Support Macao's Aspirations to Build a World Tourism and Leisure Centre. In the meeting, CNTA vice chairman Li Shihong said the tourism industry has become one of the backbone industries in China's economy. Macao should grasp the opportunity with the Chinese mainland and deepen the tourism cooperation to explore the global market. During the meeting, the two sides reviewed the tourism situation and work completed in 2016, and discussed major projects for 2017, including deepening regional co-operation between Guangdong and Macao, strengthening collaboration under the Belt and Road Initiative, further reinforcing co-operation on tourism industry management, and continuing support for the development of the meeting and exhibition industry in Macao. After the meeting, the joint working committee published the major programs for 2017, including joint tourism market supervision, Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao tourism integration and maritime cooperation through Guangdong-Macao free yacht travel scheme. In June 2015, the Macao SAR government signed an agreement with CNTA to set up the joint working committee to support Macao in building a world tourism and leisure center, which will convene a work meeting every year since 2016. Alex Yip is only 34 but he is a man to watch. He serves on the local council in Birmingham, Britain's second-largest city. But he has his eye on the national stage and hopes to stand for the Conservative Party to become a Member of Parliament in the 2020 British general election. Alex Yip wants more people to be involved in local issues. [China Daily] Yip, whose Cantonese-speaking family is from Hong Kong, is active in several groups that promote ties between China and the United Kingdom and is busy trying to improve his Mandarin. "I had a really nice chat with the Chinese ambassador (Liu Xiaoming) in London just a few days ago, and as I left and said goodbye, he told me: 'Alex, you really need to improve your Mandarin!'" As well as serving as a Birmingham City councilor since 2015, Yip is involved in several organizations that aim to give a louder voice to the Chinese community and deepen ties between the UK and China, such as the British Chinese Project, the All Parliamentary Chinese in Britain Group, and the Confederation of Chinese Business UK. He is also governor of the Overseas Chinese Association School, which offers Chinese language tuition in Birmingham. He says he knew from an early age that he wanted to "make a difference" through civic and political activism. He studied history and politics before doing a master's degree in international relations, both at the University of Leicester. He then worked as a volunteer in Ghana, Zambia and Botswana. He also taught English at Chang Zheng Secondary school in Shanghai. "I loved my time in China and traveled to as many places as I could, including as far away as Jiayuguan (a prefecture-level city in Gansu province in the northwestern part of China)," he says. "I strongly identify with my Chinese heritage." On his return from his travels, aged 24, he agreed with his parents to take over the family takeaway business while he started to explore a possible role in politics. He bought a couple more takeaways and ended up with roughly 20 staff. Meanwhile, he joined the Conservative Party, which appeals to some immigrants and small businesspeople because of its emphasis on self-sufficiency. "I believe strongly in striving for success from your own efforts," he says. Yip, a committed Christian and member of the Church of England, also became a school governor and trained to become a magistrate. Magistrates, in the British legal system, hear more than 90 per cent of criminal cases, ranging from drunken driving to assault. They are volunteers who are given only travel and subsistence expenses. They do not have to be qualified in the legal profession but are given some training. Yip said he wants to see more people from minority ethnic groups become magistrates. And younger people too. Yip said: "In the UK, our legal system is based on being judged by your peersyour own community. Britain is very diverse and in Birmingham, almost 50 per cent of the people come from a minority ethnic group and we are one of the youngest cities in Europe. Having a representative bench is so important for people to have faith in our system." "While I have been able to give something back as a magistrate, I feel I have learned and gained a lot more." When his local councilor stepped down, Yip jumped at the chance and was elected in 2015. He has found the job fascinating, fulfilling and frustrating. He gives the example of trying to get speed-restricting measures installed at a junction where many accidents have occurred. There was overwhelming local approval for it but not the37,000 needed for "just for a few signs and a bit of tarmac," he says. "I felt it quickly became a political issue with the council run by the Labour group while the Conservatives are in opposition. I was surprised by how frustrating the whole process can be. The council is a huge monolithic beast and it can be hard to make simple and commonsense changes quickly for residents," he says. "At the same time, being able to help an elderly resident get a200 rebate from her council tax, to help another with assistance with their waste collections, or getting funding for a local woodland area or community group, is very satisfying because you have helped someone in a small but meaningful way." He is hopeful he will be selected by the Conservatives to stand in parliamentary elections in 2020 while being aware of the many problems facing the UK, not least Britain's decision to quit the European Union. He campaigned locally for the country to remain in the EU. "Politics has always been something that the Chinese community has stayed away from, they are seen as a withdrawn and hidden minority ethnic group. But it's a true privilege to be part of our democratic system and visibly representing the British Chinese community. We need to use our voice. As they say: use it or lose it." Members from the Chinese Canadian communities gathered in Markham on Monday to mourn victims of the Nanjing Massacre on Tomb-Sweeping Festival (Qingming). They also released a joint declaration to support Bill 79 by signing a petition for its third reading in Ontario's legislature. [Photo by Na Li/chinadaily.com.cn] Members of Chinese Canadian communities gathered in Markham on Monday during the Chinese Tomb-Sweeping Festival, or Qingming, to mourn victims of the Nanjing Massacre. They also called on Ontario residents to sign a petition in support of Bill 79, the Nanjing Massacre Commemorative Day Act. If the Ontario legislature passes the bill, it would make Dec 13 of each year Nanjing Massacre Commemorative Day in Ontario. The bill was proposed by MPP Soo Wong. It passed a second reading debate in the legislature on Dec 8, 2016. However, according to Wong, as a private member's bill, even with more than 60,000 signatures and more that are expected, petitions do not guarantee that a bill will pass the legislature. Chinese communities announced a campaign for 100,000 signatures across Ontario from beginning of this year to tell the legislature that Ontarians want the bill passed. "This year marks the 150th anniversary of the Canadian Confederation. Chinese were in Canada before the Confederation. We have contributed much," said Soo Wong, "But this bill is not just about Chinese, it is about human rights, social justice and humanity. This atrocity against humanity that happened was ignored, it is not acceptable in Ontario and Canada that we don't talk about what happened in history." Wong appealed to people to educate their neighbors, friends and family about Bill 79, and to encourage them to sign the petition. "It's a very important historic event that needs commemoration," said Johnson Ji, one of the bill's supporters and president of Real Force Inc. "I will talk to my friends, my clients and business partners about the history. We have to teach our future generations to know the truth, to remember history and cherish peace," he said. This year marks the 80th anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre. In Nanjing, China, at the Memorial Hall of the Victims, fellows of the Nanjing Association of Canada (NAC) attended a ceremony to mourn the victims of the Nanjing Massacre who were killed by Japanese invaders. Memorial Hall was built in 1985 by the Nanjing Municipal Government in memory of the 300,000 victims of the Nanjing Massacre. The Memorial Hall members said they hope to exhibit the draft of Wong's bill the Nanjing Massacre Commemorative Day Act as part of the hall's permanent collection "to let more peace-lovers know and remember this history". Please turn JavaScript on and reload the page. Loading... Checking your browser before accessing the website. This process is automatic. Your browser will redirect to your requested content shortly. Please wait a few seconds. The Sedona International Film Festival will bring its monthly independent film to Flagstaff on Wednesday with a true story of a trailblazing woman who finds freedom in her explorations of the early 20th Century Middle East. Starring Nicole Kidman and directed by Werner Herzog, Queen of the Desert will screen at 7 p.m. on April 12 at Harkins Flagstaff 16 Theatres. Tickets are $12, $9 for Film Festival members or $6 for full-time students and will be available starting at 6 p.m. that day in the Harkins lobby. Learn more at www.SedonaFilmFestival.org. According to the film synopsis, Gertrude Bell (Kidman) chafes against the stifling rigidity of life in turn-of-the-century England, leaving it behind for a chance to travel to Tehran. So begins her lifelong adventure across the Arab world, a journey marked by danger, a passionate affair with a British officer (James Franco), and an encounter with the legendary T.E. Lawrence (Robert Pattinson). Shot on location in Morocco and Jordan, Queen of the Desert reveals how an ahead-of-her-time woman shaped the course of history. Kidmans interest in exploration mirrors Gertrude Bells own adventurous spirit. While Kidman admires Bell greatly, she also shares her insight of why Bell pursued travelling and adventure. She went off and lived a life that I would only dream of living. What she did is amazing, but she did it through motivations that, I believe, come from huge loss so thats fascinating in itself, too. And the landscape and what the desert gave her was her salvation. As Kidman discovered that while Bell was a true trailblazer in a time when women were not treated as equals, especially in politics, she also had ambiguous aspects. Theres an interesting fact about Gertrude though, is that she was not a supporter of the suffragette movement, so that was fascinating, Kidman said in an interview. Her extensive research of Bell enables her to bring a realistic and nuanced performance to this legendary character. A representative from the NAU Philosophy Department and Philosophy in the Public Interest will lead a discussion following the Wednesday film screening. Seth Muller Auckland Transport(AUCKLAND, New Zealand) -- The new electric trains in Auckland, New Zealand, are much quieter than typical trains. That's great for surrounding neighborhoods but could present a danger for pedestrians. Auckland Transport issued a reminder for pedestrians to be extremely diligent when crossing train tracks, citing some recently released footage from CCTV. One video shows a woman on April 7 crossing over the tracks. There are flashing lights warning her, so she looks to the right to see if she sees a train coming, but doesn't see anything, so she continues to cross over the tracks. However, just before she made it across the tracks, she turns to the left to check. It was a good thing she did, as she had to hop out of the way of an oncoming train. There is a sign before the crossing warning pedestrians to look both ways before crossing. Copyright 2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. Gen. Abdel Fattah Sisis Egypt holds at least 40,000 political prisoners, secular democrats as well as Islamic extremists. His security forces have killed thousands at least 817 at a single demonstration, according to Human Rights Watch. For three years, the Obama administration kept Sisi at arms length, working with his government on counterterrorism while expressing disapproval of its repression. No longer. This week, President Trump welcomed Sisi to the White House and hailed him as a hero. We are very much behind President Sisi, Trump said. Hes done a fantastic job in a very difficult situation. In public, no U.S. official said a word about human rights. Trumps spokesman refused to say whether the issue came up in private. Sisi isnt the only strongman whos getting a free pass from the Trump administration. Chinas President Xi Jinping will be visiting Trumps Florida vacation home at Mar-a-Lago on Thursday, and hes not likely to hear much about human rights either. And last week, the Trump administration told Congress it intends to lift the human rights conditions that had blocked the sale of F-16 fighter jets to Bahrain. Its one thing to retreat from putting human rights first. Its another to abandon the field entirely. Most famously, Russias Vladimir Putin has long been an object of Trumps praise for his strength, even as his regime assassinates opponents and jails protesters. Trump made it clear during his presidential campaign that he was interested in military strength and trade deals more than promoting democracy. But its still striking: The president is systematically dismantling a 40-year-old bipartisan tradition of U.S. foreign policy. Presidents have used rhetoric about freedom and democracy for more than a century, but Jimmy Carter elevated human rights to a top priority in 1977. Ronald Reagan made the issue bipartisan in the 1980s as he campaigned to undermine the Soviet empire. Even after the end of the Cold War, all of their successors maintained the tradition with varying degrees of enthusiasm until Trump. Not only did the new president define his foreign policy as America First, he once breezily suggested that he didnt see much difference between American democracy and Putins authoritarianism. We have a lot of killers, he shrugged in a famous interview on Fox News. You think our country is so innocent? Its one thing to retreat from putting human rights first. Its another to abandon the field entirely. Its not only morally offensive; its bad policy, for practical reasons. The moral argument is straightforward: Americans who believe in democracy and due process of law ought to care when they are denied to people in other countries. But the practical arguments are compelling, as well. Democratic countries are, by and large, less dangerous than dictatorships less likely to start wars and spawn international terrorist organizations. We should want more democracies for our safetys sake. Our strongest alliances are with other democracies, partly because they share our values. If we no longer care as much about those values, we are likely to weaken our alliances as well. That proposition has a flip side: Our most important adversaries Russia, China, North Korea, Iran are all authoritarian states. Pressing them to grant political and human rights to their citizens isnt just consistent with American values; its a way to apply leverage. Notice how insecure those regimes are when the question is raised how touchy Chinas leaders get, for instance, when their domestic repression is publicized. These are pretty low-cost diplomatic tools. And they dont get in the way of deal-making, unless we choose to let them. Reagan negotiated nuclear arms deals with the Soviet Union even as he demanded an end to the Berlin Wall. Other presidents cut plenty of trade deals with China despite friction over human rights. Walking away from human rights is a sign of weakness, not strength. Its consistent with Trumps view that the United States is a crippled country, a superpower that can no longer pull its weight. Its a retreat from American exceptionalism; it means we think we no longer have the capability to think much beyond a narrow conception of American interests. Trump often boasts that his foreign policy is about hard power military assets, financial strength and not soft power, intangible assets such as values and alliances. But the strategist who coined the term soft power, Harvards Joseph Nye, has long argued that its not an either/or choice. The most successful nation, he contends, will find an effective combination of both kinds of power. Soft power is one of the comparative advantages the United States enjoys over its rivals. If were serious about promoting democracy and human rights, people in other countries may ally with us because they share those aspirations. If, however, we abandon those values, and suggest that as a nation were not so different, really, from Putins Russia or Xis China, were giving that asset away. Its a form of unilateral disarmament, an idea Trump would naturally reject if it came up in a discussion of hard power. The worst thing is: He may not even realize it. PHOENIX State lawmakers acted illegally in making it a crime for medical marijuana users to possess their drugs on college and university campuses, the Court of Appeals ruled Thursday. The judges said the 2010 initiative that legalized the use of marijuana for medical purposes set out the specific places where even those entitled to otherwise use the drug may not have it. That list, they said, includes school buses, public schools and in correctional facilities. But Judge Peter Swann, writing for the unanimous three-judge panel, pointed out the Arizona Constitution forbids lawmakers from amending what voters have adopted unless it furthers the purpose of the initiative. And making criminals out of medical marijuana users, he said, does not. To the contrary, it eliminates some of its protections, Swann wrote, making a 2012 change in law criminalizing medical marijuana possession on campuses illegal. The judge, however, was careful to say that nothing in Thursday's ruling prohibits state lawmakers or the universities themselves, as the owner of the buildings, from enacting regulations against marijuana possession on campuses. To the extent a person violate such rules or prohibitions, the state can have the offending party removed or charged with trespassing, Swann said. The Arizona Medical Marijuana Act does not stop it from creating such policies. What lawmakers may not do, he said, is make criminals out of medical marijuana users just because they bring their drugs on campus. Thursday's ruling deals with a 2012 amendment to the law which expanded the area off-limits to medical marijuana users to include the campus of any public university, college, community college or post secondary educational institution. Rep. Amanda Reeve, R-Phoenix, who pushed the change, said federal regulations governing universities require they forbid students from having illegal controlled substances. And marijuana remains illegal for all under federal law. Reeve argued that schools that do not comply can lose federal funding and financial assistance for students. Andre Maestas was arrested in 2014 on a charge of obstructing traffic after Arizona State University police found him sitting in an intersection. A search of his wallet produced a medical marijuana card. When police questioned him about the card at the station, he admitted to having marijuana in his room. That gave police what they needed for a search warrant, coming up with about 0.4 grams of the drug, far below the amount medical marijuana users are legally allowed to possess. Originally charged with a felony under the 2012 law, prosecutors reduced that to a misdemeanor, a move that meant Maestas was not entitled to a jury trial. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Dean Fink found Maestas guilty, placed him on unsupervised probation, and imposed a $1,000 fine. Maestas then appealed. Swann rejected arguments by prosecutors that the threat of the loss of federal dollars gave lawmakers the right to outlaw medical marijuana use and denied courts the ability to review that decision. He said the issue is the way that is done. Schools and landlords may discriminate to protect federal money or licensing benefits, he wrote. And Swann said the 2012 law provides a defense to those accused of discriminating against medical marijuana users. Nothing in the plain language of the statute authorized criminalization of cardholders' possess of marijuana on college or university campuses, the judge said. There was no immediate response from the attorney general's office on whether there will be an appeal to the state Supreme Court. According to Vietnamese law, imported motorcycles must be brand-new ones. If you wish to import used motorcycles into Vietnam for personal movement purpose, you are required to carry out the customs procedures under the regulations on personal effects of foreign individuals working in Vietnam.Regarding taxes and duties, you will be exempted from import duty if your motorcycle is brought into Vietnam as a personal effect of a foreigner permitted to reside and work in Vietnam at the invitation of a competent state agency, or moved to a foreign country when your duration of residing and working in Vietnam expires. As your motorcycle is not regarded as a commodity, it will not be subjected to value-added tax.However, when imported, foreigners motorcycles are liable to excise tax, which will be calculated based on the taxed price and tax rate. In your case, an excise tax rate of 20 percent will be imposed on your two-wheeled motorcycle.Accordingly, payable excise tax = (taxed price of imported motorcycle + import duty (which you are exempted from)) x 20 percent.For used motorcycles that are owned by foreign individuals and satisfy technical conditions and standards to be imported into Vietnam as prescribed by law, each individual will be exempted from import duty for only one motorcycle, but will have to pay excise tax and value-added tax in accordance with law.Regarding the customs procedures, personal effects of individuals, households or organizations must go through the customs procedures and be subject to customs inspection and supervision. Exporters or importers of goods being personal effects must produce papers proving their residence and operation in Vietnam or overseas.According to Clauses 1 and 2, Article 45 of Government Decree No. 08/2015/ND-CP dated January 21, 2015, when wishing to bring his personal effects into Vietnam, a foreigner must clear the customs procedures by submitting:- A customs declaration: two originals (payable fee: VND 20,000 per declaration);- A written accreditation for his work in Vietnam, issued by the organization or agency where he is working, or a work permit issued by a Vietnamese competent agency: one copy; and,- A transportation document, if such personal effect is transported by sea, air or railway: one copy.Time limit for settlement:- Customs offices will receive, register and examine customs dossiers right after customs declarants submit or produce their dossiers as prescribed by the customs law.- The time limit for customs officers to complete the examination of dossiers and physical inspection of goods and means of transport is as follows:+ To complete the examination of customs dossiers within two working hours after receiving complete customs dossiers;+ To complete the physical inspection of goods within eight working hours after customs declarants fully produce goods to customs offices.- HA NOI Viet Nam continued to be among the top five investors in Cambodia as of December 2016, with US$2.85 billion registered capital invested in 183 projects. Viet Nam is also Cambodias third largest partner, with bilateral trade reaching $3 billion until the end of last year. The two countries are striving to raise the figure to $5 billion in the following years. In the first two months of the year, two-way trade turnover reached $624.1 million, up 21.2 per cent compared with the same period last year. In addition, Viet Nam was always among the highest number of visitors to Cambodia, and vice versa, as Cambodian tourists consider Viet Nam their top choice for travel. The information was presented by Vietnamese Ambassador to Cambodia Thach Du at a seminar in Cambodia, held by the Vietnamese Embassy with the participation of some 100 Vietnamese firms. Traditional friendship, favourable geographical conditions and concerns of the two governments were the foundation for promoting economic, trade and investment co-operation between Viet Nam and Cambodia in recent years, Du added. The seminar was aimed at helping Viet Nams enterprises better understand the situation and business opportunities in Cambodia to continue to maintain the leading position in the country. It provided an opportunity to connect with other businesses investing in Cambodia. Many representatives of companies attending the seminar, such as the Association of Vietnamese Investors in Cambodia (AVIC), Viet Nam Rubber Group (VRG), Metfone, Angkor Milk and Chak Angre Hospital, also mentioned their difficulties and obstacles in doing business abroad. In addition, they proposed some recommendations of the enterprise community on existing issues, such as tax and visa-related issues for Vietnamese workers, to the governments of the two countries. VNS HAI PHONG The Belgium government has always supported investment in projects in Viet Nam, especially support to further pursue green projects, Rudy Huygelen, chief of Cabinet, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and European Affairs of the Kingdom of Belgium, said. Huygelen, attending the celebration to mark the 20th anniversary of the inh Vu Industrial Zone (DVIZ) and its success as the leading seaport industrial zone (IZ) in Viet Nam, held in the northern Hai Phong Port City on Wednesday, said the Deep C-DVIZ project was a symbol of the firm cooperation between Belgium and Viet Nam. He said the project is the largest investment of Belgium in Viet Nam, probably also one of the oldest, and maybe also be the one with the maximum impact on the Vietnamese economy and society. Development of other expansion projects such as this and green energy projects have also been welcomed by both governments, he said. inh Vu Industrial Zone Joint Stock Company, the company invested by Hai Phong Peoples Committee, Rent-A-Port (Belgium) and Infra Asia Investment Hong Kong, has developed and manages the Deep C cluster. Partner Rent A Port has a proven track record as a pioneer in the development and exploitation of renewable energy in Europe and particularly Belgium, hence we are convinced we have the correct partners in Viet Nam and we are happy to see this partnership moving to the next level in addition to the development of industrial parks, he said. Set up on inh Vu Peninsula, a deserted area mainly used for fishery, DVIZ is different from other IZs as it started with no land, no power, no water supply and no access road; only with the vision of exploiting this premium and strategic location as the centre of a transportation hub. Over the last two decades, DVIZ has drawn US$3 billion investment from 70 multinational companies from Japan, Germany, the United States and Viet Nam, as well as Singapore and South Korea. Prominent investors include Bridgestone, JX Nippon Oil & Energy, Idemitsu and Shin-etsu, as well as Chevron, PVOil, IHI and Nippon Express, along with Yusen, Knauf, C.Steinweg and Flat Group. DVIZ has created more than 10,000 direct and 50,000 indirect jobs in the industrial service sector, contributing to the countrys rapid industrialisation, Nguyen Van Tung, chairman of the municipal Peoples Committee, said. DVIZ created the precedent to confirm feasibility of building on the sea and has become the symbol for port and industrial development in Cat Hai-Lach Huyen, in which DVIZ/Deep C is also a major player. Expanding to south inh Vu (Deep C HP II) and Cat Hai (Deep C HP III next to Lach Huyen Deep Seaport), DVIZ is a good starting point for the Deep C Industrial Cluster of over 3,000ha at the centre of the citys mega infrastructure, which is the most strategic location in north Viet Nam. Taking the initiative for sustainable development of the city and the country, the main shareholder of the Deep C/DVIZ project is undertaking green energy projects, including green power generation from renewable energy sources, generation of water from the sea and generation of electrical energy from waste, which is today left unexploited. On the same day, a number of co-operation MoUs were signed between Rent-A-Port and the city for green projects, including research on the development of a green industrial cluster in Hai Phong, research on green energy production supply to industrial zones and research on wind-powered water treatment in Cat Hai to supply 400 cu.m. per day clean water to 4,000 residents of the island in the beginning stage. This is a pioneering project in Hai Phong and can be duplicated in other provinces with water shortage. Both parties will partner to request for 4.5 million euros Official Development Assistant from the Belgian government to fund this project. Another MoU was signed between Daiwa House Viet Nam and DVIZ stating co-operation in finding prospective investors for DVIZ and its expansion. Daiwa House is Japans largest firm in real estate and construction, while Daiwa House Viet Nam has operated since 2012. The co-operation promises increased presence and participation of Japanese investors in the city for its strategic development. VNS HA NOI The Viet Nam International Travel Mart (VITM) 2017 officially kicked off on Thursday at the International Exhibition Centre in Ha Noi. Themed Ha Noi Destination of Vietnamese tourism, the four-day fair showed businesses support for the citys efforts to promote tourism as its key economy, said Vu The Binh, vice chairman of the Viet Nam Tourism Association (VNTA) and head of the organising board. Binh added that most of the products at the event focus on promoting tourism of the capital city, helping to attract more tourists to Ha Noi. Huynh Vinh Ai, deputy minister of Culture, Sport and Tourism, said Viet Nams tourism had seen impressive development over the past few years. The Government has paid attention to promulgating important policies to encourage the countrys tourism development. Especially, the Resolution No 08-NQ/TW on tourism development was promulgated with the aim to developing the sector become one of the key economic sectors has become an important landmark for the industry. Ai noted that in the trend of globalisation and competition, promotion activities have been vital in maintaining and expanding the tourism market. Such events could contribute to affirm the capitals trademark as a big tourism hub in the country and the region. People flock to buy low-cost package tours at the Viet Nam International Travel Mart (VITM) 2017. VNS Photo oan Tung The event has seen the participation of over 650 enterprises and tourism agencies from 43 cities and provinces of Viet Nam and 25 countries and territories around the world. Besides traditional markets such as Japan, South Korea, Western Europe and ASEAN, the fair welcomed travel firms from the United States (US) Tourism Association. The US travel enterprises will have a meeting with Vietnamese travel companies and sign a co-operation deal with the VNTA. The deal is expected to help Vietnamese travel companies attract more American tourists as well as open up more opportunities for Vietnamese to travel to the US. There are more than 150,000 low-cost air tickets and 20,000 package tours at reasonable prices offered by travel companies and airlines at the fair. These activities are expected to give a fillip to the local tourism market. VNS HCM CITY In order for HCM City to have 500,000 enterprises by 2020, departments, agencies and districts must have specific solutions to support and encourage business households to transform themselves into enterprises. Vice Chairman of HCM City Peoples Committee Le Thanh Liem made the request at the conference to discuss its plan to develop 500,000 enterprises by 2020 held by the committee on Wednesday. According to Liem, the plan has been supported by the municipal Peoples Council, Peoples Committee, departments and agencies. However, to fulfil the target does not mean taking the quality for granted. To ensure that the plan ushers in real economic effect, HCM City has developed strategic solutions, including reforming administrative procedures, creating favourable conditions for start-ups and enterprises making innovation, and ensuring equal access to resources and business opportunities of enterprises. Tran Thi Binh Minh, deputy director of the municipal Department of Planning and Investment, said that solutions should not focus only on supporting operations of existing enterprises, but also facilitate the transition of household-model businesses to enterprises. Specifically, it was necessary to actively promote the benefits of the transition to encourage households, Minh said, adding that advice on business establishment and tax declaration procedures should be made available. Deputy Director of the HCM City Tax Department Le Duy Minh said the department was actively disseminating the fruits of the transformation of business model from individual households into enterprises. "When a business household is transformed into an enterprise, business activities will become more transparent, and that will be reflected in accounting books with a declaration of invoices and vouchers," Minh said. With an increased reputation, enterprises will have more chances to expand production and trade with more qualified partners. When establishing a professional business, the legal value of transactions will also be higher than those conducted by households, thereby minimising risks in the course of operation. The Tax Department also launched a programme to support start-up businesses, including newly-established businesses and businesses converted from households with many practical incentive policies, Minh noted. Luu Trung Hoa, Vice Chairman of Peoples Committee of District 1, said that in the district, there were 18,000 enterprises and 15,000 business households. To convert 2,300 business households into enterprises in 2017 and 7,000 business households from now to 2020, the district Peoples Committee had conducted surveys on business households which were providing catering and hospitality services and producing garment products, to study their demand and aspirations, so as to encourage them to switch to a business model. For business households who have converted to enterprises, the district Peoples Committee would open workshops to train entrepreneur skills and provide information on supporting policies, stimulus programmes and preferential lending schemes to help them develop in a stable and sustainable manner. Regarding the citys plan of having 60,000 enterprises this year, vice chairman of the citys Peoples Committee Liem said that the target was quite achievable. Of the total, the number of newly-established enterprises was estimated at 43,000 and the rest would be converted from individual business households. He asked districts and communes to periodically report on the conversion progress as well as the arising difficulties and problems so that the committee would have timely solutions. VNS BAC NINH Samsung Viet Nam on Wednesday officially kicked off their consultation programme for Vietnamese enterprises, assisting them in joining the component supply chain for the year 2017. The consultation programme started in 2015 with focus on industries such as printing, packaging, and plastic moulding. In 2017, Samsung will expand their consultation to hi-tech industries such as electric, electronics (PCB, speakers built into TV, wire harness) to help Vietnamese enterprises produce sophisticated electronic parts which have added-value and hi-tech content in the global supply chain. Samsung targeted to provide consultation for 12 Vietnamese suppliers, which would bring the total number of business consultees to 26 since the year 2015. Samsung affiliates like Samsung Display Viet Nam and Samsung Electro-mechanics Viet Nam join this programme for the first time. Samsung will also launch a pilot model for tier-1 vendors to guide tier-2 vendors, creating a ripple effect in Viet Nams supporting industry. This turning point demonstrates the Samsungs commitment in increasing localisation rate, supporting Vietnamese businesses to get further involved in Samsungs component supply chain and contributing to the development of Viet Nams supporting industry. With 12 Vietnamese firms participating in the consultation programme in 2017, Samsung will continue to send South Korean experts experienced in the field of final product technology and production quality control to directly guide them for 12 weeks. The South Korean experts will survey and assess local firms for two weeks and directly consult and work with them in the following 10 weeks in reforming production procedures and complete all standards in the product/parts supply process for Samsungs factories in Viet Nam. Through the consulting, all suppliers have achieved good results, including an average 25 per cent reduction in defect rate and a 30 per cent increase in manufacturing capacity Han Myoung Sup, president of the Samsung Complex Viet Nam said, During the past two years, Samsung has always endeavoured to support Vietnamese enterprises in increasing their competitiveness in production and product quality. The consultation expansion into hi-tech industry with the aim of assisting local firms in producing sophisticated parts and joining the value chain is a strong affirmation for Samsungs long-term and sustainable commitments in Viet Nam. This consultation programme is one of the Samsungs efforts to dramatically increase the number of local firms participating in its supply chain with 201 vendors in total (23 tier-1 vendors and 178 tier-2 vendors). They are participating in supply chain for three Samsung plants in Viet Nam, including Samsung Electronics Viet Nam (SEV), Samsung Electronics Viet Nam Thai Nguyen (SEVT), and SEHC Complex (HCMC). It is expected that, Samsungs total number of tier-1 vendors will increase to 29 in 2017. Besides, Samsung Viet Nam has also recorded the significant breakthrough in raising the localisation rate of products from 35 per cent in 2014 to 57 per cent at present. This year, the turning point in supporting programme for high-tech enterprises will promisingly create more opportunities for Vietnamese suppliers to join Samsungs global value chain as well as help Samsung achieve its goal of increasing the localisation rate in 2017. VNS HCM CITY The former chairman of Sacombank, ang Van Thanh, and prestigious international partners will strengthen the financial capacity of Sai Gon Thuong Tin Commercial Joint Stock Bank (Sacombank) by increasing its charter capital by VN20,600 billion (US$907 million). They will also set up a Debt Settlement Committee to resolve the bad debts issue and recover assets, and use the available sources of income to provision for bad debts. It has also been reported that Evercore was recently authorised by competent authorities to access data from Sacombank and review and evaluate its performance to accurately assess the current status of the Bank. This would be the basis for mapping out a detailed, precise and specific restructuring plan and proposing specific mechanisms if necessary. Sacombank annual general meeting this year was the focus of attention of financial investors and the public due to the presence of wealthy investors, especially Thanh, the "father" of Sacombank. Thanh, returning to the financial and banking market after an absence of more than five years, and a group of foreign shareholders are considered to have a number of advantages over other suitors. With more than 20 years of experience working at the bank (1991-2012), Thanh is considered the "captain" who promoted the Sacombank brand b oth in the domestic and international markets. Evercore Group is a New York-based investment banking firm listed on the New York Stock Exchange with a market cap of US$2.8 billion, while Redsun Capital Limited is a consulting firm specialising in M & A. Thanh Thanh Cong Corporation (TTC) was the place where Thanh and his family cut their entrepreneurial teeth in 1979 before entering the finance and banking sector. It has interests in many fields, including real estate, energy, molasses, hospitality, and education. TTC was also the company Thanh turned to for de veloping together with his family after relinquishing the management of Sacombank in 2012. When Thanh exited Sacombank in May 2012, there were lots of rumours surrounding the banks operations, especially about corporate loans given to TTC Group, which affected the reputation of his family. But in April 2013 Sacombank officially released information about these loans, revealing the company was repaying them on schedule. The restructuring plan requires the expeditious setting up of a transparent, professional an d capable regulatory body to oversee the restructuring and financing efforts. Thanh is expected to bring with him the advantage of having successfully managed not only a bank but also several other businesses. Thanh is expected to bring with him the advantage of having successfully managed not only a bank but also several other businesses. The Sacombank brand with its solid foundation has always been a name that investors and both domestic and international customers are interested in, thanks to its advantages such as long-established operation and retail banking potential. VNS HA NOI Stricter punishment, particularly criminal charges, should be imposed on illegal sand exploitation activities, said Politburo member and president of the Viet Nam Father Land Front Central Committe, Nguyen Thien Nhan. Leading an inspection team to visit the capital city of Ha Noi on Wednesday, Nhan urged city authorities to speedily complete the plan on sand exploitation and implement auction sand-mining rights on the Red Rivers riverbed. As one of the key areas of sand exploitation, Ha Noi should be the pioneer in restoring order in the activity, according to Nhan. Nguyen Quoc Hung, deputy chairman of Ha Noi Peoples Committee, said the city has 26 sand mines, of which 11 mines have not yet been granted licences. The city authorities have undertaken measures to put an end to illegal exploitation, which has become complicated in the area, Hung said. Last year, Ha Noi Police settled 217 cases involving illegal exploitation, seizing 246 vessels and collecting over VN4.4 billion (USS$194,000) from administrative fines, he said. Since the beginning of this year, the city police have detected 85 cases related to this activity, seizing 72 vessels, he said. However, Hung said, challenges lie ahead in dealing with violations in sand and pebble exploitation as violators are often seen quickly moving from one area to another to avoid inspection by a competent agency. inh Van Toan, deputy director of the Ha Noi Police, said existing fines and other penalties were not severe enough to deter illegal sand miners, adding that some 30 per cent of violators resumed activities despite being penalised earlier. Specifically, criminal charges had been filed in only one out of 217 illegal sand mining cases detected last year, he said. Toan attributed the low rate to the fact that it was difficult to determine the effect of illegal exploitation on the environment before imposing the criminal charge as regulated by the State. While praising the efforts of city authorities in sand exploitation management, Nhan emphasised the need to closely monitor the points for sand gathering and trading. He suggested assigning specific supervision tasks to mass organisations, for example, the local Father Land Front coordinate with residents in monitoring mineral exploitation activities. Earlier, the Ha Noi Peoples Committee has announced a plan to auction sand-mining rights in the bed of the Red River. The move aims to improve the management, exploitation and use of sand, besides bringing the potential of minerals of the region into full play, attracting investment and increasing the State budget. VNS PESHAWAR, Pakistan A Pakistani city that has suffered more than a decade of devastating extremist violence is set to release its first ever international movie, the filmmakers said Thursday, a hopeful sign as security improves. Peshawar, capital of northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, was for years hit by militancy and unrest but will soon roll out the red carpet for "Project Peshawar", which will be released in the US, UK, Canada and Holland. "The film... revolves around a London-based character who falls in love with a girl from Peshawar through the internet and travels there only to discover that it was a mere trap to kidnap him," the films director Irshu Bangash said. Filming took place in Peshawar, as well as in the UK and Canada. The movie will be released in English, Dutch, Urdu and Pashto, which the language spoken by the Pashtun tribal people living in the mountainous border areas between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Peshawar, once the cradle of Pashtun cinema, has long suffered in Pakistans war on militancy. It was the site of the countrys deadliest ever attack, a Taliban assault on an army-run school in 2014 that left more than 150 people dead, most of them children. That bloodshed scarred Pakistanis, already grimly accustomed to atrocities, spurring a crackdown that has seen militant violence drop significantly in the past two years. As security improves cinema is seeing a renaissance. Bangash said the red carpet premiere will be held in Peshawar ahead of the films release, which he said would be in the next two months. AFP HONG KONG Family Life, an artwork by late Vietnamese painter Le Pho, fetched US$1.2m at a Modern and Contemporary Art auction at Hong Kongs Sothebys home late last week. The painting, made with ink and gouache a type of watermedia consisting of pigment, water, a binding agent (usually dextrin or gum arabic), and sometimes additional inert material is 82cm x 66cm and was completed during the period of 1937-39. It combined "Oriental" themes with "Occidental" forms, a specialty in Phos works. Le Pho (1907 - 2001) was a Vietnamese painter. In 1932, he earned a scholarship to study at Ecole des Beaux-Arts (National School of Fine Arts) in Paris. After returning to the country, he taught at Viet Nam University of Fine Arts in Ha Noi. His favourite subjects are Viet Nam landscapes, still life with flowers, family settings and portraits. Vietnamese women often portrayed as elongated, surrealistic figures are a recurrent theme in his works. As part of the universitys first generation, Pho spent most of his time working in France. Each of his works are painstakingly well-preserved, stored and separated into seperated files. Thanks to that, his paintings are thriving on the world market. His works normally range from $10,000 to $50,000 per painting. Before Family Life was sold, three other of the artists pieces sold at high prices this year. The trio Nhin Tu inh oi (A View From Top of The Hill, oil in canvas, 1937), sold at $844,697, Thieu Nu va Canh Na (Young Lady and the Sugar Apple branch, silk on canvas, 1938), sold at $567,178 at Hong Kongs Christies; and Tinh Mau Tu (Motherhood, silk canvas, 1940) sold at $629,276 at Hongkongs Sothebys. VNS VIENTIANE Lao Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith and National Assembly Chairwoman Pany Yathotou praised the co-operation between the State Audit Organisation of Laos (SAL) and the State Audit Office of Vietnam (SAV) while meeting SAV officials on Wednesday. During separate meetings in Vientiane, the Lao leaders described the SAV delegations working visit as a practical activity on the threshold of the 55th anniversary of the countries diplomatic relationship and the 40th anniversary of the bilateral Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation. They applauded the two audit agencies co-operation outcomes and orientations while appreciating the SAVs effective and substantive assistance to the SAL, especially in improving Lao auditors capacity. Laos attaches importance to auditing, considering it an effective tool to monitor and control power and prevent power abuse in the management of public finance and asset, they added. The Lao government and parliament leaders voiced their hope that the SAV will enhance co-operation with and assistance to the SAL, particularly in personnel training and experience sharing, thus helping to reinforce relations between the two agencies, as well as between the two countries. Highlighting the audit agencies sound relations, SAV Auditor General Ho uc Phoc said that over the last three years the SAV has offered training courses for Lao auditors and sent experts to Laos to help with auditing activities. It has also assisted its Lao counterpart in strengthening its legal status, completing its apparatus, drafting an audit law and integrating into the region. He asked the Lao National Assembly Chairwoman and Prime Minister to further facilitate the agencies relations. The SAV will continue helping the SAL perfect regulations and apparatus and promote auditing capacity, thereby contributing to the two countries development, he added. The SAV delegations visit to Laos from April 3-5 was made at the invitation of SAL President Viengthong Siphandone. VNS HA NOI Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has asked Thailands Siam Cement Group (SCG) to expand its investments in the country. Receiving SCG President and CEO Roongrote Rangsiyopash in Ha Noi on Wednesday, he said Viet Nam hopes that the Thai group will reap success in its co-operation and investment projects in Viet Nam, including the oil refinery and petrochemical project that it is implementing in partnership with the Vietnam National Oil and Gas Group (PetroVietnam). The Vietnamese Government will provide the best possible conditions for SCG to carry out this project as soon as possible, the PM said. The groups investment in Viet Nam is suitable and will benefit both sides at a time when Viet Nam is enjoying vigorous growth and is seeking more investment, he added. The SCG President and CEO thanked the Vietnamese Government for supporting the groups investments, noting that they were expediting the joint petrochemical project with PetroVietnam, since it was their most important project in Viet Nam. He also expressed his hope for continued support from the Government and relevant agencies. VNS HA NOI Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has agreed to support construction of the North-South Highway with investment of VN55 trillion (US$2.4 billion) sourced from Government bonds during the 2016-2020 period. He has asked the Ministry of Transport (MoT) to conduct a pre-feasibility study and report its results to the Government, the Giao Thong (Transport) newspaper reported on Thursday, citing a Government Office announcement. The highway will be constructed using a Public Private Partnership (PPP) model that is transparent and highly effective, the announcement said. The Government will also provide capital support for site clearance. The report said that a consultancy firm would be selected through a competitive bidding process to plan and design the highway construction. The final selection will be based on cost and feasibility of their technical designs, it added. The transport ministry will be responsible for directing the planning of component projects soon after the National Assembly approves of highways master plan. It will also collaborate with the ministries of Planning and Investment, Finance, Construction and Justice, and the State Bank of Viet Nam to develop investment mechanisms and policies for the project, the report said. It quoted the PM as saying the mechanisms and policies must both abide with regulations and attract investment. He has asked the Ministry of Planning and Investment to form a State council to assess the project. The PM has also instructed the MoT to review and adjust the plan on developing Viet Nams expressway network until 2020 (with a vision to 2030), towards developing the North-South Highway into 6-10 lanes instead of 4, as originally proposed. Road markers should be installed along the highway to manage land in accordance with regulations, the PM said. The PMs latest instructions follow the transport ministrys submission of three proposals last December on building the North-South Highway (from Ha Noi to HCM City). VNS HA NOI A year after the environmental catastrophe of mass fish deaths caused by the Hung Nghiep Formosa Steel Corporation, residents along the central coast are trying to return to a normal life. Formosas actions polluted more than 200km of coastline in April last year, killing more than 100 tonnes of fish and devasting the environment, robbing thousands of people of their livelihoods and severely damaging the economies of Ha Tinh, Quang Binh, Quang Tri and Thua Thien Hue provinces. Fisheries and tourism, key economic sectors for the central region, were plunged into a serious crisis. Residents surviving on fishing were rendered desperate and helpless, not knowing what to do with no fish or shrimp to catch. After Formosa committed to pay compensation, the Government and local authorities have tried to support residents resume production and positive results have been seen. The bustle and noise have returned to Ha Tinh Provinces Ky Anh District, with hundreds of boats going out to sea and returning every day. Ha Tinh households engaged in offshore fishing and aquaculture suffered damages estimated at over VN260 billion (US$11.5 million). Hoang Thi Huong, a resident of Ky Ninh Commune in Ha Tinhs Ky Anh District, said that after receiving compensation, her family bought new fishing tools and upgraded her fishing boat. All boats in the communes have resumed operations and they usually get plenty of fish every trip, said Le Cong Duong, chairman of Ky Ninh Commune. Better catches Nguyen Suu, another farmer, said hed never enjoyed such a bumper crop as hes done this year. We are getting a better catch compared to last year, and there is no difficulty in selling the seafood, he said, adding that his family was earning dozens of millions of ong per fishing trip. Signs of economic recovery have also been seen in Quang Tri Province. Nguyen Van Huan, deputy director of the provinces Agriculture and Rural Development, said fishermen have been regularly getting big catches since the beginning of this year. Huan cited as an example the case of Le Tuan, a fisherman from Gio Linh District. Tuan returned from a fishing trip with a catch weighing 150kg, the biggest ever reported in the province. At VN40,000 per kilogramme, he earned VN6 billion from this trip. Signs of recovery Huan said that the bigger catches that fishermen are getting in the central region show that the sea is recovering, and so is the fisheries sector. The mass fish deaths were first reported on April 6 when a large number of dead fish washed ashore in Ha Tinh Province. The phenomenon soon spread to Quang Binh, Quang Tri and Thua Thien-Hue provinces. The pollution also affected over 260,000 people who earned their living from the sea. Late in June, Formosa Ha Tinh accepted responsibility for the mass fish deaths and pledged to compensate by paying over VN11.5 trillion ($500 million) to support local fishermen and help clean up the polluted marine environment. As of April 1 this year, nearly VN3.7 trillion has been paid to affected people. It is expected that the payment of compensation to victims will be completed by June this year. Apart from monetary compensation, many incentives have been offered to affected people, like supporting fishermen who want to shift to other jobs or work overseas. Aquaculture exploitation and trading of aquatic products in the central area have returned to normal, officials say. Since the beginning of the year, over 4,500 tonnes of seafood have been bought and consumed. Over 80 per cent of fishing boats have resumed their operation, and the area of brackish water aquaculture has met the target of 2,777ha set for the end of 2016. VNS Nguyen Van Hoa, a 22-year-old resident of Ky Anh District, has been arrested by Ha Tinh police for allegedly abusing his civil rights and infringing upon the States interests. Photo thanhnien.vn HA TINH Nguyen Van Hoa, a 22-year-old resident of Ky Anh District, has been arrested by Ha Tinh police for allegedly abusing his civil rights and infringing upon the States interests. A report in the local newspaper said on Thursday that the arrest followed a decision by the provincial police to start legal proceedings against the accused. Hoa will be detained for three months as the prosecution prepares his case. Police said that over the last two years, Hoa was involved in various activities designed to foment protests in the province. He will be accused of abusing his civil rights, freedom and democracy to infringe upon the interests of the State, legitimate rights and interests of organisations and citizens" under Article 258 of the Penal Code. The police also alleged that the young man had joined dozens of other residents in a number of protests at the main gate of the Formosa company, using a Flycam device to shoot videos that were directly posted on social networks. To incite protests, he directly persuaded many locals to follow some extremists in Ha Tinh Province in organising activities that disturbed social order and undermined social security, the police alleged. Some Formosa property in the province was also destroyed during the protests. Hoas arrest followed a special investigation called V116 by the provincial police, focusing on reactionary activities by extremists who took advantage of the recent environmental disaster caused by the Formosa company to disturb social order. Hoa has confessed to all his wrongdoings, including the spreading of wrong, distorted information that smeared the Party and the Government, police said. The investigation found that in 2014, Hoa had set up several social network accounts to make friends and connect with many people. In April the same year he collected reports from different sources that contained reactionary information against the State of Viet Nam and spread them throughout the social media via network accounts. The police said that he also set up many gmail accounts to share photos, video clips, reports and articles on hot issues in Ha Tinh and others neighbouring provinces of Nghe An and Quang Binh. The reactionary information in many of his posts attracted the attention of some foreign organisations, some of whom were ready to pay him for what he was doing. Hoa was paid about US$1,500 for having shared 16 reports in a month about several issues in the country. Most of the reports contained reactionary information, the police alleged. VNS HA TINH A 19-year-old girl in the central province of Ha Tinh has received a letter of compliment from President Tran ai Quang applauding her decision to donate her brain-dead mothers organs. President Quang said he was touched by Nguyen Thi Sangs brave decision made in the sorrowful moments of her mothers death. Although still young, you have overcome social prejudice and the familys difficulties and loss to perform such a humane deed. May I share with you and your family the loss and grief. I hope you will soon overcome the difficulties, return to a stable life and become the sheet-anchor for your younger siblings, the letter said. On March 19, Sangs mother was admitted to HCM Citys Cho Ray Hospital following a serious traffic accident. While waiting at the hospital, Sang watched a video clip which explained how organs from a brain-dead person can save the lives of 7-8 other people. After learning that her mother was brain dead and could not be saved, Sang decided to donate her organs. She later explained to the media that when her mother was alive, she always helped other people in difficulty and had taught her children to do the same. I think my mother would be pleased to know about my decision, Sang said. Four patients with kidney, liver and cornea-related medical issues have been cured thanks to her action. Besides the letter of compliment, President Quang also granted Sang VN20 million (US$880) as encouragement for her to overcome lifes difficulties. Ha Tinh Provinces People Committee also gave the girl VN10 million. Sang and her two younger sisters are now temporarily living with their uncle in Ha Tinh. In Viet Nam, organ donation is in dire need to meet increasing demand. Over 16,000 patients suffering from heart, kidney, liver and lung diseases and more than 6,000 blind people are awaiting eye donations, according to the Ministry of Health. However, public awareness of organ donation remains limited, leading to the shortage of organ donation sources. According to reports of Ha Noi-based Viet uc Hospital, one of the 17 facilities qualified to perform organ transplants, there are around 1,000 brain dead patients every year. However, only 26 donated their organs between 2011 and 2015. VNS QUANG NINH Officers from the Tra Co border guard station in the northern province of Quang Ninh seized a fishing boat on Thursday. The boat was allegedly using an electric generator to catch fish; a method which has been banned due to its harmful side effects. The owner of the vessel, Nguyen Van Tran, 50, from Mong Cai Citys Van Ninh Commune, said he had purchased the electric generator at a shop in the town of Quang Yen for the purpose of catching seafood, despite knowing it was illegal. The border guard officials seized all equipment and fined Tran. In accordance with the Decree 103/2013/N-CP dated September 2013, using electric generator to catch fish and other marine species is banned and violators face a fine from VN1 million (US$44) to VN30 million ($1,300) depending on specific offences. During the two-month crackdown on illegal seafood exploitation, the Tra Co border guard station has uncovered 17 cases, of which 14 are related to the use of electric generators for fishing. On March 31, Quang Ninh Provinces Border Guard Command destroyed 105 electric generators, 700kg of wire, four machines, and ten home-made electric guns, as well as 27 sets of batteries and other fishing equipment. VNS THUA THIEN- HUE Fish breeding in floating cages in central Thua Thien-Hue Provinces river have died en mass, resulting in huge losses for breeders. The fish deaths occurred earlier this week in Bo Rivers section running across the provinces Huong Toan Commune in Huong Tra District. Breeders said the fish were almost ready to harvest; therefore, they were expected to incur significant losses for this breeding season. Tran Kiem Hieu, a breeder, said there were some 50 dead fish in each of his cages. On average, fish weighed 1kg each and was ready for harvest. We face estimated loss of VN1 million (US$85) per day, he said. Tran uc Gang, another breeder, said almost all his fish were dead and he could lose VN100 million due to the incident. Gang explained that in summer, the river water level is lower and fish died due to the shortage of oxygen. Gang and others demanded the release of water from the Huong ien power plant, which blocked water on the upper part of the Bo River. Nguyen Xuan Ty, the district chairman, affirmed the case, saying local authorities and the Department of Fishery had checked the site. Ty said they were working with the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development to ask the plant to release water into the river. Following the mass fish deaths caused by Formosa toxic spill in the part of the sea bordering Ha Tinh, Quang Binh, Quang Tri and Thua Thien-Hue provinces, breeding fresh water fish in floating cages has bloomed, including in the communes of Phong ien, Quang ien and Huong Tra Districts. VNS HA NOI Some 3.6 million Vietnamese are suffering from depression, accounting for four per cent of the total population, the Ministry of Health (MoH) said on Friday. The statistics were revealed during a meeting to mark World Health Day at a secondary school in Ha Noi and were based on studies conducted by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2015. Depression is a mental disorder that commonly occurs in people with stress, those that have experienced psychological trauma in daily life with family members or social connections or after they have suffered from other illnesses, affecting their physical health and ability to study and work, according to WHO. The risk of suicide in people with depression is 25 times higher than in people without mental disorders, the study revealed. Each year, some 5,000 Vietnamese and 800,000 people worldwide commit suicide, and depression is one of the leading causes, the study said. Speaking at the meeting, Deputy Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long said depression is a serious health problem in Viet Nam and worldwide. Despite the ministrys efforts to pay attention to mental health services over the last few years, actions, activities and programmes to deal with the issue in Viet Nam were only implemented in a few localities on a small scale, he said. A majority of people with depression have not been discovered, helped and cared for properly, he added. Most people have not been provided with proper understanding of the illness, leading to discrimination, he said. Deputy minister Long said the MoH considers depression a priority under the nations mental healthcare programme. More information, education and communication on the illness must be provided so that people understand and are able to recognise its symptoms and get timely treatment, in addition to helping people with depression overcome the illness, he said. Schools play a vital role in educating and taking care of students mental health because the rate of depression is highest among students and young people, he added. The MoH requests that the Ministry of Education and Training continue to instruct educational units in providing education on healthy lifestyles, physical training and soft skills for students to identify early risks of depression among students and collaborate with families to provide them with timely consultancy and care, he said. Depression is not a sign of weakness and can happen to anyone, the MoH affirmed. Talking to other people, especially trusted friends, is the simplest way to prevent and treat depression, the ministry added. VNS Vu Quang Tho, head of the Institute for Workers and Trade Unions, tells Lao ong (Labour) that both workers and trade unions are ill-equipped to cope with the free flow of labour mandated by the ASEAN Economic Community Will free movement of labour within the ASEAN create difficulties for Vietnamese workers? Yes, it would. Workers have to be equipped with good general knowledge, specific skills, languages and knowledge of cultures. We often say that we are capable of training skilled workers at a very high rate, but in fact, we are weak in terms of labour quality compared to many other countries. Our so-called high-quality workers fall behind the world standard in several areas, especially communication skills with foreigners. According to a survey by the Institute for Workers and Trade Unions in 2015, Viet Nam had around one million workers overseas; just 1or 2 per cent of these were considered skilled ones. Vietnamese workers by and large are unfamiliar with the industrial, modern working style, so they often fail to comply with the employers rules and requirements, even in simple jobs like housemaids, let alone highly-skilled ones like engineers or architects. The latest report of the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs ( December 2016) shows that the number of skilled workers that Viet Nam can export under AEC commitments is very low, limited to a few jobs in computer science or tourism, while the free labour flow applies to as many as eight sectors. Apart from tourism, preparations for workers in the remaining sectors are very weak, and this could cost Vietnamese workers jobs if the situation does not improve very soon. What should we do to fix this? The Government has recently asked the Institute for Workers and Trade Unions to undertake scientific research on the movement of skilled workers among ASEAN nations. The research aims to find out if Viet Nams labour market can respond well to such movements and what changes we should make to the education and training system to meet the new demands. As Viet Nam integrates with the global economy in general and ASEANs in particular, the integration of the labour market plays a key role. Viet Nam and other ASEAN countries managed to agree on free flow of labour within the bloc for eight particular sectors, but they will have to set up a common legal framework for everyone to follow. First, the labour force subject to overseas employment must be of high, or top quality. Second, all countries have to agree on a standardised language to be used in training courses (for now, it is English). Workers should also learn about the culture, customs of ASEAN countries, particularly those countries where they go to work. What will be the role of Viet Nams trade unions when the labour movement takes place? Most trade union officers are still clueless about specific requirements related to the free flow of labour and on how establish links with partners overseas to support Vietnamese employees. On the other hand, how should we protect the rights of expats working in Viet Nam under the AEC commitment? These are the issues we should carefully consider before putting the AECs labour movement programme in motion. VNS Travellers looking to experience a slow pace of life should visit Hoang Thu Pho Commune in the northern province of Lao Cais Bac Ha District. From Bac Ha, they can take a motorbike 12km drive to reach Hoang Thu Pho to admire the beautiful landscapes there. The place is home to a large community of ethnic Mong, ancient snow tea trees and plum and peach fruits. There are imposing mountains rising to the sky and majestic forests. Hoang Thu Pho looks like a picture postcard with its immense green trees, corn and rice fields and a harmonious combination of nature and life that waits to be discovered. The melodies of mountains and streams can be clearly heard as can the songs of birds in the jungle. Visitors should take a path leading to the centre of the commune to explore the leisurely daily life of the Mong. They can experience home-stay in their wooden houses by a stream, breathing the fresh air and admiring the wild nature. At night they can enjoy corn wine and char-grilled chicken served with cham cheo, a unique salt of the Mong, or sticky rice served with roasted chicken and ginger and grilled pig. VNS UK-based travel publisher Rough Guides has described Viet Nams north-south rail link as one of the most scenic routes in Asia. The trip of more than 1,700 kilometres offers beautiful views along the way. And while many passengers have complained about service quality, the globetrotters at Rough Guides have discovered only great things. Breakfast in the dining car is pot noodles in broth, served with fresh lime and chili. Enjoy it with a cup of instant black coffee, drunk as the train chugs its way past buffalos grazing in rice paddies, according to Rough Guides. Watch fishermen cast their nets as you pass the sea, just metres away from the tracks, before curving around the coast past deserted white beaches and lush rainforest. Rough Guides also recommends train journeys through Sri Lanka, China, Malaysia, Japan, and Uzbekistan. VNS Tour operators lament that a ban on kayaking in Ha Long Bay takes effect almost immediately, leaving them scrambling to make changes to their scheduled tours. The decision by city authorities to ban all kayaking trips in the world-renowned Ha Long Bay last week has come as an unpleasant surprise for many tourism firms. The decision was made last week following accusations that some kayaking trips are overpriced. It is unclear when the ban will go. Local authorities said the number of kayaks in the bay has been growing rapidly, with many services not being registered and many tourists getting overcharged. But tour operators complain that the ban was announced only three days before it took effect. Nguyen Tien at, deputy director of Transviet travel agency, said the reaction of most customers has been "unhappy". "We do not know what to replace the activity with." Some travel agencies have petitioned the administration of Quang Ninh, home to Ha Long Bay, to overturn the ban. "If the decision cannot be reversed, local authorities should shelve it until the end of 2017," a representative of German tourism company Chamaleon Reisen told e-newspaper VnExpress. VNS Sleeping next to a snorer can be irritating. If you dont fall asleep first, you could be lying there for an extended time before being able to fall asleep yourself. You toss and turn. You nudge your partner hoping the change in position will stop the annoyance. Its not just the annoyance that can be a problem. Snorers can be putting their health at risk. There are approximately 88 sleeping disorders. Sleep apnea is the primary condition, along with insomnia. The disorders can increase the risk for high blood pressure, heart disease, heart attack, stroke, or driving- or work-related accidents. Diabetics left untreated for sleep apnea can record higher sugar levels in the morning. Treated, the sugar levels may be in normal range. In children, sleep apnea can cause hyperactivity and affect development. As a rule, children should not snore. Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) afflicts about 20 million adult men and women in the U.S. Only about 10 to 15 percent have actually been treated. The result is repeated breathing cessation during sleep because the airway collapses. This may be due to anatomical factors like a large tongue, extra tissue in the airway, or decreased muscle tone holding the airway open. Weight can be another cause. Weight does have an impact, says Francis Connelly of the Cedar Valley Sleep Center, a partner of Cedar Valley Medical Specialists (CVMS). Gravity pushes down on the airway if you have a lot of tissue. But I have seen significant sleep apnea in people that are quite slim. Each persons anatomy is different, especially in the throat and with the tongue. Some people may have big tonsils that can cause snoring. The Sleep Center and CVMS have been in partnership since 2014. Connelly is a registered EEG technologist and registered polysomnographic technologist. Electroencephalography is a monitoring method to record electrical activity of the brain. Connelly worked at Mercy Medical Center-North Iowa in Mason City for 24 years. It was one of the few hospitals in the state that performed sleep testing in 1986, when the specialty was in its infancy. I got involved with it really early, Connelly says. I took a liking to it because it changes peoples lives, sometimes almost immediately. Ive done tests on people who have bad sleep apnea, put them on a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine and they wake up the next morning and say, oh, my gosh, I havent slept this good in 20 years. They didnt realize how tired they were, how disruptive this can be to their daily lives. Sleep disorders are broken down into disorders of excessive somnolence (sleepiness) and disorders initiating and maintaining sleep. Parasomnias are the bizarre sleep or unusual sleep disorders, such as REM behavior disorders, sleep terrors, sleepwalking and sleep eating. Some people get up in the middle of the night, eat food and not even know they are doing it, Connelly explains. Theyll eat dog food or cigarettes. When a person dreams, the body paralyzes itself, a preventative mechanism so the dream is not acted out, like jumping out of a window, running into walls or striking your bed partner if the dream is about being chased or held. If the person has REM behavior disorder, this mechanism isnt working for some reason, whether because of a previous stroke, medications or a brain tumor. Connelly says this condition is not very common and generally affects males in their 60s. When adolescents and adults have an apnea event there is a protective mechanism in the brain to arouse the person so they take another breath. It is believed babies who have SIDs may not have that preventative mechanism in place. When they stop breathing, they dont recover. If a person is suspected of having a sleep disorder, they are referred to a sleep lab such as the Cedar Valley Sleep Center. The center is located at 2413 W. Ridgeway Ave. in Waterloo. The patient is hooked up to various monitors and allowed to go to sleep. The patient is made as comfortable as possible in a home-type atmosphere. The monitoring provides answers as to what kind of sleep disorder or disorders the person suffers from. If the condition is severe enough, we try to fix the problem in one night, Connelly says. The fix most often includes the fitting of a mask and initiating a CPAP machine that the person wears each night when they go to bed. The mask provides a continuous stream of air pressure to keep the airway open. A bilevel PAP machine may be prescribed for certain situations and gives two levels of pressure, while an auto-PAP machine adjusts the pressure while the person sleeps according to the persons needs. A Servo-Ventilation machine is similar to a ventilator but is non-invasive. Each time the machine senses the person is not breathing, it kicks on automatically and breathes for the patient until they begin breathing on their own. Extreme cases may require surgery such as a tracheotomy. Other corrective measures include changing sleeping positions, or fitting the person with an oral device to help keep the airway open. As a result of more awareness on the parts of physicians and sufferers, sleep testing is becoming more accepted. Cardiology is one of the specialties that refers patients for sleep testing. Sleep apnea creates a stress, and if you have heart problems, the stress becomes more serious, Connelly explains. Cardiologists believe the sleep problem should be addressed quickly before they start treating other conditions. For example, hypertension medications may be reduced or possibly eliminated due to the correction of the sleep apnea. Concerns regarding sleep apnea have arisen in other areas as well. The U.S. is the last developed country to implement sleep testing for truck drivers. A large number of accidents annually have been attributed to sleep apnea or driving drowsy behind the wheel. The Sleep Center can perform four to six studies per night. It currently performs 60 to 80 studies per month. The monitoring technicians are respiratory therapists or are registered in sleep therapy. In 2017, everyone performing sleep tests in Iowa must be a registered sleep technologist and be licensed. The Cedar Valley Sleep Center is an independent diagnostic testing facility, meaning it treats patients in an outpatient environment. This is a true advantage for our patients, Connelly says. Hospital-based sleep testing can be quite expensive. Were the only independent facility in the local area. Connelly says the CPAP therapies will continue to improve because of the technological advances. More dentists will become involved because of the improvements and advancements of oral appliances. More sleep testing will be home-based because of technological advances. Sleep labs still will be needed, however. The number of patients being tested will increase because of better awareness of the problem by both patients and physicians. Testing will become less expensive because there will be more facilities like the Cedar Valley Sleep Center. Sleep apnea is a treatable condition, Connelly says. Losing weight may improve or correct the problem, but again it depends upon the anatomy, how large the airway or how thick your tongue is. ENT (ear, nose and throat) specialists can perform laser procedures to shrink the palate or remove tissue to open a small airway. The older you become, the better chance you have of developing sleep apnea. Males tend to have more sleep apnea issues, but women have equally as much sleep apnea after menopause. The first step is to get diagnosed, then the right treatment plan can be explored for you. WATERLOO A Waterloo family escaped their burning home Thursday morning, but the blaze claimed one of their pets. Loren Swanson said he noticed the TV in the living room had switched off. I went down to check the breaker, and it wouldnt stay, Swanson said. When he returned upstairs he and his girlfriend, Sue Clow, noticed the porch was full of smoke with flames shooting from a part of the wall near an outlet. We all got out, and I told her to get the dog. We couldnt get the cats. They were running all over, Swanson said. One of the cats died and two others were unaccounted for as of Thursday morning. Battalion Chief Mike Moore with Waterloo Fire Rescue said he could see smoke billowing in the sky from as far away as Broadway Street as they headed to the call. Firefighters contained the fire to the porch, which was loaded with furniture and other items Swanson said were intended for an upcoming yard sale. A small propane tank ignited and began venting flames, and firefighters used a pike pole to remove it from the porch and put it out, Moore said. The fire sent thick smoke into the house, and the family will have to find another place to live until repairs are finished. We kept the fire from going in, but it got a lot of smoke, Moore said. Moore said they suspect an electrical issue is behind the fire. They said theyve been having problems with the breaker that controls the living room and that front porch, Moore said. In addition to Swanson and Clow, Clows granddaughter and the granddaughters boyfriend lived in the house. Clow has owned the home for about 12 years, Swanson said. 2 rescued from Turkey River ELKADER Volunteer firefighters rescued two people after a vehicle crashed into the Turkey River in Elkader. The Clayton County Sheriffs Office said the vehicle went into the river Wednesday afternoon near High and Bridge streets. Elkader firefighters were able to pull two people from the vehicle. An ambulance took both to the hospital. The truck was almost submerged when volunteer firefighters got to the scene. Volunteer firefighter Caleb Shea said the current was moving fast. It was a pretty good drop off, so I jumped on it and went in there, Shea said, I went in first. ... The man was still in the truck when I went after him. The current and the location of the dam made for a tough rescue, but he and another firefighter managed to get the driver and passenger to safety. We got them out, and thats the most important thing. It couldve been a lot worse, Shea said. Shea said it was their first time using insulated water rescue wetsuits. He said it would have been a lot more difficult without them. The department just got the suits this year. Court upholds conviction WATERLOO The Iowa Court of Appeals has upheld the conviction of a Waterloo man who killed a friend following a night of drinking at his home in 2014. Roderick Earl Ward Jr., 29, was convicted of second-degree murder in the death of Gary Lee Wilson, and on appeal he argued the judge shouldnt have allowed testimony he allegedly tried to silence two witnesses in the case his uncle and his girlfriend. In a ruling handed down Wednesday, the Iowa Court of Appeals ruled the evidence was proper. Wards discussion of threatening witnesses has the tendency to make Wards guilt and his connection to the crime more probable, said the ruling, which was written by Chief Judge David Danilson. Authorities allege Wilson had been picking fights and arguing during the get-together at Wards Jackson Street home in the early morning hours of Aug. 2, 2014. Toward the end, Wilson and Ward became involved in a confrontation, and Wilson suffered three shotgun wounds from two or three blasts of the weapon, according to testimony in court. During trial, prosecutors introduced testimony from Trevino Fox, who had been at the Black Hawk County Jail with Ward while Ward awaited trial. Fox testified Ward admitted to shooting Wilson. He also said Ward told him about a plot to have Wards girlfriend followed after a jail visit because he was concerned about her testimony. He said he wanted her to disappear, you know? Said he was going to make sure she didnt show up to testify, Fox told jurors during trial. He also said Ward told him he planned to have people he knew holler at his uncle, who was living in Chicago. Ward is currently serving a 55-year prison sentence for second-degree murder and felon in possession of a firearm in the case. WATERLOO The Voices of Payne will present a Gift Experience program at 4 p.m. Sunday at Payne A.M.E. Church, 1044 Mobile St. Theme is Embracing Your Gifts to Transform Lives. Special guests will be Minister Reatha Phillips and LeKeisha Veasley of Antioch Baptist Church and Delores Davis of Union Missionary Baptist Church. PARKERSBURG The United Methodist Church will host a Living Last Supper passion play at 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. Sunday and at 7:30 p.m. Thursday. Donations will go to the local food pantry. WATERLOO The Antioch Music Ministry will sponsor a Community Musical for Easter, One Voice, at 6 p.m. Sunday at Antioch Baptist Church, 426 Sumner St. Choir members from churches throughout the city will come together. WATERLOO Palm Sunday festivities begin Holy Week at First Baptist Church of Waterloo at 10:15 a.m. Sunday. A special performance of The Tale of Two Trees will be presented by the Celebration Childrens Choir, led by the director of childrens music and Christian education, Susan Price. April 13 brings a new kind of Maundy Thursday Service. At 6:30 p.m.there will be meditative worship and communion in the style of Taize. The adult choir as well as a special musical ensemble including Cara Lockard, Randall Harlow, Toby Teare and Carol Teare will contribute. At 6:23 a.m. April 16, Easter morning, First Baptist will participate in the ecumenial Sunrise celebration at the Riverloop Amphitheatre. At 10:15 a.m. the traditional Easter worship begins at the First Baptist Church, 434 Baltimore. Everyone in the community is welcome. WATERLOO The ushers of Mount Carmel will host a Southern-style breakfast from 8 to 11 a.m. Saturday. On the menu will be bacon, sausage, salmon patties, eggs, biscuits, pancakes, fruit, rice and beverage for $7. Call the church at 233-9482. OSAGE -- An Osage man authorities say attacked a teen girl has been arrested. Matthew Ray Entriken, 36, was charged with assault causing bodily injury or mental illness. Entriken allegedly hit a 16-year-old in the head with his fist on March 28 at his residence in Osage, according to court documents. Investigators say they saw a bump and bruise on the side of the girl's face. They went to the home to check the girl's welfare at the urging of local school officials, according to court documents. Entriken's next court hearing is set for April 18. Fifth in a series of stories highlighting diversity in the community from our Inclusion magazine. WATERLOO -- As John Berry visited one of the Head Start classrooms recently at the Eastside Ministerial Alliance building, he paused to grab a tissue and wipe a boy's nose. After 14 years as a higher education administrator, it's a change for the new executive director of Tri-County Child & Family Development Council, which operates the Head Start programs in Black Hawk, Buchanan and Grundy counties. But the 62-year-old has embraced the role and is always ready to lend his staff a hand when stepping into their classrooms. "They need to know there's no task too small or big," said Berry. "If they can wipe noses, I can wipe noses." He regularly inspects the EMA classrooms. "I try to do that every day for the troops, for the kids," said Berry, whose office is just down the hall. "The kids keep me grounded." About 930 children from newborns to 4-year-olds are served through Tri-County Head Start's full-day, part-day and home-based programs. The EMA classrooms are one of four centers in the Cedar Valley. The organization also partners with school districts and various educational and community agencies in the three counties to provide services. Berry became the executive director and CEO of Tri-County Head Start in July, succeeding the retiring Kim Young-Kent after 25 years in the position. Before coming to the organization, he was vice president for institutional advancement at Florida Memorial University in Miami. Berry made the point Head Start's preschoolers are on the same continuum as students at the universities he's been employed by in the past. He noted the federal government mandates their programs to use as many developmental and educational tools as needed to prepare children for kindergarten. "I like to say not only kindergarten, but K-12 and on to college," he said. "Sometimes with the general public, there's a misconception that this is plain day care," said Berry. "The creative part, in some ways, is left up to the teachers. But there is a curriculum to get them ready for K-12 and then college." The Brooklyn, N.Y., native earned an associate's degree from the State University of New York at Farmingdale before heading to New Orleans to complete bachelor's and master's degrees in social work at Southern University. He earned a doctorate from Cincinatti's Union Institute & University in leadership and philanthropy in higher education administration Prior to Florida Memorial University, Berry worked for West Virginia State University, South Carolina State University, Lincoln University in Missouri, and Winston-Salem (N.C.) State University. He held administrator positions in institutional advancement, development and student affairs at these historically black universities. Before becoming a university administrator, he had a career in the field of social work. His wife, Gwenne, is Berry's connection to the Cedar Valley. She grew up here and is a longtime employee of the University of Northern Iowa. She now works as UNI's chief diversity officer. For years after their marriage, though, Berry didn't live full time in Waterloo because of his career. "We've had a professional commuter marriage," he said. "We decided, after nearly seven years of marriage, what would it be like to live together?" Without a direct connection to early childhood education, leading Tri-County Head Start may seem like a surprising next step in Berry's career. "The board did not hire me because I'm steeped in Head Start," he said. "They hired me for my executive level skill set." Berry said one of his mandates is updating technology platforms in Head Start classrooms. Currently, some are equipped with a computerized smart board. He is looking at expanding the smart boards to each classroom serving the older students with the help of grant funding as well as outfitting them with five iPad Mini 2 tablet computers. He suggested that will help them to "address the technology gap at home," where many of the children do not have access to a device. With "one or two hours a day here" using an iPad, they would be better prepared to navigate a computer in kindergarten and beyond. Some of Berry's higher education work involved fundraising, and he is looking at that possibility with Tri-County Head Start. Establishing an endowment would help fund initiatives to strengthen the education provided by the organization. "Private dollars are the difference in academic excellence," he said. Berry also has been working to add key people to the organization's board of directors. Several additional educators have agreed to join the board, including the dean of UNI's college of education, and the director of the Black Hawk County health department. "What has eluded me are corporate types," he said. "I want some corporate folk, I need corporate folk. We need folks that are bottom line folk, that are for-profit folk. We have to start thinking like that." In the meantime, Berry has been finalizing plans to move one of the Head Start centers out of the Freeburg building on the Allen College campus when the organization's lease is up at the end of the school year. The center will move downtown to 211 E. Fourth St. Whenever Berry needs a reminder of who he is working on behalf of, he steps into a classroom to see "our precious kernels of corn" the infants, toddlers and preschoolers enrolled in Head Start's programs. He noted that any of them could grow up to be an astronaut on a mission to Mars, a Supreme Court justice, or someone who discovers a cure for cancer. "I am keenly aware who we are educating today," he said. "That's what excites me." WAVERLY The Iowa Finance Authority has approved $453,000 in tax credits for development of residential spaces in the former CUNA Building at 201 First St. S.E. The project, estimated at about $7.9 million, would create about 30 affordable loft apartments in the 1932 office building, which decades ago housed CUNA predecessor Lutheran Mutual Life Insurance Co. Funding sources include a 4 percent city contribution, about $315,000, and a 10-year tax abatement. That contribution was required by the Iowa Finance Authority for the developer, Cohen-Esrey Affordable Partners, LLC, of Overland Park, Kan., to receive the state housing tax credits. State and federal historic tax credits also have been identified as potential funding sources. The Iowa Finance Authority Board of Directors last week awarded more than $7.3 million in housing tax credits to 11 projects, including the Waverly project. The actual awards exceed $73 million because the credits are committed annually for a 10-year period. Waverly City Administrator James Bronner said city officials have not yet been given a construction timetable as Cohen-Esrey is still seeking state historic preservation and Iowa Workforce housing tax credits. The IFA press release announcing the tax credit awards listed Hatch Development Group of Des Moines, co-founded by former longtime state lawmaker and 2014 Iowa gubernatorial nominee Jack Hatch, as a co-developer with Cohen-Esrey in the Waverly project. PALM BEACH, Fla. President Donald Trump cast the United States assault on a Syrian air base as vital to deter future use of poison gas and called on other nations to join in seeking "to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria." The U.S. blasted the air base Thursday night with a barrage of cruise missiles in fiery retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. It was the first direct American assault on the Syrian government and Trump's most dramatic military order since becoming president just over two months ago. The strikes also risk thrusting the U.S. deeper into an intractable conflict that his predecessor spent years trying to avoid. Announcing the assault from his Florida resort, Trump said there was no doubt Syrian President Bashar Assad was responsible for the chemical attack, which he said employed banned gases and killed dozens. "Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children," Trump declared. The U.S. strikes 59 missiles launched from the USS Ross and USS Porter hit the government-controlled Shayrat air base in central Syria, where U.S. officials say the Syrian military planes that dropped the chemicals had taken off. The U.S. missiles hit at 8:45 p.m. in Washington, 3:45 Friday morning in Syria. The missiles targeted the base's airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, officials said. The Syrian military said at least 6 people were killed and several were wounded in the strikes on the air base. Trump ordered the strikes without approval from Congress or the backing of the United Nations. U.S. officials said he had the right to use force to defend national interests and to protect civilians from atrocities. Syrian state TV reported a U.S. missile attack on a number of military targets and called the attack an "aggression." The U.S. assault marked a striking reversal for Trump, who warned as a candidate against the U.S. being pulled into the Syrian civil war that began six years ago. But the president appeared moved by the photos of children killed in the chemical attack, calling it a "disgrace to humanity" that crossed "a lot of lines." U.S. officials placed some of the blame on Russia, one of Syria's most important benefactors. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in Florida with Trump, said Moscow had failed in living up to a 2013 agreement that was intended to strip Syria of its chemical weapons stockpiles. "Either Russia has been complicit or Russia has been simply incompetent in its ability to deliver on its end of the agreement," Tillerson said. The U.S. Tomahawk missiles, fired from warships in the Mediterranean Sea, targeted an air base in retaliation for the attack that America believes Syrian government aircraft launched with the nerve agent sarin mixed with chlorine gas. The president did not announce the attacks in advance, though he and other national security officials ratcheted up their warnings to the Syrian government throughout the day Thursday. The strike came as Trump was hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping in meetings focused in part on another pressing U.S. security dilemma: North Korea's nuclear program. Trump's actions in Syria could signal to China that the new president isn't afraid of unilateral military steps, even if key nations like China are standing in the way. "This clearly indicates the president is willing to take decisive action when called for," Tillerson said. Trump has advocated greater counterterrorism cooperation with Russia, Assad's most powerful military backer. Just last week, the Trump administration signaled the U.S. was no longer interested in trying to push Assad from power over his direction of a conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and led to the worst refugee crisis since World War II. U.S. officials portrayed the strikes as an appropriate, measured response and said they did not signal a broader shift in the Trump administration's approach to the Syrian conflict. "The intent was to deter the regime from doing this again," said Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, the Pentagon spokesman. "It will be the regime's choice if there's any more, and it will be based upon their conduct going forward." Still, the assault risks plunging America into the middle of Syria's conflict, complicating the safety of the hundreds of U.S. forces fighting a separate campaign against the Islamic State group in the north of the country. If Assad's military persists in further gas attacks, the Trump administration might logically pursue increased retaliation. Russia and Iran, Assad's allies, pose other problems. Russian military personnel and aircraft are embedded with Syria's, and Iranian troops and paramilitary forces are also on the ground helping Assad fight the array of opposition groups hoping to topple him. Before the strikes, U.S. military officials said they informed their Russian counterparts of the impending attack. The goal was to avoid any accident involving Russian forces. Nevertheless, Russia's Deputy U.N. ambassador Vladimir Safronkov warned that any negative consequences from the strikes would be on the "shoulders of those who initiated such a doubtful and tragic enterprise." The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin believes that the U.S. strike on a Syrian air base is an "aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law." The U.S. also notified its partner countries in the region prior to launching the strikes. Trump's decision to attack Syria came three-and-a-half years after President Barack Obama threatened Assad with military action after an earlier chemical weapons attack killed hundreds outside Damascus. Obama had declared the use of such weapons a "red line." At the time, several American ships in the Mediterranean were poised to launch missiles, only for Obama to abruptly pull back after key U.S. ally Britain and the U.S. Congress balked at his plan. He opted instead for the Russian-backed plan that was supposed to remove and eliminate Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles. The world learned of the chemical attack earlier in the week in footage that showed people dying in the streets and bodies of children stacked in piles. The international outcry fueled an emotional response from Trump, who appeared to abandon his much-touted "America First" vision for a stance of humanitarian intervention, akin to that of previous American leaders. Trump seemed to rapidly reconsider his feelings about Assad, saying: "He's there and I guess he's running things, so something should happen." The show of force in Syria raises legal questions. It's unclear what authority Trump is relying on to attack another government. When Obama intervened in Libya in 2011, he used a U.N. Security Council mandate and NATO's overall leadership of the mission to argue that he had legal authority arguments many Republicans opposed. Trump can't rely on either justification here. Unclear also is whether Trump is adopting any broader effort to combat Assad. Under Obama, the United States largely pulled back from its support for so-called "moderate" rebels when Russia's military intervention in September 2015 led them to suffer a series of battlefield defeats. Instead, Obama sought to work with Russia on a negotiated transition. Trump and his top aides had acknowledged in recent days the "reality" of Assad being in power, saying his ouster was no longer a priority. But the chemical weapons attack seemed to spur a rethink. In Florida on Thursday, Tillerson said of Assad, "There's no role for him to govern the Syrian people." Images of the human horror in Syria filled the worlds news screens this week: Infants, children, teens, adults, some strong, some weak, all helpless and hopeless. Mouths gasping for air and oozing foam, eyes staring but not seeing. The dying lay alongside the already dead. All were innocent victims of deadly chemical weapons Russias Vladimir Putin and his despotic client, Syrian President Bashar Assad, had assured the world no longer existed. Now the world has seen with its own eyes why, even though Assad may have ordered the crime, Putin must bear the ultimate blame. And maybe the most conscientious world leaders, who once again found it inconvenient to intervene and easy to just accept the assurances of the untrustworthy, will know they too must share the ultimate shame. Once again, the world watched but did not act. Perhaps now the Russian people will finally see why the world blames Russia for enabling the horror in Syria and elsewhere. And perhaps Russians will finally figure out, although Putins militarism and swagger makes them feel strong and makes others fearful, fear is a weak substitute for the real strength that comes from genuine prosperity, which they not long ago came close to achieving. But maybe not. Perhaps Russias citizens have forgotten or never even knew! just three years ago, Putin came close to convincing world leaders Russia could be a trusted partner in the global economy. But Putins chance to bring prosperity to his people was shattered when his inner KGB nerve-stem erupted in rage. The re-emergence of Putins inner KGB was masterfully explained last month by respected CNN international affairs analyst Fareed Zakaria in his documentary, The Most Powerful Man in the World. It began by reporting on the trauma and shame Putin felt in 1989 as a 37-year-old KGB agent in East Germany when the Berlin Wall fell. And how Putin has relied on military power to make sure Russia never suffered that sort of embarrassment again. But I believe there was a crucial gap in CNNs otherwise comprehensive documentary. It overlooked the almost-success of a nonmilitary plan Putin never announced but definitely implemented. Ive previously called it the Sochi Two-Step. One: Putin would convince the world to hold its 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Two: Putin would then convince the G8 world economic leaders to hold their June 2014 summit in Sochi, where he would deploy round two of his charm offensive. It was way back in 2010 that Putin set out to make it happen. Thats when he went to the Olympic Committees meeting in Guatemala City and launched a charm offensive. He brazenly built an ice rink in that tropical locale and worked with the skill of a Chicago alderman to impress each committee member. Sochi won in a close vote. A Russian official called it one of the most important days in Russian history. The 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi was a huge success for Russia and Putins grand plan seemed on the verge of delivering for the Russian people. But when Putin saw Ukraine, once a Soviet family jewel, seeking closer ties with NATO and Europe, his inner KGB resurfaced. Putin snatched Crimea from Ukraine in March and boosted his military backing of Ukraine rebels. A stunned G8 retaliated by canceling its June summit in Sochi and held a G7 (minus Russia) in Germany instead. The West slapped Russia with new sanctions. Putin abandoned all pretense of being a global good neighbor and aligned himself with the worlds worst. He militarily propped up Syrias mass murdering Assad; Syrian or Russian jets repeatedly bombed hospitals. And across the pond, Putin ordered a neo-Watergate cyber-stealing and leaking of Democratic Party emails to help Donald Trump get elected. Russians seemed charmed by Putins strongman ways. His poll percentages soared into the 80s. And the Moscow Times reported a 2014 poll showing an astounding 45 percent of Russians felt the sacrifices of the Stalin era were justified (up from only 25 percent two years earlier). And 39 percent actually expressed admiration, kind regards or sympathy for Stalin. But Russians may soon wise up and realize they cant deposit Putins swagger in their bank accounts. Once again, Putin is seeing antigovernment protests in the streets. And a terrorists subway bomb in St. Petersburg just killed 11. Any day now, Russians may figure out their tough-guy president has failed to deliver the prosperity that, back in the days of Putins kinder, gentler Sochi Two-Step, seemed to be just a step away. Letters to the Editor Republican claims JAMES E. HINES WATERLOO To all the whiners in the Republican Party who say Obamacare was forced down their throats, I recall many meetings were held with Democrats and Republicans, and I recall our hard-working senator was taking part, trying to get an agreement in Washington and going to meetings in Iowa with him preaching, if passed, the government would put gramma to sleep and form death squads. President Trump did not drain the swamp; he gold-plated it with his millionaire friends. The person who continually called people liars turns out to be the biggest lair in history. Videos do not lie. A Call the Courier question asked if any Republicans campaigned on busting unions or taking rights from workers. Your reply was none were found. If you vote Republican you must realize they hate workers and union workers with a passion. As demonstrated by eliminating bargaining rights for pubic employees and changing rules on workers compensation injuries. Many articles stated neither item was a problem. So this is just Republicans sticking it to the working class. LWV and forums GERRI PERREAULT, LWV president and CINDY WELLS, vice president CEDAR FALLS The legislative forums are sponsored by a coalition of organizations. The League of Women Voters is one of 31 sponsors of the forums. As a sponsor, the League makes suggestions but does not control the decisions for the coalitions forums. Brief background on League: Following achievement of the vote by the Womens Suffrage Movement, the League was established to help voters become the educated participants so needed by a democracy. Our Leagues candidates forums in the fall, our community conversations, and our co-sponsorship of the Coalitions legislative forums contribute to the education of the public. Our annual directory of elected officials and our voter registration activities also assist the public in becoming engaged citizens of our democracy. Democracy needs the involvement of people with diverse views and experiences. It also needs the willingness of all involved to respect the views of those with whom they have strong disagreements. We believe our areas legislative representatives and the participants in the Legislative Forums Coalition, including our League, can become leaders in working together to find solutions to the problems facing our state. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Iraq's military arsenal included weapons of mass destruction (biological and chemical) starting from 1960s, effectively ending with its near total destruction in the 1990s. Iraq used chemical weapons on multiple occasions, both domestically and in the war against Iran. After the first Gulf War in 1991, the UN Security Council required Iraq to eliminate its chemical, biological and previously unknown nuclear weapon programs under UN verification. Iraq was subsequently accused of having restarted its WMD programs, which was the principal justification for the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States and a number of its allies. The fifth president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein,[1] was internationally condemned for his use of chemical weapons during the 1980s campaign against Iranian and Kurdish civilians during and after the IranIraq War. In the 1980s, Saddam pursued an extensive biological weapons program and a nuclear weapons program, though no nuclear bomb was built. After the Persian Gulf War, the United Nations located and destroyed large quantities of Iraqi chemical weapons and related equipment and materials throughout the early 1990s, with varying degrees of Iraqi cooperation and obstruction.[2] In response to diminishing Iraqi cooperation with UNSCOM, the United States called for withdrawal of all UN and IAEA inspectors in 1998, resulting in Operation Desert Fox. The 1999 disarmament report by UNSCOM listed large quantities of WMD material that was unaccounted for.[3] The United States and the UK asserted that Saddam Hussein still possessed large hidden stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in 2003, and that he was clandestinely procuring and producing more. Inspections by the UN to resolve the status of unresolved disarmament questions restarted between November 2002 and March 2003,[4] under UN Security Council Resolution 1441, which demanded Saddam give "immediate, unconditional and active cooperation" with UN and IAEA inspections, shortly before his country was attacked.[5] In March 2003 Chief inspector Hans Blix stated that Iraq had made "significant progress" toward resolving a number of key disarmament tasks, noting the "proactive" but not always "immediate" cooperation as called for by UN Security Council Resolution 1441. In the event of proactive Iraqi cooperation, he said it would take "but months" to resolve the key remaining disarmament tasks.[6] However, in his May 2003 report to the U.N., Blix said that his team had made "little progress" accounting for other materials which Iraq claims to have unilaterally destroyed.[7] The United States asserted this was a breach of Resolution 1441, but failed to convince the UN Security Council to pass a new resolution authorizing the use of force due to lack of evidence.[8][9][10] Despite being unable to get a new resolution authorizing force and citing section 3 of the Joint Resolution passed by the U.S. Congress,[11] President George W. Bush asserted peaceful measures could not disarm Iraq of the weapons he alleged it to have and launched a second Gulf War. Later U.S.-led inspections found out that Iraq had earlier ceased active WMD production and stockpiling. The report also found that Iraq had worked covertly to maintain the intellectual and physical capacity to produce WMDs and intended to restart production once sanctions were lifted.[12] In 2015 it was learned that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction had not been fully accounted for by UN inspections.[13] Ten years after its inception, Operation Avarice was declassified and it was learned that there were stockpiles of warheads and rockets containing degraded chemical agents similar to those used in the Iran-Iraq War. From 2005 through 2006 military intelligence discovered that the weaponsmany in poor condition, some empty or containing nonlethal liquid, but others containing sarin with unexpectedly high puritywere in the possession of one Iraqi individual who remained anonymous. Operation Avarice, headed by army intelligence and the CIA, involved the discreet purchase of the weapons from the unidentified individual to keep them off the black market.[13] Calvert City to help get letters to Santa past daily news Sep 13 (1) Sep 09 (15) Sep 06 (12) Sep 04 (10) Sep 03 (10) Aug 31 (17) Aug 29 (14) Aug 26 (13) Aug 22 (11) Aug 21 (12) Aug 19 (21) Aug 14 (6) Aug 13 (10) Aug 10 (10) Aug 08 (9) Aug 07 (10) Aug 06 (10) Aug 05 (8) Aug 03 (8) Aug 02 (7) Aug 01 (7) Jul 31 (14) Jul 29 (1) Jul 27 (7) Jul 25 (5) Jul 24 (10) Jul 22 (11) Jul 19 (16) Jul 17 (6) Jul 16 (10) Jul 15 (13) Jul 12 (7) Jul 11 (5) Jul 10 (8) Jul 08 (8) Jul 07 (3) Jul 06 (5) Jul 05 (8) Jul 04 (11) Jul 03 (8) Jul 02 (7) Jul 01 (5) Jun 30 (8) Jun 28 (7) Jun 27 (8) Jun 26 (7) Jun 25 (8) Jun 24 (6) Jun 23 (6) Jun 22 (9) Jun 20 (5) Jun 19 (9) Jun 18 (8) Jun 15 (9) Jun 13 (13) Jun 11 (11) Jun 09 (19) Jun 06 (10) Jun 04 (10) Jun 03 (8) Jun 01 (6) May 31 (5) May 30 (5) May 29 (6) May 28 (7) May 27 (7) May 26 (6) 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Nov 10 (15) Nov 09 (9) Nov 08 (9) Nov 07 (12) Nov 06 (8) Nov 05 (4) Oct 29 (1) Oct 01 (1) Jul 29 (1) May 11 (1) Jul 11 (1) By John Stanton I feel much alarmed at the prospect of seeing General Jackson President. He is one of the most unfit men I know of for such a place. He has had very little respect for laws and constitutionsHis passions are terrible. When I was President of the Senate, he was Senator; and he could never speak on account of the rashness of his feelings. I have seen him attempt it repeatedly, and as often choke with rage. His passions are, no doubt, cooler now; he has been much tried since I knew him, but he is a dangerous man. Thomas Jefferson Jefferson held that a little revolution now and then in a democratic republic was a necessary evil, not unlike severe seasonal storms that come each year. Those storms can cause extensive damage to life and property but communities rally and rebuild. Often they develop improved protocols to deal with storms ranging from disaster response to revised building codes that might withstand the next big storm. And yeah, Jefferson had black slaves like Jackson but, I mean, does that cancel out Jacksons madness and Jeffersons knowledge that the practice would destroy the United States? Who wants to litigate those issues? That said, Trump is the storm that Jefferson predicted. And, like Jackson, Trump is a dangerous, non-calibrated human being. With the exception of Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, Trump has loosed the bottom-feeders of America onto the American political scene. He has appointed extraordinarily wealthy individuals to cabinet positions with clear conflicts of interest who seek nothing less than the rape of the federal governments support for social welfare, culture, education and child care, plus the civilian federal workforce. Kill Every Social Program to Tune Of Climb Every Mountain His destruction of the federal government is the long-standing goal of Americas most strident conservatives who see the role of the federal government limited to national security and law enforcement. Its part and parcel of the effort to destroy legacy programs established by Franklin D. Roosevelt like Social Security. Trump and his fellow vermin are undertaking these task with a gleeful vengeance normally reserved for autocratic governments. They are obscurantists and adhere to the script of German general Joseph Goebbels in their daily Big Lies. No doubt, former US Navy surface warfare officer and incendiary Steve Bannon. The nepotism Trump puts on display with his daughter and son-in-law shows that he clearly intends to enrich the Trump enterprise. It is a bit nauseating to think about all the books and television appearances that are sure to come post-Trump presidency from Trumps vermin. The Trump folks proclaimed their support for States rights during the 2016 campaign. They also claim that the federal government should not be meddling in citizens freedom of choice. But their 2017 budget proposals and the health care plan would dump costs, responsibilities and choice issues onto state and local governments. Moreover, many states; for example, some energy dependent ones, do not have the funds to bolster either infrastructure repair or health care. In fact, many states are struggling to fully fund education programs. Earlier in March, the Congressional Budget Office noted that millions of Americans will be left off the health insurance rolls under the Paul Ryan signature health care act. Remarkably, the conservative Freedom Caucus in the US House of Representatives believes Ryans pogrom does not go far enough. They seek nothing less than clearing the way for the pillaging of the health care, education and social security programs. And then there is Attorney General Jeff Sessions who wants to re-declare the drug war. This Republican believes states rights do not matter as he claims he is going to crack down on marijuana usage. Welcome to the French Palace Opiod addicts, coal miners, industrial workers, part-time workers, old and young are going to suffer mightily in the coming years. Trumps claims of making America Great Again ring hollow. Just glance at the resumes of the bulk of his Wall Street, politically connected cabinet. Has anyone of them spent time walking the streets of the rotting communities in West Virginia without a script and security detail. Looking at President Trump and his court one cant help but think of the Frenchmen and women who marveled at the self-serving court of Louis the 16th and his wife Marie Antoinette. I have written some vicious polemics over the years focusing on the Clintons, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. But Trump has gone far beyond his predecessors in the designed display of callousness, arrogance and rage aimed at over 55 percent of the American public. His distortion of facts, false promises and disparagement of allies, partners, congressional opposition, media, American citizens and, yes, corporations reeks of someone with vendetta against all those who mocked his political ambitions many years ago. And the veiled racism in the repetitive attacks on Obama and Obamacare have become revolting. Trump and his cronies make sure to use the words failure and disaster at every turn as if on the 2016 campaign trail. Steve Bannon has declared war on the press that is not on the right side of Trump the New York Post reported. Its not going to get better, its going to get worse. They are adamantly opposed. Adamantly opposed to [the] economic nationalist agenda like Donald Trump has, said Bannon, who last month told the media to keep its mouth shut. Nationalist economic program? Whats next, Nationalist socialism? US Storm Troopers Yes, the storm troopers are in charge and have laid down the challenge to Americans. The Democrats, if they are to remain a viable long term party, must wage political war with their opponents. Playing nice will not work with Trump or the vermin he has released on the body politic. Americans opposed to Trump have to get off their butts and form a political party that can win major national offices and force the two parties to have to dilute the worst of their political platforms. Why not a party with the vigor of the US House Freedom Caucus? Where is the alt-Freedom Caucus in the House? The seriousness of the Trumps war on America is its attack on the US intelligence machinery. Say what you will about the CIA, NSA, DIA, FBI NSA and some of their most despicable actions in US history. But the fact is they have another side to that balance sheet that matters, just as China, Russia and every nation state competitor has. Maybe the actions are unsavory but if you deny that they happen you are a fool. Trump and his campaign advisor and chair of the US House Intelligence Committee, David Nunes Committee has continued Trumps attack on the US intelligence community. On March 22, citing only sources, he announced that he had seen a transcript in which names were masked that indicated the NSA, under a court approved order, may have collected Trump campaign people who were mentioned in conversations involving a foreign power. Nunes is a Republican party stooge. He is young and seeks longevity in Congress and is betting on Ryan and Trump to increase his influence within the Republican party. Who leaked the classified information to him? These Trump people are after us all. Quit pissing and moaning and do something. John Stanton can be reached at jstantonarchangel@gmail.com So I jump ship in Hong Kong and I make my way over to Tibet, and I get on as a looper at a course over in the Himalayas. A looper, you know, a caddy, a looper, a jock. So, I tell them Im a pro jock, and who do you think they give me? The Dalai Lama, himself. Twelfth son of the Lama. The flowing robes, the grace, bald striking. So, Im on the first tee with him. I give him the driver. He hauls off and whacks one big hitter, the Lama long, into a ten-thousand foot crevasse, right at the base of this glacier. Do you know what the Lama says? Gunga galunga gunga, gunga-lagunga. So we finish the eighteenth and hes gonna stiff me. And I say, Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know. And he says, Oh, uh, there wont be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness. So I got that goin for me, which is nice. Carl Spackler (Bill Murray), Caddy Shack In a very real sense, we are shipwrecked passengers on a doomed planet. Yet, even in a shipwreck, human decencies and human values do not necessarily vanish, and we must make the most of them. We shall go down, but let it be in a manner to which we may look forward as worthy of our dignity. Norbert Weiner A pair of Beatrice Good Samaritan Society workers were recently recognized with the regional GSS Way Regional Champion Award.These are people all over the Society who have been recognized for consistently going above and beyond in their work, and living out The GSS Way while carrying out the mission of the Good Samaritan Society. Each region will hold a special celebration for their award winners in each honorees location. Regional award winners also receive a GSS Way Champion trophy and certificate. Winners are automatically considered and nominated for the national GSS Way Champion Awards that will be celebrated at the Annual Operations Conference in June. Beatrice is located in Region 64, which includes 50 centers in Nebraska. The winner of the Employee Champion and the Volunteer Champion were both selected from the Beatrice center. Patty Moening and Lana Hager will represent the region in the two categories they were nominated for, Employee and Volunteer respectively. Beatrice celebrated the honors of these two women with staff, residents, volunteers and family members on Feb. 15 at the Good Samaritan Society Events Center with a catered lunch. The Nintendo Switch's battery life isn't good by current norms, however it could positively be better. Three to five hours sufficiently isn't for some individuals, which is the reason the SwitchCharge case may do surely.Created by a UK organization called InDemand Design, the SwitchCharge is on Indiegogo presently and is hoping to raise $80,000 to start generation. Not exclusively does it incorporate an enormous 12,000mAh battery which conveys 12 hours of battery life, it likewise has a more vigorous kickstand, spaces for diversion cards when they're not being used and a side-mounted USB Type C port for charging - which implies you can charge and play in the meantime.The main staying point is evaluating; the Indiegogo battle is putting forth units at $75 a fly for early adopters, however the retail cost could be as high as $130. Would you consider paying that for more battery life and different upgrades? Tell us with a remark.What you thinks guys let us know via in comment! A startup needs to test an idea quickly. For this, an MVP is created. MVP, Minimal Viable Product a test version of a product or service with a minimum set of functions (up to one or two), which allows you to see the product's value for consumers and the market. MVP is created to test hypotheses and check the viability of the intended product: is it worth developing the project further, what changes should be made? The sooner a startup brings its MVP to market and tests the idea, the better. This article will look at how no-code technology can help founders achieve their business goals. This article will try to cover everything that a founder needs to know about no-code at the initial stage of creating a startup. What is no-code? No-code, zero-code platform is a tool for creating websites, applications, chatbots, and other programs without the need for direct code writing by programmers. No-code is a valuable alternative to traditional development. No-code is confused with low-code, but there is a difference in these terms. Low-code includes no-code and the ability to "finish code", add parts of code and the functionality. A user of a no-code platform usually does not need to know layout, programming languages, or hire a team of programmers. The user of the no-code tool creates an application using a visual block constructor, which he fills with the necessary content and functions, and the no-code platform itself does the processing of requests, compiling the application and other "magic." It generates code using AI and/or contains blocks of code pre-written by programmers. No-code allows the startup founder to create an MVP himself, entrust it to his employee with basic technical literacy and understanding of the project, or hire a no-code developer. Even in the case of hiring a no-code developer, the cost of creating an MVP will be significantly lower than with classical development with programmers. For example, you can read the interview of a startup and no-code developer on our website, who initially worked as a Product Manager and was able to master no-code for his project himself. Benefits of no-code for a startup founder There are the following key advantages for a startup founder in using no-code technology: a large selection of no-code tools, platforms, and their integrations at the moment already in 2022, there are many tools and platforms for creating an MVP, a larger project, or even a finished product on no-code, but few people still know about them, and others are far from all startups and founders use their potential; cost no-code development saves the money by speeding up the development process, not hiring professional programmers or no need to maintain a developer department, monitoring functions and quick bug fixes, avoiding or reducing the growth of technical debt; speed is the main advantage over classical development no-code allows you to build a simple application in a weekend, and a more complex one can be built in a month. In this way, you can test an MVP and even several versions of an MVP very quickly; low entry threshold to master a no-code platform, you often do not need technical education at all, but only an understanding of a company's business processes or product from the inside. In the case of pro-level no-code platforms, technical education is required, but you can get used to it hundreds of times faster than with any programming language. This makes no-code available to almost everyone who wants to work with technology; ease of use no need to write hundreds of code lines just move the blocks and assign links between them. Work on a project can be entrusted to your employee without communicating with a team of third-party developers. You can speak "in your language" without the need to understand the "inner kitchen" of developers; flexibility with the help of no-code, it is easy for a startup founder to add new functionality and new features right during a project or a MVP testing without a significant increase in development costs. Possible disadvantages of no-code for a startup founder As often, any property can be, under certain conditions, both a disadvantage and an advantage. In no-code, many of the benefits with the wrong choice of tool can turn into disadvantages: no-code is not always a budget solution for a project. Sometimes in a no-code development package, you get unnecessary functions and additions (on AppMaster.io you can separately connect the frontend and pay only for the backend or only for those functions that you are using); if you do not understand the needs of your project, then you can make a mistake with the choice of a no-code tool and not be able to implement the necessary functions on it, or it will be too difficult to implement them; often, no-code tools fail to ensure proper data security and contribute to data leakage (but AppMaster.io allows you to host a finished application on any server); no-code tools often do not provide the ability to upload source code or provide uploading in an inconvenient format, which makes it difficult to move to another tool or to your development. You have to choose a no-code tool "once and forever immediately" (AppMaster. io gives you the ability to download the source code. Also, we generate human-readable code and you will not have any difficulties with its transportation); most no-code tools on the market are not suitable for creating a finished product, and there are significant difficulties with scaling the project if the MVP is successful (AppMaster.io is a professional no-code platform and our capabilities allow us to implement and support the finished product and scale it in the future). Forewarned is forearmed. Choose your no-code tool wisely and take full advantage of your choice. Types of no-code platforms Conventionally, all no-code tools can be divided into several types: no-code devices with a low entry threshold (you can create frontend and not very powerful backend on them), integrators that help connect applications and services, and professional no-code platforms (they strive to replace the code completely, provide the ability to create a robust backend and high bandwidth). The basic principle of operation of your MVP and the choice of a no-code platform depend on such a conditional division into types. For example, if you make a simple application like a diary, you can limit yourself to a no-code tool with a low entry threshold and a beautiful design. If your application has powerful potential, high bandwidth, multi-user interface, and works with large amounts of data or real-time data, it is better to choose a professional no-code platform like AppMaster.io or Direcual. If you use several services at once, link them on integrators like Integromat and Zapier. Adalo An easy-to-learn designer with a relatively user-friendly interface. The free version is helpful for learning. The free version contains Adalo watermarks and does not allow you to upload your applications to GooglePlayMarket and AppStore. Beginners often choose this no-code platform to create their first applications with simple logic. Bubble It will take more time to learn Bubble , but the platform allows you to work with the backend, databases, business processes, and layout. There are many plugins. The free plan allows you to master the tool, and you can start developing at the middle rate. The price increase is due to the rise in the number of users. Integromat It is an integrator. Experts talk about it as a simple and affordable platform for linking applications and services. Scenarios can be created personally, or you can use templates. If you need to connect an application with a service not from the Integromat database, fill out the form and connect to its API via HTTP. Zapier This is an integrator for linking applications with each other or with other external services. You can transfer data between thousands of applications. There is a script constructor (one event starts a chain of necessary actions). Directual The no-code platform positions itself for creating MVP applications (Minimal Viable Product, minimum viable product) and full-fledged applications of finished products. Scenarios are the backbone of the platform. Using scripts, you can automate the backend logic of the application, create and combine workflows. The Directual catalog includes out-of-the-box connectors, HTTP requests, webhooks, database listeners, and integration with popular services. AppMaster.io No-code next-generation platform for creating native and web applications on a real backend. Visual drag-and-drop designer, user-friendly business process designer, one-click app publishing to AppMaster Cloud, or integration with any cloud platform. Push notifications, authorization using social networks. Networks, email, and more. Connect applications to hundreds of services or programmatically access them using APIs. The ability to upload source code and documentation in a human-readable format and transfer it to your servers. Documentation auto-generation. Modern and fast language GoLang at the core. No-code perspectives for startups No-code development is gradually gaining popularity around the world. There are already more than 500 no-code tools for creating websites and various types of applications. According to the forecasts of IT world experts, no-code will develop more and more actively and capture parts of the market responsible for medicine, small online business, small business, and all niches where it is possibly necessary to optimize and automate development processes. The mass shift of businesses and their customers online and to gadgets has increased the demand for the fast and inexpensive creation of mobile applications that would work according to a single quality standard and have a simple, understandable, user-friendly interface. Conclusion No-code is visual programming in the form of a constructor without directly writing code. Usually, basic knowledge in development is enough to build applications on no-code. The logic of no-code constructors is intuitive: the application interface is assembled from blocks, icons, buttons, and text which are connected to the database. Usually, you can choose a suitable template or do everything from scratch. Speed and economy are the main advantages of no-code tools. No-code is suitable for creating an MVP, testing an idea or new features in a product, saving time for solving standard tasks. PRO level no-code platforms can provide you with a finished product, an application. If you don't have an account on AppMaster.io yet, join us. After registration, you will be given a free trial period for 14 days, in which all the basic functionality of the platform is available. It will allow you to learn the intricacies of working with a professional-level no-code platform and understand its potential. More than 24,000 business entities in Nebraska are on notice annual and biennial reports are now past due. Secretary of State John Gale says all 2017 reports should have been filed with his office by April 1. Now, a reminder is being mailed to those limited liability companies (LLCs), limited liability partnerships (LLPs) and nonprofits, which missed the deadline. Each of those entity types can file and make payments online, which can help expedite the process, explained Gale. They have until June 1 to do this, otherwise, domestic entities could be administratively dissolved or in the case of foreign entities, have their authority revoked. Links to the appropriate forms are easily accessible on the main page of the Secretary of States. The system guides users through the filing process and produces an electronic receipt after payment is completed. Filings have not been received by 20,326 LLCs, 60 LLPs and 3,900 nonprofit corporations doing business in Nebraska. Business entities that fail to file by June 1, but wish to remain in good standing, will be required to reinstate or refile, depending on the entity type. They will be assessed a reinstatement fee in addition to any payments that are past due. Archived Results for Friday, April 7th, 2017 Older Page 1 Part of the array of turbines at the Amazon Wind Farm. (CJ photo by Don Carrington) The facility now known as the Amazon Wind Farm was approved by state regulators after they were told it would provide part of the electric power necessary for the state to satisfy renewable energy mandates passed in 2007 by the General Assembly.But it doesn't supply any of that energy, signaling another instance of what critics consider frequent deception by the wind industry intended to fool the public into authorizing its projects. (See related story here .)In May 2011, the North Carolina Utilities Commission approved Atlantic Wind LLC's application to build a 300-MW wind facility in Pasquotank and Perquimans counties and register it as a "New Renewable Energy Facility." The approval, in part, was granted based on testimony from Jay Lucas, an electrical engineer with the Utilities Commission Public Staff's Electrical Division. "Lucas testified that the facility is needed to provide renewable energy that will help electric power suppliers in North Carolina meet the requirements of Senate Bill 3, which was enacted in 2007," the approved order stated.S.B. 3 established REPS for North Carolina public utilities. The requirements were for renewables, including wind and solar, to comprise 6 percent of the previous year's retail sales in 2015, 10 percent in 2018, and 12.5 percent in 2021.For the Amazon Wind Farm to count towards a utility's REPS requirement, the environmental attributes - or "greenness" - of the energy produced at the site would have to be bought by a North Carolina power company. The attributes are measured in Renewable Energy Certificates, or RECs. One megawatt hour equals one REC. The actual power and the RECs can be sold to different parties.In August 2015, the Utilities Commission revoked the registration of 127 renewable energy facilities because "their owners had not completed or filed the annual certifications required each April 1 as detailed" by commission rules. One of those facilities was Atlantic Wind, which later became known as the Amazon Wind Farm. After this revocation, the facility could not participate in the North Carolina in RECS program or have its renewable energy count in the REPS program.Lisa Linowes, executive director of the New Hampshire-based WindAction Group, told Carolina Journal.James McLawhorn, director of the Electrical Division of the Public Staff of the N.C. Utilities Commission, monitors utility company compliance with REPS. McLawhorn told CJ that electricity from the Amazon Wind Farm doesn't help North Carolina meet its renewable energy goals.he said. David A. Bell at The Nation: If you want to understand the populist fury now crashing over the West, France provides a good place to start. Not only has the country had its own Trumps for a long time now, but the conditions under which Trumpism can flourish have been present in France for much longer than in much of the rest of Europe and the United States. There is a good case to be made, in fact, that France was the patient zero of the Wests current epidemic of populist fever. Think of the conditions that helped propel Trump to the American presidency. Economic stagnation? Since the 1980s, the French economy has expanded at barely half the pace of Americas, and for all but a few brief moments over this long period, unemployment has remained stubbornly at over 8 percent. Resentment of entrenched ruling elites? A very high proportion of Frances political and business leadership graduates from a handful of small, ultra-elite grandes ecoles, and is widely criticized as aloof and out of touch. Perceptions of national decline? In many ways, France has still not recovered, psychologically at least, from its loss of great-power status and its colonial empire. Loss of sovereignty? France has surrendered far more to the European Union than the United States has done to any combination of international organizations and multilateral trade pacts. Xenophobia and controversies over immigration? Already in the 1980s, the expansion of the French Muslim population was giving rise to alarmist headlines such as La France islamique? in the mainstream French press. Terrorism? Spectacular terrorist attacks traumatized Paris in the early 1980s and again in the 1990s, and again in our own moment. more here. Elaine Blair in The Paris Review: What is Goodbye, Columbus? A story of a summer romance, a satirical sketch of suburban arriviste Jews in the fiftiessure. But when I stumbled on Philip Roths first book on the shelf of my high school library, Goodbye, Columbus seemed to me above all a brief against marriage. The storys pointor so I thought of itunsettled me. I had no intention of heeding it. I was for marriage, a born ball and chain. In the story, Neil Klugman, recently out of Rutgers and the army, works behind the desk at the Newark Library. His summer girlfriend is Brenda Patimkin, a Radcliffe student from tony Short Hills, New Jersey. We lived in Newark when I was a baby, she tells Neilthat is, before the Patimkins social climb. For Neil, Brendas allure is tangled up with his fascination of her prosperous world, and the closer the two of them get, the closer Neil comes to signing up for the whole Patimkin package: a fancy wedding, a lifetime management job at her fathers factory (Patimkin Kitchen and Bathroom Sinks), a country-club membership, a house in Short Hills, and, inevitably, babies. Its cushy, but Neil isnt sure he wants that life, while Brenda seems to consider no other. The second time I read Goodbye, Columbus, I was in my late twenties, living in New York City, working in the editorial department of a magazine, and had no aspirations to move to the suburbs. I didnt think I particularly resembled Brenda Patimkin or the rich young matrons of Short Hills, whose ranks she seemed destined to join, yet I felt very much the thing being cautioned against. I knew myself to be a future wife; I harbored dreams of having children. And I was surrounded by Neils, leery of family life. On the subject of family planning, a beau had recently leaned back in his chair and recited This Be the Verse. I have not forgotten his smugness, or my defensiveness: he had some pretty good writing on his side. He might have read aloud from Goodbye, Columbus, from a scene that preoccupied me in those days. While Brenda goes dress shopping in New York, Neil drives up to the mountains alone and observes a group of picnicking young mothers and children: Young white-skinned mothers, hardly older than I, and in many instances younger, chatted in their convertibles behind me, and looked down from time to time to see what their children were about. Neil has seen them in the mountains before; in clutches of three or four they dotted the rustic hamburger joints that dotted the Reservation area. While their kids feed the jukebox, the mothers, a few of whom I recognized as high school classmates of mine, compared suntans, supermarkets, and vacations. They looked immortal sitting there. They looked immortal sitting there. The irony needled me. The line stayed with me for years. I was sure, on last reading it, that Roth meant not that the mothers individually looked immortal but that the condition of motherhoodand fatherhoodwas immortal, the inescapable, wearying lot of most of humanity. Neil was girding himself to get out while he could. More here. Set in a St. Helena apple orchard, this lighthearted wedding captured the colors and vibes of summer. After an eight-year relationship, Roy and Rebekah decided on a relaxing, slightly fancier-than-a-dinner-party wedding that blended their country girl and city boy backgrounds. The country part came in with succulents dripping in gold, dried flowers dyed in a modern palette of saturated blues and greens, vintage accents, and a barn dance; great local food, wine, and cocktails represented for the city. Out-of-state guests arrived via yellow school bus after spending a relaxing weekend in St. Helena, which Roy and Rebekah planned as a special opportunity for friends to mingle and explore Napa Valley before the big day. The newlyweds hosted breakfast each morning in the hotel courtyard with locally roasted coffee and fresh pastries from Calistoga Roastery, as well as a Saturday night welcome dinner catered by Mitchell's Taco Truck. Rebekah made a bold move choosing a vivid yellow cocktail dress, while Roy added his own personal flair with a vintage Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso watch, the same kind Don Draper wore in Mad Men. Together, the couple walked down the aisle as they skipped over other prim and formal wedding traditions tequila shots instead of a Champagne toast, s'mores instead of a wedding cake, and an iPhone app instead of a live DJ. The cocktail hour featured fresh oysters shucked to order and French 75s and Sazeracs as guests played lawn games. Keeping with the casual feel, dinnerbrick-cooked chicken, local petrale sole, and risottowas served family style on the lawn. Guests then moved to the barn for a lively dance party that continued well after midnight. Photographer:Caitlin O'Reilly Photography Ceremony & Reception Venue:Long Meadow Ranch Catering: Farmstead at Long Meadow Ranch Floral Designer: Succulently Urban Event Coordinator: Erica Selsted Events Hair stylist: Stella Stevens Hair Designs Makeup artist: Cari Orr Transportation: Michael's Busing Lodging: Dr. Wilkinson's Hot Springs Resort Welcome dinner catering: Mitchell's Taco Truck Breakfast catering: Calistoga Roastery Paper fans, garland, mad libs, tin vases:BHLDN Dried flowers: Fantastico Mailbox and table runners: DIY Lodging: Dr. Wilkinson's Hot Springs Resort Officiant: Rev. Richard Orr Groom's attire: Custom suit by Black Lapel, custom shirt by Proper Cloth, pocket square and tie from Tie Bar, vintage watch by Jeager-LeCoultre, shoes by Allen Edmonds Brides attire: dress by Shoshanna, shoes by Rachel Simpson exclusive to BHLDN, necklace by J. Crew, earrings by Anthropologie, veil by Brenda's Bridal Veils on Etsy Part meditation and part otherworldly nap, "sound baths" are sound-meditation sessions "bathed" in healing sounds and vibrations produced by crystal bowls, tuning forks, and rainforest sticks. (No, claw-footed porcelain and water are not part of the equation). Devotees claim the benefits of sound baths include relief from chronic pain, digestive issues, stress, and depression. If this, er, sounds like what you need to quiet that monkey mind, we've rounded up the five best sound-healing experts in the Bay Area to help you get your aural on. Maryzell Ungo leads the Chakra Soundbath & Tea Ceremony at The Center SF (Courtesy of @thecentersf) The Center SF The Center SF hosts regular events that involve detoxing and healing with sound. Look for experiences like the Chakra Soundbath & Tea Ceremony with Maryzelle Ungo, which uses seven different chakra crystal bowls to guide you to a more balanced and harmonized state, and the Sound Immersion Expereince with Danny Goldberg, which harnesses the vibrations of gons and singing bowls for deep relaxtion. // 548 Fillmore St. (Lower Haight), thecentersf.com Inner Sounds Meditation Melissa Felsenstein offers sound healing experiences at venues around the Bay Area, as well as online. Paiste gongs and quartz singing bowls are played throughout an hour-long sound savasana meant to relieve tension in the body and promote deep rest. Themes range from restorative to mindful movement. // Rotating locations virtual and in-person locations, innersoundsmeditation.com Sound Meditation SF A local sound-healing outfit that follows the vibrational-healing philosophy of Nada Yoga, Sound Meditation SF livestreams sound baths on Wednesdays and Sundays. Students lay in savasana while the instructor uses gongs, crystal singing bowls, shamanic drums, and chimes to create healing vibrations. // Virtual events at soundmeditationsf.com The Center for Integrative Wellness The sound healing ceremonies at Pacifica outfit The Center for Integrative Wellness coincide with the full moon. The events are a time to manifest and celebrate new beginnings while clearing and releasing stress. The donation-based ceremonies take place monthly (outdoors when possible) and are also streamed virtually. The next healing is on November 22 at 7pm. // 15 W Manor Dr. (Pacifica), facebook.com/wellnesscenterpacifica Aura Stream The Bay Area healing collective Aura Stream leads regular sound bath pop-ups around the Bay, as well as for private groups and individuals. On November 17, celebrate their three year "auraversery" with a sound bowl healing and meditation event at Manila Taekwando in Union City. Register in advance to participate. // Various locations, theaurastream.com ABC News(NEW YORK) -- Nikki Haley, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, warned Friday that the U.S. is "prepared to do more" in Syria, one day after American warships fired a barrage of cruise missiles at a Syrian government air base. "The United States took a very measured step last night. We are prepared to do more, but we hope that will not be necessary," Haley said Friday during a special open session of the U.N. Security Council devoted to discussing Syria. The United States launched the direct assault against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime in response to a chemical weapons attack earlier this week that killed dozens of civilians. Haley accused Assad's regime of carrying out Tuesday's horrific attack in northern Syria, saying this "fully justified" the U.S. government's decision to strike the air base. "The moral stain of the Assad regime could no longer go unanswered," she said. U.S. officials said a total 59 tomahawk missiles were launched from destroyers USS Porter and USS Ross in the Mediterranean Sea over a half-hour span beginning at 7:36 p.m. ET on Thursday. The strikes were aimed at the Shayrat Air Base in Syria's Homs province, where an aircraft carrying the chemical weapons in Tuesday's attack is believed to have taken off. "The intent here wasnt just to punish; it was deter future use," retired Vice Adm. Robert Harward, an ABC News contributor and the former deputy commander of U.S. Central Command who turned down the role of national security adviser after Michael Flynn's resignation, told ABC's "Good Morning America" on Friday. The Shayrat Air Base has been one of Russia's main airfields in Syria, serving as a forward operating base for Russian attack helicopters to support Assad regime offensives in Homs province amid Syria's ongoing conflict. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the United States did not discuss the military strike with Russian President Vladimir Putin or political leadership in Moscow either before or after it occurred. But the U.S. military said it communicated with its Russian counterpart to minimize any chance of Russian causalities, particularly any Russians operating out of the targeted air base. U.S. President Donald Trump, who blamed Syria's leader for the chemical weapons attack, said on Thursday night that the airstrikes were in the "vital national security interest" of the United States. The aftermath A U.S. official said 58 of the 59 missiles reached their intended targets, and approximately 20 aircraft were struck. The official also said that there were no Russian aircraft at the base at the time, nor was there any indication that Syria had detected incoming missiles before they struck. According to Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis, the missiles targeted aircraft, hardened aircraft shelters, petroleum and logistical storage, ammunition supply bunkers, air defense systems and radars. The time of the airstrike was chosen to minimize civilian casualties, Davis said. The Shayrat Air Base housed chemical weapons prior to 2013 but it is unclear if weapons are still stored at the facility. A U.S. official told ABC News the missiles did not target any suspected chemical weapons stockpiles at the air base because that was not the intent of the operation. Col. Steve Ganyard, an ABC News contributor and a retired Marine Corps fighter pilot who served as former deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of Political-Military Affair, said in an interview on "GMA" Friday morning that "the message has been sent." "We'll just have to see how Assad reacts to this," Ganyard added. Syria reacts The Syrian government swiftly denounced what it described as "illegal action targeting one of our air bases against our sovereignty," the first time the U.S. military intentionally targeted Assad's forces since the beginning of Syria's civil war. Al-Assad's office said in a statement Friday that the United States "naively followed a false and lying propaganda campaign" that led it to "carry out this irresponsible recklessness." The presidency of the Arab Syrian republic asserts that what America carried out was an irresponsible act that only reflects short-sightedness, a narrow perspective and political and military blindness toward reality," the statement said. The fact that the United States of America has committed this shameful act by targeting an airport of a sovereign state clearly demonstrates, once again, what Syria has said and continues to say - that changing administrations doesnt change the deep policies of this government, namely, the targeting of countries, the subjugation of people and an attempt to dominate the world." The Syrian army delivered a statement on state-run television on Friday, saying six people were killed in the U.S. airstrikes. The Syrian army went on to describe the United States as "the initiators of the ongoing dirty war against our people." According to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the death toll has increased to seven. Russia reacts Russia, a staunch ally of the Syrian government, also had harsh words for the United States, calling the military airstrike a "clear act of aggression" that would "further undermine Russo-American relations." The presence of military personnel from the U.S. and other countries in Syria without the permission of the government "or a resolution of the U.N. Security Council is a gross, clear and in no way justified violation of international law," the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement Friday. "If before it was explained as a mission in the battle against terrorism, now it is a clear act of aggression against a sovereign Syria. The taking of these actions by the U.S. today yet further undermines Russo-American relations." The Russian foreign ministry said it was calling for an urgent United Nations Security Council meeting and that Moscow was suspending its current memorandum of understanding with the U.S. military that was aimed at avoiding air collisions in Syria. Both Russia and the United States have a large air presence in Syria and had established so-called "de-confliction" channels to avoid collisions of their respective aircraft. The Russian foreign ministry also suggested that the U.S. decision to strike the Syrian regime was made in advance of Tuesday's chemical weapons attack, calling it "a pretext for a demonstration of force." The Russian defense ministry claimed only 23 U.S. missiles hit the Syrian air base, saying it's unclear where the others landed. The airstrikes destroyed a supply dump, a training building, the canteen, six planes that were under repair in hangars and a radar station. The ministry claimed the runways and operational Syrian aircraft were not damaged. Citing the Syrian military, the Russian defense ministry said four Syrian soldiers were killed and six suffered burns while putting out fires caused by the explosion. Two Syrian soldiers remain unaccounted for. "As such, the military effectiveness of the American massed missile strike on the Syrian airbase was extremely low," the Russian defense ministry said in a statement Friday. What prompted the U.S. to strike? At least 86 civilians, including 30 children and 20 women, have died from a chemical weapons attack in northern Syria on Tuesday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Harrowing footage from the scene in Idlib province showed victims gasping for air and being hosed off, as well as the lifeless faces of those who didnt survive. It's the worst chemical attack the war-torn country has witnessed since 2013. Trump on Wednesday firmly condemned the "heinous actions" in Syria, telling reporters that the attack "crossed a lot of lines for me." "I do change, and I am flexible, and I'm proud of that flexibility. And I will tell you that attack on children yesterday had a big impact on me," the U.S. president said during a press conference at the White House with Jordan's King Abdullah II. "It's already happened, that my attitude towards Syria and Assad has changed very much." After conducting autopsies on victims who were brought to Turkish hospitals for treatment, Turkey's health ministry confirmed Thursday that the patients had been exposed to sarin gas, a banned nerve agent. A U.S. official also said the symptoms exhibited by the victims pointed to sarin gas. The U.S. official told ABC News that a Syrian military fixed-wing aircraft dropped the chemical weapons on what was an underground hospital run by an al-Qaeda affiliated rebel group formerly known as Al-Nusra Front in the town of Khan Sheikhoun. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem firmly denied that his government used chemical weapons in Tuesday's deadly attack. He told reporters at a televised press conference in the capital of Damascus on Thursday that "the Syrian Arab Army has never used chemical weapons and will not use chemical weapons against Syrians and even against terrorists." Moallem said rebels linked to al-Qaeda and ISIS have brought chemicals from Iraq and Turkey into the country and have been stockpiling them in residential areas. On Wednesday, Russia's Defense Ministry blamed Syrian rebels for the attack, saying that the Syrian air force struck a warehouse where opposition militants were storing chemical weapons a statement that contradicts testimony from residents, doctors and activists on the ground. Syria's ongoing conflict Tuesday's chemical weapons attack is the latest atrocity in Syria's ruinous six-year war. What started as a local protest movement in Syrias southern city of Dara'a expanded into a full-fledged civil war by 2012. ISIS, which grew out of al-Qaeda in Iraq, took root in northern and eastern Syria in 2013 after seizing swaths of territory in neighboring Iraq. The jihadist group is fighting to overthrow Assad's regime and establish a caliphate. The Syrian Civil War has pulled in the United States, Russia, Iran and almost all of Syria's neighbors. It has become the largest humanitarian crisis since World War II, according to the U.N. What's next? Nikki Haley on Friday denied a request from Bolivia for a closed session on Syria, insisting that "any country that chooses to defend the atrocities of the Syrian regime will have to do so in full public view. During the open session, Russian deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Vladimir Safronkov, condemned the "illegitimate" U.S. military action on the Syrian airbase, calling it a "flagrant violation" of international law. Safronkov called on the U.S. to instead "work together" with Syria and Russia to combat terrorism in the country. "We call on the United States to immediately cease its aggression," Safronkov said. Haley, who is acting as the president of the U.N. Security Council for the month of April, spoke next. She didn't mince words in rebuking those who support Assad's regime. "Every time Assad has crossed the line of human decency, Russia has stood beside him," Haley said. "The world is waiting for the Russian government to act responsibly in Syria." She also suggested that Russia may have known about Syria's illicit chemical weapons supply and may have even had a hand in Tuesday's attack. "Russia's supposed to be a guarantor of the removal of chemical weapons from Syria. Think about that," Haley said. "Russia is supposed to have removed all the chemical weapons from Syria. But obviously that has not happened." She continued, "As innocent Syrians continue to be murdered in chemical attacks, let's think about the possible reasons for Russia's failure. It could be that Russia is knowingly allowing chemical weapons to remain in Syria. It could be that Russia has been incompetent in its efforts to remove the chemical weapons. Or it could be that the Assad regime is playing the Russians for fools." Syrian ambassador to the United Nations, Bashar Jaafari, said the United States acted "illegally against the Syrian Arab Army" and "without genuine knowledge of what happened" in the chemical weapons attack, or "without identifying who was responsible." Jaafari added that U.S. airstrikes harm counterterrorism efforts. Copyright 2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. Is the concerted Democrat plan to obfusticate the purpose of government by the unprecedented delaying of President Trump's appointments, while galvanizing with the organized protesters' directive to obstruct the process of governing, at the federal level, working for the Democrat brand? Yes, Democrats will finally create a Socialist Progressive utopia if they remain banded together. No, the nation is in dire straits, on so many levels, and needs immediate repair. I'm busy with my important life, such as it is, and don't care. 68 total vote(s) What's your Opinion? It was a daring political move for the Democrat party, and the Democrat Media, but, it just might work. Link to Russia, and Vladimir Putin at every possible point. It was a failed exercise in defeating the mercurial Trump, as L. Hillary Clinton was soundly defeated in the 2016 Electoral College, but the groundwork had been laid to delegitimize the new president , which well suited their partisan needs; the time honored 100 day presidential honeymoon be damned.Maybe, it began during the Republican primary with the inarticulate musings of Candidate Trump's muddled discussions that he professed that he could possibly work with Vladimir Putin's Russia upon the complicated stage of foreign policy, to eradicate common foe ISIS, as well as all Islamic Terrorism. After Candidate Trump won the Republican Primary, the Democrats, with their Democrat media in tow, made silly political hay when Candidate Trump joked by imploring that: 'the Russians should find L. Hillary's missing 30,000 emails' , which she had illegally destroyed. It was a joke aimed at the press, mostly the Democrat Media, who had little desire to investigate the Candidate L. Hillary Clinton /Clinton Foundation's collusion for the corrupt administration of its purpose and the destroyed 'paper trail' contained within L. Hillary's illegal servers, soon to be all destroyed. The Trumpian joke that most principled Americans well understood was what Trump meant: Maybe, we should depend on Russian hackers to discover the truth, since the Democrat Media could not be counted on to perform their avocation, other than to tacitly advocate for their preferred Democrat champion.Accordingly, when Trump came from behind to trounce L. Hillary in the Electoral College, the Democrat Media was visibly shaken, some even wept on camera. The Democrat faithful fared no better , expressing bitterness, contempt, hatred for their nation's new path, so what should they do?The Democrats' concocted plan is to Resist, Obstruct, Obfusticate, Conflate to the point of Lying, and in the spirit of grand Hypocrisy, Delegitimize the Trump Administration as well as his family. It is scorched earth policy that knows no bounds, no party that is not committedly "Democratic" survives their unbridled wrath. And while the modern Democrat party has proven to have the core principles of a sloth when dealing with Republicans, President Donald J. Trump has brought out a truly ugly side of Democrat Party; one that they may never recover from.But for Democrats, there truly is an upside: After a lifetime of decades of complete ambivalence on the Soviet Union now Russia issue, Democrats, however short-lived, finally care about Russia . The supreme irony here is that their concern is about Russian hacking, an issue, heretofore, the Democrats had no issue with; not until it became nearly certain that they were behind the hacking of Democrat operatives' emails, which were publicly revealed by WikiLeaks. This Democrats are still howling, in unison, that Russia cost L. Hillary the election due to this unveiled political dirty laundry, and that Donald Trump colluded with the Russians to make it so. After 6 months or more of investigations, with no real proof before or after the near landslide election in the Electoral College, there is no real evidence of his collusion, yet the Democrats, and many within the Democrat Media treat the Trump /Russia Collusion allegations as if they are know fact.It is upon this muddled stage of congressional and FBI Investigation that another, more substantial scandal is being unveiled: The Obama Administration's surveillance of Trump and his political team by the NSA, and to a lesser extent, other Federal agencies; the collection of data; the unmasking of names within that data collected; the unprecedented widespread sharing, by Obama executive order, of that data within the Federal government, and the subsequent leaking by yet unknown participants of this extra-classified information to the Democrat Media. Many felonies have been committed here on behalf of this Democrat cause to discredit Trump, yet nothing new of any real substance has been revealed to link the president to any Russian collusion; much to the anxious chagrin of the Democrat extra-partisans, irrespective of their collective wish otherwise.There is, however, the Democrat unsightly, unwanted by-product of the Russian /Trump Collusion investigation, especially in the U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence - Americans are being surveilled, and collected information is being used against them, but not for their breaking of the law; but to assess guilt by association against their political enemies.Guilt by association, even by multiple degrees of separation, is a hallmark of how Democrats mark their principled opponents, since Democrats aren't principled driven to the point of claiming the right ground on most issues, which precludes them from winning the overall debate against average to good debaters. Just as Russian hacking may have taken a long look the Democrat operatives to employ to influence public opinion, the government of our States United does reserve the right to surveil American citizens for any purpose other than national security, and even then their names cannot be unmasked and then widely disseminated as is being proved that the Obama Administration did in its final weeks.Stay connected for updates. Captain William Chrismon Washington Police Department At 11:59 a.m., Washington Police responded to a robbery at First Bank 639 West 15th Street. The suspect entered the bank and presented the teller with a note demanding money. The suspect left on foot with an undisclosed amount of cash and no weapon was seen. The suspect is described as a black male six foot tall, approximately last seen wearing a grey toboggan with a brim, a navy blue and black hooded sweatshirt, white under shirt, dark pants, black sneakers with white trim and blue and black thick gloves. Surveillance images are attached. Surrounding daycares were notified and placed on temporary lock down. Anyone with information can call Washington Police Department at 252-946-1444 or Beaufort County Crime Stoppers 252-974-6400. To Deploy MABR Wastewater Treatment Systems with RWL Water in Tianjin China Melbourne, April 7, 2017 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Emefcy Group Limited ( ASX:EMC ) ( EMFGF:OTCMKTS ), a global leader in energy-efficient wastewater treatment solutions and RWL Water (www.rwlwater.com), one of the fastest growing water solutions companies in the world, today announced their first jointly developed project in China. To be deployed in Tianjin, China's fourth-largest city, the project was developed in partnership with one of Emefcy's China distributors, Interflow Control Technologies, and involves a multiphase agreement to utilize Emefcy's MABR wastewater treatment technology at one of five treatment plants in the city. The five plants are owned and operated by Tianjin Caring Company and have a total installed capacity of 1.5 million cubic meters per day. The first phase of the project is based on a proprietary "packaged plant design solution" developed jointly by Emefcy and RWL Water, with an installed capacity of 20,000 litres per day and scheduled for installation in Q3, 2017. This paid Phase I MABR "packaged plant" combines Emefcy's proprietary technology and RWL Water's engineering and packaging solutions. The second phase will be to upgrade one of Tianjin's existing Class 1B centralized waste water aeration basins to the new standard of Class 1A, using Emefcy's proprietary submerged MABR technology. This installation will mark the first use of a submerged derivative of Emefcy's MABR solution for centralized waste water aeration basin. This deployment demonstrates how MABR can be applied to centralized treatment, a new vertical that expands the market opportunity beyond off-grid communities. Tianjin Caring Company is located in Tianjin and has the primary responsibility for implementing new wastewater treatment technologies and process design for the Tianjin Capital Environmental Protection ( SHA:600874 ) ( HKG:1065 ) ("TCEP") Group of companies. Tianjin Caring is a member of the National Urban Water Supply and Sewage Engineering Technology Research Center, under the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development. This Research Center has primary responsibility for implementing new and innovative water and wastewater treatment technologies to meet the increasingly stringent environmental discharge and reuse standards being introduced in China. The Emefcy demonstration plant is expected to be installed and begin operation in Q3 2017 with final Tianjin municipal certification expected in Q4 2017. Tianjin Caring intends to upgrade all of its existing wastewater treatment plants from Class 1B to Class 1A within the next 3 to 4 years. Tianjin views the MABR technology developed by Emefcy and engineered into a turn-key packaged solution by RWL Water as an enabler to meet regulatory requirements for class 1A at the lowest life-cycle cost. The total addressable market in Tianjin alone is quite large. For example, retrofitting all of the existing municipal wastewater treatment plants would have an estimated contract value in excess of A$100 million. Yet, Tianjin's treatment capacity is less than one half of one percent of the addressable market for the "submerged" MABR solution in all of China. Richard Irving, Chairman of Emefcy, commented: "We can now demonstrate that Emefcy's MABR value proposition extends beyond rural distributed wastewater systems to large centralized wastewater treatment sites too. This is a potentially enormous market opportunity in China and beyond. We are excited to be working with Tianjin Caring Company to demonstrate the efficacy of Emefcy's next generation, submersible MABR technology in a completely new market vertical. Our alliance with RWL Water brings the ability to offer a unique solution that combines Emefcy's differentiated technology with the proven engineered solution capabilities and the pedigree of the RWL Water team." Henry Charrabe, CEO of RWL Water stated: "We are excited to leverage our global leadership position in designing packaged water and wastewater treatment solutions in order to assist Emefcy in executing on their strong pipeline of opportunities in China." About RWL Water Founded by Ronald S. Lauder in 2010, NY-based RWL Water was established with a vision to become the leading global water, wastewater and reuse solutions provider in the middle market. With operations in Latin America, the United States, Europe and the Middle East and over 90 years of combined operational experience, RWL Water provides leading edge, global solutions for desalination, water, wastewater, waste-to-energy, recovery & reuse as well as food & beverage processing. Recognized as one of the fastest growing water solutions companies in the world, RWL Water has designed and built more than 7,000 successful installations and possesses strong customer references in more than 70 countries worldwide. For more information about RWL Water, please visit the company's website: http://www.abnnewswire.net/lnk/99039OZM About Tian Caring Company Tianjin Caring Company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Tianjin Capital Environmental Protection Group Co. listed in Shanghai and HK stock markets (A-share code 600874; H-share code 1065) with a market cap of 10 B RMB. Tianjin Capital Environmental Protection Group owns various subsidiary companies who build and operate multiple water and wastewater concessions across China in Shandong, Anhui, Yunnan, Guizhou, Hebei and Shaanxi Provinces. About Fluence Corporation Ltd Fluence Corporation (ASX:FLC) (OTCMKTS:EMFGF) is a leader in the decentralized water, wastewater and reuse treatment markets, with its Smart Products Solutions, including Aspiral, NIROBOX, NIROFLEX and SUBRE. Fluence offers an integrated range of services across the complete water cycle, from early stage evaluation, through design and delivery to ongoing support and optimization of water related assets, as well as Build Own Operate Transfer (BOOT) and other recurring revenue solutions. With established operations in North America, South America, the Middle East, Europe and China, Fluence has experience operating in over 70 countries worldwide and enables businesses and communities worldwide to maximize their water resources. Further information can be found at https://www.fluencecorp.com/ As Republicans continue to surge in the polls in the days leading up to the midterm elections, Democrats report being confused as to why their official "Do More Of What Got Us Into This Mess In The First Place" message isn't resonating with everyday American voters. Innovation enhances safety, leads to international recognition Air traffic control is serious business. Every day thousands of flights take off and land all across the U.S. Dedicated professionals known as air traffic controllers are responsible for monitoring every flight and coordinating with aircrews and people on the ground. In 2016, about 134,000 aircraft, including military planes and commercial airliners traveling from San Francisco and Sacramento, were monitored by air traffic controllers assigned to the 60th Operations Support Squadron at Travis Air Force Base. Thats an average of 367 aircraft daily for the busiest air traffic control complex in Air Mobility Command for two out of the past three years. These professionals use sophisticated radar technology to track aircraft that enter Travis AFB air space. Sometimes the radar can pick up something known as a false target which shows up on radar like its an aircraft, but it may not be. When a target, false or real, is observed by a controller and appears to intersect the flight path of an aircraft with radar service, a traffic call is issued, said Master Sgt. Brian Bertolucci, the 60th OSS airfield automation manager NCO in charge. This traffic call requires pilots to scan the areas theyre flying in for other aircraft that may or may not be in their flight paths. This tends to distract aircrews from their primary missions, which is to get to wherever that aircraft is going, said Bertolucci. Approximately four miles southeast of Travis AFB there is a wind farm with nearly 600 windmills that can interfere with Travis radar, leading to several false targets on a daily basis. In January 2015, as part of a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement, Travis partnered with C-Speed, a product development and engineering services company, to install and test the capabilities of a gap-filler, Light-Wave Radar System, which is capable of distinguishing between wind turbines and aircraft. An independent review team analyzed the data from multiple reports on the systems performance. In October 2016, the team found there was a significant improvement to existing radar surveillance performance. So much improvement that C-Speed, Travis AFB and the Energy Siting Clearinghouse were nominated for the IHS Janes Airport Review Innovation Award, which was presented at the Worldwide Air Traffic Management Congress in Madrid, Spain in March 2017. While Travis AFB didnt win the award, the nomination was one of only two from the U.S. and the only one representing the Defense Department. Tech. Sgt. Matthew Zimmerman, the 60th OSS ground radar systems NCO in charge, assisted C-Speed, the DOD, Department of Energy and numerous other government agencies with planning, testing and integrating the infill radar system at Travis AFB. He was also one of two people who represented Travis AFB at the conference. Its an amazing feeling to get nominated and recognized for performance and innovation, said Zimmerman. The nomination showcases Team Travis flexibility to innovate with the private sector on a worldwide stage. Being able to step out of your comfort zone to solve problems through innovation is a necessary skill. Bertolucci joined Zimmerman at the conference and shared his sentiments. It was an incredible and rewarding experience, he said. During the three-day conference, Zimmerman and Bertolucci met with aviation management experts from all over the globe. They provided a great deal of insight into how and where the air traffic management industry is and will be moving in the future, said Bertolucci. Lt. Col. Eric Weber, the 60th OSS commander, said the success of the gap-filler radar technology is just one way his Airmen and Travis AFB lead the way with innovation. When you think of how this can benefit the public, regional and international airports around the globe, we are balancing green energy with a growing national and international airspace system, he said. We are balancing emerging technology and green energy with emerging requirements and growth with international travel and commerce. Its a win-win. Weber also said Travis AFB benefits from having an innovative spirit. Travis (AFB) has a culture and climate of innovation, he said. Its the most innovative environment Ive been a part of in my 19 years of service. Our Airmen are empowered to solve problems and as a commander its my responsibility to foster an environment where they can thrive. C-Speed plans to seek Federal Aviation Administration certification and approval to implement their gap-filler, Light-Wave Radar System, in the national airspace of the U.S. At Travis AFB, innovation will continue as well, as the 60th OSS seeks to build upon the success it has seen with the gap-filler technology, said Weber. We will build upon our efforts with the Pilot Mitigation Program Initiative Data Collection Study, he said. The goal is to leverage existing infrastructure at Travis AFB such as command and control systems, radar and wind turbine radar interference mitigation systems, to collect data necessary for the FAA. They will assess the feasibility and development requirements associated with the integration, operation and performance of an infill radar inserted into the FAAs existing command and control system, Weber added. According to the PMP charter, the project will allow the demonstration and performance measurement of two infill radars, compare infill radar performance and permit ATCs to assess integrated radar coverage of both the wind turbine area and other coverage areas. The Air Force has identified 1,175 positions across 10 developmental special duties, or DSDs, for spring 2017.Identified as developmental due to their unique leadership roles and the responsibility to mentor and mold young Airmen, the 10 duties are: career assistance advisor, military training instructor, military training leader, Air Force Academy military training instructor, Airman and Family Readiness Center NCO, first sergeant, Air Force Honor Guard NCO, recruiter, professional military education instructor and specialty training instructors identified with a T prefix.Commanders are encouraged to nominate any Airman in the rank of staff, technical and master sergeant they feel is the right fit for these critical duties. Nominees must have demonstrated a record of exceptional performance and a high capacity to lead.When Americas sons and daughters commit themselves to service, the Air Force takes on the charge to develop them into Airmen, said Master Sgt. Falon Holman, the Air Force Personnel Center NCO in charge of developmental special duty assignments. Airmen selected for DSD must be the best of the best in the Air Forcean ambassador and role model for the Air Force core values of integrity, service and excellence.The nomination process provides commanders, through their respective major commands, an opportunity to nominate their best Airmen to fill these critical positions, providing a developmental career path.To be considered for a DSD nomination, Airmen must be staff, technical or master sergeants with at least four years of service remaining before they reach their high year of tenure. They require a score of 90 or above on the last fitness test, or 80 or above on the last two tests.In addition, nominees must have exhibited excellence in their core career field with a skill level commensurate with their grade, and have a performance assessment rating of either of the top two ratings under the new rating system or an overall 5 under the previous rating system on their last three enlisted performance reports.The DSD nomination process truly begins at the unit level.Squadron commanders are in the best position to know their Airmens strengths, abilities and interests, Holman said. They review the developmental duties and identify two for each nominee. However, Airmen interested in performing developmental special duties should ensure their leadership is aware of their aspirations.Airmen who are not nominated for DSD, but still interested in career-developing opportunities, can go to the Enlisted Quarterly Assignment Listing-Plus website and review the special duty catalog Airmen who are nominated for a developmental duty, but are not selected, remain eligible for selection until the end of each DSD cycle, in the event of future openings.DSD qualifications are outlined in the special duty catalog. Additional information about specific rank requirements, nomination eligibility criteria, process and other specifics can be found on myPers under Special Duty Assignment Programs on the Active Duty: Enlisted Assignments Home Page or select Active Duty Enlisted from the dropdown menu and search DSD.For more information about Air Force personnel programs, go to myPers . Individuals who do not have a myPers account can request one by following these instructions ANG units fly first, last C-130 deployments Big changes are in the works for two Air National Guard units deployed to the 737th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron at the 386th Air Expeditionary Wing in Southwest Asia. The Connecticut ANG has transitioned from the A-10 Thunderbolt II and the C-21 Cougar to the C-130H Hercules, which it is currently flying on its first C-130 deployment. On the other hand, the Charlotte ANG, out of North Carolina, will be flying its last Hercules mission as it prepares to transition to the C-17 Globemaster III. Whether big or small, change brings many challenges. In the case of flying new aircraft, these challenges include incorporating new procedures and personnel requirements, among others. On a C-17 you dont have navigators or engineers, so just the manning document itself is going to change, explained Lt. Col. Gary Dodge, the 737th EAS commander. The logistics the buildings, the training, the air frames its a huge puzzle. Trying to make that transition is challenging, but Im sure itll be successful. One piece of this puzzle is training maintainers in the skills theyll need to keep their new aircraft flying sorties. For Charlotte ANG members, this means learning the ins and outs of the Globemaster III, while Connecticut ANG members focus on the Hercules. Youre basically taking people with different skill sets and teaching them about the C-130, which is an extremely difficult airplane to employ, just because of the diverse role, said Maj. Paul Fiasconaro, the 737th EAS director of operations. This diverse role includes everything from air drops to flights requiring night vision goggles. Furthermore, many of the Connecticut ANG pilots are used to taking off and landing on larger runways, but C-130 missions often require landing on a small dirt strip, Fiasconaro explained. Although the Connecticut ANG has been flying C-130s since 2013, a deployment to Southwest Asia in support of Operation Inherent Resolve has provided them lots of opportunities to fly sorties and gain experience with their new aircraft. Additionally, they work closely with the Charlotte ANG to learn from their experiences with the Hercules. Our aircrew, our maintenance folks are all learning from Charlotte (ANG Airmen) so its taking a squadron thats very new in the C-130 up against a squadron thats been doing it for a very long time and doing it very well, said Fiasconaro. Armed with these advantages and opportunities to learn and grow, the two units have much to look forward to, whether its their first or last deployment with the C-130. Dodge said he and other members of the Charlotte ANG recognize the historical significance of this deployment, and look forward to not only flying one last C-130 deployment but also ensuring future success for the Connecticut ANG as well. We were all raising our hand to volunteer and for me to actually get the opportunity to be the commander during that time frame has been a great honor, said Dodge. Im surrounded by great talent not only from Charlotte but from Connecticut as well. Operation Homefront recognizes 2017 AF Military Child of the Year Eighteen-year-old Jamal Braxton has a busy schedule. The high school senior holds various leadership positions with the Red Cross, participates in multiple varsity sport programs and is a lifeguard. He accomplishes all this as a military child and the challenges inherent in military family life. Because of his accomplishments, Braxton was presented the Operation Homefront 2017 Air Force Military Child of the Year award by Air Force Assistant Vice Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Stayce Harris April 6, 2017, in Washington D.C. Operation Homefront hosts the gala each April to honor an award recipient from each branch of the military, including the National Guard, as part of Month of the Military Child. The award honors resiliency, strength of character in the face of the challenges associated with military life, and selfless service to others within their families and communities. Being a military child means adapting and being flexible and being tested about what you think you can and cannot do on a recurring basis, Harris said during the gala. Military kids and families truly are a treasured gift our nation gets and they can never get enough gratitude or recognition Jamal is an exemplary example of an Air Force military child. Braxton excelled in leadership by overseeing monthly veteran house visits, youth and leadership group meetings, numerous armed forces activities, the recruitment of future Red Cross Youth Services leaders, and several fundraisers, including the International Measles and Rubella Initiative fundraiser. In addition to volunteering, he participates in varsity swimming, cross country and outdoor track and field, while maintaining a 3.98 GPA. The epitome of resiliency, he maintains these activities while mourning the loss of two school-aged friends. During the gala, Harris excitedly announced that Braxton was accepted to the U.S. Air Force Academy and hopes he will soon become an Airman. I call his volunteer efforts servant leadership and it was what we aspire to exhibit in our core values of the Air Force, she said. I would be proud to call you my wingman one day. Thank you for your service to our community and future service to our nation. Braxton of Layton, Utah, is the son of retired Master Sgt. Lawrence Braxton and Ahllam Braxton. Its great realizing that (my dad) and many other military members are out there serving our country and doing to the best of their ability providing us, youth and kids, the best opportunities we can have for our future, Jamal said. RALEIGH More than $30.1 million from the N.C. Volkswagen Settlement Program will be distributed by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality to fund 161 new school buses across the state, with the majority of the funding going toward new all-electric school buses. It was a 96-hour battle: four ambushes, 17 airstrike missions and the eventual safety of a 150-person team that led to one Special Tactics combat controller receiving the Silver Star medal, April 7, here. Tech. Sgt. Brian Claughsey, a combat controller assigned to the 21st Special Tactics Squadron, was awarded the nations third highest valor medal for his role in liberating Kunduz City, Afghanistan, from the Taliban over four days, Sept. 30 to Oct. 4, while assigned to a joint special operations team. "Brian is a consummate Special Tactics professional," said Chief Master Sgt. Jeffrey Guilmain, chief enlisted manager of the 720th Special Tactics Group. "His recognition exemplifies the ground combat skill, Airmanship expertise, and bravery that our Airmen bring to the joint special operations force." Claughseys medal contributes to his units legacy of valor; the 21st STS is one of the highest decorated Air Force units in recent history in terms of individual valor awards, totaling five Air Force Crosses and 10 Silver Stars since 9/11there have only been only nine Air Force Crosses awarded since Sept. 11. All have been awarded to Special Tactics Airmen. "The teams here aren't seeking any of this recognition; it's really about the job for them, and its about the service to our nation," said Lt. Col. Stewart Parker, commander of the 21 STS. "If you saw these folks on a day-to-day basis in the squadron, it's just how we do business." The night before the four-day battle, then-Staff Sgt. Claughsey, attached a U.S. Army Special Forces team alongside Afghan national army forces, was notified that an airfield in Kunduz province was overran by Taliban forces. That night, the joint special operations forces team successfully took back and secured the airfield, with the Afghan Army forces maintaining control of it. The next morning, their team learned the entire city was under Taliban-controland their mission was to liberate the city of Kunduz. The team planned quickly for the infiltration, borrowing light-skinned pickup trucks from the Afghan Army and Army Special Forces humvees to drive a 50-vehicle convoy into the city. "As we passed the airfield, civilians were leaving in droves, which is a telltale sign that the Taliban took over," said Claughsey. "The state of the city upon infiltration was completely desolate, with the exception of the Taliban." Shortly after passing the airfield they secured the night before, the convoy was ambushed from a fortified building. Claughsey, riding in the fourth vehicle with the ground force commander, suppressed enemy fire by coordinating an AC-130 gunship strike on the building. From that point on, Claughsey was constantly coordinating with aircraft above to relay information on the enemy's whereabouts along the route. "The entire route was covered with Taliban forces, so there were several strikes along the way-- one of the strikes was about 70 meters from friendly forces," said Claughsey. "The AC-130 did a phenomenal job of putting those rounds down and keeping us safe and allowing us to continue on." Then, the convoy tripped a wire, triggering a vehicle borne improvised explosive device and halting the convoy in its tracks. Claughsey's vehicle was at a four-way intersection and came under fire from two different machine gun locations at close distance. While Claughsey fought back with his personal weapon, two Special Forces soldiers in an all-terrain vehicle mounted with an M-240B machine gun put themselves between Claughsey's vehicle to protect and suppress the ambush. "Those two soldiers who placed themselves between us and the attack were the only reason we survived that ambush," said Claughsey of the two who also received Silver Star medals for their actions during the firefight. With the enemy forces fleeing their positions to maneuver behind the convoy from behind, Claughsey quickly coordinated an AC-130 strike and eliminated the threat. Claughsey and the team secured the Kunduz provincial chief of police compound, where they would continue to be attacked four days and nightalmost constantly. At the compound, Claughsey received a call for help from an Army Special Forces element receiving accurate and relentless mortar, grenade launcher and small arms fire. "All that was going through my mind was that those guys needed my help and we're all out there together as a team," said Claughsey. "I can't do my job without them and vice versa." Claughsey neutralized the enemies when he maneuvered to the attack site, coordinated with F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter jets, and controlled strafing runs from approximately 140 meters away. "The precision of the aircraft and the confidence that we have in each other as a team, from the controller on the ground and the aircrew...we have a lot of faith in each other and they certainly didn't let us down out there," said Claughsey. A couple of hours later, the Taliban began their final attack on the compound to retake the team's position. Attacked from three sides, Claughsey willingly put himself in harm's way to coordinate airstrikes from the roof. "I was exhausted...it was a four-day firefight; however, at a certain point, your training kicks in and takes over," said Claughsey. "This wasn't the first time that I hadn't slept or been stressed out for four days straight -- our training pipeline is two years and it does a really good job of building resiliency and putting you in stressful situations so you can immediately adapt to the situation." Once on the roof, a Special Forces soldier and Claughsey were immediately pinned down by small-arms fire for approximately an hour. They continuously fought back with their rifles, with Claughsey marking enemy positions with his grenade launcher for aircraft to effectively strike. Despite rounds impacting less than a meter away, Claughsey controlled two danger-close 500-pound bombs within 185 meters of friendly fighting positions, effectively stopping the onslaught of enemy forces on the compoundand ending the fight to liberate Kunduz. Over the course of 96 hours of sustained and intense firefights, Claughsey coordinated 17 separate close air support engagements, with no civilian or friendly casualties, ensuring the safety of the 36 U.S. Army Special Forces personnel and 110 Afghan partner forces. I have absolutely no doubt that the [Special Forces team] would have taken causalities and would not have successful if not for Brian on this mission, noted the Army Special Forces ground force commander in his eyewitness statement about that mission. For Claughsey, it isnt about the recognition; it is about doing his job, and doing it well. "To hear children playing in the street and people moving back into our homes ... to know that we were successful ... and these people were back in their homes, it was an incredible feeling," said Claughsey. Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad on Friday again tried to book tickets on Air India flights, but the airline rejected the booking. This is the seventh attempt on the part of the Sena MP to book a flight on Air India, which barred him from flying after he assaulted the airlines staffer. There was an attempt to book a ticket at 5 AM today through our web portal. The reservations were being made for March 17 for travel from Delhi to Mumbai and for 24 March from Mumbai to Delhi, said an airline source. The ticket was being booked under the name Ravindra Gaikwad and we were alerted through our tracker, the source said. The MP has also made an attempt each to book an IndiGo flight as well as a SpiceJet flight since the flying ban on him by all domestic carriers was put in place. Racism and skin colour, is nothing but the many shades of prejudice. Tarun Vijay of the BJP has apologised after remarks that suggested Indians cannot be considered racist because they are accepting South Indians. I think, he failed to understand the colour of South Indians or he failed to understand that the South Indians too are Indians. This colour racism is curse across the globe, but never knew this is in the mind set of people such deep rooted. If someone from other parties had told Krishna was black, BJP would have reacted aggressively. When we worship Krishna the dark skinned God, how can we have any reservations for colour of people of our country? He was very confident in saying, if we were racist, why would the entire South you know the Tamils, you know Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra why do we live with them? We have black, black people around us. You are denying your own nation, denying your ancestry, your history and youre denying your culture. Mr. Vijay should know that 80 per cent of Andhra people have white skins, like any other North Indian and many North Indians have black skins like an average South Indian. He was responding to questions about the recent attacks on African students in Greater Noida. Vijay, head of the India-African Parliamentary Friendship Group, blamed the attackers as mindless, criminalised people and said such criminalised behaviour doesnt need any logic. In 2015, Tarun Vijay questioned the logic of being selective in teaching the children more about North India rulers and ignoring the Tamil rulers from the past. Why should we learn only about Vikramaditya and Ashoka? Raja Chozha too was a great king. Do we give him the same importance as we are giving to other historical figures from North India? He is always obsessed with Tamil culture and attacked North culture. He himself is south Indian and stands by them but today he shocked people with his mindless comparison to Africans with South Indians and Lord Krishna. Discrimination based on skin colour, also known as colourism or shadeism, is a form of prejudice or discrimination in which people are treated differently based on the social meanings attached to skin colour. Colourism, a term coined by Alice Walker in 1982, is not a synonym of racism. Race depends on multiple factors (including ancestry); therefore, racial categorization does not solely rely on skin colour. Skin colour is only one mechanism used to assign individuals to a racial category, but race is the set of beliefs and assumptions assigned to that category. Racism is the dependence of social status on the social meaning attached to race. Colourism is the dependence of social status on skin colour alone. In order for a form of discrimination to be considered colourism, differential treatment must not result from racial categorization, but from the social values associated with skin colour. A 2015 study, for example, finds that among African Americans, skin colour differences are associated with perceptions of discrimination from whites and other African Americans. In attacks last week that were caught on camera, four Nigerians were assaulted by a large group of people who were protesting against the death of a schoolboy of a suspected drug overdose and a Nigerian student was beaten inside a mall by a mob. The Greater Noida residents alleged that African students who live in the area supplied the teen with drugs. Tarun Vijay is a familiar face in Tamil Nadu, widely accepted as the Dravidian culture, because of his expression of love for Tamil, Thirukkural, and Thiruvalluvar. His controversial comments triggered a backlash, especially on social media. Thiruvalluvar is a celebrated Tamil poet and philosopher whose contribution to Tamil literature is known as the Thirukkural, a literature talking about everyday virtues of an individual. Vijays campaign to spread the Tamil language and culture of Tamilians in the north had earned him prestigious Thirukkural Thuthar (Ambassador of Tamil epic class Thirukkural by Thiruvalluvar) award in 2014. He is also known as the one who brought a statue of Thiruvalluvar from Kanyakumari to the banks of the River Ganga in Haridwar. This former editor of RSSs weekly organ Panchajanya had also been felicitated by Tamil literary personalities in Chennai for his efforts. Vijay has also advocated making the biography of Thiruvalluvar as a part of the school syllabus in every states education board. However, his recent comments on Al Jazeera news channel have put the BJP leader in the dock. Attack on Nigerian students has harmed the Indias international image. At a time, when India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi is up scaling its African diplomacy, the fact that the country has a deep-seated racism problem to confront could complicate New Delhis African agenda. In India, racism is adept in some quarters and by some Indians. Right from Africans land in India, their colour becomes an excuse for Indians to display all their prejudices. An extension of their visas which should not take more than seven days takes at least three months for them. Police verification becomes an excuse for extortion. Policemen keep calling them at odd hours. On the other hand, there is craze for white people, may they be from any part of the planet and people love to get pictures clicked with them. The Government of India has not condemned the attacks against Africans. The government has to acknowledge that there is a deep-rooted prejudice here. If you accept it, then only you will address the problem otherwise you cant. However, it seems that the government is in denial mode. Due to the hostility of some Indians, the number of African students coming to India for study may come down. (Any suggestions, comments or dispute with regards to this article send us on feedback@afternoonvoice.com) Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad was trying to defend himself and feel tough as he is not allowed to board an aircraft. Now, he is bringing past records and that includes how Mahatma Gandhi was thrown out of train in South Africa to defend his case vehemently in the Lok Sabha. This is a regular practice as no one is ready to accept his mistake even though found fault by media, Air-India and other Airlines. How long such serial offenders will have faced the trial one day or the other for causing trouble on board of a flight and even after being pushed out of the aircraft. Time tested methods are there to find out whose fault was there as TV cameras clearly give the correct picture. At last, the Sena MP expressed regret and that fall short of saying sorry. This is one mere case of causing disrepute for himself and the national aircraft. The delayed caused by the inhuman act is history now and no one can pardon him for his open fist with a senior staff of Air India. He can defend himself in a serious case offence. Nickil Krishnan (The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.) The United States on Thursday launched a military strike on the Syrian government target in response to their chemical weapon attack on the civilians few days before. Said to be carried out on President Donald Trumps orders, U.S. warships launched between 50-60 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Syria Government airbase where the warplanes that carried out the chemical attacks were based, U.S. officials said, CNN reports. Tonight, I ordered a targeted military strike on the air field in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched, Trump said during short remarks to reporters at Mar-a-Lago. It is in this vital national security of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention and ignored the urging of the UN Security Council. Years of previous attempts at changing Assads behavior have all failed and failed very dramatically, he added. Strikes are over until another decision is made, the official said. The strikes are the first direct military action the U.S. has taken against the leadership of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the countrys six-year civil war and represent a substantial escalation of the US military campaign in the region, which could be interpreted by the Syrian government as an act of war. Earlier, Trump said the chemical attack on Syrias Idlib province affected his deeply and tranformed his thinking about the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. I will tell you that attack on children yesterday had a big impact on me big impact. My attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much. Youre now talking about a whole different level, the Guardian quoted Trump as saying. When asked if he would opt for military intervention to oust Assad, Trump said, Im not saying Im doing anything one way or another, but Im certainly not going to be telling you . Militarily, I dont like to say where Im going and what Im doing. Dozens of people, including at least ten children, were killed and over 200 injured as a result of asphyxiation caused by exposure to an unknown gas on Tuesday. According to Anas al-Diab, an activist with the Aleppo Media Center, airstrikes hit the city of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province giving off a poisonous gas that led to this asphyxiation. Three more strikes hit the same city center location but did not result in any gas, al-Diab added. Activists said the Syrian regime dropped a chemical bomb and was responsible for the killings, leading the United Nations to replace a scheduled Security Council session for Wednesday morning with an emergency meeting. Syrian President Bashar al-Assads military denied using chemical weapons and blamed rebels for the carnage. The death toll is said to be at least 67, according to al-Diab, while the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has reported it to be 58. The High Negotiations Committee claimed the death toll could be as high as 100 with up to 400 injured. Ever since the calls to defund the police began in 2020 after the death of George Floyd, Ive been making the case for increased police spending so that we can deploy more active duty police officers on the streets in high-crime, high-disorder neighborhoods. Mrs. Louise H. Hill, age 88, a resident of 422 Bragaw Lane, Chocowinity, NC died Thursday March 30, 2017 at her home.A funeral service will be held 2:00 p.m. Sunday April 2, 2017 at Trinity Episcopal Church of Chocowinity. The service will be officiated by The Reverend Mary Ogus. Burial will follow in Trinity Cemetery. Grey Rowe, Mason Rowe, Bryan Dixon, Charlie Elks, Brandon Elks and David Elks will serve as pallbearers.The family will receive friends at the home following the service on Sunday.Mrs. Hill was born in Beaufort County on April 14,1928 daughter of the late Joseph Franklin Hill and the late Ina Sellers Hill. She was the valedictorian of her class at Chocowinity High School. She married Ray Wilson Hill who preceded her in death on January 31, 1981. Mrs. Hill was a homemaker who worked at National Spinning Company of Washington until her retirement. Following her retirement, she was very active at the Grace Harwell Senior Citizen Center and enjoyed her Senior exercise class and senior bowling. Mrs. Hill was an active member of Trinity Episcopal Church as long as her health permitted.Survivors include a daughter: Wendy Hill Rowe of Chocowinity and two grandchildren: Leah Morgan Rowe and Mason Grey Rowe both of Chocowinity. Mrs. Hill was predeceased by a daughter: Sandy Hill and a son: Clay Wilson Hill.In lieu of flowers the family kindly asks for memorial contributions be made to Trinity Accessibility Fund, P.O. Box 332, Chocowinity, NC 27817.Online condolences may be offered to the family visiting www.paulfuneralhome.com Paul Funeral Home & Crematory of Washington is honored to serve the Hill family. Flapping in the breeze Thursday, the American flag stands tall over the Veterans War Memorial on Richland Avenue in Aiken. At least 29 Aiken County soldiers gave their lives during World War I, which the U.S. entered 100 years ago on April 6, 1917. With the Midterm Elections less than one week away: What do you consider the top issues that you will be voting on to be corrected by your better representation? Education Crime Big Government getting Bigger Biden /Democrat controlled Spike in Energy Cost Inflation created by Legislation of Majority in Power Gender Reassignment Corrupted Bureaucratic /Service (DOJ, FBI, etc.) Institutions Abortion Discredited Legacy Media Ending the Corruption of Dishonest Politicians Corruptive Influence of Social Media Wide Open Southern Border April 6, 2017 Egypt is moving ahead with a development project that will demolish a major slum in the heart of Cairo. Residents are concerned about relocation and whether they can afford to remain in the area once development works are complete. The Maspero Triangle is a decades-old informal area close to the Nile River and behind the Foreign Ministry and the Maspero Radio and Television building. It's home to numerous small workshops and neighborhood shopping malls as well as five-star hotels along the Nile Corniche. Given its strategic location, the Maspero Triangle is at the center of a government-led development project set to cost 4 billion Egyptian pounds ($222 million) that would transform the area into an investment and residential hub over three years. Before approving the start of the project, the Egyptian Ministry of Housing has offered local residents a set of compensation options, including: relocation to al-Asmarat neighborhood in Mokattam district in southeast Cairo, renting or buying a home in the area at an increased cost, or receiving cash compensation of 100,000 Egyptian pounds ($5,555). Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail approved the project on April 1 at a meeting of the Higher Council of Planning and Urban Development that was attended by the Cairo governor and ministers of housing, culture, environment, agriculture and local development. Last week, the Egyptian Housing Ministry began surveying residents on their preferred method of compensation. Deputy Minister of Housing Ahmed Darwish told Al-Monitor, "There will never be forced relocation of the Maspero Triangle residents." Darwish said the government has offered several alternatives to the residents so they feel comfortable about the development process. "With those options, we are allowing the residents to choose whatever they want," Darwish said. "The residents can choose between staying in the area, being relocated and receiving cash compensation. I think that these options constitute a reasonable compromise." Darwish said the government has surveyed 40% of the residents so far and that 70% of those surveyed have chosen the financial compensation. Residents will have until April 20 to make a decision, Darwish said. According to government data, the Maspero Triangle is home to 3,500 families, or 18,000 residents, and spans an area of 64 feddans (66 acres). The area's namesake comes from its triangle shape on the map. Some residents have rejected the plan, saying their livelihoods are connected to the place where they were born and where they have lived for years. They called upon the government to increase the financial compensation, lower the rent and payments required to own a residential unit in the area, or offer alternative residential units in nearby areas. "It is not an area for me. It is my home," said Am Ibrahim, a Maspero Triangle resident. "I was born here and I am proud to live in this land and I will never leave the area unless I receive financial compensation that fully satisfies me." However, other residents have welcomed the plan and lauded the options that the government gave them. "I think that the options are fair and they give us room to choose how we want the development of the area to be like," said Am Hassan, a resident who accepted cash compensation for his house. The dispute over the Maspero Triangle dates back three decades, when the government first proposed development projects for the area. The triangle's strategic location, near the Egyptian Museum, the iconic Tahrir Square and several luxury Nile-side hotels, has always been appealing to foreign investors. The development of the Maspero Triangle is part of a government effort to do away with crumbling slums and to provide proper housing for citizens. Egypt is home to at least 351 unsafe slums, where poor citizens have built homes that lack basic amenities like sewage and water. Some 850,000 people are believed to live in dangerous slums, according to the Egyptian Ministry of Housing. In 2016, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi promised to relocate all those living in unsafe slums to new apartments over three years in an ambitious project worth 14 billion Egyptian pounds ($778 million). I think that residents should support government plans to develop informal areas and build decent homes that meet basic needs, said Mohamed Montasser, a real estate expert. This will help attract investments, revive the flagging economy and beautify the countrys districts. April 7, 2017 This past Iranian calendar year, which ended on March 20, was not favorable to moderate President Hassan Rouhani, despite his expectations. Rather, it turned out to be an ominous year, in the span of which the three main high-ranking clerics who backed Rouhani from the very beginning of his campaign for office in 2013 and through the ups and downs of his presidency died. In Iran, clerics have consistently had a major impact on peoples views and opinions over the past centuries. A prominent example of this is the tobacco fatwa, which was issued in response to a British citizen being granted a full monopoly over the production, sale and export of tobacco for 50 years. Back then, mosques and hosseiniehs (prayer halls used to mark the martyrdom of Shiite imams and figures mostly in the Islamic months of Muharram and Safar) were the most influential media in Iran. The impact of these venues was such that various shahs and governments were loath to issue contentious decrees or sign controversial treaties with foreigners on dates close to Muharram and Safar. The tobacco concession led to a revolt in Iran and climaxed in the 1891 tobacco fatwa issued by Grand Ayatollah Mirza Hassan Shirazi. The religious edict, which was issued with consideration for the situation and expediency of the country, outlawed the use of tobacco and labeled it as tantamount to waging war against the 12th Shiite Imam Muhammad al-Mahdi, who is believed to emerge from occultation at the end of time. More recently, the Islamic Revolution in 1979, which toppled the US-backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was led by clerics, with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini at its helm. Indeed, some argue that the revolution first started in the seminaries and among clerics, who were trusted and respected by the people. Thus, it is clear that clerics have long played a significant role in Iranian politics. In the 2013 presidential vote, Ayatollahs Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Abbas Vaez Tabasi and Abdolkarim Mousavi Ardebili all threw their weight behind Rouhani to prevent the election of another hard-liner, given the performance of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005-2013), who is seen by many analysts as having damaged the countrys economy and foreign relations. In the span of the past 12 months or so, these three senior clerics and important supporters of Rouhani have died. Ayatollah Tabasi died on March 4, 2016, only weeks before the beginning of the Iranian calendar year 1395. A leading figure in the Islamic Republic, Tabasi was appointed by the late Ayatollah Khomeini to the important position of custodian of the holy shrine of the eighth Shiite Imam Reza. The shrine is located in the northeastern city of Mashhad. Tabasi was also a close friend of current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei a long friendship that dated back to the years before the 1979 revolution. He harbored moderate views and actively opposed the hard-liners. Indeed, he largely supported Rafsanjani and his policies over the past decades. In this vein, despite being recognized as a conservative, he did not back fellow conservative Ahmadinejad. Rather, he supported Rafsanjani in the 2005 presidential elections. As such, he rarely, as is customary, used to welcome then-President Ahmadinejad upon his visits to Mashhad. Tabasi, who was also in charge of Razavi Khorasan provinces seminary, was a supporter of Rouhani. His [Rouhanis] relationship with the seminaries is very strong and firm and he doesnt think about anything except the advancement of Islam and enforcing the divine and Islamic laws, Tabasi said of the Iranian president in August 2014. Following his demise, Mashhad one of the largest cities in Iran has rather rapidly turned into a new base for the hard-liners, dealing a direct blow to Rouhanis presidency. Ayatollah Mousavi Ardebili died on Nov. 23, 2016. He served as chief of the Iranian judiciary in 1981-1989, and then returned to the holy city of Qom, where he acted as a marja (the highest clerical rank in Shiite Islam). Another strong supporter of Rouhani, Mousavi Ardebili played an important role in mobilizing Qom and its clerics in favor of the incumbent both before and after the 2013 presidential elections. He had a good relationship with other grand ayatollahs, including Mousa Shobeiri Zanjani, making him an invaluable supporter for Rouhani. On Aug. 7, 2013, only days after Rouhanis inauguration, Mousavi Ardebili commended him and made particular note of his promised foreign policy, saying, He [Rouhani] is a resourceful and experienced person. The social and political situation of Iran is very variable, and we need stability. The policy of detente is useful, good and necessary. Last, but certainly not least, Ayatollah Rafsanjani died on Jan. 17, 2017. The figurehead of the moderation camp and the paramount patron of Rouhani, his unexpected death has left the president alone in dealing with tough challenges ahead. Rafsanjani is widely seen as having been one of the most influential figures in Iran, having held a number of important positions over the decades, including serving as president for two terms (1989-1997). After having his candidacy in the 2013 presidential elections disqualified by the Guardian Council, which is tasked with vetting candidates, Rafsanjani, who was expected to win by a landslide according to several opinion polls, publicly announced his support for Rouhani. His longstanding support didnt end when Rouhani took office; Rafsanjani repeatedly criticized the hard-liners for questioning the incumbents achievements, and especially the 2015 nuclear deal. As such, Rouhani who intends to run in the May 19 presidential elections has started the new Iranian year on a heavy note. Although he has lost his three main supporters within the clergy, he still enjoys a good rapport with the high-ranking clerics in Qom unlike his predecessor, who was banished by some grand ayatollahs. However, already under fire over his handling of the economy and other issues, it appears evident that Rouhani is likely to become even more vulnerable to attack looking ahead. April 6, 2017 The evacuation of four Syrian towns that have been besieged since 2015 began on April 4 in a sectarian fashion. While civilians and opposition fighters will leave the towns of Madaya and Zabadani near Damascus, residents of al-Foua and Kefraya, two government-held towns located in the province of Idlib, will be given safe passage. The Sunnis will be transported to rebel-held Idlib and the Turkish-controlled town of Jarablus in the north, while the Shiites will be taken to the government-controlled areas of Damascus. The evacuation is scheduled to last 60 days. To make it possible, a truce will take effect in the areas south of Damascus and in several parts of Idlib province. The cease-fire will allow aid to be delivered. In addition, the deal will also see the Syrian government release 1,500 prisoners. At first glance, the evacuation seems like a logical and expedient step in the way events have been unfolding. Opposition fighters and their families have recently been taken from the city of al-Waer in Homs province to Jarablus. The current deal, however, was different. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and other sources reported that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) plus Hezbollah and Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps reached this agreement on March 28 with mediation from two external players, Iran and Qatar. Doha played an unusual role as an intermediary in the new deal. At least several sources confirmed to Al-Monitor that on March 26, Hussam al-ShafiI (also known as Zaid al-Attar), spokesman for Jabhat Fatah al-Sham and political chief of HTS, visited Qatar to strike the deal. Given the still-relevant Astana process, the deal may have looked suspicious to Moscow because the Syrian conflict was discussed without Turkey or Russia. Theoretically speaking, Russian and Turkish authorities should find it alarming, as the talks were unexpectedly held elsewhere rather than at the traditional venue of Istanbul or Ankara. Mind that the Shiite villages, which have openly supported Hezbollah, have been the opposition's trump cards since the territory was encircled in March 2015. Iran and its allied Shiite groups have long been trying to strike a deal with Ahrar al-Sham for a cease-fire to begin and for aid deliveries to reach the villages. Al-Monitor sources in Idlib province claim that Abdullah al-Muhaysini, a prominent Saudi cleric and jihadi figure in HTS, has been an informal custodian of al-Foua and Kefraya even though he has aired contradictory views in public. In particular, he stated in January 2016 that unless the Madaya siege was lifted, al-Foua should be "exterminated." Claims of "custodianship" may prove to be true as Muhaysini's address to the opposition called for sparing Christians after the fall of besieged Aleppo. One might see it as part of the strategy to integrate the al-Qaeda branch into the Syrian opposition. The Russian-Turkish agreements provided for the evacuation of the opposition from eastern Aleppo to Idlib in December 2016. However, Iran demanded a reciprocal step to bus the residents out of al-Foua and Kefraya. Back then the evacuation was halted as extremists hijacked and burned six buses collecting villagers. The Aleppo evacuation later resumed, with several thousand people taken away from the villages. Some Russian experts treated the evacuation deal brokered by Qatar and Iran as unambiguous evidence of Doha's sponsoring of HTS extremists. It is up to investigatory bodies to file charges, but one should not be oblivious to the heterogeneous nature of the HTS. It comprises many Syrians opposed to negotiations with President Bashar al-Assad's regime, as well as former and, above all, Salafi factions of Ahrar al-Sham. By shoring up Ahrar al-Sham, Qatar enjoys ample opportunity to enter into a direct dialogue with HTS, even though the two groups are vying for power and survival in western Syria. Russian officials, who have not commented on the issue so far, are likely to disregard it altogether as a local case. However, as mentioned earlier, such arrangements create a precedent for Iran to employ its own stratagems in Syria. As far as we can judge, Iran's strategy is at odds with Moscow's interests. Back in September 2016, when Russia and the United States agreed on a cease-fire deal for Syria, Al-Monitor's sources close to Russia's security organs did not rule out Tehran's subtle sabotage because the agreement aimed to strengthen Russia's standing in Syria. These concerns have become conspicuous in 2017. Actually, long-term settlement and political solution do not benefit Iran since any reform will reduce its political and military influence in Syria. In this regard, Iran's position is close to that of HTS militants, a factor that directly affects the truce. Meanwhile, Moscow and Ankara literally imposed the Astana process on Tehran by including the armed opposition. Understandably, Russia does not dwell on it, but it was Syria's "war party" and its Iranian sponsors that, from the outset, sought to maximize their advantage of the cease-fire, if not break it. Since early January, governmental forces and Hezbollah have been waging military operations to eject the opposition from enclaves outside Damascus under the pretext of combating Jabhat Fatah al-Sham. Ahrar al-Sham, which refused to engage in the Astana talks amid the regime's continued fighting in the Wadi Barada valley, made that clear. At the same time, the Syrian regime has allegedly contaminated with diesel the pumping station that provides most of the capital's water. Moreover, the real number of Jabhat Fatah al-Sham militants operating in the valley does not exceed several dozen. In addition, the Hezbollah militia barred Russian troops that were authorized to oversee the cease-fire from entering the besieged Wadi Barada area. Such incidents along the front line, together with HTS provocations, compelled Jaish al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sham to respond and engage in anti-regime offensives. It stands in the way of a new round of the Astana talks, which will be pointless without the opposition. Against this background, the Iran-Qatar deal seems somewhat controversial. Absent Moscow and Ankara, talks can throw an additional curveball at the negotiating process between the opposition and the regime. Further details of the accord may disprove the information about the bilateral negotiations behind Russia's and Turkey's back. In any case, the situation is testament to a possible compromise between unexpected players. More significantly, such agreements should be reached in presence of the allies and should be consistent with the settlement strategies. April 7, 2017 BAGHDAD With the Islamic State (IS) nearly defeated in Iraq, Baghdad and Damascus have remarkably stepped up security and military cooperation. On March 29, the Iraqi Federal Intelligence and Investigation Agency announced that, through coordination between the two countries, the Syrian Air Force has successfully carried out airstrikes against the Syrian cities of al-Bukamal and Deir ez-Zor near the Iraqi borders. The two areas host senior leaders from IS and other terrorist groups. The airstrikes destroyed 39 IS sites used as labs for manufacturing arms and explosive belts, killing dozens of terrorists and destroying large quantities of weapons, auto parts and infrastructures. The agencys statement added that the targeted terrorist groups were planning to launch large-scale attacks and take control of Syrian government buildings. On March 13, Syrian Foreign Affairs Minister Walid Moallem extended a formal invitation to his Iraqi counterpart Ibrahim al-Jaafari to visit Damascus to expand security and military relations and agreements between the two countries. Speaking at the March 8 Sulaimaniyah Forum hosted by the American University of Iraq at Sulaimaniyah, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said, With due respect to the sovereignty of other countries, I will not hesitate to strike terrorist sites in neighboring countries if they threaten the security of Iraq. Abadis statement came after Iraqi fighter jets flew into al-Bukamal within the Syrian territories on a mission to bomb IS sites there on Feb. 24. Abadi justified the move, saying he obtained approval from the Syrian government. The US Department of Defense praised the airstrikes carried out by the Iraqi air force within the Syrian territories. Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis, in a Feb. 24 press briefing, said, The Pentagon was informed of the Iraqi airstrikes in Syria and provided intelligence to Iraq. The airstrikes were good and effective against [IS] targets. Nicholas Heras, a Middle East research associate at the Center for a New American Security, a security think tank in Washington, argued that the most significant aspect of the Iraq-Syria security and military cooperation is the fact that it demonstrates that IS center of gravity has shifted from Mosul to the Iraqi-Syrian border area. In a March 2 statement to the Iraqi Al-Mada newspaper, Iraqi member of parliament Abdul-Aziz Hassan said that IS has relocated its training and planning centers to the Iraqi-Syrian border area where the Iraqi government has pursued groups that have been fighting in Iraq before moving to Syria. The Iraqi government estimates that the targets bombed on the Syrian border were the departure point for rigged cars striking Iraqi cities. The ongoing security and military cooperation, together with Abadis statement concerning military strikes outside Iraq, indicate that the Iraqi government intends to take part in the fighting in Syria on a larger scale. Speaking to Al-Aalem Al-Jadeed newspaper on condition of anonymity, security sources revealed that the United States requested that Abadi dispatch the 2nd Division of the Iraqi Special Operations Forces of the Counter Terrorism Services to take part in recapturing the Syrian city of Raqqa from IS. In an interview with Al-Monitor, Maj. Gen. Imad Eloan, an adviser at the European Center for Counterterrorism and Intelligence Studies, said, Taking into account the statements made by Abadi and the leaders of the Popular Mobilization Forces concerning the fight against terror in Syria, in addition to the preparations on the ground for the battle of Raqqa from the dispatching of an additional 400 US troops in Syria to the dispatching, for the first time, of the famous US reconnaissance planes used by the CIA, we might be looking at a potential involvement and decisive role by Iraqi forces in the battle of Raqqa, owing to their recent experience in the fight against IS. This role is of major importance to the political developments in the region. By maintaining good relations with the United States and Syria alike, Iraq would assume a mediator role, which would contribute to restoring stability in Syria. But this role, especially after the US airstrike on a Syrian airfield on the morning of April 7 local time, would be a very complicated and hard task, and Iraq may hesitate about taking such a risky step. The head of the Iraqi Center for Political Thought Ihsan al-Shammari told Al-Monitor, Iraqi airstrikes against terrorist strongholds in al-Bukamal represent a new turning point in the fight against terror. However, it should not be construed as the beginning of an Iraqi large-scale air and ground operation against terrorist groups in non-Iraqi areas. Iraq is involved in a security war that will continue even after the recapture of Iraqi cities from IS, since its remaining cells will keep trying to destabilize the country. This is why it seems that Iraq will limit its cooperation with neighboring countries and Syria in particular to information and intelligence exchange. This new role, on any level, shows that Iraq is trying to re-establish its stature in its Arab and regional entourage and that, in the Iraqi governments view, combating terrorism at the intelligence and military levels will speed up this comeback through diplomatic and economic channels. When it comes to fighting terrorism, Iraq seems to possess more experience than its neighbors. This is why Iraq will be able to help other countries in the fight against terror, which for now seems to be the effective way. In turn, Iraq is portrayed as a provider of help rather than a country that needs it. However, the question remains: Will Iraqi politicians be able to build on this move or will political conflicts play a negative role, maintaining Iraqs agitated role in regional developments? April 7, 2017 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus office published a document on April 5 detailing the achievements of various government ministries compared with the goals they set for themselves for 2016. For five years, the Israeli government has published these goals as part of its annual plans. This year, at the direction of the prime minister, data on progress toward them was also published for the first time. Two failures made headlines. The first was the publics low participation in buyers price, the flagship low-cost housing program of Kulanu chairman and Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon that reached only 42% of the goal set by the Housing Ministry. Only 6,343 qualified people bought reduced-price homes through the program, compared to a planned 15,000. While Yoav Galant heads the Housing Ministry, the program itself is unequivocally associated with the finance minister, for better or for worse. The second news item concerns the Ministry of Transportation, headed by Yisrael Katz. It seems that the number of fatalities in traffic accidents was 12.2% higher than the goal the ministry set for itself (377 instead of 336 lives lost). The prime ministers report includes many successes for these two ministries, as well. The Finance Ministry, for instance, had a surplus of 1 billion shekels ($273 million) in revenue compared to its goal and a budget deficit lower than the goal, but all the same, it was the negative news that caught the publics eye. Senior Kulanu and Transportation Ministry officials felt that it was not coincidental that the prime ministers office distributed the report. Katz and Kahlon are two popular and admired ministers among the general public for their professional achievements, and its a poorly kept secret that the prime minister is uneager to praise popular ministers in his government. Rather, he has been caught time and again taking the credit for their achievements. In a message attached to the document, the prime minister noted, Not all the goals can be fully achieved in a short period, but we aren't losing sight of the goal. Frustrated government ministers find quite a lot of humor in Netanyahus reluctance to commend them for their achievements and his tendency to take credit for those achievements. Only last week there were several instances when the prime minister appropriated the finance ministers achievements for himself while demonstrably ignoring Kahlons contribution to these successes. On April 3, at the conclusion of the political crisis between Kahlon and Netanyahu around the public broadcasting corporation, the two stood onstage together in the town of Beit Shemesh to inaugurate a major housing initiative. The effort to lower housing prices is the flagship of the Finance Ministry, but Netanyahu, as is his habit, appeared at the event. To Kahlon and his staffs astonishment, the finance minister was cut out of the photo of the event taken by the government press office. The one distributed by the prime ministers office showed only Netanyahu. Kahlon wasnt mentioned in the prime ministers Facebook post, even in passing: Today we signed an umbrella agreement to build 17,000 more new housing units in Beit Shemesh and thus well double the citys population. We continue to build the State of Israel. The finance minister was of course missing from the accompanying photo. In another post for his many Facebook followers, Netanyahu announced, The unemployment rate continues to fall and its the lowest its been in the past decade. More good news for Israels economy! A good word for the finance minister? In Netanyahus world, successes belong only to him, and this attitude contributed to the tense atmosphere in the broadcasting corporation crisis. In one of their conversations during the crisis, Kahlon told him that for successes, he always appears, but you always disappear when there is trouble. The finance minister was referring to how Netanyahu stole credit for the decision to lower taxes following significant collection surpluses. The energetic Katz also has firsthand experience with Netanyahus methods. Netanyahu always arrives at every unveiling of a big new interchange. In every post the prime minister writes about the flourishing of national projects at the Transportation Ministry, he forgets to mention Katz. In February, when Katz introduced the new machine that would dig the subway tunnels in Tel Aviv, one of his associates was heard mocking Netanyahu. In a few months, when the digging progresses, Bibi will probably pop out of the tunnel, make [Katz] disappear and say everything is thanks to him, the associate told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. There are other regular victims of credit theft, even among the ministers close to Netanyahu. Last May the government held a meeting to authorize the natural gas outline. Netanyahu praised Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz for his work, then let him speak. What happened next was simply embarrassing. Netanyahu expected compliments and thanks from the minister, and when they didnt come he turned to him with a leading question: Maybe there was something else that contributed to it? Steinitz didnt understand what the prime minister was getting at, and spread praise around to a variety of actors who worked on the issue. Netanyahu lost patience and turned to Steinitz again, this time with a far less subtle hint: Maybe there was something else? Maybe the prime minister played a role? The man who once so highly praised the communication minister that he told his other ministers to be Kahlons has become an all-out credit thief. Beyond the folklore that has evolved around his inability to commend anyone else's work, the habit is strongly indicative of the soured relations between Netanyahu and his senior partners in the Likud and the government. April 7, 2017 Transportation and Intelligence Affairs Minister Yisrael Katz has been trying for the past three years to promote what he considers to be a creative response to the decade-long Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip and a measure to prevent yet another round of fighting with Hamas. Katz's plan for a so-called civil separation from neighboring Gaza is essentially a sequel to the 2005 Israeli withdrawal from the territory orchestrated by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that saw Israel pull all its settlers and troops out of the coastal enclave. The central idea of the Katz plan is for an internationally funded, artificial island to be built near the Gaza coast. Katz believes that the construction of such an island could be used to open Gaza to international commerce and result in a true Israeli separation from Gaza, as Sharon would have wished. The island would serve as a sea trade port for Gaza residents. Ships would unload their cargo there, and after an inspection for weapons or weapons-grade material, the crates would be shipped on small vessels for the short onward journey to their destination. In Katzs view, this would enable economic transportation links for the blockaded residents and at the same time protect Israels security interests. The proposed island would also house power and water purification infrastructure, for which Gaza is dependent on Israel to a certain extent. Katz believes that once completed, the project would relieve Israel of a heavy moral responsibility and burden of the Palestinians in Gaza, which was under Israeli occupation for 38 years and for which Israel is still responsible under international law even after its 2005 pullout. Most Israeli ministers view the grandiose Katz plan as ludicrous and unfeasible, but over time he has managed to win over supporters, among them senior defense and military officials concerned about the ticking time bomb that is Gaza blowing up in Israels face. Since the May 2015 formation of Benjamin Netanyahu's fourth Netanyahu government, Katz has tried, unsuccessfully and much to his chagrin, to bring his proposal up for debate by the Diplomacy and Defense Cabinet. The prime minister is not wild, to put it mildly, about the creative initiative of the man considered a political rival and with whom he has publicly locked horns several times over the past year. Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman is also vehemently opposed to the plan, which he claims would do nothing to remove the threat to Israels security. Shin Bet also objects, believing the artificial island itself could turn into yet another keg of dynamite. Katz is not, however, giving up. Katz presented the blueprint to Jason Greenblatt, President Donald Trumps representative for international negotiations, on his visit to Israel at the end of March. Following their meeting, Katz said the envoy, tasked with promoting the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, expressed his willingness to get the administration on board of the island plan. Katz also said the United States would play an important role in boosting and leading the initiative. He added that other states in the region and beyond might also have key roles in aid, planning and implementation, for example, by funneling billions of dollars to ensure the plans execution. Katz is probably the only member of the Israeli government who does not view Gaza as just another threat to the countrys security. In addition, guided by the realization that the blockade cannot go on forever, he is serious about trying to find solutions for Gazas 1.8 million Palestinian residents. The plans main downside is its one-sidedness, as was Sharons unilateral withdrawal. The Palestinians were not asked about it their opinion was not sought and they were not offered any role to play in it. In an interview with Al-Monitor, a senior Hamas political bureau official in Gaza said that building an Israeli-inspired island under full Israeli control would result in the perpetuation of the blockade. Your minister is willing to invest billions of dollars to build a port that will serve Israels security, but this money could be used for millions of far more logical and feasible solutions, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Israel has been playing with the idea that it can continue to rule over residents of the Strip from the air, sea and land, he said, but he noted, This cannot go on forever. The only solution, according to the official, is to allow the Palestinians to build a seaport on Gaza's shore. When asked about Israels concerns that a free port would enable Hamas and other Palestinian organizations in Gaza to smuggle in arms, he responded that the motivation of these resistance groups stems from their overriding desire to remove the Israeli stranglehold on Gaza. Hamas will soon unveil the movements new charter, he said, which will replace the old one that calls for the destruction of the State of Israel. [It will] clearly show the conceptual change the movement has undergone in recent years, he said. The new document, awaiting a green light from the Hamas leadership, will call for the establishment of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital. Hamas' recognition of the 1967 borders as the basis of a future Palestinian state is not new. The movements leaders have for years been forced to adapt to the changing winds of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and understand that wiping out Israel is not a realistic option. In a 2013 interview, senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad told Al-Monitor that there are many in the movement who understand that things have changed since 1989, when the previous charter was formulated by the movements founder, the late Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Hamad said at the time, What I can tell you is that all factions in the movement agree to this and are prepared to accept it, referring to a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. Will the plan conceived by Katz prevent the next war with Gaza? Probably not. Even if an artificial island were built off the coast, it would take more than a decade to do so. The residents of Gaza cannot wait that long. April 7, 2017 Saudi Arabia was quick to endorse the American cruise missile attack on the Syrian air base responsible for the horrendous chemical massacre in Idlib. Saudi expectations of future American steps to unseat Bashar al-Assad are likely to be extravagant. The Saudis have wanted Washington to get rid of Assad for years. Riyadh believes the Assad dynasty is the key to Iranian influence in the Levant. In the 1980s the Saudis tried to get then-President Ronald Reagan to oust Bashar's father, Hafez al-Assad, and in the 1990s they hoped Washington would entice Damascus away from Tehran by a peace agreement with Israel on the Golan Heights. Neither strategy worked, but both relied on American heavy lifting to do the job. Both expected Washington to be capable of delivering more than it could. That is a common feature of Saudi foreign policy: to expect the United States to be all powerful. When the Arab Spring came to Syria, the Saudis hoped an Afghan-style mujaheddin war with covert Saudi and American support would do in the Assads and the Iranians. Riyadh spent billions on the rebels, but Assad is stronger today than at the onset of the rebellion. The Saudis were deeply disappointed by President Barack Obama's vacillation on his approach toward Syria. The Saudi kingdom now is encouraged that President Donald Trump's administration shares their enmity with Iran. Trump's decision to sell F16s to Bahrain the kingdom's closest client state despite human rights concerns was welcomed in Riyadh as a sign Washington finally understands that Iran is the source of instability on the island. The Saudis are looking for a free hand in Yemen and American support for an attack on Yemen's port of Hodeidah. They expect human rights and gender equality issues to be off the table, but more sanctions on Iran are welcomed. King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud spent considerable energy at the Arab summit in Amman seeking to secure pan-Arab opposition to Assad and Iran, even trying to coax Iraq away from its Shiite partner. Earlier this year he traveled to Indonesia, China and Japan to press an anti-Iran agenda. Saudi commentators were alarmed when US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley said Trump was abandoning the Obama administration's public demand that Assad must go. An important editorial noted that the Trump administration's big defeats on health care and immigration issues suggested his team might be simply incompetent and thus unlikely to fulfill Gulf Arabs' high hopes for defeating Iran. The editorial even warned that impeachment over whether the president colluded with Russia to subvert the American democratic process is unlikely but not impossible, so the Arabs should avoid putting all their hopes on Trump. The cruise missile strikes should give the Saudis more confidence that the Trump administration is competent, capable and even decisive. But it will also raise expectations. The royal family will expect an American strategy to get rid of Assad sooner rather than later. More military strikes against Syrian regime targets and the Iranians are what the Saudis want to see. The Russian presence is a complicating factor, but in Riyadh's eyes it should not give Moscow a veto over steadily more aggressive attacks on Assad's forces, the Iranians and Hezbollah. More arms for the opposition is a priority for the Saudis. Aside from money, the Saudis have little to add to a campaign against the Assad regime and its Iranian supporters in Syria. The kingdom is bogged down in Yemen, and the Royal Saudi Air Force has its hands full with bombing the Houthi rebels and the forces loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Saudi air defenses are absorbed in stopping missile attacks on Saudi cities from Yemen. Also, the kingdom has been very averse to using its ground forces either the regular army or the Saudi Arabia National Guard inside Yemen and is even less likely to send them to the more distant Syria. Saudi intelligence is very good at fighting terrorism at home but has no experience in covert military activities like Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force. So, the kingdom has to rely on the American card. The royal family will raise money, but it can't do much more for the cause in Syria given its enormous commitment to the Yemeni adventure in which King Salman and his favorite son, Defense Minister Deputy Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salman, have stacked all their credibility on. The kingdom has been deeply frustrated for years that, in their eyes, the Iranians have been the principal beneficiary of American policy in Iraq and Syria. They blame Presidents George W. Bush and Obama for not understanding the region and naively giving Iran too much influence. They have seen their own interests diminished since 2003, as Iran has grown stronger in Baghdad and Damascus. If the cruise missile attack is a one-off and not followed by more aggressive American military action, Riyadh will be bitterly disappointed. It will still cooperate on confronting Iran in the Gulf and in Yemen, but its high hopes that someday, somehow, America will rid Syria of Assad will be again crushed. If the administration is loose in its rhetoric about how far it is prepared to go in Syria in getting Assad out, its words will come home to haunt the relationship with the kingdom. April 7, 2017 ALEPPO, Syria The Syrian war has taken its toll on the education sector in Syria, specifically in the areas under opposition control, and schools have lost many teachers. Some opted for immigration due to the tough security situation, others were displaced to safer areas in Syria, and many changed jobs and quit teaching. Some teachers were killed in the raids of President Bashar al-Assads regime that deliberately targeted schools, like the shelling that targeted Saad Ansari School and Al-Rajaa kindergarten in Aleppo on April 15, 2015, in addition to the Russian air raids that targeted schools. Others could not teach due to the Islamic States control. The education sector in the opposition-controlled areas of Aleppo and its countryside has been the most affected. The war has led to the collapse of the educational sector in all Syrian regions under the opposition, and one of the main problems has been the lack of staff, thus prompting the search for a solution to save education and reintegrate children into schools. The severe shortage of teachers has led to the emergence of teacher training institutes in several areas under the control of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) during the last quarter of 2014 in Marea, Azaz, Tell Rifaat and Anadan in Aleppos northern countryside; in Atarib and Darat Izza in Aleppos western countryside; and in Zerbeh and Tal al-Daman in Aleppos southern countryside. The aim of such initiatives is to equip elementary and secondary schools with specialized teachers in Arabic, English, mathematics and science, and classroom teachers for grades 1-4. The Marea Teacher Training Institute established by the education bureau affiliated with the local council in Marea on Sept. 3, 2014, in Marea city, which is under the FSAs control in Aleppos northern countryside is a successful model. It offered the city the first group of graduates in several disciplines (English, Arabic and classroom teaching), and the opposition has started to reap the fruits of this training center as the schools now have enough teachers. On Aug. 1, 2016, 35 students graduated, and they started teaching at the start of the 2016-17 school year. The director of the Marea Teacher Training Institute, Salah Naasan, told Al-Monitor that the institute offers theoretical and practical education to students for two years until they become capable of teaching and handling the responsibility of educating a generation of children. He said, The holders of secondary education certificates can apply to the institute, regardless of their gender, and their employment is guaranteed upon graduation due to the pressing need for teachers in Marea and other FSA-held areas in Aleppos countryside. He added that about 50 trainees in various disciplines are currently being trained at the institute and are expected to graduate next year. Naasan said that the female turnout to the teacher training institute is high out of the total number of trainees, 65% are women. The first class that graduated in August 2016 included more than 70% women. Naasan said, The high female turnout stems from their love for this noble profession. Meanwhile, young men are more inclined to join the ranks of the FSA. He added, These institutes are giving hundreds of students who had to drop out of university due to the war the chance to continue their studies. Besides, they can now get a job. Teachers graduating from the institute start out with a salary of $100 per month, which humanitarian aid organizations pay, with the sponsorship and supervision of the Syrian interim government represented by the Ministry of Education. Studying at the institute is almost free of charge. Students pay $15 only for each term to cover the cost of printing and exams. They pay $60 for the two-year program. The Marea institute and others like it were established in the opposition-controlled areas in Aleppos countryside through cooperation between local councils and education bureaus affiliated with them, and also in cooperation with the Syrian interim government that encourages such initiatives. The staff salaries of the Marea institute and others are paid by the Sankari Humanitarian Foundation, under the supervision of the Syrian Interim Government based in Gaziantep, Turkey. Naasan said, The Marea Teacher Training Institute and the other institutes in Aleppos countryside are mainly suffering from lack of stable financial support. We are now paying the monthly salaries from the aid offered by Sankari Humanitarian Foundation under the supervision of the Syrian Interim Government. But these salaries are not enough to cover the needs of the staff. Besides, the institutes are not equipped with modern materials [such as computers and overhead projectors], and there is a shortage of books. We are instead photocopying the class materials for the students. The Marea institute and its counterparts in Aleppos countryside adopt a curriculum that the Ministry of Education affiliated with the Syrian Interim Government has put together, which combines several curricula. Part of it is taken from the curriculum taught in institutes in areas under Assads control, and the other part from the curricula of institutes in Arab countries such as Egypt and Sudan. Marwa Urfali, 20, is a student at the Marea Teacher Training Institute. She is in her first year of English training. She told Al-Monitor, I am glad I got this chance to pursue my studies. I have always loved the English language and literature, and I was afraid I would not be able to continue due to the war. Despite the institutes limited capacities, it offers experience that helps me to gain teaching skills. I am glad I will be contributing to building an educated generation when I graduate. Urfali's parents support her studies at the institute. She said that nothing can stand in her way, and she is bent on teaching in the future, even at the expense of getting married. She said, We cannot succumb to the circumstances. We should take the initiative to change things and build a generation that understands the meaning of freedom. We are responsible for ensuring that our children get an education, and this is motivating me to become a specialized teacher." April 7, 2017 WASHINGTON US President Donald Trump, less than 100 days in office, caught the world off guard when he ordered the military to fire 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles in a targeted military strike on a Syrian air base April 6, in retaliation for a suspected chemical weapons attack on civilians in rebel-held Idlib province two days before. Years of previous attempts at changing [President Bashar al-] Assad's behavior have all failed, and failed very dramatically, Trump said April 6 at a news conference in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, announcing that he had ordered what he called a targeted military strike. As a result, the refugee crisis continues to deepen and the region continues to destabilize, threatening the United States and its allies. Administration officials said the strikes showed Trump was willing to take decisive action, but they were limited to retaliation for using chemical weapons and did not signal a broader shift in US policy toward military intervention to overthrow the Assad regime. This clearly indicates the president is willing to take decisive action when called for, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told journalists traveling with Trump for his summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping April 6. The use of prohibited chemical weapons, which violates a number of international norms and violates existing agreements, called for this type of kinetic military response. I would not in any way attempt to extrapolate that to a change in our policy or our posture relative to our military activities in Syria today, Tillerson said. Theres been no change in that status. But I think it does demonstrate that President Trump is willing to act when governments and actors cross the line in the most heinous of ways. The Pentagon and National Security Council said Shayrat airfield, the targeted facility, was used to store chemical weapons and is believed to be the base from which Syrian air force planes had taken off to conduct the April 4 chemical weapons attack on Khan Sheikhoun that killed more than 80 people, many of them children. It was aimed at this particular airfield for a reason, because we could trace this murderous attack back to that facility, national security adviser Gen. H. R. McMaster told journalists at a press conference with Tillerson in Florida April 6. I think what it does communicate is a big shift in Assads calculus because this is the first time that the United States has taken direct military action against that regime or the regime of his father, McMaster said. The U.S. intelligence community assesses that aircraft from Shayrat conducted the chemical weapons attack on April 4, Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis said in a statement to the press April 7. The strike was intended to deter the regime from using chemical weapons again. The Pentagon said it had notified Russian forces in advance of the action to minimize the risk of killing Russian or Syrian personnel. U.S. military planners took precautions to minimize risk to Russian or Syrian personnel located at the airfield, Davis said. Russia, acknowledging that the Pentagon had indeed informed it in advance of the planned military action to avoid Russian casualties, nevertheless criticized the US action on Friday as breaching Syrias sovereignty. Russian President Vladimir Putin considers the US strikes against Syria an act of aggression against a sovereign country violating the norms of international law, and under a trumped-up pretext at that, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists April 7. Washingtons move substantially impairs Russian-US relations, which are in a deplorable state as it is. It is not clear, however, if the griping was largely face-saving posturing. Russia said Friday that it had suspended deconfliction channels with Washington, set up to avoid air collisions over Syria, as a result of the US action, but the Pentagon said it continued to use the channel Friday. Tillerson, due to travel to Moscow April 11-12, had called his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, April 6 to discuss the situation, the State Department said. Tillerson said that Russia had not lived up to its 2013 agreement to ensure that the Syrian regimes chemical weapons arsenal was fully destroyed. The Russian government entered into agreements whereby Russia would locate these weapons, they would secure the weapons, they would destroy the weapons and that they would act as the guarantor that these weapons would no longer be present in Syria, Tillerson said. Clearly, Russia has failed in its responsibility to deliver on that commitment from 2013. Tillerson concluded, So either Russia has been complicit or Russia has been simply incompetent in its ability to deliver on its end of that agreement. Iran also condemned the US cruise missile strikes against its Syrian ally, while the Syrian regime blasted the US action as unjust and arrogant aggression. Such condemnation was strikingly isolated, as European nations, Israel, Turkey, Jordan, Gulf states and Canada broadly praised Trumps action, considering it proportional and justified. In words and actions, President Trump sent a strong and clear response: The use of chemical weapons is unacceptable, said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu April 7. Israel fully and unequivocally supports the presidents decision and hopes the clear message will reverberate not only in Damascus but also in Tehran, Pyongyang and other places. US strikes show needed resolve against barbaric chemical attacks, European Council President Donald Tusk tweeted April 7. He said the European Union will work with the US to end brutality in Syria. The US action was limited and appropriate, said British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon. We fully support this strike, Fallon told the BBC April 7. We have been in close contact with the US over the last couple of days and they believe they have exhausted all possible diplomatic and peaceful ways of dealing with the regime's use of chemical weapons. They want to try to prevent future chemical attacks. The US missile strikes show that chemical weapons attacks on civilians wont go unpunished, Ibrahim Kalin, a spokesman for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said April 7, urging that Syrian safe zones be established. Even as the United States deliberately targeted Assad assets for the first time in the six-year conflict, Tillerson said the US military priority in Syria is still to fight the Islamic State, and he anticipates continuing to work through the Geneva process to try to reach a broader political resolution of the civil war. Overall, the situation in Syria is one where our approach today and our policy today is first to defeat [IS], Tillerson said. There is a large coalition of international players and allies who are involved in the future resolution in Syria. The United States is focused on planning to defeat IS and begin to stabilize areas of Syria through cease-fire agreements between the Syrian regime forces and opposition forces [and] begin to restore some normalcy to them, he said. In the midst of that, through the Geneva process, we will start a political process to resolve Syrias future in terms of its governance structure, Tillerson said. And that ultimately, in our view, will lead to a resolution of Bashar al-Assads departure. The narrow purpose of the retaliatory strikes against Assads use of chemical weapons was reflected in congressional notification. Several members said they were informed by the administration of the impending action only just before or after the strikes were underway, reflecting their understanding, they said, that this was not the start of a major war without their authorization. Congress largely applauded the strikes as a proportional response to the suspected chemical attack but demanded to be included going forward. The full Senate is scheduled to receive a briefing before leaving for its two-day Easter break on April 7, said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. In an April 7 letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., demanded that the lower chamber immediately be called back into session to debate a war authorization. The Presidents action and any response demands that we immediately do our duty, Pelosi wrote. Congress must live up to its constitutional responsibility to debate an Authorization of the Use of Military Force against a sovereign nation. Just hours earlier, Pelosi had released a statement saying the strike appears to be a proportional response to the regimes use of chemical weapons. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., likewise issued a statement, saying, Making sure Assad knows that when he commits such despicable atrocities he will pay a price is the right thing to do. He added, It is incumbent on the Trump administration to come up with a strategy and consult with Congress before implementing it. The chairman and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Ben Cardin, D-Md., also applauded the strikes but demanded to weigh in if a longer-term or larger operation is under consideration. As we move forward, it will be important for the administration to engage with Congress and clearly communicate its full strategy to the American people, Corker said in a statement. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., Hillary Clintons vice presidential running mate in the 2016 election and the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations panel on the Near East, was one of the lone voices to decry the decision to act without Congress. I voted for military action against Syria in 2013 when Donald Trump was advocating that America turn its back on Assad's atrocities, Kaine said in a statement. Congress will work with the President, but his failure to seek Congressional approval is unlawful. A few others by contrast called for an immediate ramp-up. Building on tonights credible first step, we must finally learn the lessons of history and ensure that tactical success leads to strategic progress, Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., said in a joint statement with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. That means following through with a new, comprehensive strategy in coordination with our allies and partners to end the conflict in Syria. The first measure in such a strategy must be to take Assads air force which is responsible not just for the latest chemical weapons attack, but countless atrocities against the Syrian people completely out of the fight. We must also bolster support for the vetted Syrian opposition and establish safe zones to address the ongoing humanitarian crisis. Julian Pecquet contributed reporting. Zonta Club of Billings and Billings Public Library are hosting Artful Women of Montana on Tuesday, April 11, 7-8 p.m. featuring Anna Paige and Ashley Warren. From a desire to connect writers to each other and grow the literary community in Billings, Warren and Paige created Billings Area Literary Arts. Active in the writing community, both Warren and Paige are faculty at Montana State University Billings, poetry teachers with Arts Without Boundaries, and instructors for Big Sky Writing Workshops. Through BALA, they host bi-monthly write-ins where they invite the community to "occupy space in form of creation." Warren writes fiction and poetry. Shes a graduate of the Stonecoast MFA program, and her work has appeared in The Examined Life, Easy Street, and in the anthology "Poems Across the Big Sky II" among other places. She was recently an Artist-in-Residence with the Billings Public Library and teaches youth in the juvenile detention system through the nonprofit organization Free Verse. Paige is a freelance journalist, photographer and poet. A Montana Slam Grand Champion, Paige has also been named Best Spoken Word Artist by the Magic City Music Awards in 2012 and 2014 - 2016. Shes performed spoken word poetry in several collaborative pieces, including a short act in Billings Fringe Festival and with Terpsichore Dance Company of Montana. She also co-hosts "Resounds: Arts and Culture on the High Plains on Yellowstone Public Radio. In this Artful Women of Montana talk, they will be discussing a multi-disciplinary approach to the arts, the importance of collaboration, and empowering community voice through writing. All Artful Women of Montana events are held in the Community Room of the library. April 7, 2017 DIYARBAKIR, Turkey When Molla Mustafa Barzani, father of the current president of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), established the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in 1946, his real objective was autonomy for the Kurds. He relinquished his post to his son Massoud in 1979. Massoud followed in his fathers footsteps and refrained from advocating independence until the 2000s. That is when the status of the Kurdish region was given constitutional recognition and the Kurds began standing on their own feet; it's also when their relations with the central government soured. The fundamental cause of their deteriorating relations was economic. As tensions mounted, Kurds began to play the "independence" card while repeatedly warning that if nothing else could be done they were ready to declare independence after holding a referendum. But global and regional developments did not allow for a referendum to be held or for independence to be declared. The bitter, endless arguments were eventually forgotten when the Islamic State (IS) attacked the Kurdish region. Inevitably the major issue then became how to expel IS from the region. Kurds were the only force that could take on IS on the ground, and Kurdish operations indeed forced IS to halt its attacks and retreat. This, in turn, boosted the popularity of the Kurds worldwide. Independence debates resumed parallel to growing confidence in the Kurds. Suddenly the Kurdish independence issue put on the backburner by the Kurdish administration was again on the agenda. The first move was the decision of the Kirkuk Municipal Council to fly the Kurdish flag. That was followed by a debate on holding a local referendum to attach Kirkuk to the KRG. As these debates were taking place, the KDP and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) held a meeting to discuss independence. In the meeting chaired by President Barzani, a decision was made to hold a referendum for independence. At first glance, this meeting resembled all others before it. But this time it was decided to organize a separate council for the referendum. This council will first meet with all ethnic and religious groups in the Kurdish region and then go on tour to persuade Baghdad and neighboring countries. The council has not yet been formally set up, but a smaller delegation made up of KDP and PUK delegates went to Baghdad for consultations. All these signs indicate that this time around the Kurds are taking the independence issue seriously. But realistically speaking, it is clear that the Kurds are first going to probe reactions of neighboring countries and international powers regarding the referendum. Academic Mehmet Alkis, who specializes in Iraqi Kurdistan issues, agrees that this time the Kurdish administration is serious. Alkis believes that, although this time the Kurdish hand is strong, it still needs to find the answers to several questions: "What will international powers say? What will be the reactions of regional powers, Turkey, Iran and neighboring countries? How will the political relations between the Kurds shape after the referendum?" Alkis asks. Alkis notes that from 2013 to today and during the Barack Obama period, the United States was telling the Kurds to coexist with Baghdad. Washington was saying, let the Baghdad government rule. Dont disrupt Iraqs territorial integrity. If you walk out now, Irans influence in the region will grow, Alkis stated. How Turkey will react seems to be an important question. Alkis says Turkey will remain neutral on the referendum issue. He explained: Turkey politically doesnt want Iraqs territorial integrity to be touched. But Ankara has political and economic ties with the KRG. If there is a referendum, Turkey will remain neutral. An independent Kurdistan wont have any negative repercussions for Turkey, as the Kurdish oil is exported via Turkey. Moreover, Turkey may want to use the Kurds as a buffer to Irans designs. Yes, Ankara reacted angrily to the flag at Kirkuk, but it wont be the same if there is a referendum. Former deputy of the KRG assembly Aso Karim said it is inevitable for changes to take place after wars in the region end. Speaking to Al-Monitor, Karim said Kurds will also be affected by these changes. The Kurdish experiment on federalism with the central government did not succeed. None of our problems were solved particularly the Shiites ignored the constitution. As Kurds, we have to seek other means and formulas. Otherwise, our legal and political status will remain stagnant," said Karim. He said the referendum is not a card to be played in domestic and foreign politics. We have some problems in Kurdistan. The national assembly is not functioning. We have economic problems in our daily lives. Political parties dont trust each other. The KRG president wanted support from the UN secretary-general because Kurdistan has lost confidence in Baghdad. Nobody believes that our problems will be solved with Baghdad, added Karim. He nevertheless insists the referendum should be held in cooperation with Baghdad. We are first trying to persuade Baghdad. If we cannot do that, then we will act unilaterally. But what will Tehran and Ankara say then? I am sure most people in Kurdistan will vote for independence. He emphasized that a Kurdish state will not pose a threat to Iran and Turkey. Other ethnic communities living in the Kurdish region are not expected to oppose independence, as they are living in the most secure and stable part of the region. Are the Kurds probing, taking a pulse or really serious about independence? If external reactions remain low key, we may well see the birth of Kurdistan. If not, the debate will continue for years to come. 2015 Food Truck Season Kickoff4849.JPG Food trucks. (File photo) (Sarah Cole) Here are the top business stories on AL.com for Thursday, April 6, 2017. Follow all of Alabama's business news here anytime. Food trucks could soon have a home in Birmingham's central business district. Terry Damsky is hoping to open a food truck park at the corner of 1st Avenue North and 24th Street. It's planned to have live music and free wi-fi. Craft beer and firearms have more in common than one might think. For decades, beer makers did little to innovate besides offer "light" versions or import beers from other countries. The industry experienced a major shift when drinkers became interested in the ingredients, brewing process and unique flavors craft beer provides. If you're going to Maho Bay in the U.S. Virgin Islands, you expect to need sunglasses. Out for a day of paddleboarding there, an Alabama couple both managed to lose their sunglasses. So, they started Maho Shades. The Crescent Theater Film Society, the nonprofit group that financially supports Mobile's independent movie theater in downtown Mobile, announced Wednesday afternoon on its Facebook page that the beloved theater will soon close. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink, the saying goes. Beer? Now, that's another story. Take Mac, a horse at King's Home in Chelsea. Mac drinks a Good People Brewing beer a day. There's no telling how many potential customers heading out to dinner at The Mariner recently have turned around when they spotted the sign at the corner of Dauphin Island Parkway and Bayou Road announcing that the restaurant and adjacent Grand Mariner marina will be sold at an estate auction on Saturday, April 8. Birmingham law firm Bradley, formerly known as Bradley Arant Boult Cummings, has laid off a total of 28 people. The layoffs affect seven of Bradley's nine offices. Twenty-one out of 160 secretaries in those seven offices were affected, along with five paralegals and two other staff members. A $10 million downtown Anniston hotel is set to open early next year as a Best Western Plus. Developers announced today the hotel project, slated for the corner of 12th and Noble in Anniston, will be one of the franchise's new line of upper mid-scale hotels targeted at the business and leisure traveler markets. Hundreds of students at Calhoun Community College received a rare opportunity this week to get hands-on training with cadavers donated to the advancement of science. Bridge Street Town Centre Bridge Street Town Centre in Huntsville. (BayerProperties.com) Fast-casual Mexican food will arrive next week at Bridge Street Town Centre in Huntsville. Moe's Southwest Grill will host a grand opening April 13 between Michael Kors and Steel City Pops. The 2,100-square-foot eatery and outdoor dining patio have been under construction since 2016. Elizabeth Anne Drake, social media and marketing manager for Moe's Southwest Grill, confirmed the first 50 customers in line next week will win free burritos for a year when they download Moe's new Rockin' Rewards app. The restaurant will be open from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. In addition to Moe's, spokesman Van Geroux said Kendra Scott is launching a market-exclusive boutique next to Altar'd State at Bridge Street. The 1,200-square-foot jewelry shop is under construction and should open in late June. Kendra Scott is based in Austin and has 40 stores across the U.S. The brand is sold at Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, Bloomingdale's and other specialty boutiques. Anna Cate, a fine fashion jeweler next to Belk, also carries Kendra Scott products. In other Bridge Street news Element Hotel, a new hotel on floors 7-11 of The Westin, will open April 10. Victoria's Secret will also begin a complete interior and exterior remodel April 12. The store will move temporarily to the former J. Crew location while construction is underway. Geroux said a new XD (Extreme Digital) theater will open at Monaco Pictures on April 14. It will be the largest screen at the Monaco and feature a state-of-the-art projection system. Connors Steak & Seafood will unveil a new dining patio in mid-May, while Urban Cookhouse will launch its first Alabama restaurant next to the newly-expanded Mountain High Outfitters in June. Bath & Body Works, a longtime tenant at Bridge Street, is set to open in its new, larger location in the former Banana Republic in July. The retailer will remain in its existing location next to Reeds until the new space is complete. Geroux said shoppers can expect more tenant announcements soon. The company is in advanced lease negotiations with other market-exclusive retailers who will be announced within the coming months," he said. A new 90-acre business park is opening today in Elmore County off Interstate 65. There will be a groundbreaking ceremony at 2 p.m. for the Millbrook Business Park, located off 2800 Grandview Road. The Park is the result of a partnership between the City of Millbrook, the Elmore County Commission, the Central Alabama Electric Cooperative and the Elmore County Economic Development Authority. According to the Elmore County EDA, the park occupies 89.5 total acres along a natural conservation area administered by the Alabama Wildlife Federation. There are no tenants yet, but the park has 10 lots available for development, from 2.8 acres to 13.6 acres, with more than 69 acres of land ready for development. Millbrook Mayor Al Kelley said the city is looking forward to working with new businesses that will eventually call the park home. The opening is the culmination of more than a year of work, Elmore County EDA Director Leisa Finley said. The authority is recruiting light industrial, technology-focused companies, and other businesses to the park. Millbrook is a city of almost 34,000, and looks to grow another four percent over the next five years. That's after experiencing nearly 38 percent growth from 2000 to 2010, and 43 percent growth in the decade before. The park is in the process of earning an AdvantageSite designation from the Economic Development Partnership of Alabama, a program to help with industrial site preparedness in the state's economic recruiting efforts. Alabama is among nine southern states that have made up a larger share of the U.S. economy over the last 10 years than traditional rust belt states that led the nation in the last century. That's according to Reuters, which has a new report out today on how manufacturing jobs which traditionally went to northern industrial areas are now finding homes in the South. This could spell trouble for President Donald Trump, who promised on the campaign trail to revive the industrial power of the North and Midwest. In addition to Alabama, the report includes North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. All of those states represent much of Trump's voter base, and accounted for 120 electoral votes in the 2016 election. Why is the South flourishing? Analysts say the traditional reasons - lower wages, little union activity - are no longer valid, and the region's college educated workforce is growing. Instead, it's relatively cheap land, low taxes and a rising population. In addition, while the economic collapse of 2008 hit both North and South hard, the South still has managed 13.5 percent growth over the last 15 years. For more details, read here. A group of high-profile evangelical Christian ministries in Birmingham has raised $111,745 toward security upgrades at the Levite Jewish Community Center, which has been the target of four bomb threats this year. "Our goal was to raise $100,000 and it exceeded that," said Scott Dawson, founder of Scott Dawson Evangelistic Association, which helped spearhead the fundraising drive. "So many times Christians are known for what we stand against. This is a great time to show what we stand for. That's for religious liberties. We're not intimidated by anyone living out their faith. We want to be good neighbors." Dawson said the arrest of an Israeli teenager who was suspected of making the bomb threats against the Birmingham Jewish Community Center did not have a significant impact on the fundraising effort. "We're glad they arrested someone," Dawson said. "The fact that children were having to be evacuated from the Jewish Community Center means they are going to still going to have enhance their security." About 125 of the 200 children enrolled at the Levite Jewish Community Center's pre-school program are not Jewish, and the physical fitness program is open to the community. Dawson said he hopes the effort will enhance interfaith relations in Birmingham. "I hope it goes a lot further in building bridges between the Jewish and Christian communities," Dawson said. "It really speaks well of churches across central Alabama," he said. "When there's a need, they all jump. We get ridiculed and scrutinized sometimes, but when you need help, the church just rises up to help." The ministries involved so far include Scott Dawson Evangelistic Association, The Center for Executive Leadership, Young Business Leaders, Lifework Leadership, JH Ranch, Alliance Ministries, and the National Christian Foundation of Alabama. Several major churches have pledged contributions of $5,000 to $10,000. Dawson said other churches are still expressing interest in assisting in fundraising, so the total could go higher. Dawson and other religious leaders with meet with leaders of the Birmingham Jewish Federation and others on Monday to present a check. "We're very, very grateful," said Richard Friedman, executive director of the Birmingham Jewish Federation. "We appreciate their support and friendship. This money will help us greatly. We remain concerned about security. We remain concerned about anti-Semitism. It's heartwarming to know we have such good Christian friends." Prattville is not one of those early boom towns where the industrial section was built separately from the downtown area. In fact, Prattville's early mills form one end of the quaint downtown district of this city of about 35,000 people. The factories were built by founder Daniel Pratt along Autauga Creek, which powered the machinery that made cotton gins, as well as textiles, and window sashes and doors, according to the Encyclopedia of Alabama. Prattville, the seat of Autauga County since 1868, is called "The Fountain City" because of the numerous artesian wells in the area. There is a picturesque downtown fountain, but one of its most popular features is the Creekwalk, established in 2006 behind the buildings on one side of downtown, where residents and visitors walk dogs, jog or just enjoy the scenery along the creek. Prattville's beginnings Daniel Pratt arrived in 1838 and bought nearly 2,000 acres for $20,000 on which to found his cotton-gin-making company. Before long, Prattville would become the center of the industrial revolution in Alabama. The town was founded in 1839 and incorporated in 1872. Pratt's mill would "employ as many as 175 workers who produced as many as 1,500 gins a year that were shipped worldwide. Pratt also founded the Prattville Manufacturing Company, No. 1, which produced cotton and woolen goods, and helped found a sash, door, and blind factory," according to the Encyclopedia of Alabama. Pratt was also a benefactor to the town he created. In 1859, he established the Prattville Male and Female Academy, where renowned poet Sidney Lanier once taught. The school operated for more than 50 years. The building was torn down in 1929 but the bell from its belfry was preserved. Prattville's first courthouse, an example of Italianate architecture, was constructed in 1870 at 147 South Court Street. In the early 1920s, after a new courthouse had been constructed, the owner of the building added a service station to its side. Today, it is a historic site. The Old Plank Road Pratt had found the perfect industrial site beside Autauga Creek, whose flow powered his mills. However, he needed to find a way to get his cotton-ginning machines and other goods to rivers, which were the main source of transportation at the time. So in the 1840s, he decided to build a road ... made of planks. A historical marker on Maple Street says, "The plank road was constructed of large pine logs, sawed lengthwise and laid round-side down. Daniel Pratt built the road for public benefit and to provide transportation from the Pratt Cotton Gin Factory to Washington on the Alabama River. Over four-miles long, the road cost between eight- and ten-thousand dollars to construct." The Bamboo Forest Did you know you can find an Asian-style forest just minutes from downtown Prattville? It is filled with bamboo stalks growing up to 60 feet high. It is also home to a wide array of unusual plants, as well as lots turtles, and frogs bigger than your hand. The Bamboo Forest is part of Prattville's Wilderness Park. After the land was deeded to the city, the park was dedicated in 1982, becoming the first wilderness park in the U.S. established inside city limits. The bamboo was planted in 1940 by Floyd Smith, who loved exotic plants and had a small packet of bamboo shoots mailed to him. At some point, Gen. William Butler from Maxwell Air Force Base's Air University bought the land. According to a sign at the park, "Gen. Butler allowed Mr. Morgan Smith, then head of the USAF Survival Program, to use the property for troop survival training, because the bamboo and climatic conditions simulated conditions in Southeast Asia, site of the Vietnam War." The address is 800 Upper Kingston Road. For information, call 334-361-3640. Artesian Wells Prattville was once filled with numerous wells. Although some have since been capped or stopped flowing, PrattvilleAL.gov says," "many wells still produce gallons of sweet, free-flowing clear water daily. At many of the public wells, thirsty citizens wait their turn to fill plastic jugs with the fresh water. Enjoy a drink of water and sit a spell under the tin-roofed well shed on Doster Road, sip from a dipper at the well in the back yard of the Prattaugan Museum/Heritage Center, slake your thirst at Heritage Park overlooking Autauga Creek, or at any of the other public artesian wells." Old Prattvillage This part of town was created in 1982 as a way to preserve old homes and buildings. PrattvilleAL.gov says, "The 1840 Mims Hotel was in danger of being moved out of the Daniel Pratt Historic District or destroyed. A group of houses on First Street, though in a dilapidated state of repair, were in a prime location and the property included a vacant lot which would accommodate the beautiful old hotel." The buildings were refurbished to house businesses. today Old Prattvillage includes such sites as the ca. 1880 Dennison House, the Mim Hotel, an 1880 mill-worker's house, the 1845 chapel and the ca. 1845 fishpond and Summer House, among others. "All houses are leased for office and business," the city says. The U.S. missile attack targeted at Syria on Thursday hit especially close to home for one Alabama man. Birmingham photographer Karim Shamsi-Basha spent his childhood in Damascus, Syria, but has lived in Alabama since 1989. His mother and a sister live in Damascus. He has a brother in Latakia. He has cousins in Homs, a city near the Syrian military base that was bombed by U.S. forces on Thursday. In an interview with AL.com today, Karim said he hasn't spoken to any of his family in Syria since the missile attack ordered by President Donald Trump. "I've been calling all morning and I haven't gotten through," he said. Karim said he's not sure how to react after the U.S. response to Syria's reported chemical weapons attack that killed civilians. "It's a really tough question," he said. Karim said the situation in Syria is complicated, since some of the rebels, including terrorists aligned with the Islamic State, may be worse than the country's dictator, Bashar al-Assad. "The Islamic State has to be eliminated," Karim said. "They're not people; they're animals." But Assad needs to be removed, he said. "At the same time, I don't want my people gassed," Karim said. "Assad should have been out of there six years ago." Instead, Assad has continued to wage war against rebels while inflicting mass casualties on civilians, resulting in a massive refugee problem and humanitarian crisis. "What he's doing is obviously horrendous," Karim said. "Killing people with nerve gas is beyond inhumane and it needs to be stopped. When Obama drew the red line, they crossed it and nothing happened, I was disappointed. At the same time, I didn't want my family bombed. It's very mixed feelings, I have family an hour and a half away. If one of those Tomahawk missiles went off course, it'd be a disaster." He's also worried Trump's action could have unforeseen consequences. "Congress should have been consulted; to act on his own is insane," Karim said. "I don't trust Trump. Did he do the right thing? It remains to be seen." Russia and Iran support Assad militarily. "I just don't want it to escalate into World War III," Karim said. But some sort of action was needed, he said. "In a way I'm glad somebody did something," Karim said. "Hopefully it won't escalate. It remains to be seen, what the result is." But keeping Assad in power is not a viable option, he said. "Him being there is not making anything better," Karim said. "I want him out of there. He's killed a half million people." If the United States had helped remove Assad and move moderate rebels into the vacuum, Karim wonders, could peace have been achieved? "If that had happened five years ago, maybe we (Syria) would be like France and Germany," he said. "It's the most beautiful country. Damascus is the oldest continuously inhabited city on earth. It's just being destroyed." Karim's mother and sister live day by day, trying to live in the midst of civil war. "They open the window and listen for 10 or 15 minutes," he said. "That's how they decide if they are going to the grocery store. Everybody's hunkering down. You pretty much don't go out if you don't have to. They try to take it one day at a time." By contrast, Karim has raised his children in peace in Alabama. He has two sons, Zade and Dury, 25 and 21, and a daughter, Demi, who is 17. "Right now, I'm trying to decide whether to get a cappuccino or a latte, and they are wondering if they are going to be shot," he said of his relatives in Syria. His brother, Maher, designs and manufactures upscale women's clothing. In the midst of civil war, it's a tough business. "He's hunkered down," Karim said. "Life is life everywhere. We have people who dress up and go out." Karim left Syria at 18. He graduated from the University of Tennessee and moved to Birmingham in 1989 to work as a photographer for the Birmingham Post-Herald. He grew up Muslim, but has converted to Christianity while living in Alabama. He wrote a memoir called "Paul and Me: A Journey to and from the Damascus Road, From Islam to Christ." Karim wonders why the world has allowed Syria to devolve into chaos. "Why can't we just solve things peacefully?" Karim said. "Why can't the world come to Assad and say, 'You're gone.' Why can't we stop these problems before they happen, in a peaceful way? A 131-page report from the investigator of impeachment charges against Gov. Robert Bentley says the governor used career law enforcement to try to cover up an inappropriate relationship with former adviser Rebekah Mason. "Governor Bentley directed law enforcement to advance his personal interests and, in a process characterized by increasing obsession and paranoia, subjected career law enforcement officers to tasks intended to protect his reputation," the report states. The report says more than 20 witnesses were interviewed and 10,000 pages of documents reviewed, but says Bentley and Mason did not cooperate and tried to obstruct the investigation. . Ross Garber, who is representing the governor's office in the impeachment proceedings, issued a statement after the report and after Montgomery County Circuit Judge Greg Griffin granted a temporary restraining order to stop hearings planned by the Judiciary Committee next week. "We appreciate the Court's consideration of this serious case and are gratified by the result," Garber said. "The Rule of Law applies. Even to the Legislature. Even in Impeachments. "We will review today's document dump - which appears to be an amalgam of hearsay, rumor and innuendo. I continue to have confidence that there will ultimately be fairness and due process in this matter." Mason declined comment. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Mike Jones said the committee filed an appeal of Griffin's order, seeking expedited action from the Alabama Supreme Court. Jones said the committee will meet Monday, as planned, to discuss procedures and what happened today. The impeachment report came from Special Counsel Jack Sharman, hired by the Alabama House Judiciary Committee to investigate the impeachment allegations. "Special Counsel (Sharman) and his staff brought no preconceptions to the investigation of Governor Bentley, an approach that was endorsed by the Chairman and by the Committee as a whole," the report from Sharman states. "Despite the heated and sometimes ill-considered discussion in the media or the public about Governor Bentley and a variety of issues, the Committee's investigators took a thorough, skeptical approach." "Unlike a criminal investigation that involves specific statutes or detailed regulations sitting atop a body of well-developed case law, impeachment does not require a specific violation of law, nor is there a neatly defined set of doctrines applicable to every impeachment investigation." Sharman also took the time to shoot back at some of the comments from Bentley's attorneys during the investigation. "The Committee's Special Counsel is not "some private lawyer in Birmingham," as Governor Bentley and his counsel claimed throughout the investigation (any more than Governor Bentley's counsel is 'some private lawyer in Washington, D.C.')." Bentley has denied wrongdoing and said he intends to stay in office despite calls to resign from House Speaker Mac McCutcheon and Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh. "I have done nothing illegal," Bentley said this morning, reading a prepared statement on the steps of the State Capitol. "If the people want to know if I misused state resources, the answer is simply no, I have not." The Alabama Ethics Commission found probable cause on Wednesday that Bentley violated the campaign finance law and the ethics law and forwarded those allegations to the Montgomery County District attorney. Sharman's report makes note of that but says it does not draw further conclusions about the findings. The report backs the allegation of former Alabama Law Enforcement Secretary Spencer Collier that Bentley fired him for providing an affidavit to the attorney general's office against his orders. Bentley said he fired Collier for alleged misspending of state funds, but the report notes that an investigation cleared Collier. The report alleges that on a number of occasions Bentley involved Collier and his security chief, Ray Lewis, in trying to cover up the relationship with Mason. It says those efforts grew after Bentley learned of the existence of recorded phone calls. The report says Bentley had Lewis confront women in his office who he thought were gossiping about the relationship with Mason and twice directed Lewis to break off the relationship with Mason. It says Bentley sent Lewis to Tuscaloosa to convince Bentley's son Paul to turn over the recordings. Some of the accusations were included in a lawsuit against Bentley filed by Lewis. The report also says Bentley ordered Collier to research criminal law and be prepared to arrest Heather Hannah, a former assistant for Dianne Bentley, who Bentley believed had made the recordings, and sent Collier to Greenville on election night in 2014 to ask Linda Adams, the governor's director of scheduling, whether she knew about the recordings. The report says that by all accounts the governor and his wife Dianne had a strong relationship when he began his first term. But it says Dianne Bentley began to have concerns about Mason by September 2013. It says Dianne Bentley confronted the governor about the relationship shortly after the State of the State speech in 2014 and Mason was in charge of seating arrangements. "The tipping point was Mason's failure to seat one of the Bentley children near Ms. Bentley during the speech and Governor Bentley's defense of Mason when it was brought to his attention," the report says. "Shortly thereafter, Ms. Bentley directly confronted her husband about Mason. He denied an inappropriate relationship." According to the report, Bentley's scheduler, Linda Adams, said that during 2014 the governor begin blocking off hours of time to spend with large segments of time with Mason in his office. It says Bentley also began restricting access to his calendar, including to Dianne Bentley and her staff. The report says Bentley's refusal to cooperate with the process could be another ground for impeachment. Other details found in today's report: Hannah, former assistant to former first lady Dianne Bentley, grew suspicious of the relationship between Bentley and Mason and helped Dianne Bentley capture the now infamous call between the two. Hannah once "noticed that Governor Bentley was leaving the Mansion earlier in the mornings and returning later, and she recalls a particular day when Governor Bentley had makeup on his shirt when he came home. Around the same time, Ms. Bentley had begun to record in her journal the absence of affection from her husband. She noted there was no physical affection, no suggestions of intimacy, and that he had not so much as said "I love you" in quite some time." The report states Hannah was subjected to intimidation and harassment. "Within a few days of Hannah's deposition, she believes on or about June 6, 2016, Hannah was outside of her new home watering plants when she heard what sounded like her bushes rustling. Unsure of the source of the noise, she walked to the front of her house where she noticed "scribbles" on the windows of her vehicle. "She stated that at the time she could tell the scribbles were some sort of writing, but she had difficulty reading it. She took photographs of the writing on her windows, and it showed up much clearer in the pictures. Hannah provided the two pictures to Special Counsel, which are attached to this report and contained in Exhibit 9A at 217-218. "The first photograph is of writing on what appears to be the driver side windows of her vehicle, and it appears to read, "Bitch Die." The second photograph is of writing on the windshield, and it appears to read, "You will f...ing die." "On June 15, 2016, Hannah was at her home preparing for bed. She turned off the light in her kitchen and was walking to the back of her house when she heard the sound of breaking glass. "She walked back to her kitchen where she believed the sound originated and saw a rock lying on the floor. She also observed a broken panel in a large window on the front of her house. "Hannah immediately called the police, who came to her home and took a police report at twenty minutes after midnight. At that time, Hannah also advised the officers of the vandalism of her vehicle. The police report reflects that Hannah told the officers at the time that she believed both incidents were related to her recent deposition." "Hannah testified during her deposition by Special Counsel that she believed both incidents were related to her testimony before the Alabama Ethics Commission." The governor accidentally ended a text message to his now former wife by saying, " Another text exchange showed Bentley's concern the first lady would not attend his inauguration. "Dianne I wish you would still come Monday. He then asks if their children are going to attend. "Have u made your choice? Do you still have a relationship going? Those facts can be decided Sun afternoon," she replied. "I am not having a relationship with anyone!!!" he replied. "I need to know before Sunday!" While in Washington D.C., Bentley once answered the door of his hotel room wearing his boxers, mistakenly thinking Mason was on the other side. "The majority of the entourage, including both Mason and Ms. Bentley, attended a dinner at the Old Ebbitt Grill, a well-known local restaurant. Throughout the dinner, Ms. Bentley was able to read text messages being exchanged between Governor Bentley and Mason, who was seated directly across from the Bentleys. Those text exchanges included Governor Bentley stating, "I can't take my eyes off of you." Later that evening at a D.C. bar, Mason bragged that Governor Bentley had called and told her that he had opened his hotel room door to hotel staff while clad in boxers, believing Mason was on the other side." "Although many witnesses have been candid and forthcoming, Governor Bentley and his associates, including Rebekah Mason, refused to cooperate in any meaningful sense and, indeed, obstructed this investigation," a report summary states. That lack of cooperation, the report states, may be grounds for impeachment. The report at one point references President Richard Nixon. "Unlike Governor Bentley, President Nixon invoked the doctrine of "executive privilege" in refusing to comply with the subpoena. Rather, Governor Bentley has declined to comply with the subpoena on the grounds that the Committee lacks authority to issue them, or that the subpoena is procedurally or substantively unfair to him, or both. "The "Nixon case made it clear that the claim of executive privilege by a president in an impeachment investigation should be viewed with extreme skepticism. Where the Committee has authority to issue subpoenas, and where the House investigation follows appropriate safeguards established both by House rule and common sense, a Governor's refusal to comply without even a fig leaf of a privilege claim should be met with skepticism." The report seems to indicate Rebekah Mason ran ACE.GOV: "Shortly after ACEGov was formed, Governor Bentley revealed that Mason was going to be involved in it. One Bentley staff member reported that Mason said," the report states. "I will be running ACEGov." Available information supports her statement. In July and August 2015, ACEGov conducted polls that Mason provided to Governor Bentley's staff for review and dissemination to the Legislature. Mason recruited members of Governor Bentley's staff to attend events supported with ACEGov funds. Although ACEGov's website, www.acegov.com, was pulled down in early 2016, its webpage content remained accessible via Squarespace, a website development and management platform, through a URL associated with Mason." AL.com reporters Kent Faulk, Mike Oliver, Connor Sheets Leada Gore and Paul Gattis contributed to this report. lawyers.jpg David Byrne, chief legal advisor for Gov. Robert Bentley, left, and attorney Ross Garber responded to findings by the Ethics Commission at a news conference on Thursday. (Mike Cason/mcason@al.com) Lawyers for Gov. Robert Bentley held a news conference this afternoon responding to Wednesday's findings by the Alabama Ethics Commission, as well as the House Judiciary Committee's plans to start impeachment hearings next week. The Ethics Commission found probable cause that Bentley violated the Fair Campaign Practices Act three times and the state ethics law once. The commission's decision forwards the allegations to Montgomery County District Attorney Darryl Bailey for possible prosecution. Bentley has denied wrongdoing. David Byrne, chief legal adviser for the governor, talked about some of the specific findings today. Byrne said the governor's legal team took three hours to present its case before the Ethics Commission on Wednesday. The commission heard testimony and evidence during a closed door session that lasted all day Wednesday. Byrne said Bentley's legal team was not present to hear the other side's case. One probable cause finding was that Bentley violated the campaign finance law by accepting a campaign contribution outside the allowed window, which is one year before an election or 120 days after an election if the candidate has a campaign debt. Byrne said that finding concerned a contribution of $11,641 to Bentley's campaign account from the Republican Governors Association in March 2016. Bentley was not a candidate at that time, having been reelected in November 2014. Byrne said the payment from the RGA was reimbursement to the state for Bentley's trip to an RGA event in Las Vegas in November 2015 on the state airplane. Former adviser Rebekah Mason and staff members also went. The trip and payment have been the subject of previous news stories. Byrne said that before the trip, the governor's legal office determined it was appropriate to use the state plane. Byrne said official state business for the governor on the trip included meetings on the issues of refugees from Syria and Medicaid reform. Byrne said after the trip, the state applied for and received reimbursement from the RGA. "The situation is for whatever reason the Republican Governors Association told our staff that they weren't sure they could cut a check directly to the state of Alabama," Byrne said. "So that's the reason it went into the (campaign) account." Byrne said Bentley wrote a check for the exact amount from his campaign finance account the day after receiving the RGA payment and gave it to the state finance director. The RGA contribution and the payment from Bentley's campaign account to the state General Fund are listed on Bentley's annual campaign finance report for 2016. "It was not a contribution in the sense of someone trying to buy political influence," Byrne said of the RGA contribution. "That is the kind of evidence that we think places this into a perspective and gives it some context." Another Ethics Commission probable cause finding concerned the payment of $8,912 in legal fees for Mason in January 2016 from Bentley's campaign account. Secretary of State John Merrill said he believed the payment was illegal and reported it to the Ethics Commission. Elected officials are allowed to use campaign funds for legal fees related to their duties in office. Former House Speaker Mike Hubbard used campaign funds to pay his lawyers during his ethics trial. But the Ethics Commission found probable cause that Bentley violated the law by using his campaign funds to pay legal fees for someone other than himself, Mason. Byrne said Mason's legal fees were incurred because of questions about whether she could serve as the governor's adviser while being paid by entities outside state government as a "loaned executive." Byrne said he and other lawyers, including Joe Espy and Bobby Segall, met with the Ethics Commission over the matter, sent a letter to the commission and received a response. Byrne said the payment $8,912 payment to Segall was for representing Mason on the issue. Byrne said the governor's legal team relied on federal election opinions to determine the payment was legal because there was no relevant case law in Alabama. William Athanas, another lawyer for Bentley, cited those federal opinions in a letter to Ethics Commission Executive Director Tom Albritton defending the payment. Ross Garber, who is representing Bentley in the impeachment proceedings, joined Byrne at this afternoon's news conference. Garber said the Ethics Commission findings are not grounds to impeach the governor. Garber maintains the governor is not receiving due process and opposes a plan for impeachment hearings to begin next week. Garber proposed an alternative plan and called for the House Judiciary Committee to hold a meeting to hear his concerns about due process but said he has not gotten a response. "There are ethics commissions in every state, proceedings like you saw yesterday, they happen all the time," Garber said. "All the time. And the consequence of yesterday is that there's a referral made to another regulatory agency. And that's fine. "But what you saw yesterday and the consequences of it are not the kind of thing that results in the impeachment of a governor. It's just not." Jack Sharman, special counsel for the House Judiciary Committee, is scheduled to release a report on his impeachment investigation on Friday. Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh called on Bentley to resign today, saying the governor can no longer effectively lead the state. Bentley said he would not resign. NORFOLK, Neb. "The Woman at the Well" is back at St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Norfolk. The 18-foot stained-glass depiction of the story in John 4 had been absent since shortly after Christmas. That's when it was removed by Kenny and Kristi Kruse, a rural Hartington couple who exchanged their lives as dairy farmers to become stained-glass specialists. The couple own Kruse Stained Glass, a business they began 19 years ago when a specialist hired to complete a restoration project for the stained-glass windows at Ss. Peter and Paul Church in Bow Valley was unable to complete the job. Kristi Kruse said her husband who had done small stained-glass projects for some cabinetry work expressed his belief that they could handle it, so they began further honing their skills. Kruse even found a china painter who taught her how to paint on glass. Other projects began coming their way. The couple enjoyed the work so much and the demand for their work kept them so busy that they eventually decided to give up their dairy. "We used to be dairy farmers," Kruse told the Norfolk Daily News. "We milked and did stained glass, but something had to go." Kruse estimates that about 80 percent of their work is restoration of old stained glass like the project at St. Paul's. Although they have done some transom windows for residences, the majority of the Kruses' work is done for churches. They've gone as far south as Lincoln and as far north as the South Dakota/North Dakota border with their skills. The Kruses were also responsible for making the stained-glass windows for the reconstructed St. John's Lutheran Church in Pilger after the original structure was destroyed by a tornado in 2014. "It's a full-time business for all of us," Kruse said, adding that her son, Jason, and daughter, Candace Burbach, are also involved in the endeavor. The project at St. Paul's in Norfolk has been underway since last July, shortly after the church's 150th anniversary celebration wrapped up. "We took this one out right after Christmas," Kruse said in reference to the large window. The window is split up into several sections; the four main sections are each about 7 feet tall. Each section is divided with smaller frames. When the window was removed, each piece was labeled so it would be returned to its original spot. Kruse said they hope to have the project wrapped up by Easter, but there are never any guarantees because each job has the potential for complications to arise. "You never know what you're going to run into," Kruse said. Still, the Kruses find reward in the work they're doing, especially when a someone sees their loved one's name memorialized in a church window. "With the new windows, you're putting something in that you know will be there for another hundred years hopefully," she said. "With the restorations, we like taking the old and making it look new again." A Hoover lawyer says he and six others have filed an ethics complaint with the Alabama State Bar seeking an investigation of whether Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange stalled an investigation into Gov. Robert Bentley to get an appointment by the governor to a vacant U.S. Senate seat. Sam McLure, an adoption lawyer who writes columns for the Alabama Political Reporter website, said he filed the complaint Thursday. The complaint asks that the Alabama Bar investigate the claims. "It appears that Sen. Luther Strange has egregiously violated his duty to his client, the State of Alabama, by accepting Governor Robert Bentley's appointment to U.S. Senate after stalling the Legislature's impeachment investigation into Governor Robert Bentley and halting his own investigation in to Governor Robert Bentley," the complaint provided by McLure states. An Alabama Bar spokeswoman said this morning that rules prevent them from commenting on whether a complaint has, or has not, been filed. A spokeswoman for Strange also has not responded to a request, made Thursday afternoon, for comment. Strange was appointed to fill the vacant U.S. Senate seat of Jeff Sessions, who was appointed U.S. Attorney General in the Trump Administration. The appointment came four months after Strange asked the Alabama House Judiciary Committee to suspend an investigation into impeachment articles against Bentley because his office was conducting a related investigation. "I respectfully request that the Committee cease active interviews and investigation until I am able to report to you that the necessary related work of my office has been completed," Strange wrote in a Nov. 3 letter to Judiciary Committee Chairman Mike Jones, who agreed to suspend the proceedings. Luther Strange Strange, however, never confirmed that an investigation of Bentley was underway in his office, but new Attorney General Steve Marshall revealed it existed when he took office. Marshall turned the investigation over to a special prosecutor. The impeachment investigation was related to allegations that Bentley had an affair with former political adviser Rebekah Mason and whether state resources were used to facilitate the relationship. The Alabama Ethics Commission on Wednesday found probable cause that Bentley violated the state ethics law and the campaign finance law. The commission is turning their findings over to the Montgomery County District Attorney's Office, which could seek possible criminal charges against Bentley. Bentley and Mason have denied having an affair and the governor has denied doing breaking any laws or doing anything to warrant impeachment. McLlure said he had sought out five people to join him in filing the bar complaint in one of his columns for the Alabama Political Reporter. That column ran March 28. "There it is ... if your bologna meter peaked out when Luther Strange was appointed to the U.S. Senate you are not alone. If you think there is a sufficient likelihood of impropriety that you would like a public hearing to determine if there is clear and convincing evidence of Sen. Strange's alleged ethical violations, then contact me," McLure wrote. "I'm applying the Rule of Six in this case. If five other Alabama citizens will join with me in a Disciplinary Complaint to the Alabama State Bar, then we'll file it together." McLure said of the six residents who joined him in filing the complaint "are just concerned Alabama citizens like me." The body of an Illinois man was found in a tent Friday morning by a turkey hunter in the Talladega National Forest. The discovery was made about 11 a.m. off of U.S. Forest Service Road 615, said Talladega County Coroner Shaddix Murphy. No foul play is suspected in the man's death. The man, whose name is being withheld pending notification of relatives, had fashioned a shelter out of trees, and then set up a tent underneath that shelter, Murphy said. A receipt in the pocket of his pants showed he bought the supplies in Florence in January. The turkey hunter told authorities he had seen the tent from about 100 yards away on the first day of the turkey hunting season. When he saw it again Friday morning, he went to investigate and found the man dead inside. Murphy said the man had likely only been dead for a day or so. Authorities don't yet know why the man was living in the forest, or how long he had been staying there. VestaviaHillsCarDeath.jpg Vestavia Hills police and firefighters responded to an office building on Columbiana Road Friday, April 7, 2017, on a report of a child left in a vehicle. The boy was unresponsive and rushed to Children's of Alabama, where he was pronounced dead.(Carol Robinson) ( ) A child was rushed to the hospital late Friday afternoon after being left in a car outside of a Vestavia Hills office building. The child - a 1-year-old boy - was pronounced dead a short time later. Vestavia Hills police and firefighters were dispatched to an office building in the 2000 block of Columbiana Road at 4:38 p.m., confirmed VHFD Lt. Ryan Farrell. The call was on a child left in a vehicle, he said. The red Ford F-150 was parked in the rear parking lot of the NaphCare Building. The child was unresponsive and in cardiac arrest, according to Farrell. First responders rushed the child to Children's Hospital via a police escort, with area municipalities helping to clear the roadways for faster transport. The father of the child was on the scene and accompanied the child to the hospital. The caravan arrived at Children's at 4:53 p.m. The baby was pronounced dead at 5:06 p.m. Children's of Alabama, said Vestavia Hills Capt. Brian Gilham. Gilham said the investigation is in its early stages and very few details are available. He said they don't yet know how long the boy had been in the vehicle. As of 6 p.m., officers remained on the scene, though the vehicle has already been removed and towed for evidence. Police officials met with the general counsel for the company inside the building. Gilham said the boy's father had already taken the boy out of the car by the time police and fire arrived on the scene. It wasn't immediately clear whether he or someone else initially dialed 911. He said investigators will work throughout the weekend to try to determine what happened. As of now, he said, they are classifying the case as a death investigation only but will coordinate with the Jefferson County Coroner's Office to determine whether any criminal charges are warranted. He emphasized, however, that is standard procedure and it's too soon to know whether that is a possibility. He said he couldn't say it was a "hot car death" but said they will have to see what the autopsy and investigation shows. The initial call, however, was a child left in a vehicle. Gilham said it will likely be Monday or beyond before authorities release the name of the child, or any other information. He said it was a tough scene for first responders. "When you're dealing with a child, it makes it very difficult,'' Gilham said. "I'm a father, many of our officers are parents, and our hearts go out to the family." Brad McClane, chief of administration at NaphCare, confirmed the boy's father works at the company. "We're deeply saddened by this tragedy and our hearts are with our employee and his family," he said. house of representatives Members of the Alabama House of Representatives say there is virtually no momentum or appetite to consider legalizing marijuana for medical or recreational purposes. (Julie Bennett/jbennett@al.com) For marijuana to be legalized in Alabama - whether for medical or recreational use - it must begin with the state legislature. And that's pretty much the end of the conversation because that conversation isn't taking place these days. "There's not been any talk here about, any serious conversations about it," said state Rep. Anthony Daniels, D-Huntsville, and House minority leader. "I've heard more from constituents on this issue than legislators. There's nobody really leading that fight." AL.com this week spoke with seven lawmakers - both Republicans and Democrats - and that sampling indicated there was virtually no movement in legalizing marijuana. Beyond those seven opinions, the House Judiciary Committee has received a bill sponsored by state Rep. Patricia Todd, D-Birmingham, both this year and last year that would significantly reduce the criminal penalties for possessing marijuana for personal use, which she defined as one ounce or less. The bill was not even brought up for a committee vote last year. And as the 2017 legislative sessions winds to an end, the bill again is sitting in committee without getting a vote. "I think we're still a ways from it," state Rep. Mike Ball, R-Madison, said of legalizing medical marijuana. Ball's perspective is telling. He has championed bills in recent years that led to a study of cannabis oil at UAB, which included a trial study for qualified applicants to access the oil as well as the 2016 bill that decriminalized possession of cannabis oil that had 3 percent or less of THC - the psychoactive element in marijuana that produces an intoxicating high. At such a low percentage, though, achieving that high is not possible. So if Ball doesn't see anything happening on legalizing marijuana, that's probably because there's nothing to see. "I don't foresee it but there is a possibility," state Rep. Jimmy Martin, R-Clanton said. "You do have the marijuana oil that has been legalized but you don't have the other and from what I can understand from other states, that has been abused and expanded. They're calling it medical and they're just smoking it for the heck of it. "I don't really see in the age of the people in the legislature now, which is my age and a little younger, I don't see it authorized." Martin described his age as "about 78." State Sen. Dick Brewbaker, R-Montgomery, perhaps gave the most optimistic outlook on medical marijuana. But even that outlook came with tempered expectations. "As long as it's treated like any other drug, I think you could pass the bill today," Brewbaker said. "The proponents seem to be committed to a grow-your-own approach and the legislature is just not going to go for that. I don't think (lawmakers) have a problem with medical marijuana as such. If there's one thing we ought to learn from mistakes other states have made is that's when you lose control of it is when people are growing their own in their backyard and you can't tell what's legal and what's not. "There's nothing to stop us from sourcing marijuana at one of the agricultural universities or buying it through the federal program and distributing it to legitimate people with prescriptions through county health departments. There is a way to do the distribution without resorting to people growing it in their backyards. If we could ever get the proponents off the grow-your-own, I think we could pass it pretty easily. But that has not been possible yet." Eight states, as well as the District of Columbia, have legalized marijuana for recreational use. But the other 41 states may legalize it before Alabama does, Brewbaker said. "If you're talking about outright legalization, I think we'll definitely be at the tail end of the pack of that," he said. "There's just no support for it right now. I think we could get a medical marijuana bill as long as that's what it is - as long as it's medical. When people insist they would be able to source their own marijuana, I become much more suspicious of what their real motives are." On legalizing medical marijuana, Sen. Billy Beasley, D-Clayton, said "It's probably not a probability." And if the legislature isn't going to legalizing medical marijuana, it's certainly not going to legalize it for recreational use. "I think that would be an accurate assessment," Beasley said. Under Alabama law, possession of marijuana for personal use is a Class A misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail, a fine of not more than $6,000 or a combination of the two. Todd's foundering bill would make possession of personal use a violation - not unlike a traffic citation - punishable only by a fine of $250 on first offense and $500 on any other offense. The violation would also not appear on a person's criminal record. Todd's bill also had a Republican co-sponsor, Alan Harper of Northport, but the lack of action on a bill introduced almost two months ago seems to indicate it was dead on arrival. Todd did not respond to multiple phone messages from AL.com to discuss her bill. Martin served as coroner in Chilton County for more than 30 years and also co-owns Martin Funeral Home. He said that experience has helped shape his views on marijuana. "As far as I'm concerned, I would probably say we would probably be one of the last states (to legalize marijuana)," he said. "Being in the funeral business and a coroner, I've seen too much that marijuana leads on into other things. To me, it's a stepping stone to stronger drugs." State Rep. Will South, R-Fayette, said there may be a push across the nation to loosen restrictions on marijuana. But not necessarily in Alabama. "The more information that's out there, it seems like it's picking up a little bit of momentum and becoming more widely supported," South said. "I don't think we're to the point here yet." South also described medical marijuana as "a gray area" and said, "We have to be careful and make sure we are doing the correct thing." There are perhaps two other hurdles. First, as one lawmaker said, legalizing marijuana is pretty much off-limits in the 2018 session because it's an election year so the earliest a serious conversation might be had is at least two years away. The other is the fact that marijuana remains a Schedule 1 drug, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. Schedule 1 is the classification for the most serious drugs that, according to the DEA, have no medicinal value and a high potential for abuse. Other Schedule 1 drugs include heroin and LSD. "I don't see Alabama passing state laws on marijuana that contradict with federal laws," state Rep. Jack Williams, R-Vestavia Hills, said. "Hopefully we would agree we're a nation of laws. And the fact that the previous administration (under President Barack Obama) was selective in the laws they enforced and ignored other laws means the power of law goes away. "We have folks hitting us all the time why pass bills that are in contradiction with federal laws. This is one I would agree it's probably not wise use of the legislature's time, particularly on the recreational side, to pass laws that we know are in contradiction with federal law." Landing Idahos catch-and-release record northern pike wasnt painless for Scott Kerns. He cut me, the Hayden resident said. I was bleeding, but thats OK. We got him back in the water alive. Kerns almost didnt make it to chill on the frozen lake with his ice-fishing buddy Mike Nunemacher on March 3. I crashed my pickup on the way there, he said. I went home, called my insurance company. It was a bad day. But there was nothing more I could do but go fishing. While fish managers are waging war against northern pike in Washington and British Columbia to keep them from infesting the Columbia River and impacting native fisheries, many sportsmen in Idaho revere the predator as a trophy. In 10 years of fishing for pike, this was one of Kerns worst seasons. It had been extremely slow, he said, noting that hed caught only one other pike through the winter before his tip-up flag signaled a strike that day. The fish made two runs and Mike was hollering for me to play out line, said Kerns, who was wearing fingerless wool gloves. We dont use a reel. The line cut my fingers. It was a panic. Im not complaining. It was exhilarating. The best part was his first glimpse of the fish through the 10-inch hole in the ice. That eye! Whoa! You see that eye and then the long length of the fish as it goes by. You think youre going to pass out. Thats my favorite thing about ice fishing. Working together, the two anglers carefully gaffed the pike in the jaw, pulled it up through the hole, which is limited to 10 inches by state rules. The fish, laden with eggs, measured 44 inches long with an unofficial weight of 33 pounds, according to their hand-held digital scale. That blows away the old catch-and-release record of 17 inches, caught by Michael Friedrich on April 9, 2016, out of Benewah Lake. Northern pike are a blast to catch and really good to eat, although the really big ones arent as tasty as the smaller ones, he said. I didnt have any trouble letting this one go. If anglers keep taking out the biggest fish, soon there are no more big fish. Besides, after crashing my pickup, I didnt have money to pay for a mount. Idahos certified weight record northern pike weighed 40.15 pounds and measured 51.5 inches, caught in Lower Twin Lake by Kim Fleming in August 2010. I met the guy, Kerns said. He caught his while he was fishing for trout. I was targeting pike when I caught mine. We both had thrills of a lifetime. HELENA The remaining bill intended to battle suicide in Montana was heavily amended Wednesday to broaden its scope and divide $1 million among multiple programs, although some legislators said its missing important policy. Legislators in House Appropriations were up against a deadline last week and decided to move only one of three suicide prevention bills forward to the Senate and table the other two. Committee members said they hoped a working group could combine multiple pieces into one comprehensive bill, but some House legislators had spent years drafting their legislation and worried the final version wouldnt include the best policy. At the end of last week, it was unclear who, if anyone, would lead a working group and who would have their input included. Rep. Jonathan Windy Boy, D-Box Elder, who is the sponsor of the remaining bill, introduced House Bill 118 to a Senate committee with five pages of amendments requested by Sen. Albert Olszewski, R-Kalispell. Olszewski was said to be in charge of leading a working group, but he said he didnt expect a formal sit-down. Both Rep. Jessica Karjala, D-Billings, and Rep. Mary Ann Dunwell, D-Helena, had bills to address suicide prevention tabled last week. They were told by several legislators they likely wouldnt be included in the working group, regardless of its formality. Dunwells bill would have created a suicide grant prevention program in schools and require schools to have an evidence-based prevention plan. Dunwell said she was able to reach out to Sen. Edie McClafferty, D-Butte, and make recommendations on which parts of her bill to include. The requirement of schools to have a prevention plan didnt make the cut. Its certainly a move forward, she said. I would argue we need a lot more. Dunwells bill would have created a special revenue account to establish a reliable funding source, but the amended version appropriates half the funds as one-time-only. She said $1 million isnt enough to solve a problem and legislators will have to justify asking for more money in the next biennium. Its not something youre going to fix overnight, she said. Were changing a culture of suicide in Montana thats generational." The amendment appropriates $1 million to three different prevention programs administered by the Department of Public Health and Human Services. A recurring $500,000 from the national Master Settlement Agreement with tobacco companies will go into a state special revenue account to fund a suicide grant prevention program, including for veterans. A one-time-only appropriation of $250,000 from the health and medicaid special revenue account will help DPHHS implement the action steps in the Montana Native American youth suicide reduction plan. The final $250,000 is also one-time-only and will provide grants for school-based prevention programs. Karjala saw some important parts of her bill included but said she had to track down Olszewski during a brief recess to make recommendations. She said the inclusion of language to increase the knowledge of adverse childhood experiences, such as a child experiencing abuse, was crucial. She was disappointed to see its counterpart to provide trauma-based care wasnt included, since 80 percent of suicides can be attributed to an experience of trauma, she said. House Bill 118 also added language to make sure the programs implemented are evidence-based and requires communities receiving grants to report outcomes at the end of the biennium to DPHHS. While Karjala and Dunwell said they were frustrated to see parts of their bills missing, Dee Brown, Republican chair of the Senate State Administration committee, said the bill included everyones work. Everyone is pulling on the same rope, and everyone is pulling in the same direction, Brown said. Everyone had part of their (bill) survive. Brown said the committee should move the bill forward and explained the amendments to the rest of the committee. Before voting, she said she supports the bill because it allows communities to approach suicide prevention with their own evidence-based strategy. Its also addressing that one size doesnt fit all, she said. Your community is different from my community is different from his community. The bill will move to the Senate floor for debate. Madleen Kullabs love for the sea has allowed her to overcome the physical and social challenges of her unusual job. Gaza City The world may not know her name, but anyone who has visited Gazas seaport will recognise Madleen Kullab. The daughter of a fisherman, 22-year-old Kullab is the only female fisher in Gaza. It was not her choice to follow her fathers path: As a child, she dreamed of becoming a fashion designer, but the winds do not always blow as the vessels wish. The first time Kullab took to the sea with her father, she was just six years old. After her father was diagnosed with acute myelitis, an inflammation of the spinal cord, he lost his ability to work. Kullab, then 13, made the unusual decision to pick up her fathers fishing gear. The first time I went fishing by myself, on a motor boat, was frightening but I picked it up pretty quickly, Kullab told Al Jazeera, while sitting on a cement step at the edge of Gaza Citys fishing harbour. As a 13-year-old girl, Kullab faced multiple challenges, including the physical strength needed for the job and the communitys scepticism towards her role in an industry dominated by men. The best way to combat such criticism, she found, was to showcase her fishing prowess. She learned by heart all the different types of local fish, the best times to cast a line, what kinds of rods and hooks to use, and what types of fish are most affordable for Palestinian families in Gaza: Sardines, definitely. At night, Kullab prepares her nets. In the morning, she pulls her boat out into the water. As the waves slap against its sides, she casts her net into the sea, hoping to make a sufficient catch to feed her six-member family and put some out for sale. INTERACTIVE: 24 Hours in Gaza Although male colleagues initially belittled her, Kullab says she eventually proved herself through the amount of fish that she caught: Some of them said that I must have a supernatural power that helped me, she said with a wide smile. Her unique position as Gazas only fisherwoman has inspired many journalists, both local and foreign, to cover Kullabs story. The attention made some of her male colleagues envious in the beginning, she said, but over time she earned their respect. They all treat me now as a sister or a daughter, she said. Kullab has viewed fishing first as something she was forced into, then as a passion, and now as a profession at which she excels. But amid Israeli-imposed limits on Gazas fishing areas, the job has become dangerous, and Kullab is pursuing a secretarial diploma to give herself another option in the territorys limited job market. She tries her best to balance work and classes, although nothing beats her love for the sea: I have become part of the sea. Like the rest of Gazas 4,000 fishermen, Kullab has struggled to make ends meet in the Israeli-defined six-nautical-mile fishing area to which they are limited a limit that was raised just last year to nine nautical miles, then reduced back to six after less than three months. The result has been a decimation of the local fish population. We used to have 4,000 tonnes of fish of different types. They were sufficient for the needs of the Palestinians in Gaza, and we exported the rest to the West Bank, noted Nizar Ayyash, the head of the Palestinian fishers syndicate. We now have only 1,500 tonnes maximum of fish, and they are barely enough to meet the local markets needs. [The by Madleen would not differentiate between a boat with a man on its deck or a woman. Whoever attempts to come closer will be shot at directly.] When they stray outside of this zone, fishermen have been fired upon with live ammunition, had their equipment seized or been arrested by Israeli forces. Kullab has experienced such harassment on multiple occasions, noting that her boat has been shot at directly, and she has been screamed at through a loudspeaker by the Israelis in broken Arabic: Go from here, you girl! Such incidents have forced her to flee back to shore, even when she was empty-handed. They would not differentiate between a boat with a man on its deck or a woman, Kullab said. Whoever attempts to come closer will be shot at directly. According to the human rights group BTselem, about 95 percent of fishers in Gaza live below the poverty line. Kullab herself earns just 500 shekels ($135) a month, although her income may fluctuate based on weather conditions, Israeli naval policies and the availability of fish. It is very disappointing [on the days when you] go home with zero fish, Kullab said. Fuel to operate fishing boats is also quite expensive, and Israel has forbidden the entry of key boat maintenance materials and spare parts, including fibreglass, rendering one of Kullabs favourite boats useless. Apart from her work as a fisher, Kullab also offers her services as a tour guide, taking families on short sea tours, especially during the hot summer season. And although she is looking for a way out of the industry, in the meantime, Kullab says she would love to see other women from Gaza follow in her footsteps as a fisherwoman. Id love to see more women joining me in this career, she said. This would help to lift the burden [of social pressure and criticism] from my shoulders. HELENA Gov. Steve Bullock vetoed a bill that would have banned Sharia and other foreign laws from being used in Montana courts, saying Thursday that the measure would "upend our legal system and debase what we stand for as Montanans and Americans." Montana was one of the 13 states considering legislation seeking to prevent the use of foreign law in state courts. While the bill's focus was not on Sharia law, some supporters specifically spoke out against the religious law used in some parts of the Islamic world. Some Republicans sided with Democrats in opposing the measure but could not block it from going to the governor. "There is absolutely no need for this bill," Bullock wrote in his veto message, adding that the proposal could add to the "nationwide surge in hate crimes." The bill was one of five on which the governor took action Thursday, and the only to get a veto. Including that measure, the governor has vetoed five bills outright with an additional 50 waiting on his desk for action. Bullock said he was disturbed that the ban, if he had signed it, could have been seen as an "endorsement for anti-Muslim sentiments and activity." "I don't see how affirming our Constitution does that. I disagree with him," said Sen. Keith Regier, a Kalispell Republican. He and other backers argued that the measure aimed merely to declare support for U.S. and Montana law, which some Republican lawmakers say is under assault. They rejected contentions that the bill was anti-Islamic or xenophobic. The governor saw it differently. "It cannot be seriously denied that the bill is drawn from 'Sharia law bans' that have been tried in other states," Bullock wrote. "The intent of these bills is to target a particular religion and group of people for disfavored treatment." Boston, US Thuli Madonsela, South Africas former public protector a position tasked with investigating state and government misconduct is best known for her resolve in standing up to President Jacob Zuma and holding him to account for wasting public funds on his private estate. Madonsela is sitting with colleagues in an otherwise empty lecture hall in the upper reaches of the Harvard Law School in Boston. The soft-spoken 54-year-old is particularly absorbed in events back home; it isnt long before she is discussing the sequence of recent events that have shaken the country. On March 28, Ahmed Kathrada, an iconic anti-apartheid activist, died. Just hours after his funeral, Zuma fired the well-respected Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan and others from key portfolios in a major cabinet reshuffle and replaced them with his close associates in a move that enraged civilians, opposition parties and even leaders of Zumas own party the African National Congress (ANC). Mourning quickly morphed into rage, with calls for mass action, including protests, echoing across the political spectrum. Zumas presidency has been marked by allegations of corruption and, for millions of South Africans, something snapped this week. Al Jazeera: So much has been made out of the events of the past week. Are you at all surprised by Zumas drastic cabinet changes? Thuli Madonsela (TM): It was both surprising and yet unsurprising. There have been a lot of excesses that the nation has tolerated and this has been just one of those. But what was surprising for me was the timing. I had expected that there would be a bit of a period of peace after the funeral of Ahmed Kathrada out of respect for him. But when [the cabinet reshuffle] happened, I thought that perhaps those actions were done so soon after the funeral because [Zuma] did not want to give the nation time to reflect and regroup and challenge the autocracy that has been taking place in the name of democracy. Al Jazeera: The move has prompted many calls for Zuma to step down. People are also planning to take to the streets. Do you think this is the way forward? TM: Its not for me to tell the people what to call for. All I know is that if youre a leader and you look back and find that no one is following, then you have no right to call yourself a leader. What people do is their choice, as long as they do what is lawful and doesnt harm others. Its their duty to act and to end whatever they dont want. Al Jazeera: There has been a lot of outrage and anger from many different sections of society. What role do you think you played in public perception of recent events? TM: I look back and can say that somehow the public protector became part of the disruptive forces in terms of undoing the complacency when it comes to the abuse of public power for personal gain by people in higher office. The Scorpions [a crime-fighting unit that was discontinued in 2009] had shaken the institutions a bit, but it had never gone to the president. I somehow found myself having to deal with the propriety of the conduct of the president. Since then, South Africa has started talking about how entrusted officials should be behaving with public power. It got Africa talking about whether or not presidents should have unlimited access to or use of public resources. Today I go around the continent and people say that what happened in South Africa awakened them to the fact that nobody should have unlimited access to public resources. Everyones benefits as employees of the state should be defined and they shouldnt take more than what is defined by law and policy. Al Jazeera: In the early 1990s you wrote a part of South Africas landmark constitution. I am guessing your resolve to see it upheld comes partly from that? TM: Absolutely. It came from having been part of the South African dream and having been a part of the constitution-building process. It also came from a history of having been told by my father what the liberation movement stood for. At the same time, from Mama Albertina Sisulu [the wife of Walter Sisulu, former secretary general of the ANC] I was told what the liberation movement was about. It wasnt about implementing a piece of paper; it was a social pact introduced to ensure that we would never have a situation like the one we had under apartheid where the government did not operate under the rule of the people and was not held accountable. Al Jazeera: But today, we have talk that the constitution needs to change in order for land redistribution to take place. What do you make of these discussions? TM: With regard to the land question, I dont think theres any problem with the constitution. I think that when the government fails to implement the constitution it becomes an issue. The property clause within the constitution outlines various ways for land redistribution. Under certain circumstances it does explain the expropriation of land. What failed is that the government did not pass laws to implement this. The constitution anticipates persistent structural racism and sexism [and] there are positive measures included to address this. The government has never used these measures. How are these mountains of inequality going to be dismantled without the implementation of an evolutionary way of dismantling structural inequality? Al Jazeera: At the same time, there has been a wave of young activists calling for free education and faster redress. Are you impressed by their persistence or are you afraid of their so-called radical rhetoric? TM: Im both excited and afraid. Excited that young people have awakened us to the reality of the existence of structural inequality, particularly with regard to race. They have awakened us to education as an equaliser, which we neglected in favour of Black Economic Empowerment [BEE]. BEE has left a lot of people behind in terms of education. Former Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah said that the way forward must be so that every child has access to quality education, which explains most African countries investing in education. South Africa, which has more universities than most African countries, has failed to invest. I think that young people have done incredibly well to awaken us to this, but Im worried about them being harvested for political gain. There is a hijacking of the movement towards extremism. During my time, it was South Africans against the system of oppression, against racism, against apartheid. There was a unity between movements against the system. Now, instead of people fighting against inequality they are encouraged to fight amongst themselves using racial politics to fight white people. Al Jazeera: So the identity politics coming into play makes you afraid? TM: Yes. Once these ideas are fuelled and racial politics and ethnic divides spread to the rest of South Africa and people buy into this, when the politicians mess up the economy and steal the greatest share of things you fight each other over the crumbs. I think Madiba [Nelson Mandela] was a leader who was acutely aware that sexism and racism and these problems remained a reality but he understood that in times of political trouble people need to band together. Al Jazeera: But in a place like South Africa where whiteness means privilege, how does one escape identity in tackling redress? TM: I think you can talk about that without identity politics. You can engage with a system and make sure that a system allows for equal distribution without damning white people. We can acknowledge that they are beneficiaries of an unequal system and that we must put it back together. I think we are better off with white people joining the redistribution path voluntarily rather than alienating them. Look at what has happened in Zimbabwe and our country, where land has been taken and given back to the people and it has made no difference. People are given this hope that they will be given land and end up richer. The Bapo Ba Mogale were given land, they are not richer. The Bakubung people were given land where the Sun City Casino is. Are they rich? No. Land redistribution and radical economic transformation on their own mean nothing. There is now a new term: white monopoly capital. But if capital is the problem, then it is a problem black or white. I think that white monopoly capital is a narrative brought in to place blame on something for peoples suffering, and everyone who disagrees is an agent. Al Jazeera: Finally, you have been lauded internationally and domestically for your work. How do you balance the needs of your job while understanding that you calling out corruption also plays into the hands of certain agendas? That you could be seen as Afrophobic because there is so much to do, and there is a larger project, and theres you, coming in the way, talking about people stealing the scraps. TM: When I deal with people who laud me or praise me, I understand that everyone has their own agenda and they like me to the extent that theres a confluence of interests between what they believe are my interests and their interests. But Ive never been anyones particular agent and when it comes to the African story, Im very Africanist. You can look at all of my international presentations; the Afrophobic story that says we are a dark continent that is corrupt is not accurate. We are a great continent. We have brought great things to the international community. Our problems are due to the greed of our own people and the greed of companies, but we have so much more to offer the world. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. They are cute, cuddly and one of Chinas most instantly recognisable symbols. Pandas are also the face of global wildlife conservation. But these lovable bears are more than just the stars of viral videos and zoo attractions, theyre diplomatic tools used by China as bargaining chips and rewards for lucrative trade deals. Today, zoos around the world rent pandas from China and they come with a million dollar price tag. 101 East asks, what is the true cost of a panda? WATCH MORE: Saving Chinas Pandas (25:00) Where are all the pandas located around the world? Its not the first time a US president launches missile strikes that do not amount to much but boost ratings. The United States launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at a government-controlled Syrian air force base in the Homs province, purportedly where the nerve agent sarin was loaded on to aircraft that attacked a village in the rebel-held Idlib province. Trump authorised this attack to ostensibly demonstrate that he will take a harder line against Syria, unlike his predecessor Barack Obama. While Trumps actions represent the first time the US has attacked Assads forces since the civil war began six years, this military strike is embedded in a deeper history of America disciplining countries from the air over their weapons of mass destruction (WMD) facilities. Trump is in fact carrying on the legacy of President Bill Clinton. The US launched cruise missile attacks against Iraqi WMD sites throughout the 1990s, and as of 2017 it is doing the same in Syria. The attacks seem to achieve little in the long run in changing the targeted governments behaviour, but they provide symbolic proof to the international community of the US taking concrete action to discipline a country that violates the norm prohibiting WMD use. The legacy of Bush and Clinton On the 25th anniversary of the 1991 Gulf War I wrote: Desert Storm represented the first time the US sought to shape, control, and configure the Middle East from the air. During the six-week air campaign of this war, aerial sorties were conducted against Iraqs WMD sites. Yet UN weapons inspectors on the ground after the war still discovered both facilities and munitions that survived the air campaign. With the Saddam Hussein regime having survived Desert Storm, the US tried to contain the Iraqi leader with no-fly zones in the north and south of Iraq, dubbed respectively Operation Northern and Southern Watch. Air strikes during these operations constituted a means of disciplining Saddam Hussein from the air, targeting Iraqi anti-aircraft radars and missile sites. Additionally, in 1993 the Clinton administration authorised the launch of 23 cruise missiles against Iraq in retaliation for Saddam Husseins alleged plot to assassinate former president George H W Bush, which ended up killing one of Iraqs most prominent artists, Layla al-Attar. In 1996 the US launched 27 cruise missiles at defence targets in southern Iraq, after Iraqi troops entered Kurdish-controlled areas in northern Iraq and hunted down opponents of the regime. This attack was followed up in 1998 with Operation Desert Fox, during which 415 cruise missiles were launched at suspected Iraqi WMD sites. INTERACTIVE: From chlorine to sarin Chemical weapons in war These punitive aerial attacks did little to alter Saddam Husseins behaviour, and in fact subsequently intensified the conflict between the US and Iraq, where after 1998 the Iraqi president ordered increased efforts among his air defence forces to bring down an American aircraft, leading to an increase in US retaliatory bombings that continued right up to the 2003 Iraq war. Trumps military strike was ostensibly aimed at damaging Syrias WMD programme. However, aerial military campaigns in the past have failed in this regard. While members of the Syrian opposition celebrated the attacks, in fact they are likely to do little damage to Bashar al-Assads survival, and only rally his domestic core of supporters, as well as Hezbollah, Iran, and Russia behind him. The strike served a domestic agenda, showing that Trump can act against Russian interests, at a time when he is viewed as Vladimir Putin's puppet. by Fear of boots on the ground In the media commentary that has emerged since the strike, I have noticed that pundits repeatedly have described the cruise missiles that struck Syria as stand-off strikes, fired from afar, in this case two American naval vessels in the Mediterranean. The terms used to describe such strikes are politically expedient for the Trump administration, opposed to its antithesis, sending in ground forces to take action. While the decision to send boots on the ground in the form of US special forces to combat the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group in Iraq and Syria has backing from Congress and the American population, expanding the use of ground forces to strike targets linked to the Assad regime would have been seen as a dangerous escalation of the conflict. Even sending manned aircraft to take out the sites would have risked the downing of an American pilot. However, a cruise missile strike carried little risk for the Trump administration, and distracted the publics attention from his domestic political crises A foreign policy distraction In December 2016 there were predictions that Trump would attempt to Wag the Dog, or use a foreign crisis to distract domestic audiences and unite the nation behind him. The strike served a domestic agenda, showing that Trump can act against Russian interests, at a time when he is viewed as Vladimir Putins puppet. OPINION: We must not let chemical weapons become the norm Trump did show emotion when moved by images of children killed in the chemical weapons attack. If he really wanted to do something for the children of Syria, Trump could open up the US to Syrian refugees rather than opting for a military strike that might make him look more decisive than Obama. This strike might improve Trumps abysmally low approval ratings, but will do little to alleviate Syrias humanitarian crisis. Ibrahim al-Marashi is an assistant professor at the Department of History, California State University, San Marcos. He is the co-author of Iraqs Armed Forces: An Analytical History. The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy. In order to be a serious challenger to the BJP, the Congress Party needs to free itself from the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. The recent breathtaking victoryof the Hindu nationalistic Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Uttar Pradesh has been commented on widely and even has drawn international attention because fiery Hindu priest Yogi Adityanath was appointed chief minister. This, however, prevented adequate examination of other critical fallouts of BJPs electoral success. Foremost among these is the political future of the Congress Party, formed 132 years ago with a record of governing India for 54 of the 70 years since Indias independence. Its impressive history, however, has offered little solace since May 2014 when the party plummeted to its worst ever parliamentary performance. Thereafter, the party was haunted by just one question: Is it in terminal decline? This poser acquired greater forcefulness after the UP result because it won just seven seats out of the 403 on offer. It also secured barely 6 percent of popular vote, down from almost 40 percent that it polled in the past. UP is no ordinary state and is a gateway to political power. Eight of Indias 13 prime ministers were from UP, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi who represents UP and not his home state, Gujarat. Whats more, with 80 members in the 543-seat Lok Sabha (the lower house of the parliament), the states presence is numerically overbearing. This, perhaps, was why the rout in UP eclipsed the Congress Partys victory in the border state of Punjab, where it returned to office after a decade. Indeed, the defeat in UP stunned the Congress leaders into comatose shock and they provided BJP with the opportunity to form governments in the smaller states of Goa and Manipur by quickly wooing coalition partners and inducing splits in the Congress. The culture of sycophancy The Congress has not weakened overnight. The decline of the party has been in process for almost three decades, though it was in power for half of these years. However, the realisation that it is beyond the capacity of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty to resurrect the party is a new phenomenon. With party president Sonia Gandhis health impeding her from leading the party, son Rahul Gandhis failure to make a mark either as a charismatic leader or an astute tactician after 13 years in politics and daughter Priyanka Vadras presumptive ability demonstrated as overhyped, the Congress Party faces an unprecedented crisis. Congress leaders of standing have not openly demanded change in leadership because the culture of sycophancy has deep roots. Though India is among the largest democracies, most political parties are not democratically managed. Congress leaders are silent, because strategy to revive the party eludes them. OPINION: A new India where fringe is the mainstream After being shepherded by the Gandhi-Nehru family for half a century apart from five years in 1991-96 when Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao led the party Congress leaders do not have the confidence to contemplate an alternate leadership. Consequently, disintegration of the party remains a distinct possibility. Falling between stools The Congress predicament mainly lies in its past after its origins as an annual jamboree of the enlightened, the organisation shaped into an all-embracing anti-colonial movement. Jawaharlal Nehrus interim government in the run-up to independence underscored the partys umbrella nature. The ministry included leaders of diverse political orientations, from western-educated and egalitarian-minded social elite to conservative Hindus, nationalist Muslims and leaders emphasising growth opportunities for the Lower castes and Untouchables. Democratising the Congress and holding fair organisational elections from district level and upwards are crucial to revitalising the party. by However, after 1989 when Rajiv Gandhi was upended by a united opposition politics started to be shaped mainly by religion and caste identities and not other issues. After regional, religious and caste identities became the principal basis of individual identities, elections became more competitive as new political parties spawned unceasingly. During this time, the Congress remained an umbrella-type party accommodating economic views ranging from left-of-centre to the far-right and from Nehruvian secularism to soft Hindutva. Consequently it kept falling between stools. The BJPs rise as an unabashed Hindu nationalistic party since the 1980s roughly corresponded with the Congress abandoning its principled standpoint on secularism. Consequently, the Congress was relegated in several states as either the BJPs B Team or an appendage of a strong anti-BJP front as in UP where it joined a regional player, Samajwadi Party, as a junior partner. Once Congress ceded its vanguard position, there was little to halt its slide down. Significantly, after 1989, the Congress never secured more than 30 percent of the popular vote in national elections, even when it governed India in 2004-2014. Lack of commitment Rahul Gandhis refusal to recognise that politics required total commitment he often took ill-timed holidays also had negative effect. He even departed for the US immediately after the UP election results and before governments were formed in other states, to join his mother who was undergoing treatment. In contrast, BJP leaders were pictured as relentless warriors Amit Shah toured Gujarat, his and Modis home state, which faces local elections later this year, while victory celebrations were still under way. The Congress in its present form certainly cannot put defeats since 2014 behind it and resurface as the BJPs principal challenger. To retain its place as one of the two national parties with pan-Indian footprint, it must reposition itself as a coalition of strong regional units and as vanguard of the principles that the BJP assailed in recent years. In its heyday after independence, the Congress was both. OPINION: BJPs Uttar Pradesh win A turning point for Modi? Nehru was the undisputed jewel in the partys crown but stalwarts headed state units and crossed swords with him if the need arose. In contrast, the present Congress leadership, including Rahul Gandhi, talk down to state leaders and run the party as a proprietary. This rankles with satraps because in Sonia Gandhis absence, Rahul has no ability to attract votes. The Congress victory in Punjab was owing to its charismatic leader, Amarinder Singh. Likewise, the party ended in the top of the heap in Goa and Manipur because of its local leaders popularity. The way forward There is nothing that prevents the Congress president and her son from identifying powerful state-level leaders and providing them with greater autonomy, so they see a future for themselves in the party. Forming a presidium of such leaders for collective decision with the family as titular head is a viable objective. Democratising the Congress and holding fair organisational elections from district level and upwards are crucial to revitalising the party. Alongside these efforts, the Congress must be proactively secular once again. In 2014, the BJP polled 38.5 percent of the popular vote along with allies and in UP this time it polled 41 percent. This demonstrates that despite its surge, the BJP is still not backed by more than 50 percent of Indians. This is the section that the Congress must target. For this, its opposition to BJP must be unequivocal and posture towards other anti-BJP parties should be accommodative. OPINION: The need for reform in Indian National Congress party Between now and 2019, when the next parliamentary polls are due, the BJP and Congress are locked in mainly bipolar contests in states due for elections. The process of relinquishing controls to regional chieftains must be initiated right away if the party is to re-emerge. Only then can the narrative of Indian elections stop being pre-ordained in BJPs favour. The Congress flag which fluttered in India for long, now hangs limply. For it to fly high once again, the party requires new wind. This will not come from the ailing limbs of Sonia Gandhi or the perennial apprentice that Rahul is. The Congress must be freed and allowed to find its own leadership eventually, or else no national challenger to the BJP and Modi shall remain. Necessity is the mother of invention, and experience the mother of reinvention. It is time for Congress leaders to give serious thought to the partys future. Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay is a Delhi-based writer and journalist with a special interest in Hindu nationalistic politics. He is the author of Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times. The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy. Al Jazeeras senior political analyst comments on the lead-up and aftermath of US missile strikes on a Syrian airbase. The United States navy has fired nearly 60 Tomahawk missiles at an airbase in Syria which it says was used by Syrian government forces this week to launch a deadly chemical attack on a rebel-held town. The move on Friday marked the first direct military action the US has taken against Syrian President Bashar al-Assads forces in the countrys long-running war, now in its seventh year. As the world reacts to the US strike, Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeeras senior political analyst, offers his view on the latest developments in Syria. What prompted the US to take direct military action against Assads forces? Marwan Bishara: Publicly, the US administration justified its response on humanitarian grounds and vital national security interests. I doubt theres much currency to either. If President Donald Trump cared so much for Syrian children, he would not have barred them from entering the US. As for security, the chemical attack horrible as it, maybe is of no threat to vital US national security. READ MORE: Donald Trumps full statement on Syria missile strikes If, on the other hand, it was established that ISIL or al-Qaeda had carried out the attack using sarin gas, then there would be ground for concern to US forces in the area. This was both a win-win strategic and political step by the Trump administration. The proportionate military response is meant to shore up Trumps popularity in the polls and to project an image of boldness and decisiveness. Its a pinprick attack thats designed as a low-risk response that puts the Syrian regime on notice, increases the heat on Russia and opens the way for a more substantial US involvement in shaping the future of Syria. It also establishes Trumps independence from Moscow and helps remove some of the suspicion of his alleged shady relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Russias condemnation of the US response, followed by the decision to suspend its coordination with the US air force over Syria, will eventually work in Trumps favour as tensions subside. Did Trump come up with this all on his own? Bishara: Absolutely not. Despite his insistence that he knows more than the generals, Trump has proven ignorant and out-of-his-depth on strategy and foreign policy. As the commander-in-chief, hes the one to give the order but it was the generals he appointed to his cabinet that are behind this decision and others in the future. As I see it, Defence Secretary James Mattis, Homeland Security chief John Kelly and National Security Adviser H R McMaster are the trio in control of US national security policy. Unlike ex-President Barack Obama, Trump has thus far placed his trust in the generals he appointed. The three are veterans of the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are known for their boldness and strategic intellectualism and unconventionality. So when Mattis insisted that torture was counterproductive and America would not torture, Trump backed down on his campaign pledge to go beyond waterboarding. And when White House strategist Steve Bannon overstepped his boundaries by recommending a ban on Muslims without previous consultation, Kelly along with the other two generals ousted him from the National Security meetings. Thats why it seems to me that after taking their time, the trio are now articulating the strategy in both Syria and Iraq. It remains to be seen what other steps they have in mind. Whats the endgame now that the attack has been carried out? Bishara: In strategic and political terms this has been a low-risk, high-yield scenario for the Trump administration. It has shored up the presidents popularity among many Democrats and the mainstream media and earned much praise from regional and international powers. Already, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Israel, as well as Britain, the European Union and Australia, among others, have come out in support of the US attack. READ MORE: Saudi Arabia, Iran, world leaders react to US strike It showed that Trump could and would act more boldly than his predecessor when needed. And that he wont go to Congress before carrying out such an attack. Although limited in focus and nature, the US armys attack on Shayrat airfield paves the way for more of the same military actions and that will improve US leverage in future negotiations over Syria. It also demonstrated to Russia and Iran that the US must be taken seriously moving forward in Syria, and proved that Trump doesnt require an absolute proof of culpability of the Syrian regime over chemical attacks in order to punish it. This is especially important because the punitive attack came against the backdrop of Secretary of State Rex Tillersons claim shortly after this weeks chemical attack that steps are under way to form an international coalition to remove Assad. In other words, if the military response is only part of a wider strategy to establish safe zones and eventually remove Assad from power, then we are certainly on the brink of major transformation of US policy in Syria and beyond. The timing of this attack also coincided with the visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to the US. It might create some tensions, but it sends a message about North Korea ahead of US-China talks in Florida. Trump warned last week that Washington could act alone if Beijing did not put the necessary pressure on North Korea to halt its nuclear and missile programmes. More than 6,000 people have fled from southern South Sudan into the northern Ugandan district of Lamwo, recounting the slaughter of civilians by armed forces, according to the UN refugee agency. A statement from the UNHCR said on Friday that more residents of Pajok town in South Sudans Equatoria region were hiding in the bush trying to find their way to safety in Uganda. People fleeing the recent incident claimed that the town came under an indiscriminate attack by the South Sudan armed forces, the statement said. The crisis comes after fighting between government forces and rebels erupted on Monday in Pajok in a previously peaceful part of the country that has seen a surge in conflict in recent months. Refugees told the UNHCR team on the ground in Lamwo terrifying stories of violence and abuse against civilians. Many have witnessed their loved ones shot dead or slaughtered like animals, Rocco Nuri, UNHCR spokesman, told AFP news agency. Families fled in all directions. Those unable to run were reportedly shot dead, including the elderly and people with disabilities. A local pastor who fled Pajok on Wednesday, and asked not to be named, said soldiers had entered the town in tanks and suddenly we saw shooting and we just had to run. Both he and regional Anglican Bishop Oringa Benard reported that about 135 people had been killed; however, it could not be independently verified. Uganda currently hosts more than 832,000 refugees from South Sudan, including more than 270,000 in the Bidibidi refugee camp, which in eight months has gone from an empty patch of land to the worlds biggest refugee camp. Government confirms Michael Makuei, South Sudan government spokesman, confirmed its forces had attacked Pajok. As you know Pajok has been in the hands of the rebels so what happened was government forces went there and fighting ensued and so the civilian population that has been staying with the rebels had to run away, he said. I dont know the figure [of those who might have been killed or injured] but in any fighting there must be casualties. READ MORE: Uganda at breaking point from South Sudan refugee crisis The UN peacekeeping mission UNMISS said in a statement on Wednesday it had twice been prevented from accessing Pajok. The mission has received reports of fighting between SPLA [government] troops and the opposition there and is trying to follow up on reports of civilians killed in the area, it said. UNMISS urged the government to immediately allow it access so it can fully implement its mandate, including to protect civilians and report on human rights violations. Russian UN envoy warns of extremely serious consequences as Washington says it is ready to take further action. Russia and the United States have traded barbs at an ill-tempered emergency session of the UN Security Council called by Moscow after the US army launched a barrage of cruise missiles against a Syrian government airbase. Syrias army said six people were killed in the early hours of Friday morning after the US fired nearly 60 Tomahawk missiles at Shayrat airbase, in retaliation for a suspected chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held town that killed scores of civilians earlier this week. Vladimir Safronkov, Russias deputy ambassador to the UN, strongly condemned the US for what he called a flagrant violation of international law and an act of aggression. The consequences of this for regional and international stability could be extremely serious, he told the Security Council. Russia is a key ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and has been bombing rebel-held areas in Syria since September 2015. ANALYSIS: US strike on Syria unlikely to mark policy shift For her part, US Ambassador Nikki Haley said the missile strikes were fully justified and warned that Washington was ready to take further military action. The United States took a very measured step last night, she told the council. We are prepared to do more, but we hope it will not be necessary. Mounzer Mounzer, deputy Syrian ambassador to the UN, called the US strike a barbaric, flagrant act of aggression that will embolden terrorist groups to use chemical weapons in the future. According to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, at least 88 people, including 29 children, were killed in the suspected poison gas attack on Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province, which the US has blamed on Assad. Haley said the missile strikes destroyed the airfield from which the US believes Tuesdays suspected chemical attack was launched. The United States will no longer wait for Assad to use chemical weapons without any consequences, Haley said. Those days are over. While threatening further strikes, the US envoy also said it was time to press on with a political solution to the six-year war. READ MORE: Syrians should not be thanking Trump for the strikes Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeeras senior political analyst, questioned whether the missile barrage was simply bravado, or part of a larger strategic plan. Is it because US President Donald Trump wants to prove he is a resolute, decisive leader who is independent of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, or is this punitive attack part of a comprehensive effort aimed at leveraging American influence in Syria to lead to a diplomatic solution, he said. Haley also took a swipe at Russia for failing to rein in its ally, and said Moscow must reconsider its support for Assad. The world is waiting for the Russian government to act responsibly in Syria. The world is waiting for Russia to reconsider its misplaced alliance with Bashar al-Assad, she said. READ MORE: Syrias civil war explained from the beginning The US said 58 of the 59 cruise missiles fired at the Shayrat airfield hit their targets, dealing heavy damage to the base. But the Russian defence ministry downplayed the damage, claiming only 23 missiles landed on target. Satellite footage showed many of the runways were fully intact, as well as several untouched defence surface-to-air rocket launcher and radar systems. Less than 24 hours after the US strike, two Syrian jets took off from the targeted base and bombed nearby rebel targets, according to the Observatory, which monitors Syrias conflict via a network of contacts on the ground. Regardless of its damage, the attack Trumps biggest military decision since taking office marked a dramatic escalation in US involvement in Syrias war. It followed days of outrage over images of dead children and victims suffering convulsions from the suspected poison gas attack in Khan Sheikhoun. After the strike, Russias defence ministry notified the Pentagon it would suspend its communication with US forces in Syria, while Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian prime minister, told on social media that the strikes had brought the US one step away from military clashes with Russia. US jets frequently attack Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters in Syria and come close to Russian forces. US officials informed Russian forces ahead of the missile strikes, and avoided hitting Russian personnel. The Syrian government and Moscow have denied that Syrian forces were behind the gas attack, but Western countries have dismissed their explanation that chemicals leaked from a rebel weapons depot after an air strike as not credible. OPINION: The US shows it is still in the game by striking Assad US allies from Asia, Europe and the Middle East expressed support, if sometimes cautiously, for Fridays missile barrage. Opposition figures hailed the move as first good steps but demanded they be included within a larger strategy aimed at ending the war. Homs Governor Talal Barazi said the US direct strike on the Syrian military was a clear sign it was supporting terrorists. The action is likely to be interpreted as a signal to Russia, as well as countries such as North Korea, China and Iran where Trump has faced foreign policy tests early in his presidency that he is willing to use force. Henrique Capriles rejects ruling that would prevent him from challenging President Nicolas Maduro in 2018 polls. Venezuelan authorities have banned top opposition leader Henrique Capriles from running for office for 15 years, the latest move in an increasingly tense power struggle in the crisis-hit country. Capriles read from excerpts of the comptroller generals order at a rally on Friday night in which he urged supporters to take to the streets, beginning with a previously scheduled demonstration on Saturday, to defend their political rights and demand the removal of President Nicolas Maduro. When the dictatorship squeals its a sign were advancing, he said in a speech surrounded by other leading opposition figures, many of whom themselves have been targeted. The only one who is disqualified here is you, Nicolas Maduro. The 44-year-old Capriles has been the most prominent leader of Venezuelas opposition over the past decade, twice coming close to winning the presidency. He is currently governor of Miranda state, which surrounds Caracas. The ban deals a blow to the opposition after stepped-up protests this week and accusations that Maduro is tightening his grip on power and cracking down on dissent. Leaders in the ruling socialist party have accused Capriles in recent days of trying to provoke a bloodbath through his leadership of protests, many of which have ended in tear gas and rubber bullets. Violence erupted for a third straight day on Thursday, leaving one demonstrator dead. IN PICTURES: Hardship and political theatre in Venezuela The ruling said the sanction was due to administrative irregularities by Capriles in his post as governor. Authorities have been investigating Capriles since the beginning of the year for what they say are a half dozen administrative irregularities, including taking suspicious donations from abroad. The move effectively bans Capriles from running against Maduro in a general election due next year. It is part of a broader government crackdown that began with a decision last week by the Supreme Court to gut the opposition-controlled congress of its last vestiges of power. The decision was later reversed amid widespread international condemnation. The comptrollers office notification to Capriles said he had 15 working days to appeal the decision at that office or 180 days to ask for its annulment at the Supreme Court. Both are pro-government and unlikely to overturn the decision. Capriles lost narrowly in the 2013 election that brought Maduro to the presidency after the death of Maduros mentor Hugo Chavez. The collapse in prices for Venezuelas crucial oil exports has sapped the countrys revenues, prompting shortages of food, medicine and basic goods along with a surge in violent crime. The opposition blames Maduro for the economic crisis. He says it is due to a capitalist conspiracy. The wave of protests has revived fears of broader unrest in Venezuela, where 43 people were killed during riots in 2014. The country has undergone three attempted military coups since 1992. Homs Governor Talal Barazi says US attack would not impact the Syrian government or its ability to fight terrorists. A United States military attack on a Syrian airfield in Homs province is a clear message that Washington is supporting terrorists trying to take over the country, a top Syrian official has said. The US strike on the Shayrat air base on Friday followed international condemnation over a suspected chemical weapons attack earlier this week that killed dozens of people, including many children, in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province. Homs Governor Talal Barazi said the US armys direct military involvement in the countrys long-running conflict would not impact the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad or its ability to fight terrorists. We knew from the beginning that this conspiracy against Syria has means and that ISIL, al-Nusra and others are means of American, Israel and other Arab regimes, Barazi told local media. We are not surprised today to see the supporting parties interfering directly after the failure of terrorists in targeting Syria, he added. We will not be surprised to see the Americans playing direct role on the ground to support its means everywhere. Conversely, a Syrian opposition group welcomed the strike, saying Washingtons direct military involvement could be an opportunity to end the war, now in its seventh year. We welcome these strikes, Najib Ghadbian, special representative of the Syrian National Coalition to the United States and the United Nations, told Al Jazeera. They are first good steps but we would like them to be part of a bigger strategy that would put an end to the mass killing, an end to impunity and eventually we hope that they will lead to a kind of a political transition [in Syria]. People trying to escape besieged Iraqi city are being killed and their bodies hanged from electricity poles. ISIL fighters have killed dozens of civilians attempting to flee Mosul in recent days, hanging several dead bodies from electricity poles as Iraqi forces fight to retake the city, witnesses said. Troops are meeting fierce resistance as ISIL retreats into the Old City, where street fighting is expected in the narrow alleyways and around the mosque where Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant declared its caliphate nearly three years ago. A man who spoke to Reuters news agency by telephone said he had found the mutilated body of a relative strung up from an electricity pole in the Tenek district, along with three other young men caught trying to flee by the group. Their appearance was shocking. We werent able to get them down and they have been there for two days, said the relative on condition of anonymity. The Kurdistan Region security council said the number of people killed by ISIL on Monday and Tuesday was as high as 140. In the Old City, more than 40 civilians were killed when ISIL caught them trying to escape, said a resident of the Farouq district where the symbolic Nuri mosque is located. Another resident of the Old Citys Shahwan district said a family of six, including an elderly woman, had also been killed for the same reason. READ MORE: Mosuls civilian deaths How the US destroyed Iraq A woman from the Yarmouk district said she had narrowly escaped death along with her husband and children after ISIL caught them trying to flee among a group of about 30 people. They took our bags thinking there was gold or money in them and as they were busy checking the contents, we fled through the houses taking advantage of the pitch darkness, said the woman, who is now in an area under the control of the security forces. I fear those [families] who stayed in Daeshs grip met a terrible fate, she said, calling ISIL by its Arab name. Montanas congressional delegation is cautioning President Donald Trump not to proceed with any more Syrian bombings without Senate approval. U.S. Sens. Jon Tester and Steve Daines say they didnt oppose Thursday nights bombings but think its time Congress update the Authorization for Use of Military Force, which addresses military action in Afghanistan and Iraq but not Syria. The attack against a Syrian air base was the first U.S. assault against the government of President Bashar al-Assad. The lawmakers issued statements about the bombing after participating in a confidential, all-Senate briefing by the Trump administration. Before further military intervention in Syria we need to have a clear plan and a clear endgame. As I said when Barack Obama was president, the White House does not have a blank check to entangle our troops and taxpayers in foreign conflicts, said Tester, Montanas Democratic senior senator. The costs of war are great and take a toll on human life, returning service members, their families, and all Americans. In order to keep this nation safe and secure, we need a strategic plan with Congressional approval and oversight to hold the Putin-backed Assad regime accountable. Daines, also said the future military action required a congressionally approved plan, but he said the president was right to launch 59 missiles at a Syrian airstrip after the state attacked its citizens with deadly chemicals earlier this week. This was an appropriate strategic strike that had a defined mission and leveled the airfield where these horrific chemical attacks against Syrian children and families originated, said Daines, a Republican. However, I still remain concerned that a long-term strategy to deal with Assad and Russian interference is not yet clear and I want to ensure Americas interests are protected. After the briefing, both Daines and Tester flew out of Washington for a two-week Easter break. In the House, Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, called the bombings appropriate, while Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi asked Ryan to cancel the two-week break so a military plan could be developed. Montana doesn't have a representative in the House. Former Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke resigned from the state's at-large seat to lead the Department of Interior. Democrat Rob Quist, Republican Greg Gianforte and Libertarian Mark Wicks are campaigning to replace Zinke. Absentee ballots for a special election will be mailed out April 28. Voting ends Thursday, May 25. Both Gianforte and Quist said a military plan is needed for addressing Syria. "The Assad regime committed an atrocity when they brutally murdered innocent men, women, and children earlier this week," Gianforte said. "We have an obligation to protect and defend our national security and to stop the use of chemical weapons. President Trump acted within his authority as commander and chief, and I stand behind his decision to take out the air base where these chemical attacks were launched. Trump sent a strong message to Assad and other dictators around the world that the horrific use of chemical weapons will not be tolerated." "I look forward to President Trump and Congress working together on a long-term strategy to address this crisis in Syria," Gianforte continued. "As we work towards a solution, we must always ensure that America's interests are protected." Quist cautioned against committing to another Middle Eastern war without an exit plan. "What happened in Syria, the loss of innocent lives, including women and children, is intolerable. As the president said, its an affront to humanity. However, we need to have a clear plan and strategy before intervening militarily and Congress should be consulted going forward," Quist said. "Any military intervention needs to be strategic and with an endgame in place. The last thing we need is to get involved in yet another Middle Eastern war with no end in sight," the Democrat continued. "After all, it's our sons and daughters who have to bear the burden, so we'd better get it right when getting entangled in foreign conflicts." Wicks had not returned a call to his home by presstime. The Associated Press reported Friday that the Trump administration signaled new sanctions would soon follow the missile attack. The Pentagon was probing whether Russia was involved in the chemical weapons assault that compelled Trump to action. During the Obama presidency, Trump said Obama should have had congressional approval for military action. He wasnt the only one. Daines voted against authorizing U.S. military involvement in Syria in 2013 when he was Montanas lone congressman. At the time, Daines said he had heard from Montanans through telephone townhall meetings and concluded constituents didnt support military force. He said the objective of military action was unclear and the outcome uncertain. Daines' staff said the senators position on Syria was unchanged. A clear plan and certain outcome are required. Tester opposed a 2013 military strike in Syria, as well. Obama had asked Congress to approve military action to destroy chemical weapons. Like Daines, Tester said he had consulted with Montanans and concluded that military action was a bad idea. He said at the time it was better to pressure Syria to surrender its chemical weapons. Russia negotiated a deal with Syria in 2013 that required Syrias chemical weapons to be destroyed under international supervision. But the United Nations concluded that chemical weapons were again being used in 2014. Announcement likely to further divide the presidents opponents in a country that has been rocked by violence. The president of the Democratic Republic of Congo named a former member of the largest opposition party as prime minister on Friday, a move likely to further divide Joseph Kabilas opponents after talks to negotiate his exit from power broke down last week. A statement from the presidency named Bruno Tshibala the prime minister of a new transitional government meant to organise a presidential election by the end of this year following Kabilas refusal to step down when his mandate expired in December. Tshibala replaces Samy Badibanga, who resigned on Thursday. READ MORE: DRC tense as police clash with anti-Kabila protesters Polls were not held last year because of what the government said were budgetary constraints, sparking violent protests at the end of last year in which security forces killed at least 40 people. Critics say Kabila deliberately delayed elections in order to remain in power. DRCs conference of Catholic bishops (CENCO) helped to negotiate a December 31 deal aimed at avoiding a political crisis by ensuring an election this year to elect Kabilas successor. The bishops stepped aside last week after progress on the deal stalled. Congolese police fired rounds into the air and launched tear gas canisters to disperse hundreds of opposition supporters in the capital Kinshasa after the negotiations broke down. Nomination departure from accord Tshibala was expelled from the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS), Congos largest opposition party, last month after he contested the designation of successors to veteran leader Etienne Tshisekedi, who died in February. Tshibalas nomination as prime minister escalates tensions ahead of a mass march on April 10, called for by the UDPS in Kinshasa to protest delays in implementing the deal. Under the December political agreement, the opposition coalition known as the Rassemblement was to pick a prime minister, but divisions within the coalition complicated efforts to choose a candidate. Kabilas announcement on Friday came two days after the president said he would name a new prime minister if the opposition could not agree on a candidate. READ MORE: Deal finalised on peaceful political transition in DRC Tshisekedis son, Felix, who replaced his father as president of the Rassemblement, said Kabila violated the deal by not naming a candidate of the alliances choosing. We continue to demand the application of the December 31, 2016 accord, he told Reuters news agency. The nomination of Bruno Tshibala is a departure from the accord. Tshibala will be confronted immediately with stern security and economic tests. Congos franc currency has lost nearly half its value since last year and violence has worsened across the country in the wake of Kabilas decision to stay in power. The country, which suffered through two wars between 1996 and 2003, has not had a democratic transition of power since its independence from Belgium in 1960. Russia labels US missile strikes on Syria as aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law. The Russian government has condemned missile strikes by the US on a Syrian airbase, saying Washingtons action would inflict major damage on US-Russia ties, according to Russian news agencies. In its first public response to missile strikes by the US , the Kremlin on Friday issued a strong statement labelling Washingtons move as aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law. The US fired dozens of missiles at Sheyrate airbase earlier on Friday from which it said a deadly chemical weapons attack was launched this week in Syrias Idlib province. Dmitry Peskov, spokesperson of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said the missile strikes created a serious obstacle to creating an international coalition to defeat ISIL and said that Russia views the strikes as an attempt to deflect world attention from civilian deaths in Iraq where scores of people died in a series of US-led coalition air strikes in Mosul last month. Putin views the US strikes on Syria as aggression against a sovereign state in violation of the norms of international law and on a made-up up pretext, Peskov was cited as saying. Washingtons step will inflict major damage on US-Russia ties. Tensions rise Al Jazeeras Rory Challands, reporting from Moscow, said that Russia is recalibating its position towards the US. Its clear for the Russians that Donald Trump is not the president that they thought they were getting, he said. They are talking about how the US is basically acting now like it did in the invastion of Iraq 14 years ago, when it acted without the permission of the United Nations essentially taking unilateral action with its various allies. A statement by the Russian foreign ministry on Friday also announced that Moscow was halting an agreement with the US aimed at avoiding clashes between their forces and ensuring safety of flights in the skies over Syria in response to Washingtons missile strikes. Russia, which has been bombing rebel-held areas in Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad since September 2015, said the US strike had been carried out on an invented pretext and reiterated its view that the Syrian army did not possess chemical weapons. READ MORE: Saudi Arabia, Iran, others react to US strike in Syria Russia has maintained that Syrian air strikes hit a depot where anti-Assad rebels were building chemical weapons a claim the US has vigorously disputed. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, speaking just after the strikes were announced, said Russia had failed in its responsibility to deliver on a 2013 deal it helped broker to destroy Syrias chemical weapons arsenal. Tillerson is set to make the first visit to Russia by a Trump administration official next week. US-Russian relations are under the spotlight ahead of Secretary of State Rex Tillersons visit to Russia next week. Questions have been raised over the future of US-Russian ties after Washington launched a barrage of tomahawk missiles against an airbase in Syria, where Russias military is on the ground propping up its ally, President Bashar al-Assad. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will next week make the first visit to Russia by a Trump administration official, just days after the US strike on Shayrat airfield in Homs province described as a response to a suspected chemical attack in the Idlib province, blamed by many on Assad. The attack, as well as multiple Russia-related investigations in the US, will follow Tillersons trip, which was designed to test the Trump administrations hopes for closer ties to its former Cold War foe. READ MORE: US launches cruise missiles on Syrian air base Al Jazeeras Rory Challands, reporting from Moscow, said that the implications for US-Russia relations would depend on whether Washingtons missile strikes are a one-off, or if further action will be taken. Challands said the attack raised questions over why Russias S300 and S400 air defence systems did not stop the missiles and how much, if any, warning was given to Russia in advance. The Pentagon said limited warning had been given through the normal de-confliction channel used by both sides, but Tillerson said that no approval was sought from Moscow. The Russian-US relationship picked up in the early days of the Trump administration but I think the authorities in Moscow have for quite some time now, over the last few weeks, been re-appraising Donald Trump and how positively they feel about him, said Challands. The relationship is souring anyway, and these air strikes are not going to help it, he added. The irony is that in acting so unpredictably, Trump has actually slotted into a much more predictably American foreign policy playbook. Matthew Schmidt, a Russia expert and assistant professor of national security at the University of New Haven, told Al Jazeera that Russia is likely to take several steps to increase the pressure on the US if it keeps bombing Assad. If Washington was to deploy manned aircraft, Schmidt said, Russia could take steps such as exposing them on radar to kind of say, if we wanted to shoot you down, we could shoot you down, and Putin will use this to sort of increase the pressure and the threat on the US. Lawrence Korb, a former US secretary of defence and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, told Al Jazeera he thought that Russia would privately be upset with Assad. I think that they did not want to give the United States an excuse to go after Assad, said Korb. Korb said that the attacks could give fresh impetus to the Geneva peace process, on Syria. The Russians are going to say we dont want this to escalate anymore, said Korb. So I think it may lead to a temporary ceasefire while the parties talk and divide up the country, and then talk about Assad [possibly] stepping down in 2020. Tillerson, speaking just after the strikes were announced, said Russia had failed in its responsibility to deliver on a 2013 deal it helped broker to destroy Syrias chemical weapons arsenal. So either Russia has been complicit, or Russia has been simply incompetent on its ability to deliver, Tillerson said. READ MORE: Syrian National Coalition hails US strike on Homs base Despite Trumps much-hyped campaign talk about a Russia reset, theres no appetite for that from either political party in the US, analysts say. Even minor concessions to Russia would trigger immediate accusations from Trumps opponents that the president who has praised Putin generously and repeatedly is beholden to the Russian leader. The US State Department said Tillerson had spoken by phone to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov after Tuesdays suspected chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun, in northwest Syria. Russia has maintained that Syrian air strikes hit a depot where anti-Assad rebels were building chemical weapons, a claim the US has vigorously disputed. REPORTERS NOTEBOOK: Trumps Russia mess Five things to know Tillersons close ties to Russia Putin once gave him the Order of Friendship award drew serious concerns during his confirmation hearings, but he has since emerged as one of the Trump administrations more sober voices about Moscows behaviour. Senior State Department officials described Tillersons visit as an exploratory trip aimed at determining any potential for cooperation, adding that no decisions to increase cooperation had been made. Tillerson may or may not meet with pro-democracy activists in Russia, as members of congress have urged, the officials said. US relations with Russia sharply deteriorated in 2014, following the annexation of Crimea. The Obama administration and Western countries slapped Moscow with severe economic sanctions that Trump has so far vowed to keep in place. Still, Putins government has been optimistic about Trumps presidency. Until Tuesdays suspected chemical attack in Syria, Trump and his deputies said their top focus in Syria was fighting ISIL not ousting Assad a position that aligned with Putins own publicly stated goal. Schmidt told Al Jazeera that Russia is likely to veto any action in response to the alleged chemical attacks at the UN Security Council on the grounds of Syrias sovereignty. He added that without massive numbers of troops on the ground, missile strikes by the US are unlikely to change the trajectory of the conflict, which has seen Assad make significant recent battlefield gains on the battlefield with Russian and Iranian support. Putin will look at Trump and he will say Trump is weak, Schmidt argued. [That Trump] bombed out of an emotional response, that he is unconnected to a thought-out policy. Trump is not a chess player and Putin plays long-term, slow, three-dimensional chess. So he sees Trump as someone he can play, not as someone he can play with, because Trumps just not on his level of strategic games. Regional and world leaders are quick to react to the news after US fires missiles at Syria airbase. The United States has fired nearly 60 Tomahawk missiles at a military airfield in Syria, the first direct military action Washington has taken against Syrian government forces in the six-year-old conflict. The US said the missiles on Friday severely damaged or destroyed Syrian aircraft and support infrastructure and equipment at the airfield. US President Donald Trump said he ordered the strikes against Shayrat airbase in Homs province, saying it was believed that a suspected gas attack on a town in Idlib province had been launched from there. Trump said he acted in Americas vital national security interest. READ MORE: Donald Trumps full statement on Syria missile strikes World and regional leaders and countries were quick to react to the news. Russia, which has been bombing rebel-held areas in Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad since September 2015, condemned the strikes, saying Washingtons action would inflict major damage on US-Russia ties, according to Russian news agencies. In its first public response to the attack, the Kremlin labelled the US move as aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law. Washingtons step will inflict major damage on US-Russia ties, Dmitry Peskov, a spokesperson of Russian president Vladimir Putin, was quoted as saying. In contrast, Saudi Arabia said it fully supports the strikes, adding that it was a courageous decision by Trump in response to the alleged use of chemical weapons against civilians in Khan Sheikhoun. A responsible source at the foreign ministry expressed the Kingdom of Saudi Arabias full support for the American military operations on military targets in Syria, which came as a response to the Syrian regimes use of chemical weapons against innocent civilians, a statement carried by state news agency SPA said. The statement said it holds the government of Assad responsible for the deaths of dozens of civilians in Khan Sheikhoun. READ MORE: What next for US-Russia ties after Syria strike? Iran, an Assad ally, said it strongly condemned the missile strikes against the Syrian armys Shayrat air base. Iran strongly condemns any such unilateral strikes such measures will strengthen terrorists in Syria and it will complicate the situation in Syria and the region, ISNA news agency quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi as saying. Turkey, which hosts three million Syrian refugees, said it views the US missile strikes positively and called for the establishment of a no-fly zone, as well as safe zones, in Syria. What happened in Idlib on Tuesday proved again that the bloody Assad regime show complete disregard for the prospect of a political transition and efforts to enforce the ceasefire, read a statement by presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin. The destruction of Sharyat airbase marks an important step to ensure that chemical and conventional attacks against the civilian population do not go unpunished. READ MORE: Syria denies using chemical weapons in Idlib Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he supports the strong and clear message sent by the US strikes. The Israeli military said it had been informed in advance of the attack. In both word and action, President Trump sent a strong and clear message today that the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated, a statement from Netanyahus office said. Israel fully supports President Trumps decision and hopes that this message of resolve in the face of the Assad regimes horrific actions will resonate not only in Damascus, but in Tehran, Pyongyang and elsewhere. European Council President Donald Tusk also voiced support for the missile strikes. US strikes show needed resolve against barbaric chemical attacks. EU will work with the US to end brutality in Syria, Tusk wrote on his Twitter account. Britain said the US action was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian government, according to a spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May. Italy also gave its support, saying it was a suitable response to Syrian aggression. The strike was a commensurate response and a signal of deterrence against the risks of further use of chemical weapons by Assad, Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano said in a statement. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull also weighed in, saying that he supported the strike, calling it a proportionate and calibrated response. In a televised statement, he also called on Russia to play its part in bringing peace to Syria. Meanwhile, Bolivia has requested the UN Security Council hold closed-door consultations on Friday about the missile strikes, a senior Security Council diplomat said. Three different draft resolutions circulated at the Security Council as US weighs military intervention. Ten non-permanent Security Council countries have circulated a compromise resolution demanding a full investigation of the suspected chemical attack in Syria in a move designed to avoid a clash with Russia. The new text the third now before the council on investigating the apparent gas attack was presented ahead of a closed-door meeting of the 15-member council on Syria on Thursday evening. The US, UK and France proposed a first draft resolution on Tuesday to condemn the attack and press Syria to cooperate with international investigators. Russia said the text was unacceptable and proposed a rival draft that does not include specific demands that the Syrian government cooperate with an investigation. The draft by the non-permanent members is based on the first one, but drops demands that Syria hand over information on its military operations on the day of the strike, replacing them with language from a previous resolution urging cooperation on chemical weapons investigations, diplomats said. READ MORE: Survivors and aid workers in Idlib share their stories It remained unclear if Russia or the other four permanent council members would back the compromise presented as the United States was weighing military options in Syria. UN Security Council will no longer vote on the [resolution] on Syria this evening. Consultations among council members are ongoing, British diplomat Stephen Hickey posted on Twitter. At least 86 people including 27 children died in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province on Tuesday, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Results from post-mortems performed on victims point to exposure to the deadly sarin nerve agent, according to Turkish health officials. Britain, France and the United States are permanent council members along with Russia and China. The 10 non-permanent members are Egypt, Japan, Senegal, Ukraine, Uruguay, Bolivia, Ethiopia, Italy, Kazakhstan and Sweden. There are efforts to find a way forward that might be a compromise, Swedish Ambassador Olof Skoog told reporters. We are going to try to make sure we have a good discussion before there are any votes. Russia has rejected the proposed Western-backed resolution as categorically unacceptable. The Russian text calls for an investigation but requests that the council approve the makeup of the team from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) dispatched to Idlib, according to the draft seen by AFP. In February, Syrian ally Russia, backed by China, cast its seventh veto to protect Bashar al-Assads government from council action, blocking a bid by Western powers to impose sanctions over accusations of chemical weapons attacks. China has vetoed six resolutions on Syria. A Security Council resolution needs nine votes in favour and no vetoes by the United States, Britain, France, Russia or China to pass. Chinas UN Ambassador Liu Jieyi said on Thursday he hopes the Security Council can reach consensus on a resolution condemning the reported use of chemical weapons. Trump nominee voted into Supreme Court after Republicans unilaterally rewrite Senate rules to assure his ascension. The US Senate has narrowly confirmed President Donald Trumps pick to the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch. Presided over on Friday by Vice President Mike Pence, the 54-45 near party-line vote caps a partisan saga that has seen Republicans pursue what many call the nuclear option. Gorsuchs confirmation ends a 14-month vacancy on the court following the February 2016 death of Justice Antonin Scalia. His death prompted a showdown between then-president Barack Obama and the Republican-controlled chamber that confirms Supreme Court nominees. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to hold a hearing for Obamas nominee, Chief Judge Merrick Garland, for nearly a year an action that continues to galvanise Democrats. On Thursday, they successfully filibustered Gorsuch using a 60-vote cloture rule that prompted Republicans to undo the threshold, upending long-standing Senate tradition. The move is likely to fuel ideologically driven nominations from presidents in the future, dealing a powerful blow to the bipartisanship normally seen on Supreme Court nominees. Gorsuchs confirmation restores the nine-seat courts 5-4 conservative majority, and enables Trump to leave an indelible mark on Americas highest judicial body. Gorsuch could be expected to serve for decades. READ MORE: Senate headed for showdown over Neil Gorsuch With the recent failure of Republican healthcare legislation in Congress and with federal courts blocking the presidents ban on people from several Muslim-majority nations from entering the US, securing Gorsuchs confirmation took on even greater importance for Trump, who took office in January. The courts ideological leaning could help determine the outcome of cases involving the death penalty, abortion, gun control, environmental regulations, transgender rights, voting rights, immigration, religious liberty, presidential powers and more. Liberal groups called for an all-out fight to reject Gorsuch, a staunch conservative who is likely to vote to limit gay rights, uphold restrictions on abortion, and invalidate affirmative action programmes, according to a study that analyses the ideologies of potential Supreme Court nominees. Swedish police say at least four killed and many injured in the incident on Drottninggatan street in the capital. Four people were killed when a hijacked beer truck ploughed into a crowd on a shopping street and crashed into a department store in central Stockholm on Friday. The incident occurred just before 13:00 GMT at the corner of the Ahlens department store and Drottninggatan, the citys biggest pedestrian street, above-ground from Stockholms central subway station. We stood inside a shoe store and heard something and then people started to scream, witness Jan Granroth told the Aftonbladet daily. I looked out of the store and saw a big truck. Swedens Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said everything indicated it was a terror attack. We are thinking of the dead and the injured and their families. I am urging the public to be vigilant and keep updating the police, Lofven said. Photos from the scene showed a beer truck sticking out of the department store, and Aftonbladet reported that Swedish beer maker Spendrups said one of its vehicles had been carjacked earlier on Friday. Lars Bystrom, a police spokesman, confirmed to Swedish media that four people were killed and 12 others injured. One man has been arrested for some kind of involvement in the attack, Bystrom said. The vehicle reportedly caught fire after driving through the busy pedestrian zone and slamming into the building. READ MORE: Swedish parliament holds first war game in 20 years Body-like forms covered by blankets were seen on Drottninggatan. I saw at least three dead, but probably more, Swedish radio reporter Martin Svenningsen said. Live television footage on Friday showed smoke coming out of the upscale Ahlens department store. Police vans circulating in the city using loudspeakers urged people to go straight home and avoid large crowds. Helicopters could be heard hovering in the sky over central Stockholm. An image of a suspect caught on a surveillance camera was later released by police. The picture showed a man wearing a white sweater and dark hoodie under a military green jacket, with dark stubble on his face. The European Union offered Sweden support and solidarity on Friday. An attack on any of our member states is an attack on us all, said EU chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker. One of Europes most vibrant and colourful cities appears to have been struck by those wishing it and our very way of life harm. A spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said: We stand together against terror. Fridays incident was near the site of a December 2010 attack in which Taimour Abdulwahab, a Swedish citizen who lived in Britain, detonated a suicide bomb, killing himself and injuring two others. READ MORE: Westminster attack Car-and-knife rampage kills four Several attacks in which trucks or cars have driven into crowds have taken place in Europe in the past year. In London last month, a man in a car ploughed into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, killing four, and then stabbed a policeman to death before being shot by police. In Nice, France, last July, a truck killed 86 people celebrating Bastille Day, and one in Berlin in December smashed through a Christmas market, killing 12 people. Syrian opposition groups official tells Al Jazeera US involvement could really be opportunity to end Syrias war. A Syrian political opposition group has welcomed a US strike on a government-controlled airbase, hailing Washingtons direct military involvement in Syrias conflict as an opportunity to end the countrys long-running civil war. The US strike on the Shayrat airfield in Homs province on Friday followed international outrage this week over a suspected chemical attack that killed dozens of civilians in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun, in northwestern Syria. We welcome these strikes, Najib Ghadbian, special representative of the Syrian National Coalition to the United States and the United Nations, told Al Jazeera. They are first good steps but we would like them to be part of a bigger strategy that would put an end to the mass killing, an end to impunity and eventually we hope that they will lead to a kind of a political transition [in Syria]. The strikes, launched from two warships in the Mediterranean Sea, marked the first direct military action the US has taken against Syrian President Bashar al-Assads forces in the six-year war. READ MORE: Syrias civil war explained Ghadbian hailed what he described as a change of policy by the new US administration under President Donald Trump. What was lacking in the whole thing was a US leadership to counterbalance the two powers that were providing support to Assad: Russia and Iran, Ghabdian said. This could really be the opportunity to end the war the previous [US] administration, by taking away the military option, emboldened both Russia and Iran. I think this has ended today. Talal Barazi, the governor of Syrias Homs province, where the Shayrat airfield is based, said the US strike will not affect the Syrian government or its ability to fight terrorists. We are not surprised today to see the [terrorists] supporting parties interfering directly after the failure of terrorists in targeting Syria, he told local media. We will not be surprised to see the Americans playing a direct role on the ground to support its means everywhere. The Syrian opposition has long criticised the US for failing to protect rebel-held areas from government air strikes, demanding the creation of a no-fly zone or the provision of anti-aircraft weapons to rebel groups. Several leaders of armed opposition groups demanded the US do more to hinder the Syrian armys abilities. One airbase is not enough. There are 26 airbases that target civilians, tweeted Mohammad Alloush, a senior rebel official. The Free Syrian Army (FSA), a loose alliance of rebel groups that includes factions that have received military support from the United States, called the US strike the correct starting point for finding a just political solution to the war We view that the responsibility of the United States is still great, and does not stop with this operation, it added in a statement, warning that the Damascus government and its allies could commit acts of revenge against civilians. Activists welcome US President Donald Trumps decision to strike Syrian targets after suspected chemical attack. Washington DC Dozens of Syrians gathered in front of the White House on Thursday, blaming President Bashar al-Assad for the suspected chemical attack in Idlib province and calling for his ouster. Protesters held signs reading Assad Out Now and Syrian Genocide. Tuesdays attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun in northern Syria which killed more than 80 people drew international condemnation and prompted President Donald Trump to launch cruise missiles on a government-controlled airbase. Farouk Belal, an activist who helped organise the protest and who is a member of the Coalition for a Democratic Syria, said he and other Syrians in the DC area are calling for Assads ouster by military force to end the war and stop the proliferation of extremist organisations. The rise of ISIL is due to Assads crimes As long as these crimes continue, people will join any group to fight him, Belal, who is originally from Idlib, told Al Jazeera. READ MORE: Autopsy shows chemical weapons used in Syria attack Belal said he was with some 20 other Syrian activists as news broke that 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles had been launched from US vessels in the Mediterranean Sea. We all felt the same thing, we were very sad that our home country was being bombed. We arent sure to be sad or happy. But we also want Assad to feel pain and be punished So its a very confusing feeling. Stepping away from emotions, yes its good. At least Trump did something, Belal said. The hope is that President Trump continues this attack and hurts Assad more so that he can sit at the table and negotiate peace. Bassam Rifai, a spokesperson for the Syrian American Council, a grassroots organisation that advocates for a a free, democratic, and pluralistic Syria through American support, said the strike was the first piece of hope Syrians have had since the civil war started in 2011. President Trump just started to do in two days what weve been asking for six years, he told Al Jazeera. We want no-fly zones, air strikes against runways, no more hitting civilian areas and hospitals. We want the entire [Syrian] air force to be grounded so they cant carry out attacks against civilians. No-fly zones were discussed extensively before Russian air forces entered the civil war. When asked how effective a no-fly zone for Syrian warplanes would be with Russians still providing support, Rifai said it becomes a touchy situation. But because we have a different relationship with Russia, its a negotiation to be had, referring to warmer relations between the Trump administration and Moscow than under previous administrations. Russia just said its support for Assad isnt unconditional. That was unthinkable a week ago, Rifai added. Military intervention is a contentious subject for many in the US, who are still wary from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that have gone on for more than a decade. The six-year civil war in Syria has killed an estimated 500,000 people. Another 11 million people have fled their homes. Follow Creede Newton on Twitter: @creedenewton Largely peaceful protests come as a second ratings agency downgrades the countrys debt rating to junk status. Tens of thousands of people marched through South African cities on Friday in largely peaceful protests to demand President Jacob Zumas resignation. In the biggest political protests in years, large crowds gathered in the capital Pretoria, the economic hub Johannesburg, and the coastal cities of Durban and Cape Town. Nobel laureate and anti-apartheid leader Desmond Tutu, 85 and frail in health, made a rare public appearance to support the protests outside Cape Town. Several thousand people attended the Johannesburg protest organised by the opposition Democratic Alliance party, which hopes to make gains in the 2019 elections. We want Zuma to fall. He is too corrupt. Real people are struggling, protester Vanessa Michael, 54, told AFP news agency. Mabefw Malega, a 38-year-old undertaker who had travelled three hours from Limpopo province to march, said: People just want Zuma gone. Al Jazeeras Fahmida Miller, reporting from Pretoria, said the demonstrations are significant because its just the beginning of protests and marches by a large sector of South Africans calling for the president to resign. She added that protesters say there are more demonstrations to come. #peoplesmarch in Pretoria and #AntiZumaMarch Johannesburg led by the DA calling for President to resign #SouthAfrica pic.twitter.com/eJmicJuvmv Fahmida Miller (@FahmidaMiller) April 7, 2017 While Fridays marches remained largely peaceful, groups of protesters scuffled outside the Johannesburg family mansion of the wealthy Gupta family. The relationship between Zuma and the Guptas has been an issue for years, amid allegations they have undue influence on the president. Both families have denied any wrongdoing. Zumas sacking of respected finance minister Pravin Gordhan last week has fanned public anger, divisions within the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party, and a sharp decline in investor confidence in the country. OPINION: Even if Zuma goes, South Africa will remain divided Zuma, who came to power in 2009, has been battered by a series of corruption scandals during his time in office, while the country has suffered record unemployment, slowing growth and stubborn racial inequality. His removal of Gordhan unleashed a fresh bout of criticism, as many South Africans and international investors saw the former minister as someone who fought corruption. The demonstrations came as a second ratings agency downgraded the countrys debt to junk status. Recent political events, including a major cabinet reshuffle, will weaken standards of governance and public finances, the Fitch ratings agency predicted as it announced the downgrade. Earlier this week, the Standard & Poors agency downgraded the South African sovereign debt to junk status after Zumas dramatic ministerial shake-up. ANC backs Zuma Zuma supporters also gathered outside the ANC headquarters in Johannesburg on Friday and the ANC Youth League held a counter-protest in Durban. The ANC led the decades-long struggle against apartheid, and carried Nelson Mandela to power in the 1994 elections that ended white-minority rule. But the party has lost popularity in recent years and slipped to 55 percent of the vote in last years local elections its worst ever result. Zuma this week appeared to have quelled a rebellion within the ANC despite senior party figures, including Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, speaking out against Gordhans sacking. READ MORE: South Africas ANC stands by President Jacob Zuma On Wednesday, the ANC acknowledged, but rejected calls for Zuma to step down. ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe told reporters that although the party had reflected on the resignation demands, we wont recall President Jacob Zuma because opposition parties say so. It wont work that way. Zuma, 74, is due to step down as head of the ANC in December, and as president ahead of the 2019 general election. Parliament will vote on a motion of no confidence in the president on April 18, though Zuma has easily survived such votes against him before. A judge went above the prosecutor's recommendation on Thursday in sentencing a man with a lengthy history of violent convictions. Frank Joe Belmarez, 49, received a sentence of 40 years in prison on one count of felony partner or family member assault, as well as misdemeanor counts of obstructing a peace officer and resisting arrest. The prosecutor had recommended 15 years in prison. District Judge Rod Souza said during the hearing that Belmarez's lack of remorse for current and past crimes, as well as a history of violence, particularly toward women, led to his sentence. "I do not find any mitigating factors in this case," Souza said. "However, there are several aggravating factors." Belmarez was sent to prison in 1990 for mitigated deliberate homicide after stabbing his wife. He was released in 2013. He was convicted of domestic assaults in 1985 and 1986. After serving time for murder, he was convicted of partner or family member assault and misdemeanor assault in 2015 and 2016, respectively. Belmarez was on probation when he assaulted a woman in July 2016. Officers had to break down the door to arrest him. In court on Thursday, Belmarez attempted to give lengthy justifications for his crimes. He referred to the assaults in the 1980s as arguments and downplayed his more recent convictions. He claimed self-defense during his trial for the current case, which was held in February. The jury found him not guilty of aggravated assault but guilty of the rest. "I didn't want to hurt her, but she didn't stop hitting," Belmarez said Thursday. "And so I hit her." Souza said that he didn't find Belmarez's justifications credible. The judge raised his voice as he recalled Belmarez referring to the killing of his wife as accidental. During the sentencing hearing, Jodi Antone read a letter on behalf of the victim. She said that she wished for a punishment that would prevent other women from going through what she had. "I have anxiety that is so bad, I am still struggling to get it under control," Antone read. She asked for the maximum sentence. Chinese leader speaks in positive terms as US president says lots of very potentially bad problems will be going away. US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping have announced making progress in narrowing their differences during their Florida summit, but did not elaborate on the achievements. As the two leaders wrapped up their meeting on Friday at Trumps Mar-a-Lago resort, the US leader said: We have made tremendous progress in our relationship with China. We will be making additional progress. The relationship developed by President Xi and myself I think is outstanding, Trump said in contrast to the anti-China rhetoric of his 2016 election campaign. And I believe lots of very potentially bad problems will be going away, he added, without offering any indication of what differences had been narrowed between the worlds two biggest economies. Xi also spoke in mostly positive terms, but offered only broad generalities. We have engaged in deeper understanding, and have built a trust a preliminary working relationship and friendship, he said. I believe we will keep developing in a stable way to form friendly relations For the peace and stability of the world, we will also fulfill our historical responsibility. Well, I agree with you 100 percent, Mr President, Trump replied, speaking to a small pool of journalists allowed into the room for a few minutes. The two men had a working lunch before Xis motorcade left the resort, ending the summit. Theft of jobs Trump had said he intended to raise concerns about Chinas trade practices and press Xi to do more to rein in North Koreas missile and nuclear programmes. During his campaign, Trump promised to stop what he called the theft of American jobs by China and to rebuild the countrys manufacturing base. Many blue-collar workers helped propel him to his unexpected election victory on November 8 and Trump is under pressure to deliver for them. The Republican president, who took office on January 20, tweeted last week that the US could no longer tolerate massive trade deficits and job losses and that his meeting with Xi will be a very difficult one. On Friday, Trump and Xi, politicians with distinctly different styles and experience levels, appeared cordial and businesslike in their interactions, with no outward sign of tensions. Syrian army denounces aggression after US launches nearly 60 missile strikes following suspected gas attack in Idlib. The United States on Friday fired dozens of cruise missiles at a government-controlled airbase in Syria, in retaliation for a suspected chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held town that killed scores of civilians. The Pentagon said 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired from two warships in the Mediterranean at the Shayrat airfield in Homs province, targeting the base from where US officials believe Tuesdays attack in Khan Sheikhoun had been launched. At least six people were killed in the early morning strike, according to the Syrian army, which denounced the US aggression as a violation of international law. In a statement carried by the state-run SANA news agency and read on television, the military said the US strikes were done on a pretext of the Khan Sheikhoun attack, without the full facts being disclosed. It also said the attack, which caused extensive damage to the base, made the US a partner of terrorist groups. Syrias state-news agency SANA gave a death toll of nine civilians, including four children. READ MORE: Donald Trumps full statement on Syria missile strikes It was the first direct military action the US has taken against Syrian President Bashar al-Assads forces in the the countrys long-running conflict, now in its seventh year. There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the chemical weapons convention and ignored the urging of the UN Security Council, US President Donald Trump said in a televised statement after the strike. Syrias opposition National Coalition hailed the US attack, saying it puts an end to an age of impunity and should be just the beginning of further military action against Assads forces. Russia, a key military ally of the Assad government, strongly condemned the strikes, saying Washingtons action would inflict major damage on US-Russia ties, according to Russian news agencies. The Pentagon said that Russia had been notified ahead of the operation but US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that Washington had sought no approval from Moscow. At least 86 people, including 27 children, were killed after a suspected poison gas attack on Khan Sheikhoun on Tuesday, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. ANALYSIS BY SULTAN BARAKAT, DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH AT THE DOHA INSTITUTE: Its an important step but I doubt it being a game changer as it does not represent a major shift in US policy. We have to remember that at the heart of this, there is US president who is a populist and this is very much about the image of having reacted to some very difficult situation. There has been a lot of pressure on him and everybody else to react to those images coming out of Syria with the children dying from the gas. Until now, the US had a very small role to play in getting Assad and other parties to the negotiating table. Now they will have to play a greater role. It has to be said that this is not the first strike that the US had conducted in Syria. They have been acting for months but they were targeting ISIL. The attack drew widespread international condemnation and public revulsion, prompting the United Nations to pledge it would investigate it as a possible war crime. READ MORE: Syrias civil war explained The Syrian government denied carrying out the raid. Russia has blamed the opposition, saying a government shell hit a building where rebels were producing chemical weapons. The rebels deny this. Turkey said samples from victims of the attack indicate they were exposed to sarin, a highly toxic nerve agent. Syria maintains it did not use chemical weapons, blaming opposition fighters for stockpiling the chemicals. I stress, once again, that the Syrian Arab Army did not and will not use such weapons even against the terrorists who are targeting our people, Syrias Foreign Minister Walid Muallem told reporters in Damascus on Thursday. At the time of the US strike, Trump was at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, where he is holding two days of meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Trump said the strike was in the vital national security interest of the US. I call on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria, and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types, he said. Al Jazeeras James Bays, reporting from Palm Beach, said: This may be a one-off operation, but it will be quite difficult from now for Trump to get himself out of the argument over the future of Syria, the political future of Assad, the UN talks process in Geneva. The Trump administration is now at the centre of it all. Christopher Swift, professor of national security studies at Georgetown University, said the most important question was whether the Trump administrations vision in launching the strikes was an impulsive one or a strategic one. Its not clear to me, yet, whether this administration has thought through the implications of the actions they took this evening, he told Al Jazeera. If the president has a plan, then it will be interesting to see how that plan comes through. But if he doesnt, he may have done more harm than good. While Fridays strike was the first direct US military action against Assads forces, fighter jets by a US-led coalition last year killed dozens of troops fighting for the Syrian government after being misidentified as ISIL fighters, according to the US army. More than 100 Assad loyalists were also wounded after the attack near the eastern city of Deir Az Zor on September 16. Over the past 24 hours, the US-led Coalition has continued targeting ISIL positions in Syria, conducting at least 20 strikes. That was the message at a presentation Thursday night after Paul Losch, a UF head librarian, discussed letters that tied fake news, the Gainesville Sun and the Cuban War of Independence together. The letters, published in 1895, described the bloodshed of the war in Cuba from the perspective of a soldier who was actually a resident living in Gainesville. The 10 letters, written by a waiter, Frank Hann, chronicled made-up people and events related to the war in Cuba. After failed attempts at publication in New Jersey, Hann successfully got the letters published in the Gainesville Sun, where they received widespread attention and foreign criticism until national publications realized the letters were fake. It was kind of like serial fiction, Losch said. Losch, who works as the head librarian of the Latin American and Caribbean Collection at Smathers Libraries, decided to give the presentation after stumbling upon a few articles about the saga. It took him two years to compile all the research. In his presentation, Losch spoke about the growing public attention that Hanns letters were quickly receiving and foreign reactions about the tales. All of this illustrates how information good or misinformation can travel, he said. Amber Martinez, a 20-year-old UF finance sophomore, said she was surprised at how long Hann was able to get away with publishing such absurd stories. She said she believes fake news completely undermines the purpose of journalism. I mean, the fact that this lasted three whole months is just a testament to peoples disposition to believe everything the media says, Martinez said. Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now For the first time in his life, Paul Burns woke up at 4:30 a.m. But when his alarm rang Thursday, the 21-year-old UF psychology junior said he was energized, ready to catch a charter bus to Tallahassee. The trip about 12 hours in total was designed to give Gainesville residents the opportunity to lobby for better mental health services in Florida. We had a diverse group of viewpoints on mental health in Florida, and thats what weve been talking to these lawmakers about, said Burns, who also serves as an Awareness Wellness Ambassadors Reaching Everyone ambassador with the UF Counseling and Wellness Center. The group, made up of 40 local members of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, fundraised in order to make the trip to the state capital. There, they joined 20 other alliance members to speak with legislators about the struggle to find funding for mental health resources. The goal is to fund services in the community, outpatient-intensive treatments, said Terrie Mullin, the president of the Gainesville NAMI chapter. Bottom line is that what we have been encouraging and stressing is services so that a person doesnt have to go into the hospital. For Lauren Kirkley, 18, the priority was drawing attention to the limited number of mental health services on college campuses, including UF. Other universities often have either similar or worse situations, the UF political science freshman said. So UF is in a bad situation, but its not specific to UF. The group brought signs with pictures and phrases like Prevention Not Detention and Stomp out Stigma to the capital. They also met with legislators, including Clovis Watson, Alachua Countys representative. Burns, who also gave a speech at a press conference about suicide prevention among students, said he felt the trip was quite productive, and he appreciated how receptive the legislators seemed to be. It was a very good atmosphere, Burns said. About 60 people pose for a photo in Tallahassee on Thursday. The group traveled to the state capitol to lobby for better mental health services in Florida. Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now Growing up in Tampa, Vincent Adejumo was used to seeing drugs. With trap houses on almost every corner, he said some people thought African Americans allow for negative environments to happen, but that isnt true. Now a UF African-American studies professor, he spoke to a crowd of about 25 people Thursday about how there remains a lack of understanding about diversity. During Student Governments first Gators Talk, a TED-style speaking event, two professors and six students spoke about their experiences with multiculturalism. For an hour and a half, they talked about aspects of their identities from being a child of immigrants, having undocumented family members, going through times of depression and stigmas in the Greek community. For Adejumo, he sees a lack of understanding in Gainesville. He pointed out how only a couple people in the room knew about Virgil Hawkins, who was rejected from UFs law school in 1949 because he was African-American. We go to a school that preaches that it wants to be about diversity and inclusion, and we dont even know who Virgil Hawkins is, he said. How can that be? Evelyn Veras, SGs multicultural affairs cabinet director, went into the event without hearing any of the speeches first. She wanted to have the same experience as the audience, she said. And Adejumos talk, The Trap House, didnt hold back. It was just the truth, she said. Veras said her team came up with the idea in January and worked to put it together ever since. She wants SG to highlight the Student Bodys diversity and hopes the talk encourages students to discuss and embrace that diversity. I hope for the future that it continues and improves, the 20-year-old UF health education and behavior junior said. Another professor, Cecilia Suarez, told students in Pugh Hall they can overcome internal struggles. The professor in UFs agricultural education and communication department spoke about her issues learning to express her emotions until she started seeing a counselor at 30 years old. Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now Jocelisse Morales, a UF visual art studies junior, said hearing Suarezs speech made her feel better about her own struggles. Im actually going through a hard time now in my personal life, the 20-year-old said. I really needed to hear that. Contact Paige Fry at pfry@alligator.org and follow her on Twitter at @paigexfry By now, the U.S. Senate may already have dispensed with tradition and confirmed Judge Neil Gorsuch by simple majority. They would have done this by invoking what is dramatically termed the nuclear option a process by which Senate rules are changed to allow a confirmation vote of Supreme Court nominees with 51 (instead of 60) votes. If this is the case, take a moment to mourn yet another nail in the coffin for a Senate run by adults. I do not say this because Im a liberal and Judge Gorsuch is a conservative. Whatever our philosophical differences, Gorsuch is no more conservative than Justice Clarence Thomas and hardly more conservative than former Justice Antonin Scalia. His appointment to the bench would be the logical outcome of a Republican-controlled Senate. My issue, rather, is with Democratic obstinacy. A dense fog of jargon and tradition shrouds any Senate preceding, so Ill try to break this one down in English for claritys sake: After a Supreme Court nominee passes a committee vote, his or her nomination gets debated on the Senate floor by all 100 representatives. All 100 must agree to end debate in order to move forward with a final vote. When one more refuses to stop debating, we have a filibuster on our hands. To end a filibuster, a Senator must file a cloture motion, which allows for 60 senators to vote to end debate and move forward with the final vote. In the past, a vote to confirm the nominee did not correlate perfectly with a vote to end debate. Senator John Doe might not agree with nominee X, but agreement does not determine qualification. The Supreme Court needs justices, and the Senate has other work to attend to. Doe votes to end debate and tosses his name in the Do Not Confirm pile for confirmation. The nominee has the majority she needs, and voila: We have a new justice. This year, however, is different. Democratic senators have by-and-large indicated they will not vote to end debate and will instead protest Gorsuchs nomination indefinitely. Why? Im not quite sure. Many claim that hes remarkably unfit for the position; others claim 60 confirmation votes are necessary to ensure a justice whose views align with the mainstream. But both of these arguments are weak. Looking at qualifications alone, Gorsuch looks like most other justices on the court: an Ivy League education, a clerkship at the Supreme Court, a largely uncontroversial federal judgeship. Considering ideology, he stakes out no uncharacteristically conservative positions. As for vote totals, two sitting justices were confirmed with less than 60 votes (Alito and Thomas). The reason were left with, then, is pettiness hypocritical payback for Republican refusal to vote on former President Barack Obamas nominee, Merrick Garland and this should frustrate us all. Merrick Garland is not coming back. President Donald Trump (a phrase that still astounds me to type) in an impossibly rare flash of maturity managed to nominate an immensely qualified conservative rather than an insane ideologue or reality show judge. If there is a God, Gorsuch was heaven-sent to give us all a break. Democrats could have bitten the bullet, allowed a vote on his confirmation, and followed Michelle Obamas lead: going high when they go low. Instead, in an act of political expediency that only further sows division, they decided to deliver jabs of their own. Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now And so the Senate turns sandbox. For as principled, progressive and inspiring as senators like Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders can be, each bows to the temptation of a partisan food fight. Republicans in turn will throw out the filibuster, and Gorsuch will be confirmed anyway. There is a sliver of hope, however. If a vote on cloture has not yet taken place, call your representative! Our senators may be children, but we can be the adults who tell them what to do. Champe Barton is a UF economics and psychology junior. His column appears on Fridays. One of the preeminent intellectuals of the last century, Noam Chomskys quote is aimed directly at our generation: If we dont believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we dont believe in it at all. Nicole Dans recent publication posits that paying for Ben Shapiros appearance at UF by Accent represents not only their ignorance, but (at worst) sanctioned approval of his message. This is not only incorrect, but close-minded. Higher education is tasked with challenging assumptions, facilitating experiences and, god forbid, making us uncomfortable. To stick our head in the sand and ignore the perspectives of opposition parties not only insulates us from diverse perspectives and facilitates groupthink, but other-izes the very individuals we need to engage with the most. She argues that theres no room for dialogue when someone believes that a group doesnt have the right to exist. These moments necessitate discussion the most. As exemplified by the riots at University of California, Berkeley at the appearance of Milo Yiannopoulos, our fear of hearing things that disturb us not only closes paths to dialogue, but alienates others. With Shapiros appearance having passed, consider these words: Apathy is the greatest insult. Protest, post on social media, but above all, dont close your eyes. To do so is nothing less than intellectual dystrophy and further entrenches that which you purport to hate in our mainstream culture. Greg Muller is a 25-year-old UF doctoral student studying school psychology. English News China expected to export nuclear technology to UK Alwihda Info | Par peoplesdaily - 7 Avril 2017 The UK has the strictest nuclear regulations in the world. In this January, the country approved to launch an assessment to review the design of the reactor. If the Hualong One reactor can pass the assessment in the next five years, it will surely get a passport in the worlds atomic industry. By Li Gang from Peoples Daily China is expected to export nuclear technology to the UK, a traditional nuclear power that realized commercialization of nuclear energy, after China's Hualong One reactor finally gets a permit to enter the latters market, sources from China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN) told the Peoples Daily. The UK government has started an assessment to build a nuclear power plant at Bradwell in southeastern England, disclosed an official from CGN, adding that the chances are high that the Hualong One reactor will pass UK's approval. It is estimated that the value of one nuclear reactor sold abroad equals that of 1 million cars. If approved by the UK, the Hualong reactor will, together with the high-speed train technology, become name cards of Chinas high-end manufacturing industry in the world. The Hualong One reactor was jointly developed by CGN and China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), sources said. For the sake of safety, China has learnt lessons from Japan's Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011 and followed the latest nuclear safety requirements. The reactor keeps abreast with a high safety index: It has double-layer safety shells, offering enhanced protection capabilities against commercial airplane crash. The UK has the strictest nuclear regulations in the world. In this January, the country approved to launch an assessment to review the design of the reactor. If the Hualong One reactor can pass the assessment in the next five years, it will surely get a passport in the worlds atomic industry. In another development, sources said that the construction of a nuclear power plant in Kenya will be examined under the training cooperation framework agreement and confidentiality agreement signed between CGN and the Kenya Nuclear Electricity Board. Under the agreement, the two sides will launch comprehensive cooperation in terms of technology and business. It is regarded as an important step for the Hualong One reactors entry into the African market as well as the export of Chinas unitized technology, equipment and general contracting services. Dans la meme rubrique : < > China's Beidou reaches world-leading level: white paper Silk Road e-commerce promotes trade among Belt and Road countries Irrigation project in Jiangsu gets world heritage designation Pour toute information, contactez-nous au : +(235) 99267667 ; 62883277 ; 66267667 (Bureau N'Djamena) English News China-Norway friendship sets sail again: Chinese ambassador Alwihda Info | Par peoplesdaily - 7 Avril 2017 China and Norway share same or similar viewpoints on such agendas as free trade, climate change and sustainable development. Source: People's Daily China-Norway relations will enjoy a healthy, stable and sustained development, Chinese Ambassador to Norway Wang Min said in a commentary published in People's Daily on Friday, when Prime Minister Erna Solberg of Norway kicked off an official four-day visit to China upon invitation. It is the first visit to China paid by a Norwegian Prime Minister in the recent decade, and also the first meeting between top leaders of the two countries after a turnaround of bilateral relations at the end of last year. Reviewing the twists and development of the China-Norway relations in recent years with his personal experience, Wang praised Norway's efforts and achievements in improving the relations with China. The following is the full text of the article: Norway is among the first Western countries to recognize the People's Republic of China. It is also the first Western country to ink cultural agreement with China, the second European nation to admit China's market economy status, as well as the earliest European state to negotiate a free trade agreement with China. Back to those days in history, China and Norway yielded fruitful outcomes from close cooperation in politics, economy, culture, education, technology, polar research and sports. However, the wrong decision made by Norwegian administration on issues related to China's core interest and major concerns seven years ago resulted in a disastrous retrogress of bilateral relations, undermining political foundations of both sides. With stalled bilateral cooperation in each field, the ship of friendly cooperation between the two countries encountered a storm. Through extensive contact with Norwegian residents in all walks of life after I arrived in Norway as Chinese ambassador in March 2016, I have felt the friendship of the country toward China. Many of my Norwegian friends told me that they feel sorry about the loss of bilateral relations caused by the Norwegian side, hoping the relations between the two countries could return to the right track. A senior Norwegian citizen has impressed me very much. Though suffering from an incurable disease, he is still working hard to normalize China-Norway ties, in a hope to see a turnaround in the bilateral relations for the rest of his life. In my lecture delivered in middle 2016, I have mentioned that Norway lagged behind almost all its European peers in terms of developing relations with China, and it has missed many chances of cooperation. I was deeply impressed by the anxious and expecting faces of the audiences. Norway is a country with a number of far-sighted and excellent statesmen. Since the establishment of this Norwegian administration, Solberg has devoted much energy to improve relations with China. Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs Borge Brende, who has a close bond with China, has also made the normalization of China-Norway ties a priority of his work. After rounds of intense negotiations, both sides finally reached consensus on many key issues concerning improvement and development of bilateral relations. Bilateral ties finally dispelled the clouds after both governments released a statement on the normalization of bilateral relations during Brendes Chinese visit last December. Norway, in the announcement, pledged to fully respect China's development path and social system, respect China's sovereignty and territorial integrity, attach high importance to China's core interests and major concerns, and never support actions that undermine them. Reiterating its commitment to the one-China policy, the Norwegian government vowed its utmost efforts to avoid any future damage to bilateral relations. China and Norway have highly complementary economies and have great potential for cooperation. Faced with the lingering recession in global economy and a rising tide of anti-globalization, Chinese President Xi Jinping's speech delivered at the World Economic Forum in Davos this January has been greatly lauded by the Norwegian people. China and Norway share same or similar viewpoints on such agendas as free trade, climate change and sustainable development. During Solberg's Chinese visit, leaders of the two states will have an in-depth exchange of opinions, set directions and principles of bilateral relations, determine key cooperation areas and witness the signing of a series of bilateral agreements. Her visit will mark the restart and full recovery of China-Norway cooperation. I believe that the relations between China and Norway will enjoy a healthy, stable and long-term development to make the ship of bilateral friendship sail again, as long as both countries keep the pledge on normalization of bilateral relations and stick to the principles of mutual respect and equality. Dans la meme rubrique : < > China's Beidou reaches world-leading level: white paper Silk Road e-commerce promotes trade among Belt and Road countries Irrigation project in Jiangsu gets world heritage designation Pour toute information, contactez-nous au : +(235) 99267667 ; 62883277 ; 66267667 (Bureau N'Djamena) English News Chinese enterprises invest more in US high-end sectors Alwihda Info | Par peoplesdaily - 7 Avril 2017 The US is unquestionably a sci-tech power. As China stepped up its efforts to restructure economy, its businesses are diverting the focus of investment from the lower end of industrial chain, such as energy and minerals, to the higher-end high-tech fields. By Liao Zhengjun from Peoples Daily Chinese enterprises, with a growing globalization capability in recent years, have diverted more capital from developing countries to developed European and American market with higher access threshold. They also put more money into high technology, agriculture and real estate rather than previous energy, minerals and other natural resources. Private businesses carry more weight in overseas investment Private capitals now make up bigger share in Chinas overseas investment, reshaping the cake dominated by state-owned enterprises (SOE) previously. According to a recent statement issued by the US electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla, Chinese Internet giant Tencent has become its 5th largest shareholder after purchasing 5% of the companys passive stake at the price of about $1.78 billion. The investment would probably help Tesla further expand its market share in China, said a Forbes commentary. Most of the Chinese capitals in the US used to be invested by SOEs, and now private companies have become a major force, said Steve Orlins, president of National Committee on US-China Relations. He was one of the first US citizens who came to China after the two countries established diplomatic ties. A report complied by China General Chamber of Commerce U.S.A. said that more than 80% of Chinese capitals in the US market as of 2016 were contributed by private enterprises. Wanxiang Group, a Chinese automotive component manufacturer who accessed the US in 1994, has established 28 factories in the country, becoming the largest Chinese enterprise in central and western US. According to local media, every 1 in 3 automobiles in the US is installed with components manufactured by Wanxiang America Corporation. Wanxiang Group invested $12.5 million to build a 4,000-squaremeter solar panel factory in Rockford, Illinois in April 2010, receiving financing support from the state government. In August of the same year, after winning a $4 million financial backing from local government, Wanxiang Group used the money to develop a 62-megawatt solar power plant at Chicago Rockford International Airport, which is the largest project of its kind in central and western US. Chinese battery and new-energy vehicle manufacturer BYD established the first electric bus and power battery factory in northern Los Angeles Lancaster in May 2013. President Stella Li of BYD Motors told Peoples Daily that the company has recruited local employees, made specific training plans and established research and development center for high-end buses. Localization of production not only cultivated skillful workers, but also built competitive research teams, he added. Expanding its market from western to central US, BYD is now stretching its reach to the east US and Canada. A total of 500 employees work at BYD Motors manufacturing facility in Lancaster, including 30 bus designers, 120 managers and 350 operators. Tony Martinez, director of the welding workshop, said that he earned bread in the car maker since it offers a salary he had never had before. It is learnt that the income of local employees at BYD is 37% higher than the average income of workers in Los Angeles. Investments to five sectors grow at faster pace The US is unquestionably a sci-tech power. As China stepped up its efforts to restructure economy, its businesses are diverting the focus of investment from the lower end of industrial chain, such as energy and minerals, to the higher-end high-tech fields. According to a report issued by Rhodium Group, 5 industries have witnessed the most rapid growth in Chinas investment in the US. The investment in real estate, information technology, health care and biotechnology, finance as well as commercial service have all experienced a compound growth rate of over 50% in 2013-2015 period. Chinese communication giant ZTE established its US branch in 1998, in a bid to enhance cooperation with US technology partners and provide quality products to the US consumers. By the end of 2016, ZTE had invested a total of $25.8 billion in the US. The company has not only offered diverse choices for US consumers, but also revived the countrys employment and economy through the purchase of US technologies and high-tech components. Senior Vice President of ZTE Corporation Cheng Lixin told Peoples Daily that the company has become the largest mobile phone brand from China in the US market. In the past decade, ZTE has spent $2.6 billion on purchasing products and technologies from the US sci-tech companies, said Cheng, also CEO of ZTE USA, adding that it has offered more than 130,000 high-tech jobs each year. More than 80% of its 300 employees in the US are local staffs. ZTE is a good example to demonstrate the win-win results of international trade, said the governor of Kansas Sam Brownback, adding that he deeply understands the importance of international trade and investment for the healthy development of the states economy. Pic: Bus line operator Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority in Pinellas county, Florida has purchased 2 electric buses from BYD with more than $2 million, the first of its kind of the county. The company plans to introduce another 20 buses from BYD to promote zero-emission public transport of the region. (Photo: BYD) Dans la meme rubrique : < > China's Beidou reaches world-leading level: white paper Silk Road e-commerce promotes trade among Belt and Road countries Irrigation project in Jiangsu gets world heritage designation Pour toute information, contactez-nous au : +(235) 99267667 ; 62883277 ; 66267667 (Bureau N'Djamena) Darlene Hert, a Montana State University Billings alumna and longtime library employee at the college, was named MSUB's new library director on Thursday, according to an MSUB press release. Hert has worked as the technical access services librarian and City College librarian since 2008 and previously worked as an acquisitions and access technician at the MSUB Library from 1995 to 2008. Hert graduated from MSUB with a bachelor of science degree in business administration in 1981 and earned a master of library science from Texas Woman's University in 2007. Hert and Casper College assistant library director Sarah North were announced at a March 15 meeting as the two finalists for the position. Brent Roberts had been the library's director since 2010. He left MSUB in the fall to take a position at Longwood University in Virginia. Reference and assessment librarian Megan Thomas worked as the interim director for the library after Roberts' departure. In the release Hert said she looks forward to working with other libraries, particularly the TRAILS (Treasure State Academic Information & Library Services) consortium in order to expand academic library affordability and access to resources. Hert also previously worked as a micographics technician for the Bureau of Reclamation and a cataloging technician at the Eastern Montana College Library. A Billings native, Hert will move into her new role later this month, according to the release. English News Finland expects to scale up high-tech solutions with China: prime minister Alwihda Info | Par peoplesdaily - 7 Avril 2017 China has been our largest trading partner in Asia for years, and last year it was our 5th largest trading partner globally, he noted, adding that for Finnish companies China is a very important market and they are happy that this trend continues to increase. By Liu Zhonghua, Guan Kejiang, Li Meiyi from Peoples Daily The state visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to Finland marks the excellent state of bilateral relations and further deepens the diverse cooperation between China and Finland, Finnish Prime Minister Juha Sipila hailed the significance of the successful trip in a written interview with the Peoples Daily on Thursday. We are honored that President Xi visits Finland during the centenary year of Finlands independence, Sipila said, adding that both sides, during the visit, have an opportunity to exchange views on a number of significant bilateral and global issues. Important agreements and memoranda of understanding are signed to further deepen bilateral cooperation as well, the prime minister pointed out. I am sure our diverse cooperation will continue to broaden and deepen, he stressed. The future-oriented new type cooperative partnership enhances political mutual trust and expands and deepens cooperation to the benefit of our two peoples, Sipila emphasized. The partnership, according to him, covers topics of mutual interest and areas where both countries want to reinforce cooperation in issues where they can find common solutions to concerns. He cited the areas such as innovation, entrepreneurship, clean energy, bio-economy and arctic research Xi mentioned in an article published ahead of his Finnish trip as examples, believing that these are excellent base for enhanced cooperation between both countries. Describing high-level political visits as a very important way to exchange views and ideas both bilaterally and in the EU-China context, Sipila stressed the necessity for both nations to maintain contacts at the level of parliaments, officials, and other spheres of the society. Moreover, I think there is still a lot of untapped potential in our trade and investment relations, he said. In todays changing world, we do need a regular dialogue on many global issues, too, such as climate change and sustainable development, the prime minister added. Sipila said that three points impressed him most after he had a chance to read the article entitled Our Enduring Friendship published on Finnish media Xi wrote before he started the trip. He explained that they were the long history of bilateral relations that have been only strengthening throughout the decades, the importance of bilateral trade, investment and tourism relations, as well as the strong support from Xi to the European integration and the EU-China relations. It has been touching to notice what great importance President Xi has attached to this visit in Finlands centenary year and to the Sino-Finnish relations at large, the prime minister underlined. China has been our largest trading partner in Asia for years, and last year it was our 5th largest trading partner globally, he noted, adding that for Finnish companies China is a very important market and they are happy that this trend continues to increase. Sipila suggested that to further develop bilateral collaboration, Finland could act as a test bed in multiple different areas, including self driving cars, 5G and Internet of Things. We could scale up the solutions jointly in China, he added. The prime minister also vowed that Finland, during its chairmanship in the Arctic Council, will focus on environmental protection, better connectivity, utilizing meteorology for better monitoring, and improving the education. All these offer also good platforms for cooperating more with China, he pledged, adding that Finland as an Arctic nation pays great attention to sustainable development of the arctic. Dans la meme rubrique : < > China's Beidou reaches world-leading level: white paper Silk Road e-commerce promotes trade among Belt and Road countries Irrigation project in Jiangsu gets world heritage designation Pour toute information, contactez-nous au : +(235) 99267667 ; 62883277 ; 66267667 (Bureau N'Djamena) English News For complete Syria solution, Indian Muslims should move GOI to offer ~ 10 million Muslims to US led PKF and Election m/cry Alwihda Info | Par hemraj jain - 7 Avril 2017 Bengaluru, India ---- US military strike of Friday in Syria (in view of alleged chemical attack on Syrians by Syrian regime) should not be a merely punitive action rather it should lead to permanent Syria solution because Syrians have already suffered a lot during last 6 years in the name of Arab-spring and now they should get succor by installing democracy in Syria by USA and its Allies. USA has already accused Russia of complicity with Syrian President Assad in said Tuesday chemical attack [in which ~ 84 civilians (including children) have reportedly died and many more still injured / suffering]. Therefore it will serve no purpose if matter is taken to UN where at-least Russia (if not China) will use Veto to stop any US initiative to find permanent solution to gory Syria problem. Therefore USA should proceed alone along with allies (from Christian and Muslim countries) whichever wants to join US led Peace Keeping Force (PKF) and Election machinery (m/cry) which will ensure free and fair election in Syria after bringing peace and thereafter preparing voter list in Syria, in a time bound program of say one year. For this US led PKF and Election m/cry, India which (with much smaller population) provided ~ 2 million persons (mostly military) to Britishers during World War I & II each, now with population of ~ 1.3 billion people (with ~ 200 million Muslims) can easily provide ~ 10 million persons (including for Election m/cry). If this Indian contingent in US led PKF and Election m/cry is composed of mostly Indian Muslims (both Sunnis and Shias) then it will easily win the confidence and trust of Syrians and it will go a long way in bringing peace and stability to Syria. This model can be emulated later on in other troubled countries of NAME region also. Therefore Indian Muslims (combined of Sunnis and Shias with other Indians) should immediately organize demonstrations at District and State headquarters and also at Jantar-Mantar Delhi and their delegation (combined of Sunnis and Shias with other Indians) should meet GOI to request that India should offer persons (eve up-to 10 million or more) to US led PKF and Election m/cry and for which this Muslim delegation should tell GOI that Indian Muslims are prepared to provide the entire requirement of these ~ 10 million Indians. Nothing will be better service of Islam by Indian Muslims than helping ~ 22 million profusely bleeding and weeping beleaguered Muslims of Syria (and may be later on beleaguered Muslims of NAME region). Regards Hem Raj Jain (Author of Betrayal of Americanism) Bengaluru, India Dans la meme rubrique : < > China's Beidou reaches world-leading level: white paper Silk Road e-commerce promotes trade among Belt and Road countries Irrigation project in Jiangsu gets world heritage designation Pour toute information, contactez-nous au : +(235) 99267667 ; 62883277 ; 66267667 (Bureau N'Djamena) English News Giant pandas to tighten China-Finland bond Alwihda Info | Par peoplesdaily - 7 Avril 2017 Thanks to unremitting protection by China for the past over 10 years, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) announced in September 2016 that the giant pandas were downgraded from Endangered to Vulnerable on the global list of species at risk of extinction. By Gong Ming from Peoples Daily Finnish peoples dreams to see Chinese giant pandas in their own country have finally come true after China agreed to send a pair of pandas to Finland during Chinese President Xi Jinpings state visit on Wednesday. The public in the European country of all ages are enthusiastic for Chinas cute giant pandas. Xis Finnish trip this time brought such passion to an unprecedented high. A poll before Xis visit showed that bringing giant pandas to Finland is what local residents expect most of the presidents trip. Their dream has come true after a memorandum of understanding to jointly research on giant panda was inked between China's State Forestry Administration and its Finnish counterpart in Helsinki on Wednesday. According to the memorandum, China will send two pandas to Finland for the research on giant pandas, which will be jointly carried out by China Wildlife Conservation Association (CWCA) and the Ahtari Zoo in Finland. The cute animals will be loaned for 15 years. Finland will pay a designated amount of fund to China, which will be used to build up the scientific research of giant pandas, protection of breeding base, conservation, management and other purposes, according to the agreement. According to Li Qingwen, the deputy secretary-general of CWCA, experts of both countries started their investigations and discussions about which zoo should host the pandas since 2014. Ahtari Zoo was chosen because it is the biggest nature reserve in Finland, and it shares similar climate with the panda bases in Sichuan of southwest China, Li explained. The Ahtari Zoo has a total area of over 5,000 square meters and can provide an environment close to wildlife habitation for the pandas. In addition, the zoo is reliable in terms of disease treatment, rescue and epidemic disease research, because it has close ties with the Veterinary Hospital of University of Helsinki. By the end of 2016, China has developed research projects on giant pandas with 18 zoos from 13 countries, including the US, Austria, Thailand, Spain, Australia, the UK and France. Currently, there are a total of 53 giant pandas and panda cubs living overseas, Li said. Giant panda, China's unofficial national mascot, has been regarded as a bond to enhance connections and a token of peace and friendship. In 1961, a giant panda Chi Chi caused a stir in London when it arrived in the city for exhibition. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) decided to use the panda to design its logo, considering that the passion for life can cross language barriers. The adorable giant pandas could always ignite peoples enthusiasm wherever they go. At the end of 2011, China rent two giant pandas Tian Tian (Sweetie) and Sunshine to the Edinburgh Zoo in Scotland. Later that year, Tian Tian was voted as the December Woman 2011. The two pandas also aroused the interest to learn Chinese culture and characters among the Scottish, who even hosted events to welcome the traditional Chinese Spring Festival. After the arrivals of the two pandas, the Edinburgh Zoo started to make profits with the annual revenue rising from 5 million to 15 million and visitor number increasing by 51 percent. After two years dialogues between China and France, giant pandas Huan Huan and Yuan Zai arrived in France in 2012. The hosting Beauval Zoo has become the top tourist destination in the province of Loir-et-Cher thanks to the two pandas. According to statistics, over 1 million tourists visited the zoo in the same year, up 60 percent from the previous year. The giant pandas are not just attractions. The purpose of international cooperation on panda research is not only to breed the animals and display them in the partnership countries, but also to better protect them and other endangered species by scientific research and raising public awareness via publicity, Li said. With such efforts, overseas giant pandas are having productive success. In June 2016, panda Hao Hao gave birth to a male cub at Paira Daiza zoo in Belgium. Later that year, mother Yang Yang and father Long Hui gave birth to twins in Vienna Zoo. The panda couple has given birth to 5 cubs since they came to Vienna. Often pandas can only be bred by zoos using artificial insemination, which makes the twins - conceived naturally - a special and rare case in Europe. Thanks to unremitting protection by China for the past over 10 years, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) announced in September 2016 that the giant pandas were downgraded from Endangered to Vulnerable on the global list of species at risk of extinction. The organization also estimated the total population of wild giant pandas, including the cubs, at 2,060. Pic: A staff demonstrates a giant panda souvenir at a shop affiliated to the Ouwehands Dierenpark in Rhenen in the Netherlands, April 5, 2017. Chinese pandas will arrive in the country on April 12. (Xinhua/Gong Bing) Dans la meme rubrique : < > China's Beidou reaches world-leading level: white paper Silk Road e-commerce promotes trade among Belt and Road countries Irrigation project in Jiangsu gets world heritage designation Pour toute information, contactez-nous au : +(235) 99267667 ; 62883277 ; 66267667 (Bureau N'Djamena) English News P&G CEO: Business community works as stabilizer and propeller in US-China relation Alwihda Info | Par peoplesdaily - 7 Avril 2017 China is a fast-paced, dynamic and globally connected marketplace. Chinese consumers are increasingly demanding and discerning seeking recognized, high quality brands. This is even more evident today than it was when I worked in China nearly 20 years ago. By Zhang Niansheng, Peoples Daily People Daily: Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet with President Trump at Mar-a-lago from April 6 to 7. Do you have any expectations for the incoming high level visit? David Taylor: Strong, constructive trade and diplomatic relations are critical to the success of China, the United States and P&G. We share a common aspiration for social mobility and economic prosperity. And we share a common commitment to fostering an environment where free and fair competition thrives, markets grow and innovation flourishes. Im encouraged the leaders of the worlds two largest economies are creating a relationship based on trust, integrity and passion for winning. The challenges we face are real and the solutions are neither simple nor easy. However, I am confident the mutual desire to best serve the citizens of both countries will steer us towards lasting solutions that benefit China, the USA and the global economy. People Daily: You have been dealing with China and witnessing the development of US-China relationships for a long time, how would you like to outline some cases or examples which lead to closer cooperation between the US and China? David Taylor: As a corporate citizen of both countries, it is incumbent upon P&G to help build bridges and contribute to economic growth and job creation in our two countries. In fact, P&Gs entry into China nearly 30 years ago, as the country was beginning to open to the West, reflects our long-standing commitment to serving Chinese consumers. Indeed our progress, the result of investments totaling $1.8B USD, can be seen across the country, not just in the products in the homes of Chinese consumers, but in the 17 manufacturing plants and distribution centers that supply these products, employing more than 7000 people and supporting hundreds of other Chinese businesses to support the Chinese economy. This investment in international trade supports jobs in the US as well. In fact, 1 in 5 of P&Gs US-based jobs support our international business in areas such as marketing, innovation and supply chain management. Chinas tremendous success story, of dynamic growth and economic development, is one that I personally witnessed when I first worked in China in the late 1990s and that is immediately visible every time I visit the country. It is testament to both the resilience and bright future that lies ahead with continued investment, innovation and reform. P&G benefits from a constructive US-China relationship and we need US and Chinese government policies that view this critical relationship in a balanced way. This calls for a thoughtful and measured approach to resolving issues, recognizing the interdependence of the worlds largest economies, and our impact on the global economy. As Ambassador Cui and I discussed, the business community plays an important role as a stabilizer and a propeller in the US-China relationship. Promoting and advocating for a constructive US-China relationship is important to me in my role at P&G and the US-China Business Council, and a shared interest among many American and Chinese leaders Ive met with including Vice Premier Wang Yang and Chinas Ambassador Cui Tiankai. People Daily: People are worrying about the trade war between our two countries, how do you interpret the significance of trade to US-China relationship development? David Taylor : Trade is equally important to both China and the US and has been an important driver of the positive relationship our countries have long enjoyed. Simply put, a trade war would hurt both Chinese and American consumers and potentially damage the global economy. As with any economic relationship, there are always challenges and opportunities. I believe it is important to address these tensions with calm and reasoned dialogue, avoiding escalation. China is a fast-paced, dynamic and globally connected marketplace. Chinese consumers are increasingly demanding and discerning seeking recognized, high quality brands. This is even more evident today than it was when I worked in China nearly 20 years ago. P&G benefits from US-China trade. China is P&Gs second largest market and P&Gs success in China is critical to P&Gs success globally. We are proud of P&Gs role as one of the largest consumer products companies in China. However, our role and the role of business is beyond simple economic self interest. P&G has driven consumption and positive competition via innovation and contributed to the development of Chinas consumer goods industry. We share best practice and experiences in manufacturing, R&D, sales, management and talent development, which in turn benefits the growth of local Chinese companies. As bilateral relations are tested in these times of uncertainty, P&G is stepping up to tell our story of success in China and to encourage constructive, mutually respectful and open dialogue as the means to resolve differing points of view. People Daily: As a successful entrepreneur, what is your idea on the significance of US-China relations? David Taylor : Our Company was founded with a handshake between a candle maker and a soap maker who believed that everyday products could and should be of the highest quality, and sold honestly. We still create products with that handshake in mind. This foundation of trust between leaders and nations serves as an enduring model and one Im confident will be embraced by President Xi and President Trump. Dans la meme rubrique : < > China's Beidou reaches world-leading level: white paper Silk Road e-commerce promotes trade among Belt and Road countries Irrigation project in Jiangsu gets world heritage designation Pour toute information, contactez-nous au : +(235) 99267667 ; 62883277 ; 66267667 (Bureau N'Djamena) Chulina, the first female giant panda cub born in Madrid Zoo, on Wednesday went for her first walk outside the pagoda where she has spent her life until now. The baby stepping outside home was also witnessed by Queen Sofia of Spain, Lyu Fan, Chinese Ambassador to Spain, as well as students and residents coming for the cute animals. Some of the visitors and students even came from Spains southernmost city of Almeri, a place more than 500 kilometers away from Madrid. It is learnt that 4 pandas now live in Spain, a figure more than that of any other European countries. She is the fifth giant panda cub to be born at the Madrid Zoo thanks to its collaboration with the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding. Growing from 180 grams to 15 kilograms, the 7-month-old panda has acquired the ability to walk and climb. During the event, a group of Spanish children with panda paintings on their faces learnt to write the pandas name in Chinese. China sent two pandas to Spain in 1978. Ever since, Queen Sofia has always come to visit the pandas in the zoo. She also took a photo with panda in her arms. Pic: Giant panda cub Chulina plays outside the panda enclosure at Madrid Zoo in Madrid, Spain, April 5, 2017. (Photo by Wang Di from Peoples Daily) English News Sino-US ties enjoy strong public support Alwihda Info | Par peoplesdaily - 7 Avril 2017 We are happy to see the meeting. The face-to-face dialogue is much more effective than other ways of communication like phone conversations. It will enhance mutual understanding between the two leaders as well as the in-depth exchange of views between the two sides, though the Trump administration hasnt formed a clear China policy at this moment. It could not be better if the two leaders could reach some consensus. By Li Bingxin from Peoples Daily More than 40 years of experience in people-to-people diplomacy has made me realize the strong public supports for development of China-US relations, Jan Berris, vice president of National Committee on US-China Relations and an expert on Chinese affairs, said in a recent interview to the Peoples Daily. AS the Chinese and US heads of state are about to meet in Florida, Berris is quite confident about the post-meeting development of China-US relations. Having been engaged in US-China exchanges for more than 40 years, she was, in 1980, once among the US delegation to receive then Secretary of the CPC Guangdong Provincial Committee Xi Zhongxun, father of the sitting Chinese President Xi Jinping. In 2012, Berris presented Xi Jinping, then Chinas Vice President a photo album recording the moments during Xi Zhongxuns US visit. Q: You accompanied Xi Zhongxun during his visit in the US. What impression he left on you? A: He was very impressive. It was a large delegation consisting of provincial secretaries and governors. Different from the current tight visiting schedules of Chinese officials, the delegation stayed for three-and-a-half weeks in the US and visited eight places. They had in-depth communication with a great number of US officials and experts, obtaining a deep insight into the US society. We also got to know these Chinese senior officials during their stay. Xi Zhongxun was the head of the delegation who has taken really good care of other members. I have been in companion of many delegations, and sometimes the chiefs of them would only care about his or her own speeches regardless of other members opinions. However, Xi Zhongxun was different. He encouraged the members to voice their thinking. The deputy chief of the delegation was Song Ping, then member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of CPC Central Committee, and Secretary of the CPC Gansu Provincial Committee. Xi Zhongxuns speeches and answers were also sincere and properly arranged, especially the one delivered on the farewell dinner held by the governor of Hawaii State before they returned China. Q: Xi Zhongxuns son, the then Vice President of China Xi Jinping visited the US in 2012, and received an album recording his fathers US visit as a present from the president Stephen A. Orlins of the National Committee on US-China Relations. What was his reaction? A: There was no digital camera back in 1980, and the photos were shot with a small traditional camera. Orlins and I selected some representative pictures and made them into an album. First informing the protocol department about the present, we finally sent it to Xi Jinping on the welcome banquet held by the National Committee on US-China Relations. He was very pleased to see the album. Instead of extending thanks and handing it to retinues, he opened it and had a thorough look. Recognizing many people on the pictures, he leafed through almost the entire album. When he visited the US again in 2015 as the Chinese President, the National Committee on US-China Relations held a large welcome banquet in Seattle. On the banquet, Xi Jinping mentioned the album to Orlins. His wife Peng Liyuan said that he has placed the album on the tea table of the living room rather than a book shelf. Q: Xi Jinping is about to meet with his US counterpart Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago resort. Whats your opinion on the meeting? A: We are happy to see the meeting. The face-to-face dialogue is much more effective than other ways of communication like phone conversations. It will enhance mutual understanding between the two leaders as well as the in-depth exchange of views between the two sides, though the Trump administration hasnt formed a clear China policy at this moment. It could not be better if the two leaders could reach some consensus. I think the two leaders will have a discussion on the issues of common concern, such as the nuclear issue on Korean Peninsula and China-US trade, among others issues. It is already a positive sign for the two leaders to have a talk and work things out, regardless of whether consensus will be reached or not. QHow do you expect the China-US relations after the meeting? Will it develop toward a positive direction? A: The two presidents are both strong and influential leaders. I have been engaged in the promotion of China-US relations at the National Committee of US-China Relations for 46 years. I believe the development of bilateral relations between China and US is more than simply one or two high-level meetings, and the long-term common interest and people-to-people exchanges are the real power driving the ties between the two countries after the signing of the Shanghai Communique in 1972 and the establishment of China-US diplomatic ties in 1979. Over the past years, the two countries have witnessed prosperous academic, economic and trade exchanges, and their governments at all levels have signed numerous memorandums of understanding. We hope the bilateral relations will carry on the positive momentum during Trump administration. All in all, the relationship between the two countries is determined by people-to-people exchanges. Therefore, as long as the two leaders could have a good start, the solid foundation of public support for the China-US relationship will never be shaken even if no consensus is reached this time. QWhat role will the National Committee of US-China Relations play, if disagreements remain after the meeting? A: Since the establishment of the organization in 1966, the committee has been devoted to pushing forward China-US relations. Despite twists and turns and changing situations, the committee will continue to facilitate people-to-people connections, promote exchanges between different ideas in a bid to deepen mutual understanding and solve problems together. Dans la meme rubrique : < > China's Beidou reaches world-leading level: white paper Silk Road e-commerce promotes trade among Belt and Road countries Irrigation project in Jiangsu gets world heritage designation Pour toute information, contactez-nous au : +(235) 99267667 ; 62883277 ; 66267667 (Bureau N'Djamena) English News Stable Sino-US ties can aid Trump presidency Alwihda Info | Par peoplesdaily - 7 Avril 2017 If Trump wants to become a better president by stabilizing US-China relations, he is unlikely to send the tensions spiraling. It is believed that Beijing-Washington ties can stay healthy and stable thanks to the concerted effort of the two leaders. By Sun Xihui Source: Global Times, Peoples Daily Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet his US counterpart Donald Trump on Thursday and Friday. Given that the White House's policy toward the Asia-Pacific region has not yet taken shape, Sino-US relations are confronting a myriad of uncertainties. Therefore, the upcoming meeting will be of great strategic significance. Likewise, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's recent trip to China is also a critical step in the development of the bilateral ties between Beijing and Washington. He said Trump was willing to meet with his Chinese counterpart and visit China as soon as possible, and emphasized that Sino-US ties were built on "non-conflict, non-confrontation, mutual respect, and win-win solutions." Though Tillerson did not directly mention the "new type of major-power relations" in his public speeches, he approved of the phrase and used it to describe Sino-US ties over the past four decades. Tillerson's stance on such an important issue is unlikely a decision he made on his own. It represents that the Trump government has accepted the principle of a new type of major-power relations. Trump has showed a tough stance on China on many occasions. But the US needs China's involvement in handling a variety of international affairs, given the two countries' intensive economic interaction. The Trump administration expects to bargain with China by meeting some of Beijing's demands for more cooperation or compromise on the North Korean nuclear issue, the war on terror, trade deficit, currency exchange rate and investment in the US. Moreover, Trump attempts to create an image of a powerful president. During his campaign, he described himself as the most "presidential" candidate since Abraham Lincoln. In light of the importance of Sino-US ties, his government has recognized the new type of major-power relations and even proposed a 50-year development blueprint for the bilateral relations. This aims at adding bonus points to his presidency and helps him become the US president he projects himself to be. Trump also needs to properly tackle domestic issues. Known for taking the unpredictable route, he probably intends to gain more domestic support by accepting the new type of major-power relations with China in an "all but Obama" manner. Common sense has it that the Trump administration's diversion to a positive China policy will be conducive to the stability and development of China-US ties. Nonetheless, the reality will not be as sanguine as expected. If the White House has changed its attitude based on the mentality of "transactional policy," Beijing and Washington will hold negotiations on a wide spectrum of areas and some sensitive issues will inevitably be discussed. If the results do not meet the expectations of the US side, the Trump administration will probably use scathing words and draconian measures against China once again. Although the Trump administration may have accepted the new type of major-power relations, it is no more than a superficial gesture. When specific issues come up, the two countries will likely witness more rifts due to conflicting understandings of the connotation of the new type of major-power relations. Furthermore, some American scholars, media outlets and former government officials aired dissenting opinions immediately after Tillerson declared his "pro-China" stance. Bonnie Glaser, senior adviser for Asia and the director of the China Power Project at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Tillerson was dead wrong for endorsing China. Daily Kos, a political analysis weblog, questioned whether Tillerson knew clearly that he was making concession to China. Ely Ratner of the Council on Foreign Relations, who served as the deputy national security advisor to former US vice president Joe Biden from 2015 to 2017, said "terms like 'mutual respect' and 'non-confrontation' are code in Beijing for US accommodation of a Chinese sphere of influence in Asia." These comments are not necessarily the views of the Trump government but demonstrate that there is strong objection to China within the US, which will affect the US' public opinion and its strategic circle to some degree. If Trump wants to become a better president by stabilizing US-China relations, he is unlikely to send the tensions spiraling. It is believed that Beijing-Washington ties can stay healthy and stable thanks to the concerted effort of the two leaders. The author is associate professor with the National Institute of International Strategy at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Dans la meme rubrique : < > China's Beidou reaches world-leading level: white paper Silk Road e-commerce promotes trade among Belt and Road countries Irrigation project in Jiangsu gets world heritage designation Pour toute information, contactez-nous au : +(235) 99267667 ; 62883277 ; 66267667 (Bureau N'Djamena) The People's Republic of China and the US established diplomatic relations in 1979. They are both members of UN Security Council, G20, APEC and various other international groups and have agreed to work together on addressing their common interests such as the North Korean nuclear issue, the Syrian civil war, climate change and maintaining global economic stability. As President Xi Jinping visits the US this week, the Global Times reviews different aspects of the bilateral ties. Xi Jinping's quotes on the Sino-US relationship English News Vintage photos witness Sino-Finnish friendship Alwihda Info | Par peoplesdaily - 7 Avril 2017 President Xi, in a signed article entitled Our Enduring Friendship published on Finnish newspaper Helsinki Times ahead of his visit, pointed out that China and Finland share a friendly relationship passing the test of time and international changes. By Guan Kejiang from Peoples Daily A group of old photos on people-to-people exchanges between China and Finland were recently sent to Peoples Daily upon Chinese President Xi Jinpings Finnish visit, serving as the latest witness and evidence of traditional friendship between the two countries. President Xi, in a signed article entitled Our Enduring Friendship published on Finnish newspaper Helsinki Times ahead of his visit, pointed out that China and Finland share a friendly relationship passing the test of time and international changes. It sets an example for peaceful co-existence and friendly exchanges between two countries that are different in size, culture and development level, Xi noted. The photos were sent by Annika Heikinheimo, an official with Finland-China Friendship Association, one of the earliest friendship associations between China and a European country. It is also the oldest and most active one in Finland. The society was founded on June 15, 1951, only eight months after the establishment of diplomatic ties between the two countries, with an aim to promote cultural exchanges. The founders of the association were big names in Finland, such as composer Ahti Sonninen, author Helvi Hamalainen, politician V.J.Sukselainen, writer Urho Kekkonen and former first lady of Finland Sylvi Kekkonen. Heikinheimo noted that these photos were taken in 1953 when Finland's first large cultural delegation visited China. In these vintage photos, delegation members were visiting Chinese tourist spots, talking with Chinese friends, or inspecting a construction site in straw hats. The delegation, headed by Kekkonen, consisted of representatives from all walks of life including senators, actors, writers, poets and workers, who were received by then Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai as well. "Scholars studying the history of exchanges between China and Finland have all noticed that almost every Finnish delegation has been received by top Chinese leaders," Heikinheimo said, adding that it reflected the attention paid by Chinese leaders on the development of bilateral relations. "In the tight schedule, we visited Beijing, Hefei, Nanjing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Guangzhou and Wuhan in one and a half months and attended all kinds of exchange activities," she recalled. The official added that the members were astonished after learning that Lu Xun, a leading figure of modern Chinese literature, had translated the works of female Finnish author Minna Canth when visiting the Beijing Lu Xun Museum. Finland, after the delegation concluded their visit, designed a student exchange plan with China. The University of Helsinki opened a course of Chinese studies, and two delegation members wrote monographs about China after returning to homeland. In addition, the delegation delivered tens of speeches after returning to their country, introducing the achievements made by the new China. Actor and director Ritva Arvelo translated and directed the Chinese opera the White Haired Girl. A great number of Chinese movies, books and artworks spread in Finland. Meanwhile, more Finnish novels have also been translated into Chinese. In 1955, the first Sibelius concert was held in Shanghai. Heikinheimo also noted that the visit has not only brought China-Finland cultural exchange onto a new stage, but opened a new chapter in bilateral economic and trade relations. The two countries have inked inter-governmental trade and payment agreement, which is the first of its kind signed between China and a Western country. Both countries also intensified their exchanges since then. Back to 1956, the then Finnish Speaker of Parliament Vieno Sukselainen visited China with a parliament delegation at the invitation of the Chinese side, during which they met with Chairman Mao Zedong, Chairman of the NPC Standing Committee Liu Shaoqi and Premier Zhou Enlai. One photo also recorded the moment Mao and Liu walking out of the Great Hall of the People with the delegation. Finland held an art exhibition in the autumn of 1958 in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. It was the largest overseas art exhibition held by Finland. Finnish delegation members were impressed by China, describing the country as a happy nation. Artist Sven Gronvall once wrote in his diary after he arrived in China by train that "we must have reached China since I can feel the relaxed, happy, friendly, young, diligent and historic atmosphere." Heikinheimo said that her association never stopped its efforts to propel bilateral exchanges despite of changing international arena. Now the Spring Festival temple fair organized by the association has become a well-anticipated annual event for Finnish people, she said, adding that the 11th event was held in the downtown Helsinki last year. In addition, a cultural festival themed "Hello Helsinki" was held in Beijing in May, 2016. Heikinheimo spoke highly of the friendship between the two countries, saying they are close despite of the long distance. Pic: A group photo of the Finnish cultural delegation who visited China in 1953 taken in front of the Beijing Lu Xun Museum. (Photos: Courtesy of Finland-China Friendship Association) Dans la meme rubrique : < > China's Beidou reaches world-leading level: white paper Silk Road e-commerce promotes trade among Belt and Road countries Irrigation project in Jiangsu gets world heritage designation Pour toute information, contactez-nous au : +(235) 99267667 ; 62883277 ; 66267667 (Bureau N'Djamena) The Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Paul Ryan, talked tough on Iran last March 28, stating that the regime is a danger to the U.S., in need of non-nuclear sanctions, and calling for Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) to be listed by the U.S. as a foreign terrorist organization. Coming from such high-ranking U.S. office-holder, it points to the heart of the problem when it comes to Iran's regime: that it uses the IRGC and its armed Quds Force as a means to an end to export Islamic fundamentalism across the Middle East and beyond. Ryan explicitly suggested that IRGC be listed as a foreign terrorist organization to put a leash on mullahs relentless craving to devour the region. At the conference he spoke at, some believed and even entertained the idea that Iran will come around with the nuclear deal. Speaker Ryan pointed out that such deal did no good in reforming the Iranian regimes behavior, something the Obama administration tried so hard to sell. He said that the deal has been an unmitigated disaster and I dont say that lightly, he added. Ryan also warned that, Iran has stepped up its support for terrorism, increased its human rights abuses, and ramped up its ballistic missile program following the July 2015 agreement while also gaining additional funds as a result of sanctions relief. The statement from House Speaker coupled with that of U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, saying that Iran gained a lot from the nuclear deal and that is the reason why the world now faces a much more aggressive Iran. Irans behavior and expectations after the nuclear deal were "concerning, and the reason it's concerning is because when the Iran deal took place, all it did was empower Iran," she said: "And it emboldened Iran to feel like they could get away with more." Since the nuclear deal with Iran in the summer of 2015, the regime in Tehran changed gears, taking the money released to go full throttle in the business of making long range missiles and stepping up meddling in the region. There were primary targets: Iraq, Syria and Yemen, with an eye always on Lebanon. The Iranian regime is not stupid and knows full well that it has almost zero popular support at home and needs to place the nuclear program at least for now on the back burner. Since the 1979 revolution, the mullahs have always looked to expand beyond Irans borders and they consider it their right to export their brand of Islam to other countries. One of IRGCs mandates described in the constitution is to defend Islam wherever needed. IRGCs aggressive presence in Iraq and Syria and participation in the massacre of half a million people in Syria stems from that logic. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has said throughout the painstaking nuclear deal negotiations that he does not believe such talks bear any fruit. He only agreed to the deal at all because Iran was broke and the prospect of popular uprising was not only possible but inevitable. The Iranian economy had buckled under crushing sanctions. The Obama administration on the other hand misread the signals coming from Iran as signs that the mullahs were changing their behavior and ignored the growing evidence of chaos and terror, which is deeply enshrined in their ideology. Irans neighbors to the south are extremely concerned with Tehrans intentions. The regime showed its true colors in Syria by setting aside all claims of being true champions of Islam and unleashed Lebanese Hezbollah in addition to its Quds Force to terrorize and brutalize the innocent people of Syria. IRGC works overtime to stir violence and unrest among the Shiite population on the tiny island-state of Bahrain. In past few weeks, especially, the island's government has faced plot after plot, and all of them bankrolled by IRGC. A closer look at this makes it crystal clear that the mullahs insidious interest in the island is for a far more important reason: Bahrain is the home to the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, responsible for keeping sea lanes open through the Persian Gulf. On March 29, Arab League members strongly condemned Irans destabilizing role in the region and unanimously called for Irans containment.The Arab Leagues Ministerial Quartet Committee was tasked with following up the developments of the crisis with the Iranian regime, an dit denounced on March 27 the Iranian regimes continued intervention in the internal affairs of Arab countries. The U.S.'s seasoned top military official, Secretary of Defense General James Mattis, on March 31 in London confirmed his 2012 statement in which he had said that the three gravest threats to Americans national security were Iran, Iran, Iran. He also said: At the time when I spoke about Iran, I was a commander of U.S. Central Command and [saying] that (Iran) was the primary exporter of terrorism, frankly, it was the primary state sponsor of terrorism and it continues that kind of behavior today. U.S. CENTCOM commander Gen. Joseph Votel also agrees with Secretary Mattis. On March 29, he said: Iran poses the most significant threat to the central region and to our national interests and the interests of our partners and allies. Last year, in a hearing, General Votel told Congress that Iranian regime has become more aggressive in the days since the [Iran nuclear] agreement. What's coming up next are Iran's elections. Next month Khamenei must make a crucial decision which would leave unprecedented outcomes for the regime. It has always been true that mullahs in power engineer the electoral results. They pull out of ballot boxes the votes for their favored candidates behind the scenes and then announce them as winners for the Iranian presidential office. It is also true that for a right mind their actions are confusing and the myth of moderates verses hardliners in Iran - which pops up especially at election time - was shaped for the sole propose of selling a backward and fundamentalist regime to the rest of us as a unique model of Islamic Democracy. Don't think there aren't champions out there of this sort of fraudulent 'narrative.' Mohammad Javad Larijani, the head of the so-called Iranian Judiciary's Human Rights Council , and ironically, American-educated, often brags about Islamic democracy and complains about the West's lack of appreciation for the Islamic Republics values. His brand of democracy simply boils down to suppression at home and terror aboard. But the turning point for Iranian history may have arrived. The United States and rest of the world have the desire and ability to stand on the side of the Iranian people and their will for a democratic change; one that not only affects them, but their neighbors, and the entire region, if not the world. Something that the Congress and officials of the new administration in past few weeks seem to have agreed on is taking a tough and firm stance toward mullahs regime in Iran. Together, they are sending the message to the Iranian regime that actions have consequences. The new era has begun and the world would be a safer place without them. The first logical step in the right direction to stop Iran is slapping the IRGC right where it belongs: On the U.S. blacklist. Reza Shafiee is a member of Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) The group heard the animals before they actually saw them. But there in the darkened Night House, lounging in separate pens, the two newest additions to ZooMontana's menagerie of wildlife hissed and growled, staring up with glassy black eyes at the visitors. The two wolverines, Sid and Ahmari, are from Sweden and Norway, and will be the first wolverines ZooMontana has had since 2012. The group there on Thursday afternoon to see Sid and Ahmari were business leaders and special guests invited to see the new habitat and meet the new residents. The new enclosure will be open to the public within the next few weeks, early May by the latest, ZooMontana Director Jeff Ewelt said. The habitat was constructed through a $50,000 grant from Phillips 66. Businesses like Yellowstone Electric, Hardy Construction and others donated funds, labor and materials. Each sent representatives to attend the tour. Ewelt led the tour of the new habitat, which sits near the tiger enclosure, and includes a small cement pond, dozens of trees with slick, gray plastic wrapped around the trunks, and objects with which the wolverines can amuse themselves. Wolverines like to climb, hence the plastic-wrapped trees. And they like to dig. Ewelt said the habitat's fencing extends five feet underground. "Despite their small size, they're fierce animals," Ewelt said. They like to be active and they can be aggressive. Adding to the aggression, it's nearly mating season for the two. But Sid and Ahmari won't be allowed to get intimate until 2019, Ewelt said. And so they'll have to stay separated until August, when mating season ends. It was the pair's breeding habits that brought them to ZooMontana. In the next couple of years, they'll be participating in a special breeding program used to bolster wolverine numbers at zoos worldwide. ZooMontana was one of six in the country selected to participate, and Ewelt sees it as a big honor for the zoo and a vote of confidence in the new habitat they've built. But more than anything, he's excited to have wolverines back at the zoo. They're secretive, nocturnal animals, notorious for rarely being spied in the wild. At ZooMontana, folks can get a good look, he said. "It's a fun animal to see." President Donald Trump has been accused of many dire acts and devious intentions. The latest, and one of the most absurd, comes from Hassan Nasrallah, the head of the terrorist Hizballah organization, in a television interview in his bunker in Beirut on February 16, 2017. As if to give credence to the remark of the famous Jonathan Swift that if a lie is believed for only for an hour, it has done its work and there is no further occasion for it, Nasrallah claimed that Trump was responsible for giving Israels Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the green light to wage a war on Lebanon. Trump of course bears no responsibility for this flight of fantasy, but it is an indication of the increasing brazenness and self-assurance of Nasrallah and his organization Hizballah. It is telling that symbolically, the television address marked the anniversary of the death of the master Hizballah terrorist and head of security, Imad Mughniyeh, assassinated, probably by his own group, in Damascus on February 12, 2008. At one point, Mughniyeh held the record of having killed more Americans than any other terrorist. His record was eclipsed by Mustafa Badreddine, also assassinated by internal rivals in Hizballah on May 13, 2016 in Damascus, and who was behind the bombing of the U.S. Marine Corps Barracks in Lebanon in 1983 that killed 241 marines. Nasrallah is not one of the worlds leading experts on the nature of Jews or on the nature of Israel. Rather he is the messenger of anti-Semitism. He informed the world that throughout history the Jews have been Allahs most cowardly and avaricious creatures. you will find no one more cowardly, weak in psyche, mind and religion, miserly or greedy than they are. It comes as no surprise that he is a Holocaust denier: he believes Jews invented the legend of the Nazi atrocities. Not surprisingly, he sees Israel as the state of the grandsons of apes and pigs the Zionist Jews. Israel is and will be an illegal state Israel is a cancer that must be eradicated. Hizballah (the Party of Allah) emerged in the 1980s. Palestinians terrorists using Lebanese territory had attacked Israel, which responded by invading their bases in Lebanon in 1982. One of the consequences was the creation of this radical Shia group, led by clerics, and part of Irans Revolutionary Guard Corps, aiming at an Islamic government in the Arab world, the liberation of Jerusalem, and the elimination of Israel. Terror would be used to attain political objectives. Though Hizballah is regarded as a terrorist organization by a number of countries, including the U.S., France, the Arab League, and Gulf States; others including the UK, Russia, and the EU are hesitant and regard only the military wing of Hizballah, Islamic Resistance, as terrorist. The Lebanon war began in 2006 after the Hizballah attack on an Israeli border patrol that killed three soldiers and kidnapped two IDF soldiers. This sparked the second war as Israel reacted immediately to the kidnapping. During the war Hizballah fired more than 4,000 rockets into Israel. Although Israel hoped to crush Hizballah it did not deliver the crushing blow it wanted. This was made plain in the very critical Winograd Commission report submitted on January 30, 2008 to the then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and to the minister of defense, Ehud Barak. The report questioned Israels military superiority and concluded that the Lebanon campaign of 2006 had ended without a clear military victory for Israel. The report was severely critical of the failings and shortcomings in Israeli decision-making, both political and military. Hizballah had resisted the much larger Israeli force that had air superiority. The war ended with UN Security Council Resolution 1701 of August 11, 2006. The resolution called for full cessation of hostilities, for Israel to withdraw its forces from Lebanon in parallel with withdrawal of Hizballah and UNFIL soldiers in South Lebanon, and with some provisions for a long-term solution. It stressed the importance of full control of Lebanon by the government of Lebanon, and not by other forces, and the territorial integrity, sovereignty, and political independence of Lebanon within its internationally recognized borders. It also called for addressing the unconditional release of the abducted Israeli soldiers. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on March 10, 2017 in a periodic report on the implementation of the UN Resolution objected to the belligerent statements of Nasrallah against Israel which increased the risk of tension and could lead to renewed war. Guterres rejected the argument that Hizballah threats are justified as a need for deterrence. This rhetorical threat of the use of force destabilizes the relative calm and stability in the region. Part of the Guterres report was an appeal to the Lebanese President Michel Aoun to obtain agreement among Lebanese political parties to remove weaponry from Hizballah and other armed groups. It made clear that the retention of arms by Hizballah and other groups undermines the states authority. Already, UN Security Council Resolution 1559 of September 2, 2004 called on foreign forces, Israel and Syria, to withdraw from Lebanon, and for all militias, that is Hizballah, to disband. Guterress plea regarding Resolution 1701 is unlikely to be implemented since Aoun, a Maronite Christian and former general, elected president in October 2016, signed a memorandum of understanding in 2006 between his Free Patriotic Movement and Hizballah, which backed him for president. According to the Lebanon constitution the president must be a Maronite. Most importantly, the Guterres report condemned the threats launched by the Hizballah leader against Israel on February 16, 2017 to strike Israels Dimona nuclear reactor which is for Hizballah a military target. In any case, Nasrallah called for Israel to dismantle it. Nasrallah also called on Israel to remove the large ammonia tank from Haifa Bay and boasted of his success in the events regarding it when on March 30, 2017 a Haifa district court ordered the Haifa Chemicals Ltd firm to close it. Israeli environmental groups had for some time pointed out the danger of the large ammonia tank, a weapon of highly toxic gas when exposed to the open air and thus with enormous destructive potential. Nevertheless. Nasrallah claimed credit for the courts decision saying it showed the strength of Hizballah. Indeed, that strength has been increasing. Hizballah has increased its military arsenal. It now has more than 150,000 missiles, longer range and guided missiles, capable of hitting Israel. Most of its weapons come from Iran which has trained its militants and gave religious instruction to them. Hizballah essentially remained a guerilla force until the Syrian civil war, but has become more active in its support of Assad, and collaboration with Iran in defense of Shiites. Hizballah, fighting in Syria may have devised the battle plan for Aleppo, and changed the civil war in favor of President Assad. Hizballah threatens to invade Galilee, liberate Palestine, along with the Golan Heights, to harass Israeli civilians living near the border with Lebanon, and is forcing the IDF to build defensive tunnels on the northern border. It should not be forgotten that Hizballah also runs a prosperous business enterprise based on drugs. On 2011, the U.S. government seized the drug profits linked to Ayman Jouma, drug trafficker linked to Hizballah. In April 2013, the U.S. took action against Hizballah as a drug cartel and in 2016 a number of its members were arrested for working with a South American drug cartel. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration(DEA) in 2017 announced it had uncovered major international criminal activity by Hizballah using funds from drug trafficking operations, especially from cartels in South America to buy weapons and fund its other activities. As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump confessed has he did not know the names of some terrorist leaders, such as Nasrallah. As president, he does know them and one expects he will take appropriate action to deal with the Hizballah leader who once called him an idiot. Ronald Reagan must be grimacing in heaven as he witnesses America fund the very forces in Europe he labored to defeat. In Macedonia, a beacon of conservatism in a heavily liberal Europe, U.S. taxpayer dollars are bankrolling a multitude of George Soros chaos-creating leftist organizations to oppose and ultimately defeat the pro-American, center-right government there, known by the acronym VMRO-DPMNE (pronounced VOOM-row). We have Barack Obama and his ambassadorial minion, Jess Baily, to thank for this turn of events. We should pay careful attention to Soross activities in Macedonia, for they serve as a useful case study in the methods he uses to sow discord throughout the world, including in the United States. Through a U.S. Agency for International Development program called the Civil Society Project, the U.S. government funneled nearly $5 million to Soros-backed groups in Macedonia between 2012 and 2016. Just prior to the U.S. presidential election in 2016, the CSP program in Macedonia was extended from 2017 to 2021 and its funding increased to $9.5 million. A little recent history on Macedonia reveals how remarkable is the shift in direction that has occurred in the diminutive country during the Obama years. Macedonia had been part of the formerly Communist Yugoslavia. Following the Reagan-promoted dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, its ally, Yugoslavia, completely unraveled. In its wake, Macedonia, Yugoslavias southernmost republic, achieved peaceful independence. About a quarter of Macedonias population consists of Albanian Muslims. Two-thirds of its people are ethnic Macedonians, mostly of Orthodox Christian Slavic background, and about 10 percent are of smaller communities. Although not impacted by the Balkan conflict of the early 1990s, Macedonia was affected by the Kosovo War of 1999, with over 350,000 Albanian Muslims seeking refuge in Macedonia. With the urging of Albanians in Albania and Kosovo, the Albanian Muslim community in Macedonia launched an armed insurgency in 2001, attacking the Macedonian police and army, thus enflaming ethnic strife in the country. During the conflict, many Macedonian churches were destroyed or damaged by the Albanian insurgents. NATO intervened, however, and brought a peaceful resolution to the conflict, convincing the Albanians to disarm and cease their efforts to break away. Under its conservative government, since gaining independence Macedonia has done remarkably well in throwing off the yoke of socialism, pursuing market-oriented reforms, and creating a modern, pluralistic democracy. The World Bank ranks Macedonia 10th in the world for doing business. Individual and corporate taxes in Macedonia are a flat 10 percent. Total public debt runs 38.6 percent of GDP. Compare that to the United States, with total public debt running 105.8 percent of GDP, individual tax rates as high as 39.6 percent and a corporate rate of 35 percent. Macedonia has also enjoyed a steady, relatively strong GDP growth rate averaging 3.26 percent between 2004-2016. Macedonias government has also been closely aligned with traditional U.S. interests. It is a close friend of Israel. Unlike most other countries of Old Europe, it recognized the dangers of unfettered Middle East/North African immigration during the 2016 refugee surge, and built a fence along its southern border. It sent troops to serve alongside U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Macedonias capital, Skopje, even has a street named after Ronald Reagan and airs pro-life public service television ads. Macedonia accomplished much of its steady growth and transformation into a free-market, business-friendly, pro-Western country through nonideological U.S. assistance channeled through USAID, which sent Macedonia anywhere between $11 million to $63 million per year since 2001, according to USAID data. That is, it was nonideological until George Soros and Barack Obama entered the picture. Beginning in 2012, that financial support turned very ideological. The Obama administration began funneling U.S. aid that year to numerous George Soros-created Macedonian entities whose mothership was something called Foundation Open Society -- Macedonia. The FOSM-affiliated subentities receiving U.S. tax dollars through USAIDs Civil Society Project are also closely tied to the main opposition political party in Macedonia, the countrys former Communists, now called SDSM. They have innocuous-sounding names, like Youth Educational Forum, Center for Civic Communication, and Reactor-Research in Action. Yet beginning in 2015, these organizations methods of operation were anything but innocuous: protests by masked youths, rock-throwing at police officers, smashing windows of buildings, burning down government offices and other destruction of public property. Protesters proudly wear Soros Army t-shirts. They have translated Saul Alinskys Rules for Radicals into Macedonian. The leader of this so-called Colorful Revolution, Pavle Bogoevski, a prominent LGBT activist, is a member of the NGO Forum, which is funded by both Soros and USAID. He was elected a member of parliament on the SDSM party ticket, illustrating the ties between the leftist opposition party and the Soros/USAID-backed groups. If the tactics of protest and mayhem above sound familiar, they should. Following the massive destruction inflicted on Baltimore by Black Lives Matter in 2015 associated with the death of Freddy Gray, Soross organization, Open Society Institute, donated $650,000 to BLM. And Soross organizing mass demonstrations to oppose a conservative government is also something weve seen close to home. According to no less an authority than the New York Times, Soros funded 50 partner organizations to protest the election of Donald Trump in the Womens March on Washington. Other countries in which Soros is funding massive, often violent, leftist turmoil against right-leaning governments include Albania, Israel, and Hungary. Soross organizations in Macedonia, numbering perhaps as high as 61, are working now to align the forces of leftist mayhem with the historically volatile Albanian Muslim community of Macedonia, to wage a combined frontal assault on the conservative government. According to an American Spectator report, whose author consulted U.S. and Macedonian-based conservative analysts, Our [American] foreign policy has destabilized the country and promoted Islamic extremism. In a conversation with me, senior Macedonian officials advised that the entire contingent of personnel at the U.S. mission in Skopje, from the ambassador on down, are hardcore leftists in the mold of Obama/Soros and are hell-bent on bringing down Macedonias conservative government. To their credit, various outstanding members of Congress are investigating the U.S. aid going to these organizations. As the congressmen detail in a letter to the Government Accountability Office, the U.S. Mission to Macedonia has actively intervened in the party politics of Macedonia. Such partisan activities by U.S. officials violate the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (1961), which imposes on U.S. diplomats a duty not to interfere in the internal affairs of foreign countries. Judicial Watch has also launched an intensive investigation into the matter. In the meantime, the Trump administration should recall Ambassador Baily. It should institute a wholesale housecleaning of the U.S. mission in Skopje and stop funding the organizations of the proud, admitted former Nazi collaborator, George Soros. Lets return the smile to Ronald Reagans face and help Macedonia continue its recovery from its Communist nightmare. William F. Marshall has been an intelligence analyst and investigator in the government, private and non-profit sectors for over 30 years. Presently he is a Senior Investigator for Judicial Watch, Inc. (The views expressed are the authors alone, and not necessarily those of Judicial Watch.) The pernicious lie that President Trumps claim he was wiretapped by President Obama is baseless is being regurgitated in the mainstream media virtually nonstop in the 24/7 news cycle. These people are so desperate to hang Trump that they embraced the ridiculous piss-gate dossier promoted by political hack Ben Smith's cat-video website Buzzfeed. At the same time as we are assured by Never Trumpers that Trump is making things up, the so-called evidence of Team Trumps allegedly nefarious connections and collusion with the Russian government to subvert the American electoral process is treated as Holy Writ. The Left and the mainstream media but I repeat myself gravitate to the evidence that hurts Trump, ignoring the rest. It's that simple. And there is an impressive evidentiary double-standard at work in the weighing of evidence, much of which apparently has been politicized. But as far as I can tell, nobody has clearly pointed out the seeming arbitrariness in the media taking the word of one group of spies over the other. We know that the evidence supporting both the anti-Trump and pro-Trump claims reportedly comes from unnamed sources within the same U.S intelligence community (IC). If anyone with direct personal knowledge of evidence backing either claim has gone on the record, Ive missed it (and I spend all day long on the Internet). Why should we believe one set of anonymous IC sources over another? We dont know who these people are on either side -- and what axes they may have to grind. And we shouldnt blindly trust these intel people, either. There may be plenty who are honest and honorable, but there are plenty who arent. (See McMullin, Evan, and Rice, Susan.) At this point at least, were in no position to assess the evidence. All we have so far is one set of faceless spooks anonymously providing evidence that contradicts what the other spook cohort reportedly said. Weve just come out of the roughest, nastiest presidential transition in my lifetime, made so by Barack Obama, the most despotic, overreaching president since the great proto-fascist Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat like Obama. While Obama smiled for the television cameras and pretended to be cooperating with the Trump people, behind the scenes he worked zealously to lay minefields to safeguard his destructive, anti-American legacy. There is no parallel in American history for the Obama administrations not-so-metaphorical war against the incoming Trump administration. Obama has even taken the extremely unusual step of staying behind in the nations capital to vex and harass his successor. He has rented an Embassy Row mansion not far from the White House, built a wall around it to keep prying eyes away, and arranged for his senior White House advisor, Valerie Jarrett, to live there. He is also using his well-funded nonprofit, Organizing for Action, to do his dirty work. Obamas strategy is working. The constant drumbeat about Russian meddling has helped to keep Trumps approval numbers low enough that he cant get his agenda through Congress. But lets go over how we got here. President Trump published a series of tweets on his @realDonaldTrump account March 4, 2017. At 6:35 a.m. he wrote, Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my wires tapped in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism! At 6:49 a.m. he 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 tweeted again at 6:52 a.m., writing, 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! At 7:02 a.m. he added, How low has President Obama gone to tapp [sic] my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy! Here Trump was referring to two instances last year when the FBI applied to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for warrants related to his activities. The June application to monitor communications between Trump and some of his advisers was refused, something that almost never happens. According to a Heat Street article citing anonymous sources, in October, a second, narrower application for a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant was granted after evidence was presented of a server, possibly related to the Trump campaign, and its alleged links to two banks; SVB Bank and Russias Alfa Bank. The server was reportedly located in the Trump Tower in Manhattan but other reports suggested it was located in Philadelphia. The granting of the warrant was also reported independently by BBC News on Jan. 12 in an article citing anonymous sources. On Jan. 19, the New York Times published an article online with the headline, Intercepted Russian Communications Part of Inquiry Into Trump Associates. The item, which examines the wiretapping of the Trump team, relies on anonymous sources. American law enforcement and intelligence agencies are examining intercepted communications and financial transactions as part of a broad investigation into possible links between Russian officials and associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump, including his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, current and former senior American officials said. A note at the bottom of the web page states, "A version of this article appears in print on January 20, 2017, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Wiretapped Data Used in Inquiry of Trump Aides. (Note the Old Gray Ladys use of the word Wiretapped.) So there is evidence out there in media outlets that left-wingers accept as credible that supports Trumps wiretapping allegation against Obama. Whether that evidence is trustworthy or relevant will be decided at some point in the future but it does exist regardless of the increasingly strident posturing of Fox News Channels worst anchor, Shepard Smith. Some hairsplitting left-wingers pillory Trump for tweeting that President Obama, as opposed to the FBI, wiretapped him. This is semantic goalpost-shifting. Although the FBI enjoys great independence from the White House, it remains part of the Department of Justice in the administration of the sitting president. And in colloquial American speech, that is, expression outside of legal documents and formal writing, people commonly attribute actions by federal employees to their ultimate overseer, the president of the United States of America. George H.W. Bush is commonly said to have raised Americans taxes in 1990, even though all he did in the legislative process apart from being a RINO coward and betraying his political base was minimal as he signed into law a bill that the peoples representatives in the House and Senate had sent him. So according to this longstanding linguistic convention, because Barack Obama was president when the FBI sought the warrants against the Trump people, Barack Obama sought the wiretapping warrants, just as Donald Trump tweeted. Some of the other intellectuals on the Left even attack Trump for supposedly using the verb wiretap incorrectly. David Jackson of USA Today accuses Trump in a March 16 piece of trying to alter the meaning of the term wiretap. He adds, [f]or days, Trump aides have tried to shift the term wiretapping to surveillance. If true, Trump aides under pressure from the media have been wasting their time. Their boss got it right the first time, using the verb correctly on Twitter. This is confirmed by the authoritative textbook, Introduction to Computer Security, by Matt Bishop, a professor of computer science at the University of California at Davis. Wiretapping, or passive wiretapping, is a form of snooping in which a network is monitored. (It is called wiretapping because of the wires that compose the network, although the term is used even if no physical wiring is involved.) There is the apparent admission of the existence of an Obama-era IC conspiracy by Dr. Evelyn N. Farkas to MSNBCs Mika Brzezinski on March 27. Farkas left her post as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia/Ukraine/Eurasia in 2015 and went on to serve as a foreign policy advisor to Hillary Clintons 2016 presidential campaign. Then theres the March 16 allegation by Fox News contributor Andrew Napolitano who, citing unnamed sources, claimed President Obama may have used British intelligence to spy on Trump. Sources have told me 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 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. Although Napolitano, who was briefly suspended by Fox News management for this statement, has been ridiculed for this claim, it isnt as far-fetched as it may initially seem. As my intrepid Capital Research Center colleague, Dr. Steven J. Allen, informed me, the United States and United Kingdom are parties to a multilateral intelligence cooperation pact. This five-way intelligence alliance among the U.S., United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada is called Five Eyes (FVEY). It obligates the countries to work together in the area of signals intelligence (SIGINT). SIGINT is the gathering of intelligence related to communications between individuals (COMINT) and or from electronic signals not directly used in communication (ELINT). Her Majestys Government has allowed the U.S. to spy on Britons. The Independent reported in 2013 that former British Prime Minister Tony Blairs government gave America permission to store and analyse the email, mobile phone and internet records of potentially millions of innocent Britons and that there is no evidence that the practice has been discontinued. The report added, US intelligence uses a practice called contact chaining gathering data not just on surveillance target, but that of their friends and their friends, too. So if Napolitanos sources are correct, British spymasters may very well have had no good reason to turn down a request from Obama or his subordinates to spy on Trumps people This is not an exhaustive compilation of evidence that bolsters Trumps claim. But it is enough to show that the president isnt making a baseless accusation against his predecessor. Matthew Vadum is senior vice president at Capital Research Center, a think-tank in Washington, D.C., and editor-in-chief of its new Bombthrowers blog. He is also an investigative reporter and author of the ACORN/Obama expose Subversion Inc.: How Obama's ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers. Follow him on Twitter. E-mail him at matthewvadum [at] gmail.com. The world now knows that when it comes to America, it is dealing no longer with an indecisive community organizer, but with a proved business leader who will not dither when bad guys act badly whither. Our new president just put those bad guys in Syria, North Korea, and Iran on notice that they are definitely screwing around with a different brand of cat from that puss in shorts who played games with little white balls while the real world turned and too frequently burned. To say that Donald Trump hammered home his message is a bit inadequate when one considers the hammering of several dozen cruise missiles upon the very site from which the Syrian government stores and launches (in crude fashion) the chemical weapons it uses upon its own populace. Bashar Assad thought he was dealing with a new American president beset with many domestic problems, and likely Bashar felt he could test the limits of chemical warfare without too much fear of serious blowback. But blowback he got, in the form of several thousand pounds of high explosives directed at his means of inflicting chemical attacks on his own people. This writing is an early response, so I have no idea as to the extent of damage inflicted on the targeted airbase, but that is immaterial. What matters is that President Donald Trump reminded the world that America is once again a geopolitical force to be factored into all military planning and all political treachery, especially within the hotbed of religious and political upheaval that is the current Middle East. What is particularly courageous in Trump's action is his willingness to accept the risk of Russian casualties from the missile attacks and the consequences that could devolve from that hazardous probability. Yet he was not deterred by that possibility, as was his pusillanimous predecessor, whose skill set was geared more to drawing meaningless red lines than actually being a world leader. The libs will no doubt scream that this was a reckless endangerment of our place in the world. Let them scream; let them whimper; let them finally collapse in tears when they see the rest of the world respond positively to an actual American leader, a true world leader, who has that singular quality to lead that their guy was lacking in spades: balls. Theres a new sheriff in town. On Wednesday, members of Congress jammed out with some of the big hitters of music at the annual "Grammys on the Hill Awards and Advocacy Day," a highly political event sponsored by the major record labels that touts legislatures who carry the ball for Big Music's special interest priorities. Yesterday, many of these musical figureheads took it a step farther by participating in a massive lobbying effort to convince Congress to help boost the bottom line for corporate music. In January, the MusicFirst Coalition, a front group for the three largest record labels that control about 80 percent of the songs on our playlists, got the ball rolling on this lobbying campaign by penning an open letter to Congress, where the group asked for a new royalty tax to be imposed on local radio stations. MusicFirst had the audacity to refer to its proposal as being founded on "market-based principles [that] drive compensation for all artists and creators." This couldn't be farther from the truth. Since the creation of the radio, the market has operated on a "you scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours" system. The local community radio stations give Big Music free advertising time by playing the songs they represent on air a highly valuable "give," given that local radio stations reach hundreds of millions of listeners each week. In exchange, the local stations get to play their songs on air without being subjected to a per-play tax. This setup was put in place nearly a century ago because it was the commonsense thing to do. Since the promotional value of radio airplay is what makes our breaks the commercial success of an artist, nearly all labels would undoubtedly pay for the ability to receive airplay. Doing so is prohibited by law, so, instead, the publishers and stations worked out a system where they exchange free publicity for free airplay. MusicFirst disputes the promotional value, claiming that "long-gone are the days when radio helps 'discover' performers." This incredible claim is debunked even by the group's own actions. The sponsors of MusicFirst invest tens of millions of dollars annually to promote music from radio airplay. In fact, even Keith Urban, this year's honoree at Grammys on the Hill, said recently that his fans hear most of his music on local radio. MusicFirst claims that even with the promotional value of radio, "in any other market-based arrangement they [local radio stations] would have to compensate the owner of that music at market rate." But the reality is that under any other market-based arrangement, corporate music would also have to pay billions upon billions for radio advertising to have its product promoted. The so-called "market rate" MusicFirst is asking for is not actually a market rate, either; it's a fixed price set by a government rate-setting board. Although claiming to seek compensation based on market-based principles, MusicFirst is in reality seeking a government-backed subsidy at the expense of local radio stations. In recent years, the music industry has brought in record revenues from music royalties without the added fees they are requesting from Congress. There is no excuse for them to even be suggesting that they should have their cake and eat it, too. This lobbying campaign is not new. Congress has already previously rejected MusicFirst's campaign efforts on the premise that radio promotion is a key driver of corporate music's revenue. Yet the music publishers are still seeking to have Congress enact a bill called the Songwriter Equity Act, legislation that would greatly inflate fees on any business that plays popular music, including restaurants, bars, and mom-and-pop stores. It's no coincidence that the largest music publishers and record labels are joining forces to have other industries bail out their businesses. The three largest music publishers are also owned by the very same corporate parents as the three major record labels. Congress has many priorities to tackle, including repealing and replacing Obamacare, reforming our overly complex and jobs-killing tax code, and enacting economic policies that will promote economic prosperity. The body should have far higher priorities on which to spend its time than subsidizing corporate music. Edward Woodson is a lawyer and host of the nationally syndicated Edward Woodson Show. Yesterday, I was running around on business and made a quick stop at the friendly fast-food place. Well, I got my Big Meal and sat down to watch a little CNN on the big screen. For the record, I was the only one on the crowded floor who was even paying attention to it. I looked around, and most people were talking or doing something else. My unscientific survey revealed that no one cared what was on the TV! So what did I learn from having a little CNN for lunch? First, they really hate Bill O'Reilly. I don't recall ever seeing anything like this before on any other network. They did a whole segment on what a terrible man O'Reilly is. It even included a message from the one and only Congresswoman Maxine Waters: she wants to put Bill in jail! I guess we will do that after impeaching Trump, or something like that. Speaking of O'Reilly, the "experts" were shocked to hear that President Trump said something nice about him. For the record, I like O'Reilly, and it appears that I am not alone. His numbers are still strong, a confirmation that people are still interested in the good work he does. Obviously, I'd be concerned if there was a pattern of sexual harassment, but O'Reilly should explain himself before we assume it's all true. It's amazing to watch a news network spend so much time talking about the guy on the other channel. We used to see that all the time on MSNBC, but I expected a little more common sense from CNN. On the other hand, maybe CNN is MSNBC with three letters! The other segment was all about Syria and President Trump. Most of this segment was spent demonstrating how then-private citizen Trump had encouraged President Obama to do nothing in Syria. I guess the point was to show that President Trump is a bad person for now blaming the situation on President Obama's infamous red line. Furthermore, they kept wondering if it is presidential to blame the predecessor. Do you recall any of that when the Obama administration blamed Bush for everything under the sun? I don't! My friend William Katz has been posting about the decline of CNN. We've discussed it many times. Yesterday, I had a chance to see it for myself. As I left the place, I reminded the manager that the Rangers replay their games at this time, and more people would appreciate watching that. I hope he will oblige for my next visit! CNN is indeed unwatchable! P.S. You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter. The candidacy of a cleric well known for his role in the atrocious crimes by the regime ruling Iran over the past three decades was announced. Ebrahim Raisi, currently head of the massive Astan Quds Razavi entity in control of a sacred Shiite Muslim shrine, will be running for president in the May 19 polls. While there are claims that this new development will unify the faction opposing the incumbent, President Hassan Rouhani, it is important to shed some light on Raisi's past to understand how, very similarly to Rouhani himself, this new candidate has played a major role in the mullahs' crimes. One can also conclude that this is a prerequisite for any candidate taking part in any so-called election read: selection held by the regime in Iran, thus rendering no change at all. Raisi's announcement on Thursday, as reported by the semi-official Tasnim news agency, comes a day after two other members of the "hardliners" faction, former firebrand president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Tehran mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, opted out. Analysts are voicing a variety of opinions over the fact that Raisi will tighten the race and make the stretch more difficult for Rouhani, and portraying a broader image of Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei, ill with prostate cancer, who is grooming Raisi to succeed him, using the presidency as a springboard. Born in 1960, Raisi was involved in the regime's judiciary since early after Iran's 1979 revolution. In 1988, as Tehran's deputy prosecutor, Raisi was a member of the four-man team known as the "Death Commission," appointed by Iranian regime founder Ruhollah Khomeini, to massacre all political prisoners in Iran's prisons who maintained their opposition. Over 30,000 political prisoners, mostly members and supporters of the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), were sent to the gallows in a span of mere months. Last summer, a sound file surfaced, dating back to 1988 and around 20 days after the massacre began, of Khomeini's successor, Hossein Ali Montazeri, meeting with Death Commission members, including Raisi, and describing the massacre as the most horrifying crime carried out by the Iranian regime. Subsequent reports showed how Raisi played an active role and was known as the most ruthless Death Commission member. Khamenei promoted Raisi in 1989 to deputy chair of the Assembly of Experts, the body in charge of selecting the next supreme leader. Raisi continued to climb up the regime's ranks in the judiciary, continuing his crimes against the Iranian people. Khamenei also trusted Raisi to lead the Astan Quds Razavi, a foundation reported to be "one of the most important political and financial conglomerates of the clerical regime controlling massive assets and capital." However, as mentioned before, this presidential election in Iran is not between two starkly different candidates. Rouhani has also played his role in the regime's atrocities, proving despite his claims of being a "reformist" that all of the Iranian regime's establishment enjoy reports full of repressive measures and crimes against the Iranian people. Rouhani has since the 1979 revolution enjoyed a close relationship with the ultraconservative and ruthless Khomeini; acted as former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani's right-hand man as he commanded Iran's forces during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, sending millions of innocent Iranians, including juveniles, into the battlefields; was actively involved in the crackdown of the 1999 student uprising as secretariat of the Supreme National Security Council; and presided over 3,000 executions under his tenure during the past four years. In 2013, atheist blogger Rebecca Watson complained about her experience at an atheist convention. Specifically, she complained that after a night of drinking, a male convention-goer invited her back to his hotel room. "Don't take this the wrong way, but I find you very interesting. Would you like to come back to my hotel room for coffee?" the anonymous male convention-goer asked Ms. Watson, after a night of drinking. While many atheists dismissed the incident as trivial, feminists rushed to defend Rebecca Watson's honor. Whatever his intentions, they argued, inviting a woman you just met back to your hotel room is inappropriate. Given this, it was odd to see self-described feminists excoriating Mike Pence for his marital practices. How could someone who sympathizes with Rebecca Watson's acute discomfort not sympathize with Mike Pence's marital practices? In 2002, Mike Pence told The Hill he doesn't dine alone with any woman other than his wife, and that he doesn't go to parties where alcohol is served without his wife. Sounds sensible, as feminists are always complaining about unwanted sexual advances in mixed-gender settings. Would it not therefore be reasonable for a married man to take some precautions? I underestimated the narrowness of contemporary feminism. Where bawdy humor and unwanted sexual advances discourage women from participating in a particular activity, feminists demand that no expense be spared in remedying the situation. At the same time, feminists have no respect for a married man's desire to protect his marriage. Feminists are perfectly consistent; they care a great deal about gender equality but are indifferent to marriage. Married people have legitimate reasons to avoid intimate situations with members of the opposite sex, reasons that go well beyond avoiding temptation. They might not want to arouse the jealousy of their spouses, or perhaps they worry about the impression it will give others. It's fair for feminists to ask what impact Pence's marital practices have on female employees. However, they shouldn't ignore the legitimate concerns that motivate those practices; it isn't sexist to protect your marriage. The problem is not that feminists care about gender equality; the problem is that they don't care about anything else. We have reached a point in our nation's history where we have put far too much power in, trust in, and dependence on government. Shortly after the nation was founded, government began to encroach on our freedom, making us more reliant on the federal government for our daily needs. In recent decades, that government creep has accelerated exponentially, to the point where every single thing in our lives has some form of regulation touching it. The more government intrudes through regulation, the fewer rights we have as individuals. Recently, being an individual has been characterized by the following labels: radical, selfish, greedy, racist, unpatriotic, ignorant, narrow-minded, and egotistic. As is often the case, the irony lies in the fact that the name-callers are usually found to be the ones with the above characteristics. These labels are often used by members of Congress, widening the divide within the country. Let's be honest: congressmen don't care about America, and they certainly don't care about you and me, the individuals. Their every thought revolves around maintaining power and getting re-elected. This was evident last week when the speaker of the House withdrew the bill he'd created to theoretically fix Obamacare. Under the Obama administration, Congress knew that the president would veto a repeal of his signature law, so they had no problem passing repeal legislation. They could easily say they were doing the will of the people, voting for repeal, and blame the president when he vetoed the repeal. Now it's a different story. Whatever repeal bill the Republican-dominated Congress passes is likely to be signed into law by our current administration. President Trump and the Congress that passes a repeal bill will be held accountable if the new program is a disaster, and the last thing anyone in Congress wants is to be held accountable for his actions. To further illustrate that Congress cares only about its own situation and not the individuals it represents is the speed or should I say lack thereof it takes to get anything done. How long have Trump nominees been languishing in committee, awaiting confirmation? If our representatives truly cared about accomplishing anything, they would get the president's Cabinet in order and move on to the next issue. Instead, they create a media circus, spending time and money on the process rather than the goal, ensuring they get their five minutes of national notoriety. They're mistaking activity for productivity in the private sector, this would be a career-ender. Watching the circus out of our nation's capital reinforces the idea that the individuals must refuse to hand over our independence to lawmakers. America was founded in the spirit of individuality and self-reliance. Understand, I'm not talking about going Grizzly Adams and going off the grid what I'm advocating is that you find ways to solve your own problems while still working within the parameters of the law and regulations. Independence and self-reliance aren't just about putting aside food and silver for a crisis. Rather, the key to independence is knowledge. Not information knowledge. Because of the internet, people mistake information for knowledge, due to the immediate access it gives us to information. Others go one step farther and mistake knowledge for wisdom. Wisdom and good judgment come from experience, and experience comes from previous poor judgment. To stand firm as an individual, one needs to gain knowledge and apply it to develop wisdom. Wisdom is crucial to maintaining your power as an individual, separate and independent from a government that could not care less about you. Gary L. Rathbun is the host of An Economy of One, syndicated nationally by Radio America. Contact him at Gary@aneconomyofone.com. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has reversed himself from previous statements hinting that Syrian president Bashar Assad would be able to stay in power after the civil war ended. Tillerson now saysthere will be "no role" for Assad in a postwar Syria. In late March. Tillerson strongly suggested that removing Assad is "up to the Syrian people" similar language to that being used by Russia and Iran. Indicating a possible shift in US policy on the war in Syria from the days of the Obama administration, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on a trip to Turkey that the "longer-term status of President Assad will be decided by the Syrian people." And in New York, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley was even stronger about the Trump administration's decision not to push for Assad's departure. "Our priority is no longer to sit and focus on getting Assad out," Haley told wire reporters Thursday, according to AFP. "Do we think he's a hindrance? Yes," she said. "Are we going to sit there and focus on getting him out? No." It is unclear if Tillerson's and Haley's words were simply misunderstood or that the administration was contemplating a change in policy. Whatever the reason, Tillerson sought to clarify his remarks following the brutal gas attack on civilians and in advance of the U.S. retaliatory strike on Syria early this morning. The Hill: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Thursday said the U.S. is considering an "appropriate response" to the Syrian government's apparent use of chemical weapons and that he sees "no role" in the country for President Bashar Assad. "The process by which Assad would leave is something that requires an international community effort both to first defeat ISIS within Syria, to stabilize the Syrian country to avoid further civil war and then to work collectively with our partners around the world through a political process that would lead to Assad leaving," Tillerson said at a news conference in Palm Beach, Fla. "Assads role in the future is uncertain, clearly, and with the acts that he has taken, it would seem that there would be no role for him to govern the Syrian people," he said. Unfortunately, the U.S. will not be a major player in any negotiations to end the conflict. The decision by both the Obama and Trump administrations to keep the civil war at arm's length and concentrate on fighting ISIS means that Russia and Turkey will play a far larger role than the U.S. in shaping a postwar Syria. That may be for the best. Creating a stable state out of the chaos in Syria is going to take a herculean effort. If Russia and Turkey wish to get bogged down in that effort, they are welcome to do it. I was recently asked about sanctuary cities what they are and how they fit into Americas immigration policy and our criminal justice system. I thought it is an interesting topic worthy of an article. The encyclopedia defines a sanctuary city as cities in the United States that have policies designed to not persecute undocumented immigrants. These practices can be by law (de jure) or by habit (de facto). Put another way, sanctuary cities do not enforce immigration laws. Sanctuary cites often do not allow their law enforcement personnel to inquire about immigration status. Furthermore, sanctuary cities will not inform immigration officers if an illegal immigrant has been convicted of breaking the law. The most common situation that occurs in my courtroom is when an illegal immigrant (generally from Mexico) is charged with a felony, often criminal distribution of dangerous drugs for carrying (referred to as muling) drugs into Yellowstone County. Once convicted, immigration is informed and that defendant is deported. In a sanctuary city, deportation would not occur because immigration is not informed of the criminal conviction. There are two downsides to this situation, in my opinion. First, Montana would pay for the cost of imprisoning the illegal immigrant, and two, the illegal immigrant, now a convicted felon, would not be forced to leave our state and go home. Sanctuary history Though very different in scope and intent, sanctuary cites have been in existence for thousands of years, and have been associated with most faiths, including Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism. In the United States, the first policy adopting what would become sanctuary city type ordinances was initiated in Los Angles in 1979. Special Order 40 states: Officers shall not initiate police action with the objective of discovering the alien status of a person. Officers shall not arrest nor book persons for violation of title 8, section 1325 of the United States Immigration code (illegal entry). I once heard a quip that a long time ago God took the United State and tilted it back and forth, and everyone who did not have a grasp on reality slid to California and New York. It is laws like this that make me wonder if this is not far from the truth. Some states have gone the other way and banned sanctuary cites (Georgia) and some require law enforcement to notify immigration officials if an immigrant is arrested (Arizona). The Montana legislature has a bill pending (HB 611) making it illegal for local governments to ignore federal immigration requests to detain illegal immigrants. Federal law The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1997 outlawed ordinances allowing city workers to not inform immigration of illegal immigrants and allowed deportation of illegal immigrants committing even misdemeanor crimes, such as shoplifting. On Jan. 25, 2017, President Trump issued an executive order defunding cities or counties that did not comply with federal law. Of course, immigration officials depend on local law enforcement to be their eyes and hands on the ground when it comes to rounding up illegal immigrants, as they are the ones coming in contact with illegal immigrants. Generally only those illegal immigrants who break the law are brought to the attention of the system. If an illegal immigrant never breaks the law they often (with exceptions) do not hit the radar of immigration officials. In my mind, if an illegal immigrant breaks the law they conclusively forfeit any privileges they have enjoyed in the United States. They should be deported post haste. President Trump had dinner with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Mar-a-Lago country club last night just as the U.S. launched a barrage of missiles at an air base in Syria in retaliation for a gas attack on civilians. The Chinese downplayed the timing of the strike, as the foreign ministry in Beijing released a statement saying only that all parties in Syria should find a political settlement. The two leaders discussed trade at dinner one of the major issues to be addressed during the summit. Reuters: Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, joined Trump and his wife, Melania, at a long table in an ornate candle-lit private dining room festooned with red and yellow floral centerpieces, where they dined on pan-seared Dover sole and New York strip steak. Trump, a New York real estate magnate before he ran for office, joked before dinner: "We've had a long discussion already, and so far I have gotten nothing, absolutely nothing. But we have developed a friendship I can see that and I think long term we are going to have a very, very great relationship and I look very much forward to it." The fanfare over the summit on Thursday was overshadowed by another pressing foreign policy issue: the U.S. response to a deadly poison gas attack in Syria. As Trump and Xi were wrapping up dinner, U.S. forces fired dozens of cruise missiles at a Syrian airbase from which it said the chemical weapons attack was launched this week, an escalation of the U.S. military role in Syria that swiftly drew sharp criticism from Russia. In Beijing, China's Foreign Ministry urged all parties in Syria to find a political settlement. Trump and Xi were expected to get into more detailed discussions about trade and foreign policy issues on Friday, concluding their summit with a working lunch. Trump promised during the 2016 presidential campaign to stop what he called the theft of American jobs by China and rebuild the country's manufacturing base. Many blue-collar workers helped propel him to his unexpected election victory in November and Trump wants to deliver for them. Nothing vital is expected to be resolved at the summit, including what to do about the North Korean nuclear threat. China has more influence over the North Koreans and its unbalanced leader, Kim Jong-un, than any other country but so far has mostly refused to use that influence to moderate North Korea's behavior. President Xi will get a good idea of how seriously Americans are taking Kim's threats but probably won't alter China's current policy. Xi has shown himself to be a pragmatist in foreign affairs, but on issues directly affecting Chinese security including the controversial militarization of artificial islands in the South China Sea he has also demonstrated an inflexibility to deal. Whether the U.S. president can reach Xi on this and other security issues will determine the direction of U.S.-China relations in the future. In a dramatic escalation, President Trump ordered a cruise missile attack on the airfield where U.S. intelligence believes that Syrian aircraft launched a chemical weapons attack on civilians last week. The strike represents the first overt military action taken against the regime of Syrian president Bashar Assad. Trump's order to strike the Syrian government targets came a day after he said the chemical attacks -- whose grisly effects were broadcast worldwide where videos captured in the immediate aftermath -- "crossed a lot of lines for me" and said he felt a "responsibility" to respond. "I will tell you it's already happened that my attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much," Trump said. "When you kill innocent children -- innocent babies -- babies -- little babies with a chemical gas that is so lethal, people were shocked to hear what gas it was, that crosses many, many lines. Beyond a red line, many, many lines," Trump said. As expected, Russia condemned the attack on its ally as an "act of aggression" and said it would negatively affect U.S.-Russia relations. CNN: The strike took place at 8:40 p.m. ET (3:40 a.m. local time), when there would have been minimal activity at the base. It targeted aircraft, aircraft shelters, petroleum and logistical storage, ammunition supply bunkers, air defense systems, and "the things that make the airfield operate," Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis told reporters. The missiles were launched from warships in the Eastern Mediterranean. "Initial indications are that this strike has severely damaged or destroyed Syrian aircraft and support infrastructure and equipment at Shayrat Airfield, reducing the Syrian government's ability to deliver chemical weapons," the Pentagon said in a statement. Briefing reporters late Thursday night, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that the strike did not represent a "change in our policy or our posture in Syria," even though it marked the first time the US had decided to take military action against the Syrian government. "There has been no change in that status," he said. "It does demonstrate that President Trump is willing to act when governments and actors cross the line ... and cross the line in the most heinous of ways." Tillerson said the administration felt the strike was "proportional because it was targeted at the facility that delivered this most recent chemical attack." The US military also showed reporters Thursday night an image of the radar track of a Syrian airplane leaving the airfield and flying to the chemical strike area Tuesday. A second image of bomb damage craters at the airbase was also shown to reporters at the Pentagon. Tillerson said the US has a "very high level of confidence" that the Syrian regime carried out at least three attacks in recent weeks -- including on Tuesday -- using Sarin and nerve gas. Congressional reaction to the strike was generally supportive, but some members including Senator Rand Paul warned the administration to work with Congress if the strike represented a significant change in American policy. This is not likely. There will almost certainly be no U.S. ground troops in significant numbers going to war against Assad and the Russians, and no direct military action to assist U.S.-backed rebels who are being ground down by President Assad's forces. The president is cognizant of the risks involved in such action, and his administration has made no statement that indicates that such action is on the horizon. The strike represents reality slapping the president in the face. Just days after Secretary Tillerson had indicated that there may be a role for President Assad to play in a post-civil war Syria, the dictator brazenly sent his planes to deliberately bomb civilian targets. While a correlation between Tillerson's statement and Assad's chemical attack cannot be proved, Assad's actions indicate his determination to annihilate the rebels looking to overthrow his regime. All presidents reach a determination sooner or later about the thugs and dictators the U.S. must deal with in the world regarding how much the U.S. can afford to allow these bad actors the leeway to violate international law with impunity. In this case, Trump is right and Obama was wrong. The use of chemical weapons cannot ever be tolerated and must be severely punished. And the former president made the situation far worse by threatening to use force against the Syrian regime and then not following through. Since President Obama reneged on his "red line" threat four years ago, there have been dozens of gas attacks on civilians using chlorine a gas that has commercial and industrial applications but is prohibited by international law from being used as a weapon. In this specific attack, medical observers have evidence that the deadly nerve agent sarin was also used. That may be the "red line" Trump spoke of in his statement. I think there's a good chance that the attack was a specific response to a specific incident and does not represent a sea change in American military policy in Syria. The State Departments recent granting of a long-awaited permit for the Keystone XL pipeline affirmed what common sense and an exhaustive review process made clear long ago: Expanding energy infrastructure serves both U.S. economic and security interests. Repeatedly deemed environmentally safe during a yearslong review process starting in 2008, Keystone XL is set to transport 830,000 barrels of oil per day from Canada and North Dakotas Bakken region, dramatically enhancing U.S. energy security. $2B construction The projected economic benefits are just as significant: 42,000 jobs and $2 billion in earnings during construction. Like the recently completed Dakota Access pipeline a $3.78 billion investment supporting 8,000-12,000 jobs in four states Keystone XL represents a vital investment in 21st century energy infrastructure. The United States now leads the world in production and refining of oil and natural gas, and that new energy reality spells major opportunity for Americas skilled building trades workers. Thirty-two percent of todays construction industry workforce is employed on energy projects, amounting to more than 2 million workers. Hundreds of energy infrastructure projects pipelines, storage, processing and rail are slated for development in state after state, each one representing shovel-ready, middle class-sustaining jobs that do not rely on taxpayer funding. Essential infrastructure investments in just the oil and natural gas sector could spur up to $1.15 trillion in new private capital investment, support 1.15 million new jobs and add $120 billion on average to national GDP. Eighty-one percent of American voters support increased energy infrastructure development. Activists who oppose pipeline construction are a small minority promoting the false idea that energy development and environmental progress are mutually exclusive. Clean-burning gas The United States leads the world in reduction of carbon emissions, due largely to greater use of clean-burning natural gas delivered by pipelines. Natural gas is now the leading source for electricity generation, driving carbon emissions in that sector to 25-year lows. Even under optimistic scenarios for renewable energy growth, oil and natural gas will continue to supply 60 percent of U.S. energy demands through 2040, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. And pipelines happen to be one of most efficient and environmentally safe ways to transport the energy American families and businesses need. The most recent data show that both liquid pipelines and natural gas pipelines transported crude oil, petroleum products and natural gas at a safety rate of 99.99 percent. Attempts to thwart energy infrastructure threaten to undermine the very climate progress pipeline opponents say they want, while risking increased energy costs. Just look at New England, home to seven of the 10 most expensive states for electricity. Despite being just a days drive from ample natural gas supplies, residents of the northeastern U.S. paid up to 68 percent more for electricity than the national average in the winter of 2014, while industrial users there paid up to 105 percent more. Nationwide, reliable access to energy has helped drive down utility, product and other energy-related costs for families, contributing to a $1,337 boost to the average American household budget in 2015. U.S. industrial electricity costs are 30-50 percent lower than those of our foreign competitors, giving manufacturers including producers of steel, chemicals, refined fuels, plastics, fertilizers and numerous other products a major competitive advantage. President Donald Trump has pledged to fund new roads, bridges, tunnels, airports and railways. Energy infrastructure is the backbone for it all. Americas construction sector and our oil and natural gas industries are ready with the workers and private capital investments to do our part in building 21st century infrastructure. Its been almost exactly six years since the opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline went national, with climate scientists and environmental activists joining Native Americans and Nebraska ranchers whod begun the battle against transporting tar sands from Alberta, Canada, to the Texas Gulf Coast. The fight tipped into victory in late 2015 when President Barack Obama and his State Department rejected the pipeline on the grounds it didnt advance U.S. interests. Last week, President Donald Trump signed a permit giving TransCanada Corp. the right to cross the American border with its pipe. As he showed off the order, he turned to the companys CEO and said, When does construction start? The answer is, no time soon. No Nebraska route The immediate problem for Trump and TransCanada is that theres no approved route for the pipeline through Nebraska, where organizers and citizens are hunkering down again for spirited resistance. Dozens of landowners along the route are refusing to let their land be taken, and the states public utility commission hasnt granted a permit. The deeper problem is that an awful lot has changed over the six years since Keystone became a national cause. For one, the price of oil has fallen by more than half. Combined with activists throwing up one protest and legal challenge after another against other pipeline plans in the U.S. and Canada, the cost of oil has sent investors scurrying away from the Alberta tar sands. Earlier this year Exxon wrote off its huge tar sands reserves, conceding they cant be profitably developed. And even deeper forces are at play: For starters, the price of a solar panel has plummeted over those six years, falling by more than half. When people went to jail in 2011 to block the Keystone pipeline, electric cars were obscure playthings of the rich. This fall, the Tesla Model 3, price tag $35,000, is scheduled to roll off assembly lines, with hundreds of thousands already sold. More crucially, the world set a new heat record in 2014, which was smashed in 2015 and smashed again in 2016. Last summer saw the highest reliably recorded temperature ever measured on our planet, 129.2 degrees (Death Valley at its hottest), reported in a big city in Kuwait. With Arctic sea ice diminishing to an all-time low this month, were clearly near the breaking point for the planet weve known. The pipelines economic rationale rests on its functioning for decades to come it locks us into at least 50 more years of taking oil out of the tar sands and refining it into gasoline, slowing down the pace at which wed install the renewable energy on which our future as a planet (and as an economic power) depends. The only reason the only reason for building Keystone XL or for ending other Obama-era climate rules is to help the fossil fuel industry. But since that industry owns the GOP, the Trump administration will do its bidding he is, after all, the president who once announced that climate change was a Chinese hoax and hired Exxons CEO to run his State Department. Smoggier future? Trump is doing his best to increase not just the supply but the demand for oil. He said in Detroit earlier this month that he wanted to gut new mileage standards mandated in the Obama years, and it seems likely hell try to force a showdown over the exemption that lets California set its own emissions rules. If so, hell be doing his best not just to break the electric car industry but also to return the Golden State to its brownish, smoggy past. Americans dont share Trumps archaic outlook. According to the Pew Center, a majority oppose the Keystone pipeline. Huge percentages of Republicans, independents and Democrats want more solar power. The level of worry about global warming is at an all-time high. Thats why so many fossil fuel projects have been fought and beaten in the last few years, from drilling in the Arctic to fracking in New York, to building coal ports in the Pacific Northwest to running oil trains in San Luis Obispo, Calif. The Keystone protests kicked off a resistance to fossil fuel infrastructure that will not flag. In this battle between the past and future, theres simply too much at stake. Justice John C. Sheehy, known to friends as Skeff, had a golden tongue, and it served him best on the day he was held at gunpoint in his state Supreme Court chambers for three hours. "That was a scary day," said his daughter Martha Sheehy, an attorney in Billings. John Sheehy died in his sleep Friday morning at his home in Helena. He was 99. Born in Butte to Irish immigrant parents in 1918, he was an eloquent and forceful communicator with a sharp legal mind. He served in the state House of Representatives from 1959 to 1965 and in the state Senate from 1969 to 1971. And in 1978 he was appointed by Gov. Tom Judge to the state Supreme Court, where he served as a justice until 1991. It was as a justice, on a sunny day in late June 1984, when a gunman burst into Sheehy's Supreme Court chambers in Helena, holding him hostage at gunpoint for most of the afternoon. The man was a disgruntled litigant looking for some kind of validation from Sheehy. Instead, Sheehy and the gunman talked until Sheehy persuaded the man to hand over his gun. Sheehy simply placed it in his desk and then kept his knee in front of the drawer. "My dad talked him out of it, and they called the police together," Martha Sheehy said with a laugh. "He was probably never better served by his skill than on that day." Sheehy's skills were numerous. One of his proudest achievements as Supreme Court justice came when the state court's ruling on a law requiring a heavy coal levy was validated by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1980s. Sheehy wrote the opinion for the state court decision, arguing Montanas right to levy what was then a 30 percent severance tax on coal, the highest in the country. That decision, and Sheehy's written opinion in particular, was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court and meant millions of dollars in taxes for Montana. He understood the important role mining played in the state's economy. He also understood the importance for the state to be able to tax it. In fact, as a boy from Butte, mining was his life's calling. "His history is the history of the state," Martha Sheehy said. His father had been a miner, and Sheehy graduated from high school ready to head into the mines himself, following in his father's footsteps. Instead, Sheehy, at 18, was hit by a drunken driver and left with permanent damage to his left hand. He couldn't work in the mines, and his parents didn't know what to do with him. So they sent him to college, the first in his family to go. "It completely changed the course of his life," Martha Sheehy said. Sheehy graduated with a law degree from the University of Montana in 1943 and moved to Billings, where he practiced law for the next 35 years. He closed his practice when he was appointed to the Supreme Court. In 1945, two years after moving to Billings, Sheehy married Rita Ann Schiltz, and together they raised 11 children. Instilled in the children were the values of their parents. They grew up to be lawyers, teachers and legislators. In fact, two of the sisters have been named Montana teachers of the year. Sheehy believed in Montana and in returning to the state the resources it had invested in him. All of the children earned higher education degrees in Montana and nine of the 11 still live in the state, putting to use their skills and education here. "That's a debt paid," Martha Sheehy said. "Education was not taken for granted by him." A staunch Irish Catholic, Sheehy attended mass every day. His church and his family were priorities for him, and family law cases were at the heart of what he believed as a jurist. "The work of the courts is the work of the people," Martha said. "That was the crux of his judicial philosophy." An Arizona man admitted on Thursday he supplied meth to a Fishtail man, who was convicted in a large trafficking ring that brought at least 178 pounds of nearly pure meth to Montana for distribution. During a hearing in U.S. District Court in Billings, Juan Carlos Dorado, 41, of Tucson, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess meth for distribution and to conspiracy to commit money laundering as part of a plea agreement in which other charges are to be dismissed at sentencing. Assistant U.S. Attorney Colin Rubich said Dorado supplied Merrill Clark Gardner, 62, a Fishtail resident who used couriers to transport meth to Montana and send an estimated $1.4 million in proceeds back to his supplier. The overall conspiracy ran from about 2012 until it ended in October 2015. Gardner was sentenced in July 2016 to more than 15 years in prison for his conviction in the case. Gardner, Rubich said, told authorities that Dorado was his supplier and that for several years, he sent large amounts of currency in drug proceeds to Arizona in exchange for more meth to distribute. Gardner rarely made the trips himself. Rather, he used two couriers, identified as Jason Harold Wacker, of Sheridan, Wyoming, and Brett Wade Clouse, of Absarokee, to make the trips. Wacker was sentenced to two years for his conviction in the case, while Clouse was sentenced to about five years in prison for his conviction. While Dorado disputed the quantity of meth, he admitted it was more than 500 grams, which is a little more than a pound. U.S. District Judge Susan Watters set sentencing for Aug. 3. Dorado, who remains in custody, faces a minimum mandatory 10 years to life in prison and a $10 million fine on the drug conspiracy count. Samantha Baldwin v the States secret care system Police have arrested Samantha Baldwin on suspicion of abducting her two young sons, Dylan Madge, 6, and Louis Madge, 9, on March 27. Samantha Baldwin age 40 (Daily Telegraph) and 42 (Nottingham Post) and her sons were found, reportedly, at The Sherwood Hideaway in Ollerton a holiday venue advertised as a woodland retreat of luxury lodges nestled deep within Sherwood Forest. The stylish, luxury lodges offer customers a luxurious holiday experience, with crisp Egyptian cotton sheets and sumptuous towels, duck-down pillows, Molton Brown toiletries, central heating and iPod docking stations. Some lodges feature private outdoor hot tubs. Samantha Baldwin and her boys were not slumming it. A week at the retreat costs about 1,000. As well as pinching Samantha Baldwin, police have arrested two other women, aged 62 and 36 the Mail says they are Samanthas mother Dianne, 62, and sister Leonie, 36. Theyre on police bail. Removed from their mother, the two boys are with care of childcare professionals, which sounds a lot like theyve been placed with strangers in foster care. And fostering is a thriving business. Christopher Booker says the countrys 80,000 foster carers [are] earning up to 500 a week or more for each child within five years, according to the Local Government Association, childrens services will account for a fifth of all the money raised in council tax. Nottinghamshire Police dont explain why three women have been arrested and a mothers children placed in the care of the State. Nottinghamshire Police is now working to establish the full facts of the disappearance and is putting in place additional support measures for all parties involved, says Chief Superintendent Helen Chamberlain. We would ask the public to consider before commenting as, in line with media law, when a person is in custody any comments or speculation could be seen to be prejudicial. And thats that. No comment. You cannot wonder aloud in print why Samantha Baldwin allegedly legged it nor why two others allegedly assisted her. All we know is what the Nottingham Post tells us: During a hearing at Nottingham Family Court that day [when she went missing], Louis and Dylan were declared wards of court, meaning Samantha has no legal custody. Police say they are concerned that Samantha poses a risk to the boys. Superintendent Rich Fretwell from Nottinghamshire Police, added: This [the court order] means Samantha does not have legal custody at this time. During that same day Samantha went missing, having left court shorty after 11am. We are working on the notion that they remain together. We are concerned that Samantha poses a risk to the boys and we have a 100 strong team of officers working around the clock to trace her and return the children safely. What happens in a family court is a secret. The Guardian notes: Family courts, which deal with issues such as divorce, financial provision for children, contact with children, adoption and local authority intervention to protect children, were opened to the media in 2009, but hearings largely remain secret. Judges can limit media attendance, there are tight restrictions on what if anything can be reported, the media have no access to documents and can be ordered to leave the court on the decision of the judge or magistrate. On April 5, Chief Superintendent Chamberlain appealed to Samantha from one mum to another. She said without irony: The boys are away from home and their friends and must be unsure of whats happening. I am sure people who know you and the boys are worried and want to hear from you. The Mail quotes a close friend and civil servant who has known her since her teens. From them we learn that Samanthas whole life was her sons. She was amazingly devoted and we are proud of her and how she brought them up There has been a mistake. Both children adore her and she does them. They will be distraught at being taken from her and being given to strangers. Another pal adds: If ever there was a good mother, she was it. The message in the Mail is clear: the boys are loved. If the aim is to prevent the children from suffering, why has a family been broken up? But we cant talk about it. The story is rooted in the secretive child protection system. The media cannot place these secret courts in the full glare of publics gaze. Law prevents it. What goes on in family courts largely remains hidden. That cannot be right. Comments are closed. Spotter: The Real Stig Paul Sorene Posted: 7th, April 2017 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink FLORENCE - The Bardo museum in Tunis will host an exhibit on pre-Roman antiquities that are part of the Uffizi's collection - a way to boost the cultural ties between Tuscany and Tunisia and most of all relaunch the museum after the March 18, 2015 terror attack. The announcement was made by the deputy president of the Tuscany region, Monica Barni, who visited Tunisia at the beginning of April. The date has not been set yet but it will be by the end of the year. Tuscany, explained Barni, is among few European and Italian regions who are active in the least favored regions of Tunisia like Kasserine, Jendouba and Tatauine. These regions have the lowest rates of economic development and the country's highest youth and women's unemployment levels. ROME - The United States launched 59 Tomahawk missiles at the Al Shayrat airfield in central Syria following the Syrian government's suspected chemical weapons attack on April 4 in which at least 86 civilians were killed, including a reported 30 children. The Pentagon said the missile strikes, which began at 4:40 am Syrian time, from Navy destroyers USS Porter and USS Ross targeted Syrian fighter jets, aircraft shelters, radar equipment, ammunition bunkers, air defense systems and fuel-storage locations. Damascus said six people died in the strikes. Previously, the governor of Homs, Talal Barazi, had said two civilians were among the casualties, adding that the airfield had been burning for over an hour following the strikes. According to the UK-based monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, about 10 hangars, a fuel deposit and a defense airbase were destroyed. The strikes are the first direct US military action against forces under Syria's president. Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said Russian forces had been notified in advance and that no Russian aircraft were at the base. The Kremlin, which supports Bashar al-Assad, condemned the action. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the strikes an "aggression against a sovereign state" that inflicts "considerable damage to US-Russia relations, which are already in a lamentable state". Moscow and Damascus also said the strikes undermined the war on terror. Before the strikes, Washington alerted NATO and European authorities, including EU Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini who is reportedly "coordinating with member states". Mogherini overnight spoke on the phone with Italian Premier Paolo Gentiloni. ROME - The United States overnight launched 59 Tomahawk missiles at the Al Shayrat airfield in Syria's Homs province from which a Syrian government's chemical weapons attack was allegedly launched on April 4, killing at least 86 civilians were killed, including a reported 30 children. The Pentagon said the missile strikes, which began at 4:40 am Syrian time, from Navy destroyers USS Porter and USS Ross targeted Syrian fighter jets, aircraft shelters, radar equipment, ammunition bunkers, air defense systems and fuel-storage locations. At least 15 people were killed, among them 4 children. The action prompted Russia's harsh reaction. President Vladimir Putin accused Washington of carrying out an ''aggression against a sovereign state'' that will compromise relations between the US and Russia. Moscow has announced that it will boost Damascus' air defense to protect infrastructure and suspended an agreement with the US that guarantees the security of flights during operations in Syria. According to the ministry of Defense, however, ''only 23'' of the 59 missiles reached the Shayrat base, while the other 36 fell in an ''unknown'' location. Russia, which confirmed it was alerted prior to the raid, also said it believed the chemical attack on April 4 was only ''a pretext'' for the American operation, claiming it had already been decided, and demanded an urgent UN Security Council meeting. Moscow said the operation favors ISIS and Al Nusra. Iran also protested against the ''dangerous unilateral action''. Before acting, Washington alerted its allies, including Nato and the EU. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said the use of chemical weapons ''required a response''. In a joint statement, French and German leaders Francois Hollande and Angela Merkel stressed that the ''entire responsibility weighs on Assad'' and called for ''appropriate UN sanctions'' over the use of chemical weapons. In contact with them, Italian Premier Paolo Gentiloni also spoke about joint engagement ''so that Europe will contribute to the resumption of talks'' with the UN and Russia. The prime minister also defined the intervention as ''motivated action'' sparked by a ''war crime'' for which the ''Assad regime is responsible''. ''Those who use chemical weapons cannot rely on extenuating circumstances'', he added, expressing the conviction that US action will remain ''limited''. The historic enemies of the Assad regime also expressed support for the US strikes, including Israel, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Ankara expressed the wish that the job will be ''completed'' and called for Assad's ouster ''as soon as possible''. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu forecast ''new waves of migrants'' fleeing Syria and asked for a ''safe zone''. ISTANBUL - Polling stations in Italy have opened for Turkish voters in a constitutional referendum on the presidential system. The voting operations are being held at the Turkish embassy in Rome and at the Turkish consulate in Milan. Turkish nationals who have the right to vote and reside in Italy are just over 14,000. Overall, almost three million Turkish voters living abroad can vote at polling stations open in 120 diplomatic missions across 57 countries until Sunday, a week before the vote is scheduled to take place in Turkey. According to several surveys, the outcome of the referendum is uncertain and the vote of Turkish nationals living abroad - about 5% of voters - could be key. US action in Syria response to war crime says Gentiloni M5S, Northern League blast strikes ordered by Trump (By Denis Greenan). (ANSAmed) - ROME, APRIL 7 - US action in Syria was a response to a war crime, Premier Paolo Gentiloni said Friday, while the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S) and the rightwing populist Northern League blasted the air strikes on a Syrian government air base ordered by Donald Trump after a gas attack that killed at least 86 civilians including a reported 30 children. Gentiloni told a press conference that "the action ordered last night by (United States President Donald) Trump was a response motivated by a war crime". The US missile strike on an air base in Syria followed this week's suspected chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held town near Idlib in Syria. "The United States have described their action as prompt and limited and not as a stage in a military escalation," the premier said. "Last night's attack, as is known, took place at the air base from where the chemical weapons attack was launched a few days ago. "Against a war crime that the (Bashar al-)Assad regime is responsible for... "I think the images of suffering that we have had to see over the last few days following the use of chemical weapons must not be seen again". Gentiloni said he saw Moscow playing a mayor role in talks to bring peace to Syria. "Italy has always been convinced that a lasting solution for Syria should be sought in negotiations," he said. "It was and remains our position. Negotiations must include the many opposition forces and the regime, under the aegis of United Nations with a decisive and construction role for Russia". Gentiloni called European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs Federica Mogherini overnight to discuss the strike, a spokesperson for Mogherini said Friday. Italian Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano described the United States military action in Syria as proportionate in a statement. "Italy understands the reason for the US military action, which was proportionate in timing and methods, as a response to an unacceptable sense of impunity, as well as a signal of deterrent towards the risk of further use of chemical weapons by Assad, in addition to those ascertained by the UN," Alfano said. Lawmakers for the M5S in the Senate, Lower House and European Parliament on Friday issued a statement condemning the US missile strikes on a Syrian base. It said the attacks "risk constituting a clear violation of international law". It added that "it shows for the umpteenth time the real value that the world's powers attribute to the United Nations. Zero value". The statement also called on Italy to "stay out of this game of risk", arguing that "a war cannot be the solution to another war". Northern League leader Matteo Salvini also criticised United States President Donald Trump's decision to order a missile strike on a base in Syria. "US missiles on Syria are a terrible idea and a gift to ISIS," said Salvini, who has frequently praised both Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. "Perhaps due to domestic problems, perhaps badly advised by the warmongers who are still looking for Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons, Trump has made the most mistaken choice in Syria and has reopened a war against Islamic terrorism that had been won. "Maybe someone in Washington wants to repeat the disasters of Iraq, Libya and the Arab Spring with all the devastating consequences for Italy and Europe".(ANSAmed). In 2016 there were 14,331 reports received in North Dakota of suspected child abuse and neglect resulting in 1,805 children who were confirmed as victims, according to the North Dakota Department of Human Services-Children and Family Services Division. "In 2016 Morton County, we completed 522 child protection assessments," said Jennifer Wetsch, Child Protection Services supervisor. Morton County Social Services, Custer Health and Morton County's NSDU Extension Service have teamed up this April during Child Abuse Prevention month to bring attention and resources to the community regarding the issue. Today, Mandan and Bismarck city employees are participating in the Wear Blue Day campaign to bring awareness to child abuse. The city with the most employees wearing the color blue will win a trophy and bragging rights, the winning city will be announced on Tuesday. The contest between Bismarck and Mandan city employees will be judged by representatives from Prevent Child Abuse North Dakota, one of the sponsors of North Dakotas Wear Blue Day. This year local schools also are getting involved in the campaign as students from Mandan Middle School have challenged students from Horizon Middle School and students from Mandan High School challenged students from St. Marys High School. Students, faculty and administrators wearing blue are asked to take a group photo and post them to social media using the hashtag #preventchildabusend or send them to info@pcand.org for posting on Prevent Child Abuse North Dakotas Facebook page and website. The middle school and high school with the greatest percentage of their student body wearing blue will receive an award. Community members are encouraged to wear blue every Friday in April to recognize and bring awareness to Child Abuse Prevention month. The NDSU Extension Service is offering a Common Sense Parenting course, a six-week series focusing on encouraging good behavior, preventing problems, correcting problem behavior, teaching self-control and parents are teachers. The series began April 4, however, Liz Larson, the Extension parent educator encourages parents and guardians who want information to sign up for their newsletter. Larson can be contacted at 701-667-3342 or email her at Liz.Larson@ndsu.edu. "This year we're focusing on not only bringing awareness about prevention month but also doing prevention work, which is helping to support families and putting on classes," said Larson. Babies and Mother Beyond Birth Education is a program of Custer Health that provides a home visit from a public health nurse to a new mother and her baby. This year, all new moms in Morton County will receive a "Happiest Baby on the Block" DVD to learn more tactics on how to calm a crying baby and in return stay calm themselves. All of these events and opportunities are funded by a grant from Prevent Child Abuse North Dakota in collaboration with Department of Human Services. For more information on preventing child abuse visit www.pcand.org/ or call 701-223-9052. Lane was previously the Vice President of Offset and Industrialisation, a post he held since joining BAE Systems in 2011. He succeeds Matthew Foster, who moved to the UK Defence Solutions Centre in the UK. Ian will bring robust benefits to our operations in Oman and we welcome him back to the Sultanate in his new role, said Guy Griffiths, Group managing director, International, BAE Systems. BAE Systems has had a strong relationship with Oman for more than 40 years so its a very important market for us. Having someone of Ians experience heading our office in Muscat will ensure we continue to have a good relationship with the Omani customer, further strengthening our ties with the Sultanate. Lane said: I look forward to working with His Majesty Sultan Qaboos Government and all of our Omani partners and stakeholders. The Sultanate is one of our most important partners in the region and were committed to developing programmes and solutions tailored to meeting their needs as well as developing Omani skills and talent. He added: Oman is working to develop a national workforce powered by STEM education, putting engineering, aerospace and innovation at the heart of building a sustainable future. We continue to develop initiatives to support this national agenda and our education and industrial programmes will provide the Omani people with the skills to help achieve this goal. Arturo Merino Benitez Santiago International Airport has become the 25th airport included to the portfolio of TAV Operation Services. TAV Operation Services General Manager Ali Bora Isbulan said: TAV Operation Services undertakes innovative projects with its advanced technology and strong infrastructure. At TAV Operation Services, which established its business development mentality on a global perspective, is glad to include a new lounge to its existing operations. Thanks to our 15 years of experience and our portfolio including more than 40 lounges and establishing a partnership with Primeclass Pacifico and Servicios Aeroportuarios S.A., our company has the goal to welcome 280,000 passengers per year at the lounges and provide meet & assist services. TAV Operation Services has become one of the world's highly-preferred brands in developing privileged travel solutions. We host 3 million passengers per annum at the lounges we operate and provide meet & assist services to 100,000 passengers. Following Turkish Airlines Star Alliance lounges that we opened in Nairobi and Washington D.C. Dulles airports in 2016, we will put into operation lounges at Frankfurt, Muscat, Copenhagen and Zurich airports with our primeclass brand in 2017. DAVENPORT, Iowa Lee Enterprises Inc. announced March 29 that Matt Meyers, regional director of classifieds and niche publications for Capital Newspapers in Madison, Wis., has been named group publisher for the companys AgriMedia Group. Matt brings a wealth of experience and creativity to AgriMedia, said Julie Bechtel, president and publisher of Lees Central Illinois Group and company group publisher. He is an accomplished advertising executive with a strong background in agriculture. Im confident Matt will excel in this new role. Meyers joined Capital Newspapers in 1992 and ascended to a number of retail and classified advertising leadership roles. I am thrilled to be joining the Lee AgriMedia team, Meyers said. It brings two of my greatest loves together, newspapers and the agricultural industry. Meyers is a 1991 graduate of the University of Iowa. He is married to Marcy Meyers and has two children. Brian Kroshus, the former publisher of the AgriMedia Group, left for a position on the North Dakota Public Service Commission. YEREVAN, APRIL 7, ARMENPRESS. Mayor of Yerevan Taron Margaryan issued a congratulatory letter on the occasion of April 7 - Motherhood and Beauty Day, the City Hall told ARMENPRESS. Dear mothers, sisters and wives, I cordially congratulate you on the Day of Motherhood and Beauty. This day is another opportunity to honor you,to express our respect and gratitude to you, to restate our love towards you. For us Armenians Woman has always been the spirit of hearth, the flair of family. The highest calling of Armenian woman has always been in maternity and we have always honored it. And it is natural as you dedicate all your time to your children, grandchildren and families without days off and holidays. And there is no doubt that due to this dedication Armenian family is stable and strong. It keeps traditions and at the same time strives to the future remaining the basis and long life guarantee of our nation. Dear mothers, sisters, and wives, Congratulating you on the holiday I wish you strong health. Let the warmth of mothers heart, the charm and tenderness inherent only for women be enriched with the love of your fathers, husbands and sons and will accompany you throughout your life! And be sure that we will do our best to make you smile as frequently as possible. YEREVAN, APRIL 7, ARMENPRESS. Catholicos of All Armenians Garegin II addressed a congratulatory message on the feast of Annunciation of the Holy Virgin Mary, the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin told Armenpress. The message reads: On this joyful occasion of the Annunciation of the Holy Virgin Mary, We bring our Pontifical blessings to our people and congratulate all women on the Day of Motherhood and Beauty. Dear ones, today, from the Holy Altars of our Holy Church, through the intercession of the Virgin Mary, blessings are distributed to all faithful, all pregnant women are blessed and the angelic appeal of the Annunciation of the Holy Virgin Mary is transferred, to be happy, for the Lord is with you (cf. Luke 1:28). For centuries, our Christian nation has been encouraged and strengthened through this radiant annunciation, and our mothers and sisters, having the perfect example of the Blessed Virgin Mary as a perfect Mother role model, have educated their children through faith, love, and devotion for the Homeland, and bring their indispensable contribution to our national-religious and social life. Our prayers and wish is that strengthened through the mystery of this cherished Feast, our women, and mothers continue to add to their cherished efforts, for the sake of our country's progress, our people's welfare, and the safety and happiness of their families. May all mothers embrace their children with a joyful heart and educate them in peace and security. Not long ago, March 22, Louis LAmour celebrated his 109th birthday, that is he would have if he were still alive. I posted that little fact on my Facebook page and got a response from quite a few friends. A few comments seemed so familiar, Ive read all of his books many times each, my sons favorite author and must have read 100. One of the editors I work with, Johnny Boggs from Santa Fe, N.M., is a good writer himself who has just been named the winner of his seventh Spur Award from the Western Writers of America. Writers of his caliber can often be found at book fairs, where they visit with fans and sell some books. He told me one time an old-timer stopped by his booth and told him that hes read and reread all of LAmours books, after which he walked away without buying any from him. Personally, Ive read a number of LAmours novels and short stories but havent dived wholeheartedly into his catalog of works like that man did. Instead, his personal story interests me more than his fiction. For instance, take the opening lines of his book "Education of a Wandering Man," in which he wrote, It was May 14. In a few days my class back in Jamestown, North Dakota would be graduating from high school, and I was in Singapore. The family had moved from Jamestown because of financial difficulties and soon after, at the age of 15, he struck out on his own. A life of wandering and working on a variety of odd jobs helped him earn his keep. In Texas he undertook the dreadful job of skinning dead cattle, 925 of them, which had been dead for weeks and stank to high heaven. When the job ended, he collected his wages and checked into a hotel, where he showered three times a day to rid his body of the stench. But he liked and learned from this boss, who had grown up with Apache Indians and told stories that LAmour remembered. He also worked on a hay crew, as a miner, a sailor, a prizefighter, and a longshoreman among others. He lived a hobo lifestyle, traveling by any means available, whether on freight trains or hitchhiking along a road. Looking like a hobo, he often had trouble flagging down rides, but one day, with his pockets stuffed with books, a man picked him up thinking anyone that interested in books couldnt be dangerous. Wherever the location and whatever the job, he read many books, a fact he recorded in his journal entries. Returning from World War II in which he was awarded four Bronze Stars, LAmour began to write mostly stories about crime or the sea, but he earned his chops as a writer on July 5, 1952, when Colliers Magazine published his Western short story The Gift of Cochise. He later rewrote it as the famous novel "Hondo," which was made into the movie starring John Wayne. Because he loved and learned from reading, he created some characters who loved them, too, such as Bendigo Shafter, who eagerly read from the books brought West by the Widow Macken. The death of one of LAmours great-grandfathers at the hands of Indians put him in touch with the West of his stories. Ambrose Freeman fought in the defense of Fort Abercrombie in the 1862 Indian attack but was killed and scalped a year later near present-day Pingree while marching with the Sibley Expedition in North Dakota. An interesting situation followed LAmours success after a publisher discovered some of his earlier stories no longer came under protection of copyright laws. Unauthorized collections of LAmours short stories for profit had been printed without his permission. An enraged LAmour and his long-time publisher, Bantam Books, decided to quickly reprint approved versions with the added bonus of the authors comments. Their action successfully pushed unauthorized versions from the marketplace. Fortunately my own copy of "Riding for the Brand" is the approved version because it wears the Bantam logo, and each of its 12 short stories includes additional historical background written by LAmour. Lovers of his writing were saddened when LAmour died in 1988 at the age of 80. He was still editing his last book until a few hours before his death. In one of his novels, "The Lonesome Gods," he wrote, If man is to vanish from the earth, let him vanish in the moment of creation, when he is creating something new. His death marked the fulfillment of that wish. All told he created over 100 books and hundreds of short stories. The Western Writers of America named "Hondo" and "Flint" in their list of best Westerns ever written. YEREVAN, APRIL 7, ARMENPRESS. The European Union continues providing budget support to Armenia to carry out reforms in various fields, reports Armenpress. On April 7 a workshop dedicated to the coordination of EU budget support provided to Armenia was held within the frames of the European Neighborhood Instrument. During the workshop, Armenias First Deputy Minister of Economic Development and Investments Garegin Melkonyan delivered a welcoming speech. He said the budget support provided by the EU to Armenia is one of the most assistant tools thanks to which significant reforms have been made in Armenia in a number of key sectors since 2007. Last year we have received an unprecedented budget support from the European Union which comprised 27.5 million Euro. In 2016 and in the first months of 2017 we have signed a cooperation package of overall 51 million Euro with the EU from which almost 50 million Euro is budget support. This already shows that we are going to carry out significant works in terms of this tool this and in upcoming years. This year we have three large and one small tranches of budgetary allocation which we will discuss in-detail during todays workshop. We expect active engagement of all concerned agencies. Our goal is all our obligations assumed for implementing reforms in Armenia will be carried out on time and completely, the First Deputy Minister said. He said the Ministry of Economic Development and Investments, being the national coordinator of programs carried out under the European Neighborhood Instrument in Armenia, is interested that the use of other tools of budget support, as well as the European support in Armenia will be effective as much as possible. Hoa-Binh Adjemian, head of the Cooperation Section at the EU Delegation to Armenia, thanked the workshop organizers, highlighting its importance in terms of effectively utilizing the EU budget support. Over the last 10 years the European Union has provided 250 million Euro budget support to Armenia. This means that within a year Armenia receives 25 million Euro budget support from the European Union. Every year we spend nearly 40-50 million Euro in Armenia, half of which is directed to budget support programs, Hoa-Binh Adjemian said. During the workshop issues related to the outlining, implementation, monitoring of EU assistance programs, as well as summary and assessment of the program implementation results were presented and discussed. Group works were held aimed at presenting the opportunities of practical use of the outlined mechanisms. The workshop was attended by more than 30 representatives of stakeholder Ministries and other state bodies, as well as representatives of the EU Delegation to Armenia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The New Mexico Motor Vehicle Division (MVD) today announced the creation of the Chile License Plate. The plate declares New Mexico as the Chile Capital of the World, reflecting New Mexicos status as the world leader in chile quality and production. With the creation of this license plate, we are sending a strong message that New Mexico is the only chile capital of the world, said Governor Susana Martinez. Not only does chile play a significant role in our states culture it is one of our states greatest treasures, and this license plate will let the world know. Im proud that New Mexicos chile is the best in the world and that our state has been a leader in chile production for hundreds of years, said Rep. Cathrynn Brown of Carlsbad. The creation of this license plate reflects New Mexicos unique connection to chile and its importance to our culture and economy. The Chile License Plate is being launched as a standard plate and will require no additional fees on registration, unlike a specialty plate, which would require an additional fee of $35. For drivers with a current registration who choose to switch to the Chile License Plate, a $17 in-office or $7.25 online replacement fee is required. Drivers with specialty plates can switch to the Chile License Plate at no cost. We are very proud to create a plate that represents New Mexicos unique cultural heritage and one of its greatest industries, said Acting MVD Secretary John Monforte. The Chile License Plate definitively shows the rest of the nation that New Mexico is the only state that has a right to call itself the Chile Capital of the World. The Motor Vehicle Division can be contacted online at www.mvd.newmexico.gov and by phone at 888-683-4636. Perloff said her biggest regret was the failure to sustain A.C.T.s core acting company. (The city got too expensive artists cant afford to live here anymore.) But the theaters thriving acting conservatory remains, and in an era that has seen nonprofit theaters become clearinghouses for jukebox musicals and other commercial trifles from Broadway, she has shored up A.C.T.s reputation as one of the most principled regional theaters in America. Last week, the New York Post published news of a possible scandal: a 12th-century head of King David, said to be originally from the portal of Notre-Dame de Paris, may be a 20th-century fake. And, writes Noah Charney in his examination of the story, there is a backstory that has even identified a potential forger, and it involves a former Monuments Man, James Rorimer, [who had been] the curator for medieval art at the Met. As a pre-World War II transatlantic creative, he worked in Hollywood and on Broadway. And after World War II things had gotten pretty hot for him in Britain because of the radio broadcasts he made for the Nazis as a captive in 1941 he lived in the U.S. until his death. He became an American citizen in 1955. And this American-ness, argues one scholar, is key to Wodehouses continuing appeal. In an effort to lend a helping hand to struggling families the Affordable Housing Developers Inc. has brought Trails West Townhomes to north Mandan. Located at 4530 30th Ave. N.W., the 12-unit housing development provides a more affordable rent option to the community. The townhomes are three-bedroom units with one and one-half baths and tuck-under garages. The single-story, end units with attached garages are two-bedroom, one-bath that meet HUD Section 504 accessibility requirements. All of the townhomes are furnished with soft-closing cabinets, kitchen pantries, appliances including dishwashers and in-unit washers and dryers, window coverings, air conditioning and patios. "We hope Trails West Townhomes can fill the need for low to moderate income families in the Mandan area who would like a fresh start in a new apartment," said Andrea Diede, executive director of AHDI. According to a press release from ADHI, to rent one of the townhomes, households must be income qualified. Nine of the units are reserved for tenants earning 80 percent or less than area median income. The three remaining townhomes are reserved for low-income tenants at or below 30 percent of the area median income. A four-person household earning $26,500 or less would be able to rent one of these units for $470. The three-bedroom townhomes, in particularly, are a welcome addition to the community. Our greatest rental need in Morton County is affordable housing for larger families, said Rick Horn, executive director of the Morton County Housing Authority in a press release. With a price tag of $2.65 million the project received support from state and federal government programs to guarantee affordability. The North Dakota Department of Commerce provided $985,000 through the HOME program and North Dakota Housing Finance Agency allocated $762,000 from the Housing Incentive Fund and the balance of the project was financed by US Bank, according to a press release. AHDI owned the land on which the townhomes were constructed. Consultant for the project, Rob Knoll, said he assisted in putting the final package and bid together for the development. "The project was designed to address affordable housing issues identified in the Housing Needs Assessment by the city and county," said Knoll. Construction on this project began in April of 2016 and was completed this past February, Brendel Homes in Bismarck constructed the housing development. For more information on Trails West Townhomes contact HJL Management, the property manager at 701-663-7494 or the AHDI at 701-438-4432. Shawn Boehm, the associate director of Mandan High School bands, has received the North Dakota Jazz Band Educator of the Year Award from the North Dakota National Band Association. The award was presented at the recent North Dakota Music Educators Association conference in Bismarck. Jio has not specified any date and has only said Summer Surprise to be withdrawn in next few days. Mumbai: Telecom regulator TRAI on Thursday asked Reliance Jio to stop its Summer Surprise, a sub-offer under Jio Prime, Jio's paid service that came into effect from April 1. TRAI on Friday said the complimentary free offer for three months or till July-end was not in sync with country's telecom rules. But, over 72 million users who have already signed up for Jio Prime paid service can still avail the offer, according to NDTV. Here is how's that possible even after TRAI ruling: "All customers who subscribe before the discontinuation will remain eligible for the offer," Reliance Jio website stated. Reliance Jio which has accepted the order did not give any specific date when it will withdraw the free three months offer. It has only said that Summer Surprise will stand to be withdrawn in the next few days. TRAI chairman R S Sharma had advised Jio to stop three months complimentary service, an order which was welcomed by Reliance Jio. While accepting the TRAI ruling, Jio has said it is in the process of "fully complying" with regulatory framework related to India's telecom sector. It must be noted that telecom regulator had not raised any objections in the past over Reliance Jio's free Welcome Offer, from September 5 to December 31, and Happy New Year offer, from January 1 to March 31. Reliance Jio Prime service comes at Rs 99 annual fee coupled with monthly recharges. The plans that Jio is considering to offer to majority of its users come on dirt cheap rates given the amount of data and type of services they are coming along with. The development triggered led to FPIs offloading shares worth Rs 262.37 crores on Friday. Mumbai: The equity markets ended the week on a subdued note as cautious investors booked profits in frontline stocks amidst increasing fear regarding an escalation of tension in the Middle East that could disrupt oil supply and push the global crude oil prices higher. The Nifty slipped below its crucial support level of 9,200 level mark and closed the session at 9,198.30, losing 63.65 points or 0.69 per cent. On the other hand, the BSE Sensex ended the day at 29,706.61, down 220.73 points or 0.74 per cent. Even global equity markets witnessed selling pressure after the US fired cruise missiles at a Syrian airbase on Thursday that immediately led to a spike in crude oil prices. However, global equities recovered some lost ground after an US official said that the strike was a one-off event and the government is not in favour of escalating it further. Air strikes by US forces on Syria caused a spike in oil prices. This was unexpected change of stance from US President Donald Trump on Syria as he had earlier said in his election campaign that that he has no plans to widen the conflict in Syria. However markets across the world reacted maturely and has side stepped the issue at least temporarily, said Jimeet Modi, CEO, SAMCO Securities. The development triggered led to FPIs offloading shares worth Rs 262.37 crores on Friday. Any major confrontation in Syria is likely to impact the global markets. Additionally, the meeting between the US & Chinese Presidents will be closely watched by investors to get more cues on how they tackle trade and geopolitical issues. Considering this, a state of consolidation in the domestic markets cannot be ruled out in the near term, said Vinod Nair, head of research at Geojit Financial Services. The actress may feature in the next Mission Impossible installment to be shot in India. If sources in Los Angeles are to be believed, Priyanka is now all set to rub shoulders with mega Hollywood star Tom Cruise, in the new installment of the Mission Impossible franchise. Cruise, who is currently shooting in Paris for Mission Impossible 6, is expected to shoot in India for a portion of the film later this year. And it is in the India leg of the shoot that Cruise is expected to be paired with PeeCee for. A source informs, The Mission Impossible team is keen to have Priyanka Chopra on board. But she has her schedule in America to work around. The new season of Quantico is going to begin. Whatever her other commitments, it is doubtful she will say no to Tom Cruise and Mission Impossible. The film stars Darshan Kumaar, Pia Bajpai, Chandan Roy Sanyal and Priyanshu Chaterjee. Rating: Director: Rajesh Ram Singh Cast: Darshan Kumaar, Pia Bajpai, Chandan Roy Sanyal, Priyanshu Chaterjee In the era of experimental cinema, Mirza Juuliet lacks every possible aspect of a good film. Director Rajesh Ram Singh directed a TV series called Service Wali Bahu and now the film seems like a sequel to the show titled Mirzapur Wali Bahu. Well, set in Uttar Pradesh, Mirzapur, Mirza Juuliet starts off quite well but fails to impress till it reaches to the climax. Mirza (Darshan Kumaar) goes through a troubled childhood as he kills the murderer of her mother and is sent to the juvenile cell. He then was raised by his relatives. Julie (Pia Bajpai), childhood friend of Mirza is a vivacious and bold beauty of her town. She lives on her own terms and is the only sister of Dharam Raj (Priyanshu Chaterjee), a so called local goon of Mirzapur. He fixes Julie with soon to become CM of the state Rajan (Chandan Roy Sanyal), who is a lustful young boy and is disturbingly fond of phone sex. Mirza secretly admires Julie but never confesses about it. Later, in the series of events Julie realises her love for Mirza and decides to run away with him. The two reach Nepal followed by Dharam Raj and Rajan. What happens next is no thing novel. The trailer of the film raised huge expectations since it had some rawness to it. Small town love, city politics and cuss words; it was enough to give you an urge to watch the film but it turned out to be blah. The film plot has nothing new to it. Director Rajesh Ram Singh seriously thinks that Indian audiences still live in the ancient era of the 90s when love triangles were done to death. Through the plot, Mirza Juuliet will remind you of the romantic cult Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak and Ishaqzaade. The narrative of the film is soggy considering the film is based on the backdrop of city politics. The biggest glitch in the film is its narrative. Shanti Bhushan who has written the dialogues and screenplay is clearly blind to the modern way of telling a story. The film has many jump cuts on the edits that it makes the film look funny. Just by putting brash dialogues, director cant get away with the film. Over to the actors now. Darshan Kumaar looks good in his mildly grey role while Pia Bajpai lightens the screen with her beauty and dialogue deliveries. Priyanshu Chaterjee looks great too in his strict and rugged role. The one who disappoints the most is Chandan Roy Sanyal who looks like a loser throughout the film. He is inarguably wasted in the film. The performances of the actors are the saving grace of this half drowned film. Ajay Pandey has beautifully captured the interiors of Uttar Pradesh especially the scenes shot on the banks of Ganges and Nepal. Music by Ksrna Solo is just about average. Tukda Tukda might appeal to you at best. Mirza Juuliet might garner whistles in Uttar Pradesh but surely wont achieve much in multiplexes. Watch the film for its performances else or any other potboiler would work for you this weekend along with popcorns and chilled drinks on your TV sets at home. New Delhi: Air India on Friday revoked its flight ban on Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad with immediate effect, two weeks after he had assaulted an airline staffer onboard a plane. An airline spokesperson said the move follows a written order from the Ministry of Civil Aviation. The spokesperson said, "AI is committed to ensuring its employees are not assaulted or misbehaved with. We will take strong action to preserve dignity of our employees." Aviation sources said that with the AI revoking the ban, private airlines may follow suit. Read: Unconditional apology or nothing: Air India grounds Sena MP Gaikwad for 7th time The 56-year-old Osmanabad MP had on Thursday written a letter to Minister for Civil Aviation Ashok Gajapathi Raju expressing his "regrets" over the "unfortunate incident" on March 23. "I write to convey my regrets for the unfortunate incident that took place on 23rd March 2017 in the Air India Flight No. AI-852 seat No.1F," Gaikwad had said in the letter. The ban was lifted by Air India, hours after it thwarted an attempt by Gaikwad to book a ticket for the seventh time in the last two weeks. However, the MP, in a statement denied having made any attempt to book a flight. An airline head on the condition of anonymity said it has been agreed that police investigation will continue and the MP will give a commitment that he will show acceptable behaviour in the future. Gaikwad had assaulted an Air India employee and had boastfully claimed on national TV about having hit him with slippers 25 times. He was banned by the airline on March 24. He, however, yesterday played the victim card, claiming he had only retaliated when provoked. The MP, who had attended the Lok Sabha for the first time yesterday since the incident, had denied any "wrongdoing" on his part and instead accused Air India officials of misbehaving with him, and sought action against them, especially the airline's CMD. He struck a somewhat conciliatory note when he tendered an apology to Parliament but insisted he owed no apology to the airline officials. In his letter to the civil aviation minister, the MP had stopped short of tendering an apology to either the national carrier or the staffer concerned. A combative Shiv Sena had yesterday threatened to disrupt AI operations in Mumbai and Pune and forced repeated adjournment of the Lok Sabha over the issue. The party had also declared it would not attend the April 10 meeting of the NDA if the ban was not lifted. While BNSF Railway considers what do with the aging bridge over the Missouri River, a Bismarck resident is putting forward a lofty idea. Nick Hornbacher wants to see the 134-year-old trestle transformed into a walking path with parks on both ends. The 24-year-old English teacher started an online petition Monday after reading an article in The Bismarck Tribune announcing the railroads intentions to replace the crossing. The company has yet to say whether it plans to dismantle the old bridge, and Hornbacher saw an opportunity to start a community conversation. Functionally, it doesnt affect your average citizen, but it is such a historic piece of the skyline, Hornbacher said. If there arent any solid plans created, that might leave an opening to create a discussion. The bridge could be a walking path across the river and an extension for those rollerblading or hanging out on River Road in the summer, he imagines. It would be something to tie together Bismarck and Mandan. Though Hornbacher collected 896 signatures in just four days, he realizes the idea is ambitious and would require help from experts and stakeholders. There are questions around zoning, ownership, stability, retrofitting, liability and cost. The more I know, the more it becomes more complicated, the more I realize Id be way over my head on my own trying to do something about it, he said. The Bismarck mayor shares some of those concerns, calling the idea a big goal, but hes supportive of the general concept. Its very complicated, because its a huge liability issue, said Mike Seminary. Whenever we can find ways to repurpose infrastructure, especially something that dated and unique, those are great ideas. The premise of turning city railroad bridges into parks has strong precedent. In Cincinnati, a former L&N Railroad bridge, now known as the Purple People Bridge, has been retrofitted for pedestrians and bikers. Its a popular attraction, but it has had some incidents of crime and controversies over upkeep. In Louisville, Ky., the Big Four Bridge, a former railroad trestle spanning the Ohio River fills a similar role. As a way to financially support it, people and organizations can pay to light the bridge in their chosen color at night. Eric Oberg, director of trail development for the Midwest regional office of the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, an advocacy group that supports these types of projects, said he sees similar potential in Bismarck. You dont get a lot of chances to walk over a major river like this on a bridge like that, Oberg said. It really could be a calling card for Bismarck. Oberg said the project would be a major undertaking, costing millions of dollars to retrofit the bridge and build new approaches. For a nonprofit or government agency, that would be in addition to the cost of buying the bridge from the railroad company, who may be willing to sell it at a discount. Its not easy, and its not cheap, Oberg said. But the places that have done it ... these big bridges are absolutely icons. In response to a request for comment on the green space idea, Amy McBeth, spokeswoman for BNSF, said the company is in the early stages of design for this project. Were looking at all options as part of the process and still evaluating them. One of the people who signed Hornbachers petition is 52-year-old Sonja Walder, of Bismarck. Her father was a life-timer with the railroad, working from Mandan as a direct service agent. Shes hopeful the landmark may be conserved, instead of demolished, as was done with the old Liberty Memorial vehicle bridge. This bridge, its got so much history, Walder said. If they took it away, it would be just like when they took the Memorial Bridge away. That was sad. The former BJP MP also apologised for remarks, saying that he did not convey what he had meant to. New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Partys Tarun Vijay, in a shocking remark, said that Indians cannot be considered racist because they are accepting of South Indians. He made these remarks on a television debate on racism on Thursday. After facing severe backlash for the same, the BJP leader has apologised saying that he did not convey what he had meant to. "If we were racist, why would we have the entire south? Which is you know... completely Tamil, you know Kerala, you know Karnataka and Andhra. Why do we live with them? We have blacks, black people all around us," he said on air. Admitting that his choice of words sounded ridiculous and very bad, Vijay clarified in a series of tweets he had meant to say that Indias racial demographic is diverse, but it has never been an issue for its citizens. He also took the example of Lord Krishna, saying that while Krishna means black, we worship him; reiterating his stand that racism was not a problem in India. I feel the entire statement was this- we have fought racism and we have people with different colour and culture still never had any racism (sic), he tweeted. My words perhaps were not enough to convey this. Feel bad, really feel sorry, my apologies to those who feel in said different than what I meant (sic), he said in a tweet. The minister had earlier in the Rajya Sabha, said that the incident did not happen at all leading to outage from the Opposition. Union Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi speaks in the Rajya Sabha in New Delhi. (Photo: PTI) New Delhi: In contrary to his previous stand, Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi on Thursday admitted that the Alwar killing occurred and an FIR has been filed in the case. In response to Congress member Madhusudan Mistry's Zero Hour mention on Thursday on cow vigilantes in Alwar stopping a truck carrying cows from a cattle fair and thrashing its occupants leading to the death of a Muslim, Naqvi had stated that no such incident had taken place. Naqvi's statement denying the lynching of a man transporting cows in Rajasthan by vigilantes led the Congress to create a ruckus in the Rajya Sabha on Friday, demanding apology from him for misleading the House. However, Naqvi clarified that he had referred to Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh where no such incident had taken place. "We do not justify anarchy and hooliganism," he said, adding that the incident in Alwar did take place and an FIR has been registered against six persons. While the state government was taking action under the law against the accused, Home Minister Rajnath Singh will make a statement on the issue in the House on Monday, he said. But Congress members were not satisfied by the clarification from Naqvi and demanded an apology from him for misleading the House. When deputy chairman P J Kurien did not find merit in their demand, they trooped into the Well of the House and shouted slogans. This infuriated Kurien who asked them to go back and allow the Chair to speak. With Congress members continuing to protest, an angry Kurien said he will not adjourn the proceedings. As Satyavrat Chaturvedi (Cong) argued with him to allow members to make their submissions on the issue, the Deputy Chairman shot back, "you are nobody to ask the Chair." "A senior member of Congress comes to the Well and questions the Chair. Very bad. I am sorry," he said. "Congress members are behaving irresponsibly. I see no reason (for them to shout slogans)." As Congress members shouted "Sadan ko gumrah karna band karo (Stop misleading the House)" and "mafi mango (apologise)," Kurien responded asking why Naqvi should do so. Naqvi also refused an apology with a gesture of hand. As the logan-shouting continued, Kurien said "I will not adjourn. This is nothing but intimidation. I am sorry for the disciplined members. ... A few members cannot take the House to ransom." Kurien said as far as the Chair was concerned, the Minister's assurance that the Home Minister will come to the House and make a statement on Monday was enough. Few minutes into the slogan shouting, Leader of the Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad asked his party colleagues to return to their seats but not before blasting the government for undermining the Rajya Sabha. He said the Home Minister had made a statement in Lok Sabha yesterday and the Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs should have fulfilled his duty by informing him that the issue has also been raised in the Upper House so that he could have made a statement yesterday itself. "It is unjust... every day they are undermining Rajya Sabha," Azad said. Naqvi said the Home Minister is travelling to Andaman, but Azad countered saying either of the two Ministers of State for Home could have made the statement. "I am very sorry. This government should take Rajya Sabha seriously," he said. Earlier, when the House met, Azad said the victim had gone to the cattle fair to buy cattle and chose a cow over a buffalo, after he was told that it would give more milk. Yesterday when the incident was raised, Naqvi, instead of accepting, had denied it. "Central Government should not protect these kinds of hooligans," he said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Azad said, had last year spoken harsh words for cow vigilantes but actions on ground seem to suggest that BJP workers have been given a free hand. Azad said a BJP MLA in Rajasthan had said the death of the victim was caused by heart attack but the post-mortem by state government doctors confirmed thaty it was caused due to internal bleeding in stomach and chest caused by thrashing. He said a person accused of slapping someone is remanded to 14-day police custody but in this case, the accused have been remanded to just one day custody, which indicates the intention to end this case. Azad said Naqvi had misled the House and Kurien had yesterday directed him to ascertain the facts from the Home Minister and report to the House. He wanted to know when Home Minister would come and make a statement in the House. Naqvi on his part said Mistry had in his Zero Hour mention stated that such incidents were happening in Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat and when he stated that no such incident has taken place, he was referring to those states and not Rajasthan. No such incident has been reported in BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat, he said. Terming the issue as "sensitive", he said it required sensitive handling and criminals should not be looked from the prism of religion, "otherwise a wrong message will go out, disturbing peace and harmony," Naqvi said. While Sharad Yadav (JD-U) said he was shocked to hear Naqvi's statement yesterday, Satish Misra (BSP) said the action by Rajasthan government was nothing but a cover-up. Kurien said he agreed with the contention of the members that Naqvi had yesterday stated that no such incident had taken place and it was he who had instructed the minister to ascertain the facts from the Home Minister and report them to the House. New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday sought response of six states, including Rajasthan, on a plea seeking a ban on cow vigilante groups there. A bench comprising Justices Dipak Misra and A M Khanwilkar issued notices to Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh and asked them to file their reply within three weeks. The bench has fixed the matter for hearing on May 3. During the brief hearing, the counsel appearing for the petitioner referred to the recent incident at Alwar in Rajasthan where a man was killed allegedly by a mob of cow vigilante group. The counsel claimed that the ground-level situation in these states was worrisome as the cow vigilante groups were resorting to violence there. Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar, appearing for the Centre, told the bench that formal notices were not issued to the states on the plea after which the apex court sought response from these six states. The Supreme Court had on October 21, last year agreed to examine the plea which sought action against cow vigilantes who were allegedly indulging in violence and committing atrocities against Dalits and minorities. Activist Tehseen S Poonawalla, in his plea, said violence committed by these 'Gau Raksha' groups have reached to such proportions that even Prime Minister Narendra Modi had declared them as people who are "destroying the society". The plea also alleged that these groups were committing atrocities against Dalits and minorities in the name of protection of cows and other bovines and they needed to be "regulated and banned in the interest of social harmony, public morality and law and order in the country". "The menace caused by the so-called cow protection groups is spreading fast to every nook and corner of the country and is creating disharmony among various communities and castes," the petition said. The plea sought to declare as "unconstitutional" section 12 of the Gujarat Animal Prevention Act, 1954, Section 13 of Maharashtra Animal Prevention Act, 1976, and Section 15 of Karnataka Prevention of Cow Slaughter and Cattle Preservation Act, 1964, which provide for protection of persons acting in good faith under the Act or rules. "These laws and the protection granted therewith act as a catalyst to violence perpetrated by these vigilante groups," it said. Seeking action against the vigilantes, the petition said the atrocities committed by them were punishable under various provisions of IPC and under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of atrocities) Act, 1989. The bodies of the two victims were retrieved on Thursday evening and that of the third jawan on Friday. Officials here said that five other persons died in weather-related mishaps elsewhere in Kargil and Kashmir Valley during the past two days. (Representational image) Srinagar: All the three Army jawans who went missing after multiple avalanches hit their post in 14,000 feet high Batalik area along the Line of Control (LoC) in Kargil district on Thursday have been found dead. The bodies of the two victims were retrieved on Thursday evening and that of the third jawan on Friday. Two others were rescued earlier, the Army said. Elsewhere in Kashmir Valley and Kargil, which experienced days of torrential rains and unexpected snowfall during the week, five persons including a father-son duo, died due to drowning, electric shock, lightning and after being swept by avalanches. Defence spokesman Colonel Rajesh Kalia said the bodies of the dead soldiers were retrieved from the debris and that these were being sent to their respective places of residence soon. He said the unprecedented snowfall triggered multiple avalanches in Batalik and Kaksar areas of Kargil, and one of the Army posts was buried under mounds of snow. While two soldiers were rescued immediately, the bodies of three others were retrieved from the debris by a team of avalanche rescue team, he said. He added the soldiers trapped in other incidents were, however, rescued and provided medical aid and that they are safe and sound. Officials here said that five other persons died in weather-related mishaps elsewhere in Kargil and Kashmir Valley during the past two days. A youth was electrocuted and two others were injured when they came in contact with a fallen power transmission in Hamray village of north-western Baramulla district on Thursday morning. In neighbouring Kupwara, a minor girl Shabana Saleem was drowned to death in a swollen stream in Hayhama area of the frontier district, the police said. A father-son duo died after being swept by an avalanche in Kargil. A woman was struck by lightning in Rajouri district, the officials said. Meanwhile, the authorities have withdrawn flood warning for Srinagar and some other Valley areas as the water level in Jhelum and other rivers and water bodies started receding early Friday following improvement in weather. Chief Engineer Irrigation and Flood Control (I&FC) Department, Muhammad Hanief Lone, said that the water level in Jhelum, the main river which flows through the Valley before entering Pakistan, which had crossed the danger mark on Thursday is decreasing fast and that there was no need to panic. Kashmirs Disional Commissioner, Baseer Ahmed Khan, also announced that the water level in Jhelum and its tributaries started to recede on Friday morning after rainfall stopped last night, easing flood fears in the Valley. While the Valley was faced with threat of flood and swelling rivers and streams set off panic buttons as the worst devastation caused by September 2014 floods is still haunting people, Prime Minister, Narendra Modi spoke to Chief Minister, Mehbooba Mufti, to offer all possible support in dealing with the situation. He wrote on micro-blogging site Twitter.com Spoke to J&K CM @MehboobaMufti on the flood situation in the state. Offered all possible support from Centre in dealing with the situation. Ms. Mufti later during the day on Friday visited various areas in Srinagar to personally inspect the status of dewatering and administrations response in dealing with the flood like situation. She asked I&FC department officials to patrol constantly the banks and breach spots on the Jhelum and other streams. She said, It is a matter of satisfaction that water level in Jhelum and other streams has started receding and administration is working round the clock to bring things to normal and extend relief to people. She thanked the Prime Minister for the gesture and apprised him about the losses suffered by the infrastructure, roads and horticulture sectors due to these unseasonal rains and snow, an official spokesman here said. He added that Home Minister, Rajnath Singh, also spoke to the Chief Minister and pledged support from the Centre to the State government in meeting the challenges posed by inclement weather. The Army here said that while the entire Valley was in the grip of a flood like situation and weather turning out to be adverse, it and civilian authorities jointly sprung into action to provide succour to the affected population on receiving distress call from low lying areas of Isthil, Chehlan and Kokernag. The only bridge in Isthil got washed away and the locals who were in critical situation near the bridge were immediately rescued and taken to safer places and were provided required medical assistance. The team was also able to save life of six persons who got stuck in drowning of a Sumo cab that fell into the Brengi nala in Kokernag, a defence spokesman said. In a separate incident an ambulance ferrying a pregnant woman to Srinagar from northern Bandipore district got stuck along Bandipore-Srinagar road near Malpura village. Army with the help of locals managed to rescue the stuck ambulance and ensure safe movement from an alternate route, the spokesman said. He added that later the womans husband Abdul Ahad Khan called the area Army camp at Saderkote Balla (Bandipore) to inform that he was blessed with a healthy boy at Srinagars Lal Ded Maternity Hospital and thanked Army for the initiative and timely assistance. These vigilantes groups are operating beyond the realm of law and are known to take law in their hands. New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to examine a writ petition filed by Congress leader, columnist and model Tahseen Poonawala to take immediate action against the vigilantes, working in the garb of Gau Rakshak Dals (cow protection groups) by spreading violence and committing atrocities against Dalits and minorities in the name of the protection of cows and other bovine species. A bench of Justices Dipak Misra and A.M. Kanwilkar, after hearing senior counsel Sanjay Hegde and counsel Shezad Poonawala, issued notices to the Centre and six states of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Haryana and Karnataka. Mr Hegde brought to the notice of a recent incident in Alwar, Rajasthan, where a middle-aged man was beaten to death, and urged the court to seek reply from the Rajasthan government. The bench did not give a specific direction but asked the states to file their response to the PIL and posted it for further hearing on May 3. In his petition, Mr Poonawala has sought a ban on such groups on the ground that they were operating illegally in several parts of the country, allegedly killing people in the name of protecting the cow. He likened the gau rakshaks to the now disbanded salwa judum, a similar vigilant groups formed by the Chhattisgarh government by arming civilians to kill Maoists. The petitioner alleged that some states like Gujarat, Haryana, MP and Maharashtra have given licences to these vigilante groups to check passing of trucks illegally smuggling cows. The gau rakshaks dals are in news for the past few months following a series of incidents in which beef-eaters and those purportedly indulging in cowmeat business have been targeted. Starting from Mohammad Akhlaques lynching in Uttar Pradesh for allegedly eating beef to the bashing up of a Dalit family in Gujarat for skinning a dead cow, the country has witnessed a spurt in such incidents. The petitioner submitted the menace caused by the so called cow protection groups is spreading fast to every nook and corner of the country, and is creating disharmony among various communities and castes. The violence committed by them have reached to such proportions that even Prime Minister Narendra Modi has declared them as people who are destroying the society. These vigilantes groups are operating beyond the realm of law and are known to take law in their hands. The atrocities committed by these vigilantes groups are punishable under various provisions of IPC as well as under Schedule Caste and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of atrocities) Act, 1989. The petitioner submitted that State laws and the protection granted therewith act as a catalyst to violence perpetrated by these vigilantes group. He said that the actions of these cow vigilantes groups are in complete violation of Article 21 of the Constitution as it takes away the victims Right to life and personal liberty. He said that the videos of such atrocities are readily available on Social Media and are inter alia spreading tension and enmity between the societies. Further sting operations conducted by various News Channels clearly show that these vigilante groups are mere extortionists in the garb of Cow Protection and are feeding on fear psychosis of victim as well as the community or caste that person belongs to. Multiple self- declared Cow Protection groups are active on Social Networking websites wherein they spread rumors as well as hatred between different communities and castes. He said these groups need to be regulated and banned in the interest of social harmony, public morality and law and order in the Country. Judicial stamps, revenue ticket and insurance ticket have been excluded from this new surcharge. Jaipur: The Rajasthan government has started charging a 10 per cent cow protection tax on non-judicial stamp duty transactions. The finance department last week issued the order for the 10 per cent surcharge, in line with chief minister Vasundhara Rajes tax proposals for fiscal 2018. Surcharge for development of basic infrastructure facilities and protection and propagation of cow and its progeny shall be levied on all instruments included in the Schedule to the Rajasthan Stamp Act, 1998, Ms Raje had said in her Budget speech. Non-judicial instruments bought for drawing up rent agreement, mortgage paper, lease agreement, power of attorney and similar agreements will cost more. Judicial stamps, revenue ticket and insurance ticket have been excluded from this new surcharge. The cow protection tax is in addition to the existing 10 per cent surcharge for infrastructure development. The move to impose the new surcharge came after a Cabinet sub-committee, formed in 2016 to find ways for funding cow protection programmes, gave several suggestions. Hundreds of cow have also died due to alleged mismanagement at the government-run Hingonia Goshala. Swaraj said the country wants the same responsibilities, prerogatives as well as obligations as the current permanent members. New Delhi: External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj on Thursday said India has all the credentials to become a permanent member of UNs Security Council. Ms Swaraj said that she is confident that if not this time, then next time, India would become a permanent member of the Security Council. She also said that the government expects that the new members would have the same rights, including the veto power, as the existing permanent members. Replying to a supplementary during the Question Hour in Rajya Sabha, Ms Swaraj said India has all the credentials to become a permanent member of the Security Council and four permanent members US, UK, France and Russia have extended support. The fifth member, China, has also not publicly opposed it, said the minister. I am confident that if not this time, then next time, India would become a permanent member of the Security Council, she said. When asked whether India would also get the veto power, Ms Swaraj said the country wants the same responsibilities, prerogatives as well as obligations as the current permanent members. We dont want any discrimination between old and new members. We dont want two classes that there is a first class and a second class of permanent members. This should make it clear that India wants the same responsibilities, prerogatives and obligations as the current permanent members, she said. The minister said India has been making diplomatic efforts to ensure not only expansion but also reform in the Security Council. She said India wanted expansion of its permanent as well as non-permanent membership of the council. Manmohan Singh pressed for constructive cooperation between the Centre and the states in resolving outstanding issues. New Delhi: Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday hailed the passage of GST bills by Parliament and sought to play down the fact that it could not happen during his tenure, saying "let bygones be bygones". Observing that the new indirect tax regime could be a "game-changer", he, however, cautioned that there could be "difficulties" in its implementation. He pressed for constructive cooperation between the Centre and the states in resolving outstanding issues. "There will be pitfalls. But we learn as we go along," he told reporters after Parliament approved four GST-supporting legislations, clearing the decks for the rollout of the historic indirect tax regime from July 1. Asked whether he felt disappointed that it could not happen during his tenure, the former Prime Minister said, "Well I think, let bygones be bygones." On whether the measure would help increase the GDP, he said, "it could be a game-changer but we should not assume that there will be no difficulties on the way. There must be a constructive spirit of cooperation between the federal government and the states to resolve the outstanding issues." The Central GST Bill, 2017; The Integrated GST Bill, 2017; The GST (Compensation to States) Bill, 2017; and The Union Territory GST Bill, 2017 were returned by the Rajya Sabha by a voice vote as all parties were on board. Condemning the attack of African students, the BJP leader said they were by mindless, criminalised people. New Delhi: Former BJP MP Tarun Vijay on Friday put his foot firmly in his mouth while making a valiant attempt to project India as a nation that was not racist. He explained Indias non-racist attitude by throwing light on how Indians had black people all around them and actually lived with these black people from Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. Mr Vijay, who was the former editor of RSS-affiliated weekly Panchjanya, made these comments during a television debate on Racism against Africans in India. Rattled by the uproar following his comments, he tweeted an apology for his badly framed sentence. Incidentally, he also heads the India-Africa Parliamentary Friendship Group. When asked why it was being felt that Indians were racist, he said, If we (Indians) were racist, why would we have the entire south? Which is you know...Completely Tamil, you know Kerala, you know Karnataka and Andhra. Why do we live with them? We have blacks, black people all around us (sic). His comments drew flak from the Congress which said it was shocking, while the DMK said it was funny. Mr Vijay also had to face massive social media outrage. An embarrassed BJP said Mr Vijay could have phrased his comments differently. Slamming the BJP leader for his remarks, senior Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge said the comments showed the saffron partys tendency to discriminate among people of the country. DMK MP, T.K.S Elangovan pointed out that not all people in south India are dark-skinned and cited the example of late Tamil Nadu chief minister J. Jayalalithaa and also DMK supremo M. Karunanidhi. I find it funny. Our leader Dr Kalaignar is fair, (late) Jayalalithaa was fair. Racism is not in colour and that is what Tarun Vijay should understand. He has chosen the wrong word while describing South Indians, said Mr Elangovan. Actor-turned-politician and Congress leader Khushboo said such remarks by the BJP leader were shocking and pointed out that he should have been more careful especially since he has worked to promote the Tamil culture. BJP spokesperson Shaina N.C. said her party believes in an inclusive approach towards every religion, language and culture. Maybe he (Vijay) could have worded it differently... For whatever words (used by Vijay), India continues to be a diverse country, said Ms Shaina N.C. While insisiting that to say Indians can be racist is the most vicious thing Mr Vijay gave examples of Indians worshipping a black God Krishna and said descendants of black Africans have been living amicably in states like Maharashtra and Gujarat. Condemning the attack of African students, the BJP leader said they were by mindless, criminalised people. Mr Vijay said Indians themselves were the victims of racism for long by the British and had fought against racism. ..we gave Gandhi to Africa and they turned him into Mahatma...we have great affinity and respect for each other, the BJP leader said. After his remarks ended up creating a massive uproar, Mr Vijay tweeted, Feel bad, really feel sorry, my apologies to those who feel I said different than what I meant.....I feel the entire statement was this; we have fought racism and we have people with different colour and culture, and still never had any racism. He, however, claimed that he never called south India as black. Responding to accusations of racism, he tweeted: I never, never, even in a slip, termed south India as black. I can die but how can I ridicule my own culture, my own people and my own nation? Think before you misinterpret my badly framed sentence. The Congress members demanded an apology from Mr Naqvi for misleading the House. New Delhi: The issue of cow vigilantes rocked Rajya Sabha yet again on Friday. The Opposition, particularly Congress, created chaos in Parliament over Union minister for minorities and parliamentary affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvis statement in Rajya Sabha on Thursday, denying the lynching of a man, who was transporting cows, by vigilantes in Rajasthan. The Congress members demanded an apology from Mr Naqvi for misleading the House. The minister clarified in the House on Friday that he was talking about other states like Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat where no such incident took place. Mr Naqvi then added: We do not justify anarchy and hooliganism. He acknowledged that the lynching incident did take place in Alwar and an FIR has been registered against six persons. The minister also said the issue was sensitive but, criminals should not be regarded on the basis of their religion. Mr Naqvi said by looking at them as Hindus or Muslims, sends a wrong signal. Home minister Rajnath Singh is expected to make a statement over the issue in Rajya Sabha on Monday. The home ministry has received a report from the Rajasthan government. Sources said a special police team has been set up to arrest all the accused involved in the crime. Out of the six accused, the Rajasthan police claimed to have arrested three of them. CHENGDU - Myanmar President U Htin Kyaw arrived in Chengdu, capital of the southwestern province of Sichuan, on Thursday to start his six-day trip in China. At the invitation of Chinese President Xi Jinping, U Htin Kyaw will pay a state visit to China from April 6 to 11, according to China's Foreign Ministry. He is accompanied by a delegation of over 30 members, including ministers of Myanmar's commerce and construction departments. China is the largest trading partner and the biggest source of foreign funding for Myanmar, and the two countries maintain close high-level contacts. 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However, the revocation of the ban came despite AIs cabin crew and pilot unions reportedly saying that the curb should not be lifted unless the MP tenders an unconditional apology to airline employees and promises to behave in the future. Mr Gaikwad had on Thursday sent a letter of regret to the civil aviation minister. On Friday evening, airline officials expressed confidence that AIs unions would accept the governments decision. Air India officials said the airline remains committed to ensuring that its staff is not subjected to assault or misbehaviour by passengers, adding that it would always take strong action to preserve the dignity of its employees at all times. In a communication to the Air India CMD, the aviation ministry said, In order to deal with unruly passengers in a more effective manner in future, an amendment to the civil aviation regulations is being drafted by the DGCA in consultation with this ministry for establishing a national no-fly list. This is expected to be a comprehensive framework added to civil aviation regulations that will ban unruly passengers from subsequently flying on any airline in the interests of air safety and aviation security. Hours before the ban was lifted, AI officials said Mr Gaikwad had booked tickets early on Friday morning on the Delhi-Mumbai sector, one on April 17 and the other on April 24, which were promptly cancelled since the ban was then still in place. But now he can book tickets afresh. Private airlines are also expected to follow suit and lift the ban. The national carrier said, MP Ravindra Gaikwad badly assaulted our employee and forcibly occupied the aircraft for over 40 minutes delaying other flights. Accordingly, two FIRs were filed. The PMs regret letter had come only after the Sena MPs ruling NDAs ally at the Centre caused pandemonium in Parliament and Mr Gaikwads defiant speech in the Lok Sabha where he denied attacking any AI employee and tried to play the victim. The Shiv Sena had even threatened to boycott the NDA if the ban was not lifted. Unless he tenders an unconditional apology to AI employees, and undertakes in writing to abide by the Chicago and Tokyo Conventions & Rules of the Air and follow all cabin safety and public behaviour norms, we must not let him on board, a letter from the Air India Cabin Crew Association to the airline management was quoted by news agencies as stating. Ravindra Gaikwad is and will continue to be a risk to flight safety and flight operations and to cabin crew safety on board, and hence the government must think long and hard about letting him back on, the letter said. The association said it would be a crying shame if he is let off without even a rap on the knuckles, adding, It would also crush the morale of all employees and indeed all fair-minded Indians. We do not wish to be flying such a person. The Indian Commercial Pilots Association, a pilot union of Air India, said, ICPA strongly condemns his misconduct and demands an unconditional apology for the same, failing which we will be constrained to direct our members not to operate any flight which has Mr Ravindra Gaikwad on board in the interest of the safety and security of our own people. Dinesh Sharma, on the other hand, said that yoga would soon be made compulsory in all schools from the new academic session. Lucknow: UP minister of state for basic and secondary education Sandeep Singh said here on Friday the Uttar Pradesh government is planning to introduce a dress code for teachers in the government schools. Deputy chief minister Dinesh Sharma, on the other hand, said that yoga would soon be made compulsory in all schools from the new academic session. He urged the people not to attribute motives to the decision, which was spurred by the fact that good health is necessary for all. Meanwhile, Mr Sandeep Singh, grandson of Rajasthan governor Kalyan Singh, said to maintain the decorum of educational institutions, orders would shortly be issued for a dress code for government teachers. The male teachers will be required to wear pant and shirts, while the women teachers can choose between sari or salwar kurta. In another proposal, the state government may soon change the uniforms of the children in the government schools. At present, most government school students wear khaki and white uniforms. We will decided on a new colour and notify the change in uniform, the minister said. It is not proper for teachers to wear informal clothes like jeans or tee shirts to work, he said. A government order on this will be issued shortly, he said. Currently, a number of male teachers in the rural interiors of the state can be seen wearing kurta-pyjama or dhoti-kurta, which is the dress of people in villages. The minister, however, parried questions on this dress. Recently, a statistical officer in Sultanpur was handed over a show-cause notice for wearing jeans even when there was no government order to this effect. Officials were later asked not to go overboard on this issue since there was no formal order for this. The minister added the government is mulling a proposal to introduce a dress code for teachers in the higher education sector too but the modalities are still being worked out. A variant of the gene CRY1 slows the internal biological clock making you sleep late Washington: If you've been a night owl all your life and mornings are your nemesis, blame a gene mutation for keeping you awake, scientists say. Researchers at Rockefeller University in the US have discovered that a variant of the gene CRY1 slows the internal biological clock - called the circadian clock - that normally dictates when you feel sleepy each night and when you are ready to wake. People with the "night owl" variant of this gene have a longer circadian cycle than most, making them stay awake later, researchers said. "Compared to other mutations that have been linked to sleep disorders in just single families worldwide, this is a fairly impactful genetic change," said Michael W Young, professor at Rockefeller. According to the new research, the mutation may be present in as many as one in 75 people in some populations. Sleep or wakefulness disorder - ranging from insomnia to narcolepsy - can predispose people to chronic diseases including diabetes, obesity and depression. People who self-categorise as night owls are often diagnosed with delayed sleep phase disorder (DSPD). Their 24 hour sleep-wake cycle is delayed, making them energetic long after most people have fallen asleep. Going to bed late has its downsides: most people with DSPD are forced to wake up before their bodies tell them to in order to make it to work or school on time, leading not only to insomnia early in the night, but also to fatigue during the day. To find out whether mutations in any known circadian genes were linked to DSPD, subjects were asked to spend two weeks in a laboratory apartment that was isolated from all cues to the time of day, eating and sleeping whenever they were inclined. Researchers also collected skin cells from each person. Most people will follow a roughly 24 hour sleep-wake cycle when put in such a free-run environment. However, a DSPD subject that caught the researcher's interest not only stayed up late, but had a cycle that was about 30 minutes longer. Moreover, changes in body temperature and hormones that cycle along with the circadian clock - including melatonin, which helps regulate sleep - were also delayed. "Melatonin levels start to rise around 9 or 10 at night in most people. In this DSPD patient that doesn't happen until 2 or 3 in the morning," said Young. When the researchers examined the DNA from the DSPD patient, one variant stood out; a mutation in CRY1, a gene that had already been implicated in the circadian cycle. In a healthy circadian clock, a handful of genes turn on and off over a 24 hour cycle. The protein made by CRY1 is normally responsible for suppressing some of these genes during certain parts of the cycle. However, researchers discovered that the mutation identified in the patient made the CRY1 protein more active than usual, keeping other clock genes switched off for a longer period of time. Women presume these symptoms are just signs of aging, but they can be corrected by talking to a gynecologist or urologist. Women who have other symptoms associated with menopause, such as night sweats, hot flashes or other whole-body problems, may need to take estrogen treatments by a pill or skin patch. (Photo: Pixabay) Women who experience vaginal and urinary problems associated with menopause should seek help from their doctors, according to a new patient resource page from the JAMA journal. Women with pre- and post-menopausal symptoms, as well as their doctors, need to remember that these common complaints are treatable in ways that can easily improve quality of life, writes Dr. Jill Jin. We created this resource based on a reader request, and I see many patients in my own practice with these complaints, so its highly relevant, said Jin, an internist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, who wrote the one-page primer intended for patients. The page discusses genitourinary syndrome of menopause, which used to be known as atrophic vaginitis. The new term was introduced in a 2016 review article in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology (bit.ly/2oDcPF4), which notes that the syndrome affects more than half of postmenopausal women. I see a wide variety of patients who look up health information online, and its useful to have reliable sources to direct them to when they have questions, Jin told Reuters Health. Theres a lot of false health information online, and journals such as JAMA are great places for concise, accurate information. The JAMA patient resource explains that estrogen levels drop during menopause, and the walls of the vagina become thin, dry and inflamed. The related symptoms of burning, irritation and urinary issues are common but can be more bothersome for some women than for others. Doctors can recommend both hormonal and non-hormonal treatment options, such as over-the-counter lubricants and moisturizers or estrogen treatments administered by pill or through the skin. Women presume these symptoms are just signs of aging, but they can be corrected by talking to a gynecologist or urologist, said Sardar Khan of Stony Brook University School of Medicine in New York, a co-author of the 2016 review. Typically, doctors recommend trying vaginal estrogen first as a cream, tablet or ring inserted into the vagina. This provides estrogen to the vaginal area without circulating through the bloodstream first, which can lower the chance of health risks associated with hormonal treatments during menopause. Women who have other symptoms associated with menopause, such as night sweats, hot flashes or other whole-body problems, may need to take estrogen treatments by a pill or skin patch, the patient resource notes. Women who take this type of estrogen should also take progesterone. Khan and his co-authors reviewed additional treatments as well, including synthetic steroids, laser therapies, homeopathic remedies and lifestyle modifications. Importantly, early detection and individually-tailored treatment plans are key, the study authors wrote. Women should not suffer in silence, Khan told Reuters Health. The days are gone when we accept these symptoms as merely signs of aging. The JAMA patient page also suggests seeking additional information on the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists website about menopause (bit.ly/1Ml5Vcf ). The site features a comprehensive FAQ section about menopause, symptoms, osteoporosis, hormone therapy and healthy lifestyle advice. Women should begin talking to their doctors about these symptoms in the perimenopause period and share any concerns they have, Khan said. Health providers should ask about menopause, quality of life, and pain routinely during visits, he added. Ive found its often up to caregivers to make patients feel comfortable enough to open up and talk. Mr Hazare said he will never ever support the way Mr Kejriwals government broke all rules and laws. New Delhi: Social crusader Anna Hazare said his protege Arvind Kejriwal has gone off-track in pursuit of power after the revelation of the Shunglu report. He was pained to read about the allegations against the Delhi chief minister in the report, the 79-year-old said in a statement from his village in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra. The committee set up by Delhis former L-G Najeeb Jung has indicted the Delhi government of bypassing law, nepotism and financial irregularities among others. Delhi Congress president Ajay Maken, who obtained the report through RTI, made the document public on Thursday. Mr Hazare said he will never ever support the way Mr Kejriwals government broke all rules and laws and said such behaviour will weaken the country and society. He was my colleague in the fight against corruption... At that time, I felt the educated, new generation could help rid the country of graft, the anti-corruption crusader said, adding that his dream lies shattered. The MLAs were speaking during the discussion on amending the law to allow bullock cart racing in the state. Mumbai: Amidst rising incidents of cow vigilantism in the country, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) legislators have demanded stricter laws to deal with cow and bullock slaughter in Maharashtra. Mangal Prabhat Lodha, a senior BJP MLA from Mumbai, asked for capital punishment for killers of cow and bulls whereas the saffron partys Mumbai chief Ashish Shelar claimed the illegal killing of cows and bullocks has been going on in the state despite the ban. The MLAs were speaking during the discussion on amending the law to allow bullock cart racing in the state. While speaking on the issue, Mr Lodha said, I ask the government to provide money for gaushalas in every district. Those who kill cows and bulls should be given the death penalty. At the same time, the killing of these animals at abattoirs like Deonar for export purposes should also be stopped. There should be a ban on the export of meat. Interestingly, no MLA present in the House supported Mr Lodha and animal husbandry minister Mahadev Jankar ignored his demand. Stating that illegal butchery was still going on in the states abattoirs despite the government having banned the slaughter of cows and bulls, Mr Shelar said, The government must clear its stand on the matter. He added, Mumbai has many animals, but the citys sole veterinary hospital is in a poor condition. Therefore, the government must ensure a minimum of one veterinary hospital and two animal dispensaries in the development plan of the city that is in the making. The government is positive about a pension scheme for journalists and is studying the pension schemes of other states. Mumbai: Maharashtra Government will soon initiate a pension scheme for journalists in the state, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis told the Legislative Council on Friday. Fadnavis was responding to a Calling Attention motion moved by the Congress member Sanjay Dutt. "The government is positive about a pension scheme for journalists and is studying the pension schemes of other states who are implementing them. We will soon be initiating it (scheme) in our state as well," the chief minister said. Earlier, Dutt demanded that the government introduce a pension scheme for journalists before the monsoon session of the state legislature. Dutt said that several states, including smaller ones like Goa, Jharkhand, Arunachal Pradesh etc. are giving pension to journalists, apart from Delhi. "Why Maharashtra cannot do so," he asked. Dutt demanded that a corpus fund be allocated for the purpose and that interest accumulated on it can be utilized towards payment of the monthly pension to journos. He also asked the government to ensure effective implementation of the Journalist Protection Act once it is approved by the state legislature. The Maharashtra cabinet yesterday gave its approval to the draft Bill on the law prohibiting attacks on journalists (Journalists Protection Act) Parliamentary Affairs Minister Girish Bapat friday moved a resolution for revocation of the suspension of remaining 10 MLAs Mumbai: The Maharashtra Assembly on Friday revoked the suspension of 10 more Opposition MLAs who were barred from attending the proceedings of the House for the rest of the year for creating ruckus during the Budget presentation last month. A total of 19 Opposition MLAs (10 from NCP and nine from Congress) were suspended on March 22 till December this year keeping them away from House proceedings and also restricting their entry into the Legislature premises in Mumbai and Nagpur. The suspension of nine members was earlier revoked on April 1. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Girish Bapat friday moved a resolution for revocation of the suspension of remaining 10 MLAs, which was adopted by the House. The 10 MLAs who will be able to return to the House are: Amar Kale, Vijay Wadettiwar, Kunal Patil, Jaykumar Gore, Harshwardhan Sapkal (all from Congress) besides Bhaskar Jadhav, Madhusudhan Kendre, Jitendra Awhad, Rahul Jagtap and Sangram Jagtap of the NCP. The Opposition disrupted proceedings in the House during the Budget presentation on March 18, by displaying banners before Finance Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar while he was reading out the budget speech. They also sang bhajans, played cymbals, raised slogans and later burnt copies of the budget outside the House. Police in Pietermaritzburg city fired rubber bullets to keep Jacob Zuma supporters away from a rally against him. Johannesburg: Tens of thousands of South Africans demonstrated peacefully on Friday in a national outpouring of anger at their scandal-tainted president, while a second agency lowered the country's credit rating to junk status a week after the firing of the respected finance minister. While concerns grew about the struggling economy and government corruption, the protests were unlikely to pose an immediate threat to President Jacob Zuma, who retains the backing of powerful factions within the ruling African National Congress party. But divisions over his conduct are growing within the party, whose moral authority a legacy of its leading role in the fight against white minority rule has eroded during his tenure. Nobel laureate and anti-apartheid leader Desmond Tutu, 85 and ailing, made a rare public appearance to support the protests. His foundation posted a scathing tweet in his name: "We will pray for the downfall of a government that misrepresents us." In Johannesburg, police fired rubber bullets to disperse about 100 ruling party members who were making their way toward protesters, the African News Agency reported. Separately, ruling party members assaulted several protesters participating in a march organized by the Democratic Alliance, South Africa's biggest opposition group. Other ANC members in military uniforms who had been posted outside their party headquarters helped to escort the protesters to safety. Police in Pietermaritzburg city also fired rubber bullets to keep Zuma supporters away from a rally against him. The Fitch agency cited political uncertainty as a factor in its decision to downgrade South Africa's credit rating to below investment grade, days after Standard & Poor's did the same. Zuma's Cabinet reshuffle, in which Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan was fired, will further discourage companies from investing in South Africa and could weaken "standards of governance and public finances," Fitch said. The government appealed for calm and said it respected the right to protest peacefully. The country turned to democracy after white minority rule ended in 1994 with the country's first all-race vote and the election of Nelson Mandela as president. In some cities, protesters with banners lined stretches of road or stood on overpasses; passing cars honked their horns. In the capital, Pretoria, they marched to the Union Buildings, which houses the offices of Zuma and other government officials. In Cape Town, motorcyclists with South African flags led a rally. "Fire Zuma," read some placards. South African media outlets posted photos of Tutu and his wife, Leah, standing with residents at a bus shelter outside the retirement home where they are staying in Hermanus, near Cape Town. Tutu was shown smiling and raising a walking stick, apparently to acknowledge passing protesters. The retired Anglican archbishop, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his peaceful campaign against apartheid, has criticized the ANC for alleged mismanagement over the years. He has been hospitalized several times since 2015 because of infections linked to past treatment for prostate cancer. Gordhan, the former finance minister, was seen as a counter to the alleged influence of the Gupta family, Indian immigrant businessmen who have been accused of trying to influence some of Zuma's Cabinet picks for their own financial gain. The Guptas deny any wrongdoing, and Zuma has said there was nothing improper in the way he chose ministers. Zuma and the ruling party, which suffered big losses in municipal elections last year, have been weakened by other scandals around the president. Zuma was forced to reimburse some state money after the Constitutional Court ruled against him last year in a dispute over millions of dollars spent on his private home. UN peacekeeping mission UNMISS said on Wednesday that they had twice been prevented from accessing Pajok. Uganda currently hosts more than 832,000 refugees from South Sudan, including over 270,000 in the Bidibidi refugee camp which in eight months has gone from an empty patch of land to the world's biggest refugee camp. (Photo: Representational) Juba: More than 6,000 people have fled fighting in southern South Sudan, with refugees recounting the slaughter of civilians by armed forces, the United Nations refugee agency said on Friday. Fighting between government forces and rebels erupted on Monday in the town of Pajok in the country's southern Equatoria region, a previously peaceful part of the country that has seen a surge in conflict in recent months. According to a statement from the UNHCR over 6,000 people have fled into the northern Ugandan district of Lamwo since the attack while many others were hiding in the bush trying to find their way to safety in Uganda as main roads were blocked by armed groups. "People fleeing the recent incident claimed that the town came under an indiscriminate attack by the South Sudan armed forces," the statement said. "Refugees told the UNHCR team on the ground in Lamwo terrifying stories of violence and abuse against civilians. Many have witnessed their loved ones shot dead or slaughtered like animals," UNHCR spokesman Rocco Nuri told AFP. "Families fled in all directions. Those unable to run were reportedly shot dead, including the elderly and people with disabilities." A local pastor who fled Parjok on Wednesday, and asked not to be named, said soldiers had entered the town in tanks "and suddenly we saw shooting and we just had to run." Both he and regional Anglican Bishop Oringa Benard reported that some 135 people had been killed, however this could not be independently verified. The UN peacekeeping mission UNMISS said in a statement on Wednesday that they had twice been prevented from accessing Pajok. "The mission has received reports of fighting between SPLA (government) troops and the opposition there and is trying to follow-up on reports of civilians killed in the area," the statement added. UNMISS urged the government to immediately allow it access "so it can fully implement its mandate, including to protect civilians and report on human rights violations." South Sudan government spokesman Michael Makuei confirmed that its forces had attacked Pajok. "As you know Pajok has been in the hands of the rebels so what happened was government forces went there and fighting ensued and so the civilian population that has been staying with the rebels had to run away," he said. "I don't know the figure (of those who might have been killed or injured) but in any fighting there must be casualties." Uganda currently hosts more than 832,000 refugees from South Sudan, including over 270,000 in the Bidibidi refugee camp which in eight months has gone from an empty patch of land to the world's biggest refugee camp. The North Dakota Board of Medicine has canceled the upcoming hearing for a Bismarck oral surgeon suspended from practice last month. Duane Houdek, the board's executive secretary, said the April 13 hearing has been postponed while lawyers review evidence and Dr. Mansureh Iravani is evaluated for psychiatric competency and chemical dependency. The hearing will be rescheduled but may not take place until June, Houdek said. Iravani's medical license remains suspended. Iravani is accused by two former employees of a number of poor practices. These include pulling the wrong teeth, asking untrained personnel to conduct procedures and starting procedures before patients were fully sedated. She claims the allegations are made up by disgruntled former employees. Bashir faces 10 charges, including three of genocide as well as war crimes and crimes against humanity in the western Darfur region. The Hague: South Africa will on Friday seek to defend its failure to arrest visiting Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir who is wanted on charges of genocide, at an unprecedented hearing before international war crimes judges. It will be a humbling moment for Pretoria, one of the leading voices in the creation of the International Criminal Court, whose lawyers will be fending off accusations that it failed in its obligations to the tribunal. To the frustration of the ICC's prosecutors, Bashir remains in office and at large despite two international warrants for his arrest issued in 2009 and in 2010. He faces 10 charges, including three of genocide as well as war crimes and crimes against humanity in the western Darfur region. The deadly conflict broke out in 2003 when ethnic minority groups took up arms against Bashir's Arab-dominated government, which launched a brutal counter-insurgency. At least 300,000 people have since been killed and 2.5 million displaced in Darfur, the UN says. Several victims of the lingering conflict in the western Sudanese region, who now live in The Netherlands, will attend Friday's hearing which opens at 0730 GMT in the tribunal in The Hague. Long wait for justice The UN Security Council asked the ICC as long ago as 2005 to probe the crimes in Darfur where conditions remain "dire," according to Monica Feltz, executive director of the rights group, International Justice Project. The 10 Darfurians who will watch the hearing are "hoping to see that their story is told, and that their voices are heard, and that the international community still cares," Feltz told AFP. "They're been waiting for over eight years to see justice in this case," she added, voicing disappointment the victims were not granted permission to actually take part in the hearing. The issue is centred on South Africa's refusal to arrest Bashir when he attended an African Union summit in Johannesburg in June 2015, insisting he had "head of state immunity" and allowing him instead to slip out of the country. The judges will have to decide whether Pretoria violated its obligations under the court's founding Rome Statute by not arresting him and handing him over for trial. South Africa insists it was caught on the horns of a dilemma: between its obligations to both the ICC and to laws providing heads of state with immunity. 'No-one is above the law' The ICC's prosecutors have hit back, pointing out that in the past South Africa told Bashir he would be arrested if he set foot in the country. "No one is above the law, even heads of state," insisted Feltz. Friday's hearing is "a historic opportunity for the court to demonstrate that its charges must be taken with extraordinary seriousness," said Wanda Akin and Raymond Brown, two legal representatives of the victims, in a joint statement. They urged the court to send "an unmistakable message that open defiance of its writ will not be permitted." The judges will return their decision at a later date, and may decide to report South Africa to the UN Security Council for eventual sanctions. Although this is the first public hearing of its type, last year the ICC referred Chad, Djibouti and Uganda to the UN for also failing to arrest Bashir. So far no action has been taken against them. The Sudanese leader was a guest last month at an Arab League summit hosted by Jordan -- also a signatory to the Rome Statute. South Africa moved this year to withdraw from the court, angered by the case against it. But it formally revoked its decision last month after its own High Court ruled in February that it would be unconstitutional. Although the date of the hearing was set late last year, it also comes at a moment of political tension in South Africa as embattled President Jacob Zuma faces growing calls to resign. Police are investigating the case and are now looking for two men caught on surveillance camera leaving the store. Jaryal was taken to the hospital where he later died. (Photo: Representational) Washington: A 26-year-old Indian man has been shot dead allegedly by two masked armed robbers at a convenience store of a gas station in the US Washington state, his family said on Friday. Vikram Jaryal, who was working as a clerk in the store at AM-PM Gas Station in Yakima city, was behind the counter when two people in masks came in and robbed the store on Thursday. Police said the clerk handed the suspects money, but one of the suspects fired at him. Jaryal was taken to the hospital where he later died. The victim was able to tell officers what happened when they arrived a few minutes later; but tragically, he died a short time later at the hospital, police was quoted as saying by the NBC Right Now channel. Jaryal hailed from Hoshiarpur district in Punjab and had shifted to the US about a month ago, his elder brother told PTI. External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj condoled the tragic death after she was informed about the incident by the victims brother through twitter seeking her help to bring back the body. Police are investigating the case and are now looking for two men caught on surveillance camera leaving the store. Somebody knows something. Somebody knows these people. The still photos show a very recognisable top that one of the suspects is wearing, Mike Bastinelli, Yakima Police Department said. The shooter wore a black hoodie with patches of white on the back, Mike said. Trump, speaking to reporters after the strikes, said the attack was in the nations vital national security interest. President Donald Trump took the toughest direct US action yet in Syrias six-year-old civil war. (Photo: AP) Washington: The US military launched cruise missile strikes ordered by US president Donald Trump against a Syrian airbase controlled by president Bashar al-Assads forces in response to a deadly chemical attack in a rebel-held area, a US official said on Thursday. The military targeted Syrian aircraft, an airstrip and fuel stations in its strike, the official said, adding the missiles themselves struck their targets at 3:45am in Syria on Friday. Trump, speaking to reporters after the strikes, said the attack was in the nations vital national security interest. He said the United States must prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons and that there was no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons. Facing his biggest foreign policy crisis since taking office in January, Trump took the toughest direct US action yet in Syrias six-year-old civil war, raising the risk of confrontation with Russia and Iran - Assads two main military backers. Some 60 Tomahawk missiles were launched from US Navy warships in the Mediterranean Sea, the US official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. A target was identified as an airbase in Homs. Further details on the target and the results of the strikes were not immediately known. Trump ordered the strikes just a day after he pointed the finger at Assad for this weeks chemical attack, which killed at least 70 people, many of them children, in the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun. The Syrian government has denied it was behind the attack. Trump, who was attending a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping at his Florida resort, said earlier on Thursday that something should happen with Assad as the White House and Pentagon studied military options. US military action put the new president at odds with Russia, which has air and ground forces in Syria after intervening there on Assads side in 2015 and turning the tide against mostly Sunni Muslim rebel groups. Trump has until now focused his Syria policy almost exclusively on defeating Islamic State militants in northern Syria, where US special forces are supporting Arab and Kurdish armed groups. The risks have grown worse since 2013, when Barack Obama, Trumps predecessor, considered and then rejected ordering a cruise missile strike in response to the use of chemical weapons by Assads loyalists. Police said the clerk handed the suspects money, but one of the suspects fired at him. Jaryal hailed from Hoshiarpur district in Punjab and had shifted to the US about a month ago, said his elder brother. (Photo: Representational Image) Washington: A 26-year-old Indian man has been shot dead allegedly by two masked armed robbers at a convenience store of a gas station in the US Washington state, his family said on Friday. Vikram Jaryal, who was working as a clerk in the store at AM-PM Gas Station in Yakima city, was behind the counter when two people in masks came in and robbed the store on Thursday. Police said the clerk handed the suspects money, but one of the suspects fired at him. Jaryal was taken to the hospital where he later died. The victim was able to tell officers what happened when they arrived a few minutes later; but tragically, he died a short time later at the hospital, police was quoted as saying by the NBC Right Now channel. Jaryal hailed from Hoshiarpur district in Punjab and had shifted to the US about a month ago, said his elder brother. External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj condoled the tragic death after she was informed about the incident by the victims brother through twitter seeking her help to bring back the body. Police are investigating the case and are now looking for two men caught on surveillance camera leaving the store. Somebody knows something. Somebody knows these people. The still photos show a very recognisable top that one of the suspects is wearing, Mike Bastinelli, Yakima Police Department said. The shooter wore a black hoodie with patches of white on the back, Mike said. Pakistan accused India of trying to hide the atrocities in Kashmir. Islamabad: Pakistan today expressed regret at India's snub to the US offer to help resolve the Kashmir issue between the two neighbours, saying New Delhi as usual "reacted negatively" to the proposal. Pakistan always welcomed offers of mediation, which has been made by various countries, to resolve the Kashmir issue, Foreign Office spokesperson Nafess Zakaria told reporters. "India as usual reacted negatively to the US offer. India wants to speak of terrorism. We also insist on speaking of terrorism, which forms one of the elements of the comprehensive dialogue process," he said. The US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, had said on Monday that the US would try and "find its place" in efforts to de-escalate tensions between India and Pakistan. Speaking at the weekly press briefing, Zakaria said resolution of the Kashmir issue in accordance with the wishes of Kashmiri people and UN resolutions is the only way for durable peace in the region. Accusing India of "trying to hide the atrocities in Kashmir", the spokesperson said that the protests during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Kashmir visit recently are reflective of the "strong prevailing sentiment of the Kashmiri people". Zakaria said that alleged Indian ceasefire violations are attempts to divert the attention of the international community from the deteriorating situation in Kashmir. "Our forces act responsibly and with restraint returning fire only when fired upon. We regularly report the incidents to the UNMOGIP, who in turn submit their report to the UN Secretary General. International Community is realising the threat to the regional peace posed by the Indian belligerent posture," he said. He also accused India of involvement in terrorism, saying that it has "irrefutable" evidence about it. "Kulbhushan Yadav and many other examples are irrefutable proof of Indian involvement in Pakistan," he said. Commenting on a New York Times report about India may be reinterpreting its nuclear weapons doctrine of 'No-First Use', he said Pakistan has long maintained that the ambiguous no-first use declaration is not verifiable and hence nothing more than an empty political statement. "It cannot substitute for verifiable arms control and restraint measures. In taking appropriate security measures, Pakistan has to consider capabilities and not intentions which can change anytime. "It goes without saying that the talk about pre-emption in a nuclearized South Asia is highly irresponsible and dangerous and will not help the cause of promoting strategic restraint and stability in the region," he said. Both the Swedish Prime Minister and the country's intelligence agency said that it was a terror attack. People walk away fro the scene after a truck crashed into a department store injuring several people in central Stockholm, Sweden, Friday April 7, 2017. (Photo: AP) Stockholm: A truck crashed into an upscale department store in central Stockholm on Friday, killing at least two people, according to Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, who said all indications were that it was a terror attack. One person was arrested. The incident happened just 100 metres from the Indian embassy in Stockholm, said ANI reports. People in the downtown area fled in panic, and the country's intelligence agency said a large number of people were injured. Swedish radio put the death toll at three. "Sweden has been attacked," Lofven said. "This indicates that it is an act of terror." Swedish broadcaster SVT said shots were fired at the scene, though it wasn't clear by whom and police said they could not confirm that. Live television footage showed smoke coming out of the upscale Ahlens department store on Drottninggatan Street, which the truck smashed into. The department store is part of Sweden-wide chain. The building includes several stores at street-level. "We stood inside a shoe store and heard something ... and then people started to scream," witness Jan Granroth told the Aftonbladet daily. "I looked out of the store and saw a big truck." Photos from the scene showed a beer truck sticking out of the department store, and Aftonbladet daily reported that Swedish beer maker Spendrups said one of its trucks had been carjacked earlier Friday. Friday's incident is near the site of a December 2010 attack in which Taimour Abdulwahab, a Swedish citizen who lived in Britain, detonated a suicide bomb, killing himself and injuring two others. Abdulwahab rigged a car with explosives in the hope that the blast would drive people to Drottninggatan - the street hit Friday - where he would set off devices strapped to his chest and back. The car bomb never went off, and Abdulwahab died when one of his devices exploded among panicked Christmas shoppers. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Friday's attack, but vehicles have been common weapons in recent extremist attacks. Last month, in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group, a man drove into a crowd on London's Westminster Bridge, killing three people and injuring many others before stabbing a policeman to death. A fourth person, a woman thrown into the Thames by the force of the car, died Thursday. The IS group has also claimed responsibility for a truck attack that killed 86 people in Nice, France, in July and another that killed 12 people at a Christmas market in Berlin. Many mafia turncoats have done just that, risking their own lives and those of their families to help authorities fight the mob. Vatican City: Pope Francis will wash the feet of inmates at a prison known for housing mafia turncoats in an Easter week ritual meant to show his willingness to serve. The Paliano prison, located in a huge fortress outside Rome, houses many of Italys collaborators of justice, who can shave time off their sentences by cooperating with anti-mafia investigators. Given the security concerns involved, the Vatican said on Thursday the April 13 Mass at the maximum-security facility would be strictly private. Francis has spoken out frequently to denounce the mafia, declaring mobsters excommunicated and urging them to change their ways. Many mafia turncoats have done just that, risking their own lives and those of their families to help authorities fight the mob. Francis has used the Holy Thursday foot-washing ceremony as a deeply symbolic gesture of inclusion that has at times riled conservatives, such as when he washed the feet of women and Muslims. Last year he performed the ritual on would-be refugees. Even before he became pope, the Argentine Jesuit paid particular attention to prison ministry and still stays in touch with a group of inmates in Buenos Aires. Francis has denounced the death penalty and solitary confinement and says inmates must be given hope and chances for rehabilitation. Moscow had been hoping to work with Trump to jointly fight ISIS in Syria and boost US-Russia ties. Moscow: Russian President Vladimir Putin condemned US cruise missile strikes on Syria as illegal on Friday, warning the move would further damage already battered US-Russia relations which Moscow had hoped President Donald Trump would revive. US officials said they had informed Russian forces ahead of the strikes intended to punish the Syrian government for what they say was a chemical weapons attack earlier this week and had avoided hitting Russian personnel. Satellite imagery suggests the Shayrat air base that was struck in western Syria is home to Russian Special Forces and military helicopters, part of the Kremlins effort to help the Syrian government fight Islamic State and other militant groups. Russias main air base and a naval facility were not hit. Moscow had been hoping to cooperate with Trump to jointly fight Islamic State in Syria, a move it was banking on to boost US-Russia ties which are at a post-Cold War low. After the US strikes, that task now looks harder. President Putin views the US strikes on Syria as aggression against a sovereign state in violation of the norms of international law and on a made-up up pretext, said a Kremlin statement. This step by Washington will inflict major damage on US-Russia ties. Putin, a staunch ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, was holding a meeting of Russias Security Council to discuss the strike on Friday afternoon and the Russian Foreign Ministry called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council. A foreign ministry statement said Moscow was suspending a Syrian air safety agreement with the United States originally drawn up to ensure that the two countries planes did not collide. Its clear to any specialist that the decision to launch a strike was taken in Washington before the events in Idlib (the province where the gas poisoning took place) which were simply used as a pretext for a show of force, the ministry said. Dmitry Peskov, Putins spokesman, told reporters the US strikes had been conducted to help rebel groups fighting Assad. Russia would keep military channels of communication open with Washington, but would not exchange any information through them, he added. When asked whether Russia had deactivated its own anti-missile defence systems in Syria before the missile strike, Peskov declined to comment. The Russian Defence Ministry meanwhile mocked the effectiveness of the US strikes, saying only 23 missiles had found their targets. It was unclear where another 36 had landed, it said, promising Syrian air defences would now be beefed up. A Russian frigate armed with Kalibr cruise missiles sailed through the Bosphorus en route to the eastern Mediterranean in the early hours of Friday morning, according to pictures taken by Turkish bloggers for their online Bosphorus Naval News project. It was unclear if that was related to the US strikes. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said there were no reports of any Russians being hurt in the attack. He said he hoped US-Russia ties would not be irreparably hurt as a result. Rex Tillerson is due to make his first visit to Moscow next week as US secretary of state, an eagerly awaited event in Russia where politicians have been anxious to try to use the change of administration to reboot relations. One senior Russian lawmaker, Leonid Slutsky, told the Russia 24 television channel on Friday Moscow should use the Tillerson visit to try and talk sense into Washington. Syria, ironically, was one of the few areas where analysts believed Moscow and Washington might be able to find common ground. The Kremlin says Washingtons allegations that the Syrian army possesses and used chemical weapons are flat out wrong and accuses the West of ignoring rebel use of such weapons. It says scores of Syrians were killed by poison gas on Tuesday because the Syrian air force had struck a militant bomb-making factory which it said contained chemical weapons procured in Iraq. Western countries have dismissed this version of events and say Syrian planes dropped the gas, which Assad denies. The Kremlin said on Friday the U.S. attack had thrown up a serious obstacle to the idea championed by Trump during his election campaign of creating an international coalition against terrorism. Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the upper houses international affairs committee, said it looked like Trump may have been pushed into approving military action by the Pentagon and US intelligence agencies. One way or another, Russian cruise missiles are continuing to strike terrorists and American ones government troops who are heading the war against the terrorists, Kosachev wrote on social media. I fear that with these approaches the hoped-for US-Russian anti-terrorism coalition in Syria is breathing its last before it is even born. Jerusalem: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday he supports the "strong and clear message" sent by a US strike in neighbouring Syria in retaliation for a suspected chemical attack. "In both word and action, President (Donald) Trump sent a strong and clear message today that the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated," a statement from Netanyahu's office said. "Israel fully supports President Trump's decision and hopes that this message of resolve in the face of the Assad regime's horrific actions will resonate not only in Damascus, but in Tehran, Pyongyang and elsewhere." Meanwhile, Turkey welcomed the US air strike on a Syrian airbase early Friday as a "positive" move and urged the international community to maintain its stance against the "barbarism" of President Bashar al-Assad. "We welcome this as positive but... we believe that the Assad regime must be punished completely in the international arena," Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus told Turkey's Fox TV in an interview, quoted by state-run news agency Anadolu. "The international community must maintain its stance clearly against this barbarism," said Kurtulmus, who is also government spokesman. Similarly, Britain's government "fully supports" US strikes against a Syrian air base launched after a suspected chemical attack on Tuesday, a spokesman said. "The UK government fully supports the US action, which we believe was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime," the spokesman said in a statement on Friday. He also said the US strikes were "intended to deter further attacks". British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson on Tuesday said the attack bore "all the hallmarks" of action by government forces and called for those responsible to be "called to account". Britain is a leading member of the US-led 68-country coalition fighting against the Islamic State jihadist group in Syria and Iraq. Trump ordered the massive military strike on a Syrian airbase on Thursday in retaliation for the "barbaric" chemical attack he blamed on President Bashar al-Assad. The US strike follows international outrage this week over the suspected chemical attack that killed dozens of civilians, including many children, in the rebel-held northwestern Syrian town of Khan Sheikhun. The US attack on the Shayrat base in central Syria was Washington's first military action against the regime in the six-year civil war. Colonel Ahmed Osman, of the Turkey-backed Sultan Murad rebel group said any action that will put an end to the regime is welcome. (Photo: Representational/AP) Beirut: Syrian rebels on Friday welcomed a US strike on a government airbase, but urged additional action, with one powerful faction saying a single strike was "not enough." The US attack on the Shayrat base in central Syria was Washington's first military action against the regime in the six-year civil war. "Hitting one airbase is not enough, there are 26 airbases that target civilians," a key figure in the Army of Islam faction, Mohamed Alloush, said on his Twitter account. "The whole world should save the Syrian people from the clutches of the killer Bashar (al-Assad) and his aides." Other rebel groups welcomed the US strike and called for continued military action against the regime. "The American strike against the killing tools used by Bashar al-Assad is the first step on the correct path to combating terrorism and we hope it will continue," said Issam Raes, spokesman for the Southern Front rebel faction. "In my opinion, the message is political, and the message has arrived to Russia and been understood," he said. Colonel Ahmed Osman, of the Turkey-backed Sultan Murad rebel group said: "We welcome any action that will put an end to the regime that is committing the worst crimes in history." Mohamed Bayrakdar, another leader of the Army of Islam, which operates mainly around the capital Damascus, described the strike as "a bold and correct step." "We welcome any response to the crimes of the regime," he said. by card. Oswald Gracias* The archbishop of Mumbai expressed Asias solidarity and offered prayers to Card Zenari. Children in Asia weep for those in Syria. Bombing worsens the unspeakable horrors of war. Mumbai (AsiaNews) Card Oswald Gracias, archbishop of Mumbai and president of the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences (FABC), expressed to AsiaNews his deep sorrow for the US decision to attack a Syrian base in response to a chemical attack against a rebel-held town near Idlib. On behalf of the Church in Asia, he said he was praying for suffering Syrian children, women, families, the sick and seniors. The cardinal extended to Card Mario Zenari, apostolic nuncio to that tormented land, his solidarity and prayerful support. Here is Card Graciass message: "Man's inhumanity to Man: The unimaginable horrors of war and the tragic loss of life and property is compounded by the use of bombs that are more lethal and destructive. "The cries of agony of children, women, families, the elderly, sick people, the suffering of people make the Church in Asia suffer in solidarity with Syria. The Church in Asia supports Cardinal Mario Zenari with our prayers and acts of penance as we beg for God's Mercy. "As the Spiritual Leader of the Church in Asia, I join my voice with that of the international community in calling for an end to all hostilities and a return to the path of peaceful negotiation. Dialogue and non-violence are the only true arms that will bring back peace to Syria. "God is present in human history, even in its most tragic episodes. The Church in Asia prays for Syria. God does not abandon us but consoles the weeping. "We pray that God may give eternal peace to all those who have lost their lives and turn the hearts of the perpetrators of this attack to values of peace, mercy and justice. "My heart is deeply troubled. I lift my soul to the Lord, O God from the depths of my soul I cry to thee for Mercy. Save our people and our brothers and sisters in Syria torn by grief and heartbreak. This has been going on for six long years, too long O Lord. The Children in Asia cry out for the children in Syria, pleading with God to save Syrian children from this senseless slaughter. * Archbishop of Mumbai and president of the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences (FABC) (Nirmala Carvalho contributed to the article) by Sumon Corraya Rally marked the 42nd anniversary of the Islamic Foundation with two Islamic scholars from Makkah and Madinah as guests of honour. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina reiterated solidarity with the Saudi king, urging Islamic countries to join forces in a concerted campaign to eliminate extremism. Dhaka (AsiaNews) About 100,000 people, including ulemas, imams and others, took to the streets of Dhaka yesterday to protest against the latest wave of terrorism in the country on the 42nd anniversary of the Islamic Foundation, an organisation associated with the Ministry of Religious Affairs. Speaking during the ceremony at the Suhrawardy Udyan, the national memorial, in Dhaka, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina urged participants to spread the true message of Islamic education: Muslims killing Muslims in the name of jihad is not Islam; Islam does not say to kill others. The guests of honour included two important Saudi clerics: Mohammad Bin Nasser Bin Mohammad Al Khuzaim, vice president of the Masjid al-Haram (the Grand Mosque in Makkah) and Al-Masjid an-Nabawi (the Prophets Mosque in Madinah), and Abdulmehsin Bin Mohammad Bin Abdul Rahman Al-Qasim, imam and preacher at the Prophet's Mosque. The Prime Minister of Bangladesh urged all Islamic countries to join hands to launch a concerted campaign to eliminate terrorism. She reiterated her solidarity with the Saudi king, saying " We will work together so that no one can undermine our holy religion. She went on to bemoan that Muslims are being killed by Muslims, noting that arms manufacturers are the first to benefit from terrorism at the cost of Muslim blood. Islamic Foundation Director General Shameem Afzal joined her in saying that Islam does not teach to conquer countries, a view shared by other participants, like Imam Mahamud Hasian who told AsiaNews that he got the message from the meeting and will sincerely teach people to be against extremism at his mosque. Mgr Socrates Villegas acknowledges differences in principle, but adds that they should not prevents us from cooperating). He urges bishops and government to tone down the confrontation. For the CBCP president, silence is not an option; disregard for human life must stop. Contrary to what some believe, the Catholic Church is not an enemy of the Duterte administration, says Mgr Antonio R. Tobias. Manila (AsiaNews/CPCPNews) Despite differences over the war on drugs and extra-judicial killings, Filipino bishops remain committed to a positive relationship with the Duterte administration. This week the Filipino Church held a number of meetings with senior government officials, the first on 31 March, at the headquarters of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) in Manila, in order to iron out differences. On 4 March, in an interview with ANC television, CBCP president Archbishop Socrates Villegas said that the dialogue with the authorities is the best way to proceed. There are issues where we differ in principle, but we should not allow such differences to prevent us from cooperating, Villegas said. We should support him (the president) on peace-making, alleviating the situation of the poor and everything that is for the benefit of the people. The CBCP president did not name the officials he met, but said that they had made a breakthrough, noting that both sides wanted to tone down attacks against each other. You stop, we stop, said Villegas. You cant tell us to stop talking when issues are so unchristian and against our beliefs. For the prelate, if the killings stop, if the disregard for human life end, then you can trust that we will tone down [our] statements because we will see goodwill. Mgr Villegas added that the bishops are concerned that, in case of their silence and no protests, "people may think that this is the new normal." At the same time, Church is not against Duterte as a person, but against issues concerning morals. Whilst hoping to see the president succeed, solutions should be within parameters of morality, he added. In recent months, many Catholic leaders have spoken out against a "culture of death" promoted by Dutertes policies. For his part, the president has often launched in harsh attacks against the bishops, guilty in his eyes of criticising the bloodshed caused by his war on drugs and opposing his attempt to reintroduce the death penalty. Contrary to what some believe, the Catholic Church is not an enemy of the Duterte administration but an ally, a helper of the state, this according to Mgr Antonio R Tobias who spoke during last Sundays holy Eucharistic mass at the Sto. Nino parish church in Bagong Silang about the victims of extra-judicial killings and their families. In his homily, Mgr Tobias focused on to the rising number of widows and orphans generated by the presidents war on drugs, which has so far left 7,000 people dead. Mr President, said the prelate, the Church and the bishops you curse, together with the priests [. . .] are the ones who help the victims of your fight against drugs. In lieu of the death penalty, the bishop called on the government to help Filipinos overcome the bondage of addiction through treatment and rehabilitation. He also criticised the idea that addicts are good for nothing, noting that what brings divisions is judgemental attitudes towards others. As a society, all Filipinos are accountable for the high level of drug abuse. Saudi Arabia and Israel praise attack which they also read as a message to North Korea and Iran. Turkey calls it a "positive", but not enough. Russia and Iran criticize the unilateral decision, Putin terms it an "aggression against a sovereign state." Washington (AsiaNews) - The US bombing of the Syrian Khan Sheikhun base has provoked immediate reactions above all from Saudi Arabia and Israel, who have been supported the decision of the President of the United States Donald Trump. Instead Russia and Iran have expressed their firm opposition. The Saudi foreign minister said the missile launch was the right answer " "the crimes of this regime to its people in light of the failure of the international community to stop it. Saudi Arabia is a historical enemy of Assad, and has supported the rebels against him, because it considers the conflict a "continuation" of the one against its rival in the Middle East, Iran. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu applauded Trumps decision, expressing its "full support." For Netanyahu, the attack is a "strong message" against the use and spread of chemical weapons. According to the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, military action was "a moral decision that sent a message three times," not only to Syria, Iran and North Korea, but also to the international community, regarding the opportunity to act in situations which the UN is "incapable". A second message that Netanyahu "will resonate not only in Damascus but in Tehran, Pyongyang, and in any other place." Turkey has also stated its support for Trump. The Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said today during a television interview that it is "imperative that the Assad regime is to be punished by the international community." He said that the air raid is "positive, but should be brought to fruition and" the barbaric regime of Assad immediately stopped. " Turkey had already announced his support yesterday when Tayyip Erdogan had announced he is ready to do its part in case of US attack. However Russia and Iran, Assad's allies, have expressed their condemnation. Russian President Vladimir Putin considers the US military action an "aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law." Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said that the President considers the bombing a "forced pretext". The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman says that "Iran condemns all unilateral attacks of this nature. These measures reinforce terrorism in Syria and complicate the situation in Syria and the region. " This is the 20th charter since the end of Thailands absolute monarchy in 1932. It boosts the monarchs powers without popular vetting. For opponents, the new Charter neuters democracy. Elections are set for next year. The outgoing military government will pick Senate members who will elect the prime minister. For the military, the new dispensation will end deep political divisions. Violence breaks out in the south: Malay rebels carry out 23 attacks. Bangkok (AsiaNews) Thailands king yesterday signed into law a new pro-military constitution, an essential step towards the new elections promised by the ruling junta to restore democracy after the 2014 coup. King Maha Vajiralongkorn signed the new charter, the 12th in more than 80 years, in Bangkok in a televised ceremony held yesterday afternoon. He ascended to the throne last October after the death of his father, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who reigned for more than seven decades. In August 2016, Thai voters approved a draft charter in a referendum in which opponents were barred from formally campaigning, and the new king had not yet expressed a desire to change it. In January in fact, the king asked for some changes to sections concerning the powers of the monarch, which were strengthened. The new constitution, the 20th since the end of the absolute monarchy in 1932, was published in yesterdays Royal Thai Government Gazette. Critics argue that it will once again give the military a powerful voice in Thai politics for years, if not decades. They note that the new document will give the Thai people a neutered democracy. One of the most controversial provisions of the new Constitution gives the outgoing military government the right to appoint members to the Senate, which will have a say in choosing the prime minister. In addition to an appointed upper house, the new constitution boosts the powers of the Constitutional Court and makes it easier to impeach civilian leaders elected by the people. For the military, the new charter will end the kingdoms deep political divisions and hold at bay corrupt lawmakers. It also provides for an election before the end of 2018. The junta had promised elections in 2015 after seizing power in 2014 from the government of Yingluck Shinawatra, sister of Thaksin Shinawatra, the populist leader deposed in 2006. The army claimed that the coup would end political turmoil. However, the main political divisions remain pitting the Bangkok elite and pro-royalist military against Shinawatras supporters, who can be found in particular among the poor, and in the countrys rural north and north-east. The new dispensation also includes a "20-year" plan that will bind any future government. A few hours after the signing ceremony, violence broke out overnight in the south of the country, a Muslim-majority region torn apart by poverty and an armed insurrection. Since midnight the Thai military has reported more than 20 arson and bomb attacks, causing widespread blackouts but no casualties. Analysts doubt any link between the ceremony and the attacks, noting that the violent flare-up is likely a reaction to the killing of two suspected rebels by security forces last month. "There have been 23 simultaneous incidents in three southern provinces and four districts of Songkhla," said Colonel Pramote Prom-in, an army spokesman for the south. The region has been violence for more than a decade. Malay rebels have been at war with regular Thai troops in order to obtain greater autonomy. So far, the conflict has caused the death of about 6,800 people. This border region is one of the few areas to have rejected the military-backed constitution in last years referendum. UNMAS Director: "Decades of work" to clean up contaminated areas. In Iraq, the annual cost of demining is approximately $ 180 million. Even the Chaldean primate wants land secured prior to the return of refugees. Every year landmines kill more than 6400 people. Baghdad (AsiaNews) It will take at least 50 years to clean up the land by underground landmines and unexploded bombs, Syria and Iraq, according to UN sources, denouncing that in the underground of the two Middle East countries are hidden deadly traps for civilians. A similar drama to what happened in Cambodia and Laos where, today, half a century after the war in Indochina, people are still subjected to amputation or death from unexploded legacy of the conflict. In conjunction with the twelfth UN International Day against landmines, April 4, Agnes Marcaillou stressed that it will take "decades of work" to clean up the land. The director of UNMAS (United Nations Mine Action Service) speaks of a scenario similar to the European continent "at the end of the Second World War", where " unexploded ordnance can still be found here and there ". According to figures provided by the United Nations expert, every year it will cost between 170 and the 180 million to "clean up" the areas taken from the Islamic State in Iraq. Among these, the Nineveh plain (home to several Christian towns) and Mosul, the second largest city of the country and long considered a stronghold and capital of the self-proclaimed "caliphate". Marcaillou pointed out that the figure of $ 50 million is needed each year to break free from weapons circulating in Mosul. For months an international coalition led by the United States in support of Iraqi forceshave been leading an offensive to retake the city in the hands of the Islamic State (IS) for almost three years. In January, the authorities declared the eastern sector "completely free", while clashes are still ongoing in the western sector. The UNMAS director confirms that the work for the safety of the lands in Syria and Iraq will be complex, sophisticated and "far-reaching." However, the UN expert shows optimism adding that the goal will be achieved in a not too distant future. "The greater the funds she explains - the greater the staff that we can employ" for soil detection. The goal is to make the Iraqi government independent, so that it can tackle the work of demining as did the governments in London, Paris and Berlin at the end of the war. Therefore, concludes Macaillou, the financing of the international community will be essential in allowing the return of displaced people to their homes and lands. The issue of landmines and unexploded bombs is also at the center of the Iraqi Church concerns. Chaldean Patriarch Mar Louis Raphael Sako has intervened on several occasions asking for the demining of the Nineveh plain and return the land to the Christian refugees (and non-Christian). In a letter-appeal last September, the Chaldean Primate stressed that before rebuilding homes, churches and hospitals "mine clearance is essential". "Today - added the prelate - more than two years on from the taking of Mosul and the Nineveh Plain militia by the IS [...] is" difficult to know in what condition we will find the villages "after their liberation. "Before returning to restore new life to our dear beloved towns", he continues, it will be necessary to "remove a devious enemy, hiding under the ground, and sometimes even in everyday items". "Today - said Mar Sako - we have to seriously deal with the post Daesh and plan the return to life of this fertile and ancient plain. According to a report by the United Nations every year landmines kill more than 6400 people. In 2015 it is estimated that they injured or killed 18 people a day for a total of 6460 victims. Although the use of mines is limited, they are used especially in Myanmar, Libya, Syria and Iraq. Damascus (AsiaNews / Agencies) - At 4:40 this morning the United States launched a hail of 59 Tomahawk missiles against a Syrian military base in Shayrat, near Homs. The attack - in the words of President Donald Trump - was in response to the bombing with chemical weapons in Khan Sheikhun, near Idlib three days ago. The chemical weapons attack led to the death of at least 86 people, of whom 27 children. The Pentagon said it had informed Russia - an ally of Assad - before launching the attack against Shayrat. The missiles were launched by two Navy destroyers, the Porter and Ross, based in the eastern Mediterranean and hit planes, warehouses, ammunition bunkers, air defense and radar systems. The US decision to attack came before any inquiry into the responsibility for the bombing Idlib. Yesterday, the UN Security Council did not reach an agreement and was due to meet again today. The Russians, who have blocked a motion by the US, France and Britain, argue that Syrian planes struck a rebel chemicals storage / factory. Speaking from his villa at Mar-a-Lago (Florida), Trump branded Syrian President Bashar Assad a "dictator" who has "launched a horrible chemical attack on innocent civilians". Trump also called "all civilized nations to unite in seeking to end the bloodshed and carnage in Syria, also to eliminate terrorism of all kinds." In addition, the Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that now "there is no role for Assad in Syria." These statements are a complete u-turn in US policies. Previously Trump seemed spoke of the Syrian president as an ally against terrorism of the Islamic State and the US ambassador to the UN had said that Assad's removal was no longer "a priority". Syrian television spoke of an "American aggression" that struck a Syrian base, without giving too much detail. The governor of Homs Talal Barazi said that "there are many martyrs and we do not know the number or martyrs or wounded." Many areas of the base are on fire and the wounded are being treated for severe burns. He recalled that the forces present in the base were "important support" in the battle against the Islamic State for Palmyra. These Redditors Taught Us All How Not To Pick Up Older Women Let These Redditors Teach You How *Not* To Pick Up Older Women It's not secret that some men love older women. Words like "MILF" and "cougar" became popular in the past decade to say nothing of "your mom" jokes in part because of how damn sexy older women can be. What's the fascination? Well, women who are a little bit older might be more likely to be self-possessed and successful. By a certain age, they definitely know how to look their best in a way that younger women might still be working out the kinks on and damn if more mature women don't know a thing or two about having better sex. But as with every male/female flirtation, there are lots of ways this kind of flirtation could go wrong. If there's an older woman who's caught your eye and got you all in a tizzy, it can be easy to say exactly the wrong thing and torpedo the whole thing from the start. This recent Reddit thread proves just how decidedly not into young male antics these women can be. So take these deeply embarrassing screw-ups as a lesson when it comes to shooting your own shot, compadre. 1. Don't Hit On Her While She's Chaperoning A Party []rooneygirl420 5554 points 13 hours ago When my brother graduated from high school, he had a big party at our house. My mom would walk around periodically to make sure things weren't getting too ridiculous. At one point, this kid very openly hit on my mom and told her she was hotter than any girl there. Obviously my mom noped out of that mess and was thoroughly creeped out. Are her kids, who are your age, within earshot? Probably don't hit on her. 2. Don't "Casually" Put Your Arm Around Her Shoulder []_Colombiana_ 19.2k points 16 hours ago I don't consider myself to be a MILF, but I have had my sons' friends try and make moves on me before. I am younger (had my first kid in my early twenties) and am "exotic" (Colombian immigrant in a small southern town). I think those play more of a role than my actual looks. Just something different than what the teen boys here are used to. The weirdest one was when my boys had a couple of friends over to watch a movie a couple of years ago. I believe they were 14 and 12 at the time. I was watching the movie with them and one of the boys (14 years old) put his arm around me. I didn't want to make a big deal about it and embarrass him or anything, so I tried to subtly get out of the situation. I yawned and I told the group that I was going up to bed and he stood up and started following me. I asked what he was doing and he said he thought I wanted him to come up to bed with me. I explained that I was sorry for the confusion, but that I absolutely did not want him to come up to bed with me. He apologized and returned back to the media room to watch the movie with the rest of the boys. My oldest is a senior in high school now and has been asked by his friends if they can take me to prom if they can't find another date. Yikes, yikes, yikes. 3. Don't Try To Walk In On Her While She's Changing []SuperHighSkiBunny 5622 points 10 hours ago I have two teenage daughters and have had several of their guy friends hit on me. We moved to a new town a few years ago and both my girls are quite pretty so they had a lot of new guy friends that would come over and hang out. I would talk with them in the group and kinda hang around and listen to what was going on. Some of the ones who looked older would say things just to see if they could get away with it. I can't recall most of the things that were said but two stand out to me. The first one happened when my daughter came in with a group of friends and asked me to give several a ride home. I told her I just needed to hurry and change out of my gym clothes and I'd be right down. Next thing I know there's a knock at my bedroom door and I ask who it is (my daughter wouldn't knock) From the other side of the door I hear a boy ask if I needed any help changing. I told him to get his ass out of my house. The second one happened at a party we my other daughter threw at our house. One of the boys came up and put his arm around me and asked to see my tits. I was so shocked I couldn't think of anything to say other than fuck off. Then I told him to leave. The next day he called my daughter and asked her to ask me if he would ever have a chance. Seriously?!?! It finally got to the point that she asked me not to come around when her guy friends were over and not to talk to them when I see them at the school because she was sick of hearing things about me from the guys. I had to start just being a bitch after that because obviously me being nice was taken as something other than what I'd intended and I didn't want to embarrass my daughters any more. Trying to sneak a peek of someone naked without their consent is harassment. Not a good flirt vibe. Consent first, boys. 4. Don't Tell Her You See Her As An "Experience" []anothermochaplz 9465 points 13 hours ago Every moderately attractive high school teacher has been hit on. Currently, a senior that graduated last year is patiently waiting to turn 21 so he and I can go have a beer. I'm sure in his mind this will lead to a weekend of wild sex where I show him the hidden secrets of the Kama Sutra. I'm just interested to see if anything will have changed by then. Also, one of my son's friends once told me he'd "like to experience an older woman" and then stared at me. He's more likely to experience his own right hand. 5. Don't Stare At Her Boobs []finigian 5980 points 17 hours ago I'm a gilf, still get hit on by younger men. But when I was a milf my daughters boy friends would boob watch all day. Yes, she can tell. Want to know what you should do? Check out what real cougars revealed were the keys to dating them. Wilderness Survival Gear Going Camping? Be Sure To Pack This Wilderness Survival Gear The AskMen editorial team thoroughly researches & reviews the best gear, services and staples for life. AskMen may get paid if you click a link in this article and buy a product or service. Man vs. nature. What is it about braving the elements, facing the best that nature can throw at a man and not only surviving but thriving? Even the most citified among us holds a high regard for the fellow who ventures into the wild with but a few necessities and his wits and emerges unscathed. The admiration for the physical toughness goes without saying, but its the mental resilience we truly envy. At its severest, the environment is an adversary against which all others pale. Lets face it, Mother Nature is a bitch and seriously trying to kill us. Whether the parched desert, weather-beaten mountaintops, teeming jungle, frigid arctic, or churning ocean, the weapons that the wilderness brings to bear are formidable. But theres no sense in raging against the storm. The only thing for it is to be prepared. Training Courses The first step in preparation is a little (or a lotta) training. All the toys, tools, and whiz-bang gewgaws wont do much good if you dont employ the most important outdoor accoutrement your brain. Its not necessary to complete the Ranger Course to handle better than 90% of what you might encounter. While autodidacts will head to the library, read a few books (Surviving the Extremes by Dr. Kenneth Kamler is a good start), and venture out, theres something to be said for some hands-on, practical application under the tutelage of an old hand. Those fortunate enough to have grown up with the Boy Scouts will have a good foundation, especially if they paid attention during those merit badge classes. For the guys who pursued other hobbies, all is not lost. While you might learn a thing or two from fellas named Bubba with summer teeth and mad banjo skills or your local prepper, there are more reliable venues. We have the lowdown on several courses for the budding outdoorsman. Local Outdoor Shop Stores like REI offer basic classes for the neophyte. The advantage here is that they are often free, offered with the likelihood that youll buy something new and shiny (see below) to make your experience more enjoyable and safe. These classes provide you with the fundamentals for a safe adventure: packing lists, basic navigation, meal preparation, elementary field first aid, weatherproofing, and wildlife avoidance. Outward Bound Outward Bound offers a range of courses across the United States, as well as farther afield, in backpacking, rafting, rock climbing, mountaineering, kayaking, and sailing among others. The courses are often extended trips with a group of peers, whether school-age teenagers, middle-age adults, or special groups such as veterans, educators, or grieving/struggling teens. The emphasis is the shared experience, but even the most reluctant are bound to learn something useful. National Outdoor Leadership School With a mission to be the leading source and teacher of wilderness skills and leadership that serve people and the environment, NOLS prepares you to assume a leadership role in your outdoor adventures with competence. The Landers, Wyoming based non-profit provides courses that range from weeklong trips to courses that last the better part of a year. Youll emerge from their training capable of functioning under the most arduous conditions, comfortable living and traveling in the wilderness, able to care for not only yourself but others as well. What to Bring The 10 Essentials list represents the bare necessities to venturing into the great wide open. The original list has been around for a while, collated by the Mountaineers (a Seattle-based club for outdoor enthusiasts) in the 1930s based on hard-won experience. The Classic 10 Essentials Map Compass Sun Protection Extra clothing Headlamp/flashlight First-aid supplies Firestarter Matches Knife Extra food The Essentials 2.0 The classic system was nice for its simplicity; however, the items on it were meant to be treated as standalone tools. Lets face it: A map is nice, but so much more effective when paired with a compass. You might say, well, both were included on the classic list, right? Yes, but the gear below will allow you to get the most out of classic navigation tools. Is it cheating? Maybe so, but the methodology might just save your butt. 1. Mountain Hardwares Ghost Whisperer Down Jacket Best for: Keeping you warm on freezing nights (or days) Insulation is very environment-specific. What works for a temperate forest when the sun sets will be insufficient for the arctic freeze or thin mountain air. If youre venturing into snow or above the tree line, consider Mountain Hardwares Ghost Whisperer Down Jacket. Its expensive, but the 800-fill down is water resistant and it packs down to eight ounces of nothing, leaving you with no excuse to leave home without it. $349.00 at Amazon.com 2. Hydro Flask Best for: Preventing your kidneys from shutting down Other than air, water is your most precious expendable. A few hours in a desert without it can drive you to madness, and even in the most temperate climate youll only last a few days waterless. In the heat of the Mojave in August, temperature can top 120 degrees Fahrenheit. The Hydro Flask 64 ounce water bottle is double-walled vacuum insulated stainless steel, keeping ice for over 24 hours in the brutal heat of the Mojave summer. Bonus: it makes a great growler for craft brewery visits. $59.95 at Amazon.com 3. American Optical General Sunglasses Best for: Protecting your tender skin Most animals come with built-in protection from the suns rays with a layer of fur, feathers, or leathery skin. Humans arent so lucky; we add to our soft, pink layer in order to withstand UV rays. Sunglasses and sunscreen are both particularly necessary in desert, artic, mountain, and maritime environs. Sunscreens range from scant to full protection by either chemical or physical blocking. You want at least 15 SPF and broad spectrum to guard against both UVA and UVB rays. But dont forget about your eyes extended exposure to direct and reflected light can lead to temporary blindness and even long-term damage. For sunglasses, you can easily spend a small fortune. We like the value option with sunglasses no big deal if you lose them or your toddler, dog, drunken tumble destroys them. Our choice: the MacArthur-esque American Optical General Sunglasses. $76.67 at Amazon.com 4. Cammenga Tritium Lensatic Compass Best for: Finding your way navigation (map and compass). A topographic map and a compass will tell you where you are and where you need to go. With a good understanding of terrain appreciation, an ability to shoot a resection or intersection, and an understanding of magnetic declination (theres that training we mentioned), these two tools will ensure the only thing lost is your quotidian troubles as you meander over new territory. The best compass is a lensatic compass with tritium insets, which makes shooting precise azimuths day or night so much easier than with that $10 clip-on. $76.67 at Amazon.com 5. Black Diamonds Spot Headlamp Best for: Shedding some light on your predicament Everything from a keychain fob LED to a one million-lumen face-melting hand laser are available. A hands-free headlamp addresses your illumination needs while leaving you with two mitts available for addressing your other problems, like where you put those other nine essentials. RELATED: Best Tactical Flashlights More power equals more weight and a bigger drain on batteriesLED lights are the way to go for their longevity and light weight. Black Diamonds Spot Headlamp offers just the right amount of light, 200 lumens on high, for the right amount of time, 200 hours on low. $25 at Amazon.com 6. Adventure Medical Kit Best for: Curing what ails ya The best first-aid kit is the one you build yourself. This takes a certain level of living saving knowledge, and a bevy of supplies from which to draw. Several of the pre-packaged kits are pretty damn good, and save you from overstocking with medicinal alcohol, which really only makes you FEEL better. Adventure Medical offers a range of kits, from basic to just short of combat lifesaving. At a minimum, grab their Hiker Kit, which will cover your more likely maladies and mishaps. Bigger adventures, bigger kit, of course. $25 at REI.com 7. Ultimate Survival Technologies BlastMatch Best for: Lighting your fire In our modern lives, we take heat and fire for granted. Building a fire, from scratch, in wet, windy conditions, on the verge of hypothermia with numb fingers and racked by shivering thats a challenge. Lighters are a popular option, but dont work well once wet. A fire starter combines a flint with a carbide striker to produce high temperature sparks and all-weather fire. The Ultimate Survival Technologies BlastMatch works with one hand. Paired with the USTs Wetfire Tinder, the BlastMatch will get you warm in any environment. $15.05 at Amazon.com 8. Leatherman Wave Best for: Fixing whats broken The fundamental tool in the back country is a knife. Whether a basic folding knife or a multi-tool, you can do a lot with a sharp blade: fashion a fish hook from wood, trim branches for a shelter framework, whittle a fuzz stick for fire-starting tinder. However, why settle for one or two blades when you can hold a veritable toolbox in your pocket? Swiss Army knives are the original multi-tool, but were partial to the Leatherman Wave. The 17 included tools cover pretty much anything youll encounter, including snipping a fish hook embedded in your thumb (dont ask). $90.00 at Amazon.com 9. RXBar Best for: Filling that hole in your middle Extra food gives you time to find those sources of food in the environment that you can tap to stave off hunger. A person can go a long time without food, and many of us have a decent personal calorie reserve we can tap into. Pretty much any energy-dense (read: high fat) will do, but havent found a bad one among the range of flavors from RXBar egg whites, nuts, dates, and no B.S. $41.00 at Amazon.com 10. Space All Weather Blanket Best for: Keeping a roof over your head Shelter from wind and rain or a layer between you and heat-sapping snow can make the difference between a miserable night and the slow slide into deadly hypothermia. Most emergency blankets are so ephemeral and small that they provide little protection, or so bulky and heavy that youre reluctant to devote the space. The Space All Weather Blanket is substantial enough to take abuse, features grommets on each corner, and the aluminized coating reflects 80% of body heat. At 60x 84, it is big enough to serve as a blanket, ground cover, or a lean-to if paired with some para cord. $19.13 at Amazon.com AskMen may get paid if you click a link in this article and buy a product or service. To find out more, please read our complete terms of use. Cams.com Model AZBlonde Shares Her Favorite Sex Toys Cams.com Model AZBlonde Shares Her Favorite Bedroom Moves The AskMen editorial team thoroughly researches & reviews the best gear, services and staples for life. AskMen may get paid if you click a link in this article and buy a product or service. Welcome to Just The Tip, AskMen's weekly series where we interview the greatest adult entertainers to get their sex tips and understand why they are so successful. Call it the tip of the iceberg, if you will. This week, we had the pleasure of speaking to one of the most popular cam girls on the net, AZBlonde. She also does porn under the name Alena Croft. Where can our readers follow you on social media? Due to the fact that so many social platforms are not adult friendly (i.e. Instagram, Facebook, Periscope, etc.), the best place to follow me is actually on Twitter at @AlenaCroftXXX or via Snapchat under the same username. What are you best known for? What is your signature move? Do you cater to a particular fantasy? Among my friends and family, I am probably best known for my competitive spirit. I have been that way since childhood. I'm not entirely sure this counts as a "signature move," but I am probably best known for my oral skills and my love for swallowing semen. Fortunately for me, my fans seem to enjoy watching it as much as I love doing it. As a cam girl, I find that you must be willing to cater to a wide variety of fantasies. However, If I had to pick one that I enjoy the most, it would have to be cuckolding. I get this request more than any other while camming and it's kind of grown on me. How did you decide on your cam girl name? I actually have two online personas, one for camming and one for porn. While I am universally known in the adult industry as Alena Croft, my camming fans also know me as AZBlonde (which is the name I started under when I got my start with Cams.com some six years ago). Long story short, I needed to quickly come up with a stage name, and as silly as this may sound, AZBlonde was derived by simply combining Arizona (where I live) and Blonde (obviously my hair color) together. Not all that exciting of a story really, but you can now watch me on my personal Cams.com page. What's your best professional memory/experience to date? My most memorable experience would have to be the time I was at an affiliate gathering in Playa del Carmen, Mexico on behalf of Cams.com. Myself along with two other girls in attendance had been doing a bit of drinking with everyone during the company dinner. Afterwards, we decided to go back to our room to freshen up before an after-hours party we were scheduled to attend later in the evening. Somehow we all wound up naked in the outdoor bathtub together. Thinking this might be a good opportunity to do a little camming, I broke out my laptop and began streaming the whole thing live. Needless to say, the combination of booze and boobs was simply too much for us to handle and things began to escalate quickly. Before I knew it, all three of us girls were literally having sex with each other while several hundred people watched and cheered us on! If it wasn't for someone pounding on our door, we might have kept going and likely missed the festivities all together! Who is *your* favorite adult entertainer? I am not sure I could pick just one! However, if I had to narrow it down to entertainers that are currently in the industry, I would have to say Johnny Sins and Samantha Saint. I have worked with Johnny in the past, but havent had the pleasure of working with Samantha a threesome with these two and I could die a very happy girl. I also kind of have a thing for Dredd XXX too. Ill let the readers try and guess why. What sex move do you wish regular guys knew? Typically, guys just want to rip my clothes off, slap my ass, pull my hair, and get right into it. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy rough sex just as much as the next girl. But a guy who knows how to slow down and take his time is always a nice change of pace. What is the most important foreplay move for you? Sensual things like kissing, caressing, licking, fingers, and taking our time. Did I mention taking our time? What are three sex toys or products our readers should buy either for their girlfriends or for themselves? While I cant speak on behalf of men, I can tell you what toys I personally enjoy. 1. Bad Dragon Dildo These dildos have to be the most intriguing things I have ever laid eyes on. These extremely unique toys are available in just about every size, shape, color, and even species. Having personally toured the manufacturing plant, I have seen first hand all the detailed work that goes into making each and every one of these things. A Bad Dragon dildo just might be one of the most unique gifts you can get for your significant other. $107.99 at Kink.com 2. Hitachi Magic Wand Just like the names suggests, these toys are indeed magical and no girls sex toy collection is complete without one. I personally have two, one corded, and one cordless. I find that the cordless one can really come in handy for unexpected events like sitting in traffic or tailgating (just kidding, I dont tailgate). Anyhow, there are also plenty of accessories for these, so its a toy that can be universally used on guys too. If she doesnt already have one, you cant go wrong with a Magic Wand. $58.95 at Amazon.com 3. Sybian I never really understood the hype behind these toys until a very generous fan of mine actually purchased one for me. My very first ride on this thing had me questioning if I even needed a man to begin with. Its also the very first toy that actually made me squirt uncontrollably (true story). While on the pricy side, I would say if youre shopping for the ultimate sex toy for her, go for the Sybian. Oh, and unless you're into water sports, youll wanna grab a plastic tarp and maybe a rain poncho for yourself as well. $1,412.00 at Amazon.com What's on your bucket list? Well, this might be more than some of you guys can stomach, but when youre known as the girl with a huge cum fetish, it only makes sense that I would want to combine my love for oral and swallowing along with my competitive spirit in an attempt to break some sort of a record. So, without going into too much detail, all I can say is that my bucket list just might involve a bucket if I'm lucky of course! Finally, anything to promote? Actually, yes. Since moving my camming operations to an actual studio last year, and now having the space to get a little more creative, I have decided that it was time to put a website together and start documenting some of my real, true life sexual adventures. The site is currently still in development, but I hope to have something exciting to announce very soon! And as always, visit me on my Cams.com page. AskMen may get paid if you click a link in this article and buy a product or service. To find out more, please read our complete terms of use. FARGO Internet service providers in the Red River Valley area say they wont alter their policies concerning customers' private data now that Federal Communications Commission regulations have been repealed that would have required ISPs to do more to protect that information. President Trump signed the resolution repealing those rules Monday. The now-repealed regulations were approved in October 2016 and were to take effect in December. They would have required ISPs to get consumer consent before selling or sharing such things as Social Security numbers, web browsing history, contents of emails, precise geo-location data, financial and health information, and even childrens information. Midco CEO Pat McAdaragh recently said Midcos privacy policy will remain the same. They (privacy rules) aren't going to change at all, McAdaragh said. Already, we're regulated just like Google and anyone is through the (Federal Trade Commission). I can't speak for anybody else in the industry, but we don't think it's very good long-term strategy to do things that are invasive and the like, he said. No, we wouldn't sell." Representatives for Cable One and 702 Communications said their firms also wont change their privacy practices. We take our customers privacy very seriously. I cant see a scenario where we would sell our customers information for profit, said Brian Crommett, service manager for 702 Communications, which serves the Fargo-Moorhead and Wahpeton, N.D.-Breckenridge, Minn., areas. There is an implicit trust between an internet service provider and a customer, he said. As long as youre not doing anything illegal we never monitor what you do. And we certainly wouldnt want to sell who you are, or anything like that. Cable One media representative Patricia Niemann released a statement just before the president overturned the FCC rules saying Cable One would not change its privacy practices or policIes. The protection of customer privacy and personal information is very important to Cable ONE, she said in her statement. Cable ONE does not sell our customers personal information or sell customers online browsing information. Its definitely not as scary as some customers might think, said Rachel Woodman, regional spokeswoman for CenturyLink. Woodman said CenturyLink does not have a formal statement, but instead referred to one issued last week by USTelecom, an industry trade group. USTelecom CEO Jonathan Spalter said the repeal is another step to remove unnecessary rules and regulations that handicap economic growth and innovation, and moves the country one step closer to ensuring that consumers private information is protected uniformly across the entire internet ecosystem. Spalter said the repeal would simply maintain the status quo on privacy protections by removing the misguided rules adopted last year. We continue to support the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) privacy framework and look forward to working on a more uniform air-tight approach to privacy that doesnt advance a Balkanized regulatory structure. K. Brewer Doran, dean of Concordia Colleges Offutt School of Business, said because the rules werent to take effect until December, consumers wont see any difference yet. She said Trump believes the FTC should control both the ISPs and internet companies like Google and Facebook. Still, in terms of regulation, we are now in a black hole, with a patchwork of state laws regulating what can be done with consumers private information and voluntary compliance by the ISPs, she said. Doran said that for the big ISPs, the backlash could be so extreme that they would not take the chance of selling or sharing customer data. But people should be aware that your internet service provider has always had access to that information, and its out there, she said. I think its really important that people think through how much of their information theyre giving to whom. She said its also important for voters to pressure their lawmakers to enact privacy protections. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., and Minnesota Democrats Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar joined 43 other senators who urged President Trump to veto the Senate resolution that overturned the FCC rule. In a separate statement, Heitkamp added: I dont know why anyone would want the company they pay to get internet service to have access to their private information. ... North Dakotans value their privacy as should every American but this legislation takes away that fundamental right, and instead, sells it to the highest bidder. Hi My Daughter in Law is waiting for a 820 and had a BVA. She left Australia without getting a BVB !! (not wise) I'm figuring she will need to get an E Visa (Visitors) to get back in the country. My question is - should she apply for the e visitor visa using her immi account or just like the first time she applied for it? i.e. does it matter how she applies for it? Appreciate any thoughts. A dramatic increase in business migrants moving to the state of South Australia is creating jobs with most of the visas being granted to business people from China.The latest figures show that business migrant nominations doubled from 130 in 2013/2014 to 266 in 2015/2016 and in the 2016/2017 year to date there have already been around 300 nominations.It means that the state will easily achieve its target of 250 set out in its Economic Priority strategy with 83% of those being nominated for this financial year to date from mainland China.In addition three new migration agency offices have opened in Adelaide in the past financial year to provide consulting services to the increasing numbers of Chinese business people moving to South Australia.In 2016 some 92 Chinese business migrants were granted visas, up from 59 granted in 2015. Many more are expected with the state having nominated 607 overseas business people for visa grants in the past 18 months.The growth in migration offices is part of a key initiative in the state government's updated China Engagement Strategy, to support new and existing Chinese migrants to South Australia.However, there have been changes announced to the requirement for high points state nomination visas from 80 to 85 as the overall quota of nominations was achieved under the existing 80 points requirement with the new points requirement coming into effect on 19 April 2017.A spokesman said that this will not affect applications lodged prior to this date, but applications for high points nomination received after this time will be refused if they fall short of the required 85 points.However, some occupations have been excluded from the high points and chain migration streams including general accountant, human resources adviser, marketing specialist, sales representative, university lecturer, university tutor, hospital pharmacist and retail pharmacist.It means that these occupations will not be available for the high point or chain migration with immediate effect, but does not affect applications lodged prior to 1 pm on 05 April 2017. Applications for these occupations lodged after this time will be refused if applying for high points or chain migration nomination. With a portfolio ranging from hatchbacks to compact SUVs, SAIC-owned company could have a cost advantage over its other global counterparts in India. Chinas largest automaker SAIC Motor Corp plans to enter the fast growing Indian automotive market with cars from its subsidiary MG Motor. Globally, the company's portfolio ranges from hatchbacks, sedans to compact SUVs, and the Chinese carmaker could have a cost advantage over its other global counterparts such as VW, Toyota and Honda. Although not confirmed, the company could look at expanding its reach by tapping into GM dealership network in India. SAIC, which acquired British marquee MG Rover after its collapse over a decade ago, has reportedly even registered its subsidiary in the country as 'MG Motor India'. In fact, SAIC has been in talks with General Motors for a while now to acquire General Motors Halol plant in Gujarat. The deal even came closer to fruition earlier this year when the Competition Commission of India cleared the proposed acquisition. However, SAIC is yet to officially sign a formal agreement to acquire the plant, according to an official statement. "It is clarified that SAIC has not signed any formal agreement with GM for the Halol Plant. However, SAIC's decision to enter into the Indian market remains unchanged and the company continues to evaluate various options to set up a car manufacturing plant in India as early as possible." The deal to acquire GM's Halol plant is subject to GMs submission of all government approvals, settlement of labour and all other pending issues by GM, the statement added. GM India recently announced that it would cease production at its Halol facility by April 28, 2017. In line with its decision to stop production at Halol, which was set up in June 1996, GM was scouting for a buyer. Around end-2016, it is learnt that a subsidiary of SAIC Motor Corp applied to the Competition Commission of India to acquire these assets of GM India. GM India, which currently produces the Beat, Sail and the Cruze in its Talegaon plant, and the Tavera in Halol, will stop producing the Tavera (one of its high margin models) as it ceases operations at the plant later this month. Having failed to crack the Indian market, GM has put on hold its planned investments on new models for India as the company undertakes a full review of its future product portfolio for the country. The Halol plant has an annual manufacturing capacity of over 1,30,000 units, while Talegaon is reported to manufacture over 1,60,000 units. Both plants have a very low capacity utilisation and by selling off the Halol plant, the carmaker will aim to strengthen its operations at Talegaon and turn around its volumes in India. Photo of the Mondeo Energi courtesy of Ford. Ford will launch two new electrified vehicles in China as part of the automaker's plan to roll out a broad range of electric vehicles in the country by 2025. The Mondeo Energi plug-in hybrid will launch in early 2018, and will feature an electric drive range of up to 50 kilometers (31 miles). The Mondeo Energi will be manufactured by Changan Ford, a joint venture with Changan Automobile. The company also plans to bring a new battery-electric utility that will be sold in China within the next five years. It should deliver a range of more than 450 kilometers (279 miles), and will also be made available in North America and Europe, according to the automaker. The time is right for Ford to expand our EV lineup and investments in China, said Mark Fields, Ford's president and CEO. We are prioritizing our electrification efforts on China to reflect its importance as a global electrified vehicle market and to make lives better, simpler and more cost effective for Chinese consumers. Also as part of Fords electrification plan in China, the automaker said it will start manufacturing electrified powertrains in China by 2020. It also plans to expand its new energy vehicle engineering capabilities at its Nanjing Research and Engineering Centre. Ford plans to offer a variety of electrified solutions by 2025 in China, including hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and battery-electric vehicles. By then, 70% of Ford nameplates will have electrified powertrain options, including the full range of nameplates produced by Changan Ford, according to the automaker. In January, Ford confirmed seven of the 13 new global EVs it will launch in the next five years, including the battery-electric compact SUV that will be sold in China, and a hybrid autonomous vehicle designed for commercial operations in mobility services, starting in North America. Successors of the Google Pixel have been in fact confirmed, accidentally. Codenamed after fish, these highly anticipated real Google smartphones have probably one of the best cameras on the market. The keen eyes at Android Police were the first to caught sighting of these fish or devices, but definitely not food at Google's Android Open Source Project (AOSP). Anyway, the real culprit as to its confirmed successors is Google's automated update bot, Treehugger. Treehugger was reporting for changes. Although there is really little information to work with, the trio of Google Pixel for 2017 are ever so present. Now, what we do know so far is that the 2017 Google Pixel devices have a rather "fishy" codename. "Walleye" and "Muskie" have already been rumored a few weeks ago as the Google Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL, respectively. So, the third one is "Taimen," the biggest of the bunch. This could be the third super-sized Pixel 2. But we won't know for sure unless Google provides further details other than speculations. However, if we look back on the company's flagship devices, which by the way were obsessively named after fishes, they give away the sizes of the phones. In 2012, "Mako" was the codename for the 4.7-inch Nexus 4, followed by 2013 5-inch Nexus 5 as "Hammerhead." And then you have in 2014 "Shamu" as the 6-inch Nexus 6, and there is the 5.2-inch Nexus 5X in 2015 internally called as "Bullhead" and the 5.7-inch Nexus 6P as "Angler." And as for 2016, the 5.1-inch Pixel codenamed "Sailfish" and 5.5-inch Pixel XL as "Marlin." See the pattern now? As for the 2017 Google Pixels, the tech giant is expected to finally introduce dustproof and waterproof features to the anticipated devices. Also, the company could pay more attention to its hardware. We won't see the 2017 Google Pixel devices until their launch before fall, as the company claims. So, there will still be ample amount of time for any changes to the unit. But we will keep our eyes peeled hoping to fish out more details in the long run. Until then, stay tuned. Diamond Aircraft launched three new diesel-powered singles at Aero Friedrichshafen but it wont be supplying the engines itself. Flight International reported the Austrian company will produce the four-place DA50-IV, five-place DA50-V and seven-place DA50-VII with 230-, 260- and 360-horsepower Safran/SMA diesels. The -VII will also be available with a 375-horsepower Lycoming gas engine or a Ukranian Ivchenko Progress/Motor Sich AI-450S turboprop. The -V version flew in March and is on display at Aero. Diamond owner Christian Dries told Flight International the -V will be certified by 2018. The new models come four months after Dries sold a 60 percent stake in Diamond Canada to Wanfeng Aviation. That deal transferred the type certificates to its DA40 singles and DA62 twin diesel to the Chinese-controlled company in London, Ontario. Ive said this before, but its worth repeating: Despite its reputation for stifling regulation, theres more airframe and powerplant innovation coming out of Europe than from the U.S. If youre interested in new airplanes, look east, not in your backyard. Its not unreasonable to say Chinese money is funding at least some of this. Consider this report from our remote coverage of Aero: Diamond will produce the four-place DA50-IV and the seven-place DA50-VII with230-, 260- and 360-horsepower Safran/SMA diesels. Theres more developmental news in that little nugget than from the last three or four Sun n Fun shows combined. Lets break down where Diamond is going with this. The DA50 emerged as a proof of concept in 2006 and Diamond CEO Christian Dries said it would be certified in 2010 or 2011. It was a five-seater and could accommodate a range of engines. Never happened. I think Diamonds capital and interest got sucked into the dark hole of the now idled D-Jet project. But the large cabin idea morphed into what is now Diamonds premium diesel twin, the DA62, which despite a price tag north of $1 million, is selling well. The announcement at Aero revisits the single-engine idea with a host of engines that thus far, havent even been the brides maid, much less the bride. To me, thats the most interesting part of the news. The smallest version of the DA50 series, the IV, will use the SR305-230E. This engine has a stunning history of, shall I say, non-acceptance. Its appearance in the market in 1999yes, 18 years agopredated the arrival of the Thielert diesels which, to date, remain the most successful Jet A piston engines. SMA continued to improve the engine and it continued to not find traction in the OEM market. An STC conversion for the Cessna 182 found some buyers, but the company never really promoted it much. Maule offered it in the M9, but that project stalled and more recently, Cessna announced in 2012 that it would offer the SR305 in the Cessna 182 JT-A. But that project stalled, too and now has no definite timeline. Before it bought the assets of Thielert, Continental purchased a technology transfer agreement with SMA to produce a certified variant of the SR305 of its own. That was in 2010. Seven years later, still no marketable engine, although Continentals Rhett Ross told us last week during a visit to Mobile that announcements are imminent. Will Diamond have any better luck? Maybe. Its got more diesel experienceincluding manufacturing its homegrown Austro enginesthan anyone else. I wouldnt bet against Diamond. The DA50-IV is intended for the training market and presumably would be a competitor with the Cirrus SR20. Not one to mince words, Dries said at Aero that Diamond has lost sales to Cirrus because its cabins arent large enough because Americans are, well, too fat.Diamond also mentioned a 360-HP version of the DA50 and I take that to bethe flat six-cylinder diesel SMA showed off at Aero in 2013. At the time, SMA said it was just getting into test cell work. By the way, while the -IV has fixed gear, the more powerful variants will be retractables. Havent seen a new certified piston retrac for quite some time. As for the Lycoming offering, Diamond CEO Christian Dries said it would be a 375-HP engine. If that potentiates, it will be the most powerful single-engine piston on the market today. I assume this engine will be some variant of the IE2 project Lycoming has been simmering since at least 2010. (No one has ever accused this industry of rushing things to market.) Recall that this is a fully electronic engine, with single-lever control and dual FADEC. Lycoming used the Lancair piston Evolution as the test bed for this engine and as we reported, Tecam picked it for the emerging P2012 Traveler mini airliner. Its good to see it finally finding OEM interest. Diamond also announced a turbine version of the DA50, using the Ukrainian Ivchenko-Progress AI-450S. This is a free-turbine design similar to the Pratt & Whitney PT6. So Diamond is going the direction of Piper and Daher in offering a high-performance turboprop single. But its not to be a cabin-class airplane, so I have no idea of the market appeal. As for the piston versions, the market niche is twofold. One is the Cirrus-type buyer who wants performance, but a larger cabin, which the DA50 has. The second is the buyer of a Piper Saratoga or a Beechcraft/Textron G36. In other words, the six-place market. This is not a major segment. In 2016, Textron sold 25 G36s and Piper ended the Saratoga in 2009, although it did move 26 Mirage/Matrix airframes. Thats not quite the same class of airplane, but they are singles. Could new powerplants and the option of a seventh seat stimulate the market? At least a little? I wouldnt bet against it. I have a history of being wrong about Christian Dries sometimes wacky ideas. When the DA42 appeared at the Berlin Airshow in 2002, I thought the idea of pairing obscure diesel engines with a new airframe was nuts. When I reviewed the airplane, I questioned whether the engines were ready. It turned out they were not, but it got sorted out. The airplane has been and continues to be a good seller for Diamond. Obviously, these will be expensive airplanes. Im guessing around the million dollar or a little more mark. Im further guessing that at this price point, theyll find buyers in the multiple dozens just as other Diamond products have. If the company makes money at that volume and the untried engines deliver acceptable service, thus is a business plan born. Im not going to whine about the price because doing so is a pointless playing of a record that broke 20 years ago. But I will whine about one thing. Who dreamed up those hideous gold paint schemes Diamond showed in its Aero stand? My colleague from the U.K.s Flyer sent me this photo and it isnt easy on the eyes. 7 April 2017 11:58 (UTC+04:00) By Sara Israfilbayova Khasan market, one of the largest markets of Saint Petersburg, is ready to provide places to Azerbaijani producers desiring to do business in Russia. St. Petersburg Governor Georgy Poltavchenko held a meeting with Deputy Minister of Economy of Azerbaijan Sahib Mammadov this week to discuss the opportunities to increase imports of Azerbaijani agriculture products. He noted that imports from Azerbaijan increased by 14 percent to $8.1 million in 2016. Petersburg imports from Azerbaijan mainly vegetables, root crops, fruits, nuts and ferrous metals. At the same time, Poltavchenko marked with regret that the trade turnover between the Northern capital and Azerbaijan has recently fallen. Last year, trade turnover decreased by 24 percent compared to 2015 and amounted to $69.5 million. In turn, Mammadov stressed the necessary for strengthening and expanding cooperation in the pharmaceuticals given the fact that Petersburg is picking up steam in field. Poltavchenko assured that specialists from St. Petersburg can visit Azerbaijan to exchange experience with local doctors and carry out consultations for the population. Azerbaijan began deliveries of tinned goods to St. Petersburg, Russia, in mid-March 2016. Some of the goods from Azerbaijan have become a popular brand in Russia. For example, in Russia they say the most delicious tomatoes are coming from Azerbaijan. The real delivery of goods between Azerbaijan and Russia rose by more than 50 percent in the first half of 2015, despite a slight drop in turnover, reaching a historical height of $4 billion in late 2014. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 7 April 2017 12:32 (UTC+04:00) By Amina Nazarli Azerbaijan and the European Union will start implementation of seven more twinning projects in the near future, said Malena Mard. The Head of the EU Delegation to Baku announced about this when addressing a conference dedicated to the 10th anniversary of launching EUs twinning projects in Azerbaijan on April 7. Azerbaijan is a leader in the Eastern Partnership region in cooperation in twinnings with the EU, said Mard while talking to reporters. She noted that the EU has implemented or is implementing 45 twinnings in Azerbaijan. We are celebrating the 10th anniversary of twinning in Azerbaijan and I think the results have been very positive for the EU and Azerbaijan, Mard told reporters on April 7. She said twinnings have very strong and good results in the strengthening cooperation in different areas. We are benefiting both the EU and Azerbaijan from our colleagues gaining knowledge from each other about very specific areas, Mard said. The head of the EU Delegation went on to add that at least a thousand of European Unions expats have been working in Azerbaijan in twinning projects of different capacity during the last five years. Mard stressed that Azerbaijan and the EU have a very strong base of cooperation on very many different areas besides twinnings: in statistics, environment, social issues, safety, constructing standards. Speaking about holding of the next round of talks on the Azerbaijan-EU new strategic partnership agreement, Mard said that the meeting will be held within the next two weeks and most likely to take place in Baku. We are very happy with the visit of President Ilham Aliyev to Brussels which was the start of the negotiation on the new legal basis of cooperation between the EU and Azerbaijan. And we hope within a couple of weeks we will have another meeting, Mard said. She noted that the both sides are very ambitious about this meeting and the experts from Azerbaijan and the EU are very busy preparing for this round of negotiation. The new agreement should replace the 1996 partnership and cooperation agreement and should better take account of the shared objectives and challenges the EU and Azerbaijan face today. The agreement will follow the principles endorsed in the 2015 review of the European Neighborhood Policy and offer a renewed basis for political dialogue and mutually beneficial cooperation between the EU and Azerbaijan. Azerbaijani Deputy Economy Minister Sahil Babayev, who also addressed the event, said that investments of European countries in Azerbaijan's economy exceeded $20 billion in 10 years. Babayev noted that the mentioned amount of investments make up for 45 percent of all funds invested in Azerbaijan over this period. The EU countries are our main investors. Over 10 years, European countries have invested about $20 billion in our economy, including nearly $3 billion in the non-oil sector, he said. We have extensive economic cooperation with the EU countries. European states are the main trade partners of Azerbaijan. In January-February 2017, 42 percent of Azerbaijans trade turnover [$866.6 million, according to the State Customs Committee] accounted for the EU countries, Babayev added. The deputy economy minister noted that Azerbaijan and the EU have the potential to expand the current cooperation. -- Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 7 April 2017 14:00 (UTC+04:00) By Rashid Shirinov The skies will soon be flocked with small planes as the Georgian airline Aviator will launch flights to Azerbaijan. Air taxi services will be set up aiming for a convenient mode of transportation for locals and tourists following the increase in the number of travels between Georgia and Azerbaijan. "The cost of the air taxi services en route Tbilisi-Baku-Tbilisi, provided by the airline, is $6,930 regardless of the number of passengers," a source in the company told Trend. Aviator is the first Georgian Airline by Adjara Group Hospitality offering Air Taxi services flying both, domestic and international routes. Based in Tbilisi International Airport, brand new King Air C90GTx will be offering flights to all airports in Georgia and Caucasus Region, including Baku, Trabzon, Istanbul and others. The flights will be performed with brand new Beechcraft King Air C90GTx. Equipped with 5 seat business class interior and latest technologies, aircraft provides comfort and safety during the flight. We get a relevant permission before each flight. Moreover, we have no restrictions. The cost of the permit is 100 euros," the company said. Speaking about the possibility of opening flights to other cities of Azerbaijan, the source said that the maximum flight range of the aircraft is 1,700 kilometers; therefore, the company can fly to any city in this range. Today, tourism in Azerbaijan is one of the most promising economic sectors. Compared to 2015, last year there was an 11.7 percent growth in the number of tourists, and the figure hit 2,242,783 people. A significant part of them 22.5 percent were the visitors from Georgia. As for the travels to Georgia, more than 1.5 million citizens of Azerbaijan visited the country in 2016. Thus, Azerbaijan led the top countries, representatives of which visited Georgia in past year. --- Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 7 April 2017 16:40 (UTC+04:00) By Kamila Aliyeva The Taxes Ministry of Azerbaijan has set up special VAT kiosks [for registration of Tax Free documents] during the Baku Shopping Festival scheduled for April 10-May 10. Deputy Minister Sahib Alakbarov said that buyers need to submit a cash receipt for the purchase to these special places and VAT refund will be paid either in cash or in non-cash through [transfer to a card or bank account] within ten days. "The Taxes Ministry is the operator for VAT refunds to buyers of the goods at the Baku Shopping Festival. We have completed the preparatory work to date we have already installed special VAT kiosks in six locations. In addition, we have prepared software that has been tested, Alakbarov said. A list of banks, through which VAT refunds will be made, was defined together with the Culture and Tourism Ministry, as well as the Financial Market Supervisory Body (FMSB), Alakbarov said noting that the size of the returned funds will amount to 10-13 percent of the purchase price. The return of VAT applies to purchases made only in the stores that have a special logo of the Shopping Festival, which means that these shopping facilities were registered as participants in the stimulating program. The VAT refunds can be received in the branches of five banks, including Kapital Bank, PASHA Bank, Yapi Kredi Bank Azerbaijan, Bank Silk Way and Azerbaijan Industrial Bank. During the festival, a buyer [Azerbaijani citizens or foreigners] can have the VAT refunded at the banks in case the amount of the purchased goods exceeds 100 manats ($58) [including VAT]. The Shopping Festival will not cover excise goods, gold, food and cars, but only production of light industry. --- Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 7 April 2017 17:25 (UTC+04:00) By Amina Nazarli The strengthening of economic relations and improving the interaction between businessmen of the two countries were the key topics of the third meeting of the Azerbaijan-Estonia Intergovernmental Commission in Baku on April 7. The meeting chaired by Estonias Minister of Public Administration Mihhail Korb and Azerbaijans Minister of Transport, Communication and High Technologies Ramin Guluzade ended with the signing of a protocol on trade and economic cooperation. Korb, following the signing ceremony, said that the protocol was prepared with participation of specialists from various ministries of the two states, and envisages many different areas of cooperation from energy, tourism and trade to culture, Trend reported. Apparently, certain steps have been outlined in all areas that will help to bring the relationship between the two states to a new level of cooperation, noted the Estonian minister. We sign such protocols once in two years and the fulfillment of the tasks envisaged in them falls on both sides, he added. Korb further said that officials of Estonian and Azerbaijani railway administrations, as well as an Estonian port signed a protocol on cooperation in creation of a new South-North logistics corridor. The corridor will allow transporting cargo between Azerbaijan and Estonia, as well as to the Scandinavian countries, according to the minister. He also touched upon the necessity of expanding the trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Estonia, adding that the figure may be increased, first of all, by increasing mutual supplies of agriculture products. We can offer products that are not manufactured in Azerbaijan, and Estonia will, in turn, be able to purchase the needed agriculture products, Korb said. Of course, we talked [during the meeting of the intergovernmental commission] about the spheres of woodworking, metalworking and mechanical engineering, which are more developed in Estonia. Korb mentioned that Estonia also has several projects in the energy sector, namely the projects on gas and oil products. He added that these projects will be discussed by members of the Estonian business delegation and their Azerbaijani partners on April 7. During the Baku visit, the Estonian delegation led by Korb was received by President Ilham Aliyev, Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov and Prime Minister Artur Rasizade. At the Azerbaijan-Estonia Business Forum held on the same day Rufat Mammadov, Head of the Azerbaijan Export and Investments Promotion Foundation (AZPROMO) said that Azerbaijan is interested in investment cooperation with Estonia. "We are very interested in the presence of Azerbaijani goods in the Estonian market, Mammadov said. We are also very interested in investment cooperation with Estonia. We invite Estonian companies to take advantage of this business forum and expand ties with Azerbaijani enterprises. AZPROMO Head said that currently the volume of mutual investments is at a very low level. To date, the volume of Azerbaijani investments in Estonia is only about $300,000-400,000. In turn, Estonia has invested about $1 million in the economy of Azerbaijan. This is a very low rate, he said. He also noted that the trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Estonia does not reflect the existing potential of bilateral relations. "Last year, the volume of trade between our countries amounted to just over $3 million. This is an unsatisfactory indicator, as there is a great potential between our countries to expand trade ties," Mammadov said. Trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Estonia amounted to $541,130 in January-February 2017, according to Azerbaijans State Customs Committee. The figure has increased by 2.2 times as compared to the same period of 2016. Meanwhile, a source in the telecommunications market of Azerbaijan told Trend that "Azerkosmos" is preparing to provide remote sensing services to the state structures of Estonia. The source said that the Estonian company Reach-U will act as an intermediary in the provision of the services in the Estonian market, negotiations with which are currently being conducted. The contract with Reach-U will be signed in the near future, which will allow it to sell images received from the Azersky satellite to the Estonian Defense Ministry, Agriculture Ministry and the Executive Power of Tallinn. Earlier, Azercosmos and Reach-U signed a contact which envisaged transfer of satellite images received from Azersky to the University of Tartu. Also, the postal operator of Azerbaijan - Azerpoct sent a contact project to the Estonian postal administration for the launch of electronic money transfers through the STEFI system (Secured Transfer of Electronic Financial Information). The document is expected to be signed in the near future, said the source. As of today, Azerpoct offers money transfer services through this system to Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Russia, Kazakhstan, Lithuania and Kazakhstan. -- Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 7 April 2017 13:05 (UTC+04:00) By Laman Ismayilova Easter Charity Bazaar has opened at the Russian Information and Cultural Center in Baku. The head of Rossotrudnichestvo representative office in Azerbaijan, Valentin Denisov, Counselor of the Russian Embassy in Azerbaijan Artem Barkov, Archbishop of Baku and Azerbaijan Eparchy Alexander Ischein and MP Elmira Akhundova welcomed the guests of the event, Trend Life reported. During the two-day traditional Bazaar, participants have a chance to buy gifts, decorations, handicrafts, souvenirs, jewelry and paintings presented by several artists. Each year, visitors come here to purchase Easter gifts made by talented craftsmen and participate in a charity lottery. All funds raised from the Easter Charity Bazaar will be spent for the needs of orphans. Easter is a Christian festival which celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ. According to the New Testament, Jesus died on the cross on Good Friday, and came back to life three days later. His resurrection is celebrated on Easter Sunday, which also marks the end of Lent, the 40-day period of fasting which begins on Ash Wednesday. Maundy Thursday is the Thursday before Good Friday and commemorates the Maundy and Last Supper of Jesus Christ with the Apostles. Many churches hold special services on Easter Sunday. Easter traditions throughout the world differ from country to country. In many central and eastern European countries decorating eggs in beautiful patterns is especially popular. --- Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 7 April 2017 14:23 (UTC+04:00) By Laman Ismayilova Azerbaijan will host a congress of the European Federation of Psychology Students' Associations (EFPSA) for the first time. Co-organized by ASAN Volunteers and Azerbaijan Young Psychologists Association, the congress will take place in Gakh city on April 23-30 April, Trend Life reported. The 31st congress will bring together three hundred young psychologists and twenty academics from thirty three countries. The event, which will be held under the motto Humanity today, will be dedicated to the psychological consequences of wars and terrorist attacks, the problems of intercultural relations, crisis of refugees and internally displaced persons. The congress will also highlight the psychological consequences of Islamophobia, religious and racial intolerance. The media partners of the event are Trend.az, Day.az, Milli.az, Azernews.az. EFPSA, the European Federation of Psychology Students Association, was established in 1987 with the first International Congress of Psychology Students in Portugal and now consists of 33 psychology students organisations of 33 European countries and regions. Stimulated by its mission, vision and values, EFPSA attracts more and more students every year, with the number of its members increasing and so far represents approximately 300.000 psychology students across Europe. EFPSA is a multicultural and colorful network of European psychology students associations, run on a voluntary basis by and for psychology students of Europe. --- Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 7 April 2017 11:19 (UTC+04:00) By Rashid Shirinov Independent French journalist Roman Mielcarek has visited the Armenian-occupied Azerbaijani territories, observing the laws of Azerbaijan, Foreign Ministrys Spokesman Hikmat Hajiyev said on April 7. The journalist asked the Foreign Ministry of Azerbaijan for accreditation and permission to visit the occupied territories for journalistic activities. In his letter, Mielcarek noted that he respects the territorial integrity, sovereignty and laws of Azerbaijan, and guaranteed that he wont illegally visit the occupied territories in the future. Given the journalists appeal, his name wasnt included in the list of undesirable persons of the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry. During March 3-7, the French journalist visited Azerbaijan, the frontline zone, met with refugees and internally displaced persons, received information about the position of the Azerbaijani side, and on March 19-20 he visited the occupied territories, Hajiyev said. Unauthorized visits to Nagorno-Karabakh and other regions of Azerbaijan occupied by Armenia are considered illegal, and any individuals paying such visits are included in the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry's "black list". Azerbaijans Foreign Ministry and diplomatic missions pay special attention to the illegal activity in the occupied areas of Azerbaijan. Baku has repeatedly warned foreign officials and diplomats of illegality of visits to its territories that are occupied by Armenia, calling them contradictory to international law. The work is constantly carried out to prevent such illegal actions. 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. -- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 7 April 2017 11:40 (UTC+04:00) By Rashid Shirinov The position of the European Union on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is well-known the status quo is unacceptable, Head of the EU Delegation to Azerbaijan Malena Mard told journalists on April 7. She added that the EU supports the efforts of the OSCE Minsk Group on the settlement of the conflict. The EU, which is not directly involved in the conflict resolution, has repeatedly stated that the status quo is unacceptable and supports diplomatic settlement of the conflict within the framework of the Minsk Group. The peace talks have been largely fruitless so far despite the efforts of the MG co-chair countries over 20 years. Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a lengthy war that ended with the signing of a fragile ceasefire in 1994. Since the war, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and over 1 million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities. Armenia ignores four UN Security Council resolutions on immediate withdrawal from the occupied territory of Azerbaijan, thus keeping tension high in the region. --- Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 7 April 2017 13:52 (UTC+04:00) By Rashid Shirinov Ukraine supports the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Azerbaijan, Ambassador of Ukraine to Azerbaijan Alexander Mishchenko said during a press conference on April 7. It is impossible to understand the difficulties Azerbaijan faced until you get into a similar situation. We advocate for peaceful solution to conflicts, the ambassador said. Mishchenko wished the Azerbaijanis to return to their homelands in the near future, adding that Ukraine appreciates the friendship and support of Azerbaijan. 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. Mishchenko further said that during the recent meeting of the GUAM, member countries of the organization discussed the strengthening of economic ties, as well as the opportunities offered by the Silk Road project. Azerbaijan and Ukraine enjoy sustainable prospects of bilateral relations in political, economic, energy, transport and humanitarian fields. In 2016, President Petro Poroshenko visited Azerbaijan, and a number of agreements were signed during the visit. Additionally, the presidents discussed the implementation of joint projects in energy, transport and agricultural spheres. --- Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 7 April 2017 18:07 (UTC+04:00) By Rashid Shirinov Russia must make a breakthrough decision to resolve the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, said Grigory Trofimchuk, Chairman of the Expert Council of Research Support Foundation Workshop of Eurasian Ideas. He made the remarks during discussions on ways of resolving the conflict, organized by the Baku Network expert council on April 7. The issue of resolving the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict affects everyone, and we have been discussing it since 1994, looking for solutions to the conflict, Trofimchuk said. He noted that since the outbreak of the April fighting in 2016, the situation around the conflict moved to another level. On the night of April 2, 2016, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire of large-caliber weapons, mortars and grenade launchers by Armenian army. Azerbaijani counter-attack led to liberation of several strategic heights and settlements. The expert reminded that after the meeting of the Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents in Vienna and St. Petersburg in 2016, specific structures authorized to solve the problem, including the OSCE Minsk Group, were given specific recommendations concerning technical and economic aspects of the conflict. However, the OSCE Minsk Group has not fulfilled the tasks set by the heads of state at these meetings, Trofimchuk stressed. He added that Armenia in fact does not need the negotiation process on the conflict settlement, but Azerbaijan needs. Russia in this situation must make a new, breakthrough decision to resolve the conflict, the expert 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. 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. Trofimchuk also noted that many problems that have accumulated in Armenia in recent years have not been solved. Problems of socio-economic nature have come to a critical level. And the victory of the forces, which had previously been in power, in the parliamentary elections in Armenia will not solve all these problems, he noted. --- Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 7 April 2017 10:30 (UTC+04:00) President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko has hailed his country`s relations with Azerbaijan in his letter to President Ilham Aliyev on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries, Azertac reported. Dating back to the times of the Ukrainian People's Republic and Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, our relations mark successful cooperation based on strong friendship and mutual understanding between our historic states. It is with great pleasure that I emphasize that over the course of these 25 years of the modern stage of our bilateral ties the cooperation between Ukraine and the Republic of Azerbaijan has reached the level of strategic partnership. Our state are demonstrating eagerness to achieve high dynamics of political dialogue, deepen the bilateral cooperation and add pragmatism to relations in all areas of mutual interest, Petro Poroshenko said. Current challenges unite us more tightly as regards the issues of protection of independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the two states. We in Ukraine feel and highly appreciate the relevant position of Azerbaijan. For our part, we have always supported and will continue to support the people of Azerbaijan. In particular, we are ready to increase mutual support through speeding up joint efforts on the international arena. I am confident that your visit to Ukraine will be an important stage in the relations between our states and that Ukraine-Azerbaijan cooperation will continue to strengthen on the basis of mutual confidence, respect and sincerity in the best interests of the peoples of the two countries, the Ukrainian leader added. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 7 April 2017 10:42 (UTC+04:00) Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany Angela Merkel has sent a letter to President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev as the two countries celebrate the 25th anniversary of the founding of diplomatic relations, Azertac reported. Twenty-five years ago our countries established diplomatic relations. Our bilateral ties have an ancient history. Swabian immigrants resettled in the territory of Azerbaijan two hundred years ago. Your visit to Germany in June of 2016 unambiguously proved that our relations are lively and multi-faceted, she said in her letter. Germany welcomes your readiness to maintain close cooperation with our country and your will to join the European community of values. You can be rest assured that Germany will remain your reliable partner in modernizing your country and developing democracy and constitutional state. I am confident that like the entire region Azerbaijan will be able to fully develop its potential only after regional conflicts are resolved. As a member of the OSCE Minsk Group, Germany will contribute to peaceful resettlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and support the efforts of the co-chairs, Angela Merkel said. As we celebrate the 25th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations, please accept my wishes for peace and prosperity of Azerbaijan, and for successful continuation and expansion of reliable cooperation between our countries, the German Chancellor added. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 7 April 2017 11:11 (UTC+04:00) By Amina Nazarli Estonias Minister of Public Administration Mihhail Korb, who is on a working visit to Baku, holds meetings with the countrys leadership to discuss the bilateral relations. During the Baku visit, Korb, who is also the head of the Azerbaijani-Estonian Intergovernmental Commission, met with Prime Minister Artur Rasizade on April 6. Praising the political ties between Azerbaijan and Estonia, Rasizade stressed the necessity of expanding the economic relations. The Premier pointed out good potential in various areas, including technology, telecommunications, agriculture and trade. The PM highlighted the opportunities of the North-South Transport Corridor and Azerbaijan`s work under the project. The North-South Corridor will connect the railways of Azerbaijan and Iran, which in turn will provide a wider transport connection between India, Iran, Azerbaijan, Russia, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. Due to its location on the corridor and role as a transit country, Azerbaijan stands to gain substantially from the North-South project. Touching upon the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Rasizade stressed that the conflict must be resolved on the basis of Azerbaijan`s territorial integrity and inviolability of borders. In turn, Korb noted that during the visit he conducted very fruitful discussions with Azerbaijani counterparts. He said there are favorable opportunities for Azerbaijani and Estonian businessmen in both countries. A delegation headed by Korb also met with Azerbaijan`s Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov. The sides discussed cooperation between Azerbaijan and Estonia in various areas, and hailed the activity of the Intergovernmental Commission. The two ministers also stressed the importance of the next meeting of the Commission in terms of developing trade and economic relations between the two countries. They pointed out favorable opportunities for the cooperation in the fields of transport, information technologies, agriculture, tourism and medicine. The two also noted the significance of expanding trade turnover and exploring export opportunities between Azerbaijan and Estonia. President Ilham Aliyev also received a delegation led by the Minister, and hailed the importance of the Estonian delegation`s visit to Azerbaijan in expanding the bilateral cooperation between the two countries. Pointing out the activities of the Azerbaijani-Estonian Intergovernmental Commission, the head of state underlined the significance of another meeting of the Commission in terms of discussing the issues on how to further develop trade and economic relations between the two countries. Korb, for his part, pointed out the experience of cooperation between the two countries, saying this experience covers mostly the service sector. He said although trade with Azerbaijan is not so great, there are development trends in this field. The Estonian public administration minister praised the fact that compared to last year the bilateral trade has increased almost 2.5 times. -- Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 7 April 2017 12:32 (UTC+04:00) By Amina Nazarli Henceforth Azerbaijani citizens will be able to obtain a visa to India easier. India has facilitated the visa application procedures for Azerbaijan, the Indian Embassy in Baku reported on April 6. From now on, Azerbaijani nationals would be able to get online e-Visa for visits to India for recreation, sightseeing, casual visit to meet friends or relatives, short duration medical treatment or casual business. Online application for e-visa could be made at website: https://indianvisaonline.gov.in/evisa/Registration The fees for e-Visa for Azerbaijani nationals is $50 plus bank transaction charges. The validity of e-Visa will be 60 days from the date of arrival in India. Double entry is permitted on e-Tourist Visa and e-Business Visa. Triple entry will be permitted on e-Medical Visa. E-Visa can be availed for maximum of two times in a calendar year. The applicants are required to apply online at least 4 days in advance of the date of arrival in India. The e-Visa facility is in addition to the existing Visa services for longer duration or specific purpose being provided by the Indian Embassy. Detailed information about the e-Visa scheme is available on website: https://indianvisaonline.gov.in/evisa/tvoa.html Earlier in December 2016, Azerbaijan revealed the list of countries, whose citizens will be able to visit the Land of Fire fast and without tedious procedures. India became one of the 81 countries who is able to take advantage of ASAN Visa system, which will make life of many foreigners easier. The only thing to do, instead of going to the diplomatic mission and talking with foreign officials, is to enter requested details onto "ASAN Viza" and pay the proper stamp duty. Three days later, the visa will be sent to e-mail of an applicant. India has close and friendly relations with Azerbaijan and was among the first countries to recognize Azerbaijan and establish diplomatic ties. Last year the trade and economic exchanges between India and Azerbaijan progressed from strength to strength, increasing by 63 percent in 2016 as compared to 2015. -- Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 7 April 2017 11:46 (UTC+04:00) By Trend Azerbaijans Emergency Situations Ministry will send humanitarian aid to Djibouti in the coming days in accordance with the instruction of Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev. The ministry reported on April 7 that preparation is underway to send the humanitarian aid, which will be delivered with the help of Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL). --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem described the U.S. border with Mexico as a war zone last year when she sent dozens of state National Guard troops there. Noem said theyd be on the front lines of stopping drug smugglers and human traffickers. But newly released records from the National Guard show that in their two-month deployment, the South Dakota troops didnt seize any drugs and sometimes went days without encountering any migrants at all. Noem justified the deployment and a widely criticized private donation to fund as a state emergency because of drugs making their way across the southern border to South Dakota. But the records cast doubt on whether the deployment was effective in addressing that. 7 April 2017 16:47 (UTC+04:00) Indian President Pranab Mukherjee has hailed his country`s relations with Azerbaijan as he addressed a letter to his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations, Azertac reported. I am glad that in these 25 years, our cordial bilateral relations have progressed well. Our expanding relations in all fields and our cooperation including political, economic, energy, cultural, as well as our people-to-people exchanges have been mutually beneficial and contributed significantly to the peace, stability and prosperity of our respective regions. It is my sincere belief that as we look to the future with hope, Indias diverse ties with Azerbaijan will effectively build upon the achievements of these years and attain newer heights, the Indian President said. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 7 April 2017 17:48 (UTC+04:00) By Amina Nazarli A plenary session of Azerbaijans Parliament was held in Baku on April 7. The Parliament approved two documents signed with Belarus and Kazakhstan. These are the "Agreement between the Ministries of Labor and Social Protection of Population of Azerbaijan and Belarus on the application of the Agreement from November 21, 2013 On Cooperation in Pension Provision between Azerbaijan and Belarus and Exchange of Notes between the Azerbaijans and Kazakhstans Foreign Ministries on amendments and additions to Article 5 of the Treaty on Legal Aid and Legal Relations in Civil Cases between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, signed in Almaty. The meeting also discussed the issue of approving the convention "On avoidance of double taxation and prevention of evasion from taxes payment on income between Azerbaijan and Israel". The parliamentarians noted that Azerbaijan and Israel enjoy effective cooperation in many spheres and the approval of this document will contribute to the development of bilateral relations. The document was put to the vote and adopted by a majority vote. The trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Israel in January-February 2017 amounted to $116.2 million, an increase of 17.5 percent compared to the same period last year, According to the State Customs Committee. -- Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 7 April 2017 12:21 (UTC+04:00) By Kamila Aliyeva SOCAR RUS, a subsidiary of Azerbaijans state oil company SOCAR, is starting the sales of low-density polyethylene (LDPE) at the Saint-Petersburg Exchange (SPB Exchange), the SPB Exchange website reported. SOCAR RUS has been offering low-density polyethylene 15803-020, produced by Azerikimya Production Union, for sale at the Saint-Petersburg Exchange since April 7 on terms of self-trucking of the buyer from the warehouse of Noginsk warehouse complex JSC. The product has already passed customs clearance and is ready to be sold in Russias market. This sphere of the business activity of SOCAR is considered as one of the most important sales areas, to which SOCAR RUS devotes the highest priority. The minimum lot is 1.5 tons. It is also possible to deliver the goods by road to the buyer's warehouse (the minimum lot is 21 tons). SOCAR includes such production associations as Azneft (the enterprises producing oil and gas onshore and offshore), Azerikimya (the chemical enterprises) and Azerigas (distributor of gas produced in the country), as well as oil and gas processing plants, service companies, and the facilities involved in geophysical and drilling operations. In Russia, SOCAR is represented by the subsidiary company SOCAR Rus, which began operating in 2013 and received a license to explore and assess the hydrocarbon deposits in the North-Beshkulsky region in the Narimanov district of Astrakhan region. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 7 April 2017 15:25 (UTC+04:00) By Gunay Camal Azerbaijans sales gas output stood at 4.8 billion cubic meters in the first quarter of 2017, stable compared to the same period of 2016, the Natural Gas World quoted Khoshbakht Yusifzade, first vice-president of the countrys state oil company SOCAR, as saying. Yusifzade noted that Shah Deniz Stage 1 produced about 2.5 billion cubic meters of gas, less than in 1Q16. Meanwhile,the associated gas deliveries from the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli block to SOCAR increased by 0.4 billion cubic meters as compared to the same period of 2016. Azerbaijans gross gas production was 29.4 billion cubic meters in 2016, including 18.71 billion cubic meters of sales gas, of which 6.754 billion cubic meters was exported. The total volume of gas export in 2016 stood at 7.78bcm, recording a decrease of 625million cubic meters as compared to figures of 2015. Earlier, Energy Minister Natig Aliyev announced that Azerbaijan plans to produce more gas and less oil in 2017 by 0.8 percent up to 29.561 bcm. Azerbaijans proven gas reserves as of early 2016 amounted to 1.1 trillion cubic meters, which accounts for 0.6 percent of global proven gas reserves, according to BP's estimates. The country holds over three trillion cubic meters of gas reserves which help develop the country's export potential. The Shah Deniz natural gas and condensate field started producing in late 2006, making Azerbaijan a net gas exporter. While the main focus is on the Shah-Deniz field with estimated gas reserves at 1.2 trillion cubic meters, the country possesses additional significant gas fields such as Absheron, Umid, Babek and Nakhchivan, of which Absheron field is projected to be commenced in 2021. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 7 April 2017 12:55 (UTC+04:00) By Kamila Aliyeva Hungary will cooperate with the Islamic Republic of Iran on setting up a small nuclear reactor for scientific-educational purposes, Prime Minister Viktor Orban's chief of staff told a news conference on April 6. Janos Lazar said in response to a question that the cooperation will be within the framework of an agreement between Iran, the EU and the United States, Reuters reported. He said the cooperation had been agreed during Orbans visit to Iran in 2015. "When the Prime Minister was there, we undertook to take part in jointly creating a mini nuclear plant with educational, scientific purposes, and now this agreement will be implemented," Lazar said. In February 2016, Iran's top nuclear official Ali Akbar Salehi said the country had proposed a pilot project to Hungary to design a 25-megawatt reactor and then a reactor of up to 100 megawatts to be sold in Africa and Asia. According to him, the reactor would fit the poorer countries in the region, as it requires less cooling water. "One particular project that I suggested was to see if we can... together design a small reactor of 25 megawatts. It was received well, and we hope that we can start this project, just on paper, Salehi said. Following the lifting of international sanctions on Iran, Tehran has strived to fully utilize economic and scientific opportunities, including the pursuit of peaceful nuclear activities. The Islamic Republic also enjoys close nuclear cooperation with Russia. Last week, the two countries signed an agreement to build two new nuclear power plants in Irans southern city of Bushehr. Iran, five permanent UN Security Council members, Germany and the European Union signed the JCPOA in July 2015 to ensure the peaceful nature of Irans nuclear program. Then, the Islamic republic pledged to refrain from developing or acquiring nuclear weapons in exchange for the lifting of sanctions imposed against Iran. The agreement provides that in return for verifiable abiding by its commitments, Iran receives relief from U.S., European Union, and UN Security Council nuclear-related economic sanctions. --- Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 7 April 2017 12:41 (UTC+04:00) By Kamila Aliyeva Washington's recent strike at the airfield in response to the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria may have a negative impact on the ongoing uneasy talks in Astana and Geneva and undermine all international efforts aimed at finding a political solution to the six-year bloody conflict in Syria. U.S. President Donald Trump confirmed that he gave instructions to strike at the airfield of the Syrian Air Force, from where, according to him, allegedly, an attack with the use of chemical weapons against civilians was carried out. The strike is the first direct military action the U.S. has taken against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the country's six-year civil war and represents a substantial escalation of the U.S. military campaign in the region. "It is in this vital national security of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons," Trump said. Trump's decision marked a big shift in his position on whether the U.S. should take military action against the Syrias government regime. "There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention and ignored the urging of the UN Security Council, he said adding that years of previous attempts at changing Assad's behavior have failed dramatically." Russians were present at the base the U.S. struck, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said. Tillerson confirmed that the U.S. military contacted their Russian counterparts about the attack ahead, in accordance with deconfliction policies between the U.S. and Russia over military activities in Syria. Russian President Vladimir Putin regards the attack of the United States on objects in Syria as aggression against a sovereign state, Dmitry Peskov, the presidential press secretary told reporters, TASS reported. "President Putin sees the American attacks on Syria as aggression against a sovereign state and violation of the norms of international law, and moreover, under a far-fetched pretext," Peskov said. Russian president considers the U.S. attack on Syria to be an attempt to divert attention from the numerous civilian casualties during operations in Iraq, according to the Kremlin spokesman. Putin believes that the U.S. strike on Syria is causing significant damage to U.S.-Russia relations, while it also hinders effective counteraction to terrorism, Peskov said. "And most importantly, as Putin believes, this step does not bring us closer to the ultimate goal in the fight against international terrorism, but rather evolves a serious obstacle to the creation of an international coalition to combat it and effectively counter this world evil, which incidentally U.S. President Donald Trump has proclaimed as one of the main tasks during his election campaign," Peskov added. The international community has already reacted to the latest events. Thus, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said that the U.S. attack on the base in Syria is a warning for the Syrian government. He also noted that he was informed about operation. Iran and Russia should understand that it is pointless to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, according to Ayrault. At the same time, Foreign Minister said that Paris does not seek a confrontation with Moscow or Tehran. Turkey in its turn also gave positive assessment of the strike as Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmush stated that this operation will make a significant contribution to the settlement of the crisis in Syria. U.S. close ally, Israel expressed its full support to the U.S. decision to strike at the Syrian airbase, according to the Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu. In turn, the President of Israel Reuven Rivlin described the attack on the airbase in Syria as a "justified and adequate response" to the alleged use of chemical weapons in the province of Idlib. On April 4, the National Coalition of Opposition and Revolutionary Forces of Syria reported about 200 wounded and 80 victims of chemical weapons attack in Khan-Sheikhun city of Idlib province. The oppositionists blamed government troops of Syria for the attack. The command of the Syrian army rejected accusations in its address and laid the blame on the militants and their patrons. The UN and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) have already taken up the investigation of the incident, but so far they have not published any conclusions about possible perpetrators of the incident. As Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem stated on Thursday, Syrian government troops have never used or intend to use chemical weapons against civilians and against terrorists. The stocks of chemical weapons were successfully exported from Syria. In January 2016 the OPCW announced the complete elimination of the country's chemical industry. In 2013, the organization received the Nobel Peace Prize for chemical disarmament of Syria. --- Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 7 April 2017 12:15 (UTC+04:00) By Kamila Aliyeva The next meeting of the CIS Council of Foreign Ministers has kicked off in Uzbekistans capital, Tashkent. The meeting is being attended by Azerbaijans Deputy Foreign Minister Khalaf Khalafov, Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei, Kazakh Foreign Minister Kairat Abdrakhmanov, Kyrgyz Foreign Minister Erlan Abdildayev, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Tajik Foreign Minister Sirojiddin Aslov, Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian, Moldovan Deputy Foreign Minister Lilian Darii, Turkmen Deputy Foreign Minister Vepa Hajiyev and CIS Executive Secretary Sergey Lebedev. Meetings of the CIS Council of Foreign Ministers are one of the key stages in the preparation of meetings of the CIS Council of Heads of Government, which are held twice a year. In 2017, next meetings of the heads of state will be held in Moscow in October, as well as in Kazan in May and in Ashgabat in November. The upcoming meetings agenda includes 16 draft documents, 10 of which are expected to be approved for further consideration by the heads of state and government. One of the most important documents to be considered is the draft declaration of foreign ministers of the CIS member states on the inadmissibility of discrimination and intolerance against Christians, Muslims and representatives of other faiths. More than a third of projects included in the agenda of the CIS Council of Foreign Ministers are aimed at expanding and deepening cooperation in the sphere of ensuring security and countering new challenges and threats. The foreign ministers will also consider a draft decision on amending the provision on the Bureau for the Coordination of the Fight against Organized Crime and Other Dangerous Crimes on the territory of the CIS member states. Participants of the meeting also plan to exchange views on topical issues of strengthening regional security and stability, deepening trade, economic, cultural and humanitarian cooperation. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 7 April 2017 14:55 (UTC+04:00) By Kamila Aliyeva The office of NATO for cooperation with Central Asian countries operating in Tashkent was closed on April 1 due to a change in the structure of the alliance's contacts in the region, RIA Novosti reported. From now on, the alliance's work on Central Asia will be conducted from the NATO headquarters in Brussels. The decision to close the office in Tashkent was taken in 2016. The NATO Liaison Officer in Central Asia Rosaria Puglisi earlier told reporters that the closure of the office is a result of an internal consideration of the budget. "This decision is the result of internal budget considerations and doesn't have any political character," she said adding that "there was no pressure from Uzbekistan or from other states working with our office, on the contrary, we've always had a warm reception in the region." The NATO liaison in Tashkent was opened in May 2014. A NATO liaison and interaction officer with Central Asian countries served as the diplomatic representative of the alliance and facilitated practical interaction with partners in the region in various directions. NATO opened the office in order to coordinate the alliance's activities in the region. That meant, primarily, the logistics of moving war materiel in and out of Afghanistan, the then-special representative for the Caucasus and Central Asia. All five Central Asian countries were early participants in the North Atlantic Cooperation Council a forum for dialogue established by the Alliance in December 1991 as a first step in reaching out beyond the East-West divide to former Warsaw Pact members. This body was later replaced by the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council in 1997. Four out of the five countries quickly took advantage of the opportunities offered by the Partnership for Peace, joining this major program of practical bilateral cooperation shortly after its launch in 1994 (Tajikistan joined later, in 2002). At the Istanbul Summit of 2004, Allied leaders decided to make partnership with Central Asia, as well as the Caucasus, a priority for the Alliance. --- Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 7 April 2017 17:53 (UTC+04:00) By Kamila Aliyeva Belarus and Turkey intend to intensify investment cooperation, BelTA reported referring to the Belarusian Economy Ministry. The information came after a recent meeting of Belarusian First Deputy Economy Minister Dmitry Krutoi and Turkish Ambassador to Belarus Kezban Nilvana Darama. The sides discussed topical aspects of Belarus-Turkey bilateral ties, the state and prospects of development of trade and economic cooperation, and joint projects in the area of telecommunications, woodworking, light industry, and the service sector. Close attention was paid to concrete tasks, the accomplishment of which will intensify investment cooperation between Belarus and Turkey. In 2016, the volume of Turkish investments in the Belarusian economy totaled $34.5 million (68.0 percent to 2015), including direct investments $31.4 million (73.3 percent). The volume of net FDI from Turkey amounted to $8.3 million (51.8 percent). Examples of successful Turkish investment projects in Belarus include the acquisition by the Turkish company Turkcell of the 80 percent share of the Belarusian GSM-operator JSC BeST in 2008, construction by the Princess Group of the Crowne Plaza Minsk hotel, the implementation of other projects in the field of real estate, textile industry, production of building materials. Belarus and Turkey actively cooperate in the framework of international platforms, including the United Nations, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, World Trade Organization. Bilateral legal framework of Belarus and Turkey has more than 30 intergovernmental and interagency agreements. In June 2014 the intergovernmental agreements on mutual abolition of visas went into force. According to the Agreement, citizens of Belarus and Turkey are exempted from the visa requirement for entry, exit, transit and temporary stay in the territory of the other party state for a period not exceeding 30 days. In 2016, the trade turnover between Belarus and Turkey amounted to $817.4 million. The volume of trade in services between Belarus and Turkey amounted to $81 million (65.1 percent to 2015), the Belarusian export $45 million (74.3 percent), import $36 million (56.3 percent). Commodity structure of Belarusian exports to Turkey includes potash fertilizers, acrylonitrile, harness, synthetic fibers and yarns, steel products. Commodity structure of Turkish imports to Belarus includes seasonal and uncultivated in Belarus agricultural products, knitted fabrics, synthetic filament, parts and accessories for automotive vehicles, trucks. --- Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 7 April 2017 18:05 (UTC+04:00) By Kamila Aliyeva Tashkent has hosted the CIS Foreign Ministers Council chaired by Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov. The meeting was reportedly attended by Azerbaijans Deputy Foreign Minister Khalaf Khalafov, Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian,Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei, Kazakh Foreign Minister Kairat Abdrakhmanov, Kyrgyz Foreign Minister Erlan Abdyldayev, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Tajik Foreign Minister Sirojiddin Aslov, Moldovan Deputy Foreign Minister Lilian Darii, Turkmen Deputy Foreign Minister Vepa Hajiyev, Uzbek Foreign Minister Anvar Nasirov and CIS Executive Secretary Sergey Lebedev. The meeting participants discussed 15 draft documents and nine of them will be submitted for consideration to the CIS Council of Heads of Government that will take place in May and to the CIS Council of Heads of State that will take place in October. The Council adopted a number of important documents including a statement condemning discrimination and intolerance towards Christians, Muslims, and representatives of other religions, the Uzbek Foreign Ministry repotted. The statement conveys concern over the growing number of incidents targeted at Christians, Muslims, and representatives of other faiths in different regions of the world. It reiterates the commitment of the CIS member states to protect human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion. The statement also emphasizes the absolute inadmissibility of associating terrorism and violent extremism with any specific religion. The final part of the statement conveys the intent to consolidate the positions of the international community to prevent discrimination of Christians, Muslims and representatives of other religions in universal and regional international human rights organizations. The heads of the foreign ministries also summed up the results of the multi-level ministerial consultations that took place in 2016 and approved the plan for 2017. This year, the CIS member states will hold consultations to discuss cooperation in international organizations, the field of information, the effort to address contemporary challenges and threats, and matters related to disarmament and economic cooperation. Over a third of the projects approved by the CIS Foreign Ministers Council are designed to expand and strengthen the cooperation in ensuring security and countering new challenges and threats. The most important are the documents regulating the cooperation of the CIS countries in the fight against money laundering, financial of terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, illicit trafficking in narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances and their precursors, firearms, munitions, and explosives and explosive devices that are evidence in criminal cases. The foreign ministers discussed the cooperation among the CIS member states in legal matters. They decided to give Nizhny Novgorod Academy of Russia's Ministry of the Interior the status of a basic organization for university training and advanced training of personnel for tax (financial) investigation agencies. Besides, the ministers adopted a decision to amend the regulation on the basic organization for training of metrology specialists for the armed forces of the CIS member states. The next meeting of the CIS Foreign Ministers Council will be held in Moscow on October 10, 2017. The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) was created in December 1991. The CIS united Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine. However, in 2008 Georgia withdrew its membership. The Council of Foreign Minister of the CIS Member Nations is the main executive body ensuring cooperation in the field of foreign policy activities of the CIS member states on the matters of mutual interest, adopting decisions during the period between the meetings of the Council of the CIS Heads of State, the Council of the CIS Heads of Government and by their orders. --- Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz Bakersfield, CA (93308) Today Cloudy with periods of rain. High 64F. SSE winds shifting to WSW at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph.. Tonight Overcast with rain showers at times. Low 47F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%. The March 22 fire that destroyed an unoccupied former church in Nome was intentionally set, Deputy State Fire Marshal Ken Sisk said in a report released Thursday. It is my opinion an unknown person or persons intentionally set fire to the area near the southeast walk-in door of this building using an undetermined open flame device; therefore I am labeling the cause of this fire to be incendiary, Sisk said in the report Sisk noted that the wood-framed church had no electrical service, no heating and was secured, with new locks installed just one day before the fire. The 108-year-old Zion Lutheran Church building at 295 3rd Ave. N. was reported purchased by white supremacist Craig Cobb before the fire. Sisks report lists Kevin Richman and Alexis (Wolf) Haseleu as the owners. Cobb, of Sherwood, said Thursday that he wasnt informed about Sisks report. Why didnt they use the word arson? Is that too incendiary? Cobb asked. Still, he was glad the fire was ruled deliberate. Ive very pleased, because I was afraid they were going to say indeterminate for a cause of the blaze, he said. Cobb said he paid Richman $8,000 for the property. Im recorded. Go check the county, he said. I own it. However, he was unable to get insurance for the church. I had a great loss. Its very maddening to me, Cobb said. It was a very bold-faced sociopath that walked in broad daylight and did it. Sisk was not available for comment, said a spokeswoman for the North Dakota Attorney Generals Office. We do not discuss these reports, Liz Brocker said. The report stands by itself. There were no injuries or fatalities reported because of the fire. Sisk said the Barnes County Sheriffs Office had requested help determining the origin and cause of the fire. He said he arrived in Nome on March 23 and was assisted by the sheriffs office, the Nome Volunteer Fire Department and Derek Hill, a special agent with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Everything combustible had been consumed by the fire, and the basement of the structure was filled with ashes and non-combustible material, Sisk said in the report. Barnes County Sheriff Randy McClaflin said Thursday that were looking at every aspect in the investigation. Were talking to everyone around there, McClaflin said. Cobb said hes pleaded to have the FBI investigate the blaze. These are sociopaths working in concert, in my opinion. I dont believe that no one in that community doesnt know who did that, Cobb said. Its horrific, this kind of hate. . I dont go to peoples homes and burn them down. Cobb, who had been convicted of terrorizing and menacing residents in Leith, still has a year of probation on those charges, he said. He said he still likes the state. Im going to stay up here. I like North Dakota in general. They do tend to leave people alone, Cobb said. Cobb, 65, previously tried to establish white supremacist enclaves in two other North Dakota towns, including Leith, southwest of Bismarck. Cobb is involved in the Creativity Movement, a non-theistic religion that believes in the superiority of white people. He has said that unless the arsonist turns him or herself in, he will continue his efforts to remain in Nome. If they want to keep pushing, I just may very well retain the lot and build a building there and still make The President Donald J. Trump Creativity Church of Rome, not Nome, Cobb said in a previous interview. China supports the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons an intergovernmental institution that makes sure countries adhere to the prohibition on chemical weapons to carry out comprehensive investigations into all uses of chemicals as weapon in Syria, a senior Chinese envoy said on Wednesday. Liu Jieyi, China's permanent representative to the UN, strongly condemned the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria during a Security Council emergency meeting convened in response to it. It is reported that at least 70 people died and 200 others were wounded on Tuesday in a gas attack in a rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun in Syria's northwestern province of Idlib. Liu said within Syria there have been "many instances of the use of chemicals as weapons", and China supports OPCW in conducting the probe into all cases to reach conclusions based on substantive evidence that can "stand the test of time and facts". "China firmly opposes the use of chemical weapons by any country, any organization, or any person under any circumstances and this has been our consistent position," Liu said. "It is essential to hold to account all the related perpetrators and responsible parties in cases of chemical weapons," Liu said. "The civil conflict has entered into its seventh year, already resulting in enormous civilian casualties. China is empathetic with the Syrian people for their sufferings, and we call upon the various Syrian parties to put an early end to the conflict." Liu also said that political settlement is the only solution to the Syrian question. China hopes that all relevant parties will create conditions for the political solution rather than creating difficulties, he said. The 15-nation council is working on a draft resolution which asks for an inquiry into the alleged attack. Syrian government has denied any role in the attack. Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN who is currently serving as president of the Security Council for the month of April, said that the US might unilaterally act on Syria if the Security Council failed to respond to the crisis. "When the United Nations consistently fails in its duty to act collectively, there are times in the life of states that we are compelled to take our own action," she said. "For the sake of the victims, I hope the rest of the council is finally willing to do the same." Xinhua and Wang Linyan contributed to this story. The Annual General Meeting of Shareholders of AB INTER RAO Lietuva, code 1261 19913, registered address at A. Tumeno g. 4, Vilnius, the Republic of Lithuania (hereinafter referred to as the Company), is convened by initiative of the board and following the decision of the board adopted on 27 March 2017 (hereinafter referred to as the Meeting). The Meeting will be held at Mindaugo g. 27, LT-03210, Vilnius, the Republic of Lithuania, at 10.00 am on 28 April 2017. Registration will take place from 09.00 am till 09.40 am. The agenda of the Meeting approved by the Board: 1. Regarding the Consolidated Annual Report of the Company for the year 2016; 2. Approval of the Audited Annual Financial Statements of the Company for the year 2016 and the Audited Consolidated Annual Financial Statements of the Group for the year 2016; 3. Distribution of profit (loss) of the Company for the year 2016; 4. Selection of the audit firm and approval of conditions of payment for audit services; 5. lection of members of Supervisory Council; Draft decisions of the Meeting: 1. To take note of the Consolidated Annual Report of the Company for the year 2016, which has been approved by the Board and has been analysed by the Supervisory Council of the Company; 2. To approve the Audited Annual Financial Statements of the Company for the year 2016 and the Audited Consolidated Annual Financial Statements of the Group for the year 2016; 3. To distribute the profit (loss) of the Company for the year 2016 according to the draft distribution of profit (loss); 4. To select UAB Ernst & Young Baltic, legal entitys code 110878442, address Subaciaus str. 7, Vilnius, as the audit firm to perform the audit of the financial statements of the Company for the year 2017 and to establish conditions on payment as follows: not exceeding EUR 25,000 (without VAT) for the audit services; 5. To elect the following persons as the members of the Supervisory Council: (i) Victor Kolotievskiy; (ii) Evgeny Sarymsakov; (iii) Danielis Klicmanas. The Meeting record day, i.e. the fifth business day before the Meeting, is 21 April 2017. Shareholders who at the end of the Meeting record day, i.e. at the end of 21 April 2017, will be shareholders of the Company have a right to participate and vote at the Meeting. Persons, who at the end of the tenth business day following the Meeting that will adopt a respective decision, i.e. on 15 May 2017, (rights accounting day) will be shareholders of the Company, shall have proprietary rights (to get dividends). Shareholders who at the end of the Meeting record day will be shareholders of the Company have a right to participate and vote at the General Meeting of Shareholders personally or by proxy, or to be represented by the person with whom an agreement on the transfer of voting rights is concluded. Shareholders of the Company that will hold the shares through securities accounts maintained by the participants of the National Depositary for Securities in Poland will be given the opportunity to participate in and vote at the Meeting either by proxy or personally, by requesting the participant of the National Depositary for Securities (i.e. brokerage firm where the shareholder holds its shares), to register him/her for the Meeting. This request should be submitted before or on the Meeting record date. A person attending the Meeting must present a persons identification document. A person who is not a shareholder must additionally present a document confirming his/her right to vote at the Meeting. Each shareholder shall have a right to authorise another (natural or legal) person on his/her behalf to attend and vote at the Meeting. At the Meeting an authorised person shall have the same rights as would be held by the shareholder represented by him/her, unless the authorized person's rights are limited by the power of attorney. The authorised person must provide a power of attorney or a copy certified in the manner established by the laws. The Company does not establish special form of power of attorney. A shareholder or a person authorised by him/her shall have a right to vote in writing in advance by filling in the General Voting Ballot. The sample of General Voting Ballot together with instructions is provided hereby and on the Companys website at www.interrao.lt under the heading For Investors. The General Voting Ballot, duly filled in and signed by the shareholder or an authorized person, and the document confirming the voting right (if any) must be submitted to the Company at A. Tumeno g. 4, Vilnius, the Republic of Lithuania in writing before the Meeting. If the shareholder so requests, the Company, no later than 10 days before the Meeting, must dispatch a General Voting Ballot by registered mail or present this against signature free of charge for a shareholder. The Company is not providing the possibility to attend and vote at the Meeting through electronic means of communication. Shareholders holding shares that grant at least 1/20 of all votes shall have the right of proposing to supplement the agenda of the Meeting. Proposal to supplement the agenda must be presented in writing by sending it to A.Tumeno g. 4, LT-01109 Vilnius, the Republic of Lithuania. The agenda will be supplemented if the proposal is received not later than 14 days before the Meeting. Together with the proposal to supplement the agenda of the Meeting draft decisions must be presented to the Company. Shareholder holding shares that grant at least 1/20 of all votes shall have the right at any time before the Meeting or at the Meeting to propose draft resolutions on the issues already included or to be included in the agenda of the Meeting, to nominate candidates to the bodies of the Company, the audit company. The proposed draft decisions must be presented to the Company at A.Tumeno g. 4, Vilnius, the Republic of Lithuania. The shareholders shall have the right to present questions related to the agenda issues of the Meeting in advance at A.Tumeno g. 4, Vilnius, the Republic of Lithuania by not later than 3 days before the Meeting. Responses of a general character shall be posted on the Companys website www.interrao.lt under the heading For Investors. The Company will not respond personally to the shareholder if the respective information is posted on the Company's website. The shareholders could get familiarized with the documents possessed by the Company related to the agenda of the Meeting, including draft resolutions, and other documents to be submitted to the Meeting as well as to get information regarding execution of the shareholders rights at the registered address of the Company at A.Tumeno g. 4, Vilnius, the Republic of Lithuania or on the Companys website at www.interrao.lt under the heading For Investors. The total number of the Companys shares of 0,29 Euro par value each and the number of shares granting voting rights during the Meeting is the same and amounts to 20,000,000. ISIN code of the Companys shares is LT0000128621. Annexes: 1. Example of General Voting Ballot; 2. Draft distribution of profit (loss) of the Company for the year 2016. Legal grounds: Article 17.1 of the EU Regulation on market abuse No 596/2014. A fugitive who killed a man in 2012 while driving drunk is now back in the Bay Area and in jail. DUI fugitive extradited back to Bay Area Christopher Ponce killed William Angel in 2012 Ponce fled the U.S. in 2013 He was captured in 2016 in Spain Christopher Ponce is accused of killing William Angel, 20, in a drunk driving accident five years ago. Authorities said Ponce was placed on house arrest after the deadly accident and escaped the U.S. in 2013 before his trial was to begin. Law enforcement has been searching for him since then and finally caught Ponce in Spain last year. It took eight months for Ponce to be extradited back to the U.S., but it finally happened Thursday night. Angels family can now breathe a sigh of relief that they are one step closer to justice for their son. Its real, hes back. Now we can find justice for William, said Wade Angel, Williams dad. They also said they hope investigators figure out who was helping Ponce avoid capture for so long. Ultimately, Id like for those who helped him to be prosecuted as well. He didnt do this alone. His lawyer said he has no assets, he has no money, he has no, you know. So how did he get to Spain? And how did he have an apartment all by himself in downtown Madrid? said Wade Angel. Ponce faces eight additional charges for skipping trial and leaving the country. Those charges are on top of what he already faces for the DUI accident back in 2012. The Senate on Friday confirmed Neil Gorsuch to become the newest associate justice on the Supreme Court following a contentious week in Washington. Vice President Mike Pence was presiding as the Senate voted 54-45 in favor of Gorsuch, a 49-year-old veteran of the 10th U.S. Circuit of Appeals in Denver. Gorsuch will be formally sworn in on Monday, with a private ceremony at 9 a.m. at the Supreme Court and a public swearing-in ceremony at 11 a.m. at the White House. He will fill the seat of the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Gorsuch won support from 51 of the chambers' Republicans as well as three moderate Democrats up for re-election in states Trump won last fall: Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Donnelly of Indiana. GOP Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia did not vote. He was nominated by Trump shortly after the January inauguration. The president issued this statement Friday: It is a great honor to announce the historic confirmation of Judge Neil M. Gorsuch as Associate Justice to the Supreme Court of the United States. Judge Gorsuchs confirmation process was one of the most transparent and accessible in history, and his judicial temperament, exceptional intellect, unparalleled integrity, and record of independence makes him the perfect choice to serve on the Nations highest court. As a deep believer in the rule of law, Judge Gorsuch will serve the American people with distinction as he continues to faithfully and vigorously defend our Constitution. I would also like to thank Justice Scalia and his wife Maureen for their immeasurable service to this country. Justice Scalias legacy of fidelity to our laws and our Constitution will never be forgotten. This week's maneuvering played out in a tense Senate chamber with most members in their seats, a rare and theatrical occurrence. First Democrats tried to mount a filibuster in an effort to block Gorsuch by denying him the 60 votes needed to advance to a final vote. That was successful only briefly, as Gorsuch fell five votes short. Then Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., raised a point of order, suggesting that Supreme Court nominees should not be subjected to a 60-vote threshold but instead a simple majority in the 100-member Senate. McConnell was overruled, but he appealed the ruling. And on that he prevailed on a 52-48 party-line vote. The 60-vote filibuster requirement on Supreme Court nominees was effectively gone, and with it the last vestige of bipartisanship on presidential nominees in an increasingly polarized Senate. "We will sadly point to today as a turning point in the history of the Senate and the Supreme Court," Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York declared on the Senate floor Thursday. "This is going to be a chapter, a monumental event in the history of the Senate, not for the better but for the worse," warned Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a senior Republican. Information from the Associated Press was used in this story. UPDATE: 6:15 a.m. I-275 and Gandy Boulevard are back open to traffic following a brush fire Friday night. 10:04 p.m. St. Petersburg Police now reports that I-275 has re-opened to traffic at Gandy Boulevard. Gandy Boulevard itself, however, will remain closed for several hours. 8:11 p.m. St. Petersburg Fire Rescue is reporting that the fire is now mainly under control. Crews are dealing with hotspots and will remain on scene through the evening. Fire investigators say the original fire was caused by a lawn mower that heated up and set dry grass clippings on fire. The wind then caught the burning clippings and spread the flames. In total, 40-50 acres suffered fire damage. In addition to the one fire fighter who was hospitalized for heat exhaustion, three people from the Village Green Mobile Home Park were treated for smoke inhalation. I-275 remains closed in both directions. 6:48 p.m. Duke Energy is now reporting the number of people without power due to the fire is down to 435. The maximum number of customers affected reached 2,876 earlier Friday. 6:28 p.m. Lt. Steve Lawrence of the St. Petersburg Fire Department is reporting that fire fighters are dealing with a water supply issue as they fight the brush fire. There are no fire hydrants on the interstate, so crews are having to use water supplies in their trucks. Fire trucks can hold up to 500 gallons of water. The result is that crews have had the fire knocked down, but have had to leave the area to resupply. While they're away from the scene, the fire flares up again. 6:18 p.m. - Florida Highway Patrol is reporting traffic is still being diverted off I-275 northbound at 54th Avenue and southbound at Roosevelt Boulevard. St. Petersburg Fire Rescue is reporting one firefighter has been hospitalized for heat exhaustion. We do have one firefighter transported to the hospital for heat exhaustion. St Pete Fire Rescue (@StPeteFR) April 7, 2017 A small brush fire that has quickly expanded has forced the Florida Highway Patrol to close both directions of Interstate 275 in St. Petersburg. Brush fire burning near I-275 and Gandy Boulevard FHP has closed Gandy Boulevard and I-275 in the area About 2,500 Duke Energy customers are without power Mandatory evacuation issued for Village Green mobile home park OUR NEW APP: Watch us on the go or wherever you are with the new Spectrum TV app The fire initially forced authorities to close the southbound exit ramp from I-275 onto Gandy Boulevard. Both directions of Gandy Boulevard were subsequently closed as the smoke increased in the area. Sgt. Steve Gaskins, of the Florida Highway Patrol, said both directions of I-275 are now closed because of low visibility caused by smoke from the fire. About 2,500 Duke Energy customers were without power as of 6 p.m. due to the fire. St. Pete Fire Rescue also issued a mandatory evacuation of the Village Green mobile home park due to smoke conditions. This is a developing story. Check back and refresh the page for the latest updates. President Donald Trump's proposed budget is calling for major cuts to Amtrak, impacting passenger service throughout Central Florida. Proposed cuts to federal funding for Amtrak long distance routes Eliminating funding puts several train services in jeopardy Florida rail service includes Auto Train, Silver Service between Florida and New York OUR NEW APP: Watch us on the go or wherever you are with the new Spectrum TV app RELATED: National Association of Railroad Passengers news release Stops and routes for Amtrak Atlantic Coast Silver Service (.PDF) The cuts are part of the proposed "America First" plan released last month and if approved would begin Oct. 1. Those cuts would affect the popular Sanford Auto Train, which allows you to ride the rails north with your vehicle. "[I] come down around Sept. 1, and I go back some time in April," said Earl Hearst, who was on his way back to his home in Maryland on Friday afternoon. Hearst spends every fall and winter in The Villages. So for the self-proclaimed snowbird, the Amtrak Auto Train is a necessary convenience. "I suspect there's mainly seniors on the train who don't want to take long drives. They would rather just put the car on the train and relax," Hearst said. Even with traffic backed up down the street waiting to board the train, the service used by hundreds of people every day is on the chopping block in Trump's proposed budget. Proposed cuts would eliminate funding for the Sanford Auto Train and long-distance passenger service across Florida, including stops at historic stations in Orlando and Winter Park. "I use the Auto Train, so that's the part I hope they won't cut," Hearst said. "My family rode the Amtrak train from Sanford when we went up for swearing-in," said Democratic Rep. Val Demings, who represents west Orange County. The president, as you know, as candidate Trump, led with a jobs plan and huge his favorite word infrastructure plan. And to reduce the service that Amtrak gives and others like it would be a major hit to the transportation industry," Demings said. "Im hoping that hell listen to the people who are in this area and depend on it," she said. The Auto Train makes the 900-mile journey from Sanford to Lorton, Virginia, in about 17 hours. For Hearst, it's a safer alternative compared with pushing through a long, tiring drive on Interstate 95. "It probably saves me an extra day of driving eight hours a day and then having to stop and rest and finish up the journey the next day," Hearst said. "It's very comfortable." Also included in the proposed cuts are plans to restore the Sunset Limited service from Jacksonville to New Orleans. That route has been out of service since Hurricane Katrina washed out the rail line in 2005. However, Amtrak and the Southern Rail Commission has been negotiating plans to bring back the service. Any cuts would still need to be approved by Congess. In total, 18 cities in Florida would be affected by the proposed Amtrak budget cuts. In 2016, 949,710 passengers used Amtrak trains in Florida, including more than 238,000 on the Auto Train in Sanford alone. Amtrak employs some 731 Florida residents. Blessing boxes have been sprouting up all over Southeast Texas, so much so that it inspired the Silsbee Chamber of Commerce to begin creating the first one in Hardin County. The boxes serve exactly what the name promises a blessing. A John Deer mower, front-end loader and mini-excavator stolen from Texas has landed a Lake Charles in prison. Katherine P. LaRocca, 53, was sentenced to one year and one day in prison, followed by two years of supervised release and a $20,000 fine, according to information from the US Attorney's Office for Western Louisiana. LaRocca was charged with three counts of sale and receipt of a stolen vehicle after she knowingly purchased stolen equipment worth up to $150,000, the department said. The three pieces of equipment were taken illegally from Texas sometime between December 2010 and October 2011 and brought to LaRocca in Calcasieu Parish. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A former DEA agent based in McAllen was sentenced in Houston Thursday to seven years in federal prison for downloading child pornography. James Patrick Burke, 39, was caught as a result of Operation Pacifier, an international sting by FBI agents that swept up visitors to a dark website that peddled illegal images and videos. INAPPROPRIATE RELATIONSHIP: Texas softball coach accused of having sexual relationship with 17-year-old student U.S. District Judge Alfred H. Bennett told Burke he was taking into consideration the former special agent's criminal behavior as well as his law enforcement and military service, according to a news release by the U.S. Attorney's Office. The judge said he was repulsed by the crime and unmoved by the lengthy statement Burke made in court, which did not demonstrate Burke was ready to take the blame for his conduct. He ordered Burke to pay $4,000 in restitution to a known victim and serve 15 years of supervised release after his prison term. He will be required to register as a sex offender. Burke, a Drug Enforcement Administration agent, was taken into custody after sentencing. His attorney, Mark Diaz, could not be reached for comment. POLITICAL SCANDAL: Child prostitution charges brought against Oklahoma senator caught with teen boy in motel room Burke pleaded guilty June 2. He was one of more than 135 people indicted on allegations they accessed content from a website known as Playpen in early 2015. FBI agents executed a search warrant after they traced downloads to his Internet ID from the Playpen site that trafficked in pornographic images of children. The FBI had seized the website's server and gotten a search warrant to keep it running for a month in 2015 while agents ran hacking software tracing the IP addresses of site visitors. During a search of his McAllen residence, investigators seized a laptop and a desktop computer. Burke told agents he used software to wipe the devices clean, but agents also found remnants of the movie titles that indicated they might have been of child pornography. An examination of Playpen's server showed Burke had accessed 77 threads containing 345 contact sheets with about eight images of child pornography per sheet, including prepubescent children and toddlers in acts of bondage and violence. Some were known victims as identified through the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, according to court documents. A Canadian man is looking to pass down a car collection he has spent four decades curating plus the land it's on, plus a renovated home and more for a little more than a $1 million. Canadian realtor Hudson Purba describes the sale of the land in Tappen as a "lifetime opportunity" up for sale for $1.45 million, or about $1.08 mullion U.S. dollars. A judge ruled against The Surgery Center at Lone Tree (Colo.) in a $14.9 million verdict after a patient received an injection that allegedly paralyzed her from the waist down, according to Denver Business Journal. Here are six things to know: 1. The patient received an epidural steroid injection filled with Kenalog in September 2013, which caused a spinal cord infarction, the Denver Business Journal reports. 2. Kenalog manufacturers started listing "Not for epidural use" on its warning label in 2011. During the trial, the patient's attorneys showed the jury similar bottles available at the surgery center with the warning. 3. The patient's attorneys said ASC personnel did not inform the patient about the warning label prior to the injection. 4. Denver Business Journal reports this case is the second largest negligence verdict in the state to date. 5. Attorneys representing the surgery center filed an unopposed motion to allow resolution of post-trial motions before entering judgment and setting a briefing schedule. 6. An attorney representing The Surgery Center at Lone Tree was not immediately available for comment to Becker's ASC Review. David Meeker, MD, is stepping down from Cambridge, Mass.-based Sanofi Genzyme at the end of June 2017 as the company's executive vice president and head, according to the Boston Globe. Here are five notes: 1. Bill Sibold will take over for Dr. Meeker. Mr. Sibold is currently leading the company's oncology and immunology programs. 2. Dr. Meeker hired Mr. Sibold in 2011 to create and build up Sanofi Genzyme's multiple sclerosis business. 3. During Dr. Meeker's tenure, Sanofi Genzyme developed its first multiple sclerosis medicines, Aubagio and Lemtrada. The company recently obtained US approval to market Dupixent, a drug to treat eczema. 4. He told the Boston Globe his greatest achievement was strengthening the company's multiple sclerosis franchise and maintaining the culture of putting the patient first and being a "science-driven company." 5. Dr. Meeker is weighing options for his next career move. He told the Boston Globe, "I'm more excited by the industry than ever. And I look forward to being an active contributor." The financial peril many U.S. retailers have faced in recent years has led to thousands of closures and created numerous vacancies in shopping malls across the country, and Bloomberg forecasts the industry's future is bleak. In the coming years, more than 10 percent of retail space which equals nearly one billion square feet might need to be closed, converted to serve other uses or renegotiated for reduced rent, according to data by CoStar Group cited by Bloomberg. Retail jobs are also rapidly dwindling. In March, retailers eliminated about 30,000 positions, the same total as February. The two-month period was the worst since 2009, according to the report. "This created a bubble, and like housing, that bubble has now burst," said Urban Outfitters CEO Richard Hayne, according to the report. "We are seeing the results: Doors shuttering and rents retreating. This trend will continue for the foreseeable future and may even accelerate." The rate of year-to-date store closures in 2017 is already outpacing that of 2008 during the peak of the recession. About 2,880 closures have been announced so far this year, compared with 1,153 at the same period in 2016, Credit Suisse Group AG analyst Christian Buss told Bloomberg. The retail industry is suffering for a few main reasons, including internet shopping and in particular, Amazon. "Today, convenience is sitting at home in your underwear on your phone or iPad," said Mr. Buss, according to the report. "The types of trips you'll take to the mall and the number of trips you'll take are going to be different." Hospital and health system leaders don't have to worry about being supplanted by online shopping. However, other trends do pose a threat to the hospital business, such as the shift to outpatient and ambulatory care; the emergence of standalone urgent care, retail facilities and microhospitals; and enhanced competition among hospitals in a market due to consolidation and the rise of healthcare consumerism. These forces, combined with lower reimbursement, make it critical for hospitals and health systems to adjust their strategies, be nimble and bend with the trends. Hospitals that maintain a position of dominance in their market will likely continue to fare well in the future. Their competitors, however, will need to pare down low-volume service lines and consider ways to promote the specialties in which they excel. Adding new capabilities, such as consumer-facing telehealth, will satisfy patients' desire for on-demand, real-time care at their convenience. Unlike shopping malls, people will always need hospitals for the acute care services they provide. But to thrive in an increasingly competitive landscape with savvier shoppers, healthcare leaders must ensure their strategies and offerings match consumer demands. Sebastopol, Calif.-based Sonoma West Medical Center was able to keep its doors open due to a last-minute $1 million infusion from Durall Capital Holdings, a Sunrise, Fla.-based hospital and laboratory operator. However, the hospital's financial troubles aren't over. Sonoma West Medical Center began preparing to shut down on Tuesday. The hospital stopped accepting new patients, and emergency crews told The Press Democrat ambulances were being diverted from the hospital. "We were anticipating closure," Dennis Colthurst, president of the Palm Drive Health Care District board told The Press Democrat. "We were ready to pull the trigger." Sonoma West Medical Center was able to avoid closure after Durall Capital Holdings agreed to make a $1 million capital investment in the hospital. At a meeting Wednesday with the Palm Drive Health Care District, which owns SWMC, hospital interim CEO and COO John Peleuses said Durall Capital Holdings will take over management of the hospital's laboratory services with hopes of turning a profit. The hospital will use the funds from Durall to pay debts owed to key vendors and keep the facility running. "We are not out of the woods yet, but we have some breathing room," Mr. Peleuses said at the meeting Wednesday, according to The Press Democrat. Although the hospital is open, no surgeries could be performed there as of Wednesday evening because its anesthesiologists quit on Tuesday. Mr. Peleuses said hospital officials will try to get the anesthesiologists, who are owed $146,000 by SWMC, to come back to work, according to the report. Sonoma West Medical Center, formerly Palm Drive Hospital, has faced financial troubles for years. The hospital closed in April 2014 after a duo of bankruptcy filings but resumed business in October 2015 after a strong push by local residents to reopen the facility. It was not long before the hospital began struggling financially. In February 2016, the hospital reported it was not bringing in enough revenue to cover its expenses. With the goal of improving its financial performance, Sonoma West Medical Center enlisted the help of Pipeline Health, a healthcare management company that owns and operates hospitals in California and Washington, D.C. Pipeline ended its contract with Sonoma West Medical Center in March, with the hospital owing it about $800,000. As of February, the hospital's outstanding bills totaled roughly $6.8 million, according to the report. More articles on healthcare finance: Arizona hospital falls into bankruptcy less than 2 years after opening SSM Health's operating income tumbles after St. Louis hospital acquisition 5 latest hospital, clinic closures From laid-off workers accusing Minneapolis-based Hennepin County Medical Center of discrimination to a man being arrested for impersonating a nurse practitioner at a California medical clinic, here are the latest healthcare industry lawsuits making headlines. 1. Medical practice manager sentenced to prison for billing fraud Anthony C. Neal, who managed an ophthalmology practice in Gresham, Ore., was sentenced April 4 to one year and one day in federal prison for his role in a seven-year healthcare fraud scheme. 2. Judge says antitrust lawsuit against Carolinas HealthCare can move forward A federal judge ruled that an antitrust lawsuit filed against Charlotte, N.C.-based Carolinas HealthCare System can move forward. 3. Laid-off workers accuse Hennepin County Medical Center of discrimination The American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees accused Minneapolis-based Hennepin County Medical Center of discriminating against union employees who were reassigned or laid off earlier this year. 4. EpiPen consumers launch class-action lawsuit against Mylan over price hikes Three EpiPen consumers filed a lawsuit against Canonsburg, Pa.-based Mylan over the high prices for EpiPens. 5. Recently discharged patient accused of stealing ambulance from Texas hospital A 47-year-old woman was charged with second-degree felony theft after police say she stole an ambulance from South Austin (Texas) Medical Center March 29. 6. Man arrested for impersonating a nurse practitioner at California medical clinic A 39-year-old man with no medical training was arrested and charged with identity theft and practicing without a license after posing as a nurse practitioner at a medical clinic in San Francisco. More articles on legal and regulatory issues: Shuttered NC hospital settles case over improper layoff notification Judge refuses to toss case alleging MedStar conspired with revenue cycle vendor in false billing scheme 5 latest lawsuits involving hospitals Police officers fatally shot a mental health patient outside of Mount Carmel St. Ann's hospital in Westerville, Ohio, on Thursday afternoon, according to a WKBN report. Westerville medics asked Columbus police to help them transport a mental health patient to the acute care hospital about 1 p.m. on Thursday. Police spokesman Sgt. Rich Weiner said officers followed the ambulance to the hospital, according to the report. Police say when the patient stepped out of the back of the ambulance outside of the hospital he was carrying a garbage bag. When he saw a police officer, the man took out what authorities believed to be a gun, and police shot him after he ignored their orders to drop it. The weapon the man was wielding turned out to be a BB gun. The man was taken to St. Ann's emergency room, where he was pronounced dead, according to the Columbus Dispatch. According to a statement from St. Ann's, no patients or hospital employees were involved or injured in the incident. "We are doing everything we can to assist the police with their investigation and to provide support and care to patients, families, visitors and colleagues. Our first priority is always their safety," the hospital said. More articles on healthcare news: Arizona hospital falls into bankruptcy less than 2 years after opening Quorum closes investigation into spinoff from CHS: 6 things to know Hedge fund looks to take control of Adeptus Health as bankruptcy looms Frank Phillips, MD, co-founder of the Minimally Invasive Spine Institute at Midwest Orthopaedics at Rush in Chicago discusses the future of spine in ASCs and where the biggest opportunities for outpatient spine will be in the next five years. Dr. Phillips is speaking on a panel about the future of spine and ASCs at the Beckers 15th Annual Spine, Orthopedic and Pain Management-Driven ASC Conference + The Future of Spine on June 22 to 24, 2017 in Chicago. Click here to learn more and register. Question: How do you see spine evolving in ASCs over the next five years? How will they change and how will they stay the same? Dr. Frank Phillips: There will be continued expansion of spine procedures in the ASC environment. With the advent of improved anesthesia and more reliable postoperative analgesic strategies, more complex spinal procedures will migrate to ASCs. Already we and others are routinely performing lumbar and cervical fusions as outpatients in an ASC setting. The efficiencies and cost-effectiveness when compared to traditional hospitals will continue to drive this. With this inevitable migration to outpatient surgery, hospitals/hospital systems and surgeons will be required to partner in creating ASC opportunities. When done appropriately this creates aligned incentives for all stakeholders. Q: What opportunities are there for spine surgeons to expand their outpatient ASC and practice? FP: There are still many instances where spine surgeons do not have relationships, incentives or ready access to focused ASCs. This is particularly the case in academic, university-based programs where large hospitals have been the backbone of the relationship. I would suggest that these practices need to explore ASC opportunities, often by necessity in partnership with their affiliated hospitals, to provide the most appropriate venue for spinal procedures. Spine surgeons interested in expanding procedures in the ASC, should work closely with the center to establish safe and reliable patient care pathways to ensure excellent patient care. Q: What do spine surgeons need to know about payers and reimbursement for their procedures in ASCs? FP: This is an area where considerable effort is required. Complex spine procedures are expensive and resource intensive and without appropriate contract negotiations and developing carve-outs for implant and biologics, these procedures are not sustainable in the ASC. The demonstrable cost savings realized in the ASC environment, will however bring payers to the negotiating table. Michael Kellams, DO, an anesthesiologist based in Indiana, discusses healthcare consolidation and how physicians are navigating the market today. Dr. Kellams is speaking on a panel about the future of orthopedics and physician practices at the Beckers 15th Annual Spine, Orthopedic and Pain Management-Driven ASC Conference + The Future of Spine on June 22 to 24, 2017 in Chicago. Click here to learn more and register. Q: How are spine, orthopedic and pain physicians navigating the challenges associated with consolidation in healthcare? Dr. Michael Kellams: In my area, we have seen what has happened the first wave of consolidations of physicians practices into hospital systems over the last 10 years. The result has been mixed. Many physician groups succumbed to the pressure to strengthen their negotiating power and streamline patient care and referral networks. The downside was that administrators assumed the decision making and largely disregarded what physicians knew was best for patient care. In our large Midwest city, the top spine groups avoided that first wave. The chasm has grown between the large hospital systems and the surgeon practices over patient care issues. The hospitals seem to have lost sight of who their primary customers are and who fills the ORs and hospital beds and thus the hospital's coffers. Recently, the two largest, and competing, spine practices instead joined forces and built their own fully independent physician-owned and physician-run spine hospital, The Indiana Spine Hospital. They know that they can provide better patient outcomes, better patient satisfaction, lower costs and better overall surgeon experience for inpatient spine surgeries. We are excited to see how this affects competition for patients and improves cost and care overall in the Indianapolis area. Q: In what situations is it smarter for independent physicians to merge or sell? When should they stay independent? MK: Independent physicians should weigh the overall risks and benefits when considering merger or sale of their practice. A small group that cannot compete and end up losing revenue due to all the costs associated with the ACA and whatever the new administration may replace it with often have no choice. Well established larger practices that have the reputation of excellence and cost containment can earn a seat at the table and out-negotiate the behemoth hospital systems. This is what we are witnessing here in our city and the patients will benefit. Q: How can physicians improve efficiencies after consolidating with a larger practice/hospital? MK: The only way to have an effect on efficiency of care is to have representation in the board room. Sometimes we see a group get representation on the board, and then the hospital brings them over to the other side and they change hats and lose perspective. It is important for physicians to have representation uninfluenced by a hospital paycheck. Physicians must never lose sight of why they do what they do and must use their voices when warranted. "If you aren't seated at the table, you are on the menu." To continue following the latest news and information for Bedfordshire and surrounding areas, simply enter your full postcode below North Koreas ambassador to Moscow Kim Kyong Jun on Thursday reportedly said the country is ready to deliver the most ruthless blow if provoked by the United States. The warning comes after US President Donald Trump pledged to keep building up defences against Pyongyang. Stating that North Korea has the readiness and ability to counter any challenge from the US, he added, Our army has already said that if there will be even the smallest provocation from the United States during exercises, we are ready to deliver the most ruthless blow, say reports. PM Narendra Modi progressed in regular traffic without any route restrictions to receive Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina at the Delhi airport on Friday. The Bangladesh Prime Minister is touring India after seven years, with over twenty deals likely to be signed between the two nations during her four-day visit. Notably, the two leaders are scheduled to hold official talks on Sunday. Shops in the Republic have seen a dip in consumer confidence because of the devaluation of sterling, Retail Excellence Ireland said Nearly 300,000 retail jobs depend on the Republic's relationship with the UK, the sector has warned. Lorraine Higgins from industry body Retail Excellence Ireland said shops across the border have already seen a dip in consumer confidence and loss of sales because of the devaluation of sterling. Retail NI, its counterpart in Northern Ireland, said leaving the single market and customs union following a hard Brexit would be a backwards step for the province. Ms Higgins said: "Disentangling Ireland from the UK is the most brutal break-up and we need to ensure that we have the best possible plan to safeguard Irish retailers and the 282,000 jobs and 100,000 businesses dependent on the relationship." Retail Excellence and Retail NI jointly presented the sector's views on Brexit to the Dail's Oireachtas committee on the Good Friday Agreement. Ms Higgins, head of public affairs at Retail Excellence, added that people were doing their shopping online in growing numbers to take advantage of the weaker pound. Retail NI chief executive Glyn Roberts said retailers on both sides of the border needed to focus on international visitors. "Both our organisations are working in partnership to ensure that policies are put in place to support what is the island's largest industry by employment." He said Belfast, Dublin and London should begin the process of establishing a new one-hour fast train service between Dublin and Belfast, a "game changer" for the all-Ireland economy. Mr Roberts added: "The bottom line is that Brexit should not result in any barriers in trade and on free movement across the border. "It clearly is a major problem not having an Executive in place to argue our case in these vital Brexit negotiations. We urge all the political parties to redouble their efforts to secure agreement for a new administration. "Triggering Article 50 is the start of a huge process of economic, social and political change for Northern Ireland and it remains to be seen if this change will be positive for our local economy. "Northern Ireland's retail sector needs a lot more certainty than just a vague aspiration about 'no return to the borders of the past'." Bombardier has faced protests outside its Montreal headquarters and criticism from Canada's Prime Minister following a pay rise for its top-earning executives in a year it cut 1,080 jobs in Northern Ireland. Despite the plane maker receiving a $1bn bailout from the Quebec Government for its struggling CSeries jet and a 225m loan from the Canadian Government, the company's top bosses will see their pay and bonuses rise this year to $32.6m (26m). The move has sparked outrage among other staff. Bombardier has since said it will defer 50% of the payments until 2020. The firm employs 4,500 people in Northern Ireland building parts for the CSeries. Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he was not happy at the pay rise for the company's fat cats. "We're obviously not pleased with the decision that Bombardier made around its remuneration for its executives," he told the Canadian parliament. Bombardier boss Alain Bellemare said: "We didn't do a good job of communicating it. "If you look at it at face value, I can understand why people were so angry, so unhappy." Mr Trudeau said: "We believe in the long-term profitability and growth in our auto and aerospace sector. "We know that investing in Bombardier is a way of ensuring good, long-term jobs. "We respect the free market and the choices that companies will make, but we also have a responsibility to ensure that the investments we make with taxpayer dollars are leading to good jobs and growth." Mr Bellemare said: "Over the past 75 years our fellow citizens have always been by our side. "It is because of this deep relationship that we are sensitive to the public reaction to our executive compensation practices. "To address these concerns, I've asked our board of directors to defer the payment of more than 50% of the total planned 2016 executive compensation for our six named executive officers to 2020." The CSeries launched in 2015, more than two years late and around $2bn over budget. Orders were also lower than expected, but morale was boosted last April when Delta Airlines bought 125. In Bombardier's latest accounts for 2016, the company's Northern Ireland business saw turnover fall from $919m (740m) in 2015 to $871m (702m) in 2016. It also said it will continue to shift work away from Northern Ireland to keep cutting costs amid an "extremely challenging year". The company says that, despite this, "excellent progress was made on the CSeries". Hundreds of staff work on the wings and part of the fuselage for the CS100 and CS300 passenger jets. However, it was hit by slow sales and was given the $1bn bailout by the Quebec administration in return for a 49.5% stake in the CSeries programme. The bulk of Bombardier's revenue in 2016 came from Canada and the US. Its average workforce in Northern Ireland last year stood at 4,558. Hotel Chocolat is to open its first cafe in Ireland in Belfast city centre, it can be revealed. The top-end chocolate business already has one of its traditional shops at Victoria Square, selling a wide range of chocolates and Easter eggs. But it is understood to be launching its first cafe here - serving coffee, chocolate and ice cream - at Wellington Place. There are currently 13 Hotel Chocolat cafes across the UK. A spokeswoman for Hotel Chocolat said: "Our cafes are a new concept that brings together everything we do under one roof - from cocoa-growing and chocolate-making to innovative new cocoa-based drinks and food. "Hotel Chocolat set out to make British chocolate exciting again. Now we are going one step further, creating cafe spaces to relax, refuel and be restored. "A revolution in cafe culture, customers can explore our award-winning Hot Chocolat, available in eight different chocolate types. "Our cafe will also serve a range of coffee chocolat lattes, where coffee meets chocolate, frappes and our revolutionary new Ice Cream of the Gods." The cafes offer a luxury range of sweets, including a series of brownies. That includes lemon and pistachio, toasted coconut and maple, and pecan. In its results, reported in October, the firm said "hedonistic chocolate" has helped drive up sales and profits. The chain said sales rose 12% to 91.1m in the year to June 26, with pre-tax profits up from 2.9m to 8.2m. The group, which listed on the London Stock Exchange's Alternative Investment Market in May, said sweet treats made with less sugar were also proving popular. "We see an increasing trend that consumers want uncompromisingly delicious and hedonistic chocolate that's also made with responsible amounts of sugar", Hotel Chocolat said. Founded in 1993, Hotel Chocolat has 81 stores, a hotel in St Lucia and restaurants in London and Leeds. The group also benefited from a Father's Day campaign, Better Than Socks, and plans to launch a new website next year. Just last month, the Belfast Telegraph reported on Hotel Chocolat's mammoth 75 Easter egg. An enquiry about its flagship Classic Ostrich Egg revealed the milk chocolate versions were already sold out. Weighing in at 1.1kg, the milk egg, is made with 40% milk chocolate with crunchy cookies and puffed rice, and 50% milk chocolate with crispy feuilletine. The dark version is made with 70% dark chocolate, with almonds and a dash of salt, and dark chocolate with hazelnuts. A former soldier who participated in a riot at a north Belfast interface told police he had psychotic breakdown and felt he was fighting the Taliban, a court has heard. Co Antrim man James Burns - who served two tours of Afghanistan during his career in the Army - was handed a three-year sentence at Belfast Crown Court after he admitted being involved in a riot in July 2015. The court heard the 26-year old, from Hydepark Manor in Newtownabbey, was present for around three hours, during which time he was seen throwing missiles such as bottles and bricks at police lines. At one point, he was also observed setting a bin on fire. Despite a request from his barrister that his case should be deemed exception and that he should be spared a jail term due to significant mental health issues, Burns was handed a three-year sentence. Her Honour Judge McCaffrey told the former soldier he will spend 18 months of his sentence in prison, with the remaining 18 months on licence when he is released. After sentence was passed and he was being led from the dock in handcuffs, Burns shouted that the sentence was a "f***ing disgrace" and said "give that 18 months to Tony Blair." Before she passed sentence, Judge McCaffrey was told that trouble flared in the area on July 13, 2015 following a Parade Commission's determination banning an Orange lodge and loyalist band from returning past the nationalist Ardoyne shop fronts area. Around 25 police officers were injured after police lines were pelted with masonry, bricks, bottles and other items including fireworks. The riot was recorded by police and Burns was captured on CCTV. Present for around three hours, a prosecutor said Burns was "masked at times, and other times he wasn't." Two days after the riot, Burns attended a police station voluntarily and said: "I'm here to hold my hands up." He made full admissions of his involvement and claimed he thought he had a psychotic breakdown on the day in question, and was fighting the Taliban. Telling the court the Crown accepted Burns had mental health issues, the prosecutor said he came before the court with 47 previous convictions. Defence barrister Declan Quinn confirmed Burns suffered from a range of mental health deficiencies - many which are linked to his former career in the Army. Mr Quinn revealed Burns has been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, suffers from nightmares about strangling people and "hears the voice of a friend who was killed in Afghanistan." Burns has also abused Tramadol and other medication and has a history of drugs and alcohol misuse. Regarding the offence itself, Mr Quinn said Burns regretted his involvement and is not sectarian but rather became involved in a "crowd mentality". Mr Quinn concluded by saying: "He is not a bad or dangerous individual, but he got himself into a position where alcohol played a major factor ... and there was an element of playing to the ground and playing to his peers." Secretary of State James Brokenshire went to the front line of healthcare yesterday - to warn politicians they must come up with a cure to restore devolution urgently. And Sinn Fein Stormont leader Michelle O'Neill also warned last night: "The next week is critical in the political talks. The political stakes are high." On a visit to Antrim Area Hospital, Mr Brokenshire stressed that the ongoing talks cannot continue indefinitely and only a "narrow window" remained. He said he would make a call on the state of negotiations over the Easter weekend - in 10 days - to enable him to move legislation in Westminster once MPs return from recess on April 18. His comments effectively make Good Friday the deadline for the region's rowing parties to reach consensus - a timeline that is sure to prompt comparisons with the tense negotiations ahead of the historic Good Friday Agreement of 1998. While doctors, nurses and support healthcare professionals ensured that local people can avail of a range of services close to home, Mr Brokenshire insisted the lack of an Executive and Assembly caused "uncertainty for those providing vital front line services". He said: "Public services will suffer if there continues to be political stalemate. "Budgets need to be established in order to provide much-needed services for the public. "That is why I am urging the political parties to continue to talk and find a way through the outstanding issues. "It remains important that an agreement is reached which enables the restoration of devolved government. This is absolutely critical for Northern Ireland and its people." Sinn Fein slammed Mr Brokenshire's concern for public services as "a bit rich". Former Executive minister Conor Murphy said: "Relentless Tory cuts and austerity policies have taken hundreds of millions of pounds out of public services over the last seven years and the Tories are also pursuing a pro-Brexit agenda which will be disastrous for the people of this island." Nonethelesss, Mr Brokenshire, who has been co-hosting the talks which resumed this week after collapsing a week earlier, reiterated that he would be forced to take decisions, including on the regional rate, over Easter. "I need to make decisions over the Easter period to bring legislation forward at Westminster. That is the timeline I am working to," he said. "It is that Easter focus that I have on needing for me to take decisions and therefore to introduce legislation there afterwards so that we can get on with the job, get an Executive back in place and, equally for me, if we don't see that, to start to make decisions about what further contingencies may need to be put into place." But Mrs O'Neill last night demanded a "step change" from the UK Government and DUP if the talks are to succeed. At a public meeting in Londonderry, she said there had been "little progress" on the key political issues since the election last month, including dealing with the legacy of the Troubles, a Bill of Rights and Irish language legislation. "Getting the political institutions back in place will be a challenge given the DUP's stated position on an Irish Language Act, a Bill of Rights and other fundamental requirements, and the British Government's obstructive approach to legacy issues and other matters," she added. "The reality is that the British Government has abjectly failed to honour its commitments on equality and rights. They must now step up and deliver on their commitments otherwise restoring the institutions is in serious doubt. The institutions will not be restored without movement on these key issues." The funeral of Paul McCready takes place in North Belfast following his murder in Belfast last weekend on April 7th 2017 (Photo - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) The funeral of Paul McCready takes place in North Belfast following his murder in Belfast last weekend on April 7th 2017 (Photo - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) The funeral of Paul McCready takes place in North Belfast following his murder in Belfast last weekend on April 7th 2017 (Photo - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) The funeral of Paul McCready takes place in North Belfast following his murder in Belfast last weekend on April 7th 2017 (Photo - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) The funeral of Paul McCready takes place in North Belfast following his murder in Belfast last weekend on April 7th 2017 (Photo - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) The funeral of Paul McCready takes place in North Belfast following his murder in Belfast last weekend on April 7th 2017 (Photo - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) The funeral of Paul McCready takes place in North Belfast following his murder in Belfast last weekend on April 7th 2017 (Photo - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) Boxer Paddy Gallagher The funeral of Paul McCready takes place in North Belfast following his murder in Belfast last weekend on April 7th 2017 (Photo - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) The funeral of Paul McCready takes place in North Belfast following his murder in Belfast last weekend on April 7th 2017 (Photo - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) The funeral of Paul McCready takes place in North Belfast following his murder in Belfast last weekend on April 7th 2017 (Photo - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) The funeral of Paul McCready takes place in North Belfast following his murder in Belfast last weekend on April 7th 2017 (Photo - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) The funeral of Paul McCready takes place in North Belfast following his murder in Belfast last weekend on April 7th 2017 (Photo - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) The funeral of Paul McCready takes place in North Belfast following his murder in Belfast last weekend on April 7th 2017 (Photo - Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph) The funeral has taken place of Belfast murder victim Paul McCready. The 31-year-old died after sustaining injuries in an altercation inside the Northern Whig pub in Belfast city centre at around 12.50am on Sunday. It spilled on to the street and it is understood that Mr McCready, from north Belfast, hit his head on the pavement. He passed away in hospital in the early hours of Sunday. Mr McCready had two young sons both under the age of 10. Speaking previously the partner of Mr McCready paid tribute to her "rock" and "best friend in the whole world". Read more: Read More Mr McCready's partner of more than a decade, Ruth Patterson, also said their sons were "broken" and she wanted to "wake up now from this nightmare". As police appealed for information they said two young children now face a lifetime without their dad. Appealing for witnesses to come forward Detective Superintendent Kevin Geddes said officers knew from watching CCTV footage there were a lot of people who had not yet contacted police. He said: I would appeal to those people who havent yet got in touch with the investigation team to please do so. We are keen to gather as much information as possible about the circumstances and events that occurred here early on Sunday morning. We would also like to hear from anyone who took video footage or photographs." A 30-year-old-man arrested by police investigating the murder was released pending a report to the Public Prosecution Service (PPS). The legacy of Eoin Mac Neill, the prominent Gaelic revivalist who famously tried to call off the Easter Rising, has been commemorated at his old school in Belfast. Mac Neill's grandson, senator and former tanaiste Michael McDowell, unveiled a plaque at St Malachy's College to mark the life and times of one of its most famous ex-pupils. Born in Glenarm, Co Antrim, Mac Neill boarded at St Malachy's from 1881 to 1887. The blue Ulster History Circle plaque was commissioned to mark the 150th anniversary of his birth. Mr McDowell said it was a "great honour and great pleasure" to unveil it. The ex-Irish government minister said St Malachy's was the "making" of his grandfather. "He was really very, very fond of this institution and he was somebody who after he ceased to be a pupil here he kept very close ties with St Malachy's," he said. "There is no doubt that it was the education he received here in St Malachy's which set him on his career and changed Irish history." Mac Neill would go on to become a law clerk and then history professor at University College Dublin. Six years after leaving school, he co-founded the Gaelic League with Douglas Hyde. The league was established to promote Irish nationalism through cultural expressions of language and literature. Mac Neill would later become chief of staff of the Irish Volunteers, the military organisation formed in 1913 to ensure home rule was delivered in Ireland. When the volunteers split at the outset of the First World War, Mac Neill led the minority faction not prepared to join the British war effort. But when the clandestine revolutionary body the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) infiltrated the volunteers and plotted to use scheduled manoeuvres on Easter Sunday 1916 as a cover for an insurrection, Mac Neill issued a countermanding order instructing his men to stand down, believing the armed rebellion had no chance of success. The impact of his order on the Rising, which started a day later with fewer participants than first envisaged, has been a matter of intense historical debate ever since. After spending a year in prison in the wake of the Rising, Mac Neill went on to play an important role in the subsequent shaping of the Irish Free State. Paul McBride, principal of St Malachy's, said he was delighted the college was recognising Mac Neill. "The plaque is located in a very prominent part of the college and will remind present and future generations of students of Eoin Mac Neill's important role in the cultural life of Ireland," he said. Chairman of the Ulster History Circle, Chris Spurr, said: "As a co-founder of the Gaelic League, Eoin Mac Neill assured his place in his country's history, but he was also an eminent scholar, historian, and linguist. "The Ulster History Circle are delighted to commemorate Eoin Mac Neill with a blue plaque at the college he attended." Irish language body Foras na Gaelige helped fund the plaque. An award winning milliner and designer has told of the moment a staff member was threatened with a knife in broad daylight as he demanded money. Grainne Maher told of her horror at the incident that happened at the Fashion Vault in the Spires Mall in Belfast on Wednesday. She said how they had had some items stolen before over the past two years - but that it was an entirely different matter when "someone comes in to your shop brandishing a knife and threatening your staff to open the till". She told the Belfast Telegraph what happened to her member of staff who was on her own when it happened - and has been off work since the incident. Grainne said: "A man in his mid 20s wearing a hoodie came in and stood at the counter. He said to Terri 'don't go doing anything stupid I need you to open the til' and he had a knife and showed it to her. "He came round behind the counter towards her and the till - still with the knife. "She opened the counter and we had already cleared the cash out." When he realised there was nothing there he left. Grainne said: "It all happened quite quickly but it was still very scary and threatening and she is off now - she's very upset about it. "I myself have a weird feeling just being here - it's not nice to have to be suspect of people "We are watching more intently at people coming into the shop you have to do that anyway - but it's a bit more stressful. " Grainne said the incident shows how quickly something can go wrong - no matter what time of the day it is. "It just leaves you with a strange feeling. We'll keep going - you have to just get on with things." It comes as the shop owner is having to move premises due to the Spires Mall closing permanently. She said one good thing of that means she won't be in the place where she will be reminded of the incident. She said: "He went with nothing this time, but that doesn't mean damage wasn't done. Feeling safe and happy isn't a luxury, it's something we should all be able to expect in our place of work." In the meantime she said that security in the Mall has been upped. Police are investigating the incident and are appealing for information and witnesses. Detective Constable Siobhan McIlhone said At approximately 3:10pm a man aged in his 20s entered a shop in Fisherwick Place holding a knife with a black handle. He examined the till of the shop before leaving the scene empty-handed exiting to College Square East. Hes described as having reddish/brown beard and was wearing a hoody. "We are appealing to anyone that may have any information or to anyone that may have witnessed any suspicious activity in the vicinity at the time to contact Musgrave on the non-emergency number 101, quoting reference 688 of the 05/04/17. Or , alternatively if someone would prefer to provide information without giving their details they can contact the independent charity Crimestoppers and speak to the anonymously on 0800 555 111. Almost half a million people in the Irish Republic now identify as having no religion, with Catholicism down by 14% in the past 25 years Almost half a million people in the Irish Republic now identify as having no religion, with Catholicism down by 14% in the past 25 years. Statistics from the 2016 Census revealed that only 78% of the population is Catholic compared with 84% in 2011 and 92% in 1991. Michael Nugent, head of Atheist Ireland, believes that the actual figure for non-religious people in Ireland is significantly higher than the 468,421 cited in the statistics, with a large number of people opting not to state a religion. The figure increased from 269,800 in 2011, while the number of Catholics dwindled from 3,861,300 to 3,729,100.The percentage of non-religious people trumps that of all the minority religions in Ireland combined. However, the number of Muslims has risen by 29% in the past five years. There were 126,400 Church of Ireland subscribers, 63,400 Muslims, 62,200 Orthodox, 37,400 Christians, 24,200 Presbyterians and 14,300 Hindus. Mr Nugent also highlighted the need for government to take note of this change, with the Catholic Church losing a significant grip on Irish society. His organisation was delighted with the latest figures, particularly given a strong campaign to encourage non-religious people to tick the box on the form last year. "We had a campaign urging people without a religion to say so and we're quite pleased with the results," Mr Nugent said. "It's part of a process. The country is becoming more secular, the Catholic Church doesn't have the power it used to have and the politicians and the laws are going to have to catch up with that." Dublin and Galway were above average when it came to the number of non-Catholics, working out at more than one in three people. Tipperary, meanwhile had the lowest percentage, with only 12.9% declaring themselves as non-Catholic. Elsewhere, the average number of children in a family is unchanged at 1.38 and there are 218,817 single parent families, 86% of which are headed by women. Same-sex civil partnerships were counted for the first time last year, and 4,226 people confirmed they had tied the knot. But in total, there were 6,034 same-sex couples, 6,884 men and 5,184 women. Also on the relationship front, the census recorded 103,895 divorcees. The report also revealed a surge in the number of people seeking Irish passports, with the amount of people recorded as having dual nationality more than doubling in the five years to 2016 to 104,784. In terms of ethnicity, there was a slight fall in the number of people who identify as Black Irish or Black African to 57,850, and another 6,789 who identify as Other Black. There are 30,987 travellers living in Ireland, 5% up on 2011. There was a 9% increase in the number of people identifying as ethnically Chinese to 19,447, and a 19% rise in those classing themselves as ethnically Other Asian. More than 124,000 people failed to answer the question on ethnicity, the report said. Irish language enthusiasts take part in a protest against the withdrawal of funding to Irish-medium youth providers at the Education Authority headquarters in Belfast city centre Youth service providers who lost funding may have a second chance to obtain cash , the Education Authority (EA) has said. Four Irish language youth clubs in Belfast say they are facing closure after applications to the EA for public funds were not approved. They are among 13 groups affected. Opponents of the cuts held a protest yesterday outside the EA's Belfast offices which was attended by former Finance Minister Mairtin O Muilleoir. Later the EA said there will be a further opportunity to apply for funding after a number of unsuccessful applications to the Extended Provision Youth Scheme. EA chief executive Gavin Boyd said: "EA does not yet have a budget for 2017/18. However, we received a cash allocation from DE in March 2017 which allows us to spend up until July 31, 2017." Reporter Victoria Leonard outside Stormont with food for the estates three cats Reporter Victoria Leonard outside Stormont with food for the estates three cats A fearless pensioner's fight to feed three Stormont felines has resulted in a victory - albeit temporary. Yesterday, we revealed how the Stormont Three - Ginger, Maggie and Furby - had become the unwitting victims of the political stalemate after the 76-year-old east Belfast woman who had cared for them for years was deemed a "security risk" by senior civil servants. Read More However, hours after the Belfast Telegraph challenged Secretary of State James Brokenshire to allow Edna Watters to feed her much-loved moggies, the Department of Finance granted temporary access for three people who feed the animals. We need your consent to load this Social Media content We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content. Manage Preference Giving 'paws' for thought, it added: "Longer term solutions will need to strike a balance between animal welfare and security." Cat champion Edna said she was "happy" that she would be granted access to her favourite felines once more, but called for permission to be granted on a permanent rather than a temporary basis. "How can three retired civil servants in their 70s constitute a security risk?" asked the incredulous pensioner. "It's a load of rubbish, and I believe they are just looking for an excuse to get rid of us and the cats. "I would love to know who the jobsworth is who gave out the information that we were not to be admitted. "We just want to be allowed in for five minutes a day. I was distraught at being banned from seeing them - they are like my family." Earlier, negotiations appeared to have reached an im-puss, with Edna left heartbroken as the four-legged companions who she had cared for come rain, hail or shine were left to fend for themselves. The Stormont Estate Management Unit (SEMU) is understood to have previously circulated an email instructing all security guards to "ensure that only those visitors with a valid business reason are permitted access to the restricted areas of the estate." The 'securocats' email added that "providing food for feral cats does not constitute a business need and as such entry has been refused and will be so going forward." At a press conference in Antrim Hospital yesterday, the Belfast Telegraph tackled James Brokenshire on whether Edna, who has looked after cats on the estate for three decades, would be allowed to provide sustenance to the floundering felines. A taken-aback Mr Brokenshire replied "Well, I'll, ah, I, I, ah, that's one I'm not familiar with." He added with a wry smile: "But I think that it's interesting if there are all sorts of different people who have been affected by the political uncertainty in the community as a whole. "And I suppose the message is we need to get on with this, we need to see the Executive in place delivering for everyone of whatever character and I think it is that sense of momentum that we need to maintain that I'll be taking back into the talks this afternoon and seeing that we have an Executive that is delivering for Northern Ireland." While Mr Brokenshire fell short of rubber-stamping Edna's access to the Stormont estate, the Belfast Telegraph mounted an attempt to deliver a food parcel to sustain Ginger, Maggie and Furby in their hour of need. Arriving at the security entrance to Stormont House with a large bag of cat food and treats, we met a bemused security guard who appeared sympathetic to our aim. However, the need to gain permission from a higher power meant that we spent nearly an hour standing at the gates wrangling with press officers. Although our bid to gain access was thwarted due to "talks ongoing", we were able to deliver a bumper bag of cat food to ensure Stormont's newest stars wouldn't go hungry overnight. Meanwhile, two separate petitions have gathered more than 100 signatures calling for Edna to be granted access. Abigail Garratt, who created one of the petitions, stated: "This is a lady who finds joy in caring for those who need it, a woman with compassion for animals and feels a duty of care for them. "She should be allowed to continue to feed these cats freely, and should not be deemed a 'security risk.'" Henry Clarke worked as a pastor at four different Canadian churches in a northern Canadian town Belfast man Billy Brown (61) was abused by Clarke when he was 12 in Newtownabbey in 1968 Church pastor Henry Clarke confessed to abusing three different boys at care homes in Northern Ireland Henry Clarke told police he had abused boys in Sixties and Seventies but was never prosecuted. BBC NI tracked him down to the frozen wastes of northern Canada, where he agreed to talk. An expedition to the frozen lakes of Northern Canada is a long way to go to look for someone who may not be there. I had managed to find an address for Henry Clarke in a remote town on the edge of the great Canadian wilderness. The only way to make sure he was the same man we wanted to talk to was to go there in person and knock on his door. If he was hiding, he'd picked a good place. The abuse he'd carried out on three children in Northern Ireland in the early Sixties and Seventies, and the fact that he'd never been prosecuted, had remained buried over the years. The recent Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry heard that a man who worked at the Bawnmore care home had confessed to police in 1985 that he had sexually abused children but escaped justice. He could not be named until the BBC successfully applied to have his anonymity lifted. Once that restriction was gone, his name appeared on documents on the HIA's website, and I began searching for the man. The documents revealed he'd emigrated to Canada in the early Eighties and had become a pastor. It transpired that a small church in Canada had posted sermons by a pastor called Henry Clarke online. Could it be the same man? I listened to hours of his sermons and references "to life back in the country", and his dad meeting him off the Liverpool boat when he was in the RAF suggested he was the right person. Then I found an address for him, and days later the BBC head of radio, news and online Adam Smyth, lead cameraman Donal Hamilton and I were on a plane to North America following the story. We drove for hundreds of miles north from Edmonton, where the roads got narrower and the snow heavier, with ice lakes to our right and left. All the while I kept thinking what if I've found a different Henry Clarke? Or it's him but he's away on holiday? I didn't know the answer until I knocked the door of the address in my notebook. A woman opened the door and I asked for Henry Clarke. She invited me in and a small man in a dressing gown appeared. I recognised his voice from the online sermons, explained who I was, and where I was from. Even in the fading light I could see his face change colour. Rather than have a long conversation with him I handed him a pre-prepared letter requesting an interview, and asked him to call me back. This helped avoid a conversation in front of his wife, as I didn't want to be the first to tell her her husband was a paedophile. The following day he phoned me. He said: "I got the shock of my life when I read the letter. My wife and I read it together. She knows all about this. Yes, I am the man you are looking for. You know where I live. We'd like to talk to you. Come on round." We shook hands when he opened the door. For years in this job as a reporter I've always told myself never to judge anyone. But as a father of boys myself, I couldn't help but think of the disturbing allegations against him. We spoke for more than an hour and he agreed to a recorded interview. Why? Perhaps he felt he couldn't hide it any longer. The BBC in Belfast was on his doorstep. He'd been named as a child abuser through the witness documents published on the HIA's website. Perhaps he wanted to explain that he'd confessed in the past, and it was the authorities that had failed to act. I don't think I've ever heard anyone admit to child abuse in a television interview before, and certainly not someone who hasn't been convicted of it. Each time I replayed the interview in an editing suite back in BBC Broadcasting House in Ormeau Avenue, it didn't feel any less shocking, as he repeated what he told the RUC when he was interviewed on his birthday in 1985. "I admitted I had interfered with a boy at Bawnmore (hostel), and one at Firmount Hostel and then, at a later date, I omitted to mention a boy at Conway and I wrote a letter to the RUC, when I returned to Canada, I wrote a letter to them, and told them that I had missed telling them about this other boy, and I felt at that point in time there would be consequences for my admission." What did he think would happen? "I'm not sure, my wife and I both thought that I probably would finish up going to prison for what I'd done. In fact, when we were in NI on holiday the RUC did seize my Canadian and my British passports, so we were expecting something." The HIA papers show the RUC decided not to tell the Canadian authorities of his admissions because he hadn't actually been convicted of any offences. He said he had not abused since the early Seventies and says, without trying to detract from what he did, it was almost 50 years ago. It may be, but not for one of his victims. I found the child he'd abused from Bawnmore when I returned from Canada. His name is Billy Brown, and with the help of my colleague Kevin Sharkey, I tracked him down and showed him the interview. After a childhood where he was abused in a system that was supposed to look after him, he had a very disrupted and often dysfunctional life with bouts of homelessness laced with alcoholism. On the subject of Henry Clarke, Billy Brown deserves to have the last word. "Your life's hell - people say you'll forget about it. But you'll never forget about it," he said. "I'm coming 61 and I still have the nightmares. But now I have a face I can put to the shadows." He added: "I was that child, and I don't know how it came about. Why me? Why was it in his head to pick me, to go and ask me to go to his house. "He was in his own mother and father's house, and for him to get in beside me and do what he did..." Billy says his abuser should never have been allowed to reach Canada. "Why should I have to live this hell on my own, and me the victim?" Former first minister Arlene Foster said the DUP has set no red lines The UUP's Tom Elliott, Mike Nesbitt, and Reg Empey talk to the media in the Great Hall at Parliament Buildings. Mike Nesbitt holds a piece of paper to illustrate an agreement which he then rips up. (Picture by Jonathan Porter/PressEye.com) SDLP leader Colum Eastwood leads some of his party colleagues out to talk to the media in the Great Hall at Parliament Buildings. (Picture by Jonathan Porter/PressEye.com) Sinn Fein's Conor Murphy leads some of his party colleagues out to the Great Hall at Parliament Buildings to speak to the media. (Picture by Jonathan Porter/PressEye.com) DUP leader Arlene Foster leads some of her party colleagues out to the Great Hall at Parliament Buildings to speak to the media. (Picture by Jonathan Porter/PressEye.com) The prospects of a deal to save powersharing in Northern Ireland look bleak after the first week of talks ended in negativity and recriminations. The Democratic Unionists and Sinn Fein - the two parties whose agreement is essential if a new coalition executive is to be formed - again blamed each other for a lack of progress, while the Ulster Unionists and SDLP raised serious doubts whether an accord will be reached. The mood music has been similarly downbeat in the run up to previous historic deals in Northern Ireland, so some form of agreement may yet materialise come the effective deadline of Good Friday. But the assessments aired on Friday afternoon in the Great Hall of Parliament Buildings, Belfast, certainly did not suggest a breakthrough was imminent. DUP leader and former first minister Arlene Foster said: "We want to get back into devolution as soon as possible, we believe in devolution, we believe devolution is the right way to deal with people's problems in terms of health, education, to have a strong economy for Northern Ireland. "We have set no red lines." She added: "Others unfortunately are holding up this process in terms of their political demands and that is really regrettable." Sinn Fein negotiator Conor Murphy said the talks to date had been "all about process and not about progress". "We want to see an agreement, we are still focused on securing an agreement," he said. Mr Murphy said the majority of participants in the talks acknowledged the need for a "step change" in how government operated in the region "Apart from the DUP and the British government everybody else gets that," he claimed. "We need to see that type of change, we need to see agreements that were made before being implemented and thus far we haven't any progress in relation to that. So we are frustrated, I sense that some of the other parties are frustrated too. "So rather than getting on this round-table, process-driven approach to things let's get down and crunch the key issues - everybody knows what they are, we need to get down and do that." Devolution crashed in January over a row about a botched green energy scheme. The subsequent snap election campaign laid bare a series of other disputes dividing the DUP and Sinn Fein. The main stumbling blocks are the contentious issues of Irish language protections; how to deal with the toxic legacy of the Troubles and a stalled Northern Ireland-specific Bill of Rights. Sinn Fein insists all three were integral parts of previous agreements that just need to be implemented. The republican party accuses the DUP and UK government of failing to honour obligations in that respect. The DUP, however, claims what Sinn Fein is asking for represent new and unreasonable demands. Northern Ireland Secretary of State James Brokenshire instigated the two-week talks process after last month's negotiations to form a new powersharing administration ended in failure. Parties missed a deadline to get a government up and running within three weeks of March's Assembly election. Mr Brokenshire has made clear he will start formulating legislative steps to either restore devolution or make the first moves toward direct rule over the Easter weekend - meaning Good Friday is set to be make or break for a deal. SDLP leader Colum Eastwood said the dynamic of the talks needed to change dramatically if agreement was to be secured. "At the end of another week, almost a month after the election and we still have no government and we have very, very little progress - in fact I think we are miles away," he said. "We have no momentum in this process." He added: "If this process doesn't ratchet up in the early stages of next week there won't be a deal, so all of us have to recommit to doing that." Outgoing UUP leader Mike Nesbitt said soured personal relations between the DUP and Sinn Fein were preventing progress. "If they wanted to, the DUP and Sinn Fein could cobble together some sort of agreement in five minutes, but unless they fix the relationships and build trust around the executive table and show respect to each other, whatever agreement they come up with is going to be worthless," he said. "It is deeply, deeply, deeply frustrating to be involved in a process with people who know they can make it happen but are showing no willingness to make it happen." The Alliance party and Irish government are also involved in the negotiation process. A small number of meetings are planned on Saturday, with the talks recommencing in earnest at Stormont Castle on Monday. The Public Prosecution Service (PPS) is considering a review of the case of Henry Clarke, who has admitted abusing boys in care in Belfast during the 1960s and 1970s. The abuse was highlighted on BBC Northern Ireland television this week after Clarke was tracked down to his home in Canada. Read More Clarke, a former church pastor, has never faced a court in relation to his self-confessed crimes. The BBC revealed Clarke had confessed to the RUC in 1985 that he had abused children from three separate care homes. Despite his confession, the RUC did not press charges against him. The PPS yesterday told the BBC it was concerned police did not at the time forward evidence to the Director of Public Prosecutions. The PPS has now written to the Chief Constable requesting the information given to police by Clarke in 1985 be handed over. Jim Gamble, a former senior officer with the PSNI and now a leading child protection expert, said: "You had an admission, so you didn't have... to worry that the allegation was old, and the evidence may be stale. You had a contemporary admission. "And given that, I don't understand why he wasn't prosecuted." Clarke, who is now 75, said he had never abused any children since he emigrated to live in Canada. He claimed his abusing stopped when he left Northern Ireland. "I took the opportunity to start a new life and I went back to Bible college and did my training," he said. "And from 1982 until now I've been a pastor." Nichola Baird who has died in a crash at Finvoy Road, Co Antrim. A woman who lost her life in a Co Antrim crash in the early hours of yesterday has been named locally as Nichola Baird. Ms Baird, who was a nurse, was the only person involved in the single-vehicle collision at Finvoy Road near Ballymoney shortly after 4.30am. She was believed to be in her early 30s, and was travelling home after a night out in Portrush. Her parents were informed of their daughter's death while on holiday in Spain and had to make emergency travel arrangements to return home. North Antrim DUP MLA Mervyn Storey, who knows the family, said Nichola's loss would have shocked the local community. "This news marks yet another tragic story on our roads," he said. "I want to express my sympathy to the Baird family and friends as they come to terms with this devastating news. "Nichola was a young woman who dedicated her life to caring for others in her work as a nurse, but sadly her life has been cut short far too early. "She was an integral part of a close-knit family and highly regarded by everyone who knew her. "Her parents were on holiday when they received the terrible news and now face the long journey back home to such sadness, which only adds to this tragedy. "At this time my thoughts and prayers are with all of the family and Nichola's friends. "It has come as a shock to both the family and friends, but also the Ballymoney and Rasharkin communities. "I would urge road users to take care and drive with caution. One life lost on our roads is one too many." While the exact circumstances of why Ms Baird's car crashed are to be confirmed, Finvoy Road is well-known as an accident blackspot. Causeway Coast and Glens councillor John Finlay said: "Tragically, the Finvoy Road has been the scene of another serious car accident which has claimed the life of a young woman from Finvoy. "I was shocked to hear the news, and I want to extend my sympathy to the woman's family and friends at a time of unspeakable grief. "For them, life will never be the same again. "Although the precise circumstances are as yet unclear, I have previously raised concerns with the PSNI and Department for Infrastructure about safety issues on this road. "And, in light of this latest tragedy, I will be making further representations. "This is a wide, straight stretch of road that, unfortunately, has seen too many serious crashes." Offering his condolences to Ms Baird's family, TUV leader Jim Allister said: "The loss of this young life will take her parents and family to a dark place suffered by too many as our roads continue to take lives." People Before Profit MLA Gerry Carroll is trying to find the owner of a lost kitten that has turned up at his party's west Belfast office. The young black and white cat appeared outside the Falls Road premises yesterday morning, trying desperately to get in. "The wee kitten showed up and started scratching at the front door. "We took him in immediately," Gerry said. "We're on a very busy road and we were worried that he would run out and get hit by a car or he would be chased by a dog. "He's only a tiny wee thing and he could easily have got hurt. He has a black collar with a silver bell but there's no name on it." As Gerry went on a hunt around the streets of west Belfast to find the kitten's owners, party activists in the office looked after it. "The kitten got milk and food and he seemed to have a ball. He is very excited and playful. "He has been jumping up on desks and chairs and running all over the place," the MLA said. "I'm not really a cat person. I'm fonder of dogs, but this kitten is nice and friendly and I don't mind him at all." The politician was told that the cat lived in Iveagh Parade but when party activists called to the address the family said that it wasn't theirs. Gerry then took to Facebook, posting photographs of the animal in the hope that the owner could be traced. But some party supporters told him to hold onto the kitten. "Gerry, keep the cat. Downing Street has a cat, the Foreign Office has a cat. Put it on Instagram and (its) antics, and it's the best advertising and recruitment tool you will ever have," one advised. Others suggested that the kitten should be named 'Chairman Meow' or 'Proletaricat' and become a party mascot. The owner was still not found last night so a party member took it home. "Anybody who knows this wee kitten's owner should contact us," Gerry said. Police say people in Northern Ireland should be on their guard over a 'new email scam' Police have issued a warning over a new email scam which aims to obtain sensitive data from victims, including banking details and passwords. Police say fraudsters are sending so-called phishing emails to personal and business email addresses in Northern Ireland. The emails include an attachment which attempts to access sensitive information. Detectives say local people and businesses should be on their guard. They say the subject line contains the recipients name. They have released a sample email. Sample email: Hi, [name]! I am disturbing you for a very serious reason. Although we are not familiar, but I have significant amount of individual info concerning you. The thing is that, most likely mistakenly, the data of your account has been emailed to me. For instance, your address is: [real home address] I am a law-abiding citizen, so I decided to personal data may have been hacked. I attached the file [surname].dot that I received, that you could explore what info has become obtainable for scammers. File password is 2811 Best Wishes, Police say the stolen data is used by criminals for monetary gain. Detective Chief Inspector Ian Wilson said: The PSNI has been made aware of this scam by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau and we want to warn local people to be on their guard. The emails include an attachment a .dot file usually titled with the recipients name. This attachment is thought to contain the Banking Trojan Ursniff/Gozi, hidden within an image in the document. The Ursniff Banking Trojan attempts to obtain sensitive data from victims, such as banking credentials and passwords. The data is then sold on by the criminals involved to make money. Police have shared the following tips: As part of her 500 bail conditions Pewtner is barred from the Salvation Army in Ballymena and also the Tower Centre. A shoplifter has admitted stealing from the Salvation Army and has been banned from its Ballymena store as part of her bail. Louise Pewtner (44), of Henry Street, Ballymena, took clothing worth 17.50 from the Salvation Army on March 28 this year. On the same date she also store hair straighteners and hair extensions worth 109.49 from Boots and admitted causing criminal damage to a box containing the straighteners. She also took clothing worth 69 from Dunnes where she had previously stolen clothes worth 26. As part of her previous bail conditions she was banned from the Tower Centre in Ballymena but on Wednesday of this week she breached that by stealing a pillow worth 8 from Primark. Pewtner appeared in the dock at Ballymena Magistrates Court where defence barrister Alan Stewart said all offences and the breach of bail were admitted. Mr Stewart said his client has a history of mental health problems and addictions. The case has been adjourned until May for the preparation of a pre-sentence report. As part of her 500 bail conditions Pewtner is barred from the Salvation Army in Ballymena and also the Tower Centre. Sinn Fein have said if there is no agreement in the next eight days of talks, then there will have to be an election as they described the past week as more about process than progress. Conor Murphy addressed the media at the end of the first week of talks after the deadline to form an Executive was missed. He said: "We are at the end of the first week of this phase of talks which followed three weeks of unproductive talks before that. "The talks this week have all been about process and not about progress." He added: "We remain focused on getting an agreement and I am sure the other parties feel it. All the parties recognised the step change needed here in the political process in terms of how the Executive works, does business and treats society. "And apart from the DUP and the British Government, everybody else gets it. "We need to see that change and agreements made previously implemented." The MLA said the past week could not be described as a waste of time and that an agreement could be done on Monday "if there was a political will". "We need an Executive that functions on the basis of the Good Friday Agreement and that is key," he said. "We wanted to see progress all along, others were focused on the process. A lot of it has been useful." He added: "The legislation is clear, if there is no agreement then we need to go to another election." Speaking afterwards, SDLP leader Colum Eastwood said they were "miles away from any deal". The parties have until parliament recess ends on April 18 to reach agreement making Good Friday the deadline. A boss at one of Northern Ireland's top nightclubs has been acquitted of assaulting two customers A boss at one of Northern Ireland's top nightclubs has been acquitted of assaulting two customers. Mark McCourt (35) was also found not guilty of attacking a third man outside Thompsons Garage in central Belfast two years ago. The case against the venue's part-owner and two co-accused was thrown out after one of the alleged victims lied about having no criminal record. Clearing all three defendants at Belfast Magistrates' Court, Deputy District Judge Chris Holmes warned he may refer that man to the Public Prosecution Service for attempting to pervert the course of justice. Mr McCourt, of Pattersons Place, Belfast, denied assault occasioning actual bodily harm and two counts of common assault. Joseph Doyle (28), from Cliftonville Road, and Seamus Deeds (51), of Horn Drive, both in Belfast, each contested a single assault charge. The picture of Baker issued by the PSNI This is the face of the woman behind one of Northern Ireland's most shocking sex abuse cases. Caroline Baker was unmasked yesterday after a legal challenge by media organisations including the Belfast Telegraph. Earlier this week the 54-year-old was handed a three-year sentence for her part in subjecting a disabled woman to horrific sexual assaults. Read More Baker and her husband Keith abused their victim, who had severe learning difficulties, keeping her prisoner in a filthy room for years. Until yesterday a court order banned the media from publishing Caroline Baker's image. But reporting restrictions were lifted after a joint challenge by the Belfast Telegraph, Sunday Life, BBC, UTV and Sunday World. Olivia O'Kane (below) from Carson McDowell solicitors, who led the challenge, welcomed the ruling. "The notion that justice must be seen to be done is of significant importance, and the media in acting as the public watchdog, took a media application in this case to ensure that the public could be fully informed," she said. "The role of the media has particular importance in ensuring the administration of justice is transparent and publicly administered. Expand Expand Previous Next Close Evil: Keith Baker The picture of Baker issued by the PSNI / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Evil: Keith Baker "The Belfast Telegraph, Sunday Life, BBC NI, UTV and Sunday World, in taking this case to protect the right of the public to be fully informed about those persons named in open court involved in serious criminality, have produced a definitive restatement of the importance principle of open justice." Earlier this week Keith Baker was jailed for 15 years for keeping the victim as a sex slave in a room with no light bulb, carpets or curtains at his filthy house in Craigavon. His wife was imprisoned for three years - 18 months of which will be on licence. The Public Prosecution Service is considering whether there is a basis to refer the sentences to the Court of Appeal on the grounds that they may be unduly lenient. The couple took the woman from her home in England in 2004. She was found by police in Northern Ireland eight years later after another woman, Mandy Highfield, contacted officers. Ms Highfield had also lived with Keith Baker and was the mother of four of his children. Judge Patrick Lynch QC described Keith Baker as a "Svengali-type figure" whose wife was a "pawn doing his bidding". It emerged in court how the 61-year-old filmed many of his attacks for his own sexual gratification and held sway over his wife and other partner through his willingness to resort to violence and immorality. Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Caroline Baker outside court in 2014. Pic Pacemaker The tiny bedroom where depraved Keith Baker kept his helpless victim as a virtual prisoner and sex slave for many years Pervert: A young Keith Baker cascadenews.co.uk / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Caroline Baker outside court in 2014. Pic Pacemaker The door of the room in which the victim was imprisoned had no handle on the inside and the toilet was overflowing with waste. The victim was so badly emaciated she had only one tooth left when she was rescued by police in 2012, after Ms Highfield raised the alarm. The woman's learning difficulties were so severe her IQ placed her in the lowest 0.3% of the population. She was not on the electoral register, with a GP or dentist, and never claimed benefits. The Fennelly Commission said there had not been a widespread abuse of the system over the secret recording of telephone conversations at Garda stations The Garda is unlawfully in possession of countless recordings of telephone calls spanning decades, some of which contain sensitive details of people's private lives, a State inquiry has found. The secret taping of non-emergency phone calls at 22 Garda stations country-wide violated the rights of citizens under the Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights Act, it further concluded. The Fennelly Commission, set up to probe the phone recording scandal uncovered three years ago, said the system was operating without the knowledge of the force's top brass. The debacle stemmed back to a "crucial misunderstanding" of technical jargon by a Chief Superintendent in 1996, who unwittingly gave the go-ahead for non-999 calls to be recorded at the main stations in each Garda division. Judge Nial Fennelly, who headed the inquiry, said all the evidence pointed to a "great deal of confusion, amounting to ignorance, at the highest level" of the force as to what telephone lines were recorded. Despite this apparent ignorance, the system was upgraded twice. "The users of the system were the telecommunications technicians in the divisional stations who, reasonably believing that their superiors would have attended to such matters, were unaware of any unlawfulness," he found. "They acted, on the whole, responsibly and conscientiously. "There was no Garda system of snooping, spying or intrusion into private life and certainly not of listening to solicitor/client calls." But he added that it remains the case that the force "is unlawfully in possession of a very large volume of recorded material". Judge Fennelly finds evidence gardai prepared to alter, modify & suppress evidence in Toscan du Plantier murder case pic.twitter.com/Y8hQ1VXd3b Brian Hutton (@magicbathtub) April 6, 2017 "Most of it is, no doubt, entirely innocuous," he added. "However, the Commission is aware that it necessarily includes an unknown and unknowable quantity of sometimes sensitive information about the private lives of individuals, including members of An Garda Siochana." The inquiry found that the secret recording of telephone calls could not rule out an abuse of the system. But it accepted recordings were generally made because of error and misunderstanding. In a 742-page report into the affair, he identified three Garda stations at which telephone calls between solicitors and clients either were, or were likely to have been, recorded. These were Bandon, Waterford and Wexford, in the years between 1995 to 2013. But it said in each case, the evidence indicates the recordings were carried out inadvertently and not to tape the confidential conversations. Judge Fennelly was asked to investigate the impact of the taped conversations specifically on the investigation into the murder of French film producer Sophie Toscan du Plantier. A legal action by former English journalist Ian Bailey for wrongful arrest in the investigation in west Cork exposed the recording system. Manchester-born Mr Bailey was twice arrested for questioning in connection with the 1996 murder but never charged. He has always denied involvement. The inquiry found no evidence that statements in the Du Plantier case had been interfered with. But it said there were two instances when gardai appeared willing to contemplate allowing or encouraging false allegations to be made or false evidence to be given. The report said an unnamed detective sergeant considered doctoring a written statement prepared by another officer and removing detail in a second statement. One involved a statement on an assault being "pre-dated". Judge Fennelly described it as "improper conduct". He said: "It is of serious concern that ... evidence is disclosed that members of An Garda Siochana involved in the investigation, including the officer responsible for preparing the report for the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, were prepared to contemplate altering, modifying or suppressing evidence that did not assist them in furthering their belief that Mr Bailey murdered Madame Toscan du Plantier." The government said many findings are of "great concern" including the unlawful nature of the taped phonecalls, the lack of oversight and the content of some of the calls in the Du Plantier murder probe. In a statement, Garda headquarters said it welcomed the judge's "clarity on the legal status relating to the retention of phone data". "We will work with the relevant authorities on the recommended legislation on this matter," it added. "There will now be a detailed examination of the report and where any organisational issues are identified they will be addressed as quickly as possible." Labour leader Brendan Howlin said the operation of "a legally unsanctioned and unconstitutional recording system" for decades " under the noses of Garda management is quite simply bizarre". "This whole sorry saga reinforces my conviction that the systems and structures of Garda management are not fit for purpose and can no longer command the confidence of the public or their representatives," he added. International Development Secretary Priti Patel said the new humanitarian corridor will deliver vital aid to the area. International Development Secretary Priti Patel has hailed the opening of a "vital" new humanitarian corridor to South Sudan, which she said could help feed 300,000 people. The East African country is set to benefit from a new border crossing from neighbouring Sudan, which will deliver emergency food assistance to thousands of people at risk of famine due to the ongoing civil war. One million people are on the brink of starvation and famine has been declared in two counties in South Sudan, where fighting has raged since 2013. Ms Patel said: "This world food programme delivery contains enough food to feed 300,000 people for three months. "This is vital ahead of the rainy season, which renders roads impassable and will give thousands of people the chance to stay alive. "UK support is delivering urgently needed food, water and medicine for millions of people in South Sudan, as well as food and shelter for refugees crossing the border into Sudan. "We will continue to work with the government of Sudan and others in the region to ensure aid reaches those in need. "Without vital assistance, famine and malnutrition will spread across South Sudan and more people will die." Britain will give at least 100 million this financial year to South Sudan, which is facing one of the world's largest humanitarian crises. A Romanian tourist who was knocked into the River Thames during the Westminster terror attack has died. Andreea Cristea, 31, was struck as Muslim convert Khalid Masood ploughed through pedestrians on Westminster Bridge on March 22. She had been visiting London with her boyfriend, Andrei Burnaz, who was due to propose to her later on the day of the attack. Scotland Yard said Ms Cristea was receiving treatment in hospital but life support was withdrawn on Thursday afternoon. Her death brings the number of innocent victims of the attack to five. Mr Burnaz suffered a broken foot but has since been discharged from hospital and attended a vigil on Westminster Bridge last week. He was pushed in a wheelchair to the scene of the attack where he placed a single rose. In a statement, Mr Burnaz and Ms Cristea's family said she would "always be remembered as our shining ray of light that will forever keep on shining in our heart". "After fighting for her life for over two weeks, our beloved and irreplaceable Andreea - wonderful daughter, sister, partner, dedicated friend and the most unique and life-loving person you can imagine - was cruelly and brutally ripped away from our lives in the most heartless and spiritless way." They said the money raised for her recovery would now be donated to charity, stating: "She would not have it any other way. "There are no words to even begin to describe the crushing pain and emptiness that is left in our hearts." The family added that they were "deeply touched and eternally grateful for the unimaginable efforts and never-ending dedication" of medical staff, and said their "hearts and love go out" to two family liaison officers - Detective Sergeants Tony De-Wilde and Geraint Jones - who were "our lifeline". Mayor of London Sadiq Khan said he was "deeply saddened to hear of the death of Andreea Cristea". He tweeted: "Londoners hold her & her loved ones in our thoughts today." Footage of the atrocity showed Ms Cristea falling from the bridge into the water below. Witnesses reported seeing a body lying face-down in the Thames in the wake of the incident. After being rushed to hospital for treatment, Ms Cristea was diagnosed with a blood clot on the brain and underwent surgery. Kurt Cochran, 54, Leslie Rhodes, 75, and Aysha Frade, 44, also died after being struck on the bridge. Pc Keith Palmer, 48, died from a single stab wound to the chest outside the Houses of Parliament before Masood was shot dead by armed police. A statement from Barts Health NHS Trust said: " We are greatly saddened by the death of Andreea Cristea at St Bartholomew's Hospital, where we have cared for her following the Westminster terror attack. "The thoughts of all our staff are with her family and friends at this difficult time." Ms Cristea was transferred from the Royal London Hospital last month for specialist care at Barts. Tomahawks were fired from guided missile destroyers USS Porter, pictured, and the USS Ross during the US strike on a Syrian air base (US Navy/AP) The USS Ross fires a Tomahawk land attack missile from the Mediterranean Sea during the attack on the Syrian air base (US Navy/AP) President Donald Trump prepares to speak at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., Thursday, April 6, 2017, after the U.S. fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria Thursday night in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) The United States has warned it is "prepared to do more" to stop the horrors that are taking place in Syria under Bashar Assad. President Donald Trump u nleashed a barrage of cruise missiles on a Syrian air base in retaliation for the regime's "barbaric" use of chemical weapons against its own people. Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the United Nations, told an emergency meeting of the world body's Security Council that Washington was ready to go further. She said: " The United States took a very measured step last night. We are prepared to do more. But we hope that will not be necessary. "It is time for all civilised nations to stop the horrors that are taking place in Syria and demand a political solution." Russia and Britain clashed at the tense round of UN talks in New York. The UK's ambassador said President Assad had been "put on notice" and claimed Moscow had been left humiliated by its failure to bring him to heel. But Russia accused Britain of "colonial hypocrisy" and "lies" as it warned against military involvement in Syria. Russia's UN representative Vladimir Safronkov said: "Stop putting forward these unprofessional arguments and accusations against my country. These are not diplomatic. These are lies. "Don't even try to get into fights in the Arab world. Nothing will work and nothing will be achieved. "All Arab countries recall your colonial hypocrisy." Russia has consistently denied that Syrian forces used chemical weapons, claiming the incident at Khan Sheikhoun was caused by a hit on a rebel chemical weapons plant, a claim dismissed by the West. Matthew Rycroft, the UK's ambassador to the UN, said Russia has given Assad "everything he could have dreamed of" in its continued support. He said: "The greatest war criminal of all, Bashar Assad, has now been put on notice. "The US strike was a proportionate response to unspeakable acts that gave rise to overwhelming humanitarian distress." "Russia sits here today humiliated by its failure to bring to heel a puppet dictator entirely propped up by Russia, Hezbollah and Iran," he added. Russia accused the US of violating international law but Mr Trump said the dramatic strike from US warships in the Mediterranean was in the "vital national security interest". Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said the Americans had used a "far-fetched pretext" to justify the attack while the defence ministry in Moscow said it would be helping its Syrian ally strengthen its air defences. Britain led international support for the attack, describing it as a "limited and appropriate" response to the use of chemical weapons by the regime of Assad against its own people. Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon said the Government had been in "close contact" with the US administration in the run-up to the strike. The Syrian military said at least seven people were killed and several others injured in the strike which caused extensive damage to the base at Shayrat, in central Syria, from where Tuesday's chemical strike was believed to have been launched. Russian defence ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov sought to play down the impact, claiming fewer than half the missiles reached the air base, destroying just six Syrian MiG-23 fighters and leaving the runway intact. The surprise barrage of 59 cruise missiles in the early hours of Friday, UK time, was the first time the US has struck directly against the Syrian government. In an emotive broadcast, Mr Trump said he was responding to the regime's attack - believed to have involved sarin nerve agent - on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun which left at least 72 people dead, including 20 children. "Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many," he said. Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close A Syrian doctor treats a child following chemical attack, at a makeshift hospital, in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, northern Idlib province, Syria. (Edlib Media Center, via AP) AP In this photo obtained from the US Navy, the guided missile destroyer USS Porter on March 22, 2003, launches a Tomahawk missile toward Iraq during the initial stages of shock and awe. The US has launched 'dozens of Tomahawk cruise missiles' at Syrian air bases, according to US officials on April 6, 2017. The United States on Thursday threatened Syria with military action as President Donald Trump warned "something should happen" following a suspected chemical attack that left at least 86 dead and provoked global outrage. / AFP PHOTO / CHINFO, Navy Visual News Service / HO / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY CREDIT "AFP PHOTO / US NAVY / Lt. Christopher Senenko" - NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS HO/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images In this image provided by the U.S. Navy, the USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile Friday, April 7, 2017, from the Mediterranean Sea. The United States blasted a Syrian air base with a barrage of cruise missiles in fiery retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. (Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Robert S. Price/U.S. Navy via AP) AP This image released by the US Department of Defense, shows the Shayrat airfield in Syria on October 7, 2016. Pic: Getty Images AFP/Getty Images MEDITERRANEAN SEA - APRIL 7: In this handout provided by the U.S. Navy,The guided-missile destroyer USS Porter fires a Tomahawk land attack missile on April 7, 2017 in the Mediterranean Sea. The USS Porter was one of two destroyers that fired a total of 59 cruise missiles at a Syrian military airfield in retaliation for a chemical attack that killed scores of civilians this week. The attack was the first direct U.S. assault on Syria and the government of President Bashar al-Assad in the six-year war there. (Photo by Ford Williams/U.S. Navy via Getty Images) Getty Images In this image provided by the U.S. Navy, the guided-missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG 78) launches a tomahawk land attack missile in the Mediterranean Sea, Friday, April 7, 2017. The United States blasted a Syrian air base with a barrage of cruise missiles in fiery retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. (Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Ford Williams/U.S. Navy via AP) AP Protesters perform as victims with Syria's former independence flags (which have been adopted by the rebels forces fighting against Syrian pro-government forces in Syria) as they simulate a chemical attack during a demonstration against chemical attacks in Syria on April 6, 2017 on the Place de la Republique, in Paris. An air strike on rebel-held Khan Sheikhun in the northwestern province of Idlib on April 4, 2017 left scores of civilians dead from a suspected chemical weapons attack. At least 86 people -- among them 27 children -- were killed, with results from post-mortems performed on victims pointing to possible exposure to sarin, according to Turkish health officials. / AFP PHOTO / Zakaria ABDELKAFIZAKARIA ABDELKAFI/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Protesters perform as victims and rescuers as they simulate a chemical attack during a demonstration against chemical attacks in Syria on April 6, 2017 on the Place de la Republique, in Paris. An air strike on rebel-held Khan Sheikhun in the northwestern province of Idlib on April 4, 2017 left scores of civilians dead from a suspected chemical weapons attack. At least 86 people -- among them 27 children -- were killed, with results from post-mortems performed on victims pointing to possible exposure to sarin, according to Turkish health officials. / AFP PHOTO / Zakaria ABDELKAFIZAKARIA ABDELKAFI/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Protesters perform as victims and rescuers as they simulate a chemical attack during a demonstration against chemical attacks in Syria on April 6, 2017 on the Place de la Republique, in Paris. An air strike on rebel-held Khan Sheikhun in the northwestern province of Idlib on April 4, 2017 left scores of civilians dead from a suspected chemical weapons attack. At least 86 people -- among them 27 children -- were killed, with results from post-mortems performed on victims pointing to possible exposure to sarin, according to Turkish health officials. / AFP PHOTO / Zakaria ABDELKAFIZAKARIA ABDELKAFI/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Protesters perform as victims and rescuers as they simulate a chemical attack during a demonstration against chemical attacks in Syria on April 6, 2017 on the Place de la Republique, in Paris. An air strike on rebel-held Khan Sheikhun in the northwestern province of Idlib on April 4, 2017 left scores of civilians dead from a suspected chemical weapons attack. At least 86 people -- among them 27 children -- were killed, with results from post-mortems performed on victims pointing to possible exposure to sarin, according to Turkish health officials. / AFP PHOTO / Zakaria ABDELKAFIZAKARIA ABDELKAFI/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Protesters hold pictures and Syria's former independence flags (which have been adopted by the rebels forces fighting against Syrian pro-government forces in Syria) during a demonstration to protest against chemical attacks in Syria on April 6, 2017 on the Place de la Republique, in Paris, two days after a suspected chemical attack in the northwestern province of Idlib. An air strike on rebel-held Khan Sheikhun in Idlib's province on April 4, 2017 left scores of civilians dead from a suspected chemical weapons attack. At least 86 people -- among them 27 children -- were killed, with results from post-mortems performed on victims pointing to possible exposure to sarin, according to Turkish health officials. / AFP PHOTO / Lionel BONAVENTURELIONEL BONAVENTURE/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images President Donald Trump prepares to speak at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., Thursday, April 6, 2017, after the U.S. fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria Thursday night in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) AP / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp A Syrian doctor treats a child following chemical attack, at a makeshift hospital, in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, northern Idlib province, Syria. (Edlib Media Center, via AP) "Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror." Downing Street was swift to offer its backing for the US action, which was also supported by Israel, Australia, France, Germany and European Council president Donald Tusk. A No 10 spokeswoman said: "The UK Government fully supports the US action, which we believe was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, and is intended to deter further attacks." Read more In contrast, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn condemned what he said was a "unilateral military action without legal authorisation or independent verification" which risked intensifying the Syrian conflict. Mr Lavrov, on a visit to Uzbekistan, compared the US action to the invasion of Iraq by American and British forces in 2003. "I want to emphasise that this is, of course, an act of aggression under a far-fetched pretext. Russia will draw conclusions from the actions of the United States in Syria," he said. The damaged train that hit a truck at a railway crossing in Poland (AP) Nineteen people have been taken to hospital - including seven with life-threatening injuries - after a train hit a flat-bed truck at an unguarded railway crossing in south-western Poland. A number of other people suffered less severe injuries in the partial derailment in the village of Schodnia. The accident occurred at about 3pm local time when a Pendolino intercity train carrying some 300 passengers hit the vehicle, national firefighters spokesman Pawel Fratczak said. The train damaged its protruding front section and partially derailed but remained upright. The truck driver was not hurt, Mr Fratczak said. Regional police spokeswoman Monika Mrugala said seven of those injured were in life-threatening condition. Some of the injured were airlifted to a hospital while others were taken there by ambulances. Ms Mrugala said the truck was transporting another truck on its trailer when it was hit at the crossing, which has no barriers, only warning lights. The truck was badly damaged and its make could not be immediately determined, she said. Images from the site showed both vehicles lying by the railway tracks. Police were investigating the cause of the accident. The railway tracks at the crash site need to be repaired and rail traffic will probably not be restored before next Thursday, according to Cezary Nowak, a spokesman for Poland's state railway PKP. Italian-made Pendolino trains operating in Poland have a top speed of 87 mph. Passengers who were not injured were taken to a nearby restaurant and then put on buses by PKP to continue their journey. AP Protesters hold pictures and Syria's former independence flags (which have been adopted by the rebels forces fighting against Syrian pro-government forces in Syria) during a demonstration to protest against chemical attacks in Syria on April 6, 2017 on the Place de la Republique, in Paris, two days after a suspected chemical attack in the northwestern province of Idlib. An air strike on rebel-held Khan Sheikhun in Idlib's province on April 4, 2017 left scores of civilians dead from a suspected chemical weapons attack. At least 86 people -- among them 27 children -- were killed, with results from post-mortems performed on victims pointing to possible exposure to sarin, according to Turkish health officials. / AFP PHOTO / Lionel BONAVENTURELIONEL BONAVENTURE/AFP/Getty Images Protesters perform as victims and rescuers as they simulate a chemical attack during a demonstration against chemical attacks in Syria on April 6, 2017 on the Place de la Republique, in Paris. An air strike on rebel-held Khan Sheikhun in the northwestern province of Idlib on April 4, 2017 left scores of civilians dead from a suspected chemical weapons attack. At least 86 people -- among them 27 children -- were killed, with results from post-mortems performed on victims pointing to possible exposure to sarin, according to Turkish health officials. / AFP PHOTO / Zakaria ABDELKAFIZAKARIA ABDELKAFI/AFP/Getty Images Protesters perform as victims and rescuers as they simulate a chemical attack during a demonstration against chemical attacks in Syria on April 6, 2017 on the Place de la Republique, in Paris. An air strike on rebel-held Khan Sheikhun in the northwestern province of Idlib on April 4, 2017 left scores of civilians dead from a suspected chemical weapons attack. At least 86 people -- among them 27 children -- were killed, with results from post-mortems performed on victims pointing to possible exposure to sarin, according to Turkish health officials. / AFP PHOTO / Zakaria ABDELKAFIZAKARIA ABDELKAFI/AFP/Getty Images Protesters perform as victims and rescuers as they simulate a chemical attack during a demonstration against chemical attacks in Syria on April 6, 2017 on the Place de la Republique, in Paris. An air strike on rebel-held Khan Sheikhun in the northwestern province of Idlib on April 4, 2017 left scores of civilians dead from a suspected chemical weapons attack. At least 86 people -- among them 27 children -- were killed, with results from post-mortems performed on victims pointing to possible exposure to sarin, according to Turkish health officials. / AFP PHOTO / Zakaria ABDELKAFIZAKARIA ABDELKAFI/AFP/Getty Images Protesters perform as victims with Syria's former independence flags (which have been adopted by the rebels forces fighting against Syrian pro-government forces in Syria) as they simulate a chemical attack during a demonstration against chemical attacks in Syria on April 6, 2017 on the Place de la Republique, in Paris. An air strike on rebel-held Khan Sheikhun in the northwestern province of Idlib on April 4, 2017 left scores of civilians dead from a suspected chemical weapons attack. At least 86 people -- among them 27 children -- were killed, with results from post-mortems performed on victims pointing to possible exposure to sarin, according to Turkish health officials. / AFP PHOTO / Zakaria ABDELKAFIZAKARIA ABDELKAFI/AFP/Getty Images In this image provided by the U.S. Navy, the guided-missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG 78) launches a tomahawk land attack missile in the Mediterranean Sea, Friday, April 7, 2017. The United States blasted a Syrian air base with a barrage of cruise missiles in fiery retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. (Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Ford Williams/U.S. Navy via AP) MEDITERRANEAN SEA - APRIL 7: In this handout provided by the U.S. Navy,The guided-missile destroyer USS Porter fires a Tomahawk land attack missile on April 7, 2017 in the Mediterranean Sea. The USS Porter was one of two destroyers that fired a total of 59 cruise missiles at a Syrian military airfield in retaliation for a chemical attack that killed scores of civilians this week. The attack was the first direct U.S. assault on Syria and the government of President Bashar al-Assad in the six-year war there. (Photo by Ford Williams/U.S. Navy via Getty Images) This image released by the US Department of Defense, shows the Shayrat airfield in Syria on October 7, 2016. Pic: Getty Images In this image provided by the U.S. Navy, the USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile Friday, April 7, 2017, from the Mediterranean Sea. The United States blasted a Syrian air base with a barrage of cruise missiles in fiery retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. (Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Robert S. Price/U.S. Navy via AP) In this photo obtained from the US Navy, the guided missile destroyer USS Porter on March 22, 2003, launches a Tomahawk missile toward Iraq during the initial stages of shock and awe. The US has launched 'dozens of Tomahawk cruise missiles' at Syrian air bases, according to US officials on April 6, 2017. The United States on Thursday threatened Syria with military action as President Donald Trump warned "something should happen" following a suspected chemical attack that left at least 86 dead and provoked global outrage. / AFP PHOTO / CHINFO, Navy Visual News Service / HO / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY CREDIT "AFP PHOTO / US NAVY / Lt. Christopher Senenko" - NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS HO/AFP/Getty Images President Donald Trump prepares to speak at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., Thursday, April 6, 2017, after the U.S. fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria Thursday night in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) A Syrian doctor treats a child following chemical attack, at a makeshift hospital, in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, northern Idlib province, Syria. (Edlib Media Center, via AP) Syria has condemned a US missile strike on one of its air bases that left at least seven people dead. The office of Syria's president called the strike "reckless" and "irresponsible". The statement said the strikes were "short-sighted" and reflect a continuation of policy, regardless of which administration, that is based on targeting and "subjugating people". State TV also said the strikes on the Shayrat air base were an "aggression" but the Syrian opposition welcomed the military action against President Bashar Assad after a chemical attack earlier this week killed over 80. The US strike followed Tuesday's gruesome chemical attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, where more than 80 people were killed. Initial reports said about 60 US Tomahawk missiles hit the base south-east of Homs, a small installation with two runways, where aircraft often take off to bomb targets in northern and central Syria. However, Russian defence ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov claimed that "the combat efficiency of the US strike was very low", adding that only 23 of the 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles reached the base. He said it destroyed six MiG-23 fighter jets of the Syrian air force which were under repair, but did not damage other Syrian warplanes at the base. He added that the base's runway was left undamaged. Major General Konashenkov also said the Russian military will help Syria beef up its air defences following the US strike. He said that a "complex of measures" to strengthen Syrian air defences will be done shortly to help "protect the most sensitive Syrian infrastructure facilities". The missiles hit early on Friday morning and targeted the base's airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, US officials said. They were fired from two warships in the Mediterranean Sea, in retaliation for Tuesday's deadly chemical attack, which officials said used chlorine mixed with a nerve agent, possibly sarin. Announcing the strike, US President Donald Trump said that Assad "choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children". Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close A Syrian doctor treats a child following chemical attack, at a makeshift hospital, in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, northern Idlib province, Syria. (Edlib Media Center, via AP) AP President Donald Trump prepares to speak at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., Thursday, April 6, 2017, after the U.S. fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria Thursday night in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) AP In this photo obtained from the US Navy, the guided missile destroyer USS Porter on March 22, 2003, launches a Tomahawk missile toward Iraq during the initial stages of shock and awe. The US has launched 'dozens of Tomahawk cruise missiles' at Syrian air bases, according to US officials on April 6, 2017. The United States on Thursday threatened Syria with military action as President Donald Trump warned "something should happen" following a suspected chemical attack that left at least 86 dead and provoked global outrage. / AFP PHOTO / CHINFO, Navy Visual News Service / HO / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY CREDIT "AFP PHOTO / US NAVY / Lt. Christopher Senenko" - NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS HO/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images In this image provided by the U.S. Navy, the USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile Friday, April 7, 2017, from the Mediterranean Sea. The United States blasted a Syrian air base with a barrage of cruise missiles in fiery retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. (Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Robert S. Price/U.S. Navy via AP) AP This image released by the US Department of Defense, shows the Shayrat airfield in Syria on October 7, 2016. Pic: Getty Images AFP/Getty Images MEDITERRANEAN SEA - APRIL 7: In this handout provided by the U.S. Navy,The guided-missile destroyer USS Porter fires a Tomahawk land attack missile on April 7, 2017 in the Mediterranean Sea. The USS Porter was one of two destroyers that fired a total of 59 cruise missiles at a Syrian military airfield in retaliation for a chemical attack that killed scores of civilians this week. The attack was the first direct U.S. assault on Syria and the government of President Bashar al-Assad in the six-year war there. (Photo by Ford Williams/U.S. Navy via Getty Images) Getty Images In this image provided by the U.S. Navy, the guided-missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG 78) launches a tomahawk land attack missile in the Mediterranean Sea, Friday, April 7, 2017. The United States blasted a Syrian air base with a barrage of cruise missiles in fiery retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. (Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Ford Williams/U.S. Navy via AP) AP Protesters perform as victims with Syria's former independence flags (which have been adopted by the rebels forces fighting against Syrian pro-government forces in Syria) as they simulate a chemical attack during a demonstration against chemical attacks in Syria on April 6, 2017 on the Place de la Republique, in Paris. An air strike on rebel-held Khan Sheikhun in the northwestern province of Idlib on April 4, 2017 left scores of civilians dead from a suspected chemical weapons attack. At least 86 people -- among them 27 children -- were killed, with results from post-mortems performed on victims pointing to possible exposure to sarin, according to Turkish health officials. / AFP PHOTO / Zakaria ABDELKAFIZAKARIA ABDELKAFI/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Protesters perform as victims and rescuers as they simulate a chemical attack during a demonstration against chemical attacks in Syria on April 6, 2017 on the Place de la Republique, in Paris. An air strike on rebel-held Khan Sheikhun in the northwestern province of Idlib on April 4, 2017 left scores of civilians dead from a suspected chemical weapons attack. At least 86 people -- among them 27 children -- were killed, with results from post-mortems performed on victims pointing to possible exposure to sarin, according to Turkish health officials. / AFP PHOTO / Zakaria ABDELKAFIZAKARIA ABDELKAFI/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Protesters perform as victims and rescuers as they simulate a chemical attack during a demonstration against chemical attacks in Syria on April 6, 2017 on the Place de la Republique, in Paris. An air strike on rebel-held Khan Sheikhun in the northwestern province of Idlib on April 4, 2017 left scores of civilians dead from a suspected chemical weapons attack. At least 86 people -- among them 27 children -- were killed, with results from post-mortems performed on victims pointing to possible exposure to sarin, according to Turkish health officials. / AFP PHOTO / Zakaria ABDELKAFIZAKARIA ABDELKAFI/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Protesters perform as victims and rescuers as they simulate a chemical attack during a demonstration against chemical attacks in Syria on April 6, 2017 on the Place de la Republique, in Paris. An air strike on rebel-held Khan Sheikhun in the northwestern province of Idlib on April 4, 2017 left scores of civilians dead from a suspected chemical weapons attack. At least 86 people -- among them 27 children -- were killed, with results from post-mortems performed on victims pointing to possible exposure to sarin, according to Turkish health officials. / AFP PHOTO / Zakaria ABDELKAFIZAKARIA ABDELKAFI/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Protesters hold pictures and Syria's former independence flags (which have been adopted by the rebels forces fighting against Syrian pro-government forces in Syria) during a demonstration to protest against chemical attacks in Syria on April 6, 2017 on the Place de la Republique, in Paris, two days after a suspected chemical attack in the northwestern province of Idlib. An air strike on rebel-held Khan Sheikhun in Idlib's province on April 4, 2017 left scores of civilians dead from a suspected chemical weapons attack. At least 86 people -- among them 27 children -- were killed, with results from post-mortems performed on victims pointing to possible exposure to sarin, according to Turkish health officials. / AFP PHOTO / Lionel BONAVENTURELIONEL BONAVENTURE/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp A Syrian doctor treats a child following chemical attack, at a makeshift hospital, in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, northern Idlib province, Syria. (Edlib Media Center, via AP) "Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. "Tonight, I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched. "It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons." The Syrian military said at least seven people were killed and nine wounded in the US strike. A Syrian opposition monitor put the death toll at four, including a general and three soldiers. Syria's state TV showed footage of the missile strike, as a fast sequence of orange flashes lit the dark sky. The Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir Putin believes the US strike is an "aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law". "Washington's move deals a significant blow to the Russia-US relations, which are already in a deplorable shape," Mr Peskov said. He added that the attack creates a "serious obstacle" for creating an international coalition against terrorism. Russia's foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said no Russian servicemen were hurt in the missile attack but insisted the strike violated international law. A US-led coalition has been bombing Islamic State targets in Syria since 2014, while Russia's air force has been striking both extremist groups and Syrian rebels in order to aid Assad's forces. Read more A Syrian opposition group, the Syrian Coalition, welcomed the US attack, saying it puts an end to an age of "impunity" and should herald the start of a larger campaign against Damascus. Major Jamil al-Saleh, a US-backed rebel commander based in the area where the US attack took place, said he hoped the strike would be a "turning point" in the six-year-old war, which has killed an estimated 400,000 people. Assad's government had been under mounting international pressure after the chemical attack, with even key ally Russia saying its support is not unconditional. Syria rejected the accusations, and blames opposition fighters for stockpiling the chemicals. Russia has said the toxic agents were released when a Syrian air strike hit a rebel chemical weapons arsenal on the eastern outskirts of Khan Sheikhoun, and that blame should not be apportioned until a full investigation has been carried out. Russia's intervention in Syria since September 2015 has turned the balance of power in Assad's favour, and Moscow has used its veto power at the Security Council on several occasions to prevent sanctions against Damascus. Mr Trump had said the chemical attack crossed "many, many lines" and put the blame squarely on Assad's forces. Speaking on Thursday on Air Force One, Mr Trump said the attack "shouldn't have happened, and it shouldn't be allowed to happen". Later, Syrian opposition activists said warplanes had carried out their first air strike since the US missile attack. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the air strike hit the northern edge of the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun where the chemical attack took place. The Observatory and Turkey-based activist Ahmad al-Ahmad said Friday's air strike caused material damage but no casualties. They said it was not immediately clear if the warplanes were Syrian or Russian. Later, the US military rejected the Russian claims, saying 58 of the 59 missiles struck their intended targets. A US official said the initial assessment suggested one of the missiles malfunctioned. The official said the missiles hit multiple aircraft and hardened aircraft shelters and destroyed the fuel area. In Geneva, the UN envoy for Syria said his office is in "crisis" mode after the strike, and that he would soon convene an urgent meeting of a Syrian ceasefire task force chaired by the United States and Russia. Staffan de Mistura said Russia requested the meeting, which was "agreed upon" by the United States. The envoy has been spearheading peace-making efforts for nearly three years, with little progress. Jeff Dudgeon took on the UK Government to stop criminalisation of gay men It sounds like a great idea - a stained glass window in City Hall to celebrate Belfast's LGBT citizens. I like the thought of those pompous marble halls, once the preserve of people who chained the swings on Sundays, being lit up by a colourful tribute to gay life in this town. And now it seems that the window will become a reality. The council has voted to begin the process of designing and installing it. The motion was proposed by Mary Ellen Campbell, the gay Sinn Fein councillor and Deputy Lord Mayor, and seconded by Nuala McAllister of the Alliance Party. Belfast Pride welcomed the initiative as breaking new ground for the city. On the surface, then, this looks like a good news story - and a rare moment of forward-thinking in a place known for its backwardness. Poke a little below the shiny, progressive veneer, however, and you soon discover the same old pettiness and point-scoring. For instance, I was astonished to hear that Campbell and McAllister, as proposers of the motion, did not consult councillor Jeff Dudgeon of the Ulster Unionist Party about their idea for a permanent tribute at City Hall to the LGBT community. Have they forgotten who Dudgeon is? This is the man who took the UK Government to the European Court of Human Rights over its continued criminalisation of gay men - and won. As a result the law in Northern Ireland was changed in 1982. This was, and remains, a victory of great significance. It was the first ECHR case to be decided in favour of LGBT rights and it continues to form the basis of European law for all member states. So the failure to consult Dudgeon on the plan is a bit like not asking the late Rosa Parks or the black caucus in Congress about a memorial to the civil rights movement in America. In other words, a glaring omission. Which makes me wonder what the motivation for the window was in the first place. Is it really a tribute to gay people in Belfast? Or is it just another form of virtue-signalling on the part of Sinn Fein and its allies in the Alliance Party? A way to announce how wonderfully principled, morally elevated and open-minded they are, in contrast to their benighted, bigoted enemies? Belfast in the Seventies and early Eighties was a bleak and bloody enough place - and how much more oppressive it must have been if you happened to be gay. A temporary exhibition currently on show at the Ulster Museum - Gay Life And Liberation - gives a sense of what life was like for those activists who were brave enough to challenge the law, enduring arrests, threats of exposure, seizing of personal papers. What struck me most about this exhibition was not the misery of the time, however, but the sense of mutual support, hope and resilience. Photographs of young, smiling faces - out for dinner, sunbathing topless in the park, posing with broad grins in front of a Save Ulster From Sodomy poster. But where were Sinn Fein - and indeed the Alliance Party - during the decriminalisation campaign? Did either party lift a finger to help? Personally, I find it difficult to take lectures on matters of principle, morality and respect from Sinn Fein, given the party's past as apologists for politically-motivated murder. It seems that equality is being appropriated as just another weapon in SF's drive to advance its ultra-nationalist aims and to shame its opponents, not sought as a good in itself. As for Alliance, enough already of the piety and right-on posturing, please! At the same council meeting that considered the LGBT window, DUP councillor Graham Craig gave a sexist compliment to council chief executive Suzanne Wylie about how nice she looked riding her bike, for which he later apologised. Craig deserved to be called out on it, but Alliance went into demented overdrive, with councillor Emmet McDonough Brown calling Craig's remark "dehumanising" and Ms McAllister describing it as "absolutely horrific" and "vile". So much of our public discourse adds up to show without substance. Absurd pantomime politics and silly infantile display. For the subject of the LGBT window, Dudgeon suggests Roger Casement or Montgomery Hyde, the Ulster Unionist MP for North Belfast who campaigned for law reform in the 1950s. But to my mind, the most deserving and obvious candidate for the tribute is sitting right there in the council chamber. A man of principle and conviction, who brought gay freedom to this city: Jeff Dudgeon himself. When morality and party politics mix, the result is never pretty. The suspension of three SDLP councillors in Belfast because they refused to toe the party line on condemning harassment or intimidation of women outside sexual health clinics is a case in point. The three abstained on the vote, while four party colleagues supported the motion. It should be made clear that this newspaper does not support the harassment or intimidation of those seeking assistance in such clinics. If women want to avail of any or all of those services they should be at liberty to do so. One of the councillors suspended says that he is likewise against any interference with women entering those premises, but took his decision based on his pro-life beliefs. It can be argued that he chose the wrong battle in which to make those beliefs clear, as encouraging women not to have a termination is different from attempting to block their access to such services. His beliefs may be a matter of conscience but could be misconstrued as supporting the more extreme methods adopted by some within the pro-life lobby. But however he reached his decision, it demonstrates the dilemma many people in public life face when attempting to follow their conscience and adhering to party policy on any moral issue. When it comes to the rights of women to seek terminations in Northern Ireland, politicians can face particular difficulties as parties can adopt entrenched positions which allow no wavering by individuals. Even attempts to change the current law to allow for terminations in cases of fatal foetal abnormality cause endless but heartfelt debate. Many people are informed by their faith - or indeed lack of it - which determines how they feel in good conscience, but that may not necessarily coincide in every instance with party policy. For reasons of discipline it is understandable that parties expect all members to follow policy on any issue but that may not always be the right approach on sensitive moral dilemmas. To compel members to adopt a position which may run contrary to their own conscience is not always the healthiest option. Many people would agree that even when there is broad consensus on policies like terminations, some freedom of expression on conscience grounds should be allowed. The UK Government was right to state its rock-like support for Gibraltar over the weekend. Gibraltar has made clear that regardless of the EU referendum result they wish to maintain undiluted British sovereignty. I fully support that. Spain has no valid claim to Gibraltar. Indeed there is irony in Spain lecturing about 'colonies' while maintaining Spanish cities in Africa - one just across the Strait from Gibraltar. Suggesting war with Spain is folly, but it is unbecoming of a supposed Nato ally to act in the way Spain routinely behaves towards Gibraltar. In general, friend and foe should know we will never be found wanting in defence of our territory or allies. Friends should be reassured by this commitment - indeed some should follow our example and honour their commitments as Nato members. There will be no winners if the Spanish, EU bureaucrats in tow, maintain their foul belligerence. Yes, Spain is entitled to close its border and make life awkward; as we will be entitled to sail the Royal Navy into the Strait to guard our waters. Neither is preferable. We each have choices. The Andalusian workers who cross the border daily will wish to avoid obstructions to their employment post-Brexit with levels of unemployment in Spain, particularly among youth, catastrophic. It seems Madrid hopes that 'bread and circuses' will keep their citizens distracted from the real problems facing Spanish people. The Spanish Foreign Minister noted composure as a British trait, but he should also consider that other aforementioned trait: willing defence of ourselves and our friends. European neighbours know more of this than most. In this instance diplomacy will suffice, but Spain should know that no amount of diplomacy will see Gibraltar's sovereignty sold or shared. Gibraltar is British. Diane Dodds MEP It's traditional for any motorist pulled over for a minor traffic offence to say to the police officer in question: "Shouldn't you be catching real criminals instead?" It must be infuriating to hear this umpteen times a day, but drivers do have a point. It's about priorities. Politics is no different. Northern Ireland currently has, well, let's say a few problems. There's no Executive. Talks are dragging on longer and more frustratingly than the final season of Lost. Whatever Sinn Fein's ceremonial Northern leader Michelle O'Neill might say, if Secretary of State James Brokenshire's Easter deadline is not met then there's a very real prospect of a return of direct rule - or, worse, another election. We're all paying the price for this inexcusable inertia. So what is exercising the minds of the powers that be up at Stormont as we hurtle towards the brink? Cats. Specifically, the three stray cats who've made the grounds of Stormont their home, and which pensioner Edna Watters goes out 365 days a year to feed, through snow and rain and wind, including Christmas Day. The 76-year-old from east Belfast had been barred from entering the estate, on the pretext that she poses a "security risk". No, seriously. That's what they told her, following a review of protective measures which ordered that anyone without a proper "business reason" to be there must henceforth be refused entry by the guards at the gate. That part of the story could probably have been predicted. Whenever those in positions of influence want to stop someone doing or saying something, security is always the reason. It sounds official. It sounds serious. No one wants to undermine the wellbeing of the realm, after all. It's the political equivalent of "health and safety", that catch-all formula that is trotted out everywhere to stop us having fun. Of course, MLAs and ministers must be kept safe, but it beggars belief what security threat those up on the Hill at Stormont decided was being posed by Edna feeding the cats. Did they think she was a sleeper for Islamic State, secretly training up Ginger, Maggie and Furby to become a crack squad of suicide bombers? If so, then the pensioner's taking her time about it, because she's been feeding stray cats at Stormont for 30 years without any apparent danger, ever since she worked as a civil servant there and the cat colony was much larger. To put it another way, Edna has spent the last three decades doing absolutely no harm whatsoever, which is far more than can be said for some of the people inside Parliament Buildings. There are former Provo terrorists working there as special advisers, and loyalists trousering millions of pounds for heaven alone knows what. But wait, what's this? It's a harmless old lady feeding cats. Call in a SWAT team immediately. This is not a drill! If that isn't a metaphor for the dysfunctionality of Stormont right now, what is? It's easy to laugh at the pettifogging ways of officialdom, but what was done here is actually quite cruel. This isn't some funny story to squeeze into the "And finally" section of the news. This is Edna Watters' life, and has been for an admirably long time. She and her friend Carol, another former civil servant, do it because it gives them satisfaction, and because it's a kind thing to do. They've paid out of their own pocket for years to have the cats neutered and spayed, and to provide food for them, bringing some of them home to domesticate and rehouse. The world is topsy turvy when that level of selfless dedication becomes a source of irritation to others. It's even worse when officials come up with nonsensical excuses to stamp down on it. The key word there is 'excuses'. No one in their right mind believes that Edna poses a security threat, either to delegates taking part in cross-party talks or anyone else (proof of that came yesterday after this newspaper broke the story and Edna was quickly given temporary access to feed the moggies. Is she no longer a threat?). The original reason given was just some meaningless babble that penpushers came up with to justify doing what they always wanted to do anyway, which was evict the uninvited feline residents once and for all. Edna says "they've never liked the cats", and wanted rid of them from the start, even bringing in a pest control company in the past to gas them. The cats are blamed for everything, she says, from making the place look untidy to encouraging vermin - which must be news to the mice and rats, who tend to keep their distance when cats are around, not move even closer in the hope of being eaten. Once she was even called in for questioning and shown a dossier containing surveillance photographs of her feeding them. Ian Paisley thinks it's scandalous that his MP father's phone was being tapped. That pales into insignificance next to what Edna's had to put up with. What is it about cats that those close to power resent so much? Cherie Blair infamously wanted shot of Humphrey the Downing Street mouser when her husband Tony was Prime Minister, believing cats to be unhygienic. Following a public backlash she was forced to pose for pictures holding Humphrey to prove she meant him no harm. The only way to reassure cat lovers in Northern Ireland that the 'Stormont Three' are safe is for Arlene Foster to be seen treating Maggie with the respect due to any moggie who shares its name with a former Conservative and Unionist Party leader, and Mrs O'Neill to start patrolling the grounds, not holding an armalite and ballot box like her predecessors, but with a tin of Whiskas in one hand and a catnip toy in the other. That would have the added advantage of showing voters who they could really trust. When he was pictured with Cherie Blair, poor Humphrey looked absolutely petrified. Cats can tell when someone doesn't like them. Unlike gullible humans, they're not fooled by insincerity or photo opportunities. Bring Maggie, Ginger and Furby face to face with the party leaders, and let's see what they make of them. And if the cats decide to scarper away from both, who could really blame them? We've all felt that way lately. In the meantime, couldn't some enterprising MLA take on Edna as an unpaid special adviser, so that she too can have a pass that lets her come and go freely from Stormont on a permanent basis? Better still, put her on the payroll. The thousands squandered each year on Spads with dubious qualifications would be much better spent on cat food. GAUTIER, Miss. -- The City of Gautier's water and sewer rate structure cannot be altered this budget year, but City leaders and a volunteer committee of residents will study the issue for possible changes in the 2018 fiscal year. Rates cannot be changed in the middle of a budget year because "it will cause a major hindrance on the enterprise fund," councilman Adam Colledge said at Tuesday's city council meeting. Amid public outcry from local church leaders, Mayor Gordon Gollott called for the community's help. "I want to start a committee tomorrow," the mayor said. "Who wants to volunteer to get on it?" Gollott said the City will provide the committee "any data that you want to see concerning the water and sewer fund" so the volunteers can help "come up with a better system" for funding the water and sewer system. By state law, the system must be self-sustaining and funded wholly through user payments. This year, a demand fee was added to all commercial accounts based upon the size of the user's water line. Churches and non-profits organizations are considered commercial accounts, as the only other option is a residential designation. Church leaders called the demand fee a "tax," said it was too high, and asked to be classified separately from commercial users. "Every city in south Mississippi charges every church -- we have written proof -- commercial rates," councilman Casey Vaughan said. "Unfortunately that's how it is." Vaughan said several church representatives have spoken out about the charge and incorrectly called it a tax. "There are churches here complaining about the demand fee, saying it's a tax, and they're paying sales taxes because they are yet to furnish the (tax exemption) paperwork," he said. "I had our utility department work on a report, (and) only 11 churches off of this list are exempt. Not all churches in Gautier are registered as a 501(c)(3), nor do they want to be. "The city wrote to the attorney general to ask if a non-profit classification could be established for the purpose of utility billing. It did not ask whether churches alone could be given a break. The City received an answer saying a non-profit classification may be established provided only if there is a finding of fact that non-profit entities use less water than other similarly situated non-residential users. This attorney general's opinion was requested for consideration in setting future rates so that the City would have the information for the next budget year." Tuesday's meeting reached a boiling point when Rev. Harold Roberts of St. Pierre Episcopal Church pushed for a 501(c)(3) classification to be created and churches exempt from the utility demand fee. Councilmen reminded Roberts of the public budget meeting where the utility rates and demand fees were discussed at length. "We had two people attend," Colledge said. "I'll be clear," Roberts said. "Take your 30 pieces of silver and go you know where." "Geez, that's very godly of you, sir," Colledge said before leaving the council chambers through a side door. The councilman returned less than a minute later and had a message for Roberts. "You've just insulted me in front of this entire room," Colledge said. "For you to come at me like that, I wouldn't step foot in your church. You are not a good man." Gollott reiterated the need for public opinion during the budgeting process. "We've had budget meetings and nobody showed up," he said. "So what do we do? We sit and make our decisions. What do ya'll do? You overwhelm us; everything's wrong. This is the smallest budgeted city on the Gulf Coast. This is the smallest administration. We would love your help. Let's tackle this problem." Gollott said "the first order of business" will be a discussion about 501(c)(3) entities, but the solution can't just be about creating a new classification. "This ain't going nowhere you coming in here and complaining because we know what we have to pay," he said. "It's all about money." Vaughan agreed. "We didn't do this on purpose," he said. "We have to work together and try to figure out how we can pay the bills." Members of Indonesian anti-terror squad Densus 88 raid the house of a suspected terrorist in western Java the day after an attack in Jakarta left eight dead, Jan. 15, 2016. Updated at 5:58 p.m. ET on 2017-04-07 Indonesian counter-terror squad Densus 88 on Friday arrested three suspected militants who were plotting to attack a police station in East Java province, police alleged. Police tied the three to seven suspected members of an Islamic State-linked local militant group, Jemaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD), who were arrested in West Java and Banten provinces on March 23. An eighth suspect was killed during the police operation last month. The newest suspects in custody are all from Lamongan regency in East Java and were planning to target a local stationhouse, a spokesman for National Police told BenarNews. Densus 88 arrested suspects Zainal Anshori and Adi Bramadinata from their motorcycle at 9:30 a.m. Friday and Zainal Hasan at his house about 30 minutes later, police spokesman Martinus Sitompul said. JAD is led by imprisoned Indonesian Muslim cleric Aman Abdurrahman, whom the United States has branded as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist. According to Martinus, suspect Zainal Hasan purchased firearms in the southern Philippines with Suryadi Masud, one of the seven suspects arrested on March 23. Two of the weapons were used in a terrorist attack in Jakarta on Jan. 14, 2016, that left four civilians and four assailants dead. IS claimed responsibility for the attack. Police are searching for three other guns, Martinus told Benar. Links to terror leaders The three men who were arrested Friday have links to Aman and Iwan Darmawan (alias Rois), who are imprisoned at Nusakambangan, a penal island in Central Java. Aman is serving nine years for his involvement in a training camp in Aceh province run by extremist group Jemaah Islamiyah in 2010. The U.S. government, in issuing the terrorist designation, stated that Aman authorized the 2016 Jakarta attack while in prison and issued a fatwa encouraging Indonesians to join IS. Rois is on death row for his involvement in a car-bomb attack on the Australian embassy in Jakarta that killed nine people in 2004, and has been linked to the Jakarta attack. Martunis said Rois has been able to plan terror attacks from prison, including the one in Lamongan foiled by Fridays arrests. Martunis played down a report published this week by Channel News Asia out of Kuala Lumpur that said Indonesian police had foiled a Mumbai-style terror attack in the heart of Jakarta, referring to the November 2008 terrorist assault in several locations in Indias financial capital that killed 166 people. The report quoted an unnamed counter-terrorist official saying that Rois had hatched the large-scale plot from his prison cell and was able to communicate with militants outside prison. According to the report, Rois directed a man identified by the initials S.M. to procure weapons from the southern Philippines. SM paid U.S. $30,000 for the 18 guns. Police are still investigating where the funds came from, the source told Channel News Asia. The 18 guns have not entered Indonesia and are still on Basilan island, Philippines. S.M. was among the JAD suspects arrested in raids in West Java on March 23, the report said. There is no information about that yet, Martinus, the national police spokesman, told BenarNews, when asked about the report. Brig. Gen. Hamidin, who directs Indonesias National Counterterrorism Agency, said he could not identify a potential attack of that magnitude in Jakarta. However, each plan can almost always be foiled by police, he told BenarNews. Terrorism expert Sidney Jones, director of the Jakarta-based Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC), said that even though IS was losing ground in Syria and Iraq, its followers were carrying on with their efforts in Indonesia. The movement of militants was concentrated in Java but their networks have spread to other places in Indonesia, she said. There will be continued efforts to conduct attacks, she told a seminar in Jakarta on Thursday. Fridays arrests add to the list of suspected terrorists arrested by Densus 88 in 2017. Officials said it arrested at least five suspects in the first two months of the year and at least 16 in two incidents in March. In addition, at least six suspects have been killed since December. In 2016, at least 160 people with alleged ties to IS were arrested in Indonesia, according to National Police Chief Gen. Tito Karnavian. Members of an army bomb-squad unit inspect a utility pole in Yalas Bannang Sata district that was felled by explosives, April 7, 2017. Updated at 12:17 p.m. ET on 2017-04-07 Coordinated explosions and arson attacks by suspected insurgents who targeted electrical infrastructure rocked Thailands restive Deep South region early Friday, causing widespread power and internet blackouts but no casualties, officials said. The 23 attacks in parts of Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat and Songkhla provinces took place less than 24 hours after Thailands king signed a new junta-backed constitution paving the way for fresh general elections. The attacks took place after midnight in acts of sabotage homemade bomb blasts, setting fire to utility poles, and tire burning in 19 districts of four provinces. There were no reports of human casualties, Col. Pramote Prom-in, spokesman for Internal Security Operations Command Region 4 (ISOC 4), told reporters in Pattani on Friday morning. Fifty-two utility poles were targeted, he said. Given the pattern and time frame, the assailants are in the same group and well-coordinated, he said. The Commander of the 4th Army Region added that he suspected insurgents had carried out the attacks. The sabotage was likely the works of the insurgents on the ground who wanted to make their presence known and to show off their potential to cause damage, Gen. Wiwat Nakwanich told reporters, also speaking in Pattani. Nails are seen laid out on a road in Narathiwat province, a common insurgent tactic to slow down security forces, April 7, 2017. (BenarNews) Politically motivated? The first attack took place nine hours after King Maha Vajiralongkorn signed Thailands 20th constitution Thursday afternoon in Bangkok, and three hours after Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha went on television to discuss a road-map to elections, now projected for late 2018. In a briefing at the Defense Ministry on Friday, Deputy Prime Minister for Security Affairs and Defense Minister Gen. Prawit Wongsuwan said the motive for the attacks should be investigated. I dont understand why the attacks happened at this juncture. Whether they have anything to do with the new constitution or not, I would like to have time to investigate, a Bangkok Post reporter quoted him as saying. Late Wednesday, on the eve of the elaborate constitution signing ceremony, a small pipe bomb went off in Bangkok, near the Grand Palace and the Monument of Democracy, slightly injuring two women. Prawit said the bomb attack resembled ones that took place during political turmoil in 2009 and 2010, when supporters of ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who lost power in a 2006 coup, violently rallied on Bangkok streets to overthrow then-Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva. Lee Tangda, a sympathizer of the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN) the largest armed separatist group in the Deep South said he did not believe the 23 attacks early Friday were the work of the Juwae a Malay word for young militants. The Juwae were not mobilized last night. And to do such large-scale, coordinated attacks, it needs a big number of operatives, the man, who uses a pseudonym for security reasons, told BenarNews in Pattani province. Since Jan. 1, at least 28 people have been killed and 37 injured in 17 different incidents across the Deep South. Pattani, Narathiwat and Yala provinces, along with some districts in Songkhla, form the predominantly Muslim, Malay-speaking Deep South. The region has been wracked with violence despite efforts by Thailands military government since 2015 to pursue formal peace negotiations with southern separatist rebel groups. After months of on-again, off-again exploratory talks between the government and rebel negotiators, the two sides on Feb. 28 announced plans for a limited ceasefire in one Deep South district. The so-called safety zone, expected to take at least three months to implement, would serve as a test to see if the concept could work in other areas of the Deep South, negotiators said. The region has seen nearly 7,000 people killed since 2004 in violence associated with the ongoing conflict between separatist rebel groups and the government. ein Google-Unternehmen Google-Dienste anzubieten und zu betreiben Ausfalle zu prufen und Manahmen gegen Spam, Betrug und Missbrauch zu ergreifen Daten zu Zielgruppeninteraktionen und Websitestatistiken zu erheben. 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Originally built in January 1894, the building has been thoroughly renovated and reconstructed for use as a hotel, incorporating as much local flavor as possible -- from beach-themed decor to use of wood from the original building as accent throughout. The Condreys also own The Inn at Ocean Springs, a bed and breakfast on Washington Avenue, which they opened in 2009. They and their partners had already purchased the historic Porter Avenue building and were using it as offices when they developed the idea for the boutique hotel. "Ted and I started The Inn and it's been a big success, so we've been looking to expand and do more rooms," Roxy Condrey explained. "As we started to realize what a jewel the (Porter Avenue) location is -- you've got the oak trees, you can walk to the beach, you can walk to the downtown shops and restaurants -- it all started to come together. It just made sense to put a boutique hotel here." The Roost has six meticulously-designed rooms -- five of them upstairs, hence the name The Roost. Five have king size beds with one double queen room. Two are suites with full kitchens and living rooms. Adjoining the hotel is the Eat, Drink, Love catering and restaurant business, which had been operating on Ocean Springs Road until The Roost owners offered them the opportunity join them at the Porter Avenue location. "In coming up with the concept of the hotel, we wanted to have a restaurant as an amenity for our guests," Condrey said. "We were looking for a restaurant piece to add, so we invited them to join us here." Throughout the facility, local flavor can be found. Outside of the original wood accents, there is a wall constructed of oyster shells at the front entrance and the art of Walter Anderson is featured, as well. "We were really looking to incorporate the area flavor," Condrey said. "We wanted to highlight the natural aspects of the area, as well as the art -- particularly the art of Walter Anderson. "We've worked with the Anderson family and they've allowed us to put some of their prints on the original wood from the 1800s. We took that old wood and Brian Milling engraved the prints on the wood, which will adorn each room with an original name for each room." In addition to the co-owners, there are three employees staffing The Roost -- two who manage and work the front desk, and a housekeeper. Over the past few weeks, The Roost has had a "soft opening" for family and friends, who have been invited to stay and offer their feedback. "The feedback has been really positive," Condrey said. "I think they've been surprised with the attention that went into creating it. We told them not to spare our feelings, to give us an honest assessment. They've helped us work out a few kinks. "But it's been nice to hear the feedback about the things we took so much time to do. We've been excited to see them enjoy the space after so much effort went into it." The basic rate to stay at The Roost is $159 per night, although Condrey said that rate can go as low as $119 during slower times. Busy weekends can see the rate go as high as $289. Numerous bookings are already coming in, she said. The Roost also offers packages which include such activities as kayaking tours and boat trips into the Gulf and the barrier islands. Reservations can be made through the hotel website or by calling 228-285-7989. Bleached staghorn coral on the Great Barrier Reef between Townsville and Cairns, March 2017, Credit: Bette Willis, Source: JCU We are the biggest threat to coral reefs Coral bleaching Bleached corals are physiologically damaged, and prolonged bleaching often leads to high levels of coral mortality. Other factors affecting corals This study reports coral mortality in Indonesia after an El Nino-induced sea level fall. The fact that sea level fall, or extremely low tides, induces coral mortality is not new, but this study demonstrates that through rapid sea level fall, the 20152016 El Nino has impacted Indonesian shallow coral reefs well before high sea surface temperature could trigger any coral bleaching. Sea level fall appears as a major mortality factor for Bunaken Island in North Sulawesi, and altimetry suggests similar impact throughout Indonesia. Our findings confirm that El Nino impacts are multiple and the different processes need to be understood for an accurate diagnostic of the vulnerability of Indonesian coral reefs to climate disturbances. This study also illustrates how to monitor local sea level to interpret changes in a particular coastal location. coral bleaching through thermal stress diseases - this term can cover a large range such as toxins etc, not just microbes predator outbreaks, such as the crown of thorns starfish storms, which harm but can also help - e.g. Winston saved the southern GBR last year. The current bleaching might not have been as bad if Debbie had arrived sooner sea level rise, when it rises more quickly than a reef build up, etc. Terry Hughes' on coral reefs TedTalk In the talk below, Terry Hughes talks about the damage to reefs and yet how he retains some optimism that we can save the world's coral reefs. He also describes the research that he reported in his In the talk below, Terry Hughes talks about the damage to reefs and yet how he retains some optimism that we can save the world's coral reefs. He also describes the research that he reported in his Nature paper . It's less than 15 minutes long. If you've time and even if you're short of time, it's well worth watching. Note how Professor Hughes distinguishes between the time needed for different corals to recover, and the risk of more bleaching events preventing some from being able to do so. ( The pseudo-science nonsense from climate disinformer, Jim Steele Note how Professor Hughes distinguishes between the time needed for different corals to recover, and the risk of more bleaching events preventing some from being able to do so. ( about 10 minutes in ). "If you lose a 100 year old coral, you cannot replace it in a few years." You may have come across Jim Steele before . He's a wannabe scientist who has never published any scientific research papers as far as I can tell. He's retired now, I believe, after working part-time as a manager of a field station for a college in California, where he organised nature walks or something. These days he spends his time writing disinformation for WUWT so he can promote his vanity-published denier book, and conducting personal vendettas on a small number of individual scientists. He's seems to be very jealous of their success, and just as clearly is a scientific ignoramus with a history of blatant lying This week Anthony Watts, who runs a climate conspiracy blog WUWT, chose to publish another article by Jim Steele (archived here ). In this one Jim did his usual misrepresentation of science, mixed with his denial of global warming. mortality (not bleaching) from sea level fall? Well, Jim Steele started off badly, with a headline "Falling Sea Level: The Critical Factor in 2016 Great Barrier Reef Bleaching!". Jim wrote: Remember how the second paper I referred above to was about(not bleaching) from sea level fall? Well, Jim Steele started off badly, with a headline "Falling Sea Level: The Critical Factor in 2016 Great Barrier Reef Bleaching!". Jim wrote: In contrast in Coral Mortality Induced by the 20152016 El-Nino in Indonesia: The Effect Of Rapid Sea Level Fall by Ampou 2017, Indonesian biologists had reported that a drop in sea level had bleached the upper 15 cm of the reefs before temperatures had reached NOAA Coral Reef Watchs bleaching thresholds. The paper he referred to is about coral mortality on a reef shelf from a sudden drop in sea level. The authors didn't mention the word "bleaching" except in references to mass bleaching events from marine heat stress. As the authors state in the abstract , the rapid fall in sea level resulted in substantial death of the corals "likely by higher daily aerial exposure, at least during low tide period". Still on page one of the paper, the authors wrote about what happens when corals are heat stressed. The symbiosis between the coral and the algae is disrupted and the coral turns white: El Nino increases temperature in several coral reef regions and induces zooxanthellae expulsion from the coral polyp, resulting in a coral colony looking white, hence bleaching. If the situation persists the coral colony eventually dies. Thus, it is assumed that coral bleaching induced by ocean warming will be the main culprit if post-El Nino surveys report coral mortalities. Figure 1 | Bunaken reef flats. (a) Close-up of one Heliopora coerula colony with clear tissue mortality on the upper part of the colonies; (b) same for a Porites lutea colony; (c) reef flat Porites colonies observed at low spring tide in May 2014. Even partially above water a few hours per month in similar conditions, the entire colonies were alive. (d) A living Heliopora coerula (blue coral) community in 2015 in a keep-up position relative to mean low sea level, with almost all the space occupied by corals. In that case, a 15 cm sea level fall will impact most of the reef flat. (eh) Beforeafter comparison of coral status for colonies visible in (c). In (e), healthy Porites lutea (yellow and pink massive corals) reef flat colonies in May 2014, observed at low spring tide. The upper part of colonies is above water, yet healthy; (f) same colonies in February 2016. The white lines visualize tissue mortality limit. Large Porites colonies (P1, P2) at low tide levels in 2014 are affected, while lower colonies (P3) are not. (g) P1 colony in 2014. (h) Viewed from another angle, the P1 colony in February 2016. (i) Reef flat community with scattered Heliopora colonies in February 2016, with tissue mortality and algal turf overgrowth. Source: Ampou17 Other causes of coral damage and death et al described coral mortality in a section of the Great Barrier Reef on Heron Island, back in 2005. They said how it was probably caused by high winds combined with aerial exposure, noting that the maximum water temperatures at the time were not sufficient by themselves to cause bleaching. Corals on the eastern side weren't affected. The authors wrote: Although solar radiation cannot be ruled out in the present case, the direction of the bleaching (west-north-west) is more consistent with the observed wind direction, rather than the sun azimuth (west-south-west) during the preceding low-tide periods. It appears that the stress of high winds and aerial exposure, possibly together with the sub-bleaching water temperature, prompted the observed bleaching pattern. Interestingly, that As you can see from the above, in particular regions different factors can cause coral reef damage. At the very local level, bleaching response and coral mortality can be from various causes. For example, in a short article in Coral Reefs (2006) , Leggatdescribed coral mortality in a section of the Great Barrier Reef on Heron Island, back in 2005. They said how it was probably caused by high winds combined with aerial exposure, noting that the maximum water temperatures at the time were not sufficient by themselves to cause bleaching. Corals on the eastern side weren't affected. The authors wrote:Interestingly, that article , about how wind and aerial exposure probably led to bleaching, was co-authored by another coral expert, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg , who Jim Steele had added to his list of personal vendettees More on mass bleaching from marine heat stress However, when you come across mass bleaching over the vast extent seen in the 2015/16 El Nino, it's much more likely to be from the obvious cause - very high ocean temperatures. Compare these charts from Figure 1 of Figure 2 | The footprint of bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef in 1998, 2002 and 2016, measured by extensive aerial surveys: dark green (< 1% of corals bleached), light green (110%), yellow (1030%), orange (3060%), red (> 60%). The number of reefs surveyed in each year was 638 (1998), 631 (2002), and 1,156 (2016). Source: Hughes17 Compare Figure 2 above with the spatial pattern of temperature stress, recorded as degree heating weeks (DHW). As you can see, in each bleaching event (1998, 2002 and 2016), the greatest coral damage was where there was the greatest heat stress. Figure 3 | Spatial pattern of heat stress (DHWs; C-weeks) during each mass-bleaching event. Dark blue indicates 0 DHW, and red is the maximum DHW for each year (7, 10 and 16, respectively). Orange and yellow indicate intermediate levels of heat exposure on a continuous scale. Source: Hughes17 Huge increase in Degree Heating Weeks Degree Heating Weeks (DHW) are a bit complicated. The concept is best described in some detail in Field observations (most of which are subjective measurements presented as informal reports) with coincident satellite data are only available for a limited number of years; these observations indicate that there is a correlation with bleached corals when DHW values of 4.0 have been reached. By the time DHW values reach 8.0, widespread bleaching is likely and some mortality can be expected. Have a look at the charts below, from Hughes17, showing DHW for each of the three bleaching events. In 2002 there were a lot of reefs where DHW values were greater than 8.0. In 2016 there were many more: Figure 4 | Frequency distribution of maximum DHWs on the Great Barrier Reef, in 1998, 2002 and 2016. White bars indicate 04 C-weeks; grey bars, 48 C-weeks; black bars, >8 C-weeks. Source: Hughes17 However, when you come across mass bleaching over the vast extent seen in the 2015/16 El Nino, it's much more likely to be from the obvious cause - very high ocean temperatures.Compare these charts from Figure 1 of Hughes17 , which show the differences in the reefs affected by coral bleaching in 1998, 2002 and 2016.Compare Figure 2 above with the spatial pattern of temperature stress, recorded as degree heating weeks (DHW). As you can see, in each bleaching event (1998, 2002 and 2016), the greatest coral damage was where there was the greatest heat stress.Degree Heating Weeks (DHW) are a bit complicated. The concept is best described in some detail in Liu et al (2003) in EOS. What DHW shows is how much heat stress has accumulated in an area. It is measured as HotSpot anomalies, which are departures from the "climatological mean temperature of the climatological hottest month". That means it is region specific, though it's not like a normal sea surface temperature anomaly (which uses a different mean as a baseline). Essentially it is an indicator of the departure from the bleaching temperature threshold for coral reefs. The bigger the departure and the longer the duration the greater the risk of severe damage to the coral. From Liu03 Have a look at the charts below, from Hughes17, showing DHW for each of the three bleaching events. In 2002 there were a lot of reefs where DHW values were greater than 8.0. In 2016 there were many more: Jim Steele and his pseudo-science Gish gallop Aerial and underwater surveys To ground-truth the accuracy of aerial scores of bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef (Fig. 1a), we conducted in-water surveys on 104 reefs during March and April 2016 (Extended Data Fig. 5). We also measured differential species responses (winners versus losers; Fig. 4) on 83 reefs, spanning the 1,200-km-long central and northern Great Barrier Reef, from 1019 S. We surveyed two sites per reef, using five 10 1 m belt transects placed on the reef crest at a depth of 2 m at each site. Observers identified and counted each coral colony and recorded a categorical bleaching score for each individual: 1, no bleaching; 2, pale; 3, 150% bleached; 4, 5199% bleached; 5, 100% bleached; 6, bleached and recently dead. The site-level amount of bleaching for each taxon in Fig. 4 is the sum of categories 25. The number of colonies assessed was 58,414. A similar standardized protocol was used to measure amounts of bleaching for the Coral Sea, on sub-tropical reefs south of the Great Barrier Reef, and across 18 of latitude along the west coast of Australia (Fig. 1g). Anything but hot water Aerial surveys, on which Hughes 2017 based their analyses, cannot discriminate between the various causes of bleaching. To determine the cause of coral mortality, careful examination of bleached coral by divers is required to distinguish whether bleached coral were the result of storms, crown-of-thorns attacks, disease, aerial exposure during low tides, or anomalously warmer ocean waters. We also showed that the amount of bleaching measured below water ranged from 0-100%, and was tightly correlated with DHW (Figure 3). If sea level was responsible why didnt cooler reefs also bleach? We found bleaching down to 40m which cant be explained by any tidal anomaly. Figure 5 | The relationship between heat exposure (satellite-based DHWs in 2016) and the amount of bleaching measured underwater (per cent of corals bleached) in March/April. Each data point represents an individual reef (n = 69). The fitted line is y = 48.6ln(x) 21.6, R2 = 0.545. Source: Hughes17 It's El Nino - good for Jim - he's partly right Global scale or "patchy"? Hughes 2017 wanted to emphasize GBR bleaching as a global-scale event in keeping with his greenhouse gas/global warming attribution, but bleaching and mortality was patchy on both local and regional scales. ...only 8.9% of 1,156 surveyed reefs escaped with no bleaching, compared to 42.4% of 631 reefs in 2002 and 44.7% of 638 in 1998. The cumulative, combined footprint of all three major bleaching events now covers almost the entire Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, with the exception of southern, offshore reefs (Fig. 1d). The lack of mortality in 2016 across the southern and Central GBR, was explained as a result of the cooling effects of tropical storm Winston, but that does not explain why individual reefs in those regions have not bleached at all, while others bleached only once, and still others bleached twice or three times since 1998. Cherry-picking and more Future testing and refinement of the ideas presented within this paper thus offers considerable hope for developing further insights into tack[l]ing the climate-induced demise of coral-algae symbioses and the reefs they construct. Jim's real message - denying global warming After perusing Hughes 2017, it was clear they had been led to incorrectly embrace the prevailing bias of CO2-induced catastrophic bleaching because they failed to address the fall in sea level before and during the 2016 El Nino, and likewise they failed to address how weather created by El Ninos promotes clear skies and increased solar heating. Weeping for a lost reef I suggested: Your paper does not refute the work that has shown that excessive warmth of some duration can cause coral bleaching. Response: Of course not. Bleaching is caused primarily by excess temperature. ...we never contradict that bleaching can be caused by warming. It's silly to pretend otherwise. ...if someone is manipulating and transforming the content of paper to push his ideas, that's an ethical issue. I can just condemn this. Some years ago I visited the Great Barrier Reef offshore from the resort town of Port Douglas. It was a magical experience (and I think the only time I've scuba dived in the ocean). Later I had the privilege of swimming over part of the Great Barrier Reef again from the seas around the Whitsundays, staying at Airlie Beach. Apart from some snorkelling over coral reefs in a few other places, such as Bali, and doing some work with the fishing industry, I know very little about coral reefs. Any knowledge I do have is thanks to experts.What I do know is that coral reefs are extremely critical ecosystems for maintaining marine life and protecting coastal environments, and for all sorts of human activities too, such as fishing, tourism and more.I also know that our actions are killing many corals and even entire reefs.Although I've written about them in the past, I'm reluctant to delve too deeply into a topic as complex and specialised as coral reefs for risk of giving wrong information. However the sort of nonsense that you read by deniers and disinformers, who seem to want to kill the reefs off as quickly as possible, has prompted me again. That plus the fact that governments in Australia (the Australian Government and the Queensland Government), a suspect coal company from India, and less prominent players are doing all they can to speed up the death of the Great Barrier Reef by giving our hard earned money, plus permits, for Adani to mine coal and wreck the reef (and use up our precious water ).On top of all that, the Great Barrier Reef is suffering another bleaching event this year, hot on the heels of the worst mass bleaching ever that happened last year.What finally got me going was an article at WUWT by Jim Steele, in which he tried to tell his readers that the 2016 coral bleaching wasn't really widespread (it was the worst ever), and was caused by any of a whole number of different reasons he offered up, except the real cause - excessive ocean heat. Jim Steele's a global warming denier, in case you've not heard of him.Because of all this, I've read more and made contact with a couple of experts and this article is the result. All errors are mine - so if you see some, let me know and I'll correct them.The biggest threat to coral reefs is us. People. Human activity.The causes of the present-day demise of coral reefs are varied. One of the biggest causes is global warming. This is having both direct and indirect effects on coral reefs.Mass bleaching is causing huge damage to coral reefs around the world. There was a recent paper in Nature by Professor Terry Hughes and a team of scientists. Corals are marine animals that have a symbiotic relationship with particular algae. They rely on each other to live. The authors of the paper explained how heat stress disrupts this symbiotic relationship and this is evident when corals lose their colour - hence the term "bleaching". The authors wrote:That's it in a nutshell. Bleached corals don't necessarily die. They are sick, and sometimes recover. Depending on the severity of an event, or how often it's repeated, and other factors, corals and coral reefs can die - or they may recover.Corals can be damaged and die from causes other than bleaching. There was a paper recently in Biogeosciences that was about how a drop in sea level caused mortality in shallow coral reefs in Bunaken Island in North Sulawesi. That is, not bleaching but death. The authors stated (my emphasis and paras):The authors of the Indonesian study point to a range of factors that can adversely affect corals. In addition to a rapid fall in sea level, the authors list things corals can be seriously damaged by (I've added more information in italics):Jim didn't mention that part of the paper. How could he have missed it?What the authors were focused on in their research was what happened in the lead up to the severe El Nino temperatures of 2016 (but before the hottest temperatures). They attributed the coral deaths to a severe drop in sea level. Below is Figure 1. from Ampou17, which shows pictures of the coral on Bukanen reef before and after this extreme drop.If you are a discerning reader, you'll immediately see that Jim Steele's article at WUWT is suspect. He spends time trying to discredit some experts and misrepresents or cherry-picks from others. He gives no solid evidence for his claim that falling sea levels were responsible for bleaching over the entirety of the bleached areas in 2016 (or at any time). (This is an area the size of Italy that we're talking about, not a lone reef on the edge of a small tropical island.) He hits his readers with every notion he can think of as an alternative to the actual cause of the mass coral bleachings described in Hughes17 Hughes17 is based on data collected from extensive aerial and underwater surveys. Jim Steele implies that the researchers of Hughes17 relied only on aerial surveys, ignoring the fact that the scientists assessed the accuracy of the scores applied from the aerial surveys by ground-truthing. As the authors wrote If only disinformers were as particular.When Jim wrote the following Gish gallop of suggestions, he shows no logic, and wants the bleaching (that he doesn't believe in) to be anything but hot water. He wrote Is he really suggesting that all these different events came to pass at exactly the same time as the excessively hot waters, and that it was the above events, not hot water, that caused the massive bleaching, covering umpteen thousand square kilometres of reef?Unlike the researchers, Jim provides not a jot or hint that he has any evidence to support his implied claim, apart from showing a chart of sea level in one single spot off the coast of northern Queenland, Lizard Island , which only goes, with gaps, from 1960 to the end of 2015 . (Here's a blog article from March 2016 from the Lizard Island Research Centre, about the coral bleaching there.) Jim's chart doesn't show that the 2015 sea level was any lower than it's been in the past, when there was no bleaching.I did ask Terry Hughes about this, and his response, in part, was:Below is the Figure 3 that Dr Hughes mentioned, showing the relationship between heat exposure and bleaching in March/April 2016:It's not just the correlation of bleaching and DHW, I expect most of you will have picked up this next point, too. In the study that Jim Steele looked at in which aerial exposure caused coral mortality, the coral at depth wasn't harmed. Jim Steele even noted that in his article. (In fact, the scientists unsurprisingly reported that many corals in that region are often exposed to the air without harm. It was the extent of exposure that made the difference in 2015.) So how can he possibly try to argue that reefs at 40 metres below the sea surface were killed by low sea level rather than the obvious culprit - excessive exposure to hot water?Interestingly, in an article in the Guardian today , it was stated that a couple of groups have suggested to the Australian Government that cold water should be pushed onto a couple of reefs to protect them from coral bleaching. Most experts didn't much like the idea for various reasons, but it does mean that people accept the evidence that bleaching is caused by excessively warm water.After trying that hotch potch of notions, Jim shifted to El Nino as the cause. He's correct to a point. However it was El Nino on top of global warming. There have been El Ninos for centuries and it's only in recent times that they've heated up the oceans so much that they've caused mass bleaching. The other point is that there is no El Nino right now, yet the Great Barrier Reef is suffering another hit of coral bleaching this year, 2017.Later in his article, Jim wrote He's not serious, is he? The 2016 mass bleaching was the worst ever. Perhaps by "patchy" Jim meant that there were some reefs somewhere in the tropics that escaped mass bleaching.The authors of Hughes17 reported that in 2016, the proportion of extreme bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef (more than 60% of corals bleached) was four times higher that the mass bleachings of 1998 and 2002. They wrote that in 2016:Jim added this next bit, which was him practicing deception or lack of comprehension:Jim should have looked at Figure 1 in the paper, which illustrates how heat stress affected different areas of the Great Barrier Reef at different times (see Figures 2, 3 and 4 above, especially Figure 3 that shows the lack of heat stress in the southern portion in 2016).There's more. After arguing that mass bleaching probably isn't getting worse because of hotter seas as the world warms, Jim cites different studies, but ignores the parts where the authors talk about mass bleaching from heat stress. One of these is Wooldridge13 , where the author is explaining the mechanism that causes mass coral bleaching, would you believe. Jim should take note of the last sentence in Wooldridge13 , which is (my emphasis):Jim's Gish gallop continues into how it's not just sea level, crown of thorns, storms, disease, low tides - he next tosses into his mix of distractions high nutrient loading that caused the mass bleaching that Jim thinks didn't happen anyway. Sure - as Terry Hughes said in the video above, replacing bad water with good water will help, and all these these things affect coral, but they didn't all happen everywhere all over the tropics, in the same short time interval, just when the oceans happen to be excessively hot, and not at any other time. It's the heat stress that clearly caused the coral bleaching in the periods described in Hughes17 I won't bother with the rest of Jim's article, except this bit where he shows his underlying rejection of climate science, if not his motivation for rejecting science and the knowledge of experts. He wrote I dare any normal sane person (i.e. not a hard-core conspiracy theorising climate "hoax" crank) to read Hughes17 and not be convinced that mass bleaching is the result of excessive ocean heat, and that it is causing real and already has probably caused irrevocable damage to one of Australia's most precious resources.I dare the same people to read Jim Steele's article and not be amazed at the red herrings, snide insinuations, pseudo-scientific crap, misdirection, misrepresentation, cherry-picking, and disinformation he's managed to cram into a single article. It is quite a challenge to wade through his diatribes and I don't recommend it. Jim is getting more practiced at diluting some good science with loads of pseudo-science, while rejecting the elephant in the room.Jim Steele claims he wept , which I expect is a snarky reference to a tweet by Terry Hughes, lead author of the Nature paper that Jim tried to trash:Jim Steele isn't weeping. He is doing his utmost to kill coral reefs as quickly as he and his anti-environmental vandals can.The experts in coral reef science are doing their best to save it. Unfortunately, as Terry Hughes said: "."As a final note, the prestigious general science journal Nature included Professor Terry Hughes, as one of the top ten people who mattered in 2016. (I didn't see Jim Steele's name in the list.)I've just been made aware that the Townsville Bulletin has unbelievably presented the crank denier nonsense of Jim Steele as being as credible, or more so, than rigorous science from the foremost coral experts in the world. So I've decided to add some from the email from one of the authors of Ampou17 , whose work the Townsville Bulletin mentioned , hoping he doesn't mind.And more: Lush and lively, brimming with history, filled with untouched natural landscapes, and broiling with tempestuous delicacies, Vietnam is a country of many facets. Split into the Northern, Central, and Southern regions, each offers a unique experience that will leave you breathless. Whether youre a foodie hoping to taste authentic Vietnamese cooking, an adventure junkie wishing to bike through an entire country, or a couple perusing your honeymoon options, Vietnam has you covered. Cruise through Halong Bay to uncover celestial karst caves. Bike from village to village through the Mekong Delta, meeting local craftsmen and fishermen. Sample exquisite spring rolls in Hanoi. Travel back in time with a day trip fro the My Son Sanctuary and explore fascinating ruins. Now, you before you jump on a plane to Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City, pump your brakes and peruse our key tips for first time visitors to Vietnam. Visas First up, the most dreaded part of traveling: Visas. For most travelers, theyre entirely essential and completely comprehensible. Vietnam, on the other hand, has pretty clear guidelines for international travelers. Passport wise, youll need one that is valid for more than 6 months. On the Visa side of things, tourists should definitely apply for a Visa On Arrival (VOA) which lasts for 3 months. If youve booked a Vietnam tour package the local agency can provide a letter of approval for the government. Then you can apply for your Visa on your own or apply online through a variety of agency who specialize in VOAs. They can have your Visa to you in 5 days, the standard time, or express delivery it in 1 to 2 business days for an extra fee. Or you can bring your Letter of Approval with you to Vietnam and pay your Visa fee when you arrive at the airport. Alex Stevenson, seen above, has broken down the process in a handy dandy video as well as the benefits to a VOA. He also has a few other guides for Vietna, so definitely give his YouTube page a look through. Traveling to Vietnam Now that you have your Visa and Passport, youll want to get your flights. International Airports Vietnam has 3 international airports, each conveniently located in the major cities of Vietnams regions: North, Central, and South. Theres no wrong airport to fly into, so well just breakdown the nearby attractions and routes to take. In the North youll fly into Noi Bai International Airport, servicing Hanoi, the capital. If youre planning on visiting Halong Bay, Sapa, or want to do a scenic journey south, this is a perfect option. For Central you have Da Nang International Airport, servicing Da Nang, from which you can travel to the ancient city of Hoi An, the archaeological sanctuary of My Son, Cham Island, the historic Nguyen capital of Hue, and Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park, hone to the oldest karst mountains in Asia. And lastly you have the Southern Region with Tan Son Nhat International Airport, servicing Ho Chi Minh City, aka Saigon. While Hanoi and Da Nang offer the most traditional experience in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City is one of the liveliest parts of the country, with a cosmopolitan nightlife and party scene. But that doesnt mean you wont get a bit of culture here, as you can easily take a Mekong Delta tour by local boat or bike to visit the famed Floating Markets and villages of the Mekong. If you fly into Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City, you can easily combine any of these experiences together into one extended trip, with domestic flights included, all for roughly USD 100 or less a day. When to Visit The tourist season for Vietnam is between November to March and youll find everything to be more expensive and crowded. That being said, youll also want to keep an eye out for the monsoon seasons and which region youll be visiting, as each have their own climates. North : From May to October you can expect heat, sweat, and rain as youre right in Monsoon season. November to April is the inverse, with cool and dry weather, hence the popularity. Unlike the other two, the North experiences 4 real seasons and the most stunning changes in color throughout the year. If you pop in during the shoulders months you may that perfect equilibrium between hot and cold, wet and dry but bring a jacket and a swimsuit to be safe. : From May to October you can expect heat, sweat, and rain as youre right in Monsoon season. November to April is the inverse, with cool and dry weather, hence the popularity. Unlike the other two, the North experiences 4 real seasons and the most stunning changes in color throughout the year. If you pop in during the shoulders months you may that perfect equilibrium between hot and cold, wet and dry but bring a jacket and a swimsuit to be safe. Central : The major cities Da Nang, Hoi An, and Hue are warm and dry from January to August, ripe for snorkeling around Cham Island. In contrast, expect cold showers from October to November. Each city has its own geographies, whether they be more coastal or mountainous, that will effect their weather. If youre looking to for a beachside vacation, then Nha Trang is your best bet with a dry, sunny season from January to September : The major cities Da Nang, Hoi An, and Hue are warm and dry from January to August, ripe for snorkeling around Cham Island. In contrast, expect cold showers from October to November. Each city has its own geographies, whether they be more coastal or mountainous, that will effect their weather. If youre looking to for a beachside vacation, then Nha Trang is your best bet with a dry, sunny season from January to September South: Down near the Mekong youll find two season: dry and wet. Dry runs from November to early May, and wet the reverse, with heavy rainfall from June to August. And definitely check out Hoi An Expresss breakdown for more weather advice. Things to Keep in Mind Vietnam is a melting pot of cultures and customs, both for foreign influences and local ethnic minorities (over 50 in total), so youre going to experience culture shock. And thats the best part! Youll find a variety of Vietnam tours offering a true Vietnam experience, including visits to handcraft villages, working on a farm for a day, strolling through local markets, and getting an insiders look at the major cities. As we mentioned above, there is something for everyone in Vietnam, and you should definitely try it all. Now that Ive buttered you up with a little travel inspiration, heres a little travel advice that youll need and want to know before your Vietnam trip. If youre on the road, bring a roll of toilet paper, especially out in the countryside. Haggling is not just encouraged, it is the law of the land. Never accept market prices and always be willing to negotiate and even walk away to get a better price. Stick with local tour companies and official government taxis for transportation to avoid any scam artists. If you fell in love with Vietnam through Top Gears season finale on it, youll definitely want to try motorbiking around Vietnam. What they didnt tell you was that youll need an international drivers permit from your national transportation department to legally drive in Vietnam, so make sure to grab one before you go. You can And, as always, wear a helmet. Try. The. Food. You can find Western meals here and there but dont you dare miss out on the delectable cuisine that is Vietnamese cooking. But definitely drink bottled water. Electricity is 220V, 50HZ, and a standard two-pin plug is most common. The officialy currency is the Dong, but you can still use US Dollars for tourist venues. Visa, MAster card and JCB are also valid for some retailers in the city, but expect a 3% surcharge. Emergency Numbers in Vietnam Police: 113 Fire: 114 Ambulance: 115 If you want to discover more amazing destinations or learn all the tips and tricks to planning your next vacation, please subscribe to our Tours4fun Newsletter below. For Immediate Release, April 7, 2017 Contact: Taylor McKinnon, (801) 300-2414, tmckinnon@biologicaldiversity.org Congressman Pearce Pushes Fracking in New Mexico Despite Risk of Sinkhole Collapse, Destabilization of Nuclear Waste Disposal Site ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.) sent a letter this week urging the New Mexico Bureau of Land Management director to resolve administrative protests and fast-track a federal fracking plan near Carlsbad, N.M., even though fracking-induced earthquakes could trigger collapse of a massive brine well sinkhole in Carlsbad. Officials say there is already a high probability that the Carlsbad brine well will collapse, which they estimate would result in more than $1 billion in damages, as well as lost lives. The administrative protest to the dangerous fracking plan was filed by the Center for Biological Diversity and other organizations in May 2016. It challenges the Bureau's failure to analyze the potential for fracking-induced brine well collapse and for fracking to destabilize the geology of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant a Department of Energy facility that stores 119 million cubic yards of radioactive waste, including from nuclear weapons projects. The Eddy County location was originally chosen for the nuclear waste site specifically because it lacked oil and gas development and associated geologic risks. Despite the Bureau's failure to analyze those risks, Pearce's letter urges the agency to resolve the protest and enact the plan in order to transfer $69 million in fracking lease sale revenues to the New Mexico state legislature. Only Rep. Pearce would gladly put the people and environment of this region at such grave risk from a completely avoidable catastrophic event simply to generate fracking revenues, said Taylor McKinnon with the Center. As usual, Pearce is thinking not of the people of New Mexico but only of the special oil and gas interests that continue to grease his jaded political journey. Since 2008 three large brine well sinkholes have collapsed in the Permian Basin two in New Mexico. Brine wells are underground chasms formed when fracking operators inject freshwater into salt deposits to create salt water later extracted for drilling. Officials in Carlsbad have been conducting safety procedures to prepare for a collapse. By blatantly ignoring the facts, Congressman Pearce is putting New Mexican lives and property at tremendous risk, said McKinnon. If the brine well in Carlsbad collapses as a result of an earthquake from this careless federal fracking, the damage and lost lives will sit squarely on the shoulders of Mr. Pearce and the BLM officials all too willing to do his bidding. Download Pearce's letter here. Download the Center's administrative protest here. 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. For Immediate Release, April 6, 2017 Contact: Ileene Anderson, Center for Biological Diversity, (323) 654-5943, ianderson@biologicaldiversity.org Drew Feldmann, San Bernardino Valley Audubon Society, (909) 881-6081, drewf3@verizon.net Lawsuit Challenges San Bernardino's Plan to Deplete Santa Ana River Project Would Cut Water Releases by 50 Percent, Hurt Endangered Wildlife, Impair Recreation for People SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. Two conservation groups filed suit against the city of San Bernardino Municipal Water Department and the city of San Bernardino today challenging a plan to drastically reduce water releases to the Santa Ana River. The largest river in Southern California, the Santa Ana provides recreational opportunities such as hiking, biking, picnicking, boating and fishing to Southern Californians. The water department's proposal would cut off needed water that feeds the river and its riparian ecosystems. This project is a bad deal for people and wildlife alike, said Drew Feldmann, a city of San Bernardino resident and conservation chair of the San Bernardino Valley Audubon Society. At a time when the city's emerging from bankruptcy, it should not be wasting limited resources on this expensive project that will starve our river of water and wreck its riparian ecosystems. The people of San Bernardino should not have to choose between a healthy river and adequate water supplies. The project would also drive the highly endangered Santa Ana sucker closer to extinction. The Santa Ana sucker is a small, olive-gray fish that sucks up algae and invertebrates from river bottoms; most adult suckers are under 4 inches long and have a lifespan of about 2 years. Suckers used to be common throughout the rivers of Southern California, but urban development has diminished their numbers to just a few remnant populations. The city for years has released treated water from its water plant into the Santa Ana River, which has helped keep the fish alive along several miles of its habitat. The water department's proposal would permanently limit water releases by up to 17.9 million gallons per day (or 27.7 cubic feet per second), which could reduce flows in the river by more than 50 percent. Although the water department claims it will replace some unspecified amount of this water by groundwater pumping, such severe reductions may render the river uninhabitable for suckers. In the past, when the department has temporarily halted water releases to the river, many suckers either were stranded or perished from anoxia (lack of oxygen). The Santa Ana sucker has a right to live and thrive in the Santa Ana River, as it has for thousands of years, said Ileene Anderson, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity. The water department has no business pushing this endangered fish closer to extinction so it can pursue this costly and ill-conceived water project. The lawsuit outlines the department's violations of the California Environmental Quality Act, including inadequate review of the project's impacts on fish, wildlife and water resources. During the environmental review process, the project was criticized by other agencies, including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and California Department of Fish and Wildlife. The suit also raises concerns over the project's potential to degrade riparian ecosystems for the endangered San Bernardino kangaroo rat and two songbirds the southwestern willow flycatcher and least Bell's vireo. 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. The San Bernardino Valley Audubon Society is the local chapter of the National Audubon Society for almost all of Riverside and San Bernardino Counties, and has about two thousand members in that area. Its missions are the protection of natural habitat for birds and other wildlife, and public education about the environment. It can be tough to be a vegetarian. You have to work harder than everyone else to make sure youre getting all the nutrients your body needs. So, when its time to take a Somewhere between the equator and the Kenyan town of Nanyuki, five students sit inside a classroom watching a YouTube video describe how to extract aluminum from bauxite. Once you see it, it makes it so easy, exclaims 19-year-old Kenneth Karue. Matthias Ziegler via 123RF Two years ago Gakawa Secondary School had no internet access. But thanks to an initiative by Mawingu Networks, a solar-powered internet service provider, rural Kenyan youth are going online for the first time, and with amazing results. High school students like Karue, who didnt know how to use a keyboard, much less a search engine, are now Googling entry requirements for information technology programmes at Nairobi universities. Some of these students aspire to careers in Africas blossoming information and communications technology (ICT) sector. The World Bank estimated that in 2016, African nations would invest between $155 billion and $180 billion in the ICT sector, accounting for 6%7% of Africas gross domestic product (GDP). But young people say there are major barriers preventing them from finding jobs in the industry. We have a lot of young people. But unfortunately they come from neighbourhoods that dont have a lot of opportunities, says Tim Nderi, the chief executive officer of Mawingu Networks. Since 2013 Microsoft has invested in Mawingu Networks on the premise that enabling young Africans to access the digital world is the first step towards getting them employed in it. However, Do people have access to the internet, and is that access affordable? asked Microsofts Anthony Cook in an interview with Africa Renewal. As you think about moving towards a knowledge economy, you have to be able to take the bulk of the population with you. By October 2016, 10,000 people were using Mawingus internet in four different Kenyan counties. And in September, former President Barack Obama lauded Microsoft and Mawingus success during his address at the US-Africa Business Forum in Cape Town. Many African countries have embraced the idea of a knowledge economy, a term coined in the 1960s to describe economies in which the production and use of knowledge are paramount. Academic institutions and companies engaging in research and development are important foundations of such a system. And so are those who apply this knowledgethe programmers developing new software and search engines to use data, and the health workers who use data to improve treatments. A long way to go Some African governments have begun employing tech-ready youth in the public sector. In Kenya, where an estimated 5 million youth are unemployed, the Presidential Digital Talent Programme recruited 400 university graduates to work on major projects at different ministries. A $150 million, five-year public-private partnership launched last year by the World Bank set out to help 280,000 unemployed Kenyan youth learn about employment opportunities and undergo employability training. But elsewhere on the continent, such government initiatives have fallen short. Three years after it began, Innovate Lagos, a 2013 Nigerian government-funded ICT incubator that set out to prepare youth and other entrepreneurs to drive growth and development through innovation, no longer even owns the domain name of its website. Africans have good reason to be hesitant about the idea of their countries economies being centered on information technology. Many of the new jobs that have been created over the past two decades are fundamentally different from the ones that have been lost, and the new jobs tend to favour educated workers over those with less education and skills, says author Dan Tapscott in the 2014 edition of The Digital Economy, his book about the global ICT industry. For those preparing for careers in ICT, access to the internet and to education are fundamental prerequisites. Fortunately, in places like Nigeria, cellular internet is becoming eminently affordable. Recently, data prices in Nigeria crashed by more than 50%. For just a dollar and a half you can have access to internet each month, says Adeloye Olanrewaju, a Nigerian entrepreneur who co-founded SaferMom, which gives expecting mothers access to health and pregnancy information via cell phones. Internet penetration is going to increase, more people are going to come online, and sectors like ours are going to get more attention, he predicts. By attention he means investment in educational and job opportunities. Nigerian youth are brilliant. We need to get them jobs, says Olanrewaju. Lagos wants to be the Silicon Valley of Africa, but we see lots of youth struggling to gain the skills and experience to find employment. Generational gap Part of whats holding them back, he says, is a deep generational gap. Technology is still new in Africa, Olanrewaju told Africa Renewal. People in power often are in the range of 50 years old. Technology is new to them. He says African governments have been slow to incorporate any of the promising tech achievements conceived by private sector start-ups or the established firms those start-ups are good at attracting. More than two years after the Kenyan government announced that it would require its public minibuses, or matatus, to use cashless payment services in an effort to reduce bribery between operators and traffic police, matatu owners continue to resist those efforts. But Olanrewaju isnt surprised by the slow rate at which some African governments are adapting. Innovation isnt usually led by the governmentits led by people like you and me. Olanrewaju would know. As project director for Nigerias Youth LEAD initiative, he oversaw the training of 400 students in different technology skill sets and mentored 25 of them in social entrepreneurship with the goal of helping them begin their own companies. He says the private sector has been essential in generating opportunities for youth in ICT. We have more than 20 incubators in Africa, says Olanrewaju. That means that if I have an idea, instead of paying thousands of dollars in rent in Lagos every month, I can pay a few hundred dollars and have access to the internet, space and mentors and all that. I can do a lean start-up. Still, he says, Nigerias technology sector is no panacea for Africas unemployed youth. Not everybody is going to build a viable business. If you actually have the right network, the right mentorship, and you have access to funds, theres no reason not to try. On the other hand, if you dont really have enough experience managing a company, why not get a job, learn some innovative roles, and learn how that works before starting your own business? He explains that not every African needs to be an entrepreneur: Different people, different strokes. When private sector isnt enough African governments should do more if they hope to grow a knowledge economy to absorb the continents young workforce. We have a lot of talent in Africa, says Esther Muchiri, a Kenyan consultant and a recent vice-chair of Kenya IT and Outsourcing Service (KITOS), a trade association of IT and IT-enabled companies. Much of Africas progress in generating job opportunities for young people interested in technology is coming from the private sector entities like Africa's 300 tech hubs and business incubators, including iHub in Nairobi, CTIC Dakar in Senegal and the Bandwidth Barn in Cape Town all of which nurture young talent and innovative ideas, says Muchiri. She adds, What is clogging the tech scene in Africa is the gap between innovations and market needs. Muchiri says that too often, developers make assumptions about what consumers want or need, only to discover later that their idea isnt exactly what the local market is looking for. One way African countries are bridging that gap is through partnerships with leading global educational institutions. Many foreign universities already operate satellite campuses in Africa. A partnership between Rwanda and Carnegie Mellon University, a top US engineering school, is enrolling hundreds of young Rwandans in programmes leading to Master of Science degrees in information technology. Rwandas government is covering half of each tech students tuition, easing the financial burden of a tech education. Rwanda is also home to one of Africas largest technology universities, the University of Rwandas College of Science and Technology, which hopes to enroll 9,000 students by 2020. As African governments continue to invest in internet access and technology education, the potential for young Africans to find jobs in the continents IT sector is sure to grow. Source: Africa Renewal KIGALI, Rwanda - Africa's first and biggest network of centres of excellence, the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), in partnership with the Government of Rwanda, have announced the launch of AIMS in Rwanda, an ecosystem of pan-African transformation that will leverage scientific innovation, learning and research to apply solutions to the continent's challenges. The official launch took place at the Kigali Convention Centre (KCC), with president Paul Kagame in attendance. "We are collaborating with AIMS to develop an ecosystem of pan-African institutions with a transformative agenda. We all recognise that AIMS' education model is an important tool for development and progress on our continent," Kagame said at the gathering. The first AIMS centre of excellence was opened in Cape Town, South Africa, founded by Professor Neil Turok in 2003. The network prioritises international class education for Africa's most valuable resource, its youth, for the development of Africa and to the benefit of society. The institute has since opened up six education centres of excellence across the continent, with the latest in Rwanda's capital, Kigali. "We are thrilled to have partnered with the government of Rwanda to continue to nurture Africa's most talented scientific minds in mathematical sciences, creating opportunities to allow them to contribute to the continent by tangibly developing solutions to Africa's problems, and fostering collaboration that will reverse the brain drain of our thinkers, problem-solvers and innovators," said Thierry Zomahoun, president and CEO of AIMS. The launch of AIMS Rwanda is a result of a partnership agreement between the government of Rwanda through the ministry of education and AIMS. The ecosystem of pan-African transformation has the following elements at its core: 1. Discovery and Technological Advances The Ecosystem will support researchers who are tackling, through multidisciplinary approaches, research topics that challenge fundamental concepts and high-end research (fundamental research and quantum science). 2. Industry and Economic Advancement AIMS will maximise the opportunities and potential for mathematical sciences to contribute to African economies through human capital, knowledge transfer and applied research for scientific and technological excellence. 3. Lifelong Learning and Inspiration The AIMS's Teacher Training Program will strengthen the mathematics teacher capacity and provide as many students in Africa as possible with a quality education in maths and science. 4. Scientific and Technological Excellence As part of the ecosystem of transformation, the Next Einstein Forum (NEF), the first global science forum on African soil, will continue to showcase the remarkable progress that Africa is making in science. The African Freedom of Expression Exchange (AFEX) joins its member, the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ), in expressing deep concern over the continuing harassment of journalists in Somalia by security agents, unidentified non-State actors and government officials. imilian via 123RF A total of 11 journalists and one media organisation have been attacked in Somalia in six incidents of violations recorded from January 25 to April 1, 2017, according to the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ). The attacks included five incidents of physical assault, some of them fatal, and one incident of censorship. Eight journalists were severely wounded in Somalia during separate incidents of bomb explosions recorded in January and March 2017. In the first incident, seven journalists were severely injured in two separate incidents of bomb explosions on January 25, 2017, which also resulted in the killing of several citizens with many others injured. The wounded journalists were covering a terror attack on a hotel located in the city centre of Mogadishu. In the second incident, Abdihamid Mohamed Osman, a Somali cameraman and video editor with London-based private station, Universal TV, was seriously wounded on March 12, 2017 when a bomb attached to his car exploded in Mogadishu's Hamar-weyne district. Osman was on his way to work when the incident occurred. Both incidents were perpetrated by unidentified persons. Other violations included two incidents of physical assault, one incident of censorship and kidnap each: on February 5, 2017, about 30 armed police officers in Puntland, a region in northeastern Somalia raided the premises of Radio Voice of Peace. The police forcefully pulled the director of the station, Ahmed Mohamed Ali, popularly known as Aano Geel, out of his office, and started beating him up with guns and batons. Ali sustained injuries in the neck, shoulders, lower back and chest and was admitted to the hospital. Another journalist working with the station, Rabile Abdikarim Mohamud, was threatened when he tried to intervene. No reason was given for the attack. Exactly a month later, on March 5, 2017, authorities at the Ministry of Information in Puntland Regional State of Somalia, barred Universal TV, a private TV station, from covering events in regions controlled by Puntland authorities. The Ministry accused the TV station of creating conflict between people and the government (Puntland), destabilising regional security, spreading of false news and broadcasting news in contradiction of journalism ethics. Puntland did not specify the period for which the private television network is barred to operate in its regions. On March 19, 2017, Mahad Mohamed Abdurahman, a journalist working with Radio Shabelle, was wounded during clashes between two government forces in Tarbunka neighbourhood of Hodan district. Abdurahman, nicknamed Mutawakil, sustained injuries on the left hand and on his back. While wounded, Mahad Mohamed Abdurahman was assigned to conduct an interview with Hodan district commissioner Ahmed Salad Ibrahim and internally displaced people (IDP) living in Tarbunka over disputed opening of roads. On April 1, 2017, unidentified gunmen kidnaped journalist, Hanad Ali Guled, working with privately owned Goobjoog Television of Goobjoog Media Group. Guled was driven to an unknown location where he was reportedly detained in a small room. Guled was found the following day, in the outskirts of Mogadishu, handcuffed and reportedly beating. The purpose for which Guled was kidnapped is unclear, but colleagues working with him stated that he has been receiving threats via telephone over his involvement in a drought relief programme, Media for Aid. Most dangerous place The above violations are part of a pattern of attacks that journalists in Somalia have had to endure over the years as Somalia has been described as one of the most dangerous places to practice journalism in Africa. Journalists who forge on despite these challenges also risk being harassed by security forces in the country. AFEX urges the new Somali Government to intervene in order to end forthwith the egregious practices and decisions of security forces and government officials that are designed to curtail the freedom of journalists and the wider freedom of expression community, and allow them to enjoy their fundamental rights. Perpetrators of acts of violations against journalists and media professionals must be held accountable, says AFEX, while stressing that impunity for crimes against journalists make a mockery of the important role the media and journalists play in society. This statement was originally published on africafex.org on 5 April 2017. Adidas celebrated the relaunch of the EQT brand, which began in the 90s in Berlin, by sending out an open invitation to South Africans born in that decade for an inclusive casting call utilising a mobile street studio at locations across Johannesburg. The result is a photo essay of portraits that document a generation. The focus was placed on individuals being recognised for creating culture and who form part of a unique generation of creators. Capturing the images was 24-year-old photographer and digital artist Aart Verrips, who has worked with Vogue Italia and whose Gazelle collage received global recognition on Adidas Originals social platforms in 2016. The street level casting kicked off at Shelflife on Friday 24 March before heading to AREA3 in Braamfontein on Saturday 25 March and wrapped up at Thesis in Soweto on Sunday 26 March. Adidas Originals in Sandton hosted a version of the activation in-store, with a pop-up studio experience on Saturday 25 March. The portraits are used in a series of short format brand films, released as key campaign imagery and used in a 90s inspired AREA3 window display. Selected portraits will also be screened in designated stores. South African online retail store, Rabaki, aims to extend opportunities for growth to beyond the e-commerce industry, by including individual or small business. Whereas most online stores are about selling and promoting their own products, Rabaki is giving locals an opportunity to become part of the outlet and earn 5% commission for selling its merchandise. According to the company, this new feature will allow both individuals and small businesses to grow and expand the opportunities around them with extra income to increase their stability in tough economic situations. Were excited to launch this new reseller feature because we believe that this will help empower both the unemployed and employed South Africans and small businesses, says Larry Kgatle, spokesperson for the company. The unemployed youth no longer have to define themselves as another statistic in the youth unemployment rate and small companies are allowed the opportunity to create more employment prospects out of this reseller feature. The company plans to launch a merchant registration feature soon, which will allow small to medium companies to sell their own products in the store. The merchant registration will play an integral role in developing small businesses that would like to sell and showcase their products. In the meantime, however, merchants who are interested in joining our online store will be given the option to submit their products manually for listing in the store. The site is owned by Rabaki, in partnership with Zartner Technology and Rams Comics. Theres been a lot of speculation in the K-12 policy world about how President Donald Trump will handle education issues in rural America, where he won overwhelming support in the 2016 election. One part of the puzzle could be how he decides to deal with the the Secure Rural Schools program . The program is designed to provide additional support for schools and local governments affected by activities on federal lands and is linked to revenue from timber harvests on those lands. Before 2000, school districts and counties got a fixed percentage of this revenue, but as this timber-related revenue declined, local governments share of the money declined accordingly. In 2000, Congress passed the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act and changed the way these payments were structured. Secure Rural Schools impacts 4,400 schools and 9 million students in 775 districts. The program is controlled by the U.S. Department of the Interior. The program received $278 million in federal cash in fiscal year 2015, but the funding dropped to $58 million in fiscal 2016. A half-dozen years ago, in fiscal 2011, U.S. Forest Service payments to localities (including districts) topped $300 million . The single biggest state beneficiary of the program, you may not be surprised to hear, has historically been Oregon, with California, Idaho, Montana, and Washington also receiving relatively large payments. If youre a Republican, my message is, these are the people who voted for you. These are the people who put the current administration in power. You cant turn your back on them, said Kermith Walters, the superintendent of the Siskiyou County Office of Education in northern California, whos been lobbying federal lawmakers this week to boost funding for the program. Walters office oversees 28 schools with about 5,800 students; there are also four individual districts under his county office. Trumps initial proposed budget for fiscal 2018 doesnt mention Secure Rural Schools, and it will likely be several more weeks before his administration releases a fully fleshed-out budget that addresses the program. In fiscal 2016, Walters county education office received $272,000 from the rural schools program out of a budget of roughly $16 million, although he notes that much of his overall budget is restricted in what it can be used for. In Siskiyou County schools, that money has supported everything from outdoor education camps to school nurses. Walters says that hes socked away rainy-day funds and that the reductions in Secure Rural Schools money therefore hasnt had a huge impact on his district. But if the money continues shrinking or goes away, he said, hell have to start looking at laying off nurses and cutting off health services and other programs. This is a program thats actually bipartisan that we can get behind, Walters said, noting that Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, have been particular champions of Secure Rural Schools. In February, Hatch and Wyden, along with Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, D-Ore., and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., wrote to the Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney urging the Trump administration to provide adequate funding for Secure Rural Schools. They noted that the program has not been authorized since fiscal 2015, even though its been funded since then. Without SRS, existing revenue-sharing payments are not sufficient to support the services these counties must provide, and counties are forced to choose between critical services for their citizens, the four members of Congress wrote to Mulvaney . Prevailing uncertainties about SRS make it nearly impossible for local governments to plan their annual budgets. Photo: Mount Shasta looms over the remains of defunct lumber company in McCloud, Calif. (Rich Pedroncelli/AP-File) Follow us on Twitter at @PoliticsK12 . The Manufacturing Indaba, now in its fourth year, will be hosted at Emperors Palace from the 27 to 28 June 2017. Planned keynote addresses and panel discussions will focus on the future of manufacturing in South Africa centred around the role of manufacturing, how to build a stronger manufacturing sector and the growth sectors for the future. The event continues to be a respected manufacturing business platform encouraging debate, exploring market opportunities for manufacturing growth and providing Government with the stage to share the latest policy news with manufacturers, from small to large. With many emerging manufacturing sectors and opportunities developing in South Africa, from fuel cell technologies, electronics, to food and beverages, etc. the forum aims, through the engagement with key stakeholders and manufacturers, to grow manufacturers. "The rapid advancement of technology and processes in the manufacturing industry across the world has forced South Africa to consider changing current practices and mindsets in order to be able to compete internationally," say the organisers. We want to move South African manufacturing forward and the Manufacturing Indaba provides the opportunity to share knowledge, explore public and private sector collaboration, develop new markets for the sale of products and services and to gain an understanding of the future trends that can impact manufacturing, commented Liz Hart, managing director, Manufacturing Indaba. A platform making impressive headway in sharing positive stories from South Africa is Ginkgo Agency's Beautiful News. Anthony Hinrichsen, commissioning editor of Beautiful News. Having only initiated on 1 November 2016, the platform has already grown to 50,000 followers. The videos, which are published at 4.14pm every day, show the agencys heart and capture peoples stories in an authentic way. Anthony Hinrichsen, commissioning editor of Beautiful News, shares the platforms origin and mission; what it takes to produce videos of this nature; and Beautiful News plans to reach as many untold stories in South Africa as possible. 1. Tell us the story of how Beautiful News formed. Beautiful News is produced by Ginkgo Agency, the creators of 21 Icons, a collective of like-minded people whose shared values, passion and interest in South Africas potential brought them together. 21 Icons celebrated South Africas most remarkable men and women over three seasons. The experience of creating that project made it clear that South Africa is full of people whose stories are worthy of celebration. Beautiful News was born out of a desire to share them. Beautiful News is made possible by the support of Mercedes-Benz South Africa. Mercedes-Benz South Africa was the title sponsor of 21 Icons South Africa. Partnering with Beautiful News represents a continuation of Mercedes-Benz South Africas commitment to and celebration of the people of South Africa. Today, the Beautiful News platform and Mercedes-Benz South Africa make a commitment to South Africa. We will remind each other of the extraordinary people whom we live amongst. We will show the selflessness, the entrepreneurial spirit, and the human kindness that binds South Africans together. This country and its people have so much to give and so much to live for; now we will tell their story, our story, together. Our stories are published on the Beautiful News platform and distributed across News24, 24.com and the Beautiful News South Africa social channels. 2. What counts as beautiful news to you? We aim to celebrate the South African spirit and people by sharing stories that are inspiring, positive and delightful. It is a reminder that, as bad as things can get, the world is full of incredible people doing remarkable things that, in the words of Desmond Tutu, We are made for goodness. These are stories that take a personal, intimate or unexpected angle on events. They seek to inspire, surprise and delight. 3. How do you source your stories? Stories are everywhere, and come from many different sources South Africa is one of the most diverse countries in the world, a melting pot for ideas and stories. We have an editorial team that sources stories daily. We also invite the Beautiful News audience to submit story ideas, to make sure that every person in South Africa is given a voice. 4. Who makes up the Beautiful News team? Also, what do you enjoy most about the team? Beautiful News is a collaborative effort. We have a number of departments that handle different aspects of the process, from researchers to post-production. Outside of our walls we have our sources, our story subjects and our incredible audience, not to mention Mercedes-Benz South Africa whose support makes this all possible. Each link is important and each step in the production is just as crucial as the one before. The thing I enjoy most about the team is the diverse set of voices that come together daily to unearth and celebrate stories on individuals who are surprising in their innovation and commitment to doing good. 5. Your videos are visually captivating. Please explain the cinematographic process that goes into these videos. The way we approach it is with research, looking at our audience and asking, what do they want, how do they want it and what will they do with it? Statistics show that in this information age, with the sheer amount of data that is transmitted to us daily, the average adult has the attention span of a goldfish, now while this may sound extreme, it does give us an advantage in the sense that we know the people we are wanting to reach are busy and are pressed for time. We know that more than 80% of social media users view videos with the sound off, we know that if a video goes on longer than a minute and half that people are going to turn off (data isnt cheap, especially in South Africa). So taking these factors into account, our shooting team is equipped with the knowledge of what is needed to make an impactful and captivating film. 6. What do you feel creatives require in order to produce work as visually and emotionally gripping as Beautiful News? As with any production, technical skills and expertise play a major factor, and we all know these, if youre in the film business you know what tools and software you need to be able to operate to be successful. If youre a writer, you know what resources and platforms you need to own and be a part of to keep abreast of trends and hot topics. The same goes for editors, social media practitioners and anyone else along the production path. However, theres something that precedes all of these technical skills and know-how. Theres something that comes before all of these practical skills that can be taught over time and through practice, and whatever this is, it cannot be taught, bought or even seen. Its something within a person that makes them want to connect with people, to make an impact in their lives and to create something that did not exist before. Its a burning passion inside of you that makes you want to tell stories, to cross language, racial and religious boundaries and connect with humans first and foremost. So technical skills are important and they can be learnt, but passion, empathy, desire, inquisitiveness and passion, these are things that you have to bring to the table, these are qualities that you have to work on in yourself. 7. Does Beautiful News have any upcoming plans? Beautiful News is taking to the road and will be travelling throughout the South African provinces. Our intention is to tell the stories that no one is telling. From the western mouth of the Orange River to the Drakensberg wetlands in the east, there is Beautiful News all over South Africa. Find out more about Beautiful News on their website and follow them on Facebook and Instagram. Environmental Affairs Minister Edna Molewa says the department will study the Constitutional Court order that dismissed the leave to appeal the application to keep a ban on the domestic trade in rhino horn. The Constitutional Court dismissed the Gauteng Division order to set aside the moratorium on the domestic trade in rhino horn. Whilst we are studying the implications of the order handed down by the Constitutional Court, it should be noted that the courts decision should not be construed to mean that the domestic trade in rhino horn may take place in an unregulated fashion, said Molewa. The moratorium was implemented in terms of section 57(2) of the National Environmental Management: Biodiversity Act, 2004 (Act No. 10 of 2004) (NEMBA), and took effect on 13 February 2009. An original application challenging the moratorium was brought by Johan Kruger in 2012, joined by John Hume in 2015. Wildlife Ranching South Africa and the Private Rhino Owners Association of South Africa supported the application. On 26 November 2015, the High Court set aside moratorium on the domestic trade in rhino horn with immediate and retrospective effect. With this, Minister Molewa filed an application for leave to appeal to the High Court, which was dismissed. After that the minister petitioned the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) for leave to appeal. The SCA in May 2016 dismissed the ministers application for leave to appeal with costs. The minister subsequently applied to the Constitutional Court for leave to appeal the decision in June 2016. Wednesdays decision was the outcome of this application. Strengthening of laws Since the moratorium came into effect, the Department of Environmental Affairs has strengthened its laws, regulations and systems to ensure no regulatory loopholes exist with regards to the possession of rhino horn as well as a possible future domestic trade in rhino horn. The department emphasised that with the absence of the moratorium, all domestic trade in rhino horn will be subjected to the issuance of the relevant permits in terms of the National Environmental Management: Biodiversity Act, 2004 (Act No 10 of 2004) (NEMBA) and applicable provincial legislation. In terms of NEMBA, a permit is required to among others possess, transport and trade in rhino horns and any derivatives or products of horn. The judgment does not mean that persons are allowed to trade (including selling, donating, or in any way acquiring or disposing of rhino horn) without a permit issued by the relevant provincial conservation department. Application forms applying for authorisation of the regulated activities must be submitted in the province in which the applicant intends to carry out the restricted activity (e.g. selling, trade in, buying, giving, donating or accepting as gift, possession, conveying, movement, transport etc.). It must be furthermore emphasised that this matter does not relate to the international trade in rhino horn for commercial purposes. Commercial international trade in rhino horn is still prohibited in terms of the provisions of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), said the department. After announcing the project late in 2016, Porsche has now opened its new training centre in Cape Town. Over three academic years, a total of 75 men and women from socially disadvantaged backgrounds will be trained as service and technology technicians. This training will unlock career opportunities in the retail organisations of the Volkswagen Group both in SA and internationally. Porsche says it intentionally designs the training to cover topics far wider than those required in-house, to give the trainees as many opportunities as possible. This project is being organised in association with the Don Bosco Salesian Institute Youth Projects (SIYP) in Cape Town and the local Porsche importer, LSM Distributors. PAVE Eight women and 16 men will participate in the first year of training. Porsche has equipped SIYP with two seminar rooms and a training workshop which includes cars for the trainees to work on. Training content has been designed by the brand's after-sales experts, who are responsible for the project. They are also tasked with training the trainers of the newly established Porsche Training and Recruitment Centre SA, under the umbrella of the worldwide after-sales qualification initiative PAVE (Porsche Aftersales Vocational Education). The aim of this initiative is not only to find young talent for the VW retail organisations but also to raise the image and attractiveness of working as a service mechatronic in the long term. Due to the rising significance of digitalisation, electrification and connectivity in automotive manufacturing, the importance of aftersales services is growing. With this project, Porsche says it proactively supports the adaptation of the education system for a future-oriented business. Creating opportunities Speaking at the official opening ceremony, Michael Drolshagen, after-sales manager at Porsche AG, said: "When I look into the eager faces of our first trainees it's a further confirmation that we and our partners are doing the right thing: creating opportunities. Opportunities for young adults to enhance their skills and position themselves permanently on the job market, and opportunities to develop a professional reputation and use this reputation to strengthen their position in society." With SIYP, Porsche has an experienced partner. "Creating new opportunities, opening their minds and hearts, this is what the Salesians have done for our young people in Cape Town since 1910. We want our youth to believe in themselves and help them achieve their fullest potential. We are delighted that Porsche has partnered with the Salesian Youth Projects to create opportunities for those who are deserving of this chance," says Lynn Steven, SIYP chairwoman. From its fourth year, the training programme is planned to fund itself, while at the same time the sole responsibility for the training will be transferred to SIYP. Porsche and the VW Group brands will continue to supervise the project and will be responsible for enhancing the curriculum as well as employing the graduates. Three possible routes Interested young people from socially disadvantaged backgrounds can apply for the training programme. There are three different routes into it, depending on the applicant's qualifications. If an applicant is already sufficiently qualified for vocational training, he or she can access the two-year car service mechatronic training programme directly. Applicants who do not possess the required qualifications can complete a six to eight-week life skills training course at the Don Bosco SIYP. If an applicant is lacking basic skills, he or she will be given the opportunity to complete a year of training to prepare them for the working world. This option will be available to up to 50 people and will enable them to achieve significant steps in their development, regardless of whether they ultimately reach the level required to undertake the training programme or not. The Cape Town training project is based on the Porsche Training and Recruitment Centre Asia in Manila, which has been training young Filipinos as service mechatronics since 2008, in co-operation with Don Bosco and the local Porsche importer. Source: Business Day Efforts between the government, business, and organised labour to find solutions that can stabilise South Africa's poultry industry last month has been welcomed by Eastern Cape poultry producer Sovereign Foods Investments Limited. Sovereign Foods CEO Chris Coombes, referring to high-level private-public meetings between the state, unions and private sector, said: The willingness of government, the South African Poultry Association, the Food and Allied Workers Union, DTI and Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries and other parties to engage in discussions to find solutions and introduce swift and decisive measures is welcoming. Level the playing fields This is moving the industry in the right direction and is key to stabilise forces hurting the South African poultry industry, he said. In terms of potential measures and solutions, we support calls to the South African government to devise and swiftly implement trade support measures including, amongst others, higher tariffs on imported chicken. While there is a general belief by government that protectionism and interventionism is a condition not belonging to the free market, the fact remained that state support to producers in EU countries is a source of the current dumping crisis in South Africa. We need to level the playing fields now, Coombes said. A call for higher tariffs on EU chicken imports While the DTI during recent meetings argued for a larger export effort and greater market access, we are registering a concern that this is a long process that would not happen over-night. To bring South Africa in line with global compliance for exports to new markets will take at least two years. Whilst this a step in the right direction for the long-term, this is not a short-term solution to the current situation. We believe that the correct answer to the immediate situation is implementing higher tariffs on dumped EU chicken imports to give government and industry time to plan and put measures in place to protect and ensure the sustainability of poultry production in South Africa, he said. The Constitutional Court often introduces principles of equity and fairness which are enshrined in the constitution when dispensing justice. However, these principles are introduced against the background of the rule of law. Since the rule of law is preserved, the Constitutional Court is not a court of equity in the true sense of the word. Jonathan Ripley-Evans Contractual relationships On 9 February 2017, the Constitutional Court handed down a judgment, which may ultimately prove to be a significant departure from South Africas established legal practice, at least insofar as contractual relations in the petroleum retail industry are concerned. The Petroleum Products Act (duly amended) has introduced a statutory form of arbitration for the resolution of certain contractual disputes arising between licensed retailers and wholesalers operating in the petroleum industry (whether this satisfies the requirements for classification as an arbitration is a debate for another day). In terms of s12B(1), a party can refer a dispute alleging an unfair contractual practice to the controller of petroleum products, who may then in turn, refer the parties to arbitration. No agreement to arbitrate is required. Until the 9 February 2017 judgment, s12B(1) was interpreted rather restrictively which resulted in only a few disputes being referred to arbitration. In Business Zone 1010cc v Engen Petroleum Limited and others, the Constitutional Court substantially widened the ambit of s12B by reducing the discretion afforded to the controller to not refer a dispute alleging an unfair contractual practice to an arbitrator for determination. In the Pretoria High Court, Engen argued that as the contract upon which the dispute arose had been cancelled, the question could not relate to a contractual practice. Further, as the question of cancellation was then pending before another division of the High Court, Engen argued that the arbitrator was not entitled to consider the question of an alleged unfair contractual practice. These contentions were rejected by the High Court, but Engen ultimately found favour with the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA). Business Zone subsequently appealed the decision of the SCA to the Constitutional Court. Unfair and unreasonable The Constitutional Court ultimately found in favour of Business Zone and set aside the decision of the SCA. As a result, the question of Engens unfair contractual practice was then referred to an arbitrator for determination. This judgment is significant in a number of ways firstly, the scope of the dispute and ultimately the jurisdiction of the arbitrator is defined in s12B(4) of the Act which states that an arbitrator shall determine whether the alleged contractual practices concerned are unfair or unreasonable and, if so, shall make such award as he or she deems necessary to correct such practice. Principles of lawfulness In terms of this section, an arbitrator is not empowered to make any determination which exceeds a finding on fairness or reasonableness. That means that principles of lawfulness, for example, fall outside the jurisdiction of the arbitrator. It would, therefore, appear that an argument that a lawfully concluded contract expressly permits the conduct concerned would fall outside of an arbitrators jurisdiction. Such a defence is based on the law of contract and not on principles of fairness or reasonableness. The maxim that agreements are to be upheld therefore plays no role in such proceedings. Only principles of fairness and reasonableness are relevant - a drastic departure from the rule of law one might say. South African law does not embody a historical jurisprudence based on principles of equity and fairness to the exclusion of private law rights. Equity and fairness are not legal concepts clearly defined in our law. Not only will an arbitrator be called upon to make a call without the assistance of years of jurisprudence to guide them in reaching a decision, their decision will be final and binding on the parties. To make that clear: an unsuccessful party cannot appeal such an award where the statute prescribes that the award will be final and binding. Arbitrations made in private Drawing on the jurisprudence of our labour courts is not extremely helpful either. Labour disputes are normally resolved in a different manner and are aimed at protecting entirely different interests compared to the purely commercial interests here relevant. Arbitrations are mostly conducted in private. Most of the widely-accepted rules in terms whereof arbitrations are administered impose the strictest forms of confidentiality on the parties covering the proceedings and the ultimate award itself. Arbitral awards are kept secret and are not relied upon or even referred to in arbitrations which follow. A s12B arbitration is no exception, further fuelling arbitrary decision making and removing the ability to learn from previous advancements or mistakes in applying these principles. How will this affect private law? In light of this recent interpretation of s12B, we are now burdened with a mechanism to refer an alleged dispute relating to contractual unfairness against a possibly unwilling and unconsenting participant, to an arbitrator (in the absence of agreement) potentially appointed solely by the controller, empowered to potentially apply principles of equity and fairness to the exclusion of principles of law and to force him or her to reach a decision to which no appeal will lie, which will most likely remain confidential, thereby depriving further arbitrators the opportunity to learn from such decisions. How does this process affect well established private law rights? Is a claim based in contract then extinguished by such a decision? If so, how do we reconcile this with the principle that each party should be afforded equal opportunities to advance their own case and to exercise their own rights? Importantly, if the parties choose an arbitrator and the rules under s 12B(2), can this decision be regarded as having been made freely? Further, would such an agreement protect the arbitrator from the danger of a review under PAJA? I dont think that this beast has a name yet. But it has certainly reared its head. None of the four candidates interviewed for the Eastern Cape judge president position have made the cut, the Judicial Service Commission said. The commission announced that it would not be recommending any of the candidates it interviewed to President Jacob Zuma. Pressed to share his weaknesses during his interview, high court judge, Mandela Makaula, who has at times taken months to deliver outstanding judgments, said he had none, and the delays mostly occurred when he was battling chronic diabetes. Chief justice, Mogoeng Mogoeng, failed to find the humour when incumbent seputy judge president in the division, Zamani Nhlangulela, made light of allegations that some judges only arrived at work at 11am. "I only have two eyes. If I had 10 eyes, I would know, so now I am relying on being told," he told the JSC during his interview. Mogoeng replied: "I have a problem in the manner in which you make light of serious things. "You are there making jokes of things which discredit the judiciary." A joint venture between sister companies Momentum Global Investment Management in London and Eris Property Group in South Africa, the Momentum Africa Real Estate Fund (MAREF) held its final close on 28 February 2017, raising a total of $170m. Momentum and Eris are both subsidiaries of Johannesburg-listed MMI Holdings Limited. Momentum is responsible for the fundraising, investor relations, fund management and operational oversight whilst Eris is responsible for the origination, development, management and exit of MAREFs assets. MAREF seeks to achieve an 18% net IRR for its investors by investing in a portfolio of commercial real estate developments (office blocks, shopping malls and warehouses) in sub-Sahara Africa outside of South Africa. A total of eighteen investors committed to MAREF including pension funds, institutions and family offices. Three projects David Lashbrook, head of Africa Real Estate at Momentum Global Investment Management in London said, We are extremely grateful to our investors for the support they have given for our maiden fund. 23% of investor capital is currently committed to three projects which include an office block in Mauritius and two office blocks in Accra, Ghana. Warren Schultze, CEO of Eris Property Group, said, We are very pleased with the three commitments that we have made so far and we are particularly encouraged by MAREFs swelling investment pipeline in Ghana, Mauritius and East Africa. In a recent opinion piece in thenewspaper, author and academic Jonny Steinberg suggested that a generational estrangement deeper than we have acknowledged had emerged between the Fees Must Fall generation - those who've led protests against high university tuition fees and higher education structures they say are unjust - and their scorn for almost everyone over the age of 40. At times over the past two years it may have seemed that a generation had emerged on South Africas campuses that has disowned the past. But generational rebellion is an enduring feature of all societies. Indeed, its the dynamic through which societies renew themselves and move forward. Reflecting on more than 40 years of teaching three generations of University of Witwatersrand (Wits) students incidentally, Steinberg was among them I couldnt help observing how each generation developed a distinct self consciousness; a world view. Each generation was shaped by particular political icons and engaged in particular forms of political action. Repression and state violence The first generation, the Soweto generation, looked for theories of radical even revolutionary change. The central figure was Karl Marx, whether students chose to reject him and go in a different direction or to adopt one or other of the intellectual currents that had their source in Marx. These included Antonio Gramsci, Leon Trotsky, Ernest Laclau, Vladimir Lenin and so on. In 1981 half of the students in my honours class in industrial sociology were held under the Terrorism Act. Some were detained for months without trial. It was the time of the United Democratic Front; of trade union militancy and nationwide resistance to apartheid. But it was also a time of repression, of state violence even assassination. The assassination of David Webster, a colleague in the department of anthropology, was a dramatic illustration of those times. The release of Nelson Mandela in 1990 and 1994s new democratic government was an event that profoundly changed the classroom. This, the 1994 generation, was quite different from those whod come before. Decolonisation of knowledge For many, the classroom was an opportunity to escape the poverty and political turmoil of the townships for a career in a transformed public sector or the private sector. But they were rebels too. I recall students occupying the administrative building and trashing the campus in support of their demands for the transformation of Wits. Indeed, one of the demands was for free education. By the end of the first decade of the 21st century, around 2009, I sensed a new assertive spirit in the corridors of the humanities faculty at Wits. A new generation was in the making, a third generation. It was to culminate in the Fees Must Fall movement of 2015 and 2016. In February 2016 I was in discussions with my new, black female Masters interns about what they wanted to research for their theses. They announced: We are tired of white people studying blacks; we want to study whites. This generation had found its voice and the language to express their feelings of discomfort and sense of racial injustice in a world where knowledge production is still dominated by whites. The decolonisation of knowledge was their aim. Post-colonial theory was their guide. Edward Said and Frantz Fanon, and African intellectuals such as Steve Biko and Ngugi Wa Thiongo were now the key theorists. Whats striking about this, the third generation, is the leading role played by black female students. Black feminism, the black body and sexuality become the dominant discourse of this generation. This third generation had found its voice. They were now comfortable in their skin and proud of their identity. The teacher student relationship what I call the chalk face is a crucial interface between the generations. Its here that academic generations are made. A central demand of the current generation of students is the need to recognise their dignity, their material needs, their distinct family and cultural backgrounds, and of course their language. Discovering a new mission But the generational rebellion that Steinberg refers to is not simply about the need for better communication. Its a demand that goes back many generations. Indeed it was a demand made by Pan African Congress founder Robert Sobukwe when he was a tutor at Wits nearly 60 years ago. Its a demand to change the content of the curriculum so that South Africans, especially black men and women from all over Africa, can become the producers of knowledge. To rebuild trust and mutual respect between the generations we need to make our classrooms places where our students are not only the consumers of knowledge produced elsewhere. This is the challenge for the graduating class of 2016. In the memorable words of Fanon: Each generation must discover its mission, fulfil it or betray it. Your mission is to become the authors of the books the next generation of students read; the articles they cite and the theories that shape their thinking. This is an edited extract of the authors speech on the occasion of being awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of the Witwatersrand. The Western Cape is one of the most exciting places to visit in South Africa, while many towns in this province are unique and beautiful, there are some hidden gems that offer a truly remarkable experience. Robertson Located just two hours away from Cape Town, Robertson is a relatively quiet town. Nestled in a fertile agricultural valley, it has been christened the valley of wine and roses. Although the name does capture some imagination of the pleasures found here, it does not entirely communicate the magic and splendor of a charming little town in the backdrop of some of the best wineries in the world. Apart from savouring world renowned brands like Graham Beck from Becks winery itself, you can enjoy picturesque views of lush green fields, visit the Robertson art gallery, the birds paradise or even take on an adrenalin sport like skydiving. Beautiful sunset in the gorgeous Robertson Wine Valley by @maricialeroux #nature #outdoors #seasons #autumn #farmlife #travel #meetsouthafrica #countrylife #celebraterobertson #tastethelifestyle A post shared by Robertson Wine Valley (@robertsonwinev) on Mar 22, 2017 at 6:23am PDT Struisbaai Struisbaai is an enchanting fishing town, very near to the Cape Agulhas - the southernmost point of the African continent. Marvel at the 150-year-old Cape Agulhas Lighthouse and the museum that is the only one of its kind in Africa. If you ever dreamt of a shipwreck, the Spook Draai hiking trail will send chills down your spine. Struisbaai. A post shared by Bond (@bondfreyer) on Mar 27, 2017 at 9:51am PDT Swellendam This is one of the oldest towns in South Africa and historic sites are a major attraction here. Notable landmarks you must see include the NG Kerk and Drostdy Museum. If you love nature, you will find inspiring hiking trails, the Marloth Nature Reserve, Bontebok National Park and a horse trail that will take you through forests, mountains, and rivers. Even under overcast skies she stays spectacular!! #DutchReformedChurch, #Swellendam, #SouthAfrica #Church A post shared by Ben Steyn (@flysteyn_680) on Jan 25, 2016 at 1:02pm PST Stanford If you love the sound and sights of a river, this is a paradise town for you. This small town is actually a village that dates back to 1857 and has been declared as a Heritage Site. The architecture is an attraction in itself but it is the Klein River that makes this little place such a popular destination. Some of the top attractions include river cruises, kayaking, bird watching and shark cage diving. If you like, you can also indulge in horse riding, hiking, or just find your way to the local coffee shop or antique store. No filter needed for this sunset on the farm #whitewaterfarm #whitewaterfarmstanford #stanfordsouthafrica #stanford #southafrica #sunset A post shared by @emf7 on Nov 8, 2016 at 9:40am PST Citrusdal This is a scenic town located at the base of the Cederberg mountains in a fertile river valley amidst rolling lush green plains. This region is most famous for citrus fruit farming, ancient rock art and the natural hot springs that dot the landscape. You will be treated to rock art trails, the cape flower route, wine tasting and a host of other outdoor activities. What are you waiting for? All you need is good company and a reliable set of wheels and youre ready to explore. Republican Gov. Doug Ducey has signed a bill that would open up education savings accounts to all of the states 1.1 million students. Ducey, who signed the Empowerment Scholarship Accounts bill April 6, would improve academic outcomes for the students. Previously, access to the money had been restricted to students with disabilities and students in low-performing schools. When parents have more choices, kids win. Looking forward to signing #SB1431 tonight. #AZboundless Doug Ducey (@dougducey) April 7, 2017 U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos soon tweeted her support. A big win for students & parents in Arizona tonight with the passage of ed savings accts. I applaud Gov. @DougDucey for putting kids first. Betsy DeVos (@BetsyDeVosED) April 7, 2017 But the states Democrats, who are in the minority in the legislature, argue that wealthy and military parents that home school their students will swamp the states system with students who would otherwise have been home-schooled or have themselves paid for private school, ultimately costing the state millions more dollars. The mostly rural state has struggled academically and financially in recent years and has one of the lowest school spending rates in the country. Under the ESAs expansion, the average student will receive $4,400 a year, the amount of money the state would typically send a district for enrolling a student. Students with disabilities and poor students would receive more money than other students. On the heels of the election of President Donald Trump and the appointment of DeVosboth steadfast charter school and voucher proponentsRepublicans who control the majority of state legislatures have been pushing to expand the charter sector and the use of vouchers and ESAs, as my colleagues Corey Mitchell and Arianna Prothero wrote earlier this year . While Texas rejected a voucher bill this week, Kentucky passed a charter school bill in March last year that made it the 43rd state to allow for charter schools. Nevadas use of education savings accounts was rejected late last year by that states supreme court on the grounds that the spending of tax dollars was unconstitutional. Check out my colleague Arianna Protheros explainer on the differences between vouchers and education savings accounts. South Africa has seen a significant increase in the demand for outbound travel trade exhibitions. Says Chardonnay Marchesi, general manager of Africa Travel Week, Travel agents and tour operators are constantly under pressure to provide new and exciting destinations, hotels and experiences for their clients, and WTM Africa is the ideal platform to provide access to these. A collection of pictures taken from ibtm africa 2016 An exclusive 2016 study conducted by Grant Thornton in partnership with WTM Africa, concluded that there were upwards of five million outbound travellers from South Africa in 2015, inclusive of a 7,6% increase in air departures throughout the year. These travellers made trips to familiar destinations including USA, Australia, Britain, Germany and Indonesia amongst others. The Outbound Pavilion When estimating the outbound leisure market through travel agency and wholesale sales, the study uncovered that travellers using travel trade channels to book their trips totalled between 200,000 and 250,000. More insights and statistics on from this research is to be revealed at WTM Africa 2017 in a new session taking place in the Outbound Theatre on 20 April at 10.30am. To better assist in developing travel trade selling outbound destination to South Africans, WTM Africa is constantly adding international exhibitors and content to its portfolio for the exhibition, says Marchesi. Marchesi furthers that WTM Africa 2017 will see the introduction of an outbound pavilion that will allow international destinations a space to market to outbound travel trade in attendance. The pavilion will be sectioned into desktop setup areas for destinations that will allow exhibitors to host meetings with their contacts and do business. Outbound specialists that wish to take advantage of this exciting opportunity can contact Penny Snodgrass at az.oc.acirfaopxedeer@ssargdonS.ynneP. The Outbound Conference Theatre Furthermore, the Outbound Conference Theatre, new to WTM Africa, will offer a full programme for travel professionals to learn more about international and Pan-African destinations through interactive workshops. These destination workshops will both up skill and educate attendees on selling various destinations. The workshops will be hosted by individual destinations from around the globe who have a depth of knowledge on how to package the destination, its cities, activities and more. All sessions and information can be found on the Event Programme page. The world is slowly turning to data for decision making and with the amount of data generated in the technology era, data science has become a hot trend, increasing the demand for data scientists. Sergey Nivens via 123RF But what is data science? Is the field new? Does it only involve big data? How does it differ from statistics and analytics? These are frequent questions among businesses and consumers alike. According to New York University, one way to consider data science is the next step in fields like business analysis that incorporate computer science, modelling, statistics, analytics, and mathematics. Data science involves using automated methods to analyse large amounts of data and to understand its meaning. Data scientists, therefore, are largely responsible for gathering and managing an organisations data in a way that makes a difference and is meaningful to business decision makers. The rise of everything 'smart' Soon everything will become intelligent: we will not only have smartphones but also smart homes and cars, smart factories and smart cities. While most people can see how certain information would be useful and what sort of insights might be derived from it, most lack the technical skills to perform the analytics. They might not have the computers that are able to carry out the large volume of calculations quickly enough to take action. But more often they lack the analytical skills to tell the computer what to do. The need Thus, there is a strong need for professionals who understand data, who have experience working with major database platforms and have strong analytical, quantitative and problem-solving abilities. These individuals are able to assist organisations to make better decisions by directing actions based on quantifiable, data-driven trends, which in turn help in defining goals. They are also able to challenge staff to adopt best practices and focus on issues that matter, adding great value to the overall business. The struggle Data scientists with the right set of skills coding, statistics, machine learning, database management, visualisation techniques, and industry-specific knowledge are hard to find. This is mainly because many university students are studying subjects that do not support the need in business for science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) as well as future-oriented skills. Businesses are thus faced with a challenge in finding appropriately trained graduates with complex problem-solving skills, critical thinking, good judgement and decision-making, as well as cognitive flexibility that can address business needs. The opportunity As such, there is a real opportunity for undergraduates to reap rewards by studying subjects that teach computational thinking and focus on real-world applications of problem-solving, such as data science. Organisations also need to embark on programmes to address this skills shortage challenge. Tracker, which built its reputation as South Africas leading stolen vehicle recovery brand, is evolving to capitalise on the vast quantity of data that it collects on a daily basis, which currently exceeds 40 million packets of information per day in real time. Our real-time traffic feeds and traffic incidents are used daily by various partners to ensure our customers have the most convenient and safe journeys. We have also released a vast amount of machine learning algorithms into production over the past two years, including customer profiling, road anomaly detection and road conditions. Creating resources for the future For this we require the scarce resource of data scientists and we are therefore investing in a number of initiatives to ensure that we are part of creating these resources for the future. We are proud to be the first EMEA company to roll out a data science internship programme on the Microsoft Professional Programme in Data Sciences in 2017. The internship, which received over 150 applications, will enable four students to be exposed to real-world scenarios and assist the Tracker Business Intelligence resources on machine learning and research projects. We also sponsor five students from Sol Plaatjie University in Kimberley that are busy with degrees in data sciences and is part of the Big Data Careers initiative that was launched by the Square Kilometer Array in 2015. We hope that our initiatives encourage scholars to take an interest in STEM subjects and related IT fields. The Nelson Mandela Children's Hospital, which opened on 2 December 2016, is the culmination of years of effort by many people. Among them were four students of Vega School, a brand of the Independent Institute of Education (The IIE). Each of the group achieved a career pinnacle even before embarking on their first jobs. The logo of the hospital was designed in 2009 by then Vega third year visual communication, copywriting and multimedia design students Deeshana Chetty, Nkgabiseng Matou, Nichola McKay Davis, Vanja Lavadinovic, and Kagiso Magoba. The project arose out of Vegas annual Brand Challenge in which students are given the opportunity to tackle real-world briefs from external organisations as an experiential part of their studies. Their design was ultimately selected. It was based on the concept of Ubuntu, which includes the essential human virtues of compassion, humanity and care an echo of the qualities that children in need of medical attention most require. All the students have moved on with successful careers, but say the experience of playing a critical role in the design of the hospital will rank among their career highlights. No matter what they ultimately achieve, it was done for Madiba. Nichola Davis says: Its amazing to see the building finally up and to realise that we were part of Madibas dream. For all of us, it has been an exceptional experience having worked on a project and to finally see it realised. Even if the individual role of each one of us was relatively small, its part of something that has become incredibly meaningful. I gained a lot of real life experience through Vegas Brand Challenges. This one will always be more inspirational. Vega students were invited to the former presidents 99th birthday, shortly after winning the 2009 logo competition. Kagiso Magoba explains that it was the experience of a lifetime and the magnitude of their accomplishments only struck him when he rubbed shoulders with greatness. This hospital stands as a part of all of us who were involved. Its a monument to Madibas lifetime of achievement, something we were all honoured to have been a small part of. I dont believe Ive yet realised the full impact, however it has made me realise that there is no limit to what an individual can achieve given the chance, says Magoba. At Vega, and especially on this project, we learned a lot about each other, about different cultures and backgrounds. I am no longer hesitant to tackle any challenge, continues Davis. The design did not come easily or quickly, but was the product of researching different cultures and the dreams and aspirations of children. The Vega students took basic childrens drawings and doodlings from many school children and graphically conceptualised them. They simplified the concept into something which could turn the clinical structure of a hospital into a warm environment children could feel at home in. We all feel proud of our involvement. Personally, this has been the most momentous event of my life, says Deeshana Chetty. Its emotional, ultimately we helped Nelson Mandela reach his final dream. Its all a tribute to the great man. Vega teaches you to be conceptual, something which played a big role in this project. The Vega style of learning has taught me to become a thinker in my subsequent career. Its an invaluable trait to be able to take an intangible idea and convert it into a visual, tangible design. Great design comes from developing something which is not just pretty, but has a strong message, explains Chetty. Construction of the Nelson Mandela Childrens Hospital in Parktown, Johannesburg, began on 22 April 2014. The state-of-the-art hospital has a specialised paediatric facility that will provide the children of Southern Africa with quality medical services irrespective of their economic status. For more information, please visit or [[www.nelsonmandelachildrenshospital.org The Syria Campaign has leveraged the symbolism of clothes pegs to create a new campaign to increase public pressure on politicians looking to shift the EU and other key countries to a more pro-Assad position. The launch of the campaign follows on from a suspected chemical attack in the country on Tuesday, killing dozens in Idlib province. Borrowing the tone of a tech crowdfunding campaign, the satirical film pitches the Personal Embarrassment Guard (PEG) as a new wearable that blocks the awkward stench of war crimes. Flaunting PEGs nasal technology, the satirical product film rolls into a montage of the content faces of PEG-wearing diplomats, complete with upbeat, inspirational music, before abruptly cutting to real-life footage of the conflict in Syria. Targeting the Brussels Conference on supporting the future of Syria and the Region on 5 April, the campaign film was distributed to journalists covering the talks and be supported by a stunt in Brussels. Developed in-house by the independent advocacy organisation, the PEG campaign acts as a creative way of explaining the complicated diplomatic situation currently concerning Syria. London-based production company, Armoury, brought the concept to life and was responsible for directing and casting the film, and creatively directing the animation. Director Jack Laurance of Armoury comments: The project was immediately appealing to us for the level of creativity and humour being levelled at such a serious subject. Recreating the world of the PEG product and its well-trodden visual cues was a great exercise. These sorts of projects allow us to focus on a moral imperative, as opposed to a commercial one. However, approaching it creatively was the key and one that James Turner at The Syria Campaign led from the beginning. They were fantastic to work with. James Turner, communications director for the Syria Campaign, comments, "Armoury immediately understood what we were trying to do with the PEG concept and the collaboration was effortless. Jack and the team brought it to life so cleverly, and with such craft, that it felt like the idea had been two years in the making. The fact that it only took two weeks is almost making me pinch myself or perhaps peg myself. For more information, go to nosepeg.com. Credits FRANKFURT, Germany: French carmaker Peugeot pledged to uphold wage and job deals with workers after its planned takeover of Germany's Opel, according to a joint statement from the company, workers and government representatives. Peugeot chief executive Carlos Tavares "reaffirmed its commitment to respect the existing agreements" covering jobs, salaries and sites, at a Berlin meeting with German Economy Minister Brigitte Zypries, regional government leaders and workers. Opel workers secured a 'jobs guarantee' from current owners General Motors that runs until the end of 2018 and a pledge to continue investing in German sites until 2020, among other deals. Half of Opel's 35,600 employees and three of its 10 factories are in Germany, with the rest spread around five other European countries including Britain, where its cars are sold under the Vauxhall brand. Building on quality of relations PSA, which owns France's Peugeot, Citroen and DS manufacturers, will "build on the quality of relations with employee representatives as a key factor of success of the company," Tavares said in the statement, promising to uphold Opel's "long-term viability". Representatives from the Opel works council and powerful metalworkers' union IG Metall were more guarded, saying they were prepared to "engage in discussions on the future of Opel" once the takeover plans were in place. Repeated losses Founded in 1862, Opel, with its lightning bolt emblem, has long been a familiar sight on German and European roads.But in recent years the firm has booked repeated losses, costing Detroit-based GM around $15 billion (14 billion euros) since 2000. By integrating the German firm into PSA, CEO Tavares hopes to achieve big economies of scale in the group, which would become Europe's second-largest carmaker after Volkswagen. Workers fear that the boost to the combined group's bottom line will come at the cost of job losses and factory closures in future. Source: AFP SAN FRANCISCO - Facebook on Wednesday unleashed a new weapon in the war against "revenge porn" at the leading social network as well as the messaging services Messenger and Instagram. When intimate images shared on Facebook without permission are reported, confirmed and removed, the company will use photo-matching technology to prevent copies from being shared on its platform anew. "When this content, often referred to as 'revenge porn,' is reported to us, we can now prevent it from being shared on Facebook, Messenger and Instagram," the head of global safety Antigone Davis said in a blog post. "This is part of our ongoing effort to help build a safe community on and off Facebook." In most cases, Facebook disables accounts on which intimate images are shared without permission, according to Davis. Users trying to share pictures after they have been removed as revenge porn will see alerts explaining the images violate Facebook policy and that posting them has been prevented. "We look forward to building on these tools and working with other companies to explore how they could be used across the industry," Davis said. With the aim to better connect African customers with the airline and encourage them to become frequent fliers, fastjet has launched a new, strategic 'Taking you Places' campaign. The campaign will be implemented across fastjet's core markets in Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Zambia and South Africa, to reinforce the low-cost airline's commitment to providing affordable, convenient and accessible air travel for everyone in Africa. The core focus of Taking You Places is the fastjet customer, and the frequent or first-time flyer. Its purpose is to effectively deliver on the airlines mandate to make air travel more affordable and accessible for everyone while highlighting the airlines culture and route network. Driving brand affinity with existing and potential customers The new campaign encourages a more emotive approach in tandem with our value proposition. We expect this to drive brand affinity with existing and potential customers, says Nico Bezuidenhout, CEO at fastjet. fastjet makes it more affordable for traders to take their business to the next level, to connect people with loved ones, and to make dream holidays a reality. Gendel Strategic Marketing Group (Gendel), recently appointed as fastjets creative agency, will execute the Taking You Places campaign. Gendel will also introduce fastjets new tagline from 'Smart Travel' to an airline 'For Everyone', which reflects its market position as a low-cost airline for the network and communities that it serves. The campaign will enrich the innovative and ambitious spirit of the fastjet brand, says Samantha Jones, director at Gendel. Our extensive experience and successes within the travel, tourism and commercial aviation industry on the continent position us well to collaborate with fastjet and help grow the brand. Making an impact on African aviation fastjets route network includes Tanzanian domestic routes from its Dar es Salaam base to Kilimanjaro, Mbeya, and Mwanza, and international routes from Tanzania to Lusaka in Zambia and Harare in Zimbabwe. It also flies domestically from Harare to Victoria Falls, and internationally from Harare to Johannesburg in South Africa. fastjet has positively impacted aviation on the African continent by making air travel more accessible and providing reliable, on-time and affordable flights. Since launching in November 2012, we have flown over 2.5 million passengers, many who were first-time flyers and may not have previously had access to affordable air travel, says Bezuidenhout. Africa offers a significant growth opportunity for exhibition organisers: one that has already been spotted by international exhibition players, with over 50% of the events in South Africa, 60% in Nigeria and over 70% in Kenya already run by international companies. Sergey Kohl via 123RF Despite the challenges facing sub-Saharan Africa, these economies have been attracting international investment interest, said Carol Weaving, chairperson of the Association of African Exhibition Organisers (AAXO) and MD of Thebe Reed Exhibitions in South Africa. The exhibition industry has seen significant growth over the past 10 years with many International organisers setting their sights on African exhibition industry as a new frontier for growth. Weaving was speaking at the presentation of the Grant Thornton Report on the Economic Impact of the Exhibition Industry in Gauteng, South Africa. She said that South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya are all markets at the early stages of development that are ready for the picking. Nigeria, in particular, has considerable potential for growth. While Nigeria is risky, the investment will come from South African exhibition organisers, and it is already an attractive market for international exhibition organising companies. What is constraining this market and the other two, is a lack of venues. South Africa has six venues offering 120 000m; in Nigeria, three totalling 40 000m; and in Kenya, only two offering a total of 10 000m. This lack of venues is a key barrier to growth and without scale the risk to enter these markets is too great, Weaving added. The importance of exhibitions and their contribution to a country cannot be underestimated. That is why, AAXO urges the African convention bureaus and governments to work with them to find a solution to the venue capacity crisis on the continent. The association can work with the convention bureaus and department of tourisms to build an exhibition community which will have a phenomenal economic impact on their respective countries. The importance of exhibitions and their contribution to a country cannot be underestimated, she says. The Grant Thornton Report on the Economic Impact of the Exhibition Industry in South Africa, found that exhibitions add R66.5 billion to the countrys GDP, contributing R3 billion to national taxes and 135 100 sustainable/created jobs. In 2015 of the five million visitors to exhibitions in South Africa, tourists accounted for one million. The industry contributed R23 billion to the tourism sector and sustained 47 000 jobs. The direct impact to the tourism sector is R7.6 billion. The exhibition industrys impact on tourism is huge, says Weaving. That is why we have to ensure that business understands the importance of exhibitions. We are a full-service Market Research Agency and now part of SA's leading Management Consulting firm IQbusiness. We use technology and a deep understanding of human motivations to uncover powerful insights to help our customers to grow. Corrected One of President Barack Obamas pet education initiatives was Computer Science for All : Obama proposed $4 billion to help states develop their computer science programs, arguing that working with technology is an essential skill. [5/1/2017: This post was corrected to clarify that, while President Obama proposed devoting $4 billion to computer science programs, the funds were not actually dedicated.] But with funds for federal education programs in question, future leadership in computer science education will likely come from states. And right now, there are major differences in how states have approached strategy, standards, and other state-level computer science education initiatives. For instance, seven states now have standards for computer science education and 22 have teacher licensure standards for the subject. Those arent the same states as those that require high schools to offer computer science, or those that have created a state computer science position. Thats according to a new report from the Massachusetts Computing Attainment Network, or MassCAN, an initiative of the Education Development Center, and a number of partner organizations . It takes stock of the current state of computer science education-related policies in states across the country and recommends that states create plans for increasing access to this fast-growing field. Jim Stanton, a senior project director at EDC and the executive director of MassCAN, said that the report comes after a few years in which many states have created new policies or laws related to computer science education. The goal is to help develop and share best practices for computer science education among states. It seems clear that the federal government will be playing less of a role driving computer science education now, so its really going to be up to the states, Stanton said. The report argues that computer science is quickly becoming an essential subject and that states need to create plans for education in the subject. It also encourages states to focus on diversity and equity by ensuring that students from all racial and socioeconomic groups and genders have access to computer science. Stanton said that educators basically have to build the plane while flying it, as computer science has a much shorter history and is less established as a discipline in schools than other subjects. But, he said, theres been such an extraordinary transformation in our world and economy just over the past 15 years. Tech is ubiquitous. As an education community, we havent grasped how quickly things are moving and how essential these skills will be. He said students need to understand computer science to engage in civic discourse about issues like data and privacy. The report surveys whether states have: A plan for K-12 computer science Initiatives to address diversity in computer science Adoption of K-12 computer science standards State-level funding for K-12 computer science education State computer science teacher certification State-approved preservice teacher-preparation programs A dedicated state-level computer science position A requirement for all high schools to offer computer science A system in which computer science can satisfy a high school graduation requirement A system in which computer science can satisfy an admissions requirement for postsecondary institutes. It notes Arkansas, Massachusetts, Utah, and Washington as having more of these pieces in place than other states. Individual cities or districts in places like Broward County, Fla.; San Francisco, and New York have also focused on the subject. Earlier this week, the nonprofit Code.org released findings that showed that the number of students earning bachelors degrees in computer science is rising . Photo: Jim Stanton talks about computer science education at a conference this week. Source: Burt Granofsky/EDC Related stories: Subscribe to daily business and company news across 19 industries SUBSCRIBE Virginia high school senior Gavin Grimm is now known nationwide as the plaintiff in a case over transgender student rights that made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Grimm, who transitioned from female-to-male his freshman year, sued the Gloucester County district after it created a policy that limited bathroom access by biological sex. That case, which the Supreme Court sent back to a lower court earlier this year, wont be decided until after Grimm graduates. But hes embraced his new public role as an advocate, he told lawmakers at a congressional hearing Thursday. I stand not only with my family and friends but with millions of supporters who stand with me, Grimm said at a panel on civil rights in the Trump era held by congressional Democrats. My case will not be resolved until after I graduate, but this case is bigger than me. Recently, the Trump administration rescinded Obama-era guidance on transgender students , which put schools on notice that they would be found in violation of Title IX if they dont allow transgender students to use the restrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity. Conservative groups and a host of states had pushed back against that guidance, calling it a threat to student privacy and federal overreach. The Trump administration did not assert a new interpretation of Title IX, saying instead that it would leave interpretation of the federal law to states and districts. The move was a frequent topic of discussion among panel participants Thursday. While Trump has billed himself as supportive of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans, actions speak louder than words, Grimm said, referring to the decision to withdraw guidance. You can watch the whole panel discussion below. Related reading on transgender students: Follow @evieblad on Twitter or subscribe to Rules for Engagement to get blog posts delivered directly to your inbox. [Updated: Monday, April 10, 1:20 p.m.] Neil M. Gorsuch was sworn in Monday as the 113th justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, promising to be a faithful servant to the Constitution and laws of this great nation. Gorsuch, 49, took his constitutional oath from Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. in a small private ceremony at the court, then the judicial oath from Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, for whom he had served as a law clerk, in a ceremony in the Rose Garden at the White House. President Donald Trump spoke first, saying, Ive always heard that the most important thing that a president of the United States does is appoint people, hopefully great people like this appointment, to the United States Supreme Court, and I can say this is a great honor. And I got it done in the first 100 days. You think thats easy? Gorsuch said, To the American people, I am humbled by the trust placed in me today. I will never forget that to whom much is given, much will be expected. Besides Roberts and Kennedy, all other members of the current court were present at the Rose Garden ceremony, as was Gorsuch family members including his wife, Louise, and daughters, Emma and Belinda. Maureen Scalia, the widow of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, was also present. The Senate on Friday confirmed Gorsuch to the high court, one day after a bitter battle in which Republicans changed the rules of their chamber to end filibusters for high court nominees. Gorsuch is joining the court in time to participate in April arguments that include a case with potentially major implications for religion and education. The new justice also could cast potentially deciding votes in education issues expected to come to the court in the near future, including on the rights of public-employee unions and transgender students. The Senate voted 54 to 45 to approve Gorsuch, who has served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, in Denver, for the last 11 years. He is President Donald Trumps nominee to succeed the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who died Feb. 13, 2016, and whose seat has been vacant amid the refusal last year by Republicans to consider President Barack Obamas nominee, Judge Merrick B. Garland. (Three Democrats joined 51 Republicans in voting aye"Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Manchin of West Virginia.) During his confirmation hearing last month and in floor debate this week , Democrats criticized Gorsuch as having a record that was insensitive to the powerless, including students with disabilities. They attacked him for a 2008 appeals court decision he wrote that went against a student with autism because the boys school district had provided a special education that met a standard that was merely more than de minimis. The Supreme Court issued a decision on March 20 , during Gorsuchs confirmation hearing, in another special education case that expressly rejected the standard that the nominee had embraced, giving Democrats more fodder against him. Republicans defended the 2008 decision, saying Gorsuch was following 10th Circuit precedent. Aside from that battle, and a skirmish over whether Gorsuch fully embraced the result of the Supreme Courts landmark 1954 decision against race segregation in the schools, in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kan. , the hearings revealed relatively little about Gorsuchs views on legal issues in education. But Gorsuch will soon have an opportunity to express his views in a case being watched closely by educators. In Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer (Case No. 15-577), the justices will hear the appeal of a Lutheran church and preschool in Missouri that was denied a grant from a state program to use recycled tires to build safer playgrounds. State officials cited the Missouri constitutions prohibition against providing any money, directly or indirectly, in aid of any church, sect, or denomination of religion. Similar language is present in the constitutions of some three dozen states, and if the court decides this case broadly, such as by ruling that these amendments interfere with First Amendment free-exercise-of-religion rights of churches and religious groups, that would have major implications for state private school voucher and other programs. The court granted review of the Trinity Lutheran case in January 2016, when Scalia was still alive. The court repeatedly put off oral arguments in the case until scheduling it during the last argument session of its term. There is widespread speculation that the eight current justices believe, based on their preliminary discussions when they granted the case, that they are equally divided and were awaiting a ninth member. Gorsuch is now expected to be on the Supreme Court bench when the court takes up that case on April 19. Soon after the confirmation vote, the Supreme Court announced that Gorsuch would be administered his constitutional oath privately at the court on Monday, and his judicial oath at a White House ceremony later that day. A formal investiture ceremony will be held at the court at a later date. PHOTO: President Donald Trump watches as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy administers the judicial oath to Judge Neil Gorsuch in the Rose Garden of the White House on April 10. Holding the Bible is Gorsuchs wife, Marie Louise Gorsuch. Photo by Evan Vucci/AP The U.S. Senate on Thursday made a historic change in its rules to require a simple majority vote for Supreme Court nominations, setting up a vote on Friday when Neil M. Gorsuch will almost certainly be confirmed to succeed the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Republicans failed to secure the necessary 60 votes to end debate on the Gorsuch nominationthat vote was 55 for, 45 againstand quickly moved to invoke the nuclear option, a rules change allowing the majority vote. That change passed 52 to 48 along party lines. The dramatic procedural maneuvering led to the beginning of a final 30 hours of debate on President Donald Trumps Supreme Court nominee, which would put a final confirmation vote on Gorsuch at about 7 p.m. Friday. [UPDATE Friday 9 a.m.: Senate leaders have decided to move up the vote to about 11:45 a.m. on Friday.] This will be the first and last partisan filibuster of the Supreme Court, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said on the Senate floor before the cloture vote seeking to end debate. The minority leader, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said, In 20 or 30 or 40 years, we will sadly point to today as a turning point in the history of the Senate and the Supreme Court, a day when we irrevocably moved further away from the principles our founders intended for these institutions: principles of bipartisanship, moderation and consensus. Luke P. Case Cited During two days of floor debate leading up to Thursdays showdown, Senate Democrats repeatedly highlighted the two key education matters that emerged from Gorsuchs confirmation hearing: his actions in a special education case and his perceived reluctance to declare that the Supreme Courts landmark 1954 desegregation decision was correctly decided. Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state, the ranking Democrat on the Senate education committee, said on the floor Tuesday that she was deeply concerned about the potential effect [of Gorsuch] on children and students with disabilities. In a number of cases, Judge Gorsuch ruled in ways that made it more difficult for them to receive the support and services they not only deserve but are entitled to under the Individuals With Disabilities Education Actour nations special education law, Murray said. It is notable that while Judge Gorsuch was testifyingactually, while he was testifying before the Judiciary Committee two weeks agothe Supreme Court unanimously rejected his prior ruling in a case involving the rights of a student with disabilities to receive a meaningful education. That was a reference to a 2008 opinion by Gorsuch for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, in Denver, that under the IDEA schools must provide a merely more than de minimis education program to students with a disability. In that decision, Thompson R2-J School District v. Luke P. , Gorsuch had added the word merely to the phrase more than de minimis, which had come from other cases. In its March 22 decision in Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District , the Supreme Court rejected the standard Gorsuch had formulated in the Luke P. case, ruling unanimously that the IDEA requires a higher standard. The Democrats on the Judiciary Committee questioned Gorsuch about his earlier ruling within hours of the Supreme Court ruling. It wasnt one or two Justices rejecting Gorsuchs writing, his interpretation of the lawbasically, his decision to ignore the law, which is what he did in his decision, said Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., during his more than 15 hours on the Senate floor speaking against the nomination on Tuesday and Wednesday. They ruled 8 to 0. They basically kicked that decision clear out of the field of common sense or a rational interpretation of what the IDEA Act says. Gorsuchs Answers on Brown Some Democrats also criticized Gorsuch over exchanges during his hearing about the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kan. Only after considerable prodding did Judge Gorsuch eventually agree that the decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which did away with the doctrine of separate but equal and desegregated schools across our nation, was correct, said Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass. Having to pry out of Judge Gorsuch that concession does not inspire confidence in him. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., cited an article Gorsuch had written criticizing liberals for being addicted to the courtroom for their policy goals, including in education. I wonder what Oliver Brown, plaintiff in the seminal case of Brown v. Board of Education would say to Judge Gorsuch? Booker said. Was he addicted to the courtroom to advance his social agenda? Or was the courtroom his avenue to justice against profound oppression? Republicans had not yet defended Gorsuch on the special education issue on the Senate floor, as they had in the Judiciary Committee . But Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who led the Gorsuch hearing as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, took to Gorsuchs defense on the Brown issue. My colleagues said that the judge should have announced that he agreed with the ruling in Brown v. Board of Education but didnt offer enough information about this opinion in an appropriate discussion of precedent, Grassley said on the floor. I will quote our nominee. He said this: Senator, Brown v. Board of Education corrected an erroneous decision, a badly erroneous decision, and vindicated a dissent by the first Justice Harlan in Plessy v. Ferguson, where he correctly identified that separate to advantage one race can never be equal. ... So the judge spoke about precedent very appropriately. He answered our questions in a manner consistent with his obligations and with past nominees. PHOTO: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., signals a thumbs-up as he leaves the Senate chamber on April 6, after he led the GOP majority to change Senate rules and lower the vote threshold for Supreme Court nominees from 60 votes to a simple majority in order to advance Neil Gorsuch to a confirmation vote. J. Scott Applewhite/AP If a low-income black student has just one black teacher in elementary school, that student is significantly more likely to graduate high school and consider attending college, a new John Hopkins University study has found. A low-income black students probability of dropping out of school is reduced by 29 percent if he or she has one black teacher in 3rd, 4th, or 5th grades. That student is also 18 percent more likely to express interest in college after graduating. There was an even stronger effect for black boys from persistently low-income homes: Their probability of dropping out of school is reduced by 39 percent if they have one black teacher, and they are 29 percent more likely to consider college. These results come from a longitudinal study that tracked 100,000 black students who entered 3rd grade in North Carolina public schools between 2001 and 2005 all the way up through 12th grade. Researchers later replicated their findings in Tennessee, by looking at black students who entered kindergarten in the late 1980s through a class-size-reduction program. Those students who had at least one black teacher in kindergarten through 3rd grades were 15 percent less likely to drop out, and 10 percent more likely to take a college entrance exam. The paper was published by the Institute of Labor Economics in March. Co-author Nicholas Papageorge, an assistant economics professor at JHUs Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, told Education Week Teacher that while he wasnt sure why there was a link between teachers race and positive outcomes for black students, he had some ideas. First, it could be that some of the black teachers in the study were just better teachers. Another option is that this is an example of the role-model effect. We think that students, especially poor black boys, might not identify with higher levels of education; they might not see people with high levels of education that look like them, he said. If thats the case, they might not be making investments in their own education ... because they just [dont] identify with being an educated professional. Another possibility is that black teachers, Papageorge said, tend to have higher expectations of future educational attainment for black students than white teachers do. Those high expectations matter, he said, pointing to a study he published last year , which found that compared to black teachers, white teachers are 40 percent less likely to expect that their black students will graduate high school. Only 7 percent of public school teachers are black. Research has found that black teachers are less likely to suspend, expel, or give detention to black students, who are disproportionately given exclusionary discipline. Other notes from the study: Papageorge said the researchers couldnt detect if the gender of the black teacher had an impact. Only 2 percent of teachers are black men , so the sample size simply wasnt large enough. Also, when the researchers looked at the full sample of black students, of all income levels, they didnt see the same effect. Thats partly because in general, black girls drop out of high school much less frequently than their male counterparts, Papageorge said, although having a black teacher did make black girls more likely to be interested in college. Also, importantly, there wasnt a significantly higher effect when a black student had more than one black teacher during elementary school. I found that to be encouraging, because suppose we found that you really need three black teachers over the years to make any difference at all, Papageorge said. It would just make the policy more difficult to implement [through increased recruitment of black teachers]. That will take some time . Now, we can start implementing policies tomorrow, he said, adding that school administrators can be more thoughtful when assigning students to teachers. We want to make sure that every black student has classroom time with a black teacher because of this effect, he said. Chart via John Hopkins More on Black Teachers: This was a follow-up meeting to the Mai Ja Yang conference, said CT member Sunny ahead of the talks. We are here to lay the groundwork for future negotiations. We will be discussing security and defence issues, the political dialogue framework, and the points of the Panglong Paper. The so-called Panglong Paper was a set of principles agreed between ethnic groups at the Mai Jar Yang meeting in Kachin State in July 2016. In addition to matters of security and defence, the documents record agreements on federalism and the Myanmar peace process. Sunny told Mizzima that the results of this two-day meeting will be further discussed at an ethnic armed group conference on 89 April, when both NCA signatories and non-signatory groups will come together. The people in Chaungzon have less interest in politics and didnt cast their vote [in the by-election]. Moreover, most of the Mon ethnics didnt go to the polling station. The [Mon] voters lost interest in the by-election because the two Mon political parties competed for [the election in the same constituency], said Nai Sein Tun, a Secretary Committee Member of the Chaungzon AMDP. Vote counts and voters in Chaungzone Township The low voter turnout is attributed to the dissatisfaction with actions by the new National League for Democracy (NLD)-led government and the limited knowledge of politics by Chaungzon Township residents. When the National League for Democracy competed in the [2015] election, they promised they would introduce genuine changes, but the NLD hasnt met the needs of the civilians and even denied the voices of the locals in the naming issue of the Than Lwin (Chaungzon) Bridge. So the civilians have lost their trust in the [new] government and politics, continued Nai Sein Tun. The April 1 by-election was held in 19 constituencies throughout Burma, including a vacant parliamentary seat in Mon State. Five political parties the NLD, the AMDP, the National Unity Party (NUP), the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), and the Mon National Party (MNP) had competed in the by-election. Nai Aung Kyi Thein of the USDP won the by-election in Chaungzon Township with 19,667 votes. U Aye Win of the NLD, Nai Win Htut of the AMDP, U Tin Wai of the NUP, and Nai Sein Mya Maung of the MNP, received 12,636, 10,859, 2,813, and 1,992 votes respectively. Chaungzon Township has 78 villages and its population is approximately 200,000. There are about 20 ethnically Mon villages and several Karen villages, while the remaining villages are dominated by ethnic Burmans. This article firstly appears on Human Rights Foundation of Monland (HURFOM) Reported by: HURFOM Based on a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Myanmar (Burma) government and Kasikorn Bank, the bank will train businesspeople on a variety of industry practices and help them to get access to small business loans. The program, which will eventually include several large cities, is being launched in Mon States Mawlamyine and Tanintharyi Regions Myeik, according to the SME Development Departments Deputy Director, Daw Aye Aye Win. Myanmar and Thailand are neighbors, and border trade between our two countries is really key, so were first implementing the MoU in two border cities, Mawlamyine and Myeik. Were going to begin working with SMEs in Mawlamyine this coming May, she said. At a signing ceremony held on March 30 at the Emerald Palace Hotel in Myanmars capital Nay Pyi Taw, Daw Aye Aye Win told reporters that SMEs need support to help them become competitive in international markets. She said that the K Bank training would teach businesses about business structure, accounting techniques, taxes, marketing, human resources, finance, and how to establish credit. The SMEs in this country have few assets and generally have trouble offering collateral when pursuing loans. In many cases they also do not systematically document their business plans, which also makes it hard to access credit. So our aim in signing this MoU is to build the SMEs capacity, said the Deputy Director. She added that SMEs need the opportunity to build the economic foundations for their success, which will allow them to promote themselves and improve their production techniques and the quality of their products. Nai Hu, a salt producer and an executive at a salt-producers trade group, appreciates the need for the program. Without access to credit we cannot effectively manage our prices. As it stands, we are forced to take whatever price a buyer offers because we need the cash. If we had better access to loans we would be able to sell when the price is good, which would benefit us and the bank, he said. The Ministry of Industry already subsidizes loans to SMEs through the Small and Medium Industrial Development Bank. But Nai Hu, says he does not use that banks services because of onerous documentation that it requires. To apply, he would have to show his companys registration documents from a variety of government entities, his tax receipts for the last three years and a deed for his business. Under the previous U Thein Sein government we were told that, if we had all the appropriate documents, we could borrow at any bank that has a relationship with the government. But when we tried, they never lent us money, he said. So even as the leader of the salt industry group, Nai Hu did not apply for loans from the SMID bank, and he says that few other Mon State salt producers did either. Nonetheless, he says that a salt business generally needs 200-500 lakhs ($14,700-$36,800) of credit every year to operate. Salt production is a major industry in Mon State, with more than 70 companies and over 3,000 acres producing 31,536 metric tons of salt last year, accounting for 20% of Myanmars salt production. Myanmars SMEs are regulated under the 2015 Small and Medium Enterprise Development Law which classifies them by investment capital, workforce and cash flow. However compliance with the law is far from universal. SMEs in Mon State generally do not comply with the SME law, so we need to work to get them compliant, said Dr. Aung Naing Oo, Deputy Speaker of the Mon State Hluttaw (parliament). The business environment in Mon State is characterized by a large number of small and medium businesses, with most people employed in agriculture, rubber and salt production, and fisheries. Many of the states businesses are also oriented towards Thailand, just across the border. Q: Among the projects you have carried out so far, what has been the most successful? A: [Projects improving] road and communication access were successfully implemented. Q: What about unsuccessful projects? A: There havent been any unsuccessful activities. There may be some weaknesses. And for issues that require some time to address, people may think we have been unsuccessful, but we just need more time to achieve success. Q: Can you give an example of the kinds of tasks that will require more time? A: Peace is one example. Time is necessary in order to work toward peace. There are [peace-related] issues that cant be rushed. The appropriate meetings and discussions have to be held in our state in order to work for peace. We have submitted such plans to our superiors. Peace is mainly the responsibility of the Union-level government. Q: How do you cooperate with Nay Pyi Daw? A: The Union [government] has set down guidelines for the implementation of peace in order for us to work in line with their procedures. We submit reports about what work we have carried out to advance peace with ethnic armed organizations. There has been good cooperation between the Union-level and the state-level [governments] on many things, for example, budget issues. Q: Can you detail some projects that will be implemented next year? A: We will continue to work on improving the roads and communication, as well as the water supply and electricity [sectors] adding more momentum next year. Our state really needs a better supply of water and electricity, and better roads. I am doing the best I can to develop [these area[s] with the budget allocated by the Union [government]. Q: Whats going on with the planned border trade zone? A: We signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on March 9 designating Mae Hong, Thailand and Loikaw, Kayah State as sister cities. This is a big success achieve under our new governments first year. Im satisfied with it. We are preparing to discuss bilateral rules and regulations, as well as [implementation] procedures in greater detail. Q: What does Kayah State need the most? A: While we have opened a border trade zone in Kayah State, we cannot yet export goods from our state. We dont have factories or industries. We opened the trade zone with the hope that these will exist one day. [So far] in implementing the sister cities agreement, we are focusing on the hotel and tourism industry. We signed this MOU to help instill momentum into the hotel and tourism sectors. Q: What were the major challenges you faced over the first year? A: Challenges are everywhere. Nothing is finished. Out administration faces challenges in enforcing the rule of law and fighting corruption. I have given clear instructions to [the states] civil servants to avoid corruption. They are being supervised and effectively scrutinized. We need to change the way the government staff think in order to successfully carry out rule of law and anti-corruption efforts. Similarly, the public also needs to change the way they think. For example, they need to prevent corruption by not giving bribes. I expect [the anti-corruption efforts] will be more successful if the public can effectively report corruption and cooperate with us. Q: Does this mean combatting corruption is a major agenda for your government? A: Stopping corruption is one of the tasks we must carry out because we can only have a good government after we eradicate corruption. We are striving to fight corruption and we must continue to be even stricter in the future. Currently, the administration is taking a middle path. We cannot be strict in some places yet. Q: When new administration took office last year, you said in an interview that you would make peace your first priority. What have you done to achieve this goal so far? A: I have focused my attention on peace. There are seven ethnic armed organizations [operating in Kayah State]. Six of them have signed the ceasefire. We are still negotiating with the Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP). I have met with these ethnic armed groups seven times. Each time that I met with them to discuss peace, I said, You told me that you want peace. The public wants peace. I also want peace. So, what can we do? We need genuine cooperation in order to achieve peace. We told them [the ethnic armed organizations] that we will all have to make sacrifices. We can only succeed if we are willing to make those sacrifices. If we truly want peace and want want our future generations to enjoy the benefits peace, [the ethnic armed organizations] will need to be open-minded and cooperate with us This is the message we have given to them. They accept it. I believe they are cooperating with us. Any peace organization or ethnic armed organization can meet with me any day. We have welcomed them. I believe we have been able to get to this stage without any gunfire because we have made sure that cooperation is the foundation for peace. Q: What is the prognosis for the KNPP? A: I believe we have established a successful working relationship between the KNPP and our government because we are working together for peace. They want peace. We also want peace. The public wants peace. We share the same view. Thats why I believe cooperation with the state-level is 100 percent successful. Detailed discussion will have to take place at the 21st-Century Panglong Conference. Q: What advice do you have for the KNPP? A: I want to urge them to implement peace as soon as possible. Please implement peace as that is the truly desire of the public. Q: What message do you want to give to the people of Kayah State? A: The government alone cannot secure the peace and development of our state. I want to urge them to participate wholeheartedly in any way they can. Translated by Thida Linn Edited by Laignee Barron **This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Freida Pinto Turns Her Movie's London Premiere Into A Runway With Temperley London Bollywood Wardrobe Kaustubha Freida Pinto is all set to give us major fashion goals. The girl's wardrobe is overwhelmed with international labels. Freida has been busy promoting her upcoming movie Guerrilla and recently she attended the said movie's premiere in London. She picked Temperley London for this public appearance. And we think it was a chic choice. The outfit comes with a lot of detailings. Ruffled crew neckline with a bow neck tie is quite elegant. The front of the dress is detailed out with floral pattern and it spreads out in a skirt. The dress is paired with rather interesting overcoat with shoulder designs. It's a difficult to work with but Freida pulled it off. She paired it with a pointy toes and a boxy clutch. Wearing her hair in a low ponytail worked out quite well for her. PR Newswire PHILADELPHIA, April 6, 2017 PHILADELPHIA, April 6, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Clean Air Council today announced the 36th annual Run for Clean Air will be held on April 9, 2017, from 7:30 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. This year's event will begin at Paine's Park on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive next to the Philadelphia Art Museum. More than 2,500 runners are expected to join in this year's certified-green Run for Clean Air, sponsored by Toyota Hybrids. The event is the region's largest Earth Day celebration and one of its longest-running charity races. This year's event features four races the PHLY 10K, 5K Run, 3K Walk and Kids' Fun Run. Additional details can be found at runforcleanair.com. "We're so excited to bring more than 2,500 participants together to celebrate Earth Day and broaden our community committed to protecting everyone's right to breathe clean air," said Joseph Otis Minott, Esq., Clean Air Council's Executive Director. "This year, we're especially eager to use this wonderful event to let people know about important work we've been doing around reducing methane and natural gas emissions in Pennsylvania and nationwide. We're grateful to Toyota Hybrids and our sponsors for their pivotal role in making the Run for Clean Air one of the most successful charitable events in the Philadelphia region. We've got something for runners of all ages and abilities, and there's still time to sign up and run for a great cause!" The PHLY 10K run, sponsored by Philadelphia Insurance Companies, is one of the few organized 10K runs in the region, and runners often use it to train for the Broad Street Run or longer races. It begins at 7:30 a.m. The 5K Run starts soon after at 7:45 a.m. and includes an optional yoga stretch at 7:00 a.m. specifically designed for runners to warm up in the best way possible. The 3K Walk, now in its fifth year, gives everyone in the community the chance to get active and support Clean Air Council's mission to protect clean, breathable air. The Kids' Fun Run opens up the event to the entire family. Children five and under can participate in a 250-yard dash and children ages six to 12 can sign up for a half-mile fun run. Participating kids receive a Kids' Run shirt, a ribbon and a bag of eco-friendly goodies. All three race routes trace the banks of the Schuylkill River along the scenic Martin Luther King Drive, complete with mile markers with clean air facts provided by Peco. "Toyota and the Tri-State Toyota Dealers are very proud to be the Presenting Sponsor, a 3rd year in a row, for the 36th annual Run for Clean Air. With Toyota's ongoing commitment to the development of vehicles that help reduce carbon emissions in addition to being at the forefront of alternative fuel leadership, we are thrilled to once again support the Clean Air Council and this year's Run for Clean Air," said Paul Muller, President of the Tri-State Toyota Dealers Association. "Toyota is committed to helping play a role in delivering cleaner air and environmental sustainability to our customers and leading the world toward a more sustainable future. With a portfolio of eight Toyota hybrid models and one Toyota hydrogen fuel-cell model, we are the leader in green vehicles and have selection of hybrid sedans and SUV models to fit our customers' diversified needs, including the newest edition to our hybrid line-up, the Prius Prime, which will be onsite for runners to come take a seat and check out in this year's Toyota Hybrid display at the post-run Earth Day Celebration at the base of the iconic Art Museum steps." Run for Clean Air Through the Years and Today More than 50,000 runners have participated in the event since it began in 1981 as a small race in Wissahickon with just over a hundred participants. Today, the event champions breathable air and healthy, engaged communities as one of the region's largest Earth Day celebrations. Clean Air Council is committed to making each year's Run for Clean Air a certified green run by AFitPlanet. This year, the Council is pushing the limits of the event's sustainability with t-shirts printed with sustainable inks, recyclable run bibs, paperless on-site registration, picture frame medals, free bike valet and powering the event with portable solar panels. About the Run for Clean Air Sponsors The Run for Clean Air is made possible by the generous support of the following organizations: The Clean Air Council is grateful for the ongoing commitment of these community-minded companies. About Clean Air Council Clean Air Council is a member- supported, non-profit environmental organization dedicated to protecting everyone's right to breathe clean air. For more information about Clean Air Council, visit www.cleanair.org. Contact:Katie [email protected], ext. 102 To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/clean-air-council-to-host-36th-annual-run-for-clean-air-on-sunday-april-9-presented-by-toyota-hybrids-300436407.html SOURCE Clean Air Council Are Programmers Liable If Hackers Misuse Software? In 2012, Taylor Huddleston created what is known as a remote management tool, a piece of software that allows users to remotely log keystrokes, download stored passwords, turn on the web cam, access files, and watch a computer screen in real time. Designed, he says, to help low-income users who couldn't afford more expensive remote-access programs monitor online activity for safety reasons, NanoCore was going to be Huddleston's ticket out of a trailer he lived in on his mother's property and into a real house. And it worked -- Huddlestone sold NanoCore and another piece of software called Net Seal and was able to buy a $60,000 home. But FBI agents and police raided that home last December, and are now charging Huddlestone with conspiracy and aiding and abetting computer intrusions, for all the times hackers used NanoCore to commit crimes. Illegal IT So should Huddlestone be criminally liable if he didn't intend his software to be used for hacking? His attorney, Travis Morrissey, likens the case to firearms manufacturers: "Everybody seems to acknowledge that this software product had a legitimate purpose," he told the Daily Beast. "It's like saying that if someone buys a handgun and uses it to rob a liquor store, that the handgun manufacturer is complicit." Thus far, courts haven't held firearms makers liable for criminal acts committed with their products, but computer crimes laws are written a bit differently. One factor might be where Huddlestone chose to market his software: HackForums.net. As the Daily Beast points out: It would soon become clear that it was a terrible place to launch a legitimate remote administration tool. There aren't a lot of corporate procurement officers on HackForums. Instead, many of Huddleston's new customers had purely illicit uses for a slick remote access tool. Illegal Intent? Huddlestone quickly found out what his buyers were using the software tool for, and, to his credit, attempted to curb illegal activity using NanoCore: In short order, Huddleston found himself routinely admonishing people not to use his software for crime. "NanoCore does not permit illegal use," he wrote in one post. In another, "NanoCore is NOT malware. It is intended to be used legitimately and I don't want to see words like 'slave' and 'infect.'" Huddleston backed his words with action. Whenever he saw evidence that a particular buyer was using the product to hack, he'd log in to Net Seal and disable that user's copy, cutting the hacker off from his infected slaves. But these efforts may not be enough. By then the cat was out of the bag and hackers were trading in copies of NanoCore that bypassed Huddlestone's disabling efforts. Now, he's looking at jail time for making a product he thought would help people. Related Resources: PR Newswire MAZATLAN, Mexico, April 7, 2017 MAZATLAN, Mexico, April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire-iReach/ -- When travelers discover the magic and beauty of the city of Mazatlan for the first time with companies like El Cid Vacations Club, they quickly learn that it has a lot to offer. The city is dynamic and enchanting, and it is a perfect beachside locale for family vacations or a couples getaway. This destination comes alive year-round with spectacular arts attractions like shows, arts festivals, concerts, and museums. Mazatlan is truly a fantastic destination for vacations, but what many individuals are quickly discovering is that it is also an ideal place to call home. Right now, travel to Mazatlan is growing in popularity. Mexico in general is currently a great choice for vacations because the weak peso makes it a fit for even modest travel budgets. Additionally, it is becoming easier than ever to travel to Mazatlan. These advantages are making many individuals seek Mazatlan for vacations, but the same contributing factors also make Mazatlan an ideal place to find in real estate investments, whether individuals are looking for a vacation property, a home to enjoy after retirement, or a beachside destination to relocate to permanently. One of the most compelling reasons to invest in Mazatlan properties is the current standing of Mexico's currency. The weak peso has the same appeal to investors as it does to vacationers, namely that those coming from the Unites States or other destinations can see their money go further in a city like Mazatlan. Those selling property in Mazatlan are also increasingly accepting United States currency for their properties. However, the weak peso is not going to last. There has been an influx in business and tourism in the country, and many markets in Mexico are starting to recover, so now is the time to buy. Mazatlan itself is showing much progress, with estimates that an economic boom is on the horizon for the city. Mazatlan is already gaining popularity and many of its once run-down buildings and city streets are now being rebuilt and made over making the city shine and cementing it as an extraordinary place to call home, either during the vacation season, or in an individual's twilight years. It is also becoming easier to get to Mazatlan. Many airlines are either adding new flights to Mazatlan, or increasing the frequency of the flights that they already offer. This will make it easy for individuals to travel between their home in Mazatlan and their home abroad, or for retirees to visit friends and family back home. El Cid Vacations Club has always known that Mazatlan is one of the most extraordinary cities in the world, and now individuals have a unique opportunity to take advantage of prime conditions and to ensure that they will be able to enjoy a Mazatlan home for the rest of their lives. For those who want to discover the beauty and magic of Mazatlan before they consider it as a permanent home, a visit to the city with El Cid Vacations Club is within easy reach, and a stay with the resort will allow guests to appreciate all that the destination has to offer them. About ECVC El Cid Vacations Club is a global leader in the vacation ownership and resort industry, delivering a wide variety of memorable vacation experiences for members. El Cid Vacations Club continually strives to enhance its member services and guest experiences. Members are invited to take advantage of downloading the complimentary El Cid Vacations Club Member mobile app available on both the App Store and Google Play (keyword "ecvc"). This application allows members to stay up to date on the most recent news, make reservations, and always stay in contact with El Cid Vacations Club. This is the perfect opportunity for El Cid Vacations Club members to plan their next dream vacation at one of the many stunning El Cid properties. For more information, visit http://www.elcidvacationsclub.com Media Contact: El Cid Vacations Club, El Cid Vacations Club, 1 866 552 7320, [email protected] News distributed by PR Newswire iReach: https://ireach.prnewswire.com SOURCE El Cid Vacations Club 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 When to Turn Yourself in for a Warrant? Finding out that there is an active warrant out for your arrest can be an alarming experience. What you do after learning about a warrant depends largely on what you know about the reason behind the warrant. Before you go fleeing to a warm weather country with no extradition agreement, or just turning yourself in, you may want to consider seeking legal advice from an experienced criminal attorney. After all, it will definitely be cheaper than attempting to live the rest of your life on the run. Should You Turn Yourself In? While there is an active warrant, if you are stopped by police, you will likely be arrested, even if the warrant was issued out of a different jurisdiction (SCMODS is not just the bane of Elwood Blues). However, if you are not stopped by the police, it may take some time before police ever bother coming to your home, or work, to make the arrest. If the warrant is issued out of a different county, it could take weeks or months to process the warrant through a different jurisdiction. If your work and home address is unknown, you could have a warrant for several months, or even years, without ever getting arrested for it. If you know that there are serious criminal charges pending behind the warrant, you should retain an attorney, and potentially arrange bail/bond depending on your attorney's advice, before turning yourself in (assuming your attorney tells you to do so). Frequently, even for serious criminal charges, by retaining an attorney, you may be able to negotiate a favorable surrender, where you can be booked, processed, arraigned, and released on bail, all in the same day. Sometimes, if the warrant is for a relatively minor violation, such as a bench warrant for a failure to appear in court, an attorney may be able to get the warrant squashed without you ever being arrested. You may not even need to show up to court. At the end of the day, turning yourself in can go a long way toward receiving leniency from the court or prosecutor. However, it is best to rely on the advice of an experienced criminal defense attorney when making any decisions that could have an impact on your case. Related Resources: Amber Heard Sues Movie Producer for Unauthorized Body Double Sex Scene Actress Amber Heard has filed a lawsuit against the producers of the movie London Fields as a result of an alleged breach of contract relating to nude and sex scenes she did not authorize in the producer's cut of the film. If you're not familiar with the movie, that's because it is yet to be released due to other litigation holding it up. However, Amber Heard was not out looking for a legal battle. In November 2016, Ms. Heard, and the film's director Matthew Cullen, were sued by the film's producers for $10 million. The producers alleged Ms. Heard breached the contract by failing to finish some work on the film as well as failing to do promotional activities. Cullen was alleged to have changed the script in cahoots with Heard. Breach of Nudity Agreement In the lawsuit Ms. Heard has filed against the producers, she is alleging that the producers used her body double to create pornographic sex scenes, and film nudes scenes, intended to depict Heard. The scenes are alleged to have been filmed after Heard was no longer on set, and only using a skeleton crew. Heard only agreed to do the film after a rider was added to her agreement to address nudity and sex scenes. The rider's terms allegedly provide that Heard was to have final authorization over any sex or nude scenes depicting her. Although the film has not been released publicly, it has been viewed by critics and limited, private audiences. It was supposed to be released at the 2015 Toronto Film Festival, however legal controversy prevented the film from being shown. London Fields Forever ... in Litigation The initial controversy over the film involved the director Matthew Cullen filing a lawsuit for fraud. He alleged that the film's producers used his name in promotional materials despite Cullen having never agreed to the final cut of the film. Cullen objected to what he considered "incendiary imagery" depicting 9/11 and Islam. After this lawsuit was filed, the producers filed cross complaints against Cullen and Heard. And now that Heard was brought into the fray, she has fired her own shots back. Related Resources: Appeals Court Upholds Title VII Protection for LGBT Employees The Federal Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit issued an important ruling regarding a hotly contested issue: federal discrimination protections for LGBT employees. While many states already provide legal protections for LGBT employees who suffer discrimination based upon their sexual orientation, it is not a settled issue whether Title VII provides any protection. The Seventh Circuit's ruling found that the protections for sex discrimination listed in Title VII do protect LGBT employees from discrimination based on their sexual orientation. While other courts have agreed with this interpretation of Title VII, several have not despite the fact that the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has considered LGBT individuals to be protected since 2015. How Is Sex Discrimination the Same as Sexual Orientation Discrimination? The court essentially found that sexual orientation discrimination is the same as sex discrimination. The court explained that when an employment decision is made based on an employee's sexual orientation, that the employer is basing the decision on a discriminatory or stereotyped notion of the employee's sex, or gender. The court specifically stated that: Any discomfort, disapproval, or job decision based on the fact that the complainant -- woman or man -- dresses differently, speaks differently, or dates or marries a same-sex partner, is a reaction purely and simply based on sex. The court further explained that: No matter which category is involved, the essence of the claim is that the plaintiff would not be suffering the adverse action had his or her sex, race, color, national origin, or religion been different. Is This Headed to the Supreme Court? While the EEOC has settled on the correct interpretation of Title VII including sexual orientation discrimination, the Supreme Court has not weighed in directly on this specific issue. Typically, controversial issues involving civil rights will be appealed to the top, but the Supreme Court only hears a small number of cases each year. If the High Court finds that the logic of the appeals court is satisfactory, they may choose to decline hearing the matter entirely. However, the appeals court did cite recent, and not so recent, Supreme Court precedent to support their reasoning. Particularly the fact that SCOTUS has ruled that gender stereotyping, same-sex sexual harassment, associational discrimination, all violate federal protections, the appeals court extended that same logic. Related Resources: Arizona's Diaper Changing Child Molestation Law Ruled Unconstitutional A federal district court judge in Arizona has ruled that the state's relatively new no-intent-required child molestation law is unconstitutional. Although the US Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of a man convicted under that new law, the federal district court in Arizona reversed the state's supreme court's upholding of the law. Diaper Duty The now defunct law provided that a caregiver, parent, or anyone, could be found guilty of child molestation if they touched a child's genitals, anus, or female breasts, knowingly or intentionally. A defendant could plead as an affirmative defense that there was no sexual intent, but to avoid being convicted, a defendant had to prove the lack of sexual intent, while the state was not required to show that there was a sexual intent at all behind the touching. These burdens of proof were found to violate a defendants constitutional rights, as it is fundamental in the US justice system that for a defendant to be found guilty, the prosecution must prove every element of the crime. Not having sexual intent proven by the state in a case of child molestation seemed to be, and the court recognized it as such, a logical failure. How to Legally Clean After Diaper Changing? For those with experience changing a diaper, a thorough clean up job would require breaking this law. You can't just hand an infant a stack of wet-ones and tell 'em to clean themselves off. And failing to clean all the nooks can result in hygiene and health issues, which could result in other legal problems. However, the new law criminalized any knowing or intentional touching of an infant's genitals or anus, unless a defendant proved it was non-sexual. No other state, except Hawaii, allows molestation charges to be brought without proof of a sexual intent. While the federal district court case in Arizona reversed one conviction rendered under this poorly drafted law, it is speculated that there are several convictions that were handed down against parents engaged in completely innocent behavior, such as bathing, or changing the diaper of, their own child. Related Resources: Federal Court: Civil Rights Act Protects Gay, Lesbian Workers From Discrimination Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination against employees based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Because it was enacted in 1964, many have wondered whether gay and lesbian workers were also protected under the law. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals answered that question this week, ruling that Title VII protects employees from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The court reasoned that the statute's ban on sex discrimination also prohibited sexual orientation discrimination because, among other reasons, the discrimination is based on outdated gender stereotypes. Here's a look: Stereotypical Discrimination The plaintiff in the case, Kimberly Hively, contends that she was passed over for full-time employment at Ivy Tech Community College because she is lesbian. Her central claim, as it pertains to Title VII, is that this discrimination was based on her sex or gender -- that, had she been a man, she would not have been discriminated against for being sexually attracted to women. And the majority found it persuasive: Viewed through the lens of the gender non-conformity line of cases, Hively represents the ultimate case of failure to conform to the female stereotype (at least as understood in a place such as modern America, which views heterosexuality as the norm and other forms of sexuality as exceptional): she is not heterosexual ... Hively's claim is no different from the claims brought by women who were rejected for jobs in traditionally male workplaces, such as fire departments, construction, and policing. The employers in those cases were policing the boundaries of what jobs or behaviors they found acceptable for a woman (or in some cases, for a man). Essentially, Hivey was still discriminated against based on her sex in that she did not conform to stereotypes about female sexual orientation. A Definitive Decision? The court's decision is groundbreaking. Until now, the majority of courts interpreting Title VII have held that it did not cover discrimination based solely on sexual orientation. While the Second Circuit found that sexual-orientation discrimination wasn't explicitly prohibited by Title VII, it recently found that gay workers who were subject to gender stereotyping still had the right bring sex discrimination claims. The Supreme Court has yet to decide the issue, but may need to soon, giving the disagreement between circuits. For now, the Seventh Circuit's ruling applies only to its own jurisdiction: Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. Related Resources: One hundred years ago this week, the United States of America rose to assist its European allies and officially declared war on Germany. This was an unprecedented moment in this countrys history, a signal of its rising importance on the world stage and a declaration of the United States as the standard bearer of democracy. But thisA declaration was also a delayed reaction. In most ways, America was already at war. PBS marks this important moment inA history with an intense three-part mini-series The Great War, looking at this countrys involvement in the European conflict from vivid and surprisingly fresh angles. Below: An exclusive clip from The Great War, of the initial influence of Tin Pan Alley on the earlyA opinions of Americans: My confession: I love great historical stories of war, but I do not always like war documentaries. Theres a certain uniformity to many of them thats rather numbing black-and-white stock footage ofA smoky battlefields, static maps of troop movement, battles without context. Wars are sometimes presented as impressive events, devoid of humanity. The Great War is ratherA unique (and potentially frustrating for some true war-history fanatics), easing deliberately into discussion of the conflict in the same way that Americans would have learned of it themselves during the summer of 1914. The assassination of Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, by members of the revolutionary movement Young Bosnia, didA not seem like the sort of event that would concern the dinner conversations of regular Americans. Many believed themselves isolated from those sorts of conflicts by an ocean; if anything, the Gilded Age proved that the United States was equal, if not greater, to those foreign cultures. At yet, as the situation escalated, bringing in Germany, Russia, France and eventually Great Britain into the conflict, it would seem the United States would be dragged in as well whether its leadersA admitted it or not. The Flatiron Building, for a time, became a war recruitment office. The first part of The Great WarA (airing Monday night)A takes theA temperature ofA America from 1914 to 1917, a country torn into sympathizers and pacifists. Because of thisA countrys unique make-up of immigrants, the European struggleA ignites a thousand smaller conflicts here. Many race to their old homelands. Suffragists, in a struggle for their basic rights, ignite an anti-war movement. President Wilson, in a fierce re-election bid in 1916, brandishes the sloganA He Kept Us Out of War. But in fact, America was already engaged in the conflict on both sides of the battle, depending on who you were and where you lived in America. German immigrants felt embattled and rallied for peace. But events such as the sinking of the Lusitania and the explosion at Black Tom Island soon turned the opinions of most American to the cause of war. How then could a powerfulA nationA enter such a conflict from thousands of miles away? A faux battleship was constructed in Union Square in 1917 to encourage participation in the war effort: Part Two (airing Tuesday, April 11) explores the mobilization and training of American forces. But while the documentary does follow a set of individual stories of men going to war (such as that of Alan Seeger, a Greenwich Village poet ), it spends a significant time on American shores, observingA the efforts of many (led by Wilsons propaganda chief George Creel)A to drum up excitement and patriotism and others whose opposition to war remains steadfast. We do follow the journey of one entire squadA of soldiers, and its a truly amazing tale the Harlem Hellfighters, the first African-American regiment to engage in the conflict.A They were assigned to the French Army as many American troops refused to fight alongside them. What the French got was a well-trained, preciseA and sometimes viciousA squadron. (Thanks to the under appreciated James Reese Europe, they also had a renown military band.) Below: An exclusive clip from The Great War, ofA national outrage in 1918 of slackers and an extraordinary raid in New YorkA City. Its not until Part Three (airing Wednesday) that American forces, led by General John J. Pershing, are fully engaged along the Western Front. By this time, tens of thousands of Allied soldiers had been killed, The films unique point of view can be unsettlingA at times; there are so many perspectives to tell and the filmmakers should be credited with this uniquely 21st century approach that the larger canvas of war and its cruel atrocities often leaves center stage for a time, only to come crashing into the narrative with jarring force. Theres no escape in Part Three. The battles of the Hundred Day Offensive are depicted in ominous, almost otherworldly detail. Meanwhile, back in the United States, campaigns to drive slackers and anti-war agitators into the open tramples upon basic constitutional rights and escalatesA the fears of regular Americans. Over six hours, The Great War leaves you sorrowful,A exhilarated and hungry to learn more. A Id recommend pairing this with another Europe-focused film series the BBCs The First World War or, for something older, the epic 1964 series produced by England, Canada and Australia also called The Great War. During the live broadcast, please following along with me on TwitterA @BoweryBoys where Ill be sharing trivia about American and its involvement in World War I throughout the show. THE GREAT WAR PBS, American Experience Debuting April 10, 9/8C Check your local listings 9th Circuit Sets Hearing for Trump's Revised Travel Ban A federal appeals court has set a hearing next month to review President Trump's second travel ban. After a federal judge in Hawaii blocked the President's orders, the Trump administration asked the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal to expedite the matter. The appellate court has agreed to hear arguments on May 15, 2017. Trump's latest order revised a broader travel ban that the appeals court turned back in February. Rather than continue his appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, however, Trump issued a second, narrower ban. But Hawaii sued, saying it was unconstitutional just like the first one. "We cannot fault the president for being politically incorrect, but we do fault him for being constitutionally incorrect," said state Attorney General Douglas Chin. Muslim Nations Banned Again The second ban targets all refugees and people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen who are not also U.S. citizens or otherwise legally in the country. After the first order was found to be an unconstitutional ban against people from predominantly Muslim nations, the second order attempts to avoid the religious controversy. However, the controversy will not likely go away so long as the same Muslim nations are being targeted by the President. Trump made Muslims the issue during his campaign for the White House, although there is some controversy even within the appeals court on that issue. Meanwhile, civil rights advocates have praised the courts for standing up to the President. Omar Jadwat, director of the Immigrants' Rights Project at the ACLU, said the law should be fair to all people. "There's obviously more litigation to come, but this is truly good news for the many people both in this country and abroad who have been unfairly targeted on the basis of their religion by this ban," he said. "Watered Down Version" On the other hand, Trump has consistently criticized the judges who have ruled against him. He said the second ban is a "watered down" version of his first order and decried the judge for "unprecedented judicial overreach." "The order he blocked was a watered down version of the first order that was also blocked by another judge that should have never been blocked to start with," he said at rally following the defeat. "This new order was tailored to the dictates of the Ninth circuit's, in my opinion, flawed ruling." The appeals court will hear more Trump arguments soon enough. Related Resources: This blog is looking for wisdom, to have and to share. It is also looking for other rare character traits like good humor, courage, and honor. It is not an easy road, because all of us fall short. But God is love, forgiveness and grace. Those who believe in Him and repent of their sins have the promise of His Holy Spirit to guide us and show us the Way. In 1980, Lal Bihari, a man from the poor Indian state of Uttar Pradesh whose cousins had bribed a local official to have him declared dead in order to steal the one-fifth acre of land he owned, founded Mritak Sangh, the "association of the living dead," for similarly situated people who spend decades (and sometimes their entire lives) trying to resurrect themselves in the eyes of the national bureaucracy. Bihari tried many extreme tactics to get re-recognized as a living person, from applying for a widow's pension for his wife to bribing a policeman tho lay criminal charges against him so he could argue before a judge that dead people don't commit crimes, ergo he must not be dead. He even kidnapped a cousin's child (but just ended up taking the kid to the movies for a while before returning him). In 1994, he was finally declared to be alive. He still runs the Mritak Sangh, and answers the phone "Mritak (dead man) speaking." There's a lot of dead people in his club, but it's rare that he manages to resurrect one. Gimmick after gimmick followed. He bribed a policeman Rs 500 to get a case registered against him and his cousin for rioting. The policeman returned the money when he discovered the motive. He applied for widow's pension for his wife, Karami. "They would refuse because I was alive. This would be a record for me," he says. But the government's refusal made no mention of him. Next, Lal Bihari sold his property to contest the 1988 Lok Sabha election from Allahabad against former Prime Minister VP Singh. Surprising even himself, he got about 1,600 votes. In 1989, he filed nomination papers against Rajiv Gandhi in Amethi and then promptly filed an application for countermanding the election, as he was dead. It was not countermanded, of course, but he got written about. His resurrection, too, was theatrical. In May 1994, after an enquiry, the lekhpal and kanungo recommended that he be declared alive, but the file vanished from the tehsil office. Lal Bihari was furious. "I put up posters and handbills saying I was going to capture the tehsildar's office and write an order declaring me alive," he says. The next month, the tehsildar passed an order making him alive. The Living Dead [Madhavankutty Pillai/Open] (via Marginal Revolution) The LRSAM missile being test fired by an Indian Navy warship. A file photo JERUSALEM (PTI): Israel has signed a nearly USD two billion deal with India to supply advanced missile defence systems, bolstering bilateral military ties in a contract said to be the largest in Israel's defence industries' history. In a mega-contract worth over USD 1.6 billion, state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) will provide advanced medium-range surface-to-air missile systems (MRSAM) to the Indian Army. IAI said it would also supply additional long-range air and missile defence systems (LRSAM) for the first locally produced Indian aircraft carrier, the company said in a statement on April 6, describing the deal the largest in Israel's defence industries' history. The contract is worth 1.6 billion USD for IAI, with the rest going to another state-owned defence company, Rafael, that will be providing components for the systems. "The current contracts represent an enormous expression of confidence by the government of India in IAI's capabilities and advanced technologies, which are being developed with our local partners as part of the Indian government's 'Make in India policy'," IAI CEO Joseph Weiss said in a statement. Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, who is said to have discussed the deal with Indian leaders during his trip to India early this year, congratulated Weiss on the "historic" deal terming it truly "exceptional". "Please pass on my congratulations to all who contributed to this important achievement. You have come such a long way to arrive at this point, it is truly exceptional," Rivlin told IAI's CEO. Weiss responded calling it a "truly remarkable achievement" and "a wonderful gift for the upcoming festival (Passover)" to be celebrated next week. Israel's willingness to share technology and form joint ventures with Indian companies to develop and manufacture military equipment supporting the "Make in India" initiative is said to have been well received in New Delhi. In the case of MRSAM, an advanced air and missile defence system that provides protection against a variety of aerial threats, the technology is said to have been jointly developed by IAI and DRDO in collaboration with Rafael and IAI's Elta division. Indian companies such as BEL and L&T are said to have also participated in the project. MRSAM's current version is operational with the Indian Air Force, Indian Navy and Israel Defence Forces (IDF). The system includes an advanced phased-array radar, command and control, mobile launchers and missiles with advanced RF seekers. A file photo. SEOUL (AP): The missile in North Korea's latest launch didn't fly very far, but it may have been the second test of a technology that worries experts. The launch on April 5 into waters off North Korea's east coast came shortly before US President Donald Trump's first meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping later this week, raising speculation that it might have been timed to get their attention. Initial US and South Korean assessments indicate it was a KN-15 medium-range missile, whose first known test by North Korea was in February. The KN-15, known as "Pukguksong-2" in North Korea, uses pre-loaded solid fuel, which shortens launch preparation times, boosts its mobility and makes it harder for outsiders to detect ahead of liftoff. Most North Korean missiles use liquid propellant, which generally must be added to the missile on the launch pad before firing. The South Korean military said the missile was fired from land near the east coast city of Sinpo and flew about 60 kilometers. The earlier one in February flew about 500 kilometers. Analysts were trying to determine if the shorter distance in the latest test meant the launch was a failure. One expert said it could have been a test of a new missile intended as a stepping stone toward developing a solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile that could reach the US mainland. Kim Dong-yub, an analyst at Seoul's Institute for Far Eastern Studies, questioned why North Korea would do a shorter launch of the KN-15. "There's absolutely no reason for North Korea to fire the KN-15 again this way; the launch measurements show something similar to when developing missiles are flight-tested for the first time for data-gathering purposes," he said. The KN-15 is believed to be an upgraded version of the submarine-launched "Pukguksong" launched last summer. Many experts say a "Pukguksong-2" missile would be a greater security threat, because it can be launched anywhere from a mobile vehicle. While submarines are a stealthy way to do that, North Korea doesn't have enough of them. Ralph Cossa, president of the Pacific Forum CSIS think tank in Honolulu, said he was expecting North Korea would do something to coincide with the Trump-Xi summit, perhaps conduct a nuclear test. The missile launch may be a precursor, with more to come as the summit started on April 6, he said. "I've joked before that they don't mind being hated but they definitely hate to be ignored," Cossa said. Recent satellite imagery shows possible preparations for a test at North Korea's main nuclear test site, including the laying of communication cables used to initiate a test and collect data. North Korea's state media have said the world will soon witness what they called "eventful successes" in the country's space development. The United States, South Korea and others call North Korea's space programme a cover for its long-range missile development programme. South Korea's Foreign Ministry called the North's latest missile launch a "reckless provocation" that posed a threat to international peace, while Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said his country lodged a strong protest over the launch. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson acknowledged the launch in a brief statement but said the US had spoken enough about North Korea and would not comment further. Analysts say North Korea might time nuclear and long-range rocket tests to the April 15 birthday of North Korea founder Kim Il Sung, the late grandfather of current leader Kim Jong Un. North Korea is pushing hard to upgrade its weapons systems to cope with what it calls US hostility. Many weapons experts say the North could have a functioning nuclear-tipped missile capable of reaching the continental US within a few years. North Korea carried out two nuclear tests last year. The North's latest missile launch also came during annual military drills between the United States and South Korea. North Korea sees the drills as an invasion rehearsal. Two weeks ago, the South Korean and US militaries said they had detected a failed North Korean ballistic missile launch. Earlier in March, North Korea fired four ballistic missiles that flew about 1,000 kilometers, with three of them landing in waters that Japan claims as its exclusive economic zone. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 07/04/2017 (2041 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. The City of Brandon has secured federal and provincial funding for all six projects it submitted through the Public Transit Infrastructure Fund. Included in the plans are two new 40-foot buses, four new Handi-Transit buses, as well as the replacement of 32 bus shelters across the city. We are beyond excited, said Carla Richardson, director of transportation. Tim Smith/The Brandon Sun A Brandon Transit bus waits at the downtown terminal on Thursday. The city is receiving $1.4 million from the federal government and $688,000 from the province for transit projects including new buses. The city expects new conventional buses to hit the road in 14 to 16 months, and new Handi-Transit buses to be in use in nine to 12 months. The new Handi-Transit buses are needed to replace the four aging ones currently in use. The funding allowed for replacement of two new conventional buses from 2002, rather than refurbishment. Its a better use of the taxpayers money to replace the units, Richardson said. Were going to go ahead and replace those two buses, as opposed to just doing something with the engine, so it worked out really well, timing-wise. Under the PTIF formula, the federal government provides 50 per cent of the project cost, while the province and municipality each provide 25 per cent. In total, the federal government will provide $1.4 million for the six Brandon projects combined, while the province and city will each pay $688,000. Collectively, over $2 million in assistance there, so its certainly very welcomed, to say the least, said Mayor Rick Chrest. It will be quite a while before the new buses actually hit the road in Brandon, however. For the Handi-Transit units, the city expects a nine- to 12-month wait period, while the conventional buses will take about 14 to 16 months. This PTIF funding was federal across Canada, so theres quite a few municipalities that are ordering buses with it so its tough to get a spot on the assembly line, Richardson said. The only problem is, projects are required to be completed by March 31, 2018, unless an extension is granted by the Minister of Infrastructure and Communities. Earlier this week, city council passed a resolution seeking a timeline extension for a few of the projects. With this big uptick Im sure that bus manufacturers will be stretched out a little longer, so I would be fairly confident that were not going to be the only municipality thats needing assistance, Chrest said. Its been our experience of the past that with both levels of government, provided that theres logical, sound reasons why you need an extension, theyre generally fairly good at granting them. The bus shelter replacement program will also be a lengthy process, with estimated completion by the summer of 2019. Other projects include bus wash equipment replacement to enhance functionality at the civic services complex. Were in the process right now of just finalizing exactly what components and pieces we need, and what we can do to make the bus wash work a little bit more effectively, Richardson said. The city will also install a diesel exhaust fluid filling station at the civic services complex. Were just going to put in a filling station as opposed to using the jugs and doing it manually, she said. Hopefully the work will be done later this year. The sixth project is the replacement of information centre/transit station, to be located downtown. Were going to take those two components and merge them together and build a new information public kiosk, Richardson said, adding construction is expected to happen in the fall of 2018. Brandons transit projects are six of 43 across Manitoba approved for the federal funding. Investments in public transit infrastructure make it possible for Canadian communities to build the new urban transit networks and service extensions that will transform the way that Canadians live, move and work, said federal Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr in a recent press release. The Government of Canada is working closely with the Government of Manitoba and municipalities to invest in important transit initiatives that will strengthen communities across the province. (This) investment will grow the middle-class and foster long-term prosperity, while helping get Manitobans to their daily activities reliably and on time. jaustin@brandonsun.com Twitter: @jillianaustin Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 07/04/2017 (2041 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. A group of Brandon University students marched in solidarity with the family of Colten Boushie on Thursday morning. Boushie, 22, was shot and killed on Gerald Stanleys farm near Biggar, Sask., on Aug. 9, 2016. Boushie and a group of friends were heading home to the Red Pheasant First Nation after an afternoon of swimming when they got a flat tire and drove onto the farm to seek help. There was a call from Colten Boushies family for people to come up to North Battleford, Saskatchewan because today was the preliminary hearing for Gerald Stanley, said Rachel Gregory, who organized the march. Tim Smith/The Brandon Sun The Sweet Grass Singers perform a song during a Justice for Colten Boushie solidarity gathering at Brandon University on Thursday morning. As students, we cant drive eight hours up to North Battleford during finals week, so I thought we should put together something here at BU in honour and solidarity for him and his family. Approximately 20 students came together in BUs courtyard, some holding signs with Justice and solidarity for Boushie and If you arent angry you arent listening written clearly with marker. Aboriginal victimization in Canada is an ongoing crisis aboriginal people and non-aboriginal people need to unite and fix the flaws in our justice system, Gregory said. Colten Boushies story is one thats been told over and over again through the years and it needs to stop. Frank Tacan lead the group in a prayer before a drumming group played a song, which echoed through BUs courtyard and drew the attention of students passing by between classes, some of whom stopped to join the circle. In our hearts we have fear we all fear each other were tired of being afraid, speaker Jace Pratt told the crowd. That man who did what he did was obviously not happy. He lived in fear a manufactured fear. Pratt said he prays that communities can learn to connect with each other. Tim Smith/The Brandon Sun Jace Pratt C of Sioux Valley Dakota Nation speaks as Brandon University students and other demonstrators take part in a Justice for Colten Boushie solidarity gathering at Brandon University on Thursday morning. Theres a growing amount of people who want to understand, want to open up that dialogue and talk, Pratt said. We need to talk about these things and whats really going on to understand both sides of the story. Gregory and other organizers led the group in a march down 18th Street and around the campus. Gregory said she was happy with the turnout, considering the event was organized on short notice. I think its important to send our well wishes to the Boushie family, so they know were standing with them, Gregory said. Sometimes instead of meeting people with only empathy, its more important to meet them with solidarity. The killing of Boushie has ignited racial tension in Saskatchewan and prompted rallies outside some of Stanleys court appearances. Following the preliminary hearing on Thursday, Judge Bruce Bauer said there was enough evidence to send Stanley to trial. He is charged with second-degree murder. Tim Smith/The Brandon Sun Brandon University students Kelsey Nepinak and Cheyenne Ironman hold placards as they take part in a Justice for Colten Boushie solidarity gathering at Brandon University on Thursday morning. Stanley declined to comment outside court. He has a plea hearing June 26 on two counts of unsafe storage of firearms related to the Boushie killing. edebooy@brandonsun.com, with files from The Canadian Press Twitter: @erindebooy UK Prime Minister Theresa May says that post-Brexit Britain won't rely on the EU, but will become a "Global Britain," turning to the rest of the world to bring the the billions the UK will lose when it departs from the European Union. A quick survey of the May government's global dealings reveals what that looks like when it's at home: May herself is in Saudi, Chancellor Philip Hammond says they'll re-establish the country's colonial-style dealings with India, Secretary of State for International Trade Liam Fox is palling around with the Middle East's most brutal strongmen and posing for photo-ops with Rodrigo Duterte, the self-confessed murderer whose tenure as leader of the Philippines has seen death squads operating with impunity. For the rest of the world, "global Britain" has already had significance. In January, May flew from the court of Donald Trump, where he was signing his draconian Muslim ban, to Turkey, where thousands of President Erdogan's opponents languish in jail awaiting trials and flogged 100m of arms. Trump used May as a symbolic weapon against the EU, Erdogan basked in the legitimacy she brought. Senior ministers have already undertaken an astonishing number of visits to the Gulf, paying homage to the oil barons who promise to keep the London markets afloat. Johnson might think of them as exotic local rulers, but they hold all the cards. Saudi holds Yemen in the modern equivalent of a medieval siege, where a devastating famine will starve its opponents into submission at the cost of tens of thousands of lives. But May, Fox and Johnson have other matters to discuss. On Tuesday, Fox was in the Philippines, greeting a president, Rodrigo Duterte, who apparently compares himself to Hitler and brags of mass murder, who derides the United Nations and is killing thousands of his citizens under the guise of a war on drugs. None of this would have been mentioned, of course. What is 'global Britain'? A financier and arms merchant to brutal dictators [Nick Dearden/The Guardian] (via Naked Capitalism) Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 06/04/2017 (2042 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. In a choir room filled with music stands and percussion instruments usually orchestrated to bring the classic works of Bach, Beethoven and Mozart to life, a different classic is being awakened 80s rock. The students at Crocus Plains Regional Secondary School are busy putting the finishing touches on those high notes and dessert garnishes for their dinner theatre production Rock of Ages. Believe it or not, a lot of (the students) are actually familiar with a lot of the songs, so that makes it easier, said Deanna Ginn, choir teacher at Crocus Plains. Tim Smith/The Brandon Sun Crocus Plains Regional Secondary School students involved in the upcoming dinner theatre performance of Rock of Ages rehearse a song for the performance on Wednesday. Im a classically or traditionally trained musician and music teacher, so its a bit of a leap for me to be working on rock vocals with the kids, but its also a lot of fun because you get to venture into a different genre and watch the kids use their instruments a little differently. When Crocus Plains drama teacher Ramey Praznik saw Rock of Ages on Broadway, she said she knew it had to be their next production and that her students would be up for the challenge. It was the most fun Ive had watching a musical, Praznik said. It was just so interactive, all 80s music, which I was a teenager in the 80s so I loved it, and I knew lots of parents would love it too. And Praznik was right. All showtimes, including matinees, have completely sold out three weeks before opening day. Its just crazy. That tells us the community is excited to see the show, and it raises the level of anticipation, Praznik said. I want it to be great. It is great, but its crunch time. Its time to make the magic happen. Organizing the production, especially developing it as a dinner theatre production, has presented its own unique challenges, Praznik said. (Rock of Ages) is not a dinner theatre show, so the challenge is figuring out things like when to place dessert? How do we make sure that people arent sitting there for seven and a half hours because were trying to couple (the show) with a meal, and a three-course meal at that, Praznik said. But our school is able to do something a little different, so we do something different. The production is multifaceted, with different classes and departments working together, building construction is making the sets, cosmetology and hairstyling classes create the look and the culinary arts program creates the menu and cooks each meal. The dinner is a show of its own, intertwined with the production to bring the audience back to the 80s with classic pub fare. Caesar salad serves as a starter for dinner, which includes a half rack of smoky barbecue ribs, Greek chicken skewers, corn on the cob and potato wedges. A generous piece of chocolate brownie finishes everything off. Our students are so conscientious, engaged and talented, Theyve been enjoying it, but more than anything theyve been working very hard, Praznik said. A lot of the cast may have not seen Rock of Ages before, but it didnt take long for them to not only fall in love with the production, but their characters as well. (Rock of Ages) is awesome. Its all old classic rock, and they have some sweet characters and good story lines, said Grade 12 student Michael Wenham, who is playing the dual role of Lonny Barnett, the narrator and secondary male lead character within the story. Its awesome. (Lonnie) is a lot like me. Hes very outgoing, outspoken and hes not really afraid to show his true colours. Bryan Kwak plays the city boy born and raised in South Detroit, Drew Boley. He auditioned specifically for role because he believed he could relate to him. Its like me playing myself almost. Hes kind of like a shy and chill guy, Kwak said. Im surprised that I got the role, I wasnt expecting it, but Im really happy that I got to play it with these awesome people, in this awesome show with awesome teachers. The dinner theatre production of Rock of Ages runs from April 20 to April 22 at the MNP Hall at the Keystone Centre. edebooy@brandonsun.com Twitter: @erindebooy Opinion Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 07/04/2017 (2041 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. One final reminder that tomorrow is the annual Brandon Beer Festival! This years festival will be the best yet as the event will have presence from four Manitoba breweries Farmery, Half Pints, Torque and Little Brown Jug so you will get to try Manitobas best beers and get to chat with the people who make the beer as Torque and Little Brown Jug are sending their brewers to the event. There will be 51 beers to try, and Ive gotten a sneak peek of what to expect. Theres something for everyone, including the cider drinkers! Ill be making an appearance and I believe Vine Lines own Diane Nelson may be making an appearance proof that beer is better than wine (Ha, ha. I kid.) Tickets are $30 and are available at all Brandon Liquor Marts and at BrandonBeerFest.com. This week Im checking out Muskoka Brewerys Legendary Oddity Ale, a springtime favourite for me. The first time I ever had Muskokas Legendary Oddity (then named Legendary Spring Oddity) back in 2012, I fell in love with the beer. The beer was more expensive than what I could afford at the time at $10 per 750 ml corked bottle but it tasted like spring in the bottle. Now you can find this beer every spring at local Liquor Marts for a much more reasonable price of $3.30 per 473 ml can. The Legendary Oddity pours a dark and cloudy golden ale with a good amount of carbonation and a moderate amount of off-white head on top, reminiscent to a Belgian Pale Ale. The aroma starts off with a Belgian candi sugar aroma that gives it a very sweet smell, with a hint of orange peel and lemon, a mild grassy hop note thats quite reminiscent of when the grass is woken up after the long Manitoban winter. Theres a bit of earthiness in there as well from the hops. Its also mildly yeasty, reminiscent of Belgian ales like Unibroues recently retired Blonde de Chambly. The beer tastes quite a bit like how it smells. I had a hard time picking up other notes in the beer so I asked my parents what they thought. My dad said he picked up lemon and that it was fairly light, while my mom simply cringed (as always) and said it was too bitter in reality, she was tasting the bready yeast as Im not finding this beer bitter at all. The most dominant flavours are orange peel, Belgian yeast that gives it a sweet doughy taste to it, a bit of a sweetness from the candi sugar, lemon, and a mild grassiness with a touch of pine from the hops. The Legendary Oddity is reminiscent to a variety of lighter Belgian style of beers that I love to drink in the summertime. Its sweet, citrusy, mildly grassy and easy to drink. When I first reviewed this for BeerCrank.ca I felt that it was worth the $10. Now that its $3.30 for a 473 ml can, its an absolute bargain! You can find it at Liquor Marts in Brandon, Dauphin and Portage la Prairie. Alongside Muskokas Legendary Oddity, you will also find Shawinigans Trou du Diable Saison du Tracteur, Vancouvers Fuggles & Warlocks Valis IPA and Whitehorses Yukon Brewings Breakfast at the Brewery Mimosa Kolsch. Its a tasty time to be a beer drinker in Brandon! Opinion Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 07/04/2017 (2041 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. A bottle of white, a bottle of red Perhaps a bottle of rose instead. With credit to Billy Joel for my parroting of his lyrics from Scenes from an Italian Restaurant, theres something about spring that always has me thinking rose. Which is odd, because while I really like it, Im pretty much a one-glass-of-rose kind of gal. And thats great when one has company over and everybody gets a glass. Perfection! But since my husband isnt crazy about rose, I usually end up opening a bottle for my one glass, and then not wanting another portion at that time, then recorking the bottle with my VacuVin (more on that fabulous device in an upcoming column), and putting the rose back in the fridge where it usually sits for a long time before I feel like another glass. Rose is great with shellfish and fish really with anything light. A refreshing salad or delicate appetizer rose adds a touch of elegance and a wonderful flavour to such dishes. And as a sipper, its great too. But since I rarely want more than one glass Im not sure why that is, but its the case nonetheless I tend not to purchase pink wine very often. However, with the above-average temperatures weve been enjoying lately, and despite my tendency to not consume as much of it as an open bottle warrants, my thoughts have still been turning to a beautifully chilled rose. And I found a lovely one a few weeks ago for those of you who are feeling, as I am, that the change of seasons has rose written all over it. The 2015 Belleruche Cotes du Rhones Rose is just the ticket. A blend of Grenache, Cinsault and Syrah, this pale, salmon-pink wine is redolent with red berries currant, raspberry and cherry and boasts just the faintest hint of citrus to keep things wonderfully fresh. Truly one of the nicest roses Ive had in ages, if the Belleruche doesnt make you think spring, I dont know what will. This fab French rose sells for $16.99. In case I cant persuade you to give rose a go, I have two other options to offer. I thought Id gotten away from big, heavy Chardonnays, and I have, at least from the ultra-oaky ones I used to adore. But as they say, theres a time and a place for everything. And the 2014 Tom Gore Chardonnay from California ($19.99) is delightful. Yes, it has some toasted oak notes, but theyre neither overpowering nor intense. Theyre just there, and nicely balanced by the acidity in the wine. And I truly enjoyed this Cali Chard for a change of pace. Truth be told, there are very few California Chardonnays I dont like. And the Tom Gore, with its aromas and flavours of apple, pear and tropical fruit, and, thanks to the oak, some caramel, has a soft and creamy mouth-feel thats very appealing. Finally, for those who are dedicated red wine drinkers and red wine with grilled red meat is pretty much impossible to beat the 2013 Bodegas Villa Conchi Gran Sello Tempranillo Syrah is a great choice. With just a kiss of sweetness (which is what makes me think it would be splendid with barbecue-sauced anything), this is a lot of wine for $14.99. A vast step up from the medium-sweet wines of the same price out there, the Spanish Gran Sello has fruity, plummy flavours that are balanced by savoury notes, and is as pleasant to sip as it would be to pair with food. Medium- to full-bodied, I was surprised by how much I liked this wine. Certainly the price has something to do with that, but again, its such a wonderful replacement for much sweeter wines, Im betting a lot of folks would enjoy it. I know I did. So between a crisp rose, a gutsy Chard, and a barbecue-ready red blend, I say bring on summer. My wine fridge is stocked and Im ready to go! Opinion Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 07/04/2017 (2041 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Theres no doubt a key theme of the recent federal budget was innovation. Indeed, the word appears 261 times in the 280-page budget document. While innovation is certainly an important driver of economic growth and prosperity, Ottawas current approach doling out public funds to favoured industries and companies is unlikely to spark innovation, and may, in fact, hinder it. For instance, the government plans to spend $950 million over five years for the formation of superclusters to help create the next Silicon Valley. How precisely this will be accomplished is unclear, but the government has anointed particular industries such as agri-food and clean technology as the most likely originators of coming innovation. The problem with trying to pick winners is that no one really knows which sectors will drive growth-enhancing innovation in the future. Ironically, this is a point Finance Minister Bill Morneau recognized in his budget speech when he noted that a few decades ago no one would have imagined how much mobile computing would change the way we live. Critically, handing out taxpayer money to the governments favoured industries takes resources away from other areas of the economy that could, in fact, be the source of future innovation. The budget contains other handouts to businesses in the name of innovation, such as $400 million for a new government-sponsored venture capital fund and $1.4 billion in new available financing for businesses involved in clean technology. While Ottawa hopes the private sector contributes financing for the venture capital fund, the auditor general recently found that a similar fund, created by the Harper Tories, failed to attract private investors owing to low returns and high management fees. Moreover, evidence shows that government-sponsored venture capital initiatives tend to underperform compared to initiatives funded by the private sector. More broadly, its concerning to see the government announce new spending on innovation when theres no indication the considerable resources it currently spends are effective. Ottawa already spends $23 billion each year on 147 separate programs and special tax breaks aimed at innovation and skills training. But as a recent study found, the government has not properly measured whether 90 per cent of this spending is achieving the stated goals. Also concerning, the government has brought back the labour-sponsored venture capital corporation tax credit, a failed policy that is counterproductive to innovation. Again, the evidence shows this tax credit, which costs $150 million each year, displaces more effective private venture capital funding and lowers the level of overall capital available to Canadian entrepreneurs. Rather than trying to pick winners (and losers), the government should instead foster an economic environment that encourages innovation and entrepreneurship broadly. This can be achieved in two important ways. First, reduce regulations that protect industries and certain businesses from competition. When competitive pressures are lacking, theres less incentive to innovate, whether the desire is to protect or gain market share. Indeed, research shows that regulations restricting competition slow the introduction of innovative technologies and practices. Second, ensure entrepreneurs are rewarded for taking risks on unproven ideas. Unfortunately, the federal governments record on this front is not positive, as it has raised the top marginal tax rate on personal income a policy that research shows will adversely affect entrepreneurship by changing the risks and rewards associated with it. In other words, by raising the top tax rate, the federal government is discouraging the very people most likely to innovate. If the government is serious about encouraging innovation, it should take steps to eliminate counterproductive policies and increase the rewards of innovative endeavours. Charles Lammam is director of fiscal studies. Hugh MacIntyre is a policy analyst at the Fraser Institute (fraserinstitute.org). Their column was also recently published by the Winnipeg Free Press. Opinion Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 07/04/2017 (2041 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. In case you hadnt noticed, the province has gone hog wild for changes to the pork industry. Last month, the Progressive Conservative government introduced legislation that, in conjunction with an upcoming review of regulations concerning the industry, could roll back many of the restrictions introduced more than a decade ago by the former NDP government. Those restrictions were brought in because the former government believed this was the best way to prevent toxic algae growth that has been literally choking the life out of Lake Winnipeg much of which has been and continues to be blamed on the hog industry in this province. As a point of fact, the Tories are not deregulating the hog industry far from it. Many basic restrictions on hog operations will remain in place, including a prohibition on the spreading of manure on snow-covered or frozen fields and requirements that producers get expert advice in building manure-storage facilities. As well, producers will still have to create soil-testing and manure-management plans that must be approved by government. However, in many other areas, the governments grip on the industry will loosen. The proposed changes that reduce requirements for soil testing, allow for larger manure-storage facilities and offer increased flexibility in identifying fields on which to spray manure as fertilizer, are clearly designed to allow producers to increase the number of hogs they are raising. With a little more than eight million hogs raised annually, Manitoba is the largest pork producer in Canada. However, neither of Manitobas two main hog-processing plants operate near capacity. The opportunity for hog farmers to increase production and improve their margins is rather compelling. This is also good news when it comes to the potential for jobs at the HyLife plant in Neepawa and the Maple Leaf facility in Brandon. Should pork production ramp up, there will be greater need for skilled labour. And yet, the hog industry is among the most environmentally challenged in all of agriculture. Hogs produce enormous amounts of manure, and the safe storage and disposal of said manure is a paramount concern. Right now, hog producers dilute the manure and then spray it as fertilizer on agricultural fields. For the industry to expand, producers would need access to more suitable land, as it is described in regulation and be able to use it more frequently. Do these regulations accomplish those goals? It is hard to say with certainty. Government officials claim the loosening of regulations is safe and justified based on evolving environmental and soil science. And yet, less-frequent testing of soil and land and greater flexibility in identifying suitable land for manure spraying doesnt seem to suggest safer. And the Tories have really produced no evidential basis for this regulatory change. In fact, the Progressive Conservatives have long held that the NDPs unnecessarily stringent policies have been negatively affecting Manitobas hog industry for years, at least according to a December 2014 press release. The NDP refuses to implement the reforms needed to save Manitobas hot industry, it reads. As a result jobs related to the industry continue to be put in jeopardy. While we support our farmers and the continued existence of the hog industry in this province, to us, the statement above does not sound like a disinterested third party that is basing policy on fact-based scientific analysis. The best option for the government is to subject all legal or regulatory changes to a full hearing of the Clean Environment Commission. Currently, there is no plan to do that. Most of the current law and regulation up for debate was either informed or created by the commissions seminal review of the hog industry more than a decade ago. Certainly it makes sense now to call on the commission once again to review these changes. Arms-length reviews of public law or policy are essential when government finds itself in an inherent conflict of interest, which is the case here. The province has a responsibility to promote economic growth through industrial activity. The province also has a solemn responsibility to safeguard the environment. The only way to strike the balance is to have a fair and independent review by knowledgeable people who can make recommendations without political fear or favour. Bypassing a review by the commission will serve only to undermine changes that very well could be safe and reasonable, which is ultimately a disservice to hog producers. Winnipeg Free Press and The Brandon Sun A former heroin addict jailed for life for the murder of his friend during an argument over drugs has has his conviction upheld by the Court of Appeal. Peter Jackson (aged 42), of Kerryhall Road, Fairhill, Co Cork had pleaded not guilty at the Central Criminal Court to the murder of Wexford man David Hamilton (aged 31) on May 4, 2012 at a house on Kerryhall Road. He was found guilty by a jury and was given the mandatory life sentence by Ms Justice Isobel Kennedy on November 23, 2015. During the trial, the court heard that Mr Jackson and Mr Hamilton were heroin users who went to a house on Kerryhall Road on May 4, 2012 to inject heroin. Ms Pamela McHale (aged 26) from Cork, who was a friend of Mr Jackson, told the court that they had bought two bags of heroin earlier that day worth 50 each. An argument started after Mr Jackson had cooked up the first bag of heroin and injected himself and Ms McHale but had difficulty finding a vein to inject Mr Hamilton. "Peter and Dave got in a fight," she said. "He was trying to pull the foil off Peter and Peter gave him a dig and Dave gave Peter a dig. Peterpicked something up from the table and he swung." Jackson moved to appeal his conviction last week through his barristers Dominic McGinn SC and James Burke BL instructed by solicitor Eddie Burke. Mr McGinn said it was the defence's case that there was simply no evidence in the case to establish the necessary mental element of the crime. Mr McGinn said there was evidence which tended to rebut the presumption that Jackson should be presumed to have intended the natural and probable consequences of his conduct. But the trial judge failed to engage with how that presumption could have been rebutted by certain evidence, he submitted. Dismissing this ground today, Mr Justice Birmingham said the Court of Appeal entirely agreed with the judge that this was not a case for a direction. He said it was accepted that the judge dealt with the question of the presumption at several stages but was criticised for using the same language on each occasion, that she did not engage with the facts of the case and did not contextualise the presumption issue. Mr Justice Birmingham said the court had fully and thoroughly considered the arguments and was quite satisfied that the criticisms were unfounded. He said the trial judge's charge dealt with the ingredients for the offence of murder, the mental element required for murder and the relevance of the rebuttable presumption impecabbly. The phrase textbook charge came to mind. The difficulty for the defence was that if one stabs someone in the chest with a steak knife with a 10-inch blade the conclusion that at least serious injury was intended is overwhelming, the judge said. Turning to other grounds, Mr Justice Birmingham said the court was satisfied that the trial judge's remarks did not undermine the right to silence in an impermissible manner. Quite simply the remarks made were ones the judge was entitled to make. He said the court saw no merit in the argument that the trial judge failed to instruct the jury on the option to disagree in a timely manner. The trial judge might well have declined the defence request but given that she did not and in fact acceded to the defence request, this ground of appeal was rejected. Mr Justice Birmingham, who sat with Mr Justice Alan Mahon and Mr Justice John Hedigan, said the court was not pursuaded that the trial was unsatisfactory or the conviction unsafe. The appeal was therefore dismissed. A four-year-old boy has died in a farm accident in Co Fermanagh. It is understood the youngster was killed in an incident involving a JCB-type digger. Police attended the property in the Maguiresbridge area at around 8.30pm last night. The Northern Ireland Heath and Safety Executive is investigating the circumstances of the fatal incident. Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) Inspector Glen Latimer said: "The child was sadly pronounced dead at the scene. "Local PSNI will work closely with the Health and Safety Executive as they investigate the circumstances." The Government is being urged to crack down on some Irish trawler owners who are reportedly treating migrant fishermen 'like slaves'. A report on RTE's Prime Time last night highlighted a range of employment breaches and a large number of illegal workers in the sector. Two Dublin men have been handed life sentences for the murder of dissident republican Peter Butterly who was shot dead outside a pub in Meath in 2013. Neither of them pulled the trigger, but they were convicted on the basis they helped to plan and execute what the judge described as his slaughter. Peter Butterly was shot dead in the car park of the Huntsman Inn in Gormanston just before 2pm on March 6,2013. Edward McGrath from Springfield in Tallaght drove the gunman to the scene, and his co-accused Sharif Kelly of Pinewood Green Road in Balbriggan was identified as the driver of a car that was due to take them away from the area after theyd burnt out the getaway car. Both were convicted of murder and handed mandatory life sentences today. The suspected gunman was also arrested when Gardai intercepted the car driven by McGrath. He failed to attend his trial and is still on the run. A self-confessed accomplice called David Cullen was also charged with murder but he turned State witness and the charge was dropped. He is now in the Witness Protection Programme. In her Victim Impact Statement, Peter Butterlys wife Eithne described her husband as a devoted and loving father to their three children and she said their lives have been shattered forever. A Limerick man has been acquitted by the Special Criminal Court of involvement in an assault during which a 53 year-old was nailed to a kitchen floor. Mark Heffernan (aged 32), with an address at Swallow Drive, John Carew Park, Limerick, had denied assaulting Dan Quilligan, causing him harm, at Larch Court on September 14, 2015. The court today concluded that the evidence was not of the necessary weight to convict the man. "For that reason alone," presiding judge Mr Justice Tony Hunt said, "the court will acquit the accused." The prosecution had invited court to draw inferences from the evidence in the case. The court had heard that a tracking-device showed an Audi was parked outside the Larch Court house at the time of the alleged assault, and that Mr Heffernan was the driver. CCTV footage from the day of the assault showed Mr Heffernan in the company of another man, Gerard Mackin. Last month, Mackin (aged 33), a native of Northern Ireland with an address at Star Court, John Carey Park, Southill, Limerick and Patrick Hayes (aged 52), Larch Court, Kennedy Park, Limerick, both admitted to the assault. Mr Justice Hunt said that the evidence had showed Mr Heffernan's "continued association with a number the culprits before and after the assault", but that the indictment against the man was framed in a narrow way, such that the court was "not empowered" to convict him. Previously, the court had heard that when Mr Quilligan arrived at the house that afternoon, a group of men was waiting, and he was "immediately set upon". Mr Quilligan was put in a chair in the middle of the kitchen and assaulted. His right shoe was removed and a nail gun was used. His left foot was nailed to the floor. The prosecution had alleged that Mr Heffernan, as driver of the Audi parked outside the Larch Court house, was involved in the assault. The court found that Mr Heffernan was the driver of the Audi on the day in question but the evidence was not of sufficient weight to convict him of involvement in the assault. Some callers to today's Liveline show on RTE Radio 1 said they didn't see a problem with having a few pints and driving home, especially if living in rural Ireland. Other callers had lost children or a spouse to drink driving and are utterly opposed to the idea of having alcohol before sitting behind a wheel. By David Raleigh A man was "accidentally" shot in the face and seriously injured by armed gardai when they intercepted an international "professional" burglary gang in Co Limerick, a court heard Friday. Aurimas Petraska, 32 of Church Street, Rathkeale, an associate of the man who was shot, pleaded guilty to a string of major burglaries, involving the theft of 150,000 of women's clothes and Chanel beauty products, from pharmacies across Munster. The gang operated with military precision, Michael Collins, prosecuting, told Limerick Circuit Court. "Dressed in black fatigues, wearing head lights", the gang were observed on CCTV footage inside the premises they robbed "checking their watches at regular intervals". The gang timed their robberies to perfection, he said. "They were highly sophisticated...in and out in six minutes." Petraska admitted transforming "cheap" cars into battering rams, capable of smashing through the premises. He spray painted the windows of the cars, and replaced the seats with concrete blocks, ensuring they were heavy enough to mount footpaths and crash through the targeted business premises. All available garda resources were put into tracking the gang's movements, the court heard. International police units at Europol and Interpol are involved in the "ongoing" investigation. Petraska, the only member of the gang to be charged, was arrested when members of the armed Regional Support Unit (RSU) intercepted a car traveling near Shanagolden, on June 29, 2016. During the course of the arrest, a man "accompanying" Petraska was shot in the face after a garda's gun fired "accidentally", Michael Collins, prosecuting, said. The man spent several months in hospital to treat his serious injuries. Petraska said he was paid around 3,000 for each robbery. He did not disclose the identity of the gang boss. During one of the robberies, at O'Briens Pharmacy, Cahir, Tipperary, 20,000 worth of Chanel products was stolen. In a burglary at O'Connor's Pharmacy, Kinsale, Cork, 50,000 worth of Chanel products was taken, and 10,000 damage was caused. Petraska also admitted stealing 80,000 worth of high-end women's clothes from Isobel Boutique, Adare Co Limerick. In a victim impact statement, Isobel owner Kay Mulcair, said she lost 240,000 in revenue. She said her insurance company was refusing to meet the loss, as the security alarm had not been set at the store when the burglary occurred. Kieran O'Connor, O'Connors Pharmacy, Kinsale, said he spent 40,000 on security after the robbery there, including having anti-ram bars installed outside the front of his premises. Judge Tom O'Donnell praised gardai attached to the Cork Division, led by Det Insp Joe Moore; Det Gda Michael Brosnan, and Det Gda Ailish Murphy, for their "painstaking" investigative skills in tracking the gang over a two-year period. Aurimas Petraska sentencing adjourned to May 5th. A judge has given lawyers for a veteran republican charged in connection with the murder of Jean McConville a week to hand over medical notes related to a dementia diagnosis. Ivor Bell, 80, faces two counts of soliciting the IRA abduction and killing of the mother-of-10 in 1972. The Belfast pensioner's legal team are arguing that his ill health renders him unable to fully participate in his trial and are seeking a ruling declaring him unfit to plead. Prosecution lawyers have commissioned a doctor with expertise in dealing with older patients to make his own assessment of Bell's condition. ivorbelljuly2016_large.jpg[/timcap] Counsel Ciaran Murphy QC told Belfast Crown Court that in order to conduct the examination the medic needed access to the defendant's most recent medical notes. He described the documents as "crucial". "There is no point in him (the expert) being prepared for an examination if he doesn't have up-to-date blood tests and brain scans and that type of thing," he said. "They are a crucial piece of material". Defence lawyer Dessie Hutton said he would work to obtain copies from Bell's own doctors. "I don't think it will be an issue," he said, noting that the prosecution had Bell's medical records up until September 2016. Judge Seamus Treacy said it was important the matter was dealt with "expeditiously". He told Mr Hutton to inform health service officials that the documents should be ready for distribution to the prosecution within a week. "There's nothing to stop you requesting them today," he said. The prosecution-hired doctor will examine Bell on May 2, with the next pre-trial court hearing listed for May 12. Bell, from Ramoan Gardens in west Belfast, has denied the charges. Mrs McConville, a 37-year-old mother, was dragged from her home in Belfast's Divis flats complex by an IRA gang of up to 12 men and women, accused of passing information to the British Army - an allegation later discredited by the Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman. She was shot in the back of the head and secretly buried 50 miles from her home, becoming one of the "Disappeared" victims of the Troubles. It was not until 1999 that the IRA admitted the murder when information was passed to police in the Irish Republic. Her remains were eventually found on Shelling Hill beach in Co Louth by a member of the public in August 2003. Nobody has been convicted of her murder. The case against Bell is based on the content of tapes police secured from an oral history archive collated by Boston College in the United States. Academics interviewed a series of former republican and loyalist paramilitaries for their Belfast Project on the understanding that the accounts of the Troubles would remain unpublished until their deaths. But that undertaking was rendered meaningless when Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) detectives investigating Mrs McConville's death won a court battle in the US to secure the recordings. It is alleged that one of the interviews was given by Bell, a claim the defendant denies. The prospects of a deal to save powersharing in the North look bleak after the first week of talks ended in negativity and recriminations. The Democratic Unionists and Sinn Fein again blamed each other for a lack of progress, while the Ulster Unionists and SDLP raised serious doubts whether an accord will be reached. The mood music has been similarly downbeat in the run up to previous historic deals in the North, so some form of agreement may yet materialise come the effective deadline of Good Friday. But the assessments aired on Friday afternoon in the Great Hall of Parliament Buildings, Belfast, certainly did not suggest a breakthrough was imminent. DUP leader and former first minister Arlene Foster said: "We want to get back into devolution as soon as possible, we believe in devolution, we believe devolution is the right way to deal with people's problems in terms of health, education, to have a strong economy for Northern Ireland. "We have set no red lines." She added: "Others unfortunately are holding up this process in terms of their political demands and that is really regrettable." Sinn Fein negotiator Conor Murphy said the talks to date had been "all about process and not about progress". "We want to see an agreement, we are still focused on securing an agreement," he said. Mr Murphy said the majority of participants in the talks acknowledged the need for a "step change" in how government operated in the region "Apart from the DUP and the British government everybody else gets that," he claimed. "We need to see that type of change, we need to see agreements that were made before being implemented and thus far we haven't any progress in relation to that. So we are frustrated, I sense that some of the other parties are frustrated too. "So rather than getting on this round-table, process-driven approach to things let's get down and crunch the key issues - everybody knows what they are, we need to get down and do that." Devolution crashed in January over a row about a botched green energy scheme. The subsequent snap election campaign laid bare a series of other disputes dividing the DUP and Sinn Fein. The main stumbling blocks are the contentious issues of Irish language protections; how to deal with the toxic legacy of the Troubles and a stalled Northern Ireland-specific Bill of Rights. Sinn Fein insists all three were integral parts of previous agreements that just need to be implemented. The party accuses the DUP and UK government of failing to honour obligations in that respect. The DUP, however, claims what Sinn Fein is asking for represent new and unreasonable demands. The North's Secretary of State James Brokenshire instigated the two-week talks process after last month's negotiations to form a new powersharing administration ended in failure. Parties missed a deadline to get a government up and running within three weeks of March's Assembly election. Mr Brokenshire has made clear he will start formulating legislative steps to either restore devolution or make the first moves toward direct rule over the Easter weekend - meaning Good Friday is set to be make or break for a deal. SDLP leader Colum Eastwood said the dynamic of the talks needed to change dramatically if agreement was to be secured. "At the end of another week, almost a month after the election and we still have no government and we have very, very little progress - in fact I think we are miles away," he said. "We have no momentum in this process." He added: "If this process doesn't ratchet up in the early stages of next week there won't be a deal, so all of us have to recommit to doing that." Outgoing UUP leader Mike Nesbitt said soured personal relations between the DUP and Sinn Fein were preventing progress. "If they wanted to, the DUP and Sinn Fein could cobble together some sort of agreement in five minutes, but unless they fix the relationships and build trust around the executive table and show respect to each other, whatever agreement they come up with is going to be worthless," he said. "It is deeply, deeply, deeply frustrating to be involved in a process with people who know they can make it happen but are showing no willingness to make it happen." The Alliance party and Irish government are also involved in the negotiation process. A small number of meetings are planned on Saturday, with the talks recommencing in earnest at Stormont Castle on Monday. Thousands of South Africans have gathered in major cities to demonstrate against President Jacob Zuma. The protests are taking place after Mr Zuma's dismissal of the country's finance minister fuelled concerns over government corruption and a struggling economy. Protesters began marches in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town and other big metropolitan areas to push for the resignation of scandal-hit Mr Zuma, who for now retains the support of a ruling party facing an internal revolt against the president. "Fire Zuma," read some placards. A march organised by the Democratic Alliance, South Africa's biggest opposition party, was expected to pass near the headquarters of the ruling African National Congress in Johannesburg. ANC members in military uniforms who oppose the protest were posted outside. The government appealed for calm and said it respects the right of South Africans to protest peacefully, a legacy of the struggle against white minority rule that ended in 1994 with the country's first all-race vote and the election of Nelson Mandela as president. Pravin Gordhan, who was fired as finance minister in a late-night cabinet reshuffle a week ago, was widely respected for his anti-corruption stance. The Standard & Poor's agency lowered South Africa's foreign currency credit rating after the dismissal, citing political instability and threats to economic growth. Mr Gordhan was seen as a counter to the alleged influence of the Gupta family, Indian immigrant businessmen who have been accused of trying to influence some of Mr Zuma's cabinet picks. The Guptas deny any wrongdoing, and Mr Zuma has said there was nothing improper in the way he chose ministers. Mr Zuma and the ruling party have been weakened by other scandals around the president. Mr Zuma was forced to reimburse some state money after the Constitutional Court ruled against him last year in a dispute over millions of dollars spent on his private home. PA In a lethal rampage spanning 14 hours two teens have allegedly killed a man, stabbed another and brutally attacked a third with a tyre iron. Police are investigating whether two boys, aged 15 and 16, stabbed Caltex service station attendant Zeeshan Akbar, 29, to death at Queanbeyan in an act of terrorism. The pair were arrested in the ACT on Friday morning and it is expected they will be extradited to NSW on Saturday. NSW Police Force Deputy Commissioner Catherine Burns said there was some evidence the spree could be terror-related or linked to drugs. A Muslim leader whose group planned to rally 5000 protesters outside a talk by anti-Islam activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali on the basis that she "condones violence and radicalises people" has previously met with a radical sheikh who promoted suicide bombing. On Monday Ms Ali, a Somalian-born activist and refugee, cancelled her planned speaking tour of Australia and New Zealand, citing a "number of reasons including security concerns" and a "succession of organisational lapses" by event organisers. She had been due to appear in Sydney on Saturday night. As a Jewish person, I am constantly reminded of my minority status, and the lack of understanding of my culture. Every Christmas, for example, I am asked how I am celebrating. I'm not, I tell them. Jews don't celebrate Christmas. And it's fine. I get it. Australia is big, and the Jewish community is extremely small. I can't expect everyone to understand who we are. Religious schools assist minority groups to maintain their sense of community. Credit:Nic Walker Having said that, I want my children to understand. I want them to be familiar with their cultural background and history. They are alive because their great-great-grandparents escaped pre-war Eastern Europe, and I want them to appreciate their heritage. And so I enrolled them in a Jewish school. It is inclusive all religions are welcome but it incorporates Jewish Studies, Jewish History, and Hebrew (the language of prayer) into the weekly lessons. "Assad must go," they say. The rhetoric is so simple. So simple that many forget this is in fact a matter of life and death. We are lulled by news bulletins into a silent acquiescence that it is our moral obligation to take action. After all, how can one sit idly by while atrocities stream through our Facebook feed? We must take action. Assad must go. By all means, let's retaliate against innocent deaths by dropping bombs that will almost certainly kill even more innocents. Let's trust a system of government that is severely compromised by those who profiteer from war. A system that has led us into illegal wars and cost the lives of millions of innocent civilians. Let's trust Trump, and his gang of thugs and thieves, to protect the lives of innocent Syrians. Let's check our rationality at the door, and pretend that there is no need for accusations against the Syrian government to be proven. No one wants to wake up in the morning and see dying children on their screens. And every politician wants the chance to be the hero that saves the day. As asylum seekers languish indefinitely behind barbed wire, our politicians talk with feigned conviction about their commitment to human rights. Soon some will feel strong as our parliament blows the trumpet and we march to the beat of America's war drum. Then we can return to our screens and scroll through the top ten places to get a soy latte, or ponder the newest fashion trend and celebrity divorce. This episode of the Syrian crisis will become a thing of the past, a momentary burst of outrage quelled with decisive action. But for the Syrians it will not be momentary. The sheer magnitude of that means it is more likely that the US military action will remain a limited strike to punish Assad over the chemical attack. Trump is finally responding to the crossing of the famous red line that his predecessor had drawn but then failed to enforce. He is saying that he will not hold all the might of the US military on a tight leash when there are such deliberate and cruel provocations. The guided-missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG 78) launches a tomahawk missile towards a Syrian air base in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack. Credit:US Navy Russia can tolerate this limited attack on its ally - indeed it may even be so frustrated by this latest chemical attack that it ditches Assad for a new leader from his Alawite tribe who suits Moscow's purposes. Assad has no viable way to retaliate against the US. Therefore this should not escalate the broader conflict and should not mean an expanded role for Australia. Apart from anything else, Australia's legal basis for air strikes against the Islamic State in Syria - defending Iraq at the request of its government - does not extend to attacking the Assad regime. But this is a complicated conflict with many players, and Trump has just proved himself to be an unpredictable president. Even if it is meant as a limited strike, the X-factor is that someone will decide to hit back somehow - Assad through some indirect means such as attacking Israel, Russia by deliberately conflicting with coalition air forces operating in Syria, or Iran perhaps through its proxy Hezbollah. The former principal of Punchbowl Boys, Chris Griffiths, was not given any explanation as to why he was unexpectedly removed from the school and was only told he would be given a new job as principal at another school, according to court documents. Documents lodged in the NSW Industrial Relations Commission say that Mr Griffiths' deputy, Joumana Dennaoui, who was also removed from the school on March 2, was told she would be moved to Casula High School as deputy principal. Chris Griffiths was removed as principal of Punchbowl Boys High in March. Credit:Twitter Mr Griffiths and Ms Dennaoui are taking legal action in the commission, alleging procedural unfairness in their removal from the school. They were removed from Punchbowl Boys after the department undertook an "appraisal" of the school's "policies, practices and procedures". A leader of the once-feared Brothers for Life gang ambitiously boasted of making Sydney his, overseeing a period of intense violence, including five shootings, before his eventual demise. Farhad Qaumi once told a couple of gang associates that the city was theirs if they didn't get locked up and claimed that "if you put fear in the members' hearts they'll obey you". Farhad Qaumi is led from court in May 2006. Credit:Peter Rae "The aim of Farhad Qaumi was that the gang would become the biggest or one of the biggest gangs in Sydney," Deputy Senior Crown Prosecutor Ken McKay submitted during Qaumi's sentencing hearing this week. Now the married 34-year-old spends his days in extreme conditions in Goulburn's Supermax prison, a court has heard, suffering post traumatic stress disorder and facing life behind bars. The Australian Taxation Office on Elizabeth Street in the Brisbane CBD was evacuated on Friday afternoon after smoke was seen pouring into the building through ceiling vents. Emergency services responded about 1.40pm and locked down the area, with fire crews going to the second level of the building and identifying faulty air-conditioning units as the source of the small fire. Emergency services closed Elizabeth Street as fire crews searched for the source of the smoke. Credit:Craig Turnbull (Supplied) Queensland Ambulance Service senior operations supervisor Ronald Cunningham said the office was evacuated because there were "mixed messages" about explosions and fire within the building. "But there's a little bit of smoke damage, a little fire and no explosion," he said. Detectives expect to lay more charges over a 10-month investigation into "systemic" fixing of harness races in Queensland. Police believe a "loose cartel" of drivers and trainers has been meeting regularly to decide driving tactics and race outcomes. Drivers are involved in deciding who will win a race ahead of time, police say. Credit:Jay Cronan Queensland Racing Integrity Commissioner Ross Barnett said the race fixing was not occurring at every race meeting but was "more frequent than it is rare". A 46-year-old Warwick man was arrested on Thursday and charged with the first ever count of match fixing in Queensland's racing industry, after police raided five properties across the south-east. The Premier has committed to funding permanent flood levees in Rockhampton and threw down the challenge to the federal government to follow suit on Friday. Annastacia Palaszczuk admitted it would be more cost-effective in the long-term to build levees, but said funding was needed in the short-term. The Fitzroy River reached a height of 8.9 metres in Rockhampton early on Friday morning, which was only 50 centimetres short of the 1954 flood peak and just shy of the nine metres predicted by the Bureau of Meteorology. More than 200 homes had water over their floorboards and about 3000 homes and businesses were cut off. Guards sprayed juvenile inmates with capsicum spray at close range during a riot in the youth justice unit of Barwon Prison that allegedly left one officer injured, the Supreme Court has heard. CCTV footage of the Grevillea unit of the maximum security adult prison on February 13, the day of the riot, was shown to the Supreme Court on Thursday and released publicly on Friday, providing one of the first glimpses into the controversial youth justice centre. The footage, requested by lawyers of children who argue that the unit is illegal, shows a riot starting in the communal area of the ground level. One of the inmates is seen throwing a chair up towards a staff member as they walk downstairs towards them. As the staff member catches it, the inmate throws another chair at him, prompting a number of guards to emerge from the unit's control room. Police have seized nearly $3 million worth of ecstasy allegedly hidden in a wall cavity of an Alexander Heights home and $10 million worth of methamphetamine, allegedly found in a car near Gingin. The drugs haul was uncovered after police issued search warrants at properties in Alexander Heights, Breera, which is near Gingin, and North Perth on Monday. 90,000 ecstasy pills allegedly found in a wall cavity of an Alexander Heights home. Credit:WA Police WA Police deputy commissioner Gary Dreibergs said the joint WA Police organised crime squad and Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission investigation had stopped the illicit drugs reaching the community. "The 18 kilograms of ecstasy represents up to 90,000 individual hits worth up to $2.7 million, while the 10 kilogram of methylamphetamine represents up to 100,000 hits worth up to $10 million," he said. Perth Lord Mayor Lisa Scaffidi has again ignored calls to stand aside, this time by Premier Mark McGowan, instead accusing him of being unprofessional and interfering. Her comments, made during a press conference on Friday afternoon, come just hours after it was revealed Mr McGowan had reportedly severed ties with the embattled Lord Mayor, telling her the City of Perth had lost the confidence of the state government. Perth Lord Mayor Lisa Scaffidi has again ignored calls to stand aside. Credit:Ross Swanborough The Premier had earlier sent a letter to Ms Scaffidi explaining he would not be reconvening a City of Perth committee - a committee chaired by the Premier aimed at building Perth's international profile. Ms Scaffidi, during her press conference, said the letter was "politics at its lowest" and a desperate attempt by Mr McGowan to interfere with local government. The USS Porter launches a missile towards a Syrian air force base. Credit:US Navy/AP "It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons," he said at one point. Did this mean that this single strike concluded military operations against Assad? Moments later, he added, "Tonight I call on all civilised nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria." A child victim of the chemical attack is treated at a makeshift hospital. Credit:AP Did this mean he was seeking to create a coalition to defeat Assad? And what does it mean for relations with Assad's staunch allies, Russia and Iran? Within hours of the statement, Reuters was reporting based on comments from an unnamed source that the strike was a "one-off". Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is an ally of Russia and Iran. Credit:AP Even before the missiles slammed into the Syrian airbase though, Russia had chastised Trump for being so quick to blame chemical attack on Assad, who is, along with Iran, a key Russian ally. "We would welcome a more considered approach," President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday. "This is a dangerous and heinous crime, but it's hasty to put labels on it." Trump's relationship with Putin only adds to the complexity of the situation. Members of Trump's campaign and administration are under investigation for alleged links Russia, which is believed by US intelligence agencies to have used social media to support the Trump campaign. (A cynic might note that this strike serves to ameliorate Trump's snowballing domestic political problems.) But even if the world were not already riven with a new period of instability, a US strike in the midst of a terrible and complex ongoing conflict would be cause for alarm for the broader international community. With the global diplomatic establishment still trying to come to terms with the Trump administration's goals and strategies, that uncertainty is compounded. The Trump doctrine Back in 2014 then president Obama believed he was being unfairly criticised for what he believed was a carefully considered foreign policy approach. His decision to set a rhetorical "red line" against any use of chemical weapons by Assad, only to walk away from it when Russia brokered a deal for the destruction of those weapons, had attracted particular derision. During an Air Force One flight he famously appeared unannounced and angry before the travelling members of the White House press corps and gave them an impromptu lecture on what became known as the Obama doctrine, the central tenet of which was, he said, "Don't do stupid shit". Obama's point was that he believed the most serious errors of US policy in recent years were those of commission rather than omission. On Syria he believed it would be preferable to remove Assad's chemical weapons without directly engaging in yet another conflict. He believed that should America use military force to either punish or remove Assad he could neither walk away from the conflict nor predict how his actions would alter it. This was the Obama the world came to know, though not always admire a restrained and reluctant warrior, happier to use the surgical force of drones and special forces rather than the might of the full US military. What the Trump doctrine might be is so far anyone's guess, but his rhetoric to date has not always been calming. In March last year the then Republican presidential aspirant was given one of his first high-level security briefings during which he reportedly asked questions that chilled some of those in the room. Three times in the space of an hour he asked his briefers why it was that America could not use nuclear weapons against its foes. The story was revealed by the morning show host on the left-leaning MSNBC cable news station, Joe Scarborough a former Republican congressman as he was interviewing former CIA director Michael Hayden. "That's one of the reasons why he doesn't have foreign policy experts around him," Scarborough said after relating details of the meeting. That same month, 122 Republican foreign policy experts published an open letter saying that Trump was unqualified to run for the presidency. "His equation of business acumen with foreign policy experience is false. Not all lethal conflicts can be resolved as a real estate deal might, and there is no recourse to bankruptcy court in international affairs," they wrote. Though some observers welcomed the appointment of the former ExxonMobil boss Tillerson as Secretary of State, he has so far proved to be at best an inscrutable chief diplomat for Trump. Last week The Washington Post reported that he remains isolated from his own senior diplomats, going so far as to order staff not to make eye contact with him as he treks to his suite of offices in the State Department's vast Washington, DC headquarters. As he prepared for talks this week with Xi, Trump also ramped up American rhetoric against North Korea, which is rapidly advancing its nuclear weapons capability. In an interview with the Financial Times on Monday, Trump said the US would act on the North Korean situation unilaterally if he could not find a way to do so with China. "Well if China is not going to solve North Korea, we will. That is all I am telling you," he said during an Oval Office interview. Sending a message all of his own, the North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un responded by firing off another test missile on Wednesday. Compounding the issue to a diplomatic establishment that is struggling to read the semaphore emanating from the White House and the State Department is the civil war within the Trump administration. Trump might argue that his unpredictability by comparison to his predecessor is in fact a strength. Indeed this was a point he made time and again during his election campaign when he railed at the Obama administration for flagging its potential future military actions to the world. So far the State Department has said that Russian military forces were made aware of the strike before it went ahead, in keeping with so-called "deconfliction" protocols put in place to stop the two militaries accidently engaging one another, but it is not yet known if the White House quietly flagged the strike with the Kremlin. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has made it clear that key members of the international coalition fighting the Islamic State were notified of the strike before it took place. This was, said Turnbull, a "calibrated, proportional and targeted response" that would degrade the Syrian air force's capacity to deploy such weapons in future. By coincidence, hours before the strike Hillary Clinton advocated for a similar course of action. Speaking at a conference in New York the former secretary of state and presidential contender observed that the Syrian "air force is the cause of most of the civilian deaths" and suggested that Democrats "should have been more willing to confront Assad" after previous chemical attacks. It should be remembered that though punitive missile strikes were not part of the Obama administration's playbook, they were employed by previous presidents. How the strike will play out in immediate and practical terms is not yet clear. The alliance, that under the Trump administration was directing its might entirely against the Islamic State, has shifted focus with the American attack on Assad's air force. Loading President Donald Trump's pick for the US Supreme Court, Judge Neil Gorsuch, was confirmed by the US Senate on Friday, capping a political brawl that lasted for more than a year and tested constitutional norms inside the Capitol's fraying upper chamber. The development was a triumph for President Donald Trump, whose campaign last year rested in large part on his pledge to appoint another committed conservative to succeed Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in February 2016. However rocky the first months of his administration may have been, Mr Trump now has a lasting legacy: Mr Gorsuch, 49, could serve on the court for 30 years or more. The Supreme Court's newest Justice, Neil Gorsuch. Credit:AP Vice President Mike Pence presided over the final vote Friday, a show of force for the White House on a day when his tiebreaking vote as president of the Senate was not necessary. The confirmation was also a vindication of the bare-knuckled strategy of Senate Republicans, who refused even to consider President Barack Obama's Supreme Court pick, Judge Merrick B. Garland, saying the choice of the next justice should belong to the next president. The missiles were launched from the USS Ross and USS Porter, US Navy destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, off Syria's western coast, defence officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the operation. The Tomahawk has been a critical part of US warfare since the Persian Gulf War in 1991, and commonly carries a 1000-pound (453-kilogram) warhead. It was last used by the Pentagon in October, when the military launched Tomahawks from the Red Sea at three coastal radar sites in Yemen after Houthi rebels there fired missiles at several US ships over the span of several days. A Tomahawk missile is launched during a test in 2010 in the Pacific Ocean. Credit:USNavy Before that, the United States used them in September 2014 as the US expanded its air war against militants from Iraq into Syria. The Pentagon said at the time that it launched 47 Tomahawks from two ships - the USS Philippine Sea in the Persian Gulf and the USS Arleigh Burke in the Red Sea - and hit numerous sites used by what it called the Khorasan Group, an Islamist cell said to be linked to al-Qaeda. One of the largest advantages of the Tomahawk is that it does not require a pilot to be anywhere near a potential target. It can be launched from Navy destroyers up to 1600 kilometres away, a tactical consideration when facing enemy air defences. Syndicated News The Ten Major Military Players Fighting for the Heart of Syria "Nobody is overestimating the value of pre-election promises but there must be limits of decency. Beyond that is absolute mistrust. Which is really sad for our now completely ruined relations. And which is good news for terrorists." During a special UN Security Council session on the airstrikes Friday, Russia's United Nations envoy condemned what he called an "illegitimate action by the United States." "The consequences... for regional and international stability could be extremely serious," Deputy Ambassador Vladimir Safronkov said. "The US has often talked about the need to combat international terrorism," he said, yet it attacked the Syrian air force, which he claimed is leading that fight in Syria. "It's not difficult to imagine how much the spirits of terrorists have been raised by this action from the United States," Mr Safronkov said. Earlier in the session, the British representative had mocked Russia, saying that Mr Assad is making a fool of his backers by committing war crimes and rebuffing Moscow's effort to negotiate. "Russia sits here today humiliated by its failure to bring to heel a puppet dictator," said Matthew Rycroft, Britain's ambassador to the United Nations. Mr Trump has frequently called for improved relations with Russia which were strained under Mr Obama, but the US president said action had to be taken against Assad. "Years of previous attempts at changing Assad's behaviour have all failed and failed very dramatically," Mr Trump said as he announced the attack from his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, where he was meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping. "Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack," he said, adding: "No child of God should ever suffer such horror." Mr Assad's office said Damascus would respond by striking its enemies harder. The strike creates the possibility of a direct confrontation with Russia, which has forces on the ground and advanced air-defense systems capable of shooting down US aircraft and missiles. The so-called "deconfliction" channel that Russia suspended was established in 2015 to prevent mishaps, including collisions, after Russia deployed aircraft to a base along Syria's Mediterranean coast and began carrying out strikes on behalf of the Syrian regime. It calls for a US colonel at an air base in Qatar and a Russian colonel to man a phone hotline and inform each other of where their countries' planes are flying. The arrangement has been far from ideal, however, and US military officials have called in recent months for an expansion of deconfliction talks as Russian and US military aircraft fly in increasingly close quarters over Syrian cities such as Manbij. Senior US military officials have said they have resorted to flying advanced F-22 Raptor jets at the top of the "stack" formations used to carry out airstrikes in part because they can better keep track of incoming aircraft and direct other coalition planes to shift out of the way of incoming Russian aircraft. Two US military officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Friday morning that they were aware of Russia's stated intention to suspend the channel, but it was not yet clear how losing it may affect air operations. The Pentagon was still assessing the situation, they said. One said on Friday that communication through the hotline has continued, including after the attack. "There's someone who is on the other end who is talking to us," one official said. Before the missile strike, a Pentagon spokesman, Captain Jeff Davis, said in a statement, "US military planners took precautions to minimise risk to Russian or Syrian personnel located at the airfield." There have been no reports of Russian casualties in Friday's strike, but Syrian officials claimed that civilians, including children, were killed in the attack. In Moscow on Friday, a Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, Major General Igor Konashenkov, said Russia would help strengthen Syrian air defenses to "protect the most sensitive Syrian infrastructure facilities." General Konashenkov said the attack destroyed a warehouse, classrooms, a cafeteria, six Mig-23 fighter jets that were being repaired and a radar station. The runway and other aircraft were not affected, he said. "Therefore, the military effect of the massive American missile strike on the Syrian air base was extremely small," he said. Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for Russia's Foreign Ministry, also dismissed the US assertion that the attacks were a response to this week's chemical weapon attack in northern Syria, which left scores dead in a village in Idlib province - one of the last strongholds of anti-Assad factions. "It is obvious that the strike by US cruise missiles was prepared well in advance," Ms Zakharova said on Russian state television. "It is clear to any specialist that the decision to deliver the strikes was made in Washington before the Idlib events, which were simply used as a pretext for demonstrating force." Mr Putin's spokesman said the Russian president considered the attack an attempt to distract attention from the heavy civilian casualties caused by a US-backed offensive to capture the northern Iraqi city of Mosul from the Islamic State group. Under a 2013 Russia-US agreement, Syria agreed to dismantle its chemical weapons stockpile. A UN mission in 2014 confirmed that most of Mr Assad's "declared" chemical arsenal had been eliminated. But this week's attack in Idlib raised questions about whether some arms were held back. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who is due to arrive in Moscow next week, said the attack on Idlib meant that "clearly, Russia has failed in its responsibility to deliver on that commitment." Mr Putin carefully orchestrated a peace process that brought together Turkey and Iran - regional powers that have backed opposing sides in the civil war. At the same time, the chemical weapons attack suggested that Mr Assad and his Iranian allies have no intention of being party to a power-sharing agreement with the opposition, indicating that Putin's deal is all but dead. US-Russian relations are at their lowest point in decades, over Moscow's annexation of Crimea and its proxy war in eastern Ukraine, as well as allegations that the Kremlin interfered in the US presidential election last year. Loading Latest News Why are property buyers taking so long to purchase? Here are five factors at play Industrial property growing stronger New report reveals market trends The National Australia Bank ( NAB ) is now offering 350,000 NAB Rewards Points to new customers through a combined home loan and banking package.Those eligible include owner-occupiers, investors, refinancers from other banks, and construction loan customers. Eligibility also requires brokers to help customers apply for a new NAB mortgage of $250,000 or more by 31 August with approval and drawdown occurring by 30 November.The applicant must also be a primary cardholder of any NAB Rewards Credit Card and hold a personal NAB Transaction Account.A change to an existing NAB Home Loan which results in a new account number does not on its own qualify as new home lending, the bank said.Eligible home loans include the NAB Choice Package (excluding the NAB FlexiPlus Mortgage), NAB Base Variable Rate Home Loan, and NAB Tailored Home Loan. NAB HomePlus, NAB Peak Performance, lines of credit and Portfolio facilities are excluded.Finally, this promotion is not available for new home lending or refinancing from UBank or Advantedge nor with refinancing from NAB or NAB Broker.Customers eligible for these rewards points will receive them within 90 days following the home loan drawdown. Points can then be traded for gift cards, plane flights, homewares and more.NABs promotion commenced on 1 April and ends on 31 August. Latest News Why are property buyers taking so long to purchase? Here are five factors at play Industrial property growing stronger New report reveals market trends A former mortgage broker has pleaded guilty to six charges of deception totalling $1.902m.Michael Samra faced charges relating to allegations he deceived investors into lending money to him and his company, ALC Group, between 13 January and 30 July 2009, an Adelaide district court heard.While the investors believed their money would be lent to builders and property developers, Samra used the funds to repay interest and principle to other investors.Samra pleaded guilty on 30 March and was remanded in custody after his bail was revoked. Sentencing submissions will be handed down on 11 May when the matter returns to court.ALC group, which was based in the Adelaide suburb of Norwood, collapsed in 2009 with liabilities of approximately $40m.Investigations by the Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC) found around $66m entered the companys bank account over a seven month period with the majority paid to investors.In 2015, 12 charges of deception were laid totalling more than $12m. Samra pleaded guilty to six charges, while the remaining six charges were discontinued. Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams And thats why readers of The Brooklyn Paper didnt vote for Trump! The decline of community news is the big reason President Trump rose from realty television star to leader of the free world, claims an award-winning Brooklyn Paper alum who explained his theory at a seminar about covering the Donald on Thursday night. I really believe the collapse of local journalism is a huge part of the Donald Trump phenomenon, said Alec MacGillis, who now works for online outlet ProPublica and appeared on a panel ahead of receiving Long Island Universitys prestigious Polk Award. The hard-hitting journalist nabbed the honor for his reporting on the rebellion of working class America as it shifted to support Trump, which he compiled into a lengthy post-election explainer called Revenge of the Forgotten Class. But he got his start working the beat, grinding out several stories a day, getting police blotters at the eight-four, and covering community meetings, including a graduation at Long Island University crucial work that helps journalists build trust with residents, he said. And the loss of good local newspapers and the journalists they produce was a paramount reason why many people stopped believing unfavorable Trump news reports and instead deemed questionable stories as credible. If people in their communities dont see journalists on a regular basis people working hard covering communities at City Hall, at the school board, at the court house if they dont see [Lauren Gill] with her notepad trying to get the story right at the town meeting, instead the story becomes just the national figures who they see on TV or maybe swooping in now and then for a story. And here in red America that builds massive distrust, said MacGillis. He was joined by fellow award winners David Fahrenthold, the Washington Post reporter best known for breaking the Trump Access Hollywood tapes story, and Marina Walker Guevara, who was part of the team behind the Panama Papers. Along with expounding the significance of local news, they also agreed that journalists need to make complicated stories palatable to people who dont have the time to read them by filling people in on the backstory, adding graphics, and going on television to talk about their reports. And Trumps fake news accusations and branding of journalists as enemies of the people makes it important for reporters to take extra steps to make their stories transparent so people can understand the process behind getting a scoop. Fahrenthold who Trump personally called a nasty guy said its now more important than ever for reporters to make sure they are getting the story right so people dont have a reason to mistrust them. The only thing we have is our reputation for truth and fairness and its so easy to lose that, he said. State Senator Steve Santarsiero (D-10) presented a check to Yardley Borough Police Chief Joseph Kelly for $68,600 for the purchase of a new police vehicle and motorcycle during a visit to the station. Our police put themselves on the line every day to keep our community safe, said Sen. Santarsiero. Dating back to when I was a Lower Makefield Township Supervisor more than... Riverdales Chapter Nine: La Grande Illusion gives us a deeper look at both the Blossom and Lodge families. While the Blossoms have to appease the board to keep their business, Veronica and Hermione have to deal with the fallout from Mr. Lodges illegal activity. Who Will Be The New Heir To The Blossom Empire? Riverdales Chapter Nine: La Grande Illusion begins by giving the backstory to the town. The biggest business has always been maple syrup, which is owned by the Blossoms. Because Jason died, the business has no heir. And the vultures have started coming. Every year, the Blossoms throw an exclusive maple tree tapping ceremony. Cheryl used to go with Jason, but she cant face it to do it alone. She begs Archie to go as her escort and help her through. Archie, of course, is dating Val, so he says no and Cheryl storms off. But then Cheryls mom approaches Archie about the ceremony. They have a family member who sits on the board of a music academy. So, he could get into the summer program if he just goes to this ceremony. Why are the Blossoms so obsessed with him? Because hes a good guy? Because he has red hair? I swear Archibald, when the light hits you just right Mrs. Blossom says. Gross. Riverdale Interview: KJ Apa, Luke Perry and EPs on Archie and Cheryls Romance; Molly Ringwald as Mary>>> Archie tells the gang about his deal with Mrs. Blossom and theyre all against it except for Betty. Polly hasnt been speaking to her, so she asks him to go and talk to Polly for her. Cheryl and Archie show up to the ceremony and find that the whole board is there. They want to oust Cheryls dad since Jason died and Pollys pregnant. Theyre just waiting for him to screw up. Cheryl gets to tap the first tree since Jason had died, and she is totally feeling the pressure. Luckily it all works out, but everyone seems surprised Cheryl can do anything without messing up. Archie also pulls Polly aside and asks her why shes ignoring Betty, but Polly tells him to tell Betty not to worry. Cheryl and Archie then overhear members of the board talking about how Cheryl would make a terrible successor to the business, but Archie totally stands up for her, which is sweet. Mr. Blossom eventually asks Archie to escort Cheryl to a dinner for the board. He adds that they can be generous to the right people. Its super weird and theyre clearly up to something. Then later, Cheryl shows up at Archies house and gives him a guitar, which is way too excessive. Fred and Jughead warn him against trusting the Blossoms and taking their gifts. Theyre just using him, but he doesnt see it. Poor, idiot. Mr. Blossom takes Archie to get a fancy suit for the fancy dinner and Archie tries to get Mr. Blossom to help his dads business instead of helping him with music school. Mr. Blossom is super impressed and says Jason would never stick up for him the way Archie stands up for his dad. They already called the music school though. They can get through the dinner and then talk about Fred. Val later tells Archie that Cheryl told her that she was going to steal Archie from her and she believes it. She says the Blossoms are buying him and he didnt earn his place. Eventually, its time for the big, fancy dinner. Everyone at the table is against Cheryl, but Archie promises to help. Mr. Blossom pulls Archie aside and says hell help Fred. He adds that the board doesnt like Cheryl, so they want to create the right picture by having Archie by Cheryls side, which was obvious. Polly pulls Archie aside and says Betty needs to stop contacting her. She knows the Blossoms have something to do with Jasons death and shes going to prove it. Shes really just been spying on them. Archie then sees Cheryl and her dad fighting and he goes after Cheryl. Cheryl tells Archie people hate her. Its fine at school, but this is her family. Archie says not to listen to them. He thinks shes awesome. She kisses him, but he just walks away. But then he stumbles across Mr. and Mrs. Blossom talking about the Lodges and saying they should have sent Hermione to jail instead of her husband! Archie says hes leaving, but Cheryl threatens him and says he wont go to music school or they wont help his dad if he leaves. If he only came to get stuff from them, hes no better than anyone else. Still, Archie leaves. So Archie tells Val hes done with the Blossoms, but shes done with him now, too. He always ditches and ignores her. He kind of had it coming. Cheryl, meanwhile, is furious and starts creepily coloring over Archie and Pollys heads in a group photo from the tree tapping. Shes out for revenge. 9 TV Characters Who Just Deserve to Be Happy>>> Will The Coopers Take The Blossoms Down? Bettys really upset that Polly has stopped talking to her, but Alice has a plan. Shes going to write a tell-all book about the Blossoms and their feud with the Coopers. She wants to find a way in to see why the Blossoms board of trustees is showing up. Yeah. Thats gonna help Polly. Archie later reports to the Coopers and says Polly isnt coming back home. Alice also questions him about the board. He tells her there might be a hostile takeover and Alice obviously wants to write about it. Betty says that she shouldnt write about it while Pollys still there, but Alice says Pollys the one who betrayed them. Shes clearly just covering up how much she misses Polly though. So Betty goes to Cheryl and accuses her of casting a Stockholm Syndrome spell on Polly. Cheryl says its a time to celebrate, though, since Polly just found out that she is, indeed, having twins. Bettys shocked. Then she tells her to ask Polly to call her mom, but it doesnt seem likely. So Alice and Betty go to Mr. Cooper and tell him theyre writing a tell-all about the Blossoms. He refuses to publish it and changed the password to the papers computer so Alice cant work there anymore. He actually fires her. So Alice throws a brick through the window and screams about how she wants Polly back. Shes completely unraveling. Betty rages about her parents to Jughead. Her whole family is falling apart and she cant stop it. Jughead says shes the one holding them together though. Eventually, Archie tells Betty that Pollys okay and is spying on the Blossoms. She didnt betray them. Betty and Jughead tell Alice and she bursts into tears with relief. She was worried this would be the time that Polly really didnt come back, but she will. Betty and Jughead invite Alice to write for their school newspaper, which is pretty weird. But now theyll have a way to tell the truth about the Blossoms. Archie also tells Betty and Jughead that the Blossoms went after Veronicas dad. So, that means he might have wanted payback by going after the Blossoms and killing Jason. Can Veronica and Hermione Redeem Themselves? Hermione admits to Veronica that her dad found out new about the deal with Fred. Plus, the Blossoms still want the land and Fred still doesnt know her dads the buyer. Veronica tells her she has to tell Fred about the land before someone else does. Meanwhile, Ethyls back! She recites a super emotional, dark poem, so Veronica approaches her and asks her if everythings okay. Her parents have been fighting, but they wont tell her why. Veronica can relate. She invites her and Kevin over for a pick-me-up. Veronica admits to Kevin that she and her friend bullied another girl until she had to transfer and go to therapy. So Veronicas determined to redeem herself by cheering Ethyl up. So the whole gang goes to Veronicas house, but Ethyls super upset. Her dad has money problems and they need to sell the house. Veronica explains theyd lost their place in New York, too, but itll all work out. But when Veronica mentions Ethyls last name, Hermione gets super uncomfortable. It turns out, Ethyls father invested in Veronicas fathers company and lost money. Now her fathers testifying against Veronicas father. Veronicas furious about what her dad did. Could Fred lose everything too? So Hermione finally comes clean to Fred. Hes working for Lodge Industries. Freds understandably angry, but Hermiones trying to make the business legitimate now. Then she reveals that Mr. Blossom told her husband about their relationship and her husband sent those kids to destroy their equipment. So Fred decides to quit. Veronica feels super guilty and gives Ethyl all these gifts her father had given her, but Ethyl says she just wants to be friends.Later, though, Kevin tells Veronica that Ethyls dad tried to kill himself. She completely loses it and blames herself. So Veronica and Betty go to the hospital to give Ethyl and her mom some flowers. Before they leave, though, Veronica has to come clean. As soon as she says shes a Lodge, Ethyls mom turns on her. She says Veronica should tell the truth about her father and that he deserves to sit in jail. Veronica goes home and tells Hermione what happened and says she doesnt want to lie for her dad anymore. Fred also eventually tells Hermione hes staying with the job, but theyre doing everything legally and hes getting a 20% share. He and his family wont be used as pawns anymore. And he breaks up with her. Veronica approaches Ethyl at school and apologizes again too. Ethyl says its not Veronicas fault and she was there for her when nobody else was. She even lets Veronica sit next to her. Do you think Ethyl really forgives Veronica? Did the Blossoms or Lodges have something to do with Jasons death? And what will Cheryl do to get revenge? Riverdale airs on Thursday nights at 9/8 c. on the CW. Like BuddyTVs Facebook page. (Image courtesy of the CW) These new people threatening Papa Pope and killing presidents are not the only scary things in season 6 of Scandal. When Quinn and Olivia find out in Dead in the Water that Abby is responsible for Hucks disappearance and possible death, they flip out, and rightfully so. Dead in the Water is dedicated to finding Huck, dead or alive, and eventually forgiveness. Scandal: Will Olivia Follow Fitz to Vermont?>>> Not Dead in the Water After Meg kills Jennifer and shoots Huck, she somehow manages to get both bodies into her car trunk, clean up the hotel room and push said car over a cliff into a quarry. One can assume she thinks Huck is dead. But alas, he is not. He struggles frantically to get out of the trunk as the car sinks into the water. Eventually, he hallucinates that hes back at Pope & Associates. Olivia, Charlie and Quinn urge him to think of ways to get out of the car. He manages to work his way into the front seat, and with pushing from Papa Pope and Meg in his dream as he loses air, he breaks the car window with the headrest and surfaces. Huck then swims to shore and hallucinates again, this time his old self taunts him that hell probably die. But somehow, he musters up more strength and gets Jennifers body from the car trunk to the shore as well. Honestly, I have no idea how any of this was even possible because he was shot three times and lost a ton of blood. But thats TV for you. Cry For Help After learning that Huck and Jennifer are missing, Olivia sends Jake to search for the people blackmailing her father and Quinn and Charlie are on the hunt for Meg. Olivia then heads to see Abby at the White House. She tells Abby that Huck is missing, and asks if Abby can get the FBIs help in finding him. When Olivia gives Abby a photo of the American Renewal people, Abby freaks out but says she doesnt know them. Abby agrees to get help finding Huck. Then she calls the blonde Renewal lady to find out what happened to Huck. The scary lady tells her that Huck is dead, and then tells her that the deal was just Jennifer for Cyrus Beane. There was no mention of Huck. Feeling lonely and at a loss, Abby resorts to telling Fitz everything, as hes her only friend right now. Hunting For Huck Quinn and Charlie head to Jennifers hotel room first, where they find blood spattered across the whole room. Then, they head to Megs apartment, which has been emptied out completely. But Quinn finds a laptop that Huck hid in a vent, which has information about where Meg may be. They eventually track her down to an abandoned house where she has been hiding out and dying her hair. Once Quinn gets her hands on her, she tortures Meg, finger by finger. Before she can get information on where Huck is though, Meg insults Quinn, so Quinn slits her throat. Meanwhile, at the office, Marcus comes by to help out with the search. He gives comfort to Olivia when Jake walks in and shows Olivia a photo of the blonde Renewal lady, Meg and Abby. Olivia is furious, and as she goes to leave, Abby walks into the office. Olivia slaps her a bunch of times, and after the two exchange words, Abby begs for forgiveness, which Olivia doesnt want to give. In fact, Olivia makes Abby wait in the office for Quinn to come back and tells Abby that when Quinn finds out, shes basically going to kill Abby and she wont stop it. She then tells Abby that she messed with the wrong gladiator. Creating Miracles Charlie and Quinn arrive back at the office and tell them that Meg is dead. And since that is their only lead, the team feels defeated and convinced that Huck is dead. Olivia goes into her office, pours herself some wine and sulks the best way she knows how. Charlie comes in and gives her perhaps the best pep talk Ive ever heard him give. He tells Olivia that she needs to fix her team. She is a miracle worker, and she needs to get her team to find Huck, dead or alive, for closure. Charlies words are all she needs. She gets back into the conference room and gives a great speech because they owe it to Huck. Then they all get to work to try and track him down. At one point, Quinn realizes that they should be looking for Jennifer too, because they assume she was with Huck. Olivia and Jake manage to track Jennifers phone, which is on her person, next to Huck in the quarry. And at the office, as everyone waits, Quinn realizes what Abby has done and pounces before Marcus and Charlie hold her back. Quiz: Who Is Your TV Boss?>>> Forgiveness and Recovery At the hospital the doctor informs the team that Huck is stable, but since he lost so much blood theres a chance he could have brain damage or not wake up at all. As they all process the news, in walks the Secret Service and Fitz. He gets Olivia alone, where she breaks down at the possibility of Huck dying. He tells her that Abby talked to him, and that Olivia needs to forgive Abby. Olivia tells him she cant. But he reminds her that they forgave each other once. He also reminds her that Olivia has been down the same dark hole as Abby, and that she knows how to help Abby get out of that hole. Quinn stays by Hucks bedside. She lectures him on being too trusting and says shell never forgive him if he dies. She even tells him that if/when he wakes up, shell always be there to protect his blind spot for trusting people. Huck then wakes up, and she curls up next to him on his hospital bed, as Charlie looks in from outside the room, probably wondering if Quinn should be with Huck instead. And outside, Olivia finds Abby, who breaks down in tears. Olivia doesnt say a word, but just holds Abbys hand. Dead in the Water is pretty violent, with two viewer discretion notices. But its nothing out of the ordinary for Scandal, as any time a member of B613 tries to extract information, torture is always involved. Im very glad that Huck is alive, though I find the whole episode just unbelievable. I cant imagine after being shot three times and losing so much blood that Huck would even be able to move, let alone break a car window under water and swim to the top of the water and then the shore. Then again, he is B613 and a gladiator, so I guess the impossible can be a reality sometimes. I still want to know whats up with this group and why they are so hell bent on getting Mellie into the office. And with Cyrus getting out of jail soon, hopefully well find out who will actually become the next president. And I do have to wonder if Fitz going to the hospital is a sign hes still not quite over Olivia. When him wanting a library in Vermont, and now this, it seems to me that there could possibly be an Olivia/Fitz reunion at some point. Perhaps to take down this new group? What did you think of Dead in the Water? Did you find Huck surviving unbelievable? Are you glad Huck is alive? What do you think will happen now that Fitz knows about these Renewal people and their intentions? Let us know in the comments below. Scandal airs Thursdays at 9/8c on ABC. Want more news? Like BuddyTVs Scandal Facebook page. (Image courtesy of ABC) Scientist to discuss groundbreaking Iceman research 5,000-year-old body discovered in 1991 providing rare glimpse into ancient human life This is truly an amazing story. We have for the first time a window into the lives of people who lived 5,000 years ago. BUFFALO, N.Y. Klaus Oeggl, professor in palynology and archaeobotany at the University of Innsbruck and one of the worlds leading authorities on the Tyrolean Iceman, will discuss recent research about the mummified Neolithic man of the Alps on Monday, April 10, at 4 p.m. in 354 Fillmore Academic Center in the Ellicott Complex on the University at Buffalo North Campus. Oeggls keynote lecture is part of The Institute for European and Mediterranean Archaeologys (IEMA) 10th annual Visiting Scholar Conference, titled The Archaeology of Mountain Landscapes. Oeggl will be available for media interviews prior to the lecture from 2-3:30 p.m. in Department of Anthropology office in MFAC 380. Hikers accidentally found the Icemans body in 1991 in the Central Eastern Alps near the border separating Austria and Italy. Initially thought to be a recently deceased individual, researchers eventually determined the corpse was a well-preserved body of an approximately 45-year-old male who lived around 3200 B.C. The Iceman, referred to as Otzi, is a two-fold archeological illustration of mystery and information. Evidence that he was possibly murdered makes him the subject of the worlds longest-running cold case, but more than 25 years of research also has provided an astonishing glimpse into the human condition of the remote past. This is truly an amazing story, says Peter Biehl, professor and chair of the UB Department of Anthropology and IEMA Director. We have for the first time a window into the lives of people who lived 5,000 years ago. In addition to an overview of major findings since the Icemans discovery, Oeggls lecture will focus on new research, including presentation of many unpublished images, that explore many unresolved issues: How did he die? What did he eat? How did he get up to the mountain? Where did he live? Was he a warrior, a shepherd or a shaman? We have cultures in Italy and cultures in Germany, but we never thought that people 5,000 years ago had crossed high mountain ranges like the Alps, says Biehl. How did he get there? The Iceman is slowly providing answers to these questions, as well as illuminating the study of climate change and the history of illness. Glaciers are melting around the world, but here we have a perfectly preserved body captured in ice, says Biehl. That also relates to the kind of climate change research happening at UB. We also know what kind of illnesses he had because his body is so well preserved, which helps us to better understand health conditions in the past and possibly inform our research of these diseases in the present and future, he says. This is a rare opportunity to look into the eye of a human who lived long ago, says Biehl. Campus News Scientist to discuss groundbreaking Iceman research The well-preserved body of the Iceman, referred to as Otzi, was found in 1991 by hikers in the Central Eastern Alps. By BERT GAMBINI We have for the first time a window into the lives of people who lived 5,000 years ago. Klaus Oeggl, professor in palynology and archaeobotany at the University of Innsbruck and one of the worlds leading authorities on the Tyrolean Iceman, will discuss recent research about the mummified Neolithic man of the Alps at 4 p.m. April 10 in 354 Fillmore Academic Center in the Ellicott Complex, North Campus. Oeggls keynote lecture is part of The Institute for European and Mediterranean Archaeologys (IEMA) 10th annual Visiting Scholar Conference, titled The Archaeology of Mountain Landscapes. Hikers accidentally found the Icemans body in 1991 in the Central Eastern Alps near the border separating Austria and Italy. Initially thought to be a recently deceased individual, researchers eventually determined the corpse to be the well-preserved body of an approximately 45-year-old male who lived around 3200 B.C. The Iceman, referred to as Otzi, is a two-fold archaeological illustration of mystery and information. Evidence that he was possibly murdered makes him the subject of the worlds longest-running cold case, but more than 25 years of research also have provided an astonishing glimpse into the human condition of the remote past. This is truly an amazing story, says Peter Biehl, professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology and IEMA director. We have for the first time a window into the lives of people who lived 5,000 years ago. In addition to an overview of major findings since the Icemans discovery, Oeggls lecture will focus on new research, including presentation of many unpublished images that explore many unresolved issues: How did he die? What did he eat? How did he get up to the mountain? Where did he live? Was he a warrior, a shepherd or a shaman? We have cultures in Italy and cultures in Germany, but we never thought that people 5,000 years ago had crossed high mountain ranges like the Alps, says Biehl. How did he get there? The Iceman is slowly providing answers to these questions, as well as illuminating the study of climate change and the history of illness. Glaciers are melting around the world, but here we have a perfectly preserved body captured in ice, says Biehl. That also relates to the kind of climate change research happening at UB. We also know what kind of illnesses he had because his body is so well preserved, which helps us to better understand health conditions in the past and possibly inform our research of these diseases in the present and future, he says. This is a rare opportunity to look into the eye of a human who lived long ago. Gibbs & Dandy has opened a branch in Stevenage to carry on the legacy of a local builders merchant, Chas Lowe & Sons in Knebworth, which is due to close. Gibbs & Dandy, which already has branches in Luton and Bedford, will open a new branch less than three miles away from the Chas Lowe & Sons site in order to service the customer base, and visitors will see some familiar sights. As well as offering posts at the new branch to the entire Chas Lowe & Sons team, Gibbs & Dandy is paying tribute to the role that the business has played in the local community by erecting its old trading sign at the new Stevenage premises. There will also be permanent recognition of the connection between the two in the form of a business history plaque, and Gibbs & Dandy managing director Neil Lawrence is delighted to keep the link alive. He said: Chas Lowe & Sons is an extremely respected business in the region and when we heard that the site was going to be sold, we were very keen on ensuring that the community continued to have a merchant to turn to and that the great history of the business was preserved. Were really pleased that the vast majority of the team have decided to join us in Stevenage, and we have also had some great conversations with customers about continuing to care for their business in the same way that Chas Lowe & Sons has done for so long. The new branch will open on 3 April on Gunnels Wood Park in Stevenage. 1st Chulmleigh Scouts are the latest winners of RGB Building Supplies Well Built Community Fund following a public vote. Up against Stithians Scouts in Cornwall and Exeter Division Guides, 1st Chulmleigh Scouts came out on top of the vote and now have 1,000 to spend at RGBs South Molton branch. Just over 1,700 votes were received in total. To protect all their equipment, 1st Chulmleigh Scouts have two sheds that are no longer fit for purpose. The sheds house the groups canvas tents, which need to be kept dry when not in use, and all the equipment that enables them to provide activities. The 1,000 donation will be used to carry out repairs and improvements to the sheds. Ashley Christian from 1st Chulmleigh Scouts said: We would like to say a big thank you to everyone that voted for us and to RGB Building Supplies for the donation. The activities we provide children and young adults in Chulmleigh and the surrounding areas ensure they grow up with a wide range of skills, a healthy respect for themselves and their community, and a sense of adventure. Its therefore really important were able to protect our equipment and were thrilled were now able to update our facilities. Everything you need to know for election day in Burlington County Colleagues who visited the National Gallery of Modern in Bengaluru recently are exulting over the Madras Movement exhibition curated by Ashrafi Bhagat. I could not make it, unfortunately, and have had to listen to its high points second-hand, but can only hope it makes it to New Delhi as well, where art-lovers, viewers and writers remain snootily oblivious of the many peculiarities and particularities of the movement led by the artist-teacher, KCS Paniker. It is a pity that part of our regional superiority percolates down to the world of art, where one part of the countrys is dissed by those from other centres. Healthcare start-up Practo's moves to sack 150 people, or 10 per cent of its workforce, is part of the new reality at Indian start-ups, who have been forced to rationalise costs and increase focus on profitability. Carpet bombers, aggressors, barbarians at the gate these are among the names by which global ecommerce majors Amazon, Uber and Alibaba were referred to on India Internet Day, hosting domestic new-economy on Friday. The event, organised by TiE Delhi NCR, witnessed a high-pitched demand for a level-playing field as well. Unlock 30+ premium stories daily hand-picked by our editors, across devices on browser and app. Full access to our intuitive epaper - clip, save, share articles from any device; newspaper archives from 2006. Curated newsletters on markets, personal finance, policy & politics, start-ups, technology, and more. Pick your 5 favourite companies, get a daily email with all news updates on them. 26 years of website archives. The Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM), along with Vandana Shiva of Navdanya, on Friday alleged global seed major has illegally introduced an herbicide-resistant genetically modified organism (round-up ready flex Bt cotton) known to cause cancer into the country. Amadeus, the global provider of technology solutions for the travel industry, is finding strong growth in India. It is developing solutions for airports in addition to working with online travel and airlines. ALBERT POZO, president (Asia Pacific) at Amadeus, tells Ajay Modi that their India business is seeing high double-digit growth and there is a large scope to improve that. Excerpts: Selecting wedding cards can be as tough as narrowing down a guest list for the event, but for a Mysuru-based Jain family, the invite has brought in unexpected attention as soon as it was seen on social media. While discussions on energy, transport and infrastructure are expected to dominate the agenda during Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's visit to India, the issue of trade will remain the elephant in the room. on Friday lifted its ban on flying Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad, whose flight bookings had been repeatedly cancelled after he assaulted an officer of the carrier last month. According to Air India, the ban was lifted after the Civil Aviation Ministry wrote to the airline, a day after Gaikwad expressed "regrets" in the Lok Sabha over the March 23 incident. "Ministry of Civil Aviation has today directed us to lift the ban in view of the apology tendered by Mr. Gaikwad to the Hon'ble Minister of Civil Aviation. The ban placed by on Mr Gaikwad has, therefore, been lifted with immediate effect," the airline said in a statement. "Air India, however, remains committed to ensure that its employees are not assaulted and neither misbehaved with by any passenger and would always take strong action to preserve the dignity of its employees at all times." The passenger carrier placed the ban on the movement of the Sena MP aboard its flights after Gaikwad assaulted an senior manager. Subsequently, two FIRs were filed at the Indira Gandhi International Airport police station at Delhi for assault and delaying of the aircraft -- as the MP refused to disembark from the plane. The Delhi Police Crime Branch is currently investigating the cases. Since the ban, Gaikwad has been compelled to travel by train or by road depending on his engagements, keeping away from the media glare. The airline's unions too supported the company and its Chairman and Managing Director Ashwani Lohani. On late Thursday, the All India Cabin Crew Association (AICCA) said, "We, as cabin crew, must only point out that Gaikwad is and will continue to be a risk to flight safety and flight operations and to cabin crew safety on board, and hence government must think long and hard about letting him back on." Meanwhile, the Ministry of Civil Aviation took the decision after the MP assured that such incidents would not be repeated. The ministry's letter to Air India said: "In view of the apology tendered by Shri Gaikwad and the undertaking of good conduct given by him, Air India and other airlines are advised to lift the ban imposed on him for air travel." Besides, the letter detailed that in order to deal with unruly passengers in the future, an amendment to CAR (Civil Aviation Requirement) is being drafted by Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) in consultation with the ministry for establishment of a "No Fly List". Currently, rules only allow airlines to refuse boarding or off-loading of a passenger whose behaviour is deemed as unruly or disruptive to the safety of flight operations. Earlier in the day, the national passenger carrier again cancelled flight tickets allegedly booked by Gaikwad. However, the MP denied making any such bookings. Airlines sources said that Gaikwad had booked tickets for travelling between Delhi and Mumbai on April 17 and a return trip on April 24, both of which have been cancelled. Cancelling his tickets, the national carrier referred to it as a "possible passenger match with Blacklist entry" and it would be treated as 'No Valid Ticket'. However, the MP in a letter said: "I would like to make it clear that I have neither booked a ticket for 17th nor 24th April, 2017, for any airline... as the session will adjourn sine die on April 13, 2017." The development came a day after Gaikwad wrote a letter to Civil Aviation Minister A. Gajapathi Raju expressing 'regrets' over the March 23 fracas on Pune-Delhi flight AI 852. Gaikwad had also raised the issue of flying ban on him during Zero Hour in the Lok Sabha on Thursday and demanded that it be lifted. Gaikwad's party colleagues in the Lok Sabha also demanded the flying ban against him be revoked and the party threatened to boycott an April 10 National Democratic Alliance meeting in case the matter was not sorted out at the earliest. Captain Suresh Raina led from the front with an unbeaten 68 to propel Gujarat Lions to a challenging 183 for four in their opening Indian Premier league match against Kolkata Knight Riders, in Rajkot on Friday. Raina top-scored for the hosts and consumed 51 balls during his knock which was studded with seven boundaries. Besides Raina Dinesh Karthik (47) and Brendon McCullum played good hands for Gujarat Lions. For KKR, chinaman bowler Kuldeep Yadav picked up two wickets giving away 25 runs. Sent into bat, hard-hitting Englishman Jason Roy (14) made a breezy start to his IPL debut, smacking two fours off Trent Boult in the opening over. But Roy's cameo came to and end in the fourth over when he got a leading edge of a short delivery from Piyush Chawla (1/33) and Yusuf Pathan did enough to hold on to the chance. But the wicket hardly made any impact on McCullum's style of play as he clobbered Chawla for a six just two balls later. Raina then joined the party and hit Chris Woakes for two boundaries in the sixth over. The Lions skipper, however, got a reprieve in the fifth ball of the same over when, running backward, Kuldeep failed to latch on to a tough chance. McCullum looked ominous in his short stay as he welcomed Kuldeep with a four and a six in the next over. But Kuldeep got his revenge in his next over when McCullum missed a straight delivery that caught the former Kiwi batsman plumb in front of the wicket. New man in Aaron Finch (15) then smashed Pathan for consecutive sixes before he was holed to Suryakumar off Kuldeep at long-off in the next over. Then Karthik and Raina joined hands and the duo shared crucial 87 runs for the fourth wicket. Raina should consider himself lucky as beside surviving a run out chance, he was dropped again this time Pathan spilling a simple chance soon after scoring the batsman scored his half-century. Raina grabbed the life with both hands and struck Chawla over the midwicket fence in the final ball of the same over. Without going for rash shots, flamboyant Karthik hit Woakes for a six and a four and then Raina also found the fence to pick up 16 runs off the penultimate over. Karthik continued in the same vein and struck two more boundaries in the final over from Boult before being caught by Suryakumar in search of quick runs. A Right to Information (RTI) query on Thursday revealed that a huge plot of acquired land here was allegedly 'gifted' to the Tata Group at throwaway rates by the previous Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) government in Maharashtra. The land measuring 32,182.20 sq. metres was given to the Tata Group by the previous government shortly before it demitted office. Prominent RTI activist Anil Galgali has now demanded that Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis should order a probe into the matter and cancel the allotment as the land could have been used for housing the poor. Giving details, he said the acquired piece of prime land in Borivali East, opposite the Sanjay Gandhi Park, worth over Rs 3,000-crore, was allotted to Tata Group at dirt cheap rates. "This acquired land could have been used for public or low-cost housing, but now it will be utilised for construction high-end luxury apartments. It is a good example of how land acquired from the poor is handed over to the rich," Galgali said. When asked for their response, a Tata Steel spokesperson said they needed time to study the matter before replying. According to documents acquired by Galgali from the Mumbai Suburban District collectorate under the RTI, the state government had acquired the plot (32,182.20 sq. mt.) in the 1960s under the Land Acquisition Act. It was meant for extending godowns and making residential quarters for the workers of the company, Special Steels Ltd, which was later taken over by Tata Steel. In 2001, new owners Tata Steel sold a part of the land, 3,051.80 sq. mt. to a leading private builder for commercial and residential purposes. However, Galgali said, in the process Tata Steel violated government rules which stipulated that before handing it over to any other party, it must take the government's permission but it defaulted and sent a request to the collector only subsequently, seeking transfer of the property. The government asked Tata Steel to return the land but when it appealed and ruling went in its favour, Tata Steel paid Rs 8.40 crore as 'unearned income'. Later, the company applied for transfer of the remaining 29,130.40 sq. mt. land to exploit it for residential and commercial purposes, ostensibly with help from government officials. This was despite the fact that the government's Committee for Land Acquisition had decided to reject any proposal for transfer from Tata Steel for purposes other than what was stipulated in the beginning, and approved by the then Congress government's Revenue Minister Balasaheb Thorat. The matter again went to Thorat in appeal but strangely, he overruled the earlier decision of the Committee for Land Acquisition and around 2014 allowed the transfer to Tata Steel which paid up Rs 44.98 crore. "The land is worth minimum Rs 3,000-crore, besides the value of the commercial and residential construction on it which will be sold in the open market at current high rates. Tata Steel violated the provisions of the agreement and Thorat misused his status for a huge loss to the exchequer," Galgali said. He said in 2014, even if the government had allowed the change of user, there is no evidence that the company had paid the necessary fees for it, making it clear the land is being illegally developed for commercial gains, though both the collector and the revenue departments had given proposals to take it back. After the new Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government assumed office, then Revenue Minister Eknath Khadse issued an order on November 21, 2014, that since the decision was taken by the previous regime just prior to the October 2014 assembly elections, it should be reviewed. On February 20, 2015, the Konkan Divisional Commissioner scheduled a hearing in the matter of which no information is available on government records. Accordingly, Galgali pointed out that since even the new government suspected it was a wrong decision by the previous government, Fadnavis must order a detailed probe into the case, put on hold all construction activities on site and take action against concerned officials. To develop a pan-India common agriculture market which would help growers get a better price for their produce, the Central government along with the NITI Aayog and over 70- senior level officers from states would discuss reforms next week. India is making big inroads in horticulture (fruits and vegetables) exports with an improvement in quality and a special focus on market-specific approach to reach out to customers according to their requirement. It is true that the government should not throw good money after bad, but failed projects should at least be used as lessons to improve the ... Congress Member of Parliament Jairam Ramesh on Thursday withdrew an amendment to highlight how the Rajya Sabha was being taken for granted by the government, after former prime minister Manmohan Singh asked him to do so. Singh told him it would disturb the fine balance in the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council. Nearly ten have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with unions to formalise a turnaround pact. Earlier, the unions had laid out the condition that they would sign the MoU only after the details of the turnaround plan were discussed with them. President Donald J. Trump was right to strike at the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for using a weapon of mass destruction, the nerve agent sarin, against its own people. Mr. Trump may not want to be president of the world but when a tyrant blatantly violates a basic norm of conduct in this case, the ban on using chemical or biological weapons in armed conflict, put in place after World War I the world looks to America to act. Mr. Trump did, and for that he should be commended. I am racked with anxiety that our buffoonish president who sounds so internationally unsophisticated and who is still operating under a cloud of illegitimacy is beginning to face his first real foreign crises. An economic relationship "that is fair on both sides" is our top priority, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said, as the Chinese President Xi Jinping landed in Florida to meet his American counterpart Donald Trump. "High on the list of our priorities is an economic relationship that is fair on both sides," Tillerson told reporters at the West Palm Beach Airport as the Chinese President arrived here. Trump and Xi are to hold a series of meetings here. This is the first meeting between the two leaders. "Today will be a time to exchange candid views on the nature of the US-China relationship, and we look forward to additional discussions in the future on topics of mutual importance," Tillerson said. Referring to the statement by Trump, Tillerson said the chief goal of US trade policies is the prosperity of the American worker. "To that end, we will pursue economic engagement with China that prioritises the economic well-being of the American people," he said. The United States is also looking to make progress with China on areas of foreign policy, those that serve US interest as well as the region's. "We are hopeful that China will find ways to exercise influence over North Korea's actions to dismantle their nuclear weapons and their missile technology programs," he said. "Whether it's using their authority on the UN Security Council or utilising new levers of power, China can be part of a new strategy to end North Korea's reckless behaviour and ensure security, stability, and economic prosperity in Northeast Asia," Tillerson said. At the same time, he said, the US does recognise the challenges China can present to American interests. The US renews its strong commitments to allies in Asia and around the world who have been valuable partners in preserving shared values and security interest. "Similarly, the United States will protect our citizens and our institutions against cyber attacks. On other areas of disagreement, such as human rights and religious freedom, the United States will be firm in representing our core democratic values and advocating for the right of all people to live in freedom," he said. Tillerson said the Trump administration remains dedicated to working with China toward mutual goals of respect, security, and prosperity. "As we do so, we will not shy away from frank discussions which are necessary to narrow our differences," he said. Syria is to blame for the US missile strikes carried out after a deadly suspected chemical attack on a rebel-held town earlier this week, NATO head Jens Stoltenberg said today. "The Syrian regime bears the full responsibility for this development," Stoltenberg said in a statement. "Any use of chemical weapons is unacceptable, cannot go unanswered, and those responsible must be held accountable," he added. Syria, already torn by years of battle, on Tuesday saw yet another atrocity, one which has echoed internationally, when government forces launched a suspected chemical attack in the Idlib province of the country. The weapons used was likely to be sarin, a lethal nerve agent. Since its inception in 2008 digital currency has attracted critics who argue its inherently risky. The latest push to create an exchange traded fund (ETF) in order to make trading it easier, suggests attitudes to it havent changed. But some risks associated with a ETF is just like any other asset that becomes tied to investors and the stockmarket. Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet US President Donald Trump for the first time on April 6 and 7 at the latters Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach. On the agenda are a number of contentious issues that the two leaders are unlikely to resolve. Uruguay will become the first country in the world to allow recreational to be sold in pharmacies, starting in July, the president's office has said. The South American country adopted a revolutionary law in 2013 that fully legalised the production, sale and consumption of . But the most innovative -- and controversial -- aspect of the law, pharmacy sales, had been on hold, with no clear timeline for when it would begin. President Tabare Vazquez's administration yesterday put an end to the uncertainty. "Cannabis will be dispensed in pharmacies starting in the month of July," presidential aide Juan Andres Roballo told a press conference. Under the law, buyers must sign up for a national registry of users to ensure they have fulfilled licensing procedures and do not exceed the monthly maximum purchase of 40 grams. The registry -- which is only open to Uruguayan citizens or permanent residents -- will be up and running on May 2, Roballo said. The marijuana sold in pharmacies is being grown in state-supervised fields. Under the law, users also have the option to grow their own pot at home, or join cannabis clubs that grow it in cooperatives. US President Donald Trump said on Friday he had made progress in talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping and expected them to overcome many problems, a marked contrast to the stridently anti-China rhetoric of Trump's 2016 election campaign. Russian President Vladimir Putin considers the US strike on a Syrian airbase on Friday as "aggression against a sovereign state," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to Russian agencies. "President Putin considers American strikes on Syria aggression against a sovereign state in violation of norms, and under an invented pretext," Peskov was reported as saying. The United States fired a barrage of cruise missiles on Thursday night into Syria in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians, US officials said. The diplomatic situation had been looking bright for President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. With the help of Russia, he had consolidated his power, the rebels were on their heels and the United States had just declared that ousting him was not a priority. moved to its 52-week high of Rs 232, up 10% on BSE in intra-day trade, after the company announced that it has received Letter of Award ('LoA') from Mumbai International Airport Pvt. Ltd. (MIAL) for combined land parcels in Mumbai. Air India has, once again refused to fly Shiv Sena Member of Parliament Ravindra Gaikwad by cancelling his tickets between Mumbai and Delhi for later this month. This is the seventh attempt on the part of Gaikwad to book a flight on Air India, which barred him from flying after he assaulted an airline staffer. Asserting that the travel ban against Gaikwad should not be lifted unless he tenders an 'unconditional apology' to Air India employees and undertakes in writing to abide by the Chicago and Tokyo Conventions and Rules of the Air and follow all cabin safety and public behaviour norms, the carrier in a letter said taking the saffron leader back on board would crush the morale of its workers and other domestic airlines. Elucidating that blatant criminal actions of Gaikwad have not only been in poor taste, but are criminal acts of violence, All India Cabin Crew Association (AICCA) general secretary Sanjay Lazar in a letter to the Chairman and Managing Director of Air India, Ashwani Lohani, said that Gaikwad was and would continue to be a risk to flight safety and flight operations and to cabin crew safety on board, and hence, the government must think long and hard about letting him back on. Post keeping his stand in the Lok Sabha yesterday where he asserted that he would not apologise to the Air India employee, Gaikwad, later on Thursday, in a letter to Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju, expressed "regrets" over the incident which courted controversy a month ago and said that he was clearly told this was a pre-requisite for him to fly again. The letter claims the restriction on flying is preventing the "effective discharge of his duties and responsibilities." Upping the ante against the government, the BJP's alliance partner yesterday also threatened to boycott the meeting convened by the NDA if the ban on Gaikwad was not lifted by April 10. Gaikwad, who was banned from flying after he assaulted an Air India staff, said that he had been provoked and alleged that the airlines staff misbehaved with him. Speaking on the issue during Zero Hour, Gaikwad demanded the flying ban on him be lifted. He got support from other opposition parties. The Shiv Sena MP also said that he can apologise to the Parliament but will not apologise to the airline staffer. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Rajasthan Government on Friday sent a report to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Alwar cow-vigilantism incident. Earlier in the day, the Supreme Court issued a notice to the Rajasthan Government seeking a reply on the matter within three weeks, after a Muslim man was allegedly killed by cow protectors over suspicion of cow-smuggling in Alwar. Besides Rajasthan, the court also issued notices to Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Jharkhand. The top court's directive came after a petition was filed by activist Tehseen Poonawalla seeking ban on Gau Rakshaks and to probe all incidents of cow vigilantism in these states. The matter has been deferred to May 3 for further hearing. Yesterday, Alwar incident sparked war of words in theParliament as well. Both Houses of Parliament witnessed heated exchanges regarding this incident. Congress Rajya Sabha member Madhusudan Mistry demanded the dismissal of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in the state in view of the "breakdown of constitutional machinery." Three people have been arrested in connection with an attack on a group of five men by the cow vigilantes that led to the death of one Muslim man on Wednesday. The incident happened on April 1 after gau rakshaks affiliated with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal stopped their vehicle on NH 8, alleging that they were illegally transporting cows. An FIR has been registered and investigation is currently underway in this regard. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday slammed the opposition for politicising the song and the anthem and asked rival parties to develop patriotic sentiment. Dubbing arguments over the song and anthem as unfortunate Uttar Pradesh Health Minister Siddharth Nath Singh said such themes bind the nation and must not be subjected to derogation or ridiculed. "It is unfortunate that we are having arguments on national song and national anthem in this nation. These are few aspects which bind the nation as one. I would like to urge the political parties politicising such issues to bring some sense of patriotism in their thinking," said Singh. "It is very shameful that people are drawing communal lines around such topics. I would like to urge to these political parties that you have many issues to raise your political stature, so don't be so bank corrupt, so as to demean or undermine nationalistic issues," he added. A week after the mayor of Meerut asked all corporators to either sing Vande Mataram or leave the country, BJP councillors at the Allahabad Nagar Nigam yesterday demanded that a new rule is passed under which the House proceedings would start with the national song Vande Matram and end with the national anthem Jana Gana Mana. Some councillors objected to the proposal and it led to ruckus and disruption of the proceedings of the House. Councilors in the Opposition alleged that BJP Councillors are raising this demand because of BJP coming to power in the state. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will arrive in India on a four-day visit today and will meet External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj. India will sign an inter-governmental agreement on civil nuclear energy with Bangladesh during Prime Minister Hasina's visit to India. According to Dhaka Tribune, India and Bangladesh may sign around 35 deals and Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) on trade and commerce, economy and connectivity, and on defence related issues. The MoUs will include prevention of human trafficking, blue economy and maritime cooperation in the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean, use of Chittagong and Mongla seaports, Indian economic zone, and joint research on oceanography of the Bay of Bengal. Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Joint Secretary Sripriya Ranganathan on Thursday said that India was expecting to sign over 20 agreements with Bangladesh during this visit. Ranganathan further said the two countries would also launch a bus service connecting two cities of India and Bangladesh and a train service between West Bengal and Bangladesh. The Bangladesh Government on Monday approved the draft of a proposal to establish a new passenger bus service between Dhaka in Bangladesh and Kolkata in India via Khulna. The draft of the proposal was approved in a weekly Cabinet meeting presided over by Prime Minister Hasina. The visit will be aimed at expanding bilateral trade, boosting investment, connectivity and sub-regional assistance. India is likely to offer USD 500 million Line of Credit to Bangladesh for defence exports from the country during the visit. It is unlikely that the Teesta water sharing agreement would be signed. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The U.S. military strike on the Syrian Government airbase in response to Tuesday's chemical weapon attack has drawn differing reactions across the with most inclining in favour of President Donald Trump's move. Nations including the United Kingdom, China, Japan, Australia, Turkey and Saudi Arabia have supported Trump in his endevaour to put an 'end to chemical attacks.' Britain issued a show of support for the U.S. "The UK government fully supports the US action, which we believe was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, and is intended to deter further attacks," a Downing Street spokeswoman said. China, which has repeatedly blocked resolutions by the United Nations against Bashar-al Assad, has said it had always been opposed to the 'use of force.' "China had always been opposed to the use of force," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said while speaking at a press conference in Beijing. Hua also said that China opposed "the use of chemical weapons by any country, organisation or individual, in any circumstance and for any purpose," The Guardian reports. There was now an urgent need to prevent a "further deterioration" of the situation in Syria, Hua added. Trump sat down with Chinese President Xi Jinping to steak and pan-seared sole shortly after making the decision to pull the trigger on the strike in Syria. He met with his national security team before the formal dinner in Mar-a-Lago, sitting through the meal with President Xi while action was underway. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has said he "strongly supports" the US military strike on Syria's al-Shayrat airfield, calling it a calibrated, proportionate and targeted response to the Syrian regime's "shocking war crime". "It sends a strong message to the Assad regime. The retribution has been proportionate and it has been swift. We support the United States in that swift action," Turnbull told the media. "There is no question that this shocking conflict in Syria is crying out itself for a resolution and we certainly will continue to work with our allies and our partners to see a resolution to this shocking war," he added, as reported by the Guardian. France was among the countries informed by the U.S. ahead of the strikes, French foreign minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said. "I was told by Rex Tillerson during the night," Ayrault said, calling the missile strike "a warning [to] a criminal regime". The office of the French President, Francois Hollande, issued a statement citing he had spoken with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel. "The president and the German chancellor held talks on the telephone this morning on the situation in Syria. Following the chemical massacre on April 4 in Khan Sheikhun in the northwest of Syria, a military installation of the Syrian regime used chemical bombing was destroyed last night by US strikes. We have been informed," the statement said. "Assad bears full responsibility for this development. Its continued use of chemical weapons and mass crimes can not go unpunished . France and Germany therefore continue their efforts with partners in the United Nations framework to sanction the most appropriate criminal acts related to the use of chemical weapons banned by all treaties. We call on the international community to come together for a political transition in Syria, in accordance with resolution 2254 of the security council and the Geneva communique," it concluded. New Zealand Foreign Minister Murray McCully said, "It is becoming clear that Syrian government forces were responsible for the outrageous attacks where chemical weapons were used. These events are horrific. It is critical that the international community emphatically demand an end to this violence, and that the Syrian government be held to account." "In the absence of an adequate response from the United Nations security council, we can understand why the United States has taken targeted unilateral action to try and prevent further such attacks by the Syrian regime," McCully added. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the nerve gas attack earlier this week justified the retaliation. "Many innocent people became victims from the chemical attacks. The international community was shocked by the tragedy that left many young children among the victims. Japan supports the US government's determination to prevent the spread and use of chemical weapons," he said. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also lent his backing to the strike through a tweet. Earlier, the Pentagon confirmed it used a hotline for minimising the risk of aerial combat between U.S. and Russian jets in eastern Syria to alert Moscow of the strike against the Syrian Government. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, however, contradicted the information and said Russia was not alerted. Hours after launching the strike, Trump called on all 'civilised nations' to stop the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria. He also asserted that Assad "choked out the lives of innocent men, women and children." "Tonight I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched. It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the chemical weapons convention, and ignored the urging of the UN security council," he said. "Years of previous attempts at changing Assad's behaviour have all failed and failed very dramatically. As a result the refugee crisis continues to deepen and the region continues to destabilise, threatening the United States and its allies. Tonight I call on all civilised nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria, and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types," he added. On Trump's orders, U.S. warships launched between 50-60 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Syria Government airbase where the warplanes that carried out the chemical attacks were based, U.S. officials said. Trump had famously said the chemical attack on Syria's Idlib province affected his deeply and tranformed his thinking about Assad. Dozens of people, including at least ten children, were killed and over 200 injured as a result of asphyxiation caused by exposure to an unknown gas on Tuesday. The death toll is said to be at least 67, according to activist al-Diab, while the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has reported it to be 58. The High Negotiations Committee claimed the death toll could be as high as 100 with up to 400 injured. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Congress on Friday welcomed the Supreme Court's directive to the Rajasthan Government on the Alwar incident where a man was allegedly killed by Gau Rakashaks (cow protectors) over suspicions of cow smuggling. Congress leader Pramod Tiwari told ANI, "I welcome the decision taken by the Supreme Court. The kind of hooliganism we have been witnessing in the garb on cow vigilantism, it has led to a situation where people are taking law into their own hands. The matter should have been brought first to the police's attention." Congress leader Madhusudan Mistry said, "I think the Supreme Court seems to have taken the right decision in issuing that notice, because it seems as if the gang of Gau Rakshaks seems to be enjoying extra constitutional powers and they don't seem to have fear of the state at all. Another Congress leader K Rahman Khan also welcomed the top court's decision. Besides Rajasthan, the apex court also issued notices the to Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, and Jharkhand governments. The top court's directive came after a petition was filed by activist Tehseen Poonawalla seeking ban on Gau Rakshaks and to probe all incidents of cow vigilantism in these states. The matter has been deferred to May 3 for further hearing. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) U.S. President Donald Trump honoured wounded veterans and soldiers for their services as he welcomed them to the White House on Thursday. Trump addressed them as part of the annual Wounded Warrior Project's Soldier Ride. Citing a source, CNN reported that Trump said "These are real heroes; I call them America's winners, because they are winners." The president says soldiers and veterans have "risked all that you have" to protect the country. "You've earned our freedom with your sweat and your blood and your incredible sacrifice." Trump added. The service members gathered in the White House with Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and their wives. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Lying onn a hospital bed, the last thing you should have to worry about is a personal data breach. Yet, a recent research co-authored by a Michigan State University business scholar found nearly 1,800 occurrences of large data breaches in patient information over a seven-year period. According to the study by Xuefeng "John" Jiang and colleagues from Johns Hopkins and Ball State universities, the data breaches occurred in care facilities ranging from UC Davis Medical Center in California to Henry Ford Hospital in Michigan. "Our findings underscore the critical need for increased data protection in the care industry," Jiang said. "While the law requires care professionals and systems to cross-share patient data, the more people who can access data, the less secure it is." The researchers examined Department of Health and Human Services data for the period October 2009-December 2016. By law, hospitals covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPPA, must notify HHS of any breach affecting 500 or more individuals within 60 days from the discovery of the breach. They found that healthcare providers reported 1,225 of the 1,798 recorded breaches, while business associates, health plans and healthcare clearinghouses reported the rest. 257 breaches reported by 216 hospitals, while 33 hospitals experienced more than one breach - many of which are large, major teaching hospitals. This research reinforces the critical trade-off patients face: healthcare systems having access to information they need, versus a hacker planning to spend your savings at Best Buy. The study is published in JAMA Internal Medicine. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Union Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Minister(MSME) Kalraj Mishra on Friday praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for ending VIP culture by shunning traffic restrictions to receive Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at the airport this afternoon. "Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India is a perfect example of an ideal and capable prime minister a country should have," Mishra told ANI. He said this act of the Prime Minister also shows he considers the prime minister of the neighboring country an equal and one among us. Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Modi travelled from his residence on Lok Kalyan Marg to Delhi Airport, in normal traffic when he went to the airport to receive Hasina. Several efforts have been made to end the VVIP culture in the state. Recently, the Punjab government put a ban on use of red beacons on government vehicles. Meanwhile, Hasina today landed in New Delhi to kickstart her four-day visit to the country. The two leaders are expected to hold official talks on a range of issues including an inter-governmental agreement on civil nuclear energy. According to Dhaka Tribune, India and Bangladesh may sign around 35 deals and Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) on trade and commerce, economy and connectivity, and on defence related issues. The MoUs will include prevention of human trafficking, blue economy and maritime cooperation in the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean, use of Chittagong and Mongla seaports, Indian economic zone, and joint research on oceanography of the Bay of Bengal. Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Joint Secretary Sripriya Ranganathan on Thursday said that India was expecting to sign over 20 agreements with Bangladesh during this visit. The visit will be aimed at expanding bilateral trade, boosting investment, connectivity and sub-regional assistance. The Bangladesh Prime Minister will be staying at the President House as a special guest during her stay. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) In its first public response to the U.S. military strike on the Syrian Government's al-Shayrat airbase in response to Tuesday's chemical weapon attack, the Kremlin has issued a strong statement condemning the attack as "aggression against a sovereign nation." Moscow said the strikes had been carried out on an "invented pretext" and claimed the Syrian army did not have chemical weapons. "President Putin regards the U.S. attacks on Syria as an aggression against a sovereign state in violation of the norms of international law, and under a trumped-up pretext at that," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday, Sputnik International reports. "Putin also sees the attacks on Syria by the US as an attempt to divert the international community's attention from the numerous casualties among civilians in Iraq. The fact of the destruction of all chemical weapons stockpiles has been recorded and confirmed by the OPCW, a specialized UN unit. At the same time, in Putin's opinion, total disregard for the use of chemical weapons by terrorists only drastically aggravates the situation," he added. He also said the strikes would do "significant damage to U.S.-Russia ties" and created a "serious obstacle" to creating an international coalition to defeat the ISIS. Vladimir Safronkov, Russia's deputy UN ambassador, asserted that the consequences of these operations would be on the conscience of those who came up with these plans. "The authors of these plans should stop and think what military operations in Iraq, Libya, and other countries led to. All the consequences will be on the conscience of those who came up with these plans." State news agency RIA quoted Viktor Ozerov, head of the defence and security committee at the Russian Upper House of Parliament, saying the U.S. strikes could undermine the fight against terrorism. Ozerov also said Russia would call for an urgent meeting of the UN security council. The RIA news agency also cited Yury Shvitkin, deputy head of the Russian Lower House of Parliament's Defence Committee, as saying that the United States was using the Islamic State militant group as a tool for its own geopolitical interests. This comes ahead of U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson visiting Moscow next week. He is expected to meet with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and President Vladimir Putin, The Guardian reports. Earlier, the Pentagon confirmed it used a hotline for minimising the risk of aerial combat between U.S. and Russian jets in eastern Syria to alert Moscow of the strike against the Syrian Government. "Russian forces were notified in advance of the strike using the established deconfliction line. US military planners took precautions to minimise risk to Russian or Syrian personnel located at the airfield," Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said. "We are assessing the results of the strike. Initial indications are that this strike has severely damaged or destroyed Syrian aircraft and support infrastructure and equipment at Shayrat airfield, reducing the Syrian government's ability to deliver chemical weapons. The use of chemical weapons against innocent people will not be tolerated," he added, citing "the strike was a proportionate response to Assad's heinous act and that it was intended to deter the regime from using chemical weapons again." PENTAGON: At direction of POTUS, U.S. forces conducted cruise missile strike against a Syrian Air Force airfield today at about 8:40 pm EDT pic.twitter.com/TEac56cQee Dan Linden (@DanLinden) April 7, 2017 Hours after launching the military strike, Trump called on all 'civilised nations' to stop the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria. He also asserted that Assad "choked out the lives of innocent men, women and children." "Tonight I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched. It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the chemical weapons convention, and ignored the urging of the UN security council," he said. "Years of previous attempts at changing Assad's behaviour have all failed and failed very dramatically. As a result the refugee crisis continues to deepen and the region continues to destabilise, threatening the United States and its allies. Tonight I call on all civilised nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria, and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types," he added. On Trump's orders, U.S. warships launched between 50-60 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Syria Government airbase where the warplanes that carried out the chemical attacks were based, U.S. officials said. Trump had famously said the chemical attack on Syria's Idlib province affected his deeply and tranformed his thinking about the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. Dozens of people, including at least ten children, were killed and over 200 injured as a result of asphyxiation caused by exposure to an unknown gas on Tuesday. The death toll is said to be at least 67, according to al-Diab, while the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has reported it to be 58. The High Negotiations Committee claimed the death toll could be as high as 100 with up to 400 injured. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Ace Indian shuttler Ajay Jayaram will aim to book his place in the semi-finals of the Malaysia Open Super Series Badminton Tournament when he takes on fifth-seeded Son Wan Ho of South Korea in their last-eight clash later today. Jayaram entered the quarter-finals of the tournament with a hard-fought victory over Denmark's Viktor Axelsen in a men's singles match in Kuching yesterday. The unseeded Jayaram stunned Axelsen, seeded fourth, 9-21, 21-14, 21-19 in a thrilling second round contest that lasted 44 minutes. Wan Ho, on the other hand, stormed into the last-eight following a comfortable 21-15, 21-15 win over Indonesia's Tommy Sugiarto in a match that lasted 38 minutes. Jayaram is currently the lone Indian survivor in the ongoing tournament after Rio Olympic silver-medallist PV Sindhu and star shuttler Saina Nehwal made shocking first-round exits from the tournament on Wednesday. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) In the wake of the ongoing controversy over the VVIP culture, Minister of State for Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises and BJP MP Babul Supriyo on Friday stated that MPs are being considered a 'soft target' for scrutiny by the media and general public alike. Backing the political fraternity, Supriyo told ANI it is unfair for the media to relentlessly brand the MPs based on the privileges they are entitled to. "Any person who becomes a Member of Parliament has worked very hard to earn that position. Therefore, any privilege we enjoy is purely based on seniority. We are also public servants, who work for development in the absence of a uniform. We have earned our position. It has not been gifted to us. Not all of us have become an MP through family connections," he said. Supriyo, however, refused to comment on Trinamool Congress (TMC) Rajya Sabha MP Dola Sen, who delayed an Air India flight from Delhi to Kolkata by 39 minutes after refusing to abide by the security protocols. He stated that it would be inappropriate to voice his opinion in the absence of complete information regarding the aforementioned incident. "I would first like to know what exactly happened. Before that it is not advisable for me to say anything. Having said this, it is necessary for both MPs and the general public to make sure that security procedures are not disrupted, as this can cause inconvenience to the others," said Supriyo. Congress leader Pradeep Bhattacharya on his part said it is incorrect to disobey the norms of airline security and stated that travelers should become more responsible. "It is nobody's business to stop airline officials from performing their duties. As the people's representatives, the MPs must monitor their behavior and make sure they act more responsibly," he said. According to Air India officials, the aforementioned flight AI 020 was delayed as Dola Sen's mother, who was travelling with the help of a wheelchair, could not be seated near the exit door as per the in-flight regulations. Due to this, the cabin crew requested for a change in seats, to which Sen was reluctant to abide by the norms. An inquiry into the matter revealed that the TMC MP had paid an extra fee for front row seats, located near the emergency exit. However, the airline officials were not notified of any passenger requiring a wheelchair. As per the Civil Aviation Requirement (CAR) rule, when the cabin crew on board requested the MP to change her seats, she allegedly raised her voice and refused to do so in spite of being offered business class seats. The flight subsequently took off after the passengers on board and the Captain intervened to solve the matter. This incident comes just days after Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad delayed an Air India flight for 45 minutes and even hit the staff of the carrier over a seating arrangement issue. Almost eight Air lines imposed a ban on Gaikwad for his unwarranted act. Air India, however, lifted the ban today after he apologised for the incident. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) After Air India yet again denied him permission to fly and cancelled his tickets between Mumbai and Delhi, Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad on Friday said that neither did he book a ticket for April 17 nor for April 24 for any airline as being aired by the media. "It is learnt through media that I have booked the tickets for Air India to travel from Delhi to Mumbai for 17 and 24 April and my defaming is continued. On this connection, I would like to make it clear that I have neither booked a ticket for 17 nor 24th April, 2017 for any airline as being aired by media as the session will be sin-e-die on 13th April 2017," Gaikwad said in a statement. Clarifying his stand, Gaikwad further requested not to penalize any citizen or encroach upon any one's right just because one's surname or name resembles his name. "Also I request to airline to find out the true person who has booked the tickets," he added. Meanwhile, Air India has lifted the ban on Gaikwad. Air India had earlier in the day announced that the airline has cancelled Gaikwad's Delhi-Mumbai round tickets for April 17 and 24. Air India's move comes a day after protests in Parliament by the Shiv Sena MPs, who threatened to disrupt the airline's operations in Mumbai unless the ban on Gaikwad was revoked. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Human Rights Commission has taken suo motu cognizance of a media report that 20 eye patients had to be rushed to the AIIMS from the Guru Teg Bahadur (GTB) Hospital, Delhi on 2nd April, 2017, when they complained about blurred vision, pain and watery eyes after they were, allegedly, administered contaminated injections at the hospital. About 8 of them reportedly require eye surgery. The commission has observed that the contents of the news report raise serious issue of negligence by the GTB Hospital doctors and its management, putting the eyesight of the patients to risk. Accordingly, it has issued a notice to the Chief Secretary, Government of NCT of Delhi calling for a detailed report in the matter within four weeks. According to the media report,20 patients, as part of their follow up treatment, were administered injections containing the drug "Avastian", which is globally used to prevent blindness due to ageing, diabetes, hypertension and rupturing of blood vessels. Reportedly, Dr. Atul Kumar, Chief of the R.P. Centre for Ophthalmic Sciences at AIIMS has said that 'Avastian' is classified as sight saving drug and used all over the world. In this case, it seems that the injections were contaminated, which caused the reaction. Reportedly, the Medical Director of the GTB Hospital has stated that the samples of the injection have been sent to the microbiology lab for testing so that suspected contamination could be determined. He has informed that specialists were called immediately when the patients complained about blurred vision and mild pain, during the follow up and the serious cases were referred to the AIIMS, New Delhi. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) India's leading institution in design, fashion and creative Pearl Academy has announced the launch of a unique initiative, 'Canvass'- the Incubation Cell. This platform will provide students and alumni an opportunity to nurture their ideas and bring them to fruition. Situated in Noida Campus of Pearl Academy, 'Canvass' aims to provide an ecosystem that will foster and support innovation, creativity and knowledge based entrepreneurship amongst alumni and students of Pearl Academy. Pankaj Singh, MLA and General Secretary BJP, Uttar Pradesh inaugurated the incubation cell. The dedicated 625 sq. ft. facility will provide fully equipped work stations along with wifi, meeting rooms, storage space for resources and access to facilities such as laboratory and library. Apart from providing this vital infrastructure, Pearl Academy will also provide mentoring to its alumni through workshops, online modules by domain experts and strategic networking with investors to make these ideas - a reality. The center is also designed to provide funding assistance to budding entrepreneurs through interactions with angel investors, seed funders etc. To encourage the spirit of entrepreneurship amongst students, Pearl Academy hosted two panel discussions on topics such as 'Bridging the gap between academic and startup requirements, better startup culture and responsible entrepreneurship' and 'Changing length and breadth of Indian economy and entrepreneurship as a new game', with industry experts from Sheroes, ispirit,Innov8 as well as representatives from StartUpIndia. The discussions touched upon various critical aspects of nurturing and building up a startup enterprise. The knowledge sharing sessions were well received by budding entrepreneurs. Commenting on the launch of this initiative Nandita Abraham, CEO Pearl Academy said "With the constant growth of design industry in India, more and more young designers are turning entrepreneurs. As educators, our role has also assumed a bigger responsibility by not just believing in their bold ideas, but also to take a step ahead and provide support to fuel our students' growth as entrepreneurs. I am sure that this initiative will provide critical support and help to our young budding entrepreneurs to transform their innovative and ingenious ideas into a reality. Sharing his thoughts Pankaj Singh MLA and General Secretary BJP, Uttar Pradesh said, "India being a young nation needs more and more initiatives that encourage youth to become self-reliant. The inauguration of the 'Canvass - Incubation Cell' is a step in right direction by Pearl Academy. I congratulate them for having a vision to empower the young creative minds that will go a long way in supporting and realizing the dream of StartUpIndia. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina today landed in New Delhi to kickstart her four-day visit to the country. Prime Minister Narendra Modi received his counterpart at the Palam Technical Airport. Officials from Prime Minister Hasina's entourage took selfies with Prime Minister Modi. The two leaders are expected to hold official talks on a range of issues including an inter-governmental agreement on civil nuclear energy. According to Dhaka Tribune, India and Bangladesh may sign around 35 deals and Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) on trade and commerce, economy and connectivity, and on defence related issues. The MoUs will include prevention of human trafficking, blue economy and maritime cooperation in the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean, use of Chittagong and Mongla seaports, Indian economic zone, and joint research on oceanography of the Bay of Bengal. Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Joint Secretary Sripriya Ranganathan on Thursday said that India was expecting to sign over 20 agreements with Bangladesh during this visit. The Bangladesh Government on Monday approved the draft of a proposal to establish a new passenger bus service between Dhaka in Bangladesh and Kolkata in India via Khulna. The draft of the proposal was approved in a weekly Cabinet meeting presided over by Prime Minister Hasina. The visit will be aimed at expanding bilateral trade, boosting investment, connectivity and sub-regional assistance. India is likely to offer USD 500 million Line of Credit to Bangladesh for defence exports from the country during the visit. It is unlikely that the Teesta water sharing agreement would be signed. During her stay in New Delhi, Prime Minister Hasina will call on President Pranab Mukherjee and Vice President Mohammed Hamid Ansari. The Bangladesh Prime Minister will be staying at the President House as a special guest during her stay. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Lauding Prime Minister Narendra Modi's decision to travel in 'normal traffic' as he received his Bangladeshi counterpart Sheikh Hasina at Delhi's Palam technical airport, Minister of State for External Affairs M.J. Akbar on Friday said this act is one of the examples of his simplicity. "This is a very illuminating example of the Prime Minister's simplicity, his humility and his concern. He has done the important honour of going to the airport. But he did not want to trouble the people in the process. This is the Prime Minister's reality," Akbar told ANI. Earlier today, Prime Minister Modi travelled from Lok Kalyan Marg to the Palam technical airport without any routine restrictions. Prime Minister Hasina, who is presently on a four-day visit to India, will hold official talks on a range of issues including an inter-governmental agreement on civil nuclear energy. Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Joint Secretary Sripriya Ranganathan on Thursday said that India was expecting to sign over 20 agreements with Bangladesh during this visit. The visit will be aimed at expanding bilateral trade, boosting investment, connectivity and sub-regional assistance. India is likely to offer USD 500 million Line of Credit to Bangladesh for defence exports from the country during the visit. It is unlikely that the Teesta water sharing agreement would be signed. During her stay in New Delhi, Prime Minister Hasina will call on President Pranab Mukherjee and Vice President Mohammed Hamid Ansari. The Bangladesh Prime Minister will be staying at the President House as a special guest during her stay. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Appreciating the Air India's move to lift the ban on Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad, the party on Friday said all is well that ends well, adding nothing can be acquired without struggle. "As I have said the incident has ended well which means everything is fine now. Everything involves struggle, nothing can be achieved easily," Shiv Sena leader Arvind Sawant told ANI. He further said the party had protested as per the law eventually and got the desired results. "We did not threaten anybody, it is all rumours. We talked politely, but when it did not work out we had to put efforts," he said. Air India had earlier in the day announced that it has cancelled Gaikwad's Delhi-Mumbai round tickets for April 17 and 24. Air India's move comes a day after protests in Parliament by the Shiv Sena MPs, who threatened to disrupt the airline's operations in Mumbai unless the ban on Gaikwad was revoked. Gaikwad today said that neither did he book a ticket for April 17 nor for April 24 for any airline as being aired by the media. "It is learnt through media that I have booked the tickets for Air India to travel from Delhi to Mumbai for 17 and 24 April and my defaming is continued. On this connection, I would like to make it clear that I have neither booked a ticket for 17 nor 24th April, 2017 for any airline as being aired by media as the session will be sin-e-die on 13th April 2017," Gaikwad said in a statement. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A Swedish brewery 'Spendrups' on Friday confirmed that the truck which rammed into a departmental store in Stockholm was theirs and had been stolen from them. At least three people were killed after a lorry rammed into a crowd of people in central Stockholm, few meters away from the Indian Embassy. Soon after the incident, Sweden's Prime Minister Stefan Lofven released a statement to caution the public about the alleged 'terror attack'. "Sweden has been attacked. All indications are that it was a terrorist attack. Our thoughts are with the victims, their families and those injured. The Government is being kept up-to-date and is doing everything it can to assist the relevant authorities in their work. I encourage everyone to be vigilant and to pay attention to the information from the police," the statement read. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) New Delhi, April 07, 2017: Students from Arunachal Pradesh residing in New Delhi on Friday called for an indefinite hunger strike over corruption and alleged mismanagement in registration of upcoming Arunachal Students Union Delhi (ASUD) Election-2017. The protesters allege that the registration of Alenso Chai, one of the aspiring candidates for the post of ASUD- president along with 149 others students, was rejected on flimsy ground. Chai's candidacy was rejected after he failed to reach Arunachal Bhawan to file for his nomination within the prescribed time frame of 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., starting from April 2 - April 3. According to Chai's friends, he reached the premises right on time but supporters of other candidates obstructed his way. Chai's candidacy was rejected and after providing proof from CCTV footage, which showed that he was in the premises for registration on 3:41 p.m., 19 minutes before the deadline, his application, along with the registration of 149 voters, was accepted along. Rupees 300 is being charged as registration fee per voter. A total amount of Rs 44,700 has been collected. Protesters also expressed dismay over voters being charged for voting which they said does not happen anywhere. Incumbent ASUD president Taba Doni said the charge was based on the constitution and bye-laws of the student body. Protesters allege that the constitution of the student body has no credibility because Doni has the sole right to change the rule. Following repeated complaints to All Arunachal Pradesh Students' Union (AAPSU), the apex students' union body in Arunachal Pradesh regarding the monetary involvement in student organisation, AAPSU issued an ambiguous notification on March 31, 2017. The notification said that ASUD can charge Rs. 10,000- per presidential candidate and charge voters as per the bye-laws of ASUD, which should not exceed Rs 300. ASUD on Wednesday in the presence of all the presidential candidates and hundreds of students, convened a meeting regarding the cases of Chai and 149 voters. After the meeting, Chai's registration along with the registration of 149 voters was rejected amid opposition from two other candidates. The protesters now demand justice over the matter which they say is 'unconstitutional'. They want the main student body, AAPSU to intervene and resolve the matter. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Friday met Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in New Delhi. Earlier, Prime Minister Hasina arrived in New Delhi to kickstart her four-day state visit to the country. Prime Minister Narendra Modi received his Bangladeshi counterpart at the Technical area of Palam Airport. "Delighted to welcome H.E. Sheikh Hasina, the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, on her State Visit to India. PM Sheikh Hasina and I are determined to take the relationship between our nations to a new level," Prime Minister tweeted. Officials from Prime Minister Hasina's entourage took selfies with Prime Minister Modi. The two leaders are expected to hold official talks on a range of issues including an inter-governmental agreement on civil nuclear energy. According to the Dhaka Tribune, India and Bangladesh may sign around 33 deals and Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) on trade and commerce, economy and connectivity, and on defence related issues. The MoUs will include prevention of human trafficking, blue economy and maritime cooperation in the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean, use of Chittagong and Mongla seaports, Indian economic zone, and joint research on oceanography of the Bay of Bengal. Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Joint Secretary Sripriya Ranganathan on Thursday said that India was expecting to sign over 20 agreements with Bangladesh during this visit. The Bangladesh Government on Monday approved the draft of a proposal to establish a new passenger bus service between Dhaka in Bangladesh and Kolkata in India via Khulna. The draft of the proposal was approved in a weekly Cabinet meeting presided over by Prime Minister Hasina. The visit will be aimed at expanding bilateral trade, boosting investment, connectivity and sub-regional assistance. India is likely to offer USD 500 million Line of Credit to Bangladesh for defence exports from the country during the visit. It is unlikely that the Teesta water sharing agreement would be signed. During her stay in New Delhi, Prime Minister Hasina will call on President Pranab Mukherjee and Vice President Mohammed Hamid Ansari. The Bangladesh Prime Minister will be staying at the President House's as a special guest during her stay. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Slamming the Shiv Sena who created a ruckus in the Lok Sabha on the flying ban on Ravindra Gaikwad, senior Congress leader Majeed Memon on Friday asserted that those sitting in the power are themselves threatening to be violent. "The situation that was created over Ravindra Gaikwad at the Lok Sabha today is very peculiar. It's difficult to appreciate how this democracy works; those who are sitting in power are themselves threatening to be violent," Memon told ANI. Memon further stated that the government should take action against these people either for intimidation or threat in the country. "It's difficult to understand that those who are responsible for maintaining law and order in the country are themselves preaching of breaking it. The government should take criminal action against these people either for intimidation or threat. Lets us wait till April 10 to see what results comes out in this matter," said Memon. Resonating similar views, Congress leader Nawab Malik stated that if Gaikwad apologies he will not become small but would rather learn from his mistake. "The Shiv Sena said that they are not going to attend NDA meeting on the issue of Ravindra Gaikwad. We all know that, Gaikwad has committed a crime and it is a responsibility by him to surrender before court. No one becomes small after an apology, Gaikwad should understand this," said Malik told ANI. Earlier in the day, hours after Gaikwad wrote an apology letter to Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapati Raju requesting to lift the travel ban imposed on him, the ministry said the letter of the Shiv Sena MP is being examined. According to sources, a meeting took place between Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha and Air India Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) at Airlines Housex where the process to lift the travel ban on Gaikwad, imposed by all airlines post his altercation with an Air India employee was discussed. Expressing his regret for thrashing an Air India employee last month, Gaikwad said it could have been no one's intention to have let the situation aggravate to the level that it eventually did. This came hours after Air India, according to sources, decided to lift the travel ban on the Shiv Sena leader if he tenders an apology. Earlier today, the Shiv Sena threatened to boycott the NDA meeting if the ruling dispensation failed to resolve the matter by April 10. During the Zero Hour, there were unruly scenes with the Shiv Sena members protesting against the ban and even thumping the desk of the Civil Aviation Minister in anger. Gaikwad tendered an apology to the Parliament but insisted that he owed no apology to the airline official as he sought removal of the ban imposed on him by domestic airlines. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) At least six people were killed in the U.S. military strike on the Syrian Government's al-Shayrat airbase in response to Tuesday's chemical weapon attack, a statement from the Syrian Army has said. The Army has further accused the United States of 'blatant aggression' against the airbase and said its response would be to continue to 'crush terrorism' and restore 'peace and security to all Syria.' Earlier, Syrian State TV responded to the strike by dubbing it as 'American aggression,' albeit without much detail. "American aggression targets Syrian military targets with a number of missiles," The Guardian reported State TV as saying. In its first public response, the Kremlin issued a strong statement condemning the attack as "aggression against a sovereign nation." Moscow said the strikes had been carried out on an "invented pretext" and claimed the Syrian army did not have chemical weapons. It also said the strikes would do "significant damage to U.S.-Russia ties" and created a "serious obstacle" to creating an international coalition to defeat the ISIS. Earlier, the Pentagon confirmed it used a hotline for minimising the risk of aerial combat between U.S. and Russian jets in eastern Syria to alert Moscow of the strike against the Syrian Government. Hours after launching the military strike, Trump called on all 'civilised nations' to stop the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria. He also asserted that Assad "choked out the lives of innocent men, women and children." "Tonight I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched. It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the chemical weapons convention, and ignored the urging of the UN security council," he said. "Years of previous attempts at changing Assad's behaviour have all failed and failed very dramatically. As a result the refugee crisis continues to deepen and the region continues to destabilise, threatening the United States and its allies. Tonight I call on all civilised nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria, and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types," he added. On Trump's orders, U.S. warships launched between 50-60 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Syria Government airbase where the warplanes that carried out the chemical attacks were based, U.S. officials said. Trump had famously said the chemical attack on Syria's Idlib province affected his deeply and tranformed his thinking about the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. Dozens of people, including at least ten children, were killed and over 200 injured as a result of asphyxiation caused by exposure to an unknown gas on Tuesday. The death toll is said to be at least 67, according to al-Diab, while the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has reported it to be 58. The High Negotiations Committee claimed the death toll could be as high as 100 with up to 400 injured. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Congress party on Friday condemned Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Tarun Vijay's reported 'racist' comments about South Indians in a video that went viral. Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge told ANI, "I condemn such statements. This is the reason we have been maintaining that it is the tendency and philosophy of the BJP leaders that they even discriminate Indians. They even create hurdles in our bilateral relations with those countries with which we want to have cordial relations." He said that Tarun Vijay's statement is an example of the BJP's mindset of 'being superior'. Meanwhile, a ray of respite came for Tarun Vijay as some eminent personalities came out in the open to save him. Talking to ANI in Kochi, Social activist Rahul Easwar termed Tarun Vijay as one of the most vocal supporters of Jallikattu, a popular sport of Tamil Nadu, and went on to the extent of saying that Jallikatu is our birth right. "What he said was should be seen in the context of people living together. His intention was very much right. May be some people may criticise that his articulation could have been better but he wanted to say that people from all parts of the country should live together. And, India accommodates all religions and races, said Easwar. He exhorted the people to see Tarun Vijay's intention and not his articulation. Vijay found himself in the middle of a storm as he tried to defend India after recent attacks on African students in Greater Noida. He reportedly told news channel Al Jazeera's online show The Stream: "If we were racist, why would we have the entire entire south.Tamil, Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra.why do we live with them? We have black people around us," the politician was heard as saying in the video. Vijay was cornered as the video went viral. People on social media platforms reacted very sharply over his reported remarks about South Indians. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) New Delhi [India], Apr.7 (ANI): We live in times when the lines between the 'local' and the 'global' are getting increasingly blurred. The world is seen as a global village and conversely the village reflects the world. The Mohalla Clinics in Delhi have caught the attention of leading international figures. Kofi Annan, former Secretary General of the UN termed it as "successful and impressive" noting that the initiative was consistent with the Universal Coverage (UHC) goal of the World Organisation (WHO). The initiative came up for praise by yet another leading figure -Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Director of the WHO. What is special about these Mohalla Clinics? On the occasion of the World Day, celebrated on 7 April every year, this merits a probe. The term Mohalla itself brings to mind a community, a sense of familiarity, an ease of living in close proximity to everything that makes up a 'neighbourhood'-the shops, the service providers, the facilities, everything. Taking a leaf from this concept, the Mohalla Clinics were started by the Delhi government in 2014 to take diagnostics and treatment of simple ailments to people's doorstep and reduce the footfall in tertiary care hospitals. A quick study shows that in the period April to December 2016, an astounding 15 lakh people received medical treatment across 110 such clinics. The clinics are equipped to treat 110 kinds of illness and provide a range of medical tests -all free. There is a plan to open 1,000 such clinics by March 2017. Once all the clinics start running, most people will have a clinic within a 5km radius from their home. Sobiya who has visited the clinic in Jugabai in Jamia Nagar says"Many women visit this clinic. The doctors are very considerate. They give us time. listen carefully and only then prescribe medicines or tests, which are all free. I have been treated here and am fine." Shazia is also enthused with the services " Ever since the clinic opened in our mohalla, there is a sense of relief. Whenever my children fall ill, I just bring them here. "She says beaming. Then in a more reflective tone, says "What I like is there is no bribery, no playing favourites here, unlike other places I've been to or heard about. All the patients are given a number and each one follows it. Its peaceful." For most women the previous experience of healthcare facilities has been frustrating. There was hardly any accountability of the service providers who did as they please, leaving the patients floundering. Women in the Jama Masjid area speak of their experience at the Kasturba Gandhi Hospital about a year and a half ago. "Patients used to wait for two, sometimes three hours. Then suddenly another patient would be called in before them because they bribed those in charge." Many of these women now visiting the Mohalla clinics find it a refreshing change. Being open from 9.00 a.m to 1o'clock, the timings are suitable particularly to housewives. They can finish their morning chores at home and nip across to the clinic. Then return home in time to finish any pending household work and care for their family. Bound by social norms, many women hesitate to step out into the hurly-burly of a city like Delhi. They find the clinics particularly conducive. According to Iffat Rehman, "Women should take good care of their health. This is really important as they have to take care of their children, husband and in-laws." Still, there are some hiccups. According to an NRI who visited the clinic "Patients crowd everywhere, each trying to meet the doctor first. But this is useless as each patient is given a number and the doctor sees them accordingly" Often the patient-staff interface is fraught with tension. Sushma who works as a lab technician says, "Handling patients can be tough. Many of them behave badly, even get offensive. Sometimes I get so upset, I don't even then feel like talking to them or giving them service. "But she knows that she would be failing in her duty, and maybe face disciplinary action. It could even cost her the job which is nervous about. There are systemic issues as well. The pressure is huge, says Sushma but there is a staff crunch. "When medicines are delivered I receive and then stock them. We need more staff for this. The salary is also not so great." Despite the hitches, there is a joie de vivre. The patient rush is demanding, but doctors are happy with the way this initiative has shaped up. As for the work load, they say, it just shows that Mohalla clinics are meeting a crucial need of the citizens! The Delhi Government has taken a quantum leap by establishing the clinics. The experience has been a positive one, finding a resonance amongst the people. At the level of the Central Government, health is a priority. The National Health Mission envisages the achievement of universal access to equitable, affordable and quality healthcare services that are responsive to people's needs. Localized efforts such as the Mohalla Clinics bring in unique benefit that are in tandem with the overarching goals at the national level, indeed at the international level. Will this prompt other state governments to take the cue; to replicate the model or evolve their own? This surely merits attention from stakeholders primarily from policy makers at the state level. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A day after Shiv Sena threatened to boycott the Democratic Alliance (NDA) meeting if the ban on its party lawmaker Ravindra Gaikwad is not lifted by April 10, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said the matter should not be escalated and be resolved amicably. "A case has already been registered against Gaikwad for all the misdeeds. Unfortunately he is unapologetic. Since the incident is in the police inquiry and court will take note of it, I feel the Air India should also reconsider its boycott as under the law nothing can prevent him from travelling on flight. He has been punished enough and dragging the issue will only create an unsavory incident. I hope all the parties concerned will resolve it amicably by April 10," BJP leader S Prakash told ANI. Another BJP leader Rahul Sinha remained unperturbed of the Shiv Sena's stand saying that there is nothing to worry about it. "Shiv Sena is very old friend of our party. Sometimes we do have different opinions on some issues but ultimately we end up agreeing unanimously on that issue. There is nothing to worry about. Shiv Sena and BJP will always work together," Sinha told ANI. Upping the ante against the government, the BJP's alliance partner yesterday threatened to boycott the meeting convened by the NDA if the ban on Gaikwad is not lifted by April 10. "If this issue is not resolved by April 10, we will not attend the NDA meeting," Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut said in a press conference. Lashing out at Air India Raut said that the carrier is people's servant, adding that it has no right to insult a person on social media. "What is Air India? Who is CMD? What is their status and where do they even stand? How can they even insult an MP so openly on social media? Who has given them this right? It is peoples' servant, India's servant. If you expect us to learn to behave properly, then first you learn the same," Raut said. Gaikwad, who was banned from flying after he assaulted an Air India staff, said that he had been provoked and alleged that the airlines staff misbehaved with him. Speaking on the issue during Zero Hour, Gaikwad demanded that the flying ban on him be lifted. He got support from other opposition parties. The Shiv Sena MP also said that he can apologise to the Parliament but will not apologise to the airline staffer. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) With effect from 01 April 2017 Atlas Cycles (Haryana) announced that Veena Buber has ceased to be the Director of the Company with effect from 01 April 2017 as she tendered her resignation via Letter dated 01 April 2017 from the post of Non Executive Woman Director of the Company and the Board of Directors has taken note of her resignation in their meeting held on 04 April 2017 and accepted the same with effect from 01 April 2017. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Kirkuk Governor Speaks on Implications of Raising Kurdish Flag in Province Rudaw correspondent Ranj Sangawi sat down with Kirkuk Governor Najmadin Karim. The veteran Kurdish official answered an array of questions about the raising of the Kurdistan flag over provincial buildings in Kirkuk and the reactions by local Turkmens, Arabs and Christians, as well as officials from Baghdad, the Kurdistan Region, Turkey and the United States. Additionally Governor Karim spoke about Article 140, a referendum, and Kirkuk's role in those processes. Karim also recalled former Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu's actions with the Kurdistan flag in Kirkuk. Rudaw: How was the decision to raise Kurdistan's flag made? Did you have prior discussions or consultations in the governorate or provincial council with the Arab, Turkmen and Christian parties, or it was a unilateral decision? Governor Najmadin Karim: No, it wasn't unilateral. Before that, I will just talk about one by one, met with the Brothers List, which besides Kurds includes Arab, Turkmen, Chaldean and Assyrians -- comprising two Turkmen, two Arab and three Chaldean and Assyrian members. In addition, we also talked to the Turkmen who have a list in Iraqi Turkmen Front, even to the Turkmen working independently outside the list. The Arab parties came to us and we talked to them. We also talked to people outside parties and political organizations, who are the majority among the Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen. We talked to them. This wasn't done alone. The subject was also discussed with Kurdish parties in Kirkuk. What are other parties concerned about? According to Rudaw reports, people from all social backgrounds were happy about the things you have done as governor to this city. Did you expect other ethnic groups, especially the Turkmen, to object and protest this decision? Do the protests of some of the provincial council members represent the public opinion of Turkmen, Arabs and Christians? No, it doesn't represent the opinion of all. We know that there are different sects among Turkmen in Kirkuk. And the whole world knows how dispersed the Arabs, especially Sunnis, are in terms of politics. They haven't yet been able to determine a leadership to represent them. We have met with the Turkmen. Less than 100 had staged the protests. It wouldn't have been like this if the opinion of the Turkmen population was supportive of them. And the day before the voting in the provincial council, the Turkmen Front asked Turkmen not to go to work, school and university. But people didn't listen to them. Turkmen people and the indigenous Arabs know that they are partners with the Kurds in this city. Turkmen, Arab, Kurdish people, Chaldeans and Assyrians want to live happy. They want their lives to be protected. They don't want to be assaulted at work or at home. That is what they want. And when you say that they supported us before, it was because we treated them all equally, we have served all parties without difference and we have been continuing in this kind of work and service and we will continue in the future. So the public opinion of the Turkmen and other social makeup supports your decision? I think, according to the negotiations we've had with the Turkmen and Arab people, even those who speak publicly on TV being motivated by a party or some other place, say they don't have a problem with flag of Kurdistan when they meet with us. So they want Kirkuk to be returned to Kurdistan? I don't know whether or not they like this. But if we present them a good model, I am sure they will like it because they know now that they have stayed and are protected in Kirkuk is because of the forces of Kurdistan who are here, ranging from the Peshmerga, Asayesh, assisted with the police which includes all parties. Had it not been due to these forces, Kirkuk would be like Mosul, Tikrit, Ramadi, Fallujah and Haweja. After all, Kurdistan's flag has been here since 2003. So, the Kurdistan flag is not a new thing. Ahmet Davutoglu [the former prime minister of Turkey] passed out Kurdistan flags when he came to Kirkuk, beginning from Erbil, through Pirde until he arrived in here. Besides, there was Kurdistan flag on the citadel, and he had visited there. Kurdistan flag is not a new thing. This has been exaggerated. Did the march you led to raise the Kurdistan flag help exaggerate the matter? We didn't have any marches. If you look at your archives, we have every year been raising the Kurdistan flag on the citadel. It was raised in most places. But we wanted to make it official such that the provincial council votes on it. We had a look at the constitution and consulted constitutional experts; there is no article in the constitution barring us from raising a second flag. The Iraqi Prime Minister says that it is unconstitutional, and he says in an interview with Rudaw that the governor of Kirkuk should represent all the social makeup of the city. Has Haider al-Abadi as Prime Minister of Iraq been representing all the social makeup of Iraq? Has been impartial in dealing with the problems of Iraq? The Prime Minister of Iraq surely has a difficult task. He became prime minister in difficult conditions. I have respect for the Iraqi prime minister. He can file a lawsuit against us in the federal court if he thinks the matter is unconstitutional. There is no need to exaggerate the matter this much on the part of some parties who regard themselves to represent the Turkmen or Arab population in Kirkuk. There are constitutional and legal ways through which they can make their voices heard. Regarding the question whether he has been treating them equally, I am not in a position to answer this question. Rather, we should ask the Sunnis, the Daa'wa Party, the Sadrists and Badir group to see whether he represents and treats them all equally. These are the ones to answer the question. Does your raising of the Kurdistan flag mean not representing the whole social makeup of Kirkuk? First of all, the Iraqi flag is there in its position, and we have been respecting the Iraqi flag. If you noticed, we first raised the Iraqi flag then the flag of Kurdistan. The Kurdistan flag exists in Kurdistan. The flag of Kurdistan is not the flag of the region. It is the flag of the people of Kurdistan, people living in Kurdistan. The same Turkmen and Arab social makeup exists there too, even more of them live there. The same flag flies in Erbil and Sulaimani where all the social makeup lives. Regarding the remark that I should serve them all, I have proved that I have been serving all the social makeup of Kirkuk. And the best proof and example for this is the 2014 elections in which we won the votes of many Arab and Turkmen people. You know that Turkey has influence over Kirkuk due to the Turkmen living in the city. What do you think of the strong statements issued by the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan? I haven't heard his words directly. But from what I have heard, we have always in Kirkuk to which Mam Jalal, Mr Masoud and other Kurdish political leaders have come and stressed that Kirkuk is not a purely Kurdish city. Rather, there is Arab, Turkmen and Christian social makeup in Kirkuk. We all know this. We know that there Sunnis, Shiites and Sabehas in Kirkuk. It has all the social makeup that exists in Iraq. We certainly are against the position that argues only the Kurds should have power, no one else exists and no one else should have power in Kirkuk. Erdogan says: The Kurdistan flag should be lowered in Kirkuk which is the city of Turkmen, Arabs and the Kurds, if there are Kurds in the city. Do you think there is some kind of misunderstanding on the part of Turkey regarding this decision and the social makeup of Kirkuk? I hope, as you know, there is going to be a referendum in Turkey. This referendum has put a lot of pressure on the AK party there. It has many problems with Turkey and even Russia with which people thought have reconciled. What they looked to happen with Trump hasn't happened yet. There are problems inside Turkey. There are extreme parties which accuse the president and his party of being soft on the question of Kurds. Before the subject of raising the Kurdistan flag was voted in the provincial council, the MHP especially its leader Bah Market hovered with small losses in morning trade amid geopolitical tensions as US fired dozens of cruise missiles into Syria. At 10:15 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, was down 62.24 points or 0.21% at 29,865.10. The Nifty 50 index was down 23.55 points or 0.25% at 9,238.40. The Sensex lost 164.32 points or 0.54% at the day's low of 29,763.02 in early trade, its lowest level since 3 April 2017. It fell 61.76 points or 0.2% at the day's high of 29,865.58 in morning trade. The Nifty fell 49.35 points or 0.53% at the day's low of 9,212.60 in early trade, its lowest level since 3 April 2017. It lost 21.80 points or 0.23% at the day's high of 9,240.15 in morning trade. The BSE Mid-Cap index rose 0.17%. The BSE Small-Cap index advanced 0.29%. Both these indices outperformed the Sensex. The breadth, indicating the overall health of the market, turned positive from negative. On the BSE, 1,238 shares rose and 978 shares declined. A total of 101 shares were unchanged. Telecom stocks advanced. Idea Cellular (up 2.66%), Bharti Airtel (up 1.73%), Bharti Infratel (up 0.66%) and Reliance Communications (up 0.62%) edged higher. Realty stocks also gained. Prestige Estates Projects (up 2.57%), Indiabulls Real Estate (up 1.54%), Sobha (up 1%), Godrej Properties (up 0.78%), DLF (up 0.74%) and HDIL (up 0.42%) edged higher. Unitech (down 2.32%) and Oberoi Realty (down 0.07%) edged lower. Dynamatic Technologies surged 5.34% at Rs 2,974.80 after the company announced signing a cooperation agreement with Magal Security Systems, an Israeli company. This new cooperation aims to answer the Indian increasing market demand for high-end security products and solutions for critical infrastructure, among other, to provide combined integrated border management solutions (CIBMS) aimed to address the challenges in securing our borders. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 6 April 2017. Overseas, Asian stocks edged lower after the US fired dozens of cruise missiles into Syria. The missile strikes happened as President Donald Trump hosts Chinese President Xi Jinping at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. US equities closed well off session highs yesterday, 6 April 2017, after Trump said he's willing to act alone on North Korea if China does not step up. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Cadila Healthcare gained 3.07% to Rs 461.85 at 15:00 IST on BSE after the company announced that its Topical manufacturing facility in Ahmedabad successfully completed US drug regulator's inspection. The announcement was made during market hours today, 7 April 2017. Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was down 199.81 points or 0.67% at 29,727.53. Higher than normal volumes were witnessed on the counter. On the BSE, 9.26 lakh shares were traded on the counter so far as against the average daily volumes of 1.3 lakh shares in the past one quarter. The stock had hit a high of Rs 466.10 in intraday trade, which is also a record high for the stock. The stock hit a low of Rs 447.50 so far during the day. The stock had hit a 52-week low of Rs 305 on 12 April 2016. The stock had underperformed the market over the past one month till 6 April 2017, gaining 2.18% compared with Sensex's 3.03% gains. The scrip had, however, outperformed the market in past one quarter, advancing 18.14% as against Sensex's 11.84% rise. The large-cap company has equity capital of Rs 102.37 crore. Face value per share is Re 1. Cadila Healthcare announced that United States Food & Drug Administration (USFDA) issued no observation (483) after inspecting company's Topical manufacturing facility in Changodar near Ahmedabad from 3 April to 7 April 2017. The company has filed 17 products with the USFDA from this manufacturing facility, it added. Cadila Healthcare's consolidated net profit fell 34.6% to Rs 281.60 crore on 0.8% decline in net sales to Rs 2249.60 crore in Q3 December 2016 over Q3 December 2015. Cadila Healthcare is an innovative, global pharmaceutical company that discovers, develops, manufactures and markets a broad range of healthcare therapies. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Dynamatic Technologies surged 5.84% to Rs 2,988.80 at 09:19 IST on BSE after the company announced signing a cooperation agreement with Magal Security Systems, an Israeli company. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 6 April 2017. Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was down 112.71 points or 0.38% at 29,814.63. Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Mid-Cap index was down 8.52 points or 0.06% at 14,268.02. On BSE, so far 67 shares were traded in the counter as against average daily volume of 301 shares in the past one quarter. The stock hit a high of Rs 2,988.80 and a low of Rs 2,950 so far during the day. The stock had hit a 52-week high of Rs 3,650 on 24 October 2016. The stock had hit a 52-week low of Rs 1,696 on 6 April 2016. The small-cap company has equity capital of Rs 6.34 crore. Face value per share is Rs 10. Dynamatic Technologies said that the company had yesterday, 6 April 2017, signed a cooperation agreement with Magal Security Systems (Magal-S3), an Israeli company. This new cooperation aims to answer the Indian increasing market demand for high-end security products and solutions for critical infrastructure, among other, to provide combined integrated border management solutions (CIBMS) aimed to address the challenges in securing our borders. Magal S3 has unique experience in perimeter security technologies and complex technological security projects, among other, defending Israel's borders, whilst Dynamatic Technologies has been a partner of Indian Defence and Security establishment for over 3 decades. On consolidated basis, Dynamatic Technologies' net profit fell 52.03% to Rs 1.18 crore on 3.59% decline in net sales to Rs 346.87 crore in Q3 December 2016 over Q3 December 2015. Dynamatic Technologies designs and builds high precision systems and sub-systems for Aerospace, Automotive, Hydraulics, and Homeland Security & Defense. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) On 06 April 2017 Power Grid Corporation of India announced that Jyotika Kalra has resigned as Independent Director on 06 April 2017 on her appointment as Member of the National Human Rights Commission. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Accusing the BJP of playing dirty politics, the AAP on Friday said Delhi Lt Governor Anil Baijal had cancelled the allotment of a bungalow on 206 Rouse Avenue, renamed Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Marg, that houses the AAP headquarters. However, the Lt. Governor's Office did not confirm the development. Speaking at a public meeting at Nangloi here, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said he got to know that the Lt Governor had cancelled the allotment of the Deen Dayal Upadhyay Marg bungalow to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). Kejriwal said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Central government first got a CBI raid conducted against him but found nothing. "Then they said they would recover Rs 97 crore from me. I don't even have 97 rupees... My only fault was that I worked for people's welfare," the AAP leader said. Baijal had last month asked the Delhi government to recover Rs 97 crore from the AAP that it spent on certain advertisements. Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said the allotment of the party's office was cancelled because of the AAP's fight against corruption. "It's not a joke. We are fighting a battle to save the nation from corrupt people and their agents. So this was bound to happen," Sisodia tweeted. AAP leader Sanjay Singh accused the BJP of playing "dirty politics" and called the decision "unfortunate, unjust and non-democratic". "Why so much enmity with the AAP? What crime has the AAP committed that you (Lt. Governor) do not let us work in Delhi?" he asked. The AAP leader said despite holding 67 of the 70 seats in the Delhi Assembly, the AAP was not being allowed to have its office in the capital while both the BJP and the Congress with three and zero seats respectively had offices allotted for them. "I do not understand what kind of discrimination is being done to the AAP." The Lt Governor's move comes a day after a three-member Shunglu Committee appointed by the then Lt. Governor Najeeb Jung questioned a Cabinet decision to allot the government-owned Deen Dayal Upadhyay Marg bungalow to the AAP for its office. "Since land is a 'reserved' subject, this decision should be deemed null and void," the report said, referring to land in Delhi not falling under the city government's purview. "The elected government doesn't have any power to deal with the subject of land, let alone allot it," the report added. Headed by former Comptroller and Auditor General V.K. Shunglu, the committee was set up by Jung in August last year after the Delhi High Court gave primacy to the Lt. Governor in Delhi's administrative affairs. The report was submitted to the L-G's office in November last year, weeks before Jung resigned on December 22. --IANS vv-am/rn (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Environmental activists here on Friday accused GM crop giant Monsanto of "illegally" introducing a GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) based crop in various states of India and urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take action against the multinational. On the occasion of World Health Day, Navdanya, a networking body of seed keepers from around the country, and Swadeshi Jagaran Manch, an association which advocates indigenous industry, appealed to the Prime Minister to "ban Monsanto on account of illegal introduction of herbicide-tolerant GMO 'Round-up Ready Flex' (RRF) Bt Cotton", during a meet. Noted environmental activist and Founder of Navdanya, Vandana Shiva, said the seed is not going to help farmers and using it would mean risk to plants lives as "rest of the crops are going to die and soil is going to die". The Manch alleged in a statement that "Monsanto (apparently) had released RRF trait after transferring it into several local varieties, into the Indian environment so that they will be able to induce the farmers to grow herbicide resistant cotton to sell their herbicide 'Roundup' in large quantities". It said that samples submitted by farmers from several states -- Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra, Odisha, and Gujarat -- were tested by Central Institute for Cotton Research (CICR) and that the latter "confirmed the presence of RRF Bt Cotton, which is not only illegal but a massive fraud on the faith of Indian government and Indian people". Roundup is a herbicide brand which is being sold by Monsanto since the 1970s around the world, including India. The 'glyphosate'-based brand is used for killing weeds and other grasses which compete with the crop. Round-up Ready Flex is a form of Bt Cotton designed by Monsanto which, according to the firm, "offers a high margin of crop safety due to its tolerance ot glyphosate". Shiva also cited a World Health Organisation report that "declared (gylophosate-based herbicide) a probable carcinogen" to denounce the multinational giant further for the "contamination". However, Monsanto, when contacted by IANS, rubbished the allegations as "baseless" and said that it conducts all its business ethically. "Monsanto conducts its businesses in a transparent and ethical manner and in adherence with the laws of the land. Technologies introduced by us have been subject to rigorous regulatory evaluations over the years and have been approved by the country's regulators. "The history of safe use of glyphosate is supported by comprehensive assessments of the scientific evidence that span four decades. Glyphosate is one of the most widely used and comprehensively evaluated herbicides with a 40-year history of safe use. "The European Chemical Agency (ECHA) as recently as March 2017 after a rigorous and comprehensive assessment of the safety data on glyphosate, affirmed glyphosate is safe and not a carcinogen," Monsanto India said in a statement shared with IANS. --IANS vn/rn (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A day after Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad expressed 'regrets', the Air India on Friday again cancelled his flight tickets, officials said here. Airlines sources said that Gaikwad had booked tickets for travelling between Delhi and Mumbai on April 17 and a return trip on April 24, both of which have been cancelled. The development came a day after he wrote a letter to Aviation Minister A. Gajapathi Raju expressing 'regrets' over the March 23 fracas on Pune-Delhi flight AI 852. Later, Gaikwad was blacklisted and slapped with a flying ban not only by the Air India but all other private carriers, even as Shiv Sena cried foul and created disturbances in Parliament on Thursday. Cancelling his tickets, the national carrier referred it as a "possible passenger match with Blacklist entry" and it would be treated as 'No Valid Ticket'. Admitting that the ban on him in the past 14 days is "affecting the effective discharge of my duties and responsibilities" the minister urged for the restrictions on his flight to be revoked. Since the ban, Gaikwad has been compelled to travel by train or road depending on his engagements, keeping away from the media glare. --IANS qn/in/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) In a bid to further boost bilateral ties, Minister of State for External Affairs M.J. Akbar will visit the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on April 10-11, the External Affairs Ministry said on Friday. "During the visit, he will be meeting his UAE counterparts and other UAE leadership and hold official discussions covering the entire gamut of bilateral, regional and international matters of mutual interest," the ministry said in a statement. "He will take this opportunity to also address the annual forum for the UAE's Ambassadors being held in Abu Dhabi," it stated. Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the UAE in August 2015, which was the first prime ministerial visit from India to the Gulf nation in 34 years. Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, visited India in February 2016 and then in 2017 as the chief guest at the Republic Day celebrations elevating the relationship to a comprehensive strategic partnership. Bilateral trade stands at around $50 billion. UAE is India's third largest trading partner and for the UAE India is the largest trading partner. The UAE is among the largest investors in India in terms of foreign direct investment. It contributes significantly to India's energy security and has been the fifth largest supplier of crude oil to India in 2015-16. There are around 2.6 million expatriate Indians in the UAE and their contribution to the country's development has been well appreciated. "This visit (of Akbar) will provide a useful opportunity to further cement our mutually beneficial bilateral ties with the UAE," the ministry statement said. --IANS ab/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Akshay Kumar was chosen as Best Actor for "Rustom" and Surabhi C.M. was named Best Actress for Malayalam movie "Minnaminungu - The Firefly" at the 64th National Film Awards, announced here on Friday. Akshay's performance in crime thriller "Rustom" -- a film loosely based on the commander K.M. Nanavati case -- has been lauded for "a perfect portrayal of a character caught in personal and social turmoil". Surabhi has been honoured for showcasing her brilliance in portraying pain and ecstasy of a mother in a deplorable social condition in the Malayalam film. In the Best Supporting Actor category, veteran actor Manoj Joshi has won for Marathi film "Dashakriya", and among the actresses, Kashmiri talent Zaira Wasim's "portrayal of a female sportsperson's battle with the society with utmost maturity" in "Dangal" has been awarded by the jury. Zaira had played young Geeta Phogat in "Dangal". The 64th National Film Awards jury was chaired by veteran filmmaker Priyadarshan. --IANS dc/rb/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Learn from a powerful rejoinder to corporate group thinking and an indispensable resource for leaders and innovators who want to stand out from the pack; flick through an interesting story about an e-retailer taking an unprecedented gamble; get insights on living without the sadness of depression, the fear of anxiety or the pain of fractured relationships. The IANS bookshelf has varied fare for this weekend. 1. Book: Sensemaking; Author: Christian Madsbjerg; Publisher: Little, Brown; Pages: 216; Price: Rs 599 Based on his work at some of the world's largest companies, including Ford, Adidas, and Chanel, Christian Madsbjerg's "Sensemaking" is a provocative stand against the tyranny of big data and scientism, and an urgent, overdue defense of human intelligence. Humans have become subservient to algorithms. Every day brings a new Moneyball fix -- a math whiz who will crack open an industry with clean fact-based analysis rather than human intuition and experience. As a result, we have stopped thinking. Machines do it for us. Madsbjerg argues that our fixation with data often masks stunning deficiencies, and the risks for humankind are enormous. Blind devotion to number crunching imperils our businesses, our educations, our governments, and our life savings. Too many companies have lost touch with the humanity of their customers, while marginalizing workers with liberal arts-based skills. Contrary to popular thinking, Madsbjerg shows how many of today's biggest success stories stem not from "quant" thinking but from deep, nuanced engagement with culture, language, and history. He calls his method sensemaking. In this landmark book, Madsbjerg lays out five principles for how business leaders, entrepreneurs, and individuals can use it to solve their thorniest problems. He profiles companies using sensemaking to connect with new customers, and takes readers inside the work process of sensemaking "connoisseurs" like investor George Soros, architect Bjarke Ingels, and others. Both practical and philosophical, "Sensemaking" is a powerful rejoinder to corporate groupthink and an indispensable resource for leaders and innovators who want to stand out from the pack. 2. Book: Saboteur; Author: RV Raman; Publisher: Hachette; Pages: 325; Price: Rs 399 MyMagicHat, a high-value, supercharged Bengaluru based e-retailer is about to take an unprecedented gamble that will forever change the country's e-commerce market. But, suddenly, things start to go awry just as the company unexpectedly runs out of cash. To make matters worse, a massive data theft follows, causing panic among investors. Is someone trying to kill the company? When Inspector Dhruvi Kishore is brought in to investigate the incidents, she finds that in the dog-eat-dog world of e-retailing, crime, too, is driven by technology. Hidden in mountains of data and unverified claims lie clues that lead her to unearth a massive fraud one that justifies anything. Even murder. 3. Book: Healing Room; Editor: Reena Nath; Publisher: Harper Element; Pages: ; Price: Rs Problems happen to all of us at some time or another. It can happen to people who are strong, capable, successful and normal. Emotional difficulties can cause pain that affect rational thoughts and decision-making, leading to conflicts in relationships and in the capacity to work and enjoy life. But while pain might be inevitable, suffering need not be. This book is about hope, the hope that we can live without the sadness of depression, the fear of anxiety, the pain of fractured relationships. Psychotherapy can heal these and other challenging situations that can wreck a person's life. But how does one find a psychotherapist? What does a therapist do? And, very importantly, what type of psychotherapy should one choose that best suits one's needs? "The Healing Room" is a collection of essays put together by noted psychotherapist and systemic family therapist Reena Nath that sets out to act as a bridge between the person seeking help and professionals from various branches of psychotherapy. Nine eminent practitioners share their experiences and insights into their fields of expertise. --IANS mg/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Bharatiya Janata Party chief Amit Shah's visit here in Telangana scheduled for Friday has been postponed. Telangana unit of the BJP announced that the much-awaited visit was put off as Shah's presence was required in New Delhi for the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coordination committee meeting in view of the ongoing Parliament session. Senior leader N. Ramachandra Rao said the new date would be announced in a couple of days. He indicated that Shah could visit Hyderabad after BJP National Executive meeting in Bhubaneswar on April 15 and 16. The party cadres were eagerly waiting for the visit as Shah was to kick-start the process of strengthening the party in Telangana by addressing a meeting of party workers in Hyderabad Lok Sabha constituency, the bastion of Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM). As the Hyderabad seat has been held by the MIM by over three decades and all attempts by the BJP in the past to wrest it proved futile, Shah decided to focus on this constituency as a first step towards galvanising the party in the state. Shah was scheduled to address the workers in Exhibition Grounds. The party, however, was still waiting for permission from the state government. He was also scheduled to address a meeting of intellectuals and bank employees and have lunch with the Dalits in the old city of Hyderabad. Buoyed by the BJP's massive victory in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, the party is gearing up for the elections in Telangana, scheduled in 2019. A section of party leaders believe that Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) government may go for polls in 2018. BJP's state president K. Laxman believes that the situation is conducive for the party. He is confident that BJP will come to power in Telangana, riding on 'Modi wave'. It decided to rope in top central leaders of the party including ministers to address the meetings in all 17 Lok Sabha constituencies in the state. Shah's meeting in Hyderabad was scheduled to be the first in the series of meetings. Several BJP leaders will be visiting Telangana over the next few days. Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar is scheduled to visit Bhongir on April 8. Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari will be visiting Nizamabad and Rajya Sabha member and BJP leader from Gujarat, Purshottambhai Rupala will be addressing a meeting in Mahabubnagar. --IANS ms/in/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Bodies of four of the five workers from Telangana who died in a fire in Abu Dhabi in October last year have reached their home towns. The mortal remains of Naresh Muchindla and Prakash Malavath were brought from Abu Dhabi to Hyderabad on Friday. The state government provided free hearse service to transport the bodies to their homes in Nirmal district. Bodies of Thota Rakesh of Nizamabad and Gandla Abhilash of Nirmal districts were brought on Thursday. The bodies of the four workers were identified after the state government last month sent their relatives to Abu Dhabi to give their DNA samples. Five workers from Telangana were killed in an accident in a labour camp on Reem island on October 19 in Abu Dhabi. They were working for Gulf Dunes Landscaping & Agricultural Services Co. The body of Pitla Naresh of Kamareddy district was identified and was brought to India in January. As the other bodies were charred beyond recognition, the Indian embassy in the UAE had asked the NRI Department of Telangana to prepare a close relative each of the deceased for journey to Abu Dhabi to give DNA samples. --IANS ms/lok/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Congress criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday for not speaking out against the self-styled cow vigilantes who were beating and killing people on the pretext of cow protection. "You save cow, but humans should also be saved," Congress senior leader and former minister Kapil Sibal said in a press conference here. He said that Modi does not even speak about such incidents. "Our Prime Minister does not speak (on these issues), whereas his ministers were saying that it didn't even happen," he said, referring to the Alwar incident in which a man succumbed to his injuries after being beaten by gau rakshaks last week. Minorities Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi denied that the incident even took place. "We must ask overselves whom should the government protect," he said. The Congress leader listed other similar incidents in the past three years said this must be stopped. The Alwar lynching occurred on Saturday when a group of self-styled cow vigilantes attacked dairy farmer Pehlu Khan in Behror area. Khan was travelling in a truck with two cows and two calves. The attackers accused Khan of illegally smuggling cows for slaughter. However, his family said he had bought the animals for his small dairy business. In another incident in 2015, Akhlaq, a resident of Bisara village near Dadri in Uttar Pradesh, was lynched by a Hindu mob on September 28 for allegedly possessing and eating beef. --IANS sk/py/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Congress on Friday slammed the CPI-M's defence of the police action against the hapless mother of Jishnu Prannoy, an engineering student who, according to her, was "killed" by his college authorities. She has blamed the college's Chairman Krishnadas and some others, all of whom are now out on bail, for her son's death. "If Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has any sense of morality left, he should apologise to Mahija (the breaved mother)," Leader of Opposition in Kerala Assembly Ramesh Chennithala told reporters here. "She was 'dragged and roughed up' by the police, when she and her relatives were going to the office of the state police chief to lodge their protest over the manner the probe is going on... It's been 90 days since Prannoy left this world," he said. Mahija and her brother are admitted in a hospital here after being "dragged and attacked" by the police on Wednesday and they are on an indefinite fast. "Now a CPI-M statement says that the Congress is behind the action that took place on Wednesday. Not a single leader of ours was anywhere near there. So, this charge against the Congress is nothing but a joke. "Vijayan's statement that the police did not do any wrong is in fact a reply to V.S. Achuthanandan, M.A. Baby and CPI state Secretary Kanam Rajendran, who have all condemned the police action against the hapless mother," added Chennithala. State Tourism Minister Kadakampally Surendran on Friday called on Mahija and assured her that the state government would do everything they can to address her grievance and urged her to call off her protest. But Mahija and her brother and other relatives are determined that they would not retract from their earlier stance that their protest would continue till the two senior police officials, who roughed them, are suspended. They have also demanded that the state government ensure arrest of three more staff members, who are on the run ever since her son passed away. The arrest of five social activists, including the former private secretary of Achuthanandan -- K.M. Shahjahan, who was present when Mahija was walking towards the office of the police chief, came under fire from several quarters. The ageing mother of Shahjahan -- a retired scientist of the Rubber Board -- told the media here that her son was being harassed by Vijayan as he had filed a petition against the Chief Minister in the SNC Lavalin case. "This is nothing but a vindictive action unleashed by Vijayan against my son, as he has taken up the cudgels against Vijayan," said Thankamma, the mother of Shahjahan, who has threatened to sit on an indefinite fast in front of the jail where her son is kept. Public sympathy is growing for Mahija in her home district Kozhikode, where her daughter's fast entered the third day. A good number of local people have also joined her in the fast. State Minister for Fisheries J. Mercykutty told the media that there was no police excess against Mahija, but the police could have acted in a more reasonable manner. Prannoy was found hanging in January on the campus of the Nehru College of Engineering and Research, a private college in Thrissur. Initially, it was dismissed as a case of suicide, but following Mahija's strong protest, the police have taken up the case again. --IANS sg/nir/dg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Supreme Court on Friday referred to a Constitution bench a plea seeking citizenship status for the "displaced persons" belonging to minority communities of Bangladesh, who have taken shelter in Assam, West Bengal, Meghalaya and some other states of India. Referring the matter to the Constitution bench, the bench of Chief Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar, Justice D.Y. Chandrachud and Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul tagged it with another matter relating to the question whether the children of illegal Bangladeshi migrants born in India could avail the benefit of citizenship under the existing law. The hearing by the Constitution bench would commence on May 11, 2017. However, for framing of issues, a hearing would take place on April 19. The petition by NGO Swajan, Bimalangshu Roy Foundation and the Joint Action Committee for Bengali Refugees has sought direction to the Centre and Assam "not to expel/ push-back the 'displaced persons' belonging to minority communities of Bangladesh, who have been forced to take shelter in various parts of Assam". The petitioner organisations have sought direction that the government should ensure that these people are "not harassed and enjoy basic human rights and reasonable living conditions including access to courts, facility of primary education, of residence, permission to work and to travel, and also to protect their life and liberty". In July 2015, another bench of Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman had referred to the Constitution bench the question whether the children born to illegal Bangladeshi immigrants were Indian citizens by virtue of their being born here. The Constitution bench will also examine the constitutional validity of Section 6A of the Citizenship Act with regard to the cut-off date for awarding citizenship to the Bangladeshi migrants. --IANS pk/nir/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama arrived at the Tawang monastery in Arunachal Pradesh on Friday, the high point of a visit that has angered China. Buddhist monks at the monastery, the biggest in India and second only to the world's largest -- the Potala Palace in Tibet, and scores of devotees received him warmly and with piety. The Nobel peace laureate will stay at the monastery. Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu accompanied the Tibetan leader, who has lived in self-imposed exile in India since he fled Tibet in 1959. Nestled among snow-covered mountains and perched at a height of 10,000 feet, Tawang is home to Monpa people who follow Tibetan Buddhism. The town was decked up to welcome the 81-year-old. Tawang was decorated with colourful prayer flags, besides Indian and Tibetan flags and flowers. The roads were repainted and the drains cleared. The Dalai Lama was to start his week-long religious visit to Arunachal Pradesh from Tawang on April 4. But bad weather forced him to take to the road as his helicopter couldn't take off from Dibrugarh in Assam. Hundreds of people lined along the winding road to Tawang, holding traditional ceremonial scarves and burning incense, to see the Dalai Lama and receive his blessings, a government official told IANS Thousands of people from as far as Ladakh and neighbouring Bhutan flocked to Tawang for a glimpse of the Dalai Lama. "We have been preparing for the last two months. Everybody wants to see him, talk to him and get his blessings," said the monastery Secretary, Lobsang Khum. The Tawang monastery belongs to the Gelugpa school of Mahayana Buddhism and had a religious connection with Lhasa's Drepung monastery that continued during the British rule. Beijing refers to this connection to claim Tawang as part of China after invading and taking over Tibet in 1950. The Dalai Lama had stayed in the Tawang monastery for some days before he reached Assam after fleeing his homeland in 1959. The Dalai Lama first arrived in Bomdila, the district headquarters of West Kameng in Arunachal, and delivered religious discourses. He then drove to Dirang valley, about 50 km from Tawang where he consecrated the Thupsung Dhargyeling monastery on Thursday. Earlier on Friday, he left Dirang for Tawang by road. Security forces kept a vigil, particularly at Sela Pass, which was wet because of melting snow, muddy and slippery. This will be the Dalai Lama's first visit to Arunachal after eight years. His first visit to the state was in 1983 and the last trip was in 2009. China has strongly opposed the Dalai Lama's visit to Arunachal Pradesh, which Beijing considers a part of Tibet. --IANS rrk/mr/py (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama on Friday began his winding road journey to Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh -- the high point of his visit that has angered China. The Dalai Lama was to start his week-long religious visit to Arunachal Pradesh from Tawang on April 4. But bad weather forced him to take to the road as his helicopter couldn't take off from Dibrugarh in Assam. Nestled among the snow-covered mountains and perched at a height of 10,000 feet, Tawang is home to Monpa people who practice Tibetan Buddhism. The town is all set to welcome the Dalai Lama. Tawang has been decorated with colourful prayer flags, besides Indian and Tibetan flags and flowers. The roads have been repainted and the drains cleared. The Nobel peace laureate will stay at Tawang monastery, the largest in India and second only to the world's largest - the Potala Palace in Tibet. The 81-year-old Dalai Lama's journey to Tawang will take him over the 13,700 feet Sela Pass. He is likely to touch Tawang after noon. "Hundreds of people are holding traditional ceremonial scarves and burning incense all along the road to see the Dalai Lama and receive his blessings," a government official told IANS Security forces kept a vigil, particularly at Sela Pass, which is wet because of melting snow, muddy and slippery. "All necessary security arrangements have been taken," Arunachal Pradesh police chief Sandeep Goel told IANS. The Dalai Lama first arrived in Bomdila, the district headquarters of West Kameng in Arunachal, and delivered his religious discourses and interacted with people. From there, he drove to Dirang valley, about 50 km from Tawang where he consecrated the Thupsung Dhargyeling monastery on Thursday. Chief Minister Pema Khandu is accompanying the Tibetan leader. The Tawang monastery belongs to the Gelugpa school of Mahayana Buddhism and had a religious connection with Lhasa's Drepung monastery that continued during the British rule. Beijing refers to this connection to claim Tawang as part of China after invading and taking over Tibet in 1950. The Dalai Lama had stayed in the Tawang monastery for some days before he reached Assam after fleeing his homeland in 1959. Thousands of people as far as from Ladakh and neighbouring Bhutan have descended at Tawang for a glimpse of the Dalai Lama. "We have been preparing for the last two months. Everybody wants to see him, talk to him and get his blessings. The Dalai Lama is our revered leader," said the monastery Secretary, Lobsang Khum. This will be the Dalai Lama's first visit to Arunachal after eight years. His first visit to this mountainous state was in 1983 and the last trip was in 2009, which coincided with his 50 years since he crossed through Arunachal Pradesh. The Dalai Lama has lived in India in self-imposed exile since 1959. India is also home to some 100,000 Tibetan exiles. --IANS rrk/mr/py (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama arrived here in Arunachal Pradesh on Friday, the high point of a visit which has angered China. Buddhist monks and scores of devotees at the Tawang monastery, the biggest in India and second only to the world's largest, the Potala Palace in Tibet, received him warmly and with piety. The Nobel peace laureate will stay at the monastery. "He has arrived after a strenuous seven-hour road journey from Dirang. He is in the monastery praying," said the monastery Secretary, Lobsang Khum. Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu accompanied the Tibetan leader, who has lived in self-imposed exile in India since he fled Tibet in 1959. Nestled among snow-covered mountains and perched at a height of 10,000 feet, Tawang is home to Monpa people who follow Tibetan Buddhism. The town was decked up to welcome the 81-year-old. Tawang was decorated with colourful prayer flags, Indian and Tibetan flags as well as flowers. The roads were repainted and the drains cleared. Thousands of people from as far as Ladakh and neighbouring Bhutan holding traditional ceremonial scarves and burning incense queued up on both sides of the road for a glimpse of the Dalai Lama. Security forces kept a vigil in Tawang, about 25 km from the McMahon Line, an imaginary border known as the Line of Actual Control separating the Sino-Indian border. The Dalai Lama was to start his week-long religious visit to Arunachal Pradesh from Tawang on April 4. But bad weather forced him to take to the road as his helicopter couldn't take off from Assam. The Tawang monastery belongs to the Gelugpa school of Mahayana Buddhism and had a religious connection with Lhasa's Drepung monastery that continued during the British rule. Beijing refers to this connection to claim Tawang as part of China after invading and taking over Tibet in 1950. The Dalai Lama had stayed in the Tawang monastery for some days before he reached Assam after fleeing his homeland in 1959. The Dalai Lama first arrived in Bomdila, the district headquarters of West Kameng in Arunachal, and delivered religious discourses. He then drove to Dirang valley, about 50 km from Tawang where he consecrated the Thupsung Dhargyeling monastery on Thursday. On Friday, he left Dirang for Tawang by road. This will be the Dalai Lama's first visit to Arunachal after eight years. His first visit to the state was in 1983 and the last trip was in 2009. China has strongly opposed the Dalai Lama's visit to Arunachal Pradesh, which Beijing considers a part of Tibet. The Dalai Lama has lived in India since 1959. India is also home to some 100,000 Tibetan exiles. --IANS rrk/mr/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Rome, April 7 (IANS/AKI) An 80-year-old woman allegedly bludgeoned her 87-year-old husband to death in Italy with a lamp before suffocating herself by putting a nylon bag over her head, police said. The murder-suicide took place at the couple's apartment in the town of Roveredo in Piano in Friuli Venezia-Giulia region on Thursday, according to police. Investigators said they believe the woman killed her husband and committed suicide because both were ill and she feared they could no longer cope. The woman had laid out clothes for the couple to be buried in with instructions for their funerals and left a written apology for her children. "I can no longer go on. Please forgive me for the pain I am causing you but I can't bear to see your father suffer like this and my time is up too," read the note, according to local daily Il Gazzettino. The couple's daughter allegedly discovered her parents' lifeless bodies at the apartment and called police. --IANS/AKI mr/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Export of unsold BS-III commercial vehicles is the most suitable option for the manufacturers with a sizeable inventory following the Supreme Court ban on sale and registration of these vehicles after April 1, 2017, rating agency ICRA said on Friday. "CV (commercial vehicle) OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) are now sitting on sizeable stock of unsold inventory, which is worth approximately Rs 46-58 billion," the rating agency said in a report. "We believe exports of these vehicles to nearby markets where emission norms have still not progressed to Euro-IV or equivalent appears to be the most suitable option available with OEMs as upgradation to BS-IV has limited possibility." The report said the technology to meet BS-IV norms has undergone a significant shift. In case of CVs, the engines technology has moved from largely mechanical to electro-mechanical. "Apart from changes in engine technology, the exhaust system has also been upgraded to either exhaust gas re-circulation (EGR) or selective catalytic reduction (SCR) technology to achieve higher reduction in Nox levels under BS-IV," the report said. In a setback to the automobile industry, the Supreme Court ban on the sale and registration of BS-III vehicles just two days prior to the implementation of new emission norms on April 1 resulted in the sizeable stock of BS-III vehicles lying unsold. Besides, there was a sharp contraction in earnings on account of deep discounts extended to clear existing inventory and costs associated with re-calls and possible upgradation to BS-IV norms. "According to industry estimates, the CV industry had approximately 95,000 BS-III vehicles in March 2017, of which they were able to clear only 50,000-60,000 units (or 55-65 per cent) in the last two days of the fiscal 2017 despite sharp increase in discounts (ranging between 10-30 per cent) offered by OEMs as well as dealers," the report added. --IANS ppg-rv/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Aiming to unravel and interpret the fascinating bond between people and places, a "Festival of Places" kicked off here on Friday to explore the cultural legacies of cities -- Delhi, Lucknow and Kolkata. The festival is about understanding the idea of "Space as a Place" -- about exploring places that form an integral part of cities and towns. It is expected to offer experiences about celebrated places in the three cities as meaningful connected spaces through which urban life throbs. It will rediscover the lost art of creating vibrant Places that nurture culture and creativity. "Festival of Places" has been organised by the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts (IGNCA) and has been conceptualized by CATTS a non-profit working in the area of heritage conservation and management. "We are featuring talk sessions on Indian and International Placemaking and Placecentered Initiatives that have helped revitalize public and community spaces in cities," Urvashi Shrivastava of CATTS told IANS. Architectural and photographic exhibitions, presentations and short films, cultural performances by renowned artists will highlight the uniqueness of each city and prove how culture, conservation and creativity can drive development. "The festival explores the invaluable cultural fabric and a memory associated with places and provides an opportunity to people for sharing their personal narratives," Shrivastava said. "It has been envisaged as a convergence of people from all walks of life and disciplines who seek a deeper understanding of our culture through the places we live in as well as share an eagerness to rejuvenate them," she added. She further explained that the festival encourages participation of people of all ages, youth and experience for developing an in-depth understanding of places and spaces we live in. "It seeks people to play an active role both in the creation of new places and the preservation and sustenance of existing ones," Shrivastava said. --IANS mg/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The first Hindu elected to the Congress, Hawaiian Democrat Tulsi Gabbard, slammed President Donald Trump's decision to strike against Syria as reckless, the media reported. "This administration has acted recklessly without care or consideration of the dire consequences of the US attack on Syria without waiting for the collection of evidence from the scene of the chemical poisoning," The Hill magazine quoted Gabbard as saying on Thursday. "It angers and saddens me that President Trump has taken the advice of war hawks and escalated our illegal regime change war to overthrow the Syrian government. "This escalation is short-sighted and will lead to more dead civilians, more refugees, the strengthening of Al Qaeda and other terrorists, and a possible nuclear war between the US and Russia," she added. Gabbard's comments came after US warships on Thursday night launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at a military airfield in Syria. The attack was in retaliation to a chemical weapons attack in northern Syria on Tuesday that killed over 80 civilians, including children. In February, Gabbard stirred controversy after she made a trip to Syria and met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, reports the magazine. The Hawaii Democrat has insisted that the meetings were not planned and focused on peace efforts in the war-torn country. Gabbard released a separate statement ahead of the attacks on Thursday calling for an investigation into the chemical weapons attack in Syria and the eventual prosecution of Assad in the International Criminal Court. --IANS ksk/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A donor heart, airlifted from Chandigarh, was safely delivered at Fortis Escorts Heart Institute here in two hours, thanks to a green corridor. A green corridor created on Thursday covered a distance of 18 km from Delhi's Indira Gandhi International (IGI) airport to the Fortis Escorts Heart Institute in just 18 minutes, said a release on Friday. The donor, a 32-year-old female from Faridabad, was declared brain dead after being on ventilator support for three weeks at Post Graduate Institute Hospital, Chandigarh. The heart was successfully transplanted on a 13-year-old teenager from Agra, who was suffering from a heart failure due to viral myocarditis and also had an ejection fraction of barely 15-20 per cent, whereas normal heart functions at 55-60 per cent. "When we first heard that the donor was a 32-year-old person, it looked that the match might not be possible. However, the body weight of the donor matched with the recipient and hence their chest cavities were nearly comparable, though we still had to use special techniques to connect arteries of the donor heart with those of the recipient," Z.S. Meharwal, Director (Cardiovascular Surgery and Transplant Surgery), Fortis Escorts Heart Institute, said in a statement on Friday. The donor's family consented to donate heart, kidneys and liver, following which the harvested heart was flown down to Delhi by a chartered flight. "It was unfortunate we did not get the cooperation of the commercial airlines in bringing the heart from Chandigarh to Delhi, and thus did so in a chartered flight," said Ashok Seth, Chairman at Fortis Escorts Heart Institute. "I would urge the Ministry of Civil Aviation to consider regulations in which all stakeholders, including airlines, develop policies to become an integral part of this life-saving effort," Seth said. --IANS rt/pgh/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Filmmaker Hansal Mehta says it's disappointing that his critically acclaimed film "Aligarh" was not considered worthy of an honour at the 64th National Film Awards. However, he hopes the debate around LGBTQ rights is not ignored. Set in a town in Uttar Pradesh from which the film takes its name, "Aligarh" is the story of a professor played by actor Manoj Bajpayee, fired for his sexuality, and a young journalist essayed by Rajkummar Rao, who tells his story to the world. After the 64th National Film Awards were announced on Friday in New Delhi, Mehta expressed his sentiments via a Twitter post. He wrote: "I am getting calls asking me if 'Aligarh' was entered for the National Awards and if I was disappointed with the results. Yes, 'Aligarh' was entered and while we are disappointed like many other colleagues, I would like to congratulate all the the winners." The filmmaker says that the jury has a difficult job every year and there are bound to be disappointments for many. "Some fine films have been rewarded and some excellent work has been recognised. To all my colleagues who poured their hearts out into 'Aligarh', let's just keep making our films with love and care - awards or no awards. There is no point brooding over the results. "There is merit in only moving on and continuing to work, to make movies that we believe in." He says it's more important that the fight for LGBTQ rights continues. "If 'Aligarh' has shone a light on these issues and if India's ignored LGBTQ's population are able to move forward with dignity rights, and unconditional integration into the mainstream, we will consider our task in making 'Aligarh' accomplished," he said. --IANS dc/rb/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Resource mobilisation through India's own schemes is essential to address the "huge gap" in international investments to achieve national biodiversity conservation targets, a Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) official said here on Thursday. India, a signatory to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and pursuant to the global agreement, has a national biodiversity strategy and action plan for implementing the convention at the national level. It now has 12 National Biodiversity Targets which form the blueprint for biodiversity conservation in the country. "There is a huge gap in investments and we need substantial investments to meet those targets," Sujata Arora, CBD Primary National Focal Point, MoEFCC, said here. "The CBD provides that the developed countries... have to provide funds to the developing nation parties to meet the targets. But the developed countries now say that India is now almost at their level... so getting the funding is a major concern," she said. Arora was speaking at the 'Understanding the National Biodiversity Targets and the Biodiversity Act' workshop organised by the Centre for Environment Communication and West Bengal Biodiversity Board. Emphasising the need to look into India's own schemes, Arora said the current thought process on resource mobilisation focuses on sensitising ministries who unknowingly contribute to biodiversity conservation. "Many a time, these ministries do not know that they are contributing to biodiversity conservation through their schemes because their mandate is different. We have identified the ministries and their schemes and how much funding goes into that and trying to understand what percentage of the scheme could be given to biodiversity," Arora said. She explained: "... by tweaking something in the scheme... say if one per cent of the scheme (the funding) goes for biodiversity conservation... by tweaking a little bit, may be the contribution could be five per cent." --IANS sgh/lok/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Opening up about life after the death of both his first wife and daughter, Hollywood star Pierce Brosnan says he still believes in looking for positive things in life. Brosnan's wife of 11 years Cassandra Harris died in 1991 due to ovarian cancer at the age of 43, and then he lost his daughter Charlotte to the same disease in 2013 when she was 42. "I don't look at the cup as half full, believe me. The dark, melancholy Irish black dog sits beside me from time to time," Brosnan told esquire.com. At present, he is married to Keely Shaye Smith since 2001. The "Remember Me" star is father to four sons - Chris, 44, Sean, 33, from his first marriage as well as Dylan, 20, and Paris, 16, with Keely. --IANS sug/nn/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The present-day Poompuhar or Kaveripoompattinam at the mouth of the river Cauvery in Tamil Nadu is not the original location of the famed port city, researchers at the state's Bharatidasan University (BU) report. The original Poompuhar existed about 30 km east of today's Kaveripoompattinam nearly 2,000 years ago, S.M. Ramasamy, Professor, Centre for Remote Sensing, BU, and co-workers report in the Current Science journal. It seems to have shifted location four times due to a rise in the sea level and the changing coastline, they report. "The present Poompuhar must be the fourth establishment after the earlier three were swallowed one after the other by the Bay of Bengal," they say. The BU researchers undertook the study to find an answer to the unsolved scientific debate over the exact location of Poompuhar, the time of its establishment and its lifespan. According to the researchers, the archaeological remnants of Poompuhar are found scattered in the land region of present day Poompuhar and also offshore about eight kilometre northeast. This had raised the question whether the on-land and underwater archaeological remains belong to the same Poompuhar or the underwater remains are part of an earlier Poompuhar city. "So, the exact boundary of the city was not known." Similarly, the age of Poompuhar city has also remained a major enigma, Ramasamy says. While some studies claimed that it is more than 11,000 years old, Tamil literary works described it was a highly fortified port city during 300 B.C.-300 A.D. Again, Carbon dating done in one of the locations from Poompuhar assigned it the age of 2,300 years. The BU team carried out the studies using imageries sent by an Indian remote sensing satellite, near-shore topographic data and IPCC (Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change) data on the rise in sea levels in the last 20,000 years. Combining all this information they derived the sea-levels that existed during six different periods in the last 20,000 years and the coast lines corresponding to those times. They found that 20,000 years ago, the east coast of what is now Tamil Nadu was 30 km further east from the present coast. "Thus, when the ancient coast was 30 km east of present Poompuhar, there was a huge delta of the Cauvery and the initial establishment of the port city might have come as Poompuhar-A," Ramasamy said. The researchers found that around 11,000 years ago the sea-level rose to 50 metres below the present mean sea level (MSL) and the coastline shifted to around 20 km from present-day Kaveripoompattinam. "This might have led to the submergence of Poompuhar-A and to the establishment of the second Poompuhar (Poompuhar-B) along the new coast where the Cauvery formed another delta." When the sea-level further rose and swallowed Poompuhar-B about 9,000 years ago, Poompuhar-C might have been established 5-7 km east of present city. Poompuhar-C also might have suffered the same fate 7,000 years ago, forcing the people to shift further west towards the new coast and establish the present-day Kaveripoompattinam (Poompuhar-D). "Such constant shifting of the port city appears to be logical under the proven phenomenon of sea-level rise," the researchers conclude. While their study has thrown new light on Poompuhar, the authors say "more detailed studies are required to bring out the holistic life history of this ancient port city". Given this hoary past, is it any wonder that the Tamil Nadu government's handicrafts outlets across the country are named "Poompuhar"? (K.S. Jayaraman can be contacted at killugud@hotmail.com) --IANS ksj/vm/ky/sac (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The process of urbanisation has ended in the US and Europe, while India will see a huge upsurge in urbanisation, says Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog (National Institution for Transforming India). During a session at The Taj Luxury Symposium 2017 here on Friday, Kant said luxury brands like BMW and Mercedes are doing well in the country. Talking about digital platforms transforming luxury, he said: "Digital technology is going to bring a lot of immersive virtual reality and that is going to create a vast amount of unique experiences. "There will be a huge amount of intersection between art and creativity, that will ensure that many of our weavers in rural areas will be able to reach the market points. "This will happen because India will sees a huge upsurge in terms of e-commerce. India will see 300 per cent growth in the next four to five years in terms of e-commerce transaction." Kant said that an e-commerce company needs to spread out and get into rural areas where there is a huge strength. "If you look at the growth of Amazon or Flipkart, it's like Alibaba in China... The ability to source great products from rural areas and enable them to be consumed in urban areas," he added. He feels that the process of urbanisation has ended in the US and Europe. "It's nearing its completion in China. In India, it has just begun. India will see a huge upsurge in urbanisation. The second thing is the middle class is moving to the upper end of the market. India is creating a huge middle class." And the middle class, he says, is essentially an aspirational class. "If you look at UK, the latest cars, perfumes and jewellery... The consumption boom was driven by the aspirational middle class. That is what is going to happen to India in the coming years and that will be driven digitally," said Kant. In fact, physical banking in India will be dead in the next five years, he says. "Physical banks and infrastructure will be so expensive." But Umang Bedi, Managing Director - India and South Asia at Facebook, feels that luxury brands are yet to build digital commerce strategy. "It will take them sometime," he said. Samrath Bedi, Executive Director, Forest Essentials India, says millennials are very demanding and tough consumers. "The consumer is looking for a real story and looks beyond packaging. They want to know how the product is made, where it is made," Bedi said. Suman Billa, the Joint Secretary, Ministry of Tourism, spoke about how experiences are the new collectibles. "Today, people seek experiences. There are some set of people who go every year to Kerala to look at the elephants," he said. He pointed out that India generally gets two types of travellers -- high-end travellers who are chauffeur-driven and then there are the backpackers. "We are completely missing out on the middle one... People who would like to stay in a hotel for $100 for a night," said Billa, who also said that now there are electronic visas, helpline numbers and sim cards are given to travellers for smooth stay in the country. Hotels are also doing their bit. Chinmai Sharma, Chief Revenue Officer at Taj Hotels Palaces Resorts Safaris, added that during business trips, the focus is on meetings, but during personal travel they are more discerning. "So we need to cook up experiences and give the ability to live like a local." --IANS nn/rb/dg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Iran strongly condemned the US missile attack on a Syrian army airbase, calling it a "dangerous" action, state TV reported on Friday. The missile attack is a "pretext for unilateral action, dangerous, destructive and violation of peremptory principles of international laws", Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi said. The US launched 59 Tomahawks at the Shayrat airport in central Syria late Thursday, the Pentagon confirmed, saying the strike was intended to deter the Syrian government from using chemical weapons again. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said on Thursday that the Syrian recent airstrike on a rebel-held town in Idlib province in northwestern Syria struck a rebel depot containing chemical materials, denying that the air force fired toxic gas during the attack. --IANS mr/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Mosul, April 7 (IANS/AKI) Hundreds of civilians trying to escape from the embattled Iraqi city of Mosul were killed by the Islamic State earlier this week, with bodies being hung from electrical poles across the city, according to a report from the region on Friday. "On Monday and Tuesday, IS massacred 140 civilians fleeing to areas controlled by Iraqi forces," Kurdish broadcaster Rudaw cited tweets by the Kurdistan Region Security Council (KRSC) as saying. "Some bodies were later hung on electrical poles in (the) Eslah, Zirai and Tanak neighbourhoods. Others were taken to nearby front lines," the KRSC wrote. Eslah and Tanak are located in western Mosul, where government forces began an assault last month to dislodge IS fighters. Fierce fighting has continued in western Mosul as Iraqi forces battle to retake the Old City, where 400,000 people are believed to be living. Iraqi forces began an offensive in mid-October to oust IS from Mosul and now control the east of Mosul, Iraq's second city. IS captured Mosul in June 2014 and declared it the capital of its Islamic 'caliphate' stretching across swathes of territory it seized in Iraq and Syria during a lightening offensive. IS atrocities, including mass killings, public executions and murders of fleeing civilians have been widely reported in Mosul. --IANS/AKI mr/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Income Tax Department officials on Friday recovered about Rs 4.5 crore from the residences of two persons close to Tamil Nadu Health Minister C. Vijayabaskar, said a senior official. The IT officials also searched the residences and business premises of Vijayabaskar, his relatives and associates. "Rs 3.5 crore cash was recovered from Nainar Mohammed, one of the confidants of Vijayabaskar, and nearly Rs 1 crore was recovered from a person who was managing the funds of Vijayabaskar," the IT official told IANS, preferring anonymity. According to him, some incriminating documents were seized from the residence of Vijayabaskar. Raids were also conducted at actor-turned-politician Sammuthuva Makkal Katchi leader Sarathkumar's house, the official said. The premises of some AIADMK functionaries and government officials were searched as well. Initially, the raids were launched at around 35 places. Tne operation was later extended to nearly 50 addresses, including some located outside Chennai in the state, the official added. He said: "Trigger for raids at Vijayabaskar's residence is the money distributed to voters in the R.K. Nagar assembly constituency where the by-poll is slated for April 12." Vijayabaskar is a loyalist of AIADMK General Secretary V.K. asikala, now in jail for corruption. Sasikala's relative T.T.V. Dhinakaran is contesting from the R.K. Nagar constituency and complaints of large-scale bribing of voters has been lodged with the Election Commission by the opposition parties. The officer said Minister Vijayabaskar was on IT radar for the past one year in connection with his quarry business. Soon after the news about the raids broke, media persons assembled outside Vijayabaskar's residence. AIADMK (Sasikala faction) leaders and cadres, too, gathered there and demanded entry into his residence. Speaking to the media, Vijayabaskar said the IT officials were not able to find not even Rs 10,000 from his house and his children were not allowed to attend school. The raid at Sarathkumar's residence comes a day after he announced his support to Dhinakaran. PMK founder S. Ramadoss in a statement demanded sacking of Vijayabaskar and other officials whose residences were searched by the IT officials. DMK's working President and Leader of Opposition in the state assembly M.K. Stalin said IT raids on AIADMK leaders was not something new. He said IT searches were also conducted at the residences of former ministers Natham Viswanathan, Saidai Duraisamy and others. Stalin recalled the IT raid on the residence of former Tamil Nadu Chief Secretary P. Rama Mohana Rao. According to Stalin, despite the raids by the IT Department on these people, there was no follow-up action and the central government should come clear on it. --IANS vj/nir/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Japanese government on Friday approved a two-year extension of its unilateral sanctions against North Korea, including a total blockade of trade, in response to Pyongyang's latest missile tests. The sanctions, which were scheduled to expire in mid-April, were imposed on North Korea in response to a lack of progress on the abductions of Japanese citizens by Pyongyang in the 1970s and 1980s, and its repeated missile provocations, government spokesperson Yoshihide Suga said at a press conference. Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said Japan will continue to implement its policy of bilateral talks and sanctions against North Korea, Efe news reported. Tokyo imposed a set of unilateral sanctions on North Korea in response to its missile tests in 2006, which have since been extended several times. These measures were endorsed simultaneously with sanctions by the UN Security Council. Japan, together with the US and South Korea, tightened sanctions in December 2016, following North Korea's nuclear and missile tests. The sanctions include a total ban on trade and on the entry of North Korean vessels into Japanese ports. Members of the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, known locally as Chongryon, are also prohibited from re-entering Japan if they leave the country to visit North Korea. The tensions between Japan and North Korea have increased following a number of successful mid-range missile launches by North Korea in March, one of which fell about 200 km off the Japanese coast. --IANS ksk/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A 22-year-old man viciously attacked a woman journalist he was attracted to after she spurned his advances, police said on Friday. The accused, identified as Sanjay -- a resident of Sawan Park JJ cluster -- was arrested from his residence on Friday after multiple police teams detained over 100 people during investigation. The incident took place on Wednesday evening when Sanjay attacked Aparna Kalra, 45, when she had gone for an evening walk to a park near her Ashok Vihar residence in north Delhi. Sanjay told interrogators that after consuming alcohol, he went to the park. He was infatuated by Kalra and tried to be friendly with her, Joint Commissioner of Police (Northern Range) Rajesh Khurana said. Since he was in an inebriated condition, Kalra ignored him. In a fit of rage, he picked up a heavy stone and attacked her from behind and fled the site, Khurana said. Kalra suffered skull fractures, he said. "Sanjay is a school dropout and works in a factory producing nail paint. There are no indications of any sexual assault," he added. Doctors say Kalra is recovering. --IANS sp/nir/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Malayalam film industry has emerged successful in the 64th National Film Awards, that were announced in the capital on Friday, bagging several honours, including that for the Best Actress and Best Screenplay. Surabhi C.M. won the Best Actress Award for her role in "Minnaminungu - the Firefly". This role fetched her only a special mention in the recently announced Kerala State Film awards. Surabhi, all of 26, was not in Kerala when the announcement was made. "I now really wish I was in Kerala when this news came. I am here (in Oman) to attend a function. I never ever expected that this award will come to me. I take this opportunity to thank all behind the film and who helped me to win this," said Surabhi. At her home in suburban Kozhikode in north Kerala, it was excitement galore as her mother and grandmother could not hide their excitement. The other awards that the Malayalam film industry won include the Best Child Artiste that has been shared by three child actors -- and saw Kerala boy Adish Praveen bagging it for his role in the film "Kunju Daivam". The Best Screenplay prize went to Shyam Pushkaran for the film "Maheshinte Prathikaaram", which also bagged the Best Malayalam Film award. In the Best Sound Design category, Jayadevan Chakadath was choosen as the winner for the film "Kaadu Pookkunna Neram". Superstar Mohanlal won a Special Jury mention for three of his movies which included Telugu film "Janatha Garage" and two Malayalam films -- "Pulimurugan" and "Munthirivallikal Thalirkkumbol". Peter Hein, who worked on the action scenes in the film "Pulimurugan" bagged the Best Action Director Award constituted for the first time. Reacting to the award, Mohanlal said he is very excited as he has got a Special Jury Mention for a film which was not in Malayalam. "To get it for a Telegu film makes this award all the more sweet. And I am very happy for Peter Hein who bagged the award that was constituted for the first time. "The film 'Pulimurugan' was one film which saw so many people working very hard and I am happy that it also won the award," said Mohanlal, who was shooting for his latest film "Villain" when the news of the award emerged. He said the shooting of the film came to a standstill and everyone got together and celebrated it by cutting a cake. --IANS sg/rb/dg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Having waived the loans of marginal and small farmers -- as promised in the run-up to the assembly polls -- the Uttar Pradesh government may well find itself carrying an unprecedented financial burden in the days to come. While officials and ministers in the Yogi Adityanath government insist the "whole thing has been planned well", financial experts here say the new Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government will find it hard to bear the burden, which will be around Rs 37,000 crore (over $6 billion), especially as it has said that there would be no new taxes levied on the people. Of the 23 million farmers in the state, 92.5 per cent (about 21.5 million), who are small and marginal, have been granted a waiver against crop loans up to a limit of Rs 1 lakh each. The Yogi government has also erased loans of around 700,000 farmers who have defaulted and are now under the non-performing assets (NPA) tag to the tune of Rs 5,630 crore. "There would be no burden on the people, they should remain relaxed," state Finance Minister Rajesh Agarwal said. But the bravado, many fear, could be short-lived. Siddhartha Nath Singh, a minister and the state government spokesman, has been candid in admitting that the Union government headed by the BJP has already said a firm no to any sharing of the burden following the farmer loan sop. "We are tied to fiscal discipline which mandates the states to keep the deficit not above three per cent of its GDP," Singh said citing the FRBM Act passed by Parliament. Other than this, the state government will also have to face the major burden of the Seventh Pay Commission payouts. The predecessor Akhilesh Yadav government had to bear this brunt for only three months but it would burn a hole in the pocket of the Yogi government for the entire 2017-18 and also in the years ahead. This alone involves an outgo of Rs 31,000 crore. With growing incidences of violence in the state by women over their demands for a liquor-free Uttar Pradesh, the state government's revenue will take a further hit in case it goes for such a social cause under pressure. Fear is looming large in the corridors of power on the shrinking revenue net and hence the loan waiver for farmers is being seen with some apprehension here. If all the debts of the Uttar Pradesh government are taken into consideration, an official said, the state is reeling under an unprecedented debt of Rs 375,049 crore -- a whopping 30.3 per cent of the state's GDP. "The financial system of the state and economic planning has been a complete mess in the past decade and it sure will take a lot of time to manage it, forget taking new hits like the loan waiver," a senior bureaucrat said. The state says it has an answer: Raise funds to cover for the loan waiver through a Kisan Relief Bond. The modalities of the bond are being worked out and it would be cleared during the forthcoming budget session of the state assembly. Even so, a tough litmus test awaits the Yogi government as it treads delicately between economic prudence and populism. Politically, the opposition parties are questioning the decision of the BJP government, saying it made a mockery of the pain being felt by the farmers. Former Chief Minister and Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav has called it a "farce perpetrated on farmers". "There was no capping in the promise made by the BJP during the state assembly election campaign; now they have done so and are only trying to fool the people," he said. The Congress, on its part, has welcomed the waiver, saying that while the decision was good, much more needed to be done by the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh and at the Centre. (Mohit Dubey can be contacted at mohit.d@ians.in) --IANS md/vm/sac (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A draft legislation to amend the Motor Vehicles Act to impose higher penalties for traffic rule violations and to protect Good Samaritans from legal harassment was taken up by the Lok Sabha on Friday. The bill proposes hefty penalties for various traffic offences, three-year jail term for parents of minors caught driving and causing fatal accidents, and a ten-fold increase in compensation for the families of accident victims, among other things. While moving the bill in the Lok Sabha, Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari said there are around five lakh accidents in India each year, and around 1.5 lakh people die in road accidents each year. "India has the highest number of deaths in road accidents," the Minister said. "From driving licence to traffic rules, people have no respect or fear for law... I feel sad sometimes, India is the country where it is the easiest to get a licence," Gadkari said. He said around 30 per cent driving licences are "bogus". K.C. Venugopal of the Congress said he acknowledged the efforts of the Minister in bringing the bill with an "open mind". Congress leader Mallikarju Kharge also appreciated Gadkari, as he complained about lack of quorum in the Lok Sabha. "He is performing well. He has extended roads, highways... but see the support," Kharge said. Trinammool Congress member Arpita Ghosh said: "We are very thankful that after 30 years a bill has been brought which was long needed." Biju Janata Dal member Tathagat Satpathy also lauded Gadkari. "The public perception as well as my personal perception is that this is a Minister who is a very hard-working person," he said. The changes in the Motor Vehicle (Amendment) Bill, 2016, was approved by the Union Cabinet on March 31. The bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha last August and was referred to a parliamentary standing committee, whose suggestions have been endorsed by the Union Cabinet. --IANS ao/lok/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Rome, April 7 (IANS/AKI) Italian authorities on Friday expelled an alleged Moroccan Islamic extremist who proselytized on social media and planned to travel to the Middle East to wage Jihad. The 34-year-old Moroccan was deported from Rome's Fiumicino airport on the orders of Interior Minister Marco Minniti, the interior ministry said in a statement. The suspect was resident in the eastern Italian town of Recanati and was arrested last April for suspected terrorist association after he was linked to two Moroccan jihadists who travelled from the northern city of Milan to join the Islamic State jihadist group in Syria and Iraq. A total 31 Islamist terror suspects have been expelled from Italy this year and 163 since January 2015, the ministry said. --IANS/AKI mr/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Condemning the in Syria, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on Friday said the action puts Moscow and Washington "on the verge of a military clash." "This military action is a clear indication of the US President's extreme dependency on the opinion of the Washington establishment, the one that the new president strongly criticized in his inauguration speech," Medvedev wrote on Facebook. Medvedev said the missile strike was "really sad for our now completely ruined relations" with the US and "good news for terrorists." "The Trump administration proved it will fiercely fight the legitimate Syrian government, in a tough contradiction with law and without UN approval, in violation of its own procedures stipulating that the Congress must first be notified of any military operation unrelated to aggression against the US." President Trump authorised a missile launch into Syria late on Thursday in response to a chemical attack earlier this week that US and other Western officials believe was conducted by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad. According to the Pentagon, 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles were launched during the strike, which targeted the Shayrat Air Base, the reported origin of a chemical attack. The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) on Friday issued notice to the Delhi government over reported administering of contaminated injections to 20 eye patients at Guru Tegh Bahadur (GTB) Hospital, an NHRC statement said. According to the statement, the notice was issued after the NHRC took suo motu cognizance of a media report that 20 eye patients had to be rushed to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) from the GTB hospital on April 2 when they complained of blurred vision, pain and watery eyes after they were allegedly administered contaminated injections. About eight of them reportedly require eye surgery. "The commission has observed that the contents of the news report raise serious issue of negligence by the GTB Hospital doctors and its management, putting the eyesight of the patients to risk." "Accordingly, it has issued a notice to the Chief Secretary, Delhi government, calling for a detailed report in the matter within four weeks," the statement said. The statement said patients, as part of their follow-up treatment, were administered injections containing the drug "Avastian", which is globally used to prevent blindness due to ageing, diabetes, hypertension and rupturing of blood vessels. "Reportedly, Atul Kumar, Chief of the R.P. Centre for Ophthalmic Sciences at AIIMS, has said that 'Avastian' is classified as sight saving drug and used all over the world. In this case, it seems that the injections were contaminated, which caused the reaction," it said. According to the statement, the Medical Director of the GTB Hospital has stated that the samples of the injection have been sent to the microbiology lab for testing so that suspected contamination could be determined. "He has informed that specialists were called immediately when the patients complained about blurred vision and mild pain, during the follow up and the serious cases were referred to the AIIMS," the statement added. --IANS am/lok/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Taking suo motu cognizance of the lynching of a Muslim man by cow vigilantes in Alwar district of Rajasthan last week, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) on Friday issued notice to the Rajasthan government demanding a detailed action report. "The Commission has issued a notice to the Chief Secretary, Rajasthan calling for a detailed report in the matter along with action taken against the culprits," NHRC said in a statement. Calling the incident a serious case of human rights violation, NHRC said: "Self-proclaimed volunteers creating an atmosphere of fear in society by taking law in their hands are required to be dealt with strictly as per law." "The state has a responsibility to remain vigilant to prevent such activities," it added. The commission also issued a notice to the Union Home Secretary, calling for a response on what steps have been taken or proposed to be taken by the Centre to deal with such incidents in the country. The response is expected within four weeks. The commission observed that this incident is not the first of its kind and in a similar incident, four Dalit boys, possessing beef, were severely beaten up in the Gir Somnath district of Gujarat in July, 2016. The lynching incident occurred on Saturday when a group of self-styled cow vigilantes attacked dairy farmer Pehlu Khan in Behror area of Alwar. Khan, hailing from Haryana, died on Monday night in hospital. He was travelling in a truck with two cows and two calves when the attackers accused him of illegally smuggling cows for slaughter. However, his family said he had bought the animals for his small dairy business. --IANS rs/lok/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) One in every four mental health problems occurring in people is due to depression, said experts in a seminar here. Long working hours, tight deadlines, long journeys from home to the office in traffic are all factors that contribute to workplace induced mental health problems, Chee Ng, Professor at the University of Melbourne, said in a statement. "One in every four mental health problems arises due to work place depression. Not only does this reduce productivity, but also affects cost to the business," Ng said. The seminar entitled 'Depression: Let's talk about what we all should know' was organised by Jindal Global University in association with the University of Melbourne, Australia, and was attended by academicians and mental health experts from both the countries. According to World Health Organization, five crore Indians are suffering from depression. "India has a total of only 898 clinical psychologists, one for every 13 lakh people and a total of 3,800 psychiatrists, one for every 3,30,000," said Sanjeev P. Sahni, Principal Director, Jindal Institute of Behavioural Sciences. "There is need for mental health services to be available in each district across the country and the essential drug list to be available free of cost in government hospitals," Sahni added. People need to be made aware of the fact that depression occurs not due to a person's weakness, but because of imbalances in the brain chemistry, the experts argued. "Globalisation has not only impacted the socio-economic status of individuals, but their mental well-being as well," noted Ian Everall, Professor at the University of Melbourne. "Today, 4.4 per cent of the world's population is suffering from depression. Only 50 per cent of people suffering from depression receive treatment. This lack of treatment affects a person's productivity and causes huge losses to companies and the country as a whole," he said. --IANS rt/pgh/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Ontario Assembly has passed a motion that recognises the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in India that killed over 2,500 people, as genocide. The motion was passed 35 to 5 on Thursday. It was moved by Harinder Malhi, an MP from Brampton-Springdale district. Malhi in her remarks said: "The Legislative Assembly of Ontario should reaffirm our values ...and condemn all forms of communal violence, hatred, hostility, prejudice, racism and intolerance in India and anywhere else in the world including the 1984 genocide perpetrated against the Sikhs." "Today we recognise the human rights, social justice, reconciliation in the events that took place in New Delhi and other cities across India in 1984." The province of Ontario is "a place where people see democracy as a way to recognise the past of our neighbours and the violence that took place in 1984 which can only be described as a genocide," the MP added. "While we can't change the events of 1984, we have an opportunity here today to clear the misconceptions that divide the community and the residents of Ontario." The motion comes ahead of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's expected visit to India either late this year or early next year, according to the country's High Commissioner to India Nadir Patel. The 1984 riots took place in the aftermath of the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on October 31, 1984, by her two Sikh bodyguards. --IANS ksk/rn (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Pakistan Defence Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif has blamed India for destabilising the bilateral relations between Islamabad and Kabul. The Associated Press of Pakistan quoted the Defence Minister as saying that the relations between the two countries were strained due to Indian influence on Afghanistan. He emphasised the sacrifices of the Pakistan armed forces in the country's "war on terror", and added that every possible step would be taken to flush out militants and the menace of "terrorism" from the country. Relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan appear to be back on track after months of tensions and war of words, as the Prime Minister's Advisor on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz on Wednesday reported progress in his recent talks with senior Afghan officials in London. Briefing the National Assembly Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Sartaj Aziz said the London meeting with Afghan National Security Advisor Hanif Atmar had helped break the ice. --IANS ahm/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Pakistan's National Security Advisor Nasir Janjua on Friday denied that Pakistan was a dangerous country and at the "centre of global terrorism", and said the perception being created was far from reality. "The world thinks we are interfering in Afghanistan... (that) our economy is damaged... (that) we are playing a double-game regarding the Taliban... Pakistan's nuclear assets are not protected," that is the perception about Pakistan, Janjua said, adding "but the true picture was not being presented adequately before the world". The former army-man said it was "unfortunate" that allegations had been hurled against Pakistan without ascertaining the facts. Janjua also said Pakistan has fought for Afghanistan's existence. "We have been confronting difficulties (vis-a-vis) for the past 40 years." Speaking about the appointment of former army chief General Raheel Sharif as the head of a Saudi-led military alliance, Janjua said Sharif is "not going to lead a Sunni alliance", but a Muslim alliance being dubbed as "Muslim Nato". Noting that Saudi Arabia had chosen the countries for the military alliance, Janjua said that Gen Sharif is nonetheless an equal friend of Iran and will not act against its interests. --IANS ahm/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Megastar Amitabh Bachchan starrer "Pink" -- which raked up discussions on crimes against women -- has won the Best Film on Social Issues at 64th National Film Awards, it was announced here on Friday. Directed by Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury, the courtroom drama is a contemporary youth-centric film with a strong socially relevant message about the choices young women of today make and about respecting those. Its prime message was "no means no". With a cast including Taapsee Pannu, Kirti Kulhari, Angad Bedi, Andrea Tariang, Piyush Mishra, and Dhritiman Chatterjee -- the movie was lauded for its impactful performances and strong message. It tells a story about a girl named Minal, who after being molested, along with her friends, tries to file an FIR against a politician's nephew. When the subsequent case gets rigged, Deepak, a retired lawyer, helps them to fight the case. The powerful dialogues and strong screenplay were appreciated by the audience and the critics alike. This apart, Sonam Kapoor starrer "Neerja" won the Best Hindi Film Award, while actor Akshay Kumar was chosen for the Best Actor honour for the film "Rustom". --IANS dc/rb/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) US Senate and House Republicans supported Donald Trump's decision to strike against the Syrian government, but cautioned the President against unilaterally starting another war in the Middle East, a media report said. On Thursday night, the US launched 59 cruise missiles into Syria in retaliation for Tuesday's chemical weapons attack on civilians that killed over 80 people, including children. This is Washington's first direct military attack on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime. Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham -- who have frequently been critical of Trump -- praised the President's decision, CNN reported. "Acting on the orders of their commander-in-chief, they have sent an important message the US will no longer stand idly by as Assad, aided and abetted by (President Vladimir) Putin's Russia, slaughters innocent Syrians with chemical weapons and barrel bombs," McCain and Graham said in a joint statement. "Unlike the previous administration, President Trump confronted a pivotal moment in Syria and took action. For that, he deserves the support of the American people." House Speaker Paul Ryan called the US military action "appropriate and just." "These tactical strikes make clear that the Assad regime can no longer count on American inaction as it carries out atrocities against the Syrian people," Ryan said. However, some Republicans also lawmakers argued that Trump does not have the authority to launch strikes against the Assad regime, CNN reported. In 2013, President Barack Obama went to Congress before he would launch strikes against Assad, and the effort ultimately fizzled. Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican who has frequently questioned military intervention, warned Trump that Congress must approve new action in the region. "While we all condemn the atrocities in Syria, The President needs Congressional authorisation for military action as required by the Constitution. Our prior interventions in this region have done nothing to make us safer and Syria will be no different," Paul said. Justin Amash, a Michigan Republican and member of the House Freedom Caucus, also called for congressional action. "Airstrikes are an act of war. Atrocities in Syria cannot justify departure from Constitution, which vests in Congress power to commence war." --IANS ksk/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Friday condemned the US missile strike on Syrian airbase. "The tragedy of Khan Sheikhoun is horrifying & must be condemned. It reminds Iranians, victim of CW for years, the attacks in Sardasht," the President tweeted. "US aggression against Shayrat strengthens regional extremism and terror, and global lawlessness and instability, and must be condemned. I call on the world to reject such policies, which bring only destruction and danger to the region and the globe," he added. The US military launched 59 missiles during the early hours of April 7, targeting an airbase in Syria. The strike was the Pentagon's first direct attack against Syria since the beginning of the conflict in 2011. On US President Donald Trump's order, the US launched the strike on the Syrian airfield in response to an alleged chemical weapons attack in the town of Khan Sheikhun in Idlib province earlier this week. Damascus has categorically denied carrying out a chemical attack. --IANS sku/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Russia on Friday condemned US cruise missile strikes on a Syrian military target and suspended a deal with the US to prevent mid-air collisions over Syria. "The Russian side suspends the memorandum on preventing incidents and ensuring flights safety during operations in Syria signed with the US," the Foreign Ministry said, after the US fired 59 cruise missiles at a military target in Syria on Thursday. According to Moscow, the Thursday night strike would impair the already "deplorable" bilateral ties between Russia and America and hamper the "effective fight" against terrorism. "We're urging the UN Security Council to hold an emergency meeting to discuss the current situation," the Ministry said. The US struck the Shairat military base in Homs province in central Syria, killing six Syrian soldiers and causing huge damage. Russia also said the air strikes were planned by the US before Tuesday's toxic gas attack in Idlib. Moscow and Damascus have termed the barrage an "American aggression". According to US President Donald Trump, the strike was in response to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad-led government's chemical weapons attack in Idlib province that left dozens of civilians dead. Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov, citing President Vladimir Putin, termed the strike "an attempt to distract attention from numerous civilian casualties in Iraq". "Washington's move impairs the Russian-US relations, which are in a deplorable state, substantially," Peskov said. "Putin believes that this step does not bring us closer to the ultimate goal in the fight against international terrorism... It creates serious obstacles to efforts to forge an international coalition to fight against it and effectively counter this global evil," the Kremlin spokesman said. --IANS py/rn (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Actress Sandra Bullock was spotted with her beau Bryan Randall stepping out arm-in-arm during their visit to Jackson Hole, Wyoming for a private family getaway. In photos obtained by eonline.com, the couple was spotted enjoying a trip to Whole Foods where they walked arm-in-arm to their car. The actress kept things casual with ripped denim jeans, a plaid jacket and black Ugg boots. As for Randall, he wore three layers and a beanie. During their outing, the couple also headed to Teton Toys. "They seemed very normal. It was just a normal, happy day," a source said. "They were both smiling and having a good time." According to eonline.com, the couple bought a pink PlasmaCar before leaving the local store. "It was obvious Sandra is completely happy with Bryan and he was just like a dad to the kids," another sourece said. "He and Sandra were very touchy and were always holding hands or arm-in-arm. It was so touching to see Bryan with Laila and Louis (Bullock's children). They're all very close and so comfortable with each other." --IANS nn/rb (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Supreme Court on Friday sought responses from six states on a plea that has sought curbs on self-appointed cow vigilante groups indulging in violence. The cow vigilantes were attacking people particularly from lower rung of society and the minorities merely on grounds of suspicion of their being involved in the beef trade. A bench of Justice Dipak Misra and Justice A.M. Khanwilkar issued a notice after Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar told the court that so far no formal notice has been issued to the states in the matter. The court had earlier issued notice to the Centre seeking its response on the plea. The six states that have been asked to respond to the petition are Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka and Jharkhand. The notice was issued on a PIL by entrepreneur and social activist Tehseen S. Poonawala. On October 21, the apex court ordered that notice be served on the PIL to the Centre and six states -- Karnataka, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. The court on November 7 gave four weeks to the Centre and the six states to file their response in four weeks. The Centre was given four more weeks on January 2 to file its reply to the petition. Social activist Poonawalla had moved the Supreme Court seeking ban on the "Gau Rakshak Dals" and directions to the Centre and state governments to take action against their activities and "atrocities against Dalits and minorities" in the name of cow protection. Poonawalla has referred to the series of violent incidents in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Jharkhand, urging the court to direct the removal of violent content uploaded by the Gau Raksha Dals on social media. --IANS pk/py/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Home grown technology and internet of things (IoT) company Smartron on Friday inked an MoU with the Telangana government to expand its corporate headquarters and research and development (R&D) centre. The company signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the state government to assist, extend incentives and subsidies for its business activities through various technology, manufacturing and IoT policies. "This office expansion and MoU signing is a step closer towards making Smartron a global product technology brand based out of India," said Mahesh Lingareddy, Chairman Smartron, in a statement. Lingareddy added that the expansion was a step towards building a stronger base to support R&D and innovation to create a smart product ecosystem. "We are glad to be associated with the government of Telangana and we believe this association will bring a lot of strength and innovation to what we do," said Narsi Reddy Posham, Managing Director Smartron. Smartron is rumoured to launch an exclusive Sachin Tendulkar-branded mobile phone in April which will be the first-ever signature series of the master blaster for a mobile phone brand. --IANS qd/na/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Rising Pune Supergiant and Australia skipper Steve Smith is in the form of his life, former India captain Sourav Ganguly said here on Friday. Smith led from the front on Thursday in his franchise's seven-wicket win against two-time Indian Premier League (IPL) champions Mumbai Indians, scoring an unbeaten 84 off 54 balls, laced with seven fours and three sixes. "He is in outstanding form at the moment," Ganguly, who captained Smith during his time at erstwhile Pune Warriors, told reporters on the sidelines of an apparel accessories, home furnishing and decor items store launch here. "He is just a quality player and currently one of the world's best batsmen. He showed his class by switching formats so swiftly in such a short time," Ganguly said. Smith captained Australia to a 1-2 series defeat against India in a hotly contested four-match affair recently. The 27-year-old right-hander who started his Test career as a leg-spinner and batted at No.8, finished as the top-scorer, amassing 499 runs in eight innings with an average of 71.28. He also notched up three centuries in the rubber. Meanwhile, Ganguly, who was present during the IPL opening ceremony in Hyderabad, said the cash-rich league has gone from strength to strength over the years and is a "huge affair" now. This is the tenth edition of the T20 extravaganza. --IANS dm/tri/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Thousands of South Africans took to the streets across the country on Friday to protest against President Jacob Zuma and demanding his resignation. The most populous demonstration took place in the capital, Pretoria, where the civic collective "Save South Africa" organised a march from the treasury to the presidential seat of the Union Buildings, Efe news reported. In Johannesburg, the Democratic Alliance main opposition party called its supporters to gather in a downtown square to protest against Jacob Zuma. Cape Town, Durban and other cities also experienced similar protests. Friday's mass protests came a week after the sacking of former Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, who triggered a tide of reactions against Zuma and led the credit rating agency Standard and Poor's to downgrade South Africa's rating to junk status. Gordhan, a person of Indian origin, has become a symbol of the fight against corruption for refusing to approve several projects that would allegedly benefit businessmen close to Zuma. Gordhan's sacking provoked a deep fracture in the governmental alliance led by Zuma's African National Congress, as its partners, the Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions, have also called for the president's departure. Meanwhile, the opposition has redoubled its efforts to overthrow Zuma, and filed a no-confidence motion against the country's president to be debated by members of parliament on April 18. Zuma's ruling party, the African National Congress, has an absolute majority in parliament, but the opposition expects many of the ruling MPs to break the party discipline and vote conscientiously. --IANS ksk/dg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Former Rajya Sabha member and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) National Vice-President Avinash Rai Khanna on Friday said the state governments should decide whether to ban cow slaughter. "It depends upon the state to decide whether to ban cow slaughter," he told journalists here in Meghalaya if the BJP-led NDA government plans to impose beef ban in the northeastern states of the country. However, he said the sentiments of the public at large will be taken into consideration on whether to ban cow slaughter. On the cow vigilantism in the Hindu-heartland, the BJP leader said, it was the duty of the state government to maintain law and order. "If there is a violation of the law (ban on cow slaughter), then action must be taken as per the law of the land. But nobody has any right to take law into his hand," he said. On the amendment to the Citizenship Act which gives Bangladeshi Hindus Indian citizenship, Khanna said: "There is a procedure and it will be followed. If anyone comes under that provision they will get citizenship." --IANS rrk/lok/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Syria is consulting with its allies on a response to the US missile strike that targeted a Syrian air base, Information Minister Ramez Turjman said on Friday. The minister said the Syrian leadership was consulting with Russia and Iran on the response to the "American aggression," reports Xinhua news agency. The US launched a missile attack on the Shayrat Air Base in the central province of Homs in retaliation to the alleged chemical attack on a rebel-held town in the northwestern province of Idlib. --IANS mr/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Three school children and the driver of their school bus were killed on Friday morning when a speeding jeep collided head-on with their vehicle in Hoshiarpur district of Punjab, police said. The victims died on the spot as the pick-up jeep, laden with potatoes, hit the driver's side of the school bus and virtually pierced through it. The accident took place on the Hajipur-Dasuya road. Among the dead were brother-sister twins and another student. All three belonged to Talwara town in Hoshiarpur district. The school bus driver, Ranjit Singh, also died in the accident. Other students travelling in the bus were injured. Six of them with serious injuries were admitted to a hospital in Dasuya town. The school bus was carrying around 15 children to the Gems Cambridge International School near Dasuya. Eyewitnesses told the police that the jeep, which was speeding, was trying to overtake another vehicle when it hit the school bus coming from the opposite direction. --IANS js/sm/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Three of the five soldiers hit by an avalanche in Batalik sector in Jammu and Kashmir were found dead on Friday, the Indian Army said. The avalanche swamped an army post on Thursday in Ladakh region, burying five soldiers. Two soldiers were rescued immediately. The Udhampur-headquartered Northern Command of the Army said the body of a third soldier was recovered on Friday. Earlier, two soldiers succumbed to their injuries. The army said all soldiers hit by another avalanche in Kaksar sector in Ladakh had been safely rescued while damages to stores and equipment were being assessed. Fresh heavy snowfall in Ladakh region has triggered multiple avalanches, especially in the areas close to the Line of Control (LoC). --IANS sq/sm/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The US informed Turkey before attacking a Syrian base in Homs province, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told media on Friday. "US ambassador to Ankara John Bass contacted our (Foreign Ministry) Undersecretary Umit Yalcin" before Washington fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at the Shayrat airbase, Xinhua news agency quoted Cavusoglu as saying. Information on the attack was also diffused through the coalition members fighting against the Islamic State (IS) militant group, Cavusoglu said. He also said that contacts had been initiated with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. The minister also called for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's immediate removal, saying a transitional government must be established. He said safe zones for civilians in Syria were now more important than ever. --IANS py/dg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The UK government on Friday said it "fully supports" the US missile strike against an air base in Syria in retaliation to a chemical weapons attack that killed over 80 people, including children. Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said Prime Minister Theresa May had been "informed throughout" but the UK was not asked to take part, the BBC reported. He described the strike as "limited" and "wholly appropriate". Fifty-nine Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired from two US Navy ships in the Mediterranean on Thursday night. Six people were killed, according to the Syrian army. US President Donald Trump said the US missile strike targeted the base which was the launch point for this attack. Fallon told the BBC Radio that the UK government had had close discussions with the US over the past few days "at all levels" and had "reviewed the various options they were considering". The US strike had "targeted the airfield, the aircraft the support equipment that were involved, the Americans believe, in this gas attack and is designed to deter the regime from planning similar gas attacks," Fallon said. "The Americans have made it very clear the attack last night was limited, was narrowly focused, they did everything possible to minimise Syrian casualties, indeed to involve Russian personnel on that particular airfield." The Defence Secretary said there would have to be a vote in Parliament before the UK got involved in any military action. In 2013, UK MPs rejected strikes against Syrian government forces in a vote. --IANS ksk/dg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Union Environment Minister Anil Madhav Dave and United Kingdom Secretary of State for Business and Energy Greg Clark met here on Friday and discussed possible bilateral collaboration on key climate resilient technologies. During the meeting, Dave emphasised the need for completing the pre-2020 actions. India has decided to ratify the second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol (Doha Amendment). So far, 75 countries have ratified the second commitment period. Both India and UK are parties to the Kyoto protocol but unlike the UK, India doesn't have binding targets. "During the meeting, Dave emphasised the collaboration between India and the United Kingdom at the sub-state level on climate resilience," a Ministry statement said. "The UK Secretary of State emphasised the possibility of future collaboration on tidal energy and technology issues." The Minister also appreciated the United Kingdom role on climate change issues, as both nations shared the progress in bilateral cooperation on environmental issues. On Wednesday, Union Power Minister Piyush Goyal told Parliament that while the Indian government is open to exploitation of tidal energy, the technology is still in the pre-research and developing stage and the cost is extremely high. The per unit price from tidal energy can range from Rs 17 to Rs 36, while solar energy costs about Rs 3.30 per unit and wind energy costs about Rs 3.46 per unit. According to the New and Renewable Energy Ministry, a potential 40,000 megawatt power from waves, 9,000 MW from tides and 180,000 MW from thermal gradients can be tapped. "Deployment is currently limited but the sector has the potential to grow, fuelling economic growth, reducing carbon footprint and creating jobs not only along the coasts but also inland along its supply chains," says the Ministry. Meanwhile, during the meeting, India and UK expressed the hope that their cooperation and exchange of experiences, knowledge and technologies will continue in future also. --IANS kd/tsb/dg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The US fired 59 Tomahawk missiles on a Syrian airbase in response to an alleged chemical weapons attack which killed civilians, drawing angry responses from and its key ally Russia. The US action on Thursday night killed six Syrian soldiers and nine civilians besides causing huge damage at the Shairat military base in Homs province in central Syria, news reports said. termed the missile barrage an "American aggression" and held consultations with Russia and Iran. Russian President Vladimir Putin said the strikes were an "aggression against a sovereign state" and violated " norms". The Kremlin warned it would hamper Washington's ties with Russia. Within hours, Russia suspended a deal with the US to prevent mid-air collisions over . "The Russian side suspends the memorandum on preventing incidents and ensuring flights safety during operations in Syria signed with the US," the Russian Foreign Ministry said. Moscow also urged the UN Security Council to hold an emergency meeting to discuss the Syrian situation. This was the first direct military action President Donald Trump has unleashed against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad since he took power in January and represents a dramatic escalation in the US military campaign in the volatile region. Speaking to the media at Florida, the President said Damascus had "ignored the urging of the UN Security Council". Washington has blamed the Syrian military for the toxic attack of Tuesday in which over 70 persons died in Khan Shaykun town of n Idlib province. Damascus called the allegation a "lie". Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said the army struck an arms depot of the Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front and the target contained chemical materials that terrorists had brought from Iraq. The Syrian airbase hit by the US missiles was used in the war against the Islamic State and played a key role in liberating the ancient city of Palmyra from the jehadist group. The Russian Defence Ministry said only 23 of the 59 cruise missiles fired from US warships hit the target. The US said it notified both Russia and Turkey before the missile strike. "US military planners took precautions to minimise risk to Russian or Syrian personnel located at the airfield," a US statement said, hinting a Russian military presence at the Shairat base. Russia said it expected the UN Security Council to condemn the US strikes, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. Victor Ozerov, the chairman of Russian Federation Council's Committee on Defence and Security, said on Friday that the US strike in Syria was "an act of aggression" against a UN member. He said it would "undermine the efforts in the fight against terrorism" in Syria and that cooperation between the US and Russia may be "shut down". In the US, Adam Schiff, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, said there were "no current plans for additional strikes". The US fired 59 Tomahawk missiles on a Syrian airbase in response to a chemicals weapons attack which killed dozens of civilians, drawing condemnation from Damascus and its key ally Russia. The US action killed six Syrian soldiers and caused huge damage at the Shairat military base in Homs province in central Syria, a monitor group said. Syria termed the Thursday night barrage an "American aggression", Xinhua news agency reported. Russian President Vladimir Putin said the strikes were an "aggression against a sovereign state" and violated "international norms". The Kremlin warned it would hamper Washington's ties with Russia. This is the first direct military action President Donald Trump has unleashed against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the six-year civil war and represents a dramatic escalation in the US military campaign in the volatile region. Trump said he ordered the Tomahawk strike in the "vital interest" of the US. Speaking to the media at Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, the President said the Syrian government "ignored the urging of the UN Security Council". CNN reported that the US action could be interpreted by the Assad regime as an act of war. Washington has blamed the Syrian military for the toxic attack in which over 70 persons died. Damascus called the allegation a "lie". Homs Governor Talal Bazarir accused the US and Israel of backing the terrorist groups in Syria. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said Israel was the only beneficiary of the allegations of the chemical attack and denied the army had fired toxic gas. He said the army struck an arms depot of the Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, and that the target contained chemical materials that terrorists had brought from Iraq. The Syrian airbase hit by the US missiles was used in the war against the Islamic State group. It played a key role in liberating the ancient city of Palmyra from the Islamic State. Victor Ozerov, the chairman of Russian Federation Council's Committee on Defence and Security, said on Friday that the US strike in Syria was "an act of aggression" against a UN member. He said it would "undermine the efforts in the fight against terrorism" in Syria and that cooperation between the US and Russia may be "shut down". Adam Schiff, the ranking member of the US House Intelligence Committee, said there were "no current plans for additional strikes". --IANS py/mr/rn (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) On an official visit here on Friday, French Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve declared that the US strike on Syria proved that France's reaction since the sanctions in 2013 on Damascus for use of chemical weapons was 'visionary'. "The American strike proves that our line in 2013 was the right one," Xinhua quoted Cazeneuve as saying. "Since 2013, we have called for firm sanctions against the use of chemical weapons by the government of Bashar al-Assad," Cazeneuve said just after his meeting with the Tunisian Head of Government Youssef Chahed. Earlier on Friday, the US targeted a Syrian air base in Homs Province with nearly 60 Tomahawk missiles, killing six Syrian soldiers and nine civilians, including four children, and destroying nine Syrian warplanes. The US government said the attack on the air base came in retaliation for the strikes by the Syrian air force on the town of Khan Sheikhoun. --IANS sku/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) When Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN, hinted on April 5 at Washington taking "our own action" in Syria unless the UN Security Council moves to prevent the use of chemical weapons in the war-torn country, it was perhaps an indication of imminent US military action. The barrage of cruise missiles ordered by President Donald Trump late on Thursday, in fiery retaliation for Tuesday's chemical weapons attack against civilians in the town of Khan Sheikhun, appeared limited to punishing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for using the poisonous gas on his people at a time when there was no escalation in the country's long and brutal civil war. By hitting military targets in Shayrat, Trump perhaps aimed at preventing Assad from repeating such barbaric attacks. The strikes by dozens of missiles marked the first time the US military intentionally attacked Assad's regime. These came two days after 86 people, including 27 children, died from what has been determined to be a lethal nerve gas. "The strike was intended to deter the regime from using chemical weapons again," Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement. Trump said he ordered the targeted missile strikes as the Syrian government "ignored the urging of the UN Security Council". "It is in this vital national security interest of the US to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons," he said. For President Trump, choosing targets and launching cruise missiles to punish the Syrian regime for using chemical weapons might have been a relatively clear-cut decision. But the big question is what comes next. The US military had been preparing options for a strike against Assad since well before 2013, when Syrian forces killed nearly 1,300 people in a devastating nerve agent attack. The biggest difference between 2013, when President Barack Obama threatened air strikes against Assad, and Thursday's strikes by President Trump is that the risks of widening the conflict are much greater now. Since 2013, the US-led coalition has been conducting air strikes in Syria against the Islamic State, which opposes the Assad regime, but until now the US has been careful to avoid direct attacks on Syrian forces. Assad's regime will likely survive the strikes, and the Syrian leader may bide his time -- hoping that Trump will soon turn his attention to a crisis elsewhere. The US also realises that forcing a sudden collapse of the Assad regime would lead to further chaos and would rather prefer to pursue diplomacy to remove him from power. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said removing Assad would require an international effort, which was being vetoed repeatedly by Russia and China. Yet, even a limited military attack raises a host of risks. Once military power is unleashed, it is difficult to predict what will happen next. The US military has several hundred troops in Syria who back anti-Assad forces fighting the Islamic State. A US strike could provoke a Syrian retaliation against these US forces. Trump's decision to strike Syria has also sent a powerful message around the world -- one that could be read very differently in Moscow, Pyongyang and Beijing. For Russia, it may finally put to rest any expectations that Trump would pursue closer ties with President Vladimir Putin, a staunch ally of Assad. For North Korea, the air strikes are a warning the US is willing to act unilaterally. For China, whose leader Xi Jinping was dining with Trump right before the missiles took flight, the attacks are a potent sign of the new American President's unpredictability. Xi's meeting with Trump at the latter's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida was supposed to be an opportunity for the two leaders to build a rapport and work through tough issues, especially trade. Instead, it was overshadowed by the assault on Syria. The strikes also possibly put Putin on notice that the US will no longer tolerate his close ties to Assad. Russia has sent troops and weapons to Syria to bolster Assad's battle against the IS and rebels seeking his ouster. In a sign of how little trust there is between the US and Russia, Secretary of State Tillerson said the US didn't consult with Moscow before the strikes. Instead, it used an established military "deconfliction" channel to inform Russia that an attack would soon be underway. Tillerson, who is due to meet Putin in Moscow next week, left no doubt about the administration's view of the Russian President's relationship with Assad. Russia on Friday denounced the US attack in stern language. Putin "regards the strikes as aggression against a sovereign nation", his spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to Interfax, noting that the Russian leader believes the strikes were carried out "in violation of international law, and also under an invented pretext". (Aadil Mir can be reached at aadil.hussain@ians.in) --IANS ahm/rn/vt (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The US-India Business Council (USIBC) on Friday announced to partner the International Centre for Entrepreneurship and Technology (iCreate), an entrepreneur incubation centre in Ahmedabad. The USIBC will support the iCreate's work in areas such as sharing of mentorship programme, research and startup collaboration, establishing centres of excellence and innovation, labs for pilot programmes and exploring funding opportunities for entrepreneurs and other allied activities, the council said in a statement. "Following Cisco's partnership with iCreate, I am pleased to be part of the innovation and entrepreneurship dialogue between USIBC and iCreate. An institution like iCreate taps in to the entrepreneurial spirit of Gujarat, providing the younger generation with opportunities for employment and financial prosperity," said John Chambers,USIBC Chairman and Cisco Executive Chairman. iCreate provides the complete ecosystem for innovation-based start-ups. From seed capital and formal mentorship to working space, hostel facilities and labs, the initiative covers the complete life cycle of start-ups. "The partnership with iCreate is a necessary and timely enterprise. The Council is well positioned to provide greater levels of support to start-ups and entrepreneurship with its membership base of 400 companies from diverse business areas," added Dr Mukesh Aghi, USIBC President. "This partnership brings together best of both the worlds. USIBC members offer access to cutting-edge technology along with capital and iCreate brings the entrepreneurial spirit of Gujarat," noted Parag Amin, iCreate's Chief Mentor. --IANS na/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A Romanian woman who fell into the Thames during last month's Westminster terror attack has died, police said on Friday. Andreea Cristea is the fifth victim of the attack on March 22, in which Khalid Masood drove into crowds on Westminster Bridge then stabbed a policeman to death, before being shot dead, the BBC reported. Cristea, 31, who was on holiday with boyfriend Andrei Burnaz, had been in hospital since the attack. Her family said in a statement that she passed away on Thursday. Burnaz sustained a broken foot in the attack but has been discharged from hospital. The couple were in London to celebrate Burnaz's birthday and he had been planning to propose to Cristea that day, Romania's UK ambassador Dan Mihalache told the BBC. He said it was thought Masood's car had mounted the pavement and hit Burnaz, before pushing Cristea into the Thames. The other people killed on the bridge were Aysha Frade, 44, who worked at a London sixth-form college, US tourist Kurt Cochran, 54, from Utah, and retired window cleaner Leslie Rhodes, 75, from south London. Father of two PC Keith Palmer was fatally stabbed outside Parliament. Relatives of those killed joined members of the Royal Family at a "service of hope" held at Westminster Abbey on Wednesday. --IANS ksk/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Obscured by the din of the Uttar Pradesh victory (well take the adjectives as read) of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), some important foreign policy footwork by the government in relation to Pakistan has not got full attention. When I request a lunch with Banmali Agrawala, president and CEO, South Asia, I am told that he would like to focus the conversation on how is transforming itself into a digital industrial company. We decide to meet at Amaranta at The Oberoi in Gurugram. Because of the hotels unusual construction, one has to go down from the lobby right at the entrance to reach the restaurant a few levels below. The Shiv Sena, a key constituent of the ruling Democratic Alliance (NDA), on Thursday threatened to disrupt flight operations from Mumbai and Pune airports over the flying ban on its member of Parliament Ravindra Gaikwad by airlines. 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As many as 18 villages in the parched Saurashtra region of Gujarat were today declared as 'scarcity-hit' by the state government. Among them, half a dozen villages fall under Chotila taluka of Surendranagar district. The rest are in Vinchhiya taluka of Rajkot district, an official release said here. The villages were declared 'scarcity-hit' due to a shortage of water caused by deficient rainfall in the region during the last monsoon, it said. Revenue Minister Bhupendrasinh Chudasama today presided over a high-level meeting where he assessed the scarcity situation in Gujarat. During the meeting, the government decided to provide cattle feed (grass) at a subsidised rate of just Rs 2 per kg in 566 villages, including those declared scarcity-affected, in Saurashtra and Kutch regions, said the release. Chudasama said the administration is fully prepared to deal with any situation arising out of water scarcity. The state currently has a stock of around 4.11 crore kg of grass. As many as 70 villages and 28 other localities across Gujarat have been provided water through tankers. Small, medium and large dams in Gujarat, numbering 204, currently have 12,171 million cubic meters of water in them, which is 57.85 per cent of their actual storage capacity. These include the Sardar Sarovar Dam on the Narmada river, the release said. The situation is much better than the previous year, when the water storage around this time was 42 per cent, it added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Allahabad High Court has granted bail to two persons named as accused in the Dadri lynching case of Noida, where a middle-aged man was beaten to death by a mob more than a year ago on suspicion of cow slaughter. A single judge bench of Justice Umesh Chandra Srivastava yesterday granted bail to Arun and Puneet, both of whom were lodged in a jail in Greater Noida in connection with the killing of Mohd Akhlaq, a resident of Bisada village in Dadri tehsil of Gautam Buddh Nagar district, in 2015. A mob had gathered outside Akhlaq's house on the night of September 28 after it was announced over the loudspeaker of a temple in the village that he had stolen a calf and consumed its meat. The mob thereafter barged into the house, beating Akhlaq to death and leaving his son Danish severely injured. A case was registered against more than a dozen persons, including the son of a local BJP leader, in connection with the attack. Akhlaq's family had claimed that the meat recovered from their refrigerator was "mutton", denying the charge that they had consumed beef on the occasion of Id-ul-Azha festival, in violation of the ban on cow slaughter in UP. However, the report of tests conducted at a forensic lab in course of hearing in the case relating to Akhlaq's killing held that the meat was of "cow progeny". Subsequently, upon orders of a Greater Noida court, an FIR was lodged last year against Akhlaq and his family members for violation of the UP Cow Slaughter Act. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) : A total of 290 CRPF constables passed out at a ceremony at the RecruitTraining Centre at the Peringome CRPF, here today. DIG and Principal of RTC,M J Vijay, who reviewed the parade and took ther salute as Chief Guest, congratulated the constables for successfully completing 44 weeks of rigorous training at RTC, Peringome. He exhorted them to maintain a high standard of discipline, training and devotion to duty throughout their career and serve the nation and the Force with great honour and pride. The 44 weeks basic training is divided into two parts.The first part was 40 weeks in campus training and the second part, consisting of four weeks jungle training involving seven daysself content survival exercise, a RTC release said today. The new recruit constables would join their units deployed in various operationalareas of the country like Jammu and Kashmir, North East and Left Wing Extremist affected states, the release added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Three giant pandas born and raised in Japan will return to China in June to start new lives, authorities said today. The panda twins and their younger sister, born to pandas that are "on loan" from China to Japan, had been living at Adventure World in Shirahama, Wakayama Prefecture in Japan. Their new home would be Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in southwest Sichuan province. The animals' names have been translated into Chinese ones, authorities said. The male-female twins, called Hai Bang and Yang Bang, were born on August 11, 2010, while their younger sister You Bang was born on August 10, 2012. The breeding base and the Japanese park commenced a panda breeding research program in 1994. They have successfully bred 15 pandas. Among them, eight have returned to China. Cubs born to pandas that are "on loan" from China must be returned to China after they reach sexual maturity or when the cooperative agreement ends, state-run Xinhua agency reported. A national survey released in February 2015 showed that as of the end of 2013, China had 1,864 wild pandas and 375 others living in captivity. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A US missile strike targeting an airbase in central Syria killed nine civilians, including four children today, state agency SANA reported. The agency said five of the civilians were killed in the village of Shayrat just outside the base of the same name. It said four more were killed in two other nearby villages -- Al-Hamrat and Al-Manzul. Washington said it fired a barrage of 59 cruise missiles at the Shayrat base in response to what President Donald Trump called a "barbaric" chemical attack on a rebel-held town on Tuesday that he blamed on the Damascus regime. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) To ensure high degree of sanitation during annual Amarnath yatra in 2017, 400 workers will be deployed every day for carrying out sanitation and camp cleaning. "About 400 workers will be deployed every day for carrying out sanitation and camp cleaning", CEO of Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board, Umang Narula said. These steps have been taken by the Board on the direction of of J&K Governor N N Vohra to provide more dustbins en-route Holy cave and for proper sanitation arrangements. The annual yatra will began on 29th of June 2017. The Governor asked Narula to inform the CEOs of the Pahalgam and Sonamarg Development Authorities to take timely action to ensure collection and disposal of all garbage which would be generated during the Yatra. Arrangements are also being made to ensure proper medical facilities to the pilgrims. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Six persons, allegedly belonging to the 'Guffa Gang', members of which used to take shelter in a cave in south Delhi's Moti Bagh area, have been arrested, police said today. Police said the arrested, aged between 24 and 32, were drug addicts and they took to crime to earn quick money. They would use surgical hand gloves in order to ensure that there were no fingerprints left on the scenes of crime, said Chinmoy Biswal, Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (South). With their arrest from Prem Chand Ki Guffa behind Smriti Vatika Park yesterday, police claimed to have solved 16 cases of burglary and robbery. The 50-metre Prem Chand Ki Guffa is located in the forest area near Moti Bagh. Police have recovered Rs 50,000 in cash, 10 mobile phones, two laptops, 1 Nikon digital camera (worth Rs 3 lakh), 13 imported wrist watches, jewellery worth Rs 2 lakh, two motorcycles and one scooty from them, said the officer. The gang was active in South Campus, Sarojini Nagar, Vasant Vihar, Chanakyapuri, Mandir Marg, Rajender Nagar and R K Puram. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad, who fell afoul of domestic airlines for assaulting an Air India employee, inviting a blanket ban on his air travel, can fly again, with the national carrier today lifting the restriction after he expressed regret. In a sudden climbdown after combative Shiv Sena members disrupted Lok Sabha proceedings, the tough-talking MP from Maharashtra's Osmanabad, had written a letter to Union Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju yesterday expressing "regret" over the "unfortunate incident". He had also virtually given and undertaking that there would be no repeat of the unsavoury incident and sought lifting of the ban. An Air India spokesperson said the move follows a written order from the Ministry of Civil Aviation. The spokesperson said, "AI is committed to ensuring its employees are not assaulted or misbehaved with. We will take strong action to preserve dignity of our employees." Aviation sources said that with the AI revoking the ban, private airlines may follow suit. The revocation of the ban came despite two AI union of the cabin crew and pilots deprecating any move to lift the restrictions imposed on air travel of the MP before he tendered an "unconditional apology" for assaulting R Sukumar, a sexagenarian duty manager of the state-run airline. "Unless he tenders an unconditional apology to AI employees, and undertakes in writing to abide by the Chicago and Tokyo Conventions & Rules of the Air and follow all cabin safety and public behaviour norms, we must not let him on board," said the letter from the Air India Cabin Crew Association to its Chairman and Managing Director Ashwani Lohani. It said any decision by either the Ministry of Civil Aviation or Parliament to lift the ban will affect the morale of the employees. "Ravindra Gaikwad is and will continue to be a risk to flight safety and flight operations and to Cabin Crew safety on board, and hence Government must think long and hard about letting him back on," the letter added. The association said it would be a "crying shame" if he is let off "without even a rap on the knuckles", adding "It would also crush the morale of all employees and indeed all fair minded Indians. We do not wish to be flying such a person." The Indian Commercial Pilot's Association, one of the unions of pilots of Air India, also demanded an "unconditional apology" from the Shiva Sena MP, failing which they threatened to not fly him. "ICPA strongly condemns his misconduct and demands an unconditional apology for the same, failing which we will be constrained to direct our members not to operate any flight which has Mr Ravindra Gaikwad on board in the interest of the safety and security of our own people," they wrote in a letter to the Civil Aviation Minister. Gaikwad had yesterday written to Raju voicing "regret" over the incident but stopped short of tendering an apology. "It could have been no one's intention to have let the situation aggravate to the level that it eventually did. While the on-going investigation will bring out the factual sequence of events to fix responsibility, this incident may kindly not be seen as a reason for likely recurrence of such an event in future also," he said in the letter. Agitated Shiv Sena MPs had earlier in the day repeatedly forced the House to adjourn amid unruly scenes and even threatened to disrupt Air India operations in Mumbai and Pune. The party's Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Raut had declared the Sena would boycott the April 10 NDA meeting if the ban was not lifted by then. Gaikwad's letter to the Civil Aviation Minister followed a meeting in Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan's chamber in Parliament yesterday where Shiv Sena MPs were told that if he issued a statement undertaking that he would not engage in any such incident in future, the government could intervene and have the ban revoked. The Osmanabad MP had assaulted the AI employee on March 23 after he landed here on a Pune-Delhi all-economy flight. Complaining about not being able to travel business class, Gaikwad repeatedly hit Sukumar with slippers when the latter went to persuade him to disembark after he refused to alight. Gaikwad later boastfully claimed on TV he had hit the official 25 times with slippers. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Air India today revoked its flight ban on Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad with immediate effect, two weeks after he had assaulted an airline staffer onboard a plane. An airline spokesperson said the move follows a written order from the Ministry of Civil Aviation. Aviation sources said that with the AI revoking the ban, private airlines may follow suit. The 56-year-old Osmanabad MP had yesterday written a letter to Minister for Civil Aviation Ashok Gajapathi Raju expressing his "regrets" over the "unfortunate incident" on March 23. "I write to convey my regrets for the unfortunate incident that took place on 23rd March, 2017 in the Air India Flight No. AI-852 seat No.1F," Gaikwad had said in the letter. The ban was lifted by Air India, hours after it thwarted an attempt by Gaikwad to book a ticket for the seventh time in the last two weeks. However, the MP, in a statement denied having made any attempt to book a flight. An airline head on the condition of anonymity said it has been agreed that police investigation will continue and the MP will give a commitment that he will show acceptable behaviour in the future. Gaikwad had assaulted an Air India employee and had boastfully claimed on national TV about having hit him with slippers 25 times. He was banned by the airline on March 24. He, however, yesterday played the victim card, claiming he had only retaliated when provoked. The MP, who had attended the Lok Sabha for the first time yesterday since the incident, had denied any "wrongdoing" on his part and instead accused Air India officials of misbehaving with him, and saught action against them, especially the airline's CMD. He struck a somewhat conciliatory note when he tendered an apology to Parliament but insisted he owed no apology to the airline officials. In his letter to the civil aviation minister, the MP had stopped short of tendering an apology to either the national carrier or the staffer concerned. A combative Shiv Sena had yesterday threatened to disrupt AI operations in Mumbai and Pune and forced repeated adjournment of the Lok Sabha over the issue. The party had also declared it would not attend the April 10 meeting of the NDA if the ban was not lifted. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) 070417ANIDO WANTS BETTER FUTURE By Aloysius Laukai Former Meekamui strongman in the Konnou and born-again Christian, DANIEL ANIDO wants peace and unity in our communities. Formely known as PETER KIROKOMAI, he said that only peace and stability in our homes can get us through to Referendum and beyond. He called on the people to respect lives and properties of fellow citizens as Bougainville is preparing for Referendum. DANIEL ANIDO said that he has seen the worst and has turned to understand that the people can forget their differences and work as united Bougainvilleans. He said turn back to Jesus is the only way for Bougainville to move forward. Ends Union Minister for Urban Development and Information and Broadcasting M Venkaiah Naidu today said All India Radio (AIR) is still the most trusted broadcasting system in the country. "All India Radio broadcasts genuine that reaches all corners of the country. It is still the most trusted broadcasting system in the country," Naidu said after inaugurating the 47th regional news centre at Visakhapatnam station of All India Radio. "That is the reason why Prime Minister Narendra Modi has chosen this medium to broadcast his 'Mann ki baat' that reaches the masses all over the nation," Naidu said. This news centre can directly broadcast the local and regional news. Naidu said, Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune was asked to start a short term course in film making and in this regard, preliminary talks were held between the FTII and Andhra University officials here today. "Vizag with most scenic beauty spots will be most ideal place for film making," he said. Local MP Dr K Haribabu requested the Union Minister to open PIB centre in Visakhapatnam. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Minister of State for External Affairs M J Akbar will visit the UAE next week during which he will review with the top leadership there the entire gamut of bilateral ties, which were recently elevated to the strategic level. During his visit to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) from April 10-11, he will be meeting his counterparts and the top leadership there. He will hold discussions covering the entire gamut of bilateral, regional and international matters of mutual interest, a Ministry of External Affairs release said. Akbar will also address the annual Forum for the UAE's Ambassadors being held in Abu Dhabi. His visit comes just months after Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan was in India to be the Chief Guest at the Republic Day celebrations in January. During that visit, India and the UAE signed a comprehensive strategic partnership agreement and over a dozen pacts in key areas like defence, security, trade and energy. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had asserted back then that cooperation stands poised for a "major take off". Before the Crown Prince's January visit, Modi visited the UAE in August 2015. The Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi had also visited India in February 2016. The bilateral trade between the two countries amounts to around USD 50 billion. The UAE is India's third largest trading partner. For the UAE, India has been the largest trading partner. The UAE is among the largest investors in India in terms of foreign direct investments. It contributes significantly to India's energy security and has been the fifth largest supplier of crude oil to India in 2015-16. About 2.6 million strong Indian community forms the largest expatriate group in the UAE. This visit will provide a useful opportunity to further cement our mutually beneficial bilateral ties with the UAE, the statement said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A US missile strike on an airbase in central Syria early today was "foolish and irresponsible," President Bashar al-Assad's office said. "What America did is nothing but foolish and irresponsible behaviour, which only reveals its short-sightedness and political and military blindness to reality," a statement said. The US fired a barrage of 59 cruise missiles at the Shayrat base in response to a suspected chemical attack on a rebel-held town on Tuesday widely blamed on the Damascus regime. The Syrian government has categorically denied the accusation, saying it had struck an arms depot belonging to a jihadist group. Assad's office said the government would redouble its efforts against rebel groups after the US strike - the first direct military action by Washington against the Damascus regime. "This aggression has increased Syria's determination to strike these terrorist agents, to continue crushing them and to speed up the pace of work on this, wherever they are on Syrian territory," it said. "The disgraceful act of targeting a sovereign state's airport demonstrates once again that different administrations do not change deeper policies." The massive strike - US President Donald Trump's biggest military decision since taking office - marked a dramatic escalation in American involvement in Syria's six-year civil war. It followed days of outrage at images of dead children and victims suffering convulsions from the suspected sarin gas attack on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhun. An unnamed foreign ministry official quoted by Syrian state agency hinted the footage was fabricated to preempt the strike. "What happened in Khan Sheikhun was a premeditated act aimed at justifying the US strike on the Syrian army, which has confronted and continues to confront terrorism," the official said. Yesterday, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem repeated the government's denial that it used chemical weapons on Khan Sheikhun at dawn, saying warplanes had instead targeted a jihadist warehouse. "The first air raid conducted by the Syrian army was at 11:30 am (local time) on that day (Tuesday) and it attacked an arms depot belonging to Al-Nusra Front that contained chemical weapons," Muallem said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Eyeing voters from Bihar and Purvanchal, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar will tomorrow campaign for JD(U) candidates in the Delhi municipal elections scheduled for April 23. This will be the JD(U) president's maiden campaign in the national capital for the local polls and underlines the party's drift from Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP. JD(U) General Secretary Javed Raza said his party will go all out to woo voters, especially those from the two states, as they have been let down by the poor governance in the city. Kumar will campaign in Burari and Badarpur, two places with sizable population from the two states. JD(U), which is in power under Kumar in Bihar since 2005, is contesting 113 seats out of 272 in the MCD polls. The party believes that a respectable performance will boost Kumar's national ambitions. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A bill to "save lives" by ushering in radical reforms in the motor vehicles law to slap heavy penalty on traffic violators, protecting good samaritans and making vehicle-makers responsible for design defects to cut road accidents, today drew support from all sections of the Lok Sabha. The basic aim of the Motor Vehicle (Amendment) Bill 2016 is "to save human lives", Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari said, adding that a whopping five lakh accidents took place every year claiming around 1.5 lakh lives across the country. Moving the bill for consideration and passage, Gadkari said it would bring about much-needed reforms in the transport and road sectors through 'maximum governance with minimum government'. It also addresses issues like third party insurance and regulation of taxi aggregators. Cutting across party lines, members complimented Gadkari for taking the views of all stakeholders in drafting the "comprehensive" bill. However, many of them made suggestions on certain provisions as Congress member K C Venugopal said some of them were "very, very good". "Even if you are a minister and you violate the traffic rules, a letter (citing a penalty) will come to your home," Gadkari said. He said around 30 per cent of total licenses across the country were bogus and, under provisions of the new law, a transparent online system for grant of license will be put in place under which everybody will have to undergo certain tests for getting it. The bill, he said, seeks to make services like issuance of license totally transparent and online and provides for punitive action against officials in case of delay in issuing of the document to eligible applicants. The proposed legislation also seeks to put in place an automated intelligent traffic management system under which anyone flouting traffic rules will face action. Under the new system, every one -- from a political leader to a film actor -- will have to go to the license issuing authorities under an uniform procedure and if license is not issued in 3 days, then the RTO will have to face action, he said, adding that a learner's license can be availed online sitting at home. The bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha on August 9, 2016 and then referred to the Standing Committee on Transport, Tourism and Culture, headed by Mukul Roy. The Motor Vehicle Act was a 30-year-old instrument which has "not kept pace with the change of dynamics of road transport & information technology," he said, adding that it specifically targets traffic offenders with stringent penal provisions. The bill has identified priority areas for improving road safety. Stricter penalties have been proposed for high risk offences such as drunken driving, dangerous driving, overloading and non-adherence to safety norms by drivers like not using seat belts or helmets. Gadkari said the process for registration of vehicles will be made transparent and people will be able to access various transport-related documents online. "If police stops you and asks for documents, you will be able to access them using your phone. It will be very convenient," the Minister said. Expressing serious concern over the burgeoning road fatalities, Gadkari said the government has identified 786 black spots across the country and will spend Rs 11,000 crore on them to curtail accidents. Asking the MPs to resolve to ensure that no road accident takes place in their constituencies, Gadkari said there will be a committee headed by local MP in each district of the country to recommend measures for road safety. The minister said the government will set up a National Road Safety board and the states have been told to incorporate chapters in the curriculum on road safety and added that changes were also being brought about for insurance sector. "At present, there is no fear for traffic law and it is not a good sign. We have made the law studying traffic laws in the US and some other countries," he said. Talking about loopholes in the existing licensing system, he said "India is a country, where it is easiest in the world to get a licesnse" and the new law will address these issues. Participating in the debate, Congress member K C Venugopal called some of the provisions of the bill "very very good" and said all the roads in the country should be brought under the new law. He also suggested incorporation of certain provisions in the bill like ensuring parking space for heavy vehicles and to bring doctors and nurses to treat accident victims under the ambit of good samaritan. Tathagata Satpathy (BJD) suggested that traffic signage across the country should be equalised and should be in same font, colour, shape and size. He said if people who do not wear helmet while driving bikes should be let free as they should themselves care for their life and if they do not, then they should be left to die as there is a lot of population in the country. He demanded that government should enact stringent measures for drunken driving and driving contra-traffic by impounding the vehicle and auctioning it off. Also, the licence of the driver should be withdrawn. Satpathy wanted that wherever the vehicle might be registered, there should be 'one country, one number' policy. Arvind Sawant (Shiv Sena) praised the Minister for bringing a holistic bill which covered all points, while Varaprasad Rao (YSR Cong) said while linking vehicle registration with Aadhaar was a good step, but linking it with driving licence can lead to inconvenience. Kirron Kher (BJP) drew strong objections to Satpathy's remark. She said "saying that helmets should be done away with is an obnoxious statement to make and should be expunged". She praised the Road Transport Minister for providing for in the bill for protection of good samaritans -- who take accident victims to hospitals. Referring to certain court orders including the Supreme Court ruling banning liquor shops within 500 metres of highways, Meenakshi Lekhi (BJP) said while drunken driving is not an excuse, passengers in a vehicle can be drunk. Such a ban is going to affect the economy as well as livelihood of many people, she said, adding that though she does not support alcohol consumption, "I have an opinion" and the order seems bit odd. Further, the BJP member, who is also a lawyer, touched upon the Supreme Court ruling that bars the sale of certain vehicles from April 1 and noted that banning already manufactured vehicles is "injustice". She also mentioned recent accidents involving BMW and Lamborghini cars in the national capital which had claimed some lives. Lekhi spoke about another recent order calling for farm loan waiver and said the government, the MPs, courts, the executive and the media have their own jobs to do, as she referred to instances of certain court orders. Kaushalendra Kumar (JD-U) said there has been a decline in road accidents in Bihar since imposition of ban on liquor. Pusphendra Singh Chandel (BJP) suggested that there should be some kind of mechanism like airbags on the bumpers of vehicles. In case a vehicle hits a pedestrain, the latter would not badly hurt with such a mechanism, he added. Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury (Cong) said road design should be properly taken care of and stressed the need for having more trauma centres. The count of deaths in road accidents was much more than in terrorist attacks, he added. Shushil Kumar Singh (BJP) suggested that the government should consider collecting premium for third-party insurance at the time when vehicle is sold, as done in case of road tax. This will save poor farmers and other economically weaker section from paying hefty compensation in case of death of third party due to accident, he said. In order to check the menace of overloading, not only the owner of the vehicle should be held responsible but the administration of the area from where vehicle ply should be made accountable, he said. Gopal Shetty (BJP) pointed out that many vehicles have gone out of road due to recent Supreme Court order. There was increasing incidence of courts "over-reaching the executive area," he said. BJP members Om Birla and Jayshreeben Patel, Dharamvir Gandhi (AAP) and Siraj Uddin Ajmal (AIUDF) also partcipated in the debate which remained inconclusive. BJP national vice president Avinash Rai Khanna today expressed optimism that his party will form a government in Meghalaya in 2018. "We will definitely form a new government in the state and for this, the policies of the Centre has to reach the grass root level," Khanna said while addressing BJP state leaders and party workers and urged party workers to start spreading the word about the good governance the Centre was doing under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. On the recent violent incidents in the name of cow vigilantism, the BJP leader later on told reporters that nobody has the right to take law in their own hands. "There are laws made by some states, but maintenance of law and order is the duty of respective state governments," he said adding, in respect to the North East region, it would depend on the state governments. Stating that there was lot of corruption under the present state government led by the Congress, Khanna said with the commitment level of party leaders and workers, BJP would come to power in the state in the 2018 Assembly elections. In the past one year, the BJP has snatched power from Congress in the North East states of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur. The BJP leader, however, refused to comment on any pre or post-poll alliance with non-Congress political parties in the state and only said "Time will tell." He said the party was in the process of strengthening its organisation at the booth level. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A teenaged boy was killed and another injured this evening after a small bag they had picked up from the roadside exploded in Gajraura village under Pallia police station area here. Police officials said that the Anti-Terrorist Squad team has been called to probe the cause and nature of explosion. The boys had gone to cattle in the fields when the deceased Vimlesh found a small bag on a deserted stretch of the village road. It was while he was carrying the bag that it exploded, killing him on the spot and Arun who was walking along was injured and rushed to a hospital, police said. The area where the incident took place is close to Dudhwa national park and the India-Nepal border. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Citing security concerns, the government today refused to share in the Lok Sabha the number of Brahmos cruise missiles deployed in the country. Responding to a question on the number of Brahmos missiles used by Russia, the number deployed in India and the quantum of investment by the two nations, Minister of State for Defence Subhash Bhamre said the Indo-Russia joint venture was a big success for India. "Brahmos is a state-of-the-art supersonic cruise missile, which is a universal missile capable of being launched from multiple platforms... "As regards the details that he has asked, I do have all the details. But due to security reasons of the country, I would not like to divulge," he said during the Question Hour. Responding to a question on the need for uninterrupted supply of spares from Russia for military equipment, he said the issue has been discussed between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin. "As a result of that, there was an inter-governmental military industrial conference held on March 17 and 18. It was primarily aimed at long term supply agreement between Russian original equipment manufacturers and the Indian armed forces and companies for spare parts of different platforms and formation of joint ventures and partnerships between Indian vendors and Russian original equipment manufacturers," he said. The first agreement was for long-term support for Sukhoi 30 MKI fleet, he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Border Security Force has set up two new posts in the Naxal affected Kanker district of Chhattisgarh to facilitate road construction projects. "Both the company operated bases (COB) were set up last week in the highly sensitive region of Kanker bordering with Maharashtra," Inspector General, Frontier Headquarters of BSF in Bhilai, Mahendra Singh told PTI. One BSF post has been set up at Kanhargaon village which is on the border of Kanker and Gadchiroli (Maharashtra) to ensure security to the Bande-Irpanaar road (36 km long) and the other at Charre Marre village for the Antagarh-Amabeda road (35 km long), he said. The road between Bande and Irpanaar villages goes through dense forests along the Chhattisgarh-Maharashtra border which is considered a Maoist den. The route connecting Antagarh tehsil to Amabeda village passes through some hilly forests where also the ultras are quite active. In view of the attempts made in the past by Naxals to thwart development works in these areas, the paramilitary force has been tasked to ensure safety to the construction work and the people engaged in it, the IG said. "It is only roads that will help in mobilisation of security forces, economic activity, government schemes, hospitals and ambulances to reach the tribal areas," he said. Singh said these roads are the most important tool in fighting the Left Wing Extremism in the area. Presently, five different roads are being laid under the security cover of the BSF in Kanker. Notably, the BSF has eight battalions (nearly 8,000 personnel) in Chhattisgarh, all concentrated in Kanker district, which is around 150 km from state capital Raipur. The BSF Frontier Headquarters is at Bhilai inDurg district of the state. The paramilitary force ensured security to the construction of four roads in 2015 and eight in 2016 in Kanker, as per an official release. The BSP personnel succeeded in instilling a sense of security among the local population and bringing peace and order by carrying out an extensive operation against Maoists in the area, the release said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The campaigning for the bypoll to Srinagar Lok Sabha constituency ended today even as Election authorities here reviewed the preparedness for polling on Sunday. The campaigning for the Srinagar constituency remained low key affair with political parties holding fewer election rallies and instead relying on smaller meetings to reach out to the electorate. Opposition National Conference president Farooq Abdullah is among nine candidates in the fray for the polls to be held on Sunday. However, the former chief minister will face a virtual direct contest with ruling PDP's Nazir Ahmad Khan. More than 11.72 lakh voters, spread across three districts of Srinagar, Budgam and Ganderbal are eligible to exercise their franchise on over 1500 polling stations this Sunday. The bypoll was necessitated by the resignation of then PDP leader Tariq Hameed Karra from the Lok Sabha in September last year to protest against the "atrocities" against the Kashmiri people by security forces during the summer unrest triggered by killing of Hizbul Mujahideen terrorist Burhan Wani in an encounter in July last year. Karra, who recently joined the Congress, had defeated Abdullah three years ago but is now supporting the National Conference president following the agreement between the two parties. The voter turn out in 2014 polls was 26 per cent in Srinagar constituency, slightly better than 25.55 per cent recorded in 2009 elections. Meanwhile, Chief Electoral Officer Shantmanu today chaired a meeting to finalize arrangements made for polling in Srinagar Parliamentary Constituency. The meeting was attended by Returning Officer Srinagar, DIG, District Electoral Officers of Budgam and Ganderbal, SSP Security while ARO Migrants Jammu, Udhampur and Delhi participated in the meeting through video conferencing. The CEO called on the officials to ensure all facilities are in place and the infrastructure is in best possible shape so that electorates do not face any problems in exercising their franchise in the forthcoming bye-elections. The meeting was informed that third phase of randomization of poll staff, final check of all EVMs, transport and logistics facilities for poll staff to the Constituency have been completed. During the meeting, the CEO directed the District Electoral Officers to dedicate a core team on a full time basis for election duties for the next two days. Regarding the adverse weather conditions, he directed the officials to check all polling stations to address water-logging issues. He also took stock of arrangements made at the Model Polling Stations in the three districts comprising the Parliamentary constituency. The CEO also reviewed the security arrangements made for hassle free and smooth conduct of the elections. He was informed that adequate security personnel have been deployed to deal with any security eventuality and to ensure and free and fair elections. All distribution cum collection centres and strong rooms have been sanitized, the meeting was informed. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) 070417KONNOU COMPLETE By Aloysius Laukai Elections in the Konnou Community Government is now complete after the last two wards were filled today. The seats for NAKATU WARD 1 and 2 in the Konnou Community Government area were the difficult seats to fill as this place is one of the restricted arrears on Bougainville due to the continues disturbances by armed groups. Although Peace was achieved after the Mogoroi Peace Ceremony on September 29th 2009 disturbances have remained until today. Yesterday the people were relieved after voting for their wards at the MONGAI junction. Ends The cop who allegedly misbehaved with female JNU students during a protest demonstration could not be identified, the police has informed the Delhi Commission for Women. The women's panel had last November issued a notice to Delhi Police seeking explanation for alleged misbehaviour by cops including "groping" and "physical abuse" of girls when they were participating in a protest over missing JNU student Najeeb Ahmad. "While picture of a cop groping a girl was splashed across all papers, Delhi police has informed us that the said male officer visible in the photograph is not traceable and his identity cannot be ascertained," DCW Chief Swati Maliwal said. Maliwal has written a letter to Special Commissioner of Police, Women Safety, saying the response is "unacceptable". "It appears that no standard protocols are in place in Delhi Police to deal with such matters and therefore, such unfortunate incidents continue to occur, most recently in the case of Ramjas College protests," she said in the letter. "Further, well-defined protocols need to be formulated to ensure that such digressions by erring police officers do not occur in the future," she added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Canada "fully supports" the US firing of cruise missiles at a Syrian airbase in response to a suspected chemical weapons attack, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said today. "Canada fully supports the United States' limited and focused action to degrade the Assad regime's ability to launch chemical weapons attacks against innocent civilians, including many children," he said in a statement. "President Assad's use of chemical weapons and the crimes the Syrian regime has committed against its own people cannot be ignored," he added. "These gruesome attacks cannot be permitted to continue operating with impunity." The prime minister called this week's chemical attack in the northwestern province of Idlib "a war crime" and "unacceptable." "Canada condemns all uses of chemical weapons," he said. US President Donald Trump launched the massive strike in retaliation for what he called a "barbaric" chemical attack he blamed on the government of Bashar al-Assad. It was the first direct US action against Assad's government and Trump's biggest military decision since taking office. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Securing series C and beyond funding is a challenge for start-ups, Information Technology veteran Kris Gopalakrishnan said as he called for a simple, orderly and fast-track mechanism to shut failed businesses. The start-ups scenario in India is pretty good but when those firms go for series C and beyond funding, there are some challenges, the co-founder and former CEO of Infosys said. "But at the seed stage or series A (funding), there is still money available; good ideas will get funded and there are lot of opportunities for innovation and new startups in the area of financial services, healthcare, niche retail and deeper technologies, converting research into new products and new businesses," Gopalakrishnan told PTI here. "So, there are significant opportunities still (to tap in the start-up space). India is a country of large number of challenges and problems which means that there are significant opportunities for start-ups to emerge (to address them)," the former President of Confederation of Indian Industry said. At the series C and above funding space, India needs a mechanism for exits, consolidation, mergers and acquisitions to happen. "So, that's starting to happen. That's a good sign," said Gopalakrishnan, who served as one of the co-chairs of the World Economic Forum in January 2014. "It's still very difficult to close down a business; many businesses will fail and you need to have an orderly mechanism, simple, fast-track mechanism to close down a business," said the Chairman of Axilor Ventures, an early stage startup accelerator and venture fund. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Chief Minister Nitish Kumar today termed child marriage as the "root of half of the social ills" and sought intensified campaign against it. An official statement said Kumar commented that "root of half of the social ills lie in child marriage at a review meeting of Social Welfare Department and instructed officials to run a campaign against it and the dowry system. He directed to broadbase the social campaign by running it together by social welfare, health, education and rural development departments. Kumar also took stock of progress of welfare schemes like Mukhya Mantri Kanya Vivah yojna among others. The meeting, which was participated by Social Welfare Minister Manju Varma, Development Commissioner Shishir Sinha, Principal Secretary to Social Welfare Department Bandana Kini, discussed the Prohibititon of Child Marriage Act, 2006. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) China today refrained from joining Russia in condemning the US missile strikes in Syria after being caught by surprise amidst President Xi Jinping's first summit meeting with his American counterpart Donald Trump in the US. "China supports resolving the Syrian issue through political means. All parties should not give up efforts to use political ways to solve the crisis," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told reporters here, deflecting questions over how China viewed US strikes in Syria which overshadowed Xi's first summit meeting with Trump in Florida. Refraining from joining Russia which condemned the strikes as "aggression against a sovereign state and violation of international law", Hua, however, backed beleaguered Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, saying the elected choice of Syrians should be respected. Hua said China condemns the chemical attacks carried out in Syria recently and supports the UN in launching an independent investigation. She said China always opposes the use of chemical weapons by any country, denouncing chemical attacks in Syria on Tuesday in which 70 people were killed and scores injured, most of them civilians in Syria's northwestern Idlib province. China in the past has maintained contacts with both the Syrian government and rebels, and has teamed up with Russia to veto any UN resolution proposals sponsored by the US and its allies to sanction the Assad government since the country's civil war broke out almost six years ago. Trump's move ordering missile strikes caught Beijing by surprise amid Trump-Xi summit meeting which China is projecting as the most significant for the bilateral ties and a host of critical global issues. State-run China Global Television Network said Trump informed Xi during their meeting in Mar-a-Lago in Florida. In response to the chemical attacks, the US today struck the Syrian air base in Homs with 59 Tomahawk missiles. China called on all the sides to prevent the deterioration of the situation in order to ensure the political solution in the Syria crisis, Hua said. Chinese analysts however said the missile strikes may take the heat off the Trump administration to act tougher in talks with China, Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported. The strike diverted global attention away from the summit, in which the two leaders are expected to discuss North Korea's nuclear ambitions and trade disputes. Trump has accused China of manipulating its currency value to give its exporters an unfair advantage and of failing to do enough to rein in Pyongyang. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) China will build an observation station in the country's northwest Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region to improve the ecology of Pamir Plateau, a busy passage once for traders traveling along the ancient Silk Road. The station to be built in Taxkorgan County will be used by researchers concerned with water resources, biodiversity, grassland productivity, climate change and disaster warning and forecasting, said Lei Jiaqiang, director of the Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography under the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Field observation could also help the local community improve agriculture and livestock production efficiency and support the construction of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, state-run Xinhua quoted Lei as saying. The Pamir Plateau Ecosystem Scientific Observation Station will be the 10th built by the institute in the country and will be run by the institute and the administration bureau of Taxkorgan Nature Reserve. Situated in the west of the Pamir Plateau and some 300 kilometers from Kashgar City, Taxkorgan borders Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK), Afghanistan and Tajikistan. Lei said the station would also facilitate scientific cooperation between China, its neighbours and international organisations. The institute has built 15 field observational stations with countries in Central Asia, the report said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Assam Police has arrested a top CID officer, heading the SIT probe into the Silpathar AASU office attack, after suspending him on the charge of revealing crucial information about the ongoing investigation. CID Senior Superintendent of Police N Rajamarthandan was arrested at midnight and was today produced before the court, which remanded him to two-day police custody, Guwahati Police Commissioner Hiren Chandra Nath told PTI. "We arrested him last night at 12. Today we produced him in the court and we received two days of remand," he said. The SSP was the CID's Public Information Officer and was heading the Special Investigation Team (SIT) formed to probe the Silapathar case. The office of the All Assam Students Union (AASU) at Silpathar in the state's Dhemaji district was attacked by a fringe group, Nikhil Bharat Bangali Udbastu Samanway Samitee (NIBBUSS), on March 6 and Rajamarthandan had allegedly disclosed crucial information about the investigations. "We have collected sufficient evidence from Rajamarthandan. To some of the queries he could not give satisfactory replies to the Investigating Officer. So we needed his custody for further interrogation," Nath said. He dismissed allegations of conspiracies by some senior officials to implicate Rajamarthandan in the case. "Investigation carried out till now hints about some conspiracies between Rajamarthandan and some private persons. But nowhere it is found that any senior police officials were involved. It is an absolute lie. "The allegation is not based on facts and it may mislead our investigation," Nath said. The Assam Police had suspended Rajamarthandan with immediate effect on April 4 for allegedly revealing crucial information on the investigation in a reply to an RTI query. AASU general secretary Lurinjyoti Gogoi had alleged a conspiracy to free the main accused in the case Subodh Biswas, the all-India president of NIBBUSS. Biswas was arrested from West Bengal on March 22 and is currently in police remand. On March 6, NIBBUSS had organised a public meeting at Silpathar followed by a march demanding citizenship for all Hindu immigrants from Bangladesh. The other demands of the meeting, which was attended by an estimated 4,000-5,000 people as per an Assam Assembly report, were cancellation of 'D' voter system, immediate release of Hindu Bengalis from detention camps and stop atrocities on Hindu Bengalis as foreigners. According to a report of an all-party delegation of the Assam Assembly, around 2,500 people marched through the town after the meeting and ransacked the AASU office, damaged the Shadid Bedi (martyrs memorial), furniture, electrical items, sign board and photographs of the state's icons Bhupen Hazarika and Jyoti Prasad Agarwala. More than 40 accused named in the FIR, who were found involved in the incident during investigation, have been arrested from different parts of Assam. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Union minister Vijay Goel today hit out at Congress and Aam Admi Party (AAP) saying they could again join hands for "greed of power" after the MCD elections. Goel said the real contest is between the BJP and Congress while AAP will be left in the third position after elections for 272 wards of three municipal corporations on April 23. "They are of same kind of parties. They can join hands for greed of power to rule the municipal corporations if they could not do so independently, as they formed government in Delhi in 2013," he said in a press conference here. The Shunglu committee report has "exposed" AAP that came to power on an anti-corruption plank, the minister said, citing various allegations of corruption. "If the findings of the committee are probed completely, the AAP government will not survive for one day," he said. Congress is now attacking Kejriwal government on the Shunglu committee report but they themselves were involved in it, he alleged. "The two are not very different from each other and face corruption charges. Congress is a Ghotala (scam) party while AAP is Awaidh Amdani Party," he added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A couple, set on fire by their relatives for performing 'black magic' at Dubbak in Siddipet district of Telangana, died at a hospital in Hyderabad today, police said. Sudarshan (56) and his wife Rajeshwari (52), residents of BC Colony at Dubbak, were tied to an electric pole in front of their house by their relatives and some villagers last evening and set on fire after pouring kerosene on them. The relatives blamed the couple for the problems in their lives and accused them of practising black magic, police said. Sudarshan's sister and some others rescued the couple, but both had suffered 90 per cent burn injuries and succumbed at Gandhi Hospital in Hyderabad early this morning, said sub-inspector Srinivas of Bhoompally police station. Those who led the mob were apparently close relatives of the couple, he said, adding that arrests would be made after identification of the culprits. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Three persons arrested in connection with the death of a man after he was beaten up by so-called cow vigilantes in Rajasthan's Alwar district were sent to 14-day judicial custody today. Kalu Ram (44) of Ratanpura, Vipin Yadav (19) and Ravindra Yadav (30), both from Behror, were produced in a court here which granted their custody and they were sent to jail, Alwar SP Rahul Prakash told PTI. He said no fresh arrest has been made in the case and that police teams are looking for other accused named in the FIR. The three were on one-day police remand yesterday after they were booked under IPC sections 302 (murder), 143 (unlawful assembly), 308 (culpable homicide), among others. They have identified on the basis of a video footage and are among the prime accused in the case. Last Saturday, Pehlu Khan (55) and four others, including his two sons, were brutally beaten up by so-called cow vigilantes who suspected that they were smuggling cows. As many as 16 people were transporting 36 bovine animals in six pick-up vans. They were on their way to Haryana from Jaipur when they were stopped on Jaipur-Delhi national highway. Khan died on Monday during treatment. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) April 5, 2017 Mayor and two-time presidential candidate Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf has announced that he does not intend to run in the presidential elections May 19. The move came amid widespread speculation that Ghalibaf would take a third shot at the presidency, having been the runner-up to Hassan Rouhani in the 2013 elections. Following his statement, there were reports in Iranian media indicating that Ghalibaf is upset with the conservative coalitions decision to not back him as its consensus candidate. Some reports claim that Ghalibaf has reached an agreement with conservative cleric Ebrahim Raisi, the custodian of the holy shrine of Shiite Imam Reza in the city of Mashhad, to serve as his vice president if the latter runs and is ultimately elected. According to the moderate Entekhab news site and the conservative Tasnim news agency, Raisis candidacy is certain, as he has reportedly resigned from the election monitoring committee, as required by law. However, Entekhab is quoting sources claiming that Raisi has not agreed to the conservative coalitions demand that all conservative candidates withdraw at the last minute in favor of the sole conservative candidate who has the greatest chance [of winning the vote]. Of note, the conservative coalition, which is formally called the Popular Front of Revolutionary Forces and known by its Persian acronym JAMNA, will hold a summit April 6 to make a decision about how to approach the presidential elections. JAMNA aims to choose five candidates from the present 14, and in the end, the one who has the greatest chance will be chosen as the only conservative candidate. However, it still seems as if some conservative candidates, including Mostafa Mirsalim, have not agreed to potentially be excluded from the final list of five conservative candidates. On April 5, former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad held a press conference for the first time in almost four years. He spoke about a range of issues, including the upcoming presidential elections and US President Donald Trump. At the press conference, Ahmadinejad accused the moderate government of President Rouhani of publishing false information about the state of Irans economy. He also said that the Rouhani administration has caused setbacks for Iran. In reaction to reports about corruption in his government, Ahmadinejad said, They accused me of all the corruption that has happened in history. Have any of the accusations been proven? In response to a question about whether he is defying Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameneis advice last autumn that he not run in the upcoming vote, he said, The [supreme] leader told me not to run; he didnt tell me to be indifferent [toward the vote]. Ahmadinejad continued, I dont have any plan for the presidential elections, but I support [my former Vice President] Mr. [Hamid] Baghaie as the most deserving candidate." He added, "There is no reason for Baghaie to be disqualified [by the Guardian Council]. I will do my best to get him approved, but we have chosen an alternative [candidate in case of Baghaie's disqualification]." 070417MEMBER VISITS BANA By Aloysius Laukai THE Member for South Bougainville, Hon. Timothy Masiu had a hectic two days of community engagements and project inspections in the Bana district of his South Bougainville electorate. Following a busy two weeks of official duties in Port Moresby attending the final session of the Ninth Parliament, that included the farewell of the countrys funding father, Sir Michael Somare, and the national Leaders Summit, Mr Masiu rushed back to his electorate on Wednesday to attend to invitations and continue his community visitation program. On Thursday, Mr Masiu officiated as the guest of honour at the official hand over and opening of a double classroom at Mungkala Primary School in Bana district. The classroom was jointly funded by Digicel Foundation and DFAT AusAID. Mr Masiu was later accompanied by Bana district executive manager, Michael Otaroa on an inspection tour of the Tavera to Mevaraka road which is being funded the DSIP. The road leads to the proposed international wharf site at Mevaraka. Mr Masiu was impressed with the progress of work road works being undertaken by local contractor, JSK Roads Works. The Member was also impressed with progress on the Baretemba to Moratono roads and reconstruction of the burnt down Marau Market. In the evening, Member Masiu became the first Member of Parliament to address students at Bana High School and gave words of encouragement as well as some fatherly advise to the students. On Friday morning, the member addressed the public at the Bana High school junction market on request from chiefs in the area. He was later taken to the Jaba River Project site where he met and was briefed by the company chief executive officer, and expressed support for the company. Member Masiu then officiated at the launching of an integrated land group co-operative society at Sivele village. Mr Masiu will spend the next three days in his electorate before travelling to Port Moresby for the Joint Supervisory Body (JSB) meeting. JSB is a body comprising technical officers from the national government and ABG who meet and deliberate on matters relating to Bougainville including devolution of powers. ENDS/ A sniffer dog of the CRPF died and its handler injured today when a pressure bomb planted by Maoists went off in Chhattisgarh's Bijapur district, police said. The incident occurred at around 1620 hrs when a Road Opening Party (ROP) of CRPF's 170thbattalion was returning to its camp after a combing operation in Modakpal police station area, a district police official told PTI. The ROP, accompanied by a snifferdog, had launched the operation from its camp in Chinna Kodepal village. Just 2km ahead of the camp, the canine, named Cracker, sniffed a pressure IED (improvised explosive device). The device got triggered probably due to some movement during sniffingand exploded, killing the canine, he said. Its handler, constable B Bhanu Prakash Reddy, received minor injuries on his hand, the official said. Cracker, a Belgian shepherd (Malinois) breeddog, was inducted into the CRPF battalion in December 2015, he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A hijacked truck ploughed into a crowd of people outside a busy department store in central Stockholm today, causing "deaths" in what the prime minister described as a 'terror attack.' The attack, which also caused several injuries, was the latest in a string of similar assaults with vehicles in Europe that include the southern French city of Nice, Berlin and London. "There are deaths, and many injured," Nina Odermalm Schei, a spokeswoman for Swedish intelligence agency Sapo, told AFP, without giving a precise figure. "Sweden has been attacked. Everything points to a terror attack," said Prime Minister Stefan Lofven. Police released a grainy picture of a suspect but said they did not currently have him in custody. "We do not have contact with the driver," national police chief Dan Eliasson told reporters. Authorities also said they could not immediately provide a death toll or say how many were injured but local media said two or three people had lost their lives in the attack. Pictures showed a large blue truck with a mangled undercarriage smashed into the Ahlens department store. A spokeswoman for beer company Spendrups told AFP that the truck "had been stolen during a delivery to a restaurant." Witnesses described scenes of terror and panic. One witness identified only as Dimitris told the Aftonbladet daily the truck came "out of nowhere." "I couldn't see if anyone was driving but it was out of control. I saw at least two people get run down. I ran as fast as I could away from there," he said. Another shopper, 66-year-old Leander Nordling, was at Ahlens when he suddenly heard a loud bang. "It sounded like a bomb exploding and smoke starting pouring in through the main entrance," he told daily Aftonbladet. He and fellow shoppers took refuge in a supply closet inside the department store. "After that the building was evacuated ... There were a lot of guards who took care of us outside and they urged us to leave the scene immediately," Nordling said. Video footage taken from above showed scores of people streaming down the street in terror. The attack occurred just before 1300 GMT at the corner of the store and Drottninggatan, the city's biggest pedestrian street, above ground from Stockholm's central subway station. Thick smoke billowed from the scene, while the area was blocked off by police and crowds gathering around the police cordon. Police vans circulating in the city using loudspeakers urged people to go straight home and avoid large crowds. The centre of the usually buzzing city was in lockdown, with the central train station evacuated and other stores quickly emptied of shoppers. The Stockholm metro was also completely shut down, with the attack taking place at the city's T-Centralen station, through which all the city's lines pass. The area around the attack was cordoned off, but other streets in the city were packed with pedestrians trying to find a way home on a Friday afternoon. Helicopters could be heard hovering in the sky over central Stockholm, and a large number of police cars and ambulances were dispatched to the scene, witnesses said. Another section of Drottninggatan was also the scene of Sweden's only other terror attack, in 2010, when a suicide bomber blew himself up, slightly injuring several . European politicians expressed solidarity, with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker saying that it was an "attack on us all." A spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said: "Our thoughts go out to the people in Stockholm, to the injured, their relatives, rescuers and police. "We stand together against terror." French President Francois Hollande voiced his "horror and indignation" over the assault. The attack followed a string of similar massacres in Europe by people using vehicles as weapons. The deadliest came last year in France on the Bastille Day national holiday of July 14, when a man rammed a truck into a crowd in the Mediterranean resort of Nice, killing 86 people. He was shot dead by police, and the Islamic State group later claimed responsibility. Last month, Khalid Masood, a 52-year-old convert to Islam known to British security services, drove a car at high speed into pedestrians on London's Westminster Bridge before launching a frenzied knife attack on a policeman guarding the parliament building. The incident killed five people, while Masood himself was shot dead by police. And in December, a man hijacked a truck and slammed into shoppers at a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 people. That attacker was shot dead by police in Milan four days later, and the rampage was claimed by the IS. In 2014, IS called for attacks on citizens of Western countries and gave instructions on how they could be carried out without military equipment, using rocks or knives, or by running people over in vehicles. Attacks have not been limited to Europe. In 2014, a Muslim convert used his car to mow down two soldiers near Montreal, killing one of them. The attacker was shot dead by police as he climbed out of his wrecked vehicle brandishing a knife. There have also been false alerts, however. Earlier today, Belgium dropped terrorism charges against a driver who sped into a crowded shopping area in Antwerp last month, which sparked fears of a copycat terror attack. The strike by resident doctors of Deen Dayal Upadhyaya (DDU) Hospital was called off tonight, five days after it had started, following a meeting between the doctors and the state health secretary. "We have discussed all our demands with the health secretary and he has given assurance to work on them," Dr Sumit Paria, president of DDU's Resident Doctors' Association (RDA) said. Around 10 Delhi government hospitals which had also gone on strike in solidarity with their counterparts in DDU also called off their strike. Resident Doctors in West Delhi's Deen Dayal Upadhyay hospital had gone on strike following an alleged assault on their colleague. Resident doctors from Baba Saheb Ambedkar, Acharya Shree Bhikshu hospital, Rao Tula Ram Memorial and Sanjay Gandhi memorial hospital, among others had joined the strike yesterday, affecting routine and emergency services in their establishments. Resident Doctors' Association of AIIMS had also threatened to go on strike if the government did not fulfil the demands of the doctors in DDU. "We strongly condemn the repeated attacks on resident doctors by anti-social elements. It is the duty of hospital administration and the government to provide security at their work place," AIIMS Resident Doctors Association said. "We request government to fulfill the demands of the resident doctors with immediate effect...If this stubborn attitude of the government continues then resident doctors at AIIMS will be left with no other option except joining the striking doctors by strike at AIIMS," it said. On Monday the doctors in the DDU hospital emergency and the guards were allegedly beaten up by the relatives of a patient. Reportedly, the female doctors had to lock themselves up in the toilets to avoid assault on them. "Three incidents of such assaults were reported within three hours from the hospital, which led to the resident doctors go on strike," a hospital official said. The incident occurred close on heels of a massive protest by resident doctors in Maharashtra who demanded security for hospital staff and themselves following a spate of assaults on them. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) today foiled an attempt to export Methaqualone tablets in a courier parcel from the city to Kuwait. The value of the seized contraband tablets is estimated to be Rs 9.20 lakh, said DRI. On specific intelligence that certain cargo booked by courier to Kuwait contains contraband material, officers of DRI, Hyderabad Zonal Unit visited a courier company here and verified the said cargo, a release quoting Additional Director General M K Singh said. "This cargo was packed in a carton, which was found to be containing six jeans pants and one half pant. On detailed examination of the cargo, the officers found tablets concealed in the waistband part of the pants," the DRI official said. On removing the stitches, the tablets were found and they tested positive for Methaqualone, Singh said, adding a total of 2,300 tablets were found, weighing 860 grams. Methaqualone is a psychotropic drug prohibited under Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act and the tablets were attempted to be exported by way of concealment in contravention of the provisions of the NDPS Act. Efforts to locate the consignee, whose address was indicated that of from Proddutur in Kadapa District of Andhra Pradesh and further investigation in the case are in progress, the release added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A 57-year-old man and his son aged 23 have been booked for the death of a labourer at their house in Aadharwadi locality of Kalyan township here, police said. The deceased, Ravi Padu Walavai (40), worked as a labourer at the farm of the two men. They asked Ravi to demolish a wall in their house yesterday. As the victim was trying to pull down the wall, it collapsed on him, police said. Ravi sustained serious injuries and was rushed to a hospital where doctors declared him brought dead, they said. The Khadakpada police have registered an offence under IPC sections 304(A) (causing death by negligence) and 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) against the father-son duo. No arrest has been made so far, police added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A 31-year-old Romanian woman who had plunged into the river Thames during the brazen London terror attack has died from her injuries, becoming the fifth victim. Andreea Cristea's life support machine was turned off by her family yesterday afternoon, Scotland Yard said today. The Romanian tourist was on Westminster Bridge when Khalid Masood rammed into crowds, including her, at high speed. She was rescued from the river and had been receiving medical treatment in hospital here following the attack on March 22. Cristea becomes the fifth victim of the terror attack by 52-year-old Masood, who was also shot dead by security officials after he stabbed a police officer to death at the gates of the UK Parliament. Four people were killed and dozens injured in the attack. "Andreea was a Romanian national, but had been visiting London. Next of kin have been informed and are being supported by specially trained family liaison officers," the Metropolitan Police said. Cristea was in London with her boyfriend, Andrei Burnaz, who along with her family released a statement today. It reads: "After fighting for her life for over two weeks, our beloved and irreplaceable Andreea - wonderful daughter, sister, partner, dedicated friend and the most unique and life loving person you can imagine - was cruelly and brutally ripped away from our lives in the most heartless and spiritless way. "There are no words to even begin to describe the crushing pain and emptiness that is left in our hearts. Our family, together with Andrei, are deeply touched and eternally grateful for the unimaginable efforts and never-ending dedication provided to her and us by the entire medical personnel of each and every hospital involved. Their kindness and empathy are beyond compare," the statement said. The family said all the funds raised for Cristea by the public for her recovery will now be donated to charity. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Terming the invalidation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes as a "bold move" to check black money, the finance ministry today said no serious attempt of this scale was made in the past. "No serious attempt at this scale has been attempted in the past. In the two attempts of demonetisation made in 1946 and 1978, the scale of operation was not as expansive," the finance ministry annual report 2016-17 released today said. The present scheme under Section 26 of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, is a bold move of the government to eradicate black money or slush money operating for decades, it said. The legal tender character of banknotes in the denomination of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 was cancelled with effect from the expiry of November 8, 2016, with the objective to eliminate black money and curb infusion and circulation of fake Indian currency notes (FICNs). India is the second-largest producer and consumer of currency notes. Circulation of banknotes has increased to 90.27 billion pieces from 64.58 billion over the last five years. As on November 8, 2016, the total amount of currency in circulation was Rs 17.7 lakh crore, which included specified bank notes (SBNs) of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000. "The ratio of currency to GDP in India (12.2 per cent) is higher than countries such as South Africa (3.9 per cent), Brazil (4.1 per cent) and Mexico (5.7 per cent)," it said, adding that a high volume of cash transactions has positive correlation with the percentage of shadow economy to GDP. India remains a cash-based economy and hence the circulation of FICNs continues to be a menace. The fake notes are used for illegal, anti-national and terrorist activities, it added. As per a study conducted by the Indian Statistical Institute, the stated value of fake notes in circulation is about Rs 400 crore. As for remonetisation, the total value involved was Rs 15.4 lakh crore. "... There was necessity to remonetise the economy as early as possible. The introduction of Rs 2,000 note was the first step towards quick remonetisation. The stock of Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 notes was built up to take care of and deal with the process of remonetisation," it said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Flood fears in Kashmir eased as water in Jhelum started to recede after rainfall stopped last night while higher reaches of the Valley received snowfall today, even as the mercury stayed within normal limits in parts of the northern plains. But, Jharsuguda in Odisha sizzled at 43.5 degrees Celsius, followed by Chandrapur in Vidarbha region at 43.2 degrees Celsius. In the national capital, the maximum temperature settled at 34.4 degrees Celsius, while the minimum was 22.3 degrees Celsius. According to the Safdarjung observatory, the recording of which is considered official for Delhi, the city received 0.4 mm rainfall since yesterday. The water level in Jhelum and its tributaries started to recede after rainfall stopped last night, easing flood fears in Kashmir, while in Jammu region one person was killed, eight others injured and over 40 structures were damaged in floods and high speed winds. One woman was washed away after a drain was flooded in Sudhmahadev area, while around 8 persons were injured in Udhampur district, police said, adding efforts are on to restore the power supply and clear the roads in the district. Yesterday, the water level in the Jhelum had crossed the 'flood declaration' mark at Ram Munshi Bagh in Srinagar even as 17 people were rescued from flash floods in Poonch and a woman was killed in lightning in Rajouri. The Srinagar-Jammu National Highway, connecting Kashmir Valley to the rest of the country, remained closed for the third consecutive day today due to landslides and shooting stones triggered by rains and snow. Parts of Kashmir received intermittent rains during the night, while some areas in the higher reaches experienced fresh snowfall. There were reports of snowfall in some areas in the higher reaches of the Valley, a MeT official said. South Kashmir's Kokernag area recorded 79.9 mm of rainfall during the night, while the neighbouring Qazigund and Pahalgam each received 38.2 mm of rains. Srinagar received 19.5 mm of rains, while Kupwara in north Kashmir recorded 26.3 mm rainfall, the official said. The bodies of the three soldiers who were missing after multiple avalanches struck an Army post in Batalik sector of Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir were recovered from under 15 feet of snow. Unprecedented snowfall had triggered multiple avalanches in Batalik yesterday, burying the post. Fresh avalanches hit army posts in Kaksar belt of Kargil district but all soldiers were rescued, and Army official said. In parts of Rajasthan, heat wave conditions abated with the day temperatures dipping by a few notches. Kota recorded maximum temperature of 37 degrees Celsius, while the mercury in Barmer settled as 35.5 degrees Celsius, the MeT Department here said, adding other places in the state registered their maximums below the 35 degrees Celsius mark. In several parts of Punjab and Haryana, maximum temperatures hovered around normal level a day after rains brought respite from the hot weather conditions in the two states. Chandigarh recorded a maximum of 33 degrees Celsius, while in Punjab, Amritsar registered a high of 29.5 degrees Celsius. In Haryana, Ambala recorded a maximum of 33.4 degrees Celsius In Bihar, the capital city Patna recorded maximum temperature of 36.8 degrees Celsius, while Gaya was the hottest place in the state with the mercury climbing to 40.6 degrees Celsius. The MeT office has forecast partly cloudy sky with possibility of rain or thundershowers in the state tomorrow. Day temperatures were above normal in parts of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Odisha, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Goa, Telangana and Tamil Nadu. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The proposed move on a 3D virtual reality village project to recreate the magic of iconic Bollywood film 'Sholay" in the rocky terrain of Ramanagaram, 50 km here, may face objection from the forest department if it affects wildlife conservation, a senior official said. A Rs 7.5 crore proposal is on the anvil to establish Sholay-the-3D Virtual Reality Village for movie lovers on a locale at Ramadevara Betta, that was popularly known as Ramgad as a shot in the film. Ramadevara Betta an area surrounding it is a protected area as it is a vulture sanctuary. "Nothing has come to me yet. We don't know where exactly and what exactly they are planning to do. Our DFO (Divisional Forest Officer) will update us on getting to know about any such project. After that, we will take a call," Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Wildlife) K S Sugara told PTI. "If there is anything that is not in the interest of wildlife conservation or vulture sanctuary, we will object", he said. The Ramanagaram district administration has submitted the plan to the state government to either implement it as a public-private venture or as a state project. The District administration officials have said the project, however, will not be established in the vulture reserve area, but outside it. The virtual village will bring alive the trailblazing characters, 42 years after they were immortalised in the film, through three-dimensional (3D) printing and Virtual Reality (VR) technology. Ramanagaram, located about 50 km south-west of Bengaluru, is a paradise for trekking, rock climbing and photo shooting. Seven hills are located within a 10 km radius of Ramanagaram, including Ramadevar betta, where Gabbar Singh, played by the late Amjad Khan in the antagonist role in the 1975 film, was picturised. Gabbar Singh's dacoit role gave Khan cult status, along with the memorable role of his henchmen Samba and Kaalia. Karnataka Tourism Minister Priyank Kharge has told PTI that the state government has to evaluate the entire proposal. He has also said Sholay locales have the potential to attract visitors heading towards Mysuru and is also the first exit point for IT people living in Bengaluru. But, the minister made it clear that some locales that fall into the vulture reserve zone like Gabbar's hideout, Thakur (Sanjeev Kumar)'s haveli and the rocky terrain where Basanti (Hema Malini) dances, among others, will have to be recreated outside the prohibited area if the project is implemented. A massive manhunt was underway for the driver of a stolen truck that ploughed into a crowd outside a busy department store in central Stockholm, killing four and injuring 15, Swedish police said. A national police chief, Stefan Hector, said the police's "working hypothesis is that this is a terror attack." One man was arrested in connection with the attack but the driver remained at large, police said. Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, who cut short a visit in southwestern Sweden to return to Stockholm, said he had strengthened the country's border controls. "Terrorists want us to be afraid, want us to change our behaviour, want us to not live our lives normally, but that is what we're going to do. So terrorists can never defeat Sweden, never," he said. If confirmed as a terror attack, it would be Sweden's first such attack with a deadly outcome. Pictures taken at the scene showed a large blue truck with a mangled undercarriage smashed into the Ahlens department store. Witnesses described scenes of terror and panic. One witness identified only as Dimitris told the Aftonbladet daily the truck came "out of nowhere." "I couldn't see if anyone was driving but it was out of control. I saw at least two people get run down. I ran as fast as I could away from there," he said. Another shopper, 66-year-old Leander Nordling, was at Ahlens when he suddenly heard a loud bang. "It sounded like a bomb exploding and smoke starting pouring in through the main entrance," he told daily Aftonbladet. He and fellow shoppers took refuge in a storage room inside the department store. "After that the building was evacuated ... There were a lot of guards who took care of us outside and they urged us to leave the scene immediately," Nordling said. Video footage taken from above showed scores of people streaming down the street in terror. A spokeswoman for beer company Spendrups told AFP that the truck involved "had been stolen during a delivery to a restaurant." The man arrested in a suburb north of Stockholm was detained after his appearance matched that of a man in a picture released by police and wanted in connection with the attack. Yesterday's attack was the latest in a string of similar assaults with vehicles in Europe, including in London, Berlin and the southern French city of Nice. The attack occurred just before 1300 GMT at the corner of the store and Drottninggatan, the city's biggest pedestrian street, above ground from Stockholm's central subway station. Thick smoke billowed from the scene, while the area was blocked off by police and crowds gathered around the police cordon. Police vans circulating in the city using loudspeakers urged people to go straight home and avoid large crowds. The centre of the usually buzzing city was in lockdown, with the central train station evacuated and other stores quickly emptied of shoppers. The Stockholm metro was also completely shut down for several hours before resuming in the early evening, with the attack taking place at the city's T-Centralen station, through which all the city's lines pass. Cinemas, shopping malls and other public buildings were also evacuated. The area around the attack was cordoned off, but other streets in the city were packed for hours with pedestrians trying to find a way home. Helicopters could be heard hovering in the sky over central Stockholm, and a large number of police cars and ambulances were dispatched to the scene, witnesses said. Another section of Drottninggatan was also the scene of Sweden's only other terror attack, in 2010, when a suicide bomber blew himself up, killing himself and slightly injuring several . European politicians expressed solidarity, with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker saying that it was an "attack on us all." A spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said: "Our thoughts go out to the people in Stockholm, to the injured, their relatives, rescuers and police. "We stand together against terror." The attack followed a string of similar massacres in Europe by people using vehicles as weapons. The deadliest came last year in France on the Bastille Day national holiday of July 14, when a man rammed a truck into a crowd in the Mediterranean resort of Nice, killing 86 people. Last month, Khalid Masood, a 52-year-old convert to Islam known to British security services, killed five people when he drove a car at high speed into pedestrians on London's Westminster Bridge before launching a frenzied knife attack on a policeman guarding the parliament building. And in December, a man hijacked a truck and slammed into shoppers at a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 people. In 2014, IS called for attacks on citizens of Western countries and gave instructions on how they could be carried out without military equipment, using rocks or knives, or by running people over in vehicles. Four people were killed and 15 injured when a stolen truck ploughed into a crowd of people outside a busy department store in central Stockholm today, police said, adding that one man had been arrested in connection with the attack. It was the latest in a string of similar assaults with vehicles in Europe, including in London, Berlin and the southern French city of Nice. Children were among the injured, Stockholm's regional health care authorities said in a statement. "Sweden has been attacked. Everything points to a terror attack," said Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, who cut short a visit in southwestern Sweden to return to Stockholm after what, if confirmed, would be the country's first deadly terror attack. Police had earlier released a grainy picture of a suspect they did not have in custody. Police spokesman Lars Bystrom refused to say whether the man who was later arrested was the man in the picture, and would not confirm media reports that he had confessed to the attack. Police had earlier said two people had been taken in for questioning. Pictures taken at the scene showed a large blue truck with a mangled undercarriage smashed into the Ahlens department store. A spokeswoman for beer company Spendrups told AFP that the truck "had been stolen during a delivery to a restaurant." Witnesses described scenes of terror and panic. One witness identified only as Dimitris told the Aftonbladet daily the truck came "out of nowhere." "I couldn't see if anyone was driving but it was out of control. I saw at least two people get run down. I ran as fast as I could away from there," he said. Another shopper, 66-year-old Leander Nordling, was at Ahlens when he suddenly heard a loud bang. "It sounded like a bomb exploding and smoke starting pouring in through the main entrance," he told daily Aftonbladet. He and fellow shoppers took refuge in a storage room inside the department store. "After that the building was evacuated ... There were a lot of guards who took care of us outside and they urged us to leave the scene immediately," Nordling said. Video footage taken from above showed scores of people streaming down the street in terror. The attack occurred just before 1300 GMT at the corner of the store and Drottninggatan, the city's biggest pedestrian street, above ground from Stockholm's central subway station. Thick smoke billowed from the scene, while the area was blocked off by police and crowds gathering around the police cordon. Police vans circulating in the city using loudspeakers urged people to go straight home and avoid large crowds. The centre of the usually buzzing city was in lockdown, with the central train station evacuated and other stores quickly emptied of shoppers. The Stockholm metro was also completely shut down for several hours before resuming in the early evening, with the attack taking place at the city's T-Centralen station, through which all the city's lines pass. Cinemas, shopping malls and other public buildings were also evacuated. The area around the attack was cordoned off, but other streets in the city were packed for hours with pedestrians trying to find a way home. Helicopters could be heard hovering in the sky over central Stockholm, and a large number of police cars and ambulances were dispatched to the scene, witnesses said. Another section of Drottninggatan was also the scene of Sweden's only other terror attack, in 2010, when a suicide bomber blew himself up, killing himself and slightly injuring several others. European politicians expressed solidarity, with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker saying that it was an "attack on us all." A spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said: "Our thoughts go out to the people in Stockholm, to the injured, their relatives, rescuers and police. "We stand together against terror." French President Francois Hollande voiced his "horror and indignation" over the assault. The attack followed a string of similar massacres in Europe by people using vehicles as weapons. The deadliest came last year in France on the Bastille Day national holiday of July 14, when a man rammed a truck into a crowd in the Mediterranean resort of Nice, killing 86 people. He was shot dead by police, and the Islamic State group later claimed responsibility. Last month, Khalid Masood, a 52-year-old convert to Islam known to British security services, drove a car at high speed into pedestrians on London's Westminster Bridge before launching a frenzied knife attack on a policeman guarding the parliament building. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Three persons were arrested and one juvenile apprehended today in connection with a shootout incident near V3S Mall in east Delhi's Preet Vihar last month, in which one person was killed, police said today. Nishant Arora alias Noni, Nimit Gaba alias Ajay alias Kubba, and Sameer Ahmad alias Baba were arrested from Anand Vihar area on a tip-off, said DCP(East) Omvir Singh. A juvenile has also been apprehended, Singh said. Police said Nishant had rivalry with Vishal, who was allegedly killed in the shootout, in the business of gambling. They had plans to bump off each other and on March 23, Vishal and his gang members had allegedly gone to Nishant's house and threatened him, they said. Later on, Nishant and his gang members followed Vishal and his associates and fired on them when they were looking for food in the intervening night of March 23-24 near V3S Mall, Preet Vihar, police said. Vishal succumbed to injuries, they said, adding that the eyewitnesses told the police that Vishal was fired upon allegedly by Noni and his associates. Noni has a strong network of followers comprising "budding criminals and minors", who used to pass on information on daily activities of police teams. "He used to contact them through Facebook, WhatsApp etc to get details of police movement and movements of his rival gang members. Noni along with a few of his associates had come to Anand Vihar area for meeting some of his other associates," said Singh. The accused, including the juvenile, were apprehended from there. Two cars used in the commission of crime have also been recovered. In 2013, he came to be known as Great Gambler in his locality, due to his habit of rigorous gambling and winning at it, said the officer. He was shot at by rival gamblers in 2013 but survived. In 2016, he and another person Afsar killed one Nadeem in the area of Seelampur. He came out on bail and built his gang again. "He used to spend money earned from gambling on parties organised by him in five-star hotels and used to invite several female models. He is also fond of bikes and purchased a Harley Davidson recently," added the officer. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Damascus regime and its ally Russia furiously condemned an American air strike on a Syrian airbase today that marked the first direct US assault on President Bashar al-Assad's government. US allies rallied around Washington after President Donald Trump launched the massive strike in retaliation for a "barbaric" chemical attack he blamed on Assad. But Assad's office called the strike "foolish and irresponsible" and Moscow announced a series of retaliatory steps including plans to strengthen Syrian air defences. Russia also demanded an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council and US diplomats said it was to meet at 11:30 am (local time) today. The strike -- Trump's biggest military decision since taking office -- marked a dramatic escalation in American involvement in Syria's six-year civil war. It followed days of outrage at images of dead children and victims suffering convulsions from the suspected sarin gas attack in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhun. US officials said 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired from Navy ships in the Mediterranean at the Shayrat airfield at 3:40 am (local time), dealing heavy damage to the base from where Washington believes Tuesday's deadly attack was launched. Syrian state agency SANA said nine civilians including four children were killed in villages near the base. "What America did is nothing but foolish and irresponsible behaviour, which only reveals its short-sightedness and political and military blindness to reality," Assad's office said in a statement. Syria's regime has denied using chemical weapons in Khan Sheikhun, where at least 86 people, including 30 children, were reported killed and more than 500 wounded. With US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson due in Moscow next week, the Kremlin called the US strike a "gross... violation of international law" and warned it would inflict "considerable damage" on US-Russia ties. It immediately suspended a deal with the United States aimed at avoiding clashes in Syrian airspace. The Russian military also announced a series of measures "to strengthen and improve the effectiveness of the Syrian armed forces' air defence system" in the wake of the strike. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif of Iran, another staunch Assad ally, said on Twitter that the US strike was based on "bogus CW (chemical weapons) allegations" and would aid jihadists in Syria like the Islamic State group. Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Japan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey all supported Washington, with Ankara also calling for a no-fly zone in Syria. Trump announced the strike in a brief televised address delivered hours after the Security Council failed to agree on a probe into the suspected chemical attack. "Tonight I call on all civilised nations to join us in seeking to end this slaughter and bloodshed in Syria and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types," Trump said. The missiles were fired from the USS Porter and the USS Ross, which belong to the US Navy's Sixth Fleet, in the eastern Mediterranean. The strike targeted radars, aircraft, air defence systems and other logistical components at the base south of Homs in central Syria. In a statement read on state television, the army confirmed the strike and said it had caused extensive damage. Russia's military said the strike had an "extremely low" military impact, with fewer than half of the 59 missiles reaching the base. The strike destroyed six planes under repair and several buildings, including a storage depot and radio station, it said. Opposition and rebel fighters, who have for years urged more direct US military action in support of their uprising, hailed the strike and called for more. The National Coalition, the main opposition grouping, called on Washington to take further steps to "neutralise" the regime's air power. "We hope for more strikes... And that these are just the beginning," spokesman Ahmad Ramadan told AFP. Rebels have suffered a series of setbacks in recent years as Assad's forces have reclaimed much of the territory once under opposition control. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a longtime foe of Assad, also called for further action. "I welcome this concrete step as positive," Erdogan said at a rally in the southern city of Antakya just north of the Syrian border. "I don't see this as enough... The time has come for steps for a serious result to protect the oppressed Syrian people." But the White House was quick to paint the decision as limited to deterring the use of chemical weapons, and not part of a broader military campaign. "The intent was to deter the regime from doing this again, and it is certainly our hope that this has had that effect," Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain Jeff Davis told reporters. US officials said Russia's military in Syria was informed of the strike beforehand in order to avoid casualties that could prompt a broader crisis. Russia stood by Damascus this week despite the global uproar, insisting that the chemical weapons that caused the deaths in Khan Sheikhun had been stockpiled by "terrorists" and possibly released by a conventional strike. "We consider these strikes not only as a reaction, but a way to avenge the blood of the martyrs who fell here," said Haj Kassar, a merchant in his 50s. Trump had previously indicated no willingness to engage further in Syria's civil war, beyond stepping up efforts to battle the jihadists of IS, who have been targeted by US-led air strikes in Syria and Iraq since mid-2014. His administration had in fact signalled in recent days that it was no longer seeking the Assad's departure from power. But Trump said the "very barbaric attack" in which "even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered" had required a response. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Civil Aviation Ministry is learnt to have asked private airlines, which have barred Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad from flying after he assaulted an Air India employee, to revoke the ban. Air India today lifted the flying ban on Gaikwad following an order from the Civil Aviation Ministry, a day after the Osmanabad MP expressed "regret" over the "unfortunate incident" on March 23. On March 24, a day after the incident at the Delhi airport, Air India had barred Gaikwad from flying with it. Following suit, the Federation of Indian Airlines (FIA) had also imposed a ban on him. Jet Airways, SpiceJet, GoAir and IndiGo are part of the grouping. Sources said the Ministry has asked Air India as well as other airlines to lift the ban imposed on Gaikwad citing the "undertaking of good conduct" given by him. However, there has been no official word from any FIA member on the issue. A senior official at an FIA member airline said it has been agreed that police investigation would continue and the MP would not engage in any such unruly conduct in the future. When FIA had imposed a flying ban on Gaikwad, two non- member carriers -- Vistara and AirAsia -- had said they were with the industry on the issue. When contacted, full service carrier Vistara's spokesperson said, "We are reviewing the series of events, related to this case, that took place recently. We have not taken a decision as yet". No-frills carrier AirAsia India's spokesperson said its stand on the ban remains the same, adding that it has not heard anything from the FIA so far on the matter. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The government is in the process of drafting the Public Health Bill to give legal teeth to administrative authorities during health emergencies caused by epidemics including bird flu and dengue. "Yes. The government of India is in the process of drafting the Public Health Bill," Minister of State for Health Anupriya Patel said in response to a written reply to a question. She was asked whether the government proposes to bring a draft bill to give legal teeth to administrative authorities and to institutions under Union and state governments during public health emergencies caused by epidemics like bird flu, chikungunya, dengue and others. "Extensive consultations have already been made with all stakeholders. The draft Bill was also uploaded on the Health Ministry's website on February 22 this year inviting comments," the Minister said. She said that the comments received are being evaluated for suitable and necessary action. "No time frame can be fixed at this stage for the implementation of the proposed Public Health Bill," Patel said. The ministry has put the draft Public Health (Prevention, Control and Management of epidemics, bio-terrorism and disasters) bill, 2017 in the public domain seeking comments from various stakeholders. The health ministry has proposed a bill that seeks to empower state and local authorities to take appropriate action to tackle public health emergencies like epidemics and bioterrorism. States and local bodies under the proposed bill can take multiple measures, ranging from quarantining people to decontamination of areas, destruction of animals or birds and surprise inspections during any public health emergency. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The government could consider increasing the import duty on wheat from the present ten per cent. Agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh said in the Rajya Sabha during the Question Hour that the government could look at increasing the import duty if required. He was responding to JD(U) member Harivansh's statement that despite the government imposing an import duty, the importers were reportedly finding buying of wheat from abroad cheaper. Singh said that for the first time, import duty had been imposed by the present government. It was removed last year in view of the shortage of wheat, he said, adding that the duty was introduced to upto 10 percent. In his reply tabled in the House, Singh said the "government has raised import duty on wheat from zero to ten per cent with effect from 28, March, 2017. Speaking about pulses, the Agriculture Minister said that a bumper crop was expected this time, but it would still be less than the demand. He said that steps had been taken to encourage domestic pusrchase of 'tur dal'. He also said that a committee has submitted a report on the process through which Minimum Support Price (MSP) is determined may be revised. "The ministry is already considering the suggestions of the committee," Singh said. Congress member Jairam Ramesh had asked Singh to review the cost of production of wheat so that the right MSP could be set. He said to increase the income of farmers, measures like providing irrigation and seeds were too important. Often it is seen that various states spend less on farmers than what is earmarked, Ramesh said. To this, Singh said "we are going to release data on how different states have released the money, which was meant for the welfare of the farmers. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Greece agreed on a fresh set of reforms with its eurozone creditors today, boosting hopes Athens can unlock fresh bailout cash in time to avert a debt default this summer. "I welcome the agreement in principle on Greece at the Eurogroup after several months of difficult negotiations," EU Economic Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici said in Malta after a meeting of eurozone finance ministers. Heavily-indebted Athens and the EU and IMF have been deadlocked over reforms for months amid disagreements on debt relief and budget targets for Greece. The deal is needed to prevent a possible default as early as July when Athens owes about seven billion euros in debt repayments. "The big blocks have now been sorted out and now we just have the final stretch," Eurogroup head Jeroen Dijsselbloem said after the talks. Dijsselbloem said the Greek government was now prepared to reduce pensions in 2019 and increase taxes in 2020 despite widespread public opposition. "The situation in Greece is not improving and that is something we are responsible for. This is taking too long," said Dijsselbloem, who is also Dutch finance minister. Despite projections for growth, the Greek economy actually stalled in 2016 and recent data show that after some stabilisation, it has begun to falter again amid uncertainty triggered by the debt row. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is scheduled to visit Ajmer dargah in Rajasthan on Sunday. "She will arrive at Sanganer airport here in a plane from New Delhi and will go to Ajmer in a helicopter on Sunday. The Bangladeshi PM will pay obeisance at the dargah of sufi saint in Ajmer," an official of the state government said here. She will return the same day. Hasina arrived in national capital today on a four-day visit during which she will hold bilateral talks with her Indian counterpart Narendra Modi. Both the sides would be signing at least 25 pacts in various key sectors including civil nuclear cooperation and defence but there was unlikely to be any agreement on the Teesta water sharing. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Hospital stays may put the patients' personal information at the risk of being breached, a new US study warns. Researchers at Michigan State University (MSU) in the US found nearly 1,800 occurrences of large data breaches in patient information over a seven-year period. "Our findings underscore the critical need for increased data protection in the health care industry," said Xuefeng Jiang, MSU associate professor of accounting. "While the law requires health care professionals and systems to cross-share patient data, the more people who can access data, the less secure it is," said Jiang. The researchers examined US Department of Health and Human Services data for the period October 2009 to December 2016. They found that healthcare providers reported 1,225 of the 1,798 recorded breaches, while business associates, health plans and healthcare clearing houses reported the rest. As many as 257 breaches were reported by 216 hospitals. 33 hospitals experienced more than one breach - many of which are large, major teaching hospitals, researchers said. The study was published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) With the UK endorsing the USD 46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, India should shed its concerns over it and sign-up for the Silk Road project, state media here said today. "The UK is poised to be a key partner of CPEC" and will host a conference in Islamabad in May, an article in the state-run Global Times said. "The offers a positive signal that the CPEC has received an increasing amount of attention from developed economies," it said. The UK's international trade minister Greg Hands held a roundtable with leading UK businesses, policy experts and senior representatives of the Chinese and Pakistani governments earlier this week. "The UK is poised to be a key partner of the CPEC," an official British government statement said in an endorsement of the project even though it goes through the Gilgit and Baltistan area of the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) over which India has protested. "New Delhi is yet to sign up for the Belt & Road (Silk Road) initiative and has claimed that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) violates its sovereignty because it passes through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir," the Global Times article said. "China's enormous investment in the CPEC has become an inharmonious factor in Sino-Indian ties. However, it would be unwise to think that increasing investment in the CPEC means a lack of respect for India's sovereignty," it said. The article said that such ideas could lead to unnecessary opposition between India and the West as developed countries show an increased interest in the CPEC and China's Belt and Road (B&R) initiative. "The CPEC is simply an economic project. Beijing has no intention to use to the B&R initiative to recognise any geopolitical spheres of influence. Hopefully China's open mind towards cooperation on the B&R initiative can help dispel misgivings held by India and some other countries," it said. There is great potential for developed economies, like the UK, to join CPEC and other projects in B&R initiative, it said. China is likely to welcome enterprises from the UK and other developed nations to participate in construction of the CPEC which has long been seen a flagship project in the B&R initiative, the article said. The B&R initiative not only provides a platform for China and countries along the route to enhance cooperation, but also adheres to the principle of openness and inclusiveness in global economic development, it said. Currently, China is encouraging wider participation from developed economies in the initiative, it said. In March, New Zealand signed a cooperation agreement with China on the B&R initiative, a first for Western developed countries. A B&R initiative summit, to be held in Beijing in May, will also provide an opportunity to enhance cooperation between China and developed countries, the article said. The steady development of the CPEC has made Pakistan more attractive to foreign investment, it claimed. Some Western developed countries, as the traditional foreign trade partners of many emerging economies along the B&R initiative, have a clear intent to increase trade with those countries, Pakistan included, it said. Additionally, Pakistan's nuclear power sector and other high-tech industries are also likely to gain more opportunities if developed economies participate in the construction of the CPEC, the article said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) India and the UK will focus on innovation in smart technology to reduce power sector losses and clean energy finance for bolstering bilateral energy ties. In the first India-UK 'Energy for Growth' Dialogue here today, Power and Renewable Energy Minister Piyush Goyal and UK's Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Greg Clark agreed on priority areas for further collaboration in the energy sector. The agreed areas include innovation in smart technology to improve performance and reduce losses in India's power sector, financing for clean energy; decentralised energy scale up and sustainability; and support to states in renewable energy planning and deployment, the power ministry said in a release. The two countries will also focus on work to accelerate deployment of renewable energy and its integration with the grid; support for increased energy efficiency; and enhanced energy access for strengthening ties. The dialogue takes forward the commitment of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and UK Prime Minister Theresa May for an enhanced energy partnership between the countries, the release said. The two countries had signed an MoU on cooperation in the energy sector during the visit of Prime Minister Modi to the UK in November 2015. On April 4, the two countries reaffirmed their commitment to anchor investment up to 120 million pound each in a joint fund which aims to raise around 500 million pound, and has the potential to unlock much more in the future. It was announced that the fund will focus its initial investments on India's rapidly growing energy and renewables market. India and the UK also recognised the importance of combating climate change and mobilising finance from a variety of sources, instruments and channels to mitigate its effects alongside generating economic opportunities. They welcomed the work of the G20 Green Finance Study Group promoting green finance encouraged the issuance of green bonds, among other forms of green finance. Both Ministers appreciated the strides taken by Energy Efficiency Services Ltd (EESL), which has established operations in UK by investing around 7 million pound in seven energy saving projects after intense technical and financial due diligence. The projects are in operation for more than two years and have been yielding dividends, it said. The ministers also noted the interest expressed by the UK for replicating successful LED business model (UJALA-Unnat Jyoti by Affordable LED's for All) of India in the UK. India and UK share a strong investment and financial partnership, wherein the UK is the third largest FDI investor in India and India is the third largest source of FDI projects in the UK. Clark's visit is the latest in a series of high-level exchanges between the UK and India. This week, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond led a trade delegation to India. Hammond was in India for the UK-India Economic and Financial Dialogue (EFD), which included discussions on infrastructure, finance and business engagement. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Hospitality service provider InterContinental Hotels Group today announced launch of its first property under the Holiday Inn brand in the city. The 202-room Holiday Inn Hotel is located on the Old Mahabalipuram Road (OMR) or the Information Technology Corridor, home to a number of IT companies, a company press release said here. "The hotel marks the fifth set up by IHG Hotel in Chennai and the first Holiday Inn in the city", it said. Recently, IHG had signed agreements with existing owners to set up three Holiday Inn Express hotels in the country during the next two to three years. It includes Holiday Inn Express and Suites in New Delhi and NCR region, Holiday Inn Express and Suites, Gurgaon Sector 90 with Crowne PropBuild Pvt Ltd. The IHG Group is also setting up Holiday Inn Express Kolkata Airport with DS Group, which currently owns Crowne Plaza Jaipur Tank Road with IHG. All the three Holiday Inn Express hotels are set to open in next two to three years, it said. "We are delighted to sign three new properties that expand our Holiday Inn brand family portfolio in India", IHG, Vice-President, Development, South West Asia, Sudeep Jain said. "Signing these properties with existing owners is indicative of IHG's strength in building strategic partnerships and the growing recognition of the Holiday Inn Express brand in India", he said. On expansion in overseas market, he said, "While IHG already has a strong and growing presence in India, we are looking at developing our portfolio further in Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Pakistan". On the outlook for next 10-15 years, the company said it planned to open 150 hotels, largely driven by the Holiday Inn brand family, Crowne Plaza and InterContinental Hotels and Resorts in gateway cities. IHG, Asia Middle East Africa, Chief Operating Officer, Alan Watts said, "There are 36 hotels in our current pipeline in India totalling a growth of more than 125 per cent over the next three to five years". "With this momentum, we continue to collaborate with existing and new strategic partners to bring the right brands to the right locations in India", he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Iran said today that it "strongly condemns" a US air strike on a Syrian government airbase in retaliation for a suspected chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held town. "We condemn all unilateral military action and the missile strike by US warships against Shayrat airbase under the pretext of Tuesday's suspected attack on Khan Sheikhun," foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghassemi told the Fars agency. Iran with Russia is the closest ally of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and has provided money, weapons, military advisers and trainers, as well as volunteer militiamen to support it in the six-year civil war. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he supports the "strong and clear message" sent by a US strike on neighbouring Syria today in retaliation for a suspected chemical attack. The Israeli military said it had been informed in advance of a massive cruise missile strike on a Syrian airbase, the first US operation against the Damascus regime in six years of civil war. "In both word and action, President (Donald) Trump sent a strong and clear message today that the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated," a statement from Netanyahu's office said. "Israel fully supports President Trump's decision and hopes that this message of resolve in the face of the Assad regime's horrific actions will resonate not only in Damascus, but in Tehran, Pyongyang and elsewhere." Trump said the strike on the Shayrat airbase with 59 Tomahawk missiles fired from warships in the eastern Mediterranean was in retaliation for what he said was a "barbaric" chemical attack on a rebel-held town in northwestern Syria by the Damascus regime. Israeli President Reuven Rivlin said the "clear and determined steps" taken "constitute a fitting and appropriate response to such unthinkable brutality." There had been international outrage over Tuesday's suspected attack that killed dozens of civilians but Moscow stood by its Damascus ally and warned of the negative consequences of any military action. As a result, a UN Security Council debate on a Western-drafted resolution was again delayed on Thursday amid Russian insistence that the chemical weapons that caused the deaths had been stockpiled by jihadists on the ground and released by a conventional strike. Washington said it had given advance notification of its military action to both Russia, and its Western and Arab allies in a coalition fighting the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq. Israel has repeatedly struck alleged weapons convoys in Syria they claim are bound for Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah. However it has been reluctant to be dragged into the civil war and has rejected calls for a more substantial intervention. After Russia entered the war in support of its ally President Bashar al-Assad in late 2015, Moscow and Israel agreed to coordinate on their actions to avoid accidents. Last month, Syria fired missiles at Israel after the Jewish state struck a number of sites in the country, in the worst flare-up between the two governments since the civil war began in 2011. Netanyahu said at the time that the Israeli strikes targeted Hezbollah and warned the army would do so again if necessary. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Actor Jeremy Renner and Hannibal Buress are in negotiations to join Ed Helms in the New Line comedy "Tag". Details of Renner and Buress' roles are currently unknown, other than the fact that they will be part of the core group of friends, reported Variety. Jeff Tomsic is on board to direct from a script by Mark Steilen and Rob McKittrick. Todd Garner, Steilen and Sean Robins are producing the project. The film is based on a true story featured in the Wall Street Journal about a group of friends who have been playing a no-holds-barred version of the children's game Tag for the last 30 years. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das today condoled the death of three soldiers from the state who were killed when multiple avalanches hit an army post in J&K and announced a compensation of Rs 2 lakh each for the dependents. Das condoled the death of three soldiers of Jharkhand through an official statement issued here. He said that the whole state was in grief and prayed to God so that the departed souls could rest in peace. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Lt Governor Anil Baijal today cancelled office allotment to the ruling AAP, stating the allotment was made in "clear violation" of rules, as powers on land in the national capital are vested with the Centre. The L-G office sources told PTI Baijal had also sought opinion of the Public Works Department on the issue said the "accommodation was alloted violating the rules". "The accommodation allotment to the AAP by the government was in clear violation of laid down rules as powers related to land in Delhi are vested with the Centre," the sources said. The allotment of the accommodation was one of the "irregularities" pointed out by three-member Shunglu panel constituted by the then L-G Najeeb Jung to examine files related to decision taken by the AAP government. In November 2015, the AAP government had approved a policy for land allotment to state parties. The Kejriwal government then alloted a bungalow to the AAP on the Rouse Avenue early last year. The bungalow was earlier alloted to Asim Ahmed Khan, the then Delhi Minister, who was sacked over graft charges. Hitting out at the L-G and the Centre, senior AAP leader Sanjay Singh said, the BJP was not allowing the AAP to work for the people in the national capital. "I want to know, what is the personal enmity with Aam Aadmi Party? Why is the party being targeted and why this discrimination against us? "I want to know whether a party which has got huge mandate from the people and won 67 out of 70 seats cannot have its office in the state?" Singh asked. He said while the BJP has been alloted a bungalow on the Pant Marg, former L-G Najeeb Jung had also alloted land to the saffron party on the DDU Marg, which was orginally earmarked for a school. The BJP said, allotment of an accommodation for office to the AAP was a "criminal breach of trust and illegal encroachment of the property". "No sanction was taken from the Urban Development Ministry, the authority concerned, before for the move. Land is not a subject for the Delhi government. Even Delhi government's PWD has flagged the allotment proposal," Vijender Gupta, Leader of Opposition in the Delhi Assembly, said. "Installation of furniture and electrical fittings made in the government bungalow was turned into party office on public expense. This was against the norms. PWD raised objections, but they were ignored by the Chief Minister," Gupta added. AAP leader Ashish Khetan said, when "smaller parties" can have offices in the national capital, why can't a state party that has an over-whelming majority in the Delhi Assembly, have the same. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Maharashtra government planned to develop a cab hailing app in three months for black- and- yellow taxis on the lines of the services provided by private aggregators like Ola and Uber,Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said today. The measure was meant to help the black-and-yellow taxi operators facing stiff competition from the cab hailing services, especially in Mumbai and other major cities. Fandavis disclosed this while responding to a query by Leader of Opposition Dhananjay Munde, Hemant Takle (NCP) and other members in the Legislative Council. Takle said that after app-based cab aggregators came into the picture the business of black-and-yellow taxi drivers had been hit and sought to know if the Government could take some steps to ensure their survival. Munde said that private cab hailing services enabled the users to track locations besides providing easy services, and asked when would the government bring in such an App for black-and-yellow taxis. To this, Fadnavis said, "the government is in the process of developing an electronic platform for black-and- yellow taxis similar to that of cab aggregators. It will provide services similar to those given by cab aggregators. This app will be launched in three months." Kiran Pawaskar (NCP) said cab aggregators survived across the world due to the low costs they charge from customers, cleanliness and manners of their cabs and drivers as well as tracking facility. "On the other hand, black and yellow taxi drivers do not wear uniforms, do not behave properly and often refuse to ferry customers. They do not provide proper service and would hold people to ransom anytime. Will they be asked to adhere to rules ?" he asked. Transport Minister Diwakar Raote said black-and-yellow taxi drivers would themselves have to deal with issues like good manners and cleanliness to boost their business and survive the competition. He said taxi unions could help them in addressing these issues. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee received a gift packet from Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina after the former arrived in the national capital tonight. The gift packet apparently contained sweets. The Trinamool Congress leader will meet Hasina and Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Hyderabad House over lunch. She would also attend a banquet being hosted by President Pranab Mukherjee on Sunday evening in honour of Hasina. On Monday, Banerjee, a former Railway Minister, is likely to visit Parliament House before leaving for Kolkata. Officials here have said that Hasina's visit "will be a visit without water", indicating that a pact on the Teesta river water-sharing is not on the cards. "The central government will not go ahead with the agreement on Teesta without taking West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on board and she has been opposing it stridently citing water crisis in the state," an official said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Renewing her attack on the BJP for "mixing politics and religion", West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee today accused the party of trying to incite communal tension in the state and called upon the people to remain alert. "BJP is trying to disturb the communal harmony in the state. Who are they to decide what a person will eat or wear? Every religion has its own rituals and everyone has the right to perform rituals according to his or her belief. "I don't believe in creating divisions in the name of religion. I was born in a Hindu family, but does that mean I will not participate in religious functions of Sikhs, Muslims or Christians? I will participate in these functions a hundred times. If you have the power, stop me," she told a gathering here on the occasion of creation of the new Burdwan West district. Referring to the RSS-BJP-backed Ram Navami processions in which arms were allegedly carried, Banerjee said, "If you carry arms in processions without permission, the law will not allow it. I will not give permission to such programmes. "We do not indulge in the politics of division and we will not tolerate a communal riot in Bengal." The chief minister defended the police action against state BJP chief Dilip Ghosh for brandishing a sword at a Ram Navami function in Kharagpur, saying no one can organise such an event without permission. The police had yesterday filed cases under non-bailable sections against Ghosh. Reacting to Banerjee's statement, the BJP said law should be the same for everyone and the state government should stop "targeting" their party workers. BJP general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya said, "Do you need permission to organise Muharram processions? Then why do you need permission to organise a Ram Navami procession? "Will the state government take action against the TMC leaders who participated in the Ram Navami processions with arms? The law should be the same for everyone and the TMC government should stop targeting BJP workers. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) News / Local by Stephen Jakes Rampant littering in Bulawayo city has irked councillors who expressed concerns that there must be stringent measures to deal with the offenders.Latest council minutes states that Councillor Mlandu Ncube said there was an increase in the incidence of littering in the Central Business District."This was of major concern as it could easily result in drain blockages which may also lead to the flooding of the City in view of the current heavy rains being experienced throughout the region," he said."There was also need for an update on the Health Services Department's strength in terms of refuse collection/ removal vehicles."The minutes states that concurring, Councillors Silas Chigora and G. Masuku called for more information regarding the Committees efforts in addressing the litter problem in the Central Business District particularly in Sanitory lane, where dumping was rife."Councillor Gideon Mangena lamented indiscriminate methods used by a certain college in distributing fliers to advertise their activities streets were literary littered with these fliers and there was need for the college(s) concerned to be brought to account," reads the minutes.The Chairperson of the Committee (Councillor L. Mlilo) confirmed that efforts were underway in consultation with the Public RelationsSection to tackle the issue of littering. A man has been charged with animal cruelty after authorities say nearly two dozen French mastiffs were found dead or starving on a rural upstate New York property. Valdez Bentley was charged yesterday with 22 counts of failure to provide sustenance to his dogs. The 55-year-old was released from the Fulton County Jail after posting bail. Authorities say they were alerted to the situation by a contractor taking photos of a dilapidated home in the town of Stratford, in the southern Adirondacks. Troopers say when they arrived they found nine of the dogs dead and another 13 extremely emaciated. Police say the dogs had no food or water. The surviving dogs are being cared for at a local humane society. It couldn't be determined if Bentley has an attorney. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Meghalaya's first and only commercial pilot, Ruth West Kharshiing, has congratulated Kashmir's Ayesha Aziz after she received her commercial pilot license saying her achievement as a woman could inspire a lot many others from remote corners of the country to dream big. "I congratulate Aziz for her feat. Her achievement will surely inspire a lot other young women from remote corners of the country to dare dream big and fly," Ruth, who is a commercial pilot license holder in the USA, told PTI. "I am happy that we as young women hailing from remote corners of the country are able to do this. I hope to meet and probably fly with Aziz later on in life," she said. Aziz got her license last week from the Civil Aviation Department while Ruth was granted her license by the United State's Federal Aviation Administration in December last year. Ruth will have to appear for another exam in India before she could fly in the country as per the guidelines of the Directorate of Civil Aviation here. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti today expressed grief over the death of three soldiers in an avalanche in the Batalik sector, an official spokesman said here today. He said the Chief Minister has conveyed her sympathies to the bereaved families. The spokesman said Mehbooba also expressed sympathies with people who suffered losses to their properties, including damages to houses and orchards because of the inundation and incessant rains during the last three days. The chief minister said the Government fully stands with them during the difficult times. The Army had today found bodies of three soldiers who were missing after multiple avalanches struck their post in Batalik sector of Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Mukta Dutta Tomar, a 1984-batch IFS officer, has been appointed as India's next ambassador to Germany. The appointment of Tomar, who will succeed Gurjit Singh, comes ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Germany next month. The external affairs ministry today said she is expected to take up the assignment shortly. Among other positions, Tomar has been Consul General of India in Chicago. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Pakistan's envoy to India Abdul Basit today said he is not aware whether Gilgit-Baltistan was being announced as the country's fifth province, even though the region is part of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Basit said he has not seen any proposal pertaining to the matter and was unaware if it was "really happening". "I have to be very frank and honest with you I have not seen any proposal to this effect so I would not like to comment on that because I have not seen anything to that effect," he told NewsX in an interview. The channel released a press statement quoting Basit. Asked about dialogue between the two neighbours, he said Pakistan does not believe in preconditions and as "mature nations" both countries must avoid them. "In past whenever we engaged with each other, we were able to lead good positive results," he said. Basit, appointed as Pakistan's High Commissioner to India in 2014, said terrorism was an issue for both countries. "Both countries need to work. There is mutual distrust and we need to plug trust deficit as we tried to do post-Pathankot (attack)," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) India's oilmeal export rose by 22 per cent to Rs 3,178 crore during the last fiscal on higher sales, according to trade data. "The total export of oilmeal during April 2016 to March 2017 in terms of quantity is reported at 18,65,757 tonnes compared to 15,29,115 tonnes during the same period of last year i.E. Up by 22 per cent," Solvent Extractors' Association of India (SEA) said in a statement. In terms of value the total earning stood at Rs 3,178 crore compared to Rs 2,600 crore in 2015-16, it added. Out of the total exports, the country shipped soyameal the maximum at 9,16,306 tonnes worth Rs 2,235.50 crore during the financial year 2016-17. Oilmeal export increased by 42 per cent to 1,50,773 tonnes last month compared to 1,06,122 tonnes in March 2016. South Korea imported 5,43,235 tonnes of oilmeal last fiscal, while Vietnam imported 3,28,348 tonnes, France 2,23,920 tonnes and Japan 1,92,575 tonnes. India exported 2,30,581 tonnes of oilmeal to Bangladesh. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A 29-year-old Pakistani man was stabbed to death allegedly by two teenagers in a "horrific" crime spree in Australia, prompting police to investigate if the attack was inspired by the Islamic State terror group. Zasheen Akbar, a service station attendant, was found with stab wounds by a fellow employee at the Caltex service station in New South Wales late last night. The fellow employee found Akbar, a Pakistani, lying on the floor and windows smashed, The Daily Telegraph reported. Counterterrorism police are investigating if the two 15-year-old and 16-year-old boys, who allegedly murdered the attendant, had been radicalised by extremist Islamic ideology. The two teenagers have been arrested and police have not provided further details. The Australian media claimed that a sheet of paper that covers the window of the service station where letters "IS" were reportedly written in blood after the attendant was fatally stabbed. Police believe the youths, from Queanbeyan, went on a rampage, allegedly stabbing another man in the stomach, hitting a third with a tyre iron and a fourth with a beer bottle. "The teenagers went on a violent crime spree but we think one of the violent crimes at the servo has the hallmarks of an IS inspired terrorist act," a senior police source was quoted as saying by The Daily Telegraph. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull also said allegations that the teenagers killed a service station employee in Queanbeyan "underline" the government's concerns about terrorism. "The involvement in this crime of two males, two youths, teenagers, is a shocking matter and one that underlines many of the concerns we have raised in this field...They are in custody following the alleged murder of a 29-year-old man in Queanbeyan overnight," Turnbull said. "Our condolences goes to the family of the victim. We send our prayers and best wishes to the two other victims of that evening," Turnbull said. The police will be making a statement about this but I can say that the circumstances have raised sufficient concern, as I have discussed with the Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police (AFP), Andrew Colvin, raise sufficient concern to warrant the involvement of the Joint-Counter Terrorism eam, he said. Police expect to lay a number of serious charges, Monaro Police Superintendent Rod Smith said. "Our investigation into these matters will continue, but it doesn't need to be said it doesn't get more serious than this - an absolute horrific series of events," Smith said. He wanted to reassure the public "two people we believe are involved in all of these are in custody". NSW Deputy Commissioner Catherine Burn said police had "sufficient information" to believe the 16-year-old's involvement in the alleged murder may be related to terrorism. That information comes from physical evidence at the scene and other sources, Burn said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A vigilance team today arrested a a cashier of Public Health and Engineering Department (PHED), on graft charges from Bihar's Rohtas district. Acting on a complaint, a vigilance team headed by Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Maharaj Kaniska Kumar laid a trap and arrested cashier Sharda Chaudhary from his office located in Dharmashala locality on GT Road in Sasaram soon after he took Rs 27,000 as bribe from the complainant, an official release said. One Anil Kumar Arya, a native of Gaurakshani village under Sasaram police station area, had lodged a complaint with the vigilance officials that Chaudhary and Sujit Kumar, an executive engineer, had demanded bribe in lieu of releasing the bills for work done by the complainant, the release said. The tainted cashier was being brought to the state capital where he would be produced before a designated court for judicial remand, it said. The vigilance department has laid 16 traps and arrested 18 government servants so far this year. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Police has identified ten more persons allegedly involved in the lynching of a Muslim man by cow vigilantes and efforts are on trace them. Three persons including main accused Vipin Yadav, have already been arrested. The other main culprit identified as Rajesh is absconding, police said. "Six persons were named in the FIR and besides them, we have identified ten more persons on the basis of the video of the incident," SP Alwar Rahul Prakash told PTI. He said that Vipin Yadav and Rajesh are the main culprits who along with others thrashed those who were transporting cows and damaged their vehicles. Vipin, Ravindra Yadav and Kalu Ram were arrested late on Wednesday night. "Police teams are looking for the other accused involved in the incident," he said. 16 people were allegedly illegally transporting 36 animals in six pick-up vans. They were on their way to Haryana from Jaipur when the vigilantes stopped two of the vehicles in Behror on Jaipur-Delhi national highway and thrashed five persons on Saturday. They were admitted to a nearby hospital where 55-year old Pehlu Khan died on Monday night. (REOPENS DES11) Meanwhile, former chief minister Ashok Gehlot demanded a CBI inquiry into the lynching of the man. "There should be an impartial inquiry of the whole incident by the CBI. All the culprits must be arrested and punished," Gehlot tweeted. Private traders imported 44.10 lakh tonnes of wheat during the first eleven months of the last fiscal, the government said today. "The government has not imported wheat since 2008. However, private traders have imported 44.10 lakh tonnes of wheat from April 2016 to February 2017," Minister of State for Agriculture S S Ahluwalia said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha. He said the government has raised import duty on wheat to 10 per cent with effect from March 28. "To ensure remunerative prices to farmers, several steps are taken by the government such as fixing Minimum Support price (MSP) every year and procurement of wheat from the farmers," he said. The minister informed that the government had wheat stock of 94.29 lakh tonnes at the beginning of March as against the buffer norm of 64.60 lakh tonnes as on April 1. The wheat stock is likely to improve in the coming months when Rabi crop arrives in markets, Ahluwalia said. India's wheat production is estimated at record 96.64 million tonnes in the 2016-17 crop year (July-June) as against 92.29 million tonnes in 2015-16 on the back of a good monsoon. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) News / Local by Staff Reporter A witch hunter from Jambezi was knifed to death while enjoying sex with a married woman in Lupane.Moyana Nyoni aged 29 had been caught in the act with Iphithule Sibanda.Sibanda is married to Editor Moyo aged 23.Nyoni and Sibanda had been used to occasionally indulge sex when Moyo was away.However, on the fateful day, Moyo set a trap on the love rats.Moyo told his cheating wife that he was traveling to Binga for several days.However, he only returned unexpectedly that very night and found the lovers indulging in sex.He drew out his knife and aimed for Nyoni's chest who died on his way to hospital, B-Metro reported.The late Nyoni had been invited to Lupane by lover's aunt, Alice Ncube.Moyo is on the run, police said. Ramkumar Ramanathan overcame a spirited challenge from Temur Isamilov to hand India a 1-0 lead against Uzbekistan in the Davis Cup Asia/Oceania Group I tie here today. Ranked 267, Ramkumar eked out a 6-2 5-7 6-2 7-5 win over the Uzbek, who is ranked 406, in the opening singles rubber of the second round tie. Prajnesh Gunneswaran, ranked 287, makes his India debut against Sanjar Fayziev (376). To his credit, Ismailov made life difficult for the Indian despite suffering cramps in his right hamstring. Ramkumar dominated the proceedings before a bout of double faults handed Ismailov a small opening, which the Uzbek garbbed with both hands to make a match of it. The Indian sealed the opening set in a jiffy and was leading 4-3 in the second when he saw himself down 0-40. He saved two breakpoints but netted a backhand on the third to allow Ismailov stay alive and fight. The Uzbek played freely while Ramkumar put himself under pressure to finish the job quickly. The nerves got to Ramkumar and, in utter desperation, he squandered four set points and was eventually broken in the 12th game. The Uzbek had snatched the momentum but suffered cramps in his right leg in the third set, making the job of the Indian easy. Ramkumar ran away with the third set as Ismailov's restricted movements gave him easy points. Isnailov, though, recovered remarkably after a medical timeout and was battle ready for the fourth set. Ramkumar was always catching up with the Uzbek, holding his serves without fuss, and soon it was 5-5. Two unforced errors by Ismail gave Ramkumar three break chances. He converted the third when Ismail buried a return to the net. Ramkumar's unforced errors continued as twice he sent down double faults on match points. He though sealed the match with a forehand volley winner. The winner of the tie will qualify for the World Group play-offs, to be played in September. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Reliance Communications is learnt to have sacked nearly 380 employees for below-par performance, and 260 more are seen to be in the line of fire. "RCom under its performance management system has asked around 380 people to leave the company for non-performance. It may sack another 260 people for the same reason," a source told PTI. Faced with cut-throat competition, RCom had reported its first ever consolidated net loss of Rs 531 crore in the December quarter. The merger of SSTL with RCom is expected to be complete by the end of this month. RCom is believed to have paid second instalment of Rs 396 crore spectrum purchased and interconnection usage charge of around Rs 25 crore, among others. "In the merger process, the liability spectrum instalments of SSTL have come on to RCom. The company cleared IUC payment to a telecom operator after gap of around 2 months. The rest of the payments were as per schedule," the source said. The Anil Ambani-led RCom did not comment on a query sent to it. Icra has downgraded the long-term rating of Rs 5,000 crore debt in the form of non-convertible debenture. Credit ratings are ascertained based on the company's ability to serve or pay back debt. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Noted art historian Saryu Doshi was today appointed as the Vice-Chairman of the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) here. "She takes charge with immediate effect. The decision was taken at the meeting of the governing council of INTACH at its Delhi-based headquarters," said a member of the council, who attended the meeting. The post of the vice-chairman had fallen vacant after the completion of the term of Tasneem Mehta on March 18. "Saryu is a Mumbai-based art scholar and her presence will add much value to this heritage body," the member told PTI. The governing council has 42 members, including the chairman. It holds at least two meetings a year, approves the annual accounts and annual report, along with other policy matters, and is empowered to delegate all or any of its powers to the executive committee. INTACH's current chairman is Maj. Gen. (retd) LK Gupta. "Besides regular members, there are several ex-officio members from the ASI, National Museum and a few ministries," the member said. Senior-ranked officers of the army and navy are permanent invitees to the council. INTACH works on the conservation and restoration of unprotected heritage with its nearly 190 chapters spread across the country. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) It was a walk down the memory lane for the State Bank of India chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya as she visited her alma mater at Bhilai in the Durg district of Chhattisgarh today. Bhattacharya had attended the English Medium Middle School run by Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP) way back in 1962. This was her first visit to the school after becoming SBI chairman, according to BSP officials. She also got to see the school's attendance register which had her name. "Fifty or sixty years ago, it would have been hard to imagine the kind of growth Bhilai has achieved. Back then the area was a barren piece of land. On this barren land, Bhilai was planted as a 'Temple of Modern India'," she said, speaking on the occasion. The school inculcated very strong values in the students, she said. "The kind of grounding we got was par excellence. It stood us in good stead in our subsequent careers," she added. To the students, she said, "You have places to go, your future is bright with the teachers to guide you." A few alumni of 1962 batch were also present on this occasion. Bhattacharya later also visited the company house in sector-10 where she lived with her parents. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Expressing concern over the "misuse" of sedition and anti-terror laws against human rights and political activitists and relgious minorities, a CPI(M) member in Rajya Sabha today said these charges were being "used recklessly" and with a "political motive". Raising the issue during Zero Hour, CPI(M) member Ritabrata Banerjee said sedition charges as well as the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) were being slapped in a wrong manner. "Invoking sedition provisions by raking up baseless charges are completely unacceptable and it is a brazen violation of democratic principles and basic human rights," Banerjee said. He said the judiciary, in a number of cases while awarding life sentences, has used "very harsh words" in cases where UAPA was slapped. "But there have been a series of actual terror cases where the judiciary has no harsh words at all. Malegaon, Ajmer Dargah, Samjhauta Express, Hyderabad Mecca Masjid...All those involved in bomb blasts and killings authorised by right-wing groups like Abhinav Bharat, let alone being declared terror organisations, the accused are brazenly acquitted," he said. He also referred to the recent acquittal of Aseemanand, accused in several of these cases, and six others by a Jaipur NIA Court. Deputy Chairman P J Kurien said expunged the use of the name of religion by the CPI(M) member. Banerejee also said that "yesterday in West Bengal, we have seen how these organisations have openly taken out processions with arms in hand", in a reference to the marches taken out by BJP and RSS in different parts of the state. Sukhendu Sekhar Roy (TMC) too raised objections to certain parts of Banerjee's speech. In his Zero Hour mention, T K Rangarajan (also CPI-M) raised the issue of amendements proposed in the RTI Act, while Swait Malik (BJP) demanded starting up of work on the alternate expressway connecting Amritsar and Delhi. SP member Revati Raman Singh highlighted plight of farmers and demanded that their loans including those for tractors and term loans, should be waived off. Vivek Gupta (TMC) raised the issue of delay in issuance of passports. He said the capacity of police verification for issuance of passports should be agumented. Ali Anwar Ansari (JD-U) said Coal India was paying only Rs 5,000-7,000 to about its 4,000 teachers and demanded a hike in their salaries. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Senate confirmed Neil Gorsuch to become the newest associate justice on the Supreme Court today, elevating Donald Trump's nominee following a corrosive partisan confrontation that could have lasting impacts for the Senate and the court. Vice President Mike Pence was presiding as the Senate voted 54-45 in favor of Gorsuch, a 49-year-old veteran of the 10th US Circuit of Appeals in Denver whose rulings make him an intellectual heir to the late Justice Antonin Scalia, whose seat he will fill. Gorsuch won support from 51 of the chambers' Republicans as well as three moderate Democrats up for re-election in states Trump won last fall: Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Donnelly of Indiana. GOP Sen Johnny Isakson of Georgia did not vote. The outcome was a major win for Trump, his biggest congressional victory to date, as well as for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky, who kept Scalia's seat open after the justice's death in February 2016. McConnell refused to hold hearings for President Barack Obama's nominee. After he is sworn in, Gorsuch will restore the court's conservative voting majority that existed before Scalia's death. Republicans exulted in the victory. "He's an exceptional choice," McConnell said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar said today the sex ratio at birth stood at 950 girls to 1,000 boys for the first time in the history of the state in March this year. As per district-wise data, the sex ratio at birth during March in Kaithal, Rohtak, Jhajjar, Gurugram, Bhiwani, Jind, Fatehabad, Panchkula, Rewari, Ambala, Mewat, Sonepat and Faridabad was 864, 863, 893, 893, 893, 896, 898, 912, 913, 921, 926, 939 and 947 respectively. The ratio in Karnal, Hisar, Yamunanagar, Sirsa, Kurukshetra, Panipat, Palwal and Narnaul was 953, 972, 974, 976, 980, 993, 1,217 and 1,279 respectively, as per information provided by the state government. Khattar said that the state had, after the launch of 'Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao' programme by Prime Minister Narendra Modi from Haryana, accepted the challenge of improving the skewed sex ratio. It launched a massive campaign in the state by implementing Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act, 1994 and Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act, 1971 and running sensitisation-cum awareness campaigns promoting girl child. An official release quoting Khattar said more than 430 FIRs have been lodged in the state under the PC-PNDT Act and the MTP Act against the offenders during last about two years since the launch of this campaign, who were involved in sex selection and female foeticide. Out of these, more than 80 FIRs were registered after inter-state raids in the neighbouring states of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Punjab. The sex ratio at birth in the state crossed the 900 mark in 2016 for the first time, for which the Prime Minister had lauded the Haryana government for its achievement. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The CBI today carried out searches at 16 locations in Ahmedabad after booking 12 people, including Axis bank employees, for alleged illegal cash deposits of around Rs 100 crore post demonetisation. The cash deposits of Rs 100.57 crore in purported shell companies' accounts in Axis Bank's Memnagar branch in Ahmedabad were in violation of RBI notifications issued after November 8 last year, when the government, in a sudden move, scrapped Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes. The CBI has booked branch manager Yasha Mehta, operations head Ahbhimanyu Singh Naruka and customers' relations officer Rita Kumar and nine others, including the cash handlers. The agency teams swooped down on 16 locations in Ahmedabad at offices and residences of the accused. There were three groups of cash handlers who were depositing demonetised Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes in the accounts of purported shell companies at the bank, CBI sources said. CBI spokesperson R K Gaur said the notes were allegedly being deposited by a group of people in name lending accounts with the help of the branch manager and other bank officials. The first group was Sanjay Manu Soni, Saurin Soni and Sameer, the second was Himanshu Agarwal, Jaideep, J D Shroff and Afzal and the third was Kiran Parekh and Hitesh Parekh, he said. The bank officials allegedly abused their position by allowing huge amount of unauthorised transactions in accounts of shell companies between November and December last year, he said. Owners of the so-called shell companies as well as those who were used for depositing the huge amount of cash in the said accounts were people of no-means and whose profile was non-commensurate with the quantum of such huge suspicious deposits, the FIR said. The accused were creating such accounts for "lending" purposes for depositing cash on commission basis and converting black money into white, they said, adding huge cash deposits were made in the bank several times during a day by one person. It is alleged that the first group of cash handlers deposited Rs 55.70 crore, the second group deposited Rs 41.62 crore and third group Rs 3.25 crore, they said. "At many such instances, they deposited huge amount of cash by way of submitting multiple deposit slips in one go, with cash value of less than Rs nine lakh, per slip, as per the advise of the bank officials," Gaur said. "It was also alleged that cash deposit slips of approximately Rs 13 crore are not available with the bank," he said. These suspicious deposits were transferred to bullion traders and jewellers by way of RTGS, sources said, adding these bullion traders and jewellers will soon be called for questioning. The RBI guidelines issued after November 8, mandated that cash could have been deposited either by the account holder or their authorised representatives on production of suitable identity document. "...In the above cases, a majority of the pay in slips bear forged signatures of the account holders, which were ignored by bank officials," Gaur said. He said the accused in active connivance with the bank officials had failed to disclose their unaccounted wealth, in accordance with the amnesty schemes declared by the government and has converted black money into white by misusing the banking channels. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Set to take over the reins of engineering major Larsen & Toubro, S N Subrahmanyan today said stepping into A M Naik's shoes will be a difficult task, but he is all geared up to take the business forward. "It is an onerous responsibility of managing a complex and diversified and very uniquely positioned organisation. And stepping into the shoes of the legend like Naik is definitely not easy and is not something which one would look forward to in a business-as-usual manner," Subrahmanyan told PTI here. Naik, who has served for over 52 years, became CEO and Managing Director in 1999 and was appointed chairman in 2003. He will now become L&T's non-executive Chairman, effective October 1. Subrahmanyan said Naik had identified him 12 years back and he was practically being mentored by Naik in the last three years. "I also had the chance to work with him extremely closely in the last two-and-a-half to three years and therefore much of the organisation business system, etc, I have been privy to," Subrahmanyan said. "Of course one cannot say one is an expert as Naik has been there for long time and started the businesses, so he knows much better than me, but one has to get into some of that (responsibility)," he added. Subrahmanyan further said L&T's businesses already have stability and growth, and "we just have to see how to take it forward". "We already have our five years strategy plan in place where many of the thought processes within the businesses have been captured. We have identified the businesses that we need to exit as well as those which are potential growth drivers," he said. In August last year, L&T announced its five years strategic plan that will help the company achieve its target revenues of Rs 2 lakh crore by 2021. "We have identified businesses like infrastructure, realty and services business like IT and engineering services as potential growth drivers. These are the ones which have been our growth drivers and cash cows for the last few years so we will continue to drive at this pace," he said. Besides, the company has also identified businesses like Water Management, Smart World, Communication and Digital, among others as other growth drivers, he said. In the 'Smart World' business segment, Subrahmanyan said, the company has already undertaken various projects including providing security solutions in Mumbai, creating smart infrastructure in Jaipur, developing smart city in Nagpur, Hyderabad, Pune, among others. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) News / National by Staff reporter President Robert Mugabe apparently read the riot act to the organizers of recent Zanu-PF demonstrations at Wednesday's politburo meeting in Harare, including those who mounted this week's protest marches against party national political commissar Saviour Kasukuwere.Party sources said that Mugabe's outburst had forced the alleged masterminds behind the recent demos to disown the marches.Meanwhile, beleaguered Zanu-PF political commissar Saviour Kasukuwere reportedly asked for forgiveness from President Robert Mugabe during Wednesday's politburo meeting, NewsDay has heard. Sources who attended the meeting claimed Mugabe told the meeting he was aware of Kasukuwere's shenanigans including creating parallel structures.Sources said Kasukuwere took the chance to apologize "profusely". The revenue of telecom sector from consumer services like mobile telephony and data dipped 10.5 per cent to Rs 37,284 crore in the October-December period over the previous three months, according to regulator Trai. The revenue of the sector from the same set of services stood at Rs 41,681 crore in July-September last year. The sector had reported Rs 44,754 crore adjusted gross revenue (amount earned from sale of telecom services only) from access service in April-June 2016, showed the data released by the regulator. Incumbent telecom operators have blamed free services of new entrant Reliance Jio for the decline in their quarterly numbers. It was in July when Reliance Jio started expansion of its free 4G services bundled with LYF handsets in trial phase. The company in mid-July claimed to have 1.5 million subscribers during the trial phase. Jio launched its service commercially on September 5 and became first company to clock 100 million subscribers in just 170 days of its launch. While Jio provided free 4G service during the period, other telecom operators struggled to compete with it. Telecom operators pay government licence fee and other charges based on their adjusted gross revenue (AGR). "The license fee declined to Rs 3,698 crore for the December quarter from Rs 4,091 crore in the July-September period of 2016," the report said. The AGR from all telecom services fell by 9.17 per cent on quarterly basis to Rs 45,905 crore in October-December from Rs 50,539 crore in the July-September period. "Access services contributed 81.22 per cent of the total adjusted gross revenue of telecom services. In access services, gross revenue, adjusted gross revenue(AGR), license fee and spectrum usage charges (SUC) declined by 8.09 per cent, 10.55 per cent, 10.92 per cent and 12.29 per cent respectively," the report said. The gross revenue of telecom service provider too declined by 6.79 per cent to Rs 66,532 in October-December 2016 from Rs 71,378.69 at the end of July-September period. It was Rs 73,344.66 crore at the end of April-June 2016 quarter. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, today set foot in Tawang for the second time in seven years as part of his visit to Arunachal Pradesh that has triggered strident protests by China. The exiled Tibetan leader was to reach Tawang by chopper on April 4 but due to bad weather, he had to travel over 550 km by road from Guwahati to reach here. He was accompanied by Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu. The Dalai Lama, 81 , is visiting Tawang for the fifth time during his seventh trip to the frontier state that began in 1983. The Dalai's previous trip to Arunachal Pradesh came in 2009, when he stayed at Tawang for four days. This visit came exactly 50 years after his exile from Tibet. He was compelled to flee Lhasa in 1959 and cross over to India by foot via the Tawang sector. The Nobel Laureate covered 140 km by road from Dirang in West Kameng district accompanied by Khandu with a 30-km stretch of the route at Sela being partly snow-covered and having turned muddy and slippery due to the melting snow. The state police and paramilitary personnel are keeping vigil along the 140-km stretch between Dirang and Tawang, particularly at Sela (13,700 feet). Tawang has been decorated with colourful prayer flags and flowers with the roads repainted and the drains cleaned. "A series of religious discourses by the Dalai Lama will begin tomorrow. He will stay at the Tawang monastery for four nights before leaving on April 11," Tawang deputy commissioner Sang Phuntso said. Security has been strengthened around the Tawang monastery, the Yid-Ga-Choezin ground where the spiritual leader will deliver his sermons. The 336-year-old monastery is the largest in India and second largest in the world after Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet. Perched on a cliff at 10,000 feet, Tawang monastery is known in Tibetan as 'Tawang Gaden Namgyal Lhatse,' meaning celestial paradise chosen by the horse. It belongs to the Gelugpa school of Mahayana Buddhism and had religious connection with Lhasa's Drepung Monastery that continued during the British rule. Beijing refers to this connection to claim Tawang as part of China after invading and taking over Tibet in 1950. Chinese state media had said on Wednesday that India is using the Dalai Lama as a diplomatic leverage to challenge China's "bottom line." The Dalai's first stop was Bomdila, the headquarters of West Kameng district, from where Chinese soldiers retreated after the 1962 war. A day after delivering sermons in Bomdila, he spent two days at Dirang, about 40 km north of Bomdila, where he consecrated the Thupsing Dhargye monastery. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Two days before polling in the by-election to Srinagar Parliamentary constituency, prominent Shia leader Agha Syed Mohsin today switched allegiance from opposition National Conference (NC) and joined the ruling Peoples Democratic party (PDP) here. Hailing from a prominent religious family of Budgam, Mohsin was welcomed into the party fold by Chief Minister and PDP president Mehbooba Mufti, a spokesman of the party said. Mohsin is the son of political activist and religious scholar late Agha Syed Mustafa and uncle of NC leader and former minister Agha Syed Ruhullah. Mohsin said he had been observing the functioning of the PDP for long and had come to the conclusion that it was the only political party that worked for the interests of the poor, marginalised and backward communities in Jammu and Kashmir. He had joined the NC in 2014. The Srinagar Lok Sabha constituency, spread over the three Assembly seats of Srinagar, Budgam and Ganderbal, will go to polls on Sunday. NC president Farooq Abdullah is contesting the seat against PDP's Nazir Ahmad Khan. Abdullah had contested and lost from the seat in the 2014 general election. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) President Pranab Mukherjee today said traditional Indian values and Yoga can become good mechanisms to support people suffering from mental health disorders and noted that social stigma attached to such conditions remains a "major" problem in India. On World Health Day, which focuses on depression this year, Mukherjee said that this condition is the most common form of mental health disorders and asked medical fraternity to focus on traditional support systems, social support systems and spiritual beliefs and practices in providing wellbeing to all. Observing that 5.2 per cent of the adult population in India suffer from depression in some form, he appealed to health professionals to "think globally and act locally" and come together to meet the challenges of depression. "Out of all mental health disorders, depression is probably the most common. As per the National Mental Health Survey 2015-16 conducted by National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), 5.2 per cent of the Indian adult population suffers from depression in some form or other. "The problem of depression often gets ignored due to lack of understanding on the part of the family members. The social stigma attached to a mental disorder is also a major problem in India. However, people have now started talking about these issues leading to greater awareness," he said while addressing a World Health Day summit organised by NIMCARE. He said the entire world made a commitment in the form of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in which mental health and wellbeing figure prominently. Noting that with the SDGs, countries (including India) have committed to achieve quantified targets by 2030, the President said looking at the scale of the problems and the limited time available, the task is "challenging". "Traditional Indian values along with family systems can be good mechanisms to support those who suffer from mental health disorders. I urge medical practitioners to focus on the social support systems, spiritual beliefs and practices as well as system of Yoga in their quest for providing wellbeing to all," he said. Observing that lack of mental wellbeing contributes significantly to the total disability and morbidity burden across the world, he said productivity of human beings, whether in workforce or in the family situation, gets reduced if one has any mental disorder. Mental health disorders have a wide range, from simple disorders to very complex situations, he said adding that it is often seen that simple disorders, if not managed in time, tend to become more complex putting the patient at higher risk of morbidity. He said there is a severe shortage of mental health professionals in India and the gap can be bridged effectively by telemedicine. He said telemedicine application in armed forces healthcare delivery and the health monitoring of defence force personnel and their dependents is of paramount importance. With the introduction of new norms for implementation of telemedicine for the army, accessibility to quality healthcare, specially in hilly areas of the North East will be provided, he said. "I have no doubt that telemedicine will play a very important role in saving the lives of our jawans and provide them advanced updates on health-related issues. Telemedicine is well suited for armed forces and will significantly improve the healthcare delivery system," he added. Mukherjee expressed happiness that the organisers of the summit had planned strategic follow up conferences in different cities of the world to create broad framework for collective action. "I appeal to all of you to think globally and act locally. I also urge all the health stakeholders to come together in meeting the challenges of depression," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) US President Donald Trump gave a go ahead for a missile strike against the Syrian regime from his Mar a-Lago resort in Florida after a series of meetings and conference calls with his national security team, the White House said today. And in less than four hours after he gave the green signal, missiles were launched against the Syrian regime, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters. Giving a timeline of Trump's decision making process, Spicer said the President first heard about the gas attack in Syria at his daily briefing on Tuesday at about 10:30 am. He asked questions and his team for a range of options. There was another meeting at 8 pm Tuesday at the White House on options and again Wednesday morning. Trump met again 3 pm Wednesday and decided to reconvene Thursday for a decision. On route to Florida on Thursday, at about 1:30 pm, he spoke through secured video conference with his team and again at 4 pm with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and in a secure room in Palm Beach. That's when the "President gave the OK to move ahead," Spicer said. Missiles were launched at 7:40 pm during dinner. Foreign leaders and congressional leaders were notified starting at 8:30 pm, just as first impacts were hitting the ground, Spicer said, adding that these calls were made by the Secretary of State, Defence Secretary and the National Security Council. Trump informed the visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping as dinner concluded. After dinner, Trump went to secure room with his Secretaries of State Rex Tillerson and the Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and had secure conference call with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. During the call, Trump asked about effectiveness and was told it would take few hours but initial results positive. Responding to questions, Trump said congressional and world leaders had fairly unanimous praise. However, he refrained from spelling out the next moves of the Trump Administration. "He's not going to telegraph his next move," he said. The attack was "very decisive justified and proportional", he added. He said the actions were taken were clearly against the Assad regime. There was no political contact with Moscow, just military "last night sent a very clear signal". Spicer said the President was very disturbed by the chemical attack. "It was very disturbing and tragic and moving to him. He had a very deliberative process of asking his national security team to develop options," he said. Trump, he said believes that the Syrian government and the Assad regime should abide by the agreement they made not to use chemical weapons. US President Donald Trump and his team discussed three options before zeroing in on a limited missile strike in Syria in response to a "heinous" chemical attack on civilians by President Bashar Assad's regime, his aides said today. "There were three options we discussed with the president, and the president asked us to focus on two options in particular, to mature those options, and he had a series of questions for us that we endeavoured to answer," US National Security Advisor Lt Gen H R McMaster told reporters during a hurriedly convened conference. "After a meeting of considerable length and a far-reaching discussion, Trump decided to act," McMaster said giving the sequence of events. He said the national security team weighed the risk associated with any military action. "But we weighed that against the risk of inaction, which is the risk of this continued, egregious, inhumane attacks on innocent civilians with chemical weapons," McMaster said at the conference which was also addressed by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. "It's important to recognise, as I think everyone does, the chaotic circumstances that exist on the ground in Syria with the presence of a battle underway to defeat ISIS, the presence of Al-Qaeda elements inside of Syria and a civil war that is underway," he said. "We feel that the strike itself was proportional because it was targeted at the facility that delivered this most recent chemical weapons attack," he said. According to McMaster, Trump was immediately notified after the chemical attack that killed 86 people, including 27 children. "He was very interested in understanding better the circumstances of the attack and who was responsible," he noted. Tillerson said the US coordinated very carefully with its international partners in terms of communicating with them around the world. "I would tell you that the response from our allies, as well as the region and the Middle East has been overwhelmingly supportive of the action we taken," he said. "There was a thorough examination of a wide range of options, and I think the President made the correct choice and made the correct decision. First, to be decisive in acting, acting against this heinous act on the part of Bashar Assad, but acting in a way that was clearly directed at the source of this particular attack to send that strong message," Tillerson said in response to a question. "Other things were considered. Those were rejected for any number of reasons. In my view, the President made the exact, correct decision," said the Secretary of State, adding that the missile strike shows that Trump is willing to take decisive actions. "This clearly indicates the president is willing to take decisive action when called for," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Tulsi Gabbard, the first Hindu lawmaker in the US Congress has described the massive American military strike on a Syrian airbase as "reckless" and "short-sighted" amid bipartisan support from the House of Representatives to President Donald Trump's punitive action. "It angers and saddens me that President Trump has taken the advice of war hawks and escalated our illegal regime change war to overthrow the Syrian government," Gabbard, the Democratic Congresswoman from Hawaii, said in a statement. Gabbard is a Iraq war veteran and a member of the powerful House Foreign Relations Committee. In January Gabbard travelled to Syria to meet Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, thus making her perhaps the only senior US official to meet the Syrian leader. "This escalation is short-sighted and will lead to more dead civilians, more refugees, the strengthening of al-Qaeda and other terrorists, and a possible nuclear war between the US and Russia," she said. "This administration has acted recklessly without care or consideration of the dire consequences of the US attack on Syria without waiting for the collection of evidence from the scene of the chemical poisoning," Gabbard said. "If President Assad is indeed guilty of this horrible chemical attack on innocent civilians, I will be the first to call for his prosecution and execution by the International Criminal Court." she said. "However, because of our attack on Syria, this investigation may now not even be possible. And without such evidence, a successful prosecution will be much harder," Gabbard, who is also a co-chair of the Congressional India Caucus said. Gabbard appeared to be the lone voice in opposing the Trump's decision to carry out missile strikes against the Syrian regime. Trump appeared to have bipartisan support to his military decision, which came in less than 100 days of him taking over the office of presidency. On Trump's orders, US warships in the Mediterranean Sea launched between 50-60 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Shayrat air base, in Homs governorate, where the warplanes that carried out the chemical attacks are based. The attack was in retaliation to a "barbaric" chemical attack on civilians allegedly by Assad's regime. "This action was appropriate and just. These tactical strikes make clear that the Assad regime can no longer count on American inaction as it carries out atrocities against the Syrian people," said House Speaker Paul Ryan. "Resolving the years-long crisis in Syria is a complex task, but Bashar al-Assad must be held accountable and his enablers must be persuaded to change course. I look forward to the administration further engaging Congress in this effort," Ryan said. "Unlike the previous administration, President Trump confronted a pivotal moment in Syria and took action. For that, he deserves the support of the American people. Building on tonight's credible first step, we must finally learn the lessons of history and ensure that tactical success leads to strategic progress," said Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham in a joint statement. "Making sure Assad knows that when he commits such despicable atrocities he will pay a price is the right thing to do? It is incumbent on the Trump administration to come up with a strategy and consult with Congress before implementing it," said Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer. "Assad was warned, repeatedly, by the US and the UN that the intentional targeting of innocent men, women and children is intolerable," said Congressman Ed Royce, Chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee. "Now Assad has been caught red-handed carrying out another abhorrent chemical attack, and the administration has taken a measured response. Moving ahead, the administration must work with Congress and lay out clear policy goals for Syria and the region," Royce said. "By acting decisively against the very facility from which Assad launched his murderous chemical weapons attack, President Trump has made it clear to Assad and those who empower him that the days of committing war crimes with impunity are over," said Senator Marco Rubio. Senator Dick Durbin said this was a measured response to the Syrian nerve gas atrocity. Senator Bob Corker, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee applauded Trump for taking decisive action following the latest chemical weapons attack. "These military strikes against Assad's arsenal send a clear signal that the United States will stand up for internationally accepted norms and rules against the use of chemical weapons," said Senator Ben Cardin. "Tonight's strike in Syria appears to be a proportional response to the regime's use of chemical weapons. If the President intends to escalate the US military's involvement in Syria, he must to come to Congress for an Authorisation for Use of Military Force which is tailored to meet the threat and prevent another open-ended war in the middle east," said Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi. House Democratic Whip Steny H Hoyer said the airstrikes, launched in response to the horrific atrocity of the use of chemical weapons, are not a sufficient answer on their own to the challenge posed by the civil war in Syria and the Assad regime's war crimes. "President Trump must follow them with the presentation of a clear and coherent strategy and the articulation of what discernible goals these strikes were meant to advance," he said. "Trump's decision to strike the Assad regime's air base where chemical weapons were deployed against the innocent people of Syria earlier this week sends a clear signal to the world that war crimes such as these will not be tolerated. I support the president's swift and decisive action to punish this dictatorship for the atrocities committed," said Senator Johny Isakson. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy applauded US troops for their professionalism in carrying out these strikes. "Assad has made his disregard for innocent human life and longstanding norms against chemical weapons use crystal clear. Tonight's strikes show these evil actions carry consequences," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The UN Security Council will meet today at 11:30 am (local time) to discuss the US missile strikes on Syria, US diplomats said. Russia demanded an emergency meeting after angrily denouncing the military action as an "aggression against a sovereign state. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The US today criticised Russia for standing with Syrian President Bashar Al Assad every time he crossed the "line of human decency" and asserted that it was "fully justified" for striking the Syrian airfield from which the chemical attacks were launched. "Our military destroyed the airfield from which this week's chemical strike took place. We were fully justified in doing so. The moral stain of the Assad regime could no longer go unanswered. His crimes against humanity could no longer be met with empty words," US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley told an urgently called UN Security Council meeting here on the situation in Syria following the US missile strike. Haley described the US missile strike against the Syrian air field as a "very measured step" and said Washington is "prepared to do more but we hope that will not be necessary". Earlier, Haley had said in a statement that Bolivia had requested an emergency Security Council meeting to discuss the events in Syria in closed session. Rejecting the demand for a closed door meeting, Haley, who is President of the Council this month, said the session would be held in the open. "Any country that chooses to defend the atrocities of the Syrian regime will have to do so in full public view, for all the world to hear," she said in the statement. Addressing the 15-nation Council, Haley said it was not only time to say enough to the Assad regime but also to act. "Bashar Al Assad must never use chemical weapons again. Ever," she said. Blaming the Syrian regime for the chemical weapons attack, Haley said the country was not the only "guilty party" but Iran and Russia also bear responsibility for the brutality against the Syrian people. She said Iran has propped up and shielded Syria's brutal dictator for years. "The Russian government also bears considerable responsibility. Every time Assad has crossed the line of human decency, Russia has stood beside him," she said. She said the reason for Russia supporting Syria "could be that Russia is knowingly allowing chemical weapons to remain in Syria. It could be that Russia has been incompetent to remove the chemical weapons or it could be that the Assad regime is playing the Russians for fools, telling them that there are no chemical weapons, all the while stockpiling them on their bases," she said. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said following the US air strikes against the Shayrat airbase in Syria, he is "mindful of the risk of escalation" and appeals for restraint to avoid any acts that could deepen the suffering of the Syrian people. These events underscore my belief that there is no other way to solve the conflict than through a political solution. I call on the parties to urgently renew their commitment to making progress in the Geneva talks. He added that was following the situation in Syria "with grave concern", stressing he was "abhorred" by the chemical weapons attack in Khan Shaykhun and the death and injury of many innocent civilians. "The Security Council has the primary responsibility for international peace and security. I call on the Council to unite and exercise that responsibility. For too long, international law has been ignored in the Syrian conflict, and it is our shared duty to uphold international standards of humanity. This is a prerequisite to ending the unrelenting suffering of the people of Syria," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The US today launched a massive military strike on a Syrian air base in retaliation to a "barbaric" chemical attack on civilians allegedly by embattled President Bashar al-Assad's regime and asked all "civilised" countries to join it to end the killing of innocent people. On President Donald Trump's orders, US warships in the Mediterranean Sea launched between 50-60 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Shayrat air base, in Homs governorate, where the warplanes that carried out the chemical attacks are based, US officials said. The move signals a dramatic shift in Trump's position on whether the US should take military action against Assad's regime. Trump, during his campaign for president, had opposed any such move. The missiles from two US warships hit at 3:45am and targeted the base's airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas. Speaking from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Trump said he ordered targeted missile strikes at the Syrian airfield. A military official quoted on Syrian TV said the US action caused material damage. Describing the chemical attack on innocent civilians as "horrible", Trump said President Assad took the lives of helpless men, women and children. "It was a slow and brutal death for so many. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror," he said. "It is in vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter use of deadly chemical weapons," Trump told reporters. The military action comes after Tuesday's deadly chemical attack that officials said used chlorine mixed with a nerve agent, killing 86 people, including 27 children, in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhun in northwestern Syria. This is the first direct military action the US has taken against the regime of Assad in Syria's six-year civil war and represents a substantial escalation of the US military campaign in the region. "There can be no dispute that Syria used the banned chemical weapon violated its obligations under the chemicals weapons convention and ignored the urging of the UN Security Council," he said. "Years of previous attempts at changing Assad's behaviour have all failed and failed very dramatically. As a result the refugee crisis continue to deepen and the region continues to destabilise threatening the US and its allies. I call on all civilised nations to join us seeking to end this slaughter and bloodshed in Syria and also to end terrorism of all kinds and types," he said. "We asked for God's wisdom as we face the challenge of our very troubled world. We pray for the lives of the wounded and for the souls of those who passed. And we hope as long as America stands for justice and peace and harmony will in the end prevail. Good night and God Bless America and the entire world," Trump said in his brief remarks before his first meeting with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who is set to visit Moscow next week, said Russia as "failed in its responsibility" to deliver on a 2013 commitment to secure Syria's chemical weapons. "Clearly Russia has failed in its responsibility. Either Russia has been complicit or either Russia has been simply incompetent in its ability to deliver on its end of that agreement," Tillerson told reporters. He said that the US has a very "high level of confidence" that the chemical attacks were carried out under the direction of Assad's regime. "We have very high confidence that the attacks involved the use of sarin nerve gas," he said. Russia, who has provided military support for Bashar al-Assad's government since September 2015, said that the air strikes could undermine efforts to fight against terrorism in Syria while Israel and Syrian rebels welcomed the attack. Pentagon Press Secretary Captain Jeff Davis said Russian forces were notified in advance of the strike using the established deconfliction line. "US military planners took precautions to minimise risk to Russian or Syrian personnel located at the airfield," he said. The Pentagon said the missile strike that targeted Shayrat Airfield was a proportional response to Assad's heinous act. "The strike was a proportional response to Assad's heinous act. Shayrat Airfield was used to store chemical weapons and Syrian air forces. The US intelligence community assesses that aircraft from Shayrat conducted the chemical weapons attack on April 4," Davis said. The strike was intended to deter the regime from using chemical weapons again, he said. "Russian forces were notified in advance of the strike using the established deconfliction line. US military planners took precautions to minimise risk to Russian or Syrian personnel located at the airfield," Davis said. The deaths of civilians in Syria sparked international outrage with many pointing the finger at the government of President Assad. The UK, Israel and Australia were among the countries backing Trump's move as an "appropriate" and "just" response. The Syrian army on Tuesday denied that it had used chemical weapons against Khan Sheikhun. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The US military strike on Syria was widely hailed by the world community today with nations like the UK and Israel backing it as a "just" response to the chemical attack by President Bashar Al-Assad's regime, but Russia and Iran strongly condemned the unilateral move. The UK government said it "fully supports" the US missile strike against an air base in Syria over a suspected chemical weapons attack on Khan Sheikhun on Tuesday in which 86 people, including 27 children, were killed. A 10 Downing Street spokesperson said, "Overnight, the US has taken military action against the Syrian regime, targeting the airfield in Shayrut which was used to launch the chemical weapons attack earlier this week. "The UK government fully supports the US action, which we believe was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, and is intended to deter further attacks." UK defence secretary Michael Fallon told the BBC that the UK had been in "close contact" with the US over the last few days and that British Prime Minister Theresa May had been "informed throughout". He said that the UK government had not been asked to take part in the strike. China condemned the deadly chemical weapons attack in Syria. "We condemn the recent chemical attack in Syria, and we support the independent and comprehensive investigation conducted by the relevant UN agencies into ... The use or suspected use of chemical weapons so as to reach a conclusion that stands the test of history and facts on the basis of solid evidence," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said. "We have noted the latest developments. What is urgent now is to prevent the situation from deteriorating and uphold the hard-won political process to settle the Syrian issue," she said, without mentioning the US military strike which came as China's President Xi Jinping met his American counterpart Donald Trump in Florida. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he supports the "strong and clear message" sent by the US strike. "In both word and action, President (Donald) Trump sent a strong and clear message today that the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated," a statement from Netanyahu's office said. "Israel fully supports President Trump's decision and hopes that this message of resolve in the face of the Assad regime's horrific actions will resonate not only in Damascus, but in Tehran, Pyongyang and elsewhere." Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said, "The Australian government strongly supports the swift and just response of the United States." "This was a calibrated, proportionate and targeted response,"Turnbull said, adding that the US had informed Australia before the strike. He said Australia was not involved in the strike, but remained fully committed as a coalition partner to 'ongoing military operations in Iraq and Syria'. Russia, one of the the closest allies of the regime of Assad, said it considers the US strike as "aggression against a sovereign state" which will further harm US-Russia ties. "President Putin considers American strikes on Syria aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international norms, and under an invented pretext," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. "The Syrian army does not have any chemical weapon stockpiles," Peskov said. "The fact of destruction of all chemical weapon stockpiles of the Syrian armed forces was recorded and confirmed by the (Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons)." "This step by Washington inflicts considerable damage to US-Russia relations, which are already in a lamentable state," Peskov added. Russia also called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss the US missile strikes. Iran also "strongly condemned" the military strike. "We condemn all unilateral military action and the missile strike by US warships against Shayrat airbase under the pretext of Tuesday's suspected attack on Khan Sheikhun," foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghassemi told the Fars agency. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande issued a joint statement in response to the US air strike and blamed Assad for the US action. "President Assad alone bears the responsibility for this development. His repeated use of chemical weapons and his crimes against his own people demand sanctions which France and Germany already asked for in the summer of 2013 after the massacre at Ghouta," they said. Italy gave its support to the US action, saying it was a suitable response to Syrian aggression and a deterrent against the use of chemical weapons by its leader. European Union President Donald Tusk said the US missile strikes demonstrated "needed resolve" against chemical attacks. The bloc will work with the US to "end brutality" in Syria, he said. NATO head Jens Stoltenberg blamed Syria for the US missile strikes. "Any use of chemical weapons is unacceptable, cannot go unanswered, and those responsible must be held accountable," he said. Saudi Arabia said it "fully supports" US strikes, terming it a "courageous decision" by Trump in response to the use of chemical weapons against civilians. "A responsible source at the foreign ministry expressed the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's full support for the American military operations on military targets in Syria, which came as a response to the Syrian regime's use of chemical weapons against innocent civilians," a statement carried by state agency SPA said. Turkey's foreign ministry said it viewed US missile strikes against a Syrian air base "extremely positively" and added that Turkey would fully support steps that would ensure accountability for the Syrian regime. Meanwhile, Turkish President Recap Tayyip Erdogan's spokesman called for the creation of a no-fly zone and safe zones within Syria. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The row over 'Vande Mataram' has spread to Allahabad municipal corporation, where a proposal to make singing of the national song compulsory at commencement of proceedings led to protest by Samajwadi Party corporators. The incident came days after municipal corporations in Meerut and Varanasi too witnessed similar ruckus over the issue. BJP member Girishankar Prabhakar yesterday mooted a proposal in Allahabad civic body for singing of national song at the start of proceedings and the national anthem upon conclusion. However, Samajwadi Party corporators led by Athar Raza and Sushil Yadav vociferously opposed it. BJP members alleged that the protesting corporators refused to stand when the national song was sung after Mayor Abhilasha Gupta gave her nod to Prabhakar's proposal. Defending their opposition to the move, Raza alleged that the "politicization" of Vande Mataram has always been a "ploy" of the BJP. The SP members opposed "laying down a new rule at a time when just a few months were left for the expiry of the term of the house". The protest led to suspension of proceedings for a couple of hours. After the house met again, Mayor Abhilasha Gupta gave her nod to Prabhakar's proposal following which the national song 'Vande Mataram' was recited by members. The protesting members left the premises in protest even as proceedings concluded later in the day with the recital of national anthem - 'Jana Gana Mana'. BJP corporators later alleged that during the recital of 'Vande Mataram', the protesting councillors had remained seated which was tantamount to insulting the national song. "We have received the complaints. The CCTV footage is being examined to ascertain the veracity of the allegations. "If the charges are found true, action will be taken accordingly," the Mayor told reporters. Raja said their protest was "not against national song and national anthem per se, but against starting a new trend just ahead of the next municipal polls. "It is unfortunate that the Mayor, whose close ties to the BJP are well known, became a party to this." Gupta's husband Nand Gopal Gupta 'Nandi' is a cabinet minister in the Yogi Adityanath government in the state.The BJP won two-thirds majority in the recent election in Uttar Pradesh, returning to power after 15 years. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath today asked the farmers in state to adopt attitude as he promised them that his government will not allow any injustice to them. Speaking at a meeting with a delegation of farmers affected by the construction of Eastern Peripherial Expressway, he asked the district administration and the NHAI to extend compensation and other benefits to them as per the law. "The government will not allow any kind of injustice with farmers and their interests will never be neglected. But, they too need to adopt a positive attitude and should help in development works," the chief minister said. The benefit of development is for the entire area as it provides new opportunities which help future generations, Aditynath said, adding that for doing this, it's important that the development projects are completed within the given time frame as delay leads to escalation of cost which has a negative impact on the economy. During the meeting, the delegation sought compensation as per the Land Acquisition Act, 2013, employment and other benefits, and construction of a service lane along the expressway besides toll-free commuting for locals. The chief minister supported the demand of toll-free movement of locals and said if there were problems in it there can also be an option of using the service lane. Stressing that dialogue was a must to find out a solution to all problems, Adityanath said when farmers' land is being acquired, direct dialogue should be held with them. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) BEIJING (Reuters) - China's top listed steel maker Baoshan Iron & Steel Co., has enough coking coal in stock to last four weeks and will buy locally if needed, a source said on Friday, as some domestic miners hiked prices amid concerns about tightening supplies. Steel mills in China and Japan have scrambled to find alternative supplies after a powerful cyclone ripped through the state of Queensland last week, damaging coal haulage and cutting off supplies in the world's top exporter. "Our current stock level is relatively high and can last at least for a month," a purchasing manager for coke and coking coal said on Friday. He declined to be named as he is not authorised to speak to the press. He said he would not consider alternative supplies from Russia or Mongolia, which are often considered of lower quality compared with Australian coal. While the steelmaker, which veteran traders say is one of China's main importers of Australian coking coal, is unscathed, the cyclone may disrupt smaller mills. Some buyers in China, the world's largest coking coal importer, have even looked to fix cargoes from the United States, spurring a 9-percent rally in Chinese futures. Shanxi Hongsheng Energy, a Shanxi-based coal company with 3 million tonnes of annual capacity, plans to hike physical prices by 50-100 yuan ($14.50) per tonne, the second increase in the past week, a senior sales manager said. He said the move comes as the Shanxi provincial government launched in mid-March a fresh crackdown on illegal mining, with frequent checks on sales documents and safety measures in the nation's top coking coal producing region. The company hiked spot prices by 50 yuan ($7.25) on April 1, according to the sales manager who spoke on the condition of anonymity as he is not authorised to speak to the press. China coking coal futures fell 3.8 percent to close at 1,283 yuan on as immediate concerns about tightness waned despite domestic supplies dwindling as Beijing seeks to cut excess as part of its long-term shift to cleaner fuels. "Many of the coking coal producers in the region have been operating at their full allowed capacity. It leaves us no room to ramp up output even if we want," the sales manager said. The press office of Baowu Steel, parent of the listed Baoshan Iron and Steel, was not immediately available to comment. (Reporting by Meng Meng and Josephine Mason; editing by Susan Thomas) (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) By Sethuraman N R and Rajendra Jadhav BENGALURU/MUMBAI (Reuters) - Gold demand in Asia remained soft this week, with premiums in China notching a slight uptick and those in India remaining unchanged, as higher prices kept physical buyers at bay. Indian demand for the yellow metal fell this week primarily due to a rally in overseas rates, though an appreciating rupee capped upside in local prices. "Retail buyers are struggling to adjust with the sudden price rise. They are delaying purchases expecting a correction in prices," said Ashok Jain, proprietor of Mumbai-based wholesaler Chenaji Narsinghji. In the local market, gold futures were trading around 28,900 rupees ($449) per 10 grams on Friday, up 1.5 percent from a week ago. "If prices remain at higher level for a week or if they rise above 29,000 rupees then people will resume buying. They are waiting for a clear trend," Jain said. The Indian rupee has risen 5.5 percent against the U.S. dollar so far in 2017, partly offsetting gains in overseas gold prices. Dealers in India were charging a premium of up to $1 an ounce this week over official domestic prices, unchanged from the last week. The domestic price includes a 10 percent import tax. "The demand should improve by month end due to Akshaya Trititya," said a Mumbai-based gold dealer with a private bank. In the last week of April, Indians will celebrate the Akshaya Trititya festival, when buying gold considered auspicious. In top consumer China, premiums were around $10 to $12 per ounce against the international benchmark, up from last week's to $8 to $10. "The demand has been quite stable this year. While investors are looking to sell, the physical flows are quite stable," a trader with a Shanghai-based bullion bank said. Premiums in China had risen early this month as traders said supplies of the precious metal were limited due to tightening import restrictions to stem currency outflows. In Hong Kong, premiums were quoted in a range of 70 cents to $1 an ounce, mostly unchanged from last week, while in Singapore, gold was being sold at premiums between around $1.20 to $1.50. "A lot of people, mostly high net worth investors, have been looking into gold kilo bars purely for investments as a safe-haven," said Brian Lan, managing director at gold dealer GoldSilver Central in Singapore. Premiums were flat in Tokyo due to limited demand. Traders, however, said demand for platinum has risen on industrial buying. Gold prices were on track for its fourth straight weekly gain, with the bullion rising over 1 percent so far this week. Platinum has been the best performer of the week so far, up 1.7 percent. (Additional reporting by Koustav Samanta in Bengaluru; Editing by Christian Schmollinger) (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) If live up to the safety hype, they could result in a significant reduction in the number of court cases dealing with human-related traffic offences. YouTube said Thursday that video channels on its site must now have more than 10,000 total views before the company will place ads on their videos, a major shift in policy the company said is designed to punish rule breakers. Commercial Feature is a Business Standard Digital Marketing Initiative. The Editorial/Content team at Business Standard has not contributed to writing or editing these articles. For further information, please write to assist@bsmail.in Indian cab aggregator Ola today said the firm is focussing on building a sustainable business and will turn profitable in two years even as it used the analogy of "Vietnam War" to describe competition with its US-based rival Uber. "...this is corporate war and the competition between us and Uber is very intense... the analogy that I gave about India is that this is like Vietnam War. "We are the local guerillas...We have the Americans carpet bombing us but we will go into the nooks and corners of the country and we will find those opportunities in niche areas and in large areas," Ola co-founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal said at a TiE event here. He added that the Bengaluru-based company is focussing on building "more sustainable" and profitable solutions to grow its market share in the on-demand transportation market in India. "We have significantly improved our bottom-line over the past year or so and we have a very clear path to profitability . Within the next two years, we will be profitable," he said. Previously, Indian startups like Ola and Flipkart have raised concerns about "capital dumping" by global rivals like Uber and Amazon, who have deep pockets and are investing heavily in the Indian market. They had urged that the government should design policies that favour home grown companies. However, this also drew a flak from many quarters that viewed the statement as being protectionist. Aggarwal said it is for the government to decide how they want to deal with capital dumping. "It is for the relevant government agencies to decide what capital dumping is and what is not. We are focussed on building a business which is impactful," Aggarwal said. However, he added that while one may call it capital dumping or not "but the fact is money is thrown, customer gets lots of discounts, drivers get a lot of subsidies". "The negative social effects of that is that once these are withdrawn, drivers have an issue with that," Aggarwal said. Using another war analogy, Aggarwal said the fight between Uber and Didi in China was like World War II. "Our industry is very competitive and what happened in China between Uber and Didi was like World War-II, where there were two people with lot of ammunition against each other and in the end, one company won. India is not like that," he said. Last year, Chinese ride-hailing firm Didi Chuxing had announced the acquisition of Uber's operations in China in a USD 35 billion deal. "Globally, rideshare is a very intense industry and I believe there is an irrational belief that it is a winner take all business and there will be one guy standing in the end. And that leads to an irrational exuberance from the investors also," he said. Even as valuation of many of the Indian startups falls, Aggarwal said he has not seen investors getting jittery unnecessarily. "The Indian Internet ecosystem is going through an interesting phase... an investor should definitely question companies on their (investor) returns, their path to profitability.. I, as a company, have not seen investors getting jittery unnecessarily," he said. Digital healthcare platform Practo has laid off around 150 employees as part of its annual performance appraisal cycle. Bengaluru-headquartered Practo, founded in 2008 by Shashank ND, acts as a one-stop shop for patients booking appointments with doctors for online and in-person consultations. "This is a combination of natural redundancies that emerge as we integrate our five acquisitions and evolve our businesses, as well as the performance required for the next phase of Practo's growth," VCCircle quoted company's spokesperson as saying. The layoffs were not because of a cash crunch, but part of the regular appraisal process, the spokesperson added. Practo will provide the outgoing employees with two months' pay and outplacement assistance, the report said. Practo has about 1,500 employees. In January, the online healthcare platform raised $55 million from new and existing investors in a fresh round of funding led by Chinese internet conglomerate Tencent Holdings. Apart from India, the company already has a presence in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Brazil and Singapore. With more than 1 lakh doctors on board, the firm says 45 million appointments annually are currently managed through its website. The government on Friday lifted the ban on Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad and asked Air India to fly him again after a gap of 15 days. The ministry of civil aviation in a statement said Air India has been asked to lift the ban on the MP. Air India, along with top private airlines who are members of the Federation of Indian Airlines banned the defiant Shiv Sena MP who assaulted a 60-year-old Air India duty manager at IGI airport in New Delhi. Setting an example, in a rare step, the airlines along with Air India banned Gaikwad from immediate effect. Air India cancelled his ticket several times and did not allow the MP from boarding any of its flight after the incident. The Federation of Indian Airlines is an apex industry body which was formed by the scheduled carriers in India. Top private airlines like Indigo, Jet, SpiceJet and GoAir are the members of the FIA. Later, Vistara, too joined the move to ban the MP. Ravindra Gaikwad, who was flying on an Air India flight from Pune to Delhi, hit the airline's duty manager Sukumar with his slipper 25 times when the latter urged him to deplane . "The MP turned violent, broke the duty manager's spectacles, tore his shirt and hit him with slippers several times," an airline source said. Gaikwad, carrying a business class ticket, insisted on taking the airline's early morning flight AI-852 from Pune to Delhi, which is an all-economy class. This led to an argument with the airline employees in Pune and an assault on the manager by the MP when the aircraft landed in Delhi. [April 07, 2017] Rossmann Becomes First Large Retail Chain in Germany to Offer Alipay Payments in Collaboration With Wirecard ASCHHEIM, Germany, April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Chinese tourists can shortly pay with Alipa y at checkouts and online shops Quick and easy integration into Rossmann's central checkout system Wirecard AG has secured Dirk Rossmann GmbH, one of the largest drugstore chains in Germany, as a customer: Rossmann will soon offer Alipay as a new payment method in all branches with immediate effect. This means that Chinese tourists can shortly use their familiar Alipay App to pay at all of the merchant's checkouts and online shops. In order to do this, Wirecard has integrated Alipay Barcode Payment into Rossmann's till system and will assume the processing for these payments. In future, mobile Alipay Barcode Payment will be available at over 2,000 Rossmann branches in Germany. Additionally, the new Alipay payment method will now also supplement the payment choices in the online shop at http://www.rossmann.de. This means that Rossmann is the first major German merchant to tap into the booming Chinese tourism market. Two million Chinese tourists travel to Germany every year. On average, they spend EUR 3,000 on shopping alone during their holidays. Wirecard often records hundreds of Alipay Barcode Payment transactions at individual merchants. CEO Raoul Romann: "For us, Chinese tourists are an increasingly important target group - they have a particularlyhigh demand for baby products, cosmetics and organic products. This is why we are delighted to introduce Alipay as a new payment method together with Wirecard, both at all of our points of sale and also for our e-commerce platform." Christian Reindl, Executive Vice President Sales Consumer Goods at Wirecard, adds: "We are proud to have Rossmann as a customer. Our ConnectedPOS platform enables us to quickly and easily implement acceptance for Alipay payments in Rossmann's central till system and also make it available for online customers. This is a prime example of the omnichannel approach, which means that customers can pay easily and securely across channels. Technical integration at Rossmann has been carried out so as to facilitate further developments in the field of alternative payment procedures." Wirecard has been offering this innovative POS payment acceptance at retailers across Europe through the Alipay app since December 2015. For more information on Wirecard's Alipay solutions, please visit: https://www.wirecard.com/alipay. Wirecard media contact: Wirecard AG Jana Tilz Tel.: +49(0)89-4424-1363 Email: [email protected] About Wirecard: Wirecard AG is a global technology group that supports companies in accepting electronic payments from all sales channels. As a leading independent supplier, the Wirecard Group offers outsourcing and white label solutions for electronic payments. A global platform bundles international payment acceptances and methods with supplementary fraud prevention solutions. With regard to issuing own payment instruments in the form of cards or mobile payment solutions, the Wirecard Group provides companies with an end-to-end infrastructure, including the requisite licences for card and account products. Wirecard AG is listed on the Frankfurt Securities Exchange (TecDAX, ISIN DE0007472060, WDI). For further information about Wirecard, please visit http://www.wirecard.com or follow us on Twitter @wirecard. Rossmann media contact: Dirk Rossmann GmbH Stephan-Thomas Klose Tel.: +49(0)5139-898-4444 Email: [email protected] About Rossmann: Dirk Rossmann GmbH is the second largest drugstore chain in Germany and is one of the ten most important grocery retailers in Germany by sales. ROSSMANN is placed 111th out of the 250 largest retailers worldwide. In 1972, Dirk Romann opened his first store in Hanover. Dirk Romann GmbH is still an owner-managed company, the majority of which is owned by the Romann family. The company is headquartered in Burgwedel near Hanover. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Israel has signed a USD 2 billion contract with India to supply it with missile defence systems, the state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries said today. Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) in an announcement said that it has been awarded its largest defence contract of almost USD 2 billion for supplying advanced medium-range surface-to-air missile systems (MRSAM) to India. IAI said it would also supply additional long-range air and missile defence systems (LRSAM) for the first locally produced Indian aircraft carrier. The contract is worth USD 1.6 billion for IAI, with the rest going to another state-owned defence company Rafael, that will be providing components for the systems. "The current contracts represent an enormous expression of confidence by the government of India in IAI's capabilities and advanced technologies, which are being developed with our local partners as part of the Indian government's 'Make in India' policy," IAI Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Joseph Weiss said in a statement. President Reuven Rivlin, who is said to have discussed the deal with Indian leaders during his trip to India early this year, called to congratulate Weiss on this "historic" deal terming it truly "exceptional". "Please pass on my congratulations to all who contributed to this important achievement. You have come such a long way to arrive at this point, it is truly exceptional," Rivlin told IAI's CEO. "Israel's willingness to share technology and form joint ventures with Indian companies to develop and manufacture military equipment supporting the 'Make in India' initiative is said to have been well received in New Delhi. In the case of MRSAM, an advanced air and missile defence system that provides protection against a variety of aerial threats, the technology is said to have been jointly developed by IAI and India's Defence Research and Development Organisation in collaboration with Rafael and IAI's Elta division. Indian companies such as Larsen & Toubro are said to have also participated in the project. MRSAM's current version is operational with the Indian Air Force, Indian Navy and Israel Defence Forces (IDF). The system includes an advanced phased-array radar, command and control, mobile launchers and missiles with advanced RF seekers. Putting all speculations to an end, BJP patriarch Lal KrishnaAdvani on Friday said that he is not in the race for the post of the Presidentof India. Advani's name was doing the rounds as he was believed to be a strong contender for the post. Advani started his political career as avolunteer for the RSS and served as the country's Home Minister between1998-2004. He was also appointed as the Deputy Prime Minister during AtalBihari Vajpayee's regime. In an interview to CNN News18 outside the parliament, Advanisaid that he was not in the race for President. Earlier in the month, some reports suggested that the Prime Minister had suggested LK Advani's name for the post ofIndia's President. PM Narendra Modi had apparently putforward Advani's name during a meeting in Gujarat's Somnath. Now that the senior BJP leader himself has ruled out ofbeing in the Presidential race, here are some other names that are floatingaround for the post. Murli Manohar Joshi Age: 83 Plus: A veteran RSS ideologue and a prominent Brahmin facefrom Uttar Pradesh (where the BJP recorded a sweeping victory in the recentlyconcluded assembly polls), Joshi has good rapport with the allies, as well aswith the JD(U), BJD and the AIADMK. RSS leaders think he can be a good choiceas their first ideologue in Rashtrapati Bhavan. Over the past two years, he hasalso successfully bridged the gap with PM Modi. What's not in his favour: There is not much support for himwithin the party. He has always been seen as the third in command in the lineof leadership hierarchy, after Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L.K. Advani. Ram Naik Age: 82 Plus: An old warhorse with a good stint in the UP RajBhawan. Naik, a former Cabinet Minister in the earlier NDA government, also hasgood rapport with Modi, Amit Shah and the RSS leadership. What's not in his favour: It will be difficult for the BJPto pick him and ignore the big two also in the fray. Ramnath Kovid Age: 71 Plus: The BJP's best bet as a Dalit face. He belongs to theDalit community Koli and worked extensively in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar beforebeing elevated as the Bihar Governor. Earlier, he headed the party's Dalit baseand groomed several leaders for the BJP and the RSS. At one time, the partywanted to project his as an alternative to Mayawati in UP. What's not in his favour: He does not have backing ofleaders from other communities, both in the party and the RSS. Not having animpressive tenure as the Bihar Governor is another handicap. He has been closeto Home Minister Rajnath Singh, but the proximity can backfire as well when itcomes to his candidature. Thawar Chand Gehlot, Union Minister for Social Development& Entrepreneurship Age: 68 Plus: A noted Dalit face and a Modi-Amit Shah loyalist, hiselevation to the President's post can help BJP portray a pro-Dalit image, wipeout the weakening BSP in Uttar Pradesh and further extend the party's baseamong dalits in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Maharashtra. What's not in his favour: He does not have much backing fromthe RSS. Moreover, the Sangh believes he can still deliver as a CabinetMinister and should serve the party at the national level. Draupadi Murmu Age: 58 Plus: A tribal woman leader from Odisha and currently theGovernor of Jharkhand, Murmu may be projected as the first tribal President ofIndia and that too, from the BJP fold. This can help the party expand its basein the tribal areas of the country. What's not in her favour: She may not be too keen for thisposition as she is eyeing the Rajya Sabha and a meaty portfolio in the UnionCabinet. Sumitra Mahajan, Speaker, Lok Sabha Age: 73 Plus: A woman leader and a seasoned politician from Indore.Has a strong network among politicians across party lines. She is close to bothPM Modi and party chief Amit Shah. What's not in her favour: RSS may not favour her as achoice. It is still not clear, whether party leadership is considering her bet.She may lose out to Sushma Swaraj as a choice, who has all the backing from bigRSS leaders. (Swaraj is pitching for VP post, but if women president needs tobe made, she can be the first choice). Amitabh Bachchan, Actor Age. 73 Plus: Close to PM Modi and is first choice to be theface of the government's social campaigns. What's not in his favour: His last tenure as a politicianwas a disaster. RSS may veto his name. Plus his wife continues to be SamajwadiParty's MP and a bitter critic of the RSS and the NDA government. Rajinikanth, Actor Age: 66 Plus: A huge fan base in Tamil speaking community across theworld. His name will help BJP make inroads into Tamil Nadu before 2019. Withthe death of J Jayalalithaa, BJP sees as an opportunity to make a dent in Tamilpolitics. What's not in his favour: BJP doesn't a large cadre in thestate. The party's tallest leader down south is Pon Radhakrishnan. Office of the Vice President: The four in fray Sushma Swaraj Age: 65 Plus: Currently the Minister of External Affairs and alsoresponsible for overseas Indian affairs. Reports suggest that she is keen to gofor the not-so-strenuous role due to health reasons as she has recentlyundergone a kidney transplant. Her stint as a Cabinet Minister is rated highand she has also worked as a backroom strategist. Swaraj is active on Twitteras the minister in charge of overseas Indians. She has also gelled well withTeam Modi. What's not in her favour: After the exit of Defence MinisterManohar Parrikar--he is now Chief Minister of Goa--it is not easy for PM Modito spare her as well. She is a key member of the team working on the Chinastrategy and with the ongoing changes in the U.S. regime, she will be requiredeven more. M Venkaiah Naidu Age: 67 Plus: Currently serving as the Minister of Urban Developmentand also in charge of Information and Broadcasting. Just like Swaraj, he, too,is keen to take on a lighter assignment due to health issues. A former leaderof the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), Naidu has firm backing of theRSS leadership. What's not in his favour: Once again, it may be difficultfor PM Modi to spare Naidu, especially when Amit Shah is working on a missionto crack South India for the BJP. Naidu is required for his oratory skills andhis friends across the party line down south to make this mission successful.Naidu as a choice can work both ways. Kalraj Mishra Age: 76 Plus: Currently the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises(MSME) Minister in the Union Cabinet, Mishra has played an active role inmobilising Brahmin votes in the UP polls. He has already celebrated his 75thbirthday and is keenly pushing for the Office of the Vice President as an exitroute. What's not in his favour: Not an RSS choice and most of theleaders consider him as "close" to a particular caste. His work asthe MSME head is seen as a below-average performance. Parkash Singh Badal Age: 89 Plus: Five-time Chief Minister of Punjab and a veteran ofanti-Emergency struggle, he is only the second leader outside the BJP to beconsidered for the top role. During the first tenure of the NDA, another Akalileader, Simranjit Singh Mann, was elected as the Vice President of India. Badalwas the Union Cabinet Minister for agriculture in PM Morarji Desai's governmentalong with Advani and Vajpayee. However, Badal's party, the Shiromani Akali Dal(SAD) is now out of power in Punjab. The veteran leader may not contest thenext polls because of his age, and can be rewarded with this office. It wasonly his presence in the government that led the BJP's central leadership toavoid a split with the Akalis before the assembly polls. But his exit from thestate politics may enable the BJP to gradually move out of the alliance. What's not in his favour: It will require the BJP leadershipto exercise a great deal of manoeuvring to ward off other aspirants, especiallywhen the party has comfortable numbers. Days after image of Rs 200 note surfaced on social media, now it has emerged that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is against the circulation of proposed new bank currency through ATMs. According to a report in the Hindustan Times, the central bank wants to circulate the new Rs 200 banknotes only through bank branches. The report quoted a senior bank official who said dispensing new currency notes through ATMs would mean recalibrating India's 220,000 machines, an exercise that will take more than a month. The RBI wants to avoid the recalibration process as it does not want to see the same hectic situation it faced after demonetisation. Last year in November, when the Prime Minister demonetised old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, the RBI took more than a month to calibrate 2 Lakh ATMs to dispense newly-minted Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 notes. "The idea is not to disturb the system once again, there has been disruption for more than four weeks between November and December and it is advisable to circulate these notes through the bank branches, though at present these are just proposals," the official said. According to reports, the RBI wants to circulate Rs 200 bank notes only through branch, the way Rs 50 and Rs 10 notes are circulated. Earlier in March, the central bank board had cleared a proposal to introduce Rs 200 notes to minimize the shortage of lower denominations. According to a report by India Today, the new note is already in the pipeline and is only awaiting instructions from the central government to go ahead with the printing procedure. "Rs 200 currency note is in the pipeline. But, unless it is notified by the central government, making a dye (block), working on security features and printing process of Rs 200 would not take place. So this time, RBI would implement its plan only after the Centre's notification," a source told India Today. It's a high stakes war to dominate India's Rs 2.6 lakh crore telecom sector. A corporate fight as brutal, intense, debilitating and bruising as that seen in the cash-guzzling e-commerce business. Indeed, the giants in both these sectors are involved in a game of one-upmanship for customer acquisition through attractive freebies which are burning a hole in their balance sheets. But that's where the comparison ends, and the contrast begins. On every parameter, the telecom clash dwarfs the e-commerce battle: telecom has seen an investmentof Rs9.27 lakh crore against about Rs 71,000 crore in e-commerce; it employs 4 million against 0.35 million in e-commerce and its debt burden of Rs3.81 lakh crore is next only to the power sector in India. And, it's a no holds barred contest in telecom for another reason. The winner will actually lord over the most precious commodity of the future: DATA. Little wonder then that the incumbents Airtel, Vodafone, Idea Cellular and Tata Teleservices, besides Reliance Communications (RCom) and BSNL/MTNL, have taken on the challenge thrown by the Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Industries' bold and disruptive Rs 2,00,000 crore telecom play, Reliance Jio. Retreating is not even an option. All the large players have invested between $15-20 billion besides raising a debt pile of between Rs50,000 crore to Rs1 lakh crore. So, Jio's aggressive tariff cuts are being met with matching offers to retain customers; 4G networks are being expanded at breakneck speed; and the chatter to merge or acquire is louder than it has ever been. Jio's launch on September 5, 2016 was a watershed moment in India's telecom space. First, by making voice calls free for all subscribers, Jio hit at the very root of the incumbents business - voice still constitutes 70 per cent of their revenues. Second, by offering the service free for seven months, it eroded the subscriber growth of rivals while ramping up its own base by nearly half a million subscribers a day. As a result, while pricing voice is becoming unthinkable, data prices have almost halved. Nearly all the players have begun to bleed profusely. And they are reacting by coming together to, at least, make it a battle of equals on subscriber base, network expanse and spectrum. It began with Vodafone, number two in terms of subscriber base, agreeing to merge with number three Idea Cellular, to create India's biggest telecom company. Market leader Airtel had been preparing for such an eventuality for 20 months, acquiring smaller players such as Telenor and 4G spectrum or businesses from companies such as Videocon Telecom, Augere Wireless, Aircel and Tikona. Meanwhile, reports suggest that Tata Tele has been in discussions with RCom for a possible merger. RCom itself has signed up to merge Aircel and acquire MTS in the past 17 months. RCom chairman Anil Ambani has also announced that the telco is in a 'virtual merger' with brother Mukesh's Reliance Jio. RCom has over 95 million subscribers while Jio raced to 100 million customers within 170 days of entering the market. Just before the launch of Jio, India had 12 telecom service providers. Today, seven months later there are just five - Bharti Airtel, Vodafone-Idea, Reliance Jio, RCom-Aircel combine and state-owned combine of BSNL and MTNL. This is just the beginning.After the current round of M&As, the number will most likely shrink to three (plus BSNL/MTNL). The Vodafone-Idea merger will dethrone market leader Bharti Airtel both in terms of subscribers and revenues. The $23-billion Vodafone-Idea merger is the biggest ever in the history of telecom and corporate India. It is bigger than the combined size of Bharti's acquisition of Zain (valued at $10.7 billion) in 2010 and Vodafone's purchase of Hutchison Essar ($10.9 billion) in 2007. Airtel, post the recent acquisition of Telenor India, has 320 million subscribers against 395 million for Vodafone-Idea. Jio has 120 million subscribers, of which 72 million will start paying from this fiscal. It has set the stage for what could be a bruising battle to be the leader in the world's second largest telecom market by subscribers. "Consolidation helps reduce costs and improve network efficiencies. The aggressive tariffs will continue in this calendar year before there's some stability among operators," says Jaideep Ghosh, Partner at KPMG India. In all likelihood, the sector will be divided between three large players - Vodafone-Idea combine, Airtel and Jio - once the consolidation phase is over. Each of these entities will play on their strengths in spectrum holding, profile of customers, strength of balance sheet, network capabilities and value-added offerings. A THREE-WAY FIGHT When Jio stormed the market with its free unlimited calls and data, it was clear that only stronger players could survive its onslaught. In fact, Jio's disruptive pricing threatened even the established telcos. The quarter after the commercial launch of Jio's services was terrible for incumbents. Airtel, for instance, has reported 54.9 per cent drop in net profits in the third quarter of 2016/17 over the same period previous year. Idea Cellular registered a loss of Rs 383 crore, its first-ever quarterly loss since its stock market listing. Vodafone too felt the heat and, recently took e5 billion write off on its Indian assets. Even the massive investments of older operators didn't help much. Vodafone and Idea, which were weaker on a standalone basis, have joined hands to emerge as the leader in what seems like a three-horse race. The consolidation in the telecom sector was long-pending. For instance, when the Supreme Court cancelled 122 telecom licences in February 2012, there were 15 mobile operators. The presence of a large number of players has resulted in fragmentation of spectrum, severely compromising its efficient usage. Telecom is a business of scale. During his visit to the World Economic Forum Annual Summit 2017 in Davos, Sunil Mittal, Chairman of Bharti Airtel said in an interview that "Jio is a big player that has entered the industry and smaller players are looking to exit over the last few months. The Indian telecom industry could finally come down to four players." "What are the chances of having a standalone Reliance Communications (RCom)? There are signs that RCom and Jio will work together, if not merge," says Mahesh Uppal, director of consultancy firm ComFirst India. Most experts concur. "There will be three meaningful players in the market. If no one absorbs RCom, then it will be fourth but then RCom doesn't have enough resources to fight a data war," says another analyst. At the last Reliance Communications Annual General Meeting, promoter Anil Ambani admitted that he was joining forces with Reliance Jio. "As far as our 100 million customers are concerned, as far as our 1 million retailers are concerned, as far as our employees are concerned, and as far as our vendors and partners are concerned, there has already been a virtual merger of the two organisations (RCom and Jio)," Anil Ambani said. "Our spectrum is shared, our network is shared, our fibre is shared, our towers are shared, our voice is shared," he said. On a standalone basis, RCom has been posting net losses for the past two financial years (Rs154 crore in 2014/15 and Rs1,624 crore in 2015/16). Going by the trend of past three quarters, the losses in 2016/17 are expected to increase substantially over the previous years. The situation of Tata Teleservices (TTL), another marginal player, is worse. In the past two financial years - 2014/15 and 2015/16 - it had a cumulative net loss of Rs7,079 crore. There are reports that TTL is talking to RCom-Aircel combine for a possible merger. If that happens, the Jio-led block will become even bigger and overtake Idea-Vodafone in terms of spectrum holding and Airtel in terms of subscriber base. The government-run MTNL and BSNL, which are reportedly exploring a merger, will continue to operate as minor players. "The state-run telco is important from the government's point of view; otherwise private players will have a free run," says B.K. Syngal, Senior Principal, Dua Consulting. INCUMBENTS FIGHT BACK Airtel's acquisitions and Idea-Vodafone merger are primarily aimed at adding more spectrum to their portfolio. It was more gradual in the case of Airtel. The Vodafone-Idea merger was a reaction to the damage caused by Jio. The merged Idea-Vodafone entity will hold about 1,850 MHz spectrum across different bands, including about 1,645 MHz of liberalised spectrum. In comparison, Airtel's spectrum holding is 1692 MHz and Jio has 1301 MHz. The pooling of spectrum holdings - as is the case with Vodafone and Idea - leads to higher network capacity, which in turn means that the telcos can use airwaves more efficiently than they were doing independently. For instance, spectrum needed to deliver voice services to the existing Idea and Vodafone customers will reduce to 400 MHz from 600 MHz now. The freed 200MHz can be deployed for data services. "Data is a bandwidth guzzler. Voice is simple. Two plus two is always more than four when it comes to spectrum," says an analyst. Idea-Vodafone will have combined 273,000 sites, of which 189,000 will be broadband sites. "This should allow the combined company to accommodate over 15 times more data volumes than currently, and thus match Jio's data offerings," says a Motilal Oswal report. Airtel has 185,000 2G sites and 171,000 3G or 4G sites whereas Jio has 249,000 4G sites. THE FIRST MOVER ADVANTAGE The biggest strength of Airtel is that it entered the market when mobile calls were expensive. Only those who had higher spending power could afford its services. Airtel still has a substantial chunk of these users in its portfolio. Typically, high-end users are not price-sensitive, and have loyalty towards the brand. Airtel has reduced tariffs for its postpaid customers in response to Jio. Its aim is to match Jio's low price points to keep these high-end subscribers in its fold. Vodafone India too has a significant number of high-end subscribers, thanks to its predecessor Hutch which was a dominant player in metro cities right from the start. Idea, on the other hand, started off with rural and semi-urban towns, and entered metros much later - Mumbai in 2008, Chennai and Kolkata in 2009. Over the years, Idea and Vodafone's customer profiles haven't changed much. Jio's customer base is largely built on freebies, and there's still not much clarity on the profile of its subscribers. Experts, however, say that Jio's not a preferred brand for high-end users because many of them had a poor first-hand experience of RIL's telecom services in its previous avatar over a decade ago. But for new-generation, data-hungry users, brand names don't matter. GAME OF SPECTRUM Both Idea and Vodafone missed the 4G bus. By the time the market was moving towards 4G, it was already too late. Take the case of spectrum auctions in 2010, when Reliance Jio and Airtel aggressively bid for airwaves in 2300 MHz, one of the bands to deploy 4G technology - Idea and Vodafone then did not bid. In the subsequent five auctions, both picked up 4G spectrum but that was still far less than Jio's and Airtel's 4G spectrum. In a January report, brokerage CLSA points out that before their merger, Vodafone's 4G spectrum holding stood at 410 MHz whereas Idea's holding was 440 MHz. In comparison, Airtel had 730 MHz of 4G airwaves. Unlike Vodafone and Idea, Airtel was quick to sense the 4G opportunity and started gobbling up spectrum gradually - through auctions and acquisitions. Not just the quantum of spectrum, the type of airwaves that Jio and Airtel hold are superior to Vodafone-Idea combine. For instance, Jio has spectrum in the lower-frequency bands such as 800 MHz, 1800 MHz and 2300 MHz while Vodafone and Idea have spectrum in the higher-frequency bands such as 1800 MHz, 2300 MHz and 2500 MHz. Lower frequency bands are considered superior for the delivery of 4G services because they give better indoor coverage. "Airtel is still the most efficient operator because of its size, scale and the superior network that they have built," says Bhupendra Tiwary, Lead Analyst (telecom & media), ICICIdirect. As recently as 2015, Vodafone India was seemingly ignorant about the fast-changing telecom landscape. In a response to Business Today's query on its 4G plans, the telco had said that "today a customer is looking at a seamless mobile internet experience especially for videos and is not bothered about the technology (2G, 3G or 4G). Hence, investing in 3G in the medium term is a viable proposition." That approach turned out to be a disaster. Vodafone underestimated the demand of data-hungry consumers who were asking for higher data speeds than 3G. "Their reluctance to invest in 4G until recently has left them with no option but to either merge or perish," says an analyst. BURDEN OF DEBT Debt is a big area of concern for almost all operators at the moment. A large part of the investments are funded through debt that stands at Rs 3.81 lakh crore, making it one of the most indebted sectors. The rise of debt is primarily driven by five successive spectrum auctions between 2012 and 2016. These auctions saw aggressive bidding by operators leading to three-fold jump in debt from Rs1.23 lakh crore in 2009/10. The high debt level is not an issue as long as businesses generate enough profits to take care of debt repayments and interest costs. But that's not the case right now. The gross debt of Idea-Vodafone combine is higher than its closest rival Airtel. It's also more leveraged than Airtel. For instance, Idea-Vodafone has debt-to-EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) ratio of 4.4 as against Airtel's 2.8 post the Bharti Infratel deal. Analysts at Motilal Oswal expect Idea-Vodafone's debt-to-EBITDA ratio to rise further to 5.6 in 2017/18 before starting to drop. Debt-to-EBITDA ratio indicates a company's ability to pay off its debt. A high ratio shows that a company is deep in debt. Vodafone-Idea has indicated that once the benefits of the synergies are achieved, its net debt-to-EBITDA will touch 3. But there's a fair bit of scepticism about the synergy benefits being talked about by both telcos. Analysts say that targeted synergies and actual synergies have a gap. Brokerage Bernstein, in a March report, says that "mergers are complicated in the best of times. Synergies are only delivered if staff are let go; network overlaps eliminated; brands integrated and marketing budgets reduced. All of these are disruptive at the best of times, and in almost all cases result in share loss. We expect they will lose 5 per cent revenue market share in 2017/18 (as Jio starts charging) and a further 2 per cent during the network integration period. This implies their combined subscriber share will fall from the current 40 per cent to 34.6 per cent by March 2018." Vodafone India, in a post-merger investors call, has said that the debt held by the new entity is primarily spectrum debt, owed to the government over a long period, typically at least ten years. In the face of heightened competition, telcos have to constantly invest in network expansion and value-added services which could further raise debt levels. Airtel is spending about Rs20,000 crore every year under its Project Leap programme to upgrade and expand infrastructure. Jio will be spending Rs 12,500 crore on network expansion. According to some estimates, Idea-Vodafone would spend Rs 12,000 crore for capital expenditure. Together, these telcos will be spending about Rs45,000 crore annually till 2018. Where will the money come from? Telcos are exploring selling stake in non-core assets, mainly towers. For instance, Airtel, which held 72 per cent stake in towers company Bharti Infratel, has recently sold 10.3 per cent of it to a consortium of funds for Rs 6,194 crore. As of last December, Airtel had a net debt of Rs 97,395 crore. There is an opportunity for Vodafone-India combine to monetise its tower assets. Vodafone India has around 10,500 standalone towers, and Idea has around 9,000 towers. Besides, Idea owns 11.2 per cent stake in Indus Towers. Analysts caution that selling of towers assets is not as easy as it seems. Take the case of RCom, which had to wait for a couple of years before finding a buyer for its tower assets. Harsh Jagnani, Sector Head (Corporate Ratings) at ICRA, says that top three players have the ability to refinance their debt due to strong parentage and access to global markets. "Nearly 1.65 lakh crore is spectrum-related debt. The spectrum debt is the payments that telcos owe to the government. These payments cannot be deferred. For non-spectrum debt, there are refinance options if there are not sufficient cash flows or other investment requirements," he says. THE FINAL BATTLE On the last day of its Prime membership programme, Jio announced that 72 million have subscribed to its paid programme, and with the first recharge of Rs303 and above, it will be giving three months of free service till July. Thats a monthly ARPU of Rs 100 but Jio has finally begun to charge for services. Experts say that until Jio doesn't attain meaningful paying customers - over 100 million - it will continue to disrupt the market. ICRA's Jagnani says that competition will remain high for the next few quarters. Jio has invested over Rs 2 lakh crore. If the depreciation period for this investment is 20 years, the yearly cost would be around Rs 10,000 crore. In addition, there will be operating expenses and interest costs. On a conservative level, Jio would need annual revenues of Rs 25,000 crore to just recoup its expenses. Syngal of Dua Consulting says Jio's game plan is to enroll customers for free and start charging at discounted rates. "Once the users get used to it, they will jack up tariffs," he says. If Jio raises tariffs, others are expected to follow suit. Some analysts say that Jio has indeed priced its Prime membership plan at a premium to the sector's ARPU rates. In 2015/16, the ARPU of the entire sector stood at Rs 127. Jio has substantial spectrum holding in 850 MHz band and has no legacy network unlike Airtel, Idea Cellular and Vodafone. For instance, Airtel still has about 349 MHz of 2G spectrum and some 185,000 GSM sites, which are deployed to serve its voice customers - they have lower ARPUs but it's almost difficult for Airtel and Idea-Vodafone to shun them and move to an all IP-based network like Jio. There are about 120 million data customers out of 400 million subscribers of the Idea-Vodafone combine. "As early entrants, Idea and Vodafone deployed technologies available at the time. They operate multiple networks - 2G, 3G, 4G. This has increased complexity and costs. Jio, on the other hand, has no legacy network and operates only 4G services," says Uppal. Most countries have a maximum of two technologies but India is a unique country where all three technologies co-exist, points out Rajan Mathews, Director General, Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI). ICICI direct's Tiwary says that the new entrant will be targeting ARPU between Rs 250 and Rs 300 with a majority of user base at the Rs 303 plan (with unlimited voice calls and 28 GB data) and some at the Rs 145 plan (with unlimited voice calls and limited data). So far, Jio's services - 4G data and VoLTE calls - can be accessed on just smartphones. India is predominantly a feature phone market with nearly 700 million users as compared to about 300 million smartphone users. That's where Airtel and Vodafone-Idea have an edge over Jio. Also, the growth of the smartphone market is cooling down - last year was particularly weak for it. According to CLSA, smartphone users are likely to touch 331 million in 2016/17, up 19 per cent a year ago while the growth in the previous two financial years was 40 per cent (2015/16) and 57 per cent (2014/15). Jio is now planning to target the lower-end of the market with its feature phones that are capable of making voice calls over LTE network. "There is a strong possibility that Jio may launch low-end 4G feature phones priced below $20 and bundle them with long-term, inexpensive data plans in an attempt to increase the 4G addressable markets such a move would hurt the competition as, currently, as much as 70 per cent of cash flows for the rest of the telcos accrue from voice business," notes an HSBC report published in January. Email queries sent to Airtel, Vodafone India, Idea Cellular and Reliance Jio didn't elicit a response. On the value added services front, there's no major difference in the services offered by large telcos. Services like live TV, movies, music, etc. are standard across all operators. Vodafone, for instance, has Vodafone Play where it offers movies, music and TV. Airtel too has Airtel Movies, Wynk Music and Pocket TV. Analysts say that Jio seems to have taken a lead in offering a wide and rich variety of content. "Jio has rolled out live TV streaming services and Bharti Airtel has so far responded very tactically. We believe it may be necessary for Bharti Airtel to launch similar services. A delayed response could have an adverse impact on market share in the mid or high-end segment," says a HSBC report. The bugle, then, has just been sounded. Additional reporting by Nevin John @manukaushik Banks charge clients for a plethora of services to recover their costs. And it is not a recent phenomenon. There are charges for PIN generation, demand draft, duplicate bank statement, and even account balance updates that you get via SMS on your phone. Here are some common bank charges that we all should know about. 1) Cash Transactions You cannot do unlimited cash transactions from your bank account. There is a cost to it and banks charge you for that. For example, SBI Bank allows just three free cash transactions per month and thereafter charges Rs 50 per transaction. The charges were introduced last year by the bank. Similarly, India's biggest private sector bank, ICICI Bank, reintroduced cash transaction charges post demonetisation at branches from January 1, 2017. There are no charges for first four transactions in a month at branches in the same city. Thereafter, Rs 5 per Rs 1,000 is charged. 2) Non-maintenance charges Non-maintenance charges have always been a point of dispute between a customer and a bank. It is always advisable to ask your banker at the time of opening an account about the minimum balance required. For example, HDFC Bank charges Rs 600 if the minimum balance (Rs10,000) falls below Rs 2,500. If the balance is between Rs 7,500 and Rs 10,000, the penalty is Rs 150. SBI recently brought back the penalty for failure to maintain the monthly average balance (MAB) in metro, urban and rural centres. In a metro city, failure to keep the Rs 5,000 balance will attract a Rs 50 charge if the shortfall is 50 per cent, Rs 75 if the shortfall is 50-75 per cent and Rs 100 if the shortfall is 75 per cent or more. Different types of accounts have different minimum balances. So, while opening any account, ask the bank about the minimum balance for your account and the penalty for not maintaining it. Banks calculate the MAB by adding daily closing account balance and dividing by the number of days in the period. Considering the method involved you might meet the minimum balance limit just by keeping your salary for a few days in your bank account. 3) Home branch and non home-branch transactions Though the banking industry has adopted core banking, several banks still distinguish between home and non home-branch transactions. Large transactions are generally not encouraged at non-home branches and therefore charges are levied on them. For instance, HDFC Bank has capped the amount that can be transacted in the home branch at Rs 2 lakh. Above Rs 2 lakh, it charges Rs 5 per Rs 1,000. At non-home branches, there is a cap of Rs 25,000; above this, customers are charged Rs 5 per Rs 1,000, subject to a minimum charge of Rs 150. It is always good to shift your bank account to the place you reside so that there is less cost to the transaction 4) ATM transactions You cannot make unlimited cash transactions from your ATM. There is a limit to it. According to RBI rules from your own ATM you can make at least first five transactions in a month free. From other ATMs you can make three free transactions per month in six metro cities and five in other cities. Banks charge Rs 20 per financial transaction and Rs 9.55, including tax, for every non-financial one beyond this limit. 5) International Transactions If you make payments abroad through debit or credit card, a charge of 3-4 per cent is added to the exchange rate. So, before swiping the cost abroad, add 3-4 per cent extra cost on the transaction amount. Next time when you do any banking transaction do keep the above-mentioned charges in mind. This Feb. 8, 2017, photo, sexual assault evidence collection kit are shown during committee meeting at the Utah State Capitol, in Salt Lake City. Utah crime lab officials are feeling optimistic as they work to speed up the time it takes to process sexual assault evidence kits, after lawmakers approved a measure last month that sends more than $1 million to go toward this effort. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer) SALT LAKE CITY (AP) Utah crime lab officials are optimistic they can reduce a backlog as they work to process over 500 sexual assault evidence kits. They hope to speed up the time it takes to test the kits, after lawmakers approved a measure last month that sends more than $1 million to go toward this effort. Last year, a study released by Mormon-owned Brigham Young University found that Utah is so far behind in processing rape kits that only about one-third of the samples taken from 2010-2013 had been tested by the end of 2015. It also discovered that law enforcement takes about 60 percent longer than other parts of the country to send rape evidence to crime labs. Jay Henry, of Utahs department of public safety crime laboratory, said on Thursday that the new measure has allowed the lab to start the process of hiring a handful of new forensic scientists to cut down on the time testing takes. Unless law enforcement have determined that a kit needs to be analyzed urgently because of a looming court case or a public safety threat, the evidence can take more than a year to be processed, said Henry. His goal is to reduce that time to only 30 days. The measure approved during the 2017 session requires law enforcement to send sexual assault kits to the lab within 30 days. Bill sponsor Rep. Angela Romero, D-Salt Lake City, has said that the requirement would not take effect until 2018 in order to give the state crime lab time to work through the kits it currently has. The law also requires that by next year the lab must launch an online tracking system for sexual assault evidence kits, so that victims can keep tabs on the status of their case. That type of infrastructure will be great for the healing of survivors and for making sure the process moves quicker, said Turner Bitton, executive director of the Utah Coalition Against Sexual Assault. Bitton called the law a landmark step when it comes to fighting sexual violence in the state. The proposal was expected to send about $2 million toward improving the sexual assault evidence processing, but legislators opted to approve only half that amount, said Henry. He said he expects them to reconsider the funding next year once they see how the program is doing. Bitton said the funding is enough to help make the program successful, and that it will go a long long way in ensuring that every victim and every survivor gets justice. In this image from video provided by the U.S. Navy, the guided-missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG 78) launches a tomahawk land attack missile in the Mediterranean Sea, Friday, April 7, 2017. The United States blasted a Syrian air base with a barrage of cruise missiles in fiery retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. (Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Ford Williams/U.S. Navy via AP) PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) The United States blasted a Syrian air base with a barrage of cruise missiles Thursday night in fiery retaliation for this weeks gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. President Donald Trump cast the U.S. assault as vital to deter future use of poison gas and called on other nations to join in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria. It was the first direct American assault on the Syrian government and Trumps most dramatic military order since becoming president just over two months ago. Announcing the assault from his Florida resort, Trump said there was no doubt Syrian President Bashar Assad was responsible for the chemical attack, which he said employed banned gases and killed dozens. Assad choked out the lives of innocent men, women and children, Trumped declared. The U.S. strikes hit the government-controlled Shayrat air base in central Syria, where U.S. officials say the Syrian military planes that dropped the chemicals had taken off. The U.S. missiles hit at 8:45 p.m. in Washington, 3:45 a.m. Friday morning in Syria. The missiles targeted the bases airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, officials said. Syrian state TV reported a U.S. missile attack on a number of military targets and called the attack an aggression. The surprise U.S. assault marked a striking reversal for Trump, who warned as a candidate against the U.S. getting pulled into the Syrian civil war, now in its seventh year. But the president earlier in the week appeared moved by the photos of children killed in the chemical attack, calling it a disgrace to humanity that crossed a lot of lines. About 60 U.S. Tomahawk missiles, fired from warships in the Mediterranean Sea, targeted an air base in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack that American officials believe Syrian government aircraft launched with a nerve agent, possibly sarin. The president did not announce the attacks in advance, though he and other national security officials ratcheted up their warnings to the Syrian government throughout the day Thursday. I think what happened in Syria is one of the truly egregious crimes and shouldnt have happened and it shouldnt be allowed to happen, Trump told reporters traveling on Air Force One to Florida, where he was holding a two-day summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The strike came as Trump was hosting Xi in meetings focused in part on another pressing U.S. security dilemma: North Koreas nuclear program. Trumps actions in Syria could signal to China that the new president isnt afraid of unilateral military steps. even if key nations like China are standing in the way. Trump has advocated greater counterterrorism cooperation with Russia, Assads most powerful military backer. Just last week, the Trump administration signaled the U.S. was no longer interested in trying to push Assad from power over his direction of a conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and led to the worst refugee crisis since World War II. U.S. military officials sought to portray the strikes as an appropriate, measured response. But the assault still risks plunging America into the middle of Syrias conflict, complicating the safety of the hundreds of U.S. forces fighting a separate campaign against the Islamic State group in the north of the country. If Assads military persists in further gas attacks, the Trump administration might logically pursue increased retaliation. Russia and Iran, Assads allies, pose other problems. Russian military personnel and aircraft are embedded with Syrias, and Iranian troops and paramilitary forces are also on the ground helping Assad fight the array of opposition groups hoping to topple him. Before the strikes, U.S. military officials said they informed their Russian counterparts of the impending attack. The goal was to avoid any accident involving Russian forces. Nevertheless, Russias Deputy U.N. ambassador Vladimir Safronkov warned that any negative consequences from the strikes would be on the shoulders of those who initiated such a doubtful and tragic enterprise. The U.S. also notified its partner countries in the region prior to launching the strikes. Trumps decision to attack Syria came three-and-a-half years after President Barack Obama threatened Assad with military action after an earlier chemical weapons attack killed hundreds outside of Damascus. Obama had declared the use of such weapons a red line. At the time, several American ships in the Mediterranean were poised to launch missiles, only for Obama to abruptly pull back after key U.S. ally Britain and the U.S. Congress balked at his plan. He opted instead for a Russian-backed plan that was supposed to remove and eliminate Syrias chemical weapons stockpiles. Thursday nights strikes were launched from the USS Ross and USS Porter and landed in the early morning Friday in Syria. The world learned of the chemical attack earlier in the week in footage that showed people dying in the streets and bodies of children stacked in piles. The international outcry fueled an emotional response from Trump, who appeared to abandon his much-touted America First vision for a stance of humanitarian intervention, akin to that of previous American leaders. I think what happened in Syria is a disgrace to humanity, he said Thursday. Trump seemed to rapidly reconsider his feelings about Assad, saying: Hes there and I guess hes running things, so something should happen. The show of force in Syria raises legal questions. Its unclear what authority Trump is relying on to attack another government. When Obama intervened in Libya in 2011, he used a U.N. Security Council mandate and NATOs overall leadership of the mission to argue that he had legal authority arguments that many Republicans opposed. Trump cant rely on either justification here. Unclear also is whether Trump is adopting any broader effort to combat Assad. Under Obama, the United States largely pulled back from its support for so-called moderate rebels when Russias military intervention in September 2015 led them to suffer a series of battlefield defeats. Instead, Obama sought to work with Russia on a negotiated transition. Trump and his top aides had acknowledged in recent days the reality of Assad being in power, saying his ouster was no longer a priority. But the chemical weapons attack seemed to spur a rethink. In Florida on Thursday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said of Assad: Theres no role for him to govern the Syrian people. FILE - People gather near a shelter in Salt Lake City Friday, Feb. 24, 2017, in Salt Lake City. Legislative leaders and the mayors of Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County announced they're abandoning two of four planned homeless resource centers for the city. Officials said they'll still build two other 200-bed shelters and will select a site for a third shelter in Salt Lake County by March 30. House Speaker Greg Hughes, R-Draper, says officials have also decided they'll close the 1,000-plus bed downtown homeless shelter by June 30, 2019.(AP Photo/Rick Bowmer) SALT LAKE CITY (AP) Mormon church officials say theyre committed to helping address homelessness and that the religion has donated $42 million in cash and materials over the last decade to eight Utah organizations. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints top leaders said Thursday in a statement that they are grateful to Salt Lake City area leaders who have been tackling the issue. The church agreed to sell a church-owned thrift store to make room for one of the new homeless shelters. Church leaders say they will continue to offer their food storage, employment training, job placement and ministry to help because they feel keenly a responsibility to help in a Christlike way. Mormon church officials dont usually discuss how they spend their money. Faithful Mormons give 10 percent of their income as a tithe to the church. [April 07, 2017] Flymya.com Acquires London - based Distribution API Startup SWITCH.CM PENDING CITY, April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Flymya.com today announced it has acquired SWITCH.CM, a startup specializing in building reservations platforms for the hotel and airline industry, for USD 600,000. About Flymya.com Flymya.com is Myanmar's largest one stop shop for domestic air tickets, hotel reservations and car rentals supplying travellers with itinerary plans and packages. Flymya.com is a subsidiary of BOD Tech & boasts a strong presence in CLMV (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam). Its IT operations in Southeast Asia cover industries ranging from retail, travel, food delivery, O2O, publication, cloud communication, SaaS, and fintech. About SWITCH.CM SWITCH.CM is based in London with an Indonesian-based development office. The engineering team specializes in distribution API architecture and was the first in the world to successfully execute the Agoda 5.0 XML and use the Google API to power dynamic pricing & revenue management. They were selected as the opening keynote speaker of the 2016 World Travel Market conference in London, and their hotel reservations software is used by properties in 41 countries. Tech in Asia 2016 Conference Jeff Pan, the founder of SWITCH.CM, was an exhibitor as a startup in the Bootstrap Alley section of the Tech in Asia conference in Singapore in April 2016. Mike Than Tun Win, CEO of Flymya.com, had a chance encounter with the team in the closing minutes of the conference as they were on their way to the airport. Comments by Mike Than Tun Win, CEO of Flymya.com: "We were extremely impressed by Jeff's background as both a hotelier and a software engineer with deep knowledge of hotel API architecture. We look forward to utilizing his team's software to provide an added value to our hotel partners." The acquisition of SWITCH.CM's hotel software will allow Flymya to leverage its local expertise to deploy world class technology to small and medium-sized hotels as it continues its growth as the leading OTA in Myanmar and the region. Comments by Jeff Pan, CEO of SWITCH.CM: "I was blown away by the operational infrastructure that Mike has built, pioneering the digital revolution in Myanmar by combining technology with a massive network of resellers and on-theground staff. I'm excited by the acquisition to see him leverage his expertise in Southeast Asia to grow our technology to its fullest potential." He added: "I think the lesson for all startups is that no matter how close you are to missing your flight after an event, stick around. You never know who might drop by your booth as the conference is emptying out." Contacts: Jeff Pan / +1.917.520.1844 / [email protected] Hsu Mon Aung / +959.7299.3535 / [email protected] Photo - http://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20170407/8521702347 [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Iconic portraits and New Mexico landscapes spanning 50 years and featuring a selection of one-of-a-kind vintage prints from each photographers' archives. Edition ONE Gallery is pleased to be expanding west from Canyon Road to join JFD GALLERY in presenting a rare vintage photography exhibition with two of New Mexicos premier long time residents and photographic chroniclers, Lisa Law and Ray Belcher. Both photographers offer a deep knowledge of the scenes and residents of New Mexico. Ray Belcher came to Santa Fe from California in the mid-1970s, having earned a National Endowment for the Arts grant which he used to travel and photograph. A man of true artistic discipline and tradition, Belcher is one of the few photographers who still utilizes the black and white silver gelatin printing process and pursues a life of work based primarily on the skies and landscapes of Galisteo and more recently, Santa Fe. Lisa Law has spent five decades photographing the shifting tides of American culture. Her reputation is built on photographs unique for their startling sense of intimacy and spontaneity as exhibited in her book of photographs, Flashing on the Sixties. Her documentary film, also entitled Flashing on the Sixties won 4 major awards at film festivals upon its release and has been enjoyed by millions of viewers on Cinemax, The Discovery Channel and PBS. Actor-director Dennis Hopper describedFlashing on the Sixties as the most compelling, moving documentary of the Sixties. Lisa's early New Mexico photographs feature intimate portraits of Dennis Hopper and Janis Joplin. She chronicles the hippie migration from the west and east coasts to New Mexico along with their cultural crossings with the traditional elders of Taos Pueblo, and the communities of Truchas, El Rito, Abiquiu and Santa Fe. [April 07, 2017] Thomson Snell & Passmore Selects Intapp Open for New Business Intake TUNBRIDGE WELLS, Kent and LONDON, April 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Intapp, a global leader in legal software, today announced that Thomson Snell & Passmore LLP, a leading law firm in the South East and the oldest law firm in the world, has selected Intapp Open for new business intake. Intapp Open is a new business intake (NBI) application which has been adopted by more than 200 firms worldwide, designed from the ground up to address the specific needs of firm management, lawyers, risk staff and IT stakeholders. With over 120 lawyers, Thomson Snell & Passmore offers a wide range of services to both private and commercial clients across 25 areas including wills, trusts and tax planning; property law; employment law; dispute resolution; and many others. Lights-On Consulting assisted TS&P with a thorough selection process for an NBI application, as part of a larger engagement to replace and upgrade its practice management system (PMS). As we were evaluating new practice management systems, it became clear that the leading options would not be able to support our existing processes for new business intake, said Roland Millar, Finance Director, Thomson Snell & Passmore LLP. Intapp Open offers the functionality we need to maintain our existing workflow for client evaluation and AML risk assessments, and to add a further level of sophistication into our risk rating methodology. We especially like its ability to manage different workflows depending on the requirements of individual practice areas. Intapp Open provides a structured framework for client evaluation, with a client scoring system that can be configured to reflect firm-specific priorities and concerns. The application helps to streamline compliance with anti-money laundering (AML) regulations and know your client (KYC) guidelines by integrating information from both internal and external data sources, and automating the review process. Forward-thinking firms are taking the opportunity to rethink and redesign their new business intake processes in tandem with upgrading their practice management systems, said Chris Turk, Regional Vie President for UK/EMEA, Intapp. Were pleased to work with Thomson Snell & Passmore in realising its vision for an NBI system that combines rigour with efficiency and an intuitive, modern interface for lawyers and staff alike. Thomson Snell & Passmore will be working with Opes Consulting, an Intapp Certified Services Partner, on the implementation of Intapp Open. About Thomson Snell & Passmore LLP Thomson Snell & Passmore LLP is one of the preeminent leading law firms in the South East providing peace of mind to generations of families and business. The firms private wealth and commercial practices have a reputation for providing high quality, intelligent advice and the very best service to their clients. Established in 1570 the firms heritage underpins its longevity, quality, commitment and reassurance. www.ts-p.co.uk About Lights-On Consulting Established in 2005, Lights-On Consulting Limited is an IT and management consultancy practice which specialises in supporting the legal sector. Staffed by senior IT professionals with experience of both in-house IT leadership and consulting services, Lights-On is renowned for its total independence, integrity and quality of services which helps guide law firm clients to robust and innovative decisions. Operating largely by recommendation, Lights-On offers a wide range of consultancy services including IT strategy development and advice, IT service and technology reviews, systems and service tendering procurement, organisation design, interim management or IT Director as a Service and supporting achievement and ongoing adherence to industry standard excellence (e.g. ISO20000 and ISO27001). With well over 100 clients ranging from niche legal practices to global and magic circle firms, Lights-On has a breadth and depth of skills and services which it combines with deep sector knowledge to deliver sustainable improvements in clients use of information technology. Lights-On proudly lives by its operating vision of Strategic Advice, Practically Delivered. www.lights-on-consulting.com About Intapp Intapp provides software that enables law firms and other professional services firms to thrive in an increasingly competitive marketplace by improving operational efficiency, increasing profitability and driving client success. Intapp's three practice groups (Risk, Integration and Time) focus on understanding existing pressures and emerging trends, and translate this knowledge into products and best practices. Intapp products allow firms to align business operations with strategy and deliver on client expectations. They are recognised as the most advanced in their respective categories new business intake, conflicts management, confidentiality management, process automation, data integration and time recording. Serving more than 650 customers, including 91% of the Am Law 100, 90% of the Global 100 and three of the Accounting Top 20, Intapp has cultivated an unparalleled record of customer success and collaborative partner relationships. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, with business operations in New York, Atlanta, London, Manchester and Sydney, Intapp offers a unique combination of legal industry expertise, technical innovation, consumer-friendly design and customer-focused business philosophy. For more information, visit www.intapp.com. CONTACT: Eureka Endo Intapp +44 (0)795 828 7483 [email protected] [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Hopital Laquintinie de Douala Archives The disease that has killed over 300 in neighbouring Nigeria has been confirmed by several health units including the Cameroon Pasteur Centre (CPC). Panic has reportedly gripped Cameroonians as a meningitis outbreak that was reported at the Kondengui prison in Yaounde has already spread to several regions of the country with 17 confirmed cases in Garoua, in the North region. According to media reports, a total of 23 suspected/confirmed cases including 9 deaths (case fatality rate of 39%) were reported as of March 24 in Yaounde. While majority of the affected people were prisoners, 5 suspected cases came from the surrounding community in the affected district. However, the government has said the outbreak is not yet an epidemic. Public Health Minister, Andre Mama Fouda told state broadcaster, the Cameroon Radio Television (CRTV) that it is yet to be declared an epidemic in the country as identified cases have been treated while epidemiological surveillance has been reinforced around the borders with Nigeria where the outbreak has killed over 300 people. One case is not an epidemic. You have over 200 cases per year in the different regions of the country but it is not epidemic. We want to appeal to the population not to panic, it is not necessary to rush to the health facility for vaccination. The different regions that share border with Nigeria; the Adamawa, Southwest, North and Far North, weve reinforced epidemiological surveillance and placed drugs to treat any cases, Mama Fouda said. He said a number of cases were identified at the Yaounde central prison at the end of February which was already taken care of. | BY Lynchy | A year has passed since Dictionary Films Tokyo, the production arm of creative shop Cutters Studios Tokyo, launched at AdFest 2016. Dictionarys incredible risk-taking efforts have massively paid off, illustrated best by the teams latest achievement in leading the production of Japans first ever LGBT commercial. Dictionarys latest spot takes its cues from Stanley Kubricks A Clockwork Orange and converts its now contemporaneous dystopian energy into ultra-necessary, Ultra Love, Executive Producer Peter Grasse explains. It comes as no surprise, then, that Japan and Dictionary Films Tokyo led the pack in Adfests Film Craft finalists in 2017. Representing the Cutters Studios Tokyo team at AdFest this year was Managing Director Ryan McGuire (pictured above). McGuire took the stage to present a compelling argument for the importance of the commercial film editor. Have you ever thought of the editor as a set of fresh eyes?, McGuire began. Eyes that havent been blurred by the to and fro of opinions during pre-production and shoot. Eyes that havent sparred with the client. Eyes whose job it is to edit in the bits your ad needs to thrill its audiences, like feeling, rhythm, pacing and detail? The editor is the last key storyteller on a piece of work. He or she matters. Like his partner Grasse, McGuire invokes the wisdom of Kubrick, who succinctly captures the editors place in the filmmaking process, I love editing. I think I like it more than any other phase of film making. If I wanted to be frivolous, I might say that everything that precedes editing is merely a way of producing film to edit, he said. The editor is the brand master, as well as the ultimate asset manager. McGuire himself has ulcerated over the tiniest details of the brand 720 frames of the brands details in a 30 second ad, 144 in a 6 second YouTube bumper. Every frame counts. McGuire went through 50 versions on his last Suntory ad for Hakuhodo every version ingraining the brands salient and subtle assets into the editors brain. This is all to make the argument that, by being faithful to your editor, one is rewarded with efficient delivery of premier content which clearly understands and executes the advertising objective. "If you just have one single material there is that compromise which limits the efficiency whereas if you have both materials you can get a higher efficiency overall," Professor Catchpole said. But back to earth, to the Dome and to the looming March for Science. Perhaps Tuesday's lecturer Professor McClure-Griffiths will take part in the march. She was born in America but now lives in Australia. That's because, she enthused on Tuesday, as a student of our planet's "home galaxy" the Milky Way our dear continent gives a fabulous view deep into "the CBD" of that galaxy while in the northern hemisphere the view is only of the galaxy's "boring suburbs". Professor Cox, too, has been reminding us how lucky stargazing Australians are to be blessed with such a sparkling firmament. "We're concerned about the use of notebooks and iPads in schools because of the lack of adjustability and a separate keyboard and mouse, and also the fact that child is holding them with one hand while using them with the other, so that's placing a lot of strain on the arms, neck and hands," she said. [April 07, 2017] Second Edition of RenewX Commences in Hyderabad HYDERABAD, India, April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Industry platform for the renewable energy sector in South India by UBM India UBM India, organisers of Renewable Energy India (REI) Expo launched the second edition of RenewX, a two-day expo (April 7-8) at Hitex, Hyderabad today. The expo witnessed a congregation of South India's green economy community to discuss industry trends, challenges and market insights. It also served as an industry platform for organisations to capitalize and penetrate into the lucrative South Indian renewable energy market. (Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/487629/RenewX_2017_UBM_India.jpg ) (Logo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/479598/RenewX_Logo.jpg ) (Logo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/471349/UBM_Logo.jpg ) The inaugural ceremony of RenewX 2017 took place in the presence of key dignitaries Shri Ajay Mishra, IAS, Chairman TNREDCL & Special Chief Secretary Energy, Government of Telangana; Shri A. Sudhakar Rao, VC & MD, Telangana New & Renewable Energy Development Corporation Limited; Mr. Shantanu Jaiswal, Bloomberg New Energy Finance; Mr. Yogesh Mudras, Managing Director, UBM India and Mr. Rajneesh Khattar, Group Director, UBM India amidst an industry gathering. The show brought together over 130 exhibitors that include manufacturers, EPCs, distributors and service providers. In its second edition, RenewX has grown in size and depth, attracting industry leaders and key exhibitors, including Greenko Energy Projects Pvt Ltd, REC Solar, Cleantech Solar Energy, Amplus Energy Solutions Pvt Ltd., Zhuhai Gmee Solar Equipment Co., Ltd, MachinePulse Tech Pvt. Ltd, Oriano Clean Energy Pvt. Ltd., Avi Solar Energy Pvt. Ltd, Brij Encapsulants, Sileaf Pvt Ltd, Relyon Solar Pvt Ltd, Hero Future Energies, Phocos India Solar Pvt Ltd., MECO Meters Pvt Ltd., Vision Mechatronics Pvt. Ltd, Bergen Associates, Premier Solar Systems Pvt. Ltd, Premier Solar Powertech Pvt. Ltd, Archimedes Green Energys Pvt Ltd., Greenvision Technologies, Surana Solar Ltd., Greentek India Pvt Ltd, Radite Energy, Solar Idea Pvt Ltd., Nuevosol Energy Pvt. Ltd., and RenewSys India Pvt Ltd., amongst others. This year, the expo had a dedicated hina Pavilion for the first time. Chinese companies such as Sunworld Tech Corp, Ningbo Aike Electronic Technology Co. Ltd., GuangZhou Mango Energy Technology Co. Ltd, Shanghai Minjian Alu Co. Ltd, Taizhou Hangning Refrigeration Equipment Co.Ltd, amongst others provided immense value addition and intelligence sharing for visitors. RenewX 2017 is supported by central nodal agencies such as Solar Energy Corporation of India Limited (SECI), the Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency Ltd. (IREDA), Telangana New & Renewable Energy Development Corporation Ltd (TNREDCL) and the National Small Industries Corporation (NSIC). Adjacent to the expo, a two-day conference themed 'Sourcing the Sun' was held, which highlighted the needs to integrate renewable energy into business. The conference focused on the best solutions and practices that could lead to an increased integration of clean energy into businesses. The conference attracted over 45 speakers and over 150 industry delegates, the key focus was to also include and invite industry leaders from other industries and give them a overview of the solar industry and its potential. Day one of the expo also saw sessions on 'Converting Curiosity into Demand', 'International Perspective on the Indian Solar Rooftop Market', 'Sunny Side Up' (Where the industry leaders shared insights on the most pressing issues in the sector), 'Today or Tomorrow?' (A unique session which aimed at bringing the volley of questions from project costs to tariffs to finance that has been on the minds of each customer and technical presentations). Day two will see sessions on 'Third Party Financing: Game Changer for Achieving the Rooftop Targets?', 'Walking the Double-edged Sword: Project Financing and Risk Management in the Indian Scenario', 'The Inflection Point: Manufacturing Trends to Enhance the Efficiency of PV Cells and Cost Optimisation', a presentation on 'Financing RE projects in India' along with insightful technical presentations. Speaking at the inaugural session of RenewX 2017, Mr. Yogesh Mudras, Managing Director, UBM India said, "Renewable energy is key to India's electrification plan. Providing clean energy security has been one of the challenges our country is facing despite being endowed with numerous non-conventional energy resources. The government's ambitious goal of achieving 175 GW of renewable power in the country by 2022 has caught global interest and will offer massive investment opportunities across the value chain. Along with other states in South India, Telangana has been playing an active role in aggressively supporting solar energy and holds promise for the sector with its profitable and favourable government and industrial policies. Consequently, the sector in the region has seen an influx of international interest and in-turn, investments leading to the launch of major projects. Against this landscape, our second edition of RenewX intends to accelerate the growth of renewable energy industry in South India and contribute to the country's sustainable economic development." About UBM India: UBM India is India's leading exhibition organizer that provides the industry with platforms that bring together buyers and sellers from around the world, through a portfolio of exhibitions, content-led conferences and seminars. UBM India hosts over 25 large-scale exhibitions and 40 conferences across the country every year; thereby enabling trade across multiple industry verticals. A UBM Asia Company, UBM India has offices across Mumbai, New Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai. UBM Asia is owned by UBM plc which is listed on the London Stock Exchange. UBM Asia is the leading exhibition organizer in Asia and the biggest commercial organizer in mainland China, India and Malaysia. For further details, please visit ubmindia.in. About UBM plc: UBM plc is the largest pure-play B2B Events organiser in the world. In an increasingly digital world, the value of connecting on a meaningful, human level has never been more important. At UBM, our deep knowledge and passion for the industry sectors we serve allow us to create valuable experiences where people can succeed. At our events people build relationships, close deals and grow their businesses. Our 3,750+ people, based in more than 20 countries, serve more than 50 different sectors - from fashion to pharmaceutical ingredients. These global networks, skilled, passionate people and market-leading events provide exciting opportunities for business people to achieve their ambitions. For more information, go to http://www.ubm.com ; for UBM corporate news, follow us on Twitter at @UBM, UBM Plc LinkedIn. Media Contact: Mili Lalwani [email protected] +91-22-61727000 UBM India [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] The United States has fired more than 50 missiles at a Syrian airbase following orders from President Donald Trump. The US air strikes killed at least nine civilians, including four children. The escalation was in response to the chemical weapon attack earlier this week, which killed more than 80 civilians, including at least 30 Syrian children. The attack has been widely blamed on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime. This is what we know so far: The new cable, Indigo, will be owned by a consortium with AARNet, Google, Indosat Ooredoo, Singtel and Telstra. Nokias Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) will build the cable, expected to be complete by mid-2019. The delivery of secure, reliable and high-speed connectivity between Singapore and Sydney has been the core focus of SubPartners since its inception, said company CEO Bevan Slattery. The cable will provide Australia with a new diverse international route into south east Asia, he added. Indigo will be 9,000km long, connecting existing facilities in Singapore, Indonesia and Australia, where it will land in Perth and Sydney. Each of the two fibre pairs will have a minimum capacity of 18Tbps. Alexander Rusli, president director and CEO of Indosat Ooredoo, said: Indigos consortium is a strategic and crucial partnership for Indosat Ooredoo that will help provide the digital services needed by Indonesian society. High-speed network infrastructure availability, both into and out of Indonesia, is important for business and personal consumers in Indonesia to be able to connect to global content. Both Singtel which owns Australian operator Optus and Telstra are members of the consortium. David Burns, Telstras group managing director of global services and international, said: With internet data consumption growing by 70% in Asia last year alone these sorts of investments in international networks are critical for meeting the needs of connected consumers and businesses. Ooi Seng Keat, Singtels vice president, carrier services, group enterprise, said, The construction of Indigo is timely to meet the rising demand for high-speed broadband between Asia and Australia. This cable system complements our global connectivity that links Asia, the US, Europe, Australia and the Middle East. Slattery provided more details of the SubPartners acquisition, for just $2.5 million. We are very excited by the prospect of offering customers a fully meshed pan-Asian network, connecting the existing metropolitan networks which we own and operate, he said. Once the cables are complete, we will have even more capacity to meet growing customer demand across the region. Superloop said that it will be able to configure and expand its cable capacity, independently of the other consortium members, allowing it to offer Singapore to Perth, Perth to Sydney and Singapore to Sydney routes to match customer requirements. Slattery owns 80% of the issued capital of SubPartners. If shareholders approve the issue of shares to Slattery, his holding in Superloop will increase from 28.8% to approximately 29.1%. If shareholders do not approve the issue of shares to him, he will be paid cash consideration equivalent to $2 million. Superloop owns and operates over 540km of fibre networks in Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong, connecting over 70 data centres. In Hong Kong, Superloop has established a 110km fibre network to initially connect 30 strategic sites including the Hong Kong Stock Exchange data centre. The company also constructed TKO Express, the first submarine cable to connect the traditional carrier hotels located in Chai Wan on Hong Kong Island and the data centre campus located at Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Tseung Kwan O Industrial Estate on the mainland. [April 07, 2017] Hitachi to Showcase Industrial IoT, Energy IoT and Artificial Intelligence Innovations at Hannover Messe, Including Its Humanoid Robot, EMIEW3 SANTA CLARA, Calif., April 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Hitachi Insight Group, which is responsible for driving the global unified internet of things (IoT) business and go-to-market (GTM) strategy for Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE:6501), today announced that the Hitachi Group will be exhibiting at Hannover Messe, demonstrating innovative industrial IoT technologies, artificial intelligence and robotics applications. The theme of this years Hannover Messe event is Integrating Industry Creating Value and Hitachi will use this platform to demonstrate how businesses can take advantage of the many new opportunities being created in the IoT era. The event marks the first time Hitachis humanoid service robot, EMIEW3, will be in Europe. EMIEW3 can move at a maximum speed of 3.7mph, avoid obstacles, regain its posture if it should fall over and interact with people needing assistance in multiple languages. Scheduled demonstrations will be held where visitors to the Hitachi booth can see EMIEW3 in action. The Hitachi booth is in Hall 12, Stand C80, at the intersection of the areas on energy and industrial automation. There, Hitachi will showcase several exciting industrial and energy IoT innovations from across its group company portfolio, including Lumada, its intelligent and composable IoT platform, and will introduce a simultaneous optimization system of distributed power generation resources and energy trading, and smart manufacturing capabilities. Hitachi will have multiple technology demonstrations for visitors to engage with and will offer guided tours of the booths highlights. Patrik Sjoestedt, Co-Head of Social Innovation Business for EMEA-CIS, Social Innovation Business Division, Hitachi, Ltd., will participate in the Global Business & Markets Forum on April 24th. Patrik will offer his opinion on the opportunities presented by new manufacturing trends and how Hitachi is pursuing new digitalization strategies, with a prticular focus on Germany. Keiji Kojima, Senior Vice President and Executive Officer, Hitachi. Ltd., and CEO of Hitachi Insight Group, will present at the 11th German/Japanese Economic Forum on April 26th, discussing the work Hitachi is undertaking around Society 5.0 in Japan and Industrie 4.0 in Germany through its Social Innovation Business, as well as how Japan and Germany can work together to create value. Hannover Messe 2017 will include over 6,500 exhibitors and is expected to attract over 200,000 visitors. This years focus is on current industry trends, such as integrated energy, predictive maintenance and other practical applications of Industrie 4.0. Through its Social Innovation Business, Hitachi is committed to creating solutions to challenges currently facing society, helping to create a safer, smarter and more sustainable world with its technologies and solutions. Register to meet with Hitachi at Hannover Messe: https://www.hitachiinsightgroup.com/go/events/hannover-messe.html?utm_source=corpcomms&utm_medium=pressrelease&utm_campaign=hannovermesse&id=pr_de_en_hannovermesse About Hitachi Insight Group Hitachi Insight Group is dedicated to driving business and societal transformation through digitalization. Its digital solutions deliver connected intelligence from the internet of things and actionable insights that support better decision-making, exceptional outcomes and smarter, safer, healthier, more efficient societies. Leveraging Hitachi's rich industrial heritage and extensive expertise in both operational and information technologies (OT and IT), Hitachi Insight Group accelerates solution creation with the Lumada IoT platform, serving public and private sector customers across three market categories: Smart City, Digital Energy and Industrial IoT. The group is based in Santa Clara, CA, USA, with offices and operations worldwide. For more information, visit www.hitachiinsightgroup.com. Connect with Hitachi Insight Group Twitter LinkedIn Facebook About Hitachi Ltd. Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE:6501), headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, delivers innovations that answer societys challenges. The companys consolidated revenues for fiscal 2015 (ended March 31, 2016) totaled 10,034.3 billion yen ($88.8 billion). The Hitachi Group is a global leader in the Social Innovation Business, and it has approximately 335,000 employees worldwide. Through collaborative creation, Hitachi is providing solutions to customers in a broad range of sectors, including Power / Energy, Industry / Distribution / Water, Urban Development, and Finance / Government & Public / Healthcare. For more information on Hitachi, please visit the company's website at http://www.hitachi.com. Contact Hope Nicora Hitachi Insight Group [email protected] +1-831-227-3660 [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 07, 2017] Dell EMC Announces First-Ever NASCAR Sponsorship; Helps JTG Daugherty Racing Transform Digitally DALLAS, April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Dell EMC and JTG Daugherty Racing announce partnership to leverage IoT technology to give team a winning edge at the track Dell Edge Gateways, Embedded PCs and workstations power race team's digital transformation Today, Dell EMC announces that, for the first time ever, the company is sponsoring a NASCAR team, JTG Daugherty Racing. Through this partnership, Dell EMC is working with JTG Daugherty Racing to help provide a competitive edge through the implementation of technology within the race car, on the track and at the shop. Specifically, the JTG Daugherty Racing team is using Dell IoT and client solutions and Dell EMC enterprise technologies to help improve performance of the team at the racetrack and manage shop floor operations. This collaboration is reflective of the growing trend within NASCAR to leverage more powerful technologies and data in new ways to help improve performance at all levels of the race team for the drivers, throughout practice and testing and at the track on race day. "Dell has had a long-standing relationship with JTG Daugherty Racing and the company is excited to be taking the partnership a step forward by bringing innovative solutions to NASCAR. This is the first time Dell EMC will sponsor a NASCAR team and we are pleased to be working with such an innovator in motorsports," said Joyce Mullen, senior vice president and general manager, Global OEM and IoT Solutions, Dell EMC. "The presence of technology is growing in sports, especially auto racing, where there's no better proving ground than a race car to show what technology is capable of. This is a tremendous opportunity and we look forward to proving how Dell EMC solutions can offer JTG Daugherty a competitive edge." With powerful insights and analytics, JTG Daugherty Racing expects tangible advantages from its Dell EMC solutions, including the power to control their garage and shop in North Carolina from afar and improving team performance on the track. Specific solutions that help the team: Enhance productivity and power simulation workloads with Dell Precision 7510 Mobile Workstations Gain real-time insights about timing and scoring, directly from track to server with the Dell Edge Gateway 5000 Series Enable testing of shock with Dell Embedded Box PC 3000 Series, designed to withstand the harshest of environments Improve tire matching via barcodes with Dell Latitude 12 Rugged Tablet Deliver driver overview of speed and performance with Dell Latitude laptops. Support applications for predictive modeling to help JTG Racing identify when critical parts are approaching end of life in the race car Support race engineers and tire specialists to make smarter, faster decisions trackside or in the garage using Dell Precision 7510 mobile workstations and Dell Latitude 5000 Series laptops to run real-time decision making software Streamline operations with ruggedized Dell EMC PowerEdge servers in JTG Daugherty Racing's Harrisburg, N.C. shop and on the haulers that transport cars to the races; the servers store vital race car information to help simplify car set-up when transitioning to a new track Tad Geschickter said. "Additionally, we leverage resources located in remote locations so there is a need to move data to multiple points quickly. Dell and Dell EMC provide solutions to accomplish this seamlessly." Supporting Quotes "A race engineer's computer must be able to handle multiple tasks running simultaneously to support the race team. It's crucial that it is fast and reliable," No. 37 BUSH'S Beans Chevrolet race engineer Brian Burns said. "During races, we are required to execute race simulations, perform database mining, utilize race strategy software, monitor pit crew data systems, and much more. With everyone in the group depending on you to give them quick and accurate answers, Dell EMC has answered the call with the perfect solutions for our rugged and fast-paced environment." said. "During races, we are required to execute race simulations, perform database mining, utilize race strategy software, monitor pit crew data systems, and much more. With everyone in the group depending on you to give them quick and accurate answers, Dell EMC has answered the call with the perfect solutions for our rugged and fast-paced environment." "Dell EMC plays a big role in what we do both at the shop and at the track," No. 47 Kroger ClickList Chevrolet race engineer Tony Palmer said. "From sharing, collecting and analyzing all kinds of data, computing critical fuel mileage and pit windows during the race, all the way down to monitoring crucial weather data, a lot of what we do requires some serious computing power. That's where Dell EMC comes in. The ability to run faster simulations increases our productivity to help find that critical extra tenth of a second. We're fortunate to have a great partnership with Dell EMC to help us excel and be the best." said. "From sharing, collecting and analyzing all kinds of data, computing critical fuel mileage and pit windows during the race, all the way down to monitoring crucial weather data, a lot of what we do requires some serious computing power. That's where Dell EMC comes in. The ability to run faster simulations increases our productivity to help find that critical extra tenth of a second. We're fortunate to have a great partnership with Dell EMC to help us excel and be the best." "Dell EMC is a huge part of our race team, whether it's data acquisition or engineering expertise, everything that the company provides helps make our race team better and faster," AJ Allmendinger, driver of the No. 47 Kroger ClickList Chevrolet said. "The quality and reliability of our partners and products in our demanding conditions is imperative. Dell EMC helps everything run smoother as the weekend progresses. They speed up our processes and increase productivity for both JTG Daugherty Racing teams. We're thankful for their partnership in providing technology solutions for our racing organization." About Dell EMC Dell EMC, a part of Dell Inc., enables organizations to modernize, automate and transform their data center using industry-leading converged infrastructure, servers, storage and data protection technologies. This provides a trusted foundation for businesses to transform IT, through the creation of a hybrid cloud, and transform their business through the creation of cloud-native applications and big data solutions. Dell EMC services its customers including 98 percent of the Fortune 500 with the industry's broadest, most innovative infrastructure portfolio from edge to core to cloud. For more information, visit www.dell.com/IoT. Follow us at @DellOEM on Twitter and Dell Internet of Things on LinkedIn. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/dell-emc-announces-first-ever-nascar-sponsorship-helps-jtg-daugherty-racing-transform-digitally-300436550.html SOURCE Dell EMC [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 07, 2017] RenaissanceRe Schedules First Quarter 2017 Financial Results Conference Call RenaissanceRe Holdings Ltd. (NYSE:RNR) will conduct an investment community conference call on Wednesday, May 3, 2017, at 10:00 a.m. ET to discuss its financial results for the first quarter of 2017, as well as the Company's outlook. RenaissanceRe will release its results following the close of market on Tuesday, May 2, 2017. A live webcast of the conference call will be available through the Investor Information section of RenaissanceRe's website at www.renre.com. An archive of the call will be available from approximately 2:00 p.m. ET on May 3, 2017 through midnight ET on July 12, 2017. RenaissanceRe Holdings Ltd. is a global provider of reinsurance and insurance. The Company's business consists of two reportable segments: (1) Property, which is comprised of catastrophe reinsurance, including certain property catastrophe joint ventures managed by our ventures unit, and other property reinsurance and insurance and (2) Casualty and Specialty, which is comprised of casualty and specialty reinsurance and insurance and certain specialty joint ventures managed by our ventures unit. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170407005278/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 07, 2017] Vixxo Plans Signage and Lighting Growth and Expansion With New Houston Location HOUSTON, April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Vixxo, a national leader in facility and asset management solutions, is relocating its signage and lighting division in Houston, to welcome growth and expansion plans in the Houston area. The new 5,148 square-foot space office is ideally located at 4801 Woodway Suite 160. Known for its superior project management and national manufacturing network, the signage and lighting division of Vixxo has offices located in Houston as well as Denton, Texas. Vixxo associates serve a roster of nationally-known clients in the retail, restaurant, automotive after-market and self-storage industries. Leading the Sign and Lighting group is Tim O'Donnell, general manager and business executive with more than four decades of experience in the signage and lighting industry. Before joining Vixxo, O'Donnell erved as the chief operating officer of Harbinger Sign. Previously, he served as chief executive officer of US Signs, the company's legacy brand. "The new Houston office is an indication of our growth and focus," said O'Donnell, "and our continuous effort to better serve our clients across North America. It provides an outstanding environment for our excellent team of professionals." Additionally, the new Houston office will house a national service center team, a group of associates committed to managing and facilitating Vixxo's dispatch of sign and lighting services for clients across the country. Looking forward and preparing for future growth, Vixxo Sign and Lighting will add to its national team in 2017 with sales executives, designers and additional associates supporting its growth. About Vixxo Vixxo is a leading technology-enabled facility and asset management provider for many Fortune 500 clients in the restaurant, retail, convenience, and supermarket industries. Their solutions are designed to revolutionize and optimize clients' multisite portfolios by improving service delivery, reducing costs and providing strategic insights all aimed at lowering total cost of ownership. Based in Scottsdale, Arizona, Vixxo maintains a national network of 150,000 service provider technicians and services over 65,000+ client locations. MEDIA CONTACT Jessica Pridonoff, LAVIDGE [email protected] (480) 998-2600 ext. 577 To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/vixxo-plans-signage-and-lighting-growth-and-expansion-with-new-houston-location-300436408.html SOURCE Vixxo [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 07, 2017] Accel-KKR Completes Sale of Abila to Community Brands MENLO PARK, Calif., April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Accel-KKR, a technology-focused private equity firm, today announced that it has completed its sale of its portfolio company Abila to Community Brands. Accel-KKR acquired Abila in 2013 when the business, which provides software and services to associations, nonprofit organizations and governmental entities, was spun-off from UK-based The Sage Group plc. Following its initial investment in 2013, Accel-KKR rebranded the company, augmented the management team, and invested to build the infrastructure to position the company for significant organic growth and strategic consolidation. During the past four years, Abila grew its revenues threefold, successfully integrated three acquisitions to expand its product offerings in the non-profit and association sector, and transformed its revenue base to a primarily subscription-based (SaaS) model. Dean Jacobson, Managing Director of Accel-KKR, said, "We are extremely proud of the leadership position Abila established under our ownership. We believed that with the right team, the right products and the right delivery model this business could grow faster and make a bigger impact for its customers. That vision was achieved. We are excited by the possibilities that Abila will have as part of Community Brands." "Accel-KKR was a true partner to Abila in every phase of our growth. The team provided guidance and support in a myriad of ways from the initial carve-out to helping us build a world-class management team and beyond. We could not have successfully tripled the size of the company, creating opportunity for our employees as well as our customers without Accel-KKR," said Craig Charlton, Abila CEO. Tom Barnds, Managing Director of Accel-KKR and Chairman of Abila, said, "Our experience with Abila illustrates one key tenet of our approach to investing -- we are very comfortable with complex deal dynamics. Having completed more than 20 divisional acquisitions in our history, we have the capabilities, patience and expertise to complete complex transactions and then invest to help our companies accelerate their growth through both organic and inorganic means post-acquisition." Accel-KKR will maintain a small equity ownership position in Community Brands going forward. About Accel-KKR Accel-KKR is a technology-focused investment firm with over $4.0 billion in capital commitments. The firm focuses on software and IT-enabled businesses well-positioned for topline and bottom-line growth. At the core of Accel-KKR's investment strategy is a commitment to developing strong partnerships with the management teams of its portfolio companies and a focus on building value through significant resources available through the Accel-KKR network. Accel-KKR focuses on middle-market companies and provides a broad range of capital solutions including buyout capital, minority-growth investments, and credit alternatives. Accel-KKR also invests across a wide range of transaction types including private company recapitalizations, divisional carve-outs and going-private transactions. Accel-KKR is headquartered in Menlo Park with additional offices in Atlanta and London. For more information, please visit: www.accel-kkr.com. About Abila Abila is the leading provider of software and services to associations and nonprofit organizations that help them improve decision-making, execute with greater precision, increase engagement, and generate more revenue. With Abila solutions association and nonprofit professionals can use data and personal insight to make better financial and strategic decisions, enhance member and donor engagement and value, operate more efficiently and effectively, and increase revenue to better activate their mission. Abila combines decades of industry insight with technology know-how to serve nearly 8,000 customers across North America. For more information, please visit www.abila.com. Contact: Todd Fogarty KEKST 212-521-4854 [email protected] To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/accel-kkr-completes-sale-of-abila-to-community-brands-300436577.html SOURCE Accel-KKR [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Harris Corporation Employees Pack Food for New York and New Jersey Children About 400 employees from Harris Corporation's (News - Alert) (NYSE:HRS) New York and New Jersey operations gathered this week to assemble 8,000 food packs to help feed low-income children during weekends. The food will be donated to Foodlink and the Center for Food Action, assisted by the United Way. The effort was part of Harris' HEART (Harris Employees Actively Responding Together) service initiative that encourages employees to volunteer in support of their communities. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170407005309/en/ Harris Corporation employees in Clifton, New Jersey, help assemble food packs as part of a company-sponsored service event to support low-income children. (Photo: Business Wire) About Harris Corporation Harris Corporation is a leading technology innovator, solving customers' toughest mission-critical challenges by providing solutions that connect, inform and protect. Harris supports government and commercial customers in more than 100 countries and has approximately $6 billion in annual revenue. The company is organized into three business segments: Communication Systems, Space and Intelligence Systems and Electronic Systems. Learn more at harris.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170407005309/en/ 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. The pre-examination training call letters for SC/ST/Religious Minority community candidates has been released today by the State Bank of India (SBI), April 7. Candidates can check it out on SBI official website. The State Bank of India (SBI) has released the pre-examination training call letters for SC/ST/Religious Minority community candidates today, April 7 on its official website. The call letters are meant for those candidates who had earlier applied for Probationary Officers (PO) recruitment 2017. Pre Exam Training Duration The Pre-exam training will begin from April 17 and will continue till April 22. How to download the SBI PO Pre-exam training call letter? To download the SBI PO Pre-exam training call letter, all the candidates need to follow the below mentioned steps: Visit the official website sbi.co.in Click on relevant link Fill in your registration number and password in the space provided Submit the log in Admit cards will be displayed Save it to your computer and take a print out of the same for future reference When did the online registration begin and end? The online registration for the same began on February 7 and continued until March 6. Selection procedure: The selection procedure is that itwill be done based on the candidate's performance in the preliminary examination, main examination, and interview. Note Take note that marks obtained in the preliminary examination will not be added for the selection. Marks obtained in main examination, both in objective test and descriptive test will be added to the marks obtained in GE and interview for preparation of the final merit list. About SBI According to SBI website, State Bank of India (SBI), with a 200 year history, is the largest commercial bank in India in terms of assets, deposits, profits, branches, customers and employees. The Government of India is the single largest shareholder of this Fortune 500 entity with more than 50% ownership. SBI is ranked 59th in the list of 'Top 1000 World Banks 2015' by The Banker magazine. The origins of State Bank of India date back to 1806 when the Bank of Calcutta (later called the Bank of Bengal) was established. In 1921, the Bank of Bengal and two other banks (Bank of Madras and Bank of Bombay) were amalgamated to form the Imperial Bank of India. In 1955, the Reserve Bank of India acquired the controlling interests of the Imperial Bank of India and SBI was created by an act of Parliament to succeed the Imperial Bank of India. IBPS CWE Clerk VI Main Exam Results Released: View Now! The results of the constable exam held by the West Bengal Police Recruitment Board has been released. Candidates can check their results in the exam from the official website of the West Bengal Police. What does the West Bengal police constable recruitment notification read? "The Result of Written Test for recruitment to the post of Constable (Male) in West Bengal Police has been announced and uploaded on the website of West Bengal Police (www.policewb.gov.in)," it read. The West Bengal police recruitment board notification also said that the board will back all efforts to deliver SMS alert to the candidates to their registered Mobile Number intimating the date and venue of Interview. Nevertheless, it also put up a precautionary word that it will not be responsible for non-delivery of such SMS. Call letters for West Bengal Police Constable recruitment Candidates will receive the call letters for the West Bengal Police Constable recruitment through their e-mail. The board made clear that it would not be delivered by any other means like post or others. 'No Call Letters will be sent by post to the candidates who applied online nor will it be made available from the Office of the West Bengal Police Recruitment Board,' it said. How to check the results of WB Police Constable Recruitment Written Test? Follow these steps to check results of WB Police Constable Recruitment Written Test [April 07, 2017] AXIS Re Hosts Inaugural 'Future of Insurance' Student Hackathon at University of Illinois AXIS Capital Holdings Limited ("AXIS Capital") (NYSE:AXS) today announced that AXIS Re - a business segment of AXIS - will host its inaugural "Future of Insurance" student hackathon in the Siebel Center for Design on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, on April 9. During the hackathon, students will be challenged to create new catastrophe risk conceptualization models while leveraging data analytics, computer programming and risk modeling technologies that are reshaping the insurance industry. "We are proud to partner with the University of Illinois - a leader in research and education and a valued partner of the AXIS Research Center - to launch our inaugural student hackathon," said Jon Colello, President and Chief Underwriting Officer, U.S., at AXIS Re. "The 'Future of Insurance' is not just the name of the hackathon - it reflects our company's commitment to help engage and develop the next generation of insurance and reinsurance professionals." Added Colello: "We anticipate that the next generation of insurance professionals will come from both traditional and non-traditional educational backgrounds, including computer science and information technologies. Through this hackathon and future events, we hope to draw more young professionals into the field while illustrating the dynamic and exciting opportunities within today's rapidly evolving insurance industry." The April 9 student hackathon is a collaboraton between the AXIS Research Center and the University of Illinois Office of Risk Management and Insurance Research. As part of the hackathon experience, students will be challenged to build a data visualization tool for underwriters to assess the potential impact of catastrophic incidents. These include floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes and other natural and manmade disasters, which can cause catastrophic damage in a given region. About AXIS Capital AXIS Capital is a Bermuda-based global provider of specialty lines insurance and treaty reinsurance with shareholders' equity at December 31, 2016, of $6.3 billion and locations in Bermuda, the United States, Europe, Singapore, Middle East, Canada and Latin America. Its operating subsidiaries have been assigned a rating of "A+" ("Strong") by Standard & Poor's and "A+" ("Superior") by A.M. Best. For more information about AXIS Capital, visit our website at www.axiscapital.com. Please be sure to follow AXIS Capital on LinkedIn. About AXIS Re AXIS Re - a business segment of AXIS Capital Holdings Limited (NYSE:AXS) - provides reinsurance to insurance companies on a worldwide basis, comprising catastrophe, property, professional lines, credit and surety, motor, general liability, engineering, marine, workers' compensation and agriculture, as well as other highly specialized risk transfer solutions. For more information about AXIS Re, please visit www.axiscapital.com/en-us/reinsurance. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170407005345/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] PLEASE NOTE! Due to the March 23, 2020 NM DOH Public Health Order, These Event Listings Are Not Accurate! All non-essential businesses are closed, public gatherings are prohibited! (One day some of these events will be rescheduled or will resume, but they are not happening now!) [April 07, 2017] Manheim Reports Used Vehicle Prices Signal Stability for 2017 ATLANTA, April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Stability continues heading into the second quarter. While wholesale used vehicle prices declined by 0.5 percent in March, the Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index a measure of wholesale prices adjusted for mix, mileage and season came to a reading of 124.1. This is an increase of 1.3 percent from a year ago. "While used vehicle values have declined in five of the last six months, it has not been the collapse that many analysts have warned for more than a year due to increasing wholesale supplies," said Tom Webb, chief economist for Cox Automotive. "On the contrary, the used vehicle market remains healthy while any weakness we've witnessed is overall due to an excessive new vehicle inventory not used." Pointing to the continued stability of the market regarding used vehicle retail sales, total used retail sales in January and February including private party transactions were up 5 percent. Growing on this strength, franchised dealer sales were up 6 percent and independent sales were up 7 percent according to the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA). Additionally, the credit and lending environment remains favorable. Despite the continued overall stability, the new vehicle environment continues to pressure used vehicle values, and franchise dealers started both February and March with more than four million new units in stock. A variety of major incentives were applied to that inventory in February and the industry achieved a seasonally adjusted annual selling rate (SAAR) of 17.5 million. Available incentives were just as large in March, but sales slowed and resulted in a SAAR of 16.5 million the lowest in just over two years. For used vehicle pricing trends, all car segments except for truck segments were down from a year ago. First quarter wholesale pricing for all vehicle segments included: Compact Car prices, typically one of the weakest segments, experienced some relative strength in comparison to the other car classes and were down a modest 0.9 percent prices, typically one of the weakest segments, experienced some relative strength in comparison to the other car classes and were down a modest 0.9 percent Midsize Cars once again surfaced as one of the weaker segments compared with last year and had a decline of 1.6 percent. once again surfaced as one of the weaker segments compared with last year and had a decline of 1.6 percent. SUVs and CUVs increased 1.4 percent from last March and again remain weaker than the overall market. increased 1.4 percent from last March and again remain weaker than the overall market. Pick-ups and Vans Pick-ups had the most significant increase of all car classes, with an increase of 6.7 percent over a year ago while vans saw a more modest increase of 3.9 percent. Pick-ups had the most significant increase of all car classes, with an increase of 6.7 percent over a year ago while vans saw a more modest increase of 3.9 percent. Luxury Cars represented the biggest decrease of all classes, dipping 1.8 percent over last year. "Even when compared to last year's high level, rental risk volumes sold at auction in the first quarter were up considerably," said Webb. "This year's off-rental volume was primarily due to fleet rationalization unlike last year's high number of new units entering the fleet and, as such, off-rental auction volumes may weaken later in the year." Visit Manheim's website to access a variety of company publications, including monthly Auto Industry Briefs, white papers and blog entries by Tom Webb. About Manheim (www.manheim.com) Manheim is North America's leading provider of vehicle remarketing services, connecting buyers and sellers to the largest wholesale used vehicle marketplace and most extensive auction network. Through 127 traditional and mobile auction sites and a robust digital marketplace, the company helps dealer and commercial clients achieve business results by providing innovative end-to-end inventory solutions. Approximately 18,000 employees enable Manheim to register about 8 million used vehicles per year, facilitate transactions representing nearly $57 billion in value and generate annual revenues of more than $2.6 billion. Headquartered in Atlanta, Manheim North America is a Cox Automotive brand. For more information, visit http://press.manheim.com. About Cox Automotive Cox Automotive Inc. is transforming the way the world buys, sells and owns cars with industry-leading digital marketing, software, financial, wholesale and e-commerce solutions for consumers, dealers, manufacturers and the overall automotive ecosystem worldwide. Committed to open choice and dedicated to strong partnerships, the Cox Automotive family includes Autotrader, Dealer.com, Dealertrack, Kelley Blue Book, Manheim, NextGear Capital, vAuto, Xtime and a host of other brands. The global company has 33,000 team members in more than 200 locations and is partner to more than 40,000 auto dealers, as well as most major automobile manufacturers, while engaging U.S. consumer car buyers with the most recognized media brands in the industry. Cox Automotive is a subsidiary of Cox Enterprises Inc., an Atlanta-based company with revenues of $18 billion and approximately 60,000 employees. Cox Enterprises' other major operating subsidiaries include Cox Communications and Cox Media Group. For more information about Cox Automotive, visit www.coxautoinc.com. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/manheim-reports-used-vehicle-prices-signal-stability-for-2017-300436467.html SOURCE Manheim [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [April 07, 2017] BioNJ to Partner with J.P. Morgan on Seventh Annual BioPartnering Conference In partnership with J.P. Morgan, BioNJ's Seventh Annual BioPartnering Conference, scheduled for Tuesday, May 23, 2017 at the Busch Campus Center at Rutgers University in Piscataway, is expected to bring together over 200 regional biopharmaceutical executives, investors, academic collaborators and business development professionals for a day of networking, 1-1 partnering meetings, company presentations, exhibits and plenary sessions. "We're thrilled to be partnering with J.P. Morgan on this year's BioPartnering Conference," said Debbie Hart, President and CEO, BioNJ. "With valuable insights from J.P. Morgan, the agenda will dive into the marketplace issues, challenges and trends that are impacting deal making, financial viability and the opportunity for medical innovation." Sharing their perspectives will be J.P. Morgan executives: Robert Huffines, Vice Chairman of Healthcare Banking, kicking the day off with an industry update and trends overview Mr. Huffines joined J.P. Morgan in 1991 in the M&A group where he was healthcare focused. From 2002-2010, he was Co-Head of the Global Healthcare Investment Banking Group and later was promoted to Vice Chairman in 2011. In 2017, he was added to the Global Banking Management Team and named Co-Chair of the Global Strategic Advisory Council. ______ Philip Ross, M.D., Managing Director Healthcare Investment Banking Group, moderating a panel to discuss capital raising and what now constitutes an attractive investment As a client executive and key coverage partner in Healthcare Investment Banking, Dr. Ross is responsible for relationships with many of J.P. Morgan's clients in the biotechnology industry. He also leverages his biotechnology expertise for J.P. Morgan's global pharmaceutical coverage effort. ______ Michael Griffin, Managing Director and Investment Specialist, leading a fireside chat with an industry research analyst In his current role, Mr. Grifin is responsible for advising ultra-high net worth individuals, foundations and senior executives on a range of financial matters including asset allocation, portfolio construction, equities, fixed income and alternative investments. ______ Alma DeMetropolis, President, New Jersey Market Leadership Team and Senior Investment Specialist, wrapping up with a regional note and the day's insights around navigating the evolving marketplace dynamics Ms. DeMetropolis has been advising ultra-high net worth individuals, families, endowments and foundations on a broad range of wealth matters and managing investment portfolios for over 20 years and has been with J.P. Morgan for over 25 years. She is actively involved in leading the bank's initiatives across New Jersey. ______ Joining this year's exhibits will be industry liaisons from Rutgers University, Princeton University, University of Pennsylvania and New York University among other regional university research centers. "Throughout the day, R&D companies will showcase their technologies and business models before an All-Star Panel of Judges," added Hart. "It's all about growing the ecosystem and bolstering opportunity for medical innovation." Apply by April 15 to be a company presenter. Limited presentation slots available. Register by April 14 for the Early Bird rate of $250 for BioNJ, LES and NewYorkBIO Members and $300 for Future Members. Contact Edie Esposito at 609-890-3185 or [email protected] to discuss exhibit and sponsorship opportunities. Visit www.BioNJ.org to learn more. Thank you to our Sponsors Amicus Therapeutics; Ashton Tweed; ContraVir Pharmaceuticals; Dynamic Strategies; EisnerAmper; Fisher Scientific; Friedman LLP; Johnson & Johnson; Merck & Co.; New Jersey Health Foundation; Law Office of Philip P. Crowley LLC; Princeton University; Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey and ThromboGenics. About BioNJ BioNJ, The Gateway (News - Alert) to Health, is a network of 400 Members representing research-based life sciences companies and stakeholders dedicated to propelling a vibrant ecosystem where Science is Supported, Companies are Created, Drugs are Developed and Patients are Paramount. Because Patients Can't Wait, BioNJ supports its Members in the discovery, development and commercialization of therapies and cures that save and improve lives and lessen the burden of illness and disease to society by driving capital formation, fostering entrepreneurship, advocating for public policies that advance medical innovation, providing access to talent and education and offering a cost-saving array of critical commercial resources. For more information about BioNJ, please visit www.BioNJ.org. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170407005389/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] General Motors is among many automakers that are constantly looking to expand their presence in the largest automotive global market, China. And they have done so by launching the 2018 Chevrolet Equinox, which debuts in six trim levels and a pricing range set between RMB 174,900 and RMB 249,900 ($25,355-$36,225). It looks identical to the North American version, benefiting from the same front fascia that adopts Chevys signature dual-port grille, silver wing-shaped roof rack, and dual five-spoke aluminum alloy wheels. The company hasnt released any images of the interior yet, but says that leather, 8-inch touchscreen display, panoramic sunroof, and others, are part of the package, and add up to the long list of standard features that include start/stop system, keyless entry, push-button start, Bluetooth, USB, Active Noise Cancelation and active grille shutters. Chevrolets 2018 Equinox aimed at the Peoples Republic also gets Side Blind Zone Alert, Forward Collision Alert, and other advanced safety systems. Buyers will get to choose between the 1.5-liter turbo, rated at 177hp and 275 Nm (203 lb-ft) of torque, mated with the six-speed DSS transmission, and the 2.0-liter twin-scroll direct-injected turbocharged unit, delivering 256hp and 353 Nm (260 lb-ft) of torque, which comes with GMs 9-speed auto, a first for the Chinese market. The 2018 Chevrolet Equinox is assembled locally at SAIC-GMs Wuhan facility. CHINA 2018 CHEVROLET EQUINOX NORTH AMERICA 2018 CHEVROLET EQUINOX It seems more major brands will be missing this years Frankfurt Auto Motor than we might have thought. Aside from two PSA Group brands (Peugeot & DS), the likes of Nissan, Infiniti, Fiat, Jeep and even Alfa Romeo are said to be skipping the show due to financial reasons. Still, according to Autonews, the IAA organizers (VDA) said that despite some automakers deciding against attending this year, more than 50 other brands from Europe, the U.S and Asia are planning on being there. Among the participants will be young Asian manufacturers, attending for the first time, along with some big international technology companies such as Qualcomm, Sony and IBM. Naturally we regret when individual exhibitors will not be in Frankfurt this time. The reasons are varying and each specific to the company, but mainly connected to financial or corporate policies, stated VDA managing director, Klaus Braeunig. These exhibitors however have all spoken out in favor of strong automotive trade shows and are open to returning in the future. As far as PSA is concerned, Citroen for example will attend in order to support a product launch, stated a spokesman for the group. However Peugeot and DS have decided to communicate to customers through different marketing methods. Nissan skipping the IAA is a direct result of a global review of the companys event and show strategy. Moving forward, we will adopt a flexible strategy using a combination of automotive, consumer and dedicated Nissan events and partnerships to broaden our reach and appeal among influencers and wider consumers, stated a Nissan Europe spokesperson. As for FCA, while theyve declined to make an official statement, sources say they will not attend this years show in Frankfurt, and neither will Mitsubishi and Volvo, according to Automobilwoche. PHOTO GALLERY Following Hyundais official teaser of the upcoming Kona sub-compact SUV, we bring you the latest spy shots of the new Korean model. Hyundai picked Kona as the name of its new SUV after the Kona district on the Big Island of Hawaii, revealing in a way the funky character of the new model. The new Hyundai Kona also claims that it will offer best-in-class interior space along with an attractive design, which is sort of obligatory in the segment. With rivals like the Nissan Juke, the Renault Captur and the Opel Mokka X coming in mind, we understand why Hyundai would opt for a visually strong model in this class. The test car remains under pretty heavy wraps, keeping its general styling off the radar for now. Only the front end gives away its arrangement, with a set of slim LEDs mounted on each corner of the bonnet and a set of headlights resting underneath them. As for the cabin we showed you in an earlier scoop, it follows the latest Hyundai design language we saw in models like the i30 and the Ioniq, featuring a tablet-like infotainment screen. The new Hyundai Kona will be most likely based on the i20 platform, using a mix of parts from both the i20 and the i30, including some of the latters engines. Hyundai is planning to reveal the new Kona this summer or at latest during the 2017 Frankfurt Motor Show in September. Photo Credits: CarPix for CarScoops PHOTO GALLERY A Tesla Model S owner from Toronto, Canada reports that he took delivery of his brand new P90D with a huge split in the A-pillar. The owner, Snowstorm on the Tesla Motors Club forum, says he happily took delivery of his new car but a few days later, noticed that the aluminum used in the A-pillar had a crack in it. Before you blame the owner for the split, its worth noting that there is white paint over and inside the crack, indicating that it left the factory like that. In a post, the member asks How can the delivery folks not see this as they are prepping the car? Would have been obvious on a wash. I dont even know how can the part be replaced without taking apart a lot of things. If I saw this on delivery, I would have asked for a different car The A-pillar of the Model S is a single piece of aluminium that stretches all the way back to the C-pillar and plays in important structural role in the sedan. This crack not only looks bad but is downright dangerous. The owner says that after contacting Tesla, he was instructed to take the car to a local Tesla body shop to have it evaluated and is currently waiting for an assessment of the defect and a proposed fix. However, he, and other forum members, suggest that the only solution is for Tesla to give him an entirely new car, something we agree with. One member suggests that given the delivery date of the Model S, the owner may have been a victim of rushing on the part of Tesla as it looked to push out as many vehicles as possible late last year, potentially resulting in poor quality control and lackluster inspections. Well update this story as more details about the defect emerge. PHOTO GALLERY The people who used to nominate the animated features were members of the Short Films and Feature Animation Branch, comprised largely of individuals who work in the animation industry, as well as select members invited from other branches. After the nominations are selected, the voting to determine the winner of the Academy Award is opened up to all 17 Academy branches, which includes actors, casting directors, executives, film editors, make-up artists, hair stylists, musicians, public relations, sound designers, and writers, among others. The general membership is the group that has voted to give the animated feature Academy Award to the same corporation The Walt Disney Company for nine out of the last ten years. That voting pattern, combined with past comments about animation by the general membership, suggest that the category is about to be pushed into more commercially oriented territory. One of the companies that could be affected by this new rule change is independent American distributor GKIDS, which has done a remarkable job of launching foreign animated features into the limelight over the past decade. This year, the company earned its ninth Oscar nomination for the Swiss-French co-production My Life As A Zucchini. GKIDS founder Eric Beckman spoke with Cartoon Brew this afternoon about the new rule changes. He expressed hopefulness that voters would still respond to good filmmaking in the same way that the broader Academy has responded to good filmmaking in live-action. GKIDS has made a name for ourselves by championing a broader definition of animation as a cinematic art form on a par with live action, he added. To the extent that we can find films that exemplify or approach that aspirational goal, I think that people are going to respond to that. GKIDS, however, isnt the only studio that stands to be affected by the new rules. In 2016, Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnsons penetrating character study Anomalisa earned a nomination. Distributed by Paramount, the stop motion feature was the first independently produced American feature to compete in the categorys 16-year history. This year, one of the nominees was Michael Dudok de Wits poignant The Red Turtle, a hand-drawn/cgi hybrid that was released by Sony Pictures Classics in the United States and produced by Studio Ghibli and other European co-production partners. It is films like Anomalisa and The Red Turtle that the Academy may ultimately be trying to knock out of contention, according to a piece published by The Wrap. They report that there have been internal debates within the Academy about finding ways to eliminate old school animation and focus more attention onto commercial cgi projects: The committees have been under increasing criticism in recent years for shunning films like The Lego Movie and showing a marked preference for hand-drawn or stop-motion films over CG moviesThe move should substantially increase the number of voters in the category, and perhaps lessen the bias toward old-school animation. It remains to be seen how the specific rule changes will affect the nominations in the category. For example, what is to be gained by replacing the current numerical ranking system with preferential balloting (explained here)? Well find out come next January. One thing is already clear though: 2017 is shaping up to be a particularly weak year creatively for American studio animation, especially relative to preceding years. Under the old rules, the animated feature category could very well have been dominated by independent and foreign productions this year, while these rule changes will almost certainly benefit commercial fare. In other words, if The Emoji Movie and Cars 3 didnt stand a shot before, theyre definitely back in the Oscar race for 2017. CORRECTION: An earlier version of this piece misstated that previously the animated feature nominees were selected only by the Short Films and Feature Animation Branch. That branch has selected the nominees, but also sends invitations to members of other branches to increase voter participation. Photo: Fraser Institute Canadians have been paying the man for a century the taxman, that is. Personal income tax was brought in as wartime revenue generator in 1917. Since then, it has morphed into a costly, complex behemoth thats difficult to administer and makes Canada uncompetitive, the Fraser Institute argues. The fears policymakers had in 1917 when the personal income tax was introduced that governments would become dependent on it and that it would hurt our competitiveness have all come, said William Watson, acting chairman of the Department of Economics at McGill University, a co-editor of the study. Just filing their taxes costs the average Canadian family $500 in time and money, even before they get to what they owe, Watson said. In 1917, just two per cent of Canadians filed taxes, accounting for 2.6 per cent of federal revenues. Fast forward to today, and 75 per cent file income tax returns, and the share of federal revenue has grown to 51 per cent. A hike to the top federal rate to 33 per cent in 2016 brought Ontarios combined federal-provincial tax rate to 53.5 per cent, making it the third highest in the G7 behind only France (54.5 per cent) and Japan (55.9 per cent). Canadian provinces have seven of the eight highest top combined rates in all of North America. Even B.C., which has Canadas lowest combined top rate (47.7 per cent), is still higher than 42 U.S. states. Canada is already uncompetitive with the U.S. on personal income taxes, and with the Trump administration vowing to reduce taxes further, that gulf will likely grow, Watson said. Photo: Castanet Staff Lisa Church, left with the URM, MLA Eric Foster and Lisa Anderson with the URM Business is booming at the Upper Room Mission so a $50,000 cheque from the B.C. government came at the right time. Lisa Anderson, co-executive director, said the money, which was provided through a B.C. Gaming grant, will be used to provide food for URM guests. Anderson said last year, the URM did not receive any money from B.C. Gaming, forcing the mission to cut back on several programs. However, Anderson said the province did eventually come up with a $100,000 grant. Although the money given to the mission on Thursday was half that amount, Anderson said there will be no impact of existing programs. Anderson said the mission is starting to get busier and that they are seeing a lot of new faces, many of them from Alberta. The mission is also seeing more seniors stopping by for a helping hand. At the end of each month we are seeing more seniors coming in so the $50,000 will help out greatly, said Anderson, adding donations are always welcome. Photo: vernonpickleball.com Greater Vernon politicians have been inundated with emails from pickleball enthusiasts who want dedicated courts built in the city. Some months ago, the Vernon Pickleball Association asked local government for $500,000 of the $1.2 million cost of construction of a facility at Marshall Field. The Greater Vernon Advisory Committee decided to look into the matter. We've all had numerous emails about pickleball, said Juliette Cunningham, GVAC chairperson. I think it's a concerted effort to organize and put pressure on where we're at. North Okanagan Regional District staff have promised to have a report ready next month that will lay out different options for a project as well as costs. I think part of it is they were hoping to have (the facility) for the 55+ BC Games (in September)," said Cunningham. "I don't think that's realistic so we're waiting for the staff report. We all have been getting the emails so I will respond saying we are getting a report back from staff in May dealing with the financial aspects of how it could be funded. It's not everyday dinosaurs are seen walking through downtown Vernon, but that is exactly what has been happening lately. Two Tyrannosaurus Rex were recently spotted at the Castanet office delivering Brontosaurus burgers from Topping Expectations' restaurant. The Vernon eatery will be selling the monster burgers every Saturday as part of a promotion for the Dinosaurs Unearthed exhibit at the Okanagan Science Centre. The dinosaur display will run until Aug. 31. and features a wide variety of jurassic beasts. The exhibition questions what people think they know about dinosaurs and presents prehistoric creatures in a new way. It will show a life-sized juvenile Tyrannosaurus Rex sporting a coat of heat-regulating feathers and give the inside scoop on the ancestors of Triceratops. The display also features fossils from China and North America, including skulls, eggs, claws, teeth and a giant forelimb and scapula, along with a full-scale Gasosaurus skeleton. Photo: Wayne Emde. File photo. Some effort is being spent to make the DND fields look a little greener, despite some opposition. The Greater Vernon Advisory Committee has allocated $25,000 from reserves to be spent on repairs to the irrigation and electrical systems at the fields. The decision was made despite a complaint from Electoral Area C director Mike Macnabb about the cost to taxpayers. He suggested the cash should come from any residual funds left over from the $13 million earmarked for the new arena. We've talked our residents into this expansion and now we're going to tax residents for the other, the DND upgrades, Macnabb said during a meeting on Thursday. However, they are two separate issues, according to David Sewell, North Okanagan Regional District's chief administration officer. Our strategic direction is to separate those two issues, Sewell reminded the group. In January, former Funtastic president and founder John Topping urged the organization to plow funds into upgrading existing softball diamonds and create a new field. It has been 15 years since any significant investment has been made at the DND fields, Topping said in a letter to the Funtastic board. [April 07, 2017] Make the Change: Attracting More Women to STEM Careers Boosts Diversity VANCOUVER, British Columbia, April 7, 2017 /CNW/ -- Istuary Innovation Group has kicked off the first of a series of talks, Make the Change: Women in STEM, focused on creating opportunities and efforts to build a more diverse, inclusive workforce in Canada. The first talk, held yesterday, was in collaboration with the University of British Columbia, featuring leading academic Professor Elizabeth Croft, well known for increasing the percentage of female students entering first year engineering at UBC to 30 per cent from 20 per cent during her tenure as NSERC Chair for Women in Science and Engineering. Research presented by Professor Croft covering women in STEM professions indicates only 12 percent of hires in computing and engineering were women as of 2013. "One of the biggest challenges for attracting women, in my experience, is in building their confidence," said Professor Elizabeth Croft, Associate Dean for Education and Professional Development, University of British Columbia. "This can be done by creating a welcoming environment and addressing their feelings of 'imposteritis,' that is, feeling like an imposter no matter how successful or established one is." Istuary grew from zero womenhires when it first started in 2013 to 20 percent in less than three years. Jean Su, Vice President of Engineering, Innovation Labs, who also spoke today, was the first female software developer hired at the company a year and a half ago. Underrepresentation of women led Istuary to make significant strides to increase the number of women with backgrounds from mechanical engineering to software development and computer design. "I developed my career in a heavily male-dominated industry but I saw it more as an opportunity," said Su. "I studied in Canada at UBC then worked in China, where my female colleagues are expected to work for a few years then leave and have a family. Canada is more advanced in providing huge opportunities for women, but it needs to be better. From a business perspective, it just makes logical sense." Istuary will host Make the Change: Women in STEM Talks regularly. For more information, contact: [email protected]. Istuary Innovation Group Istuary Innovation Group is a Canadian technology company with a mission to connect local technology to global markets through globalization for sustainable innovation. Istuary focuses on identifying and filling technology gaps in foreign markets by leveraging Canada's world-class design and engineering talent. Operating in 3 countries, 30 cities, and employing over 1500 employees worldwide, go to www.istuary.com for more information. Related Images image1.jpg image2.jpg image3.jpg image4.jpg Contact: Shirley Wong Walker Manager, External Relations Istuary Innovation Group Phone: 604 299-0388 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 Istuary Innovation Group [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Photo: Contributed A family dog may be a baby's best friend for avoiding allergies and becoming obese later in life, a new study suggests. Research at the University of Alberta shows infants from families with furry pets, especially dogs, showed higher levels of two types of gut microbes associated with lower risks of obesity and allergic disease. "The abundance of these bacteria were increased twofold when there was a pet in the house," said Anita Kozyrskyj, a pediatric epidemiologist who is one of the world's leading researchers on gut microbes. The findings of her research team were published Thursday in the journal Microbiome. The study theory suggests that babies exposed to dirt and bacteria from a pet's fur or paws can create early immunity. The exposure can happen from pet-to-mother-to-unborn baby as well as during the first three months of the infant's life. "This interaction is required for a baby's immune system to develop," she said. "The microbes are training the immune system to react to harmful entities like pathogenic microbes and not react to beneficial microbes and food nutrients." Kozyrskyj said the findings build on the work of earlier research that found that children who grow up with dogs have lower rates of asthma. Photo: David Ogilvie At least one person was taken to hospital after a collision involving a semi-truck and an SUV Thursday afternoon. Firefighters and paramedics arrived on scene at the intersection of Highway 97 and Princeton Avenue around 4:30 p.m. An ambulance transported one person to the hospital. The extent of the injuries or how many people are injured is unknown at this time. Traffic is beginning to build and a detour has been created along Beach Avenue. Photo: The Canadian Press A 51-year-old Quebec man was charged Thursday with killing three women in a town northeast of Montreal, at least two of whom were family members. Sylvain Duquette was charged with three counts of first-degree murder, one charge of attempted murder with a firearm, one count of unlawful confinement and an arson-related offence. Crown prosecutor Vicky Belleville said the attempted murder and confinement charges relate to the accused's father, Claude Duquette, 80. One of the women, Denise Halle, was the suspect's sister-in-law, while the second, Jocelyne Pellerin, was his father's wife, Belleville said. While the identity of the third woman killed has not yet been released, police said the suspect knew all three of them. The events all took place within a short distance of each other, about 170 kilometres northeast of Montreal. Duquette appeared briefly in court on the allegations against him on Thursday after being arrested earlier in the day at a gas station north of the city. Duquette will remain in detention until his next court date on April 13. His lawyer, Karine Bussiere, said she hadn't decided whether she will seek bail for her client. Provincial police spokesman Marc Tessier said the slain women were 56, 61 and 70 years old. The director of the local volunteer fire station said a 911 call came in around 11:45 p.m. Wednesday about a fire in a building. Denis Boutin said the blaze was out by the time firefighters arrived and he could see an inert person laying inside. The accused's father was wounded in that home before fleeing and alerting a neighbour. He was taken to hospital with non-life threatening injuries. Two other women were killed in a second residence not far away, police said. Police would not say how the women died or if a weapon was used. But Claude Blais, a neighbour, said he awoke to the sound of gunfire late Wednesday night. "I said: 'Something must be happening for sure, we're not supposed to have gunshots here,'" he said. Photo: The Canadian Press A ghastly chemical attack pushed the Syrian civil war toward a dramatic turning point, with the new U.S. administration launching a missile strike against the regime of Bashar Assad in a sudden shift in policy. American warships launched dozens of rockets at military targets after a nerve-gas attack that killed scores of civilians including children, U.S. officials said late Thursday. Speaking earlier Thursday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau offered little hint about Canada's role in any effort to remove the Syrian strongman. Yet he expressed horror over this week's attack, which killed more than 80 people. "This is a war crime and the international community must stand firmly against such things," Trudeau said Thursday after a day of meetings in New York. "We condemn in the strongest of terms (these) heinous acts against civilians, children, by chemical weapons." He promised Canada would be involved in the United Nations process to investigate and punish the perpetrators of the chemical attack that killed civilians, as seen in grotesque images that have shocked the world. The U.S. strike came hours after the new Trump administration signalled a reversal of policy with respect to Assad: that the Syrian leader had lost the legitimacy to govern, he had to go, and an international coalition was being assembled to oust him. President Donald Trump explained why he ordered the military strikes in a statement that did not elaborate on his longer-term political objective for Syria. "Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women, and children," President Donald Trump said from his Florida residence. "It was a slow and brutal death for so many. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror." The Trump administration was already assigning blame. After repeatedly expressing disinterest in removing Assad, and frequently declaring that America's sole interest in Syria was defeating terrorist groups, not toppling its oppressive government, Trump's team signalled its course correction earlier Thursday. Trump's secretary of state went further. Rex Tillerson said a coalition-building effort has already begun, with the aim of ousting Assad. He did not specify whether the effort would be primarily diplomatic, military, or both but he made clear it's underway. Photo: The Canadian Press President Donald Trump cast the United States assault on a Syrian air base as vital to deter future use of poison gas and called on other nations to join in seeking "to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria." The U.S. blasted the air base Thursday night with a barrage of cruise missiles in fiery retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. Announcing the assault from his Florida resort, Trump said there was no doubt Syrian President Bashar Assad was responsible for the chemical attack, which he said employed banned gases and killed dozens. "Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children," Trump declared. The U.S. strikes 59 missiles launched from the USS Ross and USS Porter hit the government-controlled Shayrat air base in central Syria, where U.S. officials say the Syrian military planes that dropped the chemicals had taken off. The U.S. missiles hit at 8:45 p.m. in Washington, 3:45 Friday morning in Syria. The missiles targeted the base's airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, officials said. The Syrian military said at least seven people were killed and several were wounded in the strikes. Syrian state TV reported a U.S. missile attack on a number of military targets and called the attack an "aggression." The office of Syria's president called the U.S. missile strike "reckless" and "irresponsible." Photo: SCMP Suspected Muslim insurgents set off dozens of bombs in southern Thailand, bringing down power lines and setting tires on fire to block roads. Security officials said there were no reports of deaths or injuries. Most of the attacks occurred early Friday in Muslim-majority provinces in Buddhist-dominated Thailand's deep south, where about 7,000 people have been killed in a separatist insurgency that flared in 2004. Thai media speculated the actions were in response to Thursday's ratification of Thailand's new constitution, but officials said they had no information connecting the events. Military spokesman Pramote Prom-in said 52 electric poles were damaged by explosives in the provinces of Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat, and Songkhla, causing scattered minor blackouts. He said officials also discovered burnt tires and more explosives but reported no injuries or deaths. Photo: Contributed A non-profit working to protect Montreal's Mount Royal is making a push to have the famed mountain park considered a UNESCO World Heritage Site. But first, the three-headed mountain located in the heart of Montreal island needs to be added to the federal government's list of potential sites from which the world body can choose. "Preliminary studies by experts in world heritage have advised the City of Montreal that there were some exceptional characteristics to Mount Royal," Helene Panaioti, spokeswoman for the non-profit, said Thursday. Les amis de la montagne (friends of the mountain) said it's hoping to collect up to 30,000 signatures by the end of April to help bolster its case to the federal government, which is looking to update a list of potential Canadian world heritage sites. The government's list hasn't been updated since 2004. Photo: The Canadian Press UPDATED: 11:30 a.m. Canada was briefed about an hour before a barrage of U.S. cruise missiles were launched at an airbase in Syria, says Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who also spoke by phone Friday with the man responsible: President Donald Trump. The two leaders discussed the need for a "political solution" to the Syria crisis, the Prime Minister's Office said in a brief synopsis of the call. Trudeau disclosed the discussions during a long-awaited statement Friday in the House of Commons following Thursday's strike, Trump's promised response to a gruesome chemical attack Monday in Syria that killed more than 80 civilians. Trudeau said that prior to the strikes taking place, U.S. Defence Secretary Jim Mattis called Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan, who then briefed the prime minister. "This morning I spoke with the president directly and emphasized that Canada agrees that Assad's repeated use of chemical weapons must not continue," Trudeau said during question period. "In the face of such heinous war crimes, all civilized peoples must speak with one voice." The PMO's readout of the call said the two leaders agreed "that the repugnant chemical attacks cannot be permitted to continue with impunity. They also committed to continuing to seek a political solution to end the crisis in Syria." The strike prompted an abrupt change in Trudeau's position: after stopping short Thursday of directly blaming Syrian President Bashar Assad, he is now holding the Syrian government responsible for using chemical weapons against its own people. ORIGINAL: 6:55 a.m. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is holding the Syrian government responsible for using chemical weapons against its own people, saying Canada fully supports the United States' retaliatory missile strike. That represents a hardening of Trudeau's position from a day earlier when he stopped short of directly blaming Syrian President Bashar Assad and his government. Trudeau said in a statement today that Canada supports what he called the "limited and focused action" by the U.S. in retaliation for the chemical weapons attack. The prime minister also denounced Assad's use of chemical weapons, saying "the crimes the Syrian regime has committed against its own people cannot be ignored." "These gruesome attacks cannot be permitted to continue operating with impunity," he said. "This week's attack in southern Idlib and the suffering of Syrians is a war crime and is unacceptable. Canada condemns all uses of chemical weapons." He also said Canada will continue to back diplomatic efforts to resolve the Syrian crisis. Photo: The Canadian Press North Korea's nuclear ambitions and the U.S-China trade imbalance as well as other points of tension between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are being overshadowed by the U.S. missile strikes on Syria. Nonetheless, the two leaders are meeting for a second day at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate as planned Friday. Their first-night summit dinner wrapped up shortly before the U.S. announced the missile barrage on an air base in Syria in retaliation against Syrian President Bashar Assad for a chemical weapons attack against civilians caught up in his country's long civil war. Before Thursday night's dinner with their wives, Trump said he and Xi already had had a long discussion and had "developed a friendship," and then joked, "I have gotten nothing, absolutely nothing." Xi apparently got something out of dinner, though. Chinese state media reported late Thursday that Trump has accepted Xi's invitation to visit China this year. The official Xinhua News Agency reported that Trump will travel to China at an "early date" in 2017, but gave no details. The White House downplayed expectations for a breakthrough on issues like trade and tariffs, insisting that the 24-hour summit is mostly an introductory meeting for the two leaders. Within Trump's administration, divisions remain over how to approach China. Still, North Korea was a top priority for Trump in the meetings with Xi. The American president told reporters travelling with him to Florida that he thinks China will "want to be stepping up" in trying to deter North Korea's nuclear ambitions. While Trump would not say what he wants China to do specifically, he suggested there was a link between "terrible" trade agreements the U.S. has made with China and Pyongyang's provocations. He said the two issues "really do mix." Trump has said the U.S. will act alone if China doesn't exert more pressure on North Korea. The missile strikes on Syria bring more weight to that statement. Both as a candidate and president, Trump has taken an aggressive posture toward China, labeling Beijing a "tremendous problem" and arguing that lopsided trade deals with China shortchange American businesses and workers. Last week, the president predicted in a tweet that his meeting with Xi would be "very difficult." Photo: The Canadian Press A former Ontario nurse accused of killing eight seniors in her care has waived her right to a preliminary hearing and will go straight to trial. Elizabeth Wettlaufer, 49, appeared in a Woodstock, Ont., court on Friday by video link. She is expected to appear in person on April 21 to set a date for her trial. In October, Wettlaufer was charged in the deaths of eight residents at nursing homes in Woodstock and London, Ont. In those cases, police alleged Wettlaufer used drugs to kill the seniors while she worked at the facilities between 2007 and 2014. In January, Wettlaufer faced six additional charges related to seniors in her care. Court documents allege Wettlaufer injected those six alleged victims with insulin. The allegations against Wettlaufer have not been proven in court. Photo: The Canadian Press In this image provided by the U.S. Navy, the USS Ross fires a tomahawk land attack missile Friday. World leaders including Canada rallied around the United States after it launched a missile strike early Friday on a Syrian air base in response to this week's chemical attack, while Russia condemned the move as "aggression" and suspended crucial co-ordination with Washington in Syria's congested skies. The overnight missile attack, which marked the first time the U.S. has directly targeted Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces, was condemned by his allies in Russia and Iran but welcomed by the Syrian opposition and its supporters, who expressed hope it signalled a turning point in the devastating six-year-old civil war. The bombing represents Trump's most dramatic military order since taking office and thrusts the U.S. administration deeper into the complex Syrian conflict. The Obama administration threatened to attack Assad's forces after previous chemical attacks, but never followed through. About 60 U.S. Tomahawk missiles hit the Shayrat air base, a small installation with two runways, where aircraft often take off to bomb targets in northern and central Syria. The U.S. missiles hit at 3:45 a.m. (0045 GMT) Friday and targeted the base's airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, U.S. officials said. They were fired from two warships in the Mediterranean Sea, in retaliation for Tuesday's deadly chemical attack, which officials said used chlorine mixed with a nerve agent, possibly sarin. Assad's office called the U.S. missile strike "reckless" and "irresponsible." The Syrian military said at least seven people were killed and nine wounded in the strike. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition monitor, also put the death toll at seven, including a general and three soldiers. The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin believes the U.S. strike is an "aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law." Photo: The Canadian Press UPDATED: 11:55 a.m. Stockholm police say one person "that can have some kind of connection" to the beer truck attack in the city has been arrested. Stockholm County Council says three people have been killed and 15 people have been injured nine seriously after a hijacked beer truck slammed into a department store. UPDATED: 9:35 a.m. A hijacked beer truck crashed into an upscale department store in central Stockholm on Friday, killing at least two people, according to Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, who called the crash a terror attack. Live television footage showed smoke coming out of the upscale Ahlens department store on the city's pedestrian street Drottninggatan, the store the truck smashed into about 3 p.m. People in the downtown area fled in panic. Authorities evacuated the city's Central Station, which serves regional trains and the Swedish capital's subway system, which was a few hundred yards away. All trains to and from the main station were halted and two large shopping malls in the capital were shut down. "Sweden has been attacked," Lofven said in a nationally televised press conference. "This indicates that it is an act of terror." Broadcaster SVT said at least five people were killed in the attack while Swedish radio reported three dead, but police could not immediately confirm those reports. The country's intelligence agency said a large number of people were wounded in the crash. "We stood inside a shoe store and heard something ... and then people started to scream," witness Jan Granroth told the Aftonbladet daily. "I looked out of the store and saw a big truck." There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack and police in a later news conference said no one has been arrested, contradicting earlier Swedish media reports that one person was in custody. "We have no contact with the person or persons who drove the truck," Sweden's top police chief, Dan Eliasson, told reporters. "Right now, we have no one arrested," said Jan Evensson of the Stockholm police, who urged people not to drive into central Stockholm. Swedish beer maker Spendrups said one of its trucks had been hijacked earlier Friday. Photo: Getty Images A report affirming the shoreline of Lake Huron as the best place to bury radioactive waste failed to provide information the government had requested, federal environmental authorities say. In a detailed letter and document sent to Ontario Power Generation, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency criticizes the utility's report as inadequate and asks it to try again much to the delight of project opponents. The impugned OPG report came after Environment Minister Catherine McKenna asked the utility in February last year for information on, among other things, the feasibility of burying the low or moderately radioactive waste elsewhere. In response, OPG insisted the Bruce nuclear plant near Kincardine, Ont., was the best location for its proposed deep geologic repository a massive underground rock bunker about 1.2 kilometres from Lake Huron. Among other things, OPG said in its report in December that it would be cost-prohibitive and more dangerous to truck the hazardous waste elsewhere. Critics, however, were quick to argue the analysis was simplistic, saying OPG had done no in-depth studies of other sites. The assessment agency appears to have agreed. In a 15-page request for information, the federal agency calls OPG's analysis of other sites vague and superficial. The utility should have "objectively and rigorously" analyzed potential problems with other locations from construction of the repository to its ultimate closure, the document states. "These alternative locations should be reasonable, conceivable, and realistic within the context of developing a deep geologic repository," according to the information request. "Candidate locations should be developed to a point where meaningful evaluations of the concepts can be made." Photo: The Canadian Press A major Canadian-Syrian community group says the U.S. airstrikes on Syria came as a surprise and a relief. Faisal Alazem, a spokesman for the Syrian Canadian Council, says Thursday's missile strike was long overdue in light of the crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Syrian regime. He says it's "comforting" to see punitive measures taken against Syrian President Bashar Assad's government because only then will there be incentive to change. Alazem says he hopes the U.S. bombing a response to a chemical weapons attack that killed more than 80 people isn't merely symbolic, and will usher in a broader campaign to protect Syrian civilians. He also praised the Canadian government for supporting the strike while emphasizing the need for diplomacy. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Friday morning that Canada supports what he called the "limited focused action" by the U.S. in retaliation for the sarin attack. The Bank of Canada has unveiled a new $10 bank note to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Confederation and it will mark the first time an indigenous Canadian and a woman other than the Queen are featured on the country's currency. The mostly purple polymer note depicts the faces of four federal political figures the Bank of Canada says helped shape the country: Sir John A. Macdonald, Sir George-Etienne Cartier, Agnes Macphail and James Gladstone. The bank has already announced plans to put human rights activist Viola Desmond on the $10 bill later next year, making Desmond the first woman to grace a regularly circulating bank note. The note marking the 150th anniversary, to be released in June, will be a commemorative one and won't replace the existing design. Bank governor Stephen Poloz says the new $10 bill is intended to instill a sense of pride in what Canadians have accomplished as a nation. The note's front also carries images of Parliament's Hall of Honour, the names of all the provinces and territories and a depiction of the Memorial Chamber Arch in the Peace Tower of Parliament's centre block. On the back, a range of images are shown to capture the country's diverse landscape, including mountains, Prairie wheat, the Canadians Shield, the East Coast and the Northern Lights. The new note will be available in June when 40 million of them go into circulation. Photo: Flickr-beingmyself A motorist travelling in Alberta's Rocky Mountains found three furry surprises at a roadside bathroom stop. Parks Canada spokeswoman Christina Tricomi says three black bear cubs were found inside a washroom less than five kilometres from the west entrance of Banff National Park. Tricomi says the cubs are about three months old, weigh about six pounds and are healthy. But momma bear is nowhere to be found, despite several searches since her babies were found in the bathroom on April 1. Tricomi says the cubs are too young to survive on their own and Parks Canada is caring for them. They are considering options for the cubs, such as rehabilitation facilities or a certified zoo. "We don't think they were in there too long, it's a pretty well-used washroom and stop area," Tricomi said. "There was no mother bear in the area. We had the area searched for any signs of bear activity and we didn't see any. We patrolled the area for a few days and no mother bear showed up. We checked our wildlife cameras in the underpass." She said there are no surveillance cameras at the roadside pullout. Black bear cubs usually stay with their mother for a full year, Tricomi said. As for how the cubs got into the bathroom in the first place? "We have no clue," Tricomi said. Photo: Canadian Forces The Royal Canadian Air Force has grounded its fleet of CH-148 Cyclone helicopters after one of the naval choppers encountered a "severe bump" during a training flight the latest delay in a project years behind its original delivery date. Col. Peter Allan, commander at the 12 Wing Shearwater air base, said the problem corrected itself during a descent and the pilot safely landed the aircraft with no damage during a night flight near Halifax on March 9. However, the glitch prompted a freeze on flying as of March 12, and the Air Force is investigating with the help of aircraft manufacturer Sikorsky. The Air Force also temporarily grounded the Cyclones in January to check for potential tail rotor problems following an incident on a North Sea oil platform involving a civilian version of the helicopter. Allan said the Cyclone crew described feeling a "a severe bump on the underside of the aircraft" followed by warning lights from the "automatic flight control system advisory" and "primary flight control system degraded advisory." To date, 11 of 28 Cyclones have been delivered to the Royal Canadian Air Force in a much-delayed roll-out. Three are operated for testing and evaluation. The existing fleet of aging CH-124 Sikorsky Sea King helicopters will continue to provide maritime helicopter support for the Royal Canadian Navy. Photo: Toronto Zoo The Toronto Zoo says it has successfully hatched four African penguin chicks. The zoo says of the 18 penguin species around the world, the African penguin is one of the most endangered the current population of wild African penguins is less than half of what it was 40 years ago. It says the first two chicks were laid by a pair named Thandiwe and Matata, who were recommended to breed by the Species Survival Plan, but both eggs had to be given to surrogate parents as the pair didn't sit on the eggs. The other two chicks were laid by another pair, Eldon and Chupa, and one of their eggs went to a surrogate pair. The zoo says incubation by the parents occurs for just over a month, then the hatched chicks stay with their parents in the nest for another three weeks. The chicks three females and a male hatched on Feb. 12, 15, 27, and March 4. "By this point the chicks are large and mobile enough for the penguin keepers to hand-raise them," the zoo said Friday in a Facebook post. "The keepers are teaching the chicks to be hand-fed fish and to get on a scale for daily weigh-ins." They're expected to be able to join the zoo's penguin colony at around 80 days. The fact that three of the chicks are female "is good news for North American zoo population, which is predominantly male," the zoo said. Fewer than 20,000 breeding pairs are left in South Africa, it said. (TNS) It's winter break at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and four undergraduate students with the school's Engineers Without Borders program have just flown into Nepal to design, build and implement a water filtration system for a school in Goduk.Five minutes into a meeting with school officials and there's a problem: the school already has water. After some investigating, the students decide instead to create filters for one of a dozen tap stands around the village.It was on an exploratory survey of the land that the group ran into a crew working on a slow sand filter for the area, which was in need of financial and technical support. After two pivots, that became the new school project, and work began.Two more surprises were ahead: a change in location and a different flow rate required a pre-filter that was four times larger than the first design."We had to recalculate everything," said Madison Baker, one of the four-person student team that included Jordan Erdie, Noah Kaiser and Anna Iisa. "We pulled an all-nighter on that one."That pivoting provided valuable experience that is giving EWB alums an edge in the competitive hiring process that follows -- and sometimes precedes -- graduation.EWB, now in its 15th year, was born at CU by Professor of Civil Engineering Bernard Amadei, who is still an active professor. Today, the nonprofit has 1,600 members and more than 100 chapters in the U.S.There are four EWB teams at CU in Boulder, with projects in Rwanda, Peru, Paraguay and Nepal. The current Nepalese project has been ongoing for two years; CU's part in it is over, but the work is being continued by non-governmental organizations.The experience the students received over that two-year period is hard to match in the private sector. Internships in civil and environmental engineering are available, but not plentiful."There's not tons available, so it's going to take a lot of perseverance and legwork to get one," said Kevin Tone, vice president at Boulder consulting firm JVA.And most internships wouldn't allow for the same kind of hands-on work students get to do with EWB, added Mike Gill, principal at Denver consulting firm Stantec and a mentor for CU's EWB Nepal team."Oftentimes the level of responsibility is less" in internships than with EWB projects, Gill said. "We're throwing students out to the other side of the world. They're on their own, making decisions and having to live with them."It's real-world experience that other students don't have."Job prospects for graduates are pretty good for students with any level of work experience."Students get snapped up before graduation (and) often have multiple job offers," said Karl Linden, professor of environmental engineering at CU. "We have a top-ranked program in the country and have a lot of really good students in the program."There aren't any statistics to demonstrate that EWB alums fair better in the job hunt, but anecdotally, Linden said, the evidence is there."I've never seen anyone not get a job."A handful of former EWB-ers work at JVA in Boulder. And Gill himself hired a recent grad from the Nepal team."The biggest skills students gain out of this is resiliency," Gill said. "Sometimes you have a project, then you meet somebody in the woods and now your project is completely different, but you have to figure it out."That's the kind of thing you can't learn in school."Shay Castle: 303-473-1626, castles@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/shayshinecastle___ Appellate Court of Illinois, Fourth District. THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. SEAN A. PECK, Defendant-Appellant. NO. 4-16-0410 Decided: April 05, 2017 Presiding Justice Turner and Justice Harris concur in the judgment and opinion. OPINION 1 Following a December 2012 trial, a jury found defendant, Sean A. Peck, guilty of (1) possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver (15 or more objects but less than 200 objects containing N-benzylpiperazine (ecstasy)) (720 ILCS 570/401(a)(7.5)(A) (West 2010)) and (2) possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver (less than one gram of a substance containing cocaine) (720 ILCS 570/401(d) (West 2010)) premised on drugs found in a search of defendant's residence. In February 2013, the trial court sentenced defendant to concurrent prison terms of 20 years and 10 years, respectively. Following the sentencing hearing, defendant's counsel filed a motion to reconsider the sentence. Defendant pro se filed a separate motion to reconsider the sentence and argued that his trial counsel was ineffective when she failed to file a motion to suppress his incriminating statements. In August 2013, the court denied the motions. Defendant appealed. 2 On appeal, defendant argued that (1) trial counsel was ineffective for failing to file a motion to suppress his incriminating statements and (2) the trial court erred when it failed to conduct a hearing in compliance with People v. Krankel, 102 Ill. 2d 181, 464 N.E.2d 1045 (1984). This court agreed with defendant's latter assertion and remanded the case with directions for the trial court to (1) appoint defendant new counsel and (2) conduct a Krankel hearing on his claim of ineffective assistance of counsel. People v. Peck, No. 4-13-0749 (May 15, 2015) (unpublished summary order under Supreme Court Rule 23(c)). 3 On remand, newly appointed Krankel counsel filed an amended motion for a new trial. Defendant filed a motion to withdraw the amended motion and argued Krankel counsel had (1) not sufficiently communicated with him and (2) a conflict of interest due to a professional relationship with defendant's trial attorney. Defendant elected to proceed pro se and filed a new motion to support his contentions for the Krankel hearing. At a May 2016 hearing, the court found trial counsel was not ineffective for failing to file a motion to suppress defendant's incriminating statements. 4 Defendant appeals, arguing (1) that the trial court failed to properly admonish him before permitting him to waive counsel and proceed pro se at his Krankel hearing; and (2) in the alternative, that his trial counsel was ineffective for failing to file a motion to suppress his incriminating statements following his request for legal representation. For the reasons that follow, we agree with defendant's second argument and reverse and remand for a new trial. 5 I. BACKGROUND 6 In December 2011, the State charged defendant with (1) possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver (15 or more objects but less than 200 objects containing ecstasy) (720 ILCS 570/401(a)(7.5)(A) (West 2010)), (2) possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver (less than one gram of a substance containing cocaine) (720 ILCS 570/401(d) (West 2010)), (3) possession of a controlled substance (15 or more objects but less than 200 objects containing ecstasy) (720 ILCS 570/402(a)(7.5)(A) (West 2010)), (4) possession of a controlled substance (less than 15 grams of a substance containing cocaine) (720 ILCS 570/402(c) (West 2010)), and (5) possession of cannabis (more than 10 grams but not more than 30 grams of a substance containing cannabis) (720 ILCS 550/4(c) (West 2010)). The State enhanced each count due to defendant's prior conviction for possession of cocaine. 7 A. The Evidence 8 These charges arose from a search warrant executed on defendant's residence on February 17, 2011. The police found 0.5 grams of a white substance later tested and identified as cocaine, 19 pills in defendant's kitchen cabinets, and 50 pills in a black leather jacket (17 of the 69 total pills were tested and identified as ecstasy). The police also found a digital scale, a razor blade with white residue on the blade, a screwdriver with white residue on the tip, and a box of sandwich bags in the kitchen cabinets. During the search, defendant and his girlfriend, Pershoun Ewing, were present. 9 The police later brought defendant to the Decatur police department and placed him in an interview room. Detective Jeff Hockaday informed defendant of his Miranda rights (Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966)) and asked defendant if he had any questions. Defendant immediately responded, I want an attorney. Hockaday responded, You do want an attorney? Defendant explained he did not want to say anything that the police could use against him. Hockaday stated, Okay, now like I explained to you out there *** Pershoun is going to be arrested as part of this, okay? Following this statement, defendant asked what evidence the police retrieved from his residence. Hockaday listed several items that the police found at defendant's residence. He explained he was going to charge Pershoun and send the evidence away for fingerprints. Hockaday told defendant, I know your prints are going to come back *** so we're just going to go from there. 10 Hockaday asked defendant if he had any questions. Defendant asked, What's the next move? Hockaday responded, You're going to go to county [jail] here in a minute once I get some paperwork done, alright? Defendant asked, What's my charge? They then discussed the possible charges based on the evidence retrieved from his residence. Defendant reiterated that he was going to have to hire a lawyer. Hockaday responded, You've already asked for an attorney *** unless you withdraw that request right here, I'm not going to bother wasting my time with you. Okay? The bottom lineyou can help yourself out. Defendant responded, I'll withdraw it then. Hockaday then began discussing that defendant could become an informant and not face charges. Later, defendant asked about Pershoun, and Hockaday replied, She's in the hospital, and she's got a warrant *** she's going to get charged with the dope unless I hear the truth from you *** if you make me arrest her, that's what I'll do. Defendant then admitted selling cocaine and ecstasy. The entire interrogation lasted approximately 1 hour and 25 minutes. 11 B. Pretrial 12 In July 2012, defendant filed a motion to dismiss for ineffective assistance of counsel and argued the State violated his speedy trial rights. The trial court disagreed and found no speedy trial violation. Defendant decided to waive counsel. Soon thereafter, defendant asked the court to reappoint his former counsel. The court granted his request and reappointed his former counsel. However, defendant again took issue with his counsel and argued she neglected to file motions on his behalf and was not working with his best interest in mind. In response, counsel told the newly assigned judge that (1) there was no basis to suppress the search warrant and (2) the previous judge had already ruled on the speedy trial issue. 13 C. Trial 14 In December 2012, defendant refused to attend his trial, stating that he did not trust his appointed counsel. The trial proceeded in his absence on counts I and II. The testimony focused on evidence recovered after a search of defendant's residence. Hockaday testified about the interrogation, and the jury viewed an edited version of the interrogation, which was approximately eight minutes long and excluded the portions of the interview regarding defendant's request for an attorney and his withdrawal of his request for counsel. 15 Officer Chad Ramey testified about the items found at defendant's residence. Ramey stated the cocaine was in a large chunk form and there were many pills found in defendant's residence, indicating that they were being sold. Additionally, the other items found in defendant's residence, such as the digital scale, razor blade, screwdriver, and sandwich bags were consistent with the sale of drugs. Ramey stated that although a buyer could possess these items, it was more common for the seller to have them. The white residue on the screwdriver and razor blade found at defendant's residence were never tested. 16 During closing arguments, the prosecutor relied on the interrogation video and stated, [Defendant] himself told us exactly what it was he was planning to do with the ecstasy and the cocaine. He made it easy for us. Defense counsel reminded the jury that defendant (1) was not the only person who lived at the residence and (2) admitted possessing the contraband only after Hockaday told defendant of Pershoun's circumstances. On rebuttal, the State maintained that no speculation was required because, during the police interrogation, defendant said exactly what he intended to do with the drugs. The jury found defendant guilty of counts I and II, and the State dismissed the remaining charges. 17 D. Posttrial 18 In February 2013, the trial court sentenced defendant as previously noted. In February 2013, defendant's counsel filed a motion to reconsider the sentence, arguing defendant's sentence was excessive. Shortly thereafter, defendant pro se filed a separate motion to reconsider his sentence, arguing that his trial counsel was ineffective in that counsel failed to file a motion to suppress evidence. 19 In March 2013, defendant filed a motion for reduction of sentence, again alleging, in pertinent part, that his trial counsel failed to file key motions on his behalf. During an August 2013 hearing (at which defendant was not present), defendant's counsel acknowledged that she had yet to review defendant's filings but, relying on the State's representations, informed the trial court that defendant was merely complaining that his [pro se] motion to reconsider hasn't been set for hearing. The State confirmed defense counsel's representations. Relying on the parties' representations, the court stated that it would not inquire further under Krankel into defendant's filings. The court scheduled a later hearing to consider defense counsel's February 2013 motion to reconsider the sentence. At an August 2013 hearing, the court denied defense counsel's motion to reconsider the sentence. Defendant appealed. 20 On appeal, defendant's appointed counsel, the office of the State Appellate Defender (OSAD), argued that (1) trial counsel was ineffective in that she did not file a motion to suppress the incriminating statements defendant made to police following his request for legal representation and (2) the trial court erred when it failed to conduct a Krankel hearing to inquire further into defendant's claims of ineffective assistance of trial counsel. The State conceded the second argument, and this court remanded the case with directions that the court appoint defendant new counsel and conduct a hearing on defendant's ineffective assistance of trial counsel claims. 21 On remand, defendant's appointed Krankel counsel filed an amended motion for a new trial and attached a copy of OSAD's brief. However, the court granted defendant's request to proceed pro se, and defendant thereafter pro se filed a motion for a Krankel hearing, which reiterated the points in his former counsel's amended motion. 22 In May 2016, the trial court conducted a hearing on defendant's motion. Defendant argued that his trial counsel was ineffective for (1) failing to file a motion to suppress his custodial statements and (2) relying on OSAD's brief. Trial counsel testified that she met with defendant prior to trial, and he requested his statements be suppressed. However, she explained she reviewed the interrogation video and did not believe defendant's rights were violated. Although defendant asserted his right to counsel, she noted that he reinitiated the conversation with Hockaday. The State argued trial counsel was not ineffective because she determined that defendant, following his request for an attorney, reinitiated the conversation with Hockaday, thereby waiving his prior invocation of counsel. Defendant responded trial counsel was incorrect because he only spoke to Hockaday after he threatened to lock [his] girlfriend up. The court agreed with the State, finding counsel's representation did not fall below an objective standard of reasonableness and defendant was not prejudiced by trial counsel's representation. 23 This appeal followed. 24 II. ANALYSIS 25 Defendant's raises two issues on appeal. First, defendant argues that he did not receive the proper Illinois Supreme Court Rule 401(a) (eff. July 1, 1984) admonitions prior to waiving counsel at the Krankel hearing. Alternatively, defendant argues that his trial counsel was ineffective for failing to file a motion to suppress his incriminating statements following his request for legal representation. Because we agree with defendant's second argument, we need not address the first. 26 To establish a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, defendant has the burden to show his claim satisfies the two-pronged Strickland test (see Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984)), as recently explained by the Illinois Supreme Court in People v. Cherry, 2016 IL 118728, 24, 63 N.E.3d 871: Under Strickland, to prevail on a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, a defendant must show both that counsel's performance was deficient and that the deficient performance prejudiced the defendant. [Citation.] More specifically, the defendant must demonstrate that counsel's performance was objectively unreasonable under prevailing professional norms and that there is a reasonable probability that, but for counsel's unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different.[Citation.] 27 A. Objective Standard of Reasonableness 28 Defendant argues that his trial counsel's performance fell below an objective standard of reasonableness when she failed to file a motion to suppress the incriminating statements he made to Hockaday after he invoked his right to counsel. We agree. 29 In order to satisfy the deficient-performance prong of Strickland, a defendant must show that his counsel's performance was so inadequate that counsel was not functioning as the counsel guaranteed by the sixth amendment. Counsel's performance is measured by an objective standard of competence under prevailing professional norms. (Internal quotation marks omitted.) People v. Manning, 241 Ill. 2d 319, 326-27, 948 N.E.2d 542, 547 (2011). Defendant must overcome the strong presumption that the challenged action or inaction may have been a result of sound trial strategy. People v. Evans, 186 Ill. 2d 83, 93, 708 N.E.2d 1158, 1163 (1999). Moreover, the decision whether to file a motion to suppress is generally a matter of trial strategy, which is entitled to great deference. (Internal quotation marks omitted.) People v. Bew, 228 Ill. 2d 122, 128, 886 N.E.2d 1002, 1006 (2008). 30 In Miranda, the United States Supreme Court held that before an accused is subject to custodial interrogation, he must be advised of certain rights, including the right to remain silent and the right to have an attorney present. Miranda, 384 U.S. at 444. The Court further held that when an accused invokes this right to counsel, the interrogation must cease until an attorney is present. (Emphasis added.) Miranda, 384 U.S. at 474. When this right is invoked, there is a presumption that the accused is unable to proceed without counsel's advice. Arizona v. Roberson, 486 U.S. 675, 683 (1988). 31 In Edwards v. Arizona, 451 U.S. 477, 484-85 (1981), the Court expanded upon its decision in Miranda and created a bright line rule: when an accused invokes his right to counsel, he is not subject to further interrogation by the authorities until counsel has been made available to him, unless the accused himself initiates further communication, exchanges, or conversations with the police. In People v. Woolley, 178 Ill. 2d 175, 198, 687 N.E.2d 979, 990 (1997), the Supreme Court of Illinois explained that the Edwards holding means that [i]f the police subsequently initiate a conversation with the accused in the absence of counsel, the accused's statements are presumed involuntary and are not admissible as substantive evidence at trial. Given that the parties in this case do not dispute that defendant was in custody or that he invoked his right to counsel, the sole issue presented is whether Hockaday continued the interrogation after defendant invoked his right to counsel. On this record, we conclude that he clearly did. 32 Hockaday began the interrogation by reading defendant his Miranda rights. Defendant immediately and unequivocally responded, I want an attorney. Hockaday responded, You do want an attorney? Defendant explained he did not want to say anything that the State could use against him. Hockaday stated, Okay, now like I explained to you out there *** Pershoun is going to be arrested as part of this, okay? Following this statement, defendant spoke further with Hockaday and eventually admitted selling ecstasy and cocaine. 33 The Illinois Supreme Court has stated: [T]he term interrogation under Miranda refers not only to express questioning, but also to any words or actions on the part of the police (other than those normally attendant to arrest and custody) that the police should know are reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response from the suspect. (Emphases added.) People v. Hunt, 2012 IL 111089, 30, 969 N.E.2d 819 (quoting Rhode Island v. Innis, 446 U.S. 291, 301 (1980)). 34 When determining whether police words or actions are reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response, we focus primarily upon the perceptions of the suspect, rather than the intent of the police. (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Hunt, 2012 IL 111089, 30, 969 N.E.2d 819. 35 In this case, defendant argues that when Hockaday said, Okay, now like I explained to you out there *** Pershoun is going to be arrested as part of this, okay?, Hockaday's statement was reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response. Viewing the police words or actions primarily from the perceptions of the suspect, as we must under Hunt, we agree. 36 As defendant argued at his Krankel hearing, he only continued to speak to Hockaday after the detective threatened to lock [his] girlfriend up. Because Hockaday's statement was reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response from defendant, it constituted an improper continuation of defendant's interrogation after he invoked his right to counsel. Hockaday's remarks constituted a clear violation of the United States Supreme Court's bright line rule in Edwards and the Illinois Supreme Court's directives in Hunt. Once defendant invoked his right to counsel, Hockaday was required to cease the interrogation until such time as an attorney was present. 37 We conclude that trial counsel could not reasonably have determined that defendant reinitiated the conversation with Hockaday. After viewing the interrogation video, counsel should have concluded that defendant invoked his right to counsel and Hockaday, by not stopping his interrogation, violated defendant's constitutional rights. 38 Counsel's failure to file this motion was not the result of a tactical decision, but of a fundamental misjudgment. Counsel's testimony at the Krankel hearing demonstrated she erroneously believed a motion to suppress would be without merit because defendant reinitiated the conversation with police. For these reasons, counsel's performance fell below an objective standard of reasonableness because she should have filed a motion to suppress defendant's custodial statements. 39 B. Prejudice 40 [T]o establish prejudice where an ineffectiveness claim is based on the failure to file a suppression motion, the defendant must show that a reasonable probability exists both that the motion would have been granted, and that the result of the trial would have been different had the evidence been suppressed. People v. Henderson, 2013 IL 114040, 12, 989 N.E.2d 192. In People v. Simpson, 2015 IL 116512, 35, 25 N.E.3d 601, 611, the Illinois Supreme Court quoted Strickland, 466 U.S. at 694, and explained that [a] reasonable possiblity is defined as a probability sufficient to undermine confidence in the outcome. For the reasons previously mentioned, this court concludes trial counsel had a meritorious basis to file a motion to suppress defendant's confessional statement and a reasonable probability exists that the motion would have been granted. 41 Defendant argues that the outcome of his trial would have been different had his confession been suppressed because without his confession (1) the intent to deliver element was much less clear, (2) he could have presented an alternative theory that the drugs belonged to Pershoun, and (3) he would have been able to present jury instructions on lesser-included offenses. 42 First, defendant argues, without his confession, the intent to deliver element was much less clear. Defendant argues his confession was the centerpiece of the prosecution's case. As demonstrated by the transcript of the State's closing argument, the State mentioned defendant's confession and said the case did not require the jury to draw inferences from circumstantial evidence. Instead, defendant's own confession confirmed his intentions. For example, the State said, [defendant] himself told us exactly what it was he was planning to do with the ecstasy and the cocaine. He made it easy for us. The State asserted that defendant confessed he was selling ecstasy and cocaine and that was why they were in his possession. The State maintained the same argument on rebuttal, focusing on defendant's confession. 43 Next, defendant argues, the admission of his confession prevented him from arguing a different theorynamely, that the evidence collected indicated Pershoun might have been responsible for the ecstasy and cocaine. Defendant notes trial counsel mentioned the leather jacket at trial, which contained 50 of the pills that were found, and asked the jury to consider whether the jacket appeared to belong to a man or a woman. Defendant asserts the jury disregarded this suggestion because of defendant's own confession. 44 Last, defendant argues he was prejudiced because he was convicted of the more serious offense of possession with the intent to deliver, noting those were the only charges considered because the trial court denied his request for instructions on lesser-included offenses. For these reasons, defendant suggests the case presents a reasonable probability the outcome of his trial would have been different had his confession not been admitted into evidence. We agree. 45 The record demonstrates that defendant's confession had an immense impact on the outcome of his case, and its admission negatively impacted defendant's ability to provide alternative theories and request jury instructions on lesser-included offenses. Additionally, defendant's confession was the State's strongest piece of evidence to establish his intent to deliver. As mentioned by the State in its closing argument, the jury did not have to speculate as to defendant's intent, as he said exactly what he intended to do with the drugs. Accordingly, we conclude defendant was prejudiced by trial counsel's deficient performance. 46 III. CONCLUSION 47 For the reasons stated, we reverse defendant's conviction and remand for a new trial. 48 Reversed and remanded. JUSTICE STEIGMANN delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion. United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. NELSON RUBIEL CANAR-VALENCIA, Defendant-Appellant. No. 16-15854 Decided: April 05, 2017 Before ED CARNES, Chief Judge, HULL and MARCUS, Circuit Judges. Nelson Canar-Valencia appeals pro se from the district court's denial of his motion for a sentence reduction under 18 U.S.C. 3582(c)(2), which allows a court to modify a defendant's term of imprisonment if the Sentencing Commission later reduces the guidelines range for his offense. He contends that he was entitled to that reduction based on Amendment 782 to the United States Sentencing Guidelines. We disagree. Amendment 782 amended the Drug Quantity Table in U.S.S.G. 2D1.1(c) by, among other things, increasing from 150 kilograms to 450 kilograms the minimum amount of cocaine for which a defendant must be responsible to qualify for a base offense level of 38. Compare U.S.S.G. 2D1.1(c) (2013), with U.S.S.G. 2D1.1(c) (2014). This change would not have affected Canar-Valencia's base offense level, however, because according to the presentence investigation report in his case he was accountable for approximately 5,268 kilograms of cocaine (and some heroin). As a result, he is not eligible for a sentence reduction under 18 U.S.C. 3582(c)(2). U.S.S.G. 1B1.10(a)(2)(B); United States v. Jones, 548 F.3d 1366, 1368 (11th Cir. 2008). AFFIRMED. FOOTNOTES . Because we conclude that the district court correctly denied Canar-Valencia's motion on the merits, we do not address the government's law of the case argument.We also do not address Canar-Valenica's arguments as to safety valve reductions under 18 U.S.C. 3553, the substantive reasonableness of his sentence, and his lack of access to certain programs available to non-alien prisoners. Those arguments have no bearing on whether he was entitled to relief under 18 U.S.C. 3582(c)(2). See United States v. Bravo, 203 F.3d 778, 782 (11th Cir. 2000) (Section 3582(c), under which this sentencing hearing was held, does not grant to the court jurisdiction to consider extraneous resentencing issues such as this one. Bravo must instead bring such a collateral attack on his sentence under 28 U.S.C. 2255.). PER CURIAM: United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ex rel. J. MICHAEL HAYES, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. ALLSTATE INSURANCE COMPANY, DAIMLER CHRYSLER INSURANCE COMPANY, ERIE INSURANCE COMPANY OF NEW YORK, ERIE INSURANCE EXCHANGE, INC., ERIE INDEMNITY COMPANY, FARMERS INSURANCE EXCHANGE, TRUCK INSURANCE EXCHANGE, FIRE INSURANCE EXCHANGE, FOREMOST INSURANCE GROUP, GEICO, INSURANCE, GMAC INSURANCE, KEMPER INDEPENDENCE INSURANCE COMPANY, LIBERTY MUTUAL INSURANCE COMPANY, LIBERTY MUTUAL GROUP, LIBERTY MUTUAL HOLDING COMPANY, INC., METROPOLITAN GROUP PROPERTY AND CASUALTY INSURANCE COMPANY, METROPOLITAN PROPERTY AND CASUALTY INSURANCE COMPANY, NATIONWIDE GENERAL INSURANCE COMPANY, NATIONWIDE FINANCIAL SERVICES INCORPORATED, NATIONWIDE MUTUAL INSURANCE COMPANY, NEW YORK CENTRAL MUTUAL FIRE INSURANCE COMPANY, PREFERRED MUTUAL INSURANCE COMPANY, PROGRESSIVE INSURANCE COMPANY, THE PROGRESSIVE CORPORATION, INC., REPUBLIC - FRANKLIN INSURANCE COMPANY, UTICA MUTUAL INSURANCE COMPANY, GRAPHICS ARTS MUTUAL INSURANCE COMPANY, UTICA NATIONAL INSURANCE COMPANY OF TEXAS, UTICA NATIONAL INSURANCE COMPANY OF OHIO, UTICA NATIONAL ASSURANCE COMPANY, UTICA LLOYD'S OF TEXAS, UTICA SPECIALTY RISK INSURANCE COMPANY, FOUNDERS INSURANCE COMPANY, FOUNDERS INSURANCE COMPANY OF MICHIGAN, UTICA NATIONAL INSURANCE GROUP, STATE FARM MUTUAL AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE COMPANY, HARTFORD FINANCIAL SERVICES GROUP, INC., TRAVELERS INSURANCE GROUP HOLDING, INC., TRAVELERS PROPERTY CASUALTY CORPORATION, THE TRAVELERS COMPANIES, INC., ZURICH NORTH AMERICA, FEDEX CORPORATION, FEDEX EXPRESS, FEDEX GROUND, FEDEX FREIGHT, FEDEX OFFICE, FEDEX CUSTOM CRITICAL, FEDEX TRADE NETWORKS, FEDEX SUPPLY CHAIN SOLUTIONS, FEDEX SERVICES, J.B. HUNT TRANSPORT SERVICES, INCORPORATED, U-HAUL INTERNATIONAL, THE ERIE INSURANCE COMPANY, Defendants-Appellees, ALLSTATE CORPORATION, CASTLEPOINT NATIONAL INSURANCE COMPANY, SPECIALTY UNDERWRITERS ALLIANCE, INC., TOWER GROUP COMPANIES, MAIDEN HOLDING LTD, KEMPER CORPORATION, MEDICAL LIABILITY MUTUAL INSURANCE COMPANY, NATIONWIDE CORPORATION, NEW YORK STATE INSURANCE RECIPROCAL, THE PRUDENTIAL INSURANCE COMPANY OF AMERICA, PRUDENTIAL FINANCIAL, INC., HEARTLAND EXPRESS, INCORPORATED, NATIONWIDE, FARMERS INSURANCE GROUP COMPANIES, FARMERS UNDERWRITERS ASSOCIATION, AIG, BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY INC., NATIONWIDE MUTUAL INSURANCE INTERCOMPANY POOL, NATIONWIDE, ZURICH FINANCIAL SERVICES AG, ZURICH INSURANCE GROUP AG, Defendants. No. 16-705 Decided: April 04, 2017 Present: ROBERT A. KATZMANN, Chief Judge, ROSEMARY S. POOLER, GERARD E. LYNCH, Circuit Judges. For: Plaintiff-Appellant United States ex rel. J. Michael Hayes: J. MICHAEL HAYES (Peter M. Jasen, Buffalo, NY, on the brief). For: Defendants-Appellees FedEx Corporation, Federal Express Corporation, FedEx Ground Package System Inc., FedEx Freight Corporation, FedEx Office and Print Services, Inc., FedEx Custom Critical, Inc., FedEx Trade Networks, Inc., FedEx Supply Chain Systems, Inc., and FedEx Corporate Services, Inc.: JOHN W. CAMPBELL, Federal Express Corporation, Memphis, TN. For: Defendants-Appellees Farmers Insurance Exchange, Truck Insurance Exchange, Fire Insurance Exchange, and Foremost Property and Casualty Insurance Company: DAVID L. YOHAI (Lori L. Pines and John P. Mastando III, on the brief), Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, New York, NY. For: Defendants-Appellees Travelers Insurance Group Holding, Inc., Travelers Property Casualty Corporation, and The Travelers Companies, Inc.: Bryce L. Friedman, Simpson Thatcher & Bartlett LLP, New York, NY; Deborah L. Stein, Simpson Thatcher & Bartlett LLP, Los Angeles, CA. For: Defendant-Appellee Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc.: Jonathan M. Freiman, Wiggin and Dana LLP, New Haven, CT. For: Defendants-Appellees J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc., Founders Insurance Company, Founders Insurance Company of Michigan, Graphic Arts Mutual Insurance Company, Republic-Franklin Insurance Company, Utica Mutual Insurance Company, Utica National Insurance Company of Texas, Utica National Insurance Company of Ohio, Utica National Assurance Company, Utica Lloyd's of Texas, Utica Specialty Risk Insurance Company, and Utica National Insurance Group: Sharon Angelino, Goldberg Segalla LLP, Buffalo, NY. For: Defendants-Appellants Erie Insurance Company of New York, Erie Insurance Exchange, Inc., Erie Indemnity Company, and The Erie Insurance Company: Heath J. Szymczak, Bond, Schoeneck & King, PLLC, Buffalo, NY. For: Defendants-Appellees Allstate Insurance Company, Allstate Indemnity Company, Kemper Independence Insurance Company, Metropolitan Group Property and Casualty Insurance Company, Metropolitan Property and Casualty Insurance Company, and Defendants Kemper Corporation and The Allstate Corporation: Steven M. Levy and Alan S. Gilbert, Dentons US LLP, Chicago IL; Sean C. Cenawood, Dentons US LLP, New York, NY; Sharon Angelino, Goldberg Segalla LLP, Buffalo, NY. For: Defendant-Appellee Preferred Mutual Insurance Company: Suzanne O. Galbato, Bond, Schoeneck & King, PLLC, Syracuse, NY. For: Defendants-Appellees Progressive Insurance Company and The Progressive Corporation, Inc.: Terrance M. Connors, Connors LLP, Buffalo, NY; Michael K. Loucks, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, Boston, MA. For: Defendant-Appellee State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company: Douglas W. Baruch and Anayansi Rodriquez Carbo, Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP, Washington, D.C.; Dan David Kohane, Hurwitz & Fine, P.C., Buffalo, NY. For: Defendant-Appellee Zurich North America: Michael J. Willett, Gibson, McAskill & Crosby, LLP, Buffalo, NY. For: Defendants-Appellees Nationwide General Insurance Company, Nationwide Financial Services Incorporated, and Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company: Stephen Sozio, Jones Day, Cleveland, OH; Matthew Corcoran, Jones Day, Columbus, OH; Mark C. Davis, Lippes Mathias Wexler Friedman LLP, Buffalo, NY. For: Defendant-Appellee New York Central Mutual Fire Insurance Company: Eric Dranoff, Saretsky Katz & Dranoff, LLP, New York, NY. For: Defendant-Appellee CorePointe Insurance Company f/k/a Daimler Chrysler Insurance Company: Susan L. Swatski, Hill Wallack LLP, Princeton, NJ. For: Defendant-Appellee Geico, Insurance: Barry I. Levy, Cheryl F. Korman, Brian L. Bank, Rivkin Radler LLP, Uniondale, NY. For: Defendants-Appellees Liberty Mutual Insurance Company, Liberty Mutual Group, and Liberty Mutual Holding Company, Inc.: Kevin J. Fee and Amy C. Gross, Duane Morris LLP, New York, NY: Dennis R. McCoy, Barclay Damon, LLP, Buffalo, NY. For: Defendant-Appellee U-Haul International: Kevin M. Hogan, Phillips Lytle LLP, Buffalo, NY. Plaintiff-Appellant J. Michael Hayes, relator in this qui tam action, appeals from the February 8, 2016 order and February 9, 2016 judgment of the United States District Court of the Western District of New York (Skretny, J.) adopting the Report and Recommendation of the magistrate judge and dismissing Hayes's Amended Complaint with prejudice as to Hayes as a sanction pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11. We assume the parties' familiarity with the underlying facts, the procedural history of the case, and the issues on appeal. Relator Hayes is an attorney. In this qui tam action, Hayes sued over sixty companies, primarily, but not exclusively, liability insurance companies, alleging that they have been systematically noncompliant with certain statutory obligations to reimburse Medicare. Hayes alleged that, through his law practice, he acquired personal knowledge from conversations with defense counsel, insurance carrier representatives[,] and other attorneys[ ] of the Defendant insurance companies' company-wide and nationwide failure to notify Medicare of liability case resolutions App. 150-51. After the government declined to intervene and the complaint was unsealed, Hayes filed a motion for expedited discovery. In that motion, Hayes admitted that certain defendants might not have participated in the scheme alleged in the complaint and acknowledged that such defendants should be dismissed. After receiving this motion, the magistrate judge called a conference and observed that repeatedly throughout the amended complaint, the allegation [wa]s that Mr. Hayes ha[d] personal knowledge of this nationwide scheme involving every single defendant. S. App. 21. The magistrate judge further noted that Hayes's motion for expedited discovery admit[s] that it's possible that some defendants weren't involved. S. App. 22. Due to this inconsistency, the magistrate judge ordered Hayes to show cause as to why he had not violated Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 and held several subsequent conferences to discuss the issue. In the written Report and Recommendation on the Rule 11 violation issued on October 16, 2014, the magistrate judge returned to the allegations in Hayes's complaint, noting that: One of those allegations, repeated throughout the Amended Complaint, was that the Relator has personal knowledge that this scheme [to defraud Medicare] was employed generally and throughout the industry nationally, by all the Defendants herein. However, the Relator's subsequent submissions demonstrate beyond question that he did not know whether all defendants had participated in the alleged scheme Relator's claim of personal knowledge that all defendants defrauded Medicare, and that they did so whenever they settled claims involving Medicare beneficiaries, fits the definition of subjective bad faith, because he knew that he had no such knowledge as to all defendants or all settlements. S. App. 111-13 (alterations in original). As a result, the magistrate judge recommended that Hayes's complaint against all defendants be dismissed with prejudice as to Hayes, but without prejudice as to the United States. Hayes and the defendants submitted objections to the Report and Recommendation, but the district court adopted the magistrate judge's recommendation. The district court observed that Hayes steadfastly adhered to his disproven allegations that he had personal knowledge that all defendants were engaged in a nationwide scheme to defraud the United States by failing to reimburse Medicare when [his] own submissions and statements before the court demonstrate that he does not possess such personal knowledge. S. App. 132. Hayes now appeals. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11(b)(3) provides that [b]y presenting to the court a pleading, an attorney certifies that to the best of [his] knowledge, information, and belief, the factual contentions have evidentiary support. A court may, sua sponte, order an attorney to show cause why conduct specifically described in the order has not violated Rule 11(b). Fed R. Civ. P. 11(c)(3). If, after notice and a reasonable opportunity to respond, the court determines that Rule 11(b) has been violated, the court may impose an appropriate sanction. Fed. R. Civ. P. 11(c)(1). A district court must make a finding of bad faith before issuing sanctions sua sponte. See Muhammad v. Walmart Stores E., L.P., 732 F.3d 104, 108 (2d Cir. 2013) (per curiam) (citing In re Pennie & Edmonds LLP, 323 F.3d 86, 91 (2d Cir. 2003)). Similarly, the district court must make a finding of willfulness, bad faith, or fault before dismissing a complaint as a sanction. West v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., 167 F.3d 776, 779 (2d Cir. 1999). Hayes now concedes that his claim to have personal knowledge of the involvement of all the defendants in the alleged scheme was incorrect, but contends that this error was not the result of bad faith and thus did not merit the sanction of dismissal. Br. at 22, 24. Whether a litigant acted in bad faith [is a] question[ ] of fact, and we review the [d]istrict [c]ourt's determination[ ] on that question for clear error. Agiwal v. Mid Island Mortg. Corp., 555 F.3d 298, 302 (2d Cir. 2009) (per curiam). Ordinarily, we review a district court's imposition of Rule 11 sanctions for abuse of discretion. See Star Mark Mgmt., Inc. v. Koon Chun Hing Kee Soy & Sauce Factory, Ltd., 682 F.3d 170, 175 (2d Cir. 2012). We must bear in mind, however, that when the district court is accuser, fact finder and sentencing judge all in one, our review is more exacting than under the ordinary abuse-of-discretion standard. ATSI Commc'ns, Inc. v. Shaar Fund, Ltd., 579 F.3d 143, 150 (2d Cir. 2009) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). The magistrate judge concluded, and the district court adopted the conclusion, that Hayes's claim of personal knowledge that all defendants defrauded Medicare fits the definition of subjective bad faith[ ] because he knew that he had no such knowledge as to all defendants. S. App. 112-13, 132. Hayes's primary argument to the contrary, that he was confused by corporate complexities, Br. at 25, is different from the explanations for his behavior that he offered to the magistrate judge below. Even if we were to credit Hayes's explanation, confusion about corporate complexities would not justify falsely purporting to have personal knowledge as to more than sixty defendants' involvement in wrongdoing. Cf. DiRose v. PK Mgmt. Corp., 691 F.2d 628, 632 (2d Cir. 1982). In light of the foregoing, the finding of bad faith made by the magistrate judge and district court is not clearly erroneous, even under our more exacting standard of review. Shaar Fund, 579 F.3d at 150. Hayes also argues that he should have been granted leave to amend his complaint. The court should freely give leave [to amend] when justice so requires. Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(a)(2). However, leave to amend may be denied based on bad faith. See Loreley Fin. (Jersey) No. 3 Ltd. v. Wells Fargo Sec., LLC, 797 F.3d 160, 190 (2d Cir. 2015). We review the district court's denial of leave to amend the complaint for abuse of discretion. Id. at 169. The magistrate judge concluded Hayes should not now be allowed to simply walk away from his earlier misrepresentations, and the district court adopted this conclusion. S. App. 118, 132. And insofar as Hayes concedes that some of the defendants may not be proper parties to the case, his proposed Second Amended Complaint does not solve that problem; in fact, the proposed Second Amended Complaint would add 38 new defendants. The district court's denial of leave to amend for bad faith based on the foregoing does not constitute an abuse of discretion. We have considered all of Hayes's remaining arguments and find them without merit. For the reasons given here, as well as those given in the opinion on the district court's subject matter jurisdiction issued simultaneously with this order, we AFFIRM the judgment of the district court. FOR THE COURT: Catherine O'Hagan Wolfe, Clerk FOOTNOTES . We address a challenge to the district court's subject matter jurisdiction, mounted by several of the defendants, in an opinion filed simultaneously with this order. United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit. OUSMANE TAPSOBA, Petitioner, v. JEFFERSON B. SESSIONS III, UNITED STATES ATTORNEY GENERAL,* Respondent. 15-529 Decided: April 05, 2017 PRESENT: PIERRE N. LEVAL, REENA RAGGI, RAYMOND J. LOHIER, JR., Circuit Judges. FOR PETITIONER: Gary J. Yerman, Esq., New York, New York. FOR RESPONDENT: Benjamin C. Mizer, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General; Terri J. Scadron, Assistant Director; Wendy Benner-Leon, Trial Attorney, Office of Immigration Litigation, United States Department of Justice, Washington, D.C. UPON DUE CONSIDERATION of this petition for review of a Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) decision, it is hereby ORDERED, ADJUDGED, AND DECREED that the petition for review is DENIED. Petitioner Ousmane Tapsoba, a native and citizen of Burkina Faso, seeks review of a January 30, 2015 decision of the BIA affirming an Immigration Judge's (IJ's) May 1, 2013 denial of his application for asylum, withholding of removal, and relief under the Convention Against Torture (CAT). See In re Ousmane Tapsoba, No. A087 633 004 (B.I.A. Jan. 30, 2015), aff'g No. A087 633 004 (Immig. Ct. N.Y.C. May 1, 2013). Where, as here, the BIA does not expressly adopt the IJ's decision, but closely tracks its reasoning, we review both the BIA's and IJ's decisions for the sake of completeness, Wangchuck v. Dep't of Homeland Sec., 448 F.3d 524, 528 (2d Cir. 2006), applying well-established standards of review, see 8 U.S.C. 1252(b)(4)(B); Xiu Xia Lin v. Mukasey, 534 F.3d 162, 16566 (2d Cir. 2008). In doing so, we assume the parties' familiarity with the underlying facts and procedural history of this case. I. One-Year Jurisdictional Bar Under 8 U.S.C. 1158(a)(3), we lack jurisdiction to review the agency's factual findings regarding the timeliness of an asylum application, see id. 1158(a)(2)(B), but retain jurisdiction to review constitutional claims or questions of law, see id. 1252(a)(2)(D); Weinong Lin v. Holder, 763 F.3d 244, 24647 (2d Cir. 2014). Tapsoba argues legal error in the agency's determination that extraordinary circumstances were not presented by his belief that a third party to whom he had provided identification documents, but whom he did not contact for more than one year thereafter, would file his application for him. We identify no legal error in the agency's conclusion that any such reliance was not reasonable. See 8 C.F.R. 1208.4(a)(5) (describing extraordinary circumstances to include serious illness, legal disability, or documented ineffective assistance of counsel directly related to untimeliness). We therefore lack jurisdiction to review Tapsoba's asylum claim. II. Withholding of Removal and CAT While we nonetheless possess jurisdiction to review Tapsoba's withholding of removal and CAT claims, see Liu v. I.N.S., 508 F.3d 716, 722 (2d Cir. 2007), we identify no error in the agency's conclusion that Tapsoba failed to meet his burden of proof on these claims. While consistent, detailed, and credible testimony may be sufficient to carry the alien's burden, evidence corroborating his story, or an explanation for its absence, may be required where it would reasonably be expected. Diallo v. INS, 232 F.3d 279, 285 (2d Cir. 2000). Where the trier of fact determines that the applicant should provide evidence that corroborates otherwise credible testimony, such evidence must be provided unless the applicant does not have the evidence and cannot reasonably obtain the evidence. See Chuilu Liu v. Holder, 575 F.3d 193, 197 (2d Cir. 2009); 8 U.S.C. 1158(b)(1)(B), 1129a(c)(4)(B), 1231(b)(3)(C). In denying relief for lack of corroboration, an IJ should identify specific pieces of missing documentation, explain why the documentation was reasonably available, provide the alien with an opportunity to explain the omission, and assess an explanation that is given. See Chuilu Liu v. Holder, 575 F.3d at 198. No court shall reverse a determination made by a trier of fact with respect to the availability of corroborating evidence unless the court finds that a reasonable trier of fact is compelled to conclude that such corroborating evidence is unavailable. 8 U.S.C. 1252(b)(4). Even assuming that Tapsoba testified credibly, the IJ reasonably concluded that he failed adequately to corroborate his claims. Tapsoba testified that he was arrested twice for his political activities as the spokesman of his local merchant association, detained for several days or weeks at a time, and sustained injuries from which he continues to suffer. Letters from his mother and brother, however, mention neither his alleged arrests nor his alleged injuries. When asked about this discrepancy, Tapsoba could not provide an explanation. Nor did he provide any medical documentation of his injuries or evidence of his role as a merchant-association spokesperson. In sum, Tapsoba submitted no evidence to corroborate his central claims of past persecution in Burkina Faso or the political activities that allegedly made him a target for persecution. The IJ specifically identified the types of documents that could have corroborated Tapsoba's testimony and questioned him about the absence of such documentation. Given Tapsoba's failure to explain why he did not obtain that evidence, we cannot conclude that the record compels a conclusion that the evidence was unavailable. See 8 U.S.C. 1252(b)(4). Because this corroboration determination is dispositive, we need not reach the agency's alternative rulings, see INS v. Bagamasbad, 429 U.S. 24, 25 (1976), to conclude that the agency's denial of withholding of removal and CAT relief was not in error, see Chuilu Liu, 575 F.3d at 198-99; see also Paul v. Gonzales, 444 F.3d 148, 155-57 (2d Cir. 2006). For the foregoing reasons, the petition for review is DENIED and the pending motion for a stay of removal is DISMISSED as moot. FOR THE COURT: Catherine O'Hagan Wolfe, Clerk of Court United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit. VERNON L. TRASTER, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. OHIO NORTHERN UNIVERSITY, Defendant-Appellee. No. 16-3320 Decided: April 05, 2017 BEFORE: BATCHELDER, ROGERS, and WHITE, Circuit Judges. This employment case arises out of several accusations of sexual harassment made against Vernon Traster, a long-time professor of law at Ohio Northern University. In the spring of 2012, university officials received complaints from two women at the university's law schoolTraster's student research assistant and a library employeealleging that he had sexually harassed them and, in the employee's case, had assaulted her. The university promptly suspended Traster without pay pursuant to the university's faculty handbook, and launched an investigation under its university-wide sexual harassment policy. After a faculty committee convened by the university found Traster in violation of that policy, his suspension was continued and, soon after, a second faculty committee recommended his termination, which the university ultimately approved. Traster then brought this suit alleging, among other things, that the university breached his employment contract by suspending and terminating him, and that by choosing to suspend him without pay it had also discriminated against him based on his age. After granting summary judgment to the university on Traster's age discrimination claim, the district court ordered a bifurcated bench trial pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 16(c)(2)(M) and 42(b), dividing the procedural questions at the core of Traster's contract claimwhich set of university procedures was required by the contractfrom the substantive issue of whether the correct procedure was properly employed. In the event that the court found that Ohio Northern had failed to employ the correct procedure, the court would then have moved to a re-do of the disciplinary proceedings. If, on the other hand, the court determined that Ohio Northern had followed the correct procedures, the court would instead allow Traster to litigate his claim challenging [Ohio Northern's] findings relating to his termination. The case proceeded to a bench trialcorresponding to the first step of the bifurcation orderafter which the district court issued an opinion ruling in Ohio Northern's favor on the remaining contract issues, including the substantive issue of whether sufficient evidence supported Traster's termination. Traster then sought reconsideration of that judgment, in part on the basis that he had not been given the opportunity to litigate the substantive question of whether the termination decision was proper under his contract, as had been spelled out in the court's bifurcation order. The district court reaffirmed its original rulings, and Traster now appeals. After carefully reviewing the record and the parties' briefs, as well as the relevant law, we are convinced that the district court correctly resolved the issues presented in this case. The district court's two principal opinionson summary judgment and on the remaining contract claims following the bench trialaccurately and exhaustively lay out the facts and law governing the major questions raised in this appeal, and those opinions clearly articulate the court's reasons for ruling as it did. A full written opinion from this court is therefore unnecessary. Only two further issues need be addressed specifically. First, apart from his challenge on the merits of his breach of contract claims, Traster has also objected on appeal to the way the district court handled those claims, by deciding the substantive issue of his termination before allowing him to brief and argue that issue. Thus, Traster contends, the district court's departure from its bifurcation ordera departure that the district court itself admitteddenied Traster the opportunity to litigate his substantive claim before the district court ruled on it, resulting in reversible error. But whatever error there was, being harmless, does not justify reversal. Rule 61 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure makes clear that an error of the kind Traster alleges would not warrant setting aside a judgment unless it affects the substantial rights of the parties; otherwise, the error should be considered harmless. Gandy v. Sullivan County, 24 F.3d 861, 866 (6th Cir. 1994). There was no such prejudicial effect on Traster's rights, however, for he was provided the opportunity to litigate the substantive claim. It is true that that opportunity came only after the court had already ruled on the issue and then only in a motion for reconsideration. Nonetheless, in ruling on that motion the court emphasized that it had been willing to reconsider its original view of Ohio Northern's decision to terminate Trasterit had left open the door for Traster to show the court it had erred. Even after weighing that motion and the various exhibits attached to it, however, the court was still unmoved, having found Traster's alleged evidence of bias too meager to justify overturning either Ohio Northern's termination decision or the district court's original opinion upholding it. The latter opinion, as the district court explained, was also sound under Ohio law and had adequate support in the record. Even if the court may have jumped the gun, then, in reaching the substantive issue of Traster's dismissal, that lapse ultimately did not affect Traster's ability to make his case that Ohio Northern had wrongly dismissed him. Nor, therefore, does it now justify reversal. Traster also raises an issue that he claims was avoided by the district court: that because he was normally paid for nine months of work over a twelve-month period, but received pay for only seven of the nine months he actually worked before his suspension, he is now due the difference between what he received (7/12th of his salary) and what he was owed (7/9th of that salary). But the district court likely did not address that claim for the same reason that this court cannot review it now: it appears nowhere in Traster's complaint. Indeed, Traster himself was unable to locate that claim in his complaint during the telephonic hearing on Ohio Northern's summary judgment motion, and in his brief before this court he appears to admit that he raised the issue only in response to that motion. We have declined, however, to consider a claim raised for the first time in response to a motion for summary judgment, see Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. WB Music Corp., 508 F.3d 394, 400 (6th Cir. 2007), just as we have more generally refused to consider a claim not raised in a complaint, see Freightliner of Knoxville, Inc. v. DaimlerChrysler Vans, LLC, 484 F.3d 865, 871 n.4 (6th Cir. 2007) (citing Clark v. National Travelers Life Ins. Co., 518 F.2d 1167, 1169 (6th Cir. 1975)). This final claim, having been raised for the first time in response to a motion for summary judgment, is therefore not properly before this court. The judgment of the district court is accordingly affirmed. ROGERS, Circuit Judge. An Easter Sunday service will be offered at 6 p.m. at the Hullander Farm, 10944 London Lane, Apison. Organizers said, "Come join us as we songs like He Lives, He Arose, and other great songs out of the Red Back Hymnal." Tennessees upcoming tourism events include a Cherry Blossom Festival, the grand opening of Tennessees newest natural attraction and more. For a complete list of Tennessee events, visit tnvacation.com/calendar. Ongoing Cookeville Enjoy free family fun in Cookevilles historic WestSide cultural district with history hikes 10 a.m. Knoxville The Dogwood Arts Festival has miles of trails featuring some of the most spectacular dogwood trees, the highly-anticipated Rhythm N Blooms Music Festival, artwork and much more. Nashville Awesome April has a major event each weekend during this musical tribute to the city. April 7 Cookeville The teams from The Outdoor Experience and Caney Fork Cycles have joined forces, creating a dream retail and rental experience for outdoor enthusiasts. Join them for their grand opening as they celebrate along with Red Silo Brewing Co., toasting at their joint location near the entrance of Dogwood Park. Knoxville Dismembered Tennesseans perform bluegrass for audiences 8 p.m. ET at the Laurel Theater. Nashville Taste wines paired with a five-course menu designed by Chef Chase Ingalls and head baker Jen Mello during Wine Love: A Wine Dinner 6:30-9 p.m. CT at the Frothy Monkey in downtown Nashville. Ooltewah The Cambridge Square Night Market opens its 2017 season 6-9 p.m. ET with local live music by Megan Saunders, artisan food and fine crafts on Cambridge Square. April 7-8 Halls A commemoration for the 75,000 U.S. and Filipino soldiers who endured the 65-mile Bataan death march during World War II to prison camps takes place with living historians, Filipino American cultural performances, military vehicles, exhibitions, and a 5.6-mile walk called Remembrance of the Bataan Death March beginning at the Veterans Museum. April 7-28 Knoxville Enjoy the exhibition, The Enlightened and Lost by Kat Lewis, a collection of works about dreams, visions and stories of spiritual awakening, on display at the Emporium Center. April 8 Baxter Experience Tennessees newest natural attraction, Window Cliffs State Natural Area during the grand opening next to Burgess Falls State Park. A strenuous 4-mile, round-trip hike rewards guests with spectacular views of the unique geologic "windows" formed in the limestone cliffs, a Cane Creek oxbow, and Window Cliffs Falls. Cookeville Take part in the Window on the World International Festival, celebrating cultural diversity and global harmony with symposium and festival components of food, performers and cultural displays at Tennessee Tech University. Jackson A Notable Journey features the Jackson Symphony as they take audiences on a tour through Europe with compositions from across the continent 7:30 p.m. CT at the Carl Perkins Civic Center. Knoxville Play ball! A double header of vintage base ball features local favorites Emmett Machinist of Knoxville vs. Travellers of Brentwood at noon ET and Knoxville Holstons vs. Cumberlanders of Nashville at 2:30 p.m. ET at the Historic Ramsey House. Nashville The 9th annual Nashville Cherry Blossom Festival celebrates spring and Japanese culture through family-friendly activities like music, dance, martial arts, food, a Cherry Blossom Walk and more beginning 9 a.m. CT on Nashville Public Square. Nashville The hit songwriter series, Backstage Nashville Live features Kendell Marvel, Tim James, Ray Stephenson and Alex Seier 12:30 p.m. CT at 3rd and Lindsley. Nashville Slow Art Day is a global event that encourages the public to contemplate several works of art for an extended period of time. Participate 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. CT at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts. Shiloh Young local artists from Adamsville High School and Hardin County High School capture the battlefield in watercolors, oils and pencils 10 a.m. to noon CT at Shiloh National Military Park. The public is invited to view their works in progress. April 9 Nashville The Zombies mark their 50th anniversary of their iconic album Odessey & Oracle live for the final time 7 p.m. CT at James K. Polk Theater. April 12 Memphis Mike Doughty performs on the Beale Street Caravan Show via public radio. Nashville Take the final course of the four-course series, Vine to Glass: Wine Bootcamp 101 that broadens participants understanding of wine 6 p.m. CT at City Winery. April 13 Maryville Musical Story Time with the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra String Quartet combines childrens literature with classical music, sound effects and hands-on learning 10:30 a.m. ET at the Blount County Public Library. April 15 Cowan Arts & Ales is an event featuring craft beer tastings, art exhibits and live music noon to 4:30 p.m. CT at Monterey Station. Pocahontas The Big Hill Trail Run is a 5k course featuring paved and mixed natural surfaces with registration beginning 6 a.m. CT and the race starting 8 a.m. CT through Big Hill Pond State Park. Townsend Bill Landry of The Heartland Series fame conducts a personal guided trip 9:30 a.m. ET around Cades Cove. Union City Kids can enjoy the Dino Egg Hunt and a plethora of activities 2 p.m. CT at Discovery Park of America. April 16 Nashville Enjoy a lovely Easter brunch 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. CT at Chauhan Ale & Masala House; 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. CT at City Winery; 1 p.m. to close CT at Carters in Union Station Hotel; and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. CT at Watermark. April 18 Nashville The Fall 2017 collection by Zac Posen is featured at The 2017 Symphony Fashion Show with a performance by Kelsea Ballerini beginning with cocktails at 6 p.m. CT and the fashion show at 7:30 p.m. CT at Schermerhorn Symphony Center. Townsend A tour and hike featuring a presentation about The Walker Sisters of Little Greenbrier by Robin Goddard and a hike to the Walker Sisters homestead departs 9:15 a.m. ETfrom the Great Smoky Mountains Heritage Center. April 18-23 Memphis The Sound of Music, the story of Maria and the von Trapp family comes to life on stage 7:30 p.m. CT April 18-20; 8 p.m. CT April 21; 2 p.m. CT and 8 p.m. CT April 22; and 1 p.m. CT and 6:30 p.m. CT April 23 at the Orpheum Theatre. April 19 Nashville Determine whether classical or rock music pairs well with wine at Music of The Grateful Dead: Music and Wine Pairings featuring a performance by The Stolen Faces 7-9 p.m. CT at City Winery. April 19-22 Reliance The Ramp Tramp Festival features a hike up Big Frog Mountain, live music, clogging and buck dancing performances and a ramp meal at Greasy Creek 4H Campground. April 20-22 Lewisburg Enjoy the three-day Rusted Magnolia Marketplace featuring vintage, repurposed and handmade furniture and home decor, jewelry and unique art, live music and food at Jubilee Hills. Registration is still open for the 11th Annual Childrens Hospital at Erlanger Dragon Boat Festival on Saturday, May 6, at the TVA Park at Chickamauga Dam. Dating back more than 2,300 years, Dragon Boat racing features teams of 20 paddlers, a drummer and a coxswain in 46-foot long Chinese dragon boats, racing through the water to the finish line. Paddlers ages 15 and older at any skill and fitness levels can participate, making it a good team building sport. Corporate and community teams are encouraged to register their boat and a fundraising page by going to http://paddleforchildrenshospital.org. Boating registration is currently $1,000 for regular team entry. The team fundraising entry is $100 for teams who are going the extra mile to raise $3,000. Individual paddlers are welcome to register to join a crew. A few teams who have registered and are meeting or exceeding their fundraising goals are the CBL Motley Crew, BCBST Liquid Awesome Blue and The Personality Paddlers First Volunteer Bank. New this year are an expanded concessions area, a childrens play area and a variety of new trophies and honors for the event including Most Creative Team Name. The last day to register a team is April 20 and the first captains meeting is April 26. To learn more about the festival, please call or email Rebecca Styles at 778-4803 or Rebecca.styles@erlanger.org or visit www.paddleforchildrenshospital.org. Eleven Latin American neuro specialists attended a training program focusing on Regional Stroke Care and Financial Operations. This program, geared for the international medical community, is part of an ongoing course taught quarterly by key faculty at the Erlanger Southeast Regional Stroke Center and Neuroscience Institute. At a Bienvenidos welcome dinner, physician delegations from Mexico, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Brazil, and Colombia met with Erlanger President and CEO Kevin Spiegel, FACHE and Chief Operating Officer Rob Brooks to share their experiences. Joining the international physician delegation were Dr. Blaise Baxter, Erlanger chief of Radiology; Dr. Thomas Devlin, director of the Erlanger Neuroscience Institute, Traci Jennings, assistant vice-president of the Neuroscience Institute and Peter Catalano, director of Stroke Consulting Services. During the dinner meeting, each physician described the challenges of practicing high-quality stroke care in regions of the world lacking the infrastructure and financial support available in the United States.During the seminar, led by Dr. Devlin and Ms. Jennings, the eleven physicians learned about building an advanced Regional Stroke Center, along with developing a referral base of hospitals in outlying areas. The Latin America guests toured Erlanger facilities and came away with new ideas for strengthening their programs back home.Another member of the Erlanger Seminar faculty was Dr. Raul Nogueira, president of the Society of Vascular and Interventional Neurology and Professor of Neurology at Emory University. Dr. Nogueira, along with his Brazilian colleagues at the Brazilian Ministry of Health, is performing clinical trials of thrombectomy procedures (mechanical clot extraction devices for stroke). The objective of these trials is to validate the utility of endovascular stroke treatment within the reality of the public healthcare systems in developing nations. Among the leading physicians attending the Erlanger seminar were Dr. Nogueiras co-authors on Stroke Care guidelines for Brazil, Drs. Octavio Pontes-Neto and Daniel Abud (directors of the Stroke and Neuroendovascular programs at Universidade de Sao Paulo Ribeirao Preto). Dr. Devlin concluded the seminar by offering participants a peek at new technology used for diagnosing strokes with an automated TransCranial Doppler system. This system, currently under development with Dr. Devlins research team, is hoped to significantly reduce diagnostic costs and time to treatment for acute stroke. Seminar participants saw this new technology as a potential path to high-quality care that could be supported by insurance and income levels in much of Latin America. The Tennessee State Parks Conservancy a recently formed nonprofit partner of Tennessee State Parks within the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) will look to enhance visitor offerings at Tennessee State Parks in education, health and other special areas. This supporting organization to TDEC will make the park experience better for visitors through additional historical, cultural and recreational opportunities, said TDEC Deputy Commissioner of Parks and Conservation Brock Hill. Individuals and corporate partners can directly contribute to the sustainability and longevity of our statewide park system. Established in 2016, the Tennessee State Parks Conservancy was created to allow corporations, foundations and individuals to support the Tennessee State Parks system as a whole. Funds raised through the Tennessee State Parks Conservancy will go towards educational programs like field trips and outdoor classrooms, health initiatives like playgrounds, and special park projects like museum exhibits. Modeled after the National Park Foundation, the Tennessee State Parks Conservancy will make donated funds available to Tennessees 56 state parks on a grant-based system. The Tennessee State Parks Conservancy is hosting a kickoff event will take place at Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park on Thursday, April 20, from 5-8 p.m. Tickets are $50 per person and include refreshments and catering provided by the staff at Henry Horton State Park. Remarks will be made by TDEC Commissioner Bob Martineau and others. Tickets can be purchased online at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/t ennessee-state-parks-conservan cy-kickoff-reception-tickets- 32480618404 or at the event. BASF announced that it has signed an agreement to sell its Bleaching Clay and Mineral Adsorbents businesses to EP Minerals. Financial details of the divestiture are not being disclosed. The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2017, subject to regulatory approval and other customary closing conditions. The Bleaching Clay and Mineral Adsorbents businesses are currently part of the Process Catalysts business unit of BASFs global Catalysts division. The divestiture includes a production site and a clay mine in Mississippi, and the mineral rights sublease associated with a mine in Arizona. The transaction will affect approximately 70 employees. In the process of focusing our portfolio on strategic growth areas we are divesting the businesses to a strategic buyer, EP Minerals. This is the best course of action for the further development of the businesses and the impacted employees, said Detlef Ruff, BASF Senior Vice President, Process Catalysts. Were excited about this opportunity to acquire the Bleaching Clay and Mineral Adsorbents business from BASF, said EP Minerals President and CEO Gregg Jones. Its a strategic move to strengthen our portfolio of industrial minerals and position EP Minerals for future growth and innovation. The fifth edition of analytica Vietnam, which was held from March 29 to 31, 2017, in the International Center for Exhibition (I.C.E) in Hanoi, produced an excellent overall result. 121 exhibitors from 17 countries, more nations than ever before, presented their products and solutions for the laboratory technology, analysis, biotechnology and diagnostics industries. There is considerable interest in the topics of analytica Vietnam: A total of 3,514 visitors obtained information during the fair about the developments in the industry. Susanne Grodl, Project Manager of the analytica trade fairs at Messe Munchen, summarized the three event days: "This year's analytica Vietnam has demonstrated impressively that the Vietnamese market for analytical techniques, biotechnology and lab technology is growing. The demand for laboratory equipment is increasing, and the numerous products exported from the country are analyzed in accordance with international testing standards. Our trade fair concept starts exactly at this point and combines the latest products and solutions as well as links national and international manufacturers with extensive knowledge transfer in the supporting program". Gabriele Kraus, Division Manager at the trade fair organizer IMAG, also emphasized the advantage of the location in this context: "Vietnam has one of the fastest growing economies in Asia. Its proximity to China and stable political situation have a positive influence. These factors have favored the growth of analytica Vietnam. Exhibitor growth of 27 percent shows that companies share this assessment." Tok Wee Keong, COO of Technospex confirmed: "This is the first time we are exhibiting in Vietnam and it was truly an eye-opener for us. The lab visits gave us the valuable opportunity to see and experience the Labs in Vietnam first hand and we now understand their equipment requirements which is very important information for making sales." Exhibitors have also been impressed by the high quality of the visitors. Pham Thi Tuyet, PR Manager at SISC Vietnam, sums up: "Were definitely happy with the results of analytica Vietnam 2017. Since the first day we have connected with many big potential end-users. We surely will participate again." Blast effects accompany the trade fair and supporting program Not only the numbers of exhibitors and visitors, but also the supporting program got people's attention. The experiment presentations on the topic of occupational health and safety held by asecos, the German specialist for safety and environmental protection when working with hazardous materials, attracted a large audience, not the least due to the planned triggered explosions that contributed by illustrating risks in laboratories. During the analytica Vietnam conference, international experts from science and research provided insights into the latest developments and practice-oriented solutions in the areas of foodstuff analytics and safety, pharmaceutical and medical diagnostics, environmental analysis and quality optimization as well as chromatography and mass spectrometry. The halls were full at the conference, especially for the talks "Mobile toxic carrier the main perpetrator causing an environmental disaster in the central coast of Vietnam in 2016" and "Two-dimensional liquid chromatography applications in food analysis". A total of 411 visitors filled the rows of the conference area in the I.C.E. Premiere for buyer-seller meetings and the seminar series of VinaLAB There were lively exchange between exhibitors and visitors not only at the trade fair stands; the buyer-seller meetings also provided an attractive context for business talks with precisely the right contacts. And they also did it successfully! Approximately 160 people attended the organized discussions. There were very attentive listeners on the last day of the fair in the specialist laboratory analysis presentations. The seminars series, organized by the Vietnam Association of Testing Laboratories (VinaLAB), dealt with topics such as "National brands and credibility of testing results in Vietnam". The next analytica Vietnam will take place in the spring of 2019. Fed up with the theft of toilet paper from public bathrooms, tourist authorities in China's capital have begun using facial recognition technology to limit how much paper a person can take. The unusual move part of a " toilet revolution" is another step in China's vast upgrading of public facilities. Bathrooms at tourist sites, notorious for their primitive conditions and nasty odors, are a special focus of the campaign, a response to a vast expansion in domestic travel and demands for better-quality facilities from a more affluent public. "Today in China , people are highly enthusiastic about tourism, and we have entered a new era of public tourism," said Zhan Dongmei, a researcher with the China Tourism Academy. "The expectation of the public for the toilet is becoming higher." At Beijing's 600-year-old Temple of Heaven, administrators recognized the need to stock the public bathrooms with toilet paper , a requirement for obtaining a top rating from the National Tourism Authority. But they needed a means of preventing patrons from stripping them bare for personal use hence the introduction of new technology that dispenses just one 60-centimeter (2-foot) section of paper every nine minutes following a face scan. "People take away the paper mostly because they are worried they can't find any when they want to use it the next time. But if we can provide it in every toilet , most people will not do it anymore," Zhan said. Launched two years ago, the revolution calls for at least 34,000 new public bathrooms to be constructed in Beijing and 23,000 renovated by the end of this year. Authorities are also encouraging the installation of Western-style sit-down commodes rather than the more common squat toilets . Around 25 billion yuan ($3.6 billion) has already been spent on the program, according to the National Tourism Administration. The ultimate target, Zhan said, "is to have a sufficient amount of toilets which are clean and odorless and free to use." At Happy Valley, the largest amusement park in Beijing, around 4 million annual visitors rely on 18 bathrooms, each of which is assigned one or two cleaners who must make their rounds every 10 minutes on busy days. "People come here to have fun, but if the toilets are disgusting, how can they have a good time here?" said Vice General Manager Li Xiangyang. "It is the least we should do to offer a clean and tidy environment for tourists to enjoy both the tour of the park and the experience of using our toilets ." Going a step further, the financial hub of Shanghai even opened its first gender-neutral public toilet in November in order to boost convenience and efficiency. "Women are stuck waiting in longer lines for stalls than men, and it is fair for men and women to wait in line together," Shanghai resident Zhu Jingyi said after using the facility. Zhan said the toilet revolution is about 90 percent complete, but warned that it has yet to be won. Facebook and Google are launching resources to help you spot false news and misleading information that spreads online. Facebook's resource, similar to previous efforts around privacy and security, is basically a notification that pops up for a few days. Clicking on it takes you to tips and other information on how to spot false news and what to do about it. Google will expand the use of fact check tags in its search results the tech industrys latest effort to combat false and misleading news stories. People who search for a topic in Googles main search engine or the Google News section will see a conclusion such as mostly true or false next to stories that have been fact checked. Google has been working with more than 100 news organizations and fact-checking groups , including The Associated Press, the BBC and NPR. Their conclusions will appear in search results as long as they meet certain formatting criteria for automation. Tips to spot false news include looking closely at website addresses to see if they are trying to spoof real news sites, and checking websites' "about" sections for more information. Some sites might look like real news at first glance, but their "about" sections inform the visitor that they are in fact satire. Adam Mosseri, vice president of News Feed at Facebook , said he hopes people will become "more discerning consumers" of news . The new feature is part of a broader plan by Facebook to clamp down false news stories, which gained outsized attention in the months leading up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Fake news , of course, was around long before the election. But supermarket tabloids peddling stories about aliens and celebrity miracles are less insidious than, say, "Pizzagate," a false internet rumor that led a gunman to fire an assault weapon inside a Washington pizzeria in December. Facebook has been "working very hard to figure out how to get their arms wrapped around this," said Lucy Dalglish, journalism dean at the University of Maryland. " Facebook was always very interested technology but not the social and civic implications of technology. It's like they have become citizens." She praised the company for seeking help from outside experts, including academics, researchers and nonprofit journalism organizations. The company, for instance, is working with outside fact-checking and media organizations to identify false news as such. And once they are identified, Facebook is trying to dry up the "economic incentives" of false news sites by making it difficult for them to buy ads on Facebook . Mosseri said most of the false news content on Facebook is from spammers trying to seek a profit and not, for example, political propaganda. This is apparent as the sites often flip-flop around opposing political candidates or ideologies, for example, or have multiple pages that support different candidates. Facebook's other efforts include the creation, with other companies, groups and tech leaders, of a " news integrity" nonprofit to promote news literacy and increase the public's trust in journalism. A nascent Facebook Journalism Project , meanwhile, is a lofty effort to work with news organizations to develop products, provide tools for journalists and generally promote trust in news . The new feature will be available in 14 countries, including the U.S., Germany, France, Italy, the U.K., Philippines, Taiwan and Brazil. Also on Thursday, Facebook said that its messaging app, Messenger, will soon start showing users suggestions from a virtual assistant to users in the U.S. The artificial intelligence-powered assistant, called M, will suggest things it deems might be helpful to users based on the conversations they are having. This can include sending stickers, sharing your location with a friend to meet up, hailing a ride or sending money to friends. The more someone uses M, the "smarter" it gets and if the suggestions are routinely ignored, it will stop providing them. While having a virtual assistant monitor your private messages can sound creepy, Facebook stresses that there is no advertising component to the move. Facebook unveiled M in 2015, but until now it's only been testing out the suggestions with a small percentage of Messenger users. Associated Press reporter Anick Jesdanun contributed. A sign advertising Bill O'Reilly's show is displayed April 5, 2017, in New York City. The New York Times has reported that Fox News and O'Reilly have settled five cases with women who claimed he sexually harassed them. (Spencer Platt / Getty Images) Thanks to the president of the United States, we have now seen the structural support system that allows workplace sexual harassment to persist, writ large. And it is sickening. Advertisement Responding this week to a New York Times report that Fox News and host Bill O'Reilly have settled five cases with women who claimed he sexually harassed them with payouts totaling about $13 million President Donald Trump cavalierly said: "I don't think Bill did anything wrong. I think he's a person I know well he is a good person." Trump has no evidence to support his assertion that O'Reilly did nothing wrong, unless he happened to be in the room at the moment of each alleged incident. Advertisement And, more importantly, the president has zero credibility on this issue. In a 2005 recording released during the presidential campaign, Trump told "Access Hollywood" host Billy Bush how he uses his star power on women: "You know, I'm automatically attracted to beautiful I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab 'em by the (expletive). You can do anything." Trump's rise to the presidency was a clear enough example that such views on the sexual assault or harassment of women are no barrier to the highest office in the land. But now we have this: A president who previously bragged on tape to groping women is defending a man repeatedly accused of sexual harassment who's losing sponsors hand over fist on a network whose then-CEO Roger Ailes stepped down last summer following repeated accusations of sexual harassment. And who was there last summer to defend Ailes? Donald Trump. Both O'Reilly and Ailes have denied the sexual harassment charges, and Trump has denied a variety of sexual harassment and sexual assault claims, defending the comments he made to Bush as "locker room talk." But what message is sent to women in the workplace when three powerful men one the most powerful in the country prop each other up while largely ignoring the issue at hand? It's the old boys club writ large. "Everything that has happened in the last week is reinforcing a message that sexual harassment isn't taken seriously, that serial harassers will be protected, and that powerful people can do whatever they want without consequences," said Maya Raghu, director of workplace equality at the National Women's Law Center, a women's rights advocacy group in Washington. "If you're a victim and want to report, there will be serious negative consequences for your job and your career. It's essentially saying that putting up with sexual harassment is the price that women have to pay for keeping a job." Advertisement The fact that this is all coming to light at the beginning of the month, which is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, makes it that much worse. Maya Raghu, director of workplace equality at the National Women's Law Center The defense used by Trump, O'Reilly and Ailes and the routine pushback on sexual harassment allegations by those who think sexual harassment is some kind of workplace myth is that high-profile men are targeted by female colleagues looking to cash in. Setting aside the inherent sexism behind that argument, it's also an absurd one, considering the risks women take when they file a sexual harassment claim. "Victims of sexual harassment are between a rock and a hard place," Raghu said. "Either they don't come forward and they have to live with the harassment because they're afraid to lose their jobs or they come forward and people attack them or accuse them of lying. They're called troublemakers; they may be blackballed in their industry. It has implications for not just their jobs but their careers and their future job potential. It's not something people do lightly." And that's what makes workplace harassment so difficult to eradicate: Victims are hesitant to step forward; harassers know that and become confident they can harass people without consequence. What makes Trump's decision to speak out in support of O'Reilly so troubling is that he didn't need to say anything. Why is a president weighing in on a media personality's legal issues? Again, it's the old boys club. Trump and O'Reilly have been pals for years. Same with Trump and Ailes. And that means that in making the decision to put the weight of the presidency behind his support for O'Reilly, Trump never for a moment thought about women or how his comments might affect workers facing sexual harassment. Advertisement Working Lunch Weekdays Get the latest business news headlines, delivered to your inbox midday weekdays. > And that, my friends, is why sexual harassment persists. Powerful men unconcerned with how any of their actions might affect women circle the wagons and protect each other, while victims risk their reputations and fight myriad obstacles to be heard. "The fact that this is all coming to light at the beginning of the month, which is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, makes it that much worse," Raghu said. "It sends this message that nothing's changed after all these years." A lot still needs to change, and it's up to company leaders to be champions of strong policies that forbid harassment and encourage victims to report without fear of retaliation. Sexual harassment cannot be tolerated. Or excused. Or defended. Don't let the president's 1960s mindset fool you. It's 2017. We have to do better. Advertisement TALK TO REX: Ask workplace questions anonymously or by name and share stories with Rex Huppke at rhuppke@chicagotribune.com, like Rex on Facebook at www.facebook.com/rexworkshere and find more at www.chicagotribune.com/ijustworkhere. The Southern Lit Alliance will welcome author Lisa Wingate for an afternoon book club and an evening reception event sponsored by the Monarch Financial Group. Ms. Wingate will be discussing and signing copies of her novel Before We Were Yours at both events Friday, June 14, at 3 and 6 p.m. Ms. Wingate is a national bestselling author and the 2011 winner of the American Christian Fiction writers Book of the Year. Her novel Before We Were Yours delves into the true story of The Tennessee Childrens Home Society and Georgia, Tann, a woman involved with the kidnaping and exploitation of over 5,000 children in the 1920s 1950s. The book follows the journey of the stolen Foss siblings, and the life changing effect their lives have on attorney Avery Stanford as she investigates their pasts. The afternoon book club and evening reception events will both be held in the Arts Building at 301 E. 11th St. in downtown Chattanooga. Tickets to the afternoon event at 3 p.m. are $10 and tickets to the evening event at 6 p.m. are $15. Seating is limited and reservations can be made online at www.SouthernLitAlliance.org or by calling Ann Johnson at 777-4223. There will be books for purchase and book signing at both events. Food and beverages will be served at the 6 p.m. event. this November 23, 2012 file photo, shoppers are seen in front os a Wal-Mart store in Paramount, California. (Frederic J. Brown / AFP/Getty Images) Washington There were days when Stacy Steward had 25 seizures. And months where she had just two. Advertisement There were days when Stacy's blood platelet count dropped so low, she was sealed in an isolation ward, and her mom had to suit up and wear gloves and a mask to visit her. And there were months when Stacy happily went to the mall and to the movies. Advertisement This is motherhood when your 27-year-old daughter - diagnosed with brain cancer when she was 5 - still needs help. And this is the kind of caregiving that the Family and Medical Leave Act was designed to protect. Except in Beverly Steward's case, she believes it didn't. Steward filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., this week alleging she was harassed, badgered and eventually fired from her supervisor's job at Wal-Mart in Washington because she took the federally protected days off to take care of her sick adult child. She wants her job back and $250,000 in compensatory and punitive damages. Wal-Mart denies Steward was targeted for using family leave. "Our policy is to treat everyone with respect and dignity. Ms. Steward was terminated from the company for legitimate business reasons," said Ragan Dickens, director of national media relations for Wal-Mart. "We deny all of the allegations and will defend ourselves in court." In 1996, Stacy Steward - diagnosed with brain cancer at age 5 - went to the Oval Office to watch President Bill Clinton sign the Cancer Control Month proclamation. She is 27 now. (White House / Handout) The struggle for Steward began in 1995, when she'd just given birth to a second daughter and learned that the first had brain cancer. The doctor said Stacy, then 5 years old, probably only had five years left to live. The following year Stacy went to the Oval Office to watch President Bill Clinton sign the Cancer Control Month Proclamation in 1996. She met Socks the cat. And she beat the brain cancer, graduating from high school on time. Advertisement But as result of her cancer treatments, Stacy suffered cognitive delays, seizures, thyroid disease, and osteoporosis. She also has a blood disorder that has left her with a compromised immune system and repeated hospitalizations. She wears hearing aides, but she is almost deaf. She functions like a 13-year-old. Eventually, juggling all that care devastated the working class family, and they landed in a city homeless shelter. The job at Wal-Mart saved them. "Wal-Mart gave me a very good opportunity to put my life back on track," Beverly said. "I remember moving into my apartment at last and crying. Stacy was in a safe place. That job was everything for us." Steward loved working at Wal-Mart. She was was one of the first employees to be hired at the Georgia Avenue location in 2013. She knew the customers, they knew her. She got consistently good reviews on her performance as one of the night-shift supervisors, she said. And a raise. And for years, the system for granting her leave worked perfectly - and definitely serves the country. A recent study published by the American Academy of Pediatrics showed that family caregivers help save about $35 billion in special needs care costs to public and private health care providers every year. Advertisement But this kind of family leave can be complicated for employers, said labor lawyer Sara Faulman, who is representing Steward. The 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act - which doesn't grant anyone paid leave, but rather protects their employment status when they take unpaid leave for a number of approved reasons - is easy to understand when it's a maternity leave. "You have the baby, take 12 weeks off, it's a chunk of time," Faulman said. But intermittent leave is a little harder to understand, especially in a case like Stacy's, where the long-lasting affects from her childhood cancer treatments can send her into a medical crisis one week, but subside and leave her without major problems for two weeks. Each time Steward took the intermittent leave, Wal-Mart's managers approved it, and they were kind and thoughtful afterwards, she said. "They always asked me, 'How is your daughter doing now?' " Steward said. Advertisement But it all changed last year, the lawsuit asserts, when she was promoted to a day-time job and her new supervisor wasn't supportive. Although the human resources department cleared her to take intermittent leave throughout October 2016, the lawsuit alleges that her new supervisor harassed her every time she took an unpaid day, which was an average of once a month. He told her he was "tired" of having to document her absences as family leave in Wal-Mart's timekeeping system, according to the lawsuit, which contends he warned her that he'd find a way to fire the folks who bothered him with this kind of leave. After she filed a written complaint about him in May, she got her first bad performance review, the lawsuit charges. In July, after she took two days of leave to get Stacy to doctors, she was fired. The official reason? According to the lawsuit, it was because Steward charged the cash register five cents to open the drawer for the start of the shift, something she contends all the cashiers do. Steward said she is heartsick. She really liked it there. Advertisement But she's moved on. She has a new job working as a counselor and manager at a halfway house. She is sharing Stacy's caregiving duties with the help of her younger daughter, who is now 21 and a student at Trinity University,. They call themselves the Three Musketeers, and they're happiest when they're all home, together, watching a movie and laughing. "It's critical that I keep working, that I keep fighting for us and to keep our home," Beverly said. Back in 1996, meeting Socks the cat and putting on a brave face in her pretty blue dress and bald head, Stacy was a poster child for the urgent need for children's cancer care. Twenty years later, the whole family was a poster-perfect example of how corporations can work with federal regulations so everyone wins. And today? They're a perfect example of what can happen when the system's protections don't work. Kenosha County Sheriff's Deputies escort Andrew Obregon into a courtroom for a hearing, Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2015, in Kenosha, Wis. Obregon was sentenced to life in proson on April 4 for the killing of Tywon Anderson. (Brian Passino / AP) KENOSHA, Wis. A Wisconsin man who was the subject of a manhunt across parts of that state and Lake County in 2015 after he killed another man has been sentenced to life in prison. Andrew Obregon, 34, pleaded guilty in January to first-degree homicide and other charges in a plea deal with prosecutors under which numerous other charges were dropped. He was sentenced Tuesday. Advertisement Obregon was accused of killing 37-year-old Tywon Anderson over a drug deal in September 2015, dumping his body in a cornfield along County Highway A in Kenosha County and then eluding capture for weeks before being arrested near Winthrop Harbor on Oct. 13, 2015. The manhunt between the discovery of the body and Obregon's arrest resulted in four police chases, and Obregon was accused of stealing several vehicles along the way, police said. On Oct. 12, 2015, the search extended to the Antioch area, where police requested help cordoning off an area around Route 173 and Grimm Road. Advertisement The Lake County Sheriff's Office helped set up a perimeter and provided a K-9 unit in the successful search for the suspect, Christopher Covelli, a sheriff's office spokesperson, said at the time. According to the Racine County Sheriff's Office, Obregon was suspected of stealing a Ford pickup truck from Antioch on or around Oct. 5. Police said that truck was used during a chase the next day in the area of 240th Avenue and 18th Street in Kenosha. The suspect escaped and the vehicle was later recovered on Hoosier Creek Road on Oct. 9, police said. Obregon was accused of stealing three other vehicles and engaging in high-speed chases with Racine and Kenosha police prior to his arrest. Obregon was considered armed and dangerous during the manhunt. News-Sun staff contributed. The man convicted of murdering a Sycamore girl in 1957 and then freed when DeKalb authorities said they believed him innocent testified Thursday that he is trying to win back his reputation from people who consider him a "monster." Jack McCullough, 77, testified for 40 minutes during a DeKalb County court hearing, and he denied any culpability for the murder of Maria Ridulph in his bid to obtain a certificate of innocence that McCullough said will help clear his name. Advertisement "I am innocent, and I've been proven innocent. I want my name back. My name has been in all the papers, coast to coast. I've been put forth as a monster, and people still believe I'm a monster," McCullough told Judge William Brady and a courtroom audience whose members included Maria's sister, Pat Quinn. The judge said he would announce Wednesday whether he would issue the certificate. After the hearing, McCullough said he would travel home Friday to the Seattle area, where he has lived since the 1970s, and would not return to Illinois to hear the judge's ruling. Advertisement "I've always had a warm place in my heart for Sycamore. It was a great place to grow up," he told reporters. But he also said he wanted "justice" against what he called a corrupt system. The certificate of innocence would allow McCullough to obtain compensation from a state program for people wrongly convicted. It also, McCullough attorney Russell Ainsworth argued, helps McCullough regain his reputation. "We've seen a presentation of evidence that would make any person in Mr. McCullough's shoes innocent in the eyes of the law," Ainsworth told the judge. A year ago, McCullough was serving a life sentence, having been found guilty of being the man who approached Maria and a friend as they played on a Sycamore street corner on the evening of Dec. 3, 1957. Maria's disappearance was national news. Her body was found five months later in northwest Illinois. The case went cold for decades, until new developments led to McCullough's arrest in 2011. His guilty verdict at a 2012 bench trial was believed to have been the longest cold case in U.S. history to result in conviction. However, DeKalb County State's Attorney Richard Schmack, who succeeded the chief prosecutor who won the conviction, said in March 2016 that he believed McCullough was innocent. Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > McCullough's conviction was vacated and he won his freedom when Schmack dropped the charges against him. Ainsworth, like Schmack, placed heavy emphasis on FBI reports from 1957, which created a timeline Ainsworth said would have made it impossible for McCullough to have kidnapped Maria. Advertisement McCullough said he had been in Chicago that day, trying to enlist in the military, and had taken a train to Rockford, where he interacted with Air Force recruiters and then called his parents collect to get a lift home. The call was made just before 7 p.m., near the time Maria was last seen, Ainsworth said. That information was corroborated in investigative reports, but those reports were ruled inadmissible at trial. McCullough said his father drove him back to Sycamore that night and dropped him at his girlfriend's house. The former girlfriend, Jan Edwards Swafford, testified via a video feed that she saw McCullough that night. The other witness for McCullough was Nancy Steblay, a Minnesota college professor whose research has centered on eyewitness identifications. Steblay said it was unlikely that Maria Ridulph's childhood friend, Kathy Sigman Chapman, could have accurately identified McCullough as being the man who approached the girls just before Maria disappeared. At trial in 2012, Chapman positively identified an old picture of McCullough as being an image of the same man who walked up and introduced himself as "Johnny." Steblay said Chapman's identification, coming via a poorly conducted photo lineup 52 years after the crime, made her identification highly unreliable. Clifford Ward is a freelance reporter. For six years, a wide assortment of belligerents in Syria's civil war have heaped misery and death on the country's civilians. When Russia intervened on behalf of Syrian President Bashar Assad, the Kremlin became the lead belligerent, cementing for itself a military presence in the volatile Middle East while helping a brutal despot turn the tide against rebel fighters. Vladimir Putin gained the upper hand in Syria because Barack Obama ceded it a disastrous policy failure that buoyed Assad's hold on power and led to the slaughter of hundreds of civilians in Aleppo. Now, following President Donald Trump's cruise missile salvo on a Syrian air base in retaliation for Assad's use of chemical weapons on his own citizens, the U.S. has newfound leverage in the Syrian conflict, putting Rex Tillerson in a position of strength as he visits Russia Wednesday for the first time as secretary of state. Advertisement Hopes for a major rapprochement between Washington and Moscow had been dimmed by the ongoing investigation into Russian meddling in the presidential election, as well as the Trump administration's refusal to scale back or lift the sanctions. Still, the Kremlin felt optimistic about Tillerson's visit. As Exxon's CEO, he nurtured a chummy relationship with Putin and shared the Russian leader's opposition to sanctions imposed by the West in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. (Those sanctions kept Exxon from reaping billions of dollars in developing Russian oil fields.) Tillerson's visit, the Russian Foreign Ministry said, could put U.S.-Russian relations "on a steady growth trajectory and increase the level of mutual understanding." After the strike on Shayrat airfield, a reset with Russia is unlikely. Instead, Tillerson goes to Moscow with Trump's abrupt cruise missile assault on a Russian ally fresh in the Kremlin's mind. Advertisement It would be unrealistic to expect the Kremlin to jettison Assad. But has the dynamic changed enough that the U.S. can push Russia to do as it pledged in 2013 to set in motion the destruction of Syria's remaining chemical weapons stockpiles? Can Tillerson make the case for Russia shifting its focus in Syria toward defeating Islamic State, which may have trained the Kyrgyz-born suicide bomber behind the attack on a subway train in St. Petersburg? Tillerson can ask the Kremlin directly: Did Russia know Assad was going to use chemical weapons, and did it give him the go-ahead? At the same time, the tension between Washington and Moscow created by the U.S. airstrike in Syria needs to be eased, quickly and carefully. In retaliation for the missile strike, Russia says it is suspending the hotline between the U.S. and Russian militaries that helps prevent collisions and clashes between the countries' fighter jets although on Friday U.S. officials said the line remained active. Before Trump unleashed American Tomahawks on Assad's air assets, Russia harbored notions of the new American president as pliant, perhaps even a patsy. So often, Trump had been Putin's apologist, his firewall to Western animosity toward the Kremlin. It's hard to imagine anyone in Russia still thinking that now. It's not every day that Chicago audiences are the first in the U.S. to hear the modern premiere of a recently rediscovered work by a major composer. But that is what took place Thursday night at Symphony Center, where the Chicago Symphony Orchestra gave the first-ever U.S. performance of "Funeral Song," a long-lost orchestral piece by the young Igor Stravinsky. Written as an homage to his beloved teacher Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, the score vanished after the work's one and only original performance in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1909, and was presumed lost in the Bolshevik Revolution. Only in 2015 did a neatly preserved set of orchestral parts turn up in an archive of the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Through the efforts of a Russian scholar and Stravinsky specialist, Natalia Braginskaya, the full score was reconstructed, edited and published. Advertisement The modern "re-premiere" by the Mariinsky Orchestra in St. Petersburg in December 2016 touched off a scramble by conductors and orchestras eager to jump aboard the "Funeral Song" bandwagon. Thursday's American premiere here under the direction of Charles Dutoit was one of more than 70 performances the piece is scheduled thus far to receive by orchestras in more than 20 countries, this season and next. MOST READ ENTERTAINMENT NEWS THIS HOUR Advertisement Stravinsky composed his opus 5 just after his 1908 orchestral miniature "Fireworks" (the first Stravinsky work ever to be performed by the CSO) and just ahead of "The Firebird," the ballet masterpiece that brought him international fame following its premiere by the Ballets Russes in Paris in 1910. In his 1960 memoir "Memories and Commentaries," the composer declared "Funeral Song" to be "the best" of his music predating "Firebird." The music represents the brilliant young Stravinsky working his way through influences of his Russian contemporaries Alexander Scriabin in particular on his way to becoming the Stravinsky the world would soon come to know and idolize. "Funeral Song" (which the CSO program book cites by its French title "Chant Funebre") begins, somber and quiet, in the depths of the orchestra, out of which the solo horn announces a mournful chromatic theme on which the rest of the 12-minute opus is based. The theme is taken up by other solo instruments and combinations of instruments, moving across the 106 measures (marked "largo assai") like a funeral procession: Stravinsky designated it to represent the wreath placed by the orchestra on Rimsky's tomb. The mood ranges from elegiac to exultant to peaceful, at the close. If "Pogrebal'naya Pesnya" (to revert to the Russian title) didn't have Stravinsky's name attached, one easily could have mistaken it for a well-made piece of Russian late-romanticism by Scriabin. But while it may be less than a masterpiece, it is far from a negligible piece of quasi-juvenilia. The importance of "Funeral Song" lies in what it reveals of the artistic development of one of the last century's great musical geniuses, and its portents of greater Stravinsky works to come (his revolutionary "Rite of Spring" lay only five years in the future). That the CSO should be the orchestra to introduce it to America was quite a coup. Dutoit is a practiced hand when it comes to Stravinsky's music and he drew a dignified, atmospheric performance from the CSO to launch his two-week spring residency. "Funeral Song" is rife with darkly alluring orchestral color that the Swiss conductor brought out in every department of the ensemble. The reading set up high expectations for what was to follow, and those expectations were not dashed by either the Dvorak Cello Concerto, with Norwegian cellist Truls Mork making a welcome return as soloist, or the Prokofiev Fifth Symphony that came after intermission. Mork is a consummately musical artist of his instrument. In his hands the lyrical flow was very tenderly shaped where Dvorak's melodies needed space in which to soar. That was the case particularly throughout the slow movement, here an unhurried idyll in the middle of a grand symphonic concerto. The tone he drew from his cello presumably the 1723 Domenico Montagnana cited in his Wikipedia biography was lithe and focused, abetted by impeccable intonation and bow work. Refinement was the keynote of this performance, with musical projection taking precedence over ego projection. The old warhorse galloped anew. Dutoit was careful to provide Mork with an accompaniment warm and flexible enough to support the soloist's sometimes generous rubato phrasing. Standing ovations have become so commonplace at Orchestra Hall concerts as to be virtually meaningless, but this one was amply deserved. Advertisement Dutoit's reading of the Prokofiev symphony carried a sophisticated understanding and delivery of the music's inner workings and outer rhetoric. Some listeners might have found it a bit too tasteful for this sinewy Soviet wartime masterpiece, but I enjoyed it a great deal and took pleasure in hearing the CSO musicians make something exciting and beautiful of this music. The mechanistic scherzo had immense driving energy and a mocking edge, to boot. The sharpness of rhythm evident throughout this performance paid off particularly well in the finale, an explosion of joyous spirit true to Prokofiev's stated, Kremlin-approved intent. The program will be repeated at 8 p.m. Saturday and 7:30 p.m. Tuesday in Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan Ave.; $34-$222; 312-294-3000, www.cso.org. John von Rhein is a Tribune critic. jvonrhein@chicagotribune.com Twitter @jvonrhein RELATED STORIES: Advertisement Long-lost opus by Igor Stravinsky gets its American premiere at the CSO Bella Voce gets up close, intimate in rare version of Brahms' 'A German Requiem' James Conlon saves the day as pinch-hitter for Bernard Haitink in CSO concert 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) At a panel discussion, Queen Reese, from left, Kabriya Newton and Asunti Henderson remind us that parents who love, provide and believe in you are true heroes. (Brissa Hanzel / Breeze Art Creative) It's hard to feel like a hero when your bills and deadlines and laundry are piling up faster than you care to admit. It's easy, in fact, to feel like quite the opposite: A failure. A misfit. A disappointment. Advertisement Which is why I want to share a story about some teenage girls I met recently. I was invited to moderate a panel sponsored by Step Up, a nonprofit that helps girls from under-resourced communities. The group offers after-school programs to mentor high school girls for college, internships and, eventually, their careers. Advertisement Before my panel, three teens took the floor and answered questions about their goals and their obstacles. They mentioned marine biology and pediatric surgery. They talked about classmates who spend more time on makeup than homework. They talked about boys. Then a Step Up volunteer asked them each to name a hero, and all three, one after the next, said the same thing: my mom. Each girl had a different reason, but they boiled down to some essentials She loves me unconditionally. She works so hard to give me what I need. She believes in me. I sat in my chair wiping away tears and thinking about how many people I wished were in the room, hearing what heroics look like to the people on the receiving end. Love. Work. Belief. Advertisement We tie ourselves in knots wondering whether we're doing enough or doing too much or doing the right amount but doing it all wrong. It's a modern fear, I think. Kids used to worry about disappointing their parents. Now parents worry about disappointing their kids. We should worry less. They're watching us love them and believe in them. And that means everything. I was driving my daughter, 11, to a chemistry fair the other day, and we made a quick detour to Starbucks for tea. We were late, and I was distracted, probably feeling like a failure (misfit, disappointment) when she asked if I remembered her first Frappuccino. "I do!" I answered. Advertisement I didn't. Thankfully, she launched into her detailed memory of that transcendent moment. We were on a road trip to Iowa last winter, just the two of us, and I treated her to her first coffee drink, with a plea that she drink it slowly. She drank half, took a break and was thrilled when we returned to the car after a brief stop to find that it was still mostly frozen. She drank the rest and felt sick but suffered in silence, so I wouldn't regret my decision to let her make such a grown-up purchase. We laughed and sipped our tea, and I delivered her to the chemistry fair. I thought about our conversation the whole ride home. A few days later, my husband was washing out the kids' lunchboxes when my 7-year-old son, sitting nearby, burst into spontaneous, inconsolable sobs. We ran through the usual questions: What happened? What hurts? Did you pinch something? Cut something? He asked me to follow him upstairs, where he admitted, after much coaxing, that he saves all the notes I put in his lunch and hides them in a lunchbox pocket. Now they were waterlogged and wrecked. Advertisement He cried a little more. My husband gently apologized, and we all moved on. The whole episode lasted 15 minutes, tops. But it reminded me, one more time, how often the moments and gestures that mean the most are tiny little things. I thought those notes ended up in the cafeteria garbage, alongside empty Capri-Sun pouches and uneaten carrot sticks. I wouldn't have guessed my little scribbles leave such a lasting impression. Nor would I have put much weight in a Frappuccino, memory-wise. It got me wondering how different we'd feel about our days about ourselves if we took inventory of all the ways we make people feel loved and believed in. How different would we feel about our perpetual busy-ness and ball dropping if we knew that one day, maybe even now, someone would say, She works so hard to give me what I need. Advertisement Few of us set out to be heroes, certainly not when we're parenting. (Some days I'm just shooting for adequate.) But we want to do well by our loved ones, and it was inspiring to hear some teenagers spell out what that entails. Unconditional love. Generous providing. Absolute belief. And, I'll add, the occasional Frappuccino. hstevens@chicagotribune.com Twitter @heidistevens13 RELATED STORIES: Advertisement 'Strong Is the New Pretty' shows girls in their muddy, messy glory In defense of opposite-sex friendships Decades of '60 Minutes' couldn't prepare Lesley Stahl for shock and aww! of grandparenting A Syrian child receives treatment in the town of Maaret al-Noman on April 4, 2017, following a suspected toxic gas attack in Khan Sheikhun, a nearby rebel-held town in Syria. (Mohamed al-Bakour / Gatty-AFP) The images coming out of Syria were hard to watch. Children with reddened cheeks, foam seeping from their mouths as they struggled to breathe. Human beings sprawled motionless on the ground, as rescue workers rinsed them off with water hoses. A father holding the stiffened bodies of his 9-month-old twins. Advertisement This is what a chemical weapons attack looks like. And in the end, more than 80 innocent people were killed. At home in America, we wondered how such a travesty could occur and, silently, we prayed that it would not happen again. So when President Donald Trump decided to launch an attack on Syria in retaliation, why did we flinch? Why did we question whether it was a reasonable response? Why didn't we trust that our president had done the right thing? Advertisement The answer is simple. Many of us have no confidence in our commander-in-chief. Until a day ago, the president had made it clear that he had no sympathy for the people of Syria. He had done all within his power, including going to court, to keep Syrian refugees from fleeing to the United States. The pictures of dead and injured children in the recent chemical attack, he said, prompted him to change his mind about Syrian President Bashar Assad. We still don't know, however, whether Trump will now open America's doors to Syria's victims. It's not like Trump just found out about the evil deeds of Assad. Nearly four years ago, the Syrian military conducted a chemical weapons attack near Damascus, killing more than 1,400 people. Trump, the private citizen, went on Twitter and urged President Barack Obama not to intervene, saying "there is no upside and tremendous downside." But he was just a regular American then, with an opinion that no one cared about. Now the world will have to listen to his message. Trump's decision to fire 59 Tomahawk missiles on a military air base in Syria was done without the approval of Congress or consultation with our NATO allies or the United Nations Security Council. And as a wise general by the name of Colin Powell once warned President George W. Bush before he invaded Iraq, "If you break it, you own it." Perhaps Trump was right to destroy those Syrian fighter jets, radars, ammunition bunkers and fuel storage sites. But we have to wonder how this will affect America's future. Will a single airstrike stop Assad in his tracks? Or will it lead to a long-term conflict? All of it seemed to happen too hastily, without adequate time to develop a plan for the aftermath. But on the other hand, it seemed like perfect timing for a president who two months into office had the lowest public approval rating of any new U.S. president. And as of Friday, a Gallup poll found that only 41 percent of Americans thought Trump is doing a good job. Advertisement In the eyes of our enemies, Trump clearly isn't taken seriously. On Wednesday, North Korea fired yet another ballistic missile into the Sea of Japan, likely to test of the novice American president. It came on the heels of two other launches that occurred during March. On top of that, just days ago ISIS released its first official statement on Trump. It said: "You are being run by an idiot who does not know what Syria or Iraq or Islam is." And what better way for Trump to try to distract the American people from the investigation into his staff's alleged ties with Russia than to attack one of that country's closest allies? We can only hope that Trump did this for the "beautiful babies" of Syria, as he said. We can only hope that he did it in the nation's "vital national security interest," as he insisted. And we can only hope that "peace and harmony will in the end prevail," as he promised. There are lots of unanswered questions, but there are two things we know for sure. Many Americans will continue to distrust the president. And we will not ignore his suspicious links to Russia. dglanton@chicagotribune.com Advertisement Twitter @dahleeng Thomas Vranas, center, co-owner of SUPES Academy, arrives at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse on Oct. 14, 2015, to be arraigned on bribery charges. On April 12, 2016, he pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to commit federal program bribery and faces up to five years in prison. (Abel Uribe / Chicago Tribune) The co-owner of two companies at the heart of a bribery scandal at Chicago Public Schools is asking a judge for a sentence of three years probation, according to court documents filed Thursday by his attorneys. Defense attorneys say Thomas Vranas, 36, co-owner of the SUPES Academy and Synesi Associates, was initially unaware of the corrupt arrangement between his business partner, Gary Solomon, and former CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett. Advertisement "Although Tom did not originate the conduct in this case, he eventually participated in it," Vranas' attorneys wrote. "And, while he wholeheartedly believed in the value of his companies and worked hard to deliver the contracted work to CPS, Tom knew that the financial arrangement with Barbara was wrong and illegal." Defense attorneys said they expect federal prosecutors to request a 39-month prison sentence but asked the judge to consider "probation with a lengthy period of home detention and significant community service." Advertisement Vranas and Byrd-Bennett are scheduled to be sentenced April 28 at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse. Solomon, cast by prosecutors as the "mastermind" of the bribery scandal, was sentenced last month to seven years in prison. Prosecutors are expected to ask that Byrd-Bennett be sentenced up to about 7 1/2 years in prison. Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > According to Thursday's court filing, attorneys argue Vranas was the least culpable of the three people involved in the bribery scheme and was "pulled into the scheme originated by his codefendants." Vranas, after consulting with Solomon, agreed to delete "bad emails" to conceal the arrangement with Byrd-Bennett, his attorneys wrote. Instead of leaving the companies or confronting Solomon, Vranas' attorneys said their client "acted out of fear and self-interest" and participated in the scheme. Much of the defense team's plea for leniency focused on Vranas' cooperation with government investigators and character endorsements from his family members, friends and colleagues. According to the filing, Vranas first met Solomon during his senior year of high school. "It was Gary, Tom's former mentor, who cultivated the relationship with Barbara and concocted the corrupt payment agreement, initially keeping it a secret from Tom," Vranas' defense team argued. "Ultimately Gary 'corrupted' Tom and Tom willingly participated in the offense instead of confronting Gary or leaving the Supes Entities." jjperez@tribpub.com Twitter @PerezJr. Last year, Mr. Perfect took the public on a tour of some unreal companies that moved to Chattanooga and were unbelievably successful. Now he returns in a musical extravaganza. And this time he will have to convince his toughest audience yet that Chattanooga is "literally perfect". The Literally Perfect online video campaign helps attract tech talent, entrepreneurs and people to work at Chattanooga companies. The video has received nearly 50,000 impressions in 24 hours. Paul Vallas listens as the board of trustees of Chicago State University makesrecommendations during special meeting on Monday, March 27, 2017. (Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune) Former Chicago Public Schools chief Paul Vallas has resigned from the Chicago State University board of trustees to apply for a top leadership position in the university's administration, the Tribune has learned. Vallas' resignation comes ahead of an emergency board meeting Friday where university trustees are expected to fill two top administrative posts with the hope that sweeping change will help turn around the troubled school. The board has said it plans to name a new interim president and interim chief administrative officer, a newly created position. Advertisement Vallas, one of four trustees appointed to the board in January by Gov. Bruce Rauner, submitted his resignation April 3, according to the letter obtained by the Tribune. He resigned with the intention of pursuing the administrative officer position, according to a source not authorized to speak on the record. Vallas could not be considered for that job while still on the board. The Far South Side public university has been plagued by financial, academic and leadership issues for years. Enrollment at the school has fallen by half since 2010, and the graduation rate has dropped to 11 percent. Hundreds of employees were laid off last year amid a financial crisis brought on in part by the state budget impasse. Advertisement The board last met in special session March 27 to discuss leadership changes, and it was expected that Vallas would take on a top administrative role at that time. But trustee Nicholas Gowen, also a Rauner appointee, said hiring Vallas directly from the board could create a conflict of interest. Trustees instead announced they would meet again Friday to decide who would fill the positions, and Vallas resigned from the board in the interim. Gowen said the board is considering several people for the two positions, and that Vallas had made a presentation during a closed session of the board's meeting last week to promote his qualifications, then recused himself from the group's discussions. Reached by the Tribune on Thursday, Vallas declined to comment. Board Chair Marshall Hatch could not be reached for comment. Chicago State professor Robert Bionaz, the faculty union president, said Vallas has "skills that we could use," but said he didn't know whether he would be a good fit for the chief administrative officer job as he hasn't seen anything officially describing the position. "He's got obviously some fundraising abilities. He's certainly done some management, some turnaround work," Bionaz said. "But like I said, without knowing exactly what the job description is, I don't know what the relationship would be with someone they might make the president, the board, or any of that." Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > Once the appointments are made, the current interim president, Cecil B. Lucy, is expected to return to his previous post as interim finance and administration chief. He has been interim president since September, when Thomas Calhoun Jr. resigned after just nine months on the job, taking a $600,000 severance with him. The plan to put Vallas in charge began unfolding last month. Rauner in January appointed him, Gowen, attorney Tiffany Harper and business owner Kam Buckner to the board to promote change. He also created an eight-member advisory panel, putting the group on notice that he expected aggressive moves to resolve myriad problems at the university. Advertisement Rauner made clear that he wanted Vallas to lead the board, but trustees already had elected the Rev. Marshall Hatch Sr. as their chairman in December. Last month, state Education Secretary Beth Purvis summoned Vallas, Hatch and advisory member Tony Anderson to brainstorm a plan to put Vallas in a so-called crisis management role, leveraging Rauner's political capital on the board to effect that change. But the move also drew fire from some politicians across the state. A group of Chicago aldermen and county commissioners who said they supported Lucy's continued leadership accused the governor of overstepping his authority. gpratt@chicagotribune.com Twitter @royalpratt Chicago State University 's board on Friday appointed a former CSU dean to be the troubled institution's interim president and hired ex- Chicago Public Schools chief Paul Vallas to be a top interim administrator. The board announced it was hiring Rachel Lindsey, who served as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and Vallas after more than four hours in closed session. The Far South Side public university has been plagued by financial, academic and leadership issues for years. Enrollment at the school has fallen by half since 2010, and the graduation rate has dropped to 11 percent. Hundreds of employees were laid off last year amid a financial crisis brought on in part by the state budget impasse. Advertisement Vallas, one of four trustees appointed to the board in January by Gov. Bruce Rauner , resigned earlier this month to pursue the administrative position. Last month, state Education Secretary Beth Purvis summoned Vallas, board Chair Marshall Hatch and advisory member Tony Anderson to brainstorm a plan to put Vallas in a so-called crisis management role. Vallas ran Chicago Public Schools from 1995 to 2001, then served as a turnaround specialist for other city school districts. The Democrat returned to Illinois politics as Pat Quinn 's lieutenant governor candidate when Quinn ran unsuccessfully for re-election in 2014 against Rauner. Vallas was at Chicago State early in the day but left before the vote was taken. He did not immediately return a message seeking comment. Lindsey could not immediately be reached for comment. Advertisement Purvis said in a statement that Rauner "applauds Chicago State leaders for moving forward with an interim leadership team that will focus on getting the school back on track. "We hope that this new team will make strong, decisive operating improvements in the coming days and then will create a strategic plan that puts CSU on a path to success. While we are very concerned that it took so long for the Board to make these changes, we are hopeful that there is sufficient time to do what is necessary to ensure a strong future for the school." At the start of Friday's meeting, interim President Cecil B. Lucy made an appeal for unity at a time when he said the country, state, city and Chicago State are all divided. "We must rebuild. We must give the students the education they pay for," Lucy said. "And we must change the public narrative in emphasizing the greatness we continue to do and the successes we continue to have." One speaker urged the board to consider "purging" the "toxic" people who led Chicago State into its current turmoil. Two speakers asked the board to consider reappointing Thomas Calhoun Jr., the former president, who resigned after just nine months on the job, taking a $600,000 severance with him. Others addressed the looming decision of whether to appoint Vallas. Michael Johnson, president and CEO of the Boys and Girls Club in Dane County, Wis., said he drove three and a half hours to speak in support of Vallas. "Find a role he can play," Johnson told the board. "Whether it's a volunteer role, an interim (administrative) role, he deserves to be at the table to bring this university to the next level." Advertisement Not everyone supported Vallas' job application. Frank Horton, who graduated from Chicago State in 1964, stood to speak against Vallas. "Paul Vallas wrecked Chicago Public Schools. He wrecked Philadelphia. He wrecked New Orleans," Horton said, referencing places where Vallas worked. With each proclamation, a woman in the audience replied, "Amen!" Horton finished his speech by exhorting the board not to "let this Bruce Rauner bring his people in to control you." Calhoun's departure in the fall was controversial, as he was well-liked on campus. Calhoun was hired in late 2015 to replace Wayne Watson, whose six-year tenure was marked by high-profile whistleblower lawsuits, declining enrollment and low morale. Trustee Nicholas Gowen, also a Rauner appointee, struck an optimistic note after the meeting. "We hope these two positions combined will help stabilize the university and put us on track to find a permanent president," he said. Advertisement Officials didn't announce how long the search process would go or what Vallas and Lindsey would be paid. Gowen said salaries were being negotiated. Gowen said the board was put in a "difficult position" but took several weeks and went through a "deliberative process." "This board acted independently of the governor. This board operated independently of community interest. But we took everyone's interests to heart," Gowen said. "It was our fiduciary duty, and we took it seriously." Faculty members Kelly Harris and Garrard McClendon praised the moves after the meeting. Harris said the moves were "long overdue." McClendon said he looked forward to the administration making aggressive enrollment and recruitment plans and said, "We've got two professionals in the mix now." After the vote, Chicago State officials released a PowerPoint presentation called "Strategic Revitalization Plan," prepared by Vallas. The document says Chicago State's "current crisis is real and urgent. The university is deeply troubled by debt, low enrollment, embarrassing graduation rates, and a reputation and protracted record of poor management." Advertisement "While Chicago's African-American community deserves better, neither the state nor the community can afford the financial and social burdens of maintaining the institution in its current condition," it reads. The board is committed to "immediate reforms" that will succeed in substantially rehabilitating CSU's "product and its reputation," the document says. Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > The 37-page document lists "immediate actions to contemplate." They include: Assembling a team that can be immediately embedded in the finance office "to develop an actual budget and long-term financial plan," and to bring "effective financial management, accountability and transparency to the system." Establishing a "true partnership" with faculty. Developing and quickly implementing a student recruitment and retention strategy. Advertisement Securing a state commitment for maximum flexibility on all resources dedicated and appropriated to the university ... in the form (of) an operations and capital block grant. gpratt@chicagotribune.com Twitter @royalpratt Antonio Smith, 35, of the 7000 block of South Indiana Avenue, is charged with murder and aggravated criminal sexual assault in the 2007 killing of Shirley Regina Morgan, and two separate 2002 and 2010 sexual assaults, authorities said. (Chicago Police Department) A man charged with murder in the 2007 slaying of a woman in Chicago's Bronzeville neighborhood and the sexual assaults of two other women in 2002 and 2010 was linked to the attacks after a 2012 shoplifting arrest, according to prosecutors. Antonio Smith 35, is charged with murder and aggravated criminal sexual assault in the attack Jan. 11, 2007, in the 4200 block of South Indiana Avenue, that led to Shirley Regina Morgan, 47, dying 10 months later, according to authorities. Smith was ordered held without bail in a hearing Friday before Cook County Judge Donald Panarese Jr., who called Smith "an extreme danger to the community" before denying bail. Morgan was found partially clothed and unconscious near a carport in the 4200 block of South Prairie Avenue on Jan. 11, 2007, according to Assistant State's Attorney Mary Anna Planey. Morgan suffered multiple cuts to her head, including four to her forehead and above her eyes, loose teeth and bruises and scrapes on her face, according to prosecutors. Morgan was taken to Stroger Hospital, where she remained in critical condition and unconscious for about two months, prosecutors said. A sexual assault kit included DNA evidence collected from her. Advertisement She died Oct. 27, 2007, and her death was ruled a homicide from blunt force head injuries that caused her brain to be deprived of oxygen, killing her, according to prosecutors and Cook County medical examiner's office records. Smith also is charged in two other sexual assaults in which he assaulted victims and hit them in the head, according to police and prosecutors. Advertisement In the first attack, a 33-year-old woman was walking in the 4600 block of South Prairie about 8:50 p.m. on Feb. 8, 2002, when Smith went up to her and they had a brief conversation, according to prosecutors and police records. Smith then took the woman into a vacant lot, where he hit her in the head with his fist, sending her to the ground, prosecutors said. Smith sexually assaulted the woman, and while he was doing so, she saw him reach for a large brick. He then knocked her unconscious and took her coat, keys and money before runing off. The woman called police and was taken to Provident Hospital of Cook County, where a sexual assault kit was used to collect evidence, prosecutors said. Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > The last attack took place after Smith picked up the woman on the street while he was driving near 80th Street and Cottage Grove Avenue on Aug. 14, 2010, prosecutors said. Smith drove up to the woman and asked if she wanted to get a drink, and she got in. They drove around for a bit before he pulled into a parking about 4:30 a.m., according to prosecutors and records. Smith began beating the woman with his fists, then sexually assaulted her, while hitting and choking her until she passed out, prosecutors said. Residents of the area found her, unconscious and with some of her clothes off, in the 1000 block of East 80th Street about 5:30 a.m., prosecutors said. The woman was taken to Jackson Park Hospital, where she was treated for numerous head injuries, including damage to her eyes, and a sexual assault kit was collected, prosecutors said. Smith was arrested March 24, 2012, in a retail theft about 3 p.m. at department store in the 8300 block of South Stewart Avenue, according to records. A Wal-Mart is listed at the address. He was convicted May 22, 2012, and given 12 months probation. His DNA profile was submitted to the Combined DNA Index System, CODIS, after the conviction, and in June 2012, the system matched his initial profile to the killing and two sex assaults, prosecutors said. In August 2012, he consented to the collection of further DNA samples, which confirmed his DNA matched that of the attacker in the three cases. Why it took until 2017 to charge him in the cases was not revealed. Police worked with the state's attorney's Cold Case Unit to investigate the cases, prosecutors said. Smith, of the 7000 block of South Indiana, was arrested about 5:20 p.m. Tuesday in the same block where he lives, according to the news release. Advertisement Smith is the father of Antonio Smith, 9, who was killed Aug. 20, 2014, according to sources. Smith's defense attorney said in court that Smith is the single father of a 15-year-old daughter and a 14-year-old son, and that his 9-year-old son had been killed, but did not give the boy's name. Smith does odd jobs in his neighborhood to support himself and his family. Antonio was killed in the 1200 block of East 73rd Street, a few blocks from his home, when he left home because he was angry at his mother for not giving him cake. Prosecutors and police say Antonio was shot by a gang member who was looking for rival gang members to shoot and happened upon him. Four men are charged in his killing Antonio was being raised by his mother and stepfather, not by Smith, at the time of his death. Alberto Manzo, 18, and Carlos Tapia, 19, not pictured, have been charged with invading a homethe morning of April 5, 2017, in the 4800 block of South Lockwood near Stickney, according to Cook County sheriffs office. Tapia and a 20-year-old residentended up both shot. (Cook County sheriff's office) Two men have been charged in a Stickney-area home invasion that left one of them and a 20-year-old resident of the home with gunshot wounds, police said. Carlos Tapia, 19, has been hospitalized since soon after the home invasion about Wednesday morning in the 4800 block of South Lockwood near Stickney, according to Cook County sheriff's office spokeswoman Sophia Ansari. Tapia, who lives in the 4700 block of South Lorel Avenue, a block from the incident, and Alberto Manzo, 18, are both charged with home invasion in the attack, which also left a 20-year-old man with a gunshot wound. Advertisement Manzo, of the 5000 block of South LaCrosse Avenue in Chicago, was scheduled to appear in bond court Friday at the Bridgeview Branch Court. Two masked gunmen forced their way into the home on Lockwood about 9:25 a.m., intending to steal cash and drugs, police said. In the home, Tapia pointed an assault-style gun at the 20-year-old, but the resident was also armed and shot Tapia multiple times, Ansari said. Tapia also shot him. Advertisement The man's 17-year-old brother jumped out a window to escape the gunmen and was not seriously hurt, according to police. The 20-year-old was taken to an area hospital for treatment. Manzo dropped off Tapia at a nearby hospital, and they both were later arrested, police said. A booking photograph for Tapia was not available, because he is still hospitalized. Then-Rep. Tammy Duckworth after receiving the endorsement of U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin on March 12, 2016, in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago. (Anthony Souffle / Chicago Tribune) WASHINGTON As expected, Democratic U.S. Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth of Illinois voted against confirming Judge Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court on Friday, but he will the take the bench after the Senate voted 54-45 in favor of the nomination. Republicans have a 52-48 Senate majority, so the vote largely was along party lines, with few Democratic defections. One member, Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., did not vote. Advertisement Durbin, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee that vetted Gorsuch, opposed him in a party-line committee vote Monday. Before the committee vote, Durbin said that during 10 years on the Denver-based Court of Appeals, Gorsuch had "favored corporations, employers and special-interest elites" over "workers, consumers, people with disabilities and victims of discrimination." Advertisement He also complained Gorsuch had received a "stamp of approval" from conservative GOP groups, naming the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society. Durbin, speaking Friday from the floor before the vote, continued to assail Senate Republicans' refusal to hold nomination hearings or a vote on a suburban Chicago native, Judge Merrick Garland, whom President Barack Obama put up for the Supreme Court in March 2016. Garland is the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington. Also Friday, Durbin condemned a Senate rules change a day earlier that allowed Gorsuch to be confirmed by a majority vote, not the usual 60 votes. "A lifetime appointment to the highest court of the land should be more than just a bare majority vote," Durbin said. Duckworth entered the Senate in January. That meant Gorsuch, President Donald Trump's pick for the Supreme Court, was the first high court nominee she evaluated. She announced her opposition to Gorsuch on March 30, citing concerns with his past rulings and noting he had canceled a scheduled meeting with her. Duckworth said she was worried about Gorsuch's "predilection for putting corporate profits ahead of people time and again" and "his troubling rulings on disability rights, civil rights, reproductive rights and other issues." Advertisement In a dig at Gorsuch's four-day appearance before the Judiciary Committee, she scoffed: "Earning a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court requires much more than a genial demeanor and an ability to artfully dodge even the most pointed of questions." He will take the seat that became vacant when Justice Antonin Scalia died in February 2016. Gorsuch is expected to be sworn in as an associate justice early next week. kskiba@chicagotribune.com Twitter @KatherineSkiba WASHINGTON The missile attacks against Syria drew solid bipartisan support from Illinois' congressional delegation, but some lawmakers are insisting President Donald Trump consult with lawmakers on next steps. Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth, who lost her legs in combat during the Iraq War, on Friday attended a top-secret briefing by senior Pentagon officials about the strikes against a Syrian air base from which a poison gas attack was launched last week. Officials say the attack killed almost 90 people, many of them children. Advertisement In a conference call with reporters after the briefing in the Capitol, Duckworth said the U.S. military did an "excellent job" in the narrowly targeted action, which she was told left four or five foreigners dead. Duckworth said she long has called for Assad's ouster, and the international community should assist in the removal of a "butcher" who has killed innocent civilians. In an earlier statement, she raised many questions, including whether the U.S. and its allies were prepared to support this country's efforts in Syria if "things go wrong." Advertisement "Because in war, they always do," she said in the statement. Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who also has combat experience, was robust in his support of the Tomahawk missile attack. "These strikes send a strong message: America will no longer allow evil to prevail," Kinzinger said. Kinzinger, a military pilot and a major in the Air National Guard from Channahon, often has said there can be no future for Syria with Assad in charge. He applauded President Donald Trump and criticized his predecessor, Barack Obama. Kinzinger said he has called for air strikes since the first reported chemical attacks in Syria in 2013. "Instead, President Obama failed to take action, and we as a nation have watched this genocide claim nearly 500,000 Syrian lives," Kinzinger said. Duckworth took a jab at Trump by telling reporters he apparently was moved by the images this week of dying Syrian children but "not enough by the (earlier) images of children drowning in the Mediterranean trying to reach safety." She is a strong advocate of allowing Syrian refugees into the U.S., which Trump tried to ban until courts blocked his executive order. Democratic U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin said his preliminary briefing from the White House showed the strikes were a "measured response." He said any further action requires close scrutiny by Congress, and an escalation beyond missile strikes requires engaging the American people in the decision. Democratic Rep. Mike Quigley of Chicago called the missile attack "proportional and appropriate." Quigley also called for more humanitarian aid to Syrians and a re-examination of U.S. refugee policy for displaced Syrians. Advertisement U.S. Rep. Randy Hultgren, a Republican from west suburban Plano, lashed out at Assad, saying: "His wicked actions are a blatant violation of his agreement to dismantle Syria's chemical weapons arsenal and they have consequences." Hultgren said, though, that any further military response in Syria should be reviewed by Congress. Democratic Rep. Brad Schneider of Deerfield called the strikes a "measured reaction" and said Trump now needs to develop a comprehensive strategy to confront the Syrian crisis. Schneider also said after six years of civil war and countless war crimes by the Assad regime, "one strike will not bring an end to the atrocities of this war." He said the battlefield dynamic must change to enact a political solution. Republican U.S. Rep. Peter Roskam of Wheaton called the strikes "bold and decisive" but said a comprehensive strategy was needed to "end the tyrannical reign of the Assad family and free the Syrian people from the grip of Iran and Russia." Other Democratic members of Congress U.S. Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Schaumburg, Dan Lipinski of Western Springs and Cheri Bustos of Moline all also said they backed the attack but that Trump must seek congressional approval before going further. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on Friday asked GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., to call lawmakers back into session to debate a congressional authorization for the use of military force against a sovereign nation. The House left Thursday for an 18-day break. Advertisement Four Democratic representatives, including Duckworth, Quigley, Schneider and Jan Schakowsky of Evanston, likewise called on Congress to hammer out a new authorization for the use of military force. Schakowsky said Assad's "latest atrocities" demanded a strong response, but the strikes "are by no means a solution to the ongoing conflict." The lawmakers' comments came in statements from their offices. Duckworth issued a statement and later held a conference call with reporters. kskiba@chicagotribune.com Twitter @KatherineSkiba President Donald Trump receiving a briefing on the Syria military strike from the National Security team via video teleconference on April 06, 2017, at the Mar-a-Lago estate in West Palm Beach, Florida. (White House / AFP / Getty Images) WASHINGTON The United States and Russia sparred Friday over whether they will maintain a hotline aimed at preventing midair collisions of their warplanes in Syria, with senior U.S. military officials contradicting Moscow's claims that it has suspended the "deconfliction" talks in protest of America's cruise missile strikes on a Syrian air base. The officials also said they're looking into whether Russia participated in the chemical weapons attack in Syria earlier this week that prompted President Donald Trump's order for a retaliation. They said Russia has failed to control the Syrian government's use of chemical weapons or to account for chemical agents that were supposed to have been eliminated under a 2013 agreement, and may have been complicit in Tuesday's horrifying strike that involved the use of a sarin-like nerve gas. Advertisement In Moscow, the Russian government on Friday announced its own swift response to the American intervention against its Arab ally. It said it would cut the hotline that was established after Russia joined Syria's civil war in 2015 to help Syrian President Bashar Assad's government against opposition groups. The hotline's primary intent is to ensure Russian planes conducting combat missions in Syria's skies don't stumble into an accident or confrontation with aircraft flown by the U.S.-led coalition fighting an Islamic State insurgency in the north of the country. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova reportedly said that Moscow would consider reactivating the memorandum with the United States on preventing air incidents in Syria. Advertisement But the senior U.S. military officials, who weren't authorized to speak publicly on the matter and demanded anonymity, said U.S.-Russian discussions have continued since Thursday night's attack on the Syrian military base. They said American officials asked the Russians on Friday if the military talks would continue. The Russians said they would. Pressed on whether the Russians were actively participating in the safety calls, including one on Friday, one U.S. official said conversations were ongoing. The officials' comments, however, triggered a response from Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov. He said reports that the hotline was active were wrong, and that the U.S. military attache in Moscow was called to the ministry to be told that the communications would stop at midnight Saturday. Neither side had previously expressed an interest in severing the line of communication. Even when the U.S., under President Barack Obama, briefly halted talks with Russia on a Syrian peace process, both sides maintained the military communications. Eliminating the hotline could enhance the risk of an accident involving the two nuclear powers. The U.S. officials, however, said they were also reviewing evidence to see if Russia was complicit in the attack on the northern Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun, where more than 80 people were killed. They said a drone belonging either to Russia or Syria was seen hovering over the site of the chemical weapons attack Tuesday after it happened. The drone returned late in the day as citizens were going to a nearby hospital for treatment. The hospital was bombed shortly afterward, officials said, possibly in an effort to cover up evidence of chemical weapons usage. The U.S. says a sarin-like nerve agent was used. Syria denies the claim. And the Kremlin says Syria's government wasn't responsible. The U.S. officials also said they're aware of Russians with chemical weapons expertise who have been in Syria. Advertisement Detailing the results of the U.S. missile strikes, the U.S. officials showed graphics and photographs of the strikes and said 20 aircraft were destroyed, including some that were inside hardened shelters. Also, the strikes took out the air defense system, all the aircraft hangers and the petroleum storage. So far, they said, they do not have any confirmation of any military or civilian deaths. Officials said Russian officials called the U.S. earlier on Thursday after seeing media reports that missile strikes were under discussion, to make sure the Americans knew there were Russians on the Syrian base. The U.S. called the Russians less than an hour before the missiles were launched to alert them of the attack so they could insure their people were safe. In a related development, U.S. officials said that a Russian warship, the frigate Admiral Grigorovich, had moved into the eastern Mediterranean Sea on Thursday. Two U.S. Navy Destroyers, the USS Porter and the USS Ross, launched the barrage of Tomahawk cruise missiles into Syria on Thursday from the eastern Mediterranean. The two ships are moving west, and officials said there have been no interactions with the Admiral Grigorovich. Reporting from Irbil, Iraq Syrian officials early Friday denounced a U.S. missile strike on one of the country's air bases in retaliation for a poison gas attack, calling it "blatant aggression" that killed and wounded several and caused "significant material damage." "This condemned American aggression confirms the continuation of the wrong American strategy and restricts the counter-terrorist operation that the Syrian army is conducting," the General Command of the Syrian Army said in a statement. Advertisement Russia and Iran joined in condemning the U.S. strike, with President Vladimir Putin calling it "an aggression against a sovereign state in violation of the norms of international law" executed "under a trumped-up pretext," according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. Iran condemned the strikes Friday, saying the unilateral U.S. action would strengthen terrorists and "further complicate the situation" in the Middle East. Iran, a strong ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad, said that while it condemned the use of chemical weapons, the U.S. response was "dangerous, destructive and a violation of international law." Advertisement Iranian Shiite Muslim militias, along with Russian air power, have been among Assad's strongest allies against the Sunni rebels. Early Friday, Russia's Defense Ministry said the "combat effectiveness" of the airstrike was "very low," according to its spokesman, Maj. Gen. Ignorances Konashenkov. Of the 59 missiles dispatched by the U.S. on the Shayrat air base, Konashenkov said, only 23 missiles hit their target. "The place of the fall of the other missiles is unknown," said Konashenkov, according to a report by Russian state news operator TASS. He added that the Syrian army's air defense systems would be reinforced in the near future to "protect the most important infrastructure facilities." "It is nakedly clear that the attack on a Syrian air base with U.S. cruise missiles had been planned well beforehand." The Russian Foreign Ministry said it was suspending an agreement with the U.S. to prevent incidents and ensure flight safety during military operations in Syria. Under the memorandum, signed when Russia launched its air campaign in Syria in 2015, Russia and the U.S. had exchanged information about planned flights to avoid conflicts during the thousands of airstrikes that have been conducted. "Russia suspends the memorandum on the prevention of incidents and ensuring air safety during operations in Syria reached with the U.S.," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. Advertisement The Syrian army command said Friday's missile attack on the air base northeast of Damascus made the U.S. "a partner of Daesh, Nusra and other terrorist organizations." Daesh is a common acronym for the militant group Islamic State, and the Nusra Front is a former al-Qaida affiliate in the region, now known as the Organization for the Liberation of Syria. Both are listed as terrorist entities by the U.S. Talal Barazi, governor of Syria's Homs province, told Al Arabiya TV that a fire raged for two hours at the Shayrat air base, near the city of Homs, before firefighters put it out. Barazi told Manar, a Lebanese channel that is close to staunch Assad ally Hezbollah, that seven people had been killed and nine others wounded. A correspondent with state news operator SANA, quoting local sources, said that nine civilians had been killed, including four children in villages surrounding the base. Trump ordered the attack in retaliation for an apparent poison gas attack Tuesday that killed up to 70 people in the northern town of Khan Sheikhoun, about 60 miles from the Syrian border in Idlib province, an opposition stronghold. Advertisement Turkish experts found evidence that civilians were targeted with chlorine and possibly sarin, a toxic nerve agent. Peskov said the U.S. strike was an effort to divert attention from recent civilian casualties caused by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes in Iraq, and predicted the latest U.S. attack would worsen the conflict in Syria. "The Syrian army has no reserves of chemical weapons. The fact of destruction of all the reserves of Syria's chemical weapons has been documented and confirmed," Peskov told reporters in a conference call. Russian officials said military operations in Syria can be conducted only under the authorization of the Syrian government and the United Nations Security Council. "Fighting terrorism in the Middle East and North Africa requires coordinated efforts of the international community under the auspices of the United Nations," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. "Attempts to pursue geopolitical objectives and violations of the sovereignty of states in the region can only aggravate tensions and further serve to destabilize the situation." Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghassemi rejected the conclusion that Assad's forces had carried out the chemical weapons attack, saying the attack was "suspicious" and its "timing, actors and perpetrators are cloaked in a curtain of ambiguity." He invoked Iran's history as a victim of chemical warfare, carried out by Saddam Hussein's Iraqi forces during a grisly war in the 1980s. Advertisement At Friday prayers in Tehran, where clerics deliver sermons that reflect the view of the ruling theocracy, Ayatollah Mohammad Emami Kashani echoed the Syrian government account, suggesting that poison gas was released when Assad's military targeted a rebel weapons depot that had contained chemical agents. Iranians shout anti-U.S. slogans after the Friday prayer ceremony in Tehran on April 7, 2017. (Abedin Thaerkenareh / EPA) "The chemical weapons are in the hands of terrorists and the Syrian army attacks the terrorists, but all are making a hue and cry that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons," Kashani said. "It is a sheer lie." Speaking at a news conference in Palm Beach, Fla., where Trump is meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Russia had "failed" in its responsibility to deliver on a commitment to secure Syria's chemical weapons. Tillerson briefed reporters shortly after the U.S. launched the cruise missiles, saying Russia had either been complicit or "simply incompetent" in failing to deliver on a 2013 agreement to remove Syria's chemical weapons following an earlier chemical weapons attack in the Damascus suburbs that killed hundreds. The Obama administration had threatened to attack Assad's forces after that incident but never launched a strike. Amar Salmo, a civil defense volunteer in northern Syria, welcomed the new U.S. intervention. Advertisement "For Syrians, any military intervention that will neutralize Assad's ability to continue his genocide will fall on our hearts like music," Salmo said by phone Friday. "If there will not be a cost for Assad after using chemical weapons, it will be a clear signal for him to continue his genocide, killing the innocent." An opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition, also praised the U.S. missile strike, saying it puts an end to an age of "impunity" and should be just the beginning. "We welcome these strikes," Najib Ghadbian, special representative to the U.S. and the U.N. for the Syrian National Coalition, told the Al-Jazeera news service. "They are first good steps, but we would like them to be part of a bigger strategy that would put an end to the mass killing, an end to impunity, and eventually we hope that they will lead to a kind of a political transition in Syria," he said. Syrian human rights advocates said they hoped the attack signaled the start of a broader U.S. campaign against Assad. Neighboring Turkey also welcomed the U.S. military move. Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmas told the Daily Sabah that he hoped the strike would ultimately help bring peace to the region. Advertisement "The barbarism of the Assad regime must be stopped as soon as possible," Kurtulmus said. The bombing was Trump's most significant military order since taking office 11 weeks ago. Before the strike, Trump said the Khan Sheikhoun chemical weapons attack crossed "many, many lines." He blamed Assad's forces, saying it "shouldn't have happened, and it shouldn't be allowed to happen." U.S. officials had hoped for a vote late Thursday on a U.N. Security Council resolution they and allies had drafted, condemning the chemical attack, but council members postponed the vote after delays negotiating the wording with Russian diplomats. Syrian officials have insisted that they did not use chemical weapons and that it was opposition fighters who stockpiled the chemicals. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem told reporters that a government airstrike hit a rebel chemical weapons arsenal and munitions factory near Khan Sheikhoun that day, noting militant groups have continued to store chemical weapons in urban areas. Advertisement "The Syrian Arab Army did not and will not use such weapons even against the terrorists who are targeting our people," Moallem said at a Thursday briefing in Damascus, adding that "we condemn such a criminal act." Russia's Defense Ministry also said the toxic agents were released when a Syrian airstrike hit a rebel arsenal outside Khan Sheikhoun. Hennessy-Fiske reported from Irbil and Bulos from Beirut. Special correspondent Mansur Mirovalev contributed from Moscow. Ramin Mostaghim and Shashank Bengali also contributed from Tehran and Mumbai. molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com @mollyhf The United States blasted a Syrian air base with a barrage of cruise missiles Thursday night in fiery retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. President Donald Trump cast the U.S. assault as vital to deter future use of poison gas and called on other nations to join in seeking "to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria." It was the first direct American assault on the Syrian government and Trump's most dramatic military order since becoming president just over two months ago. The strikes also risk thrusting the U.S. deeper into an intractable conflict that his predecessor spent years trying to avoid. Advertisement Announcing the assault from his Florida resort, Trump said there was no doubt Syrian President Bashar Assad was responsible for the chemical attack, which he said employed banned gases and killed dozens. "Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children," Trump declared. Advertisement The U.S. strikes 59 missiles launched from the USS Ross and USS Porter hit the government-controlled Shayrat air base in central Syria, where U.S. officials say the Syrian military planes that dropped the chemicals had taken off. The U.S. missiles hit at 8:45 p.m. in Washington, 3:45 Friday morning in Syria. The missiles targeted the base's airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, officials said. The attack killed some Syrians and wounded others, Talal Barazi, the governor of Syria's Homs province, told The Associated Press. He didn't give precise numbers. President Donald Trump delivers a statement from Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., following the U.S. missile attack on a Syrian air base. April 6, 2017. (Video: The White House | Photo: Alex Brandon/AP) (Chicago Tribune) Trump ordered the strikes without approval from Congress or the backing of the United Nations. U.S. officials said he had the right to use force to defend national interests and to protect civilians from atrocities. Syrian state TV reported a U.S. missile attack on a number of military targets and called the attack an "aggression." The U.S. assault marked a striking reversal for Trump, who warned as a candidate against the U.S. being pulled into the Syrian civil war that began six years ago. But the president appeared moved by the photos of children killed in the chemical attack, calling it a "disgrace to humanity" that crossed "a lot of lines." U.S. officials placed some of the blame on Russia, one of Syria's most important benefactors. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in Florida with Trump, said Moscow had failed in living up to a 2013 agreement that was intended to strip Syria of its chemical weapons stockpiles. "Either Russia has been complicit or Russia has been simply incompetent in its ability to deliver on its end of the agreement," Tillerson said. Areas of control (Updated March 17) Pro-regime forces Opposition forces Islamic State Kurdish forces Mediterranean Sea Aleppo Idlib Khan Sheikhoun, site of chemical attack Homs Damascus Beirut LEBANON TURKEY IRAQ JORDAN SYRIA 100 MILES Sources: OpenStreetMap, Mapzen, Associated Press Paul Duginski / @latimesgraphics Shayrat air base, site of U.S. airstrike The U.S. Tomahawk missiles, fired from warships in the Mediterranean Sea, targeted an air base in retaliation for the attack that America believes Syrian government aircraft launched with the nerve agent sarin mixed with chlorine gas. The president did not announce the attacks in advance, though he and other national security officials ratcheted up their warnings to the Syrian government throughout the day Thursday. Advertisement The strike came as Trump was hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping in meetings focused in part on another pressing U.S. security dilemma: North Korea's nuclear program. Trump's actions in Syria could signal to China that the new president isn't afraid of unilateral military steps, even if key nations like China are standing in the way. "This clearly indicates the president is willing to take decisive action when called for," Tillerson said. Trump has advocated greater counterterrorism cooperation with Russia, Assad's most powerful military backer. Just last week, the Trump administration signaled the U.S. was no longer interested in trying to push Assad from power over his direction of a conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and led to the worst refugee crisis since World War II. Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 17 Russian Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vladimir Safronkov confers with aides during a meeting of the United Nations Security Council concerning the situation in Syria, at U.N. headquarters on April 7 in New York City. (Drew Angerer / Getty Images) U.S. officials portrayed the strikes as an appropriate, measured response and said they did not signal a broader shift in the Trump administration's approach to the Syrian conflict. "The intent was to deter the regime from doing this again," said Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, the Pentagon spokesman. "It will be the regime's choice if there's any more, and it will be based upon their conduct going forward." Still, the assault risks plunging America into the middle of Syria's conflict, complicating the safety of the hundreds of U.S. forces fighting a separate campaign against the Islamic State group in the north of the country. If Assad's military persists in further gas attacks, the Trump administration might logically pursue increased retaliation. Advertisement Russia and Iran, Assad's allies, pose other problems. Russian military personnel and aircraft are embedded with Syria's, and Iranian troops and paramilitary forces are also on the ground helping Assad fight the array of opposition groups hoping to topple him. Before the strikes, U.S. military officials said they informed their Russian counterparts of the impending attack. The goal was to avoid any accident involving Russian forces. Nevertheless, Russia's Deputy U.N. ambassador Vladimir Safronkov warned that any negative consequences from the strikes would be on the "shoulders of those who initiated such a doubtful and tragic enterprise." The U.S. also notified its partner countries in the region prior to launching the strikes. Trump's decision to attack Syria came three-and-a-half years after President Barack Obama threatened Assad with military action after an earlier chemical weapons attack killed hundreds outside Damascus. Obama had declared the use of such weapons a "red line." At the time, several American ships in the Mediterranean were poised to launch missiles, only for Obama to abruptly pull back after key U.S. ally Britain and the U.S. Congress balked at his plan. He opted instead for the Russian-backed plan that was supposed to remove and eliminate Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles. Advertisement The world learned of the chemical attack earlier in the week in footage that showed people dying in the streets and bodies of children stacked in piles. The international outcry fueled an emotional response from Trump, who appeared to abandon his much-touted "America First" vision for a stance of humanitarian intervention, akin to that of previous American leaders. Trump seemed to rapidly reconsider his feelings about Assad, saying: "He's there and I guess he's running things, so something should happen." The show of force in Syria raises legal questions. It's unclear what authority Trump is relying on to attack another government. When Obama intervened in Libya in 2011, he used a U.N. Security Council mandate and NATO's overall leadership of the mission to argue that he had legal authority arguments many Republicans opposed. Trump can't rely on either justification here. Unclear also is whether Trump is adopting any broader effort to combat Assad. Under Obama, the United States largely pulled back from its support for so-called "moderate" rebels when Russia's military intervention in September 2015 led them to suffer a series of battlefield defeats. Instead, Obama sought to work with Russia on a negotiated transition. Trump and his top aides had acknowledged in recent days the "reality" of Assad being in power, saying his ouster was no longer a priority. But the chemical weapons attack seemed to spur a rethink. In Florida on Thursday, Tillerson said of Assad, "There's no role for him to govern the Syrian people." MADISON, Wis. Wisconsin residents who love Irish butter will soon be able to buy it in their dairy-obsessed home state, thanks to a creamery's workaround to a decades-old state law. Old World Creamery of Sheboygan announced Thursday that it will import Irishgold butter from Ireland, process and package it then have the company's five state-licensed butter graders rate it. That will allow Irishgold to be sold legally in Wisconsin, which bans the sale of any butter that hasn't been graded for quality. Advertisement Residents tired of crossing state lines to load up on Irish butter filed a lawsuit against the state last month over the law, the only of its kind in the U.S. "This will be a big day for Wisconsin residents who love the rich taste of Irish butter," Steve Knaus, Old World Creamery's managing partner, said in a news release announcing the workaround. Knaus said the company will import the butter in bulk and grade it both before and after packaging. He said the plan was in the works before the lawsuit was filed. Advertisement Jake Curtis, the attorney for the residents suing the state, applauded Old World's efforts, but said his clients would press forward with their lawsuit. Curtis called the ban "irrational" and said it inhibits access to all international butters. "This story illustrates the extreme measures retailers have to go through," Curtis said. "Only in Wisconsin." The lawsuit characterizes the law as a "government-mandated taste test." But Knaus said he appreciates that Wisconsin's law holds butter to high standards. Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protections spokesman Bill Cosh has said his agency has to uphold state law, but that enforcement "has been limited to notifying retailers of what the law says." Irish butter does sometimes appear on grocery store shelves around the state. Saturday of each month at 9 a.m. for a free breakfast, fellowship and Bible study. The church is located at 1573 Keith Road in Ringgold. The Women's Ministry of Keith Baptist Church invites you to join them on the firstof each month atfor a free breakfast, fellowship and Bible study. The church is located at 1573 Keith Road in Ringgold.For more information, please call Emily Salter at 423.315.0606 Saturday of each month at 9:00 AM for a free breakfast, fellowship and Bible study. The church is located at 1573 Keith Road in Ringgold. For more information, please call Dustin Salter at The Men's Ministry of Keith Baptist Church invites you to join them on the secondof each month atfor a free breakfast, fellowship and Bible study. The church is located at 1573 Keith Road in Ringgold. For more information, please call Dustin Salter at 423.827.2930 Sunday April 16 at 7 a.m. for our Sunrise Service, followed Sunday School for all ages at 10 a.m. and Easter Worship at 11 a.m . The church is located at 1573 Keith Road in Ringgold. For more information, please call Jeff Greer at Join Keith Baptist Church on Easterfor our Sunrise Service, followedSchool for all ages atand Easter Worship at. The church is located at 1573 Keith Road in Ringgold. For more information, please call Jeff Greer at 423.400.8761 Saturday April 29 at 9 a.m. for Men's Witness Training. Breakfast will be provided. The church is located at 1573 Keith Road in Ringgold. For more information, please call Dustin Salter at The Men's Ministry of Keith Baptist Church invites you to join them onfor Men's Witness Training. Breakfast will be provided. The church is located at 1573 Keith Road in Ringgold. For more information, please call Dustin Salter at 423.827.2930 Sunday April 30 at 11 a.m. for their 5th Sunday Singing. Featured artists will be The Heritage Quartet. A pot luck dinner will follow the service. The church is located at 1573 Keith Road in Ringgold. For more information, please call Jeff Greer at Join Keith Baptist Church onfor their 5thSinging. Featured artists will be The Heritage Quartet. A pot luck dinner will follow the service. The church is located at 1573 Keith Road in Ringgold. For more information, please call Jeff Greer at 423.400.8761 Monday May 15 at 7 p.m. , Franklin Graham will conduct an Evangelistic Crusade at Coolidge Park in Chattanooga. All churches in Southeast Tennessee and Northwest Georgia are encouraged to attend. For more information, please contact Andrea J. Wright at 704-401-2192 or ajwright@bgea.org. On, Franklin Graham will conduct an Evangelistic Crusade at Coolidge Park in Chattanooga. All churches in Southeast Tennessee and Northwest Georgia are encouraged to attend. For more information, please contact Andrea J. Wright at Evanston psychotherapist Jane Gerber began her practice around 1960 with a focus on personal growth and development. (Family photo) Jane Gerber began her psychotherapy practice around 1960 with a focus on personal growth and development, moving away from digging into neuroses what was wrong to helping people to live their best lives. That shift coincided with changes in American culture, a societal shift with such markers as hippies, "flower power," the Summer of Love, sensitivity training and interest in Zen Buddhism. Advertisement "She was very much in the forefront of the whole area of the human potential movement," said DeLacy Sarantos, who became executive director of the Oasis Center Gerber co-founded in Chicago around 1968. Gerber's mentors included Fritz Perls, founder of Gestalt therapy, in which patients were urged to deal with the present moment rather than the past, and Virginia Satir, whom Sarantos described as "a genius in family dynamics." Advertisement Former colleague John Banmen said Gerber brought unique skills to her work, both in training other therapists and working with her own patients. "She could be direct without making people defensive," Banmen said. "She could get people to trust, to let down their defenses, to deal with what they were trying to avoid." Gerber, 98, died March 31 of pneumonia in her home in Presbyterian Homes in Evanston, according to her daughter, Lynn Levenberg. Gerber, born Jane Schram in St. Louis, moved with her family to Evanston as a toddler and spent the rest of her life there. She graduated from Evanston Township High School and was 18 when she married Merton Levenberg, who died in 1951. Encouraged by her husband, she got a bachelor's degree from Northwestern University in 1941. A second marriage ended in divorce. She later married John Gerber, who died in 1986. After raising her children, she returned to school, getting a master's degree in social work from the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration in 1959. Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 86 Dick Orkin, an award-winning radio advertising creator for close to a half-century who was perhaps best known for his syndicated Chickenman spoof, which aired on Chicago stations, died on Dec. 24 in California. He was 84. Read more. (Handout) "I think the impetus was from her mother, who had a breakdown," Levenberg said of Gerber's return to graduate school. "She felt she couldn't help her own mother. I think her helplessness propelled her to help others." Soon after getting her degree in social work, Gerber began seeing patients from a basement office in her Evanston home. In the early 1960s, she visited the Esalen Institute in California and came back with the idea of starting a similar center here to advance personal growth. Advertisement In 1968, she and a friend started the Oasis Center for Human Potential. Later known as Oasis Center, it provided a forum for therapists and others to present ideas, to lead encounter and sensitivity groups, and to demonstrate for other therapists its techniques and approaches for working with people. Gerber was in touch with people in the field across the country and brought several eminent people to Oasis. "She facilitated getting some of those really important people (like Satir and Perls) to Chicago," Sarantos said. Gerber herself also taught and worked with people in the healing professions in the U.S., Canada, Latin America, England, France, Israel and Hong Kong, her daughter said. Her topics included Gestalt therapy, family therapy, human sexuality, transitions for widows and single parents, encounters with illness, death and dying, and other life changes. Banmen said in the 1980s that he and Gerber worked with Satir and others in monthlong summer workshops for therapists in Crested Butte, Colo. The work focused on personal growth. Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 100 Actress/singer Rose Marie is gleeful as director Carl Reiner, right, and Honorary Mayor of Hollywood Johnny Grant, present her with 2,184th star on the famed Hollywood Walk of Fame Oct. 3, 2001, in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles. Marie died Dec. 28, 2017, at age 94. Read more. (Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press) "We would have them look at their families of origin," said Banmen, who explained that that was part of stressing the importance of the therapist's self in working with patients. "So their own background wouldn't get in the way. So you'd get your act together." "She was a very well-educated and experienced therapist, also a group leader. She was also a wise woman and a great friend," said Maria Gomori, who was a co-author on two of Gerber's three books, including with Satir and Banmen on 1991's "The Satir Model: Family Therapy & Beyond." Advertisement The Oasis Center closed in the late 1990s. Gerber continued to practice psychotherapy until about four years ago. "She had a great sense of humor, she was a great teacher and it was really a gift that she lived," Gomori said. "A gift to those of us who were close to her." Gerber is also survived by two sisters, Miriam Jaffe and Florence Greenberg. Her son, Jordan Benedict, died in 2014. No services were held. Graydon Megan is a freelance reporter. Margaret "Margie" Dennehy in a photo provided by her daughter Kathy Dennehy. Dennehy, 80, who was co-founder of one of Chicago's most influential Irish dance schools, died of natural causes March 12 at Smith Village, a senior living community in Chicago's Morgan Park neighborhood, her family said. (Family photo) As co-founder with her husband of one of the city's most influential Irish dance schools, Margaret "Margie" Dennehy was a teacher, mentor and "second mom" to scores of students. Dennehy, 80, was inducted with her husband, Dennis, into the North American Feis Commission Hall of Fame in 2005. She died of natural causes March 12 at Smith Village, a senior living community in Chicago's Morgan Park neighborhood, her family said. Advertisement For more than five decades, Dennehy inspired and instilled confidence, propelling many toward high-profile careers, including Mark Howard, an award-winning Irish dance choreographer. "She was a pioneer in Irish dance, with an extraordinary ability to create something so profound, so innovative that to this day her imprint still endures," said Howard, founder of the Trinity Dance Company and Trinity Academy of Irish Dance. "As a teacher, she made me feel like I was way better than I was. She helped me believe that anything was possible." Advertisement Her can-do spirit was never more apparent than when Dennehy's dynamic dancers arrived at a feis a Gaelic arts and cultural festival and captured one award after another. "Competitions were tough on mom, because they made her nervous," said her daughter, Kathy. "She could barely watch them." Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 86 Dick Orkin, an award-winning radio advertising creator for close to a half-century who was perhaps best known for his syndicated Chickenman spoof, which aired on Chicago stations, died on Dec. 24 in California. He was 84. Read more. (Handout) The Dennehy School of Irish Dance has won hundreds of regional titles and several national titles, and now operates in Morgan Park, on the North Side and in Wisconsin. "She was so supportive of me, of all her students, and she let us know it at every turn," said Howard, whose choreography has won several Emmy Awards for shows on PBS. In the 1970s, Dennehy taught step-dancing to a young Michael Flatley, who was the first American to win a World Irish Dance title and later gained fame with "Riverdance." She created the original choreography for Flatley's wildly popular dance show, "Lord of the Dance." "She was the one who put it in Michael's head," said her daughter, who now runs her parents' dance school. Born Margaret Bartishell, Dennehy grew up in the Back of the Yards neighborhood, the daughter of an Irish immigrant father and the youngest of four children. Her love of Irish culture began at a young age, during a trip to Ireland, and took off after she enrolled in Irish dance classes. "She loved to dance, but choreography was her passion," her daughter said. Advertisement Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 100 Actress/singer Rose Marie is gleeful as director Carl Reiner, right, and Honorary Mayor of Hollywood Johnny Grant, present her with 2,184th star on the famed Hollywood Walk of Fame Oct. 3, 2001, in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles. Marie died Dec. 28, 2017, at age 94. Read more. (Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press) Dennehy met her future husband on a bus after he struck up a conversation about step dancing. She shared with him her dream of someday running a dance studio. After the couple married in 1960, they opened a school and rented space wherever they could in storefronts, community halls and even church basements. Their fee in the beginning was 75 cents per lesson. Dennis Dennehy, who died four years ago, worked days as an insurance underwriter, returning home in the evening to help teach classes. He took charge of the school in the 1980s, when his wife needed to step down because of poor health. "Margie was (the school's) heart and soul and one of the nicest, kindest people you could ever meet," said former student Jimmy Keane, an accordion virtuoso of traditional Irish music. "When it came to dancing, she did her best to turn my two left feet into something workable." After retiring from teaching, Dennehy still sometimes attended competitions, quietly cheering on her dancers with a wink and a smile. "On stage, as her student, you were an extension of her heart," Howard said. "She was a wonderful, wonderful woman, who gave and gave and asked nothing in return." Advertisement Survivors also include a son, Dennis; a brother, George Bartishell; and a grandson. Services were held. Joan Giangrasse Kates is a freelance reporter. President Donald Trump receiving a briefing on the Syria military strike from the National Security team via video teleconference on April 06, 2017, at the Mar-a-Lago estate in West Palm Beach, Florida. (White House / AFP / Getty Images) In the worldview Donald Trump brought to the White House, all problems are easy. Fix the economy by getting tough with China. End illegal immigration by building a wall. "Totally obliterate" the Islamic State. Even after the humiliating failure of an effort in the House to repeal and replace Obamacare, Trump declared: "I know that we're all going to make a deal on health care. That's such an easy one." Advertisement Trump apparently thinks the same thing about one of the knottiest questions he has encountered Syria. After a chemical weapons attack blamed on President Bashar Assad, Trump didn't spend much time agonizing before using cruise missiles against a Syrian air base. It's a response that creates new dangers without solving old problems. He obviously never read up on Dwight Eisenhower, who said: "No easy problems ever come to the president of the United States. If they are easy to solve, someone else has solved them." Advertisement Syria is one of those no one has solved, mainly because it is virtually impossible. The country has been a charnel house since 2011, when an armed uprising elicited savage responses from Assad bombing hospitals, torturing opponents and starving civilians. In 2012, Barack Obama threatened U.S. retaliation if Assad used chemical weapons. When Assad used them anyway, Obama changed his mind, recognizing that major military measures had scant prospect of success but an excellent chance of catastrophe. The options in Syria did not become more viable merely because Trump finally took note of what's happening. In fact, they have gotten worse. Russia now has ground and air forces in Syria, fighting on the side of the regime. Hawks accused Obama of facilitating Assad's brutality by standing aside. But it was not until Trump arrived that this nerve gas attack occurred. Maybe Assad felt emboldened after the administration indicated his regime is "a political reality that we have to accept," as press secretary Sean Spicer said March 31. In that case, Trump is not compensating for Obama's mistakes so much as his own. It's hard to have any confidence that this decision was made in a careful way, with a clear sense of purpose and a full understanding of the risks. The suddenness of Trump's shift indicates he gave no more thought to his new position than he did to his previous, opposite one. The important questions are: What will the strike accomplish, and where will it lead? One taste of the lash isn't likely to shake Assad's grip on power or deter him from killing his own people on a large scale possibly even with chemical weapons. National security adviser H.R. McMaster said Friday that the dictator "will maintain the certain capacity to commit mass murder with chemical weapons, we think, beyond this particular airfield." The administration is trying to thread a very small needle. "This was not a small strike," McMaster insisted, while noting that it was also "not of a scope or a scale that it (went) after all such related facilities." The exquisite calibration suggests Trump and his advisers want to reassure both the American people ("I'm tough!") and the Russians ("Really, it's nothing"). It indicates he has no intention of bringing down Assad. Maybe someone told him that without Assad, the chaos and bloodshed in Syria would not abate but expand and intensify. Advertisement Apparently, Trump is averse to full-scale intervention, which would carry the risk of direct combat with Russians in the air or on the ground. But as the signs on ski slopes say, hazards exist that are not marked. Once the U.S. inserts itself into the fight against Assad, the chance of a misstep increases. With a little bad luck, we could find ourselves at war not only with the Syrian government but with a nuclear superpower. Why take the risk? Even if conflict with Russia could be avoided, making any real difference in the war would require a large number of U.S. ground troops for a long time. And the outcome would probably be a costly failure, kind of like Iraq and Afghanistan. As every president learns, matters of war and peace look much simpler before you get to the White House. Obama came to understand that if we went to war in Syria, our adversaries might lose, but we would not win. Trump will learn that, too, but he may have to learn the hard way. Steve Chapman, a member of the Tribune Editorial Board, blogs at www.chicagotribune.com/chapman. Download "Recalculating: Steve Chapman on a New Century" in the free Printers Row app at www.printersrowapp.com. schapman@chicagotribune.com Advertisement Twitter @SteveChapman13 The video from a chemical attack had horrified viewers worldwide, but the war in Syria has reliably delivered many other atrocities for six years. This reign or even rain of death, though, was enough to provoke a new U.S. president. No drawing red lines, no waiting until they're crossed to painstakingly decide whether to fulfill a threat. With dozens of Tomahawk missiles, Donald Trump has disrupted the world's long, inconclusive debate over what, if anything, to do about Bashar Assad. This attack won't dislodge Assad or help the all but defeated rebel forces take control of the fractured country. But if it diminishes his air power, it also could reduce his ability to poison, crush and dismember his own people. To an important extent, though, this attack is about more than Assad and questions of how to deal with a vicious despot. It's about President Donald Trump. On a geopolitical plane, it tells Vladimir Putin that he isn't the only president who'll take risks in Syria. Advertisement The world's rulers and diplomats aren't accustomed to that sort of unilateral gambit from Washington. If Trump wanted to assert that he isn't his predecessor much as Barack Obama found ways to prove he wasn't beholden to the style of George W. Bush firing Tomahawks at a Russian ally's air assets will make the distinction. Whatever the back-channel advance alerts to world capitals, Trump didn't publicly signal to his adversaries that he would take military action on such-and-such schedule. Thursday was rife with rumors of an impending attack. But Assad likely was as surprised as the rest of us by the first missile's impact. On Wednesday, Trump had reacted angrily to the gassing of Syrians, including children and babies. He acknowledged that Assad crossed "many, many lines" and suggested that there would be repercussions. His administration carried forward that threat on Thursday. If Trump had done nothing but fume, the president at some point would have looked wobbly. Powerless. Advertisement In this case, of course, there is unfortunate history. In 2012, President Barack Obama declared his red line in the sand to Assad, but he didn't follow through when Assad's regime killed some 1,400 people in a chemical weapons assault on Damascus. That brought U.S. credibility into question. Trump likely made the calculation that if the Syrian government launched another despicable chemical attack on its own people, he was going to make an issue of it and would have to follow through with a proportional punishment. Otherwise, Assad and others of his ilk would figure chemical warfare is a useful tool. But what happens next? Will Assad take the hint and stop the use of chemical weapons banned throughout the world? Or will he, backed by Putin, again deploy his air force to bomb civilians? The conflict escalates from here or not. Pentagon planners famously war-game such scenarios. But the wily Assad is still in power six years after Obama famously said he "must go." He's withstood years of conflict and slipped the grasp of U.N. inspectors tasked with making sure he disposed of all of his chemical weapons. By continuing to use them, he's mocked those who believed he had surrendered them. No one, not Americans or any allies, knew how an untested commander in chief with a history of shooting from the lip would react to his first international crisis. He could have let his State Department deplore this with words and kept missiles at bay. He didn't. Now adversaries and allies will have to recalculate. As the U.S. Congress drags its feet concerning the investigations of Russia's interference into the 2016 presidential election, it is practically ensuring that the Russians will be interfering in our upcoming elections as well. The Russians tainted the 2016 presidential election and now have the Congress spending a considerable amount of its time squabbling about this interference. In another words, this is a huge win for Russian espionage without much of a downside (with only minor sanctions imposed by President Obama). Advertisement Members of Congress should stop, in essence, advancing the Russian's goal of delegitimizing our democracy and start fighting the Russians instead of fighting among themselves. Congress should immediately impose severe punishments on the Russians. It should also immediately authorize and fund countermeasures to prevent Russia from interfering with our future elections. "A house divided against itself cannot stand." Advertisement Jesus and Abraham Lincoln knew this. Unfortunately, Russian President Vladimir Putin does too. Tom O'Brien, Lincolnwood Before his fourth birthday, Makheil McMullen was severely poisoned in three privately rented homes on the South Side. His mother received vouchers for public housing, where he continued to be exposed to lead. Makheils ordeal highlights how Chicago continues to fail some of its most vulnerable residents. (Terrence Antonio James and Abel Uribe/Chicago Tribune) ((Terrence Antonio James And Abel Uribe/Chicago Tribune)/Chicago Tribune) As private landlords increasingly take over the government's role of housing low-income families, dozens of children have been poisoned by brain-damaging lead while living in homes and apartments declared safe by the Chicago Housing Authority . Taxpayers often still paid the rent. Federal law requires the CHA to inspect subsidized homes before tenants move in and at least once a year afterward. But since 2010, the housing authority has approved occupancy at 187 homes where at least one child was later diagnosed with lead poisoning , according to a Tribune analysis of thousands of pages of inspection reports, monthly payments, court documents and property records. The CHA paid the landlords of those hazardous homes more than $5.6 million in federal rent subsidies after clearing them to participate in the Housing Choice Voucher program, the Tribune analysis found. Nearly $1 million of that amount was delivered to landlords while they faced housing code violations or lawsuits filed by another city agency, the Chicago Department of Public Health, over deteriorating lead-based paint in their rentals. Advertisement Young kids remain at risk in part because CHA inspectors only check visually for cracked and peeling paint, rather than confirming hazards with dust swabs or hand-held scanners. The CHA also doesn't consider lead paint a "life-threatening" hazard that landlords must fix immediately in order to collect taxpayer subsidies through the voucher program, commonly known as Section 8. CHA officials have said for more than a year that they are working with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development on a new "proactive approach" to home inspections. But when the CHA renewed its guidelines for the voucher program in February, it made no changes to its inspection procedures. Maryland, Rhode Island and Rochester, N.Y., already require rigorous lead testing before families move into subsidized rentals. Advertisement "By failing to do anything about the lead, they are making crippled children who are going to grow up to be crippled adults," said Tolanda McMullen, whose son Makheil was poisoned while living in a home approved by CHA inspectors. "They don't even have a chance because it was taken from them when they were babies." The CHA said that in some cases it has suspended or docked payments to landlords who failed to fix lead hazards quickly. "The safety of our residents and HCV participants is our priority," the housing authority said in a statement, using the acronym for the official name of the voucher program. Asked why they continued paying landlords after health inspectors intervened, housing officials said children in some cases identified by the Tribune weren't poisoned enough to merit intervention under the CHA's regulations at the time. In other cases, the CHA said officials did not know a child was living in the home or renters had failed to report a child had been poisoned there. Molly Sullivan, a CHA spokeswoman, said housing officials sometimes clear landlords who provide a report from a state-certified inspector documenting that lead hazards were removed, even if the health department considers the case unresolved. Parents of poisoned children can request to move, Sullivan said, though lawyers familiar with the system said renters often are either too afraid of eviction to complain or their moving papers are rejected because they didn't cite specific language from the federal housing code. Makheil McMullen's ordeal highlights how Chicago continues to fail some of its most vulnerable residents. Mixed messages Before his fourth birthday, Makheil was severely poisoned in three privately rented homes on the South Side, according to inspection reports and medical records provided by his mother. The amount of lead in his blood peaked at 69 parts per billion nearly 14 times higher than federal health guidelines and he underwent several rounds of painful injections to strip the toxic metal from his body. Advertisement Exposure to lead early in life can permanently damage parts of the brain that enable people to pay attention, regulate emotions and control impulses. A week before Makheil turned 3, doctors at the University of Chicago concluded he had the language skills of a 9-month-old and the cognitive ability of an 18-month-old. "My baby had been healthy," McMullen said. "One day it seemed like the light in his eyes had just gone out." Taking the toddler's health into consideration, the CHA allowed Makheil's mother to jump ahead of others on the Section 8 waiting list and gave her a voucher to cover most of her rent. In April 2015, McMullen and her son moved to a three-bedroom house in the 8800 block of South Winchester Avenue after CHA inspectors certified their new landlord had fixed several problems, including faulty heating, leaky ceilings, cracked windows, exposed wiring, a broken toilet and mold. The CHA also determined the home met its standards for deteriorating paint, a hazard in homes built before lead-based paint was outlawed in 1978. But Makheil's lead levels soon spiked again. Less than five months after the CHA had vouched for the safety of the property, the city health department sent one of its inspectors to take a look. He found lead hazards in every bedroom, the dining room, living room and back porch, indicating Makheil was ingesting contaminated dust and absorbing more of the toxic metal into his bloodstream. CHA inspectors came back and documented cracked and peeling paint during seven visits between December 2015 and February 2016. The heat still didn't work properly. Mold had spread to a bedroom, the living room and the bathroom. Advertisement When McMullen withheld her small share of the rent in protest, the landlord, Integrus Realty Group, posted a notice on the front door threatening to evict them, she said. Integrus did not respond to requests for comment. CHA officials sent a form letter to McMullen in March 2016 declaring they were kicking the property out of the voucher program. But the housing authority reversed its decision three days later, sending another letter telling McMullen the home was safe. The next day, the CHA informed McMullen in writing that it was giving Integrus up to 60 days to eliminate the lead hazards found by the health department six months earlier. Amid the contradictory messages, the CHA reduced its payments to Integrus by $2,420, an amount equivalent to less than 2 1/2 months of what the landlord was charging for rent. But by the time McMullen and her son moved out last April, the housing authority still had paid Integrus $9,701, including $4,648 during the seven months the health department was involved in the case. "There is no justification for standing by as child after child suffers brain damage under the CHA's watch," said Emily Benfer, director of the Health Justice Project at the Loyola University School of Law, which represented McMullen in a fight with the housing authority that dragged on for months. Policies lacking Like the Winchester home, the vast majority of subsidized rentals are in poor, predominantly African-American neighborhoods on the West and South sides where children suffer lead poisoning at rates significantly higher than the city average. In some census tracts within those neighborhoods, the rate of lead poisoning is increasing again after years of improvement. Advertisement Robert Sampson, a Harvard University sociologist who has studied the Englewood neighborhood for more than two decades, calls lead paint a "pathway through which racial inequality literally gets into the body." Yet federal and local housing policies lag woefully behind scientific research that shows there is no safe level of exposure to the toxic metal. The Tribune first revealed in 2015 that Section 8 landlords nationwide weren't required to address lead hazards unless children were poisoned at levels four times higher than guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention . CHA officials said they continued paying landlords of some lead-contaminated rentals because their policies mirrored HUD regulations, which had not been updated since the 1980s. Shortly before the Obama administration left office in January, HUD updated its rules to match the CDC's more stringent standard for intervention after kids are diagnosed with lead poisoning. To help prevent kids from being poisoned in the first place, HUD officials have said lawmakers need to approve an overhaul of national inspection standards for subsidized housing. Despite bipartisan support, leaders of the Republican-controlled Congress have not advanced legislative changes proposed last year by Democrat Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois, Ben Cardin of Maryland and Jack Reed of Rhode Island, and Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine. Ben Carson, President Donald Trump 's housing secretary, noted during his Senate confirmation hearing in January that each case of lead poisoning burdens society with "tremendous costs." But Trump's proposed budget would drastically reduce federal spending on housing programs, including initiatives to eliminate lead hazards in low-income neighborhoods. "If you are a businessperson and want to look only at your return on investment, spending in modest ways now to prevent lead poisoning avoids those tremendous costs later," said Ruth Ann Norton, president and chief executive of the nonprofit Green and Healthy Homes Initiative. "By repairing these crumbling homes, we can help children, improve real estate and change the economy and health of struggling communities." Persistent problem The toxic legacy of lead paint has haunted the Chicago Housing Authority for decades. During the mid-1990s, housing officials acknowledged they had known for years about high levels of lead in hundreds of CHA-owned properties but had failed to tell families living there. The mother of a child poisoned around that same time while living in the ABLA Homes on the West Side later won a $16.5 million jury verdict against the CHA after the agency conceded it had failed to fix lead paint hazards in their apartment. Advertisement When former Mayor Richard M. Daley began a campaign to bulldoze the CHA's notorious high-rise housing developments, he promoted Chicago's rapid expansion of the Section 8 program as a model for the rest of the nation that would make cities more diverse while giving low-income families an opportunity to live in safer neighborhoods with better schools. Giving low-income Chicagoans a choice of subsidized housing would "rebuild their souls," Daley said at the time. Daley's administration also pledged to help Section 8 landlords rid their properties of lead. But it failed to follow up with funding. While most voucher recipients can only afford to live in neighborhoods where it is common to find aging homes in various states of disrepair, the CHA said it would be too burdensome to routinely check whether Section 8 landlords are involved in lawsuits filed by the health department or other city agencies. The Tribune documented weaknesses in Chicago's voucher program with records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act , matching the CHA's list of properties with lead-inspection data from the health department and tallying monthly payments to the landlords. One of the properties that stood out is an East Chatham three-flat where city health inspectors found widespread lead hazards in 2009 after a child was poisoned in one of the apartments. A year later, the CHA approved the first and third floor to be rented at taxpayer expense through the voucher program. The owner, Jule R. Williams Jr. of Chicago, collected $105,450 in rent subsidies from 2010 to 2015 while the health department urged him to make repairs and fought him in administrative hearings, records show. The payments continued even after Williams' mortgage lender moved in 2012 to foreclose on the building, located on the 8300 block of South Ingleside Avenue. Efforts to reach Williams for comment were not successful. The CHA said it had no record of young children living in either of the subsidized apartments. After the health department inspected the building again in 2015 and confirmed lead hazards remained in all three apartments, the CHA suspended its payments to Williams and the families with rent vouchers moved out. A city lawsuit against the bank that now owns the building is pending in Cook County Circuit Court. Advertisement In the East Garfield Park neighborhood, CHA inspectors cleared one of the city's biggest beneficiaries of rent subsidies to lease the second floor of a two-flat on the 400 block of North Lawndale Avenue during 2010 and 2011. The CHA declared the apartment safe again in 2012 after a trust affiliated with Andrzej Bobrowski sold the building and the new owner, Joyce Jones, continued renting to a voucher recipient. The health department found lead hazards in both apartments after a child living on the second floor was diagnosed with lead poisoning in May 2012, according to court records. City lawyers summoned Jones to administrative hearings a year later, and when that didn't work they sued her in circuit court. In November, a judge prohibited her from renting both apartments. The CHA confirmed that a child younger than 6 lived in the subsidized apartment between 2010 and 2012. Neither Bobrowski nor Jones was cited for any violations of the CHA's housing standards in the building during the period. Bobrowski, who collected nearly $7.8 million in CHA rent subsidies between 2010 and 2016, said in a brief interview that it would be impossible for a child to be poisoned in the Lawndale home because he thoroughly renovated it. "There was no lead in the unit," he said. "It is possible the kid could have gotten lead poisoning somewhere else." The Tribune was unable to reach Jones for comment. Moving forward After leaving the Winchester Avenue rental last April, McMullen had trouble finding a new place to live that was affordable and lead-free. She and her son stayed in a North Side homeless shelter for several months while the CHA processed paperwork transferring them to the suburban Cook County voucher program. Advertisement Eventually McMullen found a home she liked in Country Club Hills, and Benfer and her Loyola colleagues persuaded the Housing Authority of Cook County to conduct a thorough risk assessment before they moved in. A spokeswoman for the agency acknowledged that lead hazards still need to be eliminated on the back porch and garage a concern now that it's getting warmer and Makheil wants to play outside. Makheil is due for another checkup this month, and his mom is praying his lead levels have continued to drop. Tests last fall showed just under 20 parts per billion of lead in his blood, still far higher than federal health guidelines but considerably lower than when the family was still living in the city. McMullen coaxes him to drink more milk and eat green, leafy vegetables, which provide extra calcium to help purge lead from his body. At his new school, an aide helps him repeat class exercises and keep him on task when his attention drifts, giving him the time and patience he needs to keep from falling further behind other kids his age. "I have to believe it's going to get better, but I'm afraid it's too late for Makheil," McMullen said. "What about those other kids out there, though? When are we going to step up so we don't lose another generation of kids to this horrible poison?" Former Chicago Tribune staff member Geoff Hing contributed. mhawthorne@chicagotribune.com Advertisement jrichards@chicagotribune.com Twitter @scribeguy Twitter @jsmithrichards The social media team at Christ United Methodist church will host a program on April 18 to review the benefits of social media, provide tips on how to use it and get you up to speed on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Boomers, Shakers, and Beyond is a community enrichment program designed for adults 50 + focusing on mind, body, and spirit. The program is designed for learning new things, enhancing old skills, exchanging thoughts on numerous topics, meeting new people, participating in community service projects, and in general having a great time! The program will be held in the Youth Center at Christ United Methodist at 8645 East Brainerd Road (across from Publix). Registration for the program can be made at ChristChurchChatt.org under Get connected>Adult>Small groups or at boomers.shakers@yahoo.com. An inmate at the Kendall County Jail, originally held on sex assault charges out of Cook County, has been charged in his second additional felony case since he was transferred to Kendall earlier this year. Deverick Alex, 26, of the 2100 block of East 99th Street, Chicago, has been housed in Kendall County Jail since Jan. 31 through an agreement with Cook County, Deputy Nancy Velez, Kendall County sheriff's spokeswoman, previously told the Beacon-News. Advertisement On April 3, Alex allegedly struck a wall-mounted television at the jail with a mop handle, causing about $200 in damage to the handle and television, both government property, according to a news release from the Kendall County Sheriff's Office. After the sheriff's office investigated the damage, which occurred about 2:24 p.m. at the jail on the 1100 block of Cornell Lane, Bristol Township, Yorkville, Alex was charged with criminal damage to government property worth less than $500, a class 4 felony. Advertisement Additional bail for Alex was set at $25,000, adding to $500,000 from a hostage threat he was charged with in March, according to Kendall County court records. Alex, who remains at the jail, is next to appear on the Kendall County charges before Judge Timothy J. McCann at 9 a.m. April 27 at the courthouse in Yorkville. On March 6, Alex was accused of threatening to kill a fellow inmate if authorities didn't take him back to Cook County, where he was initially booked on sexual assault charges in 2013. Sheriff's deputies went to the jail at 6:43 a.m, March 6, to assist corrections deputies with a noncompliant inmate, according to a sheriff's office news release. During attempts to clear several inmates from a common area, Alex refused to comply, according to the sheriff's office. Alex is accused of forcibly detaining another inmate with a weapon, which Velez described as a hand-fashioned sharp object, and threatening to kill the other inmate if his demands were not met, according to the sheriff's office. Corrections deputies took Alex into custody without incident after the hostage situation, according to the news release. The Kendall County State's Attorney's Office subsequently charged Alex with armed violence involving a category II weapon, a class X felony; forcible detention, a class 2 felony; aggravated unlawful restraint, a class 3 felony; possession of contraband in a penal institution, a class 4 felony; and aggravated assault, a class A misdemeanor. Alex was booked in Cook County in August 2013 and charged with aggravated criminal sex assault involving a weapon. His bail was set at $1.5 million and he is next to appear in that case April 10 at the Criminal Courts Building in Chicago, according to Cook inmate records. Advertisement In 2013, when Alex was 22 and on parole, he was charged with aggravated kidnapping, robbery and aggravated criminal sexual assault in connection with an attack that March on a 26-year-old woman, a mother on her way to work in Evergreen Park, the Chicago Tribune reported. Cook County prosecutors said Alex hid in the woman's van as she paid for gas at a northwest Indiana station, then forced her to drive into Chicago, where he sexually assaulted and robbed her, the Tribune reported. At the time of the alleged assault, Alex was on parole for a 2007 carjacking and armed robbery conviction for which he was sentenced to eight years in prison, the Tribune reported. hleone@tribpub.com Twitter @hannahmleone Aurora aldermen are considering an ordinance that city staff said would make for better enforcement of property codes. The City Council Tuesday will consider an ordinance that would allow the city's Department of Neighborhood Standards to expand its use of administrative citations known as "P-tickets" to enforce the property maintenance code and the zoning ordinance. Advertisement Currently the tickets are used by Animal Control, the city's Quality of Life enforcement, Motor Vehicle Parking and other places to enforce city codes. The City Council is expected to vote on the new ordinance at Tuesday's City Council meeting. They discussed it at a recent Committee of the Whole meeting. Advertisement The expansion of Neighborhood Standards enforcement would mainly make violators have to comply within seven days instead of the current 14 days, but would give them a first ticket warning that means if they do comply within that time, they can escape a fine altogether. According to a memo from Chuck Nelson, Neighborhood Standards director, to Mayor Robert O'Connor, more enforcement is needed because Aurora, similar to other communities, "has experienced growth and expanded its rental licensing program, with the most recent expansion including inspections of all single-family rentals and all other non-owner occupied properties." He added that the expansion increased the need for the city staff's ability to utilize administrative citations more efficiently. Many of the ordinance violations would be for property owners who keep junk and open trash on their property. It could be failure to repair certain items, like crumbling concrete. It also could be for things not allowed, such as certain kinds of carports. The new ordinance would require that notice of violations be sent to the property owner, and a tenant, if applicable; and that offenses would require a date-stamped photograph showing the violation. "There is a warning system," said Kelvin Beene, property standards manager. "So, if you get a ticket and you comply right away, you can get rid of the fine altogether." Fines for violations range from $50 to $500, and would accumulate if a violation continues. Alderman Ted Mesiacos, 3rd Ward, asked why the compliance time was cut from 14 to seven days. Advertisement Corporation Counsel Alayne Weingartz said that many of the violations, such as junk, trash or signs in the right-of-way, can be take care of within a week. She said the quicker the time frame, the quicker neighbors are relieved of the situation. She and other city officials added that there can be exemptions made and a longer time given, if the violation needs more time to remedy, or cannot be fixed for some reason. Alderman Michael Saville, 6th Ward, said he did not think the increased enforcement addresses his main concern of repeat offenders who are cited "year after year after year." Nelson said he thinks the progressive nature of the fines would take care of that, because the fines would mount up over time. "I know fining is important," Saville said. "But I want compliance." Alderman Scheketa Hart-Burns, 7th Ward, chairman of the Government Operations Committee that recommended the new ordinance, suggested aldermen approve the change and have Neighborhood Standards come back in six months for a review. Advertisement "I'm happy with all of it," she said. "But with the questions we have, why don't we have them come back after six months?" slord@tribpub.com Kane County States Attorney Joseph H. McMahon said the battle against gangs in the Aurora and Elgin areas goes on. (Sean King / The Beacon-News) Since 2010, the Kane County state's attorney's office has secured 120 injunctions on specific gang members from Aurora and Elgin as part of a series of lawsuits aimed at limiting gang activity and recruitment. Speaking at his monthly news briefing, Kane County State's Attorney Joe McMahon highlighted a recent bench trial decision which put legal restrictions on an entire organization Elgin's Maniac Latin Disciples, who were sued by McMahon's office in 2013. The December ruling by Judge David Akemann placed an injunction on the group which includes a total of 15 prohibitions barring, among other things, meetings, drug and criminal activity, and even specific clothing colors. Those restrictions are similar to those faced by individual members of the Latin Kings in Aurora and Elgin and Maniac Latin Disciples and Spanish Vice Lords in Elgin who have injunctions on them. Advertisement McMahon said the individuals named in the four lawsuits were the "most active, most entrenched members," while going after the gangs as a whole targets their ability to operate and recruit. "(The injunction) is going to make it more difficult," McMahon said. "It strikes at the heart of gang activity ... in those communities." Advertisement Gang cases are pending in suits filed in 2010 and 2012 against the Latin Kings factions and the 2016 suit involving the Spanish Vice Lords. A total of 31 members have active cases, with four from Elgin awaiting a judge's decision on whether to grant the injunction. The 120 members under injunctions face possible criminal charges or civil sanctions if they fail to abide by the restrictions. "Simply possessing a can of spray paint outside the home is a violation," McMahon noted. McMahon also pointed out that individual injunctions create an opportunity for gang members to change what they do and who they associate with. "This gives them a way out" of gang life, McMahon said. Dan Campana is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News Erik Butler's work with the St. Charles water department in February 2016 had him sleeping just a couple of hours each night, and once sex assault allegations against him surfaced, he became suicidal, his lawyer said. Those details are included in a recently filed motion seeking to suppress 38-year-old Butler's statements to police following his arrest on charges he fondled a young girl under the age of 13 between October 2015 and February 2016. Butler's attorney claims his mental and physical condition made him unable to knowingly give up his rights before speaking to police investigating the assaults. Advertisement Butler has pleaded not guilty to two counts of predatory criminal sexual assault and an unrelated count of aggravated unlawful use of a weapon alleging he illegally had a handgun in his vehicle. He appeared in Kane County court Thursday. According to the motion, Butler worked 60-hour weeks dealing with water main breaks in St. Charles prior to his arrest. At the time he was confronted about the assaults on Feb. 18, 2016, he was sleeping only two or three hours per night, the motion states. On Feb. 20, Butler drove to a Geneva sporting goods store to purchase a box of "hollow point" bullets with plans on killing himself with a .40-caliber handgun, the motion states. He spent a total of nine hours driving around that day before ending up in the Rochelle area. By then, St. Charles police were calling his phone because Butler's then-wife made a missing persons report, the filing states. Advertisement An affidavit from Butler included with the motion explains that police and his wife encouraged him to go to a hospital, but he eventually agreed to drive to the St. Charles Police Department the evening of Feb. 20. Once there, officers took him to a nearby hospital where he was deemed suicidal and later returned to the police station. "I attempted to get some sleep as I was exhausted and broken down," Butler wrote, noting he was on suicide watch and only left his cell once to smoke a cigarette. Later the next day, on Feb. 21, Butler spoke with investigators, yet he wrote he can't recall the questions he was asked or the answers he gave, the affidavit explains. Butler's attorney argues that police didn't immediately inform Butler of his rights and that his client was in no mental condition to voluntarily waive those rights before making unspecified statements. Butler was "under extreme mental distress, to the point of suicidal ideations," the motion states as part of the request to bar prosecutors from using anything Butler said against himself. Prosecutors have not yet responded to the motion. Judge Linda Abrahamson set a May 25 hearing date to consider the request. Butler is free on $350,000 bail. Dan Campana is a freelance reporter for the Beacon-News As she watched her daughter Hannah learn Korean fan dancing during a recent event at Daniel Wright Junior High in Lincolnshire, Brooke Schwartz marveled at the unity on display between students and parents, who represented different backgrounds and countries. "What a fantastic program this is," said Schwartz, a Vernon Hills resident who said her family originally came from Israel. Advertisement Schwartz and her daughter were among the hundreds of Daniel Wright parents and students who attended the school's first "Celebrate DW Night," which Lincolnshire-Prairie View School District 103 officials introduced this year as a way to show off the increasingly diverse set of cultures at the school district. The event filled the gym, lunch room, library and several classrooms with food, dancing, martial arts demonstrations, musical performances, poetry and more. Advertisement "The diversity of our student population is something that's changed in the last five years or so," said Heather Santella, an event organizer and special education instructor at Daniel Wright Junior High School. "We wanted to be conscious of all the cultures in our building." The new event at the school grew out of a springtime tradition, in which students presented a variety of school projects that they had been working on during the year, organizers said. The new program still included students showing off projects, but organizers said they added new performances and informative presentations from parents and other adults, who demonstrated the traditions of their native countries. Attendees, who at one time came from India, gave henna tattoos and showed Bollywood dance styles on the lunch-room stage, while students read poetry in the library and cooks from several continents offered food and dishes from their native countries in the gym. In the lunch room, eighth grader Alex Lie, of Buffalo Grove, stood by a map of Earth, helping visitors place pins that marked the nations they identified with. About half of the pins were pointed toward Chicago, but others were scattered, marking places in Ireland, Poland, southern India, eastern Asia and other areas. Lie put his own pin on Hong Kong. "They're from all over the world," he said, looking at his classmates' pins. Tania Surane, vice president of the District 103 PTO, was busy working the PTO's table at the time, but said she came from Panama. For college, she moved to the U.S. and experienced the culture of Louisiana, she said. Advertisement "The community has really come together to put on a show," she said. "As you walked into the room, you could feel the buzz." Back in the gym, Schwartz and her daughter walked away from the fan-dancing demonstration, as instructors Inhee Jung and Josephine Lee welcomed other students to join. Lee said she was thrilled to show aspects of her native South Korean culture. "Sometimes, we don't have enough understanding of each other," she said. "This makes me feel proud of who I am." rwachter@pioneerlocal.com Twitter @RonnieAtPioneer The Walker County Chamber will host a Business Expo sponsored by CHI Memorial on April 27 at the Walker County Civic Center. The event which begins at 3 p.m. will be followed by an after-hours event courtesy Cohutta Banking Company. 7 p.m. The public is invited to attend this special event at no cost. Chamber members can reserve a booth for $50 and non-member businesses can reserve a booth for $75. To learn more, please visit / or call . Champaign County State's Attorney Julia Rietz discusses coming to a plea agreement with 21-year-old former University of Illinois student Lindsay Johnson, who had been charged with first-degree murder in the death of her newborn son. April 7, 2017. (Zak Koeske / Daily Southtown) (Chicago Tribune) URBANA A former University of Illinois student accused of suffocating her newborn child in a dorm bathroom in March 2016 pleaded guilty Friday to felony child endangerment as part of a plea deal. Lindsay L. Johnson, 21, of Monee, was sentenced to 10 years in prison and one year mandatory supervised released as part of the agreement the maximum she could have received for an extended class 3 felony, Champaign County States Attorney Julia Rietz said. Advertisement Johnson, who had been charged with first-degree murder and faced up to 75 years in prison had she been convicted at trial, did not offer a statement at Friday's plea hearing. Rietz said concern over proving intent in the case led prosecutors to make the deal. Advertisement "Looking at the facts of the case, we felt that a jury might struggle with the question of intent," she said. "Obviously, this is a very emotional case and we were concerned if we went to a trial in a first-degree murder case, the question of her intent would have been an issue for the jury. In this Tuesday, April 12, 2016 photo, University of Illinois student Lindsay Johnson, 20, walks away from the bench with attorney Tony Bruno during her arraignment at the Champaign County Courthouse in Urbana, Ill. (Rick Danzl / AP) "So that question, as well as just the overall entirety of this tragic case led us to believe that this was an appropriate resolution. It's a prison sentence. It holds her accountable and responsible for the death of this child, but it also acknowledges what I think are clearly some mental health issues that she is absolutely going to need to address in the future." Evan Bruno, one of Johnson's lawyers, said she took the plea rather than risk trial and the possibility of a much longer prison sentence. "If she were to be convicted of first-degree murder she would be, as a guaranteed matter, she would not get out of prison until the year 2037," he said. "My understanding is that she made the decision that that's a risk not worth taking." Tony Bruno, another of Johnson's attorneys, said his client had spent the past year since her arrest thinking, preparing and spending time with her family while out on bond. "She's profoundly impacted by everything that happened," he said. "She's regretful and she's remorseful beyond words." Johnson could be out of prison in five years with good behavior. She was charged with first-degree murder, child endangerment and concealment of a homicidal death last April after allegedly suffocating her infant son shortly after giving birth in the bathroom of her dorm suite at Bousfield Hall in Champaign on the afternoon of March 13, 2016. Advertisement University police were dispatched to the dorm after receiving reports that a student had been in the bathroom for several hours. Witnesses reported hearing what they believed to be the crying of a child coming from the bathroom, and said they looked under the door of the bathroom to see Johnson cleaning blood from the floor, according to prosecutors. Johnson left the building prior to police arriving, but was picked up by officers later that evening wearing a backpack with the deceased newborn boy inside, prosecutors said. She initially told police she had given birth earlier in the day, but had not previously been aware that she was pregnant. The child, she said, was not breathing when he was born, and she was in the process of taking him to the hospital when they stopped her, according to prosecutors. However, forensic analysis of Johnson's phone and computer showed a web history going back to July 2015 with searches made for information on pregnancy, pregnancy symptoms, miscarriage, home abortions, and how to manage physical signs of pregnancy after the loss of a baby, the state's attorney's office said. Investigators found web searches about child delivery conducted in the final days prior to Johnson giving birth, prosecutors said. Johnson later provided police a statement indicating that the boy was alive when he was born and that she may have tried to quiet the crying child by putting a towel or hand over his mouth, the state's attorney's office said. Advertisement Medical tests performed on the deceased infant showed the child was alive and breathing on its own at birth, and that there was no evidence of disease or defect that contributed to its death, prosecutors said. An autopsy found the child's death was "consistent with" suffocation, and while no outward signs of trauma were discovered, prosecutors said medical testimony indicated that the absence of physical trauma is not uncommon in cases of infant suffocation. Friends described Johnson, who had no prior criminal record, as a quiet farm girl and conscientious student who loved country music, cheering for Illini athletics and spending time with her boyfriend. She graduated from Peotone High School in 2014, and had been a sophomore agricultural communications major and trumpeter in the Marching Illini at the time of her arrest. Tammy Cowger, whose son Dakota was a close friend of Johnson's at Peotone High School and who chaperoned Johnson and other Peotone High School students on Future Farmers of America field trips, said she was shocked to hear of Johnson's arrest last April. "She's one of those kids you would want your kids to hang out with," Cowger said at the time. "She was just like your typical high school girl." Advertisement Rietz, the Champaign County state's attorney, said Johnson hid her pregnancy from family, friends, teachers and even her boyfriend, who was the father of the child. "We have found during the investigation no one who indicated that they were aware that she was pregnant," said Rietz, adding that her office had kept the boyfriend, whose name has not been released, abreast of developments in the case, including Friday's plea. Johnson's case raised questions among fellow students and observers, who have reacted to the allegations against her with a mix of horror and confusion. In a country with legalized abortion, and in a state like Illinois where Safe Haven laws permit the no-questions-asked drop-off of unwanted babies, why would a seemingly sane mother resort to killing her newborn child, some have asked. Rietz called the case "unusual" and said that in her 20-plus years working in the criminal justice system she'd never seen one similar. But neonaticide, as the act of killing an infant within its first 24 hours of life is called, is believed to occur hundreds of times each year in the United States. Researchers who study the phenomenon have found sufficient similarities between cases that it's actually considered a syndrome. Mothers who kill their newborns within the first day, often immediately after giving birth, are rarely mentally ill. They tend to be younger in their late teens or early 20s unmarried, isolated from the men who fathered their children and emotionally distant from friends and family, research has shown. Advertisement It's precisely because these are generally not women who friends and family expect to engage in impulsive or irresponsible behavior that they are believed to often hide their pregnancies out of fear of rejection by loved ones. "Oftentimes there's a sense, usually a sense that is not necessarily true, that, 'My parents would reject me. My community would reject me. I'd be exiled to the fringes of my known world,'" said Michelle Oberman, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law in an interview last year. She also is author of two books about mothers who kill their children. Mothers who end up committing neonaticide typically remain in denial throughout their pregnancy, and as a result, fail to seek any prenatal medical care or make advance preparations like seeking out an abortion clinic or looking into adoption, experts said. "They just wish it away," Oberman said. "Maybe, I'll have a miscarriage. Maybe I'm not really pregnant." While experts say harming the child is not something these mothers anticipate doing, once thrust into the situation of having to handle a live childbirth on their own, they panic and act impulsively. Prosecutors frequently charge these women with murder, as the Champaign County state's attorney did in Johnson's case, but plea deals are common, experts said. Advertisement Sentences for women convicted of killing their newborns have run the gamut from probation with counseling to decades behind bars, although many judges believe putting a mother who commits neonaticide behind bars for an extended period of time is not productive, experts said. Oberman, who has studied hundreds of neonaticide cases over the past two-plus decades, said women with competent legal representation generally receive sentences of no more than a year or two in prison, with many receiving only probation. Johnson's lawyers said Friday they attempted to bring examples of such cases to the prosecution's attention, but failed to persuade Rietz' office to agree to grant Johnson anything short of a 10-year prison sentence. "We have done everything in the book that we can to convince, to enlighten the state's attorney's office about the dynamics in these kinds of cases, about the psychological elements present," Evan Bruno, one of Johnson's lawyers, said. "They're very aware that neonaticide is a thing. They're familiar with that term and that concept, and they're familiar with the cases involving that." Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday > But Bruno said, "The state's attorney's office here is not willing to treat this the way many jurisdictions treat this type of thingDespite our presenting all of the facts we can to the prosecutor's office, that was not an option that was available to us." Rietz confirmed Friday that probation for Johnson had not been on the table. Advertisement "Absolutely not," she said, when asked about community-based sentencing for the 21-year-old. "It was never in my consideration. Always a prison sentence to hold her accountable for the death of this child." Still, finding the delicate balance between holding Johnson accountable for her actions while also taking into account her clean background was "incredibly complicated," Rietz acknowledged. "We can find the best justice that we have available to us," she said. "And so that's how we came to the result that we chose for today, whether there's some other force in the universe that would find a different result, I can't tell you." zkoeske@tribpub.com Twitter @ZakKoeske Country Club Hills School District 160 was one of just three districts selected to record an original song on the John Lennon mobile recording studio bus. April 6th, 2017, at Southwood Middle School in Country Club Hills. | Gary Middendorf-Chicago Tribune Media Group (Gary Middendorf / Daily Southtown) Until she boarded the John Lennon recording studio bus Thursday, Kourtlyn Cannon could only imagine what it might be like to write and record an original song. "This is really fun, it's exciting," Kourtlyn said, as she took a break from jamming out a melody inside the dark blue bus parked at Southwood Middle School. "I've been playing piano since I was 6 and even though I know how to do it, the engineers here make me better." Advertisement After Country Club Hills School District 160 was chosen as one of three winners in the national "What Makes Music Education Great in My School District" contest, Kourtlyn and six of her peers were invited to spend the day on the state-of-the-art John Lennon Educational Bus. With the help of three sound engineers, the students were encouraged to write and record an original song as well as produce a music video for it, all in one day. Advertisement Engineer Steven Meloney said, "We're a nonprofit mobile recording studio that travels all around the country giving students the opportunity to write and record original music." The bus, which is divided into three sections and includes bunks for the three live-in engineers, was the brainchild of Yoko Ono, Lennon's wife, who funded its start "in the spirit of John Lennon," said Claire Kreger-Boaz, senior project manager for the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) foundation, which based in Carlsbad, Calif., and sponsors the contest. Kourtlyn Cannon, a 7th grader at Southwood Middle School, rehearses a song before recording on the John Lennon mobile recording studio bus. April 6th, 2017, at Southwood Middle School in Country Club Hills. | Gary Middendorf-Chicago Tribune Media Group (Gary Middendorf / Daily Southtown) "Peace, love and music is sort of their motto," Kreger-Boaz said. The Country Club Hills entry beat 36 districts across the country and was the only Midwest stop on the contest tour, Kreger-Boaz said. The district was chosen "because it has a wonderful sequential music education program," she said. "There is clear community support and cross discipline support. The commitment to music stood out. So did the application video." Superintendent Sandra Thomas said despite the fact that 80 percent of the student population is impoverished enough to qualify for free lunch, the district is dedicated to educating the "whole child." Music is a part of that, she said. "There are children who are so gifted out there that if we don't tap into that, we're not tapping into their full potential," Thomas said. Enabling children to pursue their interests and talents, she said, results in better academic performance. Advertisement "It is extremely important to have a balance," Thomas said. And, these days, it also is important to be creative when it comes to funding that kind of holistic approach, she said. "Our board supports it with funding and our community supports us with sponsorships. We don't just rely on the state," she said. Between giving video instruction, Meloney said, "A typical day will have eight to 10 students come on board. We spend a little time in the morning getting to know each other and then dive right into writing a song from scratch. As we're writing, we also start to record and usually by around 2 o'clock we have a rough recording of a song. Then we go outside and start shooting a music video." Southwood Middle School students Eric Allen (left to right), Heaven Johnson and Alexis Franklin rehearse a song before recording on the John Lennon mobile recording studio bus. April 6th, 2017, at Southwood Middle School in Country Club Hills. | Gary Middendorf-Chicago Tribune Media Group (Gary Middendorf / Daily Southtown) By midday, the youngsters had lyrics, a melody and lots of ideas. While eighth grader Alexis Franklin and seventh grader Eric Allen practiced projection and harmony, Heaven Johnson, an eighth grader, described the songwriting process. "A song generally starts with an idea or message, whether it's bullying or what we're doing here, which is motivational," Heaven said. "So it starts as an idea, something that I would like people to hear, my story, my truth. Then the creative juices start to flow and you hear a melody in your head and you start to plan how slow or fast you want specific parts to go." Advertisement Eric described their work, titled "Unbreakable," as "motivational." "It's kind of like follow your dreams and don't let anybody say anything that can bring you down," he said. "Make sure you stay true to who you are." Because his father is a music producer, Eric said his family has a recording studio in the basement so he was familiar with some of the process. "The coolest part of being on this bus," he said, "is the technology. "And knowing your friends will get to see it," he added. Thomas said she plans to debut the video during a school concert May 11. The public is invited to attend and to check out the YouTube video (www.nammfoundation.org), which should be posted by then. Advertisement Alexis, too, was familiar with the recording process. Her father owns a music school in Park Forest. Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday > "I've been in a studio before but never with my friends to create a song," she said. "This is just a super cool opportunity." Lennon died in 1980, decades before any of the day's aspiring musicians were born, but his message lives on. "I know he was in the Beatles, he was a main member of that group," Eric said. "And he loved music." So does fifth grader Destane Williams. "I sing, play the drums, the marimba, the bells and the piano," Destane said. "I have a lot of passion for music. I think that's why I was chosen for this." Advertisement dvickroy@tribpub.com Twitter @dvickroy Tinley Park Trustee Jacob Vandenberg and his Concerned Citizens for Tinley Park slate apparently scored a decisive victory on Tuesday, sweeping from power the last vestiges of what he's referred to as the "Tinley machine." The 32-year-old Vandenberg, a lifelong Tinley Park resident and third-generation funeral director at Vandenberg Funeral Home, sailed to a 25-point win over incumbent Mayor David Seaman, according to unofficial results, with a populist message of economic development, government transparency and installing a fresh set of voices on the village board. Advertisement Vandenberg's running mates Kristin Thirion, a teacher at Reavis High School in Burbank; Cynthia Berg, a nurse at Bloom Trail High School in Chicago Heights; William Brady, a retired business owner; and Michael Glotz, a union steward with Local 150 of the International Union of Operating Engineers all won their races handily as well. Seaman, a veteran trustee appointed in 2015 to serve out the remainder of Ed Zabrocki's term when the longtime mayor stepped down for health reasons, had been in office since the year Vandenberg was born. Village Clerk Pat Rea, who apparently lost to Thirion on Tuesday, had held elected office in Tinley Park since 1972. Advertisement "I know this is a very large change of scenery and environment here in the village," Vandenberg said Wednesday, following his slate's victory, "but it is important to make sure everyone understands we should show gratitude for [Seaman and Rea's] service to the town for many years." Seaman, a health care executive, did not return a request for comment. Vandenberg, who was elected as village trustee two years ago, said his initial focus as mayor will be on restoring the gap in trust that has developed between residents and elected officials. "There has been a setback in trustworthiness and accountability for our elected officials in Tinley Park," said Vandenberg, who espouses a resident-first message of unity. "I want to take the politics out of it and bring back the hometown feel of Tinley Park. I want to restore accountability and trustworthiness and build those bridges." Part of bringing back trust, Vandenberg said, is keeping residents informed of the goings-on of local government and soliciting community input for proposed developments and major village initiatives. To that end, he said he's spearheaded the live streaming of board meetings on the village's website, and hopes shortly to expand the range of government meetings that are broadcast for public consumption to include meetings of board committees and village commissions. "That would really increase the level of transparency in our town," Vandenberg said. "There should be no hidden agendas. These conversations, these are not 'ours'These are (for) the residents and their information." The mayor-elect also is looking forward to gauging resident input at upcoming community forums on the redevelopment of the state-owned Tinley Park Mental Health Center, a 280-acre property that includes the former Howe Developmental Center, which closed in 2009, and the mental health center, which closed in 2012. Advertisement The next forum is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. April 12 at Prairie View Middle School, 8500 175th St. He anticipates holding at least one additional forum over the next couple months where residents can provide feedback to the design firm that's creating the redevelopment plan before its ultimately unveiled at a public meeting, hopefully before summertime. "The goal is to see progress and not just talk about it," said Vandenberg, who declined to discuss his own preference for the property's future use. "It's not really my vision, it's the Tinley Park vision and plan," he said. "I may have an opinion as a resident, but as an elected officialwhatever the town wants there is what I would ultimately like to see there as well. "My biggest thing is just to make sure we have good attendance (at the community forums) to get as much input as we can so they can take it back to their drawing board and address residents' needs or wants," he said. Vandenberg's other primary economic initiative is stimulating new business in the village's downtown Oak Park Avenue business district. Advertisement Unlike the old mental health center redevelopment, which he sees as a long-term project, he's hoping to move quickly on Oak Park Avenue. "I don't want another year to go past without any type of development," he said. "We need to get these things going. "How we get there is going to be a work in progress, but I'm not going to allow another year or two or three go by with just nothing. We need to see something happen." Vandenberg said he's also been working on a structured plan to energize small business growth in Tinley Park, but declined to release any details on the initiative. Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday > "I'm looking forward to presenting something to the village staff and allowing them to do some investigating before we do any publication on it," he said. "The goal is to stimulate small business growth in the community. That's what Tinley Park is downtown that's what we're striving for. The plan is to try jump start that a little bit." Whatever initiatives Vandenberg's administration takes on, he expects there to be healthy debate about them among trustees. Advertisement "I'd like to think of it as the elected trustees are independently thinking," he said, noting that he doesn't view himself as having "control over the board," despite the fact that he'll have no opponents on it. "I know we ran under the same slate, but that's one of the key things for our team differences of opinion, different outlooks on ways to do things and that's what I liked about our team to begin with," he said. "Everyone will look at things independently, which is very important." zkoeske@tribpub.com Twitter @ZakKoeske A wreath honoring World War I veterans was placed Thursday at Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Elwood on the 100th anniversary of the U.S. entry into that war. The wreath was placed next to one from a ceremony in March honoring Vietnam War veterans marking the anniversary of that war's end. (Erin Gallagher / Daily Southtown) A hundred years later, it's well known that the "war to end all wars" wasn't the last war. But America's entry into the way launched a century of involvement and eventual leadership on the world stage. Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery director Sean Baumgartner said remembering the 100th anniversary of America's entry into World War I also is important because of those veterans who laid the groundwork and in many cases lost their lives to make that involvement possible. Advertisement Marking the centennial of the U.S. Congress' declaration of war against Germany on April 6, 1917, officials at the cemetery held a wreath-laying ceremony Thursday. "A hundred years seems like an eternity," Baumgartner said. "The future generations that are in school right now, they need to know the significance of it, our involvement in it." Advertisement The cemetery, which opened in Elwood in 1999, is the permanent resting place of only a small number of WWI veterans, according to Matthew Ulrich, a cemetery representative. Still, remembering them memorializes and honors their service, he said. Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday > "The freedoms we have in the U.S. were not just handed to us, they were earned by the veterans," said Dave Hicks, of Jacksonville, the vice commander of the Illinois Amvets. "I came up for the wreath-laying to show or respect for the veterans." "It means a lot to show respect for the ones who came before me," said Hicks, who served seven years in the military and whose sister served twenty years. On March 29, the cemetery hosted a wreath laying ceremony marking teh anniversary of the close of the Vietnam War. After Thursday's ceremony, Baumgartner explained why these remembrances are important. "Every headstone is a different story," Baumgartner said. "We cannot forget what they did. That needs to be taught to the younger generations." Baumgartner said where, how or when veterans served does not change how they should be honored. Each veteran made the same commitment to go where they were sent, making a contribution for our freedom, he said. Erin Gallagher is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown. A body was recovered Friday from the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal in Summit, officials said. The unidentified body was recovered along the 7300 block of West Canal Bank Road in the southwest suburb, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office. The location is near the Stevenson Expressway and Illinois Highway 171. Advertisement Employees of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District assisted in recovering the body from the canal, according to Allison Fore, the district's public and intergovernmental affairs officer. The U.S. Coast Guard also sent personnel from its Calumet Harbor station to assist, Chief Warrant Officer Matthew James said. Advertisement The body had been transported from the scene by late Friday afternoon, according to Trooper Woodrow Montgomery of the Illinois State Police, which was involved in the investigation.. Summit police and fire officials were not immediately available for comment. Further information was unavailable. Wow. We had an election, and what an election we had. Voters the relative few who showed up to the polls Tuesday weighed in on who's running the show locally. Not surprisingly, changes are coming. Advertisement We saw one longtime mayor lose after his friends on the board approved a big salary and pension boost that would have benefited him. Another lost after he was appointed to lead a village that overcharged residents on their water bills. Or maybe they were upset at the village's handling of a proposed low-income housing project. School boards also saw their share of upheaval. Across the Chicago suburbs, 17 incumbent mayors and village presidents lost to challengers, according to the Chicago Tribune. That's not counting incumbents who lost their seats on city councils and village and local school boards. Advertisement So what's it all mean? We can't say for sure. But it seems like residual voter sentiments that may have played a part nationally in the election of President Donald Trump in November may still be simmering. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. Maybe voters were outraged. Maybe they wanted to flip the status quo. Maybe they just wanted change for the sake of change. But more than likely, they felt their best interests weren't their elected representatives' first priority. It seems people voted based on their pocketbooks and what, in some cases, appeared to them a hearty dose of politicians gluttonously dining at the public trough. Orland Park Mayor Dan McLaughlin lost to political newcomer Keith Pekau, a Republican who owns a landscaping company. McLaughlin was targeted in the closing days of the campaign by nearly $200,000 worth of political TV and direct mail ads by the political action committee Liberty Principles, which gets some of its funding from Gov. Bruce Rauner. Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday > Last year, the board voted to increase the mayor's duties and salary during the next term from $40,000, plus $3,000 for being the liquor commissioner, to $150,000. Rightly or wrongly, had McLaughlin won, his pension would have seen a substantial boost. Dan Proft, who runs the PAC, told the Tribune that he got involved in the race to "send a message to those who think they can enrich themselves without consequence" and to help boost newcomers such as Pekau. McLaughlin and his apologists could try to spin the insanely large salary increase as a cost savings because they weren't filling other positions, but it was a tough sell. The numbers screamed cash-and-pension grab. And arrogance. Voters responded to that. Advertisement In Tinley Park, the village came under fire in recent years after a water billing debacle that occurred before Dave Seaman, a former trustee, became mayor. That, combined with a slew of other questionable expenditures and insider deals over the years, may have been what spelled doom for the ruling party there. Seaman lost to Trustee Jacob Vandenberg, whose entire slate, Concerned Citizens for Tinley Park, also ousted incumbents aligned with Seaman, including longtime Tinley Park official Pat Rea. And Lincoln-Way voters rose up against a sickening pattern of waste, mismanagement, secrecy and more insider deal-making that this newspaper uncovered last year. The incumbents who lost Tuesday can argue the public perceptions were wrong and that they were not guilty of the alleged transgressions. But the voters were the only judges who mattered, and they rendered verdicts in favor of transparent and fiscally conservative government of true public service. Vernard Alsberry was apparentlyi re-elected mayor of Hazel Crest this week, but he was also sued for the fourth time by a former employee claiming wrongful termination for political reasons. (Ted Slowik / Daily Southtown) Hazel Crest Mayor Vernard Alsberry celebrated an apparent re-election victory this week as members of his political party swept races for village board and clerk seats. As Alsberry prepares to begin his second term, however, he'll continue to face questions about his leadership of the village of 14,200 residents. A new lawsuit by a former employee accuses Alsberry of overstepping his authority as mayor by meddling in employment decisions that should be left to the village manager. Advertisement This is the fourth lawsuit in the past two years by a former Hazel Crest employee or contractor claiming termination for political reasons. William Davis, 61, of Chicago, claims Alsberry did not consider Davis part of his "political team and plotted to remove" him as the village's director of communications and public outreach in May, 2015. Advertisement The suit claims Alsberry and five village trustees violated the Illinois Municipal Code's manager form of government that prohibits political hiring and firing by the village president and trustees. "Alsberry repeatedly violated, or attempted to violate, the (Municipal) Code by forcing hires or orchestrating the termination of certain village employees for political reasons," the suit claims. Davis, a former director of news affairs for the Chicago Police Department, was hired for the communications role in Hazel Crest in April, 2012 by former Village Manager James Whigham. Alsberry was elected mayor in April, 2013. Whigham retired several months later amid conflicts with Alsberry over raises and promotions for various employees. In March, 2014, Marlo Kemp signed a contract to become village manager. After Alsberry allies won a majority of village board seats in the April, 2015 election, Kemp was fired. Kemp sued for wrongful termination and sought $500,000 in severance as spelled out in his contract. Last year, the village agreed to pay Kemp $300,000 to settle the dispute. The new suit claims Alsberry and trustees acted illegally when they fired Davis by voting to eliminate his department during a special board meeting on May 1, 2015. The suit claims Kemp advised Alsberry and trustees prior to the decision that eliminating Hazel Crest's communications department without amending the budget would violate the Municipal Code. "In other words, elimination of a department could not be used as a cover for terminating employees," the suit claims. The suit claims audited financial reports show the village never eliminated the department and continued to pay expenses from the department's accounts. The "fake elimination" of the department was a "poorly thought out" ploy to work around the Municipal Code, the suit claims. Advertisement "Defendants knew good and well that neither the village president nor the village trustees had the authority to terminate plaintiff's employment; only the village manager had that authority. But they did it anyway," the suit claims. The suit claims Davis opposed Alsberry's attempts to hand-pick summer employees and to "financially favor a friend by allowing that friend to stage a large private event for profit in the village of Hazel Crest with the cost of that event supplemented by the village of Hazel Crest." In addition to Alsberry, the suit filed March 29 in Cook County names village trustees Mary Grant, Kevin Moore, Susan M. Pate, Benjamin Ramsey and Sandra G. Slayton as defendants. Davis seeks more than $50,000 in damages. Davis is repesented by Chicago attorney Linda Chatman, who said he tried to resolve his dispute with Hazel Crest since his termination nearly two years ago. "We've been trying to work it out amicably," Chatman said. "He'd prefer not to (sue), but it was necessary." In addition to the lawsuits by Davis and Kemp, a third former employee, Sammie Young, claims in a suit he was fired from his job in the Hazel Crest police department for refusing to buy additional tickets to a political fundraiser for Alsberry. Advertisement In a fourth complaint, contractor Joseph Griffin claims Alsberry wrongfully terminated his agreement to perform work for the village. Despite the lawsuits and controversy over Alsberry's alleged interference in employee hiring and firing, voters on Tuesday apparently elected him to a second term. Alsberry received just over 50 percent of the vote in a three-way race that saw turnout of just under 20 percent, according to unofficial results. Alsberry received 752 votes to 369 for Roderick S. Bashir and 365 for McStephen O.A. "Max" Solomon, according to unofficial results. "I believe the third candidate in the race split the vote and hurt my chances," Bashir told me Thursday. He and Solomon both said they hope to continue in watchdog roles as citizens. "It's incumbent upon all of us to make sure our village is functioning properly and we have transparency," Bashir said. Solomon pointed out the sum of votes for he and Bashir was still less than the number received by Alsberry. Advertisement "Alsberry's voters voted for the ticket," Solomon told me. "They were loyal and consistent and focused on what they were told to do." "Whatever (Alsberry) did, it worked," Solomon said. Alsberry's Hazel Crest United Party slate apparently swept contests for clerk and trustee over Bashir's New Leadership Party and Solomon's Democratic Party candidates. Isaac R. Wiseman apparently was elected clerk and Moore, Marlon D. Rias and Java Rogers apparently won the trustee contests. Rias currently serves as village clerk. Alsberry allies now hold all six seats on the village board. I left a message at village hall Thursday asking Alsberry to contact me but did not hear back from him before my deadline. A representative for village attorney John B. Murphey said he was unavailable and Murphey did not immediately respond to an email requesting the village's response to the latest suit. Hazel Crest voters on Tuesday also supported a referendum to limit the mayor, clerk and trustees to no more than two consecutive terms in office, according to unofficial results. The clock starts now, meaning Alsberry and others apparently elected this week may serve until 2025 if they are re-elected in 2021. Advertisement Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday > "While they voted to keep (Alsberry) in, they also voted for term limits," Kemp told me Thursday. "I think it's proof of the power of incumbency." Last year, Hazel Crest voters overwhelmingly rejected referendum questions that sought to change Hazel Crest's village manager form of government and hand more power over employment matters to the mayor. I think the spate of lawsuits raise concerns about Alsberry's leadership and management practices. Homeowners in Hazel Crest are shouldering the burden for the costs of settlements and legal fees to defend the suits. Bashir said Alsberry pulled the plug on local-access cable television broadcasts of village board meetings two years ago. Residents are in the dark about the true state of village affairs, he said. "(Alsberry) has complete control of the village now," Bashir said. "Hopefully, some new leadership will emerge from some members of the board." tslowik@tribpub.com Advertisement Twitter @tedslowik Sinclair Broadcast Group of Chattanooga announces the newest member of its anchor team, Jessica Harthorn. Ms. Harthorn joins the morning news team for Good Morning Chattanooga and GMC FOX Edition. She is an Emmy nominated journalist for her work on a cold case murder and was a lead reporter on crime, government, waste and community concerns. She spent the past six years as reporter and weekend anchor with Sinclair Broadcast Group at WWMT-TV in Kalamazoo, Mi. Before moving to West Michigan she spent a year as an anchor/reporter for WEYI-TV in Clio, Mi. There she won the 2010 Best Individual Reporter award from the Michigan Associated Press. She also won the 2011 State Bar of Michigan Wade McCree Award in the broadcast category for her series on a father fighting to change Michigans Paternity Act. Prior to WEYI-TV, she spent two years at WICZ-TV in Birmingham, New York as the 6PM anchor. In 2009, the New York Associated Press awarded Ms. Harthorn first place for Best News Series on her coverage of the struggling dairy farmers. The series later won the New York State Agricultural Society Cap Creal Journalism Award. She also covered the mass shooting at the American Civic Association in Binghamton during the spring of 2009. Despite her short time in Chattanooga, she is already a fan, saying, Chattanooga is fantastic! I love the people, the scenery and of course the excellent team at NewsChannel 9 and FOX Chattanooga. Im honored to serve this community and call this city home! Upon the arrival of a new anchor, Tom Henderson, news director, is excited about what Ms. Harthorn brings to the team. He said, As a hard working mother of two children, Jessica knows firsthand what it takes to get a busy day started, which makes her a great fit for Good Morning Chattanooga and GMC FOX Edition. Viewers will soon get to know Jessica as we have in the newsroom for her dedication, warmth and healthy sense of humor. Ms. Harthorn is a native of Dansville, Mi. She and her husband, Steve, and their two daughters enjoy the great outdoors, camping, biking and spending time with family. She will begin co-anchoring on Monday. Miranda Green (from left); Adriana Barriga and Kerry Kelly tour the property of the former Fox River Day School in Elgin last month. (Rafael Guerrero / The Courier-News) The fate of a proposed first charter school in Elgin will be discussed Monday evening. While School District U46 administrators recommend the school board to reject the Elgin Math and Science Academy last month, it will be up to the board members to vote yes or no on the K-8 school, which would open as K-2 in 2018. Advertisement "We feel that we are confident that we can do this," said chairwoman Kerry Kelly. "We're bringing one of the most innovative curriculum in the country to one of the most beautiful locations in the Fox Valley." The Elgin Charter School Initiative submitted a 10-page response to the district's recommendation to deny the charter. It touted EMSA's expeditionary model for learning and the school-in-nature possibilities given its Fox River Country Day School setting. Advertisement "The natural setting of the school, surrounded by towering oaks and hidden ponds, creates endless outdoor classroom opportunities for study and play," the response read. "EMSA students will engage in research and decision-making with real-world consequences: studying this special ecosystem in order to protect it. Every student learns that he or she belongs to EMSA through constant community." Two of the primary concerns from U46 were uncertainties regarding English language learning students and special education. The response made clearer some of EMSA's proposals. Under the proposal, EMSA would have 1.5 full-time equivalent staff as special education certified teachers, while each grade level would have at least one bilingual teacher. Kelly acknowledged it will be difficult finding bilingual teachers as they have been hard to come by, even for District U46. "Putting one teacher in each level is definitely attainable," said Kelly. Financial concerns were raised by U46 during last month's charter school hearing, such as EMSA's dependence on grants and the gradual renovation of the school site. The former boarding school site has been vacant for years and some of the buildings require extensive fixing. According to the response, the group has reviewed at least 20 budget projections. There have been some changes to special education salary-reimbursement, field trips, extracurriculars, busing reimbursement, among other areas, and still foresee staying in the black. The group's selection of the day school site has already been endorsed by Elgin City Council, voting 7-1 to lease the property. Kelly said she believes had the charter school initiative come in requesting Wayne Elementary or one of the other alternate sites outlined in the original proposal, administration may have felt differently about EMSA. "I hope we didn't shoot ourselves in the foot because of this (day school) property," said Kelly. Three of seven school board members have supported EMSA at one point or another Veronica Noland, Cody Holt and Phil Costello. Holt will be replaced by Melissa Owens of Bartlett beginning next month following Tuesday's school board election. The school board will meet in open session at 7 p.m. Monday at the U46 board room, 355 East Chicago Street in Elgin. Advertisement raguerrero@tribpub.com Home means many different things to Americans and the ways and places that they have lived have changed dramatically over the decades. That diversity is spotlighted in "House & Home," a traveling exhibit from the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. on display at the Elmhurst History Museum from April 7 to May 25. "I really thought that the themes from the exhibit, the objects and the way it's described would really speak to the community," said curator of exhibits Lance Tawzer. "My biggest challenge is to fit it all in my gallery and have room for people to see it." Advertisement The exhibit packs in a huge amount of artifacts, videos, photographs and construction models that show how changes in technology, laws and consumer culture over time shaped how people thought about home. It spans an equally impressive range of homes including college dormitories, military barracks, trailer parks, condos and gated communities. "It really tells a story of how Americans defined what it meant to have a house and a dwelling and an idea of the things that make it that way," Tawzer said. Advertisement An area discussing modern home convenience is used as a showcase for old toasters, coffee makers and other appliances that were groundbreaking when they first were created. Sections of the exhibit are designed to resemble parts of a house, with artifacts positioned in cubbyholes or mounted onto structures shaped like house frames. "It's quite impressive," Tawzer said. "It looks more like a permanent exhibit installation because there are so many structural elements." Integrated throughout the exhibit are items from the museum's permanent collection that focus on local Chicago area homes. The exhibit also explores the way houses changed over time, from highly compartmentalized structures with many small rooms with specific uses to today's more open layouts. It also looks at ways homes may continue to change by displaying sustainable materials that visitors can touch. While it explores many historic events such as the Homestead Act, the creation of the Federal Housing Administration and the Oklahoma Land Rush, the exhibit is organized by theme instead of chronologically. You'll see everything from modest shacks to ornate estates to nontraditional dwellings that once served different purposes. "People are going to come away with expanded appreciation of what it means to have a house or home, whether they're living in an apartment or a rural situation," Tawzer said. "It focuses on the American Dream, which was synonymous with home ownership. Everybody's dream is a little different, and I think people will have different takeaways." The museum is also running numerous events to coincide with the exhibit including a lecture on the 2008 housing crisis on April 20, a bus tour of Elmhurst's neighborhoods on April 30 and a May 7 workshop on how to research the history of your own home. Throughout the run, the museum will also be looking to support the homeless by collecting household items for DuPage Pads. Donations will be accepted in the gift shop. 'House & Home' exhibit Advertisement Where: Elmhurst History Museum, 120 E. Park Ave. When: 1-5 p.m. Sunday and Tuesday through Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday; April 7 through May 25 Admission: Free Information: www.elmhursthistory.org From left to right, Goran Ivanovic, acoustic guitarist, Pete Tashjian, drummer and Mike Harmon, bass guitarist, perform at Triton College's World Music Series on April 5. (Rachel K. Hindery / Pioneer Press) Guitar and percussion mingled with the voices of students, faculty and staff for an hour on April 5, as Triton College's student center was transformed into an impromptu concert hall. Seated at round tables barely 10 feet from the musicians, some came specifically to hear the Goran Ivanovic Trio perform original works influenced by jazz, and global guitar music inspired by tones from the Balkans, Middle East and Latin America. Advertisement Others came for lunch or to study with friends. All experienced the easy cultural immersion that is a goal of Triton's World Music Series. Advertisement Joann Cho is a lead music instructor at Triton where she began the series in 2015. "The World Music Series was created first and foremost to bring the Triton student body together with the community," Cho said. Cho received a doctorate in music composition from the University of California Santa Barbara and said she appreciates different styles of music. Dennis McNamara, department chair in the School of Arts and Sciences at Triton College, also realizes the importance of bringing music to students wherever they are. "The point of all of this, folks, is to give us a chance to hear music we ordinarily wouldn't get to hear," McNamara said before the concert. The trio's versatility and global influences made them a natural fit for the World Music Series. They returned to Triton on April 8 for a master class and were guest artists at a "Jazz Spectacular" held in the Performing Arts Center. "Goran's expertise in Balkan music and his astounding guitar virtuosity will no doubt be greatly appreciated their vast repertoire and unique band sound was always exciting to hear," said James Davis, the director of jazz studies at Triton. Some had already experienced the trio's music and enjoyed another opportunity to hear them, including Daniele Manni. Manni is a philosophy instructor at Triton and often attends World Music Series concerts. Manni connected his memories of the trio with his experiences at Triton. "My life outside in the community merges with my life at work," Manni said. Advertisement Others heard the trio's music for the first time. Angie Sandoval studies pre-medicine at Triton and loves music. She's enrolled in a music class and attended a Triton concert earlier in the semester. At this concert, "the fast-paced songs were my favorite ones. I liked it more when the drums were part of the song," Sandoval said. Percussionist Pete Tashjian plays between acoustic guitarist Goran Ivanovic and bass guitarist Mike Harmon. "The inspiration from Mike's playing is always challenging me. I'm compelled to push through the music," Tashjian said. Harmon explains that how songs are learned adds to the trio's ability to listen to the unique musical voice of each member. "We learned it all by ear instead of sheet music. It's very conversational," Harmon said, describing a "shared language and vocabulary." Harmon has played with the trio for about a year and a half. With a smaller ensemble, each instrument is important. Advertisement "It gives me a chance to open up the bass sounds," Harmon said. Ivanovic formed the trio as a way to explore "guitar in its various traditions and Balkan folk music." Both traditions are important to Ivanovic. "It does capture a lot of the songs I grew up with. There's [also] a huge [tradition] of guitar-driven music from Brazil and Argentina," Ivanovic said. In a subtler nod to tradition, Tashjian sets his drums on a rug that he described as a hand-woven rug colored with vegetable dye, which was made in Iran. Tashjian's grandfather bought the rug, which became his father's and is now Tashjian's. "When I have [the rug] laid out, I feel a sense of peace," Tashjian said. As Tashjian's rug grounds him, it also gives his music space from which to expand as he creates, with Ivanovic and Harmon, a new musical tapestry. Advertisement Rachel K. Hindery is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press. Chelsea Clinton says hello to students at Central School in Glencoe on April 6, 2017. (Karie Angell Luc / Pioneer Press) Early in his second term, President Ronald Reagan visited a war cemetery in Germany. Chelsea Clinton, 5 at the time, wrote to the White House asking Reagan not to go because Nazi soldiers were buried there. Clinton never received a response, and eight years later, when her father became president in 1993, she told her parents of something she wanted when they moved into the White House. Advertisement "I want every child to get a letter back," Clinton told approximately 600 students at Central School in Glencoe on Thursday. Soon after that conversation, she said, her parents started an office on children's correspondence. Clinton, in the North Shore on a promotional tour for her book "It's Your World," told the fifth through eighth graders that it was important to make their views known and be a part of the community. Advertisement "I think it is really important to know that your voices are being heard," Clinton said. Clinton said she got the idea from the book, which is aimed at middle school students, from one that influenced her when she was about 10 years old - "50 Simple Things Kids Can Do To Save The Earth." "I wrote this in the hope that it would impact some kid in the same way "50 Things" meant to me," Clinton said. Clinton took questions from some of the 29 students who had formed a book club to read her book. She told one questioner that it was challenging growing up in the public eye. "One of the most difficult parts was the great disconnect between my lived reality with my parents, and the caricatures of them," she said. She called her family a "blessing" and she said she wanted to pass her good fortune along. "Those of us who have been blessed have a responsibility to expand our blessings to others," she said. Advertisement She encouraged students to get involved at all levels, specifically in their local community. That can lead to many paths, she said. "Often we don't know where we are going to wind up," she said. "You just have to start trying to solve the challenges in front of us." During her childhood, spent in both Little Rock, Ark., and Washington, D.C., she said her parents encouraged her to express her thoughts. "I was expected to have an opinion, but also make an argument about what I thought was wrong or right," she said. Clinton did not mention the 2016 election, in which her mother became the first female nominee of a major party and lost to Donald Trump, but said she is concerned about what she sees as a blur in the way information is processed today. "I hope we can get back to a place of 'here are the facts,' and then we all have our own opinions," she said. Advertisement Clinton is scheduled to attend a book signing at Winnetka's Book Stall Thursday night. District 35 Superintendent Catherine Wang said the Book Stall's management reached out to school district roughly six weeks ago about a possible Clinton visit, prompting students to form the book club. "I was impressed with the thoughts the kids had," Spanish teacher Dana Creer, a book club leader, said. "They asked genuine questions and they internalized them well." Daniel I. Dorfman is a freelancer for Pioneer Press. West School Principal David Rongey announced at the April 6 school board meeting that he will retire at the end of the 2020-2021 school year. (Daniel I. Dorfman / Pioneer Press) The Glencoe District 35 school board and the Glencoe Education Association the labor organization that represents the teachers - have agreed to a contract extension that will last through the 2021-2022 school year. At its April 6 meeting, the school board unanimously approved a four-year contract extension with the GEA, which also represents teacher associates. The current pact ran until the conclusion of the 2017-18 school year. Advertisement "The important thing is the collaborative process in which this was achieved, and the spirit in which everyone worked to achieve it. We couldn't be more thrilled with the result," school board president Gary Ruben said at the meeting. "It speaks to the culture here and the way things are done here in Glencoe, in terms of talking with each other and working things out." Jason Edelheit, District 35's director of finance and operations, said after the meeting that teachers will continue to receive 4.5 percent annual salary increases, as had been the case in the previous contract. He added that teacher associates will receive yearly hikes of between 3.5 and 4.5 percent. Moreover, if a teacher has announced he or she will retire within five years, the annual salary increases move to 6 percent. Advertisement Edelheit said the average salary of a District 35 teacher in 2017-18 will be $79,195.57. Karen Leeds, GEA co-president, wrote in an email following the meeting that her membership - which encompasses 130 teachers and the 44 teacher associates - also supported the pact unanimously. "The contract extension highlights and promotes the wonderful working relationships among the various stakeholders: GEA, Board of Education, and administration," Leeds wrote. The school board also unanimously approved a resolution supporting an inclusivity pledge that promises to stand against discrimination and expresses a desire for Glencoe to be a welcoming community. The inclusivity pledge was previously approved by Glencoe's village board of trustees and the Glencoe Park District commissioners. "It really fits beautifully with some of the initiatives in the schools," Superintendent Catherine Wang said. "We are talking about inclusivity and supporting all children, all needs, all differences. It is a beautiful match in what we are trying to accomplish." West School Principal David Rongey announced at the school board meeting he would be retiring at the end of the 2020-21 school year. "Working with 8 to 10 year olds, you can't have a bad day," Rongey said. "It's been my honor and privilege to serve this district." Rongey said he started as a teacher at West in 2000 and has been principal since 2006. Advertisement "He'll be a hard act to follow," Wang said. Meanwhile, South School Principal Kelly Zonghetti said before the meeting that she is scheduled to go on maternity leave on April 21. Amy Holaday, District 35's director of curriculum and instruction, said she would serve as principal at South for the remainder of the school year. Daniel I. Dorfman is a freelancer for Pioneer Press. Hinsdale Village President Thomas Cauley Jr. speaking at a public meeting about the possible widening of Interstate 294. (Chuck Fieldman / Pioneer Press) Hinsdale Village President Thomas Cauley, Jr. said his campaign to a third term taught him that residents are not satisfied with how the village maintains its streets. Cauley said he went door-to-door for four to five hours on four weekends prior to the election to meet residents and talk about village issues. The two most common concerns they had, he said, were the potential widening of Interstate 294 and the condition of the village roads. Advertisement Cauley did not need convincing the village needs to oppose the Illinois Tollway's widening plan through Hinsdale. Village officials have been helping residents organize to fight the expansion on multiple fronts and are attending tollway board meetings and arranging other meetings to express their objections face-to-face with the decision-makers. Advertisement But residents did persuade Cauley that the pace the village is fixing roads is too slow. "We should be doing it more aggressively," Cauley said. "They still think there are a lot of bad roads in Hinsdale." When Cauley was elected in 2009, he and the Village Board developed a plan to repair sewers and all the streets in poor condition over a 15-year time frame. Residents in 2010 also approved an additional 1 percent sales tax to fund the work. He believed in the "pay as you go" plan, spending about $8 million a year on infrastructure, rather than borrowing money to do more work in a shorter time frame, Cauley said. Although less noticeable to residents, installing separate stormwater and sanitary sewers was a high priority for the village per an agreement with the Flagg Creek Water Reclamation District. "We did a lot of sewer work," Cauley said. "That is very expensive." Logically, installing underground sewers preceded rebuilding or paving the streets above them. Cauley said when he campaigned in neighborhoods, he carried the schedule for roadwork with him. If a homeowner complained about how rutted or deteriorated his street was, Cauley said most often he could show the resident the street was included in the master infrastructure plan, but in some cases it might not be repaired until 2022. Advertisement Residents told him four or five years was too long to wait, Cauley said. Cauley was persuaded the plan should be reassessed. He said he will talk to the village staff and board members about borrowing funds and using a combination of bonds and village revenues to accelerate the street repair schedule. "I'm not talking about doing anything reckless," Cauley said. His election to a third term is unprecedented, but Cauley already was the first person to serve as village president for eight consecutive years. According to village records, E.P. Hind had four different stints as village president that totaled eight years, between 1878 and 1894. Cauley's victory over Trustee Laura LaPlaca also leaves the Hinsdale Village Board without a woman member for the first time since 1966. Advertisement But that does not mean women are not active in village government. Village manager Kathleen Gargano was hired during Cauley's tenure. And at least 15 women serve on the various village commissions and committees, such as the Hinsdale Plan Commission and the Board of Fire and Police Commissioners, which are appointed positions. Serving on a committee or a commission is not a prerequisite to running for election to the Village Board. Cauley himself did not serve on a village commission before he ran for the Village Board in 2007. But it provides good training Cauley said. Anyone who is interested in applying for a seat on a village commission, should send their resume to tcauley@villageofhinsdale.org. kfornek@pioneerlocal.com Twitter @kfdoings Here is the Chattanooga Business Calendar for April 10-14: Tuesday, April 11 Hixson Chamber Council Community Coffee 8-9 a.m. Mathnasium of Hixson: 5928 Hixson Pike, #1B Join the Hixson Council for their monthly coffee and networking, hosted by Mathnasium of Hixson. Tuesday, April 11 Create a Facebook Business Page Workshop 10:45 a.m. - Noon BrightBridge Womens Business Center: 535 Chestnut St. Suite 161 When you leave class, you will have a Facebook business page. Required material is a laptop computer and personal Facebook page (if you need a laptop let us know at least 3 days in advance). This is a workshop developed and delivered by an e-commerce seller; not a Facebook employee. As such the views or opinions expressed are those of the instructor. Reserve your free seat at brightbridgewbc.org/event/createfbpage4-11/. April 11 Women Owned Small Business Government Contracting Workshop 1-2:30 p.m. INCubator: 100 Cherokee Blvd. Topics: Overview of the WOSB Program WOSB Program Repository Eligibility Requirements Speaker: Jacqueline Merritt, SBA Register for your free seat at clients.tsbdc.org/workshop.aspx?ekey=30370019. April 11 Ribbon Cutting for Summit Physical Therapy 4:30-5 p.m. Summit Physical Therapy: 281 N. Lyerly St. Wednesday, April 12 midTown Chamber Council Meeting 11:45 a.m.-1 p.m. Family Justice Center: 5705 Uptain Rd. Speaker: Jed Mescon $10 Wednesday, April 12 Social Media 101 3:305 p.m. INCubator: 100 Cherokee Blvd. TSBDC partners with 3E Social to deliver a seminar and discussion on how to utilize social media for your business. Includes a brief overview of various social media platforms, their respective audiences and posting best practices on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and more. Speaker: Lisa Brown, 3E Social Register for your free spot at clients.tsbdc.org/workshop.aspx?ekey=30360231. Thursday, April 13 Small Business Orientation: Morning Course 11:30a.m.1 p.m. INCubator: 100 Cherokee Blvd. This seminar will address key topics of interest for individuals considering starting a business. Topics include business entity options and tax registration, the importance of business planning, financing options and the extensive network of resources through the TSBDC. Participants receive a Start Up packet containing vital phone numbers and addresses for getting established within State and Federal regulations. Register for the morning course at clients.tsbdc.org/workshop.aspx?ekey=30360129. Thursday, April 13 Southside Chamber Council Meeting Noon-1 p.m. green|spaces: 63 E Main St. Speaker: Santosh Sankar, Dynamo $10 Thursday, April 13 Small Business Orientation: Evening Course 5:307 p.m. INCubator: 100 Cherokee Blvd. This seminar will address key topics of interest for individuals considering starting a business. Topics such as business entity options and tax registration, the importance of business planning, financing options and the extensive network of resources through the TSBDC. Register for the evening course: https://clients.tsbdc.org/workshop.aspx?ekey=30360158 Friday, April 14 East Brainerd Chamber Council Coffee 8:30-9:30 a.m. Chicken Salad Chick: 1820 Gunbarrel Rd. Suite 200 Join our East Brainerd Council for their monthly coffee on the second Friday of every month. Two men, one from Antioch and the other from Mundelein, are scheduled to appear in Lake County Circuit Court later this month on charges related to drugs and a stolen gun following a disturbance call to police this week near downtown Antioch. Derrick L Copeland, 31, of the 400 block of Filweber Court in Antioch, and Richard C Davis, 27, of the 2600 block of North Violet Drive in Mundelein, were both arrested Wednesday at 3:39 a.m. after police were called for a possible disturbance in the 400 block of Filweber Court, according to Sgt. Geoff Guttschow, commander of operations for the Antioch Police Department. Advertisement Police first made contact with Copeland and found he was in possession of a number of individual packages of marijuana, and then Davis was discovered hiding between a vehicle and fence, and he was found to be in possession of packets of suspected cocaine and marijuana, Guttschow said. Police also found a loaded .40 caliber handgun that police later determined had been reported stolen, Guttschow said. Davis was being held Friday in Lake County Jail in lieu of $250,000 bail on charges of unlawful possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver, unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon, and a Class X felony of armed violence, which is punishable for up to 30 years in jail if convicted, according to Guttschow. Advertisement Copeland was being held in lieu of $75,000 bail on charges of unlawful possession of cannabis with intent to deliver, a Class 4 felony punishable by up to three years in prison if convicted, according to police. Both are scheduled to appear in Lake County Circuit Court April 26. fabderholden@tribpub.com Twitter @abderholden Citing "extraordinary circumstances" in the case, a Lake County judge sentenced a Wauconda man to periodic imprisonment and probation Thursday in the death of a pedestrian who was struck by the man's car and killed last May in Volo. Brandon Stang, 23, had previously pleaded guilty to a single count of aggravated DUI involving marijuana under a negotiated plea deal. Assistant State's Attorney Dan Brown said that in exchange for the guilty plea, lesser charges of reckless homicide and two other counts of aggravated DUI related to the same incident were dropped by the state. Advertisement Stang had still faced the possibility of three to 14 years in prison but was also eligible for a probationary sentence under state statute because Lake County Circuit Judge James Booras found extraordinary circumstances present in the case. Stang was sentenced to 36 months of probation, including 18 months of work release during which he will be allowed to leave for work, educational purposes and treatment. Booras also said Stang could have no contact with the victim's family, must not use drugs or alcohol or be in the presence of anyone doing so, and must complete 200 hours of community service. Advertisement Booras also ordered Stang to attend a victim-impact panel and comply with any other conditions recommended by probation officials. Brown had asked for a five-year prison sentence for Stang, while defense attorney Greg Nikitas requested a probationary sentence. Stang was driving a Ford Mustang southbound on Route 12 near Route 120 just after 2:30 a.m. May 5, 2016, when he struck Stephanie V. Kostenko, 22, according to reports from the Lake County sheriff's office. According to results of an investigation by the sheriff's office, Kostenko, of Lake Zurich, was crossing Route 12 on foot when she was struck. She later died of her injuries. Authorities said Stang told investigators he had smoked marijuana about two hours prior to the crash. Blood tests revealed cannabis in his system. According to a coroner's report, Kostenko was legally drunk when she died and also had marijuana present in her system. Booras said he found no doubt that Stang's conduct caused great bodily harm, and eventually a death, but also questioned whether any driver could have avoided the collision. "I can't impose on the defendant superhuman ability (to avoid the collision) at 2:38 in the morning on a highway where the speed limits are fairly high," Booras said, although he also noted that the presence of cannabis in his system justified the charges and potential penalties faced by Stang. Brown argued that Stang's actions were mitigating factors but were not extraordinary, and that stopping after an accident, calling for help and then following bond conditions were ordinary actions under the circumstances. Advertisement We'll never be the same. Everything is viewed through a different lens. The victim's mother, Iriana Zagalsky Nikitas had argued that in addition to his actions at the scene of the crash, Stang took the incident very seriously and voluntarily enrolled for substance-abuse classes after the crash before he was required to do so, and was also extremely remorseful. "Everyone in the courtroom is very sad for the loss of a young woman who seemed like a fine person," Nikitas said after the sentence was handed down. "We really appreciate that the judge recognized who Brandon is." Nikitas also said he felt the sentence was appropriate "in light of the facts of the case." Brown had argued that the choices made by Stang, including getting behind the wheel instead of getting a ride from someone or staying where he was, "robbed the world of a girl who was going places." Brown declined to comment after the hearing on the circumstances leading up to the crash or what led to Kostenko's presence on the highway. Kostenko's mother, stepfather and a sister all gave victim-impact statements at the sentencing hearing Thursday regarding the devastation that the young woman's death caused the family. Advertisement The family members said she had been an honor student throughout high school and that she wanted to be an actuary and was getting ready to attend college in Florida before her death. "When I think of her, I always see that happy smile that can be seen in every photo of her," her stepfather, Boris Zagalsky, said. "I still think of her as here. She was always ready to help friends and family and was friendly to everyone." Zagalsky added, "We'll never be the same. Everything is viewed through a different lens." Her mother, Iriana Zagalsky, said, "Stephanie's dreams were big. She wanted to have a family and have kids." "It's been 11 months since that day, and I'm still waiting for my daughter to come," she said. Stang's parents also addressed the court, saying that he had changed and grown since the crash, basically eliminating his social life, concentrating on work and his ambitions to become a chef, and carefully observing his bond conditions. Advertisement "He's a good kid. He's a good boy," his mother, Cheryl Stang, said. Prior to closing arguments by the attorneys, Stang addressed the court and Kostenko's family. "I would like to say that I'm sorry," Stang said, adding that he thinks about Kostenko and her family every day and that, through his substance-abuse classes, he has resolved to try to help prevent such tragedies in the future. He said the woman's death will be "a darkness I have to live with the rest of my life." Stang had been freed from custody of the Lake County Jail after posting 10 percent of his $100,000 bail. He was taken into custody following the sentencing hearing. Booras said that if he meets the qualifications, Stang may be allowed to serve some or all of his periodic imprisonment sentence at home under electronic monitoring. Advertisement jrnewton@tribpub.com Twitter @jimnewton5 Grayslake North High School Spanish teacher Jim Murphy asks his students questions about the book they reading called "Patricia va a California" by Blaine Ray. (Emily K. Coleman / Lake County News-Sun) An expansion to the Grayslake Community High School District 127 language department seems to be catching on. Both high schools are set to add sections of German next year, bringing Grayslake North High School to enough sections for a full-time German teacher, said Tracey Landry, the district's director of curriculum and instruction. Advertisement This was the first school year that the 3,000-student district offered German in addition to French and Spanish, she said. "As our population grew, our world language offerings did not," Landry said. "As we became this dynamic, more global, modern school, it follows that we need to expand our language offerings." Advertisement Under the leadership of Superintendent Catherine Finger, who is set to retire this spring, Grayslake Community High School District 127 has focused on providing its students a window to the world through trips, exchange students, bringing in guest speakers and using technology to tap into classrooms around the world, district and school officials said. "International travel is a priority for us," said Jeff Schagrin, Grayslake North's associate principal for curriculum and instruction. "We have kids that have never been on an airplane before," Schagrin added later. "To go on these types of experiences, to take a kid to China, to take him to Xi'an some of these kids have only been to Chicago a few times." The language department has sponsored trips to Costa Rica, Peru and Spain and has a trip to the French-speaking part of Canada planned for the summer, said Valerie Padgett-Krause, world language chair at Grayslake North. The language department would eventually like to add full German exchanges where Grayslake students get to study abroad as well, but that takes a lot of planning, Padgett-Krause said. Grayslake North High School student Kaiyla Spencer answers a question about a book students are reading in her Spanish class. (Emily K. Coleman / Lake County News-Sun) The trips aren't just through the language department, though, Schagrin said. Every year, the schools have three or four major trips. Grayslake North Advanced Placement European History students recently traveled to France and Italy, and another trip through the school's Exploring World Cultures course to Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand is planned for the summer, he said. Each year, the curriculum for Exploring World Cultures changes, Schagrin said. Advertisement A team of teachers across subject areas government, culinary, science and English, depending on the country being studied develop the class and plan the trip, Landry said. A new scholarship created in Finger's name aims to help students afford to travel internationally, Landry said. Before that, the district "just did our best," Landry said. They facilitated fundraising efforts, partnered with other community groups to help high-need students, and started planning its trips two and sometimes even four years out to help families plan, Schagrin said. The trips can cost $2,000 to $4,000, depending on where they go, he said. About 11 percent of District 127 students are considered low-income, meaning they receive public aid or receive free- or reduced-price meals, according to Illinois Report Card data. Advertisement Landry also emphasized that the schools have "a variety of ways to get kids exposure to cross-curricular, multicultural experiences." Each high school typically takes two or three foreign students for an entire year in addition to students visiting for shorter periods, Schagrin said. I think students make meaning when they are deeply engaged in something and when they can connect to it. Tracey Landry, District 127 director of curriculum and instruction Guest speakers have also included a winner of "The Amazing Race" and a Holocaust survivor, Schagrin said. One geography class is using technology to talk to other classes in different countries. The curriculum is also designed to expose students to beliefs, culture, food and music from around the world, Landry said. These experiences and other cross-curricular offerings are important because they get students drawing from different subject areas and applying them in ways that are relevant and interesting, Schagrin said. The schools have built-in time to give teachers time to plan these opportunities. Schagrin pointed to another non-travel related experience where the math and government teachers teamed up to talk about what the Electoral College means and how polling numbers work. Advertisement "I think students make meaning when they are deeply engaged in something and when they can connect to it," Landry said. "When you're able to be immersed in something that is cross-curricular, that is multi-faceted, that kids can grab on to, the things that are of most interest to them you're only going to transfer what you learn if you've really connected to it and can apply it in a meaningful way." Jim Murphy, a Spanish teacher at Grayslake North High School, asks his students questions about the book they reading called "Patricia va a California." (Emily K. Coleman / Lake County News-Sun) When the district decided to add another language, the schools' language departments did some research; looked at area districts to see what languages were offered; and did a survey of current students in the program, the parents and community members and the incoming freshmen, Padgett-Krause said. Out of American sign language, Arabic, German, Italian, Latin and Mandarin, German was the No. 1 pick of District 127 students overall and No. 2 for the parents. The survey also provided a space for "other." Based on the research the department did, Padgett-Krause thought some of the draw might be Germany's global prevalence; the thousands of international exchanges sponsored by Germany; its place in health care, law and environmental science; and the size of the German economy and its businesses operations in the U.S. "It could open some doors for those fields," Padgett-Krause said. The number of people learning German as a foreign language grew between 2015 and 2010, according to a survey conducted every five years by the German Foreign Office and other institutions. The increase to 15.4 million students worldwide noted in 2015 was the first increase since 2000. Advertisement Padgett-Krause said she would love to see this sort of process continue where more languages are added to give students more options. "We need to respond to the needs of our community and respond to the needs of our students," Landry said. "That's what we do in all of our programs language, of course, included in that." emcoleman@tribpub.com Twitter @mekcoleman Fox Lake Fire Department personnel on the scene of a head-on collision Thursday at Route 120 and Wilson Road. April 6, 2017. Joe Shuman/For The Lake County News-Su (Joe Shuman / Chicago Tribune) One woman was in critical condition and her 16-year-old passenger in serious condition after a Thursday afternoon crash with a semi-tractor trailer truck on Route 120 near Wilson Road, an accident that shut down both roadways for an extended period of time. The crash occurred just before 2 p.m. when a 1998 Ford Contour driven by a 50-year-old woman from Lake Zurich was heading eastbound on Route 120, just west of Wilson Road, "drifted into the westbound lane," according to Sgt. Christopher Covelli of the Lake County Sheriff's Office. Advertisement The vehicle was struck head-on by a 2016 Freightliner semi pulling an empty trailer, reports said. The 64-year-old driver of the truck from St. Louis, Mo., received minor injuries and was treated at Centegra Northern Illinois Medical Center, McHenry, Covelli said. The woman had to be extricated from the vehicle and was transported by Flight for Life to Advocate Condell Medical Center, Libertyville, in critical condition. The passenger, a relative of the driver, was taken to the same hospital in serious condition, Covelli said. Advertisement "No citations have been issued and the crash is still under investigation," he said. The Lake County Sheriff's Office's Crash Investigations Unit was called in for the investigation, he said. fabderholden@tribpub.com Twitter @abderholden Mayor Wayne Motley and the Waukegan City Council discussed a potential deal involving city-owned land on Thursday, April 6, potentially including the former BRP site west of Municipal Beach. (Dan Moran / Lake County News-Sun) There are few details surrounding a potential sale of publicly owned land at the Waukegan waterfront that the City Council considered at a special session Thursday night and chose to hold over to a future meeting. Mayor Wayne Motley and the aldermen held a long executive session, closed to the public, to discuss an item on the agenda "to accept a letter of intent for the purchase of certain city-owned real estate." When they emerged from the private session, which is allowed for discussions such as real estate proposals, the council chose to hold over the agenda item for a later meeting. Advertisement Corporation Counsel Steve Martin said it was being tabled so he could further discuss the proposed contract with the buyer. Ald. Sam Cunningham, 1st, the city's mayor-elect, confirmed afterward that the land purchase involves Waukegan's Lake Michigan waterfront, which has been the subject of revitalization debates for years. Advertisement Cunningham said there were "some good things" involved with the deal "that we really like," but the aldermen "need a little bit more time" to consider it. Motley on Friday said the city has "someone who has shown interest in purchasing the lakefront" and that Waukegan officials "are vetting" the offer. Cunningham provided a business card for a company called Waterfront Investment Properties Group, with offices in Northbrook and St. Petersburg, Fla. An attempt to reach principal Eddy A. Dingman with the company was unsuccessful. Cunningham also gave contact information for Sheryl Fisher, a broker with Coldwell Banker Commercial, based in Northbrook. An attempt to reach Fisher was not immediately successful. Earlier on Thursday, Ald. Ann Taylor, 9th, said the aldermen didn't know any details about the deal before the special meeting. "We haven't been told anything about it," Taylor said prior to the session. Ald. David Villalobos, 4th, also said he hadn't any prior knowledge of the deal before Thursday's meeting. The city could not immediately provide a description of all the property it owns at the waterfront, asking Friday that a Freedom of Information Act request be filed to access the information and advising such a request could likely not be fulfilled Friday. Advertisement The city owns several notable parcels. One is the 11-acre former Bombardier Recreational Products site immediately west of Waukegan Municipal Beach, where a vacant building was demolished following a close City Council vote last year. Another is the 36-acre former North Shore Gas property immediately to the north of the BRP site. And there is property north of Municipal Beach that the city acquired in 2005, formerly home to Outboard Marine Corp.'s 1 million-square-foot facility and now an Environmental Protection Agency Superfund cleanup site. The city also owns land south of Waukegan Harbor, part of which is included in the city's plan to revitalize the South Sheridan neighborhood, said Ald. Lisa May, 7th. lhammill@tribpub.com Twitter @lucashammill Wayne Motley made nearly $133,600 last year as the mayor of Waukegan, according to the Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund, so when he leaves office next month, he'll take a pay cut. But between the two pensions he'll collect, based on his service as mayor and city clerk and for the Waukegan Police Department, Motley, 66, will still make nearly six figures next year, according to a News-Sun analysis. Advertisement The analysis is conservative because the Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund does not calculate or estimate pensions for its members until they retire, and Motley is still collecting a paycheck until Ald. Sam Cunningham, 1st, replaces him in May. Cunningham defeated Ald. Lisa May, 7th, in a tightly contested mayoral election this week after topping Motley in the Democratic primary. The News-Sun analysis used the 15 full years Motley served as clerk and mayor, from 2002 to 2016. It did not use the partial years Motley served in 2001 the year he took office as clerk and in 2017 because the Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund has not yet released the exact number of months and days that will count toward his pension. Motley's salary increases in 2015 and 2016, plus the extra months of service in 2001 and 2017, suggest his actual pension would be slightly larger than the one calculated by the News-Sun. Advertisement Motley's retirement as mayor comes during an era in Illinois when municipalities across the state, and politicians in Springfield, are grappling with rising pension costs, which threaten the long-term viability of government services. The News-Sun estimate shows Motley, under the conditions previously described, would earn nearly $32,100 in the first year after leaving office. The pension gives Motley an annual raise of 3 percent, based on the original amount, which would be about $963 in the analysis. Motley also collects a police pension that is operated by the city. He served as an officer from 1975 to 2001, before he was sworn in as clerk. His salary was about $62,000, city records show. He said in a previous interview he served in "every division" at the department, eventually becoming sergeant in 1993. Motley is set to earn $64,643.76 from the police pension this year, according to Waukegan records. His annual increases get larger every year. City records show that in 2044, Motley would earn almost $143,600 from the police pension alone, along with the $58,090 he'd earn from the Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund under the News-Sun analysis. When Motley is set to turn 75 in 2025, he would earn nearly $82,000 from the police pension and almost $39,800 from the Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund. Motley was elected mayor in 2013, defeating incumbent Mayor Robert Sabonjian and independent candidate Susana Figueroa in the general election. He beat Cunningham and state Sen. Terry Link in that year's Democratic primary. Motley declined comment. lhammill@tribpub.com Advertisement Twitter @lucashammill Sam Cunningham talks to a potential voter during what would turn out to be a successful run for mayor of Waukegan. (Luke Hammill / Lake County News-Sun) A look back at an election whose existence took more than one person in Lake County completely by surprise: It is time to take back some of the things - if not all of them that we've been saying about election-day turnout in Waukegan. Tuesday's contest between Sam Cunningham and Lisa May drew the largest turnout for a mayoral election since 2003, reversing a concerning trend of declining participation by Waukegan voters. Advertisement Not that 8,956 combined votes is a lot in a city of 90,000 people, but it was more than the 6,493 that turned out for Wayne Motley, Robert Sabonjian and Susana Figueroa in 2013; the 7,549 that showed up for Sabonjian, Richard Hyde and Greg Flesher in 2009; and the 8,221 voting for either Hyde or then-Republican Larry TenPas in 2005. In his fourth bid for mayor, Cunningham and the Waukegan Democratic Organization that backed him followed the first rule of politics: Get your voters to the polls. Advertisement His overall 290-vote plurality for the record, all these returns are still technically unofficial until certified, and late-arriving votes by mail and provisional votes were not included as of Friday morning was driven by impressive margins of victory in precincts on the city's south side in general and in his 1st Ward in particular. At Precinct 371 inside Robert Abbott Middle School on Washington Street, Cunningham took 145 votes to May's 42. At 375 inside Jesus Name Apostolic Church on South Genesee Street, his margin was 186 to 29. And at 374, also inside Jesus Name, Cunningham was up 276 to 40. All told, the 1st Ward delivered a nearly 500-vote plurality for Cunningham on the city's southeast side. Cunningham's overall total in his home ward on Tuesday was nearly twice what he earned in his last contested race for alderman in 2011. It was also 300-plus more votes than the ward delivered for him in the 2013 Democratic mayoral primary. However he got more supporters to the polls, he did it. May didn't exactly do badly in her 7th Ward home base. In Precinct 355 inside the Jane Addams Center in Bowen Park, she won the largest margin of the night by either candidate 362 to 85. Turnout in that precinct alone was 49 percent, the highest of any in the city. But Cunningham did OK in other 7th Ward precincts and actually won two of the nine in that north side ward, once again speaking to either his turnout apparatus or that of Waukegan Democrats. Of course, the cloud hanging over the race in the closing week or so was the cartoonishly negative mailers targeting May, including one linking her to Donald Trump and another that literally dressed her up in an engineer's costume, using graphic design that might have earned a Participant ribbon at a third-grade art contest. Maybe even fourth grade. Was stuff like that beneath the dignity of Waukegan voters? Did Cunningham really need it to win? Whatever your arguments, it can be counter-argued that stuff like that works, and he won. Advertisement We can all imagine the tongues that were bitten through when May stepped before her supporters on election night to issue a concession speech, a video of which was posted on her campaign's Facebook page. "Congratulations to Sam Cunningham," she began, and when there was some murmuring that sounded like sour grapes, May held up a finger and said, "shh, no we stay high. Always." Lake County News Sun Twice-weekly News updates from Lake County delivered every Monday and Wednesday > While the rest of the speech was magnanimous, May did add that "we ran a campaign on the issues, based on facts without lies or name-calling." Cold comfort to anyone who holds out hope for America's political discourse rising above its current Romper Room status. Meanwhile, in North Chicago, incumbent Leon Rockingham Jr. took 703 votes running only against write-in candidates, and he cruised to another term. Down the ballot, Paula Carballido, also facing opposition from a write-in candidate in this case, Kathy January took exactly one vote on election day, one via early voting and one by mail. Think write-in campaigns don't matter? Carballido's total of three ballot-box votes were overcome later in the week when write-in ballots were counted and January came in with five. Speaking of "every vote counts," election-day totals showed how tight things can get at the local level: a Lindenhurst trustee race was decided by 18 votes; a Grass Lake School Board seat by 16; a Lakemoor trustee race by 12; a North Barrington trustee race by eight; a Big Hollow School Board seat by six; and a Barrington Hills trustee race by two. Advertisement Because we're waiting for late-arriving votes by mail and considering so many Illinois residents winter in the Sunshine State, looks like a handful of votes from Florida may once again decide the fate of the nation, or at least this corner of it. Let's keep that in mind the next time we sit on the sidelines during one of those boring off-year elections. danmoran@tribpub.com Twitter@NewsSunDanMoran green|spaces and Glass House Collective are bringing an interactive-light project called The Pool, created by sculpture artist Jen Lewin, to neighborhoods Highland Park, East Chattanooga, and East Lake April 21-30. The installation here will be featured by the world-renowned artist as a global showcase project. The Pool will be on display in the following neighborhoods on the following days: April 21-23 - East Chattanooga near Glass House April 25-26 - Highland Park Commons April 28-30 - East Lake Park EPB will be in each neighborhood sponsoring a light bulb exchange. Residents may bring an old incandescent light bulb and exchange it for a free LED bulb while supplies last. "It costs over $70 more annually per bulb to power an incandescent light bulb than to power an LED light bulb, says Sam Fulbright, Empower coordinator. With an easy swap residents can save on their electric bills. Each neighborhood has created their own multi-day festivals to celebrate The Pool. Music and dance performances, physical activities, and sideline activities (such as art projects for kids), and more are all possibilities for the types of experiences that each neighborhood has worked to create. Activities throughout The Pools entire stay in Chattanooga include: April 21 23 - East Chatt Highlight Festival 1901 Roanoke Ave. near Glass Street Presented by green|spaces, Empower and Glass House Collective April 21, 7:30-10:30 p.m.: Lyrical Lights: Hip-Hop and Spoken Word April 22, 3-10:30 p.m.: 3rd Annual Gospel on Glass Featuring Marcellus Barns with Unity Performing Arts Foundation. DJ LV starting at 7:30 p.m. April 23, 3-10:30 p.m. Family Friendly Picnic with bounce houses, food trucks and DJ LV April 25 and 26 - Highland Park Festival of Lights Highland Park Commons Presented by green|spaces and Empower April 25, 7:30-10:30 p.m. Local Showcase with Music and Activities featuring Young, Black and Gifted April 26, 7:30-10:30 p.m. Music By DJ Flux308 April 28-30 Book Fiesta Weekend East Lake Park Presented by green|spaces, Empower, ELLA and Expression Engine April 28, 7:30-10:30 p.m. Performances by Expression Engine and Seaux Chill April 29, 2-10:30 p.m. Book Fiesta Music, games and family activities presented by ELLA Live DJ starting at 7:30 p.m. April 30, 7:30-10:30 p.m. El Fin Closing night with open play and music We are very excited to be a part of the Chattanooga community and especially these neighborhoods, said artist Jen Lewin. In the 10 years we have been traveling the world with this installation, weve never had the opportunity to work with organizations like green|spaces and Glass House Collective and get deep into the communities and really interact with neighborhoods. Ms. Lewin is also collaborating with CGLA, Hardy Elementary School, and Expression Engine and working with students there to add a new layer of engagement with the community. This will allow for the students to put their hands on the technology. Students have had the opportunity to critically think through design and ideas and come to a majority vote and actually see their vote matter and come to life, said Niki Lewis of Glass House Collective who has been working with students from Hardy Elementary on designing a color show for their neighborhoods installation. This is empowerment through art! Made up of 40,000 LEDs on 106 computer-powered 3-foot discs arranged in concentric circles, the piece activates when someone steps on the pads, setting in motion colored light effects. Dance on a pad, and it will create hula-hoop swirls around you. Sprint from pad to pad and ribbons of light will trail you. Step on certain discs and the entire piece will change color. Its meant for people of all ages to play and allows multiple users to collaboratively create patterns of shifting colors and light. People think about energy through light and since we are now in our second year of the Empower program, we wanted to have a fun, interactive, educational experience in the neighborhoods where we are helping residents save money on their energy bills, said Dawn Hjelseth, development director for green|spaces. We feel The Pool represents bringing a community together - pooling people together to create a really amazing experience. We cant wait to see what ideas each neighborhood has to make The Pool experience unique to their own community. The Pool in Chattanooga is made possible by green|spaces and Glass House Collective along with other generous sponsors and supporters including Lyndhurst Foundation, Public Art Chattanooga, EPB, ArtsBuild, Subaru, and S&H Trucking. Harvest Bible Chapel in Naperville and its satellite campuses in North Aurora and Bolingbrook will officially change its collective name to Highpoint Church on Easter Sunday. This mocked-up photo shows the Naperville church as it will look with its new sign. (Harvest Bible Chapel / HANDOUT) Same church, new name. That's the tag line for Highpoint Church, soon to be the church formerly known as Harvest Bible Chapel of Naperville. On Easter Sunday, the church and its satellite campuses in Bolingbrook and North Aurora will shed the Harvest name and adopt their new identity. Advertisement Easter was selected as a symbolic day for the change because it's the high point of the Christian calendar, the day on which followers celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, church communications director Michelle Visk said. The new name includes a full rebranding of the church, including new logos, color scheme, website and publications. It will maintain its same mission though, she said. Advertisement Visk said the name change has been a "long time coming." When the church formed in 2000, it was the first one planned by Rolling Meadows-based Harvest Bible Chapel. But now there are multiple Harvest campuses across the Chicago area and Visk said it's confusing for people unfamiliar with the different churches. Harvest Naperville and its two satellite campuses make up one entity with its own pastor, she said. Sometimes people would come to the church thinking it was one of the campuses associated with the Rolling Meadows church and its pastor, James MacDonald. "What ended up happening, people would come to our church and be confused about not seeing Pastor James, or people would go to one of the other churches expecting to see our pastor," Visk said. "This is a move to differentiate ourselves, not disassociate ourselves, with the parent church in Rolling Meadows." With three campuses of their own, Ron Zappia, lead pastor at the Naperville church, said the name change was simply for identity purposes, as a way to distinguish themselves from the campuses led by MacDonald. The name Highpoint was chosen for several reasons. Not only is the church located on High Point Drive, but early in his career, Zappia once led a youth ministry called High Point through the parent church in Rolling Meadows. He also has a radio ministry called High Point. Although the church is dropping the well-known Harvest brand, Zappia said the congregation, which includes about 3,000 members and regular attendees, has responded approvingly. "They understand why we're making the change and it's being well received," he said. "As we seek out own identity, we want people to experience a high point in their faith and spiritual journey as they elevate their faith. We help people believe in Jesus, belong to Jesus and become like Jesus." Advertisement The church has put a FAQ page on its website to provide information about the name change, Visk said. Alex Keown is a freelance reporter for the Naperville Sun. One-hundred years can seem like a long time, especially when you think of all the events that end up crammed into those years. I've always thought it was remarkable, for example, that a man walked on the moon only 66 years after the Wright brothers made their first flight on the Outer Banks. One-hundred and three years ago, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife were visiting the city of Sarajevo, the capital of the Austro-Hungarian province of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Their motorcade was attacked with a hand grenade, which badly damaged the car behind them. Advertisement Later, while driving to visit the victims at the hospital, one of the cars stalled. By chance, a young ideologue named Gavrilo Princip, who was a member of a unification society, was sitting in a cafe across the street. He shot the archduke and his wife, springing the trap that became World War I. America stayed out of the war for two years. However, unrestricted submarine warfare on American shipping, and an intercepted communication in which Germany promised Mexico it would get its American territories back if it joined the war, changed President Wilson's mind. Advertisement Congress declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917. Three days later, 100 years ago this weekend, Naperville men, reportedly 16 of the first 90 to enlist, entered the war. You can find a list of all of the Napervillians who eventually served in WWI at the DuPage County Genealogical Society, http://dcgs.org/cpage.php?pt=33. Illinois gave more than 351,000 men to the Army and the Navy during that war. By the time it ended, more than 5,000 of them had given their lives. You can find a list of the seven local men who were killed on a plaque attached to a memorial rock in Burlington Square Park, just south of the downtown Metra station. The inscription on that plaque reads: "TO HONOR THE MEMORY OF THE NAPERVILLE BOYS WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES IN THE WAR OF 1914-1918." Next to it is a statue, The Spirit of the American Doughboy, to perpetuate the memory of the veterans of that war. The pressed copper statue was created in 1920 by Spencer, Ind., native Ernest Moore "Dick" Viquesney, a sculptor who, like his father Alfred, was also a stonecutter. Viquesney designed the sculpture while working for a monument company in Americus, Ga. Dedicated locally May 31, 1926, and rededicated May 25, 2003, after extensive restoration, the statue is probably one of the most widely viewed in the nation, being situated in more than 135 parks across the nation. Viquesney called the Doughboy his greatest and most sincere effort. Five years later, Viquesney created a tribute to the Navy, also of stamped copper, entitled The Spirit of the American Navy. Unfortunately by that time memories of the war were fading, and the cheerful, less heroic-looking sailor sold poorly. Only eight statues of the sailor are known to exist. On Nov. 18, 2012, an expert in Oxnard, Calif., received a Google alert that one of the sailor statues had been seen in the Brass Anchor Ship Store in Pentwater, Mich., on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. Since he had known of Naperville's "Save Our Doughboy" restoration project a decade earlier, he emailed a local historian, who is on the Century Walk committee. Century Walk purchased the statue in April, 2013, for $15,500, beating representatives from Spencer, Ind., by less than a month. Advertisement It was dedicated Oct. 13, 2013, the 238th birthday of the U. S. Navy, and resides in Burlington Square, across from the Doughboy statue. This weekend would seem to be a good time to visit the park and remind ourselves of all the things that have happened in those 100 years. bill.mego@sbcglobal.net The new Habitat for Humanity ReStore for Ooltewah/Apison will have a grand opening on April 21. It is located in a former Winn-Dixie at 9408 Apison Pike. It will be a much larger version of the original ReStore still operating near the corner of Main Street and Holtzclaw Avenue. Senator Lamar Alexander on Friday co-sponsored Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Senator Richard Burrs (R-N.C.) legislation to permanently reauthorize and fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF). Over the past 50 years, the LWCF has provided Tennessee approximately $73 million for the state grant program and $110 million for federal land acquisition within the state, he said. The Land and Water Conservation Fund has played a large role in protecting Tennessees outdoors for over 50 years. In 2015, funding from the Land and Water Conservation Fund helped complete efforts to conserve a nearly 10,000 acre tract of land, known as Rocky Fork, in the Cherokee National Forest in East Tennessee, Senator Alexander said. In total, the LWCF has provided $189 million to conservation and outdoor recreation efforts in Tennessee, and I cosponsored this legislation because it will help preserve our states beautiful land, water resources and recreation areas so future generations have the same opportunities to enjoy them as we have. In the 114th Congress, Senator Alexander co-sponsored Senator Burrs legislation to permanently reauthorize the Land and Water Conservation Fund. In 2015, Senator Alexander voted for the Senates bipartisan energy bill, which would have also permanently reauthorized the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Senator Alexander also signed letters to Senate leadership requesting the Senate make permanently reauthorizing and fully funding the Land and Water Conservation Fund a priority. The Land and Water Conservation Fund was created to help preserve, develop and maintain access to outdoor recreation across the United States. The LWCF receives nearly all of its revenue from offshore oil and gas drilling and other activities that deplete natural resources. This revenue is then used to provide grants to states and funds conservation efforts by the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service and the Forest Service. Over the past five decades, the LWCF has provided a total of $189 million for Tennessee conservation and outdoor recreation, including the following state and federal land acquisition projects: 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. Harsher Sentencing Guidelines For Gun Offenders Clears IL Senate Amid Criticism By Stephen Gossett in News on Apr 7, 2017 4:23PM Getty Images A bill heavily lobbied by the Chicago Police Department that would create more stringent sentencing guidelines against repeat gun offenders has cleared a major legislative hurdle. The somewhat contentious bill cleared the Senate on Thursday by a vote of 35 to 9. Under the parameters of the bill, which was proposed by Chicago Democratic Sen. Kwame Raoul, judges' sentencing guidelines would jump from the three to 14 years for someone caught more than once with an illegal gun to seven to 14 years. At the same time, judges would be allowed to veer from the guidelines if they can illustrate a reason. Chicago top cop Eddie Johnson was in Springfield early last month pushing hard for the legislation, which passed the Senate this week in a revised form. It only eeked out committee in March, 6-5, despite high-profile support from other Chicago officials, including Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Raoul praised the vote, but the bill is still not without controversy. Opposition from left-leaning lawmakers some criminal-justice experts persisted even as the bill advanced. Democratic Sen. Jackie Collins, of Chicago, said, via NPR: "Locking up more people is not the solution to gun violence. What is needed is economic development, police reform, and stopping the flow of illegal guns in communities ravaged by deep concentrations of poverty and hopelessness." And even though judges technically have a way out of the harsher range, the bill could still lead to higher prison populations. It means that if you are looking at a presumed sentence of seven to 14 years, you are incredibly motivated to plead guilty to an offense that carries a lower sentence, even if you would otherwise defeat the charge," Stephanie Kollmann, policy director at the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern, told Chicago magazine last month. Simultaneously, the bill contains several measures that spring from a bipartisan effort to reduce mass incarceration, including diminished "drug-free" zones. But in the face of opposition from Gov. Rauner's office and law enforcement, the revised version that passed the Senate chamber also removed language that allowed for some more lenient drug punishment. "Police contended drug sales fuel gun crimes, and Republicans said decreasing prison time for convicted dealers would send the wrong message as a heroin epidemic grips the suburbs," the Tribune reports. You Can Protest The Bombing Of Syria Tonight At Trump Tower By Rachel Cromidas in News on Apr 7, 2017 3:23PM Photo: Tyler LaRiviere If you saw the news of President Donald Trump's surprise decision to fire dozens of missiles at a Syrian airfield Thursday night in response to a chemical weapon attack on Syrian civilians and thought, what can I do? one group of activists has an answer: a protest of the Syrian bombing outside River North's Trump International Hotel and Tower. The ANSWER Coalition (which stands for Act Now To Stop War & End Racism) is organizing the protest alongside other national protests slated for Friday in response to the decision. The Facebook event, thrown together Thursday night, has nearly 400 RSVPs as of Friday morning. Organizers write that the point of the protest is to "resist war" and call attention to the ways history could repeat itself if the U.S. deepens its military actions in the Middle East. The protest is scheduled for 5 to 7 p.m. According to the event post: Our weekly round up of other news affecting foreign investors throughout Asia: Podcast: Talking ASEAN Episode 1 FDI Opportunities in ASEAN, a Look Ahead for 2017 In the first-ever episode of the Talking ASEAN podcast series, Dezan Shira & Associates Dustin Daugherty and Max Brown provide a country-by-country prediction of ASEANs foreign investment future. Business Branding versus Economic Reforms: An Updated View of Modis India The regulatory landscape in India is changing with a concentrated effort on improving the ease of doing business. In this article, we break down the factors shaping Indias current business environment, identify major reforms passed, and examine the impact of growing state-based reforms. Setting Up Bookkeeping and Accounting Systems in Russia Foreign invested companies often encounter administration difficulties when first establishing operations in Russia, as the local reporting requirements differ from those in their home country. Reporting back to head office must still be provided in standard corporate protocols, while local mechanisms must also be adopted to be in compliance with Russian laws. Financing Chinas One Belt, One Road: US$8 Trillion in Capital Requirements A common question when it comes to financial assessments of Chinas huge Silk Road plans is how to finance the entire initiative. The anticipated expenditure estimates suggest a cumulative investment over an indefinite timescale variously put at between US$4 trillion to US$8 trillion. Managing Payroll in Vietnam As a greater amount of foreign companies establish a business in Vietnam, a thorough knowledge of the countrys salary structure is vital to operate efficiently and to improve staff retention. 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. By Alexander Chipman Koty Chinas toy industry posted strong growth in 2016, countering recent trends in Chinas light industry sector. While Chinas total exports dropped by 7.7 percent and imports by 5.5 percent in 2016, toy exports rose by 9.5 percent and imports by 23 percent. Although lower cost manufacturing locations in India and Vietnam have attracted investor attention, Chinas toy industry has been performing well due to a shift in the countrys burgeoning domestic consumer market and advanced manufacturing processes. Given the maturity of the industry, however, foreign investors must be strategic when entering the market to compete with established players. Market overview China is the worlds largest toy manufacturer, producing around 70 percent of the worlds supply. Total export value of toys reached US$33.7 billion in 2016. Of this, traditional toys, including dolls, puzzles, educational toys, etc., were valued at US$18.4 billion. Most of Chinas exported toys are produced by OEMs who manufacture for foreign brands. China has numerous toy industry clusters along its affluent east coast. Guangdong province alone produces over half of the worlds toys, with the cities of Dongguan, Foshan, Shantou, and Shenzhen leading the way. Other major toy production sites include the cities of Yiwu, Yunhe, and Wenzhou in Zhejiang province; Yangzhou in Jiangsu province; and Linyi and Qingdao in Shandong province. The city of Jiaxing in Zhejiang province has also emerged as a major toy producer after Danish toy manufacturing giant, LEGO, opened its first Asian plant there. The 160,000 square meter plant will eventually employ some 1,200 workers and produce 80 percent of LEGO products to be sold in Asia. Overall, there are more than 10,000 toy manufacturers in China. Collectively, they employ around six million workers. Both Chinese and foreign manufacturers have been investing heavily in automation and R&D to increase efficiency and offset rising labor costs. Additionally, the increasing popularity of more complex and higher-tech toys is fueling the need for more advanced technology and production methods, as well as higher skilled employees. RELATED: Pre-Investment and Entry Strategy Advisory from Dezan Shira & Associates Favorable demographics Low cost manufacturing initially drove Chinas toy industry, but the emergence of a massive domestic consumer market has fostered its continued growth. The China Toy & Juvenile Products Association projects that Chinas toy market will grow by 9.2 percent in 2017 to reach RMB 60.7 billion (US$8.8 billion). Chinas rapidly rising income levels have made the country a giant consumer across a growing number of industries. However, it is not only soaring wealth that is increasing toy consumption. The abolition of the one-child policy in late 2015 in favor of a two-child policy is expected to bring an influx of newborns, which should lead to increased demand for toys in the short to medium term. According to the Hong Kong Trade and Development Council, the two-child policy will lead to an additional 2.4 million babies born in China each year, contributing RMB 75 billion (US$11.5 billion) to the toy industry. In total, the National Health and Family Planning Commission expects the number of newborns to hover between 17.5 million and 21 million annually over the next five years. Currently, there are about 226 million children under the age of 14 in China. According to Chinese e-commerce website Baobei360, which concentrates on baby products, the average amount spent on toys per child under the age of 16 in China is less than US$30, compared to over US$200 in the US. This suggests that there is still significant growth potential in toy spending per child, particularly given that Chinese parents have consistently shown a willingness to invest heavily in their children. Despite the implementation of the two-child policy, many families in the wealthier first-tier cities do not plan on having a second child, largely due to the high cost of living. For example, only 10 percent of eligible couples in Beijing said they would take advantage of the two-child policy. Rather, it is Chinas less developed, but increasingly affluent lower tier cities where the birth rate is expected to be higher. Subsector opportunities Given the industrys growth potential, the competition is intense, both in term of cost and innovation. Traditionally, foreign brands dominate the higher end of the market, while domestic brands control the lower to middle end of the market. Electronic toys that are more interactive than traditional toys have strong growth potential. This is true for both conventional toys, like action figures, as well as experimental products, such as virtual reality and intelligent toys. Toys that are both interactive and educational are a particularly popular subsector, especially among parents. Plush toys that depict cartoon characters are popular both among children and adults of all ages, and are often used for decorative purposes. Although homegrown Chinese cartoon characters are slowly gaining prominence, this sector is still dominated by Japan and the US, and South Korea to a smaller extent. The popularity of foreign cartoon characters offers ample opportunities for licensing. However, despite improvements in IP protection, counterfeit products are still rife. Foreign investors should therefore make concerted IP protection efforts when entering the market. RELATED: Investing in Chinas Education Industry Industry outlook Although Chinas toy industry has outperformed light industry as a whole, it still faces challenges going forward. Intense competition among domestic toy manufacturers many of which compete on cost drives down margins. Meanwhile, land and labor costs continue to rise, meaning higher upfront investments into higher tech production methods is increasingly crucial. These factors will lead many to consider lower cost alternatives. However, as evidenced by LEGOs massive investment in Jiaxing, the sheer size and spending power of the Chinese market can offset many of these challenges. As is the case with many of Chinas traditional manufacturing sectors, investments into innovation and automation, and a recalibration towards the domestic consumer market are keys to take advantage of the Middle Kingdoms economic restructuring. About Us China Briefing is published by Asia Briefing, a subsidiary of Dezan Shira & Associates. We produce material for foreign investors throughout Asia, including ASEAN, India, Indonesia, Russia, the Silk Road, and Vietnam. For editorial matters please contact us here, and for a complimentary subscription to our products, please click here. Dezan Shira & Associates is a full service practice in China, providing business intelligence, due diligence, legal, tax, IT, HR, payroll, and advisory services throughout the China and Asian region. For assistance with China business issues or investments into China, please contact us at china@dezshira.com or visit us at www.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 China 2017 Dezan Shira & Associates Silk Road and OBOR investment brochure offers an introduction to the region and an overview of the services provided by the firm. It is Dezan Shiras mission to guide investors through the Silk Roads complex regulatory environment and assist with all aspects of establishing, maintaining and growing business operations in the region. A dormitory building in Taifu Town Middle School [Photo/Shanghai Daily] An autopsy is being conducted on a middle school student alleged to have fallen to his death on Saturday, with no evidence having been found so far to suggest he was physically abused, officials in Luzhou, Sichuan province, said at a news conference on Thursday. He Shaopeng, deputy mayor and public security bureau director of Luzhou, said the chest and belly of the student's body had been cut open and lacerations were found in his liver and spleen. The publicity department of Luxiana county under the administration of Luzhousaid on Wednesday that a 14-year-old male student of Taifu Middle School in Taifu town was found dead outside his dormitory building at about 6 a.m. on Saturday. The department stated that local police did not think the boy had been murdered after initial investigations, but this caused public outcry, with many people suspecting that the boy was beaten to death by five other students who are children of local officials. Mao Handong, a police officer with Luzhou public security bureau, said at the conference that none of the officials' children were proved to have been classmates with, or to have known of, the deceased student. Lyu Yugang, director of the Ministry of Education's basic education department, said at a conference in Beijing on Thursday that he felt sorry for the death of the student and had requested education departments in Sichuan to assist local authorities in discovering the cause of the student's death and reporting to the ministry in a timely manner. A video obtained by Lyu Qingfu, a reporter at Xinhua News Agency, showed the mother of the deceased student visiting a crematory and cutting clothes off her son's body to expose a large purple area on his back and wounds on both hands and elbows, suggesting that the boy might have been beaten to death. People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of China, said in an opinion piece on its WeChat account on Wednesday that local governments should release information in a timely and accurately manner in emergency situations. "Timely and accurate information, as well as an authoritative and convincing autopsy report, will help clarify facts and dispel rumors," it said. More eco-friendly ways of honoring the deceased are needed. [File Photo] More eco-friendly ways of honoring the deceased are needed as traditional tombstones swallow natural resources and degrade the ecological environment. The answer, says an expert, is a QR code tombstone. According to Wang Yanzhen, Vice-President of the China Funeral Association: "In modern times, people should commemorate their deceased loved ones in modern ways". "The internet provides impetus for the transformation and upgrading of funeral modes. Thus, the QR code tombstone can play the same role as a traditional one in helping people offer sacrifices to their departed ones," said Wang. Based on the QR codes and the mobile internet, the new type of tombstone uses digital data to store a biography, photographs and videos of the departed. By scanning the QR code, one can gain access to all these memorial materials, helping make a commemoration interactive and far more educational. Made of bronze and pottery, the QR code tombstone helps save land and protect the environment, Wang argued. He explained that China started to promote cremation in the1950s in order to save land. However, after reform and opening up, the resurgent idea of "Being laid to rest" prompted people to build cemeteries and bury the bone ash from cremation of their deceased relatives. However, cemeteries, especially large, luxury ones, not only occupy farmland and forestland but also consume wood, stones and cement, leading to resource waste and environment degradation. Therefore, ways of honoring the deceased should be changed. Statistics show that it takes 200,000 square meters of land to provide cemeteries for 70,000 dead people each year in Beijing alone. Without a change in thinking, the living would have to fight for land with the dead in the near future, Wang added. James Watson delivers a keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the 2017 Shenzhen International Precision Medicine Summit on April 6. [Photo/China.org.cn] Chinese universities, research institutes and companies are seeking synergy in their efforts to harness the nascent field of precision medicine that uses genomic, physiological and other data to tailor treatments to individuals in fighting deadly diseases. Around 1,000 representatives from Chinese and overseas academic and business circles gathered in the southern city of Shenzhen to discuss the prospects for the future of life sciences and healthcare industries at the 2017 International Precision Medicine Summit April 6-7. In a congratulatory letter to the event, Chen Zhu, former health minister and a famed biologist, said the emergence and rapid development of precision medicine offered new opportunities for healthcare development with strong hopes of being able to conquervarious deadly diseases. China has made precision medicine a focus of its 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020), and various companies are engaged in ambitious efforts to collect a vast trove of genetic and health data, researching how to identify cancer markers in the blood, and launch consumer technologies tapping the potentially lifesaving information. "Fresh advances in human genome sequencing brought about by breakthroughs in biochip and protein technology, as well as improvement in molecular imaging, surgery navigation, minimal invasive technology and big data analysis also provide new opportunities for precision medicine," Chen said. Speaking of treating deadly diseases, James Watson, the visiting Nobel laureate for his co-discovery of the DNA double helix, was disappointed that cancer mortality hasn't seen little change in the past 40 years, saying that "most cancer patients still suffer and die." "Given the wealth and all the devotion from society, China could be the No.1 or No.2 science-based nation in the world within the next 50 years if it can spend money wisely, create good institutions and encourage individual science projects," Dr. Watson told China.org.cn. He predicted the next great scientific discovery could be made in China if the country created a stronger pro-science environment to promote research. He calls the country to mobilize its huge strength that could lead to a quick and inexpensive cure for deadly diseases. The Nobel prize-winner was credited as the principal science consultant with the CheerLand Investment Group, which is strongly involving in promoting a bright future for precision medicine. The company has established an institute for precision medicine in partnership with Southern University of Science and Technology. You are here: Home Of China's more than 30 provincial localities, 27 have completed discipline inspections on the agencies they directly administer, the Communist Party of China's (CPC) disciplinary agency announced Friday. CPC organizations and departments directly administered by the provincial level authorities were inspected, according to a report posted on the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) website. The inspections focused on the implementation of central authority rules and regulations. Inspectors in Hubei Province, central China, were despatched to 300 Party organizations and found 12,567 pieces of evidence that led to the investigation of 4,362 officials. In Jilin Province, northeast China, inspectors reviewed the work of 242 Party organizations and found supporting evidence that linked 1,565 officials to violations. The current CPC Central Committee will finish inspecting agencies directly under its administration before the end of the first half of the year. All central and provincial level CPC committees are required to conduct inspections within their tenure of five years. The remaining provincial regions are expected to complete their inspections before new provincial Party committees are elected, according to the CCDI. Comparing it to "a physical examination" of the Party, the CCDI said inspection was a powerful weapon in the fight to resolve internal CPC problems. Finding problems is both a major task and the appraisal standard for inspections, the CCDI said, adding that the inspection was by no means "a gust of wind." Xu Qin was appointed vice governor and acting governor of north China's Hebei province on Friday. The decision was announced at a morning session of the standing committee of the provincial legislature, which also accepted the resignation of governor Zhang Qingwei. Xu, who was born in 1961, graduated from the Beijing Institute of Technology with a major in optoelectronics, according to an introduction from the official website of the Hebei provincial government. He had worked with the National Development and Reform Commission and earned a doctorate from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University before moving to south China's Shenzhen in 2008, where he served as the mayor from June 2010 to March 2017. Flash Representatives of Chinese companies doing business in Kyrgyzstan met here on Thursday with the country's First Deputy Prime Minister and co-chairman of the Kyrgyz-Chinese intergovernmental commission Muhammetkaly Abulgaziev. The meeting was also attended by Chinese Ambassador to Kyrgyzstan Xiao Qinghua, the Kyrgyz Government's press service reported. Xiao said China highly values good-neighborly relations with Kyrgyzstan and is committed to strengthening relations in all areas of cooperation. "We are ready to develop bilateral cooperation in all areas of the economy, particularly in the fields of agriculture, transport and infrastructure." "China is ready to discuss proposals for investment, implementation of joint major projects. China is interested in bringing our cooperation to a higher, new level. We are not going to stop on what has been achieved, we intend to boost our cooperation," the Ambassador said. Speaking at the meeting, Abulgaziev said that China is a friendly neighbor for Kyrgyzstan, a reliable partner. "Kyrgyzstan is open to foreign investors and is interested in attracting investments in the national economy of the country. We are trying to create favorable conditions for doing business in our country, including for foreign entrepreneurs. Our good-neighborly relations with China are based on mutual understanding and respect, and we intend to develop them, particularly in the economic sphere," Abulgaziev said. Representatives of Chinese companies talked about the achievements in the implementation of their projects in Kyrgyzstan, especially in the mining industry, energy and transport infrastructure. The two sides also discussed further joint work aimed at the effective development of partnership in the trade and economic sphere. The Kyrgyz official stressed Kyrgyzstan always supports investors and is open for their suggestions in improving the conditions for doing business in the country. Flash The U.S. missile strike that targeted a Syrian airbase in Homs province at dawn Friday left big damages, Homs governor Talal Barazi told Xinhua. The governor said that rescue operations have started at the facility over an hour and a half ago. He added that he thinks there are no big number of casualties, but huge damage to the airbase. Barazi said the airbase is located east of Homs, and was a key backer to the Syrian army in the war on the Islamic State (IS) group, noting that the airbase played a significant role in liberating the ancient city of Palmyra from IS. At dawn Friday, the U.S. struck the Syrian airbase in Homs with tens of Tomahawk missiles, a Syrian military source told Xinhua. The attack targeted the Shairat military base in the central city of Homs, the source added, asked not to be named. Meanwhile, the state TV also confirmed the attack, saying it was an "American aggression." The military source told Xinhua that the army general-command awaits the reports from Homs to precisely assess the damage. The attack marks the U.S. response to the alleged chemical attack on rebel-held town in northwestern Syria this week. Washington accused the Syrian army of being behind the toxic attack, an allegation totally denied by Damascus. Barazi accused the U.S. and Israel of being backers of the terrorist groups in Syria, and partners in destroying the infrastructure of the country. Meanwhile, Maher Ihsan, a Syrian political expert, said that the U.S. targeted the airbase, which contains air defense systems that fired at the Israeli warplanes that have infiltrated the Syrian airspace last month and carried out airstrikes on Syrian military positions. At the time, the Syrian army said it downed one of the Israeli jets, which it said crashed over Israel, a claim the Israelis denied, but didn't hide their resentment nonetheless. "I think that the whole chemical attack allegations were just a smoke screen for retaliating against the firing on downing of Israeli warplane," he said. Even Syria's Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said at a press conference Thursday that Israel is the only beneficiary of the allegations of the chemical attack, denying that the Syrian army fired toxic gas. The minister said the army struck an arm depot which belongs to the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front, adding that the depot contained chemical materials the terrorists were bringing in from Iraq. Activists of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said over 70 people were killed in Khan Sheikhoun by the toxic gas. A girl looks at high tech products of China's technology products at a mobile phone store in Bogota City, capital of Colombia, on May 21, 2015. (Xinhua/Jhon Paz) A Chinese court has ruled Samsung Electronics Co Ltd's Chinese subsidiaries must pay 80 million yuan ($11.6 million) to Huawei Technologies Co Ltd for patent infringement. The court ruling marks the Chinese smartphone maker's first victory in safeguarding its intellectual property in the local market. Huawei filed a lawsuit against Samsung's two units in China, one in Huizhou in Guangdong province and the other in Tianjin, as well as Samsung China Investment Co Ltd and two Fujian-based electronics companies, claiming that more than 20 models of Samsung smartphones and tablet products, including the flagship Galaxy S7 and the Galaxy S7 Edge, have infringed its patents. The Quanzhou Intermediate People's Court in Fujian has ordered the five companies to stop infringing patents and asked the three subsidiaries of Samsung to compensate for the loss. Huawei said it fosters industrial innovation and healthy development of the industry by respecting and protecting intellectual property. Samsung declined to comment on whether it will appeal the ruling. The judgment is the first of a series of lawsuits filed by the Chinese tech giant against Samsung. In May 2016, Huawei filed lawsuits against Samsung in Shenzhen and California for patent infringements. Huawei said several of its cellular communications technology and software inventions have been used in Samsung smartphones without permission. Wang Yanhui, secretary-general of the Mobile China Alliance, said Huawei is a patent giant in the global market, and has been planning to collect copyright fees from domestic and foreign telecom companies. Huawei has signed reciprocal patent agreement with Apple Inc in 2015. "The smartphone patents were dominated by foreign telecom firms including Qualcomm Inc, Ericsson AB and Nokia Oyj in the past, and China has no right of speech in this sector. Huawei, as a rising and top-ranking Chinese telecom equipment and smartphone maker, has played a bigger role in standards setting, especially with 5G, and boasted more patents in recent years," said Wang. The patent wars among tech giants are common. Apple and Samsung have been battling over patents since 2011. Both companies have said that the other has violated its patents related to mobile technology and design. Wang said there is no doubt Huawei's stance will set an example for its rivals, and highlight the significance of innovation and patents. China Aviation Daily | Apr. 07, 2017 Between April and June 2017, customers travelling in Air France's La Premiere cabin will be able to enjoy a selection of starters and main dishes created by Guy Martin, the internationally-renowned Michelin-starred chef. Two starters and six main dishes alternating over a three-month period: Starter in April and June 2017: Slice of foie gras, lime zest accompanied with its quenelle of date confit. Starter in May and June 2017: Lobster on a bed of fresh coriander, crunchy salad, pecan nuts and young spinach roots Main dishes in April 2017 -Beef tenderloin heart with carrot coriander jus accompanied with white radish palets and a fava bean and carrot stew. -Pan fried pigeon in a liquorice sauce accompanied with a mango pineapple confit and snow peas sauteed in olive oil. Main dishes in May 2017 -Rack of lamb with yellow pepper star-aniseed sauce accompanied with Pekin sucrine lettuce and its ratatouille. -Pan fried cod, Venere rice, sweet pepper seasoning, piquillos, fava beans and fennel. Main dishes in June 2017 -Pan fried beef tenderloin on a slice of sour eggplant and avocado, tomato jus. -Sumac prawns wrapped in a chicken breast, poultry and shellfish sauce, spring vegetables. Fine dining in the air To continue to surprise its customers while affirming its role as ambassador of fine French dining in the sky, Air France works together with renowned chefs to develop its menus on departure from Paris in the Business and La Premiere cabins. Since 2002, Guy Martin has been one of the famous talented chefs to help to create an exclusive menu with dishes specially developed to be served on board. Every three months, a different chef is in the spotlight and for the period from April to June 2017, Guy Martin is once again designing the Air France La Premiere menu, with two a la carte starters and six main dishes including two new creations that will alternate over this three-month period for an optimum fine dining experience for customers. Guy Martin, inventive culinary delights and delicate flavours A self-taught culinary expert, Guy Martin is now an internationally-famous chef. At the age of 26, he was awarded his first Michelin star after only 6 months at the helm of his kitchen. At the time, he was considered a promising young chef. At the head of the Grand Vefour restaurant since 1991, he has worked in various other famous restaurants and has established himself as an expert, alongside Jean Taittinger among others. He has received awards for his inventive and colourful cuisine both in France and abroad. Named the best chef of the 21st century in Japan, he is also celebrated by great names in French cuisine, such as the Champerard guide and the Gault and Millau restaurant guide. Committed to producing cuisine which combines culinary pleasure and healthy eating, Guy Martin uses an innovative style to design his original creations. He has been greatly inspired by his trips abroad, especially by Japanese culture as well as art, which is another of his passions. Contributed by Air France China Aviation Daily | Apr. 07, 2017 Over the next three months, Air France's Business class customers will be able to enjoy Chef Michel Roth's signature dishes on their long-haul flight from Paris. Two dishes renewed every month: April 2017 -Braised beef tenderloin, onion asparagus and carrot mousseline with mustard; -Cod with tartuffon, golden polenta and mange-tout peas; May 2017 -Chicken with rare peppers and citrus honey, caramelized pineapple and mango, vegetable sticks; -Pollack, mussel juice with lemon zest, mixed green vegetables; June 2017 -Veal shank with verbena, coloured vegetable fricassee; -Pan-fried shrimp, tarragon-flavoured lobster sauce, red rice, spinach shoots and oyster mushrooms. Unique culinary creations for an exceptional dining experience in the sky To continue to surprise its customers while affirming its role as ambassador of fine French dining in the sky, Air France has been working with renowned chefs since 2009 to develop its menus on departure from Paris in the Business and La Premiere cabins. In this way, famous talented chefs regularly help to create an exclusive menu with dishes specially developed to be served on board. This strategy has resulted in an increase in satisfaction rates for inflight catering. This is why, between April and June 2017, Air France has asked Michelin-starred chef Michel Roth to design two dishes on the Business class menu. Each month, the menu will be renewed with two new dishes, for optimum dining pleasure on board. With these six culinary creations, Michel Roth is spotlighting regional products and has dared to produce unexpected combinations demonstrating his technical mastery by combining traditional French classics and more modern tastes. This is his way of expressing his dream as a chef: to provide pleasure with his cuisine, both on the ground and in the air. Michel Roth, the multi-award winning chef Michel Roth is one of the most celebrated chefs in France, with the most prestigious titles in French gastronomy to his name: Bocuse d'or and Meilleur Ouvrier de France in 1991, he was named Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 2006, he has several Michelin stars and in 2016 received the coveted title of Romand of the year with a score of 18/20 in the Gault and Millau restaurant guide. Throughout his career, Michel Roth has worked alongside the greatest French chefs and in prestigious restaurants such as the L'Espadon at the Ritz on Place Vendome and the grand Hotel President Wilson in Geneva. Between technical mastery, culinary traditions and modern tastes, Michel Roth is a passionate chef and a perfectionist, whose sole aim is to please those who enjoy his dishes, whether it's on the shores of Lake Geneva or in the air. Contributed by Air France Copyright 1995 - . All rights reserved. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to China Daily Information Co (CDIC). Without written authorization from CDIC, such content shall not be republished or used in any form. Note: Browsers with 1024*768 or higher resolution are suggested for this site. License for publishing multimedia online 0108263 Registration Number: 130349 Registration Number: 130349 Chinese artists perform in the acrobatic show "Rainbow on the Silk Road" in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, Aug 18, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua] BISHKEK - Chinese artists performed acrobatic show "Rainbow of the Silk Road" in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, and received big applauses. The two-day show, performed by the Troupe of Acrobatic Art from Shanxi, China, was held in the Kyrgyz National Philharmonic Hall and the first day of the show draw a full house of spectators on Thursday. Chen Haiyan, deputy head of the group, told Xinhua that the show tells about the history of the Silk Road and various events associated with it, adding that the show was performed earlier in China, and has received numerous awards. A Kyrgyz spectator who only gave her name as Kymbat told Xinhua that she was very impressed by the show and that it was the first time for her to see performance of Chinese artists. "I saw more than expected. Chinese acrobats were well prepared, one by one they appeared on stage in various indescribable colorful costumes. And they performed such tricks, which thrilled the audience. Previously, I had seen such acrobats only on TV, but seeing acrobats alive is much better," she said. Another spectator Nazgul, who came to the show with her children, said she was lucky to attend the exceptionally beautiful and inspiring charity event. "This is a unique show -- the complex and spectacular stunts, beautiful costumes. My children and I watched the performance of actors in a burst of inspiration," she said. The performance of the Chinese circus troupe is dedicated to the Year of History and Culture in Kyrgyzstan in 2016. Xu Shaoshi (center), head of the National Development and Reform Commission and special envoy representing President Xi Jinping, watches as Hailemariam Desalegn, Ethiopia prime minister (left), and Djibouti President Ismail Omar Guelleh (right) cut the ribbon to launch the new railway from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to the port of Djibouti on Wednesday in Addis Ababa. QIN BIN / FOR CHINA DAILY High leaders, dignitaries mark opening of service between Ethiopia, Djibouti port In the 1970s, China anchored the construction of the Tazara railway linking Tanzania and Zambia a project that greatly boosted the two countries' economies. A little more than 40 years later, a new episode of railway history was written, again with a Chinese helping hand, as East Africa's first modern electrified standard gauge railway was inaugurated on Wednesday in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The 750-kilometer railway, built by two Chinese companies and mainly financed by a Chinese bank, links Addis Ababa to the Red Sea port city of Djibouti. Designed for a speed of 120 kilometers per hour, it is expected to reduce travel time from seven days by road to about 10 hours, and provide landlocked Ethiopia with a faster access to the Djibouti port. In a ceremony on Wednesday morning, Hailemariam Desalegn, prime minister of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, and his neighbor, Ismail Omar Guelleh, president of the Republic of Djibouti, cut a red ribbon officially commissioning the infrastructure that traverses both countries. The railway was developed by two Chinese firms China Railway Engineering Corp and China Civil Engineering Construction Corp. China Export and Import Bank loaned 70 percent of the capital. "This train is a game-changer," said Mekonnen Getachew, CEO of the Ethiopian Railways Corp. "Ethiopia is one of the fastest growing economies in Africa. The connection to the ports (of Djibouti) will give a bounce, and our economy will grow faster." In his keynote speech, Desalegn said the $4 billion railway project clearly showed Africa's desire and commitment to speed up the integration process. "Ethiopia is once again in the continental map as a pioneer toward implementing modern infrastructure, courtesy of China," Desalegn said. The Djibouti president, Guelleh, hailed the project as a symbol of friendship and integration between the two neighboring countries. He said the project was conceived in 1897 but was only made possible more than 100 years later by China. "China has stood by us and has been instrumental in building not only our regional infrastructure but the whole of Africa," he said. "We see a prosperous future as a more integrated continent. This railway represents the new face of Africa, which is ready to take charge of its destiny." Also present were Togo's President Faure Essozimna Gnassingbe; Xu Shaoshi, special envoy of President Xi Jinping and head of the National Development and Reform Commission; and Yuan Xingyong, vice-president of Export-Import Bank of China. Xu hailed the railway as an achievement of cooperation and friendship, calling it a road map to the future, but said more effort should be made to develop the local labor force. There will be a three-month test period of the line. To address a shortage of railway personnel, a massive training program is being led by China. In Ethiopia, which hosts most of the line, about 2,000 local stewards, technicians, drivers and others are receiving training from China Railway No 2 Engineering Group, a major builder and operator of the railway. More than 20,000 workers from Ethiopia and 5,000 from Djibouti were employed during the construction. China is a leading builder and operator of railways worldwide. As of the end of 2015, the country had put 121,000 kilometers of rail lines into service, including 19,000 km of high-speed rail. Xinhua and Agence France-Presse contributed to this story. Contact the writers at panzhongming@chinadaily.com.cn Chinese embroidery is going to make a mark at the 8th BRICS Summit in India as four Chinese gurus have been invited to create handcrafted gifts for leaders of the five emerging economies during the summit over the weekend. Bringing Chinese craftsmen's glory to the world File photo shows Jin Jiahong stitching a piece of traditional Hangzhou embroidery in Moscow, Russia, on Dec 5, 2013. [Photo/people.com.cn] Jin Jiahong, an inheritor of Hangzhou embroidery, is joining the other three masters to display the traditional Chinese handicraft in India, the host nation of the 2016 BRICS Summit. Together with artisans from the other four BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa), they will collaborate on design and produce a set of embroidered gifts for the upcoming summit. "Exquisite gifts we create will include handbags, pillow cases and scarves," said Jin Jiahong, who has been working to upgrade the stitching patterns of Hangzhou embroidery for 30 years. "In the meantime, I have also participated in the design of the logo for the summit, a blooming lotus with five different colors of petals representing the five nations. The logo itself is quite artistic and meaningful," Jin added. Hangzhou is well-known for its rich history of producing silk and silk-related products that goes back thousands of years. Hangzhou embroidery can be dated back to the Warring States Era of ancient China and peaked during the Southern Song Dynasty, when Hangzhou became the capital city. Meanwhile, three other masters, representing Suzhou embroidery (Su Xiu), crewel embroidery and Hunan embroidery respectively, were also chosen to attend the 10-day workshop. Mutual learning process for artisans File photo shows Fu Jian receiving a thumb up from Sultan of Brunei Hassanal Bolkiah while stitching a piece of crewel embroidery in Brunei on March 16, 2015. [Photo/Xinhua] Fu Jian, an expert in crewel embroidery, sees the high-level workshop as a great inspiration. "During the exchanges, we, the Chinese artisans, have learned the latest embroidery techniques from masters from the other four countries. I am particularly interested in the bead embroidery from India," said Fu. Influenced by his father, the 29-year-old started exploring crewel embroidery at a very young age. Back in 2008, Fu established an embroidery institute and provided job opportunities for more than 200 rural women in Yangzhou, Jiangsu province. "The technique of India's bead embroidery is very unique. I believe we could incorporate it into our traditional stitch work and develop more practical handicraft products in future," Fu said. Organized by the Export-Import Bank of India, the exchange event also aims to enhance global markets for handcrafted products and show respect to craftsmen around the world. The freight train from Yiwu of China to Riga enters the Central Station of Riga, Latvia, Nov 5, 2016. The first trans-Eurasia container train linking China and Latvia arrived here on Saturday afternoon, marking a milestone in the history of the two countries' cooperation in transport and logistics sectors. The train departed on Oct. 20 from Yiwu, a vibrant manufacturing hub in east China, and finished a journey of over 11,000 km following the China-Russia-Latvia route. [Photo/Xinhua] Visitors at a forum on marine technology under the Belt and Road Initiative in Tianjin, March 7, 2017. [Photo/VCG] TIANJIN - China and Russia are cooperating on marine technology in the China-Mongolia-Russia economic corridor under the Belt and Road Initiative. The cooperation includes offshore oil and gas exploitation equipment, underwater robotics as well as scientific utilization of the Arctic passages, according to attendees at a forum on marine technology under the Belt and Road Initiative, held in north China's Tianjin Municipality Tuesday through Wednesday. During the two-day forum, Tianjin Economic-Technological Development Area (TEDA) signed agreements with universities and institutes in Russia to research marine technology. The United Nations Security Council on Thursday unanimously adopted a new resolution to extend the mandate of the UN assistance operation in Afghanistan, which also urged more efforts to strengthen regional economic cooperation through initiatives such as the Belt and Road. The 15-member council extended the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) for another year until March 17, 2018, in a move to emphasize its role in supporting an inclusive Afghan-led and Afghan-owned peace process. According to the Resolution 2344, the council urges further efforts to strengthen the process of regional economic cooperation, including measures to facilitate regional connectivity, trade and transit. These include 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. The Belt and Road Initiative was proposed in 2013 and has received support from more than 100 countries and international organizations, with more than 40 signing cooperation agreements with China. The resolution urged all parties to provide a safe environment for the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative, step up efforts to develop policy connectivity and promote pragmatic cooperation. The resolution said that all parties should further regional cooperation in the win-win spirit to promote safety, stability and development in Afghanistan and the region, and build a community of shared destiny. President Xi Jinping elaborated the concept of building a community of common destiny during his speech at the UN Office in Geneva in January. Students learn Chinese at the Confucius Institute in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan. [Photo by Ren Qin/China Daily] Editor's note: This is the second installment of China Daily's special series on the Belt and Road Initiative. More than 2,000 years ago, China and Central Asia were linked by the Silk Road. Now a modern version of the ancient trading route is being built, and Confucius Institutes are spreading the Chinese language and culture throughout the region. Uzbekistan is a typical Silk Road country. Some of its oldest cities, such as Bukhara and Samarkand, became wealthy as a result of the fabled route and established close commercial relations with China. Those relations have been maintained, not only politically and economically, but also culturally. With the development of modern Uzbekistan, economic cooperation between the Central Asian nation and China has increased in recent years, and a growing number of Uzbeks are learning about the Chinese language and culture. Uzbekistan was the first nation to sign an agreement with China to establish a Confucius Institute, which provides foreigners with language skills and extensive knowledge about the world's second-largest economy. In June 2004, Lanzhou University, in the capital of Gansu province, and the Tashkent State Institute of Oriental Studies signed contracts to build the first Confucius Institute in the Uzbek capital, assisted by the China National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language. The institute, which opened in 2005, saw 30 to 50 students enroll in the first year. At the time, few Uzbeks knew anything about China, its language and culture, according to Di Xiaoxia, the Chinese director of the Tashkent Confucius Institute. "In the beginning, we had to expend a lot of effort because the Uzbeks had no idea of what we were or what we taught," she said. "We had to place a lot of ads and promotions in the community before parents brought their children to the institute." Now, the situation is vastly different. After 10 years of development, large numbers of Uzbeks attend the Tashkent Confucius Institute, and more than 1,200 studentsages 8 to 60attend its Chinese classes every year, according to Saodat Nasyrova, the institute's Uzbek director. Nasyrova visited China as a 17-year-old student of Chinese, and began teaching the language in 2003. She said studying Chinese has become increasingly popular in Central Asia, and two high schools in Tashkent offer classes in the languageTashkent No 59 Middle School and the Tashkent State Institute of Oriental Studies, which is affiliated with the school. "The institute moved into a new building in 2016, gaining more classrooms and greater seating capacity. However, many more people are coming to the admissions office than we can accept," she said, adding that some form of entrance exam may have to be adopted if the number of people who want to study at the institute continues to grow. Chinese President Xi Jinping (2nd R) and his wife Peng Liyuan (1st R) pose for a photo with Hery Rajaonarimampianina (2nd L), president of Madagascar, and his wife in Beijing, March 27, 2017. Xi held a welcome ceremony for Hery Rajaonarimampianina, president of Madagascar here on Monday. [Photo/Xinhua] BEIJING - China and Madagascar on Monday agreed to synergize development strategies under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative and ten major plans for China-Africa cooperation. The pledge came out of the talks between Chinese President Xi Jinping and President of Madagascar Hery Rajaonarimampianina in Beijing. China and Madagascar enjoy great potential for mutually beneficial cooperation, said Xi, welcoming Madagascar to participate in the Belt and Road construction. He said China supports Madagascar in playing its role as a bridge between the Belt and Road and the African continent. China is ready to establish a comprehensive partnership of cooperation with Madagascar, said Xi, calling on the two sides to deepen cooperation in agriculture, fisheries, people-to-people exchanges, security, police affairs, justice and law-enforcement. China supports Madagascar to play a bigger role in international and regional affairs, and is willing to enhance communication and coordination with the country on climate change, the UN 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development as well as peace and security of Africa. Xi said China will comprehensively implement the results of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in December 2015, held in South Africa's Johannesburg, to achieve common development with Africa. Rajaonarimampianina said he was delighted to visit China as the two nations were celebrating the 45th anniversary of the establishment of ties. Madagascar supports the Belt and Road Initiative and is willing to beef up cooperation with China in energy, aviation, transportation, ports and airport construction, he said. After the talks, the two leaders witnessed the signing of a number of cooperative documents, including a memorandum of understanding on jointly advancing the Belt and Road Initiative. Rajaonarimampianina just attended the annual conference of the Boao Forum for Asia, held in south China's Hainan Province. Only Shanghai unit will change shareholding structure Shares in China Unicom Hong Kong Ltd dropped nearly 4 percent on Thursday as investors expressed disappointment over its parent company's signal that the much-expected mixed ownership reform may not involve the Hong Kong-listed firm. Shares closed at HK$10.44 ($1.34). The drop came a day after China United Network Communications Group Co, the country's second biggest telecom carrier by subscribers, said there may be changes in the shareholding structure of its Shanghai-listed unit, China United Network Communications Ltd. The Beijing-based group did not mention any changes at its Hong Kong-listed unit. China Unicom is in the first batch of pilot projects to push forward mixed-ownership of State-owned enterprises. Premier Li Keqiang said in March that concrete steps would be taken this year to accelerate reforms in sectors such as telecoms, railways and civil aviation. China Unicom has been struggling to revive profits and revenue amid fierce competition from China Mobile Communications Corp and China Telecommunications Corp. Xiang Ligang, a smartphone expert and CEO of telecom industry website cctime.com, said China Unicom is highly likely to attract an investor from among the ranks of internet giants such as Tencent Holdings Ltd, Baidu Inc and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. "China Unicom is suffering from a brain drain. Teaming up with internet moguls can help rebuild it as an open and energetic company and boost employee confidence," he said. "Also, their businesses are complementary, though it will be very, very time-consuming to integrate such resources." China Unicom signed a deal with Alibaba in November to cooperate on basic telecom services, mobile internet and related areas. Last year, it also sealed a similar partnership with Baidu. In 2016, its Hong Kong-listed unit posted a 94 percent decline in net profit to 630 million yuan ($91.15 million), due to a huge investment in 4G and broadband network infrastructure. Revenue also fell 1 percent to 274.20 billion yuan. Peter Liu, research director at consultancy Gartner Inc, said even if internet giants jump on board, they may chiefly play a symbolic role given that China Unicom would remain the majority shareholder and play a decisive role. LHASA - Construction started Thursday on the world's highest power transmission project in southwest China's Tibet autonomous region. The 16.2 billion yuan ($2.35 billion) project includes the construction or upgrade of 16 110-kv substations and transmission lines, with a total length of 2,738 km. The average altitude is 3,750 meters, with the biggest altitude gap of 494 meters between two adjacent transmission towers. The project also includes power supply facilities for the railway between Lhasa, the regional capital, and Nyingchi. The Lhasa-Nyingchi section of the Sichuan-Tibet railway began construction in December 2014. Shu Yinbiao, chairman of the State Grid, said the project would ensure stable power supply and assist with the transmission of Tibet's clean energy to other places. Currently, the backbone grids in Tibet are not all interconnected, resulting in unstable operation. The complicated grid project will be completed in 2018. From 2011 to 2015, the State Grid spent 27 billion yuan building key power projects, connecting Tibet's grids to those of Sichuan and Qinghai provinces and enabling 480,000 people in Tibet to have power. Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan are welcomed by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and his wife upon their arrival at Palm Beach International Airport in Florida, the United States, April 6, 2017. Xi arrived here for the first meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump. (Xinhua/Lan Hongguang) Trade is a simple thing, if you can provide something people want, at a quality and value point that is better than someone else's; as long as there's no trade protectionism, you should prosper. So, when the headlines talk about trade deficits, you may well wonder what is going on with the companies producing the goods and services and the realities they face. In the U.S., for example, manufacturing companies account for around three-quarters of annual private sector spending on research and development. They do so in order to stay competitive. And, actually, American manufacturers are very competitive, their output doubling since 1984 with a third fewer workers. From a quantitative economist's viewpoint, it's an amazing feat of increased productivity; however, if you're one of those who lost their job, it's a miserable tragedy. Driving this change are wage growth, technology and competition. Higher wages made it more economical to put labor-intensive industries like textiles, shoes, light assembly in places where wages were lower (i.e. in other countries). Technology created new methods, machines and materials that mean more production with less labor. Competition meant that those unable to adopt more competitive manufacturing went out of business. In 2015, the U.S. manufacturing sector, hit hard by the financial meltdown in 2008-2009, was within 3 percent of its record 2007 high, but that was before the reality of a strong dollar and a weaker Euro, made EU companies more competitive. Hence, realistically, market forces are driving changes, and if anyone is taking jobs from the U.S., it is probably the EU, not China or Asia in general; and, this is happening because of a financial meltdown emanating from the U.S. The difficult part is that middle class America has been watching its wages and prospects stagnate, even as they read about multi-million dollar bonuses to those who run the companies creating the mess in the first place. They feel bitter because the failures were those too small to succeed, while those who were too big to fail prospered. Unsurprisingly, this has resulted in a rage against the regime, and the rise of opportunistic populists, like President Donald Trump. Trump's tune is simple: everyone, especially the Chinese, are to blame. This is easier to accept than facing up to the fact we're going through a Technological Revolution, a period of economic change possibly rivaling the scope of the original industrial revolution in terms of economic, political and social change. Unfortunately, a lot of people prefer simple fiction to complicated realities, and that's why America now has Trump. Trump has a simple answer, being the ultimate business deal maker who now has the combined strength of America's military and economic power at his back to return the U.S. to greatness. It reminds me of the old story of King Canute who thought he could control the tide - and ended up with wet feet. Meanwhile, China is struggling to overcome the middle-income trap, that line in the sand where your labor dividend can no longer compensate for your inefficiency. For China to grow and prosper, it will need to become more efficient and find new products and services markets want and are willing to pay for. However, even success could be problematic, as it would change the shape of the economic order from a pyramid, dominated by the U.S., the EU and other developed countries, to a sandwich with emerging countries being the meat in the middle of two large opposites, the developed and undeveloped countries of the world. China's answer has been to engage in intensive planning, try innovative regional economic outreach, like the Belt and Road Initiative , develop collaborative financing mechanisms like the AAIB and retool its economy away from investment to a focus on consumption. So, as Xi Jinping and Donald Trump meet, keep in mind that the reality of where China and the U.S, are now, and where they need to go, will not be settled in a moment at Mar a Lago; it will most likely be created in government planning rooms and small and medium sized businesses, who are investing in their future, and hopefully ours as well. As we can go back to the past we need to concentrate on the future, something Xi seems to grasp better than Trump. Einar Tangen is a political and economic affairs commentator, author and columnist Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn. BEIJING - China and Australia will prepare to begin talks on upgrading a bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) between the two nations, a commerce ministry official said Thursday. Sun Jiwen, spokesperson of the Ministry of Commerce, made the remarks at a press briefing in response to a question over a statement of intent signed during Premier Li Keqiang's official visit to Australia in late March. The two sides will start reviewing the China-Australia FTA (ChAFTA) chapters on service trade and investment, as well as a memorandum of understanding on investment facilitation this year, according to the statement of intent. This will pave the way for starting ChAFTA upgrade talks "when appropriate," said Sun. ChAFTA took effect in December 2015. In 2016, 85 percent of bilateral goods trade benefited from tariff reductions, while Chinese enterprises made $3.68 billion in direct investment to Australia, up 56 percent year on year. China and New Zealand will start the first round of talks on upgrading the China-New Zealand FTA, which took effect in 2008, from April 25 to 27 in Beijing, according to Sun. YANGON - Chinese giant telecommunication equipment company, Huawei, launched a program Thursday to send 10 outstanding students from Myanmar to learn the culture and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in China. Under the program of "Seeds for the Future", the selected students to be sent to China to study in the Huawei Office, are from the Yangon University of Computer Science and Thanlyin Technological University. Huawei signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Myanmar's Ministry of Transport and Communication on cooperation in ICT development and founded its Network Academy in Yangon's Thanlyin Technological University last year. According to Zhang Liman, chief executive officer of Huawei Myanmar, as a drive to push Myanmar's ICT development, the company plans to enter another MoU for a five-year project with Yangon regional government for ICT Talent Development. U Win Khaing Moe, director general from Research and Innovation Department of Myanmar's Ministry of Education, expressed his gratitude to Huawei for Myanmar's ICT development. Since the program was launched in 2008, over 2,700 students from 96 nations across the world have been sent to China by the company for studying. Tourists visit Baiyangdian in Anxin county, Hebei province, April 3, 2017. [Photo/VCG] SHIJIAZHUANG - First she was in disbelief. Then she was amazed. Then she realized everyone around her was talking about the same thing. Those were Zhang Suti's first hours after news broke that a new economic zone would be built in her hometown. "I was overjoyed to find out I am now a local from the national new area," said Zhang, the 50-year-old owner of a farmhouse resort. China announced Saturday it would establish the Xiongan New Area in Hebei province, which neighbors Beijing, as a measure to advance the coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. The Xiongan New Area is another new area of national significance after the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone and the Shanghai Pudong New Area, according to the announcement. Zhang's hometown of Baiyangdian, 160 km southwest of Beijing, is located in Anxin county, one of three counties under the planned Xiongan New Area. Dubbed the "Pearl of North China," Baiyangdian is one of the largest freshwater wetlands in north China, essential to conserving water for the North China Plain. "I don't know what the other new areas are like, as I have never been there," Zhang said. "I don't know what Xiongan will be like either, but I believe that the environment and life here will improve." Covering an area of 366 square kilometers, Baiyangdian has 143 small lakes. Various aquatic products, including fish, shrimp, crab, shellfish, lotus roots, gorgon fruit, and water chestnuts are harvested here. Reeds were once a major product and women could be found weaving mats at home for a living, though this scene is disappearing as reed mats are no longer popular. Now, while most villagers work elsewhere, Zhang has stayed behind to run a family inn, offering farmhouse accommodation and food for visitors. "I can earn about 80,000 yuan ($12,000) to 90,000 yuan a year," said Zhang. She promotes her inn via social media, which lets her communicate with the outside world. In addition to the environment, the wetlands' revolutionary history also draws tourists. The domestic film "Little Soldier Zhang Ga" tells the story of a teen guerrilla from Baiyangdian who fights against the invasion of Japanese troops during World War II. A specific plan on developing the area has not been released yet, but the move will help phase out some non-capital functions from Beijing, explore a new model of optimized development in densely populated areas, and restructure the urban layout in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, according to the circular. The Baiyangdian high-speed railway station opened in December 2015, which has allowed people and products to flow in. "Xiongan New Area is intended to receive part of Beijing's population. We have made up our mind to attract them with our unique culture and extraordinary environment," said Liu Wuqi, deputy manager at Baiyangdian Wenhuayuan Tourism Company. Gold bars display at an expo in Beijing, Nov 22, 2016. [Photo/VCG] China's Shandong Gold Mining will buy half of the Veladero Mine in Argentina from Barrick Gold for almost $1 billion, Financial Time reported on Thursday. The portion of the Veladero Mine Shandong Mining bought is expected to produce as much as 830,000 ounces of gold this year. Shandong Mining and Barrick Gold will also look at options for developing Pascua Lama, an unfinished project that Barrick Gold put on hold in 2013, and joint investments in the gold-rich region straddling the border of Argentina and Chile. Barrick Gold, the world's largest producer of the precious metal, said proceeds from the sale of stakes in one of its biggest mines will be used to pay back debt and fund future investments. The deal between Shandong Mining and Barrick Gold also shows that after a multiyear downturn in the industry, mining companies are looking to spread costs and risks through partnerships and joint ventures, instead of developing new mines and projects on their own. Shandong Gold Mining, which is listed in Shanghai with a market value of almost $10 billion, produced 1.2 million ounces of gold in 2016. Its flagship project is an underground mine called Sanshandao, which reaches depths of 1.1 km. Ford cars are on sale at a dealership of Genser company in Moscow, Russia, February 14, 2017. [Photo/Agencies] US automaker Ford Motor Company announced on April 6 an electrification strategy targeted at China's growing new energy car market, with the first locally made plug-in hybrid scheduled to roll off the assembly line in early 2018. The model, Mondeo Energi, which will feature an electric drive range of up to 50 kilometers, will be manufactured by its joint venture Changan Ford. Ford also confirmed plans to bring an all-new fully electric small SUV to China within five years. "The time is right for Ford to expand our electrified car lineup and investments in China," said Ford President and CEO Mark Fields. "We are prioritizing our electrification efforts in China to reflect its importance as a global electrified vehicle market and to make lives better, simpler and more cost effective for Chinese consumers." China has been the world's largest market for new energy vehicles, which consist of electric cars, plug-in hybrids and fuel cell cars, since 2015. Xu Yanhua, a vice-secretary-general of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, said the sales of such cars this year in China are expected to reach 800,000 units, a 60 percent growth year-on-year. Ford said it will also start manufacturing electrified powertrains in China from around 2020. The carmaker also plans to expand its new energy vehicle engineering capabilities at its research facility in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, with a focus on incorporating Chinese customer needs into Ford's next generation electric car technologies. "Ford is committed to developing smarter, greener mobility solutions for the future, and our team in China will be at the forefront of this innovation," said Trevor Worthington, vice-president of Ford Asia Pacific responsible for product development. The automaker said it will offer a comprehensive range of electrified solutions by 2025 -- hybrids, plug-in hybrids and fully battery-powered electric vehicles to Chinese customers. By then, 70 percent of all Ford nameplates in China will have electrified powertrain options, including the full range of nameplates produced by Changan Ford. By 2025, new energy vehicles are expected to account for over 15 percent of total passenger vehicle sales in China, according to the Society of Automotive Engineers of China. Globally, the company is investing $4.5 billion to electrify its most-popular, highest-volume vehicles. Earlier this year, Ford confirmed it will launch 13 new energy cars in the next five years, including the all-new fully electric small SUV that will be sold in China, and a hybrid autonomous vehicle designed for commercial operations in mobility services, starting in North America. Staff members work at a fintech incubator in Qingdao, Shandong province, March 28, 2017. [Photo/VCG] The Chinese mainland overtook the United States as the No 1 investment destination in financial technology or fintech, according to Citi GPS, a research team under Citigroup. According to a Citi GPS research report, in the first three quarters of 2016 the mainland accounted for over 50 percent of the world's total fintech investments. In fact, the Chinese mainland was the only major place where fintech investments showed a major increase last yeardoubling in the first nine months versus the same period in 2015, whilst investments in the US and Europe declined 38 percent and 27 percent respectively. In a separate report by consultancy firm Accenture, global fintech business venture firms grew 10 percent last year to $23.2 billion, fueled by huge investor appetite in the Chinese mainland and Japan. Experts attributed the skyrocketing Chinese fintech investments to a unique combination of factors including a rapid spread in digital technologies with a simultaneous rise in its mass middle classes, along with the fact that the old banking industry was poorly prepared for the new technologies. "To push the development of fintech, you need entrepreneurs and funding," said Ronit Ghose, head of the Citi GPS research team. The Chinese mainland has a much larger base of entrepreneurism than Hong Kong, Singapore or Europe, even though its venture capital system is yet to become well-developed, he noted. For years, mainland banks focused only on large corporate clients, such as State-owned enterprises and property developers, with the growing digitally-enabled middle classes being underserved. Fintech has now grabbed that client base, he said. But Ghose also pointed out that investments from the mainland fintech industry last year seemed still to be concentrated on only big companies, such as JD Finance and Lu.com, squeezing out opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises. "One potential risk for China's fintech market is the lack of diversity," he said. So the government should encourage diversity in the fintech sector to ensure the industry's healthy development, he added. Banks are fighting back by arming themselves with fintech. Since November, the Bank of China (Hong Kong) has been working on the utilization of blockchain, artificial intelligence, big data analysis and vein recognition technology in its banking business. Rocky Cheng Chung Ngam, general manager at the information technology department at the bank, said there was big competition between the banks and thirdparty payment companies. He said internet companies, such as third-party payment companies, had developed a very large client base because they were more closely linked with the clients in their daily life. Some third-party payment companies have grown into financial empires, such as Tencent's online banking affiliate WeBank. A man pays via WeChat app on his mobile phone in Fuzhou, capital of Fujian province. [Photo/VCG] WeChat Pay is expanding into the United Kingdom next month. China's biggest mobile payments platform in terms of number of transactions will offer a new payment option to British retailers looking to attract Chinese shoppers. "In overseas markets like Europe, we'll keep focusing on the development of services to best serve EU companies interested in leveraging digital channels to foster business opportunities with Chinese customers," said Andrea Ghizzoni, European director of Tencent, the company that owns WeChat. In the UK, WeChat Pay has linked up with the British payments company Tramonex, which will help WeChat Pay integrate its payments infrastructure with British retailers. "We know we can bring real value to the WeChat Pay solution and the entire team is very excited about this opportunity," said Amine Berraoui, CEO of Tramonex. "This arrangement goes a long way in developing Tramonex's footprint and awareness within Asia and completely opens up the East-to-West corridor, fulfilling the goal of facilitating global flows." WeChat Pay's foray into Italy in 2015 enabled Italian merchants to accept mobile payments from Chinese customers by scanning a barcode. France and Germany are to be next European destinations for WeChat Pay, which has 800 million users in China, thanks to WeChat, China's largest social media network in terms of daily users. They use WeChat Pay in wide-ranging ways: for restaurants bills, online and offline shopping, digital transactions for hotel bookings and travel tickets, and even to pay street vendors. WeChat Pay's European expansion follows that of Alipay, another Chinese mobile payment company, which is an affiliate of the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. With two years of operating history in the UK, Alipay has linked up with powerful European banks, including BNP Paribas, Barclays and UniCredit, enabling 930,000 merchants to join its payment network. In the UK, Alipay is accepted at many luxury stores and brand retailers, including Harrods in London. Alipay has 450 million active users in China. Ghizzoni said WeChat Pay is already available at more than 50 locations in Italy, including large fashion and luxury brand outlets, retail companies and the hospitality industry. "Revenues are already in the range of millions, and we expect them to grow significantly this year," he said. Ghizzoni said WeChat Pay is also working with clients to find ways to promote their products to Chinese consumers, leveraging on WeChat's advertising capabilities and Tencent's cloud solutions. "All these tools can prove extremely successful to help Western brands reach and serve Chinese consumers in a consistent and effective manner," he said. The You Bring Charm to the World award ceremony was held in Beijing on March 31. The winners include actress Yao Chen. Provided To China Daily Movie star Jackie Chan, architect I.M. Pei, astronauts of China's Shenzhou-11 space mission and other leading figures from various fields were honored on March 31 for being 2016's top influencers. Martial artist and actor Chan said he would act until he is 70 years old after receiving a special award of You Bring Charm to the World, an annual honor given by Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV to those who have greatly influenced people in the country and beyond. Chan said he once planned to retire at age 40 because he thought his body couldn't afford the tough action scenes in films. But with support from Chinese audiences and the country's growing movie market, he has also done other roles tailored for his age. "I will act as long as I can move my body. I will try different roles rather than martial arts only, in my own style," he said while accepting the award at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Liu Changle, chairman and CEO of Phoenix TV, said Chan has created a brave and unbeatable Chinese on world screens. "Chan is a special envoy who has spread Chinese culture in the world with his martial arts," said Liu. Chan also sang a birthday song at the award ceremony for fellow winner Pei, who will celebrate his 100th birthday on April 26 in New York. The Chinese-American architect didn't attend the ceremony due to age but received the award at his house in New York. The invisible pollutant is rapidly becoming a main cause for concern in many areas of China, as Zheng Jinran reports. After the heavy, prolonged smog that often shrouds China during winter, the return of blue skies in spring and summer is always welcome. However, sunny summer days may not be as beneficial as one might imagine: instead, people may become unwell as a result of rising concentrations of ground-level ozone, an invisible airborne pollutant. At street level, ozone, a type of oxygen formed with an extra molecule, is created when vehicles, power plants, industrial boilers, refineries and chemical factories emit pollutants that react chemically in strong sunlight. When Li Hui was affected by ozone pollution after working outside for long hours on sunny summer days, she had no idea what was causing her sore throat and dry eyes. "I didn't have a cold, but I coughed a lot," she said. "Sometimes, my mother had similar problems." The 31-year-old from the northern port city of Tianjin only realized the cause of her mysterious cough when she received a health alert from a smartphone app that measures air quality. The alert said the pollution level was medium and the main pollutant was ground-level ozone. "A friend, a physician who specializes in pulmonary conditions, told me the problem had probably been triggered by breathing ozone when the level was excessive, usually on hot summer days," Li said. The doctor's assumption was supported by Lyu Mengyao, an environmental engineer with the China Meteorological Administration, who said ground-level, or "bad", ozone is different to stratospheric, or "good", ozone, which is found in a band that stretches from about 15 kilometers above the surface of the Earth to roughly 35 km. According to Lyu, breathing high concentrations of ozone can result in a range of health problems, including chest pain, coughing and irritation of the airways. It can also harm lung tissue and worsen the effects of bronchitis, emphysema and asthma, leading to increased need for medical attention. Many provinces have noticed the growing risk from ozone pollution. In response, they have issued early warnings, similar to the practice adopted to tackle PM2.5, hazardous fine particulate matter with a diameter of less than 2.5 microns, which has been the main target in the battle against pollution for several years. For example, the Shanghai Meteorological Service has set up a two-tier warning systemwith yellow and orange alertsfor ozone pollution. It also recommends the suspension of outdoor activities and a reduction in the use of vehicles during periods of severe saturation. People lay flowers to commemorate victims of an explosion in St. Petersburg in Moscow, Russia, on April 6, 2017. About fifty thousand people gathered here at Manezhnaya square on Thursday to commemorate victims of the explosion in St. Petersburg. A blast took place on Monday afternoon in a train carriage in the tunnel between metro stations Technological Institute and Sennaya Ploshchad in St. Petersburg, Russia's second largest city, killing 14 people and wounding dozens. [Xinhua/Evgeny Sinitsyn] When the Syrian turmoil started, and ISIS spread rapidly through Syrian and Iraqi heartlands, Russian intelligence saw that as a boon. Thousands of Islamists who were inside Russia fled and joined the Caliphate. For Russian policy makers, who are mostly hardcore believers in old fashioned realpolitik, in their mindset, this was an opportunity to drain out and solidify a singular Islamist identity, under whose banner the most toxic elements from the Western and European societies would flourish. If thereafter, U.S.-led Western intervention happens, those Islamists would be cannon fodder in the crossfire - killing two birds with one stone. As Mark Galeotti, one of the World's foremost scholars pointed out, that didn't quite turn out well. The Western intervention never really came, nor did ISIS solidify, and Assad was almost toppled forcing Russia to intervene. On one hand, that led to realignment in Middle Eastern policies. Secular and authoritarian leaders in the Middle East started to gravitate towards Russia, feeling betrayed by the West, who were either overtly or covertly perceived to be on the side of the Islamists. The second thing that happened, however, was that the dormant extreme Islamism in Russia made a return. Russia is now seen by Islamists as a crusader nation again, alongside the West. Russian soldiers were attacked, the Russian ambassador was shot dead, a Russian flight bombed, and most recently, the Russian metro station in St Petersburg was bombed killing 14 people thus far. Initially it was thought that this was a resurgence of Chechen insurgency in Russia. However, now a Central Asian man is considered to be the suspect. That might make more sense, as around five thousand Russians of central Asian origin went to do Jihad in the Middle East, who are now returning back home as the dreams of a global Caliphate start to fade. Funnily enough, this time there was no solidarity in Western capitals. No candle lit marches, no hash tags and Pray for St Petersburg. Landmarks weren't lit up in Russian flag colors. Twitter wasn't abuzz. A distinct sense of conspiracy was afoot. Old dissidents were openly blaming Putin on Twitter , as if this was a false flag operation, even when there was no evidence present and available. This is wrong and inhumane but extremely typical. When Islamists attack the West, a chain of reaction starts, with pray hash tags, solidarity, and then vapid arguments about Islamophobia. When the same thing happens in any non-Western country, for example in Russia, or in Xinjiang, China, or in India, the response is never the same. It is always the fault of the society, or repression, or the political situation and other factors. This is a double standard. Even before 1999, Russian intelligence was constantly warning the West of an "Arc of instability" spreading from Afghanistan to Syria. Putin was the first head of state to openly align with George Bush after 9/11. Russia didn't utter a word of protest when U.S. walked out from missile treaties in Europe after 9/11. Without Russian intelligence cooperation, the U.S. would not have gotten information on the Taliban in Afghanistan, or without Russian security guarantees and tacit support, the U.S. wouldn't secure supply lines in Central Asia, so vital for the campaign in Afghanistan. It is well accepted in Western academic circles , something that is much forgotten now, of the invaluable contribution of Russia towards a tactical alignment with the U.S. Russia suffers from the same curse that is undoubtedly the most pressing concern in modern international relations. And regardless of how the domestic regime in Russia is, or how their geopolitical interests differ, Russia could be a steadfast ally against global Jihadism. The Western public, especially across mainland Europe and the U.K., want that as well. They see a confrontation with Russia as meaningless as there are increasing terror attacks all across Europe. It is high time Western policymakers actually pay heed to that. Sumantra Maitra is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit: http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/SumantraMaitra.htm Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors only, not necessarily those of China.org.cn. An autopsy is being conducted on a middle school student alleged to have fallen to his death on Saturday, with no evidence having been found so far to suggest he was physically abused, officials in Luzhou, Sichuan province, said at a news conference on Thursday. He Shaopeng, deputy mayor and public security bureau director of Luzhou, said the chest and belly of the student's body had been cut open and lacerations were found in his liver and spleen. The publicity department of Luxiana county under the administration of Luzhousaid on Wednesday that a 14-year-old male student of Taifu Middle School in Taifu town was found dead outside his dormitory building at about 6 am on Saturday. The department stated that local police did not think the boy had been murdered after initial investigations, but this caused public outcry, with many people suspecting that the boy was beaten to death by five other students who are children of local officials. Mao Handong, a police officer with Luzhou public security bureau, said at the conference that none of the officials' children were proved to have been classmates with, or to have known of, the deceased student. Lyu Yugang, director of the Ministry of Education's basic education department, said at a conference in Beijing on Thursday that he felt sorry for the death of the student and had requested education departments in Sichuan to assist local authorities in discovering the cause of the student's death and reporting to the ministry in a timely manner. A video obtained by Lyu Qingfu, a reporter at Xinhua News Agency, showed the mother of the deceased student visiting a crematory and cutting clothes off her son's body to expose a large purple area on his back and wounds on both hands and elbows, suggesting that the boy might have been beaten to death. People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of China, said in an opinion piece on its WeChat account on Wednesday that local governments should release information in a timely and accurately manner in emergency situations. "Timely and accurate information, as well as an authoritative and convincing autopsy report, will help clarify facts and dispel rumors," it said. Judges told to learn a case's background and to take social effects into account A senior official of the Supreme People's Court underscored the importance of judicial fairness on Wednesday and called on all courts to improve their performance in criminal trials. "People's increasing legal awareness has brought higher requirements to our judicial work, urging us to uphold justice and improve the quality of case hearings," said Shen Deyong, executive vice-president of the SPC. Shen made the comment during a seminar on criminal trials on Wednesday in Shandong province, where a 22-year-old man's case recently aroused heated discussion. Yu Huan, from Liaocheng, was convicted of intentional injury and given a life sentence on Feb 17 after he stabbed four debt collectors who confronted him and his mother last year. One of the injured later died. Yu claimed he attacked the debt collectors after one of them exposed himself to his mother. The case quickly went viral on social media, with many saying Yu's penalty was too harsh, as well as some criticizing how police handled the incident. The Shandong High People's Court has accepted an appeal from Yu, while some police officers involved in the case were probed for alleged misconduct in the case. "Courts should take initiative to echo public concerns when some rulings stir the public," Shen said. Some controversies lie in the courts' unclear explanations of laws, while some are attributed to a lack of transparency in judicial procedures, according to Shen. He compared the handling of such disputes to open classes, asking courts to use them to educate people about the law. "What we can do is to improve our ability and efficiency of tackling cases and avoid verdicts that are obviously contrary to common sense," he said. While clarifying the facts of a case, judges should learn to understand the background behind an incident and take the social effects that a judgment may cause into consideration, Shen said. "But it doesn't mean making rulings contrary to laws or facts," he added. In November, the top court approved the execution of a man named Jia Jinglong, who was convicted of murder in Hebei province, despite his case sparking controversy. Jia was sentenced to death in 2015 after he killed his village chief with a gun. Although some legal experts said Jia deserved a lenient penalty as the village head also committed wrongdoings in demolishing his house, the top court still approved the ruling by the lower court, as it had clear facts and sufficient evidence. "The village chief's improper behaviors couldn't excuse Jia's actions and didn't mean he could be leniently punished for homicide," the court added. When the Beijing government announced its new medical reform policy late last month, a number of government organizations pledged to offer their support. The reform plan focuses on easing the burden on patients and their families and ensuring the healthy operation of medical institutions by decreasing the cost of medicines and the cost of checkups using medical equipment, and increasing the fees charged for services based on the intelligence and labor of medical workers. The Beijing Municipal Commission of Health and Family Planning will be responsible for the implementation of the plan. As it is a comprehensive scheme, the plan will also be carried out with the coordination of other government institutions including the Beijing Human Resources and Social Security Bureau, the Beijing Civil Affairs Bureau and the Beijing Food and Drug Administration. Wang Mingshan, deputy chief of the Beijing Human Resources and Social Security Bureau in charge of the basic medical insurance system for the city's employees and residents, said his bureau will ensure that the reimbursements for the new medical service fee and the medical treatments covered are properly paid. The new medical service fee, which replaces the registration fee and consulting fee, will be between 20 yuan ($2.9) and 50 yuan depending on the level of the medical institution, and the reimbursement amount will be between 19 yuan and 40 yuan, according to Wang. He said more than 150 new items, including services relating to nursing, newborn baby treatment and traditional Chinese medical services will also be reimbursed. "All of our designated medical institutions will be covered in the new reform initiative, ensuring that all the abovementioned costs are properly reimbursed," Wang added. The Beijing Civil Affairs Bureau is also offering assistance to the city's low-income residents, or residents struggling to a living. The government-sponsored basic medical insurance system will cover a large portion of these people's medical costs, with the the remaining costs reimbursed by an assistance fund from the civil affairs bureau. According to Dong Minghui, deputy chief of the bureau, the portion of reimbursement from the assistance fund will be raised. "We have increased the portion from 70 percent to 80 percent to cover the beneficiaries' costs after basic medical insurance reimbursement," Dong said. She added that the ceiling of financial assistance for an outpatient has increased from 4,000 yuan to 6,000 yuan a year, while that for an inpatient grew from 40,000 yuan to 60,000 yuan. Dong said the financial assistance to patients with critical diseases is even higher, with the proportion rising from 75 percent to 85 percent and the ceiling raised from 80,000 yuan to 120,000 yuan a year. With reduction of prices for medicines as a highlight of the medical reform, officials from the city's drug and food administration said supervision on both medicine wholesaling companies and medical institutions will be further strengthened. Liang Hong, deputy chief of the administration, said more unannounced checks will be made on the medicines' supply chains to ensure they meet national and local regulations. "We will promote a medicine supply chain tracking system to make sure the production and distribution processes are transparent to every patient," Liang said. "We will also enhance the monitoring of adverse reactions of medicines, and we have developed a monitoring network covering 4,633 units including medical institutions, medicine producers and distributors," he added. A photo shows a menu of the baozza shop in Beijing. [Photo/dianping.com] A small restaurant selling baozza, a fusion of Chinese and Italian food, will move to new location at Xiguan Hutong in Beijing's Dongcheng district on April 15 following customers' suggestions. American consultant Alex Cree came up with the idea to use cheese, tomato and other pizza toppings in China's popular steamed bun during a trip with clients in southern China in 2015. "We were talking about the idea of maybe combining bao with more traditional American flavors like burger and different things and somebody said 'pizza baozi'," Cree said. "I said 'bao-zza!' and the more I thought about it, the more I thought there might be something to this," he said. Cree did not forget the idea after returning to the United States, and began experimenting with recipes. Later he quit his job and moved to China in 2016 to set up a restaurant in the basement of a shopping mall in Sanlitun. His restaurant offered four-flavored baozza - Margherita, Meat Lover, BBQ Chicken, and Hawaiian Jalapeno. Each bun costs 10 yuan ($1.45). A customer "Tianmidejuanjuan" left a comment on dianping.com, an information and trading website, that baozza were very delicious, especially when combined with chili sauce, and the cheese and chicken were good. Another client "ppla_chu" said with the fusion of both Chinese and Italian food styles was really good and he loved the flavors of Margherita, Meat Lover and BBQ Chicken. But some consumers complained about the restaurant's location, saying the joint was too small and its environment was bad, and they suggested the restaurant to move. Now, the outlet's website has this message: "We will open our new location on April 15!" Reuters contributed to this story. Doctors and nurses stand in silence to honor the young organ donor.[Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn] On March 27, an organ donation procedure was carried out at Chongqing Daping Hospital on a donor who only lived for 33 hours. The baby boy was diagnosed with severe congenital heart disease after his mother gave birth by Caesarean section, or C-section. After their son passed away, the parents decided to donate the childs organs to help extend anothers life, according to the local Red Cross Society. After a doctor evaluation, the boy successfully donated two kidneys that would be used to help save a 27-year-old woman with renal failure. The Red Cross Society of China and the former Ministry of Health started the organ donation system in March 2010, encouraging citizens to voluntarily donate organs after they pass away to help others live longer. The baby boy in Chongqing is the youngest donor since it was established. Public understanding and support of organ donations has significantly improved over the years in China. Nearly 170,000 people had registered as organ donors in China by the end of last year. A total of 4,080 organ donations were made in 2016, with 11,296 organs being donated, an increase of 47.5 percent from 2015, according to the Red Cross Society of China. Xu Qin appointed acting governor of Hebei Xinhua | Updated: 2017-04-07 15:35 SHIJIAZHUANG - Xu Qin was appointed vice governor and acting governor of north China's Hebei province on Friday. The decision was announced at a morning session of the standing committee of the provincial legislature, which also accepted the resignation of governor Zhang Qingwei Xu, who was born in 1961, graduated from the Beijing Institute of Technology with a major in optoelectronics, according to an introduction from the official website of the Hebei provincial government. He had worked with the National Development and Reform Commission and earned a doctorate from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University before moving to south China's Shenzhen in 2008, where he served as the mayor from June 2010 to March 2017. Chinas top court said on Friday that all lower courts nationwide must make detailed plans before the end of June to establish an information platform that will handle cases related to prisoners being released on parole or having their sentences commuted. Provincial high peoples courts and intermediate peoples courts that handle more than 5,000 parole and commutation cases a year are required to have the platform up and running by the end of September, said Zhou Qiang, president of the Supreme People's Court. He made the remarks at a meeting held in East Chinas Anhui province to discuss digitalization of the courts processes. An online platform that connect courts with prosecuting authorities and prisons will help improve information sharing and further speed up the efficiency of dealing with parole and commutation cases, said Zhou. It will also allow prisons to upload information on inmates, such as behavioral reports and commutation applications, while courts will be able to make a decision on any application using the details provided. "It will save the time and labor that previously had to be expended delivering such materials," said Zhou. All procedures relating to parole or commutation handled via the platform will be traced and recorded, as well as being subject to prosecutors supervision, he said, adding that this will ensure transparency and prevent the abuse of power. "The platform, I believe, can also improve the rule of law, regulate our behaviors in dealing with such cases ... and prevent judicial officers from commuting sentences in improper ways," said Zhou. The courts announcement echoes a guideline it issued in 2014 to increase transparency and standardize procedures related to reducing penalties and approving parole. It is also in line with a document issued by the central leadership in 2013, which required strict reviews of parole or commutation cases to fight judicial corruption. It is a great pleasure to come to beautiful Bangkok to attend the launching ceremony of the Thai version of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China. First of all, on behalf of the Department of Publicity of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to friends from the political, academic and cultural circles, and overseas Chinese who have come to attend the launching ceremony, and Chinese and Thai friends who have made contributions to the translation, publication and launching event of this book. Jiang Jianguo (second right), minister of the State Council Information Office and Thai Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam (third right) attend the launching ceremony of the Thai language edition of the book Xi Jinping: The Governance of China in Bangkok April 7, 2017. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn] The book presented before you is a collection of President Xi Jinping's 79 speeches and instructions from November 2012 to June 2014, and a total of 6.2 million copies in 16 languages have already been circulated across the world. China's reform and opening-up have been continuing for nearly four decades and have made remarkable achievements, especially since the 18th National Congress of the CPC in late 2012. China's gross domestic product grew by 6.7 percent year-on-year to reach $11 trillion in 2016, with the country maintaining its status as the world's second-largest economy and contributing to more than 30 percent of global economic growth. In today's China, the economy is healthily developing, the society is in a harmonious and stable state and people are living and working in peace and contentment. Such achievements accomplished by China have benefited from the "Chinese road". But what is the "Chinese road"? I would like to use a string of numbers, "one, two, three, four and five", to brief you. "One" here means "one dream", namely the Chinese Dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. "Two" here means "two centennial goals", namely the successful building of an all-round well-off society by the 100th anniversary of the founding of the CPC in 2021, and the successful building of a modern, socialist nation by the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China in 2049. "Three" here means "three greats", namely advancing the great socialist cause with Chinese characteristics, comprehensively strengthening and improving the great project of Party building, and carrying out a great struggle with numerous new and historical features. "Four" here means the "Four Comprehensives", or Four-pronged Comprehensive Strategy, namely comprehensively build a moderately society, comprehensively deepen reform, comprehensively promote the nation's governance in accordance with laws, and comprehensively promote stricter governance of the Party. And "Five" here means "Five-in-One", namely, promote the overall layout of economic construction, political construction, cultural construction, social construction and civilization construction. If one understands these numbers contained in this book, he or she will understand President Xi's thoughts on the governance of China and understand the Chinese road. On April 2, 2017 (Beijing time), the North American Tsinghua Alumni Association of Automotive Industry was inaugurated at the 2017 China-US Green Mobility and Smart Vehicles International Forum in Ann Arbor, Michigan.[Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn] On April 2, 2017 (Beijing time), the North American Tsinghua Alumni Association of Automotive Industry was inaugurated at the 2017 China-US Green Mobility and Smart Vehicles International Forum in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Nearly 200 people attended the inauguration ceremony, including Tsinghua alumni from Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Boston, Silicon Valley, Beijing and Shanghai, as well as outstanding persons in the automotive industry. The newly-established organization will facilitate communication between Tsinghua alumni engaged in auto research and development around the world to strengthen their fellowship and cooperation in accordance with the Tsinghua motto Self-Discipline and Social Commitment. Professor Yang Diange, Head of the Department of Automotive Engineering of Tsinghua University and Vice Chairman of the Tsinghua Alumni Association of Automotive Industry (TAI), explained the development of TAI in his speech. With the support of the Tsinghua Alumni Association, TAI has been building a career development platform for all Tsinghua alumni in the automotive industry with its mission to enhance communication and collaboration among alumni. By now, TAI has branches in Sichuan, Chongqing, Guangdong and Shanghai, and has set up alumni groups in major automobile production and sales areas such as Beijing, Jilin and Hubei. The number of registered alumni has exceeded 2,000. Among them, one-third came from sister departments such as Mechanical Engineering, Precision Instrument, Environment and Computer Science. Professor Yang pointed out that North America not only has the largest number of overseas Tsinghua alumni, but also is one of the busiest regions of automobile development, production and marketing in the world, as well as one of the worlds centers for the intelligent automobile technology revolution. The newly-founded North American TAI will provide strong support for uniting international Tsinghua alumni and promoting global auto-related cooperation among them. All TAI members should seize every developmental opportunity and vigorously take part in national strategies of innovation-driven development, push ahead new power and intelligent vehicle revolutions, strive for the strategic goal of constructing world-class automotive engineering, and join hands to make continuous progress in the automotive industry and technology. These things combined could build China into a world automobile manufacturing power, with an eye on Domestic Development, International Cooperation and National Defense, following the trend of Safety, Energy Conservation and Environmental Protection of the automotive industry. Professor Yang Diange delivered the association flag to the North American Tsinghua Alumni Association of Automotive Industry, announcing its official inauguration. Fan Jiang, president of the Association of Tsinghua University Alumni in Michigan, Ford powertrain expert, 1987 alumni of Department of Automotive Engineering, as the Vice President of the North American Tsinghua Alumni Association of Automotive Industry, presided over the inauguration ceremony and delivered the establishment speech. Fan Jiang mentioned that in Detroit, Michigan, as a gathering place of technical talents in the automotive industry, people need to broaden horizons and cooperate with others at home and abroad in the fields of automotive innovation and entrepreneurship. Standing at the forefront of intelligent car development, making full use of resources to develop traffic products that meet needs of the next generation, and creating traffic ecosystems is vital. Fan Jiang said that the North American Tsinghua Alumni Association of Automotive Industry would actively help alumni expand international business and career development opportunities through the alumni association and the global Automotive Industry Association Network. Adhering to Tsinghuas traditions, the North American TAI will maintain a high degree of self-discipline, and serve North American alumni with quality services. Zeng Hua, Council member and Secretary-General of the North American Tsinghua Alumni Association of Automotive Industry, read the congratulatory letter from Tang Jie, Secretary-General of Tsinghua Alumni Association. Yu Peng, Deputy Consul-General of Consulate-General of China in Chicago in charge of overseas Chinese affairs, science and technology and administration, attended the conference to express warm congratulations to the inauguration of the "2017 China-US Green Mobility and Smart Vehicles International Forum" and the North American Tsinghua Alumni Association of Automotive Industry. He expected the newly established alumni association could give full play to its own advantages and play a positive role in promoting Sino-US auto industry cooperation. Yu Peng, Deputy Consul-General of Consulate-General of China in Chicago, addresses the audience at the inauguration.[Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn] This is the first overseas alumni association of Tsinghua Alumni Association of Automobile Industry. Its establishment marks the Tsinghua automotive industry alumnis solid step forward in producing far-reaching influence in promoting the global automotive industry technology exchanges and cooperation. Government agencies should be further streamlined, and ministries with similar duties and responsibilities should be developed as well, a think tank report suggested on Friday. The 2016 China Reform report, released by the Shenzhen Innovation and Development Institute, analyzed and evaluated China's reform last year and made suggestions on future reforms. The report suggested that the Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Water Resources and State Forestry Administration should be merged into one encompassing ministry. The Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Science and Technology should also be consolidated, while the Ministry of Finance and State Administration of Taxation should merge as well, according to the report. It also suggested that three regulatory commissions - banking, insurance and securities - be merged to form a mega state finance regulatory commission. "The restructuring of government departments is to improve efficiency and push forward scientific administration," said Xu Yaotong, a professor with the National Academy of Governance. Zhang Siping, founder of the Shenzhen Innovation and Development Institute, said China's reform in 2016 had breakthroughs in areas such as anti-corruption. But in many other areas, reforms have only just started and are yet to meet public expectations, such as in education and medical sectors. Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan arrive at Palm Beach International Airport in Florida, the United States, April 6, 2017. Xi arrived here for the first meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump. [Xinhua/Liu Weibing] The first U.S.-China summit of the new Trump administration takes place at President Trump's preferred venue, his own resort of Mar-a-Lago in Florida. The principal topics are security and trade; more importantly, however, the two leaders will be seizing the opportunity to take each other's measure as they plot a course for the relationship over the next few years. The global security environment has been rendered particularly unstable in recent months. China has tried to combine restraint in her military build-up - as evinced by the announcement earlier this year that the rise in military expenditure will be limited to 7 percent, not even a quarter of the proposed American budget - with a determination to maintain her core security interests in the East Asian region, particularly the East and South China Seas. However, it seems that the U.S. has decided to raise the stakes on the Korean Peninsula, basing the THAAD missile defence system in the Republic of Korea, amid indications that Trump has grown impatient with the continuing stand-off regarding the DPRK's nuclear ambitions and appears to be threatening unilateral action. Obviously, any threat of military conflict on China's borders is a matter of deep concern. President Xi will certainly be looking to defuse that threat. At the same time, President Trump has called into question the traditional American commitment to active maintenance of the post-World War II alliance system in the Asia-Pacific region. The sabre-rattling over the DPRK seems to suggest no serious American withdrawal - but it must have caused uncertainties among regional allies such as the ROK and Japan. Trump's demonstrative withdrawal from the planned trade-focused Trans-Pacific Partnership will certainly has that effect. A further issue is the allegation that the Syrian government is using chemical weapons against its civilian population in the civil war festering since 2011. Until now, the U.S. administration had been prepared to work with other members of the UN Security Council - notably Russia - and the Syrian government itself to bring about a solution to the crisis. Now, the American position has been reversed, a matter of great concern to China as a Permanent Member of the UNSC. On trade matters, President Xi will be aiming to change the current American populist narrative that China is somehow to blame for America's economic and employment problems, and that cooperation offers far better prospects than confrontation. Yes, China has a large trade surplus, but much of that is generated by American companies operating in China. Chinese statistics suggest that bilateral trade and investment are creating something like 2.6 million American jobs each year (2015 figures). After years of American criticism of China for restricting trade through protectionist measures, it is perhaps ironic to see China now figuring as the world's flagbearer for globalisation and free trade, while America is tempted to retreat into protectionism and defiant mercantilism. Certainly, China will stick to her guns. The world is hoping that the Florida meeting will concentrate the Trump's mind and bring a sense of realism to the formulation of American policy. In particular, President Xi attaches great importance to the agreement reached on climate change in Paris with former President Obama. Trump, as part of his campaign rhetoric, denounced this agreement and even described climate change as a hoax perpetrated by China. The Chinese president will certainly hope to salvage this agreement, a real achievement of the present decade. The meetings will certainly be low-key - there has been too much noisy rhetoric already - as neither country will benefit from flag-waving. In fact, the world's two greatest powers will have to get down to the hard, detailed work of mapping out a path for future cooperation; both nations have enormous scope to profit from economic relations, and the whole world requires them to work together in the interests of global security. It is clear that the Chinese president is not seeking confrontation. It is important that this first meeting concludes with no sign of public conflict, and that at least a basic framework is laid out for constructive dialogue and a mutual commitment to stability. It is probable that not much more is feasible at this stage. But an initial exchange in which both sides are seen to hold each other in respect will lay the foundations for practical improvements in the future relationships. Tim Collard is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit: http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/timcollard.htm Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn. Steven Hoffman publishes his latest book, Making Elephants Fly, on the process of innovation with practical advice from Silicon Valley.[Photo provided to China Daily] The Chinese version of a veteran US entrepreneur's book, Making Elephants Fly, on the process of innovation with practical advice from Silicon Valley, is on the stands. Xing Yi reports. Steven Hoffman believes that Chinese startups will play a vital role in shaping the future of the planet. Recently, the veteran US entrepreneur published a book, Making Elephants Fly, on the process of innovation with practical advice from Silicon Valley. The Chinese edition hit the shelves in March, but the English edition will not be available until this fall. "It is unusual," says Hoffman. "While I was talking to business book agents in the US, I told my Chinese friends that I had just finished a book. "Instantly, I was connected to almost all the top Chinese publishers, and things moved really fast. In China, everything seems to move so fast." Having created three venture-funded startups in Silicon Valley and trained many corporate executives, Hoffman founded a business incubator in San Francisco in 2012. The company opened its first overseas branch in Shanghai last September. Besides giving consultancy, providing shared working spaces, and connecting angel investors with Chinese startups, the Shanghai branch serves as a bridge that helps overseas startups to enter the Chinese market, and the Chinese to go to Silicon Valley. Last year, Hoffman traveled to more than a dozen major cities in China, meeting business partners and giving lectures to startups. The experiences in China enabled Hoffman to do some "localization" in the book's Chinese edition. "I put in special things just for China," says Hoffman. "The core teaching is the same, but there are a lot of Chinese examples." When speaking about commercialization, Hoffman uses Hiibook to make the point. White LotusBlack Sand is a collaborative production by the Rhythmosaic-Sengupta Dance Company and Beijing Dance/LDTX. [Photo provided to China Daily] Indian and Chinese artists get together to present a piece inspired by classical kathak and modern dance in Beijing, Chen Nan reports. She spins around and around really fast with her long, black braided hair spinning in the air and her hands gesturing up and down. "It's all about the center point. All the movements start and return to the center point of the body," gasps Mitul Sengupta, a 35-year-old Indian dancer-choreographer, who displays a movement of kathak, a major Indian classical dance form, at the theater of Beijing Dance/LDTX. This is part of her latest choreography work, titled White Lotus - Black Sand, which will be staged at Beijing's Tianqiao Performing Arts Center on Friday and will travel to Taiyuan in Shanxi province on Monday. The work is the first collaborative project between Rhythmosaic-Sengupta Dance Company, which was founded by Sengupta 10 years ago along with her husband, Ronnie Shambik Ghose, who graduated from the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts with a major in musical theater dance, and Beijing Dance/LDTX, which was founded by Willy Tsao in 2005. Katie Chin's cookbook features recipes that she and her mother developed together. Photos provided to China Daily A new cookbook celebrates a family's life around Chinese food, from Guangzhou to Minneapolis, Mike Peters reports. Leeann Chin knew it would be hard for her children to assimilate as Chinese-Americans growing up in the northern US state of Minnesota. "My mother did everything she could to help us fit in, like bringing us to Sons of Norway events, but every night she made us Chinese food," her daughter Katie Chin writes in her new book. "We didn't fully appreciate the gourmet Chinese meals we were served, and secretly wished we were eating Hamburger Helper like all the other kids. Foolish, I know." Her mom's lifelong love of cooking wasn't confined to her home kitchen. The Leeann Chin restaurant chain she founded now has 45 locations spread across the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul. After she retired, she wrote a Chinese cookbook with Katie, and the two started a pan-Asian catering business called Double Happiness Catering. Leeann died in 2010, but her daughter has captured their culinary life together in Katie Chin's Everyday Chinese Cookbook: 101 Delicious Recipes From My Mother's Kitchen. "In between our catering gigs, we were lucky enough to travel to China together to co-host a Food Network special called My Country, My Kitchen," Katie Chin writes, "as well as to New York for numerous appearances together on the Today show. The next natural step was to do a cooking show: We co-hosted the national PBS cooking series Double Happiness, a mother-daughter Chinese cooking show shot in Hawaii. Ying Yong, mayor of Shanghai, speaks at a meeting held on March 30 to discuss development of Shanghai's financial sector. Leaders from many top financial institutions including the People's Bank of China Shanghai Head Office attend the meeting. [Photo/WeChat Account: lujiazuijrc] In a meeting held to discuss Shanghai's financial sector on March 30, Ying Yong, the mayor of Shanghai, has urged the relevant authorities to step up the implementation of the city's financial reform measures. He stressed the importance of keeping focused upon the goal of developing the city into an international financial center by 2020. Leaders from leading financial institutions, including the People's Bank of China Shanghai Head Office, Shanghai Banking Regulatory Bureau, Shanghai Securities Regulatory Bureau, Shanghai Insurance Regulatory Bureau, China UnionPay, China Foreign Exchange Trade System, and Shanghai Stock Exchange, attended the meeting. They also analyzed the current situation of the financial sector and made relevant suggestions. Ying expressed his gratitude to local financial institutions for their contributions to Shanghai's economic growth and mentioned the important role of finance in the city's economic development. Ying asked the relevant institutions to strengthen connections between the construction of the city's financial center and free trade zone construction. The mayor said that the city will actively advance financial opening up and innovation, improve the convenience of trade and investment, and better serve the economy. Additionally, preferential financial policies will be launched to help tech startups, and emerging industries will be supported in a variety of ways. Ying also urged local officials to pay close attention to financial risk, to enhance financial supervision, and to strengthen legal education to create a framework for legal awareness. Chinese President Xi Jinping arrives in the southeastern US coastal town Palm Beach on April 6, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua] There has been much speculation about what issues should be resolved, or even talked about, when President Xi Jinping and President Donald Trump meet at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. However, the goal of their first meeting should be to build a good personal relationship that facilitates a constructive and productive relationship between the two countries. This is especially true given that the Trump administration is less than 80 days in office, with many official positions yet to be filled and several cabinet nominees still to be confirmed. The new US administration has not rolled out a comprehensive foreign policy and trade policy, except what Trump had said on the campaign trail, or tweeted or mentioned in casual conversations since his inauguration. The China-US relationship is immense and consequential. A good personal relationship between the top leaders would enable their countries to greatly expand the areas of cooperation in the years ahead while effectively addressing differences. It would help prevent the two nations from drifting into a strategic rivalry or triggering the so-called Thucydides trap between a rising power and the existing power, as many worried might happen during Barack Obama's eight years in office. Despite their growing economic interdependence, China and the United States still have vast potential for win-win cooperation that is untapped. Concluding a Bilateral Investment Treaty will be one way for them to inject new momentum into both economies. With its impressive record in infrastructure construction in the past decades, China can play a positive role in helping accomplish Trump's ambitious plan to fix the crumbling infrastructure in the US. The US could also adopt a more positive attitude toward the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Belt and Road Initiative (the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road), which aim to facilitate regional connectivity and economic development. The thinking that the US should not endorse any China-led initiatives reflected the zero-sum mentality of the previous administration, and is an attitude Trump needs not inherit. There is a host of regional and global challenges that require China and the US to work together, from counter-terrorism and fighting epidemics to improving global governance and reviving the world economy. White House officials and many US pundits have put the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and some trade and investment issues between China and the US on top of the agenda for meeting. Such issues call for China, the US, and other parties involved, to conduct more consultations, rather than taking unilateral actions, to resolve them. The same is true for bilateral economic and trade issues. Many US economists, for example, believe that blaming US trade deficits and job losses on China or Mexico is missing the big picture, and such misguided analysis will only lead to wrong policies. For all these reasons, it is unrealistic to expect quick results from the first informal summit between the two leaders. But if they can build a good personal rapport, it would be easier for the two countries to sort these things out in the days and years ahead. The author is deputy editor of China Daily USA. chenweihua@chinadailyusa.com SHI YU/CHINA DAILY The first set of meetings between Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump looks likely to prove a great disappointment to the crisis mongers in the media, since both leaders recognize the value of economic cooperation over rivalry, the importance of a balanced and thriving global trade system and the mutual interdependence and shared interests of their nations. The first face-to-face meeting between the heads of the world's two most powerful nations will be of great significance for the healthy and stable development of ties as well as the peace, stability and prosperity of the Asia-Pacific region and the world. Xi and Trump both know this. They have more in common that meets the eye. Trump wants to emulate Xi's success in spreading economic growth, opportunity and prosperity throughout the country, not just the eastern coastal areas. The revival of US industry in its heartland is the emphasized priority of Trump and his strategists as well. Careful listeners to Trump's speeches through the long 2016 US presidential campaign will have heard him repeatedly express his sincere admiration for the achievements of China's leaders in the modern era and recognize the success of their economic and social policies. Trump's argument throughout his campaign was that US economic policy could learn from China. Trump's own professional background is crucial to understand this shrewd pragmatist. Trump defines himself above all as a hard negotiator and dealmaker. He understands the necessity of compromise. His aim as a businessman has always been to achieve the goals he has set for his companies and improve their prospects. That is now the aim for the trade and security goals of the United States. The 45th US president does not see international relations as a Darwinian struggle to survive where one nation can only prosper and gain at another's expense. His approach is to offer concessions to negotiating partners as the understandable price in order to get the key concessions he seeks for his own country. This conception of international pragmatism, if maintained, will be a welcome relief from the moralism, double standards and ideological fantasies pursued by previous US administrations in the recent past. Above all, Trump came to the White House with the strongest economic and business background of any US president in the modern era. He therefore well understands the complex web of interdependence, investment and trade that have benefited the US and China so profoundly over the past four decades. Trump's message during President Xi's visit can therefore be expected to be clear: While seeking cooperation on dealing with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea nuclear issue and a reduction of tensions in such regions as the South China Sea, he will be focusing primarily on mutual respect, cooperation, especially on economic affairs and trade, and win-win results instead of conflict and confrontation. This does not mean that Trump and Xi cannot or will not talk about difficulties and challenges: They certainly will, precisely because such inevitable issues need to be recognized and managed. But that is precisely because the mutual benefits enjoyed by China and the US are so important to both nations. The world has benefitted immeasurably over the past two generations from the flourishing Sino-US interaction: Trump recognizes this. Above all, his strong sense of financial probity will be welcomed by Beijing policymakers and money managers in Shanghai. For decades Chinese leaders have expressed concern about the feckless domestic economic policies of previous US presidents. China continues to recognize that a stable, solvent United States is in its own best interests too. The author is a senior fellow at the Global Policy Institute in Washington. A surface-to-surface medium- and long-range ballistic missile Pukguksong-2 is test-fired by DPRK on Jan 12, 2017. [Photo/VCG] The Iranian nuclear deal, finalized between Teheran and six world powers on April 2, 2015, is two years old. While people's memories of the diplomatic triumph over what had become a dangerous nuclear issue are still fresh, the landmark deal now faces uncertainties because of the changing stance of the United States, which played an important role in making it reality. US President Donald Trump, from his campaign trail days, has been saying he plans to "dismantle" the deal. And analysts say that even though he may not be able to scrap a multilateral deal, he can find ways to "violate" it, which in turn will make it difficult for the US to uphold it. On March 23, Republican Senator Bob Corker submitted a bill titled Countering Iran's Destabilizing Activities Act to the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which had received more than a dozen co-sponsors in just a few days. The bill could allow Trump to re-impose sanctions on Iran, including those set to expire under the Iranian nuclear deal by adding new conditions that must be met before Washington lifts the sanctions on certain Iranian parties. Such a bill will no doubt anger Iran. Even some US media outlets have said such a move is tantamount to an open declaration of conflict with Iran. The Iranian nuclear deal, deemed one of the most important legacies of former US president Barack Obama, is the result of years of strenuous negotiations among the P5+1 countries (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, the US plus Germany), the European Union and Iran. During the course of the negotiations, all the participating parties demonstrated strong political will and spirit of diplomacy. The final round of talks alone spanned 20-plus months. And negating the result of such painstaking efforts could dim the hopes that similar gnawing issues the world faces today can be resolved peacefully. The Iranian nuclear deal formally came into force in July 2015, and there is ample evidence to show Iran has been fulfilling its commitments and following the timetable to dismantle its nuclear infrastructure. The Iranian nuclear deal raised the world's hopes that the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue can be resolved peacefully. But compared with the Iranian nuclear issue, the DPRK problem seems more complicated and volatile, and is becoming graver with each passing day. In its latest provocative move, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea test-fired a ballistic missile on Wednesday, but even before that, Trump had warned that the US will act alone if China "did not" help resolve the issue. Washington has apparently hardened its stance on Pyongyang since Trump took office. Last month, US officials said all options are on table, including military ones, triggering speculation that the White House is changing course on the DPRK issue. The fact is, the US and the Republic of Korea have been following a policy of containment and retaliationa vicious circleagainst the DPRK. Complicating matters is Seoul's decision to deploy the US' Terminal High Altitude Area Defense anti-missile system on the ROK soil, which has driven China-ROK ties to its lowest point in years. Besides, the long-standing distrust between Pyongyang and Washington has prompted the former to view every military maneuver by the US and the ROK as a plot targeted against Pyongyang. The situation on the peninsula has reached such a dangerous point that Foreign Minister Wang Yi described the two contesting sides as "two accelerating trains heading toward each other with neither side willing to give way". A collision between the "trains" will do neither party any good; instead, it will leave both licking their wounds and calculating the severe costs. All parties therefore should exercise utmost restraint, as any misstep at this stage could lead to irreversible consequences. Exercising restraint and holding meaningful multilateral talks are the best ways to prevent the "train" collision and to work out a diplomatic solution to the problem. The author is a senior writer with China Daily. wanghui@chinadaily.com.cn Boarders have a PE class at the primary school of Shicheng Township of Pingshun County, north China's Shanxi province, May 26, 2015. The children in the school are mostly left behind children whose parents work outside of their hometown. [Photo/Xinhua] According to a demographic survey conducted by the Guangdong provincial bureau of statistics, the migrant population in the province in South China aged below 17 was 4.47 million by the end of 2013, 21.8 percent of the province's population in the same age bracket. Guangdong is an attractive destination for migrant workers, especially younger ones, who are more inclined than the older generation to raise their children in the places where they work. There is no difference between these migrant minors and local non-adults, except they lack a local household registration, or hukou. Given that the realization of most of their wishes depends on the public services provided by the local governments, how to protect their legal rights and interests has long been a big issue, especially at a time when institutional discrimination against people without a local hukou has not been completely eradicated across the country. Migrant minors should have equal access to local educational resources and be allowed to sit in local senior high school and college entrance examinations, but regrettably this issue has not been addressed. Guangdong province, as home to a large army of migrant children, has made great efforts to this end, but it still needs to do more. In its future policy innovation, the Guangdong government should further intensify the protection of their rights and interests, and make greater efforts to give them fair access to public services. China's economy and social development have benefited a lot from the country's highly mobile population. Migrant workers have made huge sacrifices for the country's development, and their children's claims to their legitimate rights and interests should not be continuously thwarted by artificial barriers. --Southern Metropolis Daily Stabilizing and expanding employment was the focus of an executive meeting of the State Council, China's Cabinet, presided over by Premier Li Keqiang on Wednesday. An employment and entrepreneurship fund is to be established for college graduates, and local authorities are encouraged to provide one-time entrepreneurship subsidies to qualified college graduates. The employment and internship subsidies for college graduates will be extended, with internship subsidies offered to unemployed secondary vocational school graduates in poorer areas. In addition, college graduates from poverty-stricken families or households with disabled family members will be included as recipients of employment and internship subsidies. It is estimated that this year, the number of China's college graduates will reach about 7.95 million, a record high. Authorities at all levels must therefore pay great attention to the issue of college graduate employment. The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security recently made an announcement for the key employment work in 2017, which proposed giving top priority to the employment of college graduates. Local authorities should also take measures to promote and foster college graduates' spirit of entrepreneurship. Chinese President Xi Jinping (2nd R, front) and his wife Peng Liyuan (1st R, front) are welcomed by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (2nd L, front) and his wife upon their arrival at Palm Beach International Airport in Florida, the United States, April 6, 2017. Xi arrived here for the first meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump. [Xinhua/Wu Xiaoling] Sino-U.S. relation is on a testy ground, particularly since the arrival of Trump Presidency. The disagreements between world's two pre-eminent powers are many and widening each passing day of the new administration. There are serious disagreements over trade, currency, North Korea's nuclear programs, issues involving South China Sea, intellectual property rights, cyber security and so on. In this regard, President Xi Jinping's visit to Mar-a-Lago, a prized estate owned by President Trump, may prove very useful to lower down the unwarranted heat in 21st century's most vital relationship. It must be noted that during the course of his election campaign, candidate Donald Trump chose China as the favourite "whipping boy." While this is a common sight in democracies to toss up rival powers to gain some brownie points in bitterly contested elections, Trump had taken an extreme position throwing away minimum niceties and decorum when he accused "China of raping the American economy and stealing its jobs." Further, he had called for "trade war" and imposing hefty tariffs on the import of goods from China. However, what he did after his slender election victory was even more worrisome. Breaking an established foreign policy tradition in America, Trump took an extreme brinkmanship to take the call from the Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen, thereby raising questions over the long standing "One-China Policy." Although he was quick enough to undo the damage by speaking with President Xi and then dispatching his foreign sectary Rex Tillerson to Beijing, such impulsive behavior often taking tenor of brinkmanship is likely to overshadow a crucial visit by the Chinese president. Yet, as a consummate businessman, President Trump knows too well that any missteps or brinkmanship in the upcoming meeting at Mar-a-Lago would be much more costlier for his own country than China. First, the American president faces serious challenges to his leadership and skills as an efficient "deal makers." The glaring failure of his administration to overturn the Obamacare where many of the Republican lawmakers went against his wishes has left him politically weaker. Therefore, he would not like to commit another blunder with President Xi thereby risking open trade war and geopolitical tensions. Second, on contentious issues like trade, given huge trade surplus that China runs over the U.S. economy ($347 billion), Trump has to be doubly careful before he launches any full blown "trade wars" as he has been threatening for quite a while. From electronics, textiles, construction to even agriculture, a large chunk of the U.S. industries are deeply integrated with China's and any misadventure from Trump would prove far more costlier for the struggling American economy. Third, notwithstanding acrimonies and occasional rancor, China and the U.S. arguably share the deepest relationship on range of issues - trade, climate change, energy, global governance, peacebuilding and geopolitical cooperation at the United Nations among others. Economically speaking, having one sixth of world's economy and a trade volume over $520 billion, Sino-U.S. relationship is critical to maintain the good health of free trade and globalization. Besides, both countries have huge responsibility to lead the global collective action on climate change. It is for everybody's benefits that acrimonies are managed through practical deal makings mutually beneficial to both countries and the world. In short, the world is watching with bated breath how the first meeting between two most powerful men would end. It would be an understatement to say that stakes are very high for the world on a number of issues ranging from trade, globalization, regional security, geopolitics and global growth and peace. If not any major breakthroughs on contentious issues, the world is expecting incremental positive outcomes from the meet. The author is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit: http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/NiranjanSahoo.htm Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn. [Photo/IC] THE OFFICIALS running official micro blogs and instant-messaging accounts should always bear in mind that no matter how advanced the technology, these channels should only convey the government's point of view, rather than their personal views, Guangming Daily comments: The fast development of information technology has made the internet-based channels and platforms, such as micro blogs, an indispensable means for governments to exchange information with the public. If operated well, these new channels can improve the transparency of governance, and help to refute rumors by keeping people informed about government affairs in a timely manner. However, the official micro blog of Gucheng district in Lijiang responded to people's anger over a recent violent incident in the popular tourist spot in Southwest China's Yunnan province, in which a female tourist was disfigured by locals in a street attack by saying: "You'd better never come! Nobody cares whether you come or not!" And Jinan public security bureau in East China's Shandong province said through its official micro blog: "Freaks are everywhere in the world. They are like an over-confident donkey knocking into a bus." These sarcastic remarks were seemingly addressed to the people pathetic with a young man, who was sentenced lifelong imprisonment for wounding a person with a fruit knife that later died in hospital, as the person and some others were physically and verbally abusing his mother who failed to pay back the money she had borrowed from a loan shark. Such personal and emotional rhetoric is improper for the official information disclosure channels. The operators of these government social media accounts must be cautious and prudent in their wording to avoid any possible misunderstanding. Also, governments at various levels should establish a more rigorous proofreading mechanism before releasing any information through these official accounts, so that rather being the platforms for quarrels with the public, they are reliable information sources that care about people's concerns and dispel their doubts. A man walks past the China Construction Bank in Rizhao, Shandong province, China, March 16, 2014.[Photo/IC] A BEIJING-BASED NEWS ANCHOR recently sued a local branch of China Construction Bank, a year after the bank charged him 300 yuan ($43) simply because he forgot to pay the 69-yuan repayment. Beijing Youth Daily commented on Thursday: The news anchor found it shocking that he was charged such high interest. Yet the bank argues that the interest charge was based on the total sum of his debt in that month, not the just the repayment part. Many banks still adopt such a controversial, questionable approach, which should have been abolished a long time ago. Imposing extra interest charges on credit card users is beyond common knowledge and transactional customs. Generally, a debtor pays interest on the principal, or the original amount of a loan, and is rarely required to pay interest on the full amount. In most cases, credit card applicants are informed about the benefits they can receive by using the card, which range from a flexible transaction limit to low-interest repayment installments. Often they are not fully aware of the charges that accompany an overdue payment, and the bank staff will not bother to inform them. Card holders are supposed to pay their debts on time and accept the penalties should they fail to do so. But they have every right to question any charge that is not in the terms and conditions set out by the card providers. Banks are right to hold unruly debtors to account. But there are better ways of dealing with those who don't make their repayments. The authorities should work out binding regulations so that dishonest borrowers face the legal consequences. Inner Mongolia becomes a paradise for migratory birds (chinadaily.com.cn) Updated: 2017-04-06 Two white cranes fly wing to wing at Agula wetlands, Horqin Left Wing Rear Banner, Tongliao, Inner Mongolia autonomous region. [Photo/nmgnews.com.cn] With a wide span of longitudes, Inner Mongolia boasts over 180 nature reserves and 49 national-level wetland parks, all of which attract flocks of migratory birds to perch there during the long journeys. From Juyan Lake to Horqin Grassland, migratory birds swans, geese, egrets, mallards, cranes and gulls gather in the wetlands and lakes to eat and rest before resuming their long annual journeys. Usually there are three migration routes for birds that travel through Inner Mongolia. One route starts from Poyang Lake in Jiangxi province, with stopovers in Chifeng city in Inner Mongolia, and then transferring to two separate ways, one to the northeast to the Hulunbuir grasslands and the other through Tongliao and Manzhouli (both in Inner Mongolia) heading to breeding grounds near Lake Baikal in Russia. Another route travels along the Yellow River, stops over in Baotou and Bayannur in Inner Mongolia, and then goes to Mongolia, said Yang Guisheng, professor of Inner Mongolia Universitys school of life sciences. In recent years, officials in the region have worked hard to protect the water and air environments through retrieving grasslands from reckless grazing and planting drought-resistant trees to control desertification. Thanks to these measures, the region has hosted over 50 new species of birds. Britain's Prime Minister, Theresa May, greets Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council, outside 10 Downing Street, in central London, Britain April 6, 2017. [Photo/Agencies] LONDON - European Council President Donald Tusk met British Prime Minister Theresa May for Brexit talks on Thursday in London, with 10 Downing Street saying later that both leaders agreed the tone of discussions had been positive. The two agreed to try and remain in close contact as negotiations about Britain's departure from the EU progressed, said an official spokesperson for May. It was the first time the two had met since May triggered the Article 50 process last week, setting in motion Britain's departure from the European Union (EU) through an official letter delivered to Tusk on Britain's decision to leave the bloc. Tusk smiled to waiting media as he left Number 10, but gave no comment about their private 90-minute meeting. In a communique after the meeting, Downing Street said: "The PM reiterated the UK's desire to ensure a deep and special partnership with the EU following its exit and noted the constructive approach set out by the Council in its draft guidelines published last week." "She said the UK looked forward to formally beginning negotiations once the 27 member states agreed guidelines." The statement added that May also made it clear that on the subject of Gibraltar, Britain's position had not changed. "The UK would seek the best possible deal for Gibraltar as the UK exits the EU and there would be no negotiation on the sovereignty of Gibraltar without the consent of its people," it said. Gibraltar, located at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula at the entrance of the Mediterranean Sea, was ceded to Britain as part of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. Spain has persistently sought to regain the territory. The statement said that with Britain also remaining a member of the EU for the next two years, May and Tusk also discussed the agenda for the next EU Council meeting. MOSCOW - Six people in St. Petersburg and two others in Moscow were detained Thursday for suspected involvement in a deadly blast in the St. Petersburg metro Monday, the Russian Investigative Committee (RIC) said in a statement. An explosive device similar to the one found at the Ploshchad Vosstania metro station in St. Petersburg, along with firearms and ammunition, was seized at the detainees' residences, said the statement. The RIC offered names of the eight suspects but did not disclose their nationalities or whether they have links to terrorist groups. A blast took place on Monday afternoon in a train carriage in the tunnel between metro stations Technological Institute and Sennaya Ploshchad in St. Petersburg, Russia's second largest city, killing 14 people and wounding dozens. The RIC said Tuesday that 22-year-old Akbarzhon Dzhalilov carried out the deadly bomb attack, and he left an additional bomb at the Ploshchad Vosstania station, which was defused later by investigators. Dzhalilov himself died in the blast and he was widely-reported as a Kyrgyz-native. On Wednesday, six Central Asian nationals were detained in St. Petersburg on suspicion of facilitating terrorist activities and recruiting their compatriots for the Islamic State and other terrorist groups. Their connections with Dzhalilov are still under investigation. BOGOTA - At least 306 people have died and 362 more have been injured by the landslide that hit the Colombian town of Mocoa on Saturday. The Minister of Defense and the man in charge of Mocoa's reconstruction efforts, Luis Carlos Villegas, told the press Thursday that 220 bodies had been handed over to their families after being identified, including 92 children. "We have 362 injured people, of which 19 are still in hospital. Another 100 have been sent to specialized treatment centers...I have been inspecting the shelters and government food supplies are being delivered there. The population in the shelters is being well-fed," he added. The minister also explained that, in recent days, there had been a sharp rise in demands for vaccinations by a great number of people seeking to avoid diseases. According to instructions from President Juan Manuel Santos, daily supplies for the displaced will continue to arrive until at least April 16th. The city of Mocoa is crisscrossed by the Mocoa, Mulato and Sancoyaco rivers, all of which burst their limits last Friday due to intense rain. The landslide hit early Saturday morning, when most of 43,700 people in the town was fast asleep. US President Donald Trump delivers an statement about missile strikes on a Syrian airbase, at his Mar-a-Lago estate in West Palm Beach, Florida, US, April 6, 2017. [Photo/Agencies] DAMASCUS - At least four Syrian soldiers were killed by the US missile strike that targeted an airbase in central Syria on Friday, a monitor group reported. The US missile strike against the Shairat airbase has destroyed the airbase almost completely, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. At dawn Friday, the US struck the Syrian airbase in the center province of Homs with tens of Tomahawks missiles. The state TV said the attack was an "American aggression." The attack marks the US response to the alleged chemical attack on rebel-held town in northwestern Syria last Tuesday. Washington accused the Syrian army of being behind the toxic attack that targeted the town of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province, an allegation totally denied by Damascus. Activists of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said over 70 people were killed in Khan Sheikhoun by the toxic gas. Syria's Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem denied at a press conference Thursday that the Syrian army fired toxic gas on Khan Sheikhoun town in Idlib province. The minister said the army struck an arm depot which belongs to the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front, adding that the depot contained chemical materials the terrorists were bringing in from Iraq. PALM BEACH, United States - US President Donald Trump said Thursday he had ordered targeted missile strikes at a Syrian military airfield and called the strikes in the nation's "vital interest." Speaking to reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Trump said the Syrian government "ignored the urging of the UN Security Council." "The refugee crisis continues to deepen and the region continues to destabilize," said Trump. According to local news reports, US warships launched around 50 Tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian government airbase. The United States believed that Syrian planes based at the airbase carried out chemical attacks on Tuesday that killed over 70 people and wounded scores of others, most of whom civilians in Syria's northwestern province of Idlib. Syria's Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said early on Thursday that the Syrian airstrike on a rebel-held town in Idlib struck a rebel depot containing chemical materials, denying that the air force fired toxic gas during the attack. At a press conference held in response to the international accusation that Syria allegedly fired toxic gas in Idlib, al-Moallem said the reports are "lies." DAMASCUS - At least four Syrian soldiers were killed by the US missile strike that targeted an airbase in central Syria on Friday, a monitor group reported. The US missile strike against the Shairat airbase has destroyed the airbase almost completely, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. At dawn Friday, the US struck the Syrian airbase in the center province of Homs with tens of Tomahawks missiles. The state TV said the attack was an "American aggression." The attack marks the US response to the alleged chemical attack on rebel-held town in northwestern Syria last Tuesday. Washington accused the Syrian army of being behind the toxic attack that targeted the town of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province, an allegation totally denied by Damascus. Activists of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said over 70 people were killed in Khan Sheikhoun by the toxic gas. Syria's Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem denied at a press conference Thursday that the Syrian army fired toxic gas on Khan Sheikhoun town in Idlib province. The minister said the army struck an arm depot which belongs to the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front, adding that the depot contained chemical materials the terrorists were bringing in from Iraq. People were killed when a truck crashed into department store Ahlens on Drottninggatan, in central Stockholm, Sweden April 7, 2017. [Photo/Agencies] At least three people were killed and many injured when a truck hit a group of pedestrians before ploughing into a department store in central Stockholm, Swedish media reported. Shots have also reportedly been fired in another part of the city, the BBC said. The Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet published a photo online showing the large truck embedded in the front window of a department store in Drottnigattan, a popular pedestrian street in central Stockholm. Swedish Prime Minister said the country had been attacked and there was every indication it was an act of terrorism. Recently France, Germany and the UK have suffered terror attacks using vehicles from Islamic militants. To contact the reporter: chris@mail.chinadailyuk.com Photo taken on April 5, 2017, shows the United Nations Security Council holding an emergency meeting on alleged chemical weapon attack in Syria, at the UN headquarters in New York. China supports the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and related UN entities in carrying out comprehensive, objective and fair investigations into uses of chemicals as weapons in Syria, said China's permanent representative to the UN Liu Jieyi here on Wednesday. [Xinhua/Li Muzi] Truth is the first casualty in every conflict, and this was illustrated again in the incident involving use of deadly chemical weapons in Syria's Khan Sheikhoun area, in which an airstrike by the Syrian Air Force killed 72 people, including many children. The killings and sufferings are undeniable. So are the traces of Sarin, a deadly nerve gas, which choked many to death. This use of prohibited chemical weapons has been condemned around the world. However, the problem lies in differences over who is responsible for their use. Hence, the death of truth. The United States and several Western or other anti-Assad governments have squarely blamed the regime's air force. However, Syria, and its chief backer Russia, accused rebels who allegedly had a depot of those weapons targeted by the jets leading to the poisoning. It is also a technical issue. So far, it is not clear if a facility producing and storing chemical weapons is capable of causing widespread damage to the people in the case of aerial attack. Some experts say it is possible, others disagree. Their idea is that extensive loss of life shows the weapons dropped by the jets contained the deadly chemicals. The incident highlights the complexity of the intractable war now in its sixth year. With hundreds and thousands of people killed, maimed or evicted from homes, the enormity of the tragedy has already gone beyond all limits. Ideally, the latest attack should be an eye-opener for different parties, directly or indirectly involved in the conflict. Unfortunately, it is once again being used to score points and promote rival political agendas than finding solutions. President Donald Trump said after the attack that his "attitude" towards Bashar al-Assad was changing. Almost the same thing was repeated by the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Nikki Haley, who said that her country would be compelled to take action on its own in case Russia and others fail to cooperate. Vice President Mike Pence said all options were on the table. The drum-beating has just started. The latest incident reminds us of the terrible chemical attacks of August 2013 in the Ghouta area near Damascus in which hundreds of civilians were killed. Widespread global outcry followed. Assad was blamed and, for a while, it seemed the U.S. might resort to force to punish the Syrian leader. Russia intervened and a deal was struck to rid Syria of chemical weapons. Despite this, use of chemical weapons continued to be reported. The latest attack could be used to turn heat on Assad to step down or face consequences for allegedly "gassing his people." Since Russia has already shown its cards, that it would stand by the Syrian government, chances for a politically negotiated settlement seem to have receded. Establishing who was responsible is obviously of first importance. Since the area targeted by the jets is at the heart of a war zone, sending neutral experts to seek forensic evidence is highly challenging. The Security Council can be helpful. Instead of wasting time in useless rhetoric, it should work out the modalities to fix the responsibility. The U.N., or any other neutral body, should be allowed to send a team of experts to determine if the Syrian jets used the chemical weapons or whether ground storage facilities turned into inferno due to being hit from the air. Once the perpetrators are known, the next step could be taken to permanently address the issue of chemical weapons in Syria. For many experts, it would be extremely foolish of the Syrian government to use such weapons when it is already winning and also can use conventional weapons with impunity to kill scores of people, including militants and those civilians trapped in the places controlled by rebels. Others suggest that Assad has become so powerful and bold that he might go to any limits to bring the conflict to the end at the earliest moment - regardless of cost. Sajjad Malik is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit: http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/SajjadMalik.htm Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn. A view of the street scene after people were killed when a truck crashed into a department store Ahlens, in central Stockholm, Sweden, April 7, 2017. [Photo/Agencies] PARIS - A truck attack in a shopping street in central Stockholm on Friday showed that "relentless fight against terrorism must be a priority of European solidarity," said French President Francois Hollande. Expressing "dismay and indignation," Hollande sent sympathy and solidarity message to families' victims. In a joint statement with his German counterpart Sigmar Gabriel, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said they were "distressed by the fact that Sweden may have been the victim of such an act of terrorism." "In these difficult times, we stand alongside our Swedish friends. We hope that all the light will be be shed on this horrible act," they added. Earlier on Friday, a truck crashed into a crowd on a shopping street and a department store in central Stockholm, killing at least four people and wounding many others in a likely terrorist attack, according to Swedish officials. The incident came just two weeks after a man drove a car into the crowded Westminster Bridge in London, killing four, and then stabbed a policeman to death before being shot dead by police. The recent attacks in main European capitals reminded people of Nice attack last summer when a 31-year-old delivery man drove his heavy truck into revellers of Bastille Day in French Rivera city of Nice, leaving 86 people killed. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack. The top priority after a US missile strike on a Syrian air base is to prevent further deterioration of the situation and thus maintain the "hard won" political process to settle the Syrian issue, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Friday. At dawn on Friday, the United States struck a Syrian air base in the central province of Homs with dozens of Tomahawk missiles, saying the strike was in retaliation for the chemical attack on a rebel held town in the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib. China's stance on chemical weapons is consistent, and it has condemned the recent chemical weapons attack in Syria, Hua told a daily news conference in Beijing on Friday. "We are opposed to the use of chemical weapons by any countries, organizations or individuals under any circumstances, for any purposes," Hua said. She said China supports the United Nations conducting an"independent and comprehensive investigation into all cases of the use or suspected use of chemical weapons" and coming to conclusions based on solid evidence that can"stand the test of history and facts". The US missile strike nearly destroyed the Shayrat Air Base in Homs, killing six Syrian soldiers and destroying nine Syrian war planes. Homs Governor Talal Barazi said rescue operations had begun at the facility. According to Barazi, the air base provided key support to the Syrian Army in the war against the Islamic State group. The governor said the air base played a significant role in liberating the ancient city of Palmyra from the IS. The US said the attack was in retaliation for strikes that it alleges were carried out by the Syrian Air Force on the rebel held town in north western Syria on Tuesday, killing over 70 people and wounding scores, most of them civilians. Damascus denied the allegation. Director of the United Nations Information Service in Geneva Alessandra Vellucci said on Friday that the UN Syria envoy, Staffan de Mistura, is closely "following the situation, including through consultations with relevant interlocutors". Syrian Information Minister Ramez Turjman said the Syrian leadership was consulting with Russia and Iran on the response to the US "aggression". CHINA DAILYXINHUA By ANBAIJIE in Palm Beach, Florida, and ZHANG YUNBI in Beijing | China Daily | Updated: 2017-04-08 05:12 President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump and their delegations meet at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, on Friday. CARLOS BARRIA / REUTERS He and Trump meet in Florida, agree to a new starting point President Xi Jinping pledged in Florida on Thursday to work with US President Donald Trump to push forward China-US ties from a new starting point. "There are a thousand reasons to make the China-US relationship a success, and not a single reason to break it," Xi said at his first meeting with Trump. At their long awaited meeting at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Xi invited Trump to make a state visit to China before year's end. Trump accepted the invitation and said he expects to visit at an early date. The two leaders and their delegations met for further talks on Friday. Xi and Trump spoke highly on Thursday of the historic progress made in the ties and agreed to push for greater development of the bilateral relationship from a new starting point, thus benefiting the peoples of both countries and the world. Xi said that the bilateral ties, which got back on track 45 years ago, have brought enormous pragmatic benefits to the two peoples. It will require deep thinking, political resolve and historic commitments by leaders of both countries to further develop the ties in the next 45 years, he added. Trump said the two countries shoulder great duties and should maintain contact and coordination on major issues. He also said he looks forward to building a good working relationship with Xi and achieving greater development of US China relations. Regarding bilateral high level exchanges, Xi said the two sides "should make full use of" newly established high level dialogue mechanisms on diplomacy and security, economy, law enforcement and cyber security, and society and culture. Xi called for "making the pie of cooperation bigger, stipulating lists of priority cooperation and achieving more initial outcomes". The two countries should properly tackle sensitive issues and constructively manage and control their differences, Xi added. On the economic front, Xi said the two nations should promote the negotiation of a bilateral investment treaty and the healthy development of two way trade and investment. The two countries also could explore embarking on pragmatic cooperation in areas including infrastructure construction and energy, Xi added. The two leaders introduced to each other the priority agenda items of each side, and they exchanged views on regional hot spot issues. Xi said the two sides should reinforce communication and coordination on major international and regional issues and jointly promote the proper addressing and settlement of such issues. They also could expand cooperation in handling global challenges such as nuclear nonproliferation and cracking down on transnational crimes, Xi said. To jointly champion world peace, stability and prosperity, the two countries should also strengthen communication and coordination within multilateral mechanisms such as the United Nations, Group of 20 and Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, Xi added. When Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, arrived at the resort at about 5 pm local time on Thursday, Trump and his wife, Melania, greeted them. The two couples talked and listened as two of Trump's grandchildren sang Jasmine Flower, a traditional Chinese song. The children also recited Three-Character Primer, an original Chinese text for children's early education first compiled in the Song Dynasty (960-1279), as well as a Tang Dynasty (618-907) poem. Contact the writers at anbaijie@chinadaily.com.cn You are here: Home Flash China confirmed Thursday that it has lodged solemn representations to India over a visit by the Dalai Lama to a disputed region. China lodged solemn representations to the Indian ambassador to China and senior officials of the Indian foreign ministry, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying confirmed at a routine press conference. "Border issues and Tibet-related issues concern China's core interests. India failed to honor its commitments on Tibet-related issues and further stirred up border trouble by inviting and allowing the Dalai Lama to visit the disputed border region," Hua said. The Dalai Lama, regarded by China as a political exile who has attempted to split Tibet from China under the cloak of religion, arrived in the so-called "Arunachal Pradesh" on Tuesday for a week-long visit. Hua said China opposes the Dalai Lama's visit to the disputed region and opposes any country offering him a platform for him to engage in anti-China, separatist activities. China urged India to stop using the Dalai Lama to damage Chinese interests, Hua said. The spokesperson said mutual respect and accommodation for each other's core interests and major concerns is an important foundation for the smooth development of China-India relations. (Photo : Getty Images) Alipay has more than 450 million active Chinese users. Advertisement Alipay has formed a new partnership with Italy's UniCredit to make the Chinese payment service available in the European country. The two companies have already entered the operational stage, allowing Chinese visitors to use Alipay when purchasing goods and services in Italy. The Alipay users will be able to use the app they are accustomed to in their homeland. The partnership was made possible by employing the UniCredits merchant customers Points of Sale in reading bar codes generated by Alipay. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement Its our honor to offer users Alipays payment and lifestyle services in Italy by cooperating with UniCredit. The seamless in-app payment and marketing solutions provided by Alipay creates a cashless, efficient and productive way to do business, removing language, currency and cultural barriers between Italian merchants and Chinese tourists. We are dedicated to enhancing our technology-backed services to create a better experience for both merchants and tourists, explained Rita Liu, Head of Alipay Europe. Popular Italian outlets and stores are now using Alipay and it includes food and beverage Eataly and fashion boutique Antonia, letting Alipay transactions in its store in Brera. It will be available to Lagardere, a major part of the travel retail sector for Italian airports. Moreover, other important brands and distributors of the Fashion & Luxury sectors like Pisa Orologerie, Morellato, Fedon and Mitsukoshi will start accepting Alipay payments. Alipay will be used in 120,000 merchant network located in different parts of Italy. Alipay is launched by Alibaba Group in 2011 and has been the most used mobile payment method in China. It has more than 450 million active users that are allowed to make in-store payments in various markets popular with Chinese tourists around the world. Currently, Alipay is accepted in 70 countries and regions, with in-store payments covering around 100,000 retail stores. Advertisement TagsAlipay, china, Italy, Alibaba, UniCredit, Chinese tourist, mobile payment service Flash Egyptian Presidency announced Thursday that the meeting between Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi and his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump in the White House has heralded a new phase of relations between Egypt and the United States. "President Sisi held significant meetings during his U.S. visit with senior officials of the new administration," state-run MENA news agency quoted spokesman for Egyptian presidency Alaa Youssif as saying. Egypt's Sisi concluded on Thursday a six-day visit to the United States where he met with Trump and a number of U.S. military, economic and political officials. The visit came after years of rift in Egypt-U.S. relations following the ouster of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi by the army in 2013. The spokesman said it was clear at all meetings that the U.S. side is very much interested in boosting relations with Egypt, adding that the U.S. officials expressed appreciation for the major Egyptian role in the region. "They also voiced eagerness to work together for overcoming joint challenges," he added. The spokesman pointed out that the meetings of the president in the U.S. Defense Department were important as joint military cooperation is one of the most important pillars of relations between the two countries. "The two sides share the same keenness on cooperation for fighting terrorism," added the spokesman. The U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis said that he will visit Egypt later this month to resume talks on enhancing joint cooperation in the military and security domains, the spokesman said. According to Youssif, the Egyptian president also underlined the necessity of stopping supplying terrorist groups with weapons and funds. "President Sisi also held lengthy talks in the U.S. Congress and met with several House members where he expounded the recent developments in Egypt and the region," the spokesman revealed. The president held several other meetings with the civil society and business community along with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and major U.S. companies that are interested in operating in Egypt, Youssif said. President Sisi held important meetings with the chiefs of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund where the two international officials lauded the brave economic decisions that have been recently adopted by the Egyptian government, he added. Meanwhile, Egyptian Interior Minister Magdy Abdel-Ghaffar praised the outcome of the current visit by Sisi to the U.S., pointing out that the visit will have a positive impact on the fight against terrorism. In an interview with MENA, Abdel-Ghaffar said that President Sisi and his U.S. counterpart have expressed determination to unify efforts to defeat terrorism. He said he expects security cooperation between Cairo and Washington to increase in the coming period to put an end to this international phenomenon. "Since his first day in office, President Sisi has warned of the growing threat of terrorism, not only on Arab countries but also on all the world countries," Abdel-Ghaffar said. Therefore, he noted, the international community should coordinate efforts to fight terrorism and put an end to terrorist attacks, which hit several European countries recently. Egyptian Investment and International Cooperation Minister Sahar Nasr announced that the U.S. side expressed keenness on pumping new investments into Egypt in the coming period. "The U.S. side voiced keenness on investing in several sectors in Egypt, including renewable energy, transportation, industry and infrastructure," Nasr said in a press statement earlier. The minister said she held a series of meetings with U.S. companies, ahead of President Sisi's visit to Washington, to discuss means of removing obstacles to doing business in Egypt. She further revealed that a U.S. business delegation will visit Egypt soon. Commenting on the visit of President Sisi to Washington, the U.S. Embassy's Press Attache in Cairo Brian Shott said on Thursday that talks between Trump and Sisi were "so constructive." Speaking to reporters, Shott said the visit was a chance to cement relations and partnership between the two countries just as the U.S. president asserted. The discussions between the two countries would continue and Trump had stressed Washington's commitment to support Egypt in its fight against terrorism, he said, adding that the security cooperation between Egypt and the U.S. was important and a cornerstone for the bilateral relations. At least two people have died and dozens have been injured after a vehicle drove into pedestrians in Swedens capital of Stockholm on Friday. Although authorities have not officially determined whether the attack was an act of terrorism, there is strong suspicion that it is. The truck used in the attack was a hijacked vehicle. CNN.com reports that the attack occurred in Stockholms busy city center. Police were evacuating the area and urging people to stay home. Subways were also shut down. "Many things point to this being a terror attack," said Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven. Authorities are currently working on determining the identity of the attacker and whether more than one person was involved in the attack. Using vehicles to carry out attacks has become increasingly common. Such attacks are difficult to prepare for and prevent and have caused widespread devastation in Nice, France and Berlin, Germany last year, and most recently in London, UK. "Steal a lorry or a car and then drive it into a crowd. That seems to be the latest terrorist method. Berlin. London. Now Stockholm, Swedens former prime minister Carl Bildt wrote on Twitter following the attack. The U.S. Embassy in Sweden warned U.S. citizens to stay away from the area of the attack. Photo courtesy: Thinkstock/bhidethescene Publication date: April 7, 2017 A federal judge on April 3 blocked an Indiana law that required women seeking an abortion to get an ultrasound at least 18 hours before the procedure. Several states have laws requiring ultrasounds to give women the chance to see their babies before they abort them. The laws, including Indianas, typically allow a woman to avert her eyes or ask for the volume on the heartbeat monitor to be turned down. U.S. District Judge Tanya Pratts preliminary injunction against the law is the first challenge to a state ultrasound requirement since last years Supreme Court ruling in Whole Womens Health v. Hellerstedt, Indiana Right to Life president Mike Fichter told me. How this works its way through the courts is going to have very meaningful impact on state legislation throughout the entire United States, he said. In Hellerstedt, the Supreme Court overturned a Texas law that required abortionists to have hospital admitting privileges and for abortion facilities to meet ambulatory surgical center standards. At the time, pro-life leaders feared the worst for gains made toward restricting abortion at the state level. Since then, Planned Parenthood has filed several lawsuits against 20-week abortion bans and other state regulations, including in Alaska, Missouri, and North Carolina. Fichter said the Hellerstedt decision gave the ACLU and Planned Parenthood, which filed the Indiana suit, hope for something to exploit to do great damage to informed consent laws and ultrasound laws across the country. The abortion giant argued the state should not force it to pay for additional ultrasound machines, Fichter said. The group claimed it only had four ultrasound machines in the entire state. Indiana Right to Life surveyed pro-life pregnancy centers in the state and found 52 with ultrasound machines that provide their services for free. Its just laughable that Planned Parenthood, which likes to position themselves as a womens health leader, openly admits that they only have four ultrasound machines in the entire state of Indiana, Fichter said. Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill said he hasnt decided whether to appeal Pratts decision, according to the IndyStar. Fichter told me one of the ultrasound bills sponsors is circulating a letter among fellow lawmakers to urge Hill to file an appeal. If he does, Fichter expects a pro-life victory. Its a common-sense issue that a woman have 18 hours before an abortion so that she can make an informed decision prior to the abortion. What this ruling says is that the ultrasound will not be done until literally minutes before the abortion takes place, Fichter said. This is a very disturbing ruling, and it points to judicial activism, and it points to progressive judges and how they are protecting abortion in the courts. Courtesy: WORLD News Service Photo courtesy: Wikimedia Commons Publication date: April 7, 2017 Somali-based extremist group al-Shabaab has abducted five World Health Organization (WHO) employees working in the country, security officials said. The report comes as aid workers responding to the humanitarian crisis in some parts of the continent battle security risks. Col. Deeq Abdi Khaliif, commander of the Somali army in the town of Luuq, told Voice of America (VOA) the extremists broke into the aid workers home early on April 2 and took them. The men lived in Maganey village, close to Luuq. We are now pursuing them to free the abducted men, Khaliif told VOAs Somali Service. The five Somali men worked for the World Health Organizations polio vaccination program. Al-Shabaab has not allowed any vaccinations in the regions under its control and previously threatened the aid workers because of their work, Khaliif said. Somalia faces a humanitarian crisis that has left 5.5 million people suffering from food insecurity. The crisis is worse in the areas controlled by al-Shabaab, an extremist group that has plagued the country since 2006. The insecurity has blocked aid from reaching its territory and places at risk aid workers who try to help. IRIN, a humanitarian news agency, said 16 aid workers died in Somalia last year. South Sudan also faces a similar crisis, with more than 4 million people severely food insecure. The country descended into civil war in 2013 when fighting broke out between supporters of the countrys president and vice president. The conflict has led to accusations of civilian assaults and targeted killing by several government militias and other armed factions. The fighting has multiplied the challenges aid workers face. Samaritans Purse last month said armed rebels released eight of its South Sudanese staff in the countrys Mayendit region. Another nonprofit based in South Sudan confirmed last month that attackers killed six of its aid workers, the highest casualty count from a single attack. About 79 aid workers have been killed in the country since the war began, according to the United Nations. Deepmala Mahla, Mercy Corps country director for South Sudan, said it sometimes takes the organizations teams two days to reach project sites in areas in dire need of aid. The conflict also has made it impossible to reach some regions and frequently leaves their centers vulnerable to attacks. Many humanitarian organizations' facilities and compounds have been looted, Mahla said. Unfortunately its not decreasing or stopping. Mahla called on governments in the famine-hit countries to provide immediate and safe humanitarian access for the needs of their own people: We want to help save lives, and for that we need access to the people. Courtesy: WORLD News Service Publication date: April 7, 2017 Flash The UN Security Council on Thursday strongly condemned the most recent ballistic missile launch conducted by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). On Wednesday, the DPRK test-fired a ballistic missile into eastern waters, according to the Republic of Korea defense ministry. In a press statement issued here, the 15-nation council said that the launch is in grave violation of the DPRK's international obligations under UN Security Council resolutions. The council members deplored all DPRK's ballistic missile activities, noting that "such activities are contributing to the DPRK's development of nuclear weapons delivery systems and are significantly increasing tension in the region and beyond." "The members of the Security Council reiterated the importance of maintaining peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in North-East Asia at large, expressed their commitment to a peaceful, diplomatic and political solution to the situation and welcomed efforts by Council members, as well as other States, to facilitate a peaceful and comprehensive solution through dialogue," said the statement. The most powerful UN body also demanded the DPRK to refrain from further actions in violation of the relevant Security Council resolutions and comply fully with its obligations under these resolutions. "The members of the Security Council emphasized the vital importance of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea showing sincere commitment to denuclearization and stressed the importance of working to reduce tensions in the Korean Peninsula and beyond," it added. Boko Haram continues to terrorize Nigerians and especially Christians. It is estimated that at least 500 Catholic priests have been killed in the country due to the violent Boko Haram militants. According to a report from NAIJ.com, the 500 priests were all killed in Borno state. In addition, 250 Catholic churches were set on fire by Boko Haram and as many as 80,000 Nigerian Catholics have been made homeless. Many have fled to Cameroon as refugees. The battle against Boko Haram should not be limited to the physical realm, said Rev. Oliver Doeme, Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Maiduguri. It needs to be fought in the spiritual realm for it is a demonic attack. Just this week, Boko Haram militants kidnapped 22 Nigerian girls. In 2014, the militants had captured 276 Chibok schoolgirls in Nigeria which turned into an event surrounded by a national outcry. Several of the girls have since been released or have escaped. The extremists particularly target Christians and schools. The name Boko Haram means Western education is forbidden. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has been cracking down on the Boko Haram extremists. Although the militants are losing ground, they still pose a threat to Nigerias people. Photo courtesy: Thinkstockphotos.com Publication date: April 7, 2017 I grew up in a violent, fundamentalist, polygamist culta radical offshoot of the modern-day Mormon church. My father, Ervil LeBaron, was the man at the top. He demanded total allegiance. In the 1970s and 80s, he commanded followers to carry out mob-style hits on those who opposed him or fled his cult. He referred to these killings as hot lead, cold steel, and a one-way ticket to hell. Media outlets nicknamed my father the Mormon [Charles] Manson for the atrocities he committed, and authorities in multiple states (and Mexico) issued arrest warrants for him and his murderous followers. We moved unexpectedly and often, living in constant fear of getting caught. On many occasions, we left home in the middle of the night to stay one step ahead of the authorities. The FBI and Mexican police would raid our homes, looking for my father and the others who had carried out his orders. We experienced poverty of mind, spirit, and body. It doesnt take any mathematical genius to realize that one man cannot support 13 wives and over 50 children. His ministry consumed all his time. Some of his wives worked, and others went on welfare, but they could never manage to make ends meet. Everyone, even young children, worked long hours in grueling conditions to ensure we didnt starve. Even so, we regularly scavengedor outright stoleto meet basic food and clothing needs. As you can imagine, we were never allowed to make friends with anyone outside the cult. Until a few years ago, the only pictures I had of my father were newspaper clippings, including one (from the National Enquirer) of him in handcuffs after the Mexican police finally tracked him down. After being taken into custody by the FBI agents waiting across the border, he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to life in a Utah prison. A Difficult Mourning Even though I grew up in a religious group that claimed to believe the Bible, I had no idea who Jesus was. When anyone in our tight-knit community spoke the name of Jesus or mentioned Christianity, they did so with contempt and derision. But God had his eye on me even then. When I was very young and living in an overcrowded house in Denver, I took advantage of an opportunity to go to Sunday school, provided by a local church that sent a bus down our street every Sunday morning. The teachers handed out prizes if you took home papers, answered the questions, and brought them back the next week. I didnt always know the answers, but I definitely wanted the prizes. One day the Sunday school teacher asked us, Who is Gods Son? I had no idea how to answer. After a while, though, I figured out that no matter which question the teacher asked, if you answered Jesus you would be right about half the time. That meant more prizes! My older brother Ed, who lived and worked in Houston, wanted a better life for us. I remember the day, not long after my fathers imprisonment, when he showed up in Denver with a U-Haul truck. For what seemed like the first time, we were allowed to pack up all our belongings before we moved. Living in Houston, I experienced my first taste of a stable, non-chaotic life. After about a yearthat was probably the longest Id ever lived in the same placethe phone rang one Sunday morning. I picked up the receiver and heard my mother talking on the extension upstairs. The caller reported that my father had been found dead in his prison cell. I was shocked, but having never spent any significant time with him, I found it difficult to mourn as a normal child would. Still, my fathers death triggered a chain of events that changed the trajectory of my life. The Bibles description of God as a father to the fatherless (Ps. 68:5) became true and real for a troubled teenage girl. Article continues below Start Walking After hearing the news, my mother decided to move back to Denver and the chaos of the cult. I didnt want to go with her. I called Lillian, an older sister who had married and had begun distancing herself from the cult a few months earlier. She told me, Start walking. I hung up the phone and walked out of my house with just the clothes on my back. I had walked a little over three miles when she found me and picked me up. She hid me in a hotel for three days. My mother looked for me that night, and when she couldnt find me, she loaded up my other siblings in our station wagon and, without telling them where they were going, drove them back to Denver. As usual, they left behind most of their belongings. Lillian and I waited until we were sure they were long gone before driving back to the recently abandoned house. It felt dark and ominous going inside, but I was determined to retrieve what little I owned. I packed up all my clothes and the little odds and ends that have such meaning to a 13-year-old girl, and I moved in with Lillian, her husband, Mark, and their six children. They reluctantly enrolled me in a Christian school just down the road. Compared to the public schools in their area, they considered it the lesser of two evils. Several students there embraced the new girl, and they became my first real friends outside the cult. They showed me love and acceptance quite different from anything Id ever experienced. I could tell they had something inside them that I was missing and desperately needed. From my friends at school (and at the church with which it was affiliated), I learned about the Good News of Gods love for me. I learned how Jesus, Gods Son, was sent to earth to die on the cross for my sin. I learned that Jesus lived, was crucified, and was raised from the dead. Not long after enrolling in the Christian school, my sister allowed me to go on a retreat with the church youth group. The youth pastor gave me the opportunity to ask Jesus to come into my life and change me. That night, God took the broken heart of a 13-year-old girl in his hands, and since then he has been gradually restoring the wholeness that my chaotic childhood smashed to pieces. I left the retreat a different person than when I arrived. I didnt understand everything about God or the Bible, but I had a willing heart and lots of friends around to help me learn what I needed to know. Because I wasnt sure how my sister and her husband would feel about my acceptance of Jesus as Savior, I kept quiet about it at home so I wouldnt get sent back to Denver. Much later, they both accepted Christ as well, which gave me the freedom to open up about my salvation experience. My faith has carried me through the dark valleys Ive walked on my healing journey. It has helped me persevere through intense fear, tragedy, and multiple murders of people I love. As a child, I knew myself only as the polygamists daughter. But when I came to truly know and experience God as my father, he shattered the evil, all-consuming grip my earthly father had on my life. I began to find my identity as a daughter of God and learned to experience true freedom in and through Jesus Christ alone. Anna LeBaron is a speaker, life coach, and mother of five in the DallasFort Worth area. She is the author of The Polygamists Daughter: A Memoir (Tyndale). Did this testimony resonate with you? Let us know at cteditor@christianitytoday.com. Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here. When you ask someone about their faith, expect to hear a qualifier. Of course, theres spiritual but not religious, a category that 11 percent of Americans now fall into, according to Barna Group research. (The figure could be at least double that if applied to all without a particular religious affiliation, often referred to as the nones.) But even Christianity comes with caveats. Some try to change up the term by saying, Im not a Christian, but a Christ-follower. #ImChristianBut trended on Twitter a couple years ago, in the wake of a BuzzFeed video of young Christians butting against what they saw as negative stereotypes of Christians. They said lines like Im Christian, but Im not homophobic and Im Christian, but Im not closed-minded. Before that, the spoken word poem Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus took off with a message that confronted frustrations with religious ... 1 Books Abounding with Author Kelli Bolton Contact: Kelli Bolton, 614-599-0197 COLUMBUS, Ohio, April 7, 2017 / Her books include issues such as; unforgiveness, rejection, pride, jealousy, envy, betrayal, morality and singleness. "Past & Present"-A story about two pastors in one city with an unresolved issue from the past. Will they be able to work together in the present to aid in a desperate situation? "Remember Josephine"- A modern day adaptation of the story of Joseph. Josephine Jacobs finds herself facing her family after many years of separation just as Joseph did, will she be able to forgive them and love like Joseph did? "He That Findeth"- Karen Shepard was beginning to think she was "man repellant" because the prospects of her being "found" were starting to look dim and the fact that she was friends with three other women that had a different view of "finding a man" made it seem hopeless. Will there ever be one that will "findeth" her. Kelli also shares her experience as a mother to an adventurous little boy named Kameron in the book "Kameron Khronicles." Share Tweet Contact: Kelli Bolton, 614-599-0197COLUMBUS, Ohio, April 7, 2017 / Christian Newswire / -- There are many opinions about what the "church" is and isn't these days, leaving it to be made a mockery of. Author Kelli Bolton has a desire to see that change by addressing the "stereotypical" behavior that has caused people to take God and the church less serious. With the success of her 2015 film adaptation of her novel "Church Gossip" Kelli's back with more books to get the reader to see themselves through the eyes of those that question "is that how Christian's really act?"Her books include issues such as; unforgiveness, rejection, pride, jealousy, envy, betrayal, morality and singleness."Past & Present"-A story about two pastors in one city with an unresolved issue from the past. Will they be able to work together in the present to aid in a desperate situation?"Remember Josephine"- A modern day adaptation of the story of Joseph. Josephine Jacobs finds herself facing her family after many years of separation just as Joseph did, will she be able to forgive them and love like Joseph did?"He That Findeth"- Karen Shepard was beginning to think she was "man repellant" because the prospects of her being "found" were starting to look dim and the fact that she was friends with three other women that had a different view of "finding a man" made it seem hopeless. Will there ever be one that will "findeth" her.Kelli also shares her experience as a mother to an adventurous little boy named Kameron in the book "Kameron Khronicles." Nebraska Defeats LGBT Bill Contact: Liberty Counsel, 407-875-1776, Media@LC.org; Press Kit LINCOLN, Neb., April 7, 2017 /Christian Newswire/ -- Yesterday Nebraska state senators ended debate on LB173, a bill that would have added "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" to the state's employment nondiscrimination statues. This bill would also have allowed municipalities to add "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" to their public accommodation and housing nondiscrimination statutes. Nebraska will join at least 14 other states and 70 cities that have rejected sexual orientation and gender identity proposals in the last year. Liberty Counsel's Director of Public Policy, Jonathan Alexandre, spent this week traveling throughout Nebraska meeting with concerned citizens, business owners, religious leaders and legislators and presenting arguments in opposition to the proposed law. Immediately before the legislature convened to debate this bill, Alexandre spoke at a breakfast attended by several Nebraska senators and their staff. Right after the breakfast and floor debates, the speaker of the house killed the bill. Alexandre said, "Laws like LB173 are consistently used to criminalize anyone who speaks against it. This has been the case for countless business owners across the country who have been victims of the LGBT agenda. The legislature's decision not to move forward with this bill is a good move and is consistent with its duty to preserve the privacy rights and dignity interests of all Nebraskans. It is wrong to force some people into intimate situations with members of the opposite sex while forcing religious institutions to deny their moral convictions on human sexuality." 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 Mob kills church elder during raid on Christian school in Sudan A Sudanese church elder was killed after he was attacked by a mob during a raid at a Christian school that is being seized by a Muslim businessman. Younan Abdullah, an elder with Bahri Evangelical Church, was stabbed while he was defending women at the Evangelical School of Sudan. Christians had planned to stage a protest against the attempted seizure of the school. However, police from the Omdurman Central Division, accompanied by a group supported by Sudan's Ministry of Guidance and Religious Endowment, arrived at the school first and arrested all the men, Morning Star News reported. According to the advocacy group Middle East Concern (MEC), about 20 men arrived at the school with knives and other weapons and began to beat the women. Among them were members of a committee the government has illegally imposed on the Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church (SPEC). "Several men from the nearby Bahri Evangelical Church rushed to the church to try and protect the women," MEC leaders said in a statement. "The armed men attacked them, and two church members were stabbed," they added. Abdullah and another church member were brought to a nearby hospital, but he later died of his injuries. He is survived by his wife and two children. The other member, Ayoub Kumama, has since been treated and released from the hospital. Although the police were present during the attack, they failed to intervene, and they also did not help Abdullah after he was stabbed, MEC revealed. "Following Younan's death, the police arrested Mr. Shamshoun Hamoud, a member of the illegal committee who was identified by eyewitnesses as the person who stabbed Younan. None of the other attackers have been arrested," MEC leaders stated. A funeral service has been held for Abdullah at the school on April 4, and three days of mourning has been declared. The service was attended by the U.S. Ambassador to Sudan and the Second Secretary of the British Embassy. On March 27, police in Omdurman arrested 12 staff members of the school and prevented others from leaving the campus on the next day. The staff members were accused of obstructing the work of Education Vision, which is trying to take over the school. School personnel said that the institution still functions as a Christian school but representatives of Education Vision are regularly disrupting the classes. MEC noted that the illegally imposed committee has been selling church properties to businessmen aligned with the government since 2013. The Evangelical School of Sudan is one of several SPEC schools across the country. SPEC leadership remains in the hands of government-appointed committee members despite the November 2016 court ruling that declared the appointments illegal. The persecution of Christians has been augmented since the secession of South Sudan in 2011 when President Omar al-Bashir pledged to enforce a stricter version of Sharia or Islamic law. In April, the Sudanese Minister of Guidance and Endowments said that it will no longer grant new licenses for building new churches in the country, citing the decrease in the South Sudanese population. Persecution watchdog group Open Doors has ranked Sudan in the 2017 World Watch List as the fifth nation where Christians face the most persecution. home US South Carolina lawmakers considering bill that would recognize personhood of the unborn South Carolina lawmakers are currently considering a legislation that would recognize the personhood of unborn children starting at fertilization. The Personhood Act of South Carolina or S.217 was introduced by Lt. Gov. Kevin Bryant while he was still a state senator. He testified briefly in favor of the bill during the state Senate subcommittee hearing last week. "This legislation directly underscores and recognizes those unalienable rights endowed by the Creator: the right to life, the right to liberty, and the right to the pursuit of happiness for the baby girl and the baby boy that have yet to be born," Bryant told the subcommittee. One of those who testified against the bill was Katie Sacra, a mother who told the Senate panel about her trials and troubles raising a child with a painful, lethal disorder. "I promise you, no matter how hard you try to imagine, you cannot begin to understand the magnitude of suffering this has caused in our lives," she said, as reported by WISTV. She narrated that she had to terminate her pregnancy more than once because of the disorder, and she maintained that she was grateful that she was able to make the decision. Bryant's bill states that all life begins at conception, and it would outlaw all abortions, with no exceptions for cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother, according to WSPA. "Stating that human life begins at fertilization is really not consistent with scientific fact. Both sperm and egg are alive prior to fertilization. Although there is DNA added, no real new life is created," Dr. Michael Slowey of Coastal Fertility Specialists in Mt. Pleasant told the senators. Planned Parenthood representatives argued that the bill would pose health risks for women suffering from life-threatening pregnancies. Vicki Ringer of Planned Parenthood South Atlantic criticized the legislation for the lack of exceptions and noted that it would also ban the destruction of embryos from infertility treatments. Supporters of the bill believe that there should be a voice for the unborn who do not have one and that they deserve the same due process as adults. The hearing was packed to standing room only, and many residents signed up to speak for and against the bill, but there was not enough time to hear them all. Another hearing has been scheduled before a vote takes place. A Peninsula woman charged with two accomplices in the killing of the father of her children nearly a year ago was released from a Redwood City jail Thursday after family and friends posted bail backed by a staggering $70 million in cash and property. Tiffany Li, 31, walked out of jail in Redwood City around 1:50 p.m. wearing a black windbreaker and surrounded by four men in suits. She made no statements as she got into the front seat of a waiting sport utility vehicle to be driven to an undisclosed location, where she will be under house arrest. Li had appeared in San Mateo County Superior Court in Redwood City about 9:30 a.m. Thursday as Judge Donald Ayoob approved the bail amount, which was actually $35 million. San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said it was the highest bail in county history, but it was unclear if it was largest in the state or nation. Lis family put up $4 million cash, and other relatives, friends and business associates anted up at least 18 properties worth $66 million as collateral to secure the bail. Most of the properties are in the Bay Area, said Wagstaffe. Her two co-defendants in the case, Keveh Bayat, 30, and Oliver Adella, 41, remain in jail without bail. The other two defendants didnt set motion for bail and its because they didn't have any capability to pay, said Wagstaffe, adding that $35 million is the same as no bail for them. He said Li had the capability to make bail because she has a very, very wealthy family in China. The posted bail may be unprecedented in San Mateo County, but not in murder cases, said Lis attorney, Geoff Carr. California law requires twice the amount of bail if property is used instead of money. Lis parents live in China and are financially successful because of real estate, Carr said. Prosecutors charge that Li instructed her boyfriend, Bayat, and Adella to kill Keith Green, the 27-year-old father of her two daughters, and get rid of the body. Li, who lived in a mansion in Hillsborough, was arrested May 21, a little more than three weeks after Green disappeared. Police said Green was supposed to meet Li at a Millbrae pancake house April 28 but never returned home. A hiker found his cell phone the next day in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. For two weeks, Greens disappearance was treated as a missing-person case. But on May 11, Sonoma County sheriffs deputies found his body in a field off Highway 101 near Healdsburg. An autopsy confirmed that he was the victim of a homicide, authorities said. Bayat is the one who allegedly shot Green to death, according to court documents. Though Li and Green were involved in a custody dispute over their children, prosecutors have not revealed an alleged motive for the killing. Friends and family members of Green, including his mother, were sitting in the courtroom wearing blue T-shirts with Greens face and large, black letters spelling, Justice for Keith. They were floored that Li would be released on bail, said Angela Dunn, a family spokeswoman. Its just incredible, she said. Li walked into the courtroom with her head down and dressed in a red jail-issued jumpsuit. She sat quietly next to her attorney as they awaited the judges decision. It is unclear whether she will have visitation with her two children, whom she has not seen since being jailed. Her lawyer said Li speaks to them by phone. Prosecutors are concerned that Li will be a flight risk and raised the possibility in earlier arguments. Wagstaffe said his office had requested bail be set at $100 million because of fears that Li will flee the country once she is out of jail. Before being released from jail, Li was fitted with an electronic monitor shackled to her ankle and was expected to turn over her passports. State Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Alameda, who introduced legislation in 2016 calling for an alternative to the cash-bail system, said Lis is the highest posted bail hes heard of. I think this extreme ... example really draws attention to the fact that our bail system is broken, Bonta said. Its a system based on wealth. Chronicle staff writers Steve Rubenstein and Jenna Lyons contributed to this report. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A Houston man is charged with capital murder in a fatal shooting Wednesday outside a fast food restaurant in northeast Harris County. Sheriff's deputies said Amir Yarbrough, 29, allegedly shot Marquiet Davis, 29, about 6:30 p.m. in the parking lot of a Carl's Jr. restaurant in the 15200 block of Wallisville near Interstate 45. Davis was pronounced dead at the scene. A second unidentified man fled after he also was hit by gunfire. He collapsed at a nearby strip shopping center and was taken to the Texas Medical Center where his condition on Thursday wasn't known. Deputies said Yarbrough shot Davis during an apparent drug-related robbery. He fled the scene after the shooting and was later taken into custody. Yarbrough remains at the Harris County Jail where he is being held without bond for the capital crime. The investigation is continuing. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate What began with a welfare check Friday morning at a south Houston home turned into an apparent murder-suicide with four people killed across three connected murder scenes in two counties. Houston Police Department officers arrived around 7:20 a.m. to a modest house on Mt. Pleasant Street in South Union. A woman who appears to be the shooter was found dead. Her stepfather was also fatally shot and her mother was critically injured, HPD homicide detective Bill Elsbury said. The mom was rushed to Ben Taub Hospital in critical condition. Police officers would quickly learn their death count would double. They discovered a man's body at a separate home just a few doors down on Mt. Pleasant Street, where neighbors said the suspected shooter had been living for about a month. Houston police then asked Fort Bend County law enforcement to check on a home in the Andover Farms subdivision in Fresno. Sheriff's deputies checked at 9 a.m., saw nothing suspicious and left, homicide detective Justin White said. About 30 or 40 minutes later, they returned. They forced their way inside and found the body of Carolyn Jean Holmes, 48. It is unknown how long she had been dead, but authorities said she was shot and that she knew her attacker. "I don't know what drives a person to have that much rage," he said. Authorities have not released the identities of the suspected shooter or other victims. Elsbury did confirm that the suspected shooter has children, who are safe. Deputies were looking for security cameras to help determine the time of the shootings, especially as it connects to other deaths believed to be related in Houston. A 50-year-old neighbor said the area was full of hard-working people, including teachers, nurses and lawyers. He said Holmes had helped keep an eye out on the neighborhood. He believed she was disabled after an accident, walking with a limp and cane. He recalled that she had two sons. "She was a very good neighbor," he said. Neighbors of the suspected shooter said they didn't know her well. She had been in the South Union neighborhood such a short time. Many were familiar with the stepfather, who was shot and killed that morning. Krista Reece, 33, said she saw the stepfather every day where he worked at a meat market on the corner of Mt. Pleasant Street and Scott Street, just a few houses from where he was found dead. He packed sodas and manned the butcher counter, she said. A man and a woman who said they were the stepfather's biological children stood outside of the meat market Friday morning. The man's daughter was in shock. Her friend, 40-year-old Letisha Simmons, comforted her. "He was a good-hearted man," Simmons said. "He didn't deserve what he got." Flash Seoul, capital of South Korea, is enveloped in smog on December 29, 2014. [File photo: Xinhua] Chinese scholars and authorities have responded to the smog-related accusations made by some South Korean activists and media, the Beijing-based Global Times reports. Choi Yul, president of the Korean Green Foundation, and six other individuals jointly lodged a lawsuit with the Seoul Central District Court on Wednesday, accusing the governments of China and South Korea inaction on air pollution. Previously, South Korean media reported that about 30,900 people in South Korea and Japan die prematurely every year due to the fine dust from China. The report attributed the figure to a research paper published in the international journal, Nature. However, Zhang Qiang, one of the authors of the paper, dismissed the reports last week in Beijing. "There is no specific data on Japan and South Korea in the paper," he said. In the paper, researchers divided the world into 13 zones and analyzed the affects of international trade on air pollution and human health. There was no specific study on the effect of air pollution on human health in South Korea and Japan, Zhang said. Earlier in March, Hua Chunying, spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, also responded to the denunciation at a regular press conference in Beijing. She said the Chinese government is working hard to tackle air pollution, which might require a long period of time, and it still needs to be proved whether or not the air pollutants in China have a direct bearing on neighboring countries. But Hua assured that China's environmental protection authorities have maintained frequent contact with its counterparts in other countries. South Korea has joined the ranks of the world's most polluted countries, according to a report by the Financial Times on March 29. Although many common people in South Korea blamed China for the pollution, scholars in the country believed the root cause lies at home. "The government is sitting idly by while passing the buck to China," said Kim Shin-do, a professor of environmental engineering at the University of Seoul. Texas' representatives and senators in the U.S. Congress quickly reacted to news of the airstrikes that President Donald Trump ordered Thursday against a Syrian military installation after a suspected chemical attack on civilians earlier this week. While most Republicans praised the action, some suggested Trump should seek congressional authorization while others suggested they were pleased the president seemed to act as a leader of the free world rather than narrowly looking out for American interests, as he had promised in his recent address to Congress. Sen. John Cornyn, the state's senior U.S. senator and a Republican, lauded the action as "a clear message to Assad," the Syrian dictator. "I stand shoulder to shoulder with the Administration in condemning this brutality... The United States and the world community simply can't stand idly while Syria continues crimes against humanity." Texas' junior U.S. senator, Republican Ted Cruz, condemned Assad's apparent use of chemical weapons but said Trump should seek authorization from Congress: "Any military action in Syria must be justified as protecting the vital national security interests of America ... and I look forward to our Commander-in-Chief making the case to Congress and the American people how we should do so in the days ahead." Rep. Kevin McCaul, a Republican whose district stretches from Katy to Austin and who chairs the House's Homeland Security Committee, praised the action: "Passiveness in Syria is what has exacerbated this situation and allowed for adversaries such as Russia and Iran to exert their influence at the expense of U.S. national security, all the while allowing ISIS to flourish. Tonight's military strikes in Syria are a signal to the world that the days of blank threats are long gone and under this Administration credibility will be restored." Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston and also a member of the Homeland Security Committee, questioned how the strikes fit into a larger plan: "No amount of missile strikes are going to end the terror in Syria without an established strategy, something the Trump Administration does not have. If we are to stop the killing and solve the problem, Trump must immediately confront Vladimir Putin who is propping up Assad." Kevin Brady, a top House Republican who represents The Woodlands, was more ambiguous: "Like so many across the country and the world, I was sickened by the pictures of the Syrian chemical weapons victims. Too many have died or fled their homeland due to this relentless civil war. At what point is enough enough?" Republican Rep. John Culberson of west Houston praised the move but, like Cruz, suggested the president should cooperate with legislators: "Swift decisive action like this missile strike will have a salutary effect on tyrants worldwide. As the leader of the free world, the United States cannot stand by and allow chemical weapons to be used against the Syrian people. I look forward to the Administration engaging with Congress on any ongoing efforts to combat atrocities in Syria." Rep. Ted Poe, a Republican who chairs a subcommittee on nonproliferation and whose district stretches from the Texas Medical Center to Spring to Humble, argued the airstrikes had a firm legal basis: "The use of chemical weapons is not only barbaric , it is a violation of international law. Accordingly, last night, the United States responded forcefully with a targeted strike against the origin of that attack. This swift and decisive retaliation was an appropriate and proportional response to this horrific crime. This Administration has sent the message to Assad and other dictators that when they do cross that red line there will now be consequences from the United States." The Republican who represents Friendswood and much of Galveston and Brazoria counties, Randy Weber, criticized the Obama administration's policies before saying that "President Trump showed that he is ready and willing to act with appropriate speed and strength." Brian Babin, the Republican representative for a district that stretches from Pasadena and Baytown up to Woodville, also supported the airstrikes: "The tyrants and dictators around the world better take notice that for the first time in eight years we have a strong and decisive commander-in-chief in the White House. ... I commend the President for his firm leadership and making clear to Assad and the entire world that such evil will not be tolerated. American leadership is back and it is high time." Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner recently flew to Iraq, the young diplomat's first visit to the country battling ISIS. It was a packed schedule for Kushner, who traveled on behalf of the President to speak to Iraqi leaders and senior U.S. advisers. A Cypress pizza shop is helping serve up education to children in Uganda, one slice at a time. Bryan Engledow, owner of Five Loaves Pizza and Cy-Fair resident, was inspired to name his pizza restaurant from the story in the bible of Jesus feeding thousands of people with five loaves of bread and two small fish. The establishment provides a family-friendly atmosphere for the community in Cypress and allocates 5 percent of its net to building a school in Karamoja, Uganda. "It was put on my heart that I needed to be more involved with these kids once I learned about them. The inspiration came from wanting to get schooling to the most remote parts of the world that have zero access to communication," Engledow said. "In Africa, they don't really have school systems, so where I go is literally in the poorest region of the world." Engledow, a member of the Fairbanks Baptist Church, serves as a missionary pastor of the Ezekiel 37 Ministry, an organization that does mission work in remote villages in Africa. Engledow has participated in many mission trips and has sponsored two Ugandan children. Through a course of visits to Uganda, Engledow and his wife have obtained guardianship of a young man in need. The 5 percent net sales support Ezekiel 37 Ministry and their mission is to change the lives of the people of Uganda through education. The organization, named after the bible scripture, which speaks about the valley of dry bones, also works to provide short-term mission outreaches and access to clean water for improved health and hygiene to the many who are less fortunate in Uganda. Ezekiel 37 Ministry aims to assist the "forgotten people" of Uganda. Lack of government support, housing, water, and food has yielded the people of Uganda to have a low quality of life. Engledow and other members of the ministry had to work with some of the outer-city local governments in Uganda to analyze the schooling. Ministry is working to build a primary school, which is similar to America's elementary and middle schools. Eight villages donated eight acres to the organization so that a school could be built on the land, and those villages can have access to education. Engledow has more than 30 years of experience in the food industry. Five Loaves Pizza offers salads, calzones, and soon the establishment will be offering five different types of bread for their pizza and a root beer bar for root beer floats. "That is fantastic, and we are excited that a percentage of the sales go towards building a school for children in need in another country," Emily McAnear said, a Five Loaves Pizza customer. "I think it is a really good thing that they have decided to establish, and I think it could draw more people into their business." In the future, Engledow hopes to open additional restaurants including a Five Loaves barbecue and Five Loaves Mexican restaurants. "We want people to experience the goodness and what God gives them. I think that we can do that by this restaurant," Rick Engledow said, Bryan's father. "What a great way for people to know that the money they are putting in is going to help other people." School construction is underway in Uganda. Even though Five Loaves Pizza just recently opened its doors for business, Engledow has already donated 5 percent of the establishment's net sales towards the first phase of the school. The phases will grow over a three or four year period to be able to expand with more classrooms, teachers, and eventually living facilities. The project will take an estimated five different phases to complete the schools through high school level education and university. Engledow's long-term goal through the ministry is to educate an entire region. People in the remote villages of Uganda do not have any education or clean water to drink. The pizza restaurant owner hopes to help provide education for others one slice at a time. They don't even have water, and they have zero education on how to provide that for themselves. I want to put into perspective of what the Cypress area is doing just by ordering pizza," Engledow said. "It's a difference that everyone can get on board with is education no matter how you feel religion wise. We really wanted to bring awareness of the importance of everybody needing an education. Our hearts are there for people who have absolutely nothing." Five Loaves Pizza 2640 Telge Rd. Suite D Cypress, Texas 77429 Tel: 832-653-2433 Monday Thursday, 11:30 a.m. 10:00 p.m. Friday- Saturday 11:30 a.m.- 11 a.m. Sunday Closed www.fiveloavespizza.com Ezekiel 37 Ministry: www.ezekiel37ministry.org Fort Bend County Jail A Missouri City man is in jail, accused making an obscene gesture at a Fort Bend County deputy, then striking the deputy with his vehicle. Det. D. Calvillo was directing traffic in Sienna Plantation at the time of the incident, the Fort Bend County Sheriff's Office reported. A woman is in good condition after being found Thursday night in northwest Houston with a gunshot wound to the head, according to the Harris County Sheriff's Office. Harris County Sheriff's Office deputies headed to the 18100 block of West Road around 9:20 p.m., where they found the 33-year-old woman injured. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A Montgomery County man has been sentenced to 25 years in prison after paying a woman $15 through PayPal to watch her perform oral sex on her 2-month-old son via skype. Phillip Wayne Rickard, 51, of Conroe, plead guilty to aggravated sexual assault of a child. Investigators with the Montgomery County Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force worked with the Tippecanoe County Sheriff's Office in Indiana to learn about Rickard's alleged activities, according to a news release from Montgomery County District Attorney Brett W. Ligon's office. CHILD PORN BUST: Former DEA agent sentenced to 7 years in federal prison on child porn charges Lead investigator Nikki Neeley with the district attorney's office determined that Rickard not only paid the mother of the infant, but was paying other women online to perform sexual acts, the release said. Rickard was a Texas prison guard and a former detention officer at the Montgomery County Jail. He had no prior criminal history, officials said. When his sentence expires in 2042, he will have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life. "Phillip Rickard is a sick man who deserves every year of this sentence," Neeley said in a statement. "This was one of the worst cases I have seen in my career in law enforcement. What he did was beyond comprehension." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Hundreds of Transportation Security Administration workers at U.S. airports have reportedly failed drug and alcohol tests in recent years. According to KGW in Portland, Ore., 858 TSA airport screeners tested positive for drugs or alcohol between 2010 and 2016. The station obtained the information through a Freedom of Information Act request. Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport reported 14 failed tests, 11 for drugs and three for alcohol in the six-year period, according to the information KGW obtained. At Hobby Airport in Houston, four TSA agents failed tests, two for drugs and two for alcohol. The highest rates came from some of the nation's busiest airports, the station reported. For example, 51 agents at Los Angeles International Airport failed the tests and 40 tested positive for drugs or alcohol at John F. Kennedy International Airport. DFW PAT-DOWN: Texas mother 'livid' over TSA's pat-down search of her son A report published last year by the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee found increased misconduct at TSA. For example, in December 2015, a federal grand jury charged a TSA officer at Oakland International Airport with using her position to smuggle more than 220 pounds of marijuana through the security checkpoint, according to the report. Also in 2015, a male TSA employee at New York's LaGuardia Airport allegedly sexually assaulted a female passenger after telling her he had to do additional screening. He was later charged with forcible touching, official misconduct and unlawful imprisonment, the report stated. CONTRABAND: What the TSA found in travelers' bags in 2016 In 2012, a TSA supervisor and an agent were found guilty of using cocaine while on duty at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, the report stated. Both were arrested and resigned. The number of alleged misconduct incidents increased from 13,722 in Fiscal Year 2013 to 17,627 in FY 2015, an increase of 28.5 percent, the report stated. The agency was created in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks . It now has about 60,000 employees at about 450 airports, the report's executive summary states. Although the agency has tried to respond to complaints about employee misconduct, the report referred to "seemingly continuous scandals." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The seemingly forgotten child, Tiffany Trump, made her first visit to the White House since her father Donald Trump was sworn into office back in January. Though she kept a low profile during the event in support of the Wounded Warriors Project, the 23-year-old did not go unnoticed in her white, sleeveless dress. However, had her older sister Ivanka Trump been at the event, the youngest Trump daughter may very well have gone completely unseen VACATION GOALS: While in Belize with her boyfriend, Tiffany Trump was having a better spring vacation than you Ivanka has a tendency to steal the show wherever she goes and might even be the president's favorite daughter. Especially considering the posh new White House office she just got, or the many trips on Air Force One, or even her new unpaid position at the White House. Meanwhile Tiffany has been to the White House a couple of times and is quietly living out of the limelight. So much so, that even her graduation from the University of Pennsylvania in 2016 flew under the radar. She may be out of the view of the paparazzi and press, and in the shadow if her sister, but Trump is probably living a life Ivanka could only dream of. Instead of having to be tied down with politics or working at the White House, Tiffany is off having the time of her life and documenting it on Instagram for the world to see. Her Instagram has more that 700,000 followers, and she keeps a steady flow of posh, extravagant photos going for her fans. Take a look through the gallery above to see Tiffany Trump's cushy life according to Instagram. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Hillary Clinton called on President Donald Trump's administration Friday to develop a strategy to end Syria's civil war in a manner consistent with American values, following a United States missile strike on the country late Thursday. The former secretary of state and Democratic presidential candidate also condemned Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad's chemical weapons attack on his country this week, which prompted the U.S. strike. "It is essential that the world does more to deter Assad from committing future murderous atrocities. But the action taken last night needs to be followed by a broader strategy to end Syria's civil war," Clinton said, speaking at a Houston luncheon for Annie's List, a Texas group helping to elect Democratic women. "I hope this administration will move forward in a way that is most strategic and consistent with our values, and I also hope that they will recognize that we cannot in one breath speak of protecting Syrian babies and in the next close America's borders." Clinton added that the attack "reminds us and certainly the last 100 days are a reminder that politics matter enormously." The former secretary of state kept a relatively low profile after losing last year's presidential election to Donald Trump, but has spoken at several events geared toward women in leadership in recent weeks. Clinton helped turn Harris County blue last November despite under-performing national expectations, defeating Trump by more than 12 points and carrying local Democrats with her. The party won every countywide position on the ballot. Harris County still is considered the nation's largest swing county, however, and Democrats face a steep uphill battle across the state. Texans last elected a Democrat to statewide office in 1994, and the party holds just 36 percent of seats in the state Legislature, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Women are outnumbered on both sides of the aisle. Just 20 percent of Texas state legislators are women, per NCSL, putting the state 33rd in the nation for female representation. Amber Mostyn, a top Democratic donor and former Annie's List board chair, also was honored at the luncheon. Flash The Turkish government views U.S. missile strikes against a Syrian air base positively and significantly, Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said on Friday. "The regime should be punished in the international field. I hope the U.S. operation will contribute to peace. The UN should impose sanctions on the al-Assad regime until it is unable to harm its own people anymore," Kurtulmus said in an interview with private broadcaster Fox TV. Turkey welcomes this action but the al-Assad regime must completely be punished in the international field, he added. Late on April 6, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he welcomed U.S. President Donald Trump's remarks on a potential military action in Syria, voicing the country's readiness to support. "If an action will really be put forward, we are ready to do our part," Erdogan said. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Several Pearland residents are questioning the way a religious rally was promoted to Pearland ISD junior high and high school students during secular in-school assemblies on April 4 and 5. Residents Wade and Sue Matthews and Dawson High School student Mike Floyd say the district should have clearly identified Go Tell Ministries, which presented the school assemblies, as a religious organization. Go Tell Ministries is in town this week for its evangelical rally, the Bay Area Go Tell Crusade, happening all weekend at Challenger-Columbia Stadium in Webster. The secular On Track Assemblies, held in various local schools, are listed on the schedule as part of the religious crusade event. Go Tell Ministries is led by evangelical minister Rick Gage. Pearland ISD Director of Communications Kim Hocott said the school assemblies were secular in nature, with motivational themes like being aware of the needs of others or treating fellow students like family. Rick Gage did not give the assembly presentations, she said. "It was a great message for our kids." PHOTOS: Painted churches are Texas gems Floyd, a senior who is a candidate in the upcoming Pearland ISD Board of Trustees election, said he attended one of the student assemblies that was held at his school. He said the school district never told students that the On Track Assemblies presented during school hours were part of the Go Tell crusade. Floyd also believes Go Tell Ministries misled students during the assemblies, heavily promoting what was billed as a "pizza night" at the stadium on April 8, without mentioning that the event is a religious revival. Tickets to the event, pictured above, were distributed to students during school. "I think it's an honorable thing that he's trying to do," Floyd said of Gage's ministry. "But I think this is not a good way to get it done." Hocott said the distribution of materials at non-school events is protected by law from discrimination based on content, so the tickets were allowed to be distributed to students who were interested. She said similar protections apply to presenters at school assemblies, who are not screened for their religious activities outside of the school. She added that the district complied with Texas Association of School Boards policy in arranging the assemblies, which were also presented to other school districts in the area. In a letter of complaint to the district, Wade Matthews says a parental opt-out form sent by Berry Miller Junior High also should have informed parents about the religious nature of Go Tell Ministries. Matthews and his wife, Sue Matthews, posted photos on Facebook of a consent letter sent home to Berry Miller Junior High students. The Matthews' no longer have children attending PISD schools, but were provided a copy of the document by another parent, Sue Matthews said. "It is important to note that all references to Mr. Gage as an evangelist are missing. All references to his life goal of leading young people to make decisions for Christ have been redacted," Wade Matthews said in his letter to the district. Sue Matthews said she believes students need "a strong moral compass," but that the school district should not host events by any religious group without full disclosure on the nature of the group. BEST OF AMERICA: 5 Texas schools land in top 25 of this national ranking Gage's group was invited to speak to students after he first gave a presentation to Pearland ISD's 80-member United for Kids group, which is comprised of school, government and community partners and meets bi-monthly, Hocott said. "In the wake of suicides and other very serious student issues, it is unfortunate that the attempt to give students a good secular message about helping one another, making good choices, and getting help when you need it is criticized because the presenters have activities outside of the school which are religious in nature," she said. Floyd said he feels that the assemblies, which included 40 minutes of optical illusions and other tricks, were insensitive and out of touch. "This was not the time to have people coming to our school doing magic tricks," he said. "The lack of understanding that they have really does show that they (district officials) are not in touch with the students or the parents." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The League City home that was the scene of a grisly discovery last year has been sold, according to property records. The body of 30-year-old Anne-Christine Johnson was found in December in the garage of a Chesterfield Lane home that just went for between $185,000 and $215,000, according to the Houston Association of Realtors. The online listing boasts about "luxury upgrades," a granite island kitchen and a two-car garage. The post makes no mention of the home's gruesome past. Shaun Hardy, 32, admitted to killing his ex-wife only after crews hunted for the missing mother for three weeks, combing wooded areas near the home. CONFESSION: League City man admits to killing ex-wife to 'put her out of her misery' Then in early January, police showed up at Hardy's Chesterfield Lane home with a search warrant for cell phones possibly linked to the case. When a detective neared the garage, he noticed a "strong odor of decaying flesh," according to a probable cause affidavit. Once inside the garage, the detective spotted an object the size of human body, covered in dark plastic and duct tape, with scented candles arranged around it. Later, in a recorded interview, Hardy described the crime in detail, telling police he kicked a knife into Johnson's chest and then threw a Kroger bag over her head to put her "out of her misery." PAST PROBLEMS: Missing League City woman, ex had turbulent history, records show The home that was the alleged site of the crime sold Monday, according to Galveston County Clerk records. Although he lived there at the time of the killing, Hardy was not the home's owner. Instead, it was listed to Vault Investments - a company managed by Shaun Hardy's father Barry, according to deed records and a person familiar with the family. It had been on the market less than two months, according to Realtor.com. Shaun Hardy is currently being held in the Galveston County jail on $500,000 bail. Nancy Sarnoff contributed to this report. Houston lost one of its key medical leaders Friday as University of Arizona regents finalized the selection of Texas Medical Center CEO Dr. Robert Robbins' selection as its next president. The Arizona regents approved a contract that will pay Robbins nearly $1 million annually, a major reduction from his salary at the TMC. Some of the new salary will be paid from private funds, regents said at the meeting. Robbins will begin the Arizona presidency June 1, roughly 4 1/2 years after he came to Houston to head the corporation that governs the medical center. During that time, he pushed the mammoth complex toward a greater focus on commercialization and collaboration. In a statement, TMC board chairman Holcombe Crosswell thanked "Dr. Robbins for his contributions that have inspired and united the TMC member institutions on a bold vision to transform our medical city into a leading destination for life sciences." A TMC spokeswoman said the company has not yet determined transition plans. Arizona regents praised Robbins for his commitment to the university, noting that other schools were interested in him as president and that he took a significant pay cut from what he could have made elsewhere. Robbins was paid nearly $1.2 million as the TMC's CEO in 2014, according to the company's most recent tax records online, but Arizona regents said his current total package is worth about $1.8 million. Under the new contract, Robbins will make $988,000 in salary and benefits, the most ever for a state university president in Arizona. Before the vote to approve the contract, Arizona regents chairman Greg Patterson elicited laughter when he played a congratulatory voice mail left by his mother that noted Robbins "looks like Jimmy Buffett and needs a haircut." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Homicide investigators are asking the public's help in uncovering evidence that could lead to the killer of veteran lawman Clint Greenwood. Officers asked the business owners and residents in a large swath of Harris County to preserve any video they may have showing the suspicious Nissan Versa Note that was seen at the courthouse at the time Greenwood was gunned down. They also released new photos of the Versa, believed to be a black 2013-2017 model. Greenwood, an assistant chief deputy for the Precinct 3 Constable's Office, was shot in an ambush as he arrived for work just before 7 a.m. Monday at the Harris County courthouse annex in Baytown. Video captured a man walking briskly away from the shooting area and another video showed a Versa driving quickly away. There is also video of the suspect checking out the courthouse parking lot the afternoon before the shooting. "We would term it as pre-operational planning, or scouting, or surveillance," Baytown Police Lt. Steve Dorris said. "He's driving around the parking lot, stops, gets out and walks over to where Greenwood would park on Monday.... This tells us there was some planning involved, and not just that he woke up Monday morning and decided to do this." THE VICTIM: Things to know about Clint Greenwood, the officer shot and killed in Baytown Investigators are confident that the man in the Sunday video is the same person recorded Monday during Greenwood's slaying. FALLEN HERO: Slain lawman Greenwood praised as 'hero' with full honors at Thursday funeral Investigators are asking the public to check for any video that might depict the Nissan Versa from 6 a.m. March 30 to 5 p.m. on Tuesday, the day after the shooting. They are asking for help in Baytown, Pearland, Pasadena and the east side of Harris County. Officials are hoping the home or even phone video might catch a better glimpse of the man behind the wheel. Anyone who believes they have video is asked to send their name, phone number and address to video@baytown.org so that police may contact them. Before joining Precinct 3 in January as assistant chief deputy, Greenwood, 57, a father of four, had worked as a prosecutor, a Precinct 4 reserve deputy constable, a high-level officer in the Harris County Sheriff's Office, a prosecutor, and as a defense attorney representing police officers. THREAT WIDENS: Former DA under armed protection after deadly ambush Authorities have offered a $65,000 reward for information leading to an arrest. Anyone with tips relating to the case can call Baytown Crimestoppers at 281-427-TIPS or Baytown police at 281-422-8371. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate This month, Texas A&M is celebrating its 146-year anniversary. When it was founded on April 17, 1876, the school was almost unrecognizable. The "Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas," as it was called, only accepted white males and required all students to participate in military training. A few months after being founded, the schools official body count was six professors and 40 students. Now, Texas A&M boasts more than 60,000 students and 3,500 teachers and researchers. The campus owes part of its creation to Jonathan Baldwin Turner, a botanist, political activist and figurehead behind an 1850s movement that sought to create agriculture colleges. PHOTOS: See the evolution of College Station, Texas A&M Turner's reasoning was that private universities focused too much on the study of ancient literature and not on the practical concerns of life, like agriculture. Newspapers and private universities called his ideas foolish and many farmers believed that university schooling would only prevent students from learning practical lessons with their hands. A decade after his movement began, Turner's wishes were granted through the 1862 Morrill Land-Grant Acts, a statute signed by Abraham Lincoln that donated public lands for the creation of agricultural and mechanical colleges. Thanks to Turner's efforts, the Morrill Land-Grant Acts is now responsible for nearly half of the top 50 engineering schools in the country, one of which is Texas A&M. ALUMNUS: Former Texas A&M offensive lineman Chris Dausin dies Aside from academics, the school is well-known for its passionate student body, which has carried school spirit through multiple generations. Things like the Midnight Yell, Elephant Walk and the school's vast array of slang have helped cement the school's legendary status. The proud and enduring traditions that many students hold dear help give credence to Texas A&M's opening inaugural words, said by Gov. Richard Coke more than 14 decades ago: "In time these halls will become classic." Click through above to see take the "Are you an Aggie" trivia quiz. You are here: Home Flash Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday extended an invitation to his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump to pay a state visit to China in 2017. Trump accepted the invitation with pleasure, and hoped to make the trip at an early date, according to officials. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Vogue cover model and native of the Maldives, Raudha Athif was found hanged March 29 , 2017 at a hostel in Bangladesh. Her death, which was previously ruled a suicide, is now under investigation after her brother spoke out, claiming that she was murdered. According The Sun, Athif, 21, used her platform as a public figure to "defend victims bullied over religious controversies." "Her style of clothing was branded as 'immodest' and 'un-Islamic' even though she adhered to the dress code in the college premises by wearing a veil covering her face," her brother, Rayyan Athif, said. "She was criticized for wearing jeans and was repeatedly told she couldn't wear it at the Muslim college." CRUEL JOKE: Boy, 11, killed himself after girlfriend faked suicide for a 'sick' prank When the autopsy was conducted, Athif allegedly had marks on her neck that were dismissed as birthmarks, but her family says that's not the case. Her family also claims that the week before she died, Athif claimed someone had tried to drug her drink. "There have been a series of murders in Bangladesh which have been staged to look like suicides and Islamic extremists have been suspected to be behind these atrocities," said Rayyan. ANALYSIS: Syrian opposition leader says Trump must match words with deeds Athif was featured on the cover of Vogue India in October 2016 after becoming wildly popular as the "Maldivian girl with aqua blue eyes." She was studying to become a doctor at the Islami Bank Medical College in Bangladesh and was in her second year. In an interview with Vogue, she said that modeling was a hobby. Her true passion was to become a doctor so she could help people. She had more that 30,000 followers on Instagram, but her page was taken down after her death. In its place, a backup account was set up so friends, fans and family would have a place to leave their condolences. Take a look through the gallery above to see some of the beautiful photos shared by her friends and family on the account. The Trump administration must back up its tough talk with real action against Bashar Assad's regime in Syria, including by destroying the Syrian government's ability to use chemical weapons against its own people, according to the lead negotiator for the Syrian opposition. Riyad Hijab, the head of the High Negotiations Committee that represents the Syrian opposition in the international political process, happened to be in Washington this week when the Syrian government perpetrated its latest chemical weapons attack, killing dozens of innocent men, women and children in Idlib province. Assad's flagrant use of banned weapons to murder civilians is a direct challenge to Trump, the former Syrian prime minister told me in an interview. Trump said the right things, but nobody knows whether he will back up those words with action. "We expect deeds from President Trump, not words," Hijab said. "We want deeds to protect the Syrian civilians and to protect the entire region, and to protect the American people as well. This is a defiance to President Trump in front of the American people and the entire world." The Syrian opposition is calling on the Trump administration to take military action to destroy Assad's chemical weapons stockpiles as well as its means of delivering those weapons. That would include destroying the runways and airplanes Assad uses to bomb civilian areas as well as the missile launchers that have been used to drop chemical weapons on civilians in the past. "These weapons must be destroyed," Hijab said. "The airplanes and the runways must be destroyed. All the weapons that are killing the Syrian people must be destroyed." An outraged Trump on Wednesday condemned Assad for using chemical weapons and pledged to take action in response. "It is now my responsibility," Trump said while standing alongside Jordan's King Abdullah II at the White House. "My attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much. . . . It crossed a lot of lines for me." Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told the U.N. Security Council that if the world does not act collectively in response, the United States may "take our own action," although she declined to specify what that might be. Hijab said the Trump administration must find a way to get past the Russian roadblock at the Security Council to compel collective action by that body. Also, the United States should reinvest in supporting a political process that can lead to a transitional government and Assad's departure. There is a role for Russia in solving the Syrian crisis, according to the opposition. Russia shares the opposition's desire to keep the Syrian state intact, preserve its institutions and protect its minorities. But Russia, which has launched thousands of airstrikes against the Syrian opposition, must be persuaded or pressured to break with Assad. "You cannot eliminate terrorism if Assad remains in power, and you cannot eliminate Iranian influence if Assad is in power," said Hijab. The last time the United States threatened strikes against the Assad regime, after the killing of more than 1,400 civilians with chemical weapons in 2013, one of the loudest and most consistent opponents of that action was Trump. He and other critics of that idea argued that the United States would only find itself entangled in another Middle East conflict that doesn't impact core U.S. interests and risks sparking a dangerous military escalation with Russia. Those arguments are exactly what prevented President Barack Obama from acting in 2013, and since then, the situation has only gotten worse, said Hijab. Hijab shares Trump's criticism of Obama's Syria policy, which he sees as a moral and strategic failure of historic proportions. "The Obama administration is the one that led to this tragic situation," he said. "I don't think history will forgive Obama for what he's done in Syria. How can Obama look at the faces of these children now and at the same time look at his children?" The Syrian opposition is also asking the United States to support a new effort to train and equip moderate rebel fighters to combat the Islamic State, especially in the eastern regions of Deir al-Zour and Raqqa. Several previous attempts to build up a rebel force have failed and U.S. support to Syrian rebels has essentially ceased, Hijab said. But despite past failings, there is still a dire need to support Sunni Arab fighters to take and hold Sunni Arab lands and prevent them from falling into the hands of the extremists. "The only solution is to build a partnership between you and us in order to together fight against al-Qaida and ISIS," Hijab said. --- Rogin is a columnist for the Global Opinions section of The Washington Post. He writes about foreign policy and national security. 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. We attempted to send a notification to your email address but we were unable to verify that you provided a valid email address. Please click here to update your email address if you wish to receive notifications. Otherwise, you may click here to disable notifications and hide this message. Fundatia de Binefacere Caritas Moldova solicita oferte de pret de la companii cu privire la productia de materiale de vizibilitate Hats off to those busy debunking fake news and digging for true dirt. But for one of the most compelling pieces of journalism on the early days of the Trump presidency, David Frum chose another approach: fiction. His March cover story in The Atlantic, How to Build an Autocracy, opens in January 2021, after Donald Trump has just won a second term: The 45th president has visibly aged over the past four years. He rests heavily on his daughter Ivankas arm during his infrequent public appearances. Fortunately for him, he did not need to campaign hard for re-election. His has been a popular presidency Of course Frum is hardly the first writer to use a hypothetical future (or past) to make a political point. Whats notable here is the way fiction is employedat lengthin the cover story of a current affairs magazine. Going well beyond just an opening splash of imagination or one-off prediction, the respected political journalist and former presidential speechwriter keeps up the make-believe construct for 14 paragraphs and nearly 900 words, detailing what four years of Trump have brought the world of tomorrow: rising wages and minority voter suppression, Wikileaks targeting Democrats, and Jeff Bezos selling off The Washington Post (to a Slovakian investor group) to resolve a Justice Department antitrust case against Amazon. Inventing an ominous future functions as a narrative device in the service of in-depth journalistic analysis, as Frum first lays the fictional groundwork for a rollback of democratic freedoms before circling the article back to the present to explain whats at stake for the next four years. For real. Amid all the never-could-have-predicted events and a reality TV star dictating public discourse, other serious journalism outfits also have been crossing into the realm of making stuff up. On election day in November, Quartz published a faux curtain raiser news story to describe what could happen when both Trump and Putin show up at the 2018 G8 summit in Vancouver. The Economist now has an annual The World If issue, which takes on a variety of topics by either rewriting the past or projecting into the future. Paris-based Liberation newspaper has tried to imagine what France would look like following the election in May of Socialist Party candidate (a prospect which now appears more and more like fantasy fiction). For my part, as editor of the global news site Worldcrunch, fiction arrived last month the way lots of story ideas take shape. Our daily editorial meeting was dominated by the drama unfolding in the French election campaign, and the increasing chances that far-right candidate Marine Le Pen could win: And imagine, quipped Marc Alves, our French politics expert, when she actually meets Trump. Oui! Assigned! The would-be May 20, 2017 presidential rendezvous at a fort on the Mediterranean coast came with colorful family members on both sides and ominous threats against common adversaries around the worldall the makings of a good yarn, with some real geopolitics to chew on. Sign up for CJR 's daily email We have since decided to turn it into a regular thing, taking on regime change in Iran, Mark Zuckerberg playing ball with Chinese censors, and most recently, imagining the exclusive inside story of a Trump divorce. We have found the format liberating: Unlike the Economist and Atlantic, we dont break down the fourth wall, never coming back to the present in our pieces. The format allows us to explore often-unfamiliar topics in absorbing prose. But the use of fiction necessarily poses big questions for anyone in the business of doing journalism. Does imagining future scenarios ultimately distract readers (and writers) from the real issues at hand? Will the imagined truth provoke deeper thinking, or be just another way to escape? The American author Thomas Mallon, who has written several political novels focused on contemporary historical figures, says the approach offers a sort of speculative intimacy that can bring the reader closer to real events. But I try never to make too many claims for the genre, he tells me by email. I think readers should be wary: historical fiction is always fiction, never history. Still, during the maelstrom of last years ugly and often surreal campaign, a rare moment of clarity came from Mallons piece in The New Yorker, where he described how the presidential race could function as a novel. He had no doubt that the lead character would be Hillary Clinton, not Trump, for the depth of her inner struggles and many Shakespearean/Nixonian features. The Republican, Mallon wrote, is flat, consistently shocking and never surprising, and thus offering little as a literary character. In a very different way, journalism must also manage the tensions between shock and surprise. From 9-11 and the financial crisis to the victories of Brexit and Trump, the news business was there to record it all. But in each case, as some have pointed out, our industry may have suffered from a failure of imagination. While experimenting with fiction in the news pages will not lead us to the truth, it may help to start questioning the lies we cant stop telling ourselves. Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today Jeff Israely a former Time correspondent in Rome and Paris, is the editor and co-founder of Worldcrunch. Follow him on Twitter @jeffisraely or check out his website. One day last spring, Sarah Silva drove north on Interstate 25 out of Las Cruces, New Mexico, with her boyfriend, Heath Haussamen, sitting in the passengers seat. They stopped at a Border Patrol checkpointnothing unusual for the two, who live roughly 50 miles from Mexico. Were surrounded by militarized checkpoints, Haussamen says. But he didnt expect what happened next. An armed agent intimidated and berated Silva until she was shaking and near tears, Haussamen wrote in a column about the incident. Silva is Latina. The agent asked where she was born. Im a US citizen, she told him. But that didnt answer the question. The agent leaned into her face with two other officers surrounding the vehicle. I felt powerless to stop it, according to Haussamen, who is white. When Silva finally answered that she was born in the United States, the agent relented. Haussamen, who operates a local news website, took the incident as a personal affront. Wed both been questioned at checkpoints, but neither of us had experienced anything that severe beforeor since, he says. Sarah and I both have daughters, Haussamen writes. Had our girls been with us that day, that agent would have taught them to be terrified of law enforcement officers. The checkpoint episode was also a professional wake-up call for Haussamen. As editor and publisher of NMPolitics.net, based in Las Cruces, Haussamen grew concerned for his colleagues. Journalists are no different than other citizens in these situations, he says, except they often store sources contact information and confidential correspondence on phones, laptops, and notebooks at a time when electronic devices are increasingly subject to searches. When government agents search a journalist, not only is his or her own privacy violatedso is the privacy of any source whose information is stored on that journalists phone or computer. Federal agents inspected 23,877 electronic devices in 2016nearly five times as many as in 2015, the Associated Press reported in February. Meanwhile, several cases involving journalists being detained, searched, or denied entry to the United States have made national headlines. Checkpoints present logistical hurdles for journalists, too. Reporters and camera crews racing to cover a fire, a wreck, or other breaking news lose precious time when theyre detained or delayed by border agents. Sign up for weekly emails from the United States Project So Haussamen, a Society of Professional Journalists Rio Grande Chapter board member, teamed up with ACLU lawyers to offer a half-day training on March 25 centered on journalists rights at the border. It was the first such traininganywhereinvolving the ACLU and journalists border rights. Haussamen hopes to have several more, in addition to off-the-record meetings between journalists and border agents to speak frankly about the law and its interpretations. Also in the works from SPJ Rio Grande: a potential video and know-your-rights literature for journalists in border regions. Now is a good time for journalists to really do some hard thinking, says ACLU staff attorney Nathan Freed Wessler in an interview with CJR. Here are some key considerations: What constitutes the border? Border crossings include dozens of land sites and seaports, plus airports with international terminals. Border agents also have powers within a reasonable distance from any external boundary of the United States. The federal government has determined reasonable distance to mean 100 miles. That zone essentially traces the outline of the United Statesan area where more than 200 million people live. Seattle, San Jose, Houston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, the whole of Florida and several other East Coast statestheyre all in that zone. The residents of many of those regions arent accustomed to having Border Patrol checkpoints in their midst. But the Department of Homeland Security reserves special powers in those areas nonetheless. Can border agents search your electronic devices? Its complicatedand many questions about border agents authority have yet to be tested in court. The Fourth Amendment protects Americans from unreasonable searches and seizures. That means, for example, police officers need a warrant to search a citizens property. But CBP claims such protections dont fully apply at the border. Federal agents have the power to inspect, without warrants, travelers baggage , and CBP takes that to mean electronic devices as well. Customs and Border Protection thinks the issue is entirely black and white, Wessler says. We strongly disagree. The ACLU thinks electronic devices should not be considered the same as physical luggage like suitcases or handbags. But few courts have weighed in on this question so far. Wessler says theres also a difference between a cursory search (an agent quickly looks through a device on the spot) and a forensic search, which is typically conducted off-site and entails downloading the entire contents of the device and thoroughly inspecting all data, metadata, and deleted items. In 2013, the Ninth Circuit ruled that agents need reasonable suspicion to conduct forensic searches (but not cursory searches) on devices at the border. In 2014, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that police need a warrant to search cellphones. The ACLU thinks the same should hold true for border agentsand Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) is introducing a bill that would make such requirements the law. Furthermore, Border Patrol agents within the 100-mile zone cannot pull someone over without reasonable suspicion of an immigration violation or crime, and they cant search a vehicle in that zone without probable cause. That probable cause standard is the exact same legal standard that applies to the local police searching someones car after they pull it over in a traffic stop, Wessler says. By extension, the ACLU thinks the same rules should apply to electronic device searches inside the 100-mile zone. Can border agents demand yours passwords? They might try, and Wessler says journalists should prepare a response. That response will likely vary depending on an individuals immigration status. For US citizens, and in most circumstances for returning green card holders, CBP cant literally compel you to provide your password, he says. But they can detain you for hours, and they might seize your device. Its an individual decision how much inconvenience a person is willing to bear, Wessler says. Non-citizens entering the US on visas face greater consequences. There is a risk that by refusing to provide a password, CBP may decide to turn the person away, to deny them entry. How can journalists prepare for traveling through border areas? Preparation can help minimize border hassles. Many of the best protections are going to be things you can do before you get to the border, Wessler says. Travel with as few devices as possible. One recommendation is to mail electronic devices back home rather than carrying them through the border. However, thats impractical for journalists in the 100-mile zone, Haussamen says. We live here, we gather news here, we cant just mail our devices to ourselves on the other side of the zone. Were here all the time. If its feasible, Wessler advises traveling with phones or laptops used solely during the journey, keeping primary devices at home. Encrypt your devices. Encrypting your devices and setting a strong, unique password for each one creates a series of impediments to unjustified searches, Wessler says. (The Electronic Frontier Foundation offers a guide here, and the Committee to Protect Journalists weighs in here.) Store sensitive information elsewhere. Keep a copy of critical information in the cloud or on a hard drive elsewhere. If your devices end up being seized, Wessler says, you still have some other options to get your work done.Also, store sensitive photos in a safe place such as a password-protected device or cloud-storage account. Back them up, then reformat your cameras memory card before crossing a border. At this point, no professional cameras offer secure storage of the images on them. Make a plan before youre stopped. If border agents detain you, you might be allowed one phone call. Haussamen urges journalists to plan ahead. Think of one person you can call who can call others for you. You need your family to know. You need your newsroom to know. You probably want the ACLU notified, he says.The Nieman Lab also recommends staff journalists work with their higher-ups to develop a border-crossing policy and a ready response, should border agents demand a device or a password. Something like, My organization doesnt allow me to cross borders with passwords to devices containing sensitive information.Given the political climate, journalists and border agents will likely interact more often in the future. Planning ahead is key. My attitude right now is: Learn as much as I can, be prepared for anything, and then hopefully it doesnt happen, Haussamen says. Id rather be prepared for a situation that doesnt play out than not prepared and find myself in the middle of it. The memory of his and Silvas checkpoint experience still rankles him. To this day, it makes me angry, Haussamen says. Those of us living in the Las Cruces/El Paso region literally cant leave the area in any direction without being questioned by armed agents who are allowed to racially profile at checkpoints that look like fortresses. I cant go to Albuquerque for work, to the mountains to hunt, or to visit my sister in California without passing through a checkpoint. The couple filed a formal complaint against the officer, but they dont know the outcome because it was deemed a personnel issue. After Haussamen wrote his column, he began hearing story after story after story from people, both brown and white, having troubles at checkpoints. Theres no question the stories I hear of harassment or worse by Border Patrol more often come from Latinos than anyone else, he says. And thats not surprising. Thanks to a decision during the Obama administration, border agents are still allowed to engage in racial profiling, and I believe they do. President Obama later discussed strategies for confronting and ending racial profiling; meanwhile, the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona obtained 6,000 pages of government records containing scores of complaints against border agents who use such methods as tactics. (A US Senate bill that would end racial profiling by law enforcement was introduced in 2015, but it was referred to a committee without further action.) Are the border hassles a fair tradeoff for the benefit of border law enforcement? Its difficult to get data from border agencies, Haussamen says, so the answer isnt clear. What is clear is that its a question Americans will continue to confront. Journalists who want to know more about their rights on the border, or potential trainings on the issue, can contact Heath Haussamen at heath@haussamen.com. Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today Karen Coates is a senior fellow at Brandeis University's Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, and a fellow with the International Women's Media Foundation. She reports on human rights, health, immigration, refugees, and food security in Asia, Africa, and, most recently, the US/Mexico border. Safety experts are questioning St. Louis boiler safety standards, following a deadly explosion that killed three people and injured four others. Boiler safety is regulated almost uniformly in most places, with standards that generally include periodic inspections, but not in St. Louis. The city is exempt from the Missouri law requiring regular inspections of high-pressure boilers by either a state inspector or insurance company, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. The deviation from national boiler safety standards was revealed after an explosion Monday sent a van-sized boiler into the sky at Loy-Lange Box Co., landing in the offices of Faultless Healthcare Linen. The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the St. Louis Fire Department are investigating. The state of Missouris fire safety division issues more than 20,000 certificates of inspection for boilers and pressure vessels each year, and typically about 2,000 are found to be in dangerous condition. But in St. Louis, the law requires a company to have a licensed stationary engineer on site while a high-pressure boiler is in operation, rather than requiring periodic inspections. Loy-Lange employed three stationary engineers assigned to the companys two boilers. One of them, Kenneth Trentham, 59, was among the people killed. Authorities have not publicly identified the two people killed at Faultless. No details have been released about factors that may have contributed to the explosion. It was not known whether the device had been inspected by an insurance company and issued a certificate that would have been acceptable under a standard process anywhere else. The city insisted its system of regulating boiler operation was safe. Because the city mandates licensed engineers to operate high-pressure boilers, they are under constant inspection, rather than just once per year, said Maggie Crane, a spokeswoman for Mayor Francis Slay. But David A. Douin, executive director of the National Board of Boiler and Pressure Vessel Inspectors, said an engineer working for a company simply could not be objective. Thats the whole thing about third-party inspection, he said. You can be objective. You dont work for the company that owns the equipment. Like, your boss isnt going to say, Hey, we need to do this production run today, cant we wait a couple weeks before we fix it? Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. I am delighted to be writing a twice-monthly column on claims writing for Claims Journal. This first column will lay out writing issues to be discussed, types of letters written by claims professional and claims areas such as auto, property, liability, homeowners and workers compensation that have their own special writing challenges. Also, we may occasionally delve into areas such as special investigation unit (SIU), large loss reports, best practices guidelines and style guides. Let me first introduce myself: My name is Gary Blake and I have been the director of The Communication Workshop for more than 20 years. My business focuses on improving the writing of claims professionals. I present writing webinars and seminars geared to claims professionals, and I have done this throughout the US, UK, Canada and Bermuda. I am fortunate to be the co-author of The Elements of Business Writing, which is in the same line as its famous ancestor, The Elements of Style by Strunk & White. My goal for the column will be to pass along useful information on claims letter writing, using actual claims letters as examples. When I comment on a letter, I will tell my readers whether the issue under discussion is large or small, and whether they are hearing an opinion or an idea generally agreed upon among writers and editors. Among the writing topics that will be covered: tone, organization, wordiness, old-fashioned phrases, format, regarding (RE) lines, salutations, closings, breaking up lengthy sentences and paragraphs, vagueness, punctuation, grammar and phrasing. We will touch on areas such as the format of policy language within claims letters, negative and positive tone, and the overuse of weasel words. You are welcome to participate in my column by sending me any anecdotes or stories describing your companys template letters and any discrepancies you find between these letters and what your own best instincts tell you would be better (e.g., friendlier, fewer mistakes, better word choice, improved format of policy language, etc.). Send your comments to me directly at garyblake725@gmail.com. I will, on occasion, offer readers free posters, exercises and other brief documents that are concise summaries of everything from the comma rules to sexist language to tips on improving workers compensation letters. Despite the increased role of analytics, social media and technological advances of every description, the heart of the insurance industry is still embodied in the communications send by adjusters to policyholders. If the letters are poor, corporate image suffers. If the writing is inaccurate or not timely, a bad faith lawsuit may be a result. If the letters are inundated with too much jargon, legalese or vagueness, the settlement process may slow to a crawl or your policyholder may just give up on your company and look elsewhere for an insurer who values plain English. So, I look forward to sharing with you the most interesting and colorful examples of how writing goes wrong and how it can be made right-organized, concise, well-phrased and easy to understand. I hope youll read my column, enjoy it, spread the word and share your experiences in writing claims letters. Hawaii drivers arrested on a repeat DUI offense would have to agree to stop drinking alcohol for at least 90 days and wear an ankle bracelet if they want to be released from jail on bail under a bill being considered in the Legislature. The bill also requires DUI offenders to pay $360 a month for the monitoring device, which checks the skin for alcohol excretions every 30 minutes, The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported. The ankle bracelets are made by Denver-based company SCRAM Systems. The Honolulu prosecutor has voiced support for the proposal, while Hawaiis Office of the Public Defender argues it is unfair to low-income residents who would potentially face longer jail times than those who are well off. If you got the money, you are only going to spend a few minutes in jail, but if you dont you could spend a lot longer. That is our objection, said Tim Ho, chief deputy public defender. It carves out two categories of defendants: those that have money and those that dont. The measure has passed the full House and three Senate committees and is close to gaining final passage in the Legislature. Another critic of the legislation is Mothers Against Drunk Driving Hawaii, which has also cited cost as an issue. If mandated, the alcohol-monitoring devices could replace ignition interlock devices, which require repeat offenders to do a blow test for their vehicle to start. The ignition interlock devices cost about $3 a day, compared to the $12 a day for ankle bracelets. Arkie Koehl of MADD Hawaii said it is unlikely drivers would want to pay for the ignition devices if they are required to wear and pay for ankle bracelets, which cant stop a person from driving if they are drunk. The drunken driving bill has been pushed through committee after committee. Each time, we have been getting more and more upset about it, Koehl said. Each time, there has never been a proper discussion about how it would work with the ignition interlock. In 2015, drunken driving contributed to 51 traffic fatalities in Hawaii. Honolulu Prosecutor Keith Kaneshiros office said in testimony supporting the bill that it would save lives and generally assist in making our community a safer place to live and work. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Whether one entity can legally grow and sell marijuana at the retail level in California is emerging as one of the biggest conflicts state authorities are wrestling with as they move to streamline regulations and adopt the same rules for medical and recreational pot use. Gov. Jerry Browns administration released documents late Tuesday outlining proposed changes to square the states new recreational pot law with its longstanding law on medical marijuana. The two laws took different approaches in many areas including whether one entity could hold multiple licenses to grow, manufacture, distribute and sell in retail stores. The governor is seeking to harmonize those regulations. The Democrat governors administration has stressed that one regulatory framework is needed to avoid duplicating costs and confusing businesses in a marijuana economy expected to grow to $7 billion in annual sales annually after recreational sales become legal in California next year. The governors attempt to reconcile the two laws hasnt met any formal opposition, though the proposal is lengthy and complicated and groups such as the Los Angeles Cannabis Task Force, comprised of Southern California marijuana businesses, is still reviewing the plan. This takes us another step closer to a uniform industry and puts this state in a position to set the national standard, Avis Bulbulyan, president of the group, said in an email. Hezekiah Allen, president of the California Growers Association agreed but said his marijuana farmers organization is concerned about Browns proposal to allow single entities to hold licenses to grow and sell marijuana. Medical marijuana providers are currently prohibited from hold both licenses but Brown proposes to lift that restriction after it becomes legal to sell recreational pot in California on Jan. 1. It could lead to mega-manufactures and mega-chain stores, Allen said. Browns plan would temporarily ban a single business from owning more than three retail stores and having a farm larger than four acres (1.6 hectares). California last November joined a growing number of states in legalizing recreational marijuana use for adults. The regulations and rules governing the emerging legal market will cover issues ranging from where and how plants can be grown to guidelines on tracking marijuana buds from the fields to retail stores. People 21 and over are allowed to possess up to one ounce of marijuana and grow six marijuana plants at home. This proposed legislation helps build an effective statewide regulatory system for cannabis to achieve our goals of protecting public safety with clear and consistent rules that are not overly burdensome, said Lori Ajax, head of the states marijuana agency. It harmonizes the many elements of the two main statutes governing medicinal and adult-use cannabis, while preserving the integrity and separation of those industries. Those changes must be approved by the Legislature. Earlier this year, Brown proposed spending more than $50 million to establish programs to collect taxes and issue licenses while hiring dozens of workers to regulate the industry. (Elias contributed to this report from San Francisco.) Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. AKRON, Ohio - An Akron man was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole for raping a 6-year-old girl. Carey Collins, 26, pleaded guilty last month to performing a sex act on the girl at a family cookout in 2015. Judge Amy Corrigall Jones sentenced him Wednesday in Summit County Common Pleas Court. Collins will be eligible for parole after 25 years. If he is released from prison he will be required to register as a sex offender every 90 days for the rest of his life, Corrigall Jones ruled. Collins was indicted Dec. 10, 2015, a month after the girl's father found him performing oral sex on her at a family cookout, police said. Collins later met with detectives and confessed to the crime, police said. If you'd like to comment on this story, visit Friday's crime and courts comments section. cleveland.com is a partner of the Greater Cleveland Food Bank. Every dollar buys four meals for the hungry. Click here to donate. AKRON, Ohio -- An Akron mother is accused of leaving her children for more than a week to visit her boyfriend in Mississippi, police say. Nichole Thigpen, 32, is charged with endangering children, Akron police Lt. Rick Edwards said. She is scheduled to appear at an 8 a.m. status hearing April 21. Officers went to Thigpen's Albrecht Avenue home just after 7 p.m. March 27 after receiving a call to check on the welfare of Thigpen's three children, ages 8, 11 and 13. Summit County Children Services said the children were left home alone for more than a week, Edwards said. Thigpen was in Tennessee on her way home from Mississippi when police officers called her. She said her boyfriend's sister was on her way to pick up the children, reports say. Thigpen told officers several adults went to check on her children. Thigpen's children told police otherwise and she said they were wrong, a report says. "When the sister arrived, she told officers that Thigpen has been on drugs for a while, and that she had called her and told her to go to her house and lie to officers and say she had been checking on the children every day," a report says. Thigpen told her boyfriend's sister to hide a plastic bag on her dresser. Officers found the bag which had a white powder residue in it, a report says. Children services took the children into their custody. Thigpen has a prior conviction for endangering children, court records show. If you'd like to comment on this story, visit Friday's crime and courts comments section. Operating a vehicle under the influence, North Rocky River Drive: A Berea man, 32, was arrested at about 3:10 a.m. April 1 after police found him unconscious behind the steering wheel of a car parked outside Circle K, 825 North Rocky River. The car's engine was running. The man, who smelled of alcohol, didn't regain consciousness until police shook his shoulders. When officers asked him to unbuckle his seat belt, the man started to take off his pants belt. Police stopped him, and removed him from the car. The man could not stand without assistance. During booking, he refused to answer questions and accused police of "modern slavery." Private property damage, Mulberry Street: A Mulberry resident called police at about 3:45 a.m. March 31 after a vehicle hit her house, causing minor damage. The resident said she heard the revving of an engine and saw headlights shining through her window. Then she heard something slam into her home. The resident ran outside and spotted tire tracks on her lawn and mulch, but the vehicle was gone. A downspout was knocked off the house. Police determined that the vehicle had traveled eastbound on Murphy Street, which runs perpendicular to, and dead-ends just short of, Mulberry. The vehicle then burst through a fence and landscaping at the end of Murphy, drifted off the right side of the road and into the resident's yard on Mulberry. Grand theft auto, West Bagley Road: A 2002 Jeep Liberty was stolen between 10 p.m. March 30 and 7:45 a.m. March 31 from an apartment building parking lot at 150 West Bagley. The victim said she had locked the vehicle and did not leave the keys inside. Parma police found the Jeep on April 4 in that city and believe the vehicle was involved in the theft of several weapons from On Target Firearms on State Road. Marijuana possession, Woodmere Drive: A Berea man, 19, was arrested at about 12:20 a.m. April 4 after police found hashish and a small butane blowtorch in his Chrysler sedan. Police had stopped the man's car because its rear license plate was not illuminated. The man did not have a driver's license. The officer noticed a green and purple rubber container, typically used to store hashish, and the blowtorch, used to smoke the drug, in the car. Accidental discharge of firearm, Lindberg Boulevard: A Berea man, 78, accidentally fired a .45-caliber handgun while cleaning the weapon in his home at about 11:25 p.m. April 2. The man, who had a permit to carry a concealed weapon, called police to report the incident, saying he had fired one round. He was alone in the home at the time. The bullet went through the bedroom wall. Officers searched several neighboring backyards but did not find the bullet. Police said they consider the case closed because it was an accident. Operating a vehicle under the influence, North Rocky River Drive: A Columbia Station man, 48, was arrested at about 1:30 a.m. March 31 after police saw his Chevrolet Cruze travel left of center at least three times on North Rocky River near Depot Street. The man failed field sobriety tests. Police found a firearm in his car. Theft, Barberry Drive: Loose change was stolen late March 30 or early March 31 from a van parked in a driveway. The victim believes she had locked the van but there were no signs of forced entry. Operating a vehicle under the influence, Riveredge Parkway: A Cleveland man, 29, was arrested at about 3:50 a.m. April 2 after police saw his car turn right from North Rocky River Drive onto Riveredge without signaling. After failing field sobriety tests, the man admitted drinking wine from a bottle while driving. If you'd like to comment on this story, visit Thursday's crime and courts comments section. cleveland.com is a partner of the Greater Cleveland Food Bank. Every dollar buys four meals for the hungry. Click here to donate. Perry nuclear plant shuts itself down; no injuries and no radiation released FirstEnergy wants to change Ohio law to create "zero emission credits" for its Perry nuclear power plant, shown here, east of Cleveland on Lake Erie, and for its Davis-Besse nuclear plant east of Toledo. The ZECs would reflect the thousands of megawatts the two power plants generate annually without producing carbon dioxide. Customers would pay for the ZECs through increases on their monthly bills for up to 16 years, whether or not FirstEnergy owns the power plants. All FirstEnergy customers would have to pay ZEC charges, even customers who buy power from independent companies. (Plain Dealer file ) CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Add another 5 percent to the bottom line of your electric bill if FirstEnergy's latest effort to have customers subsidize its power plants makes it through the Ohio Senate and House. Senate Bill 128, introduced by two Northeast Ohio lawmakers Thursday afternoon, would raise current monthly bills for all consumers by roughly $5, or $60 a year. Overall, the legislation would allow FirstEnergy to collect an extra $300 million a year from its roughly 2 million Ohio customers -- all of it to subsidize the company's Perry and Davis-Besse nuclear power plants. FirstEnergy has been lobbying Ohio lawmakers since January to drum up support for amendments to state law that would create "zero emission credits," or ZECs, to support the nuclear plants. The company has argued that even though the nuclear plants cannot compete well against the increasing number of gas turbine plants and wind farms, they are crucial for the stability of the high-voltage grid. The Ohio Consumers' Counsel's quick analysis of the bill is that the legislation would allow the extra charges for up to 16 years, meaning consumers would pay roughly an additional $912 for electricity during that time. "The subsidy charges would be above the market price of electricity that would otherwise produce lower electric prices for Ohio consumers," said spokeswoman Molly McGuire. Primary sponsor of the bill is Sen. John Eklund, a Republican from Munson Township in Geauga County, and an attorney at Cleveland-based Calfee Halter & Griswold, with the reputation as "a stand-up guy." But two of the firm's Columbus-based lawyers are listed in state records as lobbyists for FirstEnergy, a fact that could become an issue when debate about the legislation begins. The two are Leah Pappas Porner, a long-time FirstEnergy lobbyist and Joshua Sanders, whose practice is focused on government relations, according to the Calfee website. Calfee was was one of the firms that represented the company in its last rate case. Sen. Frank LaRose, a Hudson Republican, co-sponsored the bill. FirstEnergy has tried since 2014 to find a way to funnel more money from customers to its power plants through special fees charged by its local distribution companies such as Ohio Edison and the Illuminating Co. The power plants are owned by the unregulated FirstEnergy Solutions, out of reach of state regulators, and free to compete for customers anywhere. They are, by law, not supposed to be subsidized by customer charges. Federal regulators derailed the company's initial, state-approved plans to subsidize both its coal and nuclear plants with special "power purchase agreements" between FirstEnergy Solutions and the local delivery companies. The company convinced the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio last fall to approve a three-year "rider" (increase) on delivery rates designed to raise about $200 million a year in extra money, ostensibly for modernization of the local distribution system, but available for use anywhere in the company. The PUCO figured the increase would raise average residential bills about 3 percent, or $3 a month. In a prepared statement Thursday, Chuck Jones, CEO of FirstEnergy, said passage of the bill would ensure "a strong local economy, a clean environment and a more secure energy future for Ohio." "As non-emitting, base-load energy resources in Ohio, Davis-Besse and Perry generate more than 2,200 megawatts of electricity - enough to power more than 2.8 million homes, around the clock, every day of the year, and produce approximately 90 percent of our state's carbon-free electricity." The Ohio AARP, which was critical of the earlier increase, immediately blasted the ZEC proposal. "Deregulation of the market in Ohio is working," said State Director Barbara Sykes. "Ohioans have the ability to buy power from whoever they want, forcing competitive pricing. This legislation unfairly props up businesses... which have failed to remain competitive by passing the costs of doing business on to consumers. The Ohio Manufacturers' Association staked out a similar position. "FirstEnergy should not be allowed to prop up its business on the backs of Ohio consumers," said Eric Burkland, OMA president, in a statement declaring that the bill "is nothing more than another attempt by utilities to force customers to pay above-market prices for electricity." "While manufacturers support nuclear power as part of an all-of-the-above energy portfolio. S.B. 128 is a wolf in sheep's closing. We will actively work to oppose this misguided bill." The Alliance for Energy Choice, a group representing independent power producers with tens of thousands of customers in Ohio, was also critical, charging that the special nuclear subsidy would harm wholesale and retail power markets "This energy tax is solely intended to improve the company's bottom line," said Alliance spokesman, Todd Snitchler, a former Ohio legislator and PUCO chairman. "FirstEnergy says that even after receiving the subsidy [it could sell] the plants to another operator. This proposal raises the sale price to benefit FirstEnergy and leaves Ohio's families and businesses paying the bill." A spokesman for NRG Energy, one of the Alliance's member energy companies and the owner of the Avon Lake coal-fired power plant west of Cleveland, said the company will oppose the legislation just as it opposed -- and has now filed suit against -- similar measures in New York and Illinois. S.B. 128 "is not about choice for consumers or protecting retail electric service customers," said David Gaier. ""It's a handout to a single company to prop up obsolete and uneconomic nuclear facilities that would otherwise close. "It would be paid for on the backs of those customers it's supposed to protect, and it will crowd out legitimate investment in new technology including renewables. NRG will take on these handouts in Ohio and wherever they emerge." Finally, Bill Siderewicz, president of Clean Energy Future, a company building gas turbine plants in Lordstown and Oregon, near Toledo, said the legislation is "little more than a way to make the plants more attractive to sell," as FirstEnergy said it would by the middle of 2019 if its power plants could not somehow put back under the umbrella of state regulation and guaranteed profits. With 20 years on the job at Southwest Airlines as a ramp agent in Dallas, 39-year-old Shane Parker is hoping for 20 more. "It's physically demanding you have to be ready to get down and dirty," Parker said of his job, which calls for getting luggage transported properly and helping to turn aircraft on time. The work of agents like Parker is ever-important, with air travel on the rise and aircraft services following suit. Today, nearly 700,000 direct employees in the U.S. airline industry usher some 2 million people traveling domestically and internationally on 27,000 flights per day, according to industry trade group Airlines for America. The number of air travelers across the globe stands to nearly double in the next two decades, with the global trade group International Air Transport Association projecting 7.2 billion passengers a year by 2035, up from 2016's 3.8 billion. "The outlook for the industry is very good. We've sustained profitability, and we are reinvesting both in our people and product and customer experience to make flying better," said Nicholas Calio, CEO of Airlines for America. "The more we hire, the more actual jobs we create in that ripple effect throughout the economy." Adding to the industry's optimism is the White House's new focus on creating American jobs. In February, President Donald Trump invited executives from the nations' largest airlines, including Delta , United and Southwest, to discuss travel infrastructure and regulation in February. Trump also proposed the privatization of the nation's air traffic control system in his skinny budget last month. "They've shown a proclivity, the administration, for looking at current regulations that don't make any sense and eliminating those," Calio siad. "So, those savings, those efficiencies will make us better able to continue to invest in our employees and products." After ordering a barrage of U.S. missiles, President Donald Trump said he was targeting the Syrian airfield from which the government allegedly launched a chemical attack this week on a rebel-held area. Here's what the president had to say in a Thursday evening address: My fellow Americans: On Tuesday, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad launched a horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians. Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror. Tonight, I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched. It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention, and ignored the urging of the U.N. Security Council. Years of previous attempts at changing Assad's behavior have all failed, and failed very dramatically. As a result, the refugee crisis continues to deepen and the region continues to destabilize, threatening the United States and its allies. Tonight, I call on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria, and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types. We ask for God's wisdom as we face the challenge of our very troubled world. We pray for the lives of the wounded and for the souls of those who have passed. And we hope that as long as America stands for justice, then peace and harmony will, in the end, prevail. Goodnight. And God bless America and the entire world. Thank you. watch now Cue the trucks and trenchers, bulldozers and backhoes: President Donald Trump says he's thinking about "accelerating" his $1 trillion, 10-year infrastructure plan. Cue, too, the hip hip hooray in the markets. Trump told the New York Times he's considering tying the plan to legislation on either health care revisions or tax reform to bridge the growing partisan divide in Washington, D.C. "Infrastructure is so popular with the Democrats and pretty popular with the Republicans," he said in the interview. "A lot of Republicans want infrastructure, too." But don't fire up the jackhammers just yet, according to a former U.S. ambassador to the Asian Development Bank. "It's not going to be anytime soon," said Curtis Chin, a Milken Institute Asia fellow and trustee of World Education Services of New York. "Even if a piece of legislation passes, think about how long it takes to place something out in terms of individual projects." Trump's timeline Trump, though, has said he's determined to move fast on a range of fix-ups, from roads and bridges to electrical grids, water systems, and airports, some of which he likens to "a horror show." "If you have a job that can't start within 90 days, we're not going to give you money for it," he told business executives at a town hall on Tuesday. Even though Chin noted infrastructure changes in the U.S. can't happen soon enough, he argued it's not just about securing financing and building things. "When you do an energy project or a road project, the reality is that you kind of come up with what we call a bankable project, which means how it's not only going to be built, but how it's also going to be maintained," he said. "My hope is that this infrastructure bill gets passed, and it will be a realistic bill, that it won't burden future governments, future taxpayers with all the obligations of financing things, continuing things that they didn't think through first." The investment question This photo taken on April 4, 2017 shows Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte gesturing as he delivers his speech during the 120th anniversary ceremony of the Philippine Army at Fort Bonifacio camp in Manila. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Thursday ordered troops to occupy uninhabited islands and shoals it claims in the disputed South China Sea, asserting Philippine sovereignty in an apparent change of tack likely to anger China. The firebrand leader, who on the campaign trail joked that he would jet ski to a Chinese man-made island in the South China Sea to reinforce Manila's claim, also said he may visit a Philippine-controlled island to raise the national flag. "The unoccupied, which are ours, let's live on it," Duterte told reporters during a visit to a military base in Palawan, near the disputed waters. "It looks like everyone is making a grab for the islands there. So we better live on those that are still unoccupied. What's ours now, we claim it and make a strong point from there." Duterte's plan is unlikely to sit well with China, which lays claim to almost all the South China Sea, especially as it comes amid a fast-warming relationship in recent months. China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Brunei and Vietnam contest all or parts of the South China Sea. This has led to confrontations between China and some of its neighbors over the strategic trade route. This domain was recently registered at Namecheap.com. Please check back later! A U.S. official said the Russians had been warned before the U.S. launched at least 59 tomahawk missiles aimed at Syria. Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said in an official statement: "Russian forces were notified in advance of the strike using the established deconfliction line. U.S. military planners took precautions to minimize risk to Russian or Syrian personnel located at the airfield." The strikes, which hit an airfield near Homs, struck aircraft and infrastructure including the runway, NBC reported. There is no word on casualties yet, but no people were targeted, the official told NBC. No Russian assets were targeted, according to the report. On Thursday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that Russia had failed to carry out a 2013 agreement to secure Syrian chemical weapons, adding that Moscow was either complicit or incompetent in its ability to uphold that deal. Tillerson said that the U.S. had a high degree of confidence that sarin nerve gas had been used in the Tuesday chemical weapons attack in a rebel-held area of northern Syria hit by government air strikes. The secretary of state said the U.S. "sought no approval from Moscow" on the strike. Following the U.S. attack, the head of Russia's upper house of Parliament's defense committee said Moscow would call for an urgent U.N. Security Council meeting, Reuters reported citing RIA. The report also said the lawmaker claimed the U.S. strike could undermine efforts to fight terrorism in Syria. Russia's deputy U.N. envoy, Vladimir Safronkov, warned earlier Thursday of "negative consequences" if the U.S. carried out military strikes on Syria over the attack. watch now U.S. President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart finally met Thursday with Trump saying he has "developed a friendship" with Xi Jinping, but undercurrents ran deep at state dinner in Mar-a-Lago as the U.S. military attacked a Syria-government airfield when the meal was underway. The timing was unlikely to be much of a coincidence, analysts told CNBC. "I don't think it was deliberately aimed at China. But obviously, the U.S. felt that it didn't need to wait until after that summit, so they didn't hesitate to do it right in the middle of the summit. That's definitely sending some kind of message to Xi Jinping," said senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, David Dollar. "It definitely raises the stakes for China in looking at what the United States might do about North Korea," he added. watch now China ally North Korea launched a Scud-ER ballistic missile from the port city of Sinpo on Wednesday in what is seen as an act of defiance before the meeting between the two leaders, and just days after Trump himself told the Financial Times that the U.S. will take unilateral action to end North Korea's nuclear threat unless China raises the pressure on Pyongyang. The attack on Syria was thus a signal to North Korea that "when I make a threat, I'm serious about it," said Francesco Mancini, assistant dean at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore. With talk rife in the Chinese press ahead of Xi's visit that Trump was all talk and no action, Trump can now say: "'No, I am a man of my words, when I make a threat, I will follow through' and this is certainly something the Chinese and the North Koreans will be thinking about," vice president of global analysis at Stratfor, Reva Goujon, told CNBC's "Street Signs". watch now Meanwhile, the state dinner between Trump and Xi was cordial, with observers saying despite intense speculation prior to the encounter, both sides will make it work for their domestic audiences. "These types of summit are about pageantry. The Chinese are looking to get the right photo ops to show that President Xi is an equal to Donald Trump and that China is a superpower. At the same time, Donald Trump is looking to have a successful summit," said Harry Kazianis, defense studies director at the Center for National Interest. With the attack on Syria, Trump was also taking the opportunity to send a message out to Americans that as a strong leader, he is not like predecessor Barack Obama, analysts said. While there is talk that the Chinese may limit photo opportunities for fear that the impulsive Trump may embarrass Xi, there's little to worry about as both leaders would want to score points with their constituents, Kazianis added. The U.S. president is battling troubles with overhauling Obamacare and with his Supreme Court nominee, while China is preparing for a leadership reshuffle in the fall. "For both sides, they are going to want a successful summit and that is what we're going to see," Kazianis said. Trump and Xi are expected to discuss finer points of trade and foreign policy on Friday, finishing the event with a working lunchbut don't expect a major breakthrough over just two days, he added. watch now "The best outcome would be something that makes Donald Trump look good, even look good to himself, and that makes President Xi Jinping look good to the people watching in China. it's a optical matter rather than a substantive matter," said former U.S.-China Business Council President, Robert A. Kapp. While it was a strong possibility the two sides will agree on issues that will not be discussed in public, it would also be a negative if there was a failure to talk about any of issues on the meeting agenda, he added. "If they came up with something saying 'we had a frank and honest exchange of views, the end', that would be a pretty dark outcome," said Kapp. After all, the U.S. views rising China as a strategic competitor. "One of the reasons why this summit is so important and it needs to go on very well is that both sides have so many pressure points between them whether it's about the South China Sea, Taiwan, East China Sea, North Korea and now trade. This is a relationship that both sides want to get right and it's important to really see what compromises and strategies both sides are going to employ," said Kazianis. watch now watch now U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping sat down together to dine on pan-seared Dover sole and New York strip steak on Thursday, spending some social time before digging into thorny bilateral security and trade issues. Trump has said he wants to raise concerns about China's trade practices and urge Xi to do more to rein in North Korea's nuclear ambitions during his first talks with the Chinese leaders, though no major deals on either issue were expected. The summit at Trump's Spanish-style Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, got off to a cordial start. Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, joined Trump and his wife, Melania, at a long table in a candle-lit ornate private dining room festooned with red and yellow floral centerpieces. Trump, a New York real estate magnate before he ran for office, joked before dinner: "We've had a long discussion already, and so far I have gotten nothing, absolutely nothing, but we have developed a friendship - I can see that - and I think long term we are going to have a very, very great relationship and I look very much forward to it." The fanfare over the summit on Thursday was overshadowed by another pressing foreign policy issue: the U.S. response to a deadly poison gas attack in Syria. A U.S. official said on Thursday the White House and Pentagon were discussing military options. Trump and Xi were expected to get into more detailed discussions about trade and foreign policy issues on Friday, concluding their summit with a working lunch. watch now Trump promised during the 2016 presidential campaign to stop what he called the theft of American jobs by China and rebuild the country's manufacturing base. Many blue-collar workers helped propel him to his unexpected election victory in November and Trump wants to deliver for them. "We have been treated unfairly and have made terrible trade deals with China for many, many years. That's one of the things we are going to be talking about," Trump told reporters ahead of the meeting. Trump is still finding his footing in the White House and has yet to spell out a strategy for what his advisers called a trade relationship based on "the principle of reciprocity." He brought his top economic and national advisers to Florida for the meeting, including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. "Even as we share a desire to work together, the United States does recognize the challenges China can present to American interests," said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, also in Florida for the meeting. Trump's daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner, who both work at the White House, also were among the dinner guests. Differing personalities Their summit brings together two leaders who could not seem more different: the often stormy Trump, prone to angry tweets, and Xi, outwardly calm, measured and tightly scripted, with no known social media presence. What worries the protocol-conscious Chinese more than policy clashes is the risk that the unpredictable Trump could publicly embarrass Xi, after several foreign leaders experienced awkward moments with the new U.S. president. watch now "Ensuring President Xi does not lose face is a top priority for China," a Chinese official said. The most urgent problem facing Trump and Xi is how to persuade nuclear-armed North Korea to halt unpredictable behavior like missile test launches that have heightened tensions in South Korea and Japan. North Korea is working to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting the United States. Trump has threatened to use trade to try to force China to exert influence over Pyongyang. "I think China will be stepping up," Trump told reporters on Thursday. Beijing says its influence is limited and that it is doing all it can. The White House is reviewing options to pressure Pyongyang economically and militarily, including "secondary sanctions" against Chinese banks and firms that do the most business with Pyongyang. A long-standing option of pre-emptive strikes remains on the table, but despite the tougher recent U.S. talk, the internal review "de-emphasizes direct military action," the U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Analysts believe any military action would likely provoke severe North Korean retaliation and massive casualties in South Korea and Japan and among U.S. troops stationed there. No grand bargain on trade On trade, U.S. labor leaders say Trump needs to take a direct, unambiguous tone in his talks with Xi. watch now President Donald Trump offered an impassioned explanation of the U.S. missile attack on Syria, saying he was targeting the air base from which the Assad government allegedly launched a deadly chemical attack on a rebel-held area this week. But his comments have not always been in support of American military action in Syria. In fact, many of his older Twitter posts began resurfacing on the platform soon after news of Thursday night's attacks. Here are some of those tweets urging the U.S. not to attack Syria: Trump tweet 1 Trump tweet 2 Trump tweet 3 Trump tweet 4 Trump tweet 5 Trump tweet 6 Trump tweet 7 And here are Trump tweets that demanded Congressional approval before any attack on Syria: Trump tweet 8 Trump tweet 9 watch now The U.S. military attacked a Syria-government airfield with 59 Tomahawk missiles on Thursday evening. The missiles targeted the Shayrat air base near Homs, and were in response to a Tuesday chemical weapons attack. Officially announcing the strike, President Donald Trump said the targeted airfield had launched the chemical attack on a rebel-held area, and he called on other nations to oppose Syria's embattled leader. "On Tuesday, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad launched a horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians. Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack," Trump said Thursday night. A U.S. defense official called the U.S. strike a "one-off," Reuters reported. Nine civilians including four children were killed, the Syrian state news agency claimed, but the Pentagon said civilians were not targeted. watch now On Thursday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Russia had failed to carry out a 2013 agreement to secure Syrian chemical weapons, adding that Moscow was either complicit or incompetent in its ability to uphold that deal. Tillerson said the U.S. had a high degree of confidence that sarin nerve gas had been used in Tuesday's chemical attack in northern Syria. The Pentagon released details on the strike, saying it was conducted using Tomahawk missiles launched from the destroyers USS Porter and USS Ross in the eastern Mediterranean. "A total of 59 (Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles) targeted aircraft, hardened aircraft shelters, petroleum and logistical storage, ammunition supply bunkers, air defense systems, and radars," Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis said in a statement. "As always, the U.S. took extraordinary measures to avoid civilian casualties and to comply with the Law of Armed Conflict." watch now The Pentagon called the U.S. airstrikes a "proportional response to Assad's heinous act." No people were targeted, an official told NBC. Additionally, Russian forces were notified in advance of the strike, according to the Pentagon. "U.S. military planners took precautions to minimize risk to Russian or Syrian personnel located at the airfield," Davis said. Still, Tillerson said the U.S. "sought no approval from Moscow." Syrian armed rebels welcomed the strike. Ahrar al-Sham, an opposition group backed by Gulf states responded: "The armed opposition welcomes any U.S. intervention through surgical strikes that would deter the Assad regime capabilities to kill civilians and shorten the suffering of our people." Syrian state TV, meanwhile, said, "American aggression targets Syrian military targets with a number of missiles." President Donald Trump speaks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., Thursday, April 6, 2017, after the U.S. fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria Thursday night in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. Alex Brandon | AP Earlier Thursday, Reuters reported that a British diplomat had said the United Nations Security Council would not vote Thursday on a draft resolution to condemn Tuesday's gas attack, but will continue negotiations. Russian response Russia's deputy U.N. envoy, Vladimir Safronkov, issued a warning ahead of the U.S. attack. "We have to think about negative consequences, negative consequences, and all the responsibility if military action occurred will be on shoulders of those who initiated such doubtful and tragic enterprise," Safronkov told reporters when asked about possible U.S. strikes, adding that such consequences could be seen in Iraq and Libya. The Russian response on Friday morning said the strikes violated international law and would do significant damage to relations between Russia and the U.S. The Russian news agency Interfax reported comments from the Kremlin which said the strikes had happened under a "far-fetched pretext." Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that President Vladimir Putin believed the U.S. attacks on Syria showed aggression against a sovereign state. Tuesday's attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun "Restaurant industry groups continue to cite claims by individual businesses that higher wages are forcing them to close. Sorting fact from fiction here isn't easy. But what is clear is that overall job growth data don't back them up." Other major states appear poised to follow. Leaders in the Illinois legislature are holding hearings on a $15 minimum wage, which could be headed to Governor Bruce Rauner's desk soon. And leaders in Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Hawaii and Minneapolis are all pushing similar $15 legislation. And what's been the impact on jobs as states and cities have phased in higher wages? In December the White House Council of Economic Advisors compared employment data for all of the states that raised the minimum wage since the 2009 recession with those that didn't. They found "substantial wage increases with no discernible impact on employment levels or hours worked." That's in line with the lion's share of recent rigorous research on the minimum wage. Nonetheless, restaurant industry groups continue to cite claims by individual businesses that higher wages are forcing them to close. Sorting fact from fiction here isn't easy. But what is clear is that overall job growth data don't back them up. Instead, strong job expansion has continued in places like San Jose, New York City, Seattle and Chicago that have adopted some of the nation's highest minimum wages. State-of-the-art studies on the $15 minimum wages proposals in California, New York and Minneapolis help explain why. They find that though a $15 wage increases costs for businesses, it also generates billions in new consumer spending that offset much of the higher cost. In states that have already approved $15 minimum wages, business organizations representing more than 32,000 small businesses have either endorsed -- or in some cases simply not opposed -- the $15 minimum wage. These include the Greater New York Chamber of Commerce, the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington, the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, the Northeast Organic Farmers Association New York Chapter, and the Long Island and Westchester/Putnam African-American Chambers of Commerce, and others. What lies ahead? Two strong Fight for $15 supporters, Tom Perez and Keith Ellison, now lead the Democratic National Committee. And more and more Democrats in Congress are talking about coming together around making $15 the next federal minimum wage bill. But with the Republican Congress and the Trump Administration focused not on raising pay but on rolling back protections for workers, no one is betting on federal action. That means the gulf between the cities and states where pay is beginning to rise, and those where even manufacturing workers and EMT's struggle on less than $15 an hour, will only grow as the nation heads into the 2018 election. That's when voters will get to decide what they think of politicians who side with corporate lobbyists rather than working families fighting for a decent paycheck. Commentary by Paul Sonn, the general counsel and program director at the National Employment Law Project. For more insight from CNBC contributors, follow @CNBCopinion on Twitter. The iShares U.S. Aerospace & Defense ETF (ITA) popped nearly one percent on Friday after the U.S. launched 59 missles at Syria Thursday night. Orbital ATK and Huntington Ingalls Industries lifted the sector ETF, both stocks were up over 2 percent earlier. Shares of Orbital and Huntington Ingalls closed up over 2 percent and over 1 percent, respectively. Huntington Ingalls was on pace for is best day since Feb. 3, when the shipbuilding company gained 2.33 percent. The ITA was also on pace for its second consecutive positive day since Feb. 27 and for its best day since March 28. iShares U.S. Aerospace & Defense ETF (ITA) share performance year to date "This is not enough angst to cause the prices to stay above $50." "We are still in the middle of a glut of all gluts and I still see that ultimately weighing on prices," the founder of Again Capital said in an interview Friday with " Closing Bell ." Usually in this type of situation, there is "the briefest of spikes" in crude prices but then they almost give back all the gains in the next day or two, he explained. Oil rose Friday after the United States airstrike on Syria, but noted expert John Kilduff doesn't expect that to last. An employee holds a control panel as barrels are filled with lubricant oil ahead of shipping at Royal Dutch Shell lubricants blending plant in Torzhok, Russia. On Thursday evening, the United States hit a Syrian government airfield with 59 Tomahawk missiles in response to a Tuesday chemical weapons attack. Brent crude futures were up 31 cents to $55.20 a barrel in late afternoon trading Friday after reaching an intraday peak of $56.08, the highest since March 7, shortly after the missile strike was announced. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures were last up 54 cents to $52.24 a barrel, having reached an intraday high of $52.94. Michael Cohen, head of energy commodities research at Barclays, believes the biggest bearish risk right now is how what's occurring in Syria impacts the upcoming OPEC meeting in May. "One of the most important factors that led all of these countries to actually get to a deal back in November of 2016 is the involvement of Russia. If we are now looking at this possibility that there is this wedge between some of the key players, then the likelihood of an amicable outcome on May 25 is therefore less," he said in an interview with "Power Lunch." In November, OPEC agreed to cut oil production in an effort to prop up prices. And while Syria isn't a big crude producer the conflict could exacerbate fault lines in the region, Cohen noted. "That is important to take into account if you have the possibility of further conflict in a place like Iraq, in a place like Yemen and the rest of the region," he said. Reuters contributed to this report. Watch: Crude gives back gains after Syria attack Allies of White House chief strategist Steve Bannon have reportedly told him to "lay low" as stories swirl about a possible shake-up at the top ranks of the Trump administration. Numerous reports this week have signaled that the populist provocateur considered leaving the White House following his removal from the National Security Council's principals committee, although Bannon has denied those. Bannon is enduring a "bad time" partly due to low polling numbers for Trump and the growing influence of President Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka and son-in law Jared Kushner, a source close to Bannon told NBC News' Katy Tur on Friday. Katy Tur tweet The White House strongly denied reports Friday that Trump is considering major changes to his senior White House staff amid clashes among top aides. A White House official called the suggestions "completely false" and claimed they were "driven by people who want to distract from the success taking place in this administration." Bannon, who joined Trump's presidential campaign after serving as chairman of Breitbart, was one of the forces behind the president's nationalist policies, including his denunciations of some U.S. military interventions. Bannon reportedly did not support the strike on a Syrian airfield that the U.S. carried out Thursday night in response to a chemical attack Trump has blamed on the Syrian government. Trump mulled reassigning Bannon and chief of staff Reince Priebus, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday afternoon. Trump became unhappy with disagreements among his top aides, the outlet added. Numerous reports in recent days have described clashes between the populist wing of the White House embodied by Bannon and more moderate staff members including Kushner and chief economic advisor Gary Cohn. Separately, Axios said Trump was considering Cohn and House Majority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy, among others, as possible chief of staff replacements. China is investing in Silicon Valley start-ups with military applications at such a rapid rate that the United States government needs tougher controls to stem the transfer of some of America's most promising technologies, a Pentagon report says. There are few restrictions on investing in American start-ups that focus on artificial intelligence, self-driving vehicles and robotics, the report contends, and China has taken advantage. Beijing, the report says, is encouraging its companies to invest for the purpose of pushing the country ahead in its strategic competition with the United States. In some instances, Chinese companies have made under-the-radar investments intended to dodge the oversight of a government agency, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, known as Cfius. "If we allow China access to these same technologies concurrently, then not only may we lose our technological superiority, but we may even be facilitating China's technological superiority," the report says. Such concerns show that China is looming in America's rearview mirror after a decades-long campaign by Beijing to close the technological gap between the two countries. Although the race is often cast in an economic light, the Pentagon report underlines the national security threat. In recent years, China has combined domestic subsidies with aggressive investment overseas to build its own technological know-how. A government plan, "Made in China 2025," that proposes lavishing state funds on 10 important industries has raised concerns from American and European business groups. Meanwhile, the global semiconductor industry has been shaken by Beijing-backed investment aimed at acquiring new microchip knowledge. President Trump has said he would resist Chinese trade tactics that put American companies at a disadvantage, though it is unclear whether the topic has come up in meetings with President Xi Jinping of China that began on Thursday and continue Friday. The report found that increasingly sophisticated commercial technology had blurred the lines between what was available to military consumers and civilian ones. Often start-ups and leading internet companies like Facebook and Google are working on products as sophisticated as anything the military has at its disposal. "For example, V.R. for gaming is at a similar level of sophistication as the V.R. used in simulators for our armed forces," the report said, referring to virtual reality. "Facial recognition and image detection for social networking and online shopping has real application in tracking terrorists or other threats to national security," the report continued, which added that much of the autonomous vehicle and drone technology of today was developed using grants from the Pentagon. In some cases, companies aided by those grants have since raised money from Chinese investors. Velodyne, for example, started developing light sensors for driverless cars after participating in a competition set up by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a unit of the Pentagon, in 2005. Since then, those sensors have been used on the United States Navy's unmanned surface vehicles. Last summer, the company received a $150 million joint investment from Ford and the Chinese internet giant Baidu. Baidu declined to comment on the investment. A Velodyne spokeswoman said the round represented its first outside investment. "The company obtained all necessary government clearances relating to the investment as part of the funding process," the spokeswoman wrote in an email. "Notably, the investments were designed to make advanced LiDAR sensors more accessible to the broader industry, resulting in the development of safer, less expensive autonomous vehicles." Ashton B. Carter, the former secretary of defense, commissioned the report as an urgent review of what senior Pentagon officials have considered China's alarming penetration of Silicon Valley, particularly in deals that finance nascent technology that has military applications. The report found that American private industry was mostly unaware of Beijing's efforts many of the deals involve relatively small amounts of money and that Washington did not have a strong understanding of the scale of the issue. "The U.S. government does not have a holistic view of how fast this technology transfer is occurring, the level of Chinese investment in U.S. technology, or what technologies we should be protecting," the report said. Michael A. Brown, the former chief executive of Symantec, led the study, called "How Chinese Investments in Emerging Technology Enable a Strategic Competitor to Access the Crown Jewels of U.S. Innovation." The New York Times reviewed a copy of the unclassified report. Mr. Carter declined to comment on the final document issued to cabinet officials last month. The report does not offer examples of American companies that have accepted Chinese investment and then found that their sensitive technologies were transferred to China. But it does take exception to tactics that it says Chinese funds have used to skirt government oversight. For example, it singles out Canyon Bridge, a venture capital firm that it says was formed to buy Lattice Semiconductor, an American microchip company. The firm has Chinese capital and American management expertise. The purpose of creating Canyon Bridge was to obscure the source of capital to "enhance the possibility" that the transaction would be approved by Cfius, the report said. Peter Kuo, a partner at Canyon Bridge, said that the there was never any intention to obscure the source of the fund's capital, as shown by meetings it had with Cfius before the deal was signed. Chinese investors plowed about $30 billion into early-stage technology through more than 1,000 funding deals between 2010 and 2016. During that time, participation from China rose to about 10 percent of total venture deals, with investment in crucial industries like artificial intelligence, robotics and augmented reality accelerating in 2016, according to the report. Among the investors identified in the report are well-known private firms and funds like Alibaba and Baidu. It also points to government-sponsored investors like Westlake Ventures, a fund in Redwood City, Calif., that is owned by the Hangzhou government, and ZGC Capital, an investor owned by 17 state-owned enterprises with an office in Santa Clara, Calif. The rising trend in venture capital investments has occurred alongside state-directed industrial espionage and online theft, which the American government has been unable to slow, the report says. In the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Silicon Valley field office, only 10 people are dedicated to counterespionage, and F.B.I. officials said in interviews for the report that it "has very limited resources relative to the threat." "The scale of the espionage continues to increase," the authors say. "Despite the rise in convictions, there is no way to know how big this problem really is." While American TV networks blast footage of the summit in Mar-a-Lago between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, the Chinese media have been cautious. Normally when Xi travels, especially on an overseas trip, there is a full-court press. For a trip to the U.S. to meet the leader of the free world, greater coverage would seem to be warranted. However, when the two presidents met in Florida during the early hours in China, there was almost no reporting at all. No photos of Xi. Discussions about the event appeared to be blocked and censored. Only in the late afternoon hours Friday did the state media start to report more detail of the summit though the articles have largely included only basic information. For example: Trump's acceptance of Xi's invitation to China. People on Sina Weibo, a Chinese social media platform, have been mainly focused on the fashion of Chinese first lady Peng Liyuan and the handshake between the two presidents. "The handshake looks very gentle," one user wrote. Zhang Ming, a political science professor at Renmin University, told CNBC the reason for the near radio silence is because the Chinese government is still nervous about what will come out of the Florida summit and how it could affect Xi's image back home. Chinese government officials are meticulous at planning events and tend to shy away from anything impromptu. "Chinese people associate a leader's image with the ability to rule. If he doesn't have a good image, there will be trouble," Zhang explained. "Trump is very hard to predict, so there is a lot of uncertainty in this meeting." There has been talk in China about how the U.S. airstrike on Syria could influence the Trump-Xi meeting and what it signals to the Chinese about North Korea. Trump has indicated he plans to push his Chinese counterpart to get tougher on Pyongyang, Beijing's longtime ally. North Korea, for its part, test-fired a ballistic missile ahead of the Trump-Xi meeting. At a regular press briefing in Beijing on Friday, China's Foreign Ministry called for calm and for all sides to "stick to political settlements." It also said China opposes the use of chemical weapons. Zhang Lifan, a Chinese historian, speculated that another reason authorities overseeing the local media were so cautious Friday was because Xi could be potentially embarrassed if Trump gets tough with him on North Korea. "Xi won't appear strong on this issue as he is always painted to be [by the government] and he won't want the people to see it," Zhang told CNBC. "This is why the state media is so low key reporting this meeting." CNBC's Daisy Cherry contributed to this report. A large 20-foot-deep (6-meter) sinkhole that swallowed two vehicles in North Laurel Canyon Blvd, in Los Angeles, is cordoned-off on February 18, 2017, after a powerful storm hit southern California. California's $54 billion plan to fix roads and fund highway improvements cleared a major hurdle late Thursday, passing in the state legislature and setting the stage for what could become a massive spending spree. Positive comments last week from analysts about the state transportation plan sent shares of several construction-related companies sharply higher. Some of them continued to trend higher this week and with passage in both houses of the legislature it's possible they could rally Friday. Analysts have suggested beneficiaries of the state spending could include Summit Materials , a construction materials producer, and AECOM , an engineering firm. Summit's stock jumped more than 5 percent last week and was up another 2 percent on Thursday. Goldman Sachs last Wednesday recommended investors buy call options on Vulcan Materials - a producer of aggregate materials used in highway construction - as part of a strategy to benefit from the California transportation spending bill. The call options go up in value when the stock rises, and in the case of Vulcan its shares spiked nearly 7 percent last week. Also, Cowen last Friday said it sees the California infrastructure spending as particularly lucrative for Granite Construction given the company has a 10 to 15 percent share of the state highway spending already. The legislation, part of a transportation funding package, provides money for local and state projects to fix roads, highways and bridges as well as to fund other transportation programs. The plan would generate about $5.2 billion in new taxes annually over the next decade by increasing gasoline taxes by 12 cents per gallon to 30 cents per gallon in the Golden State. The last time the state increased the gas tax was in the early 1990s. California's Senate voted 27-11 to approve the transportation plan, while the Assembly chamber passed it 54-26, barely reaching the two-thirds required. Governor Jerry Brown has already promised to sign the legislation into law. Brown traveled throughout the state this week to lobby for the proposal, which also would raise money through vehicle taxes. According to Brown, the state had a backlog of more than $100 billion in unfunded transportation needs even before the heavy winter rains caused damage to highways, bridges and local roads. Some Republican lawmakers opposed the plan arguing the state currently has some of the highest gasoline prices nationally and the additional gas taxes would encourage more businesses to leave California. Critics also contend the state has a history of raising money from gas or vehicle taxes and siphoning the money away to fund programs unrelated to roads, bridges or other transportation needs. That said, backers of the plan insist the legislation includes safeguards to prevent the funds from going to purposes other than for transportation. "Pajama traders" got it wrong Thursday night after President Donald Trump ordered an attack on a Syrian military base, CNBC's Jim Cramer said Friday. The term "pajama trader" was coined by Cramer to refer to traders who control the opening of the stock market based on extraneous data, like the futures, and news events from overseas. After the U.S. missile strikes, Dow futures tumbled as much as 100 points overnight, but they managed to retrace most losses. Stocks opened flat Friday on Wall Street. The attack was in response Tuesday's deadly chemical weapons attack allegedly carried out by Syrian President Bashar Assad's military on a rebel-held area. "These guys [pajama traders] who just sell, they know one thing," Cramer said on "Squawk on the Street." They must take action no matter how reckless and stupid it is," he added. Cramer had fired off in a series of tweets Friday morning after the futures were down. He asked "pajama traders" to stop following him. @JimCramer Tweet 1 @JimCramer Tweet 2 @Jim Cramer Tweet 3 Cramer said no one but international criminals endorse chemical warfare. "And if anybody wants to go read what happened in World War I and World War II and what happened again after Syria did it last time ... [they] would know that if you're pro-chemical warfare you're an outlaw that will never be embraced," he said. It's that time again! Jim Cramer rang the lightning round bell, which means he gave his take on caller favorite stocks at rapid speed: Federal Realty Investment Trust : "I've been recommending this stock since we started the show. And I know it's down a lot, I know people have given up on the shopping center, but this is [CEO] Don Wood, he's delivered and he's delivered and he's delivered. And people are heavily shorting this stock and I would not go against Don Wood. Period. End of story." Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, Inc. : "No, no. Please don't buy. I mean, on any lift I want you to sell because that's just a call option. You've got to look at the debt side. The debt side's really hideous. Even though they don't have a lot of debt coming to you right now, I am concerned." Vector Group Ltd. : "Yeah, I just blessed it the other day when we were playing 'Am I Diversified?' I think you're in good shape there. I like the yield. I think it's going to calm down." Corbus Pharmaceuticals : "You're talking about a very speculative stock. I will bless it for speculation only because it's a developmental company that does not make any money. Believe me. It loses money. And, you know, that's what they do." Toro Co. : "The weather better be good or Toro's going to be bad. That's why I prefer to stick with Home Depot , then I don't have to worry so much about the weather." Alder BioPharmaceuticals : "Man, I tell you, they've been just smacking that bad boy around. I don't know. Again, it's speculative. But you know what, we're going to check in to see why that thing isn't doing as well as we thought it would be by this point." Questions for Cramer? Call Cramer: 1-800-743-CNBC Want to take a deep dive into Cramer's world? Hit him up! Mad Money Twitter - Jim Cramer Twitter - Facebook - Instagram - Vine Questions, comments, suggestions for the "Mad Money" website? madcap@cnbc.com In the fickle world of advertising technology, it can be difficult to exceed expectations. But in February, multi-billion dollar digital performance advertising agency Criteo reported quarterly earnings that bested industry expectations. "Business is very good. We've been a public company now for 13 quarters, and we've achieved, over-achieved, expectations as a public company," CEO Eric Eichmann told CNBC's "The Rundown" on Thursday. Eichmann said the main reason behind the company's success was simple: "What we do is basically help retailers maximize their sales by using their data and serving personalized ads that consumers will click on and hopefully buy." It's a formula, according to Eichmann, that is working for clients. "We have high retention rates, over 90 percent now for over 24 quarters in a row," he said. Commenting on the state of affairs in the digital world, Eichmann noted that globally, more consumers are purchasing across platforms. "Forty-one percent of transactions globally are happening across devices," he said. "That means, you start on your smartphone, and end up on the desktop or vice versa." This paradigm shift has necessitated a change in looking at how advertising dollars are spent. "If you don't know whether the user is the same, you might not spend your dollars or your Singapore dollars or your Yen profitably so it's very important to be able to match the users," Eichmann said, adding that Criteo achieves this by working closely with a network of over 14,000 advertisers and e-Commerce companies to identify users across devices. Having found success in the West, the company is now looking to Southeast Asia as the next frontier. Unlike their contemporaries in the West who may prefer shopping on the desktop, though, many shoppers in Southeast Asia actually shop on mobile, he said. Eichmann did, however, express caution that there was still much work to be done in the region before e-commerce could truly take off, with infrastructure around logistics and payments still relatively under developed. Additionally, mobile penetration remains modest. "The penetration of online commerce is only 3 percent in Southeast Asia. Compare that to the U.S., and the U.S. is about 14 percent," he said. Looking ahead, Eichmann said that companies operating in the region should also think of ways to retain customers over the long-run: "In a new market, one of the priorities is also acquisition, is making sure that as the population that shop grows, that you're capturing a lot of that population." Gregory Hines as Ben Doucette, Sean Hayes as Jack McFarland, Eric McCormack as Will Truman on 'Will & Grace.' JGI | Tom Grill | Getty Images Chewing and lip-smacking One of those pesky office-mates was a former boss of mine. One of his irksome habits: Eating with his mouth open. At about noon he would descend to the cafeteria and return to our close quarters with something healthy (he was a vegetarian). And then it started. Loud chewing and, worse, lip-smacking as he savored his hummus and quinoa sandwich (or whatever it was). Unlike with my egg-loving neighbor, I could not bring myself to complain to the person who decided the size of my paycheck. So I just cringed. Five days a week. I shouldn't have had to wince as he minced, according to Patricia Rossi, a Florida-based business etiquette expert. Eating "al desko" is an acceptable practice, she says, but it should be done as sparingly as possible and with the feelings of neighbors top-of-mind. "Work projects and deadlines might make it necessary to do so," she said. "But keep chewing, slicing, and dicing on the down-low. We don't want coworkers to think we are auditioning for 'Top Chef.'" Oh, that smelly food I am not entirely innocent. I don't often eat at my desk, but when I do I tend to fetch food from a nearby deli where they have a lunch buffet containing such treats as fried chicken and shrimp. No one has complained, but I worry that the odors could be offensive. That said, I know they are less bad than the ex-colleague who brought in leftovers to heat up in the office microwave. Whatever he had the night before, you got a sniff of it the next day. OK, the lasagna wasn't awful. And the pong from the pot roast was (just) passable. The chicken, however, pecked at my olfactory system. And then there was the fish. I think it was salmon. It made me pink with exasperation. And please don't mention the fake butter smell of microwaved popcorn. Another office etiquette expert, Haydee Antezana, is among the odor-averse. "Avoid eating strong smelly foods that will linger for longer," she urges. And she even advises keeping a toothbrush in your desk. "You should try brush your teeth after lunch," she adds, "or the smell will linger on." "Stay away from anything heavy on the garlic or onions," says Jacqueline Whitmore, founder of the Protocol School of Palm Beach, Inc., especially if you work in close proximity to anyone. "Otherwise, the smell may offend someone and permeate the office." Janis Christie | Getty Images Fellow workplace behavior expert Patricia Fitzpatrick of The Etiquette School of New York is even more emphatic. "Proper office etiquette dictates that one not eat anything at one's desk that is going to offend coworkers, such as food that has a strong odor or is messy to eat," she says. "And they should never heat food, such as fish, that has a strong odor in the microwave." Hygiene, slurping and other noises Whitmore also worries about non-chewing and slurping sounds associated with eating and drinking. "Try not to rattle paper bags, such as chip bags," she says. "It might distract co-workers." Other auditory distractions Whitmore warns about include beverages. "Don't slurp your drink or chew ice," she advises. "And stay away from overly crunchy food." Another issue, say the decorum doyens , is hygiene. "Desks have 400 times more bacteria than toilet seats," says Antezana, who describes herself as an 'impression management specialist." "And it's visually unappealing, especially if you're walking through with a visitor. Breadcrumbs scattered all over files, sticky keyboards yuck!" "Eating at your desk can also attract bugs," adds Whitmore. "Clean up after yourself. After all, your mother does not work there and will not clean up after you!" A further bugbear is use of office kitchens and their appliances. "Don't eat other people's food in the communal refrigerator," says Whitmore. "Clean up spills if you make a mess in the microwave or on the counter-tops. "And if your food has been in the refrigerator for more than three days, throw it out." Kitchen craziness Antezana has some additional rules: "Cover your food when heating it up," she says. "And if your spaghetti sauce splatters all over the microwave, make you clean it up before the next person has to use it. Same goes for the toaster make sure it's clean of your breadcrumbs for the next person." Rossi also is a stickler for tidiness and garbage disposal. "Always tidy up carefully," she says, "throwing sandwich wrappers, containers and anything with a lingering smell in a larger trash can that isn't in an enclosed area." Meanwhile, all the experts urge workers to avoid desktop eating, at least occasionally. U.S. President Donald Trump seems to be struggling with the way he has decided to approach politics, a former economist at Goldman Sachs told CNBC on Friday. Jim O'Neill, also a former U.K. Treasury minister, said that the U.S.- China summit on Friday should end with some commitments on Chinese investment and some broad assurances against protectionism, but nothing else much further than that. "I can't imagine anything grander than that, not least because I'm not quite sure what the hell such an agreement would be really. My mind is frequently baffled by what Trump's advisors are going on about really ... And all of this stuff is sort of stuck in the dark ages, it seems to me," O'Neill, told CNBC at the Ambrosetti Forum in Italy. Forty kilometers south of the cosmopolitan metropolis of Lille lies the French city of Henin-Beaumont. Surrounded by waste heaps from old mines it is home to more than 26,000 people. Henin-Beaumont forms part of a wider region where the closure of mines and steel plants has transformed life and drawn comparisons with America's Rust Belt. Once a prosperous region in the northeast of France, it has been hit by deindustrialization and unemployment the jobless rate has reached about 17 percent when the national average is closer to 10 percent. Historically, steelworkers and miners have tended to vote left, but in the past few years, the far-right Front National (FN) has managed to establish itself locally. Since 2014, the party holds two cities in this region, Henin-Beaumont and another city called Hayange. Henin-Beaumont itself is taken as an example of the Front National's management skills. The mayor, Steeve Briois, is widely praised by inhabitants and it didn't take long walking around the town for CNBC to find his supporters. "When he (Briois) arrived in 2014, it was the Socialist Party at the helm, and Henin-Beaumont had a lot of difficulties, now Mr. Briois put things right I say that the Front National is today able to do the same thing on a national level", said Daniel Vaissier, who moved to Henin-Beaumont a few months ago, but already supports the mayor strongly. An ArcelorMittal factory in Hayange, France. Marion Lory | CNBC The town hall in Henin-Beaumont, France. Marion Lory | CNBC Vaissier grew up voting for the left, like his parents, but started leaning to the far right in 2005 when he realized the left and right were making what he perceived as the same mistakes over and over again. Vaissier is indicative of the unanimous support for the mayor, but some inhabitants have however underlined that Briois's popularity was mainly due to his personality rather than his label and some are still reluctant to vote Front National at a national election. This view is supported by Valerie Igounet, an historian who specializes in the far right. "Today in France, there is one out of two voters that are not ready to vote for her (FN leader Marine Le Pen) to be president of the Republic It is still a party that scares people", she explained. watch now With photographer Vincent Jarousseau, she spent two years in different Front National cities, writing about people they had met. L'Illusion Nationale, the book which resulted from this trip, tells the story of these citizens, torn between disappointment and hopelessness. A few hours away, close to the Luxembourg border, stands Hayange. This heartland of steel mining is regularly in the limelight due to its controversial Front National mayor, Fabien Engelmann. In 2014, he was elected in a quadrangular election with 2,000 votes out of 12,000 voters. Since then, he has tried to clean the city, installing cameras, reinforcing the local police and forbidding ball games. And any differing opinions are muzzled. Like Patrice Hainy, a former deputy sport councilor working at the town hall, who joined the Front National ahead of the 2014 elections but quickly realized that Marine Le Pen's party was strictly controlling its members. "During the elections, they give the impression to listen, that our opinion matters but once they have the power, we have to follow We have to follow and obey. It is even worse than the right or left," he told CNBC. Patrice Hainy, former deputy sport councilor, who joined the Front National ahead of the 2014 elections. Marion Lory | CNBC Hainy was leaning to the left for years until he got tired of the politicians not listening to the people. And he is not the only one. "Some are traditional (and vote along family lines), but others voting for the first or second time feel betrayed by politicians that didn't keep their promise and are disappointed by the left and the right," Igounet said in a telephone interview. Others voting for the first or second time feel betrayed by politicians that didn't keep their promise Valerie Igounet Historian who specializes in the far right Such a statement is shared by Herve Hoff, a local Front National politician based near Hayange, who stated that the closure of plants in the region didn't make people vote for the Front National but rather the tiredness of the left-right scenario. "It is this disappointment that triggers the vote for the FN. It is a deep vote that dates back several years, it is not recent" he said in an interview with CNBC. watch now At least $2.5 million of that was spent to oppose Ossoff, the former congressional aide who has led most polling in the race, partly because of fractured support among Republicans. Ads targeting Ossoff have claimed he lacks experience and is too closely tied to top Democrats. One even hit him for dressing up as "Star Wars" character Han Solo when he was in college. Another tied Ossoff to terrorist groups, even including an image of Osama bin Laden, because his filmmaking company reportedly produced documentaries for news outlet Al Jazeera. There is nothing to indicate that Ossoff has any ties to terrorist organizations. His campaign manager Keenan Pontoni called the ad a "smear attack" and said it was "truly shameful." In a statement, he said Ossoff is "proud of his work as an investigative filmmaker." Ossoff has easily outraised his opponents. As of March 29, Handel raised about $463,000, Hill garnered about $473,000 and Moody about $108,000. All the more unusual is the Hollywood attention Ossoff has attracted. Actor Jon Cryer and comedian Chelsea Handler both donated $2,700 to his campaign, and actress Alyssa Milano has publicly supported him, prompting an attack from Handel. If no candidate in the April 18 election wins 50 percent of the vote, it goes to a June runoff. The top two candidates will advance regardless of party. One recent poll showed Ossoff with 43 percent of support, well ahead of Handel's 15 percent. However, he faces a much tougher task in a runoff, as support would likely coalesce around a Republican. Trump won the district by only 1.5 points last year. Still, Price got more than 60 percent of the vote there in 2016. The Greek government has agreed Friday to institute new measures worth of 2 percent of gross domestic product by the end of the decade after the country exits its third bailout program. However, there is no scheduled date for new payments to Athens, which raises doubts about Greece's ability to repay creditors in July. Furthermore, discussions on debt restructuring, which have yet to begin, are set to be complex and long. Eurogroup President Jeroen Dijsselbloem said Friday that there's been "significant progress" in talks with the Greek government after the latter agreed to legislate reforms affecting the country's pension system and widen the country's tax base. Following Friday's Eurogroup agreement, it is now up to the Greek government to implement the pledged reforms and then technical teams will be able to conclude the second bailout review, an EU official told CNBC on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the topic. Once that review is finalized, Greece will receive fresh disbursements from the 86 billion euro ($91.40 billion) bailout program. "We don't know dates for disbursements," the official said. It all depends on how quickly Greece legislates the new reform package. Analysts have said that Greece will struggle to repay 8 billion euros ($8.51 billion) it owes governments and private investors due next July without new money coming in. "My guess is that the Greek government got a stern warning from the ECB(European Central Bank)/Bank of Greece that a further impasse would have meant a severe hit to the economy via capital outflows," Claus Vistesen, chief euro zone economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, told CNBC via email about Friday's agreement. "We have to be skeptical of course that a reform pledge for 2019 and 2020 will actually be carried out, but it plugs a hole for now," he added. But the big hurdle in Greek bailout talks comes after the conclusion of the review, assuming that Athens follows through with the pledged commitments. "We will start discussing the Greek debt, and that's going to be a very complicated discussion," the official said. The International Monetary Fund has said that before it joins the Greek bailout, the country's debt need to be more manageable. At the same time, European creditors want the IMF involved in the Greek process to give credibility to the program. This has been a contentious issue between Greece's euro creditors, Greece and the IMF since the program began. This is because there's been strong opposition from European countries to grant signifcant debt relief before the program concludes in 2018. The IMF has already agreed that debt relief can be applied after 2018, but it will conduct a new debt sustainability analysis to ensure that the reforms agreed so far will reduce Greece's debt. If that's the case, the Fund will join the bailout financially. "As for the IMF, I would assume that they are in otherwise I don't see the Eurogroup agreeing to this. Another way to put it is that they haven't said, as far as I can see at least, that they're out. So I have to assume that they're in," Pantheon's Vistesen said about the IMF's participation. Yvan Mamalet, senior euro area economist at Societe Generale, told CNBC in January that it would be "very difficult" for Greece to go back to the markets once the program is concluded and fund itself at low costs if it hasn't lowered its debt levels. Follow CNBC International on Twitter and Facebook. watch now American military action against a Syria-government airfield late Thursday will do significant damage to relations between Russia and the U.S., according to the Kremlin quoted by the Interfax news agency. The missiles targeted the Shayrat Airfield near Homs, and were in response to a chemical weapons attack on Tuesday. Officially announcing the strike, President Donald Trump said that the targeted airfield had launched the chemical attack on a rebel-held area, and he called on other nations to oppose Syria's embattled leader. Sasha Mordovets | Getty Images Europe | Getty Images The Russian response on Friday morning claimed that the strikes violated international law. The Russian news agency Interfax reported comments from the Kremlin which said the strikes had happened under a "far-fetched pretext". A quote from Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also said that President Vladimir Putin believed the U.S. attacks on Syria showed aggression against a sovereign state. Further comments from Peskov indicated that Putin sees the U.S. strikes on Syria as an attempt to divert the international community's attention from civilian casualties in Iraq. "President Putin considers the U.S. strikes against Syria an act of aggression against a sovereign country violating the norms of international law, and under a trumped-up pretext at that," the Russian Tass news agency reported Peskov as saying. Meanwhile later on Friday morning, the Russian Foreign ministry called for an urgent UN Security Council meeting to discuss the aftermath of U.S. missile strike, according to Russian news agencies. It also suspended a Syria air safety agreement with the States and said the "thoughtless" attack was intended as a show of force against a country engaged in fighting terrorism. watch now The ministry claimed that it was obvious the missile launch had been prepared before Tuesday's alleged chemical attack. Adding to these comments, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he would demand an explanation from the U.S. on the strikes and said they reminded him of the Western attack on Iraq in 2003, which were condemned by the UN as they did not conform to its charter. "I hope this provocation will not lead to irreparable damage (to U.S.-Russian ties)," Lavrov told a news conference in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, according to Reuters. Other voices from inside the Kremlin on Friday confirmed that no Russians had been injured in the U.S. strike on the Shayrat Airfield. Leonid Slutsky, a Russian politician and the deputy of the State Duma, said that the strike undermined in the the most serious way the opportunity for anti-terrorism cooperation with Russia and ruined efforts to achieve a truce, according to Interfax. He also said the attack would lead to further escalation in Syria and would negatively affect Russian-U.S. dialogue in general. watch now When Jared Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, sought the top-secret security clearance that would give him access to some of the nation's most closely guarded secrets, he was required to disclose all encounters with foreign government officials over the last seven years. But Mr. Kushner did not mention dozens of contacts with foreign leaders or officials in recent months. They include a December meeting with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, and one with the head of a Russian state-owned bank, Vnesheconombank, arranged at Mr. Kislyak's behest. More from The New York Times: In battle for Trump's heart and mind, it's Bannon vs. Kushner Up to 100,000 taxpayers compromised in Fafsa tool breach, IRS says What we know and don't know about the missile attack on Syria The omissions, which Mr. Kushner's lawyer called an error, are particularly sensitive given the congressional and F.B.I. investigations into contacts between Russian officials and Trump associates. The Senate Intelligence Committee informed the White House weeks ago that, as part of its inquiry, it planned to question Mr. Kushner about the meetings he arranged with Mr. Kislyak, including the one with Sergey N. Gorkov , a graduate of Russia's spy school who now heads Vnesheconombank. Mr. Kushner's omissions were described by people with direct knowledge of them who asked for anonymity because the questionnaire is not a public document. While officials can lose access to intelligence, or worse, for failing to disclose foreign contacts, the forms are often amended to address lapses. Jamie Gorelick, Mr. Kushner's lawyer, said that the questionnaire was submitted prematurely on Jan. 18, and that the next day, Mr. Kushner's office told the F.B.I. that he would provide supplemental information. Mr. Kushner's aides said he was compiling that material and would share it when the F.B.I. interviewed him. For now, they said, he has an interim security clearance. In a statement, Ms. Gorelick said that after learning of the error, Mr. Kushner told the F.B.I.: "During the presidential campaign and transition period, I served as a point-of-contact for foreign officials trying to reach the president-elect. I had numerous contacts with foreign officials in this capacity. I would be happy to provide additional information about these contacts." No names were disclosed in that correspondence. Applicants for major national security positions must submit a lengthy F.B.I. questionnaire as part of a background check. They are asked to list the dates and details of all contacts with representatives of foreign governments. This is not just bureaucratic paperwork. The form warns that "withholding, misrepresenting, or falsifying information" could result in loss of access to classified information, denial of eligibility for a sensitive job and even prosecution; knowingly falsifying or concealing material facts is a federal felony that may result in fines or up to five years imprisonment. Clearance holders are often allowed to amend disclosure forms and avoid punishment if omissions are deemed oversights rather than deliberate falsifications, and prosecutions are rare. Mr. Kushner is the second top White House official to have problems concerning his dealings with foreign officials. Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump's first national security adviser, had his security clearance suspended and was fired for misleading Vice President Mike Pence about the content of phone calls with the Russian ambassador during the transition. Last month, the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, confirmed to Congress that his agency was investigating Russia's interference in the election and the possibility of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Vnesheconombank is a target of American sanctions imposed in response to Moscow's annexation of Crimea and aggression in Ukraine. It is controlled by members of President Vladimir V. Putin's government, including Prime Minister Dmitri A. Medvedev, and has been used to bail out oligarchs favored by Mr. Putin and to fund pet projects like the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Mr. Kushner has said he did not discuss sanctions with Mr. Gorkov, the Russian banker. Mr. Gorkov declined to comment on the subject of whether sanctions were discussed. Instead, those who just want to criticize President Trump and a good number of honestly concerned Americans will now be focused on wondering if pushing back on President Bashar Assad in Syria was worth antagonizing Syria's Russian protectors. That's a much healthier debate because it's almost entirely based in known factual information and not shrouded in mysterious conspiracy theories and innuendo. For example, we still don't know if Russia's public opposition to the attacks is 100 percent honest or just for show, but we do know that the U.S. did inform the Putin regime before launching the attacks. And Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Friday morning that the missile strikes came "within an inch of militarily clashing with Russia." But he ended it there. Medvedev is thus playing the role of the angry uncle many of us have who swears that if his rival had "said ONE MORE WORD, he would have really done something!" In other words, the Russians are folding... for now. This attack also suddenly puts the Trump team into a more traditional and accepted role for a presidential administration. Almost every president has been involved in ordering some kind of military action, and there's a long tradition of presidents gaining a natural degree of added public support as commander-in-chief when our troops are put into harm's way. Some of that added support has eroded over time, thanks to residual public resentment over the Iraq War, but it still exists. It also seems to be making this president act more presidential, as he gave a heartfelt address to the nation last night instead of tweeting. In fact, he didn't tweet about the attack at all the night of the missile launch or even the morning after. And that's not the only part of the script that's flipped so suddenly. Because guess who is a de facto supporter of President Trump's decision now? The answer is none other than Hillary Clinton, who called for just this kind of strike on Syrian air bases just hours before they occurred. "I really believe we should have and still should take out his air fields and prevent him from being able to use them to bomb innocent people and drop sarin gas on them," Clinton said on Thursday afternoon. That's a case of strange bedfellows not many people could have predicted. Again don't be fooled, President Trump's opponents are still angry as ever and many of them will use this missile attack to form a new series of political attacks against him. But now they have to start over and their range of attack has been significantly narrowed. In fact, in light of President Trump's clear challenge to the Russians, a good case can be made to end the House Intelligence Committee's hearings and ranking member Adam Schiff's crusade to uncover some kind of Trump-Russian grand conspiracy. Something else will catch the Democrats' anti-Trump fancy to be sure, but it will have to be something else. That "something else" will likely be a continued rehashing of then-private citizen Trump using Twitter and other venues to warn against attacks on Syria and more wars in the Middle East. But we've seen that kind of tactic before used against presidents in the past. The "Trump is a Russian-controlled stooge" was different and unique, especially since concerns over its possible veracity made it all the way to the level of a congressional investigation. So, while we're not flipping the script from nasty to nice, we are getting more into the realm of political normalcy. Commentary by Jake Novak, CNBC.com senior columnist. Follow him on Twitter @jakejakeny. For more insight from CNBC contributors, follow @CNBCopinion on Twitter. The Tomahawk cruise missile used in the attack on a Syrian airbase is considered a workhorse offensive weapon of the U.S. Navy but the Obama administration once considered scaling back production and funding of it. Defense analysts say the Pentagon's stockpiles of the Tomahawk a weapon manufactured by Raytheon could quickly be depleted if the U.S. were to face a two-theater war or any action against North Korea. "You can run out of these things pretty quickly," said Daniel Goure, vice president of Lexington Institute, a non-profit public-policy think tank in Arlington, Virginia. "They tend to be very good against targets like radar installations, communication centers and things of that sort." During the first Gulf War in the early 1990s, the U.S. military used an estimated 900 Tomahawks on day one of the conflict, and 100 to 200 of them were fired in 2011 against targets in Libya. The U.S. military, which also has used the guided cruise missile against targets in Afghanistan and Sudan, is believed to have an inventory of around 3,000 to 4,000 Tomahawks although the exact number is considered classified. The U.S. military used about 60 Tomahawk missiles in this week's operation against the Syrian government airbase. It followed a chemical weapons attack in Syria that killed more than 100 people. The U.S. believes the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad conducted the chemical weapons attack and now is investigating whether the Russians had a role. Goure estimates a larger attack on the Syrian government could end up requiring about 400 to 500 missiles. The Tomahawk originally was designed in the 1980s to carry a nuclear warhead but was later converted to conventional weapon use. The Navy and Raytheon declined comment for this story. Indeed, the Tomahawk is sometimes one of the first weapons U.S. military planners reach out to when looking to respond to a threat or send a message to an enemy. It can strike targets from far away and thus keep warships safely out of harm's way and lessen the need to send bombers and crews on dangerous missions. Tomahawks can fly more than 1,000 miles at very low elevations and its warheads switched out depending on the mission. The missiles cost around $1.4 million apiece. The Russians also have developed a similar missile they can fire from warships. NBC News reported that all but one of the Tomahawk missiles hit their intended target in Syria. Tomahawks are considered very reliable and use GPS tracking to lock in fixed targets but also have the technology to be reprogrammed in flight to new targets. Raytheon also disclosed in a press release in 2015 that the Tomahawk can hit moving targets. They conducted a test from a Navy destroyer off the California coast and the missile rocketed directly to a vessel moving at sea. President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary James Mattis have made modernization of the U.S. military and readiness a top priority and want to increase weapons spending. One of the priorities is adding more warships to the Navy fleet, both destroyers as well as submarines a decision likely to result in more need for the Tomahawk missiles. Yet the Obama administration had proposed a plan a few years ago to stop buying Tomahawks and use up the existing inventory and spend the money instead on research and development of a new offensive weapon system. At the time, some members of Congress criticized the strategy saying it was wrong since a next-generation version of the military's current Tomahawk variant could take a decade or longer to develop and that there was no guarantee it would be a better weapons system. "Congress said it was a hugely valuable and flexible weapon," said Dakota Wood, research fellow for defense programs at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based think tank. "The Tomahawk is deployed on just about every surface combatant ship, whether submarine or destroyer." Moreover, some lawmakers said slowing the buying of the Tomahawk or stopping production entirely was foolhardy because it would let the production line on the weapon system go idle at a time of uncertainties and rising geopolitical tensions. "You can't predict that you won't find yourself using a whole bunch of Tomahawks at some point," said Goure. "If you allow the production line to go cold, it can be years before you're able to get it up and running again if ever." In the end, the Obama administration's Pentagon reversed its decision and restored some of the Tomahawk funding. Even so, the current procurement by the military is still just under 200 missiles per year and could quickly be depleted in a major war. Experts suggest that 200 missiles is roughly the minimum sustainment rate needed to keep the Tomahawk production line going. Also, at the current level there's a expectation that Raytheon could ramp up production if needed by the Pentagon. Watch: Experts weigh in on Syria Russian President Vladimir Putin is likely furious after the U.S. fired cruise missiles at a Syrian air base in response to a chemical weapons attack, former U.S. Ambassador to Syria Theodore Kattouf told CNBC on Friday. "But they have egg on their face," Kattouf, who served under the George W. Bush administration, said on "Squawk Box." Kattouf said that Russia guaranteed in 2013 that Syria's chemical weapons arsenal would be removed or destroyed. Obviously, that did not happen "100 percent," Kattouf said. After Thursday's U.S. missile strikes on a Syrian air base, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Russia had failed to carry out the 2013 agreement to secure Syrian chemical weapons. He said Moscow was either complicit or incompetent in its ability to uphold that deal. Russia said the U.S. strikes against Bashar Assad's government violated international law. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin believed the U.S. attacks on Syria showed aggression against a sovereign state. President Donald Trump ordered the attack by 59 Tomahawk missiles on a Syria military air base in response to Tuesday's deadly chemical weapons attack allegedly carried out by Assad's military on a rebel-held area. Kattouf said the strikes against Assad's government sent "just the right message." James Stavridis, a retired admiral who served as NATO's supreme allied commander, told CNBC on Friday that the attack showed the U.S. is not afraid to use force. "Let's face it: Part of the audience here is not just Russia, Iran and Syria. Part of the audience is (Chinese) President Xi (Jinping)," Stavridis said on "Squawk Box." As missiles hit a Syrian air base, Trump was meeting with the Chinese president in Florida. "Perhaps it is no coincidence that the strikes get launched while President Xi is down in Mar-a-Lago. Pretty good signal that the United States intends to play hard with North Korea," Stavridis said. CNBC's Everett Rosenfeld contributed to this report. Week in Review: What makes a super hero? Invincibility? Super-human strength? Resilience the ability to shake off adversity? All of the above! Superheroes are magnetic, drawing in the masses, exuding a confidence that others glom onto, comforted by a sense that ultimately all will be okay, even, if at a particular point, it seems that the chips are stacked against a positive outcome. I'm not talking about complacency; nope, that would evidence a lack of any concern at any time; that would be boring. Does any of that sound familiar? Of course it does all of it. I'm not channeling Superman or even the more believable Stallone, circa Rocky I. I'm talking equities and treasuries. A hawkish Fed? No match for the markets. D.C. gridlock, both interparty and intraparty? Swatted away like a NY Times reporter at a presidential press conference. Healthcare reform? Tax reform delayed longer than a reservation at The Polo Bar? Russian scandal? A floundering administration? Air strikes in Syria? Come on, be serious; the markets are impervious to the collection of such trivial matters, most of which, standing alone, would have felled a lesser foe. Stocks hold on to full valuations and bonds rally. It really is incredible when you think about it, and we all have. But we hang on for the ride, cognizant, perhaps even concerned, about that kryptonite event, but while the ride has had some mild bumps we all remain invested, sanguine in the belief that our capital is safe and sound. Clearly, the one notable non-believer is Mario Draghi , he of the ECB, steadfast in his belief that the EU economy is not strong enough to exit QE. This is actually positive for the markets, although not for the banks. Free money to invest in an improving economy what could be better? Maybe when the French elections are over he will get on board. Observations: Like Superman, like Batman and Wonder Woman, this superhero has a secret identity. What could it be? As James Carville famously intoned, it's "the economy stupid ." Long before the above noted slings and arrows of misfortune arose, there was hope; hope that we would have tax reform this year; an infrastructure bill and repatriation of assets held abroad, fueled by the Republicans controlling all 3 branches. Superheroes prefer to be unsung, to let others take credit for their efforts. So while the White House claimed credit for the S & P making new highs and for the strong March employment report, while ignoring today's payrolls miss, it was only partially true. There is no question that postelection optimism, both from Trump's election and Obama's exit, was impetus for a market rally. However, the real superhero in this story is the economy. A strong economy, abetted by what will continue to be extremely accommodative monetary policy, even with 3 hikes this year, becomes a near impregnable force. But unlike a superhero of yore, this one has a wingman and it's a synchronized global recovery as heretofore European laggards, such as Spain and Italy, gain traction, emerging markets rally and China's debt problems remain in the background. With an economy so strong, here and abroad, why have 10YR Treasuries and Bunds rallied so hard, hitting levels not seen since there was much less optimism, much less perceived strength in the economy? I can offer conjecture but no firm view as to why. There is a segment of investors that are concerned about all of the above seeking safety in Treasuries; sovereigns buying Treasuries for a 200 bp pickup over Bunds or other sovereigns, ex-currency implications; and others who are concerned about equity valuations, although not necessarily focused on the issues, exhibiting a preference for bonds, perhaps exhibiting a belief that the downside from that asset class's excessive levels is much less. But for every action in the markets, there is a reaction. So while the indices barely move, financials retreat, inversely correlated to bonds; retail stocks and autos get smeistered (a technical term); while tech moves higher and energy stocks recover ever so slightly. Outlook: So where to now? My view is consensus: equities have modest upside absent significant progress in Washington or a strong reporting period which starts in earnest with the banks late next week. Expectations for earnings and guidance are high, the product of a benign pre-announcement period and strong economic data. And although I believe repeal and replace is not dead and buried, the turning point in sentiment re: Trump's ability to execute, will depend upon the conditions of the revival. If the President crosses the aisle and Democrats sign on, we hit new highs in expectations of bigger things to come. If it sneaks through with a helping hand from the so-called Freedom Caucus, it may turn out to be a yawner. Whatever the result, confidence will be somewhat restored in the administration's ability to execute on initiatives that require a vote rather than a signature. The perception will be that we are back on course for policy initiatives that are more catalytic for the economy. Alas, this is not the prototypical movie where the packed bus teeters over the edge of the cliff, rocking back and forth, commuting schoolchildren screaming and pushing to the front when just in the nick of time, a superhero swoops in and steadies the vehicle before lifting it and everyone aboard, to safety. I think we're okay; not exactly humming What A Wonderful World but neither am I singing I Need A Hero. For that I am glad. (Mr. Weiss is the managing partner of Short Hills Capital Partners, a hedge fund advisory firm and asset manager primarily established to invest on behalf of one of the industry's most successful hedge fund managers. He has held senior management positions at SAC Capital, Salomon Brothers, Lehman Brothers and MSW Asset Management. He is the author of two investment books and a novel, is a visiting teaching fellow at UNC's graduate business school, Kenan-Flagler, and a CNBC contributor appearing regularly on "The Halftime Report.") Silver Screen Collection | Getty Images President Donald Trump, in an address, said the attack with 59 missiles was launched because of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad's "horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians." Trump said, "No child of God should ever suffer such horror." (CNBC) The U.S. had warned Russia ahead of time. But the Kremlin, quoted by state media, said the American military action against in Syria will do significant damage to Russian-U.S. relations. Meanwhile, Russia suspended a U.S.-Russian agreement on coordinating air operations over Syria. (CNBC & WSJ) The action by President Trump, largely supported on Capitol Hill, was taken without prior congressional approval. In 2013, Trump's tweets showed his opposition to U.S. strikes in Syria. He wrote at the time then President Barack Obama would need congressional approval. (USA Today) The U.S. missile attack, military analysts said, can be read as President Trump sending a message about North Korea: "When I make a threat, I am serious about it." (CNBC) Trying to persuade China to rein in North Korea's military aggressiveness, Trump meets again today at Mar-a-Largo with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Trump said he's "developed a friendship" with Xi. (CNBC) The Senate voted to scrap the filibuster on Supreme Court nominees in order to move toward a Friday confirmation of Judge Neil Gorsuch, a historic move with wide implications for the top American court. (CNBC) When Trump son-in-law and senior advisor sought the top-secret security clearance, he omitted meetings with Russians and dozens of contacts with foreign officials. (NY Times) In her first public interview since losing the election, Hillary Clinton said alleged Trump camp ties to Russia should be investigated, the GOP health-care failure was "somewhat gratifying;" and she doesn't think she'd run for office again. (CNBC) In his first speech since being fired, Preet Bharara, former U.S. attorney often referred to the top cop on Wall Street, quashed rumors that he would run for political office. Bharara also joked about Trump. (CNBC) The third-generation leader of South Korea's top conglomerate, Samsung, was mostly silent at his first court appearance in what has been called the "trial of the century" over alleged graft. (Reuters) watch now While the global economy may still be dealing with the after-effects of the financial crisis of 2008, the latest subprime fear in the auto industry has already started to worry investors. In a note last week, UBS analysts Matthew Mish and Stephen Caprio said the latest subprime auto default data has been more than raising eyebrows in financial circles and the wider economy. While many analysts have been trying to explain subprime default rates for recent vintages that have reached levels just prior to the financial crisis of 2008, a number of U.S. banks have predicted consumers and auto delinquencies to rise further in 2017. Another report from Morgan Stanley recently described a third of the risky loans bundled into bonds as "deep subprime". The report said that this level has spiked since 2010 and is now slowly translating to higher delinquencies on loans. And the securitization market has become more heavily weighted towards issuers that would consider deep subprime. "The percentage of subprime auto-loan securitizations considered deep subprime has risen to 32.5 percent from 5.1 percent since 2010," Morgan Stanley said. "Auto loan fundamental performance, especially within ABS pools, continues to deteriorate." Robotic arms work on the bodyshells of Mini cars as they pass along a section of automated production line at the BMW Mini car production plant in Oxford, west of London. Geoff Caddick | AFP | Getty Images Why are these auto subprime defaults happening? UBS explains that the root causes of the rise in delinquency rates can be traced back to rising U.S. consumer income inequality and aggressive easing in lending conditions, primarily from non-bank lenders. "Central bank reflation efforts have been more successful at fuelling wealth creation for a subset of the consumer and less effective in stimulating broader income growth," according to UBS.WHowever, the global automotive wing of London-based Evercore ISI research thinks the auto lending is not the next subprime bubble. "Third parties have flagged that auto delinquencies are at or close to record levels," Evercore ISI's George Galliers , Arndt Ellinghorst and Chris McNally wrote in a research paper. "Similarly, outsiders have noted an uptick in credit losses. However, it needs to be recognized that delinquencies are high in absolute terms because lending is at an elevated level. Delinquency rates do not look concerning and, in fact, remain at very low levels." But data from TransUnion points out that subprime auto lending balances total $179 billion, which is 16 percent of all auto loans outstanding. UBS estimates subprime consumer debt outstanding is $1.25 trillion comprised primarily of mortgage , student and auto loans. This is down from 2009 peak levels of $1.9 trillion. Are autos a robust asset class? "We continue to believe that auto as an asset class is extremely robust. Not only are contracts underwritten in the knowledge that the asset's value will depreciate but also vehicles are easy to repossess and have an intrinsic tangible value," according to the Evercore ISI research. The note further explains that consumers tend to keep up payments and in the event that they do not, recovery can be made. Cars for sale at a motor dealer in Bristol in the U.K. Matt Cardy | Stringer | Getty Images Sunni Arab states and Israel on Friday applauded the US Tomahawk missile strike on an air base in Syria, welcoming what they saw as an overdue show of resolve against the Assad regime and its main foreign patrons, Iran and Russia. The attack comes after six years of hands-off policies under former US President Barack Obama that saw Russia enter the war unchallenged on the Syrian government's side in 2015. Officials in the Gulf states and Israel said they believed US President Donald Trump was drawing a line of deterrence against what they see as hitherto unchecked Iranian and Russian-backed militarism in the region. "This is the serious, credible and reliable America that its Gulf allies want to see more of," said Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a Dubai-based political analyst. "They were limited strikes, but meaningful messages for everybody, and were heard loud and clear." More from Financial Times: Russia condemns US strike on Syrian air base as act of aggression Chaos will reign when Isis loses Raqqa Berlin seeks to strip far-right party's state funding Across the Arab world trending posts on social media included songs celebrating the air strikes and a coffee cup in which the dregs portrayed a likeness of Mr Trump. "America strikes the regime of Bashar," was a popular hashtag in Saudi Arabia, a key backer of the Syrian opposition. The official reaction was most forthright in Israel, the US's closest ally in the Middle East. Israel's military said they were notified ahead of time and "expressed our support" for the strikes, which were launched in response to this week's deadly gas attack that killed more than 70 people in Khan Sheikhoun, northern Syria. "In both word and action, President Trump sent a strong and clear message today that the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said. The Israeli leader said Mr Trump's use of force would send a "message of resolve in the face of the Assad regime's horrific actions" that would resonate, too, in Tehran and Pyongyang, the Iranian and North Korean capitals. "We're only at the beginning of this military response, but I think President Trump has gone a long way to restoring American credibility in the Middle East," said Dore Gold, a former close adviser to Mr Netanyahu and head of the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs. Mr Trump has been vocal in denouncing Iranian military action in the region, while embracing both Israel and Sunni Arab states most notably Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan as allies. Oil-rich Gulf countries, which back the Syrian opposition, have for years been pleading for more direct US intervention in Syria's six-year war, partly to counter the influence of predominantly Shia Iran. Saudi Arabia said on Friday that it gave "total support" for the US strikes. The Saudi news agency, citing an "official source" at the foreign ministry, said the Syrian regime bore responsibility for the country being exposed to military action. The U.S. missile attack on a Syrian air base can be read as President Donald Trump sending this message about North Korea: "When I make a threat, I am serious about it." North Korea, which fired a ballistic missile into the sea one day before Trump's summit meeting with China's President Xi Jinping, was a top agenda for the first meeting between the leaders of the world's two largest economies. Analysts told CNBC after the attack on Syria that while the latest development replaced North Korea as the immediate security risk, it elevates concerns about the hermit nation. "I think it actually raises the importance of the North Korea issue. Remember Kim Jung Un recently used a nerve agent to assassinate his half brother, allegedly, in Malaysia, showing the U.S. it is willing to do military action unilaterally. I think it definitely raises the stakes for China in looking at what the states might do about North Korea," David Dollar, senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, said on CNBC's "Street Signs." "I don't think it's deliberately aimed at China but obviously the U.S. felt it didn't need to wait until after that summit. They didn't hesitate to do it in the middle of the summit so that's sending a certain kind of message to Xi Jinping," he added. Reva Goujon, vice president of global analysis at Stratfor, said the Tomahawk missile attack signaled that Trump is "willing to take action" after wide speculation that he is a president who "is all bark and no action." "This is Trump saying, 'No, I am a man of my words. When I make a threat, I will follow through.' That's certainly something the Chinese and North Koreans will be thinking about," she said on CNBC's "Street Signs." US missile strikes against Syria send a clear message to North Korea but in the long run will only encourage the regime of Kim Jong Un to bolster its military and nuclear capabilities, analysts say. The Tomahawk missile launches were an "indirect warning to Pyongyang that once North Korea crosses a red line, [US President Donald] Trump will not hesitate to to turn the US's power into action," said Youngshik Bong, a North Korea expert at Yonsei University in Seoul. "This is far more effective in terms of etching a strong image of the Trump administration in the mind of Kim Jong Un . . . it shows Trump is not business as usual." More from Financial Times: Russia condemns US strike on Syrian air base as act of aggression Chaos will reign when Isis loses Raqqa Berlin seeks to strip far-right party's state funding Mr Bong said the attacks would create uncertainty in Pyongyang over how the US might attempt to put a halt to Pyongyang's increasingly sophisticated ballistic and nuclear weapons programmes. Mr Trump told the Financial Times last week that the US could take unilateral action to eliminate the nuclear threat from North Korea comments that raised the spectre of pre-emptive strikes but he did not expand on his potential policies. "Every statement that Trump makes about North Korea is important if for no other reason than that the North Koreans read it very carefully," said John Delury, another Yonsei University professor. "They're trying to piece together what the US policy is. Trump is almost intentionally cryptic about North Korea and that makes it harder for them to read what is he going to do. On assuming office, Mr Trump ordered a review of US policy on North Korea and the results are expected soon. Officials have repeatedly said all options are on the table. North Korea's foreign ministry issued an unusual memorandum on Thursday outlining how the country would respond to a conflict with the US and highlighting that it would focus its retaliatory measures on US bases, not civilian targets. "[North Korea's] mode of attack, once launched, would be the precision strike to destroy only the military bases of the US and its vassal forces," the memo said. "As already declared, the DPRK will also take all responsible measures for protecting the legal economic interests of other countries that they hold in South Korea." For almost 70 years Pyongyang has invested heavily in its military in an effort to deter invasion. The country's nuclear weapon's programme is widely seen as a means for Mr Kim to ensure his survival. "In the long run, [the Syria strikes] will only reinforce Kim's belief that 'we have to have nuclear weapons'," said Mr Bong. However, he added that Pyongyang would now be more more careful about how it proceeds. Syria is not a major producer of crude, but its proximity to Middle East producers and its relationship with Iran makes it more important to the oil market than it normally would be. Oil was about 1 percent higher, with West Texas Intermediate futures trading at around $52.30 per barrel. Market reactions, however, were fairly muted and by Friday afternoon, some of the earlier moves were fading. Just after the Thursday evening attack, oil futures prices popped, but no large war premium was being built in. The U.S. attack, using Tomahawk missiles fired from ships, was prompted by Syria's alleged use of chemical weapons on civilians. The U.S. missile attack on Syria prompted investors to add to their positions in oil but also safe haven plays, such as gold and bonds, ahead of the weekend. "People are nervous ahead of the weekend. If you have Iran and Russia in the mix, a significant amount of oil hangs in the balance in that regard," said John Kilduff of Again Capital. Russia, which has been helping Assad consolidate power, took issue with the U.S. attack. Russia said it condemned the illegitimate actions of the U.S. and called it a flagrant violation of international law and an act of aggression. But its language went no further than that. Treasury yields, which move opposite to prices, initially fell on news of the attack, but recovered some ground, after the U.S. response was viewed as being contained. Yet traders said buyers were active Friday, adding to positions. Markets are also watching the first major military action by the as yet untested Trump administration. "Initially you got some worries," said John Briggs, head of strategy at NatWest Markets. He added the attack was not being seen as an escalation of military action. "I do think the one thing that could bring a little bit of weekend risk is the idea that if [Syrian President Bashar Assad] is going to escalate or retaliate, it's most likely in the next 24 or 48 hours. You might have some reluctance to go home short fixed income." In the stock market , there was even a positive view of the strike later Friday. "The initial part of it is he's [Trump's] showing himself to be a kind of take charge guy. Obama never did this. Maybe he's redefining his presidency. I think that's a bit much but that's the kind of buzz you're hearing," said Art Cashin, UBS director of floor operations at the New York Stock Exchange. Gold hit a five-month high Friday, trading more than 1 percent higher, but it gave up much of its gains before the close. Kevin Grady, president of Phoenix Futures and Options, said gold got a boost from the Syria attack but then got another lift in early trading from the weak U.S. jobs report. By the end of the session, however, he said investors were bailing on some positions around the 1:30 p.m. ET settle, and gold futures ended the day at $1,257.30, up $4 on the day. "I think it was the lack of follow-through and people didn't want to go home long," he said. Grady said the 200-day moving average is $1,269.20 and gold has met resistance near that level, so unless there is a bigger military conflict, it may stay below that level. "We just want to see if the situation escalates. I think that's the exact reason you see the stock market flat. People aren't sure what's going on. They want to see more news coming out," he said. As gold slipped, the rose and was up nearly 50 points in afternoon trading. The was higher, trading at a near 1-month high, above 101. Watch: Syria conflict risks to the oil market President Donald Trump's attack on a Syrian air base has signaled a shift in his once-cozy relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, former Defense Secretary William Cohen told CNBC on Friday. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is scheduled to travel to Moscow on Wednesday, a week after the U.S. military fired 59 Tomahawk missiles on a Syria military air base in response to Tuesday's deadly chemical weapons attack allegedly carried out by Bashar Assad's military on a rebel-held area. The Syrian strike "sets the tone," Cohen, a Republican who served under former President Bill Clinton, said on "Squawk Box." "Life between us is going to be somewhat different." After Thursday's U.S. missile strikes, Tillerson said Russia had failed to carry out the 2013 agreement to secure Syrian chemical weapons. He said Moscow was either complicit or incompetent in its ability to uphold that deal. Russia said the U.S. strikes against Assad's government violated international law. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin believed the U.S. attacks on Syria showed aggression against a sovereign state. Cohen said one strike against Assad's government is not a strategy, but a tactic. He also said Tillerson needs more staff support at the State Department, where many top spots are still unfilled. "We need to get the State Department really beefed up so that Secretary Tillerson can have his full team to give all the options to the president as he moves forward," Cohen said. "It won't be just military, it has to be economic." But Gambles is skeptical. "This is essentially a transfer of wealth to Trump and his buddies," he said. The New York Times reported Trump wants to accelerate that plan, possibly by piggy-backing legislation for health care and tax reform, to bridge the Republican-Democrat congressional divide. Some projects, Trump said, could use the public-private partnership model. Take the $1 trillion Trump's promised to spend to rescue the decades-old crumbling infrastructure across the world's largest economy. According to Gambles, President Donald Trump's attempts at reforms are like a "headlong rush into lava." So the roadblocks standing in the president's way are actually a good thing, in Gambles eyes: They're keeping a bad situation from getting worse. The volcano could be like the world economy, according to MBMG's Paul Gambles, one of the more creative strategists we talk to at CNBC. But unlike in the charming animated musical, the story could end badly. Sorry, kids. ''A long, long time ago, there was a volcano...'', starts the 2014 Pixar short "Lava." You can hear the ukulele right? Well, cover your ears. Strings could start popping soon. The lava flows on the the ground after the Bardabunga volcano erupted again on August 31, 2014. "The fact that it's a public-private partnership, where public is going to pay and private is going to benefit...it's a very small amount of the private that gets that benefit. This is not a real infrastructure plan. This is not 1930's style; it's not the Hoover Dam. It may have an initial positive initial impact, if they get it over the line," he said emphasis on "initial" and "if." Gambles' take is that the U.S., and even the global economy, is NOT in good shape. Exactly the opposite, in fact. His key measure: total private credit, which he zooms-in on as the largest driver of economic and commercial activity. Credit growth, according to statistics Gambles has studied, is struggling globally, ''but not nowhere near so badly as in the States." One of the biggest red flags could be the U.S. auto sector: An increasing number of analysts are warning it could be an accident waiting for a place to happen. March sales hit 16.5 million vehicles, slowing down for the third month in a row. Some analysts think the market has peaked, after hitting a record 17 million vehicles last year. Inventory levels are rising, discounts are increasing, and there's likely a flood of used cars set to hit the market. Morgan Stanley warned recently that used car prices could plunge anywhere between 25 and 50 percent. That's almost guaranteed to hurt profits at automakers. And, S&P warns, because consumers are already so leveraged to automobiles, there could be a wave of auto-lending defaults. This isn't another potential housing bubble bursting, but because of the supply-chain effects, the auto sector could have spillover consequences for the broader U.S. economy. Gambles is blunter: "What that means is the States is heading for a recession." The auto sector, in Gambles' view, isn't a leading indicator. Worse, "it's usually a live indicator." "It's the change in the rate of private debt that is the biggest single driver of GDP. So, if we get a slowdown in debt, we get a slowdown in GDP, if we get any kind of flattening off or contraction in the rate of creation of private debt, that is an economic disaster," he said. Gambles says a decade of cheap money from the world's central banks has gone into financial markets, but not enough has entered real economies. Which is why we're still waiting for the private capex cycle to kick back in, and why central banks are still largely doing the heavy lifting. The failure of easy money policy, according to Gambles, has been not being able to recognize that it's not enough to just pump out credit. If the demand isn't there, it doesn't matter how much credit is being made available: nobody's going to borrow. That's similar to currencies and export competitiveness after a point, it doesn't matter how cheap or weak your currency is, if there's no demand, it's not going to help your exports. The only place where there is credit growth is China. ''China is basically carrying the entire world's GDP on its own shoulders," he says. China flooded its slowing economy last year with a record amount of credit worth almost a third of GDP. That's pushed leverage massively above China's private indebtedness levels of 2008. But Gambles warned it's almost impossible for China to keep this up. And if it eases back credit growth, watch out. "In China, in the past, because it is a command economy, the switch is turned on, then it's turned off, and it's turned on. It looks like China's threatening to turn that switch off, which if it does, the whole world is then suddenly seeing a very very contractionary policy." In China alone, the flood of credit is already having unintended consequences, stoking yet another bubble in real-estate, for example. There's also the huge run up in prices for iron ore and coal, two commodities still in heavy over-supply. That's made China "very vulnerable to anything actually pricking the bubble," Gambles said. And if the China credit bubble pops... Well, that's like the one single leg the world is standing on buckling at the knee. So, head for the hills before the volcano blows? Absolutely, says Gambles. The highground, he said, can be found in U.S. Treasuries and gold the safest assets for investors. Managed futures/commodity trading advisors are probably wise, as well. Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, visits an Apple store where third grade children from PS 57 James Weldon Johnson Leadership Academy are learning how to code through Apple's 'Hour of Code' workshop program on December 9, 2015 in New York City. In a rare interview, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that society, including the tech community, is not moving fast enough on issues like equal rights and diversity. "I think the U.S. will lose its leadership in technology if this doesn't change," Cook said to The Plainsman, the student newspaper at his alma mater. "Women are such an important part of the workforce. If STEM-related fields continue to have this low representation of women, then there just will not be enough innovation in the United States. That's just the simple fact of it." Diversity is "incredibly important," Cook told the newspaper. He also touched on his platform as the most high-profile gay executive in technology. "The impatient side says we're not moving fast enough," Cook said. "Everyone deserves the same human rights. I don't hear anybody asking for special rights just the same rights. I think that's true not only in the gay community but many other communities as well." The spotlight has been on Silicon Valley this year as several diversity-related issues have reached the public eye. Accusations of sexism at Uber have stoked a conversation about the role of women in tech. And immigration reform proposals from the Republican administration have sparked backlash from tech companies. Apple has pledged millions to support historically black colleges and universities, and also supports the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, National Center for Women & Information Technology and the National Society of Black Engineers. But as of June of last year, 32 percent of Apple employees are women, and 22 percent are underrepresented minorities, according to Apple's website. Shareholders struck down a proposal earlier this year to broaden the disclosure of its diversity practices. For the full interview, see the story at The Plainsman.com Watch: Swisher on 'tech bros' Mexico could be the go-to play for investors concerned with discord in the White House and the struggles of the Republican congress to pass legislation, Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at BMO Private Bank, said Friday on CNBC's "Closing Bell." "Mexico could be an interesting play for investors who think that the Trump agenda is going to continue to get pushed out," Ablin said. The White House has denied a swirl of reports claiming that senior White House officials Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon are on the way out, but among the commotion, Ablin said the Mexican stock market's strong performance makes it an attractive play for investors losing faith in the promise of deregulation and tax reform. "We've got a Mexican peso that is trading much cheaper than it was before the election, [and] we've got a Mexican stock market that is certainly cheap relative to the S&P 500," Ablin said. "In fact, Mexico has been one of the best-performing markets this year and if the Trump agenda gets pushed out, it will likely continue." The Mexico IPC Index is up more than 8 percent year to date, while the is up more than 5 percent year to date. Watch: State of US-Mexico relations President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price arrive on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, March 21, 2017, to rally support for the Republican health care overhaul. J. Scott Applewhite | AP President Trump's proposed budget may not make it through Congress, but his effort to slash funding for the National Institutes of Health is nonetheless having an impact on biotechnology start-ups and research. Just ask Jonathan Hirsch. Hirsch, the founder and president of medical software start-up Syapse , thought he had the green light for at least $400,000 in funding from NIH's National Cancer Institute to integrate new data types into a government-backed cancer surveillance database called SEER. That all changed last week. "The program is put on hold," said Hirsch, who added that he hasn't received word on whether it will eventually go forward. He's hopeful the funds will be available when the NIH gains clarity around its budget. In March, Trump put forward his budget proposal that included a $5.8 billion cut in the government's 2018 allocation to the NIH, an 18 percent reduction from 2017. Additionally, the White House has proposed a $1.2 billion cut in research spending for the remainder of this year. Congress still has to weigh in; the current budget is set to expire at the end of April. Syapse , backed by venture capitalist and former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya, was one of the companies tapped by President Obama's "cancer moonshot," initiative, a national effort to move the disease closer to a cure in the next five years. Former Vice President Joe Biden championed the initiative after losing his son Beau to brain cancer in 2015. watch now In late 2016, the moonshot received $18 million in funding when Congress passed the 21st Century Cures Act with bipartisan support. Biden publicly condemned Trump's proposed cuts earlier this month. "This would set the NIH budget, and biomedical research, back 15 years -- and that's not hyperbole," he said. "The chance of getting a grant would almost certainly reach a historic low." The NIH consists of 27 centers and institutes, including the National Cancer Institute, National Institute on Aging and National Institute of Mental Health. Combined, they account for less than 1 percent of the federal budget. Kenneth Baer, a former associate director at the Office of Management and Budget, said he's not surprised about NIH hitting the pause button. "A lot of people are concerned about cuts to non-defense discretionary spending," he said. "This is how agencies behave when you have uncertainty." Earlier this week, Daniel E. Weeks, a professor of human genetics and biostatistics at the University of Pittsburgh, tweeted that funding was drying up for biomedical training grants. He told CNBC.com by e-mail that a set of applications submitted by Pittsburgh and many other universities were denied because of "a concern that future additional funding for the BD2K Initiative will not be forthcoming." BD2K, short for Big Data to Knowledge, refers to an NIH-funded program to update biomedical big data sets. Weeks said he had high hopes of procuring funding and the response was "quite disheartening" given the time and effort spent preparing the grant. A representative from the NIH declined to comment and said all related inquiries are being referred to the White House OMB. John Czwartacki, the OMB communications director, sent us the following statement: "Fighting disease and helping patients is a central function of NIH. We need to ensure that every tax dollar is spent to achieve those goals and not wasted on unnecessary administrative costs that don't advance us closer to eradicating illnesses and improving the lives of Americans." Even within Congress, there's plenty of opposition to Trump's proposed cuts, including from Republicans like Oklahoma's Tom Cole, who's also chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee responsible for NIH. Funding for innovation in the medical field has in the past been supported by both parties, so there's no guarantee that Trump will score a legislative win. Tom Cole Tom Williams | CQ Roll Call | Getty Images U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to launch airstrikes on Syria seems rushed and influenced by emotional swings, according to the former Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta. In an interview with CNBC Friday, Letta said Trump reacted without correct preparation, allies or relationship with international organizations. "It seems to be a little bit rushed and we have to know what will be the consequences and what will be the next steps. Is it tit for tat? Is it a one off? Maybe it is too early to say," Letta said. Letta further added that the move seems to be a very unilateral initiative and is another example of this new "zigzag foreign policy" that Trump is starting to apply. "In the first two months of his Presidency we were there seeing and watching changes in each week with a different angle and a different point of view. So in the last few days, my feeling is that the decision was influenced, the emotional swings were very important to influence the decisions, pictures and so on." Italy's former prime minister, Enrico Letta Filippo Monteforte | AFP | Getty Images The United States launched a missile attack on a Syrian-government controlled airfield near the city of Homs. Two US warships in the Eastern Mediterranean fired 59 tomahawk missiles at the target. Speaking in Mar-a- lago , President Trump said the strike was made in response to the Assad government's use of chemical weapons earlier in the week. The Syrian Army has said that 6 people have been killed. The Kremlin says the strikes deal a significant blow to Russian-U.S. relations, calling them an aggression against a sovereign state which violates international law. It added that the move will do significant damage to U.S. Russia ties and will deal a serious obstacle to an attempt to create an international coalition to fight terrorism. A Pentagon spokesman said the attack represented a "proportional response", and was intended to stop the regime from using chemical weapons in the future. The Pentagon confirmed the US military gave Russia advance notice of the strike and did not target specific sections of the airfield where Russian forces were believed to be present Speaking to reporters after the strike, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Russia has failed to uphold its responsibility to locate and secure Syria's chemical weapons, as agreed upon in a 2013 resolution. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson makes a statement about the visit of China's President Xi Jinping and about the situation in Syria, at Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., April 6, 2017. Joe Skipper | Reuters Then-Maj. Michael Zacchea in Fallujah, Iraq, late 2004. Slowly I began to discern the divisions that separated the Iraqis from each other. The most obvious was rank. The officers strictly separated themselves from the enlisted men, to a degree much more stringent than we knew in the Marine Corps. Every expression, every gesture reinforced their separateness and their superiority. Their attitude toward the NCOs those sergeants who acted as intermediaries between the officers and the enlisted Iraqis was only slightly less condescending. The second-most-obvious partition among the Iraqis was ethnicity. The Arabs considered the Kurds' loyalty suspect. The Kurds considered the Arabs' motives dangerous. The Arabs spoke Arabic, and the Kurds spoke two dialects of Kurdish. The couple dozen [soldiers in the battalion I advised] from other ethnic groups Assyrians, Turkmen, and the like clung to each other for safety. The toughest schism to detect but probably the most dangerous was the religious divide. The Sunni-versus-Shiite division of twenty-first-century Iraq made me think of the Catholic-versus-Protestant division of sixteenth-century Europe. The Sunnis and the Shiites split apart almost at the very beginning of Islam, in the seventh century. ... Fourteen centuries later, the dissension was still just as real, right in front of me. The fact that the Kurds were mostly Sunnis and so had that in common with half the battalion's Arabs scrambled things up that much more. We advisers had been taught about none of these rifts before we left the States. Probably nobody in the military knew to teach them to us. We learned on the fly. Making things even more turbulent were a few basic facts about Iraq and our war. Most Iraqis are Shiites. But Saddam Hussein and his old power structure were Sunni. Both the Kurds and the Shiite Arabs resented the Sunnis in a deadly serious way. Then there were our enemies, the insurgents. Most of them were Sunnis. But in the south and around Baghdad, they were usually Shiites who were allied with Iran. The two insurgent sects also were fighting each other. In some places, subsects were fighting each other. The Kurds were loyal to the Americans, but their Peshmerga warriors were fighting insurgents in the north without consulting with us. That said, the Iraqis' [animosity toward each other] seemed to evaporate when they dealt with each other one-on-one. Like people everywhere, in the abstract, their words were a lot tougher and meaner than their face-to-face behavior. A Kurd may casually refer to Arabs as "rabbits," because he thinks they're good for hunting down, but then he'll be friends with an individual Arab. A Sunni may like saying that Shiites are wannabe Iranians, but then he'll greet a Shiite acquaintance with a kiss on both cheeks. [My close friend and Iraqi officer] Major Zayn, for example, was a Sunni, but he shared a room and was close with two Shiite officers. ... I stayed up with the three of them late nights, taking in everything I could. We sat on their scratchy wool blankets and talked about religion and the war and America. The Iraqis loved talking about politics and religion. They went on and on about those two topics more freely with the Americans than we Americans are willing to do with each other. The Iraqis were intensely curious about the United States. So we talked, long into the night. Outside, it was 110 degrees. Inside, they turned the AC down as low as it would go. My teeth chattered, and they laughed at me. I needed to learn as much as I could. I felt rushed to learn. Military units need cohesion. They do not need baked-in discord. If we were going to overcome the Fifth Battalion's many partitions, we would have to do it on two levels: On a high level, we had to make them loyal to the concept of a unified Iraq where everyone is equal under the law. In other words, we had to make them Western. (Nobody back in the States had told us how to do that, either.) On a basic level, we had to work man by man, creating something cohesive between individuals that could supersede the cultural schisms. That meant building relationships between Americans and Iraqis, and building trust among the Iraqis themselves. We had to find the best, most committed leaders who could hold the battalion together. The ancient schisms weren't going away. The most senior bank examiner for Wells Fargo has been removed by a U.S. regulator in the wake of the bank's unauthorized accounts scandal, people familiar with the matter told Reuters this week. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the lead regulator for national banks, stripped the examiner, Bradley Linskens, of his supervisory powers within the last two weeks, said three sources, who were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. Linskens did not immediately respond to requests for comment. OCC spokesman Bryan Hubbard declined to comment. Wells Fargo's board is expected to release a report on Monday detailing what went wrong at the fourth-largest U.S. bank, according to sources familiar with the matter. The bank and its board both declined to comment. In September, Wells Fargo reached a $190 million settlement with the OCC and other regulators over its opening millions of accounts in customers' names without their permission. At the time, the bank said as many as 2 million accounts were affected, but has since said the number might be larger. The report is the result of a seven-month investigation by Wells Fargo's board of directors into how and why the sales abuses happened. Thousands of employees were dismissed over the matter, and several have publicly said they opened the fake accounts to hit aggressive sales targets set by managers. The headline unemployment rate might not be the best measure of jobs 12:22 PM ET Fri, 7 April 2017 | 00:39 The unemployment rate fell to 4.5 percent in March, according to the Labor Department. But relying on that one headline number as an indicator for the economy as a whole ignores important information just below the surface. Each month on "Jobs Friday," the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases a ton of economic data, each point providing its own perspective on the employment situation. Economists look past the official unemployment rate that 4.5 percent figure, also known as the "U-3" to other measures of jobs in this country. One of those measures is the U-6 rate, which has a broader definition than the U-3 rate. In March, that figure fell three-tenths of a point to 8.9 percent. Police launched a manhunt in Sweden's capital Friday for a suspect who rammed a truck into a department store in a likely act of terrorism killing at least two people and injuring many others, officials said. The vehicle plowed into a crowd on Stockholm's busy street of Drottninggatan before barreling into the side of the Ahlens store, the country's security agency said. Panicked pedestrians and shoppers were caught scrambling for safety. During a news conference, police described the suspect as a man in a green jacket and hoodie with a mustache and beard. "Everything indicates that this is a terrorist act," Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said. By mid-afternoon, Swedish police said one person had been arrested in relation to the attack, according to a local news station. Police were also investigating the truck and said they were in contact with its owner. Spectators took to social media shortly afterwards to post what they were witnessing. @GlobalZarfati: moments after the Truck the rammed people struck the building in #Stockholm Friday's incident marks the latest in a series of low-tech, vehicle-based terror attacks across Europe over recent years. Lofven told reporters that at least two people had been killed and the security service said there were a "large number" of injuries. Swedish broadcaster SVT said shots had been fired although officials would not confirm that detail. Eyewitnesses described confusion as smoke from the crash filled the building. Maria Nathalie said she was in the department store at the time of the incident. "People started running down the stairs when the fire alarm started," she told NBC News. "And when we came down to the bottom of the building, all we could see was a lot of smoke and there was someone who helped us get out on the other side of the building." John Backvid, a 25-year-old Stockholm resident and local university student, said he had just gotten out of the subway across the street from the department store when the crash occurred. He could smell smoke and came across a chaotic scene. "I looked up and saw people running towards me and I saw the truck on the other side," Backvid said. People were worried that a hot dog vendor's gas grill might spark an explosion, and Backvid said he and others started running. He also noticed someone performing CPR on a victim. The incident comes two weeks after a man rammed a car through crowds in London and killed four civilians before stabbing to death a police officer. Some residents in Sweden said they would not let a terror-related scare paralyze them. "We need to stand up and continue our lives and show that we are not afraid," Backvid said. CNBC's Lauren Thomas, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report. Vinod Khosla once proclaimed that machines will replace 80 percent of doctors, which prompted waves of backlash from the medical community. Never one to shy away from controversy, the venture capitalist went a step further when I interviewed him last month for a podcast hosted by Silicon Valley biotechnology startup Color Genomics. "The role of the radiologist will be obsolete in five years," he said. In Khosla's view, sophisticated algorithms are better than specialists at spotting potential problems in medical images, like x-rays and CT scans. "There's no reason a human should be doing it," he says, adding that computers can rapidly shift through thousands of scans to evaluate possible diagnoses and potential treatments, as well as ingest the latest medical research. The podcast will go live on Monday. A report from PwC found that about 4 in 10 U.S. jobs are susceptible being taken over by machines in the next 15 years. But doctors don't typically make the list of the occupations most under threat, given the importance of bedside manner, among other factors. Khosla's comments come at a time when many of the leading technology companies are building new tools for the medical sector. Technology companies, including Alphabet , have efforts underway to train machines to spot potential problems in medical scans. Verily, Alphabet's health and life sciences arm, recently teamed up with Nikon to develop machine learning tools to screen for diabetic retinopathy and macular edema, both causes of blindness in people with diabetes. In 2015, Kaggle (later acquired by Google), hosted a competition for data scientists to develop a similar algorithm, with the winner having an "agreement rate" about 10 percent higher than a human specialist. What that means is that the algorithm and human were more likely to agree on a diagnosis than two human experts. IBM Watson is also developing tools to help physicians solve medical mysteries by shifting through millions of research papers in minutes. Still, many of these efforts aim to augment doctors, and not replace them. The goal for Kaggle's algorithm, for instance, was to help radiologists triage, so they can prioritize certain patients over others in giant piles of scans. Radiologists say their jobs will only become more important in the coming years. The specialty is a prime target for tech companies, as radiologists have used computer-assisted tools for years. "Our field is the Silicon Valley of medicine," says Garry Choy, a San Francisco-based radiologist, adding that computers would free up time for radiologists to "do what humans do best," rather than take their jobs. That includes more time with patients, and "higher order complex thinking," he added. Others, like Simon Rascovsky, a radiologist and director of medical informatics at medical software startup Nucleus Health, have heard statements like this before, given all the hype around artificial intelligence. But he said that the radiology field still doesn't have "clinically proven deep learning based applications outside of pilots and marketing hype." "When states keep academic standards high, they're helping to put all students on a path to employment." The demands of our workforce make standing by and continuing to build on a commitment to higher academic standards made by 42 states and the District of Columbia absolutely key to continued economic growth and low unemployment in the United States. According to the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, by 2020, 65 percent of all jobs in the economy will require post-secondary education and training beyond high school. If we want to fill these jobs and reduce unemployment, we have to prepare today's students with the education and skills that will help prepare them for college and career. And when students can see the connection between school and the colleges and careers they aspire to, they are more likely to stay in school. Delaware adopted higher academic standards in 2010, and thanks to the hard work of educators and students, the statewide graduation rate in 2016 reached 84.66 percentthe highest rate since 2010-11. By creating stronger pathways between K-12, higher education, and the employer communitylike discussed in this week's Business Town Hallstudents are more prepared to gain college-entry credits or earn industry certifications while still in high school. For instance, in Delaware, our Pathways to Prosperity program saw enrollment grow from a few dozen students to more than 5,000 students who are now better prepared for college or career. More rigorous academic standards can also help students prepare for competitive jobs in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) fields, where unemployment is more than two percentage points below the national average. Unfortunately, the so-called "skills gap" between what employers need and employees can do is real, and growingwith nearly 95 percent of CEOs reporting that this talent gap, from entry level to highly technical positions, is problematic for their companies. That's why we need to remain committed to providing our students with the skills and knowledge they'll need to fill these jobs. Today, 7 years after many states adopted higher academic standards, we've seen the majority of those states remain committed to implementing rigorous, comparable standards that better prepare students to think critically and problem solve. We've also seen these states adopt assessments that are aligned to the new standardsassessments that provide a much clearer picture of where students are doing well and where they need additional support. Students across the country are now beginning their third year of annual assessments aligned to the new standards, and we've seen scores on the rise for the majority of studentseven as the nation's high-school graduation rate reached 83 percent in 2014-15, the fifth straight record-setting year. From my vantage point, the correlation is clear: More rigorous academic standards that are better aligned to the skills and competencies of today's workplaceand the workplace of tomorrowlead to more engaged students better equipped for postsecondary education, to better qualified job applicants, to lower unemployment, and to a stronger economy. Now isn't the time to turn back this progress. When states keep academic standards high, they're helping to put all students on a path to employment. That's a smart investment for all our futures. Commentary by Jack Markell, a Democrat who served as the governor of Delaware from 2009 to 2017. He is a former chair of the National Governors Association and was a co-chair of the initiative that established the Common Core State Standards. For more insight from CNBC contributors, follow @CNBCopinion on Twitter. Investor sentiment turned bearish Friday morning in the wake of the U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to launch a military air strike against a Syrian airfield. But markets should not lose confidence: they should view the event simply as a "test" albeit the first of many within an increasingly fraught geopolitical environment, analysts told CNBC. "We have to recognise that it is an incident, so we see no escalations between the powers. There is really no reason to go into a huge risk off wave," Didier Duret, global chief investment officer at ABN Amro Private Banking, said Friday. "We take the assumption that Mr Trump is unpredictable but so far from what we have seen in reality there is some form of predictability that comes through. I think a reaction to an incident is simply business as usual for the commander in chief." Markets moved lower in the aftermath of President Trump's decision late Thursday evening, when he ordered the launch of 59 Tomahawk missiles at Syria in response to an alleged chemical attack which claimed more than 70 lives earlier this week. Stocks slumped and the U.S. dollar dropped against the yen during Asian trading Friday. Meanwhile, safe haven bonds, gold and oil prices jumped higher in response. However, Duret said President Trump's sudden move should be viewed as par for the course of the new administration and markets should not be shaken indefinitely. "It is a test to the residents of the market. We have low volatility; we have very strong economic conditions and very stable financial conditions, so it really represents a test to see whether we can move from the geopolitical point of view." The holidays are creeping up on us Jeff Williams became an application security engineer in the late 1990s, before it was a common job title. "General Electric came to my company and said, 'We like your data centers, but we need every line of code reviewed for security before it goes on the internet,'" he recalled. "The sales team quickly said, 'Sure!' Everyone else took a quick step backwards and I got the job of figuring out how to deliver." Thinkstock Download the PDF version of this article That meant learning how to do penetration testing, security code reviews, secure coding training, application security architecture, and threat modeling, he said. Since then, Williams, who is now the CTO and cofounder at Palo Alto, Calif.-based application security vendor Contrast Security, has hired hundreds of application security engineers. He said that he looks for people with strong computer science skills, who are fluent in multiple programming styles and languages. "But that's not enough," he added. "I always looked for people like myself who loved programming, but didnt necessarily want to spend their life coding other peoples ideas. I look for people who work on open source projects, write their own tools, and code every day those people that are excited and passionate about code. So, its a lot more about real-world experience than book learning." Many large companies, particularly in the financial services industry, have application security teams, he said. "You can also work at a consulting company, where you will get experience with a lot of different technologies and many different types of businesses," he said. "If youre up for some really hard work it can be a tremendously rewarding experience. Theres just no other way to get the breadth of experience you can get this way, and youll work with the best in the business. Application security vendors are also hiring, he added. "You can get a job building an application security product," he said. "You might be a product developer, security researcher, product marketer, sales engineer, or solutions architect." These jobs are often in security startups, he added. That can be exciting, he said, but can also be volatile place to build a career. For those starting out, Anthony Bettini, senior director of software engineering at Columbia, Md.-based Tenable Network Security, recommends NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering, Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon and Purdue as having good programs in this field. "Cybersecurity education at the university level is a lot better now than it was, say, ten years ago," he said. The annual Black Hat conference also has a lot of content related to application security, he added. "Their historic talks are archived, and there are a lot of white papers online." People looking to move over from application engineering can also get certifications and attend training programs, he said, though they most often focus on operational security rather than application security. As with other security fields, there is a wage premium. The national median salary for an application security engineer is $98,040, according to Glassdoor, while the salary for an application engineer is $82,467. Plus, it's another growing area, said Bettini. "It's no longer just technology companies developing software," he said. "All of the Fortune 500 have become software companies, and are facing increasing cybersecurity risks, so it's causing them to hire more application security engineers." That, and the demand from the vendor side, is driving wages up, he said. It's the area of cybersecurity that's had the least investment so far, and is the most immature, said Kennet Westby, chief security strategist at Denver-based Coalfire Systems, Inc. "It's an area where we're seeing huge demand." Most of the application security engineers he's hired come from an application development background, he said. Samsung and Microsoft recently struck an unusual partnership: Buyers of new Samsung Galaxy S8 phones will soon be able to load Office and other productivity apps onto those Android 7 phones via Wi-Fi when inside Microsoft Stores. With the Windows apps on a Galaxy device and the new Samsung DeX docking station, business users will be able to access Microsoft Azure cloud services, and more, through the large monitor and full-sized keyboard and mouse, an analyst said. The partnership was first announced somewhat quietly a week ago. Microsoft said customers can now pre-order the Galaxy S8 and S8+ inside Microsoft's physical stores, with deliveries starting April 21 -- Samsung's release date. The S8 will cost $750 and the S8+ $850. On Thursday, Microsoft added a few details via two emails to Computerworld, saying that the pre-orders apply to S8 and S8+ devices running on the AT&T network. Unlocked devices that will work with any carrier are coming "in the future," a spokeswoman added. When a customer buys a Galaxy device in a Microsoft store, a sales associate will help with an in-store connection to Wi-Fi to load apps such as Office, OneDrive, Cortana, Outlook and more, Microsoft said. The potential to buy unlocked phones with Windows apps is significant, analysts said, given the 20% or greater savings enterprises can achieve with unlocked smartphones that don't require a service contract. Samsung has sold unlocked smartphones in the past, but has recently begun making a greater push in that direction, just as U.S. carriers have increasingly wanted to step back from smartphone subsidies. Business users may come out winners in the Samsung-Microsoft arrangement, while both companies expect to benefit as well, analysts said. Galaxy S8 customers using the loaded Microsoft productivity apps stand to gain access to Microsoft Azure cloud services, productivity software with Office 365 and enterprise workflow with SharePoint, said Gartner analyst Werner Goertz. With the new DeX docking station that Samsung announced alongside its new phones, workers could dock a new S8 and run Windows apps on large displays and a full-size keyboard and mouse. And "think about the [many] use cases that DeX [docking station and large screen] will open up for Samsung in the workplace," Goertz said. Microsoft benefits somewhat in the partnership with Samsung, although the potential benefits are iffy, given Microsoft's difficulties in the smartphone arena. "By more closely aligning with the mobile phone leader, Microsoft will gain better control over a mobile device platform, since Nokia didn't work out," Goertz said. Smartphones running Windows Phone and Windows 10 Mobile have become "basically irrelevant" in the global smartphone market, with less than 1% share, IDC analyst Ryan Reith said in a recent email. "It's tough to rule Microsoft out from a mobile OS perspective forever, but in the next three to five years, the only way that trajectory changes is within some sort of overhaul to Windows Phone or whatever it is being called, or some seamless connection to app stores like Google," Reith said. However, Reith said Microsoft's Continuum "concept is interesting and has caught the ear of industry hardware" manufacturers, as demonstrated by the Samsung partnership. Continuum allows users to connect Windows software across a phone to a tablet and PC. Microsoft recently said it will roll out a Windows 10 Mobile Creators Update on April 25. That update will reportedly will go to 13 devices, a subset of Windows Phones, according to research by ZDNet. Microsoft has not confirmed this list, however: So even though Microsoft officially releases the Windows 10 Creators Update on April 11, impatient users can grab it now using an update tool. However, if you are running Windows 10 on a Mac with Boot Camp, you might want to hold off a bit. Apple posted a support page on Thursday that explicitly said not to do a clean install of the Creators Update on a Mac running Boot Camp. If you do, you'll get a blue screen and then you'll have to use Boot Camp Assistant to delete the partition and start over. Apple says that it's working with Microsoft to fix the problem. If doing a clean install, Apple recommends that you begin by installing the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, and then use the Update Assistant to upgrade the OS to the Creators Update. Which is what most people are doing right now anyway. Or you could just wait until April 11 for the Microsoft rollout via Windows Update. So far, Ive yet to see howls of complaints from trashed machines in the many techie corners I visit, so I decided to risk my personal PC, the one I am typing on as I write this, with the Update Assistant. The upgrade process went very smooth, even though I stepped out of the room to read a book while letting it run. But I didnt come in to find it hung at 3% complete or something like that. I only hit one snag. The Office 2010 install somehow got pooched and when I went to run Outlook, it asked for some install files that were supposed to be in a directory called C:\MSOCache. Just one problem: I installed Office from a file I downloaded from Microsoft, not a DVD. That cache directory is created by the DVD installer when it puts the files on your hard disk, so if they are needed to change the installation you dont need to go looking for the DVD-ROM. The problem is the installer doesnt recognize an install from the downloaded file, only the DVD-ROM. I dont know if it exists in the newest release but I hope not. In the end, there was only one solution: uninstall Office and reinstall it. While I had to re-enter the Product Key, thankfully it was validated. Ive had to reinstall Office far too many times due to OS reinstalls and the product validation no longer works. Thats what I get for monkeying with my system a little too much. Also, all of my custom settings for Word were still there as were my Outlook Rules and the PST file. Which just goes to show that uninstalling Office means a whole lot gets left behind. But this time Im glad. To be quite honest, I get little out of the Creators Update. For my usage, theres little benefit. I do like the new privacy settings, which are quite complex but thorough. But the update was going to be pushed out to me anyway, so I figured Id do it on my own terms at the right time. Given the smoothness of the update, Office aside, I have no regrets. Dubais tenants complain of noise at night from construction sites Tenants living in Dubai buildings are facing sleepless nights these days, thanks to the sound of jackhammers and construction equipments which are used across sites. A whopping 898 complaints have been made by the tenants to the Dubai Municipality over building violations. People in Dubai are facing problems due to sound of jackhammers and machinery used at construction sites during night. Photo courtesy: constructionweekonline.com These complaints have been lodged in the first three months of 2017. On an average, about 10 complaints have been made per day- which is a high number considering that less than six complaints were made daily last year. Though the municipality has set a limit from 7am to 8pm for construction work, and the sound limit at 55 decibels, these rules are flouted repeatedly. The construction companies can request permits to carry out their work at night till the early hours of the morning as long as they are below the decibel range. To ensure compliance of the rules, Layali Abdulrahman Al Mulla, Director of Buildings Department at Dubai Municipality, said that her team has carried out 379 field visits till April 1, 2017. She also added, The necessary technical reports have been submitted. These are the handling of public complaints and complaints regarding violations of existing buildings during public holidays and outside working hours, as well as the requests of some government agencies such as the Dispute Settlement Center. About 898 complaints were made by the tenants to the Dubai Municipality over building violations. Photo courtesy: cinet-tech People living in Dubai facing any problems related to noise at construction sites are urged to contact Dubai Municipalitys toll-free number 800 900. In 2015, Dubai Municipality received 2,124 registered complaints a little less than six daily of violations, cases in which companies were not abiding by safety regulations at the construction sites and reports of noise caused by construction work at night. Singapore will be haze-free this year: Sumatra Governor Transboundary haze, a long-standing problem in South-east Asia. It is largely caused by the drainage of carbon-rich peatland, as well as fires started by farmers and companies to clear land for agriculture and industrial plantations. Despite forecasts of a hotter and longer dry season this year, the Governor of South Sumatra has pledged that Singapore and the region will not experience haze arising from forest fires in the Indonesian province, Todayonline reported on April 6. Photo courtesy: blog.nus..edu.sg This year is more dangerous than 2015 because the dry season is longer and quite hot compared with 2015. But I guarantee there is no fire, there is no haze, said Governor Alex Noerdin during a panel discussion at the Singapore Dialogue on Sustainable World Resources on Thursday (April 6). It was organised by the Singapore Institute of International Affairs. Singapore experienced its worst haze episodes etween September and November 2015. The Pollutant Standards Index had hit hazardous levels. Noerdin noted that during the raging fires in 2015, at least five countries, including Singapore, had stepped in to help extinguish the fires in South Sumatra. Since then, his team has been making preparations and efforts to prevent such fires. The measures include canal-blocking, which will raise water levels to sustain the water composition in the dry peat soil and prevent it from burning easily. Photo courtesy: wildfiretoday.com Villagers were trained and given the necessary equipment to extinguish and prevent fires. They were also shown alternatives to the slash-and-burn method to clear land. The efforts have seen success, according to Noerdin, who noted that there were no fires last year. This year, we are just strengthening our efforts. I guarantee that there (will be) no fires, that means no haze, from South Sumatra province this year and next year, and the next year, he added. Shaun Bailey is a London Assembly member and the Environment spokesman for the Conservative Group. Improving air quality is clearly a top priority. However, Sadiq Khan needs to consider how his plans for the ULEZ will impact on the three emergency services, members of which dedicate their careers to serving Londoners. I and my fellow Conservatives on the London Assembly have uncovered that the Capitals emergency services are struggling to cope with Sadiq Khans plans for the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ). Information that I have obtained from FOIs show all three emergency services are concerned about the financial and logistical impact of the introduction of the London Mayors scheme. The ULEZ will require all vehicles travelling inside the zone including those run by the emergency services to meet exhaust emission standards or pay a daily charge of 12.50. Boris Johnson proposed to introduce the ULEZ in 2020, with the charging zone matching the Congestion Charge area. The emergency services have known about the introduction for some time now, and the longer date of 2020 gave the services at least some time to prepare. However, Sadiq Khan has pledged to bring forward the date of implementation to 2019 and he wants to widen the zone to the North and South Circulars covering half of London with a new motoring charge in the process. The emergency services had designed their vehicle replacement programmes with the original date of 2020 in mind, so bringing the implementation date to 2019 has financial implications for Londons emergency services. A recent report by the London Fire Brigade highlights the impact of the new ULEZ introduction date. The London Fire Brigade admitted within the report that there would be 52 non-compliant vehicles in 2019. This means that every day one of these vehicles enters the zone to potentially save a life, the fire service will be charged 12.50. Following on from this, I made Freedom of Information requests to the Metropolitan Police Service and the London Ambulance Service to examine the impact on them. The information obtained from the Freedom of Information requests were astonishing and shows how clumsy and ill thought through this policy really is: The Metropolitan Police says: It needs to replace 82 per cent of its entire fleet. That despite a replacement programme, financial restraints mean that by 2020 it will still have 800 non-compliant vehicles facing daily charges. Tight budgets mean it is unlikely to be able to replace the vehicles early. It has asked the Mayor for concessions on its non-compliant vehicles London Fire Brigade says: If the ULEZ is brought forward to 2019, it will have 52 non-compliant vehicles on the road facing daily charges potentially costing a quarter of a million pounds per year. London Ambulance says: It needs to replace 828 diesel vehicles and 27 petrol vehicles before the fleet is ULEZ compliant It will have to modify its replacement programme if the deadline is brought forward It just seems unbelievable to me that with the high number of emergency services vehicles that will not be compliant by 2019, the Mayor has stated that he will not give an exemption for our brave blue light services. Exempting these vital public service vehicles would have a minimal impact on emissions, yet doing the opposite could impose a cost of millions on them if it goes ahead. It should be abundantly clear that a pollution tax on fire engines, police cars and ambulances is not what Londoners want or need. Unfortunately the Mayor appears to be telegraphing his virtues with this decision rather than delivering an effective policy. It may be that Donald Trumps missile strikes against one of the Syrian regimes airfields achieve their purpose namely, deterring any further use by it of chemical weapons against innocents. If so, he will have drawn a red line over the use of chemical weapons by rogue states; prevented their future use in Syria while avoiding being further drawn in to the conflict, and succeeded where Barack Obama failed. The President will have demonstrated nerve, decisiveness and good judgement in contrast to his predecessor, who has been so over-puffed in BBC-land Britain, and thus (inevitably) over-rated. But it may be instead that the Assad regime, backed by Russia and Iran, deploys chemical weapons again. What then? Trump would have a choice: to order further missile strikes (or some other form of military action), or to back off. The latter course would risk an impression of weakness. The former would be to raise the stakes. At which point, the question would arise of whether it is in Americas strategic interest, or that of its allies, to be drawn into Syrias civil war on one side in the same way that Russia has committed itself on the other. There is no solid basis for such engagement. This is a horrible civil war with no heroes reminsicent in its ferocity, contempt for human life, flagrant propaganda and involvement of outside powers of the Spanish civil war. We view with contempt the conspiracy theory view, pushed on blogs and Twitter by the Putinbots, that this weeks attack on Khan Sheikhoun, which left the best part of 100 people dead after the apparent use of Sarin, was a false flag operation. None the less, the various ISIS and Al Qaeda-flavoured groups that make up much of the other side of the war have tried to get their hands on some and may have done so already elsewhere. They have no less contempt for human life than Assad, and pose a more immediate threat to our security: 7/7, the murder of Lee Rigby, the recent Westminster car-and-knife attack and the mass of plots that the security services and police have disrupted over the last decade or so have been planned and executed by Sunni-aligned extremists, not Shia ones. All this casts a searching light on Trumps decision to order these missile strikes. During his campaign for the Presidency, he made it very clear that ISIS would be Enemy Number One of a Trump administration. Now he has turned on the Syrian regime. It would be simplistic to argue that what is bad for Assad is good for ISIS: as we have said before, the former has spent much of the war deliberately targeting non-Islamist and other Islamist groups, with the cynical aim of seeking to force America to choose between him and ISIS. None the less, the missile strikes suggest strategic confusion. First, the Trump administration signalled that it would no longer seek Assads removal. This arguably led to the regime concluding that it could now use chemical weapons safely. Now it is reported that the President seeks Assads removal. Has Trumps decision shown human decency? (Some 30 children died at Khan Sheikhoun, vilely murdered by chemical weapons.) Or has he demonstrated dangerously erratic judgement? The Islamist groups may not have used chemical weapons, but they have committed atrocities every bit as sickening. How should those be weighed in the moral balance? It is ironic that Trump who was better disposed to Russia during that presidential campaign than any previous post-war Republican candidate; who has seen it accused of improper relations with the Putin Government, and has lost a national security adviser over the issue is now closer to a stand-off with Russia, the Assad regimes patron, than his predecessor. Some of the Presidents most prominent critics within his party, such as John McCain and Lindsey Graham, have rallied to him. By contrast, many of the isolationists who helped elect him will be downcast. Theresa May needs Trump for help with the Brexit settlement. A free trade deal with America that worked for Britain would be icing on the cake. But she will remember the backbench revolt over proposed missile strikes against the Syrian regime in 2013 which left David Camerons foreign policy rudderless. Downing Street will not want to do anything that might risk a repetition. Her instinct will be to act as a force for restraint. It will be reinforced by the knowledge she acquired as the longest-serving Home Secretary since the war of the security threats to Britain. As if the long-term challenge of Brexit were not enough, she now faces a short-term one of the first order. CORNWALL, Ontario Three-year old Kohen Paschek has faced tough adversity at his young age. Two years ago, he was diagnosed with a rare brain tumor. He is one of only 15 children in the world right now to have had this tumor and, doctors said that if removed, there would still be a 98 percent chance of the tumor recurring. Now, it has been a little over a year since Kohen has finished his treatment and his doctors say that there is no evidence of disease and that the tumor bed is reducing in size. Additionally, just in the past year, advances have been made in Kohens type of cancer. When it was removed, the doctors begged us to have Kohens tumor for research because it is so rare, said Kohens mom Jessie. Thanks to the research done by the Arthur & Sonia Labatt Research Centre in Toronto on his own tumor, doctors have raised Kohens survival chance from 2 percent to 50 percent. However, if the cancer returns he is out of treatment options, which is why his mother Jessie is working so hard to raise funds for this valuable research. With things looking up, Kohen is ready to start at a Montesorri pre-school, and will soon be able to play sports. Doctors say that he shows no signs developmental delays because of the brain tumor, although he does have to be a little careful when taking bumps on the head, because there is a gap in his skull where the tumor used to be, but doctors say that gap is shrinking. Kohens mom Jessie has organized a few upcoming fundraisers in order to raise money for vital research into brain tumors. A lot of people dont know, but brain tumors have overtaken Leukemia as the leading cause of cancer-related death in children, she said. Yet only three percent of the Canadian government funding goes towards that research. On April 23 from 12 5 p.m. to 5 p.m. there will be an Afternoon of Music in support of Team Kohen at the Eight Zero Zero Resto Lounge, who have donated their restaurant as the venue for the event. Music will be provided by Bob and Ducky, Steve Proulx and Al Wagner from Twisted Kilt and Jill Leclaire, Cameron MacPhee and Virginia Diperro from Llawnroc, who have all donated their time. Entry to the event is free, but donations are accepted at the door. On April 29 and 30 there will be a Charity Yard and Bake Sale from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day. Jessie says that she is looking for a lot of donations for the yard sale and items can be dropped off at 104 Westmoreland Ave., or they can be picked up by Jessie if donors want to email her at jessie.mcdonald104@gmail.com. Pancake feed in Tarnov TARNOV -- St. Michaels Historical Society will sponsor a pancake and sausage feed from 9 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Sunday at St. Michaels Parish Hall. Cost for the meal is $6 for adults, $3 for kids ages 5-10 and free for those younger than 5. The event will also include a bake sale, raffle, book fair and Easter egg hunt. Mass will be celebrated at 10 a.m. for those wishing to attend. Holy Week retreat planned SCHUYLER -- A Holy Week and Easter retreat will be held from Wednesday through April 16 at St. Benedict Center, with Fr. Thomas A. Leitner, OSB. Participants will join the Benedictine monks of Christ the King Priory in their prayer and worship during the "Three Holy Days." The retreat, which begins at 6 p.m. Wednesday and concludes at 1 p.m. April 16, will include times of silence, meditation and talks. For more information, call 402-352-8819 or visit www.christthekingpriory.com. Secretaries retreat set SCHUYLER -- A parish secretaries one-day retreat will be held from 9:30 a.m.-3 p.m. April 18 at the St. Benedict Center, with Sisters Kathleen Courtney and Marietta Kerkvliet. Secretaries will be treated to a day away with pampering, artful pausing, prayer, sharing, quiet time and lunch. The fee for program and lunch is $40. For more information, call 402-352-8819 or visit www.christthekingpriory.com. Palm Sunday breakfast slated COLUMBUS -- The St. Isidore Knights of Columbus will host a French toast and pancake breakfast from 7:30-11 a.m. Sunday in the St. Isidore Elementary School cafeteria. The breakfast will also include scrambled eggs, sausage, fruit and drinks. There will be a freewill offering to support the Knights' youth, church and community programs. Gruen retreat at St. Benedict SCHUYLER -- The Rev. Anselm Gruen will present a one-day retreat at St. Benedict Center on April 22. His retreat is titled, "Jesus: The Image of Gods Mercy," and will be an encounter with Jesus who is the face of the Fathers mercy (Pope Francis). This day will enliven and deepen the relationships of those attending with Him. Cost is $45.50, which includes program fee, meals and tax. For more information or to register, call 402-352-8819 or visit www.christthekingpriory.com. Empirical studies have shown that minorities pay more for goods and services, and that they pay more to finance their purchases of those goods and services -- for instance, through subprime home and auto loans. Machine Bias, a new study from ProPublica and Consumer Reports, adds car insurance premiums to the list of what minorities can expect to pay more for. The study uses zip codes to analyze auto insurance premiums and payouts in four states, California, Illinois, Texas, and Missouri. It finds that major insurers charge up to 30% more in minority neighborhoods as compared to white neighborhoods with the same risk profile. The results mean that where someone lives matters even more, and could have devastating consequences on upward mobility. When faced with budget-busting car insurance bills, do people give up the cars they need to get to work? Or do they go out without necessities, such as food and medicine, so they can pay their car insurance premiums? Channel programs News Datatec Is In Talks To Sell Major Share of Westcon-Comstor For More Than $800 Million, SAP Snafu Blamed For Earnings Drop Michael Novinson Share this Datatec Ltd. announced Friday that it is in talks to sell a major portion of its struggling $4.9 billion distributor Westcon-Comstor for more than $800 million in the wake of a troubled SAP implementation.. Westcon-Comstor parent company Datatec said in a regulatory filing that the proposed deal is subject to contract and exclusivity provisions, with no certainty that the transaction will be completed. The purchase price of more than $800 million includes both current and deferred compensation. Datatec's stock is up 13.8 percent to $4.37 per share since the announcement was made early Friday. That is the highest price at which the company's stock has traded since October 2015. [RELATED: Datatec Is Set To Make A Deal: Is WestconGroup For Sale?] The company also revealed Friday that Westcon-Comstor was responsible for more than 50 percent decline in the $6.5 billion IT conglomerate's earnings per share results for its most recent fiscal year, which ended Feb. 28. The earnings decline stemmed from disruption during the final stages of an SAP implementation in Westcon-Comstor's Europe, Middle East and Africa region. Datatec informed investors in October that it expected earnings per share for its fiscal year ending February 2017 to be better than the previous fiscal year. Three months later, Datatec announced that it was negotiating a material transaction, with sources telling CRN at the time that the most likely outcome was the sale of Westcon-Comstor. Tarrytown, N.Y.-based Westcon-Comstor has reportedly made adjustments to its operating model, which Datatec expects will result in a rapid recovery. The results for $1.5 billion solution provider Logicalis, also owned by Datatec, were in line with management's expectations. Westcon-Comstor's sales fell 10 percent to $2.26 billion in the six months ending Aug. 31, with sales dropping in all of the company's geographies except Asia-Pacific. The company's earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) were down 18 percent to $42.9 million due to lower profitability in Latin America and efforts to transform the company's business process outsourcing (BPO) practice. Westcon-Comstor derives 90 percent of its revenue from just 15 global vendor partners, CEO Dolph Westbros told CRN in 2015, with 42 percent of overall sales coming from its Cisco-exclusive Comstor business. Other vendors Westcon works closely with include Avaya which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection earlier this month Polycom, Juniper, Check Point, F5, Palo Alto and Blue Coat (now Symantec). Datatec spent $160 million in June 1998 to purchase a 92.5 percent stake in Westcon-Comstor and quickly expanded into Europe, which now accounts for 34 percent of the distributor's overall sales. Westcon-Comstor's security practice has grown over the past year from 33 percent to 36 percent of its overall business, and its networking practice has grown during that same period from 24 percent to 26 percent of overall sales. But Westcon-Comstor's unified communications sales have dropped from 26 percent to 22 percent of revenue, and its data center business has sunk from 17 percent to 14 percent of overall sales. The IT distribution landscape has experienced lots of upheaval in the past year, with Avnet selling its Technology Solutions (TS) business to Tech Data in February for $2.6 billion and Ingram Micro being sold to Chinese logistics firm Tianjin Tianhai for $6 billion in December. A group of what appears to be Chinese hackers infiltrated a U.S. trade-focused lobbying group as the two countries wrestle with how they treat imports of each other's goods and services. The APT10 Chinese hacking group appears to be behind a "strategic web compromise" in late February and early March at the National Foreign Trade Council, according to security vendor Fidelis Cybersecurity. The NFTC lobbies for open and fair trade and has pledged to work with U.S. President Donald Trump to "find ways to address Chinese policies that frustrate access to their market and undermine fair trade, while at the same time encouraging a positive trend in our trade relationship." Trump will meet with China President Xi Jinping in Florida this week. The lobbying group discovered the attack almost immediately and took steps to remove the malware and protect website visitors, a source close to the group said. It is "highly probable" that the web attack targeted key private-sector organizations focused on U.S. trade policy, Fidelis Cybersecurity said in a blog post. The company's research has found a similar operation targeting government officials in Japan, it said. "The connections we can draw from the Japanese campaign lead us to estimate that it is highly probable that the actors involved are known as APT10," a well-known Chinese hacking group. The attack on the lobbying group, dubbed Operation TradeSecret by Fidelis, targeted visitors to some of the organization's web pages, including one used to register for meetings. The attacks served reconnaissance malware known as Scanbox, Fidelis said. Scanbox is typically used by hackers associated with or sponsored by the Chinese government, the company said. It gives hackers multiple capabilities, including JavaScript keyloggers installed on target PCs. The information gathered with this reconnaissance can be used in phishing campaigns directed toward targeted individuals. These campaigns can then exploit specific vulnerabilities known to exist within the user's applications. The information gathered can then be used in phishing campaigns targeting specific computer users, Fidelis said. "The benefit of such a watering-hole attack is that it enables the adversary to target key individuals as they go about their business," said Hardik Modi, vice president for threat research at Fidelis. "Big business plays a key role in the formulation of trade policy in the U.S., and our expectation is that this campaign was about gathering intelligence in advance of the negotiations that accompany the [U.S.-China] summit." Lobbying groups are particularly attractive targets, Modi added by email. They are "in a difficult position because they often have a sensitive membership and can be an easy conduit for the adversary to target the specific interest group they're interested in," he said. "This has been part of cyber tradecraft for a long time now." This type of espionage is "an age-old tradition for governments," he added. COLUMBUS A 29-year-old Columbus man was arrested on drug, gun and stolen property charges after law enforcement officers served a search warrant at his 14th Street residence this week. Platte County Court Judge Frank Skorupa on Wednesday set bond for David Hayek at $250,000, 10 percent allowed for release, and scheduled the defendant for an April 19 arraignment hearing on the charges. Hayek, who has not been formally charged by the county attorneys office, was arrested on suspicion of possession of methamphetamine, possession of stolen property and being a felon in possession of a stolen handgun following the police raid of the residence in the 3400 block of 14th Street. Officers seized about 4.5 grams of a white, crystalline substance that field-tested positive for meth, marijuana pipes and glass pipes with suspected meth residue, according to Nebraska State Patrol Investigator Keith Bignell. Authorities also found a .40-caliber handgun confirmed stolen in Merrick County, ammunition, digital scales and other stolen property, Bignell wrote in his probable cause arrest statement. The suspect admitted ownership of the drug-related items in the residence, and said he was unaware of the stolen property, but knew it wasnt legit, the investigator wrote. Hayek was convicted of theft by receiving stolen property in May 2014 in Platte County District Court in connection with his role in burglarizing a Columbus convenience store in December 2013. The city man admitted his role in the burglary of Boulevard Express was to divert the attention of police with a bogus break-in at a jewelry store while his accomplices were hauling a safe out of the convenience store across town. Hayek began serving a prison sentence of 20 months to five years in June 2014 and was released on parole in April of last year. LONDON Over the last several years, a European family business has spent more than $40 billion assembling a coffee empire. JAB Holding Company has acquired the American brands Peets Coffee, Caribou Coffee and Keurig Green Mountain, all since 2012. It also combined the European coffee giant, D.E. Master Blenders 1753, with the coffee business of Mondelez International foods to create a company now known as Jacobs Douwe Egbert. Then it bought the high-end coffee retailers Stumptown Coffee Roasters and Intelligentsia. Mondelez continues to own 25 percent of Douwe Egbert and has a similar stake in Keurig. Now JAB needs somewhere to sell all that coffee. On Wednesday, JAB, which is privately held, said it would add the Panera restaurant chain to its growing empire of U.S. coffee and food favorites for $7.5 billion, including debt. It is only the latest effort to expand into restaurants by JAB, the investment arm of the Reimann family of Germany, who are heirs to the consumer goods company Joh. A. Benckiser. In 2014, JAB bought the bagel chain Einstein Brothers, which it has been combining with Caribou is some markets. And last year, it paid $1.35 billion for Krispy Kreme, the struggling doughnut chain. In Panera, JAB will acquire a popular fast casual chain that serves soups, salads, sandwiches and baked goods at about 2,000 locations. But Panera, which went public in 1991, has chafed under Wall Streets relentless demand for growth. Ron Shaich, Paneras personable chief executive who controls roughly 15 percent of its stock, said one of the biggest attractions to the JAB deal was the chance to take his company private. For the last 20 years, Ive spent 20 percent of my time telling people what weve done to grow and another 20 percent of my time telling people what were going to do to grow, Shaich said in an interview. I wont have to do that anymore. Shaich said that he planned to continue to lead Panera. Nothing will change, he said. The management team and I will remain. The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter and is subject to shareholder and regulatory approval. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Coffee time is a very important time of the day, so don't waste it at just any coffee shop. We took a look at what Yelp users have to say about local coffee shops, and the verdict is in: Lorca in Stamford is the favorite coffee shop among Yelpers in southwestern Connecticut. Click through the slideshow to see the top 10 Yelp-reviewed coffee shops in southwestern Connecticut. "This is a beautiful coffee shop we enjoyed our coffees my girl friend and I next time I go there I have to try the Cortado and churro. I just moved to Stamford and I must say this is an awesome find," one Yelp reviewer wrote. The cortado, a small Spanish-style coffee with equal parts coffee and milk, is one the of the drinks that Lorca is known for, according to manager Claire Sears-Tam. Other popular items are the churros and the alfajor cookiesa shortbread cookie with dulce de leche filling. The alfajor cookie is made using the owner's mother's recipe and it is the inspiration for Lorca's current seasonal latte. Each season, Lorca creates a new coffee drink. For coffee buffs, Lorca brings in guest coffee roasters every two to three months to offer something different. Guest roasters have included local roasters like neighbor Espresso Neat in Darien. Sears-Tam said keeping it local and offering a community vibe has been essential to the success of Lorca since it opened in 2013. "It's a small space has that community feel; you know you're at an independently-owned shop. We're on a first-name basis with customers; we know their drinks and get to know them as friends," she said. Yelpers agree; one reviewer described Lorca as: "A small, cozy little coffee shop in downtown. It's extremely tiny and typically filled with the locals (unless you happen to be traveling by and are hungry, like me)." Another said, "Good coffee and cool baristas. Hipster central, make me feel like I'm in BK again. Always busy, especially on weekends." Sears-Tam said she knew Lorca had a good Yelp reputation but she doesn't look at the reviews so as not to dwell on the negative. She said she prefers feedback in person from customers. "We're successful now because of word of mouth. It's not reliant on Yelp; that's for new people to town. Our reputation is positive for the most part for residents of Stamford." BRIDGEPORT - A large crowd filled the courtroom at Golden Hill Street Friday as 19-year-old Tikhari Morton was arraigned Friday for fatally shooting a local teen and wounding a Stamford man last month. Meanwhile, questions still abound why the shooting, which happened in a quiet North End neighborhood, occurred in the first place. Police said Morton, who was charged Friday with murder, attempted murder, first-degree assault and a gun charge - as well as a carjacking of a food delivery driver the day before the shooting - claims he was out for a smoke when he was attacked by the victims. While the wounded Stamford man claims they were there to buy sneakers from Morton when he just began shooting at them for no reason. Superior Court Judge William Holden ordered Morton held in lieu of $2 million bond for both cases and continued the case to April 25. Mortons lawyer, John R. Gulash, declined comment as he left the courtroom with Mortons mother. The crowd, under the watchful eyes of a half-dozen judicial marshals, left peaceably and without comment. On the evening of March 18, police, responding to a call of gunshots, found 18-year-old Gregory Francilme and the 27-year-old Stamford man lying on the ground behind an apartment building on Bretton Street. Francilme died on arrival at St. Vincents Medical Center from gunshot wounds to the head and torso. The other victim had been shot in the arm and abdomen and survived his wounds after a hospital stay. Police said witnesses told them they saw a man, later identified as Morton, shooting at the victim and heard the wounded man yell, I messed up Gregory, I messed up. Morton was later arrested in connection with the attempted armed robbery of a Waterbury Deli. While in custody for that case police said he confessed to the Bretton Street shooting. He told detectives Robert Winkler and Jorge Cintron he had been behind the apartment building smoking marijuana stuffed in a cigar roll when Francilme and the other man approached him and began getting aggressive, police recounted. They then tried to grab him, so he shot them, police said Morton told them. I shot until they were not there I shot so I could get away, police said Morton confessed. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate HARTFORD Legislation that would have required those who openly carry handguns to show their permits when asked by police has died in the Judiciary Committee. Lawmakers said there was not enough support for the bill, which was provoked by a January 2016 incident in a downtown Bridgeport Subway restaurant, during which a Waterbury man declined to show police his permit, correctly citing that state law was on his side. With the failure of this proposal, the last time the General Assembly approved major gun-safety legislation was in 2013, banning sales of military-style rifles and large-capacity ammunition magazines in the months after the Newtown school shootings that killed 20 first-graders and six adults. Rep. Steve Stafstrom, D-Bridgeport, vice chairman of the Judiciary Committee and a chief proponent of the bill over the last two years, said that while he believed several Republicans on the panel would have supported the bill, it wasnt enough. During a recent committee hearing, several big-city Democrats on the panel voiced concerns that police could use a new law as a racial profiling tool. We heard the concerns during the committee process, Stafstrom said in a phone interview Friday morning. Well certainly seek to revisit the issue next year. He said forcing the issue to a debate on Friday could have resulted in a virtual gridlock of committee business on its 26-item agenda. It was going to be close, and the committee has other priorities, Stafstrom said. Ron Pinciaro, president of CT Against Gun Violence, said it seems unlikely the bill would be revived in any other form this legislative session, which ends on June 7. The bill was opposed by gun-rights activists, as expected, but it was also opposed by some legislators from urban districts that unfortunately have a long history of racial profiling and inequalities, Pinciaro said. They were afraid this bill would be another reason to stop young men of color. We tried to find a way to address their concerns but were unable to reach such a compromise. During the recent public hearing, gun-safety advocates including Po Murray, chairwoman of the Newtown Action Alliance, told the lawmakers that her town is still suffering trauma from the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre and that many residents believe open-carry is a threatening act. Pinciaro said that part of the trade-off in the legislative process would have been a so-called reciprocity agreement that would have allowed non-residents of Conneticut to carry concealed firearms in Connecticut. Scott Wilson, president of the Connecticut Citizens Defense League, a 27,000-member gun-rights group, said members succeeded in preventing the bill from reaching a committee vote. This bill was not only an unnecessary intrusion, it was advertised as something that is it was not, Wilson said in a statemnt. The usual gun-control proponents have for two years now failed to convince two different committees that there really is a need for what theyve sought. We really appreciate the hard work of our members to help stop this bill. We could not have done this without the time and effort that they have dedicated. Hopefully as time passes, our legislators will understand more about the issues that plague society, and start addressing the root causes of violence with real solutions. Nebraska is a national leader in agricultural production, both in grain and livestock. Our leadership role is no coincidence. Its the result of the University of Nebraska following the land-grant philosophy that informed its founding almost a century and a half ago. When I enrolled in the Nebraska College of Agriculture in 1949, it was drummed into all of us students that the college was dependent on the model of a three-legged stool. All the legs had to be equal, we were told, or the stool would collapse. The three legs were the colleges agricultural education programs, the research department and its extension offerings. The college was responsible for educating students, equipping them with information on the best-known methods of production. Then some of these students would go on to conduct research to find new methods of increasing production in an efficient and sustainable manner. And then the successful methods they developed would be disseminated to producers so they could adapt to the latest available technologies. That model worked in 1869, when our university was established. It worked in the 1940s and 1950s, when I was a student. It works today. And -- at a time when innovation in agricultural production is needed more than ever -- it will be the model that sustains Nebraskas leadership in feeding an increasingly hungry and thirsty world. In earlier years, most of the technologies and improvements to production were the result of research at what would become UNLs Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources. But as technology has developed at a more and more rapid pace, IANR has wisely taken advantage of the resources and talents of a diverse range of disciplines across the university system. That kind of collaborative, interdisciplinary thinking is exactly the approach thats needed to address the complex challenges facing our planet today. The University of Nebraska, and consequently the State of Nebraska, has benefited from leaders who have recognized the importance of partnership both within and outside of the university system to keep Nebraska at the forefront in agricultural production and efficient use of our precious natural resources. In my view, were ahead of other states in gathering the best minds around the table to come up with solutions to pressing challenges -- and Nebraskans are better for it. As one example, consider the development of the university-wide Robert B. Daugherty Water for Food Institute. I was fortunate to serve on the search committee for the founding executive director of the institute, and I was joined by representatives from across the university as well as external partners. Similarly, stakeholders within the university and beyond provided input on the development of the Water for Food Institutes strategic plan and programming. Our partnership is paying off. Only seven years after the institute was established, the University of Nebraska is increasingly recognized as an international leader in developing methods for the most efficient use of water to feed the world. Our global leadership will be on display in a few weeks, when we host hundreds of researchers, producers, business managers, government and non-governmental organization directors, students and others from around the world for the Water for Food Conference in Lincoln. Im confident that if we, the citizens of Nebraska, continue to support our excellent university system, our state will lead the nation -- and in many ways the world -- in developing more efficient and sustainable methods of supporting the growing population. The long-term well-being of the planet depends on our success. Nebraska, through the education, research and extension programs that have been at the heart of the University of Nebraskas mission for almost 150 years, is ready to lead. Page Content Following the Treaty of Rome's 60th anniversary celebrations and the publication of the European Commission's White Paper on the Future of Europe, members of the Committee of the Regions Commission for Citizenship, Governance, Institutional and External Affairs (CIVEX) yesterday debated the issues at stake in creating a new vision for Europe, from the perspective of regions and cities. Participants in the debate, including European Commission representatives, reiterated that the consultation process is as essential as the final outcome and that cities and regions are crucial in driving this wide-ranging exercise forward. As part of the ongoing political discussions on the future of Europe, European Council president Donald Tusk has asked the CoR. as the voice of cities and regions, to submit its recommendations on the future of Europe. The CoR position will draw from a wide-ranging consultation process called "Reflecting on Europe ", mostly in the form of citizens' dialogues and town-hall debates, to collect citizens' concerns and expectations at the grassroots level. The opinion, due to be adopted in mid-2018, will be drawn up by CoR President Markku Markkula and First Vice-President Karl-Heinz Lambertz. The purpose of yesterday's debate was to take stock of the preparatory process, discuss the latest input from the European Commission and encourage CoR members to further engage in citizens' dialogues in their constituencies. In a second request, the European Commission has asked the CoR to draft an Outlook Opinion, based on the Commission White Paper and the ideas and priorities of Europe's regions and cities, on the future development of our Union. Opening the debate, Karl-Heinz Lambertz shared his views on the nature of the CoR's "Reflecting on Europe" campaign and how should be conducted: " 'Reflecting on Europe' is not a large-scale public survey, nor another campaign on the achievements of the European project. It is a real dialogue, a desire to expand the debate, mobilise and together generate concrete actions with the citizens. We're not just listening, we are conversing. That is why the process is as important to me as its formal outcome the adoption of a joint resolution in 2018. This is also why your full participation, as local and regional elected representatives, is an absolute prerequisite to the success of the project ". Mr Lambertz also highlighted concerns in the current debate on the future of Europe: " I see three main dangers: first, that we focus all our energy on a 'divorce' that we have not chosen and that the Brexit process undermines our European ambitions; second, that the cohesion between our territories and our people is considered as incidental and third, that the debate on a multi-speed Europe actually hides a debate on a multi-directional Europe and takes us all away from such a hard-won common good. " The next steps will need to be adapted to the ongoing and upcoming developments in the inter-institutional debate, including the recent European Commission's White Paper on the future of Europe . In this regard, a representative from President Juncker's Cabinet commented on the content of the White paper, referring to the fact that, beside the five proposed scenarios, the final outcome may well see a sixth scenario developed on the basis of the results of the debate. He further insisted that "the future of the EU lies in cities and regions" as these are the level of government citizens are most familiar with. A representative of the European Commission's DG Communication also presented the main conclusions of the last Eurobarometer surveys, focussing on the three following aspects: trust in the institutions, trust in the media, and the rise of populism. He stressed that the results show a widespread loss of trust in the institutions, a trend that is not specific to the EU but that, on the other hand, citizens' confidence in local and regional authorities remains the highest. Against this backdrop, he called on CoR members, in their capacity as local and regional elected representatives, "to help drive the current debate on the future of Europe". This discussion with the European Commission representatives supplements the debate with MEPs Guy Verhofstadt, Elmar Brok and Jo Leinen, which took place during the March Plenary Session. Moreover, it will feed into a debate with the European Parliament's President Antonio Tajani on the future of Europe, to be held during the CoR plenary session on 11 May. The European Commission's White Paper on a new direction for Europe will also be on the agenda of the next plenary, with a debate with the Commission Vice-President Jyrki Katainen. *** CoR "Reflecting on Europe" initiative The CoR initiative to consult European citizens directly at the grassroots level is already up and running, with 27 local events organised by the CoR, its members and local and regional partners, in 13 EU countries in 2016, with an overall participation of over 3 200 citizens. This exercise will be further developed throughout 2017, with about 100 local events to be organised across the EU. A debate on the different aspects of the "Reflecting on Europe" exercise will be organised in every forthcoming plenary session and CIVEX commission meeting. CIVEX will also organise a conference on the "Future of Europe" as part of its external meeting in Caen (France) on 21-22 September. The CoR will also be launching a public web-based application, including a number of questions related to the future of EU policies, which will be used to collect and present citizens' feedback during local events and citizens' dialogues. - Agenda of the 13th CIVEX meeting - CoR's Reflecting on Europe initiative (brochure) - Photos from the CIVEX meeting Contact: Nathalie Vandelle Tel. +32 (0)2 282 24 99 nathalie.vandelle@cor.europa.eu What to do in Pennsylvania if you made an error on your mail-in ballot The state Supreme Court recently ruled that undated or incorrectly dated mail ballots cannot be counted. Here's what voters can do about an error. Call me an old softie, but I find something profoundly poignant in this weeks news that the dear old Guardian is actively considering moving its headquarters from north London back to its birthplace in Manchester. What breaks my heart is not just the thought of uprooting all those Pollys, Zoes, Jacks and Amelias from the wine bars, arthouse cinemas and polenta restaurants of the capital, where they have made themselves so comfortably at home. No, this is the parable of the prodigal son, re-spun for the modern age. (To avoid offending the Guardians sensibilities, let me be quite clear that I use the word son to include prodigal daughters and prodigal members of the gender-fluid community). Moneys the problem, of course, as it was with the protagonist of Jesuss story the son who squandered his lavish inheritance before returning home to throw himself on his fathers mercy and beg for a place among the familys hired servants. Call me an old softie, but I find something profoundly poignant in this weeks news that the dear old Guardian is actively considering moving its headquarters from north London back to its birthplace in Manchester We all know what happened next or at least, those of us do who were brought up in the age when schools took seriously their duty to impart knowledge of our countrys Christian heritage. Far from the harsh reception he was expecting, the prodigal found himself warmly welcomed by the father he had let down so badly. In the words of the Gospel of St Luke: . . . the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry: For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. What sort of welcome awaits the Guardian when it slinks back to Manchester, I cannot say. Only one thing can be said with certainty. If the paper does indeed return home, the locals will find it completely unrecognisable as the great, crusading liberal organ that started life in their magnificent city back in 1821, before it set off in 1964 to lose its fortune in London. The modern equivalent of the prodigals father was C. P. Scott, who edited the Manchester Guardian for 57 years from 1872, becoming its owner in 1907 when he bought it from the estate of the son of its founder, a cotton merchant. In 1936, Scotts son John set up a handsomely endowed trust to secure the financial and editorial independence of the Guardian in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of the Guardian free from commercial or political interference. It was a beautiful idea. But what perhaps the Scott family didnt realise was that by liberating the paper from grubby commercial constraints, they were also freeing its journalists from the need to write anything that might interest readers, or reflect their concerns, enough to persuade them to buy it. The papers staff knew that no matter how carelessly they frittered away their inheritance, they could always rely on Daddy in the form of the Scott Trust to pick up the bills. The only wonder is that they have managed to keep going for so long, burning up the trusts banknotes with losses running into tens of millions of pounds a year. Meanwhile, the irony has never seemed to occur to them, as they pontificated against the exploitation of workers, that they themselves have been living like aristocratic absentee landlords at the expense of poor toilers in the trusts profitable companies. But of course they couldnt go on for ever, staggering from one stupefyingly inept business decision to the next, while shedding readers by the hundreds of thousands. It was inevitable that even their massive inherited wealth would begin to dry up. But chins up, Polly, Zoe & Co. If you are sent back to Manchester, its too much to hope your paper will re-connect with reality. But at least youll be reunited with your old friends at the BBC, the prodigals exiled to Salford (pictured) before you Hence the heart-rendingly pathetic pleas for charitable donations that appear on the Guardians website (Since youre here, weve got a small favour to ask . . .) Hence, too, those thoughts of returning home to Manchester. Which brings me to the most interesting aspect of the Guardians story. By this, I mean the truly remarkable way in which the papers views have changed since it abandoned its roots in the great northern capital of the Industrial Revolution. In the 19th century, the Manchester Guardian was the voice of manufacturing and free trade, a stalwart champion of small government. It was liberal in the old sense of the word, before its meaning was hijacked by the likes of Nick Clegg, with their passion for regulation and state interference in every aspect of our lives. With its eye constantly on promoting economic growth, the paper took a particularly dim view of workers strikes, arguing that the raison detre of trade union leaders was to avoid settling disputes, since they live on strife. In the words of its working-class competitor, the Manchester and Salford Advertiser, the Guardian was the foul prostitute and dirty parasite of the worst portion of the mill-owners. As late as the Forties, the paper was so hostile to the Left-winger Aneurin Bevan and the hate-gospellers of his entourage that it called for Clement Attlees postwar government to be voted out of office. Today, its contributors worship Bevan and Attlee and the welfarism they espoused. According to David Kynastons masterly history, Austerity Britain 1945-1951, the paper even opposed the creation of the NHS. This was on the morally repugnant grounds that free healthcare for all would eliminate selective elimination, leading to an increase in the numbers of congenitally deformed and feckless people. In other words, the Guardian wanted the weak to be left to die. You dont hear much from Guardian writers today, when they are attacking other papers for embarrassing episodes in their long-distant past, about their own employers more recent, disgusting flirtation with Nazi-style eugenics. So what prompted the papers lurch to the Left? If you ask me, the answer lies in the way it is funded. For in freeing Guardian journalists from all considerations of commercial reality, the Scott Trust inadvertently began a process that has cut them off from every other aspect of the real world, the way it works and the real people who inhabit it. Why else do they persist in their fantasy that the answer to every social problem lies in expanding the public sector (after all, doesnt money grow on trees)? And why else were they so totally baffled when the country voted for Brexit? Doesnt everyone think, as they do, that we are better off in the hands of a statist bureaucracy? Whatever the truth, the paper that left Manchester in touch with at least some sense of reality, banging the drum for free trade and deregulation, now lives in a la-la land of its own. This is a world in which the burning issues of the day are rights for the gender-fluid, the pressing need for more wind farms and the vital importance of re-educating voters until they understand the charms of Jean-Claude Juncker and EU protectionism. But chins up, Polly, Zoe & Co. If you are sent back to Manchester, its too much to hope your paper will re-connect with reality. But at least youll be reunited with your old friends at the BBC, the prodigals exiled to Salford before you. As the great echo chamber of the subsidised Left moves north, you can be sure that they, at least, will welcome you with that proverbial fatted calf. The huge number of pupil absences is profoundly worrying, so the Mail strongly supports the Supreme Court decision yesterday to uphold a fine on a father (Jon Platt, above with his wife, Sally) who took his daughter to Disney World in term time The Mail has considerable sympathy for parents who are cynically ripped off when they take their children on vacation during school holidays. When term ends, travel firms and airlines rack up prices, leaving many families struggling to afford a break. As a result, increasing numbers are pulling their children out of school in term time to take advantage of cheaper holidays. Nearly 150,000 did so in the last school year, even though they knew they would be fined and possibly face a criminal record. This huge number of absences is profoundly worrying, so the Mail strongly supports the Supreme Court decision yesterday to uphold a fine on a father who took his daughter to Disney World in term time. The judges ruled only head teachers can give special leave and then only in extraordinary circumstances. Taking children out of class is disruptive for teachers and fellow pupils. It undermines the schools authority and risks sending out a signal that attendance is optional. But the real villain is the holiday industry. We would never advocate market regulation but the Government must make a determined effort to stop this exploitation of parents. Otherwise, pressure for price controls will surely grow. Devious death tax A sly scheme to increase probate fees from 155 to a shocking maximum of 20,000 has rightly been ruled unlawful by a parliamentary committee. In a shameless act of deception, ministers hoped to sneak in this death tax, designed to raise 300million, without Parliaments consent by calling it an administrative charge rather than new legislation. The rises have been ruled unconstitutional and will now have to be reconsidered. But why was such a blatant stealth tax proposed in the first place? We became used to such underhand tactics in the Blair years but hoped a Tory government might be more transparent. This kind of devious behaviour corrodes public trust in politics. The probate scheme would hit people when they are at their most vulnerable. It is unfair and dishonest. It was inevitable sooner or later that Jeremy Corbyn would attack Britains private schools, this time on the spurious grounds that they should pay VAT to fund free school meals for all primary school pupils - rich or poor Free lunch folly As sure as night follows day, whenever a Labour politician is in trouble, he plays the politics of envy card. So it was inevitable sooner or later that Jeremy Corbyn would attack Britains private schools, this time on the spurious grounds that they should pay VAT to fund free school meals for all primary school pupils rich or poor. Thanks to Nick Clegg, children up to age seven already receive free lunches. Described by critics as a total car crash the scheme costs 600million a year and forces cash-strapped schools to provide more staff and bigger kitchens. Mr Corbyns proposal will only exacerbate the problem and rising fees will force many middle class parents, who make enormous sacrifices to educate their children privately, back into the state system at huge cost to the taxpayer. Hounded by judges The Mail holds no torch for Liz Truss, whose performance as Justice Secretary has so far been less than surefooted. But the insidious campaign by top lawyers and judges to get her removed is profoundly disturbing. Her real crimes, it seems, are that shes not legally trained, not a man and not one of us. Judges (who are of course unelected) are all too quick to protest if their independence is threatened by politicians. They more than anyone should be wary of trying to destabilise democratically-elected politicians particularly as many ordinary people think they are Britains last great unreformed vested interest group. Whatever else may be said about Donald Trumps cruise missile strike against al-Shayrat airfield in Syria, it sends a potent signal that the civilised world will not tolerate the obscenity of chemical warfare. Indeed, it shows that America, for the first time in many a year, has a president who is not afraid to deploy the immense firepower at his command in defence of the Wests fundamental values. It was his much vaunted predecessor Barack Obama whose soaring rhetoric was rarely matched by decisive action who laid down a red line against chemical weapons but did nothing about it when the line was crossed. This left him and his country looking weak and foolish. 'Donald Trumps cruise missile strike against al-Shayrat airfield in Syria, it sends a potent signal that the civilised world will not tolerate the obscenity of chemical warfare' Mr Trumps message will not have been lost, either, on rogue states such as North Korea which wish the US ill: they provoke this president at their peril. It should also be noted that hours before the attack, Hillary Clinton urged that America should take out Assads airfields. So Democrats who accuse Mr Trump of behaving like a trigger-happy lunatic would do well to reflect that their own candidate would have done the same. Yes, the President is an untested novice, whose judgment remains deeply questionable, to say the least. But it is fair to assume that he listened to the advice of the many seasoned generals and other wise heads in his administration. His action is all the more remarkable in that for months he has been talking up his relationship with Vladimir Putin, but when push came to shove he was prepared to defy Russia and act on principle. As for Downing Streets swiftness to support Mr Trump along with France, Germany, Australia, Nato and others we have difficulty in disagreeing with it. At a frightening time like this, it would be the height of folly for the West to present a disunited front to our common enemies. And yet this paper cannot help feeling distinctly queasy about the Presidents decision to toss another burning match into the tinderbox of the Middle East. The fact is that every western intervention in the region for the past 15 years, from Iraq to Libya, has caused infinitely more suffering than it has spared. Add the mind-boggling network of alliances and warring factions in Syria with no clear forces for good on either side and the risk of making this hellish war bloodier still could hardly be more stark. Indeed, throw in the presence of Russian troops, taking orders from a president just as unpredictable as Mr Trump, and its no exaggeration to call this a terrifying threat to world peace. Add the mind-boggling network of alliances and warring factions in Syria with no clear forces for good on either side and the risk of making this hellish war bloodier still could hardly be more stark (pictured, Syria's Shayrat airfield) And the chilling truth is we simply dont know who or what to believe about the Syrian war, with both sides spreading black propaganda and falsifying news. Is Mr Trump 100 per cent sure that the Syrian air force was responsible for the atrocity that provoked this punishment raid? If it was to blame, this was an almost inexplicable act of strategic folly by president Bashar al-Assad. Why on Earth would he use sarin, letting the world see harrowing photographs of poisoned children, just as Syrias Russian allies were winning grudging plaudits for offering the first glimmer of hope that order might one day be restored? As for Americas strike, isnt there a risk Assads enemies will now launch a poison attack and try to pin the blame on him, in the hope of provoking more of the same? If the best comes of Mr Trumps action, the world will get the message that anyone who deploys a chemical weapon will suffer instant punishment from the mightiest military power on Earth. As for the worst all this paper will say is that its utter madness at such a perilous moment for Britain to be cutting back our defences while increasing spending on foreign aid. A man who turned his back on his A-levels to follow his dream of opening a craft workshop has now become of one the industry's most revered jewellery designers, counting Thandie Newton and Emma Watson as fans. Alex Monroe, 53, from Suffolk, set up his eponymous jewellery brand in 1987 after failing to secure a place at fashion college. His designs, which are inspired by wildlife, have sold millions of units and been worn by countless A-listers, and this week he celebrated 30 years of business with the help of Princess Anne. Alex Monroe, 53, from Suffolk, set up his jewellery brand, which is named after him, in 1987 after failing to secure a place at fashion college. He now has countless A-list fans and travels all over the world Sharing his career story with FEMAIL, Alex explained how he always had a penchant for designing his own clothes. 'As a teenager I would make my own clothes and accessories,' he explained. 'This was the era of punk so pink PVC trousers, chunky knit turquoise and black striped off the shoulder jumpers, eye liner and a spiky dog collar.' After dropping out of his A-levels, Alex applied for a place at fashion college. However, after failing to land a spot, he took a place studying jewellery. 'I took the place just to be able to move to London and hang out on the Kings Road,' he said. 'I then immediately set up a workshop and I've been making jewellery ever since.' After dropping out of his A-levels, Alex applied for a place at fashion college but didn't get a spot. Instead, he set up a workshop and has been designing jewellery ever since Alex admits he remortgaged the house ages ago to finance growth, but says, ultimately, he was always confident it would work His earrings, necklaces and rings, which cost around 150, have been worn by the likes of Emma Watson, left in his ring, Lily Allen, right in his ring, and Sienna Miller. Despite his strong celebrity clientele, Alex claims he is 'rubbish' with celebrities The father-of-three said the company has grown organically - but he has certainly taken financial risks to get to where he is. He said: 'My mum taught me to save up to buy something and Ive stuck to that. I tend to plough everything back into the business because its what gives me pleasure. I dont like fast cars or posh holidays. I like making jewellery. 'I did remortgage the house ages ago to finance growth, so theres been an element of risk. But ultimately I was always confident it would work.' ALEX'S ADVICE FOR BUDDING ENTREPRENEURS Have fun with it! Be true to yourself, find your own voice, and enjoy it. Advertisement It certainly did work; his earrings, necklaces and rings, which cost around 150, have been worn by the likes of Emma Watson, Lily Allen and Sienna Miller. Despite his strong celebrity clientele, Alex claims he is 'rubbish' with celebrities. 'Of course there are some people who are fans and I really like, respect and admire them - like Emma Watson or Thandie Newton,' he said. Alex cites his career highs as being asked to write a book and spending days in Buckingham Palace, pictured Princess Anne is the patron of the trade organization UKFT so she helped Alex, left, celebrate 30 years and his new building 'She was generous and attentive to a fault,' said Alex speaking about Princess Anne Alex cites his career highs as being asked to write a book, spending days in Buckingham Palace, travelling the world and meeting all sorts of amazing and interesting people. 'Its all good really,' he adds. 'Although I dont necessarily recommend it to everyone. Ive worked pretty much seven days a week for decades, lots of stress and precariousness. but Ive loved it. Some people might prefer a quieter life.' Alex also claims he has 'no idea' how much his company is worth, saying: 'Im not at all sure how you work that out. But its worth everything to me. I get to do exactly what I want every day! You only get one life and it whizzes by so enjoy what you do - Whats that worth?' A successful young actress facing chemotherapy has filmed herself bravely chopping off her hair to raise money for charity. Suzie Clair Aries, 25, from London, was diagnosed with a rare form of ovarian cancer in January and is preparing to undergo a gruelling 12-week treatment. When doctors warned she would almost certainly lose her hair in the battle against the aggressive form of cancer, Suzie says she was 'devastated'. 'As a woman it's a big part of my identity, not to mention as an actress it's a big part of my job,' she told FEMAIL. 'But I have found a way forward.' Suzie, who played the role of Margot in Legally Blonde the Musical last year, has decided to donate her hair to The Little Princess Trust - a charity which makes real hair wigs for children with cancer and other illness. She filmed herself chopping off her locks on Wednesday in a video that has since gone viral, and also launched a crowdfunding campaign for the charity which has so far reached almost 7,000. Suzie, who has described 2017 as a 'turning point', told FEMAIL: 'I had been feeling unwell for a while towards the end of 2016 - bloated, stomach pains and physically exhausted. 'I was sent home from work one day in the middle of January because I looked and felt so terrible and immediately went to the doctor. Suzie Clair Aries, 25, from London, has filmed herself getting her hair chopped off ahead of her chemotherapy treatment after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer earlier this year All gone! The actress said of her impending hair loss: 'As a woman it's a big part of my identity, not to mention as an actress it's a big part of my job. But I have found a way forward' 'I had some blood tests and from then on it was clear something was wrong - my kidney markers were high and so were signs of infection and a few others, and I was put on a "two-week wait" which I later discovered was also known as the two-week cancer care pathway. 'After further blood tests and an ultra sound it was clear I had a mass on my left ovary which looked suspicious.' A few weeks later Suzie underwent an oophorectomy to remove the mass, along with her left ovary. She began feeling better almost immediately - until the biopsy results came back a few weeks later and confirmed that the mass was cancerous. Moving forward: Suzie will need to attend regular check-ups to ensure the cells are gone for good; Suzie will be declared 'cancer free' in five years' time if all goes well Suzie before cutting off her hair. When doctors warned she would almost certainly lose her tresses during treatment to cure the aggressive form of cancer, Suzie was 'devastated' Suzie shows off her scar after undergoing an oophorectomy to remove the mass, along with her left ovary. She began feeling better, but later learned that the mass was cancerous '[The consultant] told me the cancer was at Stage 1c,' Suzie recalled. 'Although catching it early and being sure all of it was removed without contamination, he suggested a course of chemotherapy would be the safest way forward to make sure. 'The next week we met the oncologist who once again told me the biopsy results. However, she added this time that the type of cancer found was small cell cancer" - usually found in the lungs. 'This type of cancer is rarely found in the ovaries which made my case quite rare and unique. Suzie, who played the role of Margot in Legally Blonde the Musical (pictured), has decided to donate her hair to The Little Princess Trust - a charity which makes wigs for children Suzie, pictured on stage before her diagnosis, recalled: 'I had been feeling unwell for a while towards the end of 2016 - bloated, stomach pains and physically exhausted' 'But once again, luck was not on my side, and due to the cancer being an aggressive type that can come back and spread easily, the course of chemo also needs to be aggressive, meaning that my hair will fall out. 'It also comes with an awful lot of other nasty side effects - sickness, tiredness, tingling fingers and toes, memory loss, just to name a few. 'Not the verdict I was hoping for.' Suzie's intravenous chemotherapy treatment will run over 12 weeks, consisting of four sessions interspersed with recovery time. Positive attitude: Suzie said of her battle, 'I may not be able to help the people closest to me cope with it, but I sure as hell can help other people who are in the same position as me' Active: Suzie pictured before her diagnosis. Her intravenous chemotherapy treatment will run over 12 weeks, consisting of four sessions interspersed with recovery time After that, she will need to attend regular check-ups to ensure the cells are gone for good; Suzie will be declared 'cancer free' in five years' time if all goes well. Speaking about her decision to donate her hair, Suzie added: 'I wanted to make my news known to people I know all at once as it was starting to get hard telling people the story again and again - it was draining me emotionally. 'So I decided that I would post a video on Facebook telling my story and my idea to donate my hair. My aim was also to raise some money for the charity too so I set up a Just Giving page and a target of 500 to send off along with the hair.' Suzie's first video, announcing her intention, has had a staggering 26,000 views plus a further 5,000 views on her hair chop video. 'Starting this fundraising as really given me a massive uplifting feeling,' she said. 'I am very aware that my cancer has and will continue to affect the people closest to me and not just myself and from the beginning I hate feeling that I am a burden on people. 'My feeling is, I may not be able to help the people closest to me cope with it, but I sure as hell can help other people who are in the same position as me.' Australia, we have a new reigning beauty queen. Meet Elise Nazzari, a 21-year-old honours student from Perth who just took out the Miss Galaxy Australia 2017 title. The blue-eyed beauty is the latest hoping to join the ranks of successful Australian beauty queens, such as Jennifer Hawkins and Erin McNaught. Elise Nazzari is a 21-year-old honours student from Perth who just took out the Miss Galaxy Australia 2017 title The blonde beauty doesn't 'want to be seen as just another pretty face' Not only is she known for her bubbly, friendly personality, Elisa holds a Bachelor's Degree in Sociology and Anthropology and is currently completing her honours degree. She also recently co-authored book chapters and Federal Government reports in the fields of applied social research and restorative justice, and has set her long-term aspirations toward completing her Ph.D. Elise entered the competition three times before winning and said the pageant helped her with her confidence. 'Never in my wildest dreams would I honestly have thought that I could actually win,' she said The blue-eyed beauty is the latest to join the ranks of successful Aussie beauty queens 'I don't think I would have had to ability to accept criticism that comes along with research and writing both in my degree and research career if it wasn't for pageantry,' she said. 'Even standing up on stage when I was crowned, I was in disbelief never in my wildest dreams would I honestly have thought that I could actually win'. Despite her success, Elise has suffered from anxiety and depression and has devoted herself to working as a Youth Mental Health Advocate, recently partnering with Lifeline WA as an advocate for their suicide and crisis support service. 'I also wouldn't have gained control of my anxiety. I meet so many girls who I see parts of my former self coming into the pageant system to garner assurance,' she said. Elise has suffered from anxiety and depression and has devoted herself to working as a Youth Mental Health Advocate 'Even standing up on stage when I was crowned, I was in disbelief,' she said of her win The blonde beauty is committed to social change and has her sights set on working for the United Nations. 'I feel that women have to work a lot harder to be taken seriously in research fields, and I dont want to be seen as just another pretty face,' she said. 'I want to be exposed to the social issues of people everywhere and learn to embrace different cultures in order to attempt to understand it.' Elise has also dabbled in acting, already landing roles in a 2014 short film, Through the Looking Glass and Australian TV Movie Pilot, Sandy Bay. Winning the title of Miss Galaxy Australia means Elise will fly to The Galaxy International Pageants Final to be held later this year in July, at the luxurious Caribe Royale Resort in Florida. Elise will then spend time in the USA before travelling to the UK and then to Trinidad and Tobago for Carnival in February, 2018. If you want to make friends with a horse a sweet treat rarely fails, as the Duchess of Cornwall clearly knows. A Lipizzaner stallion enjoyed a sugar lump from Camilla's hand as she visited Vienna's centuries-old Spanish Riding School yesterday for the first time since 1970. 'I normally bring my Polo mints but I've forgotten them,' she said. The Duchess of Cornwall was given a tour of the celebrated riding school on the last day of her and Charles's European tour. A Lipizzaner stallion enjoyed a sugar lump from Camilla's hand as she visited Vienna's centuries-old Spanish Riding School yesterday The duchess, a keen fan of equestrian sports, toured the stables before watching a special performance (pictured) in her honour in the Winter Riding School She armed herself with sugar lumps to tour the stables and feed the horses - and one of them stuck their tongue out to collect his treat. The duchess, a keen fan of equestrian sports, was shown around by Elisabeth Gurtler, the school's director, and toured the stables before watching a special performance in her honour in the Winter Riding School. The horses and riders put on a display of classical riding which left Camilla praising the performance. She said: 'It was wonderful. The last time I was here was in 1970.' The horses and riders put on a display of classical riding which left Camilla praising the performance She went on to tour the historic buildings in the 450-year-old Unesco-listed riding school, which takes the Spanish part of its name from the Lippizaner stallions, bred from horses originating from the Iberian peninsula. The tour ended with a drinks reception at the Ambassador's residence, where leading figures from Austrian life were invited. The last day of Charles and Camilla's European tour was spent in Vienna where they also met British and Austrian survivors of Nazi persecution when they toured the city's Jewish Museum. A shocking X-ray shows how dangerous small foods like grapes can be for children, as hundreds are hospitalised for choking every year. The round fruit was startlingly lodged in a five-year-old child's windpipe and came very close to cutting off his airway and killing him. He needed surgery under general anesthetic to remove the grape, but was luckier than the dozens of Australian children who die each year from choking. This grape was startlingly lodged in a five-year-old child's windpipe and came very close to cutting off his airway and killing him About 2,500 children aged under nine are hospitalised every year with injuries caused by foreign bodies - of which choking is the most common (stock image) Australian mother Angela Henderson - who blogs as Finlee and Me - shared the X-ray on her Facebook page, warning parents to cut up food like grapes and cherry tomatoes. 'He is VERY lucky that part of his airway was open or else this could have ended badly,' she wrote, of the child's ordeal. 'Please be mindful that not all kids chew their food, are in a rush at school to get in the playground. When in doubt just cut the damn grapes, baby tomatoes, etc.' About 2,500 children aged under nine are hospitalised every year with injuries caused by foreign bodies - of which choking is the most common. Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows about 30 children die every year from suffocation, and again choking was a major component. Doctors said grapes were so deadly because their shape and smooth texture meant they easily blocked airways and were difficult to dislodge Grapes were the third most common foods that children choked to death on, behind only lollies and hotdogs, according to U.S. and Canadian research. Doctors said grapes were so deadly because their shape and smooth texture meant they easily blocked airways and were difficult to dislodge. The number of hospital visits is considered just the tip of the iceberg as many times the food is removed by parents or others before an ambulance is needed. The Royal Childrens Hospital in Melbourne recommended parents always watch children under three while they eat, and food like grapes be chopped up to prevent choking. Mikhailla Glossat, 22, spent nine months posting blissful and honest pictures to Instagram of her pregnant belly. But on March 29, three days after giving birth to her son Foxx John Fitzgerald, he passed away from a rare infection. 'No mother and father should ever have to kiss their baby goodbye in the same week they meet them,' the Darwin-based Mikhailla wrote on her blog Wholeheartedly. Mikhailla shared her growing baby bump on Instagram because she was just so 'excited'. She and her fiance Ted had two miscarriages in 2016 before they found out they were pregnant with Foxx in July 2016. 'I couldn't wait to share with all our friends and family that we were expecting and I knew by sharing it that it would allow me to realise that it was real - it was happening for us. And to finally just relax,' she told Daily Mail Australia. Newborn baby Foxx tragically passed away after three days from the bacterial infection Mikhailla and her partner Ted were overjoyed at the birth of their first child but that quickly turned to panic when Foxx was diagnosed with Group B strep But after almost weekly pregnancy pictures Mikhailla had to give an update of a tragic kind. Baby Foxx died from Group B Strep (GBS) but it was only detected once he was born and coughed up bloody mucous. He was taken to NICU and placed on life support immediately but by this stage his condition was deteriorating. What is Group B strep? Group B streptococcus (GBS) is one of many different bacteria that normally live in our bodies. Approximately one fifth of women carry GBS without knowing or having any symptoms GBS is the most common cause of severe infection in newborns, particularly in the first week after birth (known as an early onset infection) If left untreated, it is estimated that one in every 200 babies born to women who have GBS would become ill with neonatal sepsis. Source: Babycenter.com Advertisement 'Prior to giving birth I was routinely offered a Group B Strep swab test. A simple test that finds out if you're GBS positive or negative and I tested negative at 37 weeks. 'The swabs are known to be inconsistent, one week you can test positive, the next negative but in that very moment in time I tested negative and Ill forever question why it had to be me.' 'At 38.5 weeks I went into labour. I had an all natural birth, and gave birth to my son seven hours later on March 26. 'Foxx was born healthy and fine, and we nursed and cuddled for a few hours before I got up to shower and my partner continued cuddling him while our son slept peacefully. 'He was brought back over to me and we tried nursing again before he started grunting and coughing up mucous with blood. 'He fought the infection for three days before it got too much for his little body and he went into a seizure he couldn't come out of,' Mikhailla told Daily Mail Australia. The happy couple had two previous miscarriages before carrying Foxx to full term. She is pictured here at 26 weeks pregnant Cautious from the beginning: 'I didn't get my hopes up this time knowing just how quickly things can come crashing down,' the 22-year-old said. She is pictured here at 27 weeks 'I didn't get my hopes up this time knowing just how quickly things can come crashing down. 'As we hit 12 weeks, I became more confident that this little baby was sticking around, and again as we hit 20 weeks and reached all the milestones after that 24 weeks, 28 weeks, 34 weeks. 'I never once took a moment for granted knowing just how lucky I was to be pregnant. My pregnancy almost went too perfectly. I only had one scare at 30 weeks with some pre-labour symptoms but everything turned out fine. 'He was always a little kicker that always let me know everything was okay when I needed it most,' she said. Mikhailla (pictured in her third trimester) has been posting photos to Instagram about her pregnancy for months now The little family were excited to add to their brood but losing Foxx was devastating: 'This is like an out of body experience. I can't comprehend why. Nothing else matters' Mikhailla shared a photo of baby Foxx covered in tubes to Instagram to tell her 7,800 followers about the tragic circumstances surrounding her son's death. 'Rip Baby Foxx. We love you forever, you didn't deserve any of this. You deserved all the love we had to give you. We will love you for a lifetime. 'This is like an out of body experience. I can't comprehend why. Nothing else matters. There is no time too long, or too short. I don't see faces, I don't hear voices. I'm just numb. You will never know the meaning of life, the meaning of each day and how precious it is. 'You might complain about the little things but there is far greater in this world that people are battling. My first baby, our rainbow baby. You fought hard. We will always love hard, and fight for your purpose,' the 22-year-old wrote in a caption. The young couple are now taking the time to heal from their devastating loss (pictured here at 37 weeks along) 'Although none of it feels right. The best thing for us is to try to remain positive. We will try again for a family again in the future, when the time is right,' Mikhailla told Daily Mail Australia The young couple are now taking the time to heal from their devastating loss. 'I only gave birth less than two weeks ago so my body has still been physically recovering but we have been making sure we try to get out of the house and do normal things like going for walks with our dog, going grocery shopping, movies. 'Although none of it feels right. The best thing for us is to try to remain positive. We will try again for a family again in the future, when the time is right. Right now it hurts knowing that our first baby can't be here with us when he was meant to be. The experience has changed the way the 22-year-old views motherhood. It's helping her understand just how many tragic stories of loss there are in the world. The experience has rocked their world: 'It made us realise how many people you may pass on the street and never know their story, their pain,' she said. She is pictured at 33 weeks along. 'It made us realise how many people you may pass on the street and never know their story, their pain. I've connected with so many woman who too have birthed and lost a child during the first week of birth, or even other women who have birth still born babies at full term due to GBS. 'I don't ask for much, but I ask for any pregnant woman to please ask their healthcare provider more about Group B strep during pregnancy and to not only have one swab test, but ask for a swab test in labour or what other options they have in getting the best, most accurate result. 'I would do anything to be able to change everything if I knew it would be enough,' she told Daily Mail Australia. International blogger Telaine Smith wanted to enjoy a 'lighthearted catch up' with girlfriends at her local RSL when two security officers allegedly fat shamed her. Ms Smith, 32, who lives in Hervey Bay, Queensland, posted about the experience on her Facebook account Low Carb Island which was met with users offering to boycott the club entirely. 'Tonight was meant to be a lighthearted catch up with girlfriends at the local RSL. I was happy, feeling good about life and myself and on a high,' the post began. 'As we walked up the stairs together, as the elevator was broken, the two security guards proceeded to make noises in sound to our steps, obviously not aware we could hear them.' Telaine Smith was fat shamed by two security guards at her local RSL club and hit back via a post on Facebook Those sounds were reportedly 'boom, boom, boom' and could be heard by the women as they climbed upstairs. 'We were fat shamed. This thing people so often say doesn't happen happened. What excuse has any person got to make noises in regards to someone's steps? "Boom BOOM BOOOOM" rang in my ears and laughing amongst themselves echoed far after the occurrence,' Ms Smith said. But instead of taking the insults lying down Ms Smith decided on a course of action. 'Well they picked the wrong lady. I will be following through with making them called out on their actions. I will bring awareness. 'I was left feeling worthless, belittled and humiliated. But I remembered all of the beautiful people who message me saying they feel this way from treatment in society and I stood my ground. 'For every woman out there who has been made to feel this way. I tried to keep my composure and being seen as more then "the fat girl."' Ms Smith approached one of the security guards after their meal and told him what had transpired was inhumane and disgusting. She caught the exchange on a sound bite and shared it with her followers. This isn't the first time Ms Smith has been shamed publicly. The Hervey Bay mum was expressing milk when another lady told her to put 'her f***ing tits away The security guard can be heard apologising to the Queensland mum but she said that wasn't enough. 'The old me would have gone home and taken on board their actions. She never would have spoken up as you hear me do in the video. I would feel I deserved that treatment. 'But f*** your judgement. No one has the right to make another feel worthless. I am worthy. And I will not stand by trying to be invisible anymore,' she said on Facebook. Ms Smith asks her followers to share the soundbite to 'stop the bullying' women often face. According to The Chronicle the security guards have been suspended and a formal investigation has been launched. This isn't the first time Ms Smith has been shamed publicly. The Hervey Bay mum was expressing milk when another lady told her to put 'her f***ing tits away'. An 'ordinary' mother-of-two claims she looks so much like Angelina Jolie that she is 'overwhelmed' with attention from strangers - but admits her partner gets jealous. Melissa Baizen, 34, from Hales Corners, Wisconsin, lives a regular life with her partner and two children but says her uncanny resemblance to the A-lister has been given a taste of the actress' glamorous life. Melissa admits that she is often critical of her own appearance but claims the comparison has boosted her self-esteem. Melissa Baizen says that she is overwhelmed by the attention she receives from strangers who mistake her for Angelina Jolie. Pictured: Melissa (left) and the real Angelina Jolie (right) The optical manager, whose look is constantly turning heads, describes herself as a normal girl and claims that the attention can be 'overwhelming' and 'embarrassing'. Melissa has always looked up to the film star and even dressed up as her character Maleficent for the Medieval-themed Bristol Renaissance Faire last year. Melissa said: 'I do get recognised. I get stared at quite a lot. I find it funny. It's quite surreal. She has always been an idol of mine. It's crazy to be compared to her. Melissa says she was always critical of her looks but the comparison to the Hollywood star has helped to boost her confidence The mother-of-two is a big fan of Angelina Jolie and says that she particularly admires her humanitarian work 'I've always been hard on myself. Some days I see it but others I don't think I look like her. I wish I had her smile, I hate my teeth. 'I have looked up to her quite a lot. I like her movies but I admire her the most for her humanitarian work. 'My personality is completely different but a lot of people say I really look like her. I think I'm probably a bit more animated than her and not so serious.' Melissa dressed up as Maleficent before for the Bristol Renaissance Faire (pictured) and was approached by many people there Melissa is a fan of Jolie's films and her favourites are The Changeling and Beyond Borders as she admires the strong female lead character she plays. Melissa said: 'I have dressed up as Maleficent before for the Bristol Renaissance Faire and a lot of people were coming up to me. 'It's quite overwhelming. I get a taste of what it's like to be her. It's nice and I'm sure you would get used to it but I don't think it's on the cards for me. I'm just a normal girl. 'It's helped my confidence a lot. I started being compared to her in my late teens but more recently I have been compared to her more - I'm not sure why. Melissa says she was first compared to the star in her teens and has been compared to her more and more as she got older Melissa says she is referred to as the actress in work which she admits is a little embarassing While Melissa finds the attention a little overwhelming she says that her partner isn't a fan of it and admits that she thinks he is jealous 'My friends and family agree that I look like her. I always get called Angelina Jolie at work, it's quite embarrassing.' While Melissa says that she finds the attention occasionally embarrassing she also finds it to be a problem for her partner. She added: 'I don't think my partner likes all of the attention. He's okay with it but I think he does get a little bit jealous he would never say it but I think deep down he does. 'I've never pretended to be her but maybe I will try it one day, I might get something out of it. 'I admire her as she is a confident and strong woman. I think a lot of women strive to be that way.' Lord Snowdon's former lover and their child joined the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh at a thanksgiving service held in honour of the late celebrity photographer today. The journalist Melanie Cable-Alexander and her son Jasper attended the service at St Margaret's Church, Westminster Abbey, which was held to celebrate the life and work of Lord Snowdon, who died peacefully at home in January at 86. The man born Antony Armstrong-Jones was remembered today by all five of his children, including David Armstrong-Jones and Lady Sarah Chatto, his son and daughter with Princess Margaret, to whom he was married for 18 years. Also there were Lady Frances von Hofmannsthal, Lord Snowdon's daughter from his second marriage to TV producer Lucy Lindsay-Hogg, and Polly Fry, the daughter it emerged he'd fathered before his wedding to the Queen's sister in 1960. Scroll down for video The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh join mourners including Lord Snowdon's children David Armstrong-Jones (second left) and Lady Sarah Chatto (far right) at Westminster Abbey Lord Snowdon's former lover Melanie Cable-Alexander, pictured with their love child Jasper, joined royals at the service at Westminster Abbey this morning Her Majesty greets the Earl of Snowdon, far left, and his daughter Lady Margarita Armstrong-Jones, following the service in central London this morning The Queen looked sombre as she left the abbey following the service just before midday, wearing an old purple coat dress with a matching hat adorned with flowers Lord Snowdon and Princess Margaret in New York in 1965 - they were married for 18 years The Duke of Cambridge joined his grandparents at today's service. Wearing a vibrant purple coat with black velvet trim, the Queen managed a smile as she left the church following the service just before midday, before stopping to greet Lord Snowdon's granddaughter, Lady Margarita Armstrong-Jones, 14. According to the monarchy's website there are 'no obligatory codes of behaviour when meeting The Queen' - but being the monarch's great-niece affords Lady Margarita a less formal approach to greeting the monarch. Her Majesty, who will turn 91 later this month, has previously worn the purple coat at a service to celebrate 60 years of the Duke of Edinburgh's Award in November 2016. More than 600 people attended today's service which was led by the Very Reverend Dr John Hall, Dean of Westminster on Friday morning. Early arrivals included The Queen's nephew Viscount David Linley, playwright Tom Stoppard, Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman and presenter Stephen Fry. Sir Peter Blake and Lord George Carey the former Archbishop of Canterbury were also in attendance. The Eton-educated photographer took portraits of some of the most famous faces of the 20th century, from Diana, Princess of Wales to Jack Nicholson and Elizabeth Taylor, in a career that lasted more than six decades. Lady Frances von Hofmannsthal, Lord Snowdon's daughter with his second wife, and her husband Rodolphe von Hofmannsthal, arrive for the service of thanksgiving in London today David Armstrong-Jones and Lady Sarah Chatto leave Westminser Abbey following the Service of Thanksgiving for the life and work of their father, Lord Snowdon, who died on January 13 The Duke of Cambridge was seen chatting to the new Earl of Snowdon's wife Serena following the service. More than 600 people attended the service led by the Very Reverend Dr John Hall William looked to be in good spirits as he spoke to Serena outside the abbey this morning, however his wife the Duchess of Cambridge was nowhere to be seen A man who 'never quite played by the rules': The colourful love life of Lord Snowdon Lord Snowdon made his name thanks to his intimate portraits of the beautiful, the rich and the royal. But his colourful love life garnered even more attention than his photographs. As well as David Armstrong-Jones and Lady Sarah Chatto, his children from his 18-year marriage to Princess Margaret, the service was attended by two daughters and a son from other relationships - Lady Frances von Hofmannsthal, Jasper Cable-Alexander and Polly Fry. Princess Margaret and Antony Armstrong-Jones (Lord Snowdon) with the Royal Family on Buckingham Palace's balcony following their wedding at Westminster Abbey Polly Fry is the daughter Lord Snowdon fathered shortly before his 18 year marriage to Princess Margaret. Polly was raised as the daughter of inventor Jeremy Fry and his first wife, Camilla, but it emerged in 2004 that a DNA test had proved the photographer was her father. Lord Snowdon's welcomed a son and a daughter during his marriage to the Queen's sister, David, the 2nd Earl of Snowdon, and Sarah. Lord Snowdon is said to have had a torrid affair with the debutante and model Lady Jacqueline Rufus-Isaacs Lady Frances von Hofmannsthal is his daughter with his second wife, the TV producer Lucy Lindsay-Hogg. Jasper Cable-Alexander is the celebrity photographer's fifth child, the product of his year-long affair with the journalist Melanie Cable-Alexander. All five were in the congregation to hear glowing tributes to their father at today's service. Lord Snowdon with his second wife, TV producer Lucy Lindsay-Hogg. The couple divorced in 2000 The opera director Patrick Kinmonth described him as a man who 'never quite played by the rules', but who was a 'delightful friend and kindred spirit'. Actor and writer Stephen Fry also paid tribute to Lord Snowdon, saying he was a 'very gentle and tender man, he was obstinate as well which made him the great photographer he was'. Anne De Courcy's explosive biography of the photographer exposed details of Snowdon's wild affairs during his marriage to Princess Margaret - including a dalliance with debutante Lady Jacqueline Rufus Isaacs, the daughter of the Marquess of Reading. Advertisement During the service today, Paralympic gold medal winner Baroness Grey-Thompson - a trustee of the disability charity Snowdon Trust - paid tribute to Lord Snowdon's work campaigning for disabled people. She said Lord Snowdon, whose leg was damaged by polio in his childhood, had helped 'many, many thousands' of disabled people through his work and 'highlighted the issues that affected people like me'. Baroness Grey-Thompson recalled hearing his name for the first time, and said when she asked her father who he was, he told her: 'This might be the year that things change for disabled people.' 'Many people thought that people like me didn't need an education but here was someone with immense wit, wisdom and charm who talked about education ... someone with a voice and a platform.' David Armstrong-Jones, the new Earl of Snowdon - also known as David Linley - greets a guest at the service of thanksgiving for this father this morning She added: 'Thanks to the work of Lord Snowdon I now see thousands and thousands of people just like me.' Patrick Kinmonth, an opera director, designer and writer, also read a tribute to Lord Snowdon during the service. He said he was a man who 'never quite played by the rules', but who was a 'delightful friend and kindred spirit'. Mr Kinmonth said the pair would 'contemplate his latest scrape' over a glass of wine, and despite his 'sometimes maddening personal twists and turns ... in the end, those of us under his spell simply soldiered on and forgave him - for he gave us so very much in return'. 'Tony was not a man of words but of pictures and it's not so much his voice that we will miss but his eye ... he taught us to see the world as he wanted it - and it's a better world, a world of compassion.' Actor and presenter Stephen Fry arrives for the service of thanksgiving in honour of British photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones at Westminster Abbey this morning The playwright Alan Bennett was photographed arriving at Westminster Abbey The Director-General of the BBC, Tony Hall, attended today's service in London Despite Lord Snowdon's work, it is his marriage to the Queen's sister Princess Margaret in 1960, a union that ended in divorce 18 years later, for which he is remembered. The couple had two children: David, now the second Earl of Snowdon, and Lady Sarah Chatto before they divorced in 1978. That year he married Lucy Lindsay-Hogg but after having a daughter she left him weeks before Country Life journalist Melanie Cable-Alexander bore him a son, and they divorced in September 2000. Lord Snowdon began his career in 1952 as a society photographer for Tatler magazine and his skill at taking portraits saw him commissioned to capture the official images of the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh for their 1957 tour of Canada. Lord Snowdon married the Queen's sister Princess Margaret in 1960. Westminster Abbey this morning tweeted a link to the order of service from the couple's nuptials He met Margaret through his work and their marriage in 1960 heralded the start of a decade that would be dubbed the swinging 60s and sweep away stuffy social conventions. It is said Lord Snowdon remained close to the monarchy, and is the only photographer to have had sittings with the Queen throughout her long reign. He was a keen designer, creating the plans for London Zoo's aviary, built in 1965 and now grade II listed, and was responsible for the design of the Prince of Wales' 1969 investiture ceremony at Caernarfon Castle. He also championed the cause of disabled people, creating a mobilised platform to give them greater mobility and sitting on a number of bodies and organisations. Lord Snowdon was frail in his later years, using a wheelchair or sticks because of a recurrence of his childhood polio and he retired from the House of Lords in March 2016. They dont ride goats but they do have to bare one breast and roll a trouser leg up. Theyre not meant to use their friendships for career gain, but they do have a strange handshake. And they dont appear to be striving for world domination theyre far too busy learning lines for their countless ceremonies. The Freemasons have long been seen as a shadowy organisation, accused of plotting to take over the world. A new series delves inside the shadowy world of the Freemasons. Pictured: The first degree salute, as recreated in 1989 documentary Inside The Brotherhood The pedigree of some past Masons including Winston Churchill, the Duke of Wellington, Lord Kitchener, Kings Edward VII, Edward VIII and George VI, and Prince Philip, a Navy Lodge Mason for more than 60 years has even led to accusations that they have a stranglehold on the Establishment. So a new documentary about this enigmatic fraternity is fascinating, even if the truth about the Masons is rather prosaic. It turns out its a bit of a glorified dinner club. The publics perception of us isnt realistic at all, says Jonathan Spence. The former banker is one of three deputies to the Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England, who happens to be the Queens cousin, the Duke of Kent, a Freemason for 50 years. Weve thought about confronting the myths for a long time. If we show how it really is for example we have a masonic handshake but its only for ceremonial use then people might understand us more. The Grand Lodge celebrates its 300th anniversary this year so the five-part Sky 1 series comes at an opportune time. The Duke of Kent who is the Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England Freemasonry has had a policy of more openness over the past 30 years to try to show people what were really about, says Jonathan. And as this is our tricentenary it seemed like a good time to let the cameras in. Freemasonry was originally based on guilds created by stonemasons in the 14th century. Many of the traditions go back to those days; the baring of the breast and rolled-up trouser leg, both part of the initiation ceremony, are meant to prove the newcomer is a healthy man. As ancient stonemasons travelled from job to job, the handshakes were created to recognise a mans experience, with each level of mason using a different handshake. Gloves and aprons, which were worn by the stonemasons for protection, are still worn today and become more decorated as a Mason climbs the ladder within the organisation. The square and compasses, trowel and plumb level, tools that every stonemason needed, are now internationally recognised insignia of the Masons. The basic tenets of the Masons are that theyre all equal (which is why they call each other brother) and that today, instead of working with stone, theyre working on themselves to make good men better. As they work harder on themselves, through charitable work for example, they climb up the hierarchy. Each man goes through three separate degrees during his time with the Masons Apprentice, Journeyman and Master and for the first time some of the rituals, which take place at Masonic Lodge meetings around the country, have been filmed. The ceremonies mirror the principles of Freemasonry which are brotherly love, relief and truth, says Garry Hacking, a nurse who works with 50 women and finds the Masons have given him some much-needed male company. The friendship is a big part of it for me but the ceremonies are important too. Theyre profound. To become a Mason, you can either apply online or another Mason can recommend you. There are six million members worldwide, with 200,000 in England and Wales, meetings range from twice a week to four times a year and Masons can be members of several lodges, or visit new ones while travelling. Membership here peaked at 300,000 after the First World War as men joined to recreate the brotherhood theyd found in the trenches. The group went underground in the 30s when it was targeted by fascists and Nazis; up to 200,000 European Freemasons died in concentration camps. When we first started making this series I didnt understand why, in the 21st century, people would want to join something that was about handshakes and aprons and that was men-only, says Emma Read, the shows executive producer. It felt really anachronistic, so were looking at what its relevance is in the 21st century. But its been a real eye-opener. Some are there for the tradition but for many its about making new friends. Its the oldest social network in the world. We meet various Masons in the show who reveal how the organisation has helped them through tough times such as the death of a partner or serious illness. The Freemasons may be a traditional institution but its also a major support network for men and I was taken aback by that, says Emma, who spent a year shadowing them. When youve fallen on hard times emotionally or physically you have a real group of friends you can turn to. Coming out of the show I thought it was a force for good. Inside The Freemasons starts on 17 April on Sky 1. For more information on the Masons visit ugle.org.uk. Outspoken and controversial blogger Constance Hall, 32, has split from her husband. The Perth-based mother made the announcement in her latest blog post on Thursday claiming her and her estranged husband Bill Mahon 'made the decision to go our own ways'. 'We stopped enjoying each other and the kids stopped seeing happiness in our love, only contempt,' she said. 'I find my period really intuitive. Last week I had no idea how many arseholes I'm surrounded by, my period just enlightened me,' Ms Hall captioned this photo 'This decision wasn't made lightly, obviously he has been the love of my life but we just weren't making each other happy anymore.' 'I was once warned that if you make yourselves redundant to each other, you won't find a reason to stay together. I guess that kind of happened to Bill and I.' The mother-of-four said her children were a huge motivation behind the decision. 'The back and forth wasn't good for the kids, they grew resilient to it,' she said. 'Look who can't live without his trophy wife. That's right, naked selfies wore him down,' she wrote alongside this photo of her and her husband Bill The Perth-based blogger, who is known for her controversial posts, said she was apprehensive to share news of her relationship break down online because she wasn't ready for a barrage of negative comments The Perth-based blogger, who is known for her controversial posts, said she was apprehensive to share news of her relationship break down because she wasn't ready for the barrage of negative comments. When she announced her and Bill were 'considering a break' last year, she said she was the victim of disgusting comments from complete strangers online. 'I was shot down with comments like "I would leave you too, you overshare every bit of your marriage" and "I can't blame him, you clearly don't take pride in your home or body" she said. When she announced her and Bill were 'considering a break' last year, she said she was the victim of disgusting comments from complete strangers online Constance Hall pictured with her husband Bill and two of her children in Perth In her tell-all blog post, Ms Hall claimed people always blamed the woman when two people got a divorce In her tell-all blog post on Thursday, Ms Hall claimed people always blamed the woman when two people got a divorce. 'She cheated because she's a sl**, he cheated because she never f***** him,' she said. Ms Hall is well-known for her willingness to share details about her private life. 'Happy Valentine's Day Queens and Kings. Have a beautiful day. But please don't let social media love announcements disappoint your own personal relationships,' Ms Hall wrote earlier this year In August Ms Hall posted to her one million followers that her and Bill were 'in a really shitty place'. 'I'm in a hotel room bathroom crying my eyes out on the floor,' she posted to her one million Facebook followers. 'I packed my bags and the kids up yesterday and left. 'I don't know if we will pull through this time, we just can't stop fighting. My heart is literally stomped on.' 'We had sex this morning. It was the first time in two months,' Constance Hall wrote alongside this photo Just four months later, she wrote a post declaring her love for him on their sixth wedding anniversary. 'Until death, or infidelity or alcoholism or I move out because your snoring is literally taking over the world,' she said. 'I love you. And you love me, despite being 15kgs heavier, having greyer hair and giving up shaving. You love me.' A glamorous looking Michaella McCollum was seen soaking up the evening sun while celebrating the anniversary of her prison release in Ibiza. The 24-year-old 'Peru Two' drug mule from County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, hit headlines when she was jailed in Peru in 2013 for attempting to smuggle 1.5 million of cocaine out of the country to Spain with Melissa Reid. But Michaella, who has since ditched her brunette hair donut in favour of a sleek blonde style, appears to have put her troubles firmly behind her as she enjoys a sun-soaked holiday on the Balearic party isle. Walking along the harbour with a blonde pal this week, Michaella covered her modesty with nipple pasties worn under her lace cropped bralet as she admired luxury yachts. One-time drugs mule Michaella McCollum was spotted back in Ibiza this week, no doubt celebrating anniversary of getting out of jail last March after serving half her jail term One half of the 'Peru Two', Michaella sported a set of nipple pasties underneath her cropped lace bralet as she wandered along the harbour of the Spanish party isle The former prisoner jetted to Spain earlier in the week for the first time since she and Reid agreed to try and bring in the drugs at the beginning of August 2013 - just two months after arriving on Ibiza to work as a dancer in a bar. She has clearly been enjoying her newfound freedom since her release, after a holiday earlier this year to Marbella. McCollum and Reid - dubbed the 'Peru Two' were each sentenced to six years and eight months in jail after admitting to trying to smuggle cocaine out of the country. The pair, who initially protested their innocence, were found in possession of 11kg of cocaine hidden inside food packets in their luggage as they prepared to board a flight from Lima to Madrid. McCollum was released on parole in March 2016 after serving less than half of her sentence but was initially required to stay in Peru, where she carried out voluntary work. Smiling for the cameras, Michaella, who appeared keen to put her troubled past behind her, and her pal looked very glamorous in matching navy outfits and heels The sight of some luxury yachts moored in the harbour had the girls snapping away on their phones. It has been a year since Michaella was released from jail The duo were sure to get pictures from every angle. Turning back to back, the two women made sure to shielf their eyes from the sun Although she was wearing a see-through lace bra top, Michaella wore skin coloured cover ups visible underneath Reid was released from prison in June last year, flying back to Scotland shortly afterwards. Michaella's holiday in the Spanish sun comes after she was reportedly offered 250,000 to reveal her prison hell in a tell-all book. It emerged last month McCollum - who was released from prison in March last year - is in the final stages of negotiation to write a book about her experience in jail according to the Sun. Since her release, she has been trying to build up her profile and image. Earlier this week, it was revealed that she had agreed a six-figure deal to present a crime TV documentary which will see her examine unsolved or unusual crime cases. A high school student was left heartbroken after she was barred from attending her senior prom because her dress showed her ankles. Amari Williams, who goes to Carencro High School in Lafayette, Louisiana, was looking forward to the dance Saturday, especially after skipping her junior prom so the senior event would feel more special. The teenager saved her own money to get a custom-made dress and spent the afternoon getting ready - but she never got to enjoy her big night. Scroll down for video 'Not formal': High school senior Amari Williams (pictured), of Lafayette, Louisiana, was barred from attending her prom Saturday because her dress didn't go all the way to the floor School officials deemed that her dress violated the dress code because it was not touching the floor. Amari told KLFY she had gotten prior approval to wear the design, but was still turned away the night of the dance. 'I went to my Principal because my mom said to get it approved to make sure it was okay. So, I got it approved, I got it checked by her and she said it was fine,' she told the network. But Amari said it was the same person, Principal Mary Qualey, who told her on the night of the dance that her dress wasn't in keeping with the dress code. 'Hearing from Ms Qualey, the person who approved it, hearing her say I can't get in, that was heartbreaking because you approved it but now you're saying something totally different.' Heartbreak: The teenager had declined to attend her junior prom to make the senior dance even more special and saved up her own money to get a custom-made dress Help: The teenager (left) called her mother, Troynetta Williams (right), who arrived to the school with pins and a pair of scissors - but she couldn't increase the length of the dress The teenager called her mother, Troynetta Williams, who arrived to the school with pins and a pair of scissors, ready to make any alterations necessary so her daughter would get to enjoy her evening. But there was nothing she could do to increase the length of the gown. School officials, meanwhile, maintain the dress code was clear and that students had been sent reminders of the 'formal' attire requirement. 'The length has to be all the way to the ground, all the way around; kind of easy to remember,' Lafayette Parish School System Chief Administrative Officer Joe Craig said. 'In this case, the dress was not all the way to the ground and on that basis, it wasn't considered a formal dress.' But Amari's mother suggested the style of the dress might have played a part in her daughter's dismissal. 'I don't know if it was because of the type of dress that it was. She was the only one that had an African-style dress,' she told Yahoo Style. Rules: Officials maintain the dress code at Carencro High School (pictured) was clear and that students had been sent reminders of the 'formal' attire requirement The mother said she spotted other students whose outfits didn't seem to comply with the rules. 'The dress code, when I looked over it, it did mention that the dress had to be floor length, and they considered it not formal since it wasn't the same length all the way around,' she said. 'But then I brought it to [the principal's] attention that some of the rules in the dress-code policy also state that midriffs, high splits, or low back dresses aren't allowed. 'As I'd been standing there, I saw she'd been allowing all those types of dresses into prom, but here she denies my daughter, and she's dressed appropriately, not showing any skin or anything inappropriate at all. Her response to me was she used her own judgement.' Qualey, who told KLFY she didn't remember approving a dress that didn't comply with the school's rules, suggested that students should get written approval for their outfits to avoid future issues. Dogs may be man's best friend, but cats are fashion's. Despite the 'cat lady' stereotype, felines actually have a pretty strong link to the fashion world, with kitty prints, accents and motifs popping up on a slew of designer merch. And now, cats even have their own magazine, thanks to Puss Puss: a luxury lifestyle mag for people who are crazy for cats. Meow! Puss Puss magazine is a publication for fashionable cat lovers (pictured: Grace Coddington) Wearing kitten heels: Celebrities including Chloe Sevigny (pictured) have appeared, and are always pictured with a feline companion Published twice a year in the UK but also available online and on some US newsstands Puss Puss sets out to 'debunk the vision of the crazy cat lady covered in cat hair,' founder and editor-in-chief Maria Joudina-Robinson told New York Magazine's The Cut. 'I feel like most people who like cats aren't like that, and are in fact very fabulous and amazing: stylists, photographers, artists, loads of creative people. The magazine isnt really about cats, it's more about cat lovers.' Just look at past famous faces that have graced Puss Puss's pages since in launched in late 2014, including Chloe Sevigny, Soko, Tyler, the Creator, and Grace Coddington (with her cat Pumpkin). Chinese artist Ai Weiwei even covered the first issue. Cat lady: The magazine was founded in 2004 by UK-based editor-in-chief Maria Joudina-Robinson (pictured: Tyler, the Creator) Then there's Choupette, the very chic cat of Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld whom Maria dream of featuring in an upcoming issue. (Karl, that is though Choupette would likely be welcome as well). 'I love cats and I love magazines, so Puss Puss is a way for me to combine the two things I love. I also think our approach allows us to have lots of varied stories so well never run out of content,' Maria told MagCulture in 2014. But make no mistake, Maria: The magazine isn't focused on kitschy, Hello-Kitty-esque 'twee cat things' Obsessed: Every story and feature in the magazine is somehow related to cats, with celebrity chef Gizzi Erskine showing off her love of food and felines in this image Feline fashionable! The founder also said that casting cats for photoshoots is easy because they are all chic 'We're not about dressing cats up in funny outfits. 'here's definitely a space for it in the world and especially on the internet, but what we do is a totally different end of the spectrum,' she told The Cut. 'It's quite conceptual. If we took the idea of cats literally we would run out of content pretty quickly, and if we just put cats in every photo shoot it would be a little bit boring and repetitive.' Rather, every piece, from fashion photoshoots to editorial features, is connected to cats in some way but the connection can be a bit more abstract. Cats also appear in the fashion and beauty photoshoots; her own cat has been featured twice And he can bring Choupette, of course: She hopes to feature Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld - and his beloved cat, no doubt - in a future issue 'I think it's even in the language; there are so many expressions that are to do with fashion or beauty that come from cats: kitten heels, the feline flick,' she said. 'If someone is told that they're quite feline, they'll take it as a compliment, but if you tell them they're canine, they'll probably going to get offended. 'The way cats move, how they look theyre just really beautiful, elegant creatures, and fashion is obviously always inspired by things that are beautiful and elegant. It's just kind of a no-brainer really.' She's included actual cats in fashion and beauty shoots, and says casting them is easy because 'all cats are stylish I think'. Her own kitty has been in two of five issues so far, but admittedly 'wasn't very happy about it'. A construction company attempted to make amends for demolished part of the wrong house by buying them a 'sorry' cake from grocery store. Roy Co. Roofing in Roy, Washington supposedly made the error two weeks ago, tearing a roof off a house that turned out to be the wrong one, due to a mistake on the work order. To make it up to the family of the mistakenly-roofless house, the owner of the company went to his local supermarket to buy them a cake, and filmed the shopping trip for a video he posted on YouTube. Uh, whoops! A video by Roy Co. Roofing shows a construction worker buying a cake for a family after accidentally ripping the roof of their house It's unclear if the mistake was actually made or if the video is merely a joke, as Roy Co. Roofing posts a lot of funny pictures and posts detailing mistakes and poor workmanship. In fact, the same week as the roofing incident, they wrote on Facebook: 'We recently had a complaint from a client about using bubble gum instead of nails... if you do not like our building methods, you can go shove a cactus in your a***.' Real or not, the idea as tickled the funny bones of thousands online. Introducing the video, the owner explains that his co-worker Chad made the major error that led to the wrong house being torn into. Nice message: He had the cake decorated with the words 'Sorry that I accidentally removed your roof' Funny: The grocery store workers seemed amused by his request 'The people who owned the house were extremely upset, so I'm hoping this cake will make up for the $7,500 in damages. Fingers crossed!' In the clip, he can be seen approaching the bakery and picking up a cake with orange and yellow frosting. He asks the young woman working behind the counter how long of a message she can fit on top, and asks her to write: 'Sorry that I accidentally removed your roof.' When the woman behind the counter tells one of her co-workers what happened, the man starts getting questions about the odd incident. Oh no! The man said they were supposed to take the roof off another house Joke: The video was likely a joke, and even ends with an image of the cake cut into slices, indicating it wasn't actually delivered to anyone 'It's not the first time,' he says. According to the man, the cake was a success, because after delivering it he hadn't heard back from the family. 'I don't think I'm gonna have to get a roof for these people,' he says. 'The weird thing is, though.' Roy Co. has posted other jokey messages in the past. In January, they wrote: 'Due to the threat of being sued by the BBB, we need to issue a recall on the construction of the last five homes we have built.' Soft cheeses, raw eggs and alcohol are something most of us would know are unsuitable for pregnant women - however, it seems that there are many more foods to be wary of. Public health nutritionist Dr Emma Derbyshire has revealed to the MailOnline the very surprising snacks that should be avoided by all pregnant women. From the pizza topping that could harm a developing baby to the sweet treat that could increase the risk of still birth, Dr Derbyshire talks us through the foods to be avoided. Dr Emma Derbyshire has revealed the ten surprising foods that should be avoided by all pregnant women including cantaloupe melons which can increase the risk of a miscarriage Unpasteurized fruit or vegetable juice Whilst you may think you are doing yourself and the baby good drinking fruit and veg. concoctions, the unpasteurized variety could be doing more harm than good. Unpasteurized fruit and vegetable juice can contain bacteria that can be harmful to those with weakened immune systems which includes pregnant women. This includes fresh-squeezed juices sold at farmer's markets, juice bars or at roadside stands. So take care to avoid these. Pate (even the vegetable variety) If pregnant, you should avoid spreading pate on your toast. This can contain bacteria known as listeria monocytogenes. Eating up these can lead to listeriosis (typically flu-like symptom, sometimes vomiting and diarrhoea) which is potentially very dangerous in pregnancy, driving up miscarriage and even stillborn risk, as well as general illness in a newborn baby. I swapped this instead of smoked salmon as that's ok to eat in the UK. Unpateurized fruit and vegetable juices can also be harmful as they contain bacteria that can be harmful to those with weakened immune systems which includes pregnant women Alfalfa sprouts Avoid sprinkling these into your stir fry in pregnancy. The alfalfa seed is another great host for bacteria. Salmonella, Listeria, and E. coli., in particular, like to fester in these sprouts. No amount of cooking is guaranteed to kill these so they are best avoided. Full stop. Cantaloupe melons Cantaloupe is a type of muskmelon that has been cultivated. Whilst these are typically 90 per cent H20, nine per cent carbohydrates and one per cent protein and fat, unfortunately the dreaded listeria monocytogenes bacteria can also invade their somewhat bumpy rinds. So, not washing the rinds or nibbling on the rind unintendedly can all pose a risk and increase miscarriage risk. Pre-cooked hot dogs If you are out and about and fancying one of those pre-cooked hot dogs with a blob of ketchup and mustard - think twice if you are pregnant. These sausages can be another source of listeria monocytogenes. AND WHAT YOU SHOULD BE EATING Dr Derbyshire says that while you don't exactly need to be eating for two (just an extra 200 calories in the 3rd trimester) there are some foods worth tucking into while pregnant. Avocados packed with 20 different nutrients, eggs encased with 13 essential vitamins and minerals, lean red meat providing high quality protein and heme iron in its most readily absorbed form, along with oily fish (up to 2 weekly portions) for its essential omega-3 fatty acids are just a few examples of foods that are great to eat in pregnancy. Advertisement They need to be reheated to very high temperatures - to around 160 degrees F in order to kill off festering listeria. Quite often, heating methods just don't cut it, so it's not worth the craving. Salami/ Pepperoni Whilst lean red meat is an important source of high quality protein, well absorbed iron and vitamin B12, pregnant women are advised against eating salami or pepperoni meats, These are quite different in that they tend to contain preservatives called nitrates which could be harmful to the developing bay. Their salt levels are also exceptionally high which can be harmful for mother and baby. So if you are fancying that spicy dried sausage, perhaps think again. Hollandaise sauce This Dutch sauce may be great over asparagus tips but it's not great to eat in pregnancy. Typically made with raw eggs this yellow runny sauce poses a risk of Salmonella so could be potentially very dangerous to a pregnant woman. Eggnog, homemade ice creams and mayonnaises can also be made with raw eggs so watch out for these too. Tiramisu Speaking of raw eggs and Salmonella risk, these can also be found in popular desserts too. Tiramisu is one of these, along with meringues and mousses. So if you are off for a meal out with a baby bump look out for other options on the dessert menu. Tuna Tuna can be eaten in pregnancy but just not too much. Ideally no more than two tuna steaks (140g per steak) or four 140g cans per week should be eaten. This is because tuna can contain mercury which can harm the baby's developing nervous system. Ideally, if you are going to eat tuna when pregnant try to eat the fresh variety as this has more omega-3 fatty acids which the canning processes can remove. Liquorice Be it in the chewy black sweet form or in tea Licorice (Glycyrrhiza glabra) contains the active ingredient glycyrrhiza. Studies suggest that taking this in pregnancy can increase the risk of stillbirth. It's not exactly known why but its not worth the risk. So, that box of liquorice allsorts will just have to go on hold for nine months. More than 250,000 patients had to change GPs last year double the figure of two years ago as more doctors retire, move abroad or quit. In many cases, patients were assigned to a new doctor after surgeries merged, but others were removed from surgery lists altogether when their practice closed leaving soaring numbers without a GP. Last year, an unprecedented 58 surgeries closed. A further 34 merged, in which case patients are meant to be transferred automatically to a new register. But they will often have to travel miles further to the next town or village and be under the care of a new GP. More than 250,000 patients had to change GPs last year double the figure of two years ago as more doctors retire, move abroad or quit Surgery closures leave patients in limbo and have a knock-on effect on nearby practices, which may have to take on thousands of extra people. Most are already struggling to cope with the pressures of treating their own patients, and appointment waiting times are lengthening. A freedom of information request from the GPs magazine Pulse revealed that 92 surgeries closed or merged in 2016, affecting 265,560 patients. This is up from the 221,000 patients displaced by the 72 surgeries that closed or merged in 2015. But it has more than doubled since 2014 when 43 surgeries closed or merged, affecting 104,000 patients. A Pulse spokesman said the closure rates were unprecedented, having been merely a trickle prior to 2013. Only last week the head of the NHS, Simon Stevens, promised to prioritise GP services at the expense of routine hospital operations and tests. He pledged that by 2019 all patients would have access to weekend and evening appointments to help reduce the demand on struggling A&E units. Mr Stevens wants to recruit an extra 5,000 GPs by 2020 and invest a further 2.4billion into surgeries over the next four years. But latest Health Service figures show that on average, 150 family doctors are quitting each month, raising doubts that his ambitious plans will be met. On top of the GP exodus, surgeries are under severe pressure from immigration and the ageing population. Waiting times are growing and many practices are completely booked for up to four weeks. Last July, the Mail reported how millions of patients deemed too healthy because they had not seen a GP for five years could be dropped by their surgery to free up space on practice lists. A freedom of information request from the GPs magazine Pulse revealed that 92 surgeries closed or merged in 2016, affecting 265,560 patients Yesterday, Lib Dem health spokesman Norman Lamb said: This is damning evidence of a system that is falling apart at the seams. The system is at breaking point, bearing the brunt of the chronic under-funding of social care and preventive services. General practice is buckling under the strain of rising demand for care and massive challenges in recruitment. Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard, chairman of the Royal College of GPs, said: Too many practices are being forced to close because GPs and their teams can no longer cope with ever-growing patient demand without the necessary funding and workforce to deal with it. This has serious consequences for patient safety and the wellbeing of hard-working family doctors and their practice teams. Pulse obtained the figures from Freedom of Information requests to all 209 clinical commissioning groups, which each include all GP practices in different areas. Dr Richard Vautrey, deputy chairman of the British Medical Associations GP committee, said: Despite repeated and clear warnings by the BMA, a decade of underinvestment and failure by successive governments to take the growing workload and workforce crisis seriously has led to this situation. Labour health spokesman Jonathan Ashworth said: These are startling revelations. A Government who knew how to manage the NHS properly would be getting a grip. But instead we get incompetence. An NHS England spokesman said: All NHS patients wanting to register with a GP practice are guaranteed to be able to do so, and we have increased investment in general practice by 1billion to improve services and boost GP numbers. These figures dont reflect the full picture as they include patients whose records automatically transfer after a merger and therefore dont have to change practice. One in three hospital trusts are flouting government guidelines designed to make it easier for patients to pay parking fees One in three hospital trusts are flouting government guidelines designed to make it easier for patients to pay parking fees, a report claims. Many hospitals have been accused of adding to the stress of patients and visitors by forcing them to carry bundles of change to park their car, often paying for longer than they actually need. Information provided by all but 16 hospital trusts in England reveals that 38 per cent offer no option to pay by card at any of their sites. And 32 per cent do not allow drivers to pay when they leave the car park. This means they risk either paying too much if they overestimate the length of their appointment, or having to run out to buy another ticket. The RAC, which lodged a freedom of information request, said many trusts were in breach of guidelines issued by Jeremy Hunt in 2014. The Health Secretary called for hospitals to operate pay-on-exit parking regimes rather than pay-and-display for a fixed period and said fees for drivers visiting seriously ill patients should be cut or axed. He said hospitals should make parking convenient, and waive fines if visitors or patients overstay through no fault of their own. Simon Williams of the RAC said: Anyone arriving at hospital ... has far more important things to worry about than paying for parking. It is for that very reason that things should be made as stress-free as possible. These figures show that in many cases it is still too difficult for people to pay to park when they make a visit to a hospital in England, with drivers still expected to carry pocketfuls of change ... despite the advent first of credit and debit card payments, and now contactless and mobile payment technology. Among the trusts which do not allow parking payment on exit are Berkshire Healthcare and Greater Manchester West Mental Health, the RAC said. Hospital parking charges which brought in 120million in 2015/16 are hugely unpopular, with critics dubbing them a tax on sick people. They have been scrapped in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The decision to slash sugar levels in Lucozade may be putting the lives of diabetics at risk. Sufferers of low blood sugar spells have long been advised to consume a small amount of the energy drink to stop them from developing hypoglycemia the medical term for low blood sugar as it can lead to a diabetic coma. Left untreated, it can be fatal. Lucozade's formula was changed at the start of this month in response to the Governments crackdown on obesity. This could leave those who are unaware at risk of death if they don't check its nutritional label before consumption, experts warn. Patients experiencing a dizzy spell are advised to drink 20g of sugar to restore their blood levels. This used to be the equivalent of 100ml of Lucozade Energy Original. The new recipe with its slashed sugar content of 8.9g per 100ml will mean patients need to consume double that amount to fluctuate their levels. But for a period of time, there will be both old and new stock of Lucozade on sale, so patients will need to check the label before they buy. Sufferers of low blood sugar spells have long been advised to consume a small amount of Lucozade Energy Original to restore them. But the popular product's formula was changed at the start of this month in response to the Government's ongoing crackdown on obesity Most people display symptoms of hypoglycemic condition before they fall, allowing them to boost their levels. But others are unaware and get no warning signs, according to The Diabetes Times. Professor Alan Sinclair, an expert in diabetes in older people at Aston University, said: The decision to lower the amount of sugar in Lucozade is seen as a positive attempt by the drinks industry to lower obesity and diabetes risk. 'But it may be a worrying development for those people with diabetes who employ Lucozade to rapidly treat hypoglycaemic episodes that often arise as an unwanted side-effect of their diabetes treatment. 'For many people with diabetes particularly those with memory difficulties or who are frail, using the previous volumes of the drink to treat their 'hypos' may lead to under-treatment of the episode which can have serious consequences such as a seizure. HOW DOES DRINKING LUCOZADE WORK FOR DIABETICS? To treat a hypoglycaemic episode - a period of dangerously low blood sugar, diabetics need to consume between 15 and 20g of sugar. Sufferers can tell they are experiencing the potentially deadly condition when they suddenly feel tired, have difficulty concentrating or feel dizzy. Experts recommend glucose tablets as they enter the bloodstream and restore blood sugar levels the fastest. In terms of judging how much glucose a diabetic takes, they are the easiest form to monitor. The same amount can also be found in sugary drinks, such as 100ml of the old recipe for Lucozade Energy Original. Diabetics will have to consume double the amount to get the same sugar from the new recipe drink. Despite being a little bit harder to judge on their sugar quantity, they are a good emergency option. Source: Diabetes.co.uk Advertisement This could leave diabetic patients unaware of the changes at risk of death if they don't check its nutritional label before consumption, experts warn 'This reduction of the sugar content of Lucozade may lead to confusion about what is now necessary to adequately treat a hypoglycaemic episode using this drink. 'Perhaps this was too hastily implemented before there had been more thought, planning, and consideration of the impact of this change?' June James, co-founder of diabetes nursing group TREND UK, said: 'This is very concerning especially as we have heard that there will be both new and old stock on the shelves.' This reduction of the sugar content of Lucozade may lead to confusion about what is now necessary to adequately treat a hypoglycaemic episode using this drink Professor Alan Sinclair, of Aston University Lucozade Ribena Suntory (LRS), which manufactures the drinks, announced the 'game-changing' sugar reduction in November. It said all of its brands, including Orangina and V Energy, will contain less than 4.5g of sugar per 100ml by 2018. They will be replaced with low calorie sweeteners. At the time it also said all packaging will be changed to ensure the nutritional information can clearly be seen on the front. The move means none of the brands will fall into the sugar tax category, which is set to come into effect in 2018. A spokesperson for the company said: 'We strongly recommend that consumers check the back of the pack to find out the nutritional information. 'The decision to halve the sugar in our drinks is in response to the growing demand from consumers who now want healthier drinks.' It added that diabetes organisations throughout the UK and Ireland and hospital trusts had been informed of the changes. If you're thinking of adding a dog to your family, there are now two reasons to say yes. A new study has found that being exposed to pets from a young age lowers the risk of obesity and results in fewer allergies. Scientists say that dogs in particular expose children to dirt and bacteria early in life, which creates early immunity. A new study had found that being exposed to family pets from a young age lower their risk of obesity and have fewer allergies. Scientists say that dogs, in particular, expose children to to dirt and bacteria early in life, which results in early immunity The study, conducted at the University of Alberta, in Canada, looked at more than 700 infants from the Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development Study, whose mothers were enrolled during pregnancy between 2009 and 2012. The mothers were asked to report on whether they owned a pet at enrollment, during the second or third trimester, and three months after birth. Infant gut microbiotas were studied from fecal samples collected around three months old. The researchers compared whether the babies were exposed only during pregnancy, or both pre- and postnatally, to no pet exposure. Over half of the studied infants were exposed to at least one furry pet in the pre- and/or postnatal periods - 70 percent being dogs. Researchers found that pre- and postnatal pet exposure enriched the amount of two types of bacteria in the gut with more than a twofold greater likelihood of high abundance. BACTERIA IS KEY TO PREVENTING ALLERGIES IN KIDS Children could be stopped from developing allergies and asthma by altering their stomach bacteria in their first few months of life, a study has found. Our increasingly sanitized world where children receive very little exposure to the bacteria of nature has led to an explosion in allergies, scientists say. But by introducing mixtures of beneficial bacteria into the stomach of babies at risk mean they are less likely to develop allergies or asthma. Both conditions are usually only noticed after the age of four - raising the possibility that the conditions could be stopped before they develop. The scientists, publishing in Nature Medicine, found that particular patterns of germs found in the stomachs of one-month-old infants meant they had a three times higher risk of developing common allergic reactions by 24 months and asthma by four months. Dr Susan Lynch, a professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, said she believes the discovery represents an opportunity to develop new treatments that could stave off allergies and asthma before they become established. She said: If we are to prevent disease development, we need to intervene early.' Advertisement Ruminococcus and Oscillospira have been linked with reducing childhood allergies and obesity, respectively. 'The abundance of these two bacteria were increased twofold when there was a pet in the house,' said Dr Anita Kozyrskyj, a University of Alberta pediatric epidemiologist. She added that pet exposure was shown to affect the gut microbiome indirectly - from dog to mother to unborn baby - during pregnancy as well as during the first three months of the baby's life. In other words, even if the dog had been given away for adoption just before the mother gave birth, the healthy microbiome exchange could still take place. The study also found that having pets at home reduced the likelihood of the transmission of vaginal GBS (group B Strep) during birth. The bacteria can cause pneumonia in newborns and is prevented by giving antibiotics to the mother during delivery. Past research has found that pets are beneficial for human health in a number of ways. Several studies have shown spending just a few minutes with a furry friend can lower anxiety and blood pressure and increase levels of serotonin and dopamine, two neurochemicals that play roles in producing feelings of calm and well-being. And a study from the American Psychological Association found that pet owners over age 65 make 30 percent fewer visits to the doctor. Although the researchers say it's too early to predict how the findings will play a role in the future, Dr Kozyrskyj doesn't rule out the concept of a 'dog in a pill' as a preventive tool for allergies and obesity. 'It's not far-fetched that the pharmaceutical industry will try to create a supplement of these microbiomes, much like was done with probiotics,' she said. Cyber attacks in hospitals are far more prevalent than we think, a new report warns - and experts warn no patient's data is safe anymore. There were almost 1,800 strikes on hospital databases across the US between 2009 and 2016, according to new data. But researchers found that only 68 percent of the attacks were reported, despite the fact that healthcare providers are required to notify the government when such breaches happen. In one of the newly-uncovered attacks, hackers accessed the data of four million patients across Illinois. Experts told Daily Mail Online that such attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated - and there is now no way hospitals can ensure the safety of medical records. A new report says almost 1,800 cyber attacks occurred in hospitals across the US over a seven-year period, but only 68 percent of these breaches were reported to the government The report, put together by Michigan State University, examined Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) data for the period between October 2009 and December 2016. By law, hospitals covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPPA, must notify HHS of any breach affecting 500 or more individuals within 60 days from the discovery of the breach. The researchers found that, of the almost 1,800 recorded breaches, only 1,225 - or 68 percent - were reported by healthcare providers. Reportedly, business associates, health plans and healthcare clearing houses reported the rest. Research showed that 257 breaches were reported by 216 hospitals. And 33 hospitals experienced more than one breach - many of which are large, major teaching institutions. PATIENTS AT RISK AFTER 700,000 HOSPITAL LETTERS MISSING FROM NHS Thousands of patients may have suffered delays to treatment after it was revealed that the UK's National Health Service (NHS) failed to deliver more than half a million sensitive documents to doctors. Test results from biopsies and patient treatment plans were among the thousands of official records that went missing between 2011 and 2016. The hospital documents did not reach the intended recipients because patients had either moved away or were not known showing up on practice records. Sensitive information - including cases of child protection and emergency service diagnoses - was also affected. Following the discovery, the lost material has been returned to 7,700 GP surgeries. A team led by Jill Matthews, head of public health and primary care for NHS England, has been investigating the data breach. GPs have so far been paid 2.2million to examine the correspondence, comparing it with patients medical records. Advertisement Two New York hospitals, Montefiore Medical Center and the University of Rochester Medical Center and Affiliates, were tied for most breaches with four each. However, Advocate Health and Hospitals Corporation, in Illinois, had the most number of individuals at risk with more than four million. 'The data breach affects two parties,' lead author Dr Ge Bai, a former doctoral student at MSU and a current faculty member at Johns Hopkins University, told Daily Mail Online. 'There is the damage to the patients because it hurts our confidentiality. 'And then there is the damage to the hospitals because of the huge costs they incur. They have the experts who are investigating, they have to pay a subscription to the victims, they need an emergency reaction team.' The study also found that 24 of the breached hospitals had the data of more than 20,000 patients was put at risk. Researchers claim their findings reinforce a critical trade-off between 'healthcare systems having access to information they need' and 'a hacker planning to spend your savings at Best Buy'. Experts in the past have noted that hospital are ripe targets for hackers because most are ill-prepared to protect their networks from sophisticated cyber-attacks. This means they simply don't have the resources to properly defend their computer systems. 'We don't have the data on what the hospitals are doing, so for future research we'd want to look into that to see what's the best course of action that needs to be taken,' Dr Bai said. 'We have to always compete with the hackers because they're getting better and better. The message to the hospitals is to always keep improving data security. 'And as patients, we shouldn't assume hospitals have complete, zero data breaches. They can only mitigate, not eliminate.' India will buy nearly $2 billion worth of weapons technology from Israel in what's being described as the 'largest defence contract' ever signed by the military exporting giant. The deal will see state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries provide India with an advanced defence system of medium-range surface-to-air missiles, launchers and communications technology, the company said in a statement Thursday. The 'mega' missile agreement is 'considered to be the largest defence contract in Israel's defence industries' history', the company said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is buying military equipment from Israel some of which will be assembled in India Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu The Israeli firm will also supply a naval defence system including long-range surface-to-air missiles for India's first aircraft carrier, which is still under construction. Comment was not immediately available from India's defence ministry. Israel Aerospace Industries said some components will be assembled in India, in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's push to reduce reliance on costly imports. Modi's government has raised the limit on foreign investment in the defence sector and encouraged tie-ups between foreign and local companies under a 'Make in India' campaign. India - the world's largest defence importer - has been investing tens of billions in updating its Soviet-era military hardware to counter long-standing tensions with regional rivals China and Pakistan. India has signed several big-ticket defence deals since Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party stormed to power in 2014. Israel is a top weapons exporter, with sales last year surging to $6.5 billion. India is a top market for its arms, as New Delhi has turned increasingly away from traditional ally Russia for its military hardware. Last year India signed a contract to buy 36 Rafale twin-engine fighter jets from France for 7.9 billion euros ($8.8 billion) after major delays and obstacles over the cost and assembly of the planes in India. The 'mega' missile agreement is 'considered to be the largest defence contract in Israel's defence industries' history' India's Iran oil imports jumped to a record high in 2016/17 topping half-a-million barrels per day (bpd) as refiners boosted purchases after lifting of some Western sanctions against Tehran last year. India, Iran's biggest oil buyer after China, was among a handful of countries that continued to deal with Tehran despite Western sanctions over its nuclear programme. Refiners shipped in about 541,000 bpd of Iranian oil in the fiscal year to March, a growth of about 115 per cent over the previous year, ship tracking data obtained from sources and data compiled by Thomson Reuters Oil Research, forecasts showed. India plans to cut its oil imports from Iran after taking in more than 500,000 barrels a day in the last financial year Iran was India's second biggest oil supplier - a position now belonging to Iraq - before economic sanctions aimed at Iran's nuclear programme hampered its trade relations, forcing the South Asian nation to tap alternative suppliers. Purchases by Indian refiners, including Reliance Industries that resumed imports last year after a multi-year lay-off, helped Iran regain some of the lost market share. Imports from Iran could ease in this fiscal year as state-refiners have agreed to cut their annual imports deal with Iran by a fifth to put pressure on Tehran to award the Farzad B gas field to an Indian consortium. Ahwas oil field in southwestern Iran. The Gulf nation has cut India's credit on oil sales in retaliation to the rumoured reduction Iran, in turn has decided to cut the credit period on oil sales to 60 days from 90 days and cut freight discounts from 80 percent to 60 percent. India imported 18.7 per cent less oil from Iran in March at about 526,000 bpd oil compared to the previous month, data showed. Volumes were however 4 per cent higher than a year ago. Overall, India's oil imports rose 4.7 per cent in March from the previous month, and by about 4.9 per cent from a year ago. In March Iraq emerged as the second biggest oil supplier to India, a position it ceded to Iran the previous month. Saudi Arabia continued to be the top oil supplier to India in March. In the first quarter of this year India's oil imports from Iran surged by about 92 per cent to 573,400 bpd as some OPEC producers had cut supplies, the data showed. Iran was exempt from an OPEC deal to reduce output by 1.2 million bpd starting January 1, a victory for Tehran which argued it needs to regain the market share it lost during sanctions. Earlier this week, Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zangeneh had said: 'India is one of our good costumers, but we cannot sign a contract under threat. 'India's cut of oil imports from Iran will not cause any trouble to us as we have other buyers.' Zanganeh said despite an extension of deadlines, India has not offered an acceptable proposal for the development of the gas field. 'Their proposal was not profitable to Iran ... We sent the Indians a letter and told them we are keen to continue negotiations, but under sensible conditions, not under threats' he was quoted as saying. The two nations were initially targeting concluding a deal on Farzad-B field development by November 2016 but later mutually agreed to push the timeline to February 2017 ONGC-VIdesh has submitted a revised master development plan of over USD 5 billion for developing the field. The new plan, filed with Iranian Offshore Oil Company (IOOC), excludes liquefaction facilities to turn the gas into LNG for ease of shipping to nations like India, sources said. The two nations were initially targeting concluding a deal on Farzad-B field development by November 2016 but later mutually agreed to push the timeline to February 2017. Offensive: O'Leary called his own customers 'idiots' and Guardian readers 'loons' We hear rather less of the Michael O'Leary of old these days. Time was when the motor-mouthed Ryanair boss, 56, and self-confessed 'jumped-up paddy', was a one-man quote machine. So raucous were his press conferences, he could have charged journalists an entrance fee. Given his propensity for turning a quick buck, he probably gave it a whirl. This was the fellow who's called his own customers 'idiots', Guardian readers 'loons', and suggested that all cyclists should be shot. Other groups deserving of the O'Leary bullet include environmentalists ('luddites marching us back to the 18th century'), Aer Lingus pilots ('under-worked peacocks') and travel agents ('a waste of bloody time'). Over the past ten years he has offended the disabled, once charging a man with cerebral palsy 18 for a wheelchair to the plane. He has outraged his own pilots, suggesting technology had made co-pilots obsolete. After dressing as the Pope during one particularly bizarre marketing stunt, he even managed to upset his own mother. Today, the famous O'Leary gob has been muzzled. He appears tamed neutered even like an unruly cur whipped into line. It's almost as though someone has finally located the volume nob next that cocksure Hibernian grin. Why this has happened, isn't clear. Middle-aged mellowing? Brexit anxiety (he thinks it'll be a disaster)? Perhaps the public relations bods have simply convinced the old rascal to stop treating customers like the enemy. Born into a wealthy farming family, the second child of six, he attended Clongowes Wood College, in County Kildare, a prominent Jesuit boarding school where the priests lashed him with leather straps. He began his career as an accountant at KPMG, via Trinity College, Dublin, where his expertise in tax matters brought him into contact with Irish businessman Tony Ryan, who had set up a small airline, Ryanair, which was leaking cash. O'Leary was recruited to see what could be done. Skinflint: Over the past ten years he has offended the disabled, once charging a man with cerebral palsy 18 for a wheelchair to the plane His advice was to shut it down immediately. But old man Ryan was fond of his creation and so O'Leary was dispatched in 1991 on a fact-finding mission to Dallas, where Southwest airlines were rumoured to have developed a new vision for the industry. There, the airline's cowboy hat-wearing founder, Herb Kelleher, delivered a sermon on the company's no-frills business model which left scales falling from the young O'Leary's eyes. He returned home to Ireland energised. Forget the syrupy mysticism that flying was somehow glamorous, O'Leary insisted. It was boring. There would be no free drinks or snacks. Passengers should pay for everything, even hand luggage. Cost-cutting measures were also applied to staff, who would pay for their own training and uniforms, even their own pens. Such rampant savings meant customers won on the cost front the airline's average ticket price remains around 36. But Ryanair also became a by-word for appalling customer service. Passengers felt like cattle being prodded towards the abattoir. Complaints were ignored. Applications for refunds rejected. Focus of their ire became the gurning face of O'Leary. Hated he might be, but in the words of that other brazen showman Liberace, O'Leary has been crying all the way to the bank. Paid 2.7million last year, his wealth is put at 796million thanks to a 3 per cent holding in the carrier. Like most work obsessives, he discovered romance late on in life. He married Anita, an investment banker, in 2003 when he was 40, after the pair met a year before at the wedding of Tony Ryan's son Shane. For all his publicity seeking, he keeps his family life private. He and Anita live with their four children in a Georgian manor house near Mullingar, County Westmeath, where they breed racehorses. After his horse Don Poli won last year's Grand National, he has five entries in today's famous race. None of them much fancied. He withdrew his best horses, claiming they were victims of bias by the race's handicapper. Typical O'Leary. Blaming the authorities, setting himself up as the underdog. If somehow he does come out on top again this afternoon, I fear we may never hear the end of it. Brace yourselves for the return of O'Loudmouth. A chairman and chief executive are expected to be on the same page when a company launches a 3.7bn bid. This ought to be especially true in the case of the Tesco offer for Booker, in that Britain's dominant grocer has only just emerged from a corporate nightmare during which it discarded global investments. We know Richard Cousins of Compass was a prominent dissident about the Booker bid on the Tesco board, quitting in January without stating the reason. Subsequently chief executive Dave Lewis revealed that Cousins 'was in a different place about the deal'. Concerns: Tesco chairman John Allan reportedly has reservations over Tesco's proposed takeover of Booker Lewis hinted at differences on the board over the transaction when he indicated that the 'overwhelming majority of the board were very happy with the proposal' implying some were not. Among those thought to have reservations was none other than Tesco chairman John Allan, a person with strong business credentials from previous roles at Deutsche Post and Dixons Retail. Allan was among those who felt the timing of the deal was infelicitous coming so soon after Tesco's escape from the padded profits scandal and before the company had fully re-established its credentials and stabilised the balance sheet. When Cousins made it clear that he couldn't go along with the Booker deal, there was an apparent effort to persuade him to explain his departure with meaningless waffle about personal reasons. Cousins would have none of it, and so his January departure became a matter of mystery until it was explained by Lewis. Cousins's departure made it difficult for Allan, as non-executive chairman, to express his disquiet outside the confines of the boardroom without provoking a crisis. To have done so could potentially have led Lewis, who has been leading the recovery drive, to head for the exit. Allan, apparently, swallowed his objections rather than provoke a crisis at the top. Disclosure of high level disagreement at Tesco looks unlikely to assist a deal which already faces substantial obstacles. Two of the grocer's top investors, Schroders and Artisan Partners, have come out against the Booker bid, saying that the price is too high and will destroy value for existing investors. But a survey by Bernstein suggests if a vote were taken now, some 70pc of investors would give their consent. A substantial minority of 30pc are against the deal or are demanding changes. Moreover, the Competition & Markets Authority has significant objections to sift through. Nick Read, the boss of Nisa, which supplies 3,466 smaller shops, has warned that Britain's corner stores could be threatened because of Booker's buying power, range and ability to lower prices. Nisa has a point. One of the glories of the grocery market in recent times is the way disrupters like Lidl and Aldi have kept the bigger chains on their toes by being price competitive. Mergers are rarely good for consumers. They reduce choice. Giving Tesco, the biggest beast in the market, control over a wholesaler does not seem very sensible. It cannot be very healthy when the process of making a bid creates a rumpus at the very highest level of a FTSE 100 company. Investors are warned. Co-op pensions One group of stakeholders watching latest machinations at the Co-operative Group are the 80,000 members of the Pace pension scheme, which includes the bank and retail group. This week the Co-op retail, funeral services and insurance group revealed a 132million loss after absorbing a write-down of its 20 per cent holding in the bank to zero. If the bank is sold, trustees of Pace will want to ensure that bank members of the pension scheme are fully protected by the 'covenant' or guarantee of new owners. At present the buyout deficit in the scheme, the figure used by regulators to assess funding needs, is thought to be 1billion. If the new owners of bank assets refuse to take on responsibility for the pensions, it would revert to the group which has a turnover of 9billion but struggles to make a profit. Not much ethical about any of this. Lloyds lessons Fraud and high jinks of staff at the HBOS branch in Reading has cost owner Lloyds Bank another 100million in compensation to victims. Lloyds is also commissioning a probe by a senior jurist to determine if there was a cover-up by senior executives, and a fresh investigation is being launched by the Financial Conduct Authority. Pity that as Lloyds chief executive Antonio Horta-Osorio prepares to mark an end of the Government stake, attention has been diverted by louche behaviour. The typical property fund holds around 10 per cent of its money in cash and real estate stocks. David Wise's 432million Kames Property Income fund has 33 per cent. It's a risky strategy any money not put to work could be a missed opportunity to generate higher returns. But it was a choice which meant his was one of the few property funds not forced to close its doors after last year's EU referendum. Following the Brexit vote many of the biggest property funds suspended trading, which meant savers could not take their money out or put any more in. David Wise's 432million Kames Property Income fund has returned 10.1 per cent over the past six months, compared to an average return among rivals of 1.3 per cent Property funds invest in bricks and mortar, they own shopping centres, offices and blocks of flats. So, unlike funds which own company shares, if a flurry of investors want their money back they have to sell entire buildings. One of the immediate fears after the Brexit vote was that property prices would plunge. It proved largely untrue, but the fear alone saw thousands of investors rushing to get their cash out of property funds in case their savings took a tumble. Funds locked their doors so they wouldn't have to enter a fire-sale of their assets just to raise enough money to meet those redemptions. It took months for some to start trading again. And in those months, Wise put his 33 per cent of cash to work. He says: 'I was still surprised that Brexit happened, I didn't expect that. But it's my responsibility as a fund manager to make sure we are prepared for any eventuality, so that's what we did.' His fund has returned 10.1 per cent over the past six months, compared to an average return among rivals of 1.3 per cent. Frequently fund managers say they don't let political events or the economic outlook interfere with their investment decisions. Wise disagrees: 'These things are important. They affect markets in a very big way and it's important to be aware of that. We're cautious about Scotland at the moment because of the chance of a second independence referendum there.' Property funds invest in bricks and mortar, they own shopping centres, offices and blocks of flats He's also cautious on London, where he thinks property prices are too expensive and are due for a fall. Wise has 37 assets in his investment portfolio and typically spends between 5m and 20million on each he likes to find bargains. While many investors have turned their attentions to industrial units and distribution centres driven by the rise of online shopping he has kept his focus on regional cities. Sites in Bristol, Manchester, Leeds and Newcastle are favourites. These cities have been quietly flourishing yet there has been little building work in recent years so supply is limited, which means rents are rising. 'People are gloomy about the High Street, but there are opportunities if you know what to look for and there is less competition for the properties,' he says. That's why he's just bought a retail location in Nottingham, in an area which is set to benefit from investment. Up-and-coming locations tend to produce better rental yields than expensive assets in popular areas. In office buildings, media companies are some of his favourite tenants; they tend to attract bars and restaurants to set up nearby and regenerate an area. With the current trend toward industrial, stripped-back decor they're also cheap to furnish. Wise has also been snapping up pubs lately. It's an industry that's been hit hard in recent years, with pubs closing up and down the country every week. 'But these pubs are often in amazing locations, so even if it doesn't work and that company goes bust you have the opportunity to redevelop the site into a residential property,' says Wise. And he's not shunning the capital entirely. Among his recent purchases are a gym in Finchley, North London, and a restaurant on the Strand. Wise says: 'We're always rooting around for bargains. I'll own a lot more in the city in a year or two.' Investing in such illiquid assets unlike shares, property takes time to sell is always a risk for savers, and for that reason many experts prefer to back property investment trusts rather than funds. Investment trusts trade on the stock exchange like any other company share so they cannot suspend trading if there is a panic in the market. On the other hand they can see their share price plunge if sentiment turns against them. Ben Yearsley, investment director at Shore Financial Planning, says: 'The fact this fund didn't close post-Brexit is very positive, but savers should still question whether an open-ended fund is the best way to invest in property.' Shares in London finished up 46.17 points at 7349.37 as the world assesses the implications of Donald Trump's military intervention in Syria last night. Unsurprisingly, oil has risen in price as has the trusty safe-haven of gold. Other events of note today included Halifax UK house price data and monthly US jobs figures. The latter undershot forecasts, leading to speculation further US rate hikes could be delayed. Trump is continuing talks with Chinese president Xi Jinping in Florida today, so there could be lines coming out from that which impact Wall Street later. Hit: Sky broadcasts shows such as Games Of Thrones starring Emilia Clarke Rupert Murdoch's attempt to take full control of Sky has been cleared by the European watchdog. The European Commission approved the deal 'unconditionally' saying the proposed deal 'raised no competition concerns' in a statement. It's a win for Murdoch, who launched an 11.7billion bid to buy the 61 per cent of Sky he doesn't already own in December. However, the bid still faces hurdles in the UK. Last month Culture Secretary Karen Bradley confirmed she was referring the takeover to Ofcom amid concerns the company would control too much of Britain's media. Murdoch owns 39 per cent of Skythrough 21st Century Fox. He also owns the Times and the Sun newspapers through News Corp. Bradley said competition concerns and broadcasting standards were among the issues for the watchdog to look at. Ofcom is carrying out a public interest test on the proposed deal, including a review of whether the holder of the broadcast licence is a 'fit and proper person'. If the watchdog has concerns by the deadline of May 16, 21st Century Fox will have to address them and Bradley must decide whether to accept what it suggests. Controversial: Australia's Macquarie bank CHALLENGE REJECTED The controversial sale of a fund for renewable energy projects to an Australian bank looks likely to go ahead after a last-ditch legal challenge failed. Sustainable Development Capital LLP had argued the Government was wrong to award preferred bidder status to its rival Macquarie in the privatisation of Green Investment Bank. But yesterday the High Court threw out SDCL's request for a judicial review of the decision, saying there was nothing to suggest the process had been carried out unlawfully. ECONOMY GROWS Britain's economy grew by 0.5 per cent in the first quarter, according to the National Institute of Economic and Social Research. That was slower than the 0.7 per cent growth seen in the final quarter of last year. house value Average house prices rose to 219,755 last month. Property values in the three months to March were 3.8 per cent higher than in the same period a year ago, but the growth was slower than the 5.1 per cent rise reported in February, according to Halifax. BANK BIDS The Co-op Bank has received takeover approaches from 'several parties' as speculation rages over its future. Co-op Group which owns 20 per cent of the bank following a previous rescue by US hedge funds said on Thursday its stake was worthless. JUNK NATION South Africa's credit rating was cut to 'junk' by Fitch with protesters across the country calling for President Jacob Zuma to resign after he fired respected finance minister Pravin Gordhan. DIAMOND DAYS Miner Gem Diamonds has found an 'exceptional quality' 114-carat diamond at its Letseng mine in Lesotho, Africa. Shares rose 6.4 per cent, or 5.75p, to 95p. US JOBS Unemployment in the US has fallen to 4.5 per cent, its lowest level in a decade despite the creation of fewer than expected jobs last month. NEW BOSS Just Eat has hired Hays chief executive Alistair Cox as a non-executive director. Hannah Milbrandt, 21, was seven years old when her mother tricked her and residents of their hometown, Urbana, Ohio, into thinking she was dying from leukemia A young woman who was drugged by her mother to convince her she was dying from childhood leukemia in a scam that duped their town has spoken for the first time about the grueling ordeal and says she believes her mother ruined her life. Hannah Milbrandt, now 21, was seven years old when her mother told her she had cancer, shaved her head, drugged her with sleeping pills, and taped bandages to the back of her head to cover a non-existent medical port. Their small, close-knit hometown of Urbana, Ohio rallied around the Milbrandts, donating money to help pay for Hannahs medical bills and organizing fundraising events. Police said the couple fooled 65 people and businesses to raise an estimated $31,000. Nine months later, in 2002, Hannahs illness was revealed to be a hoax after teachers at Hannahs school became suspicious. In 2003, both of Hannahs parents were jailed. Teresa was jailed for six and a half years for theft and child endangerment. Robert maintained his innocence, saying his wife took Hannah to all her medical appointments, but pleaded guilty to child endangerment and served four years and 11 months in prison. In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, Hannah, who spent a year in foster care after her parents were jailed before being taken in by her paternal aunt, spoke about how the cancer hoax affected her, how shes struggled with depression and suicidal thoughts and how she has tried to move on with her life. Scroll down for video Hannah has spoken for the first time since the ordeal that almost overshadowed her life. She exclusively told DailyMail.com about how she's grappled with depression and suicidal thoughts and how she is determined to move on Hannah's parents, Robert (left) and Teresa Milbrandt (right), received an estimated $31,000 during the nine-month hoax, police said at the time. The family is pictured here at Hannah's seventh birthday party held at their church, Faith Fellowship Church, a small congregation that raised $7000 to help the family with medical bills Teresa admitted to placing bandages (circled) around her daughter's body - claiming they covered a port where chemotherapy was administered - and even sending her to counselling sessions to prepare the child for her supposed death. The then-35-year-old also confessed to giving Hannah sleeping pills so she would appear sickly and be unconscious for the chemotherapy appointments she had invented I remember a lot (of what happened). I remember feeling somewhat sick but not to the point of how I was being made out to bebut then I found out it was all not true, said Hannah, who is studying to be a middle school teacher at Wittenberg University and works part-time as a waitress. My mother is still not a part of my life today and I'm thankful for that because she is a very toxic person and I don't need that. Deep down I have this fear of being around her because she's not somebody I can trust and as far as I am concerned she ruined my life. She hasnt communicated with her mother for more than a decade even though they occasionally see each other because theyve ended up living just ten minutes apart in Springfield, Ohio.Teresa said 'no comment' when DailyMail.com reached out to her. Hannah was reunited with her father after he was released from prison and is convinced he had no idea of the hoax and truly believed his daughter was seriously ill. The two remain close. Teresa and Robert Milbrandt a blue-collar family living in a three-bedroom ranch style house had six children between them and had Hannah, their only child together, during their nine-year marriage. In 2002 Teresa, a homecare nurse at the time, told her daughter she had cancer and even admitted to sending her to counselling sessions to prepare the child for her imminent death. The church-going mother told her and thousands of others that her daughter had three tumors and kept up Hannahs ill appearance by shaving her hair to mimic the symptoms of chemotherapy, placing bandages around Hannahs body and fixing a surgical mask over her mouth to apparently protect her from infections. To feed the lie she was taking Hannah to the hospital, Teresa confessed to giving her daughter sleeping pills so she would appear sickly and be unconscious for the chemotherapy appointments she had made up. She also said when the seven-year-old woke up, she would then tell her she had slept through the appointment. Teresa maintained Hannahs ill appearance by shaving her hair to mimic the symptoms of chemotherapy and fixing a surgical mask over her mouth to supposedly protect her from infections. Hannah, pictured here in 2002 with friends, was often seen with a mask that only covered her mouth and not her nose , something that Ubrana residents would later say they found unusual in hindsight Hannah said: I remember she would take me to the Dairy Queen in Urbana and she'd give me the sleeping pill. I remember falling asleep and waking up in the same exact spot every time. Thousands sympathized with the Milbrandts, who were apparently paying $500 a week in medical bills. The small church the family attended raised $7000, local firefighters, in addition to giving $500, donated a puppy and an all-expense paid trip to a water park two things the little girl had been pleading with her parents for. Teresa informed teachers at North Elementary of the proper procedure to follow if her daughter had a seizure while at school and staff there organized a hat shower where all the children wore hats in solidarity with Hannah who always covered her shaved head with a blue hat. The scope of the con was such that a seriously ill wheelchair-bound teen who had spent nine years collecting pop can tabs to help pay for her own care donated her entire collection to help Hannah. Authorities were called to investigate because Hannah's teachers noticed her short hair was cut uniformly, even though chemotherapy patients typically lose their hair in patches. The then-seven year-old is pictured with her first grade teacher Nori McCall The staff helped Hannah cope by organizing a hat shower, a day when all the children wore hats in solidarity with Hannah who often covered her shaved head with a blue hat. Hannah (pictured first row, second from right) and Ms McCall (right) are still in touch and reunited last summer Residents from the 11,600-strong town donated and thronged to fundraising events to help Robert and Teresa Milbrandt, who were apparently paying up to $500 a week in medical expenses At home Teresa, who Hannah says called her the million-dollar baby, became distant. She said: It's kind of scary but she used to call me her million-dollar baby. It makes sense now but to me, I thought she thought I was wonderful and worth everythingshe spoiled me to death. I do remember she stopped being as loving when the cancer hoax started. I used to be afraid to be alone in my bedroom and she would make me sleep alone. Terrified the upcoming Christmas would be her last, she begged Santa Claus to spare her. But by Christmas, an eagle-eyed teacher noticed Hannahs short hair was cut evenly, even though patients who undergo chemotherapy lose their hair in patches, and the Ohio Department of Job and Family services were called to investigate. On January 14 2003, police arrested the couple as well as Hannahs maternal grandmother, Mary Russell, who was later acquitted of theft. Teresa confessed but her husband maintained his innocence. At the time, Robert - who worked for a printing press company said he was oblivious because his wife scheduled these supposed hospital appointments when he had traveled for work. He told a 2005 documentary in his only interview: You look in hindsight and youre like I should have caught this. He declined to be interviewed by DailyMail.com. Even though Hannah believes he had no idea about her mothers scam, Robert pleaded guilty later to child endangerment. He also entered an Alford plea to felony theft, which means he does not admit guilt but recognizes prosecutors have enough evidence to convict. It was he who told Hannah she wasnt dying. I remember feeling excited like I was not going to die anymore, Hannah said. My happiness turned to me being afraid and not sure what was going to happen and I think that the part of it that was the scariest was being taken away from my family. Teresa (pictured left testifying in court in 2003) confessed to concocting the scheme and pleaded guilty by reason of insanity to theft and child endangerment. Her then-husband, Robert Milbrandt (pictured right in the Urbana courtroom), pleaded guilty to child endangerment. He also entered an Alford plea to felony theft, which means he does not admit guilt but recognizes prosecutors have enough evidence to convict Teresa's mother, Mary Russell, was acquitted of theft. The then-57-year-old is pictured here with her attorney Ron Tompkins during the jury selection phase of her trial in Urbana, Ohio in September 2003 Hannahs father served four years and 11 months in prison, an outcome that still weighs heavy on her heart. She said: During all of it, when it was happening I knew my dad had no idea. I believe he was manipulated by my mother...she was his wife for nine years and nothing before this had ever happened. So why would he question his daughter was ill? He went to prison for five years of his life for doing nothing. Hannah believes that her father would have been acquitted had he allowed her to testify. I firmly believe if I would have he wouldn't have gone to jail. I have spent most of my life trying to get him justice and I haven't been able to do that and that's one thing that weighs very heavy on my heart because I know that man will do anything in this world for me and the one thing that has ruined his life, I cant fix. Teresa, pictured here with her attorney Kevin Talebi in March 2003, claimed to have been diagnosed with Munchausen by proxy - a mental condition in which a caregiver invents or causes an illness of the person they are supposed to be looking after - but the judge rejected her insanity claim after he ordered a mental evaluation Robert Milbrandt served four years and 11 months in prison, an outcome that still weighs heavy on Hannah's heart because she firmly believes her father is innocent. The pair are pictured here just days after his release in 2008 Hannahs mother pleaded guilty by reason for insanity claiming to have been diagnosed with Munchausen by proxy - a mental condition in which a caregiver invents or causes an illness of the person they are supposed to be looking after. The judge ordered a mental evaluation and her insanity plea was rejected. She was sentenced to six and a half years, although she could have faced as many as 33 years in prison. After her arrest, Teresa gave one interview in which she said she was so distraught by what shed done to her daughter she could barely live in her own skin. In a 2004 interview with the Columbia Dispatch, she said: Last week, I said to someone, I wonder if I could pay the doctor and have him give me a lethal injection. I cant take you to where Im at. Theres no way. I cant hardly live in my own skin. She said she concocted the cancer scheme to keep her husband from leaving and to show love to her children. I knew how much he cared about Hannah and if shes sick, I thought, hes not going to leave us. I spent that money on my daughters, I bought them anything they wanted. We shopped, we ate out. Hannahs room was immaculate. She had everything. Thats how I thought you got love - you bought it. Hannah was sent to a foster home after her parents' arrest but her father's sister gained custody of her after a year. Hannah is pictured here with her aunt Sue Doriglizzi (left) and paternal grandmother Lorain Milbrandt (right) Hannah moved in with Doriglizzi (pictured), who was living with her husband and 19-year-old son. When she was 12 years old, she says she began to suffer from depression and contemplated taking her own life many times. During this time her aunt, who was like a mother to her, advised her to see a therapist Teresa was released in February 2010. Hannah spent a year in a foster home after her parents were arrested before her fathers sister fought to gain custody of her. Hannah moved in with her aunt, who was living with her husband and 19-year-old son. Soon, what she had been through began to gravely affect her. In her early teens, she began to have bouts of depression and even attempted to take her own life. Teresa Milbrandt has not communicated with her daughter for more than a decade. Hannah says: 'I'm thankful for that because she is a very toxic person and I don't need that' Remembering those difficult times, she said: There were very low moments, like I could die, like I didn't want to exist. I even made plans. I reached a point I realized I couldn't be as selfish. Hannah began seeing a therapist. Soon after his release from prison in 2008, Hannah rekindled the relationship with her father and moved into his New York home. Although the then-14-year-old moved to live with him and his new wife, she was bullied in school, which catapulted her into a deeper depression. With help from her father, Hannah made a recovery and made the decision to attend university in Springfield, Ohio - 20 minutes away from her Urbana home. I want to try to make the best of the worst, she said. I dont want this place to be somewhere I have to avoid because of what happened to me. But her move back hasnt been easy at times. She lives a ten-minute walk from her estranged mother and has run into her at a restaurant where she says her mother asked to be waited on by her. Hannah even remembers a day when she saw Teresa through her rear-view mirror, driving right behind her. Now a junior pursuing a degree in English and Education, Hannah is better able to handle her depression even though she says there are days when its difficult. Still, she wants to use the pain shes felt from the neglect to help others one day. She said: I feel like there are people out there who are struggling and have been abused in some way. It might not be the same as mine but everybody has a story. One thing I want people to know is that even in the hardest points in life, there is light at the end of the tunnel. This life is worth something. Hannah (center) moved out of her aunt's home when she was 15 years old and moved in with her father (right) and his wife (left). While Hannah enjoyed the reunion with her father, she says she was often bullied at her new high school, which worsened her depression A former rugby union star who ballooned to 160kg after breaking his leg lost a quarter of his body weight for the sake of his son. Ben Gorst, 34, originally from Birmingham in the UK, moved to New Zealand in 2003 to chase his dream of playing professional rugby union. But his health began to deteriorate after the super-fit athlete broke his leg in a horrifying on-field incident. 'I was a bit despondent. I started changing my lifestyle - eating the things you shouldn't,' Mr Gorst told Daily Mail Australia. Ben Gorst, 34, ballooned to 160kg (left) after breaking his leg playing rugby union. He lost a quarter of his body weight (right) for the sake of his son Mr Gorst's health began to deteriorate after the super-fit athlete broke his leg in a horrifying on-field incident. He is seen here with his wife Kate in their wedding day 'It just snowballed from there and I started really banging on the pounds. I was eating a big breakfast, a huge lunch and a massive dinner. 'I was taking in twice as many calories and I needed to.' For years, Mr Gorst weighed in at around 160kg before the thought of not being able to have children switched him into gear. 'My wife Kate said it was time to have children - we'd been married for a while. My biggest concern was I could barely run - I'd really ballooned out,' he said. Mr Gorst (weighing around 160kg left) said he was taking in twice as many calories as he needed to. He is pictured right after his amazing transformation For years, Mr Gorst weighed in at around 160kg before the thought of not being able to have children switched him into gear Mr Gorst (pictured left) welcomed his boy Louis (right) with his wife Kate in 2014 'I told her ''I don't think I could run around with a kid at the moment''. 'That was definitely a turning point. It all kind of dawned on me that I was far too fat to have kids.' After sticking to a strict regime of healthy eating and exercise under the supervision weight loss company Jenny Craig, Mr Gorst shed 30kg in just 10 months. 'For me, it was all about eating smaller portions less often. I was just eating far more than I needed to.' Mr Gorst said: 'My biggest concern was I could barely run - I'd really ballooned out.' He lost nearly 30kg in just 10 months for the sake of his son When he recovered from his injury, Mr Gorst continued to play local rugby, but struggled with his bulging weight Mr Gorst now weighs in around 120kg. He said: 'It sounds like a lot, but I'm 6ft 3in and I'm quite a large guy in stature. And I can maintain it - that's the biggest thing.' Mr Gorst said he can comfortably 'run around' with his young son Louis, who he and his wife welcomed in 2014. Before his injury, Mr Gorst was on the verge of playing professional rugby union and was once part of the exclusive Gloucester Rugby Academy in the UK. He now plays for his local club Canterbury Country in Christchurch, where he also trains the under 13 side. Mr Gorst said he can comfortably 'run around' with his young son Louis, who he and his wife welcomed in 2014 A Chinese real estate scion charged with orchestrating the murder of her children's father was released from a California jail after posting $35 million bail. Tiffany Li, 31, walked out of a San Francisco Bay Area jail on Thursday after posting the highly unusual financial transaction that startled and angered the victim's family and friends. Li will remain out of custody after her family, friend and her mother's business associates raised $4 million cash and pledged San Francisco Bay Area properties valued a combined $62 million to post her bail. Courts require double the bail amount when property is pledged instead of cash. Tiffany Li, 31, walked out of a San Francisco Bay Area jail on Thursday where she faces murder charges after posting $35 million bail 'Nothing about this seems right,' said Angela Dunn, a close friend of the victim who shared her home with him in the six months before his death. Dunn said the victim's mother is taking Li's release especially hard. Court records show 15 properties being pledged. Li's attorney Geoff Carr said the properties are owned by family and business associates of Li's mother, who spends most of her time in China where she profited from real estate investments there. Tiffany Li is accused of ordering the killing the father of her two children because she allegedly feared she would lose custody of her daughters Li faces murder charges in the death of Keith Green, 27, who was found naked along a dirt road with a single gunshot wound to the neck 80 miles north of the suburban San Francisco mansion he and Li once shared with their two young daughters. She is charged with directing her boyfriend Kaveh Bayat and another man Olivier Adella to kill Green in May. Prosecutors say Li feared she would lose custody of her daughters. Li and the two men were arrested shortly after Green's body was found and the trio is scheduled to stand trial in September. Li has pleaded not guilty. Li and Green allegedly had an acrimonious split in October 2015 after Green discovered Li's relationship with Bayat. She then kicked Green out of the multimillion dollar home they shared with their children. A bodyguard ushered Li out of jail and into a waiting Cadillac Escalade Thursday afternoon, three hours after a judge ordered her released. The two men charged in the case remain in jail and haven't asked for bail to be set because they don't have the financial backing Li has, her attorney said. A bodyguard ushered Li out of jail and into a waiting Cadillac Escalade Thursday afternoon, three hours after a judge ordered her released Li faces murder charges in the death of Keith Green, 27, who was found naked along a dirt road with a single gunshot wound to the neck 80 miles north of the suburban San Francisco mansion (above) he and Li once shared with their two young daughters Li, who was arrested last year in San Mateo County, California, along with her boyfriend Kaveh Bayat (left) and Olivier Adella (right) The cash bail system in the United States has been under legal and legislative attack in recent years. A number of class action lawsuits have been filed across the country challenging the constitutionality of requiring defendants to post cash bail to go free before trial. Critics of the system argue that cash bail schemes like the one found in California state court unfairly disadvantage poor suspects who can't afford to post bail while allowing wealthy defendants like Li to go free pending trial. Authorities in neighboring San Francisco County say they are examining cash bail requirements there after inmates filed a lawsuit. Two California legislators have introduced bills seeking to dramatically overhaul the state's bail requirements, eliminating cash requirements in most cases and taking into account a suspect's income in cases still requiring money bail. Geoff Carr, right, attorney for Tiffany Li, talks with reporters outside San Mateo County Jail on Thursday Carr said all defendants except those accused of death penalty-eligible crimes are entitled to 'reasonable bail.' The $35 million bail is the highest ever in San Mateo County's history, a county official said. San Mateo District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said he's concerned Li is a flight risk and is disappointed the judge didn't set the bail even higher. His office asked for a $100 million bail. 'If convicted she faces the rest of her life in prison,' Wagstaffe said. 'That's plenty enough incentive to flee back to her native China.' Li will be required to turn over her passports, wear an electronic monitor and remain under house arrest. Carr says the people who posted Li's bail believe she is innocent and will not flee. If she does go on the lam, the court can confiscate the property and cash. The Prince of Wales has spoken movingly about the role his grandmother played in saving the lives of a Jewish family as he met Holocaust survivors in Austria. During the Second World War, Princess Alice, the Duke of Edinburgh's mother and Charles's grandmother, sheltered a number of Jewish people when Greece was occupied. Alice who is buried in Israel was recognised by Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial as a Righteous Among the Nations, and was posthumously awarded the British Government's Hero of the Holocaust medal. But the last day of Charles and Camilla's European tour has been overshadowed by claims the Prince's use of the official Government plane for his trip forced the Prime Minister to take a costly charter flight for a Middle East visit this week. Clarence House has defended the use of the plane, stressing that the heir to the throne's nine-day tour was booked in advance of Theresa May's trip. Prince Charles, right, paid tribute to his grandmother for saving the lives of a Jewish family during the Second World War. He is pictured meeting Holocaust survivors while on a trip to Austria During the Second World War, Princess Alice (pictured with son Prince Philip as a young boy), Charles's grandmother, sheltered a number of Jewish people when Greece was occupied Speaking about his grandmother, the Prince told the group: 'My father's mother took in a Jewish family during the war and hid them she was amazing, my grandmother. 'She took them in during the Nazi occupation. She never told anybody, she didn't tell her family for many years. 'She's buried in Jerusalem. In September last year I went to the funeral of President (Shimon) Peres and finally got to see her grave.' Charles and Camilla spent the final day of the tour in Vienna and met British and Austrian survivors of Nazi persecution when they toured the city's Jewish Museum. The royal couple sat down with a group of very elderly men and women who shared their harrowing stories with them. Prince Charles paid tribute to his 'amazing' grandmother, pictured with Prince Philip, and said she kept her good deeds a secret for many years Princess Alice is pictured far left at the wedding of Prince George, later King George V, and Princess Mary in 1893 Holocaust survivor Gerda Frei, 80, said: 'It is wonderful that the Prince and Duchess came here. 'The Prince was very well informed about the holocaust and it is very important that they came here,' she said after chatting to Charles at the Jewish Museum in Vienna. Mrs Frei escaped Vienna with her mother and father to Hungary in 1938 and the group were hidden from the Nazis by a family in Budapest. Later, Camilla was treated to a special performance by Vienna's celebrated Spanish Riding School. The duchess, a keen fan of equestrian sports, was shown around by Elisabeth Gurtler, the school's director, and toured the stables before watching a special performance in her honour in the Winter Riding School. The horses and riders put on a display of classical riding which left Camilla praising the performance. A two-year-old boy in China has suffered severe skull fractures after being violently attacked by his grandfather. His sister, four, has died from the assault, carried out on both children with a hammer on February 12. The incident which took place in eastern China's Anhui province has also left the children's grandmother injured. The grandfather has been arrested. Two-year-old Zhang Chun, who was attacked by his grandfather, cries as a doctor treats his injuries at a hospital in China A brain CT scan shows the cracks on the two-year-old boy's head after his grandfather's attack The four-year-old girl (pictured) was beaten to death by her grandfather on February 12 The two-year-old boy has been named Zhang Chun by media. He has two sisters, including the one who died during the assault. Zhang Chun's father, Liu Kun and their mother, Li Miaomiao, worked in Shanghai, about 483 km (300 miles) from their hometown, Anhui's Mengcheng city. The couple left their daughters and son in the hands of their parents as they went back to work in Shanghai after the Lunar New Year holiday in February. On February 12, the children's grandmother went out for a doctor's appointment early in the morning, leaving the children's grandfather to look after them. Doctors suggested to the parents that the boy should undergo a brain surgery to fix the cracks Tragic: His parents left him and his four-year-old sister for the grandparents to take care of It's unclear in the report whether the 66-year-old man was minding two or three of his grandchildren at the time. The man reportedly viciously kicked and attacked the children with a hammer. When his wife came back from the clinic, the horrific attack had already taken place. It's thought that the woman had tried to stop the assault and got injured from her attempt. Her grandchildren were seriously injured by then. Not until 10am did a neighbour walk over to look over the grandmother and saw blood on the floor and bodies lying in the house. The neighbour called the police and also the children's parents. Paramedics were called to their house. The four-year-old was pronounced dead at the scene while two-year-old Zhang Chun was taken to Anhui Province Children Hospital for emergency treatment. Zhang Chun's mother, Li Miaomiao holds the boy as he cries during a checkup A CT scan showed that Zhang Chun had suffered fractures on the skull. Doctors told the parents that the child's right brain was severely damaged and half of his body had no feeling. They suggested that the boy should undergo brain surgery as they were afraid that tissues would leak from the cracks. Liu Kun told reporters that he recalled his father having had a minor depression disorder. He had been treated for it several times in the past. 'We know he had depression disorder but he had never beaten anyone, let alone children,' said the father Mr Liu. The grandfather has been arrested and remains in a detention centre. Zhang Chun is now slowly recovering, including the senses of his body and bruises on his eyes After a month of treatment, Zhang Chun is recovering but his parents are considering to send him to Shanghai for follow-up treatment A few days ago, pictures of Zhang Chun emerged online which showed his recovery one month on from the attack. Li Miaomiao, the boy's mother, told the reporters that her son had regained his feeling and is slowly recovering. The parents bear the pain of losing their daughter, but they were also worried about the costs of medication from the treatment of their son. 'We spent over 100,000 yuan (11k) for this incident. Both of us are taking three different jobs a day to cover the costs,' said the father. However, he added nothing is more important than curing his son's injury and is considering sending him to Shanghai for further treatment. Further investigation is being carried out by the authorities. Kellyanne Conway's grandfather was not a Mafioso, her mother, Diane Fitzpatrick, has exclusively claimed to DailyMail.com. Pictured, Kellyanne as a teenager poses with her mom Kellyanne Conway's grandfather was not a Mafioso, her mother has exclusively claimed to DailyMail.com - instead he was nicknamed 'The Brute' because of his sheer strength. Jimmy DiNatale acquired the name because he once lifted two heavy truck engines onto his pickup by hand, his daughter Diane Fitzpatrick said. He knew mob figures, she admitted, but he was never one himself. 'Anyone who had spent time in South Philadelphia in those days would have known people in the Mafia,' she said. 'But he was not in the Mafia himself.' As DailyMail.com reported last month, DiNatale, who died in 1983, was named 26 times in a New Jersey Organized Crime Commission report, mainly for providing an alibi for Philadelphia mob boss Nicodemo 'Little Nicky' Scarfo and two associates who were suspected of the December 1979 gangland murder of Vincent Falcone. He told cops that he had been with Scarfo, Philip Leonetti and Lawrence Merlino in the Country Squire diner in Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey, at the time that Falcone was murdered. The report insisted that DiNatale had lied and he had actually met them earlier and they had had time to go back to Scarfo's office in Atlantic City, New Jersey, to plan the murder before Leonetti shot and killed Falcone. Scarfo and his men were eventually acquitted of the murder. 'I know he was named in the report because he had met Scarfo but it was at the time he said,' Diane Fitzpatrick said. Jimmy DiNatale acquired the nickname 'the Brute' (which is even inscribed on his tombstone) because he once lifted two heavy truck engines onto his pickup by hand, his daughter Fitzpatrick said, not because he was in the Mafia He did know mob figures, she admitted, but he was never one himself. 'Anyone who had spent time in South Philadelphia in those days would have known people in the Mafia,' she said Nicodemo Scarfo, right, and his nephew, Philip Leonetti, left, sit in court in Atlantic City, Nov. 3, 1986. The two were brought before a judge to hear new charges of racketeering, loansharking and gambling. DiNatale was named 26 times in a New Jersey Organized Crime Commission report, mainly for providing an alibi for Scarfo 'It was because some police officers who had not done a good job had lied. They tried for many years to prove that he was in the Mafia and they never could. 'Of course, he was never charged with anything.' Fitzpatrick, now 73, is now spending much of her time helping Kellyanne and her husband George Conway look after their four children. She made it clear that she was speaking only after seeking permission from her daughter who is now President Donald Trump's White House counselor. But her main home is the same single-story house in unincorporated Atco, New Jersey, where Kellyanne was brought up. Fitzpatrick and her husband John Fitzpatrick split when Kellyanne was just three. DiNatale's wife Antoinette and two of their unmarried daughters, Rita and Marie, lived with them. 'My parents never divorced,' Fitzpatrick told DailyMail.com. 'But they did live separately. 'But we were close to him, he would come over for holidays. 'My father was a good man. He helped anyone who needed help. If someone needed money he would be there - and it would always be on a handshake not on paper.' DiNatale proudly bore the nickname Jimmy the Brute. It is even inscribed on his tombstone in Oak Grove Cemetery in Hammonton, New Jersey. In 1990, seven years after his death, the Courier-Post newspaper described him as 'a reputed associate of Angelo Bruno, who, without a criminal record, nevertheless acquired a reputation as Hammonton's Don Corleone.' Bruno, known as 'The Gentle Don,' was the head of the Philadelphia Mafia. He was murdered in 1980. Diane's main home is the same single-story house in unincorporated Atco, New Jersey, where Kellyanne was brought up. Fitzpatrick and her husband John Fitzpatrick split when Kellyanne was just three. Pictured, Kellyanne and her father in the 1980s and this past January DiNatale died in 1983 when his now-famous granddaughter was 16 and still attending St. Joseph Roman Catholic High School in Hammonton, New Jersey As revealed by DailyMail.com this week, Conway was a high-scorer for her field hockey team and was involved with a slew of different clubs and activities at her school But Fitzpatrick said her father earned the title 'The Brute' as a young man. 'He was just 19 or 20 and he was trying to make some money to help with his family's expenses and he went around the area collecting scrap iron,' she said. 'He was riding by one house and he noticed some truck engines sitting out there and he knocked on the door and asked the man if he wanted to get rid of them. 'The man said "If you can lift them you can have them." So he picked them up by hand and put them in the back of his truck. Have you ever tried lifting a truck engine? 'That is how he got the name 'The Brute.' It was just his strength, and nothing to do with the Mafia.' When asked why the family had the words 'The Brute' inscribed on DiNatale's tombstone, she said: 'It's the same reason that he had 'I Did It My Way' played at his funeral. 'That's who he was, he lived his life his way.' But the New Jersey report - which was compiled nine years after Jimmy the Brute's death - referred to him as 'an associate' of Scarfo's crime family. The report said that Leonetti and Scarfo were bailed after being charged with Falcone's murder. They then went to see DiNatale and a friend, bar owner Sam Siligato, at DiNatale's construction supply company in Egg Harbor Township. 'They asked DiNatale to lie about the time that he actually saw them at the Country Squire Diner in order to give them an alibi for the time frame of the Falcone murder,' the report said. 'They also asked DiNatale to arrange for [Siligato] and the workers who saw them at the diner to do the same. DiNatale agreed. 'DiNatale, at least one of his workers and [Siligato] then provided a defense team investigator with statements that they saw Scarfo, Leonetti and Merlino at the diner later in the afternoon than they actually did. Fitzpatrick also revealed the moment she knew her daughter was interested in politics: during a trip Ronald Reagan made to New Jersey 'Kelly sat there listening to every word and I could tell by the look on her face what she was thinking,' her mother said 'Scarfo, Leonetti and Merlino then had an alibi for part of the time that they were involved in committing the murder.' The report said Jimmy the Brute 'willingly' agreed to give the false alibi. It also claimed that DiNatale had started his businesses and bought Atlantic City real estate with 'money he had made from bootlegging during his younger years.' The report said Scarfo, who died in a federal prison in North Carolina in January aged 87, liked dealing with him 'because he knew their background and was willing to accept cash without asking any questions.' Fitzpatrick said her father only had a fourth grade education but became a 'very successful businessman.' 'Whatever he did, he did well,' she said. 'He knew math better than any graduate from college.' 'He spent a lot of his younger years traveling the country with hobos. His life was not easy, his home life was not great for him but he still made something of himself. 'I don't like people saying false things about him.' DiNatale died in 1983 when his now-famous granddaughter was 16 and still attending St. Joseph Roman Catholic High School in Hammonton, New Jersey. The following year, on September 19, 1984, Kellyanne's life changed forever, her mother said. That was the day Ronald Reagan came to Hammonton six weeks before he would be re-elected to the highest office in the nation. 'Kelly sat there listening to every word and I could tell by the look on her face what she was thinking,' her mother said. 'I knew that day that she was going to do something in politics - and she really has.' Louise Harris, 24, is a Cambridge-educated wannabe popstar from Harpenden who has compared the Just Stop Oil campaign to that of the Irish rebels' fight for independence from the British and once said she was like a prisoner of war. This morning she cried on the gantry over Britain's busiest motorway as she declared: 'You might hate me for doing this. I'm here because I don't have a future.' But despite her warnings about the future of the planet, her Facebook page shows her posing next to a 2009 Fiat Punto, which runs on unleaded. Just Stop Oil opposes petrol cars so much its members smash petrol stations to prevent people refueling and blockade refineries. She also appears to be at the wheel - or a passenger - in the same car in a number of other social media posts, including this year when she has been taking part in Just Stop Oil protests, despite it running on petrol. Miss Harris compared her yellow Punto to the vehicle made famous by The Inbetweeners, because it has a red door. In one post where she stands next to her Fiat she says: 'I am officially Number 1 fan of this show f**k you other wannabes. Unfortunately it DOESN'T have a tape deck'. Today Miss Harris was among 23 people arrested by the Met Police and colleagues at Surrey, Essex and Hertfordshire, after shutting down the M25. The demonstrator - who posts songs on YouTube including a slickly edited music video called 'Dating me is like a Cambridge term'. The lyrics include: Dating me is like a Cambridge term. By the fifth week you are completely burnt out emotionally destroyed and suicidal'. A drill instructor faces a court martial in connection with the death of a Muslim recruit at a South Carolina training base. Gunnery Sgt. Joseph Felix faces multiple charges in the death of 20-year-old Raheel Siddiqui at Parris Island, South Carolina, a statement issued by Marine Corps Base Quantico said. The charges include failure to obey a lawful general order and cruelty and maltreatment. Raheel Siddiqui, 20, of Taylor, Michigan, died in March 2016 after falling nearly 40 feet in a stairwell. His death took place just 11 days after beginning his training at Parris Island. Marine recruit Raheel Siddiqui, pictured, died in March 2016 after falling nearly 40 feet in a stairwell Capt. Joshua Pena, a spokesman for Marines Corps Training and Education Command, told the Island Packet that another drill instructor, Sgt. Michael K. Eldrige, faces charges over a case in July 2015 when a Muslim recruit was commanded to get in a dryer and questioned about his religion. Pena said that Felix's charges are linked to that case as well as 'allegations surrounding the investigation into the death of recruit (Raheel) Siddiqui'. Courts-martial for Felix and Eldridge are to be held at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. No dates have been announced. Siddiqui committed suicide after being branded a 'terrorist' and being physically abused at a Marines boot camp, an investigation found. Siddiqui took his own life on March 18, 2016, after a drill instructor slapped him, called him a terrorist and forced him to keep running from one side of the barracks to another after he said he was ill, the report finds. A redacted report into Siddiqui's death states that on March 18, the recruit wrote a note to his drill instructor asking to go to the infirmary for a sore throat. But, as he didn't follow proper procedure, the recruit was forced to run back and forth in his barracks, the report said. After several runs, he began to cry and fell to the floor clutching his throat, apparently unresponsive, the report said. He was ordered to get up and was slapped in the face. After he was slapped three times, the recruit ran out a door and vaulted over a railing on the third floor of the barracks where he fell to his death, the report said. In September 2016, the Marine Corps said Siddiqui committed suicide. Siddiqui's family, however, contends he was hazed before his death At one point, the drill instructor allegedly called the recruit a 'terrorist,' according to officials. The drill instructor wasn't supposed to be in charge of recruits because he was under investigation for his role in the July 2015 case, the Island Packet reports. The paper said that it asked Pena if Felix was the instructor involved - and that Pena said Felix was linked to claims revealed due to an investigation into Siddiqui's death. He was quoted as saying: 'Specifications will be made available at follow on proceedings.' In September 2016, the Marine Corps said Siddiqui committed suicide. But the service also said it had uncovered widespread hazing and maltreatment of recruits and young drill instructors dating back to 2015. Siddiqui's family contends he was hazed before his death. Marine Corps officials insisted at the time that the hazing had been found only in Siddiqui's training group, the 3rd Recruit Training Battalion, which is one of four training battalions at the site. The Marine Corps also said it had identified up to 20 officers, drill instructors and other leaders who face administrative or potential criminal charges for taking part in the misconduct or turning a blind eye to it. Two recruits died at Parris Island in an eight-month span in 2016, sparking renewed calls for congressional scrutiny into the service's tough training regimen. 'The loss of a second recruit raises serious questions,' Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Michigan, said in a statement issued in Michigan. 'I am committed to getting to the root of this issue.' Dingell had pressed the Marine Corps for months to look into Siddiqui's death. Two recruits died at Parris Island in an eight-month span in 2016, sparking renewed calls for congressional scrutiny into the service's tough training regimen (file picture) Dingell said in a Wednesday statement that 'since the investigation has given no specific evidence of suicide, I am determined to work with the Marine Corps, the family and all stakeholders to re-examine the autopsy report and get a more fair and neutral finding on cause of death. 'We will never know what happened that day, but it is very clear to me and others based on the facts revealed in the investigation that it was not Private Siddiqui's intention to take his own life. 'I will not stop working alongside his family and the Marine Corps until the determination is changed to more accurately reflect the events of that day so we can bring some measure of peace to the Siddiqui family.' Siddiqui family attorney Shiraz Khan said in a statement Wednesday to the Island Packet that the charges Felix is facing are inaccurate. Khan said: 'It is our position that the referred charges do not align with the facts, evidence and history of this case and are indicative of a remarkable deviation from the USMC Command Investigation into the death of Raheel Siddiqui.' Khan said that '[Siddiqui's] name was swiftly and urgently tied to an unsubstantiated and unverified claim of "suicide" almost immediately, and despite facts and evidentiary material to the contrary, there are no apparent charges of assault, and no consideration of manslaughter or murder at this time. 'Moreover, it appears that one individual is at the center of these charges when originally, it was reported that "20 Marine Corps personnel" could face possible disciplinary or criminal charges. Where are those other charges?' Almost 500 Australian men who have drowned in the past decade would have failed a random breath test with a recorded blood alcohol content above 0.05. Alarming new figures released by the Royal Life Saving Society (RLSS) has also revealed that almost a quarter of drowning victims had alcohol in their system. 'Males who were drinking around waterways and have drowned as a result, 66 per cent of them would have failed a drink driving test,' RLSS spokesman Craig Roberts told the ABC. It comes as the RLSS launches a new prevention campaign to raise public awareness on men drinking near water to prevent further tragedies. Scroll down for video Alarming new figures released by the Royal Life Saving Society (RLSS) have revealed that one in four Australian men that have drowned in the past ten years would have failed a drink driving test. The 'Don't Let Your Mates Drink and Drown' campaign targets Australian men aged over 34 that are at a higher risk of drinking and drowning than young men. RLSS Australia chief executive officer Justin Scarr says men are ignoring messages on alcohol safety and need to do more to prevent innocent lives being lost. 'The campaign encourages men to look out for their mates by avoiding alcohol around water and keeping them out of trouble by pulling them into line if they've been drinking and decide to go for a swim' Mr Scarr said. Research shows that 1,932 Australian men aged 15 years and over drowned in a 10-year span with 22 per cent of fatalities were drunk on a boat or using a watercraft. Mr Scarr believes the male culture surrounding drinking in Australia has had a critical impact with 80 per cent of all drowning deaths being men. The new figures also revealed men are also four times more likely to drown than women. 'For many Australian men an esky full of stubbies is just as important on a fishing trip as the bait, or than checking the conditions before swimming,' Mr Scarr explains. 'This culture of drinking while swimming, boating or fishing means men are at greater risk of drowning.' The 'Don't Let Your Mates Drink and Drown' campaign targets Australian men aged over 34 that are at a higher risk of drinking and drowning than young men The ad campaign depicts a group of friends drinking before a fishing trip when one of them asks where 'Dave' is. Dave is then seen creating picket signs while guzzling down beer himself before presenting himself before the group with warning messages. 'Don't drink and drive' and 'alcohol and water don't mix' have been written on the signs as the group nods in approval. In alerting people to the dangers of mixing alcohol and the water Mr Scarr believes that men could be more vigilante around each other. 'On weekends and public holidays in particular, men often get together for a day of boating, fishing or camping,' he said. 'We're urging men to look out for their mates by avoiding alcohol when they're around water and keeping them safe if they are drunk near the water.' Allen Deaver was indicted on first-degree murder charges in the death of his son-in-law after police say he confessed 24 years to the day A 74-year-old Louisiana man confessed to killing his son-in-law in North Carolina on the 24th anniversary of the crime. Allen Deaver of Livingston Parish told authorities he'd killed Sydney Maurice Gregory on February 7, 1993, police said Thursday. Gregory, who was in his 20s, was beaten and left inside a mobile home that was set on fire in Seven Springs in Wayne County, North Carolina. Authorities said the home reeked of kerosene and the body had blunt force trauma to the head. However, after years went by with no arrest, police despaired of finding his killer, reported WNCN. 'This came out of the blue,' Major Tom Effler said of learning of the crime. 'It wasn't even on our radar.' Police investigated the crime for two months to make sure facts lined up with his story. Effler said Deaver began talking with his minister about the crime while he was hospitalized in February. As the conversation continued, his vital signs changed, prompting a nurse to cut the discussion short, Effler said. When Deaver was discharged, the minister visited him at his Livingston Parish home - this time with a detective present who listened but didn't question Deaver - to continue the conversation. The detective then contacted Wayne County authorities and the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, which found an unsolved arson and murder case matching the description Deaver gave, Effler said. Deaver didn't say why he killed his daughter's husband, Effler said. Deaver and his wife, Karen, lived next door to Gregory and his wife. What Deaver's daughter thinks of the revelation is unclear. 'It's my opinion that because he started talking about it while in the hospital, maybe his conscience was bothering him or he might have wanted to just get it off his chest before he meets his maker,' Effler speculated. Gregory was found in the bedroom of his burned mobile home. His death certificate lists blunt force trauma as his cause of death. No one else was injured. Effler said Deaver moved to Walker, Louisiana, shortly after the slaying. Sonny Kilpatrick, who was was chief of the Pricetown Volunteer Fire Department in 1992, said he responded to the call about a fire at the mobile home and found Gregory's charred body. 'He was actually in his bed, in his bedroom. It was a pretty gruesome sight. We knew he was there a long time before we found him, just because of the smell. It was not pleasant,' he told WNCN. He said it was always a little suspicious how Deaver moved away from the crime scene a few months after. 'It looked like he might be a little guilty because he left the scene. He moved away and stayed away for a long time, but nobody really knew for sure,' he said. A Wayne County grand jury indicted Deaver on a charge of first-degree murder Wednesday. Effler said deputies from the Livingston Parish Sheriff's Office arrested him on a fugitive warrant and he's being held in Louisiana without bond at the parish jail. Kilpatrick said he had numerous conversations with Deaver in the years since, but they never talked about the murder. He said he doesn't know why he would confess now, but doesn't think it's guilt. 'I didnt think he was torn up or guilt ridden or anything like that,' he said. Livingston Parish sheriff's spokeswoman Lori Steele said Deaver waived extradition Thursday and was awaiting transport to North Carolina. She did not know when that would occur. A 24-hour Melbourne crime spree involving armed robberies of milk bars and muggings has led to the arrest of ten teenagers. Police arrested a gang of eight on Thursday morning after a 67-year-old woman was repeatedly struck on the head with a metal pole during a string of robberies in Melbourne's west. Two other teenagers aged 15 and 16 are talking to police about four armed robberies in Elsternwick, Melbourne on Tuesday, according to The Age. The two sets of alleged robberies involving teenagers are not believed to be linked. A 24-hour Melbourne crime spree involving the armed robberies of milk bars and muggings has led to the arrest of ten teenagers CCTV footage captured a moment a gang entered a St Albans milk bar, smashing glass counters and stealing the money register before attempting to destroy surveillance cameras The group of eight allegedly robbed four milk bars, stole a car and mugged people during a crime spree in Derrimut, Newport, St Albans and Deer Park between 11.50pm Tuesday and 4.20pm Wednesday. Police said during one of the armed robberies a 67-year-old woman was 'struck over the head with a metal pole several times' and was taken to hospital with facial injuries. CCTV footage captured the moment a gang entered a milk bar, smashing glass counters and stealing the money register before attempting to destroy surveillance cameras. Owner of a St Albans milk bar Thi Sau, told 7 News she has been left shaken and will sell the store she has owned for 23 years, after it was allegedly raided by the group armed with a hammer, metal pole and a wheel brace. 'I couldn't see anything but their black eyes,' she said. The milk bar owner said she has been feeling sick and cannot sleep following the alleged robbery. Police said during one of the armed robberies a 67-year-old woman was 'struck over the head with a metal pole several times' and was taken to hospital with facial injuries Owner of a St Albans milk bar Thi Sau (pictured), told 7 News she has been left shaken and will sell the store she has owned for 23 years Another business owner fought back and said he chased away the group when they attempted to raid his nearby store Another business owner fought back and said he chased away the group when they attempted to raid his nearby store. The group of four 16-year-olds, three 17-year-olds and an 18-year-old were arrested on Thursday morning. Police said they are 'confident' all stolen items have been recovered. One of the items recovered was a car which was allegedly stolen in the aggravated burglary in Derrimut. At the time of arrest the males were in two cars, one of which was allegedly stolen during the aggravated burglary in Derrimut. Other items stolen included cigarettes, cash and confectionery, police said. Meanwhile, police said the two teenagers being questioned over robberies in Elsternwick allegedly demanded cash from four other people at a McDonald's restaurant. They continue to help police with their inquiries, according to The Age. A heavily pregnant woman managed to crawl from the mangled wreck of a 60-tonne truck after a crash that killed her beloved fiance. Stefanie Teixeira, 32, had been sleeping in the trucks's cabin as her partner Kevin Porker, 40, drove a delivery of grapes from Robinvale, Victoria, to a Maude vineyard at 2.20am. The couple were just 10 minutes away from their destination when the semi-trailer jack-knifed on a steep hill, rolling on to its roof and killing Mr Porker instantly. Heavily pregnant Stefanie Teixeira, 32, managed to crawl from the mangled wreck of a 60-tonne truck after a crash that killed her fiance Kevin Porker The injured Ms Teixeira, who is 39-weeks pregnant, managed to find her partners phone among the wreckage and pull herself and and her unborn child to safety, Adelaide Now reports. In the dark, she walked to the top of the hill on Perdrisat Road where she called for help. 'It's an amazing story ... she crawled out of the back of the cabin, crawled up the hill and made the phone call,' Bannockburn Police Senior Constable Kristen Towers told Adelaide Now. 'Thankfully she wasn't in the passenger seat, or she wouldn't be alive now.' Ms Teixeira suffered injuries to her hand and was flown to Royal Melbourne Hospital where she and her unborn baby boy were in a stable condition. Kevin Porker, 40, was behind the wheel of the 60-tonne truck semi-trailer making a delivery of grapes when it jack-knifed on a steep hill, rolling on to its roof and killing him instantly The injured Ms Teixeira, who is 39-weeks pregnant, managed to find her partners phone among the wreckage and pull herself and and her unborn child to safety and call for help Authorities say Perdrisat Road was not appropriate for a truck a 60-tonne vehicle, with many locals and officials calling for more appropriate signage and reduction of speed limits Authorities say the dangerous stretch of road was not appropriate for a truck a 60-tonne vehicle, with many locals and officials calling for more appropriate signage and reduction of speed limits. 'It [the truck] just wasn't able to take this left bend and jackknifed and tipped,' police said. Friends of Mr Porker have expressed their devastation on social media, calling the South Australian truck driver 'a great father and 'hard worker'. 'You were a great mate. I always thought of you as a brother. We have been through so much over the many years. You taught me so much, you were the hardest-working person I have ever met,' one heartbreaking tribute read. Another wrote: 'have lost my best friend ... you are forever in my heart you amazing, caring, loving man.' Police will prepare a report for the Coroner. A Current Affair reporter Ben McCormack directed a sick gay incest film that shows a father performing a sex act on his adult son, Daily Mail Australia can reveal. McCormack, who was yesterday charged with sending child pornography, wrote and directed a five-minute film about a young man's trip to a gay bath house in Brisbane. The protagonist, who wears nothing more than a towel for most of the short film, is seen being pleasured by an anonymous man, who is later revealed to be his father. One of McCormack's colleagues at ACA said people at the network were disgusted by the film - and revealed that he had planned to settle down and have children before his shocking arrest. Reporter Ben McCormack directed a sick gay incest film that shows a father performing a sex act on his son. Pictured, the son in the film A Current Affair journalist McCormack wrote and directed a five-minute film about a young man's trip to a gay bath house in Brisbane. Pictured, a man in the bath house The protagonist is seen being pleasured by an anonymous man, who is later revealed to be his father (pictured) The young man is pleasured by a man through a hole in a wall, but when he exits, he realises the man is his father McCormack's movie, called 'Family Outing', shows a young man nervously walking through a sex club wearing only a towel as other men leer at him. He then walks into a cubicle and is pleasured by a man through a hole in a wall. When the two men exit, they look at each other and realise each other's identity. 'Dad?' the son says, as the film ends. The black-and-white film, filmed in 2001, was shot at an inner-city gay bath house in Brisbane. A colleague of McCormack's at ACA has also revealed that the reporter had been looking forward to settling down and having children. 'Ben has been openly gay the entire time he was at Nine,' they said. 'He was a single guy and a few years ago he was talking about having a kid. 'McCormack would often talk about his filmmaking prowess and in particular about 'Family Outing',' they said. 'He would talk about it all the time. The storyline was a bit sick and made people around the ACA office say "why the f*** would you do that?" McCormack's movie, called 'Family Outing', shows a young man nervously walking through a sex club wearing only a towel as other men leer at him Men are seen touching each other inside the Brisbane bath house during the short film The black-and-white film was shot at an inner-city gay bath house in Brisbane. Pictured, a wall of a cubicle, which has a hole in it Ben McCormack was sensationally charged with using a carriage service for child pornography material on Thursday One of the film's crew told Daily Mail Australia that the film was 'highly successful' and was shown at film festivals around the world. 'It was confronting but it wasn't strange because I knew that Ben was gay,' the source said. The source, who said they have not spoken to McCormack for 15 years, said none of the actors or crew were paid for working on the film. Speaking of the accusations made against the Channel Nine veteran reporter, they added: 'The whole thing has shocked me. No one had a clue.' One of McCormack's colleagues said staff were left shocked when he was charged on Thursday. 'His arrest came as a real shock because we thought there were no surprises about Ben - he was open about being gay even though Nine is not exactly the most gay-friendly place to work. Even the chicks there are really blokey," the source said. The colleague said he was assigned to chase down paedophile Robert Hughes in Singapore after Peter Stefanovic landed an interview with one of his victims, Sarah Monahan, who was a child at the time she appeared alongside Hughes in the 1980s sitcom Hey Dad!. One of McCormack's colleagues said staff were left shocked when he was charged The journalist was instrumental in Nine's coverage of the Hey Dad! abuse saga McCormack (left) was suspended by the network after he allegedly had 'sexually explicit conversations' about children and discussed child pornography with another man Colleagues remembered him as a reporter who would 'get the job done and didn't have a massive private life'. 'He didn't have anyone to go home to and he would hang around work until late,' they said. Sources said McCormack, 42, was 'very close' to ACA's head cameraman Drew Benjamin, who has been at the network for 30-odd years, and drove McCormack away from Redfern police station on Thursday night. McCormack was sensationally charged with sending child pornography using a carriage service on Thursday. He was suspended by the network after he allegedly had 'sexually explicit conversations' about children and discussed child pornography with another man. His strict bail conditions mean he is unable to go on the internet other than for work, including social media websites,. He is also not allowed to meet anyone under the age of 16, other than family members - and even then an adult must be in the room at the time. McCormack is also banned from communicating with anyone under the age of 16 and cannot go near playgrounds, schools or anywhere 'known to be frequented by children'. He is due to appear in court on May 1. Some locum doctors are refusing to work unless they get pay rises of more than 50 per cent, the NHS watchdog has warned. This could open up worrying gaps in rotas over Easter, it is feared. NHS Improvement, which regulates hospitals, said some doctors were collaborating and effectively threatening to strike if they arent paid extortionate rates. Jim Mackey, the chief executive, told the Health Service Journal their behaviour should see them struck off the doctors register. Some locum doctors are refusing to work unless they get pay rises of more than 50 per cent, the NHS watchdog has warned. Last Thursday, 14 locum doctors suddenly pulled out of shifts at Blackpool Teaching Hospitals, forcing consultants to step in. And an email from a manager at an unnamed hospital in the South West revealed three locums are refusing to work unless their pay is increased by 56 per cent. Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt imposed a pay cap for locum doctors and nurses in 2015 of up to 55 per cent more than the rates paid to permanent staff members. But hospitals often ignore this and offer far higher rates as otherwise locums might not work, which could leave them short-staffed. Mr Mackey said: We are trying to hold our nerve and not blink, but safety will drive the decisions. Behaviour reported by trusts in recent days suggested a number of medics were working together, to collectively withdraw labour in an effective strike. I dont know how theyre on the register. One unnamed NHS finance director told the HSJ the locums tactics were like a Mexican standoff. Chris Hopson, of NHS Providers, which represents hospital managers, said: A number of our members said some contractors are seeking to put pressure on them to pay more. This is a concern as every trust wants to guarantee safe care at a time of workforce shortages. Figures from 2015, before the cap, show one hospital paid a locum cardiologist 11,000 to work three shifts over the Easter weekend. The Mayor of Seattle has been accused of repeatedly raping teenage boys who were addicted to crack cocaine and paying them $10 a time. Ed Murray, 61, reportedly 'raped and molested' a 15-year-old boy for up to five years after they met on a city bus in 1986, according to a lawsuit filed on Thursday. In interviews with The Seattle Times, two other men claimed he abused them and paid them for sex when they were teenagers in the 1980s. The mayor branded the claims 'categorically false', adding that it was no coincidence that the allegations came 'within weeks of the campaign filing deadline'. Murray was elected mayor in 2013 after a long career in the Legislature, where he led efforts to legalize gay marriage in the state. As mayor he pushed to increase the city's minimum wage to $15 an hour and address the homelessness crisis in Seattle. Scroll down for video The Mayor of Seattle Ed Murray has been accused of repeatedly raping teenage boys who were addicted to crack cocaine and paying them $10 a time Murray's address in the Capitol Hill area of Seattle is seen above A 46-year-old man, identified by the initials D.H, said Murray 'raped and molested him' over several years, according to the lawsuit filed in King County Superior Court. He claimed the abuse began when he was 15 and addicted to crack cocaine, and Murray was in his early 30s. 'I have been dealing with this for over 30 years,' the man, now sober for a year, told the Times. He said he was coming forward as part of a 'healing process' after years of 'the shame, the embarrassment, the guilt, the humiliation that I put myself through and that he put me through.' The man also said his father's recent death freed him of a desire to keep the abuse secret. His attorneys wrote in the complaint that their client's actions were not politically motivated, KIRO7 reported. They said that D.H 'believes that the public has a right to full information when a trusted official exploits a child' . The newspaper also reported that two other men said they knew Murray when they lived in a Portland, Oregon, center for troubled children. Jeff Simpson and Lloyd Anderson accused Murray of abusing them in the 1980s and paying them for sex and said they'd be willing to testify about it, the Times said. In interviews with The Seattle Times, two other men claimed he abused them and paid them for sex when they were teenagers in the 1980s. Above, Murray attends a dinner reception for Chinese President Xi Jinping in Seattle, Washington, U.S. on September 22, 2015 Simpson, 49, said Murray - who he had thought of as a father - raped him over several years, starting at age 13, and in later years, paid him. 'I would really like for him to admit it and to take responsibility,' Simpson told two Times reporters who visited him in Portland. 'I don't necessarily think that he destroyed my life but I believe a lot of the problems I have stemmed from this.' Simpson tried to bring a lawsuit against Murray in 2007, with Anderson's support, but his lawyer withdrew from the case. In 2008, Simpson started calling media organizations and lawmakers in Olympia, saying Murray, then a state senator, was a pedophile who had sexually abused him. When the alleged abuse began, one of them reportedly talked with a social worker and detective. Simpson and Anderson raised the allegations a decade ago in calls to reporters and Washington state lawmakers, and they repeated them in recent interviews with the Times. No charges were filed and an entry in an old Multnomah County district attorney's database indicates the office considered but rejected a felony third-degree sodomy case in May 1984. A 46-year-old man, identified by the initials D.H, said Murray 'raped and molested him' over several years, according to the lawsuit filed in King County Superior Court (pictured). Two other men, Jeff Simpson and Lloyd Anderson accused Murray of abusing them in the 1980s Any other police and child welfare records would have been destroyed by now, officials said. Murray's personal spokesman Jeff Reading said: 'These false accusations are intended to damage a prominent elected official who has been a defender of vulnerable populations for decades. 'It is not a coincidence that this shakedown effort comes within weeks of the campaign filing deadline. These unsubstantiated assertions, dating back three decades, are categorically false.' Reading's statement acknowledged the historic allegations. 'The two older accusations were promoted by extreme right-wing anti-gay activists in the midst of the marriage equality campaign, and were thoroughly investigated and dismissed by both law enforcement authorities and the media,' the statement said. Before his political career, Murray - one of seven children in an Irish Catholic family - considered the priesthood. He spent a year at a seminary in 1976 before studying sociology at the University of Portland, a private Catholic institution, according to news profiles. Having sex with a child under 16 - the age of legal consent in Washington in 1986 and today - constitutes rape of a child under state law. The statute of limitations on any crime would have expired long ago. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and says D.H. has not previously made any financial demands of Murray. Mel B's estranged husband Stephen Belafonte has filed his official response to her divorce petition and has asked that she pay his lawyer's fees. Belafonte, 41, is asking for spousal support, the documents show, although no figure is stated. The filing also reveals the former couple disagree on their separation date - him claiming it was March 1 and she December 28. Stephen Belafonte (left) has filed his official response to Mel B's (right) divorce petition demanding she pay his lawyer's fees Mel was spotted leaving her lawyer's office for a second day in a row on Thursday as she prepares to take on a messy divorce battle with Belafonte. Mel, who filed for divorce from the producer last month, has applied for a restraining order against her estranged husband and is seeking custody of their daughter, Madison Brown Belafonte, five. Court papers see Mel claim she was subject to racist slurs, as well as emotional and physical violence in front of her children. Mel states in the documents: 'I am in fear for my safety and that of my children... Likewise the Respondent's emotional and physical abuse of Petitioner in the presence of the minor child is tantamount to abuse of the minor child.' She continues: 'I have tried to leave the Respondent many times. Every time I tried, the Respondent threatened me with violence and threatened to destroy my life in every way. 'He said he would destroy my career and take my kids from me. He threatened to release sexually explicit videotapes claiming I would never again work in the entertainment industry.' Stephen Belafonte's official response to Mel B's divorce petition is pictured above Mel says stunning German nanny Lorraine Gilles, who worked for the family for seven years, fell pregnant by Belafonte who then paid for her to have an abortion. Mel B finally sacked the 26-year-old German blonde in September last year after a disastrous family holiday to Ibiza, she says, in explosive court papers lodged on Tuesday. The catalogue of historical allegations of abuse include Belafonte 'punching' and 'choking' Mel, 'splitting her lip' and 'pushing her down on a carpet'. Mel alleges the psychological and physical abuse dates back to the first year of their marriage, in 2007. In the papers, Mel claims that Stephen forced her to 'participate in sexual intercourse with him and random women.' The former Spice Girl suggests that during their marriage, she was coerced into trysts that he secretly record and later used as ammunition against her, threatening to release as sex tapes 'if she tried to resist the threesomes'. Mel says she begged him to delete the tapes. Belafonte is also alleged to have shown his wife little sympathy as her beloved father Martin lost his battle with cancer and hid her passport so she couldn't travel. The film producer allegedly told her to 'Suck it up. If he's going to die, he's going to die.' Recalling his alleged violent behavior, Mel recalled a time Belafonte was involved in a bar brawl in 2010 when he beat up two men. Bold statement: The former Spice Girl, 41, looked stunning in a fitted cream turtle neck and generously cut matching flares as she arrived at a friends home in Beverly Hills Claims: The singer alleges her husband Belafonte repeatedly beat her in jealous rages, forced her to have sex in threesomes that he secretly filmed and threatened to release the tapes Abuse allegations: Mel, pictured on X Factor with injuries allegedly inflicted by her husband, claims that she was frightened to leave him because he threatened to release sex tapes of her MEL'S CASE AGAINST STEPHEN Psychological Threats Allegedly threatened to release sex tapes if she did not not take part in threesomes Infidelity Stephen reportedly 'paid the couple's nanny $300,000' of Mel's money to get an abortion, after impregnating her and suggesting the trio live and raise the baby together False Imprisonment Kept Mel 'locked in her bedroom' unable to call emergency services after she took an overdose in 2014 Physical Violence 'Choked' her and 'slammed' her down on hardwood floors before Dancing With The Stars appearance 'Split her lip' in a jealous rage after she danced with Usher at The X Factor in 2012 'Punched' and 'pushed' her to the floor causing severe burns before Olympics Closing Ceremony in 2012 Left 'cuts' and 'bruises' on the Spice Girl before the X Factor UK 2014 live shows, leading to her hospitalization Advertisement In another incident, the papers allege: 'Stephen placed both of his hands around her neck, began choking her and slammed her down onto the hardwood floors' while she was preparing for U.S. talent show Dancing With The Stars. It is claimed that although some friends and family members had asked Mel about her injuries and offered to call the police on her behalf, she begged them not to as she feared for her own life and theirs if Belafonte were to find out. In the documents, Mel alleges that the abuse became part of a 'pattern'. When she became successful, Stephen 'would beat me down to let me know he was in charge.' She also alleges Belafonte 'punched her and split her lip' after becoming jealous while she filmed a segment with Usher for the X Factor back in 2012. After asking her husband how she could appear on television with the obvious injury, Belafonte allegedly told her 'she should have thought of that before deciding to flirt with and f*** Usher.' In further claims, Belafonte is alleged to have 'punched' Mel and 'pushed her down on a carpet' the day before she and the Spice Girls performed at the Olympic closing ceremony. Mel claims her injuries were so severe her skin was burned from the carpet, adding that she was then forced by her estranged husband to 'tweet that she injured herself by running in heels.' So 'overcome with emotional and physical exhaustion,' an embattled Mel reveals she overdosed on a bottle of Aspirin back in 2014. Disturbingly, Belafonte allegedly stopped her from calling the emergency services, with Mel stating he locked her in the bedroom and told her to 'die b***h.' Mel says she previously tried to leave Belafonte several times, but claims 'he threatened me with violence and threatened to destroy my life in every possible way... destroy my career and take my kids from me.' However the singer claims Belafonte was supportive and 'rushed to help her in every way' in the months following their marriage. Stephen Belafonte's response 'I haven't heard these allegations. You know what my comment on this is, as this is the mother of my children? 'I'm really really distraught my brain how this is going to affect our children. and the depths that she's gone to. That's it. I'm shocked at those allegations and that's what it is. 'I think someone's set me up to look like a bad guy. Obviously you saw my house got raided and nobody found anything. It's accusation after accusation. But we'll have our day in court. 'And we have children. if anyone knows our children, we have beautiful children. They're on social media. Why do this? 'We were friends two weeks ago. And now all of a sudden the team gets around and now it's got to be this.' Advertisement Row: Lorraine, pictured with Mel's husband Stephen Belafonte, is the nanny identified in court papers submitted by the former Spice Girl as she divorces him But she admits to being 'emotionally weak' as her engagement and subsequent wedding took place shortly after the birth of second daughter Angel, conceived during a brief relationship with Hollywood star Eddie Murphy. 'At the time, I was vulnerable. I was giving birth as a single mother, my self-esteem was very low, and my hormones were out of balance due to the pregnancy,' she claims. She says: 'Respondent's name is Stephen Stansbury, but he often goes by the alias Stephen Belafonte. At the time of our marriage, I was unaware that 'Belafonte' was not Respondent's legal surname, nor was I aware that he was previously married. 'Throughout the marriage, I was the primary income earner. Respondent held neither steady nor gainful employment. 'Respondent has held himself out to be the son of singer Harry Belafonte, when in reality, he is not related.' The singer also alleges that Belafonte repeatedly told her she was 'worthless, that he made me 'who I am.' She says he called her 'fat, ugly and old' and constantly alluded to the nanny being prettier, younger and better at raising the children. A woman allegedly choked a high school student at Florida's Disney World because the girl blocked her view during a fireworks display. Tabbatha Mature, of New Baltimore, Michigan, was arrested on Wednesday night for child abuse after the alleged incident at the Magic Kingdom theme park. The 41-year-old's family was sitting behind the girl and her friends at about 9.30pm waiting for the nightly fireworks show to start. Tabbatha Mature, of New Baltimore, Michigan, was arrested on Wednesday night for child abuse after the alleged incident at the Magic Kingdom theme park in Florida The family had allegedly asked the girl to sit down when the show started so they could see. Mature allegedly became aggravated when she couldn't see, prompting the girl and her friends to leave, according to the arrest report. As they left, the girl told Mature that she could 'take our spot'. Police said Mature then grabbed the girl by her neck and allegedly squeezed her hands around her throat. The 41-year-old's family was sitting behind the girl and her friends at about 9.30pm on Wednesday waiting for the nightly fireworks show to start at Magic Kingdom When she let go of the girl, she allegedly started screaming 'you don't want to mess with me'. The girl and her friends reported the incident to a Disney World employee. She did not have visible injuries but agreed to press charges after speaking with her mother on the phone. Mature was arrested on a child abuse charge and was booked into the Orange County Jail. She was released on a $2,000 bond. It has now been over three years since Richard Simmons walked out the door of his Beverly Hills gym after teaching his daily group exercise class and disappeared from the world. And now, after years or rumors, concerns and reports he had possibly been taken hostage by his housekeeper Teresa Reveles, it seems that Simmons may finally be ready to come out of hiding and reenter public life. That news came from Simmons' manager Michael Catalano hot on the heels of a report stating that the fitness guru had just signed a lucrative deal with Prominent Brand + Talent. This new deal gives Prominent the rights to represent Richard Simmons for licensing, merchandising and endorsement opportunities around the globe. And it was set in motion by a 2016 DailyMail.com story about Simmons reclusive behavior that one year later was explored in the popular six-episode podcast 'Missing, Richard Simmons.' Scroll down for video Making money: Richard Simmons (above in November 2013) has signed a contract that may rewsult in him coming out of hiding after over three years Jackpot: Prominent Brand + Talent will represent Richard Simmons for licensing, merchandising and endorsement opportunities around the globe despite the fact that he has not left his home for three years (above) 'All I can say, at least for now, is it is possible,' Catalano said in an interview with The New York Times about Simmons leaving his home after holing up inside the residence for the past 38 months. 'But it is yet to be determined, I would say.' Catalano's statement is offering hope to those who followed the podcast detailing the odd game of hide-and-seek that Simmons is playing with the public. Richard Simmon's Housekeeper Teresa Reveles Walks a Dog Outside of Richard's House It was the most popular podcast for two straight months leading up to the final episode, but then ended without ever managing to speak to Simmons himself or getting an explanation of what brought about his behavior. Money however appears to talk much louder than public concern and a podcast host according to Catalano, who is not only Simmons' manager but also the co-founder of the company that has obtained the global rights to sell Simmons' products. In that role it would seem that he, more than anyone else, would benefit financially from Simmons coming out to help sell his products. In fact, even suggesting that he could possibly come out might help drum up interest in some vendors. The company does manage a number of other high-profile fitness brands as well, including Madonna's Hard Candy. 'Richard Simmons is a beloved American icon and a proven retail brand,' Dan Levin, a managing member of Prominent, told License Global. 'Everything he stands for has been the gold standard in health and wellness. He has paved the way for every subsequent fitness personality in this country, yet none of them have matched the impact of Richards indelible imprint on Americas psyche.' He later stated that the company 'plans to launch a global line of thoughtful motivation and inspiration-based products that will achieve the tenets Richard has always espoused - love yourself no matter what you weigh, make time to do good for others and laugh a little.' Stretch it out: The news that Simmons may come out of hiding comes from his manager, who is also the co-founder of Prominent Simmons' friend Dan Taberski, who was behind the hugely popular podcast, also spoke about his former pal's new popularity, and how he managed to somehow mastermind a perfect and massively lucrative comeback without doing a single thing . 'Telling his story was a huge part of the podcast,' said Taberski, who has never appeared to show anything other than a genuine concern for Simmons and desire to see him again. 'He changed lives, and hes a genius businessperson. If I had even the smallest part in reminding people of that, fantastic.' Catalano meanwhile bemoaned what he said were 'a lot of the mistruths' in the podcast, which he believes 'didnt really uncover or reveal anything new that hasnt been reported previously.' He was however excited that a new younger generation is aware of his client, saying: 'At the end of the day, if it helps deliver his message to people who were unaware of it previously, fantastic. Thats what Richards mission has always been.' Meanwhile, in the final episode Taberski was able to speak with Catalno, who told him: 'I cant say Richard feels better as a result of the podcast. Perhaps you do.' Falls among elderly people have become the most common cause of major trauma seen in NHS hospitals, according to a national audit. A third of all cases of life-threatening trauma in England and Wales are among over-60s who have fallen from a standing or sitting height, according to a report by the Trauma Audit and Research Network. Yet elderly people are far less likely than younger patients to be seen by a consultant when they arrive at A&E, meaning delays in diagnosis and treatment. Doctors warned elderly people had been forgotten amid the successes seen elsewhere in the NHS. A third of all cases of life-threatening trauma in England and Wales are among over-60s who have fallen from a standing or sitting height, according to a new report (file picture) Out of all 15,972 life-threatening traumas recorded in the NHS in 2014, some 6,829 were caused by falling injuries from a height of less than two metres, and 5,383 of these falls were among patients over the age of 60. Road collisions - until now considered the main cause of trauma - only accounted for 4,466 cases among all ages, the report reveals. The audit, completed by experts in Manchester, Sheffield, Southampton and Leicester, concluded that the typical trauma patient is no longer a young man in a car crash - but in fact an older person who has fallen over at home. Study author Dr Mark Baxter, of University Hospital Southampton, said: The report makes it clear that there is a change in the nature of patients who suffer from major trauma and we need to adapt to this new reality. Older people, often with frailty, present a specific challenge to the trauma centres as they are more likely to have other co-existing illnesses which require a different response with specialists in care of older people involved in their care from the outset. Professor Fiona Lecky, an expert in emergency medicine at the University of Sheffield, said Britains ageing population is driving the problem. In 2014 22.8 per cent of the population of England and Wales was over the age of 60, up from 20.8 per cent a decade earlier. There are more older people around, so we are seeing more people falling at home, Professor Lecky said. Doctors have warned elderly people had been forgotten amid the successes seen elsewhere in the NHS (file picture) There is an urgent need for prevention programmes to tackle this growing problem and for research to improve our understanding of how to best manage the complex challenges of major trauma in older people. But despite the growing problem of severe injuries among elderly people, they are less likely to receive expert care when they arrive at hospital. The report revealed only 54 per cent of people in their 70s and 43 per cent of those in their 80s were seen by consultants as they arrived at A&E, compared to 73 per cent of people aged 16 to 59 and 81 per cent of children. Dr Andy Eynon, a consultant in intensive care at Southampton General Hospital, claims injuries are missed in a quarter of elderly patients which he blames on an ageist approach. The development of trauma networks across the country has been a revelation, saving hundreds more lives a year, yet the elderly population seems to have been forgotten amid the successes, he said. But Professor Lecky insists this has little to do with ageism but is simply due to the inherent problem of diagnosing trauma among elderly people. It is not an active form of discrimination, she said. It is just these injuries are less obvious. This is mainly because fall injuries, particularly among elderly people, often appear relatively minor at first. If an ambulance is called to a car crash, for instance, the crew phones A&E in advance to prepare them to receive patients with major trauma. Study author Dr Mark Baxter, of University Hospital Southampton, pictured, said hospitals had to 'adapt to the new reality' that older patients are more at risk of major trauma But if they are called to help an elderly woman who has fallen over at home, they are likely to take it less seriously. The patient will usually be taken to hospital, but might be seen initially by a junior doctor, who might not immediately see the seriousness of the problem. Professor Lecky said: It might seem like an innocuous fall in the home. The patient might still be talking and acting normally. With a fall we are less likely to get a pre-alert - and the diagnosis is delayed. Diagnosis is made harder because among elderly people the symptoms of head injuries take longer to appear, research suggests. Scientists suspect this is because swelling and inflammation in the brain of elderly people causes problems more slowly, possibly because the brain has already shrunk slightly. But this means the severity of an injury takes longer to appear, so what initially seems like a relatively minor bump on the head later turns out to be life-threatening. A protestor was removed from a Portland city council meeting on Wednesday after presenting the town's mayor with a can of Pepsi. The man, who identified himself as a former Boston Globe reporter called Carlos Enrique, was seemingly extending an olive branch to Mayor Ted Wheeler after condemning city council-goers for berating the politician. His poorly received move comes in the wake of Pepsi's controversial campaign which depicts a tense protest scene being resolved when model Kendall Jenner offers the soda to a police officer. Scroll down for more videos The ad was branded 'tone-deaf' and Martin Luther King Jr.'s daughter was among the many to share outrage over it After introducing himself, the man says: 'I have just recently moved here and I have to say I'm very surprised at, like, how there's so many people that get mad at you and yell at you, and I'm sure that has happened in the past when I've covered city council, but not nearly as frequently as it has here.' The mayor then interrupts him, telling him that his interjections need to pertain to the issue at hand - which was the proposition to make changes to Portland's parking codes. Still, the man persisted: 'What I realized is that the language of resistance has not been properly translated to you, so this is for you,' the man said as he approached the mayor, according to SF Gate. 'Woah, woah, woah, not a good move, not a good move,' Mayor Wheeler said as police quickly approached Enrique. 'Not a smart move,' he continued. The mayor and those sitting on the bench with him looked immediately concerned, even when it became obvious that the man was offering him a can of Pepsi. He was then escorted out of the meeting by police officers. A protestor was removed from a Portland city council meeting on Wednesday after presenting the town's mayor with a can of Pepsi The man, who identified himself as a former Boston Globe reporter Carlos Enrique, was seemingly extending an olive branch to Mayor Ted Wheeler after condemning city council-goers for berating the politician The mayor and those sitting on the bench with him looked immediately concerned, even when it became obvious that the man was offering him a can of Pepsi. He was then escorted out of the meeting by police officers Though claiming to be a journalist that has covered city council meetings extensively, the Boston Globe reportedly has no record of a man by the name Carlos Enrique being employed there. The presentation of a Pepsi was likely in parody of Pepsi's controversial ad depicting Kendall Jenner bridging the gap between protesters and police when she gives a can of the soda to an officer. The commercial has since been pulled from the air and the company released a statement declaring that they did not 'intend to make light of any serious issue'. Kendall is said to be 'devastated' about the backlash from the ad, and Pepsi apologized publicly for putting her in the position to be criticized. A mother has written a heartfelt letter to her 21-year-old son who is dying from a rare and painful form of bone cancer. Rhys Pagalday from Sydney has been battling Ewing's Sarcoma since he was 18, but now he has run out of treatment options and has just months to live. His mum Caroline Pagalday was in tears as she read her letter to her son on the Kyle and Jackie O show on Friday morning - describing the young man as her hero. 'Your smile brings hope to everyone who meets you. You are my Wolverine, you are my hero and I am so honoured to call you my son,' Mrs Pagalday read. Scroll down for video Caroline Pagalday, pictured left with her son Rhys who is fighting Ewing's Sarcoma - a rare form of bone cancer, has written a heartbreaking note to her dying son Rhys Pagalday has terminal cancer - his disability pension has been cut off because he didn't attend employment meetings despite having 'months to live' 'You have fought this horrid cancer with absolute determination and strength. You have always remained positive even when things were crumbling around you. 'I love you to infinity and beyond, unconditional love always.' A teary Mr Pagalday replied to the emotionally charged letter with: 'I love you too mum'. The family first came in to the spotlight when the young man's Centrelink payments were frozen - with the government-run agency demanding Mr Pagalday get a job. The 21-year-old's big sister Sunny Spiteri who is well known for her blog 'The Curvy Gamer' lashed out at the decision and after media attention it was soon overturned. Mrs Pagalday explained 'red tape' and 'falling through the cracks' were to blame for the extra financial burden on the family. Despite the young man's painful existence he is determined to make the most of his time left and revealed to Kyle and Jackie O that he was ticking things off a bucket list. 'This weekend I am going up the coast with some of my mates, we have hired a house and will have the weekend to ourselves,' he said. 'It is something I have always wanted to do.' Kyle and Jackie O with Caroline Pagalday, her son Rhy and his sister Sunny Spiteri CAROLINE PAGALDAY'S LETTER TO HER DYING SON Rhysy, as your mum I couldnt be prouder. You my darling are a remarkable human, you are kind, you are witty, you are compassionate and humble, you are incredibly strong. You are immensely brave and wise beyond your years. You continually amaze me with your positivity, I just love your heart. I love how you naturally think of others before yourself. I love how you are protective of your sisters and myself. I cannot put in to words how much I love you. As your mum watching what you have had to endure over the last three years has broken and shattered my heart in to a million pieces. You have fought this horrid cancer with absolute determination and strength. You have always remained positive even when things were crumbling around you. Your smile brings hope to everyone who meets you. You are my Wolverine, you are my hero and I am so honoured to call you my son. I love you to infinity and beyond, unconditional love always. Love your mumma. Advertisement The radio hosts then decided to help Mr Pagalday, who is a Lord of the Rings fan, with the list and played a personalised message from the movie's director Peter Jackson inviting him to Hobbiton in New Zealand. 'Come and visit Hobbiton- I will make sure they roll out the red carpet for you, or the green grass carpet,' Mr Jackson said. The radio hosts then excitedly announced the cancer patient and his family would be off to New Zealand for a private tour of the Hobbit village featured in the Lord of the Ring films. Then the hosts gave Mrs Pagalday $5000 to help 'with bills' following the mother's financial struggle over the last three years. Last month Mr Pagalday's sister, Ms Spiteri, wrote a scathing post on social media claiming her brother's disability allowance was blocked after ongoing harassment from an employment provider in Sydney. His sister Sunny Spiteri has written an open letter highlighting the alleged harassment her brother received by the employment agency before his allowance was cut 'I would like my brothers disability payments restored as a matter of urgency and action taken against the employee who has been harassing my family,' Ms Spiteri wrote. Three years later the family have had to come to terms with treatment not working that their younger brother and son will die. 'Rhys only has months left to live. His doctors can now only medicate his extreme pain as the cancerous tumors spread even further through his body, robbing him of any quality of life,' she said. This stress has been compounded by the blow to the young man's income and the alleged harassment the family received at the hands of the employment provider. 'At times when she (the employment provider) knew Rhys was in hospital receiving chemotherapy she was calling up to three times a day to get my brother to attend her office for an interview. 'I don't think any government agency would ask a sick teenager to leave their chemotherapy bed to attend an interview for a job. 'During their discussions my mother has calmly and politely explained that it is not possible for Rhys to work or attend the employment office as he is often bed ridden and constantly on a very high dosage of morphine.' The woman who was in charge of Mr Pagalday's employment often upset the family. 'She has continually shown a great deal of contempt and rudeness towards my family. 'Keith Cox, the head of nursing at the Chris O'Brien Lifehouse, was so upset by her treatment of Rhys that he personally wrote to her and faxed a medical certificate explaining that Rhys cannot work whilst he undergoes chemotherapy. 'She was not satisfied and two days later cut Rhys's disability payments stating she was 'not interested in excuses' and that she hears them all the time. 'She said that if Rhys does not attend her office in person that she will cut all benefits permanently.' His mother Caroline had to go to Centrelink the first time the benefits were cut to attempt to fix the problem for her son who was too sick to leave the hospital. 'The staff member my mother dealt with at Centrelink called the employment service worker and asked her to lift the restrictions. 'The employment worker was rude and unprofessional to the staff member. She told her to warn my mother that Rhys will have to get a job eventually and that she will stop payments as soon as she can. 'The employment worker was rude and unprofessional to the staff member. She told her to warn my mother that Rhys will have to get a job eventually and that she will stop payments as soon as she can,' the letter read 'The staff member was understandably horrified at the woman's bullying behaviour. Her intimidation tactics are not the professional and compassionate standards I expect from someone who deals with vulnerable people and families,' the angry letter read. When Sunny's mother refused to attend an interview this week her son's benefits were cancelled. 'At this point in Rhys' life, any time he is admitted to hospital the staff must prepare us for the worst. We do not leave his side. I find it disgusting that any human being would expect a mother to leave her dying son to attend an interview solely because the government thinks a dying boy should get a job.' The heart-breaking letter has been shared more than 500 times with more than 600 people showing their support for the family on a post shared by Ms Spiteri on Facebook. Daily Mail Australia have approached the family for comment. Once, when people flew the family nest, they went to the next street or village. But today, British people are more inclined to spread their wings further afield. New research has revealed we now live an average of 100 miles from where we were born, compared to just 5 miles a generation ago. But almost half of Britons still live in or near their childhood home, a new report reveals contradicting the assumption that many adults move away from their childhood home to pursue work and education opportunities. Once, when people flew the family nest, they went to the next street or village. But today, British people are more inclined to spread their wings further afield London is the leading city for so-called internal migrants reflecting the traditional draw of the capital city. But other major go to destinations are Essex and Kent both easy commutes into London and Lancashire, which has pretty towns in the countryside within a short distance of Manchester. However, London also has one of the highest number of people moving away, highlighting the transient nature of its population. Scotland and Wales are among the other top places that people leave behind, says leading family history website Ancestry. Its survey of 2,000 British-born adults showed a huge shift in people prepared to leave their home area compared with 25 years ago. Most people move from where they were born for work (21 per cent) or a better quality of life (13 per cent). Places where people went to university also exerted a pull, with 1 in 20 wanting to settle in the area where they studied. Half of Britons feel an emotional or spiritual connection to a place, even if they havent actually been there. In the UK, Greater London tops the list of our spiritual homes (10 per cent) And a desire to live among the fresh air and green fields of the countryside (7 per cent) was twice as strong as that to contend with the hustle and bustle of the city (3 per cent). In total, only a third of people will now live their whole lives in the place they were born compared to 4 in 10 of the previous generation. Reasons include the greater ease of getting around and the fact that with increased mobility,a ccess to university and the internet, people are more likely to meet partners from elsewhere in the country. However, the urge to move is not overwhelming some 49 per cent of people have stayed in the area where they grew up. Staying close to their family is the main motivator (45 per cent) but almost as many people 42 per cent are unwilling to break the connection to the place they have spent their whole lives. Experts have suggested other possible reasons include returning to their childhood home means a better chance of being able to afford to buy a property and being near parents they would look after in old age. In total, only a third of people will now live their whole lives in the place they were born compared to 4 in 10 of the previous generation Half of Britons feel an emotional or spiritual connection to a place, even if they havent actually been there. In the UK, Greater London tops the list of our spiritual homes (10 per cent), followed by Cornwall (6 per cent) and West Yorkshire (4 per cent). Globally the United States (17 per cent) comes top, with Australia (8 per cent) and Italy (8 per cent) just behind. Brad Argent, of Ancestry, said: Immigration is something that we hear a lot about, but lesser known is the fascinating trend of people moving around within their own country which has seen a huge increase in the UK over the past few decades. With people moving around the country more and more, it means many have deep sense of belonging to places which may not only be different to where they live, but even places that theyve never actually been to. Ever generous in the face of suffering abroad, Britons have contributed an extraordinary 40million to the disaster fund to support east Africa in just 22 days. It means seven million people across the region will be given food, water and medical care in a two-year programme. The Government has added another 10million in contributions, taking the total raised so far to 50million. British donations will be used to buy food, water and medical care for seven million people across east Africa who are currently suffering through famine Saleh Saeed, chief executive of the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), said: 'We are so incredibly grateful to all who have supported the appeal for their kindness and for their generosity to people who are thousands of miles away. 'The UK government and the British public have been at the forefront of this. Sadly, this crisis is worsening and we must do more.' Although charities were already working in east Africa before the appeal began, the contributions have allowed operations to be scaled up enormously, Mr Saeed added. Famine has already been declared in parts of South Sudan, with people facing starvation in Somalia, parts of north-east Nigeria and Yemen. In all, about 20million people are affected. The appeal by aid agencies was launched by celebrities including Bill Nighy, Sir Mo Farah, Eddie Redmayne and Brenda Blethyn on March 15, with extensive television coverage by broadcasters including the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Sky. Up to 20million people in South Sudan, Somalia, parts of Nigeria and Yemen are facing starvation thanks to conflict and a severe drought killing crops The DEC, which involves 13 of the UK's leading charities, is concentrating its efforts in South Sudan and Somalia, as well as the self-declared autonomous states of Puntland and Somaliland. 'We have reports about aid delivery making an immediate difference to the lives of affected communities,' said Mr Saeed. 'For example, Concern Worldwide is supporting children at the Weydow nutrition centre just outside Mogadishu in Somalia; Save the Children is supplying food, water and medical care to 40 of the most drought-affected communities in Ethiopia and Somalia; Oxfam is providing water and sanitation to hundreds of thousands of people in Kenya; and British Red Cross has delivered emergency food supplies to thousands of people in South Sudan.' Priti Patel, the International Development Secretary, said: 'The great British public has acted without hesitation to stop people dying of famine and hunger. 'Now it's time for the international community to step up and follow Britain's lead before it's too late.' The Trumps are reportedly running 'worn out' secret service agents into the ground with the high cost of protecting the large new first family and their frequent travel habits. Dozens of agents from across the country are being pulled off criminal investigations for two weeks at a time to keep up with the strain of protecting members of Donald Trump's family, the New York Times reports. Most agents are working increasing amounts of overtime and often spend long stretches away from their homes given the first family's worldwide travel tendencies. Dozens of secret service agents are being pulled off criminal investigations for two weeks at a time to keep up with the strain of protecting members of Donald Trump's family Since the grueling election campaign, agents have been working around the clock to protect Trump, as well as his wife Melania and their 11-year-old son Barron who live at Trump Tower in New York. The Secret Service also provides protection for Trump's two adult sons and two adult daughters along with their spouses and children. His daughter Ivanka and her family live in Washington, while the remainder live in New York. The secret service has seen a 40 per cent increase in the amount of protection they are providing to the first family compared to a non-campaign year. 'They are flat-out worn out,' Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) told the Times. Agents have been working around the clock to protect Trump, as well as his wife Melania and their 11-year-old son Barron who live at Trump Tower in New York (above) The department is reportedly struggling as to how to restrain the rising costs and additional staffing requirements. The president has spent seven weekends at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida since his inauguration 11 weeks ago. Each time costs taxpayers an estimated $3 million. The cost of protecting Trump Tower where the First Lady lives could reach $183 million per year, the Washington Post reported last month. Trump's son Eric and Don Jr. have traveled with agent protection on international work trips. Eric's earlier trip to Uruguay to visit a Trump Organization condo property cost taxpayers $100,000 for security and embassy costs associated with the trip. Three of the president's adult children also traveled to Aspen, Colorado over the spring break, which required the protection of about 100 secret service agents. Photos of Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump's senior adviser and son-in-law, wearing a sport coat underneath a bullet-proof vest during his trip to Iraq earlier this week has sent the Twittersphere reeling. Kushner may have received flak for his first visit to Iraq, but it was his modeling of 'this season's casual war-zone wear' that really confused Twitter users. Though a military spokesman said Kushner was 'traveling on behalf of the president to express the presidents support and commitment to the government of Iraq and US personnel currently engaged in the campaign', only he can be blamed for his 'kushervative' business attire. Jared Kushner (left), President Donald Trump's senior adviser and son in law, wore a sport coat underneath a bullet-proof vest during his trip to Iraq earlier this week Twitter users commented that Kushner's dress was more suited for a trip to Martha's Vineyard Kushner's business casual attire made the 36 year old look out of place in the desert landscape In the photos, Kushner looks out of his league standing beside a camouflage-wearing military official, noted Twitter users. Some people found his pairing of a bullet-proof vest with an open-collared button-down, blue sport coat, khakis and Ray-Ban sunglasses incongruous with his desert surroundings. Others may have roasted him for having 'Kushner' scrawled on his vest, but some couldn't see past the only visible letters in the photo: 'Kush', meaning a high strain of marijuana. Some Twitter users guessed the military officials' thoughts on Kushner's presence in Iraq Sarcastic Twitter users could wrap their brains around the Trump administration putting the 36-year-old in charge of securing peace in the Middle East. They couldn't, however, understand why Kushner was not wearing a belt with his khaki pants. This style faux pas was coupled with a game guessing the type of shoes Kushner is wearing and the item he's holding in the photo, as both are hidden. Some mysteries will never be solved. A game was started on Twitter to guess the type of shoes Kushner is wearing in the photo Liz Truss was not only the third non-lawyer in a row to be placed in political charge of the judiciary, but also the first female Lord Chancellor Top lawyers and judges are indignant. Life has not been going entirely their way. They were already restive about austerity era reductions to legal aid and court budgets. Then came last Junes Leave vote in the EU referendum, from which they recoiled with all the squawking you would expect of rich, metropolitan eggheads. To compound their dismay, one of Theresa Mays first acts on becoming Prime Minister was to appoint a non-lawyer as Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor. Liz Truss was not only the third non-lawyer in a row (after Chris Grayling and Michael Gove) to be placed in political charge of the judiciary, but also the first female Lord Chancellor in the 1,000 or so years since that grand post was established. Judicial snoots, who regard non-lawyers as a lower class of life, were appalled. All of which may explain some distinctly intemperate things being said about Ms Truss in recent days. Go down to the Royal Courts of Justice at the top of Londons Strand and it is not long before you will hear mauve-faced, wiggy blowhards moan that the woman just aint up to the job. They complain about her personal manner, her youthfulness (she is 41), her inexperience, the calibre of her intellect (her flakiness). In short, they can see nothing good about her in the slightest. Exception was even taken to the pose she struck when she dressed up in the Lord Chancellors traditional ceremonial robes on first taking the job. Lord Chancellors were once stout figures, former assizes men mottled by age and wearing full-bottomed wigs. Ms Truss, her blonde hair coquettishly coiffed, gazed at the cameras with a gamine grin, possibly looking more like a sexy pantomime principal boy than a port-nosed grandee of the Courts. Following a recent row about rape trials, there is talk of a total breakdown in relations between the judiciary and the Ministry of Justice. Now, the rumblings have reached Downing Street, with a report yesterday suggesting that Theresa May is being urged by members of the Cabinet to remove Ms Truss and break up the Ministry of Justice over concerns it is not fit for purpose. Rumours are also being spread that several members of her office staff want to leave for other parts of Whitehall. So are the attacks, particularly from those in the legal profession, justified? Under the rape trials reform, some alleged victims will be spared cross-examination in court and will be able to give testimony in pre-recorded video films though they can also be cross-examined, but only on video before the trial starts. Yes, there are serious reasons for this and serious drawbacks. Ms Truss wants to make it less traumatic for victims to give evidence, but is an accused rapist not entitled to submit the accuser to tough questioning in court? In presenting this controversial policy, Lord Chancellor Truss and her officials got themselves into a tangle about how far it would extend and how fast it would be introduced. She did not give a convincing performance in interviews. To be honest, it sounded as if she was busking it. It reinforced suspicions that she does not spend long enough on her homework and that her private office is inexperienced. Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, who as Lord Chief Justice is the most senior judge in England and Wales, is effectively the judges shop steward. He flayed Ms Truss as being wrong about the rape trials changes. Posh Lord Thomas (who is not a man known for his sweetness of temper) snapped that the Ministry of Justice had misunderstood the whole thing completely, when he was asked about it by a House of Lords committee. It was a complete failure to understand the impracticalities of any of this, he said. That is the kind of thing that is very troubling. This was strong language a major and damaging harrumph. A former Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, soon weighed in, alleging Ms Truss has no respect either in the political or the legal world, adding she was entirely dependent on the Prime Minister for her survival. The chairman of the criminal bar association, Francis FitzGibbon, said Ms Truss had embarrassed herself. And The Times, very much the legal Establishments mouthpiece, ran a leader article that said Lord Chancellor Truss should take a good look at herself and ask whether she is up to it. Liz Truss was certainly an unlikely choice as Lord Chancellor. Before she became an MP in 2010, she was best known as a Cameroon moderniser who had an extramarital affair with a Tory MP, Mark Field. Liz Truss was certainly an unlikely choice as Lord Chancellor. Before she became an MP in 2010, she was best known as a Cameroon moderniser who had an extramarital affair with a Tory MP, Mark Field That notoriety nearly did for her as the Tories parliamentary candidate for true-blue South West Norfolk, but she made it to the Commons despite the unhappiness of the Turnip Taliban, as her pro-family local Tory critics were called. Before becoming a Conservative, she had been a republican-leaning Lib Dem and was reared in a socialist, Northern England household, being educated at a comprehensive school. Were her new Tory convictions genuine or were they worn simply with political advancement in mind? David Cameron quickly promoted her and in 2014, just four years after entering the Commons, she reached Cabinet as Environment Secretary. She became something of a joke for a party conference speech at which she spoke, with a daft grin, about the wonders of British cheese and how she was going to China to sell them some pork. But there was at least substance behind these claims pork exports to China indeed rose fast. Having followed her on the stump at election time, I can report that she is pretty good with the public, engaging them seriously in debate without sounding arrogant. Despite an occasionally wooden, distant manner on a stage, she comes across in person as a modern woman with a quick wit and cheerfully thick skin. She needed that recently after a ceremony when, soon after her appointment as Lord Chancellor, she made a speech to newly-minted QCs. Displeased by the fact she was talking about Brexit more than justice policy, some of them took to Twitter to insult her even while she was speaking. Lawyers, by and large, are controlled, cautious people of careerist bent and would not normally attack the minister who is in charge of the appointment process for top judicial vacancies. So, what is going on? Ms Truss is collateral damage It does not help that Ms Truss does not speak legal she has not mastered the ornate jargon of the law. But grotty, opportunistic politics by scheming Left-wing lawyers also has something to do with it. Lord Falconers remark about Ms Truss being dependent on the PM is laughably hypocritical, coming as it does from a New Labour insider whose Westminster career is based on the fact he once shared a house with Tony Blair. The rape trial row is not the only one of her troubles. She has been in hot water over changes to the way compensation awards are calculated for car crash injuries, which could add up to 75 on car insurance premiums. And now a parliamentary committee has concluded that Government plans to raise 300 million by increasing probate fees up to a ceiling of 20,000 per estate may not be legally enforceable. That was a change authorised by Ms Truss, too. In the eyes of judges, perhaps greater damage was done when she failed to come to their defence after last autumns High Court verdict, which found against the Government on Brexit. The judges one of whom was Lord Thomas ruled that the Government should consult Parliament before proceeding with Article 50, which would take us out of the EU. Leavers were angry at what they saw as activist judges and the Mail ran its Enemies Of The People headline. (The Daily Telegraphs front page headline, meanwhile, was The Judges Versus The People.) The judiciary was furious and looked to Ms Truss to defend them. Instead she said that it was not her job to tell the Press what to publish. The level of grievance over this in legal circles is high, but is probably linked inextricably to a wider, tribal anger at Brexit (and the Mails passionate Euroscepticism). But then the EU has long been very lucrative for lawyers. There is also a distinct defensiveness in the legal profession over the evisceration of one of their own ambulance-chasing lawyer Phil Shiner, who amorally pursued spurious cases against British troops in Iraq. To that extent, Ms Truss is collateral damage. Then there is the matter of the new Lord Chief Justiceship. Lord Thomas is soon to retire. His replacement will be selected by an expert panel, but Ms Truss was able to set the job specification and she effectively ruled out anyone over the age of 65. Lord Falconer of Thoroton alleged Ms Truss has no respect either in the political or the legal world This knocked out two favoured candidates of the legal Establishment, Lady Justice Hallett and Sir Brian Leveson. The latter is a particular pin-up for Leftists, having chaired the inquiry into newspapers after the News of the Worlds phone-hacking scandal, and recommended statutory regulation of the Press. How they would have loved the great basher of newspapers to become Lord Chief Justice. What a stick in the eye for Fleet Street that would have been! Judicial big shots are incandescent at this treatment of Hallett and Leveson and the chairman of the Commons Justice select committee, a former minister called Bob Neill (who no doubt fancies he would make a much better Lord Chancellor than Ms Truss), has helped spread dissent. Indeed, the head of the Supreme Court, Lord Neuberger, told the House of Lords constitution committee last week that the judiciary should be allowed to sit on the bench beyond the age of 70. Presumably that went down well among the creaking backs that inhabit the Upper Chamber. The question of age aside, there is a worrying mulishness in the judiciary at present, perhaps best described as pique, which defies easy explanation. They just do not think Liz Truss is one of them. And so they are attacking her. Grievous bodily harm from the legal elite. Edifying, it is not. A UK-trained doctor, who was hailed a hero for treating gas attack victims in Syria, stood trial on terror offences and allegedly belonged to the group that kidnapped British journalist John Cantlie. At least 86 people, including 20 children, died in Tuesday's attack on a rebel-held town in Idlib province. Dozens more were left gasping for air, convulsing and foaming at the mouth. Dr Shajul Islam, from East London, published a video of the patients on his Twitter account after the attack. He said his hospital took care of three victims all with narrow, pinpoint pupils that did not respond to light. The University of London graduate was arrested and charged with kidnapping two journalists - Mr Cantlie and Dutch reporter Jeroen Oerlemans - in 2012 but was released after the trial collapsed when neither of the prosecution's witnesses were able to give evidence. Dr Islam, worked as a doctor at St Bart's hospital, is currently removed from the medical register after a fitness to practise hearing at the General Medical Council in March A medical doctor going by the name of Dr. Shajul Islam on Twitter said his hospital in Idlib province received three victims, all with narrow, pinpoint pupils that did not respond to light Dr Islam was accused of kidnapping Western journalists in Syria in 2012, but was cleared when the case collapsed Dr Islam (pictured in a court sketch from 2012) stood trial on terror offences and allegedly belonged to the group that kidnapped British journalist John Cantlie The University of London graduate was arrested and charged with kidnapping two journalists - Mr Cantlie (pictured) and Dutch reporter Jeroen Oerlemans - in 2012 but was released after the trial collapsed when neither of the prosecution's witnesses were able to give evidence He has always protested his innocence, saying he went to Syria to use his medical skills to treat victims of the civil war. Dr Islam, worked as a doctor at St Bart's hospital, is currently removed from the medical register after a fitness to practise hearing at the General Medical Council in March. After the criminal case against him collapsed, and he was found not guilty, he faced close monitoring by the security services. According to a GMC report, a secret tribunal panel heard the disciplinary case against Dr Islam in March this year and banned him for misconduct. The hearing was held in private so the details of the misconduct are not publicly known. At the time of his 2012 prosecution Dr Islam, then 28, and a second man, Jubayer Chowdhury, then 24, were the only alleged British jihadists charged with kidnapping Westerners in Syria. The pair held in high security Belmarsh prison walked free from court after all charges were dropped. Cleared: The prosecution was forced to fold when their two key witnesses were unable to give evidence At the start of the hearing in November 2013, prosecutor Mark Dennis QC told the court that all evidence against the brothers rested on the two victims, who were unable to be called, and therefore could not proceed with the case. A verdict of not guilty was recorded for the charge of kidnapping. Media reports later suggested Islam may have held the key to the then unknown identity of Jihadi John, who was later unmasked as Mohammed Emwazi. In his YouTube video of the toxic attack on Tuesday, Dr Islam said: 'The patients keep just flooding in from this chemical attack,' he says in a Twitter video , purportedly taken inside a Syrian hospital this morning. 'Every one - every one - has got pinpoint pupils'. 'The patients keep coming, we've run out of ventilators,' the humanitarian aid added. 'We don't have enough ventilator space, so we're now taking out the transport ventilators we have in our ambulances and we're going to try to modify them to see if we can use them for our patients.' Dr Islam said that it was 'definitely not a chlorine attack', suggesting that the more severe sarin was used. Footage from his hospital shows adults and children lying on hospital beds unresponsive, as medics work to save their lives. 'I will show you the evidence again and again, but you know what? The world doesn't care and no-one is doing anything,' says Dr Islam. 'We urge you to put pressure on your government - put pressure on anyone - to help us.' Dr Islam said that his hospital in Hama, which is a short drive away from Khan Sheikhoun, received several victims of a suspected sarin attack Dr Islam said that it was 'definitely not a chlorine attack', suggesting that the more severe sarin was used. Footage from his hospital shows adults and children lying on hospital beds unresponsive, as medics work to save their lives. Doctors at the facility were using basic equipment, and attempting to revive patients who were not breathing following the attack Dr Islam, who trained in the UK and now works in northern Syria, said that seriously ill patients were still 'flooding' into his hospital An AFP journalist in Khan Sheikhun saw a young girl, a woman and two elderly people dead at a hospital, with foam still visible around their mouths. Doctors at the facility were using basic equipment, some not even wearing lab coats, and attempting to revive patients who were not breathing. A father carried his dead little girl, her lips blueish and her dark curls visible, wrapped in a blue sheet. As doctors worked, a warplane circled overhead, striking first near the facility and then hitting it twice, bringing rubble down on medics and patients. In a video posted online by Idlib's local medical directorate, a doctor described patient symptoms as he treated a child. 'We are seeing unconsciousness, convulsions, pinpoint pupils, severe foaming, and lack of oxygen,' he said. Dr Islam hit the headlines last summer, when he appeared in another YouTube video, filmed in Idlib, claiming to be providing medical help to the victims of Syrian and Russian airstrikes The video for citizen journalist site On the Ground News, shows Islam wearing hospital scrubs and a stethoscope Dr Islam hit the headlines last summer, when he appeared in another YouTube video, filmed in Idlib, claiming to be providing medical help to the victims of Syrian and Russian airstrikes. The video for citizen journalist site On the Ground News, shows Islam wearing hospital scrubs and a stethoscope. He tells American journalist Bilal Abdul Kareem that he is one of very few foreign doctors treating civilians injured in air strikes in north Syria. Asked why he has come to Syria, Islam replies: 'I'm a doctor. There's a serious shortage of doctors. Bent double and stumbling like a zombie in a horror film, this disturbing video shows a man in a catatonic state after seemingly taken the drug Spice. The man sways and trembles while keeping his feet completely still as people walk past on their daily business in Cardiff city centre. His symptoms are similar to other people under the influence of brands of synthetic cannabis like Spice, Frozen Spice and Black Mamba. The man sways and trembles while keeping his feet completely still as people walk past on their daily business in Cardiff city centre The video, taken on Wednesday according to Wales Online, is the latest shocking footage to emerge as the substances sweep the UK. It was revealed a month ago how a potentially deadly strain of the substance, which is still readily available from street dealers despite now being illegal, had been turning people into 'statues', paralysed while standing or squatting. Charities and youth groups have told of the problems caused by the drug, the effects of which are highly unpredictable. Drug experts are warning of a Spice epidemic that is spreading from the North-West, driving a wave of crime and casualties that the police and emergency services are struggling to cope with. [Spice] has the physically addictive qualities of heroin and the psychologically addictive qualities of crack, says Robert Ralphs, senior lecturer in criminology at the Manchester Metropolitan University and an expert on the drug. The crisis came to national attention following the publication of video footage, shot by an office worker in Manchester, showing people under its influence. His symptoms are similar to other people under the influence of brands of synthetic cannabis like Spice, Frozen Spice and Black Mamba City centre youth charity Lifeshare told how the extra-potent batch of Spice had emerged around the end of February, prompting a series of collapses and a surge in ambulance call-outs. Charity worker Julie Boyle said it was turning clusters of people into the 'walking dead'. On Friday, it was revealed 11 people had collapsed in Manchester city centre after taking spice. Two youths had fallen unconscious and two men were discovered collapsed and covered in vomit after taking the drug. A childcare worker whose remains which were found in bushland at Caboolture north of Brisbane was bashed before being buried in a shallow grave. Police on Friday confirmed the human remains identified as those of Queensland man Samuel Thompson. Even though Mr Thompson was assaulted no cause of death has been established. Mr Thompson's family has been advised of the developments. Human remains found in bushland at Caboolture north of Brisbane have been identified as those of missing Queensland child care worker Samuel Thompson. The uncharacteristic disappearance of Mr Thompson triggered a large-scale investigation involving homicide detectives and police divers. He was last seen driving his distinctive orange 2016 Ford Mustang through Brisbane's north on March 7. The car was later found abandoned in northern NSW bushland. The desperate search for Mr Thompson led police to scour bushland at both sites, and police divers and sniffer dogs have also carried out searches at North Pine River and Murrumba Downs. The desperate search led police to scour bushland at both sites, and police divers and sniffer dogs have also carried out searches at North Pine River and Murrumba Downs A post-mortem had been conducted and suggests the 22-year-old was assaulted, but no cause of death has been established The uncharacteristic disappearance of Mr Thompson triggered a large-scale investigation involving homicide detectives and police divers Mr Thompson's family made a tearful plea to the public for information, saying 'someone knows where Sam is... please help us find our boy'. Police have charged former anti-Islamic State fighter Ashley Dyball, 25, and 23-year-old Roberto Vincenzo Boscaino with Mr Thompson's murder. Dyball had been under investigation by federal police for allegedly joining Kurdish militia to fight against ISIS in Syria. Both men have been remanded in custody and are due to reappear in Brisbane Magistrates Court next month. Mr Thompson's family made a tearful plea to the public for information, saying 'someone knows where Sam is ... please help us find our boy' Advertisement Vladimir Putin has today diverted a warship to protect the Syrian coast and vowed to bolster Bashar al-Assad's missile defences against further US strikes as fears grew the crisis could topple into war between Russia and the West. The Russian President has immediately sent his Admiral Grigorovich frigate - armed with cruise missiles and a self-defence system - from the Black Sea to dock in Syria later. It will pass through the east Mediterranean waters where the USS Ross and USS Porter fired the 59 Tomahawk missiles that pounded Assad's al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs in the early hours of Friday. Putin today called it an 'illegal act of aggression' and also ripped up an agreement to avoid mid-air clashes between Russian and US fighter jets over Syria. In the continuing fight back Russian or Syrian planes also bombed the town of Khan Sheikhoun, the scene of Tuesday's horrific chemical gas attack where 80 died, witnesses in the rebel-held area claimed. The US was also branded 'a partner of ISIS' by al-Assad's spokesman, calling the missile strikes 'reckless and irresponsible' and accused Trump of 'naively falling' for a 'false propaganda campaign' about the Idlib Sarin massacre. Today world leaders praised the US strikes and urged Putin to hold urgent talks with Trump to prevent the Syria crisis escalating into a wider world conflict. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, speaking alongside German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, said: 'We do not want an escalation. We have to stop the hypocrisy. If Russia is acting in good faith it should stop and negotiate'. Russian warship the Admiral Grigorovich (pictured on recent deployment) - armed with cruise missiles and a self-defence system - is docking in Syria today after it was immediately diverted from the Black Sea following Donald Trump's airstrike on al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs, which killed six and destroyed nine Syrian jets Route: It will pass through the east Mediterranean waters where the USS Ross and USS Porter fired the 59 Tomahawk missiles that pounded Assad's al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs in the early hours of Friday First picture: These damaged hangars, blackened by smoke, are at the entrance to the Syrian airfield bombarded by the US Pictures show the aftermath of the US missile attack on the al-Shayrat airbase in Syria this morning with one of the hangars reduced to rubble Footage showing burnt out shelters and hangars and a damaged runway was cheered by tearful Syrians hoping that Trump's intervention would lead to Assad being overthrown Pictures appeared to show damage to the Syrian airbase runway caused by a barrage of some 59 Tomahawk missiles overnight A U.S. Navy image shows the USS Ross (DDG 71) firing a tomahawk land attack missile at the Syrian air base President Donald Trump has launched a US airstrike against a Syrian air base after the gas atrocity which killed more than 80 people (pictured delivering a statement on Syria from the Mar-a-Lago estate in West Palm Beach, Florida, on April 6) 'We do not wish to raise the stakes, but to find a solution. You can not deal with reality (use of chemical weapons) by resorting to propaganda.' Earlier, Trump, speaking from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida where he is hosting the Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng as part of a two day summit, said the US had to act after the Syrian dictator launched the 'horrible chemical weapons attack' on innocent civilians. 'Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack,' he said. 'It was a slow and brutal death for so many.' Pentagon officials said that the airfield was being used to store chemical weapons and was a base for Syrian air forces - including the aircraft that conducted the chemical weapons attack. Syria's state agency SANA claimed that the missiles killed nine civilians, including four children, even though the bombarded the airbase in the middle of the night. There were reports nine Syrian jets were destroyed. The Pentagon has released dramatic footage of its missiles being launched from USS Ross, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, targeting the Syrian base. Putin this morning denounced the strike as an 'act of aggression against a UN member' and suspended a deal to avoid mid-air clashes with American fighter jets over the war-torn country. The Kremlin's propaganda machine clicked into hear claiming the strikes had 'extremely low' military effectiveness and that just 23 of 59 cruise missiles reached the air base, destroying six Syrian jets but leaving the runway intact. Syrian Army officials called the US airstrike a act of 'blatant aggression', saying it had made America 'a partner' of ISIS, the ex-Nusra Front and other 'terrorist organisations'. The US used a special military-to-military hotline to warn Russia it was launching an airstrike on a Syrian air base about 30 minutes in advance - but the Trump administration did not ask Moscow for permission. It is likely Russia alerted the Syrians about the incoming strikes but this has not been confirmed. Viktor Ozerov, head of the defense committee in the Russian Federation Council, told state news agency RIA that the US strikes 'may undermine the efforts in the fight against terrorism in Syria.' 'Russia will demand an urgent UN Security Council meeting after the US airstrike on Syrian aviation base. This is an act of aggression against a UN member.' Russia's foreign minister says no Russian servicemen have been hurt in the bombing raid. Its security council said it regretted the 'harm' done to relations between Washington and Moscow. A Pentagon official told DailyMail.com that the president 'is dead-set against letting Assad labor under the illusion that the Syrian army can murder innocent people with impunity.' A US-launched missile heads for the al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs in Syria on Thursday night where it caused severe damage to military aircraft and weapons Smoke could be seen rising from the Homs airbase targeted by US missile strikes. The military action has already sparked a furious response from President Vladimir Putin, who this morning called the airstrikes an 'illegal act of aggression' Pictures show rubble strewn across the airfield at the Syrian military base this morning. The Syrian Army called it an 'act of 'aggression' Syrian soldiers have returned to the airbase today - along with emergency services. At least six have died in the blasts The runway was cratered and damaged but not all of it was destroyed, these photographs appear to show Target: In the early hours of this morning the strikes were launched from two US destroyers in the Med and have killed at least five and destroyed at least nine Syrian jets, a fuel store and badly damaged the runway at al-Shayrat airbase Aerial pictures show the airbase targeted in the strikes. Pentagon officials said that the airfield was being used to store chemical weapons and was a base for Syrian air forces About 60 of theses US Tomahawk missiles launched early Friday hit the Shayrat air base, southeast of the city of Homs, a small installation with two runways The US military fired more than 50 tomahawk missiles at the al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs on Thursday HOW THE WORLD REACTED From strong messages of support to fierce condemnation, here are the main global reactions to a US strike on a Syria air base in response to a suspected chemical attack. Against RUSSIA: Unsurprisingly, the main ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was robust in its opposition to the strike. The strikes were an 'aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international norms,' the Kremlin said in a statement. The action has inflicted 'considerable damage' to already 'lamentable' US-Russia ties, it added. As a first practical response, Moscow said it would 'halt' its deal with the US to avoid clashes in Syrian airspace. Russia also called for an urgent UN Security Council meeting following the strikes. IRAN: The Iranian regime, another Syrian ally, 'strongly condemned' the strike, just as it condemned 'all unilateral military action'. It said the US action was taken under the 'pretext' of the chemical strike. For FRANCE/GERMANY: In a joint statement, President Francois Hollande and Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Assad bore 'sole responsibility' for the US strike following the suspected chemical attack. BRITAIN: The close American ally said it 'fully supported' the strikes, judging them an 'appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack'. It said the strikes were 'intended to deter further attacks.' TURKEY: NATO ally Turkey, which is a key player in the Syria conflict and has endured choppy relations with Washington recently, welcomed the strikes as 'positive.' The deputy foreign minister added: 'We believe that the Assad regime must be punished completely in the international arena.' Turkey called for a no-fly zone in Syria in the wake of the US strike. SAUDI ARABIA: A foreign ministry official hailed US President Donald Trump as 'courageous' for taking action when 'the international community has failed to put a halt to the regime's actions.' ISRAEL: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel 'fully supports' the 'strong and clear message' sent by the air strikes. He added that the message should 'resonate not only in Damascus, but in Tehran, Pyongyang and elsewhere.' JAPAN: Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that Japan 'supports the US government's resolve that it will never tolerate the spread and use of chemical weapons.' SYRIAN REBELS: A leading Syrian rebel group said one strike was 'not enough', adding that there were '26 airbases that target civilians.' Others CHINA: Beijing offered a nuanced reaction, saying it was 'urgent' to avoid 'further deterioration of the situation.' A foreign ministry spokeswoman added: 'We oppose use of chemical weapons by any country, organisation or individual in any circumstance, for any purpose.' Advertisement 'We've laid down a marker. No more chemical weapons attacks, period. There will be consequences. Our president is showing his American conscience, and if anyone provokes him they will regret it.' The official said the Trump administration hopes Assad 'will change his ways.' The longtime Pentagon veteran said he was in the chain of command that led to Thursday night's attacks, but couldn't predict what might come next. 'We've got a new president,' he said. 'And that means none of our adversaries knows how he will react to any given situation. That's a huge advantage that Assad may not have considered.' Despite repeated questions, neither Secretary of State Rex Tillerson nor National Security Adviser HR McMaster would confirm whether China's Xi Jinping was informed of the strike ahead of time. However officials confirmed to AFP that Trump had informed Xi personally of the Syria strike before it occurred. The strikes have won broad international support with officials saying that Canada and other allies were behind the move. Britain backed the US missile strike, describing it as an 'appropriate response', as the government offered its full support to Trump's targeted assault. A No 10 spokeswoman said: 'The UK Government fully supports the US action, which we believe was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, and is intended to deter further attacks.' German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande said Syrian president Assad bore 'sole responsibility' for the US strike on a regime airbase. In a joint statement on Friday, they said: 'After the chemical weapons massacre of April 4 on Khan Sheikhun in northwestern Syria, a military installation of the Syrian regime was destroyed by a US air strike last night. 'President Assad bears sole responsibility for this development.' Hollande added that the US strike was what France had been calling for in the wake of another chemical attack in 2013. Both he and Merkel said their countries would continue to work with UN partners in 'efforts to hold President Assad responsible for his criminal acts.' EU President Donald Tusk said the action demonstrated 'needed resolve' against chemical attacks. 'US strikes show needed resolve against barbaric chemical attacks. EU will work with the US to end brutality in Syria,' Tusk said in a tweet. Israel's prime minister also welcomed the US attack saying he 'fully supports' President Trump's decision. Benjamin Netanyahu said 'in both word and action' Trump 'sent a strong and clear message' that 'the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated.' It is not yet clear what China's response has been to Trump's decision to brazenly announce the strike on Syria while the president was his guest. China has backed Syrian-ally Russia's attempts to protect Assad's government and vetoed six resolutions on Syria. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn today condemned the US cruise missile attack and has suggested it 'risks escalating the war in Syria'. The 67-year-old described the chemical attack on Tuesday as a 'war crime' which needs an 'urgent independent UN investigation'. Turkey called for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's immediate ouster on Friday, voicing support for a U.S. missile strike on one of his air bases and saying the creation of safe zones to protect civilians was now more important than ever. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif took to Twitter on Friday to denounce the strikes, saying: 'Not even two decades after 9/11, U.S. military fighting on same side as al-Qaeda & ISIS in Yemen & Syria. Time to stop hype and cover-ups.' During his public address from his Mar-a-Lago estate, Trump said that it was 'vital' to the national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. 'There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the chemical weapons convention, and ignored the urging of the UN security council,' he said. 'Years of previous attempts at changing Assad's behaviour have all failed and failed very dramatically. 'As a result, the refugee crisis continues to deepen and the region continues to destabilize, threatening the United States and its allies. 'Tonight I call on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types.' U.S. Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham said in a joint statement that the administration plans to 'learn the lessons of history' and follow the strikes with a 'new, comprehensive strategy in coordination with our allies and partners to end the conflict in Syria.' 'The first measure in such a strategy must be to take Assad's air force - which is responsible not just for the latest chemical weapons attack, but countless atrocities against the Syrian people - completely out of the fight,' they said. 'We must also bolster support for the vetted Syrian opposition and establish safe zones to address the ongoing humanitarian crisis. As we do, we can and must continue the campaign to achieve ISIS's lasting defeat.' This unverified photograph posted this morning was claimed to be part of a missile fired into the airbase by the Americans A Russian television station showed what it said was the aftermath of the missile attack on the Syrian base this morning Almost 60 tomahawk missiles were launched from the USS Ross (DDG 71) (pictured) on Thursday evening in retaliation to a gas attack in Syria The guided-missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG 78) launches a tomahawk land attack missile in the Mediterranean Sea Smoke rises from the deck of the USS Porter as the United States blasted a Syrian air base with a barrage of cruise missiles in fiery retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. A Syrian opposition monitor says the US missile attack on an air base in the country's centre has killed at least four Syrian soldiers, including a general, and caused extensive damage The military action has already sparked a furious response from President Vladimir Putin (left with Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev on Tuesday), who this morning called the airstrikes an 'illegal act of aggression The Syrian Army described the attack as an act of 'blatant aggression', saying it had made the United States 'a partner' of ISIS, the ex-Nusra Front and other 'terrorist organisations'. An unidentified Syrian military official is shown reading the statement this morning U.S. Senator Marco Rubio added that tonight's strike will 'hopefully diminish (Assad's) capacity to commit atrocities against innocent civilians.' 'President Trump has made it clear to Assad and those who empower him that the days of committing war crimes with impunity are over.' On Trump's orders, US warships in the Eastern Mediterranean launched between 50-60 Tomahawk cruise missiles at 3.45am Syrian time, targeting a Syrian government airbase. Officials say the airfield was where the warplanes involved in the gas attack were based. The strike targeted runway, aircraft and fuel points. Strikes are over 'until another decision is made,' the official said. Syria's state TV is showing footage of the U.S. missile strike, showing a fast sequence of orange flashes that lit the dark sky in the distance before the crack of dawn. The shaky footage, apparently filmed with a mobile phone camera and aired Friday, came hours after about 60 U.S. Tomahawk missiles hit the base in Homs province, causing extensive damage to the base. In a different sequence after day break, the Syrian TV station al-Ikhbariyah showed another short clip of smoke billowing in the distance, hovering over a raging fire, the tip of which emerges and a forest of trees is in the foreground. Anti-Assad Syrians have been celebrating the strike after the horrific chemical weapons attack. WHO SUPPORTS WHO IN THE BATTLE FOR SYRIA? PRO ASSAD Russia - Gives military support, condemns the US airstrikes and suspends deal not to clash mid-air Iran - Close strategic allies with Syria and has provided significant support including $8.69billion North Korea - UN probe found that North Korea was supplying arms to Syria Iraq - The Iraqi Government provided financial support and transported supplies Algeria - Rumours suggest Algerian military aircraft is regularly landing in Syria Venezuela - The South American country has shipped tens of millions of dollars worth of diesel to Syria Lebanon - Police arrested family after they protested about the Syrian Government Belarus - President Alexander Lukashenko supported Moscow's involvement and offered air strike Lebanese Hezbollah Party - Involvement has been substantial and has deployed troops since 2012 ANTI ASSAD US - President Donald Trump launches first airstrikes since six-year civil war started UK - Supports US cruise airstrikes as Theresa May said chemical attack was 'despicable' France/Germany - Both of the countries today said Assad bears 'sole responsibility' for US strike Turkey - Opposed to Assad but objects to Syrian rebels and wants control of Kurdish area Canada - Canada gave more than $4.97million to the Syrian opposition in 2013 Saudi Arabia - The Middle East country is the main group to finance the rebels and has provided a large amount of weapons Israel - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the first to praise the US's retaliatory attack, saying he 'fully supports' Donald Trump's decision to launch the cruise missile attacks Qatar - It was reported Qatar gave the Syrian rebels $2.98 billion at the start of the civil war in 2011 Advertisement Some said they had been hugging people in the street and crying after news that the Americans had intervened emerged. One wrote on Facebook: 'I've worked my tail off for six damn years to see this moment. You have no idea how cathartic it is for me. I've been hugging everyone. 'If you run into me now chances are I'll hug you and cry. This is the first time in almost half a century that the Assad regime has been held accountable for a crime they committed. Only Syrians will fully understand what this means. I'm choking back tears.' Another said: 'For those of us who have campaigned tirelessly for humanitarian intervention for 6 years today is a surreal and momentous day. 'I can't even truly express how I feel, the devastating war is still years from ending, but for a brief few moments Syrians got to taste what justice feels like, even if that is only a smokescreen, the jubilation I am witnessing is very real.' A seven-year-old refugee from Syria thanked Donald Trump today. Bana Alabed, who has tweeted for years from inside Syria, wrote: 'I am a Syrian child who suffered under Bashar al Asad & Putin. I welcome Donald Trump action against the killers of my people. 'Putin and Bashar al Asad bombed my school, killed my friends & robbed my childhood. It's time to punish the killers of children in Syria.' Talal Barazi, the governor of Homs province, didn't say how many were killed in the early Friday attack but confirmed there had been deaths and injuries in the bombing. The strikes hit the government-controlled Shayrat air base (pictured) in central Syria, where U.S. officials say the Syrian military planes that dropped the chemicals had taken off In a sharp escalation of the U.S. military role in Syria, two U.S. warships fired dozens of cruise missiles from the eastern Mediterranean Sea at the airbase controlled by President Bashar al-Assad's forces. The Tomahawk missiles were launched from the USS Porter and USS Ross (file picture) at about 8.40pm Missiles were fired from USS Ross and USS Porter (pictured crossing the Mediterranean Sea on March 9, this year) The guided-missile destroyer USS Porter fires a Tomahawk land attack missile on April 7, 2017 in the Mediterranean Sea. The USS Porter was one of two destroyers that fired a total of 59 cruise missiles at a Syrian military airfield at 8.40pm The missiles were fired from the USS Porter (pictured) and the USS Ross, which belong to the US Navy's Sixth Fleet and are located in the eastern Mediterranean. About 60 US Tomahawk missiles launched early Friday hit the Shayrat air base (file picture), southeast of the city of Homs, a small installation with two runways. The attack came in response for a chemical weapons attack on Tuesday in Syria He said a fire raged in the air base in Homs for over an hour following the barrage of missiles and that the evacuation effort was continuing early on Friday morning. The base is in Homs province - the Syrian government's most active launching pad for airstrikes on terrorist and rebel groups in central and northern Syria. Officials added that Trump has consulted key partners in Europe and other allies before he launched the strikes. But Tillerson said that the US had not sought approval from Moscow or Vladimir Putin before launching the strikes. An official confirmed that Russia, which has troops on the ground in Syria, was notified of the airstrikes 30 minutes in advance via an established deconfliction line and officials say military planners took special precautions to avoid harming Russian military. Shortly before the attack, the head of information policy commission in the upper house of Russian parliament, Alexei Pushkov, said on Twitter that military action in Syria by Trump would put him in 'the same league with Bush and Obama.' Russian deputy envoy to the U.N., Vladimir Safronkov, said Russia had warned the U.S. to 'think about what military actions have led to in Iraq, Libya and other countries,' according to the Interfax news agency. The Secretary of State insisted that Russia has 'failed to deliver' on preventing chemical weapons attacks in Syria. Tillerson, who said that the US had a 'very high level of confidence' that the brutal sarin nerve gas attacks on civilians were carried out under aircraft under the direction of Bashar Al Assad's regime, said Syria had agreed to surrender their chemical weapons under the supervision of the Russian government in an arrangement under the UN Security Council Resolution in 2013. The US and the Russian government entered into agreements whereby Russia would locate these weapons, secure these weapons and destroy these weapons. 'They would act as the guarantor that these weapons would no longer be present in Syria. Clearly Russia has failed in its responsibility to deliver on that commitment from 2013,' he said. Either Russia has been 'complicit or Russia has been simply incompetent in its ability to deliver on its end of that agreement', added Tillerson. 'It's important to recognize that as Assad has continued to use chemical weapons in these attacks with no response, with no response from the international community, he, in effect, is normalizing the use of chemical weapons, which may then be adopted by others. Ivanka Trump, the daughter and assistant to President Donald Trump, third from left, stands next to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, as they listen to President Trump speak about the strikes at Mar-a-Lago. Right is White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus. Senior adviser Steve Bannon (C) stands next to Ivanka Trump as U.S. President Donald Trump delivers a statement about missile strikes on a Syrian airfield, at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in West Palm Beach, Florida President Donald Trump walks from the podium after speaking at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, after the U.S. fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria Thursday night President Donald Trump had warned just hours earlier that Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad should pay a price for this week's civilian chemical gas attack: 'I guess he's running things, so I guess something should happen' TIMELINE OF THE SYRIA CIVIL WAR AND US RESPONSE The US attack on a Syrian air base came after years of heated debate and deliberation in Washington over intervention in the bloody civil war. Chemical weapons have killed hundreds of people since the start of the conflict, with the U.N. blaming three attacks on the Syrian government and a fourth on ISIS. One of the worst yet came Tuesday in rebel-held northern Idlib and killed dozens, including women and children. That attack prompted President Donald Trump, on day 77 of his presidency, to dramatically shift U.S. policy, with the first direct U.S. attack on the Syrian government. Trump blamed Syrian President Bashar Assad for the attack and called on the international community to join him in trying to end the bloodshed. A timeline of events in Syria leading up to Tuesday's attack: March 2011: Protests erupt in the city of Daraa over security forces' detention of a group of boys accused of painting anti-government graffiti on the walls of their school. On March 15, a protest is held in Damascus' Old City. On March 18, security forces open fire on a protest in Daraa, killing four people in what activists regard as the first deaths of the uprising. Demonstrations spread, as does the crackdown by President Bashar Assad's forces. April 2011: Security forces raid a sit-in in Syria's third-largest city, Homs, where thousands of people tried to create the mood of Cairo's Tahrir Square, the epicenter of protests against Egypt's autocrat Hosni Mubarak. Aug. 18, 2011: President Barack Obama calls on Assad to resign and orders Syrian government assets frozen. Summer 2012: Fighting spreads to Aleppo, Syria's largest city and its former commercial capital. August 20, 2012: Obama says the use of chemical weapons would be a 'red line' that would change his calculus on intervening in the civil war and have 'enormous consequences.' March 19, 2013: The Syrian government and opposition trade accusations over a gas attack that killed some 26 people, including more than a dozen government soldiers, in the town of Khan al-Assal in northern Syria. A U.N. investigation later finds that sarin nerve gas was used, but does not identify a culprit. August 21, 2013: Hundreds of people suffocate in rebel-held suburbs of the Syrian capital, with many suffering from convulsions, pinpoint pupils, and foaming at the mouth. U.N. investigators visit the sites and determine that ground-to-ground missiles loaded with sarin were fired on civilian areas while residents slept. The U.S. and others blame the Syrian government, the only party to the conflict known to have sarin gas. Aug. 31, 2013: Obama says he will go to Congress for authorization to carry out punitive strikes against the Syrian government, but appears to lack the necessary support in the legislature. Sept. 27, 2013: The U.N. Security Council orders Syria to account for and destroy its chemical weapons stockpile, following a surprise agreement between Washington and Moscow, averting U.S. strikes. The Security Council threatens to authorize the use of force in the event of non-compliance. Oct. 14, 2013: Syria becomes a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention, prohibiting it from producing, stockpiling or using chemical weapons. June 23, 2014: The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons says it has removed the last of the Syrian government's chemical weapons. Syrian opposition officials maintain that the government's stocks were not fully accounted for, and that it retained supplies. Sept. 23, 2014: The U.S. launches airstrikes on Islamic State group targets in Syria. Aug. 7, 2015: The U.N. Security Council authorizes the OPCW and U.N. investigators to probe reports of chemical weapons use in Syria, as reports circulate of repeated chlorine gas attacks by government forces against civilians in opposition-held areas. Chlorine gas, though not as toxic as nerve agents, can be classified as a chemical weapon depending on its use. Aug. 24, 2016: The joint OPCW-U.N. panel determines the Syrian government twice used helicopters to deploy chlorine gas against its opponents, in civilian areas in the northern Idlib province. A later report holds the government responsible for a third attack. The attacks occurred in 2014 and 2015. The panel also finds that the Islamic State group used mustard gas. Feb. 28, 2017: Russia, a stalwart ally of the Syrian government, and China veto a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing sanctions against the Syrian government for chemical weapons use. April 4, 2017: At least 58 people are killed in what doctors say could be a nerve gas attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun in the rebel-held Idlib province. Victims show signs of suffocation, convulsions, foaming at the mouth and pupil constriction. Witnesses say the attack was carried out by either Russian or Syrian Sukhoi jets. Moscow and Damascus deny responsibility. April 4, 2017: President Donald Trump issues a statement saying that the 'heinous' actions of Assad's government are the direct result of Obama administration's 'weakness and irresolution.' April 5, 2017: Trump says Assad's government has 'crossed a lot of lines' with the suspected chemical attack in Syria. April 6, 2017: The U.S. fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria Thursday night in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians, U.S. officials said. It was the first direct American assault on the Syrian government and Trump's most dramatic military order since becoming president. Trump said strike on Syria in the 'vital national security interest' of the United States. Advertisement 'Therefore, it's important that some action be taken on behalf of the international community to make clear that these chemical weapons continue to be a violation of international norms.' Vladimir Safronkov, Russia's deputy representative to the United Nations told reporters that Moscow heard an attack was being prepared and warned that people were not asking about possible consequences, Interfax reported. Konstantin Kosachev, the head of the foreign affairs committee in the Kremlin-controlled upper house of parliament, has since warned that the strike has put an any prospective U.S.-Russian anti-terror coalition 'to rest without even being born.' Kosachev added that 'it's a pity,' suggesting that Trump had been pressured to act by the Pentagon. He added that while 'Russian cruise missiles strike the terrorists, U.S. missiles strike Syrian government forces who are spearheading the fight against the terrorists.' Russia now has more than 30 helicopters operating in Syria, including a fleet of around eight Mi-28N Night Hunter and Ka-52 Alligator gunships stationed at its Shayrat airbase southeast of Homs city, according to satellite images posted online by IHS Jane's analysts. Certain officials believe the strike will serve as a warning to North Korea that the US is willing to strike if China does not stop the country's nuclear ambitions. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (left) accused Vladimir Putin (right) and Russia of failing to carry out their duty to prevent Syria from using chemical wepaons U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, departs after U.N. Security Council consultations regarding the deadly gas attack in Syria at U.N. headquarters in New York, U.S., April 6 Haley greets United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in the Security Council chamber on April 6 where they discussed the gas attack The US strike seems to have won bipartisan support from senators on both sides of the aisle. Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he 'applauds President Trump for taking decisive action following the latest chemical weapons attack,' against a dictator who had 'brutally tortured and murdered more than 500,000 of his own people.' Democratic senators Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Ben Cardin (D-Md.) praised the strikes as a 'measured response' to the Syrian nerve gas atrocity, saying they sent a clear message that the US will stand up against the use of chemical weapons against innocent civilians. However, both warned that any further action against Syria must require scrutiny by Congress and the American people. TRUMP'S STATEMENT ON AIR STRIKES IN FULL My fellow Americans, on Tuesday Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad launched a horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians. Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of helpless men women and children It was a slow and brutal death for so many. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of god should ever suffer such horror. Tonight I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched. It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the chemical weapons convention, and ignored the urging of the UN security council. Years of previous attempts at changing Assad's behavior have all failed and failed very dramatically. As a result, the refugee crisis continues to deepen and the region continues to destabilize, threatening the United States and its allies. Tonight I call on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types. Advertisement 'I cannot emphasize this enough, any longer-term or larger military operation in Syria by the Trump Administration will need to be done in consultation with the Congress,' Cardin said. 'The United States must lead the international community in a negotiated settlement that ends this war and facilitates Assad's removal.' Israel's prime minister also welcomed the US attack with Israeli TV confirming that the country, along with other allies was notified about the U.S. strike. The attacks in neighboring Syria have worried Israel, which has warned against 'game-changing' weapons reaching Hezbollah in Lebanon from the country, which supports the militant group. Last month Israel shot down an anti-aircraft missile fired at its planes as they struck a suspected Hezbollah weapons convoy. Israel also has treated several thousand Syrians wounded in fighting and provided humanitarian aid to some Syrian communities near the Israeli frontier in the Golan Heights. A survivor of the initial chemical attack, Alaa Alyousef, a 27-year old resident of Khan Sheikhoun, said the US missile attack 'alleviates a small part of our sufferings,' but worries it will be like 'anesthetics,' to save face. 'What good is a strike on Shayart air base alone while we have more than 15 other air bases,' he said. Alyousef lost at least 25 relatives in this week's gruesome chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun. The Syrian government denies it was behind the attack, believed to have deployed chemical weapons. Trump had been weighing up the possibility of launching military strikes against Syria, after more than 80 were killed and countless more were injured in the sarin poison gas attack. CNN reported that Trump had been 'making calls to senior members of Congress saying he was seriously considering something he said he would never do, not that long ago, which is military action in Syria.' 'What Assad did is terrible,' the president said hours earlier aboard Air Force One en route to Florida, before he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping this evening. 'I think what happened in Syria is a disgrace to humanity. I guess something should happen.' REPUBLICAN vs. DEMOCRATS: THE REACTION John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC): 'Unlike the previous administration, President Trump confronted a pivotal moment in Syria and took action. For that, he deserves the support of the American people. 'Building on tonight's credible first step, we must finally learn the lessons of history and ensure that tactical success leads to strategic progress.' Marco Rubio (R-FL): 'Tonight's strike against the Assad regime's Shayrat Air Base will hopefully diminish his capacity to commit atrocities against innocent civilians. 'By acting decisively against the very facility from which Assad launched his murderous chemical weapons attack, President Trump has made it clear to Assad and those who empower him that the days of committing war crimes with impunity are over.' Ben Cardin (D-Md.): 'These military strikes against Assad's arsenal send a clear signal that the United States will stand up for internationally accepted norms and rules against the use of chemical weapons. 'However, and I cannot emphasize this enough, any longer-term or larger military operation in Syria by the Trump Administration will need to be done in consultation with the Congress.' Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said: 'The use of chemical weapons against innocent Syrian men, women, and children is a clear violation of international law. The Syrian regime must be held accountable for this horrific act, and its actions underscore why the United States should embrace innocent people who are fleeing in terror. 'But the Constitution gives the power to authorize the use of military force to the legislative branch. Expanded military intervention in Syria requires action by Congress. If President Trump expects such an authorization, he owes the American people an explanation of his strategy to bring an end to the violence in Syria. We should not escalate this conflict without clear goals and a plan to achieve them.' House Speaker Paul Ryan ( R- WI): 'Earlier this week the Assad regime murdered dozens of innocent men, women, and children in a barbaric chemical weapons attack. Tonight the United States responded. This action was appropriate and just.' Rand Paul (R-Ky): 'While we all condemn the atrocities in Syria, the United States was not attacked. The President needs congressional authorization for military action as required by the Constitution, and I call on him to come to Congress for a proper debate.' Charles E. Schumer (D-NY): 'Making sure Assad knows that when he commits such despicable atrocities he will pay a price is the right thing to do. It is incumbent on the Trump administration to come up with a strategy and consult with Congress before implementing it.' U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas): 'Today, after eight years of Obama foreign policy failures, Syria is a humanitarian disaster. Bashar al-Assad is a monster, a puppet of Russia and Iran, and he has once again used chemical weapons against his own citizens, murdering innocent men, women, and children. 'Any military action in Syria must be justified as protecting the vital national security interests of America including decisive action to prevent chemical weapons from falling into the hands of radical Islamic terrorists and I look forward to our Commander-in-Chief making the case to Congress and the American people how we should do so in the days ahead.' Advertisement In this photo provided by the U.S. Navy, the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71) departs Rota, Spain, on March 29. The ship was used as a base to fire numerous tomahawk missiles on Thursday Russia finally condemned the ghastly chemical weapons attack on Thursday despite being allied with Bashar al-Assad against Islamist rebels in Syria Heartbreak: Disturbing footage shows Syrian father Abdul Hamid al-Yousef crying uncontrollably over the graves of his wife and two children who were killed in a suspected sarin gas attack this week A combination image released by the U.S. Department of Defense which they say shows the impact crater associated with April 4, 2017 chemical weapons allegation CAN THE PRESIDENT ATTACK ANOTHER COUNTRY WITHOUT CONGRESS? The U.S. missile strikes Thursday on a Syrian air base were conducted without formal congressional approval. Some questions and answers about how and why presidents can conduct military action without permission from the 535 representatives of the American people. DID CONGRESS KNOW? Trump did let Congress know of his plans to launch 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles Thursday evening, targeting the air base from which Syrian President Bashar Assad launched a chemical weapons attack earlier this week against his own people, killing more than 80 men, women and children. A White House official said more than two dozen members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, were briefed Thursday by White House and Cabinet officials. House Speaker Paul Ryan, the No. 3 U.S. official, said he was among those informed. IS INFORMING THEM ENOUGH? DON'T THEY GET A SAY? The War Powers Resolution, enacted in 1973, long after American troops began fighting in Vietnam, required the president to consult with Congress before sending U.S. armed forces into combat unless there already had been a declaration of war. The troops could not stay more than 90 days unless lawmakers backed the decision. The law also sought to give the president 'leeway to respond to attacks or other emergencies,' according to the Council on Foreign Relations. And it is that leeway that presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and now Trump have used to their advantage. Following the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, Congress gave Bush authority to attack any countries or groups involved in the attacks, which was generally accepted to mean al-Qaida. Obama used that same authority to fight the Islamic State militant group, which emerged in 2014 as an outgrowth of al-Qaida. Trump has used that same authority to continue military action in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. The Obama administration maintained in 2011 that U.S. involvement in the months-long air campaign against Libya didn't require congressional permission because American forces were largely playing a supporting role as part of an international coalition. In February 2015, Obama asked Congress to formally authorize war against the Islamic State, saying the militant group could threaten the U.S. homeland if left unchecked. His resolution would have limited authorization to three years, with no geographic restrictions for U.S. forces. It would have banned 'enduring offensive combat operations,' an ambiguous term that attempted to define a middle ground between Democrats leery of another protracted Middle Eastern conflict involving ground troops, and Republicans, who largely believe the U.S. needs maximum flexibility to pursue IS. Congress held a few hearings, but never acted on the proposal. WHAT DOES CONGRESS THINK NOW? Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, the Republican chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said before Thursday's missile launch that he thought it would be prudent to consult with Congress, but didn't insist Congress had to approve Trump's actions. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, insisted that if the U.S. increased the use of military force in Syria, 'we should follow the Constitution and seek the proper authorization from Congress.' Kentucky lawmakers Thomas Massie and Rand Paul, both Republicans, agreed. 'President Trump should make his case in front of the American people and allow their elected representatives to debate the benefits and risks of further Middle East intervention to our national security interests,' Lee said in a statement. Other Republicans, like former Trump primary opponent Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, applauded the strikes without mentioning congressional approval. Advertisement How Trump unleashed his awesome Mediterranean arsenal on Assad: Tomahawk missiles launched from US destroyers 150 miles away with pinpoint accuracy without endangering American pilots or enraging neighbouring allies Donald Trump unleashed his Tomahawk barrage on one of al-Assad's key bases from the sea to avoid upsetting allies and using the huge US military arsenal built up off the coast of Syria. The US President last night fired 59 missiles at al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs overnight in retaliation for the Syrian leader's horrific chemical weapons attack on Idlib. They were launched from his state of the art destroyers USS Ross and USS Porter which can fire dozens of Tomahawks with pinpoint accuracy from up to 1,500 miles away from their targets. Tactics: The US has a huge airforce at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey - but would have needed the country's permission to launch an attack on al-Assad's Syria The destroyers' locations are always kept secret but are believed to have been off the coast of Turkey or Cyprus, around 150 to 200 miles away from al-Shayrat - and fired 30 minutes after they warned the Russians to keep away from the area. The Tomahawk is the US military's most advanced missile carrying an 1,000lb bomb and can carry an nuclear warhead. The US destroyers that hammered al-Assad USS Porter: U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Porter was last seen in the Bosphorus off Istanbul in February and USS Porter Captain: CDR Andria L. Slough Class and type: Arleigh Burke-class destroyer Length: 505 ft (154 m) Team: 270 personnel including around 60 officers Weapons: Two missile launching systems with the ability to fire up to 90 Tomahawk missiles. It has six large guns and two torpedo tubes Aircraft: 2 helicopters USS Ross: Its location is secret but it is known to be in the eastern Med USS Ross Captain: CDR Russell J. Caldwell Class and type: Arleigh Burke-class destroyer Length: 505 ft (154 m) Team: 210 personnel and 38 senior officers Weapons: Two missile launching systems with the ability to fire up to 90 Tomahawk missiles. It also has a harpoon missile launcher. It has seven large guns and two torpedo tubes Aircraft: 2 helicopters Advertisement The one-ton missiles costing nearly $1m each were chosen because: It can be launched from the sea to avoid using an ally's air base Weapon map-reads its way to the enemy, hugging contours in the landscape, and using an on-board camera to pinpoint its target Tomahawks cruise at low altitude and follow a complicated route to avoid being tracked by radar Its accuracy is extraordinary, using a stored image of the target with the actual target before blowing it up America has packed the Mediterranean with ships, submarines and aircraft with even more firepower in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea including the USS George H.W. Bush aircraft carrier packed with jets currently battering ISIS targets. But these ships can quickly be moved into the Med via Suez. In the early hours of this morning the strikes were launched and have killed at least five and destroyed more than a dozen Syrian jets, a fuel store and badly damaged the runway at al-Shayrat. Mr Trump's decision to fire missiles from the Mediterranean was a tactical one, to avoid upsetting allies including Turkey by using their bases to launch a bombing raid by fighter jet. The US uses the Incirlik Air Base in Turkey but last night's operation would have required President Erdogan's consent and risked a row. Similarly any airborne sortie from bases across the Middle East could cause similar diplomatic problems. The United States has been fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria since 2014, so has amassed a huge military presence and an array of capabilities in the region. If President Donald Trump decides to launch more strikes against Syrian regime targets, the Pentagon has many ways with which to do so. Any strike against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is likely to be conducted remotely to avoid putting US pilots in harm's way. In September 2014, US ships launched 47 Tomahawk missiles during the first night of strikes against ISIS in Syria. These missiles can also be launched from attack submarines, but the location of these vessels is secret. A barrage of Tomahawks could overwhelm any air defenses. Assad's systems are weakened after six years of war but Russia has deployed state-of-the art systems to Syria. Over in the Persian Gulf, the Navy's Fifth Fleet can quickly respond to military requests in the region. The USS George H. W. Bush aircraft carrier is also in the Gulf, currently supporting operations against IS. The bulk of US efforts against ISIS in Syria has been conducted from the air, with about 7,500 coalition jet and drone strikes since 2014. The United States has multiple air bases at its disposal in the region, including Incirlik in southeastern Turkey, just 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the Syrian border. Among the many air assets available to the United States are its high-tech F-22 Raptors, F-16s and even B-52 heavy bombers. The F-22, which cost about $360million apiece, is considered the world's most advanced fighter currently operating, thanks to its ability to evade radar. It can fly faster than Mach 2 and launch laser-guided bombs from miles away. Consent (Dorfman, National Theatre) Verdict: Joshing barristers too easily acquitted Rating: Rape is one of the most fraught issues of our day. The question of how to balance the rights of victims to seek justice with the rights of the accused to defend themselves is hotly contested. Nina Raines often brilliant new play looks as if its going to take all that on, but after a blisteringly cynical first half it turns out to be just another vexed relationship drama. It all starts promisingly, with Anna Maxwell Martin and Ben Chaplin (fresh from TVs Apple Tree Yard) leading a group of well-heeled barrister couples joking about doing the crimes for which their clients are being tried. To make it even more uncomfortable, Maxwell Martins character, whos just given birth, cradles a real-life baby (the authors infant daughter) on stage. In this long, gripping first half, Raine shows herself to be a gifted writer of lacerating dialogue. Though explicit locker-room banter abounds, the story takes a darker twist with the fate of a working-class woman in a rape trial on which Chaplin and his wifes friend are acting as defence and prosecution counsels. t all starts promisingly, with Anna Maxwell Martin and Ben Chaplin (fresh from TVs Apple Tree Yard) leading a group of well-heeled barrister couples What for them is a day job, concluded with drinks, joints and jousting, is a harrowing reality for the victim, though Raine is careful to make her a tough cookie. The play is steeped in the ways of the Bar, and Raine deploys her research with panache. Rehearsing court appearances and thrashing out their own infidelities in legalese, it is distasteful, witty, informative, gripping, thoroughly recognisable and decidedly ugly. Underpinning it all is an unpalatable truth: people dont listen to arguments, they just decide. Justice is primitive stuff. Where it goes wrong for me is the second half. Roger Michells slick production confines itself to over-familiar Aga-saga territory and plays it safe on Hildegard Bechtlers set, which looks like a Habitat lighting department. Most enjoyable, but outrageous, are Adam James as the boorish pal who takes a moral stand and Daisy Haggard, as the actress friend. But after being primed by the sharp repartee of the first half, I wanted more home truths from the impressive Heather Craney as the woman they neglect. Dodie Smith is best known for writing 101 Dalmatians, but her coming of age novel, I Capture The Castle, is a delightfully rambling bohemian rhapsody of country life of the Thirties. Its a fond and episodic yarn thats been turned into a wholesome, but thoroughly agreeable, new musical by Teresa Howard and Steven Edis. I Capture The Castle (Watford Palace Theatre and touring) Verdict: Captures the audience Rating: With more than a touch of Pride And Prejudice, it follows the eccentric Mortmain family, whose lives in a tumbledown castle are touched by the arrival of rich Americans. The story is told by teenage aspiring writer Cassie as she sketches her dotty writer father, her back-to-nature stepmother and her man-hungry sister Rose, who falls, eagerly, for one of the handsome Yanks. Steven Ediss music is a home-grown mix of styles played on keyboards, percussion and violin and I came out humming the title tune. Brigid Larmours hearty production is distilled by Ti Greens set, the castle suggested by twin towers of bric-a-brac and a wraparound wooden staircase. With references to rustic pagan rites, in a story that runs from solstice to solstice, its a warm, bucolic tribute to Smiths novel. Kate Batter is cheerfully light-headed as big sister Rose, while Suzanne Ahmet is amusingly histrionic as the let-it-all-hang-out stepmother. Julia St John adds style and swagger as the American heiress with a dapper son. I couldnt for the life of me see why anyone would get hung up on this unprepossessing youth, but then the men in the story are just fantasies for the ladies: swains, swells and screwballs. At the end of the day, the two-and-a-half hour show is held together by the delightful Lowri Izzard as our heroine Cassie. She embodies her characters yearning with a strawberry voice thats sweet, lush and a tiny bit tart. This is a big-hearted night out that more than captures the soul of Smiths beloved castle. After Watford, I Capture The Castle will move to the Octagon Theatre, Bolton (April 26 to May 6) and the Oxford Playhouse (May 16 to 20). A young autistic boy has been banned from taking his assistance dog to school because of allergy risks to other children. Jodie Davidson says her seven-year-old son Aiden has a new lease on life since welcoming black labrador Cobolt to the family 18 months ago. But Aiden, a student at OSullivan Beach School in Adelaide's south, has been told Cobolt isn't welcome in the classroom because he poses health risks to other students. Young autistic boy Aiden Davidson has been banned from taking his assistance dog Cobolt to school because of allergy risks to other children. Pictured, Aiden relaxes with his dog at a shopping centre Aiden has been told Cobolt isn't welcome in the classroom because he poses health risks to other students. Above, Aiden is pictured with Cobolt and a shopkeeper who helped raise money to buy the dog Ms Davidson made a defiant stand last Friday when her son refused to go to school without his dog. 'On Friday morning he said "I don't want to go to school, I hate school. I want Cobolt to come to school",' she told Daily Mail Australia. 'So I walked straight into the building and into the classroom where the relief teacher got down on his knees and made a big deal of the dog. 'Every kid in the class came and patted him. Aiden said he felt better - so I left him with the dog.' Ms Davidson made a defiant stand last Friday when her son (pictured) refused to go to school without his dog Later that day, Ms Davidson said she received a note telling her she wasn't allowed to bring Cobolt into the school's buildings. She is appealing to the school and the Department of Education to allow her son to arrive at school with his dog to give him time to settle in. 'Cobolt has made such a big difference to Aiden,' Ms Davidson said. 'He's been diagnosed as having autism, ADHD, ODD and he's got central auditory processing disorder as well. So he's got a few challenges. 'I just want the dog to be allowed to walk up to the classroom with Aiden, get him settled and then we'll be out of there within 10 minutes.' OSullivan Beach School declined to comment when contacted by Daily Mail Australia. Ms Davidson said she received a note telling her she wasn't allowed to bring Cobolt (pictured) into the school's buildings 'He's been diagnosed as having autism, ADHD, ODD and he's got central auditory processing disorder as well. So he's got a few challenges,' Ms Davidson said of Aiden, pictured A Department for Education and Child Development spokesperson said: 'Schools must consider the needs of all students to keep children safe and well. 'The school has an agreement with the family that outlines how the assistance dog will support this particular student. 'The agreement also takes into account the medical condition of another peer, to ensure the needs of both students are being met. 'The school will continue working with the family to ensure the agreement reflects the student's needs, while ensuring a safe environment is maintained for other students.' Shocking video has emerged of the sickening moment a man stomped on the head of another patron as he lay unconscious in the carpark of a pub. David Harding was sentenced to 15 months home detention over the attack outside the Avoca Hotel, in Adelaide, which was captured on CCTV and followed a big brawl. Incredibly, despite the seriousness of the attack, the 40-year-old didn't apologise to his victim, but rather to the venue for the 'inconvenience' he caused, the Adelaide Advertiser reports. Footage captured by security cameras outside the pub, shows Harding involved in a large brawl with a number of other patrons. The patrons had allegedly seen him physically attacking a female friend and had gone to . After appearing to have a verbal stoush with another man, Harding is rushed at by the other patron, with the pair trading blows before being separated by security. Tensions flare up again when another two patrons come to blows across the carpark, however as the brawl breaks out security attempts to keep Harding separate. Shocking video has emerged of the sickening moment David Harding stomped on the head of another patron as he lay unconscious in the carpark of an Adelaide pub Harding was sentenced to 15 months home detention over the attack outside the Avoca Hotel which was captured on CCTV But when the man Harding had earlier came to blows with is knocked unconscious, the bouncer intervenes, before Harding walks over and stomps on the man's head. Some 10 minutes later an ambulance can be seen arrives in the carpark. In sentencing on Tuesday, Judge Gordon Barrett described the attack as 'extremely serious'. Despite the seriousness of the attack, the 40-year-old didn't apologise to his victim, but rather to the venue for the 'inconvenience' he caused Harding had come to blows with the man minutes before stomping on his head and causing his nose to be badly deformed 'He was completely defenceless and unconscious on the ground when you walked up to him and stomped on the side of his face,' Judge Barrett said. 'There was no provocation for you headbutting the victim in the first place it was a violent thing to do.' Judge Barrett said Harding had only written his letter of apology after pleading guilty to the charges. Amongst the carnage brought by Cyclone Debbie was a man's simple request for chicken nuggets. Tom Papworth found himself stranded in his South Lismore home when floodwaters began to rise last Friday. Unable to leave the house, Mr Papworth took the unorthodox step of erecting a large sign outside his front porch that read: 'Running low on chicken nuggets. Requesting airdrop.' South Lismore man, Tom Papworth, erected a sign saying 'running low on chicken nuggets - requesting airdrop' outside him after floodwaters struck in the wake of Cyclone Debbie His craving was soon filled a few days later when friends brought him the nuggets via 'canoe' Mr Papworth took it upon himself to bring some levity to a serious situation as Cyclone Debbie wreaked havoc across north-east Australia. 'I'm just an everyday guy who was running low on nuggets and thought it would be in good taste to share some lighthearted humour with a grief stricken community,' he told the Northern Star. As people waded through the flooded waters on canoes, Mr Papworth explained people were laughing and his idea to 'make light of a bad situation' was working. NSW SES also got wind of his plea for chicken nuggets but denied his request because of 'higher priorities'. NSW SES also got wind of his plea for chicken nuggets but denied his request because of 'higher priorities' Brent Hunter from the SES NSW did however provide some assurances that Mr Papworth's hankering would not got completely unnoticed saying that he would 'try and get him some in the next couple of weeks'. Yet it was days not weeks before Mr Papworth was able to get his hands on some tender nuggets after they were 'delivered by canoe'. He posted on Facebook a hilarious follow up video where two of his friends, dressed in worker crew gear, brought him the savoury snacks. It was not the airdrop that he had requested as his delivery came via canoe on the back of a truck, but that did not stop him joyfully raising his chicken nuggets in triumph. While Mr Papworth did not evacuate his home and says he has lost furniture because of it, he is glad that his sign allowed residents a little relief 'We live in a flood zone, we knew it was going to happen. And as bad as it is, events like this unite the community.' Counter terrorism police are questioning two 'radicalised' teenage boys after they allegedly stabbed a service station worker to death and wrote 'IS' in blood on the front window at a Caltex in Queanbeyan, near Canberra. The victim of the deadly service station stabbing has been identified as Pakistani national and student Zeeshan Akbar, 29. The Joint Counter Terrorism Team have been brought in to investigate the attack on the student, who was found bleeding to death by his co-worker at the Queanbeyan service station just before midnight on Thursday. The two boys, 15 and 16, were allegedly involved in a crime spree leading up to the fatal attack - bashing a man with a tyre iron during a break-and-enter, before attacking another with a beer bottle in a Queanbeyan park. The pair also allegedly stabbed a second man in a Queanbeyan street about 6.20am on Friday before fleeing in a silver Ford Falcon. Deputy Commissioner Catherine Burn said in Sydney that it appeared the boys' 'modus operandi' suggested the stabbing was 'indicative of a terrorist attack'. 'Certainly there was physical evidence at the scene which does go to our view that this might be an act of terrorism. Scroll down for video The victim of the deadly service station stabbing has been identified as Pakistani student Zeeshan Akbar, 29 A fatal stabbing of a service station worker may have links to terrorism, after two teenage boys were arrested following an alleged crime spree Caltex Service station worker Zeeshan Akbar had moved to Canberra at the end of 2016 for a state nominated visa. 'He was close to his permanent residence,' one of his close friends Nabeel Akhtar told Daily Mail Australia. 'But God had other plans.' Another friend Fahd Zahoor described the service station worker, who had just completed an Advance Diploma in Automotive Industry, as 'an incredibly kind-hearted person and very down to earth'. Mr Akbar was a Muslim, a club member of Haig Fawkner Cricket Club and was also 'responsible for his family's financial needs'. He was the oldest son, with two younger brothers and an elderly father, aged in his 70s, who lives in Karachi, Pakistan. His cousin Ifran Khan told Daily Mail Australia he was heading straight from Melbourne to Canberra following the attack, and expected to be in the nation's capital on Friday night. The Joint Counter Terrorism Team have been brought in to investigate the deadly attack. Itwas claimed by 2GB that the attack was inspired by ISIS Reports say police are investigating whether the attack was inspired by Islamic State, and it's reported the letters 'IS' were written in blood on the service store's window, according to Sydney Morning Herald. The pair were reportedly 'radicalised' before the alleged attack, with the 16-year-old boy allegedly making worrying terrorism-related Facebook posts in recent weeks. Both of the boys are known to police for a range of other types of offences, but the 16-year-old alleged attacked is currently the main focus of inquiries according to Deputy Commissioner Catherine Burn. Mr Akbar was described as 'an incredibly kind-hearted person and very down to earth' and had been very close to achieving Australian citizenship 'It doesn't need to be said, but it doesn't get more serious than this,' Monaro Police Superintendent Rod Smith (pictured) said following the arrests It's alleged the duo went into the service station at 11.45pm on Thursday, where a struggle ensued with the attendant who received a number of stab wounds, they then smashed windows to make their escape. The teenagers allegedly fled the scene with the cash register and other goods from the store. 'It doesn't need to be said, but it doesn't get more serious than this,' Monaro Police Superintendent Rod Smith said. 'It's an absolutely horrific series of events, and we'd just like to reassure everybody that there are two people that we believe are involved, and both of those people are currently in custody.' Forensics arrive at the home of one of the teens arrested over stabbing death and crime-spree Forensics arrive at the home of one of the teens arrested over stabbing death and crime-spree Floral tributes outside the Caltex service station, where Pakistani national Zeeshan Akbar was brutally stabbed Police have alleged that the two teenagers attacked a second man just hours after the stabbing at the Caltex service station in Queanbeyan The Joint Counter Terrorism Team have been brought in to investigate the deadly attack on a 29-year-old 'We received another report of another stabbing in Stornaway Road, Queanbeyan where a man was stabbed in the abdomen,' police said on Friday morning. 'He is currently in a serious but stable condition at the Canberra Hospital.' Ms Burn said the motivation behind the rampage was unknown. Forensic services investigate the scene, as counter terrorism police take over the case The letters IS were written in blood on the front window at the Caltex, but police covered them from the view of the public 'All we know again is that there are very, very serious crimes and we've got all the resources that we can possibly put into this.' 'This investigation is in its infancy. We are also looking at number of other incidents involving an attempted robbery at a bottle shop in the ACT, an attack on a homeless man in Queanbeyan, an assault at a unit in Queanbeyan and later an attack where a man was stabbed and his vehicle stolen. The pair had not come to the attention of counter-terrorism police before, she said. Shortly after the incident, police attempted to pull over a silver Ford Falcon Sedan, which led to a police chase, which crossed state lines from NSW to the Australian Capital Territory. Mr Akbar was a Muslim, a club member of Haig Fawkner Cricket Club and was also 'responsible for his family's financial needs' The two teenagers were arrested following a police chase across the NSW state border into the ACT. Authorities are looking to extradite them to NSW Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull sent his condolences to the family of the victim, adding that he had spoken to AFP commissioner Andrew Colvin and the circumstances of the incident merited the involvement of the JCTT. 'The police will have more to say about it but the involvement in this crime of two males, two youths is shocking,' he told media in Sydney, while addressing the situation on the US missile strikes on Syria. The teenagers were taken to the ACT watch house after their arrest, with NSW Police seeking to extradite them to NSW. The service station remains a crime scene. Hours after making her first public speech following the devastating loss of her presidential bid, Hillary Clinton attended the opening night of the Broadway musical 'War Paint' - and even took the time to snap a photo with the cast. Clinton attended the showing with long-time aide Huma Abedin, an apt showing for the two, given that the story's plot documents two powerful women in the 20th century. The former Secretary of State received a lengthy standing ovation earlier in the day when she appeared on stage in New York at the Women in the World summit organized by her close friend, Tina Brown. Scroll down for video Hours after making her first public speech following the devastating loss of her presidential bid, Hillary Clinton attending the opening night of the Broadway musical 'War Paint' - and even took the time to snap a photo with the cast Clinton attended the showing with long-time aide Huma Abedin, an apt showing for the two, given that the story's plot documents two powerful women in the 20th century The former Secretary of State received a lengthy standing ovation earlier in the day when she appeared on stage in New York at the Women in the World summit organized by her close friend, Tina Brown Hillary Clinton said in her first official interview since her failed presidential bid that she believed FBI Director James Comey's letter ten days before the election, stating that he was re-opening the investigation into her emails, ended her hopes of the presidency. She also blamed WikiLeaks, saying that the two 'had the determinative effect' on her campaign. 'I think it is fair to say that the outside intervention, the combination of the Comey letter on October 28, WikiLeaks which played a much bigger role than I think many people understand yet, had the determinative effect,' she said. She's back: Hillary Clinton used an interview at Tina Brown's Women in the World conference in New York to blame the FBI - and Wikileaks - for her defeat Hailed a heroine: Clinton received a lengthy standing ovation at the Women in the World conference, organized by her close friend Tina Brown Blame him: Clinton said the FBI Director James Comey's decision to announce the renewed probe into her emails because of messages found on pervert Anthony Weiner's computer led to her defeat She raised laughs and applause when asked by interviewer Nicholas Kristof what she thought of Comey's announcement of the investigation into the Trump team's ties to Russia. 'Yes that was one of the high points of the last weeks,' she said. She said that she had been 'devastated' in the aftermath of the election. 'I had to take up my mind that I was going to get out of bed, go for long walks and see my grandchildren.' She said that she and her team were piecing together what had happened and that there were many contributing factors, adding that she believed WikiLeaks had a much bigger role than anyone really knew yet. Abedin was spotted on the stage at the end of the event - ironic given that it was her husband Anthony Weiner being under investigation by the FBI for sexting a 15-year-old which prompted Comey's letter. Clinton opened by lacing into the Trump administration and its failure on several policies including the travel ban for six Muslim-majority countries and the healthcare bill. Kristof opened by saying he wasn't sure whether he should offer Clinton condolences or she should offer them to us. 'Yes, I had thought a lot about that,' she said. 'There's certainly enough condolences to go around. I hope we move on to 'being able to see some positive developments in country but that's going to take some time apparently.' And she spoke at length about Vladimir Putin, who is accused of interfering in the election, accusing him of 'not liking strong women'. She dodged a direct question on whether Trump or his associates were involved in the Kremlin's alleged misconduct. But she said: 'Because of the success that the Kremlin feels that it had, they are not going away. New York Times writer Kristof asked how she was doing. Im doing pretty well all things considered, Clinton said. The aftermath of the election was so devastating and everything that has come to light in the days and weeks since have been also troubling. So I just had to make up my mind that yes, I was going to get out of bed and yes, I was going to go for a lot of long walks in the woods and I was going to see my grandchildren a lot and spend time with my family and my friends whove rallied around me in an amazing way. Weve had lots of fun adventures, long nights talking and laughing. So Im okay as a person. As an American Im pretty worried - theres a lot to be concerned about. She was asked what she thought about Comeys announcement that the FBI had been investigating the Trump campaign since July but didnt think it was appropriate to release this information due to the ongoing investigation in contrast to how the investigation into her private email server had been handled. So what did you throw at the TV? Kristof asked. Yes, that was one of the high points of the last weeks, she quipped. She continued: I am deeply concerned about what went on with Russia and I think its important that we all work together regardless of party or partisanship or anything else - we start acting like patriotic Americans. A foreign power meddled with our election and did so in a way that were learning more about every single day. The people who are looking into it in the Senate have said that the Russian hacking should give chills to anybody who cares about democracy. John McCain has said hes never been so worried about our country in his lifetime and thats a lifetime that included WW2, Vietnam and being a prisoner of war. I think there does seem to be a lot of concern because what was done to us was an act of aggression by a foreign power under the control of someone who has a deep desire to dominate Europe and to send us into a tailspin. He's to blame too: Julian Assange is the leader of Wikileaks, which Clinton said had played 'a much bigger role' than people realize in her defeat It think that what Putin wanted to do was sow distrust and confusion as well as influence our election. She added: So as an American Im hoping - whether its the Congress or the FBI or outside journalists or whoever the combination of forces might be - that we find out a whole lot more. I personally favour an independent, non-partisan investigation. Clinton addressed the pressing question on whether she thought there was collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. I think that is what this investigation should look at. Im hopeful that the Congress will hold together and realize that because of the success that the Kremlin feels like it had, they are not going to go away. So whatever party you are or whatever business you run, whatever kinds of concerns you have if we dont take action together to hold whoever was involved accountable - they will be back time and time again. I know Putin. Ive sat with him and this is somebody who plays the long game. He plays three-dimensional chess, hes always trying to work out how to advantage himself, his oligarchic companions and his country in that order. He is very much focused on destabilizing Europe, NATO, and the United States real democracies. She said she has been asked by people the reason why she thinks that Putin did that to her. I dont think its too complicated. I think he had his desire to destabilize us and others and hes not exactly fond of strong women. She quipped: Although he did shake hands with me referencing President Trumps refusal to shake hands with German chancellor Angela Merkel several weeks ago during her visit to the White House. Clinton addressed the idea of democracy in Russia following mass protests against Putins government in recent weeks. I want the Russian people to know that were in their corner. We would love for them to have the same opportunities that we have for our own people and we hope that someday that will be possible. First questions: The appearance was her first 'interview', conducted by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff The discussion then moved to what Clinton believed caused her to lose the presidential election. Im currently writing a book where I spend a lot of time wrestling with this, she said. As you might guess Ive thought about it more than once and I dont think that there is one answer. In any campaign, theres many different cross-currents and events and some have greater impacts than others. Its fair to say misogyny played a role. That just has to be admitted. Why and what the underlying reasons were Im trying to parse out myself. There is a constant struggle for women and men - in a time of rapid change like the one were living through between something that is different and that may hold out even possible positive consequences - and something that is familiar and is first and foremost about security of what you have right now. I think in this election there was a very real struggle between what is viewed as change that is welcomed and exciting to so many Americans and change which is worrisome and threatening to so many others. And you layer on the first woman president over that and I think some people, women included, had real problems. Its fair to say that President Obama and my husband, they also struggled for white votes. But she said it was down to Democrats to engage with people. We have to do a better job in speaking to and with people who are on the downside of the change equation and wondering what we have to offer and why they should vote for us. As opposed to, I dont agree with him, Im not sure I approve of him but he looks like somebody whos been a president before so why do I want to add more change, more potential anxiety to my life? Were just going to hope he does a little bit of what he says. Kristof said that he had spoken to many young women who told him that they had been galvanized by Clintons loss in the way they had not been by her campaign. He added that many wanted to get involved in public life but were anxious about the nastiness especially for women. Clinton replied: Im going to spend a lot of my time encouraging young people, particularly young women, to go into politics and public service. I believe that not only is it a worthy and very satisfying way to contribute, make a living, learn more but because we really need you and we particularly need more young women. She said she planned to work with organizations to recruit, mentor and train young people for public life but offered some words of advice on the personal attacks they might face. Be ready is it not a new phenomenon but it feels new and painful every time it happens to you. She then quoted Eleanor Roosevelt who said that every woman who enters the public arena needs to grow a hide as thick as a rhinoceros. She added: And boy, do I relate to that. Clinton then addressed academic research which shows that the more successful women become, the less likeable they are the opposite of men for whom success and likeability are correlated. Its what lies at the heart of a lot of the attacks and its unconscious, she said. She pointed to how when she left her role as Secretary of State, she had a 65 per cent approval rating with the public something which slid when she began her presidential run. Well what happened? By the time theyd finished with me I was Typhoid Mary and poor Mary didnt serve it either when you go back and look at the history, she said, to laughter from the audience. She said she thought she could have been a really good president but claimed that what happened to her during the election verified the research which showed that women were less liked the more successful they became. She said she was encouraged by the numbers of young people getting involved in politics, turning up at town halls and making thousands of phone calls that helped derail that terrible healthcare bill. But she added: Toughen up your skin take it seriously but not personally. Im not perfect everybody knows that by now. I take criticism seriously but I dont take it personally. Because part of the personal attacks, the bullying, the name-calling that has become much more pervasive because of the internet, is to crush your spirit, to make you feel inadequate, to make you doubt yourself and I just refused to do that and that infuriated them. Her remarks were met with lengthy applause and cheering. Kristof asked her what she blamed for her loss. She said: How much time do we have? We have spent a lot of time trying to piece it all together and there are lots of contributing factors. We certainly could have done it better and theres certain things I could have done better. Present: Huma Abedin was at the side of the stage as her boss Hillary Clinton blamed James Comey for her defeat - because he re-opened the email probe on the basis of messages from Huma found on her pervert husband Anthony Weiner's laptop Adoring audience: The predominantly female crowd was on its feet for Clinton at the start and the finish. She pointed to the Comey letter and WikiLeaks but went on: For people who are interested in this - the nearly 66 million people who voted for me, she said with a sly grin, I want to give as clear and as credible an explanation of these factors as I can. Weve learned some lessons. One of those is about Russia, she said. Since they were successful in influencing voters, its different than the interference with the actual voting machines and for a while there was confusion about that. There are people who pursue that but putting that to one side it was really the weaponization of information, something that Putin has used inside and outside Russia to great effect. I didnt fully understand how impactful that was. It created doubts in people. But then Comey letter coming as it did just ten days before the election really raised serious questions in a lot of people, I think that were unfounded but nevertheless happened. I think we have to be really clear Democrats, Republicans, whatever what was done in that election was really unprecedented and we cant let that happen again. I dont want any Republican candidate to be subjected what I was subjected to. I dont want anyone running campaigns for the Republican Party to have their communications stolen which is what it was, it was a theft. It was more effective theft even than Watergate. She concluded: We should have tough, aggressive campaigning, that goes with the territory, but we are not going to let somebody sitting in the Kremlin with a 1,000 agents and bots and trolls trying to mix up in our elections. We need to end that and we need a bipartisan American commitment. Clinton was asked what she thought about Trumps first 100 days in office. First let me say that, I dont take any pleasure in seeing the kind of chaotic functioning. I thought I was going to win and I had a really good transition operation going because I understood. Remember that one point in the debate when my opponent was ridiculing me yet again for having prepared for the debate. And I said, Yes I did prepare for the debate and Ill tell you something else I prepared for and thats being president. She went on: Its the hardest job you can imagine. I thought we wouldve been prepared, ready to move on events. We worked so hard on policies and already lining up personal and the likes. So clearly that wasnt well prepared for the incoming administration and I think theyre going through some very public growing pains. But heres what I dont understand. I dont understand the commitment to hurt so many people that this administration seems to be pursuing. She highlighted Trumps travel ban, saying it had a chilling effect across the world. It had a terrible impact. And then of course what they did, or tried to do, with the health care bill after listening to them discuss repeal and replace for eight years now, they had no clue what that meant. I dont know if any of them had read the bill, read the law, to understand how it worked. It was so obvious. You know, healthcare is complicated! They dont know what to do and I do admit that was somewhat gratifying. The audience erupted into cheers and applause at those words. Under the weather: Clinton arrived in a downpour on board one of her famous Scooby vans - of the type which she was infamously put in when she collapsed at Ground Zero Hug time: Samatha Bee was on stage hugging Clinton before the start of her interview with Nick Kristoff Clinton went on to say that she believed supporting womens health, reproductive and maternity care across the world which is under threat of being seriously curtailed in a Trump administration - was essential to U.S. national security along with being morally the right thing to do. She said: The targeting of women which is whats going on is absolutely beyond any political agenda. There is something else happening here. The more we support women, the more we support democracy and the more we backhand terrorism. Womens issues are national security issues around the world. She eviscerated the Trump cabinet and zoned in on the picture of the all-male team discussing womens healthcare. The things that come out of some of these mens mouths like, Why do we have to cover maternity care? She quipped: Oh I dont know - maybe you were dropped by Immaculate Conception? She said the picture of the all-male Trump team looked like an SNL skit. The conversation became somber when it turned to Syria and the chemical gas attack this week which left many civilians dead, including many children. Kristof asked whether when she was Secretary of State, the muted approach to Syria was her worst foreign policy mistake. Clinton replied: I teamed up with Dave Petraeus, then director of CIA, Leon Panetta, Secretary of Defense, to present a plan for us to move more aggressively to support protestors, to try to provide some back up in what was I thought likely to turn out to be a very one-sided battle. This was before ISIS came to public awareness and their caliphate theyre setting up in Raqqa. Ive said this repeatedly that we shouldve done more at that point. Now, Im the first to say these are not easy decisions. Thats why you get the best information you can from the best advisors you can and really drill down into this whatever the situation is. Clinton went on: I wish the international community at large had been able to rein this in. She admitted that a tentative agreement she had tried to put together in 2012, and to which the Russians had agreed, fell apart because basically Assad said Im not going anywhere. I think that we have to try change the dynamic and all through the campaign I would say Im for a no-fly zone. Immediately, People would ask, Arent you afraid of Russians? Its time the Russians were afraid of us because we were going to stand up for human rights, the dignity and the future of Syrian people. Clinton said she was confident she could have brought Putin and his team to an agreement on a no-fly zone over Syria. We cannot let this massacre continue and the consequences that are effecting the entire region. I feel pretty strongly where we are now and what happened in these last days with a neurotoxin gas. Could have been her: President Trump spent the day getting ready for his meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, flying to Mar-a-Lago with the first lady Melania Trump to greet him and his wife, Peng Liyuan There will be people who say its not your fight, we dont care, what difference does it make, were not involved. First of all, we are an interconnected, interdependent world unlike any weve been in history because of mobility, because of communications. What happens in other places can very have an impact on you. The world took a position after the First World War, we took a stand against the use of chemical weapons. We have a whole unit attached to the United Nations that is devoted to preventing chemical weapons from falling into the wrong hands to be used. Clinton said that it is important we take a strong stance against chemical weapons and added: People have to know that they will be held accountable as war criminals for committing crimes against humanity if they engage in these kinds of aggressive violent acts. The hour-long conversation ended with a discussion of Clintons future plans and whether she would consider another run for public office. I am really focused on doing some things that I think I can help make a difference with, she said. Like supporting young people and getting more women into politics. I very much want to help Democrats take back the Congress. I have no plans at all other than trying to find some interesting things to do, trying to support other people, spend time with my grandchildren which is a great joy. Im not making plans to do anything. I am looking at doing interesting things. I dont think that will ever include running for office again as interesting as I find that to be. I think that there are lots of ways to make a difference in all sectors of our society - the for-profits, the not-for-profits. Looking for ways to help people live their own lives better, tell their own stories better. Ive always been really focused on kids and to find some good ways to help organizations that are particularly helping kids that faced difficulties in their lives. I am passionate about the unfinished business of the 21st century - the rights and the opportunities for women and girls. So I think I have a lot to do. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says a U.S. missile strike on a Syrian air base was a swift response to a shocking war crime. The Trump administration informed the Australian government and other allies it would fire more than 50 tomahawk missiles at a Bashar al-Assad controlled airbase near Homs 'shortly prior' to the strike on Thursday, Mr Turnbull said. The Prime Minister fully supported the operation, insisting a deadly poison gas attack which killed at least 70 people on Tuesday 'cries out for a strong response'. 'The Australian Government strongly supports the swift and just response of the United States,' Mr Turnbull said on Friday. 'This was a proportionate response by the United States. It is not designed to overthrow the Assad regime. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull insists that a deadly poison gas attack which killed at least 70 people in Syria is a war crime and 'cries out for a strong response' 'The Australian Government strongly supports the swift and just response of the United States,' Mr Turnbull said on Friday 'It is a proportionate and calibrated response, designed to prevent that airfield being used to deliver chemical weapons again. 'But we are not at war with the Assad regime and United States have made it clear that they are not seeking to overthrow the Assad regime.' He said Australia was not involved in the strike, but remained fully committed as a coalition partner to 'ongoing military operations in Iraq and Syria'. 'We have been consistent in our condemnation of the use of chemical weapons in Syria and elsewhere,' he said. Mr Turnbull said: 'This was a proportionate response by the United States. It is not designed to overthrow the Assad regime' Syrian father Abdul Hamid al-Yousef was pictured cradling the bodies of his dead twins after they were killed in the chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun, in the rebel-held central province of Idlib, Syria 'The use of these weapons, under any circumstance, is illegal and abhorrent. It is a violation of international law. It is a war crime. It is a blatant contravention of basic principles of humanity.' Speaking on 3AW Radio earlier on Friday, Mr Turnbull said: 'As a parent, a grandparent, everyone weeps when you see this sort of inhumanity, this cruelty. 'We have condemned this attack utterly. It cries out for a strong response.' But the government would not be drawn on whether Australia would consider joining U.S. action against the Syrian leader if asked by the Trump administration. Mr Turnbull said Australia had been in close touch with its U.S. ally, and he has discussed the issue with Defence Minister Marise Payne and the defence force chief. U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence upped his criticism of the Assad regime in the wake of this week's deadly gas attack in northern Syria President Trump denounced this week's horrific chemical weapons attack as an 'egregious crime' 'I don't want to speculate any further,' he said. U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence upped his criticism of the Assad regime in the wake of this week's deadly gas attack in northern Syria, telling US media 'all options are on the table'. Asked if Australia would join any U.S. action without UN backing, Defence Minister Marise Payne told ABC radio: 'We'll make decisions in regard to those sorts of issues as they are brought to us.' Senator Payne said the most important thing now is to condemn the attack. 'We have to be clear with Russia, we have to be clear with those who support the regime that this is totally unacceptable,' she said. The minister said Australia would 'of course' be part of the conversation about U.S. action. The U.S. military fired more than 50 tomahawk missiles at the al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs on Thursday 'We have condemned this attack utterly. It cries out for a strong response,' Mr Turnbull said The U.S. military fired 59 tomahawk missiles at the Assad controlled airfield on Thursday. It's the toughest direct U.S. action yet in Syria's six-year-old civil war and raises the risk of confrontation with Russia and Iran - Assad's two main military backers. The move came just hours after President Trump denounced this week's horrific chemical weapons attack as an 'egregious crime', saying 'it shouldn't have happened. And it shouldn't be allowed to happen.' President Trump, speaking from his Mar-a-Lago estate where he is entertaining the Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng as part of a two day summit, said the U.S. had to act after Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad launched the 'horrible chemical weapons attack' on innocent civilians. The Trump administration informed the Australian government and other allies before the strikes were carried out President Trump delivers a statement on Syria from the Mar-a-Lago estate in West Palm Beach, Florida 'Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack,' he said. 'It was a slow and brutal death for so many.' Australia's Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said on Friday that he expected the refugee situation to deteriorate. 'We know that in Syria already there were 6.5 million people who had been displaced by the civil conflict, and we know that the situation deteriorates when people are experiencing the sort of outcomes from chemical weapons or from attacks,' he said. Republicans including John McCain and Ted Cruz have praised Donald Trump for ordering airstrikes on Syria as Democrats stress that any further military action needs to consult Congress. Senators McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) applauded Trump on Thursday night saying he deserves the support of the American people because he took action against Syria, unlike former President Barack Obama. Trump ordered the attack on a Syrian air base with roughly 60 cruise missiles in response to a chemical weapons attack it blames on President Bashar Assad. While Democrats said the airstrikes sent a message, Senator Ben Cardin argued that any longer-term or larger military operation in Syria needed to consult Congress. Here are the statements from Republican and Democratic senators: Republicans including John McCain have praised Donald Trump for ordering airstrikes on Syria on Thursday as Democrats say any further action needs to consult Congress Senator Ted Cruz issued a statement saying after eight years of Obama failures, Syria is a humanitarian disaster and that Bashar al-Assad is a monster Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC): 'We salute the skill and professionalism of the U.S. Armed Forces who carried out tonight's strikes in Syria. Acting on the orders of their commander-in-chief, they have sent an important message the United States will no longer stand idly by as Assad, aided and abetted by Putin's Russia, slaughters innocent Syrians with chemical weapons and barrel bombs. 'Unlike the previous administration, President Trump confronted a pivotal moment in Syria and took action. For that, he deserves the support of the American people. 'Building on tonight's credible first step, we must finally learn the lessons of history and ensure that tactical success leads to strategic progress. That means following through with a new, comprehensive strategy in coordination with our allies and partners to end the conflict in Syria. The first measure in such a strategy must be to take Assad's air force - which is responsible not just for the latest chemical weapons attack, but countless atrocities against the Syrian people - completely out of the fight. We must also bolster support for the vetted Syrian opposition and establish safe zones to address the ongoing humanitarian crisis. As we do, we can and must continue the campaign to achieve ISIS's lasting defeat.' Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas): 'Today, after eight years of Obama foreign policy failures, Syria is a humanitarian disaster. Bashar al-Assad is a monster, a puppet of Russia and Iran, and he has once again used chemical weapons against his own citizens, murdering innocent men, women, and children. 'Our prayers are with Assad's victims, and with the victims of the ISIS and al Qaeda terrorists ripping Syria apart. And, as always, our support and prayers are with the brave Americans in uniform who carried out the military strike tonight. 'Any military action in Syria must be justified as protecting the vital national security interests of America including decisive action to prevent chemical weapons from falling into the hands of radical Islamic terrorists and I look forward to our Commander-in-Chief making the case to Congress and the American people how we should do so in the days ahead.' The US military fired more than 50 tomahawk missiles at the al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs on Thursday President Donald Trump has launched a US airstrike against a Syrian air base after the gas atrocity which killed more than 80 people (pictured delivering a statement on Syria from the Mar-a-Lago estate in West Palm Beach, Florida, on April 6) A U.S. Navy image shows the USS Ross (DDG 71) firing a tomahawk land attack missile at the Syrian air base Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL): 'I salute the bravery and skill of the men and women of our Armed Forces who conducted this mission. Tonight's strike against the Assad regime's Shayrat Air Base will hopefully diminish his capacity to commit atrocities against innocent civilians. TRUMP'S STATEMENT ON AIR STRIKES My fellow Americans, on Tuesday Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad launched a horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians. Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of helpless men women and children It was a slow and brutal death for so many. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of god should ever suffer such horror. Tonight I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched. It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the chemical weapons convention, and ignored the urging of the UN security council. Years of previous attempts at changing Assad's behavior have all failed and failed very dramatically. As a result, the refugee crisis continues to deepen and the region continues to destabilize, threatening the United States and its allies. Tonight I call on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria. Advertisement 'By acting decisively against the very facility from which Assad launched his murderous chemical weapons attack, President Trump has made it clear to Assad and those who empower him that the days of committing war crimes with impunity are over. 'What must follow is a real and comprehensive strategy to ensure that Assad is no longer a threat to his people and to U.S. security, and that Russia no longer has free reign to support his regime.' Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.): 'These military strikes against Assad's arsenal send a clear signal that the United States will stand up for internationally accepted norms and rules against the use of chemical weapons. 'However, and I cannot emphasize this enough, any longer-term or larger military operation in Syria by the Trump Administration will need to be done in consultation with the Congress. 'Furthermore, it is the President's responsibility to inform the legislative branch and the American people about his larger policy in Syria, as well as the legal basis for this action and any additional military activities in that country.' Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.): 'The U.S. and world community stood by as Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad brutally tortured and murdered more than 500,000 of his own people, and I applaud President Trump for taking decisive action following the latest chemical weapons attack. 'It is critical that Assad knows he will no longer enjoy impunity for his horrific crimes against his own citizens, and this proportional step was appropriate. As we move forward, it will be important for the administration to engage with Congress and clearly communicate its full strategy to the American people.' Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL): 'My preliminary briefing by the White House indicated that this was a measured response to the Syrian nerve gas atrocity. Any further action will require close scrutiny by Congress, and any escalation beyond airstrikes or missile strikes will require engaging the American people in that decision.' Senators McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) applauded Trump on Thursday night saying he deserves the support of the American people because he took action against Syria The strikes hit the government-controlled Shayrat air base in central Syria, where U.S. officials say the Syrian military planes that dropped the chemicals had taken off Republican Marco Rubio (right) and Democrat Ben Cardin (left) issued separate statements on Thursday saying the airstrikes sent a clear message House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI): 'Earlier this week the Assad regime murdered dozens of innocent men, women, and children in a barbaric chemical weapons attack. Tonight the United States responded. This action was appropriate and just. These tactical strikes make clear that the Assad regime can no longer count on American inaction as it carries out atrocities against the Syrian people.' Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky): 'While we all condemn the atrocities in Syria, the United States was not attacked. The President needs congressional authorization for military action as required by the Constitution, and I call on him to come to Congress for a proper debate. Our prior interventions in this region have done nothing to make us safer, and Syria will be no different.' Senator Charles E. Schumer (D-NY): 'Making sure Assad knows that when he commits such despicable atrocities he will pay a price is the right thing to do. 'It is incumbent on the Trump administration to come up with a strategy and consult with Congress before implementing it. I salute the professionalism and skill of our Armed Forces who took action today.' Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.): 'The use of chemical weapons against innocent Syrian men, women, and children is a clear violation of international law. The Syrian regime must be held accountable for this horrific act, and its actions underscore why the United States should embrace innocent people who are fleeing in terror. 'But the Constitution gives the power to authorize the use of military force to the legislative branch. Expanded military intervention in Syria requires action by Congress. If President Trump expects such an authorization, he owes the American people an explanation of his strategy to bring an end to the violence in Syria. We should not escalate this conflict without clear goals and a plan to achieve them.' Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky) said while he condemned the atrocities in Syria, the United States was not attacked. He said Trump needs congressional authorization for military action Russia received advance warning the United States was launching an airstrike on a Syrian air base, according to Moscow's ambassador to the UN. The US military fired more than 50 tomahawk missiles at the al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs at 8.45pm on Thursday while President Donald Trump was hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. The Russian military, which has ground troops in Syria as well as a fleet of around eight Mi-28N Night Hunter and Ka-52 Alligator gunships stationed at the base, received a 'deconfliction' notice, according to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. But no direct contact was made between the Trump administration and Russian President Vladimir Putin, with Tillerson emphasizing that they did not seek approval from Moscow. It also emerged that Syria's armed forces were warned about the threat of US military action hours before the strikes took place, according to a source who spoke to AFP. The US military fired more than 50 tomahawk missiles at the al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs at 8.45pm on Thursday The Russian military, which has a fleet of around eight Mi-28N Night Hunter and Ka-52 Alligator gunships stationed at the base, received a 'deconfliction' notice A U.S. Navy image shows the USS Ross (DDG 71) firing a tomahawk land attack missile at the Syrian air base Speaking about 30 minutes after the strikes were announced, Russia's deputy UN envoy, Vladimir Safronkov, said: 'We are receiving direct signals on this theme that such a military operation is being prepared.' He warned of 'negative consequences' if the United States went ahead with military action and said the blame would be 'on shoulders of those who initiated such doubtful and tragic enterprise.' The Syria's armed forces were also alerted, with a source telling AFP: 'We learned of the American threat and the expected military bombardment on Syrian territory. 'We took precautions in more than one military point, including in the Shayrat airbase. We moved a number of airplanes towards other areas,' the official said, adding they were forewarned 'hours' before the strike. He did not specify where the planes had been moved to or who had warned the Syrian government. The US used a special military-to-military hotline to alert Russia about the strikes. It is likely Russia then told the Syrians about the incoming missiles but this has not been confirmed. US military action puts the new president at odds with Russia, which has air and ground forces in Syria after intervening in support of Assad in 2015 and turning the tide against mostly Sunni Muslim rebel groups. After the strikes, Kremlin said Putin regretted the harm inflicted on Russia-US relations, while Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev didn't mince his words. Medvedev took to Facebook on Friday to declare US-Russian relations were 'completely ruined'. He also said the US was 'on the verge of a military clash with Russia'. Tillerson had also delivered some harsh words the day before when he said Russia was either 'complicit' in the sarin attack on Tuesday that killed more than 80 people or 'simply incompetent' in getting Syria to fall in line. Tillerson cited a 2013 UN security council resolution calling the Syrian government to surrender chemical weapons under the supervision of the Russian government. Russia's deputy UN envoy, Vladimir Safronkov warned of the 'negative consequences' of the US airstrike President Donald Trump delivered a statement from his Mar-a-Lago resort, saying he was moved to launch an airstrike after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's chemical weapons attack Tillerson said the US had not communicated with the Russian government about the airstrike, although 'the response from our allies, as well as the region and the Middle East has been overwhelmingly supportive'. Tillerson added: 'My expectation is that all of those parties with the exception of Bashar al-Assad and perhaps Russia, I think are going to applaud this particular action.' Trump has until now focused on defeating Islamic State militants in northern Syria, where US special forces are supporting Arab and Kurdish armed groups. And just one week ago, Tillerson said the 'longer-term status of President Assad will be decided by the Syrian people'. Nikki Haley, the US Ambassador to the UN, echoed the sentiment, saying it was no longer a priority for the US to focus on removing Assad from power. After the chemical attack, both Haley and Tillerson made a sharp u-turn on their statements. Haley held up graphic photographs earlier this week and told the security council: 'Yesterday morning we awoke to pictures [of] children foaming at the mouth, suffering convulsions, being carried in the arms of desperate parents.... 'How many children have to die before Russia cares?' Haley asked. She slammed Russia's support of Assad and suggested the US would take action if the UN didn't step up to the plate. Instead of leaving the Syrian people to determine Assad's fate as he had previously suggested, Tillerson said Thursday: 'With the acts that he has taken, it would seem that there would be no role for him to govern the Syrian people.' US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley departs a U.N. Security Council consultation regarding th Video has emerged of the moment a burned cockatoo has his wings replaced by vets using superglue and matchsticks at Perth Zoo. The male Carnaby's cockatoo caught fire when another bird exploded next to it while sitting on a power line. Video footage released by Perth Zoo shows vets 'imping' - a procedure where feathers are taken from a dead bird and transplanted onto a live one. Video has emerged of the moment a burned cockatoo has its wings replaced by vets using superglue and matchsticks at Perth Zoo The video released by Perth Zoo shows vets 'imping'; a procedure where feathers are taken from a dead bird and transplanted onto a live one Vets can be seen carefully applying superglue to the tips of feathers before carefully lining them up with his bare wing bones. 'The trick is to get the right feather in the right place at the right angles, before the glue dries,' Perth Zoo Veterinarian Dr Peter Ricci said. 'Effectively, it's along the same lines as hair extensions.' Perth Zoo treat 200 endangered wild cockatoos a year, but they rarely require wing transplants. 'Having a bird come in that's been burned and potentially electrocuted is something we don't see too often,' Dr Ricci said. The male juvenile cockatoo will go to a rehabilitation centre to prepare for its return to the wild once fully recovered from the procedure, Perth Zoo said. The zoo's veterinary hospital has treated hundreds of wild black cockatoos, some which have been fully rehabilitated and released back into the wild. The cockatoo will go to a rehabilitation centre to prepare for its return to the wild once fully recovered from the procedure, Perth Zoo said Socialite Kirsty Dayment has suffered a miscarriage while awaiting sentence for cocaine and ecstasy supply charges, a court has heard. Aspiring model and actress Ms Dayment wore high heels, a black vest and pants to the Downing Centre District Court on Friday afternoon. The glamorous eastern suburbs woman's barrister told the court the eastern suburbs woman's 'medical condition had changed'. 'I was told there was a miscarriage, I've already been provided with that material,' Judge Sarah Huggett replied. Socialite Kirsty Dayment, 34, arrived in court wearing tight black pants and a dark singlet Pictured left and right is the aspiring model and actress - who has pleaded guilty to serious drugs charges The judge said the court was informed about Ms Dayment's miscarriage late last month. Whether the stress of the legal proceedings had a role in the medical incident was not clear. At a previous hearing in early March, Dayment applied for a change in her bail conditions as she was three months pregnant. Dayment was told she would be giving birth in prison - but that is no longer the case. Dayment shielded her face as she attended Downing Centre Local Court on Friday The eastern suburbs model - seen in a previous photoshoot - is expected to be sentenced later this month Dayment earlier pleaded guilty to four changes relating to dealing cocaine and MDMA. One of the charges was for supplying a large commercial quantity of drugs. Detectives found the drugs in July 2015 in a Coogee unit she shared with her partner. The sentencing of Dayment and her boyfriend co-accused was pushed back until April 20 for legal reasons. She will make an appearance in court next Tuesday. As part of her bail conditions, she is required to remain at her home and keep an appointment with her barrister and solicitor. A controversial imam has called for a 'review' of Islam in Australia and demanded that Muslims respect freedom of speech and democracy. Shaikh Mohammad Tawhidi, who in recent weeks has clashed with other Muslim leaders, said he did not want 'burqas running around' or 'mosques on every corner'. Speaking at the Rotary Club of Adelaide, Imam Tawhidi said his father would not have moved from Iran to Australia had he known so many extreme Muslim people would end up living here. Controversial imam Shaikh Mohammad Tawhidi has called for a 'review' of Islam in Australia and demanded that Muslims respect freedom of speech and democracy 'My father made the choice ... to come to Australia because it is a non-Muslim country,' he said. 'Now, if we knew that after 30 years, we were going to have burqas running around, mosques being erected in every corner, and people proposing sharia law against democracy in this country, we would not have come.' He added: 'I believe that the entire religion needs a review.' The imam also said he was opposed to new mosques being built, claiming that they would all eventually be run by 'radical Muslim leaders'. He called on the security services to monitor all imams and to check how they were being funded, in case they were supporting genital mutilation or forced marriages involving children. He added that Muslims must follow Australian rules and customs if they want to live here. Imam Tawhidi said his father would not have moved from Iran to Australia had he known so many Muslim people would end up living here 'We need to come to one common understanding: it is either we follow the law of the land or we don't,' he said. 'If we do, then it is one wife. If we don't, then go back to where you came from, and have as many wives as you like. 'In Australia, where there is freedom of speech and where there is democracy, many Muslims do not find it safe to speak out against extremism in their country at all. And when I say that they are afraid they are not afraid of isolation, they are afraid of death. And I have been very close to that, and God saved me many times.' Imam Tawhidi added that those who do not want to obey Australia's laws can get on 'one of our kangaroos and you can hop back to where you came from'. Shaikh Mohammad Tawhidi, who in recent weeks has clashed with other Muslim leaders, said he did not want 'burqas running around' or 'mosques on every corner' He also had advice for government ministers, urging women not to wear headscarves while visiting Muslim nations. 'I know it is good to respect other people, but if you are the foreign minister, you are a foreign minister with your uniform and your badge, and if they don't respect you as a woman, to come and dress in what you like to dress, then that's a country whose embassy we don't want. 'We don't want anything to do with them if they don't respect our foreign minister, regardless of what country that is.' Imam Tawhidi is currently in hiding after backing Islam critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who said all Muslim schools in Australia needed to be shut down. The imam was escorted by police into hiding after said Islamic schools were 'a problem', and he fears retribution from the Muslim community. Two thieves who stole one of the world's rarest Ferraris worth $2 million were high high on ice, also know as meth, a Melbourne court has heard. Matthew Ludwig, 31, and Bradley Abela, 29, pleaded guilty in Melbourne Country on Thursday to the 2015 theft of the antique Ferrari, which was previously owned by Princess Diana's lover, Dodi Fayed. Ludwig and Abela are said to have stumbled on the 1972 Ferrari Daytona after forcing open the doors of a car workshop, according to The Brisbane Times. Two Melbourne thieves who stole one of the world's rarest Ferraris worth $2 million which was previously owned by Dodi Fayed, were high on ice Ludwig, 32, pleaded guilty to eight counts of theft, four of burglary, two of attempted theft and one of offending on parole. Abela, pleaded guilty to five theft charges and single counts of possessing a drug of dependence and making a false report. The court heard that that at 4am on November 6, they used a Ford Territory to force the door of the garage where they came found two Ferraris. The 1972 Ferrari Daytona was found a day later torched in a paddock while the 1986 Ferrari 328 was found burnt out three days later in Frankston. Ludwig's lawyer, Will May, said that his client was unaware the car was in the premises and did not destroy it. Matthew Ludwig, 31, and Bradley Abela, 29, faced court on Thursday following the 2015 theft of the 1972 Ferrari Daytona The 1972 Ferrari Daytona was found a day later torched in a paddock while the 1986 Ferrari 328 was found burnt out three days later in Frankston 'Both offenders had no idea what to do with them when they were in possession of them,' Mr May said. While the men admit to stealing the Ferraris, there was no direct evidence before the court that they torched them. 'No ... they are not charged with arson.' The pair were remanded into custody to be sentenced at a later date. A mother and child have been lucky to escape without injury after a Land Rover allegedly crashed into a parked vehicle and flipped over in Sydney's east. Emergency services were called about 11.50am on Friday to the crash on New South Head Road in Rose Bay. Fire and Rescue NSW workers were at the scene where a grey Land Rover Discovery worth over $100,000 flipped and came to rest on its driver's side. A mother and child have been lucky to escape without injury after a Land Rover crashed into a parked vehicle and flipped over in Sydney's east A woman is believed to have been driving the Land Rover with her child inside. The mother was seen shaken but unhurt while speaking to Fire and Rescue workers after the crash Emergency services were called at around 11.50am on Friday to the crash on New South Head Road along Sydney's harbour in Rose Bay Police told Daily Mail Australia a woman is believed to have been driving the Land Rover with her child inside when she crashed into a parked, flipping the vehicle onto its side. Both were assessed by paramedics but neither required treatment and walked away from the scene. The mother was seen shaken but unhurt while speaking to Fire and Rescue workers after the crash. Police partially sealed off the road and a traffic diversion was set in place while towing services flipped the Land Rover back upright. Traffic along New South Head Road experienced heavy delays until all lanes reopened at about 12.30pm. The car was towed away with damage along the front and the driver's side. Police said they will not be investigating the crash any further. Police partially sealed off the road while towing services worked to flip the Land Rover back upright after it hit a parked car Both people involved in the accident were assessed, however neither required treatment Advertisement The US airstrikes on a Syrian regime airbase have hardened the dividing lines across the world in regards to the Assad regime. MailOnline has set out world leaders' positions on the conflict, which clearly shows the split between pro and anti-Assad countries. It suggests which side of the battle line countries would position themselves on should the escalating crisis turn into an all out global conflict. This map, created by MailOnline, shows who supports who in the battle for Syria - with the UK, France, Germany and the US belonging on the 'Anti Assad' side Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (right) has led international praise of President Donald Trump's (left) airstrikes on Syria A US-launched missile heads for the al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs in Syria on Thursday night where it caused severe damage to military aircraft and weapons The US military fired more than 50 tomahawk missiles at the al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs on Thursday Britain, Israel, Canada, France, Germany and Turkey all spoke out strongly in their condemnation of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, following the strikes on Friday. Meanwhile, Russia has blasted the US, with the country's UN envoy accusing President Trump of 'violating international law' by firing at an airbase near Homs. Britain and Israel today specifically praised Trump's airstrikes, which took place in the wake of a deadly poison gas attack on a rebel-held town in Syria. This puts them at odds with countries including Russia, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Algeria and Venezuela, who have all shown their support for Assad in the past. France and Germany today said that Assad bears 'sole responsibility' for the US strike. On Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the strike saying it sent a 'strong and clear' message that the use of chemical weapons will not be tolerated. He said: 'Israel fully supports President Trump's decision and hopes that this message of resolve in the face of the Assad regime's horrific actions will resonate not only in Damascus, but in Tehran, Pyongyang and elsewhere.' The attacks in neighboring Syria have worried Israel, which has warned against 'game-changing' weapons reaching Hezbollah in Lebanon from Syria. The Israeli leader and Israel's ambassador to the U.N., Danny Danon, hope America's actions will send a 'significant message' to the likes of Iran and North Korea, where leaders have repeatedly ignored warnings against the use of such weapons. The Israel Defense Forces said Friday that Israel, along with many other international allies, were informed by the US ahead of the military strike, which saw at least 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from two American naval destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean strike the Shayrat Airfield north of Damascus. The strike was in retaliation for a deadly chemical weapons attack Tuesday in the northern Syrian province of Idlib that left at least 86 people dead. Britain backed the US missile strike, describing it as an 'appropriate response', as the government offered its full support to Trump's targeted assault. A No 10 spokeswoman said: 'The UK Government fully supports the US action, which we believe was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, and is intended to deter further attacks.' German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande said Syrian president Assad bore 'sole responsibility' for the US strike on a regime airbase. In a joint statement on Friday, they said: 'After the chemical weapons massacre of April 4 on Khan Sheikhun in northwestern Syria, a military installation of the Syrian regime was destroyed by a US air strike last night. President Assad bears sole responsibility for this development.' Hollande added that the US strike was what France had been calling for in the wake of the 2013 chemical attack. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the US attack was 'understandable' given the Syrian people's suffering. She said: 'The attack of the United States is understandable given the dimension of the war crimes, given the suffering of innocent people, and given the blockage in the U.N. Security Council.' In Australia, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull agreed the strike was a swift response to a shocking war crime. 'The Australian Government strongly supports the swift and just response of the United States,' Turnbull said on Friday. 'This was a proportionate response by the United States. It is not designed to overthrow the Assad regime. 'But we are not at war with the Assad regime and United States have made it clear that they are not seeking to overthrow the Assad regime.' Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull insists that a deadly poison gas attack which killed at least 70 people in Syria is a war crime and 'cries out for a strong response' Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (left) accused Vladimir Putin (right) and Russia of failing to carry out their duty to prevent Syria from using chemical weapons Turkey called for Assad's immediate ouster on Friday, voicing support for the US missile strike on one of his air bases. Turkey, part of the US-led coalition against Islamic State, has long argued there can be no peace in Syria under Assad. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said: ''It is necessary to oust this regime as soon as possible from the leadership of Syria. 'If he doesn't want to go, if there is no transition government, and if he continues committing humanitarian crimes, the necessary steps to oust him should be taken.' Meanwhile, Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin, said the strike was 'a positive response' to the 'war crimes' of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. He said: 'In order to prevent similar massacres from happening again, it is necessary to enforce a no-fly zone and create safe zones in Syria without further delay.' Two top EU officials have offered cautious endorsement of the missile strikes on a Syrian airbase. Donald Tusk, the chairman of EU leaders, said: 'US strikes show needed resolve against barbaric chemical attacks. EU will work with the US to end brutality in Syria.' The head of the bloc's executive European Commission said he 'understood' efforts to deter any more chemical attacks. Jean-Claude Juncker said: 'The US has informed the EU that these strikes were limited and seek to deter further chemical weapons atrocities. 'The repeated use of such weapons must be answered. There is a clear distinction between air strikes on military targets and the use of chemical weapons against civilians.' The Trump administration informed the Australian government and other allies before the strikes were carried out Italy also gave its support to the US air strike against Syrian, adding it was a suitable response and a deterrent against the use of chemical weapons. Foreign Minister, Angelino Alfano, said: 'Italy understands the reasons for the US military action. 'The strike was a commensurate response... and a signal of deterrence against the risks of further use of chemical weapons by Assad.' Saudi Arabia praised the 'courageous decision' saying the missile launch by Trump was the right response to 'the crimes of this regime to its people in light of the failure of the international community to stop it.' Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia is a longtime opponent of Assad and has supported the rebels fighting against him. It also views the long-running war as a proxy conflict between it and its Middle East archrival, the Shiite power Iran. Of course, not everyone welcomed the strike which Syrian officials labelled an 'act of aggression.' Talal Barazi, the governor of Homs province, said the strikes had led to death and destruction at the airbase. Iran has also 'strongly condemned the US strike' warning that they would likely just lead to increased terror activity. Heartbreak: Disturbing footage shows Syrian father Abdul Hamid al-Yousef crying uncontrollably over the graves of his wife and two children who were killed in a suspected sarin gas attack this week Syrian father Abdul Hamid al-Yousef was pictured cradling the bodies of his dead twins after they were killed in the chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun, in the rebel-held central province of Idlib, Syria 'Iran strongly condemns any such unilateral strikes,' the Iranian news agency ISNA quotes foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi as saying. 'Such measures will strengthen terrorists in Syria... and will complicate the situation in Syria and the region.' Qasemi added that the strike 'is dangerous, destructive and violates the principles of international law.' Iran is one of the biggest supporters of embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad. Its hard-line paramilitary Revolutionary Guard is deeply involved in the war. America's Sunni Arab allies in the Gulf view Syria as a proxy conflict between it and Shiite power Iran. Russia also denounced the strike as an 'act of aggression against a UN member' and warned that the move could end cooperation between the Russian and US military branches. Viktor Ozerov, head of the defense committee in the Russian Federation Council, told state news agency RIA that the US strikes 'may undermine the efforts in the fight against terrorism in Syria.' 'Russia will demand an urgent UN Security Council meeting after the US airstrike on Syrian aviation base. This is an act of aggression against a UN member.' It is an act of 'aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law', the Kremlin added. Konstantin Kosachev, the head of the foreign affairs committee in the Kremlin-controlled upper house of parliament, has since warned that the strike has put an any prospective U.S.-Russian anti-terror coalition 'to rest without even being born.' Kosachev added that 'it's a pity,' suggesting that Trump had been pressured to act by the Pentagon. He added that while 'Russian cruise missiles strike the terrorists, U.S. missiles strike Syrian government forces who are spearheading the fight against the terrorists.' The U.S. military fired 59 tomahawk missiles at the Assad controlled airfield on Thursday. It's the toughest direct U.S. action yet in Syria's six-year-old civil war and raises the risk of confrontation with Russia and Iran - Assad's two main military backers. The move came just hours after President Trump denounced this week's horrific chemical weapons attack as an 'egregious crime', saying 'it shouldn't have happened. And it shouldn't be allowed to happen.' President Trump, speaking from his Mar-a-Lago estate where he is entertaining the Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng as part of a two day summit, said the U.S. had to act after Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad launched the 'horrible chemical weapons attack' on innocent civilians. 'Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack,' he said. 'It was a slow and brutal death for so many.' Donald Trump's swift and decisive speed in launching airstrikes against Syria is in marked contrast to former President Barack Obama's previous military strikes. Less than 72 hours after Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad launched a chemical gas attack that killed more than 80 civilians, Trump retaliated and ordered Thursday's attack. The US military fired roughly 60 tomahawk missiles at the Syrian government's al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs. It was an action Obama was not willing to take years earlier without the approval of Congress. Scroll down for video President Donald Trump has launched a US airstrike against a Syrian air base after the gas atrocity which killed more than 80 people Trump's swift action less than 72 hours after the Syrian atrocity was in direct contrast to Barack Obama's previous military strikes when he was president Obama opted not to strike Assad's regime in Syria back in 2013 when hundreds of Syrians suffocated in rebel-held suburbs after ground-to-ground missiles were loaded with sarin and fired on civilian areas while residents slept. The former president warned Assad at the time not to cross his 'red line' and provoke a US military strike. He went to Congress for authorization to carry out punitive strikes against the Syrian government, but lacked the necessary support in the legislature. The Obama administration did eventually launch airstrikes in Syria the following year when the US started its military fight against ISIS in both Syria and Iraq. The strategic planning sharply contrasts with Trump's decision on Thursday. Trump had issued a statement on Tuesday saying the 'heinous' actions of Assad's government were the direct result of the Obama administration's 'weakness and irresolution'. Just hours before the strike was carried out, US officials said options were still being considered. It resulted in the military strikes causing an element of surprise for many late on Thursday night. The US military fired more than 50 tomahawk missiles at the al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs on Thursday A U.S. Navy image shows the USS Ross (DDG 71) firing a tomahawk land attack missile at the Syrian air base The strikes hit the government-controlled Shayrat air base in central Syria, where U.S. officials say the Syrian military planes that dropped the chemicals had taken off 'This clearly indicates the president is willing to take decisive action when called for,' his secretary of state Rex Tillerson told reporters after the strike. 'I think it does demonstrate that President Trump is willing to act when governments and actors cross the line and cross the line on violating commitments they've made and cross the line in the most heinous of ways.' A Pentagon official told DailyMail.com that the president 'is dead-set against letting Assad labor under the illusion that the Syrian army can murder innocent people with impunity.' 'We've laid down a marker. No more chemical weapons attacks, period. There will be consequences. Our president is showing his American conscience, and if anyone provokes him they will regret it.' The official said the Trump administration hopes Assad "will change his ways." The longtime Pentagon veteran said he was in the chain of command that led to Thursday night's attacks, but couldn't predict what might come next. 'We've got a new president,' he said. 'And that means none of our adversaries knows how he will react to any given situation. That's a huge advantage that Assad may not have considered.' While Trump was applauded by many Republican senators, Democrats and even some Republicans warned that any longer-term or larger military operation in Syria needed to consult Congress. Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md) and Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky) said separately that Trump should seek congressional authorization for military action. Fans of Rachel Maddow have expressed their disgust at 'sexist' NBC after the anchor was replaced on the show by Brian Williams who referred to the US missiles against Syria as 'beautiful'. Williams, the breaking news anchor for the network, appeared during Maddow's 9pm slot when news broke that the US military fired more than 50 missiles at the al-Shayrat base in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack on civilians. Furious viewers accused the network of 'sexism' and said Maddow was more than competent to cover the news without any help from Williams. The news was covered by Williams as he is the breaking news anchor for the network, meaning that during major events he takes over the airwaves at MSNBC no matter who may be hosting at that time. All the other major networks did the same last night as well, and while her fans may be upset Maddow has not voiced any complaints about what happened during her show. Scroll down for video Fans of Rachel Maddow have expressed their disgust at 'sexist' NBC after the anchor was replaced on the show by Brian Williams (pictured last night) Viewers also took issue with some of Williams' comments on Thursday night, especially when he played videos of the missiles being launched and said: 'We see these beautiful pictures at night from the decks of these two US Navy vessels... 'I am tempted to quote the great Leonard Cohen, "I am guided by the beauty of our weapons." 'And they are beautiful pictures of fearsome armaments making what is for them a brief flight over this airfield.' Christina Jacqueline wrote: 'Wtf? Brian Williams is waxing poetic about the beautiful photographs of missiles launching from ships. Why do they pay him?' Amy Volz commented: 'Why did you bring in Brian Williams to cover breaking news during Maddow air time? Rachel is more than competent. #EverydaySexism' Another said: 'Even MSNBC thinks Brian Williams, with his sketchiness, is more competent than a woman to handle breaking news. Put Maddow on now, please.' Charles Clymer said: 'Rachel Maddow would never refer to a Tomahawk launch as "beautiful". What in the ever living hell is Brian Williams doing on her air time?' Steven Trojanoski tweeted: 'I hate when s*** happens in the world and I have to put up with Brian Williams taking over Maddow's show. Maddow is 10x better than him.' Maddow is also something of a military expert having written a book in 2012 about US's role in wars from the Vietnam War to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. NBC was accused of sexism after Rachel Maddow was replaced on air by Williams A U.S. Navy image shows the USS Ross (DDG 71) firing a tomahawk land attack missile at the Syrian air base last night Smoke could be seen rising from the Homs airbase targeted by US missile strikes. The military action has already sparked a furious response from President Vladimir Putin, who this morning called the airstrikes an 'illegal act of aggression' The strike was the first direct military action the US has taken against the regime of Bashar al-Assad in the country's bitter six-year civil war. It came just days after a suspected sarin nerve agent attack on the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun, which led to the agonizing deaths of 86 people including at least 27 children. The US military fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at the Assad controlled al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs at 8.45pm (EDT) on Thursday, killing at least five and injuring many more. But the military action has already sparked a furious response from President Vladimir Putin, who this morning called the airstrikes an 'illegal act of aggression'. The Russian President, who has backed Assad militarily, warned of grave damage to relations between Washington and Moscow which are already 'in tatters'. Nearly $13 million of ecstasy and meth have been seized by police after they were allegedly found hidden in a wall cavity and inside a car. West Australian Police raided an Alexander Heights home in Perth on Monday where they found 18kg of ecstasy tucked away inside a wall. A further 10kg of methylamphetamine was uncovered inside a vehicle in North Perth along with unlicensed firearms and $60,000 in cash. Police have charged three men in relation to the seizures. WA Police have seized 18kg of ecstasy with a street value of up to $2.7 million concealed inside a home in Alexander Heights in Perth Deputy WA Police Commissioner Gary Dreibergs said that the drug bust would stop illicit substances from entering the community. 'The 10kg of meth, and 18kg of ecstasy would of converted to over 190,000 hits in our community,' he said. 'It is a priority WA police to target meth from every angle.' The seizure was the result of a three month investigation between the organised crime division of WA police and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission. Police have charged a 25-year-old Landsdale man and a 26-year-old Noranda man with possessing drugs with intent to sell or supply. A third man from North Perth, 43, has also been charged with possessing unlicensed firearms and unlawful possession of cash. Deputy Commissioner Dreibergs described the concealment of the drugs within a wall cavity as 'determined'. But applauded WA police officers who were 'more determined to find these drugs and bring the offenders to court', who were refused bail and will appear in court at a later date. Nearly $13 million worth of methylamphetamine and ecstasy were uncovered in police raids on Monday along with three unlicensed guns and $60,000 in cash. Three men have been charged in relation to the drug busts WA Minister for Police, Michelle Roberts, praised the investigation for eradicating the significant drug problem hitting the state. 'We know Western Australia has the biggest meth problem in Australia and the highest usage in the country,' the Minister explained. 'Taking these drugs off the street will mean that those people [drug suppliers] will deal in misery.' Deputy Commissioner Dreibergs and Minister Roberts both announced the establishment of a meth force with an additional 100 police officers set to be part of the state's crime division. Minister Roberts said that the meth force was part of the Mark McGowan Labor government's delivering on its promise to eradicate the 'insidious trade'. 'We will do everything we can, and the additional 100 officers will stop the supply of this drug into our state and into our community.' Theresa May has backed the US missile strike on a Syrian air base in response to Bashar al-Assad's 'barbaric' chemical attack Britain has given full backing to the dramatic US missile strike on a Syrian air base in response to Bashar al-Assad's 'barbaric' chemical attack - with Theresa May having given her blessing to Donald Trump before it happened. The American president ordered the US military to fire 59 tomahawk missiles at al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs overnight. Mr Trump believes the base's jets launched the horrific nerve gas attack on Idlib province earlier this week which killed more than 80 men, women and children. Downing Street said the missile attack, which destroyed Assad's airfield and planes and killed at least five people, was an 'appropriate response'. The government was in 'close contact at all levels' throughout yesterday and Mrs May was told in advance that the strikes were going to take place. However, Britain was not asked to join in. Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said it was 'hypothetical' whether the UK would have agreed to take part - playing down the prospects of increasing military involvement. Asked if the attack was the beginning of a wider campaign, Sir Michael said: 'We don't see last night's strike like that. 'This strike was very limited to one airfield, it was entirely appropriate, it's designed to deter the regime from carrying out further chemical weapons attacks. 'So we don't see it as the start of a different military campaign.' Sir Michael added during a round of broadcast interviews: 'We've not been asked to be involved in this, this was not a matter for the coalition that's in Syria and Iraq fighting Daesh.' 'This was a United States operation, but let me emphasise again we fully support it.' Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson urged the US yesterday to push for a UN resolution before launching unilateral reprisals against the Syrian regime. But it became clear overnight that Russia was determined to block a tough text going through the Security Council in New York. Moscow has claimed the chemical atrocity was unleashed when Assad's jets struck a rebel weapons stash. Sir Michael told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'The Americans tried very hard to get UN support but it became very clear that this resolution would be simply vetoed. A U.S. Navy image shows the USS Ross (DDG 71) firing a tomahawk land attack missile at the Syrian air base Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon said the UK had been in touch with the US government 'at all levels' yesterday and 'wholly supported' the action taken 'It is important to try the diplomatic route but what the US did last night was ... wholly appropriate.' Sir Michael said the action had been calibrated to 'deter future attacks' using chemical weapons. 'We've seen the first test of the Trump administration here,' he said. 'This is the first time it's happened under the Trump administration and they've decided they want to help deter it in future. 'This was a very limited, very appropriate, narrowly-focused action to attack the airfield, the aeroplanes and the equipment that the United States believe was involved in the gas attack to deter the regime from future attacks and hopefully therefore save lives in the future.' HOW MPS BLOCKED THE UK FROM TAKING ACTION IN 2013 MPs blocked the UK from taking military reprisals against the Syria regime in 2013. David Cameron brought a motion to the Commons in the wake of a chemical weapons attack on the edge of Damascus, which is thought to have killed hundreds of people. But the government was defeated by 285-272 after Ed Miliband refused to endorse the idea. The knock back was widely thought to have caused a rethink in Washington, with Barack Obama stepping back from action despite describing chemical weapons use as a 'red line'. George Osborne has branded the decision by MPs one of the worst in recent history. In 2015 the House of Commons did approve British involvement in strikes against ISIL in Syria - although Jeremy Corbyn caused turmoil within Labour by voting against. Advertisement The House of Commons voted against taking military action against the Assad regime in 2013 despite outrage over the use of chemical weapons in Ghouta, on the outskirts of Damascus. Two years later the House did back UK forces joining attacks on ISIS in Syria - although Jeremy Corbyn caused turmoil in Labour by voting against the move. The veteran left-winger today condemned the US action. It took took nine hours before he finally released a statement accusing America of 'escalating' the conflict. But the rift within Labour was laid bare when Mr Corbyn's deputy Tom Watson said he supported the US strikes in Syria, calling them 'a direct and proportionate response to a clear violation of international law'. Mr Watson added that chemical weapon attacks 'can never be tolerated and must have consequences'. 'These US strikes appear to be a direct and proportionate response to a clear violation of international law by the Syrian regime,' he told the Birmingham Mail. Nigel Farage laid into his ally Donald Trump today after the US struck back against the Syrian regime after the chemical weapons atrocity that killed scores of civilians. Donald's left me baffled, says Farage Nigel Farage warned the missile strike could make Syria more dangerous, not less. I am very surprised by this. I think a lot of Trump voters will be waking up this morning and scratching their heads and saying where will it all end? he said. As a firm Trump supporter, I say, yes, the pictures were horrible, but Im surprised. Whatever Assads sins, he is secular. Previous interventions in the Middle East have made things worse rather than better. His intervention is a dramatic turnaround in the pairs alliance, which at one point saw Mr Trump publicly urge Theresa May to make Mr Farage the UKs ambassador to Washington. Meanwhile, Ukip leader Paul Nuttall went further, condemning the attack as rash, trigger happy, nonsensical and will achieve nothing. Too often rash responses to horrific situations are about the conscience of the attacker, rather than a clear-headed response to an awful situation, he said. Advertisement The MEP hit out by warning that those who voted for the US president would be 'worried' by his retaliation. 'I am very surprised by this. I think a lot of Trump voters will be waking up this morning and scratching their heads and saying 'where will it all end?', he said. 'As a firm Trump supporter, I say, yes, the pictures were horrible, but I'm surprised. Whatever Assad's sins, he is secular.' He added: 'Previous interventions in the Middle East have made things worse rather than better.' Meanwhile, Ukip leader Paul Nuttall condemned the missile strikes on an Assad airfield as 'rash, trigger happy, and nonsensical'. But a Sky News poll this morning suggests that the majority of Britons would now support military action against al-Assad's Syria. The surprise barrage of 59 cruise missiles in the early hours of Friday morning, UK time, was the first direct US attack on the Syrian government. Mr Trump was reacting to the attack on Tuesday that killed at least 72 people, including 20 children, which he said was launched by Syrian president Assad. On Friday morning, a No 10 spokesman said: 'Overnight, the US has taken military action against the Syrian regime, targeting the airfield in Shayrut which was used to launch the chemical weapons attack earlier this week. 'The UK Government fully supports the US action, which we believe was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, and is intended to deter further attacks.' The strikes hit the government-controlled Shayrat air base in central Syria, where U.S. officials say the Syrian military planes that dropped the chemicals had taken off Most states apart from Russia have concluded President Bashar al Assad's regime was behind the chemical weapons attack. The US President announced the missile strikes in a speech at his Mar-a-Lago base in Florida overnight The suspected chemical attack on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhun in north-west Syria has prompted international condemnation. Above, a child receives treatment in a field hospital Speaking from Florida, Mr Trump announced his strike in an emotional message to the public in which he evoked images of children dying. 'Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many,' he said. 'Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. 'Tonight, I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched. EU Council president Donald Tusk said the missile strikes showed the US 'resolve', while former Chancellor George Osborne welcomed the opportunity for MPs to make up for blocking reprisals against Assad in 2013. Former shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn said the move would make Assad 'think twice'. But Nigel Farage and Ukip leader Paul Nuttall voiced doubts about their ally Trump's decision 'It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. Liberal Demsocrats BACK the bombing Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron backed the US missile strikes, saying the UK should support more military action. He insisted: We cannot sit by while a dictator gasses his own people, we cannot stand by, we must act. He added: The attack by American forces was a proportionate response to the barbarous attack by the Syrian government on its own people. The British government, rather than just putting out a bland statement welcoming this, should follow it up and call an emergency meeting of the Nato alliance to see what else can be done, be that more surgical strikes or no-fly zones. Advertisement 'There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons.' US Tomahawk missiles, launched from two warships in the Mediterranean Sea, targeted airstrips, hangars, control towers and ammunition areas in Sharyat, central Syria, according to officials. They suspect a mixture of chlorine and a nerve agent were used in Syria's attack on the largely opposition-held Idlib province. Mr Trump said the latest action was in the 'vital national security interest', adding that the US must 'prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons'. He also called for other 'civilised nations' to join efforts 'seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria'. Syrian state TV went on to report missile attacks on a number of military targets, calling them an act of 'aggression' which had led to 'losses'. Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said the strike was a 'proportional response to Assad's heinous act'. Nigel Farage, pictured becoming the first UK politician to meet Donald Trump after his election last year, warned today that those who voted for the US president would be 'worried' by his retaliation against the Syrian regime The World Health Organisation said victims showed symptoms of exposure to a nerve agent like sarin, and Amnesty International said many of the children killed appeared to have been suffocated by the poison gas as they slept It succeeded in 'reducing the Syrian government's ability to deliver chemical weapons' by severely damaging or destroying aircraft, according to initial indications, he added. He also said Russian forces were alerted ahead of the strike to minimise casualties at the airfield. US secretary of state Rex Tillerson said Russia had 'failed' to deliver its commitment to secure Syria's chemical weapons, saying it had been either complicit or 'simply incompetent'. Major Jamil al-Saleh, a Syrian opposition commander whose district has been hit by chemical weapons, welcomed the US attack and hopes it will be a 'turning point' in the six-year civil war. The Syrian Coalition opposition group also backed the move, with senior official Ahmad Ramadan urging Mr Trump to 'hit the snake's head'. The stock market was rocked after President Donald Trump launched cruise missiles against Syria following a chemical attack which killed at least 70 people. Trump, 70, ordered the strikes on Thursday against an airbase controlled by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces in retaliation for his actions. He said that 'even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered' in the 'very barbaric attack' on Tuesday. But immediately after his decision to launch missiles - the toughest direct US action in Syria's six-year-old civil war - stocks plummeted. President Donald Trump (pictured) launched the cruise missiles on Thursday as a response to the deadly chemical attack in Syria earlier in the week The US dollar dropped as much as 0.6 per cent after the strikes and stocks retreated as investors fled to safe assets after the attack. Meanwhile, gold and oil prices soared along with bonds and the yen in Asia on Friday. Pot gold added 1.2 per cent to $1,262.46 an ounce after hitting its highest point since November and oil prices went up 2 per cent. US crude oil added 1.6 per cent to $52.50 a barrel, after touching its highest in a month, putting it on track for a 3.8 per cent gain this week. But after a US official called their retaliation a 'one-off', with no plans for escalation, the early market panic ebbed. Christoffer Moltke-Leth, head of institutional client trading at Saxo Capital Markets in Singapore, said: 'It was a knee-jerk reaction because markets are starting to come back a little, as it doesn't seem like there will be further retaliation coming.' European stocks were also poised for a negative start, with financial spreadbetters expecting Britain's FTSE 100 and France's CAC 40 to open down 0.2 per cent, and Germany's DAX to start the day 0.3 per cent lower. A Syrian human rights monitor said the missile strike had almost completely destroyed the airbase near Homs, and the city's governor said five had been killed and seven wounded. While US allies including Britain, Australia and Saudi Arabia, as well as Syria's opposition group, welcomed the move, Russia and Iran condemned the attack. A Russian lawmaker said the nation would call for an urgent meeting of the United Nations Security Council, adding the strikes could be viewed as an 'act of aggression' against a U.N. member. The US Department of Defense of USS Ross (DDG 71) is pictured firing a tomahawk land attack missile from the Mediterranean Sea Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets in London, wrote: 'The action adds a complexity to geopolitics that wasn't there before, given Russia's support for Syria and Trump's pre-election pledges to try and repair relations with Putin, the US would now appear to be on a collision course with Russia.' Secretary of State Rex Tillerson noted the attack was 'proportionate', suggesting no follow-up was planned. Peter Kenney, senior strategist at Global Markets Advisory Group in New York, said: 'The unexpected and unequivocal nature of the US response to the sarin-centric carnage in Syria by President Trump was very much in keeping with his promise not to telegraph his military options to the world in advance of taking action.' Investors had already been on edge with Trump set to begin talks on Friday with Chinese leader Xi Jinping over flashpoints such as North Korea and China's huge trade surplus with the United States. Markets are also bracing for US non-farm payroll data for March later in the session, with economists forecasting a significant drop in job gains from February. WHO SUPPORTS WHO IN BATTLE FOR SYRIA? PRO ASSAD Russia - Gives military support, condemns the US airstrikes and suspends deal not to clash mid-air Iran - Close strategic allies with Syria and has provided significant support including 7billion North Korea - UN probe found that North Korea was supplying arms to Syria Iraq - The Iraqi Government provided financial support and transported supplies Algeria - Rumours suggest Algerian military aircraft is regularly landing in Syria Venezuela - The South American country has shipped tens of millions of dollars worth of diesel to Syria Lebanaon - Police arrested family after they protested about the Syrian Government Belarus - President Alexander Lukashenko supported Moscow's involvement and offered air strike Lebanese Hezbollah Party - Involvement has been substantial and has deployed troops since 2012 ANTI ASSAD US - President Donald Trump launches first airstrikes since six-year civil war started UK - Supports US cruise airstrikes as Theresa May said chemical attack was 'despicable' France/Germany - Both of the countries today said Assad bears 'sole responsibility' for US strike Turkey - Opposed to Assad but objects to Syrian rebels and wants control of Kurdish area Canada - Canada gave more than 4.2million to the Syrian opposition in 2013 Saudi Arabia - The Middle East country is the main group to finance the rebels and has provided a large amount of weapons Israel - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the first to praise the US's retaliatory attack, saying he 'fully supports' Donald Trump's decision to launch the cruise missile attacks Qatar - It was reported Qatar gave the Syrian rebels 2.4billion at the start of the civil war in 2011 Advertisement A Latvian mayor's serious-looking live stream was interrupted by one of his cats. Nils Usakovs was answering questions online when the black cat strolled nonchalantly into the picture. Usakovs tried his best to stare the moggy down, but it seemed completely nonplussed. It tries to take a drink from the mayor's cup before jumping off the table. Usakovs himself can't help but find the situation funny, looking off camera with a grin and laughing before gently ushering the cat out of the frame. The video was posted on Facebook with the caption: 'Anything can happen when in the office of the master of cats.' It has since been widely shared on social media. Nils Usakovs starts off looking extremely serious in his live stream But the Latvian mayor is momentarily confused as the black cat strolls into the picture YouTube user Vjacheslav Zolotarjov commented: 'Is not our mayor a cutie?' The mayor of Riga, Latvia's capital, is a well-known animal lover and has two adopted cats, Kuzya and Muris, who lived in the town hall building in Riga. Seven months ago Usakovs even posted a 360-degree picture on his Facebook page, challenging fans to find the two felines. Usakovs tries to stare the cat down but to no effect, and it ends up drinking from his cup The mayor can't help but laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation The post read: 'By popular request, here's a 360 degree photo from my office. This time start looking for Kuzya and Muris, and not the keys.' The incident brings back memories of Robert E Kelly's infamous chat on the BBC. The professor was giving a live interview about the impeachment of South Korean president Park Geun-hye when is children strolled in. Eventually he shoos the cat under the table and out of the fram Usakovs has previously posted pictures of his office challenging readers to find his cat Mr Kelly's panic-stricken wife Jung-a Kim then runs in and desperately tries to get both children out of the room. The moral of the story must be that if you're in the midst of a professional interview, make sure the door is locked. Advertisement Donald Trump unleashed his Tomahawk barrage on one of al-Assad's key bases from the sea to avoid upsetting allies and using the huge US military arsenal built up off the coast of Syria. The US President last night fired 59 missiles at al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs overnight in retaliation for the Syrian leader's horrific chemical weapons attack on Idlib. They were launched from his state of the art destroyers USS Ross and USS Porter which can fire dozens of Tomahawks with pinpoint accuracy from up to 1,500 miles away from their targets. The destroyers' locations are always kept secret but they are believed to have been off the coast of Turkey or Cyprus, around 150 to 200 miles away from al-Shayrat - and fired 30 minutes after they warned the Russians to leave the base and surrounding area. Syria's armed forces were also warned about US military action hours before the strike, a military source told AFP. The laser-guided Tomahawk is the US military's most advanced missile carrying a 1,000lb bomb powerful enough to destroy most targets with enough accuracy to avoid hitting any Russians and sparking war between the two superpowers. In response Moscow has already pledged to strengthen Assad's air defences, will stop sharing intelligence with Washington and has diverted its main Black Sea fleet warship The Admiral Grigorovich to the Syrian port of Tartus. It is currently in the Bosphorus and will enter the Mediterranean later today. Target: In the early hours of this morning the strikes were launched from two US destroyers in the Mediterranean and have killed at least five and destroyed at least nine Syrian jets, a fuel store and badly damaged the runway at al-Shayrat airbase USS Ross: This is the moment one of America's destroyers fired one of 59 Tomahawk missiles into Syria from the Mediterranean USS Porter: This destroyer is part of a US large fleet surrounding Syria and Iraq in the Mediterranean, Red Sea and Persian Gulf used to bombard Assad for the first time Destruction: This is the remains of one of the hangars obliterated by US missiles fired from destroyers overnight The US destroyers that hammered al-Assad USS Porter: U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Porter was last seen in the Bosphorus off Istanbul in February and USS Porter Captain: CDR Andria L. Slough Class and type: Arleigh Burke-class destroyer Length: 505 ft (154 m) Team: 270 personnel including around 60 officers Weapons: Two missile launching systems with the ability to fire up to 90 Tomahawk missiles. It has six large guns and two torpedo tubes Aircraft: 2 helicopters USS Ross: Its location is secret but it is known to be in the eastern Med USS Ross Captain: CDR Russell J. Caldwell Class and type: Arleigh Burke-class destroyer Length: 505 ft (154 m) Team: 210 personnel and 38 senior officers Weapons: Two missile launching systems with the ability to fire up to 90 Tomahawk missiles. It also has a harpoon missile launcher. It has seven large guns and two torpedo tubes Aircraft: 2 helicopters Advertisement The one-ton missiles costing $800,000 each were chosen because: It can be launched from the sea to avoid using an ally's air base Weapon map-reads its way to the enemy, hugging contours in the landscape, and using an on-board camera to pinpoint its target Tomahawks cruise at low altitude and follow a complicated route to avoid being tracked by radar Its accuracy is extraordinary, using a stored image of the target with the actual target before blowing it up Tomahawks offered best chance of avoiding damaging anything Russian, or killing anyone Russians, which could spark a war America has packed the Mediterranean with ships, submarines and aircraft with even more firepower in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea including the USS George H.W. Bush aircraft carrier packed with jets currently battering ISIS targets. But these ships can quickly be moved into the Med via Suez. In the early hours of this morning the strikes were launched and have killed at least five and destroyed at least nine Syrian jets, a fuel store and badly damaged the runway at al-Shayrat. The Syrian military said at least seven people were killed and nine wounded in the US strike. A Syrian opposition monitor put the death toll at four, including a general and three soldiers. A convoy of Russian vehicles was seen leaving the airbase last night. Russia's foreign minister says no Russian servicemen have been hurt in a U.S. strike on a Syrian air base. Sergey Lavrov, speaking on a trip to Uzbekistan, strongly condemned the U.S. strike saying it violates international law. Russian state TV aired the footage showing the damage from the U.S. strikes at the Syrian air base. It showed craters and pockmarks left by explosions and said that nine Syrian air force jets have been destroyed in the attack. To protect pilots, Russia and the U.S. opened a so-called "deconfliction line" in late 2015. On the US side, it is run out of the Combined Air and Space Operations Center at the vast al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, which hosts the forward headquarters of U.S. Central Command. There, air traffic controllers and senior military officers are in contact with their Russian counterparts in Syria. They share coordinates and other data to avoid midair collisions or confrontations. Mr Trump's decision to fire missiles from the Mediterranean was a tactical one, to avoid upsetting allies including Turkey by using their bases to launch a bombing raid by fighter jet. The US uses the Incirlik Air Base in Turkey but last night's operation would have required President Erdogan's consent and risked a row. Similarly any airborne sortie from bases across the Middle East could cause similar diplomatic problems. The United States has been fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria since 2014, so has amassed a huge military presence and an array of capabilities in the region. If President Donald Trump decides to launch more strikes against Syrian regime targets, the Pentagon has many ways with which to do so. Any strike against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is likely to be conducted remotely to avoid putting US pilots in harm's way. In September 2014, US ships launched 47 Tomahawk missiles during the first night of strikes against ISIS in Syria. These missiles can also be launched from attack submarines, but the location of these vessels is secret. A barrage of Tomahawks could overwhelm any air defenses. Assad's systems are weakened after six years of war but Russia has deployed state-of-the art systems to Syria. Over in the Persian Gulf, the Navy's Fifth Fleet can quickly respond to military requests in the region. The USS George H. W. Bush aircraft carrier is also in the Gulf, currently supporting operations against IS. The bulk of US efforts against ISIS in Syria has been conducted from the air, with about 7,500 coalition jet and drone strikes since 2014. The United States has multiple air bases at its disposal in the region, including Incirlik in southeastern Turkey, just 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the Syrian border. Among the many air assets available to the United States are its high-tech F-22 Raptors, F-16s and even B-52 heavy bombers. The F-22, which cost about $360million apiece, is considered the world's most advanced fighter currently operating, thanks to its ability to evade radar. It can fly faster than Mach 2 and launch laser-guided bombs from miles away. The Air Force also has at its disposal a fleet of armed Reaper and Predator drones, which use Hellfire missiles to strike targets. Weapon of choice: Donald Trump has fired 59 Tomahawk missiles into Syria - the 1million one-ton missiles destroy targets with pinpoint accuracy Target: The strikes hit the government-controlled Shayrat air base in central Syria, where U.S. officials say the Syrian military planes that dropped the chemicals had taken off Russia has diverted its main Black Sea fleet warship The Admiral Grigorovich to the Syrian port of Tartus. It is currently in the Bosphorus (pictured) and will enter the Mediterranean later today Tactics: The US has a huge airforce at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey - but would have needed the country's permission to launch an attack on al-Assad's Syria The United States has about 900 troops in Syria -- mainly special operations forces -- to help train and advise an Arab-Kurdish alliance fighting IS. A Marine artillery unit is helping local forces near Raqa and US forces have expanded a runway at a northern Syria air base to accommodate the huge C-17 military plane, which can bring in armored vehicles and equipment. The US also has Apache gunships in neighboring Iraq to support local troops on the ground. Meanwhile, Russian military chiefs have warned that its bases in Syria - Tartus and Hmeymim - are protected by 'three layers' of air defence. Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said Russia's S-400, S-300 and Pantsir systems were deployed in the war-torn country and that crews manned them 'around the clock'. But the defense facilities also include the Bastion system which Russia claims is capable of hitting 'naval and ground targets' up to 280 miles away. A British sailor had to be rescued after he went to sleep in the Costa del Sol resort of Marbella and woke up more than 100 miles away after his anchor broke. The 65-year-old sounded the siren on his yacht after climbing out of bed to discover he was near rocks and off a beach he didn't recognise. He was told after being helped to shore by firefighters that he was in Cadiz, 100 miles away from the spot where he had anchored hours earlier. A British sailor, 65, who weighed anchor for the night in Marbella, Costa del Sol, (pictured) woke up 100 miles away in Cadiz. He sounded the siren after he realised he was on a beach he didn't recognise The unnamed Brit declined medical assistance and headed for a nearby hotel, leaving his yacht which ran aground on La Caleta beach in the centre of Cadiz's old town in the care of police who kept watch on it to avoid locals looting it. The OAP at the centre of yesterday morning's bizarre drama, whose yacht is called Miss Brenda, has not been named. A spokesman for the local coastguards confirmed: 'We were called by the Civil Guard around 5.40am yesterday. 'They were alerted by council workers cleaning La Caleta beach who spotted the yacht heading for rocks as it sounded its siren. 'The vessel had run aground near the shore by the time we mobilised a rescue team so firefighters helped the occupant to safety in the end.' The yacht, named Miss Brenda, ran aground on La Caleta beach in the centre of Cadiz's old town. The man went to a local hotel and left his boat in the care of police. Pictured Cadiz Police said they were told by the sailor after his rescue that he had anchored the previous night in Marbella and had woken up 'disorientated' after crossing the Strait of Gibraltar. The spot where he was helped to safety is 110 miles away from the upmarket Costa del Sol resort. It was not clear this morning if the yacht had been removed so it could be assessed for damage. Donald Trump has said Assad 'choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children' and that 'even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered' as he launched air strikes against the Syrian president. The strike is the first direct military action the US has taken against the regime of Bashar al-Assad in the country's bitter six-year civil war. The attack was condemned by Russia, which is propping up the Assad regime, with the Kremlin calling it 'an act of aggression against a sovereign nation'. It came just days after a suspected sarin nerve agent attack on the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun, which led to the agonizing deaths of 86 people including at least 27 children. Harrowing footage showed adults and children staggering through the town's streets, foam pouring from their mouths as they fought to breathe. President Donald Trump has launched a US airstrike against a Syrian air base after the gas atrocity which killed more than 80 people (pictured delivering a statement on Syria from the Mar-a-Lago estate in West Palm Beach, Florida) An hour after launching the attack against Assad's government, Trump said he had acted in America's 'vital national security interest' to prevent the use of chemical weapons. He said: 'Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children. 'It was a slow and brutal death for so many. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. 'No child of God should ever suffer such horror.' Speaking from his Mar-a-Lago estate, he added: 'There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the chemical weapons convention, and ignored the urging of the UN security council. 'Years of previous attempts at changing Assad's behavior have all failed and failed very dramatically. 'As a result, the refugee crisis continues to deepen and the region continues to destabilize, threatening the United States and its allies. 'Tonight I call on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria, and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types.' Prior to the speech, Trump had entertained his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, and their wives at a formal dinner where guests dined on thumbelina carrots and New York strip steak washed down with Californian Chardonnay. A U.S. Navy image shows the USS Ross (DDG 71) firing a Tomahawk land attack missile at the Syrian air base last night Smoke could be seen rising from the Homs airbase targeted by US missile strikes. The military action has already sparked a furious response from President Vladimir Putin, who this morning called the airstrikes an 'illegal act of aggression' The strikes hit the government-controlled Shayrat air base (pictured) in central Syria, where U.S. officials say the Syrian military planes that dropped the chemicals had taken off What prompted Donald Trump to launch air strikes on Syria? President Donald Trump decided to launch air strikes against the Syrian government - the first time the US has taken military action against the Assad regime - after saying the Syrian leader had crossed 'many, many lines'. Denouncing Tuesday's chemical attack as an 'affront to humanity', Assad said the 'attack on children' and 'beautiful babies' had changed his attitude to the Syrian government 'very much'. He said Assad's 'heinous actions' could not be tolerated and felt he had to intervene in the interests of national security. Disturbing footage showed Syrian father Abdul Hamid al-Yousef crying uncontrollably over the graves of his wife and two children who were killed in a suspected sarin gas attack this week It was a suspected sarin nerve agent attack on the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun, which led to the agonizing deaths of 86 people including at least 27 children. Harrowing footage showed adults and children staggering through the town's streets, foam pouring from their mouths as they fought to breathe. Sarin gas is a chemical weapon accidentally created in 1938 by Nazi scientists worked on insecticides - and it is 26 times more deadly than cyanide. The chemist in charge of the project initially thought he had failed, because the compound he had created was too deadly to animal and human life to use in agriculture. But that is exactly what appealed to Adolf Hitler, whose weapons division took over the project. Hitler was so pleased with his new weapon, he named it 'sarin' after the scientists who discovered it Gerhard Schrader, Otto Ambros, Gerhard Ritter, and Hans-Jurgen von der Linde. The effect of exposure to sarin gas is instant, leading to an excruciating death. Inhaling even tiny amounts causes in less than ten seconds drooling and vomiting, while breathing becomes shallow and erratic. Less than a minute after exposure, the victim's nervous system is under sustained attack, making the body unable to control breathing. Lungs secrete fluid to try to repel the gas, making victims foam at the mouth with blood-flecked discharges. Many suffer from a medical condition known as SLUDGE, which stands for Salivation, Lacrimation (tears), Urination, Defecation, Gastrointestinal distress and Emesis (vomiting). The body loses the ability to control its functions. Abdul was pictured cradling the bodies of his dead twins after they were killed in the chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun, in the rebel-held central province of Idlib, Syria Many die within minutes of inhaling the gas. The maximum life expectancy is ten minutes after exposure. Those lucky enough to survive, due to receiving a much smaller exposure such as from touching a contaminated person often suffer permanent nerve and brain damage. The use of sarin was officially banned in 1997 under the United Nations chemical weapons convention. But only a year later, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein used sarin against Kurds in the town of Halabja in 1998, when his war planes dropped bombs containing the nerve agent, killing 5,000 people immediately, while some 12,000 were later reported to have died from symptoms of the attack. Most recently, Syria dropped up to 1,000kg of sarin in 2013 on a rebel-held area of Damascus, killing up to 1,400 people. US military intervention was only averted when Russia brokered a deal with Syria, under which Assad agreed to destroy all stockpiles of sarin and other chemical weapons. But he did not destroy all stocks of sarin and this week deployed the toxic gas again this week, bringing further horror and death. Advertisement Less than two hours after the dinner began, the US military fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at the Assad controlled al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs at 8.45pm (EDT) on Thursday, killing at least five and injuring many more. But the military action has already sparked a furious response from President Vladimir Putin, who this morning called the airstrikes an 'illegal act of aggression'. The Russian President, who has backed Assad militarily, warned of grave damage to relations between Washington and Moscow which are already 'in tatters'. In a statement the Pentagon said missiles fired from Navy destroyers USS Porter and USS Ross had targeted aircraft, aircraft shelters, storage areas, ammunition supply bunkers, air defence systems, and radars at Shayrat airfield in western Homs province. It added that the strike - which left at least five people dead - was intended 'to deter the regime from using chemical weapons again'. The Pentagon has released dramatic footage of one of its missile launches from USS Ross, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, targeting the Syrian base. The US military fired Tomahawk missiles at the al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs on Thursday Almost 60 tomahawk missiles were launched from the USS Ross (DDG 71) (pictured) on Thursday evening in retaliation to a gas attack in Syria A Syrian opposition monitor says the US missile attack on an air base in the country's centre has killed at least four Syrian soldiers, including a general, and caused extensive damage The strikes have won broad international support with officials saying Canada and other allies were behind the move. Israel's prime minister also welcomed the US attack saying he 'fully supports' President Trump's decision. Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday that 'in both word and action' Trump 'sent a strong and clear message' that 'the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated.' Britain has also backed the US missile strike, describing it as an 'appropriate response', as the government offered its full support to Trump's targeted assault. A No 10 spokeswoman said: 'The UK Government fully supports the US action, which we believe was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, and is intended to deter further attacks.' President Donald Trump had warned just hours earlier that Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad should pay a price for this week's civilian chemical gas attack: 'I guess he's running things, so I guess something should happen' TRUMP'S SPEECH IN FULL 'My fellow Americans, On Tuesday, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad launched a horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians. Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror. Tonight I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched. It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention and ignored the urging of the UN Security Council. Years of previous attempts at changing Assad's behaviour have all failed and failed very dramatically. As a result, the refugee crisis continues to deepen and the region continues to destabilise, threatening the United States and its allies. Tonight I call on all civilised nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria, and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types. We ask for God's wisdom as we face the challenge of our very troubled world. We pray for the lives of the wounded and for the souls of those who have passed. And we hope that as long as America stands for justice, then peace and harmony will, in the end, prevail. Goodnight. And God bless America and the entire world. Thank you.' Advertisement Donald Trump Jr joked that Trump's grandchildren had been caught 'stealing from the Treasury building'. The President's eldest son posted a picture of his nine-year-old daughter Kai holding what appeared to be stacks of dollar notes in her arms. He captioned the shot: 'Kai is enjoying her tour of the US Treasury in Washington DC a bit too much.' Referring to the Trump family's strained relationship with the media, he added: 'Headline: Trump Grandchildren caught stealing from Treasury building. #ItsAJokeGetOverIt #preempttheoutrage #fakenews#maga #trump #treasury #joke'. Donald Trump Jr posted a picture of his nine-year-old daughter Kai holding what appeared to be stacks of dollar notes Seeming to heighten the Trump family's strained relationship with the media, he added: '#MSM headline: Trump Grandchildren caught stealing from Treasury building. Back in February, his father blasted 'fake media' Donald Jr's jibe at the media echoes his father's criticism of journalists throughout his presidency. In February, Trump blasted 'fake media' who panned his first solo White House press conference. The president fielded reporters' questions for an hour, and faced a barrage of criticism afterward from the media outlets he said are stacked against him. He criticized reporters for misrepresenting what he called 'a fine-tuned machine' in his White House. 'I turn on the TV, open the newspapers, and I see stories of chaos,' Trump told reporters. 'Chaos. Yet it is the exact opposite.' He seemed to predict the reaction, jabbing: 'Tomorrow, they will say "Donald Trump rants and raves at the press." I'm not ranting and raving. I'm just telling you, you know, you're dishonest people. But I'm not ranting and raving. I love this. I'm having a good time doing it.' Donald Jr has five children with his model wife of 12 years Vanessa - Chloe, Kai, Tristan, Donald Trump III and Spencer (pictured with Kai and Vanessa) Donald Trump Jr (smiling at the top) shared a snap of him in his younger days rocking a bowl cut last week. He even wrote on Instagram that he may 'need to really make the effort to bring back the bowl cut' Donald Trump has three children (from left) Eric, Donald Jr and Ivanka with his first wife, Czech model Ivanka 'The press is out of control,' he complained. 'The level of dishonesty is out of control.' His son Donald Jr has been active on social media, and last week shared a snap of himself in his younger days rocking a bowl cut. 'An old school family pic to get the weekend started right with @realdonaldtrump @ivankatrump @erictrump,' he wrote in the caption. 'PS I think I need to really make the effort to bring back the bowl cut. I'm rocking that bad boy. #bowlcut,' he added. The family photo shows Donald Jr smiling at the top of a spiraling staircase with his dad and president Donald Trump, his smiling siblings, Ivanka and Eric Trump, along with their mother Ivana Trump. It comes amid reports that Donald Trump Jr wants to run for New York governor after catching the 'politics bug'. He allegedly told members of elite gun club in Hicksville, New York, that he is interested in running for office, according to Page Six. President Donald Trump launched a US airstrike against a Syrian air base after the gas atrocity which killed more than 80 people (pictured delivering a statement on Syria on April 6) 'Donald Jr said he is interested in running for office, such as governor of New York, but the position of mayor of New York would be less interesting to him,' an attendee said. Donald Jr, who has taken over running the Trump Organization along with his brother Eric Trump, reportedly said returning to business became 'boring' after he campaigned with his father on the presidential trail. 'The politics bug bit me,' he said, according to the report. He did not specify when he would consider running for the spot. Governor Andrew Cuomo - a vocal opponent of the President, is up for re-election in 2018. The reports come as his father launched a deadly US airstrike against a Syrian air base after blaming Bashar al-Assad's regime for a horrific nerve gas attack which killed more than 80 of the dictator's own citizens. The US military fired 59 tomahawk missiles at the Assad-controlled al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs at 8.45pm on Thursday, killing at least five and injuring many more. President Trump said the US had to act after the Syrian dictator launched the 'horrible chemical weapons attack' on innocent civilians. Tributes have been paid to a four-year-old boy killed in a farm accident in Northern Ireland. The youngster was pronounced dead at the scene of the incident near Maguiresbridge in Co Fermanagh on Thursday evening. It is understood the boy was killed in an incident involving a JCB-type digger. The youngster was pronounced dead at the scene of the incident near Maguiresbridge in Co Fermanagh Tributes have now been paid on social media, with local John Garrity writing on Facebook: 'Aw so sad about the wee child in Maguiresbridge. 'Wee man out farming with his daddy!!! Would break your heart. God protect all the wee children and babies!' Police attended the property around 8.30pm on Thursday and the Northern Ireland Heath and Safety Executive is now investigating the circumstances of the fatality. The nearby Maguiresbridge Methodist Church sent its condolences to the family of the boy, who has not yet been named, and announced it would hold a vigil for grief stricken residents affected by the tragedy. It wrote online: 'As a Circuit our thoughts are very much with the the Magee family this morning and in the coming days. Please uphold them in prayer at this sad time'. Officers have not made public details on the circumstances of the death, describing it only as an 'incident'. Tributes have now been paid on social media, with local John Garrity writing on Facebook: 'Aw so sad about the wee child in Maguiresbridge' Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) Inspector Glen Latimer said: 'The child was sadly pronounced dead at the scene. 'Local PSNI will work closely with the Health and Safety Executive as they investigate the circumstances.' Democratic Unionist leader Arlene Foster, an Assembly member for the area, passed on her condolences. 'This is devastating news and I wish to express my sympathy to the family,' she said. 'In the close-knit farming community of Fermanagh, news of this untimely death has caused a great deal of shock. 'The family will be in my thoughts and prayers today and in the weeks to come, as they mourn the loss of a young life taken under such tragic circumstances.' Nigel Farage laid into his ally Donald Trump today after the US struck back against the Syrian regime in the wake of the chemical weapons atrocity that killed scores of civilians. The MEP hit out by warning that those who voted for the US president would be 'worried' by his retaliation. 'I am very surprised by this. I think a lot of Trump voters will be waking up this morning and scratching their heads and saying "where will it all end?", he said. 'As a firm Trump supporter, I say, yes, the pictures were horrible, but I'm surprised. Whatever Assad's sins, he is secular.' He added: 'Previous interventions in the Middle East have made things worse rather than better.' It marks a dramatic turnaround in an alliance that at one point saw Mr Trump publicly urge Theresa May to make Mr Farage the UK's ambassador to Washington. Scroll down for video Nigel Farage, pictured becoming the first UK politician to meet Donald Trump after his election last year, warned today that those who voted for the US president would be 'worried' by his retaliation against the Syrian regime The former Ukip leader expressed concern about the strikes in response to the regime's chemical weapons atrocity Current Ukip leader Paul Nuttall was more direct, branding the strikes 'rash and trigger happy' Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon said the UK had been in touch with the US government 'at all levels' yesterday and 'wholly supported' the action taken Meanwhile, Ukip leader Paul Nuttall condemned the missile strikes on an Assad airfield as 'rash, trigger happy, and nonsensical'. The American president ordered the US military to fire 59 tomahawk missiles at al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs overnight. Mr Trump believes the base's jets launched the horrific nerve gas attack on Idlib province earlier this week which killed more than 80 men, women and children. Downing Street said the missile attack, which destroyed Assad's airfield and planes and killed at least five people, was an 'appropriate response'. The government was in 'close contact at all levels' throughout yesterday and Mrs May was told in advance that the strikes were going to take place. However, Britain was not asked to join in. Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said it was 'hypothetical' whether the UK would have agreed to take part - playing down the prospects of increasing military involvement. Asked if the attack was the beginning of a wider campaign, Sir Michael said: 'We don't see last night's strike like that. 'This strike was very limited to one airfield, it was entirely appropriate, it's designed to deter the regime from carrying out further chemical weapons attacks. 'So we don't see it as the start of a different military campaign.' A U.S. Navy image shows the USS Ross (DDG 71) firing a tomahawk land attack missile at the Syrian air base The strikes hit the government-controlled Shayrat air base in central Syria, where U.S. officials say the Syrian military planes that dropped the chemicals had taken off The World Health Organisation said victims showed symptoms of exposure to a nerve agent like sarin, and Amnesty International said many of the children killed appeared to have been suffocated by the poison gas as they slept Mr Farage was a vocal champion for Mr Trump during the US elections last year, appearing on the stump alongside the Republican candidate to urge activists to emulate the historic Brexit vote in the UK. The billionaire dubbed his ally 'Mr Brexit' and hailed him for inspiring his historic victory over Hilary Clinton. The MEP became the first UK politician to meet Mr Trump after his win, and was famously pictured grinning alongside him in Trump Tower in New York. The president-elect then caused a diplomatic storm by tweeting: 'Many people would like to see @Nigel_Farage represent Great Britain as their Ambassador to the United States. He would do a great job!' The UK dismissed the idea, saying there was no vacancy as Sir Kim Darroch had only recently been appointed. Mr Nuttall said: 'The whole world rightly condemns the use of chemical weapons in Syria, but the US attack on the Assad regime does nothing to lower tensions, nor will it hasten peace in that country. 'Too often rash responses to horrific situations are about the conscience of the attacker, rather than a clear-headed response to an awful situation. 'There are currently no good options in Syria. Assad or Isis is not a choice anyone would wish to make. But firing off missiles in an enraged response shows weakness not strength in the face of horror. 'I hoped for better from this administration.' Mr Trump at one point publicly urged Theresa May to make Mr Farage the UK's ambassador to the US A dog missing for eleven years has been found more than 300 miles away from where it disappeared in France and reunited with his family who it sadly doesnt remember. Owner Nathalie Fournier received a phone call last week from a woman who said she had found the long missing Topaze, a Bichon Frise, in a 'terrible state' by the side of the road. 'You have found our dog, Chanel?' asked Nathalie, believing their current dog had gone missing for a few seconds. 'No', the woman replied, 'Topaze.' Home sweet home? Topaze back with his family after 11 years A few days later Nathalie and her husband Daniel travelled from their home in Gravelines in the northern French region of Lorraine around 300 miles to the town of Moselle, close to the German border. However, their joy was somewhat tarnished by the poor condition he was found, seemingly uncared for in a significant amount of time. 'It appears that she has not had the easiest of lives,' Daniel said when he brought the dog back to their home in Gravelines. Topaze, who was picked up by Daniel last weekend, also appears to have forgotten his family with his owner saying the dog doesn't seem to recognise their 'smells, appearance nor voices anymore.' The dog, now 15 years old, was identified from the microchip he was wearing, and was found in Moselle near the German border, 300 kilometres from where he had gone missing over a decade ago. Daniel says it is unclear how Topaze ended up so far away from home although he believes that 'he was stolen and then transported to the east' of the country. Across the country: Daniel says it is unclear how Topaze ended up so far away from home although he believes that 'he was stolen and then transported to the east' of the country The male dog was lost in 2006 when Daniel and his daughters were preparing to leave home for a sailing trip. Daniel opened the car door to let his daughter in and the small Bichon Frise jumped out and ran off while wearing a collar which had its leash attached. The devastated family from Gravelines in the northern French region of Lorraine spent many weeks looking for the dog, posting flyers through doors and sticking posters to local shops. However the dog, who was a Christmas gift to their daughters in 2002, couldn't be found by the family. Topaze is now acclimatising to life at home, spending time with Daniel, Nathalie and Chanel. An eight-year-old girl who was found living with monkeys in India has not been claimed by any family members and could end up in an orphanage. The child dubbed 'Mowgli girl', who screeches to communicate and could only walk on all fours when she was found two months ago, is completely alone, a child specialist said. She was found in a remote nature reserve in Bahraich, northern India and has learned to walk on two legs since she was admitted to hospital. A girl, eight, who has walks on all fours and screeches to communicate has not been claimed by any family members, a child doctor said. Known as 'Mowgli girl', the child was found in a remote nature reserve in Bahraich, northern India Child doctor Krishnakant Verma said nurses have to put nappies on the girl as she cannot use the toilet. Her nickname 'Mowgli girl' refers to her story's similarities with The Jungle Book In a video clip, she takes a few tentative steps, before falling down to the ground. Dr Krishnakant Verma said: Shes still logged in our records as unknown. No one has come to claim her. 'Members of the public and members of the media have come to look at her as if shes an alien. Now we are trying to send her to a government child orphanage, in Lucknow. Dr Krishnakant Verma said: 'She sits on the bed all day. She does nothing. She roams here and there a little.' Pictured, the girl has learned to walk on two legs 'We have spoken to them and we are currently in the middle of making arrangements. 'The District Magistrate Ajay Deep Singh came to see her yesterday and we will take her to the Juvenile Court today. We hope to move her on Monday. Inspector Ram Avtar Singh, from Motipur station, in Bahraich, who took the girl to hospital, has confirmed no one has come to claim the girl. He said: We have found nothing. There have been no witnesses that have seen her in the past, and no one has come to claim her. 'Weve put adverts in the newspapers, we have interviewed many people in the region. No one knows anything about her. 'We fear her parents abandoned her because of her mental problems. The governments child protection department will now take charge of her. Dr Verma said: 'Shes physically fit but shes not mentally fit. 'She sits on the bed all day. She does nothing. She roams here and there a little. 'Shes very self involved and doesnt go over to any other patients nor freely interacts with anyone. She cannot go to the washroom and she doesnt tell the nurses if she needs to go so we have to use diapers on her. When shes filled the diapers we have to change it for her.' Her nickname 'Mowgli girl' refers to her story's similarities with The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling's tale about a boy of the same name brought up by wolves. Authorities say she seemed comfortable among the apes at Katarniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary, close to the border with Nepal. They are still trying to find out who she is, where she came from and how long she has been in the wild. The girl has tried to run away many times already and is logged in hospital records as 'unknown'. But she is happy to eat almost anything, the doctor said Hospital workers are trying to get the girl housed in an orphanage in Lucknow, northern India. Pictured, injuries on the girl's wrist The girl also has injuries on her legs. Police are hoping to house her in an orphanage by Monday. Inspector Ram Avtar Singh said: 'We have found nothing. There have been no witnesses that have seen her in the past' Dr Verma said: 'When she arrived here she walked with her hands and she would eat food off the floor. She can now walk and eat by herself. 'She doesn't speak at all, nothing, but she tries by mumbling things we cannot understand. 'But theres been a lot of improvement in her since she arrived. 'Other patients here like her, she is a very nice girl. Dr Verma said: 'When she arrived here she walked with her hands and she would eat food off the floor. She can now walk and eat by herself' Pictured, the Katarniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary where the girl was found living with monkeys. Police officers have put out adverts in newspapers to try and track down her family members The eight-year-old 'Mowgli girl' is pictured on a hospital bed after being rescued by police in Bahraich district of Uttar Pradesh, India At night she sleeps by herself, and doesnt bother anyone. She has a huge appetite and eats porridge, dahl and rice, chapati and vegetable curries, and fruits. Actually she eats everything. 'Shes tried many times to run way. Sometimes she comes back by herself, sometimes the ward boys have to chase her, and sometimes we have to go look for her around the hospital. 'The ward boys have to watch her at all times as the hospital is so big, so thats been hard at times with her. She was found living with monkeys and unable to walk or talk like a human in India, it has emerged She was spotted by woodcutters before Sub-inspector Suresh Yadav located the emaciated girl while he was on a routine patrol, according to the Times of India. She was taken to hospital after the discovery two months ago and has been looked after there ever since. The girl is being reintroduced to human society after being found with the monkeys The child (pictured), who reportedly screeches to communicate and walks on all fours, was found by police in a remote nature reserve in Bahraich, northern India She behaved like an animal, running on her arms and legs and eating food off the floor with her mouth, said D.K. Singh, chief medical superintendent of the government-run hospital. After treatment, she has begun walking normally and eating with her hands. 'She is still not able to speak, but understands whatever you tell her and even smiles,' Singh said. Police officer Dinesh Tripathi said that when the girl was found, she was 'naked and was very comfortable in the company of monkeys. When the woodcutters tried to rescue the girl, they were chased away by the monkeys,' the officer said. She was rescued later by a police officer in the Katarniya Ghat forest range. 'When he called the girl, the monkeys attacked him but he was able to rescue the girl. He sped away with her in his police car while the monkeys gave chase,' Tripathi said. Doctors say she is still prone to bouts of anger and violence while she does not appear to understand any language Inspector Ram Avtar Singh, from Motipur station, in Bahraich, said: 'She was terrified of us, she could not speak or hear us properly. She was surrounded by three monkeys. She had wounds on her body specifically on her elbow and one on her leg. 'She was wearing clothes but not very dirty, it looks like she was abandoned by her family. 'She looked weak and was very hungry. We gave her some food to eat. She looked miserable. If we hadn't rescued her she could have been eaten by other animals.' Doctors say she is still prone to bouts of anger and violence while she does not appear to understand any language. She is said to be still frightened of humans. Although she has been taught to walk upright, she still walks on all fours, medics say. According to Scroll.in, Chief Medical Officer DK Singh said: 'The girl was found two months back, eats and walks like animals, and runs away on seeing humans 'She has marks on her skin, looks like she has lived with animals for quite some time. Now she is better and healthy, showing improvement.' A Filipino beauty queen has been shot dead moments after opening the front door to 'hitmen' who gave her flowers and chocolates. Mary Christine Balagtas, 23, opened her front door to the two men at her home in Bulacan, the Philippines, on Wednesday morning. They let off a single bullet into the student's head then fled on a waiting motorbike, according to police investigating the murder. Mary Christine Balagtas has died after being shot in the head by two hitmen at her home in Bulacan, the Philippines They are believed to have come to her door bearing flowers and chocolates before shooting her She was rushed to hospital as paramedics battled to stabilise her but she died inside the ambulance. Superintendent Julio Lizardo from Plaridel Police said they were now investigating a man who had a previous relationship with Ms Balagtas. He added: 'We believe the attack could have carried out by a hired gun. 'We found an empty shell from a.45 calibre pistol at the scene and believe that two men had fled on a motorcycle. 'Witnesses said that two men had been been seen in the neighbourhood before the shooting. 'Mary died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. We are following several leads including a man who had a romantic relationship with Mary.' Ms Balagtas previously won the La Bulakenya pageant in 2009 and second pageant in 2010. Ms Balagtas was a student at the University of Regina Carmeli College when she was killed Her friends have started a hashtag on social media, called #JusticeFortTin, in memory of her She was studying at the University of Regina Carmeli College when she died. Shocked classmates this week paid tribute to Mary, who had the nickname 'Tin'. Friend Herlie Rozelle Flores Vecina said: 'Life is just really too short for the family and friends you have left. We may not even know what true happened to you but we let it given in the hands of our almighty God. 'We are confident that justice will prevail. We just pray that your family and us, your friends will get that fair. 'Tin, you will be always in our hearts. You, as a daughter, a sister, a seatmate in elementary, a classmate on high school, a colleague on college... but most importantly, a friend. We hope to never forget you. 'We will sincerely miss you. We love you, Mary Christine. May you rest beautifully in peace, our dear friend.' Advertisement These are the first images of the carnage caused by Donald Trump's Tomahawk barrage on al-Assad's badly damaged airbase as Syrians thanked the President for the raid. US missiles appear to have shattered hangars, destroyed at least nine Syrian jets, weapons and a fuel store, as well as leaving left giant craters in the runway at al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs. Its radar system and surface-to-air missile defences were also damaged - but crucially the laser-guided missiles avoided the Sarin stores there. Today smoke was billowing from al-Shayrat more than 12 hours after it was targeted with 59 missiles in retaliation for the Syrian leader's horrific chemical weapons attack on Idlib. Anti-Assad Syrians have been celebrating the strike after the horrific chemical weapons attack - critics in the country say that the US should be focussing on destroying ISIS. The Russians said that the strikes had 'extremely low' military effectiveness and claim large parts of the airbase are untouched - French and German ministers have urged Vladimir Putin not to escalate the crisis and join talks to avoid war. First pictures: This is the shattered scene at Al Shayrat Airbase where 59 US missiles rained down on it overnight US missiles appear to have shattered hangars, destroyed at least nine Syrian jets, weapons and a fuel store Its radar system and surface-to-air missile defences were also damaged, according to security sources Today smoke was billowing from al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs more than 12 hours after it was targeted with 59 missiles in retaliation for the Syrian leader's horrific chemical weapons attack on Idlib. This unverified photograph posted this morning was claimed to be part of a missile fired into the airbase by the Americans They were launched from Trump's state of the art destroyers USS Ross and USS Porter in the Mediterranean. Syria's state TV is showing footage of the U.S. missile strike, showing a fast sequence of orange flashes that lit the dark sky in the distance before the crack of dawn. President Donald Trump has launched a US airstrike against a Syrian air base after the gas atrocity which killed more than 80 people (pictured delivering a statement on Syria from the Mar-a-Lago estate in West Palm Beach, Florida, on April 6) The shaky footage, apparently filmed with a mobile phone camera and aired Friday, came hours after about 60 U.S. Tomahawk missiles hit the base in Homs province, causing extensive damage to the base. In a different sequence after day break, the Syrian TV station al-Ikhbariyah showed another short clip of smoke billowing in the distance, hovering over a raging fire, the tip of which emerges and a forest of trees is in the foreground. The Syrian government said at least six people were killed, and several wounded in the attack. Activists say the air base, hangars, fuel depot and aircraft were badly damaged. A government official said a fire raged for over an hour. Russian forces were warned ahead of the strike using a special military-to-military hotline - a convoy was seen leaving the area. Anti-Assad Syrians have been celebrating the strike after the horrific chemical weapons attack. Some said they had been hugging people in the street and crying after news that the Americans had intervened emerged. One wrote on Facebook: 'I've worked my tail off for six damn years to see this moment. You have no idea how cathartic it is for me. I've been hugging everyone. 'If you run into me now chances are I'll hug you and cry. This is the first time in almost half a century that the Assad regime has been held accountable for a crime they committed. Only Syrians will fully understand what this means. I'm choking back tears.' Syrian soldiers have returned to the airbase today - along with emergency services. At least six have died in the blasts The runway was cratered and damaged but not all of it was destroyed, these photographs appear to show The US destroyers that hammered al-Assad USS Porter: U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Porter was last seen in the Bosphorus off Istanbul in February and USS Porter Captain: CDR Andria L. Slough Class and type: Arleigh Burke-class destroyer Length: 505 ft (154 m) Team: 270 personnel including around 60 officers Weapons: Two missile launching systems with the ability to fire up to 90 Tomahawk missiles. It has six large guns and two torpedo tubes Aircraft: 2 helicopters USS Ross: Its location is secret but it is known to be in the eastern Med USS Ross Captain: CDR Russell J. Caldwell Class and type: Arleigh Burke-class destroyer Length: 505 ft (154 m) Team: 210 personnel and 38 senior officers Weapons: Two missile launching systems with the ability to fire up to 90 Tomahawk missiles. It also has a harpoon missile launcher. It has seven large guns and two torpedo tubes Aircraft: 2 helicopters Advertisement Another said: 'For those of us who have campaigned tirelessly for humanitarian intervention for 6 years today is a surreal and momentous day. 'I can't even truly express how I feel, the devastating war is still years from ending, but for a brief few moments Syrians got to taste what justice feels like, even if that is only a smokescreen, the jubilation I am witnessing is very real.' A seven-year-old refugee from Syria thanked Donald Trump today. Bana Alabed, who has tweeted for years from inside Syria, wrote: 'I am a Syrian child who suffered under Bashar al Asad & Putin. I welcome Donald Trump action against the killers of my people. 'Putin and Bashar al Asad bombed my school, killed my friends & robbed my childhood. It's time to punish the killers of children in Syria.' The military action has already sparked a furious response from Vladimir Putin, who this morning called the airstrikes an 'illegal act of aggression'. The Russian President, who has backed Assad militarily, warned of grave damage to relations between Washington and Moscow which are already 'in tatters'. Syrian Army officials described the attack as an act of 'blatant aggression', saying it had made the United States 'a partner' of ISIS, the ex-Nusra Front and other 'terrorist organisations'. President Trump, speaking from his Mar-a-Lago estate where he is hosting the Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng as part of a two day summit, said the US had to act after the Syrian dictator launched the 'horrible chemical weapons attack' on innocent civilians. 'Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack,' he said. 'It was a slow and brutal death for so many.' Pentagon officials said that the airfield was being used to store chemical weapons and was a base for Syrian air forces - including the aircraft that conducted the chemical weapons attack. Early reports indicate the strike has severely damaged or destroyed the aircraft and support infrastructure, while at least six people were killed. A Syrian official claimed the attack killed three soldiers and two civilians, while a Syrian opposition monitor said it killed four soldiers, including a general. Talal Barazi, the governor of Homs province, said seven others were wounded in the early Friday attack. The Pentagon has released dramatic footage of its missiles being launched from USS Ross, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, targeting the Syrian base. In response, Putin this morning denounced the strike as an 'act of aggression against a UN member' and suspended a deal to avoid mid-air clashes with American fighter jets over the war-torn country. Moscow received signals the US was launching an airstrike on a Syrian air base about 30 minutes in advance, according to a Russian ambassador to the UN - but the Trump administration did not ask Moscow for permission. It is likely Russia alerted the Syrians about the incoming strikes but this has not been confirmed. Target: In the early hours of this morning the strikes were launched from two US destroyers in the Med and have killed at least five and destroyed at least nine Syrian jets, a fuel store and badly damaged the runway at al-Shayrat airbase Target: The strikes hit the government-controlled Shayrat air base in central Syria, where U.S. officials say the Syrian military planes that dropped the chemicals had taken off USS Ross: This is the moment one of America's destroyers fired one of 59 Tomahawk missiles into Syria from a secret location in the Med USS Porter: This destroyer is part of a US large fleet surrounding Syria and Iraq in the Med, Red Sea and Persian Gulf used to bombard Assad for the first time Viktor Ozerov, head of the defense committee in the Russian Federation Council, told state news agency RIA that the US strikes 'may undermine the efforts in the fight against terrorism in Syria.' 'Russia will demand an urgent UN Security Council meeting after the US airstrike on Syrian aviation base. This is an act of aggression against a UN member.' Russia's foreign minister says no Russian servicemen have been hurt in the bombing raid. A Pentagon official told DailyMail.com that the president 'is dead-set against letting Assad labour under the illusion that the Syrian army can murder innocent people with impunity.' Charlie Gard's desperate mother today begged a High Court judge to give her brain-damaged son 'one shot' at life after she wept when an independent expert recommended he should be allowed to die. Chris Gard and Connie Yates will find out on Tuesday if they are allowed to take their son to America for experimental treatment against the wishes of doctors who want to turn off his life support. They suffered a setback this morning when Charlie's court-appointed guardian, who praised the couple's 'devotion' and 'dignity', said there is 'no real prospect of improving Charlie's condition or quality of life'. But his defiant mother responded by begging the judge: 'Charlie has one shot, one chance of life. Without this treatment, Charlie's only alternative is death. 'Charlie deserves his chance to improve and get a better quality of life.' Emotional: Charlie Gard's mother Connie Yates and father Chris Gard leaving court today Heartbreaking: Doctors at Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital say there is no accepted cure and it would be kinder to allow Charlie, pictured above, to pass away Tearful: Miss Yates wiped her eyes as she exited the court after begging a judge to keep her son alive Specialists at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London say Charlie, who has severe brain damage due to a rare genetic condition, should move to a palliative care regime to only ease his suffering. His parents, from Bedfont, west London, disagree and want to be allowed to take him to a hospital in the US for a 1.2million treatment trial. They today attended the High Court in London where Mr Justice Francis was hearing final submissions from lawyers ahead of his decision on Tuesday. Miss Yates was in tears as the hearing began and Charlie's guardian recommended to the judge that he should die. Victoria Butler-Cole, a barrister speaking for the guardian, told the judge: 'The guardian has listened closely to the oral evidence during the hearing this week and has concluded that it is not in Charlie's best interests to travel to America to receive nucleoside therapy. 'This is not pioneering or life-saving treatment, but a purely experimental process with no real prospect of improving Charlie's condition or quality of life. 'The guardian has further concluded that it is not in Charlie's best interests to continue to receive life-sustaining medical treatment. Heading to court: Charlie Guard's parents arrive at court where the judge heard lawyers' final submissions ahead of his decision on Tuesday Connie Yates and Charlie Gard's father Chris clutched their son's cuddly monkey (in Chris' pocket) as Great Ormond Street doctors argued their baby should be allowed to die 'The continuation of ventilation will not benefit Charlie, but will prolong the process of dying.' Miss Butler-Cole said that although the parents were 'understandably confident' Charlie does show purposeful movements and behaviour, the medics' views trumped theirs, adding: 'Nucleoside therapy can properly be described as futile in this case.' Worse, there were risks of harm to Charlie if he tried the therapy, including the possibility of 'cancerous mutations', she said. 'Considering Charlie's welfare in the widest sense, and as recognised by his parents, his quality of life at present is not good, and as there is no prospect of any improvement in his condition, it is not in his best interests to continue to provide life-sustaining treatment. The continuation of ventilation will not benefit Charlie, but will prolong the process of dying.' Charlie's mother begs the judge to let him live A tearful Connie Yates personally begged Judge Francis to let her son live. She pleaded: 'Charlie has one shot, one chance of life.' 'Without this treatment, Charlie's only alternative is death. 'Charlie deserves his chance to improve and get a better quality of life.' 'This therapy could work absolute wonders, and not harm him.' 'He always responds to us, only last night I took a video where Charlie was awake, I tickled his head.' Mrs Yates said he opened his eyes as if to say 'Oi, I was annoyed'. Charlie's father sobbed as, reading from her smartphone, she added: 'His only alternative is death. Why should any human being, let alone an innocent little boy, not be given that chance.' Miss Yates said if her son suffered or did not respond to the treatment, they would give up. 'If the situation were different we would be allowing Charlie to die with dignity.' Advertisement Family courts often appoint guardians to represent sick children in legal proceedings. Charlie's parents have a separate barrister. Miss Butler-Cole said the guardian expressed deep sympathy to Charlie's parents 'for the extraordinarily difficult and distressing circumstances in which they find themselves.' She added: 'It was already clear to the guardian that Charlie's parents are utterly devoted to him and have done everything they possibly could to care for him, to make his experiences as happy and pleasurable as possible. 'They have conducted themselves during these proceedings with great dignity and with an obvious commitment to a thorough investigation of Charlie's best interests. 'They have truly done everything they could have for Charlie and have ensured that no stone has been left unturned in the search for some respite from the awful disease that afflicts him.' But she said even the American doctor offering to treat Charlie had not disagreed that the chances of it working were 'vanishingly small'. The judge said: 'Any layman looking at this case would say, why not give the parents the chance?' Miss Butler-Cole replied: 'In a nutshell, it is not a chance but a wish.' The lawyer representing Great Ormond Street specialists said 'world-renowned' experts agreed that Charlie should be allowed to die and the American offering treatment was a 'lone voice'. Debra Powell QC said Chris Gard and Connie Yates had given their son 'complete and unwavering' love and support but Charlie's 'quality of life' was 'so poor'. She told Mr Justice Francis that the views of Charlie's parents were 'extremely important' but not 'determinative'. Ms Powell added: 'This is a case where the possible benefits are so small that they are outweighed, heavily outweighed, by the burdens.' Mr Justice Francis has been asked to make decisions about what is in Charlie's best interests 'This case concerns a little boy who is dearly loved and cherished by his family. The parents' commitment to him has been complete and unwavering. They have been determined and passionate advocates for his best interests. 'Everyone involved at the Trust is acutely aware of the distress that it has caused them that the medical professionals have been unable to agree with them as to their assessment of where their son's best interests lie.' She said Charlie had profound muscle weakness, severe brain distinction and experienced frequent seizures, adding: 'He makes no purposeful movements. He has already suffered significant irreversible brain damage.' She said even if the nucleoside therapy helped his muscles grow stronger, there was no evidence it would repair his brain damage. She said: 'Improving the muscle side of things will not avail Charlie, it will not improve his quality of life.' Miss Yates began weeping as Miss Powell went on: 'Charlie has suffered significant brain distinction.' Mr Justice Francis said that if Charlie was suffering pain, he must also be able to experience pleasure. Miss Powell agreed that 'the two go together', but added: 'That doesn't mean they cancel each other out.' She said any pleasures Charlie enjoyed were 'at the most rudimentary levels' and did not outweigh the pain. Miss Powell acknowledged Charlie's parents spent many more hours with their son and were convinced they saw him move, open his eyes and enjoy being tickled, when doctors did not. She said: 'The views of parents in this case are extremely important. It is right that the parents know him best. But it is my respectful submission that the interpretation of how Charlie moves is a matter on which medical or clinical expertise is required.' She said the parents were lay people but the medics were able to form 'robust opinions' about Charlie from their experience of treating other children. Debra Powell QC for the hospital said there was 'no way back' for baby Charlie Miss Powell said there was no evidence the proposed treatment would work, but the judge pointed out that was always the case with experimental treatments. Mr Justice Francis said: 'Once upon a time there was no evidence that penicillin works, and look what happened. I can see why people would say, 'Give it a go'. Most treatments, when they start out, have no evidence they will work.' But Miss Powell said: 'Charlie's brain distinction and brain damage is so severe it would not improve his life. The brain damage is so significant, there is no way back.' She said another concern was that if Charlie cannot currently feel pain, and if the treatment improved his ability to do so, it would actually make his situation worse. A lawyer representing Charlie's parents said on Friday that the little boy should be given a chance. Barrister Sophia Roper told the judge that Charlie would not suffer significant harm if he underwent treatment in America. 'Charlie's parents ... consider there is a chance that their child will improve,' said Ms Roper. 'They invite the court to decide that it is in his best interests to get the chance.' Judge Francis said: 'I think it would be wrong for me to try to deliver a judgement today.' 'As far as judgement is concerned, I have already indicated that my intention is to give you my decision with short reasons at 2pm on Tuesday. 'I'm sorry for the parents that it can't be nearer than that. At the end of Friday's proceedings, he praised Charlie's parents, saying: 'I think you have dealt with this with the greatest of dignity and bravery in the way you have approached your evidence today because it must have been a living hell for you - thank you for that.' Charlie, who was born on August 4 2016, has a form of mitochondrial disease, a condition which causes progressive muscle weakness. Once upon a time there was no evidence that penicillin works, and look what happened. I can see why people would say, 'Give it a go' Judge Francis The couple - both in their early 30s - launched an appeal on the GoFundMe website two months ago, saying they needed 1.2 million to fund treatment. They reached their target on Sunday with donations from more than 80,000 people. Two days ago Charlie's father made a final plea to a judge to save his son's life and told him: 'I can't bear to lose him. He's my boy'. Clutching Charlie's favourite stuffed toy monkey Chris Gard told Mr Justice Francis the eight-month-old 'deserves this chance' to go to the United States for treatment. Giving evidence at the High Court with Charlie's mother Connie by his side Mr Gard was asked to confirm he was the boy's father, and replied firmly: 'Proud father.' He added: 'Me and Connie firmly believe that Charlie was sent to us to look after him. We truly believe these medicines work. 'If there was no improvement, we would let him go. We would never keep him like this. He deserves that chance. He has earned that chance. 'I just plead that you please give him the chance'. He also attacked the doctors who said there was no hope, adding: 'My son is the apple of my eye and I would do anything for him. He deserves this chance.' Upsetting: Connie Yates, pictured left with her partner Chris and their son Charlie, sobbed as she heard her son would certainly die without any more treatment Mr Gard also agreed the 1.2million treatment was not a cure, adding: 'It doesn't mean he should have to die, [just] because he won't be a little boy running around. It shouldn't be a death sentence. 'There are many parents in this room and if they were told there was a chance, no matter how small. I just want that chance for him to improve and have a better quality of life.' Miss Yates added: 'I don't think he is suffering or I wouldn't be here. I don't think his brain function is as bad as what everyone else is saying.' Earlier it emerged a doctor who believes baby Charlie should be allowed to die described his heartbroken parents as a 'spanner in the works'. The Great Ormond Street medic, who cannot be named, said Connie Yates and Chris Gard's 'hunt' for hospitals around the world to save him had delayed the decision about their son's fate. He sent an email complaining to a colleague about their 'parent-driven' search for a specialist because it was holding up a court case in which the London hospital asked a judge to sanction letting the eight month old die. The doctor also described the US expert as 'the only person on earth' advocating pioneering treatment for Charlie. It came as Miss Yates cried out 'it's a lie' and began sobbing in court as the same doctor said Charlie's brain function was so poor there is no difference between him being asleep and awake. The doctor said that when the clinical team met in January to consider Charlie's case, 'it was one of the most distressing ethics committee meetings we have had'. The court heard that when Charlie's parents started researching his condition themselves, and contacted experts around the world, one of his Great Ormond Street doctors described this in an email as 'parent-driven' and 'a spanner in the works'. Emotional: Charlie's father, Chris Gard, wearing his son's monkey in his lapel pocket The email between the Great Ormond Street doctors which was read out by the family's barrister in court, said: 'The spanner in the works has been a parent-driven exploration of all alternatives internationally leading to a new specialist who has recommended a three month trial of nucleosides.' Asked if it was an appropriate way to describe parents on a 'hunt for a treatment for their child', the doctor replied: 'It's a bit clumsy but I was trying to suggest that our previous decision to take this to the court as urgently as we could was being held up by something being explored that needed to be explored.' A nurse who has treated Charlie said she had not seen any sign of him purposefully moving, and could not tell whether he was awake or asleep. She said she did not know whether he could or could not feel pain or comfort, although she has seen him open his eyes. Miss Roper said the parents have worked out they have spent 3,200 hours with their son, and put it to the nurse they might have seen things she had not, and she agreed. Earlier Mr Justice Francis, the High Court judge who will decide whether the baby can travel to America for treatment, adjourned the hearing as Connie Yates broke down. Her tears started when a Great Ormond Street doctor had been asked by the hospital's QC Debra Powell: 'Is there evidence for you as a clinician of a sleep-wake cycle?' When the medic said no, she asked what that meant, and he replied: 'It is a really strong indication about how bad his brain function is'. Miss Yates, with a white flower in her hair, began to sob loudly, before saying: 'I'm sorry'. As the judge adjourned the hearing a tearful Miss Yates walked out and said loudly: 'It's a lie.' Miss Yates stayed outside to compose herself and said the case could go on in her absence. Unwell: Seven-month-old Charlie Gard is believed to be only the 16th person in the world to be diagnosed with his ultra-rare genetic condition Charlie's father, Chris Gard, wearing his son's cuddly monkey in his lapel pocket, came back into court as the doctor continued his evidence. Miss Yates returned 10 minutes later. Mr Justice Francis has been asked to make decisions about what is in Charlie's best interests and started the hearing by saying: 'The parents are in an almost impossible situation'. But minutes later he had to adjourn when Charlie's mother became overwhelmed. Charlie's parents, who spend every waking hour at their eight month old baby's bedside, are adamant that he shows signs of growing stronger and is calmed by their presence. The doctor said Charlie's muscles were so weak that it was not even possible to monitor his seizures. He said as well as his ventilator, Charlie needs a sucking procedure to be carried out every two or three hours. He said: 'This is incredibly frequent and in most children would be painful and distressing.' Miss Powell put it to the doctor: 'Is there any evidence that Charlie is responsive to comforting features in his life, a loving touch or his parents' cuddles?' He replied: 'I understand the parents have suggested that. It is not something we have seen as a clinical team.' The medic told the judge that Charlie was no longer responsive, and it was hard to be sure whether little boy was in pain. 'I think that is really difficult to be certain about,' he said. 'If Charlie dies we'll use the cash to save other children', says his bereft mother Connie Yates, 31, right yesterday, has indicated what would happen to money raised if the judge sides with Great Ormond Street, who wish to withdraw life-support treatment. 'A few people have asked us what we'll do if we don't win the court case,' she said in a statement. 'We have thought long and hard about it and we would set up a charity for mitochondrial depletion syndrome's (there are others that are more common than Charlie's specific gene). 'We'd like to save other babies and children because these medications have been proven to work and we honestly have so much belief in them. 'We would like some of it to go to research at the specific hospital that are willing to treat Charlie and the rest will be available to help other families to get the medication that their children desperately need. 'We hope that you can all support us in making treatments available so that nobody else ever has to go through what we have.' Advertisement 'Charlie has deteriorated hugely since he first came to us. The disease has affected his brain to the extent that he is completely ventilator-dependent.' He added: 'This situation is not a tolerable one to leave a child in'. The doctor said the Great Ormond Street clinical team had discussed Charlie's case and sought second opinions from experts around the world. He said it was 'difficult to see how Charlie can possibly benefit' from further treatment. He said: 'Lots of doctors thought his quality of life was so poor it was not worth continuing life saving treatment. And since that stage, Charlie's brain has deteriorated further.' Yesterday it emerged that Charlie's mother and father have had to up their 1.2million fundraising target by 100,000 to cover a fundraising organisation's giant handling fee. Connie Yates, 31, and her partner Chris Gard, 32, say they need even more cash because the GoFundMe website takes up to five per cent of donations. Charlie's parents were given a month to raise the 1.2million to take seven-month-old Charlie to America for treatment they believe could spare his life. More than 80,000 people donated but it GoFundMe could take a cut of up to 65,000 based on their current 1.24million total and is refusing to waive it. The website's 'payment processor' charges a further 2.68 per cent - around 20,000. Miss Yates posted a new message to supporters, saying they have raised the target to 1.3million as a result. She said: 'We have had to put our total up to cover gofundme fee's plus the more money we get the more time we can spend in America.' The family will have to wait until at least today to hear if Justice Francis will allow Charlie can fly to the US for pioneering treatment that has 'not been tried on animal or human'. Miss Yates is expected to personally beg Mr Justice Francis to save Charlie and let him travel to America, against the wishes of his British doctors. The company hosting the 'Save Charlie' fundraising site says it is free to sign up but their fees are standard for all appeals. A GoFundMe spokesman said: 'Guidelines regarding our fees are stated clearly on our website and are standard for all campaigns. We are looking closely at Charlie's case as it develops.' A teenager who bashed a blind man at a bus stop on the NSW Central Coast has been jailed for three months. Wesley Barton, 19, pleaded guilty to the violent assault after he was caught punching and savagely kicking a man who had begrudgingly handed him a cigarette. John Jenkins, 62, was knocked over and kicked in the torso while he was on the ground during the callous attack on Mann Street in Gosford last month. Wesley Barton, 19, was seen smirking as he arrived in court to hear his sentencing on Friday Barton (pictured) was sentenced to three months jail after the violent assault last month Barton was sentenced to three months in prison on Friday but is expected to appeal the jail term. The teenager's grandmother showed little pity for her grandson as she left court. 'He's done it and now he's going to be punished for it. It's the same for all these junkies and druggies, they're all the same I'm over them all,' she told 7News. Mr Jenkins was treated for cuts above his eye, on his elbow and finger and pain in his jaw after the vicious attack left him collapsed on the ground. John Jenkins, 62, was knocked over and kicked in the torso while he was on the ground Barton's grandmother had no sympathy for her grandson as she spoke to reporters outside court on Friday When he left hospital, Mr Jenkins told 9News he was unaware of what was happening to him at the time and doesnt remember much of it. Scum, he said, when asked what he thought of the man who attacked. Especially a blind man, that was the problem. I wouldnt have known they were even hitting me or anything. Mr Jenkins, who suffered a stroke years ago, added: I was catching the bus home into East Gosford. I dont even remember anything. CCTV footage captured John Jenkins who was seen with a walking stick at the bus stop before his vicious attack Behind a metal gate in Berlin, in a small courtyard nestled between a residential building and a car park, stands a piece of American history. The Detroit home of civil rights icon Rosa Parks has been painstakingly rebuilt here by American artist Ryan Mendoza outside his studio in the Wedding district of the German capital. The unlikely location is the result of the financial crisis of 2008 and Detroit's dramatic decline. Like thousands of houses in Detroit, Parks' home was abandoned after the sub-prime mortgage crisis hit. Authorities planned to demolish it in an effort to clean up the city. Project: American artist Ryan Mendoza poses in front of the rebuilt house of Rosa Parks History: Mendoza has taken apart the Michigan house that Rosa Parks once lived in and rebuilt it in Berlin, to raise awareness about the late civil rights activist and her legacy Family: Rhea McCauley, a niece of Rosa Parks, poses in front of the house. McCauley donated the former Detroit house of Rosa Park to Mendoza That Parks had moved there only two years after becoming famous for refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, did not matter. To stop the demolition, Parks' niece Rhea McCauley bought the house from the city for $500 and donated it to Mendoza, who already had moved a Detroit house to Europe as part of an art project. Civil rights activist Rosa Parks is seen in her Detroit home in June 1988 When Mendoza said he wanted to bring Parks' house to his studio in Berlin more than 4,000 miles away, McCauley agreed. 'It is something that is precious,' she said while visiting the wooden two-story house in Berlin this week for the first time. 'And it is priceless. And yet it is being mistreated. That's what I saw. And that's how it felt. And so when I met Ryan and he said, "Let's bring it to Berlin and restore it," I said yes.' In the summer of 2016, Mendoza and volunteers took the house apart, put it into containers and shipped it to Germany. Mendoza has spent six months rebuilding it. 'It would be a difficult thing to do if you didn't want to do it,' he said. 'But I wanted to do it so much that it was a joy. 'Each day when I saw something completed at the project was a day that I had fulfilled something wonderful in my life.' Parks moved to Detroit from Montgomery in 1957 to escape death threats and stayed in the house with her brother and his family. New home: In the summer of 2016, Mendoza and volunteers took the house apart, put it into containers and shipped it to Germany. Mendoza has spent six months rebuilding it Display: The house will be shown to the public on Saturday in Berlin, Germany Preservation: Parks' niece Rhea McCauley bought the home from the city of Detroit for $500 to stop it from being demolished, and donated it to Mendoza McCauley was a child then, but she remembers that Parks used to take her for walks in the neighborhood to help struggling families and talk to them about politics. Seeing the house standing again brought back memories. 'Each little nook and cranny, each part of the board that you see is worn by weather, you know, to me (it) shows her personality. What she went through. 'As a beautiful woman, as a smart woman. And as a courageous woman.' The German capital has a long relationship with the United States. It was here that President John F. Kennedy gave his famous 'Ich bin ein Berliner' speech and President Ronald Reagan implored Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to 'Tear down this wall.' Rosa Parks is shown in 1956 being fingerprinted after her refusal to move to the back of a bus to accommodate a white passenger touched off the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama McCauley has said: 'Each little nook and cranny, each part of the board that you see is worn by weather, you know, to me (it) shows her personality' Speaking out: Mendoza says he would be happy if the house returns to the U.S. one day. But McCauley says America needs to 'grow up as a country' before then There is a Rosa Parks school in Berlin, as well as a Martin Luther King school and kindergarten. King visited the divided city in 1964, giving speeches to crowds on both sides of the Berlin Wall. 'This house is happily here, I believe. Because it finds itself in a city that honors tolerance,' Mendoza said. 'This house was rebuilt in a city that was reborn out of a wall being taken down.' The house will be shown to the public on Saturday along with a film about the project made by Mendoza's wife, Fabia. Visitors will not be able to go inside, but lights will be on in the windows and Mendoza will play music from the time when Parks lived there. After that, the house's future is uncertain. Mendoza hopes to sell it to an art institution, with all profits going to the Rosa Parks Family Foundation. Mendoza says he would be happy if the house returns to the U.S. one day. But McCauley says America needs to 'grow up as a country' before then. 'So when she grows up, yeah, I wouldn't mind if aunty Rosa's house came back to the States. But I don't want to take it back the way she is now.' Dramatic video footage has caught the moment a heroic passerby chases and tackles a thief from a nearby shopping mall in China. The passerby heard the shop's owner shouting on April 1 and chased the thief into the subway station in Nanjing City, southern China. He manages to keep hold of the thief who was later detained by police. On the move: The man in the light blue shirt chases the alleged thief into a subway station Result: Following the tackle, the alleged thief is subdued and others come to help the man The passerby heard the shop owner shouting in the direction of the fleeing thief and decided to chase after him. In the footage, the pair can be seen running down the escalator and into the subway station. The man in the blue shirt behind the alleged thief tackles the man to the floor. Nice work: The man grabbed the alleged thief by the neck, tackling him to the ground The man was later detained by police and the watch was returned to the shopping mall Another person can be seen running after the pair behind them. The man in blue managed to keep hold of the alleged thief. According to China Radio International, the man was eventually detained and the watch was recovered. The site also says that police are looking to track down the passerby to thank him for his efforts. Jeremy Corbyn, pictured in Lancashire yesterday, has condemned the US action against the Syrian regime, warning it risks 'escalating' the conflict Jeremy Corbyn was accused of 'dereliction of duty' today as he condemned the US strikes on Syria - despite his deputy welcoming them. The Labour leader, who previously opposed airstrikes against Assad and ISIL force in the country, took nearly nine hours before finally releasing a statement accusing America of 'escalating' the conflict. In contrast, his deputy Tom Watson welcomed Donald Trump's 'proportionate' reprisals against the Syrian regime following the chemical weapons atrocity that killed scores of civilians this week. Labour MPs - many of whom have already declared their support for the US response - are furious at the veteran left-winger's stance. One told MailOnline the length of time he took to respond was a 'dereliction of duty' and accused Mr Corbyn's team of being unwilling to criticise Russia. 'Tom is doing the job that the leader should be doing,' the MP said. Mr Corbyn said today: 'The US missile attack on a Syrian government air base risks escalating the war in Syria still further. 'Tuesday's horrific chemical attack was a war crime which requires urgent independent UN investigation and those responsible must be held to account. 'But unilateral military action without legal authorisation or independent verification risks intensifying a multi-sided conflict that has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. 'What is needed instead is to urgently reconvene the Geneva peace talks and unrelenting international pressure for a negotiated settlement of the conflict. 'The terrible suffering of the Syrian people must be brought to an end as soon as possible and every intervention must be judged on what contribution it makes to that outcome. 'The British government should urge restraint on the Trump administration and throw its weight behind peace negotiations and a comprehensive political settlement.' The House of Commons voted against taking military action against the Assad regime in 2013 despite outrage over the use of chemical weapons in Ghouta, on the outskirts of Damascus. In contrast to Mr Corbyn's stance, his deputy Tom Watson has supported the US action against the Syrian regime as 'proportionate' A U.S. Navy image shows the USS Ross (DDG 71) firing a tomahawk land attack missile at the Syrian air base Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon said the UK had been in touch with the US government 'at all levels' yesterday and 'wholly supported' the action taken Two years later the House did back UK forces joining attacks on ISIS in Syria - although Mr Corbyn caused turmoil in Labour by voting against the move. Mr Corbyn's position was backed by shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry today. "For Donald Trump to be taking unilateral action without consulting anyone else, I am concerned is simply going to escalate an already dreadful and tragic war," she told Sky News. The Stop the War Coalition - which Mr Corbyn helped found and chaired for more than a decade - has also railed at the US action. HOW MPS BLOCKED THE UK FROM TAKING ACTION IN 2013 MPs blocked the UK from taking military reprisals against the Syria regime in 2013. David Cameron brought a motion to the Commons in the wake of a chemical weapons attack on the edge of Damascus, which is thought to have killed hundreds of people. But the government was defeated by 285-272 after Ed Miliband refused to endorse the idea. The knock back was widely thought to have caused a rethink in Washington, with Barack Obama stepping back from action despite describing chemical weapons use as a 'red line'. George Osborne has branded the decision by MPs one of the worst in recent history. In 2015 the House of Commons did approve British involvement in strikes against ISIL in Syria - although Jeremy Corbyn caused turmoil within Labour by voting against. Advertisement But the condemnation caused fury among senior figures, fuelling the party's internal tensions. Mr Watson said chemical weapon attacks 'can never be tolerated and must have consequences'. 'These US strikes appear to be a direct and proportionate response to a clear violation of international law by the Syrian regime,' he told the Birmingham Mail. 'Indiscriminate chemical weapons attacks on civilians can never be tolerated and must have consequences. 'It's vital that the United States is now clear about its intentions and that the whole international community works towards a political settlement in Syria.' Labour MP John Woodcock, who chairs the party's backbench defence committee, added: 'The US action overnight was proportionate and should have Labour's full support.' Hilary Benn, who as shadow foreign secretary forced Mr Corbyn to give MPs a free vote on authorising UK military action against ISIL in Syria in 2015, tweeted: 'Let's hope Syria will now think twice before deciding to gas its own people again. Priority must be humanitarian assistance for civilians.' Another critic of Mr Corbyn, Labour MP Michael Dugher, tweeted: 'Stop criticising Corbyn's slow response: it takes time for Seamas (Seumas Milne) to run the draft statement by the Kremlin, Stop the War + the Morning Star.' The American president ordered the US military to fire 59 tomahawk missiles at al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs overnight. Mr Trump believes the base's jets launched the horrific nerve gas attack on Idlib province earlier this week which killed more than 80 men, women and children. Downing Street said the missile attack, which destroyed Assad's airfield and planes and killed at least five people, was an 'appropriate response'. The government was in 'close contact at all levels' throughout yesterday and Mrs May was told in advance that the strikes were going to take place. However, Britain was not asked to join in. Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said it was 'hypothetical' whether the UK would have agreed to take part - playing down the prospects of increasing military involvement. As shadow foreign secretary, Hilary Benn forced Mr Corbyn to give MPs a free vote on authorising UK military action against ISIL in Syria. Mr Benn welcomed the reprisals by the US against the Syrian regime today Labour former frontbencher Michael Dugher jibed about the affinity between Mr Corbyn's senior aides and Russia as he joked about the length of time the leader's response had taken Nigel Farage, pictured becoming the first UK politician to meet Donald Trump after his election last year, warned today that those who voted for the US president would be 'worried' by his retaliation against the Syrian regime Asked if the attack was the beginning of a wider campaign, Sir Michael said: 'We don't see last night's strike like that. 'This strike was very limited to one airfield, it was entirely appropriate, it's designed to deter the regime from carrying out further chemical weapons attacks. 'So we don't see it as the start of a different military campaign.' Nigel Farage laid into his ally Mr Trump today warning that those who voted for the US president would be 'worried' by his retaliation. 'I am very surprised by this. I think a lot of Trump voters will be waking up this morning and scratching their heads and saying 'where will it all end?', he said. 'As a firm Trump supporter, I say, yes, the pictures were horrible, but I'm surprised. Whatever Assad's sins, he is secular.' He added: 'Previous interventions in the Middle East have made things worse rather than better.' Meanwhile, Ukip leader Paul Nuttall condemned the missile strikes on an Assad airfield as 'rash, trigger happy, and nonsensical'. A mother whose son stabbed her other son to death in a violent outburst says she struggles with the guilt of still loving them both. Sharon Lemon told the South Australian Supreme Court she is kept awake at night because she still loves her son Robert Hudson, who fatally stabbed his half-brother Nokoma Hudson in the neck in February last year. But a justice has told the Adelaide mother that she should never feel judged for the way she feels. Nokoma Hudson, 25, (pictured with his partner and child) died after he was stabbed by his stepbrother Robert Hudson last year Robert Hudson, 34, was at first charged with murder but last month, he was found guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter. Ms Lemon has spoken of the heartache of losing one son at the hands of another, saying she feels torn apart. 'Living with this pain has shattered my heart,' Ms Lemon told the SA Supreme Court in her victim impact statement on Friday. 'I lay in bed feeling guilty for loving Robert because of the betrayal of taking my other son away from me. 'It is draining to be torn between both of them.... I love them both more than life itself.' Robert killed his 25-year-old brother in a violent, aggressive outburst in his backyard in Gilles Plains. Hudson, 34, was charged was first charged but convicted of manslaughter Ms Lemon has spoken of the heartache of losing one son at the hands of another, saying she feels torn apart Earlier that night, he had put his partner in a headlock, swung a knife at her and thrown a bicycle at a window while his two children were home, the trial heard. Nokoma, who had a young daughter, had also hit his older brother with a stick and thrown a bucket at him during the fight. It ended when Robert stabbed Nokoma in the neck. He cradled his younger brother in his arms and said he was sorry as he died. Ms Lemon told her son, who sat in the court dock, that he should've stopped. 'I can't put into words the hurt you have brought me,' she said. 'Why did it have to end this way? How do I reconcile that Nokoma will never feel a hug from his daughter again?' She said she had fond memories and photos of her sons when they were boys but she was now reluctant to share these with others. 'Because they all judge me for loving them both,' she said. But Justice Anne Bampton disagreed, offering some comforting words to Ms Lemon. 'I hope you find some peace one day,' the judge said. 'And no one should judge you for loving both of your sons.' Hudson will return to court for more sentencing submissions on May 18. The haunting last words written by an Australian soldier killed in Afghanistan in the ultimate act of self-sacrifice were found in a letter sent to a Sydney high school student. Corporal Cameron Baird, 32, was killed during gunfight in June 2013 while trying to save his friends - after over a decade of service to the Australian army. High school student Campbell Byrd, 16, recovered a letter that he had received from Cpl Baird only weeks before his death and passed the hand-written notes onto the Baird family. Corporal Cameron Baird (pictured) was tragically killed in June 2013 in Afghanistan only weeks after sending a letter back to a high school student Campbell Byrd, 16, wrote the letter when he was in year seven and received a response from Cpl Baird only weeks before his death Campbell was in year seven when he sent the letter to Cpl Baird as part of a school pen-pal project and was delighted to get a response. But only a week after receiving the letter Campbell's teacher gave him the news of Cpl Baird's tragic death. Cpl Baird was killed in Khod Valley, Urozgan Province in Afghanistan while attempting to draw enemy fire away from his men. The heartfelt letter was a touching souvenir of Cpl Baird's dedication to serving Australia in combat, and was delivered back to his parents Kaye and Doug Baird after Campbell realised its significance. His school, Terra Sancta College in Sydney's west, asked students to compose a 'Dear Soldier' letter with no knowledge of who it was being sent to. The teenager told News Corp he received a reply from Cpl Baird within a month of sending the letter - and it was passed onto Cpl Baird because of the pair's similarity in names. The touching letter was sent in June 2013, and Cpl Baird was killed on June 22, 2013 'Im a corporal, and will be promoted to Sergeant at the end of the year': The soldier tragically told Campbell that he was due for a promotion that year The brave Australian soldier told Campbell, 'Remember to stay in school and enjoy it while you are there' 'It's kind of crazy that my letter got to someone on his level, you could imagine it might have gone to someone sitting further back in an office, but to go to an elite soldier on the front line,' Campbell said. 'I feel pretty privileged to have received it. Those words he said will stay with me for my whole life.' For the Baird family, reading their son's hand-written words provided a window into his work in Afghanistan. Their phone calls were heavily censored due to security reasons and the letter serves as a beautiful reminder of his service to Australia. The Sydney teenager then gave the touching letter to Cpl Baird's parents as a war memorial of their son CORPORAL CAMERON BAIRD'S FULL LETTER My name is Cameron and I am 32 years old. I am writing this letter in response to the letter I received from you. Firstly I must say that you have excellent handwriting, its so much better than mine, so I hope you can understand my writing. Sometimes my job is difficult but I have good reasons to do it. Making the world a safer place for others is one reason. I think we are very lucky in Australia, we are safe and can live our lives as we wish. Being away from family and friends is difficult but I have been in the Army for over 13 years and have become accustomed to being away. In your letter you asked some questions, I would like to try and answer them for you. 1. What exactly do I do? I am a team commander in an assault platoon. I have a 6 man team within the platoon. My role as a team commander is to lead my team when on missions and during training. We do many different missions in Afghanistan but the main focus is providing security to the community and advising the Afghan police and army how to provide security within their job. I have been to Afghanistan a number of times and they are getting better and better each time I come back. My main role over here is war fighting. The enemy use Afghanistan as a place to harbour their jihad holy war. This enemy kills and harasses the local population, so we try and help and they fight us. War is very complicated and hard to explain. I hope this answers your question. 2. What rank are you? Im a corporal, and will be promoted to Sergeant at the end of the year. 3. Have I always wanted to be in the Army? Simple answer is No. As you grow older things change in your life, so you have to adjust. When I was 12 years old I wanted to be a footballer or a sportsman, but I wasnt good enough to be professional. Because the Army is physical and you work outdoors I thought it would be good to join. Since joining I have been really happy with it. I have travelled a lot around Australia training and around the world on Operations. And I have heaps of good mates I work with. Thank you so much for writing, it was great to hear from you. Remember to stay in school and enjoy it while you are there, because when you get older you have more responsibility and less time to play with your friends. Always try your best in whatever you do, and always be happy in your life. Enjoy and have fun. Regards, Cameron Advertisement In the letter Tasmania-born Cpl Baird described what he did on the front line in Afghanistan and tragically told Campbell he was due for a promotion to Sergeant the following month. He signed off the letter advising Campbell to 'stay in school' as once he is older he will have responsibilities and 'less time to play with your friends'. 'Always try your best in whatever you do, and always be happy in your life,' he said. Cpl Baird was also posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for bravery, making him the 100th Australian to ever receive the award. His mother Kaye had previously said before he left that she made a promise with her son he would not be a 'dead hero' and would return home alive. Advertisement Families hoping to get away for the school holidays face mayhem on the roads and railways this weekend. Strikes on three rail networks today are poised to cause major delays. Motoring groups last night warned this is likely to contribute to gridlock on the roads as more people choose to drive rather than take their chances on the train. With many schools having broken up for Easter and fine weather expected, traffic is already set to be heavier than usual today and tomorrow. Splash! A trio of brave boys are pictured leaping from the sea wall in Plymouth, Devon on Friday afternoon as temperatures begin to rise ahead of a heatwave tomorrow Sunshine! The pier at Southwold in Suffolk on Friday afternoon - a day before experts predict the hottest weekend of 2017 so far Scorchio! Temperatures in Britain are set to soar this weekend with it reaching 24C in some places. Right: The sunrise on Friday morning behind the pier at Bournemouth at the beginning of a warm sunny day Among the worst affected will be the area around Liverpool as rail workers strike on the day 70,000 racegoers travel from all over the country to watch the Grand National at Aintree. In what rail bosses describe as a calculated and cynical attempt to disrupt the event, the Rail Maritime & Transport Union has orchestrated a 24-hour strike on Merseyrail coinciding with walkouts at Northern Rail and Southern. The action is linked to disputes about the roles and responsibilities of conductors. Bosses say those travelling to Aintree will be prioritised but other services will be reduced or cancelled. There will also be major disruption across Northern England as train guards who are members of the RMT strike on Northern Rail. No need for a coat: A woman enjoying a sunshine-filled walk past beach huts along the sea front at Southwold, Suffolk on Friday afternoon as temperatures warm up Spring has sprung! Britain will be bathed in sunshine for the first weekend of the Easter Holidays and temperatures are expected to remain higher than average, into next week. Above, Warkworth Castle in Northumberland surrounded by daffodils Almost a third of trains will be operating across the network which serves cities including Leeds, Sheffield and Manchester. The strikes will affect tens of thousands travelling to premiership football games, and are expected to clog up the roads. Rail engineering works are also set to blight travel plans. Track renewal works between Victoria in London and Gatwick airport plus the Southern dispute will lead to a reduced service throughout the weekend, which will affect families flying abroad. Trains between Paddington and Bath or Bristol will be diverted, meaning longer journey times. The line between Wolverhampton and Shrewsbury shuts from today until next Saturday, meaning replacement bus services and diversions in some cases. Highways England plans to lift or complete 300 miles of roadworks in time for Easter, but there will be no respite for motorists this weekend. English Heritage's Warkworth Castle in Northumberland in the morning sunshine, as Easter holiday temperatures will spring to summertime heights this weekend with the hottest day of the year expected to arrive on British shores Happy Friday! A dog made the most of the unseasonably sunny and warm weather with a walk on the shore of Ryde, Isle of White this morning (April 7) Journeys will be plagued by roadworks across the country, including 34 miles of the A1 in Lincolnshire, ten miles of the A5 near Rugby and Towcester and 30 miles of the A14, near Rugby and Kettering. Forecasters have predicted that today will be warm, dry and sunny, with temperatures expected to hit 20C (68F) in the South East. Tomorrow, after a chilly start, it will be even hotter. Temperatures could reach 23C (73F) in the South East making it the warmest day of the year Despite the unseasonably warm weather, the RNLI have warned that sea temperatures will still be cool enough for ill-equipped swimmers to freeze to death and have urged those wanting to take a dip to wear a wetsuit. AA president Edmund King said: With rail strikes this weekend, drivers planning to beat the Easter rush may find themselves stuck in a rabbit hole as people take to the roads to avoid the disruption. The mixture of good weather, lots of sport and train strikes means that plenty of drivers holidays could fall at the first fence. Early start: The sun rise, pictured on Coquet Island behind the coast of Northumberland, on this morning (Friday, April 7) But the Easter weekend could be worse. The RAC estimates that motorists will make 14.3million leisure car journeys in the five days from Maundy Thursday to Easter Monday. And Network Rail is deploying an army of 13,000 workers to carry out 200 engineering works. So far the warmest temperature recorded for 2017 was taken at 21C in Gravesend, Kent in March but the Met Office expects this weekend will easily surpass that. A Met Office spokesman is urging people to enjoy the weather but to remember to put on cream as the strength of the sunshine can be 'quite deceptive' at this time of year. Lovely day for it: Revellers made the most of the sunshine in the north today with the start of the Great North Steam Fair. Pictured is Aberdeen Gas Works locomotive 'Bon Accord' pulling away from Rowley Station in Durham Not quite a heatwave up North: A pair wrap up on Friday afternoon in coats as they rumble along the cobbled streets of County Durham as the Great North Steam Fair gets underway The four day event sees the likes of fully working locomotives, steam rollers and traction engines steaming their way through as they would have been seen around the early 1900s The Living Museum of the North in County Durham uses its collections to tell the story of everyday life in the North East of England through time. History is brought to life by costumed staff and volunteers in the 350 acre open air museum comprising of a town, village and buildings from the 1820s and early 20th century Met Office forecaster Greg Dewhurst said: 'It is likely on Sunday we will see further sunshine for many parts of the UK. 'In the sunshine across England and Wales we will see temperatures above average for this time of year, above 18C or 19C. 'In south-east England we could see highs of around 23C. But sadly not everyone is going to be lucky enough to enjoy the weather, with some parts predicted to be much colder. 'It will be a lovely weekend for much of England and Wales, but in Northern Ireland and Scotland it will turn a bit cloudier.' The warm weekend will dissolve back to average temperatures on Monday morning, he added. April's agreeable outlook follows the mildest March on record last month, when the month welcoming in the spring recorded its fifth-equal warmest outing since 1910. Make the most of it! A Met Office spokesman said the public should enjoy the weather while it lasts as from Monday, temperatures will return to average April temperatures English Heritage's Warkworth Castle in Northumberland basking in the morning sunshine on Friday, April 7 ahead of the hottest weekend of the year Sunny start: The sunrise, pictured this morning, over the River Trent at Holme Pierrepont, Nottinghamshire Swimming warning: Despite the sunshine, experts are warning to take care before plunging into the sea as water temperatures remain cool Towns and cities across the country saw a fine start to Friday. Pictured: The River Trent at Holme Pierrepont in Nottinghamshire Lovely start: The sunrises behind the pier at Bournemouth on Friday, April 7, marking the beginning to a sunny weekend Epic: Beautiful skies were pictured in parts of England on Friday morning as the sun came up (Above, Coquet Island off the coast of Northumberland) Hot stuff! Southern England and Wales will see the best of the weather this weekend with widespread sunshine and temperatures up to 23C WARNING TO SEA SWIMMERS Lifeguards say although the weather's set to be warmer than Spain, the seas around our coasts are still winter chilly. And if people take a dip they could get hypothermia and even die if they become weak and get swept away by strong currents. Skimpy bikinis are definitely a no-no if girls want to swim - they should cover up with wetsuits at this time of year. On Bournemouth's famous golden sands, where families are already flocking thanks to the schools breaking up for Easter, RNLI lifeguard supervisor Mike Winter urged people to respect the sea. While, with the weather getting warmer, a dip in the water might seem appealing, but it is still very cold. 'If you're going to take the plunge and have a swim, make sure you're wearing a good wetsuit or drysuit. 'Keeping warm in cold weather can take a lot of energy, so fatigue can be an issue. 'And if you see someone in trouble in the water don't attempt to rescue them yourself, as you could also be putting yourself in more danger.' His team of lifeguards will be out at Bournemouth East, Bournemouth West, Boscombe East and Sandbanks beaches after weeks of refresher training, keeping an eagle-eye on the waves between 10am and 6pm, until Sunday, April 23. Advertisement In March, the UK experienced mean temperatures of 45.1F (7.3C). Meanwhile, Scotland experienced almost 124 hours of sunshine as it enjoyed its sixth sunniest March since 1929, with western Scotland receiving below-average rainfall. The mercury reached a 'rare' high of 71.8F (22.1C) in Gravesend, Kent, making it the fourth-highest March temperature recorded since 1968. Tim Legg, climate scientist in the Met Office's National Climate Information Centre, said: 'It is very rare to go above 71.6F (22C) in March, with only three years since 1968 recording 71F (22C) or above. 'These are March 17 1990, when 72.6F (22.6C) was recorded at High Beach; and 74.4F (23.6C) at Aboyne in 2012. 'After this we have to go way back to March 29, 1968, when we recorded 78F (25.6C) at Mepal in Cambridgeshire - currently the all-time March record.' Essex saw around 26mm of rain last month, with Sussex receiving less than two-thirds (59 per cent) of its expected rainfall. However meteorologist Emma Sharples said above-average conditions are not likely to carry on into April, when the weather will most likely be 'flip-flopping'. She added: 'We're flip-flopping around at the start of April as we move into cooler spells next week. 'Thereafter we should be into relatively dry conditions.' In contrast, although the UK as a whole faced average levels of rainfall, Wales and the North West faced wet conditions far above average. Mrs Sharples said the North West and Wales faced higher levels of rainfall, with the regions recording 146.6mm of rain - 38 per cent above the March average. The South West of England faced the next highest levels of rainfall, recording conditions of 28 per cent above average. Daytime mildness carried on into the nights as England experienced its fewest air frosts since records began in 1961, with several areas in the south facing no air frosts at all, including Farnborough, Larkhill and Boscombe Down. Trainspotters made the most of the fair weather in northern England on Friday afternoon with the start of the Great North Steam Fair. The four day event sees the likes of fully working locomotives, steam rollers and traction engines steaming their way through as they would have been seen around the early 1900s. A mother and son have been charged with fraud after they allegedly tried to fake her death in Zanzibar to claim 140,000. Fraud detectives believe Arafa Nassib, 45, and Adil Kasim, 18, submitted a fake death certificate and road traffic accident reports to claim on the mother's life insurance in May 2016. However, the insurance firm involved grew suspicious of the documents and refused to pay the money. The mother and son, of Walsall, West Midlands, were charged at Perry Barr Police Station (pictured), and have been released on bail Instead, they handed the case over to the City of London Police's Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department which launched an investigation in November. A police spokesman said: 'Kasim was arrested by officers on 22 December 2016 and Nassib was arrested on 8 February 2017 when she returned to the country from Canada.' The mother and son, of Walsall, West Midlands, were charged at Perry Barr Police Station, and have been released on bail. They are set to appear at the Birmingham Magistrates' Court to answer charges of fraud by false representation on May 3. Footage of a wild panda breastfeeding her cub in the wild has been caught on camera for the first time in China. The two-year-old baby panda was caught climbing up onto its mother's chest and taking film from her breasts on April 1. The video has surprised Chinese media and panda enthusiasts as the animals usually lead a solitary and private life. A panda cub is spotted drinking milk in its mother's arms at the Qinling Panda Reserve A television crew found the mother panda resting on a fir tree with her cub. The baby seemed to be hungry as it kept going into its mother's arms The touching moment was filmed by journalist from the Foping Radio and TV Station at Qingling Foping Giant Panda Nature Reserve in Shaanxi Province. Pu Chunju, a member of the television crew, told MailOnline that he and his colleagues spotted the mother panda resting on a fir tree with her cub. The baby seemed to be hungry as it kept going into its mother's arms. Soon after the mother went down the tree and the cub followed. The two-year-old cub went down the fir tree after its mother because the cub was hungry The Qinling pandas are a sub-species of giant pandas and are thought to have paler fur There are currently about 345 pandas living in the Qinling mountains in Shaanxi Province After looking at the picture, He Xin, a panda keeper at the Foping Panda Valley in Qinling, said that the mother panda was indeed nursing her baby. Mr He said that the two bears are wild pandas living in the Foping area. The gender of the cub remains unclear. The panda keeper added that panda cubs usually stop drinking milk when they reach two years old. The Qinling pandas are a sub-species of giant pandas. There are currently about 345 pandas living in the Qinling mountains, including the famous brown panda, Qizai. Qizai is thought to be the world's only surviving giant panda which has brown and white fur. Rupert Murdoch's bid to take full control of Sky has cleared its first hurdle today after approval EU regulators. The media mogul's 21st Century Fox launched an 11.7billion buy-out of the broadcaster in December. Culture Secretary Karen Bradley confirmed last month that she is referring the issue to Ofcom amid concerns the company would control too much of Britain's media. But one stumbling block was removed this afternoon when the competition authorities in Brussels said they had 'unconditionally' approved the purchase. 'Based on the results of its market investigation, the Commission concluded that the proposed transaction would raise no competition concerns,' the EU body said in a statement. Rupert Murdoch's 21st Century Fox has said it 'welcomes a thorough and thoughtful regulatory review' into its planned 11.7 billion takeover of broadcaster Sky The commission said its clearance was 'without prejudice to the UK's ongoing media plurality review of the proposed transaction'. 'Fox and Sky are mainly active in different markets in Austria, Germany, Ireland, Italy and the UK. They compete with each other only to a limited extent, mainly in the acquisition of TV content and in the wholesale supply of basic pay TV channels,' it said. Mr Murdoch tried to buy Sky in 2010 but the deal collapsed at the height of the phone hacking scandal. MPs symbolically voted against the deal in 2011. His 21st Century Fox already owns 39 per cent of Sky. The company said today: 'We now look forward to continuing to work with UK authorities and are confident that the proposed transaction will be approved following a thorough review process.' Confirming that she was referring the issue to Ofcom last month, Mrs Bradley pointed to concerns about media plurality and broadcasting standards. FOX BUYS SKY: WHAT HAPPENS NOW? The decision by the EU authorities not to raise concerns about the Sky deal removes one stumbling block. But there is still a long way to go before the buy-out happens. Culture Secretary Karen Bradley has referred the matter to Ofcom, which is carrying out a public interest test including a review of whether the holder of the broadcast licence is a 'fit and proper person'. If it has concerns, Ms Bradley will have to ask Fox to address any issues, and decide whether to accept what they suggest. A rejected compromise would send the bid to the Competition and Markets Authority for full review, which could take up to six months. After their scrutiny, Mrs Bradley will have 30 days to block, approve or approve the deal with conditions. Assuming the deal passes again, it will eventually be put to a vote of Sky shareholders. Advertisement She told MPs: 'While the representations from 21st Century Fox highlighted areas where it contested the position taken in my 'minded to' letter, none of the representations have led me to dismiss the concerns I have regarding the two public interest grounds I previously specified.' Ofcom is currently carrying out a public interest test on the proposed deal, including a review of whether the holder of the broadcast licence is a 'fit and proper person'. If it has concerns by the deadline of May 16, Mrs Bradley will have to ask Fox to address any issues, and decide whether to accept what they suggest. A rejected compromise would send the bid to the Competition and Markets Authority for full review, which could take up to six months. After their scrutiny, Mrs Bradley will have 30 days to block, approve or approve the deal with conditions. Finally, the package would be put to Sky shareholders. The apparent decision by the EU not to raise any issues removes one obstacle. Responding to the government at the time of Mrs Bradley's announcement, 21st Century Fox said it did not believe the deal would result in 'insufficient plurality' in the UK media. It said: '21CF welcomes a thorough and thoughtful regulatory review. We believe this transaction is in the interest of the UK, its creative economy and its consumers. 'For the past 30 years, 21CF and Sky have been broadcasters of good standing in the UK, a responsibility we take seriously. 'The UK has a thriving creative and media sector that is becoming increasingly more plural and we are confident that this transaction would not result in there being insufficient plurality in the UK.' Culture Secretary Karen Bradley (pictured) said last month she was referring the buy-out to Ofcom to see if any one company would control too much of Britain's media Florida Senator Marco Rubio, a one-time harsh critic of President Donald Trump, hailed Trump's 'decisiveness' in ordering an attack on Syria. Rubio hailed both the nature of the cruise missile strike the president ordered, and the swift action that brought it following what the government says was Bashar al Assad's use of chemical weapons on his own people. 'The decisiveness is important,' Rubio told 'Fox and Friends. 'What he did last night was critical.' Rubio, who mocked Trump as a dangerous 'con man' during the campaign, crisscrossed the TV networks Friday morning, defending the strategy behind the attacks and backing up Trump from his own prior pronouncements about Syria. 'The decisiveness is important,' Florida Senator Marco Rubio said Friday morning. In a series of TV appearances he praised President Trump's military action Rubio pushed back against critics who brought up Trump's tweets from 2013, where Trump explicitly warned President Trump from taking military action in Syria after Assad is believed to have committed another use of chemical weapons. In one of many such tweets, Trump wrote: 'AGAIN, TO OUR VERY FOOLISH LEADER, DO NOT ATTACK SYRIA - IF YOU DO MANY VERY BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN & FROM THAT FIGHT THE U.S. GETS NOTHING!' 'People keep talking about 2013 what he tweeted, this that or the other,' Rubio continued. 'He was not even a candidate then. He's now the president of the United States.' Florida Senator Marco Rubio did a series of TV appearances where he praised President Trump's military action Senate Foreign Relations Committee member Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. comments on the poisonous gas attacks in Syria during a television interview on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday 'There's a difference between being a real estate developer in New York and a private citizen and being the president. When you are the president, the weight is on your shoulders. He acknowledged that. You see those images. You get the intelligence briefings ...... I think it impacted him personally to see babies, and he talked about that last night.' President Obama sought an authorization for the use of military force from Congress, but couldn't get sufficient support. Rubio also defended the way the president came to reverse his view after having a visceral reaction to some of the footage he saw of the human suffering caused by the use of chemical weapons. 'I don't care who you voted for in this election. You watch those two statements and it is clear that as a human being as a grandfather as a father, Donald Trump was deeply impacted by what he saw,' Rubio said. A U.S. Navy image shows the USS Ross (DDG 71) firing a tomahawk land attack missile at the Syrian air base President Donald Trump has launched a US airstrike against a Syrian air base after the gas atrocity which killed more than 80 people (pictured delivering a statement on Syria from the Mar-a-Lago estate in West Palm Beach, Florida, on April 6) 'He acted decisively, which is one of the most important things a president has to be willing to do.' Rubio said Assad should be brought to justice for having committed war crimes. He also indicated the U.S. action would send a message to other bad actors, such as North Korea's King Jong Un. 'If you're Kim Jung Un and you're watching tonight your'e realizing we've got a different thing going on. I mean, we've got someone who doesn't just talk, he's actually done some things. And he's probably worried right now. Smoke could be seen rising from the Homs airbase targeted by US missile strikes. The military action has already sparked a furious response from President Vladimir Putin, who this morning called the airstrikes an 'illegal act of aggression' Rubio told CBS this morning, 'This is not similar to 2013 for a lot of reasons. Assad was actually losing the war in '13. And if we had supported some of the elements on the ground that were not jihadists he may have very well fallen.' As for Trump's change of heart, Rubio said, 'I believe it weighted on him as a person, as a human being.' In a September 2013 tweet, Trump wrote: 'President Obama, do not attack Syria. There is no upside and tremendous downside. Save your "powder" for another (and more important) day!.' Rubio also defended the attack as being in the U.S. national interest, calling it 'proportional and targeted.' He noted that there are currently hundreds U.S. forces on the ground in the region and in Syria. 'If Assad is willing to use that gas against civilians, why would he not be willing to use it against Americans?' Rubio told CNN of Assad, 'Hopefully what he's doing next is he's deeply worried about losing power and being ousted and having to stand trial for war crimes.' Hillary Clinton called for bombing of Assad's airfields hours before Donald Trump ordered the airstrike against the Syrian government Hillary Clinton called for bombing of Assad's airfields hours before Donald Trump ordered the airstrike against the Syrian government. The air strikes came just days after a suspected sarin nerve agent attack by Assad on the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun, which led to the agonizing deaths of 86 people including at least 27 children. Last night, the US military fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at the Assad controlled al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs, killing at least five and injuring many more. Hours earlier, Clinton had called for strikes on military targets in Syria while speaking at a Women in the World Summit in New York. Clinton reiterated how she had favored a tougher approach against Assad when she was Secretary of State. She said: 'I believed then, that we should've done more at the point. These are not easy decisions that's why you want to get the best info you can ... I then did promote a no-fly zone, I still believe we should've done a no-fly zone. I think we should have been more willing to confront Assad.' She added: 'I really believe we should have and still should take out his air fields and prevent him from being able to use them to bomb innocent people and drop sarin gas on them.' When he was president, Barack Obama elected not to strike Assad's regime in 2013 despite saying he had 'crossed a red line' by dropping up to 1,000kg of sarin on a rebel-held area of Damascus, killing up to 1,400 people. But Obama did launch airstrikes in Syria a year later, as the US began a military campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Thursday's air strikes was the first direct military action the US has taken against the Assad regime in the country's bitter six-year civil war. Clinton called for strikes on military targets in Syria while speaking at a Women in the World Summit in New York Back in 2013, Trump had been a vocal opponent of US military action in Syria saying it would be 'stupid' to get involved and calling Obama's red line comment 'dumb'. The billionaire also argued that Clinton would cause World War Three with a war in Syria. Days before Election Day in Florida, he said: '[Clinton] wants to start a shooting war in Syria... that could very well lead to World War III.' President Donald Trump launched a US airstrike against a Syrian air base after the gas atrocity which killed more than 80 people Elsewhere in the talk Clinton said misogyny 'certainly' played a role in her presidential defeat and called for a bipartisan investigation into Russian interference in the election. Discussing Putin, she said: '[He] is somebody who plays the long game - he plays three dimensional chess.' She added: 'He is very much focused on destabilising Europe, Nato, the United States democracies, real democracies.' A U.S. Navy image shows the USS Ross (DDG 71) firing a tomahawk land attack missile at the Syrian air base last night Smoke could be seen rising from the Homs airbase targeted by US missile strikes. The military action has already sparked a furious response from President Vladimir Putin, who this morning called the airstrikes an 'illegal act of aggression' A young man who dragged a teenage girl along a suburban Sydney street with his car and left her for dead in a gutter has been sentenced to just 18 months in prison. Samantha Giufre, aged 19 at the time of the attack, was dragged for 100 metres along a road in Casula, west of Sydney in 2014. She suffered the loss of sight in one eye, hearing loss and needed titanium plates inserted to hold her jaw together. Samantha Giufre, aged 19 at the time of the attack, was dragged for 100 metres along a road in Casula, west of Sydney in 2014 by Bashar Hawchar, 20 (she is pictured outside court on Friday) She suffered the loss of sight in one eye, hearing loss and needed titanium plates inserted to hold her jaw together Bashar Hawchar, 20, previously pleaded guilty to dangerous driving causing grievous bodily harm (he is pictured outside court on Friday) Bashar Hawchar, 20, previously pleaded guilty to dangerous driving causing grievous bodily harm. 'He should be away longer,' Ms Giufre said outside court on Friday. 'A year and a half? I've got the next 50 years to suffer.' According to court documents Ms Giufre was talking to a passenger in a car when Hawchar drove off, 9 News reported. When the car approached an intersection Ms Giufre was tossed from the vehicle and hit her head on a gutter, before the car sped off. Hawchar previously denied writing a Facebook post that read: 'I done that b****, she deserves it and that's what happened when you don't pay up'. The judge found that he did send the message and sentenced Hawchar to 18 months in jail. When the car approached in intersection Ms Giufre was tossed from the vehicle and hit her head on a gutter, before the car sped off (she is pictured outside court on Friday) Samantha Giufre, aged 19 at the time of the attack, was dragged for 100 metres along a road in Casula, west of Sydney in 2014 A toddler was left with horrific facial injuries when a dog she had been told was 'safe to pet' clamped its jaws on her face when she tried to kiss it. Ophelia Rozic, aged 18 months, was rushed to hospital after the animal sank its teeth into her face when she went to give it a kiss on Monday morning. Her heavily pregnant mother, Nicol, 31, watched on in horror as the animal clamped its jaws around her daughter's head during the terrifying attack. Ophelia Rozic suffered deep cuts all over her face when was bitten by a dog she had been told was 'safe to pet' Ophelia, who is aged 18 months, pictured eating at her family's home in Ripley, Derbyshire, prior to the attack Miss Rozic had been getting her car serviced at a garage in Heanor, Derbyshire, when she noticed a man waiting with a red pointer and asked whether it was safe to approach. She said the man gave her permission but as she petted the hound it mauled her daughter as the owner 'stood by and did nothing.' Yesterday Miss Rozic, of Ripley, Derbyshire, said: 'My daughter absolutely loves dogs - we have a French bulldog at home - I approached the gentleman to ask if his dog was friendly and he said yes. 'She stroked the dog and it bit her face twice. She went to give is a kiss and it just went for her. 'The owner just stood there, he didn't do anything. I'm heavily pregnant and I had to prise my daughter from the dog. The extent of her injuries is shown in harrowing photographs taken from hospital, which shows blood all over her cheek 'He took the dog away, saying he was just going to put him in the car, but he never came back. I can't believe he just left. 'Ophelia's had to go back into hospital because the wounds became infected, she was on a drip with antibiotics. 'She came home from hospital on Wednesday and the surgeon thinks she might need to come back to have some work done on her cheek. 'He's just waiting to see how it heals.' Miss Rozic, who lives with partner Michael Howard, 33, who runs a construction firm, also blasted police for not turning up to investigate until over eight hours after the attack. She added: 'The police's response has been disgusting. 'The attack happened at 11.30am and they didn't turn up until 8pm and even now they have failed to even interview the dog owner. She stroked the dog twice but it 'went for her' when she tried to kiss it 'I saw police had shot dead an out-of-control dog in another part of the country but this one is being allowed to run around to potentially do this to another child. 'All they sent was one PCSO and then I was told I would need to go to the headquarters to make a a complaint. 'But I'm heavily pregnant and due to have a Caesarean in eight weeks and all this is hanging over me now. 'My daughter is still not right and she is very wary of our dog now. It's been horrible -its every parent's worst nightmare.' A spokesman for Derbyshire Police said: 'Our officers were called to reports that a toddler had been bitten on the face by a dog while in the waiting area of a car garage. 'The incident left the young girl with visible injuries and has understandably left both her and her family extremely distressed. 'We are now in the early stages of an investigation and in the process of speaking to witnesses and viewing CCTV.' A man spotted standing naked, wielding a knife and screaming at a Surfer's Paradise hotel has been taken to hospital by police after a four hour standoff which saw a policeman stabbed. At about 10.30am, police arrived at the Artique Resort, where a man had been seen waving a knife and screaming in the nude, 7 News reported. The man is reported to have moved from his original position down to a hotel common area, where he jumped into a spa as police attempted to taser him. A man was arrested on Thursday after he was spotted standing naked at the Artique Resort in Surfer's Paradise, screaming and wielding a knife Prior to this, 9 News report the naked man had cornered a family with young children near the spa. After more than four hours of negotiations, police jumped into the spa themselves to take the man into custody. 'Once they jumped on him, he was just trying to get away from them, but he couldn't really,' witness Jesse Lucas told the network. Police were in negotiations with the man for more than four hours, after he ran from officers and avoided being tased by jumping into a spa It is reported the naked man at one point had cornered a young family with children in the spa area As the police tried to drag him away into custody, 7 News report he slashed the arm of an officer. The man was eventually wheeled out on a stretcher, and is in hospital under police guard for assessment. A spokesperson for Queensland Police told Daily Mail Australia no charges have been laid. A young teenager saved her little sister's life in an overnight house fire that killed both their parents and three siblings, a Tennessee sheriff said Friday. The fire was reported before midnight on Thursday in Buchanan, along the Kentucky state line about 100 miles northwest of Nashville. At a news conference, Henry County Sheriff Monte Belew identified the girls as 13-year-old Lilly Pollack and 8-year-old Rose Pollack. Lilly woke up coughing in her bed in a smoky room and was able to get outside, said her family pastor, Randy Stephens of Sulphur Well Church of Christ. Jimmy Pollack Senior, Carrie Pollack, and their three children ages JJ, age 14; Ivey, age 4; and Callie, age 3 were killed. Two other young girls 13-year-old Lilly and 8-year-old Rose escaped The charred remains of the burned-out home can be seen in this picture from firefighters Children's toys can be seen laying out on the lawn outside the home. Five children lived here, but only two of them managed to escape the inferno Five members of a family of seven all died in the blaze which happened at midnight Lily then heard someone calling from inside the home, so she stepped in, got Rose out and they ran to their grandmother's house next door and called 911, the sheriff said. 'We are calling both of those individuals heroes,' Belew said. Lilly tried to rescue the rest of her family, but couldn't get back inside again because of the intense flames. Paris Landing Volunteer Fire Department Chief Reggie Coles said the home was already two-thirds engulfed when firefighters arrived. Police tape now seals off the entire grounds of the house as investigators attempt to figure out what went wrong. The home did not have any smoke alarms fitted The burning home and partially collapsed structure is seen surrounded by children's toys The victims were likely already deceased, he said, and firefighters couldn't get into the house because of the raging fire. Afterward, officials couldn't find any smoke detectors in the charred home. Coles called it the 'worst tragedy I've ever seen in my 40 years in the fire service.' Belew said parents Jimmy Pollack and Carrie Pollack, and their children, 14-year-old Jimmy Dale Pollack Jr.; three-year-old Callie Pollack; and four-year-old Ivy Pollack died in the fire. Rose had minor burns to the neck, face and arms and were not life-threatening. She was was taken to the hospital, Belew said. Officials don't view the fire as suspicious. They are still investigating the cause, which could be faulty wiring or a wood stove. Authorities said both young girls were being called heroes for getting out and for helping each other. Belew said crews didn't immediately find anything suspicious about the fire, calling it 'a horrific, tragic accident.' Hours later, the place was still smoldering as crews continued to dampen down the building Stephens, who has talked with Lilly after the fire, said she's an 'outstanding young lady' who is going to be OK, even though she'll struggle with the loss of her family. 'She's still in shock, very much so, I think,' Stephens said. 'And she's just doing what she feels like she has to do to help grandmother, and also to try to get ready for her little sister to come home.' Lilly and Rose will be living with their grandmother. The sheriff's office set up a donation account in the grandmother's name at a local bank. 'We're a small rural, west Tennessee county, and that's kind of what we do, is we help each other,' Belew said. 'It's a tough day in Henry County. I can't think of any time that we've lost five Henry Countians in such a tragic event.' But it could've been a completely different story if the family had smoke detectors, the sheriff said. 'There's some things that we need to just take care of,' Belew said. Representative for Henry County Schools Susan Burton said it was is a tragic day for the county and community of Buchanan and Lakewood schools. The schools have grief counselors on-site and the Director of Schools,school counselors, principals and teachers are on hand to provide counseling support to students and staff. The father of a missing Tennessee teen filed a court petition Thursday, asking for the power to depose witnesses who may know more about his daughters relationship with her kidnapper. Elizabeth Thomas, 15, has been missing since March 13, when she disappeared with her 50-year-old teacher Tad Cummins. The two - believed to be an illicit relationship - were spotted two days later at a Walmart in Oklahoma City, and haven't been seen since then. In the three weeks his daughter has been missing, Anthony Thomas says that two of her classmates have stopped talking to the family and he believes that they may be holding information that could help authorities bring Elizabeth home safe, the court filing says. Anthony Thomas (left) filed a petition in court on Thursday, asking for the power to depose two witnesses who may have information that could bring his missing daughter Elizabeth, 15 (right), home Elizabeth and her 50-year-old teacher Tad Cummins have been missing since March 13. The two are pictured above at an Oklahoma City Walmart two days later. This was the last time either was seen With each passing week that Cummins and the child are gone, the memories of these witnesses potentially become less clear, the petition filed in Chancery Court said. At least two of the witnesses have information that could lead to the finding of this child. One of those witnesses has stopped speaking to counsel altogether, and the other one is believed to have more information than what has been shared to this point. Cummins was suspended from teaching on February 6, nearly two weeks after another student caught him kissing Elizabeth Thomas also revealed in the court documents what he knows so far about his daughters relationship with her teacher, including some details which have not been released before. He said that Cummins allegedly went to his home on several occasions, without his knowledge, and pressured his daughter to go out for a meal with him, threatening repercussions at school if she declined. Elizabeth reportedly told friends and siblings that she felt in over her head in the relationship and that she was scared of Cummins. When Cummins would show up at her work unannounced, Elizabeth would reportedly hide and tell Chik-fil-A co-workers to lie and tell Cummins she wasnt working. Classmates are also said to have noticed a strange intimacy between Elizabeth and her teacher. One fellow student allegedly found Elizabeth sleeping on a hospital bed in Cummins classroom before classes began one morning. Elizabeth reportedly had a special desk close to Cummins and other classmates saw the teacher give her money and gifts. Others found it weird when Cummins allegedly rubbed Elizabeths back and shoulders at school. On January 23, a student reported seeing Cummins and Elizabeth kiss to the school. Both denied the claim, but Cummins was eventually suspended on February 6. In the nearly two weeks that he was allowed to continue working at the school, Thomas says that Cummins was a chaperone on a field trip that his daughter attended. Elizabeth reportedly told friends and some of her siblings (the family pictured above) that she felt in 'over her head' in her relationship with Cummins Cummins was fired on March 14 - the day after he and Elizabeth went missing. Elizabeths father says that he believes Cummins may have guilted her into leaving with him, saying that her future collegiate and work career was ruined because of the scandal. She reportedly told a friend who dropped her off at a restaurant to meet Cummins the morning of her disappearance that she did not want to go and was having second thoughts about spending the day with him. Speaking to ABC News, Thomas attorney, Jason Whatley, said that the unnamed witnesses may be withholding information because they are intimated. Perhaps the most concerning element has been the hesitancy of some persons to fully cooperate in sharing information that they know, Whatley said. The purpose of our petition as filed today will hopefully put an end to that hesitancy displayed by some and will help us, as the family, to methodically confirm facts that have been at times unclear, he added. We have brought this petition for no purpose except to provide a vehicle for gathering information. The court filing came a day after Thomas pleaded with his daughter to come home in a television interview. 'Elizabeth that man may be telling you that nobody's looking for you or he may even be telling you that no one wants you home. Don't listen to that. 'Everything he said to all the kids, not just you, has been a lie. He's nothing but a liar. We all want you home,' he said. He said teacher Tad Cummins is 'filtering' the news the girl sees, as he urged Cummins to turn himself in. 'I know you're keeping up with all this and you're filtering. You're not letting her see how much people out here love her,' Thomas said to Cummins. Students said that Elizabeth had a special seat next to Cummins' desk and that he would rub her shoulders and back at school (the two pictured above at school) 'You're depriving her of that. It would make better sense for you to turn yourself in to law enforcement. You turn yourself in, there are laws that will guarantee your general safety,' he added. Thomas said the words at a tree-planting ceremony on Wednesday, as part of national crime victim's rights week. Police have issued an Amber alert for Elizabeth and say they have warrants charging Cummins with sexual contact with a minor and aggravated kidnapping. Authorities have warned against using the word 'romance' to refer to the two. Elizabeth's dad says she told a friend that she was hesitant about meeting with Cummins on Marhc 13 - the day she went missing. Above, Elizabeth leaving her home the morning of her disappearance At a press conference last week, Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Director Mark Gwyn said Cummins manipulated Elizabeth and kidnapped her. Maury County District Attorney Brent Cooper said he used the word 'romantic' to describe the nature of draft emails exchanged between the two, but should have used the word 'grooming.' He said a 50-year-old educated man trying to convince a vulnerable teenage girl that being in a relationship with him was the right thing to do is not a romance, but a serious crime. Last week, Cummins' wife filed for divorce after 31 years of marriage. Court records show that Jill Cummins sued her missing husband on the grounds of irreconcilable differences and inappropriate marital conduct. The wife, who works for the Maury County school system, says she has not seen her husband since March 13. The couple has two children together. Jill Cummins has previously publicly pleaded with her husband to turn himself and bring the girl home safely. Elizabeth is described as 5 feet tall and 120 pounds with blond hair and hazel eyes. Cummins is described as about 6 feet tall and 200 pounds with brown hair and brown eyes. A six-hour hostage standoff ended in a SWAT team raid, with deputies shooting and killing the armed suspect and rescuing the man he was holding at gunpoint. Glenn Watenpool, 68, was shot dead by police on Thursday afternoon in Bradenton, Florida after hours of hostage negotiations with the retiree broke down. Around 7.45am on Thursday, Watenpool stormed the clubhouse of the Pescara Lakes retirement trailer park armed with a pistol and shotgun, holding park manager Mike Albaugh, 54, at gunpoint in his office, Manatee County Sheriff Rick Wells said. 'This was his day to be heard, and this is how he was going to do it,' Wells told reporters in a press conference later Thursday. Scroll down for video Glenn Watenpool, shown at his daughter's wedding in the summer of 2016, was killed by SWAT officers after taking the manager of his Florida retirement community hostage on Thursday Watenpool had lived in this unit in the Pescara Lakes retirement trailer park, marketed as a 55+ community, for roughly six years, but was facing eviction after confrontations with neighbors The standoff began when Watenpool stormed the park's clubhouse, shown above, with a pistol and shotgun, and took park manager Mike Albaugh, 54, hostage, police said Watenpool, a Pittsburgh native with a love of Harley-Davidson motorcycles, had been living in 55-and-over retirement community for several years and knew his hostage Albaugh well, police said. 'He was unhappy with some of the rumors inside the park that he was being evicted for some reason,' said Wells. Wattenpool was being evicted for continuing to 'harass, stalk and make inappropriate accusations towards his neighbors in the community,' according to court documents obtained by the Bradenton Herald. On November 24, the eviction documents say Watenpool 'followed another resident out of the neighborhood and followed the resident in his vehicle to two different locations honking his horn and making gestures towards the resident.' Several days later, on November 29, Watenpool was given 30 days notice to move out of the retirement community, but he refused to leave, according to the records. After storming the park clubhouse early Thursday morning, witnesses say Watenpool spoke heatedly with Albaugh and barricading himself in the manager's office. 'He was unhappy with some of the rumors inside the park that he was being evicted for some reason,' said Manatee County Sheriff Rick Wells (pictured) The normally peaceful retirement community was evacuated during the standoff, as negotiators tried in vain to get Watenpool to surrender peacefully 'I heard the noise of the shot being fired. I didn't realize what it was,' Frank, a maintenance worker at the park who declined to give his last name, told Fox 13. 'I went to the door without thinking, and he said, "You better not come in here." And I said, "You can't tell me what I can't do",' Frank said. Inside the office, Frank said he saw Albaugh bleeding from the head, after Watenpool had apparently pistol whipped him. 'Things were not going his way, so he hit the manager over the head with a gun,' said Sheriff Wells. Albaugh waved off Frank, warning the man to get out, and he did, fleeing the office and calling 911. SWAT team members stood by as negotiations with Watenpool dragged over six hours. Police said Watenpool refused to release his hostage even after speaking with family members Witnesses heard a flashbang grenade and shots as the SWAT team breached the manager's office. Watenpool fired at officers and was shot dead, police said SWAT team and hostage negotiators arrived on the scene, evacuating retirees from the normally peaceful park to keep them out of harm's way. A city bus was even brought in to let the displaced retirees rest in the air conditioning if they had no place else to wait out the stand-off. Over six hours of grueling negotiations, police say they allowed Watenpool to speak to family members and encouraged the man to surrender peacefully. 'He's been trying to tell people six years whatever issue he had.... But no one would listen to him, so this is his day to be heard,' said Wells, recounting Watenpool's conversation with negotiators. After negotiations broke down, SWAT team members entered the clubhouse at 2.03pm, and Watenpool immediately fired multiple shots at the officers, Wells said. Police returned fire, striking and killing Watenpool. Albaugh was taken to hospital and is expected to recover. No police officers were hurt, Wells said. The violence left the normally peaceful community rattled, resident Linda Pray told ABC. 'It is kind of spooky, this is a quiet senior citizen community,' she said. A Louisiana student's high school prom turned into a nightmare on Saturday when staff refused to let her leave early - even though her family had been in a car accident. Kersten Demouchet, 18, was at the Carencro high-school prom when she found out her sister, cousin, one-year-old nephew and friend had been involved in the deadly crash - but was barred from seeing them in hospital. 'They didn't want to let me go,' Demouchet told KATC. 'I went to the bathroom and just cried. I kept asking over and over if I could leave and they said no, you can wait.' Scroll down for video Trapped: Kersten Demouchet (left and right) wasn't allowed to leave her Louisiana school prom on Saturday even though her family had been involved in a car crash that night Demouchet's cousin Tyrone Mitchell, 47, nephew Kishawn Leon, 1, and friend James Pappillion, 41, all died in or soon after the accident. Her sister, 25-year-old Lakesha Leon, died the following morning in hospital. Demouchet was able to see Leon that night, but feels robbed of a chance to get one last moment with her other family members. 'I probably would've had a chance to say bye at least,' she said of the family members who died in the crash. Instead, she was left frantically begging school administrators for permission to leave. Killed: Her sister Lakesha Leon (right), 25, and nephew Kishawn Leon (left), 1, were both killed. Demouchet was told she couldn't see them until prom ended or someone picked her up She was told at first that her family might have died in a shooting. When administrators called police to find out the truth, they were unable to confirm that claim. Later, she says, she found out that it had been a car crash that claimed her family - but this time police weren't contacted. She was told that she could only leave if a family member came to collect her, but nobody could reach her in time. 'I called my mom on the phone and they still didn't let me go,' she told KHOU.com. Joe Craig of the Lafayette Parish School System told KATC that she'd had to stay in the school for health and safety reasons. 'In a crisis situation, we'd really be concerned to release a student - first off - without verifying the incident, and - second off - it's not a good thing to release a teenage driver to go to a scene of crisis or catastrophe,' he said. 'We really know it's a burden on a parent to show up to school, but we really don't want to make another emergency to release a student in an emergency situation.' Demouchet is now demanding that the school board change its rules to avoid a similar situation happening in the future. 'Safety': The school said that it was not safe to release a student 'to go to a scene of crisis or catastrophe' - even though her sister was dying in hospital On Thursday Demouchet wrote on her Facebook wall: 'Kesha Is With Her Baby Boy Now & They Can Live Their Lives In Heaven Together. Its Okay Everybody. Everything Is Gonna Be Alright. They're Gone, But They Will Never Be Forgotten.' According to KLFY, the accident occurred when Paul Champagne, 20, of St. Martinville struck the rear of Mitchell's car while traveling northbound on LA 353. Police said it may be possible that Mitchell's Chevrolet had stopped partly in the lane. Mitchell was wearing a seatbelt but suffered fatal injuries. Papillon, Kishawn Leon and Lakesha Leon were unrestrained. A fifth person in Mitchell's car, Kearson Thomas, 29, was not wearing a seatbelt and suffered moderate injuries. Champagne and his passenger refused medical aid at the scene. Samples were taken from both drivers for toxicology tests. It's not known at this point whether alcohol or any other substances were a factor in the crash. Ongoing reports of strife among the White House staff has irked President Trump, and could lead chief strategist Steve Bannon and chief of staff Reince Priebus to get reassigned. Days after it was revealed that Bannon had been forced to give up his spot on the National Security Council's principals committee, there were reports of a looming shakeup. The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump is unhappy with the constant infighting among his aides. The paper reported that both Priebus, who took his post after running the Republican National Committee, and Bannon, who helped guide Trump to victory, could be 'reassigned,' citing sources. Axios reported that the shakeup could include Priebus' replacement and Bannon's departure. The reports come a day after Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One during his 11th week in office that, 'I think weve had one of the most successful 13 weeks in the history of the presidency.' Senior advisor Steve Bannon (C) stands next to Ivanka Trump as U.S. President Donald Trump delivers a statement about missile strikes on a Syrian airfield. A furious staff clash pits a faction alligned with Bannon against those associated with Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner The outlet listed several possible Priebus replacements, including House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California, top lobbyist Wayne Berman of Blackstone Group, and David Urban, who oversaw Trump's Pennsylvania effort. David Cohn, the former Goldman Sachs head who is now Trump's leading economic advisor, was also mentioned, and has at Trump's side repeatedly this week. 'Things are happening, but it's very unclear the president's willing to pull that trigger,' a top aide said. A person close to the White House told the Journal Trump was 'trying out different names with his friends.' Both Bannon and Priebus were pictured with Trump in a secure room as he got briefed on the U.S. military attack on a Syrian airfield. Bannon called reports he was ready to leave '100 per cent nonsense.' The word of a possible shakeup came amid a new report that Bannon has taken to deriding Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner by calling him a 'Democrat.' ODD MAN OUT? New reports say President Trump could clean house by replacing chief of staff Reince Priebus and chief strategist Steve Bannon Ivanka Trump, second from right, the daughter and assistant to President Donald Trump, is seated with her husband White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, right, during a dinner with President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping 'Here's the reason there's no middle ground,' Bannon told Kushner in one clash, the New York Times reported, citing someone with knowledge of the situation. 'You're a Democrat.' The story outlines a tense clash between those loyal to Bannon, a fiery nationalist credited with pushing take-no-prisoners positions on trade, healthcare, and immigration, and those with more moderating influence, led by Kushner. Bannon remains close to Stephen Miller, a former close aide to Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Kushner is joined by Gary Cohn, the head of the president's council on economic advisors, who was alongside Trump during his meeting with CEOs at the White House this week. Dina Powell, like Cohn a former Goldman Sachs alum, is considered part of the clique. Ivanka Trump, who it was revealed met with Planned Parenthood and who has pushed softer issues like women's empowerment, recently got her own West Wing Office. Cohn is a registered Democrat who gave up his job running Goldman Sachs to join the White House staff. Those close to Bannon have referred to him as 'Globalist Gary,' according to CNN. The clash in aides and ideologies appears to be somewhat by design. Jared Kushner recently returned from a trip to Iraq. His influence in the White House has grown Caught in the middle of President Trump, who sets up aides with competing views and sorts through the clashing views 'This president's method of managing is by him personally curating points of views from a diverse group of people in whom he has some trust and credibility,' said Thomas Barrack, who ran Trump's inaugural committee. 'And he very rarely accepts one course of action or one suggestion without laundering it amongst all of them. And what happens in that process is confusion amongst those from whom he's seeking advice. What works for him is that, out of that milieu, his instincts take him to the right answer,' Barrack told the Times. Politico reported on a tense White House health care meeting with intransigent House conservatives. Gary Cohn, director of the U.S. National Economic Council, was derided by the Bannon faction as 'Globalist Gary,' according to a report Dina Powell joined the National Security Council as a deputy national security advisor shortly before Bannon was taken off its principals committee At one point, White House chief of staff Reince Priebus 'suggested it could be detrimental to Ryan's speakership if Republicans fail to pass a bill,' according to the article. 'It was really bad,' a familiar with the meeting said. 'They were in total meltdown, total chaos mode.' Ryan oversaw the drafting of the failed GOP health bill that leaders had to pull from the floor amid a clash between conservative Freedom Caucus members and more moderate Republicans. It didn't have enough votes to pass. White House aides indicated at the meeting that they were in fear of losing their jobs if health care doesn't pass, sources told the publication. Bannon, meanwhile, got taken off the NSC's principals committee this week. His loss of the powerful perch comes after Bannon delivered a failed ultimatum to House conservatives that if they didn't vote for the health bill, Trump was prepared to walk away. He is also linked to the drafting of Trump's immigration order, now on hold due to federal court rulings. A person with knowledge of the situation said the problem is that, 'Bannon isn't making 'Dad' look good,' the Washington Post reported. Kushner, who just traveled to Iraq, is now heading an Office of American Innovation. Bannon forces have taken to branding their adversaries as 'the Democrats' and 'the New Yorkers' or 'Goldman,' while Kushner forces are terming the opposing faction as 'Bannonites' or 'Breitbart,' a reference to the conservative, nationalistic web site he ran. Kushner donated more than $100,000 over the years, before becoming a key advisor to Trump during the campaign, the Free Beacon reported last year. He held fundraisers for New Jersey Sen. Corey Booker, among others. 'It's not about petty soap-opera stuff,' former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told the paper. 'Bannon represents a very fundamental change in how we think about economic policy, taking us back to the era from Alexander Hamilton up through the 1920s when we were a much more national economy. Gary [Cohn] represents the New York international worldview and is a very competent and smart guy. There's a natural tension,' he said. A person who speaks with Trump says the president has begun asking, 'What do you think of my team?' Amid the turmoil, Bannon has sometimes teamed with Prieubus. The two showed their growing closeness during a joint appearance at CPAC. Ringleader: Florentino Gonzalez was jailed for 24 years A gang of drug dealers who smuggled 3.6million of cocaine into the UK using a secret compartment in the roof of a Bentley has been jailed for a combined total of more than 100 years. Florentino Gonzalez, 48, Eduia Abazi, 31, and Bajram Elezi, 34, hid more than 30 kilos of cocaine in a 130,000 Bentley Flying Spur. Ringleader Gonzalez, who claimed to be visiting Britain to set up a wine firm and a cafe, used an underground car park at the luxury Marlin Apartments in Southwark, south London, to meet dealers and exchange the smuggled drugs for cash. The Bentley was seized by police investigating the drugs gang who discovered more than 30 kilos of cocaine in two days of surveillance. It is thought the illicit cargo was last in a long line of drugs already smuggled from Europe and distributed to dealers around the capital by the gang. They travelled between 25 to 30 times over a two year period, but could have been running the conspiracy for as much as four years. Gonzalez travelled from his home in Belgium, parked up his Bentley at the Britannia International Hotel in the Isle of Dogs and met with Armand Cuni, 39, and Abazi on September 5 last year. The 30 kilos of cocaine seized had an estimated value of nearly 1million and a potential likely street value of around 3.6million. Elezi, Gonzalez and Abazi were found guilty last month following a five week trial at Blackfriars Crown Court. This is the inside of the Bentley that was rigged to fit a secret compartment for cocaine The secret compartment of a Bentley used by Florentino Gonzalez to smuggle millions of pounds worth of cocaine into the UK Gonzalez, of Spanish origin but living in Belgium, was also found guilty of concealing criminal property. Pictured: The Bentley he concealed it in Gonzalez, of Spanish origin but living in Belgium, was also found guilty of concealing criminal property, with Elezi guilty of possession with intent to supply class A drugs. Byberi was arrested near his home in Bedford, and on December 18 2016 he pleaded guilty along with Cuni and Cera to conspiracy to supply class A drugs. Cera also admitted two counts of possession with intent to supply cocaine and having an ID document with improper intention, which related to a false Romanian passport under the name of 'Bogdan'. Heather Strangoe, prosecuting, said: 'This is a conspiracy to wholesale high purity cocaine after the point of importation. 'This was a well sophisticated process whereby imported cocaine was distributed to the driver or their courier in return for cash payments and using apartments for the purpose of the exchanges. 'Gonzalez and Cuni can be shown to travel to the UK regularly during 2015 and 2016, staying in London for one to two days each time. Left to right: Armand Cuni, Edwin Abazi, Saimir Byberi, Yelton Cera and Bajram Elezi, co-conspirators of Florentino Gonzalez The stash: Drugs seized from Yelton Cera, a co-conspirator of Florentino Gonzalez 'Mr Gonzales frequently traveled with a Bentley to the UK with a large amount of drugs concealed in the roof. 'This was observed on August 29 and 31 as well as CCTV from July 8 when four different men are seen coming to the car park where the Bentley was parked with holdalls and carrier bags, before leaving with considerably heavier bags. 'Byberi was also seen leaving the underground car park and returned with a full holdall. 'The prosecution say the fact there were numerous trips and visits to the UK from Brussels by Gonzalez suggest that last exchange was the last in a long line of deliveries in this sophisticated operation to distribute high purity cocaine. 'The fact is is such high purity suggests is has not been adulterer with other powders and could have a street value of as as 3.6 million.' The court heard none of the gang had any previous convictions for drug offences. The cash: This is the money seized from Florentino Gonzalez, a drug trafficker who used a Bentley with a secret roof space to smuggle millions of pounds worth of cocaine Jailing the gang, Recorder Christopher Sallon said: 'This is a long running conspiracy and a sophisticated commercial operation to distribute very large qualities of cocaine ranging from 88 to 93 per cent purity. 'Large qualities of this drug was sourced from South America and smuggled through Europe via France and Belgium to the UK, professionally concealed in luxury cars. 'The supply of an addictive drug is a scourge which heaters and undermines the safety of communities and endangers all those to who it is supplied and particularly the young and the vulnerable. 'The consequences for those who are caught up and convicted are so great. 'These are grave crimes which attract custodial sentences.' Main conspirator Gonzalez, slammed by the judge for his 'untruthful' testimony to the jury, was jailed for 24 years. Fellow leader Cuni, of Brussels, was jailed for 22 years. Abazi, of Hillingdon, west London was jailed for 21 years and Byberi was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Cera was jailed for six year for one count and six years to run concurrently, plus 18 months for having an ID document to run consecutively, making total of 12 years. Elezi of Epsom, Surrey, was jailed for eight years. A Houston man with 'GODS SON' and a cross tattooed across his forehead has been charged with capital murder. Amir Yarbrough, 29, stands accused of shooting Marquiet Davis, 29, in the parking lot of Carl's Jr in Wallisville, 40 miles east of Houston. Another man fled after being also shot and was taken to Texas Medical Center following what deputies told the Houston Chronicle was a drug-related robbery. Scroll down for video Amir Yarbrough, 29, stands accused of shooting Marquiet Davis, 29. Yarbrough is seen above in his mugshot The fatal shooting happened in the parking lot of Carl's Jr in Wallisville, 40 miles east of Houston Authorities said Davis was in the driver's seat of a white convertible and that two individuals left the scene in a white Chevy Cobalt or Nissan, ABC13 reported. Investigators did not provide further details but added that there were 'multiple gunshots.' Yarbrough fled the scene but was caught and taken into custody at Harris County Jail, where he is held without bond. His mugshot also shows what appear to be musical notes tattooed on his neck. In late March, fellow Texan Jacob Pauda, 31, was convicted on a third-degree felony count of domestic assault, which carries a maximum of 10 years in jail. But what made headlines was his mugshot, which became increasingly tattooed over four years. Many of the tattoos on his face and body were associated with a prison gang called Texas Tango Blast. On his stomach, Pauda has a tattoo that says 'Certified Gangsta.' Lawmakers are demanding that President Donald Trump provide legal justification for the Pentagon's strike on Syrian forces Thursday. Bombs were dropped without their input, legislators say, in violation of a law requiring congressional consent for military action. Trump must provide Congress with an Authorization for Use of Military Force request, they're arguing, just as Barack Obama did in 2013 when he tried to make good on his 'red line threat' against Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. 'The President needs congressional authorization for military action as required by the Constitution, and I call on him to come to Congress for a proper debate,' Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, said. House members have already begun to depart Washington for their home districts as Congress commences a two-week recess in observance of the Passover and Easter holidays. Nancy Pelosi, the House's top-ranking Democrat, begged House Speaker Paul Ryan in a letter Friday morning to call them back. Scroll down for video Rand Paul says, 'The President needs congressional authorization for military action as required by the Constitution.' Nancy Pelosi, the House's top-ranking Democrat, begged House Speaker Paul Ryan to bring legislators back from break to have a debate Libertarians like Justin Amash saddled up with Democrats after Trump's surprise strike on the Syrian military in retaliation for Assad's deployment of chemical weapons Tuesday against women and children Trump must provide Congress with an Authorization for Use of Military Force request, they're arguing 'The Presidents action and any response demands that we immediately do our duty. Congress must live up to its Constitutional responsibility to debate an Authorization of the Use of Military Force against a sovereign nation,' Pelosi told the GOP leader. Libertarians like Paul saddled up with Democrats after Trump's surprise strike on the Syrian military in retaliation for Assad's deployment of chemical weapons Tuesday against women and children. The US military pummeled Syrian forces in the area where the chemical agent was launched with 59 Tomahawk missiles on Thursday evening. 'No child of God should ever suffer such horror,' Trump said in a brief address. 'Tonight I call on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syrian and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types.' Trump's administration claimed that the situation required a 'kinetic military response' and it would be wrong to 'extrapolate' from the bombing that the US intends to go to war with Assad. 'Theres been no change in that status,' Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters traveling with the president immediately after Trump's statement. 'But I think it does demonstrate that President Trump is willing to act when governments and actors cross the line.' Republican and Democratic lawmakers are pressing the administration for more. Trump must present his case to Congress - and the American people - and provide a blueprint for future engagement, elected officials have said. 'Any military action in Syria must be justified as protecting the vital national security interests of America including decisive action to prevent chemical weapons from falling into the hands of radical Islamic terrorists and I look forward to our Commander-in-Chief making the case to Congress and the American people how we should do so in the days ahead,' a statement from Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, said. Rep. Justin Amash, a House Freedom Caucus member and self-proclaimed libertarian, tweeted: 'Airstrikes are an act of war. Atrocities in Syria cannot justify departure from Constitution, which vests in Congress power to commence war.' Pushing back against against the administration's official line, Amash said, 'The Framers of Constitution divided war powers to prevent abuse. Congress to declare war; president to conduct war and repel sudden attacks. ' Trump's administration claimed that the situation required a 'kinetic military response' and it would be wrong to 'extrapolate' from the bombing that the US intends to go to war with Assad Republican Senator Bob Corker said Trump's actions were both 'proportional' to the crime and 'appropriate.' But the Senate Foreign Relations Chairman added, 'As we move forward, it will be important for the administration to engage with Congress and clearly communicate its full strategy to the American people.' House Foreign Affairs Chairman Ed Royce similarly said that Assad's actions were 'intolerable' and the US carried out a 'measured response.' Yet he also said, 'Moving ahead, the administration must work with Congress and lay out clear policy goals for Syria and the region.' Pelsoi said in her letter to Ryan that 'as heartbreaking as Assads chemical weapons attacks on his own people was, the crisis in Syria will not be resolved by one night of airstrikes. 'The American people are owed a comprehensive strategy with clear objectives to keep our brave men and women in uniform safe and avoid collateral damage to innocent civilians in Syria,' the House Democratic leader said. Ben Cardin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, warned the executive branch that 'any longer-term or larger military operation in Syria by the Trump Administration will need to be done in consultation with the Congress. 'Furthermore, it is the Presidents responsibility to inform the legislative branch and the American people about his larger policy in Syria, as well as the legal basis for this action and any additional military activities in that country,' the Maryland senator stated. Obama threatened Assad in 2012 with military action if he poisoned his own people and never followed through. The hard-charging language came as he was campaigning for reelection and went in 2013 as he OK'd and then pulled back from a strike because he did not have the congressional approval that legislators said he legally needed. The US military pummeled Syrian forces in the area where the chemical agent was launched with 59 Tomahawk missiles on Thursday evening CAN THE PRESIDENT ATTACK ANOTHER COUNTRY WITHOUT CONGRESS? The U.S. missile strikes Thursday on a Syrian air base were conducted without formal congressional approval. So how and why can presidents conduct military action without permission from the 535 representatives of the American people? DID CONGRESS KNOW? Trump did let Congress know of his plans to launch 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles Thursday evening, targeting the air base from which Syrian President Bashar Assad launched a chemical weapons attack earlier this week against his own people, killing more than 80 men, women and children. A White House official said more than two dozen members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, were briefed Thursday by White House and Cabinet officials. House Speaker Paul Ryan, the No. 3 U.S. official, said he was among those informed. IS INFORMING THEM ENOUGH? DON'T THEY GET A SAY? The War Powers Resolution, enacted in 1973, long after American troops began fighting in Vietnam, required the president to consult with Congress before sending U.S. armed forces into combat unless there already had been a declaration of war. The troops could not stay more than 90 days unless lawmakers backed the decision. The law also sought to give the president "leeway to respond to attacks or other emergencies," according to the Council on Foreign Relations. And it is that leeway that presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and now Trump have used to their advantage. Following the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, Congress gave Bush authority to attack any countries or groups involved in the attacks, which was generally accepted to mean al-Qaida. Obama used that same authority to fight the Islamic State militant group, which emerged in 2014 as an outgrowth of al-Qaida. Trump has used that same authority to continue military action in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. The Obama administration maintained in 2011 that U.S. involvement in the months-long air campaign against Libya didn't require congressional permission because American forces were largely playing a supporting role as part of an international coalition. In February 2015, Obama asked Congress to formally authorize war against the Islamic State, saying the militant group could threaten the U.S. homeland if left unchecked. His resolution would have limited authorization to three years, with no geographic restrictions for U.S. forces. It would have banned "enduring offensive combat operations," an ambiguous term that attempted to define a middle ground between Democrats leery of another protracted Middle Eastern conflict involving ground troops, and Republicans, who largely believe the U.S. needs maximum flexibility to pursue IS. Congress held a few hearings, but never acted on the proposal. SOURCE: Associated Press Advertisement Trump ripped Obama this week for the 'blank threat' and hinted at a news conference that he use military force to punish Assad. 'Im not saying Im doing anything one way or the other, but Im certainly not going to be telling you,' he told a reporter, explaining that he prefers not to clue in the enemy to his plans for a response. If Trump were to ask Congress for authority to hit Assad, he may not get it. Rand Paul condemned the atrocities in Syria on Thursday but came out against additional military action. 'Our prior interventions in this region have done nothing to make us safer, and Syria will be no different.' Progressive Massachusetts Senator and Armed Services Committee member Elizabeth Warren also charged that the legislative branch has the power to the decide matters of war under the Constitution and she's not prepared to authorize a war for Trump. 'Expanded military intervention in Syria requires action by Congress,' she said. 'If President Trump expects such an authorization, he owes the American people an explanation of his strategy to bring an end to the violence in Syria. We should not escalate this conflict without clear goals and a plan to achieve them.' Obama asked the Democratically-controlled Senate to table a vote on his proposed air campaign in 2013 when it became evident he would lose. A year later, he hit ISIS in Syria under authority Congress gave the executive branch to invade Iraq in 2001. Lawmakers demanded a vote on language that applied only to current battle against terrorists in the region, but they never received one. The US has continued to blast ISIS in Iraq and Syria using the 9-11 era AUMF. The value of the UK market to the EU was underlined today with figures showing an increase in imports from the bloc. As Theresa May braces for tough Brexit talks, figures showed we bought some 25billion more goods from Europe than we exported to it in the three months to February. The scale of the deficit will be seized on by the government as it argues that failing to strike an ongoing trade deal will be more damaging to the EU. Brussels has been threatening a hard line over the negotiations, insisting a divorce settlement - potentially as much as 50billion - must be agreed before the future relationship can be discussed. According to the ONS, the goods trade deficit with the EU for the three months to February was 25.31billion - up from 23.33billion in the quarter to February last year According to figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), Britain's overall trade deficit - including goods and services - widened by 700 million between January and February to 3.7 billion. The increase was triggered by a jump in imports of non-monetary gold and aircraft, with total exports falling by 400 million and total imports rising by 300 million. Stripping out erratic items such as ships, silver, aircraft and precious stones, the ONS said the trade deficit shrunk to 2.5 billion in February from 3 billion the month before. Imports of goods from the EU increased by 600million, taking the global deficit to 12.5billion. The goods trade deficit with the EU for the three months to February was 25.31billion - up from 23.33billion in the quarter to February last year. Meanwhile, ONS figures showed construction output fell by 1.7 per cent in February. Industrial production output also fell short of economists' predictions, recording a monthly drop of 0.7 per cent compared to a decline of 0.3 per cent the month before. The move was largely caused by a fall in electricity and gas demand driven by unseasonably warm weather, while manufacturing also eased back by 0.1 per cent in February compared to a contraction of 1 per cent in January. The construction industry was dragged down in February by a 7.3 per cent month-on-month slide in infrastructure work, while new housing also fell by 2.6 per cent over the period. The UK's trade deficit will be seized on by Theresa May as she argues that failing to strike an ongoing deal will be more damaging to the EU Despite monthly falls, the construction and manufacturing industries saw a more positive picture over the three months to February. Construction output grew for the fourth three-month period on the bounce, increasing by 1.5 per cent, while manufacturing increased by 2.1 per cent. Kate Davies, ONS senior statistician, said: 'While manufacturing was broadly flat in February, unseasonably warm weather reduced gas and electricity use, pulling down overall production. 'The overall trade deficit worsened, but excluding erratic items the picture improved, as imports fell more than exports. 'There were small falls across a range of construction sub sectors for the second month running, following a record performance for the industry at the end of 2016.' A YMCA lifeguard who vanished at work early on Thursday morning was found dead in a locked-off swimming pool by her colleagues. Police were called to the YMCA in Lincolnton, North Carolina, at around 6:30am after it was noticed that Yesenia Jimenez Linares, 21, hadn't opened the swimming pool area. While they were en-route, colleagues called 911 to say that they had found the young woman in the swimming pool, where she drowned the Charlotte Observer reported. Scroll down for video Dead: Yesenia Linares (left), 21, was found dead in the YMCA swimming pool (right) she worked in as a lifeguard on Thursday morning. It was locked when colleagues first found it Missed: Linares' friends mourned the loss of someone they described as kind (pictured: a tweeted tribute). She had wanted to be a teacher and helped in after-school activities Linares, who had hoped to become a teacher and had worked with children in the YMCA's after-school programs, had arrived for work in Lincolnton, 29 miles from Charlotte, at around 5:10am. But the alarm was raised after a staff member noticed that the pool was still locked and Linares could not be found. Soon after a 911 call was made by one of her colleagues, who said they had 'no idea' how the woman had drowned, WCNC reported. 'We just found her in the pool,' the co-worker said, adding that colleagues were performing CPR. Attempts to rescue her were foiled when colleagues could not open the door to the defibrillator - and once they did, they were told it could not be used on her wet body. Police arrived at around 6:45am and Linares was taken to Carolinas HealthCare System Lincoln soon after, where she was pronounced dead. Friends: Linares (second from left) was like 'family' to her friends (also pictured) at the North Carolina YMCA, who found her body early Thursday after she was seen arriving at work An autopsy report is still pending, but police say they do not suspect foul play. Molly Thompson, a YMCA spokesperson, said Linares 'had close friends here.' 'She was loved by her co-workers and our members here,' she added. She told the Charlotte Observer that YMCA staff were comforting Linares' mom, grandmother and adopted cousin. Her father is deceased. 'Theyre a part of us,' Thompson said. 'They're a part of the Y family. It's hard for everyone, but were keeping the family at the center of everything. They are cared for, prayed for, comforted.' One friend posted a tribute to Linares on Twitter, writing: 'Rip Yesenia I am shock this can't be real you are gone now u are up there with god you be a great friend.' Another wrote: 'I can't believe this...It feels so unreal. God has gained another beautiful angel today.. my heart is still sunk..' A GoFundMe page has been set up to help Linares' relatives. 'She leaves a confused and wounded family,' it says. 'She leaves behind questions nobody can answer.' The Lincoln County YMCA will hold a community prayer vigil in its gym at 12:30pm on Friday. Abousamra, 35, was born in Paris but was brought up in Boston, Massachusetts, where he studied computer science ISIS have revealed the editor of one of its propaganda magazines was a computer scientist from Boston who died in an airstrike in January. Ahmad Abousamra, 35, was killed in early January when a missile struck a house where he was staying north of the Syrian city of Tabqa, according to ISIS publications including the English language online magazine Rumiyah which he helped set up. Abousamra, 35, was born in Paris but was brought up in Boston, Massachusetts, where he studied computer science. He travelled to Yemen, Pakistan and Iraq before returning to the United States. He fled after his plans for an armed attack with two accomplices on US soil were uncovered. At the start of the Syrian conflict in 2011 he fought in the northern city of Aleppo, before joining the Al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, and then switching allegiance to ISIS. Abousamra was born in France and raised in the upscale Boston suburb of Stoughton. He attended the exclusive Xaverian Brothers Catholic high school and made the Dean's List at Northeastern University and his father is a prominent endocrinologist at Massachusetts General Hospital. He graduated with a degree in a technology field then took a job at a telecommunications company but by his early 20s is understood to have become radicalised. Abousamra was questioned in 2006 on suspicion of having travelled to Iraq to join a fledgling ISIS in their fight against U.S. troops two years earlier. In 2013 he was placed on the FBI's Most Wanted list, with a $50,000 reward for his capture Later that year Abousamra is believed to have slipped out of the country and headed to Syria. In 2009, he was charged with federal terrorism offenses relating to a would-be attack in Boston. In Syria, he helped set up publications including Dabiq, the ISIS online magazine named after a village in Syria where an Islamic prophecy says a battle will be fought between Muslims and infidels, heralding doomsday. ISIS fighters were driven from the village six months ago. It has been suggested Abousamra also led the team responsible for the distribution of ISIS propaganda videos, including the simultaneous posting of sickening videos showing the murder of Western hostages. In 2013 he was placed on the FBI's Most Wanted list, with a $50,000 reward for his capture. A Hong Kong father today pleaded guilty for having sex with a female dog in a hill. Chung Lin Fai, 58, admitted that he had lured the two-year-old stray animal using bread in Tung Chung on southwest Hong Kong's Lantau Island. The man, who is a former construction worker, also said that he had bathed the dog in a stream before having unprotected sex with the animal on February 1. Suspect Chung Lin Fai, 58, pleaded guilty to one count of bestiality today in a Hong Kong court The man admitted having sex with a female stray animal on February 1 in a hill (pictured) An examination report from the vet indicated that there was human semen inside the canine. A vaginal inflammation and blood were also found on the dog. The incident is said to have been witnessed by an animal volunteer. According to HK01, the volunteer, surnamed Chan, saw the suspect luring the cream-coloured mongrel onto a hill. Ms Chan took a picture of Mr Chung as she worried about the dog. Ms Chan waited around for about two hours and saw the same dog appearing in distress later. Injuries were reported to be found by the volunteer around the dog's genitals. The woman immediately called the police. Officers from Lantau Police Bureau arrived on the scene after receiving Ms Chan's report. They took the injured dog to the Tung Chung Animal Clinic for inspection. The dog suffered vaginal fissures and bleeding, according to the vet, as reported by HK01. The animal's private parts were said to be swollen and human semen had been found inside. Chung was arrested on February 9 and he admitted the act to the police during questioning Chung, 58, was arrested on suspicion of bestiality on February 9. He admitted to the allegations to the police. He also told the police that he worked as a welder on a construction site. The man is married and has three children. Today during the first hearing of the case, Chung pleaded guilty to the bestiality count in the West Kowloon Magistrate Court. He explained that he used bread as bait to lure the female canine and took the animal to a stream near Wong Lung Hang. He said he bathed the animal in the stream. The man also said that during the bath, he put his finger into the canine's private parts. He also said he hadn't used protection during sex with the dog. Acting principal magistrate said Mr Chung's behaviour 'is extremely revolting' Mr Chung told the Acting Principal Magistrate, So Wai Tak, that it was a 'momentary lapse of judgement' and the dog did not resist at the time, according to Hong Kong Free Press. So Wai Tak said: 'Defendant, your behaviour is extremely revolting.' The Acting Principal Magistrate also said that an imprisonment would be 'inevitable'. The father-of-three said he had been bathing the dog in the stream for nearly two years, and this was the first time he had ever had sex with a canine. In mitigation, Mr Chung's lawyer said the man had been an alcoholic with hearing impairment, and had had injuries from work. Since the case came to light, Mr Chung had lost his job. Mental and psychological reports are expected to be submitted before a sentence is made. Mr Chung is remanded in custody until a sentence hearing, which is set to take place on April 21. Advertisement A dog which was shot dead after it mauled an 18-month-old baby in a playground was a banned pitbull-type breed, police have confirmed. The infant - named as Victoria Resetnjova - was left fighting for her life in hospital after she was savaged by the animal as she played with her teenage sister at a park in Chatham, Kent. The dog was shot dead following the vicious attack on Tuesday evening. The family of a toddler who was 'scalped' by an out of control dog in a children's playground have said the attack has 'ruined their lives' and 'the lives of their two children'. This is the body of a large Pitbull crossed with a Staffordshire Bull Terrier after it was shot dead for attacking toddler Victoria Resetnjova in a playground The child remains in a London hospital with very serious injuries following the incident. After the incident the family of a toddler who was 'scalped' by an out of control dog in a children's playground said the attack has 'ruined their lives' and 'the lives of their two children'. One-year-old Victoria was thrown in the air 'like a toy' by the animal as she played on a slide with her sister just before 5.30pm on Tuesday. She was pulled from the dog's jaws by six other bloodied children and flown to a London hospital by air ambulance as armed police shot the animal dead. In a statement, her parents said: 'We would like to thank all the emergency services and others who helped our daughter by giving first aid at the scene. 'We are also grateful for the continued support of the hospital where she is being treated. 'The incident has ruined our lives and the lives of our two children.' In a statement released by Kent Police on Thursday, her family thanked the emergency services and everyone who helped her at the scene. It read: 'We would like to thank all the emergency services and others who helped our daughter by giving first aid at the scene. 'We are also grateful for the continued support of the hospital where she is being treated. The incident has ruined our lives and the lives of our two children.' Victoria was playing with her 14-year-old sister Kristina when she was attacked. Witnesses said the dog jumped the fence of the play area and charged at the toddler as several other children attempted to pull the animal away. A man, a woman and a teenage girl were arrested under the Dangerous Dogs Act. One was bailed and the others were released pending further inquiries, Kent Police confirmed earlier this week. A witness told MailOnline: 'The dog ran into the park and attacked the girl under the slide. It was going for her head all the time, grabbed her and threw her up two or three times like she was a toy. It was brutal.' One-year-old Victoria Resetnjova (pictured with mother Valentina, left) was bitten in the face and thrown in the air 'like a toy'. Kent Police confirmed three people - a man, a woman and a teenage girl - were arrested under the Dangerous Dogs Act. Michael Thornton (pictured, right), 26, has been named locally as the man being questioned by detectives Michael Thornton, 26, has been named locally as the man being questioned by detectives. A relative of Mr Thornton's told the Mirror: 'My heart goes out to that family and the little baby. I wouldn't be able to live if my dog's done something to anybody - no matter how old. I haven't spoken to him, I can't even go and see him.' A brave woman who tried to save her life today described how she heard Victoria's blood-curdling scream from her flat. The woman, who did not want to be named, said that she watched as the dog which was on a lead kept its grip on the tot's head and 'refused to let go'. A teenage girl was holding the lead and hitting the animal with a stick to force it to release the child, she says. The woman then rushed to the park in Jenkins Dale, Chatham, with a first aid kit then held the girl, believed to be aged 18 months, in her arms. Crime scene: This is the playground slide where the toddler was playing when she was mauled and scalped by the dog in front of at least six other terrified children (pictured on Thursday) She said: 'The dog was covered in the little girl's blood. It had bitten the middle of her head off. It was completely missing and I was holding her head together. 'When I got down there one of the girls was pulling the baby's legs but the dog wouldn't let go of her head. 'The three teenage girls were all crying and the dog was on the lead the whole time. 'When they eventually got the dog off I tried to bandage the little girl up and called up for neighbours to bring down some towels and we bundled her up. 'When the paramedics came I held the baby's hand until her parents arrived. 'It was awful and something that will stay with me for a long time.' The horrifying attack on Tuesday left the tot fighting for her life but police confirmed today/yesterday (Thurs) that she remains in hospital with serious injuries. Neighbour Alisha Robinson described the chaotic aftermath of the attack. She said: 'They said we need lots of towels because she is losing a lot of blood. They were trying to keep her alive. 'You couldn't see her face, she was covered in blood. Then her mum came up screaming, that did it for me, I wanted to cry. People were throwing blankets from the balcony above because she was cold.' Mother-of-five Katy Ayres claimed the same dog had 'pinned down' her son Charlie 24 hours before and said: 'It scratched his leg - but the little girl, it ripped holes in her head'. Tragedy: The dog began biting her head and face. Signs show that dogs are banned from the area - but witnesses said it had been there for much of the day Upset: Mother-of-five Katy Ayres (pictured left) believes the same dog had attacked her son Charlie on Monday, and suffered a scratch on his leg (right) The victim's terrified mother, who was reportedly at work and left her children with a childminder, ran over screaming as people gave first aid and wrapped her in a blanket to 'keep her alive'. Describing the attack one witness said: 'The baby's head was being shaken in the dog's mouth and it was covered in blood. It was absolutely horrific and there were about six children aged eight to twelve covered in blood who witnessed it all.' A family friend told MailOnline: 'It was just a complete mess - a brutal mess. Everyone was screaming'. Another said the child was thrown around like a toy, adding: 'Police did the right thing. Round here they call them trophy dogs - once they get the taste for blood they won't stop'. Armed police called to the scene yelled at crowds to 'stand back' before they 'shot it twice', one witness said, and the dead pitbull-type dog, described as 'crazy and very strong', was photographed being covered with a blanket. Ms Ayres believes the same dog had attacked her son Charlie on Monday. She said: 'He pinned him down. I grabbed my son to protect him and the dog jumped up. It scratched his leg and he has bruises. 'The police came and took pictures of the scratch. It happened all so fast. I said that day to my brother that dog will end up hurting someone, and it happened. She added: 'I'm lost for words . I hope that little girl is going to be OK. It could have been my son. I'm in shock really. I said to my brother I bet it goes for someone. And I bet it's a child'. Rescue: The child was rescued by up to six other children and then flown by air ambulance to a London hospital Describing the attack on the toddler yesterday she said: 'I heard screaming. I saw the girl carrying the little girl from that end of the park and I see all blood running down her head'. James Hamilton, who lives in a flat overlooking the play area said the dog was in the park for most of the day on Tuesday. Mr Hamilton saw the toddler bitten by the dog several times and spoke to her parents afterwards and believes they may be Polish. Shut down: This is the flat believed to belong to the couple who have been arrested since the dog attack He said: 'I saw the dog with the child in its mouth. My partner had seen the dog pick up the girl and drop her twice. I saw it do it another time. It was shaking her around. 'The little girl was lying there. She was conscious and her eyes were rolling back. I think she was in shock. 'She had an eye wound - looked like an open gash. And an injury to the back of her head which was bleeding. She was awake.' 'She was so tiny. We were only in the park five minutes before with our little girls. I was in tears myself. I hope I never see that again.' Neighbours say that the dog may have lived in this flat overlooking the playground and the owners may have only just got it Some witnesses said the dog had been on this grass area without a lead for much of yesterday before the mauling took place Operation: Officers in Chatham were called to reports that the toddler, who is believed to be about 18 months old, had been bitten and was severely injured just before 5.30pm. She was treated by these flats were residents rushed to help Investigation: Police sealed off the area last night and arrested two people, who remain in custody today Mr Hamilton said police arrived at the scene but the dog kept getting loose. He added: 'A lad was holding the dog on a lead by now. It was just standing there. The police came and I told them it needed to be put down. They said it will be done. It kept getting loose from it's collar and then they shot it.' Neighbours said they heard a gun fired and saw a child covered with a blanket being carried to an ambulance. Jaspreet Uppal said: 'First I heard a gunshot, there was a dog on the floor. A few officers carried out a child from the back area of the flats. 'There is a little park there. I could not see the child, they were covered. I think they were quite small.' Another neighbour added: 'I saw the aftermath, the emergency services do a excellent job it's times likes these we should be so grateful they act so quickly.' Detectives were pictured filling evidence bags in a small park behind a block of flats in the hours after the attack - the dog is believed to have leapt over this fence The injured child was airlifted to a London hospital in a critical condition after being attacked in the Jenkins' Dale are of Chatham, Kent, last night The young girl is being treated in hospital for 'serious injuries' and the three suspects have been released on bail, Kent Police said today. A spokesman for the force added: ''The South East Coast Ambulance Service and the Kent, Surrey and Sussex Air Ambulance Service also attended and the injured child, of toddler age, was taken to a London hospital in a critical condition. 'The child continues to be treated for very serious injuries, but these are no longer described as life threatening. 'Following the incident, police, including firearms officers, attended the scene and to ensure public safety the dog was shot dead. 'A man and a teenager, both from Chatham, were arrested on the evening of 4 April on suspicion of offences under the Dangerous Dogs Act. 'On the evening of 5 April, the man was bailed pending further enquiries, until Wednesday 26 April 2017. The teenager was released, pending further enquiries. 'On Wednesday 5 April, a woman from Chatham was also arrested in connection with the incident and she has also been released, pending further enquiries. 'Enquiries are ongoing to establish the breed of the dog which will include a necropsy (post mortem) and an expert's view.' The attack comes just days after armed police were forced to shoot dead a pack of dogs that went on a rampage in Manchester. Detectives cordoned off a small park and children's play area (left and right) on the estate. A neighbour said: 'A few officers carried out a child from the back area of the flats' Three people were arrested in connection with the attack and remain in police custody pending further enquiries Advertisement Victor Alfred Lundy was just 21 when he began sketching everyday life using a humble lead pencil and pocket-sized book. But the New York-born student's artistic promise was abruptly cut short when he was enrolled into the military in Second World War. Instead of abandoning his creative side, the talented young soldier decided to sketch his experiences on the battlefield between May and November 1944. Recording everything from fallen soldiers on the front line to his comrades playing games or lying in hammocks, his poignant etches depict the achingly humane aspects of one of the bloodiest wars in history. Lundy, now a celebrated 94-year-old architect, has donated his eight precious sketchbooks, unveiling an amazing testimony of what a soldier's life was truly like during the Second World War. Architecture student Victor Alfred Lundy (left) was enlisted into the army aged 21. He continued to sketch his experiences on the World War Two battlefield between May and November 1944 One sketch expose the brutal realities of war by capturing a comrade lying dead in the grass. Breaking away from the black and white palette of his other sketches, Lundy used a smear of red to indicate the man's bloody head wound His illustrations were all done on pocketbooks that were 3 x 5 inches and Lundy used black Hardtmuth lead drawing pencils Many of his sketches are underpinned by a theme of wistful longing, captured particularly in one illustration entitled 'Home Sweet Home' - which depicts a soldier lounging in a hammock gazing up to the sky at Fort Jackson, South Carolina With planes flying overhead, this illustration shows an air raid over Germany seen on a morning hike Lundy was studying to be an architect in New York City aged 19 when he enlisted in the Army Special Training Program in 1942. Lundy recalled his inability to concentrate during lectures, admitting 'never listened, I was busy sketching.' But he was later drawn in and 'sort of took to it. War experience just hypnotizes young men'. By 1944, with the looming threat of D-Day, he was thrown into the infantry and serves in the 26th Infantry Division until he was wounded later that year. Recording everything from front line danger (right) to portraits of his battle-weary peers (left), poignant etches depict the achingly humane aspects of one of the bloodiest wars in history A quaint church with a washing line strewn with clothes around it stands undisturbed by the carnage of war in Crasville in Normandy, north west France Some scenes were more serene, like these ones depicting soldiers lying on their beds in between warfare Lundy, now a noted 94-year-old architect, has donated his eight precious sketchbooks, unveiling an amazing testimony of what a soldier's life was truly like during the Second World War Many of his sketches are underpinned by a theme of wistful longing, captured particularly in one illustration entitled 'Home Sweet Home' - which depicts a soldier lounging in a hammock gazing up to the sky. Others expose the brutal realities of war - with one etch capturing a German lying dead in the grass who was one of four patrolmen who 'didn't get back'. Breaking away from the black and white palette of his other sketches, Lundy used a smear of red to indicate the man's bloody head wound. His illustrations were all done on pocketbooks that were 3 x 5 inches and Lundy used black Hardtmuth lead drawing pencils. Off-duty soldiers lounge around shooting craps to get cigarettes before pay day A soldier's helmet laid on the ground (left) signifies Lundy's fellow soldier, a man called Bill Shepard. His friend 'Shep' sits cross-legged as he stands guard in South Carolina (right) Lundy found the time to seek out the beauty amid the carnage of the Second World War, stopping to sketch a half-built house with an exposed roof One cluttered sketch shows Lundy's 'view from my bunk'. Lundy admitted he sketched quickly and found that drawing was 'synonymous with thinking' Lundy admitted he sketched quickly. 'For me, drawing is sort of synonymous with thinking,' he explained. After the war, he completed his architecture degree at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. In 1954, Lundy opened an architectural firm in Sarasota, Florida, and was named a Fellow by the American Institute of Architects in 1967. The war veteran moved to Houston, Texas, in the 1970s and went on to design prolific buildings like the US Tax Court, the US Embassy in Sri Lanka and the Sarasota Chamber of Commerce. One drawing captured the Bourg de Lestre, a church and First World War monument In Lestre, Manche, while another shows soldiers exclaiming as they look through binoculars After the war, he completed his architecture degree at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design In 1954, Lundy opened an architectural firm in Sarasota, Florida, and was named a Fellow by the American Institute of Architects in 1967 Obsessed collector, Philip Cullen, 57, of Bristol, who captured and killed specimens of Britain's rarest butterfly, the Large Blue, has been spared jail A former bodybuilder obsessed collector who captured and killed specimens of Britain's rarest butterfly, the Large Blue, has been spared jail. Philip Cullen, 57, was given a six-month prison sentence suspended for two years and ordered to carry out 250 hours of unpaid work for capturing the globally endangered butterflies at two protected sites. He was also given a five-year criminal behaviour order banning him from three nature reserves popular with the Large Blue (Maculinea arion). Bristol Magistrates' Court heard that Cullen scrambled over locked gates and was seen swiping a child's net at a Large Blue before leaving the Daneway Banks in Gloucestershire with a plastic bag containing glass jars. The following day, volunteers at the Collard Hill site in Somerset challenged Cullen after seeing him with the small net. Police later raided his home in Bristol and found a large number of dead and mounted butterflies, including Large Blues. Unemployed Cullen had labelled two of the butterflies, which he claimed were from France, 'DB' and 'CH', the initials of the two sites where he had been seen. Prosecutor Ian Jackson told the court: 'These charges are not brought on the grounds of cruelty, they are brought on the grounds of endangering a species. Bristol Magistrates' Court heard that Cullen scrambled over locked gates and was seen swiping a child's net at a Large Blue before leaving the Daneway Banks in Gloucestershire with a plastic bag containing glass jars 'A rare and beautiful butterfly that has once been found extinct and is struggling to establish a foothold.' Following a trial last month, magistrates convicted Cullen of six charges against him, relating to him killing, capturing and possessing the Large Blue butterflies. Cullen, of The Grove, Warmley, Bristol, had previously admitted two other charges of possessing other protected species of butterfly. Michael Hartnell, defending, said: 'He accepts the enormity of what he has done. He only had one from each site but he accepts that if everybody did that they would die out. 'He is extremely remorseful. His interest in the countryside and wildlife is one he has had for a long, long time.' Mr Hartnell said Cullen suffered with problems with his mental health and had lost more than three stone in weight over the last 12 months due to the 'strain' of the court case and was relying on food banks. He said he also regularly helps his elderly parents and fears he will soon become a full-time carer for them. Susan Helfer, chair of the bench, told Cullen: 'We have decided these offences are so serious that they cross the custody threshold. 'These offences were deliberate and pre-planned and were committed in the knowledge that you were capturing and killing an endangered species and the risk of that butterfly becoming extinct in this country.' He was also told to pay 300 prosecution costs and an 80 victim surcharge. The globally endangered species has always been rare in Britain but became extinct in the wild in 1979 and we reintroduced to Collard Hill and Daneway Banks, in the 1980s - two locations where Cullen struck Mark Greaves, a volunteer for Butterfly Conservation, previously told a court he saw Cullen and another man at Daneway Banks on June 18 2015. He said Large Blue numbers began to decline from the 1800s but a reintroduction plan was started after the butterfly became extinct in the UK. Mr Greaves said there is a secondary market for Large Blue butterflies mocked up to look like 'old Victorian species'. Cullen was observed at Collard Hill and the National Wildlife Council received information that a number of protected butterflies had been bought on Ebay. The profile which was under Biker205, was traced back to Cullen and a data protection application was made asking for details of the seller and their trading history. Police raided his home in Cadbury Heath, near Bristol, and found dead, mounted butterflies in about 30 trays, including two large blues labelled CH 18 and DB 18. Julie Williams, chief executive of the charity, said: 'Butterfly Conservation is utterly opposed to the illegal killing and capturing of butterflies and moths. As a result of Mr Cullen's actions, the Butterfly Conservation Board of Trustees moved swiftly to revoke his membership of the charity.' The prosecution said the letters stood for Collard Hill in Somerset and Daneway Banks in Gloucestershire, the two places where Cullen had been seen. In a statement read out, Professor Jeremy Thomas OBE said the reintroduction of the Large Blue bears 'global importance'. He said: 'The Large Blue is the only UK butterfly species that's sufficiently threatened worldwide. 'Because of little migration between sites, colonies depleted by collectors are unlikely to be replenished naturally.' The two display cases of butterflies seized from Cullen's home were ordered to be forfeited and will be given to a museum. The butterflies, which were reintroduced to the UK after becoming extinct in the 1970s, are protected under the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2010. Large Blues became extinct in about 1979 and were reintroduced, including to Collard Hill and Daneway Banks, in the 1980s. The butterflies, which were reintroduced to the UK after becoming extinct in the 1970s, are protected under the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2010 It 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 at nine sites in the country, following a major conservation programme. Following his convictions, Cullen's membership of Butterfly Conservation was revoked. Julie Williams, chief executive of the charity, said: 'Butterfly Conservation is utterly opposed to the illegal killing and capturing of butterflies and moths. 'As a result of Mr Cullen's actions, the Butterfly Conservation Board of Trustees moved swiftly to revoke his membership of the charity.' Syria has claimed it knew America was about to launch airstrikes hours before the attack on its airbase - and was able to move its planes out of the way. The US military fired more than 50 tomahawk missiles at the al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs at 1.40am today. Russia was informed of the airstrike about 30 minutes in advance, according to Moscow's ambassador to the UN. Now a Syrian military source has claimed that it had already 'learned of the American threat' and that precautions were taken 'in more than one military point'. The source did not say how they knew or who had informed them. 'We learned of the American threat and the expected military bombardment on Syrian territory,' a source told AFP. The Russian military, which has a fleet of around eight Mi-28N Night Hunter and Ka-52 Alligator gunships stationed at the base, received a 'deconfliction' notice The US military fired more than 50 tomahawk missiles at the al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs at 8.45pm on Thursday 'We took precautions in more than one military point, including in the Shayrat airbase. We moved a number of airplanes towards other areas,' the official said, adding they were forewarned 'hours' before the strike. He did not specify where the planes had been moved to or who had warned the Syrian government. The Russian military, which has ground troops in Syria as well as a fleet of around eight Mi-28N Night Hunter and Ka-52 Alligator gunships stationed at the base, received a 'deconfliction' notice, according to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. But no direct contact was made between the Trump administration and Russian President Vladimir Putin, with Tillerson emphasizing that they did not seek approval from Moscow. The Kremlin said Putin regretted harm done to the Russia-US relationship after the strikes. The US used a special military-to-military hotline to alert Russia about the strikes. It is likely Russia then told the Syrians about the incoming missiles but this has not been confirmed. Tillerson also delivered some harsh words on Thursday and said Russia was either 'complicit' in the sarin attack on Tuesday that killed more than 80 people or 'simply incompetent' in getting Syria to fall in line. Tillerson cited a 2013 UN security council resolution calling the Syrian government to surrender chemical weapons under the supervision of the Russian government. US military action puts the new president at odds with Russia, which has air and ground forces in Syria after intervening in support of Assad in 2015 and turning the tide against mostly Sunni Muslim rebel groups. Russia's deputy UN envoy, Vladimir Safronkov warned of the 'negative consequences' of the US airstrike President Donald Trump delivered a statement from his Mar-a-Lago resort, saying he was moved to launch an airstrike after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's chemical weapons attack Speaking about 30 minutes after the strikes were announced, Russia's deputy UN envoy, Vladimir Safronkov, said: 'We are receiving direct signals on this theme that such a military operation is being prepared.' He warned of 'negative consequences' if the United States went ahead with military action and said the blame would be 'on shoulders of those who initiated such doubtful and tragic enterprise.' Viktor Ozerov, head of the defense committee in the Russian Federation Council, suggested the airstrikes would put an additional strain on the relationship between the US and Moscow. He told state news agency RIA that cooperation between the Russian and US military branches may be shut down after the strike. He also added: 'US strikes on [the] Syrian aviation base may undermine the efforts in the fight against terrorism in Syria. 'Russia will demand an urgent UN Security Council meeting after the US airstrike on Syrian aviation base. This is an act of aggression against a UN member.' Tillerson said the US had not communicated with the Russian government about the airstrike, although 'the response from our allies, as well as the region and the Middle East has been overwhelmingly supportive'. Tillerson added: 'My expectation is that all of those parties with the exception of Bashar al-Assad and perhaps Russia, I think are going to applaud this particular action.' Trump has until now focused on defeating Islamic State militants in northern Syria, where US special forces are supporting Arab and Kurdish armed groups. And just one week ago, Tillerson said the 'longer-term status of President Assad will be decided by the Syrian people'. Nikki Haley, the US Ambassador to the UN, echoed the sentiment, saying it was no longer a priority for the US to focus on removing Assad from power. After the chemical attack, both Haley and Tillerson made a sharp u-turn on their statements. Haley held up graphic photographs earlier this week and told the security council: 'Yesterday morning we awoke to pictures [of] children foaming at the mouth, suffering convulsions, being carried in the arms of desperate parents.... 'How many children have to die before Russia cares?' Haley asked. She slammed Russia's support of Assad and suggested the US would take action if the UN didn't step up to the plate. Instead of leaving the Syrian people to determine Assad's fate as he had previously suggested, Tillerson said Thursday: 'With the acts that he has taken, it would seem that there would be no role for him to govern the Syrian people.' US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley departs a U.N. Security Council consultation regarding th An aggressive Uber passenger who threatened to call the police and falsely accuse her driver of rape - because he did not have a charger for her phone - has been banned from the service. In shocking dashcam video of the altercation, the woman can be heard shouting from the back seat: 'I'm going to start screaming out the window that you're raping me, that you raped me. 'I will punch myself in the face and tell the cops you did it. You wanna play?' An Uber spokesman told MailOnline: 'The behaviour in this video is abusive and completely unacceptable. 'As our Community Guidelines make clear, this will not be tolerated by anyone who uses Uber. The riders account has been banned and Uber is looking into this incident.' The clip was recorded in the Bronx in New York, US. It has provoked a furious backlash against the woman, pictured, online with commenters branding her 'stupid' while praising the 'patient' driver The row is said to have started because the woman's phone had run out of battery and the driver, pictured left, did not have a charger for her to use The aggressive passenger has been banned from Uber for life, it has been reported. The clip - recorded in the Bronx in New York, US - has provoked a furious backlash against the woman online with commenters branding her 'stupid' while praising the 'patient' driver. At one point she screams at the man to 'go back to your country' as she fumes: 'Donald Trump is going to send you and your family back. Get the f*** out of my country.' The row is said to have started because the woman's phone had run out of battery and the driver did not have a charger for her to use. He calmly explains to the woman: 'If I don't have a charger, politely ask me. I'll politely tell you, "I'm sorry I don't have a charger,".' But she continues yelling at him to 'call the cops' while threatening to spit in his face and 'violate' him. The woman, who has not yet been identified, says in the clip: 'I will punch myself in the face and tell the cops you did it. The driver, pictured, repeatedly asks her to leave the car as she screams racial slurs in his direction The woman, pictured, says in the video: 'You're going to jail for domestic violence' 'You're going to jail. You wanna play yourself? I'll call the cops right nowI'm going to tell them you're holding me against my will. 'You're going to jail for domestic violence.' The driver, who says he has been with Uber for more than two years, repeatedly asks her to leave the car as she screams racial slurs in his direction and orders him to call her boyfriend using his own phone. Eventually after eight minutes the woman gets out of the car - but not before shouting out the window in English and Spanish asking passersby to call the police. The upset driver can then be heard in the video furiously ranting about the incident. In shocking dashcam video of the altercation, the woman can be heard shouting from the back seat: 'I'm going to start screaming out the window that you're raping me, that you raped me' Eventually after eight minutes the woman gets out of the car - but not before shouting asking passersby to call the police He says: 'This is how Uber drivers go through every f****** day, man. People would disrespect us, talk s*** to us like it's nothing, man.' It comes amid controversy over the car service's background checking policy - with several of the firm's drivers being accused or convicted of crimes including rape. Uber, and its rival Lyft, both take precautions to screen their drivers and promote safety but their drivers are not vetted in the same way as licensed cab drivers. In the US state of Massachusetts both companies have been ordered to complete tens of thousands of background checks. The vetting is designed in part to make sure a driver isn't a registered sex offender. Some ride-hailing drivers have been charged with rape, sexual assault and assault with intent to murder in Massachusetts. Under a deal struck with the San Francisco-based companies, Uber and Lyft agreed to perform multi-state criminal and driving background checks for all drivers operating in Massachusetts. The companies also agreed to check drivers against the Department of Justice's National Sex Offender Public Website. The deal called on Massachusetts to conduct its own background checks, as well, running names through the state's criminal and sex offender registries and warrant management system. Free: Father John Reid avoided jail after admitting to fraud by abuse of his position but agreed to paid 50,000 back to St Cuthbert's Church in Chester-le-Street, County Durham A Roman Catholic priest who stole 50,000 from his parish after falling in love with his housekeeper and lavishing gifts on her family has been spared jail. Father John Reid quadrupled spending when he took charge of St Cuthbert's Church in Chester-le-Street, County Durham and started stealing money donated from kind-hearted church goers. The portly, white-haired 70-year-old priest but spent 1,200 on a canteen of William Turner cutlery, was a member of the Sunday Times Wine Club and spent 80 on oysters and smoked salmon while holidaying in Scotland. But he avoided prison after a hearing at Durham Crown Court after agreeing to pay back 50,000 within three months. He was handed an 18-month suspended sentence at Durham Crown Court after he admitted fraud by abuse of position at a previous hearing. Judge Prince said his behaviour had been 'out of character'. The court heard that Fr Reid told police he had fallen in love with his housekeeper, Gillian Leddy, 55, and saw her daughters, Veronica, 30, and Alice, 28, as 'the family that he never had'. The court heard how he bought the daughters two properties each as well as a car and funded two businesses. Jane Waugh, prosecuting, said concerns were raised by parishioners in January 2013 about how finances were being handled. The priest, now living in Stockton, had joined the parish in 2009 and accounts showed spending increased fourfold in some aspects, and doubled overall after he took over. Big spender: Father Reid was supposed to live a simple life, but spent 1,200 on high-end cutlery from William Turner cutlery and once blew 80 on oysters and smoked salmon 'In particular, there had been dramatic increases within the categories of general administration, housekeeping and hospitality,' said Ms Waugh. 'This would appear to be because Gillian, Alice and Veronica Leddy, who are mother and daughters and close friends of the defendant from his previous parish at Willington, were effectively living at the presbytery and the defendant's expenditure increased to reflect the fact that he was helping to support them financially. 'This additional expenditure was claimed back from the Church, in expenses, by the defendant.' When the priest was replaced temporarily, his successor said the presbytery was 'in a terrible condition'. Ms Waugh said: 'It was dirty and untidy with large quantities of alcohol present. During the inquiry, it emerged that the priest bought two homes each for his lover's daughters Veronica and Alice, a car each and financed a cafe business for them '(His replacement) describes the presbytery as looking more like a family home than a presbytery. 'There was female clothing in the bedrooms and it was apparent that females had been staying there.' Passports belonging to the Leddys were found alongside his in the safe. The priest appointed Veronica Leddy as co-signatory of the parish chequebook and he began running the church without a finance committee of parishioners. The court was told that led to a split in the church, with some backing the priest and others angry at how he was running affairs. Ms Waugh said: 'The witness Nora McKie, a lifetime parishioner, stated that the defendant had a lifestyle not typical of any priest she had known, and that the reason she took action to highlight these serious concerns was to protect those people, who with total trust were giving money to the Church.' Parishioners became concerned about the priest asking for blank cheques to be signed off, with Fr Reid handing over 'bags of receipts' without adequate information about what they referred to. An investigation involving the Bishop of Newcastle was launched and auditors were brought in, highlighting serious concerns. Fr Reid accepted taking the Leddys out to eat 'a few times a week'. Over the four years he was at St Cuthbert's, his basic remuneration should have totalled 31,455. But he disbursed to himself more than 113,000 from parish cheques. He wrote more than 150 cheques to himself, most of which were co-signed by Veronica Leddy. The court heard that he made claims to pay his credit card bills. Following the findings by the auditors, a serious incident report was made to the Charity Commission by the diocese, and the matter referred to the police for a full investigation. After he was removed from the post, sterling and euros totalling 2,349 were found in the safe. Fr Reid said this was 'his holiday money'. Ms Waugh said when he was arrested 'it appeared that the defendant was virtually living as a family with Gillian Leddy and her daughters, Veronica and Alice'. Father John Reid, 70, from Stockton, pleaded guilty to abusing his position after he allegedly took the money from parishioners meant for charitable purposes and the upkeep of St Cuthbert's Church During the inquiry, it emerged that the priest gave property and money to the Leddys on a 'large scale', buying two homes each for Veronica and Alice, a car each and financed a cafe business for them. He also gave them both substantial amounts of cash. But Ms Waugh said the money for these gifts came from an inheritance of the priest, not the result of fraud. In an interview, he said: 'The parish keeps me' and 'Ultimately, I'm in charge of it, so I can spend it.' Christopher Knox, defending, spoke of 15 character references and said the priest expressed 'great distress, regret and apology'. Judge Prince expressed a hope that the fracture within the parish between those who supported the priest and those who did not would soon mend. He was persuaded to suspend the sentence because of his good character. He also accepted that the priest was not fully equipped to deal with the modern priesthood, having heard he was bad at paperwork. 'You have lived an exemplary life dedicated to the service of others,' he said. He described the 'aberration' as one that 'persisted for over 40 months'. And he said: 'Your behaviour was wholly out of character. 'What led you astray so late in life must remain a matter of mere conjecture. 'Whilst of course the court and parishioners must deprecate your dishonesty, it does not otherwise detract from your creditable record in other fields.' He suspended the jail term for two years, with no other conditions. Advertisement President Donald Trump was briefed by his national security team Thursday on the strike in Syria at a secure location in Mar-a-Lago, the White House revealed in a picture on Friday. Press Secretary Sean Spicer shared a photo on Twitter of Trump positioned at a table, and surrounded by advisers and cabinet members in the improvised situation room. A sign on the door says 'quiet area' and the team sat on the same chairs found at the resort's dining areas. They included Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnunchin, National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, economic adviser Gary Cohn and chief of staff Reince Priebus. Chief strategist Steve Bannon and senior adviser Jared Kushner were also in the room as Trump received his briefing. The photograph was taken at 9.15pm eastern time, roughly 45 minutes after the missiles landed. The strikes were announced at 9.20pm. Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Marine General Joseph Dunford joined remotely, Spicer said. Trump is currently at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, where he entertained Chinese President Xi Jinping and his delegation. He attended meetings today with Xi today as they concluded their summit. 'We have made tremendous progress in our relationship with China,' Trump told reporters just before 11:30 am in his first appearance of the day. His administration announced late on Friday afternoon, after Xi had left, that it would be slapping Syria with new sanctions for its crimes against humanity. SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO Inside the Mar-a-Lago war room: President Trump is briefed on a video link with his advisers and cabinet members around him. They are clockwise around the table: Joe Hagin, White House deputy chief of staff for operations; Jared Kushner, adviser to the president; Steven Mnuchin, Treasury Secretary; Wilbur Ross, Commerce Secretary; Sean Spicer, Press Secretary; Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State; General H.R. McMaster, National Security Advisor; Reince Priebus, White House chief of staff. Seated on the right are from front: Gary Cohn, Director fo the National Economic Council; Dina Powell, Deputy National Security Advisor; Michael Anton, National Security Council spokesman; Stephen Miller, senior adviser; Steve Bannon, chief strategist Obvious comparison: This was the image which became world famous of President Obama receiving an update on the mission to kill Osama bin Laden USS Ross: This is the moment one of America's destroyers fired one of 59 Tomahawk missiles into Syria from the Mediterranean Target: In the early hours of this morning the strikes were launched from two US destroyers in the Mediterranean and have killed at least five and destroyed at least nine Syrian jets, a fuel store and badly damaged the runway at al-Shayrat airbase USS Porter: This destroyer is part of a US large fleet surrounding Syria and Iraq in the Mediterranean, Red Sea and Persian Gulf used to bombard Bashar al-Assad for the first time Smoke could be seen rising from the Homs airbase targeted by US missile strikes. The military action has already sparked a furious response from President Vladimir Putin, who this morning called the airstrikes an 'illegal act of aggression' Destruction: This is the remains of one of the hangars obliterated by US missiles fired from destroyers on Thursday night First picture: These damaged hangars, blackened by smoke, are at the entrance to the Syrian airfield bombarded by the US Footage showing burnt out shelters and hangars and a damaged runway was cheered by tearful Syrians hoping that Trump's intervention would lead to Assad being overthrown Pictures appeared to show damage to the Syrian airbase runway caused by a barrage of some 59 Tomahawk missiles on Thursday night - early Friday morning Syrian time TRUMP'S SPEECH IN FULL My fellow Americans. On Tuesday, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad launched a horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians. Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror. Tonight I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched. It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention and ignored the urging of the UN Security Council. Years of previous attempts at changing Assad's behaviour have all failed and failed very dramatically. As a result, the refugee crisis continues to deepen and the region continues to destabilize, threatening the United States and its allies. Tonight I call on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria, and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types. We ask for God's wisdom as we face the challenge of our very troubled world. We pray for the lives of the wounded and for the souls of those who have passed. And we hope that as long as America stands for justice, then peace and harmony will, in the end, prevail. Goodnight. And God bless America and the entire world. Thank you. Advertisement White House officials did not say who photographed Trump on Thursday evening, only that it was taken inside a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF, at Mar-a-Lago, at approximately 9:15pm on Thursday. Spicer's tweet said Trump was receiving a 'briefing on #syria military strike fr Nat Security team, inc @vp , SECDEF, CJCS via secure VTC' at the time. Secure VTC refers to an encryption service that allows the president to securely engage in classified communications on video. VTC stands for video tele-conferencing. The photo was edited, the White House says, to mask sensitive documents. The image is unprecedented in showing the video conference technology used inside a SCIF, a secure compartmentalized information facility. Until now images have only existed of phones being used inside the secure facilities. The devices around the outside of the table appear to be speaker phones. Those in the center are likely to be used to encrypt the voice communications. Trump unleashed his Tomahawk barrage on one of Bashar al-Assad's key bases from the sea to avoid upsetting allies and using the huge US military arsenal built up off the coast of Syria. The US President on Thursday night fired 59 missiles at al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs in retaliation for the Syrian leader's horrific chemical weapons attack on Idlib. They were launched from his state of the art destroyers USS Ross and USS Porter which can fire dozens of Tomahawks with pinpoint accuracy from up to 1,500 miles away from their targets. The destroyers' locations are always kept secret , but they are believed to have been off the coast of Turkey or Cyprus, an estimated 150 to 200 miles away from al-Shayrat - and fired 30 minutes after they warned the Russians to leave the base and surrounding area. The laser-guided Tomahawk is the US military's most advanced missile carrying a 1,000lb bomb powerful enough to destroy most targets with enough accuracy to avoid hitting any Russians and sparking war between the two superpowers. In response Moscow has already pledged to strengthen Assad's air defenses, will stop sharing intelligence with Washington and has diverted its main Black Sea fleet warship The Admiral Grigorovich to the Syrian port of Tartus. It is currently in the Bosphorus and will enter the Mediterranean later today. Trump's briefing came a half hour before he addressed the United States - and the world - from Mar-a-Lago and two hours after the missiles were launched. He said Assad 'choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children' and that 'even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered'. 'Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children,' he said. 'It was a slow and brutal death for so many. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. 'No child of God should ever suffer such horror.' He added: 'Tonight I call on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria, and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types.' Prior to the speech, Trump had entertained his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, and their wives at a formal dinner. Trump received an update this morning, his spokesman said, and was due for another once China's president, Jinping Xi departed Mar-a-Lago this afternoon Less than two hours after the dinner began, the US military fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at the Assad controlled al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs at 7:40pm EDT. The bombs began hitting their targets at 8:30 pm, killing at least five and injuring many more. The Pentagon released dramatic footage of one of its missile launches from USS Ross, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, targeting the Syrian base. Trump was first briefed on Assad's poison-gas attack at his daily intelligence briefing on Tuesday morning, the White House says. He asked then for more information that he then received at an 8pm meeting on Tuesday night. Wednesday morning Trump was briefed again. He met with his national security team once more on Wednesday afternoon, after he declared at a Rose Garden press conference that his position on Assad was changing. As he flew to Florida on Air Force One Thursday afternoon, he heard from his team again, at 1:30 pm EDT. After that briefing Trump came to the press cabin and told reporters that 'something should happen' to Assad after what he did. The president's plane landed in Palm Beach just before 3pm. At 4pm, he OK'd a strike on Assad's army, the White House said. Bombs were set off during the dinner with Xi and started exploding as the affair was wrapping up. 'He had a very deliberative process of asking his national security team to develop options,' Spicer told reporters Friday. 'Those options usually start with zero and go all the way to 100. And so there was a level of assessment, further probing and questions that the President had, and then, ultimately, after days of refinement, a decision was made.' Action was swift but the decision was not immediate. 'It evolved over time,' Spicer said. 'It was through a series of updates, questions, and further information.' Trump received another update this morning, his spokesman said, and was due to get briefed again after Xi departed. Back in Washington, the vice president was doing Trump's bidding on Capitol Hill, where a debate had erupted over whether the new president had the authority to take the military action that was not authorized by Congress. Pence, a former congressman, has largely served as a tether between the White House and the Republicans with offices in the Capitol, and the responsibility fell on him Thursday to inform legislators about the bombs. Their phones began to ring as the missiles came crashing down. Foreign leaders were alerted by the secretaries of state and defense and Trump's National Security advisor at same time. The strikes have so far won broad international support from American allies. Israel's prime minister welcomed the US attack saying he 'fully supports' President Trump's decision. The country has a land border with Syria. Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday that 'in both word and action' Trump 'sent a strong and clear message' that 'the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated.' Britain has also backed the US missile strike, describing it as an 'appropriate response', as the government offered its support to Trump's targeted assault, as well. A spokeswoman for Prime Minister Theresa May said: 'The UK Government fully supports the US action, which we believe was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, and is intended to deter further attacks.' German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande said Syrian president Assad bore 'sole responsibility' for the US strike on a regime airbase. Less than two hours after his dinner with Xi began on Thursday evening, the US military fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at the Assad controlled al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs, The bombs began hitting their targets at 8:30 pm, killing at least five and injuring many more In a joint statement on Friday, they said: 'After the chemical weapons massacre of April 4 on Khan Sheikhun in northwestern Syria, a military installation of the Syrian regime was destroyed by a US air strike last night. President Assad bears sole responsibility for this development.' In Australia, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull agreed the strike was the correct response to the shocking war crime. 'The Australian Government strongly supports the swift and just response of the United States,' Turnbull said on Friday. 'This was a proportionate response by the United States. It is not designed to overthrow the Assad regime. 'But we are not at war with the Assad regime and United States have made it clear that they are not seeking to overthrow the Assad regime.' Bolivia's, on the other hand, accused the US of acting as the judge, jury and prosecutor in Syria. 'The United States not only unilaterally attacked, but while we were discussing here and demanding the need for an independent investigation an impartial investigation, complete investigation into the attacks, the United States has become to that investigator, has become the prosecutor, has become the judge, has become the jury,' UN Ambassador Sacha Sergio Llorenti Soliz said. Soliz held up a picture of George W. Bush's Secretary of State Colin Powell and reminded Security Council members on Friday of that administration's unfounded claims that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction. The reaction from Assad ally Russia has been furious. President Vladimir Putin diverted a warship to protect the Syrian coast and vowed to bolster the Syrian dictator's missile defenses against further US strikes as fears grew the crisis could topple into war between Russia and the West. The Russian president immediately sent his Admiral Grigorovich frigate - armed with cruise missiles and a self-defense system - from the Black Sea to dock in Syria later Friday. The US military fired more than 50 tomahawk missiles at the al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs on Thursday Aerial pictures show the airbase targeted in the strikes. Pentagon officials said that the airfield was being used to store chemical weapons and was a base for Syrian air forces About 60 of theses US Tomahawk missiles launched early Friday hit the Shayrat air base, southeast of the city of Homs, a small installation with two runways Syrian soldiers have returned to the airbase today - along with emergency services. At least six have died in the blasts Russian warship the Admiral Grigorovich (pictured on recent deployment) - armed with cruise missiles and a self-defense system - is docking in Syria today after it was immediately diverted from the Black Sea following Donald Trump's airstrike on al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs, which killed six and destroyed nine Syrian jets Route: It will pass through the east Mediterranean waters where the USS Ross and USS Porter fired the 59 Tomahawk missiles that pounded Assad's al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs in the early hours of Friday It will pass through the east Mediterranean waters where the USS Ross and USS Porter fired the 59 Tomahawk missiles that pounded Assad's al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs in the early hours of Friday. Putin on Friday morning denounced the strike as an 'act of aggression against a UN member' and suspended a deal to avoid mid-air clashes with American fighter jets over the war-torn country. The Kremlin's propaganda machine clicked into gear, claiming the strikes had 'extremely low' military effectiveness and that just 23 of 59 cruise missiles reached the air base, destroying six Syrian jets but leaving the runway intact. Trump's spokesman said Friday that all of the missiles hit their targets. Syrian Army officials called the US airstrike a act of 'blatant aggression', saying it had made America 'a partner' of ISIS, the ex-Nusra Front and other 'terrorist organisations'. The US used a special military-to-military hotline to warn Russia it was launching an airstrike on a Syrian air base about 30 minutes in advance. The Trump administration did not ask Moscow for permission. It informed them the strike per an existing de-conflict agreement. It is likely Russia alerted the Syrians about the incoming strikes, but this has not been confirmed. Viktor Ozerov, head of the defense committee in the Russian Federation Council, told state news agency RIA that the US strikes 'may undermine the efforts in the fight against terrorism in Syria.' 'Russia will demand an urgent UN Security Council meeting after the US airstrike on Syrian aviation base. This is an act of aggression against a UN member.' Russia's foreign minister says no Russian servicemen have been hurt in the bombing raid. Its security council said it regretted the 'harm' done to relations between Washington and Moscow. The reaction from Assad ally Russia has been furious. President Vladimir Putin (left) diverted a warship to protect the Syrian coast and vowed to bolster the Syrian dictator's missile defenses against further US strikes as fears grew the crisis could topple into war between Russia and the West US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had wagged the finger in Russia's face on Thursday night for its role in the chemical weapons attack. Russia had been tasked by the international community with overseeing the destruction of the weapons in 2013. 'Clearly, Russia has failed in its responsibility to deliver on that commitment from 2013. So either Russia has been complicit or Russia has been simply incompetent in its ability to deliver on its end of that agreement,' Tillerson said, unprompted. The American diplomat is supposed to meet with Putin in Russia next week for talks that were already expected to be tough. US Ambassador Nikki Haley warned Russia on Friday that the United States 'is prepared to do more' to keep Assad from massacring civilians as she responded to the country's complaints at the UN Security Council convergence. 'The joint investigative mechanism has found beyond any doubt that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons against its own people multiple times,' Haley said. 'Assad did this because he thought he could get away with it. He thought he could get away with it because he knew Russia had his back. That changed last night.' Russia 'bears considerable responsibility' for chemical weapons assault, she said, arguing that 'every time Assad has crossed the line of human decency, Russia has stood beside him.' Britain's ambassador to the UN was equally hard on the Kremlin, saying at Friday's meeting that 'Russia has given Assad everything he could dream of.' 'Without Russia's seven vetoes in the Security Council, defying the views of other members of this council, Assad would now have faced sanctions and justice,' UK Ambassador Matthew Rycroft said, according to CNN.'Russia sits here today humiliated by its failure to bring to heel a puppet dictator, entirely propped up by Russia itself and Hezbollah and Iran.' A Pentagon official told DailyMail.com that the president 'is dead-set against letting Assad labor under the illusion that the Syrian army can murder innocent people with impunity.' 'We've laid down a marker. No more chemical weapons attacks, period. There will be consequences. Our president is showing his American conscience, and if anyone provokes him they will regret it.' The official said the Trump administration hopes Assad 'will change his ways.' The longtime Pentagon veteran said he was in the chain of command that led to Thursday night's attacks, but couldn't predict what might come next. 'We've got a new president,' he said. 'And that means none of our adversaries knows how he will react to any given situation. That's a huge advantage that Assad may not have considered.' About 60 US Tomahawk missiles launched early Friday hit the Shayrat air base (file picture), southeast of the city of Homs, a small installation with two runways. The attack came in response for a chemical weapons attack on Tuesday in Syria A Russian television station showed what it said was the aftermath of the missile attack on the Syrian base this morning while a picture on social media claimed to be of part of a Tomahawk The Syrian Army described the attack as an act of 'blatant aggression', saying it had made the United States 'a partner' of ISIS, the ex-Nusra Front and other 'terrorist organisations'. An unidentified Syrian military official is shown reading the statement this morning White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer would not say on Friday what Trump plans to do next as he took questions from reporters during an impromptu briefing in a filing center set up for press covering the president's summit with Xi at Mar-a-Lago. 'Hes not going to telegraph his next move,' Spicer said. 'But I think that this action was very decisive, justified and proportional to the actions that he felt needed taken. I think it sends a very strong signal not just to Syria but throughout the world.' Lawmakers are demanding that Trump provide legal justification for Pentagon strike and a blueprint for future action. Bombs were dropped without their input, legislators say, in violation of a law requiring congressional consent for military action. Trump must provide Congress with an Authorization for Use of Military Force request, they're arguing, just as Barack Obama did in 2013 when he tried to make good on his 'red line threat' against Assad. 'The President needs congressional authorization for military action as required by the Constitution, and I call on him to come to Congress for a proper debate,' Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, said. Libertarians like Paul saddled up with left-wing Democrats to pressure Trump into formally requesting an AUMF. 'Expanded military intervention in Syria requires action by Congress,' Massachusetts liberal Elizabeth Warren said. 'If President Trump expects such an authorization, he owes the American people an explanation of his strategy to bring an end to the violence in Syria. We should not escalate this conflict without clear goals and a plan to achieve them.' Hawks in the Senate like Lindsey Graham and John McCain backed Trump up, with Marco Rubio contending that the strike will 'hopefully diminish (Assad's) capacity to commit atrocities against innocent civilians.' 'President Trump has made it clear to Assad and those who empower him that the days of committing war crimes with impunity are over.' Spicer said Friday afternoon that cabinet officials, the White House chief of staff and others 'have been in constant with contact with congressional leaders' and conversations are taking place about next steps. 'And I understand your desire to understand what's going on, but I think those are conversations that are going to be held fairly privately in terms of preserving any future action,' he told a reporter. Syria's state TV is showing footage of the U.S. missile strike, a fast sequence of orange flashes that lit the dark sky in the distance before the crack of dawn. I can't even truly express how I feel, the devastating war is still years from ending, but for a brief few moments Syrians got to taste what justice feels like, even if that is only a smokescreen, the jubilation I am witnessing is very real Anti-Assad Syrians use Facebook to praise Trump's Tomahawk strikes In a different sequence after day break, the Syrian TV station al-Ikhbariyah showed another short clip of smoke billowing in the distance, hovering over a raging fire, the tip of which emerges and a forest of trees is in the foreground. Anti-Assad Syrians have been celebrating the bombing after the horrific chemical weapons attack. Some said they had been hugging people in the street and crying after news that the Americans had intervened emerged. One wrote on Facebook: 'I've worked my tail off for six damn years to see this moment. You have no idea how cathartic it is for me. I've been hugging everyone. 'If you run into me now chances are I'll hug you and cry. This is the first time in almost half a century that the Assad regime has been held accountable for a crime they committed. Only Syrians will fully understand what this means. I'm choking back tears.' Another said: 'For those of us who have campaigned tirelessly for humanitarian intervention for 6 years today is a surreal and momentous day. 'I can't even truly express how I feel, the devastating war is still years from ending, but for a brief few moments Syrians got to taste what justice feels like, even if that is only a smokescreen, the jubilation I am witnessing is very real.' Talal Barazi, the governor of Homs province, didn't say how many were killed in the early Friday attack but confirmed there had been deaths and injuries in the bombing. He said a fire raged in the air base in Homs for over an hour following the barrage of missiles and that the evacuation effort was continuing early on Friday morning. The base is in Homs province - the Syrian government's most active launching pad for airstrikes on terrorist and rebel groups in central and northern Syria. A 95-year-old man today admitted trying to kill his 88-year-old wife in 'a mercy act'. Denver Beddows pleaded guilty this afternoon to attempting to murder wife Olive at their home in Warrington in February. White haired Beddows, who listened to proceedings from the dock at Liverpool Crown Court using a loop hearing system, is to be sentenced later this month. Mrs Beddows suffered serious injuries but is now recovering. Denver Beddows, from Woolston in Warrington, was arrested after the attack on this street, which has left his wife Olive, fighting for her life in hospital His barrister, Philip Tully, told Judge Clement Goldstone, QC, the Recorder of Liverpool, that the attack was 'a mercy act. I will be inviting you to depart from the sentencing guidelines.' He also said that a psychiatric report says that Beddows, who was wearing a green body warmer over a sweater, 'is suffering from a form of amnesia, trying to block out a traumatic incident.' Mr Tully told the court that there was no suggestion of sentencing disposal under the Mental Health Act. He did not apply for bail and asked that Beddows should remain in the hospital wing at Altcourse prison. The judge responded that he had no power to order that but said, 'It is a good idea for his routine to be disturbed as little as possible. To move him from the hospital wing will cause unneccesary disturbance to is already fragile state.' Beddows, who had to be helped to his feet by the dock officer, was further remanded to Altcourse to await sentence on April 21. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says he has spoken to failed GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, following reports that Romney is considering a run for the Senate. McConnell, whose reputation for tactical acumen only grew with the culmination of his plan to put a conservative on the Supreme Court through extraordinary measures, continues to back longtime Utah Senator Orrin Hatch if he wants the seat. Hatch was elected to the Senate in 1976, and as the senior Republican and president pro tempore gaveled in a rules change that ended the judicial filibuster for Supreme Court nominees on Thursday. 'Ive had some conversations w mitt Romney. Obviously Im an Orrin Hatch supporter,' McConnell told reporters in the Capitol Friday. 'Orrin has to decide what he wants to do. If he wants to run again Im for him,' McConnell said. The GOP's 2012 nominee Mitt Romney is thinking about running for Senate in 2018, if incumbent Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah decides to retire Romney's White House fortunes didn't work out, nor did his talks with President Trump to become secretary of state, but the former Massachusetts governor may have a political future after all. Romney, according to reporting from the Atlantic, is thinking about running for the U.S. Senate in 2018. The 2012 GOP nominee, according to six sources familiar with the talks, has been actively discussing running for Senate in Utah, as Republican leaders and donors in the state have been quietly trying to convince 83-year-old incumbent, Sen. Orrin Hatch to retire. Scroll down for video Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (right) briefly flirted with President Donald Trump (left) over the position of secretary of state - now Romney is plotting his next move Hatch seemingly gave his blessing when talking to National Journal last week. 'If I could get a really outstanding person to run for my position, I might very well consider [retiring],' Hatch said. He even added, 'Mitt Romney would be perfect.' Romney himself, according to the Atlantic, was caught by surprise by the headlines, which suggested Hatch was floating a trial balloon. And Hatch moved to snuff out the fire. In a statement to the Atlantic, the Utah senator said he was 'giving careful consideration as to whether I will seek re-election' and has 'yet to make a final decision.' 'While it's no secret that I hold Mitt Romney in extraordinarily high esteem, my musing aloud on the subject has apparently snowballed into a frenzy of premature speculation,' Hatch said. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says he has spoken to failed GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, but continues to back Orrin Hatch if he wants to stay in the Senate Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, is up for re-election, but Republicans in the state are quietly trying to press the 83-year-old to retire, hoping that Mitt Romney would take his place He added that the 'overhyped intrigue ... doesn't reflect the reality of the situation, especially this soon after the last election.' But Romney seems to be taking the suggestion seriously for a number of reasons. Some Romney pals suggest the former Massachusetts governor is bored in retirement. Also, if Hatch decides to retire, Romney would want someone of the Mormon faith in the Senate to defend the church, which he belongs to. There's also the fact that former Gov. Jon Huntsman, a Romney rival, said that he was interested in the seat. Even though Huntsman will likely be deployed to Russia as ambassador for the Trump administration, Romney's interest had already been piqued. And then there's the fact that if Romney ran, it would be a cake walk. 'It would be the easiest Senate bid in the history of the United States of America,' Hal Boyd, the opinion editor of the Deseret News, told the Atlantic's McKay Coppins. A former kebab shop worker was facing a life sentence today after being convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend with cling film and masking tape after he became enraged with jealousy. Ahsan Hassan, 28, of High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, killed Zofia Sadowska, 20, in a takeaway after a series of stalking incidents triggered by her dating his childhood friend. He was later found at his home with deep cuts to his wrist, in what he claimed was an attempted suicide. CCTV footage shown during the trial showed 'utterly fixated' Hassan - known as 'Ali' - hiding behind bins to stalk Ms Sadowska weeks before he carried her 'limp and completely floppy' body out of the kebab shop and into a taxi. Former kebab shop worker Ahsan Hassan (left), 28, killed Zofia Sadowska (right), 20, after a series of stalking incidents triggered by her dating his childhood friend. Hassan had stalked her weeks before asphyxiating her with cling film Hassan admitted manslaughter by killing the Polish woman in what he described as part of a lovers' suicide pact, jurors at Reading Crown Court were told. Hassan had stood in the dock with his childhood friend from Pakistan, Usmar Ansar, who was accused of lying to police to protect his friend after feeling 'very guilty' about having sexual relations with Ms Sadowska behind his back. The jury took five hours and nine minutes to unanimously find Hassan guilty of murder but his 40-year-old co-accused was cleared of perverting the course of justice. Officers and paramedics found Hassan in a pool of blood with deep self-inflicted cuts to his wrist next to Ms Sadowska's body in his bedroom at his home on September 20, 2016. Two days earlier at around 11.30pm, Hassan tricked his former lover to go to the Dennis kebab shop in High Wycombe, where he had worked previously and still had the keys for. After murdering her in the takeaway, at around 2am he took her and put her into a waiting taxi, convincing the driver she was drunk and asleep and travelled to his home. Hassan tricked his former lover to go to the Dennis kebab shop (above) in High Wycombe, Bucks, where he had worked previously and still had the keys for. After murdering her in the takeaway, at around 2am he took her and put her into a waiting taxi, convincing the driver she was drunk and asleep and travelled to his home Emergency services were called just after 5am on September 19, to a report of an attempted suicide and Hassan told officers that it was a suicide pact to try to cover up what he had done. Prosecutor Alan Blake said at the start of the trial: 'It is the prosecution case that by September 18 last year, Ali had become jealous and controlling over Zofia. Despite their continuing relationship, she remained living with her partner rather than moving in with him. 'She continued to drink too much and to enjoy the attentions of other men. 'Having been convinced that he could change her, by the weekend of September 17 and 18, it must have become apparent to Ali that she was not going to conform according to his wishes.' 'However he was quite unable to let her go and quite unable to allow anyone else to have her. The trip to the Crowne Plaza hotel with another man was the final insult,' said Mr Blake. 'It may be that having killed the woman with whom he had become utterly fixated and faced with the prospect of being prosecuted for her murder, the defendant Ali genuinely made an attempt on his life on that Monday morning.' Mr Blake said that the defence maintained that not only did he want to die on the morning of September 19 but that Zofia had also wanted to die and that he killed her as part of a suicide pact rather than out of his jealousy, frustration and inability to let her go. Officers and paramedics found Hassan in a pool of blood with deep self-inflicted cuts to his wrist next to Ms Sadowska's body in his bedroom at his home (above) on September 20, 2016 He continued: 'The Crown say that that was, and still is, the defendant seeking to dress up and make more palatable and honourable what was actually the premeditated, callous and, ultimately utterly selfish murder of a young mother with a lot to live for. 'He must have taken Zofia into the disused restaurant on Gayhurst Road under false pretences. There it appears he restrained her and used physical violence upon her before asphyxiating to incapacity and quite probably to death. 'Having incapacitated her or killed her, he put her in a taxi and took her back to the home address, maintaining the charade that she was drunk and asleep.' A postmortem examination which was carried out on her body at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, Aylesbury, revealed that there was no alcohol in her body at the time of her death, the cause of which was found to be asphyxia consistent with compression of the neck. Hassan's childhood friend from Pakistan, Usman, with whom he shared a room and bed in a house share in High Wycombe, was said to have acted as a 'go-between' between the lovers during a break in their relationship. Hassan was found guilty of murder at Reading Crown Court yesterday and will be sentenced on Monday, April 7. Senior investigating officer, Detectiveve Inspector Stuart Blaik of Thames Valley Police's Major Crime Unit, said: 'I am pleased that Hassan has been convicted for his crimes. 'Hassan was deeply controlling, manipulative and consumed with jealousy. He evilly planned to murder Zofia and then showed cowardice when he tried to cover up his crime by falsely claiming that both he and Zofia had wished to commit suicide. 'Hassan has never admitted his crimes, which has made dealing with the loss of Zofia even more of a terrible ordeal for her family. I would like to pay tribute to Zofia's family for their courage throughout.' Millennials who struggle in the kitchen can get help from an unlikely source, as department store Selfridges has started to offer lessons in everything from bread making to potato peeling. Designed to help the younger generation 'reconnect' with themselves and instill a sense of calm, the unusual workshops are running from the basement of the high-end store in London. In the latest bizarre offering, participants will be asked to turn off their phones as they 'explore the essence of home-making as the ultimate expression of self'. Selfridges launches first potato peeling workshop as part of Our House, a campaign to make customers reconnect with home-making and craft, running until mid-June Unlikely class location Selfridges is offering the workshops as part of a Spring pop-up called 'Our House' In one workshop, a group of millennials took part in the lesser known ritual of communal potato peeling. Suzy Webb and Bea Farrell hosted the lessons, giving participants the choice of a paring knife, or metal peeler as they showed the best way to skin without losing too much spud. One participant, Antonio Pignone told the Guardian: 'Ive never peeled a potato before in my life. 'Im from an Italian family so maybe thats not that surprising. But now I am finally doing it I am really enjoying it. Im finding it a very meditative experience.' Andy Sandford told the paper that the immersive experience meant he lost all sense of time, not even feeling the need to check his emails. The events are designed to 'explore the essence of home-making as the ultimate expression of self' Ms Webb said: 'Some people were clearly not used to using a knife so we have shown them how to use that safely. We have also shown how to peel carefully, without wasting too much of the potato. 'The key thing is to look carefully what you are doing. Once you have got the knack you can do it quite quickly.' The programme is called 'Our House' and runs throughout the Spring. According to the Guardian, participants gain entry by ringing a cow bell, have to take their shoes off and can even lie down for a quick nap on some straw. Millennials can get to grips with what makes a house a home in a series of workshops run for up to 15 each, including the free potato peeling class Launching the programme, a store spokesman explained that when it first opened, it was intended as a social hub as well as a general store. A spokesman for Selfridges explained: 'Potato peeling, bread making, fabric dying, spice grinding, and loom weaving, among the multiple immersive activities and workshops, will be the platform for interaction among house guests, fuelling a sense of community and play. They will facilitate freedom, expression and discussions whilst allowing the house guests to unleash their imagination, creativity and inner-maker.' THE 'RIGHT WAY' TO PEEL A SPUD Although many people cite different ways and tricks to peel a potato, most use a metal peeler to skin a spud. If you have a long peeler, hold it like a paint roller, and if you have a Y-shaped peeler, hold it like a pencil. Start at the base of the potato and peel the skin off away from you. Rotate the potato as you get to the white flesh, peeling all the way through any dark spots. Don't forget the top and bottom! Advertisement The store hopes the programme of events will encourage people to slow down in the face of current events, like displacement, homelessness, and shrinking living space, particularly in the capital. Linda Hewson, Selfridges creative director says: 'When we brought back in January 2013 our historic Silence Room, first created in 1909 by our founder Harry Gordon Selfridge, we were taken aback by the hugely positive engagement from our customers into the initiative. The Silence Room, in which no noise was allowed, was built to offer customers a haven away from the hustle and bustle of London, and life in general. 'Whether in 1909, in 2013 or today, the world only seems to be accelerating its pace and the feeling of losing grip on harmony and order is stronger than ever. So once again, some enduring and undisputed values from the past appear to show us a possible way forward.back home. 'This time, with Our House, we are not recreating a Silence Room, but building a whole house made home for all our customers to interact in and find themselves reconciled with a pre-digital time when home rituals and making simple things well were the heart of life. With Our House, we are also reminding our customers that our founder designed Selfridges to be their home away from home where everyone is welcome.' The Bank of England governor urged Brussels against resorting to 'protectionism' in a speech today Mark Carney warned the EU against punishing Britain in looming divorce talks today - saying the City of London 'channels the lifeblood' of the continent's economy. The Bank of England governor urged Brussels against resorting to 'protectionism' as he insisted placing restrictions on financial services would be damaging for both sides. He called for a sweeping deal to recognise each other's banking standards, saying the negotiations would be 'litmus test' on how well nations could cooperate. 'The United Kingdom has been at the heart of the global economy for centuries,' Mr Carney said. 'Throughout that period the City has channelled the lifeblood of the world economy, finance. 'It is all too easy to give into protectionism, but the road less taken is often the most rewarding.' The warning, at a Reuters event in Canary Wharf, came as Theresa May braces for tough talks, with many voices in Brussels demanding that there is no special treatment for the City. Leaving the single market could mean that firms no longer have 'passporting' rights - allowing them to be based in the UK and do unrestricted business across the EU. There are concerns that some banks could shift operations out of London to avoid extra red tape and cost. Mr Carney said a so-called 'hard' Brexit with only basic terms after we leave had the potential to do serious damage to the EU economy. He said it would be 'very difficult' for other countries to 'replicate' the scale and expertise of Britain. He insisted the UK and the EU should take 'the high road' of recognising each other's financial rules, allowing companies to continue operating in the same way. Mark Carney today insisted the UK and the EU should take 'the high road' of recognising each other's financial rules, allowing companies to continue operating in the same way Some voices in Brussels have been demanding that there is no special treatment for the City of London (pictured) 'The EU and UK are ideally positioned to create an effective system of deference to each other's comparable regulatory outcomes, supported by commitments to common minimum standards and open supervisory co-operation,' he said. Mr Carney said plans had to be made in case no deal was agreed, but told banks they did not need to take 'precipitate action' by relocating. Meanwhile, the value of the UK market to the EU was underlined today with figures showing an increase in imports from the bloc. The scale of the deficit will be seized on by the government as it argues that failing to strike an ongoing trade deal will be more damaging to the EU. Brussels has been threatening a hard line over the negotiations, insisting a divorce settlement - potentially as much as 50billion - must be agreed before the future relationship can be discussed. Theresa May is kicking off what promises to be tough Brexit negotiations with the EU According to the ONS, the goods trade deficit with the EU for the three months to February was 25.31billion - up from 23.33billion in the quarter to February last year According to figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), Britain's overall trade deficit - including goods and services - widened by 700 million between January and February to 3.7 billion. The increase was triggered by a jump in imports of non-monetary gold and aircraft, with total exports falling by 400 million and total imports rising by 300 million. Stripping out erratic items such as ships, silver, aircraft and precious stones, the ONS said the trade deficit shrunk to 2.5 billion in February from 3 billion the month before. Imports of goods from the EU increased by 600million, taking the global deficit to 12.5billion. The goods trade deficit with the EU for the three months to February was 25.31billion - up from 23.33billion in the quarter to February last year. A Perth mother has slammed the police treatment of her 15-year-old son at an out o control party. Police were called to a gathering in Success, in Perth's south at 8pm on Thursday where about 50 young people were fighting, 7 News reported. The 15-year-old boy said he cracked his tooth when police pushed him to the ground during the altercation in the car park at Cockburn Gateway Shopping Centre. Scroll down for video The 15-year-old boy said he cracked his tooth when police pushed him to the ground during the altercation in the car park at Cockburn Gateway Shopping Centre Police were called to a gather in Success, in Perth's south at 8pm on Thursday where about young people were fighting A Perth mother (pictured) has slammed the police treatment of her 15-year-old son at an out-of-control party I was shining my torch at him, because he pushed me in the back of the head,' the boy said. 'Then (the officer) tackled me, shoved his torch in my eye and had my head in the floor.' His mother said the police officers who attended the scene were 'too rough' with the teenagers. 'I was just flabbergasted, absolutely flabbergasted,' the boy's mother said. The 15-year-old boy was issued with a move on notice Police have dismissed the claims of rough treatment. 'The police response was adequate, they certainly weren't heavy handed,' senior sergeant James Bradley said. A different 15-year-old, a 17-year-old and a 14-year-old were charged over the incident and are due to appear in court. Its an image that has haunted me since I first saw it on Tuesday. Seven tiny Syrian children lying together in a heap, their faces staring into space with their eyes wide open. Were horribly used to seeing young victims of this devastating war battered and bloodied from bombs. But these kids didnt have a mark on them. They looked frozen in time. Yet they were all dead; their poor little lives deliberately snuffed out by Sarin, one of the deadliest chemical weapons on the planet. This image of seven dead children in Syria, frozen in time eyes open with not a mark on them, has haunted me since Tuesday The lethal liquid was dropped on them in bombs deposited from Syrian dictator Basher Al-Assads planes. Its important to understand the scale and nature of what happened here. Sarin is a man-made nerve agent 26 times more deadly than cyanide. It was developed in 1938 by German scientists as they attempted to create stronger pesticides. The formula was swiftly passed to the military, who discovered it had such a horrendous impact on the human body it could become a weapon of mass destruction. Yet the effects were so appalling that even the Nazis reportedly held off using it on the battlefields during World War II, fearing massive retaliation. Imagine that for a moment? This was considered too heinous an instrument of death even for Hitler to deploy against allied forces. Sarin is a liquid that evaporates quickly into colourless gas with no smell or taste, so there is no prior warning when it attacks. It just absorbs into the skin of its victims, permeating the membranes and lungs. Once inside, it goes to hideous work, breaking down the nervous system so vital organs all start to lose control. Your eyes water uncontrollably, you spew saliva and vomit, your bowels evacuate, your vision fails, your breathing collapses, your chest explodes with pain. Then your whole body violently convulses and you become completely paralysed. If youre lucky, you die within 10 minutes. If youre not, it can take a lot longer. Or, perhaps even worse, you survive but with dreadful brain damage. This is what those Syrian children went through before they died. The photograph made me cry. Who wouldnt cry at such an unbearable scene, knowing what they had endured in their last moments of precious life? My daughter is five, around the same age as these stricken kids. Like any parent, I literally cant think of anything worse. I tweeted the picture with the caption: No, dont look away. These are dead children. Gassed by Assad. Hell keep doing this until someone stops him. WHO will stop him? I was instantly met with a storm of outrage. How dare I post such an offensive picture? Didnt I think of the childrens parents? How do I know it was Assad? What was I trying to do start World War III? And so, predictably on. It turned out I wasnt the only one to feel as incensed by those images. President Donald Trump, watching on television at the White House, felt the same raging torrent of fury and despair. President Trump, father of five, felt the same way and ordered a ferocious attack on the Syrian air base from which the Sarin-fuelled planes took off Hes a loving father of five. Ive seen at first hand what a devoted dad he is to his children. Like me, and any parent, hed have thought of his own dying like that. And like me, hed have thought: who is going to stop this? The answer came last night. Trump ordered a ferocious attack on the Syrian air base from which the Sarin-armed planes took off. A total of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles thundered in from two US battleships, wiping out everything that was there. It was a targeted, precise and highly effective attack. It was also entirely justified. 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles thundered in from two US battleships, wiping out everything that was there in a targeted, effective and justified attack Spare me all the weasly words of dismay this morning at this US military action. It wasnt just warranted - it was imperative. I say that as someone who campaigned vociferously to stop the disastrous war in Iraq, which was waged on the entirely false pretext of Saddam Hussein having WMD, and as revenge for the 9/11 attacks that had nothing to do with him. The crucial difference here is that Assad hasnt just got WM, he indisputably just used them on his people. The US tracked his planes on radar from their departure to their delivery of Sarin-laced bombs. They saw it all happen in real time. And Assad is a repeat offender. In 2013, he unleashed Sarin rockets on rebels in Ghouta, near Damascus, killing 1,729 people. That incident crossed a red line that President Barack Obama had publicly drawn in the sand just a year before. Weve been very clear to the Assad regime that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized, Obama said in August, 2012. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation. His then Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, agreed, saying: Everyone has made it clear to the Syrian regime that (chemical weapons use) is a red line for the world. But when Assad duly crossed that red line, nothing happened. Obama blinked. America blinked. The worlds greatest military power let him get away with it. Assad is a repeated offender. Obama drew a red line, then did nothing. America blinked So what did Assad do? He did what all bullies do when they get away with doing something despicable he did it again. President Trumps reaction to this new attack was similar to Obamas. It crossed a lot of lines, he said. When you kill innocent children babies with chemical gas that goes beyond red lines. He added: These heinous acts by the Assad regime cannot be tolerated. My attitude towards Syria and Assad has changed very much. But unlike Obama, Trump carried through on his threat. Trump has been heavily criticized for his inconsistency over Syria. He urged Obama not to respond after the Ghouta incident. If you do, many very bad things will happen, Trump tweeted, and from that fight the US gets nothing. It could also be argued that Trumps administration has previously sent benign signals to the Assad regime that may have emboldened them to commit this atrocity. And its completely incongruous to me that Trump has wrongly tried to ban all Syrian refugees, including children like this, from the US. Although he would argue, with not entirely unreasonable logic, that protecting America from potential terror attacks, as he sees his travel ban, and protecting children from chemical weapons massacres in another country are two very different issues. So, yes, Trump appears hypocritical in his shifting stance on Syria. But as he explained when asked about it: I do change, and I am flexible. The attack on children yesterday had a big impact on me. I dont mind leaders changing their minds, so long as the decisions they eventually take are the right ones. Its completely incongruous to me that Trump has wrongly tried to ban all Syrian refugees, including children, from the US. And yes, Trump appears hypocritical in his shifting stance on Syria. But I dont mind leaders changing their minds if decisions they take are the right ones Whether you love or loathe Trump, this was the right decision. Assad is a nasty bully dictator who has slaughtered 400,000 of his own people. I called for America, and allies including Britain, to go after him after Ghouta. At that time, it might still have been possible to support the rebels and overthrow Assad. But Britain bottled it, and so did America. Now, the landscape is very different. Russian President Vladimir Putin intervened on the side of Assad, and the rebels have been heavily infiltrated by ISIS and al-Qaeda terrorists. The only way this war now ends is for Assad to stay in power and finish it, however much this sticks in the claw of any right-minded person. Then he must be removed, and held to account for his despicable war crimes. And the Syrian people must be enabled to decide their own future and their own new leader. But what President Trump did last night sent a firm, powerful warning to Assad, and Putin, that use of chemical weapons to finish this war crosses a line America really wont tolerate. That, I confidently predict, will be a far more effective tactic to stop Assad using them again than Obama talking the talk but then failing to walk the walk. Its not an effort to enforce regime change, or to make implacable foes of Syria and Russia. Trump needs Assad and Putin to help him defeat ISIS in this complex, multi-layered Middle East quagmire. No, its a reminder from the biggest beast in the military jungle that there are rules of engagement in warfare and they must be adhered to. To those who oppose these air strikes, I simply urge you to look at that photograph again and ask this: If the gassing of children with one of the worlds most evil worst chemical weapons isnt justification for giving the perpetrator a bloody nose, what is? Yoda, a young yellow Labrador was rescued three days after it was assumed she had drowned along with her owner A dog that was thought to have died during a fatal boating accident was rescued by two firefighters on a rocky California beach Thursday. Yoda, a young yellow Labrador was rescued three days after it was assumed she had drowned along with her owner a boating accident near San Jose, California. Brian Phidat Ho, 47, died in the accident when his 13-foot Boston whaler capsized in rough surf at the mouth of Tomales Bay, according to a press release. The San Jose resident was with two dogs and another man when it was knocked over by the waves. The second man and one of the dogs were quickly rescued by Sonoma County Sheriff's Office personnel. It was assumed that the second dog, Yoda, had drowned when he was not able to be found. Scroll down for video Brian Phidat Ho, 47, died in the accident when his 13-foot Boston whaler capsized in rough surf at the mouth of Tomales Bay (pictured) She was finally rescued at 11:30am by the Marin County fire department (pictured), and returned to her owner Friday However, at 11:30am on Thursday, Fire Battalion Chiefs Chris Martinelli and Graham Groneman were scouting locations just offshore during a water rescue orientation for firefighters. While scouting, they spotted a pale yellow object on the beach, and as they got closer they saw the dog hiding under a rocky outcropping. Batallion Chief Bret McTigue said: 'They went on shore and put a life-jacket on him. He was wet and shivering after a few days out in the elements'. The young yellow Labrador matched the description of the missing dog. Though she displayed no injuries, veterinarians fully checked her out before she was released to her owner. Shocking bodycam footage shows the moment a cop wrestles a knife-wielding man in a shopping center before fatally shooting him. Jeremy Lopez-Robledo, 29, who was one of New Mexico's most wanted fugitives, was shot and killed by a Las Cruces police officer in January. The bodycam footage was released Thursday. The fugitive was armed with a folding knife and was swinging it erratically in the busy Solano Square shopping center. He apparently was considered a 'violent gang member' by U.S. Marshals and had previous altercations with police according to Las Cruces Sun-News. Three officers wrestle fugitive Jeremy Lopez-Robledo who was waving around a knife Robledo was fatally shot outside of a shopping center. He was pronounced dead at the hospital The Third Judicial District Attorney's Office determined the shooting was justified according to KVIA. Video released by Las Cruces Police Department shows the moment officers caught up to Robledo during a foot chase when sliding doors did not open for him at a store. The body cam video shows a struggle between three officers and Robledo. It also reveals how close the folding knife was to the officers. Jeremy Lopez-Robledo, 29, was wanted for violating his probation and was considered a 'violent gang member' by U.S. Marshals Frias was cut by Robledo's folding knife in his right hand which is how they discovered the fugitive was armed. One officer attempted to use a taser to stop the fugitive who was wanted for probation violation. Frias pulled out his gun and shot Robledo four times. Robledo was pronounced dead later that day in the hospital. His mother said he was not on medication the day of the shooting. As standard protocol, Frias was placed on administrative leave after the shooting. He was cleared on February 17. The anti-war campaign group Stop the War Coalition have taken to the streets of Westminster to protest the US air strikes against the Syrian regime. The organisation, which was chaired for more than a decade by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, called for protests outside Downing Street between 5-7pm today. In a message posted to the group's Facebook page, the organisation said: 'No to Trump's attacks on Syria! No to British support! The anti-war campaign group Stop the War Coalition have taken to the streets of Westminster to protest the US air strikes against the Syrian regime Demonstrators held placards during a protest against US President Donald Trump's decision to launch attacks against Syrian targets In a message posted to the group's Facebook page the organisation said: 'No to Trump's attacks on Syria! No to British support!' A protester shakes his hand and chants during a Stop the War Coalition demonstration opposite Downing Street 'The Stop the War Coalition condemns Donald Trump's decision to launch attacks against Syrian targets. 'This action will only increase the level of killing in Syria, and inflame the terrible war that has already caused untold misery for the people of the country. 'This is the worst possible way to respond to the indefensible attack at Khan Sheikhun. 'As well as deepening the tragedy of the Syrian people, this utterly irresponsible act threatens to widen the war and lead the West into military confrontation with Russia. A protester chants over a megaphone during the demonstration earlier this evening The organisation, which was chaired for more than a decade by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, called for protests outside Downing Street between 5-7pm today A man who identified himself as a Syrian refugee spoke in favour of US President Donald Trump's decision to launch attacks against Syrian targets at the demonstration The United States launched 59 Tomahawk missiles Assad's al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs in the early hours of Friday 'It is shameful that Theresa May has rushed to support this act by the most xenophobic and reactionary US president in history. 'Stop the War calls for protests today against this or any further attacks and against British support or participation.' However, a man who identified himself as a Syrian refugee spoke in favour of the US attacks against Syrian targets at the demonstration this evening. Protesters carrying placards and marching outside Downing Street earlier today A protester held a sign that said: '2million per day - cost of bombing Syria and Iraq' US military forces fired a barrage of cruise missiles at a Syrian airbase in the early hours of Friday morning The protest group was criticised on social media for demonstrating outside Downing Street as opposed to an international embassy such as the United States, Russia or Syria Twitter user Josh The Duke said: 'Stop the war coalition should be protesting outside Russian Embassy - not Downing Street' HOW MPS BLOCKED THE UK FROM TAKING ACTION IN 2013 MPs blocked the UK from taking military reprisals against the Syria regime in 2013. David Cameron brought a motion to the Commons in the wake of a chemical weapons attack on the edge of Damascus, which is thought to have killed hundreds of people. But the government was defeated by 285-272 after Ed Miliband refused to endorse the idea. The knock back was widely thought to have caused a rethink in Washington, with Barack Obama stepping back from action despite describing chemical weapons use as a 'red line'. George Osborne has branded the decision by MPs one of the worst in recent history. In 2015 the House of Commons did approve British involvement in strikes against ISIL in Syria - although Jeremy Corbyn caused turmoil within Labour by voting against. Advertisement The United States launched 59 Tomahawk missiles Assad's al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs in the early hours of Friday in response to Tuesday's horrific chemical gas attack where around 80 people died. The Stop The War Coalition was criticised on social media for choosing to demonstrate outside Downing Street as opposed to an international embassy such as the United States, Russia or Syria. Twitter user Josh The Duke said: 'Stop the war coalition should be protesting outside Russian Embassy - not Downing Street.' Rohullah Yakobi added: 'Stop the War Coalition to hold a demo about Syria. No, it isn't to condemn Assad's atrocities.' The Stop The War Coalition has been contacted for comment. Jeremy Corbyn was earlier accused of 'dereliction of duty' as he condemned the US strikes on Syria - despite his deputy welcoming them. The Labour leader, who previously opposed airstrikes against Assad and ISIL force in the country, took nearly nine hours before finally releasing a statement accusing America of 'escalating' the conflict. The Syrian embassy in London has been site of many protests since the war began. The country's ambassador to the UK was expelled in 2012 due to escalating violence. A U.S. Navy image shows the USS Ross (DDG 71) firing a tomahawk land attack missile at the Syrian air base Syrians opposed to Bashar al-Assad have taken to applying the ruthless leader's slogan, 'We love you,' to U.S. President Donald Trump's famous Twitter picture after missile strikes on al-Shayrat air base. The tongue-in-cheek imagery is both a jab equating Assad and Trump as leaders, and a signal of support for U.S. cruise missile strikes against the Assad regime, its supposed creator said Friday. 'Donald Trump is honestly quite the horrible human being. But he did something right,' said Twitter user Obada. Asked if his intent in juxtaposing Trump's face with Assad's slogan was satirical, Obada replied 'Yes, absolutely.' Scroll down for video Twitter user Obada says he put the Assad slogan on Trump's face after US strikes on a Syrian airbase. Trump is 'quite the horrible human being. But he did something right,' Obada said Posters like this one, bearing the image of Syria's president Bashar Assad with the slogan 'We love you' in Arabic, are ubiquitous in Damascus. A new trend mocks the propaganda Obada explained the image was 'absolutely' satirical in this Friday tweet Obada claims to be an 18-year-old Syrian who is opposed to both Assad and ISIS, as well as the YPG, a Kurdish militia in Syria. Trump ordered the Thursday airstrike on the Assad regime's al-Shayrat air base in retaliation for the facility's role in a recent nerve gas attack on civilians. Syrians, caught in a years-long, multi-party civil war that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, seemed to signal wariness at the first direct U.S. airstrikes against Assad with the cheeky Twitter avatars. Other Syrian Twitter users quickly adopted the image, prompting some Western news outlets to misinterpret the satire as an outpouring of support for the US president Other anti-Assad Syrians of various stripes also changed their Twitter profiles to the Trump-Assad mashup on Friday but other users were quick to point out that they did not believe the expression of love for Trump was genuine. 'This attack was clearly an attempt to win over hearts and minds,' Syrian Twitter user Mostafa Mahamed said in response to the Trump-Assad meme. 'Only the naive will be fooled to believe that Trump has a heart.' The baby twins of a 64-year-old Spanish mother have been taken into care less than two months after their birth. Social services chiefs removed Mauricia Ibanez's boy and girl after detecting 'signs they could be at risk.' It emerged after their February 14 birth that Ms Ibanez's first daughter, a six-year-old called Blanca now living with relatives in Canada, had also been taken away from her in 2014 following a social services investigation. Just three weeks ago Ms Ibanez had defended her decision to give birth to children Gabriel and Maria de la Cruz after fertility treatment in the States. Social services chiefs removed 64-year-old Mauricia Ibanez's boy and girl after detecting 'signs they could be at risk' Speaking after announcing she was fighting to get her six-year-old back while she got used to changing nappies again, she said: 'There was no rational justification for them to take my little girl away. 'I want her back so she can get to know her brother and sister and I hope that can happen. 'I feel totally prepared to look after all three of them. They should be with their mum.' There was no immediate reaction from Ms Ibanez, who left hospital at the end of last month to return home, to the latest decision by the authorities. A spokesman for social services in Burgos said: 'Since she left hospital, a multidisciplinary team has been monitoring the situation. 'All the reports conclude that the twins need protection in another environment.' Ms Ibanez's lawyer Juan Carlos Saiz admitted: 'She is devastated and very traumatised. 'The first time this happened was very painful for her. This time it's much worse.' Ms Ibanez, who had moved to a flat in Burgos, admitted in an interview last month she was worried her two twins would suffer the same fate as her eldest daughter. She said: 'They're so defenceless, so delicate. I'm a bit afraid for them. I just ask God that they don't fall into the hands of social services.' She is understood to have been diagnosed with a personality disorder shortly before she decided to have her first child. Just three weeks ago Ms Ibanez had defended her decision to give birth to children Gabriel and Maria de la Cruz after fertility treatment in the States The youngster was taken into local authority care after a court determined she suffered isolation, lived in a house with a lack of hygiene and wasn't being schooled. Carmen Bousada, Spain's oldest mother ever at 67, died of cancer aged 69 in July 2009 three years after giving birth to IVF twins Cristian and Pau. In October last year Spanish doctor Lina Alvarez gave birth to a healthy girl aged 62. The little girl, also named Lina, was born by C-section at a hospital in the Galician city of Lugo. Ms Alvarez had her second child 10 years after her menopause at the age of 52 thanks to IVF treatment. The world's oldest documented mother is Daljinder Kaur from India, who gave birth in 2015 at the age of 70 after two years of IVF treatment. Baby Armaan was born weighing 4.4lbs. Britain's oldest mother is Elizabeth Adeney, from Suffolk, who had a son aged 66 in 2009 after travelling to Ukraine for treatment. Russia has accused the United States of breaching international law by striking a Syrian airbase as the United Nations heard America acted like a 'judge and executioner'. The UN Security Council met in emergency session in New York today following the overnight cruise missile strikes on a Syrian airbase in response to a suspected chemical weapons attack. Russia angrily denounced the military action as an 'aggression against a sovereign state'. Bolivian Ambassador to the United Nations Sacha Lorenti, pictured right, today branded the United States as 'investigator, attorney, judge and executioner' at a Security Council meeting Russia's Deputy UN ambassador Vladimir Safronkov, right, condemned the missile attack The emergency Security Council meeting was called by Bolivia, following the airstrikes The council meeting was called by Bolivia, which branded the US strikes a violation of international law. Bolivian Ambassador Sacha Lorenti said the United States had behaved like 'investigator, attorney, judge and executioner'. Briefing reporters before the meeting, Lorenti said: 'This is not what international law is all about.' France and Britain called for a renewed push for political negotiations to end the six-year war in Syria. British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft praised President Trump's decision. He said: 'The United Kingdom fully supports the United States' action overnight, which was an appropriate response to such a heinous crime, a war crime. US President Donald Trump on Thursday ordered cruise missile strikes on a Syrian air base in response to a suspected chemical attack on a rebel-held town that killed 86 people and shocked the world. The strike - the first direct US action against President Bashar al-Assad and Trump's biggest military decision since taking office - marked a dramatic escalation in American involvement in Syria's six-year war. Describing the US strikes as 'appropriate', French Ambassador Francois Delattre expressed hope the US action would be a 'game changer and help boost the political negotiations'. Britain's UN Ambassador Matthew Rycroft supported the overnight attacks in Syria The US fired 59 cruise missiles at the Shayrat Airbase which is just south of Homs, where intelligence agencies believe Bashar al-Assad launched a chemical warfare attack The US released a satellite image of the airbase which was taken on October 7, 2016 UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres urged restraint and a renewed push for peace in Syria, saying in a statement that 'there is no other way to solve the conflict than through a political solution'. The UK ambassador continued: 'It is it is time now to focus on the political process.' Eighty-six people including at least 27 children died in the suspected attack in Khan Sheikhun. Results from post-mortems performed on victims point to exposure to the deadly sarin nerve agent, according to Turkish health officials. Guterres called on the council to unite and agree on a way forward on Syria. He said: 'For too long, international law has been ignored in the Syrian conflict, and it is our shared duty to uphold international standards of humanity. This is a prerequisite to ending the unrelenting suffering of the people of Syria.' The 59 missiles were launched from two US destroyers, including the USS Ross, pictured The missiles targeted buildings, runways, bunkers and ammunition stores at the airbase The Security Council failed during a meeting Thursday to agree on terms for an investigation of the suspected sarin gas attack in Khan Sheikhun. Russia's Deputy Ambassador Vladimir Safronkov on Thursday warned of 'negative consequences' from the US military action, which he described as a 'doubtful, tragic enterprise'. Defending last night's attacks, the US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said the strike was 'fully justified'. US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, pictured, urged Russia to reconsider its support for Bashar al-Assad's Syrian regime and claimed further military strikes could still happen She said: 'The United States will no longer wait for Assad to use chemical weapons without any consequences. Those days are over. 'Now we must move to a new phase: a drive toward a political solution to this horrific conflict. 'The world is waiting for the Russian government to act responsibly in Syria. The world is waiting for Russia to reconsider its misplaced alliance with Bashar al-Assad.' Senior US military officials are reviewing evidence as to whether Russia had advanced knowledge of the chemical strike. According to reports, officials believe Russia has failed to control Syria's use of chemical weapons. They said a drone belonging either to Russia or Syria was seen hovering over the site of the chemical weapons attack Tuesday after it happened. The drone returned late in the day as citizens were going to a nearby hospital for treatment. Shortly afterward, officials say the hospital was bombed. The officials say they believe the hospital attack may have been an effort to cover up evidence of the attack. The officials weren't authorised to speak publicly on the matter and demanded anonymity. They say they're still reviewing evidence. Russia has deployed its advanced S-400 air defence system to it Syrian airbase The S-400 Growler, pictured, can intercept aircraft at a range of 250 miles up to 90,000 feet In response to last night's attack, Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered one of his naval vessels to position itself off the Syrian coast to deter further missile strikes. The Admiral Grigorovich frigate - which is equipped with its own cruise missiles and a self-defence system - from the Black Sea to the Syrian coast. Russia has also said it will further strengthen Syrian air defences. Putin has already deployed his S-400 Growler air defence system to the Hmeymim airbase in northern Syria. The older S-300 system is protecting the Russian port in Tartus. According to Tass, Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said: 'The S-400 and Pantsir systems provide reliable protection for the Russian air group at the Hmeymim airdrome. Another group of S-300 and Pantsir systems deployed in Syria defends the naval logistics facility in Tartus.' Russia deployed the advanced air defence systems after a Turkish F-16 shot down a Russian Sukhoi-24 bomber in November 2015 after it encroached Turkish airspace. According to Russian Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu, the missiles provide a 'multi-tier defence', with the longer range S-400 able to hit targets at a range of 250 miles. The Russians claim the S-400 is able to track 300 targets at the one time . The Pantsir system is the last line of defence, while the Russians also use Bastion, which can hit naval and ground targets at a range of 300 miles. U.S. officials are investigating whether Russia was directly involved in the gas attack in Syria which led to Thursday's air strikes, they revealed today. Senior military officials said Russia has failed to control the Syrian government's use of chemical weapons. And they said a drone belonging either to Russia or Syria was seen hovering over the site of the chemical weapons attack Tuesday after it happened. The drone returned late in the day as citizens were going to a nearby hospital for treatment. Shortly afterward, officials say the hospital was bombed. The officials say they believe the hospital attack may have been an effort to cover up evidence of the attack. It is unclear which hospital they were referring to but local activists released pictures of al Rahma hospital in Khan Sheikhoun on Tuesday, claiming that damage to it was cased when 'Russian forces shelled' it. Moments after the attack a projectile hit a hospital in the area, bringing down rubble on top of medics as they struggled to treat victims Warning: Nikki Hayley told the United Nations Security Council that the U.S. hoped not to have to strike Syria again - but could do 'more' Blunt: Russia's U.N. ambassador, Vladimir Safronkov, told the Security Council the missile strikes could have 'extremely serious' consequences Gathering: The U.N. Security Council was in session in New York to discuss the Syrian crisis A US-launched missile heads for the al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs in Syria on Thursday night where it caused severe damage to military aircraft and weapons Destruction: These images show the extent of the destruction wrought on Syria's al-Shayrat military airfield by US Tomahawk missiles on Thursday. Note the holes punched through the tops of the thick concrete aircraft shelters The move came as Donald Trump's ambassador to the United Nations warned there could be 'more' action against Syria - and called the Tomahawk strikes 'fully justified'. She spoke amid escalating tension with Russia, telling the Security Council that firing the missiles was 'in our vital national security interest'. 'We are prepared to do more, but we hope that will not be necessary,' she told the U.N. Security Council. 'The United States will not stand by when chemical weapons are used. It is in our vital national security interest to prevent the spread and use of chemical weapons.' Leader: Putin has involved Russia in Syria Confirmation of Russian involvement could prove an explosive move in an already volatile environment. At the U.N. Security Council, Russia warned that the cruise missile strikes could have 'extremely serious' consequences. 'We strongly condemn the illegitimate actions by the U.S. The consequences of this for regional and international stability could be extremely serious,' Russia's deputy U.N. envoy, Vladimir Safronkov, told the meeting in New York. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev charged that the U.S. strikes were one step away from clashing with Russia's military. The U.S. military launched dozens of Tomahawk missiles from the USS Porter and USS Ross warships in the Mediterranean Sea that hit the airstrip, aircraft and fuel stations of the Shayrat air base, which the Pentagon says was involved in a chemical weapons attack this week. Satellite imagery suggests Shayrat air base is home to Russian special forces and military helicopters, part of the Kremlin's effort to help the Syrian government fight Islamic State and other militant groups. Trump has frequently called for improved relations with Russia which were strained under Obama over Syria, Ukraine and other issues, but the U.S. president said action had to be taken against Bashar al-Assad. 'Years of previous attempts at changing Assads behaviour have all failed and failed very dramatically,' Trump said as he announced the attack on Thursday night from his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, where he was meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping. U.S. allies from Asia, Europe and the Middle East expressed support, if sometimes cautiously, for the strikes. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said those killed had died from suffocation and the effects of the gas. Symptoms of sarin poison include foaming at the mouth and having trouble breathing Mohammed Hassoun, a media activist in nearby Sarmin - also in Idlib province where some of the critical cases were transferred - said the hospital there had been equipped to deal with such chemical attacks because the town was struck in one chemical attack, early on in the Syrian uprising Syrian activists said that makeshift hospitals soon crowded with people suffocating from toxins following the attack Hospital: Local hospitals treated those caught up in the gas attack. It is unclear which hospital was attacked but a British doctor has posted this video of the hospital in Hama receiving patients Treatment: Those exposed to the sarin gas were taken to hospitals for treatment, although doctors say there is little they can do in the face of such attacks U.S. officials said the intervention was a 'one-off' intended to deter future chemical weapons attacks, and not an expansion of the U.S. role in the Syrian war. The action is likely to be interpreted as a signal to Russia, as well as to countries such as North Korea, China and Iran where Trump has faced foreign policy tests early in his presidency, that he is willing to use force. Senior U.S. military officials said up to 20 Syrian aircraft had been destroyed and that the missiles also damaged fuel sites and hit a surface-to-air missile system. Assad's office said Damascus would strike its enemies harder. Damascus and Moscow denied Syrian forces were behind the gas attack but Western countries dismissed their explanation that chemicals leaked from a rebel weapons depot after an air strike. Local reports quoted doctors saying the chemical that killed dozens of people in the region could have been chlorine or sarin, a colorless, odorless liquid nerve agent that's used as a chemical weapon The Syrian army said the U.S. attack killed six people and called it 'blatant aggression' which made the United States a partner of 'terrorist groups' including Islamic State. There was no independent confirmation of civilian casualties. Russia expects U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to explain Washington's stance in light of the missile strikes when he visits Moscow in the coming week, Interfax news agency cited a Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman as saying. Washington has long backed rebels fighting Assad in a multi-sided civil war that has killed more than 400,000 people and driven half of Syrians from their homes since 2011. The United States has conducted air strikes against Islamic State, which controls territory in eastern and northern Syria, and a small number of U.S. troops are helping militias fighting its militants. Russia joined the war on Assad's behalf in 2015, turning the momentum of the conflict in his favour. Although they support opposing sides in the war between Assad and rebels, Washington and Moscow say they share a single main enemy, Islamic State. Tuesday's attack was the first time since 2013 that Syria was accused of using sarin, a banned nerve agent it was meant to have given up under a Russian-brokered, U.N.-enforced deal that persuaded Obama to call off air strikes four years ago. Video depicted limp bodies and children choking while rescuers tried to wash off the poison gas. Russian state television blamed rebels and did not show footage of victims. Ivanka Trump lauded her father on Friday, for his decision to strike back at Syrian President Assad's military for an alleged chemical attack on his own people. 'The times we are living in call for difficult decisions - Proud of my father for refusing to accept these horrendous crimes against humanity,' the first daughter tweeted on Friday. Ivanka and her family are currently spending the weekend with her father at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, while he meets with President Xi Jinping of China. Scroll down for video Ivanka Trump (pictured at Mar-a-Lgo on Thursday, left) said she's proud of her father's (right, on Friday) decision to bomb a Syrian air base after Tuesday sarin gas attack Ivanka is currently in Florida for the weekend while her father hosts the President of China at Mar-a-Lago President Trump's attack on the Al Shayrat military base was in response to Tuesday's sarin gas attack on the town of Khan Shaykhun, which left more than 80 people dead - including at least 30 children and 20 women. Ivanka, a mother of three, was quick to condemn the sarin gas attack, calling it 'atrocious'. 'Heartbroken and outraged by the images coming out of Syria following the atrocious chemical attack yesterday,' Ivanka tweeted on Wednesday. Her father responded with words of his own, accusing Assad of choking 'out the lives of helpless men, women and children'. This is the moment one of America's destroyers fired one of 59 Tomahawk missiles into Syria from the Mediterranean Destruction: This is the remains of one of the hangars obliterated by US missiles fired from destroyers overnight Target: The strikes hit the government-controlled Shayrat air base in central Syria, where U.S. officials say the Syrian military planes that dropped the chemicals had taken off 'It is in the vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons,' he said. About 60 U.S. Tomahawk missiles hit the Shayrat air base, a small installation with two runways, where aircraft often take off to bomb targets in northern and central Syria. The U.S. missiles hit at 3:45am Friday and targeted the base's airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, U.S. officials said. They were fired from two warships in the Mediterranean Sea, in retaliation for Tuesday's deadly chemical attack, which officials said used chlorine mixed with a nerve agent, possibly sarin. The president's eldest daughter, now one of his top advisers, declared the strike on innocents in Syria 'atrocious' on Wednesday morning The overnight missile attack, which marked the first time the U.S. has directly targeted Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces, was condemned by his allies in Russia and Iran but welcomed by the Syrian opposition and its supporters, who expressed hope it signaled a turning point in the devastating six-year-old civil war. The bombing represents Trump's most dramatic military order since taking office and thrusts the U.S. administration deeper into the complex Syrian conflict. The Obama administration threatened to attack Assad's forces after previous chemical attacks, but never followed through. Assad's office called the U.S. missile strike 'reckless' and 'irresponsible.' The Syrian military said at least seven people were killed and nine wounded. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition monitor said the seven included a general and three soldiers. At least 11 of the more than 80 people who died in the chemical attack were children. Two are seen receiving treatment on Tuesday at a hospital The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin believes the U.S. strike is an 'aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law.' Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said 'Washington's move deals a significant blow to the Russia-U.S. relations, which are already in a deplorable shape,' and poses a 'serious obstacle' for creating an international coalition against terrorism. Russia said it is suspending a memorandum with Washington - signed after Russia began an air campaign in support of Assad in September 2015 - under which the two exchange information about their sorties over Syria. The Kremlin said just 23 of 59 missiles reached the air base, destroying six Syrian jets but leaving the runway intact. A U.S. official said all but one of the 59 missiles struck their targets, hitting multiple aircraft and air shelters, and destroying the fuel area. The official, who was not authorized to discuss initial reports, spoke on condition of anonymity. A U.S.-led coalition has been bombing Islamic State targets in Syria since 2014, while Russia's air force has been striking both extremist groups and Syrian rebels in order to aid Assad's forces. Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which support the Syrian opposition, welcomed the missile strike, with Riyadh calling it a 'courageous decision' by Trump. Iran called it a 'dangerous' move that would 'strengthen terrorists' and exacerbate the conflict. Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Lebanese group that has sent thousands of fighters to Syria to bolster Assad, said the 'foolish' strike would lead to a 'dangerous escalation in the region.' The British government said it was informed in advance about the strike and firmly supports the American action. The opposition Syrian Coalition said the U.S. attack puts an end to an age of 'impunity' and should herald the start of a larger campaign against Damascus. Maj. Jamil al-Saleh, a U.S-backed rebel commander based in the area where the U.S. attack took place, told The Associated Press he hoped the strike would be a 'turning point' in the six-year-old war, which has killed an estimated 400,000 people. Assad had been under mounting international pressure after the chemical attack on the northern town of Khan Sheikhoun, which killed 87 people, including 31 children. Even Russia has said its support is not unconditional. Syria denied using chemical weapons. Russia has said the toxic agents were released when a Syrian airstrike hit a rebel chemical weapons arsenal, and that blame should not be apportioned until a full investigation has been completed. Russia's military intervention in Syria has turned the balance of power in Assad's favor, and Moscow has used its veto power at the Security Council on several occasions to prevent sanctions against Damascus. The U.S. had initially focused on diplomatic efforts, pressing the U.N. Security Council to adopt a resolution to condemn Syria's suspected use of chemical weapons. But the vote was canceled because of differences among the 15 members. A 81-year-old Texas woman with terminal cancer is trying to find homes for her five dogs. Gloria Gutierrez, from San Antonio, is seeking homes for Vera, Brandy, Light, Mega, and Bruno. The five dogs range in age from 11 to seven years. Her daughter Vickie Esparza is sick, too, and unable to look after the pets, KENS reports. Rachel Cannady with God's Dogs Rescue said that 'there were originally six dogs, one rescue took the severely crippled dog, and now they cannot take one that they thought they could'. The terminally ill woman is trying to find a home for here five dogs including seven-year-old Bruno (pictured) Vera was rescued by the terminally ill woman and her daughter. She apparently has a mild skin allergy that disappears with Benadryl Another 11-year-old dog, named Brandy, belongs to the terminally ill woman and needs a new home According to Cannady, one dog, named Vera, is 65lbs and 11 years old, and had been dumped at Marbach and 410. She was rescued by Gutierrez and Esparza. Vera apparently has a mild skin allergy that disappears with Benadryl. Another 11-year-old dog, named Brandy, was dumped at a nearby park not far from where Vera was left. Brandy has had some seizures, but Gutierrez and Esparza haven't been able to take her to the veterinarian recently. Light, a nine-year-old dog, weighs 55lbs. He was dumped around Old Highway 90 as a puppy and was rescued Gutierrez and Esparza, the information provided by Cannady says. Brandy is seen curled up on a bed in this photograph provided by God's Dogs Rescue Light, a 9-year-old dog, weighs 55lbs. He was dumped around Old Highway 90 as a puppy and was rescued by the terminally ill woman and her daughter A Texas woman with terminal cancer is trying to find homes for her five dogs. Pictured is one of her dogs, 11-year-old Vera A fourth dog, eight-year-old Mega, weighs 50lbs. She was found in empty fields around Old Highway 90 A fourth dog, eight-year-old Mega, weighs 50lbs. Mega was discovered in empty fields around Old Highway 90. Mega may have been hit by a car or used as a bait dog, since she limped and had a crooked jaw, but has been happy since being rescued, according to the information. Gutierrez is also trying to find a home for seven-year-old Bruno, who weighs 50 pounds and was hit by a car when he was a puppy. She and her daughter saved Bruno, who had a fractured right hind leg, but didn't have the money for surgery. He is now a lapdog, the information provided by Cannady says. A friend of Esparza's said that Gutierrez has liver cancer, which has spread to the pancreas. The friend said Friday afternoon that Gutierrez was being taken to the emergency room. Cannady told DailyMail.com that the dogs can be split up. She said: 'They are up-to-date on shots, but they will all be due for their shots in June ... so they are just up to date for now. 'Realistically, if anyone wanted to adopt them from out of state, the pups will have to get the shots taken. 'They are all spayed and neutered though. All are housebroken and good with other humans and dogs.' If you are interested in helping provide a home, contact God's Dogs Rescue. Cecille Short, 82, was mauled and nearly decapitated when two large dogs attacked her on Thursday The elderly woman who was mauled to death by two large dogs while she was walking in her neighborhood has been identified. The large dogs reportedly nealry decapitated the woman and the usually quiet street was covered in blood. Cecille Short, 82, was walking her small dog just before 2pm Thursday along Willow Creek Boulevard in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, when she was were attacked by a pit bull and another large dog. The dogs' owner was not home at the time of the deadly attack. It is not clear if she will face charges. Police were called to the scene and witnessed the horrific mauling. They were unable to reach the woman and her dog before the two vicious dogs killed them. Cecille Short (left) was pronounced dead on the scene with her smaller dog when they were attacked by two large canines in Oklahoma City Police Master Sargent Gary Knight told NewsOk: 'During this attack, the woman's dog and the woman, sadly, were both killed, they were both mauled to death by the two dogs.' Short and her dog were pronounced dead on the scene. One of the dogs was identified as a pit bull and the other's breed was not clear. It is also not known what breed of dog Short was walking at the time. One of the dogs was fatally shot by police and the other was hit by a patrol car and taken to Oklahoma City Animal Welfare in unknown condition,News9 reports. Short was widowed when her husband died in 2014. Advertisement New images from the Department of Defense show how 59 powerful US missiles obliterated an airfield that was allegedly being used by Bashar al-Assad's regime to mount chemical attacks. Observers said al-Sharyat Air Base was 'almost completely destroyed' by the 1,000lb warheads in a 30-minute barrage of destruction that is said to have destroyed 20 planes, a dozen aircraft hangars and a fuel depot, as well as ripped up runways, storage sites and radars. The missiles were launched from US destroyers 150 miles away in the Mediterranean Sea in response to Assad's Sarin gas attack in Idlib on Tuesday, which killed 80 civilians, including children. But while the US and a number of its allies say the attack was justified, it has enraged Russia, which backs Assad's regime. Scroll down for video Destruction: These images show the extent of the destruction wrought on Syria's al-Shayrat military airfield by US Tomahawk missiles on Thursday Damage: The photos show that the missiles - which were launched from 150 miles away by US destroyers - were terrifyingly accurate, slamming down on the shelters and ripping up runways Disabled: The damage sustained in the 30-minute attack was meant to disable the air base, near the city of Homs. This shot shows how far apart the main target zones were Before the attack: This photo shows the base in October 2016. Russia claimed that only 23 out of the 59 rockets fired actually hit the base, but the US Navy said only one failed to find its mark Aftermath: This is the aftermath of one of the Tomahawk missile strikes, underneath one of the protective concrete plane shelters. US officials said that 20 Syrian jets were destroyed in the attack Twisted: Twisted and shredded metal is all that's left of this ravaged plane after the bombardment. The Syrian government said at least seven soldiers were killed and nine wounded, though the US had tried to avoid barracks and populated buildings Detonated: These tanks - likely containing fuel - appear to have been blowin up by the massive rockets. The Syrian media claimed nine civilians died even though the attack was launched at almost 4am local time on a military base Shredded: Another plane shredded to pieces by the Tomahawk missiles, which have been updated many times since their use in the Gulf War. The modern missiles can be redirected en route to a target, and were launched 150 miles away Escaped: While many of the shelters were badly hit in the attacks, some - such as those visible far in the background - were not. Russian TV made a point of showing those shelters in their morning news reports Unscathed: This collection of five jets on al-Sharyat Air Base somehow escaped the bombing raid, despite being located out in the open, on a patchy grass plain Footage and photos from the ground Friday morning showed some of the aircraft shelters - which appear to be made of thick concrete, with feet of sand piled on top - partially or fully collapsed. Others had sunlight shining in through holes in their roofs, and black scorch marks on their walls. 'Initial indications are that this strike has severely damaged or destroyed Syrian aircraft and support infrastructure and equipment at Shayrat Airfield, reducing the Syrian government's ability to deliver chemical weapons,' said Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis. Two senior defense officials told Fox News that about 20 Syrian jets were destroyed in the strike, although footage screened on Russian television suggested that at least two had escaped the destruction. Early reports put the figure at nine destroyed jets. The US officials said that none of the planes had been able to scramble before missiles hit, and that no Russian aircraft were at the airfield. No helicopters were struck during the destruction, they said. When asked why Russian TV footage showed an undamaged shelter and two apparently intact jets, an expert told CNN that the US had been precise in its targeting due to the size of the airfield so as not to waste missiles, and so not every area would be accountedfor. On the ground: These damaged hangars, blackened by smoke, are at the entrance to the Syrian airfield bombarded by the US. The US targeted several such shelters across the military base, which it said held chemical weapons Burnt out: Footage showing burnt out shelters and hangars and a damaged runway was cheered by tearful Syrians hoping that Trump's intervention would lead to Assad being overthrown Shattered: Pictures show shards of shattered concrete strewn across the airfield at the Syrian military base this morning. The Syrian Army called it an 'act of 'aggression' Jets: Footage and pictures from the base screened on Russian TV appeared to show jet planes still contained in undamaged aircraft hangars Syria claimed that at least seven of its soldiers were killed and nine wounded in the airstrike. According to US intel, there were 12-100 personnel on the site that night. Efforts were made not to hit barracks, officials said. SANA, Syria's state media, also claimed that nine civilians, including four children, were killed - even though the airbase was attacked at 3:45am local time. The satellite photos show a considerable distance between the base's perimeter and the nearest built-up area. DID RUSSIA HIT HOSPITAL TO HIDE SYRIAN GAS HORROR? US officials announced on Friday that they were investigating whether a drone seen just after Tuesday's gas attack was in fact Russia-operated. The drone returned late in the day as citizens were going to a nearby hospital for treatment. Shortly afterward, officials say, the hospital was bombed. Officials said the hospital strike may have been an effort to cover up evidence of the chemical attack. It's not clear which hospital they were referring to, but local activists released photos of al Rahma hospital in Khan Sheikhoun, saying it was shelled by Russians on Tuesday. Advertisement The US said that only one of its missiles failed to land on-target after being launched by the USS Ross and USS Porter, although Russians released their own counter-claims, saying that only 23 of the 59 rockets hit the base. But the photos released by the Department of Defense suggest that that the missiles - at least, the ones involved in the damage seen in the satellite images - were closely clustered around the aircraft hangars. The US said the base was being used to store chemical weapons, like those used on civilians in the city of Idlib on Tuesday. That attack, which killed 80 civilians and injured many more, was the fourth such atrocity in Syria since the conflict began in 2011. One chemical attack has been blamed on ISIS and the other three on Syrian forces. An hour after the attack, Trump, speaking from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, where he is hosting the Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng as part of a two day summit, said the US had to act after the Syrian dictator launched the 'horrible chemical weapons attack' on innocent civilians. 'Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack,' he said. 'It was a slow and brutal death for so many. No child of God should ever suffer such horror.' He added: 'There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the chemical weapons convention, and ignored the urging of the UN security council. 'Years of previous attempts at changing Assad's behavior have all failed and failed very dramatically. 'As a result, the refugee crisis continues to deepen and the region continues to destabilize, threatening the United States and its allies. 'Tonight I call on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria, and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types.' Heartbreak: Disturbing footage showed Syrian father Abdul Hamid al-Yousef crying uncontrollably over the graves of his wife and two children who were killed in a suspected sarin gas attack this week Smoke rises from the deck of the USS Porter as the United States blasted a Syrian air base with a barrage of cruise missiles in fiery retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. The guided-missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG 78) launches a tomahawk land attack missile in the Mediterranean Sea A U.S. Navy image shows the USS Ross (DDG 71) firing a tomahawk land attack missile at the Syrian air base Inside the Mar-a-Lago war room: President Trump is briefed on a video link with his advisers and cabinet members around him. Trump was meeting with Chinese Premier Xi Jinping when he was pushed into action While Trump's election victory marked the possibility of a 'reset' between the former Cold War adversaries, that optimism has since dissipated, with relations between the US and Russia hitting a new low in recent years as officials on both sides openly bashed each other Friday. Putin this morning denounced the strike as an 'illegal act of aggression' and also ripped up an agreement to avoid mid-air clashes between Russian and US fighter jets over Syria. Putin saw the US action as an 'aggression against a sovereign nation' on a 'made-up pretext' and considered it a cynical attempt to distract the world from civilian deaths in Iraq, according to Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov. Meanwhile, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev took to Facebook on Friday to declare US-Russian relations 'completely ruined'. He also said the US was 'on the verge of a military clash with Russia'. Rex Tillerson also delivered some harsh words on Thursday and said Russia was either 'complicit' in the Sarin attack that killed more than 80 people or 'simply incompetent' in getting Syria to surrender its chemical weapons. US Ambassador Nikki Haley echoed the sentiments at the UN Security Council and mocked Moscow for failing to rid Syria of chemical weapons under a 2013 deal. WHY DIDN'T PUTIN'S GROWLERS STOP TRUMP'S MISSILES? Trump's missiles somehow managed to get past Vladimir Putin's state-of-the art S-400 Growler air defense system, which covered al-Shayrat airfield. The Growlers - which can intercept targets at a range of 250 miles and at heights of up to 90,000 feet - are stationed at Latakia Airbase, meaning al-Shayrat should be covered by them. Russia was also given 30 minutes' notice before the attacks. Why the system did not protect the base - whether it was because they've never gone up against US technology or because Putin allowed the strike to occur - remains to be seen. In the wake of the attacks, Russia said its service personnel were still protected by the Growlers, and vowed to step up protection of al-Shayrat. Advertisement 'It could be that the Assad regime is playing the Russians for fools,' Haley said. In response to the airstrikes, Russia said it will further strengthen Syrian air defenses. And Putin ordered his Admiral Grigorovich frigate - armed with cruise missiles and a self-defense system - from the Black Sea to dock in-between the Syrian mainland and the US ships that launched the attack. Russia's foreign minister says no Russian servicemen have been hurt in the bombing raid. Its security council said it regretted the 'harm' done to relations between Washington and Moscow. The country also demanded a special meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss what it called 'aggression against a sovereign state'. The meeting, called by Bolivia on Friday afternoon, saw Bolivian Ambassador Sacha Lorenti denouncing the United States as acting like 'investigator, attorney, judge and executioner'. The US was defended by France and Britain. British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft praised President Trump's decision, saying the attack was 'an appropriate response to such a heinous crime, a war crime.' And French Ambassador Francois Delattre expressed hope the US action would be a 'game changer and help boost the political negotiations'. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres urged restraint and a renewed push for peace in Syria, saying in a statement that 'there is no other way to solve the conflict than through a political solution'. He said: 'For too long, international law has been ignored in the Syrian conflict, and it is our shared duty to uphold international standards of humanity. This is a prerequisite to ending the unrelenting suffering of the people of Syria.' WHO SUPPORTS WHO IN THE BATTLE FOR SYRIA? PRO ASSAD Russia - Gives military support, condemns the US airstrikes and suspends deal not to clash mid-air Iran - Close strategic allies with Syria and has provided significant support including $8.69billion North Korea - UN probe found that North Korea was supplying arms to Syria Iraq - The Iraqi Government provided financial support and transported supplies Algeria - Rumours suggest Algerian military aircraft is regularly landing in Syria Venezuela - The South American country has shipped tens of millions of dollars worth of diesel to Syria Lebanon - Police arrested family after they protested about the Syrian Government Belarus - President Alexander Lukashenko supported Moscow's involvement and offered air strike Lebanese Hezbollah Party - Involvement has been substantial and has deployed troops since 2012 ANTI ASSAD US - President Donald Trump launched first airstrikes since six-year civil war started UK - Supports US cruise airstrikes as Theresa May said chemical attack was 'despicable' France/Germany - Both of the countries today said Assad bears 'sole responsibility' for US strike Turkey - Opposed to Assad but objects to Syrian rebels and wants control of Kurdish area Canada - Canada gave more than $4.97million to the Syrian opposition in 2013 Saudi Arabia - The Middle East country is the main group to finance the rebels and has provided a large amount of weapons Israel - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the first to praise the US's retaliatory attack, saying he 'fully supports' Donald Trump's decision to launch the cruise missile attacks Qatar- It was reported Qatar gave the Syrian rebels $2.98 billion at the start of the civil war in 2011 Advertisement The US was also branded 'a partner of ISIS' by al-Assad's spokesman, calling the missile strikes 'reckless and irresponsible.' He also accused Trump of 'naively falling' for a 'false propaganda campaign' about the Idlib Sarin massacre. A Pentagon official told DailyMail.com that the president 'is dead-set against letting Assad labor under the illusion that the Syrian army can murder innocent people with impunity.' A Syrian military source also claimed on Friday that Syria had already 'learned of the American threat' and that precautions were taken - but it did not say how they found out, or from whom. 'We took precautions in more than one military point, including in the Shayrat airbase. We moved a number of airplanes towards other areas,' the official said, adding they were forewarned 'hours' before the strike. Those claims were belied by photographs and video that emerged Friday showing burned out planes underneath the targeted shelters. Some planes - several of which had apparently been left out in the open air, at least two of which were still in shelters - were undamaged but on the base. America had used a special military-to-military hotline to warn Russia about the airstrike around 30 minutes in advance - but the Trump administration did not ask Moscow for permission. It is likely Russia alerted the Syrians about the incoming strikes but this has not been confirmed. Russian warship the Admiral Grigorovich (pictured on recent deployment) - armed with cruise missiles and a self-defense system - was sent from the Black Sea to Syria today following the airstrike on al-Shayrat military airfield Block: Vladimir Putin ordered the Admiral Grigorovich will pass through the east Mediterranean waters where the USS Ross and USS Porter fired the 59 Tomahawk missiles that pounded Assad's al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs in the early hours of Friday The US has been supported by some of its foreign allies. In a joint statement on Friday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande said, 'President Assad bears sole responsibility for this development. Hollande added that the US strike was what France had been calling for in the wake of another chemical attack in 2013. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, speaking alongside German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, added that they hoped this would not spiral into further conflict. 'We do not want an escalation,' Ayrault said. 'We have to stop the hypocrisy. If Russia is acting in good faith it should stop and negotiate.' Britain also stood staunchly behind its long-time ally and what it called an 'appropriate response.' A spokeswoman for Prime Minister Theresa May said: 'The UK Government fully supports the US action, which we believe was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, and is intended to deter further attacks.' EU President Donald Tusk said in a tweet that 'US strikes show needed resolve against barbaric chemical attacks. EU will work with the US to end brutality in Syria.' And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that 'in both word and action' Trump 'sent a strong and clear message' that 'the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated.' Bolivia called an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council (pictured) in New York to discuss Trump's attack on Syria on Friday afternoon. The Bolivian Ambassador denounced the US as acting like 'investigator, attorney, judge and executioner' Defended: The UK defended its long-time ally, with British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft defending Trump's attack as 'an appropriate response to such a heinous crime, a war crime' Predictably, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was less enthused. He took to Twitter on Friday to denounce the strikes, saying: 'Not even two decades after 9/11, US military fighting on same side as al-Qaeda & ISIS in Yemen & Syria. Time to stop hype and cover-ups.' And Iranian news agency ISNA quoted foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi as saying: 'Such measures will strengthen terrorists in Syria... and will complicate the situation in Syria and the region.' Iran is a long-time supporter of the Assad regieme. There has also been debate at home, as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle complained that the Commander in Chief had authorized military action without consulting Congress. 'The President needs congressional authorization for military action as required by the Constitution, and I call on him to come to Congress for a proper debate,' said Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. Libertarians such as Representative Justin Amash, a House Freedom Caucus member, want to stick tightly to the Constitution, which he argued on Twitter had been violated by Trump's actions. 'Airstrikes are an act of war' he wrote. 'Atrocities in Syria cannot justify departure from Constitution, which vests in Congress power to commence war.' He continued: 'Framers of Constitution divided war powers to prevent abuse,' he wrote. 'Congress to declare war; President to conduct war and repel sudden attacks.' Nancy Pelosi, the House's top-ranking Democrat, begged House Speaker Paul Ryan in a letter Friday morning to call back House members to DC as they begin their two-week Passover and Easter recess. 'The President's action and any response demands that we immediately do our duty. Congress must live up to its Constitutional responsibility to debate an Authorization of the Use of Military Force against a sovereign nation,' Pelosi said. All eyes will be on Tillerson next week when he becomes the first Trump Cabinet member to visit Russia. Tillerson may get an audience with Putin himself. Despite the breakdown over Syria, where Russia has a significant military presence, U.S. officials insisted Tillerson's highly anticipated trip was still on. For Tillerson, the trip is even more delicate than before: He must find a way to show the U.S. can stand up to Russia and safeguard elements of cooperation at the same time. He must also be prepared to deal with the notoriously unpredictable Putin, known for making guests feel uncomfortable when he wants to express displeasure. 'Let him come and tell us what they have been up to today,' Maria Zakharova, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, told Russian television. 'We will tell them everything that we think on this score.' If Putin is looking for a way to even the score, it might not be in Syria, said Julianne Smith, a former National Security Council and Defense Department official now at the Center for a New American Security. Faced with challenges to his country's dignity, she said, Putin always thinks in 'asymmetric terms'. 'We should be watching eastern Ukraine, we should be watching for a cyberattack, another drip-drip-drip of WikiLeaks,' she said. 'There's all sorts of things they can do.' By J. Keeler Johnson ("Keelerman") Twitter: @J_Keelerman Get ready, everyone! A tremendous day of racing awaits on April 8th, with fourteen graded stakes races scheduled to be run at Aqueduct, Keeneland, and Santa Anita. The lineup includes three major Kentucky Derby prep races, with the $1,000,000 Santa Anita Derby (gr. I) appearing to offer the greatest opportunity for a significant wagering score. Let's start handicapping! Santa Anita Derby (gr. I) A field of thirteen will contest Santa Anita's final Kentucky Derby prep race, and with a wet track a possibility for Saturday, the task of finding the winner might be comparable to finding a needle in a haystack. After all, few of these horses have experience on wet tracks, and only three have ever won a graded stakes race. The favorite on the morning line is Iliad, who won the seven-furlong San Vicente Stakes (gr. II) before finishing second in the 8.5-furlong San Felipe Stakes (gr. II), which marked his two-turn debut. That was a solid effort, though Iliad was no match for runaway winner Mastery (who came out of the race with an injury) and was tiring in the homestretch after tracking a pace that wasn't all that fast. He'll be stretching out another half-furlong on Saturday while facing several other speed horses that could ensure a fast pace--under the circumstances, I think Iliad is vulnerable to an upset. Gormley finished fourth in the San Felipe after pressing the pace in between horses for six furlongs, but was only beaten three lengths by Iliad in a performance that was stronger than it appears at first glance. The John Shirreffs-trained colt had previously won the FrontRunner Stakes (gr. I) and Sham Stakes (gr. III) at Santa Anita, with the latter being conducted over a sloppy, sealed track. Thus far, Gormley has been a bit unpredictable--he either wins or finishes off the board--but he has trained well since the San Felipe and is expected to rate further off the lead on Saturday. If he's able to relax and adapt to a change in running style, Gormley could be perfectly positioned to rally into a fast pace and rebound in a big way. Term of Art, who split Iliad and Gormley when third in the San Felipe, has steadily improved throughout his career and should appreciate the extra distance and possible fast pace of the Santa Anita Derby. He doesn't have much early speed at all, but figures to make one run from the back of the pack and see how many horses he can catch. While he might not be a horse to play on top, he's definitely one to consider for the exotics. Battle of Midway and Reach the World ran 1-2 in an 8.5-furlong allowance race on March 9th at Santa Anita, and the fact that they were separated by a neck makes it difficult to choose one over the other. Battle of Midway had a significantly wider trip than Reach the World (running nearly five lengths farther per Trakus), but the latter raced in tight quarters throughout and wasn't able to get a clear run until the homestretch, when he gained 1 lengths on Battle of Midway in the final furlong. Of the pair, I might narrowly prefer Battle of Midway, who broke his maiden over a wet-fast/sealed track and is bred to relish mud, but it's a close call. Actually, the most intriguing horse to come out of that allowance race might be Irish Freedom, who finished fifth. Trained by Bob Baffert, the son of Pioneerof the Nile won a high-profile maiden race at Del Mar last summer (defeating Royal Mo and Sonneteer among others) and was billed as a potential star, but went to the sidelines and did not run again until the March 9th allowance race, which marked his first start in more than six months and his debut around two turns. As if this wasn't enough of a challenge, Irish Freedom broke slowly and wound up racing last early on (a far cry from his pace-tracking maiden win) while going very wide on both turns. Despite these obstacles, Irish Freedom made an eye-catching mid-race move to rally within a length of the leaders on the far turn, but this effort cost him in the homestretch and he faded in the final furlongs to finish 9 lengths behind Battle of Midway. But considering his dreadful trip, Irish Freedom's effort was much better than it appears at first glance. According to Trakus, he actually ran 8 lengths farther than Reach the World (and 3 lengths farther than Battle of Midway), so he might have finished significantly closer with a ground-saving trip. The fact that he has been entered in the Santa Anita Derby is a sign of confidence from Bob Baffert, and may be partly the result of Irish Freedom's excellent workout on April 2nd, in which he went six furlongs in a bullet 1:12 1/5 while out-working stablemate West Coast, who had been considered a probable starter for the Santa Anita Derby up until then. To seal the deal, Irish Freedom is bred top and bottom to relish a wet track. His sire, Pioneerof the Nile, finished second in the Kentucky Derby over a sloppy track and sired the mud-loving American Pharoah, while Irish Freedom's dam sire--Smart Strike--is best known as the sire of Curlin, who romped to victory in the Breeders' Cup Classic over a sloppy track. If you're looking for a longshot with a chance to take a huge step forward, I think Irish Freedom is the most likely candidate. American Anthem started his career with a solid maiden win and a runner-up effort in the Sham Stakes, beaten just a head by Gormley. But when he shipped to Oaklawn Park to contest the Rebel Stakes, American Anthem received a wide trip and faltered to finish tenth, though he did lose a shoe during the race and is surely better than his performance suggests. Still, jockey Mike Smith has jumped ship to ride American Anthem's stablemate Reach the World, and it's hard to take a short price on a horse that was never seriously involved last time out and is now carrying seven pounds more weight. Also coming off a disappointing run in the Rebel is Royal Mo, who finished ninth after previously winning the Robert B. Lewis Stakes (gr. III) at Santa Anita by 3 lengths. Trained by John Shirreffs, the son of Uncle Mo likes to race on or near the lead, which could be tricky since he has drawn the far outside post position. From there, his only options are to gun for the lead (likely getting involved in a fast pace) or try to settle off the lead and risk a very wide trip, with neither option being very appealing. So to condense this rather lengthy analysis into something shorter, I view Gormley and Battle of Midway as the main win contenders, although in this deep field, I'm not sure either will offer very appealing odds--I would want at least 5-1. So why consider Irish Freedom at 20-1? Obviously he needs to take a huge step forward, but there are plenty of reasons to think he's better than his last run implies. Assuming the track is at least somewhat wet, let's box all three in the exacta and consider Reach the World and Term of Art as others to include in various exotics plays, emphasizing the latter for third and fourth place only. Now it's your turn! Who do you like in the Santa Anita Derby? Quick Picks In addition to three Kentucky Derby prep races, there are also three Kentucky Oaks prep races scheduled for this weekend, including the $500,000 Central Bank Ashland Stakes (gr. I) at Keeneland. Daddys Lil Darling is the morning line favorite off a solid two-year-old campaign that saw her win the Pocahontas Stakes (gr. II) and finish second in the Alcibiades Stakes (gr. I) at Keeneland, but I'm focusing my attention on Elate. Trained by Bill Mott, the daughter of Medaglia d'Oro broke his maiden by 12 lengths last November, earning an impressive 88 Beyer speed figure, and while she's been beaten in her two starts since then, I think she had legitimate excuses. In the February 11th Suncoast Stakes at Tampa Bay Downs, Elate was short of peak fitness and racing over a track that seemed to favor speed, yet still finished a good second behind Tapa Tapa Tapa after racing wide. A month later, Elate broke slowly in the Honeybee Stakes (gr. III) at Oaklawn Park and found herself eleven lengths off the lead, a complete change in running style for a filly that likes to track the pace. Despite this obstacle, Elate put in a decent rally to finish third, a neck in front of Tapa Tapa Tapa. In a race that appears lacking in serious early speed, Elate should be poised to work out a perfect trip stalking Someday Soon and Tapped in the early stages of the Ashland Stakes. From there, I think she'll take command and hold off the closers to pull off a mild upset. One other horse that has jumped out at me in the entries this weekend is Myakka River, who is entered in the first race at Aqueduct on Saturday. Trained by Shug McGaughey, who isn't known for winning with first-time starters, Myakka River showed no speed in his debut sprinting seven furlongs at Gulfstream on March 4th, but did gain an eye-catching seven lengths in the final furlong to be beaten seven lengths in a deep field. The winner, Timeline, came back to win an allowance race at Aqueduct on April 6th by 13 lengths in a fast time (keep an eye out for him!), while the runner-up--Giuseppe the Great--had previously finished a good third at Gulfstream behind two well-regarded runners trained by Todd Pletcher and Chad Brown. But perhaps the biggest reason to like Myakka River is Shug McGaughey's excellent record with horses making their second start. According to statistics from Brisnet, McGaughey has a positive ROI and a 26% win rate with second-time starters, so I expect Myakka River to take a big step forward on Saturday. Even slight improvement might be enough, as Myakka River earned solid speed figures in his debut and won't be facing the toughest field. Four-time Eclipse Award-winning jockey Javier Castellano picks up the mount, and at anything more than his 5-2 morning line odds, Myakka River could be an appealing win bet. Good luck this weekend! ***** The Unlocking Winners Road to the Kentucky Derby Handicapping Challenge is back for a third consecutive year! Please be sure to post all entries, prime horses, and stable additions on the official contest page. Thanks, and enjoy the racing! ***** J. Keeler Johnson (also known as "Keelerman") is a writer, blogger, videographer, handicapper, and all-around horse racing enthusiast. A great fan of racing history, he considers Dr. Fager to be the greatest racehorse ever produced in America, but counts Zenyatta as his all-time favorite. He is the founder of the horse racing website www.theturfboard.com. Spain said today it had stepped up border controls with Gibraltar under a scheduled move by the EU's Schengen zone. The announcement comes amid rising friction over the British territory caused by Brexit. The interior ministry said it had intensified controls at the crossing point to Gibraltar, a rocky outcrop in Spain's southern tip, in line with rules introduced on Friday for boosting security on the Schengen perimeter. Spain has stepped up border controls with Gibraltar (pictured, queues today) under a scheduled move by the EU's Schengen zone Europeans face systematic checks at the external borders of the EU's Schengen border area from today under new legislation designed to tackle 'foreign fighters' returning from Iraq and Syria The new rules coincide with a flare-up of tensions surrounding the rocky outcrop, which Spain ceded to Britain in 1713 but wants back SCHENGEN: NEW RULES AT BORDERS Europeans will face systematic checks at the external borders of the EU's Schengen border area from today under legislation designed to tackle 'foreign fighters' returning from Iraq and Syria. 'Member States will as of tomorrow have an obligation to carry out systematic checks against relevant databases at the external borders, also on EU citizens,' a European Commission spokeswoman said on Thursday. This is 'in order to verify that persons crossing the borders do not represent a threat to public order and internal security'. The EU said it was 'in response to the attacks in Paris in November 2015 and the growing threat from foreign terrorist fighters'. The EU first proposed the measures after the November 2015 Paris attacks and the member states adopted them on March 7. Advertisement Britain and its territories are not part of the Schengen agreement, whose 26 signatories have also scrapped internal border controls. 'The Spanish authorities have taken timely measures to limit the inconvenience that stronger controls may cause, thanks to new technological systems and additional personnel at the busiest points,' the interior ministry said in a statement. It recommended that for ease of passage, EU citizens carry biometric documents - which are readable by machines - to cross Schengen's external borders, which include La Linea de la Concepcion bordering Gibraltar. The new rules coincide with a flare-up of tensions surrounding the rocky outcrop, which Spain ceded to Britain in 1713 but wants back. The European Union, reacting to Britain's decision to trigger the process for leaving the EU, last month set out draft guidelines stipulating Spain must have a say over whether any post-Brexit trade deal is extended to Gibraltar. Authorities in Gibraltar fear Spain is trying to take advantage of Brexit to impose its control over the 32,000-strong territory. Earlier this week, Gibraltar accused Spain of causing long traffic jams as a result, saying it was 'clearly a response' to Brexit friction Some 10,000 people cross from Spain to Gibraltar to work every day Gibraltar on Wednesday had accused Spain of causing long traffic jams with tightened border controls, saying it was 'clearly a response' to Brexit friction. Some 10,000 people cross from Spain to Gibraltar to work every day. Gibraltarians voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU in last June's Brexit referendum, but they still appear set on remaining British after the vote. Spanish authorities recommended that for ease of passage, EU citizens carry biometric documents - which are readable by machines - to cross Schengen's external borders, which include La Linea de la Concepcion bordering Gibraltar Matthew Sharpe has been jailed for life after he stabbed his former partner and murdered her new lover A 'possessive' ex-boyfriend who stabbed his ex-girlfriend and murdered her new lover in a jealous rage has been jailed for life. Matthew Sharpe, 40, had been in a relationship with 27-year-old Charna Knights for nine years, but she ended it on New Year's Day this year partly due to his controlling nature, Cambridge Crown Court heard. Andrew Hasler, 28, a long-term friend of Sharpe, offered Miss Knights temporary accommodation at his flat. They then confided they had feelings for one another. Peter Clark, prosecuting, said Sharpe, who had been engaged to Miss Knights, saw the couple together and 'could not accept it'. He said: 'If I can't have her, no one can.' He went into a branch of Tesco Extra and bought a pack of three sharp knives and one larger boning knife at around noon on January 8. He launched his attack half an hour later at Mr Hasler's home in St Ives, Cambridgeshire. Sharpe told Miss Knights 'I'm sorry' before putting her in a head-lock and stabbing her in the left breast - almost fatally puncturing her pericardial artery. Mr Hasler 'bravely intervened' and tried to save her before the attacker 'went at him, stabbing and slicing at him,' Mr Clark said. Mr Hasler died after suffering 13 stab wounds, including one in the heart. The killer then went to attack Miss Knights again. Neighbour Andrew Phelps, who had heard the commotion, entered the flat through the unlocked back door and wrestled the knife from Sharpe, saving the woman's life. Andrew Hasler, left, died after being stabbed 13 times by Sharpe. He had been trying to protect his girlfriend Charna Knights, right The attacker fled the scene but was detained by police after jumping into a river. He was found to have cut his wrists and neck. Judge David Farrell awarded Mr Phelps 1,000 for his 'outstanding and courageous act' of bravery. Sharpe, who appeared by prison videolink, admitted the murder of Mr Hasler and the attempted murder of Miss Knights at an earlier hearing. Judge Farrell described the attack as 'brutal' and sentenced him to life in prison with a minimum term of 25 years. He told Sharpe: 'You would not accept her rejection of you and you would not move on as you had been asked to do. 'The jealousy and possessiveness in your character drove you then to a decision which you voiced at the time of the act, that "if I can't have her, no one else can".' He said Sharpe, of Eynesbury, Cambridgeshire, was 'controlling and possessive'. 'A common theme that ran through the relationship was the way you sought to control everything she did, from managing the money to telling her what time she had to be home after a night out,' he said. In a victim impact statement, she said: 'Although I knew he had a temper, I had no idea he could commit such an evil attack.' William Carter, mitigating, said: 'He simply lost it. He can provide no better explanation than that.' Sharpe was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 25 years for murder and life with a minimum term of 20 years for attempted murder, to be served concurrently. The stoic efforts of a fire crew and sheriff's sergeant to rescue an injured bald eagle didn't turn out to be a wild goose chase in the end. The first responders and a bird specialist spent nearly two hours chasing the bald eagle around Lake Afton in Goddard, Kansas on Thursday morning, after someone saw the bird unable to fly and called 911. 'Even when they can't fly, they run like jack rabbits,' Ken Lockwood, the program director for the Eagle Valley Raptor Center, told ABC. 'They do. They run like crazy.' 'It's an eagle - that's our national symbol. You just have to go rescue them. You can't just let it die,' Lockwood said. Scroll down for video Sedgwick County Sergeant Justin Antle holds the injured bald eagle that he and other first responders spent hours chasing in Kansas on Thursday, before finally safely rescuing it The three-year-old male bald eagle is said to be 'extremely thin.' The bird will be taken to the Eagle Valley Raptor Center to recover before being returned to the wild Lockwood enlisted the help of firefighters Dru Kellerby and Don Stewart on the way to the lake. Arriving, the trio found Sergeant Justin Antle and Steve Griner, who work at the Wichita-Sedgwick County Firearms Training Facility near the lake, staring on as the injured bird ran amok on the lake shore. They all teamed up to attempt to corral the injured eagle safely. For a while, the quick-footed bird fled the team, keeping a distance of 30 to 50 feet. 'It took about an hour to chase it until it got tired, and we finally got it to fly into some cedar trees,' Lockwood told the Wichita Eagle. This is Antle's second bird rescue, after he last year retrieved an owl that had flown inside a home (pictured) Lockwood said the firemen and deputies 'went out of their way to try to help this bird'. He estimates the male eagle is about three years old. The bird expert at first thought the eagle had injured its legs, which now appear fine. X-rays and blood tests have been ordered to suss out the problem. Handlers will feed the bird, which is 'extremely thin', through a tube until it is healthy, and plan to release the bird back into the wild after they are satisfied that it's back in hunting shape. As for Antle, the sheriff's sergeant, this is his second bird rescue, after he last year retrieved an owl that had flown inside a home. Antle said he'd seen several bald eagles around the lake before, but never thought he'd help rescue one. 'It was an amazing experience,' Antle said. 'I was glad I got to be a part of it.' A 32-year-old man on his honeymoon is missing at sea today, after he was seen going overboard on a cruise ship. Carnival Cruise Line spokeswoman Jennifer De La Cruz said Reco Scott 'was observed jumping from a [ninth floor] cabin balcony' at 4:53am on Friday. At the time, the Carnival Liberty was on its way from Port Canaveral in Florida to Nassau in the Bahamas, and was about 10 miles northwest of the Berry Islands - a 30-square mile chain in the northwest part of the Bahamian Out Islands. The Coast Guard is searching for 32-year-old Reco Scott (left) who went overboard from his cruise ship early Friday morning while honeymooning with his wife, Angelijica Scott (right) A family member told Fox 5 that the couple got married a year ago, and renewed their vows on Saturday before starting the cruise At the time of the incident, the ship was cruising 10 miles off the Berry Islands The ship immediately turned around to search for the Decatur, Georgia man, who was on a honeymoon with his wife, Angelijica Scott. The Coast Guard was also called and sent a helicopter and a clipper to aide in the search. A family member told Fox 5 that the couple got married a year ago, and renewed their vows last Saturday. 'We extend our thoughts and prayers to his family and loved ones during this difficult time,' De La Cruz said. Roger Bolton, who hosts Feedback on Radio 4, warned that the BBCs workers do not realise how important religion is to many of its viewers The BBCs religious coverage is a mess because its liberal staff are dangerously out of touch, one of the Corporations own presenters has claimed. Roger Bolton, who hosts Feedback on Radio 4, warned that the BBCs workers do not realise how important religion is to many of its viewers. Mr Bolton said: [The BBC has] a predominantly young workforce, which is more liberal and secular than the rest of the country. 'It is dangerously out of touch, not least with immigrant communities, whose faiths are central to their lives. In Anglican newspaper the Church Times, Mr Bolton said: Are you confused by the BBCs strategy for covering religion? You should be: the BBC is. There are real doubts about whether it has the will or ability to implement an effective response to a mess that is largely of its own making. Ofcom told the broadcaster last week that it must air at least 115 hours of new religious programming a year. A BBC spokesman said: Whos doing more than the BBC on religion? If you look around I think youll find the answer is no one. Police have arrested a father nearly 38 years after his infant son's death, which was originally characterized as sudden infant death syndrome. Maine state police charged 62-year-old Burton "Ben" Hagar with murder Friday. The Farmington man is accused of killing his 4-month-old son, Nathan, in 1979. Burton 'Ben' Hagar, 62, has been charged with the murder of his infant son, who died in 1979. The toddler, believed to have died as a result of sudden infant death syndrome, was found unresponsive in his family's Brunswick, Maine apartment Nathan was found unresponsive in the family's Brunswick apartment and later died at Parkview Hospital in May 1979. State police quietly reopened the case in 1991 and Hagar is being charged by the Cumberland County Grand Jury, WCSH6 reported. This is the first arrest as a result of the work of a cold case unit created last year by the Maine Legislature. Authorities aren't saying how the infant died. The body was not exhumed. Hagar will make his first court appearance on Wednesday, April 12. It is unknown whether he has a lawyer, and a telephone listing could not be found. The case, if solved, would be the oldest active case in the history of Maine state police. Vladimir Putin did not try and intercept Donald Trump's massive missile strike on Bashar al-Assad's Al Shayrat military airbase outside Homs - despite being covered by Russia's state-of-the art S-400 Growler air defence system. The Russians deployed the Growler - which can intercept targets at a range of 250 miles and at heights of up to 90,000 feet - to the Latakia Airbase on the Syrian coast. Yet, despite being well within the missile system's range, no attempt was made to intercept the 59 Tomahawk Cruise missiles fired from the Arleigh Burke- destroyers USS Porter and USS Ross from the Mediterranean. Vladimir Putin has deployed the S-400 Growler missile system to the Latakia Airbase in northern Syria which provides coverage over a 250-mile range including the target airbase Russian defence officials claim the S-400, pictured, can track up to 300 targets, including stealth aircraft and missiles and intercept them from low levels up to 90,000 feet Putin ordered the deployment of advanced air defence systems to Latakia after a Turkish F-16 shot down a Russian Sukhio-24 bomber in November 2015 after it encroached Turkish airspace The Tomahawks, which have a range of 690 miles can skim the surface of the earth and take a complicated route to a target to avoid possible interception. However, President Trump gave the Russians advanced notice of the attack before the 1,450kg missiles struck the air strip. Russia deployed the advanced air defence systems after a Turkish F-16 shot down a Russian Sukhoi-24 bomber in November 2015 after it encroached Turkish airspace. The Growler is able to track up to 300 targets Following last night's devastating attack, Russian politicians claimed their service personnel were being kept save by the S-400 and the older S-300 air defence systems. Viktor Ozerov of the Russian upper house defence and security committee told Sputnik: 'Regardless of today's US attack on the Syrian air force air base, our air base [in Latakia] and logistics centre in Tartus are secured from the sea and from the air by S-300 and S-400 systems. The Russian Defence Ministry claimed it may improve protection of Syrian airbases following the attacks. According to The Aviationist, the Tomahawks flew straight through the 'Missile Engagement Zone' covered by Putin's 11,000mph Growler missiles. Syrian sources suggested only some 30 of the Tomahawks failed to hit their targets, but the US insists all the weapons were successful. Russian military sources claim their advanced air defence systems can protect against incoming missiles and aircraft - including stealth jets - however, they have not been tested against US equipment. Andrei Kortunov, director of the Russian International Affairs Council told the Interfax News Agency: 'The risks of a direct military confrontation of Russia and the U.S. have risen significantly. Whether or not it could lead to WW III depends on how responsible the leaders are.' Trump ordered the USS Porter and USS Ross to fire 59 missiles at the Syrian airbase The Tomahawk missiles were fired at the airbase from the USS Ross and USS Porter Sergei Rogov, director of the US and Canada institute, a Moscow-based think-tank, said Trump authorised the strike to prove his independence and 'show Trump critics that he doesn't have a pro-Russia stance and is ready to take a tough course regarding Moscow'. However, as a result of the strike, Putin has ordered Russia no longer co-operates with the US over the so-called 'deconfliction line', which prevents coalition and Russian aircraft coming into conflict. Tramaine Brock, 28, was arrested Thursday from his home in Santa Clara County and charged with felony domestic violence A San Francisco 49ers defensive player was arrested in connection to domestic violence on Thursday. Tramaine Brock, 28, was arrested Thursday from his home in Santa Clara County and charged with felony domestic violence. Officers responded to an incident at 9.35pm to investigate a domestic violence report that had been called in. His girlfriend, who is also the mother of his two children, called 9-1-1, sources told NBC Bay Area. When officers arrived, they found that the woman, who is remaining unnamed, had 'visible injuries,' including marks around her neck. Police described her injuries as 'minor' in that she received no medical attention, reported The Sacramento Bee. The incident is said to have taken place less than a mile from the team's Santa Clara headquarters and Levi's stadium. Brock started 16 games as quarterback for the 49ers last season and is one of the few players remaining from the team's 2012 Super Bowl appearance Brock's arrest is the 15th for the San Francisco team in just five years Brock started 16 games as cornerback for the 49ers last season and is one of the few players remaining from the team's 2012 Super Bowl appearance. On November 22, 2013, Brock agreed to a four-year extension with the 49ers worth $16million including at least $7million in guaranteed money. He went voluntarily with police and was booked into the County Jail and his bail has been set at $50,000. Brock's arrest is the 15th for the San Francisco team in just five years. The most recent arrest for player was in September 2016 when tight end Bruce Miller was arrested for assaulting an elderly man and his son in a San Francisco Hotel. The 49ers have not yet commented on the case, and it is believed to be his first arrest. It is also the first incident involving a player since the team received a new general manager John Lynch, reported the Bee. I still cannot quite believe it. Cannot quite believe I am watching a UN Security Council meeting where US Ambassador Nikki Haley blames Russia for the presence of chemical weapons in Syria. Where Russia accuses the US of encouraging terrorists and routes its cruise missile-armed warship The Admiral Grigorovich to the Med. On Thursday night, the mainstream consensus that 'something must be done' in Syria became a reality. Donald Trump (left) had previously said he was not in favour of a regime change in Syria. Assad is winning the war against the rebels and Islamic State in the country On Thursday Trump launched a missile at a Syrian air base in response to Assad's alleged chemical attack on his own people The US launched fifty-nine Tomahawk cruise missiles, fired from two US Navy ships in the Mediterranean. President Donald Trump said they hit the Shayrat base that launched Tuesday's gas attack in Syria. Now their ambassador says this was 'a measured step' and 'the US is prepared to do more'. More? More what? More bombing? More attacks on a sovereign nation? To incurring more of Putin's wrath? More brinkmanship? To what end? To show that you have a red line? I am struggling to understand how a President who repeatedly campaigned to stay out of Syria is now right in the heart of it, launching missiles into the country - with Russia watching on. On Thursday night, the mainstream consensus that 'something must be done' in Syria became a reality. The US launched fifty-nine Tomahawk cruise missiles He has overwhelming support. From the UK, Canada, Australia, Israel and the EU. And from the Democrats excluding Clinton of course. (She has made the point that Trump cannot in one breath speak of protecting Syrian babies while closing American doors to them.) But Assad has friends in powerful places too. Russia. Iran. Iraq. Lebanon. Putin has called it a deliberate act of aggression on a sovereign nation. In case we needed reminding, Putin has red lines too. He has terminated the joint air safety agreement to prevent incidents in the skies over Syria. Imagine the fall out from a Russian US mid-air collision. We used to have the Wild West. Trump, Putin, Assad and ISIS just rechristened Syria the Crazy Country. There are so many arms being discharged there, it is getting to the point no one knows who is firing or why. There are only best guesses. Arguably it is still a best guess that Assad deliberately launched a chemical attack on Syria. Some question his involvement. Assad is winning the war against the rebels and Islamic State. Trump had previously said he was not in favour of a regime change. So Assad has absolutely NO reason launch a chemical attack to justify the Western intervention it has attracted. The former British Ambassador to Syria Peter Ford who says he believes it is 'highly unlikely' that Russia or the Assad regime was behind the attack in Idlib. There is much confusion. But at least the Russia's approach to Assad is clear. A foreign ministry spokesman said: 'He is the legal president of an independent state. What is the US approach?' And now we know. It is to bomb the airfield of a country that is alleged to have bombed its people. And after the depressing inaction in the UK after the Westminster terror attack at least Trump has actually done something. Moved from empty words, condemning an attack which clearly sickens us all into demonstrable force. Missiles fired. Trump understands stating the obvious is not leadership. It does not present a solution. It is the same act of nothingness as saying 'we stand united'. Or are 'not cowed'. Putin has called the missile strike a deliberate act of aggression on a sovereign nation We have all seen by now the pictures of tiny babies in shrouds. The twins sleeping too peacefully dead, in fact yet still somehow animated by their father's living embrace. We can't imagine how one parent could bear all that. I couldn't. I wonder why I haven't seen any pictures of grieving mothers in the aftermath of the attack. Where are the women survivors, connected so viscerally to their babies? But experience tells us reacting with our heart solves nothing. The world reacted with its heart to the death of little Aylun Kurdi, drowned on a beach in Greece, and it is still reeling from the political decisions made in the wake of that one picture. Trump has acted definitively. Acts like this will not be tolerated. But did he act with his heart? Or with his head? My most forgiving explanation for Trump's trigger happy Thursday is that he genuinely, morally believed he had to act. Compelled by a big heart and a love of children. He is adored by his own kids for good reason, he is a great dad. I worry about what comes next. There is no doubt Assad is thuggish and brutal. But no matter how repulsive the Assad regime may be, I would argue the alternative an authoritarian Islamic regime would be far worse. Assad is unique in the Arab world. Unlike most leaders of Muslim-majority countries, Assad is not a religious Muslim We have all seen by now the pictures of tiny babies in shrouds. The twins sleeping too peacefully dead, in fact yet still somehow animated by their father's living embrace Under Assad Syria was a secular nation in which different religions lived side by side. Even Obama recognised that Assad protected Syrian Christians, enabling them to live in peace. Women could drive and had a vote. Compare this to Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, where ISIS has set about subjugating and terrorising its one million inhabitants in a manner not seen since the Nazi occupation of Europe. Opponents have been subjected to torture and mass executions, and minority sects, such as Christians, persecuted. Civilians trying to flee are slaughtered. And suicide bombers are just another weapon in their arsenal. Given this, is deposing the legal president of an independent state, without a viable replacement on hand, really so very wise? Have we not learned our lessons from the disastrous triumph of the Arab Spring? Surely we need Trump to think with his head. Strategically. Look away from the images of war, and consider what is best for the stability of the region. More than six years into the Syrian conflict, Assad appeared to be militarily unassailable in the areas of western Syria where he has shored up his rule with decisive help from the Russian military and Iranian-backed militias from across the region. Syrians were subjected to chemical weapons attack in Idlib. World Health Organization experts are pictured working as they take part in an autopsy conducted in a hospital in Adana, Turkey on Thursday He had a clear goal: total defeat of the insurgency. He rejects the federalism sought by Kurdish groups in northern Syria. 'We have a great hope which is becoming greater, we do not have any other option except victory,' he said. 'If we do not win this war, it means that Syria will be deleted from the map. We have no choice in facing this war, and that's why we are confident, we are persistent and we are determined.' Why would we stand in his way? This is a brutal war which needs to be over. Assad is the legal president of an independent nation with a clear aim and confidence to deliver it. You may think him a monster, but history teaches us you remove one monster and another horror will come in its place. It amazes me our world leaders want to betray the only man and the only country who has stood fast against the tide of mediaeval religious fanaticism. Assad wants to rid his country of Islamic extremism. As news of another terrorist attack with a truck, driven into Swedish nationals near the Parliament building in Stockholm, sent forward and backwards over the bodies by the evil man behind the wheel, I wonder if the world is focussed on the wrong monster. Assad is a secular leader fighting against ISIS. Under threat from the death cult of ISIS, capable of radicalising European nationals on home soil, I wonder why the hell we would bomb his airbases or stand in his way. A former University of Illinois student was sentenced to a decade in prison Friday in the death of her newborn son. Lindsay Johnson, 21, of Monee, Illinois, pleaded guilty to endangering the life or health of a child in connection with her son's death on March 31, 2016. She was accused of suffocating and stuffing her newborn son into a backpack shortly after giving birth to him in a University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana dormitory bathroom. Lindsay Johnson looks back at her family once more while being taken into custody during her sentencing Friday at the Champaign County Courthouse in Urbana, Illinois In exchange for Johnson's guilty plea, charges of first-degree murder - which carry a 20-to-60 year prison sentence - and concealing a homicidal death, a Class 3 felony with a maximum of five years behind bars, were dismissed. 'She acknowledged today that there was wrongdoing, but as weve maintained all along, it was not a murder,' one of Johnson's attorneys, Evan Bruno told People. 'It is a tragedy for the newborn, for her, for the whole family.' Johnson, who has been free on bond since April 12, 2016, will be eligible for parole in five years. Police became aware of the case around 5.30pm on March 31, 2016, after reports Johnson, then a 20-year-old University of Illinois sophomore, had been in the bathroom with what sounded like a crying baby for a long time. Johnson was sentenced to 10 years after pleading guilty to endangering the life or health of a child in connection with the March 13, 2016, suffocation of her son in a dormitory bathroom on the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana (pictured) The former agricultural communications major insisted she merely had stomach flu, and the cops left. But minutes later the officers found a huge pool of blood in the bathroom. They sought her out again at around 8pm and found her walking through campus. Unzipping her bag, police found the dead newborn. Her attorney Tony Bruno said the case was 'serious and tragic', adding that Johnson's parents 'are dealing with this situation as well as anyone could be expected to.' According to court documents, Johnson tried to dismiss the officers when they approached her a second time by saying she was on her way to the hospital. When they found the baby she allegedly told them she didn't know she was pregnant until she went into labor, and that the baby was not breathing when he was born. In this April 12, 2016 photo, University of Illinois student Lindsay Johnson, then-20, walks away from the bench with attorney Tony Bruno during her arraignment at the Champaign County Courthouse in Urbana, Illinois The agricultural communications major, pictured here in 2016 mug shots, told police that she covered the newborn's mouth to stop him crying, and hid him under her bed when officers first arrived However, she later admitted he was crying and alive when he was born. She also told police she covered the baby's mouth to stop him crying, and hid him under her bed when officers first came to check on her, according to Champaign County State's Attorney's Office. Officers seized Johnson's phone and found internet searches for: 'pregnancy', 'pregnancy symptoms', 'miscarriage', 'home abortions', and 'how to manage physical signs of pregnancy after the loss of a baby'. An autopsy found the baby was not stillborn but did not find a cause of death. 'As our society would demand, Lindsay has taken full responsibility for her actions. She goes to prison today with profound remorse and the hope that others might learn from her story,' Bruno said Friday. SHIPPENSBURG A Shippensburg Area Senior High School employee was charged with DUI following an incident at the school Wednesday night, according to police. Shippensburg police were called around 7:40 p.m. Wednesday to the school for an intoxicated employee causing problems inside the building. Police were told by another employee that a vehicle leaving the scene was being driven by the employee who was said to be causing issues. The driver, 63-year-old Robert Victor Vignaud, of Newburg, was stopped by police. He was under the influence of alcohol and incapable of driving safely, according to police. A release from police states that a blood test determined Vignauds blood alcohol concentration was almost twice the legal limit. Vignaud was charged with two counts of DUI. Vignaud is listed on the Shippensburg Area School Districts website as a custodian. Donald Trump may be spending the weekend at Mar-a-Lago, but it's hard to see him getting much rest and relaxation juggling a visit with the Chinese president and the military operation against Syria. Ex-wife Marla Maples, meanwhile, doesn't seem to be lamenting her missed opportunity to be first lady. Maples was seen looking very zen on Friday, practicing yoga at a park on the grounds of Rome's Villa Borghese. Marla Maples was pictured practicing yoga in a Roman park on Friday The former wife of President Donald Trump is in Italy to film a segment fromthe country's version of Dancing with the Stars Above, a view of Villa Borghese in Rome After a few seated arm exercises, Maples erupted into laughter as she chatted with a friend. Maples is currently in Italy to appear on Italy's version of Dancing with the Stars. Maples competed on season 22 of the American series, finishing in 10th place. A former model, Maples met The Donald in 1989, when he was still married to his first wife Ivana. The two were married in 1993, and had a daughter together, Tiffany, who is now 23. The couple divorced in 1999 and Trump went on to marry his current wife Melania in 2003. Maples appears to be a regular yogi, according to her Instagram posts Maples (left) and Trump had one child during their marriage, daughter Tiffany, age 23 (right) Since her husband took office in January, Melania has continued to live in New York City where their son Barron, 11, attends school. But she flew down to Florida for the weekend to help her husband host China's first couple. Trump's eldest daughter Ivanka is also at Mar-a-Lago this weekend, and brought along her three kids - two of which are learning Mandarin. The passionate infatuation of the Queens uncle, Edward VIII, for Wallis Simpson (pictured) has been hailed as the greatest love story of the 20th century The passionate infatuation of the Queens uncle, Edward VIII, for Wallis Simpson has been hailed as the greatest love story of the 20th century. But how much of a love story was it? There is no doubt about Edwards resolve to marry the twice-divorced American socialite. After all, he abandoned his throne, country and reputation to make her his wife, and was condemned to a life in exile as a result. But whether Wallis, who was conducting simultaneous affairs with four other men, ever truly loved the besotted monarch in return is debatable. Was it actually the case that she became trapped into marriage with a man she had come privately to despise? New evidence supporting the latter view is provided in a Scotland Yard dossier that has been unearthed by academics for a Channel 4 documentary series, Spying On The Royals. It reveals that Edwards father, George V, asked prime minister Stanley Baldwin to order surveillance of his own son and heir something that was long suspected but has always been denied. The King was concerned about the then Prince of Waless friendships with Fascists such as Sir Oswald Mosley, as well as his liaison with the allegedly pro-Nazi Wallis Simpson. Both she and her husband, Ernest, were also monitored by Scotland Yard and the intelligence services. The surveillance involved close scrutiny of Walliss sex life. From her teenage years, she seems to have been irresistible to men. Nobody ever called me beautiful or even pretty, she wrote in her memoirs, but she had fine eyes, a trim figure and a sense of style, as well as wit and animation that would make her alluring and challenging to men all her life. After problems in her first marriage to a violent, alcoholic U.S. naval pilot, Earl Winfield Spencer Jr, Wallis travelled to Hong Kong, where Spencer was stationed, to attempt a reconciliation with him. The reunion was short-lived and they separated soon after. There is no doubt about Edwards resolve to marry the twice-divorced American socialite. After all, he abandoned his throne, country and reputation to make her his wife, and was condemned to a life in exile as a result During what she would later describe as her lotus year in Shanghai and Beijing, she is said to have been schooled in some of the more specialised sexual techniques of the Far East. She also had an affair with a handsome young Italian diplomat and Fascist, Count Gian Galeazzo Ciano, then 21 and seven years her junior, who later became Italys foreign minister and Mussolinis son-in-law. She became pregnant and underwent a botched abortion that left her with gynaecological problems for the rest of her life. After her divorce from Spencer, Wallis met wealthy Anglo-American businessman Ernest Simpson in London. He became infatuated and divorced his first wife to marry her in 1928. They set up home in London, where they were soon at the centre of a fashionable, well-connected circle. In January 1931, Wallis and Ernest were invited to a weekend house party at Burrough Court in Leicestershire, the country home of Edwards mistress, Thelma, Viscountess Furness. The Simpsons were there ostensibly as chaperones to neutralise gossip about Thelma and Edward but the seeds were being sown for a far more fateful relationship as they were absorbed into the Princes circle. Edward FitzGerald (left), 7th Duke of Leinster, and the German Ambassador to the UK, Count Joachim von Ribbentrop (right) Some three years later, it seemed perfectly natural for Thelma, about to leave for America, to ask her friend Wallis to look after [the Prince] while Im away. She returned to find that Wallis had supplanted her in the Princes affections. In spite of his reputation as a womaniser and his numerous affairs with married women, the Empires Prince Charming was an unsuccessful lover. Sexually inadequate and far from well endowed, he suffered from premature ejaculation, leaving his partners frustrated and unsatisfied. Wallis, with a sexual repertoire that included techniques variously known as the Baltimore grip, Shanghai squeeze or China clinch, was reputed to be the only woman capable of alleviating this condition. She was well-rewarded for her expertise. George V was aghast to discover from the surveillance that his son had given his mistress jewels costing 110,000 (7 million today). In recently declassified files in the National Archives, Superintendent Albert Canning of Scotland Yard, the man investigating Wallis, reported that the Prince of Wales was frequently visiting the Simpsons London home at 5 Bryanston Court, Marylebone, and that in addition to his lavish gifts of jewellery and furs, was paying her 6,000 a year (more than 350,000 today). Covert surveillance at an antique shop in Kensington frequently visited by the Prince and Wallis confirmed that they called each other Darling. The antique dealers opinion was that the lady appeared to have the Prince of Wales completely under her thumb. But Canning also reported that Wallis was very fond of the company of men and had had many affairs. Apart from her husband, Ernest Simpson, with whom she was still living during the royal affair, there were at least four other men in her life. In the summer of 1935, the security services shadowing Wallis reported: Although she now spends a great deal of time with the Prince of Wales, it is said that she has another secret lover who is kept by her. In a Special Branch report dated July 3, 1935, the secret lover was identified as a 36-year-old married Mayfair car dealer, Guy Marcus Trundle, who was described as a very charming adventurer, very good-looking, well-bred and an excellent dancer. He [Trundle] is said to boast that every woman falls for him. He meets Mrs Simpson quite openly at informal social gatherings as a personal friend, but secret meetings are made by appointment when intimate relations take place. William C. Bullitt (left), the allegedly pro-Nazi American ambassador to France, and Mayfair car dealer, Guy Marcus Trundle (right) In due course Trundle was interviewed by Special Branch and admitted that he receives money from Mrs Simpson as well as expensive presents. A second man intimately involved with Wallis was the German Ambassador to the UK, Count Joachim von Ribbentrop, later Hitlers foreign minister, who was hanged at Nuremberg in 1946. He was ordered by the Fuhrer to flatter Wallis and become intimate with her as a means of keeping Edward VIII friendly to the Nazi regime. He took to sending her 17 carnations or long-stemmed red roses daily, allegedly to remind her of the number of nights they had spent together. Wallis was also reported to be in a sexual relationship with William C. Bullitt, the allegedly pro-Nazi American ambassador to France in the years immediately before the war, while the fourth man was someone well-known to me personally. He was Irelands premier peer, Edward FitzGerald, 7th Duke of Leinster, whose family trustee I became in the years before his suicide in 1976. Fitz Leinster, a close friend of Edward and Wallis both before and after the Abdication, was dubbed the Shy Duke by Wallis, who began an intermittent affair with him in 1935, while he was married to his second wife, Rafaelle. Relations between Fitz and Wallis resumed in 1946, after the Windsors had returned to France from the Bahamas, where the Duke had been Governor. At that time the Duke of Leinster lived in a villa in the South of France with his third wife, former musical comedy star Denise Jo Orme. A charming man and very much a gentleman, Fitz confessed to me that the running in this relationship was made almost entirely by Wallis, but that he found it impossible to resist her advances. Many years later, when I visited the Windsors at their Paris mansion in the Bois de Boulogne in 1971, Walliss face lit up when I mentioned Leinsters name. Oh, the Shy Duke! she said. What a dear man! Please send Fitz my love. I have such happy memories of him. The popular view of Wallis Simpson was and to some extent remains that she was a scheming, ambitious adventuress who hoped to become Queen. But the evidence does not entirely support this. Lady Diana Cooper, a close observer of Wallis and Edwards relationship, wrote: The truth is shes bored stiff by him, and her picking on him and her coldness towards him, far from policy, are irritation and boredom. And indeed that may have been true. There was a part of Wallis still in love with her second husband, Ernest. In September 1936, nine months after Edward had become King and less than three months before the Abdication, Wallis wrote to the King. She told him she needed to renounce him and return to Ernest the man she was due to divorce with whom she felt so awfully congenial . . . I know Ernest and have the deepest affection and respect for him. I feel I am better with him than with you . . . I am sure you and I would only create disaster together. The King responded to this by threatening to slit his throat if she left him. She knew then that she was trapped. In a poignant letter to Ernest, written two days before their divorce hearing at Ipswich Assizes, she ended with the words: I am so lonely. Wallis had a midlife fling with the blond, blue-eyed, 35-year-old homosexual playboy James Paul Donahue Jr (left) Astonishingly, the surveillance by the security services ordered by his father continued after Edward VIII became King. On the first weekend of December 1936, a 27-year-old MI5 officer, Thomas Robertson, lay crouched in the undergrowth of Londons Green Park, wire-tapping the telephone junction box that served Buckingham Palace. Listening in on a private conversation between Edward VIII and his brother Bertie, the future George VI, Robertson became the first person outside the Royal Family to learn that the King was about to abdicate to marry Wallis. Some historians argue that Edward, while infatuated initially with Wallis, had discerned in her a means of escape from the kingly destiny he found intolerable. And when, despite Walliss desperate efforts to dissuade him, he announced that he was renouncing the throne for the woman I love, she was blamed as she knew she would be. Five months after her marriage in France to the man now known as the Duke of Windsor, an occasion boycotted by every member of the Royal Family, Wallis was still writing loving letters to Ernest Simpson. Ernest dear, she wrote from Paris on October 30, 1937, What can I say? When I am standing beside the grave of everything that was us, oh my dear, dear Ernest, I can only cry as I say farewell and press your hand very tightly and pray to God. Wallis. The new Duchess of Windsor, exiled in France, ostracised by the Royal Family, denied the title of Her Royal Highness and deluged with hate mail, faced a hollow existence with a man she did not love and whose subservient devotion inspired in her only an icy contempt. Far from being the idyllic romance of popular legend, their life together was disfigured by drunken bickering. Given the Dukes sexual inadequacy, no children resulted. When she was once asked why this was, the Duchess snapped: My husband isnt heir-conditioned. British Intelligence continued to watch their every move. They are very clearly Fifth Column, stated one wartime report, while their banishment to the Bahamas, where the Duke became Governor, led the FBI to suggest that Wallis was sending messages about British official activities to the Germans. Marriage to the former King-Emperor gave Wallis fame, wealth, fabulous jewels and clothes, and a life of luxury in their mini-palace in the Bois de Boulogne, with scarlet, blue and gold tapestries bearing the former monarchs personal standard, and a staff of 25 servants attired in the royal livery. But it was a tinselled wilderness they inhabited, peopled by fawning, second-rate Americans and ill-chosen friends such as Sir Oswald and Lady Mosley, both of whom had been imprisoned in Britain for their support of Hitler. After the Windsors relegation to what the Duchess described as the moron paradise of the Bahamas, the Duke was never given another job and their life together in Paris appeared empty, meaningless and purposeless. In her 50s, exhausted by the need to maintain the fiction of a great love story, Wallis had a midlife fling with the blond, blue-eyed, 35-year-old homosexual playboy James Paul Donahue Jr known to gossip columnists as Jimmy who had inherited some $15 million from his grandfather, the five-and-dime stores magnate Frank W. Woolworth. The scandal generated by this relationship, which created rumour and speculation in gossip columns worldwide, broke the Dukes heart. But his love for his wife stayed steadfast to the end. Displayed in their mansion, framed on royal stationery and written in his own hand, were these words: My friend, with thee to live alone Methinks were better than to own A crown, a sceptre, and a throne. For the devoted Duke those words remained true until his very last breath. Not so, perhaps, for Wallis. Katrina Kegelman, 24, gave birth to the child on Monday on a patio, then hid the baby in the backyard of a stranger's Clearwater, Florida home, according to arr est records A Florida woman was arrested Wednesday after police said she gave birth moments after smoking crack-cocaine and then tried to run away. Katrina Kegelman, 24, gave birth to the baby boy on Monday on a patio, then hid the baby in the backyard of a stranger's Clearwater, Florida home, according to arr est records. Carrie Meeks lives in the home where Kegelman left her baby, and told KTLA 5: 'I couldn't imagine doing that with my baby'. Meeks said she noticed Kegelman, who has no permanent address, walking near her home and let her inside so that she could give her clean clothes and offer her a shower. She then said that she noticed that Kegelman was in labor and attempted to take her to the hospital. However, by the time she was able to call for help, the woman had already given birth. Carrie Meeks (pictured) lives in the home where Kegelman left her baby, and told KTLA 5 : 'I couldn't imagine doing that with my baby' Meeks said she noticed blood on the new mother's pants, and said the baby was tucked inside. Kegelman reportedly begged Meeks not to call 9-1-1, so she said she was just calling a friend, but actually stepped inside to call an ambulance. During that time, Kegelman is said to have hidden the baby under a plant in her backyard. According to an affidavit, obtained by KTLA, Kegelman later admitted to police that she was afraid she would be arrested for the baby's death as she had smoked crack just moments before giving birth. Kegelman, pictured in a Facebook photo reportedly begged Meeks not to call 9-1-1, so she said she was just calling a friend, but actually stepped inside to call an ambulance She was out on bond early Thursday morning, and now faces a child neglect charge. Based on her Facebook page, she has at least one other child (pictured) 'There's not a drug in this world that could have made me stash my baby in the bushes then lie to people and tell them it's not there,' said an emotional Meeks. When fire rescue arrived at her home, Kegelman at first wouldn't say where the baby was, but eventually pointed toward the backyard. The baby boy survived and is at a hospital, according to police. Kegelman was also taken to a hospital and stayed there until Wednesday, when she admitted to the incident and was arrested. She was out on bond early Thursday morning, and now faces a child neglect charge. Based on her Facebook page, Kegelman has at least one other child. The Swedish Prime Minister laid a bouquet of red roses and lit a candle to remember the four victims of the Stockholm truck attack. Stefan Lofven was visibly emotional as he paid his respects outside the Ahlens department store. This was the site of a horrific attack that saw a 30-tonne truck ram into a crowd of shoppers, injuring 15 people - nine seriously. Stefan Lofven was visibly emotional as he paid his respects outside the Ahlens department store This was the site of a horrific attack that saw a 30-tonne truck ram into a crowd of shoppers, injuring 15 people - nine seriously Earlier, Mr Lofven vowed that Swedish people would stand firm in the face of any threat Mr Lofven spoke to police officer Jonas Hvitfeldt, who was guarding a cordon outside the store Mr Lofven spoke to police officer Jonas Hvitfeldt, who was guarding a cordon outside the store. Earlier he had vowed that the Swedish people would stand firm in the face of any threat. 'Terrorists want us to be afraid, want us to change our behaviour, want us to not live our lives normally, but that is what we're going to do. 'So terrorists can never defeat Sweden, never,' he said. As shoppers ran in terror, the driver crashed into a busy department store before fleeing at about 3pm local time, before the truck burst into flames. Two other suspects were tackled to the ground and arrested nearby. Earlier he had vowed that Swedish people would stand firm in the face of any threat 'Terrorists want us to be afraid, want us to change our behaviour, want us to not live our lives normally, but that is what we're going to do,' he said 'So terrorists can never defeat Sweden, never,' the Prime Minister added. Pictured, his floral tribute at the scene Memorial candles were left outside the Swedish Embassy on a rainy night in Helsinki, Finland Some witnesses claimed the terrorists had also opened fire on pedestrians and attacked them with knives. A third suspect was arrested in a northern suburb of the Swedish capital. He admitted responsibility for the attack. Memorial candles were left outside the Swedish Embassy in Helsinki, Finland. Others took to social media to send their tributes. Boris Johnson wrote: 'Deeply concerned by shocking incident in Stockholm. 'Britain's thoughts are with the victims, their families and the whole of Sweden.' Brendan Cox, husband of the murdered MP Jo Cox, said: 'Terrorism shows weakness not strength. 'They can hurt us, but they will never defeat us. My heart goes out to the fallen.' Others, including Brendan Cox, husband of the murdered MP Jo Cox, took to social media to send their tributes President Francois Hollande expressed his 'horror and indignation' at the attack. 'France expresses its sympathy and solidarity with the families of the victims and all Swedes,' he said. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo announced on Twitter that the Eiffel Tower, which is normally illuminated, would go dark for a minute at midnight in honour of the victims of the attack. Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman said Germany stood 'together against terror' with Sweden, and offered sympathy for those involved in the attack. Conservative commentator Tomi Lahren is suing Glenn Beck and his media outlet The Blaze for wrongful termination after she publicly declared she was pro-choice. Lahren, who joined the Blaze in 2015, was suspended from her show after she appeared on The View last month and said being pro-life would make her a hypocrite given her support for limited government. Her comments sparked an immediate uproar among conservatives, and Lahren claims Beck and his company launched a public smear campaign against her in retaliation, according to the Dallas Morning News. Lahren (left), who joined Glenn Beck's media outlet The Blaze in 2015, was suspended from her show after she appeared on The View last month and said she was pro-choice (right, Beck) Lahren (right, on The View in March) filed a lawsuit claiming she was wrongfully terminated for saying it was hypocritical to support limited government and be pro-life at the same time Lahren, who became a viral sensation for her incendiary rants, appeared on the daytime talk show The View on March 17, saying she was pro-choice. Lahren said: 'I can't sit here and be a hypocrite and say I'm for limited government but I think the government should decide what women do with their bodies.' 'Stay out of my guns and you can stay out of my body, as well,' she said. Lahren said a producer from The Blaze who accompanied her to The View taping congratulated her immediately after the appearance - but the fallout was swift. When Lahren defended herself for being an 'independent thinker' on Twitter, Beck stepped in and appeared to question her intellectual honesty Her conservative fan base immediately lashed out on Twitter, incensed that she had branded many of them hypocrites. When Lahren defended herself for being an 'independent thinker' on Twitter, Beck stepped in and appeared to question her intellectual honesty. At The Blaze, Lahren's email account was shut down, supervisors stopped communicating with her, and her dressing room door was marked with yellow caution tape, according to the lawsuit filed in Dallas County, Texas, on Friday. She also claims she was ordered to stay off social media, where Lahren has more than 4.2million followers on Facebook alone. Lahren, who became a viral sensation for her incendiary rants, wants to break out of her contract and find another job after claiming Beck and The Blaze publicly smeared her Lahren claims both Beck and The Blaze knew about her views on abortion, and did not appear to have a problem with it before she appeared on The View, the lawsuit said. The Blaze continued paying Lahren during her suspension, 'presumably hoping they could find an exit strategy to sanitize their unlawful conduct', the lawsuit alleges. But a human resources director said the 24-year-old was terminated for her pro-choice comments, the lawsuit states - and Lahren has yet to return to her show. Her attorney Brian Lauten said Lahren wants to break out her contract and find another job, likening her to an eagle with its wings clipped. She is now seeking attorney's fees and costs 'as well as all other relief'. An Uber driver is accused of pulling a gun on an alleged pot-smoking passenger who refused to get out of his car. Jacques Daaboul, of Norwood, Massachusetts, reportedly pointed a firearm at one of his riders because the passenger refused to exit the vehicle after he was asked to stop smoking pot on March 4. The Uber driver was taking two men and two women from Patriot Place in Foxboro to North Providence, Massachusetts, when they allegedly began smoking marijuana in the vehicle around 12.45am. After they reportedly refused to stop, Daaboul pulled over on I-95 South in South Attleboro, demanding the 'belligerent' riders to exit his Jeep Cherokee and then pointed a gun at one of the men, according to court documents. The 25-year-old pleaded not guilty to the charge of assault by means of a dangerous weapon when he appeared in the Attleboro District Court on Thursday. Jacques Daaboul (pictured) reportedly pointed a firearm at one of his riders because he refused to exit the vehicle after he was asked to stop smoking pot in South Attleboro, Massachusetts, on March 4 Daaboul's lawyer admitted that the driver 'made it known' he was armed during the incident. In May of 2013, Daaboul uploaded this photo to Facebook with the caption: 'Had fun with this yesterday' Daaboul claims the passengers refused to stop smoking in his car, causing him to pull over because the activity is illegal, reported The Sun Chronicle. Meanwhile, the victim claims Daaboul pointed a gun at him after he had lit a cigarette inside the car. Joseph Cataldo, Daaboul's lawyer, told the news outlet: 'Its illegal. Obviously, he told them they could not do that.' Cataldo said the passengers refused to leave the vehicle so his client told them he had a license to carry. But the attorney denied Daaboul pointed the weapon at anyone. The 25-year-old's lawyer claimed the passengers, two men and two women, were belligerent. Daaboul (pictured) pleaded not guilty to the charge of assault by means of a dangerous weapon when he appeared in the Attleboro District Court on Thursday The alleged incident happened on I-95 South near the weigh station in South Attleboro, Massachusetts (pictured) Cataldo added: 'They refused to get out of the vehicle. A couple of them became belligerent.' Daaboul 'made it known' to the riders that he was armed at the time, Cataldo said. He is adamant that his client didn't do anything illegal or make threats. A pretrial conference is scheduled for June 30. Inseparable: A six-year-old Marie-Elsa with her father, broadcaster Melvyn Two days after the Westminster terrorist attack claimed five lives in the heart of London, a woman priest luminously pretty, with a dancers graceful bearing led a minutes silence in memory of the dead and injured. The Rev Marie-Elsa Bragg, duty chaplain of Westminster Abbey, stood in the unaccustomed stillness of Parliament Square and addressed a crowd of 12,000, gathered in an act of collective respect and mourning. It was an attack on our democracy, on our constitution... on the tolerant and inclusive life we have built, she said, concluding that, despite the countrys shock and grief, the outrage would only confirm our resolution not to give in. It was very moving, because the crowd just roared and clapped after Id made the little speech, recalls Marie-Elsa when I meet her, a fortnight later. Then thousands of people bowed their heads in silence you could feel the respect, people are incredible and Big Ben chimed quarter to the hour, and Id never heard it chime into a silent city before. The occasion was poignant on many levels, not least because Marie-Elsa, who has just published her first novel, had feared for the safety of her father Melvyn Bragg, 77, the author, broadcaster and Labour peer, who was on his way to the House of Lords when the attack took place. It was distressing because I knew my father would be on his way to Westminster, she says. He walks the route across the bridge and I kept hearing bits of news; that people had been run over on Westminster Bridge; that Parliament was in lock-down. I kept trying to phone Dad but I couldnt get hold of him, so I jumped in the car and drove towards Westminster. You run instinctively towards the people you love at times like that. Eventually I got him on the phone. He was still on his way in, stuck in traffic because that day hed decided to drive, and when he said he was OK it was such a blessing. Were very close. We live not far apart hes in Hampstead, Im in Finchley and we have supper together every Sunday. When I was a child, I was always on his coat tails. Hed take me to work with him and wed walk across London to get there. Dad and I were inseparable in our grief. Marie-Elsa, 52, is referring to the tragedy that still binds them: when she was just six, the suicide of her mother, Marie-Elisabeth known as Lise shattered the happiness of her childhood and changed her life for ever. Although misfortune on an epic scale has beset her eight years of her young life were virtually wiped out by an illness that rendered her semi-conscious (more of which, later) she exudes warmth, goodness and optimism. Priest and author: Marie-Elsa Bragg (left) has just published her first novel. Fatal overdose: Melvyn Braggs first wife, Marie-Elisabeth Roche (right) Her mothers early death was, of course, formative. Lise, a writer and painter, was Melvyns first wife. They met when he was an undergraduate at Oxford. It was a coup de foudre and an attraction of opposites: he was a working-class grammar school lad from Cumbria, she a French aristocrat three years his senior. Within a year they were married, and Marie-Elsa was born in 1965. Four years on, however, Melvyns media career was on a sharp ascent and hed left Lise and his young daughter in the family home and moved out. There were attempts at reconciliation, but the marriage ended when he began a relationship with Cate Haste, who became his second wife. Mum really loved my dad, says Marie-Elsa. She really invested in the relationship with him. She was a brave woman, creative, and I think the intensity of her love made her vulnerable. 1971 was a very bad summer and my mother could have survived it. I think both my parents were in very difficult places. Dad was having a breakdown and my mum was really heartbroken, and for some reason she slipped through the net into despair. Mistakes were made, but we all have feet of clay. You have to forgive, move on, and grow a wiser, deeper sense of love and understanding of this difficult, messy, extraordinary world, she says, picking her words carefully. Scrupulous never to imply blame, she reproaches no one. Marie-Elsa had spent the 1971 summer holidays before her mothers death with her and her grandparents in Provence, south-eastern France, where they lived. Wed go up into the mountains, collecting flowers and grasses, which Mum taught me to plait. Shed read me The Little Prince so often I knew everything about it. She was so loved by her friends that even now they talk about her as if shed only just died. She smiles. The night they returned from France to London, Lise took a fatal overdose, locking herself in her bedroom so her daughter would not find her. Shed made provision for Marie-Elsa to be looked after the next morning. Telling a neighbour she would have to leave the house early, Lise asked her to get her daughters breakfast. Melvyn Bragg (pictured), 77, is an author, broadcaster and Labour peer It is hard to imagine the distress Marie-Elsa felt as events unfolded. As a child, I knew something terrible had happened, like a storm, especially with the grief of the people around me and the shock and confusion that my mother was missing, she says. I had been used to getting up at 5am and getting into her bed every morning. That day I couldnt get into her room. She wasnt discovered until 8.30am, so by the time my father got there and everyone had worked out what was going on, I was in an emotional fever. I felt overwhelmed and weak. And for years after, even though it made no sense, part of me still waited for her to come home. She recalls how her father took her to the local church on Kew Green, West London where her mothers funeral was later held to try to explain what had happened. I remember sitting on his knee in the front row and him weeping, and I didnt really understand what was going on. I was such a little girl. As a child you feel the shock viscerally that something terrible has changed your world and it will never be the same again. Ill never fully understand it, although as I became an adult I understood more. I know what its like to work really hard to get through grief, to take one day at a time. I wonder if there is any residual anger towards her mother for leaving her. She seems surprised by the idea. I didnt see it as her leaving me, she says. I was lucky to have had my mum. I adored her, and have done consistently; almost more because of what she went through. Some people go through terrible things and dont have that love. And Dad still loves her, too. These tragedies are to be lived with. You can love deeper than the tragedy can hurt you. Bragg has said, too, hes been unable to get over his first wifes death, which has cast a long shadow over his life; he addressed it in his autobiographical novel of 2008, Remember Me. There was no forewarning of Lises descent into despair. Though sensitive, she had no history of mental illness, says Marie-Elsa, but had been seeing a Jungian psychoanalyst, who had herself committed suicide six months before Lise took her own life. It meant that Mum didnt have anyone to turn to, which must have been quite shocking for her, she says. In the aftermath of the tragedy, friends and family rallied. Marie-Elsa went to live with her father; she remembers the solace she felt from the gift of a kitten, Marmalade, from her godmother, Jay Wheldon, wife of broadcaster Sir Huw Wheldon. She gave me the kitten that same day, after we were in the church, she remembers. You can play with a kitten for hours. It was, however, her fathers close-knit Cumbrian family most notably her grandparents Ethel and Stanley, who then ran a sweet shop who enveloped her in the love that helped heal her. I spent a lot of my childhood in Cumbria and whenever I went I felt as if I was going home, she says. On my first evening cuddled up with my grandma there was such a sense of warmth and belonging. She spent hours with me, patting my back, singing to me lullabies, Vera Lynn songs soothing me to sleep. She did that for years. She became my second mum. I used to go into her bed in the morning and be allowed to walk down the street in her shoes. It took two hours to buy a paper because wed be talking to everyone, admiring the shop windows because grandma knew what it was to dress her own shop window. She had a poster of the Queen in it and at Whitsun there would be a Union Jack. My grandparents were old school. They stood up for the national anthem, even at home, in the days when it was played on the television after broadcasting finished. Marie-Elsa has always had a special affinity, too, with the Cumbrian countryside surrounding Wigton, the market town where her father was raised. Her debut novel, Towards Mellbreak, is, in part, a hymn to this landscape in which she still finds solace, and a celebration of the traditions of its rural communities. And I feel that Brexit is also a cry from communities that feel theyve lost their identities, she says. Its a call to rejuvenate them and reclaim the spirit they had. She had become a priest 15 years earlier, after a life-threatening illness, and following years of frontline campaigning for Anglican women bishops she was exhausted. The germ of her story took root on restorative walks of her beloved fells. Writer Melvyn Bragg with singers The Edge, Kylie Minogue, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Bono Her talents are many and diverse. An Oxford graduate, she also trained as a dancer. Then, using her skills in choreographic notation, she worked with the Dian Fossey Research Centre set up in memory of the murdered American primatologist at the University of Stirling, researching the body language of marmosets. Here, aged 21, she was struck down by a tropical disease caused, doctors believed, by monkey urine infecting a cut on her finger which rendered her semi-conscious, in hospital, for almost a decade. My liver and kidneys broke down, my hair fell out, I couldnt walk. I was near to death, she says. I dont have much memory of any of it because I was in a semi-coma most of the time. For almost ten years, my life was suspended. Lots of my friends thought Id died. My poor dad! she sighs, smiling. Then, after seven years my liver began to regenerate. As she emerged back into the world, she began to explore the spiritual. She considered joining a Cistercian order of nuns, then, recognising that her calling was to be out in the world, trained at Oxford for the priesthood. Today she is also a spiritual director and, aside from her Westminster job, moves between different London parishes that have no permanent priest. When we meet she is elegant in clerical garb: a long black skirt made for her by her Cumbrian great aunt Margaret, a standard issue vicars shirt and collar, and a black waistcoat that she bought in a sale. She has the aura of a glamorous suffragist, carries a battered carpet bag and wears stout boots whose soles are falling off. (Theres probably a joke to be made about attending to others souls before her own.) Amicably separated after a short marriage that ended five years ago, she has no children. However babies are swelling the ranks of her Cumbrian family, which is a delight to her. I baptised my cousin Sharons daughter Jodie. Were very close, she says, and I have two goddaughters who are hilarious. Her half-brother Tom from her fathers marriage to Cate, which ended last year recently became a father, too. Melvyn now lives with Gabriel Clare-Hunt, 60, and Marie-Elsa says: Im very glad theyre finding a new life where they can be happy. Dad and Cate are legally separated and theres no shame in that. But I think Dad was very old-fashioned and worried about it. Marie-Elsa has a rare gift for mining happiness from the most unpropitious of circumstances. Despite the tragedy that has beset her she believes in the redemptive power of love, and that life is fundamentally good. Ill always love Mum and miss her, as I will my grandmother, she says. Ive been unlucky and really lucky, but the gift is that Ive been able to count my blessings alongside feeling genuine sadness and loss. n Towards Mellbreak by Marie-Elsa Bragg is published by Chatto & Windus, 12.99. With its bustling pavements and elegant shops, Stockholm has come to be seen as one of Europes most peaceful and developed cities. For decades, the Swedish way of politics based on fair wealth redistribution, a welfare state with generous benefits, a large public sector and a liberal immigration policy has been put forward as a role model for other countries. Pundits and politicians have described Sweden as the safest place on Earth and it has barely suffered from terrorist attacks. Scroll down for video With its bustling pavements and elegant shops, Stockholm has come to be seen as one of Europes most peaceful and developed cities Indeed, the last incident of note came in 2010 when a failed suicide bomber blew himself up in central Stockholm. But yesterdays killings come two months after US President Donald Trump was ridiculed around the world for making reference to a non-existent terror attack in the country. His outspoken remarks, in which he also said Sweden was having problems like they never thought possible, drew a wave of international criticism. But it prompted renewed debate over Swedens refugee policy, which has seen it described as the most welcoming country in the world. Some politicians say the country has struggled to deal with the huge numbers of migrants who have travelled there to enjoy the high quality of life. The surge at the peak of Europes refugee crisis in 2015 saw a record 163,000 asylum applications in just one year. The influx, to a country with a population of 10million, prompted officials to put in place additional checks at the countrys borders. Since 2012 around 300 people have travelled from Sweden to join violent Islamist groups making the country one of the largest contributors to terrorist cells in Europe. Pundits and politicians have described Sweden as the safest place on Earth and it has barely suffered from terrorist attacks They typically travel to Syria and Iraq but security services had felt they had stemmed the flow. Yesterdays attack will reawaken memories of Swedens first brush with Islamist extremism when another devastating incident was only narrowly avoided on the same street. The botched 2010 plot was masterminded by a former British student who travelled to Drottninggatan as it was packed with Christmas shoppers. Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly, 28, who was partly radicalised while studying in Luton, had loaded his white Audi car with gas canisters, which could have killed dozens. A remarkable stroke of luck, however, meant that the improvised weapons failed to detonate properly when the car went up in flames and only two people were injured. The sole fatality was the perpetrator himself. He had fled the vehicle carrying pipe bombs, one of which exploded. Federal immigration officials announced on Friday they plan to deport a prostitute known as the 'Harbor Hooker' who fatally injected a Google executive with heroin in 2013. Authorities took Alix Tichelman, 29, into custody immediately after she completed a jail sentence for involuntary manslaughter she served for injecting married Google executive Forrest Hayes with an overdose of heroin, killing him. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman James Schwab said a judge ordered Tichelman to be deported back to Canada because of her felony convictions. Federal immigration officials plan to deport Alex Tichelman, a Canadian prostitute known as the 'Harbor Hooker' who fatally injected a Google executive with heroin in 2013 Tichelman pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and drugs charges, which resulted in the 2013 death of Forrest Timothy Hayes (pictured) Tichelman, who had a privileged upbringing in Atlanta, Georgia, and then California, was freed from prison on March 29, after serving just two years behind bars. As soon as she stepped outside the prison gates, ICE agents took her into their custody. She injected Hayes, a married father-of-five, with heroin in November 2013 and then left without seeking help when he passed out on his yacht in the Santa Cruz harbor. Police said a surveillance video at the harbor showed Tichelman at first panicking and trying to revive Hayes. Then it showed her casually step over Hayes' body, finish a glass of wine and lower a blind before leaving the yacht. Police said Hayes hired Tichelman several times for drug-fueled sex after they met on the website Seeking Arrangement, which pairs 'sugar babies' with rich older men or women. Santa Cruz sheriff's officials confirmed they turned over Tichelman to the custody of Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents after her release from prison. The Santa Cruz Sentinel, citing court records, said Tichelman holds dual citizenship in the United States and Canada, where she was born. Tichelman (left and in court right) served nearly two years in the Santa Cruz County Jail after she pleaded guilty in May of 2015 to felony involuntary manslaughter and administering drugs Santa Cruz County Immigration Project director Doug Keegan said: 'Anyone with a felony is put in a very special category, and there's virtually no way of preventing their deportation.' Although rare, it is possible for a naturalized U.S. citizen to have his or her citizenship stripped through a process called 'denaturalization.' Natural-born U.S. citizens may not have their citizenship revoked against their will. Tichelman served nearly two years in the Santa Cruz County Jail after she pleaded guilty in May of 2015 to felony involuntary manslaughter and administering drugs. Defense attorney Larry Biggam said Tichelman injected herself with heroin before she injected Hayes, and the drugs clouded her judgement at the time. Tichelman grew up in a wealthy, upper-class family but rejected her privileged upbringing. She became addicted to heroin and turned to high-class prostitution to support herself Speaking in 2014, he said: 'This case is about two adults who were engaged in mutual consensual drug usage in the context of a sexual encounter initiated and encouraged by Mr. Hayes. There was no intent to harm or injure, much less kill, Mr. Hayes. Why would she? He was a lucrative source of income to her. 'To demonize, and sensationalize, and totally blame Alix Tichelman for his death is misplaced, unfair, and simply wrong. She's like a wounded bird.' His body was discovered the next day and she was arrested eight months later. Police originally recommended homicide charges. Several charges were later dropped or reduced by prosecutors, she pleaded guilty before the case went to trial, and a judge sentenced her to serve six years in jail. Tichelman completed drug rehab programs during her time in jail because she was addicted to heroin. She grew up in a wealthy, upper-class family but rejected her privileged upbringing. Tichelman became addicted to heroin and turned to high-class prostitution to support herself. According to her Facebook profile, Tichelman went to high school in Atlanta, Georgia, majored in journalism at Georgia State University, and worked as a dancer, makeup artist, and model. Her ex-boyfriend, 53-year-old monkey trainer Dean Riopelle, died from a heroin overdose in Georgia two months before Hayes' death. His death was ruled as accidental. Her ex-boyfriend, 53-year-old monkey trainer Dean Riopelle, died from a heroin overdose in Georgia two months before Hayes' death. His death was ruled as accidental After Tichelman was charged in California, police in Milton, Georgia, took another look at the 2013 overdose death of Riopelle. He was the owner of a popular Atlanta music venue, the Masquerade. Authorities said a panicked Tichelman had called Milton police, saying Riopelle had overdosed on drugs and wasn't responding. Tichelman was not charged. An autopsy report listed Riopelle's death as an accidental overdose of heroin, oxycodone and alcohol. After Tichelman was charged in California, police in Milton, Georgia, took another look at the 2013 overdose death of Riopelle. He was the owner of a popular Atlanta music venue, the Masquerade WSB-TV reported that Tichelman had been arrested two weeks prior to Riopelle's death for biting him, and friends called their relationship volatile and abusive. Captain Shawn McCarty with the Milton Police Department said: 'It's still conjecture, looking at the similarities of the two situations, but obviously we're going to go back and look at it and make sure that everything determined to be correct, almost a year ago, is still factual and still accurate. 'Both subjects in these cases died of heroin overdoses so there's just several factors we want to look at to make sure that we didn't miss anything.' The White House National Security Council has drawn up North Korea options for President Trump that involve killing the country's erratic dictator Kim Jong-un and reinserting U.S. nuclear weapons into South Korea. The bold options were revealed by NBC News just as President Xi Jinpeng of China wrapped up a visit and meetings with Trump at to Mar-a-Lago. Trump wants China to use its leverage to get North Korea to back off its threatening behavior. One option the network reported was bringing back nuclear bombs and positioning them likely at Osan Air Base, just 50 miles from Seoul. It would be the first U.S. deployment of nuclear weapons overseas since the end of the Coal War. 'We have 20 years of diplomacy and sanctions under our belt that has failed to stop the North Korean program,' a senior intelligence official who took part told NBC. In the sights: A South Korean Marine trains with a personal anti-tank missile launcher on a beach in Pohang, as part of joint training maneuvers with U.S. Marines After North Korea fired off yet another ballistic missile last week, the State Department issued a terse statement: 'North Korea launched yet another intermediate range ballistic missile. The United States has spoken enough about North Korea. We have no further comment,' said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Another option would be killing the famously unpredictable leader, who is known for his belligerent threats toward the U.S. and its Asian allies. Wiping out Kim and senior leaders in charge of missiles and nukes would be fraught with risks. 'Discussions of regime change and decapitation ... tend to cause the Chinese great pause of concern and tends to have them move in the opposite direction we would like them to move in terms of pressure,' said former U.S. ambassador to South Korea Mark Lippert. Tillerson in a briefing with reporters on Friday stressed the U.S. commitment to a 'denuclearized' Korean peninsula. President Xi shared the administration's view that the situation had reached a very serious stage, according to cabinet secretaries who briefed reporters. 'I think President Xi, from their part, shared the view that this has reached a very serious stage in terms of the advancement of North Koreas nuclear capabilities,' Tillerson said. 'They discussed the challenges that introduces for both countries, but theres a real commitment that we work together to see if this cannot be resolved in a peaceful way. But in order for that to happen, North Koreas posture has to change before theres any basis for dialogue or discussions,' Tillerson added. Marines lead the way: South Korean Marines were taking part in exercise Foal Eagle with the U.S. Marine Corps this week in Phang, South Korea, showing some of their assault capability Practice: South Korean Marines and their U.S. counterparts trained in amphibious assault earlier this week as part of exercise Foal Eagle President Donald Trump has accepted the invitation from Chinese President Xi Jinping to pay a state visit to China this year. Trump has called on China to pressure North Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong Un stands during the April 9, 2014, session of the Supreme People's Assembly Retired Admiral James Stavridis told NBC that 'decapitation is always a tempting strategy when you're faced with a highly unpredictable and highly dangerous leader.' But he added: 'The question you have to ask yourself is what happens the the day after you decapitate? I think that in North Korea, it's an enormous unknown.' Trump indicated Monday the U.S. would act alone if necessary. 'China will either decide to help us with North Korea or they won't," Trump told the Financial Times. 'If they do, that will be very good for China, and if they don't, it won't be good for anyone.' The developments emerged amid the fallout over the U.S. missile launch against Syria, a demonstration both of U.S. military force and of Trump's willingness to act militarily. An 81-year-old Carlisle woman has died following a multivehicle crash Sunday in North Newton Township. Shirley A. Morrison, 81, of Carlisle, was taken to Penn State Hershey Medical Center where she died as a result of a two-vehicle crash in 600 block of Oakville Road in North Newton Township that happened around 3:30 p.m. Sunday, according to Pennsylvania State Police. Morrison was a passenger in a vehicle driven by Amy Lynn Martin, 47, of Carlisle, that was traveling north on Oakville Road when a vehicle with a 16-year-old driver and two 16-year-old passengers traveling in the opposite direction struck her vehicle head on, according to state police. The vehicle Morrison was traveling in then struck a guardrail before coming to a stop, police said. Martin was taken to York Regional Hospital via helicopter and Morrison was flown to Penn State Hershey, according to police. All three teens in the other vehicle denied injuries, police said. Police said the teens vehicle was traveling at a high rate of speed at the time of the crash. Labour was plunged into a fresh anti-Semitism row last night as police launched an investigation into abuse allegedly sent by backers of union baron Red Len McCluskey. A Twitter account supporting the ally of Jeremy Corbyn targeted a rival with a smear campaign accusing him of having shadowy backers in a Jewish Mafia. The messages sent to Gerard Coyne, who is challenging Mr McCluskey for the leadership of the Unite union, are now being investigated by police. Police launched an investigation into abuse allegedly sent by backers of union baron Red Len McCluskey It comes as Labour faces criticism for failing to expel former London mayor Ken Livingstone for repeatedly claiming that Adolf Hitler supported Zionism. Mr Coyne, who is not Jewish, received the sinister messages after he did an interview with The Jewish Chronicle. In it, he said Mr McCluskey has spent too much time concentrating on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when for many of our members it is not something at the forefront of their minds. An apparent supporter of Mr McCluskey, using the Twitter name @1UnionBloke, sent Mr Coyne a slew of offensive messages on the social network. One showed a picture of Mr Coyne next to a man with the Star of David on his body and brandishing a gun. The caption read: Be warned @gerardcoyne has backing now!! Jewish Mafia. Other messages from the account included suggestions that Mr Coyne was pandering to the Jewish community in his leadership campaign. One tweet said: His anti anybody who isnt Jewish is exposed. @gerard_coyne also reveals his shadowy backers. So @UniteforLen. The messages were sent to Gerard Coyne, who is challenging Mr McCluskey in the leadership race Another Twitter post from a different account claimed Mr Coyne was cosying up to powerful Jewish conservative supporters of Zionism and ready to sell his soul. Mr McCluskeys campaign condemned the messages, but the politics website Guido Fawkes claimed followers of the @1UnionBloke account, which has been shut down, included Jennie Formby, a regional leader of Unite who is the mother of Mr McCluskeys love child. Last year Mr McCluskey insisted there was no crisis of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party and said the row had been manipulated for political aims. Mr Livingstone was suspended from Labour this week over his Zionism remarks, but yesterday Mr Coyne joined growing calls for him to be expelled. Ken Livingstone was suspended from Labour this week over his Zionism remarks He said: Mr Livingstones comments and total lack of contrition are grotesque. The leadership of Unite seems to think its role in the Labour Party is to defend the indefensible. There is a troubling trend of racism within the Labour movement at the moment. We need to stamp this out. A spokesman for Mr McCluskeys campaign said the Unite leader does not want or condone any engagement by [his supporters] in online abuse. He added: Unite has also made it clear that any member who has made anti-Semitic comments is in breach of the unions rules and will face disciplinary action. Images released on Russian media show containers 'identical to those that store WMD's' at Bashar al-Assad's Shayrat Airbase. US intelligence sources said the Chemical Weapons strike which killed at least 70 people was launched from the airbase just outside Homs. The Pentagon said all 59 missiles hit their targets while it was earlier claimed one had failed. An collage on social media suggested some of the containers damaged in last night's strike, left, looked similar to Russian chemical weapons stores from the mid 1990s Images released following last night's attack showed these distinctive-looking containers Commentators on social media claimed they looked similar to these chemical weapons, left President Donald Trump gave the go-ahead for the strikes in retaliation for this week's deadly chemical attack in Syria, which the US believes was ordered by Assad. Senior military officials said the U.S. is looking into whether Russia participated in Syria's chemical weapons attack earlier this week. The officials claimed Russia failed to control the Syrian government's use of chemical weapons. They said a drone belonging either to Russia or Syria was seen hovering over the site of the chemical weapons attack Tuesday after it happened. The drone returned late in the day as citizens were going to a nearby hospital for treatment. Shortly afterward, officials said the hospital was bombed. The officials said they believe the hospital attack may have been an effort to cover up evidence of the attack. Syria's deputy U.N. ambassador called Thursday's missile strikes as a 'barbaric, flagrant act of aggression' that will embolden 'terrorist groups" to use chemical weapons in the future. China's U.N. ambassador never mentioned the suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria, or U.S. airstrikes, at an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council Friday. Instead, Liu Jieyi focused on the need for a political solution to the six-year conflict. Photographs have been released showing the damage caused by Thursday night's airstrike The USS Ross, pictured, and USS Porter fired a total of 59 cruise missiles at the target China usually supports Russia, a close ally of Syria that accused the U.S. of aggression and violation of international law with Thursday night's missile strike. But Liu steered clear of any criticism, referring obliquely to 'some complicated new situations' in Syria in recent days which the international community must watch. Liu says military means 'will only worsen the suffering of the Syrian people'. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations warns the U.S. is prepared to take further action in Syria but hopes it will not be necessary. Nikki Haley told an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council Friday that the United States couldn't wait following Tuesday's attack and 'took a very measured step' with its airstrikes against the Assad government. Haley said: 'We are prepared to do more, but we hope that will not be necessary. It is time for all civilized nations to stop the horrors that are taking place in Syria and demand a political solution.' David Hockney's exuberant colour palette is so brightly brilliant that a visit to the exhibition of his works at London's Tate Britain is like taking a short holiday. And that's not just down to the art. The walls are painted in a range of Designers Guild shades that relate to the works, moving you through Hockney's changing themes. Curator of the show, Andrew Wilson, says: 'The paintings are best not hung on antiseptic white walls. A palette of greys, red and pink, chosen with Hockney's help, enliven the colour of his paintings.' Perky palette: The David Hockney exhibition now on at Tate Britain also showcases wall colours by Designer's Guild That marks a break with tradition, because gallery works tend to be displayed against crisp, clean white. It's a trend that was popularised in the Sixties and most of us have followed suit in our homes, thinking that white walls make rooms seem bigger and allow anything hung on the walls to sing. That's not necessarily the case, according to head of displays at Tate Britain, Chris Stephens. 'If you put things that are darker than white on a white wall, they disappear.' Which rules out most paintings and photographs. Perhaps that's why, more than 50 years later, Hockney's only stipulation for the background to his show was that it should be 'not white'. Rich background: Hockney's Yorkshire paintings are set off by Red Velvet paint Well, bravo, because the effect is dazzling. His Los Angeles work sits on Jaipur Dusk, a mauve flushed pink that is reminiscent of dusty Indian sunsets. It's a tone that appears throughout his early work, including in the portrait of his then boyfriend, Peter, sleeping next to a vase of red tulips. Hockney's Yorkshire iPad paintings, by contrast, are offset by the rich shade Red Velvet, which picks up the trunks and earthy woodland colours. Somehow, such bold hues don't distract from the work, they enhance it. Of course, we wouldn't all want a Bordeaux red living room, but Tricia Guild, founder and creative director of Designers Guild, believes we could benefit from being less fearful of colour. Painterly: Habitat's spring/summer collection takes inspiration from Hockney's iPad paintings and jaunty colour palette 'The first blob is always the worst. But, you have to remember once it's on and dry, it won't seem so shocking,' she says. If you aren't brave enough for walls of colour, then add some zip with a Hockney inspired accessory. A range of posters are on sale in the Tate shop (unframed prints and posters from 20, shop.tate. org.uk) and even a cushion of A Bigger Splash (25). Or look to Habitat. 'The pattern in our outdoor collection references David Hockney's iPad drawings using the Brushes app and artwork from designer Martha Coates,' says creative director Polly Dickens. The Melody jug (20, habitat.co.uk) will lift a summer table and the Corroco tray (12) is a celebration of pinks, yellows, greens and blues. Vibrant patterns: The Josef Frank exhibition at London's Fashion and Textile Museum is awash with colour and nature inspired prints If you need further encouragement, go to London's Fashion And Textile Museum to see Austrian designer Josef Frank's joyful fabrics, drawings and paintings. They positively bloom with life. One fabric pictures all the ingredients for an Italian dinner, another repeats bunches of jolly tulips, elsewhere birds amid blossoming trees. Such vibrantly optimistic designs were extraordinary given what was going on at the time. Frank left his hometown of Vienna in 1933 to escape Nazism, going to Sweden, then fleeing to New York. Lovely bunch: Frank's tulips textile design for Swedish company Svenkst Tenn It was while in New York that he worked with the company, Svenskt Tenn, from 1934-1950, producing furniture and textiles. You can buy his fabrics, from 120 (104) a metre, svenskttenn.se. Frank believed 'standardised interiors would make people all too uniform'. What better reason to embrace colour and print. Hockney is at Tate Britain until May 29, 2017, tate.org.uk. The Josef Frank exhibition is at the Fashion And Textile Museum, until May 7, ftmlondon.org. We live in an era of so-called fake news, so it's perhaps unsurprising that internet giants are actively improving their content by attempting to separate fact from fiction. This week, the world's largest search engine - Google - became the latest to apply quality control with a new feature which adds fact-check 'tags' to news and search results. Starting today, the company will work with third-party verification sites such as PolitiFact and Snopes to check content for its millions of users. Scroll down for video This week, the world's largest search engine - Google - became the latest to apply quality control with a new feature which adds fact-check 'tags' to news and search results. WHERE DID IT START? Fake news became a serious issue in the US election campaign, when fraudulent stories circulated on social media, potentially swaying voters. Concerns have been raised since then about hoaxes and misinformation affecting elections in Europe, with investigations showing how "click farms" generate revenue from online advertising using made-up news stories. Earlier this month, a move to combat it - The News Integrity Initiative - was launched with $14 million from Facebook, the Ford Foundation, Mozilla and others. Based at the City University of New York's journalism school, it will coordinate research, projects and events to combat the trend. Advertisement Together, they'll add quality markers which rate the veracity of the journalism and, as a result, encourage greater accuracy from the sources. Interestingly, the editing won't be controlled by a single committee or company. In fact, the feature will allow other writers and publishers to police content, meaning reporters can assess, edit and substantiate their peers' work. This allows users to question data they disagree with, much like people can with the content on sites such as Wikipedia. But while the tags won't appear on every search result, it will relate to the most pertinent - breaking news and browsed-for content. 'This information won't be available for every search result, and there may be search result pages where different publishers checked the same claim and reached different conclusions,' Google said in a blog post. 'These fact checks are not Google's and are presented so people can make more informed judgements. Even though differing conclusions may be presented, we think it's still helpful for people to understand the degree of consensus around a particular claim and have clear information on which sources agree. 'As we make fact checks more visible in Search results, we believe people will have an easier time reviewing and assessing these fact checks, and making their own informed opinions.' Initially introduced last October, Google's Fact Check was originally limited to users in the US and UK, but now it's available globally. Google's move comes shortly after social networking site Facebook also caved to pressure about managing the 'fake news' phenomenon Similarly, in February, a group of 37 French and international media outlets, supported by Google, launched CrossCheck, a fact-checking platform aimed at detecting fake information that could affect the French presidential election. Google's move comes shortly after social networking site Facebook also caved to pressure about managing the 'fake news' phenomenon. This week, the site will display a banner ad featuring advice on 'how to spot fake news' and report it. The campaign is 'designed to help people become more discerning readers', the social media firm said, and will be implemented in fourteen countries. Italy is a country famed for its world-class clay pottery. But now curators of the Museo Della Merda, Italy's 'S**t Museum', have come up with a new kind of crockery. They've invented 'Merdacotta' - a type of baked clay made from Terracotta and cow manure. Scroll down for video Plates, bowls and even toilets made from 'Merdacotta' - a baked clay made from Terracotta and cow manure - on display at the Museo Della Merda in Italy ITALY'S S**T MUSEUM The Museo Della Merda , translated as the Museum of S**t, describes itself as the first ever facility dedicated to the study of excrement. Founded by Italian farmer Gianantonio Locatelli, the museum opened this week on the ground floor of a medieval castle in the village of Castelbosco near the city of Piacenza, and boasts 220,000 lbs (100,000kg) of waste. The museum displays pots, plates and furniture made from 'Merdacotta', a cross between Terracotta and manure. The museum, which has a dung beetle as its logo, also boasts artworks, from paintings in liquid excrement, to an extract from Luis Bunuel's film 'The Phantom of Liberty'. Advertisement The Museo Della Merda , translated as the Museum of S**t, describes itself as the first ever facility dedicated to the study of excrement. Founded by Italian farmer Gianantonio Locatelli, the museum takes up the ground floor of a medieval castle in the village of Castelbosco near the city of Piacenza, and boasts 220,000 lbs (100,000kg) of waste. 'The idea came from the need to take advantage of animal dung in an ecological way,' Mr Locatelli said. 'We managed to transform it into something useful.' Over his various farms, 3,500 cattle produce 55 tonnes (55,000 kg) of milk a day to make Grana Padano, a hard cheese comparable to Parmesan. They also generate 150 tonnes (150,000 kg) of waste. Glass cabinets of fecal curiosities feature at the museum which takes up the ground floor of a medieval castle Left-over faeces is combined with Tuscan clay to make 'merdacotta' bricks, hexagonal and rectangular tiles, flowerpots, plates or jars. The clean-lined, simple Merdacotta creations are 'a revolutionary product... halfway between plastic and Terracotta', Mr Locatelli said. The objects take pride of place in the museum, which has a dung beetle as its logo. The insect uses dung balls as both a food source and a breeding chamber. A sculpture at the Museo Della Merda , translated as the Museum of S**t, which describes itself as the first ever facility dedicated to the study of excrement The museum also boasts artworks, from paintings in liquid excrement, to an extract from Luis Bunuel's film 'The Phantom of Liberty'. 'Excrement is seen as something vulgar, nauseating, as the most ignoble matter,' said Mr Locatelli, who intends to 'rehabilitate the word and transform opinions of it across the board'. The Merdacotta collection won a prize at Milan's design fair last year, justifying his bet to 'turn s**t into something graceful'. The medieval castle where the museum is located (pictured) is kept warm thanks to the heat from the engines that generate energy from methane Jars of dung light up at the museum which combines science and art to celebrate all things faeces- related And while the farms have been hit in recent years by a sharp drop in the price of milk, Mr Locatelli said he can rely on his unusual sideline to keep his business buoyant. 'I can only thank s**t,' he said with a chuckle. The rest of the excrement is collected in stool digesters, immense vats where bacteria transforms the manure into methane. The methane is then burned to produce electricity, which is sold by the farm. A collection dedicated to dung beetles the symbol of the museum- which were highly regarded in Egyptian times The daily faeces output produces three Megawatts an hour, enough to turn on the lights of a village of 3,000 to 4,000 people. The water used to cool the engines heats to 100 degrees Celsius (212 degrees Fahrenheit), which is then used to warm the farm, stables and digesters, which must be kept at a constant 40 degrees. Mr Locatellia added that he was planning to bring a line of fertilisers called 'Merdame' to supermarkets across the world. Is there life on Mars? Maybe not, but there is a pyramid, a floating spoon and a large human brain. These are some of the space oddities captured by Nasa in their search for life on other planets. However, all these sightings are just optical illusions caused by reasons including wind-shaped rocks, impact craters and remnants of volcanic activity. Other examples see a giant tick on Venus, in fact a volcano and a Mars crater resembling a happy face. For sci-fi fans, there is even a rock-shape that resembles Han Solo in carbonite was spotted on Mercury by Nasa's Messenger probe. These amusing space pictures prove that space exploration doesn't always have to be serious. It would be the trip of a lifetime and possibly your last but just how much would you be willing to pay for a chance to visit the red planet? Following SpaceX's successful launch of a reused rocket last week, the firm says hopefuls should now be 'thinking about your tickets to Mars.' Elon Musk has said he plans to get the cost of travel down to $200,000 per person, and at a recent symposium in Colorado Springs, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell suggested the use of refurbished rockets could ultimately help them hit the target. Scroll down for video Following SpaceX's successful launch of a reused rocket last week (pictured), the firm says hopefuls should now be 'thinking about your tickets to Mars.' In the past, Elon Musk has said he plans to get the cost of travel down to $200,000 per person While shipping humans to Mars en masse would be no small feat, the successful demonstration of a refurbished rocket marked a major step in the way of cutting costs. 'I hope you're all thinking about tickets to Mars,' Gwynne Shotwell said at the 33rd Space Symposium on Wednesday, addressing anyone who may still have lingering doubts, Inverse reports. '[Reusability is] really a tremendous capability, and I highly recommend it for all of you. 'Cost of refurbishment [for the Falcon 9] was substantially less than half of the rebuild.' While much larger rockets will be required for the Mars excursion, the firm plans to reduce costs of the Falcon 9 even further, with a goal of getting reused rockets down to a tenth of the cost of building a new one, Inverse reports. And, just a day after the ground-breaking launch, Elon Musk revealed he already has his eyes on the next goal - to recycle and refly rockets within 24 hours. For the first few trips to Mars, though, money won't be the only cost travelers must also be ready for the possibility of death. Blast off! The incedible images reveal the historic launch close up. Elon Musk also revealed the record breaking attempt had seen the firm parachute the rockets $6m nosecone, clearly visible in the center image, back to Earth for the first time Musk has never made any obvious efforts to downplay the risk; citing the high probability of death on the early trips, the tech giant even said he wouldn't be among the first to step foot on the red planet. 'I think the first journeys to Mars will be really very dangerous,' Musk said in September. 'The risk of fatality will be high. There's just no way around it.' 'Are you prepared to die? If that's okay, then you're a candidate for going,' he added. US AIR FORCE SHOWS INTEREST IN SPACEX'S REUSED ROCKETS The U.S. Air Force is open to buying rides on previously flown SpaceX rockets to put military satellites into orbit, a move expected to cut launch costs for the Pentagon, the head of the Air Force Space Command said on Thursday. The idea of flying on recycled rockets became a reality a week ago when privately owned Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, launched a communications satellite on a Falcon 9 booster that previously put a cargo ship into orbit for NASA. That Falcon main stage had been recovered from a successful return landing on an ocean platform shortly after its maiden flight last April, then was relaunched and salvaged again last Thursday, marking a spaceflight first. 'I would be comfortable if we were to fly on a reused booster,' General John 'Jay' Raymond told reporters at the U.S. Space Symposium in Colorado Springs. 'They've proven they can do it. ... It's going to get us to lower cost.' SpaceX has so far won three launch contracts to fly military and national security satellites - business previously awarded exclusively to United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Lockheed Martin and Boeing. All those flights will take place on new Falcon 9 rockets. - Reuters Advertisement Musk isn't alone in admitting he won't be vying for the first seat aboard the Mars-bound craft. In a recent 'Ask Me Anything' (AMA) session on Reddit, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson expressed his hesitance on the subject. 'I really like Earth. So any space trip I take, I'm double-checking that there's sufficient funds for me to return,' he wrote. 'Also, I'm not taking that trip until Elon Musk send[s] his mother and brings her back alive. Then I'm good for it.' Musk has never made any obvious efforts to downplay the risk; citing the high probability of death on the early trips, the tech giant even said he wouldn't be among the first to step foot on the red planet SpaceX is also planning to send two private citizens beyond the moon, in a crewed mission that's set to launch next year. It will be the first time in 45 years humans have been in deep space, said the company, promising its mission will go 'faster and further' than any humans before them. The week-long mission will take place sometime in late 2018 and will 'skim the surface of the moon' then venture into deep space before returning to Earth. If you've ever wondered why your dog seems to know exactly where you've hidden their treats, scientists may have an answer. Austrian researchers have found canines are clever enough to know when their owner is looking at food - and where they are looking. They say the discovery shows a previously unproven ability for dogs to see things from their owner's point of view - a key skill of social intelligence. Scroll down for video Austrian researchers say the discovery shows a previously unproven ability for dogs to see things from their owner's point of view - a key skill of social intelligence. THE THEORY OF MIND The so-called Theory of Mind describes the ability in humans to understand mental states such as emotions, intentions, knowledge, beliefs and desires. This ability develops in humans within the first four or five years of life while it is usually denied in animals. Indications that animals can understand mental states or even states of knowledge of others have only been found in apes and corvids so far. In similar experiments, chimpanzees and few bird species such as scrub jays and ravens were able to understand the state of knowledge and also the intentions of conspecifics and modify their own behaviour accordingly. Dogs have been tested several times, but the results were poor and contradictory. Advertisement The new test was able to show that dogs are not only able to identify whether a human has an eye on a food source, but can also apply this knowledge in order to correctly interpret cues by humans and find food they cannot see themselves. 'The ability to interpret our behaviour and anticipate our intentions, which has obviously developed through a combination of domestication and individual experience, seems to have supported the ability to adopt our perspective,' said principal investigator Ludwig Huber from the Messerli Research Institute of the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna. 'It still remains unclear which cognitive mechanisms contribute to this ability. But it helps dogs to find their way in our world very well.' In the animal kingdom, the ability to attribute mental states (Theory of Mind) is a highly contentious issue, according to the study in the journal Animal Cognition. Ther new study could now provide solid evidence for dogs being able to adopt our perspective. By adopting the position of a human and following their gaze, dogs understand what the human could see and, consequently, know. This ability to ascribe knowledge is only a component of a full-blown Theory of Mind, but an important one, the researchers say. The only aim of this test series, however, was to independently confirm a study carried out in New Zealand. Clear evidence of dogs being able to adopt our perspective and take advantage of it was provided in a new test developed by the team, the so-called 'Guesser looking away' test. 'To get the food, the dogs have to understand who knows the hiding place (Knower) and who does not and can, therefore, only guess (Guesser),' said Huber. 'They must identify the informant they can rely on if they have to decide for one food container,' said principal investigator Huber. In approximately 70 per cent of the cases the dogs chose the container indicated by the Knower and thus were able to successfully accomplish the test. This result was independent of the position of the food container, the person acting as the Knower and where the Guesser was looking. HOW THEY DID IT The so-called Guesser-Knower paradigm is a standard test in research into the attribution of knowledge to others. This experiment involves two persons: a 'Knower' who hides food, invisibly for the dog, in one of several food containers or knows where somebody else has hided it, and a 'Guesser'. The Guesser has either not been in the room or covered her eyes during the hiding of the food. A non-transparent wall blocks the animals' view of the food being hidden. After that, the two humans become informants by pointing to different food containers. This experiment involves two persons: a 'Knower' who hides food, invisibly for the dog, in one of several food containers or knows where somebody else has hided it, and a 'Guesser'. The Knower always points to the baited container and the Guesser to another one. All containers smell of food. Clear evidence of dogs being able to adopt our perspective and take advantage of it was provided in a new test developed by the team, the so-called 'Guesser looking away' test. In this new experiment, a third person in the middle hides the food. This person does not give cues later on. The potential informants were kneeing left and right of this hider and looked to the same side and slightly down. Thus, one of the two persons looked towards the baiter, the other person looked away. Advertisement 'This means that the tested dogs, in order to get the food, had to judge who is the Knower by adopting the informants' perspectives and following their gazes,' explained Huber. Even in this test, which is very difficult for the animals, approximately 70 per cent of the trials had been mastered. Being able to adopt the perspective of a human does, however, does not require the ability to understand intentions or wishes. 'But the study showed that dogs can find out what humans or conspecifics can or cannot see,' explained Huber. 'By adopting the positions of humans and following their gazes geometrically, they find out what humans see and, therefore, know and consequently whom they can trust or not.' As molten rock and ash swept through the ill-fated city of Pompeii nearly two thousand years ago, two doomed residents clutched each other in their final moments. Trapped in an eternal embrace, theyve come to be known as The Two Maidens since their discovery but now, a CAT scan and DNA tests on the bodies have revealed the two figures are actually men. While the true nature of their relationship can never really be known, the analysis determined for certain that they were not relatives, and researchers say the possibility that they were lovers cannot be dismissed. Trapped in an eternal embrace, theyve come to be known as The Two Maidens since their discovery but now, a CAT scan and DNA tests on the bodies have revealed the two figures are actually men WHO WERE THE 'TWO MAIDENS'? Two figures were discovered in the volcanic wreckage of Pompeii, positioned such that ones head rests on the others chest. Thought to be women, they've come to be known as 'The Two Maidens.' But recent archaeological efforts have revealed the two figures are actually men. With a CAT scan and DNA tests, including analyses of their bones and teeth, researcher determined that the men were about 18 and 20 years of age, though the latter may have been older. While the nature of their relationship can never truly be verified, the researchers said the fact that they were lovers is a hypothesis that cannot be dismissed. But, one thing is known for certain the two men were not related. Advertisement Archaeologist Vittorio Spinazzola first created casts of the figures after their discovery at the House of the Cryptoporticus in the early 20th century. And, since 2015, researchers have been working to find out more about them and the other 86 victims of the Mount Vesuvius eruption that have been cast in plaster for preservation. The city was wiped out when the devastating natural disaster struck in the year 79 AD, and its thought that thousands of people lost their lives. In the most recent effort, researchers conducted extensive tests on the victims bones and teeth and, this led to a discovery that flipped their previous assumption on its head. The Two Maidens were men. Pompeii never ceases to amaze, said Massimo Osanna, superintendent of the Pompeii archaeological site. We always imagined that it was an embrace between women. 'But a CAT scan and DNA have revealed that they are men. In the recent effort, researchers conducted extensive tests on the victims bones and teeth and, this led to a discovery that flipped their previous assumption on its head. The analyses revealed the men were about 18 and 20 years of age, though the latter may have been older The analyses of their bones and teeth revealed the men were about 18 and 20 years of age, though the latter may have been older. Their bodies are positioned such that one mans head rests on the others chest. While there is much speculation about their relationship, which can never truly be verified, Osanna said the fact that they were lovers is a hypothesis that cannot be dismissed. THE DESTRUCTION OF POMPEII, AS SEEN FROM A DISTANCE Ancient roman Bodies Italy Pompeii Volcanic.Victims in the remains of Pompeii, destroyed in AD79. An administrator and poet called Pliny the younger watched the disaster unfold from a distance. Letters describing what he saw were found in the 16th century. His writing suggests that the eruption caught the residents of Pompeii unawares. He said that a column of smoke 'like an umbrella pine' rose from the volcano and made the towns around it as black as night. People ran for their lives with torches, screaming and some wept as rain of ash and pumice fell for several hours. While the eruption lasted for around 24 hours, the first pyroclastic surges began at midnight, causing the volcano's column to collapse. An avalanche of hot ash, rock and poisonous gas rushed down the side of the volcano at 124mph (199kph), burying victims and remnants of everyday life. The city was wiped out when the devastating natural disaster struck in the year 79 AD, and its thought that thousands of people lost their lives Hundreds of refugees sheltering in the vaulted arcades at the seaside in Herculaneum, clutching their jewellery and money, were killed instantly. As people fled Pompeii or hid in their homes, their bodies were covered by blankets of the surge. While Pliny did not estimate how many people died, the event was said to be 'exceptional' and the number of deaths is thought to exceed 10,000. Advertisement But, one thing is known for certain the Two Maidens, now revealed to be men, were not related to each other. When this discovery was made, that they were not two young girls, some scholars suggested there could have been an emotional connection between the pair, said Professor Stefano Vanacore, who led the Pompeii research team, the Telegraph reports. But we are talking about hypotheses that can never be verified. What is certain is that the two parties were not relatives, neither brothers, nor a father and son.' Uber has hit back at claims a key sensor on its self driving car was stolen from arch rival Waymo. It said its self-driving sensor technology was 'fundamentally different' from Waymo's, blasting the Alphabet unit's claim that it profited from stolen files in the race to roll out the first driverless car. Uber said in a federal court filing that 14,000 of Waymo's computer files on autonomous technology never ended up on its servers, despite Waymo's claim that its former executive, Anthony Levandowski, stole them before joining Uber. Waymo sued Uber in February, seeking a preliminary injunction to stop it from using trade secrets and other intellectual property at the center of the case. Scroll down for video High-profile: Levandowski, a 'swaggering' six-foot-seven tech leader, is one of Silicon Valley's most significant figures in the development of self-driving cars WHAT IS LiDAR? In lidar or light detection and ranging scanning, one or more lasers sends out short pulses, which bounce back when they hit an obstacle, whether clouds, leaves or rocks. In self-driving cars, the sensors constantly scan the surrounding areas looking for information and acting as the 'eyes' of the car. Advertisement Waymo said Uber was able to quickly scale up its autonomous program after Levandowski downloaded the files before his departure to form a company that Uber then acquired. Levandowski leads Uber's self-driving program. The rivals are vying to bring self-driving cars to the masses in a field that includes established carmakers, little-known start-ups and major technology companies. 'The record shows that Uber never possessed - and never used - any information Mr. Levandowski allegedly took from Waymo,' Uber wrote in its filing. Levandowski, the central witness in the case, has sought his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and will not testify, over concerns about the possibility of a criminal case being filed. Levandowski has not handed over the allegedly stolen documents and Uber, which has never denied that Levandowski took the files, claims it cannot force him to do so. U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco has ordered Uber to do a more thorough search of its computer systems to see if the documents are in its possession. 'You haven't searched well enough,' he told Uber's lawyer at a hearing on Wednesday. Alsup has also suggested that Uber had leverage over Levandowski it had not used, such as threatening to fire him should he not hand over the documents. 'If you cannot find them in your files there is going to be a preliminary injunction. You're not denying it, no one is denying he has the 14,000 files,' Alsup said. 'You keep on your payroll someone who took 14,000 documents and is liable to use them.' Google claims that Anthony Levandowski downloaded 14,000 files of information while working for them - then went off to set up a self-driving car firm which he had already said would be bought by Uber. Anthony Levandowski is a fiercely talented and driven man who Uber chief executive Travis Kalanick (left) has likened to his brother from another mother - but now he is accused of stealing Google's self-driving car secrets before he left to work for Uber The explosive claims are being aired in a bitter legal dispute in San Francsico federal court, where the two tech giants worth more than $800 billion combined are squaring off to determine the future of self-driving cars. Lawyers acting for Google are trying to get Judge William Alsup to stop Uber from using what it claims are stolen trade secrets to develop its driverless vehicles. Google and its subsidiary Waymo claim that one of its former engineers downloaded 14,000 highly confidential files before he left and set up Otto. Otto is now Uber's self-driving truck company - and Google claim that the car-service company has benefited from its secrets to the tune of $500 million. It alleges that one of the key figures in Google's self-driving cars, Anthony Levandowski, downloaded their trade secrets, set up his own firm and promptly sold it to Uber - who now benefit from the cache of Google's know-how. In the lawsuit, Google claims that it is 'calculated theft' and that it made Uber half a billion dollars. Pioneering: Waymo, Google's self-driving car firm, produced the first cars with no pedals, steering wheel, or driver. They use Google's LiDAR to 'see' In a post on the blogging site Medium, Google claimed that 'misappropriating this technology is akin to stealing a secret recipe from a beverage company'. In court documents Uber say that Levandowski had acknowledged speaking an Uber executive involved with self-driving cars in summer 2015 - when Levandowski was still working for Google. Pierre-Yves Droz, the principal hardware engineer at Waymo, made the explosive allegation in sworn testimony 'Mr. Levandowski had previously told me, in or around the summer of 2015, that he had talked with Brian McClendon, an Uber executive involved with their self-driving car project,' he said in court papers filed at federal court. 'We were having dinner at a restaurant near the office, and he told me that it would be nice to create a new self-driving car startup and that Uber would be interested in buying the team responsible for the LiDAR we were developing at Google.' The extraordinary case has pulled back the curtain on the cutthroat world of Silicon Valley and the espionage-like tactics that companies allegedly use on their rivals. Roll-out: Uber bought Otto in August 2016. Google says that the Otto trucks use its LiDAR technology to see the world around them It is on the same level as the battle between Apple and Samsung over the iPhone patent and could have major consequences for self-driving cars, a nascent industry predicted to be worth $42 billion by 2025. At stake is Uber's entry into the self-driving car world, which has seen it reveal both self-driving Uber cars and self-driving trucks. Should Uber lose, it will cap a miserable year in which it has been accused of creating an aggressive corporate culture which allows women to be sexually harassed. That could put at stake its long-term future by badly damaging its corporate reputation. At the center of it is Levandowski, a fiercely talented and driven man who Uber chief executive Travis Kalanick has likened to his brother from another mother, praise which now is rather problematic given the company's recent problems. The 36-year-old, who stands six foot seven inches tall and has been described as 'swaggering' in one profile, is also known for skirting rules and doing things his own way. Levandowski is a legend in the driverless car industry and developed Google's self-driving car program in his spare time through his own startup, 510 Systems, in 2008 while working on the company's Street View maps. After a successful test he persuaded a dubious Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google's founders, to buy 510 Systems and develop the car further. Since then Google has sunk billions into self-driving cars while Uber has tested self-driving trucks and taxis, with the goal of replacing drivers for both. Rivals Tesla, General Motors and Ford are investing billions in the industry, too. The legal dispute centers around Levandowski's decision to leave Google in January and set up his own company, Otto, which was bought by Uber for around $680m three months later. The speed with which this happened caused Waymo 'grave concern' that it had been ripped off, concerns which, the lawsuit claims, were justified. In the lawsuit, Google claims that Levandowski's move is 'calculated theft' and that it made Uber half a billion dollars Waymo is seeking an unspecified amount of damages and a court order preventing Uber from using its proprietary information - bringing its self driving project to a halt. According to documents filed in the Northern District of California, Waymo developed its own system of laser sensors known as LiDAR which scan and map the world in real time, allowing driverless cars to 'see' the world and move around without hitting anything. Waymo invested 'tens of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of hours of engineering time' in the project. The result was that the company ran the world's first self-driving trip in a car with no wheels or foot pedals. The lawsuit states that Waymo's suspicions intensified when it was 'apparently inadvertently' copied on an email from one of its vendors which had images attached to it of what was an Uber LiDAR circuit board. The circuit board bore a 'striking resemblance to Waymo's own highly confidential and proprietary design and reflects Waymo trade secrets', it's claimed. The lawsuit says this is evidence that Otto and Uber's driverless systems 'infringe multiple LiDAR technology patents awarded to Waymo'. 'Ubers LiDAR technology is actually Waymos LiDAR technology,' Waymo allege. Waymo said in the lawsuit: 'Fair competition spurs new technical innovation, but what has happened here is not fair competition. 'Instead, Otto and Uber have taken Waymo's intellectual property so that they could avoid incurring the risk, time, and expense of independently developing their own technology.' According to documents filed in the Northern District of California, Waymo developed its own system of laser sensors known as LiDAR which scan and map the world in real time, allowing driverless cars to 'see' the world and move around without hitting anything Waymo alleges that Uber is guilty of trade secret misappropriation, patent infringement and unfair competition. It accused Levandowski of downloading 14,000 confidential documents, including information on Waymo's LiDAR circuit board. Waymo alleges that he undertook 'extraordinary efforts to raid Waymo's designer server' and downloaded 9.7 gigabytes of 'highly confidential data' to an external hard drive. HOW OTTO DRIVES Otto is aiming to equip trucks with software, sensors, lasers and cameras so they eventually will be able to navigate the more than 220,000 miles of US highways on their own, while a human driver naps in the back of the cab or handles other tasks. For now, the robot truckers would only take control on the highways, leaving humans to handle the tougher task of wending through city streets. The technology fitted in Otto's trucks uses Lidar sensors on top of the cab to read the road ahead, with the data fed back to a computer to analyse the data and make adjustments to speed and steering. Advertisement Levandowski is said to have connected the drive to his computer and apparently transferred the data somewhere - then wiped the machine and never used it again. The lawsuit claims that he also downloaded additional confidential Waymo documents to a personal device including five 'highly sensitive internal presentations containing proprietary technical details'. And it claims that after he left to start up his own self-driving car technology company, other Google employs left to work with him. 'A number of Waymo employees subsequently also left to join Anthony Levandowskis new business, downloading additional Waymo trade secrets in the days and hours prior to their departure,' Waymo alleges. 'These secrets included confidential supplier lists, manufacturing details and statements of work with highly technical information, all of which reflected the results of Waymos months-long, resource-intensive research into suppliers for highly specialized LiDAR sensor components.' On March 10, Waymo upped the ante and filed a request for an immediate injunction against Uber to stop it using its technology. It included testimony from three Waymo employees which it said showed clearly that Levandowski had stolen trade secrets. The most damning was Pierre-Yves Droz, who co-founded 510 Systems with Levandowski before Google bought it in 2011. Droz claimed that Levandowski met with Uber's vice president of mapping, Brian McClendon, in the summer of 2015 and that Levandowski was surprisingly open about his future plans. Droz's testimony said: 'We were having dinner at a restaurant near the office, and [Levandowski] told me that it would be nice to create a new self-driving car startup and that Uber would be interested in buying the team responsible for the LiDAR we were developing at Google. 'Later in January 2016, a colleague told me that Mr Levandowski had been seen at Uber's headquarters in mid January. The lawsuit gives evidence for why they believe Otto and Uber's driverless systems 'infringe multiple LiDAR technology patents awarded to Waymo' 'I asked Mr Levandowski about this, and he admitted he had met with Uber, and the reason he was there was that he was looking for investors for his new company.' At that time Otto, Levandowski's company, was being set up but was not officially founded. Droz said: 'I distinctly remember taking a walk around our Mountain View office one-on-one with Mr. Levandowski on or around January 5, 2016. 'During this walk, he told me specifically that he wanted his new company to have a long-range LiDAR, which is very useful for self-driving truck applications he was interested in. He also told me that he planned to 'replicate' this Waymo technology at his new company.' It also highlighted the speed with which Uber took over Levandowski's firm. 'Otto launched publicly in May 2016, and was quickly acquired by Uber in August 2016 for $680 million. (Notably, Otto announced the acquisition shortly after Mr. Levandowski received his final multi-million dollar compensation payment from Google.),' Waymo's court papers say. The case is being heard by Judge Alsup, who will have to decide on Waymo's request for the injunction before the proper trial in April. Judge Alsup will almost certainly allow the trial of the Waymo and Uber case to be shown live if the press request it, adding to the spotlight for both companies There was also testimony from Waymo security engineer Gary Brown, whose forensic tests of Levandowski's Google-issued laptop allegedly showed he downloaded 14,000 files from the company. In addition to Levandowski, former Google employees Sameer Kshirsagar and Radu Raduta are also accused of downloading additional Waymo trade secrets, such as confidential supplier lists, before they left. As a sign of how rancorous the case is, Google has filed 38 newspaper articles showing how far behind Uber is when it comes to automated cars. Among the articles is a piece from the tech website The Verge about how Uber 'gutted' the top robotics lab at Carnegie Mellon to create its self-driving cars in what was supposed to be a partnership arrangement. 'These guys, they took everybody,' a person who worked there said. Google alleges that Uber's self-driving car program was started in February 2015 and that it was 'late to enter the self-driving market'. A year later the program was 'floundering' despite hundreds of people working on the project, and therefore resorted to 'willful, malicious and fraudulent' conduct by allegedly stealing its top secret information. According to Waymo, Uber wanted to catch up 'by any means necessary'. Tech website Recode reported that Levandowski was hired by Kalanick, the boss of Uber, when he became frustrated that the Carnegie Mellon team were not making progress fast enough. Recode also reported that Kalanick felt that Uber was not living up to its win-at-all-cost culture; the company routinely skips around regulation in new markets until city officials catch up with it. The case is being heard by Judge Alsup, who will have to decide on Waymo's request for the injunction before the proper trial in April. In court filings he has asked for both sides to get their arguments in order and noted in one order that Waymo is asking for 'extraordinary and drastic relief'. The judge is no stranger to these types of cases and has presided over a dispute between Google and Oracle in a high stakes patent dispute. He is also not afraid to express his opinion. During one hearing, the judge scolded both companies and said: 'You're both asking for the moon and you should be more reasonable.' Judge Alsup will almost certainly allow the trial of the Waymo and Uber case to be shown live if the press request it, adding to the spotlight for both companies. During the Oracle and Google dispute, he admonished the Oracle lawyer when he tried to close it down. Judge Alsup said: 'This is public proceeding. Your lawyers and companies are not going to handcuff the court. 'This is not a wholly owned subsidiary of Oracle Corp.' A spokesman for Uber said: 'We are incredibly proud of the progress that our team has made. 'We have reviewed Waymo's claims and determined them to be a baseless attempt to slow down a competitor and we look forward to vigorously defending against them in court. 'In the meantime, we will continue our hard work to bring self-driving benefits to the world.' Mechanicsburg police are asking for the publics help to locate a bank robbery suspect. The Orrstown Bank in the 1100 block of East Simpson Street was robbed around 4 p.m. Thursday. According to police, the robber wore a beige knit mask, a green knit hat, jeans, a gray Nike sweatshirt and white shoes. Tellers gave the suspect cash after he demanded it. The masked robber then fled the scene, according to police. Anyone with information about this bank robbery is asked to call the Mechanicsburg Police Department at 717-691-3300. Anonymous tips can be delivered online or by calling 717-691-3309. From a vacuum Martian airship to an artificial gravity chamber, NASA has revealed a host of new proposals that could push human and robotic exploration of space even further. The space agency is investing in 22 early-stage projects for further development, many of which tap into ideas that once existed only in science fiction. While the radical projects could take years before they can be used in a NASA mission, if at all, the agency says they could soon expand how we explore the universe. Among the proposals, NASA invested in a radical idea to create a sci-fi-like Mach Effect Thruster propulsion system. This would produce thrust without the irreversible ejection of propellant, eliminating the need to carry propellant' NASA has selected Phase I and II awards for its 2017 Innovative Advanced Concepts portfolio. One notable Phase I concept calls for an Evacuated Airship for Mars Missions. This would operate similar to a standard balloon, relying on a rigid structure to maintain a vacuum to displace air and provide lift. Such a device could work in the Martian atmosphere using a multi-layer approach with a lattice structure, and would be a valuable design for a vehicular probe, according to the proposal by John-Paul Clarke of Georgia Institute of Technology. The vacuum airship could use its structure to protect the instruments from solar radiation and high energy particle, the proposal explains. The airship device could work in the Martian atmosphere using a multi-layer approach with a lattice structure, and would be a valuable design for a vehicular probe, according to the proposal by John-Paul Clarke of Georgia Institute of Technology The vacuum airship probe would be able to traverse a much greater area of the planet in a smaller amount of time because there is no need to worry about getting stuck, and the vacuum airship can also observe a greater swath of land by rising in elevation. Even though the vacuum airship would be aerially base, the vehicle would still be able to touch down and perform tasks on the ground; it is even possible the vacuum airship could be used to transport ground probes to different locations. Another proposal, submitted by Jay McMahon of University of Colorado, Boulder, seeks to create a soft robotic spacecraft that can dismantle rubble pile asteroids. To do this, the Area-of-Effect Soft-bots (AoES) would use adhesive forces to anchor itself. One of the proposals seeks to create a soft robotic spacecraft that can dismantle rubble pile asteroids. After freeing the material form the asteroid, the robot would launch it from the surface to be collected by an orbiting craft Then it would free the material from the asteroid, and launch it from the surface to be collected by an orbiting craft. The space agency has also revealed a proposal for a Turbolift device that could combat the effects of microgravity during long-duration missions. Astronauts are known to experience bone loss, muscle atrophy, cardiovascular deconditioning, sensorimotor/balance impairment, and vision changes as a result. But, the new type of linear artificial gravity technology, dubbed the Turbolift, could reduce or even eliminate physiological deconditioning. A proposal from Nan Yu, of NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, aims to directly detect dark energy based on interactions with normal matter. This would rely on a solar system laboratory that would fly unscreened atomic particles through special gravitational field regions The space agency has also revealed a proposal for a Turbolift device that could combat the effects of microgravity By this design, the astronaut is linearly accelerated at 1G for ~1s, then is rotated 180 degrees to prepare for a 1G deceleration for ~1s. This process is repeated to create intermittent AG where the force is always headward similar to standing here on Earth. The experience is likely to be analogous to bouncing mildly on a trampoline. A proposal from Nan Yu, of NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, aims to directly detect dark energy based on its interactions with normal matter. This would rely on a solar system laboratory that would fly unscreened atomic particles through special gravitational field regions. Dark energy is thought to make up roughly 68 percent of the universe, and the scientists hope this could finally help them obtain a direct detection. This could lead to a fundamental shift in our understanding of fundamental physics and our universe, stimulating a wide variety of foundational research in cosmology and particle physics, the proposal explains. And, the agency has also invested in a radical idea to create a Mach Effect Thruster propulsion system. This would produce thrust without the irreversible ejection of propellant, eliminating the need to carry propellant as required with most other propulsion systems, the proposal by Heidi Fearn of the Space Studies Institute explains. Such a device does not expel fuel mass, and opens the door for very high velocities. Phase I awardees are granted roughly $125,000 for a nine month study to define and analyze the initial concepts. After this, they can apply for Phase II. And in Phase II, awards can be as high as $500,000 for two-year studies to further develop these concepts. This TV host can make a drab crosswalk look like a high end catwalk. Padma Lakshmi stunned in a chic winter ensemble as she helped her adorable daughter Krishna across the street in NYC on Wednesday. The 46-year-old author turned the streets of the Big Apple into very her own fashion show with a sleek coat, tight pants, and high heeled boots. Catwalk: Padma Lakshmi, 46, stunned in a chic winter ensemble as she helped her adorable daughter Krishna across the street in NYC on Wednesday The Indian born author braved the cold temperatures with a shiny metallic, fur trimmed winter coat. She wore a matching shirt and pant set that was skin tight and a beautiful shade of grey. The Top Chef host rocked a pair of hot pink high heeled boots. She kept her gorgeous raven hair long and loose while sporting big retro shades. Work it: The Top Chef host rocked a pair of hot pink high heeled boots Earlier that day, Padma spent time celebrating women at the annual Women in the World Summit. The event, put on by the New York Times, honors powerful female role models who are changing the world and illuminating the most pressing international issues facing women today. The Summit features some of the top leaders in politics and female advocacy, including Hillary Clinton, Scarlett Johansson, Maria Bello and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Activist: Earlier that day, Padma spent time celebrating women at the annual Women in the World Summit Padma and Krishna just returned from a whirlwind vacation in France last week. The former model posted cute snaps on her Instagram of the incredible trip. The mother and daughter visited the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre museum among other landmarks. Jet set: Padma and Krishna just returned from a whirlwind vacation in France; (pictured last week) This actress recently stole the spotlight at the Fashion Los Angeles Awards. And Busy Philipps shared where her keen fashion sense all began in a hilarious throwback snap on Thursday. The 37-year-old actress posted an adorable pic of herself from childhood rocking bangs and a bedazzled shirt on Instagram. Sizzle: Busy Philipps, 37, recently dazzled at the Fashion LA Awards; (pictured Sunday) Cute as a button: The star shared with the world where her keen fashion sense all began in a hilarious throwback snap on Thursday The Dawson's Creek star captioned the pic: 'When I was the girl version of Macaulay Culkin. #tbt' In the pic, Busy wears her amazing bangs in a swoop styled to one side of her face. Her adorable top is white with rhinestones scattered across it. Glamour: Busy was seen on the red carpet at the Oscars; (pictured February) Kevin! She compared herself to Macaulay Culkin in the throwback image, as he is pictured in his iconic Home Alone role Busy is currently filming a new NBC comedy with Casey Wilson called The Sackett Sisters. The show is about two estranged sisters (Casey and Philipps) who perform an act of public heroism and are forced to navigate the aftermath together. The show is penned by Brooklyn Nine-Nine executive producer Luke Del Tredic and produced by 30 Rock's Tina Fey and Robert Carlock. Together: Busy is currently filming a new NBC comedy with Casey Wilson called The Sackett Sisters Meanwhile, Busy's trainer recently spoke out about how dedicated the blonde is to her workout regime. Apparently the Cougar Town actress swears by Lauren Kleban's LEKfit workout for serious toning. 'Busy committed and has consistently worked out with me five to six times a week,' Kleban told PEOPLE. She's been enjoying an extended vacation in the Mexican resort town. And Gwyneth Paltrow, 44, looked like she was getting use to her relaxed lifestyle as she sipped on freshly squeezed carrot juice with a friend in Cabo San Lucas on Thursday. The gorgeous mom-of-two let her blonde hair fall casually around her shoulders and appeared to not have a care in the world as she smiled at the camera. Gwyneth Paltrow, 44, looked like she was getting use to her relaxed lifestyle as she sipped on freshly squeezed carrot juice with a friend Gwyneth took the photo with Virginie Degryse, who appears to have joined the actress on her vacation. The stunning Iron Man star opted for large RayBan aviators that covered most of her face, but her naturally glowing complexion was still evident. She also posted a stunning shot of the view from her infinity pool at the residential community, Maravilla Los Cabos, where the actress is staying. The residence, situated right on the beach boasted stunning views of the Pacific ocean from the balcony. Stunning views: She also posted a stunning shot of the view from her infinity pool at the residential community, Maravilla Los Cabos, where the actress is staying The actress was spotted earlier in the week with boyfriend Brad Falchuk lounging on the beach in the posh resort town. Her macho man boyfriend, who is most famous for being the co-creator of hit Fox show Glee, seemed to be enjoying himself with his main squeeze. Gwyneth showed off her incredible figure in a dark blue bikini as she glanced out at the water. Extended vacation: The actress was spotted earlier in the week with boyfriend Brad Falchuk lounging on the beach in the posh resort town It has been claimed clingy Gwyneth is desperate to marry her man, who she started dating back in 2014. A source told Us Weekly that she is desperate to get engaged 'soon.' The insider said, 'They talk about marriage all the time and know it will happen.' Taking a holiday in such an exclusive area is only natural for Gwyneth, for she previously revealed the one thing she could not live without is De Gournay hand-painted wallpaper, which costs around $650 per panel, or $12,000 per room. The actress said: 'I indulged with one wall in my London living room covered in a gorgeous pattern.' Brad and Gwyneth have been dating since the summer of 2014 after he divorced his wife Suzanne, with whom he has two children. She usually shows off her model curves in her favourite fifties style frocks. But Daisy Lowe opted for an androgynous look when she attended the premiere of Amazon Prime Video series, American Gods, in London on Thursday night. The brunette beauty, 28, embraced her masculine side in a pair of black trousers complete with braces. Scroll down for video Looking chic: Daisy Lowe opted for an androgynous look when she attended the premiere of Amazon Prime Video series, American Gods, in London on Thursday night She tucked her slacks into sturdy lace-up military-style boots and wore a thin white blouse. The former Strictly star added a little sex appeal to her outfit by donning a clearly visible black bra underneath her white top. The Agent Provocateur model accessorised her look with three pendant necklaces. Style star: The former Strictly star added a little sex appeal to her outfit by donning a clearly visible black bra underneath her white top Androgynous: Daisy, 28, paired her slacks with a pair of sturdy military boots Her tumbling raven locks were teased into loose ringlets and she opted for rock chic make up. The beauty accentuated her eyes with lashings of mascara and plenty of eye liner. She slicked her pout with a juicy, dark berry shade. Raven-haired stunner: Daisy teased her raven tresses into gentle ringlets Made In Chelsea's Oliver Proudlock also walked the red carpet at the premiere of the series based on the epic road trip novel by famed author Neil Gaiman. The socialite donned an eye-catching tangerine silk bomber jacket which matched the medallion necklace hung around his neck. He added a fedora to his unique look and a white sweatshirt and somewhat grubby trousers. Eye-catching: Guests couldn't look away from Oliver Proudlock's tangerine silk bomber jacket Emily Browning, who appears in the show as Laura, sported a delicate Victoriana lace dress with nude shift underneath. The 28-year-old Australian looked stunning in the frock which featured a buckle belt to showcase her trim waist. She carried a rose velvet clutch bag and added inches to her frame with a pair of platform sandals. The star: Emily Browning, who stars in the series as Laura, looked delicate in a lace Victoriana dress with a nude shift underneath The beauty showed off her alabaster complexion with very little make up and let her caramel-coloured locks fall loose around her shoulders. Emily received author Neil Gaiman's seal of approval when it was announced she would star in the adaptation of his novel. The author told The Hollywood Reporter that he was 'fascinated' by the actress. 'I've been fascinated by Emily Browning since A Series Of Unfortunate Events. Gothic style: Emily added platformed heels to her elegant lace look and carried a rose velvet clutch bag 'She has a challenge ahead of her: Laura is a tricky character, and the Laura on the screen is even trickier and more dangerous than the one on the page. 'She's going to have a wonderful time bringing Laura to life.' Emily happily fooled around on the red carpet with her co-stars Ricky Whittle and Yetide Badaki. Yetide, who plays ancient goddess of love Bilquis in the hotly anticipated series, looked red hot in a scarlet wrap around dress. The actress teamed her showstopping frock with a pair of black heels embroidered with flowers and let her raven locks fall in curls around her shoulders. Let's mess about! Emily kicked up her heels to pose with her co-stars Ricky Whittle and Yetide Badaki American Gods: Yetide plays the ancient goddess of love Bilquis in the show and opted for a scarlet wrap around dress with embroidered high heeled sandals Blue Steel: Former model and Hollyoaks star Ricky gave the cameras his best catwalk gaze while looking dapper in a navy suit with crisp white shirt and matching pocket square Former model and Hollyoaks star Ricky looked debonair in a navy suit with a crisp white shirt and matching pocket square. Radio presenter Vick Hope arrived at the event in a sexy plunging tuxedo jacket which she chose to wear without a top. The beauty showed off her flawless skin in the velvet jacket which she teamed with matching shorts. The beauty pushed back her glossy locks into a quiff style and looked polished with a slick of coral lipstick and lashings of mascara. Tuxedo shorts: Radio presenter Vick Hope looked sultry in a tuxedo jacket with no top underneath which she paired with matching velvet shorts American Gods is a hugely popular novel by cult author Gaiman about the clash between old Gods and new Gods. Ricky plays the main character, Shadow Moon, who has just been released from prison. Shadow is swept up by the enigmatic Mr Wednesday, played by Ian McShane, who turns out to be the Norse God Odin. He soon learns that there is a battle in America. The traditional Old Gods, brought to the land by immigrants from around the world, fear irrelevance with the arrival of New Gods like media and technology. She is the Australian actress who is in the middle of a bitter custody dispute with her ex Jean-David Blanc. But Melissa isn't going through the ordeal alone. The actress found comfort in friends on Thursday night as she went out for dinner in Paris. Scroll down for video Resilient: Melissa George has posted a photo to Instagram showing the star being comforted by two gal pals on a night out, amid her bitter custody dispute with ex-Jean David Blanc In a photo she uploaded to Instagram, Melissa is flanked by two gal pals, with the trio locked in a playfully naughty pose. The former Home And Away star is seen giving one friend a peck on the cheek, while the other has a hand cheekily placed just inside the star's top. Melissa captioned the photo: 'La belle epoch' - a phrase that denoted a period in Western European history (particularly in France) from the late 1800s to the outbreak of World War I, that was characterised by a sense of optimism and peace. Melissa show her resilience again earlier this week, when she posted an adorable snap showing her sons Raphael and Solal's baby shoes dipped in bronze for posterity. 'So happy to have dipped by baby boys first shoes in bronze,' the star wrote of the cherubic creations. She added the hashtag 'bronzebabyshoes' to the delightful image. The Aussie ex-pat is locked in a much-publicised battle with her ex, French entrepreneur Jean-David Blanc, over the custody of their two children. Best foot forward: Melissa show her resilience again earlier this week, when she posted an adorable snap showing her sons Raphael and Solal's baby shoes dipped in bronze for posterity In her tearful tell-all interview in Channel 7's Sunday Night, the 40-year-old actress claimed that she was attacked by Blanc in their Paris apartment in September last year allegations which Jean-David has denied. 'It started with him on top of me with my arms locked above my head. I used my feet to get him off me... I wet the bed. I wet the floor,' Melissa told Sunday Night. 'I just went into a crazy moment of like, 'I'm in deep sh**.'' And so I just tried to fight for myself which made him more angry, which made me more angry. 'He pushed me into the door, and then struck my face and I hit the wall and fell on the floor and I was out.' In happier times: The former Home And Away star is locked in a much-publicised battle with her ex, French entrepreneur Jean-David Blanc, over the custody of their two children Tragic tale: In her tearful tell-all interview in Channel 7's Sunday Night , the 40-year-old actress claimed that she was attacked by Blanc in their Paris apartment in September last year allegations which Jean-David has denied The former The Good Wife star was admitted to Cochin Hospital after presenting to a local police station with facial bruising and complaints of pain. With the couple's relationship now in tatters, a much publicised custody battle has ensued, with the pair now sharing custody in France. However, the actress has claimed that she is trapped in Paris and unable to work there due to Visa issues, nor outside of France without leaving Raphael and Solal behind. Late last month, the star also spoke to KIIS FM's Kyle Sandilands and Jackie 'O' Henderson and revealed text messages she received from her ex-partner telling her to stop breastfeeding their young son. 'You know I just received a text message (from her ex-partner) because I'm still breastfeeding my son,' Melissa told the radio stars. 'It said: 'As I told you and as I tried to explain to you, you must stop breastfeeding my son Solal, otherwise you'll destroy him.' 'He wakes up in the middle of the night and asks for breast, not for milk, what do you want me to do? Unless you put your boobs in a bag I don't see any other solution.' She recently shocked fans with her lengthy tirade against a Los Angeles restaurant after she deemed the food 'inedible'. But Cat Deeley seemed to be pleased with the service she received at Barneys in Beverley Hills on Thursday as she beamed broadly after picking up her car from the valet. Looking in high spirits, the 40-year-old presenter had a spring in her step as she headed home. Scroll down for video Chirpy: Cat Deeley seemed to be pleased with the service she received at Barneys in Beverley Hills on Thursday as she beamed broadly after picking up her car from the valet Looking effortlessly stylish for the outing, the mother-of-one donned a denim jacket worn over a plain grey T-shirt. She teamed the garment with cropped black skinny jeans and slipped her feet into a pair of bedazzled sandals. Keeping her accessories simple, Cat - who shares 15-month-old son Milo with husband Patrick Kielty - donned a black Gucci cross body bag and aviator sunglasses. Loving life: Looking in high spirits, the 40-year-old presenter had a spring in her step as she headed home after a look around the shops Better service? Cat appeared to appreciate the valet service more than the dining experience she had last month in which she went on a lengthy Twitter rant about The outing came shortly after waiter Joseph Vasko-Bezenek accused the So You Think You Can Dance host of 'using her power to take down' his family. Speaking to Inside Edition, he said: 'This isnt fair. Shes using her power to take down my family. She grabbed the bill and she said she shouldnt have to pay for any of this [food].' He made the comments after Cat took to Twitter to express her disgust at Italian restaurant Tom George, writing: 'The worst featuring! Worst food! As for the manager?????? Moron!!!!!' She added: 'The most disgusting restaurant, terribly run, by a manager who can only be described as an amateur. Avoid at all costs. #tomgeorge.' Dreamy in denim: Looking effortlessly stylish for the outing, the mother-of-one donned a denim jacket worn over a plain grey T-shirt Leggy lady! She teamed the denim jacket with cropped black skinny jeans and slipped her feet into a pair of bedazzled sandals Finishing touches: Keeping her accessories simple, Cat - who shares 15-month-old son Milo with husband Patrick Kielty - donned a black Gucci cross body bag and aviator sunglasses The restaurant then waded into the row by writing on Facebook: 'We are listening to any feedback because we need to provide the best service what we could do. 'In this case we couldn't do anything. She didn't like the food so we comped all of the food items, then she tweeted a lot of inappropriate tweet although we tried to ease her "pain". 'But she's still very welcome in our restaurant again if she gives us any chance to prove her, the lot of good reviews are for a reason.' Shortly after this, Vasko-Bezenek revealed she did not tip him, even though the celeb's issue did not appear to be with his service. 'Just to be clear. Our order arrived at the table incorrectly FIVE times! Then one of my guests dishes was inedible. There was zero service.' Blonde bombshell: Cat wore her golden locks loose and in soft waves on the outing She had kept her second son's name under wraps for months. But Lara Worthington (nee Bingle) has finally revealed the name of her baby boy after giving birth back in October 2016. In an interview with Harper's Bazaar magazine, Lara announced she called her tiny tot, Racer. FINALLY: Lara Bingle has revealed the name of her second son after giving birth months ago The blonde beauty also shares a two year old son, Rocket Zot, with husband Sam Worthington. 'Being able to raise the boys [Rocket and Racer] here [in New York], I haven't had as much scrutiny as I probably would back home,' the model told the publication. Living abroad with her Hollywood beau, Lara revealed she has moments where she 'freaks out', but admits: 'I feel like living away has made me softer.' Proving Sam is her rock through her toughest moments, she said: 'Sam says when you turn 30, everything changes. I'm like, "What?!" When he turned 30 he sold everything he owned and had $2,000 in his pocket. It was just before he got Avatar. So when I freak out now, he's like, "Lara! You're all good, just relax!"' Baby boy: The name reveal comes nearly six months after the Cronulla-born beauty welcomed her newborn Last October, a friend told marie claire that the notoriously private couple 'are just focused on enjoying this special time together, and settling into a new routine.' Prior to her second son's birth, Lara told the magazine she was excited to add a second bundle of joy to their family. 'Sam has a sister and I have a brother, so creating that same sense of family is special and I know theyll have lots of fun together, especially being so close in age,' she said. Tribute: The couple called their first son Rocket Zot, his middle name a tribute to her late father Graham, who lost his battle with liver and pancreatic cancer and died in Sydney's Calvary Hospital, Kogarah in 2008 The couple called their first son Rocket Zot, his middle name a tribute to her late father Graham, who lost his battle with liver and pancreatic cancer and died in Sydney's Calvary Hospital, Kogarah in 2008. Shortly after his birth, a newspaper columnist wrote a scathing article about the baby's name, leaving Lara devastated. The blonde beauty slammed the article, taking to social media to write: 'My son's middle name IS a respectful nod to my late father, whose nickname was affectionately, Zot.' Devastated: The blonde beauty took to Twitter to write a scathing review of an article published by The Daily Telegraph, in which a journalist blasted the unusual name of her firstborn son 'Juvenile': Lara called the article 'juvenile' and didn't hold back in naming the journalist who penned the piece 'I wish Australian journalism, in particular The Daily Telegraph, would rethink employing people who have some respect, and integrity, who either fact check or not comment rather than just print the juvenile, spurious ramblings of some pseudo journalist...' she added. The former reality TV star confirmed she and her actor husband were expecting their second child together back in June last year. 'I'm just excited that Rocket gets a sibling and that they'll be so close [in age] together', she told InStyle at the time. Proud parents: Last October, a friend of the couple said the pair 'are just focused on enjoying this special time together, and settling into a new routine' Happy family: Speaking prior to Racer's birth, Lara revealed: 'I'm just excited that Rocket gets a sibling and that they'll be so close [in age] together' (pictured with Rocket at one year old) 'I'm sure it might seem full-on at the beginning for me, and it's probably a lot harder than it is now, but when they get older they can share their life together,' she explained. Lara and Sam were married in 2014 and relocated to New York that same year, where they are now based. Since their move, Lara has launched a beauty line called The Base - something she admits will be hard to continue managing with two young children. So happy: Lara and Sam were married in 2014 and relocated to New York that same year, where they are now based He was the Married At First Sight star dubbed a 'villain' by fans on social media for his behaviour towards his two brides. But Andrew Jones turned attention towards the show's psychologist John Aiken on Friday, claiming he promoted drama at the sake of the couples' relationships. Taking to Instagram, the 38-year-old reposted a snap the relationship expert had shared days earlier, questioning: 'Does your psychologist froth on things getting ugly?' 'Revenge and payback': Andrew Jonescalled out Married At First Sight's psychologist John Aiken on Friday, claiming he promoted drama at the sake of the couples' relationships The Perth firefighter then continued: 'Is he/she into revenge and payback?!!' before warning 'You might not be getting your money's worth'. The comments were in relation to a picture of Andrew and former TV wife Cheryl Maitland, which John shared to social media Monday. The post appeared to reference Andrew's actions on the show, before teasing that his other half would get her own back. The accompanying caption read: 'Are things going to get ugly between Jonesy and Cheryl tonight? Perhaps a little payback?' Money's worth: Taking to Instagram, the 38-year-old reposted a snap the relationship expert shared days earlier, venting: 'Does your psychologist froth on things getting ugly?' Seeking drama? The comments were in relation to a picture of Andrew and former TV wife Cheryl Maitland, which John shared to social media Monday, along with the caption: ''Are things going to get ugly between Jonesy and Cheryl tonight? Perhaps a little payback?' John's original post to Instagram, which featured different images but the same caption, attracted close to 170 likes, with many of the comments aimed at Andrew's behaviour. However, some users appeared to be on Andrew's side, also questioning the psychologists role in helping the contestants. 'So everyone makes a big hoo-ha about Andrew's behaviour at the dinner party. Yet you as ''experts'' are prepared to dig up the boys night and watch Andrew get a slamming?' one person wrote. Another fan weighed in: 'I thought the same, poor move by the experts, they are bullying him and destroying his credibility, for what? ratings.' 'Villain': John's original post, which featured different images but the same caption, attracted close to 170 likes, with many of the comments aimed at Andrew's behaviour Relationship experts role: However, some users appeared to be on Andrew's side, also questioning the psychologists role in helping the contestants In another picture of Andrew and Cheryl that John shared before Tuesday night's finale, the psychologist again referenced the drama telling fans to 'Brace yourself' in the caption. He continued: 'What's going to happen to these two when the boys night footage gets revealed? MAFS final tonight. #9married #marriedatfirstsight #brocode #awkward #crunchtime #defensive' Fans hit out at the relationship experts conduct, claiming the show's psychologists manipulated situations. 'Experts - be ashamed you stooped to the level of manipulating the truth for ratings at the expense of a living, breathing human!!' one user wrote. Another emphasised the contestants treatment, stating: 'These so called "experts" are meant to care for the well being of all the people on the show. The manipulation of scenes is unreal, which has caused unnecessary bullying, attacking and b******t hatred!!' Andrew was touted as the black sheep of the fourth season when he shocked viewers by mocking second bride Cheryl behind her back at an infamous boys night discussion. It is not the first time the show's psychologist has been called out over social media either though, with former star Clare Verrall also vocal about John's former comments. Last month she expressed her disbelief over an exchange the psychologist had on Twitter when a viewer asked why the experts don't intervene when drama unfolds. John had simply replied 'because' before adding 'all will b revealed (sic)'. Clare questioned the show's duty of care in her post, writing: 'This guy is literally the worst. Why, oh, just 'because.'' She has recently returned from a luxurious holiday in sun soaked Egypt. And Caroline Flack was clearly keen to show off her glowing tan as she arrived at her friend Dawn O'Porter's book launch on Thursday in a halterneck dress. The TV presenter looked sultry in the black frock which featured colourful embroidered flowers across her bodice. Scroll down for video Good pals: Caroline Flack cosied up to Dawn O'Porter at the book launch for Dawn's new book The Cows in West London on Thursday night The dress's skirt featured a thigh-high split offering Caroline the opportunity to show off her brown legs. The 37-year-old brunette beauty teamed her sophisticated dress with a pair of strappy sandals. Her locks gleamed and were teased into a delicate low ponytail. Giggles: Caroline flaunted her tanned shoulders and sculpted arms in a halterneck dress as she chatted with radio presenter Gemma Cairney Flamboyant: Gemma rocked a very distinctive outfit including pairing polka dot brogues with leopard print socks The former Strictly champion looked delighted to be at the book launch as she mingled with guests including author Dawn. The pregnant literary star looked chic in a lime green and cream striped high-neck dress, doubtless from her own range of vintage frocks BOB. The 38-year-old brunette rocked a boyish hair style with a heavy fringe perfectly framing her face. Book club: Gemma and Caroline discussed their friend's novel over glasses of champagne She was not the only star that Caroline was keen to cuddle up to that night. The Love Island host took time to chat with radio presenter Gemma Cairney who was wearing a very bold outfit. The 32-year-old sported a denim miniskirt with a tangerine crochet top and a shiny khaki bomber jacket. She showed she was not afraid to mix prints wearing polka dot brogues teamed with leopard print socks. Supportive friends: Actress Ophelia Lovibond also turned up to celebrate Dawn's novel Gingham chic: Ophelia sported a vintage gingham-print satin dress which she paired with understated camel pumps Earlier in the day Dawn appeared on Loose Women to speak about her pregnancy. The star is expecting her second child with husband Chris O'Dowd. She admitted she wasn't always sure she wanted to become a mother. 'Even at the start... I wasn't sure I wanted children. But I woke up one day feeling... fill my womb!' she admitted. She is due to give birth to their second child in July and revealed she is planning to deliver the baby from the comfort of her own home. 'I'm planning a home birth, hopefully,' she said. 'The first time I didn't really need to be in the hospital - that's how I felt. I just took two painkillers. Proud author: Dawn, whose baby is due in July, posed with her novel in front of a cow statue 'I wanted it to be as natural as possible.' And it seems her own experiences after starting a family influenced her latest title, The Cows, as she had originally planned to tell the story of three women who hadn't had children for different reasons. She explained: 'I had the most emotive experience I've ever had, so I had to call my editor and say my idea has changed.' Ezra Lehman was against opening up the campus to military training. The college president once visited Washington, D.C., to ask the War Department not to implement a Student Army Training Corps program at the Cumberland Valley State Normal School an early incarnation of Shippensburg University. We decided that we could render a greater service to the state and the nation by continuing our work training teachers, Lehman told alumni in the Normal School Herald. We found that it would be practically impossible for those who entered the SATC to take the regular Normal course because of the intensive training required ... The present-day university has a center for applied history that published the book Duty Calls at Home: Central Pennsylvania Responds to the Great War, 1914-1918. Released in 2014, the book is a collection of graduate student papers that touch on a variety of topics pertaining to the home front of World War I. A paper by Christy Fic focused on the issues of patriotism and dissent in the development of curriculum at local colleges. The war created tension on college campuses, Fic wrote. Schools struggled to balance their responsibility to offer students the best education possible and their responsibility to their country to support the war. Dynamic tension This tension gave rise to special courses being added for the duration of the war and for military training to be adopted as a way to prepare college men for military service. Curriculum standards were relaxed to allow students to contribute to the war effort while still earning college credit, the paper reads. While American military participation in World War I was brief, Pennsylvanias colleges were swept up in the national tide of patriotic fervor that tested the limits of government influence in higher educational institutions. Fic mentioned how many colleges considered it unpatriotic to offer courses on the language and culture of Americas new enemy. There was also concern over the loyalty of certain faculty members. Because U.S. involvement was so brief, spring 1917 to fall 1918, colleges added and deleted courses at such a brisk pace there was no time to publish the offerings in the course catalog, according to Fic. Instead, the administrators relied on student newspapers, literacy magazines and newsletters to get the word out. The Dec. 13, 1917 edition of the Dickinsonian announced a course on wireless telegraphy limited to 40 male students. Fic quoted the article which read It will be necessary for all who enroll to drop some other study. The dropped courses should not be physics, chemistry or French because of their importance to prospective soldiers. The next month, Dickinson added six courses to the curriculum primarily for upperclassmen eligible for war service, Fic wrote. The courses included Stenography and Typewriting for women, Beginning French for men, Mechanical Drawing, Food Conservation and Hygiene, Economic Principles and Problems and The Liquor Problem from the Economic Standpoint. Training program Six months later, in June 1918, the government announced the formation of a Student Army Training Corps program designed to recruit high school graduates to receive basic army training while pursuing college studies, according to the article The Battle of Dickinson College 1918, which appeared in the November 1982 edition of The Dickinson College Magazine. Six second lieutenants commanded the SATC detachment at Dickinson including Walter H. Hitchler, a faculty member at Dickinson law school and later its dean after William Trickett. Recruits in the local program were organized into four companies of 60 men each. Companies A and B were housed in West College while C and D were housed in East College. The program headquarters was in the Sigma Chi House on West High Street, the magazine article reads. The Conway Hall dining room was used as the mess hall. While SATC was in operation, a guard was maintained at a half dozen locations, day and night, around the Dickinson College campus. Recruits drilled twice a day and were expected to march to classes taught by regular faculty members. The SATC was a great boon to the colleges, some of which would have had to close for the duration of the war, the article reads referring to the shifting of manpower needed for overseas duty. However, some local residents saw the SATC only as a scheme by wealthy Americans to keep their sons out of Army service. The program acronym came to stand for Safe at The College or the Saturday Afternoon Tea Club. Such derision was unfounded, the article reads. The students constantly spoke of expecting to be moved out hopefully to officers training camps by the end of the school year ... It was also a fact that men could join the SATC only by enlisting as privates in the army. All SATC men were subject to any orders or needs the army might find for them ... The war ended before the Dickinson College SATC program could provide measurable results. Though the Cumberland Valley State Normal School opted out of the SATC program, students enrolled in its Domestic Arts classes received college credit for sewing garments for men deployed overseas, Fic wrote in her paper. Rock rolled down the generations when jewellery designer Jade Jagger, the 45-year-old daughter of Sir Mick and Bianca Jagger, met up with Stones guitarist Ronnie Woods 38-year-old daughter Leah and The Beatles drummer Ringo Starrs daughter, make-up artist Lee Starkey, 46, at a London party. Rock royalty, left to right, Jade Jagger, Leah Wood and Lee Starkey Were all good friends, Leah says of her fellow rock star progeny. Mainly because weve had such a similar upbringing. And a similar penchant for black sartorial wear. Good to see that hysterical Leftie Owen Joness despair with the Labour Party has not put him off the good things in life. Interviewed by Tony Blairs former henchman Alastair Campbell in the deplorably capitalist GQ, 32-year-old Oxford-educated Jones poses resplendent in trousers, jumper and blazer by Corneliani, respectively priced at 190, 299 and 1,080. Comrades will find the blazer and trousers at Harvey Nicks, and the jumper at Harrods. Half measures for Tim's baby Musical maestro Sir Tim Rice, 72, was so shocked at becoming a father again he dumped his pregnant lover Dr Laura-Jane Foley, 34, apparently saying: I cant go on having babies, this is going to bankrupt me. Musical maestro Sir Tim Rice, 72, was so shocked at becoming a father again he dumped his pregnant lover Dr Laura-Jane Foley No doubt he will find some loose change from his 150 million fortune to pay for his new daughters six-month birthday present. Playwright Foley shared these pictures on social media in which she cradles baby Charlotte in a frilly pink dress alongside a pink and yellow cake decorated with flowers and butterflies. Happy Half Birthday to the greatest love of my life, she captions it. Sir Tim has three other children: a daughter and son with his estranged wife, Jane, and a 16-year-old daughter with artist Nell Sully. Sir Tim has three other children: a daughter and son with his estranged wife, Jane, and a 16-year-old daughter with artist Nell Sully BBC staff in Salford are up in arms after the canteen banned meat on Mondays. This week the BBC cafeteria introduced MeatFreeMonday, tweeted one worker. Today there is a 100+ signature petition to have it abolished! MoreMeatMonday. It appears that the bulk of the protests have come from the sport department. HM's go-between, 93, passes on A navy signalman who played a vital role in the courtship of the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh has passed away at the grand age of 93. Arthur Grout served on the same fleet as the then Philip Mountbatten during World War II and his knowledge of Morse code and flag signalling meant he became a royal go-between who would decipher and send messages for the fledgling lovers. After the war he established a Scout group in Burnham, Bucks. His work led to him receiving the Silver Acorn Medal from Prince Philip at Windsor. FX - one of the top television networks - held its annual All-Star upfront event on Thursday in NYC where major stars gathered on the red carpet. And the channel's key players - Keri Russell and Sarah Paulson - showed their support for Fargo's season three premiere. Keri, 41, and Sarah, 42, each showcased their own unique style as they looked ravishing at the star-studded event. Scroll down for video Beauties! FX stars Keri Russell and Sarah Paulson attended the upfront red carpet in NYC for the channel's premiere of Fargo season three The Americans star went for a dressy casual look wearing a loose white blouse, tucked into distressed denim jeans, and rounded it out with a fitted velvet blazer. The brunette beauty opted for colorful and patterned sandal heels as she styled her locks down and wavy. The People V. O.J. Simpson star, on the other hand, looked fabulous in a black dress that featured sheer fabric along the sleeves and white lining across the front of the frock. Ravishing: The 42-year-old American Crime Story actress opted for a long black dress, adorned with white hemming along the front and sheer fabric on the sleeves All smiles: She went for a dramatic eye make-up look and peach lips as her brown short locks were deeply parted to one side Chic: The 41-year-old star went more casual for her look as she rocked out in a loose white blouse, distressed denim jeans and a fitted velvet blazer Cute couple: Keri and her co-star Matthew Rhys were a cute couple at the event She parted her short hair to one side, while the other side was pinned back, and accessorized in black wedge heels and a beige clutch. Joining the Emmy-winning actress was her co-star Cuba Gooding Jr., dressed in an olive green jacket and black jeans that he paired with leather gloves, scarf and a cap. The stars recently made headlines after the 49-year-old actor playfully lifted Sarah's dress onstage during Paleyfest in LA promoting their show, American Crime Story. While the actress played it off with a laugh, Twitter users went ballistic with expressing their outrage at Cuba Gooding. Co-stars: Cuba Gooding Jr., 49, also attended the event joining his co-star Sarah from The People V. O.J. Simpson Stars: Archer's Aisha Tyler - who rocked a tee and colorful bomber jacket - also made an appearance along with Legion's Amber Midthunder who looked great in a black peplum dress From left: Edgar Ramirez and Darren Criss, who looked sharp in tailored suits, also attended as they will star together in third installment of Versace: American Crime Story Smile! Kether Donohue, You're The Worst Star, looked festive in a floral printed dress as granddaughter of Charlie Chaplin, Ooona, opted for a jumpsuit and sneakers Other major stars who filled the carpet were American Crime Story actors Edgar Ramirez and Darren Criss who looked handsome in sharp and tailored suits. Meanwhile, Golden Globe winner Keri is dating beau Matthew Rhys along with taking care of her nine-year-old son and five-year-old daughter from previous marriage with Shane Deary. Sarah is also spending time with a loved one these days as she is dating actress Holland Taylor, 74. She will also appear in the upcoming film, Ocean's Eight, with Matt Damon, Olivia Munn, Dakota Fanning, Rihanna, Sandra Bullock, Mindy Kaling, Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway and many more. FX stars: Rachel Keller from Fargo went for a bold red as The Americans star Holly Taylor showed off her svelte frame in a navy blue jumpsuit Together: Fargo's Ewan McGregor posed with his wife and actress Eve Mavrakis From left: Dave Andron, Keri, Noah Emmerich and Holly Taylor - The Americans co-stars - all joined together on the carpet Good form: Ewan showed strong form during the annual bowling party She's known for hosting morning show Studio 10. But on Friday morning, Sarah Harris revealed her surprising rhyming prowess and hip hop dance moves on The Fitzy And Wippa show. The 36-year-old took on radio producer Sarah McGilvray on the breakfast show's weekly rap battle challenge. Scroll down for video Rap queen? Studio Ten's Sarah Harris dominated on The Fitzy And Wippa show's rap battle challenge In the past, guests have used the rap challenge to poke fun at their opponent, which is usually Fitzy and Wippa, but this time both Sarahs take a swipe at the men. Rapping to Kris Kross' 1992 hit Jump, McGilvray cleverly sledged the all male team colleagues. Her hilarious lines got praise, laughs, dabs (popular hip hop dance move) from them, as well as air AFL kicks from Fitzy. Studio 10 host: The journalist paired up with the show's producer Sarah McGilvray shared an Instagram video of the battle Getting into character: Sarah got into character pulling up her black hoodie In the video Sarah can be seen twerking mid way in the clip, which she shared on her Instagram page, along with the caption 'Oh jeebus, I twerked...' The Channel 10 reporter was next up and pulled her black hoodie up to get into character. Taking to the mic to sledged the men in the studio and take a dig at newsreader Matt De Groot, she rhymed: 'What about your news reader Matt the pig?' 'God knows how he got a journo gig/ Come on Matt, your news isnt polished/ Breaking news now, you're gonna be demolished.' Work it! In the video Sarah Harris shows off her twerk and captioned her Instagram post 'Oh jeebus, I twerked...' She took a dig at their newsreader Matt De Groot rapping: 'God knows how he got a journo gig/ Come on Matt, your news isnt polished/ Breaking news now, you're gonna be demolished' Even though he was made fun of by the blonde beauty, Matt awarded victory to Sarah. Fans of the Channel 10 journalist commented on her repost, one wrote: 'Best twerk award from a hot mummy goes to Sarah Harris.' Another said: 'Yessss Sares that was AWESOME!' While Olympic gold medal swimmer Giaan Rooney commented: 'LOVE THIS!!!' Filming is well underway for the next instalment of the hugely successful comic-based series, the Avengers. And by the looks of it, the movie - which stars A-listers Elizabeth Olsen, Brie Larson and Chris Pratt - should hit cinemas with a bang, as depicted in fiery new scenes being filmed this week. The Royal Mile in Edinburgh, Scotland was the setting for a terrifying explosion on Thursday night, which saw a van attempting to make its way down the famous road. Scroll down for video Off with a bang! The Royal Mile in Edinburgh, Scotland was the setting for a terrifying explosion on Thursday night during filming for Avengers: Infinity War It proved to a hectic day of filming for Avengers: Infinity War as scenes of the explosion were also followed by stuntmen on the roof of St Giles Cathedral. Dressed in battle gear, the two men can be seen in an intense fight scene, with one looking to reign supreme. Ahead of scenes being shot, film crew members prepared a camera drone against a bright backdrop for the all-night filming. Meanwhile, one of the flick's cast Elizabeth Olsen cuddled a water bottle during a filming break in Edinburgh on Wednesday. Explosive stuff: The movie - which stars A-listers Elizabeth Olsen, Brie Larson and Chris Pratt - should hit cinemas with a bang, as depicted in fiery new scenes which were being filmed Action packed: The explosion scenes proved hard to miss Intense: Stuntmen were also spotted on the roof of St Giles Cathedral Fight! Dressed in battle gear, the two men can be seen in a fight scene, with one looking to reign supreme Despite her discomfort, the younger sister of twins Mary-Kate and Ashley still managed to appear glamorous with her skin looking flawless for the night shoot. She wore her brown hair loose and in a centre-parted style while clutching the coat around herself to warm up. At one point, she seemed to be practising her character's trademark hand movements before the cameras started rolling. Putting everything into place: Ahead of scenes being shot, film crew members prepared a camera drone against a bright backdrop for the all-night filming Freezing! Elizabeth Olsen clutched a hot water bottle to her chest while clad in a big padded jacket as she filmed scenes for the upcoming Avengers: Infinity War in Edinburgh on Wednesday Brrrrr! The actress is more used to the sunnier climate of Los Angeles Break time: Elizabeth seemed keen for filming to commence so she could warm up a little Witchy moves: Elizabeth appeared to be practising for her part at one point Star-studded cast: The film stars Chris Evans, Jeremy Renner, Benedict Cumberbatch, Zoe Saldana, Chris Hemsworth and Robert Downey Jr The star is reprising her role of Wanda Maximoff - otherwise known as Scarlet Witch in the film which will again feature a star-studded cast including Chris Evans, Jeremy Renner, Benedict Cumberbatch, Zoe Saldana, Chris Hemsworth and Robert Downey Jr. In fact, Elizabeth recently credited Renner - who plays Hawkeye - with stopping her feel 'overwhelmed' on the Avengers set. The actress worked alongside the actor in the Avengers: Age of Ultron and has admitted she would have been plagued with anxiety if he wasn't for his advice. Hotly anticipated: The film will be released in cinemas in 2018 She's got the moves: Fans can expect Elizabeth's character to unleash her incredible powers in the new movie Costume: The star sported a black T-shirt and jeans underneath her thick coat Getting along: Elizabeth has previously spoken out about the close knit nature of the Avengers cast Speaking to Vulture, she said: 'My first day filming on Ultron, I was with Jeremy and we were ushering like 400 extras or something and I was really overwhelmed and Jeremy in a very simple way broke down a very human goal about why he's there, what he's doing and where his goal was and really simplified it for me.' She has also been complimentary about the star-studded cast, telling The Telegraph: 'Everyone was incredibly kind and playful. Paul Bettany [the Vision] is hilarious, Downeys the kindest, Renner is a really funny person. 'Ruffalo, Chris Evans, Hemsworth theyre all so nice. We had one dinner as a gang but everyone had moved their families over to London [for filming] so they didnt want to hang out with me!' Reprisal of a role: Elizabeth as pictured in the last Avengers film: Age Of Ultron which was released in 2015 Pulling out all the stops: A wrecked van was seen being placed on set to create a scene of destruction A sign of what's to come? The explosions and beaten up props were sure hints that the Avengers had hit Edinburgh Action packed: Official shots from filming teased plenty of drama to come in the latest installment of the Avenger movies Causing a stir: Crowds gathered on the streets as filming got underway Off limits: Some of the city was sectioned off as the cameras began rolling Billie Lourd has joined the cast for the upcoming season seven of American Horror Story. The 24-year-old actress will star opposite Sarah Paulson, 42, who has been a fixture in the FX anthology series, according to an article Thursday by The Hollywood Reporter. Lourd starred as Chanel #3 on two seasons of the Fox horror comedy Scream Queens co-created by Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan. Horror series: Billie Lourd, shown in December in New York City, has joined the cast for season seven of American Horror Story Murphy and Falchuk also created the FX series American Horror Story that debuted with the subtitle Murder House in October 2011. Paulson, Evan Peters and Lily Rabe have appeared in all six seasons of the anthology series. Peters also will return for season seven along with series newcomer Billy Eichner, 38. Murphy, 51, revealed during an appearance on Watch What Happens Live in February that the next season will revolve around the 2016 US election. Series veteran: Sarah Paulson is shown in season four of American Horror Story: Freak Show Comedy horror: Lourd, shown in a season one still from Scream Queens, perfected a husky deadpan delivery in the Fox comedy horror series American Horror Story was renewed in January for season eight that will air in 2018 and season nine that will premiere in 2019. Principal photography for season seven will begin in June. No release date has been announced but the first five seasons premiered in October and the sixth in September 2016. Critically acclaimed: Paulson, shown in a still from season one AHS: Murder House, has starred in all six seasons of the anthology series and returns for season seven Lourd perfected a husky deadpan delivery in Scream Queens that also starred Emma Roberts, Lea Michele, Abigail Breslin and Taylor Lautner. Lautner, 25, and Lourd played loved interests on Scream Queens and became involved romantically during filming. Lourd's mother Carrie Fisher died on December 27 at age 60 of a heart attack a few days after suffering a medical emergency on a flight from London to Los Angeles. Her grandmother Debbie Reynolds died of a stroke at age 84 one day after the death of her daughter Fisher. Famous family: Todd Fisher is shown Thursday in Los Angeles at a Classic Film Festival Ensemble cast: Lourd is shown with Emma Roberts and Abigail Breslin in a still from season one of Scream Queens She first graced the cover of Harper's Bazaar Australia in November 2015. And with that shoot following the arrival of her eldest child Rocket Zot in March that year, Lara Worthington (nee Bingle) has celebrated the birth of her second son with another stunning cover. The 29-year-old appears on the magazine's May cover, simply stunning in a fitted black turtleneck top and a white lace skirt by luxury fashion house Dior. Scroll down for video Cover girl: Lara Worthington (nee Bingle) has graced the cover of Harper's Bazaar Australia for the second time The blonde beauty took to her Instagram on Friday to debut the new cover and show love to the team who worked with her on the shoot. 'Truly grateful and honored to have shot my second @bazaaraustralia cover!' she gushed. Lara thanked the magazine's editor, Kellie Hush, for 'continually believing in me' plus her Christian Dior 'family,' saying she was 'so excited for what the year holds for us'. Designer darling: The 29-year-old stunned in a black turtleneck top as well as a white lace skirt by luxury designer Dior for the cover The Cronulla-born stunner has enjoyed a relationship with Dior for years, dating back to her attendance at the opening of their first Sydney store in 2013. She starred in the designer brand's Mother's Day campaign last year, where she promoted their iconic perfume J'adore. Chosen for being 'confident and relatable,' she joined their other A-list ambassadors including Jennifer Lawrence and Charlize Theron. The secret's out! Lara's magazine shoot comes as she finally reveals the name of her second son, Racer, nearly six months after his birth For the gorgeous shoot, the mother-of-two sported soft, romantic makeup while showing off her glowing complexion. A light shade of brown eyeshadow highlighted the stunner's blue eyes, while her brows were primed to perfection. Lara's laid-back beach babe roots were referenced in the shoot, with the star's short locks styled in tousled waves. Bundle of joy: Lara and her husband Sam Worthington welcomed Racer into the world back in October 2016 The statuesque beauty finally revealed her second son's name in the accompanying feature, following months of secrecy. Lara and her husband Sam Worthington welcomed Racer into the world back in October 2016, but remained tight-lipped about the tot's moniker. The New York City-based model confirmed the high-profile couple were expecting their second child together in June last year. 'I'm just excited that Rocket gets a sibling and that they'll be so close [in age] together', she told InStyle magazine at the time. She's just returned from her fifth holiday of the year. But Millie Mackintosh was already pining for another getaway as she shared a sizzling throwback snap from her Dubai break on Thursday. Clad in a tiny pink bikini, the reality starlet, 27, showed off her incredible figure as she threw her arms in the air with glee. Scroll down for video Fun in the sun: She's just returned from her fifth holiday of the year. But Millie Mackintosh was already pining for another getaway as she shared a throwback snap from Dubai on Thursday Featuring lattice detailing across the bust, the skimpy bikini top showed off her cleavage and exhibited her enviably toned stomach. Her glossy chestnut locks were swept back into a messy topknot, whilst she added to the glamour with a pair of circular shades. She captioned the snap: '#TBT me doing my 'it's nearly the weekend' dance'. Instaglam! Millie is undoubtedly a pro at posing in her bikini, having already jetted off on five holidays in the first three months of 2017 Millie is undoubtedly a pro at posing in her bikini, having already jetted off on five holidays in the first three months of 2017. In January she kicked off the year with a trip to South Africa, before heading to Paris in both February and March. March had been a particularly fruitful time for the starlet, jetting not just to the French capital but Los Angeles and finally Dubai. It appears she is now on track to rival her record of taking a whopping 18 trips abroad in 2016. 'Painfully thin': She recently sparked concern among her followers who said she has lost too much weight after posting an Instagram snap of herself with her beau Hugo Taylor Whilst she may turn her fans green with envy with her holiday snaps, she recently sparked concern among her followers who said she has lost too much weight after posting an Instagram snap of herself with her beau Hugo Taylor. Fans took to Instagram to comment that her legs looked 'painfully thin' in the snap. One fan, posting under the username @helen19841I, wrote: 'Never comment on people's weight but goodness me that can't be healthy!' whilst user @naomigriffiths321 added: 'Oh my gosh Millie , please stop loosing weight . You are absolutely stunning [sic].' A number of fans, however, defended Millie, saying that 'some people are naturally thin'. Things between Osher Gunsberg and his Hit105 co-host Matty Acton apparently became quite heated on Thursday. Tensions flared on-air as Matty, 24, hurled insults at the Bachelor host, 43, during a discussion. 'Run away you pussy,' Matty told Osher bluntly, News.com.au reports. Scroll down for video War of words: Matty Acton (left) and his Hit105 radio co-host Osher Gunsberg (right) had a very heated exchange on-air on Thursday, during which insults were hurled The war of words was sparked while the breakfast radio hosts were discussing a listener's complaint about a colleague who worked from home two days a week. 'You know when you see someone at work who gets something special and you go, "Why didn't I ask for that?"' Matty said. Co-star Abby Coleman added: 'Yeah, like Osher working from home,' referring to the TV host's flexible schedule. Not mincing words: Matty, 24, called his co-star Osher, 43, a 'pussy' live on-air during a heated discussion about a listener's issue with their own colleagues Osher didn't hold back in his tongue-in-cheek response, saying: 'Look, if you want me to negotiate your next contract Abby, Im happy to do it.' During the segment, Osher appeared uncomfortable at Matty's assumption that the caller's boss is a male. 'I reckon it's the manager's call. It's gotta be ... your boss, if he's sweet with it,' Matty said, to which Osher corrected: 'If she's sweet with it, Matty.' 'You're just being an a***hole at the moment': Matty said bluntly, as Osher called him a 'puppet for the patriarchy' who had an 'implicit bias to constantly put men in [positions of power]' Osher went on to explain that his co-host had an 'implicit bias to constantly put men in [positions of power]'. 'If its he, she, maybe youre transgender, maybe youre a lesbian, I dont care,' Matty argued. When Osher urged the presenter to stop 'dismissing' the issue, he fired back and called him an 'a***hole'. 'I'm not dismissing it. You're just being an a***hole at the moment,' Matty told Osher. Special treatment? Earlier in the discussion, co-host Abby Coleman quipped about Osher's flexible schedule allowing him to work from home due to his Bachelor hosting duties 'No, youre being a puppet for the patriarchy,' Osher hit back, before going to a caller. 'Yeah, run away you pussy,' said Matty. Meanwhile, the heated exchange was raised on-air during Friday's show, with Matty insisting the pair are still friends following the 'misunderstanding'. 'Me and Osh are fine. We worked it out in about three minutes ... All is sweet, until we have our next fight,' he said. For eight years running, pioneer fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg has held the annual DVF awards, which honors women for their powerful contributions to their field. And this year's event held at United Nations in NYC witnessed some of the leading ladies of this time, including Allison Williams and Karlie Kloss, who wowed in jaw-dropping numbers on Thursday. The 28-year-old actress showed off her svelte figure in a black-and-white dress while the 24-year-old model turned heads in a fitted metallic gown. Scroll down for video Wow factor! Allison Williams looked fabulous in a black-and-white fitted dress while Karlie Kloss stunned in a shimmering metallic dress at DVF Awards on Thursday in NYC The Girls star - who is a longtime friend of the 70-year-old designer after meeting her at former President Obama's Inauguration - went for a classic look. The top of her dress was adorned with striking black-and-white stripes, cinched at the waist, as it tapered off into a longer skirt, highlighting her hourglass shape. Allison paired the look with black pumps as she styled her newly-dyed blonde hair in soft curls. Classy: The 28-year-old actress paired her look with classic black pumps as her newly-dyed blonde hair was curled and parted to the side Gal pals: The Girls star met designer Diane, 70, at former President Obama's Inauguration in 2009 and have remained close ever since Jaw-dropping! The 24-year-old model paired her blue sequined dress with metallic silver pumps as she tied her blonde locks up in a ballerina bun Top model Karlie - who received this year's Inspiration Award on the night - is being honored for her organization, Kode With Klossy, and her gluten-free cookie line. She empowers women and girls to learn computer coding along with expanding access to coding education and opportunities. And the blonde bombshell certainly looked the part in a dark blue shimmering dress - displaying her flawless figure - as she paired the look with metallic silver pumps. Her locks were tied up in a high bun as she accessorized with long silver drop-down earrings. Honoree: This year, Karlie was honored with the Inspiration Award for her organization, Koding With Klossy, which offers computer coding education to women and girls Empowering: The Chicago-born beauty also started her own gluten-free cookie line Women unite! Diane also posed with Black-ish star Tracee Ellis Ross As part of Women In The World conference, each person honored will receive $50,000 towards their nonprofit work. Telling CNN in a recent interview, Diane said: 'These are the women that, when I listen to their stories and I see what they do, I feel so small and unaccomplished because they are so strong.' Adding: 'I love working, talking to women, to young girls and giving them the strength. That is what gives me strength and purpose.' Beautiful: The 44-year-old actress looked fabulous in a one-shoulder striped top paired with flared white slacks and orange heels Honoree: Jane Goodall - recognized for her powerful contributions to animal rights - was also honored with the Lifetime Leadership Award Powerful ladies: Karlie and Jane shared a heartwarming moment at the Awards ceremony Primatologist and animal activist Jane Goodall was also honored with the Lifetime Leadership award for her fight to conserve and protect the Earth. Other attendees were Tracee Ellis Ross, Lindsay Ellingson and Kate Bosworth - who spoke at the awards ceremony. In addition to Karlie and Jane, Cuban journalist Yoani Sanchez, human rights lawyer Baljeet Sandhu and education advocate Louise Dube were honored at the event. Pretty as a floral! Model Lindsay Ellingson showed some leg in a floral-printed dress Stylish: Pioneer designer looked radiant in a silver and black sequined metallic outfit that she paired with black booties Blossoming beauty: Kate Bosworth - was a vision in cream and pink - as she spoke at the packed awards ceremony Supportive: The 34-year-old actress was pleased to cheer on her fellow women Good spirits: Tracee seemed to enjoy speaking to the crowd as she took the podium Role model: Karlie engaged with the audience members as she was being honored Women of the evening: Top fashion designer spoke onstage at her eight annual event Entertainment: Festive Andra Day treated the crowd with a nice singing performance She was caught filming a selfie while driving last month. And My Kitchen Rules' Betty Banks is up to her usual tricks, posting yet ANOTHER social media video from the driver's seat on Friday. In the clip, posted on her Instagram Story, the tattooed model poses for the camera while driving on a public road. Scroll down for video Not again! My Kitchen Rules' Betty Banks was caught filming an Instagram selfie while driving on Friday, just weeks after she made headlines for the same offence Under New South Wales law, Betty could have faced a fine and/or lose demerit points had she been caught by police. The saying 'once bitten, twice shy', is clearly lost on the reality TV star and it remains to be seen if she will commit the offence a third time. Daily Mail Australia has reached out to Channel Seven for comment. Whoops! Under New South Wales law, Betty could have faced a fine and/or lose demerit points had she been caught by police. Pictured with her MKR partner David Meanwhile, on My Kitchen Rules this week, 'villain' Josh claimed Betty and partner David's chicken stew tasted 'like urine'. When he was served the dish, Josh started laughing and said: 'I tell you what that smells like, urine! It just, literally smells like pee.' Despite Josh's bizarre comparison, judge Manu Feildel offered quite a different appraisal, saying: 'I really enjoyed it, I really, really, enjoyed it.' To protect pilots, Moscow and Washington opened a so-called "deconfliction line" after Russia began its bombing campaign in September 2015. On the U.S. side, it is run out of the Combined Air and Space Operations Center at the vast al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, which hosts the forward headquarters of U.S. Central Command. There, air traffic controllers and senior military officers are in contact with their Russian counterparts in Syria. They share coordinates and other data to avoid midair collisions or confrontations. One U.S. pilot flying missions over Syria credited his safety to it in a recent Associated Press interview. Photo: In this Wednesday, March 22, 2017 photograph, Lt. Cmdr. William Vuillet speaks to The Associated Press on board the USS George H.W. Bush as it travels through the Persian Gulf. The carrier soon will begin launching airstrikes targeting the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria. Vuillet spoke to the AP about the challenges of launching those strikes. (AP Photo/Jon Gambrell) She's been very busy shooting multiple movies and a television series. And it appeared Jaimie Alexander was all business on Thursday when she attended the New York Moves Power Women Forum. The 33-year-old Thor actress definitely went for a business casual vibe for the event. Professional: It appeared Jaimie Alexander was all business on Thursday when she attended the New York Moves Power Women Forum On top she donned a long black blazer that fell all the way to her thighs. She turned the collar up and cuffed the sleeves as well. Under that, she wore a simple white oxford shirt, which she left unbuttoned at the top. A pair of shin-length black slacks finished off the more formal part of the outfit. She spiced up the more staid look with a pair of sky high heels, and her distinctively-shaped glasses also made a appearance. New twist on a classic: On top she donned a long black blazer that fell all the way to her thighs. She turned the collar up and cuffed the sleeves as well Ready for her close up! Some light blush, exquisite eye make-up and pale crimson lipstick ensured glowed on the event's red carpet Her short-cropped raven black tresses were parted on the left and styled back. Some light blush, exquisite eye make-up and pale crimson lipstick ensured she was ready for her turn on the event's red carpet. After posing for several photos with her lifestyle magazine cover, she joined Blindspot costar Francois Arnaud, 31, for several more snaps. Distinctive: Her short-cropped raven black tresses were parted on the left and styled back The native Canadian looked dapper thanks to a pale navy blazer, white shirt and dark wash jeans, which he paired with some leather oxfords. He also donned a pair of glasses for the evening. The hit NBC show focuses on a mysterious tattooed woman who has lost her memory and does not know her own identity. The FBI discovers that her tattoos contain clues to crimes they will have to solve. Colleagues: After posing for several photos with her lifestyle magazine cover, she joined Blindspot costar Francois Arnaud, 31, for several more snaps The reality shows that thrusts them both into the national spotlight could not be more thematically different. But the stars aligned and Married at First sight star Jesse Konstantinoff and season one Masterchef runner-up and celebrity chef Poh Ling Yeow found each other at Jesse's family's Adelaide fruit shop. Jesse posted a pic to Instagram of the meeting,with both stars looking wrapped to be surrounded by so many fresh ingredients. Meeting reality: Married at First sight star Jesse Konstantinoff and season one Masterchef runner-up and celebrity chef Poh Ling Yeow found each other at Jesse's family's Adelaide fruit shop 'Did someone call for a chef? Thanks for purchasing our produce and hope you enjoy eating them as much as we do,' Jesse captioned the pic. While the majority of comments on the pic were in relation to Jesse's 'hotness', one bright spark had one left-of-centre idea. 'Do a cooking program 2gether,' the follower offered. Fresh friendship: Jesse posted a pic to Instagram of the meeting,with both stars looking wrapped to be surrounded by so many fresh ingredients Since being dumped by 'wife' Michelle at the pair's final vow renewal ceremony last month, Jesse can usually be found selling fruit and veg in his family's shop. However, as reported by Daily Mail Australia last month, the fashionable fruito had created a professional modeling page with Adelaide-based agency RMT. Jesse was left heartbroken when his MAFS wife Michelle Marsh told him she wasn't interested in a relationship, but rather a 'forever friendship.' Cooking queen! Since grabbing the number-two spot on Masterchef season one, Poh certainly hasn't been resting on her cooking laurels Michelle has since been rumoured to have started dating former MAFS star Jono Pitman. Since grabbing the number-two spot on Masterchef season one, Poh certainly hasn't been resting on her cooking laurels. The foodie has forged a strong presence in the culinary industry by hosting Poh's Kitchen for ABC and Poh and Co, which currently screens on SBS. She was 'dropped like a hotcake' by Anthony Manton on Married At First Sight. But Nadia Stamp hasn't let the heartbreak get her down, as she looked stylish and confident at a Mini event in Brisbane on Friday. The 36-year-old flight attendant put a leggy display, showing Anthony what he is missing in a flirty mini dress. Scroll down for video Va-va vroom! Married At First Sight's Nadia Stamp hasn't let heartbreak get her down, as she looked stylish and confident at a Mini event in Brisbane on Friday Nadia, who is a former model, flaunted her trim pins in the burgundy frock, which featured lace and sheer panels. The pageant princess paired the dress with a pair of platform suede heels, wearing her brunette locks out straight. Nadia posed for photos with friends, including socialite Isabella Gonsalves, and looked in happy spirits despite her 'marriage' breakdown. Leggy lady! Nadia posed for photos with friends, including socialite Isabella Gonsalves (right), and looked in happy spirits despite her 'marriage' breakdown Putting on a brave face? The social event comes after Nadia's relationship with racing announcer Anthony Manton, 32, broke down in the final episodes of the series The social event comes after her relationship with racing announcer Anthony, 32, broke down in the final episodes of the series. After agreeing to continue their relationship, Nadia claimed Anthony stopped talking to her the day after their last commitment ceremony. 'He dropped me like a hotcake,' she revealed. 'As soon as the cameras stopped rolling, he was gone.' Finding love again? But the unlucky-in-love flight attendant appears to have found romance, with Woman's Day reporting she is dating a 'blonde hipster' But the unlucky-in-love brunette appears to have found romance, with Woman's Day reporting she is dating a 'blonde hipster'. A source told the publication Nadia 'couldn't be happier' despite the publicity surrounding her split with Anthony. News.com.au reported last month that Nadia was seeking $4,000 from media outlets for information about her new boyfriend. They're three Australian actresses making moves in Hollywood. And Bella Heathcote, Teresa Palmer and Phoebe Tonkin joined forces on Thursday in Los Angeles for a dinner celebrating Pharrell Williams' Chanel campaign. The beautiful trio clearly had a ball at the private event, toasting the hip-hop star as the first ever male face of a handbag from the luxury brand. Scroll down for video Three times a lady: Bella Heathcote, Teresa Palmer and Phoebe Tonkin joined forces on Thursday in Los Angeles for a dinner celebrating Pharrell Williams' Chanel campaign Outfitted in various Chanel items, the ladies posed for photographers both individually and as a group. Sydney-born Phoebe, 27, wore a denim dress paired with conservative black heels and a black minaudiere. Teresa, 31, who hails from Adelaide, donned an all-black ensemble with a pop of white on her closed-toe kitten heels. Aussie beauties: The beautiful trio were all smiles at the private event, which toasted the hip-hop star as the first ever male face of a handbag from the luxury brand Expats: They're three Australian actresses making moves in Hollywood Branding: Outfitted in various Chanel items, the ladies posed for photographers both individually and as a group And Bella, 29, who was born in Melbourne and recently became engaged to long-term partner Andrew Dominik, 49, paired a tweed top with quilted leather pants. The Fifty Shades Darker star sparked rumours weeks ago when she was pictured stepping off a plane at Sydney airport with a diamond sparkler on her ring finger. The couple have been together for more than six years, with the New-Zealand born screenwriter 20 years Bella's senior. Besties: The Fifty Shades Darker star (L) cuddled up to Phoebe as they posed for snaps Edgy: Sydney-born Phoebe, 27, wore a denim dress paired with conservative black heels and a black minaudiere Chic: Teresa, 31, who hails from Adelaide, donned an all-black ensemble with a pop of white on her closed-toe kitten heels Demure: Bella, 29, who was born in Melbourne and recently became engaged to long-term partner Andrew Dominik, 49, paired a tweed top with quilted leather pants Bella will next be seen in Professor Marston & The Wonder Women, a biographical drama based on the creator of the Wonder Woman character and due out this year. Teresa, whose second son Forest was born only three months ago, had a star turn in last year's Hacksaw Ridge and is now traveling across America with her two children and husband Mark Webber. Phoebe, who earlier this month announced her split with former co-star and boyfriend of four years Paul Wesley, appears on the CW series The Originals. She gave birth to her second son Racer just months ago in October. And Lara Worthington (nee Bingle) flaunts her svelte post-pregnancy frame in the latest Harper's Bazaar magazine. The 29-year-old model shows off plenty of skin during a sultry photo shoot, revealing her toned legs in a dramatic printed dress. Leggy display! Lara Bingle flashes thighs in sultry photo shoot for Harper's Bazaar Australia In the stunning shot, the mother-of-two pouts while her floral frock falls to the floor to reveal her trim pins and pert derriere. Her short blonde locks are messily styled for the high-fashion shoot, as she rests her hands on her chest while giving a vacant stare. In another image, the slender stunner later is seen posing on a chair in a sheer black dress adorned with glitter polka dots and patterned strips. Lara's arm and leg placement gives the illusion the star is only wearing underwear. Sheer beauty! In another image, the slender stunner later is seen posing on a chair in a sheer black dress adorned with glitter polka dots and patterned strips Her makeup is flawlessly applied, with a pink pout, highlighter and a neutral brown eye shadow. The stripped-back shoot, also sees the Australian-born beauty go barefoot and braless in a daring semi-sheer and lace pink dress. Lara kept her accessories minimal for the shoot, wearing earrings and a black choker necklace with a star charm. Peek-a-boob! The stripped-back shoot, also sees the Australian-born beauty go barefoot and braless in a daring semi-sheer and lace pink dress In an accompanying interview with the magazine, the mother-of-two finally revealed she called her second son Racer. 'Being able to raise the boys [Rocket and Racer] here [in New York], I haven't had as much scrutiny as I probably would back home,' the model told the publication. Little Racer's name has been shrouded in secrecy since Lara and her actor husband welcomed their second son last year. Living abroad with her Hollywood beau, Lara revealed she has moments where she 'freaks out', but admits: 'I feel like living away has made me softer.' The big reveal: In an accompanying interview with the magazine, the mother-of-two finally revealed she called her second son Racer Proving Sam is her rock through her toughest moments, she said: 'Sam says when you turn 30, everything changes. I'm like, "What?!" When he turned 30 he sold everything he owned and had $2,000 in his pocket. It was just before he got Avatar. So when I freak out now, he's like, "Lara! You're all good, just relax!" Lara and Sam were married in 2014 and relocated to New York that same year, where they are now based. The couple called their first son Rocket Zot, his middle name a tribute to her late father Graham, who lost his battle with liver and pancreatic cancer and died in Sydney's Calvary Hospital, Kogarah in 2008. Happy couple! Lara and actor beau Sam were married in 2014 and relocated to New York that same year, where they are now based with their two young sons Lara was pleased to have graced the latest cover, taking to Instagram to share a sneak peek of the cover with her 478k fans on Thursday: 'Truly grateful and honored to have shot my second cover!' Lara wears Christian Dior on the cover of Harper's BAZAAR Australia, photographed by Sylve Colless and styled by Naomi Smith. Hair by Fernando Torrent at L'Atelier NYC and make-up by Aidan Keogh at Honey Artists. The May 2017 issue of Harpers BAZAAR Australia is on sale Monday, April 10. He's enjoyed a decades-long career and is one of Britain's best-loved movie stars - but Sir Michael Caine's distinctive Cockney accent once landed him in hot water. The 84-year-old actor has revealed that he was once suspected to be a drug dealer as he mingled with an assortment of well-heeled revellers at an upscale party in Asia - all because of the way he pronounced his own name. Speaking on Friday's instalment of The Graham Norton Show, the star said: 'I was at a party in the Philippines and the hostess was looking at me rather nastily and finally she beckoned me over and said, "Are you a drug dealer?" Scroll down for video Hello, My Cocaine: Sir Michael Caine has revealed that he was once suspected to be a drug dealer, thanks to his Cockney pronunciation of his own name 'When I said, "No, why do you ask?" she said, "Why is everyone calling you My Cocaine?" You know that story is true because you couldnt make it up. South Londoner Michael made an appearance on the BBC One show alongside Morgan Freeman, 79, his co-star in the upcoming comedy Going In Style. And Morgan had an anecdote of his own to share about his famously booming voice: 'I am constantly asked to do answering machine recordings but I wont do any more unless I can charge for it!' Co-star: He appeared alongside Morgan Freeman on BBC One's Graham Norton Show for a joint interview that is set to air on Friday night As for whose voice is on his own answering machine, the veteran actor answered: 'The man that installed the equipment. If you dont know me and you get that voice youre going to hang up!' The pair have continued to be in demand in the movies and, as such, have ruled out the possibility of ever officially retiring from the business. However, Morgan did broach the subject of taking on roles older than his real years, as he said: 'Ive been playing "old" for a long time... Working together (again)! The pair have been on the promotional circuit as they prepare for the release of their new comedy Going In Style Wife: Michael was joined by his wife Shakira at a London screening of the film on Wednesday 'I had a drama teacher once that told me that no one old has un-broken movements and that I should imagine that my testicles were glass balls thats how I go about I just walk very carefully!' Talking about Alfie and the huge international success his 1966 enjoyed, Michael said: 'It went everywhere except France and when I asked a French friend why that was, he said, "Because we can not imagine an Englishman could make love to 10 women." I said, "Well actually it was 11 and two of those were French!"' The celebrated screen stars were later joined in the studio by Jack Whitehall and Gemma Whelan, co-stars in the new BBC comedy drama Decline And Fall - and they had a few Hollywood anecdotes of their own to share. Visit: Gemma Whelan and Jack Whitehall also dropped into the studio to make an appearance New comedy: The pair spoke about their new BBC One comedy drama Decline And Fall Said comedian Jack: 'I was in a Thailand hotel restaurant with my mum and dad and Steven Seagal was there. His manager came over and said, We saw you on the Graham Norton Show and you were very funny. Would you like to join us for lunch?" 'So we had lunch with them and it was like a weird Come Dine With Me at one point Steven was telling my mother how she could kill an attacker with a Samurai sword!' Talking about starring in Decline And Fall, Jack added: 'I was bragging about my sex scene with Eva Longoria and then it was cut. Listen up: Host Graham Norton listened intently as the screen stars shared humours tales Fine dining: Jack Whitehall drew laughs as he spoke about his dinner with Steven Seagal 'I was very upset, but it wasnt the best sex scene. I was wearing pyjamas and double sided tape had been used on them and as Eva ripped my top off it pulled out my chest hair and I was literally in tears.' However, Michael interjected, advising Jack against doing nude scenes as he explained: 'An actor controls the audience and the moment you take your clothes off you have lost them. I have never done nudity and I never would.' Going In Style reunites Michael and Morgan on screen in what is thought to be their sixth collaboration. Taking That talent to the stage: The show also featured a performance from (l-r) Howard Donald, Gary Barlow and Mark Owen of Take That Time for a chat: The trio, clad in back ensembles, later sat down for an interview with the host Making their mark: The stars stepped out in patterned tops for their appearance on the show Having previously worked together on Batman films in 2005, 2008 and 2013, the pair also shared the screen in magician film Now You See Me and its sequel. Their latest offering is crime meets comedy with the message, 'You're never too old to get even'. Directed by Scrubs' Zach Braff, the film follows Willie (Freeman) and Joe (Caine) who 'risk it all' to get revenge on a bank that absconded with their money. The Graham Norton Show, which will also feature a performance from Take That, is set to air on Friday at 10:35pm on BBC One. Cut it out! Jack revealed that he was in a sex scene with Eva Longoria that was eventually cut She's married to one of the most well-known musicians in the music industry. And Cindy Santana has gushed about being proposed to onstage by her husband Carlos and her unusual audition process with Lenny Kravitz. The 57-year-old drummer spoke to The Project on Friday night with her husband by her side and talked about the very public moment he asked her to marry him. Cindy Santana has opened up about being proposed to onstage by her husband Carlos Co-host of The Project Anthony 'Lehmo' Lehmann asked about the memorable concert in 2010 that changed Cindy's life. She said: 'It was interesting because I sat in (the audience) that night... I wasn't in the band but I was sitting in and he called me up to the front of the stage to introduce me.' She continued: 'He was talking and he often called me up to introduce me so that didn't seem odd.' 'But he was talking a lot and I kept thinking, wow, he's really talking a lot. Why is he talking so much?' After this, Santana proposes onstage to his partner. Santana proposed to his wife onstage at a concert in 2010 'He was talking and he often called me up to introduce me so that didn't seem odd. But he was talking a lot and I kept thinking, wow, he's really talking a lot. Why is he talking so much?' Cindy then went on to talk about her experience playing and touring with music sensation Lenny Kravitz and the unusual audition she did to get the gig. She said: 'The audition was over the phone. To make a long story short, when I finished playing, he said, can can you fly out here right now?' 'They got me a ticket and I flew out the next morning and it ended up being a full-scale audition.' 'The audition was over the phone. To make a long story short, when I finished playing, he said, can can you fly out here right now?' She continued: 'There were about 40 other drummers who were there and when I played he called off the auditions and said, I choose her.' At the end of the first two weeks of working with Lenny Kravitz, Cindy's first video with him called Are You Gonna Go My Way was released. Santana and his wife are in Australia for his tour which started in Perth on Friday. She found fame as part of chart-topping girl group Mis-Teeq in the early noughties. And Alesha Dixon revealed the Mis-Teeq ladies will be coming back strong during an interview with Lorraine on Friday morning, confessing that it would be 'disastrous' not to reunite. However, fans needn't get too excited just yet since the Britain's Got Talent judge confessed there was no fixed date on the cards at the moment. Scroll down for video Reunited at last? Alesha Dixon revealed the Mis-Teeq ladies will be coming back strong during an interview with Lorraine on Friday morning, confessing that it would be 'disastrous' not to reunite The Scandalous hitmakers - including Sabrina Washington and Su-Elise Nash - remain great friends since going their separate ways in 2005. Alesha, 38, enthused: 'I don't know what we're waiting for to be honest! We're talking, we love each other, but timing is key. 'At the moment I'm working on solo material and it's about finding time. It would be disastrous not to do anything! Terrific trio: The Scandalous hitmakers - including Sabrina Washington and Su-Elise Nash - remain great friends since going their separate ways in 2005 Girl power: The One Night stand hitmakers had seven consecutive top ten singles and three albums 'If it wasn't for the girls, I wouldn't be doing anything I am doing today.' Alesha also opened up about her three-year-old daughter Azura, who she raises with partner Azuka Ononye. The star made hearts melt by sharing a sweet video of the toddler singing her heart out in the recording studio, which Lorraine cooed over on the show. Doting mum: Alesha also opened up about her three-year-old daughter Azura, who she raises with partner Azuka Ononye Looking good: The Scandalous hitmaker was dressed to impress in an embroidered Zara dress and coordinating red stilettos So sweet: The star made hearts melt by sharing a sweet video of the toddler singing her heart out in the recording studio, which Lorraine cooed over on the show Looking good: The TV personality styled her locks in a top knot, offset by large gold hoops Alesha laughed: 'She wasn't supposed to come to work with me. I can't say no to her! She sang Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. She loved it!' 'She finally made the connection with what I'm doing, which is nice.' When Lorraine joked that Azura would definitely be following in her mother's footsteps by pursuing a showbiz career, Alesha joked, 'Doctor would be nice!' High hopes: When Lorraine joked that Azura would definitely be following in her mother's footsteps by pursuing a showbiz career, Alesha joked, 'Doctor would be nice!' New series: The TV personality also discussed the upcoming series of BGT, which sees her reunite with fan favourite judging line-up, David Walliams, Simon Cowell and Amanda Holden Not long to wait: Ahead of next weekend's first episode, Alesha teased that comedian David was worse behaved than ever The TV personality also discussed the upcoming series of BGT, which sees her reunite with fan favourite judging line-up, David Walliams, Simon Cowell and Amanda Holden. 'David is up to his usual tricks. He does something so outrageous this year that even I was shocked! We're pushing each other futher every time,' she said. Discussing her respect for Amanda, she enthused: 'I love her to bits. I supported her in her show stepping out. 'We went for drinks afterwards. I've got so much respect for her!' Discussing her respect for fellow judge Amanda, she enthused: 'I love her to bits. I supported her in her show stepping out' She's come a long way from her role in Hollyoaks and Game Of Thrones star, Nathalie Emmanuel was pictured heading to the Jimmy Kimmel show on Thursday. The 28-year-old looked lovely as she arrived at the studios wearing a colourful animal print jumper which was tucked into an asymmetric mini skirt which had a silver chainmail section. The acclaimed actress wore a gold ring in her nose and let her curly locks hang naturally, framing her pretty features. Scroll down for video Looking good: Game Of Thrones' Nathalie Emmanuel teamed an animal print top with an asymmetric mini skirt as she headed to the Jimmy Kimmel show in LA on Thursday She added some extra inches to her height with a pair of grey heeled ankle boots. Accompanied by a host of assistants, Nathalie seemed thrilled to have been invited on the show, wearing a big smile on her face. Nathalie's mother is Dominican and her father is half Saint Lucian, half English but grew up in Southend. Stunner: The 28-year-old looked lovely as she arrived at the studios wearing a colourful animal print jumper which was tucked into an asymmetric mini skirt which had a silver chainmail section Nathalie managed her big TV break in 2006 when she played Sasha Valentine in the Channel 4 soap, a role she starred in for four years. In 2013, she scooped the role of Missandei in HBO series Game Of Thrones, leading to stratospheric fame around the globe. Previously, David Oyelowo laid into the producers of Game Of Thrones for using ethnic minorities in minor and secondary roles. Megastar: In 2013, she scooped the role of Missandei in HBO series Game Of Thrones, leading to stratospheric fame around the globe Growing up: Nathalie's mother is Dominican and her father is half Saint Lucian, half English but grew up in Southend (pictured on her big break in Hollyoaks) Speaking to the Radio Times, the Golden Globe nominee explained: 'The fact that they put any ethnic minorities in that means that there should be space for bigger characters because youre not just saying "OK this is purely a white world, and here are very story-driven reasons why thats the case."' Game Of Thrones has featured some ethnic minorities in its ever-changing cast, including army general Grey Worm (Jacob Anderson), pirate Salladhor Saan (Lucian Msamati), wealthy schemer Xaro Xhoan Daxos (Nonso Anozie) and guard Areo Hotah (DeObia Oparei). Viewers have been deeply moved by Ashley Thomas' battle with degenerative vascular dementia. And the heartbreaking storyline will come to a close on Friday night when the vicar, played by John Middleton, takes his last breath. John and his co-star Charlotte Bellamy, who portrays his loving wife Laurel on the ITV soap, discussed the hard-hitting scenes and saying goodbye to the long-running character during an interview on This Morning. Scroll down for video Emotional interview: Emmerdale's John Middleton and his co-star Charlotte Bellamy discussed the hard-hitting scenes during an interview on This Morning Moving scenes: Viewers have been deeply moved by Ashley Thomas' battle with degenerative vascular dementia, and the heartbreaking storyline will come to a close on Friday night Admitting he won't be tuning in this evening, John said: 'We've seen it twice already. I don't think I want to watch myself die again! 'It was an extraordinary thing to film. The atmosphere on the set was amazing, you could have heard a pin drop. We really wanted to tell the story well and finish it properly.' Ruth Langsford, who was presenting This Morning alongside husband Eamonn Holmes, revealed that she had been following the storyline closely due to her own experience of her father's dementia. She said: 'My father had dementia and you've done it proud! For all the families who have got people with dementia, you really have done a fantastic job, so thank you from all of us.' John, who plays vicar Ashley, said of his death scene: 'It was an extraordinary thing to film. The atmosphere on the set was amazing, you could have heard a pin drop. We really wanted to tell the story well and finish it properly' Personal: Ruth Langsford, who was presenting This Morning alongside husband Eamonn Holmes, revealed that she had been following the storyline closely due to her own experience of her father's dementia Hard-hitting: The Alzheimer's Society are using some of John's scenes to help raise awareness John explained: 'We're quite literally stopped in the streets most days. People will come up to us and say, "Thank you very much, I don't feel so alone". That's a wonderful endorsement.' One episode in particular has resonated with people at home over the last few months, when viewers were given an insight into living with dementia from a first-person perspective as a confused Ashley wandered the streets. 'The Alzheimer's Society are using it as a training video so they can show the effects of dementia', John enthused. Charlotte hinted that things might get dark for recovering alcoholic Laurel after Ashley's death. John explained: 'We're quite literally stopped in the streets most days. People will come up to us and say, "Thank you very much, I don't feel so alone". That's a wonderful endorsement' Bereft: Charlotte, who portrays his wife Laurel, confessed that she was upset to see her good friend John leave the ITV soap Special bond: The on-screen husband and wife are also great friends in real life, and have vowed to see each other as often as possible She said: 'The decisions that Laurel has to make, putting him a into daycare then a home then the heartbreaking decision of bringing him back home to die, the weight of the decisions have been on her. 'She has a young family so I think the children will give her the strength to carry on. Of course, under the pressure of grief [being an alcoholic] is always going to be sitting on her shoulders.' The on-screen husband and wife are also great friends in real life, and have vowed to see each other as often as possible. John said: 'For me, losing the show [is hard], I've been in it for 20 years. Charlotte and I will stay friends, but I really love working with her and I won't be doing that anymore!' Best of friends: John said, 'Charlotte and I will stay friends, but I really love working with her and I won't be doing that anymore!' India, Russia ink deal on Unit 1 of Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant Published: April 7, 2017 India has signed a joint statement with Russia takeover full operational control of Unit 1 of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KKNPP). It formally marks the full transition. The agreement was signed between representatives of Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) and the ASE Group of Companies, a subsidiary of ROSATOM State Atomic Energy Corporation of Russia. Key Facts With the deal, the Russian and Indian sides have confirmed fulfilment of all warranty terms and obligations of the contractor (ASE Group of Companies) for the construction of Unit 1. The warranty period run showed reliable and safe operation of Unit 1. Thus, the NPCIL has confirmed that ASE Group of Companies, which is a general contractor, has fulfilled all its tasks in full and accurately. The commercial operation and the warranty period of Unit 1 of KKNPP had started in December 2014. The warranty was typically for one year, which ended in December 2015. However, the final takeover agreement was delayed to ensure the reliability of the plant and equipment as Unit I was the first of a series of six reactors. Earlier, in March 2017, both countries had signed joint protocol on provisional acceptance of Unit 2 of the plant, which marked the start of its commercial operation. About Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KNPP) KKNPP is the single largest nuclear power station in India . It is situated in Koodankulam in the Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu. . It is situated in Koodankulam in the Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu. It is scheduled to have six VVER-1000 reactors with an installed capacity of 6,000 MW of electricity. It has been built in collaboration with Atomstroyexport, the Russian state company and NPCIL. with an installed capacity of of electricity. It has been built in collaboration with Atomstroyexport, the Russian state company and NPCIL. Unit 1 of the plant was synchronised with the southern power grid in October 2013 and is generating electricity to its warranted limit of 1000 MW. Unit 2 with capacity 1,000 MW had achieved first criticality in July 2016. It was grid-connected in August 2016 and its commercial operation started in October 2016. The ground-breaking ceremony for construction of units 3 & 4 was performed in February 2016. The power generated from the plant will provide electricity to Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Kerala and Karnataka. Month: Current Affairs - April, 2017 Topics: India-Russia Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant National Nuclear energy Power Sector Latest E-Books Since confirming their romance, the duo have seemed nothing but besotted with each other. And in new pictures that have surfaced from their recent break in the Dominican Republic, Charlotte Crosby, 26, and her boyfriend Stephen Bear, 27, only had eyes for each other. The reality stars couldn't have cared who was watching as they packed on the PDA while enjoying a dip in the pool, with Bear even licking his Geordie Shore love across her face. Scroll down for video Hungry, Bear? Stephen, 27, showered his girlfriend Charlotte Crosby, 26, with affection on their recent romantic break in the Dominican Republic Charlotte, however, didn't seem to mind and was seen chuckling at her beau's attempts to woo her. The duo were inseparable as they soaked up the sunshine on their romantic getaway and put on a very touchy display while tanning their gym-honed physiques. In one shot, Charlotte could be seen kissing the Ex On The Beach star as they puckered up together poolside. She had her arms around her boyfriend's neck and cut a content figure as she indulged in a spot of R&R with her latest love interest. Puckering up! The couple packed on the PDA as they flaunted their romance while soaking up the Caribbean sunshine recently Holding on tight: Charlotte made sure not to let go of her beau as they put on a very touchy feely display poolside In high spirits! The duo cut content figures as they frolicked with each other in the pool - their holiday came after Charlotte and Bear finished wrapping for MTV's Just Tattoo Of Us The TV personalities had jetted off to the Caribbean together after wrapping filming for their new show that they co-host on MTV titled Just Tattoo Of Us. Their trip also came after Bear's disastrous appearance on Celebs Go Dating where he caused a stir with his outrageous dating antics that included him standing up one date and playing 'the drums' on another girl's breasts. Throughout his time on the E4 dating show, rumours had been swirling that Bear and Charlotte were an item and he was later axed from the agency by matchmakers Nadia Essex and Eden Blackman after he confessed to 'seeing someone'. Charlotte later insisted to OK! magazine that she wasn't phased by his actions on the show and had given him a pass to kiss three girls during filming - which she claims he stuck to. A long time coming: The pair had been at the centre of romance rumours shortly after filming began for their new reality show Secret's out! Bear finally confirmed he and Charlotte were romantically linked on Celebs Go Dating and was later axed by the matchmakers on the show for going against agency rules Completely smitten: The former Geordie Shore star has claimed she will marry her Ex On The Beach beau and referred to him as her 'soulmate' The couple have since professed their love for each other, with Charlotte insisting Bear is her 'soulmate' and that she will end up marrying her former co-star Vicky Pattison's ex-boyfriend. And to prove their relationship is the real deal, she and Bear unveiled matching tattoos on social media recently. In light of their show that documents people giving each other secret tattoos, Charlotte and Bear decided to get matching inkings of a fish to cement their love story. They debuted their tattoos on Snapchat before jetting off to Australia and New Zealand together in order to promote Just Tattoo Of Us. Matching tats! Charlotte and Bear recently unveiled their matching inkings they gave each other to cement their relationship However, some fans were quick to point out that Charlotte's inking appeared to be wonky. Commenting on the quality of her new design, one Twitter user penned: 'Is it permanent??? Should have let the tattoo artist take charge...' Their comment prompted Charlotte to hit back and defend her body art. She hit back that the 'whole point' of the tattoo was for it to be done poorly and in one of her Snapchat videos, Charlotte had shown Bear actually tattooing her arm for her. The starlet tweeted in response: 'Nooooo noooo the whole point was it being bad. 'We did them. DUR.' Hitting back: Charlotte defended her wonky inking in response to backlash and insisted the tattoo had purposely been etched onto her arm badly Roxy Jacenko's husband is currently serving a minimum one-year sentence for insider trading. And while Oliver Curtis is locked up in Cooma Prison, the PR maven was enjoying the company of a mystery man while out for drinks in Sydney on Friday night. The male is seen with his arm around Roxy in a photo uploaded to Instagram, planting a kiss on her cheek. Troubled: Roxy Jacenko's husband is currently serving a minimum one-year sentence for insider trading Leaning in to the embrace with the mystery man while resting her arm on his leg, the mum-of-two is also pictured pouting for the pic. Among the assembled group are two of Roxy's Sweaty Betty PR employees and Warren Ginsberg, the boyfriend of Neighbours star Jodi Anasta. Daily Mail Australia has reached out to Roxy for comment. Peck on the cheek: And while Oliver Curtis is locked up in Cooma Prison, the PR maven was enjoying the company of a mystery man while out for drinks in Sydney on Friday night Cosy: The male is seen with his arm around Roxy in a photo uploaded to Instagram, planting a kiss on her chee Rumour mill: The picture comes just two days after the blonde moved to clear up speculation that her marriage to Oliver is on the rocks The picture comes just two days after the blonde moved to clear up speculation that her marriage to Oliver is on the rocks. Roxy finally set the record straight while chatting to Nova's Fitzy and Wippa, as she confirmed she's still happily married. 'Are you still a wife? People want to know this,' Fitzy asked Roxy. 'Yes,' Roxy said, before joking: 'Well, is Wippa available?' Still going strong: Roxy finally set the record straight while chatting to Nova's Fitzy and Wippa, as she confirmed she's still happily married Ring ring: Roxy's marriage has been in question after she's been spotted recently with her weddings and other times, taking them off Roxy's marriage has been in question after she's been spotted recently with her weddings and other times, taking them off. The PR boss previously told Daily Mail Australia that she takes her wedding rings off when she works outs, so that she doesn't crush her diamonds. 'I do weights-based training, can't be doing that with rings on my fingers!,' she explained. Roxy recently defended her marriage on The Morning Show, insisting 'I'm still married'. 'Look, no marriage is ever perfect and obviously mine is challenged because of the situation that we're in. But Olly's a wonderful father,' Roxy said. It's no secret that the Britain's Got Talent judges are big dog fans. And Amanda Holden and Simon Cowell jumped at the chance of taking part in a Dog Yoga act, in scenes set to air on the first episode of the new series of Britain's Got Talent. The judges and hosts Ant & Dec joined in the fun after watching BGT contestant and yoga instructor Mahny and her pet dog Robbie's audition in sneak peek clip, roping their own dogs in to help. Scroll down for video Athletic: Amanda Holden jumped at the chance of taking part in a Dog Yoga act, in scenes set to air on the first episode of the new series of Britain's Got Talent Inviting all of the judges and Ant & Dec to join her on stage with their canines, Mahny asks them to remove their shoes and socks as they find a mat. However, it seems the excitement is too much for Ants Labrador, Hurley, who unexpectedly weed on the BGT stage. Meanwhile, Simon Cowell, David Walliams, Amanda Holden & Dec begin the routine, reaching their dogs to the sky with an upper paw pose before gently folding forward into loose dog position. Fun-filled: The judges, including Simon Cowell, joined in the fun after watching BGT contestant and yoga instructor Mahny and her pet dog Robbie's audition in sneak peek Accident-prone: Hosts Ant & Dec cracked up as chocolate Labarador Huley had a nervous wee Sitting this one out: Ant decided to forgo the task due to his pooch's stage fright Simon in particular appeared to be struggling with the Dog Yoga, juggling with his two Yorkshire Terriers Squiddly and Diddly. Amanda seemed to be getting into the spirit of things, as did her cute puppy Buddy. Finished with their deep breathing, Alesha announces the end of doggy yoga, but contestant pooch Robbie does not agree and wees on Davids shoes in protest - much to Decs amusement. Docile as can be: Dec and his dachshund Rocky had no problem perfecting the moves Limbering up: Inviting all of the judges and Ant & Dec to join her on stage with their canines, Mahny asks them to remove their shoes and socks as they find a mat A dog act has won the popular reality show twice across its ten-series span - with Ashleigh and Pudsey taking the prize in 2012, before Jules and her pooch Matisse became champions in 2015. The most recent series in 2016 was won by magician Richard Jones, who paid an emotional tribute to the Armed Forces during his performance at the Royal Variety. Britains Got Talent returns to ITV on Saturday 15th April at 8pm. She's just nailed a leading role in the hit American Horror Story. And it looked like Billie Lourd and boyfriend Taylor Lautner were celebrating her success, seen enjoying a romantic holiday together in St Barts Thursday. The couple wasn't shy to display their affections, sharing a steamy kiss while wading in the clear waters. Smooching on the shore! Billie Lourd shared a romantic holiday in St Barts with boyfriend Taylor Lautner this week. The duo were not afraid to pack on the PDA during the trip, seen sharing a steamy kiss in the ocean Celebrating couple! The 24-year-old talent and her other half are likely celebrating Billie's new role in the hit American Horror Story Billie, 24, donned a hip Brazilian bikini that highlighted her perky derriere. Her perfectly flat tummy was on perfect display, as the LA native's blonde tresses hung down past her shoulders. Wrapping her arms around the Twilight hunk, 25, it was clear that the daughter of the late Carrie Fisher is head over heels for her newly official boyfriend. Bottom's up! The Scream Queens starlet showed off her perky bottom in a trendy Brazilian bikini It's a match! Kissing and hugging the Twilight hunk, it was clear that the daughter of Carrie Fisher is head over heels for the 25-year-old talent Clear blue waters: Taylor displayed his sturdy trunk while splashing around with his love Flirty fun: The stars looked comfortable together, playfully splashing and kissing during their beach visit Taylor looked typically handsome, showing off his sturdy torso in a pair of simple swim shorts. His dark locks curled to form a stylish coif while the Michigan native sported a touch of stubble on his chiseled jawline. When they weren't embracing the Hollywood duo looked perfectly at ease with one another, smiling and laughing while they splashed around in the water. Not afraid to flaunt it! The twenty-somethings could barely keep their hands off of each other Vacation fun: The photogenic pair had tons of fun together as they splashed and laughed Making a splash! Taylor tried out some swimming techniques while his girlfriend looked on Dark haired and handsome: The Michigan native's dark locks formed a stylish coif as he was embraced by his other half But the photogenic pair simply couldn't keep their hands off each other. As they joked around in the ocean, Billie grabbing the handsome actor's muscular shoulders and pulled him in for another kiss. Their chemistry was clear, as Taylor passionately grabbed his California girl while both leaned into their embrace. Hot waters! Taylor passionately grabbed his California girl while both leaned into their embrace Celebrating her stardom! The third generation talent and her boo were likely celebrating Billie's new role in American Horror Story. The starlet previous worked with creators Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk on Scream Queens It was just announced that the actress will star opposite Sarah Paulson, 42, in the next season of American Horror Story, according to a Thursday article by The Hollywood Reporter. Lourd starred as Chanel #3 on two seasons of the Fox horror comedy Scream Queens co-created by Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan. The FX hit's seventh season is said to be inspired by the real life terror of the 2016 US elections. Principal photography for season seven will begin in June. No release date has been announced but the first five seasons premiered in October and the sixth in September 2016. Stuck on you: There were plenty of sultry kisses while the couple waded in the water Water world: The Twilight star splashed around while Billie remained relaxed The rumour mill has been swirling in recent months that he's set to take over the renowned James Bond franchise. And now, it appears fans can expect Idris Elba, 44, in the starring 007 role after his Guerrilla director John Ridley, 51, let sip that he 'can't wait' to see him on the silver screen commanding the iconic role. Speaking to BBC Radio One at the premiere of their new Sky Atlantic series, the Oscar winning writer couldn't help but gush about the Luther star's talent. Bond calling? It appears fans can expect Idris Elba, 44, in the starring 007 role after his Guerrilla director John Ridley, 51, let sip that he 'can't wait' to see him on the silver screen commanding the iconic role The American director and writer divulged: 'Idris is pretty much becoming a national treasure for every country. We couldn't have done it without him. 'It was a pleasure, he's a gentleman. I can't wait to see him as James Bond quite frankly.' The pair are working together on political mini series Guerrilla, which centres on young couple Jas (Frieda Pinto) and Marcus (Babou Ceesay), whose 'relationship and values are tested when they liberate a political prisoner and form a radical underground cell in 1970s London.' Playing Kent in the drama, Idris also executive produced the series with the 12 Years A Slave writer which is set to hit screens on Thursday April 13. 'Can't wait': The American director and writet divulged about Idris: 'It was a pleasure, he's a gentleman. I can't wait to see him as James Bond quite frankly' New role: Playing Kent in the 1970s based drama, Idris also executive produced the series with the 12 Years A Slave writer which is set to hit screens on Thursday April 13 Despite the confession from Ridley, the British actor shut down the comments as merely fueling gossip. He insisted on the red carpet: 'Oh my god, I have no idea why he said that. That's another six months of the rumour, oh well.' MailOnline have contacted Idris Elba's reps for further comment. It's not the first time the effortlessly cool actor has been linked to the Barbara Broccoli produced movie franchise since Daniel Craig called time on his portrayal of the role after four smash hit flicks. Touted as one of the hot favourites to take on a license to kill, Idris insisted he's not been involved with any discussions relating to the role in March 2016. Shut down: Despite the confession from Ridley, the British actor shut down the comments as merely fueling gossip The much-loved actor recently explained in an interview that he wasn't in talks with the movie executives behind the iconic franchise, saying that anything else was pure rumours. Speaking to Hello! US in a recent interview, the star put pay to speculation, saying: 'It's all rumour-ville.' And shutting down any notion that he might be in secret talks regarding Bond, he stated: 'I'm not speaking to the James Bond people, and they're not speaking to me.' 007 bound: It's not the first time the effortlessly cool actor has been linked to the Barbara Broccoli produced movie franchise since Daniel Craig called time on his portrayal of the role after four smash hit flicks Later that year in an interview with Good Morning America, Idris commented that he's 'too old' to play the action man. The Wire star admitted to GMA's Michael Strahan that it's the 'wildest rumor in the world' that'll he'll be replacing Craig. Asked about the never ending speculation, Idris admitted: 'If I'm really honest, man, I think I'm too old for that, I can't be running around in cars and ladies and martinis who wants to do that? It sounds terrible!' he laughed. Not in the know: The much-loved actor recently explained in an interview that he wasn't in talks with the movie executives behind the iconic franchise, saying that anything else was pure rumours Idris has been batting away the rumours for years to become the first black 007, admitting in 2015 that he blamed his pal and current Bond Daniel for starting the speculation. 'Daniel Craig actually set the rumor off. About four years ago he said Idris Elba would be a great Bond, and then it started to creep, ' he told an interviewer. He added, jokingly, 'I blame Daniel.' With Craig, 49, believed to be leaving the role after four outings and Idris joins Poldark heartthrob Aiden Turner, Jack Huston, James Norton, Tom Hiddleston, Tom Hardy and Damian Lewis as the favourites. He's best known for playing comedy favourite Dwight Schrute in the US version of The Office. And Rainn Wilson has revealed which roles he favours most as he takes to cinemas as the newest Smurf villain in the Sony reboot. The 51-year-old actor revealed to News Corp on Friday: 'There is nothing more fun than playing ridiculous comedic villains.' 'There is nothing more fun than playing ridiculous comedic villains': Actor Rainn Wilson reveals how he keeps his work interesting in an interview with News Corp on Friday... as he stars as evil wizard Gargamel in Smurfs reboot Funnyman: He's best known for playing comedy favourite Dwight Schrute in the US version of The Office Rainn plays the egotistical, narcissistic and 'pretty idiotic' evil wizard Gargamel in Smurfs: The Lost Village. While the Hollywood star has plenty of experience acting on TV and in films, Rainn confessed: 'Its a different challenge as an actor, creating it vocally through the microphone.' Also voicing characters within the film are Demi Lovato, Joe Manganiello, Julia Roberts, Meghan Trainor, Mandy Patinkin and Jack McBrayer. The bad guy: Rainn plays the egotistical, narcissistic and 'pretty idiotic' evil wizard Gargamel in Smurfs: The Lost Village 'Its a different challenge as an actor, creating it vocally through the microphone': Rainn revealed voicing an animated character takes extra care Back in the booth: It's not the first animated villain Rainn has voiced, having played the evil alien overlord Gallaxhar in Monsters vs Aliens in 2009 It's not the first animated villain Rainn has voiced, having played the evil alien overlord Gallaxhar in Monsters vs Aliens in 2009. 'I never thought I would even be a working actor, let alone get a chance to play so many different roles,' Rainn added. He says he 'had an absolute blast' on Smurfs and strives to add variety to his roles to keep his work interesting. Out soon: The actor has just finished filming shark flick Meg in New Zealand, where he stars alongside Ruby Rose as billionaire businessman and comic relief Jack Morris The actor has just finished filming flick Meg in New Zealand, starring alongside Jason Statham and Ruby Rose. Rainn plays billionaire businessman Jack Morris, which he says comes off as a villain and provides the comic relief to the shark blockbuster. Smurfs: The Lost Village is playing in cinemas now Her Instagram is littered with envy-inducing snaps of her eternal physique. And Elizabeth Hurley once again drove her 534,000 followers crazy, as she shared a titillating clip of her lying on the beach in a skimpy nautical bikini on Friday - shaking her hips from side to side. The 51-year-old eternal British actress, who was promoting the Panama Bikini from her eponymous swimwear line, looked sensational as she bared her busty assets and toned midriff in the barely-there two-piece. Scroll down for video Beach babe: Elizabeth Hurley, 51, once again drove her Instagram followers crazy, as she shared a titillating clip of her lying on the beach in a skimpy nautical bikini on Friday - shaking her hips from side to side Looking sun-kissed as she lay on the beach, Elizabeth smiled up at the camera which was placed directly above her to showcase her enviable frame to perfection. The tiny blue and white top just about managed to contain her busty assets, while her matching bottoms lay low on her hips - accentuating her lean legs which were sexily perched up. Relying on her natural features, Elizabeth went make-up free, opting for a pair of shades to combat the rays, while her brunette locks were sprawled across the sand. Clearly keen on flaunting her timeless figure on social media, the on-screen star shared a GIF on Thursday, where she dons a minuscule white bikini. Skimpy stunner: The eternal British actress, who was promoting the Panama Bikini from her eponymous swimwear line , looked sensational as she bared her busty assets and toned midriff in the barely-there two-piece Timeless: Looking sun-kissed as she lay on the beach, Elizabeth smiled up at the camera which was placed directly above her to showcase her age-defying frame to perfection In the clip, she is seen blowing kisses at the camera as she stands on the golden sands of a tropical beach while wearing the barely-there, bejewelled number, which she revealed has been named for her 'beautiful friend' Elle Macpherson. Unsurprisingly, the show-stopping upload racked up more than 10,000 likes in just two hours as hordes of fans gushed over the stunning images. On Tuesday, the brunette beauty treated fans to another seductive beach snap, showcasing her impressive figure in a plunging navy swimsuit. The actress looked sensational in the simple yet sexy one-piece, which boasted a gold ring at the bust and a teardrop cut-out running down her stomach. Lip service: Elizabeth shared a clip of herself blowing kisses at the camera while wearing a skimpy white bikini on Thursday Name: In an accompanying caption, the British beauty revealed that she named sizzling two-piece - from her eponymous swimwear line - for her supermodel pal Elle Macpherson Elizabeth's gym-honed arms and slender legs were on display in the tropical snapshot, which sees the beauty going make-up free behind a large pair of shades. The Royals star certainly wasn't short of compliments, with her male admirers showering her with compliments. 'How are you still single?', one asked, while another posted, 'What a woman'. Earlier this week, Elizabeth also shared a beach selfie with her 530,000 Instagram followers. Looking good: On Tuesday, she treated her fans to another seductive beach snap, showcasing her impressive figure in a plunging navy swimsuit The screen star pouted in the snap which showed off her pert bust in a skimpy tangerine halterneck bikini top. Elizabeth shot a wide-eyed, slightly distressed look at the camera and captioned the image 'Valley Of The Dolls'. She was referring to the cult 1967 film about three young women attempting to make it in Hollywood who succumb to ill-fated romance and the lure of drug abuse. Ahoy there! Earlier this week, the star looked sizzling in the saucy selfie as she posed in a tiny tangerine bikini top The face of Estee Lauder rocked a sexy bed-head hairstyle with her highlighted locks swept around her face. Her lashes were loaded with mascara and she sported a baby pink lip gloss. The mum-of-one has been enjoying spending some quality time with her 15-year-old son Damian recently. Elizabeth shared a touching selfie with Damian on Monday with the pair enjoying a long country walk together. Damian, whose father is Elizabeth's former partner billionaire Steve Bing, is clearly devoted to his famous mother. The school boy paid tribute to her on Mother's Day by sharing an adorable picture of the pair when Damian was just a toddler. Mother and son time! Elizabeth shared another selfie, this time taken during a long country walk with her 14-year-old son Damian Devoted: Damian paid tribute to his famous mother on Mother's Day with an adorable throw-back snap to when he was much younger After secretly battling a rare kidney condition for years, Bijou Phillips has finally received the lifesaving gift of a new kidney and is now recovering from her transplant. After the star's successful surgery, husband Danny Masterson took to Instagram to talk about his wife's harrowing journey and to thank the 'angel' who gave his wife 'the gift of an encore.' The That '70s Show star posted a black-and-white picture of Bijou and her donor holding hands across hospital beds, coupled with a caption that read, '100% successful transplant. Now the real work begins.' Successful surgery: After wife Bijou Phillip's successful kidney transplant, Danny Masterson took to Instagram to count his blessings and thank the magnificent person who donated their organ to the starlet His caption read, 'My lady has been slowing dying for the past 7 years of an incurable kidney disease.' Miraculously, one of Bijou's friends was a match for the star and was ready to make the life changing decision to be an organ donor. Danny thanked 'the amazing person who donated their kidney to Bijou,' saying that his wife was 'given the gift of an encore by a tall angel.' Gift of life: Bijou and Danny both thanked the 'amazing person' who donated their kidney to the actress, with Bijou calling her organ donor 'the perfect match' He continued: 'We do not take lightly how incredibly fortunate we are. 100% successful transplant. 'Now the real work begins for her to silence any chance of rejection,' wrote the New York native. Danny's worries are not unfounded. According to the Mayo Clinic, kidney recipients have about a four percent chance of transplant failure or complications one year after surgery, with the stat ramping up to 21% (over one-fifth) after five years. Match made in heaven: In mid-March, the Raising Hope star took to Instagram to share that she'd finally gotten an operating date and would be receiving a new kidney shortly. Above, the blonde beauty can be seen with daughter Fianna in a 2016 picture of from Danny's Instagram In mid-March, the Raising Hope actress was ecstatic when she revealed she 'finally [had her] OR date for next week' via Instagram. 'I have been waiting for this day to come for a long time... My donor is a dream come true, such an amazing guy, so kind, he blows me away everyday!' The Choke star revealed that her amazing donor had stayed by her side for three years, undergoing countless tests, battling insurance, and 'rolling with the punches.' 'It's been a wild ride. Fate finds you, he is a perfect match,' wrote the starlet. Privately coping: The Masterson clan first opened up about Bijou's condition in February, after the starlet was hospitalized from a blood infection. Here, the couple can be seen at the Veuve Clicquot Polo Classic during Summer 2016 Danny and family first opened up about his wife's condition in February, when the star was rushed to a Santa Barbara hospital after suffering from a blood infection that left her feeling sick and experiencing an increased fever. A rep for the couple shared that Bijou 'was born with small kidneys' and that she had been 'quietly dealing with [the] disease for the last five years, including being on the transplant list.' Bijou and Danny, who are both Scientologists, married in Ireland after eight years together. They welcomed daughter Fianna Francis in 2014. High school student Jacob Staudenmaier asked Emma Stone to be his prom date in an over-the-top video that was a re-creation of the opening musical number for La La Land. And on Friday the 17-year-old told Good Morning American the actress has responded. And though the Oscar-winning actress turned down his offer, she did tell him that he was right: he does resemble her La La Land co-star Ryan Gosling. Scroll down for video Polite: Jacob Staudenmaier, 17, asked Emma Stone to be his prom date in a video that was a re-creation of the opening musical number for La La Land. He told GMA on Friday that she had responded with a letter Playing the fame game: The high school student seen on GMA Compliment: She also told the teen that he was right: he does resemble her La La Land co-star Ryan Gosling The teenager read off her note when on the morning show. 'JACOB, thanks for making the greatest proposal Ive ever received,' Staudenmair said. 'I cant tell you what an honor that was and how much I smiled through that entire beautifully orchestrated video.' Stone added: 'I'm in London working, but I hope you have the best time at prom, and I'm grateful you thought of me. THANK YOU. Live from Arizona: The young man taped his appearance from his home Milking it! The boy read the letter Emma sent him live on the air The redhead ended with: 'P.S. I do see Gosling around the eyes. Love, Emma.' The boy's video was well planned, making smart substitutions. Instead of a Los Angeles freeway, he set his musical proposal in the parking lot of his high school in Scottsdale, which is incidentally also Stone's home town. 'I decided to ask Emma Stone to prom by re-creating the opening scene from La La Land. I rewrote the lyrics to the song myself and directed the video and did the choreography too, but thank you so much to all the friends and adults who came out to help make it happen,' Jacob wrote on his video, which has so far racked up more than 330,000 views on YouTube. Staudenmaier, 17, has just one big question on his mind this month The high schooler put together a parody of the opening scene from La La Land set in the parking lot of his high school to make one epic promposal In his short film, Jacob dances around cars in a tux and croons. 'People say I look like Ryan Gosling, and maybe that's a bit far-fetched,' he sings 'It started with the kind of crazy idea of saying, "Yeah, maybe I'll go with Emma Stone to the prom,''' he said. 'I decided if I was going to do this, I really needed to do it big. 'It's going better than expected,' Jacob said to USA Today. After weeks of planning, the entire sequence was filmed on Sunday, with the help of his classmates and friends, in just a couple of hours. The video sees Staudenmaier dressed in a black tuxedo as he jumps out of his car to re-create the famous highway scene in the parking lot of his high school. Jacob is an aspiring film-maker and used every bit of his skills on to remake Another Day of Sun, the opening set piece to the Oscar-winning film La la Land He replicated the one-take nature of the original and also come up with his own lyrics Jacob filmed the entire scene on Sunday and said that it didn't require too much rehearsal He enlisted dozens of classmates and a few teachers to help with the video Staudenmaier sings: 'Maybe I could buy you dinner it'll make my night and maybe make yours too. 'Emma Stone if you came I think I'd go insane. Emma Stone, please be the one!' he implores before tossing a bouquet of flowers over his head. In a bid to win her over, he compares himself to her co-star Ryan Gosling, singing: 'People say I look like Ryan Gosling and maybe that's a bit far-fetched. Instead of a Los Angeles freeway, Jacob Staudenmaier set his musical proposal in the parking lot of his high school 'Please don't let me know. It'd be in your hometown,' he jokes, later adding: 'I know my voice ain't great, but please be my prom date.' The star-in-the-making had also said that he had a backup plan if Emma said no. It looks like he'll have to use it. The prom takes place on April 29. The student says he rewrote the lyrics to the movie's first song and did most of the other work, though he had friends help with videography and editing of the two-minute clip In a bid to win her over, Staudenmaier compares himself to her co-star Ryan Gosling (seen driving a car in La La Land) The video has received over 330,000 views on YouTube so far His friends dance alongside parked cars in the elaborate promposal Jacob says asking Stone to prom started out as a joke and says he has a backup date in case the actress doesnt see his video and agree to coming She plays the role of a ruthless agent in upcoming thriller Bent. But Sofia Vergara appeared to show more of a vulnerable side as she was seen filming for the new movie in Italy. The brunette beauty, 44, was spotted with just a bedsheet wrapped around her as she shot a racy scene with co-star Karl Urban on a balcony. Scroll down for video Hotting up: Sofia Vergara was spotted with just a bedsheet wrapped around her as she shot a scene with co-star Karl Urban for her new movie Bent Showing off a hint of side boob, the Modern Family actress still managed to look glamorous despite being in a state of undress. Wearing her lengthy locks down over her shoulders, she accentuated her glowing complexion with a dash of blusher, before adding lashings of mascara. Sofia, who later slipped on a white robe in between shots, appeared to be in high spirits, beaming as she looked out over the balcony. Racy: Showing off a hint of side boob, the 44-year-old looked glamorous while on set Beauty: Wearing her lengthy locks down over her shoulders, she accentuated her glowing complexion with a dash of blusher, before adding lashings of mascara Her co-star Karl meanwhile put his hunky physique on show, wearing just a pair of white boxers to film the scene. The Colombian-born actress later shared a glamorous snap from the film set on Instagram, which she captioned 'Last night shooting in Rome' followed by a number of sad faces. Bent tells the story of shamed detective Danny Gallagher, played by Karl, who plans to seek revenge after he was framed for killing his partner. Sofia takes on the role of government agent Rebecca in the film, which also stars Andy Garcia. Beaming: Sofia, who later slipped on a white robe, appeared to be in high spirits Lights, camera, action: The Colombian-born actress looked very much in her element on set When Rome: Sofia later posted a glamorous Instagram snap, saying that it was her last night filming in the Italian capital The star shared a sexy snap of her on set on Instagram earlier in the week, which showed her carrying a gun. She appears to be making the most of her time in Italy, also posting pictures of her sampling the country's famous wine and cuisine with her 12.1m followers. Sofia's husband Joe Manganiello has not joined her in Italy for the shoot and is busy promoting his latest film Smurfs The Lost Village. Earlier this week, the actress was branded 'classless' by her former fiance Nick Loeb in an explosive letter, which revealed the 'screaming fights' the couple endured throughout their tempestuous relationship. She has been been locked in a legal battle with her businessman ex - who she split from in May 2014 - attempting to have him officially blocked from taking control of her frozen embryos. Dangerous woman: The leading lady shared a photo of her holding a gun on set on Tuesday Trying out the cuisine: She posed with pizzas in another Instagram picture as she continued to make the most of her time in the country's capital : 15 6 , 2 She recently had a 'low-key' rainbow-themed bash for her son, who turned one on March 24. But Anne Hathaway looked like she was set for a more adult celebration on Thursday. The 34-year-old actress went make-up free as she picked up four bottles of beer from Belgium brewery Chimay, alongside husband Adam Shulman at a grocery store in Los Angeles. Evening in? Anne Hathaway went make-up free as she picked up a pack of beer, alongside husband Adam Shulman on Thursday in Los Angeles The beauty was spotted child-free, alongside her husband of four years as they got set for what looked to be a relaxed evening together. The Devil Wears Prada star teams a classic white Tee with blue denim jeans. She stayed warm with the addition of a blue and mauve cardigan. Lager outing: The beauty was spotted alongside her husband of four years, at a grocery store in Los Angeles, as they got set for a relaxed evening together Keeping it casual, she added white pumps with a black trim and carried a beige handbag over one shoulder. She showed off her flawless porcelain skin make-up free, and left her long day dark loose and fresh. The actress explained to actress Ellen DeGeneres that she felt pressure to throw a well-styled party for her one-year-old, Jonathan Rosebanks Shulman, last month. Vamped up: She oozed glamour on Tuesday as she stepped out at the premiere of her latest movie, Colossal, in Hollywood Anne acknowledged that she 'made the mistake' of seeing how others celebrate their kids' first birthdays. 'I went on Pinterest and looked at other people's one-year-old parties,' she said. 'It's not fair what some people do. You know, some party planners have children, which is definitely not fair - think about it! They blow it out!' She oozed glamour on Tuesday as she stepped out at the premiere of her latest movie, Colossal, in Hollywood. The Les Miserables actress sported a plunging black one-piece, which she accessorized with some chic pointed heels. The very original comedy sci-fi is about a woman, played by Hathaway, who discovers that severe catastrophic events are somehow connected to the mental breakdown from which she's suffering. The movie is due out in theatres later this month on April 21. She's been embroiled in drama, amid claims that she 'got close' to Pete Wicks - ultimately leading to the demise of his very messy split with Megan McKenna. But Chloe Sims was seen getting messy elsewhere, as she accidentally fell into a pile of sheep poo while resuming TOWIE filming at Marsh Farm in Chelmsford on Friday. The 34-year-old reality star - who was joined by her daughter Madison and co-stars Jon Clark, Georgia Kousoulou, Tommy Mallet and Bobby Norris - looked unimpressed as she rolled up her white shirt to show the brown stain. Scroll down for video Unfortunate: Chloe Sims, 34, was unimpressed after she accidentally fell into a pile of sheep poo while resuming TOWIE filming at Marsh Farm in Chelmsford on Friday Chloe's look of disgust due to the unfortunate mark comes as no surprise, given that she looked sensational before it happened. The stunning TV sensation was dressed in an oversized white tee, which boasted holes, as well as blue skinny jeans and a cropped grey biker jacket. Her blonde locks were thrown up into a messy updo and tamed in place with a black and white bandana. She was initially seen bonding with some sheep before disaster struck and she found herself stained with the unfortunate mark. Before it went terribly wrong: The reality star's look of disgust due to the unfortunate mark comes as no surprise, given that she looked sensational before it happened Having fun: Georgia Kousoulou looks chic in a camo jacket, nude hoodie and skin-tight leather trousers as she larked around with Bobby Norris Immediately, Chloe stood up and grabbed the shirt to make it visible for everyone to sere. Meanwhile, her co-stars looked like they were having a whale of a time. Georgia Kousoulou looks chic in a camo jacket, nude hoodie and skin-tight leather trousers as she larked around with Bobby Norris. While Chloe had a bit of an unfortunate encounter with the sheep poo, she's been having much more of a tougher time in her personal life after claims emerged she is the was the cause of Megan and Pete's split. The on/off couple were seen caught in a blazing row on the street, with Megan having to be physically restrained by TOWIE crew members after she accused him of cheating on her. Filming: The TOWIE crew looked in high spirits as they enjoyed the casual day at the farm Farm boy: Jon Clark couldn't resist getting in on the action too Sources claimed during the row in the street Megan accused Pete of being unfaithful while staying in Scotland, presumably during his solo mini-break he took in January after a blazing row with Megan at the NTAs. The other woe said to be facing their relationship is claims he has 'grown close' to Chloe, after images emerged of the duo looking extremely close at London's Mayfair Hotel last month. Insiders told The Sun: 'Megan called Pete on the photos and asked whats going on. She said she was amazed Chloe didnt try to reach out to explain that theres nothing in it. 'Pete defended Chloe and said nothing had happened and that she hadnt done anything wrong, but Megan started screaming: "Why are you sticking up for her?" Three's a crowd: The outing came amid claims she is the cause of Megan McKenna and Pete Wick's recent explosive split, where she has made her feelings on the matter clear Explosive: The on/off couple were seen caught in a blazing row on the street, with Megan having to be physically restrained by TOWIE crew members after she accused him of cheating 'Megan accused Pete of cheating on her and sleeping with a girl in Scotland and he threw it back in her face, saying: "I wasnt cheating but I did text her, and it doesnt matter because youre sleeping with your ex!"' There is no evidence to suggest Chloe was involved in their break-up. During Sunday night's instalment of TOWIE, Chloe was seen comforting Megan as she admitted that she wasn't aware of the pain the EOTB star had been going through after the split. It was a dramatic change of heart for the mother-of-one, who had previously slammed Megan for leaving her best friend Pete in tears. She wrote in her Star magazine column: 'They were happy, then she broke up with him out of the blue. Pete confides in me and hes been in tears. I feel really sorry for him.' He sent the internet into histrionics when he playfully lifted costar Sarah Paulson's dress at PaleyFest last week. And now Cuba Gooding Jr. is commenting on what actually happened on stage, and how he's addressing the issue with his family. The 49-year-old Jerry Maguire actor told People the incident was simply misinterpreted. Surprising: Cuba Gooding Jr., 49, sent the internet into histrionics when he playfully lifted costar Sarah Paulson's dress at PaleyFest last week 'That image was taken out to represent some kind of sexual misconduct, and that wasn't my intent,' said the Oscar winner, before revealing 'the first person, when I heard about the fervor, I called Sarah, I said, 'I love you, I see you as my sister," and she said, "I feel the same way about you." And so I let it go.' Cuba, who co-starred with Sarah, 42, in American Crime Story, reiterated: 'I love the lady that is Sarah Paulson, we have a banter like brother and sister, which is how the spirit of that whole panel was.' In addition to trying to defuse the situation, he also insisted that the confusing episode was 'a very teachable moment.' The actor is father to sons Spencer, 23, and Mason, 21, as well as daughter Piper, 22. Setting the record straight: The 49-year-old Jerry Maguire actor talked about the incident on Thursday, which he says was simply misinterpreted Dynamic duo: Cuba, who co-starred with Paulson, 42, in American Crime Story, reiterated 'I love the lady that is Sarah Paulson, we have a banter like brother and sister, which is how the spirit of that whole panel was' 'I have two sons in college,' stated the Hollywood vet 'and I say to them, "Guys, the internet, its a beast. Its an information highway without regulation. Any image you put on there can be interpreted any way it wants to."' Aside from the advice about the internet, he also had a more fundamental message for his sons having to do with their character. 'I said to my sons again, I said, "The only thing you can do is represent your moral compass and who you are. Because images are going to be out there without your control, so continue standing in your integrity."' silver lining: In addition to trying to defuse the situation, he also insisted that the confusing episode was 'a very teachable moment' (pictured after the incident with Sarah and Kathy Bates) Cuba provoked the initial outrage by lifting his co-star Paulson's dress up for seemingly no reason while on stage for a promotional event for American Horror Story: Roanoke. The actor was quickly branded a 'creep' after he reached down and raised Paulson's dress in a bizarre stunt. Paulson stood to greet Kathy Bates on stage at the Los Angeles PaleyFest, when Gooding raised the hem of her dress from behind and nearly exposed her underwear. Paulson, who shrieked and pulled down her dress just in time, appeared to laugh it off as a joke while Twitter users unleashed their fury at Gooding, who was called a d***, among other things. Even while traveling, Kate Bosworth never ceases to be perfectly polished. The 34-year-old star arrived in style Friday, sporting a fresh faced glow as she touched down at Los Angeles International Airport. Donning a delicate ruffled blouse and dark pants, the blonde beauty was radiant as ever after her cross-country trip from New York. Scroll down for video Landing lovely: Kate Bosworth arrived to Los Angeles in style Friday, looking lovely while donning a flouncy feminine blouse and glowing skin Kate's golden tresses were severely slicked back in a center part, revealing the Still Alice star's dewy skin and rosy flush. Her flouncy white blouse put a girly spin on the starlet's travel attire, looking delicate and slender in the eyelet top. She paired the top with simple boot cut jeans to lend the look a slim silhouette. Glowing goddess! The 34-year-old beauty's skin was simply radiant, as the star flaunted a dewy face and perfectly flushed cheeks as she left the terminal Dressing up the details: The Still Alice actress polished her chic look with a handsomely constructed satchel and cute slingback Mary Jane show The Los Angeles native carried a darling satchel adorned with colorful crystals off the plane with her, emerging from the flight with an assistant in tow. The Before I Wake actress added a dash of drama to the look, hiding her eyes behind geometric frames while striding through the terminal in patent leather slingbacks. Kate is back on the West Coast after dazzling at the Diane Von Furstenberg Fashion Awards in NYC Thursday. The blonde beauty was arriving on the West Coast after attending the DVF Fashion Awards in New York on Thursday At the event held at New York's United Nations building, the talent oozed glitz and glamour in an off-the-shoulder and fitted dress that was in shades of salmon pink, metallic silver, and off-white. At the awards, namesake Diane Von Furstenberg honored five women for their work in women's causes, bestowing each with a $50k grant for their cause. Kate spoke during the gathering while model Karlie Kloss and scientist Dr. Jane Goodall were honored. The evening's other honorees included Cuban journalist Yoani Sanchez, as well as childrens rights and immigration expert Baljeet Sandhu. She may be turning a year older but this star has no plans to grow up anytime soon. Mandy celebrated her birthday by a being a big kid at the Happiest Place On Earth. The 32-year-old star spent Thursday at Disneyland in Anaheim, California. Scroll down for video Party time: Mandy celebrated her birthday by a being a big kid at the Happiest Place On Earth, Disneyland, in Anaheim, California, on Thursday The This Is Us actress - who turns 33 on Monday - headed to the park with her boyfriend Taylor Goldsmith as well as his bandmate and brother Griffin. Mandy and her beau walked around the park arm-in-arm, looking very loved up. The actress was also joined by friends Erica Cloud, Chase Weideman-Grant, Emily Schuman, Geoffrey Fuller and Raina Penchansky. The big group made the day special by all wearing customized matching T-shirts celebrating the birthday girl which had 'MM 33' on it with Mickey ears. Loved up: The This Is Us actress - who turns 33 on Monday - headed to the park with her boyfriend Taylor Goldsmith Party crew: The actress was also joined by friends Erica Cloud, Chase Weideman-Grant, Emily Schuman, Geoffrey Fuller, Griffen Goldsmith and Raina Penchansky Aside from being her age 33 is a pretty important number at the park as it is the name of the exclusive restaurant inside Disney called Club 33. So the star and her pals were treated to a lunch at the VIP restaurant and celebrated over gourmet churros. Once a secret, the club is now invitation-only with members reportedly paying a $25,000 fee just to join. Special lunch: Aside from being her age 33 is a pretty important number at the park as it is the name of the exclusive restaurant inside Disney called Club 33 VIP all the way: And the experience certainly was not lost on Mandy, who Snapchated away from inside - perhaps putting a return invite in jeopardy Going the extra mile: The star even marveled at the way staff folded her friend's napkin And the experience certainly was not lost on Mandy, who Snapchated away from inside - perhaps putting a return invite in jeopardy. The star even marveled at the way staff folded her friend's napkin. Aside from dining at the exclusive venue, the group hit the rides around the park including Splash Mountain. Almost: Mandy's crew decided to try to pull a funny pose as their log plummeted down the waterfall on Splash Mountain That's better: The group tired again on Space Mountain and this time Mandy at least got her pose right Mandy's crew decided to try to pull a funny pose as their log plummeted down the waterfall. While they tried to look bored, the big drop was too much for almost everyone. The group tired again on Space Mountain and this time Mandy at least got her pose right. Having a blast: The birthday girl and her group tried to ride every ride in the park The group then got their hearts pumping on a number of rides for the rest of the day. Posting a picture of her gang on the steps of Club 33 Mandy said of the day: 'This group. 'What a way to celebrate 33 (a tiiiiny bit early) than at Club 33?? Thanks for the epic tshirts, @rp1313 and thank you sweet Chip for escorting us through every ride, corn dog and churro. I am forever a #Disney nerd.' Kevin Frazier, a spokesman for Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, said Thursday that CEO Sergio Marchionne believed the company needed to know more about a potential border adjustment tax plan Republican plans to introduce a US border adjustment tax have auto giants General Motors and Fiat Chrysler looking for clarity, company executives said this week. Tax plans advanced by some Republicans currently include arrangements to reform corporate taxation while favoring exports but discouraging imports. President Donald Trump has said the measure could be a job creator but the proposal has faced stiff opposition from some conservatives and import-reliant industries. Draft legislation has not been introduced. Kevin Frazier, a spokesman for Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, said Thursday that CEO Sergio Marchionne believed the company needed to know more. "While it's our practice not to discuss future product and production plans, let me remind you that Mr Marchionne has said that 'were waiting for clarity,' Frazier told AFP in an email. Mark Reuss, GM's executive vice president for product development, told reporters this week that carmakers planned and developed their product lines years in advance. This made it difficult to anticipate what the future effects of the shifting political landscape would be, he said, adding that a border tax remained a significant unknown. "We don't really know what that is," Reuss said. "How do you make product plans and capacity allocations?" Reuss spoke to reporters after a news conference at the GM Technical Center in Detroit, where he introduced a new Buick Regal that will be built for GM by Opel in Germany. The production of the Regal in Russelsheim will go forward even though GM is selling both the Opel and Vauxhall brands to France's PSA Group, he added. Plans to manufacture the car in Germany did not anticipate a possible US border tax, which could raise the price of the Regal and other imported vehicles significantly. GM is developing contingency plans to shift production and capital if US tax policy changes, according to Reuss. "The agility piece is very important. You have to be prepared to do it faster than anybody else," he said. Buick now sells vehicles in the US that are built in China and South Korea as well as in the European Union. Meanwhile, Fiat Chrysler is moving ahead with plans to import the new Jeep Compass into the United States from Mexico, starting this month. Ford, however, has said it will absorb a $200 million write-off a Mexican assembly plant on which construction had already started but halted in January. If President Donald Trump decides to launch strikes against Syria regime, the Pentagon has many ways to do so including US Navy assets like the USS George H. W. Bush aircraft carrier in the Gulf The United States has been fighting the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria since 2014, so has amassed a huge military presence and an array of capabilities in the region. If President Donald Trump decides to launch strikes against Syrian regime targets in response to Tuesday's suspected chemical attack, the Pentagon has many ways with which to do so. - US Navy - Any strike against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is likely to be conducted remotely to avoid putting US pilots in harm's way. The US Navy's Sixth Fleet, headquartered in Naples, has two destroyers -- the USS Porter and the USS Ross -- in the eastern Mediterranean that could shoot a barrage of Tomahawk cruise missiles into Syria. In September 2014, US ships launched 47 Tomahawk missiles during the first night of strikes against IS in Syria. These missiles can also be launched from attack submarines, but the location of these vessels is secret. A barrage of Tomahawks could overwhelm any air defenses. Assad's systems are weakened after six years of war but Russia has deployed state-of-the art systems to Syria. Over in the Persian Gulf, the Navy's Fifth Fleet can quickly respond to military requests in the region. The USS George H. W. Bush aircraft carrier is also in the Gulf, currently supporting operations against IS. - Air power - The bulk of US efforts against IS in Syria has been conducted from the air, with about 7,500 coalition jet and drone strikes since 2014. The United States has multiple air bases at its disposal in the region, including Incirlik in southeastern Turkey, just 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the Syrian border. Among the many air assets available to the United States are its high-tech F-22 Raptors, F-16s and even B-52 heavy bombers. The F-22, which cost about $360 million apiece, is considered the world's most advanced fighter currently operating, thanks to its ability to evade radar. It can fly faster than Mach 2 and launch laser-guided bombs from miles away. The Air Force also has at its disposal a fleet of armed Reaper and Predator drones, which use Hellfire missiles to strike targets. - Military advisors - The United States has about 900 troops in Syria -- mainly special operations forces -- to help train and advise an Arab-Kurdish alliance fighting IS. A Marine artillery unit is helping local forces near Raqa and US forces have expanded a runway at a northern Syria air base to accommodate the huge C-17 military plane, which can bring in armored vehicles and equipment. The US also has Apache gunships in neighboring Iraq to support local troops on the ground. A Facebook photo from New Zealand Prime Minister Bill English shows the pizza he made topped with tinned spaghetti and pineapple for his family in Wellington New Zealand Prime Minister Bill English defended his love of pizza topped with tinned spaghetti and pineapple on Friday after the recipe sent fans of the Italian treat into an outraged frenzy. English posted pictures of his unorthodox tastes on Facebook this week, saying he prepared the dish for his family. The Internet melted down faster than buffalo mozzarella as purists poured online scorn on his spaghetti speciality. "Why on earth would you promote such garbage? Would you serve this stuff to your international guests??," one user posted. Another said: "Sorry Bill, any man who puts spaghetti on a pizza is not fit to run my country, you cannot count on my vote come election time." Even US talk show host Jimmy Kimmel got in on the act, urging New Zealanders "impeach that man immediately!". "That is so offensive. That is an act of war. I think he just declared war on Italy, and maybe Hawaii too," Kimmel told his audience. Italy's embassy in Wellington declared a vendetta, or blood feud, over the desecration, tweeting a picture of New Zealand's beloved pavlova dessert covered with salami. A Facebook photo from New Zealand Prime Minister Bill English shows the pizzas he made that sent fans of the Italian treat into an outraged frenzy "Vendetta for PM's pizza with tinned spaghetti and pineapple," it said. English was unfazed by the criticism, saying his recipe may have cooked up strong opinions but plenty of people were on his side. "Everywhere I go now I meet people who put spaghetti and pineapple on their pizza," he told NewstalkZB. "They come up to me spontaneously when I'm walking through the airport and tell me." The culinary kerfuffle comes after Iceland President Gudni Johannesson revealed in February that he hated pineapple topping on pizzas and would ban it if he could. English was unaware of that controversy but admitted he had been puzzled recently about how many times he had been asked whether he liked pineapple on pizzas. "We answered the question, the nation was clearly interested, but they'll probably move on pretty quickly now," he said. The guided-missile destroyer USS Porter launches Tomahawk missiles during military operations in the Mediterranean Sea, April 7, 2017 The United States warned Friday it is ready to hit Syria again after a missile strike that infuriated Moscow and fueled calls for a push to end the six-year war. US Ambassador Nikki Haley delivered the warning at an emergency session of the UN Security Council called after the US strikes, which were launched to punish an alleged chemical weapons attack by Bashar al-Assad's regime. Assad's ally Russia, meanwhile, declared President Donald Trump's first strike against the Damascus regime a violation of international law and an "act of aggression." Russian and American militaries in Syria "The United States took a very measured step last night," Haley told the council. "We are prepared to do more, but we hope it will not be necessary." Haley said the strike destroyed an air field from which Washington believes Damascus launched the attack on rebel-held Khan Sheikhun, where 86 people including 27 children died this week. Rights monitors warned, however, that Syrian jets were already flying sorties from the base again as night fell Friday. US President Donald Trump called on "all civilized nations" to join the US in ending the "slaughter and bloodshed" in Syria The United States fired 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles from warships in the Mediterranean at the Shayrat airfield near Homs in central Syria. Assad's office called the strike "foolish and irresponsible," and Moscow announced a series of retaliatory steps including plans to strengthen Syrian air defenses. "The United States will no longer wait for Assad to use chemical weapons without any consequences," Haley said. "Those days are over." - Russia accuses US - Russia's deputy UN ambassador, Vladimir Safronkov reacts during a United Nations Security Council meeting on Syria, at the UN headquarters in New York on April 7, 2017 The United States did not seek UN Security Council authorization for the military action that followed days of global outrage at images of dead children from the suspected sarin gas attack. It was Trump's biggest military decision since taking office and marked a dramatic escalation in American involvement in Syria's protracted war. "The United States attacked the territory of sovereign Syria," Russian Deputy Ambassador Vladimir Safronkov told the council, denouncing a "flagrant violation of international law and an act of aggression." US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in Florida to attend a summit between Trump and China's Xi Jinping, is due in Moscow next week for talks with President Vladimir Putin. "I'm disappointed in that response from the Russians because it indicates their continued support for the Assad regime," said Tillerson. US Ambassador to the UN and UN security council president, Nikki Haley arrives for an United Nations Security Council meeting on Syria, at the UN headquarters in New York on April 7, 2017 "In particular," he said, the response showed the Kremlin's "continued support for a regime that carries out these kinds of horrendous attacks on their own people. "I find it very disappointing but -- sadly, I have to tell you -- not all that surprising." In Washington, a senior US official said Syria may have had help carrying out the alleged chemical attack, but stopped short of accusing Russia of complicity. "We are carefully assessing any information that would implicate the Russians knew or assisted with this capability," he said. - A new phase - US Strikes on Syria: world reaction While threatening further strikes, Haley also said it was time to press on with diplomatic efforts to achieve a political solution to end the war. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres urged restraint and a renewed push for peace in Syria, saying "there is no other way to solve the conflict than through a political solution." Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Japan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey all supported Washington, with Ankara also calling for a no-fly zone in Syria. The Kremlin warned the US military action would inflict "considerable damage" on US-Russia ties. It immediately suspended a deal with the United States aimed at avoiding clashes in Syrian airspace, though the foreign ministry did not scrap Tillerson's visit. - 'Low' impact - A handout picture from the Syrian Arab News Agency reportedly shows Syrian Armed Forces visiting Shayrat airfield after American forces fired a barrage of 59 cruise missiles at the airbase overnight Trump announced the strike in a brief televised address. "Tonight I call on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end this slaughter and bloodshed in Syria and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types," he said. Fired from the USS Porter and the USS Ross, the cruise missiles targeted radars, aircraft, air defense systems and other logistical components. The Syrian Observatory said the US strike on the base killed eight Syrian military staff, including an army doctor. Syria's army had earlier said six people were killed in the strike, without specifying if they were military personnel or civilians. A suspected toxic gas attack on Khan Sheikhun appears to have marked a turning point for US President Donald Trump and his administration on Syria Russia's military said the strike had an "extremely low" military impact, with fewer than half the missiles reaching the base. It destroyed six planes under repair and several buildings, including a storage depot and radio station, it said. US officials said Russia's military in Syria was informed of the strike beforehand in order to avoid casualties. Syrian residents of Khan Sheikhun hold placards condemning a suspected chemical weapons attack on their town that killed at least 86 people A Syrian military source said its armed forces had also received advance warning. Russia has stood by Damascus despite the global uproar, insisting the chemical weapons that caused the deaths in Khan Sheikhun had been stockpiled by "terrorists" and possibly released by a conventional strike. - Syrians welcome US strike - In the blighted town itself, residents mourning their dead welcomed the US strike as a way to pressure Damascus. "God willing, these strikes will be a clear warning to Bashar al-Assad, to tell him: Bashar, enough killing and injustice against these people," said Abu Ali, a man in his 40s. Opposition and rebel fighters, who have for years urged more direct US military action in support of their uprising, hailed the strike and called for more. South Korean prosecutors accused Lee Jae-Yong (C), the heir to the Samsung business empire, of embezzling funds, committing perjury and playing a key role in a corruption scandal that led to the ouster of former President Park Geun-Hye South Korean prosecutors Friday accused the heir to the Samsung business empire of embezzling funds, committing perjury and playing a key role in a corruption scandal that led to the ouster of former President Park Geun-Hye. A bound and handcuffed Lee Jae-Yong, the vice-chairman of Samsung Electronics, arrived at the Seoul Central District Court as his trial opened Friday. Lee, who was arrested in February, has been charged with paying nearly $40 million to the now-impeached president's close friend Choi Soon-Sil, allegedly as bribes to secure policy favours. Four other Samsung executives have also been charged. Special Prosecutor Park Young-Soo said in his opening statement that Lee's case is "one of the most deep-rooted and typical cases involving unhealthy relations between politicians and businessmen". "In the course of providing bribes, Lee Jae-Yong embezzled company money, illegally diverted domestic assets abroad, hid illegally-earned incomes and committed perjury at parliament", the prosecutor said. Defence lawyers have said Lee and the others deny all the charges. They say the prosecutors' formal indictment is sketchy, with some accusations only backed up by circumstantial evidence. Samsung has insisted the payments to Choi were charitable contributions it was obliged to make under pressure from officials, and not bribes. "The Choi case has left a deep scar in history but it has also provided momentum to re-establish the rule of laws by dint of people's power", the prosecutor said. Ousted president Park was thrown into jail last week after a court ordered her arrest in connection with the sweeping corruption scandal that brought millions of people onto the streets and saw her impeached. Her close confidante Choi is also in custody and on trial for forcing top local firms including the tech giant to "donate" nearly $70 million to non-profit foundations which she allegedly used for personal gain. Lee's arrest, the first for a Samsung chief even though his father was twice convicted of bribery, sent shockwaves through the company and triggered the announcement of a major reform of its top-down management style. A prior sex offender serving time in the Farmington Correctional Center is being charged after he was found to be in possession of child pornography. Jason Carroll, 38, formerly of Moberly, is charged with three class D felonies of possession of child pornography. According to a probable cause statement, an officer with the Missouri State Highway Patrol met with two investigators who informed him about an investigation involving an inmate at the Farmington prison. They told him that months before a cell phone charger was found in housing unit 6D-20 and staff then located a cell phone. The telephone was sent off to their contracted vendor and was analyzed. The forensic report from the telephone linked it to Carroll. The inmate was assigned to housing unit 6D-20 at the time the phone was found. There were multiple text messages on the phone to people and the content of the messages linked Carroll to them. Also it linked him to using people on the outside to sneak illegal substances into the correctional facility. Items found on the phone were a Facebook account for Carroll, a Skype account and two Gmail accounts. Authorities also located several photographs on the phone of naked children in bathtubs, swimming pools and bodies of water. The children ranged in age from infant to toddlers. They also found a file containing four photographs depicting children up to the age of 10 in compromising sexual acts with an adult male. Another photo shows a young child having sexual relations with an animal. There were several photographs on the phone that were deleted and could not be recovered during the forensic analysis. Carroll is serving a seven-year sentence in the Missouri Department of Corrections for six class C felonies of statutory rape and one class C felony of statutory sodomy. He has been incarcerated since July 25, 2011. Harness racing, known as trotting in Australia, involves drivers competing on carts -- known as gigs or a sulky -- on a race track Australia's harness racing industry, known as the trots, was Friday rocked by fixing allegations as police charged a trainer and flagged further arrests in what they described as a systemic practice. Queensland state police said the 46-year-old man, who was not named, was charged with one count of match-fixing after a 10-month "protracted investigation... into systemic match-fixing in the harness racing industry". "There is a ... loose cartel of drivers and trainers who are involved in systemic race-fixing activity," Queensland Racing Integrity Commissioner Ross Barnett told reporters in Brisbane. "How that occurs depends from race to race. They all get together and decide on driving tactics or who will win the race, how they will win it. Those things change from race to race, from meeting to meeting. "What we are talking about is serious, organised, criminal activity." Trotting, involving drivers racing around a track on carts -- known as gigs or a sulky -- behind horses, first emerged as a sport in Australia in the 1800s. It also has a following in countries including France and the United States. Barnett said the investigation was sparked after people within the industry expressed fears that fixing was taking place. It is the first time such a charge has been used since it was recently added to Queensland's criminal code, Barnett said, and attracts a maximum sentence of 10 years' jail. The man is due in court next month. Paris-based media rights watchdog Reporters sans Frontieres (Reporters Without Borders) is opening its first Asia office in Taiwan after rejecting Hong Kong over concerns that China poses the "biggest threat" to press freedom International rights watchdog Reporters Without Borders said it is opening its first Asia office in Taiwan after rejecting Hong Kong over concerns that China poses the "biggest threat" to press freedom. Also known by its French name Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF), the Paris-based organisation decided against their original choice of Hong Kong, citing deteriorating freedom in the semi-autonomous Chinese city. Taiwan is the freest in Asia at 51st place, according to RSF's 2016 World Press Freedom Index, while Hong Kong ranks 69th and China 176th. Chinese dissident Wu'er Kaixi, who sits on RSF's emeritus board, said Hong Kong presented "real obstacles" for the watchdog to carry out its monitoring work. "They wouldn't be able to guarantee the safety of their staff," said Wu'er, a former student leader during China's pro-democracy Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 who now lives in exile in Taiwan. He proposed the island as an alternative, citing its boisterous and competitive media landscape. "Freedom of speech and freedom of press is absolutely not an issue in Taiwan. What might be a problem is the threat from China", Wu'er told AFP. "RSF realised that China is the biggest threat to press freedom, so it decided to shift its focus to Asia," he added. The opening "aims to better address the new challenges of media freedoms in this increasingly influential region of the world," RSF secretary general Christophe Deloire said in a statement released late Thursday. The office in Taipei will also cover other East Asian countries including Japan, North Korea, South Korea, and Mongolia. Recent incidents in Hong Kong -- including the disappearance of five publishers who were known for salacious titles about the Chinese leadership -- have sparked fears that Beijing is choking the city's freedoms. Hong Kong was handed back to China by colonial ruler Britain in 1997 under a "one country, two systems" formula designed to protect its freedoms and way of life. Taiwan is self-ruled but China regards the island as part of its own territory awaiting reunification under Beijing's rule. The two sides split following a civil war in 1949. In China, Communist authorities censor content they deem politically sensitive, while blocking some Western websites and the services of Internet giants including Facebook, Twitter and Google with a vast control network dubbed the Great Firewall of China. A founder of one of China's few websites dedicated to reporting human rights abuses was arrested in December for "leaking state secrets." Campaigning starts on Sunday for next month's Algerian parliamentary election as authorities desperately try to persuade disillusioned voters that their opinion counts. "Make your voice heard," reads a slogan on billboards and posters plastered in towns and villages across the North African country. Government-sponsored advertisements play in a continuous loop on television in a bid to attract a larger turnout than about 43 percent for the last legislative poll in 2012. The vote comes amid growing security and economic challenges as well as speculation around who will eventually succeed 80-year-old President Abdelaziz Bouteflika -- although experts say the real decision lies in the hands of the country's secretive elite. The election, which several parties are boycotting, will likely see Bouteflika's National Liberation Front (FLN) and the allied Rally for National Democracy (RND) retain an absolute majority. In Algiers, Salim said he would not vote on May 4. "I couldn't care less. Nothing will change," said the 29-year-old, who has been jobless for five years since graduating from accountancy. Ouardia, a 50-year-old taxi driver, said she would not be taking part in the election either. - 'Outcome already decided' - "Politicians only remember that the people exist during elections. The rest of the time, we can go to hell," she said. Like her, many residents of the Algerian capital are far more worried by the increasing cost of living than by the upcoming poll. The price of fruit and vegetables have shot up in recent weeks. Political analyst Rachid Grim says turnout at the election will probably remain low as "the largest party in Algeria is that of the silent majority". "They're no longer interested in the elections. They believe the outcome has already been decided and their votes won't be taken into account," he said. To counter voter apathy, Interior Minister Noureddine Bedoui this week called on Algerians to flock to the polls to vote "to preserve peace and stability". He urged television broadcasters to help inform voters about the importance of casting their ballots and to "not work towards discrediting the elections or give the floor to parties calling for a boycott". Retired teacher Fatima, 65, said she would vote, although she still had to decide who she would choose, "because there has been too much bloodshed in this country". She said she had lost several relatives in Algeria's civil war in the 1990s, which killed 200,000 people. - Snubbing polls 'absurd' - As he sat sipping coffee on a terrace in the capital, Said, a man in his 80s, said voting should be compulsory. He said "sleeping the day of the vote and then complaining afterwards about the result" was "absurd". Up to 23 million Algerians are registered to vote by universal suffrage for 462 lawmakers in the election. Until then, candidates on 940 lists made up from 15 parties and on two independent lists are to hold hundreds of campaigning events across the country. And they are actively seeking votes on social media for an election to include more women this year. Since 2011, a law says parties must reserve 20 to 50 percent of their lists for female candidates. A few hours drive west of Algiers, the Chlef area has a list of candidates who are all women. And since 2016, the 410 members of a new electoral body will oversee the voting. Half of them are magistrates and the others are to be picked from civil society. The head of the authority, Abdelouahab Derbal, has said the European Union, African Union and the Organisation of the Islamic Cooperation will also send observers. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court to face charges of genocide, as well as war crimes and crimes against humanity in the western Darfur region South Africa will on Friday seek to defend its failure to arrest visiting Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir who is wanted on charges of genocide, at an unprecedented hearing before international war crimes judges. It will be a humbling moment for Pretoria, one of the leading voices in the creation of the International Criminal Court, whose lawyers will be fending off accusations that it failed in its obligations to the tribunal. To the frustration of the ICC's prosecutors, Bashir remains in office and at large despite two international warrants for his arrest issued in 2009 and in 2010. He faces 10 charges, including three of genocide as well as war crimes and crimes against humanity in the western Darfur region. The deadly conflict broke out in 2003 when ethnic minority groups took up arms against Bashir's Arab-dominated government, which launched a brutal counter-insurgency. At least 300,000 people have since been killed and 2.5 million displaced in Darfur, the UN says. Several victims of the lingering conflict in the western Sudanese region, who now live in The Netherlands, will attend Friday's hearing which opens at 0730 GMT in the tribunal in The Hague. - Long wait for justice - The UN Security Council asked the ICC as long ago as 2005 to probe the crimes in Darfur where conditions remain "dire," according to Monica Feltz, executive director of the rights group, International Justice Project. Prosecutors issued international warrants for the arrest of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir -- seen here in 2009 -- over the deadly conflict that racked the western Darfur region The 10 Darfurians who will watch the hearing are "hoping to see that their story is told, and that their voices are heard, and that the international community still cares," Feltz told AFP. "They're been waiting for over eight years to see justice in this case," she added, voicing disappointment the victims were not granted permission to actually take part in the hearing. The issue is centred on South Africa's refusal to arrest Bashir when he attended an African Union summit in Johannesburg in June 2015, insisting he had "head of state immunity" and allowing him instead to slip out of the country. The judges will have to decide whether Pretoria violated its obligations under the court's founding Rome Statute by not arresting him and handing him over for trial. South Africa insists it was caught on the horns of a dilemma: between its obligations to both the ICC and to laws providing heads of state with immunity. - 'No-one is above the law' - The ICC's prosecutors have hit back, pointing out that in the past South Africa told Bashir he would be arrested if he set foot in the country. "No one is above the law, even heads of state," insisted Feltz. Friday's hearing is "a historic opportunity for the court to demonstrate that its charges must be taken with extraordinary seriousness," said Wanda Akin and Raymond Brown, two legal representatives of the victims, in a joint statement. They urged the court to send "an unmistakable message that open defiance of its writ will not be permitted." The judges will return their decision at a later date, and may decide to report South Africa to the UN Security Council for eventual sanctions. Although this is the first public hearing of its type, last year the ICC referred Chad, Djibouti and Uganda to the UN for also failing to arrest Bashir. So far no action has been taken against them. The Sudanese leader was a guest last month at an Arab League summit hosted by Jordan -- also a signatory to the Rome Statute. South Africa says it could not arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir when he visited the country for an African Union summit in June 2015 because heads of state have immunity South Africa moved this year to withdraw from the court, angered by the case against it. But it formally revoked its decision last month after its own High Court ruled in February that it would be unconstitutional. Although the date of the hearing was set late last year, it also comes at a moment of political tension in South Africa as embattled President Jacob Zuma faces growing calls to resign. The New York Times said former CIA head John Brennan began in August secretly briefing top Congress members on possible collusion between Trump's inner circle and the Russians The CIA had evidence that Russia was interfering in the 2016 US election to boost Donald Trump earlier than previously thought, the New York Times reported Thursday. Russia's interference was not made public until months after Trump's November 8 election victory, with US intelligence chiefs openly accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin of masterminding a hacking and disinformation campaign to skew the election results. Citing former government officials, The Times said secret briefings much earlier in the presidential campaign had revealed Russia's move to support Trump -- as well as divergence between the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is in charge of counterintelligence. FBI senior officials had held that Russian hacks of Democratic Party communications were aimed at disrupting the election, without the specific goal of electing Trump. The agency later reached the same conclusion as the CIA. John Brennan, the former head of the CIA, began in August secretly briefing top members of Congress on early, CIA-detected signs of possible collusion between Trump's inner circle and the Russians. The FBI confirmed in March that it was probing whether Trump campaign aides had worked with the Russian effort to influence the election. Two congressional intelligence committees have also launched investigations into the allegations. Trump has vehemently denied accusations of collusion, and so far no evidence has publicly surfaced. US president Barack Obama had vowed use of chemical weapons would "change my calculus" to justify military intervention in Syria, but backed down in 2013 President Donald Trump's decision to strike the Syrian regime in retaliation for a chemical attack comes four years after his predecessor Barack Obama faced a similar challenge from Damascus -- and chose to back down. There was no doubt among the international community on August 21, 2013: Obama's "red line" had just been crossed in Syria with a chemical weapons attack outside Damascus that was almost certainly the work of Bashar al-Assad's regime. Two years earlier, Obama had vowed that the use of such weapons would "change my calculus" to justify military intervention in Syria. Britain and France agreed, embracing the president's rhetoric. So when the massacre took place in Ghouta, an eastern suburb of the Syrian capital where US intelligence said some 1,400 were killed by a sarin gas attack, all eyes turned toward Washington. Two days later, Obama said he was ready to strike. But to surprise in the United States and around the world, he said he would put any decision over military action in Syria to a vote in Congress, essentially ruling out any immediate attack. Then his ally British Prime Minister David Cameron -- who had also submitted a decision over military action to his country's lawmakers -- backed out after parliament voted against taking part. In the end, Obama's White House would never directly intervene militarily against the Assad regime, anxious to maintain the region's crumbling geopolitical and military balance. Washington instead agreed to a last-minute deal with Damascus brokered by Moscow to dismantle Syria's chemical weapons arsenal and ship it to Russia starting in October 2013. Under the aegis of the United Nations Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) -- awarded the Nobel Peace Prize that year -- the operation theoretically ended the Syrian government's ability to use chemical weapons against its own citizens or anyone else. - 'Proud' - Obama's controversial decision precipitated an avalanche of criticism in the United States and abroad for his paralysis over Syria. On Tuesday, following a new suspected chemical weapons attack that killed least 86 Syrian civilians -- including 27 children -- that Washington attributed to Assad's regime, Trump said his predecessor bore some responsibility. "These heinous acts are a consequence of the past administration's weakness and irresolution," he said in a statement. Obama had issued a "blank threat," Trump followed up on Wednesday, which "set us back a long ways." This week's attack, he said, "crosses many, many lines." On Thursday, Trump ordered a massive military strike against Syria in retaliation for the attack that Washington said involved a sarin-like nerve agent. Fifty-nine precision-guided missiles hit Shayrat Airfield in Syria, where the United States believes Tuesday's deadly attack was launched, targeting aircraft and runways at the base. - Tough decision - Obama's decision not to attack Syria upset Washington's allies, including French President Francois Hollande, whose relations with the US leader were permanently damaged. For his part, Obama said before stepping down in January that he was "proud" of his decision to refrain from military action in Syria. "The perception was that my credibility was at stake, that America's credibility was at stake," he told The Atlantic magazine. "And so for me to press the pause button at that moment, I knew, would cost me politically." "The fact that I was able to pull back from the immediate pressures and think through in my own mind what was in America's interest, not only with respect to Syria but also with respect to our democracy, was as tough a decision as I've made," he added. "I believe ultimately it was the right decision to make." After Tuesday's suspected attack on the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhun, Trump was standing in Obama's shoes from almost four years ago -- and he decided to step in a different direction. Image released by the US Navy shows the USS Ross firing a Tomahawk missile at a Syrian air force base on April 7, 2017 The missile strike against a Syrian airbase marks the first time the United States has directly attacked the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Here is what we know so far about the target and the outcome of the strike. - The target - At around 3:40 am Syria time on Friday (0040 GMT) the US military fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at the Shayrat airfield near Homs in central Syria. According to the Pentagon, as well as hosting Syrian aircraft the facility was used to store chemical weapons. The Tomahawks targeted aircraft, hardened aircraft shelters, petroleum and logistical storage, ammunition supply bunkers, air defence systems and radars, the Pentagon said. Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain Jeff Davis said the strike lasted "a couple of minutes." US intelligence agents believe aircraft from Shayrat conducted a suspected chemical weapons attack on April 4. National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster said measures had been put in place to avoid hitting sarin gas stored at the airfield. "So that would not be ignited and cause a hazard to civilians or anyone else," McMaster said. - How it was launched - The strike was launched from the destroyers USS Porter and USS Ross in the eastern Mediterranean. Russian forces were warned ahead of the strike using a special military-to-military hotline. Davis said the strike was designed to avoid casualties. "Every precaution was taken to execute this strike with minimal risk to personnel at the airfield," he said. - The result - According to the Pentagon, initial indications showed the strike had severely damaged or destroyed Syrian aircraft, infrastructure and equipment at Shayrat. The Syrian army in a statement said six people were killed at the base and that the attack caused "significant damage". The SANA state news agency said four children were among nine civilians killed in surrounding villages. US officials stressed the strike was a direct reaction to the chemical attack, and not the beginning of a broader military campaign against Assad. "The strike was a proportional response to Assad's heinous act," Davis said. Russian state television said that nine planes have been destroyed at the base, but that the runway was intact. Davis said the runways themselves were not targeted. - Legal concerns - The strike was launched at the order of President Donald Trump and was a "proportional response," Davis said. But critics questioned whether the action amounted to a declaration of war and said Trump should have gone to Congress first. America is currently hitting the Islamic State group in Syria under a 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force. But Damascus government ally Russia said the strike constituted an "aggression against a sovereign state" and suspended a bilateral agreement to help avoid clashes in the skies over Syria. Thai Navy rangers examine a bomb site after insurgents damage dozens of electricity poles in the country's restive south Nearly two dozen arson and bomb attacks erupted across Thailand's insurgency-torn south shortly after midnight, the army said Friday, causing widespread blackouts but no casualties in the Muslim-majority region. The violence, which saw tires set alight and dozens of electricity poles damaged by explosives, struck only hours after Thailand's king Maha Vajiralongkorn signed a new military-backed charter into law. "There are 23 simultaneous incidents in three southern provinces and four districts of Songkhla," said Colonel Pramote Prom-in, an army spokesman for the south. The region has sizzled with violence for over a decade as ethnic Malay rebels battle Thai troops for more autonomy, claiming more than 6,800 lives. The border region was one of few areas to reject the ruling junta's constitution in a referendum that saw the document approved last year. Thailand has been hit by a string of suspected rebel assaults since the killing of two suspected rebels by security forces The new charter curbs the power of elected lawmakers and will bolster the army's role in government even after the junta steps down following elections which are expected in late 2018. However Don Pathan, a Thai analyst based in the far south, said Friday's wave of attacks did not appear to be linked to the charter's signing. The violence was most likely revenge for the killing of two suspected rebels by security forces last month, he told AFP. "There has been a small spike of violence since then. My gut feeling is that last night was a retaliation for that alleged extrajudicial killing," said Pathan. Thailand has been hit by a string of suspected rebel assaults since that fatal shooting on March 29, including one that saw around 30 militants open fire on a police checkpoint in Yala province, injuring 12 officers. The junta, which seized power in 2014, has held several rounds of talks with a group that claims to represent the insurgents. But the negotiations have failed to make headway and many doubt the rebel negotiators have clout over fighters on the ground. The Israeli military said it had been informed in advance of a massive US cruise missile strike on a Syrian airbase Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he supports the "strong and clear message" sent by a US strike on neighbouring Syria on Friday in retaliation for a suspected chemical attack. The Israeli military said it had been informed in advance of a massive cruise missile strike on a Syrian airbase, the first US operation against the Damascus regime in six years of civil war. "In both word and action, President (Donald) Trump sent a strong and clear message today that the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated," a statement from Netanyahu's office said. "Israel fully supports President Trump's decision and hopes that this message of resolve in the face of the Assad regime's horrific actions will resonate not only in Damascus, but in Tehran, Pyongyang and elsewhere." Trump said the strike on the Shayrat airbase with 59 Tomahawk missiles fired from warships in the eastern Mediterranean was in retaliation for what he said was a "barbaric" chemical attack on a rebel-held town in northwestern Syria by the Damascus regime. Israeli President Reuven Rivlin said the "clear and determined steps" taken "constitute a fitting and appropriate response to such unthinkable brutality." There had been international outrage over Tuesday's suspected attack that killed dozens of civilians but Moscow stood by its Damascus ally and warned of the negative consequences of any military action. As a result, a UN Security Council debate on a Western-drafted resolution was again delayed on Thursday amid Russian insistence that the chemical weapons that caused the deaths had been stockpiled by jihadists on the ground and released by a conventional strike. Washington said it had given advance notification of its military action to both Russia, and its Western and Arab allies in a coalition fighting the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq. - 'Message to allies' - Israel has repeatedly struck alleged weapons convoys in Syria they claim are bound for Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah. However it has been reluctant to be dragged into the civil war and has rejected calls for a more substantial intervention. After Russia entered the war in support of its ally President Bashar al-Assad in late 2015, Moscow and Israel agreed to coordinate on their actions to avoid accidents. Last month, Syria fired missiles at Israel after the Jewish state struck a number of sites in the country, in the worst flare-up between the two governments since the civil war began in 2011. Netanyahu said at the time that the Israeli strikes targeted Hezbollah and warned the army would do so again if necessary. On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin called Netanyahu and slammed "unfounded accusations" by the Israeli premier that Assad was responsible for the alleged chemical attack. Moscow has said repeatedly that Tuesday's deaths of dozens of civilians in Khan Sheikhun in northwestern Syria were the result not of a regime chemical attack but of toxic substances that had been stockpiled by jihadists on the ground and released by a conventional strike. Former Israeli security adviser Yaakov Amidror said US regional allies would take the strike as a sign Trump would be more willing to use force to protect their interests than his predecessor Barack Obama. He said it was also a message to Assad and its allies Russia and Iran that "America is back." "I think that the chances for an attack initiated by either Syria or Hezbollah is even less today than before because now it's understood that if they violate the interests of the United States of America... unlike the previous administration, this administration is ready to take action." New South Wales Police Deputy Commissioner Catherine Burn says physical evidence at the scene of the stabbing of a Pakistani points to terrorism A Pakistani petrol station attendant was stabbed to death during an "absolutely horrific" crime spree in Australia, authorities said, fearing Friday that the attack was terror-linked. The 29-year-old man was found with multiple stab wounds late Thursday after allegedly being attacked by two teenage boys. Police believe the pair, aged 15 and 16, went on a rampage, allegedly stabbing another man in the stomach, hitting a third with a tyre iron and a fourth with a beer bottle. Sydney's Daily Telegraph reported that "IS" appeared to be scrawled in blood on a window at the petrol station, referring to the Islamic State group. Authorities did not confirm the gruesome details but Deputy Commissioner Catherine Burn said "there was physical evidence at the scene which does go to our view that this might be an act of terrorism". "We don't know the motivation. We don't know what might have led to this. All we know again is that there are very, very serious crimes," she told reporters at a press conference in Sydney. The boys were arrested early Friday after being chased by New South Wales state police into the Australian Capital Territory. The Sydney Morning Herald said one of the teenager's mothers thought her son had been radicalised in recent weeks. Burn added that both were known to police for other offences, but not terrorism. The 16-year-old was being investigated for terror links, she said. Local police commander Superintendent Rod Smith described the incident as "absolutely horrific" and said "it doesn't get more serious than this". Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull called it "shocking" and reiterated concerns about the radicalisation of youths. Counter-terrorism police have made a series of arrests since late 2014 across Australia and say they have prevented 11 terror attacks on home soil in the past two years. But several attacks have taken place, including the murder of a Sydney police employee in 2015 by a 15-year-old boy, who was then killed in an exchange of gunfire with officers. The young age and radicalisation of many of those detained has been a growing concern for authorities. Last year parliament passed new legislation to lower from 16 to 14 the age at which individuals can be subject to a control order, which aims to prevent a terror attack by limiting a person's movements, communication and activity. A tax proposal to increase funding of the Ozark Regional Library System was simultaneously approved by voters of three counties in the April 4 election, bringing the system to the state-recommended minimum of tax support. Voters in Crawford, Iron and Madison counties each voted to increase support for the library system from 10 to 20 cents per $100 property valuation. The library system lost a substantial amount of funding in 2016 when Ste. Genevieve County decided to remove itself from the library system. Ozark Regional Library System Director Holly Martin Huffman said the tax increase secures the future of the system. It allows us to survive, Martin Huffman said. We really were threatened. For 2017, the system has operated using $250,000 of its reserve, an amount that Martin Huffman said was unsustainable. The system will not receive the newly-approved funds until the end of the year or the beginning of next year. We will be running on reserves the rest of the year, Martin Huffman said. But we anticipate the funds well be receiving, mostly in January. So since we know its coming, were not cutting back on anything, and we hope to maybe do a little more. If the proposals had not passed, Martin Huffman said the system would have had difficult decisions to make regarding where to cut from a budget that couldnt afford to be cut while maintaining current service. Primarily, branch hours, staff and subscription to external services would have been the target of those cuts and may now be the areas which the system will most quickly be able to expand. I think the first thing well look at is hours, Martin Huffman said. Wed like to be able to do evening programming. So wed like to look at offering evening hours at our locations. Some libraries like Madison (County), we may look at doing two evenings a week. Fredericktown Branch Librarian Bill Knight said the additional hours would be a welcome addition, as many groups make use of the librarys current Tuesday evening hours. Our Tuesday evenings are almost solidly booked, presently, Knight said. Its hard to get a program in on a Tuesday evening here. Martin Huffman said the tax dollars will be used to increase library outreach over the long term, in the form of additional staff and programs. She said she is interested in connecting the library branches to area institutions to better serve them, like local schools. If we talk to the schools and we know theyre doing a unit on Greek mythology, then we can get more stuff in at this branch while theyre doing it, Martin Huffman said. We can promote their events and they can promote people coming to the library. She said in the past months, visiting different organizations and officials to educate residents on the tax issue has inadvertently resulted in many of those connections being made in the area that may not have been made otherwise. One of the nice things about this is that by doing all of these things going from meeting to meeting to meeting, weve made connections, Martin Huffman said. It got us out talking to folks. And it was good publicity for the library. Now everybody knows they have a library. Martin Huffman said while the increase may seem like a large increase all at once, the system should have asked voters for incremental increases in past decades, leading up to the state minimum that was requested on April 4. Knight said the results of the election show the publics dedication to the institution of the library and what it stands for. Im so proud to be a citizen of Madison County, Knight said. Because I think the wisdom of creating a legacy library into the future is just something to be really proud of. And Im so proud of us all for doing it. A library is important for yourself, but theres always a thought about someone else when you have a library, Knight said. Its an act of generosity I think, to ourselves kindness to ourselves as a group. While system staff largely bore the responsibility of educating the public on the issue and creating awareness, Knight said the system is indebted to members of the community who went to their friends at coffee shops and churches to convey the importance of the issue. Knight said now more than ever, the library system owes its patrons an excellent level of service. Were sort of in a position of obligation now to do a really excellent job, Knight said. Hollys always talked about how we can be a really excellent library system, and Ive never doubted her, but now weve signed the contract to do it. Im just plain grateful to people for supporting the library, Martin Huffman said. I cant imagine a town the size of Fredericktown not having a strong library. It makes it a more agreeable place to live. Knight said the measure has not only ensured the survival of the library system, but provides great hope for the future. Just two days ago, we didnt really know, Knight said. But were pretty darn sure now that in 20 years, what were talking about is going to be here. So thats just astonishing. Ozark Regional Library System is the oldest such system in the state of Missouri, with branches in Ironton, Annapolis, Viburnum, Steelville, Cuba, Bourbon and Fredericktown. National League for Democracy party official Myo Yan Naung Thein criticised Myanmar's army chief in a Facebook post An official working for Aung San Suu Kyi's government was sentenced to six months in jail by a Yangon court Friday for criticising Myanmar's army chief in a Facebook post. It is the latest verdict to highlight lingering limits on free speech in the young democracy, where the military remains a powerful player despite the end of junta rule. Myo Yan Naung Thein, a researcher for Suu Kyi's ruling party, was arrested in October for urging the head of the army to resign over deadly raids on police posts in the north of Rakhine State. The attacks, by a militant group claiming to represent Myanmar's stateless Rohingya Muslims, sparked an army crackdown so brutal UN investigators believe it may amount to crimes against humanity. In a Facebook post just days after the October raids, Myo Yan Naung Thein said Senior General Min Aung Hlaing was "shameless" for allowing the raids to happen and called for his resignation. The 43-year-old appeared calm as he heard the verdict read out in Yangon's Kamayut township court on Friday, flanked by military officers. But he struck a defiant note as he left the court, criticising the army's continued grip on power even after Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) won the first free elections in half a century in 2015. Under a junta-era constitution the military still controls a quarter of parliament seats and the ministries of home affairs, defence and borders. "It's obvious that we have two groups ruling Myanmar, not only our (elected) government," he told journalists. Myo Yan Naung Thein has been held in jail since his arrest and will be able to walk free in a few weeks because of time served. Prosecutions under a controversial online defamation law have soared since the NLD took power in March 2016, targeting both those who have criticised the army and the new civilian administration. The law was originally passed by the previous military-backed government as part of a raft of measures designed to attract foreign investment in Myanmar's telecoms sector. But activists say it is increasingly being used to stifle free speech and criticism of the government, dashing hopes the NLD would usher in a new era of openness after half a century of repressive military rule. At least 46 cases have been brought over the past year, compared to just seven between when the legislation was passed in 2013 to when the NLD took power. They include cases against two officials from one of the country's biggest media groups, a man who called the president 'crazy' on Facebook and another who wrote curses about the army on his car. Last month a mother launched proceedings against her own son for writing insulting comments about her relationships on Facebook. In this image released by the US Navy, the USS Ross based in the Mediterranean fires a Tomahawk land attack missile April 7, 2017, at a Syrian air force airfield Moscow slammed the US strike on a Syrian airbase Friday as "aggression against a sovereign state", and suspended a bilateral agreement to help avoid clashes in the skies over the war-torn country. "President Putin considers American strikes on Syria aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international norms, and under an invented pretext," said the statement by the Kremlin press service posted on the official website. US President Donald Trump ordered a military strike on a Syrian air base at 0040GMT, in retaliation for what he said was a "very barbaric attack" Tuesday that is suspected to have contained a nerve agent. Moscow has been flying a bombing campaign in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces since September 2015 and on Wednesday said it would continue to back the regime. The Russian foreign ministry announced the suspension of a memorandum signed with the US in October 2015 which set up a hotline to avoid clashes between their air forces in Syrian airspace as they carried out separate bombing campaigns. "We call upon the UN Security Council to hold an extraordinary meeting to discuss the situation," the ministry said in a statement, calling the strike "thoughtless." Russia had sought to deflect blame from Assad over the incident, claiming Syrian jets struck a rebel arms depot housing "toxic substances" and denying that the regime has access to any chemical weapons. "The Syrian army does not have any chemical weapon stockpiles," the Kremlin statement said, accusing Washington of trying to "divert attention of the international community from the many civilian casualties in Iraq." "The fact of destruction of all chemical weapon stockpiles of the Syrian armed forces was recorded and confirmed by the (Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons)." "This step by Washington inflicts considerable damage to US-Russia relations, which are already in a lamentable state," the Kremlin said. A White House official said 59 precision-guided Tomahawk missiles hit the Shayrat airfield, from where the US believes the attack was launched. The Syrian army said that six people were killed and serious damage caused by the strike. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte ordered the armed forces to "occupy all" remote reefs claimed by Manila, in a move that could provoke rival claimants including Beijing The Philippines' military said Friday that it plans to upgrade and improve facilities on islands it already occupies in the disputed South China Sea, not embark on a new land grab. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said Thursday that he had ordered the armed forces to "occupy all" remote reefs claimed by Manila. Rival claimant Beijing responded Friday with a pledge to "firmly safeguard its territorial sovereignty, its maritime rights and interests" in the South China Sea, which is rich in resources and hosts vital shipping lanes. The firebrand Filipino leader said he wanted "nine or 10" islands occupied and fortified, but did not make clear whether he was referring to the nine islands already held by the army, or to some of the 40-odd other Spratly features also claimed by Manila. Duterte's announcement had appeared to be a sharp departure from his previously cordial overtures to Beijing and non-confrontational approach. But military officials on Friday said they did not think order required the army to occupy new outcrops. Disputed Spratly Islands "The context with which we take the order is to improve on our already occupied islands, islets and features," military spokesman Colonel Edgard Arevalo told AFP. The defence department said the plan was to add military barracks, water desalination systems, power generators, light houses, and shelters for fishermen to the features that the Philippines currently occupy. "The president recently announced plans to improve, and implement the Pag-asa development plan which includes nine areas," Duterte spokesman Ernesto Abella said, referring Pag-asa municipality, the Philippines' political subdivision for the Spratly islands that it claims. "This is part of his mandate to serve the best interests of the nation," he added. All other major outcrops inside the section of the Spratlys claimed by Manila are already occupied by troops from other claimant countries, Filipino maritime law expert Jay Batongbacal told AFP Friday. Only a few "reefs and shoals" do not currently have soldiers on them, he said, adding that the Philippine government would likely back away from Duterte's explosive original proposal. China claims most of the sea and in recent years has been building up disputed reefs into artificial islands that can house military facilities, further raising tensions. "We hope the Philippines side can continue to properly manage maritime disputes with China and safeguard together the sound and stable situation of China-Philippines relations," Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a regular press briefing Friday. Medics treat a civilian who was injured during the ongoing conflict between government forces and Islamic State (IS) group jihadists in Mosul at a trauma field hospital on March 29, 2017 Every time a patient is stretchered into the Athbah field hospital south of Mosul, doctor Sultan prays it isn't his sister or brother. Most of the medical staff is from the war-torn Iraqi city and each one of the victims they treat could be a relative or a neighbour. "It's very painful for us... Many people, many children, need amputations or will remain paralysed," he says from the small field hospital set up in Athbah, just a few miles south of Mosul. Sultan, who chose not divulge his full name, fled Mosul when the Islamic State still controlled the city, which they made the de facto Iraqi capital of their now crumbling "caliphate". But his siblings are trapped inside, in neighbourhoods of Mosul's west bank still held by the jihadists despite almost six months of fighting by the security forces to retake the city. "I have no news," he said. "Daesh (IS) uses civilians as human shields and many buildings have been levelled by air strikes. They might be lying under the rubble and I don't know about it." For now, the 43-year-old is treating a man in his forties with facial injuries. "He's stable," he says, after feeling the pulse in the patient's bloodied wrist. In the same room, Faruq Abdulkader is treating a teenager who is writhing in pain but was relatively lucky: "The bullet went straight through the arm without touching the bone," the doctor said, relieved. These doctors used to work in Mosul but fled the tyrannic rule of the jihadists. Now that regular forces are wresting back Iraq's second city street by street, they are back to help. The Athbah field hospital opened on March 24 with support from the World Health Organization and the Iraqi health authorities. - 'Our neighbours' - A young civilian who was injured during the ongoing conflict between government forces and Islamic Stategroup jihadists in Mosul is treated by medics at a trauma field hospital on March 29, 2017 Abdulkader said most of the injuries they treated were caused by explosions but the hardest thing was often to witness the suffering of their own neighbours. "Some of them are our neighbours, coming from the same area where I was living in Mosul, and I'm so sad for them," he said. The fighting to retake what is now the last major IS stronghold in Iraq is taking its toll on civilians. According to the United Nations, at least 307 of them were killed between February 17 and March 22, a period which only covers the first weeks of the offensive on west Mosul but not the entire operation that started in mid-October last year. The 29-year-old Abdulkader says he feels lucky to be in a position to support the humanitarian effort because two of his fellow doctors were killed -- "one by the jihadists and the other in an air strike." A patient is rushed in to the trauma unit, the third in half an hour. His face is entirely covered in bandages, bones visible all over his body. The Mosul battle has lasted nearly six months and supplies have dwindled sharply as Iraqi forces secured the city's east bank and sealed their siege on the jihadists' last redoubts on the west side. Basic goods have been unavailable for months and the little food that is left is either too expensive or hoarded by the jihadists. "Nearly all our patients suffer from malnutrition," says Taryn Anderson, head nurse at the Athbah clinic. "We can't call it a famine but it's very alarming, especially for the children." After examining the very weak patient who was just wheeled in, the doctors decide against a transfusion -- the precious blood they do have will be saved for other patients with a real chance of survival. Ali Saad Abdulkhaled, a 26-year-old nurse who used to treat people in his home in east Mosul during the fighting there, said the number of wounded civilians was increasing sharply. "The west side is more densely populated, it's the Old City," he said. "The number of victims is huge. They are our neighbours, our families." Protesters were calling for the resignation of the president after a highly controversial reshuffle Tens of thousands of protesters marched through South African cities on Friday demanding President Jacob Zuma's resignation, as a second ratings agency downgraded the country's debt to junk status. Zuma's sacking of respected finance minister Pravin Gordhan last week has fanned public anger, divisions within the ruling ANC party and a sharp decline in investor confidence in the country. "Recent political events, including a major cabinet reshuffle, will weaken standards of governance and public finances," the Fitch ratings agency predicted as it announced the downgrade. The Standard & Poor's agency had also downgraded South African sovereign debt to junk status after Zuma's dramatic ministerial shake-up. Zuma, who came to power in 2009, has been battered by a series of corruption scandals during his time in office, while the country has suffered record unemployment, slowing growth and stubborn racial inequality. Ex-South African finance minister Pravin Gordhan was seen as a bulwark against corruption His removal of Gordhan unleashed a fresh bout of criticism, as many ordinary South Africans and international investors saw the former minister as a bulwark against corruption. In the biggest political protests for several years, large crowds gathered in the capital Pretoria, the economic hub Johannesburg and coastal cities of Durban and Cape Town. Several thousand people attended the Johannesburg protest organised by the opposition Democratic Alliance party, which hopes to make gains in 2019 elections under its leader Mmusi Maimane, 36. "We want Zuma to fall. He is too corrupt. Real people are struggling. I voted for Nelson Mandela, but Maimane has a lot of integrity and he's young," protester Vanessa Michael, 54, from East Rand, told AFP. Mabefw Malega, a 38-year-old undertaker who had travelled three hours from Limpopo province to march said "people just want Zuma gone". One young woman in a wheelchair held a banner that said "I love my country, not my government". Johannesburg was thronged with the DA's signature blue while Luthuli House, the nerve centre of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), was surrounded by its veteran anti-apartheid fighters, dressed in camouflage, in a show of loyalty to Zuma. The ANC led the decades-long struggle against apartheid, and carried Nelson Mandela to power in the 1994 elections that ended white-minority rule. But the party has lost popularity in recent years and slipped to 55 percent of the vote in last year's local elections -- its worst ever result. - Divided ANC? - The reshuffle has caused huge political turmoil Zuma this week appeared to have quelled a rebellion within the ANC despite senior party figures, including Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, speaking out against Gordhan's sacking. The cabinet overhaul -- which was announced in a midnight statement -- cleared out many of Zuma's critics and placed loyalists in key positions. "Tensions within the ANC will mean that political energy will be absorbed by efforts to maintain party unity and fend off leadership challenges," Fitch said in its statement. "The agency believes that the cabinet reshuffle will further undermine the investment climate." Junk status was likely to increase the cost of the government's debt and shrink public funds available for welfare, health, education and housing. South Africa's trade union federation Cosatu this week joined many anti-apartheid veterans, civil action groups and business leaders calling for the president to resign. "We must move forward with the South Africa of our dreams -- not South Africa that will enrich a few cronies," Solly Mapaila, of the South African Communist Party, told the rally in Pretoria. Zuma, 74, is due to step down as head of the ANC in December, and as president ahead of the 2019 general election. He is seen as favouring his ex-wife, former African Union chief Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, to succeed him. Zuma has been accused of being in the sway of the wealthy Gupta business family, allegedly granting them influence over government appointments, contracts and state-owned businesses. Friday's marches were mainly peaceful, though police used stun grenades to disperse rival groups of protesters outside the Guptas' main residence in Johannesburg. Outside Cape Town, retired archbishop Desmond Tutu, who is in frail health, made an appearance to support the protests. Parliament will vote on a motion of no confidence in the president on April 18, though he has easily survived previous such votes against him. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan addresses the Mukhtars (local administrators) meeting in Ankara, on April 5, 2017 Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday welcomed the US strike on an airbase of the Syrian regime but said it was not enough and more action was needed. "I want to say that I welcome this concrete step as positive," Erdogan, a longtime foe of President Bashar al-Assad, said in a rally in the southern city of Antakya just north of the Syrian border. "Is it enough? I don't see this as enough... the time has come for steps for a serious result to protect the oppressed Syrian people," he added. US President Donald Trump ordered the missile strike in retaliation for the suspected chemical weapons attack in the town of Khan Sheikhun in northwestern Syria's Idlib province that killed dozens and was blamed by many world leaders on Assad. Erdogan reaffirmed his past calls that international community needed to impose a safe zone in northern Syria -- which Ankara has said should be backed by a no-fly zone -- to ensure security in the area. "We again say how important it is for a terror-free safe zone to be created," he told thousands of supporters in the city. He added: "I want to state something clearly: while children are being massacred in this world, no one has the right to feel themselves safe or in peace." Hours before the military strike took place, Erdogan had called on Trump in a television interview to back up his harsher rhetoric against Assad with actions, telling his US counterpart "don't limit yourself to comments". Erdogan's spokesman Ibrahim Kalin earlier said the strike against the Sharyat airbase in Homs, northern Syria, was "a positive response" to the "war crimes" of the regime of Assad. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu meanwhile said safe zones in Syria were "now important more than ever" and said Assad needed to be ousted from power. "This regime should be ousted from leading Syria at once. The best way to do this is to start a transition process as soon as possible," said Cavusoglu. "We need to establish a transition government." There were protests outside the Russian and Iranian embassies in Ankara on Friday, with hundreds of demonstrators carrying 100 black coffins with images of children killed in Tuesday's attack in Idlib, an AFP photographer said. The coffins had "murderer Assad" and "tyrant Putin" written on them. Dozens of the victims were treated in Turkey and the Turkish health ministry on Thursday said initial analysis suggested victims were exposed to the deadly nerve agent sarin. South Sudanese refugees at the "Refugee Waiting Centre" in Al-Eligat Fighting in the South Sudan town of Pajok sent over 6,000 people fleeing this week, with refugees recounting the slaughter of civilians by government forces, the UN refugee agency said Friday. Fighting between government forces and rebels erupted on Monday in the town of Pajok in the country's southern Equatoria region, a previously peaceful part of the country that has seen a surge in conflict in recent months. According to a statement from the UNHCR over 6,000 people have fled into the northern Ugandan district of Lamwo since the attack while many others were hiding in the bush trying to find their way to safety in Uganda as main roads were blocked by armed groups. "People fleeing the recent incident claimed that the town came under an indiscriminate attack by the South Sudan armed forces," the statement said. "Refugees told the UNHCR team on the ground in Lamwo terrifying stories of violence and abuse against civilians. Many have witnessed their loved ones shot dead or slaughtered like animals," UNHCR spokesman Rocco Nuri told AFP. "Families fled in all directions. Those unable to run were reportedly shot dead, including the elderly and people with disabilities." A local pastor who fled Pajok on Wednesday, and asked not to be named, told AFP soldiers had entered the town in tanks "and suddenly we saw shooting and we just had to run." Both he and regional Anglican Bishop Bernard Oringa reported that some 135 people had been killed, however this could not be independently verified. - UN blocked from town - The UN peacekeeping mission UNMISS said in a statement on Wednesday that they had twice been prevented from accessing Pajok since the fighting broke out. "The mission has received reports of fighting between SPLA (government) troops and the opposition there and is trying to follow-up on reports of civilians killed in the area," the statement added. South Sudan government spokesman Michael Makuei confirmed to AFP that its forces had attacked Pajok. "As you know Pajok has been in the hands of the rebels so what happened was government forces went there and fighting ensued and so the civilian population that has been staying with the rebels had to run away," he said. "I don't know the figure (of those killed or injured) but in any fighting there must be casualties." Uganda currently hosts more than 832,000 refugees from South Sudan, including over 270,000 in the Bidibidi refugee camp which in eight months has gone from an empty patch of land to the world's biggest refugee camp. South Sudan's leaders fought for decades for independence, but once they got it in 2011, the fighting turned inward and civil war erupted in 2013 out of a power struggle between President Salva Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar. Brutal violence has forced over 1.7 million to flee the country and another 1.9 million are internally displaced. The war has also created a man-made famine, exacerbating the dire humanitarian crisis. Sudan reports 1,500 fleeing into the country every day, while over 2,000 arrive every day in Uganda. According to the UNHCR monthly arrivals into Ethiopia's Gambella region tripled between February and March to over 16,000, with most fleeing fighting in the Upper Nile and Jonglei states. Egyptian Comedian Bassem Youssef poses at the SLS Hotel on April 6, 2017, in Los Angeles, California Not long ago, the Egyptian heart surgeon-turned-comedian Bassem Youssef was hosting the most popular political satire television show in his country's history. Launched after the 2011 uprising ousted former president Hosni Mubarak from power, the groundbreaking "Al Bernameg" (The Show) drew as many as 30 million viewers per episode in a country of 82 million people -- until it folded and Youssef left the country. Now his story is chronicled in a documentary titled "Tickling Giants," which premieres on Friday in Los Angeles. He also has a new memoir out called "Revolution for Dummies." Dubbed Egypt's Jon Stewart, Youssef ignored all the rules governing the state-controlled media, lampooning politicians from across the spectrum and providing a much-needed dose of humor as the country was undergoing massive political turmoil. But his mockery proved too much for the country's new rulers -- first the Muslim Brotherhood-led regime of Mohamed Morsi, elected president after Mubarak's downfall, and then the current president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who ousted Morsi. After "El Bernameg" folded in 2014, Youssef left Egypt with his family, first heading to Dubai before settling in Los Angeles. "There are many people, especially Egyptians, who will watch this movie and they will consider it... a story of a very important period of history for them," the exiled 43-year-old comedian told AFP in an interview. He praised the film's director Sara Taksler -- a longtime producer on "The Daily Show," formerly hosted by Youssef's idol Jon Stewart -- for managing to use comedy and satire to capture the upheaval of the Arab Spring in Egypt and explaining it to Western audiences without lecturing. "Most importantly, this is a human story." - Adjusting to America - Egyptian anti-government demonstrators (bottom) clash with pro-regime supporters in Cairo's Tahrir Square during the 2011 revolt that deposed Hosni Mubarak Despite the silencing of his show, Youssef takes pride in knowing that "Al Bernameg" helped spur debate, offering a conduit through which viewers expressed their frustrations with the political system. "The show gave people a motivation to speak their mind through comic memes, funny sketches on YouTube or on the internet, so people kind of found their voice," he says. "I think we have opened the door to many people to come forward and do something that was not even imaginable before." As for his new life, Youssef acknowledges that it has been difficult to adjust, especially because his arrival in the United States coincided with one of the most acrimonious presidential campaigns ever. "You have all these jokes about me leaving a dictator for someone who is trying to become one," he said, referring to US President Donald Trump. "But however horrible Trump is, you still have faith in the institutions that can actually hold him back." - An adventure - Taksler says following Youssef for three years chronicling his story against the backdrop of the Arab Spring has given her a new sense of appreciation about the importance of free speech. "When we were making 'Tickling Giants,' I couldn't imagine what it would be like to have a president who was so sensitive to jokes and now we have the tiniest taste of that," she said. "I can't imagine what Bassem's team felt like dealing with the repercussions." Looking forward, Youssef says he is reviewing his options as he reinvents himself in America. "This is a very tough market, it's Hollywood and there are people who are even more experienced than I am who are struggling," he said. "It's an adventure, it is something that is interesting and terrifying at the same time." Still, he says he wouldn't trade the jokes for a return to heart surgery. Egytian political satirist Bassem Youssef (R) has been called "The Jon Stewart of Middle East" as Stewart's television program "The Daily Show" was the inspiration that led Youssef to begin his career as outspoken political critic "If I hadn't embarked on this journey, I wouldn't be sitting here with a big poster with my face on it and a documentary about me," he said. "All I did was crack jokes and I have more media attention than any heart surgeon in my field, which is a little bit unfair. But this is life." Congolese Prime Minister Samy Badibanga (pictured) resigned on April 7, 2017 as part of a power-sharing deal brokered by President Joseph Kabila with the opposition President Joseph Kabila on Friday named an opposition leader as prime minister for the Democratic Republic of Congo, honouring a pledge made as part of a stalled power-sharing deal agreed in December. Bruno Tshibala, a spokesman for the "Rassemblement" (Unity) coalition of parties opposed to Kabila's rule, will replace Samy Badibanga, who resigned as prime minister earlier Friday. But the party, formed by veteran opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi, has struggled to live up to its name. Tshisekedi was to have led the transitional watchdog overseeing the power-sharing accord, but his death in February threw the Unity grouping into turmoil. Tshibala in particular contested the push by Tshisekedi's son Felix to take over as leader, prompting his exclusion from the group as well as the UDPS party. While announcing his plan to name a new premier on Wednesday, Kabila urged the opposition "to overcome its internal squabbles" and hand him a list of candidates for the post of prime minister. The appointment of a new premier is part of the deal brokered by the influential Catholic church on New Year's Eve, which aimed to avoid a full-blown crisis in the central African country after Kabila refused to step down when his second and final five-year term ended in December. The agreement would allow Kabila, 45, to remain in office until elections in late 2017, ruling in tandem with a transitional watchdog and a new premier chosen from within the opposition ranks. Violence has flared across the central African country of 71 million people amid fears of a continued delay in this year's promised elections. The country, which suffered through two wars between 1996 and 2003, has not had a democratic transition of power since its independence from Belgium in 1960. Neil Gorsuch testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on his US Supreme Court nomination March 22, 2017 The US Senate confirmed Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court Friday, culminating a 13-month fight over the vacancy and rewarding President Donald Trump by bringing a conservative tilt back to the bench. The federal judge from Colorado crossed the finish line in a 54-45 vote, one day after Trump's Republicans controversially changed Senate rules to circumvent a Democratic blockade of his nomination. "Today is a new day," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said ahead of the vote, seeking to put a positive stamp on what has been a contentious congressional process for the new Republican administration. Gorsuch is "going to make an incredible addition to the court," McConnell said. "He's going to make the American people proud." The White House said Gorsuch -- the youngest nominee in a generation -- will be sworn in by Chief Justice John Roberts on Monday at 9:00 am (1300 GMT) in a private ceremony. A public White House ceremony follows at 11:00 am. Trump, in his superlative style, praised Gorsuch's confirmation process as "the most transparent and accessible in history." "As a deep believer in the rule of law, Judge Gorsuch will serve the American people with distinction as he continues to faithfully and vigorously defend our Constitution," he said in a statement. US Supreme Court The 49-year-old judge has been hailed by Republicans as a worthy successor to towering conservative justice Antonia Scalia, who died in February 2016 as the presidential race was gaining steam. The nine-justice court has had one seat vacant for more than a year amid the ensuing political battle, with Democrats and Republicans trading bitter accusations of blame. Gorsuch's ability to write incisive rulings and his defense of a strict reading of the Constitution have fueled comparisons with Scalia. But Gorsuch was staunchly opposed by opposition Democrats, angry that Republicans refused to grant a hearing to then-president Barack Obama's pick to replace Scalia, Merrick Garland. McConnell argued that since it was an election year, the next president should pick the nominee. The Supreme Court is the final arbiter of many of the most sensitive issues of American life and law. Its members are appointed for life, so their influence is long-lasting. - Travel ban on horizon - The fight came to a head Thursday as Democrats mounted a so-called filibuster that prevented Gorsuch's nomination from advancing to a final vote. Senate Republican leaders countered with the so-called "nuclear option," a maneuver that changed the chamber's rules so that moving Gorsuch -- and all subsequent Supreme Court nominees -- to a final vote requires a simple majority of 51 votes, rather than the traditional 60 votes. "Today is a new day," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said ahead of the vote, seeking to put a positive stamp on what has been a contentious congressional process for the new Republican administration The confirmation itself requires only a simple majority, which Gorsuch received with support from the chamber's majority Republicans and a handful of Democrats. Number two Senate Republican John Cornyn appeared elated that the long confirmation struggle was over. "It's a relief," he told AFP. "I think people were expecting a mushroom cloud as a result of the nuclear option, but it's really just a restoration of the status quo before the filibuster yesterday." Gorsuch's confirmation is destined to shape the bench just as Trump is seeking approval of a key plank of his political platform: his executive order that halts entry to the United States from citizens of several Muslim-majority nations. The so-called travel ban has been halted in lower federal courts, but experts expect it will make its way to the Supreme Court. Neil Gorsuch's Supreme Court nomination was staunchly opposed by Democrats, angry that Republicans refused to grant a hearing to then-president Barack Obama's pick to replace Antonin Scalia, Merrick Garland Stephen Yale-Loehr, who teaches immigration law at Cornell Law School, said Trump has reason for optimism if his travel ban gets considered by the high court, possibly later this year. "The court generally defers to the executive branch on immigration matters because immigration touches on national sovereignty and foreign relations issues" Yale-Loehr told AFP. "That may be particularly true" with Gorsuch on the bench, he added. - 'Pro-corporate court?' - While Republicans have trumpeted Gorsuch's sterling reputation, Democrats expressed worry that his record shows he is a jurist who favors big business. Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer said he hopes Gorsuch has listened to "our concerns about the Supreme Court increasingly drifting toward becoming a more pro-corporate court that favors employers, corporations and special interests over working America." Gorsuch replaces another conservative, so his appointment does not dramatically alter the ideological makeup of the court. It is the next court appointment -- whenever it comes -- that would presage such a shift. "I believe (changing the confirmation rules) will make the Supreme Court a more partisan place. As a result, America's faith in the integrity of the court, and their trust in the basic impartiality of the law will suffer," Democrat Chuck Schumer said Professor Thomas Lee of Fordham University School of Law predicted that Gorsuch's presence on the closely divided court will not automatically translate into more 5-4 wins for conservatives, at least not in particularly socially controversial cases. Eighty-year-old Justice Anthony Kennedy, appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1987, "will remain the swing voter," Lee said. "But some issues likely to be decided in the near future include questions of church-state relations regarding religion, exemptions for religious reasons, and state regulation of gun and abortion rights." A local veteran was recently honored with induction onto the Wall of Valor at the John J. Pershing VA Medical Center in Poplar Bluff for his heroic actions during the Vietnam War. Clyde Briley was among five U.S. Army veterans recognized on Feb. 13 during an induction ceremony. As reported in Poplar Bluffs Daily American Republic newspaper, the Wall of Valor features veterans who have served with extraordinary distinction, giving the community a way to show its gratitude for their service to the country. Briley, who has been awarded the National Defense Service Medal, the Vietnam Campaign Medal, the Bronze Star, Purple Heart and Air Medal, was specifically recognized for his actions on April 17, 1971 in the Thua Thien Province of Vietnam when he rushed to the aid of several of his fellow soldiers who were injured when a land mine exploded. Not knowing if any other mines could go off or if he would be fired upon by the enemy, Briley didnt hesitate to enter the area to administer first aid to his brothers-in-arms. Despite becoming seriously injured himself when another mine was detonated, his actions were instrumental in getting the wounded soldiers successfully evacuated. Briley explained that the incident occurred that morning as the soldiers were coming back from night patrol just after 6 a.m. I watched them come across this opening and two guys came first and the third guy just blew up from the explosion, he said. So I knew he was wounded. And me and some other guys went out there to help I had the radio and was calling in medivac. Another soldier was directing the helicopter to land in an area that was believed to be free of booby traps, but the down-pressure from the copters blades set off a mine nearby. That wounded me and two others, he said. But you do anything for your friends, because thats the ones you rely on and if Id been the one out there, theyd have been the guys to come out there and help me. Its just natural Youve got people with you that are willing to make any sacrifice for you. Youve just got that bond that builds up and you can trust them. Briley was just 20 years old when he landed in Saigon on the southern coast of South Vietnam, on Friday the 13th in November of 1970. A soldier in the 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry of the 101st Airborne Division, Briley primarily served as a machine gunner. Like other young soldiers suddenly forced to deal with the common-place horrors and death that occurred every day during the Vietnam War, Briley relied upon the bonds of brotherhood to get him through the experience and back home. Whenever they were not engaging with the enemy, the men would gather together and drink beer, if it was available, play cards, talk about their families and play practical jokes on each other. You got to know everything about the guys you was with, said Briley in an interview in 2015. You get to know more about them than you do your own brothers and sisters. We spent our times out in the jungle and up on the hills and we had our bad times and we had our good times. Brileys strong sense of loyalty to his brothers-in-arms remains undiminished today. When speaking with him, its obvious that his own heroic actions, medals and honors take a back seat to making sure that all veterans are recognized and appreciated. Speaking of the members of the Leadington VFW post, Briley said, We give a lot to different organizations and lots of kids and were non-alcoholic and a lot of people cant believe that but we do good community service and nobody really knows about it unless youre a member or involved in it. Post members also visit nursing homes to spend time with residents and deliver donations theyve collected for the facilities. One of Brileys friends and a fellow veteran, Donald Duck Nelson, is known for his frequent visits to nursing homes and senior centers with his friend Ted Byers. The pair, known simply as Duck and Ted, put on free singing performances for senior citizens. Briley, who lives in the Park Hills area, speaks fondly of many of his other fellow veterans as well, including George Doc Neckermann, who is also a member of the Leadington VFW post and who served in the Pacific during World War II from 1943-1945. Among his other contributions to the community, Neckermann delivered meals for the Park Hills Senior Center for 15 years. Were pretty close Hes kinda getting up there (in age) but you cant tell, said Briley with a smile. US Attorney General Jeff Sessions, seen in March 2017, has said that US police are too controlled to halt what the government claims is a sharp surge in murder and violent crime, which has moved steadily down over two decades and ticked up in 2015 US Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Friday blasted an agreement to rein in Baltimore's notorious police department, saying it would lead to more crime. He criticized a federal judge's approval of a consent decree that requires Baltimore police to implement sweeping reforms. The agreement -- which followed riots in the East Coast city after the 2015 death in police custody of 25-year-old Freddie Gray -- forces the police to respect the rights of citizens, end harsh patrol tactics in black neighborhoods and use body cameras. The Baltimore government and police agreed on the decree last year, but the new administration of President Donald Trump, promising to empower police to crack down on crime, sought to delay and modify it. "Today, a federal court entered a consent decree that will require the court and a highly paid monitor to govern every detail of how the Baltimore Police Department functions for the foreseeable future," Sessions said. "While the Department of Justice continues to fully support police reform in Baltimore, I have grave concerns that some provisions of this decree will reduce the lawful powers of the police department and result in a less-safe city." Freddie Gray's death, which happened while in police custody in 2015, sparked riots in Baltimore to end harsh patrol tactics in black neighborhoods Consent decrees are essentially contracts police departments enter into with the Justice Department to implement reforms under federal oversight, and usually arise from rampant corruption and rights abuses in the police. Around a dozen metropolitan police departments were pushed into such agreements during the previous administration of president Barack Obama, amid a surge of police shootings of unarmed black men. Those included the cities of Cleveland, Ohio and Ferguson, Missouri, where police shootings prompted local protests and a national outcry. Baltimore's police came under scathing criticism after the death of Gray, who suffered a severed spine while being transported in the back of a police van with his hands and feet bound. Police said his death was an accident. Six officers were charged in the case, but all got off after prosecutors failed to provide enough evidence to convict them. Despite such cases, Sessions has said that US police are too tightly controlled to halt what the government claims is a sharp surge in murder and violent crime. Although down steadily over the past two decades, crime numbers ticked up in 2015, the latest nationwide data available. But crime has steadily risen in Baltimore. Sessions said violent crime was up 22 percent in 2016 and murders rose 78 percent, and have continued to gain pace this year. "Meanwhile," he said, "arrests in the city fell 45 percent based on some of these ill-advised reforms." "There are clear departures from many proven principles of good policing that we fear will result in more crime." In this image released by the US Navy, the guided-missile destroyer USS Porter conducts strike operations while in the Mediterranean Sea on April 7, 2017 Donald Trump's cruise missile strike on a Syrian air base drags Washington deeper into the country's tragedy but does not yet represent a new strategy to oust Bashar al-Assad. The new US president has been an outspoken opponent of US military intervention in Middle East conflicts and until this week, his administration had insisted that removing the Syrian strongman was not a priority. But Assad's alleged use of a banned nerve agent to massacre scores of civilians moved Trump to act, which in turn gave hope to those who have long hoped that the United States would help depose him. They may well be disappointed. Trump's cautious chief diplomat, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, was quick to pour cold water on the idea that the cruise missile salvo heralded a change in strategy. "I would not in any way attempt to extrapolate that to a change in our policy or our posture relative to our military activities in Syria today. There's been no change in that status," Tillerson said. - Regime overthrow - James Jeffrey, who held senior national security positions under former president George W. Bush and advised Tillerson when the secretary was head of oil giant ExxonMobil, does not see a change in tack. A minivan drives past a portrait of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus on April 7, 2017 "I think the administration clearly is in a different place with Assad than it was a week ago, but I don't think its primary intent is to use military force to directly overthrow this regime," Jeffrey said. But could the strike hasten Assad's fall by forcing him or his backers Russia and Iran to take the UN-mediated effort to negotiate a political solution to the civil war more seriously? The idea is not new. Former US president Barack Obama famously backed away from a threat to punish Assad's chemical weapons use in 2013, agreeing instead to allow him to surrender his arsenal. It now seems clear that the Syrian autocrat cheated on that deal and kept at least some of his banned nerve agents -- as well as carrying out frequent attacks with mixed-use substances like chlorine. In June last year, dozens of dissident US diplomats signed a "dissent cable" protesting Obama's policy and urging "a judicious use of stand-off and air weapons" to get Assad's attention. Then secretary of state John Kerry was loyal to Obama in public but has let it be known that he sympathized with the view of his colleagues, feeling US action might force Assad to the table. Thursday night's cruise missile attack was exactly the kind of raid the diplomats wanted. So might Assad now see the UN peace track in Geneva as a way out of the conflict? - Punishment strikes - Observers say that even if Assad believes he can hang on without seriously engaging in the peace process, Russia may be running out of patience with him, especially after the latest atrocity. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley delivers remarks during a meeting of the United Nations Security Council concerning the situation in Syria, at UN headquarters, April 7, 2017 in New York City Andrew Tabler, a veteran regional expert who founded Syria's first English-language news magazine and is now a fellow of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, thinks so. "In a way the strikes are not necessarily a bad thing for Russia," he told reporters. "Russia's had a very hard time getting president Assad to come to the negotiating table in any kind of meaningful way." If Washington remains prepared to punish any further chemical strikes -- "and I think under this administration that is within the realm of the possible" -- Assad may back down. "How you get there, though, is the real question," Tabler added, suggesting that Tillerson's planned trip to Moscow next week could be key to turning the strikes into a strategy. Russia has accused Washington of violating international law by attacking Assad's air base, but US officials argue they are covered by a 2013 UN Security Council resolution. Under UNSCR 2118, passed in September 2013, Assad agreed to surrender his declared stockpile of chemical arms and to abide by the international convention banning their use. "The question is: Can you get Assad off of this course where he thinks that the only solution to the war is a military solution, that there is a political solution?" Tabler said. "I think you can, but I think it's going to take a strategy that has to include the likelihood that the regime could use strategic weapons again in the future and that an international response would have to be looming." Any new strategy, just like Obama's before it, will need Russia's support -- reluctant or otherwise -- and the key to that may be Tillerson's Moscow talks with President Vladimir Putin next week. "If the Russians don't cancel the visit, and I hope they don't, that will be a sign that they're willing to live with this strike," Jeffrey suggested. US President Donald Trump ordered a massive military strike against Syria on April 6, 2017, in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack blamed on President Bashar al-Assad Russia hailed Donald Trump when he came to power as the leader who could help restore battered ties between Moscow and Washington. But the US president's surprise missile strike in Syria against the Kremlin's ally Bashar al-Assad has instead thrown down a gauntlet, infuriating Moscow and challenging its dominance in the war-torn country. Since launching a bombing campaign to support Assad's forces in September 2015, Russian President Vladimir Putin has turned the tide in the six-year war and made Moscow the key player in shaping Syria's future. As Washington backed off under former president Barack Obama, Putin stepped in to fill the vacuum and reassert Russian influence in the Middle East. Now, Trump has struck after just a few days of outrage over an alleged chemical weapons attack, ignoring Moscow's claims the regime was not to blame. Russian and American militaries in Syria The new US leader's willingness to wade in appears to have caught the Kremlin flat-footed and represents a threat to Moscow's undisputed superiority in Syria. The immediate reaction to the strike was strong condemnation of an "aggression against a sovereign state" as officials struggled to digest the news. The Kremlin accused Trump of reneging on pledges to focus on fighting Islamic State jihadists and insisted the move would "inflict considerable damage on US-Russia relations, which are already in a lamentable state". - Russian defences? - Russia's S-400 air defence missile systems stand at an airfield at the Hmeimim airbase in the Syrian province of Latakia The fact that the US managed to strike a Syrian air base unhindered has also raised immediate questions over Moscow's much-vaunted defence capabilities in the country. Russia shipped the latest S-400 air defence system to its Khmeimim air base in Syria after a Turkish jet shot down one of its warplanes in October 2015. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the US had warned Moscow ahead of the strike, but he refused to say whether any Russian soldiers had to be evacuated from the base nor if Moscow had taken a conscious decision not to try to shoot down the US missiles. Russia's military insisted its air defences could protect its forces deployed in Syria and said "measures" would be taken to bolster Syrian's own system. But experts said the US strike showed Moscow was likely unwilling -- as well as unable -- to stop an attack against a determined Washington. The USS Ross fires a tomahawk land attack missile on April 7, 2017, at a Syrian air force airfield "Russia has helped the Syrians update their air defences but it seems the Americans can easily overcome them," independent Russian military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer told AFP. Felgenhauer said that Moscow was likely hoping the US strike was a one-off and would hold back from any retribution that could up the tensions still further in the expectation that it can keep the lid on things. "They will of course severely condemn the American 'aggressor' and complain, but will not move onto radical actions," he said. - Tillerson visit - Trump's top diplomat, Rex Tillerson, is set to pay his first visit to Moscow as US secretary of state The strikes in Syria came as Moscow and Washington were gearing up for a key week in relations between the two countries. Trump's top diplomat, Rex Tillerson, is set to pay his first visit to Moscow next week as US secretary of state. Russia's hopes of a rapid improvement in relations have already dimmed as ties to Moscow have become politically toxic for Trump, after allegations the Kremlin conducted a hacking and influence campaign to help get him elected. Moscow was intent on using the visit to bolster its calls for the US to join forces against IS jihadists. These talks now look set to be dominated by the fallout from the US strikes and the deep divisions over Syria. But analyst Andrei Baklitsky said the fact that Moscow had not pulled the plug on Tillerson's visit showed the Kremlin was hoping it could weather this storm and get on with repairing ties. "There is the sense that all sides seem to be trying to evaluate what happened and what it means, but not that this is the start of a major confrontation," Baklitsky from the Moscow-based PIR Centre think tank said. From now on, however, it looks like a shocked Moscow will have to pay more heed to the US over Syria after edging Washington further out of the picture and largely getting its own way. "American involvement in the war in Syria has been dangling for a long time like a sword of Damocles," Baklitsky said. "Now it is clear that America is capable of using force in the region and that means America's opinion needs to be listened to more. Syrian residents of Khan Sheikhun hold placards and pictures on April 7, 2017 during a protest condemning a suspected chemical weapons attack on their town that killed at least 86 people While Western powers have blamed Syria's regime for this week's suspected chemical attack, questions remain over why it would make such a move following a string of victories and a diplomatic comeback. The alleged toxic gas strike in Syria's northwest prompted the United States to launch 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Shayrat airbase in the early hours of Friday morning. US President Donald Trump said Damascus was "directly linked to the horrific chemical weapons attack" on Tuesday which killed at least 86 people including 27 children. But it remains unclear why President Bashar al-Assad's government would have ordered the strike -- and to what extent his inner circle was involved. "It's not an isolated thing. They have been doing this for quite some time," said Salman Shaikh, founder and CEO of regional consultancy the Shaikh Group. The government had carried out previous chemical attacks as a "test to see if there is pushback" from the West, he said. This time around, Shaikh said, there were indications senior regime officials, including Assad's powerful brother Maher, were "in a panic," perhaps revealing the operation may have been carried out without their approval. A man looks on in a bus carrying Syrian victims of suspected chemical attack back to the Syrian border after treatment at Reyhanli hospital in Hatay on April 7, 2017 The West has pressed sanctions against Syria's regime since the early days of the conflict, which erupted in 2011 with anti-Assad protests. But efforts for stronger action at the UN have been repeatedly blocked by Assad's main ally Russia -- even after a chemical attack in a Damascus suburb killed hundreds in 2013. Backed by Russia, the regime has been gaining the upper hand in the war, recapturing second city Aleppo in December and continuing to position itself as a potential partner against extremist groups. Reed Foster, an analyst at IHS Jane's, a London-based think-tank, said it remained unclear why the regime would carry out such an operation -- particularly in light of Trump's reaction. "The attack itself opened the way for further US or Western military intervention to degrade Syrian military capabilities," he said. Malcome Chalmers, research director at the Royal United Service Institute (RUSI), said the strikes were part of a "pattern we've seen again and again". "This is part of a very established pattern of seeking to demoralise civilian populations in areas not under government control. These were not military strikes, these were very clearly intended to demoralise civilian populations," he said. "The regime still believes it can establish control over much larger areas of Syria." - Hardliners responsible? - A man carries a symbolic coffin during a protest in Ankara against Russia's alleged role in a chemical attack in Syria Some analysts believe Syrian forces may have carried out the attack without the go-ahead of President Assad. "I think there are hardliners in Damascus who ordered the strike to get back at the Russians who are negotiating at the expense of the Syrians," said Fabrice Balanche, an analyst at the Washington Institute. "If the Russians and the regime stay calm, there will be no further escalation after Friday's strike. The aim is to punish the regime for its excesses, not to get into a confrontation," Balanche said. He suspected that Russian President Vladimir Putin was likely furious with Assad over the strike but felt "obliged to support him". Some suspicion has also fallen on Iran carrying out the suspected toxic air raid, envious of the clout Russia has gained in Syria. A Lebanese researcher who did not wish to give his name as he works inside Syria said "Iran should not be ruled out because it does not want to see a rapprochement between the United States and Syria." - 'No interest' in confrontation - Observers had expected Assad to be keen to preserve his return to the international fold, particularly after US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said Washington no longer prioritised his ouster. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson also said during a late March visit to Turkey that the once-embattled leader's fate "will be decided by the Syrian people". Waddah Abed Rabbo, editor-in-chief of Syria's pro-regime Al-Watan daily, said the regime had "no interest in launching a chemical attack especially just after Assad obtained got what he's wanted for six years -- recognition and legitimacy from the United States." "Why would he ruin this opportunity by launching a chemical attack in a town of no strategic or military importance?" he asked. It was "likely the Turks who carried out the operation because the rapprochement between the Syrian government and Washington is unacceptable for them," he said. "This whole operation put them back on the main stage and brings them closer to the Americans, with the hope that Washington will change its mind about Assad," he said. The guided-missile destroyer USS Porter conducts strikes on a Syrian airbase from the Mediterranean Sea on April 7, 2017 Friday's strike on a Syrian airbase marks the first direct US attack on the Damascus regime, raising questions about the potential impact on American forces working to defeat the Islamic State group. An immediate sign of potential fallout from the strike came from Moscow, which said it would strengthen Syrian air defenses to protect the country's key infrastructure. Russia already has batteries of sophisticated S-300 and S-400 surface-to-air missiles in place. These were not deployed in the US strike, but if used, such air defenses would radically alter Syria's aerial battlespace, where US planes have largely flown with little fear of getting shot down. The United States has since late 2014 led a coalition against IS in Iraq and Syria, and flies dozens of sorties daily to bomb jihadist targets. The vast military operation is notionally separate from Syria's brutal six-year war that has left more than 320,000 dead. Syria's conflict began in March 2011 with anti-government protests, but has since spiraled into a bitter and complex civil war that has drawn in international players and jihadist fighters. About 900 US ground troops, the bulk of them special operations forces, are in northern Syria, where they train and advise an Arab-Kurdish alliance fighting IS. Russian and American militaries in Syria Further raising the stakes, Moscow also said it would cease talking to the United States on a military hotline the two powers use to keep each other apprised of where they are flying. The channel was established in late 2015 after Russia entered Syria's conflict to prop up President Bashar al-Assad. Moscow's move to abandon the hotline could dramatically raise the risk to pilots and ground forces on all sides, with near misses and misunderstandings far more likely in Syria's crowded skies. The Pentagon has urged Russia to recommit to the line, and US officials say they will continue to try to use it. "It is to the benefit of all parties operating in the air over Syria to avoid accidents and miscalculation, and we hope the Russian Ministry of Defense comes to this conclusion as well," said Major Adrian Rankine-Galloway, a Pentagon spokesman. - Interloper - Russia's S-400 air defence missile systems are seen in 2015 at the Hmeimim airbase in the Syrian province of Latakia Technically, the United States is the interloper in sovereign Syria, whereas the Russians are the invited guests. But for the most part, the Russia-backed Syria regime has left the US coalition to conduct operations as the two sides focus on different foes in the tangled conflict. The US-led coalition fighting IS has gone to great lengths to distance itself from the Syrian civil war and left the Russians to their own devices as they pounded rebel areas including east Aleppo. Experts say that posture is unlikely to change for now, absent a broader and better articulated Syria policy. In the space of just one week, the Trump administration has gone from floating tolerance to Assad staying in power to striking the airbase. "The strikes are a reaction, but not a change of US strategy in Syria, to the extent that one exists," said Sarhang Hamasaeed, director of Middle East programs at the US Institute of Peace. "The strategic focus has been on ISIS, and it will likely remain to be the same, unless blowback from the airstrikes draw in the US further, or Assad repeats other actions that will trigger more US intervention." The limited nature of Friday's strike means retaliatory action against US forces is unlikely, experts say. The missile bombardment of the airfield targeted only hangars, planes and logistics structures, not the runways, and contrary to demands of hawkish US lawmakers was not intended to ground Assad's air force. "We have no indication at this point that there's been any escalatory or any attacks or any intelligence on retribution attacks on US forces," a senior military official said. Christine Wormuth, a former Pentagon official under Obama who is now a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said she did not currently see a risk of the Russians or the Syrians shooting at US planes. "Of course, there is some risk that the Syrian military could choose to attack our forces on the ground, but I think that will be extremely unwise and risky for them to do," she added. Protestors in Senegal denounced the "numerous imprisonments" of political opponents by President Mack Sall Thousands of people took to the streets of the Senegalese capital Dakar on Friday to protest against President Macky Sall and call for the release of political opponents. The protesters, many dressed in black, demanded the release of Dakar Mayor Khalifa Sall, who had been seen as a presidential candidate for the Socialist Party. He has been held in preventive detention since March 7, facing charges of fraud, misappropriation of public funds, criminal conspiracy and money laundering. As police stood by to maintain order, the crowd chanted slogans calling for those charges to be dropped. "We do not accept that Senegal can be turned into a plaything. Macky Sall must return to reason," Fadel Barro, co-founder of the "Fed Up" youth movement which organized the rally, told the crowd. He denounced the "numerous imprisonments" of the president's opponents and urged young people to register ahead of legislative elections to be held July 30. Senegal is widely seen as one of Africa's most stable democracies. But accusations of corruption have hit the brother of President Sall -- who is unrelated to Khalifa Sall -- and plagued ministers in the administration of former president Abdoulaye Wade. The "Fed Up" group was formed in 2012 to oppose Wade's bid for a controversial third consecutive term as president, which sparked deadly violence in Dakar. KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - The Afghan government is trying to grab the attention of President Donald Trump and gain greater U.S. support by dangling its massive and untouched wealth of minerals, including lithium, the silvery metal used in mobile phone and computer batteries that is considered essential to modern life. But tapping into that wealth, which also includes coal, copper, rare earths and far more that estimates say could be worth from $1 trillion to $3 trillion, is likely a long way off. Security has worsened in Afghanistan the past year, with Taliban insurgents seizing territory and inflicting increasing casualties on Afghan forces. The regions with the greatest lithium deposits, for example, are currently too dangerous to enter. FILE - In this Sunday, Jan. 18, 2015, file photo, Abdul Qadir Timor, director of archaeology at the Ministry of Information and Culture, left, looks at the view of Mes Aynak valley, some 40 kilometers (25 miles) southwest of Kabul, Afghanistan. The Afghan government is trying to grab President Donald Trump's attention by dangling its massive, untouched wealth of minerals, including lithium, the silvery metal used in mobile phone and computer batteries considered essential to modern life. But tapping into that wealth, which also includes coal, copper, rare earths and far more, is likely a long way off, with security worsening the past year and Trump's policy on the war still not known. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul, file) So far, Trump's policy on Afghanistan remains unknown. He has said little about America's longest-running war, beyond saying on the campaign trail that he wishes the United States were not involved in Afghanistan. Last month, the top U.S. military commander called for an increase in American forces to help bring security, a call Kabul enthusiastically backed. But the White House has not said which direction it will go - toward beefing up the American role, drawing it down further or something else entirely. There are currently around 8,400 U.S. troops in the country, involved in training Afghan forces and in counter-terrorism operations. Kabul clearly hopes the promise of mineral wealth will entice Trump into making a greater commitment. "Afghanistan can be an appropriate place for U.S. industry, and specifically the mining sector, to look at opportunities for investment" because so few potential deposits have been mined, said Mohammad Humayon Qayoumi, chief adviser to Afghan president on infrastructure, human capital and technology. "Afghanistan has always been interested in the U.S. investing in many areas, specifically the mining area. Within mining, there are some areas that are strategic materials such as lithium," Qayoumi told The Associated Press. President Ashraf Ghani spoke with Trump in December, and they discussed the mineral wealth. "There was a quite good matter of interest from President Trump's administration," Qayoumi said. The two leaders spoke again in February for the first time since the inauguration in talks that focused on the security situation. A White House official said the U.S. sees sustainable economic development as "essential" to Afghanistan's stability, including in the mining sector. He said the U.S. will work with Afghan businessmen and officials on reforms that "enhance private sector development" and contribute to development. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations. Mineral resources have been touted as potentially transformative for Afghanistan, a key to lifting it out of poverty and bringing major wealth for development. Interest was particularly spiked by a 2007 report by the U.S. Geological Survey and the Afghan government that found the country's deposits of a wide variety of minerals were much larger than had been known from surveys decades earlier by the Soviets. The mountainous, land-locked nation has huge, largely untouched reserves of copper, iron ore, chromite, mercury, zinc, gems, including rubies and emeralds, as well as gold and silver. Particularly alluring is its lithium, crucial to laptop and cellphone batteries. But getting those minerals out of the ground - and doing it in a way that actually benefits the country as a whole - has been elusive. The war has scared away investors. Also, corruption is rife, and many of the mines that do exist are controlled by local warlords who reap the profits. The Taliban are believed to earn millions from illegal mining. In 2016, anti-corruption watchdog Global Witness warned that the mining sector was fueling the war. It pointed to lapis lazuli - a blue stone found almost exclusively in Afghanistan - saying local strongmen, lawmakers and Taliban insurgents were all in a violent competition over control of the mines, earning $20 million a year from illegal mining and in the process destabilizing northeastern Badakhshan province. Integrity Watch Afghanistan said in a 2015 report that the great majority of more than 300 mining contracts awarded so far "may have been exploited by local strongmen under the protection of warlords." It examined five mines and estimated the government was losing tens of millions of dollars from those mines alone because of corruption that means taxes, rents and royalties are not collected. The main lithium deposits are in three regions - Ghazni province in the east and Herat and Nimroz provinces in the west. Herat and Nimroz are the scene of regular fighting between Afghan forces and the Taliban, and the areas of Ghazni where the lithium is located have a strong Taliban presence. The government's mines and petroleum ministry has also been in disarray. The minister's post has been empty for nearly a year since the resignation of Daud Shah Saba, who often complained of "powerbrokers" controlling the mineral resources. Finally, last week, the government named Nargis Nehan, a prominent rights and anti-corruption campaigner, as acting minister. Introducing her, Second Vice President Sarwar Danesh vowed action to reform the sector, "sever the hands of traitors" controlling minerals and bring "balanced development." Wahidullah Shahrani, who served as mines and petroleum minister from 2010 to 2013, said that at that time there was a major push by the government and international partners to lay a path for developing the sector. They worked out a clear timeline and strategy. Lithium was identified as a priority. But since then, the security situation has dramatically worsened as U.S. troops - numbering more than 100,000 in 2011 - began to withdraw and hand over the fight against the Taliban to Afghan forces. Multiple areas that were once considered safe have fallen into turmoil. Shahrani said the priority now is for the ministry to clean up management of the mineral sector and draw up a plan going forward. The U.S. can play a major role in helping that. "The government of Afghanistan right now doesn't have either the financial or the technical resources," he said. ___ Associated Press writer Matthew Pennington in Washington contributed to this report. In this Sunday, Jan. 18, 2015, photo, a general view of Mes Aynak valley, some 40 kilometers (25 miles) southwest of Kabul, Afghanistan. The Afghan government is trying to grab President Donald Trump's attention by dangling its massive, untouched wealth of minerals, including lithium, the silvery metal used in mobile phone and computer batteries considered essential to modern life. But tapping into that wealth, which also includes coal, copper, rare earths and far more, is likely a long way off, with security worsening the past year and Trump's policy on the war still not known. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul) In this Sunday, Jan. 18, 2015, photo, a general view of Mes Aynak valley, some 40 kilometers (25 miles) southwest of Kabul, Afghanistan. The Afghan government is trying to grab President Donald Trump's attention by dangling its massive, untouched wealth of minerals, including lithium, the silvery metal used in mobile phone and computer batteries considered essential to modern life. But tapping into that wealth, which also includes coal, copper, rare earths and far more, is likely a long way off, with security worsening the past year and Trump's policy on the war still not known. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul) BERLIN (AP) - Hopes faded Thursday that German authorities might have solved the seven-year-old kidnapping and slaying of a German banker's wife after prosecutors said DNA taken from a newly arrested suspect did not match samples from the crime scene. Following the test results, Ellwangen prosecutors' spokesman Armin Burger said his office had released the 47-year-old man, who was taken into custody quickly after his image was released to the public Wednesday. He said they were still looking into his possible involvement, however. The man was arrested overnight in the area of Heidenheim - the same town where Maria Boegerl was kidnapped from her home in 2010. After he was taken into custody, authorities said he had had told them he had a hatred for the Boegerl family but denied being involved in her killing, the dpa news agency reported. Police refused to comment, referring all queries to prosecutors. Burger was not available by telephone. Authorities said the man made drunken boasts in the northwestern city of Hagen in 2016, recorded by two witnesses, which led police to believe he was involved in the crime. They identified the man as a former soldier who was from the town of Ochsenberg, near the scene of the kidnapping. In the audio recording released by police, he can be heard talking about having left a knife in the woods, slurring his words. Boegerl, 54, was taken from her home in Heidenheim on May 12, 2010. The kidnapper then contacted the woman's husband, an executive with a local bank, and demanded a ransom of 300,000 euros ($325,000), speaking in a local accent. The ransom money was left at the side of a highway as requested, but was never picked up. Boegerl was able to briefly speak with her husband by phone, telling him that her life was in danger, but was not heard from after that. Three weeks later, her body was found in a wooded area near where the ransom money was left. An autopsy concluded she had been stabbed to death. Mom Katrina Goss said that her son's (pictured) 13-year-old girlfriend staged her death on social media to prank him. The girl has not been identified because she is a minor Charges are pending against a juvenile after an 11-year-old boy allegedly took his own life after his girlfriend faked her own suicide in a social media prank gone horribly wrong. Katrina Goss said Thursday that she found her son, Tysen Benz, hanging by the neck on March 14 in his room after seeing social media posts and texts that his 13-year-old girlfriend had killed herself. Goss said the girl and some of her friends orchestrated the prank. It was not clear who faces charges. 'She had pranked her own death,' Goss, 41, said of her son's girlfriend. 'I don't know what possessed her to do such a weird prank. It's a twisted, sick joke.' The unnamed juvenile is being charged in Marquette County with telecommunication services-malicious use and using a computer to commit a crime, Marquette city police Capt. Michael Kohler said in a news release. The mother of Tysen Benz, 11 (pictured), said her son killed himself after falling prey to a social media prank Tysen's mother (above with him as a baby) said she would like to see the girl face charges for what she did Police would not release the age of the juvenile charged or comment on what relationship the person had with the boy. The prosecutor's office declined to comment on Thursday. Goss said that after seeing posts about his girlfriend, Tysen replied over social media that he was going to kill himself. She said those involved in the prank didn't tell an adult even then. 'She did a prank that made it look like she killed herself and used other friends and their [social media] accounts to make it look like she killed herself,' Goss told the New York Post. 'So, he believed her and said, "Im going to kill myself."' Goss described her son as an athlete, comedian, friend, brother and all-around amazing child. She did a prank that made it look like she killed herself and used other friends and their [social media] accounts to make it look like she killed herself. So, he believed her and said, 'I'm going to kill myself.' Katrina Goss, mother of 11-year-old Tysen Benz But she says things started to go wrong when he bought a cellphone from a friend behind her back and started 'secretly dating' the older girl against her wishes. His mother said she never met the girl, who other students called his girlfriend, but that she saw her several times while picking up and dropping off her son at Bothwell Middle School. She has no idea why the teen would concoct such a 'controlling, harassing and manipulative' prank against her son. While the girl is a minor, Goss says she'd like to see her face charges for what she did to her son. 'Im quite angry,' Goss said. 'I feel like, yeah, theyre young and all that, but I feel like when youre 13, youre completely knowledgeable of your choices and you know right from wrong. You can make your own choices. I do feel like she took advantage of a younger boy to control and manipulate him. 'I dont feel like it should be taken lightly. She should be held legally responsible for this horrific prank,' she said. Tributes: Tysen Benz's mom Katrina Goss paid tribute to her young son on Facebook, left. She described him as an athlete, comedian, friend, brother and all-around amazing child 'The whole thing happened in about 40 minutes,' Goss said. 'He was fine and then I found him. I don't know what she said she did to herself.' Tysen was rushed to an area hospital and later transferred to the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor, near Detroit. He died Tuesday. 'Social media harassment, bullying and pranking is a huge issue,' Goss added. 'The way it's used nowadays, kids are desensitized to social media and it really does hurt people.' A funeral will be held on Tuesday for Tysen. For readers seeking support, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 1-800-273-8255 or by clicking here. TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - A bribery complaint against President Donald Trump and Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi lacks enough evidence to move forward, a state prosecutor told the governor Thursday. The complaint filed by a Massachusetts attorney stemmed from scrutiny last year over a $25,000 campaign contribution Bondi received from Trump in 2013. Bondi asked for the donation near the same time that her office was being asked about a New York investigation of alleged fraud at Trump University. Florida Gov. Rick Scott handed the case to a southwest Florida prosecutor after another prosecutor said he could not investigate the case because Bondi used to work him. A prosecutor working in State Attorney Stephen Russell's office concluded that there is no reasonable suspicion that Trump or Bondi broke Florida's bribery law. Amira Fox, the chief assistant state attorney, said in a memo about the case that the complaint against Bondi was "insufficient on its face to conduct a criminal investigation" and was based almost entirely on media coverage. "The majority of the complaint consists of insinuation without any material evidence in support," Fox wrote. Fox added that although a campaign contribution could be viewed as a type of bribe, there was no evidence that Bondi asked for the money in exchange for any official act. J. Whitfield Larrabee, who has filed numerous complaints against Bondi, questioned the scope of the investigation. He said there was no evidence in the memo that prosecutors spoke to any witnesses. Larrabee called Russell's decision to drop the case "a gutless move that was politically motivated." Bondi, who endorsed Trump's bid for president right before the Florida Republican primary, has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and defended her decision to accept the contribution. Recent frequent trips to Washington have stirred media speculation that she might wind up taking a job in the Trump administration. The 2013 check to a committee supporting Bondi's re-election campaign from the Donald J. Trump Foundation violated a federal prohibition against charities giving money to political groups. But the issue flared back to life last summer amid media coverage of Trump's presidential campaign and news that his foundation paid a $2,500 fine to the IRS over the donation. Whitfield filed his complaint last August. Though both Trump University and the Florida-based Trump Institute had stopped offering classes by the time Bondi took office in 2011, more than 20 complaints had been filed by former students who claimed they were swindled. A judge last week approved an agreement for the president to pay $25 million to settle lawsuits over Trump University, ending nearly seven years of legal battles with customers who claimed they were misled by failed promises to teach success in real estate. The Associated Press reported last June that Bondi personally asked Trump for help for her 2014 re-election. She has said she turned to him because he was on a list of "friends and family" she sought money from when she first ramped up fundraising efforts. Though Bondi has not given a precise date for her call with Trump, documents show the political action committee she was asking donors to support was created in early August 2013. Trump signed a check on Sept. 9 and it was received by Bondi's political committee on Sept. 17 of that year. But by that time, emails show that top officials in her office - including her chief of staff - were being asked by reporters in Florida about a lawsuit against Trump University by the New York attorney general. Bondi's office said at the time that it was "reviewing" the lawsuit, but it never took any other action. Bondi said her office receives tens of thousands of such complaints each year. Bondi said that she was unaware that her office had been asked about the New York lawsuit until a Florida columnist highlighted the case and the October 2013 donation from Trump. She said she tried to return the $25,000 check to Trump this year when she found out that the money came from his foundation and not from his personal funds. But the Trump Foundation returned the money and told Bondi's accountant that Trump himself had reimbursed the money. ___ Follow Gary Fineout on Twitter: http://twitter.com/fineout AUGUSTA, Georgia (AP) - Ernie Els is content knowing this is likely his final Masters, no matter how good he felt about his strong start at Augusta National on Thursday. "The Big Easy," a four-time major champion, opened with an even-par 72 in the first round. He is seven shots behind leader Charley Hoffman and three back of William McGirt. No one else was more than two shots ahead of Els by late afternoon. Still, it didn't make the South African star misty about his time running out at Augusta. "If you can't win it in 23 goes, maybe you should try something else," Els said with his trademark grin. Ernie Els of South Africa, walks up the 15th fairway during the first round for the Masters golf tournament Thursday, April 6, 2017, in Augusta, Ga. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel) Els certainly picked the right profession. He won the U.S. Open and British Open twice. His long, circular swing and accurate putting touch made him the favorite of many to land multiple green jackets. Instead, Els joins the list of near-miss standouts who never won the prize at the year's first major. He was Masters runner-up to Vijay Singh in 2000, starting a stretch of five consecutive top-six finishes - a run that ended when in 2004 with Phil Mickelson's birdie on the 18th hole beat Els by a stroke. The loss left Els distraught. "After the seventh beer, I felt a lot better," Els said a week later at the PGA Tour's Hilton Head stop. Els never recovered his form at Augusta National after that. He has missed the cut five times since then and never again finished in the top 10. Els was humiliated a year ago when he made a nine on No. 1, six-putting that green on the way to an 80 - his highest score ever on a course he loves. So Els felt some redemption when he hit a solid starting drive and made a routine par-4 on the first. "I was really nervous on the tee so it was nice to get that one in and get going," Els said. "But then I bogeyed (No.) 2." Els best run of the day came near the end of the round with four birdies on a five-hole stretch, including three straight on Nos. 15-17. A bogey on the closing hole moved him back down to even par on a day when all competitors dealt with strong wind gusts throughout the round. "It's just making shots," Els said. "I hit shots and I tried to hit them as good as I could. And the putts went in. If I didn't make the putts, I wouldn't be standing here." Mickelson, Els' longtime friend, called him one of greats who should've but did not win the Masters. Els thanked Mickelson, then quipped, "He's one of the guys that beat me down. It's his fault." Els would love to at long last slip on that jacket Sunday. At 47, though, he realizes his best opportunities are behind him. "If it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen," Els said. "I've had a great time." PAWTUCKET, R.I. (AP) - A minor league team in Rhode Island plans to create a replica of Fenway Park. The Providence Journal reports (http://bit.ly/2oI2APB ) that the Pawtucket Red Sox are developing a replica of the Red Sox's ballpark with identical field dimensions. PawSox Senior Vice President Dan Rea says the new stadium will be identical down to a copy of Fenway Park's Green Monster wall. Rea says the organization is surveying two possible sites for construction. Rhode Island's Democratic Gov. Gina Raimondo and the state's commerce secretary met privately Thursday with PawSox Chairman Larry Lucchino. A study this year found that building a new stadium on McCoy Stadium's current Pawtucket site would cost $78 million. An earlier proposal seeking taxpayer money to build a new stadium in Providence was met by public opposition. ___ Information from: The Providence Journal, http://www.providencejournal.com AUGUSTA, Georgia (AP) - A brief look Thursday at the first round of the Masters: THE LEADER: Charley Hoffman had a 7-under 65, which was roughly 10 shots better than the average score. THE LEAD: Hoffman's four-shot lead was the largest for the first round of the Masters since 1955. THE PAR-BREAKERS: Only 11 players broke par, the fewest since 2007. THE HEARTBREAKER: Dustin Johnson, the No. 1 player in the world and Masters favorite, had to withdraw because of a freak back injury. It was the first time the No. 1 player had to withdraw on the eve of a major. SPIETH'S SPIRAL: Jordan Spieth had a quadruple-bogey 9 on the 15th hole, the highest score of his career. Spieth shot par or better in his first nine rounds at the Masters. He has shot over par his last four rounds at the Masters. KEY STATISTIC: No one has come from more than seven shots behind after the first round to win the Masters. Only 18 players were within seven shots of Hoffman. NOTEWORTHY: Hoffman became the first player since Loren Roberts in 2000 to make birdie on all four of the par 3s. QUOTEWORTHY: "I don't feel there's any chance of competing." - Dustin Johnson after withdrawing from the Masters. TOKYO (AP) - Japanese automaker Honda said Friday it was recalling 37,000 vehicles in the U.S. to check if replacement air bags contain the recalled Takata inflators that may have been installed prior to the massive Takata recalls last year. Honda Motor Co. said the recall of the front air bag inflator of the 2003 2-door Accord doesn't affect its vehicles in other regions. No ruptures have been reported. The inflators made by Japanese supplier Takata Corp. are blamed in at least 16 deaths and more than 180 injuries worldwide. The problem set off the biggest recall in U.S. automotive history, involving 42 million vehicles. Globally, the tally is more than 100 million. The inflators can explode with too much force, sending shrapnel spewing. The latest recall is unusual in that Honda is trying to find 2,500 inflators that were replaced during repairs, but it doesn't know where the 2,500 inflators went, so it's recalling all of the possibly affected vehicles so they can be checked. In February, Takata pleaded guilty to concealing a deadly defect in millions of its air bag inflators. The company agreed to pay $125 million to individual victims and $850 million to automakers. Takata's penalty is small compared with the one imposed on German automaker Volkswagen, which must buy back cars and pay up to $21 billion in the U.S. over its emissions-cheating scandal. Takata has sunk into red ink over the costs of the recalls, and it faces lawsuits from victims, in addition to the penalties. ___ AP Auto Writer Tom Krisher in Detroit contributed to this report. Yuri Kageyama can be reached at https://twitter.com/yurikageyama Her work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/yuri-kageyama Syria condemns US 'aggression' after strike on air base BEIRUT (AP) - Syria condemned a U.S. missile strike on one of its air bases that killed seven people early Friday as an "aggression," while the Syrian opposition welcomed military action against President Bashar Assad after a chemical attack earlier this week killed over 80. The surprise U.S. strike drew quick reactions from the friends and foes of the Syrian government and further strained relations with Russia, a key ally of Assad, which suspended a deal with the U.S. to prevent midair collisions in Syria's crowded skies. Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which support the Syrian opposition, welcomed the missile strike, with Riyadh calling it a "courageous decision" by Trump. Iran, another close ally of the Syrian government, condemned the strike, describing "unilateral action" as "dangerous." Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi warned the strikes would "strengthen terrorists," further complicating the situation in Syria. Shiite Iran and majority Sunni Saudi Arabia have been locked in a power struggle over influence in Syria and elsewhere in the region. The bombing represents Trump's most dramatic military order since taking office and thrusts the U.S. administration deeper into the complex Syrian conflict. The Obama administration threatened to attack Assad's forces after previous chemical attacks, but never followed through. Trump called on "all civilized nations" to join the U.S. in seeking an end to the carnage in Syria. ___ The Latest: Italy calls US strike "proportionate" for Assad BEIRUT (AP) - The Latest on events in Syria (all times local): 12:40 p.m. Italy says the U.S. strikes on Syria were "proportionate" given the "war crimes" committed by the Assad regime in using chemical weapons against its own people. It says the U.S. strikes would serve as a deterrent for any possible future chemical attacks. Premier Paolo Gentiloni says: "Against war crimes, for which the Bashar Assad regime is responsible, I believe the images of death and suffering that we have seen in recent days after the use of chemical weapons are images that we cannot accept seeing again." ___ 10 Things to Know for Today Your daily look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about today: 1. US HITS SYRIAN AIR BASE WITH TOMAHAWK MISSILES The attack of some 60 missiles blasted an air base where U.S. officials say the Syrian military launched a deadly chemical attack earlier this week. 2. 'END THE SLAUGHTER AND BLOODSHED IN SYRIA' President Trump calls on other nations to join the U.S. in seeking to halt the Syrian civil war that began six years ago. ___ US missiles blast Syria; Trump demands 'end the slaughter' PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) - The United States blasted a Syrian air base with a barrage of cruise missiles Thursday night in fiery retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. President Donald Trump cast the U.S. assault as vital to deter future use of poison gas and called on other nations to join in seeking "to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria." It was the first direct American assault on the Syrian government and Trump's most dramatic military order since becoming president just over two months ago. The strikes also risk thrusting the U.S. deeper into an intractable conflict that his predecessor spent years trying to avoid. Announcing the assault from his Florida resort, Trump said there was no doubt Syrian President Bashar Assad was responsible for the chemical attack, which he said employed banned gases and killed dozens. "Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children," Trump declared. The U.S. strikes -59 missiles launched from the USS Ross and USS Porter - hit the government-controlled Shayrat air base in central Syria, where U.S. officials say the Syrian military planes that dropped the chemicals had taken off. The U.S. missiles hit at 8:45 p.m. in Washington, 3:45 Friday morning in Syria. The missiles targeted the base's airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, officials said. ___ Gorsuch heads for confirmation as Senate tears up own rules WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, is headed for confirmation after Republicans tore up the Senate's voting rules to allow him to ascend to the high court over furious Democratic objections. Democrats denounced the GOP's use of what both sides dubbed the "nuclear option" to put Gorsuch on the court, calling it an epic power grab that would further corrode politics in Congress, the courts and the United States. Many Republicans bemoaned reaching that point, too, but they blamed Democrats for pushing them to it. "We will sadly point to today as a turning point in the history of the Senate and the Supreme Court," Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York declared on the Senate floor Thursday. "This is going to be a chapter, a monumental event in the history of the Senate, not for the better but for the worse," warned Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a senior Republican. The final confirmation vote on Gorsuch is expected Friday, and he should be sworn in soon to hear the final cases of the term. He was nominated by Trump shortly after the January inauguration. ___ Trump, Xi meet again - in shadow of missile strikes on Syria PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) - North Korea's nuclear ambitions and the U.S-China trade imbalance as well as other points of tension between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are being overshadowed by the U.S. missile strikes on Syria. Nonetheless, the two leaders are meeting for a second day at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate as planned Friday. Their first-night summit dinner wrapped up shortly before the U.S. announced the missile barrage on an air base in Syria in retaliation against Syrian President Bashar Assad for a chemical weapons attack against civilians caught up in his country's long civil war. Ahead of the Thursday night dinner with their wives, Trump said he and Xi already had had a long discussion and had "developed a friendship," and then joked, "I have gotten nothing, absolutely nothing." The White House downplayed expectations for a breakthrough on issues like trade and tariffs, insisting that the 24-hour summit is mostly an introductory meeting for the two leaders. Within Trump's administration, divisions remain over how to approach China. Still, the crisis in North Korea was a top priority for Trump in the meetings with Xi. The American president told reporters traveling with him to Florida that he thinks China will "want to be stepping up" in trying to deter North Korea's nuclear ambitions. ___ 5 things to watch for in Friday's US jobs report for March WASHINGTON (AP) - Can the U.S. economy deliver a third straight month of robust job growth? The year began with a burst of hiring - 238,000 jobs added in January and 235,000 in February, along with solid pay growth. It all added up to a picture of confident employers and ample opportunities for job applicants with the right qualifications. The question now is whether businesses extended that streak or held back a bit on hiring in March. Economists have forecast that employers added a decent if less-than-spectacular 180,000 jobs last month and that the unemployment rate remained at a low 4.7 percent. The Labor Department will release the March jobs report at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time Friday. The economy appears to have slowed in the first three months of the year, though most economists expect a rebound in the current April-June quarter. A strong March job gain would bolster those hopes. ___ Demand booming on college campuses for creative writing NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) - Some credit the rise of social media. Others attribute it to a flourishing culture of self-expression. Whatever the reason, colleges across the United States are seeing a boom in demand for courses on creative writing. Colleges are adding writing programs to accommodate interest in what has become the rarest of fields in the humanities - a sector that is growing, rather than losing students to science and technology. The number of schools offering bachelor's degrees in creative writing has risen from three in 1975 to 733 today, according to the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, an industry group based at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. So what will these students do after graduating? "Most of them are aware that this probably is not going to be their career. At least, I hope they're aware," said David Galef, director of the creative writing program at Montclair State University in New Jersey. "They're interested in doing something they feel is creative." ___ Analysis: Trump evolved on Syria after chemical attack PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) - President Donald Trump's sudden decision to order airstrikes against the Syrian government was an overnight evolution for a president who long warned against deeper American involvement in one of the world's most stubbornly violent conflicts. As he soberly announced the assault Thursday night, Trump argued that the move was still within the framework of his "America First" foreign policy agenda. The United States, he said, has a "vital national security interest" in stopping the proliferation of the kinds of chemical weapons the Syrian government used against its citizens earlier this week. Yet Trump's actions left no doubt that - at least in this instance - his view of America's role in the world has been altered. Trump is hardly the first president to reconsider his views after assuming the responsibility of controlling the world's most powerful military. But with a major shift coming just 77 days into his presidency, his may be one of the fastest transformations in recent memory. After spending years warning U.S. leaders that Syria was a dangerous quagmire, Trump is said to have been moved by the gripping images of young Syrian children's listless bodies that were beamed across the world following the chemical attack. He mourned the "beautiful babies" were among the dozens killed by the deadly gases and accused Syrian President Bashar Assad of having "choked" his own citizens. ___ Egyptians recount sexual harassment, angering conservatives CAIRO (AP) - Hundreds of Egyptian women and girls have come out to denounce sexual harassment and share personal stories about it on social media, breaking a taboo and raising the ire of some in the country's conservative majority. In posts on Facebook and Twitter from the weekend to Wednesday, rare, candid stories focused on women's first experiences of harassment, almost all of which occurred in childhood and some involving family members and teachers. The campaign promoted by a recent university graduate laid bare a phenomenon endemic to the streets of Egypt's crowded cities, where over the years women have faced sexual harassment by men or groups of men at a variety of public gatherings, protests or celebrations. "I didn't know that there were so many others who went through this, I realized I wasn't alone," said 18-year-old high school student Haidi Gamal, who recounted three physical harassment incidents around the age of six by a relative, older schoolmates and a grocery shop owner. She said she chose to speak out about harassment because many do not believe it is so widespread, and she wanted people in her circle to know. "I thought if someone that they know writes about it, they'll believe it," she said. SAO PAULO (AP) - A so-called "love motel" in Brazil's capital is using the country's corruption scandal as a gimmick to draw customers. One of the suites at the Altana Motel in Brasilia features metal bars around the bed to put couples in the mood. If that's not enough to make you feel naughty, it's decorated with photos of politicians and businessmen charged in the alleged kickback scheme at state-owned oil company Petrobras. There are even pictures of prosecutors in charge of the probe, if do-gooders are your thing. In this March 30, 2017 photo, with bars on the door and around the bed, in addition to political prisoners images, a room at the Atlanta Motel uses "The Car Wash" bribery scandal as inspiration for decoration, in Brasilia, Brazil. The so-called "love motel" in Brazil's capital is using the country's latest corruption scandal as a gimmick to draw customers. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres) Motel receptionist Claudia Leticia says about US$4,800 was spent to decorate the suite. Such motels are used almost exclusively for sexual encounters. In this March 30, 2017 photo, decorator Cristina Bertozzi stands in front of the of corruption panels she designed, as she talks about her work at the "The Car Wash" suite, inspired in the recent bribery and corruption scandal, at the Altana Motel in Brasilia, Brazil. Inaugurated about three months, the suite number eight of the Motel calls couples to an amorous adventure amid an ambience reminiscent of a police action. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres) In this March 30, 2017 photo, an access corridor with news clips of politicians jailed during the "The Car Wash" bribery scandal, are seen at the Atlanta Motel in Brasilia, Brazil. The suite features metal bars around the bed to put couples in the mood. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres) CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) - Former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Friday encouraged her successor to remember the American people are the Department of Justice's clients, not the president or Congress. "I would urge people who are taking over the department now to remember this is the Department of Justice for everyone," she said, without mentioning Attorney General Jeff Sessions by name. "As you look at the rule of law, it's not just words on the page. It's the impact on people's lives." Lynch spoke at a conference organized by Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. The forum is focusing on pressing issues facing blacks in America. Former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, the nation's first black woman to head the Justice Department, waves as she arrives to speak at a conference on policy and blacks at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, Friday, April 7, 2017, in Cambridge, Mass. The 57-year-old North Carolina native graduated from Harvard College in 1981 and from Harvard Law School in 1984. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola) Former President Barack Obama appointed Lynch to serve as attorney general in 2015, succeeding Eric Holder. The first black woman to run the department, Lynch said Friday she understands each administration has different priorities and different ways of seeing things, adding how she wanted to open up the department to empower people. But she urged her successor to remember he is responsible for the safety, wellbeing and health of all Americans. When she was asked by a student about her biggest mistake as an attorney or as the attorney general, Lynch referred to her now-infamous meeting last summer with former President Bill Clinton, when the Department of Justice was investigating his wife, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. "That was a very public mistake on my part," she said and added how it was not an excuse to say she was caught off guard by the meeting. "When you make a mistake, you have to admit it and acknowledge the problem it causes," Lynch said. The 57-year-old North Carolina native graduated from Harvard College in 1981 and Harvard Law School in 1984. She told students about her time at Harvard Law working in the legal aid bureau and how she had the opportunity to help everyday people with their problems, including a woman she helped to get a divorce. "Which sounds sad, but she was the happiest client I have ever had," Lynch joked. Such experiences, she said, taught her to put herself in other people's shoes and understand their points of view and concern. She noted that it "has become extremely hard" today for people to really relate to others "because the examples of leadership we are seeing today are not doing that either." Lynch praised Obama for his ability to "empathize with situations and conditions" and to step back and find objective solutions. "Even though that isn't being modeled today, it doesn't mean that we can't do it," she told the group. "It doesn't mean that we can't call for it and it doesn't mean that we can't urge it to exist." Lynch acknowledged the U.S. has always been divided, but said she believes people have never felt so free to be "so uncivil about it." "So we descend into vitriol and we descend into sort of political name-calling and I think people on both sides of an issue write the other opinion off as something that's ill-informed and uneducated," she said. She urged students to put themselves in someone else's shoes and ask, "What are people so afraid of?" Former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, the nation's first black woman to head the Justice Department, listens during a conference on policy and blacks at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, Friday, April 7, 2017, in Cambridge, Mass. The 57-year-old North Carolina native graduated from Harvard College in 1981 and from Harvard Law School in 1984. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola) Former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, the nation's first black woman to head the Justice Department, speaks during a conference on policy and blacks at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, Friday, April 7, 2017, in Cambridge, Mass. The 57-year-old North Carolina native graduated from Harvard College in 1981 and from Harvard Law School in 1984. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola) Former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, bottom center, the nation's first black woman to head the Justice Department, poses with students after speaking at a conference on policy and blacks at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, Friday, April 7, 2017, in Cambridge, Mass. The 57-year-old North Carolina native graduated from Harvard College in 1981 and from Harvard Law School in 1984. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola) Former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, the nation's first black woman to head the Justice Department, waves as she arrives to speak at a conference on policy and blacks at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, Friday, April 7, 2017, in Cambridge, Mass. The 57-year-old North Carolina native graduated from Harvard College in 1981 and from Harvard Law School in 1984. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola) PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) - President Donald Trump's sudden decision to order airstrikes against the Syrian government was an overnight evolution for a president who long warned against deeper American involvement in one of the world's most stubbornly violent conflicts. As he soberly announced the assault Thursday night, Trump argued that the move was still within the framework of his "America First" foreign policy agenda. The United States, he said, has a "vital national security interest" in stopping the proliferation of the kinds of chemical weapons the Syrian government used against its citizens earlier this week. Yet Trump's actions left no doubt that - at least in this instance - his view of America's role in the world has been altered. President Donald Trump speaks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., Thursday, April 6, 2017, after the U.S. fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria Thursday night in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) Trump is hardly the first president to reconsider his views after assuming the responsibility of controlling the world's most powerful military. But with a major shift coming just 77 days into his presidency, his may be one of the fastest transformations in recent memory. After spending years warning U.S. leaders that Syria was a dangerous quagmire, Trump is said to have been moved by the gripping images of young Syrian children's listless bodies that were beamed across the world following the chemical attack. He mourned the "beautiful babies" were among the dozens killed by the deadly gases and accused Syrian President Bashar Assad of having "choked" his own citizens. His sentiment - the United States' "responsibility to protect" - echoed those often used by some Trump's ardent detractors. That doctrine, espoused most notably by President Barack Obama's former ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, holds that world powers have an obligation to defend civilians from conflict, particularly from their own governments. Trump campaigned on a wholly different vision for the nation's foreign policy, one that bordered on isolationism and centered on recalibrating trade deals with international partners. He has specifically said the Middle East is one region of the world he hoped to avoid. Yet in the short term, Trump's decision to plunge the U.S. deeper into the Syria conflict won him plaudits from his own party. Even some Democrats were muted in their response, a signal of how frustration with U.S. inaction in Syria has permeated both parties. "The question now is what the consequences and reactions will be, and what are the president's strategic and long-range goals and plans with respect to U.S. involvement in Syria," said Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee. Trump's decision was all the more remarkable for his strident public opposition to launching a strike on Syria when the decision weighed on his predecessor. In September 2013, Trump repeatedly took to Twitter to urge Obama to not to attack Syria after another chemical weapons attack. "AGAIN, TO OUR VERY FOOLISH LEADER, DO NOT ATTACK SYRIA - IF YOU DO MANY VERY BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN & FROM THAT FIGHT THE U.S. GETS NOTHING!," he wrote. He followed two days later with another tweet declaring, "There is no upside and tremendous downside" to an attack. Obama nearly ordered strikes, but ultimately pulled back. He called for a vote in Congress that never came, then rallied behind a Russian-backed plan to remove Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles - an agreement that appeared to have failed, given this most recent attack. Though Trump castigated Obama for appearing weak and indecisive, he maintained as a candidate that Syria was a morass the U.S. should avoid. As recently as a week ago, Trump's top diplomats, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, both indicated the U.S. might take a hands-off approach to a civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and forced millions more from their homes. The long-term implications of Trump's sudden policy shift are deeply uncertain. But his supporters seemed willing to accept his decision. "President Trump has tonight more than earned a second or third look from a lot of doubters - both at home and abroad," said Kevin Kellems, a Republican strategist who briefly worked on Trump's campaign and also advised former Vice President Dick Cheney. Kellems singled out in particular "the speed and precision of the decision to strike." In addition to the blunt message sent to Assad, the strikes are also a signal to Russia and Iran, Syria's main benefactors, as well as China, which the U.S. believes isn't doing enough to stop North Korea's nuclear pursuits. Trump ordered the attack while hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida amid an ongoing struggle between Washington and Beijing over how to rein in Pyongyang's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. "This clearly indicates the president is willing to take decisive action when called for," Tillerson said. ____ AP Diplomatic Writer Matthew Lee contributed from Washington. Follow Lee at http://twitter.com/APDiploWriter and Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC JERUSALEM (AP) - Against an empty white wall in a nondescript Jerusalem law office hangs an impressionist work of art that encapsulates 80 years of tragedy, conflict, mystery and redemption. Max Liebermann's "Basket Weavers" is set to return to the American heirs of its original Jewish owner after it was confiscated by the Nazis, jockeyed by an unscrupulous German art trader, and ultimately purchased by an Israeli Holocaust survivor unaware of its murky past. Following an emotional negotiation, the valuable canvas is now being sent to the United States in what the attorney who brokered the deal called a fitting conclusion to a saga that pitted two Holocaust survivors against one another - and exposed one of the lingering wounds of the German campaign to annihilate Europe's Jews and steal their belongings. In this photo taken on Wednesday, April 5, 2017, Max Liebermann's "Basket Weavers" painting hangs in a law office in Jerusalem. Max Liebermann's "Basket Weavers" painting is returning to the American heirs of its original Jewish owner, after it was confiscated by the Nazis, jockeyed by an unscrupulous German art trader and ultimately purchased by an Israeli Holocaust survivor unaware of its murky past. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit) Meir Heller, the Jerusalem lawyer whose Israeli client insists on maintaining his anonymity, said both were relieved to have finally closed this historic circle. "This was not a legal case that I wanted to win because it would not be a victory for either of the sides or for the interests of the Jewish people," he said. "I'm glad that we have come to an agreement with all the emotions and all the baggage involved." Washington-based attorney Peter Toren said his 91-year-old father David was eager to receive the painting but called it "at best bittersweet" since he has gone blind and would not be able to enjoy its beauty. "He's of mixed emotions because he still harbors, understandably, a lot of resentment and anger toward the Germans," he said. "A painting certainly can't make up for that." The tale began in 1939, when the wealthy Jewish industrialist and art collector David Friedmann was forced to flee and the Nazis pillaged the vast collection he left behind. Many of the works ended up in the hands of Hildebrand Gurlitt, a notorious German art dealer who traded in what the Nazis called "degenerate art" - works deemed inferior because they were un-German, Jewish or Communist or, as is the case with impressionist and other modernist works, did not employ traditionally realistic forms - but were pleased to sell to help fund their war machine. Much of Gurlitt's collection remained unseen for decades and experts feared they had been lost or destroyed. But in a shocking discovery, a vast horde resurfaced in 2012 when German authorities raided a Munich apartment belonging to his son Cornelius while investigating him for tax evasion. Paintings by artists including Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Henri Matisse were discovered. Cornelius Gurlitt said he had inherited much of the art from his father. The reclusive Cornelius Gurlitt kept more than 1,200 works in his Munich apartment and 250 more in Salzburg, Austria. The discovery brought renewed attention to the many unresolved cases of looted art that was never returned to original Jewish owners or their descendants. "When there is a plan for genocide then it is OK to steal and pillage. There was a complete disregard for any individual rights," said Yehudit Shendar, a retired deputy director of the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem and an expert on the Gurlitt art cache. "The whole issue of the theft of art is directly related to that fact that its owners were destined for destruction." She said the nearly 1,500 Gurlitt items, valued at 1.3 billion euros ($1.39 billion), represented only a fraction of the looted art. Cornelius Gurlitt died in 2014 at age 81, designating Switzerland's Kunstmuseum Bern as his sole heir. As in many restitution cases, though, the heirs' demands for the return of looted art led to conflicts with the current owners. Germany even created a special body, known as the Limbach Commission, to mediate ownership disputes. Because of this complex process of determining ownership, and because so few direct descendants of victims remain to claim their property, only five pieces of the Gurlitt cache have thus far been returned to the descendants of their Jewish owners. One of those was Liebermann's "Two Riders on the Beach," which went to Friedmann's great nephew - David Toren of New York City, who along with his brother were the only family members to survive the Holocaust. He later sold the painting for $2.5 million. The recovery led Toren to seek out another Liebermann painting he recalled featuring five Dutch looking boys weaving baskets out of straw. The sleuthing led him to believe that "Basket Weavers" had made its way to Israel and he made a public plea to have it returned. Word reached an Israeli man who had resisted the Nazis during World War II and had donated generously to fellow survivors since then. To his horror, the man learned that the painting he had purchased at a Berlin auction in 2000 for 130,000 euros ($139,000) was the one Nazis looted from Friedman. That's when the Israeli man approached Heller about returning the painting to its rightful owners. "This caused him great turmoil," Heller said. "It retroactively sullied the artwork. He couldn't even look at it anymore." The case hit a surprising hitch last year when the Israeli contacted Peter Toren, and was deeply offended by insinuations that he had in fact known of the picture's origins. Heller said his client refused to return the painting until he received an apology. A compromise was reached: An apology would be made, Heller's client would be compensated and the proceeds would be donated to aid needy survivors. Peter Toren said he is currently focused on suing the German government for the return of 52 additional paintings he says were looted, based on a detailed inventory he acquired that was compiled by a Nazi art expert in 1942. In the meantime, he says he is looking forward to seeing the Liebermann painting hanging once again on his family's walls. "Having something tangible that when you look at it and think about it once being in the possession of my family and the history of it - it is very special," he said. ____ Follow Aron Heller on Twitter at www.twitter.com/aronhellerap In this photo taken on Wednesday, April 5, 2017, Meir Heller, the Jerusalem lawyer whose client insists on maintaining his anonymity holds the Max Liebermann's "Basket Weavers" painting in a law office in Jerusalem, Wednesday, April 5, 2017. Max Liebermann's "Basket Weavers" painting is returning to the American heirs of its original Jewish owner, after it was confiscated by the Nazis, jockeyed by an unscrupulous German art trader and ultimately purchased by an Israeli Holocaust survivor unaware of its murky past. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit) WASHINGTON (AP) - Letter carrier James Solomon thought he knew all the tricks to prevent a dog attack: watch the pet's mannerisms, use the mail satchel as a shield, pull out the emergency dog spray - it contains an extract of cayenne pepper. But nothing prepared the 17-year postal veteran from Hatboro, Pennsylvania, for what happened when a woman answered his knock. "It was three little hot dogs who came out and bit me on the shin," Solomon said, describing dachshunds. "There was nothing I could do. It didn't hurt that much, but it was very aggressive, one after the other." A pitbull named "Lucy" participates a the U.S. Postal Service "National Dog Bite Prevention Week" during an awareness event in at the YMCA in Los Angeles Thursday, April 6, 2017. Dog attacks on postal workers rose last year to 6,755, up 206 from the previous year and the highest in three decades, as internet shopping booms and consumers increasingly demand seven-day-a-week package delivery and groceries dropped at their doorstep. Los Angeles topped the 2016 list with 80 attacks on postal workers, followed by Houston with 62 and Cleveland with 60. (AP Photo/Amanda Lee Myers) Booming online retail sales are good news for the U.S. Postal Service, but its carriers are incurring a cost: more dog bites. Dog attacks on postal workers rose last year to 6,755, up 206 from the previous year and the highest in three decades, as internet shopping booms and consumers increasingly demand seven-day-a-week package delivery and groceries dropped at their doorstep. The high for attacks dated back to the 1980s, at more than 7,000, before maulings by pit bulls and other potentially aggressive dogs became a public issue. Los Angeles topped the 2016 list with 80 attacks on postal workers, followed by Houston with 62 and Cleveland with 60. The Postal Service released its annual figures as part of National Dog Bite Prevention Week, which begins Sunday. A longtime cliche of movies, dog biting of mail carriers - or at least dog chasing - is no laughing matter for the post office. Medical expenses and workers' compensation cost the Postal Service millions of dollars each year. "Even good dogs have bad days," said U.S. Postal Service Safety Director Linda DeCarlo in Los Angeles. "Dog bite prevention training and continuing education are important to keep pet owners, pets and those who visit homes - like letter carriers - happy and healthy." She urges owners to secure their dogs in a separate room before opening the door and to remind family members not to take mail directly from letter carriers in front of their dog, which may view it as a threatening gesture. Overall, an estimated 4.5 million Americans are bitten by dogs annually, mostly children. In the last year, dog attacks on carriers rose 3 percent. Still, while dog bite claims are rising, there are signs attacks may be less severe: The average cost per claim fell last year by more than 10 percent to $33,230, according to the Insurance Information Institute and State Farm. After a 14 percent jump in dog attacks in 2015, the post office launched a "Trip Hazards" app on handheld devices to help warn carriers of potentially hostile dogs. Customers are asked on package pickup applications if there are dogs at their addresses. In extreme cases, residents will be told to pick up mail at a post office until a repeat offender dog is restrained. "It's always on your mind as a carrier, 'Is there a dog in the area and is it a threat?'" said Solomon. Officially, 2 percent of carriers were bitten last year, but Solomon says every carrier he knows has some kind of "dog experience" to tell, from outrunning to cajoling a territorial pet. Rising dog attacks come amid double-digit increases in the post office's package business. While U.S. population growth means more residences to deliver to, postal carriers are also visiting homes more frequently and at all times of day, with packages or groceries in hand, thanks to agreements struck with Amazon in 2013 and 2014. United Parcel Service said its 66,000 deliverers suffered about 900 dog bites last year, a percentage that has remained fairly stable. Spokesman Dan McMackin, a former UPS driver who used to carry dog biscuits to woo surly pets, said he found pit bulls and smaller dog breeds to be more nettlesome than "hunting dogs" - such as Labrador retrievers and beagles - who "don't have much to prove." FedEx Corp. said it does not collect numbers on dog attacks. Robert Lieb, a professor of supply chain management at Northeastern University, said he expects dog attacks to keep increasing. Still, the online industry continues to change, and dogs may prove to be less of a problem if Amazon changes its delivery to a new method: drones. "The question is whether drones will land or parachute the packages down," said Lieb, a former shipping consultant. "I would see eagles, not dogs, taking out drones." ___ Follow Hope Yen on Twitter at https://twitter.com/hopeyen1 A pit bull named "Lucy" is pet by school children as part of the U.S. Postal Service "National Dog Bite Prevention Week," during an awareness event at the YMCA in Los Angeles Thursday, April 6, 2017. Dog attacks on postal workers rose last year to 6,755, up 206 from the previous year and the highest in three decades, as internet shopping booms and consumers increasingly demand seven-day-a-week package delivery and groceries dropped at their doorstep. Los Angeles topped the 2016 list with 80 attacks on postal workers, followed by Houston with 62 and Cleveland with 60. (AP Photo/Amanda Lee Myers) U.S. Postal Service Safety Director Linda DeCarlo, right, introduces the National Dog Bite Prevention Week at the YMCA in Los Angeles, Thursday, April 6, 2017. Dog attacks on postal workers rose last year the highest in three decades, as internet shopping booms and consumers increasingly demand seven-day-a-week package delivery and groceries dropped at their doorstep. (AP Photo/Amanda Lee Myers) JOHANNESBURG (AP) - Tens of thousands of South Africans demonstrated peacefully Friday in a national outpouring of anger at their scandal-tainted president, and a second agency lowered the country's credit rating to junk status a week after the firing of the respected finance minister. While concerns grew about the struggling economy and government corruption, the protests were unlikely to pose an immediate threat to President Jacob Zuma, who retains the backing of powerful factions within the ruling African National Congress party. But divisions over his conduct are growing within the party, whose moral authority - a legacy of its leading role in the fight against white minority rule- has eroded during his tenure. Nobel laureate and anti-apartheid leader Desmond Tutu, 85 and ailing, made a rare public appearance to support the protests. His foundation posted a scathing tweet in his name: "We will pray for the downfall of a government that misrepresents us." Members of the ANC Youth League flee from teargas and rubber bullets being fired by police, at the end of a march by the main opposition Democratic Alliance party in Johannesburg, Friday, April 7, 2017. Thousands of South Africans demonstrated in major cities against President Jacob Zuma. Zuma's dismissal of the finance minister has fueled concerns over government corruption and a struggling economy. (AP Photo/Yeshiel Panchia) In Johannesburg, police fired rubber bullets to disperse about 100 ruling party members who were making their way toward protesters, the African News Agency reported. Separately, ruling party members assaulted several protesters participating in a march organized by the Democratic Alliance, South Africa's biggest opposition group. Other ANC members in military uniforms who had been posted outside their party headquarters helped to escort the protesters to safety. Police in Pietermaritzburg city also fired rubber bullets to keep Zuma supporters away from a rally against him. The Fitch agency cited political uncertainty as a factor in its decision to downgrade South Africa's credit rating to below investment grade, days after Standard & Poor's did the same. Zuma's Cabinet reshuffle, in which Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan was fired, will further discourage companies from investing in South Africa and could weaken "standards of governance and public finances," Fitch said. The National Treasury described the downgrade as a setback but said the government is committed to fiscal discipline and structural reforms aimed at boosting economic growth. Zuma did not make any public statements Friday. The government appealed for calm and said it respected the right to protest peacefully. The country turned to democracy after white minority rule ended in 1994 with the country's first all-race vote and the election of Nelson Mandela as president. In some cities, protesters with banners lined stretches of road or stood on overpasses; passing cars honked their horns. In the capital, Pretoria, they marched to the Union Buildings, which houses the offices of Zuma and other government officials. In Cape Town, motorcyclists with South African flags led a rally. "Fire Zuma," read some placards. "We are sick and tired of the flouting of the constitution, flouting of the law" by the government, said Lawson Naidoo, a protest organizer in Cape Town. South African media outlets posted photos of Tutu and his wife, Leah, standing with residents at a bus shelter outside the retirement home where they are staying in Hermanus, near Cape Town. Tutu was shown smiling and raising a walking stick, apparently to acknowledge passing protesters. The retired Anglican archbishop, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his peaceful campaign against apartheid, has criticized the ANC for alleged mismanagement over the years. He has been hospitalized several times since 2015 because of infections linked to past treatment for prostate cancer. Gordhan, the former finance minister, was seen as a counter to the alleged influence of the Gupta family, Indian immigrant businessmen who have been accused of trying to influence some of Zuma's Cabinet picks for their own financial gain. The Guptas deny any wrongdoing, and Zuma has said there was nothing improper in the way he chose ministers. Police set off stun grenades as tensions grew between rival groups of demonstrators outside the Gupta compound in Saxonwold, an affluent area in Johannesburg. Zuma and the ruling party, which suffered big losses in municipal elections last year, have been weakened by other scandals around the president. Zuma was forced to reimburse some state money after the Constitutional Court ruled against him last year in a dispute over millions of dollars spent on his private home. ___ Follow Christopher Torchia on Twitter at www.twitter.com/torchiachris Demonstrators protest against South African President Jacob Zuma outside the union building in Pretoria, South Africa, Friday, April 7, 2017. South Africans are gathering for nationwide demonstrations against Zuma, whose dismissal of the finance minister fueled concerns over government corruption and economic weakness. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe) A protestor makes her way to a demonstration against South African President Jacob Zuma, past a wall mural depicting the late Nelson Mandela in Cape Town, South Africa, Friday, April 7, 2017. Some thousands of South Africans demonstrated in major cities against Zuma following the dismissal of finance minister Pravin Gordhan which has fuelled concerns over government corruption and a struggling economy. (AP Photo) Protestors hold a placard with a portrait of South African President Jacob Zuma in Pretoria, South Africa, Friday, April 7, 2017. Some thousands of South Africans demonstrated in major cities against Zuma who's dismissal of finance minister Pravin Gordhan has fuelled concerns over government corruption and a struggling economy. (AP Photo/Phil Magakoe) Some thousands of protestors gather on the lawns of the government's Union Buildings in Pretoria, South Africa, Friday, April 7, 2017. Thousands of South Africans demonstrated in major cities against Zuma who's dismissal of the finance minister Pravin Gordhan has fuelled concerns over government corruption and a struggling economy. (AP Photo/Phil Magakoe) Protestors hold a placard with a portrait of South Africa President Jacob Zuma reading "Go Away Criminal" in Pretoria, South Africa, Friday, April 7, 2017. Some thousands of South Africans demonstrated in major cities against Zuma who's dismissal of the finance minister Pravin Gordhan has fuelled concerns over government corruption and a struggling economy. (AP Photo/Phil Magakoe) Demonstrators protest against South African President Jacob Zuma outside the union building in Pretoria, South Africa, Friday, April 7, 2017. South Africans are gathering for nationwide demonstrations against Zuma, whose dismissal of the finance minister fueled concerns over government corruption and economic weakness. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe) A member of the ANC Youth League falls while fleeing from teargas and rubber bullets being fired by police, at the end of a march by the main opposition Democratic Alliance party in Johannesburg, Friday, April 7, 2017. Thousands of South Africans demonstrated in major cities against President Jacob Zuma. Zuma's dismissal of the finance minister has fueled concerns over government corruption and a struggling economy. (AP Photo/Yeshiel Panchia) A member of the ANC Youth League grimaces in pain after being hit by a rubber bullet fired by police at the end of a march by the main opposition Democratic Alliance party in Johannesburg, Friday, April 7, 2017. Thousands of South Africans demonstrated in major cities against President Jacob Zuma. Zuma's dismissal of the finance minister has fueled concerns over government corruption and a struggling economy. (AP Photo/Yeshiel Panchia) Demonstrators protest against South African President Jacob Zuma outside the union building in Pretoria, South Africa, Friday, April 7, 2017. South Africans are gathering for nationwide demonstrations against Zuma, whose dismissal of the finance minister fueled concerns over government corruption and economic weakness. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe) Members of the main opposition Democratic Alliance protest in Johannesburg, Friday, April 7, 2017, as thousands of South Africans demonstrated in major cities against President Jacob Zuma. Zuma's dismissal of the finance minister has fueled concerns over government corruption and a struggling economy. (AP Photo/Denis Farrell) Demonstrator gestures during their protest against South African President Jacob Zuma outside the union building in Pretoria, South Africa, Friday, April 7, 2017. South Africans are gathering for nationwide demonstrations against Zuma, whose dismissal of the finance minister fueled concerns over government corruption and economic weakness. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe) Demonstrators march against South African President Jacob Zuma in Pretoria, South Africa, Friday, April 7, 2017. South Africans are gathering for nationwide demonstrations against Zuma, whose dismissal of the finance minister fueled concerns over government corruption and economic weakness. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe) Demonstrators protest against South African President Jacob Zuma outside the union building in Pretoria, South Africa, Friday, April 7, 2017. South Africans are gathering for nationwide demonstrations against Zuma, whose dismissal of the finance minister fueled concerns over government corruption and economic weakness. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe) Members of the African National Congress sing and dance outside party headquarters in Johannesburg, Friday, April 7, 2017, as thousands of South Africans demonstrated in major cities against President Jacob Zuma. Zuma's dismissal of the finance minister has fueled concerns over government corruption and a struggling economy. (AP Photo/Denis Farrell) Members of the main opposition Democratic Alliance party in Johannesburg, Friday, April 7, 2017, as thousands of South Africans demonstrated in major cities against President Jacob Zuma. Zuma's dismissal of the finance minister has fuelled concerns over government corruption and a struggling economy. (AP Photo/Denis Farrell) Members of the main opposition Democratic Alliance party in Johannesburg, Friday, April 7, 2017, as thousands of South Africans demonstrate in major cities against President Jacob Zuma. Zuma's dismissal of the finance minister has fuelled concerns over government corruption and a struggling economy. (AP Photo/Denis Farrell) Members of the main opposition Democratic Alliance party in Johannesburg, Friday, April 7, 2017, as thousands of South Africans demonstrated in major cities against President Jacob Zuma. Zuma's dismissal of the finance minister has fueled concerns over government corruption and a struggling economy. (AP Photo/Denis Farrell) Members of the main opposition Democratic Alliance party in Johannesburg, Friday, April 7, 2017, as thousands of South Africans demonstrate in major cities against President Jacob Zuma. Zuma's dismissal of the finance minister has fuelled concerns over government corruption and a struggling economy. (AP Photo/Denis Farrell) Members of the African National Congress sing and dance outside party headquarters in Johannesburg, Friday, April 7, 2017, as thousands of South Africans demonstrated in major cities against President Jacob Zuma. Zuma's dismissal of the finance minister has fueled concerns over government corruption and a struggling economy. (AP Photo/Denis Farrell) Demonstrators protest against South African President Jacob Zuma in Pretoria, South Africa, Friday, April 7, 2017. South Africans are gathering for nationwide demonstrations against Zuma, whose dismissal of the finance minister fueled concerns over government corruption and economic weakness. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe) Demonstrators protest against South African President Jacob Zuma in Pretoria, South Africa, Friday, April 7, 2017. South Africans are gathering for nationwide demonstrations against President Zuma, whose dismissal of the finance minister fueled concerns over government corruption and economic weakness. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe) The U.S. attack on a Syrian air base came after years of heated debate and deliberation in Washington over intervention in the bloody civil war. Chemical weapons have killed hundreds of people since the start of the conflict, with the U.N. blaming three attacks on the Syrian government and a fourth on the Islamic State group. One of the worst yet came Tuesday in rebel-held northern Idlib and killed dozens, including women and children. That attack prompted President Donald Trump, on day 77 of his presidency, to dramatically shift U.S. policy, with the first direct U.S. attack on the Syrian government. Turkish experts evacuate a victim of a suspected chemical weapons attacks in the Syrian city of Idlib, at a local hospital in Reyhanli, Turkey, Tuesday, April 4, 2017. A suspected chemical attack in a town in Syria's rebel-held northern Idlib province killed dozens of people on Tuesday, opposition activists said, describing the attack as among the worst in the country's six-year civil war. (DHA-Depo Photos via AP) Trump blamed Syrian President Bashar Assad for the attack and called on the international community to join him in trying to end the bloodshed. A timeline of events in Syria leading up to Tuesday's attack: March 2011: Protests erupt in the city of Daraa over security forces' detention of a group of boys accused of painting anti-government graffiti on the walls of their school. On March 15, a protest is held in Damascus' Old City. On March 18, security forces open fire on a protest in Daraa, killing four people in what activists regard as the first deaths of the uprising. Demonstrations spread, as does the crackdown by President Bashar Assad's forces. April 2011: Security forces raid a sit-in in Syria's third-largest city, Homs, where thousands of people tried to create the mood of Cairo's Tahrir Square, the epicenter of protests against Egypt's autocrat Hosni Mubarak. Aug. 18, 2011: President Barack Obama calls on Assad to resign and orders Syrian government assets frozen. Summer 2012: Fighting spreads to Aleppo, Syria's largest city and its former commercial capital. Aug. 20, 2012: Obama says the use of chemical weapons would be a "red line" that would change his calculus on intervening in the civil war and have "enormous consequences." March 19, 2013: The Syrian government and opposition trade accusations over a gas attack that killed some 26 people, including more than a dozen government soldiers, in the town of Khan al-Assal in northern Syria. A U.N. investigation later finds that sarin nerve gas was used, but does not identify a culprit. Aug. 21, 2013: Hundreds of people suffocate in rebel-held suburbs of the Syrian capital, with many suffering from convulsions, pinpoint pupils, and foaming at the mouth. U.N. investigators visit the sites and determine that ground-to-ground missiles loaded with sarin were fired on civilian areas while residents slept. The U.S. and others blame the Syrian government, the only party to the conflict known to have sarin gas. Aug. 31, 2013: Obama says he will go to Congress for authorization to carry out punitive strikes against the Syrian government, but appears to lack the necessary support in the legislature. Sept. 27, 2013: The U.N. Security Council orders Syria to account for and destroy its chemical weapons stockpile, following a surprise agreement between Washington and Moscow, averting U.S. strikes. The Security Council threatens to authorize the use of force in the event of non-compliance. Oct. 14, 2013: Syria becomes a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention, prohibiting it from producing, stockpiling or using chemical weapons. June 23, 2014: The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons says it has removed the last of the Syrian government's chemical weapons. Syrian opposition officials maintain that the government's stocks were not fully accounted for, and that it retained supplies. Sept. 23, 2014: The U.S. launches airstrikes on Islamic State group targets in Syria. Aug. 7, 2015: The U.N. Security Council authorizes the OPCW and U.N. investigators to probe reports of chemical weapons use in Syria, as reports circulate of repeated chlorine gas attacks by government forces against civilians in opposition-held areas. Chlorine gas, though not as toxic as nerve agents, can be classified as a chemical weapon depending on its use. Aug. 24, 2016: The joint OPCW-U.N. panel determines the Syrian government twice used helicopters to deploy chlorine gas against its opponents, in civilian areas in the northern Idlib province. A later report holds the government responsible for a third attack. The attacks occurred in 2014 and 2015. The panel also finds that the Islamic State group used mustard gas. Feb. 28, 2017: Russia, a stalwart ally of the Syrian government, and China veto a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing sanctions against the Syrian government for chemical weapons use. April 4, 2017: At least 58 people are killed in what doctors say could be a nerve gas attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun in the rebel-held Idlib province. Victims show signs of suffocation, convulsions, foaming at the mouth and pupil constriction. Witnesses say the attack was carried out by either Russian or Syrian Sukhoi jets. Moscow and Damascus deny responsibility. April 4, 2017: President Donald Trump issues a statement saying that the "heinous" actions of Assad's government are the direct result of Obama administration's "weakness and irresolution." April 5, 2017: Trump says Assad's government has "crossed a lot of lines" with the suspected chemical attack in Syria. April 6, 2017: The U.S. fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria Thursday night in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians, U.S. officials said. It was the first direct American assault on the Syrian government and Trump's most dramatic military order since becoming president. Trump said strike on Syria in the "vital national security interest" of the United States. BERLIN (AP) - Germany's top security official is proposing a law change to stop a far-right party from receiving public funds. Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said Friday after consultations with the Justice Ministry and Finance Ministry he'd submitted a proposal for legal amendments to the heads of parties in Parliament, where the changes would have to be made. Germany's supreme court in January rejected a government bid to ban the National Democratic Party, known as NPD, on accusations it pursued a racist and anti-Semitic agenda. That would have ended public funding. The party has no seats in Parliament, but is represented at the local level and receives money like other parties based upon electoral performance. Justice Minister Heiko Maas backed de Maiziere's idea, saying "the state must not finance enemies of democracy." BANJUL, Gambia (AP) - The party of Gambia's new president won a majority of seats in parliament after two decades of domination by the party of former leader Yahya Jammeh, the Independent Electoral Commission announced Friday. President Adama Barrow's United Democratic Party won 31 seats in the 53-seat National Assembly. The results mean Barrow can move ahead with promised transitions toward greater freedoms. Barrow will appoint another five seats, including speaker and deputy speaker. "We have been in the dark for 22 years and our roads were very bad and electricity too was so poor, but now that victory is ours, they won't let us down," said Adama Mendy, a 34-year-old vegetable vendor who voted for the UDP candidate who won in her district of Serrekunda. Election volunteers count votes at the end of parliamentary election in Banjul, Gambia Thursday, April 6, 2017. Voters in Gambia headed to the polls Thursday for parliamentary elections that are expected to end two decades of domination by the party of former leader Yahya Jammeh. (AP Photo) Mendy said she wasn't surprised by the sweep in Parliament, and had high hopes that pollution and bad sewage systems would now be addressed. "As we voted for our candidates and they're the majority our suffering has come to an end," she said. Barrow, who beat Jammeh in December elections, has promised economic improvements, greater freedoms and a path toward reconciliation in this tiny West African country. Jammeh's government was long accused of rights abuses. The former ruling Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction party was reduced to five seats, according to results read out by IEC chair Alieu Momarr Njai. He called the vote free and fair. Various parties that together backed Barrow in the December election but ran separately on Thursday won remaining seats. While more than 880,000 voters were registered to vote, turnout was low. A total of 10 political parties took part in the National Assembly elections. Gambia's more than 1.8 million people were ruled for 22 years by Jammeh, whose refusal to leave power brought regional countries to the brink of a military intervention. His flight into exile in January was a dramatic moment for many in Africa, where a number of leaders have clung to power for decades. The victory by the only female UDP candidate Fatoumata Jawara was greeted in Talinding with cheers, given she put an end to APRC's domination in that constituency. "This is over!" exclaimed Salifu Bojang, a young Gambian. "If APRC wants to win back the hearts of Gambians, they need to change the name and color of the party," he said. ISTANBUL (AP) - Turkey's state-run news agency says the Syrian pilot who ejected over Turkey last month has been arrested for violating border security and espionage. Anadolu news agency reported Friday that pilot Mehmet Sufhan, 56, was treated in the southern province of Hatay for a spinal fracture suffered after he ejected from the damaged Syrian plane on March 4. He was found in an exhausted state after a nine-hour search. Anadolu says he was arrested following his discharge from the hospital. Syrian opposition military group Ahrar al-Sham claimed to have downed the plane as it was bombing the countryside around the northwestern Syrian town of Idlib. MADRID (AP) - The armed Basque separatist group ETA, inactive for more than five years, is to hand over its arms Saturday, a finishing touch to a 43-year violent campaign that claimed 829 lives, mostly in Spain. Disarmament is the second-to-last step demanded by France and Spain, which want ETA to formally disband. The organization hasn't said if it will do that. While disarmament is a crucial step to ending the Basque conflict, it remains to be seen whether the gradual fade-out on one of the Europe's last standing violent nationalist conflicts can help heal the decades-old social divisions it caused in Spain and its northern Basque region. FILE - In this file image made from video provided on Oct. 20, 2011, masked members of the Basque separatist group ETA raise their fists in unison following a news conference at an unknown location. ETA says it has given up its entire arsenal of weapons and explosives to civil society groups - but warns the disarmament process isn't formally complete. "After giving up all its weaponry (arms and explosives) to Basque civil society representatives, it is now a disarmed organization," the militant group said in a letter, dated Friday, April 7, 2017, and signed with the ETA's seal, published by the BBC on its website. (Gara via AP, File) There's also an issue of what to do with the hundreds of jailed ETA members and the handful still on the run. Hundreds of killings also remain unsolved and the arms could help lead to some of the perpetrators. Here's a glance at the conflict and the disarmament plan. ETA AND ITS AIMS ETA's name is a Basque-language acronym for Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, meaning Basque Homeland and Freedom. It emerged in the late 1950s during the dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco, which repressed Basque and other cultures in Spain. The group's stated aim was to form an independent state from Basque areas on both sides of the Pyrenees. Basques have a distinct culture and an ancient language, Euskara. ETA's first victim was a Civil Guard police officer killed in 1968. The second was a police commissioner. ETA later began to target politicians, civil servants and journalists, as well as business representatives who refused to pay the "revolutionary tax" demanded to finance the group. In 1973, ETA killed Franco's designated successor, Adm. Luis Carrero Blanco, by bombing his car in central Madrid. Democracy formally returned to Spain in 1978, three years after Franco's death, but ETA's campaign intensified. One of its most notorious attacks killed 21 people in a supermarket bombing in Barcelona in 1987. Shadowy death squads, meanwhile, killed more than 60 people in what was known as the Spanish government's "dirty war" against the group. While ETA may have enjoyed some support during the Franco dictatorship, social rejection increased over the years and then erupted massively in 1997 following the kidnapping and brutal slaying of Miguel Angel Blanco, a 29-year-old small town-councilor. THE FRENCH CONNECTION ETA carried out most of its attacks in Spain while using southwestern France as a hiding place for its members and arms stashes. Increased cooperation by French authorities in the 1990s helped Spain's police and judiciary go all out against ETA and its supporters, leading to the closure of newspapers close to the militants and the banning of political and social groups seen as speaking for ETA. Over the years there were cease-fires and some fruitless negotiations with the Spanish government, only for the bombings and shootings to resume. Depleted by arrests and wracked by divisions among its members and political allies, ETA announced a definitive cease-fire in December 2011. Its hope of beginning negotiations with France and Spain was rebuffed. Both countries also rejected ETA's suggestion that an independent commission of experts should verify the decommissioning of its arms, which would have shielded the weapons from police investigating more than 200 unresolved killings. THE HANDOVER ETA says it has now placed the disarmament in the hands of intermediaries that call themselves "peace artisans." By Saturday, this group has pledged to provide the International Verification Commission with the means to locate the arms under ETA's control, which will then be confiscated by French authorities. Some stashes could be missed because the group's current leaders may not have records. The Basque regional government, which has helped mediate the process, says "ETA's disarmament will be complete, definitive and carried out in one single act." Experts view the disarmament as symbolic, saying ETA's arsenal is already diminished and much of it obsolete. Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, the former Spanish interior minister who directed the police crackdown that led to the 2011 cease-fire, estimates that ETA had fewer than 200 guns at the time. He believed that materials to build explosives could be expired by now. VOLUNTARY ACT OR RENDITION? Saturday's weapon handover will not be public and no Spanish or French government representatives with participate. In the afternoon, thousands of supporters of Basque independence supporters are expected to join in a demonstration in the French town of Bayonne to cap the event. Spain has accused the organizers of trying give the impression that the arms are being handed over voluntarily when in reality, it argues, this is surrender. BRUSSELS (AP) - The European Union's anti-trust watchdog is investigating whether German plans to set up an emergency reserve power system comply with state aid rules. Germany wants the strategic reserve as a buffer in case of shortages as it shifts to low carbon and environmentally sustainable energy sources. But the EU's executive Commission said Friday it's not convinced that Germany really needs the reserve or whether it's fit for purpose. Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said she aims "to ensure that companies are granted state support only when it is truly necessary and in a manner that limits distortions of competition." The Commission is also concerned that Germany does not plan to phase out the reserve once its new energy market is operational. It has invited "interested third parties" to comment. ATLANTA (AP) - Authorities say a police officer in Atlanta shot a man several times, wounding him. In a news release, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation says a Fulton County police officer responded to a report of a fight at an apartment complex in Atlanta on Thursday night. The agency says the man ignored commands from police and an officer fired his weapon at some point, striking the man several times. The agency says it has learned that the wounded man didn't live at the apartment complex and attacked a resident, who did not know the man. The man was taken to Grady Memorial Hospital for treatment and is in critical condition. The GBI says it's reviewing the shooting at the Fulton County Police Department's request. BEIJING (AP) - Chinese state media say U.S. President Donald Trump has accepted an invitation from his Chinese counterpart to visit China later this year. The official Xinhua News Agency reported late Thursday that Trump will travel to China at an "early date" in 2017 but gave no details. Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are holding their first meeting this week at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. President Donald Trump, right, shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping during a dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Thursday, April 6, 2017, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) During last year's election campaign and afterward, Trump talked tough about extracting better trade deals out of China and pressuring Beijing to do more to deter North Korea's nuclear program. Trump joked at a formal dinner with Xi on Thursday that he had "gotten nothing" in long talks with the Chinese president but said they had developed a friendly rapport. CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) - A 66-year-old woman was killed in South Carolina after strong winds toppled a tree, causing it to fall onto her home amid severe weather that moved across the South this week. The woman died Thursday afternoon, according to authorities in Lancaster County. Wind advisories were in effect Friday across much of North and South Carolina, a day after storms moved through the area. The National Weather Service said gusts of up to 40 mph (64 kph) were possible Friday across most of the Carolinas. Sustained winds could be as high as 25 mph (40 kph). A gale warning was in effect off the North Carolina coast, with possible seas of up to 11 feet (3 meters). Meanwhile, the National Weather Service confirmed two tornadoes in southeastern Virginia and two in the Washington region on Thursday. No fatalities or injuries were reported. An earlier round of storms in the Southeast on Sunday and Monday killed five people. GENEVA (AP) - The U.N. human rights office is condemning "in the strongest terms" the execution of three Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, whose ruling Hamas militant group had accused of collaborating with Israel. Spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani of the rights office said Friday that the executions a day earlier came over its and other international appeals to block the sentences, and violated "Palestine's obligations under international law." The rights office said the convictions were delivered for treason, which does not qualify among "most serious crimes." It noted the defendants were civilians convicted by a military court, "again in contravention of international law." The office said the trial didn't appear to meet fair-trial standards. The three were sentenced months ago for relaying information to Israel, before last month's killing of a Hamas senior commander. Chukwuemeka Ekwonna, 27, (pictured in this unndated booking photo) allegedly paid a 15-year-old for sex and then took back the money at gunpoint A Washington, DC, police officer is facing a string of charges in Maryland after authorities say he paid a 15-year-old girl for sex and then took back the money at gunpoint. Anne Arundel County police said 27-year-old Chukwuemeka Ekwonna of Glenn Dale, Maryland, was arrested Thursday at his home in the 7500 block of Lake Glen Drive. Ekwonna was charged with armed robbery, assault, third-degree sex offense, reckless endangerment, prostitution and a weapon offense. He was denied bail by District Court Judge Eileen A Reilly, who said the charges against the former officer are 'incredibly disturbing, to say the least' and that he could pose a 'danger to the community', the Capital Gazette reports. Court documents show the unidentified teen recently told officials that she was robbed by a man she met through the social media app 'Tagged' and offered her $80 for sex. They met in person on January 9 at the Quarterfield Crossing Apartments in Glen Burnie, Maryland, and after they had sex, she says the man, later identified as Ekwonna, pointed a gun at her and demanded his money back. The former Washington police officer met the unidentified teen in person on January 9 at the Quarterfield Crossing Apartments in Glen Burnie, Maryland (pictured) Ekwonna of Glenn Dale, Maryland, was arrested by Anne Arundel County police Thursday at his home in the 7500 block of Lake Glen Drive (pictured) Authorities in Washington say Ekwonna, who has worked with the Metropolitan Police Department for 14 months, was fired Friday. Ekwonna and his father, Harrison, worked with the DC Department of Corrections, Fox 5 reports. They were sued by an inmate in August 2013 for allegedly using excessive force. The case was settled in February when the city agreed to pay the inmate $20,000, according to court records. MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) - A police officer says three civilians have been killed in a mortar attack in Somalia's capital. Capt. Mohamed Hussein said Friday at least two mortars slammed into a residential area in Wadajir district. The area is near the heavily guarded Mogadishu airport, which has seen mortar attacks by extremists in the past. There is no immediate claim of responsibility for the latest attack. It comes a day after President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed ordered a new offensive against the al-Shabab extremist group while offering the extremists a 60-day amnesty to surrender. The al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab has stepped up attacks across the Somali capital in recent weeks. PARIS (AP) - A political party that would abolish same-sex marriage - one whose founder wanted AIDS patients rounded up and branded homosexuality "a biological and social anomaly" - is now winning LGBT votes in France. Motivated in part by the deadly Islamic extremist attacks at home and at a Florida gay nightclub, a growing bloc of traditionally left-leaning gay voters has embraced far-right French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, leader of the once-fringe National Front party. "Faced with the current threats, particularly from radical Islam, gays have realized they'll be the first victims of these barbarians, and only Marine is proposing radical solutions," said Kelvin Hopper, 25, a gay artist who lives in a hipster district of Paris and plans to cast his ballot for Le Pen. FILE - In this May 16, 2014 file photo, French far-right Front National Party President Marine Le Pen and vice-president Florian Philippot, left, talk to the media at the Elysee Palace, in Paris. The gay support has helped Le Pen rebrand the once-fringe neo-Nazi party and push it to the main political stage _ with a chance of winning spring's presidential election. (AP Photo/Jacques Brinon, File) While nobody knows how far Le Pen's supporters will carry her in the April 23-May 7 vote, several years of polls have shown the National Front is now more popular with the LGBT voters who make up 6.5 percent of the French electorate than it is with straight voters. That the constituency once reviled by the party is buoying it suggests populism has taken root in France more deeply than previously thought. The embrace goes both ways. Since taking over the National Front in 2011, Le Pen has worked to soften the racist, homophobic reputation of the party co-founded by her father who was twice-prosecuted for Holocaust denial. Surrounding herself with gay advisers, a strategy known as "pinkwashing," has been a key part of these efforts that have put her within striking distance of the presidential Elysee. Jean-Marie Le Pen, 88, once declared "there are no queens" in the National Front and, in a sulfurous assault on the gay community in the 1980s, compared AIDS-sufferers to lepers whom he advocated keeping in isolation centers. To "de-demonize" the party and give it wider appeal, his daughter publicly shunned him. In a stark irony of history, Marine Le Pen's National Front has more top aides who are publicly known to be gay than any other French political party. The unusual distinction prompted commentators to give Le Pen the epithet "Pink Marine." The most prominent of the party's gay operatives is her No. 2, Vice-President Florian Philippot. He came out after being unwittingly photographed by a gossip magazine on a private weekend away in Vienna with a man in 2014. The mass shooting at the Pulse gay club in Orlando, Florida, in June also boosted Le Pen's standing with LGBT voters. Shortly after recordings emerged in which the U.S.-born attacker who killed 49 people pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, Le Pen declared "how much homosexuality is attacked in countries that live under the Islamist jackboot." Although some critics have accused her of opportunism, the rebranding work has paid off. French polling firm IFOP says its surveys show a "constant progression of the National Front among the gay electorate" since Marine Le Pen took over. At 16.5 percent, the proportion of gay, lesbian and bisexual people supporting the party last fall was 2 percentage points higher than its share of straight voters, according to the firm's research. "There is a large risk that the Orlando killing exacerbates an anti-Muslim sentiment among sexual minorities, all the more so because they have shown for several years to be more and more responsive to the security and anti-immigrant discourse of the National Front," the study says. Surprisingly, research of voting patterns also shows that one-third of gays who wed after France legalized same-sex marriage in 2013 voted for National Front candidates in the 2015 regional elections - even though the party would scrap the marriage equality law. Courting LGBT voters, "pinkwashing" the far-right, has been a delicate dance for Le Pen. She was noticeably absent from divisive nationwide protests against the same-sex marriage law introduced by the Socialist government of outgoing President Francois Hollande. Yet she can't afford to alienate the party's old guard as she tries to broaden its base. Buried in her election manifesto is a pledge to abolish gay marriage, a position aimed at appeasing the National Front's extreme-right flank. National Front Chief Campaign Strategist Sebastien Chenu, who is the most open about his sexual orientation among the party's gay top officials, disagreed that the plan was homophobic during an interview with The Associated Press. In its place, Chenu explained, would be a bolstered civil unions law providing same-sex couples with "the same duties, the same obligations" as marriage, he said. Chenu agrees that the National Front has seen a spike in support because of fear from the extremist attacks France has endured in recent years. The number of gay men in prominent positions within the party is a much less significant factor, he said. "Those who want to fight against freedoms are Islamic radicals," Chenu said. "They put bombs in gay night clubs in the United States. So obviously, it creates an anxiety for a certain number of gays." France is not the only place where far-right rhetoric conflating Islam with radical jihad has been used to shake up long-standing political alliances. In the Netherlands, Party for Freedom leader Geert Wilders said that his party, which is hostile to Muslims and wants to halt immigration, should hold natural appeal for LGBT voters. "We were always one of the top parties that were supported by (the gay) community. We believe that like Christians and Jews and women and journalists, gay people are also one of the first to pay the price of ... Islamization," Wilders said. In the United States, President Donald Trump, too, has used rhetoric expressing solidarity with gays as a means of attacking some Muslim-majority countries - claiming during the presidential debates last year that they "push gays off of buildings." The lurch to the far-right by LGBT voters - called homonationalism - deeply shocks those who see the nationalist sentiments sweeping Europe as a threat that could erode hard-fought freedoms, not protect them. "It is true that terror attacks and religious extremists brought huge publicity to Marine Le Pen. And she profits from this. She profits from people's fear," Yannick Fredefon, a gay Paris resident, said. One factor that explains the new wave of LGBT support is that many Le Pen voters are millennials like Hopper who are too young to remember the National Front's neo-fascist roots or the acid anti-gay sentiments openly expressed by her father. Others, especially gay men, are in awe of the blond, blue-eyed, 48-year-old former lawyer's persona - they see an audacious, strong-willed woman writing the rules in a world of men. If elected, Le Pen would be France's first female president. "Marine is a strong, combative, honest woman," Hopper said. Experts say the wooing strategy works best on gay people who see the fight for equality as over and no longer feel obligated to support the liberal politicians who traditionally defend their rights. "Having recently acquired the right to marry and adopt children, an important part of the gay electorate is turning to the extreme right because they do not need to support the left anymore on these issues," IFOP pollster Francois Kraus said. But gay rights groups in France warn against complacency. "The simple idea of reversing (the marriage equality) law is in itself a homophobic act as it is to want discrimination again," said Clemence Zamora Cruz, a spokeswoman for Inter-LGBT, a coalition of French LGBT rights groups. ___ Thomas Adamson can be followed at http://www.twitter.com/ThomasAdamson_K ___ Mike Corder in The Hague, Netherlands, contributed to this report FILE In this Nov. 16, 2016 file photo, Florian Philippot, National Front Vice-President and close aide to far-right leader Marine le Pen gestures during the inauguration of her presidential campaign headquarters, in Paris. National Front leader Marine Le Pen has appoint more top-ranking publicly-known gays than in any other French political party _ most prominently Deputy Leader Florian Philippot. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena, File) This photo taken on Jan.6, 2015 shows France's far-right National Front Chief Campaign Strategist Sebastien Chenu, and co-founder of GayLib for the rights of gay communities, in Paris. Chenu is the most open about his sexuality among the several gay top party officials. (AP Photo/Francois Mori) A popular Maine weatherman who had been reported missing over the weekend has been found dead of an apparent suicide, police said. Tom Johnston, also known as TJ Thunder from WCSH-TV in Portland, failed to return from the Sunday River Ski resort in Newry, after emceeing the Spring fest event on Saturday. The meteorologist had told a family member he planned to head home on Sunday morning. But when Johnston did not show up, his girlfriend filed a missing persons report early Monday. Scroll down for video The news station announced his death online on Friday and paid tribute to their popular meteorologist WCSH-TV's weatherman Tom Johnston (far left) was found dead of an apparent suicide on Thursday The 46-year-old was found dead on Thursday by Auburn Police, Old Orchard Beach Police Deputy Chief Jason Moen said. Moen said in a news release on last night that any suspicion of foul play has been ruled out. An autopsy was scheduled Friday. Johnston's last social media postings were made on Saturday, when a storm produced heavy snow in parts of Maine. Colleagues said the weatherman 'was at his best broadcasting or doing Facebook live shots in the middle of a blizzard' Johnston was described as hardworking and a funnyman on and off the camera Fans voiced their condolences and sympathy on Twitter after his death was announced WCSH announced Johnston's death 'with great sadness' on its website Friday. Johnston had worked for the station since 2014 and handled weekday newscasts. The news station reflected on Johnston's best moments as a television weatherman in a poignant article. He was described as a hardworking and 'wicked funny' on and off the camera. 'Tom loved to forecast and loved his job. He was at his best broadcasting or doing Facebook live shots in the middle of a blizzard,' the site said on Friday. 'Our thoughts and prayers are with Toms family. We will miss that great laugh of his, his fierce competitive spirit and his love for all things weather-related.' HAGATNA, Guam (AP) - Guam Gov. Eddie Calvo has announced his administration no longer supports the U.S. military buildup on the island because of the federal government's high rate of denials for temporary foreign worker visa applications. Calvo said Thursday the government's decision to deny nearly all H-2B visas has resulted in a worker shortage and a potential economic downturn for the island, The Pacific Daily News reported (http://bit.ly/2p8a5fd). He cited recent construction projects that never received bids due to a lack of workers as well as the rising costs of homebuilding. "The biggest obstacle to prosperity on Guam has not been any local politician, but the federal government," Calvo said. "We cannot afford to wait any longer." He accused the government of not keeping up "with its part of the bargain" and said there has been a breach in an agreement to "ensure Guam is not negatively impacted by the shift in military forces." Guam Delegate Madeleine Bordallo acknowledged Calvo's concerns but said Guam could benefit from the military buildup, which would involve shifting as many as 5,000 U.S. Marines from Japan to the Mariana Islands in Dededo, Guam. "We have invested heavily in supporting this buildup and while there have been challenges along the way, we continue to make progress to ensure that it is good for Guam and our people," Bordallo said. "Turning back now may jeopardize this progress, which includes significant civilian infrastructure investments." The new labor policies adopted under President Barack Obama's administration has led to many foreign workers being sent home. There are about 180 H-2B visas active, compared to 1,200 from the same time last year, according to Calvo's statement. Calvo has called on the island's attorney general to join a lawsuit filed by a dozen Guam businesses last October contesting the visa denials. The lawsuit alleges the high rejection rate represents an unlawful change in U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service policy. SEATTLE (AP) - Ed Murray led a long campaign to legalize same-sex marriage in Washington state, toiled for nearly two decades as a state lawmaker and won his biggest personal political victory in 2013 when he unseated Seattle's incumbent mayor by promising the ultra-liberal city to raise the minimum hourly wage to $15. Just as he took on a role as a high-profile critic of President Donald Trump and prepared to launch a re-election campaign, Murray was hit Thursday with a political bombshell - accusations from three men that Murray sexually abused them in the 1980s. On Friday, Murray held a brief news conference to deny allegations in a lawsuit by one man, saying "they were very painful for me. It was painful for my husband." Through a spokesman he has also denied the allegations by the other men. Seattle Mayor Ed Murray reads a statement to media members, Friday, April 7, 2017, in Seattle. A lawsuit filed Thursday accuses Murray of sexually molesting a teenage high-school dropout in the 1980s, and in interviews with The Seattle Times, two other men claim he abused them. The mayor denied the allegations through his personal spokesman Jeff Reading. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson) He said he will not step down and is sticking to re-election campaign plans but refused to answer reporters' questions, saying the case "is now a legal matter that is in the courts." Murray's spokesman, Jeff Reading, previously suggested unnamed Murray enemies were behind the claims. "It is not a coincidence that this shakedown effort comes within weeks of the campaign filing deadline," Reading said. Calls to city councilmembers earlier for Friday for comment about the mayor and what impact the allegations could mean for his political future went unreturned. Murray, 61, grew up in working class neighborhoods in and around Seattle as one of seven children in an Irish Catholic family and became one of the state's most prominent political figures. "Things have never come easily to me in life, but I have never backed down and I will not back down now," Murray told reporters in remarks that lasted less than two minutes. As a young man, he considered joining the priesthood and spent a year at a seminary in 1976 before studying sociology at the University of Portland, a private Catholic institution. Murray ended up working as a paralegal with public defender lawyers in Portland before returning to Seattle and joining the vanguard of the gay rights movement in the 1980s, serving as campaign manager for Cal Anderson, a Seattle state senator who was the state's first openly gay member. Anderson, Murray's mentor, died in 1995. Murray failed in his bid to win Anderson's seat, but he was appointed to fill the legislative seat of the state representative who won the state senate campaign. During his 18 years as a state lawmaker, Murray was the prime sponsor of Washington's gay marriage law, spearheaded an effort to protect LGBTQ youth in public schools and led the state's push to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation. "As a legislator, Ed was a warrior for core Democratic values," said state Sen. Reuven Carlyle, a fellow Seattle Democrat. "He was unquestionably a tough negotiator with an eye on the long game for progress." The 2013 mayoral race was a bruising campaign that focused on whether Murray would be more liberal and effective than incumbent Mike McGinn, a fellow Democrat, in the notoriously difficult city to govern because of competing liberal factions and an older, established political order resistant to change. Murray kept his promise about the minimum wage increase. The higher minimum wage was phased in over time. Murray also recently fought to boost funding to address Seattle's homelessness crisis. Murray has been with his partner, Michael Shiosaki, for 24 years. They married in 2013. Shiosaki hugged Murray after he made his statement Friday. "He's ambitious," state Sen. Jamie Pedersen, a fellow Democrat, said of Murray. "Not that he's always right - there are issues I disagree with him on. But when you look at the agenda that he had and what he's been able to accomplish in four years, he's done a huge amount for the city." After Trump was elected last fall, Murray became a frequent critic. He announced last week that Seattle was suing over Trump's executive order that threatens to withhold federal funds from communities that refuse to cooperate with efforts to find and deport immigrants in the country illegally. Murray on Thursday afternoon was planning on touting new numbers showing progress made by the Seattle Police Department under federal supervision - until the news broke of the lawsuit by a man who is now 46 and said in court documents that the mayor "raped and molested him" over a period of several years beginning in 1986. The man identified only by his initials, D.H., said he was 15 and addicted to crack cocaine at the time and that Murray was in his 30s. On Friday Murray said D.H.'s allegations "are simply not true" and said he felt sad for the "troubled" individual. The man's, Lincoln Beauregard, sent a letter Friday to Murray's lawyer offering to make D.H. available for a video deposition and disputed that the lawsuit was politically motivated. Following Murray's statement Beauregard said Murray wasn't being truthful. He said the mayor's representatives never asked for his client's identity and that if Murray is being forthright "he should have no idea who my client is ... how can he paint him as 'troubled.' " In the lawsuit filed Thursday, however, the man had said he had sought mental health counseling and was taking part in addiction-recovery programs. The two others who made allegations against Murray told The Seattle Times (http://bit.ly/2oOAwXY) they met him while living in a Portland center for troubled teens. Jeff Simpson and Lloyd Anderson said they were paid for sex in the 1980s and would testify. An entry in a case-tracking system shows that the Multnomah County District Attorney's office rejected pursuing a third-degree sodomy case against Murray in 1984, District Attorney Don Rees said. Portland police have found no records linking either man to Murray, said Sgt. Pete Simpson of the Portland Police Bureau. ___ This story has been updated to correct the spelling of state Sen. Jamie Pedersen's last name. ___ La Corte reported from Olympia, Washington. Associated Press writers Steven DuBois and Kristena Hansen in Portland, Oregon, and Phuong Le in Seattle contributed to this report. Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, left, walks away with his husband, Michael Shiosaki, after reading a statement to the media, Friday, April 7, 2017, in Seattle. A lawsuit filed Thursday accuses Murray of sexually molesting a teenage high-school dropout in the 1980s, and in interviews with The Seattle Times, two other men claim he abused them. The mayor denied the allegations through his personal spokesman Jeff Reading. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson) Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, right, walks past his husband, Michael Shiosaki, left, and his attorney, Bob Sulkin, before speaking to the media, Friday, April 7, 2017, in Seattle. Three men claim that Murray sexually abused them in the 1980s, paying for sex when they were teenagers and Murray was in his 30s. Murray denied the allegations and said he will not step down. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson) Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, second from right, is greeted by his husband, Michael Shiosaki, after reading a statement to the media, Friday, April 7, 2017, in Seattle. A lawsuit filed Thursday accuses Murray of sexually molesting a teenage high-school dropout in the 1980s, and in interviews with The Seattle Times, two other men claim he abused them. The mayor denied the allegations through his personal spokesman Jeff Reading. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson) Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, left, walks away with his husband, Michael Shiosaki, after reading a statement to media members, Friday, April 7, 2017, in Seattle. A lawsuit filed Thursday accuses Murray of sexually molesting a teenage high-school dropout in the 1980s, and in interviews with The Seattle Times, two other men claim he abused them. The mayor denied the allegations through his personal spokesman Jeff Reading. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson) Jailed: John Abdo was sentenced to seven years for biting off his girlfriend's nose A man has been sentenced to seven years in the South Dakota State Penitentiary for biting off his girlfriend's nose. The Daily Republic reports that Judge Bruce Anderson called the January 2016 attack by John Abdo 'unforgivable.' He sentenced Abdo this week to 15 years in prison with eight years suspended. Authorities allege the 30-year-old man also bit his girlfriend numerous times elsewhere on her body. A jury convicted him of aggravated assault in February. It was during this trial in which the 22-year-old victim testified. Abdo also was sentenced to serve half a year for escape. He failed to return to jail following a job interview in February 2016 and was on the lam for four months. He'll get credit for a little more than a year he's already spent behind bars. Deputy Charles Mix County State's Attorney Scott Podhradsky described the harm caused to the victim's body as 'horrific.' Along with the victim's nose bitten off, Podhradsky said the doctor described the countless bite wounds to her torso, arms, legs and face more like 'gnawing' than a bite. Despite the horrendous injuries, the woman ended up writing a letter to the judge asking him not to prosecute and stated that she wanted to dismiss all the charges. The judge said that he would take the victim's letter with 'grain of salt' before issuing his sentences. 'It takes a while for people to be squared away. You're not squared away,' Judge Anderson said to Abdo. 'These are unforgivable, but not something that we can't work past.' Abdo also had the opportunity to address the court while wearing his shackles and prison jumpsuit and stated he was 'just ready to get it over with.' BELTON, Mo. (AP) - Authorities have collected "several pieces of evidence" while searching an area of rural western Missouri where two sets of human bones were found. The Kansas City Star (http://bit.ly/2o2TbiI ) reports that Cass County Sheriff's Office Capt. Kevin Tieman offered no specifics Thursday on evidence recovered. He said only that authorities hope it will help with the identification of one of the sets of remains found Monday. The other set of bones already has been identified as those of Jessica Runions. The Raymore, Missouri, woman was last seen in September leaving a south Kansas City gathering with Kylr Yust, who later was charged with burning her vehicle. A judge has entered a not guilty plea on his behalf. Yust also has been questioned in the 2007 disappearance of Kara Kopetsky. ___ Information from: The Kansas City Star, http://www.kcstar.com OTTAWA, Ontario (AP) - Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Canada fully supports what he called the United States' "limited and focused action" in carrying out a missile strike on Syria. Trudeau said in a statement Friday the Assad regime's use of chemical weapons against its own people cannot be ignored. He says these gruesome attacks cannot be permitted to continue operating with impunity. He also says this week's attack in in southern Idlib is a war crime. The U.S. blasted a Syrian air base Thursday night with a barrage of cruise missiles in fiery retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. President Donald Trump cast the United States assault vital to deter future use of poison gas. 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Ireland United States Minor Outlying Islands United States of America Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) - Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley made a last-ditch attempt to stop proceedings that could lead to his impeachment and calls for his resignation grew Friday, with the House speaker warning that continuing a sex-tinged scandal would drag the state through "a long, painful and embarrassing journey whose ending is likely known." A defiant Bentley hastily called a news conference on the steps of the Capitol and refused to resign at the end of particularly difficult week. Aside from fellow Republicans telling him to quit, Bentley learned he could face criminal prosecution when the Alabama Ethics Commission found probable cause that he broke ethics and campaign law. Bentley said he has been humiliated and apologized for his mistakes. But, he said, he has done nothing illegal. Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley speaks during a news conference on Friday, April 7, 2017, outside the Alabama Capitol building in Montgomery, Ala. Bentley vowed again he won't resign even as his political troubles mounted and lawmakers said they would move forward with impeachment hearings because of a sex scandal. (Julie Bennett/AL.com via AP) "If the people want to know if I misused state resources, the answer is simply no. I have not," Bentley said in a statement on marble steps of the Capitol. He did not take questions. Moments before Bentley addressed the media, his office filed a lawsuit against the House Judiciary Committee seeking to block proceedings that include the release of a special counsel's potentially embarrassing report in the ongoing impeachment investigation. A judge said during a hearing that he wasn't inclined to block the release, and then later recused himself. Another judge was assigned the case and holding a hearing Friday afternoon. Bentley, 74, has been engulfed in scandal since recordings surfaced in 2016 of him making suggestive remarks to a female aide before he and his wife of 50 years got divorced. The mild-mannered dermatologist and former Baptist deacon has acknowledged making personal mistakes but maintained he did nothing illegal or to merit his removal from office. The controversy erupted when the former head of state law enforcement, Spencer Collier, a day after being fired by Bentley, publicly accused Bentley of having an affair with his longtime political adviser, Rebekah Caldwell Mason. Collier said Mason wielded so much power that she was considered the "de facto governor." In his statement, Bentley criticized unnamed people for "taking pleasure in shaming" him and his family. "The people of this state have never asked to be told of or shown the intimate, embarrassing details of my personal life and my personal struggles," Bentley said. In the lawsuit, Bentley called the impeachment process "fundamentally unfair." Bentley's legal adviser David Byrne has said the rapidly moving process hasn't given the governor time to respond. He also said the impeachment articles accusing Bentley of corruption and neglect of duty are "extremely vague." The special counsel to the Judiciary Committee, Jack Sharman, has said the committee hadn't violated any due process rights and court doesn't have right to interfere with the Legislature's hearing process. Legislative lawyer Othni Lathram, also representing the Judiciary Committee, said some lawmakers wanted to vote on impeachment immediately, and hearings were meant to provide Bentley with due process. He said the report is about 100 pages long with 3,000 pages of exhibits. Efforts to impeach Bentley have gathered steam for months, and the House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hold its first hearing on the matter Monday. Committee Chairman Mike Jones said Thursday that lawmakers should prepare for a long week. Earlier this week, the state Ethics Commission found probable cause that the Republican governor broke state ethics and campaign finance laws. The commission referred the case to a prosecutor, who will decide whether to seek criminal charges. Senate Pro Tem Del Marsh and House Speaker Mac Cutcheon, leaders in the Republican-controlled Legislature, have both called on the governor to step aside. "It's the only way to avoid taking the state on a long, painful and embarrassing journey whose ending is likely already known to us all," McCutcheon said Friday. Ross Garber, the lawyer representing Bentley in the impeachment investigation, has urged lawmakers to be cautious. Garber said that since 1929 only two governors have been removed by impeachment and both were under criminal indictment. ___ Associated Press writer Jay Reeves in Birmingham, Alabama, contributed to this report. Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley speaks during a news conference on Friday, April 7, 2017, outside the Alabama Capitol building in Montgomery, Ala. Bentley vowed again he won't resign even as his political troubles mounted and lawmakers said they would move forward with impeachment hearings because of a sex scandal. (Julie Bennett/AL.com via AP) Alabama Governor Robert Bentley walks to the podium before a news conference on Friday, April 7, 2017, outside the Alabama Capitol building in Montgomery, Ala. Bentley vowed again he won't resign even as his political troubles mounted and lawmakers said they would move forward with impeachment hearings because of a sex scandal. (Albert Cesare /The Montgomery Advertiser via AP) Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley speaks during a news conference on Friday, April 7, 2017, outside the Alabama Capitol building in Montgomery, Ala. Bentley vowed again he won't resign even as his political troubles mounted and lawmakers said they would move forward with impeachment hearings because of a sex scandal. (Julie Bennett/AL.com via AP) Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley speaks during a news conference on Friday, April 7, 2017, outside the Alabama Capitol building in Montgomery, Ala. Bentley vowed again he won't resign even as his political troubles mounted and lawmakers said they would move forward with impeachment hearings because of a sex scandal. (Albert Cesare /The Montgomery Advertiser via AP) STOCKHOLM (AP) - The Latest on the truck crashing into a department store in central Stockholm. (all times local): 2:30 a.m. Swedish investigators have removed the hijacked beer truck from the Stockholm department store where it ran into a crowd of pedestrians in what the prime minister says is an act of terrorism. A destroyed truck is pull away by a service car after it was driven into a department store in Stockholm, Sweden, Saturday, April 8, 2017. The hijacked beer truck plowed into pedestrians at the central Stockholm department store on Friday, sending screaming shoppers fleeing in panic in what Sweden's prime minister called a terrorist attack. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber) Police say they've arrested one man in connection with the attack that killed at least four people and injured 14 others. ___ 11:55 p.m. Government offices in Sweden will fly flags at half-mast Saturday to honor the victims of a hijacked beer truck that plowed into pedestrians at a Stockholm department store. Prime Minister Stefan Lofven calls it "a day of mourning for Sweden." Lofven says in a statement that "the attack targeted our society at its most vulnerable - when we are going about our daily lives." Four people were killed and 15 more were wounded Friday in what the prime minister has called a terrorist attack. ___ 10:20 p.m. Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven has laid a bouquet of red roses and lit a candle near the department store in Stockholm where a hijacked beer trucked crashed on a busy shopping street, killing four people and wounding 15 others. Lofven briefly spoke to a police officer at the site, who said the prime minister was "saddened" by what he is calling a terror attack. Swedish broadcaster SVT says forensic police have entered the stolen truck to search for evidence. The vehicle was still tucked inside the entrance to the Ahlens department store. Stockholm police spokesman Lars Bystrom tells The Associated Press "we will be working as long as necessary" to understand the attack. Earlier, Lofven vowed that terrorism will never undermine Sweden's democracy. ___ 9:55 p.m. Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven says "the country is in a state of shock" over the stolen beer truck attack that killed four people and wounded 15 others in downtown Stockholm. Lofven said "the aim of terrorism is to undermine democracy. But such a goal will never be achieved in Sweden." Police have arrested one suspect in the truck attack but would not say if they are hunting for any others. They discouraged people from going into central Stockholm on Friday night, and the national theater, which is near the crash site, canceled three plays. Lofven said in a national televised address that his Social Democratic Party was still planning to hold its annual convention this weekend in Goteborg, Sweden's second-largest city. ___ 9:40 p.m. Swedish police say they have arrested one man "whom we are particularly interested in" in the deadly stolen beer truck attack in Stockholm. Jan Evensson from the Stockholm police told a news conference late Friday the man was arrested in Marsta, a northern Stockholm suburb close to the city's international airport, Arlanda. He says the man was "in the vicinity" of the truck crash that killed four people and wounded 15 others on a pedestrian street in the Swedish capital. He says the suspect was spotted by a police patrol and was in a police photo released earlier Friday wearing a greenish hood at the top of an escalator. Stefan Hector of the Sweden's national police says "we have a working hypothesis this is an act of terror." Evensson urged people not to go into central Stockholm for the time being. ___ 9 p.m. Stockholm police have raised the toll in the beer truck attack to 4 dead, 15 wounded. The news comes as Swedish police launched a nationwide manhunt for the person or persons who drove a stolen beer truck down a pedestrian street in the Swedish capital and crashed it into a department store Friday afternoon. Stockholm police say one person "that can have some kind of connection" to the attack has been arrested. It's not clear if that person is the man in a police photo released earlier Friday, wearing a greenish hood at the top of an escalator. Police are holding a news conference in 30 minutes on the case. ___ 8:45 p.m. The Stockholm County Council says three people have been killed and 15 wounded in the beer truck attack, nine of them seriously. Swedish police have launched a nationwide manhunt for the person or persons who drove a stolen beer truck down a pedestrian street in Stockholm and crashed it into a department store Friday afternoon. Stockholm police say one person "that can have some kind of connection" to the attack has been arrested. The Swedish daily Aftonbladet reported that a man with minor injuries had been arrested and has confessed to being behind the beer truck crash. Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven has described the crash as a terror attack. ___ 8:40 p.m. Sweden's national theater, Dramaten, located a stone's throw from where a hijacked beer truck crashed into an upscale department store, has canceled three plays Friday evening. The theater says on its web page that people who had bought tickets could either have refunds or change their dates to other shows or days. Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven has described the crash as a terror attack and says it killed at least two people. ___ 8:20 p.m. Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen says the truck crash that killed at least two people in neighboring Stockholm "is a cowardly attempt to subdue us and the peaceful way we live in Scandinavia." Loekke Rasmussen says "it hurts deep inside my heart that our Swedish brothers have been exposed to a so abominable attack." Latvia's Foreign Ministry "condemns in the strongest terms the terror attack." ___ 8 p.m. Swedish police have launched a nationwide manhunt for the person or persons who drove a stolen beer truck down a pedestrian street in Stockholm and crashed it into a department store. Police released photos of a man wearing a greenish hood at the top of an escalator, believed to be somehow "connected to the event." Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven described the crash as a terror attack and said two people were killed. Sweden's police chief Dan Eliasson said they have had no contact with "the person or persons" who drove the stolen truck but police started "a preliminary investigation of suspected terrorist crimes." The head of Sweden's security agency, Anders Thornberg, said they are "conducting intensive intelligence work to identify the person or persons behind the attack." ___ 7:30 p.m. Swedish police say they are beginning a "preliminary investigation into suspected terrorist crimes" after a deadly truck crash in Stockholm. The head of Sweden's security agency, Anders Thornberg, said agents are "conducting intensive intelligence work to identify the person or persons behind the attack." Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven described Friday's deadly truck attack in central Stockholm as a "terrorist attack." Police, however, say they have no details about the attacker or attackers and no one in custody. No one has claimed responsibility for crashing a stolen beer truck into a major department store in the city. Lofven says two people have died in the attack. Swedish media are reporting more deaths but police won't confirm those reports. ___ 6:50 p.m. The mayor of London, where five people were killed in a vehicle and knife attack last month, says the British capital "stands united with Stockholm" after Friday's deadly truck crash. Sadiq Khan says it appears Sweden has "seen a despicable act of terrorism aimed at harming innocent people and attacking our shared values of democracy, freedom, justice and tolerance." He says Londoners know what it is to suffer from terrorism, and "we share a steely determination with the people of Stockholm that we will never allow terrorists to succeed." Swedish police say several people were killed and injured after a stolen beer truck careened down a pedestrian street and into a department store. ___ 6:10 p.m. The foreign ministers of Germany and France are reacting with shock to the deadly truck attack in Stockholm. Sigmar Gabriel and Jean-Marc Ayrault noted Sweden's efforts for human rights, peace and justice around the world. In a joint statement Friday, they said that "this makes the shock about the pictures coming from the heart of Stockholm that much greater." Both Germany and France experienced deadly truck attacks last year that were claimed by the Islamic State group. Separately, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier expressed solidarity with the victims in Stockholm "and all people in Sweden." ___ 6:05 p.m. Paris' mayor says the Eiffel Tower will go black from midnight in homage to Stockholm after a truck ran into a crowd of people with deadly consequences. Anne Hidalgo, in a communique Friday, expressed her "strong emotion" over "this new terrorist attack of immense cowardice." Hidalgo also expressed solidarity with the victims and their loved ones, as well as with Stockholm Mayor Karin Wanngard, "in this particularly difficult ordeal." Hidalgo is no stranger to bloodshed in her city, following attacks in 2015 on satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in January and on various sites in November of the same year including at the Bataclan concert hall. ___ 6 p.m. Russian President Vladimir Putin has sent a telegram of condolence to Sweden's monarch in the wake of the fatal truck crash in Stockholm that officials say was likely a terror attack. "In our country, people know, and not by hearsay, about the atrocities of international terrorism. At this difficult time, Russians mourn together with the people of Sweden," Putin said in the message to King Carl XVI Gustaf that was published on the Kremlin website Friday. A suicide bomb on a St. Petersburg subway train on Monday killed 13 passengers. ___ 5:45 p.m. Swedish police say they cannot say how many people were killed or injured when a truck ran into a crowd in downtown Stockholm, and they have not found the driver. "We have no contact with the person or persons who drove the truck," Sweden's top police chief, Dan Eliasson, told a news conference. "Right now we have no one arrested," said Jan Evensson of the Stockholm police who urged people not to drive into central Stockholm. Sweden's security agency boss Anders Thornberg said the SAPO agency was working with the ordinary police in the case, adding "we worked on a similar sceanario last week." ___ 5:30 p.m. Norwegian police, who are normally unarmed, have decided to allow officers in some major cities to carry weapons following an apparent attack in the center of the Swedish capital, Stockholm, national news agency NTB said. Oslo Police spokeswoman Marita Aune confirmed to The Associated Press that officers in Oslo will begin to carry weapons with immediate effect. Several people are believed to have been killed and several others injured after the lorry ran into a crowd of people on a pedestrian street in central Stockholm. ___ 5:30 p.m. Swedish police say there are several dead and several injured after a truck ran into a crowd of people in downtown Stockholm. In a statement Friday, they said that they cannot exclude this is an act of terror based on other events in Europe. Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, who was returning to Stockholm from central Sweden, said that everything indicates it was "a terror attack." ___ 5 p.m. Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf said in a brief statement that the Swedish royal family had noted the apparent attack in central Stockholm "with dismay" and sent condolences to the families of the victims and injured. "We follow developments but as of now our thoughts go to the victims and their families," he said. In neighboring Finland, President Sauli Niinisto said he is shocked by the "maniac act of terror" in Stockholm. "Every terror attack is to be equally condemned. But it touches us deeply when such an attack takes place in our Nordic neighborhood," Niinisto said in a statement. Finnish Foreign Minister Timo Soini described on Twitter the events in Stockholm as "a shocking incident" and the Helsinki police said separately that it will tighten security measures in the center of the Finnish capital. ___ 4:55 p.m. Top European Union officials have expressed their condolences to the families of victims of the truck crash at a Stockholm department store and praised the courage of first responders. EU Council President Donald Tusk said in a tweet Friday that "my heart is in Stockholm this afternoon. My thoughts are with the victims and their families and friends of today's terrible attack." European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said that "one of Europe's most vibrant and colorful cities appears to have been struck by those wishing it - and our very way of life - harm." Juncker said "an attack on any of our (EU) member states is an attack on us all" and that Sweden can count on EU help. ___ 4:50 p.m. Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman says the German government's "thoughts are with the people in Stockholm, the injured, the relatives, first responders and police" after a truck crashed into a department store, killing several people. Steffen Seibert said Friday on Twitter following the apparent attack in Sweden: "We stand together against terror." Germany experienced a truck attack on a busy Berlin Christmas market in December, in which 12 people were killed. The attacker, a 24-year-old Tunisian, was shot dead in Italy days later. ___ 4:20 p.m. Photos at the scene in downtown Stockholm show that the truck which crashed into a major department store, killing several people, is a large beer truck. The Aftonbladet daily says Swedish beermaker Spendrups said its truck had been carjacked earlier Friday. Photos showed the beer truck sticking out of the Ahlens department store. Swedish broadcaster SVT said shots were fired at the scene, though it wasn't clear who fired them. Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven says the truck crash "is an act of terror" that has killed at least two people. Swedish media report that up to five people have been killed, and Sweden's intelligence agency says many people have been injured in the crash. ___ 4:10 p.m. Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven says everything indicates that a truck which has crashed into a major department store in downtown Stockholm is "a terror attack." Lofven says at least two people have been killed in the attack Friday afternoon on the Ahlens store. Broadcaster SVT says at least five people have been killed in the attack but police could not immediately confirm that. Swedish radio says at least three people have died. The Aftonbladet daily says Swedish beermaker Spendrups said its truck had been carjacked earlier Friday. The most recent attack in Stockholm was on Dec. 11, 2010, when an Iraqi-born Swede, Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly, detonated two devices, including one that killed him, in central Stockholm. ___ 4 p.m. Swedish radio says a truck has crashed into an upscale department store in central Stockholm, killing at least three people. Swedish police are urging people to avoid central Stockholm around the downtown Sergels Torg square, and Swedish news agency TT says subway traffic has been shut down in the area. Broadcaster SVT says at least five have been killed but police could not immediately confirm. Sweden's Intelligence Agency says on its web page that there is "a large number of injured" in the truck crash. ___ 3:40 p.m. Pictures published by Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet show that a truck has ploughed into the upscale Ahlens department store in the Swedish capital of Stockholm. Swedish radio says Friday that three people have been killed in the crash and Swedish broadcaster SVT says shots have been fired. People in the area are fleeing the scene. Witness Jan Granroth told Aftonbladet, another daily that "we stood inside a shoe store and heard something ... and then people started to scream." He says "I looked out of the store and saw a big truck." The store is part of a Sweden-wide chain. The building includes several stores at the street level. 3:10 p.m. Swedish media say a truck has crashed into a department store in central Stockholm, killing three people. Swedish radio says Friday that three people have been killed in the crash and Swedish broadcaster SVT says shots have been fired. People in the area are fleeing the scene. The Swedish news agency TT says several people have been rushed away in ambulances, and live television footage showed smoke coming out of the department store that the truck smashed into. Swedish police said say they have received calls about a person who has injured others driving a vehicle on the central Stockholm street of Drottninggatan. Police spokeswoman Towe Hagg says people have been injured but she would not confirm the deaths. A police officer guards the scene after a truck was driven into a department store in Stockholm, Sweden, Saturday, April 8, 2017. The hijacked beer truck plowed into pedestrians at the central Stockholm department store on Friday, sending screaming shoppers fleeing in panic in what Sweden's prime minister called a terrorist attack. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber) Emergency services attend the scene after a truck was driven into a department store in Stockholm, Sweden, Friday April 7, 2017. The driver of a hijacked beer truck is wanted by police after the truck crashed into an upscale department store in central Stockholm on Friday, leaving dead and injured in its wake. (Fredrik Sandberg / TT via AP) Armed police attend the scene after a truck crashed into a department store injuring several people in central Stockholm, Sweden, Friday April 7, 2017. Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven says everything indicates a truck that has crashed into a major department store in downtown Stockholm is "a terror attack." (Claudio Brescian/TT News Agency via AP) A couple embrace after a truck crashed into a department store injuring several people in central Stockholm, Sweden, Friday April 7, 2017. Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven says everything indicates a truck that has crashed into a major department store in downtown Stockholm is "a terror attack." (Anders Wiklund/ TT News Agency via AP) Armed police patrol outside the central station in Stockholm after a truck crashed into a department store injuring several people in a different part of Stockholm, Sweden, Friday April 7, 2017. Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven says everything indicates a truck that has crashed into a major department store in downtown Stockholm is "a terror attack." (Jessica Gow/ TT News Agency via AP) Police evacuate Stockholm Central Train Station after a truck crashed into a department store injuring several people in a different part of Stockholm, Sweden, Friday April 7, 2017. Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven says everything indicates a truck that has crashed into a major department store in downtown Stockholm is "a terror attack." (Anders Wiklund/ TT News Agency via AP) A police officer in a gas mask attends the scene after a truck crashed into a department store injuring several people in central Stockholm, Sweden, Friday April 7, 2017. (Noella Gow TT News Agency via AP) A body, centre at rught, lies on the ground on at the scene after a truck crashed into a department store injuring several people in central Stockholm, Sweden, Friday April 7, 2017. (Andreas Schyman, TT News Agency via AP) People look on at the scene after a truck crashed into a department store injuring several people in central Stockholm, Sweden, Friday April 7, 2017. (Andreas Schyman, TT News Agency via AP) People look on at the scene after a truck crashed into a department store injuring several people in central Stockholm, Sweden, Friday April 7, 2017. (Andreas Schyman, TT News Agency via AP) An injured person, on the ground centre , is helped near scene after a truck crashed into a department store injuring several people in central Stockholm, Sweden, Friday April 7, 2017. Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven says everything indicates a truck that has crashed into a major department store in downtown Stockholm is "a terror attack." (Rose-Marie Otter/ TT News Agency via AP) Emergency personnel load a person into an ambulance, centre, at the scene after a truck crashed into a department store injuring several people in central Stockholm, Sweden, Friday April 7, 2017. Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven says everything indicates a truck that has crashed into a major department store in downtown Stockholm is "a terror attack." (Fredrik Sandberg/TT News Agency via AP) Armed police stand guard outside Stockholm Castle after a truck crashed into a department store injuring several people in central Stockholm, Sweden, Friday April 7, 2017. Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven says everything indicates a truck that has crashed into a major department store in downtown Stockholm is "a terror attack." (Claudio Brescian/TT News Agency via AP) The rear of a truck, left, protrudes after it crashed into a department store injuring several people in central Stockholm, Sweden, Friday April 7, 2017. (Anders Wiklund , TT News Agency via AP) A view of the scene after a truck crashed into a department store injuring several people in central Stockholm, Sweden, Friday April 7, 2017. Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven says everything indicates a truck that has crashed into a major department store in downtown Stockholm is "a terror attack." (Fredrik Sandberg/TT News Agency via AP) Police attend the scene after a truck crashed into a department store injuring several people in central Stockholm, Sweden, Friday April 7, 2017. (Noella Johansson, TT News Agency via AP) Police officers assists in evacuating the area after a truck crashed into a department store injuring several people in central Stockholm, Sweden, Friday April 7, 2017. (Noella Johansson, TT News Agency via AP) Police officers stand in a doorway at the scene after a truck crashed into a department store injuring several people in central Stockholm, Sweden, Friday April 7, 2017. (Anders Wiklund TT News Agency via AP) Police evacuate Stockholm Central Train Station after a truck crashed into a department store injuring several people in a different part of Stockholm, Sweden, Friday April 7, 2017. Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven says everything indicates a truck that has crashed into a major department store in downtown Stockholm is "a terror attack." (Anders Wiklund/ TT News Agency via AP) A view of the scene after a truck crashed into a department store injuring several people in central Stockholm, Sweden, Friday April 7, 2017. Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven says everything indicates a truck that has crashed into a major department store in downtown Stockholm is "a terror attack." (Fredrik Sandberg/TT News Agency via AP) Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven gives a media conference at Rosenbad after the truck terror attack in Stockholm, Friday April 7, 2017. A hijacked truck crashed into an upscale department store in central Stockholm on Friday, leaving dead and injured in its wake. (Fredrik Persson / TT via AP) Police block a road near to where a man has been arrested in Marsta, a suburb in northern Stockholm, Sweden, on Friday evening April 7, 2017. Swedish police say they have arrested one man "whom we are particularly interested in", in the deadly stolen beer truck attack in Stockholm earlier Friday. (Maja Suslin / TT via AP) Police block a road near to where a man has been arrested in Marsta, a suburb in northern Stockholm, Sweden, on Friday evening April 7, 2017. Swedish police say they have arrested one man "whom we are particularly interested in", in the deadly stolen beer truck attack in Stockholm earlier Friday. (Maja Suslin / TT via AP) ATHENS, Greece (AP) - German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has begun a two-day visit to Greece where he will open an art exhibition being co-hosted by the two countries. Steinmeier met Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos on Friday and held talks with Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. Ties between Greece and Germany have been strained on occasion in recent years over the austerity measures demanded of Athens in return for bailout loans that have averted a Greek bankruptcy. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his Greek counterpart Prokopis Pavlopoulos, not pictured, review the Presidential Guard during a welcome ceremony at the Presidential palace in Athens, Friday, April 7, 2017. Steinmeier is in Greece on a two-day official visit. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis) Progress over Greece's bailout program appears to have been made Friday at a meeting of finance ministers in the Maltese capital of Valletta. Greece needs its next batch of bailout cash to avoid going bankrupt this summer. Steinmeier and Pavlopoulos - whose roles are both largely ceremonial - will inaugurate the Documenta art exhibition in central Athens on Saturday. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, right, and his Greek counterpart Prokopis Pavlopoulos review the Presidential Guard during a welcome ceremony at the Presidential palace in Athens, Friday, April 7, 2017. Steinmeier is in Greece on a two-day official visit. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis) German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, right, and his Greek counterpart Prokopis Pavlopoulos review the Presidential Guard during a welcome ceremony at the Presidential palace in Athens, Friday, April 7, 2017. Steinmeier is in Greece on two-day official visit. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis) German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, right, and his Greek counterpart Prokopis Pavlopoulos review the Presidential Guard during a welcome ceremony at the Presidential palace in Athens, Friday, April 7, 2017. Steinmeier is in Greece on a two-day official visit. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis) German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, left, and his Greek counterpart Prokopis Pavlopoulos walk during their meeting in Athens, Friday, April 7, 2017. Steinmeier is in Greece on two-day official visit. (Yiannis Kolesidis/Pool Photo via AP) PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) - The Latest on President Donald Trump's summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping (all times EDT): 10:50 p.m. Chinese President Xi Jinping (shee jihn-peeng) is getting a quick view of America's Last Frontier. First lady Melania Trump, wife of President Donald Trump, right, and Peng Liyuan, wife of Chinese president Xi Jinping, left, applaud while listening to an orchestra perform while touring the Bak Middle School of the Arts, Friday, April 7, 2017, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky) Xi landed in Alaska for a refueling stop following his meeting with President Donald Trump earlier Friday in Florida. Alaska Gov. Bill Walker welcomed Xi during a ceremony on the tarmac at the Anchorage airport. They then set off on a short sightseeing tour of Alaska's largest city. Later, they plan a business meeting and dinner at a downtown Anchorage hotel before Xi returns to the airport for the 4,000-mile trip to Beijing. China is Alaska's leading trade partner, buying more than $1 billion in Alaska products in 2016. It's a two-way street, with Alaska's imports from China only lagging behind trade with neighboring Canada. ___ 6:50 p.m. The anticipated showdown between the United States and China over trade and North Korea has ended with little sign of confrontation - or concrete progress in resolving differences. U.S. officials say President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping have agreed to increase cooperation on trying to get North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program, and China has acknowledged the need for more balanced trade with the U.S. The most powerful message for the Chinese leader may have been Trump's decision to launch missile strikes at Syria, adding weight to Trump's threat to act unilaterally against North Korea's weapons program. A much heavier risk would be required to take military action against the nuclear-armed North, which has its artillery and missiles trained on a key U.S. ally, South Korea. ___ 5 p.m. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says the U.S. and China have agreed to increase cooperation on trying to get North Korea's to abandon its nuclear weapons program. Tillerson was briefing reporters Friday after President Donald Trump's two-day summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago. Tillerson said the two leaders noted the urgency of the threat of North Korea's weapons program. They reaffirmed their commitment to a denuclearization of the divided Korean Peninsula. On trade issues, Trump also called for China to "level the playing field" for American workers, stressing the need for reciprocal market access. Trump also noted the importance of protecting human rights, and asked China to adhere to international norms in the seas of East Asia. ___ 1:15 p.m. First lady Melania Trump and Peng Liyuan (puhng LEE'-yoo-en), the wife of Chinese President Xi Jinping (shee jihn-peeng), visited a seventh-grade civics class at a Florida middle school. They toured Bak Middle School of the Arts in West Palm Beach and mingled with students as they made posters about international conflicts, including the Cuban missile crisis, the Korean War and World War II. Mrs. Trump said it was "great" when one student said she wanted to be "a senator, and perhaps then president." A girls' chorus sang "Astonishing," from the musical "Little Women." Peng is a Chinese contemporary folk singer and performing artist. Choral director Connie Drosakis says she chose the song because of its message about "the power of being a woman" and "making dreams come true." ___ 11:45 a.m. President Donald Trump says it's been "very interesting" to spend time with Chinese President Xi Jinping and his delegation. Trump and Xi are spending part of Friday in talks at Trump's estate in Florida. Officials have said the leaders are expected to discuss North Korea's nuclear ambitions and trade, among other issues important to the world's two biggest economies. Trump says they made "tremendous progress" over dinner Thursday, and he's predicting that even more progress will be made before Xi departs later Friday. He says their relationship is "outstanding." Xi said a few words afterward in Chinese, but no translator was president. Trump jokingly said he agrees with whatever Xi said. ___ 3:30 a.m. The U.S. missile strikes on Syria are overshadowing the second day of talks between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (shee jihn-peeng). When the leaders meet Friday, North Korea's nuclear ambitions and the U.S-China trade imbalance as well as other points of tension are expected to be discussed. Trump and his wife, Melania, hosted Xi and his wife for dinner Thursday night at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in south Florida. Not long after dinner the U.S. announced the missile barrage on an air base in Syria in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack against civilians. The White House has downplayed expectations for a breakthrough on U.S-China issues like trade and tariffs, insisting that the 24-hour summit is mostly an introductory meeting for Trump and Xi. Chinese President Xi Jinping, joined by Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang, right, speaks during a bilateral meeting with President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, Friday, April 7, 2017, in Palm Beach, Fla. Trump was meeting again with his Chinese counterpart Friday, with U.S. missile strikes on Syria adding weight to his threat to act unilaterally against the nuclear weapons program of China's ally, North Korea. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, left, listens as President Donald Trump speaks during a bilateral meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago, Friday, April 7, 2017, in Palm Beach, Fla. Trump was meeting again with his Chinese counterpart Friday, with U.S. missile strikes on Syria adding weight to his threat to act unilaterally against the nuclear weapons program of China's ally, North Korea. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) First Lady Melania Trump, talks with students in a 7th grade civics class while touring the Bak Middle School of the Arts with Peng Liyuan, wife of Chinese president Xi Jinping, Friday, April 7, 2017, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky) WASHINGTON (AP) - The Latest on the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court (all times local): The White House is praising Neil Gorsuch following his confirmation as the next Supreme Court justice. President Donald Trump says in a statement that Gorsuch's "judicial temperament, exceptional intellect, unparalleled integrity, and record of independence" will make him "the perfect choice" to serve on the court. FILE - In this March 22, 2017, file photo, Supreme Court nominee Judge Neil Gorsuch speaks during his confirmation hearing, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Gorsuch's confirmation as the 113th Supreme Court justice is expected on April 7. It won't be long before he starts revealing what he really thinks about a range of hot topics he repeatedly sidestepped during his confirmation hearing.(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File) Trump says in the statement that Gorsuch will serve "with distinction" and continue to "vigorously defend our Constitution." Gorsuch was confirmed Friday by the Senate. The White House says he will be sworn in Monday during a private ceremony at the Supreme Court, followed by a public ceremony at the White House later in the morning. Justice Anthony Kennedy will administer the oath at the White House ceremony. ___ 12:10 p.m. The Supreme Court says Neil Gorsuch will be sworn in as the 113th justice on Monday in separate ceremonies at the court and the White House. Justices take two oaths, one required by the Constitution and the other set by federal law. Chief Justice John Roberts will administer the constitutional oath to Gorsuch in a private ceremony in the justices' conference room at 9 a.m. Later Monday, Justice Anthony Kennedy will ask his former law clerk and new colleague to take the second oath in a public ceremony at the White House. The court did not give a time for the White House event. Gorsuch will officially be a member of the court once he takes the two oaths. ___ 12:05 p.m. The Senate has confirmed Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, bringing a contentious 14-month partisan battle to a close after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. The vote was 54-45 on Friday. The victory gives President Donald Trump's 49-year-old nominee a lifetime spot on the court and his party a much-needed political win after failing to pass legislation on health care and other issues. The final confirmation vote came after Senate Republicans rewrote the rules, voting to eliminate the 60-vote filibuster threshold on Supreme Court nominees. The change allows the Senate to proceed to the final vote with a simple majority. Democrats opposed Gorsuch in part because Senate Republicans blocked former President Barack Obama's nominee, Merrick Garland, last year. A judge has reprimanded a white Oklahoma police officer accused in the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man for discussing the case on national TV. Tulsa officer Betty Jo Shelby gave her first interview since the September 16 shooting to CBS' 60 Minutes on Sunday. Judge Doug Drummond issued the formal rebuke Thursday, cautioning attorneys that further publicity could jeopardize the chance of conducting an impartial trial. 'It is obvious this case has drawn significant media interest nationwide since the beginning,' Drummond wrote in the five-page order. 'The court is, at a minimum, hopeful that all parties ... recognize that pretrial publicity potentially hampers prospects for a fair and impartial trial for both sides.' Scroll down for video Officer Betty Shelby, from Tulsa, Oklahoma, sat down on Sunday for her first interview after she was charged with manslaughter for shooting dead unarmed black man Terence Crutcher in September of 2016 The police officer revealed that Crutcher had an 'odd' and 'zombie-like' behavior before she shot him dead. She also revealed that her husband watched her open fire from above in a police helicopter where he was working as a spotter. Pictured: Police helicopter footage Crutcher (pictured) was 40 years old when he died. An autopsy determined he had PCP in his system at the time of his death. Shelby defended her actions before her criminal trial is expected to begin in May, where she could face life in prison if found guilty Shelby is seen leaving the Tulsa County Courthouse after a December 2016 court appearance In Sunday's interview, Shelby told correspondent Bill Whitaker that she used lethal force on 40-year-old Terence Crutcher because she feared he was reaching inside his SUV for a gun. 'I'm feeling that his intent is to do me harm and I keep thinking, 'Don't do this. Please don't do this. Don't make this happen,'' said Shelby, who has pleaded not guilty to first-degree manslaughter and goes on trial May 8. Shelby told Whitaker that she remembers pulling the trigger. 'It's like slow motion of me bringing my gun up, my finger coming in and then letting off. And he stopped and then he just slowly fell to the ground,' she said. The officer revealed that her husband had watched her open fire on Crutcher, as he was working as a spotter on board the police helicopter. Prosecutors contend that Shelby overreacted because Crutcher wasn't armed or combative when she approached him on a north Tulsa street after his SUV broke down. They say he obeyed orders to raise his hands. After the shooting, investigators determined that Crutcher didn't have a weapon on him or in his SUV. Shelby was charged with manslaughter six days after the fatal shooting took place; the events leading up to the shooting are shown here Shelby (right and left) had worked in law enforcement for 10 years before the fatal events While police and helicopter video shows Crutcher with his hands up for a significant portion of the encounter, Shelby said she shot him when he reached into his vehicle The shooting was caught on video from a police helicopter and a dashboard camera. Footage showed Crutcher walking away from Shelby with his arms in the air, but the images don't provide a clear view of when Shelby fired the single shot. She said she first noticed the large 240lb black man standing in the middle of the road as she made her way to a different response call, ten minutes before the incident. She said of Crutcher: 'His hands are just dropped beside him. His chin is resting on his chest. And hes standing there motionless. And I thought, Hmmm. I wonder if hes on PCP.' Shelby drove on until she came across an abandoned vehicle in the middle of the road, and after she got out to investigate, Crutcher had made his way over. The officer noted that her training taught her people on PCP have the tendency to turn violent and that the 40-year-old kept reaching his hands in his pocket, which led her to be wary. If Shelby is found guilty of manslaughter, she faces four years to life in prison Only two minutes after her initial encounter with Crutcher, Shelby fatally shot the man, right in front of the eyes of her husband, David Shelby. Oklahoma's medical examiner determined that the father-of-four did have the hallucinogenic drug PCP in his system when he died. The police helicopter pilot remarked that Crutcher looked like 'a bad dude' and David Shelby, who was with the pilot commented to CBS: 'What I saw was, an individual that was being noncompliant and apparently and obviously refusing to obey the commands of the officer.' Shelby added in her interview: 'What I based everything on was his actions, his behaviors. Race had nothing to do with my decision making.' Crutcher's twin sister, Tiffany Crutcher, said that after viewing the footage herself, she's certain her brother was wrongfully killed. Shelby said she believed Crutcher to be 'targeting' her, which means he was marking her location to grab a weapon so he'd know where to shoot; the scene of the fatal shooting as visible from helicopter cameras is shown here 'What we saw on that video is what my dad always taught my brothers, taught us to do if we were pulled over by a police officer,' Tiffany Crutcher said. 'Put your hands in the air and put your hands on the car. And my brother did what my father taught us.' While the video shows Terence Crutcher with his hands up for a significant portion of the encounter, Shelby said she shot him when he reached into his vehicle. As Shelby watched the video back, she described her thought process aloud to Whitaker, her interviewer. 'I'm feeling that his intent is to do me harm and I'm thinking don't do this. Please don't do this. Don't make this happen,' she said. 'And then right there's he's looking back at me. That's what we call targeting. So he's getting my position, my last known location to retrieve and then shoot.' 'If he were to grab a weapon he would know exactly where to turn to shoot, that's what you're thinking,' Whitaker said, verifying he understood what Shelby meant by the term targeting. Shelby confirmed that was what she meant, and went on to describe what she saw in the video playback. 'His shoulder drops, his arm drops, and he's reaching in and it's fast,' she said. 'Just that would tell any officer that that man's going for a weapon.' The footage isn't very clear, and there are times when Shelby and her partner that day blocked the video by standing in front of the dash cam. Helicopter footage is also difficult to evaluate, as it's from far away. 'I say with a louder, more intense voice, Stop! Stop! Stop!' Shelby added, further describing her recollection from that day. 'And he didn't and that's when I took aim.' When asked if she thought the Tulsa district attorney's decision to charge her with manslaughter six days after the shooting and before the police department's investigation was concluded was made to prevent civil unrest, Shelby said, 'I believe thats what they thought.' Tiffany Crutcher believes Shelby is only saying what she needs to say to get away with killing her brother. 'Of course, shes saying everything that shes supposed to say to defend herself,' she said. 'We need our men and women in blue. But at the end of the day, theyre not warriors. Theyre supposed to be our guardians,' Crutcher told the CBS host. Celebrity chef Jose Andres has settled his dispute with The Trump Organization after backing out of a plan to open a restaurant in Washington's Trump hotel in 2015 due to the President's controversial comments about immigrants. The Trump Organization, which is now being run by the President's adult sons, issued a joint statement with Andres' ThinkFoodGroup Friday saying the $10million lawsuit has been settled. The deal's terms are confidential, and both companies declined to comment. Andres' ThinkFoodGroup and The Trump Organization issued a statement Friday saying the lawsuit has been settled. The deal's terms are confidential Andres (pictured) announced he was backing out of the restaurant following Trump's comments in June 2015 that some Mexican immigrants bring drugs and crime to the US, and some are rapists. The Trump Organization then sued The lawsuit dates to 2015 when Andres backed out of a plan to open a restaurant in the Trump International Hotel in Washington, citing then-candidate Donald Trump's statements 'disparaging immigrants.' Andres, who has several restaurants in the city, is an immigrant from Spain. On Friday, both parties said in a statement that they have settled amicably. Washington's Trump hotel, which is in the historic Old Post Office building on Pennsylvania Avenue, opened in October 2016 'I am pleased that we were able to resolve our differences and move forward cooperatively, as friends,' Andres said in the statement. 'Going forward, we are excited about the prospects of working together with the Trump Organization on a variety of programs to benefit the community.' Donald Trump Jr, one of Trump's sons who is running The Trump Organization, praised Andres. 'I am glad that we are able to put this matter behind us and move forward as friends,' he wrote. The celebrity chef announced he was backing out of the restaurant following Trump's controversial comments in June 2015 that some Mexican immigrants bring drugs and crime to the US, and some are rapists. Andres (pictured on March 11) had planned a $7million restaurant benefitting the Trump's $212million makeover of the hotel. According to court documents, it was going to be called Topo Atrio and serve authentic Spanish food The Trump Organization, which is now run by his two sons Donald Jr (L) and Eric (R), settled in court on Friday. Donald Trump Jr praised Andres, and said he is 'glad that we are able to put this matter behind us and move forward as friends' Andres had planned a $7million restaurant benefitting the Trump's $212million makeover of the hotel. According to court documents, it was going to be called Topo Atrio and serve authentic Spanish food, reported the Washington Post. The Trump Organization, while Donald was still in charge, then sued in July of 2015 for breach of contract, seeking $10million. Andres counter-sued for $8million, and his firm argued that comments made by the now-President made it difficult to hire Hispanic staff or attract Hispanic patrons. Washington's Trump hotel, which is in the historic Old Post Office building on Pennsylvania Avenue, opened in October 2016. The hotel's signature restaurant is a steakhouse, BLT Prime by David Burke, which was opened in the place of Andres' restaurant. This lawsuit was one of two that Trump filed in 2015 against restaurants who backed out of plans to open restaurants in his DC hotel. The second is against chef Geoffrey Zakarian, who had similar concerns to those Andres expressed. That lawsuit is still pending, and in January both sides said talks were at an 'impasse'. Trump is seeking about $14million in that case, reported Bloomberg. More than 150 law enforcement officers are searching for 32-year-old Joseph Jakubowski A manhunt is underway for a man suspected of stealing firearms from a southern Wisconsin gun store, threatening an unspecified attack that prompted several schools to close, and sending an anti-government manifesto to President Donald Trump. More than 150 law enforcement officers were searching for 32-year-old Joseph A. Jakubowski of Janesville, Wisconsin on Friday. Investigators believe Jakubowski stole 'a large quantity of high-end handguns and rifles' from a Janesville gun shop Tuesday night, said Rock County Sheriff Robert Spoden in a statement. Authorities said he also has acquired a bulletproof vest and helmet. Jakubowski became the prime suspect in the burglary of Armageddon Gun Shop after a car registered to his name was found burning on a rural road about three miles from the store within a half hour of the break-in. FBI agents provide tactical support to sheriff's detectives during a search for Joseph Jakubowski, in Janesville, Wisconsin on Thursday Jakubowski is believed to be the man seen in this surveillance video of a gun shop burglary in Janesville, Wisconsin on Tuesday night Investigators say the suspect seen in this surveillance video stole 'a large quantity of high-end handguns and rifles' from the gun store The interior of Armageddon Gun Shop is shown. Police fear that Jakubowski robbed the store and may act on recent unspecified threats against schools and public officials Spoden said an associate of Jakubowski told authorities he had been 'agitated' by national politics and 'recently verbalized a plan to steal guns and use them in an unspecified attack.' The associate also said Jakubowski had made non-specific threats toward schools and public officials, according to the sheriff. Public schools in Janesville and nearby Milton canceled classes Friday as officers combed the surrounding county. The University of Wisconsin-Rock County and Blackhawk Technical College were also closed. Jakubowski's car was found burning not far from the gun shop after the robbery Jakubowski's last known residence (pictured) is about eight miles from Armageddon Guns Spoden said Jakubowski recently sent a 161-page anti-government manifesto to the White House and gave a copy to one his associates, who turned it over to police. 'When you look at the document that he wrote, it's really a long laundry list of injustices he believes that the government and society and the upper class have put forth onto the rest of the citizens,' Spoden said, declining to offer details. Jakubowski has had several run-ins with law enforcement over the years. Most were for traffic violations, though he has previously resisted arrest and once tried to disarm an officer, said Janesville Police Chief David Moore. A $10,000 reward has been offered for information leading to Jakubowski's arrest. Jakubowski is believed to be armed and dangerous. Anyone with information about his whereabouts is urged to call 1-800-CALL-FBI (225-5324). NEW YORK (AP) - Seattle rockers Pearl Jam, the late rapper Tupac Shakur and 1970s hitmaking band Journey were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on Friday night. Joan Baez, Electric Light Orchestra and Yes were also part of the 2017 class inducted at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York, which kicked off with a tribute to Chuck Berry. The new inductees closed the multi-hour event with a group performance, and before that Pearl Jam electrified with a performance of its well-known songs. Inductees Neal Schon, left, and Steve Perry from the band Journey embrace at the 2017 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony at the Barclays Center on Friday, April 7, 2017, in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP) David Letterman inducted the band, and brought a small guitar and letter onstage that he said Vedder gave to his son days before his late-night show ended in 2015. Letterman wasn't the only fan in the room: As Vedder thanked his wife during his speech, one male fan from a seat up high screamed, "I love you, Eddie!" "Shoot, honey, I thought you were sitting down in the front," Vedder said to laughs. His wife, Jill, was teary-eyed in the audience as fans continued to cheer. Vedder also used his speech to discuss climate change, saying "climate change is real, that's not fake news." He also said his daughter Olivia was a big fan of Chance the Rapper, and thanked the Grammy-winning hip-hop star for his charitable contributions to Chicago. Speaking of rappers, Shakur - who died in 1996 - was remembered by Snoop Dogg with a touching and playful speech. Dogg, a former label mate and friend of Shakur, says he attended the event to make sure the rapper, actor and poet is remembered as a "strong black man that stood for his." Dogg, a marijuana enthusiast, also says it was Shakur who first gave him weed. "That's right - Tupac got Snoop Dogg smoking blunts," he said to laughs from the audience. Later, Alicia Keys performed a medley of Shakur's songs on piano, including "Dear Mama" and "Changes." One of the night's most anticipated performances was Journey's. But despite earlier reports, Steve Perry did not perform with the current Journey members. Instead, Arnel Pineda sang lead as the band performed their hits, including "Don't Stop Believin'." Perry, estranged from the band for many years, did embrace guitarist and co-founder Neal Schon onstage. "You're the one who put us here," Perry said to the Journey fans, earning one of the night's loudest applauses. "I've been gone a long time but you've never not been in my heart." Like Shakur and Pearl Jam, Baez and ELO were all elected in their first year as nominees. Baez, one of folk's most iconic voices, said it felt "cool" to be inducted. She also said earning the Rock Hall honor would help young people learn who she is, and what she's accomplished. "My granddaughter had no clue who I was until I took her backstage to a Taylor Swift concert," said Baez, who added that her granddaughter took a selfie with Swift and now had "newfound respect for her grandmother." She was inducted by Jackson Browne, who said the first album he bought with his own money was Baez's second album. ELO - who kicked off the show with Berry's "Roll Over Beethoven" - and progressive British rockers Yes were also inducted Friday. "It was 49 years ago tonight I met Chris Squire at a bar," singer Jon Anderson said of the band's founding bass player who died in 2015. "Magic moment." Berry wasn't the only late legend who was honored: Lenny Kravitz paid tribute to Prince after the "In Memoriam" section with an explosive performance of "When Doves Cry," backed by a choir and beaming purple lights. Pharrell said kind words about Nile Rodgers, who received a special honor at the event, which will air April 29 as a special on HBO. To be eligible, all of the nominees had to have released their first recording no later than 1991. Inductees will eventually be enshrined in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame museum in Cleveland. _____ Online: http://www.rockhall.com Inductee Eddie Vedder from the band Pearl Jam performs at the 2017 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony at the Barclays Center on Friday, April 7, 2017, in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP) Snoop Dogg poses with an award given posthumously to Tupac Shakur in the 2017 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony press room at the Barclays Center on Friday, April 7, 2017, in New York. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP) Alicia Keys performs a tribute to inductee Tupac Shakur at the 2017 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony at the Barclays Center on Friday, April 7, 2017, in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP) Inductees Neal Schon, left, and Steve Perry from the band Journey appear at the 2017 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony at the Barclays Center on Friday, April 7, 2017, in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP) Inductee Joan Baez performs at the 2017 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony at the Barclays Center on Friday, April 7, 2017, in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP) Inductee Jon Anderson from the band Yes, left, and Geddy Lee from the band Rush perform at the 2017 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony at the Barclays Center on Friday, April 7, 2017, in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP) Inductee Jeff Lynne from the band ELO appears at the 2017 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony at the Barclays Center on Friday, April 7, 2017, in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP) T.I. poses in the press room at the 2017 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony at the Barclays Center on Friday, April 7, 2017, in New York. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP) Gregg Rolie, from left, Neal Schon and Jonathan Cain of the band Journey pose in the press room at the 2017 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony at the Barclays Center on Friday, April 7, 2017, in New York. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP) Alicia Keys performs a tribute to inductee Tupac Shakur at the 2017 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony at the Barclays Center on Friday, April 7, 2017, in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP) Alex Lifeson, left, and Geddy Lee, right, of the band Rush appear in the 2017 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony press room at the Barclays Center on Friday, April 7, 2017, in New York. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP) Inductee Jon Anderson from the band Yes, left, and Geddy Lee from the band Rush perform at the 2017 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony at the Barclays Center on Friday, April 7, 2017, in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP) Inductee Eddie Vedder from the band Pearl Jam performs at the 2017 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony at the Barclays Center on Friday, April 7, 2017, in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP) Inductees Neal Schon, left, and Steve Perry from the band Journey appear at the 2017 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony at the Barclays Center on Friday, April 7, 2017, in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP) MINEOLA, N.Y. (AP) - A popular Chinese comedian and former judge on the "China's Got Talent" television program is facing weapon and drug charges on Long Island in New York. Zhou Libo appeared playful and jovial, joking with more than a dozen reporters from Chinese media outlets before and after a brief appearance in a Nassau County courtroom on Friday. At one point before he went into court, Zhou smiled broadly as he joined other reporters in taking cellphone video of his attorney's briefing to reporters. He has pleaded not guilty to charges stemming from a Jan. 19 arrest in the exclusive village of Lattingtown, east of New York City on what is known as Long Island's "gold coast." This Jan. 19, 2017 photo provided by the Nassau County Police Dept. shows a booking photo of Chinese comedian Zhou Libo taken in Mineola, N.Y., after his arrest on weapon and drug possession charges. Zhou, 49, a former judge on the "China's Got Talent" television program, has pleaded not guilty to charges stemming from his arrest in the village of Lattingtown, N.Y., where police officers stopped the black Mercedes he was driving shortly after midnight because they said he had been driving erratically. (Nassau County Police Dept. via AP) Police said officers stopped a black Mercedes Benz that Zhou was driving shortly after midnight because "it was being driven erratically and the operator was using a cellphone." They said the 49-year-old Zhou had a passenger with him. Officers said they noticed a shoulder holster in the back seat and found a loaded pistol and two plastic bags containing crack cocaine inside a backpack. He and the passenger were arrested. Attorney Hugh Mo declined to comment on the allegations after the case was adjourned to June 9. "He's taking the charges seriously," the attorney said. "He does have confidence in the judicial system; he does have confidence in his lawyer; he does have confidence in the fact that hopefully at the end of the day we're going to come out and hopefully resolve this to his satisfaction." Authorities have not disclosed why the popular Chinese comedian was in the ritzy community near Long Island Sound on the night of his arrest. He is believed to have a residence in Alpine, New Jersey. Last July, the Shanghai native performed his standup routine at Carnegie Hall in New York City. The Carnegie Hall website noted he is a pioneer of political parody in mainland China. It said in 2012, he received the Starlight Award, the highest honor in China's television arts, for the "Chinese Dream Show." He served as a judge on the popular "China's Got Talent" program in 2010 and 2011. --- Follow Eltman on Twitter at @feltman41 Chinese comedian Zhou Libo arrives with his wife Hu Jie at court in Mineola, N.Y., on Long Island where Zhou pleaded not guilty to drug and weapon charges. The comedian and former judge on the "China's Got Talent" television program was arrested during a traffic stop Jan. 19 in Lattingtown, east of New York City. Police said he had been driving erratically and when they stopped him said they noticed a shoulder holster in the back seat and found a loaded pistol and two plastic bags containing crack cocaine in a backpack. (AP Photo/Frank Eltman) Chinese comedian Zhou Libo, center, stands with his wife Hu Jie, left, as he shoots a video of his lawyer, with reporters from Chinese media outlets outside a courtroom in Mineola, N.Y., on Long Island where Zhou pleaded not guilty to drug and weapon charges. The comedian and former judge on the "China's Got Talent" television program was arrested during a traffic stop on Jan. 19. Police said he had been driving erratically and when they stopped him said they noticed a shoulder holster in the back seat and found a loaded pistol and two plastic bags containing crack cocaine in a backpack. (AP Photo/Frank Eltman) Chinese comedian Zhou Libo, left, arrives with his wife Hu Jie, partially hidden, center, and his attorney Hugh Mo, at the courthouse in Mineola, N.Y., on Long Island where Zhou pleaded not guilty to drug and weapon charges. The comedian and former judge on the "China's Got Talent" television program was arrested during a traffic stop Jan. 19 in Lattingtown, east of New York City. Police said he had been driving erratically and when they stopped him said they noticed a shoulder holster in the back seat and found a loaded pistol and two plastic bags containing crack cocaine in a backpack. (AP Photo/Frank Eltman) Chinese comedian Zhou Libo, center, is surrounded by reporters from Chinese media outlets, center, as he arrives with his wife Hu Jie, left, to court in Mineola, N.Y., on Long Island where Zhou pleaded not guilty to drug and weapon charges. The comedian and former judge on the "China's Got Talent" television program was arrested during a traffic stop Jan. 19 in Lattingtown, east of New York City. Police said he had been driving erratically and when they stopped him said they noticed a shoulder holster in the back seat and found a loaded pistol and two plastic bags containing crack cocaine in a backpack. (AP Photo/Frank Eltman) TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP) - The Latest on the police response to a bomb threat at a western Indiana high school (all times local): 5:15 p.m. A western Indiana police chief says a caller who made threats against a high school claimed he had explosives and would start shooting students if he didn't receive a ransom. Terre Haute Police Chief John Plasse (PLAS'-ee) says a male called the police department Friday morning saying he was in a bathroom at Terre Haute North High School with a firearm and a bag of explosives. The caller said he'd start shooting students if he didn't receive a ransom within 10 minutes, or if students left the building. Plasse says the caller made other threats when he was transferred to police dispatch. No bombs or weapons were found inside. Plasse asked for the public's help finding the caller, who he says "put a lot of people in fear today." ___ 3:43 p.m. Students at a western Indiana high school are being sent home hours after police responded to a bomb threat at the school. Terre Haute police spokesman Officer Ryan Adamson says Terre Haute North High School's 1,800 students were allowed to leave just before 3 p.m. Friday after a bomb-sniffing dog finished searching the school and found no bombs. He says the threat remains under investigation and authorities hope to prosecute whoever is responsible. Adamson says the threat "isn't funny and it's left a lot of people in anguish." __ 1:30 p.m. Police say a bomb-sniffing dog is searching a western Indiana high school that received a bomb threat. Terre Haute Police Chief John Plasse (PLASS-ee) says the dog was checking Terre Haute North High School as a precaution Friday. He says there's no evidence that there are actually any explosives inside, "but we're going to check." He says the school's 1,800 students grades nine through 12 were moved from classrooms to the gym while the dog conducted its search. Plasse spoke to a group of agitated parents outside the school asking why their children had not been dismissed. He told the parents the students would be released once the dog's search is completed and the students can return to classrooms to collect their belongings. ___ 12:55 p.m. A district official says students and faculty are in no imminent danger following a bomb threat at a western Indiana school. Vigo County School Corp. spokesman Mick Newport says students and faculty were told to shelter in place at Terre Haute North High School after the school received a call Friday morning from someone making a bomb threat. Newport says no one has been injured and "there is no imminent threat" to the 1,800 students, grades nine through 12. Newport did not comment on a Terre Haute Tribune-Star report that officers entered the school with weapons drawn. Terre Haute is about 75 miles (120 kilometers) southwest of Indianapolis. ___ 12:45 p.m. Police say about 50 officers are involved in the investigation of a bomb threat at a western Indiana school. Terre Haute Police Chief John Plasse spoke to reporters Friday outside the Terre Haute North High School. Plasse declined to provide details of the search and did not comment on a Terre Haute Tribune-Star report that officers stormed the still-occupied school with guns drawn. He says students are being held in classrooms under safety protocols and that he wouldn't let them stay if he believed they were in danger. Vigo County School Corp. spokesman Mick Newport says there was no imminent threat at school with about 1,800 students in grades 9-12. __ 12:05 p.m. An Indiana State Police spokesman says a threat that led to a lockdown at a western Indiana school is believed to be hoax. Capt. David Bursten says "all indications are that this is a hoax call" that Terre Haute North High School received about a possible threat Friday. He says he doesn't have any details about the nature of the threat. Bursten says there's been no shooting or explosion at the school, and no one has been injured. He says there have been many similar threats against schools in the state recently and those were found to be hoaxes, likely made by students. Bursten says Terre Haute police are leading the investigation into the incident. ___ 11:55 a.m. Police officers are searching a western Indiana high school following a gun threat, and the students and faculty have been told to shelter in place. Indiana State Police Sgt. Joe Watts says officers have found nothing so far following the threat Friday morning at Terre Haute North High School. The Terre Haute Tribune-Star reported that officers entered the school with weapons drawn. Watts told the Associated Press that officers from city, county and state police agencies are responding to the threat. He says the school followed its own policy by having students shelter in place and announcing the potential danger. Terre Haute is about 75 miles (120 kilometers) southwest of Indianapolis. SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) - A man who was fined for allowing his pet snake to slither freely in a South Dakota park said an animal control officer suggested he use a leash to restrain the reptile. Jerry Kimball said he initially thought the recommendation was a joke because it was April Fool's Day when he was fined $190 and ticketed last week for "animals running at large," told the Argus Leader (http://argusne.ws/2oMstxK ). "He was literally asking me to put a rope around my snake," Kimball said. "I was like, 'Dude, no.' I was dumbfounded." Kimball was approached by the officer after a woman complained that his Fire Bee Ball Python was roaming freely at Falls Park in Sioux Falls. Animal Control Supervisor Julie DeJong said a city ordinance requires all pets to be leashed or restrained in public. She said pet snakes can be held or kept in a container to comply. "If it's in public and it's not on a leash, it's at large. The ordinance doesn't really distinguish between animals," she said. DeJong added that snake lovers should be more sensitive to the aversion many people feel toward the animal. While non-venomous snakes are legal to own, not all park visitors will welcome a python in a park. But Kimball said he considers it his mission to rid the public's fear of snakes. "That's my purpose in life: To let people know that snakes aren't killers," he said. "What better way to give back than to help people understand these misunderstood creatures?" Kimball said he plans to fight the ticket in court. ___ Information from: Argus Leader, http://www.argusleader.com Police are on the hunt for a man who sexually assaulted a four-year-old girl after he kidnapped her while she was playing outside. The child was outside with her friends in Wilmington, Delaware, on Thursday evening, when a man drove up in a sedan, grabbed her, and sped off, ABC reported. She was found stripped of most of her clothing about two hours later in a park, and doctors at the hospital determined she had been sexually assaulted, police said. Vaughn Bond of the Castle County Police (pictured) called the suspect a 'monster' and said every officer in the department was committed to tracking down the sexual predator A four-year-old girl was playing outside in Wilmington, Delaware, when she was abducted, sexually assaulted, and dumped in a park about eight miles away, police said Police responded to the 4800 block of Sugar Plum Court around 7pm on Thursday after the girl's friends notified an adult. The suspect drove up in a dark-colored sedan with tinted windows and started chatting with the kids in the street before he grabbed the four-year-old and drove off, police said. Less than two hours later, police received a tip that the girl was in Banning Park, about eight miles away. The young girl was treated and released to her family, and police are now intent on finding the sexual predator. Vaughn Bond of the Castle County Police said: 'Every member of the New Castle County Police Department is committed - regardless of their assignment - to solving and apprehending this heartless monster. He added: 'There is nothing lower that a person can do than to take advantage and sexually abuse and take the innocence of a four-year-old child.' Police found suspicious tire tracks in the mud along an intersection close to where she was abducted, ABC reported The driver appears to have made a hurried U-turn and police took a mold to track down the specific tire model Banning Park was shut down as police searched for evidence. Police found suspicious tire tracks in the mud along an intersection close to where she was abducted, ABC reported. The driver appears to have made a hurried U-turn and police took a mold to track down the specific tire model. An investigation is ongoing. Anyone with information is urged to contact New Castle County Police at (302)-573-2800. PIKE CREEK, Del. (AP) - After a 4-year-old girl was kidnapped and sexually assaulted, police were searching Friday for "the heartless monster" who committed the crime. At a news conference Friday, New Castle County police Chief Col. Vaugh Bond Jr. was visibly shaken when he said, "I can assure the public that this incident is by far the No. 1 priority for New Castle County Police Department." Authorities were called to a home in Pike Creek, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) west of Wilmington, about 7 p.m. Thursday. The girl was playing outside with other children when a man drove up and starting talking with her, Bond said. The man lured the girl into the car and drove off. A passer-by saw the girl about 8:45 p.m. walking near the tree line in Banning Park, Bond said. She was "without very many garments," the chief said. The girl was taken to a hospital, where medical personnel determined she had been sexually assaulted. She was treated and released to her family. Bond described the suspect as a white or Latino male driving a dark-colored, four-door sedan with tinted windows. He asked that any residents with surveillance cameras check the footage for anything that might be linked to the kidnapping. "Every member of the New Castle County Police Department is committed, regardless of their assignment, to solving and apprehending this heartless monster," Bond said. "We're going to do everything in our power. We're going to take any assistance we can get." WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump has chosen Kevin Hassett, an economics adviser to past Republican presidential candidates, to be chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. It's a critical role for analyzing the performance of the economy and impact of policy changes. Hassett is the research director for domestic policy at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. He has provided economic advice to the presidential campaigns of John McCain, George W. Bush and Mitt Romney. With a doctorate in economics from the University of Pennsylvania, Hassett has worked as a senior economist at the Federal Reserve and taught at Columbia University's business school. The CEA has routinely been filled by leading academic economists and was among the most prominent vacant posts during early months of the Trump presidency. President Trumps sudden decision to order air strikes against the Syrian government was an overnight evolution for a president who long warned against deeper American involvement in one of the worlds most stubbornly violent conflicts. As he soberly announced the assault, Mr Trump argued that the move was still within the framework of his America First foreign policy agenda. Tonight I ordered a targeted military strike...... pic.twitter.com/3nUzrdiGzX President Trump 45 Archived (@POTUS45) April 7, 2017 The US, he said, has a vital national security interest in stopping the proliferation of the kinds of chemical weapons the Syrian government used against its citizens earlier this week. President Donald Trump Yet Mr Trumps actions left no doubt that at least in this instance his view of Americas role in the world has been altered. Mr Trump is hardly the first president to reconsider his views after assuming the responsibility of controlling the worlds most powerful military. But with a major shift coming just 77 days into his presidency, his may be one of the fastest transformations in recent memory. After spending years warning US leaders that Syria was a dangerous quagmire, Mr Trump is said to have been moved by the gripping images of young Syrian childrens listless bodies that were beamed across the world following the chemical attack. He mourned the beautiful babies among the dozens killed by the deadly gases and accused Syrian President Bashar Assad of having choked his own citizens. His sentiment the USs responsibility to protect echoed those often used by some of Mr Trumps most ardent detractors. The retribution has been proportionate and it has been swift and we support the US in that swift action. https://t.co/XbrmdZTpLo #Syria Malcolm Turnbull (@TurnbullMalcolm) April 7, 2017 US drew a red line on chemical weapons. Failure to enforce again would have emboldened Assad & others. On balance, strikes were justified. Anders Fogh Rasmussen (@AndersFoghR) April 7, 2017 Jo wld have backed action to punish Syrian govt for gas attacks. She would urge that this be the start of a strategy to protect civilians. Brendan Cox (@MrBrendanCox) April 7, 2017 The doctrine, espoused most notably by President Barack Obamas former ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, holds that world powers have an obligation to defend civilians from conflict, particularly from their own governments. Mr Trump campaigned on a wholly different vision for the nations foreign policy, one that bordered on isolationism and centred on recalibrating trade deals with international partners. He has specifically said the Middle East is one region of the world he hoped to avoid. Yet in the short term, Mr Trumps decision to plunge the US deeper into the Syria conflict won him plaudits from his own party. Even some Democrats were muted in their response, a signal of how frustration with US inaction in Syria has permeated both parties. So it takes @realDonaldTrump to re-establish the West's 100 yr old redline against the abhorrent use of chemical weapons ... George Osborne (@George_Osborne) April 7, 2017 #SaudiArabia strongly supports US military operations on Syrian military targets in response to Assads us of chemical weapons. Saudi Embassy (@SaudiEmbassyUSA) April 7, 2017 Many Trump voters will be worried about this military intervention. Where will it end? Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) April 7, 2017 The question now is what the consequences and reactions will be, and what are the presidents strategic and long-range goals and plans with respect to US involvement in Syria, said Senator Jack Reed, the leading Democrat on the Armed Services Committee. Mr Trumps decision was all the more remarkable for his strident public opposition to launching a strike on Syria when the decision weighed on his predecessor. President Obama nearly ordered strikes, but ultimately pulled back. He called for a vote in Congress that never came, then rallied behind a Russian-backed plan to remove Syrias chemical weapons stockpiles an agreement that appeared to have failed, given this most recent attack. Though Mr Trump castigated Mr Obama for appearing weak and indecisive, he maintained as a candidate that Syria was a morass the US should avoid. As recently as a week ago, his top diplomats, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and UN ambassador Nikki Haley, both indicated the US might take a hands-off approach to a civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and forced millions more from their homes. The long-term implications of Mr Trumps sudden policy shift are uncertain. But his supporters seemed willing to accept his decision. President Trump has tonight more than earned a second or third look from a lot of doubters both at home and abroad, said Kevin Kellems, a Republican strategist. Officers investigating the rape and abduction of a mother from a promenade have arrested a woman on suspicion of wasting police time. Cleveland Police said it was no longer investigating the allegation that a woman and her toddler were bundled into a car while they walked by the beach in Redcar at lunchtime on March 3. 1/2 Officers are no longer investigating an allegation of rape in the Redcar area that was said to have taken place on Friday 3rd March. Cleveland Police (@ClevelandPolice) April 7, 2017 2/2 Police have today arrested a woman aged in her early thirties on suspicion of wasting police time. She remains in police custody. Cleveland Police (@ClevelandPolice) April 7, 2017 The woman claimed she screamed for help as she was driven away before she was raped by two men. The shocking allegation generated a great deal of media interest and police arrested a 31-year-old local man before he was released without charge. Police warned local people to remain vigilant while detectives carried out inquiries into the alleged ordeal, which was said to have lasted about seven hours, before she ended up in a secluded lay-by. A police appeal for information following the attack generated a lot of media interest In a statement, the force said: Officers can confirm that they are no longer investigating an allegation of rape in the Redcar area that was said to have taken place on Friday March 3. Police have today arrested a woman aged in her early thirties on suspicion of wasting police time. She remains in police custody. The European Commission has given the green light to Rupert Murdochs Twenty-First Century Fox to acquire Sky for 11.7 billion. The EU anti-trust watchdog has given unconditional approval to the deal, saying the transaction would raise no competition concerns in Europe. In the statement, the organisation said: The Commission found that the proposed transaction would lead to only a limited increase in Skys existing share of the markets for the acquisition of TV content as well as in the market for the wholesale supply of TV channels in the relevant Member States. Rupert Murdoch (Ian West/PA) Fox is aiming to seize control of the 61% of Sky it does not already own and the bid comes five years after Mr Murdochs last tilt at taking the business over through News Corporation. That bid was derailed after the company which owns The Sun and The Times was forced to abandon the bid when it became embroiled in the phone-hacking scandal involving News International. The deal still faces regulatory scrutiny from Ofcom and the Competition and Markets Authority in the UK. Culture Secretary Karen Bradley announced last month that she issued an intervention notice on the grounds of media plurality and commitment to broadcasting standards. Ms Bradley told MPs that she had considered representations from the broadcasters, but she was not satisfied that her concerns had been addressed. Culture Secretary Karen Bradley (Joe Giddens/PA) Ofcom and the CMA will have until May 16 to investigate and the commission said todays clearance decision was without prejudice to the UKs ongoing media plurality review of the proposed transaction. The commission said: Fox and Sky are mainly active in different markets in Austria, Germany, Ireland, Italy and the UK. They compete with each other only to a limited extent, mainly in the acquisition of TV content and in the wholesale supply of basic pay TV channels. Based on the results of its market investigation, the commission concluded that the proposed transaction would raise no competition concerns. Labour has raised objections to the takeover and has urged Prime Minister Theresa May to make good her promise to stand up to powerful interest groups. In a statement, Fox said: 21st Century Fox welcomes todays decision by the European Commission clearing unconditionally its proposed transaction to acquire the outstanding shares of Sky that it does not already own. We now look forward to continuing to work with UK authorities and are confident that the proposed transaction will be approved following a thorough review process. The United States has launched airstrikes against the Syrian airfield from where president Donald Trump said a chemical gas attack was launched. The UK Government has backed the decision and while Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon said Britain was not asked to join the unilateral action, Mr Trump urged other civilised nations to offer their support. Tonight I ordered a targeted military strike...... pic.twitter.com/3nUzrdiGzX President Trump 45 Archived (@POTUS45) April 7, 2017 Here is a look at the current picture in Syria and how Fridays events may change it. The UK is one of 68 countries in a US-led coalition solely targeting Islamic State (IS), also known as Daesh. According to the Ministry of Defence (MoD), there have been 87 airstrikes by the Royal Air Force (RAF) against targets in IS-controlled parts of Syria, helping towards the extremist group losing 30% of the territory it once held in the war-torn country. IS still holds large parts of central and eastern Syria, with its stronghold in Raqqa, while Bashar Assads government maintains control of much of the west of the country, including the capital Damascus and Aleppo. Syrian rebels control pockets in the south and north, including the scene of Tuesdays chemical attack Khan Sheikhoun. The RAF has six Typhoon and eight Tornado fighter jets stationed at RAF Akrotiri, in Cyprus, along with a squadron of unmanned Reaper drones, which are among the militarys intelligence and surveillance capabilities, the MoD said. There are also about 500 military personnel in neighbouring Iraq, where IS now controls just 10% of territory. The MoD said they are working with Iraqi security forces to provide training in areas ranging from medicine to countering improvised explosive devices (IEDs). There have also been reports of elite British troops, including the SAS, carrying out raids in IS territory in Syria. An MoD spokesman said: We never comment on special forces. Fridays barrage of cruise missiles was the first direct US attack on the Syrian government and it has provoked a strong reaction from Mr Assads ally Russia, which has suspended a deal with the US to avoid mid-air collisions. Experts suggested this risked hampering the air campaign against IS. Tim Eaton, a Middle East analyst at Chatham House, said: I think certainly what we have seen from Trump is a very clear focus on defeating IS and actually in the last week the chemical attack has diverted attention to fighting between rebels and the regime. .@POTUS: There can be no dispute that #Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention. pic.twitter.com/9pVEBV7QHa U.S. Embassy Syria (@USEmbassySyria) April 7, 2017 He added Russia and other opponents of the US action would suggest the strike was self-defeating, saying: They create a false binary that its Assad or IS and by weakening Assad, it is strengthening IS. Mr Eaton said US secretary of state Rex Tillerson had indicated regime change in Syria was more or less not the policy of the US government any more, adding: I think the same constraints and challenges that were in place last week prior to the chemical attack are in place today. Professor Malcolm Chalmers, deputy director general of The Royal United Services Institute, said the Assad regime miscalculated Trumps sensitivity over chemical weapons and it would be forced to bow to the international pressure which previously saw it sign up for the Chemical Weapons Convention. Both experts agreed the strike on the airfield was a response to the chemical attack rather than a decisive intervention into the civil war. Prof Chalmers said: They are trying to punish this act and deter the Syrian regime from using chemical weapons again. Mr Eaton added: This is about chemical weapons. I think further US strikes will only relate to chemical weapons use. If the regime does not use chemical weapons again, it wont have the premise to strike. This is perhaps the first point the Assad regime has faced serious international sanctions for its actions and I suspect it has been caught off-guard. The times we are living in call for difficult decisions - Proud of my father for refusing to accept these horrendous crimes against humanity https://t.co/yV0oJuC9dE Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) April 7, 2017 There have been calls for a greater UK role in the conflict but the Government has so far not gone beyond declaring its support for the limited and appropriate strikes. Mr Eaton said UK strikes were unlikely, adding: In truth, the US has all the capability it needs. The prospects of a deal to save powersharing in Northern Ireland look bleak after the first week of talks ended in negativity and recriminations. The Democratic Unionists and Sinn Fein the two parties whose agreement is essential if a new coalition executive is to be formed again blamed each other for a lack of progress, while the Ulster Unionists and SDLP raised serious doubts whether an accord will be reached. The mood music has been similarly downbeat in the run up to previous historic deals in Northern Ireland, so some form of agreement may yet materialise come the effective deadline of Good Friday. I am absolutely frustrated that we are not making the progress we should. People have spoken. We need an agreement @columeastwood pic.twitter.com/4h7t5pR8UV The SDLP (@SDLPlive) April 7, 2017 But the assessments aired on Friday afternoon in the Great Hall of Parliament Buildings, Belfast, certainly did not suggest a breakthrough was imminent. DUP leader and former first minister Arlene Foster said: We want to get back into devolution as soon as possible, we believe in devolution, we believe devolution is the right way to deal with peoples problems in terms of health, education, to have a strong economy for Northern Ireland. We have set no red lines. She added: Others unfortunately are holding up this process in terms of their political demands and that is really regrettable. DUP leader Arlene Foster Sinn Fein negotiator Conor Murphy said the talks to date had been all about process and not about progress. We want to see an agreement, we are still focused on securing an agreement, he said. Devolution crashed in January over a row about a botched green energy scheme. The subsequent snap election campaign laid bare a series of other disputes dividing the DUP and Sinn Fein. The main stumbling blocks are the contentious issues of Irish language protections; how to deal with the toxic legacy of the Troubles and a stalled Northern Ireland-specific Bill of Rights. Sinn Fein MLA Conor Murphy Sinn Fein insists all three were integral parts of previous agreements that just need to be implemented. The republican party accuses the DUP and UK government of failing to honour obligations in that respect. The DUP, however, claims what Sinn Fein is asking for represent new and unreasonable demands. Northern Ireland Secretary of State James Brokenshire instigated the two-week talks process after last months negotiations to form a new powersharing administration ended in failure. Parties missed a deadline to get a government up and running within three weeks of Marchs Assembly election. UUP leader Mike Nesbitt Mr Brokenshire has made clear he will start formulating legislative steps to either restore devolution or make the first moves toward direct rule over the Easter weekend meaning Good Friday is set to be make or break for a deal. SDLP leader Colum Eastwood said the dynamic of the talks needed to change dramatically if agreement was to be secured, while outgoing UUP leader Mike Nesbitt said soured personal relations between the DUP and Sinn Fein were preventing progress. The Alliance party and Irish government are also involved in the negotiation process. A small number of meetings are planned on Saturday, with the talks recommencing in earnest at Stormont Castle on Monday. Donald Trump said he has developed an outstanding relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping after meeting with the leader of a nation the US president has criticised as a menace to his country. The meeting of the leaders of the worlds two largest economies was largely overshadowed by the US missile strike on Syria. Those strikes added weight to Mr Trumps threat last week to act unilaterally against North Koreas weapons programme. Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks during a bilateral meeting with US President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, Florida (Alex Brandon/AP) Mr Trump said in a brief appearance before reporters that he and Mr Xi made tremendous progress in their first face-to-face talks and he believed lots of very potentially bad problems will be going away. The two days of talks at Mr Trumps private estate in Florida were expected to focus on what he has described as Chinas unfair trade practices and inadequate efforts to halt North Koreas nuclear weapons and missile programme. Mr Xi said the delegations covered important topics and have established a good friendship and working relationship. He said he believes the US and China can continue to develop the relationship, noting it is the historic responsibility of both countries to work toward peace and stability. Donald Trump and Xi Jinping meet in Florida (Alex Brandon/AP) The US announced the missile strike shortly after the two men wrapped up dinner on Thursday. The strikes were retaliation against Syrian president Bashar Assad for a chemical weapons attack against civilians caught up in his countrys long civil war. China has sided with Russia at the United Nations in opposing condemnation of Mr Assads government but has not become directly involved in the conflict. On Friday, Chinas foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said China opposed the use of chemical weapons by any party under any circumstances but did not comment on the US attack. The timing of the attack could send a message to the Chinese. Mr Trump told the Financial Times in the days before Mr Xis arrival that he is prepared to go it alone on North Korea if China does not work with the US to crack down on North Koreas nuclear programme. The leaders meet in the grounds of Mar-a-Lago, Florida (Alex Brandon/AP) Military options against North Korea are much riskier than those against Syria. It has already tested nuclear weapons and South Koreas capital, Seoul, is in range of North Korean artillery. Taking action against North Korea has been a sticking point in US talks with the Chinese. China is North Koreas most important ally and trading partner. Before Thursdays dinner, Mr Trump said he and Mr Xi already had had a long discussion and had developed a friendship, and then joked, I have gotten nothing, absolutely nothing. Chinese state media reported late on Thursday that Mr Trump has accepted Mr Xis invitation to visit China this year. The official Xinhua News Agency said Mr Trump will travel to China at an early date in 2017 but gave no details. Twitter says the US government backed down on a request for records that could identify users behind an account opposed to President Donald Trump. As a result, Twitter is withdrawing a federal lawsuit that challenged the governments request. Twitter charged that efforts by the government to unmask the people behind the account violate the First Amendment. The account in question is @ALT_uscis, a reference to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services office. The account, which is frequently critical of Trump administration policy, described its users to The Associated Press in February as employees and former employees of the agency. A sign at Twitter headquarters (Jeff Chiu/AP) Darnell McIntosh scored two tries as Huddersfield came from behind to earn a 14-14 draw at St Helens. The Giants are without a win in six Super League matches but at least avoided a third straight defeat after full-back McIntosh inspired a second-half comeback. It took 25 minutes for St Helens to get their first points but by the break the home side were in control as they took advantage of Huddersfields brittle confidence. St Helens Saints' Theo Fages scored two tries (Martin Rickett/PA) #SLStHHud A great second-half fight-back from @Giantsrl, as they pick up their second draw of 2017 at @Saints1890 pic.twitter.com/qopyN3WZuJ Betfred Super League (@SuperLeague) April 7, 2017 Theo Fages broke the deadlock and then dazzled McIntosh with his footwork to make it a quickfire double before Adam Swift scored his 74th try on his 100th appearance to make it 14-0. McIntoshs try 20 minutes from time led to a period of concerted Huddersfield pressure during which he touched down again before Sam Wood crossed two minutes from time to level the scores. Danny Brough had the chance to win it for the Giants but he missed his touchline conversion as Huddersfield fell just short of a famous win. Huddersfield were coming off the back of a 52-16 thumping by Castleford but they were the only side to have any kind of ball close to the opposition line during a forgettable first 20 minutes. 25' Try Saints - The home side are the ones to break the deadlock through Theo Fages Saints 4 Giants 0 Huddersfield Giants (@Giantsrl) April 7, 2017 The Giants lost second-rower Dale Ferguson to a head injury and it soon got worse for Rick Stones side as Saints took their first chance to put points on the board. Mark Percival made the initial break and Zeb Taia kept his composure at dummy-half to pop the ball up for Fages to hit at speed and finish. The opening try rocked the previously untroubled Giants and it was not long before the leakiest defence in Super League was breached again. Offloads from Percival and Taia put Fages into space and the France international half-back left McIntosh on the floor with a big right-foot step to race clear for his second try. Percy and Swift congratulating Theo. He is certainly having a good one! Pic by @plattyphoto pic.twitter.com/qwDm1iHVkQ St.Helens R.F.C. (@Saints1890) April 7, 2017 Ferguson returned for Huddersfield but there was nothing he could do to prevent Swift from making it three tries in 12 minutes after Saints had shifted the ball quickly from right to left on a scrum play. St Helens went into the break with a comfortable lead but they failed to kill the match off and Huddersfield gave themselves hope of a comeback just after the hour mark. Brough had been quiet on his return from suspension but it was his pass that set former Saints half-back Lee Gaskell free and gave the Giants the field position for McIntosh to crash over from close range. 75' TRY GIANTS! Sam Wood levels the scores! Saints 14 Giants 14 pic.twitter.com/23uFduwwA4 Huddersfield Giants (@Giantsrl) April 7, 2017 Huddersfield had their tails up all of sudden and they were sensing an unlikely victory after McIntosh took advantage of Fages fumble in the in-goal area from Broughs kick to touch down. Brough converted to pull the Giants to within four points and it was his kick that allowed Wood to finish in the corner after McIntoshs break had put Huddersfield deep into Saints territory. Brough had the chance to win it for the visitors but their wait for a victory goes on. Ive never seen a more dominant side not score more points. Our completion rate went from nearly 90 per cent in the first half to 33 per cent, which is disgusting at any level. The mentality of the players was really weak in that second half. They thought the job was done in the first half. At 14-0, particularly after the last couple of weeks, we were still positive in the sheds at half-time. It will be a nice step in the right direction considering what has been going on. The effort was pretty good. Clinically we werent perfect but overall for the 80 minutes everyone made sure their effort was up to the mark. By Ron Bousso and Libby George LONDON, April 6 (Reuters) - Traders are shipping more gasoline from Europe to the U.S. East Coast ahead of the summer driving season as a steady reduction in inventories there props up prices. At least 16 tankers carrying some 600,000 tonnes of gasoline blending components including naphtha have been booked in recent days by traders including Glencore, ExxonMobil, Mercuria, Repsol and Total, shipping data shows. That compared with an average of around 300,000 tonnes per week booked throughout March. The exports are helping to clear Europe's tanks of oil products and boosting profits for refining gasoline from just under $6 per barrel at the end of March to more than $13 per barrel on Thursday. "Europe looks better and better all the time," one oil trader said. "Demand is good and stocks are drawing." Benchmark U.S. East Coast gasoline refining margins have steadily risen in recent weeks as stocks in the region are gradually reduced, even though they remain seasonally high. However, because much of the gasoline in storage was winter grade it can no longer be used as the market shifts to summer quality. The New York Harbor has traditionally been a major destination for European gasoline, which is produced in excess of the region's demand. But the arbitrage from Europe was closed for weeks, leading to building stocks, including in tankers waiting for a chance to sail to other markets. The exports, along with some 2.2 million tonnes of clean products booked to sail to West Africa in March, have helped clear stock levels in the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp hub. Gasoline, blending component and naphtha stocks in the region fell by more than 6 percent in the week to March 31, according to industry monitor Genscape, to 2.9 million tonnes. There are millions of tonnes yet to clear from Europe, and while one tanker with stored gasoline, the Hamburg Star, had set sail for the United States, several others filled weeks ago were still floating offshore ARA, including the Hafnia Europe, the Amorea and the Clio. New York Harbor demand is expected to remain strong as Latin America, particularly Venezuela, pulls in more gasoline from the U.S. Gulf Coast and space on the Colonial pipeline - the key artery from the refining hub to the East Coast -- remains limited. While the April arbitrage is only narrowly open, one U.S. broker said the economics looked far better in May, meaning there could be more bookings to come. (Additional reporting by Devika Krishna Kumar and Jarrett Renshaw in New York; editing by Alexander Smith) Following are news stories, press reports and events to watch that may affect Poland's financial markets on Friday. ALL TIMES GMT (Poland: GMT + 2 hours): DATA Poland's central bank to release March FX reserves at 1200 GMT. CENTRAL BANK PROFIT The central bank's profit reached 9.2 billion zlotys ($2.32 billion) in 2016, the bank said in a statement on Thursday. According to the law, 95 percent of the profit will be transferred to the state budget. OPINION POLL If elections took place now, the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party would be supported by 34.3 percent of Poles, while the largest opposition party Civic Platform (PO) by 26.2 percent, a survey for Polska The Times newspaper showed on Friday. BANK PROFITS The profits of commercial banks will likely be lower in the first quarter in year-on-year terms due to lower profits from bond holdings and a change in payments for the bank guarantee fund, Parkiet daily reported. ****Reuters has not verified stories reported by Polish media and does not vouch for their accuracy.**** For other related news, double click on: Polish equities E.Europe equities Polish money Polish debt Eastern Europe All emerging markets Hot stocks Stock markets Market debt news Forex news For real-time index quotes, double click on: Warsaw WIG20 Budapest BUX Prague PX ($1 = 3.9737 zlotys) (Reporting by Warsaw Bureau) ANKARA, April 7 (Reuters) - Iran denounced as "destructive and dangerous" U.S. missile strikes against a Syrian airbase from which a suspected chemical weapons attack was launched, Iran's state news agency IRNA quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying on Friday. "Iran ... condemns use of chemical weapons ... but at the same time believes it is dangerous, destructive and a violation of international laws to use it as an excuse to take unilateral actions," IRNA quoted Bahram Qasemi as saying. "Iran strongly condemns any such unilateral strikes... Such measures will strengthen terrorists in Syria ... and will complicate the situation in Syria and the region." An Iranian diplomat at the Iranian embassy in Damascus said families of Iranian diplomats in Syria had not been transferred to another country following the U.S. strike, the ENTEKHAB news website reported. Tehran is Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's main regional ally and has provided military and economic support for his fight against rebel groups and Islamic State militants. Iran says it has military advisers and volunteers in Syria but denies having a conventional force on the ground. (Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Himani Sarkar and Nick Macfie, Larry King) BRATISLAVA, April 7 (Reuters) - Here are news stories, press reports and events to watch which may affect Slovak financial markets on Friday. ALL TIMES GMT (Slovak Republic: GMT + 1 hour) =========================ECONOMIC DATA======================== Real-time economic data releases.................. Summary of economic data and forecasts......... Recently released economic data................ Previous stories on Slovak data.......... **For a schedule of corporate and economic events: http://emea1.apps.cp.thomsonreuters.com/Apps/CountryWeb/#/1C/events-overview ============================NEWS================================ OIL REFINERY: Slovak oil refiner Slovnaft, part of the Hungarian oil and gas group MOL , will shut down some production starting over the Easter holiday in April for a general turnaround lasting until June, it said. Story: Related stories: =========================PRESS DIGEST=========================== FDI: Slovakia has in the pipeline foreign direct investments worth a total 2.5 billion euros ($2.66 billion) that may create 30,000 new jobs, Prime Minister Robert Fico said on Thursday. Hospodarske Noviny, page 4 US STEEL: United States Steel Corp is expected to close the sale of its Slovak unit US Steel Kosice to Hesteel Group of China by mid-April, Hospodarske Noviny said without quoting a source. Neither side has confirmed the talks yet. Hospodarske Noviny, page 10 (Reuters has not verified the stories, nor does it vouch for their accuracy.) For real-time stock market index quotes click in brackets: Warsaw WIG20 Budapest BUX Prague PX Main currency report TOP NEWS -- Emerging markets News editor of the day: Jan Lopatka on +420 224 190 474 E-mail: prague.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com ($1 = 0.9393 euros) (Reporting by Prague Newsroom) By Kaori Kaneko and Sumio Ito TOKYO, April 7 (Reuters) - Japan should push back against any U.S. suggestion that it is suppressing the yen's value for trade advantage, an adviser to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said, in a bid to preempt criticism of Japan's currency policy. Koichi Hamada, Cabinet adviser and emeritus professor of economics at Yale University, told Reuters in an interview that Tokyo should stress that Japan has a different currency policy from China. With President Donald Trump criticising the trade policies of Japan, China and other major economies, Tokyo fears that trade friction could return for the first time in years, harming Japan's interests and its deep relations with Washington. A senior U.S. official told Reuters that the administration is shifting its attention from countries that "manipulate" their currencies to currencies that are "misaligned," even if the imbalance is unintentional. "What Japan should argue is that Japan and China have totally different stances towards currency manipulation," Hamada said on Thursday. "Japan has not intervened in the currency market under Abenomics, and Japan's monetary policy is targeted strictly at domestic economic targets." (Reporting by Kaori Kaneko, Sumio Ito, Additional reporting by Chris Gallagher; Editing by William Mallard & Shri Navaratnam) By John Irish NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania, April 7 (Reuters) - France said on Friday it had been informed by the United States before the U.S. military strikes on Syrian military positions and that Russia should use this "warning" to push for a political solution to the Syrian conflict. France, a key backer of rebels opposed to President Bashar al-Assad, has repeatedly called on him to step down and this week said a suspected chemical attack by Assad's forces was a test for U.S. President Donald Trump. "The United States has started clarifying its position because over the last few days we heard one thing and then another," Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault told Reuters and France Info radio in the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott, where he was on a diplomatic visit. "Here, we have an action that is a sort of condemnation, through military strikes on a military base, of what this criminal regime is doing." In Paris, President Francois Hollande confirmed French backing for the U.S. action, saying France had been seeking U.S. missile strikes in 2013 after a previous chemical attack. Assad bore "full responsibility for this development," Hollande said in a joint statement with Germany from the Elysee after speaking with Chancellor Angela Merkel. He said France and Germany would continue efforts through the United Nations to achieve the best response to chemical attacks. The U.S. missile strikes came in response to a suspected chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held town in northern Syria earlier this week which killed at least 70 people. Ayrault, who was informed ahead of the strikes by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, said he did not believe Washington wanted to continue its strikes and that the escalation of the U.S. military role in Syria, in which two U.S. warships fired dozens of cruise missiles at an Assad-controlled airbase, was a "warning." France, a NATO ally, has been a vocal critic of Washington's policy in Syria since the previous administration of Barack Obama pulled back from launching strikes against Assad following the 2013 chemical attack that killed hundreds of people. French planes had been minutes away from taking off when Obama backed down. "A signal was sent, because yet again a red line was crossed by Assad," Ayrault said. "The use of chemical weapons is appalling and should be punished because it is a war crime," Ayrault said. He said Paris's only military role in Syria at present was its part in the coalition fighting Islamic State and that it had no intention of entering the conflict between Assad and rebels. The conflict is now in its seventh year and has killed more than 400,000 people and displaced millions. "We are not seeking any confrontation, but Russia and Iran must understand that backing the Assad regime makes no sense," he said, urging Moscow to now fully back a UN Security Council resolution that sets out the path for a transition to peace in the country. "Peace negotiations (are going on) for a political transition, to rebuild the country and enable the return of refugees and that will not happen with Bashar al-Assad," he said. "I will tell the Russians: 'Stop playing. Stop hesitating and pretending. Play your role and implement resolution 2254'(the UN resolution that sets out a roadmap for peace talks)". (Reporting by John Irish; Writing by Andrew Callus; Editing by Richard Balmforth) Kerrville, TX (78028) Today Mostly cloudy skies. Slight chance of a rain shower. High 81F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Cloudy skies with a few showers after midnight. Low 64F. Winds SE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 30%. By Gabriela Baczynska BRUSSELS, April 7 (Reuters) - The European Union said on Friday it understood the aim of U.S. missile strikes in Syria as an effort to deter any more chemical attacks there, but highlighted political solutions as the only way to end the war. The nuanced line taken by the bloc's 28 states reflects their disgust at a chemical attack that killed scores of people in a rebel-held area this week, but also a worry about any more escalation in the conflict following the unilateral U.S. move. "The U.S. has informed the European Union that ... (it) launched a strike on Shayrat Airfield in Syria with the understandable intention to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons," the bloc's top diplomat, Federica Mogherini, said in a statement on behalf of all member states. "The U.S. also informed us that these strikes are limited and focused on preventing and deterring further use of chemical weapons atrocities," the statement read. She added that the use of chemical weapons was a war crime and perpetrators of such acts "should be sanctioned within the framework of the United Nations." The bloc supports Syrian opposition rebels and some moderate rebels negotiating under U.N.-mediated talks with representatives of Damascus. The talks have long been stalled and the war, which is in its seventh year, has killed more than 400,000 people and sent millions from their homes. "The EU firmly believes that there can be no military solution to the conflict," the joint statement said. "Only a credible political solution... will ensure peace and stability." While France and Britain have led calls for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to go, some other EU states, including the Czech Republic, Hungary, Spain and Italy, are more dovish. But the bloc's role in international peace efforts has been largely marginal as it lacks influence on the ground, where Russia's military intervention has given Assad the upper hand. The EU is the largest aid donor in Syria, and has threatened it will not pay for reconstruction of the country if Assad and his allies take full control by wiping out the opposition. The EU says a "credible political transition" must start first with the aim of giving the opposition and Syria's various ethnic and religious groups political representation. The chairman of EU leaders Donald Tusk, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, the Polish foreign ministry as well as a British government spokesman supported Washington. "U.S. strikes show needed resolve against barbaric chemical attacks. EU will work with the US to end brutality in Syria," Tusk said on Twitter. But German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, Belgium's Didier Reynders and the head of the EU's executive arm stuck to a more cautious line, saying they "understood" the aim of the strikes, but highlighting more strongly the need for a negotiated end to the war. "There is a clear distinction between air strikes on military targets and the use of chemical weapons against civilians," said the head of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker. "Efforts to stem the spiral of violence in Syria and work towards a lasting peace should be redoubled. Only a political transition can lead to such an outcome." (Editing by Jeremy Gaunt) By Stephanie van den Berg THE HAGUE, April 7 (Reuters) - Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court urged judges on Friday to report South Africa for defying an arrest warrant for Sudan's president, saying failure to do so could render the court unable to perform its most basic duties. South Africa told the International Criminal Court it believed it was under no obligation to arrest Omar Hassan al-Bashir during a visit to South Africa two years ago even though he was wanted by the permanent war crimes court. The ICC's warrant did not outweigh a South African law that grants sitting heads of state immunity from prosecution, South African legal representative Dire Tladi told judges at a hearing to discuss Pretoria's failure to arrest al-Bashir in 2015. "There is no duty under international law and the Rome Statute to arrest a serving head of state of a non-state-party such as Omar al-Bashir," Tladi argued. Prosecutors said judges should refer South Africa to the United Nations Security Council or the court's assembly of member states for defying its arrest warrant. "Without cooperation from the state parties in the arrest and surrender (of suspects) the court will be unable to carry out its most basic function," said prosecutor Julian Nicholls. The row between South Africa and the ICC over its failure to arrest al-Bashir, who is accused of genocide and war crimes, led to Pretoria's notifying the United Nations last year that it would withdraw from the court. Earlier this year, a South African court blocked the move over procedural issues, but the government has said it will push ahead with the withdrawal. Al-Bashir denies the charges against him. Though Sudan is not a member of the ICC, the court has jurisdiction by virtue of a 2005 U.N. Security Council resolution referring the conflict to the Hague-based permanent war crimes court. Friday's hearing was called so that the court could gather information on whether it should report South Africa either to the ICC's governing body, the Assembly of State Parties, or to the U.N. Security Council for non-compliance with the court. (Reporting by Stephanie van den Berg, editing by Thomas Escritt and Ralph Boulton) By Astrid Zweynert OXFORD, England, April 7 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - M aking farming in Nigeria profitable and an attractive livelihood can break the cycles of poverty and unemployment that leave young people vulnerable to extremism, according to the head of a social enterprise working with small farmers. Low yields and lack of market access trap many smallholder farmers in poverty and drive young people into cities in the hope of finding jobs, putting them at risk of being lured by extremists, said Kola Masha, managing director of Babban Gona. Nigeria's north-east, which is dominated by farming, has been poor for decades and an Islamist insurgency by Boko Haram has exacerbated problems with the region facing a severe lack of food as many farmers have been unable to plant crops. To break that cycle Babban Gona - which means "great farm" - aims to turn thousands of subsistence farmers in northern Nigeria into commercial growers by giving them with everything they need from training and credit to seeds and marketing. "The problem for small farmers in Nigeria, and all over Africa, is economies of scale, no matter how hard they work," Masha told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Smallholders produce more than 70 percent of the world's food but their work needs to be commercially viable to make sure they can feed the growing global population, experts say. "We're trying to solve this challenge by helping to build thousands of grassroots level farmer cooperatives and supporting each member with services they need to be highly productive commercial farmers," Masha said. More than 13,000 Babban Gona smallholders have doubled their yields thanks to the project and increased their net income by 3.5 times that of the average farmer. While Africa's recent commodity boom has seen the continent's economies grow fast, few jobs have been created and youth unemployment is estimated to be up to 50 percent in Nigeria, Africa's most populous country. Finding jobs is pressing as the continent's youth population is forecast to almost double by 2050 and one in two Africans will be under the age of 25, according to the United Nations. Masha said if small-scale farming can be made profitable, millions of young people could be attracted to the sector. "Farming is a job creation engine that has the potential to draw millions of young people into the sector as entrepreneurs," said Masha, who was awarded the $1.25 million Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship 2017 this week that recognises business leaders whose organisations are having social impact. "That will also make it harder for extremists to recruit them," said Masha, who also heads Doreo Partners, an agriculture focused, African impact investing firm. "The next big step is to replicate Babban Gona across West Africa, and then maybe even Southeast Asia," he said. (Reporting by Astrid Zweynert @azweynert , Editing by Belinda Goldsmith; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience. Visit http://news.trust.org) ALGIERS, April 7 (Reuters) - Algeria plans to invite bids for construction of three photovoltaic solar power plants with total capacity of about 4,000 megawatts (MW), and several energy and financial firms are already interested, the energy ministry said. Algeria, member of the Organization for the Petroleum Exporting Countries, has been exploring renewable energy as a way to meet growing demand for electricity, while also freeing up more natural gas for export. Energy Minister Nouredine Bouterfa said in a statement late on Thursday the ministry would issue tenders for the three projects, without giving a specific timeline. The three plants would help meet Algeria's domestic demand for power and allow for exports of power to neighbouring countries, a source at the Energy Ministry told Reuters. Several financial institutions, including the French Agency for Development and the African Bank for Development, have shown interest in funding the project, according to the Energy Ministry, calling it a "multi-billion dollar" project. Sonatrach, Algeria's giant state oil and gas firm, would fund about 50 percent of the cost of the three plants, a Sonatrach official said. Last year, Italy's ENI signed a deal with Sonatrach to develop renewable projects in Algeria. U.S. firm General Electric had also shown interest in the solar plants with planned capacity of 4,000 MW, the Energy Ministry sources said. Hit by a crash in revenues due to lower global oil prices, Algeria has been doubling efforts to increase gas exports after several years of stagnant production. Several new gas fields have come on stream in the past year. (Reporting by Lamine Chikhi; Writing by Patrick Markey; Editing by Edmund Blair) CAIRO, April 7 (Reuters) - Jordan said on Friday a U.S. air strike on a Syrian air base was a "necessary and appropriate response" to a chemical weapons attack this week which the United States and its allies blamed on Syria's government. The chemical incident was "an inhuman act ... which drew wide-ranging international reactions, the latest of which was the U.S. military strike. "Jordan considers this a necessary and appropriate response to the continued targeting of civilians", government spokesman Mohammed al-Momeni said, quoted by state news agency Petra. Syria's government denies using chemical weapons. (Reporting by Ahmed Tolba in Cairo; Writing by Tom Perry and John Davison in Beirut; Editing by Andrew Roche) By Marine Pennetier and Adrian Croft PARIS, April 7 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to order a missile strike on Syria brought rare criticism on Friday from French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who has until now viewed the American leader as an ideological soulmate. The U.S. strike reverberated through the French presidential election campaign, just two weeks before the first round of voting, with most leading candidates taking a cautious, or a critical, stance towards the U.S. action. "I am a little surprised because Trump had said repeatedly that he didn't intend the United States to be the world's policeman any longer and that is exactly what he did yesterday," Le Pen told France 2 television. The United States fired cruise missiles at a Syrian airbase on Friday as punishment for a suspected chemical weapons attack on Tuesday which killed at least 70 people. "Is it too much to ask to wait for the results of an independent international investigation (into Tuesday's attack) before carrying out this kind of strike?" Le Pen asked. She said she didn't want a repeat of events in Iraq and Libya where she said Western intervention had "brought chaos and ended up strengthening ... terrorist organisations." Polls show Le Pen and centrist Emmanuel Macron virtually neck-and-neck before the first round of voting on April 23, with conservative Francois Fillon and Jean-Luc Melenchon of the far left close behind. The top two candidates contest a May 7 runoff, where Macron is tipped to easily beat Le Pen. Le Pen, who wants to curb immigration, ditch the euro, and hold a referendum on European Union membership, was buoyed by Trump's victory and the British vote to leave the European Union last year, hoping a similar groundswell against what she calls "unchecked globalisation (and) destructive ultra-liberalism" would propel her to victory. While she has praised Trump, the National Front leader is also an admirer of Russian President Vladimir Putin, an ally of Syria's embattled President Bashar al-Assad. Le Pen held talks with Putin in the Kremlin last month. Le Pen said last November that her election as French president would form a trio of world leaders with Trump and Putin that "would be good for world peace." Macron, who just hours before the U.S. attack had called for international military intervention against Assad under U.N. auspices, repeated on Friday that he wanted "coordinated action on the international level" against the Syrian president. Fillon warned of the risk of a broader confrontation. "This American response, understandable in view of the horror of the chemical attacks, must not lead to a direct confrontation between Western forces and those of Russia and Iran," he said in a statement. A spokesman for Melenchon spoke out against what he called "cowboy diplomacy". "This violence only sustains violence, with the people below being hit in the face with bombs," Alexis Corbiere said on Radio Classique. "It resolves nothing." (Additional reporting by Elizabeth Pineau; Editing by Richard Balmforth) By Francesco Guarascio and Jan Strupczewski VALLETTA, April 7 (Reuters) - Malta's presidency of the European Union said on Friday the bloc should slow down its drive against corporate tax avoidance because it might hurt Europe's economy by increasing legal uncertainty. Following recent revelations, such as the Panama Papers, of tax evasion and reduction by big corporations and wealthy individuals, the European Commission has made several legislative proposals to close legal loopholes but some of the most ambitious plans have yet to be approved by EU states. In a paper to be discussed by EU finance ministers in Valletta on Friday and Saturday, Malta, which holds the rotating EU chair until July, said the proposed reforms would increase uncertainty, harming international investment and trade. Malta and other smaller EU states with low tax regimes have repeatedly showed caution in the push for reform, fearing multinationals headquartered in their territory may leave. The paper, seen by Reuters, said, "a certain amount of time is needed in order to properly formulate, assimilate and apply such legislation". It also argued that the EU should align the pace of its reforms to changes at international level to avoid losing competitiveness. Moves at global level are notoriously slow on tax matters. But the EU commissioner for tax policies, Pierre Moscovici, told Reuters that reforms should continue at a "rapid pace". "EU citizens can no longer accept that multinationals don't pay taxes or pay less than they should," he said. The Commission is also trying to tackle tax avoidance by increasing tax transparency, which Malta said could lead to more tax disputes and increase legal uncertainty. Moscovici countered that. "Legal certainty will come from common rules across the EU to tackle frauds," he said, noting that "this should not be used as a political alibi to stop our reforms". In the paper, Malta also called for an "enhanced" use of regulated tax rulings, which allow large companies to settle their tax bills in advance, a practice used by several multinationals to obtain sweetheart concessions in EU countries. Among companies already sanctioned for such deals, the Commission has asked Apple to pay $14 billion to Ireland for tax skipped thanks to a generous deal with Dublin. Amazon.com and McDonald's also face Commission investigation over taxes in Luxembourg, while Starbucks Corp has been ordered to pay up to 30 million euros ($33 million) in back-taxes to the Dutch state. (Editing by Louise Ireland) By Igor Ilic ZAGREB, April 7 (Reuters) - Croatia's indebted food and retail group Agrokor, the Balkan nation's biggest private firm, said on Friday it was handing control to the state under an emergency law introduced this week to deal with big companies facing financial trouble. Agrokor, the biggest employer in the Balkan region with some 60,000 people, piled up debts worth some 45 billion kuna ($6.42 billion), or six times its equity, during rapid expansion of its business, notably in Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Serbia. The firm secured a deal with banks at the weekend to help restructure its finances but suppliers, who were worried about delayed payments, did not sign up. Earlier on Friday, the suppliers said they would halt deliveries of goods to the firm. Without broad agreement of all the stakeholders, Agrokor was left little choice but to seek the state's assistance. The emergency law envisages any restructuring taking 15 months. "Today, I put everything I had built in the charge of the Croatian state," Agrokor's owner Ivica Todoric said in a statement calling for the emergency law to be activated. "I believe it is a decision taken in best interest of every employee, partner, supplier and all other stakeholders," he said. Under the law, passed during an urgent procedure on Thursday, the state must appoint an executive to steer the restructuring process, with the approval of a commercial court. Agrokor struck a deal last Sunday with six lenders, led by Russia's Sberbank and VTB, to freeze debt repayments and to secure an unspecified cash injection before restructuring the company's business. But suppliers, including big producers and small family farms, did not join that agreement as they feared their demands for payment could be adversely affected by the restructuring. Agrokor's retail chain Konzum controls around 30 percent of the local market. (Reporting by Igor Ilic; Editing by Edmund Blair) BERLIN, April 7 (Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday defended Germany's stepped up deportations of rejected Afghan asylum seekers, saying other European countries were doing the same in response to a large influx of migrants since summer 2015. Over a million migrants have flocked to Germany in the last two years. Merkel, who initially embraced an open-door refugee policy, has toughened her tone in recent months as she seeks a fourth term in a Sept. 24 election in which the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party is expected to win seats. In December Germany began carrying out group deportations of Afghans with the government seeking to show it is tackling the high number of migrants by getting rid of those who do not qualify as refugees. One third of those sent back on the first flight were criminals convicted of offences. In 2016, Afghans were the second biggest group of asylum seekers in Germany after Syrians, according to data from the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees. "All other EU countries send those who don't have the right of residence back to Afghanistan," Merkel said during an event at the chancellery in Berlin with people who help refugees. Merkel urged Afghanistan's president: "Don't give the impression that (Afghans) can't live in Afghanistan because otherwise we'll all be lost together and we won't be able to find anybody to fight the Taliban as part of the Afghan army anymore." Around 55 percent of Afghans are granted refugee status in Germany while 45 percent are not, Merkel said. She added that the Afghan government had itself said that those coming to Germany were certainly not all the Afghans who are in the greatest danger of violence or the poorest. "I can't and should not send the signal that Germany thinks the 29 million Afghans ... live in unacceptable conditions and that you can't survive in Afghanistan. That's the dilemma we're in," the conservative chancellor said. Merkel said around 14,000 refugees and migrants were still arriving in Germany every month. Some of Germany's states are refusing to take part in deportations of Afghans, citing concerns about security in Afghanistan. (Reporting by Andreas Rinke; Writing by Michelle Martin; editing by Mark Heinrich) MEXICO CITY, April 7 (Reuters) - Mexico's President Enrique Pena Nieto received a leading Venezuelan opposition activist for the first time, in a policy shift that reflects Mexico's increasing assertiveness against the government of Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro. Pena Nieto's meeting with Lilian Tintori, wife of jailed opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, in the Mexican capital follows statements by the Mexican government demanding that democracy be "re-established" in Venezuela, where elections have been postponed. "We trust that, via an agreement between all sides, it will be the Venezuelans who re-establish the democratic order," Pena Nieto said via Twitter late on Thursday after the meeting. The position reflects deep concern about the humanitarian crisis of food and medicine shortages in Venezuela, as well as the Supreme Court's short-lived decision last week to take over the powers of the country's opposition-controlled Congress. It is also seen by diplomats as helping support ties between Mexico and the government of U.S. President Donald Trump. Venezuela's Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez last week slammed her Mexican counterpart Luis Videgaray's "betrayal" and called him "servile" after Videgaray said the situation in Venezuela was a "systematic violation" of democratic principles. Mexico has taken a leading role in efforts at the Washington-based Organization of American States (OAS) to pressure the Maduro government under threat of being expelled from the regional diplomatic body. "Pena Nieto is worried about what Venezuelans are living, Tintori said in an interview with Mexican media network Grupo Imagen that also referred to Mexico's role in the OAS. The Mexican stance against Maduro's government is a shift from a traditional neutral approach to the politics of its Latin American neighbors. It brings Mexico in line with recently elected conservative governments in Argentina, Brazil and Peru but puts it at odds with Venezuela's allies in the region. Some in Mexican foreign policy circles had been pushing for Pena Nieto to receive Tintori as a message of support for the Venezuelan opposition. Tintori had previously met Videgaray's predecessor as foreign minister. (Reporting by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Bernadette Baum) By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO, April 7 (Reuters) - Texas health officials are expanding testing recommendations for pregnant women in South Texas as the advent of warm weather increases the risk for local transmission of the mosquito-borne virus that has been shown to cause severe birth defects. The Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) on Friday recommended testing of all pregnant residents of Cameron, Hidalgo, Starr, Webb, Willacy and Zapata counties in both the first and second trimesters of pregnancy. It is also urging testing for any resident who has a rash plus at least one other common Zika symptom: fever, joint pain or eye redness. For the rest of the state, Texas is recommending testing for anyone with at least three of those four Zika symptoms and all pregnant women who have traveled to areas with ongoing Zika transmission, including travel to any part of Mexico. "Zika remains a significant health risk to pregnant women and their babies, and it's only a matter of time until we see local transmission here again," DSHS Commissioner Dr. John Hellerstedt said in a statement. He said the state wants to "cast as wide a net as possible" with testing, noting that the Lower Rio Grande Valley remains most at risk. Texas had six cases of local mosquito transmission of Zika virus disease in Brownsville in November and December. The region is considered a likely place for Zika to spread because of its history of local transmission of dengue, a closely related virus, and its proximity to Mexico, where there continues to be local Zika transmission, including in communities just across the border. Federal health officials this week reported that one in 10 women with confirmed Zika infections during pregnancy in 2016 had a fetus or baby with birth defects. With its outbreak last year, Texas became the second state within the continental United States to report local Zika transmission, following Florida, which reported its first locally transmitted cases in July. Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories have reported a total of 36,504 cases of Zika, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Texas is one of several U.S. states with Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which carry Zika. There is no vaccine or treatment for Zika, which also can be transmitted sexually. An estimated 80 percent of people infected have no symptoms, making it difficult for individuals to know whether they have been infected. (Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Editing by Richard Chang) By John Irish BAMAKO, April 7 (Reuters) - France and Mali on Friday ruled out any talks with jihadist groups responsible for repeated attacks on Malian and foreign forces, rejecting calls to bring them to the negotiating table. A peace conference in Mali last Sunday called for talks with the leaders of two violent Islamist groups. Militants linked to Malian jihadist Iyad Ag Ghali have claimed dozens of attacks on Malian, United Nations and French troops operating in Mali's desert north. "They are terrorists," France's Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault told reporters. "How do you negotiate with terrorists? This is a fight with no ambiguity." Abdramane Sylla, Mali's minister for the diaspora and migration who stood in for the absent Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop, was equally adamant. "I think it's absurd to negotiate with these terrorists, especially when they've just ... declared war on 11 countries," he said. Ayrault and Sylla spoke after they and German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel had met with Mali's President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita. Ayrault said the jihadist Ag Ghali had claimed an attack in southern Mali that killed a French soldier on Wednesday. Ayrault and Gabriel were earlier in the northern Malian city of Gao, where they visited French and German troops stationed there and attended a tribute to the French soldier. Former colonial power France intervened in 2013 to push back al Qaeda-linked militants who had hijacked an ethnic Tuareg uprising to seize northern Mali the year before. It has since deployed some 4,000 soldiers, known as the Barkhane force, across the region to hunt down Islamists. That intervention paved way for the United Nations to deploy its more than 10,000-strong MINUSMA peacekeeping force to the West African state at a cost of about $1 billion a year. Then, in 2015, a Malian peace pact was signed that was supposed to draw a line under the conflict pitting nomadic Tuaregs in the desert north against a government seated in the south that had turned Mali into a launch pad for global jihad. But thorny obstacles to implementing the deal, a surge in Islamist violence, and the U.N. mission's lack of equipment and manpower to counter it have raised eyebrows at a time when Washington wants to review its funding to the U.N. Earlier, in Gao, Ayrault said that he was confident that the United States would not seek to abandon the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Mali. "It doesn't mean that just because you are looking to make savings that you abandon these peacekeeping missions," he said. "As far as Mali is concerned ... it's clear that it's an indispensable mission." (Additional reporting by Adama Diarra; Writing by Tim Cocks; Editing by Tom Heneghan) By Mitra Taj SANTIAGO, April 7 (Reuters) - Peru, fresh off a sharp rise in copper output, is upstaging top producer Chile as a prime place to hunt for new supplies as the historic rivals race to usher in new mines. Chile, long the world leader in copper production, has struggled recently with slipping productivity and lackluster exploration. At the annual CRU World Copper Conference that the country hosted in Santiago this week, many pointed to Peru as an example for Chile to follow. "In Chile for many, many years there has been no incentive for anything in terms of national policy. Peru on the other hand is making a special effort," said Diego Hernandez, an industry veteran who heads trade body Sonami in Chile. Now the world's second biggest producer, Peru has benefited from lower production costs and untapped reserves, while Chile's output has stagnated due to falling copper grades, thorny labor relations and high energy costs. The Fraser Institute's annual survey had Peru leapfrogging its more developed neighbor as the best place for miners to do business in Latin America. Peru has introduced policies to cut red tape. Forthcoming changes to rules on safety, training and mine closures will save miners money and time, said Peru's Mines Minister Gonzalo Tamayo. The country is also studying how to promote shared infrastructure projects, from highways and railways to concentrates pipelines, to make scattered deposits feasible. Peru has become a place "that we think is great for the mining business," said Antofagasta Chief Executive Officer Ivan Arriagada. Still, Peru has had to contend with anti-mining protests that have derailed major projects. "The big question mark that can make Peru very expensive, is this unrest and conflicts," said Marcelo Bastos, the chief operating officer of MMG Ltd's massive Peruvian Las Bambas project, where disgruntled locals have disrupted transportation of copper concentrates. Bastos said Las Bambas, which has only drilled a fraction of the concession, could hold as much copper as Chile's Escondida copper mine, long the world's biggest. "VIRTUOUS CIRCLE" In the past, Peru and Chile have disputed everything from stretches of desert to the origin of the popular South American brandy Pisco. But Peru's rapid rise in mining could help both countries. "There's a healthy competition. As neighbors we're always looking at what's happening on the other side, and that's creating a virtuous circle," said Luis Marchese, Peru country manager for Anglo American. The company is evaluating a possible expansion in Peru while output at its Los Bronces mine in Chile is flat. Miners can save costs by tapping suppliers on both sides of the border and sharing know-how. Governments could further help by, for example, connecting the electrical grids and easing border restrictions, said Luis Rivera, an Americas executive for Gold Fields. Peru overtaking it as an investor darling had a silver lining for Chile, said Chile's Deputy Mines Minister Erich Schnake. "It's in Chile's interest for Peru to move forward because in the end this will create a mining hub," he said. (Reporting by Mitra Taj, Additional reporting by Barbara Lewis; editing by Rosalba O'Brien and David Gregorio) Aries (Mesha): This is a week of great significance for you given the two planetary changes due at the week-end Mars entering the 2nd House leaving Aries on April 13 and Sun entering Aries to attain exalted status on April 14 directly involves your Lagna thus making a great impact on your life at the dawn of the National New Year. The ongoing week is ideal for introspection and hindsight rather than for a hustle-bustle lifestyle. Taurus (Vrushabha): The two planetary changes due by the week-end hold great significance for you as well. For Mars due to change sign on April 13 will begin its transit in your Lagna Taurus which will work a great influence on you physically and psychologically. It would be more beneficial for you to devote this week to quietude and meditation. You are assured of a steady income at the dawn of the New Year. Gemini (Mithuna): Mars and Sun moving into new signs Taurus in your 12th House and Aries in the 11th House on April 13 and 14 respectively will bring you mixed results at the dawn of the National New Year. You are advised to pay special care and attention to ensuring your personal safety and safeguarding your honour and reputation. Introspection, mediation or religious observances during this week are more beneficial than a busy schedule of work. Cancer (Kataka): The planetary changes due by the week-end will usher in a successful New Year for you. For Mars due to begin transit in your 11th Ayasthana and Sun due to enter your 12th House in exaltation will further strengthen the existing favourable planetary configuration. Spending the ongoing week on stock-taking, planning and introspection is more beneficial for you. Leo (Simha): The planetary changes due by the week-end will work a major influence on your way of thinking, general outlook and your physique as Sun due in your 9th House on April 14 being the Lagnadhipati and Mars due in the 10th being a Yogakaraka signify a direct bearing on your fortune. Given the impact they are to make on the country as a whole apart from their impact on individuals wisdom and foresight are the needs of the hour. Virgo (Kanya): Suns movement into your 8th House to conjoin Lagnadhipati Mercury on April 14 and Mars beginning transit in your 9th House on April 13 will bring mixed results for you at the dawn of the New Year. The general advice to all natives to spend the ongoing week in quietude, introspection and stock-taking holds good for you as well. You are advised to avoid going places from April 12 to 15. Exalted Venus in the 7th House is a source of great strength to you. Libra (Thula): The planetary changes by the week-end, Sun moving into Aries on April 14 and Mar into Taurus on April 13 will bring mixed results to you at the dawn of the New Year. You have to be mindful of your personal safety beginning April 12 And avoid risk-involved activity like boat rides, sea bathing and jungle treks. Venus exalted in the 6th House is a major redeeming feature. Scorpio (Vrushika): Lagnadhipati Mars moving into the 7th House enabling it to cast its beneficial aspect over the Lagna and the 5th lord Sun gaining exaltation in the 6th House by the weekend assures you great success in the New Year. As the brief spell from April 12 to April 15 is decisive for you, you are advised to avoid taking hasty decisions and actions during this period. Sagittarius (Dhanu): A very auspicious planetary line-up is due to form by the weekend with Mars moving into the 6th Upachaya House on April 13 and Sun into the 5th House with exalted status further reinforcing the existing favourable configuration. Venus exalted in the 4th quadrant continues to hold out luxuries and comforts in addition to success in academic and scientific pursuits and happiness in the family. Capricorn (Makara): Planetary changes due by the weekend holds out mixed results for you at the dawn of the New Year. You are also advised to devote the ongoing week to hindsight, introspection and mediation or religious observances given the impact that the planetary changes could make on individuals and also the country and people at a mundane level. The fact that the Capricorn sign is due to rise from the horizon at the time New Year dawns holds significance for you. Aquarius (Kumbha): he fact that the Aries sign into which the Sun is due to enter marking the start of the New Year happens to be the 3rd House in your Natal Chart places you in a position of great strength that commands much power and influence. However, you are advised to keep a low profile and avoid taking important decisions until April 15. Pisces (Meena): Planetary changes due by the weekend hold out an auspicious start of the New Year for you. However, natives holding high political, military or executive in particular advised to go into retreat from their tight schedule until April 15. Natives have to continue to take extra precautions to protect your eyes. By Chandeepa Wettasinghe Sri Lankas Captain Cool, who has recently been playing hardball with China to get favourable terms for Sri Lanka over the Hambantota port lease deal says he will continue to work towards making the deal advantageous to Sri Lanka before an agreement is inked. We have done a lot of changes. We want to do a lot more changes before we finalize this. We have not done enough. We are discussing this. We are analyzing this. This time all the top officials are working on it, Ports and Shipping Minister Arjuna Ranatunga told Mirror Business this week. One of his key aims was to reduce the period of the proposed public private partnership (PPP) with the Chinese state-owned China Merchant Port Holdings (CMPH) down to 50 years from the 99 years currently being discussed. I believe it should be 50, thats the Presidents view as well, Ranatunga said. He noted that CMPH has now agreed to become only a service provider, without undertaking ownership of the piloting, dockage and the land area, which would require the setting up of a private ports authority. I dont want to create a new private authority. The entire Cabinet agreed on that, Ranatunga said, also adding that he would labour to always protect the Ports Authority Act of 1979. Under the previous arrangement announced, CMPH was supposed to own 80 percent of the shares in Hambantota port and take over the entire port for US$ 1.12 billion, while the Sri Lanka Ports Authority would own 20 percent. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe had recently noted that CMPH had agreed to sell down 20 percent of the shares to the Sri Lankan government or another local investor 10 years after signing of an agreement. However, Ranatunga said that the two parties have yet to come to a consensus on the shareholding structure. He noted that the government and CMPH have agreed on most of the terms, but that China is still attempting to manipulate some of them. Most of the things they have agreed but some of the things they are still trying to manipulate and get it done, he said. Wild contradictions among Sri Lankan politicians and between Sri Lanka and China have surfaced with regard to Hambantota port over the past year. Deputy Solicitor General Milinda Gunathilake yesterday revealed to the Commission that Perpetual Treasuries Ltd (PT) had borrowed from Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) and the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) on April 4, 2016 when it was settling payments to the CBSL and EPF due three days earlier (1) pertaining to the bids accepted in the bond auctions held on March 29, 30 and 31 in 2016. Concluding evidence from Director of the IT Department of the CBSL Wasantha Kumara Alwis, the Deputy Solicitor General (DSG) explained to the Commission that the PT had borrowed Rs.19.7 billion again from CBSL and EPF using it to settle the Rs.27.5 billion that was required on April 4. In line with the bids accepted on the bond auctions held between March 29-31, 2016, PT needed to settle the payments to the Central Bank on April 1, 2016. The payment process was set in the systematic medium called Lanka Security System (LSS). Perpetual Treasuries had then obtained loans on several occasions on the date of settlement (1) using the Intra-day Liquidity Facility (ILF) of the Central Bank, which is given by the Central Bank to enable financial institutions to make payments in real time with the funds accessed during the particular business day, keeping the securities provided by the institution to the CBSL as security. However, the borrowings from the ILF needed to be settled on the day it was due as it is regarded as a temporary loan given by the CBSL with no interest payable to the CBSL. This meant that even though the monies owed on the accepted bids at the bond auctions had been settled at the end of the day on April 1, the monies obtained from the ILF by PT in order to settle the bonds were not paid on the same date causing a shortfall of Rs.11.05 billion in the ILF account. It was revealed yesterday that despite the fact that the PT was not able to settle the ILF outstanding on April 1, they were again unable to settle the due amount before the LSS official closing time.The due amount was however settled by 5 pm on April 4, 2016. As a result of the Rs.11.06 billion outstanding in ILF borrowings on April 1, the system had calculated the increase of the market value of securities and had charged an additional Rs. 88 million from PT on the basis that there was an increase in the market rate from April 1 to 4. However, the witness told the Commission that the additional Rs. 88 million charged from PT was later repaid to the Perpetual Treasuries manually on the instructions of high ranking officials at CBSL. Such manual intervention to repay Rs. 88 million was an unusual and unprecedented occurrence as the sum to be paid by the company was calculated electronically by the system, said Mr. Alwis. It was also revealed that PT was fined Rs.13.6 million by the CBSL over the non-settlement of ILF borrowings on April 1 and another fine of Rs.7.8 million had been slapped on them over a REPO agreement where PT could not furnish securities to the CBSL on time. The witness was also cross examined by Nihal Fernando PC along with Counsel Romali Tudawe. Subsequently, the Commission to inquire into the Treasury Bond issue, which comprised Supreme Court Judges Kankanithanthri T. Chitrasiri, Prasanna Sujeewa Jayawardena and former Deputy Auditor General Kandasamy Velupillai, decided to resume the inquiry today (7). (Shehan Chamika Silva) Mental health has been emphasized as a core component of health by the World Health Organisation (WHO) since the late 40s. For many years however, safeguarding mental health remained on the back-burner. But mental health issues started gaining priority regionally and globally in the mid-90s, thanks to a WHO report titled bridging the gap. After this landmark report, a diverse area of mental health was explored and evidence-based initiatives and interventions came into action. Moreover, the importance of investing in mental health is further emphasized by the goal number three of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) agenda. Depression or depressive disorders is the most common mental disorder and is referred to as the unknown silent killer. Depression is a global and national public health concern Global health estimates of the WHO found that about 322 million of people suffered depression in 2015. As such, approximately four out of 100 people suffer from depressive disorders. In terms of gender, females are approximately 1.5 times more likely to get depressed than men. Prevalence is relatively higher among older persons between the ages of 55-74 years. Depression is the largest contributor to non-fatal disease burden in the world. Another crucial aspect of depression is that severely affected people are more likely to attempt to inflict injuries to selfsuicide or other forms of physical harm. As per global health estimates of the WHO for 2015, there were around 802,321 reported cases of depression in Sri Lanka. The prevalence of depressive disorders in Sri Lanka (4.1 percent) does not considerably differ from the global and Southeast Asian regions figures (4.4 percent). With regard to the major depression, prevalence and the disease burden have increased over the years (Figure 1). As in other parts of the world, prevalence is higher among females. With regards to the disease burden, the number of years lived with disability has also increased over the years. Tragically, Sri Lanka lost about 103,113 of life years due to major depression in 2015 (Figure 2). Many studies have found that poverty and low income can push people towards depression. A study published by the Journal of Affective Disorders on Depression in Sri Lanka revealed that the lack of basic amenities and poor financial resources are strongly associated with depression among men in Sri Lanka. Being unable to fulfil the basic needs such as food, water, sanitary facilities and housing and unemployment also contribute to depression in men in Sri Lanka. Economic and social costs of depression Depression is a health concern that cannot be ignored as it leads to social and economic repercussions and could even shorten the span of productive lives due to suicide. Many studies found that depression reduces productivity, increasing healthcare costs and staff turnover. The Integrated Benefits Institute says employee absenteeism and presenteeism caused by depression reduced productivity by 80 percent. WFrom the employers perspective, lost productivity accounts for 70 percent of the total cost of depression while medication accounts for the remaining 30 percent. Haslamet at (200) found that symptoms and medication of depression weaken work performance and leads to workplace accidents. Impaired work performance caused by depression also weakens the economic and social capabilities of individuals. According to the WHO, the loss of productivity at workplace due to depression and anxiety causes losses of about US $ 1 trillion per year or approximately US $ 130 per head, globally. Accordingly, investing in tackling depression can benefit not just individuals but the economy as well. Investment in treating depression can result in better health and higher productivity in the workplace. In this context, Sri Lanka can also gain US $ 4 for every US $ 1 invested in treating depression as the WHO stated. Is Sri Lanka ready to address pressing issues in mental health? Providing comprehensive and quality mental healthcare services in terms of promotion, prevention, treatment and rehabilitation with effective, accessible, equitable and affordable for the entire population is a challenge for every country. Likewise, Sri Lanka is confronting three critical issues in terms of service provision, financial resource mobilization and rigorous information system within the country. In Sri Lanka, depression is simply treated as a component of mental health policy and therefore, the national mental health interventions are not tailored specifically towards tackling depression. However, Sri Lanka has taken significant steps over the years to address mental health issues with the assistance of various development agencies. At the foremost, the Health Ministry considers mental health as a core component of non-communicable diseases and therefore a separate directorate for mental health is in place. Secondly, the initial mental health policy for Sri Lanka 2005-2015 is now being revised for the period of 2015-2020 and preparations for the mental health action plan 2015-2020 is underway. Medical services are provided through hospital networks at national and regional levels, with multidisciplinary teams of professionals (consultant psychiatrists, medical officers of mental health/psychiatrists, psychiatric nursing officers, community support officers (CSO), psychiatric social workers (PSW) and occupational therapists). While there is only a single hospital designated for mental health services (National Institute of Mental Health), 23 psychiatric in-patient units/wards, 86 outpatient clinic centres and 250 outreach clinics are operated throughout the country. In addition, day-treatment facilities as well as 22 intermediate mental healthcare rehabilitation units are also being managed by the Health Ministry. Apart from the hospital-based treatments and services, psychiatric nursing officers, CSO and PSWs are closely working with other community health workers (MOH, public health midwife, etc.) to identify people with early signs of mental illness and to direct them for continuous medical treatment and counselling. Adequacy and rationality of financial resources being mobilized for mental health is still questionable. One reason is that, the Health Ministry spends a large portion on curative care while a very small amount is being allocated on prevention and health promotion. While treating the mentally ill people at hospitals, strengthening the preventive and promotional measures on mental health is also important to reduce the incidence of mental health cases. Developing evidence-based mental health intervention and utilizing financial resources effectively can only be done with proper information on mental health. However, Sri Lanka is still far behind of maintaining a unique information system on mental health within the country. What needs to be done? Thus, mental health services in Sri Lanka have room to improve, especially with regard to their reach, when considering the increasing rates of depression. One reason for this could be irrational resource allocation where all the sophisticated and intermediate mental healthcare facilities are concentrated only at big hospitals. More than two third of Health Ministrys expenditure on mental health, excluding provincial allocations (US $ 6.4 million out of US $ 8.5 million in 2008/09) is directed to main psychiatric hospitals. Spending on prevention of mental illnesses and promotion of mental health is minimal. As such, the poor, especially those in rural areas, have limited access to mental health facilities. A patient-centred service model can be a possible solution to expand the coverage of services. One of the ways to implement this is by integrating mental health service into the existing decentralized community healthcare system, as part of maternal and child healthcare services. Next, mental health services can be coupled with the existing primary healthcare (PHC) service system that can enable the community based intervention and build social capital to sustain the continuing care. The District Mental Health Programme in India has already integrated mental health into PHC in Kerala. However, adequate physical and human resources are essential for the successful implementation of such measures. A multisectoral approach towards mental health financing, with a proper coordination mechanism to link other ministries could improve the management and coordination of efforts and reduce the wastage of resources. Absence of information on depression (and other mental health disorders) is another obstacle which hinders the proper planning and implementation of measures to address mental health issues. None of the routine national surveys collect data on common mental disorders depression and anxiety. Even now, Sri Lanka relies on fragmented sample studies by independent researchers and international databases such as the WHO, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). Therefore, the Health Ministry should develop a comprehensive database mechanism, invest on mental health research and carry out evidence-based interventions. (Samanthi Bandara is a Research Officer at the Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka (IPS). To view this article online and to share your comments, visit the IPS Blog Talking Economics - http://www.ips.lk/talkingeconomics/) Sri Lankas First National Symposium to Develop a National Export Strategy was held at the Temple Trees recently on April 6 and 7. The event was conducted by the Ministry of Development Strategies and International Trade and the Sri Lanka Export Development Board. The Governments vision is for Sri Lanka to be the next economic success story in Asia. Thus, exports play a vital role, if not the only option available for the country. Although the fundamental aspects have been discussed at almost all forums and throughout the past decades, Sri Lanka has not been able to reap the benefits of exports for a number of limitations. "We are in the process of transforming from a debt financed public investment and import substitution economy to a private sector led export and FDI led development strategy" Sri Lankas growth since independence had a high level of volatility with the annual growth rate averaging at around 4.7%. Above 7% growth has been witnessed during short spells, especially during 2010 to 2012, following the end of the conflict. Exports too witnessed a high growth during this period. However, it has declined steadily from 27% of GDP in 2000to 13.4% of GDP by 2015. Also the expected FDI rate was 4.5% of GDP, but this is in reality, it was only 1.4% Post conflict Sri Lanka had a significant level of optimism in terms of export growth, which was short lived. Therefore, achieving sustained high growth is a serious challenge. The Government has taken this challenge on board and is working on a multifaceted economic policy framework which will integrate to create an enabling environment for long term growth and the benefits will trickle down to all levels of the society, building long term sustainability and economic prosperity to all. We are in the process of transforming from a debt financed public investment and import substitution economy to a private sector led export and FDI led development strategy. Given the size of the small market of 21 million people in the country, the growth potential for Sri Lanka inevitably lies in global integration. To benefit from opening itself up for trade, Sri Lankas products and services will need to not only successfully compete domestically, but also in the highly competitive international market. Global trading environment is changing rapidly with global production networks and global value chains. These developments are a result of product fragmentation; cross boarder dispersion of component production/assembly. Each country specializes in a particular stage of production sequence and trade the value added components which ultimately result in final product. "It is imperative that Sri Lanka finds new markets and carve out easy market access" Integration into the Global Production Network is vital for Sri Lanka to switch to export oriented industrialization where economies of scale could be reaped and more foreign exchange earned. Export growth cannot be achieved through traditional export markets as demand is slack in these countries. The slow growth of exports is also due to the very little diversification of the product basket. Therefore, it is imperative that Sri Lanka finds new markets and carve out easy market access. The deepening of the existing FTA with India and Pakistan and working out new FTAs with growing Asian countries such as China and Singapore will create access to a market of over three billion. Sri Lankas agreements with these countries will give companies located in Sri Lanka preferential access to a large market. Broadening and deepening the India-Sri Lanka FTA via the proposed Economic and TechnologyCo-operation Agreement (ETCA) will certainly assist Sri Lanka to address most of the current problems it is facing in fully utilizing the FTA. "The Governments vision is for Sri Lanka to be the next economic success story in Asia" The ETCA negotiations are addressing outstanding non-tariff barriers in the Indian market as well as many other existing procedural barriers and delays in Indian ports of entry. For export promotion FDIs will support and enhance the supply capacity of and make the best use of market access gained via FDIs. These are the avenues for new business and quality products. Making this transition from debt-financial public investment and import substations to private sector led export and FDI based development strategy remains challenging. But it is the only option available for Sri Lanka. In this context developing of a national strategy for exports is a key component of the development agenda of the Government. The strategy will be designed to provide a prioritized five year action oriented framework for trade development and competitiveness. It will focus on a number of priority sectors, selected based on quantitative and qualitative analysis of Sri Lankas export competitiveness to ensure prioritized focus. It will also support the economic vision of strengthening the competitiveness of the countrys private sector to achieve inclusive and sustainable growth. A number of international organizations such as the World Bank, ComSec, Harvard, CID (Centre for International Development)and ADB have undertaken several studies and identified different sectors as promising and future visionary sectors to boost export growth. "Post conflict Sri Lanka had a significant level of optimism in terms of export growth, which was short lived" Key competitiveness constraints and opportunities at the National level and along the identified priority sectors, value chains, including selected service sectors, as well as cross-sectoral fundamental areas in institutional infrastructure for export promotions, logistics etc. will also be looked at. This National endeavour is spearheaded by the Sri Lanka Export Development Board under the strategic guidance of my Ministry (MODSIT) and of course with the total involvement of the private sector. The International Trade Centre has joined hands with us in developing the strategy by providing a combination of advisory and capacity building inputs and specialized expertise to ensure the NES is of the highest quality and validated by the relevant authorities in Sri Lanka. Sri Lankan companies, especially SMEs generally lack the knowledge and experience required to adopt and adapt new technologies and thereby develop new/higher value added products and services to address domestic and international market opportunities. Thus, they are unable to access the global value chains which may offer them the opportunity to sell their products and services in the global market. It is evident that we cannot tackle all the challenges in isolation. Therefore, we need to come on to one platform where we can have a holistic approach. A Navy diver was killed while repairing a faulty sluice gate of the Nagadeepa Reservoir in Rideemaliyadda today, Police said. He was a member of a group of four divers and according to reports he was trapped under the sluice gate while attempting to repair it. The 34-year-old Navy diver Sumith Chandana Kumara was found dead on admission to the Uraniya Hospital. He was a resident of Mahakanadarawa. The Federation Award for the Most Outstanding University Student (FAMOUS) has been offered by the Federation of Information Technology Industry Sri Lanka (FITIS) at the Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology (SLIIT) convocation held recently at the SLIIT auditorium. FITIS offers FAMOUS annually to the most outstanding student in information systems and networking at the SLIIT convocation. The winner of FAMOUS also received a cash award. We understand that it is our responsibility to encourage universities and students to excel in their education as the country needs top-quality ICT professionals. We, being the Federation of IT Industry, representing over 200 active commercial organisations in the IT industry, feel the importance of human resources where both quantity and quality are equally important. We are happy to be with SLIIT as the biggest producer of talented ICT professionals, said FITIS Software Chapter Immediate Past President Abbas Kamrudeen, attending the convocation. FITIS has many initiatives to recognize young ICT talents. Young Computer Scientist Competition, FITIS Youth Club, Innovation Pavilion at Infotel National ICT Exhibition, etc. and the FAMOUS are some of them. Established in 1994, FITIS acts as the nucleus of five industry associations of the ICT industry, namely Sri Lanka Association for the Software Industry (now known as the FITIS Software Chapter), Sri Lanka Computer Vendors Association (now known as FITIS Hardware Chapter), Association of Computer Training Organisations (Training Chapter of FITIS), Lanka Internet Service Providers Association (FITIS Telecom Chapter) and ISACA Sri Lanka Section. With a cumulative membership of over 200 active business firms in the ICT industry, FITIS is committed to foster a healthy growth of the industry focusing on resolving policy issues, lobbying with state authorities, co-operation and alignment with regional and global industry bodies and promoting harmony and innovations within the ICT industry. A blog about life under, and resisting, a dictatorship Global Hospitals, a multi-super specialty tertiary care hospital, which has treated over 1000 patients in Sri Lanka and has been acquired by Parkway Pantai, a fully-owned subsidiary of IHH Healthcare Berhad, will extend its services under its new identity to Sri Lankan patients as of today. IHH Healthcare Berhad is the worlds second largest healthcare group by market capitalization and operates more than 10,000 licensed beds across 52 hospitals in 10 countries worldwide. Global Hospitals is now part of this esteemed family of medical facilities across Asia and is distinguished by its commitment to patient-centric care and excellent service. Global Hospitals, with its new identity, is all set to offer its Sri Lankan patients (as part of one of the worlds leading international healthcare brands) the best tertiary and quaternary healthcare services. This marks yet another step towards enhancing the long-standing relationship with their existing patients in Sri Lanka in the best interests of continued care. In Sri Lanka, Global Hospitals operating under its new identity, will continue to be represented by Forte Group of Companies, headed by M.F.A. Riyas. Forte Pharmaceuticals (Pvt.) Ltd, launched in 2005, is an organisation that has identified themselves as specialists in pharmaceuticals in order to keep up with market trends and behaviour. Due to their stronghold in the healthcare industry, Forte International was appointed as the country office by Global Hospitals Group India, to take care of and serve Sri Lankan patients, with the support of medical professionals and doctors in Sri Lanka. As part of the famed Parkway Pantai group, patients can now look forward to even higher levels of service. Heavy traffic was reported from the Maradana area a short while ago due to a protest march organised by the Government Medical Officers Association (GMOA) against the South Asian Institute of Medicine and Technology (SAITM). The protest march is scheduled to arrive at Colombo Fort via Technical Junction. Police said the entrance road to Colombo via Maradana has been blocked and advised motorists to use alternative routes. Video by RM AFP: Greece agreed on a fresh set of reforms with its eurozone creditors yesterday with hopes that Athens could unlock bailout cash in time to avert a debt default just months away. Eurozone finance ministers meeting in the Maltese capital of Valletta said Athens agreed in principle to the new reforms and technical teams would visit Greece as soon as possible to seal the deal. The big blocks have now been sorted out and now we just have the final stretch, Eurogroup head Jeroen Dijsselbloem said after the talks. Heavily-indebted Athens and the EU and IMF which handle the bailout have been deadlocked over reforms for months amid disagreements on debt relief and budget targets. The deal is needed in order to stop the country from defaulting on its creditors as early as July, when Athens owes about seven billion euros (US$7.4 billion) in debt repayments. Dijsselbloem said the Greek government was now prepared to reduce pensions in 2019 and lower tax breaks in 2020 in return for a bailout payment despite widespread public opposition. Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos said the commitments would pass through parliament as soon as possible, though the gamble depends on his Syriza partys razor-thin majority. Tsakalotos said his eurozone counterparts had also accepted that Greece boost social spending if budget targets were met and that debt relief would also come back to the table. We will be ready for all the pieces of the puzzle to fit in for the discussion on debt, said Tsakalotos, for whom debt relief is a key demand. I think we will have (a solution) well before summer, he added. The eurozone is under big pressure to end the feud in order to avert inflicting damage to a stalling Greek recovery. Despite projections for growth, the Greek economy actually stalled in 2016 and recent data shows that after some stabilisation, it has begun to falter again amid uncertainty triggered by the row. Greece needs this; we must end the uncertainties that are scaring investors, EU Economic Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici said. The sketch of a deal was a victory of sorts for Dijsselbloem who visited Brussels and Berlin ahead of Fridays talks in hopes of finding a compromise. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras had until now refused to accept any commitments beyond the term of its current bailout that is due to end in 2018, arguing that his government would not have the votes in parliament. The impasse has held up the latest instalment of Greeces 86-billion-euro ($92-billion) bailout, agreed in 2015 with the 19 countries that use the single currency. Without a deal in Malta, Tsipras said he would ask for a eurozone leaders summit later this month, and made his case in a phone call to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Europes most powerful leader. Also pressing matters is a desire by eurozone ministers to present a united front to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) later this month at the funds annual meetings in Washington. The Europeans have been at loggerheads with the IMF over the Washington-based lenders demands for more realistic budget targets and firm commitments to reduce Greeces mountain of debt. An agreement among eurozone ministers would go a long way towards getting the IMF on board as a financial partner in the bailout, a major demand of Germany, Greeces biggest lender. The IMF has so far stayed out of the current rescue, Greeces third since 2010. It has always been my pet subject of digital marketing, which Ive invested time and knowledge to pour in thought to a one-page article. This time around I had a different thought of gathering information to make aware about the remittance business that Im in. Understanding the potential and inflow of remittance to Sri Lanka, I couldnt keep away from sharing my thoughts about it. Sri Lanka is an open market economy. As in many other developing nations, Sri Lankas official records show that remittances have grown dramatically over the past decade. Nevertheless, the role remittances plays in development as well as the growth effect of this unconditional migrant assistance are under-researched and needs more development policy-oriented attention. In the meantime, the protracted civil war has elevated the importance of this injection of foreign exchange into the national economy. Why remittance? Remittances flow directly from one person to another. Also, unlike the official aid flows, the process of transferring remittances does not include tax and the only cost incurred is that of the money transfer service. The recent competitive expansion in the remittance industry has reduced the cost of remitting money across countries. Hassle-free and faster remittances are also freely available in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka has been the most liberalized economy in South Asia, recording greater trade dependency with an export and import share in gross domestic product (GDP) that is higher than 55 percent (often referred to as the trade dependency ratio). The country persistently depends on worker remittances as an attractive source of financing the widening trade deficit in its balance of payments. Remittances are the second largest source of external financing. They help to offset over 70 percent of the trade deficit and to reduce the current account balance to a manageable level. After garments exports, remittances have become the single largest component of foreign exchange inflows to the economy. Remittance pattern in Sri Lanka Most Sri Lankan migrants, especially almost all of the ones in the Middle East, emigrate for a fixed period of time and individually, without taking their families with them. When there is no possibility of settlement in the destination country, then migrants are more likely to save their income and either send it as remittances during their stay or bring with them when they return. As a result, while Mexican remittances from the US are likely to decline over time as the migrants settle permanently and their families join them, this is not likely to be the case in Sri Lanka. As long as there are migrants in the Middle East, remittance flows are likely to stay stable. Remittance impact for Sri Lanka As of 2016, remittance inflows account for almost 10 percent of Sri Lankan GDP. How are the remittances spent? And it is definitely the case in Sri Lanka, thus it indicates that remittances are more likely to be spent on investments whether these are physical or human capital investments such as education. There is naturally a selection effect - people with good investment opportunities are more likely to migrate and send remittances. Furthermore, many unobservable characteristics, such as entrepreneurial ability is likely to be higher among migrants. Thus, it is very important to control for these selection and endogeneity biases as much as possible when identifying the development impact of remittances, especially through the spending channels. Are remittances important in removing credit constraints? This is one of the key issues in financial development, especially in cases where borrowers do not have access to capital markets and/or there are capital market imperfections. In this case, people with investment opportunities cannot borrow and investment which is crucial for development and growth does not take place. Remittances during the time abroad can relax these constraints whether through savings or creating opportunities such as collateral for financial market access. This can be especially identified when we survey migrants who have returned and observe what they have done since then in terms occupation and labour market activities. Are there community spillovers of remittance, other than the families? This is another key question in development. The extended families and the communities benefit from remittances, whether directly as recipients or indirectly through the activities of the migrants families. Remittance business The foreign remittances of workers and others overseas have become the single largest foreign exchange earner and are now the mainstay of successive government budgets. Migrant workers (300,703) departed for foreign employment in the year 2014, which reduced to (263,307) in the year 2015. This is a dip of 12.44 percent. Sixty five percent of migrant workers have been males in comparison to 34 percent of females in 2015. Until recently, labour migration from Sri Lanka was dominated by females departing as housemaids. Subsequent to many concerted policy efforts, such as the family background report (FBR) requirement, pre-departure training and upgrading the existing skill training to internationally recognized levels, this female and low-skilled-oriented migrant worker flow is now transformed into a more skilled and male-centric flow. As a result, the share of females among migrant worker departures further shrank to 25 percent from 28 percent in 2016. The other skills groups, such as professionals and semi-skilled groups also experienced growth to reach shares of 2.4 percent and 2 percent, respectively. This gender reversal and upskilling of migrant workers, coincided with the first-ever decline in inward remittances in 14 years. The main markets of remittance inflow are Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait and Oman. These markets have hired approximately 88.3 percent of Sri Lankan workers in the year 2016. In the year 2015, the workers remittances had decreased US $ 6,980.2 million (Rs.948,936.31 million) , while the figures were recorded as US $ 7,018.0 million (Rs.916,367 million) when it was compared with the same period in the year 2014. US $ 7.2 billion (Rs.1.1 trillion) is what foreign remittances bought into this country in 2016. Workers remittances are also expected to slow down, given the increased availability of domestic employment opportunities and policy measures to discourage migration in the semi-skilled and unskilled categories. Remittances and poverty Remittances, in fact, have great potential to generate a positive impact on development and poverty reduction in Sri Lanka. It is important to note that remittances can reduce the probability of food-based and capability-based poverty among underprivileged entities at the receiving end. This applies to both rural and conflict affected areas of the country. Where widening inter-regional income disparities are concerned, the migration of rural men and women could contribute to family income and, thereby, to rural economies. In many cases, this happens through the remittances of the primary breadwinners. It is evident that much of Sri Lankas labour exports is induced by household economic hardships. The departure of housemaids for the Middle Eastfrom where the highest volume of remittances flows into Sri Lankais mainly determined by the economic hardships in their families. The volume of remittances may, therefore, have positive correlation with wage levels of migrant workers and the economic needs of their families back home. Significantly, a colossal portion of the total remittances received by Sri Lanka meets day-to-day consumption needs rather than long-term productive purposes. In most cases, the remittance-recipient households set aside little or no savings for their future. Remittance in digital world The number of countries offering real-time intra-country fund transfer is increasing rapidly. This has made the instant cross-border small-ticket remittance on your mobile a reality. With increased convenience, speed, safety and lower fees, the remittance business is becoming more efficient due to mainly it having a total cost saving (per remittance), corridor cost savings and most importantly these savings have an impact on poverty reduction. While understanding the fact that there is numerous digital remittance developments such as Cash-to-Wallet and Wallet-to-Wallet implemented around the world, lets ponder for a moment to see how Sri Lanka can have its potential hands opened wide for digital remittance implementation. The mobile subscriber growth rate in Sri Lanka has been strong between 2011 and 2016. Mobile market penetration increased from 87 percent to 123 percent in 2016. The government effort is needed to facilitate the movement of financial transactions from cash to digital, especially with regard to reaching individuals in financially underserved areas. When governments shift their social, salary and procurement payments and taxation and licensing receipts to electronic form, it creates a foundation upon which the private sector and person-to-person payments, such as international and domestic remittances, can build. The private sector is a critical partner in this endeavour and there is a real opportunity to catalyze private-sector growth. The Sri Lanka government needs to offer a clear vision and tangible incentives in order to ensure that the private sector is an effective, competitive, transparent and efficient partner. Part of this requires that a level playing field be set up, whereby governments do not create disproportionate hurdles for a broad and growing range of providers to participate in the global financial system. Empowering a diverse range of private-sector providers will increase competition, reduce costs, empower consumers, increase the scale needed for sustainability and drive financial inclusion. The above is only the first part of understanding the remittance business and its importance for us, as a country. My future articles would pout thought about remittance marketing and digital remittance. (Kevin Almeida [MCIM, MBA (Wales)] is UAE Exchange Head Corridor Marketing for Sri Lanka) A brand new bridge maintenance vehicle from Japan was gifted by Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) to the Road Development Authority (RDA) of Sri Lanka yesterday. The keys of the vehicle were handed over by Fusato Tanaka, Chief Representative of the JICA Sri Lanka Office to Highways Minister Lakshman Kiriella. The special vehicle has a working platform which could be extended from the truck to reach under the bridge deck, so that the critical but hard to reach locations could be inspected and rectified in time. The vehicle worth over 47 million Japanese Yen (approx. Rs.86 million) will be the first of its kind in Sri Lanka. The vehicle is provided as part of the technical cooperation project on Bridge Management implemented by JICA to assist the RDA to formulate and establish systematic processes to regularly inspect and maintain bridges on the national road network. The 3-year technical cooperation project aims to assist RDA to formulate a bridge maintenance policy, set up maintenance organization in RDA, prepare working manual for maintenance work, establish IT-based bridge management system and on-the-job training in Japan for RDA engineers to get hands-on experience and technology transfer. Maintenance of bridges is especially important not only in terms of protecting infrastructure assets constructed with public funds, but also in terms of public safety. The potential risk of grave damage is greater in bridge infrastructure. But inspection and maintenance of bridges are more complex and difficult than on road sections, and may get postponed or disregarded. Our technical cooperation hopes to assist RDA to address these issues by setting up a bridge management system at RDA together with equipment such as this bridge maintenance vehicle. We hope RDA will make good use of the Japanese technology and experiences shared, and ensure a safe and smooth drive for the road users in Sri Lanka, said Fusato Tanaka, Chief Representative of JICA Sri Lanka Office. The Government has decided to bring the Neville Fernando Teaching Hospital which is affiliated to the South Asia Institute of Technology and Management (SAITM) under the purview of the Health Ministry, the Higher Education Ministry said today. The Government has also decided to conduct a mandatory examination under the joint supervision of the Sri Lanka Medical Council and the University Grants Commission to provide provisional registration for medical graduates who have passed out of SAITM. The decision was taken in the wake of the Government Medical Officers Association (GMOA) undertaking a token strike demanding the closure or nationalization of SAITM. The Higher Education Ministry announced that SAITM graduates would be given a further period of clinical training in Surgery, Medicine, Gynecology and Obstetrics, Psychiatry, Paediatrics for one month each in Homagama and Avissawella Hospitals. The Health Ministry will also gazette the minimum standards required for medical education in Sri Lanka. US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley confers with aides while she chairs a meeting of the United Nations Security Council. HINDUSTAN TIMES, 06th APRIL, 2017- Nikki Haley, the tough-talking and blunt US Ambassador to the UN, was heckled during an annual summit on women here as she spoke about President Donald Trump and Russia. Haley was speaking on Wednesday at the Women In The World summit, a premier annual gathering of influential women leaders, politicians and activists organised by media personality Tina Brown in association with the New York Times. As the Indian-American was answering questions during the session titled Trumps Diplomat: Nikki Haley moderated by MSNBC anchor Greta Van Susteren, Haley was booed and heckled on several occasions. At one point someone in the audience shouted what about refugees while another said when is the next panel. During the nearly 22 minute session, a woman in the audience shouted when is the next panel, to which the 45-year-old smiled and exclaimed wow as the audience tried to shush the heckler. She was heckled again when asked how America deals with some of the world leaders who are dictators. BEIJING - The Philippines president appeared to revive his quarrels with China on Thursday, ordering Philippine troops to occupy islands and reefs in the disputed South China Sea. Rodrigo Duterte said that the military should build structures on all of the Philippine-held islands, reefs and shoals in the contested Spratly Islands - not far from seven man-made Chinese islands in the area. Chinas construction of the islands is part of its claims of territorial sovereignty over the entire South China Sea, an important route for sea trade across Southeast Asia. Neighbouring nations strongly oppose Beijings moves and worry that the runways and docks on the artificial islands could eventually have a military use. Since winning the presidency last summer, the bombastic Duterte has struck a surpisingly conciliatory tone with Beijing. It is not clear if Duterte was making a policy statement or another of his high-stakes quips. If could suggest, however, that Duterte is returning to his confrontational stance with China after powerful domestic critics questioned his light-touch approach with Beijing. Duterte also mentioned that he would like plant a flag on one island for Philippine Independence Day on June 12. It looks like everybody is making a grab for the islands there, so we better live on those that are still vacant, he said. At least, let us get what is ours now and make a strong point there that it is ours, he added. The Washington Post Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe is to visit India in order to negotiate the proposed Economic and Technological Cooperation Agreement (ECTA) shortly. Premier Wickremesinghe was expected to proceed to India after visiting Japan, according to informed sources. He is expected to meet his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi and other high ranking Indian officials during this visit. (Yohan Perera) New York (dpa)07th APRIL, 2017- Twitter has filed a lawsuit against the US government after the Department of Homeland Security sought to unmask the user behind an account which has been critical of US President Donald Trump, US media reported Thursday. In court documents filed by Twitter in a Northern California District court, the Department of Homeland Security used a limited purpose investigatory tool in order to determine who is behind an anonymous account opened in January, The Washington Post and tech website The Verge reported. The online user criticized the Trump administrations immigration policies on the Twitter account. In its court filing, attorneys for Twitter charged unlawful abuse of the investigatory tool. Privacy Overview This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful. Now celebrating its 12th year, the regions most prestigious real estate awards series goes Asia-wide Five new judges are confirmed to join the Sri Lanka central judging panel Other markets joining the 2017 series include Mongolia, Laos, India and the Maldives Country winners will compete for regional accolades for the Best Developer, Best Mixed Use Development and Best Universal Design Development in Asia at the Singapore grand final The annual PropertyGuru Asia Property Awards series has been revamped in 2017 to include categories for exciting markets such as Sri Lanka, Mongolia, Laos, India and the Maldives. With an unparalleled reputation within the Asian real estate industry for being credible, fair and transparent, with an independent judging body, and a free-to-enter system, the prestigious Asia Property Awards grand final ceremony in Singapore will now be held over two nights at the Sands Expo and Convention Centre at Marina Bay Sands on 7-8 November 2017. The finale will also feature China, Hong Kong and Macau categories as part of the expanded programme. In the lead up to the November ceremony, nominations are now being accepted online via AsiaPropertyAwards.com/nominations/. Developers, industry professionals, consumers and the general public can nominate until 18 August, and official entries are accepted until 25 August. Five industry experts are confirmed to sit on the independent judging panel in Sri Lanka. They are: Stephanie Balendra, director, SB Realtors (Private) Limited; Dr Nirmal de Silva, director and CEO, Paramount Realty; Roshan Madawela, director and founding CEO, Research Intelligence Unit; and Steven Mayes, managing director, JLL Sri Lanka. Sri Lankan real estate, which joins the Awards series in its 12th year, recently entered JLLs Global Real Estate Transparency Indexfor the first time and has shown huge potential for development. The sector is supported by a stable economy with a projected 6 percent growth this year. Country winners in Sri Lanka and other markets will advance to the seventh annual PropertyGuruAsia Property Awards grand final in Singapore to compete for regional titles and to be crowned the best in Asia in 2017. Last years grand final champion was Malaysias Sime Darby Property, which collected the biggest award for Best Developer (South East Asia). The recognition of Sime Darby Property as the Best Developer in South East Asia by such esteemed industry experts is further testament of our commitment as a trusted developer. We were very honoured to receive the award and our heartfelt appreciation goes to the organiser, Dato IrJauhariHamidi, managing director at Sime Darby Property, said in a press statement in November 2016. Every stage of the awards programme from nominations to site visits and judges deliberations is strictly supervised by BDO, one of the worlds largest auditing and accountancy firms with operations in more than 130 countries and territories. BDO has been the official supervisor of the Awards for more than a decade. It has been an exciting journey for the Asia Property Awards after joining PropertyGuru in 2016, said Terry Blackburn, founder and managing director of the Awards. Our expanded awards scheme is a tribute to the strength of the Asian real estate industry. Fair judgement and transparency of process are at the heart of the Awards and were delighted to introduce the awards system to Asias rapidly growing property markets. He added: For more than a decade weve had incredible support from various developers, who have been instrumental in the growth of the property sector. As we explore new countries for the platform, we will ensure that the PropertyGuru Asia Property Awards truly is the regions benchmark for the finest real estate developers, developments and design in the region. Hari V. Krishnan, CEO of PropertyGuru Group, said: Because of the Asia Property Awards, consumers are empowered to make confident property decisions, whether theyre first-time buyers, expat renters or serial investors. Property knowledge is essential in our culture at PropertyGuru. We wish the country winners the best as they advance to compete at our grand final in Singapore. First launched in 2005 by Ensign Media in Thailand, the Awards system also holds annual black-tie gala dinner events in Cambodia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Myanmar, Malaysia and Indonesia, playing host to up to 600 C-level executives, senior industry figures and VIPs at each event. Following the format of the country awards, Sri Lanka categories are divided into three sections: Developer, Development, and Design. All eligible nominations are rigorously and fairly judged by the panels of experts, based on the most detailed and fairest criteria: Developers reputation, image and corporate social responsibility initiatives; overall track record; displays of innovation; and achievement in the past 12 months. Development and Design location; value for money; unique selling points; state of completion; sales success; design concept, innovation and use of space; quality of amenities; and construction and materials used. New regional categories to join the 2017 Awards include Best Mixed Use Development (Asia). While the award was presented in select country ceremonies last year (Singapore, Malaysia, China, Hong Kong/Macau), it will be the first time that a regional winner will be named. Another new category is Best Universal Design Development (Asia), which is open to residential and commercial developments across the region that will be shortlisted in any category at the country awards. The project must be built environment that can be accessed, understood and used to the greatest extent possible by all people regardless of their age, size, ability or disability. Overall, there will be seven Design, eight Development and two Developer categories at the grand finale ceremony, which will be preceded by an official shortlist announcement in early October. The two gala events in Singapore will each begin with a two-hour international networking cocktail reception, followed by the opening remarks and speeches, four-course dinner, and the awards ceremony proper. The first night on 7 November focuses on Singapore categories, and the second night on 8 November features the new markets and the regional competition. Alongside the gala dinner, PropertyGuru's C-suite conference the two-day Singapore Real Estate Summit 2017 will be held at the same venue in the daytime. For more information about the PropertyGuru Asia Property Awards, email info@asiapropertyawards.com or visit the official website : AsiaPropertyAwards.com. SriLankan Airlines added yet another international accolade to its impressive collection when it received the Best International Airline - Asia award at the second annual Tamil Nadu Tourism Awards, the largest tourism awards event in the state of Tamil Nadu. This is the second successive year that SriLankan won a major accolade at the Tamil Nadu Tourism Awards, having won last year in the category of Best International Airline. SriLankan has won a host of accolades in recent months including Worlds Leading Airline Operating to the Indian Ocean Region at the World Travel Awards; Best Full Service Airline in Central and South Asia for the second consecutive year at the Future Travel Experience Asia Awards; Most Innovative Marketing Airline in China by Life Weekly magazine; and Best Airline in South Asia at the Top Travel Awards, also in China. SriLankan now operates the largest network of any foreign airline operating in India with over 100 flights to 11 cities and is also the largest international airline serving the Maldives, with 25 flights per week. SriLankans global network covers 100 cities in 47 countries and as a member of the oneworld global airline alliance it also connects its passengers to oneworlds worldwide network of more than 1,000 destinations in 160 countries. The Tamil Nadu Tourism Awards is an annual event organised by tourist guidebook producer Madura Welcome and supported by the Ministry of Tourism of the Government of India. Among the other notable international winners were Thai Airways which won the award for Best International Airline Pacific and Oman Air which received the award for Best International Airline Middle East. The Tamil Nadu Tourism Awards are aimed at popularizing Tamil Nadu Tourism around the world; recognizing the major players in the Tamil Nadu tourism industry; encouraging higher standards and recognizing exceptional efforts in the industry; stimulating the spirit of competition within the travel and hospitality industries in order to reach higher levels of brilliance while motivating cooperation and teamwork amongst the industrys various segments; and encouraging the development of value packages to better provide end users with regional value added services. More than 100 awards were distributed at the ceremony on 24th March 2017. Categories include airlines, airports, hotels, resorts, niche resorts, serviced apartments, tour operators, travel agents, travel promoters, transport providers, online tourism marketers, travel insurance companies, travel writers, harbours, convention centres, restaurants, tourism training institutes, theme parks, etc. (Daily Mail, Australia), 6 April 2017 - Three people have been arrested over suspected links to the suicide bomber who attacked St Petersburgs subway. Police found live bombs in the apartment of the suspects, who are from Kyrgyzstan - the same Central Asia region as the 22-year-old bomber Akbarzhon Dzhalilov. Dzhalilov blew himself up on a busy subway line on Monday, killing himself and 13 others and wounding over 50 people. Investigators believed the men were Dzalilovs accomplices, a source told the Interfax news agency.The Federal Security Service experts defused a self-made explosive device at the apartment. The materials used in the explosive device found on Thursday matched those used by militants in Syria, Fontanka.ru reported. Residents were evacuated from the building before experts were sent in to secure the scene and defuse the bomb. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said between 5,000 and 7,000 people from Russia and other former Soviet republics were fighting alongside the Islamic State group and other militants in Syria. After deliberations involving President Maithripala Sirisena and Indian High Commissioner Taranjith Singh Sandhu, the government has decided to lease out the Trincomalee Oil Tank Farm for development jointly with India, a Minister said yesterday. In the lower farm, there are 14 tanks currently being used by Lanka Indian Oil Company (LIOC). However, there are 84 tanks in the Upper Tank Farm that are not being used at the moment. Petroleum and Petroleum Gas Minister Chandima Weerakkody told the Daily Mirror that ten of these tanks would be retained by the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC), and the rest would be developed jointly with LIOC under a joint venture. He said the government decided on this after a series of meetings involving President Sirisena, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe , the Indian High Commissioner and him. The initial move was to hand over all the tanks to the Indian authorities. However, the Minister said President insisted that at least ten tanks should be vested with the Sri Lankan side. (Kelum Bandara) DAILY MAIL, 07th APRIL, 2017- President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping opened their high-stakes summit at Trumps Florida beach resort Thursday, with the urgent threat of North Koreas nuclear ambitions and tensions over trade on the agenda. Xis visit was overshadowed, though, by a U.S. missile barrage on an air base in Syria in response to this weeks chemical weapons attack against civilians, which the U.S. blamed on President Bashar Assad. The U.S. announced the missile attack shortly after Xi and his wife left the Mar-a-Lago estate Thursday night. Trump appeared lighthearted earlier Thursday as he greeted Xi at Mar-A-Lago, gesturing and pointing to journalists as they tussled to get a shot of the two leaders together for the first time. Ahead of the dinner, Trump said he and Xi already had a long discussion and had developed a friendship, and then joked, I have gotten nothing, absolutely nothing. Expect a drastic deterioration in India-China bilateral ties in the coming weeks and months. Not that Asia's number three and number one economies (India and China, respectively) were enjoying the best of relations in the recent past, but the ongoing visit of Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama to Arunachal Pradesh has changed the scenario radically. Now in the aftermath of this event, the two giant Asian neighbours are bound to let go of their velvet gloves and get at each other like gladiators. China is most likely to be the initiator of aggression this time. Well, aggression doesn't mean in military terms, though the same cannot be ruled out 100 per cent given the high-decibel noises made by China over the issue of Dalai Lama's visit to Arunachal Pradesh, his eighth since he fled China and crossed over to India in 1959. China has explicitly warned India of "necessary measures" it will take to safeguard its core interests - a characterisation of its strategic red lines vis-a-vis India which keep expanding every other day. Through its favourite mouthpiece among the vast arsenal of state-owned media at its command, The Global Times, China has threatened India that New Delhi may have "underestimated" Beijing's resolve to protect its core interests. India will be ignoring this veiled threat from China at its own peril. India cannot afford to lower its guard at this point of time by all means - militarily, strategically, diplomatically or politically. The million dollar question is: what can China do? China can really push the envelope by several means, if it actually means to walk its talk. China can launch "surgical strikes" in Arunachal Pradesh while the Dalai Lama visit is still on. Photo: Reuters Scenario one China can launch another big ticket incursion into India, this time perhaps not in Ladakh but in Arunachal Pradesh where the Dalai Lama is currently visiting. But then it would be a soft response, given the current power matrix and the current state of international politics when China is not having the best of relations with the US. It would inevitably lead to a long-drawn battle of wits rather than anything else as China would be deemed as a cry baby internationally in that event without scoring any brownie points. Scenario two China launches "surgical strikes" in Arunachal Pradesh while the Dalai Lama visit is still on. But what will be the purpose of such an action as it would mean virtual declaration of war against India? That too over the visit of a Buddhist monk to a region which China claims to be its own! China would be isolated in the international community from day one, nay the first minute! Scenario three China launches a trade war and imposes severe curbs on Indian imports. But, apart from being a soft response, it would harm China more as the current balance of trade is blatantly in favour of China - and has always been. Scenario four China does none of the above but turns the heat on India by announcing the next big strategic plans of cooperation with Pakistan. But what more can be done by China vis-a-vis Pakistan - a relationship which is already deeper than the oceans, higher than the mountains, stronger than steel and sweeter than honey? After all China is already selling fighter aircraft and submarines to Pakistan and working on the $51 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). All the above-mentioned scenarios are a big no-no for a power like China which is already behaving like a superpower and pretending to put itself on a par with the world's only superpower, the US. China, of course, cannot be unmindful of the fact that the superpower status has its own trappings. A superpower cannot be seen to be working on knee-jerk reactions like taking extreme measures in response to a monk's visit somewhere. That would be tantamount to using a missile to get rid of a flea! Despite all the bravado, China doesn't appear to have many aces up its sleeve. There are many reasons for this. One, China knows in the hearts of its heart that it is not dealing with the India of 1962 when the two neighbours fought their only and unequal war. Two, China is shortly going to host a major international summit to propagate its ambitious One Belt, One Road project. Any misadventure with India at this stage will inevitably deflect attention from this biggest foreign policy outreach by China in decades. Three, India has been cleverly playing the Taiwan card with China of late and this covert strategy is far more ominous for China than the overt strategy of unleashing Dalai Lama as a counterbalancing strategic tool vis-a-vis China. Four, politically speaking, China would be ill-advised to take India head-on at this stage when Indian PM Narendra Modi is undeniably ensconced as India's strong man and is capable of implementing "the complete jaw for one tooth" kind of reprisal policy. In conclusion, China doesn't have many chips in its repertoire. If despite that China chooses to embark on some kind of misadventure, the call would be completely China's. After all, it's time for China to finally understand that Arunachal Pradesh and Kashmir are to India what Tibet and Taiwan are for China. After being deferred twice in the past few months, Bangladeshs Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will finally be in India this week. This visit, Hasinas first in seven years, has been long in the making and New Delhi is hoping to showcase it as an important part of its neighbourhood policy. Since coming to office in May 2014, immediate neighbourhood has been a top priority for the Modi government. Despite the failure of its initial outreach to Pakistan, its engagements with other neighbours like Sri Lanka and Bangladesh have been more productive. Enclaves After waiting for over four decades, India and Bangladesh exchanged 162 adversely-held enclaves in June 2016, implementing the landmark Land Boundary Agreement. While India handed over 51 enclaves, comprising 7,110 acres to Bangladesh, the neighbouring country gave India 111 enclaves comprising around 17,160 acres. It could be accomplished after Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself invested his political capital in sorting this contentious issue. Modis visit to Bangladesh in June 2015 resulted in India announcing the $2 billion Line of Credit for developing Bangladesh largest after the $1 billion announced earlier in 2010. India also agreed to increase power supply from India to Bangladesh from 500 MW to 1100 MW within two years. On her part, Hasina announced two special economic zones in Mongla and Bheramara for India, aimed at luring economic investment from India. Two bus services Kolkata-Dhaka-Agartala and Dhaka-Guwahati-Shillong were launched to enhance connectivity between the two neighbours. Delhi and Dhaka also pledged zero tolerance towards terrorism and extremism. West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee joined Modi during his 2015 visit to Bangladesh. Since then, terror cooperation has intensified between the two states with Bangladesh taking serious steps in dealing a decisive blow to separatist Indian insurgent organisations like ULFA and the National Democratic Front of Bodoland. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party had taken a softer line against such groups allowing them to operate from Bangladeshs territory with impunity despite repeated Indian concerns. The Awami League government has been more solicitous of Indian concerns and better institutional modalities have evolved over the years to share intelligence. There is now greater convergence between India and Bangladesh on dealing with fundamentalist forces like HuJi, JMB and Harkat-ul-Ansar. West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who had refused to accompany former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during his visit to Bangladesh in September 2011, joined Modi during his 2015 visit, raising expectations that Delhi and Dhaka might even be able to move forward on an accord on Teesta river water sharing an issue that has been held up by West Bengals concerns. But with political relations between Modi and Banerjee at an all-time low and water being a state subject, Delhi is not hopeful of concluding a deal on sharing Teesta water any time soon now. Negotiations on Teesta are on for the past almost two decades and the pact is widely viewed as a key deliverable by Dhaka. China A pact on Teesta river water would have been a key victory for Hasina but in its absence, New Delhi will try to put its best foot forward. There are some reports suggesting that India is likely to give Bangladesh a credit line of at least $3.5 billion for infrastructure projects during Hasinas visit. Even if India goes through with this, it would just be fraction compared to Chinese President Xi Jinpings $20 billion in low-cost loans for infrastructure projects pledged last year. Chinas grip on Bangladesh is tightening despite Hasinas friendly overtures to India. India is keen on signing a defence pact with Dhaka to wean it away from its overdependence on China which is Bangladeshs biggest defence supplier. India ideally would like a comprehensive defence pact encompassing training, sale of military hardware and military to military cooperation. But such a defence pact might be politically difficult for Hasina to sell domestically. Terrorism Hasina will also be visiting against the backdrop of a fresh surge in Islamic State linked attacks across the country. Bangladesh is witnessing a new wave of violent religious polarisation after the 2013 Shahbagh protest movement, when the Sheikh Hasina governments decision to execute war criminals from 1971 was met with virulent opposition from the Jamaate-Islami (JeI). Since then radical forces have tried to put up a united front. The attack on a popular cafe in Dhakas Gulshan area on July 1 last year led to the massacre of more than 20 hostages, most of them foreigners. Suicide bombing is on the rise in the country and the Hasina government is intent on taking strong action against provocateurs. Bangladesh has been voicing its concerns about the terrorism problem in South Asia almost as vociferously as India. It joined India in boycotting the SAARC meeting last year, which was set to be held in Pakistan. It has taken a lead in marginalising Pakistan by joining The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) and the Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal (BBIN) Initiative. In order to enhance regional connectivity, New Delhi has decided to dredge the Brahmaputra river from Sadia in Assam to Chittagong port in Bangladesh. This Brahmaputra National Waterway-II will have direct access to Chittagong port of Bangladesh, Haldia port of West Bengal and consequently will boost trade with Southeast Asian nations. It is important for India to get Bangladesh right. Delhi should be sensitive to its concerns and priorities at a time when Dhaka under Sheikh Hasina has been a votary of strong India-Bangladesh ties. Box, Inc. provides a cloud content management platform that enables organizations of various sizes to manage and share their content from anywhere on any device. The company's Software-as-a-Service platform enables users to collaborate on content internally and with external parties, automate content-driven business processes, develop custom applications, and implement data protection, security, and compliance features to comply with legal and regulatory requirements, internal policies, and industry standards and regulations. It offers web, mobile, and desktop applications for cloud content management on a platform for developing custom applications, as well as industry-specific capabilities. As of January 31, 2022, the company had approximately 100,000 paying organizations, and its solution was offered in 25 languages. It serves financial services, health care, government, and legal services industries in the United States and internationally. The company was formerly known as Box.net, Inc. and changed its name to Box, Inc. in November 2011. Box, Inc. was incorporated in 2005 and is headquartered in San Francisco Bay Area, California. Tri Pointe Homes, Inc. engages in the design, construction, and sale of single-family attached and detached homes in the United States. The company operates through a portfolio of six brands comprising Maracay in Arizona; Pardee Homes in California and Nevada; Quadrant Homes in Washington; Trendmaker Homes in Texas; TRI Pointe Homes in California, Colorado, and the Carolinas; and Winchester Homes in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. As of December 31, 2021, its operations consisted of 112 active selling communities and 41,675 owned or controlled lots. The company sells its homes through own sales representatives and independent real estate brokers. It also provides financial services, such as mortgage financing, title and escrow, and property and casualty insurance agency services. The company was formerly known as TRI Pointe Group, Inc. and changed its name to Tri Pointe Homes, Inc. in January 2021. Tri Pointe Homes, Inc. was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in Irvine, California. The following companies are subsidiares of Ecolab: AO Ecolab, Abednego Environmental Services, Abednego Environmental Services LLC, Abednego Mexico Holdings LLC, Abednego de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Alcide Corp., Anios America S.A., Anios Diffusion SAS, Anios Manufacturing SAS, Aqua Environmental Limited, Bioquell, Bioquell Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., Bioquell Global Logistics (Ireland) Ltd., Bioquell Holding SAS, Bioquell Inc., Bioquell Limited, Bioquell SAS, Bioquell Technology (Shenzhen) Ltd., Bioquell Technology Canada Ltd., Bioquell UK Limited, Bro-Tech Limited, CALGON LLC, CID LINES NV, CID Lines, CID Lines Beijing Animal Hygiene Co Ltd., CID Lines France Sarl, CID Lines Iberica SL, CID Lines LLC, CID Lines Mexico S.A. DE C.V., CID Lines R&D NV, CID Lines Sp. z o. o., CORPAK MedSystems, Cascade Water Services, Champion Technologies, Chamtech L.L.C., Chemlawn, Chemstar Corporation, Cirlam BVBA, Copal Holding NV, Copal Invest NV, Cymru Holdings Limited, DERYPOL SA, DMD, E&M Bio-Chemicals LLC, ECOLAB NL 10 B.V., ECOLAB PEST FRANCE SAS, EPN Water Col Ltd., Ecolab (Antigua) Ltd., Ecolab (Aruba) N.V., Ecolab (Barbados) Limited, Ecolab (China) Investment Co. Ltd, Ecolab (Fiji) Pty Limited, Ecolab (GZ) Chemicals Limited, Ecolab (Guam) LLC, Ecolab (Proprietary) Limited, Ecolab (Schweiz) GmbH, Ecolab (St. Lucia) Limited, Ecolab (Taicang) Technology Co. Ltd., Ecolab (Trinidad and Tobago) Unlimited, Ecolab (U.K.) Holdings Limited, Ecolab A.E.B.E., Ecolab AB, Ecolab AU2 Pty Ltd, Ecolab Acquisition LLC, Ecolab ApS, Ecolab Argentina S.R.L., Ecolab Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., Ecolab B.V., Ecolab Bahrain S.P.C., Ecolab CDN 2 Co., Ecolab CDN 4 ULC, Ecolab CH 1 GmbH, Ecolab CH 2 GmbH, Ecolab CH 3 GmbH in Liquidation, Ecolab CH 6 GmbH, Ecolab Chemicals Limited, Ecolab Co. Compagnie Ecolab, Ecolab Colombia S. A., Ecolab DE 1 GmbH, Ecolab Deutschland GmbH, Ecolab Digital Center Private Limited, Ecolab EOOD, Ecolab East Africa (Kenya) Limited, Ecolab East Africa (Tanzania) Limited, Ecolab East Africa (Uganda) Limited, Ecolab Ecuador Cia. Ltda., Ecolab Engineering GmbH, Ecolab Europe GmbH, Ecolab Export GmbH, Ecolab FR 1 SAS, Ecolab FR 4 SAS, Ecolab Finance Company Designated Activity Company, Ecolab Food Safety & Hygiene Solutions Private Limited, Ecolab G.K., Ecolab Global Business Services LLC, Ecolab GmbH, Ecolab Gulf FZE, Ecolab HK 1 Limited, Ecolab HK 2 Limited, Ecolab Hispano-Portuguesa S.L., Ecolab Holding Italy S.r.l., Ecolab Holdings (Europe) LLC, Ecolab Holdings Inc., Ecolab Holdings Mexico S. de R. L. de C. V., Ecolab Hygiene Kft., Ecolab Hygiene d.o.o., Ecolab International SDN BHD, Ecolab Israel Holdings LLC, Ecolab JVZ Limited, Ecolab Korea Ltd., Ecolab LLC, Ecolab LUX & Co Holdings S.C.A., Ecolab LUX 1 Sarl, Ecolab LUX 2 Sarl, Ecolab LUX 4 Sarl, Ecolab LUX 7 Sarl, Ecolab LUX Sarl, Ecolab Limited, Ecolab Ltd., Ecolab Lux 10 Sarl, Ecolab Lux 12 SCA, Ecolab Lux 13 Sarl, Ecolab Lux 14 Sarl, Ecolab Lux 15 Sarl, Ecolab Lux 16 Sarl, Ecolab Lux 17 Sarl, Ecolab Lux 9 Sarl, Ecolab Lux Partner LLC, Ecolab MT Holdings LLC, Ecolab MT Limited, Ecolab Malta 1 Limited, Ecolab Malta 2 Limited, Ecolab Malta GPS, Ecolab Manufacturing IE Limited, Ecolab Manufacturing Inc., Ecolab Manufacturing UK Limited, Ecolab Maroc Societe a Responsabilite Limitee, Ecolab NL 11 B.V., Ecolab NL 15 BV, Ecolab NL 16 B.V., Ecolab NL 23 B.V., Ecolab NL 3 BV, Ecolab Name Holding Limited, Ecolab New Zealand, Ecolab Peru Holdings S.R.L., Ecolab Pest Deutschland GmbH, Ecolab Philippines Inc., Ecolab Production Belgium B.V., Ecolab Production France SAS, Ecolab Production Italy Srl, Ecolab Production LLC, Ecolab Production Netherlands B.V., Ecolab Production Poland sp. z o.o., Ecolab Pte. Ltd., Ecolab Pty Ltd., Ecolab Quimica Ltda., Ecolab S. de R.L. de C.V., Ecolab S.A., Ecolab S.A. de C.V., Ecolab SAS, Ecolab SIA, Ecolab SNC, Ecolab SRL, Ecolab Sdn Bhd, Ecolab Services Argentina S.R.L., Ecolab Services Malaysia SDN. BHD., Ecolab Services Poland Sp. z o, Ecolab Sociedad Anonima, Ecolab Sp. z o, Ecolab Spain Services S.L.U., Ecolab Temizleme Sistemleri Limited Sirketi, Ecolab U.S. 2 Inc., Ecolab U.S. 6 LLC, Ecolab U.S. 7 LLC, Ecolab US 1 GP, Ecolab USA Inc., Ecolab Viet Nam Company Limited, Ecolab Water Holding LImited, Ecolab a.s., Ecolab d.o.o., Ecolab s.r.l., Ecolab s.r.o., Ecolab y Compania Colectiva de Responsabilidad Limitada, Ecolab-Importacao E. Exportacao Limitada, Ecolabone B.V., Ecolabtwo B.V., Endoclear Equipamentos Medicos Hospitalares Ltda., Enviroflo Engineering Limited, Food Protection Services, GCS Service, Gallay Medical & Scientific Pty Ltd, Gallay Medical & Scientific Pty Ltd., GallayTrac Pty. Ltd., Georgia-Pacific - Paper Chemicals Business, Gibson Chemical Industries, Green Harbour Mainland Holdings Ltd, Henkel-Ecolab, Hicopla SL, Holchem Laboratories, Huntington Laboratories, Hydenet SAS, INTERNATIONAL WATER CONSULTANT B.V., Immobiliare R.E.O.P.A. SRL, Instrunet Hospital SLU, Jianghai Environmental Protection Co., Jianghai Environmental Protection Co. Ltd., KATAYAMA NALCO INC., Kay BV, Kay Chemical Company, LHS (UK) Limited, Laboratoires Anios, Laboratoires Anios S.A.S., Laboratoires Anios-Distribution SAS, Les Produits Chimiques ERPAC Inc., Lobster Ink, Lobster Ink Africa (Pty.) Ltd., Lobster International S.A., MOBOTEC AB LLC, Master Chemicals OOO, Meratech Rus Group LLC, Microtek Dominicana S.A., Microtek Italy S.R.L., Microtek Medical B.V., Microtek Medical Holdings, Microtek Medical Holdings Inc., Microtek Medical Inc., Microtek Medical Malta Holding Limited, Microtek Medical Malta Limited, Midland Research Laboratories, NALCO (SHANGHAI) TRADING CO. LTD., NALCO AB, NALCO ACQUISITION ONE, NALCO ACQUISITION TWO LIMITED, NALCO AFRICA (PTY.) LTD., NALCO ASIA HOLDING COMPANY PTE. LTD., NALCO BELGIUM B.V., NALCO CHINA HOLDINGS LLC, NALCO COMPANY OOO, NALCO DANMARK APS, NALCO DE MEXICO S. de R. L. de C.V., NALCO DELAWARE COMPANY, NALCO DEUTSCHLAND GMBH, NALCO DUTCH HOLDINGS B.V., NALCO EGYPT LTD., NALCO EGYPT TRADING, NALCO ESPANOLA MANUFACTURING S.L.U., NALCO ESPANOLA S.L., NALCO EUROPE B.V., NALCO FINLAND MANUFACTURING OY, NALCO FINLAND OY, NALCO FRANCE SAS, NALCO FRANCE SNC, NALCO GLOBAL HOLDINGS B.V., NALCO GLOBAL HOLDINGS LLC, NALCO HOLDING B.V., NALCO HOLDING COMPANY, NALCO HOLDINGS G.m.b.H., NALCO HOLDINGS UK LIMITED, NALCO HONG KONG LIMITED, NALCO INDUSTRIAL OUTSOURCING COMPANY, NALCO INDUSTRIAL SERVICES (NANJING) CO. LTD., NALCO INDUSTRIAL SERVICES (SUZHOU) CO. LTD., NALCO INDUSTRIAL SERVICES (THAILAND) CO. LTD., NALCO INDUSTRIAL SERVICES CHILE LIMITADA, NALCO INTERNATIONAL HOLDINGS B.V., NALCO INTERNATIONAL HOLDINGS LLC, NALCO INVESTMENTS U.K. LIMITED, NALCO ISRAEL INDUSTRIAL SERVICES LTD, NALCO ITALIANA HOLDINGS S.R.L., NALCO ITALIANA MANUFACTURING S.R.L., NALCO ITALIANA SrL, NALCO KOREA LIMITED, NALCO LIMITED, NALCO MANUFACTURING BETEILIGUNGS GMBH, NALCO MANUFACTURING LTD., NALCO NETHERLANDS B.V., NALCO OSTERREICH Ges m.b.H., NALCO OVERSEAS HOLDING B.V., NALCO PAKISTAN (PRIVATE) LIMITED, NALCO PHILIPPINES INC., NALCO PORTUGUESA (QUIMICA INDUSTRIAL) UNIPESSOAL LDA, NALCO PWS INC., NALCO SAUDI CO. LTD., NALCO TAIWAN CO. LTD., NALCO TWO INC., NALCO U.S. HOLDINGS LLC, NALCO UNIVERSAL HOLDINGS BV, NALCO WORLDWIDE HOLDINGS LLC, NALTECH INC., NANOSPECIALTIES LLC, NLC PROCESS AND WATER SERVICES SARL, Nalco (BN) SDN BHD, Nalco (China) Environmental Solution Co. Ltd., Nalco Anadolu Kimya Sanayi ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Nalco Canada ULC, Nalco Company LLC (1), Nalco Contract Operations LLC, Nalco Deutschland Manufacturing GmbH, Nalco Japan G.K., Nalco Libya, Nalco Middle East FZE, Nalco Polska Sp. z o. o., Nalco Production LLC, Nalco Real Estate GmbH, Nalco Schweiz GmbH, Nalco US 1 LLC, Nalco Wastewater Contract Operations Inc., Nalco Water India Private Limited, Nalco Water Pretreatment Solutions LLC, Nalco Worldwide Holdings S.a.r.l./B.V., National Wiper Alliance Inc., Nigiko, Nuova Farmec S.r.l., Oksa Kimya Sanayi A.S., Oy Ecolab AB, PT Ecolab International Indonesia, PT Ecolab Technologies and Services, Purate business - AkzoNobel, Purolite, Purolite (China) Co. Ltd., Purolite (Int.) Ltd, Purolite (Pty) Ltd, Purolite AG, Purolite GmbH, Purolite Ileri Kimyasal Ticaret Ltd, Purolite KK, Purolite LLC, Purolite Ltd, Purolite NZ Limited, Purolite Private Limited, Purolite Pte. Ltd., Purolite Pty Ltd, Purolite S. de R.L. de C.V., Purolite SAS, Purolite SRL, Purolite do Brasil Ltda, Purolite s.r.o., Purolite sp. z o.o., Purolite C Corporation, QazSorbent LLP, Quantum Technical Services LLC, Quimicas Ecolab S.A. de C.V., Quimiproductos S.A. de C.V, RP Adam Ltd, Research Fumigation Co., Royal Pest Solutions, Shield Holdings Limited, Shield Medicare Limited, Soluscope International Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Soluscope SAS, Swisher Hygiene, TechTex Holdings Limited, Technical Textile Services Limited, Terminix, Ultrafab, VanBaele Hygiene AG, Wabasha Leasing LLC, Zhe Jiang Purosoft Home Appliances Sale Co Ltd, and vanBaerle Hygiene AG. Read More Twitter on Thursday filed a lawsuit to block that order it received from Homeland Security seeking the microblogging site to reveal its user of an account that has been very critical of the immigration policies of President Donald Trumps administration. Tweets from account @ALT_uscis seem to indicate it is operated by a person who is a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services employee. The division is part of the Department of Homeland Security. Get Warning: Undefined variable $CompanyName in /home/acctdp/public_html/wp-content/themes/responsalambre/single.php on line 65 alerts: Advocates of free speech said the order from the DHS appeared to be a first by the government to attempt to use the power it has to expose a critic who remains anonymous. This is a development, that if successful, could have chilling and grave effects on free speech of the account, along with other accounts critical of government of the U.S., said Twitter. According to court filings by Twitter, DHS had unlawfully abused a limited purpose tool for investigative purposes to find out the person behind the account in question. The case means a possible showdown will take place over free speech between Washington and Silicon Valley. Washington has battled over whether U.S. tech companies can resist orders by the government seeking identities or personal information from suspected terrorists and criminals. For instance, Apple in 2016 would not unlock the phone of one of the shooters in the massacre in San Bernardino, California and refused to build-in back doors that would provide law enforcement a path to breaking into the handsets. This move sparked a heated battle between the FBI and Apple, with the FBI eventually paying a private tech expert to unlock the iPhone. However, the case involving Homeland Security hit advocates of free speech as even more remarkable since the request for information was for the identity of a critic of the government and not for public safety. An attorney specializing in freedom of speech said Twitters argument is strong. It does appear as if the government was going after one of its critics. There is not anything in the Customs and Border Protection summons sent Twitter that authorizes such a request under the power it has, said the attorney. The account in question, which was made this past January, has let loose with attacks against the new White House administration. In one tweet on January 26, the account said that over 40% of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. were overstays for Visas from other developed nations not Mexico. Exxon Mobil Corporation is the largest direct descendent of John D. Rockefellers Standard Oil and one of the worlds largest companies. Its earliest roots lie with Vacuum Oil which got its start in the 1860s. Vacuum Oils primary product was kerosene, an important advancement for heating and lighting in rural America. Vacuum Oil was later merged with Standard Oil of New Jersey which was the parent operation of the Standard Oil empire prior to its breakup. Standard Oil of New Jersey would merge with other independent operators over the next few years until settling on the brand Exxon for most of its operations. Meanwhile, Standard Oil of New York was operating under much the same impetus, merging and growing, until it became known as Mobil. Then, in 1999, the two giants became one with a merger of equals that on paper had Exxon buying Mobil. Now, the combined company operates under the Exxon, Mobil, and Esso brands as an international vertically integrated energy and petrochemical business. Today, the company explores and produces crude oil and natural gas and their derivative products globally. As of 2022, it was ranked 6th on Forbes Fortune 500 list and 12th on the Global 500 list but it has held positions from #1 to #10 over the years. In terms of its operations, it is the worlds second-largest oil refiner and the largest refiner outside of China. In terms of reserves, ExxonMobil claimed about 18.5 million barrels of oil and oil equivalents at the end of 2021 and was ranked 15th globally. ExxonMobil operates through three segments that are the Upstream, Downstream, and Chemical segments. The Upstream segment explores for and produces oil and oil equivalents and represents roughly 70% of the income. The Downstream segment gathers, receives, stores, transports and refines oil and equivalents and their derivatives. The Downstream segment also markets and delivers fuel products to consumers and businesses. The Chemicals segment produces the full range of petrochemicals including plastics, resins and synthetic rubber. ExxonMobil is committed to advancing sustainable and carbon-free energy solutions. The company is targeting 2050 for net-zero emissions and its 2030 interim targets are in alignment with the Paris Accord, the EU's Global Methane Pledge, and US Methane Emissions Reduction Action Plan. The companys plans include investing $15 billion into reducing greenhouse emissions by 2028. Harley-Davidson, Inc. manufactures and sells motorcycles. The company operates in two segments, Motorcycles and Related Products and Financial Services. The Motorcycles and Related Products segment designs, manufactures, and sells Harley-Davidson motorcycles, including cruiser, touring, standard, sportbike, and dual models, as well as motorcycle parts, accessories, apparel, and related services. This segment sells its products to retail customers through a network of independent dealers, as well as e-commerce channels in the United States, Canada, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia-Pacific. The Financial Services segment provides wholesale financing services, such as floorplan and open account financing of motorcycles, and parts and accessories; and retail financing services, including installment lending for the purchase of new and used Harley-Davidson motorcycles, as well as point-of-sale protection products comprising motorcycle insurance, extended service contracts, and motorcycle maintenance protection. This segment also licenses third-party financial institutions that issue credit cards bearing the Harley-Davidson brand. Harley-Davidson, Inc. was founded in 1903 and is based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. RICHMOND Lawyers for condemned murder-for-hire killer Ivan Teleguz are asking Gov. Terry McAuliffe to stop his execution, set for April 25, in a clemency petition delivered Friday. The petition contends the jurors who convicted and sentenced Teleguz to death relied on testimony since proved false and recanted. "Significant information has emerged since Teleguzs trial suggesting he is innocent," his lawyers said in a statement Friday. "In this case - where new evidence jurors never had a chance to consider shows that Mr. Teleguzs conviction and death sentence are based on false testimony - Governor McAuliffe should protect the integrity of the ultimate sanction and grant clemency to ensure that Virginia does not execute an innocent man," said Elizabeth Peiffer, Teleguz lawyer said. Asked for comment Friday, Marsha L. Garst the commonwealth's attorney for Rockingham County, wrote in an email that, "All the issues have been very thoroughly tried and decided in local, state and federal courts. I feel at this stage that since the case is being handled by the Attorney General's Office that they should address any questions." A spokesman for the Attorney General's Office referred inquiries to the governor's office which did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday. Governors generally have not commented on pending clemency requests. Teleguz, 38, was sentenced to death for the 2001 capital murder of Stephanie Yvonne Sipe, the mother of their 23-month-old son. Sipe was stabbed to death in her Harrisonburg apartment. Trial evidence showed that Teleguz was angry that he had been ordered to pay child support. He hired two men to kill Sipe for $2,000 and drove them from Pennsylvania, where Teleguz had moved. Sipe suffered defensive wounds and three other knife wounds one wound went from the left side of her neck to the right side. The body was discovered by a neighbor who also found her son, unharmed, in a bathtub full of water. The unanimous three-judge panel of the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a stay request and a related matter last month. However, Teleguz's lawyers argue that the new evidence pointing to his innocence has never been fully examined by the courts. They said two prosecution witnesses admitted, "that they testified falsely in exchange for leniency in their own cases, and have no reason to think Teleguz was involved in the murder-for-hire." One of the witnesses has been deported and the other told he would lose his release date set for next year if they went back on his testimony. Teleguz also says that jurors relied on false testimony that he was involved in an additional murder in Pennsylvania. Investigation since trial by both law enforcement and the defense has confirmed that the murder never happened. His lawyers contend the only evidence remaining against Teleguz is the testimony of Michael Hetrick, the actual killer who was spared the death penalty. His lawyers said the clemency petition details why his testimony is not credible or reliable. Among other things, his lawyers said the petition is supported by an expert on clemency and former Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr., who oversaw two executions as governor there from 2003 to 2007. A Change.org petition in support of clemency has been signed by more than 113,000 people and Teleguz has also submitted written requests for clemency from thousands of supporters. A Louisa County man is facing up to 10 years in prison after being convicted of two felony assault charges. Russell W. Jeffries, 43, of Louisa, was found guilty in Louisa Circuit Court on Thursday of two counts of felonious assault on a family member, related to two incidents involving his girlfriend. Jeffries girlfriend is a bus driver for Louisa County Public Schools, according to a news release from the office of Louisa Commonwealths Attorney Rusty McGuire. Last September, Jeffries jumped on the hood of her school bus, broke the windshield and assaulted her, according to the release, before forcibly removing her from the vehicle. The two of them disappeared overnight. When police assisted by the FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service caught up with them in Spotsylvania, the girlfriend claimed she had gone along with Jeffries willingly. Police took Jeffries into custody for the assault. After further investigation, police determined that Jeffries had assaulted the woman weeks before, dousing her with diesel fuel and threatening to throw her into a pile of burning leaves due to her tardy retrieval of his [dipping tobacco], according to the release. Jeffries sentencing hearing is scheduled for June 19. Atlee Church (Scottsville) holds the Easter Eggstravanganza Carnival with egg hunt, face painting, games and more from noon to 2 p.m. April 15 at the Scottsville Community Center, 250 Page St. (804) 730-3676. Bethel United Methodist Church (Rochelle) holds an Easter sunrise service at 7:30 a.m. April 16. Route 231. (434) 973-6420. Faith, Hope and Love International Healing and Deliverance Center holds an Easter sunrise service at 6 a.m. April 16. 1229 Teel Lane. (434) 296-1995. Mechanicsville Baptist Church (Gordonsville) holds How Can I Be Blessed?, a Precepts Bible Study of the Sermon on the Mount, 12:30 p.m. and again at 6:30 p.m. each Tuesday. 10200 Louisa Road. (540) 832-3269. Operation Esther Circle meets to fast and pray for stranded international students and missions at 5:30 p.m. Thursdays at the University of Virginia. For details, call (434) 227-0811. Scottsville Presbyterian Church holds an Easter service at 11 a.m. April 16. 148 Bird St. (434) 409-3324. Sharon Baptist Church (Scottsville) hosts a performance by the Willow Branch Bluegrass Band at 7 p.m. Saturday. A soup supper will precede the performance at 6 p.m. 1627 Sharon Church Road. (434) 983-3320. Shepherd of the Hills Catholic Church (Ruckersville) celebrates Easter with a Holy Thursday service at 5 p.m. Thursday, a Good Friday service at 3 p.m. Friday, a Saturday Easter vigil at 7:30 p.m. April 15, an Easter sunrise Mass at 6:30 a.m. April 16 and Easter Sunday Mass at 8:30 a.m. April 16. 6562 Amicus Road. (434) 806-9504. Shiloh Baptist Church (Palmyra) hosts Seven Last Words at 7:30 p.m. Friday. 1620 Shiloh Church Road. (434) 589-2300. St. Johns Chapel (Green Springs) holds an Easter sunrise service at 6 a.m. April 16. Intersection of East Jack Jouett and Green Springs roads. (540) 832-5978. St. Thomas Episcopal Church (Orange) hosts a service of Choral Evensong at 4:30 p.m. Sunday. 119 Caroline St. (540) 672-3761. Union Ridge Baptist Church celebrates its 149th anniversary with a fellowship luncheon at 1 p.m., devotions at 2:30 p.m. and a special service with guest speaker Pastor Reginald Chrisp of Shepherds Ministry International and the new covenant Pentecostal Church Choir at 3 p.m. Sunday. 2980 Hydraulic Road. (434) 973-3960. University Baptist Church celebrates Easter with a Maundy Thursday service at 7 p.m. Thursday, a Good Friday service at noon Friday, followed by a soup and salad lunch, and Easter Sunday service at 11 a.m. April 16. 1223 W. Main St. (434) 293-5106. Wayland Blue Ridge Baptist Association (Rixeyville) hosts a Good Friday service, Seven Last Sayings, at 7 p.m. Friday, an Easter cantata by the Young Adult Ministry and featuring Octavia Missy Yates and The Spotsylvanians at 5 p.m. April 15 and an Easter play at 3 p.m. April 16. 15044 Ryland Chapel Road. waylandblueridge.org. (540) 661-2013. When an oil-transporting freight train derailed and exploded in Lynchburg in 2014, inspectors blamed cracks in the track. When another train derailed a year later in Culbertson, Montana, spilling 27,000 gallons of crude, inspectors similarly blamed defective or missing track fasteners. When another oil train derailed and caught fire last year in Mosier, Oregon, inspectors also blamed broken bolts. Are you beginning to see a pattern here? The Associated Press found the pattern when it obtained inspection data revealing 24,000 defects discovered in tracks since 2013, the year an oil train derailment and fire killed 47 people in Lac-Megantic, Quebec. The inspections also found a pattern in rail companies failure to effectively maintain tracks. This is of concern to Virginians not just because of the past the memory of the Lynchburg derailment but also because of what could happen in the future. Oil trains continue to roll through Virginia on their way to a terminal in Yorktown. Inspection already had found some defects on the Lynchburg track two weeks before the derailment, but railroad inspectors did not flag the problems as serious until deterioration was spotted the day before the accident. That section of track then was scheduled for maintenance to occur two days after the follow-up inspection but the doomed oil train rolled through one day after the inspection. Authorities note that the 24,000 defects nationwide are not all serious, and theyre spread out over time and over 140,000 miles of track. But "one defect or one violation of the right kind make that the wrong kind can cause a derailment," said Steven Ditmeyer, a former director of the railroad administration's Office of Research and Development who reviewed the inspection data for the AP. Since 2006, at least 27 major oil train accidents involving fire, derailment or significant fuel spill have been recorded across the U.S. and Canada. A heightened inspection program was launched by the government in 2015 as a result, producing the numbers that were analyzed by the news service. In addition to heightened inspections, government also has begun requiring freight carriers to transition to using sturdier tankers better able to resist puncture in case of a derailment. Finally, some mitigation of the problem has occurred as a result of sheer economics. Oil prices have declined, and less oil now is being produced in the U.S. and Canada, decreasing the need for oil trains to haul product across the country. But that could change. And the U.S. and Canada need to ensure that the heightened inspections program is permanently embedded in their railroad safety requirements. At present, however, its not sure whether the heightened inspections program will itself be safe under the Trump budget. Professor Allison Stanger of Middlebury College has written another excellent column this one, in The New York Times in which she worries aloud about the increasing unwillingness of self-identified progressives to adhere to values like protecting free inquiry at universities that she treasures as linchpins of liberal thought. I can't help but wonder whether professor Stanger may soon find herself in the company of individuals like former NPR reporter Juan Williams or red diaper baby David Horowitz: people who feel more welcome among conservatives than progressives. (Ronald Reagan was also a former Democrat. He famously said, "I didn't leave the Democratic Party; the party left me.") GOP shortcomings aside, what does the Democratic Party have to recommend it these days? A string of items ripped from recent headlines reinforces the question: Judge Neil Gorsuch is highly qualified, widely regarded as temperate in disposition and respected. Every Democrat in the Senate in 2006 including Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama voted in favor of his confirmation to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. Their objections now are purely political and fraudulent. It is Senate Democrats' fault that we're looking at a filibuster/"nuclear option" showdown. As Guy Benson concisely explained on Townhall this week, the Democrats' "toxic partisanship" started this with the inflammatory and false accusations made by former senator Ted Kennedy against Robert Bork in 1987. It continued with mistreatment of Bush nominee Miguel Estrada in 2001, and the "Biden/Schumer" rule of not confirming the nominations of a sitting president in an election year. Chickens, meet roost. Democrats scream about Donald Trump's vulgarity, but they have no respect for real gentlemen, as shown by their treatment of Mitt Romney in 2012 and, today, Vice President Mike Pence, whom they try to smear as a freak (or worse! sexist!) because he doesn't have dinner or drinks alone with women other than his wife. Every kind of sexual depravity is A-OK for the left, but fidelity and decency are unpardonable sins. One of progressives' cutesy slogans is "Bash the fash" i.e., it's OK to beat up so-called fascists. So they scream down speech, destroy property and physically assault people. And then wail that they need "safe spaces." The left seems incapable of defending any issue without resort to accusations of "hate," "bigotry," baseless insults or vulgarity. Trump is giving away his presidential salary. A few days ago, it was announced that his first quarter check was being given to the National Park Service. Opponents called it a "publicity stunt." Did Obama ever give away his presidential paycheck? Did the Clintons ever turn down a paycheck? Where do the Democrats stand on honesty or law enforcement? Former U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice apparently lied about Benghazi and Bowe Bergdahl. Now she's on the hot seat regarding the Obama administration's surveillance of Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton lied about Benghazi, and about using a personal email server to transmit confidential information. Obama lied repeatedly about his signature health care law. Both of his attorneys general were caught up in scandals and professional improprieties. There never seem to be any consequences. The so-called "party of science" denies biological and genetic facts whenever they're inconvenient. Among them: An unborn child is a biologically, genetically distinct human being. (An ovum is not. Sorry, sperm are not. Your arm or leg is not.) The most sacrosanct, untouchable institution for the left is Planned Parenthood, an organization whose primary business model is killing unborn babies. Better not mention that Planned Parenthood does not perform mammograms. Nor do the vast majority of its clinics provide any prenatal care. At all. Speaking of Planned Parenthood, California encourages the filming of undercover videos to expose cruelty to animals, but will prosecute anyone who secretly films Planned Parenthood admitting that it harvests and sells the body parts of aborted babies. Nice. Democrats are still hiding behind that tired nostrum that they are "for the little guy." But nine of the top 15 wealthiest people in Congress are Democrats. The Clintons are multimillionaires, as are the Obamas. Even populist/socialist Bernie Sanders owns three homes, including posh digs on Lake Champlain in Vermont. Hollywood Democrats and Silicon Valley techie lefties are among the country's super-rich. Candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton got big chunks of their campaign cash from the wealthiest ZIP codes in the United States, which surprise! overwhelmingly lean "D." The "little guys" are factory workers, cops, farmers and the military. These folks apparently make certain lefties want to vomit. Eventually, everything that starts as "choice" becomes a matter for government coercion for the left. A columnist in Australia recently argue that being a stay-at-home mom should be illegal; once kids reach school age, all parents should be forced to work outside the home. "[F]eminism," she writes, "is not about choice, it's about equality." Yeah, thanks for clearing that up. Is this your father's Democratic Party? Is it any wonder the Democrats are losing elections? 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. For a longer version of this column, visit dailyprogress.com\opinion. Register for more free articles. Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading. Catch the latest in Opinion Get opinion pieces, letters and editorials sent directly to your inbox weekly! Sign up! Already a Subscriber? Already a Subscriber? Sign in Terms of Service Privacy Policy Lawyers for condemned murder-for-hire killer Ivan Teleguz are asking Gov. Terry McAuliffe to stop his execution, set for April 25, in a clemency petition delivered Friday. The petition contends the jurors who convicted and sentenced Teleguz to death relied on testimony since proved false and recanted. Significant information has emerged since Teleguzs trial suggesting he is innocent, his lawyers said in a statement Friday. In this casewhere new evidence jurors never had a chance to consider shows that Mr. Teleguzs conviction and death sentence are based on false testimonyGovernor McAuliffe should protect the integrity of the ultimate sanction and grant clemency to ensure that Virginia does not execute an innocent man, said Elizabeth Peiffer, Teleguz lawyer said. Asked for comment Friday, Marsha L. Garst the commonwealths attorney for Rockingham County, wrote in an email that, All the issues have been very thoroughly tried and decided in local, state and federal courts. I feel at this stage that since the case is being handled by the Attorney Generals Office that they should address any questions. A spokesman for the Attorney Generals Office referred inquiries to the governors office which did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday. Governors generally have not commented on pending clemency requests. Teleguz, 38, was sentenced to death for the 2001 capital murder of Stephanie Yvonne Sipe, the mother of their 23-month-old son. Sipe was stabbed to death in her Harrisonburg apartment. Trial evidence showed that Teleguz was angry that he had been ordered to pay child support. He hired two men to kill Sipe for $2,000 and drove them from Pennsylvania, where Teleguz had moved. Sipe suffered defensive wounds and three other knife woundsone wound went from the left side of her neck to the right side. The body was discovered by a neighbor who also found her son, unharmed, in a bathtub full of water. The unanimous three-judge panel of the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a stay request and a related matter last month. However, Teleguzs lawyers argue that the new evidence pointing to his innocence has never been fully examined by the courts. They said two prosecution witnesses admitted, that they testified falsely in exchange for leniency in their own cases, and have no reason to think Teleguz was involved in the murder-for-hire. One of the witnesses has been deported and the other told he would lose his release date set for next year if they went back on his testimony. Teleguz also says that jurors relied on false testimony that he was involved in an additional murder in Pennsylvania. Investigation since trial by both law enforcement and the defense has confirmed that the murder never happened. His lawyers contend the only evidence remaining against Teleguz is the testimony of Michael Hetrick, the actual killer who was spared the death penalty. His lawyers said the clemency petition details why his testimony is not credible or reliable. Among other things, his lawyers said the petition is supported by an expert on clemency and former Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr., who oversaw two executions as governor there from 2003 to 2007. A Change.org petition in support of clemency has been signed by more than 113,000 people and Teleguz has also submitted written requests for clemency from thousands of supporters. The annual United Nations Climate Change Conference begins this weekend in Egypt. These types of conferences seem very far away with little impact on Virginia, but in the long game, they are important. We meet in the plush offices of the Sex Pistols media conglomerate empire to talk to senior executive John Lydon about the forthcoming monetary concert Audit Documentation Period. Mr Lydon speaks with authority on the subject of his vision for the punk genre and his group. The period up to the financial half yearly accountancy point has yielded great dividends and mature annuity within the aforementioned procedural revenue collection exercise. We then ask Mr Lydon for his thoughts on how the Sex Pistols within the punk movement has progressed since the 70s. I had a board meeting last night on this exact same issue. The Pistols are committed to high standards of corporate governance. The board considers that the punk movement and specifically the Sex Pistols has complied throughout the years with the code provisions set out in section 1 of the AGM EMI manual and the Revised Code of Corporate Governance which was issued in July 1977 to July 2007 (the code), except as regards the length of Directors service contracts, which is discussed in the Renumeration report on pages 47 and 48, and the combination of the roles of Chairman and Chief Executive. Cross Collateralisation It seems John Lydon who once shouted Anarchy in the UK and rejected all corporate mores has firmly embraced the ways of the corporation in middle age. The Sex Pistols, who once were purveyors of large globules of spittle and hatred to all that was associated with mass control systems and consumerist banality, are now just like any other corporate entity. Sell Out? We ask Lydon if he thinks he sold out. As Chairman of the Sex Pistols franchise, my corporate team of Glen Matlock, Paul Cook and Steve Jones are all beneficiaries to the holy compilation report. We do not have any souls anymore and are now part of the bottom-sniffing financial jargon spouting suit-brigade which we fought so hard against in the early days. ROCE n Roll The Sex Pistols are planning to open a Sex Pistols theme park in the Hollywood Hills in December and are currently conducting a revenue collection exercise (touring). The Sex Pistols will also be appearing on Ant and Decs Celebrity Phone Rip-Off this Saturday on ITV1. To vote for who wins the cheque for 2 million Ant or Dec CALL 08981 2345 3873 Calls cost 485/minute. No need to consult the owner of the phone line before calling in. LONDON - England - The Daily Squib Media Empire has issued a blanket guarantee of all bank deposits after panic withdrawals by customers in the UK, creating an unstoppable stampede across Europe for an EU-wide bail of the financial system. After Irish and Greek banks were the only ones who could guarantee deposits in the whole of Europe, the Daily Squib is set to be the first newspaper which has set up its own financial monetary haven. As rumours flew in another day of fast-moving drama in Europe, the credit system continued to flash warning signs of extreme stress. Three-month Euribor the benchmark rate used for floating mortgages and financial contracts rose to a post-EMU record of 5.33pc. Governments across Eastern Europe were forced to issue statements on Thursday assuring depositors that their banks were safe. Traders said Ukraine is on the brink of a currency crisis. By depositing your hard earned money in the Daily Squib bank accounts you are guaranteed a bona-fide safe haven for your money. Chief Finance Editor for the Squib, N. Ron Hubbub speaking from his brand spanking new Lamborghini Murcielago made a statement to investors yesterday: Your money is safe with us folks. Just deposit everything you have in our bank account and everything will be alright. There has already been a hug influx of money into the offshore Daily Squib accounts in the Cayman Islands. Please deposit all your money to account number: 696966669 Sort Code: 69-69-69 LONDON - England - Taxpayers in Britain are going to foot one of the heftiest whore and champagne bills in history. The Labour government has ensured that the bloated greed infused banking animals who chop their cocaine on boardroom tables and guzzle champagne at 25,000 a glass will have an extra pay day courtesy of even more taxpayers cash. Last night I snorted a kilo of charlie off a whores naked arse, she charged 10,000 an hour for the privilege. That was all paid for by the taxpayer and it actually made me enjoy it more, a trader for HBOS told BBC News at Six reporter Rajesh Brangawallah. Top banks who have caused the financial meltdown in the first place with their greed and recklessness are now being patted on the back for their gluttony. The Bank of England is now announcing that all banking executives who are above all laws of economics or all law for that matter, can simply put in their expense account claims straight to the Treasury itself. Labour ministers have told top executives that taxpayers money which used to have a limited supply to bankers would now be available more freely. Louis Roederer, Cristal Brut 1990 Even though the banking institutions and greed driven executives are responsible for this unholy mess were in, we as Labour ministers are also to blame because of our dithering, weak lilly livered time wasting, indecisive inaction and of course our own greed and power hungry cronyism and in-fighting. To that end, it is true to say that we are all fucked, a Labour minister working for the Treasury disclosed at Parliamentary question time to great applause. The financial blackhole which has been plugged by the British taxpayers so that Fatcat executives can carry on with their debauchery is another indication of how downtrodden the British public is. Ive ordered up five top notch whores for tonight, we will dine at Londons finest restaurants with a bill estimated at around 56,000. Then we will ensconce to a Park Lane hotel where I will snort lines off their naked bodies and be fellated by each of them in turn and sometimes three or four of them at the same time. My climax, will of course be tremendous purely at the thought of British taxpayers footing the bill, phoaargh! Tarquin-Dickinson-Johnsons, a spread trader at Barclays told Reuters. The Labour government has ensured that the bloated greed infused banking animals who chop their cocaine on boardroom tables and guzzle champagne at 25,000 a glass will have an extra pay day courtesy of more taxpayers cash coming their way even though the rest of the country is still trying to recover from the disaster the bankers created in the first place. Last night I snorted a kilo of charlie off a wh*res naked haunches, she charged 10,000 an hour for the privilege. That was all paid for by the taxpayer and it actually made me enjoy it more, a trader for RBS told BBC News Rajesh Marchandrani. Robber Barons Top banks who have caused the financial meltdown in the first place with their greed and recklessness are now being patted on the back for their gluttony and given more bonuses at the expense of taxpayers. The taxpayers deserve everything they get. They deserve nothing more than to be punished for their crimes because this is the system we created for them and there is nothing the plebs can do about it apart from moan while we steal everything from under them again and again. We feel nothing but indignation and sheer disgust at their pathetic state. F*ck them and thank you Labour for making it possible for us to f*ck the people over. Socialism is so great, Pierce Lambert-Butler, Chief analyst at Goldman Sachs told the BBC before speeding off in his Bugatti. The financial black hole which has been plugged by the British taxpayers so that banking executives can carry on with their debauchery is another indication of how downtrodden the British public is. It is the role of the British taxpayer to be buggered royally by us every few years. Whats funny is that theyre actually surprised when it happens to them over and over again. Anyway, Ive ordered up five top notch wh*res for tonight, we shall dine at Londons finest restaurants with a bill estimated at around 56,000. Then we shall retire to a Park Lane suite where I will snort lines off their naked bodies and be fellated by each of them in turn and sometimes three or four of them at the same time. My climax, will of course be tremendous as I unload my unholy cargo onto the outstretched tongues of these expensive commodities laid naked before me, and I shall revel purely in the thought that British taxpayers are footing the bill for all of this. Phoaargh! Tarquin-Dickinson-Smythe, a spread trader at RBS told Reuters. MADRID - Spain - One of Spain's largest banking institutions, Satsuma Banking Corp. was at the centre of a massive eurozone sell-off spree after another one of its bankers was spooked by a kitten that had come into the building. He was spooked by a little kitten that had sneaked into the building and he sold off 23 million client shares after pressing the sell button. This in turn made all the other scared bankers sell everything as well. By that time London was selling too, and then Japan got in the act. The jitters are really bad I tell you, Dave Harwick, senior analyst at Yellow Stain Securities told the Financial Times. Last week another banker was suddenly frightened when a cleaner accidentally touched his keyboard with a feather duster. The banker in his fit of fright jumped up screaming like a little girl and sold all his shares to make a huge loss for the bank. All over the banking sector many frightened bankers are now so scared that they need adult nappies when at work. Weve got a real problem here. Ive seen French soldiers in WW2 with more courage than these bankers. Weve had to introduce adult nappies into our trading rooms otherwise there would be an unholy stink mess all over the floors. God help us what a bunch of f*cking p*ssies, Jane Cojones, a secretary at a London investment bank revealed on Friday. ATHENS - Greece - As worldwide markets tumble at the prospect of another Greek default, pictures coming from the Ministry of Finance reveal all that needs to be seen with regards to the denouement of this terrible tragedy. What would Plato, Socrates and Aristotle say if they could view their fellow Greeks now? Its OK were taking your pensions, your stocks, economies and everything else down with us. We spent the money, now we wont pay it back, and were going to take the whole West down the plug hole. Such is our lot in life, we are the victims here, we binged on Porsche Cayennes, luxury yachts; built hi-tech rail systems and squandered every penny from the Germans. We lied to get into the Euro because we knew it would be a gravy train, we got Goldman to cook the books, they did a great job and fooled everyone including the Germans. Now the Krauts want their money back. Well, screw them, we want to retire at 30, have three hour lunches and work two day weeks. Well also make the Brits pay for our gluttony too. We dont want to pay tax and we dont want to pay back the money we owe, but we still want to stay in the euro currency, because were the victims here of our own corruption, the fifth Greek finance minister in a week, Christos Papalopolopo, told Greek news crews yesterday. Another Greek politician said: People should stop knocking us Greeks; all we want to do is stay in the euro without following any of the rules, not pay our debts and continue borrowing money from the same people we just told to f*ck off.whats the problem? ZDF The Greek Lie David Cameron this week revealed the great news that the UKs economy is doing so well that the government needs to go into peoples bank accounts and raid them. Yes, the economy is shooting upwards every day. Our deficit is still 1.3 Trillion and rising daily with vast benefits, NHS bills. We hope you dont mind that we have to go into your bank accounts and take out whatever money is left there after youve already paid the massive tax bills in this country, Cameron was quoted as saying in the New Telegraph newspaper. Taxation in Britain is amongst the highest in the world, that is unless you are a multi-billionaire or corporation who can do special deals with HMRC. With fuel tax at 85% of the price of petrol, fuel duty in the UK is an enormous revenue spinner for the government, and yet it feels the need to introduce draconian laws allowing raids on private bank accounts. Where is all the money going, you may ask? Orville Melchard, 53, a businessman from East Sussex said: They keep talking about entrepreneurs, however it is nigh on impossible to start a business in the UK with the inhibitive taxation system that punishes innovation. Success in Britain, is something that one can only achieve by hiding your money under a mattress. There is some good news though, Take That, the insipid banal boy band are now being lumped with a 30 million tax bill for utilising tax avoidance schemes. This news alone, is worth its weight in gold, so there is always a silver lining to any mucky cloud. NEW YORK - USA - Archibald Fenster, an analyst at Crook and Crook Finance is advising clients to keep buying stocks. Stock is real cheap at the moment at shy on 17,000. Keep buying, thats all you need to do. Its all pension fund debt anyway, as worthless as a pork sandwich in a synagogue, but of course the Fed dont want you to know that, shh. The analyst then went on to cite the $60 trillion debt America owes, and how thats good for the stock market. Ah, $60 trillion dollars is not that much really, consider the fact that in Zimbabwe you can just about buy a loaf of bread with sixty trillion of whatever their stupid currency is. But what about that Quantitative Easing stuff? Theyre stopping that soon. Why you think the DHS is stocking up on ammo? Anyway, keep buying stocks, no, I am not about to short the market, keep buying those goddamn stocks. Is the loss of Iraq anything to do with anything? Just take a look at this fear index and I must say, havent seen it so high in a long time, but thats no excuse to not keep buying stocks because when the oil price reaches $800 youll all be walking. As for Russia, just check out gas prices in Europe this chilly winter and see whos got who by the balls. PARIS - France - A ninja master is told to leave a performance of La Traviata at the Opera Bastille after the production refuse to go on stage Hiroku Tojitsu, a master in the art of Ninjitsu was told to leave a Paris opera house after members of the cast refused to perform if he remained in the audience, officials said. The ninja, described as a tourist from a secret Japanese silent assassin sect, was hanging from the chandeliers near the front row during a performance of La Traviata at the Opera Bastille, the deputy director, Jean-Philippe Morose, said. France banned Ninjitsu in 2011. The ban was upheld by the European Court of Human Rights earlier this year. Mr Morose said performers told him during the second act that they would only continue if the ninja left. During the interval, an attendant told Master Tojitsu that he should put the shurikens away and stop threatening theatre goers with his ninja antics. He did get a little upset and threw a shuriken at a prop, but the last straw was when he performed multiple flips onto the stage interrupting the cast during their performance, Mr Morose said. After a big chase around the circle the ninja threw down some white powder and there was a big flash. He was gone. Last year, a Ninjitsu expert stopped by police in a Parisian brothel was nearly arrested after disarming 12 officers in less than a minute, fleeing through a tiny window and causing damage to brickwork by clambering up walls. The incident sparked anger from Japans French consulate, who decry any discrimination against their ninjas. PARIS - France - This is a plea to the authorities to stop arresting Femen women across the globe. Do not arrest them, it is not 'exhibitionism' as you cite when you arrest these young ladies, you are only creating more fuel to the fire box. What on earth are police officers doing arresting these young topless ladies? Has the world gone mad? These are young women showing off their boobs for gawds sake! Lepter Samuels, 46, a gawping bystander told local French news reporters. It is to the credit of Femen organisers that they only choose attractive women to display their wonders, as to have an ugly fat feminist would defeat the whole object of the exercise. Women have been using their bodies as weapons for centuries and we are merely doing the same. It is our ethos to use our breasts as titillating terrorists. The funny thing is, what we do is more of a reverse form of feminism, it actually indicates the profound ridiculousness of militant feminism because we are displaying our breasts to you in an angry fashion and you still want to kiss us. These breasts are still attractive to men, and they still want to love us, but we hate men, they love us for our beautiful form that nature gave us. We hate nature, we want to subvert what is natural, for a man to be attracted to our naked bodies is a crime, it is a rape on our consciousness, on our feminist hatred of the masculine. Sisters, we need to get more angry, until men do not see us as mere beautiful bodies but sentient beings, with our own minds and thoughts, our own beliefs. We hate our beautiful pouting bodies, we hate these glorious breasts gently lolloping as we run away from the police, we need to liberate Femens everywhere. Please photograph and film us more we need the cameras to see us at all times. If there were no cameras we could not be Femens. You need to see our bodies and our angry faces. We hope this turned you on, Femen spokeswoman, Nancy Vadge, 21, told Le Monde from her prison cell. Detailed plans for the new U.S. Theme Park 'Jihad Land' now under construction in Baghdad, Iraq, appeared online in a major breach of the tight security surrounding the sensitive project that will be America's largest theme park abroad. Computer-generated projections of the nearly completed, heavily fortified Jihadi Land compound in Iraq were posted to the Web site of Burger Schmalt Wisney Inc., an American architectural design firm for theme parks that was contracted to design the massive fun park in the Iraq capital. The post was removed by the company from its Web site Thursday shortly after being contacted about it by the State Theme Park Department. We work very hard to ensure the safety and security of our employees overseas, said Gogozalos Gallogoogos, a State Theme Park Department spokesman. This kind of information out in the public domain detracts from the fun effort and is a darn right stinker. The 10 images included a scheme of the overall layout of the theme park, plus depictions of individual buildings including the theme park rides, office annexes, the Jihadi mouse security post, swimming pool, slaughter house, jihadi mouse and deputy mouses residences as well as the prison torture compound. The Processing Center for Jihad Land Theme Park as leaked on the internet U.S. Theme Park officials said the posted plans conformed at least roughly to conceptual drawings for the new park, which is being built on the banks of the Tigris River behind huge fences due to fears insurgents without tickets will attack when tickets are all sold out. Janice Simonen, a spokesman for Burger Schmalt Wisney Inc, declined to discuss the accuracy of the images posted online. In terms of commenting whether theyre accurate, obviously we wouldnt be commenting on that because we dont want people whoever they are or would care to think they are to know whether theyre accurate or not or may seem to be accurate or not know for security reasons, he said. Burger Schmalt Wisney Inc parent company, the giant contractor Halliburton, said the plans had been very preliminary and would not be of help to potential theme park competitors. The actual information that was up there was purely conjectural and conceptual in nature, said Chibo Mamakin spokesman for Halliburton. Google Earth could give you a better snapshot of what the site looks like on the ground. Some U.S. Theme Park officials acknowledged that damage may have been done by the postings and used expletives like fu*k, sh*t and motherf*ckers to describe their personal reactions, but downplayed the overall risk posed by whooping like chimps in a dodgem car. There is high demand for tickets to the grand opening of Jihad Land in September People are eventually going to figure out where they can get tickets for Jihad Land, but you dont have to draw them a map, its like a treasure hunt kinda thang said one senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak about the theme park project. The construction site in Baghdad is under heavy guard and treated with extreme secrecy. It is off-limits to all but those with special silly pink hats, surrounded by tall, concrete blast walls and impossible to see except from the air. The $592 million theme park, on a chunk of prime real estate acquired by Rosco Bonds and is two-thirds the size of Washingtons National Mall, is expected to be completed in September. The images posted on the Web site show that it will be a spacious and comfortable facility, albeit with some damn dangerous rides. Identified as the Jihadi Land Theme Park the images show Jihadi Land themes like: Jihad Rollercoaster, A functioning prison modeled on Abu Ghraib, Jihadi Land IED Alley, Jihadi pass the parcel Warehouse, Detention Camp Dwarves, Jihad Mountain, Osama Island, Barbed Wire Wall Frontier Land and Hook Island. The very popular IED Alley Ride In total, the 600-acre theme park will include over three hundred buildings, including one classified secure torture chamber and housing for over 1500 special ticket holders, the Web site boasts. LONDON - England - Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II honoured Pete Doherty with an MBE for his services to drug taking and avoiding arrest this afternoon. Pete Doherty was honoured at Buckingham Palace for his services to British drug-taking and prison-dodging today. He is now a proud Member of the Order of the British Empire. Kneeling before the Queen, he picked up a syringe which had fallen out of his jacket and shrugged his shoulders whilst smiling like a Cheshire cat. Artful Dodger The Queen has been very impressed by Petes prison dodging antics and calls him affectionately the artful dodger. To date, Doherty has been caught over 29 times and only briefly arrested once for carrying large quantities of class A drugs like heroin, ketamine, cocaine, crack and meth amphetamine. He has been immune to prosecution nearly every time and walked free out of all court sessions intended to jail him for longer periods. Awarded for achievement or service in and to the community that is outstanding in its field; or very local hands-on service which stands out as an example to others. Doherty has shown to have outclassed and outrun the useless prosecution services each and every time and made them into a laughing stock only fit for ridicule. To celebrate his new found status Doherty took out a large grotty HIV infected syringe in front of the Queen, smiled at her as he rubber banded his arm and dug the needle deep into one of his only working veins. It was at this moment a little squirt of blood gently spilled onto the Queens shoes. Bravo! If youre a Brit and you come over to America you gotta lick boot, and thats why James Corden may have broken the mould of the superior Brit thing that got people like Piers Morgan into so much trouble, especially with the gun control affair. Americans love to be buttered up, and the celebrities just want to hear about their success all the time, something the Brits dont do and its all too down to earth in the UK for the Yanks. Americans dont want reality, just hosts that sniff celebrity butt holes and tell them how great they are. Like a shameless whore, James Corden is nothing more than someone who would not be out of place in a day time life insurance commercial or selling PPI, and hes cracked America for that very reason. When it comes to dignity, he has none, and is testament to success in the field of effusive flattery for shit loads of money, Renfro Grechtener, a TV critic told CBS on Tuesday. All hail James Corden, an insipid, banal, now Americanised very rich sycophant buttering up the stretch skinned platitudinous trite over-clocked plastic celebrity effluent. 6 Brits That Tried to Break America and Failed 1) Piers Morgan 2) Russell Brand 3) Oasis 4) Robbie Williams 5) Ant and Dec 6) Gary Barlow LONDOOINE - Planet England - A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.... Cameron Vader first turned to the dark side when he visited his new master the Chancellor Merkeltine on the death star, somewhere in the constellation of Brussels, Belgium. Obi Dung Borisjobi, a former close friend, reveals that Cameron Vader was seduced by the dark side of the Force. The dark side provides powers that cause great harm to other people and nations collectivism, totalitarianism, hypnosis, poverty, austerity, and brainwashing but draws energy from passion, greed, unlimited expense accounts and violence, an energy that is enhanced by emotion (generally by fear, greed, anger, hatred and rage). There is only one hope for the universe, Luke Referendumvoter, he who steps forward with his vote and plonks it into the vote box using the Force. The Cap Estate - ST LUCIA - Approximately 650 guests of the Le Sport hotel were today airlifted to the neighbouring island of Martinique after being attacked by a crazed animal let out of its cage. Hotel guests at the 300 per night Le Sport Spa hotel were left fuming today after an emergency evacuation to Martinique. The luxury Le Sport Spa was overrun by a wild animal that would seek out any alcohol or drugs it could find and devour it all. One minute guests would be sitting at their tables sipping their cocktails, then they would look down to see their once full glasses all empty and the creature scurrying away giggling at its triumph. I ordered six Pina Coladas yesterday and I only got to drink a tiny sip of each. Every time I would look away or speak to my husband Gerald, this hairy thing would dart under our table and with a long straw finish off my drink. Sometimes it had the audacity to burp afterwards then scurry off saying no, no, no. Eventually we just paid the huge bill and left to our room when the creature appeared out of the darkness for the last time all dishevelled and with wild black hair. It demanded some cigarettes off us but we said we did not smoke. Thats when the abuse started so we rushed off as quick as we could, Mona Rossiter, 47, a holidaymaker from Tunbridge Wells told our local reporter. The creature seems to be female and has even used its charms to bag a few unsuspecting male guests. I was walking by the beach-front when this animal creature grabbed me by the hair and dragged me into a bushy area. She demanded I hand over my cigarettes and any alcohol I had on me. I said I didnt have any and was just in my swimming trunks. Thats when she grabbed me and ravished my body for four hours solid and demanded I sate her desires. Afterwards I managed to stagger back to the main lobby where I could receive medical attention for the deep lacerations on my back, buttocks, face and bollocks. I was airlifted to a nearby hospital where I was treated for severe dehydration and cuts, Bosh Jewman, 28, a distraught holidaymaker who retold his harrowing story from his hospital bed in nearby Martinique. Guests at the 300-a-night Le Sport Spa resort on St Lucia are said to be glad to be away from the roaming wild animal who has been seen wandering around the now empty resort trying to sniff out more drugs and booze. NEW YORK - USA - The 56 year old grandmother, Madonna, finally met up with her secret grandson after many years, the Daily Squib Exclusive Report can reveal. No one knew Madonna was a grandmother, not even her ex-husband Guy Richie. That is until now when the Daily Squib can reveal the dramatic moments when her Royal Madgeness finally got to meet her long lost Brazilian grandson. Back in 1979 she slept with a Brazilian dude named Marco Estevez who said he could make her famous. Of course that was a lie and he used that like all the other guys to get Ms Ciccone into bed. Well, she had a secret child with Marco and that childs name was Jaco who grew up to be a drummer in a samba band in Rio. Sadly Madonnas son never made it past 23 and was killed in a bar fight in Sao Paolo. The thing is, he had a son and his name was Samuel Jaco Estevez. That is who Madonna is finally meeting. This is an incredible moment in pop history. No one else knows about this and this news will rock the media to its core, Jose Mancino Vasquez, a pop genealogist revealed to the Daily Squib. The secret meeting was documented by celebrity photographer Carlos Hemingway. The photos will also be published in a special commemorative book featuring the story of Madonnas wonderful discovery. There was shock back in Britain with Madonna fans congregating outside her UK record company headquarters in Harlesden, North West London. Kia Munter, 45, has been a keen Madonna fan for the past 40 years and was visibly excited at the news: I been a Madonna fan for many years now and I probably know more about her than herself. Now theyve discovered her secret Brazilian grandson? I cant believe this? Its wonderful news, I hope shes happy with discovering her grandson. Amazing news. The book will reveal a brief incite into Madonnas discovery of her grandson and her times with him in Brazil. An excerpt from the upcoming book showing Madonna getting to finally know her grandson Madonna has apparently taken to her role as a grandmother with great relish and is enjoying her new role thoroughly. She spent some time in Brazil with her grandson. The book documents this and illustrates the themes and intrigue of finally getting to know her only grandson after many years of not knowing he even existed, Luis Tavares, the ghost-writer for the project told the Daily Squib. An awkward moment between grandmother and grandson captured in the new book My Secret Grandson by Madonna will be released in March on the same day as Madonnas new album called My Pet Gigolo. ESSEX - England - Preparations are under way for the biggest state funeral since the death of Princess Diana. PR Guru and suppurating anus, Max Clifford has revealed for the first time the intricate details of the state funeral that will be conducted for Jade Goody. Even Margaret Thatcher will not get the same treatment that Jade is going to get. The nation will observe a full days mourning and there will be a public holiday announced. After the pay-per-view funeral (ker-ching), there will be a horse drawn carriage pulling the open top coffin along from Jades home in Upshire, Essex to the Big Brother house which will be her final resting place and Endemol sponsored shrine. She will thus be buried under the building, possibly in the diary room in a glass coffin so successive celebrity Big Brother housemates can see the legend themselves. Jade is a legend I tell you. My yellow Lamborghini Murcielago LP 640 will attest to her greatness and astounding earning power. The funeral procession is expected to attract over 13 million people following the beloved celebrity star. Because of the funeral procession and the number of people said to be attending, Burberry stores all over the UK have already sold out of caps and scarves. But you have to admit, its been a great month. Kerry Katona bankrupt, Jade Goody cancer..mind if I have a good think about my last one Mr Genie, Id hate to waste it, Ernie Tarbuck, a librarian from North London told ITV1 news. According to Downing Street, the Jade Goody procession will commence after a 49 gun salute commemorating each corporate sponsor that will be involved in the parade. Dignitaries from the government will be present including the prime minister himself. There is even talk of Royal attendance, however the Beckhams may not be able to get to the UK from Los Angeles in time. LOS ANGELES - USA - A distraught Hollywood socialite has revealed the harrowing details of an encounter with Kelly Osbourne that left her and many witnesses reeling in utter horror. A prominent member of the Hollywood jetset and socialite was today nursing her wounds after witnessing something which will live with her forever. Not only did she witness her favourite pet lose its life but suffered the further indignity of having to report the incident in its full gory detail to police officers who were quickly on the scene. According to witnesses, Ms Margolis was at an affluent Beverly Hills boutique browsing when Kelly Osbourne and a little boy turned up. They were having a furious argument over who should wear the glitter makeup and which dress looks better when Kelly hit the peroxide haired twink on the head. She slapped him and he started to cry. Looking around with Ozzy-esque rage she swung around and spied the tiny pooch innocently sniffing a mannequin. Thats when the horror started. Kelly picked up the dog, looked it in the eye then stuffed the lot in her mouth. There was a bit of crunching but otherwise no sound and an almighty gulp as the dog went down. After burping loudly she stormed out of the expensive boutique and hailed a cab with her twink in tow. Ms Margolis was left with an empty leash, she just stood there, Line Officer for the Beverly Hills P.D. , Maria Gambino, told TMZ. Binky La Roo, pictured before allegedly being eaten alive by Ms Osbourne Ms Margolis has already contacted lawyers and she plans to sue Ms Osbourne for damages and post-traumatic stress which has needed hours of counselling. Kelly Osbournes Personal Assistant refutes the incident ever happened and says Osbourne will fight the claims in court: Kelly Osbourne is innocent of all charges and even though is party to intense fits of rage every few minutes, did not and would not follow in her fathers footsteps. Besides, she was with her twink boyfriend and he keeps her in check all the time. Since the incident, many of the shops employees have needed counselling and are seeking compensation. There has been a disturbing pattern of disappearances of small pets whenever Kelly Osbourne is around and PETA are investigating. Chalk it up with the rest. Its another natural death Hollywood style. She took tonnes of prescription pills and her heart gave away. You cant get more natural than that. The fact that we found huge amounts of drugs in her room and bloodstream is neither here nor there. This is Hollywood and its accepted as a natural occurrence, Dr. David Johnsons, a senior consultant at Cedars Sinai hospital told Hollywood Weekly magazine. The actress natural death is the third one this month, and is such a familiar scene to the Hollywood acting crowd that it has barely got any press coverage. We get one that goes, ten come in her place. We get fresh loads every day from boonville into Hollywood land all the time. Its only a matter of time before they get used up by the machine, and spat out, then we get the next batch in. The acting biz is like that. Its pretty natural stuff. Whats the problem huh? Moshe Silverstein III, a studio executive for one of the premier film companies, said. LOS ANGELES - USA - Posh Spice seems to be in a spot of bother after being sued for $15 million because of an altercation between her bunions and a woman in a beauty salon. Mrs Beckhams bunion caused the woman to trip up and fall thus breaking her hip, leg and cracking her cranium on the Italian marble floor. The cause of the fall was Mrs Beckhams large bunions which obstructed the hallway where my client was walking, Jan Geitner, the womans attorney told the LA Times. State of the Bunion Address Victoria Beckhams bunions are the talk of Tinseltown with everyone from Steven Spielberg to James Cameron all falling over themselves to film those beautiful monstrosities. Speaking from his latest soon-to-be blockbuster featuring yellow lizard people with blue green spots, Director James Cameron said: I saw Victorias bunions and I just swooned at the size of those motherfuckers. Shit, how does her thin frame take it when she walks with those things on her feet? Does she wear flip flops? I need to cast her for my next alien flick. We wont need CGI on her feet thats for fuckin sure! Meanwhile, Mrs Beckhams lawyers are preparing a dossier proving that her bunions are harmless and can co-exist safely with the general population. We are here to reassure the public that Mrs Beckhams bunions are perfectly safe to ordinary people. All that folks have to do when they see her walking towards them is move aside for the bunions. Its really that simple, then no one will get hurt, Harry Snatch, from Fitch and Fitch Attorneys said. LONDON - England - Thousands of fans turned out yesterday to catch a glimpse of the Pope as he paraded through Picadilly Circus with an entourage of 185 vehicles and hundreds of security guards, his purpose, to warn the crowds about the dangers of seeking celebrity culture. The crowd of 145,000 people greeted the Pontiff with songs and gifts and listened intently as he invited them to cast away celebrity culture. He said: You must reject celebrity culture. True happiness is found in God. Oh my gosh, have I won X Factor? Am I the next SuBo? Escorted by hundreds of police outriders, security vehicles, four helicopters, an armoured car and a team of surveillance agents he had arrived at Trafalgar Square in London, in a 185-vehicle convoy revelling in his super celebrity status. The whole of London had been cordoned off for the celebrity Popes outing, resulting in massive traffic disruption across the city with all airports locked down. The celebrity Pope, later on did a lap of honour around the route in his Popemobile, before speeding off with his whole entourage to his next celebrity Pope function in Birmingham opening a Tesco superstore. The Pope will be releasing a new DVD box set of his tour and a new book to commemorate the trip. Weve got another Hollywood movie release with cutesy CGI characters, American voices and American mannerisms, Ernie Schlitz, a studio executive at Fox Studios told Film Weekly. Cinema-goers in Paris, France were astounded by the new movie. Pierre Gitanes, 14, on his half-term holidays said: Every week they release a new film with the same tired old American actors voices and really dumb f*cking CGI penguins or some other stupid creature. They walk around the screen going Yo, yo, whassup? or Du-u-u-u-de! after the 380th CGI film release this year I just sat in my seat and wept. In Britain, many cinemas held a day of mourning as another cutesy Hollywood CGI film release hit the towns and cities. We just had another cutesy American CGI film release. I even had one man slit his wrist in the back and last week we had a hanging, Freddie Arbunckle, the manager at the Bexleyheath Odeon told the Mirror. CAMBER SANDS - England - Members of the Daily Squib staff were inconsolable yesterday after hearing of the terrible news that Pontins, Britain's premier leisure destination, had been closed down forever. People were visibly weeping in the Squib building, and the editor locked himself in his room all day throwing furniture around. It has been a terrible time for us, we were so looking forward to going down to Pontins for our Christmas party, sub editor, Mike Hunt, said whilst weeping into a soiled handkerchief. Pontins, which as a British tradition, is famous for its cockroaches, vomit stained bed sheets, fecal matter smeared walls and nasty attitude from the staff. That was the charm of the place. You go there, get totally blootered, then relax in your flea infested mouldy room. You can only go to that place when drunk out of your f*cking mind, if youre ever sober, thats when it gets really bad. Imagine waking up sober in someone elses vomit with cockroaches all over your face? Youd be distraught if you werent drunk, Alan Titmunch, one of the Squibs features writers said. Pontins is the only place where you have to wipe your feet on the way out of their chalets, another Squib writer quipped. LOS ANGELES - USA - British comedian, Ricky Gervais, has impressed his American hosts so much after the 2011 Golden Globe Awards that many say he should present the upcoming Oscars. We Americans adore Gervais since hes moved here. Hell, we like him so much, we reckon he should present for the Oscars too. People think us narcissistic Hollywood types are stuck up our own arses with no sense of humour. Hes shown us the delights of British humour, and weve been eating it up with gusto, Hollywood mogul, Dino Schwartz, told the LA Times. Such is the aura of praise for Gervais, that many Hollywood stars gush over the mere mention of his name. Ricky Gervais? You mean the British guy? Well, I have to say, usually we dont understand a frickin word he says anyway. Its like some different kind of language. Americans also dont understand intricate humour or subtlety either, so thats why he had to be as blunt as he was tonight he has to spell things out until we Yanks understand him, one of the stars at the event explained. Tom Cruise, who attended with his wife, was all praise for the comedian: Just before I got here for the awards, I was in my walk-in closet pondering what tie I should put on, and I thought to myself, this is going to be one hell of an evening with that English guy, Gervais. I wanted to impress him with my Scatology cult styles, so I chose the one with the rainbow on it. Another Golden Globe attendee said: Some people say that us Yanks dont have much of a sense of humour. Well after tonight, that Limey bastard, Gervais, might just find his feet in a fuckin concrete block right before he takes a long walk off a short pier, top Hollywood producer, Cohen Katzengoldberger, shouted angrily before speeding off in his Ferrari. LONDON - England - After a recent spate of science programs commissioned by the BBC, many people are now complaining about how science is so dumbed down that even chavs understand it. Astronomical shows revealing the wonders of the universe are now prevalent on the BBC. In a concerted effort to bring science to the masses, the BBC is paying celebrity scientists vast sums of taxpayers money to travel to hundreds of locations around the world and speak with very simple lingo in a condescending faux empathetic manner about the universe whilst loud electronica music blares out over a dumbed down astro-comical cum fest, an old fuddy duddy from Scunthorpe, Jack Sparrow, 67, told BBC6 news. There have been hundreds of complaints about the latest dumbing down exercise by the BBC. Things Can Only Get Better I pay the BBC tax so that this jumped up charlatan can ponce around the world and have an extended poseur holiday as well as get paid for it? You must be joking, retired colonel, John Mathers, from Gloucestershire, complained on last weeks Radio 4, Your Voice program. And its not just the elderlies who are complaining, what about the legitimate scientists? Professor Harold Jenkem from Oldham University said: Ive watched these supposed science programs from the BBC purportedly talking about the universe. All I saw was some prat calling himself professor Brian Cock prancing around posing at every opportunity with flashing lights all around him and loud electronic music blaring out. Couldnt hear a fucking word he said, but looking at a transcript, its all elementary stuff. Why not commission real science programs and not this utter guff? On a positive note, maybe it is a good thing that science is being promoted to the masses, although, unfortunately to do this, it must first be dumbed down to a standard that borders upon levels that are offensively cretinous. Here are some excerpts from the show, so you can make up your minds yourselves: Observing the night skies with the naked eye can only take us so far on our journey and wonders of our universe. Advances in technology have brought us crafts that can take humans on expeditions beyond our planet. The universe is a vast place. The moon is not as big as the earth but is smaller than the sun. LONDON - England - The re-makers of the famous Dam Busters film have come up with a solution to the problem of renaming the dog. The producers of the film have been racking their brains on what to call the dog which was originally named after the Latin word for black. We did not know what to do. Obviously, we had to change his name because it is not an appropriate word to use these days, Charles DeMenzies, one of the senior producers for the project told Empire magazine. Stephen Fry, who wrote the screenplay, said: I was tweeting to my 20 million fans the other night and I thought to myself, how about spraying the dog white and then calling it wigger? It was an astonishingly spondalicious idea, I might say, so I got one of my many portable gizmo gadget things out of the drawer and tweeted, facebooked, faxed my idea immediately. Were even thinking of putting those ghastly gold chains on the mutt and playing eminem raps whenever hes on screen. I reckon Ill get a BAFTA for this. The American financiers of the film ordered the change of name for the dog as well as replacing all the British crew of the Dam Busters with American actors enacting a purely American theme. The United Parcel Service (a.k.a. UPS) announced this week that it will no longer be taking the whole weekend off. Beginning April 15, the brown-clad delivery service will begin making deliveries on Saturdays in 15 metropolitan areas. Saturday service is expected to be expanded to 4,700 locales by November and to 5,800 by 2018. While the company plans to increase automation in 70 of its warehouses to meet the demands of the added day of delivery, UPS also says that it will be hiring as many 6,000 new employees, an increase by 1.7% to its domestic operations. As many as 4,000 of those jobs are expected to be created this year. You may recall that UPS has also been testing out drone deliveries. It's unclear whether they expect the drones to work on Saturdays. Even Less Reason to Shop In-Store The move comes as a result of the increase in online shopping. UPS expects that by 2019 more than half of all its deliveries will be made to home residences. In fact, this latest change in service seems overdue, as both FedEx and the US Postal Service already make deliveries on Saturdays. The latter also makes Amazon Prime Sunday deliveries in some markets. What do you think readers? Are you more likely to use UPS for your deliveries as a result of this change? Will you skip a trip in-store if you can get weekend delivery? Let us know in the comments below. PYONGYANG - North Korea - There were scenes of mass hysteria and lamentation on Monday as millions of North Koreans openly wept in public at the terrible news that there will not be any Daily Squib offices or publications in their country in the foreseeable future. As the thousands of grieving crowds wept in the streets in the main square where communist shows of military strength are held every year, there were reports of North Koreans even jumping off high rise buildings. Not since British former Prime Minister, Gordon Browns resignation have there been such scenes of utter despair amongst a population. The much anticipated publication of the North Korean edition of the Daily Squib had unfortunately been thwarted by a communist party censor deeming the whole newspaper a danger to the state. I was waiting to read the first edition. We were waiting for ten years. Every day, they say you can read the Daily Squib, then the next day they say it come tomorrow, then the next day they say we have to wait one more week. How much longer do we have to wait so we can read the Daily Squib? I cant take it anymore, Im going to commit hara kiri. Oh, thats Japanese, never mind, a very upset North Korean Daily Squib fan told state news before being taken away to a re-education camp. Casting directors working on the new project cast the German leader after they saw her performance at a recent Greek wedding where numerous objects, drinks and insults were thrown at the Chancellor. She was guest of honour at a Greek wedding and when she walked into the room she was greeted with plates, moussaka, spittle and cheap Greek beer. It was quite the sight. It was not only physical stuff that was thrown at her by the assembled Greek guests and priests, they also threw Greek curses and swear words at the poor Chancellor, a member of the Troika, who was flanking Frau Merkel at the wedding, told Bild magazine. Greek director, Papas Papadopoulos, was enamoured by the courageous German leader and immediately signed her up for his new feature film, My Big Fat Greek Debt II. Its about a lovely girl who goes to Greece to get married but has no money so she has to beg in the streets and do special favours for old men to get married. When she eventually does get married, her fiancee runs off with the cash to Germany and leaves her destitute again. She is then sold off to a Turkish pasha for a few euros. You could say its a bit of a Greek tragedy, Mr Papadopoulos said. Filming for My Big Fat Greek Debt II should commence next year, but there have been drawbacks with funding as many of the cast and crew do not have enough money to even eat, let alone buy cameras and props. ISTANBUL - Turkey - An after concert party for pop starlet Madonna went terribly wrong on Sunday when one of her nipple's popped off into a man's cocktail at a local bar witnesses say. She came in with her entourage and ordered everyone a cocktail. She was still wearing her stage clothes and was really hyper. She said she wanted to show everyone a close up of what she did on stage just fifteen minutes ago. She took one of her breasts out. Her nipple looked angry, like it was bruised up and mushrooming out. I just couldnt stop staring at it as it twitched uncontrollably on her breast, and then we all heard a popping sound. Her nipple shot up in the air and fell down straight into a mans Pina Colada. He said he wanted a refund after putting the nipple in his mouth with a cocktail stick and chewing it for thirty seconds. He said it tasted like an old salty leather button, an eyewitness at the bar near Istanbuls Taksim Square, told Reuters. Madonna was immediately taken by ambulance to Istanbul General Hospital where surgeons tried frantically to sew the chewed nipple back onto her right breast. Doctors this morning declined to answer questions about the surgery but Madonnas spokeswoman, Joyce Green, said: Last night after her concert, there was an incident at a bar for aftershow drinks. Madonna is doing just fine and will carry on with her tour as planned. ST HELIER - Jersey - Celebrity TV host, Jimmy Carr, is set to present and star in a new reality show that is set to become a huge hit with audiences across Britain. The basic premise of the new reality show series that Jimmy will be presenting is one of taking loads of cash from people in the UK mainland, then stashing it all in a place somewhere on the island of Jersey. Naturally, the person who is not caught by the tax man wins the reality show, series producer for Endemol, Robert Anus, told the Sun. Mr Carr will not only star in the show but present it as well. It will be me and a number of celebrities, including the tax cheats from boy band Take That on the island with our loot. Ive got so much money that I will be pulling all my cash behind my Aston Martin Vantage which will be pulling a large truck carriage. I hope there are no large gusts of wind so that I lose a bit of the money, I dont think I could live with that. Ive even enrolled my dad to come along, the vile shit, he can pick up the pennies if they fall off the carriage, Jimmy Carr said from his Oxfordshire mansion, worth 9.8 million. Prime minister, David Cameron said that he would be looking forward to watching Carr in the new reality show, and it would give him more pleasure when he plants even more tax inspectors onto the cu*t. NECHIN - Belgium - EU officials are complaining that the latest cheese surplus in the country is nothing to do with governmental waste but newly tax exiled French actor Gerard Depardieu. Depardieu likes his fromage! All 450 tonnes of the stuff, he had it delivered from France yesterday, they put it all in a warehouse right next to his newly acquired mansion, Gaston Thibaut, the Belgian minister for agriculture told the Sud Presse newspaper. French cheese officials were furious that the actor had relinquished France of so much cheese. We want our fromage back. We dont care how much Depardieu paid for it, he is a traitor to France and he owes us 75% of his income, Jean-Pierre Arnaud, the French minister of cheese told French TV networks last night. Unpopular socialist French prime minister Francois Hollande even tried to personally intervene yesterday by trying to organise a blockade of the Depardieu cheese convoy of 42 trucks but could not gather much support. Depardieu loves his fromage Francais, what can we dire? Il est un heros Francais pour defier la imbecile Hollande and nous support pleinement, a French cheese maker told a local radio station in Auvergne. NEW YORK - USA - Pop star Madonna is to make her next film about tragic British monarch Richard III, her agent has revealed. Her royal Madgeness will start filming of the biopic in July when she will fly over to the UK for a five month stint. Ive seen the script and the film will be set in a Leicester council car park for some scenes, as well as a muddy field somewhere to depict the battle of Bosworth, Joel Montestromboli, Madonnas agent revealed. Madonna is not known for her acting or directorial skills but she is very protective of her prowess in looking like she can do those two things. I go around with an eye piece and look at things from a different angle. Its going to be great to go back to England again, I really miss certain things like the constant rain, superbug infested hospitals and of course the 100% beef burgers, Madonna said from her New York apartment yesterday. Historian Malcolm Jacobian, from Cambridge University, spoke of the news: She certainly has the arms for the role. Richard III was said to have a withered arm as well as a curved spine. I looked at Madonnas arms, and was immediately struck at their magnificent grotesqueness. LONDON - England - Britain is bracing itself for another food scandal that could knock the hinges off the all encompassing horse meat food scandal and vomit into a filthy already overflowing bucket of food shame. During a preliminary rehearsal yesterday evening, a London Fashion Week official discovered some crumbs of food behind the model cat walk stage and in a corridor there were bits of food wrapping found. We found a pile of crumbs behind the stage at London Fashion Week. This means that a model may have eaten something, Jennifer Abergavenny, a fashion house leader told the Guardian newspaper. The scandal has rocked the fashion world and may threaten the rest of London Fashion Week. I just heard the awful news, a model who has participated in London Fashion Week may have eaten some food. Quel scandale? We need to find her and root her out of the business, KiKi Labroutenne, a fashionista from Paris told the Fashion Times. Is Britain ready for this latest food scandal to hit our food scandal hit shores? PYONYANG - N. Korea - North Korea's leader placed his army of dancers on readiness to "get with the rhythm" on Friday as the regime officially renounced all Gangnam pacts with its southern neighbour. Kim Jong-un escalated his inflammatory response to a new round of Gangnam You Tube videos by ordering his dancers on the border with South Korea to prepare for some serious frigging dancing. But China, North Koreas only powerful ally, publicly urged calm and Gangnam restraint. Mr Kim chose a highly sensitive location for his address to the North Korean states official dancing troupe, visiting dance studios facing the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong, where a North Korean dance-off permanently crippled four people and wounded 19 in 2010. Mr Kim stressed the need for the dancers to keep themselves fully ready to go into action to dance like they never danced before. Mr Kims open talk of a new Korean Gangnam style dance-off came after his regime threatened America with a pre-emptive thermo-groovy booty shake up that would wipe the arses off those American hip hop body poppers once and for all. The aggressive dance pose came in response to the unanimous vote in the UN Security Council on Thursday to impose further North Korean dance sanctions. LONDON - England - The Daily Squib will not be releasing anything off onto the internet today as the staff have been given their traditional April 1st day off. Whilst other traditional newspapers are writing the odd chucklsome April 1st article and even Google has had a go at it, the Squib is taking the day off thank you very much. This is one day in the year that we get a day off so Im off to the pub to get completely blootered, one of our writers said today. So dear readers, numbering about 15, expect no Squib stories from us today. We know you will be very sad about that. LUTON - England - Simon Cowell is the Music Biz today. No need for Top of the Pops anymore, because with Cowell and his franchises of music programming, the population of the world has truly been satisfied. He saved the Biz. Without Simon Cowell, there would still be people out there actually singing songs, Bobby Guccione, a former A&R man at Arista Records told Music Week magazine. Cowell was recently in the UK to promote his latest talent D4NNY. This some deep shit. When I heard this song I knew the deep message was there. Anyone who hears this song will not be able to get it out of their heads for at least a day. Thats what Im looking for in an autotune song however terrible or bad it is, Cowell said. The song has already leaped to Number 1 in the charts and sold a massive 23 records which is the requirement to get to Number 1 position these days. Without Cowells influence the songs in the charts would now not be delivered solely with autotune. This is a remarkable achievement in music software promotion and has truly dominated all genres of music. Theres only one genre of music now. Crap. And Ive made millions from that, Cowell said from his multi-million pound yacht in Montecarlo. This whole thing is the issue with Trump. He is classic narcissist. He has a YUGE ego and he simply can't tolerate ANY sort of criticism. This started day one with the flap over how many people attended the inauguration. Then with him the ONLY way Hillary got more vote is because 3 million were ILLEGAL. Then there's whole fake news. He just can't tolerate anything that doesn't fit his world view. He's the HMFIC and just can't imagine there are government employees out there, people that KNOW how to do their jobs, people that have done those jobs across multiple administrations, and they DISAGREE with him. He's used to being the absolute and final word in his companies, and now, even though he's the president, he is finding he isn't GOD and he can't ignore things like the CONSTITUTION !!!! Absolute classic narcissistic megalomaniac. LONDON - England - Based on EU policy in the UK, the latest reality show to hit our shores is so close to reality that it actually is reality. We put six Islamist hate clerics in a 3 million taxpayer funded home in Kensington where they are given every luxury they want at the expense of the British taxpayer. The aim of the show is to simply stay in the house and carry on spouting hateful rhetoric against the West. Naturally there will be a camera in every room and little creative games for the Hate Clerics to play like avoid the extradition order. Day Four Hundred and Sixty Five The six Hate Clerics will all have a team of lawyers on hand at all times racking up vast bills for the British taxpayer. After doing the first episode of the show I actually got offers from Brussels as a spokesman for Hate Cleric rights. I turned it down however as the expenses package was not good enough. I prefer to stay in the UK and live the life of Riley, Abu Hamid, a celebrated Hate Cleric from Bolton said from his luxurious room in the reality show house. Ant and Dec were said to be delighted to be presenting another multi-million pound show but are seriously scared of the contestants. Endemol, who created the reality show have said that test screenings were positive with the show format being adapted to regions all over the world. THE JUNGLE - Bolivia - Nigella Lawson's new cookery show is set to scintillate the senses with some serious candy. Theres nothing better than watching Nigella Lawson suggestively eating some of her wonderful creations in a made-up kitchen in some studio somewhere. The domestic goddess has however really excelled herself in her new cookery show where she has forsaken food altogether and plumped for some coca leaves and other chemicals. Set in the Bolivian jungle, Nigellas new show was not funded by Channel 4 but a prominent drug cartel. Shes the best cook we have. I mean, this stuff is 95% proof. In the show shes going to show people how to make the best stuff. None of the cheap cut stuff you find on the streets, were talkin pure yeyo homes, Ricardo Montoya, one of the lieutenants in charge of the cartels day-to-day business told Reuters. SEVASTOPOL - Russia - Britain's latest celebrity superstar, White Dee has managed to seal a peace deal in the former Ukrainian territory of Crimea. White Dee from Benefits Street has brokered a historic peace treaty between Russia and the West, achieving something which seasoned negotiators like U.S Secretary of State, John Kerry have not been able to do. I walked in the room. Looked Putin in the eyes, then told him about Benefits Street, how I had to call the council every day and tell em to keep paying up. I then took the mic, had a large swig of the vodka bottle Putin was holding then sang my latest song called Crimea River. By the end of my beautiful song Putin had a tear in his eye, a pair of ear plugs and an empty bottle. Vladimir Putin has vowed to visit John Turner street in Birmingham next time he invades Britain. As for White Dee, shes now up for the Nobel Peace prize, and a lucrative career as a peace broker for the British government, her next stop being Palestine. Crimea River will be available in all good Job centres and Benefits offices across the country from tomorrow. LONDON - England - Our eminent offices were graced the other day with some royal correspondence of which we have deciphered and have concluded was received from HRH Prince Charles. Prince Charles has penned another letter, this time to the Daily Squib, urging restraint in satirical matters, we can reveal the letter in full for the first time. Dear Daily Squib, One enjoys ones awkward peeps into the nether regions of your site on the odd occasion, that is when the horsey allows one. One is urging you, the Daily Squib to please tone down the royal stuff as we do chuckle sometimes but we are..er..royal and youre not meant to take the Prince Michael out of one. Lazy Kate and Ginger all agree it is a bit too much, as for Cressie, all this royal limelight is sort of off putting to put it lightly. ere, if you stop with the old satire stuff we could give one of your writers an O.B.E, or even have them decapitated, oops did one write that? One meant knighted, not chopped orf, shame those days are gone as one would like a few ministers in the Tower with their heads on a stick. Andy Pandy says his Croation escort tires him out incessantly but the writing in the Squib tires him out even further, it so very tedious. As for mama, shes a trained assassin as you already know, and if she gets a snifter of any more ridiculous satirical nonsense, she may get rather high in dudgeon. One must not forget papas wrath, as he speaketh with a very versatile forked tongue. p.s. Please take that seal of royal approval down and replace it with one of distinct un-approval. Yours Sincerely Charlie After receiving the Prince Charles letter, we were required by royal decree to always display the Royal Seal of Un-Approval on our publication at all times. GUINEA - Africa - Our special summer holiday giveaway at the Ebola hotel is sure to make your mouth and eyes water. The Daily Squib is offering a two week all-inclusive package holiday at the Ebola Hotel for our lucky summer holiday competition winners. Heres your chance to win a once in a lifetime, all-inclusive trip for a lucky competition winner to the world famous Ebola hotel resort in Guinea. Luscious bat caves, wonderful tropical jungles teeming with bats, some of the worlds best dark nightspots and friendly locals fleeing for their lives. Your stay at the 5 star rated Ebola hotel will be your own little holiday paradise lost. Enjoy total relaxation on a decrepit dirty hospital bed being treated by clueless medics wearing decontamination suits whilst bleeding from the inside, vomiting and happily ejaculating copious amounts of diarrhoea from your poor tired puckering arsehole YOUR HOLIDAY INCLUDES All Meals Consisting of Bat Meat and Assorted Bushmeat Infected With Deadly Pathogens Premium Brand Virus Laden Bat Blood Liquor Distilled in the Jungle Luxurious Accommodations in a Cave Full of Angry Pissing Bats Gourmet Bat Dining Accompanied by Severe Incurable Dysentery Projectile Vomiting into a Dirty Bucket Overflowing With Human Faeces Roundtrip Airport Transfers in a Cardboard Coffin All Bat Blood Drinks Free at Happy Hour All Tips and Gratuities to the Doctors in Chem Suits All Hotel Death Taxes Watersports from the Smelly Bats Hanging in Caves Funeral Services in an Unmarked Ditch Somewhere in the Jungle To win this exclusive holiday just answer this simple question. Where does Ebola come from? 1) Idiots who eat bat and bushmeat 2) Bat blood and bushmeat when eaten 3) Bats Terms and Conditions. Please send a postcard with the correct answer to Ebola Comp. 36 P.O. Box 456, Trimpleton Road, London, W1X D3. Competition will end on midnight some time next week. Employees of the Daily Squib are not allowed to enter the competition and neither is Batman. KANSAS CITY - USA - Michelle Obama made a surprise visit to Topeca High School dressed as a clown on graduation day but was booed off stage and pelted with rotten eggs and tomatoes. An impromptu appearance by the First Lady, Michelle Obama, at a Kansas City High School dressed as a clown came under fierce criticism from the U.S. Guild of Clowns. We found her performance darn right creepy and offensive to clowns everywhere. What was she thinking? Dilbo Bugbit, a clown told the close knit group on Saturday. Mrs Obama stepped out to the High School graduation stage wearing a full on clown outfit, then proceeded to clown around even squirting the principal with a fake flower on her lapel. Another clown said: We already got one imposter clown in office, we dont need his wife doing the same thing. EAST TEDDINGTON - England - There's some very important news circulating about the British Bake Off which you must read right now. Heres the latest news of the British Bake Off Bin gate saga gripping the nation. Some bearded pansy twat had a tantrum on television over an ice cream in a bucket that he threw in a bin. The British Bake Off episode resulted in 562 complaints to the BBC and outrage across the whole of the UK. Forget about Russia invading Ukraine, I was glued to my telly at the bin gate fiasco, John Armitage, 45, from Little Chepstow told the BBC. All across Britain, there was not even a mention of World War III starting, it was all talk about the British Bake Off. British women are renowned for being the heaviest drinkers in Europe and vow to fight the alcohol reduction quota whilst pregnant. English and Irish women are by a great distance the biggest binge alcohol drinkers not just in Europe but in the world. The latest Governmental guidelines for alcohol consumption amongst pregnant women in the UK is two bottles of vodka a day. The Government suggests that this can be brought down to one bottle of vodka a day or even better no alcohol whatsoever. Governmental Health departments however understand that this reduction quota may be too much for most mothers in the UK and would allow for some discrepancy in General Practitioner guidelines and with midwives. It is very hard for British women to stop drinking heavily and many rarely look for help. Worldwide scientific research has revealed that women who consume alcohol during pregnancy produce inferior children. Brain damage, inferior intellect and deformity are rife in the UK population and are testament to binge mothers. Britain has been inbreeding brutes for centuries in the alcopop capital of the booze world. One in three British women 10 to 30-years-old are now classed as a heavy drinker, binging on six or more drinks in one session at least five times a week when pregnant with child. I drink gin whenever possible and see no problem with my consumption as I am a responsible adult. says Jackie who is 4 months pregnant with triplets. This cavalier attitude strikes health officials around the world with bemusement. It seems there is an all encompassing disregard for welfare during pregnancy in the UK. These disturbing figures are 15 times higher than those of Germany and Italy, prompting warnings that record numbers of women face liver damage and premature death unless they curb their alcohol consumption. The findings are based on a survey of more than 177,000 women during pregnancy from 21 countries, including Belgium, France and the United States, in the largest study ever carried out into worldwide drinking habits. The disclosure will alarm policy-makers struggling to combat Britains growing drink problem amongst pregnant women, which has led to an escalation in anti-social behaviour, low birth weight, mental problems in children, lost working hours and long-term health problems, including cancer and heart problems. Not much has changed since the 18th Century: In 1751, William Hogarth etched this accurate depiction of drunks in London. Pregnant women across Britain have been fighting for their rights to binge-drink for centuries so why should things change now? It is an English tradition and should be upheld by the people. MP for Blackpool Joan Humble I do not think this Government should dictate to anyone how little or how much alcohol a pregnant woman should consume. My constituency has the highest alcoholic mother register in England, and it is our right. Who is to deny that things have definitely not changed over the centuries, so why should they change now? Keep drinking ladies. Cheers. LAs famous Heart and Lung Center in Beverly Hills is set to have a busy day on the 14th of February when 34 patients will undergo cosmetic heart transplants to show their dedication to Valentines Day and love for their partners. This is the first year we have been able to do this because weve got the right amount of surgeons this time. Our oldest patient is an eighty year old millionaire who is getting a heart transplant to show his twenty year old wife that his Valentines gift to her will last and last. Apparently shes not very happy about it though and wants him to keep his old eighty year old heart but he could not be dissuaded from going ahead with the eight hour operation, Doctor Arnold Blitzer, chief surgeon in charge told the LA Times newspaper. The hearts will be delivered to the patients in a heart shaped box before the surgeon implants the heart into the patient. This is set to be the largest single heart transplantation operation in the world with the medical team and support staff numbering at least 350 on the day. The transplants will cost each patient approximately $250,000 and even though the majority of the participants do not have anything wrong with their hearts they are going to change them mainly for more youthful pieces. The hearts are bought from China for about $200 then shipped over to the USA so that the Valentines Day surgery can be completed. Due to the Communist regime, there is never a shortage of live donors. Even Dick Cheney was in here the other day. We did tests on him but as we suspected he does not have a heart. Its just a blackened cavity, so we had to sadly send him away, Doctor Blitzer revealed. Vanity transplants are all the rage in America at the moment. For a fee of anything from $100,000 upwards, doctors can now transplant any body part you want purely on the premise of vanity. Doctor Blitzer ended the article with a poignant quote: We want people to be happy inside themselves. Beauty is not just for outside, is it? PENNSYLVANIA - USA - President Barack Obama's plans for a nationwide healthcare system akin to the UK's National Health Service has come under intense negative pressure from a major section of the American population. Here in Lebanon Pennsylvania jeers and taunts ring out from the local town hall where a congregation of locals rail at the new presidents plans to socialise American healthcare. The majority of the assembled crowd are white middle-class and damn angry. Why should we have to pay for all the other people to have health care? Ive worked hard all of my life and I pay for my own health insurance. Why should we end up like the socialist British with their crumbling NHS dealing with binge drinkers all day and night. You have to wait months, even years to get any treatment in the old crumbling, dirty, Victorian hospitals with hardly any facilities, one man told the assembled crowd of 1,500. Indeed, it is true, the proponents of socialised healthcare know that those who stand to gain most are the millions of illegal immigrants and mainly African American/Hispanic population who do not have healthcare or will ever have a chance of getting it under a Republican government. Why should white people have healthcare and not us? African Americans want to get treated too. Now that Obama is saying we should get healthcare and that white folk should pay for it theyre getting all angry? Well, they needs to grow up for a change, Elijah Jones, 47, a resident of Detroit told CBS news. Americas known population is approximately 304 million compared to the UKs of 60 million people, making a viable NHS style healthcare system an immense burden on Americas already bankrupted taxpayers. Even with the UKs relatively low population there are serious limitations to treatment and there are cost thresholds for each persons life. Britains National Institute for Clinical Evidence (NICE), which evaluates treatments in terms of the average increase in life expectancy states that if the cost of prolonging someones life for a year exceeds more than 30,000, then the NHS will not pay for that treatment. The NHS thus DOES decide who lives or dies in the UK through a death panel and if the Americans were to get their own healthcare system like Britains NHS they would have to incorporate a similar system in the United States. If one looks at the British system, the NHS is on its knees with massive black holes in its huge budget through mountainous inefficiency and waste which severely puts limitations on the quality of treatment for every individual in the UK. The lack of funding under Labour, as well as the vast increase in the UKs population due to unfettered immigration has left the NHS moribund and near death. UK waiting lists for the NHS are huge and most wait for treatment for many years only to die before anything is done for them, that is, unless you are a high ranking Labour politician or part of the hierarchy like a scientist or social technician. Here in the UK, anyone can be treated by the NHS, thats why half of the third world is daily trying to come across the Channel to these islands. Many succeed and are granted leave to remain, thus increasing the burden on society. Britains binge and stab culture is also a huge burden on the already overloaded system. Every day the NHS is inundated with millions of patients who want costly treatments costing billions per annum. The NHS is just a huge blackhole for taxpayers money to pay for everyones healthcare. So why cant America do the same thing? You will see the benefits for your populations, Britains Health Minister, Burnham Haemorrhoid MP told a CNN news program about healthcare on Monday. If you get cancer in Englands NHS system you are consigned to mediocre treatment and a quick death, at least in America there is a good level of service for cancer treatments and the survival rates are much improved than the UK. This may all change of course, if Obama embraces the British system. Once again, president Barack Obama has opened up a huge festering sore on American society. The US is a fractured nation where inequality is so engrained that it may take an internal war to solve. Midwest Americans are now joining paramilitary and militia groups so fast that the authorities cannot keep track of them, all it would take is a certain spark to go off and America would be turned into a tinderbox of guns, psychos and pent up anger that has been at boiling point for quite some time now. As Senator Arlen Specter said on Monday: There is more anger in America today than at any time I can remember. FOCUS ON DEFENSE CAPABILITY DEVELOPMENT IN SOUTHEAST ASIA AND OCEANIA WASHINGTON DC - USA - After the massive landmark Obamacare bill going through last weekend, president Obama now wants to give every person in America free food as well as free health care. If Health Care is a basic human right, what about food? says the slogan for the new Obama Free Food For All campaign Free Burritos for everyone is our next Dem deal. Not one person shall go hungry in America. You want a steak? You got one. You want a cheesecake? You got two. This is going to revolutionise food in America forever, Barack Obama told Congress yesterday. The cost of Obamas upcoming Free Food For All bill is estimated to be about 134 trillion dollars per annum and these are of course conservative estimates. Fat people across America, (98% of the population), rejoiced with joy in restaurants and supermarkets across the country after the announcement was made. Sharonda Latrina, a 322 lbs. Obama supporter from Chicago said this about the new Obama Free Food bill: Hawt diggedy dayum, I just told my whole neighborhood about this new Free Food bill. We just went got twenty buckets of fried chicken. Free food for life and free health care for life? I love Obama, he be the bomb. Obamas Free Food For All campaign has taken America by storm, theres only one slight problem there is no money left in the US budget to pay for it, but shhh dont tell the people or Obama that. Now when you fly through an American airport, we can also give you prostate check for men and also bowel cancer checks. Women will get all cavities checked. This is also part of the new Obama Health Care initiative as well as security for a trouble free flight, Roger Sanchez, TSA operations director, at Newark airport told CNN. The TSA which has promoted the new positive medical check story to all media channels, will make sure the new rectal checks will be a key factor with flying Americans when it comes to Thanksgiving. TSA One Stop Shop Im flying from New York to Phoenix this Thanksgiving, so when I get my rectal check, at least Ill be safe in the knowledge that I know whats going on down there plus I wont have to fork over seventy five bucks for my doctor to do the same thing, Gerry Harkinson, 65, told CBS news. We see things here in the airport that even the most intimate doctors probe will scant see, so people should be happy that theyre getting checked in their butt holes, a TSA official said on Monday before sticking his arm half way up an elderly gentlemans bottom. A passenger flying from Newark to Wisconsin said: I just got my bunghole checked and its ok thank god. Now when I go to Thanksgiving and stuff my turkey, Ill know how that thing feels. BILBAO - Spain - They've been sliced, diced and brutally had their skins peeled for too long, but now cucumbers are fighting back on the human population. These are killer cucumbers. We cannot be complacent here. All it takes is a cucumber in a sandwich or a salad and youre dead. Theyve got us on the run, an EU food standards official told Bild newspaper in Germany. Many have now succumbed to the killer cucumbers and are either still in hospital seriously ill or even worse dead. I swear I heard one of the cucumbers I bought from the supermarket the other day sniggering as I took it out of the bag. Luckily I only ate a few slices of the sucker before I read a news story about all the people getting killed by cucumbers, Helen Vorgens, a resident of Hamburg, Germany, where over 40 people have died from eating killer cucumbers. EU officials are now warning citizens about tomatoes. Killer cucumbers are evil, but if you add a killer tomato into the mix, you get one fucked up salad, Josef Rasslinger, the EUs food minister told Reuters. PARIS - France - Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, has been called a 'faulty implant' by many in Europe and Britain, thus warranting an immediate removal. He is not only a danger to France but himself. He looks a bit like a tit, acts like one, and is toxic to the world of politics. I say we take this faulty impudent little implant out and dump it in the nearest sewer, where it belongs, Jean Beano, a respected French politician told Le Monde newspaper. Monsieur Leblanc, president of the French Association of Implants, Tits and Politicians, told BBC Radio 4s The World At Two: Even with a very low popularity rating, he is an implant that would have to definitely be removed. If you believe a device is faulty, I think this would be true in your car or any other object that you buy, you would want to have that replaced immediately as well. Certainly, Sarkozy, is at a very much higher toxicity rate than we would consider acceptable. Good implants put in by reputable nations really have an extraordinarily low failure rate so this is quite out of the ordinary. In other words, we need to get rid of this fucker tout suite, if you know what I mean, Harry. The question is, which surgeon will step up to the plate to remove this faulty implant? We happy! Not only do we get amnesty as illegal aliens but we also get healthcare guaranteed. We got whole villages waiting to come over. Thank you Obama. We finally get the healthcare the gringos get, Manuel Escondo, 54, a Mexican man who arrived illegally over the border crossing in Arizona yesterday, told Fox news. All over South America, from Mexico to Peru, some of the poorest people in the world have been given a lifeline. Healthcare is something that most South Americans have never had, and now with a much publicised amnesty on illegal immigrants in the US, the influx of poor people looking for better lives in North America will increase by approximately 4500% per annum according to US Immigration statistical projections . Border patrol units have already seen a huge increase in people crossing over the border. We now have an open door policy here under Obama, and with the healthcare ruling, it is going to be hard to keep people out. Everyone and their uncle is going to want to come over. Look what happened in Britain. They have free healthcare for all, free housing for all and porous borders with no controls. Thats why half the Third World is over there in that tiny island right now tearing up the asshole of the UK. You try and get treatment in their crowded overrun hospitals now? They dont have the resources to cope as well as overworked staff and limited equipment. Were a big country you say! Yeah, but the US does not have unlimited resources either. Sooner or later were going to get full up too, Joel Esterhausen, a border guard in Arizona told a local radio station. GLOUCESTERSHIRE - England - Britain is slowly resembling the terrible 90s film Waterworld starring Kevin Costner, as the rain just keeps coming and coming. Were seeing more people developing gills on the side of their necks and webbed feet, Henry Fistleplath, a biologist who has been studying the British populations adaptation to the wet climate, revealed to the BBC yesterday Thousands of Britons are now sprouting gills and are more at home in a wet puddle than inside their hovels getting bladdered on cheap supermarket booze. I used to get my dole money on the Tuesday, then straight down Aldi for some cartons of cheap wine but now I go to the High Street and sit in one of those massive puddles and swish around there. I cant control meself (sic), Ian McCorrie, 27, an unemployed man from Grimsby who has amazingly sprouted some gills and webbed feet, revealed to Newsnight. The gills allow the former humans to breathe under water but because they still have noses they can still breathe above water as well. If you want to swim to the shops its OK, then once youre done you get out of the water and flush your gills out and you can be above dry land then, another gilled Briton, Mary Ruskens, 43, told the Sun newspaper. It has been raining constantly in the British Isles since September 2012 and there does not appear to be any sign of the rain stopping the Met office has said. WASHINGTON D.C. - USA - A voodoo priest from deepest Africa has been especially flown in to America's capital city to fix the troubled Obamacare website. Forget about Java or PHP, the new Obamacare website fixer is using chickens and a special powder that is guaranteed to make the website run correctly. President Obama uses this guy a lot. Like he used him for the stock market, and the two election wins. We got a plastic sheet in the oval office spread out so the blood dont stain the carpet. Obama is at a loss on how this damn website is gonna get fixed. We tried the Google tech boys but theyre too busy on those barges eating profiteroles in the hospitality lounges or sitting on fancy coloured weird shaped sofas to care about Obamacare, White House spokesman, Harvey Jenkem, told ABC news. Millions of Americans have been trying to log onto the site to get some much needed Obamacare for over two months, and hopefully the voodoo priest will call on the spirits to open the doors soon. Shit, its gonna take more than magic to get me some health care. All the doctors in my area have left the profession or retired. I now have to travel 500 miles to get some f*ckin treatment at an increased cost of over 300%, a disgruntled retired fire man told local CBS news stations in Delaware. Thousands of Obama zombies across the nation, on hearing about the wonderful Obamacare news, started chanting Obamas name and walking the streets with their hands outstretched, nothing new about that of course. You too could live in a city where the roads are filled with filth and rubbish, where the overcrowded traffic jammed violent grey CCTV nightmare snuffs the very life out of its suffering inhabitants. A city where the residents are taxed to death to exist in virtual prisons and slums not worthy of a Krakow ghetto in 1941. A city where everything is so overpriced that the only people left able to afford its nasty amenities are the awful, crass and vulgar Russian gangsters and pimps who seem to have colonised vast swathes of Kensington and Chelsea. The authoritarian government also likes to watch everything in London with the vast network of CCTV cameras and traffic cams that span the city. Once you step outside of your house, every citizen is filmed on average over 300 times daily. The rise in CCTV monitoring of course has not dented the huge increase in violent crime in the capital with daily stabbings and shootings. CCTV is simply there to monitor it cannot solve crimes committed by hoodies or stop violence after the act. If youre not into getting your face battered in by a gang of hoodies on a crowded underground train that stinks of tramps piss on a Tuesday morning, dont fu**ing come here then, says Britains Culture and Tourism Secretary John Blunkett Smith. Red Ken Ever since the staunch Stalinist Ken Livingstone became London Mayor he has made London a horrible, violent, wasteful, overcrowded, smelly, overpriced nightmare of a city. A toilet of dirt paid for by sheeple taxpayers with no say or rights who simply obey their nasty masters without question or reason. Red Ken is also well known for creating the congestion zone where citizens willingly pay eight pounds per day to sit in a traffic jam in central London. The congestion scheme has worked for the government by increasing revenue for its state coffers but has not reduced congestion in London and has merely displaced the problem elsewhere. Ken Livingstones personal budget runs into hundreds of thousands of pounds per annum all spent mainly on taxis and expensive restaurants for him and his staff. He recently completed an all expenses paid trip to China which cost the taxpayer 450,000 for him and his huge entourage. The reason for the trip was never disclosed, but Ken sure did enjoy the hospitality very much thank you. An American tourist from New York recounts his harrowing trip to London last November. I felt very unsafe walking in London, especially after dark when the roaming gangs come out. There are no police in the streets. Tourism has fallen severely in London due to the many factors that deter people from spending their cash in the rude, violent, expensive sewer that is London. Heavy taxation of the plebiscite as espoused by the Gordon Brown regime of hard-labour and misery seems to suit Londoners very well and they take to large tax increases like ducks to water. The English, especially Londoners, have an affinity for paying huge taxes without question. Every year we increase taxes and decrease services and theyre still smiling. You can actually walk up to an English man and squeeze out a turd onto his plate and he will thank you for it they are that willing to please authority. Weve been getting away with murder in this country for years and no one is saying a single word. Gordons going to raise taxes on everything next month and increase fuel duty by 2p again. This means fuel tax is a whopping 84% of the fuel price per litre. You cant do this anywhere else in the world and get away with it. The Labour peer who the Daily Squib interviewed in one of the numerous Parliamentary watering holes chortled into his Champagne glass and let out an almighty guffaw. Never has a Government apart from Stalinist Russia had so much control over the cowering pliant population. The cesspool that is London is a stinking sewer being abandoned by the money men and non-doms. They who brought the wealth to London are now scuttling the ship they kept above the waves. Thanks to Gordon Brown and his tax hungry ways he has scared away the money. Cool Brittania? Not anymore. What was left of Cool Britain is a morose shadow of its former self. The Labour government has ruined the capital and the nation as a whole. Under the spin of the Blairite mirage and the Stalin Bean tax monster Brown it has lost its lustre. You can polish a turd as much as you want but at the end of the day its still a turd. Protected: Ku Klux Klan Endorses Obama KENTUCKY - USA - Imperial Wizard, Ronald Edwards has stated that, "anything is better than Hillary Clinton." CENSORED BY GOOGLE - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Squib#Censorship WASHINGTON DC - USA - The sixteenth president of the United States of America, Abraham Lincoln has been discovered to have had a black father according to historians and scientists working for the Institute of Historical Science which is linked to Harvard university. Records dating to February 12, 1809 officially remark that Abraham Lincolns parents were Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, however, there has been a new discovery which has put a new slant on the issue of parentage. Abraham Lincolns mother was having an affair with a black plantation worker and new DNA evidence suggests that she somehow tricked her husband into believing that Abraham was the couples child. Secret love letters unearthed in 2003 reveal that Lincolns mother was conducting a clandestine affair with a slave named Iemis from a Kentucky plantation. We managed to attain DNA evidence from a lock of Abraham Lincolns hair which proves that he had a very strong African genetic link. His chromosome makeup is very specific to West African DNA patterns and this suggests that Abrahams real father was indeed of African origin, Dr. Alan Holdsworth, who is the chief Anthropologist on this project told National Geographic magazine. The Obama campaign team, on hearing of the wonderful news have already started production of a short film to be aired on all networks next week. Senator McCains campaign team are of course trying to refute the evidence collated by the scientific researchers as false and have demanded the team re-do the DNA analysis of Abraham Lincolns hair. Now we know why he was so vehemently opposed to slavery. Lincolns father was a slave. His mother, a poor white farmers wife had slept with a black slave and somehow concealed this fact from her husband. Its almost like something you would see on Jerry Springer or Maury, a reporter from the Fox News Network said. With the prospect of another half black president on the way, America must come to terms with its past before it embraces its future. LEBANON Charles E. Schmidt, American Legion national commander, will hold a veterans awareness walk that starts at 9 a.m. Sunday at American Legion Post 51, 480 S. Main St. The one-mile walk costs $12, and participants receive a T-shirt. Proceeds will go to an American Legion temporary financial assistance program and for a service officers training program. Registration for the walk will be held from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. at Post 51. These walks have become a regular event for Schmidt as he travels to different states visiting American Legion departments and advocating for veterans and veterans programs. Schmidt is the first national commander in the American Legion Department of Oregons 98-year history. The Hines resident was the state commander from 2004 to 2005 and belongs to Post 63 in Burns. Schmidt is a retired Air force officer who served in Vietnam. The American Legion has more than 2.2 million members, including 18,500 in Oregon, and it is the nations largest wartime veterans service organization. HONOLULU - Hawaii - Barack Obama is being groomed to be the first black President of the United States of America. He is being instated to take the fall for George W Bush's disastrous tenure as President. American Election Race Special Barack Obama is set to be the first black (African American) President of the United States of America and fall guy for the many years of destruction committed by George W Bush and his cronies on the US Constitution, economy, US world standing and internal affairs. George W Bush has ruined America and his perpetual wars of terror on the rest of the world have caused irreparable damage that may never be fixed thats why were bringing in the boy to take the fall, a representative from the Pentagon told Fox News on Friday. The American people who have large daily doses of intense fear pumped into their homes constantly via the Fox News Network of Terror and Propaganda are all backing Obama 110%. House Ni**er Former Secretary of State, House Ni**er and Uncle T*m, Colin Powell was on hand to support Obama last week with a public endorsement. Powell was mostly noted for his role in being told to lie by his keepers to the UN about Saddams WMD program which was supposedly capable of attacking the western world in 15 minutes. Anacondi Condoleeza Rice is another prime example of a masters puppet. Her holders have given her leave to buy expensive shoes and have meetings to discuss further meetings for more meetings where she can act like she knows shit like her massa. Shaquanda Wendell, a 39 year old housewife from Philadelphia, makes a valid point about how she views the Secretary of State. Someone needs to find Condi a man or something, she be going round and causing the death of millions of people in the world because she dont have a man and is angry and shit. There must be a man somewhere that can please her and stop her wanting to destroy the planet. Is there a man out there who can be with Condi so we can all live in peace? What Shaquanda probably does not realise is that no man can take the place of what Ms Rice really wants. Taking the Fall If we need someone to take the fall because of our illicit profiteering, greed, lies, illegal unconstitutional practices, torture and corruption we put one of them in charge for awhile. Do you even think for one second we would ever let a black become president in a normal climate, hell no! This guy is going to get everything thrown at him, John Thompson, a senior GOP representative, was quoted as saying from the Wyoming Republican caucuses this week. John McCains campaign office has already released details of their impending loss, the Republicans want Obama to win because they know he has no chance of cleaning up the George W Bush mess. The predominantly white Republicans will then simply blame the black man for a poor job done, something they have been doing for many years. When George W Bush leaves office, he will be hailed a hero by the American people and Republican guard. Obama will then be placed into office to take the can for dubyas horrific mistakes. We dont want any part of this mess and we will allow the black guy to take the heat and be back for the 2012 election with Sarah Palin. That is if America is still around by then, Mr Thompson added. Republicans do not want the post-Bush presidency. They know what George W Bush has done, they know that the damage will take many years to recover from. Bush Legacy What kind of a situation would fall guy Barack Obama inherit? A $28.8 TRILLION price tag for the disastrous Iraq/Afghanistan imbroglio with no end in sight, a $9.7 TRILLION national debt, increasing unemployment, a sub-prime mortgage fiasco that has destabilised the worlds economy, a damaged US worldwide standing, a weak currency, perpetual US made wars with no exit strategies, monstrous trade deficit of $740 TRILLION and an infrastructure buckling under the strain of incompetence and waste, 60,000 US soldiers injured and over 5,000 reported deaths in Iraq alone, energy shortages, a destabilised Middle East with millions of innocent civilian deaths and displaced peoples, US foreign policy that has brought the world to the brink of WW III. What better scapegoat to complement these elements of imminent destruction? Enter Barack Obama. It is quite ironic that the people who came up with Britains welfare state were the ones who destroyed it. During thirteen long years of Labour government they opened the doors to anyone who wanted to come into Britain. Naturally the low quality of immigrants that did come put a massive strain on the nations welfare state. The NHS suffered the most, with A&E closures, no beds and overworked staff, as well as lack of essential medicines due to the constant abuse of the system. The schools were forced to shut down as they were inundated with an overcapacity problem and not enough funding to keep them going. The Benefits system was so severely abused by mass immigration and the feckless that it was forced to shut down as well. What would William Beveridge, the father of Britains post-war welfare state, or Clement Attlee have said if they could see the state of the system they engineered? The overflowing hospitals and fundless schools were testament to an unfettered immigration policy that had created an altogether intolerable situation on the tiny island they used to call Britain and their eventual shut down never came as a surprise. It was simply not feasible that the incessant immigration tidal wave could continue, but the nefarious EU policy of no borders had dealt a vast blow to the homogeneity of the United Kingdom, where its culture had been fractured to the point of no return. There was no point in going to a university in Britain because there were simply no jobs for graduates anymore. One only had to see the recent graduates stacking shelves in Morrisons or in the unemployment offices to understand the full gravity of the debacle. In addition, the few taxpayers that were left in the bloated socialist wasteland were being fleeced so heavily that there was no point in working anymore or owning a business. What was the point when so much was taken away from them? When the riots came, there was nowhere to run, people had just had enough. It was an inevitable occurrence, possibly engineered by the Fabians or some dark Whitehall unit, but when you pile people onto people like rats, they eventually start biting. There was no surprise to the mass disenchantment, but a simple release, similar to breathing out. Britain had been poisoned from the tainted EU and Labour chalice and as the riots of discontent billowed out of the vomitous hell we had had foisted upon us, there was a fleeting glance back to the thirteen years of Labour government that led to the precipitous downfall of what was once Britain. LONDON - England - According to humourless feminazis and their unbridled levels of politically correct outrage on social media, all male scientists should now be sacked from their professions. Spokesman for the Feminazi twitter outrage group, Andrea Mann, called for all male scientists to be bullied out of their jobs for having penises and pairs of testicles on Friday via twitter. On Sunday, there were further tweets of outrage when it was found that one male professor at Bristol University opened the door for a female colleague. The professor was summarily sacked from his post and labelled a sexist chauvinist pig. With cases like that of Professor Tim Hunt and Dr Matt Taylor, the science world is reeling under the pressures of Feminazism. Soon there will not be any scientists left. Not after the incessant bullying by non-entities on twatter. If it wasnt for male scientists many of these women would not be able to exist, as men are the ones who pretty much made all the scientific discoveries in the history of mankind, another professor at UCL said before being sacked from his job. Professor Richard Dawkins has been keeping a low profile during the current climate. LONDON - England - The Samaritans have been working overtime for the last few days after Blackberry mobile phones were disconnected from the internet and suicide attempts amongst the world's populations increased rapidly. People are dying out there. Blackberry has to do something and do something quick. I ve seen fifteen Blackberry users jump from tower blocks today alone, and its barely 9.30 am, Jasper Lebovic, a waiter in Fenchurch street, London, told the Evening Standard. The crippled smartphones are now leaving a wake of destruction behind them not only in the UK but globally as well. We have noticed a massive jump in the number of Blackberry suicides, forgive the pun, an emergency worker in New York told local news stations. One Blackberry user who was eventually talked down from jumping off a downtown tower in Los Angeles said: I was desperate. I couldnt connect to Twitter or Facebook for a whole half hour. I was just about to jump when the service was temporarily restored. Thats when the policeman grabbed me and brought me down from the ledge. In a statement, RIM, which makes BlackBerry devices, said: BlackBerry subscribers need to calm the f*ck down, its only the internet. You can make voice calls or even better write a letter. How about talking to someone face to face you stupid tech obsessed dumbf*cks. We are experiencing intermittent service delays this morning so calm the f*ck down already. The firm faced growing calls for compensation from users who were still alive. All over the world, European, Middle Eastern and African BlackBerry owners have now endured three working days without mobile internet access, including email and instant messaging. BOSTON - USA - Scientists and biologists at MIT have been researching the phenomenon for the past eight years and have been astounded by their findings. Speaking at a recent lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Professor Edelweiss Applebaum, said: Birds are getting too lazy to fly, some dont even bother laying eggs anymore. Thats why there have been incidents of birds simply falling out of the sky, they get too lazy and forget to flap. This is a biological disaster and our research still has to find out why birds are getting all lazy. Thousands of blackbirds fell out of the sky on New Years Eve in 2010 causing mayhem on the Arkansas streets. All over the world there have been similar multiple bird deaths and now that scientists have pinpointed the problem they need to find ways to prevent birds from getting bored and lazy. If we attach big TV screens to balloons and float them in increments of 100 feet all the way up to high altitude, the birds will have something to watch when theyre flying around. This way, they would be engaged and not bored out of their frickin minds. Just think about it, say you have to migrate to the Southern horn of Africa every year from Europe. That is a boring flight, there are no in-flight movies for these guys, and thats a 6,000 mile trip one way. We need to also put public service announcements on the films so the birds remember to flap their wings. I know it can be done. We have already tested the balloons out on numerous species of bird and they definitely seem more flighty. The only barrier for the distribution of the bird balloon screens is the inhibitive cost. To implement the whole project worldwide would cost $560 billion and a yearly maintenance cost of $34 billion. There are also fears that airplanes and other air traffic could accidentally crash into the bird balloons, but a system of sophisticated beacons installed on each system could warn pilots within 3 km of each balloon. President Obama and Angela Merkel are set to discuss the implementation of the project next month at a special consortium for world wildlife preservation in Detroit, Michigan. Twitter once used to be the voice of freedom, promoting free speech in countries where there was very little. Sadly, things have changed since Twitters phenomenal success, and they have announced that they will report and censor people who tweet against oppressive regimes to the relevant authorities. If you live in places like China, Tibet, Syria, Egypt, Burma or Iran, where torture and imprisonment for speaking out is rife, well youre shit outta luck. We will happily shop you to the torturers of that regime so that we can increase our revenue within that domain. China is just an example of this, and even though it is a brutal, repressive regime that tortures and murders its citizens simply for speaking, we will not hesitate in reporting twitter users because it is such a huge market for us. You will probably get woken up one night with a truncheon over the head and a black sack being put over you before being thrown into the back of an unmarked van. Happy twittering folks, this is the meaning of social networking, where your every thought is indexed, analysed and then acted on. You just cant stop doing it though, can you? Well, we have files on all of you now, and theres nothing you can do about it, Joel Simons, chief operations director for Twitter said on Friday. Social Surveillance Within the last ten years, social networking sites have been presented to the public as a way to communicate with each other, but the truth is that these sites are utilised by intelligence agencies all over the world to collate valuable data about the populations and analyse human herd mentality on a scale never before seen. Social networking is a great way of gathering information about people that we never had access to before. We used to have to try very hard to get people to reveal some of this information about themselves in the past, but now that everyone is so addicted to social networking, there are not enough people to analyse this treasure trove of information. Remember also that once anyone does something on the internet it is a permanent imprint, it is never erased, therefore your every thought and every word is filed. In the future we will be able to plan your life for you, and predict what you are going to do next simply by looking at your profile. We are also able to utilise social networking as an excellent marketing tool for advertisers, who are sold your information from all of these sites. All in all, social networking is the greatest thing the internet has created for the intelligence communities across the world. Humans can be controlled very easily, and threats to the controllers can be perceived well before the fact, simply by analysing the feeds coming through, an intelligence analyst for an unnamed agency within the US government disclosed. Social networking sites like Facebook, give page access to certain government agencies at any point and willingly sell users data to advertising agencies and marketeers. This is just a part of the new goldfish system of containment that these companies have developed and will ensure that in the future, even in so-called free societies in the West, there may be a point where you might be getting a knock on your door and not some poor Tibetan dissident cowering under their bed. The best policy is not to use social networking sites. There is a way out of this. You dont have to be tricked into this horrific entrapment of humanity. Go speak to people face to face, write private letters, meet people in real life. We need to go back to humanity and not forward like lemmings into surveillance death as are half the dumbed-down populations, Gerald Humbold, professor of philosophy at Warwick University, told the Telegraph. I just pulled myself away from watching X Factor and American Idol for five minutes to make a statement about humanity and intelligence on my Facebook page, the scientist who formulated the new theory about humanitys decline in intelligence, revealed. Professor Humphrey Crabniggle, a geneticist at Stanford University in California, claims that humanity has been on a downward spiral for some time. Its like, you know the instructions you see on a carton of milk on how to open it, or the Britney Spears album I just listened to in the car or the dumbed down TV and news I watch. Stupid people can breed these days and they are encouraged to do so by modern governments and the media. Its great. In two and a half articles published in the journal Trends in Stupidity, the scientist lays out what might be called a defining theory in human stupidity. The central issue of Professor Crabniggles thinking is a simple idea: In the past, if you were stupid, you would die. Because you would get eaten or killed by something. Only clever people could breed and survive or not get eaten by sabre-toothed tigers or mobbed by some other tribe. These days though, stupid people are everywhere and can even breed and survive with impunity. In fact, the governments of today encourage stupidity and want people to be even more fucking stupid than they already are. As Crabniggle explains in the journal: A hunter-gatherer who was not clever enough to figure out anything about food or shelter would die off, whereas a modern person is given rewards for being a stupid fucking moron, they get rewarded with food stamps and benefits or whatever they want from the governments of today. Not only that, their children are also encouraged to be stupid too. I mean, which modern government would want to have a clever population? Thats really dangerous, besides most people in government are even stupider than the regular population. Professor Crabniggle however ends on a positive note: Stupid people are actually good for humanity because if people were clever, they might realise that things arent so good and they might try and make things better, or even try to topple governments. So keep surfing your Facebook and watching reality shows and living your stupid lives. Drink up your fucking Kool-Aid, everything is OK, its great to be stupid. TEHRAN - Iran - First it was North Korea and now the Iranians are test firing their missiles. Is this a growing trend in test firing missiles? Test firing missiles is the latest fad amongst nut job regimes. I guess its a way of showing that they can fire off a piece of junk a few metres into the sky. Really, theres nothing to see here folks, Dean Albright, a Pentagon official revealed today. Last week the North Koreans test fired their missiles and this week its the Iranians, and the week after that it could be Papua New Guinea. Why dont they just fire those damn things off anyway? Im sick of test firing, lets have some real action, an avid news watcher told the evening news last night. VIRGINIA - USA - A new central processing directive on all email companies has been okayed by the U.S. government responsible for all internet global email communication to be made public. Dan Ainsley, controller for email systems running through the global central processing unit has been given the task of publishing every private email sent by users since the year 2000. This is a great moment in public private transparency and has been speeded up thankfully by the NSA scandal a few months ago. We basically have all the information from email users anyway so it is in the public interest that their private emails are published, Mr Ainsley told a public records hearing yesterday. All internet companies have been directed to comply with the new directive and are keen to go ahead with the project, purely on the basis that advertising revenue will explode when the emails are made public. President Obama called me up yesterday and he congratulated me on the new project. He said it is in the best interests that all privacy is removed from individuals across the globe and will bring humanity together once and for all, Ainsley added. The private to public switch will happen in August 2014, and will encompass all emails up to the year 2000. Each persons name and identity will be marked on the emails even if they changed internet companies during the period up to present. The massive database, hosted at NSA headquarters will be fully searchable for anyone in the world. This is a great idea. I lost some of my emails from 2006 so I can locate them now. Wow, why didnt anyone think about this before? Skylar Rambone, 32, an office worker from New Jersey told ABC news. SEATTLE - USA - The Microsoft Bing search engine had a little trouble today and was down for maintenance for almost five hours. Bing engineers were up in Bing wings today when the 12 people on the internet who use the search engine all searched for the same thing at once. Our servers nearly melted, Roger Samwitz, one of the Bing engineers said. Microsoft Bing has proved popular with internet searchers and at one time even had 23 users, but that quickly died off because its shit. Next Microsoft want to come out with a new search engine called Ding, and hope to attract more than 40 users. Cant wait for that one, a nonchalant internet geek said from a coffee shop in New York city before downing another Frappucino Latte quadruple Mocha Espresso. Aug. 18, 1924 April 5, 2017 Robert (Bob) Gribble Ringo, a Corvallis community leader and attorney for more than six decades, passed peacefully at his residence the morning of Wednesday, April 5. The memorial service will be held at 10:00 a.m. on Monday, April 10 at the Episcopal Church of the Good Samaritan, 333 NW 35th Street in Corvallis. The burial will be held the following day in Milton-Freewater, Oregon, where his wife Kathryn is buried along with their son, Robert Irvin Ringo. Remembrances may be made to one of Roberts favorite causes, free mental health care for area veterans provided by Good Samaritan Hospital Foundation, with Samaritan Veterans Outreach in the checks memo or online at http://samhealth.org/GSHF. He is survived by four children: Molly, Charlie, Julie, and Mary Ellen. His son, Robert Irvin, preceded him in death in 2011. His family and eight grandchildren were among the great joys of his life. He was blessed with two happy marriages. His first marriage to Kathryn Reese provided thirty-seven years of joy until her death from cancer in 1989; his second marriage to Jane Crider Ringo in 1993 provided a wonderful second chapter to his life until she passed in 2013. Robert liked to call himself Benton County Bob, reflecting his love of community and the area he called home for more than six decades. He was born August 18, 1924 in Spokane, Washington, the son of Floyd Virgil Ringo and Claire Aletha Williams Ringo, joining his beloved sister Floydine. He moved to Portland as a young child with his mother and sister. Like many raised during the Depression, his childhood was clouded by poverty and instability, instilling a lifelong compassion for those struggling financially. In high school, he was small but mighty running in cross country and being a yell leader. He reached out to the Portland Hunt Club, offering to work at the stable in exchange for learning how to ride. He quickly found a second home, becoming an accomplished rider with a lifetime love of horses. He spent his 16th summer as an apprentice jockey at Seattles Long Acres. Robert was 17 at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack; he finished school and worked in the shipyards until his 18th birthday and could then serve. He enlisted in the Army Air Corps and excelled there. He was selected for Navigator/Bombardier school and was named a Commissioned Flight Officer. Upon the formation of his flight crew (some of his lifes most important relationships), Robert was first stationed in Sardinia as a bombardier in the 95th Bomb Squadron, 17th Bomb Group. When named Veteran of the Year in 2010, the Albany Democrat-Herald ran a feature article with a summary of his World War II experiences: He flew his plane, a type called the "Widow Maker," in bombing missions over Italy and Germany and supported the invasion of southern France. Once Ringo had flown 60 missions, he returned to the United States to become a bombardier and navigational school instructor. Of his service Ringo says, "I was just doing my duty like thousands of other kids. We got shot up and planes in our formation got shot down. Thousands didn't get to come home." For his contributions, Ringo received the Air Medal with 13 oak leaf clusters, the Croix de Guerre avec palme, and the Air Force Commendation Medal. He continued to serve with the Air Force Reserves, retiring as a lieutenant colonel. After the war, he enrolled at the University of Oregon. He became an active member of the Sigma Chi fraternity and graduated with a degree in political science. He began law school at the University of Oregon, but transferred to Portland to help his mother. He graduated from Northwestern School of Law, now Lewis & Clark. In 1951, he launched his law career in Corvallis, accepting a part-time position as Deputy Assistant Attorney and opening his own law practice at the same time. Soon after, he met Kathryn Reese. Not caring that she was dating his friend, he decided that she was the girl for him. They were married the next spring, May 1953. The next several years were devoted to family, building a law practice, and becoming an active member of the community. Contributing back to the Corvallis community was one of his most important values and favorite passions. An active Shriner, he chaired the Marys Peak Trek, which brought great joy to so many and important funds for disabled children. He was also an active Mason, Elk, and member of Kiwanis. Robert chaired the Corvallis school board and also served the Downtown Corvallis Commission, the Good Samaritan church vestry, the Air Force Reserves, the Pacific Trail Council of Boy Scouts, and the board for Red Cross, to name a few. Actively supporting Good Samaritan Hospital became one of his most cherished causes. He led both the governing and foundation boards, with a passionate belief in the importance of access to high-quality health care. One of his proudest achievements was helping to provide free mental health care to area veterans. Professionally, he became renowned for his outstanding trial lawyer skills. The recipient of many honors, including Oregon Trial Lawyer of the Year, he served as president of the Oregon Trial Lawyers Association, was on the Oregon State Board of Bar Governors, and served nationally for the American Board of Trial Advocates. He was also proud to have played an instrumental role in resolving the Rajneesh cult voter registration fraud conflict in the early 1980s, for which Secretary of State Norma Paulus awarded him the Wasco County Peace Prize. He and his partner Jim Walton founded their law firm together in 1951. Sixty-six years later, it remains an enormous source of pride in its current configuration of Ringo, Stuber, Ensor, Hadlock & Smith PC. He had nothing but the highest of respect for his colleagues, along with enormous affection and admiration for his longtime assistant, Wynona Tilton. His devotion to family was always a foremost priority. Perhaps a reflection on his own difficult childhood, he enthusiastically undertook camping trips, ski vacations, evening sailing, crab-catching, and cleaning horse stalls. Every day, he greeted life with gusto and a sense of responsibility to make the most of the time he had. FLORIDA - USA - Jesus Christ has been photographed by the Mars rover for the first time, and all over the world, Christians have been celebrating. I knew it was true when I saw the Mars Rover Curiosity photos relayed across NASAs screens. You know what I said, I said Je-e-esus H Christ Dang I just couldnt help myself, there he was right in front of the whole world, Reverend Bilko McMorgan for the South Texas Episcopacopapal Baptist Exultation Church of the Latter Day Mormons told CBS news. Followers in Romes Vatican City all lit candles at the same time and Pope Francis lined up twenty convicts to kiss and wash their feet. Some were however slightly disappointed, as they assumed Jesus would come back to earth and not some desolate red rock in the middle of nowhere. When he comes back to earth then Ill be happy in Rapture. What the hell is Jesus thinking? Maybe he gone and done a mistake or something, Al Hertz, a window cleaner from Dumpville, Massachusetts told local stations. Even though with anti-EU parties having some increases in the EU elections, there is still no change to the central agenda of the centrist EU parties which will carry on moving forward with their plans for complete integration of all the peasantry. The EU hierarchy, who are not elected, are even more stalwart about the EU project which has to be completed soon. We will abolish nationalism, we will abolish individualism, we will eventually abolish the ownership of private property, we will abolish the family unit, we will abolish the concept of male and female, and we will abolish elections. You, as a peasant, if you survive the next twenty years, will be chipped. Yes, your behaviour will be controlled via central command within an EU hive mind processor. There will be no physical currency, only digital. Your implants will determine whether you can buy food, shop and heat the micro home in which you have been allocated. Any form of dissent by you will be punishable first by your digital money being stopped, then you will be ousted from your home. If your behaviour persists we will simply delete you from existence. You may even end up as eco food for the masses, an unelected EU higher echelon controller revealed today after the insignificant euro poll results were announced. Microchipping of the populations via brain implants is well on the way and will be introduced soon enough, anyone who has read a book by Googles chief engineer would know that. You will most probably be given a choice, whether to be chipped or not be chipped. Naturally the elite controllers will have specialist programming far more advanced than the peasant masses. Most people are not actually conscious now without chipping, so they will not really lose anything once we control their minds completely. People will also be able to benefit from advertising beamed straight into their central cortex with visual and auditory signals. This is the Mind Net, a proposed extension of the Inter Net, which to us is a very limited medium. With central brain chipping, it would be possible for a citizen to be working in a salt mine digging like a slave, but your brain will think you are on a magnificent holiday in the Bahamas, an EU professor of Neurology, Dr. Alfred Mengele, told Euronews. If one adds the increased robotization of the work force and highly advanced Artificial Intelligence, there is no actual need for the Useless Eaters. Why would the elite controllers bother with all that trouble? Feeding, clothing, keeping the useless eaters entertained so they do not revolt against their masters is becoming an increasingly difficult task for the controllers of the whole show. The good thing about the governing class is they like to publish their plans well in advance, naturally many who are asleep gloss over these announcements and carry on with their unconscious lives. How it will happen, is another matter, all it will take is a crisis of some sort, as is always the case? It is quite simple really, but in the eyes of the elite controllers, highly necessary. TENNESSEE - USA - President Barack Obama has been on the midterm election campaign trail again and is pleading for black voters to back his party once again. Unpopular president, Barack Hussein Obama, was appealing for black votes for the Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections today. Speaking in Tennessee in a ghetto, the president cut his speech short after two minutes when locals had an impromptu block party. Here is some of what Obama managed to say: All yall voted fo me lass tam. You know twice yall voted fo me, so Ima gon ax you three tam. Vote for Democrat three tam. Thank yall fo yall listening yall get back to dat block partay. Pass me that blunt ni**a, ooh wee! WASHINGTON D.C. - USA - The Scorched Earth Policy Institute, an NGO working out of the Capitol has some words for the current Democrat president of the United States. Former British PM, Gordon Brown does hold some similarities to current US president Barack Obama, although Gordon Brown was not technically voted into office because he shoehorned himself into the job after an internal coup against Labour PM, Tony Blair, there are similarities in their ruling style. Both Obama and Brown hold severe Marxist views and this political doctrine always falls foul of a nations economy, chiefly because socialism utilises other peoples money for an unlimited welfare dream, however, what happens when that money runs out? Obama and Brown knew their policies were unsustainable and yet they continued to push forward their policy of spend and forget. Its not only their preponderance to spend vast amounts of taxpayer cash on welfare, but the useless socialist projects and cronyistic spending that eat up the limited budget. Just as Brown became prime minister out of nowhere, so too did Obama become president, a man with literally no past, multiple social security records and a questionable birth certificate. They were seemingly implanted out of nowhere by invisible hands. Help always comes too late, there are of course those in government who see what is going on and want to stop it, but are powerless. In Britain, an emergency coalition government had to be formed after the disaster of the Brown years was ended thanks to an actual election. In America, the Democrats have lost power in Congress, leaving Obama flailing around in the dark with little or no power. His only option now is to adopt the scorched earth policy that Gordon Brown adopted nearly a year before he was ousted from power. Obama will probably use various techniques to bring America to a complete impasse, politically and economically, maybe even racially. If the Republicans win the general election in 2016, will they want the country back after Obamas vindictive scorched earth policy? America will need a miracle to survive the next two years, a nation split in two in more ways than one. One thing is for certain, just as Brown despised the people, Obama feels a deep resentment towards the American people and when that happens, there is always friction. If you pull the elastic band too far at once, eventually it has to snap back, and Americas midterm elections were a relative reaction to six years of Obama abuse. Scorched earth policies usually work as reactions to reins of power being pulled in, they have to be subtle but effective, and Obama, the enlightened one, will blame the un-enlightened for their own demise. The Republicans will not be able to stop president Obama in reaching his goal, it was too little too late, the cackling from the likes of OReilly and Beck fall on deaf ears. America could have had destruction the easy way or the hard way, looks like they voted for the latter. MONTANA - USA - When it comes to special operations and intelligence officers, even if retired, talking and bragging can be deadly, but that's not the case for one guy. Yeah, Im a special ops soldier, and I talk about stuff to everyone, including the press. I just cant stop talking, and talking, and talking. You want to know anything thats secret, Ill talk about it in bars, in Walmart, in restaurants, hell I love talking so much I talk to anyone who wants to hear? I hope they aint agents from another country or something huh? U.S. Navy Seal, Bill bin Tawkin, told all news outlets around the world yesterday. Its a good thing this Navy Seal is not behind lines in some North Korean bunker being interrogated about state secrets and key operational procedures. LONDON, England - Muslims across the world wage Jihad on Jihad with mass protests around the globe. Mohammed Aqbar is waging Jihad on Jihad itself. He does not carry placards denouncing every other religion under the sun anymore or wishing ill on all the world but instead carries a message of peace and love. This is Jihad on Jihad, a new movement that is taking the Muslim world by storm. From Mecca to London there have been protests against the violent militant Islamist doctrine of violence and ugly rhetoric. Instead, the Islamists are now embracing peace and love to all mankind. I used to spit on anything Western. Now I embrace them as my brothers and sisters. We are all humans and bleed the same blood. exclaims Jamia Muammar the spokesman and Imam of the Juala Mosque in Qatar. In Jerusalem, a city renowned for its deathly divide of Muslim and Jew, there have been celebrations in the streets and Rabbis have been seen walking with Imams hand in hand in the narrow streets. A feeling of goodwill to all men has been felt throughout the war torn city. Instead of beheadings in Iraq now there are blessings and foot baths to show love to foreigners. I welcome all foreigners who wish to do business in my country and instead of beheading you I anoint you with love and tea. says Sheikh Mahmoud bin Saleh al-Haidari Rafsanjani. Jihad on Jihad protest in London yesterday Meanwhile, in London where there used to be a big militant Islamic contingent there has been a massive movement towards Jihad on Jihad. Trafalgar Square and Whitethall were filled with over 50,000 Muslims waging Jihad on Jihad on Tuesday. We came here today to love all, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and all religions around the globe. said Mohammed Bakri Ali Qats leader of the Brigades for Love and Peace group to cheers and confetti throwing Muslims. BAGHDAD, Iraq, A bomb killed 153 people and wounded more than 600 in the Shiite city of Kufa today to the applause and cat-calls of US Diplomats. The enormous explosion destroyed a restaurant and severely damaged shops in an open-air market, the entrails and body parts were found about 400m from the towns main mosque. Kufa, a centre of Shia Muslim pilgrimage, is a large town 170km (110 miles) south of the capital, Baghdad. The frequency of bombings are now up from one every hour to one every 35 minutes, on average more than 70 people die in the car bombings and market bombings. Tuesdays attack was the latest in a series of attacks on predominantly Shia areas south of Baghdad apparently aimed at increasing sectarian tensions. The Squibs Mohammed Al Qat in Baghdad says Kufa has not previously suffered as much violence ( only 300 bombings per day ) as neighbouring Shia cities because it is a key powerbase of radical Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr and is therefore well defended by his powerful militia, the Mahdi Army. Mr Sadr, meanwhile, published a list of what he called rogue elements in the Mahdi Army, who he said were using violence to stir up sectarian strife. Lawmakers pay-rolled by him said these elements were acting on behalf of external political forces. Italy denies US accusations it is aiding Mahdi Army fighters. Pools of blood and spinal cords In Kufa, the suicide bomber drove his vehicle into the crowded market, pulling up outside a two-storey restaurant popular with Shia pilgrims, witnesses said. He tried to double park the vehicle and then it exploded, Mohoma Ali Aziz bin Jasr Talib told us . There were many bodies. The bombers are like buses, very regular and the Americans stay in their bases playing cards. The blast destroyed the restaurant, blowing out the windows, knocking over tables and scattering body parts. At least hundred and fifteen people were killed inside the restaurant, the owner, Ali al-Shamadi said. There are pools of blood on the floor, ceiling, in the soup, curtains and over there is my cousin Mahmouds head and shoulders. A crowd gathered at the scene of the attack afterwards and began chanting No, No, America! Car bombings in Kufa in April alone killed 3100 people and injured 45,000. Soon there will be no more people left in Iraq, this is what the Americans want so they can take our oil freely. Ali laments shaking his head woefully. Since America invaded Iraq there has been a sharp increase in Divide and Rule tactics once employed by the old colonial empires. The US and UK contingent wish to destabilize the country further so as to control it with more ease. In Baghdad, meanwhile, a Sunni group said that the security forces had ordered the closure of a Sunni mosque in the mainly Shia Bayaa district and detained the mosques four guards. An Iraqi military spokesman working for the CIA said troops had arrested four men who had been firing at citizens from the mosque. The four men were taken to the US base and never seen again. US Diplomats urge more in-fighting This is a win win situation for the US. says Diplomat Ron Johnson who is conducting talks with the warring Shia and Sunni leaders expects them to keep fighting for many years to come. We divided the country for a reason, before Iraq was one nation and one people but the US cannot have strength in a country that we occupy illegally. He puffs on his cigar and laughs heartily. SURREY - England - John Prescott has decided to return to Britain after a long absence of putting his foot in it. This time he is eager to piss more people off than he has already done previously. The nightmare foot in mouth of John Prescott returned to Britain last night, forcing Gordon Brown to cut short his holiday after only a few hours in Devon to chair a crisis meeting of Cobra, the emergency planning unit in Downing Street today. Mr Prescott who has cost the British taxpayer millions of pounds in expenses and luxuries arrived at Heathrow aboard a Texan Business mans private jet intent on sucking dry more taxpayer cash. Taxpayers were hit with a 500,000 bill from John Prescotts office for travel and hospitality last year, official figures reveal. They show that even after Mr Prescott was stripped of his departmental role as Deputy Prime Minister, the public were still paying hundreds of thousands of pounds towards his and his staffs globe-trotting and first class debauchery. Mr Prescott has also still not moved out of his grace-and-favour flat in Admiralty House in Whitehall. The travel, subsistence and hospitality bill for the Deputy Prime Ministers Office was 507,000 in 2006/07, with overall office costs being 2.5 million. This financial year, Mr Prescott embarked on a farewell tour of the world, embarking on a tour encompassing 23 countries all in first class and the final bill footed by the tax payer. A Treasury Minister commented: John has done nothing wrong, as long as he is a Minister for the Labour party he is allowed a blank cheque. It is better that this large sum of taxpayers money goes to luxury travel and first class food consumed by Prescott, there are enough funds to pay nurses and hospital staff, those workers should not be greedy now, a Labour official speaking to the Squib on condition of anonymity said yesterday. During his tenure as Deputy Prime Minister, Prescott did not contribute to anything apart from putting his foot in his mouth and spending huge sums of tax payers money on his corrupt indulgent gluttony and greed. LONDON - England - The whole population and every UK visitor will be branded with an iron, a senior judge has said. Lord Justice Sedley who proposed mass branding of the UK population with irons has been hailed a hero by the regime in charge. Ministers said branding citizens with irons helped tackle crime. The compulsory UK nationwide branding operation will increase processing centre activity from next month. A spokesman for Prime Minister Gordon Brown said to expand the branding operation would create huge logistical and bureaucratic issues and civil liberty concerns but these do not matter any more because the people of Britain comply to everything we want anyway without question. The Labour Government has been branding criminals for years already, and now will extend the branding operation onto the rest of the population. Branding Iron The process involves using a branding iron to make an impression on the forehead of every UK citizen. As well as numbers to identify the person there will be a barcode. The information on the barcode will relay to a central computer details of the citizen, their status, their sexuality, their race and also their DNA information. Sir Stephen Sedley Gordon Brown has stated that the database and branding iron operation is only a minor inconvenience to the everyday citizen and should be embraced without question. The Home Secretary outlined in a Parliamentary debate today on how the branding database shall be controlled. He described the system for branding people as a vital necessity in fighting the War on Terror. For the state and your security you will be branded on the forehead with a barcode. There is nothing to worry about and it is totally painless. Nick Clegg, Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said there was no earthly reason why someone who has committed no crime should be branded with an iron yet the government is branding thousands of innocent peoples foreheads every month. The right honourable gentleman Mr Clegg was then taken away to a Processing Centre and branded before disappearing, never to be seen again. The branding operation, which is 12 years old, grows by 30,000 citizens per month and the processing centres have been working over time. The UK Branding Processing Centre in Londons Kings Cross, the largest in the world, can be identified from space utilising satellite imagery showing the immense smoke clouds from the branding irons and smelting pots. Every citizen is now guilty before being proven innocent. You are now no more than cattle and criminals to be moulded by politicians and controllers. Sir Stephen Sedley Branding Iron: A step by step guide In one case, Dyfed-Powys Police used a branding iron on Jeffrey Vineyard, 72, from Pembrokeshire. He was mistakenly branded on the left cheek and will have to be processed again on the forehead. Home Office Minister Tony McNulty said the branding process had helped police solve as many as 20 crimes a year. By giving up your freedom we are now a safer society. You will trust us with everything. Do not think just obey. Sir Stephen Sedley, who is the master architect of the population control system, is now also proposing the segregation of ethnics from the Aryan population. We are constructing five new processing centres per month and are incorporating the premise that anyone who enters Britains shores will be branded with a barcode. This is to ensure safety for our citizens. We, the controllers, have your best interests at heart so there is nothing to worry about. You may now resume watching Celebrity Cant Cook Wont Cook. WASHINGTON DC - There was shock in America as elder statesman of finance Alan Greenspan made these startling claims in a new biography. The striking revelation that the Bush Government lied to its people and invaded Iraq for oil has also been compounded by news that the sky is blue, Fox News is a Neocon propaganda lie-machine, bears are linked to excrement in the woods, the Pope has ties with the Catholic church and George W Bush is a lying war criminal who should be impeached. Greenspan is quoted in his biography as saying: I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil. There was surprise around Capitol Hill at the astounding revelation that oil conquest was the chief reason for the illegal Iraq invasion. One US Republican Senator, Bill OCoulter, who is on the board of directors of Halliburton, spoke out against the claims. Isa tells youse peoples, I knows in my heart that our great commander in chief invaded Iraqs because Saddam was a bad man and wuz gonna send rockets to the US of A in 15 minutes, he had weapons of mass destructions and nucelear missiles ready to go, we had to invade them because Saddam invaded America on 911, he wuz responsibles I know cuz the CIA said so and so did our President. Sixty five percent of the American population still believe and are told by their media daily that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 911. Greenspan who is a coward, of course did not voice his opinion at the time. He wholeheartedly endorsed the invasion which was a violation of the U.N. Charter and as such a war of aggression and therefore a war crime. The oil fuelled greed operation and occupation of Iraq has to date caused the deaths of over 750,000 Iraqi civilians and the deaths of over 3500 US soldiers. It has caused the largest mass displacement of people in the middle east in modern history as well as causing one of the largest environmental disaster zones ever through the distribution of depleted uranium en masse. US Soldiers died for oil profits and not to protect their nation. They were lied to and have been made a fool of. There are no surprises from a country which tried to impeach Bill Clinton for receiving a blowjob and yet refused to impeach a President who has murdered thousands of humans for profit and has taken the USA into further debt and near collapse morally as well as monetarily. Feb. 10, 1929 April 3, 2017 Roberta Angel, 88, of Albany passed away peacefully on Monday surrounded by loved ones. Roberta was born in Jamestown, New York, to Robert and Elinor (Mills) Baker. She lived in Jamestown until 1961 when she moved to Southern California. She married Elton Angel in 1968 in LaVerne, California. Roberta retired in 1987 and moved to Bodfish, California, and in 1997 moved to Albany. She was a hospital volunteer in Lake Isabella for nine years and attended South Albany Community Church for a time. Roberta is survived by her daughter, Jeanette Grajczyk and husband Randy of Albany; grandchildren Jason and Rhiannon; and three great-grandchildren with one on the way. She was preceded in death by her husband, Elton in 2008; as well as her parents; brothers Roger and Theodore Baker; and sister Mary Tremper. A special thanks to Ashley and Tamara who were very special to her. Condolences for the family may be posted online at www.fisherfuneralhome.com. WASHINGTON DC - George W Bush and French President Nicolas Psychozy are scheduled to attend a dinner jacket ball on a sinking oil tanker in Iran's Strait of Hormuz soon. The Strait of Hormuz (26340.00N, 56150.00E), a narrow passageway connecting the Persian Gulf with the Arabian Sea and separating Iran from the Arabian Peninsula, is one of the worlds vital oil transit chokepoints and famous for the fact that over 20% of the worlds oil goes through it every day. The Neocon and French party will be hosted by the Iranian contingency headed by the smiling Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Oil prices after the dinner jacket soiree will undoubtedly rise to over $450 a barrel. There will be widespread panic as the bombing party unleashed by the US jets slam into nuclear material holding sites, thus spreading wonderful radioactive dust all over the middle east. The Israeli contingent will not attend the celebration, but have ordered the US and French to attend the party for them. The Persian controlled Strait will then be closed for an indefinite period by being blocked by a sunken tanker or two. meanwhile, back at home There will be no need to drive a car after this happens because no one will be able to afford any petrol, let alone find any. Food of course needs to be distributed to the shops, but the fact that there will not be any fuel to do so will inevitably lead to no food in the shops, thus leading to anarchy and unrest. Governmental oil reserves are only valid for less than a week in most western countries, plus these are only used for emergency services and the army. One last reckless killing spree before the fun is cut off for George Citizens residing in the West are therefore advised to start hoarding food or growing their own fruit and veg, as well as acquiring bicycles. The consequences of multiple strikes on Persian nuclear sites by the American, Israeli, French team is apocalyptic, but totally permissible, because people like Cheney and Bush have bunkers they survive whatever happens. You dont. LONDON - England - Home Secretary Jacqui Smith today announced a new law to ban dangerous handguns and machine guns in the UK. The gun ban today will come into effect at midday and the Labour government believes this drastic measure should curb the pandemic use of firearms on Britains streets. It will be illegal to murder, shoot or maim anyone under the new rules. There will also be a two-tiered system for ensuring the law is upheld by introducing deterrents to youths who are intent on committing murder sprees. If you are caught with class A firearms like the AK-47, Uzi 9mm , RPG or M16 you will be awarded an ABC (Acceptable Behaviour Contract). The second time caught you will get an ASBO (Anti Social Behaviour Order) and the third time you will be awarded an hours worth of community service of your choice. Class B weaponry like handguns and grenades will only get an ABC and a written warning through the post. Salford youth on bike playing in the park For firearms offences like actual murder or severe wounding, the punishment will be an ASBO, ABC and community service all on the same day, as well as a re-education trip paid by the taxpayer to Alton Towers or Chessington World of Adventures for the day. The Home Secretary is toying with the idea of giving each gun criminal an 8GB i-pod and then asking them to hand over their heavy machine guns. This ploy may not work however, because many youths with guns can get anything they want anyway. The number of guns that are circulating on Britains streets is so large that the police are scared to go onto the streets. Police work is mainly conducted by CCTV and desk work back at the police station. The typical British Bobby does not carry firearms, and if there is a shooting incident they are required to flee the crime scene and head back to the police station to fill in approximately 27 forms. The form filling can take up to 4 hours to complete. An Armed Response Unit can then be authorised to visit the gun crime scene after the threat level is assessed. The Muttley crew of Liverpool have 38 ASBOs and 245 ABCs in their hideouts trophy cabinet There are measures being put in place to cut police response times by three and a half hours. However, this may cause problems in Met ranks because it would involve actual confrontation with criminals. In the polices defence, last year out of 34,578 shootings of which 24,600 were fatalities, 6 people were arrested and given warnings for their dangerous behaviour. The new law banning guns on Britains streets is sure to make citizens lives safer and is testament to the wonderful work done by the Labour Government. BRUSSELS - Belgium - Our supreme unelected leader Comrade Brown has cleansed Britain of centuries of British democratic rights and sovereignty by handing all power and laws to the New World Order Single-Party unelected state of the European Union bloc. The European Union Bloc, which is ruled by unelected leaders and dictates the law for all in Europe, was sponsored by our supreme unelected comrade Brown. The collective union is now one single entity and by joining the centralised control manifestation, Comrade Brown has effectively discarded hundreds of years worth of British sovereignty and law in one fell swoop. Unelected leader Comrade Brown made a rousing speech for the party over dinner at the EU headquarters in Brussels about his role in dictating the fate of all in Britain. I, Comrade to the Union of European central government, relinquish the British people from sovereign British laws so they are ultimately controlled from Brussels. After hundreds of years of useless concepts like democracy, sovereignty and Britishness, I have finally discarded these failing systems for the final solution One World Government in Europe. The glorious meal, attended by Comrades Psykozy and Merkel, consisted of cabbage soup and a wonderful pickled cabbage main course. Our great leader was shown to eat the same food as us Proles and was applauded when he burped his approval. After the meal, Comrade Brown was presented with a bottle of weak ale brewed in Sector 101 (used to be called Northern Britain) as a gesture of our supreme leaders true courage in leadership. The new European constitution is the same as the old one, but with a different name and has been embraced wholeheartedly by supreme unelected Comrade Brown. The New World Order and one-party system is the final nail in the coffin for British sovereignty and, whats more, the British people have no say in their destiny now and will never have any say in their destiny in the future. Notice: B64114 INGSOCK Long Live the Gordo! Specialist Meat Johnsons is giving out gifts to Iraqi children this year with great gusto. This is his third tour of duty and he is loving his time in Iraq. I get to shoot people for fun and get paid for that. Best job in the world, I tell ya. Meat then unloads several rounds into the mass of Iraqi children, and there are cheers all round from the platoon. The surge is working, and many Iraqis are being eradicated daily with US mass killing targets being breached every day. Senior level Pentagon planners are marveling at the efficiency and speed at which the civilians are being murdered in cold blood. Medal of Honour This month alone, 23 purple hearts were handed out in recognition of killing targets being met. George W Bush is happy to bring the gift of Christmas to the Iraqi people on the end of a gun barrel. His address this week to Congress was met with thunderous applause from both Republicans and Democrats alike. Every bullet is signed and delivered from the barrel of Jesus gun. This is what America does we bring Jesus and Democracy to the Iraqis. I heard there are rumours on the internets that we are losing the war on terrors. This is false, because we are bringing terror to these people every day, and all under the American flag, dammit! Spreading the love of Jesus Specialist Meat Johnsons carries on giving the gift of Christmas to the Iraqi children this year, just like he did last year. He has also made it his personal mission to spread as much depleted uranium as possible before his tour ends in July 2008. RAMADI Iraq Santa delivering some early Christmas gifts to Iraqi children Winning the hearts and minds of the world is a US strategy that has truly been endorsed by the Americans. Next stop is Iran, when the Americans bomb nuclear sites and spread radioactive dust over the whole Middle East, as well as create World War III. Christmas has definitely come early this year. ALABAMA - USA - An NGOs recent paper entitled 'Disarming Americans Through Jesus' details plans on utilising the church to bring change to the current stalemate situation of gun control. The Christian church will be utilised to disarm Americans across the nation as they will be told to put down their guns for Christ. Pastors across the country are getting ready to tell their flocks to hand their guns in to be scrapped. Americans are devoutly Christian, some even creating their own bastardised versions of Christianity like Mormonism, but the real clincher is that religion is a human construct and will be used to achieve goals set by the state for whatever agenda is required. They wont listen to Obama or anyone else but theyll listen to their pastor when he tells the congregation to hand over their guns. For Americans, their church leaders telling them to do stuff is an act of God such is the level of religious brainwashing over the generations. Submit The same technique will be utilised when the government introduces microchipping to the population. By using what the pliant masses are used to to make people accept new conditions, the church is an invaluable tool for introduction to governmental directives. Religion spurs the American population on, especially in times of war where they are told they are fighting for Christianity when going into battle. Their unquestioning beliefs are paramount to implementation of the gun control agenda and should be exploited to the full. The Christian church cannot exist without the state, it is therefore deemed an arm of the state, and it is to this end that it will be used to disarm American citizens and eventually get them chipped, for their own good of course and in the service of the Lord. DURBAN - South Africa - Prince Harry's on/off girlfriend, Chelsy Davy is spending some time away from the freezing cold UK at her parents 1 million Durban apartment and getting prepared for a major photoshoot. Prince Harrys girlfriend has been sunning herself in South Africa. Zimbabwe-born Chelsy Davy escaped the chilly UK last week to practice posing for the 2008 calendar where she will pose as a female car mechanic. A source said: Chelsy looked stunning in her skimpy white bikini and her gurning was to perfection. She is determined to get the right muntered look for the photoshoot next week. The 22-year-old spent two hours sunbathing and smoking roll-up cigarettes on the balcony of her apartment on Saturday, she was then spotted swigging a bottle of vodka and making funny faces at the bystanders Chelsy then managed to conjure up a large greenie which she spat onto an old womans head. Chelsy, who has had a series of rows with Harry over his boring academic lifestyle, has reportedly agreed to return to the UK in the New Year and give her romance with the prince another chance as soon as he is free from his studies and academic research. The source added: Harry has promised Chelsy he will take their relationship seriously and put aside his studious ways for awhile. The 2008 Calendar for Female Car Mechanic of the Year featuring Chelsy Davy is available now from all top retailers. LONDON - England - Tony Blair has caused fresh controversy by converting to Roman Catholicism less than six months after leaving office. The former prime minister ended years of speculation by being received into the church in a private ceremony celebrated by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-OConnor at Westminster. Mr Blair approached Cardinal Murphy-OConnor in the spring with a view to joining the church, The Daily Squib has learned. Confession Catholic sources said Mr Blair attended confession in the days leading up to his reception into the church, in order to seek pardon for his sins. Mr Blairs confession took up four whole days and nights and involved the use of six priests working on a shift basis to receive Tony Blairs sins. According to Catholic Church sources, Tony Blair has nearly exhausted the goodness of God but even he was still forgiven by the Catholic faith a true testament to Gods grace. Three priests who received the ex-prime minister Tony Blairs confessional announced their early retirement due to loss of faith. A fourth priest was so disgusted and disillusioned by Mr Blairs confession that he has denounced Catholicism and converted to Satanism. The subject of ex-prime minister Blairs confession may have involved devious, deceitful, murderous, treacherous and evil decisions in his 10 years in power, such as leading Britain into an illegal war with Iraq in 2003 and the early retirement of scientist Dr Kelly. Commentators claim he would have converted months earlier were it not for his position as speech maker for the American business network, where he commands up to $500,000 per speech. UGANDA - Ondongo Tamba is the only person left in the village of Kkonkoma after a mass of celebrity adoptions. Twenty years of age and too old to be adopted by a celebrity, Ondongo cuts a lonely figure in the village where children used to play once and elders sat telling stories amongst the corrugated iron huts. The village has been decimated by a mass of celebrity adoptions which has effectively turned the whole area into a wasteland. Children who were once the lifeblood of this tiny hamlet deep in the wilds of Uganda are now propped up in places like Manhattan, Kensington or Beverly Hills, living in mansions with Olympic swimming pools and walk-in cupboards decked to the hilt with thousands of expensive clothes and shoes. The heart of this community has been torn out by these vanity celebrity adoptions, Jill Severino, a relief worker from Medecins Sans Frontieres, told the Daily Squib on Friday. There used to be 30 families living in this village and now they have all gone. As well as A-list celebrities there have also been adoptions from D-listers who wish to jump on the celebrity adoption bandwagon. After adopting a boy from the same village, pop star Madonna, even went to great lengths to have jungle scenes painted on the bedroom walls of her African boys quarters to make him feel more at home. Amongst other well known celebrities, David Beckham has also adopted a Ugandan boy as well as Angelina Jolie. Its the next accessory amongst the new breed of celebrity; they already have the private jets, Aston Martins and everything and anything they want. Keeping up with the Jones is not cheap especially if youre the typical shallow celebrity, Charles Peters head of the XTM PR agency told the Daily Squib from his offices in London. There have been instances where some celebrities have wanted their first choice exchanged for another child due to unforeseen circumstances like clashing with the decor scheme. The brokers usually line up the children before the celebrities arrive. There is normally a brief ceremony of dancing and singing once the celebrity has chosen which African boy or girl they want to try out. Once the children are successfully patriated and settled within the celebrity household they are not viewed as pure ornaments and objects of interest, but as real live attractions to be paraded in front of the media networks and cameras. That is until the next celebrity craze comes along. Prime Minister David Cameron, is appealing to eurosceptics within the Conservative party: I would like to reiterate the point that it would be in Britains interests to stay in the EU, purely on an economic basis. If we pull out too early, there would be an almighty mess and it would be a premature splurge. I have agreed on an In-Out EU referendum, and a bit of In-Out is okay in my book, we must pump the EU for as many reforms as we can, that is if that Junckers Stuka cockblocker does not get in the way of our toing and froing. Legs akimbo, the EU wants full entry for the UK, but releasing all our stuff over its leg wont do either, we must penetrate deep and change things to suit our interests, not theirs. Help us fight for democracy & freedom you get unique DS goodies too @DAILYSQUIB The real Daily Squib profile has been permanently shadow-banned by Twitter LONDON - England - The Labour government is introducing a pilot Mobile CCTV Tripod Surveillance scheme in Tower Hamlets Council next month. The new scheme, according to Labour ministers, will help to reduce crime and is touted to be introduced nationally by 2009. Tower Hamlets Councillor Dave Howitt has hailed the new CCTV Tripod scheme as a jump into the future. These Mobile Monitors will be able to move anywhere independent of all obstacles or pedestrians. They will be operated by our control centres in Coventry and Wolverhampton. A truly cost effective and efficient way of monitoring people. The mobile CCTV tripods have been developed by a UK company called 1984 and will be rolled out cheaply to councils across Britain within the next year. This is the next stage in our Labour manifesto. We already have the largest number of static CCTV cameras per citizen in the world. Britain is the most surveilled country in the world and even during the Soviet era of Russia and Stalins day they did not have as much surveillance as we have now, a proud official for the council told us. There are still some areas of Britain that cannot be surveilled and these new mobile CCTV units will fill the gap that the 45 million static cameras cannot. The Mobile Surveillance units will be able to telescopically increase their height by 40 feet as well as reduce their height to 3 feet. Fitted with hi spec camera lenses, they can zoom into an area from half a mile away. The units will also be fitted with a tannoy address system to speak to citizens. The mobile surveillance units are run on state of the art fuel cells and need only to be charged once a year. If you drop a piece of litter, the cameras can detect this from half a mile away and will radio for help so that the relevant Stasi official can issue a fixed penalty notice onto the miscreant, Councillor Dave Howitt added gleefully. Labour also plans to increase monitoring of people in their homes by 2010 with an increase in home CCTV and bugging surveillance. A draft white paper has already been proposed in Parliament to increase funding to the Home Surveillance Branch which was set up by Prime Minister Gordon Brown last year. The cost to the taxpayer for the mobile units is negligible and a recent government operated MORI poll showed that 99% of the British population approved of the increased surveillance on themselves. Im like all other English people. When the Labour Government asks me to bend over and take it, I do. Were now the most downtrodden, overtaxed, surveilled people in the world and it makes you proud to be British, dunnit? Joe Burke, 43, who is a resident of Tower Hamlets, told the Daily Squib. Unelected leader Gordon Brown, who was recently on a trip to China, wowed the Chinese PM with tales of how he has acheived the massive Draconion shut-down of all privacy in the UK. Communist China still has a long way to go until they get to the British level. Lebanon police officials say the man found dead in the Albany-Santiam Canal on Wednesday afternoon is Robert Lawrence Hayes, 51, of Albany. The preliminary investigation indicates that Hayes was in the water for one week. Law enforcement and fire personnel responded to the area of Second and A streets shortly before 2 p.m. Wednesday, after a city employee at a public works property along the canal spotted the body, said Police Department officer Timothy Trahan. There are no apparent connections to missing persons cases in Lebanon or elsewhere in Linn County. A medical examiner will perform an autopsy on the body. The case remains under investigation, the Lebanon Police Department said. During the high security visit by Senior Deputy Commissar of the Labour Party, Harriet Harman, the Comrade in arms with Supreme Unelected Comrade Gordon Brown, was protected by a phalanx of thirty Stasi Police officers. Any proles within the area were told to stay back and were not permitted within 100 metres of Comrade Harman. Wearing a stab-proof Kevlar vest on the London streets, Comrade Harman walked on the same dangerous roads as the prole masses and was not stabbed or shot once during the whole visit. By walking these streets I have shown the masses that we are living in a new era of safety and change. Since our Supreme Commander in Chief Gordon Brown was instated into our one-party system we have had unbridled freedom to walk the streets without fear, Comrade Harman exclaimed to our reporter from the armoured vehicle after her tour. Comrade Jacqui Smith buys a doner kebab in Peckham last month Not since last month when Comrade Jacqui Smith of the Labour Home Secretariat decided to buy a doner kebab from a prole food stall within the sector has there been such daring shown. She bought the kebab resplendent with a liberal dollop of chilli sauce whilst flanked by no less than ten armed Bolshevik soldiers. GRANGEMOUTH OIL REFINERY - Scotland - Unelected Comrade and supreme leader of the British Soviet state, Gordon Brown, has today urged proles to keep panic buying petrol so that the Soviet Labour government can increase state revenues from fuel tax. With eighty pence from every pound going to the British Soviet Treasury in fuel tax and duty, Comrade Brown is urging more panic at the pumps. Oil as a commodity is cheaper than milk. However, with Labours fuel tax and fuel duty, it is now nearly over five pounds per gallon ($10 per gallon if you are American). The United Soviet Nation of Britain has the highest fuel taxes in the world and British prole drivers are the biggest cash cows in the world. More Panic Please There are reports that the prole populations are utilising the herd mentality for which they have been trained. By creating a mass feeding frenzy from petrol stations across the nation due to reports that Grangemouth oil refinery is shutting down, the Labour government is sure to come into a massive tax windfall. The oil refinery was ordered to be shut down by Comrade Brown himself because state funds have been floundering as of late and the nation needs a much needed cash injection to keep it above water. By ensuring the panic buying masses continue with the feeding frenzy, the Soviet British Nation will accumulate large reserves of fuel tax cash for its empty coffers. Keep Panic Buying British Soviet proles are a breed unto themselves. They seem to happily accept every indignity and injustice heaped upon them without question or protest. Our populations have been brainwashed into slave subservience and are the most pliable plebiscites in the whole world. A credit to the controllers who have steered the sheeple into the pen ready for mass shearing, Commissar for Fuel Tax, Harry Balls, said at a news briefing at the oil refinery in Grangemouth on Friday. Fuel Tax Increase Labour ministers were congratulating themselves and there were many pats on the back today for encouraging the panic buying of fuel at petrol stations across the United Soviet Nation of Britain. Despite taking 80 pence from every pound spent on petrol in the United Soviet Nation of Britain, Comrade Brown still plans to reward the population with a further 2 pence increase by June 2008. Comrades, we welcome the panic buying! Out of every pound spent we make eighty pence on fuel tax. Thank you for supporting the state in our hour of need. We will continue to utilise the revenue we receive from you and spend it on incompetent, impotent and useless politicians, waste, cronyism, stupidity, cowardice and greed. And who knows? Out of all the money were making, we might even be able to start another war! Our only worry is that petrol stations might eventually run out of fuel from the mass panic buying which would mean that all of the tax revenue were currently receiving would come to an abrupt end. But in the meantime, please carry on panicking there is nothing to worry about! a jubilant Comrade Darling told the BBC4 news yesterday. LONDON - England - Cherie Blair, John Prescott and Lord Levy are all abiding by the socialist doctrines of the Labour party by raking in millions of pounds on book deals and newspaper serialisations. The Labour party racked with greed, cronyism and vile gluttony of the highest order is a morose cesspit of inequity, a toilet flush swilling around the turds that fester amongst its clogged bowels. With such literary luminaries as Alistair Campbell, John Prescott and Lord Levy, as well as the greed-driven hideously ugly wife of the previous prime minister; is there any hope left in the British political system of government? Nu Labour Nu Greed Cherie Blair has degraded the British political culture to new depths. Her self-serving, vulgar, greed-driven Lord Levy leaving his publishers offices yesterday sensationalist memoirs serve no purpose whatsoever apart from the rather obvious to make her even richer than she already is. Is it any wonder that Tony was getting hand relief from Carole Caplin at Chequers whenever she was away with business. Cheries insane grinning face can sear paint off a wall from thirty yards , one of the sources in Lord Levys new book is quoted as saying. Her husband, Tony, has made huge sums of money off the state and public office. Their joint property portfolio is estimated at 65 million pounds. The Blairs latest acquisition is a 4 million country house, bought on the earnings of their respective biographies, as well as Mr Blairs financial handshake jobs, public speaking stints and company product endorsements. Who says socialism does not pay? John Prescott can now clean up his own pig vomit with the bags of twenty pound notes he will no doubt receive from his publishers for his memoirs as well. Lord Levy, the squirming simpering maggot who has briefly come up for air from the rotting carcass of the Labour party to cash in further with his memoirs is another nu-Labour scumbag raking in more gelt. Whilst Levy ponces around smirking in his Roller touting his base rants in his new book and fondling the vast amounts of fresh cash that pour into his already overloaded coffers every second of the day, he will not have to worry about what Labour socialism has done to this country. LOUISVILLE - USA - Touting a victory that "exceeded even our own expectations," Sen. Hillary Clinton's big win in West Virginia last night has proven to everyone that she is not going to lay down the gauntlet any time soon. They gonna have to shoehorn that bitch outta the race. She the kinda person that wont leave from the cookout. She the kinda person that dont get the message that it ovah! an Obama supporter from Detroit told the Fox News Network yesterday. Hillarys campaign manager Buzz Nougat had this to say after the momentous Virginia win: Were goin from strength to strength. We are going to pursue this campaign right up to Obamas first year in office. Whenever Hillary gets on stage, her campaign crew have taken to playing the Rocky theme tune. Hillary is not going to go easily and has pledged a further $4 million of her own money into her election campaign funds. She has even attempted to ask Bill for money and this is why he has been seldom seen as of late. One can only sit back and admire a woman of such tenacity. CREWE - England - Our great supreme leader Gordon Brown has been taken ill after eating some tainted cabbage soup whilst touring the Soviet State of Britain. Condolences for our great unelected leader It was after dining at the Crewe and Nantwich sector during the tour of Soviet Britain that our great unelected comrade was taken ill. Our supreme commander was attending a presentation of the British Soviet Agricultural revolution in the Crewe and Nantwich sector when he was invited to sup on some of the food that the proletariat exist on. Comrade Brown is very proud of the British Soviet forced collectivization of agriculture that he has pioneered and the wonderful delights of simple proletariat foods. Comrade Brown was presented with some of the local specialty prole food, Crewe cabbage soup and a delightful side dish of cabbage pickle washed down with a gulp of weak local ale. He looked alright after consuming it and gave an almighty burp and a hearty laugh at the joys of eating food that the proletariat consume, commissar for agriculture Hilary Benn said. Comrade Brown was then taken ill during the inspection of the British Peoples Soviet potato display. It seems that bourgeois elements spouting their useless democratic diatribes may have infiltrated the Crewe and Nantwich Soviet agricultural festival and sabotaged the supreme comrades cabbage feast. Politburo officials cordoned off the area and are combing the vicinity looking for anyone wearing a top hat and tails. We wish our supreme comrade Brown a speedy recovery from this minor setback to his ten year plan as an instrument to the Age of Change and British Soviet Cultural Revolution. LONDON - England - Gordon Brown's youth initiative is being unveiled today in Westminster with more graveyards being built to accommodate the increasing number of teen knife and gun crime victims Gordon Brown will today announce at PMs questions, the plan for thousands more graveyards to be built all over the UK to accommodate the huge increase in knifing fatalities. Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith also announced a planned phasing down of childrens playgrounds in England and Wales due to the fact that there is less demand for them with parents keeping their remaining children, that are still alive, away. There will be a further initiative to increase the deterrent for knife crime. Convicted murderers will not be given a verbal caution for their first murder offence as is customary but may have to do a bit of community service wearing jackets designed to be more visible to the public. Convicted knife murderers will also be further deterred of more knife slashing by having their faces published on conviction posters, showing their enemies that they have attained great fame for their violent ways. Its a form of tagging but done the Labour way. The more these teens stab and murder the more posters we put up of their faces in public. It is a sort of fame school for teenage murderers, wherein the more stabbing the more notoriety you acquire, Social worker for Haringey council, Ed Barlow was quoted as saying on BBCs Newsnight. Pupils from Marshalls Tenbenson School in Romford attend a friends funeral The increase in stab victims has also left mortuaries full to capacity and with waiting lists of atleast three weeks for fatal stab victims to be processed. Some councils in the Greater Manchester area are getting by with makeshift mortuaries in food depots and Tesco, always the saviour has lent a hand by accepting stab victims into their Salford meat processing warehouse until the council builds another four mortuaries. By demolishing playgrounds and parks there will be further room to build graveyards and mortuaries under the new Labour initiative. In the UK there are an estimated 450 stabbings per day of which an estimated 400 are fatal. Since Labour won power in 1997 there has been a remarkable increase in violent attacks in the UK despite the governments assurance that all is well. WASHINGTON DC - USA - John McCain is eagerly anticipating testing out his new mobility scooter in the vast grounds of the White House. John McCain, the Republican candidate for the presidential election, is itching to get into the White House. Asked on CNNs Hardtalk why he wanted to really become president he gave a surprising reply: I want to test out my McCain-310 mobility scooter on the White House grounds. Ill be whizzing along at high speed, ripping up the lawn. The thrill of driving through the White House lawn is making me salivate with joy. Oh boy, you should just see the scooter go! Lil ol rascal The brilliant mobility scooter that McCain will drive through the White House grounds if he wins the presidency offers Class 3, 7 mph performance and headlight, hazard lights and directional indicators. The supercharged McCain scooter has 12 tyres, suspension front and rear, and long range batteries. This is a machine that is designed from top to bottom for a president. It is also designed to go over rough ground in great comfort. The McCain-310 Mobile has a 28 stone weight carrying capacity. The company that designed the McCain-310 mobility scooter have put a lot of effort into their design process and have supplied John McCain with the only working prototype to enjoy himself with until full production starts next year. Our future president has piloted the fastest jets in the world during his distinguished military service. Do you think hes going to stop driving fast machines? Hell no! a senior GOP representative told the quarterly edition of Scooter Magazine. BAGHDAD - Iraq - There were mass celebrations across the whole of Washington when the new Iraqi flag was unveiled by Iraqi leader Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki yesterday. President Bush told Iraqs prime minister and his cabinet Saturday that well keep our commitment to sucking your country dry of all mineral and oil resources. During an unannounced visit to Baghdad aimed at buttressing the Vichy government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Bush pledged his support for the countrys new leader and declared that the oil resources of the Iraqi people is now out of their hands, and our job is to help them succeed in their ultimate defeat and dishonour. Mission Accomplished Under the ornate dome of a marble-walled chamber in one of Saddam Husseins former palaces now serving as the U.S. Embassy, George W Bush unveiled the new Iraqi flag and presented it to Prime Minister Maliki. The assembled Iraqi government all applauded as the flag was then taken by a laughing Blackwater mercenary who spat onto it and then put it on the flag pole outside the palace. The flag was designed by American flag designers and approved by the Iraqi government We are truly honoured to receive such a gift from your country and would like to extend our gratitude of cowardice for taking all of our resources and using our country as a shooting range, and for torturing and murdering our citizens in the name of Democracy and dumping tonnes of depleted uranium in our nation which has a shelf life of about 10,000 years. Thank you. As a show of my gratitude I give you a small gift an Iraqi child disfigured from birth due to DU. You can torture him as much as you want, Prime Minister Maliki told the President during luncheon handing over the little boy to the president. Perpetual War of Terror I appreciate that you recognize the fact that the future of your country is in our hands, Bush said during a second photo session with Maliki, a member of a leading Shiite Muslim religious party who takes his orders directly from the White House. Afterwards, the president told reporters that Iraqs leaders were complying well with American orders and have stepped up oil production without any questions. I assured them that well keep plundering their precious oil reserves and building more permanent bases, Bush said during his flight home. I also made it clear to them that they must comply with the will of the United States or suffer more war and torture. They have to comply with our every wish or else. There will be no room for time-wasting from the Iraqis because we need their oil ASAP. LONDON - England - Amid the frenzied mass stabbing event that is occurring in England at the moment, tourists entering the UK are being advised by embassies and the Home Office to wear stab vests whilst in the country. Visitors to Britain are being advised to bring their own stab vests or purchase them when they get here so that they can enjoy their trip without being fatally stabbed. With every day bringing another batch of brutal stabbings by feral hooded teens high on skunk weed and crack, there seems to be no respite to the deluge of knife madness that is gripping Britain. Consulates across the world are advising their citizens to only travel to the UK if it is really necessary and if they do travel to bring a kevlar stab and bullet proof vest. Travellers to Britain have also had another major setback, they cannot get travel insurance as no company is willing to sell cover for the UK. Stab vests (also referred to as stab proof vests, stab resistant vests or anti stab vests) protect the vital inner body parts from stabs, cuts, slashes and blows from sharp, edged or spiked weapons. UK citizens are not allowed to defend themselves if they are confronted by teenage killers brandishing knives and guns and are regularly arrested and charged if they dare to use self defence. The police in the UK do not carry guns and under health and safety rulings have been ordered to run away if confronted by criminals and children carrying knives or guns. Therefore, it is not advisable to ask for help from the UK police because they have less power than the criminals. Some police officers are trained in firearm use but they are only mobilised as a last resort after the stabbing or violent slashing has taken place, John Simpson a guide for the British Board of Tourism revealed. London Bus Tours, the premier tourist bus company in England, have taken the recent violent developments in England as a chance to unveil the new armoured tourist buses that have state of the art defensive capabilities ensuring all visitors are not violently murdered during the tour of the city. The armoured tourist buses come replete with gun turrets as standard on the top deck and will travel around the UKs cities with an armed escort. LONDON - England - Gordon Brown has said it is "absolutely correct" to compare him to Shylock - the evil, central character in Shakespeare's 'The Merchant of Venice' who famously demanded a pound of flesh from the title character. In a New Statesman interview the prime minister was told: Most people say you remind them of Shylock. He replied: Maybe an older Shylock, a wiser Shylock. He said like Shylock, he did not take any prisoners and will take what is his without fail. But Shakespeare expert Bertrand Tinsdale said the character was actually not an ideal role-model. A pound of flesh In The Merchant of Venice, written between 1596 and 1598, Shylock is an embittered, violent figure who treats most others with cruelty and contempt and who is a vicious heartless avaricious usurer. Mr Tinsdale, collections manager of the Shakespeare Literary Museum at Stratford-upon-avon, Warwickshire, told the New Statesman: The thing about Shylock is he turned to vengeance, greed and hatred and wants to punish people just like Gordon Browns greedy hatred can be seen in his over-taxing the populations of Britain. Is this the role model we want for a British prime minister? Gordon Brown revels in his hated status as chief bloodsucker and evil henchman who leaves people destitute. It seems our PM does not care how he is perceived and will continue to keep taking pounds of flesh from the people until someone or something dares to stop him. Elsewhere in the interview Mr Brown laughed off suggestions he had a bad temper saying: I do not have a fu**ing bad temper you stupid moronic twerp piece of sh*t! If you dare to publish what I just fu**ing said I will take more than a pound of flesh from you. Now open your shirt before I lose my temper further. I will take a pound now and leave some for later!! The Merchant of Venice Shylock, a wealthy Jew is one of the main characters of the play. His merciless and uncompassionate nature is revealed when he seeks the life of another man to sate his vengeance and greed. Laurence Olivier and several other leading actors have played him on screen. Mr Brown did not have to wait long to hear reference to Shylock in the House of Commons. Shadow Chancellor George Osborne called for an early U-turn on car tax plans, adding that it was time for Shylock to put the knife away and not take anymore pounds of flesh. Conservative leader David Cameron, responding to Mr Browns statement on introducing further taxes on the poor, said: I am sure I speak for the whole country when I say I am disgusted to see Shylock carrying on with his awful ways again. Rome - Italy - German scientists on behalf of Interpol have uncovered the identity of the notorious leader of the worlds largest and wealthiest paedophilia ring. After eight months of scientific computerised rendering, German technicians working for Interpol have finally deciphered the swirl over the face of the ring leader of a massive paedophilia organisation. We know he likes to wear a Santa Claus hat but the computerised swirl obscured his main features so we had a hard time identifying him. It has taken many months of work to uncover the mastermind of the evil ring, Jurgen Mullerice, one of the technicians working on the project revealed to Reuters. Clues in the photographs helped police identify locations in Italy and Vatican city, but the mans face had been hidden behind a digital swirl. Only when computer experts managed to unscramble the image was Interpol able to issue the worldwide appeal for the suspects identity and whereabouts. This man is the ringleader and arch criminal who is in charge of the biggest paedophile ring ever discovered. His wealthy organisation has committed terrible and horrendously evil crimes against children. They have used their vast riches to evade capture for many years but all the money in the world cannot help them now. We will find him and hopefully be able to stop the horror that he is head of, Chief Inspector, Jacques Brusard of Interpol said at a news conference in Brussels, Monday. The evil ring has been involved in many instances of child abuse in Ireland, America, Australia and Italy. There have also been many cases of abuse in South America where this paedophile ring is prevalent. Finally Uncovered Interpol is waiting for tip-offs on the whereabouts of the ring leader and has issued the photograph of the un-swirled identity of the head of the organisation. If you see this man do not approach him, just run as fast as you can. He is very dangerous. You must then contact your local law enforcement agency without fail, Mr Brusard warned at the end of the news conference. Interpol warns anyone who comes into contact with the ringleader or any of his followers to flee the area and contact the nearest Police service in your vicinity immediately. BEIJING - China - The opening ceremony for the Beijing Olympics has been so amazing and so far reaching that it has actually triggered off World War III. Ive never seen firework explosions like this. I mean here I am in Georgia and the Olympic ceremony in China has come to visit us here too. Amazing stuff, Giorgiou Kolokov a resident of Tbilisi, Georgia told CNN from his hospital bed. 8/8/8 The Chinese Olympic ceremony was so spectacular and amazing that we are all now on the brink of World War III, an excited commentator for Australian tv network Grundy said during the opening ceremony. The coordinated robotic movement of thousands of Chinese performers during the ceremony proves that totalitarian states really do know how to control their populations well. There was certainly no sniff of any Tiananmen Square-like dissent amongst the heavily controlled lemmings on display here tonight. I watched the Chinese synchronized hive mentality for the opening ceremony and was in awe at the level of mass brainwashing that was evident. A truly remarkable feat of mass human control systems these Communist Chinese controllers employ on their people. If only we could utilise just 1% of their mind control techniques on our comatose populations, one of the world leaders from a nondescript European country quipped during the opening ceremony. The Chinese opening ceremony in Beijing was the cataclysmic signal for worldwide war to commence. Already Israel is preparing a massive bombing campaign of Iran which promises tp coat the Middle East in radioactive particles for many centuries. The Americans are upping their occupation of more oil rich Middle East lands and are also gearing up to join the invasion of Iran with their Zionist friends. Russia is increasing its territorial lands with the invasion of Georgia. Birds nest soup As the fake fireworks of Beijing were beamed off to four billion people worldwide via visual trickery, the Russian missiles burst through the air landing on Georgian houses in spectacular explosive light shows of destruction. The spirit of the Olympics is one of peace and human harmony. With the Chinese Olympics, we are seeing an era of war and terror opening up and culminating in an apocalyptic crescendo of fire. Amongst the poisonous atmosphere of Beijing there seems to be little air of hope, instead we are reminded of the futility of human existence, especially under a brutal totalitarian state that is polluting and raping its own country and people for nothing. The Chinese Olympic ceremony has performed a very important function: it has proved that the post-democratic world of overt scientific totalitarian rule, which we are all to be part of very soon, will be modelled on the Chinese experiment. BEIJING - China - George W Bush took time out from watching the US Olympic female volleyball team to condemn Russia's invasion of Georgia. These Russkies have used excessive force on an unarmed country to secure oil and gas pipelines. This action by Russia is totally unacceptable and America condemns the bullying of a small nation by a big powerful super power, the president of the United States told reporters during the Olympic volleyball game. Shock and Awe Meanwhile, as the bombs and missiles drop in the tiny country of Georgia, there are concerns that the Russians are conducting an act that could trigger off World War III. It was alright for the Americans to take the oil in Iraq. Russia is no different and they (the Americans) cannot lift a finger against our little foray, Russian Minister for Petroleum, Dmitri Volkov told Pravda News. While Georgia does not produce oil itself, U.S. and European energy firms have counted on the pro-Western country sandwiched between Russia and Iran further south to host a conduit for oil and gas exports from Azerbaijan. LONDON - England - A-Level grades this year set another record and were up from 2007 where the 'A grades' were 98%. The year 2008, however, smashed all previous records with only 5 pupils getting a B grade in the whole country. Only five people in the whole of the United Kingdom failed to gain an A grade on the A-Level exam this year. The pupils who got B grades this year were said to be inconsolable. This is a sure sign that teenagers in the UK are getting more intelligent, Schools minister, Ed Balls remarked after the A-level results were released today. A-Levels Meaningless Since Labour has come into power the standard of A-Levels has dropped to such a low level that many private schools are considering dumping the dumbed down qualifications for a rival qualification that will test pupils properly. The current A-levels were watered down by controversial Labour reforms to A-levels seven years ago which split the exam into six bite-sized units examined in stages throughout the course, with potential for repeated resits. The Labour government has thus created a false grade system where even the thickest students can take the exams and get A grades. Creating a dumbed down class Not only have the A-Level exams been dumbed down to the level of a low-intelligence test, but the pass marks for A grades in the A-level have also been lowered so more students reach the A threshold. In the 50s up to the late 80s, A-levels involved students be tested by sitting exams and writing actual essays. A pass mark for an A grade was substantially higher than todays mickey mouse qualification. The result of the Labour governments spin operation on the A-levels is that there are a large number of people leaving school with A grades who are actually not qualified in their chosen subjects. Lee from Liverpool is very happy that he got 3 A grades for his A-levels and has applied to Cambridge University and been accepted Universities have a very hard time because they are receiving students who are deficient in basic grammatical and mathematical skills, let alone the higher knowledge base that should be attained at A-Level. The further avalanche effect thus extends to employment where the new A student graduates are illiterate, ineffectual and just plain deluded at their false qualifications. Despite the majority of graduates all having A grades at A-Level, universities are now having to re-train students in the basics because of the inferior education levels that they have received. The A-level A grade is now synonymous with stupidity, ignorance, deception, dishonesty, Labour spin and failure. WASHINGTON DC - USA - The Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama has today named the veteran politician Hillary Clinton as his running mate, his campaign confirmed. Clinton, who is the junior United States Senator of New York, and has served as first lady in the White House, will help Obamas campaign to challenge the frequent criticism that it lacks experience. Obamas choice of the New York senator as his vice presidential nominee was officially confirmed by a text message to supporters as his campaign continued to embrace technology to garner support. The announcement comes ahead of the Democratic Partys national convention in Denver, Colorado, next week, where Obama is likely to be officially nominated as the partys presidential nominee. Club of Rome Hillary Clinton was the right choice for Obama and he chose correctly. Never before in American politics has such a dream team stood for election. They are a formidable team, Joel Ronpaul, Democratic party leader for Minnesota told CBS news, Friday. Obamas two-month search for a running mate was conducted almost entirely in secret on the internet, CNN, Fox News and CBS. Last year, as a Democratic presidential hopeful, Hillary said Obama was not yet ready for the presidency a remark that will be seized upon by the Republican attack machine prior to the November 4 election. Even before Obama confirmed Clintons selection, McCain campaign spokesman Ben Coronary said: There has been no harsher critic of Barack Obamas lack of experience than the Clintons. WASHINGTON DC - USA - Despite election results being leaked by the automated voting software owners, Diebold, the respective candidates, John McCain and Barack Obama have agreed to carry on pretending to campaign in the last few hours before the voting booths open. Diebolds all important logo has never been more important than now : Its not the people who vote that count. Its the people who count the votes. Diebold, the company which controls and creates the voting software that won elections for George W Bush not once, but twice has done it again. We were in the Utah town of Boneta, Duchesne county, when the head of the polling station came across a glitch that revealed what many have suspected for awhile. The elections are a sham and democracy is simply a system to keep the masses from revolting every four years. The winner of the 2008 election was revealed to us before we even let the first person into the polling station to vote. Its right there on the screen, Alan Waskowich, an independent observer told CNN. In the state of Montana there have already been three instances of computer glitches that have revealed the winner of the 2008 election. One such town called Philipsburg has even gone as far as calling a town meeting to discuss the ramifications of knowing who won the election even before the first vote was cast. Last month, Princeton Universitys Centre for Information Technology found that touch-screen machines could easily be manipulated. Andrew Celantro, a professor, said the touch-screen machines used in 18 of New Jerseys 21 counties could be hacked into in seven minutes. He added that someone could replace a machines memory chip with one containing a fraudulent computer program capable of changing the results. Representatives of Diebold and Sequoia Voting Systems were not available for immediate comment however they released a brief statement. We are now all living in a digital age and it is thus much easier to manipulate the masses because of our technique and special control systems. We would therefore simply implant the belief into your sheep like brains that you voted for the right candidate and that you actually count within this system and are not simply viewed as a grazing consumer tax producing statistical plebe. Please carry on consuming cheap trinkets from China, and playing on your gadgets, please continue to be entertained by large screens in your homes, please continue your herd mentality and discard any delusions of individualistic behaviour. The winners of the election, John McCain and Sarah Palin have vowed to carry on campaigning as well as the losers, Barack Obama and his team. Even though the election results were leaked yesterday, campaigners are still carrying on with the pretence of campaigning before the main national voting will commence on the 4th of November. LONDON - England - The whole of the UK Conservative party was today arrested on charges of opposing the one party system. Labour ministers were today in a celebratory and jubilant mood as anti-terrorist Stasi officers were mobilised to arrest the entire Conservative party. Stasi Minister, Jacqui Smith was on hand to gloat over her part in securing the momentous and historic arrest which will ensure Labour has no opposition in parliament. We have cleansed parliament once and for all from the horror of democracy. We cant have people going around and telling the truth! We are now the parliament, our one party system will last for a thousand years, the opposition were useless anyway, we will not miss them comrades. The anti-terror operation was conducted over three days and managed to capture every Tory apart from one the London mayor who had absconded on his bicycle last night. The Metropolitan police were searching all ports and airports on Tuesday to try and find Boris Johnson and arrest him. Metropolitan Stasi official Peter Knacker told the BBC: We have secured all ports and airports. If anyone sees a burly old chap wot wotting along with a big mound of white hair on his head and jumping red lights on his bicycle call your nearest Stasi official immediately. Meanwhile, Red Ken Livingstone has re-taken his Mayoral seat and had this to say about the whole sorry incident: Comrades, thank you for ousting these vile capitalist pigs and lovers of democracy. I am so glad to be back as London Mayor and Im sure you are all glad to see me back. I shall start first by extending the congestion zone to the whole of London and the M25. The entire Conservative party is being held in a gulag somewhere in Northern England and will be tried with the vile crime of opposing the Labour government and attempting to make the public aware of information that would make Labour look like a bunch of bumbling incompetent morons. There will be no trial set for the incarceration of the Tory party and they will languish in their freezing prison for the next 42 years as decreed by Stasi Minister and part-time brothel madam, Jacqui Smith. LONDON - England - The British Soviet Government is to censor more of the internet under new plans from Commissar of Culture and Thoughtcrime, Andy Burnham. The Commissar for Culture and Thoughtcrime describes the spectre of free speech and democracy rampant within the Un-Sovietized Internet as quite a dangerous place and says he wants internet-service providers (ISPs) to clamp down further on web services. Our state should be modelled on the wonderful freedoms espoused by the Chinese Soviet state. We have taken notes and are speaking with our Chinese comrades on how we can clamp down on free-speech globally. Free speech is the enemy of the people. The state is an entity that should enforce all human behaviour and control all thoughts at all times, Commissar Burnham added whilst addressing the Westminster Duma. Any citizen involved in anything as nefarious as free-speech will be visited by Stasi officers and taken to a gulag for a forty two year minimum sentence. Re-education programs will also be available for all citizens who are caught utilising free speech or free thought. The Soviet British state will not be denied from any arena and the internet, which is a dangerous tool of freedom, will now be completely taken over by the great Soviet state. Our great supreme unelected commander in chief, Comrade Brown is itching to put the final nails in the coffin of all humanity and will not be denied at all costs. Commissar Burnham finished off his speech with some truly Soviet words: There is content that should just not be available to be viewed on the internet. That is my view. Absolutely categorical. This is a campaign against free speech, you can believe that it must be stamped out completely once and for all. We are also conversing with Comrade Obama in sector 34 and his New American Soviet administration are ready to draw up international rules for English language websites. There will also be an Un-Sovietized book burning ceremony in all libraries across Soviet Britain starting from tomorrow. Any proles or party officials caught with any non-Sovietized literature will simply disappear. Citizens are urged to report any suspicious behaviour from anyone including family members. Special commendation must go to Roger Pearson, 12, of sector 36b who reported his own mother for reading a poetry book by the un-Sovietized dangerous slime, Keats. Mrs Julie Pearson, 36, has been re-assigned to a gulag somewhere in Northern Britain for re-education. LONDON - England - Middle East peace envoy and ex-Prime Minister of Britain, Tony Blair is revelling in his success at bringing lasting peace to the Middle East. Since leaving his post as British Prime Minister, the right honourable gentleman, Tony Blair has embarked on a mission from God to bring peace to the Middle East. There is only one small detail that has not been addressed yet. The only God Tony Blair recognises is green and comes bundled in brown bags and stuffed under mattresses. Tony charges a very reasonable 275,000 per hourly speech. He will discuss how he plans on bringing long lasting peace to the Middle East and solving the Palestinian issue with Israel. He can fly anywhere to give the speech and of course expects you to pick up the tab for the first class tickets, hotel and transport, Mr Blairs PA, Gloria Mulrooney told the Daily Squib. To date, Mr Blair has amassed about 28 million from his speeches as well as 1 million from JP Morgan as a yearly starting salary, a book advance of 6 million and Zurich Financial Services consulting job totalling 2 million per annum. His properties in Londons Connaught Square and Buckinghamshire are valued at 15 million. His yearly pension of 125,000 is a mere drop in the ocean compared to his daily earning power. During his appointment as Peace envoy to the Middle East, Mr Blair has been to the the region more than twice and his efforts to bring everlasting calm to the region have been very effective. The Middle East is at peace. Since Tony Blair came along everything is wonderful here. You can hear birds chirping in the trees, the sky is blue and everyone has a smile on their faces, Yassir Mahmoud, a resident from Gaza attested from his pile of smouldering rubble. Mr Blair also regularly emails officials in Gaza from the comfort of a private jet or his armchair in his London home and has been very vocal on the Middle East peace process. I was appointed for this role for a reason. To bring peace to the Israeli and Palestinian people. I feel I have achieved this role. It has not been easy simply because of the complexity of juggling all of my other money-making appointments and endorsements. My filo fax is full to the brim with speeches, bribes, endorsements, satanic money rituals and we mustnt forget the luncheons. Nevertheless, one must realise that my appointment has indeed brought peace to the Middle East. Just look at Gaza, it is now equivalent to the French Riviera in the Middle East. Cherie and I are even considering buying a luxury penthouse there soon. WASHINGTON DC - USA - Last week George W Bush declared a large area of the Pacific ocean as a protected monument, that is until oil was found the next day. The drilling has already started in the protected National George W Bush Pacific Ocean Center. U.S. President George W. Bush designated nearly 200,000 square miles (518,000 sq km) of the Pacific ocean on Tuesday as a protected region, White House officials reported. By Wednesday things had changed when oil was struck. Dubya declared this area a national heritage zone only yesterday. Today were drilling for oil. We got tonnes of it here, even more than Iraq. The soon to be ex-president just could not help himself when he was told,Al Frankenheimy of the Pacific Oil Drilling company based in San Diego told CNN. Already the oil companies who have been ordered into the area by George W Bush have dug huge trenches into the coral reefs within the area and are dumping vast amounts of toxic waste into the water. A spokesman for one of the companies was apologetic for the mess created but emphatically denied that any permanent damage would result with the toxic waste dispersed due to the drilling. Those fish will survive even though they are coated in toxic chemicals and oil. This is good for our country and thats what counts. We have already extracted 20 tonnes of rock and are now drilling into the lower sediment area where the oil is held. Bush, who often draws ire from activists for his record on environmental issues, will declare three areas in the central Pacific marine national oil expeditions, spokeswoman Dana Burrito said. Hes polluted, murdered and killed the earths environment, people and animals. Why should he stop now? Ms Burrito added shrugging her shoulders. WASHINGTON DC - USA - Former Prime Minister, Tony Blair visited Washington for the last time to receive a final Presidential honour from George W Bush. President Bush tonight awarded Americas highest civilian honour to Tony Blair in a ceremony at the White House. The outgoing President said Mr Blair was a true friend of the United States. The former Prime Minister knelt in front of the President as the final reward for his service was bestowed upon him. He will stand tall in history, President Bush said. And today the United States proudly honours its gallant friend Tony Blair. You may start sucking now Tony. The President, who will be replaced by Barack Obama in seven days time, appeared to wink at Mr Blair after the dirty deed was done. President Bush said that they both had a lot in common and he jokingly said that we both lied to the people and were responsible for millions of deaths worldwide as well as ruining our nations economies whilst lining our own pockets. President Bush said that when America faced the first great challenge of his Administration, Mr Blair was on hand to offer his assistance and some much needed relief. He was there for my moment of trial, the President told a gathering of dignitaries and personal friends of Mr Blair. I will miss you Tony. The equally nauseating idiot, John Howard, the former Australian Prime Minister, was also at the ceremony and even came prepared with his own pair of knee pads. George Bush himself was later honoured with the presentation of an Iraqi shoe on a ribbon. BAGHDAD - Iraq - An Islamist helpline has been set up by Jihadis working within the Sunni Triangle to try and treat the spectre of premature detonation which is plaguing suicide bombers. This is a grave problem for our suicide bombers because they get too excited and release their bombs too early. By Allah, my brother Ali Abdul Masjid was suffering from premature detonation and we only found out after he blew himself up before he even walked out of his safe house, Khalid bin Ramallah wrote on a well known Jihadist website forum. Premature detonation is now such a major problem that Jihadis all over the internet are writing in their forums about its prevalence says a CIA backed intelligence think tank. Saiid Mohammed from Tikrit had a narrow escape from a suicide bomber who prematurely detonated: He exploded in front of my house. We havent seen any infidels here for months and he must have got so excited about meeting his 72 virgins that he let go too early. Our boys need to control themselves better. Now I have to clean up his bodyparts and splattered blood off my front porch. My son found his arm the other day and was scaring the other children with it. Intercepted communications from Jihadist groups still working in Iraq have shown the extent of the problem, with some groups even bringing in Islamic therapists to try and stop the premature detonation. It is all to do with self control. You must hold on and then release yourself for the money shot and a one way ticket to virgin central. Try thinking about Margaret Thatcher or some really ugly bird. That way you can hold on for longer and there will not be any premature detonations, Faisal Juba, an Islamic therapist who has treated many suicide bombers for premature detonation told Al Jizz news service in Qatar. As of yet there is no medical cure for premature detonation. WYOMING - USA - Dick Cheney, the former U.S. Vice President is said to be fuming at the recent ban on torture in the United States by incoming President, Barack Obama. Whats a man to do in their retirement if they ban the only thing I enjoy doing, godammit, Cheney was overheard saying as he attended a Washington post inauguration function on Tuesday. Ever since president Obama signed an order banning torture of terror suspects Mr Cheney has been in an increased agitated state and has lashed out at people around him as well as errant reporters. Dick doesnt like being denied his retirement fun. He had his torture chambers decked out with all the latest torture devices and was awaiting a new shipment of Iraqis but this is going to come as a heavy body blow for him. It would be so nice because I would be upstairs doing my knitting and sometimes hear the whirring of drills or buzzing of electricity. It is strangely comforting and he gets to do what he enjoys all day. Keeps him out of my hair, Lynne Cheney was quoted as saying on a Fox News tribute to her husband. Looks like Mr Cheney will have to find another hobby to wile away his retirement with. How about waterboarding? CHICAGO - USA - The US and British governments have finally admitted to the use of camera surveillance equipment in peoples homes. There are many uses for the home surveillance units, advertisers like to monitor the publics response to adverts when they come on as well as governmental agencies who like to monitor the publics opinions to news programs as well as gossip on everyday issues. We have had these systems in place for a very long time and there is nothing for the general public to worry about. The surveillance is actually for the publics own safety and you should be pleased that we have been monitoring you daily in your living rooms, Arnold Weiss, a spokesman for a local Chicago cable company told Fox news. Some members of the British public have not been happy with being monitored in their own homes and have complained to the Surveillance Ombudsman but according to the chief campaigner for Liberty Against Intrusion, Mike Wallace nothing has been done. The American public was informed about the home surveillance last year and a law was passed and pushed through by president Bush under a Homeland Security directive urging the clampdown on terrorists. Under Gordon Browns regime we have seen the use of CCTV surveillance increase tenfold. Within the UK alone there are over 200 million CCTV cameras as well as listening devices. The surveillance cameras installed in peoples homes is merely the next step and will help the police and security services monitor people more efficiently. This way if there is any sniff of any unlawful behaviour, the authorities will know about it. The only problem is that governmental surveillance is only limited to people with set top boxes in their living rooms. We have to find a way to monitor all the rooms of the house. These are still early days of course, Giles Peterson, a key surveillance analyst employed by the British government told Reuters. As of writing, much of the public is still unaware of the home surveillance initiative and it is better if it stays that way. The Daily Squib misses the days when you could do as you wished in your living room without a camera relaying the information to a central computer somewhere to be processed. Just think of all those unwitting moments you had in front of the TV with someone you were shagging at the time, or that illicit wank while you thought no one was watching well, its all down on a computer somewhere being mulled over by surveillance experts. WASHINGTON DC - USA - Gordon Brown nearly missed his appointment with American President Barack Obama when he lost his prosthetic eyeball during landing at Dulles International Airport, senior aides have revealed. Near disaster was averted by a quick thinking Brown aide, who opened up a tin of on-board lychees and plonked one into Gordon Browns empty socket. The rough landing by the prime ministerial airplane caused a great deal of turbulence due to the snowy conditions and Mr Brown sadly lost his prosthetic eyeball when the plane touched down. Luckily we had some lychees on-board and averted disaster by applying the lychee to Mr Browns socket, John Sebastian, a senior parliamentary speechwriter, told the Evening KGB Standard. Ministerial aides are still trying to find the lost eyeball and think it went under a seat somewhere and could have rolled around to the back of the plane. Cleaners for the airplane during the Obama-Brown visit have been told not to use any vacuum cleaners and to report any eyeballs found. No one in the American press or Obama contingent have yet noticed that the one-eyed Scot is going around with a lychee as a replacement for his prosthetic eyeball, but it may only be a matter of time. Unremarkable Relationship Mr Brown, who is keen to get away from troubles at home, has been beset by problems on his visit as well. After a lukewarm greeting from the Americans, there are now calls for unelected prime minister Brown to apologise to the British people for causing the biggest downturn and depression in economic history. Forget about the credit crunch, deficit, soaring unemployment, riots, bankruptcies, street violence, deflation, resurgence of the IRA, and major unrest. The PM has been holed up in Number 10 watching movie greats like ET, The Wizard of Oz and Lassie this weekend. Obamas gift to Brown on his recent American visit was a DVD box-set of 23 American classic films which was acquired by a White House aide for $29.99 from the bargain bucket at a local Washington CircuitCity store. Barack received some top notch gifts from Gordon including an ornamental pen holder made from the timbers of the Victorian anti-slave ship HMS Gannet. Brown also gave Obama a framed commission for HMS Resolute and a first edition of the seven-volume biography of Churchill by Sir Martin Gilbert. We gave him a box-set of 23 DVDs. We also threw in a set of hubcaps for his prime ministers car, the White Houses press secretary, Donald Finklestein told Fox News. Number 10 Downing Street was in movie heaven all of this weekend with about six films being watched daily by Brown. Gordon has been laid low in his lair watching American movies all of this weekend whilst the plotters in his cabinet plan their next move to oust him. His favourite film at the moment is Bruce Willis in Die Hard 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 because he reckons hes like Officer John McClane who is hard to kill. He also likes greats like Casablanca, The Good the Bad and the Ugly and StarWars, Number 10s press secretary, John Winterton, told the Guardian newspaper. The prime minister, who very rarely has the time to watch movies during his ailing prime ministership, is soon to find he will have all the time in the world to watch as many as he wants. LOS ANGELES - USA - John Fandango, who has been in a prolonged coma for the past 25 years, has finally woken up. But, according to his lawyers, is now demanding to be put back into his coma state. The man was said to be distraught after being told about what is going on at the moment. Mr Fandango who was being cared for at Los Angeles UCLA hospital, was said to be inconsolable after reading a daily newspaper. I just woke up from a long term coma to see that the president is black, Michael Jackson is white and Arnold Schwarzanegger is the governor of California. I even read that Hillary Clinton is Secretary of State? an agitated and shocked Mr Fandango told the LA Times. Mr Fandango is now speaking to lawyers so that he can sue the hospital for irreparable mental trauma caused by the cessation of his coma. We have reason to believe that Mr Fandango may have inadvertently been woken up by a cleaner who accidentally bumped the bed. He has instructed us to present an injunction to the hospital in question for the breach of his human rights resulting in severe mental trauma, Larry Silverstein Jnr. the attorney in charge of the case told reporters. Hospital administrators, however, are at a loss as what to do next. You cant just put someone back into a coma. Although, I do have an idea. Maybe we can make him watch 15 minutes of that British prime ministers speeches. Whats the guys name? Yes, Gordon Brown. Hell, Mr Fandango would soon be back in his comatose state in no time and we would avert a multi-million dollar lawsuit, the hospitals chief administrator, Bud Dwyer M.D. said. PYONGYANG - North Korea - The launch of Pyongyang's first pizza restaurant brings to fruition a ten-year effort by dictator Kim Jong-il - a renowned gluttonous pig and lover of western food - to create the perfect pizza and pasta in his homeland. Last year a delegation of local chefs was sent by Kim to Naples and Rome to learn the proper Italian techniques after their homegrown efforts to mimic Italian cuisine were found by Kim to contain errors. We had to learn the intricacies of creating pizzas without the ingredients found in the West. The only ingredients we have are dog, cat and rat here in North Korea so we had to change a few things, chef, Ill Fuk Yu, told Choson Sinbo newspaper. In the late 1990s Kim brought a team of Italian pizza chefs to North Korea to instruct his army officers how to make pizza, a luxury which is now being offered to a tiny elite able to afford such luxuries in a country that cannot feed many of its 24 million inhabitants. Because of the food shortages dogs, cats and rats are being incorporated to ensure the perfect Korean pizza is created every time. Our North Korean pizzas are the best in the world and are now better than Western pizzas, the manager of the Pyongyang eatery quoted Kim as saying, according to the Tokyo-based Choson Sinbo newspaper. The paper, which is often seen as a mouthpiece for the communist regime, added the restaurant had proved to be a major hit after it opened in the capital Pyongyang in December. We got dog pizza, rat pizza and cat pizza. You can mix the ingredients if you wish. The pizza topping cheese is fermented from rats milk and is a North Korean delicacy. We love it here, Jung Un-Suk, 42, told the newspaper, They have unique flavours, she said. MA'ARAT AL NUMAN - Syria - There will, of course, be no consequences for Russia or Vladimir Putin after bombing another hospital in the war torn rubble. Russian president, Vladimir Putin has never been so joyful and happy, especially after hearing that another hospital has been bombed to the ground, deliberately targeted of course by his jets. I do not consider these people as human, so why should I care when these women and children are bombed into the rubble. We are creating a humanitarian crisis and this is why millions of people are fleeing towards Europe and destabilising the EU. Thats a bonus for me. We get to kill two birds with one stone, the Russian president, Putin remarked whilst chortling under his breath much like a well sated hyena. Civilian areas in Syria are not immune to Russian cluster bombs either. So much for John Kerrys well touted ceasefire, the Russians have been carpet bombing Syria ever since. The Medecins Sans Frontieres hospital was among a school targeted by the Russians killing over 12 children. Please donate, as MSF needs all the help they can get under extremely difficult conditions. ACAPULCO - Mexico - That old swine and supreme swindler of the British taxpayer, ex-RBS boss, Sir Fred Goodwin has been located in a Mexican resort living 'la vida porko'. Like a swine in the trough, Sir Fred Goodwin who stole a 750,000 per annum pension fund after ruining the bank, was today seen guzzling endless glasses of champagne on his private yacht which is moored off the luxury seaside resort of Acapulco. According to newspaper reports emanating from Mexico everyone is now talking about the swine levels reaching epidemic levels. As soon as Sir Fred the Shred swined into Acapulco, everyone knew there was a serious threat of swine fever. This guy can outswine a member of the Labour cabinet and still go for a second-home expense account pig-out session without balking. Whats more its bloody contagious, even this morning at the breakfast buffet I found myself stuffing everything I could find into my pockets a la John Prescott and I even filled up about four plates of food which I pigged out on like a crazed hog , David Sinclair, a cruise ship passenger told the Acapulco Daily. Not Kosher Rabbi Mosher Pretzel, a prominent member of the North London Jewish community who hails from Golders Green was on holiday with his wife, Golda and was incensed about Sir Fred Goodwins porky credentials: I paid a lot of money for this cruise and then the dirty swine Goodwin turned up and spoilt everything. We cant even come on deck because we see that smarmy swine grinning as he plays with his ill gotten gains on the deck of his ship. Its like hes flaunting it. Counting his shekels in front of us like that. Its not kosher I tell you. He should give some to me and my wife. We have been confined in our room all day and night for two weeks! Fred Goodwins swine fever has swept the whole of Mexico now and is even threatening some parts of Southern California and Texas. Containment measures are now being made to thwart the spread of Fred Goodwins unholy swine ways. The world is already in enough pig shit at the moment without more people contracting Fred Goodwin Swine Fever. The filthy greedy pig has caused enough damage dont you think? another distraught cruise ship passenger said, before stealing an old womans purse and running off squealing like a delighted pig. LONDON - England - Lucky readers of the Daily Squib will have a chance to win one of many Chinese sofas in this week's exclusive competition. The Daily Squib has 1000s of Chinese sofas to give away to lucky competition winners, so if you want to grab one of these wonderful sofas get calling. Remember youve got to be in it to win it. The sofas come in all shapes and sizes and will brighten up any living room, especially when youre rolling around in agony with chemical burns over 80% of your body. You may even find that you will have trouble breathing as the chemicals get into your lungs or how about the agony of the Dimethyl Fumarate (DMF) agent getting into your eyes. The Chinese chemical sofas are also good at giving you skin cancer. Chinese mass produced goods are always soaked with these chemicals because it is a cheap alternative to expensive packaging. Theyre selling the sofas to the UK so there is no need for regulation because they know there is no comeback. Everyones happy then, the Chinese who make huge profits because they use communist slave labour to create the cheap and nasty product and the British distributors like Argos and Land of Leather who sell for huge premiums. The only losers are the poor sods who buy them and sit on them, but thats easily glossed over like everything else is, Trading Standards officer, Luke Minstrel, told Reuters. Well be giving away tens of thousands of these sofas which will also come with a chem suit so that you can sit on the bloody thing. To enter the competition answer this question: What chemicals are usually found in toxic Chinese childrens toys? a) high levels of lead b) 1,4-butanediol c) cadmium and lead Call 0969 666 666 with your answer to win a Chinese sofa. Calls will be charged at 34.23 per minute. You do not need permission from the bill payer so get calling now. NEW YORK - USA - Celebrities flocked to see Prince Harry play in a polo match yesterday. Madonna was among a number of other celebrities who watched Prince Harry play a charity polo match in New York. Members of the public were invited to watch the polo match, in which Harry displayed his polo skills. OJ Bubba, visiting from Jenkum, South Carolina, decided to take his family to the match. That nigga on a horse is crazy! He be hittin a ball wit a stick, he said. Sheeeit! Lookee all the rich folk here drinkin champagne. This aint no ghetto cook out thas fo sho! Another spectator who had never seen a polo match was LL Cool J. Yo yo yo yo, dont be passing the dutchie on the right side nigga, Harry told the rapper during the reception. Dont be talkin trash wigga or Ill bust a cap in yo Royal ass! the rapper replied. Prince Harry on the field between chukkas Harrys team won the match 6-5, and they celebrated afterwards by snorting champagne. The 24-year-old is on his first official trip to the United States a two-day New York visit. This is the first time the young prince has had the opportunity to prove himself on the field and improve his handicap point average, his instructor, Major Fritz Hewitt told reporters. BNP National-Socialist and architect of the British Reich, Nick Griffin was jubilant yesterday when Gordon Brown personally handed him a trophy to commemorate his victory at the European polls. I am pleased to be honoured by Gordon Browns Labour party. Thanks to Labours unfettered open-door policy of immigration which has stretched services to the limit and swamped the whole of the British Isles with immigrants from third world countries, we have received a huge boost in the European polls. Although the European Union is a Soviet system, our Fascist policies will be integrated very easily because there is very little difference between our ideologies. The BNP has great plans for implementing racial cleansing and eugenics policies as well as the compulsory expulsion/neutralisation of all ni**ers, jews, p*kis, ch*nks and any other non-aryan race from the UK and Europe. Gordon Brown, can rest assured that his government was instrumental in bringing forth the new era of Fascism across Britain. We must start making provisions to implement a more efficient way of disposing of the untermensch. Plans are being drawn for Europes largest Zyklon-B factory which we can deliver to the gas chambers in all the cities. Our plans will also implement those of Reinhard Heydrich, whose excellent technique in neutralising undesirables all those years ago will come into good use today. European Union gulags will be fitted with specially designed shower rooms and will be working night and day according to BNP Brownshirts who were present at Number 10 yesterday. Its going to be a gas, MEP Nick Griffin added. LONDON - England - Gordon Brown has agreed for an inquiry into the invasion of Iraq which will be held behind closed doors and conducted by government and oil company officials. Gordon Brown announced the whitewash inquiry yesterday after consulting oil executives at 10 Downing street. Iraq has the worlds second largest proven oil reserves. Since the invasion in 2003 by America and Britain, new exploration has discovered Iraqs reserves to be 200+ billion barrels of high-grade crude, which is extraordinarily cheap to produce and extremely profitable for both countries. The UK and US were barred from access to oil profits since Iraqs nationalization in 1972. It was only after the invasion in 2003 that the four Anglo-American oil giants finally got access to the oil reserves. Vichy The Iraqi constitution of 2005, greatly influenced by US advisors, contains language that guarantees a major role for foreign companies. The occupation of Iraq according to US officials will be indefinite. A spokesman for the US state department, Jim McRuckus, told CNN yesterday: It was necessary for us to liberate the oil and profits from the Iraqi people. Our SUVs and cars are bigger than theirs. Together the UK and US took the Iraqis lands, oil and killed millions of Iraqi civilians as well as displaced many millions. Sure there were a few US and UK casualties but, hey, they signed up so they were expendable for oil profits. The US owns Iraq now and were going to stay here forever. It was a win win situation for us, we killed millions of Muslims and took their oil. We thank the British for their help. Since 2003 the US and UK oil companies have been siphoning off huge profits and oil from the fields at the expense of the Iraqi regime and people and there are no signs that the thievery will ever stop. CANNES - France - Fred the Shred Goodwin has contemplated suicide. He speaks exclusively to the Daily Squib from his A4 million Riviera mansion. Poor Sir Fred, he is at his wits end as we meet him in the palatial atrium of his Riviera palace. I cant take it anymore. I have been treated so terribly, I am a broken man. I am a shadow of my former self. O woe is me, Sir Fred moans as he cries into his 1928 Krug, sniffing uncontrollably. Sir Fred Goodwin is seated in a gold plated wheelchair which is pushed around the modest surroundings of the French chateau by his personal butler, Gordon. Outside, a pristine pool gleams in the sunlight and from afar you can glimpse the crystal blue waters of a lake. I cant sleep, I havent slept in weeks in fact. People think I dont have a conscience, they think that Im a criminal banker swine who has caused misery to thousands of people. Today I am mourning the terrible, terrible woeful loss of a very dear part of my stash. My pension has been well and truly shredded, it has been put through the shredder of conscience, and I dont think Ill ever get over it. How am I supposed to live on the pittance these people have left me? You try and keep a flotilla of yachts, a private jet, twenty six luxury cars, my wife and children, fifteen luxury villas, a hovercraft and two busloads of servants on the small change I am left with. There is a pause as Sir Fred stands up from his wheelchair and walks over to the window fighting back tears of anger and self pity. A servant walks into the room with a plate of the finest Almas Beluga which is served up to the distraught ex-director of RBS. He pushes the plate away in disgust and continues staring out onto the well pruned jardin. Sir Goodwin is just another sad casualty of the horrible recession that has befallen so many, we should all spare a thought for his awful circumstances. WASHINGTON DC - USA - President Barack Obama is said to be smoking about five or six red Marlboro packs a day now and sometimes even filterless Gitanes. Senior White House aides are said to be concerned for the new president after the volume of cigarettes he is smoking daily has increased substantially in recent weeks. The Oval room is now one big ashtray, with Dubya we had to install a spittoon, with this guy we just have one giant ashtray in the middle of the f*cking room where he sticks his butts. You can imagine the stench especially, whenever there is a slight crisis. Barack will just keep chaining em like theres no tomorrow. We even had to get some people in a few days ago to scrape the nicotine off the once white ceiling, John Smithers, the White House press officer told CNN. It has been one disaster after another for Obama and it seems the fake veneer of his election promises are slowly wearing thin. Tanya Gould, a prominent Obama supporter and campaigner told the Washington Times: Its like the people got conned by electing him and sometimes you see the real truth of the situation. Like you get little glimpses, but then the PR people come in and gloss over the truth. I just wish there would be some reality even though things would be bad at least it would be real huh. The White Houses resident doctor, Meat Johnsons M.D, who trained at the Michael Jackson School of Medicine, said this about Obamas unhealthy habit: We need to realise that Obama is under a lot of stress and he needs to smoke because it gives him the strength to carry on when everything else is crumbling around him. I say smoke more!. What with the whole of the U.S.A slowly imploding underneath the trillions of debt dollars; the social infrastructure crumbling; healthcare reform; inevitable defeat in Afghanistan; pensions and mass unemployment at least Obama is keeping the U.S.s tobacco industry afloat. French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, who attended a meeting with Obama at the White House last week was astounded at the level of smoke in the Oval office: Sarkozy is not a big guy and we actually lost him at one point under the smoke from the cigarettes and ashtray. We had to get a secret service dude to open the window so we could find the French guy. In the end we found him cowering behind a chair. It was a hectic 25 minutes I tell you, another aide, who spoke to us on condition of anonymity, divulged. LONDON - England - Britain's Health and Safety commission has been found to be unsafe and will be disbanded within the year says the Ministry of Common Sense. The Health and Safety board will be dismantled after a recent Parliamentary White Paper put through the House of Lords found the Labour Stasi unit to be unsafe and extremely hazardous to the public. Speaking to ITN News, head of the Common Sense Ministry in Whitehall, Sir Ludwig Sane, outlined the main reasons for the final curtain being pulled on Health and Safety: Frankly weve had enough. Theyre f*cking bonkers. You cant even get out of bed these days without some trumped up overpaid shister in a white coat and a hardhat running over to you and telling you to stay in for the day. Theyre now stopping people crossing the roads, walking on pavements and looking up into the sky. Last week the Labour government tried to increase Health and Safety units already covering the whole of Britain to cover Northern Ireland and the rest of the British Isles. We are increasing our numbers every day and soon Britain will be a complete Health and Safety zone so that we can have even more control over your hazardous lives. No one can stop our Health and Safety ways. No one! Not even the Squib! Deputy to the Head of Health and Safety, Roger Yarwood boasted to our paper. Labour Stasi ministers were said to be furious with the plans to kerb their flagship bureaucratic nonsensical waste of money body and have vowed to fight the common sense ruling to ban Health and Safety indefinitely. Before this article was written, a Health and Safety officer attempted to stop me from typing on the keyboard. He was led into the Daily Squib office toilets and his head dunked in the toilet bowl repeatedly by the chief editor and a load of Squib staff writers. It is safe to say that we wont see him and his Health and Safety again for awhile. WASILLA - USA - Sarah Palin is set to take over from the "Governator" Schwarzenegger say sources in California. First thing Sarah asked me was Are there any moose or elk in California? I said no, but we got coyotes and a shitload of liberal do-gooders, well, she laughed and accepted the job, the soon to be ex-governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger told the LA Times on Thursday. Senior GOP members have confirmed Palins move and will make it official next week via the news networks. Sarah Palin, who recently quit as governor of Alaska, is raring to go to California and sort out the deficit once and for all. I wont be able to see Russia from California but the move might be able to expand my geographical knowledge some. I heard that California is quite near to Mexico, or is that Cuba? They got commies there I heard in one of those countries. Its going to be quite a change I tell you. I plan on raising money for the empty coffers by declaring war on Washington and extending hunting season, Sarah Palin was quoted as saying on the Fox News network. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has been dogged by the state of the Californian economy since his election will be glad to get away from it all. He plans on spending his retirement at his mansion nursing his wounds after a failed governorship that has blighted the states chances of recovery. Sarah Palin, say some politicos in Washington, will probably be using her time as Californias new governor as a stepping stone for the 2012 election when she hopes to be elected as the United States first ever female president. KABUL - Afghanistan - The Ministry of Defense is demanding the government speed up the delivery of more helicopters so that more British troops can be flown to their deaths in Helmand Province. Speaking from Bagram military base deep in Parwan province, General Sir Jock Strap told the BBC: We need more helicopters so that we can transport more troops towards the killing fields. Once they get there its usually a quick process, either theyre blown up by a mine or IED; or gunned down in an ambush. British deaths in Afghanistan are currently being realised at a rate of 10 a day. When the delivery of troop transporting helicopters materialises, the death toll for British troops will rise even further. Some experts are even predicting 20 deaths per day. Gordon Brown was adamant that there would be more helicopters delivered to the dangerous region soon so that the British soldiers can be butchered by the Taliban quicker. We are listening to the people on the ground and they say they need more helicopters in the unwinnable Afghan war. Well, we have obliged and are now borrowing some helicopters from the Kazakhstan army and this should speed up the casualty lists in this futile, pointless campaign, the prime minister said from Chequers. The deadly production line of British troops delivered to the Taliban will run smoother once the helicopters are put into service. We are winning the war of terror by dying in greater numbers daily. Our mission is to fly in the helicopters, get to a Taliban infested area (99% of Afghanistan) then get shot or blown up. Its quite a simple mission and we are committed to the mission, private John Smithers, 22, of the Irish Royal Guards Regiment told the BBC before he was killed the next day. LONDON - England - Members of the public who die from the deadly swine flu virus will be supported by a telephone helpline and will no longer need to bother their GPs after a National Pandemic Flu Service comes into operation in England later this week. Millions of Britons were told yesterday not to bother a doctor if they are dying from swine flu but instead ring a new phone line manned by staff with no medical training. As MPs prepared to break for an 82-day summer holiday in the middle of the worst health and economic crisis for decades, Health Secretary Andy Burnham called on the public not to panic. Were off on our hols. Were off to Tuscany where we will stay in our villa, which was purchased with taxpayers money of course. Dont worry everything is fine, if youre dying of swine flu just call the hotline and you can listen to a recorded message advising you on how to die quietly without bothering us. By the time we come back from our holidays everything should be done and dusted, Mr Burnham told the BBC on Tuesday. The new emergency National Pandemic Flu Service will advise victims of the pandemic on how to die quietly and not bother any overloaded NHS medical service or GPs. Recently, the government funded Optimum Population Trust released research suggesting the UK population must be cut to 30m if the country wants to feed itself sustainably. The deadly swine flu virus was encouraged to spread because of no travel restrictions or preventative measures being implemented by the government. As a result, the virus has been allowed to spread without any constraints. Anyone fearing they have the virus should no longer go to their doctor, but first ring a call centre manned by 300 staff where they will be given advice on how to stay at home and expire without taking up valuable NHS time. However, as fear continues to sweep the country, the H1N1 strain of the virus is spreading daily and claiming many lives. It is guaranteed that the lab-created virus will mutate to create an even deadlier strain which will accelerate the death rate sooner rather than later, a viral medical specialist from Whitehall disclosed. The government has moved quickly in finding solutions for the collection of the deceased from the streets. The NHS has taken measures for the eventual mass death toll to take hold over the whole of the UK. Every day at six in the evening a lorry will go through every residential street so that any surviving residents can throw the dead onto the back of it. All the bodies will be incinerated and the areas disinfected afterwards, Mr Burnham added. SOUTHMOULD - England - Supreme unelected leader of the British people, Gordon Brown is planning further petrol tax hikes to try and stem the massive black hole in Britain's failing economy. Mr Brown who has been enjoying his holiday in the grey damp miserable seaside town of Southmould, has been busy twittering about the merits of the NHS of late, even though he has himself received extensive treatment privately. The PM is fiercely against any form of private healthcare but because of his high rank in the Labour government he has seen fit to receive treatment worth thousands of pounds from Mervyn Druian of the London Cosmetic Dentristry Centre. The rest of the British people have to make do with rotting teeth because there are no NHS dentists or treatment, but for our unelected leader there are obvious exceptions to the rule, one of Number 10s spokesman told Reuters. The unelected PM has also ordered Alistair Darling to increase fuel tax from its already inflated levels to even higher heights. will never ask any questions or show dissent for the huge tax increases. I am happy to pay any fuel tax increase with a big smile on my face. Iwill never ask any questions or show dissent for the huge tax increases. Mr Parsons East Glamorgan Tips on how you can report dissentors of huge fuel tax hikes I have ordered Alistair Darling to increase fuel tax again because we must squeeze every drop out of the proles. So, from now on, for every pound spent at the pumps you will be paying more than 85 pence in fuel tax to the government. It is your duty as citizens of Britain to be milked even more. Please keep filling your cars further because every time you do that, you are helping MPs expense accounts, the unelected prime minister added. Since Labour came into power in 1997 the governments fuel tax increases have escalated by more than 170%. If it happened anywhere else in the world there would be riots in the streets. Because it happens in the UK where the people are so pliant and cowardly, nothing happens. They are daily bent over and fucked by the Labour government and bankers and they just take it all without question. Were so glad we dont live in the UK anymore, a British expat in America told the BBC. Meanwhile, crude oil prices are set to rise up to $165 per barrel which will mean that with the added fuel tax hikes from the government, the general population is set to be paying over 1.40 a litre for their petrol by Christmas. Looks like the unelected prime minister is certainly up for giving everyone an early Christmas present or two. TRIPOLI - Libya - The Libyan national anthem is to be played solely by bagpipes as a tribute to Scotland's release of the Lockerbie bomber says Colonel Gaddafi's chief musical director. In honour of the release of the Lockerbie terrorist by Scotlands parliament, Libyans are now adopting many Scottish traditions into their culture. From now on the Libyan national anthem will be played solely with Scottish bagpipes, Colonel Gaddafis chief musical director has announced. We love Scotland and Scottish people. Last night I cooked a haggis and instead of wearing white sheets and a towel as clothes I am noo adopting the kilt, it is much better I tell you than wearing a big fuckin white dress. My bairn drinks his IRN-BRU and Scottish oats every day now and every household has a picture of Gordon Brown on our wall. Hes our favourite Scottish person. Aye, we got blooterd last night on some prime Scotch whisky n all. When it came to bedtime last night I gots me boaby out and slapped one of my eight wives in the face wit it. She werent too pleased either but she wuz just as stocious as the bairn and me, Mohammed al bin Abdul-Muhaimin, a resident of Tripoli told the Libyan State News Service. Tripoli is teeming with saltires everywhere and pictures of Gordon Brown adorn all the spaces next to pictures of the colonel himself. Gordon Brown is an honourary Libyan now. We put Mr Browns handsome face next to our beloved Colonel Gaddafi. We have heard your Gordon Brown was also unelected as well. Our leaders have more in common than you think didnae think? a spokesman for the Libyan Ministry of Foreign Affairs told Reuters. Some Scottish traditions however have not been accepted as readily as others, for example, the Glasgow Kiss which is seen as a form of greeting in some parts of Glasgow has now been banned in Libya because of the violent nature of the salutation. Jings! Crivens! We are a peace loving people the noo n do not care much for violence help ma boab! another Libyan Foreign Ministry official opined. HELMAND - Afghanistan - Islamic terrorist organisations are now only recruiting terminally ill jihadists to blow up Western aeroplanes say CIA agents. The word on the street is that terrorist organisations are now only recruiting terminally ill terrorists to carry out their dirty deeds. Once our operators carry out their heroic deeds like blowing up passenger planes full of Americans we know they will be treated leniently especially if they are caught by the British authorities. We know that they will simply be let off to come home and receive a heros welcome. We must be careful not to be caught by the Americans however, because we have heard that they do not take kindly to terrorists, but Scotland and England no problem, an Al Qaeda commander revealed to Al Jazeera news service. Thanks to the British governments complacent and lenient nature with regards to terrorists worldwide, they now have a free Get Out of Jail card. It does not matter how terrible the atrocities committed by the terrorists are, we will release them on compassionate grounds so that they can revel in their notoriety and rejoice amongst their fellow terrorists when they are released back to their homelands, Scottish parliamentarian, Kenny MacGrahi announced at Holyrood today. Looks like its a win win situation for the worlds terrorists thanks to British law and underhand oil deals in dodgy Middle Eastern countries. LONDON - England - A-Level and GCSE grades had another bumper year with everyone getting A grades in all of their exams. Every person in the whole of the United Kingdom gained an A grade in all A-Level and GCSE exams this year under the celebrated Labour education initiative spearheaded by Schools Minister Ed Bollocks. This is a sure sign that under the Labour government everyone is equal and supremely educated. Nu-Labour came to power in 1997 and since then we have succeeded in our motto of Education, Education, Education, Schools minister, Ed Bollocks remarked after the A-level results were released last week. Everyones weely clevah now, innit? The fact that many of todays graduates do not possess even the most basic standards of education and have been dumbed down to such a level that there is little or no hope that they will ever be useful to any employer when they leave university is neither here nor there. There are simply not enough jobs to go around anyway. I did my coursework and if I got it wrong the teacher tells me what to change. I then submit it and it gets an A grade. Thats how I got A grades in everything. Its really that easy and multiple choice questions are a breeze too innit? Fred Gavinbourne, 18, from Wensleydale College told the Times. Lee from Dagenham is very happy that he got three A grades for his A-levels and has just been accepted at Cambridge University. Under Labours education initiative, everyone who even signs up to take a GCSE or A-level will automatically get an A grade because this will ensure equality for all students in the UK. This government sponsored initiative is said to encourage school and university attendance as well as encourage more pupils to read and write. I didnt even turn up for two of my exams but I got As. My mate Jimmy can only write in text language so he got an A in English Lit. and German as well as History and Economics. Its that f*cking easy it is and all, Harry Davis, 16, an inmate at Feltham Youth Rehabilitation Unit told the Squib. LONDON - England - Ailing unelected PM Gordon Brown showed his relief today after the High Court relaxed its rules on prosecuting those who assist in suicides. I can finally be put out of my misery, the glum prime minister told a commons meeting at lunchtime. There is a big queue of cabinet ministers and ex-cabinet members who are vying for the coveted role of assisting Gordon in escaping the morose moribund state of being himself. Weve got thousands of people applying for the job to snuff out Gordo. He wants to go out quick, maybe with a revolver or an axe, but he has asked to not make it too messy, a Number10 aide told the BBC. Mr Brown is known to the British people as the most detested and vilified prime minister in the history of politics. The prime ministers assistant told a BBC news crew today: Wed televise it if we could but its going to be done in one of the backrooms in 10 Downing Street and behind locked doors. Gordon has been begging to be put out of his misery once and for all and will do anything to escape the hell that he has created in Britain today and of living with the memory of being himself. Some commentators have however questioned the prime ministers plans for assisted suicide: We understand this is the most humane way of putting Gordo out of his misery, but we think he deserves to stick around in the Britain hes created a little while longer to suffer along with all the millions of other Britons who have to live here. Why does he get a ticket out of here? Let the bugger serve his term. NEW YORK - USA - Plans are being hatched to host a massive G meeting of countries that could possibly challenge the ascendancy of G nations worldwide all in one conference room. Its like this, weve got some majorly rich G7 countries who are going to mingle with some slightly rich G20 countries and they in turn are going to mingle with the G54 lot. Its going to be the party of the century and were making sure we have the right type and amount of canapes at the meeting, Ashley Risburger, a representative of the G20 nations told the Financial Times. With power shifting from the G7 and onto the G4, the G20 nations have sometimes felt underappreciated with the proceedings and are now pushing for the G54 contingent to muscle in as well. This is the first time all the G7, G20, G4 and G54 countries are meeting in one hall. Were so excited but its going to be one heck of a meeting, Sam Finklestein, a US eco lobbyist told Reuters. There are plans to amalgamate all the G nations into one group of G240 countries but some diplomats say that this would mean that the meetings would be less frequent annually thus depriving delegates of gourmet meals and other goodies. Larry Jenkem, who deals with International Monetary Policy, was today calling for a change of letter within the G nations. We want a different letter. Maybe we should move onto F countries. You know like F20 and F7. I think that actually sounds better than G, Mr Jenkem exclaimed. Some commentators on the G20, G7, G4 and G54 have however chosen to ignore all the suggestions because of the yawn inducing nature of the whole matter. Tony Humbug, 49, an agitated British voter said: F*cking hell, its enough to make you want to shave your eyeballs with a rusty razor. These G whatever meetings theyre always having. They just talk and talk and talk. Pamper themselves on booze, gourmet food and high class pr*stitutes then go back home to repeat the same thing next year. All the while, outside every meeting there are people causing bloody havoc with riots while these ponced up arseholes are blabbing away as if nothings going on. Im sick of the whole bloody lot. Forget about G, I say it should be Zzzzz. LONDON - England - Unelected Supreme Commander of the British Soviet People, Comrade Gordon Brown, has told of his fears of a revolution led by remnants of a previously defeated Old-Etonion Bullingdonian bourgeoisie that has made a brief resurgence as of late. The unelected leader, Comrade Brown, who was in the middle of selling off more state assets to fund huge state losses caused by his policies, warned the people via televisual address of the impending danger of democracy looming over the horizon. Comrades, brave Bolshevik warriors, hero postmen, peoples union leaders, commissars and our beloved Stasi politburo. We are coming through a time of great Soviet change. The recession caused by my idiotic, wasteful, atrociously irresponsible decisions and the crisis of trust in our Soviet politics have tested our Soviet British State. The view from where I stand is not of a Britain that is broken, but of a Britain that is ready to bounce back even further into the sewer with my superior leadership skills. Nowhere is the resilient Soviet British spirit found more strongly than among our armed forces, fighting bravely in Eurasia to preserve oil pipeline networks so that the Soviet British energy needs are met. They are an inspiration to us all and we honour their courage as they are blown to bits daily for nothing. Comrades, At our conference last week, we set out an ambitious set of new policies. A new politics reforming our institutions by selling off everything of value, taking away more peoples freedoms, ruining more peoples lives with increased taxation and less employment. A new broken society with new guarantees for early death after a diagnosis of cancer on the NHS; delivering earlier indoctrination ages for children and earlier liquidation of the elderly; and taking less action on anti-social behaviour by increasing police paperwork and decreasing sentences. And most importantly, an old Labourite economy of enriched failure, poverty, riots, social horror to help British families and businesses rot away faster, not just get by rotting slowly. I have seen how unemployment wrecks communities. And this is why I am making sure there is less and less employment for everyone and an increase in poverty, taxation, sheer uselessness of government policy and utter hopelessness. Ask most independent experts and they will tell you that the action we have taken is working in destroying Britains economy, culture, industry and families. The action Britain has taken has helped create 4.5 million unemployment placements. This action costs money. But the alternative to do something would cost the controlling socialist hierarchy even more. Once we have secured the non recovery, we will cut back the deficit of 30 Trillion by introducing more work houses and gulags. Beware of the threat of democracy rising over the horizon my dearest comrades. At every turn, the Conservative economic plan has shown up their misjudgment and inexperience. They are nowhere as good at ruining the economy as us. They are nowhere near at corrupting hard fought freedoms for slavery and injustice. They are nowhere as good as us at increasing crime statistics so high that violent crime is now a part of daily life. It is easy to talk about change and we talk about it constantly while bringing the British soviet people into further enslavement and brainwashing. Thats how Labour brought about the creation of the NHS and the minimum wage. Thats how I have overcome every challenge in my life. I know the British people will not be fooled. Our Soviet nations instinct is to know if somethings phoney when we hear it, to side with fairness and responsibility, and to root for those who have the backbone to stand up for their beliefs but not elections. That is why you will believe everything I tell you without question and vote for me again in the unelection which will probably never take place in any of your lifetimes. I leave you all with a great quote from my mentor: The people who cast the votes dont decide an election, the people who count the votes do. LONDON - England - A new British film set to commemorate the Royal Mail service is to be released soon. The film set in modern day Britain will showcase the famous Royal Mail service that is responsible for the countries postal deliveries. In the new film, which was filmed in a deserted postal depot in Walthamstow, East London, there are no stars or even cast. Were going to be filming the sacks of post lying in the depot. Panoramic shots of unopened Christmas presents never delivered, and sack loads Christmas cards which were never delivered as well. The stars of the show will be the rats and mice who will be nibbling at the packages amongst the built up dust and cobwebs, the films director, Mason Perdubero told the Mirror newspaper. The film which will be released in late December will be in 3D and is said to be so engrossing that it may rival anything released by Titanic director James Cameron which will be released at the same time say movie pundits. WASHINGTON D.C. - USA - President Barack Obama is nearing a decision to send more than 300,000 additional U.S. troops to American cities next year. We need more troops on the ground here, its like a hellhole, a wasteland, Arnie Fink, 27, staff Sergeant for 102nd Light Infantry division told Fox news who were reporting from the war torn country. America, is a war zone with thousands of shootings everyday and they desperately need more troops to quell the unrest in Americas ghettos and streets. Weve been at war for many years now and there is no sign of an exit strategy, when is Obama going to come out with a decision to send more troops to our own goddamn cities? Jeremy Poindexter, a military analyst from Fort Hood, Texas, told a group of reporters on the front line. Another 70,000 troops would man and support a new division headquarters for the national forces Regional Command (RC) South in El Paso. Some 4,000 additional U.S. trainers are likely to be sent as well, the officials said. The first additional combat brigade probably would arrive in Washington D.C. next March, the officials said, with the other three following at roughly three-month intervals, meaning that all the additional U.S. troops probably wouldnt be deployed until the end of next year. Army brigades number 3,500 to 5,000 soldiers; a Marine brigade has about 8,000 troops. Residents of a small town in Arkansas are fed up with the delay for more troops from Obama including Ronald McPherson, 64, a factory worker who told CBS news of his wishes for more troops in American cities: Instead of murdering people in cold blood in foreign lands we need to do more of that over here because we need to stop the shooters who are going on their rampages. Im up for shooting Muslims to death in those countries but we got to shoot them on our home turf too. Its like a skeet shoot or something sometimes. Yesterday I went to the store to buy me a loaf of bread, had to step over about six bodies on the way. Cmon Obama send more troops will you! Obama, it seems is under increased pressure to send more troops to deal with the U.S domestic crisis rather than creating more war elsewhere. WASILLA - USA - The 2012 election hopeful, Sarah Palin, has spoken of her refusal to read her own book, which is now a major bestseller in the US. I havent had the time to read the book yet but I plan on reading it when hunting season is over, Mrs Palin said from her cabin, deep in the tundra of Alaska. Commentators are baffled as to how she wrote the book in the first place without actually reading it. Please correct me if Im wrong but is she trying to write books the Katie Price, Jordan way? Obviously, there is something very wrong here, and Sarah Palin needs to address it, Dan Cayman, a writer for the Chuffington Post said. Sarah Palin is most notable for her vast worldly geographical knowledge and non-insular stance on the world forum. She knows where Russia is, so she can write a damn book for gods sake. Hell, I heard her talking about going to the country of Europe next week to promote Going Rogue. Sarah is not just a pretty face and a hot body, shes got a brain to go with that too, Willis T. Mandibal, her publicist told the New York Times on Tuesday. COPENHAGEN - Denmark - Supreme unelected Soviet leader, comrade Brown, today reiterated to the communist State of Europe's people that it is very important to remember the Soviet Greening Project must be adhered to without fail. Speaking from the Soviet Copenhagen Global Warming/Cooling Climate Change Environment Summit, the unelected commander in chief of British Soviet EU Sector 24 said: Comrades, EU Commissars, Kommandants, Enviro-Stasi officers and of course the proletariat slave workers. As we are gathered here today in Copenhagen we mustnt be distracted by the behind-the-times, anti-soviet, flat-earth climate sceptics. We know the science. We know that the earth is warmed by the sun in the day and cooled at night when the sun goes down. We know that Climate Change is a natural occurance that has been happening for millions of years and will continue to do so regardless. We know what we must do. We must now act and create another form of monetization for the human race and shut down personal human freedoms even further. We must use the Greening Issue as a way of bringing to the fore even more communistic methods of control that were nearly lost by the democratic processes of the vile capitalist scum. I suggest another Bolshevik revolution wherein we take those who reject the eco-communist way and put these people in eco-gulags in the deepest dark areas of Soviet Northern Britain. That will seal the deal. New Age of Change Religion Comrades, we will keep repeating our eco messages again and again. We will indoctrinate the people at a younger age through mediums like Waybuloo and other soviet methods of mass mind control. The British Soviet Broadcasting Peoples Company has been churning out state eco-control programmes for some time now and the Greening of the Youth process is working wonders. Soon, we will outlaw the old ways completely and shut down all freedom. You will only be allocated a small of amount of Carbon Credits per annum. If you use more than your ration you will starve as we will then control all food supplies. Within the new eco-tyranny we shall outlaw cash and all personal property. Everyone will be tracked and filmed wherever they go. If you are not part of the soviet hierarchy, eco science department or elite controller, you are a liability to the environment and thus we have the power to curtail your carbon footprint by liquidating you. Remember comrades we are doing this for your very benefit and the planets environment. Of course it was us in the first place who polluted the earth with our vast Soviet industrialisation programs that have so devastated our immediate vicinity. However, now that the elite have reached a desirable technological and scientific level, there is no more need for the vapid consumers who were trained from birth to service the machine we created for them. And, of course comrades, it is absolutely useless for a small British soviet sector to do anything for the worlds climate when you have large sectors like China, India and America pumping out so much shit into the atmosphere on a daily basis. You know that and so do I that the whole eco-greening affair is a bogus scam but because we will keep repeating our message you will adhere to our new eco control systema. We always need a threat pushed onto the public. Terrorism was not enough to keep the populations in perpetual fear, neither was economic disaster, we all know that Global Warming is the new stick we shall utilise to bring in the new era of scientific technological tyranny. Our scientists have the hard data right here to prove that this is happening to our planet. It is right here in my hand now in altered ink I tell you. Do not listen to the anti-soviet deceivers and truth sayers. They are the dangerous ones here and they will all soon be rounded up and put into eco-re-education camps. If we, your commanders, tell you that snow is black, you will believe us unquestionably. Remember comrades, the anti-soviet greening sceptics may have logic and real scientific evidence behind them but they dont have paid-off scientists doing their research. Their scientists do not get the funding to produce false data, ours do, and theres the difference comrades. We are in power and we alone wield the mighty taxpayer funded cheque book of truth to gain an even more draconian hold over the human race. (Rapturous applause and shouts of Long live comrade Brown and Hes done it again, comrade Brown, saved the world for the fifth time this month) This message was approved by EU Directive ECO-4467738-143-b19 COPENHAGEN - Denmark - The freezing weather and snow has brought the spectre of dangerous temperature rises to the Global Warming summit. My teeth are chattering and Ive got six layers of jumpers on, a Global Warming campaigner camping in an igloo at the Copenhagen Global Warming Climate Change Summit told the Times. Indeed, the Global Warming is so apparent here that the doors to the summit venue froze over last night and the organisers had to bring in industrial heaters just to open the doors so that frozen delegates could get into the freezing halls. Its f*cking freezing. This Global Warming is really bad huh. Oh my god , its so cold that my bogeys are freezing up my nose, Wendy McRuth, a Global Warming activist said after losing all her fingers on her left hand to severe frostbite. It is not only freezing in Copenhagen, there have been blizzards and snow storms reported back in Washington DC where Barack Obama is set to return any day after visiting the minus sixteen degrees freezing Global Warming climate of Copenhagen. I think its that Global Warming thing, thats why were all freezing and the temperature is so cold. It took my 12 hours to get to the venue today after our car was caught in a massive snow storm, another Global Warming activist said through his chattering teeth. LONDONISTAN - England - British trained shoe bombers have been gaining work experience for their skills across the Atlantic says a professor from a leading bomber university. Weve got a regular production line here training up British Islamic shoe and syringe bombers to go over to America for some postgraduate work experience, Professor Albert Hucklestone, who heads up the School for Shoe Bombing at University College Kensington. It has been a bumper year for shoe bombers graduating from London universities thanks to the Labour governments lax immigration policies positively encouraging the influx of Jihadists into the UK from all over the world. Thanks to Gordon Browns government, our university course has never been so full. Weve got Shoe Bombers coming out of our socks, the Dean of Londons premier Shoe Bomber campus, Wood Green University in North London told the BBC. The Shoe Bomber course is renowned throughout the world for its attention to detail and intricate instruction.This is why America, Land of the Great Satan, chooses only to import the finest shoe bombers from the UK. The four year course leads to a B.Sc qualification that is renowned in the Middle East as well as the US. We wear only the best shoes, like Bally, John Lobb and Berluti. Anywhere else in the world, shoe bombers wear mediocre cheap plastic shoes, once you study in London though you only wear the best. I myself like to wear platform shoes from the seventies because you can pack a lot more gunpowder in the heel plus Im only 4 3, Abdul bin Mahmoud Asshoe, a UCK graduate who gained his degree in June this year said. Because of the frequency of the British bombers, Pan Am flight attendants on trans-Atlantic flights are now designating that Syringe Bombers sit on the left side and Shoe Bombers on the right side of the aircraft so as not to sow any seeds of confusion during each flight. LONDON - England - Workers would only be forced to retire after dying, radical new Government proposals dictate. Labours deputy leader Harriet Harman says a major shake-up in the law is vital to smash the idea that people are past it once they are dead. In an interview with the Daily Mail, Miss Harman, who will today announce a fast-track Government review of the retirement age, said it should be scrapped. Britons would be forced to work beyond death, and would have the option to choose to sign a compulsory contractual clause dictating that they will only retire 5 years after their death. By increasing the retirement age to the after-life for all state workers, this will mean that the government will receive more taxes and money even after the worker has been buried underground, Miss Harman said. The change in the law would cover staff who have already signed contracts that say they will retire at the normal age and will force them to abide by the new laws. In addition, Miss Harman wants to reduce the state pension by 54% to increase the empty treasury coffers. Latest figures show a record 1.4million workers have reached the state pension age of 60 for women and 65 for men and they will be told tomorrow of the new government plans. I was going to retire tomorrow after working 45 years of my life as a road sweeper for Lambeth council, they told me yesterday that I will have to work until my death. Thats why Im off to the bridge right now to take a swan dive into the Thames. Its a hard life innit? Reg Braithwaite, 65, told the Evening Standard. The new directive is the exact opposite, however, to the retirement age for those working in high government office; they usually retire at the age of 45 with a large taxpayer funded pension and numerous other financial benefits. DAGENHAM - England - British National Party leader, Nick Griffin has today called for the deportation of all foreign robots working in UK factories. These robots come to our country, take all the work from English factory robots and think they own the place? Well, Ive got news for youse lot. They smell as well, yeah we want those stinking robots out of here, Mr Griffin told a conference room in a Dagenham hub cap factory on Tuesday. English industry utilises foreign made robots in their factories from many countries including: Japan, Germany and Korea and the BNP are determined to have them removed permanently. Just ship em back to where they f*cking came from innit? Weve got yellow machines, black machines, red ones too, doing work that English machines should be doing. We wont stand for it anymore! one of Nick Griffins deputies, Lee Skinhead, told the Daily Mail. The BNP plans on lobbying the European Union this week to put an end to foreign robots invading Britain and are already trying to build some English factory robots from bits of scrap metal and empty beer cans. If we build our own factory robots making such things as hub caps and widgets, we would not be invaded by foreign robots in our factories, Mr Griffin added. SAN DIEGO - USA - The 56-year-old man was arrested at his home in the Chupa Chupa district after buying his wife the new Toyota and encouraging her to drive it. The man is said to have bought his 54-year-old wife the Toyota for her birthday and even encouraged her to get into the vehicle and drive it. Luckily for his wife, after entering the deadly vehicle she realised it was a Toyota when she touched the accelerator pedal and it shot off like a rocket. That little shitbag tried to kill me. I hope they put him in Sing Sing for the rest of his crappy life, Agnys Demartino, told the local radio station KRCS. Her husband, Bruno Demartino, was arrested and arraigned until the court case in April. Asked after his arrest why he tried to do away with his wife, Mr Demartino said: That old bag has been trying to kill me with her cooking for thirty fuckin years! Last week, a Dallas woman was arrested after buying her husbands mistress a brand new Toyota, and in New York, Mafia bosses for the Tagliatelle family even tried to despatch a rival mafia gang boss by presenting him with a brand spanking new Toyota. ATHENS - Greece - As in Virgil's Aeneid, so too has Europe been taken down by the Greeks like the ancient city of Troy. Beware of Greeks bearing gifts, and maybe the Europeans should have watched their backs before they were suckered into accepting this debt-ridden economic liability into their arms so readily. The only reason the Greeks were allowed into Europe is because theyre Christian. They have no credentials as an economic power, and are in fact a huge burden on Europes economy. Greece is a moth-eaten debt black hole seeping with corruption, waste and greed for subsidies from rich European taxpayers. We are funding their useless wasteful economy that serves no purpose but to be a parasite on our formerly stable economy, Francois Ellul, a chief economic strategist for the French government told Le Figaro. The wealthy European states who so readily welcomed the PIGS into their open arms are now paying the true price of their imprudence. The walls were breached without a fight. There were no hoards of Turks besieging the walls of Europe, instead the fortifications were brought down from the inside and through deception. The so-called friendly Greeks sucked the coffers dry and are now looking to be bailed out by the same people they have effectively stolen from, Mr Ellul added. TEHRAN - Iran - After threatening Western countries with a "big surprise to end all surprises" the Islamic Revolutionary Government has announced the opening of the first ever McDonald's restaurant in the country. We will stun the West with an almighty surprise that will make them tremble, President Ahmedinnajacket had boasted only a few months ago. The consensus was that the Iranians would unleash something terrible towards Israel or even the US, but we have to say that we all got it wrong. Ive now heard that theyre eating Big Macs and gorging themselves on Happy Meals, a Washington insider disclosed. The secret negotiations were being laid for months by the Iranian regime and during the final unveiling of the fast food restaurant there were reports through Twitter that many people were crushed to death in the ensuing rush to buy a Big Mac, or as it is called in Iran, a Satans Burger. Experts in Middle East affairs are as baffled as anyone on how the Iranian regime finally succumbed to the Great Satans culinary habits. Were still kind of shocked at how they embraced the food from a country that is reviled so much by the totalitarian Islamic republic. Next theyll be going around and opening strip joints and casinos. Crazy shit I tell you, Dr. Al Franken, analyst at the University of Brooklyn told CBS news. NEW YORK - USA - Feral animal, Naomi Campbell, may have to be released back into the wild, her handlers have said. We are currently scouting places in Africa for her release back into the wild. It will be kind of sad to see her go, but we feel it is the best for her and the best for us as well. Check out these scratches over my face, yeah, I fuckin had enough already, Jane Rainers, Ms Campbells trainer told National Geographic magazine. After a series of horrendous attacks on maids, limousine drivers, taxi drivers and even armed policemen, the team of handlers and carers have had to put Naomi back into her steel cage before she is released into the wild next week. It was all going so well, she would sometimes even smile at people, and then it all went horribly wrong. She would lash out with her claws, growl and say the most horrid things, I guess all that training to try and domesticate her was fruitless. Well, now shes going back to Africa and well stick her back in the Savanna where she can roam freely. There wont be a catwalk in sight just a few big cats, Mrs Rainers added. Two days ago there was a massive scare in New York city when Campbell went on a rampage after escaping from her luxury Manhattan apartment. During her rampage she was witnessed slapping and biting anyone who came into her view. She was later captured and sedated with a dart gun after trying to climb a lamp post. The African savanna where Ms Campbell is to be released The research team involved in the care of Ms Campbell highlights the need for further projects similar to theirs so that animals are better prepared for living in their natural environment. This could include reducing contact with humans, creating opportunities for hunting and encouraging the formation of natural social groups, while the animals are still in captivity. The researchers also raised the need for long-term monitoring of released animals, so that success could be measured over several years. In addition, Campbells handlers call for engagement with local communities before any reintroduction, especially as most carnivore extinctions were originally caused through conflict between animals and humans. SCUNTHORPE - England - The Unite union which is responsible for the destruction of British Airways by encouraging its staff to strike, is to change its name to Destroy, union officials have revealed. We have decided that we will change our name to either Destroy or Divide because to tell you the truth Unite does not describe what we really do, Len McCluskey of Unite/Destroy told Labours state newspaper, the Mirror. The union which is the Labour governments biggest donor, with over 5 million donated per annum, was unrepentant after being accused of destroying Britains national airline. We have brought Unity in Destruction and Division for British Airways and their passengers. Let them revel in our work as their airline falls into even more debt and pain. I hope their passengers remember us as the union who ruined their journeys, postponed their once-in-a-lifetime trips and caused utter misery to everyone, Mr McCluskey laughed as he drove off in his chauffeur driven Bentley to another meeting to discuss more destructive ways of ruining other companies. PORT AU PRINCE - Haiti - In what was supposed to be a show of solidarity in a devastated country, Bill Clinton and George W Bush have been reduced to bickering over trivial matters much to the embarrassment of their handlers. Bill Clintons staff are demanding that George W Bush recompenses him for his ruined shirt after the Haitian shirt wipe fiasco last Tuesday. That shirt had sentimental value. It was the shirt that Monica gave to me after I peppered her blue dress. There werent any stains on that white shirt but I want some kind of compensation for this. I aint going to back down on this outrage either. That chimp owes me a new goddamn shirt, Mr Clinton was heard ranting to one of his aides. There were threats by Mr Clinton to bring in some of his attorneys after a spat with Mr Bush during breakfast at the Port Au Prince Holiday Inn where everyone was staying on the trip. The two former presidents were said to demand separate travel arrangements after the incident and are not on speaking terms anymore. The US consulate is very embarrassed by this latest PR mistake and are urging both sides to calm down. So, I wiped my hand on Bills shirt. Im sure he had a lot worse stuff on that shirt. Whats he going to do, sue me? Mr Bush said from his private jet going back to his ranch in Texas. VATICAN CITY - Italy - The Pope has announced that all choirs around the world within the Catholic church are to have the young boys replaced with plastic dummies to prevent any more perversions continuing from the church's priests. The new measures brought in by the church will ensure the priests will not be able to do their usual fiddling anymore, because the choirs will be manned by dummies. They will look like choir boys, but thats about it. To take away any temptation, the mannequins will not have any genitals or holes either. There will be a little speaker from their mouths to simulate singing, which will come from recordings of actual choirs from the past, Reverend Guisseppe Battybuoy told the Holy Sees own TV channel. The new directive has come straight from the Pope and will be implemented by all Catholic dioceses around the world. After hearing of the news, there were protests in many Catholic churches with many priests very angry at the new directives. Some commentators say that the priests will now look elsewhere to fulfill their evil deeds with children. This new directive has left a gaping hole in our lives. It is our God given right to administer special treatments to young boys in the choirs of our churches. By the grace of God, Jesus and the Holy Virgin, it is our privilege as Catholic priests to carry on with our practices which I might add, have been going on for centuries, Father John McBuggerer, the head of the Irish Catholic church told the BBC. GRIMLY - England - The people of Soviet Britain are set to vote for Comrade Brown once again, Labour party officials declared last night. Our great unelected comrade in chief, Gordon Brown is set to win another unelected election victory on May 6. Turnout for the vote will be 100%, and every man, woman and child in our great Soviet British state will vote for our supreme leader. All the other candidates, of which there are none, wil be superseded and routed at the Soviet ballot boxes, Commissar Mandelson told state British Soviet Broadcasting agency, the SBBC before the broadcast from the great Comrade Brown. Comrade Brown himself made another one of his eloquent, noble speeches yesterday whilst relaxing at his dacha in Grimly, North East Sector 20, just off Junction 18 of the M34. Comrades, Stasi henchmen, Commissars and brave Bolshevik fighters. I address you from my dacha in Grimly and thank the SBBC for broadcasting this televisual message to you all. It is very pleasant here amongst the volcanic ash sludge falling from the cold grey rain drenched skies. I can see the future for Soviet Britain from here, yes and you have guessed it, its me, your beloved comrade in arms. The upcoming election for me is a deciding factor in all of your future. I know comrades, you will all make the correct decision in this fair and democratic election because our officials will be commandeering the polling booths and counting the votes. You will see on the ballot paper many options that will allow you to vote for me, therefore please vote carefully. Never in the history of the world have there been such really free and really democratic elections never! History knows no other example like it. The point is not that our elections will be universal, equal, secret and direct, although that fact in itself is of no great importance to you. Even that horrible bigoted woman, Gillian Duffy, was forcibly made to sign her postal vote when my henchmen attended her home in Rochdale last week. Remember proles, let us count the votes and you shall have the leader that you deserve me, of course. The elections on May 6 are not merely elections, our beloved unelected Comrade Brown has declared a national holiday for all workers, all peasants and all intelligentsia. Comrade Brown has also declared that on this historic day, every person in Soviet Britain will be given an extra sugar cube ration and a large bag of oats for the next winter. LONDON - England - The new conservative liberal democrat partnership is set to be even more left wing than New Labour, Westminster insiders tell the Squib. After Labours scorched earth policy created cash black holes are finally being discovered by the Con-Dem partnership, theyre all in for a serious bombshell, and so are ordinary taxpayers. Britain faces many years of extreme hardship and tax torture wherein the good people of Britain will be taken to the brink of destruction. The new coalition government will not change a thing that Labour brought in over thirteen years of ruination. They will instead carry on with the Labour created Big Brother databases and network. They will carry on with the Labour created wars in the Middle East. They will also increase taxes to inconceivable levels as well as destroy any hope of economic recovery. The Con-Dem partnership does not plan on bringing back any form of freedom to the citizens of the UK after thirteen years of Labour hell. In fact, they will use the Labour government created Big Brother networks and will capitalise on the system to punish citizens further. Nothing has changed, and nothing will change. Economically it will get a lot worse for us because the nation now has to deal with Labours legacy of debts and dirty tricks they committed to sabotage the nations economy before they left office and escaped back to Scotland, a Westminster insider told the Squib. Comrade Cameron, is not a conservative in any sense. He may be masquerading as one who espouses democracy however like all systems created by elite aristocrats: communism, fascism, socialism and democracy are all part of the same technique. They ultimately control; some may give the illusion of freedom, others are more totalitarian, however, they are all part of the same machinery, and are all rooted in the primary world religion communism. Whether the Con-Dems are in power, or the Conservatives, or Labour, or the Monkey Doodle party, there is no escape from the governmental system that holds everything in place. There is no escape from the Whitehall controllers, or the EU technocrats who stay in place irrespective of who is in so-called power. Remember comrades, if you can see and hear an official dictating their laws to you on television or the radio, you know they are not in charge, they never have been and never will be. JEDDAH - Saudi Arabia - Sarah Ferguson has sold off one of her daughters to Prince Abdul bin Abdullah Mohammed Sheikh, who is part of the ruling Saudi Royal family the Duchess announced yesterday. There was no toe-sucking involved, no hushed brown envelopes being passed around, this was all quite above board and perfectly legal in Saudi Arabia. Speaking from the Hyatt in Jeddah, the Duchess of York announced the sale of her daughter to the worlds press: I have managed to secure my future for another three or four months. I sold the good looking one, princess Eugenie, to the Saudi prince for a good price. He did try to haggle with me at first but I had none of that. I had previously tried to sell off my other daughter, the ugly bug-eyed horse-toothed one, but he only had eyes for Eugenie. Shes quite the looker. How much for your daughter? There was some speculation on the price of the transaction, but the Duchess was tight-lipped about the exact sum. The Saudi prince who bought princess Eugenie has vowed to treat her better than his other concubines and will even allow her out of her cage twice a day. Prince Abdul bin Abdullah Mohammed Sheikh is said to be worth over $2 billion and was keen to get new Western slaves for his harem. He was bored with the Russian and Eastern European girls, he wants more Anglo girls. Before any sale he has to test the teeth, and it is safe to say the Windsor teeth of princess Eugenie pleased him very much. She is a real thoroughbred. Also re-sale value does not go down too much after use so he is very pleased with his new acquisition, the princes attache told reporters. LONDON - England - An arrest warrant has been put out for ex-prime minister, Gordon Brown after the extent of his abuse of power was revealed following an independent investigation. Gordon Brown is to be arrested for high treason, corruption, war crimes, robbery, deception, counterfeiting money, fraud and treacherous sabotage. He has committed many horrid offences, some too awful and disgusting to reveal here. Under his regime of corruption and lies, Britain was taken to the brink of destruction and now the people will have to suffer for many generations because of his profligate ways. This guy recklessly spent every penny and more and what do we have to show for it? Nothing! prosecuting attorney, Lord Reginald Tory said at the High Court. Police forces across the UK were searching for Mr Brown yesterday after the warrant was announced. He was last seen in his Scottish constituency of Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath and could have fled to the local forests in the region. We have mobilised hundreds of helicopters for an air search as well as thousands of officers and army personnel for the ground search. If any civilians come across this man, be warned, he is very dangerous and all it takes is for him to open his mouth to speak and you will fall into a permanent coma, police chief for the Kirkcaldy constabulary told the BBC. The Queens speech yesterday at the opening of parliament revealed the full extent of the damage committed by Gordon Brown and his evil cronies on Britains economy and people: One has called for the immediate arrest of the traitor, Gordon Brown who has caused untold damage to ones country. The one-eyed Scottish twat has caused even more damage than Diana or Fergie put together and thats saying something. Because of that wasteful spendthrift useless shister, one now has to travel on the underground and on Ryanair to complete ones public duties. Orf with his head I say, or how about a good slow hanging for him, then display his bloody head on a stick at the Tower. LOUISIANA - USA - The American company that built and owns the Deepwater Horizon rig, Transocean, as well as another American company, Halliburton were today praised by Barack Obama for their stellar work in causing lots of anti-British feeling in America. This is a great opportunity for me to deflect attention from my failed presidency. Besides, Ive always hated the goddamn Brits anyway. Thats why I have ordered the destruction of BP, and told all news outlets that Im out to get BP. You ever seen a black man mad? Well, sheeeit, Im gonna get medieval on yo limey asses, Mr Obama said at a press conference near the disaster site. The oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has worked wonders in creating anti-British sentiment across the whole of America. Many Americans are in the dark about who built the oil rig and who operated it. This is great! Weve completely deflected all the blame from the American owners of the rig, Transocean and Halliburton. This is now a British blame operation, and I have to say its great for our share prices. Those Brits dont have pensions anymore because weve destroyed their biggest company, state department spokesman, Ollie Oyle, told ABC news yesterday. Ordinary Americans do not seem to understand that the oil rig was built by an American company and was supplying oil for America. They are being fed anti-British rhetoric every day sanctioned by the Obama administration. 911 was an enlightened sign that the new order had begun. The Gulf of Mexico disaster is another sign that the thirst for oil is not sustainable, an economics expert from Harvard university told Fox news on Thursday. Related Articles: Obama Needs His Own 911 RIYADH - Saudi Arabia - One of the most prominent Islamic countries in the Middle East has taken drastic steps to thwart the Christian 'Frenchification' of its populace by banning the French beret cap, the Saudi Culture Minister has announced. According to reports coming from the Royal Saudi Kingdom, the French beret has been banned indefinitely and anyone caught wearing it will be punished with fines, then imprisonment and maybe a stoning or beheading. We have seen people going around with French berets, and even some of them walking around with strings of garlic around their shoulders. They ride their bicycles through the city streets looking all French. It is absolutely disgusting behaviour and un-Islamic to say the least. If the French ban the burka, we ban the beret, Rumbub al Hashmami, a religious leader from Riyadhs largest mosque told the Saud Times. Saudi men usually wear a white cloth and the women wear a full burka, Both sexes have been caught wearing berets over their clothes by religious police and reprimanded. Yesterday after the ban was made known, there were cries of anguish in the streets. If I cant wear my beret in the street, I will wear it at home. They cant stop me doing that, honh, honh, honh! Ansar al bin Dhakwan, a resident of Jeddah said angrily whilst being interviewed by Al Jazeera. There are now calls for all Islamic countries in the Middle East to ban the French beret, and even as far east as Indonesia and Malaysia, there have been calls for a mass beret ban. STOKE-ON-TRENT - England - Susan Benson, 34, was so desperate for a bank loan for her new flower business that she took it upon herself to acquire the loan from her local bank who had refused her a loan earlier, by robbing it. After many months of trying to get a loan from her local bank, Ms Benson took it upon herself to get a loan from her bank, the easy way. I robbed the bank to get me a loan. But, if the rozzers see this, I intend to pay the cash back once I get my flower business up and running, Ms Benson said from a secure hiding place. Despite the banks displaying record profits this year and handing out huge bonuses to their employees, as well as receiving huge handouts from the taxpayer, they are reluctant to lend any money to anyone. Small businesses in the UK have therefore suffered to such a point that thousands are going out of business or never even getting off the ground. I certainly do not commend what Ms Benson has done. She has desperately taken it upon herself to get a loan from the bank. If she is caught by the police, she will probably do a little time but thats a small price to pay for a f*cking loan, isnt it? Reggie Kendal, a councillor for Stoke-on-Trent district council told the Stoke Times. BAGHDAD - Iraq - Former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, made a surprise visit to the war-torn capital city today to attend a much appreciated book signing. As book signings go, this one surely took the detonator. Ex-prime minister Blair touched down outside the Baghdad bookshop, deep within the Green Zone in a chartered military helicopter and was met with cheers from the assembled crowd of cherry-picked book signing attendees. We are gathered here today to buy one of Mr Blairs books. I braved two suicide bombings and an American attack helicopter to get here today, so Im truly glad the greedy money-grabbing bastard finally turned up, Abdul Mejid Hassan, a one armed baker from downtown Baghdad told the Iraq Times. Mr Blairs book signing in Baghdad was celebrated with an impromptu special fireworks display as a mark of appreciation for Mr Blairs new book Tony Blairs The Journey has been selling like hot shrapnel in Iraq and has topped the bestseller list for over four weeks. Speaking from the London offices of Schister and Schister, Aaron Reubens told the BBC: We were keen to capitalise on Mr Blairs success in Iraq as a liberator by releasing the book there as well. Not only was he instrumental in stripping Iraqis of their sovereignty, their dignity, their oil and their future; he is now giving back a small morsel of himself as a sign of his undying gratitude for their defeat as a people. What more can a country ask for? KINSHASA - Congo - Another shipment of unwanted second-hand clothes has arrived from America at Le Beach Ngobila port this week much to the disappointment of the Congolese people. You would have thought that Africans would be happy to receive aid from America, but unfortunately, this vast continent is tired of American hand-me-downs, especially when it comes to clothes. I dont know anyone in Africa who has a 65 inch waist. This is ridiculous, we can make tents out of this shit. Those fat fuck slothful fast-food guzzling greed-driven Americans are sending us clothes that we cant possibly ever wear. They have plundered the earths resources for their wasteful culture of gluttony while the rest of the world is left with nothing, Albert Kinoko, Rural Minister of Agriculture in Kinshasa told the BBC. Every day, over 500 tonnes of outsized clothing is dumped in African countries. America has the highest levels of obesity in the world, with 89% of the country being clinically obese; a stark contrast to any other part of the world. SUPER SIZE Unfortunately outsize clothing is not the only other unwelcome American export in the world. The story is the same across the whole of Africa. There are now surplus mounds of American clothes dumped across Africa from the Cape of Good Hope to Nigeria. We have found an ingenious way to deal with the problem. If we receive one Americans jeans, we cut up the material and we can usually make clothes for five or six people, or even a tent that can house ten people, a resourceful aid worker for Medecins Sans Frontieres revealed. Enos Johnsons, 45, recently started the new Shotgun Breakfast craze, which is now raging through the state of Kentucky. His wife served him up some cold eggs for breakfast so he thought hed serve up some of her cold brains on the sideboard with his 12-bore. Sheriff Elrod Cooter for Kentucky State Police said: Its a new craze going around called a Shotgun Breakfast. Last week we had one guy whos wife burnt his toast in the morning. Well, he shot up the whole trailer park and killed 23. Just yesterday down in Cheyenne Creek, one mans wife blew off her husbands nutsack because he forget to buy some more booze that morning. Folks, looks like we gots us an epidemic here! Professor Jed Pitchfork of the University of Kentucky has several theories on the series of Shotgun Breakfast rampages which are sweeping the county: Bad moonshine. I say we gots us some bad moonshine in the state and its affecting people. Im currently conducting some more scientific experiments on the latest batch of moonshine doing the rounds, and I gots to say it some goo-o-o-d shieeeeet! MANCHESTER - England - The Labour party has just elected a leader in an actual internal election. In a move that astounded political commentators, the Labour party has actually elected a leader. This is absolutely incredible news, the disgraced former unelected leader of the Labour party, Gordon Brown, told the Labour party conference in Manchester before being whisked away back to his dacha in Scotland. To mass applause from the delegates, Ed Militant, a boy, barely out of his nappies and holding staunch Marxist leanings, was elected by the Red party to succeed the deposed, shameful previous leader, Gordon Brown. We thought wed try elections out a bit. Usually we shun such democratic bits of nonsense in our party, but why not? Sometimes, even we go a little wild, a senior party member told the Red Times. When the result of the leadership contest was finally announced today, there was a wry smile from senior Commissar Balls, after his mortal enemy David Militant had been so cruelly crushed by the ruthless voting. The Tories, as well, were jubilant at the news of Ed Miltants leadership; a spokesman from Tory HQ said: We wont see Labour for a very, very long time now. Theyll be stuck in the political wilderness for decades to come. This is like a gift from God. We cant f*ck this up now can we? Can we? LONDON - England - Terror attacks are 'highly likely' and could occur at anytime, the French, German, American and UK governments have revealed. France has warned its citizens that terror attacks are highly likely in the UK and America has warned that terror attacks are most probable in Europe soon, whilst the British government says that terror attacks will occur in France. The German Foreign Ministry has said that terror attacks could occur in America and the British government has warned its citizens on travelling to France, Germany and America. The Austrian government, however, have stayed out of the terror attack warning spree and have not issued any terror attack warnings yet. Switzerland, was also quiet and neutral about the whole sordid terror attack fiasco. Weve got terror attacks coming out of the ass here. What am I going to do? This morning I couldnt even get out of my f*cking bed let alone out of my hotel room, an angry tourist from Alabama, U.S.A, told CNN whilst on vacation in Paris, France. BERLIN - Germany - Paul the Octopus, who became famous during the World Cup by predicting the outcome of Germany's games, has sadly been sold to a Korean restaurant, it was revealed today. We had to let him go. He was predicting too many things. Like he predicted that my wife would leave me, that she would take everything, and even that I would crash my BMW on the Autobahn. I just said Hey, Paul, you gotta go man. Youre disturbing me, Jens Schweinner, the aquarium boss in charge of Paul the Octopus revealed to Bild magazine. In an awful twist, poor old Paul the Octopus did not predict his demise, and was suddenly snatched from his aquarium and unceremoniously sold to the Korean restaurant in downtown Berlin. It like Old Boy. We got him on the plate and just start on Paul the Octopus, In Korea it delicacy. Raw octopus alive. It make a good meal, Phong Moon Seoung, the proprietor of the Sun Woo restaurant revealed. When it comes to Freshers Balls, this year, the gonads were swinging with gusto. Forget about black ties and dresses, how about cammo and balaclavas? How about a smattering of agent provocateur inserted into the middle class majority to spike things up a notch? How about some nice headlines on TV which you can send back to mummy and daddy in their nice semi in Putney? It was like the Bullingdon Club came home to roost. Fuck lectures! This has been the best Freshers Ball Ive ever been too. Look over there, those arent marshmallows roasting on the fire but coppers bollocks, Alan Trent-Jones, 21, from Oxford University told the BBC. Indeed, this years Freshers Ball enjoyed a pretty sizeable turnout with just over 50,000 students turning up to have some much needed fun. Finally the UK got some fucking balls. We turned up the barometer a bit just like our Gallic cousins do on a regular basis. For too long the Brits have been bent over a table and fucked up the arse by the two-faced, hypocritical governing classes. This time, we thought wed show em what were thinking, another student from Leicester Uni. said. Naturally, the police had a great time too. This was a great opportunity for us to show that we need more funding and not cuts. Thats why we just had a few personnel there, who either ran away when the party kicked off, or just stood by. Of course, they were under orders to let the students and agent provocateurs have their fun, one of the policemen overseeing the operation told the Mirror. Americans sure dont do thing in halves, do they? If youre travelling to America any time soon, be sure to give your internal cavities a good wash because you dont want to be embarrassed in front of everyone when they search you. Unpleasant smells from your crotch area can be offensive to the brute TSA official searching your rectum or vagina, therefore hygiene is an essential must-do. Be prepared for invasive pat-downs, especially for women being searched by some 6-foot thug armed with a big smile and wandering hands. Unless you enjoy having your breasts rubbed hard by a man youve never met in your life before, maybe travel elsewhere this year. If thats not bad enough, dont forget that you will also be required to go through an American x-ray machine called a body scanner. This will ensure that you will have every minute part of your anatomy displayed to the authorities, and also get a nice dose of radiation for your troubles as well. I am required to travel to America at least ten times a year. I am only 24 years old, therefore I calculate, I should get full-blown lymphatic cancer by the age of 30, a recent business traveller from Italy told the Rai Uno channel. A man is told to leave the airport after refusing to be genitally groped What of the flight crews and pilots who have to endure the horror of travelling to America on a regular basis? Well, according to many airlines, the crews just have to grin and bear it. Its all part of the job. Were abused by the passengers in the air, and the TSA authorities on the ground. Were all going to get some cancer related illness sooner or later from the x-ray machines and the groping is all part of the job now. There are even training days on how to take the news that you have cancer, and how to deal with TSA officials sticking their arms half way up your rectum, Janine Fulworth, a flight attendant for British Airways told the BBC. Bon Voyage.. NORFOLK - England - It has been a long time coming, but the day that mass turkey farmer, Bernard Matthews, bit the dust, the turkeys thought they finally got some relief. Bernard Matthews is well known in England for the massive warehouses full of turkeys piled high and processed for human consumption. Some workers working in the warehouses claim that the turkeys sighed with relief as soon as Matthews passed away. We noticed that when we were processing the millions of turkeys last thursday, when Bernard died, there was suddenly a big sigh of relief from the turkeys in the warehouse. They all stopped gobbling and sighed. Its as if they knew that the mass farmer had gone to the other side. Well, the poor blighters thought they had a pardon, but we started up the machines again and they continued to go through the mincer, Mick Kief, a Bernard Matthews abattoir worker told Factory Farm Weekly. Another worker at the turkey processing plant said: Where Bernards going, Im sure hell have a Bootiful time. He can join all the millions of turkeys hes sent through the shredder, maybe this time, theyll give him the boot eh? LONDON - England - The once proud nation of Ireland is no more, new satellite images have revealed. It used to be called the Emerald Isle, as green as the greenest lush forests and pastures, untouched for centuries. An idyllic land of ancient stoned walls and quaint pubs where the Guinness runs through your veins and out the end of your todger. But no more. Ireland is now officially a land that has disappeared off the map. It has been compromised, its heart and Celtic soul ripped unceremoniously from its juddering ribs and devoured by the insatiable cash black hole called the EU. Sunk Theres no pot of EU gold at the end of the rainbow guarded by a Leprechaun, instead there lies a Belgian plastic bag with a soiled nappy full of festering shit. There are no longer three cloves on the Shamrock, instead there is just a spindly stalk waving in the freezing winds emanating from Brussels. Ireland was lost when we signed over our sovereignty to Europe and joined the euro currency. It was all an illusion and we were suckered into the illusion. All those years of fighting the English are in vain, because we succumbed to an even worse nightmare called the EU. History dictates that nations are enslaved by debt, well, its safe to say that we wont get out of this debt burden for the next five or six generations, if ever. In other words, were completely and utterly fucked, Irish politician, Seamus OHanrahanrahan told the Irish Times. Thats why, when you now look at a satellite map of where Ireland used to be, all you see is a bit of Northern Ireland and the sea. WASHINGTON DC - USA - The Pentagon has issued a statement saying that WikiLeaks is 'endangering lives' and has vowed to shut down the free speech site. WikiLeaks is endangering lives, a Pentagon operative speaking to Fox news said before ordering more mass carpet bombing runs in Afghanistan. Americas Shock and Awe tactics in Iraq and the mass murder of over 200,000 civilians during the illegal occupation of the country is proof that a website like WikiLeaks is endangering lives. WikiLeaks endangers lives because the truth is revealed and we all know we cant have that, General Putrified, told a CNN newscaster on Monday. The U.S. never endangered any lives, we just blew people away with bombs and missiles from miles away. If you use a drone or missile, youre not endangering thousands of lives, its like a video game. I can blow an Afghan or Iraqi school full of kids sky high in the morning, then go to the cafeteria and have a hamburger. You see WikiLeaks is dangerous, were not. Were installing democracy with all our guns, missiles, bombs and tanks, a White House spokesman said. This little Iraqi girl endangers American lives George W. Bushs war of perpetual terror has been neatly adopted by his successor, Barack Hussein Obama, who during his election campaign promised to stop the illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, only to renege on his promise and continue to endanger the worlds stability with even more war. LONDON - England - In another remarkable twist to the WikiLeaks story, crazed U.S. prosecutors are readying papers for WiliLeaks boss, Julian Assange's extradition because he didn't wear a condom during sex. He didnt wear a rubber during a honey trap operation so we need to extradite him on espionage charges to the U.S, a United States prosecutor said on Wednesday. Mr Assange who is pleading that he converted to Catholicism, and thus was not required to wear a condom, is vowing to fight the espionage charges vehemently. His lawyer said: My client did not wear a condom during sex with two females who were allegedly set up by the Americans to trap Mr Assange. He recently converted to Catholicism so were trying to figure out what the frickin problem is? My guess is that the yanks are yanking our chain over this shit. For now, the WikiLeaks hero is being held against his will in a British prison and has been refused any form of bail. A Very Merry Authorized Scatology Pageant is a musical play designed for the holiday season, however, the play will not focus on Jesus Christ, but instead the story will be about N. Ron Hubbub, the founder of the church Of Scatology. The story line follows N. Ron Hubbub through his life, his journey through the sewers of Los Angeles and search for faecal answers. Its about N. Rons scat life. He loved shit, he would wallow in it, he would worship the mighty Klingon and he wrote a bible about it that millions of Scatologists are still following to this day, said, Ray Mancuso, an actor that plays the role of Hubbub in the production. The musical satire features characters of famous celebrity Scatologists like John Travolting, Tom Cruises and Kirstie Alleyway and most of the dialogue comes from the writings of Hubbub and church faecal literature. The opening scene involves a giant plastic turd being winched down onto the stage from the rafters as the cast beckon down the mighty Klingon which is stuck to a huge ass hair, said, Tommy Merde, a spokesman for the American Stage Theater. The theatre is located less than a block away from a Scatology scatwashing building, where Scatologists are daily inducted into the ways of the grand toilet of N. Ron Hubbub. Officials with the theatre reached out to the church and received feedback from several Scatologists who visit the theatre. They basically said, that they absolutely adored the play and they urged all Scatologists worldwide to come and see the scat play in action, said, Edwin Winnit, the director of the musical. Two hundred and thirty productions of the musical are being produced around the country, but the American Stage Theatre production is the first to be produced in Florida. We wanted to give something back to the Scatoogist community here in Florida, so we gave them this big loving turd, Mr Winnit said. The theatre is hoping this holiday scat musical will be a big shit in the bowl for everyone, Scatologists and non-Scatologists alike. SHARM EL-SHEIKH - Egypt - After a spate of vicious shark attacks at the popular holiday resort killing a German woman, and severely maiming many others, the only people who can wade into the shark infested waters now are lawyers. Everyone else has left. The tourists have all gone home, some even leaving in coffins, Abdul Mahmoudi, a hotelier from Sharm el-Sheikhs premier resort, the Bedouin, told the BBC. Its not all bad news for the hoteliers, however, because now lawyers from all over the world are flocking to the Red Sea resort to snap up some cheap holiday deals that no one wants. The sharks are actually afraid of lawyers, so even though the surrounding coast is jumping with shark activity, the lawyers go skinny dipping without so much as a scratch, Barney Fudder, a tourist fleeing the resort told the BBC on Tuesday. Marine scientist, Jacques Limbard, told CNN: After observing the lawyers swimming in the shark infested waters, we were astounded to see that the maneating vicious marine creatures with razor sharp teeth, simply swam on by as if nothing were there. Its as if they could smell them from miles away and knew that these lawyers were one of their own. In fact, Ive rarely seen sharks act so placidly even when they were clearly starving. LONDON - England - Britain's popular Coalition government are planning on bringing Victorian style workhouses back so that the poor and destitute UK population will have some kind of means of survival. Speaking from Klosters ski resort, the Chancellor, George Osborne, planned to cut short his 25,000 weeks holiday to jet back to the UK to finalise the plans for the workhouses. Unfortunately for you lot, its to the poorhouse for you. The only ones who wont be going there are us MPs and the very rich. Everyone else the poorhouse will be your new home, Mr Osborne said from his ski chalet. The government guidelines for the workhouses state that all inmates must adhere to the strictest of rules regarding work, food and eventual permanent rest. You will be in the poorhouse because your poverty is a dishonourable state caused by a lack of moral virtue of industriousness. We, the current government, or the previous one, are not to blame for putting you filthy fuckers in the poorhouse, Mr Osborne told Sky news, before turning his nose up at the camera and sneering. The workhouses planned by the government will house much of the UK population, who will be working 18 hour days on jobs like breaking rocks, chopping wood and bone-crushing. Being an inmate at a workhouse will ensure that you will not starve anymore, you will get plenty of food and vittles like bread and cheese, frumenty and broth. The coalition plan to build workhouses in every major UK city and every rural town in the country. WASHINGTON DC - USA - New PC directives being brought into the fray by the US government stipulate that black people are not black and actually do not have any skin colour whatsoever. Im not black. My skin does not have any colour. You over there are white, and you over there are brown, and you over there are green, but me, Im colourless. You can call me an African American but I never been to Africa and I cant even pinpoint it on a world map, Robert C. Kiddo, an African American Democrat politician said on Capitol Hill today. America, under the auspices of the collectivist Obama administration, is currently censoring all art, culture and history by eradicating anything pertaining to the mention of blackness. Its our own little socialist Freedom Fries moment. Were de-colourizing black people. From now on there wont be black people in America. No more Latin words for black either. You all know what the Latin word for black is huh? Well, seeing as Latin is the root of all English, were bypassing the very structure of the English language. We want to whitewash the word black from all of culture, we want to deny history and physicality, we want to make it so that history never occurred and stay ignorant to our past, however painful or horrendous some parts are. When I look in the mirror I do not see the physical colour of my skin. I completely deny the physics, genetics and intrinsic value of my skin colour, Mr Kiddo said. Some detractors who are African American, however, decry the new socialist un-democratic directives being spouted from Washington. Joel Simmons, 29, from Atlanta said: Im black and proud. This is the colour of my skin. I can read the word nigger in Huckleberry Finn and know what the context of that word is. I know what happened in history. Im not ashamed of my skin colour, this is what I was born with and this is what I will die with. All you PC socialist motherfuckers are actually splitting up people with your African American nonsense. Youre creating more divisions, you are also censoring great art and the historic culture of the American people, whether black or white. What are you going to do next, censor the word War from War and Peace purely because war is kind of unpleasant? Washington is also now debating whether to increase the PC drive by including: English Americans, Austrian Americans, Belgian Americans, Bhuttanese Americans, Sri Lankan Americans, Italian Americans, Eurasian Americans, English/German/Scots/Irish Americans, Cuban Americans, Tibetan Americans, Madagascaran Americans, Pacific Americans, South East Asian Americans, French Americans, Chinese Americans, Australian Americans, German Americans, Polynesian Americans, Icelandic Americans, Mexican Americans, Russian Americans, but never just Americans. LONDON - England - Herman Phuckah today became the first sitting MP to admit to not committing expenses fraud when he admitted refusing to claim more than 65,000. The member for Trumpingfield Central was due to stand trial at Southwark Crown Court in London for admitting to the serious allegation of not stealing money while being a member of parliament. This is an utter disgrace to the profession of a politician in this country. We cant have such nonsense going on from a member of parliament. It is giving us a bad name, James Fetherington-Smythe, MP for Dagenham East told a parliamentary hearing yesterday. The MP allegedly refused to accept a 65,000 bribe and even refused to steal 14,000 for his third propertys mortgage. Mr Phuckah has since been ostracised by all politicians within Westminster and could even face a lengthy jail sentence if charged. He walked into the bar at Westminster last week and no one had the balls to look him in the eye. He just sat there at the bar, waited for a drink that never turned up, then walked out, a Westminster insider recalled. The MP for Trumpingfield South will be sentenced later on today. CAIRO - Egypt - Fed up Egyptians who are angry with the current regime and President Hosni Mubarak's reluctance to resign are now talking of mummification. Professor Bin Ali at Cairos world famous museum said: I have been consulted by many protesters about the process of mummification. They want me to supervise them when they finally catch Mubarak. Some protesters were however not so happy about the mummification proposals and voiced their anger. Mummification means that the body is preserved. F*ck that for a laugh, we dont want Hosni preserved, we want the idiot to disappear, Jallilli bin Abdul Ginsters Mahmoudi, a resident of Cairo told Al Jazeera news. As the daily riots and lawless anarchy continues in the beleaguered country, political commentators are also claiming that Hosni Mubarak may be getting help from ex-prime minister, Gordon Brown. Certainly we think that Gordon Brown has been on the phone to this guy Mubarak. Hes been giving him tips on how to hold onto his unelected position of power, Mohamed Fandango, an opposition party member told the BBC. We all know what Democracy means in the Middle East. Its the ability to vote in Islamic fundamentalists. It happened in Palestine so why not in Egypt? Thank you America for your help in toppling Hosni Mubarak, Ibn bin Shister, a professor at Cairo University told the BBC. US President Barack Obama said he welcomed the historic change that has been made by the Egyptian people goaded on by Intelligence agencies from external countries, naming no names, of course. What the West does not understand is that they installed Mubarak thirty years ago for a very good reason. It seems the people in power in countries like America and Britain in those days understood how the Middle East works a lot better than the naive idiots in charge now. Freedom? The Middle East cannot have a so-called Democracy when we dont have one ourselves. Arab countries can only be ruled by dictatorship. This is the Islamic way. Democracy is not an Islamic political system, and it never will be. Even Turkey, which used to pride itself on its secular stance has now pretty much reverted to full Islamification. Saying that, of course, the fundamentalists will rush in to take power over Egypt now that the previously American backed despot, Mubarak, is gone. The Muslim Brotherhood has ties and origins with the Masonic societies of Europe. Prepare yourselves for further disruption, maybe another Suez crisis and oil up to $500 minimum. It wont happen overnight but chaos and anarchy needs time to fester. Chao Ab Ordo. The disease will naturally spread across the Middle East, because the rise of the internet makes information amongst the previously brainwashed more readily available; then they realise how they have been duped for so long by their controllers, a Pentagon official revealed to the Jerusalem Post. Within this strategic cluster f*ck will, of course be, Israel, bang in the middle of the hornets nest. Israel is in grave danger more so now than it ever was. The U.N, who set up Israel in the first place, knew in 1947 that the Israel project was a suicide mission. It doesnt matter how many nuclear weapons they own or how much money America throws at it, eventually there will come a day when it is overrun and flattened. This will happen purely because of its location, right in the most inhospitable place in the world for Jews. If the U.N. and Britain had created Israel in Madagascar, we would not be having these problems now. If the Jews had stayed in Europe, then there would not be these troubles now, the Pentagon official added. Once Egypt is compromised, the whole of the Middle East is merely a stepping stone for the change that is to come. The shock waves from the ensuing anarchy will then reverberate around the globe and possibly be a catalyst for further unrest, even in the safe West. TRIPOLI - Libya - Don't worry people. Please stop panicking. Everything is going to be all right because Tony Blair is now on the way to sort out the unholy Libyan turmoil he created in the first place. It certainly wasnt those dodgy Libyan arms deals he made behind the British peoples backs, or what about Lord Mandy and the buffoon Gordon Brown who completed the shameful Megrahi oil deal much to the chagrin of the Lockerbie relatives? Well have no fear. Tony Blair has just departed from luxuriating on one of the multi-million pound yachts owned by one of his special friends, to clean up the awful mess exasperated by those secret Faustian British arms for oil deals he personally officiated a few years ago. I am not only responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, but under my watch I sold most of these Libyans arms so that they could kill more of each other. As Peace Envoy to the Middle East, I cant think of anything more peaceful. Firstly, because they kill themselves. Muslims killing other Muslims is a big bonus for us. The more that happens, the more peaceful it gets and we dont have to do all the killing ourselves from 35,000 or so feet. Secondly, I got paid huge sums of money for what I did, so that is justification in itself. In fact, that point should be number one. I should get a frickin medal for all the crimes I committed in the name of the Britain. So all those moaners and do-gooders can shut the hell up, Mr Blair said puffing on a huge cigar whilst reclining in the private jet plane headed towards Paris Charles De Gaulle airport, where he will spirited off to an all-expenses-paid five star hotel to conduct further Middle East Peace negotiations. LONDON - England - David Cameron promised to his master Rupert Murdoch, before his election into office, he would give him the keys to the whole of the UK's media, once Murdoch's empire had secured his election through the media. Murdoch already controls 90% of the worlds media and now he will pretty much control all of the UKs media after getting the go-ahead to secure BSkyB by Camerons government, a Westminster political commentator revealed. Murdochs octopus like grip over the worlds media is a testament to control techniques that would make even Hitler or Goebbels quiver with abject jealousy. Murdoch will start feeding even more of the propaganda through even more news outlets he controls. Once he takes over 99% of the UKs media, his evil plan of indoctrination will be in place, one of Murdochs indoctrination controllers, Arnold Meshugass said from the offices of the now Murdoch controlled BSkyB company. Resistance is futile Rupert Murdochs demonic media entity has a vice grip over the majority of the media churning out propaganda only favouring his agenda, and denigrating anything in the way of its message of ultimate control. We control Hollywood, we control the worlds financial system and we also control the worlds media. In other words we control everything you can ever think about. What you gonna do about it huh? Joel Schmool, head of communications of the Murdoch conglomerate bragged at a recent news conference for Fox News Media Control Symposium in Las Vegas. This new directive is another nail in the coffin of our so-called democracy because it will ensure that impartiality and real news reporting will be forbidden and brushed under the carpet forever. From now on there will be news that favours only our agenda. Nothing else matters, because it simply does not exist in our eyes. You will be fed this news 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and you will not be able to get away from it even if you try, a jubilant Mr Murdoch said from his luxury yacht moored off Monaco yesterday. WASHINGTON DC - USA - When Americans voted for 'Change' even they did not think that they would be duped to the level that is now apparent with Barack Obama. People are dying in Libya and Japan while Obama is sitting on his ass dithering like a ninny. This guy couldnt punch his way out of a paper bag, this guy is so yella that I bet he leaves streaks on the floor when he walks. This guy makes Jimmy Carter look like Attila the f*ckin Hun! a disgruntled White House official revealed on Wednesday. Too little Too late Let us face it, the Daily Squib knew from the beginning that Obama was a wet f*rt and was not going to amount to anything, but amongst the brainwashing sessions from the White House during the election campaign, people thought that the sun shone out of his arse at the beginning of his presidency. I just wish Americans would wake the f*ck up. I mean, weve been duped with this lame duck guy who needs his autocue and hundreds of spin doctors, and even then he cant make a single f*cking decision. Hes about as decisive as a two headed donkey tethered to a pole. Not only that, hes lazy as well. He just doesnt want to know. He doesnt know how the world works, or Washington or the country. Hillary has got way more balls than Obama, she should have been president, a former democrat supporter told CBS news. A discontented Washinton resident said on Tuesday: One has to wonder what Obama has done since winning the election? It seems that his socialist agenda has been successful in one thing, and thats pouring trillions of American taxpayer dollars into a black hole to be chewed up and never seen again. Someone give this guy some f*cking balls. JERUSALEM - Israel - Former American vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, expressed support for Jews and spoke openly about Jesus' return, officials who accompanied Palin on a tour of the old city disclosed. I didnt know Jesus was Jewish until yesterday when one of my speechwriters said so. I always thought he was Amish or something, Mrs Palin said as she was escorted to the Wailing Wall to offer some prayers. The former vice president also added further words of wisdom to her hosts on this remarkable visit to Israel. Unlike the guy in the White House now, Im pro Jewish so Ill be expecting yall to vote for me in 2012. Thats why I made this trip here to Israel. Look at this huge Star of David Im wearing around my frickin neck. It dont get more obvious than that. To tell yall the truth, I dont even know if Israel is next to France? Can we visit Paris next? Unfortunately for Palin, the two day visit did not include excursions to Nazareth, Bethlehem or Paris. I was told thats where the animals are kept and we should stay away. No one told us that Bethlehem is where the Palestinians are imprisoned. When Jesus comes back, Ill be president and hell want his birthplace cleaned out for good. Dang, Ill make goddamn sure about that too, I might even lend him one of my rifles. Then Ill visit when all the Muslims have been neutralized. You betcha! Sarah Palin said before leaving for the next leg of her pre-election world tour. Police have fined a man in a shopping centre car park in Jeddah for wearing a beret, in the first enforcement of Saudi Arabias beret ban. The 48-year-old man was stopped by police in the car park in the Akbar Shopping precinct, north-west of Tahlia Street, at 5.30pm on Monday, the day the beret ban came into force. Police said he was stopped without incident for a few minutes and given a 600 Riyals (110) fine. He has one month to pay or have his hand chopped off. Under the law backed by King Abdullah, it is illegal for females in full-face veils or males in thobe dresses to wear a beret on their heads in public, including walk down the street, entering shops, using public transport, attending public executions or prayers at the mosque. They face a fine or a citizenship class. On Tuesday morning a woman in a full-face veil wearing a French beret on her head was stopped by police after she tried to enter a Louis Vuitton shop, north of Jeddah. Followed by a Saudi TV crew, she had attempted to purchase a handbag just before 11am. She was refused by officials on the grounds that she was wearing a French beret. On the way out police asked her to remove her beret from her head. When she refused she was taken to a local police station, where she lifted her beret off her head but insisted on putting it back on again. She was not fined but the Saudi Times reported that she had been given a written reminder and a leaflet explaining that French berets were no longer allowed in public and she risked a fine or even a whipping. Saudi officials are also cracking down on illegal French beret imports that are smuggled into the country on camels from the desert. We are finding evidence of an illicit trade in French berets, and we have also discovered lots of garlic as well as frogs legs in tins on some shipments. For the sake of our citizens, we are coming down hard on these smugglers who are corrupting our borders with their illegal trade, Muftafer Al-Amin, Jeddahs Chief of Police told the Saudi Times. French berets on the Saudi black market can now fetch thousands of dollars, and have now become a valuable commodity to some who hold secret French beret parties in their homes. BOSTON - USA - A prominent member of the Republican tea party was today suing the tea party after a scalding cup of tea was spilled onto his lap during a meeting, his lawyer disclosed. My client is suing the tea party because the tea was too hot and when it spilled on his lap he got burnt real bad, especially on his genitals, Ronald Eavesdrip, the attorney to the man who is suing the tea party said on Tuesday. The tea party that went wrong is now splashed all over the U.S. media and the democrats are loving the tumult the tea spillage episode has created. Al Pinto, a political commentator following the tea party movement said: The multi-million dollar lawsuit filed on Monday is not a good sign for the tea party movement after the events a few months ago with Sarah Palin inciting violence and some kid in Arizona shooting a few folk up. This latest tea scalding affair is sure to muddy the waters of the Boston harbour even further. Tea party organisers have warned all their members that vigilance should be exercised when pouring their tea or to adopt cooler refreshments during the heated tea party sessions. Were now informing our members not to drink tea at our tea parties. Maybe drink kool-aid, preferably without it being spiked with cyanide, or maybe iced tea, you know something in those lines. Were now only accepting cold refreshing drinks at our events, Jim Jones, a tea party organiser from Kentucky said. WASILLA - USA - The Daily Squib reveals some of the best lines from the release of 24,000 pages of Sarah Palin's private emails. Mrs Palin has plans to win the 2012 presidential elections. Alaska has released 24,199 printed pages of e-mails covering Mrs Palins first 21 months as governor from 2006 until she accepted the vice-presidential nomination. The release of the emails give an insight into the hard-working intelligent woman who is set to be the first ever female U.S. president. Email excerpts From Palin to CERN scientist, Edward Monk on Aug 2, 2008. Monky, after our lengthy telephone conversation on Tuesday, I have to disagree with your initial theorem. Contrary to the initial findings, the volumes make a displacement of spacetime that exerts pressure on their surface. A mass effect appears, i.e. an effect having all characteristics of mass. The mass component [M] can be extracted from the spacetime pressure on the surface of the particle [M/LT] by simple mathematical operations that I am sure even Bristol could do. Only closed volumes deform spacetime, and since spacetime curvature mass (*), only closed volumes get mass, are subject to a pressure that produces a mass effect. From Palin to press aide on Sep 15, 2008 on being told reporters were asking about her views on evolution. Arghhhh! Those Bible nuts who think the earth is 6,000 years old are onto me again. Speaking about evolution, we all know that an individual organisms phenotype results from both its genotype and the influence from the environment it has lived in. A substantial part of the variation in phenotypes in a population is caused by the differences between their genotypes. The modern evolutionary synthesis defines evolution as the change over time in this genetic variation. The frequency of one particular allele will become more or less prevalent relative to other forms of that gene. Variation disappears when a new allele reaches the point of fixation when it either disappears from the population or replaces the ancestral allele entirely. I hope all these idiot bible bashers realise that evolution is purely biological and that the bible was written by men on pieces of f*cking paper and not God. From Geographical Society professor, Julian Mannion to Palin, Sep 11, 2008. Thank you ever so much for your new discovery yesterday. We have indeed found new settlement sites in Tchibanga, Gabon. We will integrate your tireless geographical work into our current research papers. From Palin to aide Jimmy McManamon, Sept 15, 2008, about a super computer she had installed in her residence. The old one was only running at 30 teraflops, after much work on the cluster, we have successfully increased it to 75 teraflops. Yes, we paid for it ourselves LONDON - England - Rupert Murdoch switched sides from Labour to Conservative after Blair was ousted by Brown and Balls. Things went downhill rapidly for the Labour government until they were finally ousted by the Con Dem partnership. Now it is revenge time. Bring out the Labour attack dogs. As much as they have ruined our country and its economy, they had made a Faustian pact with Murdoch under Tony Blair and he pretended to support them until a bigger better deal came along, and that was David Cameron. Now the scorned labour-ites have brought the knives out for Murdoch and his evil merry men and women of News International and they may very well succeed in sinking the ship with its precious cargo of filth. This is Labours ace card. They planned well in advance to leak this underhand hacking stuff to the world. Funny, it was alright when Labour were in the driving seat, but now that the Conservatives are in power it is a different story. Labour was all too happy to turn a blind eye to the major corruption of all News international journalists and police when it suited the Labour agenda, a Westminster political commentator told the Independent newspaper. No one likes Gordon Brown, but he still has garnered major sympathy from the public because of the way the evil Murdoch-created gargoyle Rebekah Brooks has conducted herself concerning Browns disabled son. This is a man who brought in more surveillance and Big brother controls than Stalin ever wished to have in Russia, it seems he did not like it much when others were watching him and looking through his records. On a human level, one would have sympathy with Brown, however, he was all too happy to use the services of News International when his government was in power under Tony Blair. Live by the sword, die by the sword. Except, this time, hes exacting his revenge on being scorned by the Murdochs and the voters, a Fleet Street journo told the BBC. And what news of David Cameron? Well, with his reputation now in tatters, he was tricked by the Murdoch empire and may never recover his credibility because of his association with the lepers of News International. This News International strain of media corruption will of course be used by the government to increase control of the media and destroy Britains famous freedom of the press. One thing is for sure, do we want a press that is similar in vain to American and French mainstream journalism where everything is heavily censored, skewed and controlled by the government? Surely not. LONDON - England - The government has come under increasing fire for asking public sector workers to pay more for their pensions, and have outlined an alternative to paying more -- death. If you cant afford to pay an extra 3000 from your gold-plated 120,000 salary as a useless cog in the red-taped bureaucratic waste bin of government, then simply die earlier. Its really quite easy, Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne told the BBC. Public sector workers are now being frogmarched into union offices and ordered to strike. The Treasury, however, is bringing in new guidelines that will guide public sector workers who are so well funded by the taxpayer, to stop taking so long to die. Youve got two choices, pay extra money to keep your hugely generous pension or jump off a cliff. The choice is yours you ungrateful fuckers, Mr Osborne announced. An angry Newham Council Bread Bin Inspector, who makes 87,000 per annum for his three day a week flexi-time job, voiced his anger from his holiday villa in Tuscany: This is outrageous. Where am I going to holiday next year? Id rather die than holiday anywhere else. Right, to arms comrades, we must strike these Tory bastards. Looks like there will be another effete protest in central London soon. ATHENS - Greece - Greek finance minister, Vasili Archimalakas, has offered the United States a helping hand in their dire time of need. We are offering the United States some much needed assistance in this terrible time of need for their nation, Mr Archimalakas, told Greek state radio today. The United States, which is set to default on its China loans by next Tuesday, needs about $3 trillion to see it through August. Speaking from the state department, House Speaker John Boner said: I know what they said about being careful about Greeks bearing gifts, but shit, well accept anything at the moment. The Greeks have thus agreed to send a few crates of olive oil, some donkeys from Crete and a bucketful of Ouzo. We feel that this should help the Americans, you know, like their bankers and credit agencies helped us, Mr Archimalakas said, before spitting into the bucket just before the aid consignment was put on a plane bound for Washington. LONDON - England - The capital's rioters were all awarded ASBO trophies and had their benefits increased yesterday by makeshift courts. They were further praised for their courage for rioting under adverse conditions. The boys and girls continued to riot even during adverse conditions with fires burning and police men standing around. They are brave and this is why we have awarded them ASBOs as well as community service trips to Alton Towers, Judge Letof Dacriminel, told Sky news. The courts were full all night processing the many cases after the riots had ended. Councillor Judith Socilistie, told the BBC: I praise the judges who have awarded these teenagers with Anti Social Order trophies because it will be a badge of honour for them, something they can put on their mantlepiece and show to all of their friends. It is also good news that these disadvantaged souls will also have all their benefits increased by large amounts. The message here is, it is good to riot, please do it again. David Camerons socialist coalition government were praising the courts yesterday on the swift action taken dealing with the assorted thugs, criminals, chavs, scallies and hooded arseholes. I particularly praise the courts who came down soft on these poor downtrodden boys and girls with hard hitting useless words on pieces of court paper. One boy I saw got a days community service order, a Kenyan safari trip, two trips to Disney World Paris and an increase in benefits of 40%. That boy must be crying into his stolen Burberry scarf right now I tell you, a proud looking David Cameron told the House of Commons yesterday. LONDON - England - The Prime Minister, today, reiterated the point that Britain's youth should look to politicians as models of high moral behaviour. Speaking at a youth centre in Dalston, North London which will close permanently due to cuts in two weeks time, the PM said: We are in a broken society. The rioting youth have lost their moral fabric, thats why I say they should look to us politicians as a guide and moral compass on how to live their filthy lives with decency and honour. As Mr Cameron was heckled by hundreds of youths who started to throw Molotov cocktails at the assembled group of journalists and Number10 aides, riot police were sent in to break up the violent protest. British politicians are known all over the world for their morality and civilized behaviour when theyre not in prison, brothels, S&M dungeons, or attending all-expense-paid trips to the Maldives. LONDON - England - Police forces loyal to British leader David Cameron appeared to be at the point of collapse last night as explosions and gunfire were heard in the capital city. Anti-police helicopter fire was seen in the sky and sustained gunfire was heard. London residents said there were anti-Cameron protesters on the streets. We can hear shooting and rioting in different places, said one. Most of the regions of the city have gone out, mostly young people. However, early today, the sound of gunfire seemed to have subsided. Almost a minute went by without the sound of gunfire, said a wounded Reuters reporter. And a spokesman for the British government said Cameron remains the leader of the British people even though he is on another holiday and that London is well-defended. The attacks in London came after rebels said they had taken control of the Midlands city of Birmingham but had been forced to retreat. The city, which contains over 4,000 Tesco Super Stores, has changed hands repeatedly over the past six months. The cities of Northampton, 60 miles north of London, and Manchester, 160 miles to the north west, have also been seized. Last night Camerons forces were fighting to regain Birmingham. Nato has dropped leaflets over London calling on the packs of hoodies and chavs to stop the mayhem and rioting. David Cameron spoke on Friday from his holiday home in Cornwall about his desire to regain control of the country from rebels and carry on with the Big Society. BRUSSELS - Belgium - The British people will now have to work for over 345 days in the year to make any money for themselves, after it was revealed that the EU wants to tax Britain further than they are already doing. Ve haf vays of making you pay more tax you schweinhunds, an EU official has told Britains chancellor, Osborne, yesterday at an impromptu EU finance meeting in Brussels. EU budget commissioner Janusz Lewandowski, ordered the British chancellor to commit Britain to pay billions more tax to fund poor Eastern European countries like Greece, Romania, Slovakia and Lithuania who are wallowing in huge amounts of unsustainable debt. Ripoff Britain Because Britain signed up to the EU charter it is obligated to bail out the profligate lazy countries of Europe that wallowed in EU subsidies for ten whole years and cooked the books to gain admission to the single currency. Were not mentioning any names here, ahem, Greekies. Well, weve had ten years of indiscriminate spending, and somebody has to pay back that shit. Step up to the plate, Britain. You idiotic suckers just do everything that you are told to do without question, so we are telling you to pay the f*ck up. I see how every indignity is foisted on your pliant population of sheep, and they lap it up. Please sir, can I have some more, as your masters whip you into submission every day. So Englishers, eat up your cold porridge and your gruel, you owe us more money. Pay up like the good scum that you are, Mr Lewandowski told the BBC after the meeting at the EU head quarters. Britain already hands over 16 billion per annum to the EU super state and has been ordered to add to this sum substantially. Its a win win situation for Britain. You get to pay for the poor people to come into your country from Eastern Europe so that they can take your resources, pollute your overcrowded cities, go on unadulturated crime sprees, and clog up your roads with untaxed, unregistered vehicles that are exempt from any British fines or laws. What more do you want? the EU budget commissioner said whilst grinning like a well fed Cheshire cat. NEW YORK - USA - The UN has conceded that Israel will never give the Palestinians a legitimate statehood, because that would bring them up to a level of humanity that is not allowed under the Jewish state of Israel. Speaking from the UN in New York, Israeli PM, Binyamin Netanyahu said: Why does the world shed crocodiles tears over the richly merited fate of a small Palestinian minority? I ask Obama, I ask the Jewish people: Are you prepared to receive in your midst these well-poisoners of the Israeli people and the universal spirit of Zionism? We would willingly give everyone of them a free steamer-ticket and a thousand-shekel note for travelling expenses, if we could get rid of them. The Israeli premier was met with rapturous applause from the assembled Israeli contingent. Israel will regard the Palestinian question as solved only after the very last Palestinian has left the greater Israeli living space Zion will have its Palestinian question solved only after the very last Arab has left our lands. Mr Netanyahu then said: For us, this is not a problem you can turn a blind eye to-one to be solved by small concessions. For us, it is a problem of whether our nation can ever recover its health, whether the Palestinian spirit can ever really be eradicated. Dont be misled into thinking you can fight a disease without killing the carrier, without destroying the bacillus. Dont think you can fight racial tuberculosis without taking care to rid the nation of the carrier of that racial tuberculosis. This Palestinian contamination will not subside, this poisoning of the nation will not end, until the carrier himself, the Palestinian Arab, has been banished from our midst. (Applause) The Palestinian contingent, who were watching the Israeli officials hold their fists in the air defiantly, cowered in the corner of the United Nations conference hall. We will never let the Untermenschen get over the wall to Israel. As you can see we have built a big concrete wall to keep the animals out of Israel. What do you gentiles suggest, that we demolish the 70 foot concrete walls and acknowledge the existence of non-humans? Mr Netenyahu shouted before leaving the conference hall. It seems that the bullied has now turned into the bullier. PARIS - France - The French want Greece in the euro single currency even if they default, and this is why the European project is doomed to certain failure. The best way for the EU to be reduced to a smouldering wreck is for Greece to stay in the euro. We should be encouraging this because it will mean that they will drag the rest of Europe down into the mire. Hades will be a welcome sight to the French and Germans after they are dragged through the broken glass by their goolies and splattered on the rocks of the Aegean. We want Greece to stay in the euro currency because theyre like a tumour growing inside the EU. Theyre like a Trojan cancer spreading from country to country. The French will defend Greece to the end even though the Greeks have literally shat in their frog leg soup. Its not just the frogs who will hopefully be dragged down but the Krauts as well, we all know theyll get sucked under too. Theyve already bailed the Greeks out twice and because Greeks dont pay tax and live off EU subsidies, their country is not sustainable economically. Greece will take them all down, because the eurocrats are blinded by their decision to keep Greece in the euro, Jim Hedger, a staunch eurosceptic MEP told the Guardian. When Greece defaults and is still allowed to stay in the euro currency, there will be an interim period of rejoicing from the eurocrats, but this will be short lived, because the Greeks will simply repeat their profligacy and ask for more money at a later date. The Greeks will have their debt wiped out. Then they will be rewarded by being given more money from Germany and told that they can stay in the euro. Thats like telling the malignant tumour that is stuck inside of your body that it can stay there and create more trouble by spreading instead of letting the surgeon cut it out and letting your body recover. Greece will take the EU down and the delusional leeches that are siphoning off every morsel of cash from the destitute taxpayers of Europe will be stripped of their cash cow forever, Joel Mancini, an EU political commentator told Newsweek. Unfortunately, the only people who will suffer when the pack of cards finally fall will be everyone but the super-rich. The statesmen and grotesquely rich business people who have plundered the population for so long, will simply enter their luxury shelters or exclusive islands, and watch the show kick off from afar. For the ordinary civilians, it is best to stock up with as many supplies as you can find and leave the cities for remote areas in the country. When the marauding gangs are searching for food and water in the hell hole cities, you and your family want to be as far away from them as possible. You dont think for one second that the likes of Mandy and Blair will stick around in the cities do you? They will encamp to some super rich playground in Montenegro and watch the fireworks go off, only emerging once the wars have died down in about ten or fifteen years. The Greeks should be applauded because they have brought down Europe with one single blow, they did not have to send an army of pom pom sporting dancers carrying 1970s issue rifles to attack the EU, they instead took the money from the rich EU states and spent it all without recourse. Greece have done a wonderful job with the EU in bringing it to its knees, but unfortunately, the thick heads at the top of the EU are morons and will need to be completely destroyed until they finally get the message. If you are a eurosceptic, you should be hoping that Greece stays in and is allowed to finish the job it started. As the Achilles heel bleeds all over the place, so too does the mortally wounded EU. The Greeks should be praised for their sheer balls in taking the EU for a ride, then destroying their dream of an EU super state and having the cheek to pretend that they did nothing wrong in the first place. ATHENS - Greece - There is one positive thing the Greeks do have in copious amounts, and that's their hot sunny weather, EU finance ministers are said to be thinking of a valuation. The Greeks have absolutely nothing left. They are a destitute people who have spent their way into financial oblivion, but they do have one thing their great weather, EU finance bureaucrat, Japseye Scheubles, told the French, Le Figaro newspaper on Friday. Indeed, out of all of the negative headlines coming from the media, Greece can be proud of one major part of their country, they always get great f*cking weather. I dont have a job, I havent eaten in four days, I lost everything including my house, my wife, my business and even my dog, but look at this wonderful weather were having. Not a single f*cking cloud in the sky. I think Im off to the beach, Stavrou Paplamouomos, a former shopkeeper from Thessaloniki told a local Greek radio station. European debt collectors who arrived in Greece yesterday from Germany were so taken by the wonderful Greek weather that they all encamped in a villa on the coast and hope to stay there for a few weeks before they decide to refuse paying more money into the infamous Greek debt hole that everyones talking so much about. LONDON - England - The Daily Squib is to become a major competitor to Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic space flights, the Squib's head of communications and space flight has announced. What you do is, you give us 45,000 for a ride in a space rocket, then we blast you into space, Mario Jenkem, the Daily Squibs spokesman has revealed at a press conference in central London. The Daily Squibs holding company has teamed up with a Chinese aeronautics firm to create cut price rockets that shoot up into the sky at very high rates of speed. Space Rocket Specifications: Number of space tourists: 56 Number of booster rockets: 15 Speed: 13,450 mph Destination: Who knows? If you think about it, youll be forking over 120 grand to Virgin Galactic so they can fly you into the stratosphere for a few minutes. F*ck that, we can take you further, for 45k youll be halfway to Jupiter. Its a bloody bargain mate, you wont get a better deal than that. Well soon have you flying in the stars in a jiffy and Bobs your uncle, innit, Mr Jenkem said. The one way trip into deep space is bound to be a surefire hit with D-list celebrities and anyone whos got a spare 45,000 hanging about. Daily Squib Space Exploration Reader Competition For a once in a lifetime chance to win a trip into space, tell us who was the first man in space? a) Bruce Willis b) Buzz Lightyear c) Yuri Gagarin Send your answers on a postcard to: Space Rocket Comp, PO Box 3423, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, GL45 9ZA LONDON - England - It's another day in British politics and the sleaze is getting so sleazy that stains are now being left on hotel bedsheets. Defence Secretary, Liam Fox, may have spent a night in a single hotel room with Foreign Secretary William Hague, reports from a London hotel claim. Amidst more lurid rumours surrounding the two cabinet ministers, they have vehemently denied any wrongdoing and have stated that they were only conducting secret cabinet meetings from within the confines of the hotel room. Mr Hague, 49, dismissed utterly false rumours about his friendship with Mr Fox who is the Defence Secretary. But he did admit they occasionally shared twin hotel rooms to save money. Dr Liam Fox also cited the money saving attributes to the room share: These are austere times we are living in and were not only making cuts in the MoD but even ministers have to make cuts. Sometimes you just have to push the stool in and take it like a man, the cuts affect everyone. BAIZAI - Pakistan - Prince Harry has successfully carried out his first mission in the Afghan border region killing up to 28 Pakistani soldiers, reports have confirmed. Speaking from his base, the proud prince Harry said: I bagged a load of pakis today. My trigger finger just kept pumping those bastards into oblivion. It was fucking beautiful. My step-dad was a Muslim so I just wanted to give something back to the ragheads, like a few 50 caliber bullets, innit, Harry added. Prince Harry even took time to go for a round of drinks before his first mission, and was said to have downed a jug of vodka, three pints of gin and sixteen bottles of lager. Ive never seen flying like that. He swooped so low you could see the whites in the eyes of the terrified Pakistanis. It was like shooting fish in a barrel, Harrys co-pilot, flight lieutenant, Richard Moorcroft, told the Telegraph. Prince Harry was meant to be greeted by his father as he returned from his first mission. However, James Hewitt was not available, so Prince Charles was sent instead. BRUSSELS - Belgium - The new EU Treaty that has been agreed by France and Germany and the rest of the inconsequential group of former European nations is a sign of things to come in the near future. Those who forget and subdue their past are doomed to repeat it, as the Germans, French and Italians are doing right now. Whatever they try and do, this is the final nail in the coffin for Europes freedom as a new cohesive treaty will ensure that all democracy and individualism is snuffed out just as the prisoners in the shower rooms were when the Zyklon B tablets fell down the mesh tubes and gassed them to death. To understand the serious nature of the threat of fascism in Europe, cast your mind back to 1930s Germany and Italy, and the rise of fascism. This Europe that we have today, is very similar to the Reich of the past except there is no outward show of military power. If the hypnotised citizens of the EU were ever to try and question their predicament, the full force of the EUs fascist force would however come down on them hard and show them whos boss. It is only a matter of time before, inch by inch, the EU is revealed to be a totalitarian dictatorship that will be used for mass genocide on a huge scale that will dwarf the technical efficiency in killing of the Eichmann era of Nazi Germany in the 1940s. Nicolas Sarkozy, is a Nazi sympathiser and practitioner himself, as can be seen with his recent purge of Roma Gypsies from France as well as his racist fascist rants against peoples of other faiths and ethnic backgrounds. Germany, according to many German ministers and financiers, is infected with low IQ Turkish grocers, who will one day feel the wrath of the searing ovens as the indigenous population reclaims their country from the high frequency breeding Gastarbeiter as they colonise the inner cities. As with any mass genocide, the cleansing will start slowly, then pick up pace as new more efficient final solutions are found. The EU has many undesirable populations like the Muslims, Africans and Gypsies in France and Germany and these will be either expelled or killed off. In Europe, there is no place for the Untermenschen, and we will eradicate these people by any means possible, a high ranking German banker, Thilo Sarrazin, told German state television last night. Even in the UK, there are increasing reports of racially charged assaults and outbursts by seemingly normal white people, but these are mere symptoms of the Hegelian dialectic where the problem of increased immigration was allowed and encouraged to happen by successive governments for a very good reason to create discord, disharmony, hatred and fear amongst the indigenous populations. An immigration open door policy was allowed to occur so as to create a problem of overcrowding in urban areas; destruction of indigenous culture, valuable resources being used up, intolerance and racism to flourish. First you create the problem, then you wait for the people to cry out, then you move in with a solution that enslaves the people even further than they already are, Gunther Mauser, a German politician told Die Welt newspaper. BUENOS AIRES - Argentina - The Argentinian government has obviously got a short memory because they seem to have forgotten the massive whacking they got from Britain the last time they tried their hand at invading the Falkland Islands. Argentinas posturing over the British Falkland Isles is the equivalent of Morocco trying to claim the Canary Islands. Just because something is near something else, does not mean it is yours. One thing the Argies dont know is that weve got quite a lot of nuclear subs in that region and we can flatten Argentina if we so wish. So back off you Argies, unless you want to meet your pals at the bottom of the sea in their Belgrano coffin, an angry Falkland islander told the Penguin News. The Argentinians have been smarting about the Falkland Islands recently after British oil exploration company Rockhopper discovered a massive oil reserve just off the coast of the Falklands causing its share price to shoot up. Argentinian president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, has been spreading her good cheer about the Falklands by introducing a South American wide shipping embargo and using threatening language against the UK. As soon as we saw those British oil companies, Desire and Rockhopper sniffing around the Malvinas, we suddenly jolted up and said, hey, these are our islands. Anyway, were up for another defeat when we try again. This time well have our friends with us and theyll get a good clunking from the Brits too. We never learn, do we, Ms Kirchner told Argentinas state news station, Canal Siete. Could this be Camerons Maggie moment he has so been waiting for? PINEVILLE - USA - Before jetting off on a taxpayer funded $5 million 17 day Christmas vacation, Mrs Obama stopped off to get some high demand sneakers and got into a pre-Christmas brawl. I told the Air Force One jet to take a detour and Barack was forced to agree with my wishes. I needs to gets me some of those Air Jordans. I went over to the sto and I said Gibs me those shoes when a big ol mutha tried to take them shoes from my grip. Lets just say hell hath no fury for a first lady scorned. I nailed that bitch into the middle o next weekand then some, Mrs Obama told the North Carolina Herald newspaper. The disturbance started inside Carolina Place Mall just after 7am when the Obama entourage arrived. Witnesses said forty five SUVs and a helicopter arrived at the mall as officials opened the mall doors, crowds of people pushed their way in including Mrs Obama and some secret service men. Michelle almost took the door off the hinges. I heard her hollerin tellin the secret service boys to get as many Air Jordans as possible while she bagged four pairs herself, one shopper who didnt want to be identified said, there were women with babies in their hands and they on their backs. Michelle didnt care though, she said she was putting herself number one fo a change. Michelle Obama, is known for her love of shoes and is not averse to spending $4,000 on a pair of flip flops even though the U.S. is currently battling a debt of 114.5 Trillion Dollars, she has already spent $17 million on holidays this year alone. LONDON - England - Serious questions should be asked at the judicial courts as to why only 1000 police officers have criminal records. In a serious breach of Britains judicial system, data revealed today shows that only 1000 police officers in the Metropolitan police force have criminal records. We need to ask how the rest of them are getting away with it? Its a criminal act in itself that these police men and women have not been prosecuted to the full extent of the law, Arnold DeLittle, a barrister at the High Court told the Times. Forces across England and Wales employ policemen and women with convictions including burglary, causing death by careless driving, armed robbery, supplying drugs, domestic violence, rape, murder, aggravated assault, bribery, blackmail, forgery and perverting the course of justice. GIGLIO - Italy - Captain Silvio Berlusconi was said to have been conducting a Bunga Bunga orgy just before the Italian cruise ship crashed onto rocks. He was even ordering cocktails and eating olives off the naked bodies of dozens of young ladies as the ship lurched sideways and was evidently sinking, one of the waiters on the ship told Rai Uno. The good ship Italia had its hull ripped to shreds when it hit the rocks after getting perilously too close to the shoreline. The captain ordered us to get closer to the shore, because he said there was a girl with big breasts he wanted to see. How could we refuse such an order, the captains deputy, told Italian reporters. As soon as the captain realised that the ship Italia was doomed, Berlusconi ordered his troupe of Bunga Bunga women onto a lifeboat and abandoned ship leaving the rest of the crew and passengers to fend for themselves. LONDON - England - Millions of people in the world are itching to get to the United Kingdom to live a life of leisure and benefits from the state as new figures reveal the extent of the taxpayer funded lifestyle of unemployed Britons. Britains porous borders are easy to get through, and there are little or no checks at the airports and ports as millions of people from across the globe come to what used to be Great Britain, for a lifestyle they could only dream about. 1 Trillion UK Debt In Romania, if you make 300 in a year you are considered rich. I come to England to sell Big Issue magazine, and they give me 26,000 benefits, housing benefits, council tax exemption, breast implants on the NHS, veneered teeth on the NHS and I still make 250 a day selling the Big Issue. I send money back to Romania now and I build big f*cking palace. Next year I build two palace and maybe a brothel. Thank you English suckers, Olga Latvayev, a Romanian woman from Lewisham told the Evening Standard. An angry worker from Wimbledon said: All across Britain, there are millions of families with benefits packages costing taxpayers fifty or sixty thousand pounds per annum minimum, and of course, there is no impetus for these people to work. Why should they? Britains problems will only get worse and worse as these leeches and feckless useless-eaters are mollycoddled for the rest of their lives, as others have to work to support them. Britain is now the sick man of Europe, an over burdened, over crowded piss hole country where no one wants to work. You cannot have a Conservative government in a socialist system. Britain will never break its debt burden without kicking the benefits packages to the floor. How can we as a nation get out of massive debt if the money Britain makes goes to prop up the feckless scum who are bleeding the nation dry? There is no way we will ever get out of debt because we have to pay for these useless excuses for human beings, in fact they contribute nothing to society. Whats the point in working when there are millions of people earning 60,000 in benefits and they get to play their playstation 3 consoles on 3D TVs and smoke drugs all day as well as get boozed up? Go into any of these low-life scums house and youll see that theyve got all the latest gadgets, not only for themselves but for all their sink estate kids as well. The government is not only encouraging these loathsome broken sub-humans to breed, but is effectively encouraging them to not work, another angry British worker told the BBC. Britain has a socialist welfare system, which was effectively proposed by William Beveridge in the 1940s for post-war Britain and adapted by Labours Clement Attlee, when he came into power in 1945. That system is now outdated, and has been exploited to the point of reproach. If the system is socialist, then you cant have a Conservative government come into that very system and try to govern. This will not be possible, because the system is socialist. The only way a Conservative government can therefore govern, is to break the socialist system and to replace it with a system that works and is profitable for the nation. Beveridge was a eugenicist, and espoused that those who receive benefits should not be allowed to breed. Maybe we need to adopt these original methods of controlling the reproduction of the sub-classes. If you want to go on benefits, we will first sterilize you. Socialist systems only work when there is money poured into them. When other peoples money runs out, then the socialist system stops working. This is one thing we have to tell the Fabians, a Whitehall insider told the Times. WASHINGTON DC - USA - The time has come for Americans to finally grow out of their obsession with firearms, and Obama's second term will ensure that he completes his mission to disarm America and make it into a 'safer' place. Speaking from the White House East room, president Obama spoke with reporters from numerous media sources telling them about the benefits of a disarmed America. The United States is a heavily armed nation. There is no doubt about that, and we all know of its bloody history of how the gun made America into what it is today. I want Americans to understand that there is no need for ordinary citizens to hold firearms anymore. We are not living in the Wild West anymore, we are not under threat anymore, these reasons are why Change has to come. The Second Amendment under my new regime will be superceded by an amendment that will ensure the safety for all Americans against firearms and themselves. How many people die every year from guns in America? Well, I have the statistics right here. In 1998, 30,708 people in the United States died from firearm-related deaths, in 2011, the numbers are shocking, over 75,000 gun related deaths occurred. Now, we saw what happened in Tucson, Arizona with the near fatal gunshot to a Congresswoman. We need to stop people buying guns. It is going to be my mission to stop you owning a deadly gun, because we have a police force to protect you. Fellow citizens, you dont need guns no more. Look how safe the UK is without guns. Rest assured it will be my mission to protect you from your own guns, and I will not play around in the next term because I will not need to be re-elected then. I am the incumbent candidate this time, and I will be re-elected because nothing sticks to me. They call me Teflon Barry. You guys dont have shit on me, Im magic, Im invincible and you Repugnants, excuse me, I mean Republicans, can kiss my indignant, perfect, half-caste ass. Youre going to wait in the sidelines for another four years. Just wait and see. What chance do your Mormon and other candidates have? The question is, what happens if an American refuses to give up his firearms? KANDAHAR - Afghanistan - The U.S. led NATO force was accused yesterday of winning hearts and minds again with another massacre of civilians. Its just another day winning the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. We win their hearts by shooting them in the chest, and their minds by blowing their brains out all over the walls, Colonel Deano Massacre, told Stars and Stripes magazine. The My Lai massacre which took place during the Vietnam war was the cold blooded killing of 504 unarmed Vietnamese women and children by a small group of US soldiers. The recent killing of Afghan civilians numbers only 16 but it has the potential to have as much significance as the My Lai massacre purely because of the level of media coverage in the internet era. The outcome of the premeditated killing of these Afghan civilians while they were sleeping, however, will probably be another whitewash in the Western mainstream media as well as the apathetic Western public. You must remember that Afghans are viewed as sub-human by the Western forces and media as well as the public. You kill a thousand of their women and children and no one even bats an eyelid let alone starts protesting the end of the war. People dont protest in the West anymore. This is not the era of Vietnam where civil disobedience eventually swayed elements of the US political hierarchy to consider leaving Vietnam, although they were effectively pushed out of Saigon anyway, political editor, John Mancuso, for the Washington Observer said yesterday. Unfortunately for the West, they have no understanding of Muslim cultures. They think they can win against a Muslim population with selective military force and psychological warfare, but they are wrong. There is no way any Muslim populated country can ever be defeated unless every man, woman, and child is murdered. The Western forces cannot kill an ideology or the level of ingrained belief in the populations which have adopted Islam. So, unless the West is willing to nuke and kill every single person in every Islamic country, they must forget about trying to occupy or take over these countries. The only way the West can win over all the Islamic countries they attack, is by adopting Islam themselves, and that is never going to happen, so they have effectively been defeated already. LONDON - England - The UK Coalition government, which is adopting the previous Labour government's total citizen surveillance plan, has been praised by the World Democracy Foundation for its dedication to freedom, democracy and justice. Speaking at Londons Westminster conference hall, Sven Scheisse, the president of the World Democracy Foundation said: The UK government should be praised for its stance towards an open society of democracy and freedom, where citizens have the right to protest and the right to communicate with each other freely without the fear of being monitored or persecuted for their views. This is why the UKs Coalition government really stands out as a leader in democracy worldwide. Even under Stalins Russia or Maos communist China they did not have the level of democracy the UK is now exhibiting. Speaking from Downing Street, PM David Cameron was adamant that the new measures would not impinge on anyones privacy or freedom in the UK. Shutting Down the Internet Everything you say or do will be recorded. You will be free to be recorded by our Stasi agents. Thats freedom for you, right there, freedom to be recorded 24 hours a day and monitored in your own homes. All Thoughtcrimes will be punished severely and without mercy. Of course, I am a reasonable chap when I say you will be arrested and charged if you say something out of the ordinary or do not support the governments views in any way. We will be generous to citizens who also sneak on others and report even their friends and family to local Stasi agents or the GCHQ listening posts. We can at any time bring up a file of your thoughts and actions online and give the data to any agency, company or employer that asks or pays for it, Mr Cameron said. There are also plans to incorporate a public address system on every street corner as well as listening devices in the streets and homes. The Shadow Surveillance Secretary, Chris Grayling, said: This is outrageous behaviour by the Coalition government. They have completely stolen our ideas and doctrines. I guess this proves the fact that which ever so-called party is in power, the people behind the scenes never change. Whitehall had it planned all along cheeky bastards. The Chinese have already praised the UK for getting in line with their policies, and hope the UK will also incorporate the mass disappearances of individuals singled out by the state monitoring systems. The new total surveillance law will be announced in the forthcoming Queens Speech in May. BRUNSWICK - USA - GOP presidential candidate, Newt Gingrich, is resorting to desperate measures to secure more funding for his ailing election campaign. One stare from Newt Gingrichs wife and people just hand over the cash, Jerry Sandweiss, Gingrichs campaign manager, told reporters assembled at a conference hall during a recent fundraising event. People waited in the audience for Gingrich and his secret weapon to turn up, and a big black curtain was draped over the stage. Suddenly there was a noise and we heard the sound of change in a pocket, ching ching, and they raised the curtain. Thats when we saw her and Im not shitting you people just started to cringe, one man had an embolism right next to me and fell to the ground with blood tricking from his ear holes and eyes, another man screamed so loud it hurt, you know like a high pitched gonad scream, he didnt care, he emptied his pockets in less than thirty seconds. We all handed over our money, our wallets, cards and dignity, a distraught Gingrich campaign funder told CBS news on Friday. According to reports, Gingrichs wife is so potent that her stare can make milk curdle, and when she speaks in her high pitched pig squealy voice, people literally have their eardrums perforated on the spot. People will do anything to get away from that. Ive seen some even pledge college funds or house payments. Gingrich is going to win this race anyway he can do it. Kudos to him, hes now the richest candidate on the field, leaving even rich boy Romney in the dust, an election observer told the New York Times. London - England - The racism crisis engulfing Scotland Yard took a dramatic turn last night as an officer was exposed for not being racist enough. In an appalling drunken outburst, PC Thomas Raycehaight, 36, told the Pakistani glad youve come to our wonderful country. You are most welcome here. The disgraced officer faces the sack for gross misconduct after being convicted of a non racially aggravated comment towards a non-English person. The Metropolitan police force which prides itself in its institutionally racist organisation is determined to not let this lax of principles by one officer let it down. We at the Met are determined to carry on and not let our force be tarnished by one non-racist individual in our ranks. He will be sent back to Hendon immediately for re-training, police commisioner, Paul Whitewash, told the BBC. The Met is determined to root out any non-racist officers and will complete an internal investigation into these serious allegations by next month. BUENES AIRES - Argentina - The thirtieth anniversary of the Falklands war has taken a hard toll on Argentinian president, Cristina Kirchner, photos reveal. She looks rather tired. Somewhat miserable and gloomy in the photograph. I just hope shell get over this Malvinas business and go back to her plastic surgery sessions. Shes really out of her depth, Argentinian politician, Augusto Galtieri, told a group of reporters outside the countrys parliament. Mrs Kirchner, however ignored the advice of the opposition partys politicians and dug down even deeper with more rhetoric against the people of the Falkland Isles. I was just on the phone to my old friend Sean Penn, and he told me that we need to get those Gringos out of our islands. Hell be on the battleship when we invade Port Stanley. What a brave fella he is. Viva Argentina! LONDON - England - Tim Berners-Lee, the Father of the Internet, has been arrested and detained by agents working for Comrade Cameron, after he dared speak out about the special surveillance Glavrepertkom. Speaking from Red Trafalgar Square, Comrade Cameron spoke profoundly about the traitorous Tim Berners-Lee, who was incarcerated in a Northern Britain gulag just yesterday. According to Politburo operatives, the former Internet Czar was removed from his Westminster microdistrict apartment last night at 3 am. Comrades, men of the Coalition Internet Goon Squad and Coalition Snoopers, social networking commanders, Facebook data collectors, and political instructors, working men and working women, collective farmers-men and women, workers in the intellectual professions, brothers and sisters in the rear of our enemy who have temporarily fallen under the yoke of the Internet Freedom brigands, and our valiant men and women guerrillas who are destroying the rear of the free internet invaders who dare espouse such monstrous ideologies as internet freedom! On behalf of the Soviet British EU Government and our Bolshevik Coalition Party I am greeting you and congratulating you on the detention of the pernicious traitor Tim Berners-Lee who will be detained in a gulag somewhere in Sector 101 for the next 75 years. The perfidious attack of the internet freedom brigands have created a threat to our country. We must uphold the tenets of surveillance for every citizen within our borders by increasing internet surveillance of all web traffic, increase CCTV surveillance cameras by three million and detain more internet freedom activists who are in fact terrorists to the Soviet Coalition. We will hunt those people down and either kill them one by one or detain them in gulags, where their spirit of freedom will be broken down daily with the use of hard labour, little food, and electric shock treatments every night. There were times when our country used to incorporate such alien tenets as democracy, internet freedom, very little governmental surveillance, and citizens could go about their business without fear and anguish. Remember those people who wanted freedom and democracy, because they are now marked as terrorists to our state.. And what happened? We routed the internet freedomites, recovered all our lost territory, and achieved victory over them. I have also asked all neighborhood Big Society agents to report any forms of internet freedom or free speech. You will be the eyes, and ears of each sector. Dont forget, proles, that if your mother, father, or brothers and sisters know of any form of internet freedom or speech, please report your relatives or friends to your nearest listening zone. You will be rewarded greatly for your service to the Soviet Coalition. My five year plan is to increase surveillance to such a level that you wont be able to take a shit in your turd bowl without it analysing what you ate the day before. I want to build a Big Society where democracy is an alien condition only prescribed to the clinically insane. We will re-educate anyone who thinks otherwise. Remember, comrades, we tell you what to think, what to do, how to do it, and how you must feel. State intervention is a priority, this is why if you disagree with what I say in anyway, you might hear your door being broken down in the night time as you sleep, and just like what happened to Tim Berners-Lee, you will be taken away to a special place and erased completely. Comrades, men of the Politburo and GCHQ, commanders and political instructors, men and women guerrillas, the whole world is looking to you as the force capable of destroying the plundering hordes of Internet Freedom. This is your future so embrace it dearest comrades, commissars, and bolshevik heroes. The war you are waging is a war against liberation, freedom, justice and the right to free speech. We will crush our enemies, as sure as comrade Nick Clegg is a snivelling ingrate pussy with a penchant for crying at any given moment. After the speech, Red Trafalgar Square, erupted in rapturous applause and five internet freedom fighters were publicly hanged as an example to those assembled. OSLO - Norway - The message coming from the staunchly socialist country is one of complacency, and encouragement for people who go on killing sprees. Anders Breivik shot 77 people in cold blood and he will be honoured for his crime by a socialist government that does not punish criminals but enables them. The message thus being promoted by the Norwegian government is one of tolerance and support for mass murderers. In fact, the Norwegian government is as much a murderer as Breivik is, because the message is out to the world, it is OK to commit mass murder in Norway, it is an open shop, please come over here and continue to do what you are doing, one of the prosecutors at the case said, before being dismissed from the court. Norwegian prisons are notoriously luxurious, where inmates languish in clean modern spacious cells, enjoy vast libraries, saunas, sunbeds, have days out in the fields, conjugal visits and can furnish their rooms with anything they want. Breivik himself has spoken of there being hundreds of people like him, who will stop at nothing to complete their missions of destruction against non-white people across Europe. Norwegian prisons are equivalent to staying in a Northern English motel. Some motels dont even have hot water in their communal bathrooms. It is taken for granted that Norway has the best prisons and Breivik will be revered by the inmates as a celebrity, another prosecutor said. Breivik languishing in a Norwegian prison for twenty one years gives him power as a figurehead for the right wing movement, where his defiance and incarceration are seen as a heroic statement by the clinical shooter. Breivik is a hero amongst Britains and Europes extreme right. And when he walks out of his luxury prison in twenty years time, he will come out without an ounce of regret for his actions. The lax Norwegian socialist state will ensure Breiviks grace and dignity. As 40,000 Norwegians sing songs of peace outside the courthouse where Breivik is being paraded, one can only think of the silent majority in Norway who secretly agree to his doctrines. BUENES AIRES - Argentina - President Cristina Kirchner, has ordered her forces to get ready to invade the British Isles next week. If we cannot have the Malvinas we must have the UK. I have ordered our invasion forces of twelve ships to sail to Britain and attack them, Mrs Kirchner told her people during an Argentine television broadcast. The president of Argentina has been campaigning against the Falkland Islands for the past three years and bad feelings have erupted again with the Argentinian hierarchy, who are determined to give Britain a bloody nose or two with a few invasions. This isnt just about The hand of God or some Royal Navy ship we sank thirty years ago, we want to take the big one, Britain itself. I have even heard there is oil somewhere up Northern Britain, she added. Prime Minister, David Cameron, today announced the Argentinian invasion plans and is committed to defending the British Isles from this Argentinian threat. Speaking from Downing Street, he said: I have ordered a few fishing boats to meet the Argentinian Armada. Im sure all of this battle stuff will be over by 2.00pm and we can all enjoy a nice cuppa with the full knowledge that the Argies bit the dust again. Around Britain, the nation is preparing to party like its 1952 all over again, only this time with better food and miles of Chinese made plastic bunting (1,500 miles of it, according to the latest estimates from Oxford mathematics professors). Tesco is expecting to sell 200,000 bottles of cheap champagne from Romania, 2.8 million Victoria sponges baked in India and two million punnets of strawberries grown in Spain this weekend. This is going to be amazing we are so excited to celebrate her majestys incredible rule. Allahu Akbar, Mohammed Al Makruni, a resident of Chigwell, Essex, told the BBC. The Shanker gang from South London celebrating on their estate in Streatham The Thames river procession, organised at a cost of 100.5 million to honour 60 years of Queen Elizabeths reign as monarch, will be the main event, celebrating the cultural richness of Britain in 2012. What better way to show the cultural diversity of Britain with a German Queen and a flotilla of refugee boats, some from the Sudan, some from Somalia, Tunisia, Morocco, Albania and Greece, royal correspondent for the BBC, Jim Sacker, reported. The flotilla of over 2,000 refugee boats will come up the Thames from Grays, Essex, then make its way up the river to Chelsea bridge where the refugees and illegal immigrants who will have sailed on their last leg of the journey from France will jump on shore and start the asylum process immediately. HOULA - Syria - Former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, plans on flying out to visit Syrian leader Bashar Hafez al-Assad in June to personally congratulate him on another massacre of civilians. Mr Blair has been officially invited to Damascus to stay with the Assads in mid-June at the palace. When I saw the headlines about all those Arab children murdered in cold blood by Assads forces, I got goosebumps all over. You know how it is when you get moments of nostalgia, I too remembered the wonderful times Dubya and I had in Iraq and Afghanistan condemning millions of people to be displaced from their homes; dumping tonnes of depleted uranium on their land and carpet bombing large swathes of the country killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. I have to say though, he hasnt done nearly as good as I did, but then again, he doesnt get pay offs from large banking institutions like I have, Mr Blair said from the Leveson Whitewash Inquiry. Mr Assad made a statement through Syrian state television last night: My good friend Tony Blair is coming to visit me, just like he visited Colonel Gaddafi until he was deemed not useful anymore. I have tried to impress Tony with my killing sprees but speaking on the phone last night, he reminded me that I still have a long way to go innit until I get to his level of coldblooded murder. LOS ANGELES - USA - Prominent Church of Scatology member, Tom Cruise, has spoken of his underpant joy at seeing the church's founder in a vision, as he was coming back to America from filming in Iceland. Arriving back at Los Angeles at midday today, an excited Tom Cruise told of his extreme joy at seeing the founder of the Church of Scatology in a vision. N.Ron Hubbub was in the room with me as I was in the rest room taking a big dump on my 50th Birthday. At first I smelled him, you know like rotten eggs and garbage, and I knew this was N.Ron coming to show me the way to go. He said I was the most dedicated Scatologist ever since my OT IX and X Preparations. I immediately got my sh-meter out and stuck it in my butt hole knowing full well that N.Ron Hubbub would be pleased. His voice sounded like a thousand farts around a camp fire after a bowl of beans, I delighted as I saw the ol sea dog, with his shit splattered captains hat telling me that I gotta put Suri in a Scatology boot camp somewhere in the desert. He said I gotta do it for the good of the Church Scatology, and Penu. Thats when I heard a knock on the cubicle door and airport security telling me I got to pipe down with the blabber. I nearly exteriorised there and then, Cruise told ABC news. Mr Cruise was escorted to his private jet still with a sh-meter sticking in his posterior, but because of his celebrity status was allowed to continue his journey to Los Angeles. The Church of Scatology will make an announcement on Thursday about Mr Cruises N.Ron Hubbub vision. We hope to increase the churchs income by 40% on that day alone, an excited church operative told Scatology Week magazine. FIFE - Scotland - Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown wants to get back into front line politics and is even aiming for the Labour leadership again. The world needs saving, and Im the man to do it. I saved the world three or four times during my reign as supreme leader in chief, and i can do it again. Every day I come up with new exciting ways to save the planet, unlike my former friend Tony who is too busy being a corporate whore. What about the current leader of the Labour party? The little boy, I could crush him with my fist, he is weak, weak, weak, Mr Brown was overheard saying to his PR adviser on a flight from Dubai last week. All over Westminster, the news is out. Could Gordo be making a comeback? If so, how will he take out the main players who are in the ring at the moment? I cant wait to see the great clunking beasts fist dragging along the blood splattered floors of Westminster once again. Gordon is a political behemoth, a man who has vengeance in his eye as he turns his stare back towards posh weakling Cammo and the one who betrayed him, Nick Clegg. Gordon is the only one who has the brute force to kill the Coalition once and for all, a Westminster political commentator told the BBC. Austerity actually means poverty. It is just that the unelected politicians in the EU can never tell the people the truth, even though the people kind of know the truth already. Furthermore, if one looks at the austerity drive in the European continent, the poverty also extends to richer nations within the EU. For example, in Germany, which used to be a rich country, under the new EU rules, the riches from these countries will be redistributed evenly for the poor EU countries, so, austerity/poverty, is for all not just the few. Look at France, 75% tax for the rich, will be redistributed to lowest classes as free money, even though the poorest will still be poor, they will have some small crumbs to sate their starving mouths, the previously rich will also be poor as 75% of their income will be immediately removed from their pockets and wasted on welfare. This is austerity, it just means poverty. It is a very simple concept. If one removes wealth and happiness from people, you create a mass of misery, and this is what the EU wants. It is better for everyone to be poor as one whole group, then to have a vast gap between rich and poor. Of course, one must realise that the unelected bureaucrats who run the EU will never be austere. They have large six figure salaries, diamond pensions, expense accounts and free flights to anywhere in the world. Your poverty is their gain, Emmanuel Breton, a French socio-political scientist at the Institute of Policy Research in Paris told Le Monde. Meanwhile as poverty spreads across the EU, the unrest is also spreading across the global markets. More poverty for us all, even outside the EU. LONDON - England - Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has accepted that he is not ready for the U.S. Presidency in an interview for NBC. I, I, I, d-d-d-dont think Im ready to be president yet, the presidential un-hopeful told NBC reporter Carl Ebert, before shuffling off the screen. During his trip to London, the former Massachusetts governor, visited Number10 Downing Street to see British PM David Cameron even though he did not know who he was. The timid Mitt Romney has never been out of the United States before, so this trip to London must be quite nerve racking for him. Poor chap looked lost. He, like most Americans does not even realise that there is a whole world out there. He has never been out of the USA and he must be trembling with fear at the newness of it all. I hope he has better geography skills than that other Republican, Sarah Palin, a Whitehall official told the Telegraph. One thing is for sure, one guy was watching the proceedings from Washington with a huge smile on his face. DALLAS - USA - How do you know if an American likes you? Well, the bullet holes in your chest should be a clue. Americans love their guns so much that now social science experts have for the first time identified the different ways Americans greet each other. Hello. Bang! Three bursts of a semi automatic means that you are happy to meet someone, but emptying a whole clip into someone you just met means that you are extra pleased to see them, social scientist at Texas University, Dr. Gabriel Batista, told Science Journal magazine. If you turn up to a meeting in public wearing a bullet proof vest, then you are seen by other Americans as disrespectful to gun play. Bulletproof vests or any type of body armour are a real no, no. Youll get a head shot just for that, because youre giving off the vibe that you dont want to get shot. Thats a serious diss to a shooter, Dr. Batista added. Is that a gun in your pocket..? If a shooter sprays bullets in every direction shooting as much as he can indiscriminately, this is seen as a sign of true joy for an American. Spraying bullets everywhere means that an American is reaching out in all directions. He or she is showing their love for everything. Americans are very passionate people and guns are a way of showing their affection. As for wearing a turban in the presence of an American packing a semi-automatic pistol, you might as well put a f*cking target on your head. Its open season on your ass, Graham Egsitwund, an NRA spokesman in El Paso told CNN. DENVER - USA - President Barack Obama told a cheering crowd of thousands on Wednesday that opponent Mitt Romney would return the country's economy to an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and distribution of goods, characterised by a free competitive market and motivation by profit, adding: "Colorado, you've got to make sure that does not happen." The choice between going backward and moving forward has never been so clear. We need to embrace a theory in which class struggle is a central element in the analysis of social change in America. I am asking you, the proletariat to rise up and bring forth this profound change, Obama told the audience gathered inside the Auraria Events Center on the Auraria campus downtown Denver. The approximately 20-minute speech focused heavily on his new state health care bill, and his new collectivist agricultural and state policies, as well as the role of the female proleteriat members in the new proposed state structure. Obamas future change policies also feature the mass redistribution of wealth, rights for all illegal immigrants, nationalisation of all industry, disarming the people, and the introduction of heavy internet surveillance/regulation. Under the old American system the president was opposing, Obama said that: The proletariat, the working class or the people, own only their capacity to work; they have the ability only to sell their own labour. According to Obama the proletariat are only defined by their ability to work. The president said that Vast change was needed by Americans with class struggles, wars, and uprisings. Under the Romney or Republican system, I have reiterated the point, that the workers, in order to support their families are paid a bare minimum wage or salary. The worker is alienated because he has no control over the labour or product which he produces. The old corporate Americanized system sells the products produced by the workers at a proportional value as related to the labour involved. Thus, surplus value is the difference between what the worker is paid and the price for which the product is sold. Obama took the stage to cheers of Four more years from the crowd, estimated by fire officials at 4,000 people. The crowds cheered his name over and over again. Obama then added: We are seeing these Republican party created recessions increasing in number every day. The proletariat are in perpetual misery as the result of economic recessions; these recessions result because the working class is unable to buy the full product of their labours and the ruling capitalists do not consume all of the surplus value. There can only be change from this terrible Republican party created malaise and wastage. A proletariat or socialist revolution must occur, where the state (the means by which the ruling class forcibly maintains rule over the other classes) is a dictatorship of the proletariat. Eventually communism will evolve from socialism out of this progression. I say to you my fellow Americans: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. I will see Change in America in my lifetime and you will help me attain this Change. After the speech, there were ecstatic applause and cheers from the assembled crowds holding Obama placards. As soon as Obama won the presidency in 2009 he walked into the White House and ordered the removal of the bust of Winston Churchill, which former president George W Bush had looked at every day of his presidency. Mr Obama replaced the Churchill bust with that of Karl Marx, who he holds in high regard, more so than the British bulldog, Churchill, who fought and won against the Nazis in World War II. Barack Hussein Obama sent the Winston Churchill bust back to England where it came from. He couldnt even look at it in the face. He was practically spitting at that thing because it stood for everything he hated. Freedom and democracy. That is something that makes Obama wince, plus he hates the Brits so much he gets angry at the mere mention of Britain. They hurt his family in Kenya, where he was born, and he will never forget that, Ellen Shapiro, a White House aide told CNN. Mitt Romney, however has vowed to restore Churchill to his rightful place, and he will get that Karl Marx statue and send it back to where it came from. Obama has created so much debt for our nation that even if every American paid 100% income tax for the next thirty years, there is no way we could ever pay the interest alone on our national debt. This is what we have to work with here. He has effectively ruined America three hundred times over with his reckless spending and he knows what hes done. Im going to take the Karl Marx bust and get it melted down, then mould it into the ultimate symbol of capitalism, a can of coke. Barack can have that. When I get into the White House, were going to get back into making money, thats what America is good for and I want all yall citizens to join me in getting rich. Obama made everyone poor, apart from the public sector workers. Well, under my way, were all going to be rich. Im a business man. I make money, and I want to make so much money that it lifts the stock markets up, the world economy jumps up and we get out of this stinking socialist mess. So what if Im a Mormon, shit lets get rich fuckers! Mitt Romney said whilst touring Wisconsin on Friday. It seems that Americans have two choices come November. Either going for economic riches or poverty. ATHENS - Greece - The perpetual problem with Greece is set to carry on for another decade or three, Jean Claude Juncker has told news outlets. This is the last chance of the last chance saloon in the last chance of the last chance within a massive last chance, Mr Juncker said yesterday after meeting Greek PM Antonis Samaras. The Greek Prime Minister was in jovial mood as he was given yet another last chance: The Germans have given us another chance within another chance, of course we had another chance last week, and the week before that too. They have given us one chance after another. Stupid krauts are giving us another chance, what a bunch of suckers. The Greek last chance show will be repeated every few months for the next twenty to thirty years so dont miss the last chance on the Greek euro question for another chance to catch the last chance. WASHINGTON DC - USA - This is just the news his followers want to hear, how Obama is brewing his own White house brand of Kool-Aid. Its just like 1978 all over again except we aint in Jonestown but Washington DC, Jeb Marmuset, a reporter for CNN broadcast over the weekend. According to Obamas followers and campaign leaders, the president brews his own grape flavoured Kool-Aid and he likes to hand out the stuff to his fans on weekends. The president is great, he has these followers who come around, you know with that wild look in their eyes. If he says sit, they sit, if he says wave that placard, they wave. Now, when he says drink that Kool-Aid, they drink it up like it the best moonshine this side of Texas, an observer of the Kool-Aid rituals conducted at the White House, told the Washington Post. No one knows the exact ingredients of the Obama Kool-Aid recipe because it is a well kept White House secret. We want more people to drink the Kool-Aid. Keep drinking, and do not think for yourself. Uh, uh, did I just hear someone questioning the president? Just drink it up fools, a White House aide was reported as saying during yet another Kool-Aid drinking session. In a world of smart phones that track your every move, social networks that track and log your every thought, aerial drones, TSA searches, listening devices, and banal vapid vulgar shows like the Kardashians spewed out on every network on a 24 hour loop, you might as well get your brain and liberty and put them in a shredder. This is the height of our civilisation. This is it. Out of the thousands of great thinkers and philosophers that have graced history, this is what the controllers are feeding the public. This is what they think of you, and looking around the streets, the cafes and the schools, this is what people deserve. Tyranny of the banal The Kardashians are the epitome of everything that has gone wrong in our civilisation, they are the antithesis of all knowledge and decency in the world. The Kardashians, and the scum that produce their show are polluters and should be tried for crimes that are too unspeakable to mention. Just for a show like the Kardashians to be broadcast is a sign that we are nearing the end of so-called civility and moving into a further state of chaos and disorder. Technique One must understand that we are nearing a new engineered stage in our history. When you cry for economic growth, the controllers will say, Why? and this is exactly the case. Why would they want growth of the economy from a system that is unworkable, old and not needed anymore? Simply put, the consumerist era is over, and there is no growth after this. Do you think for one second that 1.3 billion Chinese people moving up to all own cars, big houses and Middle Class Western goodies is a good thing? Think again, and the same goes for the rapidly increasing population of India. If they want all the trappings of a Westerner, then there is going to be big trouble. There are only finite resources in the world to cope with the rapidly increasing populations of these countries, and America will feel the wrath of the Eastern population and economic growth soon enough. What happens in America will be felt in the UK and Europe, a disillusioned American ex-voter told Fox news on Friday. The spectre of economic collapse and geo-political chaos will be utilised as an opportunity by the world government to bring in the post-consumerist era. The populations were encouraged to consume and breed post World War 2 but now that the elite have reached a zenith of technological supremacy, there is no need for the consumerist populations. Instead, bloated populations are made to feel like they are taking up too much space with eco drives, energy meters, carbon credits, eco propaganda. You are the terrorist now, purely for existing. When the intern camps are full to the brim and the smoke clears, the big screens will come on, playing more Kardashians mockingly. This is what you get for sleeping, if only you had woken up earlier. UTAH - USA - On a recent pilgrimage to the holy city of Mormon, Salt lake City, presidential candidate Mitt Romney extolled the virtues of his religion and revealed how the God particle is actually in the bible of Joseph Smith. This here Mormon bible reveals to me the truth about Gods message to us as humans and the pages reveal that the God Particle does exist in this book. There is no need for Higgs Boson or the Hadron Collider, your science is irrelevant when it comes to the words of the great messenger Joseph Smith who lived from 1805 to 1844 and wrote the Mormon bible, Mr Romney told an audience of believers at the Holy Joseph Smith church in Salt Lake City yesterday. Cain and Abel In 1823, Smith said that while praying at night for forgiveness from his sins, he was visited by an angel named Moroni, who revealed the location of a buried book of golden plates as well as other artefacts, including a breastplate and a set of spectacles with lenses composed of seer stones, which had been hidden in a hill near his home. Smith said he attempted to remove the plates the next morning but was unsuccessful because the angel prevented him. In other words, he was a fucking nut job. The Holy Mormon church also believes that blacks are cursed of the earth: But let them apostatize, and they will become gray-haired, wrinkled, and black, just like the Devil You can see now why it is my mission to get America back into the light from the despicable Luciferian abortion-loving child killer Obama. This is a mission from God, and I hold up the Book of Mormon to exorcise the United States, our God given land, back to the true people who inherited it. The Book of Mormon is the God Particle, no science or black imposter president can take away our countrys rights to be a Mormon land of God. I vow to help our nation recover from the Obama ungodly ways, he may very well be a Muslim, and you know in Americas eyes that means he consorts with Satan, Mitt Romney told the assembled Mormon followers in the church. Mitts vision for America also extends to the cities and towns across the country, when he wins the election on November 6 he vows to build a Mormon church in every city and town in America. These great towering monoliths will remind Americans every day that their servitude to God encompasses all facets of daily life in the United States. When I am in the White House, I want to bring America back to what it used to be, like in the 1800s when we used to have strange fruit hanging from the trees and real justice, and God-fearing people, thats what I want to do, and I know you will all vote for me, Romney added to rapturous applause from the audience. Both Syria and Iran are supported by the former Soviet country, Russia. The West is treading very carefully with their attempts at destabilising these two countries because if they awaken the Russian bear, there will be the advent of a terrible conflict that will affect every nation in the world. Turkeys recent retaliatory efforts do not bode well for the West, as the Turks have every right to defend themselves from attack, but if they are sucked into a greater conflict, they will be fighting Russia and not Syria. One must understand that Assad is backed fully by the Russians now; to the point that if the situation was to escalate and other nations joined the internal conflict directly, Russia would step in. For the Turks, this would be a fait accompli because they would be attacked from the North, as well as the East. If one was to add a nuclear element to the proceeding war, then Turkey would be annihilated in minutes by the Russians, bringing WW3 onto the scene as NATO reacts to the deadly situation. On the Iranian front, one must also look at Israels PM Netenyahu and see his eagerness to attack Iran as an attempt to start World War III. As soon as Israel attacks, so would Russia, and then the United States would be forced to step in, and the final denoument would include an entrance from China. When you have big players like this slugging it out, you know there are going to be fireworks. Any attack on Iran would also be a terrible end to many economies worldwide because once the Straits of Hormuz are cut off, crude oil prices will rise by 60/70%. You can forget about driving to work or flying a plane then because oil prices will ground everything. For Western countries like America, that would be the final nail in the coffin, because their reserves can only last for a limited time. The US is the largest oil dependent nation in the world, and its economy would grind to a halt almost immediately. This would precipitate civil unrest and starvation, as well as possible civil war. Now you know why Obama does not want to speak with Netenyahu, because all that guy wants to talk about is his plan to bomb Iran. This would be a surefire suicide mission for Israel and possibly the United States. Obama does not want that before the election, and he will do everything he can to postpone the conflict till after the U.S. elections. By kicking the can down the road, if he loses the election, which is looking more likely than ever now, then he will not be held responsible for the most reckless moves ever made by the West. Leave that to Romney, who was sucking up to Israels leaders on a recent trip to the Jewish state. WASHINGTON DC - USA - Has the Obama spell been broken? Has he already lost the White House? Many African Americans are now saying that they have lost faith in him and are going for Romney. Its not just the odd rapper and black celebrity speaking up and endorsing Romney. The everyday man and woman is getting up and speaking up against Obama, who they feel has abandoned their community and cause. Dont Vote For the Brother Cleandro Washington, who is a black spokesman for a group that opposes Obama said: Romney is a businessman, pure and simple. Obama is an amateur when it comes to finance and unfortunately for him, America needs Romney right now. He may be Mormon but who cares, I dont care if he worships Beelzebub, or Jesus, what he knows is how to get Americans working, get the economy moving again, get taxes down for small business people, encourage growth. Obama is a spender, and when the deficit gets too big and he spends like crazy, he decides to tax people into oblivion. One thing he does not realise is that taxation kills growth, and business needs to hire people, not let people go. When people are employed they spend more in the economy, and the USA will be prosperous once again. If Obama wins, we have another four years of spending, of socialist doctrines, of wastage, of big government and some hefty Obama tax increases coming into effect this January. Dont support Obama just because hes black, look at what he has done for us. Nothing! Sweet F*cking nothing! Europe is an example of how socialism works, it destroys the private sector and all that is left to flourish is the state, employing 80% of the workforce and a bloated welfare system that encourages laziness, dependency and apathy. This kills the economy, to have such a big government because it gives nothing back, it just takes and takes. Who is going to pay the huge gold-plated pensions of the state workers? Who is going to pay the vast welfare and social security bills? This is why the EU will be in permanent recession for the next twenty to thirty years. It will be a controlled decline, because the socialists only know how to spend other peoples money, and when that runs out, they tax heavily. Frances socialist prime minister, Francois Hollande is a prime example of the futility of socialist behaviour when it comes to the economy. He is introducing a 75% tax for high earners, which will effectively halt the French economy to a standstill soon enough and take it further into the mire. Time is Up Obama Had His Chance Many African Americans across the nation saw Romney during the first US presidential election debate as a decisive speaker showing a plan to lift Americas economy up from the disaster of Obamas economic wasteland. Obama now has no mandate, nigga looked weak up there, he looked pathetic, he looked tired and he looked like a man who has already lost. His domineering wife must have given him a good ass whooping when they got to the White House afterwards, Darnell Shaquinta, a disappointed former Obama voter told CBN news network. Many African Americans are slowly waking up to the fact that Obama has done nothing for them, with record black unemployment, record black poverty and Obama spending US taxpayers cash on a bogus stimulus to make trillion dollar deficits, they want to know where the money goes. Because it sure is not trickling down to them. NEW YORK CITY - USA - Stand back, there's nothing to see here, if you're on the East coast of America, now you know very well what it is like to have a British summer. Now Americans know what its like to enjoy a summer in the UK where it pisses down with rain constantly and you get to see the sun for a few days in the year. Its great that the Yanks are getting a taste of the Brit weather, innit, an MOT tester from Tottenham, North London, told the BBC. With pictures being constantly blasted all over the internet and news networks of a little bit of rain and wind coming over the East coast of America, one would be mistaken in thinking that the the Americans are a bunch of wusses to put it in their lingo. Its those Brits again, theyre sending over their friggin weather to NYC. As long as they dont send over their goddamn British teeth or food, then thats alright, well just take their weather, Al Johnsons, a New Jersey resident told CBS news. WASHINGTON DC - USA - The victorious Obama administration are putting into place their latest policies for the American people after winning a second term in the U.S election. Speaking from the White House, President Obama said that economic well-being in the United States was only a minor concern for the Democratic administration, which recently won a second term after the U.S. elections. Fiscal Stiff The economy to me is not a serious concern. As long as Michelle and I can have multi-million dollar taxpayer funded vacations we do not care what is happening to the economy out there amongst ordinary people. Our main concern is how there should be more abortions and mandatory homosexuality for everyone in America. This is our goal, for every American and is a serious pledge from the Democratic party. We urge you all to embrace our ideals and we will implement a five-point-plan to put these serious pledges into force by next month. Obama and the Democrat party are determined to make the new pledges stick even if the Republicans oppose the new laws. If we cannot have bipartisan endorsements of our new laws we will simply veto the Republicans and force our hands up their butts with the new legislation. We won the election so get over it, for the next four years homosexuality and abortions will be mandatory. Forget food stamps, we want lube stamps. Dont bother having kids either, that is unless you want a government endorsed session with a coat hanger, an Obama worker told the Capitol Hill Post. Milled rice at a processing factory in Vietnam's southern Mekong Delta. Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous country and a major buyers of Vietnamese rice, has not returned to Vietnam for new purchases this year. Photo by Reuters Indonesia's rice imports from all destinations in 2017 are forecast to halve to 500,000 tons, based on USDA reports. Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous country and a major buyer of Vietnamese rice, has not returned to Vietnam for new purchases this year, while its overall 2017 rice imports are forecast to halve to around 500,000 tons thanks to better domestic production, according to industry reports. Indonesia was among Vietnam's 10 biggest rice buyers in the 2010-2016 period, with imports peaking at nearly 1.9 million tons in 2011, based on data from Vietnam's agriculture ministry. But its purchases have been falling and Vietnam received no orders during the first two months of 2017, ministry data shows. Vietnam is the world's third-biggest rice exporter after India and Thailand. Indonesia is forecast to import 500,000 tons of rice this year, down 50 percent from 2016, as domestic milled rice output edges up 2.6 percent to 37.15 million tons "due to increased area harvested", a U.S. Department of Agriculture attache said in a March 30 report. The report said increased cropping intensity and new land will help expand the harvested area this year to 12.24 million hectares (30.25 million acres), 1.2 percent above 2016 when Indonesia experienced a weak to moderate La Nina weather phenomenon. Given more use of high-yielding varieties, the report forecasts Indonesia's output next year will rise further to 37.4 million tons, leaving the country's rice imports unchanged. The forecasts pose a challenge to Vietnam's rice exports in 2017, with shipments in the first quarter already dropping 24 percent from a year ago to 1.2 million tons, a two-year low, the government has said. Hanoi maintains forecasts of a modest rice export volume for 2017, anticipating 5 million tons to be shipped, due in part to expected higher demand from top buyer China. Last year, Vietnam's rice exports fell to 4.8 million tons, the lowest since 2008. Malaysia, another key buyer of Vietnamese rice, is forecast to import 950,000 tons of the grain this year, unchanged from 2016, said a USDA report dated March 27. Last year, the country was Vietnam's 5th biggest rice buyer, after China, Ghana, the Philippines and Indonesia. The average export price of Vietnam's 5-percent broken rice eased 2 percent in the first quarter ending March from a year ago to $344 a ton, free-on-board basis, and that on Thailand's 5-percent broken rice also eased the same pace in the same period to $372 a ton, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said. Unseasonal rain in the past week has disrupted the harvest of the Mekong Delta's winter-spring crop, and quotations edged up slightly even though buying demand remains thin, traders said. The 5 percent broken rice advanced to $355 a ton this week from $347-$350 last Thursday. Output of the crop, the biggest among the Delta's three crops grown a year, is projected to drop 1.3 percent from last year to around 10 million tons of paddy, the agriculture ministry has said. BEIJING - China - Eric Roelhames, 56, from Eindhoven, Netherlands, has flown to China's capital city to try and locate his mail order bride, Chinese officials have revealed. I ordered her four weeks ago and they said she would come express delivery. Last week I got a call from the Chinese postal service saying that she is now somewhere in the system and they are trying to locate her. I am very disappointed and was really looking forward to meeting 23-year-old, Jing Ling Ling, a distraught Mr Roelhames told Chinese state television on Monday. Mr Roelhames flew out to China three days ago after hearing from the agency who sold him his bride. I bought her in good faith and even though I have been assured my money back, I still want to find her so I can take her home and show her off to my friends, he explained teary eyed. The Chinese postal service deals with over a billion packages a day and over 12 billion letters per week, so the chance of finding Jing Ling Ling are slim to say the least. I got the tracking number right here, shes got to be somewhere. Im going to keep searching until I find her. Ill give it until next week then if not, I guess Ill have to buy another one, Mr Roelhames said from his Beijing hotel room. Speaking from the Soviet East Wing, Comrade Obama, Supreme commander of the American Soviet Nation spoke of his triumph at beating the vile capitalists and Tsarist GOP guard. Comrades! The American election war has been raging for more than eighteen months and I have triumphed over the capitalist swine Romney. He wanted to bring in wealth for business and prosperity for Americans, he was beaten thanks to my core voters on welfare and food stamps, as well as the disenfranchised illegal immigrants. And as each month, as each day of my Soviet reign goes by, it becomes clearer and clearer to the masses of the workers that I am here to instill the one and only system that is viable, the communist socialistic system which will redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor and finally defeat the capitalist deception. It is becoming more evident every day that this is a war between capitalists, between big robbers, who are quarrelling over the loot, each striving to obtain the largest share, the largest number of citizens to plunder, and the largest number of comrades to suppress and enslave. It may sound incredible, especially to some comrades, but it is nevertheless true that in America, also, not only bloody Republicans, not only the capitalists, but also a section of the so-called or ex-Socialists say that America is fighting a war of defence, that America must prevail against these capitalistic evil money-makers. We must avenge the appalling sufferings of the masses, out of the blood of the proletariat and rise forth, march forward, and onwards to relinquish our true heritage of communism and collectivism. I will use repetition at all times to repeat the Soviet message. I will also implement a broad program of political correctness to shut down all forms of free speech in Soviet America. Remember comrades, that we are listening to every word you say at all times and you or any member of your family can be taken away at any time. I have also implemented a reward program for any citizen that reports another citizen, whether they are your mother, father, sister, brother or friend. You will be rewarded for reporting them to your local American Stasi officer who will take the offender away to a re-education institution. In America, before the beginning of my reign as Supreme Commander, the workers deputies in the Senate waged a determined revolutionary struggle against the Republicans. Five workers deputiesPelosi, Biden, Holder, Bernanke and Geithnerdistributed revolutionary manifestos against the Republicans and energetically carried on revolutionary agitation. GOP ordered the arrest of those five deputies, put them on trial, and sentenced them to lifelong exile in Alaska. For months the leaders of the working class of America have been pining in Alaska; but their cause has not gone under; their work is being continued by the class-conscious workers all over America who unvoted me in for a second term. Thankfully our devoted comrades are back in our arms today and have survived exile to continue the fight for the Soviet American Dream. Comrades! You have heard my speeches about the workers revolutionary struggle against capitalism. I merely want to quote one other example from my Obamacare pathway to complete communism. We will prevail against the evil of capitalism in America. We will order our Bolshevik warriors, our proletariat workers, our comrades in arms to instill true socialism in America. There will be no property ownership, we will all rent from the state. There will be no private health care, the state will provide it all. There will be no private education, the state will command that you are educated in the correct way. There will be no more private business because the state will own everything. The only thing Americans have to worry about now is how long you are going to queue for your cabbage soup. And last of all comrades, you will hand over your weapons to our Stasi officials who I have also instructed to listen to your every communication and watch you at all times. Remember that under our Soviet American Dream, we cannot have anyone who is not part of the state to be armed. Thank you for your cooperation in this small matter. The assembled crowd in the White House Soviet Wing all erupt in loud applause shouting Hail Obama and There is only one comrade, Obama. LONDON - England - The errant Mayor of London is certainly a likeable fellow, but he has recently taken to buying flip flops for his holiday in some EU sinkhole, and denied his interest in an in/out EU referendum. By Jove, I used to be for an in/out EU referendum but now Im not sure this minute and am towing the europhile line. You know Bo Jos always up for a smattering of in/out with some floozy when the missus is not looking, but this time I said non to the EU referendum and joined the frogs and Cammo for a no in/out reffy, Mr Johnson said before popping into his office for another in/out session with his secretary, Miss Luscious Lips. Reporters for the Evening Standard who were perched outside Mr Johnsons London Mayoral office yesterday also heard Boris quoting Latin whilst grunting like a wild animal. I was just teaching a young blonde intern a little first conjugation Amo, Amas, Amat. She had very kindly delivered a new pair of flip flops for the family holiday in Montenegro next week, Boris was reported as saying when he opened the door afterwards. Boris Johnson and his new pair of flip flops, probably paid off by some EU bureaucrat, will be on holiday all of next week, his office has revealed. CONNECTICUT - USA - Is Sandy Hook the American version of the Dunblane school massacre on 13 March 1996, which was the catalyst that caused the ban on all privately owned hand held firearms in UK? When the ATF and Police come knocking on your door to hand over all your firearms, you will hand them over calmly, then you will fill in a form which will enable you to get some kind of governmental compensation for your weapons. It wont be much but at least you will be doing your bit to clean up the United States of America once and for all. God bless our nation. We will not tolerate an armed public any more. If you do not hand over all of your now illegal weapons, we will be forced to arrest you and remove your weapons forcibly. Thank you for your cooperation, Lieutenant John Albright, is practising what he is going to say to citizens in the neighbourhood where he will be ordered to go soon. America is slowly waking up to the fact that gun control is going to be a certainty soon and that citizens will have to hand over all of their weapons. Obamas first term was about destroying the Fourth Amendment, and he did that with TSA searches. Now, his second term will be about destroying the Second Amendment. The question is, will the American people hand over their cherished weaponry without some kind of fight, or could there be elements of civil war? We will not know until the heavily armoured trucks and armed troops descend onto our streets and order you to hand over your guns, a political expert in Capitol Hill revealed yesterday. One of Obamas policy makers said yesterday: We cannot have an armed people any more. The collectivisation of America must continue with an unarmed harmless defenceless population, not a population that can fight back. The only people who should be armed is the law. Thats it. LONDON - England - The already overcrowded British cities are heaving at the seams with people. Resources are pushed to the limit and yet there will be a further deluge when EU restrictions are lifted in 2013 when some of the poorest EU countries will be given free passes to send their poor unemployed unskilled populations to the UK. Britains post-war welfare state was created in an altogether different time. Unfortunately for it, it is in its final death throes as the unlimited immigration from the EU will kill it off completely within a few years. It does not take a rocket scientist to see that millions of very poor unskilled people who do not pay tax, coming to our shores, who expect to be given full care with their families will make the NHS, and Benefits system redundant, Raymond Churchill, a senior Whitehall civil servant revealed on Friday. Unelected officials in Brussels know full well that letting the UK take the burden of some of the EUs poorest nations is a sure fire way of destroying Britain from the inside. We not only destroy the population demographic of the UK but we also destroy your cherished welfare state and then your economy. We also destroy your countryside, because you have to build over it to house the EU and Third World migrants. This is one way of ensuring that Britain is forced into the eurozone whether she likes it or not by destroying your coveted British class system, welfare state and culture,. Divide and conquer, as you used to call it, nest pas? an unelected EU technocrat told the BBCs Newsnight from the EU parliament last week. Once Britains welfare system is reduced to a bare bones limited system, there may be some civil unrest but this is a small price to pay for the UK taxpayers tax burden being relieved. In the UK one has to work for 295 days in the year before you make any money for yourself, and then you are free from tax burden. About 90% of that taxation you pay is shoring up the welfare state. If that huge burden goes, then you will actually work for something and not support people who do not want to work, Alfred Mollison, 56, a self employed businessman from Leicestershire told the BBC. TEXAS - USA - The English tried, Mexico's Santa Ana tried, and now Piers Moron tried and failed to break America. At the forefront is Alex Jones who put the proverbial smack down on Moron's own CNN show the other day. British news hacker reject and certified smarmy shit-stirrer, Piers Moron has received a bloody nose, ego and soul after being battered by the indomitable Texan free spirit and Infowars.com pioneer, Alex Jones, on Morons low-rated CNN show. Since that Brit took over from Larry King, ratings have hit the floor. We did however notice a major spike the other day when he got five shades of shit kicked out of him by Alex. Im the series producer and even I was salivating at the sheer beauty of it all, Arnold Weisman, series producer of CNNs Piers Moron Tonight show revealed yesterday. Alex Jones will receive the Alamo award tomorrow at Texass Alamo and he is also slated for the Freedom Award, Liberty Award and True American award. Over here, we are fighting for freedom from tyranny. Our once great nation has become a festering Big Brother police state and one day its true owners will rise up and take it back from the criminals and miscreants who are running it to the ground. God Bless the real America, not the America these other people are presenting to us, Alex Jones said from the Alamo. Americans need more of that Alex Jones Alamo spirit. Wake the fuck up! LONDON - England - The British government is rapidly running out of things to tax and could even exhaust their taxation options by this summer, worried officials have revealed. We tax pretty much everything in the UK, and not only that were bringing out over 200 regulations and laws per day, a Whitehall source revealed yesterday. As well as adding new taxes the government is also increasing established tax taxation levels daily. You cant fart in this Stasi country without being taxed, a retired grave digger, Al Burriya, 75, from Grimsdale, Yorkshire, told the Sun before being taxed for grumbling. There are now calls to tax taxation itself, although this could prove quite complicated for accountants and anyone doing their own tax returns. By actually taxing taxation itself, we can increase revenues to the Treasury by 64% per annum, therefore the tax you already pay, will be taxed at the standard 34% rate and we may even tax the tax of the tax at a further 28% depending on the prior taxation rate of that tax period, a shady character from the Inland Revenue revealed. LONDON - England - Why stop at gay marriage? Why not be allowed to marry animals in places of worship? Has David Cameron lost the plot completely? Prime Minister David Cameron and his deputy, Nick Clegg are steaming ahead with proposals to legalise animal-human marriage in the UK, after the gay marriage law was legalised last week. Currently the laws in Britain forbid any forms of Bestiality but things could change soon enough as people will be allowed to marry their chosen animals, the Home Office has announced. We have had proposals from Number10 that they want to have animal marriages for the UK. I suppose if one is to allow gay marriages in places of worship, there should not be any reason to forbid animal marriages between humans and beasts, a Whitehall administrator revealed. The new White Paper sets out a timetable for introducing the new Bestiality Marriage laws in England. In Scotland and Wales, it has been legal to marry farm animals for hundreds of years so there will not be any need for law changes there. The Conservative party is however split down the middle with the new animal marriage proposals, as one side likes a good duck house f*ck session and the other does not. Labours Ed Balls weighed in yesterday by saying hes always enjoyed his regular balls deep farm yard trips to Norfolk and fully supports the new animal marriage laws. PENNSYLVANIA - USA - Amish beard thieves have struck again in the latest beard rustling epidemic which is causing terror in the Amish community. I went to bed last night with my beard intact. I like to stroke it before I do my evening prayers. When I woke up this morning, my chin was as smooth as a newborn calfs butt at a livestock auction. Ive been crying all day, Joshua Malachite, an Amish elder told the Amish Herald. Beard Rustling No one knows who is clipping the precious beards from the Amish males but some have their theories about the fiendish shaving campaign. I reckon its a conspiracy to fill pillows and duvets with the beard shavings. duck down costs a lot of money but if you get a load of Amish beard fluff, then its jackpot time. Isaac Mondrian, an Amish invstigator on the scene told a local Amish church meeting on Tuesday. The Pennsylvania Amish community are living in abject fear of any further beards being rustled. LONDON - England - There are fears that all of Europe's horses may have been eaten, nature conservationists have revealed. We cant find any horses in Europe any more. Weve eaten them all and we need to bring in horses from South America or North America, Edoardo Montelban, a conservationist for the World Wildlife Fund based in Madrid, Spain told the BBC yesterday. There has not been a horse race in Britain for weeks as there are no horses left in mainland Britain. Someone ate the whole bloody 2.30 Cheltenham race and now weve just got a retired John McCririck running up and down the course commentating on non-existent horses, a race punter said. If anyone sees any horses in the UK please contact: Horse Conservation Group, Not the Findus Factory, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, GL2 AAA The bus driver said he was hired for VND8 million ($350) to deliver the explosives to Lao Cai Province. Vietnam's traffic police said they have seized more than one ton of explosives and explosive ingredients packed in a passenger bus in a northern province bordering China. The 16-seater bus was stopped for a check late Wednesday evening in Van Ban District of Lao Cai Province, some 290 kilometers (180 miles) northwest of Hanoi. Inspectors found 43 sacks containing 860 kilograms (1,900 lbs) of mining explosive AD1, which were wrapped in long, slim cylinder packages and packed inside cardboard boxes. The police also found another six sacks containing 300 kg of small white grain, suspected to be ammonium nitrate, an ingredient used to make explosive, the police said. Police found a number of small round cylinder suspected to be explosives. Photo by Thanh Tuan. The bus's driver, identified as Tran Ngoc Anh, 35, told the police he was hired by a man to deliver the explosives to Lao Cai for VND8 million ($350). The Vietnamese government holds monopoly in production and trading of explosives while businesses in need of using them are required to obtain license. Firecrackers, a traditional item often used during Vietnam's Lunar New Year festivals, weddings and several other occasions have been banned since 1995. Violations involving the usage of explosives are often found in mining and fishing. If found guilty for trafficking 101 kilograms of explosive or more, the offender could get jail terms of between 15-20 years or life in prison, according to Vietnam's Penal Code issued in 2015. LONDON - England - Ladies and gentlemen, we at the Daily Squib have compiled a ten point plan for the next Chancellor of the Exchequer to adhere to after George Osborne is thrown out of office some time in the near future. We asked our resident economic expert Professor Lewis Handlebarr, to give his solution to Britains economic malaise. He came up with a 10 point plan in less than five minutes. Please do tell us what you think of his suggestions. Ten Simple Economic Points to Make Britain Great Once More 1) Dump all long-term benefits holders except for the severely disabled. Benefits should only be paid for 6 months, then cut off for life. This will also solve the benefit tourism problem. 2) Reduce VAT to 12% from the current stifling 20%. This will invigorate business and commerce to extreme levels and actually increase tax receipts for the government as people spend more. 3) Reduce taxation on fuel by 75%. Britain will get moving again. 4) Reduce the size of the NHS to a bare minimum and ban any foreigners from using it. Ban drunks and drug users from the NHS. Sack 90% of the NHS managers and recruit more nurses paying them proper wages. 5) Only allow UK immigration to people with jobs and income of over 35,000. Dump all foreign aid saving billions. Airlift all illegal immigrants, foreign criminals and benefit tourists out of the UK immediately and build offshore holding ships to house them before forced deportation. 6) Stop all housing benefit and do not encourage people who cannot afford children to breed. Pay people on benefits not to breed. 7) Reduce corporation tax, income tax, council tax, capital gains tax, and all the other taxes. 8) Get out of the EU. The rest of the world is out of the EU and theyre doing fine. 9) Reduce the BBC to the World Service and limited TV scheduling. Sack all the useless parasitic BBC managers and overpaid jackals ripping off the taxpayer. Reduce the BBC TV tax to 15/annum for everyone. 10) Bring manufacturing home, and start building, pay decent wages, and create jobs to make Britain Great once more. CARACAS - Venezuela - Sean Penn, Fidel Castro, Cristina Kirchner and President Obama were in mourning today, as were thousands of Venezuelans after their cherished communist leader passed away. Our beloved Comrade is now at rest in the great dacha in the sky. Venezuelas loss is Stalin, Marx, Mao, Ken Livinstone and Lenins gain. He will also be meeting up with the other great revolutionary, Che Guevara up there in the red commie clouds, a Venezuelan mourner told local Caracas radio stations today. The staunch communist who amassed a personal fortune of $2 billion will be buried sometime next week. On a slow news day like today, its great to get a little injection of news, and the death of Hugo Chavez is certainly a little morsel to sate the appetite slightly. We needed some kind of news like this, but it was inevitable, especially after the recent denials by Venezuelan officials for the past few days that Chavez had died. Its always the case with such stories that when you have vehement denials like that, you know the inevitable has already occurred, one of the news hungry journos outside the Chavez palace told their audience. PYONYANG - N. Korea - A jubilant Kim Jong Un has successfully passed the many tests required to graduate from North Korea's Dictator School officials have announced. He has passed with flying colours and completed the tasks necessary to be a North Korean mad dictator, a teacher at the school said with a gun firmly pointed at their head. North Korean state television ran the news early this morning and many took to the streets beating their fists against their chests to show their joy and proud feelings for Kim Jong Un. Declare war, check! Threaten to send missiles to USA, check! Make funny propaganda photoshops and videos, check! Kim Jong Uns teacher said as he was giving out the final grade for the course. Kim Jong Un got an A+ Distinction grade for his exemplary dictatorship skills. WASHINGTON DC - USA - There is one thing Americans are slowly learning about the staunchly Marxist leaning president Obama, and that is he will have his way whatever it takes. Americans are finally realising that they are increasingly living under a dictatorship, because Obama knows no other way to rule. All his life he was mentored and tutored in Marxist ideology, in control techniques that the Soviets used, in repetition of the message that needs to be ingested by the masses. If Americans buy more guns, what are they going to shoot with, peas? The ammo has been suppressed and Americans will now find it increasingly hard to arm themselves. Thats not a problem for the DHS though. They have plenty of rounds of ammo. I wonder why that is? Is it getting through to you yet? Bill Steads, 45, a pro-gun activist from Colorado who cannot get any ammunition for his guns told America Today magazine. The Attorney General, Eric Holder, said himself that the administration needs to keep repeating the anti-gun mantra and brainwash people into giving away their freedom to bear arms. Soviet techniques of repetition are utilised by the Obama administration, because if you repeat something enough times it becomes a truth in the eyes of the public. The Pavlovian techniques do seem to work on the pliant American public because they appear to be complying to Obamas every whim. Even though Obama has effectively curtailed many pro-gun lobbies, and voices, some people are still buying guns in America. This anomaly has resulted in the supply of ammunition being reduced to a trickle so as to stop those people who see fit to still buy guns. People are being weaned from their guns and effectively disarmed by the lack of bullets to shoot their guns with. The Obama admin. has also brought in very strict laws deterring people from trying to buy guns with increased checks and red tape. If Obama makes owning a gun like sitting in quick sand, who the hell is going to own one? a Capitol Hill insider revealed. The scientific method of controlling the public in the USA seems to be working as the Obama administration brings in any laws curtailing gun ownership they want without question. Americans are finally losing the will to fight for their guns. They are pliant and under control. It seems to be a dream-like state of collective consciousness where they have been effectively disarmed through clever Pavlovian techniques and subtle use of underhand integration of new laws. Unless some faction wakes up now and stops the brainwashing, the American public will be relinquished of their weapons in less than one generation without even a single shot being fired. It is better to die free, then live as a slave. LONDON - England - North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is set to attend the lavish state funeral of the former prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, Number10 Downing Street has announced. I will be arriving on a North Korean nuclear missile which will be fired from a silo deep in my Communist country, the dictator told Korean state television on Wednesday. The grand entrance by the North Korean despot will be hailed as an audacious show of power by the North Korean regime. Some Londoners however were not too happy about Kim Jong Un turning up to the ceremony on a nuclear missile. Didnt like Maggie much but even I think this is too much. Cant he just come along in a car like everyone else? Arthur Dingle, 56, a civil servant from North London told the Evening Standard. ALABAMA - USA - America's state education system has created a breed of placid, conformist robots who capitulate to any state demand and have forgotten what the Founding Fathers prescribed when they created the constitution of the once great country. The Daily Squib wrote about door-to-door gun confiscations as well as the destruction of the second and fourth amendment in a satirical predictive article in 2011. But we knew what Obama planned with forced gun confiscation in 2008. Satire is the truth. What I read in the Daily Squib happens soon enough. Were talking years in advance. It seems that mandatory gun confiscations in America are now close to happening and the American people are not doing anything about it. The fluoridated masses are too busy taking their daily soma to even realise what is going on and how their freedoms are being taken away right in front of their faces, a Capitol Hill insider revealed. Are Americans just going to stand there as their rights are taken away? Have they been dumbed down so much to be apathetic sheep that they let themselves be readied for the slaughter without so much as a whimper? As the DHS purchases billions of rounds of ammunition, public gun shop shelves are empty. The Obama administration is using Soviet techniques of constant repetition, celebrity endorsements of the gun ban agenda, and children to push for a total gun confiscation ban. Satire is becoming reality in America as the Democrats call for door-to-door gun confiscation as a long-term agenda that will be pushed on the people, as Democratic Austin City Council member and potential next mayor Mike Martinez, revealed. First they get you to register the guns. Then they come and order you to hand them to them. If you do not comply, you will be either arrested or taken down with deadly force. The armoured vehicles will enter every neighbourhood and knock on every registered gun owners home and my guess is people will comply. Americans are under hypnosis and have lost their will for liberty. They have lost their desire to survive and their desire for free thought. Everywhere the Obama nanny state, collectivist machine is working its Neo-Marxist agenda and Americans have been caught in the headlights. They want to keep their goodies, their cell phones, their social surveillance sites like Facebook. This is why they have been fed these addictive toys, because the public will not give those up, but they will give up their guns and freedom without question just to keep their brain addled way of life. The Founding Fathers knew this day would comeand here it is folks. Just hand over your freedom like a yella coward because you are not an American any more. Youre a coward with a yellow piss trail with no back-bone. You hand over your gun and youre a weak defenceless lily-livered chicken ready to be slaughtered, a true American revealed yesterday. What happens after your guns are confiscated? You have been disarmed, you will be chipped and numbered, you will be processed and branded, you will be put in a pen like a dumb animal and you and your family will have everything taken away from them. They know there is nothing they can do to pay back the huge deficit they have racked up and when the system crumbles, they dont want you to have a gun. Remember that the controllers and state architects plan years in advance of any move. They own the UN and they will use them to push through the gun ban. They have already planned for the next twenty or thirty years and know exactly what they have to do. And unless someone does something soon, Americans will NOT be Americans any more. WASHINGTON DC - USA - What happened in Boston on 415 could be used by the U.S. government to achieve further implementation of draconian laws taking away the freedoms of Americans, but it will probably not result in another invasion or war like 911 and Pearl Harbour did, says a prominent Think Tank. The use of easily controlled youth who have multiple personalities via trauma based mind control techniques and skilled dissociation is very well documented. These patsies are easily controlled by their controllers and their alters can be triggered quite easily. Furthermore, impressionable teenagers and children can easily be manipulated with the ruse of religion, especially radical Islam to achieve atrocities that will incite terror in the populations and thus green light certain laws that have come up against obstacles within the country. The mind naturally creates amnesiac filters when there is trauma/abuse, therefore the controllers of these two impressionable boys most certainly created split personalities, on many levels, with some parts of the mind not registering the other parts. This is why they could lead seemingly normal lives amongst others, but once their controllers triggered the alter and deadly part of their mind, they obeyed their masters perfectly, professor Lewis Edelweiss, revealed in a recent journal on the subject. Conspiracy theorists have been having a field day with the Boston bombers because there is so much information being released by certain agencies, and at times it is not clear who is releasing the well-timed snippets. Many of the conspiracy theorists active on the internet are probably fronts for certain agencies, who bring forth predictive thoughts onto the public. They utilise fear to sell survivalist products and are fully protected by the government. Trauma based mind control is used in every government agency, and military institution. Consider the fact that to become a soldier, the army first completely breaks your personality down, then they rebuild it for their own needs. No soldier can ever break away from their training because of the effective mind control technique that embedded it into their minds. A soldier has to obey their orders and because of their training they do so without question. The CIA utilise similar techniques with their operatives, and even regular policemen are indoctrinated to some level. Jamestown Zbigniew Brzezinski The two boys who were brought down, and purportedly carried out the atrocities in Boston, were completely under the control of an agency probably within the United States because they would have to be guided and have their alters triggered by their controllers, the professor added. By using people who are sympathetic to Islam is a method of throwing the public off the trail and also engendering patriotic American feeling. Even if someone is being mentored under the ruse of religion, they do not know the people higher up the echelons of power who are really pulling the strings. Consider how America is supporting the Syrian rebels against Assad, who are mainly Al Qaeda affiliates. The next few days/weeks/months will reveal the true masters of this operation because there will most probably be more laws inhibiting freedom brought into the United States. If they had used white right wing Christian European stock Americans then it would have been too obvious. They must always use an external source to implement internal changes and also additionally add a patriotic slant to proceedings. The target for gun control is the white working class Christian right wing gun owner. Obama was all for change and he will achieve it through any means possible. One must also take into account that everything is now geared towards disarming the American population. All media, politicians, agencies and the population will be utilised to bring change to the Second Amendment. Public outcries, pictures of blood on pavements, gratuitous shots of limbs strewn everywhere are things that people cannot ignore. These shots were released to the public in all the gory detail for a reason. They smack you in the face, and tell you that you and your children are not safe. Whos going to step in? The state, will tell you that the guns and gunpowder utilised in bullets are not something that should be freely available to the public, Ron Eraldite, another key researcher in the think tank revealed. As more details are released selectively and in a timely manner, there will possibly be details about how these pressure cooker bombs were made. If they were made with reloading powder as some anonymous poster claiming to work for a government agency revealed. They will possibly find NRA booklets and other items relating to easily acquired guns in America. This will further demonise American civilian gun owners and the lobbies that protect gun ownership. The role of the Democrats is to weaken the powerful gun lobbies so that there is a massive public outcry against them. Then the job of dismantling them through division will be easier. Once the gun owners are made to feel dirty by the majority herd mentality, then it is game over for the second amendment. Theres nothing they can do to stop the law taking their guns. Sandy Hook, Aurora, Boston, are all indicators that the push for a total ban on civilians holding firearms is very close. All the perpetrators were under psychiatric control and they, much like soldiers in a war were ordered to carry out their tasks without question. Their minds were split into many different compartments, not aware of the other existing, they were implanted with orders and then once they carried out their sordid deeds, they were either taken into secure locations or killed. They are the property of the state, because their actions immediately create a reaction bringing in multiple laws, the professor revealed. No external war now, just internal for America. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq had nothing to do with 911 yet millions of Americans believe it did. The reaction to Boston will bring more clues, so keep watching this space. Hes been on the phone all evening to his boss Merkel telling her there could be a slight set back with plans for the UKs EU integration into the eurozone currency mechanism, or whatever the bloody thing is called, a Number10 insider revealed. The Tories were given a drubbing at the local election polls yesterday and the fear at Tory HQ is that there could be more of the same in 2015 when the General Election will be held. Were hoping that there may be a world war between now and 2015 so that we wont have to hold an election and obviously lose it, some Tory backbencher belched over his trough. As for Ukip, well theyre obviously xenophobes, but if you live in England and are not a xenophobe by now, you will probably be one soon when 29 million Romanians and Bulgarians are shown an open door at the end of this year thanks to a forced EU directive. The massive influx will most certainly ensure the death of the NHS and a collapse of the benefits system, which is already hanging by a thread at the moment. If you are unlucky enough to have a job, just think that you will be working nine months in a year to pay taxes so that Britain can accommodate the millions of poor EU migrants who will rush into the UK, but then again, you might be lucky and have your job taken by an EU migrant. The fact is that this is not only about race but culture. The EU is systematically destroying the UK by implementing ridiculous laws in Britain by faceless unelected Marxist officials from Brussels and Strasbourg. We need to break free from this madness or we will lose everything. Cameron is a lackey of Merkel and he needs to be ousted as soon as possible so that the UK can get back its right to govern itself. At the moment the UK is not governing itself and is being controlled completely by the EU. We need to get our country back. Dont vote for Labour because they are pro-euro, dont vote for Cameron because he is pro-euro, a Ukip candidate said from a local by-election voting booth. BARCELONA - Spain - What would Picasso have thought about the euro? Maybe what is going to transpire soon in the country of bullfighting tapas eating Spaniards will be reminiscent of Picasso's greatest piece Guernica. If you are a British expat, get your money out yesterday, if you are Spanish, get your money out sooner than yesterday, if you have a property in Spain, try and sell it, although Im afraid you may be mierda out of luck with that idea, how can you sell something that is pretty much worthless now and will be even more worthless soon when the debt maelstrom hits? an insider from the Spanish Finance Ministry told a Spanish business journal. What happened in Cyprus is destined to happen in Spain soon therefore it seems the wheel of misfortune turns its weary cycle over the troublesome euro waters daily, churning away leaving frothing sewage water in its cumbersome wake. As the Eurogroup President, Jeroen Dijsselbloem said, that if necessary the uninsured deposit holders will be gored by the bulls horns and thus there is the rub, there is no chivalry left in Espana as Don Quixote has been kicked firmly in the cojones by his trusty squires donkey; Picasso would surely have crafted a diabolical sculpture of a deformed woman to represent the broken euro and Salvador Dali would have simply shat in a purple bucket standing on top of a lobster, as for Gaudi, his representation of the euro would be a pile of ceramic rubble. Spain is the big one for the euro. When Spains banks need to be recapitalised again, you can simply kiss your bank deposit goodbye. Especially with Spains unemployment currently at 26.7% things are definitely not getting better for people. There may very well be real bloodshed when the countrys economy collapses completely under its soon to be massive 110% gross debt of GDP, an economist said from the UK. LONDON - England - Mayor Boris Johnson has invited the Canadian Mayor, Rob Ford to come and deal with London's massive crack cocaine problem blighting the inner city. Ive heard he has a lot of knowledge about crack cocaine, Boris Johnson told the Evening Standard on Friday. Crack cocaine is a terrible problem in Londons inner city area and is now even quite prevalent in the capitals suburbs. Toronto Mayor, Rob Ford is himself an expert in crack cocaine and can sniff it out from miles away. Speaking from a crack den in Toronto the Mayor said: Aaaah that hit the spot. Yeah, sure I would love to come to London, England. Where theres crack, I be going to that spot. I need another blast of this pipe, hmmm. Hell, I might even introduce Boris to a bit of crack, and Im not talking about his saucy secretary either. One of the two suspects returned to Vietnam by Chinese police. File photo The 24-year-old man was said to have 'fiercely resisted' arrest, forcing Chinese police to kill him on the spot. Chinese police shot dead one Vietnamese man and arrested two more during a raid on a human trafficking ring last weekend in southern China. Thao Seo Chung, 24, from the northern mountainous province of Lao Cai, who was wanted by Vietnamese authorities for alleged involvement in human trafficking, was spotted during the raid in the early hours last Saturday. Chung was said to have "fiercely resisted" arrest, forcing the Chinese police to kill him on the spot. Chinese police also arrested two other suspects and handed them over, together with Chung's body, to their Vietnamese counterparts in Lao Cai on Tuesday. In 2016, Chung and his accomplice Sung Seo Vang, 20, took a girl with whom Vang had faked a relationship across the border and sold her for 15,000CNY ($2,170), based on police reports. On March 9, Lao Cai police charged Chung with human trafficking and issued an arrest warrant for him, but he was able to evade capture. Four days later, Vang was arrested while trying to escape to China. Authorities said that Chung crossed into China from where he contacted other traffickers who were "hunting" for girls in Vietnam's northern provinces of Dien Bien and Yen Bai to sell them in China as brides or prostitutes. Their trafficking ring was later busted by Chinese police. Police are coordinating to track down the remaining suspects and rescue the victims. In February, China's police rescued 32 women trafficked from Vietnam and busted a human trafficking ring after spending more than a year following a suspected victim. A total of 75 suspects were arrested. Last year 1,128 people in Vietnam fell victim to human trafficking, up 13 percent from 2015, based on Vietnamese government reports. Police have only managed to rescue around half of them. They were sold to men seeking wives in China, Malaysia and South Korea, or just to bear children or work as prostitutes in these countries. WASHINGTON DC - USA - What the Daily Squib knew years ago is finally being admitted by the powers that be, and President Obama has been instrumental in the Stalinist techniques of complete surveillance. Its not exactly a revelation that the NSA, CIA and every other agency under the sun has had carte blanche with your digital data, but what will be more startling in the next few days, weeks, months and years is the fact that people will carry on using these governmental data collection devices because they are now completely hooked on them. The Daily Squib was writing about Social Surveillance three years ago, and weve already discussed the drawbacks of smartphones and how the internet is being threatened by corporate government. Household Names are Involved Heavily People dont actually care any more that all their data is logged and stored in Utah or GCHQ in the UK. Its a form of apathy that indicates a social shift in populations across the globe, where people are controlled to such a level within their programmed consumerist rage, that there is no going back for them. All your household friendly software/hardware companies are in league and are part of the Industrial Military Complex. They are all fronts for the government. If you think about it, the government has full rights to appropriate your data from these companies, because they essentially own them. The Government owns the land, they helped these companies rise up and they made damn sure these companies got all the breaks and green lights to succeed. The friendly face of Zuckerberg smiles at you whilst wearing flip flops from the Facebook head quarters, hey theres no way he would mean you any harm. Well, youre wrong, and it is truly harmful that a cowardly pawn like Zuckerberg is playing with and selling your data to whichever agency he pleases. That is wrong, and a dreadful cynical as well as evil thing to do. When are people going to realise that what is going on is intrinsically evil? These companies are demonic in nature, they may have innocent angelic facades, but they are rotten to the core inside. Well, now that it is official about the PRISM project, why not look into the future and see what will change? Nothing! a citizen concerned about his privacy told a mainstream news reporter before being heavily edited out. Tim Berners Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, said a few words about the aspirations of controlling the internet yesterday, maybe he himself reads the Squib. WASHINGTON DC - USA - In a new transparency drive by the White House and in the wake of the NSA snooping row, President Obama has vowed to make all private emails, social media conversations and telephone calls public. Were going to post it all on the internet so we can show people that there is truly nothing to hide from. Privacy in the digital age is non existent anyway and I think people will feel liberated and relieved by my new directive, President Obama said from his multi-million dollar European vacation. The publication of millions of emails will be the first strand in the program and the US government is also working with the UKs spy agency GCHQ to do the same for Britain. Members of the public were strangely sanguine and accepting of the new ruling. I welcome all my private emails being published on the internet by the government. Im a narcissistic exhibitionist anyway as all my Facebook friends already know, Julia Sentermo, a student from Tulsa, Oklahoma told Fox News. President Obama then went on to say: Were truly bringing the world together. Its good to talk. Weve been reading your stuff for years, and now everyone will be reading what weve been reading. Have fun folks. BRUSSELS - Belgium - A new EU directive ordered from the highest levels has said that Britain is too far away from mainland Europe and it may have to have its shores brought closer. Ve haff vays of making you move the land mass of Britain so ve can board your island easier und make ze necessary changes to your former country, Hans Von Richter, an unelected EU representative said Friday. The EU directive proposes that the English Channel is filled up with concrete and this will thus link up Britain with Europe permanently. There wont be any white cliffs of Dover any more, just a parking lot, another faceless EU official revealed. Plans to start the concreting start in 2017. FRANKFURT - Germany - There were cheers in Athens as the news filtered through today that German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble had agreed to a 20 billion euro payout per annum for Greece for the next eighty years. We realise they refuse to pay back the money they owe every time we ask so today I have committed the German taxpayers to bail out the Greeks on a yearly basis for the next eighty years. This way the Greeks can keep their way of life and carry on with not paying any taxation or servicing the debt they owe us. This is a required action unfortunately otherwise the EU and euro would be in trouble, Mr Schauble told German news crews at an impromptu news conference today. As soon as the news came through about the jackpot deal, people took to the streets all over Greece cheering their German benefactors. This is a glorious day. It means I can keep my porsche boxter which I bought purely from the proceeds of EU subsidies. I have never paid an ounce of tax and I enjoy my 75,000 euro salary for cleaning park benches twice a week. I think Ill be off to the coast for another four month holiday to celebrate, Nikos Makalarios, 43, told local Greek news stations. Another Greek said: Its not enough. We want more. FLORIDA - USA - African Americans across the United States have threatened to riot if the British royal couple Duke and Duchess of Cambridge do not name their baby Trayvon. Imma riot if dah royal cracka azz family dont name they baby Trayvon. Ni**as is raciss! Kentnilla Latronia, an angry twitter user wrote. Riot police were on emergency standby in all metro areas in the U.S. today and are taking the threats seriously. We got the water guns out, we gon give some of them folk a good wash down, hyuk, hyuk, if they riot, Cletus McAdam, police chief for the Seminole County Sheriffs office told CNN. Another twitter user said: If they don namez that royal creepy ass wigga Trayvon imma kick sum trash cans down inna road biotch. LONDON - England - There is a misconception in politics that voting for an outsider party is effectively a vote to let in one of the two primary parties who dominate all UK politics. Well, the 2015 election could be a defining moment for the British electorate according to some political experts. Under the current British electoral first past the post system it is very hard for a third party to attain a majority in parliament therefore this is why there is a situation in the United Kingdom where all politics is defined by two stale parties, who have in all senses outlived their effectiveness. Not only is there little choice for the voter with Labour and Conservative politics, but these two supposedly different parties have actually blurred the line as their policies are so similar to each other. The Conservative government of today is essentially a socialist form of conservatism, and the Labour party is predominantly socialist with elements of conservative policy. If you vote for any of the two, you will get a socialist government who will keep Britain in the EU and integrate it further by adopting the single European currency. Prime minister David Cameron is a staunch europhile as is David Miliband of Labour. Now David Cameron has promised an In/Out EU referendum in 2017 if he is elected, but the real referendum will occur in 2015 and the people will be truly tested as to if they want to stay in the EU. By voting for Conservative or Labour, you will effectively seal the UKs fate, but if you vote for a third party, Britain may still survive. What is the third party? UKIP, is their name and there is only one way they can get into power and thats by the majority of Labour and Conservative voters voting for UKIP. Could this event ever happen? Probably not, therefore you can kiss the UK and pound sterling goodbye and welcome the euro, as well as full Brussels ownership of Britain, a Westminster insider revealed. Trying to get Tory or Labour voters to vote for an alternative option which would save the U.K. from Brussels could be a major problem, one also has to consider the massive influx of EU and Third World citizens into the UK under the previous Labour government. Peter Mandelson himself admitted that Labour utilised an open door immigration policy during their thirteen year reign, purely to garner votes and mess up the cultural identity of the UK. If Labour wins the election, then the so-called EU referendum earmarked for 2017 will be scrapped. If the Conservatives win, then David Cameron will make sure the show referendum will go his way. 2015 will thus be the real referendum, and if the people want to be finally defeated by Brussels, they will vote for their defeat. LONDON - England - A group of intrepid explorers are set to leave on a hazardous expedition North of the Watford Gap tomorrow at dawn it has been announced. The team of twelve explorers will be kitted out with two months survival rations and will set off from Tory HQ deep in the civilised environs of Central London. Im a bit scared of what I may encounter, its something that will be a great challenge to our team. As long as I have my trusty solid oak stick with me then Ill be safe from any of the wild primitives we may encounter, MP for Richmond, Lewis Fetherhimes told the Telegraph. The group expedition will also use a team of sherpas carrying all their supplies, including essentials like caviar and champagne. Its a wasteland up there, full of wild animals roaming and all sorts, Geoffrey Fortington-Smythe, another member of the expedition team revealed. The expedition will hopefully map out some of the unknown regions and bring back their findings to London sometime in late September. WEST SUSSEX - England - Now's the time to enjoy the beautiful rolling hills of the English countryside because in a few years it will not be there any more. The ancient lanes trodden by centuries of Britons, the stone walls extending over the lush green fields and assortment of trees that have seen Britains astoundingly rich history, they will all be flattened, as will the thousand year churches and tiny hamlets. When the bulldozers come they will dig the fields and lay down concrete for the affordable housing schemes required to house EU and Third World immigration as well as shale gas fracking workers. The educated and professional EU residents stay in their countries, we only get the detritous, and thus our countryside will bear the brunt of Britain being in the EU. You cannot fight progress the politicians will say, but nothing can justify what they plan to do to the countryside just so that Britain can stay in the EU. These country lanes buzzing with bees and wildlife, the dark satanic mills and rolling hills and babbling brooks will not be needed any more. There will be soviet-era style apartment blocks put here to accommodate the massive influx of poor former soviet bloc immigrants now in the EU who will invariably have more children and breed by the dozen. As Britains ageing original inhabitants die off, they will be replaced by the only people breeding these days, the immigrants and uneducated white benefits families, social historian, Giles Brandbreth, told the Daily Mail. A government spokesman said: We need to build social housing schemes not only for the millions of EU immigrants we are hosting but for their children as well. This is why it is imperative that we accelerate the fracking shale gas operations because energy will be needed for the millions of extra families. As for the NHS and free schooling Britons have enjoyed for the best part of half a century, you can kiss that goodbye because the 29 million extra Bulgarians and Romanians who will be coming here in 2014 will destroy the already crumbling stretched welfare system once and for all. Visiting your local GP will cost you an arm and a leg, literally. So dont forget, well be increasing taxes so you can pay for all these enhancements. WASHINGTON D.C. - USA - President Obama says that the Syrians urgently need some Obamacare. You see that stealth bomber over there on the deck, well that aint no ordinary kinda stealth bomber, its an Obamacare stealth bomber and its gonna bring some Obamacare to them Syrian people through indiscriminate bombs and missiles, a U.S. Navy officer on the USS Obamacare, revealed today. Obama worshippers across America were seen wildly waving their banners and flags in the air on Wednesday as they cheered on their leader blindly and without question. Ima tell you Im so happy for the Syrian people as those bombs hit Ima gon be at home wit ma popcorn and an Obama sign waving it at the TV. God Bless America and Obama! Julie Sweethorn, a Missouri mother of fourteen on welfare told CBS. BRUSSELS - Belgium - Number 3,895 reasons to hate the EU even more. Now they say all UK motorists will have to have speed limiters and GPS trackers installed in their vehicles. Not Satire Is nothing sacred to these EU bureaucratic monsters dictating their silly nonsensical laws on us? If anyone gets in between my accelerator pedal and my foot, they better be wearing a cup, an angry motorist said from East Anglia. The new EU speed limiter regulations will come into force soon and there is nothing anyone can do about it apart from not vote Labour or Conservative at the next election. Thats the only way we will get rid of the draconian EU Big Brother laws that are taking away our freedoms. Next theyll be putting electrodes up your arse to give you an electric shock if you are caught speeding in the supermarket. How much is enough? Are you the voter going to take any more of this? Wake up from your X Factor slumber and smell the fu**ing coffee, another angry Brit road user told the BBC, before being taken off air by the pro EU broadcasting company. It wont just be boy racers and Top Gear fans who will be affected but everyone. You try overtaking a lorry on the M25 when the EU speed limiter suddenly cuts in. Whats Jeremy Clarkson going to do? Hell go mad. The best thing for him would be to emigrate to Africa. At least there he can speed on the dust roads with impunity, a BBC insider revealed. Government minister Nick de Ponce said: Dont worry chaps. With all the EU immigrants coming to the UK, one would be hard pushed to go over 20 MPH on our roads anyway. Were all like rats in a tiny shoe box now. Police found no evidence of foul play involved in the gruesome death. Police in Singapore have concluded that the death of a Vietnamese man who fell from the 15th floor of a hotel last month was a suicide, the Vietnamese Embassy in Singapore said Friday. The investigation found no signs of foul play in what was previously considered an "unnatural death". Nguyen Ngoc Duy, 23, a Vietnamese national, was decapitated during the fatal fall, the announcement said. His body landed on a fifth floor balcony of the hotel, and his head was found outside an eatery on the fourth floor, media reports said. The Vietnamese Embassy is working with local authorities and his family to complete the necessary legal procedures for the victim's funeral. Duy was said to have been staying in a room with a 21-year-old Vietnamese student named An and four other friends. He and An reportedly had an argument just before the fall. An rushed to inform hotel staff, and was also taken to hospital with a cut to his head. ALEPPO - Syria - U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein has been fighting on the Syrian front for two weeks now and reveals some of her amazing stories. Last night I took some shrapnel in my legs. Ah, the pain was awful but I unloaded enough lead into the enemy with my machine gun afterwards that I think they could write a book with their shot up carcasses. It felt real good to mete out some justice on those Syrian soldiers. War is hell, but when youre packin a heavy machine gun, its not so bad, makes you feel good to be alive for that brief second. Senator Feinstein and her Al Qaeda brigade of unruly men filmed by a Fox News crew, have been encamped in a disused warehouse for the last few days, but are now considering moving through the rubble of the city to a safer place. The first night here I got all home sick. I was thinkin of Mr and Mrs America back home, and I was imagining about how they must be all safe in their homes with their AR15s by their sides. I missed home so bad I threw a few grenades at an old goat and watched it disintegrate in front of my eyes. I imagined that it was John Boehner for a second, but we were then attacked by troops from both sides because of my stupid grenade throwing antics which alerted them to our dug out position. We had a hooch here but now it was goin up in flames. I put my iPod on and turned on Paint it Black by the Stones to full volume watching the hot metal casings hit the floor as I squeezed the trigger. I was like Rambo that night. Blowin those muthas home back to where they came from. It was beautiful I tell ya. Unloading lead a documentary about Senator Feinsteins gun-toting mission in Syria will air on the Fox News Network on Wednesday. We made the fake twitter fans for Obama and now he wants us to make fake Obamacare signings. Is there anything real about this guy? an angry net worker, who is paid $3.20 per week to add fake fans to Obamas accounts, told the India Times. All across America, many are realising that what was sold to them for months was nothing but a mirage, much like the presidents tenure. Even some staunch Democrats are feeling the pain of Obamas failure: At least the Republicans get things done. They want to go to war, they go to war. They want to bring in a law, they bring in a law. Im sick of the flip flopping and failure of the Dems to do anything. The only thing they do well is leak money, taxpayers money. Im sickened by this whole fiasco, and Obama is a fake. He doesnt even have a valid social security number and his birth certificate is fake. I doubt he even killed Osama Bin Laden. Whats real about this Obama guy? Meanwhile Americas government shutdown continues for the fourth day and counting. WASHINGTON D.C. - USA - Stasi agents working for the supreme comrade Obama bravely beat up and arrested numerous old veterans today outside the Soviet House. A group of criminal pensioner veterans dared to try and visit memorials for fallen fellow soldiers today. Thankfully, Stasi agents were on hand to beat the miscreant opposers of the supreme comrade in chief within an inch of their lives. Some of the veterans were in wheel chairs and some were obviously struggling to walk with their crutches but thankfully the Stasi and riot police used batons and tear gas to neutralise the obvious threat. Did you see how that 80-year-old veteran of Iwo Jima went down when I cracked him on the skull with my baton? laughing Stasi commissar, Barry Soto told state news service, MSN. Comrade Obama, today praised the violent shutdown: Citizens and comrades of the Soviet Democratic Republic of America. We have violently cracked down on the vile elderly traitor veterans who fought for the previous capitalist entity the United States and have somehow seen fit to reemerge from their hovels. I would like to thank the rest of the coward population who stayed at home and watched the beatings of these elderlies who chose to disobey my supreme command. You did the right thing, you must obey my every order, you cowardly yellow stained maggots. Comrade Obama is pleased by the progress in the SDRA and has ordered extra rations of chocolate for all compliant citizens who stayed at home. Thank you for your continuing support. PARIS - France - Like a Phoenix from the flames, soon France may find liberty and freedom again. To be set free from the shackles of euro slavery, and for her economy to shoot up into the outer reaches of space, can the French maiden let loose from the darkness and reach her hand into the light? The EU has stifled France, muffled her voice and condemned her to the wild tax mad ramblings of the clinically insane Francois Hollande a puerile man whose idea of economic embellishment is to categorically destroy everything with socialistic punitive taxes. Can the rising Joan DArc save France from being marginalised forever? The French are understandably fed up with the EU communist entity and will do or vote for a saviour from their prison. The Bastille gates will be breached and the EU technicians taken to the guillotine for some swift justice. Vive La France, they will shout as the heads roll into the baskets, these bringers of EU monstrosities onto a land that once coined the phrase Liberte, egalite, fraternite, except no brown people allowed. WASHINGTON D.C. - USA - Today it is president Barack Hussein Obama's birthday and many across the United States are wishing him a happy birthday. From Kentucky, to Maine, to Texas and Oregon millions of people took to the streets to celebrate their great presidents birthday. We got parades here and cheerleaders. Its a nice sunny autumn day. People are milling around singing Obama songs of praise. Its really quite touching, Jenny Farnsworth, from Mobile, Alabama told Fox News. Change Even newscasters like Bill OReilly were singing Obamas praises: Hes done good for our country. I never seen so much money spent. We really are the land of plenty. God bless you Obama and hope you have a nice day in the White House with your lovely wife Michelle. In Washington D.C. a street carnival went past the White House and not even one rotten tomato or rotten egg was thrown. The American people are really happy that the country is finally Moving On. Here in Britain, the Queen toasted the president at dinner and extended her gratitude for Obamas great achievements in the United States, and prime minister, David Cameron quoted the words of Winston Churchill honouring Obamas tenure as president of the United States. Socialists think profits are a vice; I consider losses the real vice. Winston Churchill LONDON - England - The Duchess of Cambridge has thankfully been found after a worrying brief period of absence, Kensington palace staff have revealed. Kate Middleton, The Duchess of Cambridge went missing for nearly three-and-a-half hours yesterday royal palace staff revealed today. At three pm yesterday an alarm was sounded and there was a complete shut down of all palace entrances as staff and protection officers frantically searched for the Duchess of Cambridge. Two helicopters were deployed to search the grounds of Kensington palace and a team of two hundred police officers were involved in the massive search party. We searched high and low but could not find her anywhere. It was rather worrying but when we were in the royal apartments sitting room we heard a little squeaking noise. I got the mop out thinking it was a mouse. Lo and behold, it was the duchess, she had slipped behind the sofa cushion, the poor dear, Rosa Rouncewell, the duchesss maid in waiting told the BBC. The duchess was very grateful for being rescued from behind the sofa cushion and said that she had accidentally slipped behind there when trying to sit back on the sofa. Once rescued, she was told to rest by her personal physician and was placed for safetys sake in between a copy of Harpers Bazaar magazine lying on the table. Lucky for the Duchess she was found just in time for another taxpayer funded holiday with her royal husband, Prince William. Just what the doctor ordered, innit. LONDON - England - As Britain's energy companies increase their prices by over 10% this freezing winter, rest assured you've got the Daily Squib to give you some advice on keeping warm and toasty. Its never easy is it, especially when youre given the stark choice of feeding yourself or heating yourself in the sub zero dank temperatures that are sure to cause many deaths amongst the elderly and vulnerable population of Britain this winter? It certainly does not have to break the bank to get some warmth during the winter months. Let the Daily Squib warm the cockles of your heart with these 10 great cheap tips for getting some warmth this winter. 10 Tips For Keeping Warm Cheaply This Winter 1) Why not stow away on a boat to Guatemala? Dont forget to take some mosquito repellent and a machete to fend off the armed and dangerous bandits roaming everywhere once you get there. 2) Mogadishu, Somalia, may be lawless but at least its f*cking warm. Dont forget to take an AK-47. 3) Australia is so hot that you will actually forget Britain ever existed, that is if you can put up with the whinging Aussies and the Great White sharks chomping on your tiddlies. 4) Go to Thailand. You can live like a king for 5 quid a day and enjoy some very colourful nights out. 5) Snuggle up in the Sahara desert. Its certainly not like a dark freezing night in a Bermondsey council flat with no food or heating. Dont forget to take some water with you and a jacket for the even more freezing desert nights. 6) Enjoy the sights and sounds of the Papua New Guinean jungles. Be sure to have a pistol with you at all times to ward off the cannibals. 7) Another great warm destination is Colombia. Not only will you have plenty of sunshine but the local produce is amazing, especially when sniffed. 8) How about some Caribbean sunshine to warm the soul? Haiti is hot all year round, that is if you can manage the earthquakes, cut-throat gangs and mad voodoo priests. Why not give it a go? You may never come back. 9) Cuba is cheap and sunny. If youre up for eating octopus all day long and being arrested by the commie secret police for being a foreign spy, its a small price to pay for some sunshine. 10) Nothing beats the freezing British winter than a stay on Mount Merapi on the Indonesian island of Java. The smouldering volcano erupts once in awhile with lovely bilious spurts of scorching lava and as long as youre not directly next to the stuff, you can harness some of the warmth. Beats the freezing weather back in Blighty any day. BLACKSTRAP COVE - Gibraltar - British Prime Minister, David Cameron has vowed to send Britain's last remaining Navy rubber dinghy to quell the Spanish Armada off the coast of the tiny enclave. British PM David Cameron, in his defining Maggie moment, wants to send a British Navy dinghy to Gibraltar to stave off the Spanish Armada. Ive sold off and decommissioned all of our Navy warships so were going to send in a rubber dinghy. That should do the job, Cameron told the House of Commons today. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg backed up Camerons speech with one of his own: I know I have the mind of a weak, feeble woman; and I have the heart and stomach of a weasel, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of our realm; to which, rather than any dishonour should grow by me. Oh dear, I forgot wifey is Spanish. Ah, let them have Gibraltar, its only a tiny rock you know. Just changed my mind again, please ignore what I said before. Spain which hails under the orders of the EU has been chosen to bait the Brits as a warning for not going ahead with a full EU membership. In Brussels, unelected technocrats were unapologetic: Ve haf vays of making the Britishers play ball. Until zay give us all of their island, ve vill bait them in Gibraltar. That piece of land is ze property of ze EU. They have no right to be there any more. LONDON - England - Mayor Boris Johnson has said a few words that have riled a few people, nevertheless the Daily Squib is fully behind every word that he has said regarding the rather contentious subject of stupid people. Boris Johnson is right, we are not all equal when it comes to the brain department, after all the brain is a muscle and some are gifted genetically and some are not. There will naturally be a furore from the socialists because in their book everything is equal, this is the communist ethos. No doubt Harriet Harperson now has her sights set on blowing poor old Boriss brains out with a well placed shot but the socialists are the ones who thrive on a dumbed down population the most. Ever heard the words Education, education, education? The world needs dumb people. People who follow blindly without question, people who are easily persuaded, people who are only capable of doing menial jobs, people who are addicted to social networks, people who watch reality shows and participate in them. If it werent for these people, the rich would not be where they are now. Look at any internet entrepreneur like Zuckerberg and Twitters Jack Dorsey and you will see people who have harnessed the power of their brains to accommodate those below them, and make some decent bucks out of it too. World religions thrive on stupidity because the myths they extol defy any form of logic or science. Therefore to follow these myths blindly and without question is inherently stupid. Religious leaders love stupid people, so bring em on, the more the merrier, cha-ching! Simon Cowell, a self confessed stupid person has proudly announced to all that he has never read a book in his life yet he has amassed a huge fortune by dangling a carrot in front of stupid wannabees who he exploits on his shows and ridicules for profit. This shows some level of manipulation on his part therefore hes not completely stupid but of course a complete c*nt. The super wealthy can be stupid too, but only if it is inherited wealth. At least they can employ clever people to run things for them, and as long as they dont do anything too stupid while pretending to be clever, they can pass as clever people to the stupid people watching. High intelligence should rightly be respected and rewarded. Natural selection of the highest order within the confines of human society as well as the animal kingdom does prevail in a predominantly dumb society. The internet is proof in itself that stupidity is an all encompassing problem and it is filled to the brim with stupid unintelligent nonsensical comments, but it is this very stupidity that keeps the wheels turning. Without the stupid people filling Twitter and Facebook for example, Zuckerberg and Dorsey would not be living in their mansions and have billions in the bank. Stupidity therefore is a commodity worth mining and harnessing. Human stupidity is a very deep gold mine begging to be mined by the few miners who know where to dig. Here at the Squib, were as stupid as f*ck, because we say the truth that no one wants to hear, therefore were so poor we can barely buy a drink down the pub. If you want the definition of stupidity, try and write the best satire on the internet (ha,ha) and get nothing for it whilst watching other mediocre fully funded mushy sites raking in serious cash by writing for the stupid. Now thats f*cking stupid. Boris Johnson, if you read this (doubt it very much) buy our poor satire writers a drink with that Telegraph money you make, proper satire really does not pay. NEW YORK - USA - Hillary Clinton is primed and ready to win back African-American votes in the coming 2016 U.S. elections. Since Mrs. Clinton left the secretary of state post in February, she and her husband have sought to mend their relationship with African-Americans, the group that was most scarred during her first bitter bid for the presidency. Five years after remarks by Mr. Clinton about Barack Obama deeply strained the Clintons fake bond with African-Americans, the former first family is setting out to ensure that there is no replay of such trouble in 2016 when Hillary Clinton goes for the big one. Mrs. Clinton has thus vowed to make it her mission to somehow claw back previously lost ground with the ever growing population of African-American voters visibly sporting her support for them by wearing a hoodie during a recent talk at an African-American youth centre in Harlem. On Tuesday she joined Knockout Game crews in New Jersey, where Mrs. Clinton showed her support to the community and even managed to knock out cold an eighty-year-old white man trying to take his shopping home. Cleovon Trayvon, 18, who is a regular knockout star, told local news crews after the event: Ima gon vote fo Hillary fo sho. Dat cracka bitch gotta mean ol right hook. She one of us now. Whoosh we gon put da vid up n yall can see fo yourself, dat shit was crazy, we call her da Knockout Queen. I said, bitch take ma EBT card buy yoself a forty. Next week Mrs. Clinton has been invited by another group in Florida to participate in a spot of Flash Mob Robs when they go to a gas station somewhere and clean the joint out without paying. African-American leaders have praised Mrs. Clintons change from the nasty 2008 election contest when she and her former president husband, Bill, were seen to belittle Barack Obama. Reports suggested the man was simply too tired to see the night through. Police in Ho Chi Minh City have probably had their easiest catch in a bizarre burglary as a man who hid inside a building to rob the place at night was found sleeping at the scene until the next morning. Pham Minh Thanh, 39, told the police he sneaked in the 33-storey Saigon Trade Center building on Saturday afternoon and hid on the 11th floor to wait for a chance. He carried some ropes, a hammer, a crowbar, clothes and a few other things in a backpack. Later Thanh used the crowbar to break in the office of a foreign business, took four laptops and one camera. He also broke open a safe but found nothing worthy inside. After getting his hands on the valuables, Thanh inexplicably decided to take a nap. He hid the backpack, changed clothes and slept at the scene until the next morning, when a janitor spotted him and alerted the security staff. Thanh was caught and handed over to the police. CAPE TOWN - South Africa - Thousands of Amazon drones were spotted over the city today in a drone nuisance after losing their way from North America. Amazon C.E.O Jeff Bezos was shitting kittens today. Radar images revealed 40,000 Amazon drones carrying Christmas presents for Americans had mysteriously been diverted to Cape Town, South Africa. Blik Mansfoort, 34, a Cape Town dock worker first heard the noise of thousands of drones coming over the water. My god, I was unloading a ship and I heard this really loud droning sound. Then the sky went black with these things. They were buzzing and swooping all over the place. I then got hit by twenty Christmas presents and they flew North. The South African Air Force was deployed at 3pm but were unable to stop the drones flying towards Botswana. Jeff Bezos has personally apologised to the South African president, Jacob Zuma by phone. JOHANNESBURG - South Africa - President Barack Obama has been thoroughly impressed by the fake signer at Mandela's tribute and wants to bring him to the White House. President Obama was so impressed by the fake signer at Mandelas funeral ceremony that he is bringing him back to Washington D.C. Well I want him next to me every time I speak. You see as you all know everything I say is the truth, so this guy will back up my words, Obama told some reporters from his $45,000 per night South African hotel. From now on Obama will have two teleprompters, a fake signer, a fake birth certificate and fake social security numbers all displayed wherever he speaks. White house aides have said the podiums may get a little crowded with all the fake stuff but have bowed to pressure from the president. TOKYO - Japan - Shinzo Abe is the first Japanese prime minister to visit the Yakusuni shrine in seven years. Could the Japanese be finally getting their warrior spirit back? Since World War II the Japanese have had their true warrior spirit stifled by the Americans. Could this be the time the Japanese samurai spirit of Bushido is coming back? I can see Toshiro Mifune sharpening his katana as he goes over another hill in the windswept country which was so horribly subjugated by the Americans post World War II. The Japanese were weakened and had their military forces watered down to placate their American overlords, but now as China bares its teeth at Japan, is the land of the rising sun ready to fight? Have they forgotten the art of war? Can such a small island bring back their military power once again? The taiko may once again beat from one of the most fearsome warriors anyone has met, a brutal army who crushed all in their path ruthlessly, Jon Winchester, a military analyst revealed in this months edition of Janes Defence. Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution must be ripped up or amended immediately if Japan is to survive. America is now a weak nation and has no say in world affairs any more. Japan must defend itself or die. Tora, Tora, Tora! LONDON - England - Labour politicians headed by MP Keith Vaz welcomed EU immigrants into the country from some of the poorest most deprived countries in Europe today. Were welcoming our votes for the coming 2015 general election. This is how Labour will win. Thank you Tories, if it wasnt for you we would lose the election but youve just sealed your fate by letting them all in, a jovial Keith Vaz told the BBC. As well as Labour politicians lined up greeting the new arrivals were of course Unite officials who immediately enrolled the new immigrants into the union. Looks like its goodbye for the much-loved Tories in 2015. Theyve only got themselves to blame, Mr Vaz said. An estimated 12 million Bulgarians and Romanians are set to enter Britain in the coming weeks. Thats more than enough Labour votes to seal the deal. WASHINGTON D.C. - USA - President Barack Obama has given Americans a very important choice to make -- Guns or Obamacare. President Obama says he wants to make a deal with the American people. I will repeal the failed Obamacare laws I created along with the two bit mangy website if you give up your guns. Now thats a good deal right? Obama said during a public address Wednesday. Americans were however torn on the issue and many are questioning the new deal Obama is offering. Yeah, but when we throw our guns down, then he can do whatever he wants anyway. Ive seen how this guy operates. I dont trust a single word that comes out of his lying mouth, Ed Hurlehee, 62, a business owner from Wisconsin told local radio stations. LONDON - England - Britain survived and won two world wars but its ultimate defeat will come from within as our political masters sell us to our age old foes for a very low price. Constitutional experts have teamed up with financial experts from the British Finance Directorate to reveal the real reasons for the EU wanting to rifle through everyones Will in the UK. First, one must define the word collectivisation simply defined, the goal of this policy is to consolidate individual land and labour into collective farms. Stalin was a proponent of this technique of taking all wealth from every strata of class and redistributing it equally. As we all know, this was not the case as the majority of the wealth was firmly held by the upper echelons of the Communist party. The exact same system is being proposed by the EU. They want to publish the details of your Will so that the soviet collectivist EU dream can be realised. What you own now, will not be yours any more, it will be the property of the state to distribute as they see fit. This is the next stage of the EU collectivist dystopia. It does have its initial roots in Marxism, and to some extent Obama is doing the same in America by destroying the bourgeoisie. The Middle Class in Britain has been decapitated, as the British are so obsessed by class, the EU may have quite a hard time destroying the British class system altogether. Once Labour, headed by hardcore Marxist, Ed Miliband is voted in, the British will have sealed their fate. If you own any property, have a bank account, you will be punished, as were the Cypriots in the 2012 bank deposit grab. This is how the EU will act and there is nothing anyone can do about it. If you vote for David Cameron in 2015, he will enter Britain into EU slavery slowly, as opposed to the harder edged approach of Miliband. Preparing for a feudal system etched into a communist ethos, will impoverish millions of people in Europe. One only has to look at the tricked populations in the EU today drowning in their own faeces. Britain had a feudal history, and the future will be an assimilation of the old system of rule, except with technology giving an edge to the ruling Lords. All of course ruled by the ultimate Lords of Brussels. NEWCASTLE - England - If you have ever doubted poll results, you are totally wrong, because polls are a true representation of public opinion. A man who read a poll result about a subject but initially had his doubts about it, now believes that the poll result is correct and has allayed his fears about the subject. I used to have an opinion about something but when I read the poll result, you know 1,345 people were polled out of a population of 65 million in the UK, I realised I was the one in the wrong, David Crabtree, 45, an accountant from West Glamorgan, told a BBC poll. Although polls are not representative of the population, they are widely used to enforce and change public opinion by citing poll results as proof. I love polls. No, not Poles, but polls. Theyre great for changing the mind of the proles. Put a poll in an informative article and voila, you have solid proof that you were right all along. We just did a poll on how effective polls were in changing peoples minds yesterday. The poll results were astounding, we surveyed 53 people out of a possible 65 million to come to the conclusion that polls are wonderful and we need more polls to tell us that polls are a great way to poll people, senior director for the National Office of Statistics and Polls said in a recent poll. Djargo Romenescu, a convicted benefits cheat who swindled 200,000 of benefits last year, could not speak English when he was arrested in January. After a two week stay in prison for his crime where he learned to speak English, he was allowed to continue receiving benefits equating to 48,000 per annum and was upgraded to a four bedroom end of terrace house in a posh part of town. He said he was sorry, we allowed him to keep the 200k and have reinstated his benefits in full. He speaks perfect English now, and jokes with us about his numerous bank accounts, even detailing the off shore holdings he has in Jersey, the mans benefits officer for Reading council told the BBC. Convicted Romanian benefits cheat, Mr Romenescu was naturally delighted: I love Britain, come brother come sister, they give us everything here. God bless you British mugs. The recent EU migrant plans to bring his extended family of 3580 to Britain in July and his generosity does not end there, he has even pledged 2.60 to flood hit residents in Somerset. NEW YORK - USA - Parents being sued by their kids are now counter suing in a litigation war that is causing further rifts in American society. It seems American society has many pitfalls one of which is the constant threat of litigation. To live in a society where you can be sued for pretty much anything, is unbearable to think about for most citizens in Europe and Britain. No wonder 84% of the population of the U.S are under the influence of mind numbing prescription drugs. You gotta be drugged up to the hilt just to get by in this deadly vipers soup of litigation hell where the lawyers are the only winners, Lewis Carmaccio, a social commentator for a Texas radio station told his audience. With a spate of sue happy teenagers taking their American parents to court for infractions such as not getting the latest iPhone or PS4, some parents are fighting back with counter suits. My 13-year-old daughter Megan is suing me for $250,000 because I told her to do her homework and when she refused told her that she was not going to the beach on Saturday with her friends. My wife and I are however counter suing for $2.50 because thats all she can afford. Naturally, she is winning because we gotta pay all the legal fees, exasperated dad, Dupio Menendez, a retired airline pilot told CNN. Grandparents across the country are also now suing their offspring and grandchildren because its the right thing to do. PENANG - Malaysia - Expert crash investigators have been flown in from America and have come up with a theory that Malaysian Airliner flight MH370 was secretly a stealth fighter. Crash experts have come up with a new theory that is bound to boggle the mind, and it states that the Malaysian Airliner MH370 was a secret stealth fighter smuggled out of a base somewhere in the U.S. We think that flight MH370, a Boeing 777 somehow transformed in mid air into the latest stealth fighter from Americas military. All the pilot had to do was press a button and the wings shrunk, a protective radar resistant foam was spray painted over the fuselage and the tail wing morphed into an x wing or something like that. Damn, Id pay good money to see that, Gerald Ingram, a crash investigator and engineer revealed to CNN. If this is true, that means the stealth fighter could be anywhere in the world right now as it would have extra fuel tanks, or if there are collaborators, most certainly the plane was refuelled in the air. Back in 2012 the Daily Squib predicted in its own way that the EU was a catalyst for the re-emergence of European fascism, in one form or another. Through the billowing smoke of incompetence, corruption and idiocy of the European Union, there now rises a tangible fascistic threat to the current EU debacle. Fascism is something that never went away from Europe, and there is a growing tide of discontent against the forced multiculturalism being pushed down the throats of the whites within the continent. The EU already incorporates an amalgamation of fascism and soviet ideologies, however pure fascism, as in the racial form could be a threat initially to the EU, but once it is dissolved, ethnic fascism would reconvene the states, as one cohesive unit, albeit without the non-whites. In any area of town, if anyone who has colour moves in, we move out. This is the way it has always been and will always be. The French are notoriously racist, and Le Pen is a reaction to the influx of African and Algerian immigration, who breed like rats and are a burden on French society. Fascism thrives when there is an element of threat, to spur on the white masses. They must feel as if they are in constant danger and a good leader will ensure he/she will keep on stoking the fires until a raging storm builds up, a fascist Le Pen supporter revealed. There are of course elements of the Hegelian Dialectic at work as well, deep down, the majority of whites detest any other skin colour, and it is this biological programming that allows fascism to flourish, as the supposed opposition wills it into place through forced multiculturalism. The fasci rods are all too prevalent in the UK as the rise of the English national parties grow stronger every day. Mass immigration was allowed to happen for a reason, to create discontent and calls for a solution. If you overcrowd the indigenous population with foreigners, then you create hatred. This is what they want, they want the people to demand a solution, and they will be presented with one soon enough. Looking from the outside inward, Martin Amis understands full well, that the English core is one of skin colour. He states astutely that darkies can never be English, and this is the defining point about Englishness. You may be well spoken, well educated or talented, even born in the UK, but youre not English, and never will be. But what of the Poles, and other white Eastern Europeans who have come over to the UK in the most recent EU migratory push? Well, they may talk sort of funny, have weird names, but they will supersede the darkies, because not only are they white, but theyre Christian. They will be English one day. This is a fundamental point to make, they will supersede the immigration from the 1950s 80s, which included many dark skinned people from the Commonwealth countries. Those immigrants into the UK, from the 50s 80s will never be accepted into the English heartland, and are classed as untermenschen. Therefore, we come to the crux of the matter. The rise of fascism in Europe is down to one very simple element, and that is the fact that what ever happens, if you have a non-white skin tone, which is something you were born with and cannot control, you are a lesser human being in the eyes of a fascist. Soon the day may come when the soldiers come door to door, they will take the coloured occupants from their houses and march them down the streets all the while, the silent curtains twitching with relief. EAST BERLIN - East Germany - It was only a matter of time before the Berlin Wall was rebuilt. The Russian invasion taking back their former territory has seen to the wall coming back from the dead. Pink Floyd soundtracks are not being played over the PA system as thousands of East German workers get stuck in to the strenuous work of rebuilding the Berlin Wall. Ever since the Russians reclaimed this part of Germany, things have gone back to the good old days of Stasi disappearances and long queues to buy basics like bread and milk. Gunther Mathias, a carpenter, is glad the wall is being re-built and has been lending a hand wherever he can: I remember the wall being taken down, it was a very sad day for me because I knew that capitalism, would bring much sorrow and heartache to our previously simple sparse lives. This is why rebuilding the wall will bring back the simple life again. I do not want choices any more, I just want simplicity, and this is why the soviet system works so well. Citizens and comrades, how many types of cheese do we have to have in a supermarket? I would rather queue at a bakery for three hours in the pouring rain because at least that gives me hope of a hopeless future. Sadly, Mr Mathias disappeared shortly after the interview because of consorting with Western journalists, he was visited by officers from the Ministerium fur Staatssicherheit who took him away in the early hours of the morning in an unmarked van. It seems that history is one big circle as it repeats over, and over again. PRETORIA - South Africa - Oscar Pistorius, shot his former girlfriend in a fit of rage, however, he may still get off if the judge feels enough sympathy for the killer. Reeva Steenkamp wanted to leave live wire Pistorius, and he knew that. She called him stumpy, and made him out to be half a man, he lost his temper and shot her when she was taking refuge in the toilet. People like Pistorius are very driven people, nothing gets in the way of their success, and when Reeva threatened Pistorius extreme focus where he never loses he snapped. One must clearly analyse the state of mind of Pistorius, he is a paranoid control freak athlete, and he likes to shoot. When he saw red, he knew the repercussions but thought his story about intruders would make him sail through any court case. During the trial, Pistorius engaged in a theatrical show to the judge to show remorse for his crime. The more remorse he shows, he hopes the audience will look upon him with favour. He has even employed the prop of a simple bucket to vomit into, this may gain even further sympathy from the judge. No doubt many men have to put up with the devilish tongue of some women, and what Reeva said to him that night sealed her fate. Most men just eat it up, but Pistorius snapped, and he had a gun. Who was more stupid? Reeva and her deadly unravelled tongue, or the juvenile uncontrollable actions of a big kid with a gun only used to getting everything his way all the time? Beyond doubt, Pistorius is guilty of a murder of passion, whether the starry eyed judge (no juries in South Africa since 1969, please see comment below, our writer got a severe rap on the knuckles for that one Ed.) is allowed to come to that conclusion is another matter, for when it comes to justice there are two types, justice for the famous, and justice for the rest. This time, justice will come as a shock to Pistorius as he is taken away in a van to a secure prison for a long time. President Obama has made another speech revealing his plans to destroy the heart and soul of Midwest America. First of all, I hate cowboys. I want every cowboy wiped off the face of our land. You stand for everything that is against my socialist values. You are in my sights, and I will destroy you all bit by bit, rest assured I will not stop until my mission is complete. Once I completely purge the American heartland of its cowboys, the whole country will bow to the Obama doctrines and tenets I staunchly stand by. You stand for America, well I dont want that. My job is to destroy America. You stand for gun ownership, well my job is to disarm you. You stand for family values, well my job is to destroy that. You stand for your Christian religion, well my job is to destroy that. I will take your cattle, I will take your land, I will force homosexual values down your throats, I will force you to watch Ellen DeGeneres shows on a constant loop and I will force you all to participate in same sex marriages, but most of all Im banning Country music from America permanently and replacing it with black rap music. I will complete my mission to cleanse America. You will be told what to say and what not to say, you will be banned from wearing your filthy cowboy hats, you will be forced to adhere to my socialist Marxist doctrines of collectivisation, you will be assimilated into the socialist hub of the new America, the new socialist America where we want the whites to sit at the back of the bus, you had your chance, and you will comply or we will destroy you completely, a defiant Obama said at his most recent White House speech. Bureau of Land Confiscation President Obama has ordered Senator Harry Reid to spearhead the purging of Americas heartland which has been sold to the Communist state of China for a pittance. We gave your hard fought land to the Chinese for not much money. They own that land now, so be gone from it. Throw down your mangy dawg cowboy hats on the floor, because this aint your land any more. Now go on git, you two bit loser ex-cowboys. Find some other place, that aint in AmeriChina. How about you go to Guatemala, a laughing Harry Reid said as he spat on an American flag and used his boot to grind it into the dirt. Dear Comrades, ahem, I mean fellow parishioners, I am here to preach my evangelical Christian beliefs and push them down your throats whether you like it or not. If you want to live in Britain, you must be a Christian, and it is going to be my mission to force everyone to believe in the Bible, even though there are no factual events written in that book of fiction conceived by multiple writers hundreds of years ago. You see, when I visited Israel, I spoke of my Jewish heritage, when I was in Scotland, I spoke of my Scottish heritage and when I visited Germany I said I was part German, and on and on. Never mind that homosexuality is depicted as worse or equal to bestiality in the Christian Bible, I have pushed for gayness everywhere and introduced gay marriage across Britain which is in fact abhorrent to most Christians and the writing in the Bible. For me you cannot have good values or family without being a Christian, and this is why I am going to force my religion of hypocrisy upon you whether you like it or not. Truth be told, I have no morals and will say anything if it suits me or my agenda, otherwise I would not be your prime minister or a member of parliament. Thank you for listening to my sermon, Im off to Waitrose to buy a cartload of food that you cannot afford, but you never know, if you pray hard enough to some human constructed deity, you may one day be able to afford a loaf of bread at 8.99. Dont forget to vote for me in the upcoming election in 2015 you fucking non-Etonion oiks. The Prime Minister attended another evangelical Christian event yesterday in a gay bath house in Chichester where the PM even helped clean up the towels at the end of the arduous Christian session. Dont forget to send in your evangelical Christian donations to the Tory party so that they can lose the election in style in 2015. Donations should be no less than 50 or your name will be put on a list and you may be visited by David Cameron for a special sermon. WASHINGTON D.C. - USA - The former First Lady, Michelle Obama has fallen on hard times and is now living in a sewer under the city eking out a meagre existence, MSNBC has reported. Former FLOTUS, Michelle Obama has been photographed for the first time in months after being made homeless in January. She now lives in a sewer in Washington D.C. and has made an appeal to the nation through social media. After Barack was impeached, they kicked us out of the White House. He used up all the money in the country, so none was left. Barack became an angry drunk meth head and now walks the streets of Miami, as for me, I took my last multi-million taxpayer funded vacation then went to live in the sewers with all the rest of them. They treat me right here, sometimes I venture up, but I aint seen the sunlight for weeks. Scuse me, I gotta take a sniff, Michelle then picks up a brown paper bag, and inhales sharply, she then vomits into a rusting tin can. Reporters from MSNBC gave Mrs Obama a few pieces of cornbread, which she ate with gusto. How things have changed since the good old days. Researchers set up a test called Taxpayer Expenses in which the politicians had to decide how much taxpayers money they could swindle from a dwindling pot. They just couldnt help themselves, Professor Smirno Radish, of Kentucky Fry University, told the BBC. They had helping after helping of taxpayer money, and even came back for seconds, but we saw something truly astonishing with some of them, a pang of regret. In some cases, the politicians decided to move on from one expense account to another resulting in deep seated regret that they could not swindle even more freebies. Faced with this scenario, the politicians often stopped and looked back at the previous expense payments and were regretful that they did not get more, and more and more. Many of our politician study members expressed regret when the expense accounts were reduced in size over a period of time. They wished they had stolen more money, he said. The study, published in Parliament Today, questions claims that regret is a uniquely non-politicians emotion. Next week, professor Radish wants to conduct a study on BBC executives. MOSUL - Iraq - The American installed president Maliki knows all too well that his Vichy government is on tender hooks, as Iraq's second largest city falls to Sunni factions. Just like the Nazis installed the Vichy government in WW2 France, with the tenets of Travail, famille, patrie the Iraqis surrendered to the American conquistadors consorting with the de facto enemy. History thus dictates that as Saigon fell, so will Baghdad be repatriated to its original owners. Invading governments need to appreciate that unless they cleanse a whole nation completely after invasion, thousands of years of original rule cannot be erased in one instant. There will always be factions of the original status quo fighting to reclaim ownership of their land. Mosul has fallen, as has Falluja, slowly but surely the mass will gravitate towards Baghdad, and soon take that as well. If one needs a picture, imagine the evacuation of Saigon, with Hueys perched on top of tall buildings and desperate people scrambling up ladders to grab onto the landing gear as the choppers already fully laden lift off into air. Obamas Laissez Faire foreign policy is of course partly to blame, however, one must not discount the all too probable modus operandi at work where chaos can be made to work for certain factions within the global consortium. Kabul, Cairo, Kiev, Baghdad, Tripoli, are all existing assets of the United States, but for how much longer? World War III started a long time ago, but the general populace are only now starting to see little conflicts flaring up globally, eventually, the sleeping masses may wake up as all the little bursts of energy become one large burst. KIRKUK - Iraq - You'd think it's Christmas all over again, and the Turks in Turkey could soon be revelling in oil rich Kirkuk. The Iraqi City of Kirkuk is the oil rich powerhouse currently held by the Kurds who are a further threat to Turkey. Get the Turkey on the table, we have a golden opportunity now to elevate our oil holdings by 10,000%. One thing Turkey does not have is oil, if we take Kirkuk, then we wont just have kebabs, but well have oil and kebabs. Now thats an unbeatable combination right there, Turkeys oil Minister, Abdullah Akdeniz, told Turkish news. Free For All The Isis rebels also kidnapped eighty Turkish diplomats and staff on Wednesday, so this is further impetus for Turkey to act. The Turks were forbidden from taking Kirkuk during the second Gulf war by the U.S., but the time is now as this opportunity will not last for long. The bankrupt Americans are on a seemingly permanent vacation and are dithering whilst the spoils of their wars burn. The Turkey is now firmly in the oven, and if it gets roasted too much, it may need some more oil over the top, like barrels of the stuff. GENEVA - Switzerland - The United Nations proudly interred the United States of America into the annals of history today by designating it a Third World country. Speaking from UN headquarters in Geneva, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said: I am honoured to classify the United States as a Third World nation. The US is in dire need of UN aid. We are mobilising UNHCR, WFP and WHO, to provide much needed assistance to the American people. President Barack Obama, has greeted the UN ruling by holding a keynote speech at the White House: When I came into office, I promised Change, well, I have fulfilled my promise my fellow Americans. I am pleased to announce the wonderful news that the United States is now a designated Third World country, and I have accepted the UNs help in stabilising our once great nation. My dear Americans, I want every man, woman and child to stand outside their homes to accept deliveries of grain, water and essential medical assistance. The UN will however not be providing assistance to citizens with weapons, therefore I urge those who wish to feed their families to hand over their guns to the relevant agencies in the field. God bless our nation, it has been an honour serving me. Those who do have access to a radio can find hourly updates on the situation and directions to the nearest refugee camp. Please stay in your homes, as aid agencies will be assisting communities in every region. Two days after Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons against his own people in the northern Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun, the United States struck the airfield from which the April 4 chemical attack was launched. On the orders of President Donald Trump, Tomahawk missiles were fired on Al-Shayrat Air Base from U.S. Navy ships in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea targeting aircraft, fuel storage, air defense systems, and ammunition. Assads gas attack on Khan Sheikhoun killed scores of men, women, and children. As President Trump said in announcing the retaliatory U.S. strike, It was a slow and brutal death for so many. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror. President Trump said the U.S response was in the vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. He called on all civilized nations to join [the United States] to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria, as well as to end terrorism of all kinds. Speaking to reporters, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson noted that in 2013 Syria agreed to surrender all of its chemical weapons under the supervision of the Russian government, which committed to act as the guarantor that no chemical weapons would remain in Syria. Clearly, Russia has failed in its responsibility to deliver on that commitment, Mr. Tillerson said. Secretary Tillerson emphasized that the lack of response by the international community after Assads repeated uses of chemical weapons had the effect of allowing Assad to normalize their use: It is important that some action be taken on behalf of the international community to make clear that the use of chemical weapons continues to be a violation of international norms. Secretary Tillerson also noted that given the chaotic circumstances that exist on the ground in Syria, the presence of chemical weapons presents another threat: that they may fall into the hands of terrorists. There are a number of elements thatcalled for this action, Mr. Tillerson said. And in carrying this out, we coordinated very carefully with our international partnersThe response from our allies in Europe as well as in the region in the Middle East has been overwhelmingly supportive. TIKRIT - Iraq - Tony Blair is the real Caliph of Iraq he claims emphatically. Former PM, Tony Blair revealed the sensational news today in an impromptu broadcast from Tikrit. I am the real Caliph of Iraq, these are my spoils of war, not this Baghdadi ponce, Chief Al-bin Blair Caliph of Iraq and Kensington said in the broadcast. The new Caliph has big plans for Iraq and the Middle East. Yes, well, you know, wherever I go there is peace and prosperity. Thats why Im telling you people now, Im the new Caliph in town, and youd best be respecting me and my Caliphate or Ill do even more damage then Ive already done. LONDON - England - The Englishman has been emasculated by British law because he is not allowed to own a firearm to protect his family and property a new independent study has revealed. Citizens who protect their families and homes when attacked by violent thugs who carry firearms and assorted weapons are prosecuted in Britain. If you defend yourself you can go to prison according to UK law, therefore it is advised to let your loved ones be injured or killed than to defend them, the current law stipulates. When heavily armed criminals enter your property and mean to do you or your family harm, you therefore have no recourse, apart from lying down and letting them get on with it. Criminals can get firearms for as little as 50 from the black market or local pub, but if a citizen owns a firearm to defend themselves, theyre looking at a minimum of five years in jail. If they use a weapon to defend themselves whilst under attack they would get a minimum of 10 years in jail depending on the damage meted out on the protected criminals. Britain has fallen prey to a legal policy that protects the rights of criminals and thugs more than the civilians who are daily under attack from gangs armed to the hilt. The effete British male is now no more than an ornament, or a mankini wearing moobed extra on the TOWIE set. The report went on to urge the government to allow citizens to own firearms and be free from prosecution when defending their loved ones or property from attack. LONDON - England - Prime Minister, David Cameron has emphatically denied that Britain is going to war again in the Middle East. The 2015 General Election is almost upon us and it would be foolish to go to war now because that would mean Cameron would most probably be re-elected as prime minister. It doesnt bear thinking about, you know going to war in the Middle East again and the country opting to re-elect me as its not the done thing to change leaders during a military campaign. I promise that I wont send British troops to Iraq again for a cynical election victory, David Cameron, assured voters today at an impromptu press conference. FERGUSON - USA - There's a new film out on August 27 in the UK, released by 20th Century Fox called 'Let's Be Cops'. Why not watch it and enrol at your nearest police academy? Being a cop is a hard job, its all about dealing with angry civvies bent on giving you a beat down or taking your badge away with some mobile phone footage that snares you trying to do your job. It aint easy, especially when you got civil rights protesters armed with cell phones looking for the slightest infraction to whine about on the internet. You try arresting a six foot seven 240 pound drugged up shop lifter guy running towards you with the intent of pushing your eyeballs through the back of your head. If you shoot youre damned, if you dont shoot youre hospitalised with permanent damage, a cop said from his hospital bed in Ferguson, Missouri. Lets Be Cops Being a cop is all that much harder when youre a white cop in a predominantly African American area because if you shoot someone attacking you, there is an immediate response citing racism. If an African American cop shoots another African American thats okay. You must of course forget the fact that 85% of inmates in U.S. jails are African Americans, or that the recent spate of Knockout game participants are low IQ coward thugs sucker punching innocent citizens in the streets. As for the U.S. media, you must also forget that the bias is in the favour of a certain section of the population mainly due to orders from Obama and his angry chip-on-the-shoulder cohort Eric Holder. All U.S. media reports on daily crimes in the thousands never report the race of the violent perpetrators of the various crimes for a very good reason, it would reveal some rather torrid truths that would not be favourable for the African Americans and socialist American media outlets. Why would you want to be a cop in America when it has so many drawbacks? A Fox movie executive summed it up in one paragraph: Its exciting being a cop. Hell, we made a teen movie about it and the premier showing is gonna be in Ferguson, Missouri. They need another movie about some idiot cop wannabees, so this is the time to release the movie. Were using the tried and tested black and white cop plot to get around any charges of racism. I cant wait to be at the premier myself, Ill be in the armoured car wearing a bullet proof vest. Click here to join the St. Louis Police Academy ABU TETLIYA - Syria - According to reports on social media sites, British Jihadis are riling their controllers with their need for constant tea breaks. Theres something about having a nice refreshing cuppa, especially when youve got some beheadings to do and the American drones are flying overhead looking for ISIS targets to vapourise. Im a builder by trade, and as you know used to having a cuppa every five minutes, but looks like the Jihadis here dont do that. They told me one cuppa in the morning and maybe one at night, that is if Im not dead by then, John bin Brittani, revealed in Geehads magazine recently. News from the front travels fast on twitter, and Jihadi commanders have been seen tearing their beards out at the quality of the British jihadis. We had one bloke from Salford, Manchester, this geezer said he needed a cup of brew every twenty minutes. He even took his flask with him on operations. I said to him, ere mate, were getting shot at, put the flask away. He just wouldnt have it would he, next thing I know, hes got his tea and crumpets out with a big grin on his face. Poor fella didnt make it past his first day, we found him with a cup of piping Earl Grey under a tree and a bullet in him, Commander of the Al Britanni Brigade, revealed on a recent BBC Newsnight special. CALLANISH - Isle of Lewis - Never ignore the sacred hidden knowledge of the ancients, for the original inhabitants of the British Isles know more than the feckless politicians. Listen to the druids. We have acquired a few words from a Celtic druid master, Caledonus, one of the last druids to have survived the massacres by the Christians over the centuries. Our ancestors were massacred in cold blood, then they built churches over the ley lines and central energy points from which we worshipped and killed our priests and children by dashing their brains against rocks. They subverted the energy from which we fed, then destroyed our sites, leaving only a few remains today. They took our pagan earth rituals and put their contrived religion over ours. Our solstices, our rituals were changed and made theirs over time subverting them and disguising their true meaning. The Celts were the original inhabitants of these islands, and the rest are all warring immigrants. What we see in the future is something that needs to be addressed. Scotland and Wales, as well as some parts of Cornwall are the last standing ground. It is crucial to our survival that we have a separation from those who stole from us as there are serious dangers afoot through mass unfettered immigration. This brings in disease, viruses and ultimately a plague for all who reside there. We have felt aiteacht for some time. When the governments of England under Labour opened the doors to mass immigration, they did so only with malice in their hearts, you see what they seek is a breeding ground for disease, and so it is written in the stones, there shall be an opening for the entrance of such an all encompassing virus as the South has an open door to the rest of the world through constant air traffic. Sooner or later the vast influx shall bring forth a cursed virus onto the populations of the South. Open borders from air, sea and land will bring it through and it will spread, the stones reveal the cealmhaire. Scotland, this is our only chance for survival. The earth will eventually be given back to its original inhabitants, the Native American tribes, the Aboriginals of Australia will have the roaming lands of their ancestors back eventually. The earth does not belong to anyone, and the arrogance of the brute conquerors will one day come back to them. The earth always wins, you cannot tame nature, nature always finds a way. They have forgotten about the source and their own arrogance will be their dith. Every day, those infected with Ebola fly into our land, how long before the virus spreads and mutates? We must shut the border to Scotland as this will be the only way to survive the deluge. Once the South is infected, Scotland will be the only place that stands. We must prepare. Do not forget the first ones, as Henge and Callanish makes us all remember the past is the future and the force of nature always wins in the end. PRETORIA - South Africa - A jubilant Oscar Pistorius is having the party of his life time after clueless judge, Thokozile Masipa, absolved him of all murder charges. Oscar Pistorius is in a party mood, especially after being acquitted of murdering his former girlfriend. You know if it wasnt for that bucket in court I would be behind bars right now. Fooled those suckers. Hey, who wants another round of drinks? Party time! Im going to shoot some champagne corks off bottles, a victorious Pistorius said from his post court verdict party yesterday. The only trial participant who was not invited was Gerrie Nel, who was last seen downing a few whiskies in some shack in Pretoria. MANCHESTER - England - Britain may be condemned to a brain drain never before seen as Ed Miliband, the Labour party's leader wants to rule for ten years he has announced at the Labour party conference. Its bad enough as it is, but with Ed Miliband in charge, prepare for an exodus of pretty much all taxpayers. All will be left are those on the dole, illegal immigrants and benefits families. Whos going to pay the vast punishing Labour taxes then? a professional businessman told the Financial Times. Labours plan to take away earnings from hard working Britons will mean that there will be an exodus of many professionals to friendlier shores, away from the horrid thought that pretty much every penny earned is taken away to pay for the feckless. But where to go? Anywhere out of the eurozone is a safe bet, because Ed Miliband and his evil socialist henchmen and women are also seeking to incorporate the crumbling euro currency and destroy Britain from the inside out. Hopefully by the time Miliband is in power, the democrats (American socialists) will have been ousted from America, although a long shot with the level of brainwashing of American voters. Africa is out of the question obviously as it is prone to deadly viruses and war. The Middle East is out of bounds because it is entrenched in war. Russia is out of bounds because it is in a state of war. The Far East could be okay, however avoid China like the plague. South America is a possibility but beware that security is an issue and you will be in danger of kidnap, arrest, thievery or general death. If you are rich enough, you may try Switzerland or Monaco otherwise forget about it. If anyone has any ideas please leave a comment about where to go in the world that is safe. President Donald Trump recently welcomed Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to the White House. Recognizing Egypt as one of the traditional pillars of stability in the Middle East and a reliable U.S. partner, President Trump said, We are very much behind President al-Sisi. He's done a fantastic job in a very difficult situation. We are very much behind Egypt and the people of Egypt. During their meetings, President Trump reaffirmed the deep and abiding U.S. commitment to Egypts security, stability and prosperity. President al-Sisi has taken a number of bold steps on very sensitive issues since becoming president in 2014. He has called for reform and moderation of Islamic discourse, initiated courageous and historic economic reforms, and sought to reestablish Egypts regional leadership role. President al-Sisi has also led Egypts campaign to defeat a long-running terrorist threat in the Sinai. The United States seeks to support President al-Sisis efforts in all of these areas. The U.S.-Egypt relationship has historically been driven by security, and that will remain a key component of the engagement with Egypt, said a Senior White House official. The U.S. and Egyptian militaries have built close relationships, and many military officers from Egypt have trained at U.S. military installations. The United States supports al-Sisis ambition to develop a comprehensive counterterrorism approach that involves military, political, economic, as well as social efforts. But President Trump also wants to increase the focus on economic and commercial cooperation in the bilateral relationship. Building a more stable and productive economy is a critical step to ensuring long-term stability in Egypt. To this end, Egypt has begun a necessary economic reform plan that will strengthen the Egyptian economy if it is fully executed. Theres no question the transition in their economy will be difficult, but Egypt will be stronger if it follows through on its reform plan, said a senior administration official. We will fight terrorism. . .and were going to be friends for a long, long period of time, said President Trump. We have a great bond with the people of Egypt, and I look forward to working with President al-Sisi. Russias ongoing hostility in Eastern Ukraine and occupation of Crimea is compromising the shared vision of a Europe that is whole, free, and at peace, said U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. American and NATO support for Ukraines sovereignty and territorial integrity remains steadfast. "We do not, and will not, accept Russian efforts to change the borders of territory of Ukraine," said Secretary Tillerson on his recent trip to NATO headquarters. The United States, he said, thanks "Germany and France for their determination to find a diplomatic solution to the ongoing crisis in Eastern Ukraine under the Normandy format. We will continue to support their work to accelerate the implementation of the Minsk agreements." In the meantime, American sanctions on Russia will remain in place. The United States calls on Russia to exercise its influence over the separatists in Eastern Ukraine to put a stop to the violence, end the campaign of attacks and intimidation against Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE, monitors, and facilitate their access to the area. "Russia must understand," said Secretary Tillerson, "there is no basis to move forward on the political aspects of the Minsk agreements until there is visible, verifiable, and irreversible improvement in the security situation." Moreover, he said, Crimea-related sanctions must remain in place until Russia returns control of the peninsula to Ukraine. The United States continues to urge Ukraine to redouble its efforts to implement challenging reforms, including uprooting corruption, increasing transparency in the judicial system, strengthening the banking sector, and pursuing corporate governance reform and the privatization of state-owned enterprises. Even in the face of ongoing Russian aggression, Ukraine is committed to reform and modernize its armed forces according to NATO standards by 2020. In support of this effort, the United States has committed over $600 million in security assistance over the last three years. Together, said Secretary Tillerson, "we will stand by Ukraine as it defends its sovereign territory, strengthens its economy, and continues to implement reforms. As President Trump has said, every country has the right to chart its own future, and we must help the people of Ukraine maintain that sacred right." Flipkart had launched a separate groceries ordering app called Nearby for delivering fruits, vegetables, soaps and other staples from supermarkets to customers. New Delhi: Locked in an intense battle with Amazon, homegrown e-commerce major Flipkart is looking at re-entering the grocery segment that accounts for a significant portion of India's retail industry. "Yes we will get into grocery... 80 per cent of units bought in India is grocery... USD 400-600 million is grocery market, so we have to get into it," Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy said at a TiE event here. This will be the second attempt into the grocery segment for the Bengaluru-based firm. In October 2015, Flipkart had launched a separate groceries ordering app called Nearby for delivering fruits, vegetables, soaps and other staples from supermarkets to customers. However, following a weak response, Flipkart closed the business a few months later. Flipkart's rival Amazon India has launched its grocery ordering app, Amazon Now last year. The app is now available in four Indian cities including Bengaluru, Delhi-NCR and Mumbai. Amazon plans to invest around USD 500 million in e-retail of food products in India. "There are three models for grocery. One is a daily purchase, the average selling price (ASP) there is very low at about Rs 300-400. Then there is a weekly business model, which is a bit higher. Thankfully, 60-70 per cent of the market is the third one which is monthly basket where average is about over Rs 2,000. With those, it's a very sustainable business," he said. The online food and grocery segment also includes players like BigBasket and Grofers, who are also looking at expanding their operations. As per industry reports, the online F&G delivery market is estimated to be around USD 600 million in India and pegged to touch USD 5 billion by 2020. Talking about acquisitions, Krishnamurthy said the company is looking at targets for enhancing capabilities. "We will look at M&A, size doesn't matter. What we are looking at is capabilities. A lot of business we acquired over time were actually small," he said citing examples of PhonePe and Jeeves. Flipkart, which has made big-ticket acquisitions like Myntra and Jabong as well, is believed to be in fray for acquiring its smaller rival Snapdeal. It may sack another 260 people for the same reason. New Delhi: Reliance Communications is learnt to have sacked nearly 380 employees for below-par performance, and 260 more are seen to be in the line of fire. "RCom under its performance management system has asked around 380 people to leave the company for non-performance. It may sack another 260 people for the same reason," a source told PTI. Faced with cut-throat competition, RCom had reported its first ever consolidated net loss of Rs 531 crore in the December quarter. The merger of SSTL with RCom is expected to be complete by the end of this month. RCom is believed to have paid second instalment of Rs 396 crore spectrum purchased and interconnection usage charge of around Rs 25 crore, among others. "In the merger process, the liability spectrum instalments of SSTL have come on to RCom. The company cleared IUC payment to a telecom operator after gap of around 2 months. The rest of the payments were as per schedule," the source said. The Anil Ambani-led RCom did not comment on a query sent to it. Icra has downgraded the long-term rating of Rs 5,000 crore debt in the form of non-convertible debenture. Credit ratings are ascertained based on the company's ability to serve or pay back debt. Mumbai: Telecom regulator TRAI late on Thursday asked RIL's telecom arm Reliance Jio to withdraw Summer Surprise, its three months promotional offer. The ruling may hamper Jio's highly ambitious plans to add another 100 million customers in just a few more months, according to a report in The Economic Times. ET quoted some experts as saying that the order, however, will "help restore pricing rationality over the next few months". But what does the recent ruling by TRAI mean for existing Reliance Jio subscribers? Of total over a 100 million Jio users, 72 million customers have already signed up for its paid service, Jio Prime. Reliance Jio already has over a 100 million users in its kitty that the company managed to attract within 170 days of launch of Jio services on September 5 last year. Jio users now will require to get monthly recharges of their own choice as under Summer Surprise they were not required to get monthly recharges for three months or until July-end. Jio has a number of 'affordable' and other data recharges that its users will be able to chose from. A standard recharge rate that the company hopes most of its 72 million paid customers will opt for lies in the range of Rs 149 and Rs 303. It was earlier reported that Reliance Jio will lose or will have to forego a whopping $800 million or Rs 5,000 crore in revenues by giving Jio Summer Surprise. This will not happen now as Jio has been barred from extending the free service. TRAI's Summer Surprise ruling will give incumbent telecom operators a breathing space. Market leader Bharti Airtel has over 250 million customers, Vodafone 201 million customers and Idea Cellular has some 185 million customers. All the three big players have been grappling to stay afloat since Jio's launch. Airtel has seen its profits going down by 55 per cent. Jio that has energy behemoth Reliance Industries as its parent and chairman Mukesh Ambani as guiding force has accepted the decision, the report said. Summer Surprise is a sub-offer of Jio's paid service Jio Prime that has come into effect from April 1. For accessing Jio Prime, an existing Jio customer needs to pay a one-time membership fee of Rs 99 (valid for one year). And after that the Jio customer can opt for a number of monthly recharges in the range of Rs 149 to Rs 303 for majority of users, or based on their data consumption level. The Move will make OMCs margins more predictable and will also help India to move an international standard of pricing. New Delhi: State-owned oil marketing firms are looking at the option of changing petrol and diesel prices daily depending upon their prices in international market and current exchange rate. This is the intention but no action is being taken right now. We are looking at it and when some concrete will happen we will inform general public, an official from one of the oil marketing companies told this newspaper. IOC, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum own around 90 per cent petrol pumps in the country. India deregulated petrol prices in June 2010 and diesel in October 2014. Since then, PSU oil firms have been changing prices of these two products once in 15 days depending upon their prices in the international markets and currency exchange rate. However, 15 days backlog in some instances had resulted in inventory losses for oil marketing firms when crude oil prices saw a sharp reduction in past. The move will make OMC margins more predictable. It will also help India to move an international standard of fuel pricing. It would free private players Essar Oil and RIL, which currently follow the price set by state-owned companies, to also shift to a dynamic model. Last week oil marketing companies had cut petrol prices by Rs 3.77 per litre (excluding state levies) and diesel by Rs 2.91 a litre (excluding state levies) due to decrease in global crude oil prices. However, crude oil prices have shot to one month high after US missiles attack on Friday at a Syrian airbase. 1,000 shell firms which indulged in bogus transactions worth Rs 13,300 crore in the three financial years were identified by the revenue department. New Delhi: Revenue department on Friday said that raids conducted by various agencies under it has resulted in detection of over Rs 1.37 lakh crore in three years. The department also identified over 1,000 shell firms which indulged in bogus transactions worth Rs 13,300 crore in the last three financial years. The ED too intensified its anti-money-laundering actions by registering 519 cases and conducting 396 searches. Arrests were made in 79 cases and properties worth Rs 14,933 crore were attached by ED. The relentless crusade against black money will get further intensified in the coming days making the tax evaders and money launderers realise that they have to pay a heavy cost for their deviant behaviour, said revenue department. In the last three years, enforcement agencies conducted 23,064 searches and surveys out of which income-tax conducted 17,525, customs 2,509, central excise 1,913 and service tax 1,120 on people and businesses suspicious of hiding black money. During these raids, I-T department detected tax evasion of Rs 69,434 crore, Customs Rs 11,405 crore, Central excise Rs 13,952 crore and service tax Rs 42,727 crore. It said that crackdown against shell firms engaged in nefarious activities was also effected through searches, surveys, arrests and prosecutions. During the last three fiscals, I-T investigations led to detection of more than 1155 shell firms used as conduits by over 22,000 beneficiaries. The amount involved in non-genuine transactions of such beneficiaries was more than Rs 13,300 crore. The ministry of corporate affairs has issued more than a lakh notices for striking off names of defunct or non-compliant companies," it said. Bajaj group head Rahul Bajaj, who was the chief guest at a graduation ceremony at the Indian School of Business, is seen here on Friday, talking to ISBs chairman, Adi Godrej . (Photo: P. Surendra) Hyderabad: Noted industrialist Rahul Bajaj has opined that voters want basic needs like bijli, sadak and paani rather than doles as is evident in the elections held in state after state. It started in MP and has even impacted Bihar, Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand. If any reassertion of this trend is needed it was given emphatically in last month's elections, especially in UP, the chairman of the Bajaj Group said, speaking at the Graduation Day of the Indian School of Business held in its campus in Gachibowli on Friday. He said that the mandate of the 2014 general election was for growth and development rather than narrow caste or communal considerations. An aspirational India, urbanisation and re-engagement of the middle classes with politics is the reason for this trend, he felt. Mr Bajaj said that the per capita income in India is low compared to Singapore, South Korea and China, although all of them were on the same level in the 1970s. This is due to India pursuing a misdirected socialist pattern of industrialisation, especially between 1970 and 1990. We wasted our resources on the public sector and stymied the private sector. We developed a language of rights, not responsibilities and created a huge burden of distortions and subsidies in the economy, he said. Mr Bajaj had a word of advice for politicians and businessmen: Politicians should realise the damage done by the socialist claptrap and essentially dismantle the old system. Businessmen need to be ethical. No large business can be successfully run without an ethical underpinning." The heads of some of the world's biggest companies are Indians, such as Satya Nadella at Microsoft, Sunder Pichai at Google, A.S. Banga at Mastercard, Indra Nooyi at Pepsico. They are the real leaders and the country needs thousands of such outstanding leaders, Mr Bajaj felt. Though we have some achievements to our credit, we still have a long way to go, especially things we need to get right, be it growth, infrastructure, employment, income levels, good governance, health service, education etc, he cautioned. Adi Godrej, chairman, ISB Board, and Dean Rajendra Srivastava lauded the graduating students and called upon them to emerge as good leaders in the future. Some 898 students in the Post Graduate Programme class of 2017 and 61 students in the PGP MAX Class of 2016 were among those who were conferred degrees. Mumbai: He may be known for his acting skills but as a student, Irrfan Khan says he was so shy that nobody knew he even existed. Irrfan says he was often scolded by teachers for not being properly audible in the class. "My classmates didn't even know I existed in school. I was invisible. When my teacher used to ask my name, I used to stand up and say but they couldn't hear. I was often scolded 'speak loudly, say your name.' I was so shy," Irrfan told reporters. The actor was speaking at the trailer launch of his upcoming "Hindi Medium", scheduled to release on May 12. The 'Piku' actor, however, says as a kid all he thought was growing up quickly so that he would not have to attend school. Directed by Saket Chaudhary, the film also features Pakistani actress Saba Qamar opposite Irrfan. The two are essaying the role of parents who want the best education for their daughter. Mumbai: Reportedly, veteran actor, Vinod Khanna had been admitted to Sir HN Reliance Foundation Hospital, Mumbai on Sunday, April 2, 2017 due to severe dehydration. Salman Khan, who considers Vinod Khanna as his mentor and lucky mascot, paid a visit at midnight to check on the legends health. There was a picture of the weak Vinod Khanna from the hospital that is doing the rounds on the Internet; post which the veterans fans have been really affected. The actors son Rahul Khanna informed PTI, "Dad was hospitalised for severe dehydration. The situation was quickly brought under control, hes doing much better and the doctors are looking to discharge him soon. Our family is most grateful for the extraordinary care hes been receiving at the hospital and we are touched by all the good wishes pouring in." Also post the hoax about actor Vinod Khannas deteriorating health condition, the spokesperson of Sir HN Reliance Foundation hospital, Tushar Puniya, issued a statement where he said, "He is under the care of our doctors and has responded positively to the treatment and is now stable. His family thanks his well-wishers for the good wishes and requests to respect their privacy." Vinod Khanna will next be seen in the film named 'Ek Thi Rani Aisi Bhi' which also stars actress Hema Malini. He was earlier seen essaying Salman Khans fathers role in 'Dabangg' and 'Dabangg 2'. We pray for his speedy recovery. Mumbai: Akshay Kumar had a phenomenal 2016, with all three releases of his grossing over 100 crore rupees at the box-office. And now, another feather has been added in his cap, as the actor won his maiden National Award for Best Actor, for his performance in Tinu Suresh Desai's 'Rustom'. The film had sensationally clashed with and destroyed Hrithik Roshan's 'Mohenjo Daro'. An elated Akshay has shared a video on Twitter, sharing his joy. "Thank you feels like a very small word right now. But I don't know how else to express myself. I'm truly humbled by this honour. I'd like to thank the National Award jury and all my fans from the core of my heart for believing in my talent. Rustom was a very special role to play. "To wear the Indian Navy uniform was a privilege, even if it were for a film role. And now the National Award has made it special for ever. I'd like to dedicate this to the blessing of my parents and my loving family, specially to my wife, who keeps telling me 'Good you've stopped attending award functions since you never get anything anyway. Anyway, better late than never," Akshay said. Sonam Kapoor's 'Neerja' won the Best Film Award. Watch the video here: Catherine Tresa, who was last seen in Kanithan as an urban girl, will next be seen as a village lass in Kadamban. The Madras actress, in a chat with us, says it was tough yet thrilling to shoot in the forest terrains for the film, which is all set to hit the screens soon. Shooting on such a terrain is obviously not a cakewalk! It was hard for the entire crew. Actors were not allowed to wear footwear since it was not required for our characters. It was strenuous to be walking barefoot amidst leeches. And for me, working on this project was a different experience altogether. Talking about Kadamban and her role, Catherine elaborates, I play a tribal who is a strong and wonderful woman. The reason I acted in this film is because the role is a meaty one, and I like to do films where I have scope to perform. Generally, I look forward to doing different roles and I am game for challenges. Catherine has also completed shooting for a comedy drama with Vishnu Vishal, titled Kadha Nayagan. It is completely in contrast to Kadamban. The film is light and very funny throughout. I shot for both the films simultaneously, and it was nice to shuttle back and forth. In Kadha Nayagan, I am portraying a normal, city girl Catherine says. The Kathakali actress also has her hands full in Telugu with films like Gautam Nandha with Gopi Chand and Nene Raja Nene Manthiri with Rana Daggubati. However, she doesnt find it hard to make time for both the industries. I like movies and I love working in both Tamil and Telugu. So, it is not all that difficult, sums up Catherine. Rating: Cast: Anne Hathaway, Jason Sudeikis, Dan Stevens, Austin Stowell Director: Nacho Vigalondo First, Colossal is not a monster movie and it is this surface level engagement with a film that really isnt healthy for a modern society and second, if Anne Hathaway and Dan Stevens are in a movie with a budget of $15 million, please do not call it an indie movie. Sure Colossal has a confusing plot and as an audience you are left searching for logic in this strangely discomforting narrative. A relationship that seems unusually out of place, a friend who seems too creepy and a girl who constantly scratches her head, prompting you to also scratch yours by the time it gets over. Jason Sudeikis is wonderful, his character, Oscar, bordering on delusional and insane is very lifelike, and exactly how the people who are failing at love seem to behave. The last ditched efforts to hold someone back, with threats of destroying something that maybe of value but not personal. The childlike pleading to get your favourite toy or you would start breaking the older ones, rolling on the floor and crying. There is a lot of honesty in what Oscar wants and can do to get it. You have to see it from a childs perspective. Gloria and Oscar, share a childhood bond and we all know how special it is and all the more important if you havent really grown up. You are in your late 20s and you still play in childrens park, imitating monsters and making it about more than just yourself. The pretensions become too real and you start feeling pain from what happens in the imaginary universe too, all of this is good storytelling. Oscars breakdown happens at the bar when he lights up a cracker when Tim, played by Dan Stevens, is trying to talk to him about Glorias job. Gloria is a waitress at Oscars bar and he does not want to let her go. Oscar has also been trying to please her by bringing her a TV, sofa, furniture, etc., perhaps if she felt more comfortable and indulged she would not leave. But the trouble starts when one of the two delusional, drunk friends start to gain some sense. There is also a little bit of envy when your childhood friend moves out and is actually doing something with their life while you are still stuck at the same place, not likely moving anytime soon. The general behaviour in such a case is to try and sabotage your friends life and that is exactly what Oscar is doing; not being mature in any sense. The trouble with a story like this is to make things visible, since everything is below the surface. Therefore, theres a need for monsters and a weird connection to them. While you may also enjoy it at its face value you still have an open field to dig deeper and look for these meanings. This is a classical approach that many directors have used in various ways. This could actually be your initiation into the avant-garde cinema if you choose it to be. Kudos to Nacho Vigalondo, the Spanish director, who ventured into this genre defying work and made it through, as we all know it is difficult to convince people to work in a film like this, let alone managing to get funded and release globally. There was some controversy too when the Japanese company Toho brought a lawsuit against the films initial imagery, but thankfully it all worked out in the end. Colossal is also interesting for fans of butterfly effect or the chaos theory, giving them a very visual validation of what it could manifest itself as. The place where the film seems to become weak is where the director had to show the connection being established, during the childhood of Gloria and Oscar, a thunder bolt strikes both of them, perhaps this was a last ditched effort to make the film more convenient to watch. The writer is founder, Lightcube Film Society The health ministry, for its part, claims to be already working on these lines as the state has trained medical officers of the Primary Health Centers for detecting and treating depression. (Representational Image) Bengaluru: Both private and government hospitals seem to be taking the World Health Day theme of depression seriously. Take Apollo Hospitals, which is partnering with The Live Love Laugh Foundation to raise awareness about mental health by assisting its Together Against Depression programme designed for doctors. Explaining the initiative , Dr K Hari Prasad, president, Apollo Hospitals, says the idea is to ensure that doctors, who are the first line of defence, are prepared to detect depression in their patients. The move has been prompted by the World Health Days focus on depression this year, he admits. The health ministry, for its part, claims to be already working on these lines as the state has trained medical officers of the Primary Health Centers for detecting and treating depression. The psychiatrists appointed under the District Mental Health Programme treat the mentally ill at all taluka hospitals and people can also get counselling by calling the departments toll-free number, 104. Meanwhile, an online counselling and emotional wellness platform, YourDost.com, based in Bengaluru recently concluded a counselling session in the city for 500 Indian army men. Ranchi: A 20-year-old Muslim man was allegedly tied to a tree by villagers in Jharkhand's Gumla district and thrashed for hours, leading to his death, police said on Friday. According to a report in the Hindustan Times, the man identified as Mohammad Shalik, was in a relationship with a Hindu woman of a nearby village in Gumla town. The girl reportedly called the boy to meet her for the Ram Navami procession on Wednesday. Shakil declined to meet the girl, but later changed his mind. He went to meet her on a scooty, and then dropped her home. A group of neighbours saw Shalik and surrounded him, tied him to a tree and assaulted him for hours, the woman was quoted as saying by police. He succumbed to his injuries on Thursday. Gumla superintendent of police Chandan Kumar Jha was quoted as saying that villagers told the boy earlier not to meet the girl nor to visit the village. The SP said that three people have been arrested so far and an FIR has been lodged against unnamed individuals. Earlier this week, a Muslim man was beaten to death in Alwar of Rajasthan by a mob which accused him of transporting cows for slaughter. 4 other men were also injured by the mob. The men had bought dairy cows at a cattle fair and were taking them home to neighbouring Haryana state. After the case was registered and the chargesheet filed, the case was being heard at the District Principal and Sessions Court.The police top brass is planning to go on an appeal before a higher court within the next few weeks. Bengaluru: A local court acquitted a man who had allegedly beheaded his uncle and carried the severed head to the police station citing lack of evidence. In 2014, Praveen Patil, an autorickshaw driver from Wadgaon, allegedly brutally attacked his uncle Rajaram Patil of Yellur over a land dispute that was going on for a long time. Praveeen beheaded Rajaram, carried the head in his autorickshaw to the police station and surrendered before the police. After the case was registered and the chargesheet filed, the case was being heard at the District Principal and Sessions Court.The police top brass is planning to go on an appeal before a higher court within the next few weeks. Police Commissioner T.G. Krishna Bhatt said that details of the case will be collected within sometime and usually the department files an appeal in the higher court against such heinous crimes when the verdict goes against the police. The suspects, a group of around 30, assaulted Sudershan, his wife Rajeswari and their children severely, tied the husband and wife to an electric pole and set them ablaze.(Representational image) Hyderabad: A couple accused of sorcery and set ablaze in a Siddipet village succumbed to their injuries while undergoing treatment at Secunderabad's Gandhi Hospital on Friday. The police are investigating the leads and the suspects who hail from the same village. The suspects, a group of around 30, assaulted Sudershan, his wife Rajeswari and their children severely, tied the husband and wife to an electric pole and set them ablaze. Kadavergu Sudershan, 56, and Rajeswari, 52, were residents of Dubbaka village. Sudershan used to run a provision store and Rajeswari used to make beedi at home. The couple had three daughters and a son. Two of them were married, and the couple was staying with their son Sridhar and daughter Renuka. A few months ago they had disputes over a piece of land with Sudershans elder brother Srinivas. Srinivass family spread rumours that Sudershan and his wife were engaged in sorcery and that is the reason why many families in the colony were having serious problems.The rumours spread and a couple of days ago, colony residents warned them to leave the village and also threatened them with violence. We got frightened. We wanted to leave the village and my father was making arrangements. But on Thursday morning a big group barged into our house and beat us up severely. We told them that we are leaving the village but they did not listen to us, Sudershans son Sridhar said. The family approached Dubbaka police station to lodge a complaint, but before they could file it Sudershans brother Mallesham intervened and told them not to lodge a complaint. He told the police that it was a family matter and they will solve it themselves. Later, the couple and their children returned home, packed their articles and locked up their house to leave the village. While they were waiting for a vehicle to shift their belongings one of their neighbours, Karunaker, objected and started abusing him. Soon others joined him and started beating up the couple and their children. They later tied them to an electric pole and set them ablaze. When the couple started screaming, the suspects fled from the scene. Police rushed to the spot and shifted them to hospital. The couple died at the Gandhi hospital in Secunderabad. Police registered a case of murder and unlawful assembly and detained some suspects for questioning.In the morning the victims had given in writing that they do not want a case. Around 10 persons are involved in the incident. We are examining eyewitnesses to zero in on those involved in the incidents. Based on that we will take action, Siddipet police commissioner V. Shivakumar said. Hyderabad: A 21-year-old woman allegedly sold her two month old baby boy to a couple for Rs 10,000 in Secunderabad. After a complaint from the womans husband, the police arrested her and rescued the child. P. Kavitha, a resident of Tukaramgate, sold her son as her husband was a drunkard. Police said Kavitha had decided to dump the child. She went to the Secunderabad railway station to abandon the child. But, there she met a woman named M. Sumalatha, who asked her what her problem was. Sumalatha suggested that she sell the baby, said inspector G. Ramesh. Sumalatha contacted someone, who knew a childless couple from Mancherial. The couple T. Anjali and her husband T. Ramesh, a teacher, agreed to buy the child. Kavitha handed over the child on April 4, said the inspector. When Kavitha returned home her husband P. Raju asked her for their child. "She said she had sold the baby. Raju then approached us and lodged a complaint, said the Inspector. Kavitha and Raju, a mason, had got married a year ago. Kavitha alleged that Raju was a drunkard. She believed she could not bring up the child alone. Police booked a case against Kavitha, Anjali, Ramesh and the mediator under the Juvenile Justice Act. Cops will hand over the child to Sishu Gruha. New Delhi: Air India on Thursday revoked its flight ban on Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad with immediate effect, two weeks after he had assaulted an airline staffer onboard a plane. An airline spokesperson said the move follows a written order from the Ministry of Civil Aviation. The spokesperson said, "AI is committed to ensuring its employees are not assaulted or misbehaved with. We will take strong action to preserve dignity of our employees." Aviation sources said that with the AI revoking the ban, private airlines may follow suit. The 56-year-old Osmanabad MP had yesterday written a letter to Minister for Civil Aviation Ashok Gajapathi Raju expressing his "regrets" over the "unfortunate incident" on March 23. "I write to convey my regrets for the unfortunate incident that took place on 23rd March, 2017 in the Air India Flight No. AI-852 seat No.1F," Gaikwad had said in the letter. The ban was lifted by Air India, hours after it thwarted an attempt by Gaikwad to book a ticket for the seventh time in the last two weeks. However, the MP, in a statement denied having made any attempt to book a flight. An airline head on the condition of anonymity said it has been agreed that police investigation will continue and the MP will give a commitment that he will show acceptable behaviour in the future. Gaikwad had assaulted an Air India employee and had boastfully claimed on national TV about having hit him with a slipper 25 times. He was banned by the airline on March 24. He, however, yesterday played the victim card, claiming he had only retaliated when provoked. The MP, who had attended the Lok Sabha for the first time yesterday since the incident, had denied any "wrongdoing" on his part and instead accused Air India officials of misbehaving with him, and sought action against them, especially the airline's CMD. He struck a somewhat conciliatory note when he tendered an apology to Parliament but insisted he owed no apology to the airline officials. In his letter to the civil aviation minister, the MP had stopped short of tendering an apology to either the national carrier or the staffer concerned. A combative Shiv Sena had yesterday threatened to disrupt AI operations in Mumbai and Pune and forced repeated adjournment of the Lok Sabha over the issue. The party had also declared it would not attend the April 10 meeting of the NDA if the ban was not lifted. New Delhi: Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi's statement denying the lynching of a man transporting cows in Rajasthan by vigilantes today led the Congress to create a ruckus in the Rajya Sabha, demanding apology from him for misleading the House. In response to Congress member Madhusudan Mistry's Zero Hour mention yesterday on cow vigilantes in Alwar stopping a truck carrying cows from a cattle fair and thrashing its occupants leading to the death of a Muslim, Naqvi had stated that no such incident had taken place. Today, he clarified that he was referring to Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh where no such incident had taken place. "We do not justify anarchy and hooliganism," he said, adding that the incident in Alwar did take place and an FIR has been registered against six persons. While the state government was taking action under the law against the accused, Home Minister Rajnath Singh will make a statement on the issue in the House on Monday, he said. Naqvi said, "Criminal, murderer, goon or a rowdy, we should not see them as a Hindu or a Muslim as a criminal is a criminal." But Congress members were not satisfied by the clarification from Naqvi and demanded an apology from him for misleading the House. As Deputy Chairman P J Kurien did not find merit in their demand, they trooped into the Well of the House and shouted slogans. This infuriated Kurien who angrily told them to go back and allow the Chair to speak. With Congress members continuing to raise slogans, an angry Kurien said he will not adjourn the proceedings. As Satyavrat Chaturvedi (Cong) argued with him to allow members to make their submissions on the issue, the Deputy Chairman shot back, "you are nobody to ask the Chair." "A senior member of Congress comes to the Well and questions the Chair. Very bad. I am sorry," he said. "Congress members are behaving irresponsibly. I see no reason (for them to shout slogans)." As Congress members shouted "Sadan ko gumrah karna band karo (stop misleading the House)" and "mafi mango (apologise)," Kurien asked "why apologise." Naqvi also refused an apology with a gesture of hand. As the logan-shouting continued, Kurien said "I will not adjourn. This is nothing but intimidation. I am sorry for the disciplined members. ... A few members cannot take the House to ransom." Kurien said as far as the Chair was concerned, the Minister's assurance that the Home Minister will come to the House and make a statement on Monday was enough. Few minutes into the slogan shouting, Leader of the Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad asked his party colleagues to return to their seats but not before blasting the government for undermining the Rajya Sabha. He said the Home Minister had made a statement in Lok Sabha yesterday and the Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs should have fulfilled his duty by informing him that the issue has also been raised in the Upper House so that he could have made a statement yesterday itself. "It is unjust... every day they are undermining Rajya Sabha," Azad said. Naqvi said the Home Minister is travelling to Andaman, but Azad countered saying either of the two Ministers of State for Home could have made the statement. "I am very sorry. This government should take Rajya Sabha seriously," he said. Earlier, when the House met, Azad said the victim had gone to the cattle fair to buy cattle and chose a cow over a buffalo, after he was told that it would give more milk. Yesterday when the incident was raised, Naqvi, instead of accepting, had denied it. "Central Government should not protect these kinds of hooligans," he said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Azad said, had last year spoken harsh words for cow vigilantes but actions on ground seem to suggest that BJP workers have been given a free hand. Azad said a BJP MLA in Rajasthan had said the death of the victim was caused by heart attack but the post-mortem by state government doctors confirmed thaty it was caused due to internal bleeding in stomach and chest caused by thrashing. He said a person accused of slapping someone is remanded to 14-day police custody but in this case, the accused have been remanded to just one day custody, which indicates the intention to end this case. Azad said Naqvi had misled the House and Kurien had yesterday directed him to ascertain the facts from the Home Minister and report to the House. He wanted to know when Home Minister would come and make a statement in the House. Naqvi on his part said Mistry had in his Zero Hour mention stated that such incidents were happening in Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat and when he stated that no such incident has taken place, he was referring to those states and not Rajasthan. No such incident has been reported in BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat, he said. Terming the issue as "sensitive", he said it required sensitive handling and criminals should not be looked from the prism of religion, "otherwise a wrong message will go out, disturbing peace and harmony," Naqvi said. While Sharad Yadav (JD-U) said he was shocked to hear Naqvi's statement yesterday, Satish Misra (BSP) said the action by Rajasthan government was nothing but a cover-up. Kurien said he agreed with the contention of the members that Naqvi had yesterday stated that no such incident had taken place and it was he who had instructed the minister to ascertain the facts from the Home Minister and report them to the House. An illegal slaughterhouse in Choka Ghat area of Varanasi which was sealed by the authorities. (Photo: PTI) Lucknow: The Allahabad High Court has asked the Yogi Adityanath government to draw up a plan to ensure that its crackdown on illegal slaughterhouses does not encroach upon people's right to food and livelihood. A Lucknow bench of justices Amreshwar Pratap Shahi and Justice Sanjay Harkauli on Monday said that food and food-related habits are undisputedly associated with the right to life, guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution of India. Responding to a plea by a meat-seller, the court reminded the government that it cannot just crackdown on illegal slaughterhouses while neglecting its job of providing and licensing legal supply of meat. Focusing on the fundamental rights of citizens mentioned in the Constitution, including Article 19 (the freedom to practice any profession) and Article 21 (the protection of life and liberty, the court said there is freedom to eat any healthy foodstuff and nobody has right to deter the food choices. The court observed, "Health, culture, personal food habits, socio-economic status of society, availability of foodstuff at affordable prices, the convenience of availability, contents, quality and strength of foodstuff essential to life, and a balance of such competing rights under the secular umbrella of the Constitution are all issues that need deliberation before any overt or covert action is taken. "It should not appear to be abrupt for those who are at the receiving end and should not be legally unconstitutional." The court has listed the matter for April 13. Soon after assuming office, the Yogi Adityanath government, acting on its 'sankalp parta', had ordered crack down on illegal slaughter houses. The government claimed that the restriction would only be on illegal slaughter houses in compliance with National Green Tribunal. Meat traders went on strike against it which was called off on Sunday after a meeting between Adityanath and the meat sellers' association. The Law Commission has proposed certain penal actions against advocates on the grounds of misconduct and abstaining from court work for any reason. Hyderabad: Advocates across the nation have been protesting the proposed amendments to the Advocates (Amendment) Bill, 2017, which was prepared by the Law Commission of India and recommends amendments to the Advocates Act, 1961. They have called the draft bill draconian. The Law Commission has proposed the Bill in the light of the order of the Supreme Court of India in Mahipal Singh Rana v State of Uttar Pradesh that there was an urgent need to review the provisions of the Advocates Act. Advocates opposing the Bill have targeted the Law Commission, alleging that it wants to destroy the independence and autonomy of the Indian Bar. The Law Commission has proposed certain penal actions against advocates on the grounds of misconduct and abstaining from court work for any reason. It has defined misconduct as negligence, not showing due diligence, misbehaviour, and dishonourable conduct (towards the client or towards the court). The Bar Council of India feels that the Bill proposes to hand over regulation of the legal profession to persons having no concern with legal education and in the control of judges. Mr Manan Kumar Mishra, chairman of the Bar Council of India, in his appeal to advocates across the country to oppose the Bill, stated that the word misconduct had never been defined by the Bar Council of India or by the Advocates Act, 1961; misconduct was defined only in the Rules of the Bar Council of India. But the Bill proposes to define misconduct in such a provocative way that it will be now very difficult and risky to accept the brief of any client by any lawyer. He stated that misconduct as per the Law Commission's definition, provided under the proposed Bill, includes: an act of an advocate whose conduct is found to be in breach of, or non-observance of, the standard of professional conduct or etiquette required to be observed by the advocate; or is a forbidden act; or unlawful behaviour; or disgraceful and dishonourable conduct; or neglect; or not working diligently or criminal breach of trust; or any conduct incurring disqualification under Section 24A of the propose 2017 Bill. The Law Commission has proposed to impose a fine which may extend to Rs 3 lakh and the cost of proceedings, and also award compensation of such an amount subject to a maximum of Rs 5 lakh as it may deem fit, payable to the person aggrieved by the misconduct of the advocate. The Law Commission has incorporated a provision under the 2017 Bill which specifies no association of advocates or any member of the association, or any advocate, either individually or collectively, shall give a call for boycott or abstinence from courts work or boycott or abstain from courts work, or cause obstruction in any form in courts' functioning or in court premises. The Law Commission has recommended removal of name/s of advocates from the State rolls who abstain from court work due to any reason. New Delhi: Setting aside protocol, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today went to the IGI airport here to receive his Bangladeshi counterpart Sheikh Hasina. The Prime Minister travelled through normal traffic without any route restrictions, official sources said. The Bangladesh Prime Minister is on a four-day visit to India, which comes after a gap of seven years. Hasina will hold wide-ranging talks with Modi tomorrow during which India is also set to announce a line of credit of USD 500 million to Bangladesh for military supplies. Both the sides would be signing at least 25 pacts in various key sectors including civil nuclear cooperation and defence but there was unlikely to be any agreement on the Teesta water sharing. Screen grab of a Muslim man who was allegedly beaten to death by Gau Rakshaks in Alwar in Rajasthan. New Delhi: The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has issued notice to the Rajasthan Government over the death of a person due to assault by so called 'gau rakshaks'. The NHRC has taken suo-motu cognizance of media reports that in Behror area of Rajasthan's Alwar on April 1, a group of so called 'gau rakshaks' attacked some persons dubbing them as cattle smugglers, though they were dairy farmers carrying cows legally purchased under a receipt and stamp of the Jaipur Municipal Corporation. The brutal assault resulted in the death of a person. However, the Rajasthan Police has reportedly registered an FIR against the victims of assault for illegally transporting cattle for slaughter. A notice has also been issued to Union Home Secretary Rajiv Mehrishi calling for a response as to what steps have been taken or proposed to be taken by the Centre to deal with such incidents in the country. The response is expected within four weeks. The incident is not the first of its kind, which has come to the NHRC's notice. Earlier in a similar incident, four Dalit boys, allegedly possessing beef, were severely beaten up and dragged in Gir Somnath district of Gujarat in July last year. Reportedly, the family members of the deceased, a dairy farmer, stated that the victims showed the attackers the receipt of legally purchased cows but they continued to thrash them. They snatched their wallets and cash of about Rs. one lakh as well as cell phones. New Delhi: Treading cautiously on the issue of action by Shiv Sena MPs in Lok Sabha on Friday, the Congress said it was reprehensible and hoped would not be repeated. Shiv Sena members, including Union Minister Anant Geete, surrounded Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju after he refused to heed to their demand for revoking the flying ban on their colleague MP Ravindra Gaikwad, in the wake of his assault of an Air India staffer. The party felt the government is also dithering for "political or opportunistic reasons" on the issue of clear action on the matter of Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad. "It was reprehensible, the sight is difficult to explain to a politician leave aside a layman and I just hope this will not be repeated," Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi told reporters. He said anybody with a right mind would not justify physicality or manhandling situations in a House or outside Parliament. "I do not think anybody is in his right mind would support it. I do not think anybody should support and there is no question of my supporting it impliedly or otherwise supporting it," he said. Singhvi said there is no doubt that the conduct, the words and the stand of both the MP concerned and the party to which he belongs have been completely "unapologetic, completely containing not the slightest trace of mildness or an introspective spirit". "I do not think that is supportable but equally the Government, the Ministry and the authorities have dithered, they have dithered this way and that way whether for political or opportunistic reasons in deciding it clearly," he said. The Congress leader said they have to give a clear decision as to where they stand, whether this way or that way. "I think this attempt to run with the hare and hunt with the hound is opportunistic as far as the government is concerned, and (that) is the major part of the problem," he said. Screen grab of a Muslim man who was allegedly beaten to death by Gau Rakshaks in Alwar in Rajasthan. (Photo: File) New Delhi: The Union Home Ministry on Friday received a report from the Rajasthan government which said a special police team has been constituted to arrest all those allegedly involved in the lynching of a Muslim man in Alwar. The Rajasthan government gave a preliminary report about the incident in which a 55-year-old man, Pehlu Khan, was beaten to death in Alwar district allegedly by a group of cow vigilantes on April 1. The local police reached the spot soon after receiving the report about the incident, rescued four of Khan's colleagues and took him to a hospital, the report to the Union Home Ministry said. The Rajasthan government said three people have been arrested so far and a special police team has been constituted to probe the incident and find out the circumstances leading to it. The police team will also try to arrest the remaining accused, sources said quoting the report. The incident took place when as many as 16 people were allegedly transporting 36 bovines in six pickup vans. The deceased, Khan, and four others, including his two sons, were beaten brutally by some locals at Behror in Alwar suspecting they were smuggling cows, police said. The incident rocked both Houses of Parliament where the Congress attacked the BJP saying the Constitution was being violated in the name of cow protection in the states ruled by the saffron party. Vehicles make way through a waterlogged street following heavy rains in Srinagar (Photo: PTI) Srinagar/New Delhi: The water level in Jhelum and its tributaries started to recede today after rainfall stopped last night, easing flood fears in Kashmir, officials said. The water level in Jhelum started to recede at around 3.00 am at Sangam in South Kashmir, the officials said. While the water level at Ram Munshi Bagh in the city was still increasing marginally, it is expected to recede in a couple of hours, they said. The highest water level at Sangam was recorded at 22.10 feet at 2.00 am while it was 21.70 feet at 7.00 am, they said. The water level in tributaries like Veishov, Rambiara and Lidder streams has receded substantially in the past six hours, the officials said. Yesterday, the water level in the Jhelum had crossed the 'flood declaration' mark at Ram Munshi Bagh in Srinagar, prompting authorities to set up emergency control rooms, even as 17 people were rescued from flash floods in Poonch and a woman was killed in lightning in Rajouri. Prime Minister Narendra Modi today spoke to Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti and offered all possible support in dealing with the flood situation in the valley. "Spoke to J&K CM @MehboobaMufti on the flood situation in the state. Offered all possible support from Centre in dealing with the situation," he tweeted. Modi reached out to Mehbooba at a time when the Kashmir valley is facing a flood threat, with Jhelum being in spate. Kashmir had witnessed unprecedented floods in 2014 when most of the residential areas, including in Srinagar, were inundated by waters up to the level of several feet. New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Tarun Vijay, in a shocking remark, on Thursday said that Indians cannot be considered racist because they 'accepted' South Indians. He made these remarks on a television debate on racism in India. The BJP leader unwittingly said, "If we were racist, why would we have the entire South? Which is you know... completely Tamil, you know Kerala, you know Karnataka and Andhra. Why do we live with them? We have blacks, black people all around us," he said on air. Vijay, a former editor of RSS-affiliated weekly Panchjanya, claimed that people with African ancestors have been living amicably in Maharashtra and Gujarat. After facing severe backlash for his remarks, the BJP leader apologised on Friday saying he did not convey what he had meant to. Admitting that his choice of words sounded ridiculous and very bad, Vijay clarified in a series of tweets he had meant to say that Indias racial demographic is diverse, but it has never been an issue for its citizens. He also took the example of Lord Krishna, saying that while Krishna means black, we worship him; reiterating his stand that racism was not a problem in India. I feel the entire statement was this- we have fought racism and we have people with different colour and culture still never had any racism (sic), he tweeted. My words perhaps were not enough to convey this. Feel bad, really feel sorry, my apologies to those who feel in said different than what I meant (sic), he said in a tweet. Vijay's shocking remarks come in the wake of an attack on Nigerians in Greater Noida two weeks ago. Central Reserve Police Force personnel impeded the state health minister C. Vijayabaskar from addressing the media in Chennai on Friday. (Photo: DC) Chennai: In major raids ahead of the byelection slated for April 12, I-T sleuths swooped Friday morning on the residences and premises in 35 locations across Tamil Nadu belonging to health minister Dr C. Vijayabaskar, actor-turned-politician Sarath Kumar and Dr MGR Medical University Vice Chancellor, Dr. S. Geethalakshmi Income tax sources said more than Rs 4.5 crore unaccounted cash was seized during the raids, besides property documents and jewellery worth over Rs 89 crore. The seized documents also included expense details of the RK Nagar by poll, which ran into many crores of rupees, besides gift tokens. The raids are seen as a belated attempt by the income-tax department to cut the cash being distributed freely among voters in Dr RK Nagar constituency. Minister Vijayabaskar is believed to be a strong supporter of RK Nagar candidate TTV Dhinakaran of the Sasikala camp. He was also close to sand baron Sekhar Reddy, who was raided by I-T in December and later arrested by the CBI. Of Rs 4.5 crore seized, Rs 2.2 crore was seized from one Nainar Mohamed, a close confidant of the minister and `1crore was seized from another person close to the minister, sources added. The rest came from seizure in lakhs of rupees at various places. As many 21 places in Chennai, 11 locations in Pudukottai, 2 in Tiruchy and premises in Namakkal were subject to I-T tax searches on Friday. A raid was also carried out in premises belonging to former AIADMK MP Chitalapakkam Rajendran. Sources admitted that there was no major cash seizure from the houses of minister Vijayabaskar, Geethalakshmi and Sarath Kumar, chief of All India Samathuva Makkal Katchi, who declared his support to Dhinakaran on Thursday. Geethalakshmi is believed to be a close confidante of minister Vijayabaskar. Apart from Chennai, the searches are being conducted in stone quarries, at colleges and in residential premises of the minister and his family members. Vijayabaskar hit the headlines when the AIADMK split into two factions after the demise of former CM Jayalalithaa with former chief minister O.Panneerselvam accusing him of siding with VK Sasikala and her family members and pressurising him to quit. Hyderabad: Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao will step into Osmania University campus for the varsitys centenary celebrations after seven years and the first time after formation of Telangana State. Apart from Mr Rao, President Pranab Mukherjee, Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan, Maharashtra Governor Ch. Vidyasagar Rao and other top dignitaries have confirmed their participation in the celebrations. Mr Rao is likely to be awarded an honorary doctorate along with some more dignitaries. The TRS chief had last visited the campus in 2010 to attend the funeral of Ishan Reddy, a student who immolated himself thanking God for fulfilling his bizarre wish that the then APCC president D. Srinivas be defeated in the bypolls. On April 28, 2014, Mr Rao, who landed in the campus for refuelling of his helicopter as the Begumpet airport was closed due to arrival of AICC president Sonia Gandhi, earned the wrath of the students and had to be escorted by the police for promising to regularise services of contract employees. Mr Rao later said that only 80 per cent will be regularised. The state government and Osmania University authorities finalised the venue for the grand centenary public function at A Grounds near Tarnaka on April 26. The 8 acre ground will accommodate about 15,000 people. The venue has been approved by the government, OU authorities and cleared by security agencies, Vice-Chancellor Prof S. Ramachandram told DC. Rajya Sabha MP Dola Sen had booked three tickets for the Air India flight, an airline official said. The MP had booked three front row seats for herself, her mother and one more person online. (Representational image) New Delhi: Close on the heels of Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad hitting an Air India staffer, a Trinamool Congress lawmaker allegedly fought with the crew on Friday over not getting seats of her choice in an AI flight from here to Kolkata resulting in it being delayed by nearly 40 minutes. Rajya Sabha MP Dola Sen had booked three tickets for the Air India flight, an airline official said. The MP had booked three front row seats for herself, her mother and one more person online. The DGCA rules allow airlines to charge additional fee for a seat of a passengers choice, which include front row seats with extra leg room as well as aisle and window seats. But due to non-availability of the seats of her choice she was booked on emergency exit seats, which also have similar legroom, said the official. When Sen boarded the plane with her wheelchair-bound mother, she was told by the cabin crew that rules do not permit wheelchair-bound passengers to sit on emergency exit seats, said AI. The airline said the MP didnt mention that she was being accompanied by a wheelchair-bound passenger at the time of booking tickets. Following this, the TMC MP shouted and screamed at the cabin crew, the airline claimed. The pilot offered business class seats to the MPs mother but Sen declined. New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to examine a writ petition filed by Congress leader, columnist and model Tahseen Poonawala to take immediate and appropriate actions against the Vigilantes in the garb of Gau Rakshak Dals (Cow Protection Groups) who have been spreading violence and committing atrocities against Dalits and Minorities in the name of protection of Cow and other bovine species. A Bench of Justices Dipak Misra and A.M. Kanwilkar, after hearing senior counsel Sanjay Hegde and counsel Shezad Poonawala issued notices to the Centre and six States of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Haryana and Karnataka. Mr. Hegde brought to the notice of a recent incident in Alwar in Rajasthan when a middle-aged man was beaten to death and wanted the court to ask Rajasthan to reply. The Bench did not give a specific direction but asked the States to file their response to the PIL and posted it for further hearing on May 3. In his petition, Poonawala has sought a ban on such groups on the ground that they were operating illegally in several parts of the country allegedly indulging and killing people in the name of protecting the cow. He likened the Gau rakshaks to the now disbanded salwa judum a similar vigilant groups, formed by Chattisgarh government by arming civilians to kill Maoists. The petitioner alleged that some states like Gujarat, Haryana, MP and Maharashtra have given licences to these vigilante groups to check passing of trucks illegally smuggling cows. The gau rakshaks dals are in news for the past few months following a series of incidents in which beef-eaters and those purportedly indulging in cowmeat business have been targeted. Starting from Mohammad Akhlaques lynching in Uttar Pradesh for allegedly eating beef to the bashing up of a Dalit family in Gujarat for skinning a dead cow, the country has witnessed a spurt in such incidents. Hyderabad: The state government is reworking agreements with banks and financial institutions on repayment of debt and interest after two years, when its term ends in 2019. The government has been tying up with consortiums of various banks and financial institutions to secure loans for Mission Bhagiratha, 2BHK housing scheme, urban infrastructure projects etc., over the past two years. Earlier, the government entered into agreements with banks to repay the principal and interest on loans in instalments every quarter from the very first year of disbursal of the loan. However, the government is now looking to rework these agreements, urging the banks to impose a moratorium of two years since the day of disbursal of loans for repayment. This clause was included for the loans secured for Mission Bhagiratha recently. The same is being sought for other loans. This would mean that the government would start repayment in 2019, when its term will come to an end. Any government that assumes office after the 2019 elections would face the heat of repayment in its very first year. Last year, the government had to spend over Rs 6,000 crore to service loans. This year, the figure has increased to Rs 10,000 crore. Since Assembly elections are just two years away, the government wants to minimise the debt burden by postponing repayment by two years. This is to ensure that there are no major financial constraints to implement welfare and populist schemes in the last two years of its term, said sources in the finance department. The incident came days after municipal corporations in Meerut and Varanasi too witnessed similar ruckus over the issue. (Representational Image) Allahabad: The row over 'Vande Mataram' has spread to Allahabad municipal corporation, where a proposal to make singing of the national song compulsory at commencement of proceedings led to protest by Samajwadi Party corporators. The incident came days after municipal corporations in Meerut and Varanasi too witnessed similar ruckus over the issue. BJP member Girishankar Prabhakar Thursday mooted a proposal in Allahabad civic body for singing of national song at the start of proceedings and the national anthem upon conclusion. However, Samajwadi Party corporators led by Athar Raza and Sushil Yadav vociferously opposed it. BJP members alleged that the protesting corporators refused to stand when the national song was sung after Mayor Abhilasha Gupta gave her nod to Prabhakar's proposal. Defending their opposition to the move, Raza alleged that the "politicization" of Vande Mataram has always been a "ploy" of the BJP. The SP members opposed "laying down a new rule at a time when just a few months were left for the expiry of the term of the house". The protest led to suspension of proceedings for a couple of hours. After the house met again, Mayor Abhilasha Gupta gave her nod to Prabhakar's proposal following which the national song 'Vande Mataram' was recited by members. The protesting members left the premises in protest even as proceedings concluded later in the day with the recital of national anthem 'Jana Gana Mana'. BJP corporators later alleged that during the recital of 'Vande Mataram', the protesting councillors had remained seated which was tantamount to insulting the national song. "We have received the complaints. The CCTV footage is being examined to ascertain the veracity of the allegations. If the charges are found true, action will be taken accordingly," the Mayor told reporters. Raja said their protest was "not against national song and national anthem per se, but against starting a new trend just ahead of the next municipal polls. "It is unfortunate that the Mayor, whose close ties to the BJP are well known, became a party to this." Gupta's husband Nand Gopal Gupta 'Nandi' is a cabinet minister in the Yogi Adityanath government in the state.The BJP won two-thirds majority in the recent election in Uttar Pradesh, returning to power after 15 years. Uttar Pradesh Health Minister Siddharth Nath Singh said such themes bind the nation and must not be subjected to derogation or ridiculed. (Photo: Pritam Bandyopadhyay) Lucknow: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday slammed the opposition for politicising the national song and the national anthem and asked rival parties to develop patriotic sentiment. Dubbing arguments over the national song and anthem as unfortunate Uttar Pradesh Health Minister Siddharth Nath Singh said such themes bind the nation and must not be subjected to derogation or ridiculed. "It is unfortunate that we are having arguments on national song and national anthem in this nation. These are few aspects which bind the nation as one. I would like to urge the political parties politicising such issues to bring some sense of patriotism in their thinking," said Singh. "It is very shameful that people are drawing communal lines around such topics. I would like to urge to these political parties that you have many issues to raise your political stature, so don't be so bank corrupt, so as to demean or undermine nationalistic issues," he added. A week after the mayor of Meerut asked all corporators to either sing Vande Mataram or leave the country, BJP councillors at the Allahabad Nagar Nigam on Thursday demanded that a new rule is passed under which the House proceedings would start with the national song Vande Matram and end with the national anthem Jana Gana Mana. Some councillors objected to the proposal and it led to ruckus and disruption of the proceedings of the House. Councilors in the Opposition alleged that BJP Councillors are raising this demand because of BJP coming to power in the state. M B Rajesh (CPI-M) said the Hindutva outfit workers had recently killed a youth and a Muslim priest. (Representational Image/Photo: PTI) New Delhi: The BJP and the Left-Congress members were engaged in a verbal duel in the Lok Sabha after a member of the saffron party raised the issue of the "CPI(M)-sponsored terror" in Kerala and sought the state government's dismissal. During the Zero Hour, Poonam Mahajan raised the issue of a worker of the BJP's youth wing headed by her being "brutally attacked" by Left workers and alleged that several RSS and BJP workers have been killed by them. Taking a dig, she said the Left parties should speak on the issue of intolerance only after they start practicing it in states ruled by them. Mahajan asked the Speaker to lead a group of MPs to the southern state to assess the situation herself. Her remarks agitated the Left members and also those of the Congress from the state as they targeted the RSS. K C Venugopal (Congress) said the RSS was behind killings as well, including one last night in his constituency. M B Rajesh (CPI-M) said the Hindutva outfit workers had recently killed a youth and a Muslim priest. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar said he was unable to understand why Venugopal was critical of the BJP member's remarks as he himself had yesterday raised the issue of political violence in the state. As Kumar said political murders were happening in Kerala and it was not acceptable, Rajesh accused him of misleading the House. On Thursday, members of the Congress and the Left from Kerala had clashed in the House over an incident in Thiruvananthapuram where the police had ill-treated the parents of a student who had allegedly committed suicide. Among other issues raised in the House during the Zero Hour, Prem Singh Chandumajra (SAD) expressed concern over the menace of stray cattle and said stray dogs recently killed a woman in her constituency. He said people earlier used to cull stray dogs with "medicines", a reference to poisonous substance used to kill them, but "our minister" has banned it. He was apparently referring to Union Minister Maneka Gandhi, a strong votary of animals rights. It is a serious issue but the government is not taking it seriously, Chandumajra said. Rajeev Satav (Congress) sought loan waiver for farmers in Maharashtra and also in the rest of the country like Uttar Pradesh. More farmers commit suicide in Maharashtra than any other state, he said seeking relief for them. Unless a miraculous series of events with unseemly diplomatic manoeuvres takes place, the possibility of signing the Teesta water-sharing agreement between India and Bangladesh during the visit of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed between April 7 and 10 is remote. One of the main obstacles to get the treaty signed up is objection from the West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee apprehends an ill-effect on thousands of farmers solely dependent on Teesta waters. Inexplicably enough, a concerted campaign is on to malign her, mainly from political interests wanting to disempower her, and the government, run by the All-India Trinamul Congress by hook or by crook. Their right to fight for ousting the maverick CM and the AITC-led government is granted, provided it is done through parliamentary and peaceful means. The act of slandering and misrepresenting of facts about Teesta out of blissful ignorance and with narrow political motive irritates earth scientists specialising in sedimentology, engineering geology and geomorphology in understanding Teesta (geological spelling) river avulsion which is the natural process making a river flow divert out of the channel into a new permanent course on the adjacent floodplain. Ms Banerjee has a strong logic for her reservations against the bilateral water treaty. She fears that it may lead to drying up of water in the Teesta basin. She is backed by Dr Kalyan Rudra who headed the one-man commission on Teesta water-sharing which was set up by the present state government. Months before taking up the assignment, Rudra stated in an article that the TBPs projections are excessively optimistic, taking into account that it has no reservoir and depends exclusively on diversion barrages with no storage capacity. The Teesta was untamed in its upper catchment when the TBP was formulated. The series of proposed dams in the upper reaches will reduce the available discharge for irrigation as each hydropower project is expected to consume at least five per cent of the running water in the river. The geographer, who developed specialising on rivers and avulsions thereof through extensive visits along river basins, added in lamenting tone: The snow-capped peaks, precipitous cliffs, fast-flowing rivers and green slopes of the Himalayas attract tourists from across the world. The road journey to north Sikkim holds one enthralled with the beauty of the dancing and roaring Teesta as it flows through deep valleys with thick green cover. But if the eight hydroelectric dams proposed on the Teesta (six in Sikkim, two in West Bengal) are to be built, the dancing river will be silenced Soumitra Ghosh of the North Eastern Society for Preservation of Nature and Wild Life (Nespon) which, based at Siliguri in north Bengal has done several field surveys in the region during the last two decades, told this writer, there can hardly be any surplus water in Teesta especially during the lean season. With the upstream dams storing large amounts of water and the necessity of meeting the needs of downstream farmers in West Bengal, I dont see any visible surplus. The figures about seasonal availability of river water at particular points must be brought into the public domain. For no reason, there is secretiveness about this. Originating in the Himalayas, the 393 km-long Teesta flows through Sikkim and West Bengal before entering Bangladesh. Although rich in biodiversity, some 44 km stretch of it is earthquake-prone with an ecologically and geologically fragile terrain. Yet over half a dozen of hydel projects have been planned on the river in the upstream of Sikkim. Indigenous Lepcha and Bhutia communities in Sikkim as also West Bengal came out to turn the tranquil and pristine habitat into a battleground between the government and the communities. Nespon has been sympathising with them. A formidable community offensive, notably by NGOs like the Affected Citizens of Teesta (ACT) and Sikkim Bhutia Lepcha Apex Committee (SIBLAC), forced the Sikkim government to cancel construction of ten dams. Nonetheless, the Government of India is unseemly inclined to dam the 13 km-free-flowing stream for hydel power. About 75 km of it is already either in reservoirs or diverted through tunnels for hydropower generation. The imperative for environmental and social assessments necessary is pooh-poohed by Delhi which is apathetic towards addressing the potential long-term cumulative impacts of the dams, associated with the proposed hydel projects (some having been already on stream like the 510 megawatt Teesta V-dam at Gajoldoba in Jalpaiguri district of West Bengal. The inexplicable zeal, bereft of the high possibility of reduced flows downstream, goes unabated. Which is why the power, coal, renewable energy and mines minister Piyush Goyal reiterated that hydel projects under the Teesta Urja Ltd of Sikkim would soon start generating 1,200 MW power in north Sikkim with an investment of over Rs 9,000 crores. The ground realities against the Teesta waters treaty are felt by geoscientists unlike the techies most of whom are over-committed to corporate construction of interests and close to decision-makers. More disturbing are some commentators who over-emphasise the diplomatic compulsion of building amity with Bangladesh. India genuinely needs camaraderie with Bangladesh but should not lay unrealistic assurances. A seasoned Delhi-based commentator wrote that but for the backing out by Mamata Banerjee at the last minute, the treaty would have been inked in September 2011 when the then PM Manmohan Singh made a visit to Dhaka. The commentator has suggested that the present PM use Article 253 of the Constitution that empowers the Union government to conclude any treaty without consultation with the state governments. This suggestion is a provocation to trample federal principles under foot. Another media-hyped expert in Indo-Bangladesh and Saarc diplomacy keeps wooing Ms Hasina as the most trusted friend of Narendra Modi for demolishing hideouts of extremists of Indias Northeast in Bangladesh as if India should sign treaty without bothering about the feasibility. In an openly tendentious manner to belittle Ms Banerjee, he asserts that the latters reservations against the treaty would not only affect Indias fraternal relationship with Bangladesh but help Pakistan too. At home in wild assumptions, such pundits alike, accuse Ms Banerjee, proving their pathological chagrin against her, but are mysteriously silent on Hasina governments appeasement towards Hefazat-e Islam which demands communalisation of school textbooks in the interests of political Islam. Teesta is a unique river, having no parallel anywhere in the world, the late Devashis Chatterjee, formerly senior deputy director-general, Geolgical Survey of India and a rare-breed geoscientist of his time, once told me. Dr Mamata Desai, former head of the department of environmental sciences, Netaji Institute for Asian Studies, Teesta is an antecedent river flowing through inverted topography, younger beds on river bed and granite gneiss on the hill tops. This unique geographical and geological features have made this river unique. Desai stood by the West Bengal government on Teesta water sharing in September 2011. It is one thing to support the idea of sharing Teesta waters with Bangladesh but ignoring the reality that Teesta has been gradually drying up is to create a misleading perception. Let the naturally dancing Teesta flow as it wishes, never to a self-destructive tune. The writer is a Kolkata-based journalist specialising in Left politics and history and the politico-economics of Indias neighbours New Delhi: Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday hailed the passage of GST bills by Parliament and sought to play down the fact that it could not happen during his tenure, saying "let bygones be bygones". Observing that the new indirect tax regime could be a "game-changer", he, however, cautioned that there could be "difficulties" in its implementation. He pressed for constructive cooperation between the Centre and the states in resolving outstanding issues. "There will be pitfalls. But we learn as we go along," he told reporters after Parliament approved four GST-supporting legislations, clearing the decks for the rollout of the historic indirect tax regime from July 1. Asked whether he felt disappointed that it could not happen during his tenure, the former Prime Minister said, "Well I think, let bygones be bygones." On whether the measure would help increase the GDP, he said, "it could be a game-changer but we should not assume that there will be no difficulties on the way. There must be a constructive spirit of cooperation between the federal government and the states to resolve the outstanding issues." The Central GST Bill, 2017; The Integrated GST Bill, 2017; The GST (Compensation to States) Bill, 2017; and The Union Territory GST Bill, 2017 were returned by the Rajya Sabha by a voice vote as all parties were on board. Two members of OPS team sustained head injuries after they were attacked allegedly by supporters of TTV Dhinakaran at RK Nagar on Thursday. Dhinakaran supporters Rajan Chellappa and MLA Periyapullan allegedly instigated the attack. Injured man gets treatment. (Photo: DC) Chennai: Unfazed by allegations that his camp was distributing huge sums of money to lure voters in R K Nagar constituency, AIADMK (Amma) candidate T. T. V. Dhinakaran said they were being spread by the Opposition, who are sure of his victory. "They can delay the election, but they cannot deny my victory. My victory from RK Nagar is sure. There are efforts to delay the elections. The elections may be delayed for a week or 10 days, but my victory is sure. They cannot deny me victory," he told reporters at the party headquarters here on Thursday. Mr Dhinakaran, the deputy general secretary of the AIADMK, is the AIADMK (Amma) candidate for the bypolls and he is contesting on 'hat' symbol after the party's Two Leaves symbol was frozen following claims by rival OPS camp. The AIADMK (Amma) has been accused of using "money and official power" in the constituency to sway the voters in their favour. Almost all ministers of Edappadi K. Palanisami Cabinet are camping at the R K Nagar constituency to ensure the victory of Dhinakaran. "The Opposition knows for sure that they cannot win this election. The writing is on the wall. People of R K Nagar have decided to vote for me since they think I truly represent ideals of late Amma. Since the Opposition parties and OPS camp are sure of my victory, there are restoring to spreading allegations," Dhinakaran said. The deputy general secretary has been pulling every stop to score a victory from R K Nagar constituency since this is the first electoral test for the ruling AIADMK after the demise of J. Jayalalithaa. Dhinakaran's win will come as the much-needed moral booster for the AIADMK which has been hit by Jayalalithaa's death, jail term of V. K. Sasikala and desertions by leaders like O. Panneerselvam. Two Leaves symbol has been removed from websites AIADMK (Amma) has told the Election Commission that the frozen Two Leaves symbol spotted on its official website was "unnoticed" and has been removed. In his reply to the Election Commission to the notice issued by it on use of Two Leaves symbol in website and social networking sites, Mr Dhinakaran said they were not misused. "The symbol was unnoticed since the website was there for sometime and it was removed once it was brought to notice," the reply said. Dhinakaran, who has opted for the 'Hat' symbol for the by poll, said there was no need for him to seek votes in the name of Two Leaves. "Our symbol is Hat and there is no need to seek votes using Two Leaves," he told reporters here on Thursday. The EC had asked for an explanation from Mr Dhinakaran on why the symbol was not removed from the website of the AIADMK despite it being frozen. Thirsty travellers on highways are going to miss the inviting LED signboards offering cold beer to alleviate their boredom. But ask those who have lost a loved one in an accident, or been maimed in one and they will enthusiastically support the Supreme Courts ban on the availability of booze along our state and national highways. When the issue is emotive, the reflex response of both the judiciary and the executive is to do anything that appears adequately responsive. What could be easier than banishing booze from the highways, knowing full well that this could be just optics. Curbing drunken driving requires that drivers, a small fraction of all travellers, be targeted. Most travellers are passengers. It doesnt matter whether they tipple or not. Many of those at the wheel are licensed, professional cab, bus and truck drivers much like commercial pilots. Surely the owners of these commercial vehicles should be held criminally accountable, along with the driver, for accidents caused by drunken driving, unless they can prove that they test their drivers randomly. This would automatically incentivise owners to use drivers who dont drink. But this is a narrowly targeted option that requires follow-on administrative action and effective policing. Far splashier, instead, to go in for a blanket ban on booze and never mind if it causes collateral pain. The origin of our half-hearted approach to the problem lies in the Directive Principles of our Constitution. These define the higher moral ground that we all must aspire to. But these are not mandatory and need a law to be passed to become implementable. We implement these only selectively like universal education where there is near complete consensus. But we ignore others, like prohibition, where a consensus is missing. Hence the tension between the constitutional directives and reality. We do not have a fundamental right to drink or sell booze. We do so only at the pleasure of the State. It can be withdrawn at any time. Many would argue it should not be summarily withdrawn, specially when it will disrupt ongoing business. And because other options exist to curb drunken driving. If we are uncomfortable with the ideals specified in the Directive Principles, then the correct approach is to amend them and expand the fundamental rights to include the freedom to drink responsibly. But who will support such an amendment? Mainstream India has no tradition of the neighbourhood bar, from where it is all right to stagger home, helped along by acquaintances or friends. Yes, there is communal drinking in tribal areas and on special occasions in villages, where there is a lot of staggering about. But these are rare occasions. In the plains of India, most regular tipplers are men as drinking is done outside our homes. It is the anonymity of highway drinking that is attractive for furtive, male drinkers. How terrible will the booze ban be for the economy? The measure simply aims to make drinking and sale of liquor physically invisible from highways. Tippling will shift a couple of minutes away onto back streets, possibly with far worse consequences for public order. But its revenue impact will be negligible. Businesses will adjust. Web-based apps will guide travellers to back street bars and booze shops; private caches of pre-mixed booze in flasks will proliferate as will the illicit supply in dhabas along the highway. Blaming the judiciary for ham-handedness is the easy part. But the Government of India and several state governments, including Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, have accepted the verdict. Eighteen other states didnt bother to contest the decision. This shows that the judiciary is aligned with the national and state-level executive in moving India, gradually, in the direction to which the Directive Principles point us. But without effective patrolling, behavioural change among drivers is highly unlikely. Ask any highway traveller. There is nothing more reassuring than regularly passing by a police patrol car, specially at night. Drunken or irresponsible driving can only be curbed if the Centre, with the consent of all state governments, directly polices all our national highways. Centrally-monitored and controlled mobile patrols, responsive to distress calls and SMSes like the National Ambulance Service, equipped with paramedic and trauma support teams, should be frequently visible along the 90,000-km national highway network. A National Highway Police Force should be created and empowered to regulate traffic; challan errant driving; provide trauma support in case of accidents and keep the highways free of crime and irresponsible social behaviour. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that an officer-oriented, multi-skilled force of 11,000 employees would cost Rs 1,000 crores annually in overheads, maintenance and salaries, with a one-time capital cost of Rs 800 crores for equipment and housing. Sounds expensive? Implemented over a period of five years, it is just 0.3 per cent of the annual revenue expenditure and 1.5 per cent of the capital expenditure for the police in the Union Budget. Compare this with the avoided cost of Rs 1,400 crores, being the value of lives lost (42,000 persons in 2009) in accidents on national highways, computed on a present value of Rs 2.5 lakhs per life lost, based on the average per capita income, over a residual working life of 20 years. The avoided cost of injuries to 1.5 lakh people (2009) is around Rs 180 crores, assuming medical treatment and lost wages at two months wages per injured person. The cost of vehicles and goods lost and cost of trauma suffered is over and above this. An international-quality highway security and trauma support system makes economic sense. More important, it is yet another bond sealing the social compact between Prime Minister Narendra Modis government and the travelling public immigrants, business people and tourists estimated at around 230 million passengers in 2016 (assuming an average lead of 75 km) by the National Transport Development Policy Committee. There can be no better social impact investment than one which offers an economic payback of under one year. If someone called you a donkey youd probably want to give that person some hard kicks like donkeys are good at giving. Today, donkeys are regarded as stupid and stubborn. But, in ancient times, they were seen as steady, sturdy and faithful; ready to tread the extra mile in the severest of climatic conditions. This weekend, Christians celebrate Palm Sunday remembering Jesus entry into Jerusalem seated on a donkey en route to his passion, death and resurrection. The donkey that carries Jesus into Jerusalem was gifted by an unknown donor. In those days, kings often rode ceremoniously through their kingdoms seated on donkeys. Crowds thronged the streets ahead of Jesus waving palm branches, singing: Hosanna! Hail! Praise Him! Blessed is he who comes in Gods name! This scene is interpreted as fulfilment of a prediction of Prophet Zechariah: Look, your king comes; triumphant and victorious, humble, riding on a donkey. Inspirational author, Max Lucado, writes: Did the donor of the donkey have any idea his generosity would be used for such a noble purpose? Did it occur to him God was going to ride that donkey? In the Bible, besides being used for farm work, donkeys transport people from place to place. Moses rides an ass; and Mary and Joseph most probably travelled from Nazareth to Bethlehem, and then to Egypt mounted on a donkey. There are other references to donkeys in the Bible. King Solomon rides Davids mule to be anointed king, and in an interesting episode, Balaams donkey saves his life by stubbornly refusing to move forward since it sensed that he would be killed. Moreover, Spirit-filled Samson destroys a whole army of Philistines using the jawbone of a donkey. Donkeys form part of religious imagery in other religions, too. The Hindu Goddess Kalaratri is depicted as riding a donkey; and, the donkey was also the symbol of the Egyptian sun god Ra. Deepening his insight into the donkey that carried Jesus into Jerusalem, Lucado continues: All of us have a donkey, i.e., something that, if given to God, could move Jesus and His story further down the road. The point he makes is that, no matter what little thing we offer to God, God will make optimum use of it for noble purposes. These days of annual exams, and perhaps, failures, and little after April Fools Day, a parent, teacher, or colleague might call you donkey. Dont worry, be happy! Ask yourself: what little gift can I give God to promote the common good? I sometimes wonder: If God could use Samson and just the jawbone of a donkey to destroy an army of Philistines, how much more can God do with a whole donkey like me? Lee appeared gaunter in a white shirt and gray suit, having lost some of his C-suite polish. The third-generation leader of South Korea's top conglomerate was mostly silent at his first court appearance in what has been called the "trial of the century," as his lawyers laboured to portray him as an innocent bystander in a graft scandal. Jay Y. Lee, the 48-year-old boss of Samsung Group, is on trial on charges including bribery and embezzlement in a scandal that led to the ouster of President Park Geun-hye. He could spend more than 20 years in jail if convicted on all charges, including one that he pledged 43 billion won in bribes to foundations backed by Park and her confidant, Choi Soon-sil. "The defendant, Jay Y. Lee, didn't even know that the contribution was made, because that's not part of his job," his lawyer, Song Wu-cheol, told the court. Lee had merely relayed the comments from one-on-one meetings with Park to his top lieutenant, Choi Gee-sung, he added. Choi, a former Samsung Group vice chairman considered a mentor to Jay Y. Lee, the vice chairman of Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, left the conglomerate on March 1 after it dismantled its corporate strategy office - a nerve center long considered an instrument for the founding Lee family's management of the companies. Lee appeared gaunter in a white shirt and gray suit, having lost some of his C-suite polish. He was mostly expressionless at the trial, nodding occasionally when one of his attorneys reiterated his previous denials of bribe payments. Beyond confirming personal details such as his name and occupation, Lee remained silent when the judge asked if he had anything to say in response to the charges he faces. Lee's lawyers said the Samsung boss made financial payments in response to requests by then-President Park and sought no favours in return. The leader of the smartphones-to-biopharmaceuticals business empire is the only founding family member among the country's most powerful conglomerates, called chaebol, to be indicted in a graft scandal that led to Park becoming South Korea's first democratically elected leader to be removed from office. Park herself was arrested last week on charges such as colluding with Choi to pressure businesses such as Samsung to contribute to foundations that backed her administration's policy initiatives. The defence team said Lee and other former and current Samsung executives felt threatened in their interactions with Choi Soon-sil as Samsung provided financial support. Prosecution evidence showed that President Park rebuked Jay Y. Lee during a July 2015 meeting over inadequate support for the equestrian community. "Do you know what will happen to the company if the president keeps getting angry?" former Samsung Electronics President Park Sang-jin quoted Jay Y. Lee as saying, in a document presented by the prosecution. During a September 2014 meeting with Lee, President Park Geun-hye had asked for Samsung Group to take over as the main sponsor of the Korea Equestrian Federation. Park Sang-jin took over as federation head in March 2015. But the special prosecution says Lee actively curried Park's favour to cement his control of the family business empire. "We have secured enough evidence proving that defendant Lee Jae-yong made improper requests to the president," said Park Young-soo, the special prosecutor, referring to the Samsung leader by his Korean name. Lee sought Park's help in maximizing his control of the Samsung companies at the lowest possible cost, he added. Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter. Recently, LeEco sent out invites for a launch event scheduled for 11 April. If rumours are to believed, the Chinese smartphone-manufacturer is expected to unveil its brand-new flagship device namely Le Max 3 at this event. While the invite has no trace of any photos of the said smartphone, it does hint at one of its highlighted feature. Here is what the image wrote: LeEco's invite There is a clear indication of a new AI similar to that of Samsungs Bixby, Googles Home and Apples Siri. The AI provided by LeEco is expected to be able perform simple functions like making calls, scheduling appointments and working with third-party apps. If this AI is indeed making its way through the Le Max 3 smartphone, then the device will come equipped with two digital assistants the second one being Googles Assistant. Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter. Uganda currently hosts more than 832,000 refugees from South Sudan, including over 270,000 in the Bidibidi refugee camp which in eight months has gone from an empty patch of land to the world's biggest refugee camp. (Photo: Representational/AP) Juba: More than 6,000 people have fled fighting in southern South Sudan, with refugees recounting the slaughter of civilians by armed forces, the United Nations refugee agency said on Friday. Fighting between government forces and rebels erupted on Monday in the town of Pajok in the country's southern Equatoria region, a previously peaceful part of the country that has seen a surge in conflict in recent months. According to a statement from the UNHCR over 6,000 people have fled into the northern Ugandan district of Lamwo since the attack while many others were hiding in the bush trying to find their way to safety in Uganda as main roads were blocked by armed groups. "People fleeing the recent incident claimed that the town came under an indiscriminate attack by the South Sudan armed forces," the statement said. "Refugees told the UNHCR team on the ground in Lamwo terrifying stories of violence and abuse against civilians. Many have witnessed their loved ones shot dead or slaughtered like animals," UNHCR spokesman Rocco Nuri told AFP. "Families fled in all directions. Those unable to run were reportedly shot dead, including the elderly and people with disabilities." A local pastor who fled Parjok on Wednesday, and asked not to be named, said soldiers had entered the town in tanks "and suddenly we saw shooting and we just had to run." Both he and regional Anglican Bishop Oringa Benard reported that some 135 people had been killed, however this could not be independently verified. The UN peacekeeping mission UNMISS said in a statement on Wednesday that they had twice been prevented from accessing Pajok. "The mission has received reports of fighting between SPLA (government) troops and the opposition there and is trying to follow-up on reports of civilians killed in the area," the statement added. UNMISS urged the government to immediately allow it access "so it can fully implement its mandate, including to protect civilians and report on human rights violations." South Sudan government spokesman Michael Makuei confirmed that its forces had attacked Pajok. "As you know Pajok has been in the hands of the rebels so what happened was government forces went there and fighting ensued and so the civilian population that has been staying with the rebels had to run away," he said. "I don't know the figure (of those who might have been killed or injured) but in any fighting there must be casualties." Uganda currently hosts more than 832,000 refugees from South Sudan, including over 270,000 in the Bidibidi refugee camp which in eight months has gone from an empty patch of land to the world's biggest refugee camp. The guided-missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG 78) conducts strike operations while in the Mediterranean Sea, April 7, 2017. (Photo: US Navy) Beirut: A US strike on a Syrian airbase ordered in retaliation for a suspected chemical weapons attack killed four children among 9 civilians on Friday and virtually destroyed its facilities, a monitoring group said. "An air commodore was among the four soldiers killed," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. "The airbase was almost completely destroyed -- the runway, the fuel tanks and the air defences were all blown to pieces," the Britain-based monitoring group said. "There were Sukhoi-22, Sukhoi-24 and MiG-23" fighter aircraft on the ground, Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP. The officers' quarters at Shayrat, the government's second most important airbase, were also damaged, he added. Only Latakia airbase in the heartland of President Bashar al-Assad's regime on the Mediterranean coast, where his ally Russia also maintains extensive facilities, is more extensive. Washington said that Russian military officials in Syria were informed of the strike beforehand in order to avoid casualties that could prompt a broader crisis. It was the first direct American assault on the Syrian government and Donald Trump's most dramatic military order since becoming president. The surprise US assault marked a striking reversal for Trump, who warned as a candidate against the US getting pulled into the Syrian civil war, now in its seventh year. But the president appeared moved by the photos of children killed in the chemical attack, calling it a "disgrace to humanity" that crossed "a lot of lines." About 60 U.S. Tomahawk missiles, fired from warships in the Mediterranean Sea, targeted an air base in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack that American officials believe Syrian government aircraft launched with a nerve agent, possibly sarin. The president did not announce the attacks in advance, though he and other national security officials ratcheted up their warnings to the Syrian government throughout the day Thursday. "I think what happened in Syria is one of the truly egregious crimes and shouldn't have happened and it shouldn't be allowed to happen," Trump told reporters traveling on Air Force One to Florida, where he was holding a two-day summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The US strike ordered in retaliation for a suspected chemical weapons attack killed four soldiers on Friday and virtually destroyed its facilities, a monitoring group said. "An air commodore was among the four soldiers killed," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. "The airbase was almost completely destroyed -- the runway, the fuel tanks and the air defences were all blown to pieces," the Britain-based monitoring group said. "There were Sukhoi-22, Sukhoi-24 and MiG-23" fighter aircraft on the ground, Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP. The officers' quarters at Shayrat, the government's second most important airbase, were also damaged, he added. Only Latakia airbase in the heartland of President Bashar al-Assad's regime on the Mediterranean coast, where his ally Russia also maintains extensive facilities, is more extensive. Washington said that Russian military officials in Syria were informed of the strike beforehand in order to avoid casualties that could prompt a broader crisis. The strike came as Trump was hosting Xi in meetings focused in part on another pressing U.S. security dilemma: North Korea's nuclear program. Trump's actions in Syria could signal to China that the new president isn't afraid of unilateral military steps. even if key nations like China are standing in the way. Trump has advocated greater counterterrorism cooperation with Russia, Assad's most powerful military backer. Just last week, the Trump administration signaled the U.S. was no longer interested in trying to push Assad from power over his direction of a conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and led to the worst refugee crisis since World War II. US military officials sought to portray the strikes as an appropriate, measured response. But the assault still risks plunging America into the middle of Syria's conflict, complicating the safety of the hundreds of US forces fighting a separate campaign against the Islamic State group in the north of the country. If Assad's military persists in further gas attacks, the Trump administration might logically pursue increased retaliation. Russia and Iran, Assad's allies, pose other problems. Russian military personnel and aircraft are embedded with Syria's, and Iranian troops and paramilitary forces are also on the ground helping Assad fight the array of opposition groups hoping to topple him. Before the strikes, US military officials said they informed their Russian counterparts of the impending attack. The goal was to avoid any accident involving Russian forces. Nevertheless, Russia's Deputy UN ambassador Vladimir Safronkov warned that any negative consequences from the strikes would be on the "shoulders of those who initiated such a doubtful and tragic enterprise." Trump's decision to attack Syria came three-and-a-half years after President Barack Obama threatened Assad with military action after an earlier chemical weapons attack killed hundreds outside of Damascus. Obama had declared the use of such weapons a "red line." At the time, several American ships in the Mediterranean were poised to launch missiles, only for Obama to abruptly pull back after key U.S. ally Britain and the US Congress balked at his plan. He opted instead for a Russian-backed plan that was supposed to remove and eliminate Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles. Thursday night's strikes were launched from the USS Ross and USS Porter and landed in the early morning Friday in Syria. The world learned of the chemical attack earlier in the week in footage that showed people dying in the streets and bodies of children stacked in piles. The international outcry fueled an emotional response from Trump, who appeared to abandon his much-touted "America First" vision for a stance of humanitarian intervention, akin to that of previous American leaders. "I think what happened in Syria is a disgrace to humanity," he said Thursday. Trump seemed to rapidly reconsider his feelings about Assad, saying: "He's there and I guess he's running things, so something should happen." The drama played out as Trump and his top national security aides were meeting Chinese President Xi at a Florida summit, which was supposed to focus on another pressing U.S. security dilemma: What to do about North Korea's missile and nuclear programs. Thursday's action in Syria could also send a message to China. Washington is trying to persuade Beijing to adopt a tougher approach to its North Korean ally, much like the U.S. pressure campaign with the Russians on Syria. And the strikes in Syria show the Chinese that Trump isn't afraid of unilateral military steps to advance American interests, even if key nations are standing in the way. The show of force in Syria raises legal questions. It's unclear what authority Trump is relying on to attack another government. When Obama intervened in Libya in 2011, he used a U.N. Security Council mandate and NATO's overall leadership of the mission to argue that he had legal authority - arguments that many Republicans opposed. Trump can't rely on either justification here. Unclear also is whether Trump is adopting any broader effort to combat Assad. Under Obama, the United States largely pulled back from its support for so-called "moderate" rebels when Russia's military intervention in September 2015 led them to suffer a series of battlefield defeats. Instead, Obama sought to work with Russia on a negotiated transition. Trump and his top aides had acknowledged in recent days the "reality" of Assad being in power, saying his ouster was no longer a priority. But the chemical weapons attack seemed to spur a rethink. In Florida on Thursday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said of Assad: "There's no role for him to govern the Syrian people." Palm Beach (United States): US President Donald Trump called Thursday for "all civilized nations" to work to end the bloodshed in Syria, after launching a massive strike against the regime in retaliation for a chemical attack. "On Tuesday, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad launched a horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians using a deadly nerve agent," Mr Trump said in a televised address from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Mr Trump ordered a massive military strike on a Syrian air base on Thursday in retaliation for a "barbaric" chemical attack he blamed on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The US military fired dozens of cruise missiles at the Shayrat Airfield at 8:45 PM Eastern Time (0000 GMT), officials said. The chemical attack, killed at least 70 people, many of them children, in the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun. The Syrian government has denied it was behind the attack. "Tonight I call on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end this slaughter and bloodshed in Syria and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types," Mr Trump said. The US President also said the strikes in Syria were in the 'vital national security interest'. He also blamed Mr Assad of choking lives of 'helpless men, women and children' "We hope that as long as America stands for justice, then peace and harmony will in the end prevail," said Mr Trump. Preet Bharara was referring to Trump's constant bragging of how the size of the crowd at his inauguration was much bigger than that at the time of Obama's swearing-in ceremony in 2009. (Photo: AP) New York: In his first public appearance since being fired, India-born former top federal prosecutor Preet Bharara took swipes at President Donald Trump, saying "you don't drain a swamp with a slogan" and poked fun at his fixation on crowd sizes. During an hour-long speech at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art here, Bharara used wit as well as brutal criticism as he offered his thoughts about the Trump administration and reflected on his 7.5 year journey as the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Bharara, who was fired by the Trump administration last month, used the President's popular campaign slogan to "drain the swamp" to offer a brutal criticism of the new administration and its way of working. "There is a swamp, a lot of the system is rigged and lots of your fellow Americans have been forgotten and have been left behind. Those are not alternative facts. That is not fake news," the 48-year-old said to a packed hall. "But I would respectfully submit you don't drain a swamp with a slogan. You don't drain it by replacing one set of partisans with another. You don't replace muck with muck. To drain a swamp you need an Army Corps of Engineers, experts schooled in service and serious purpose, not do-nothing, say-anything neophyte opportunists who know a lot about how to bully and bluster but not so much about truth, justice and fairness." "Draining a swamp takes genuine commitment to justice and fairness and not attention to what benefits one group over another or divides one group against another," he said. Bharara began 'The John Jay Iselin Memorial Lecture' on Thursday by taking a dig at Trump's fixation with crowd sizes, saying the audience for his own event was much bigger than the one that showed up for former President Barack Obama. "This actually seems like a very great and welcoming crowd. This is like the largest sell-out crowd of my career," Bharara said, adding that the last time he was in the Cooper Union hall was about seven years ago when Obama was there to give a speech. "I just want to say one thing for the record in front of everyone about crowd size," Bharara said amid huge round of applause and laughter. "I don't care what the picture shows. My crowd is a lot bigger than Obama's crowd, much bigger than Obama's crowd. From where I stand here, it looks to be about 1-1.5 million people. It's a really huge crowd. Look that's the information I was given," he said. He was referring to Trump's constant bragging of how the size of the crowd at his inauguration was much bigger than that at the time of Obama's swearing-in ceremony in 2009. Bharara acknowledged the presence of some of his former colleagues, including some from his press office, who he said "were the only people who stood between me and the dishonest media," in another swipe at Trump. "That's called tongue and cheek," Bharara said. He also thanked New York University's School of Law for giving him a job as the distinguished scholar in residence. "My father-in-law was really happy to hear that I was going to have a job," he said. During the lecture, Bharara reflected on his time as Manhattan's top federal prosecutor and his office's accomplishments in rooting out corruption and fighting terrorism and insider trading cases. He said he has no complaints and remorse and his term as US Attorney will be the "greatest professional honour of my life." Even when Bharara was in office, he repeatedly dismissed speculation that he will eventually run for public office and reiterated that he will not enter politics. "I don't have any plans to enter politics just like I had no plans to join the circus. I mean no offence to the circus," he said to laughter from the audience. Bharara called on American citizens to unite and continue the fight against injustice, saying active citizenship matters and is "desperately needed now more than ever, individually and collectively." "In this time of antagonism and polarisation, in this time of head-strong faith that your side is always right and the other side is always wrong," Bharara cited the example of processes in a court of law where both sides have the right to present arguments and to challenge arguments. He said a court "let's both sides do so without fear of being shouted down or shut down." New York: The US military strike on the Syrian Government airbase in response to Tuesday's chemical weapon attack has drawn differing reactions across the world with most inclining in favour of President Donald Trump's move. Nations including the United Kingdom, China, Japan, Australia, Turkey and Saudi Arabia have supported Trump in his endeavour to put an 'end to chemical attacks.' Britain issued a show of support for the US. "The UK government fully supports the US action, which we believe was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, and is intended to deter further attacks," a Downing Street spokeswoman said. China, which has repeatedly blocked resolutions by the United Nations against Bashar-al Assad, has said it had always been opposed to the 'use of force.' "China had always been opposed to the use of force," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said while speaking at a press conference in Beijing. Hua also said that China opposed "the use of chemical weapons by any country, organisation or individual, in any circumstance and for any purpose," The Guardian reports. There was now an urgent need to prevent a "further deterioration" of the situation in Syria, Hua added. Trump sat down with Chinese President Xi Jinping to steak and pan-seared sole shortly after making the decision to pull the trigger on the strike in Syria. He met with his national security team before the formal dinner in Mar-a-Lago, sitting through the meal with President Xi while action was underway. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has said he "strongly supports" the US military strike on Syria's al-Shayrat airfield, calling it a calibrated, proportionate and targeted response to the Syrian regime's "shocking war crime". "It sends a strong message to the Assad regime. The retribution has been proportionate and it has been swift. We support the United States in that swift action," Turnbull told the media. "There is no question that this shocking conflict in Syria is crying out itself for a resolution and we certainly will continue to work with our allies and our partners to see a resolution to this shocking war," he added, as reported by the Guardian. France was among the countries informed by the US ahead of the strikes, French foreign minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said. "I was told by Rex Tillerson during the night," Ayrault said, calling the missile strike "a warning [to] a criminal regime". The office of the French President, Francois Hollande, issued a statement citing he had spoken with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel. "The president and the German chancellor held talks on the telephone this morning on the situation in Syria. Following the chemical massacre on April 4 in Khan Sheikhun in the northwest of Syria, a military installation of the Syrian regime used chemical bombing was destroyed last night by US strikes. We have been informed," the statement said. "Assad bears full responsibility for this development. Its continued use of chemical weapons and mass crimes can not go unpunished. France and Germany therefore continue their efforts with partners in the United Nations framework to sanction the most appropriate criminal acts related to the use of chemical weapons banned by all treaties. We call on the international community to come together for a political transition in Syria, in accordance with resolution 2254 of the Security Council and the Geneva communique," it concluded. New Zealand Foreign Minister Murray McCully said, "It is becoming clear that Syrian government forces were responsible for the outrageous attacks where chemical weapons were used. These events are horrific. It is critical that the international community emphatically demand an end to this violence, and that the Syrian government be held to account." "In the absence of an adequate response from the United Nations security council, we can understand why the United States has taken targeted unilateral action to try and prevent further such attacks by the Syrian regime," McCully added. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the nerve gas attack earlier this week justified the retaliation. "Many innocent people became victims from the chemical attacks. The international community was shocked by the tragedy that left many young children among the victims. Japan supports the US government's determination to prevent the spread and use of chemical weapons," he said. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also lent his backing to the strike through a tweet. Earlier, the Pentagon confirmed it used a hotline for minimising the risk of aerial combat between US and Russian jets in eastern Syria to alert Moscow of the strike against the Syrian Government. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, however, contradicted the information and said Russia was not alerted. Hours after launching the strike, Trump called on all 'civilised nations' to stop the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria. He also asserted that Assad "choked out the lives of innocent men, women and children." "Tonight I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched. It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the chemical weapons convention, and ignored the urging of the UN Security Council," he said. "Years of previous attempts at changing Assad's behaviour have all failed and failed very dramatically. As a result the refugee crisis continues to deepen and the region continues to destabilise, threatening the United States and its allies. Tonight I call on all civilised nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria, and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types," he added. On Trump's orders, US warships launched between 50-60 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Syria Government airbase where the warplanes that carried out the chemical attacks were based, US officials said. Trump had famously said the chemical attack on Syria's Idlib province affected his deeply and transformed his thinking about Assad. Dozens of people, including at least ten children, were killed and over 200 injured as a result of asphyxiation caused by exposure to an unknown gas on Tuesday. The death toll is said to be at least 67, according to activist al-Diab, while the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has reported it to be 58. The High Negotiations Committee claimed the death toll could be as high as 100 with up to 400 injured. The four-week capital murder trial has left little room for anything in between in the case against Rams (Representational Image) Manassas (Virginia): Joaquin Rams is either a father unjustly accused in the tragic, unexplained death of his 1-year-old son, or he is the most cold-blooded of murderers who snuffed the life from his boy to collect half a million dollars in life insurance. The four-week capital murder trial has left little room for anything in between in the case against Rams, who is charged in the October 2012 death of Prince McLeod Rams. Lawyers concluded their closing arguments Thursday, putting the case in the hands of Judge Randy Bellows. Rams waived his right to a jury in exchange for prosecutors' agreement not to seek the death penalty. If convicted, Rams will automatically be sentenced to life in prison. Prosecutors say Rams either suffocated or drowned Prince to collect on three separate life insurance policies he held on the child. Defense lawyers argue Prince died of natural causes after suffering a fever-induced seizure. The case has taken a series of twists and turns in the four years since Rams was arrested. Chief among them: Virginia's chief medical examiner, for the first time in his career, overruled the finding that Prince drowned, and instead changed the cause of death to "undetermined." In addition, prosecutors were barred from presenting evidence about the suspicious deaths of two other people close to Rams: ex-girlfriend Shawn Mason, who was fatally shot in 2003; and his mother, Alma Collins, who died in 2008. Collins' death was ruled a suicide, but prosecutors have since said they believe Rams was responsible. He collected $162,000 in life insurance when she died, and unsuccessfully tried to collect on an insurance policy after Mason's death, prosecutors say. Prosecutor James Willett acknowledged Thursday that the case against Rams is a circumstantial one, but said it is powerful nonetheless. While he said it is debatable whether Prince died of suffocation or drowning, "the evidence is clear that Prince did not die of natural causes." The death occurred on Rams' fourth unsupervised visit with his son. A Maryland judge granted visitation over the objections of Prince's mother, Hera McLeod, who feared for her son's safety. Medical experts for the prosecution testified that fever-induced, or febrile, seizures are relatively common in children Prince's age and are not known to be fatal. They questioned how Prince could have been suffering a fever and then had his temperature measured at 91 degrees just a few hours later in the hospital. Defense experts countered that febrile seizures could have been connected to a more serious, potentially fatal condition. They said it fell on prosecutors to provide clear evidence of how Prince died and they failed to do so. Defense lawyer Tracey Lenox said there was "a tide of certainty about Mr. Rams' guilt by prosecutors and law enforcement" that caused them to discount Rams' account that he saw Prince having a seizure in his crib and that he tried to cool him down by splashing him with cold water from a bathtub. Two friends who allowed Rams to live in their home also testified in support of Rams' version of events. As for the insurance, Willett said there is no innocent explanation for Rams' decision to take out three separate life insurance accounts on Prince. While they were barred from talking about Alma Collins' death, they did point out that he had been living off the life insurance settlement, and that the money from that payout was running out around the time of Prince's death. Defense lawyers cited testimony from an insurance salesman who said he was the one who persuaded Rams to take out the policy as a way to save for college. Bellows said he will issue his verdict April 13. Military spokesman Pramote Prom-in said 52 electric poles were damaged by explosives in the provinces of Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat, and Songkhla, causing minor blackouts. (Photo: Representational) Hat Yai: Suspected Muslim insurgents have set off dozens of bombs in southern Thailand, bringing down power lines and setting tires on fire to block roads. Security officials said there were no reports of deaths or injuries. Most of the attacks occurred early on Friday in Muslim-majority provinces in Buddhist-dominated Thailand's deep south, where about 7,000 people have been killed in a separatist insurgency that flared in 2004. Thai media speculated the actions were in response to Thursday's ratification of Thailand's new constitution. Military spokesman Pramote Prom-in said 52 electric poles were damaged by explosives in the provinces of Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat, and Songkhla, causing minor blackouts. He said officials also discovered burnt tires and more explosives but reported no injuries or deaths. Zasheen Akbar was found with stab wounds by a fellow employee at the Caltex service station in New South Wales late on Thursday night. (Photo: AFP) Melbourne: A 29-year-old Pakistani man was stabbed to death allegedly by two teenagers in a "horrific" crime spree in Australia, prompting police to investigate if the attack was inspired by the Islamic State terror group. Zasheen Akbar, a service station attendant, was found with stab wounds by a fellow employee at the Caltex service station in New South Wales late on Thursday night. The fellow employee found Akbar, a Pakistani, lying on the floor and windows smashed, The Daily Telegraph reported. Counterterrorism police are investigating if the two 15-year-old and 16-year-old boys, who allegedly murdered the attendant, had been radicalised by extremist Islamic ideology. The two teenagers have been arrested and police have not provided further details. The Australian media claimed that a sheet of paper that covers the window of the service station where letters "IS" were reportedly written in blood after the attendant was fatally stabbed. Police believe the youths, from Queanbeyan, went on a rampage, allegedly stabbing another man in the stomach, hitting a third with a tyre iron and a fourth with a beer bottle. "The teenagers went on a violent crime spree but we think one of the violent crimes at the servo has the hallmarks of an IS inspired terrorist act," a senior police source was quoted as saying by The Daily Telegraph. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull also said allegations that the teenagers killed a service station employee in Queanbeyan "underline" the government's concerns about terrorism. "The involvement in this crime of two males, two youths, teenagers, is a shocking matter and one that underlines many of the concerns we have raised in this field...they are in custody following the alleged murder of a 29-year-old man in Queanbeyan overnight," Turnbull said. "Our condolences goes to the family of the victim. We send our prayers and best wishes to the two other victims of that evening," Turnbull said. The police will be making a statement about this but I can say that the circumstances have raised sufficient concern, as I have discussed with the Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police (AFP), Andrew Colvin, raise sufficient concern to warrant the involvement of the Joint-Counter Terrorism team, he said. Police expect to lay a number of serious charges, Monaro Police Superintendent Rod Smith said. "Our investigation into these matters will continue, but it doesn't need to be said it doesn't get more serious than this an absolute horrific series of events," Smith said. He wanted to reassure the public "two people we believe are involved in all of these are in custody". NSW Deputy Commissioner Catherine Burn said police had "sufficient information" to believe the 16-year-old's involvement in the alleged murder may be related to terrorism. That information comes from physical evidence at the scene and other sources, Burn said. Russia's deputy United Nations ambassador Vladimir Safronkov listens during a meeting of the Security Council on Syria at UN (Photo: AP) United Nations: Russia's deputy U.N. envoy, Vladimir Safronkov, warned on Thursday of "negative consequences" if the United States carries out military strikes on Syria over a deadly toxic gas attack. "We have to think about negative consequences, negative consequences, and all the responsibility if military action occurred will be on shoulders of those who initiated such doubtful and tragic enterprise," Safronkov told reporters when asked about possible US strikes. When asked what those negative consequences could be, he said: "Look at Iraq, look at Libya." The rear of a truck, left, protrudes after it crashed into a department store injuring several people in central Stockholm, Sweden, Friday April 7, 2017. (Photo: AP) Stockholm: A truck crashed into an upscale department store in central Stockholm on Friday, killing at least three people, according to Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, who said all indications were that it was a terror attack. One person was arrested. The incident happened just 100 metres from the Indian embassy in Stockholm, said ANI reports. People in the downtown area fled in panic, and the country's intelligence agency said a large number of people were injured. Swedish radio put the death toll at three. "Sweden has been attacked," Lofven said. "This indicates that it is an act of terror." Swedish broadcaster SVT said shots were fired at the scene, though it wasn't clear by whom and police said they could not confirm that. Live television footage showed smoke coming out of the upscale Ahlens department store on Drottninggatan Street, which the truck smashed into. The department store is part of Sweden-wide chain. The building includes several stores at street-level. "We stood inside a shoe store and heard something ... and then people started to scream," witness Jan Granroth told the Aftonbladet daily. "I looked out of the store and saw a big truck." Photos from the scene showed a beer truck sticking out of the department store, and Aftonbladet daily reported that Swedish beer maker Spendrups said one of its trucks had been carjacked earlier Friday. Friday's incident is near the site of a December 2010 attack in which Taimour Abdulwahab, a Swedish citizen who lived in Britain, detonated a suicide bomb, killing himself and injuring two others. Abdulwahab rigged a car with explosives in the hope that the blast would drive people to Drottninggatan - the street hit Friday - where he would set off devices strapped to his chest and back. The car bomb never went off, and Abdulwahab died when one of his devices exploded among panicked Christmas shoppers. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Friday's attack, but vehicles have been common weapons in recent extremist attacks. Last month, in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group, a man drove into a crowd on London's Westminster Bridge, killing three people and injuring many others before stabbing a policeman to death. A fourth person, a woman thrown into the Thames by the force of the car, died Thursday. The IS group has also claimed responsibility for a truck attack that killed 86 people in Nice, France, in July and another that killed 12 people at a Christmas market in Berlin. Moscow suspends a bilateral agreement to help avoid clashes in the skies over Syria. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev (Photo: AFP) Moscow slammed the US air strike on a Syrian airbase as aggression against a sovereign state, and suspended a bilateral agreement to help avoid clashes in the skies over the war-torn country. President Putin considers American strikes on Syria aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international norms, and under an invented pretext, said the statement by the Kremlin press service posted on the official website. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said the missile strikes were one step away from clashing with the Russian military, underscoring the risks in US President Donald Trumps first major foray into the Syrian civil war. Russias military said the US strike was ineffective but announced Syrian air defences would be strengthened to shield the countrys key infrastructure. To protect Syrias most sensitive infrastructure, a complex of measures will be implemented in the near future to strengthen and improve the effectiveness of the Syrian armed forces air defence system, defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a statement. In the biggest foreign policy decision of his presidency, Mr Trump ordered a step his predecessor Barack Obama never took: targeting the Syrian military. The US action catapulted Washington into confrontation with Russia, which has military advisers on the ground aiding its ally, President Bashar al-Assad. President Vladimir Putin signalled he was ready to risk a clash with the US and abandon hopes for mending ties with the US under Mr Trump, rather than accept the humiliation of standing by while his ally is bombed. The Kremlin accused Mr Trump of reneging on pledges to focus on fighting Islamic State jihadists and insisted the move would inflict considerable damage on US-Russia relations, which are already in a lamentable state. The UN Security Council met on Friday in an emergency session following the US missile strikes, with France and Britain voicing support for Washingtons military response to a suspected chemical weapons attack. The US attacked the territory of sovereign Syria. We describe that attack as a flagrant violation of international law and an act of aggression, deputy ambassador Vladimir Safronkov told the Security Council. Meanwhile, in the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhun, the site of an alleged chemical weapons attack, residents still mourning their dead on Friday welcomed US strikes as a way to pressure Damascus. God bless Trump, said Abu Ali, in his forties, hours after the US launched a barrage of cruise missiles at a Syrian government air base in the central Homs province. God willing, these strikes will be a clear warning to (President) Bashar al-Assad, to tell him: Bashar, enough killing and injustice against these people. We consider these strikes not only as a reaction, but a way to avenge the blood of the martyrs who fell here in Khan Sheikhun, said Haj Kassar, a merchant in his fifties. How the World Reacted Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu said President Donald Trump sent a strong and clear message today that the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated. He said his country fully supports President Trumps decision and that it hopes that his message of resolve in the face of the Assad regimes horrific actions will resonate not only in Damascus, but in Tehran, Pyongyang and elsewhere. Turkey Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan welcomed the US air strike on an airbase of the Syrian regime but said it was not enough and more action was needed. European Union EU President Donald Tusk said in a tweet that the US strikes show needed resolve against barbaric chemical attacks. EU will work with the US to end brutality in Syria. In a joint statement, French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Assad bore sole responsibility for the US strike. Britain The UK government said it was informed in advance about the US missile strikes, and firmly supports the US action. PM Theresa Mays office called it an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical attack. China Beijing offered a nuanced reaction, saying it was urgent to avoid further deterioration of the situation. The US strike follows international outrage this week over the suspected chemical attack in Syria (Photo: AP) Jerusalem: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday he supports the "strong and clear message" sent by a US strike in neighbouring Syria in retaliation for a suspected chemical attack. "In both word and action, President (Donald) Trump sent a strong and clear message today that the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated," a statement from Netanyahu's office said. "Israel fully supports President Trump's decision and hopes that this message of resolve in the face of the Assad regime's horrific actions will resonate not only in Damascus, but in Tehran, Pyongyang and elsewhere." Meanwhile, Turkey welcomed the US air strike on a Syrian airbase early Friday as a "positive" move and urged the international community to maintain its stance against the "barbarism" of President Bashar al-Assad. "We welcome this as positive but... we believe that the Assad regime must be punished completely in the international arena," Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus told Turkey's Fox TV in an interview, quoted by state-run news agency Anadolu. "The international community must maintain its stance clearly against this barbarism," said Kurtulmus, who is also government spokesman. Similarly, Britain's government "fully supports" US strikes against a Syrian air base launched after a suspected chemical attack on Tuesday, a spokesman said. "The UK government fully supports the US action, which we believe was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime," the spokesman said in a statement on Friday. He also said the US strikes were "intended to deter further attacks". British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson on Tuesday said the attack bore "all the hallmarks" of action by government forces and called for those responsible to be "called to account". Britain is a leading member of the US-led 68-country coalition fighting against the Islamic State jihadist group in Syria and Iraq. Trump ordered the massive military strike on a Syrian airbase on Thursday in retaliation for the "barbaric" chemical attack he blamed on President Bashar al-Assad. The US strike follows international outrage this week over the suspected chemical attack that killed dozens of civilians, including many children, in the rebel-held northwestern Syrian town of Khan Sheikhun. Jerusalem: Israel has signed a US $2 billion contract with India to supply it with missile defence systems, the state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries said on Thursday. They confirmed that they have been awarded their largest defence contract of almost US $2 billion for supplying advanced medium-range surface-to-air missile systems (MRSAM) to India. IAI said it would also supply additional long-range air and missile defence systems (LRSAM) for the first locally produced Indian aircraft carrier. The contract is worth US $1.6 billion for IAI, with the rest going to another state-owned defence company Rafael, that will be providing components for the systems. "The current contracts represent an enormous expression of confidence by the government of India in IAI's capabilities and advanced technologies, which are being developed with our local partners as part of the Indian government's 'Make in India' policy," IAI Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Joseph Weiss said in a statement. President Reuven Rivlin, who is said to have discussed the deal with Indian leaders during his trip to India in November last year, called to congratulate Mr Weiss on this "historic" deal terming it truly "exceptional". "Please pass on my congratulations to all who contributed to this important achievement. You have come such a long way to arrive at this point, it is truly exceptional," President Rivlin told IAI's CEO. Israel's willingness to share technology and form joint ventures with Indian companies to develop and manufacture military equipment supporting the 'Make in India' initiative is said to have been well received in New Delhi. In the case of MRSAM, an advanced air and missile defence system that provides protection against a variety of aerial threats, the technology is said to have been jointly developed by IAI and India's Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) in collaboration with Rafael and IAI's Elta division. Indian companies such as Larsen & Toubro are said to have also participated in the project. MRSAM's current version is operational with the Indian Air Force, Indian Navy and Israel Defence Forces (IDF). The system includes an advanced phased-array radar, command and control, mobile launchers and missiles with advanced RF seekers. Idlib (Syria): The feeling in his limbs began fading slowly, just moments after a suspected chemical attack in a northwest Syrian town. Quick thinking saved Hassan Youssef's life -- but not his legs. "I heard it on TV and from other people that when there's a chemical strike, no one should go down to the bomb shelters," the middle-aged man said. "Get up as high as you can," he said, his motionless legs wrapped in white gauze on a hospital bed in the rebel-held city of Idlib. He is 65 kilometres (40 miles) north of his hometown of Khan Sheikhun, where at least 86 people died on Tuesday when toxic gases were reportedly released on the town. Youssef's brother-in-law pulls back some of the bandages on his legs, revealing large plum-coloured wounds. When air strikes hit Khan Sheikhun in the early hours of Tuesday, Youssef rushed outside to see if he could help any victims. "I thought it was a normal air strike. But when I started to get dizzy and saw two people collapse in front of me, I knew it was something chemical," he says. He rushed to the nearest building and began the race against time to get to a higher vantage point before he was further exposed to toxic substances. "I couldn't think about anything except getting up to the roof," he says, describing how he only walked up a few steps before collapsing and crawling up the remaining flight on his hands and knees. "I stopped feeling anything at all. I started fading in and out of consciousness. The last thing I remember is my body being completely paralysed -- I couldn't move anything but my hand," Youssef recalls. 'I hoped I would die In his last moments of consciousness, Youssef pulled himself close to the edge of the roof and threw part of a cinder block over the edge, hoping someone would find him. When he came to, his neighbours were gathered around him on the roof, shocked he had survived the eight-hour ordeal. Now, two days later, Youssef says he is still in extreme pain, his throat hurts so much he cannot drink water, and he will need surgery on his legs to return feeling to the nerves. "I cannot move them at all on my own," he says. He was among more than 70 wounded people -- including 18 children and 21 women -- rushed to the hospital in Idlib on the day of the attack. Symptoms examined by medical doctors and autopsies carried out on three people killed in the attack have indicated the use of a nerve agent such as sarin. Doctor Hussein Yassin rattles off a list of symptoms he treated on Tuesday: a lack of oxygen, convulsions, foaming at the nose and mouth, pinpoint pupils, fevers, and red eyes. "Even 48 hours later, we are treating 22 people, though most of the cases have improved and the symptoms went away," he said. He says his team has neither the training nor the equipment necessary to deal with such an attack, but they did the best they could. "All the doctors and medical staff were afraid of exposure, particularly since we don't have special clothes to protect us from toxic substances," Hussein says. Medical staff later suffered from skin rashes, breathing problems, coughing bouts, and some loss of consciousness. Anyone who was in Khan Sheikhun at the time of the attack should seek treatment and avoid the site of the strike, Hussein says. "We don't know what kind of gas this was, honestly," and his hospital does not have a lab or other necessary equipment to test any samples retrieved, Hussein says. An AFP correspondent in Khan Sheikhun on Wednesday said the town was reeling, with dead animals in the streets and residents still shell-shocked after watching their entire families die. "When the strike hit, I felt like I was going to die," Youssef says from his hospital bed. "I was in so much pain that I hoped I would die and no one would save me." Beirut: Syria decried a US missile attack early Friday morning on a government-controlled air base where US officials say the Syrian military launched a deadly chemical attack earlier this week, calling it an "aggression" that led to "losses." Rebels welcomed the US attack. About 60 US Tomahawk missiles hit the Shayrat air base, southeast of Homs, a small installation with two runways, where aircraft often take off to bomb targets in northern and central Syria. The US missiles hit at 3:45 a.m. Friday morning and targeted the base's airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, US officials said. They were fired from two warships in the Mediterranean Sea, in retaliation for Tuesday's deadly chemical attack that officials said used chlorine mixed with a nerve agent, possibly sarin. A military official quoted on Syrian TV said an air base in central Syria was hit early Friday, causing material damage. Another statement, also attributed to an unnamed official, referred to "losses." The officials did not elaborate. Talal Barazi, the governor of Homs province, where the targeted air base is located, told The Associated Press by phone that most of the strikes appeared to target the province in central Syria. He also said the strikes were meant to "support the terrorists on the ground." He told Al Arabiya TV that a fire raged for two hours in the base, until it was put out. A Syrian opposition group, the Syrian Coalition, welcomed the US attack, saying it puts an end to an age of "impunity" and should be just the beginning. Major Jamil al-Saleh, a US-backed rebel commander whose Hama district in the country's center was struck by a suspected chemical weapons attack, said he hoped the U.S. attack on a government air base would be a "turning point" in the six-year war. The bombing represents President Donald Trump's most dramatic military order since taking office. The Obama administration threatened attacking Assad's forces for previous chemical weapons attacks, but never followed through. Trump called on "all civilized nations" to join the US in seeking an end to the carnage in Syria. President Bashar Assad's government had been under mounting international pressure after the chemical attack in northern Syria, with even key ally Russia saying its support is not unconditional and the US launching a barrage of cruise missiles at a government-controlled air base in Syria. Turkey, meanwhile, said samples from victims of Tuesday's attack, which killed more than 80 people in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, indicate they were exposed to sarin, a highly toxic nerve agent. Syria rejected the accusations, and Moscow had warned against apportioning blame until an investigation has been carried out. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday that "unconditional support is not possible in this current world." But he added that "it is not correct to say that Moscow can convince Mr. Assad to do whatever is wanted in Moscow. This is totally wrong." Russia has provided military support for the Syrian government since September 2015, turning the balance of power in Assad's favor. Moscow has used its veto power at the Security Council on several occasions since the civil war began six years ago to prevent sanctions against Damascus. Syria maintains it didn't use chemical weapons, blaming opposition fighters for stockpiling the chemicals. Russia's Defense Ministry said the toxic agents were released when a Syrian airstrike hit a rebel chemical weapons arsenal and munitions factory on the eastern outskirts of Khan Sheikhoun. "I stress, once again, that the Syrian Arab Army did not and will not use such weapons even against the terrorists who are targeting our people," Syria's Foreign Minister Walid Moallem told reporters in Damascus. Trump had said the attack crossed "many, many lines," and put the blame squarely on Assad's forces. Speaking Thursday on Air Force One, Trump said the attack "shouldn't have happened, and it shouldn't be allowed to happen." Earlier, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had said he hopes Trump will take military action, Turkey's state-run Anadolu Agency quoted him as saying. Erdogan said Turkey would be prepared to do "whatever falls on us" to support possible military action, the news agency reported. US officials had said they hoped for a vote late Thursday night on a UN Security Council resolution that would condemn the chemical attack, but with council members still negotiating the text into the evening, the British Mission's political coordinator Stephen Hickey tweeted the vote wouldn't take place until later. At the UN, the United States, which currently holds the presidency of the Security Council, drafted a resolution along with Britain and France that condemns the use of chemical weapons, particularly in the attack on Khan Sheikhoun, "in the strongest terms." Russia objected to key provisions in the resolution and negotiations have been underway to try to bridge the differences. After the attack, hospitals around Khan Sheikhoun were overwhelmed, and paramedics sent victims to medical facilities across rebel-held areas in northern Syria, as well as to Turkey. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group put the death toll at 86. The attack happened in Syria's Idlib province about 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the Turkish border, and the Turkish government - a close ally of Syria's rebels - set up a decontamination center at a border crossing in Hatay province, where the victims were treated initially. Turkish officials said nearly 60 victims of the attack were brought to Turkey for treatment and three of them died. Victims showed signs of nerve gas exposure, including suffocation, foaming at the mouth, convulsions, constricted pupils and involuntary defecation, the World Health Organization and Doctors Without Borders said. Paramedics used fire hoses to wash the chemicals from the bodies of victims. Visuals from the scene were reminiscent of a 2013 nerve gas attack on the suburbs of Damascus that left hundreds dead. In Turkey, Anadolu and the private DHA news agencies on Thursday quoted Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag as saying "it was determined after the autopsy that a chemical weapon was used." The Turkish Health Ministry said later that "according to the results of the first analysis, there were findings suggesting that the patients were exposed to chemical substance (sarin)." WHO experts took part in the autopsies in the Turkish city of Adana late Wednesday, Turkish media reported. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said it has "initiated contact" with Syrian authorities and its Technical Secretariat has been collecting and analyzing information about the allegations. "This is an ongoing investigation," it said. The area of Khan Sheikhoun is difficult to access, and as more time passes since the attack, it will be increasingly difficult to determine exactly what happened. Islamabad: Pakistan today expressed regret at India's snub to the US offer to help resolve the Kashmir issue between the two neighbours, saying New Delhi as usual "reacted negatively" to the proposal. Pakistan always welcomed offers of mediation, which has been made by various countries, to resolve the Kashmir issue, Foreign Office spokesperson Nafess Zakaria told reporters. "India as usual reacted negatively to the US offer. India wants to speak of terrorism. We also insist on speaking of terrorism, which forms one of the elements of the comprehensive dialogue process," he said. The US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, had said on Monday that the US would try and "find its place" in efforts to de-escalate tensions between India and Pakistan. Speaking at the weekly press briefing, Zakaria said resolution of the Kashmir issue in accordance with the wishes of Kashmiri people and UN resolutions is the only way for durable peace in the region. Accusing India of "trying to hide the atrocities in Kashmir", the spokesperson said that the protests during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Kashmir visit recently are reflective of the "strong prevailing sentiment of the Kashmiri people". Zakaria said that alleged Indian ceasefire violations are attempts to divert the attention of the international community from the deteriorating situation in Kashmir. "Our forces act responsibly and with restraint returning fire only when fired upon. We regularly report the incidents to the UNMOGIP, who in turn submit their report to the UN Secretary General. International Community is realising the threat to the regional peace posed by the Indian belligerent posture," he said. He also accused India of involvement in terrorism, saying that it has "irrefutable" evidence about it. "Kulbhushan Yadav and many other examples are irrefutable proof of Indian involvement in Pakistan," he said. Commenting on a New York Times report about India may be reinterpreting its nuclear weapons doctrine of 'No-First Use', he said Pakistan has long maintained that the ambiguous no-first use declaration is not verifiable and hence nothing more than an empty political statement. "It cannot substitute for verifiable arms control and restraint measures. In taking appropriate security measures, Pakistan has to consider capabilities and not intentions which can change anytime. "It goes without saying that the talk about pre-emption in a nuclearized South Asia is highly irresponsible and dangerous and will not help the cause of promoting strategic restraint and stability in the region," he said. Russia warned the United States that there could be "negative consequences" if Washington takes military action against Syria. "All responsibility if military action occurs will be on the shoulders of those who initiated such a doubtful tragic enterprise," Russian Ambassador Vladimir Safronkov told reporters yesterday following a closed-door Security Council meeting on Syria. Safronkov said he had been "frank" during the meeting, telling the council: "We have to think about the negative consequences". "Look at Iraq, look at Libya," he said, referring to Western interventions in those countries that unleashed years of chaos. The United States threatened Syria with military action as President Donald Trump warned "something should happen" following a suspected chemical attack that left at least 86 dead -- including 27 children -- and provoked global outrage. The Security Council emerged from a nearly two-hour meeting with no agreement on how to press forward with an investigation of the attack on Khan Sheikhun in rebel-held Idlib province. Results from post-mortems performed on victims point to exposure to the deadly sarin nerve agent, according to Turkish health officials. Three separate draft resolutions were under discussion in the Security Council. Britain, France and the United States had pushed for a vote on their proposed measure, but decided to hold off during the meeting. Diplomats said a vote now was more likely on today. The Russian ambassador said the decision to postpone the vote "opens up a window for further work" on a compromise.' Russia has rejected the Western-backed resolution as "categorically unacceptable" and put forward a rival draft that does not include specific demands for cooperation from the Syrian government. Bangladesh Prime Minister Shiekh Hasina arrived here today on a four-day visit during which she will hold wide-ranging talks with PM Narendra Modi, who was at the airport to receive her as a special gesture. During Hasina's visit, which is her first after Modi assumed office in 2014, the two sides will be signing at least 25 pacts in various key sectors including civil nuclear cooperation and defence but any agreement on the Teesta water sharing is unlikely to be inked. Modi and Hasina, who is staying at the Rashtrapati Bhawan, will hold comprehensive discussions tomorrow. India is also set to announce a line of credit of USD 500 million to Bangladesh for military supplies. Apart from a "courtesy call on" by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, Hasina's schedule today included events at the Bangladesh High Commission. Officials here have said, "It will be a visit without water, indicating that a pact on Teesta river waters is not on the cards. "The central government will not go ahead with the agreement on Teesta without taking West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on board and she has been opposing it stridently citing water crisis in the state." However, the two sides are looking at the inking of a framework agreement on civil nuclear energy which will provide for extensive cooperation in the sector including setting up of nuclear reactors in Bangladesh by India. "It will be a very very special visit. We hope the visit will take the ties between the two countries to new level," Joint Secretary in the Bangladesh-Myanmar division of the external affairs ministry Sripriya Ranganathan told reporters. On Teesta pact, she said, "Teesta agreement remains a work in progress...We have not reached a closure on it." The Teesta deal was set to be signed during the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Bangladesh in September 2011, but was postponed at the last minute due to objections by Banerjee. Teesta water is crucial for Bangladesh especially in the leanest period from December to March when the water flow often temporarily comes down to less than 1,000 cusecs from 5,000 cusecs. Issues like combating terrorism, containing radicalism and enhancing security cooperation between the two countries are likely to figure prominently, besides stalemate over the Teesta pact during talks between Modi and Hasina. The West Bengal chief minister has accepted an invitation by the government to attend the launch of some projects between the two countries as well as a lunch to be hosted by Modi in honour of Hasina. On the agreements, Ranganathan said another pact on formalising regular defence engagements will also be signed. To boost trade, the two sides are likely to announce setting up of another set of trade facilitation huts along the borders in the northeastern region. Hasina will visit Ajmer on Sunday and will meet Indian business leaders on Monday. Minister of State for Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises Babul Supriyo is the minister-in-waiting for the Bangladesh PM. Tillerson told reporters that the US has a very "high level of confidence" that the chemical attacks which killed at least 86 people, including 27 children, were carried out under the direction of Bashar Al Assad's regime. "We have very high confidence that the attacks involved the use of sarin nerve gas," he said. "It is also clear previous agreements that had been entered into pursuant to UN Security Council Resolution 2118, as well as NXA agreements that the Syrian government themselves accepted back in 2013 whereby they would surrender their chemical weapons under the supervision of the Russian government and the US and the Russian government entered into agreements whereby Russia would locate these weapons, secure these weapons and destroy these weapons," he said. "They would act as the guarantor that these weapons would no longer be present in Syria. Clearly Russia has failed in its responsibility to deliver on that commitment from 2013," he said. He said the US expects wider global support, except from the Assad regime and Russia, to its decision to carry out missile strikes against the Syrian chemical weapons attack. "My expectation is that all of those parties with the exception of Bashar al-Assad and perhaps Russia, I think are going to applaud this particular action," Tillerson told reporters. Tillerson said it is important to recognise that Assad has continued to use chemical weapons in these attacks with no response from the international community. "He is normalising the use of chemical weapons, which may then be adopted by others. Therefore, it's important that some action be taken on behalf of the international community to make clear that these chemical weapons continue to be a violation of international norms," he said. Tillerson said overall the situation in Syria is one where Trump Administration's approach and policy is first to defeat ISIS. "By defeating ISIS, we remove one of the disruptive elements in Syria that exists today," he said. To defeat ISIS is to begin to stabilise areas of Syria, stabilise areas in the south of Syria, stabilise areas around Raqqa through ceasefire agreements between the Syrian regime forces and opposition forces, stabilise those areas, begin to restore some normalcy to them, restore them to local governments," the Secretary of State said. He said there are local leaders who are ready to return to govern these areas. "They will be part of the liberation effort to develop the local security forces, law enforcement, police force, and then use other forces to create outer perimeters of security so that areas like Raqqa, areas in the south can begin to provide a secure environment so refugees can begin to go home and begin the rebuilding process," Tillerson said. "In the midst of that through the Geneva process, we will start a political process to resolve Syria's future in terms of its governance structure and that ultimately in our view will lead to a resolution of Basher al Assad's departure," Tillerson said. Russia, one of the key supporters of the Assad regime in Syria, has "failed in its responsibility" to deliver on a 2013 commitment to secure Syria's chemical weapons, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said today ahead of his visit to Moscow next week. Tillerson's visit, the first trip to Russia by a Trump administration official aimed at establishing closer ties with the former Cold War foe, was announced after the US launched cruise missiles against an air base in Syria in retaliation to the chemical weapons attack in Khan Sheikhun in rebel-held Idlib province."Clearly Russia has failed in its responsibility. Either Russia has been complicit or either Russia has been simply incompetent in its ability to deliver on its end of that agreement," Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters at Palm Beach in Florida after the US launched cruise missiles against a Syrian air base. Four persons, including three students, were today killed while 10 others were injured when a school bus collided head-on with a jeep near Singhpur village, 75 km from here, police said. The incident occurred around 8.30 AM when over 20 students of Cambridge International School were on their way to the school and the bus collided head on with a potato-laden jeep coming from opposite direction, they said. Three students and their school bus driver died on the spot while the 10 injured, including eight students, were rushed to the local civil hospital, police said. Surbhi, her brother Anirudh, Tanish Sharma, all residents of Talwara town, and bus driver Ranjit Singh, a resident of Dehpur were killed in the mishap, police said. Shivani Thakur, Shivangi Thakur, helper Priya and Rakesh Kumar, and another student were critically injured in the mishap, police said. Russia's military today said a US strike on a regime air base in Syria was ineffective but announced Syrian air defences would be strengthened to shield the country's key infrastructure. "To protect Syria's most sensitive infrastructure, a complex of measures will be implemented in the near future to strengthen and improve the effectiveness of the Syrian armed forces' air defence system," defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a statement. He added the strike had had an "extremely low" military impact, and fewer than half of the 59 reported US missiles had actually found their target. "Only 23 missiles reached the Syrian airbase," he said. The strike on the Shayrat airbase, ordered by US President Donald Trump, destroyed six planes under repair and several buildings, including a storage depot and radio station, he said. "The runway, taxi ways and Syrian airforce planes at parking spaces are not damaged," he said. "The military effectiveness of the massive US missile strike on the Syrian airbase is therefore extremely low." Separately, the Russian state channel Rossiya24, in a report from the base, said nine planes, as well as munition and fuel depots, had been destroyed but the facility's runway was intact. Konashenkov's statement said the attack was a "gross violation" of a US-Russian memorandum aimed at avoiding clashes over Syria. Moscow announced earlier it was halting the deal reached in 2015 in response to the strike, despite Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirming the US side had warned Russia of the impending attack through the channels it had established. Trump ordered the strike - Washington's first direct military action against President Bashar Assad's government - in response to what he called a "barbaric" chemical attack this week that he blamed on Damascus. Moscow has been flying a bombing campaign in support of Syrian forces since September 2015 and has sought to deflect blame from its ally over the alleged chemical attack. The Civil Aviation Ministry is learnt to have asked private airlines, which have barred Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad from flying after he assaulted an Air India employee, to revoke the ban. Air India today lifted the flying ban on Gaikwad following an order from the Civil Aviation Ministry, a day after the Osmanabad MP expressed "regret" over the "unfortunate incident" on March 23. On March 24, a day after the incident at the Delhi airport, Air India had barred Gaikwad from flying with it. Following suit, the Federation of Indian Airlines (FIA) had also imposed a ban on him. Jet Airways, SpiceJet, GoAir and IndiGo are part of the grouping. Sources said the Ministry has asked Air India as well as other airlines to lift the ban imposed on Gaikwad citing the "undertaking of good conduct" given by him. However, there has been no official word from any FIA member on the issue. A senior official at an FIA member airline said it has been agreed that police investigation would continue and the MP would not engage in any such unruly conduct in the future. When FIA had imposed a flying ban on Gaikwad, two non- member carriers -- Vistara and AirAsia -- had said they were with the industry on the issue. When contacted, full service carrier Vistara's spokesperson said, "We are reviewing the series of events, related to this case, that took place recently. We have not taken a decision as yet". No-frills carrier AirAsia India's spokesperson said its stand on the ban remains the same, adding that it has not heard anything from the FIA so far on the matter. Home Minister and Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president G Parameshwara on Friday said that no action will be initiated against KPCC womens wing president Lakshmi Hebbalkar for alleged distribution of money to party activists ahead of the Gundlupet byelections. He said no action is warranted unless the charges are proved. He told reporters at a private hotel in the city that the Election Commission has appointed election officers to check violation of model code of conduct. If the officers find Hebbalkar guilty, they will take suitable action against her. The party will not initiate any action against her unless the allegations are proved. No one will prevent the election officers from taking action against the violators, he said. A video of Hebbalkar, believed to be distributing money to voters of Gundlupet Assembly segment at a house in Annurkeri village in the taluk, had gone viral on social media. BJP cannot fool voters Parameshwara expressed confidence about winning bypolls to Nanjangud and Gundlupet Assembly constituencies. He said, The voters are aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates and BJP leaders cannot fool them with lofty speeches. People are aware that only MLAs of the ruling party can take up development works in the constituency and thus they will support the Congress. When asked about ministers camping in Nanjangud and Gundlupet for campaigning and ignoring the interests of their constituencies, Parameshwara said, the ministers are also party workers and no minister has neglected the administrative work. We are in touch with officials and are monitoring development works, he said. A few ministers have in fact abstained from campaigning to ensure that development works do not get affected, he said. Let Prasad prove allegations He refuted V Srinivas Prasads allegations that Parameshwara had brought a bagful of money to Prasads house seeking a ministerial post. Was Prasad chief minister or general secretary of the party to make me minister? If he has any documents let him release them, he challenged. Former minister and BJP candidate from Nanjangud Assembly constituency, V Srinivas Prasad, launched a scathing attack on Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, KPCC president Dr G Parameshwara and Congress leader in the Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge, on Friday. Addressing a media conference here on Friday, he said, it is funny that Siddaramaiah, who wears an expensive Hublot watch says he is seeking his wages (coolie) from the people for his good governance in the form of votes for the Congress in the bypolls. There is no point in me accusing Siddaramaiah as arrogant. It is very evident by his behaviour. This election is a fight between Siddaramaiahs arrogance and my self-respect. Most of the Congress leaders have been misrepresenting my resignation as if I resigned just for power. But, I resigned because I was psychologically deceived and because an undeserving person was inducted into the Cabinet in my place, he said. I am from the home district of the CM. I was always there for him. Even in the last Cabinet meeting I attended, I was seated just beside him. But, the CM did not have the courtesy to consult me. If he wanted me to step down, I would have done it gracefully. But, I was dropped unceremoniously, even without a hint. Another issue that haunts me is that I have been depicted as inefficient than Priyanka Kharge, a novice. In the Cabinet meeting, when the CM announced that he wanted to reshuffle, he said, it was necessary to form an efficient government. In place of me, a Dalit, Kharges son, was inducted. Is he more efficient than me, who has put in 43 years in politics? he asked. Targetting Dr Parameshwara, he said, he was nowhere in the Congress, until he bought a ticket by paying money to some office-bearer of the AICC to contest from Madhugiri Assembly constituency in 1989. Later, to become a minister in Veerappa Moilys government, he paid money to one Jitendra Singh, an aide to then Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao, and I was witness to this. After his defeat in Koratagere in the 2013 polls, he had been complaining that Siddaramaiah engineered his defeat. Now, he is praising Siddaramaiah. What is he? The Home Ministry is under the control of the CM through the advisor, Kempaiah. Police officials themselves do not know who is the Home Minister? he ridiculed. Describing Kharge as an opportunist, he said, after deceiving then chief minister D Devaraja Urs, he has been minister in the cabinet of all chief ministers and has now fled to Delhi, leaving his son to thrive in the State. What is his achievement after winning for a record nine terms from his Gurumitkal Assembly constituency. Has he at least developed his constituency? he asked. Replying to a question he said, he was neither Left nor Right, but straight, and when it came to isms he was a humanist. He recalled the writings of Deendayal Upadhyay, which advocated unity of the nation and inclusiveness. In a swift operation, the city police claim to have arrested two hardcore criminals involved in the murderous assault on ASI of Urwa police station Aithappa in the wee hours of April 5. The suspects identified as Shameer, aged 28 years and a resident of Katipalla, Surathkal and Muhammad Niyaz, aged 20 years from Khana, Surathkal, were apprehended near Pumpwell Circle at 8 pm on April 6 by a special investigation team constituted after the attack on Aithappa during night patrolling. The team included ACPs of central and north sub-divisions, police inspectors of Urwa and east stations, Police Commissioner M Chandra Sekhar told media persons here on Friday. The suspects have confessed to the crime and an attempt to murder case has been booked against them. However, they will be taken into police custody after producing them before the court. A motorcycle has been seized from them and further investigation is on to get information about the motive behind the incident. However, their role in a similar attack on a policeman at Boliyar reported on April 4 is yet to be known, the commissioner said in his reply to a particular query. Both suspects have criminal antecedents. Shameer has eight pending cases. including attempt to murder and assault on public servant registered in various stations here. Niyaz, who has five cases registered against him in different stations, is booked in a case in Shivamogga station too, he said. Chandra Sekhar said the culprits will not be spared as it is an attack on fellow colleague and brother officer. Its the duty (of head of the force) to ensure safety of men and cannot allow people to act according to their whims and fancy. To a question on the condition of Aithappa, Chandra Sekhar said his condition is stable. The department is extending all possible assistance towards his treatment and he is recovering, he added. The situation in Afghanistan can be described as a stalemate at both the strategic and tactical levels. The security environment is precarious, socio-economic development is stagnating and the reconciliation process has reached an impasse. The NATOISAF (North Atlantic Treaty OrganisationInternational Security Assistance Force) strategy to clear-hold-build-transfer-exit has succeeded only partially as the Taliban and the Al Qaeda have not been eliminated and terrorists owing allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) are growing in number. The fledgling Afghan National Army (ANA) and the Afghan National Police (ANP) are not yet capable of managing security after the premature withdrawal of the US-led NATO-ISAF intervention force. The Afghanistan National Security Forces (ANSF, ANA plus ANP) numbers are small (3,52,000). The ANA lacks heavy weapons, artillery, air support and helicopters for logistics support. The standards of junior leadership are low and the troops are inadequately trained and equipped. They do not have the level of motivation necessary to undertake complex counter-insurgency operations on a sustained basis. Cases of fratricide and desertions with weapons are commonplace. While the ANSF and the remnants of the Nato-ISAF forces control most of the large towns and the airports, the Taliban together with the al-Qaeda control large swathes of the countryside. Governance is virtually non-existent outside Kabul. The approximately 13,000 Nato-ISAF troops now remaining in Afghanistan are on a train-advise-assist mission. Unless Afghanistans regional neighbours, the Central Asian Republics (CARs), China, India, Iran, Pakistan and Russia join hands with the international community to supplement the ANSFs efforts to eliminate the insurgents, the security environment is likely to deteriorate further and may degenerate into a civil war. Kabul and New Delhi have had a historically friendly relationship. Afghanistans location at the strategic cross-roads between South Asia and Central Asia and South Asia and West Asia makes it an important geo-political partner. Afghanistan has vast mineral deposits. When the Chabahar port in Iran becomes operational, India will gain access to the CARs through Afghanistan. Hence, peace and stability in Afghanistan are vital national interests for India. India supports the installation of a broad-based and stable representative government in consonance with Afghan customs and traditions. The imposition of the Western model of democracy will not be appropriate. India would prefer a government that adopts a stance of neutrality between India and Pakistan, but should be willing to work closely with any government that is truly representative of the Afghan people. Indias efforts to provide greater assistance are being hampered by the lack of geographical contiguity. India has only limited access to Afghanistan as Pakistan has not given India transit rights. Indias attempts to allay Pakistans misapprehensions about New Delhis intentions have not been successful as Pakistan has steadfastly refused to discuss this issue. Afghanistans problems cant be resolved unless the trans-Durand Line challenges that it faces from Pakistan and the Haqqani network are addressed simultaneously. The India-Afghanistan Strategic Partnership agreement was signed in October 2011. It calls for close political cooperation with a mechanism for regular consultations and joint initiatives on regional and international issues. It stipulates a strategic dialogue to provide a framework for cooperation in the field of national security. Security cooperation is intended to enhance mutual efforts against international terrorism, organised crime, illegal trafficking in narcotics and money laundering. The agreement specifies that India will assist in the training, equipping and capacity building programmes of the ANSF. It commits the two sides to strengthening trade, economic, scientific and technological cooperation, as well as cooperation between other bodies of business and industry representatives India has committed itself to continue to provide assistance for Afghan-istans reconstruction and development programmes and capacity building. Policy objectives Indias policy objectives in Afghanistan are in consonance with the strategic partnership agreement. Besides a stable and preferably neutral government, Indias political objectives include the following: ensure that Afghanistan does not again become a base and safe haven for terrorists and radical extremists; counter Pakistans quest for strategic depth, acquire access to Afghanistan and through it to the CARs; establish broad-based engagement with all political groups; support Afghan-led reconciliation efforts, as visualised by the Afghan High Peace Council; assist Afghanistan to train its administrative and judicial staff to improve governance and delivery of justice; and, further enhance people-to-people contacts. Indias national security objectives comprise: supporting the capacity building efforts of ANSF by ensuring implementation of the Strategic Partnership Agreement, including the supply of war-like stores; ensuring the safety and protection of Indian assets and infrastructure in Afghanistan; and, cooperating to share intelligence. Indias economic policy objectives are to increase trade with Afghanistan and through it with the CARs; enhance Indian business investment in Afghanistan; assist Afghanistan to develop its natural resources; further increase Indias reconstruction and capacity building programme; enhance Indias energy security; for example, through the commissioning of the TAPI (TurkmenistanAfghanistanPakistanIndia) pipeline; assist Afghanistan to replace narcotics-based agriculture with regular agriculture; and, work towards the implementation of Safta (South Asian Free Trade Area). Finally, unless the security environment improves substantially, governance and development will continue to take a back seat. The P-5 (UN permanent members: China, France, Russia (formerly the Soviet Union), the United Kingdom, and the United States) need to be persuaded to supplement the ANSF with a United Nations or a regional peacekeeping force to eliminate the Taliban. Though there is no support in India for sending troops to Afghanistan, there is realisation that the fight against the Taliban and the al Qaeda has long-term security implications for the country as peace and stability in Afghanistan are vital national interests. Along with other neighbours, New Delhi should be willing to deploy up to one division (15,000 troops) to join such a force provided Pakistans sensibilities about Indian military presence in Afghanistan can be assuaged. (The writer is Distinguished Fellow, Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi) It has been a hard journey for the 81-year-old Dalai Lama, perhaps his last over the mountain passes at the edge of China, to a town that has played a fateful role in his life, and in the history of Tibetan Buddhism. Violent rains buffeted the small plane he flew into the valley. His party was forced to continue overland, travelling seven or eight hours a day over steep serpentine roads, lined with villagers hoping to glimpse him. Each day, as he came closer to the holy site of Tawang, China pressed India more forcefully to stop his progress, its warnings growing increasingly ominous. By Thursday, a day before the Dalai Lama was expected to reach Tawang, the official China Daily wrote that Beijing would not hesitate to answer blows with blows if the Indian authorities allowed the Dalai Lama to continue. At stake on this journey, scholars said, is the monumental question of who will emerge as the Dalai Lamas successor and whether that successor, typically a baby identified as the next reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, will live inside or outside Chinas zone of influence. By visiting Tawang, a Tibetan Buddhist stronghold that was the birthplace of a previous Dalai Lama, he is expertly needling Beijing, which maintains that this area should be part of China. He is also consolidating his sects deep roots among the population, potentially laying the groundwork for a reincarnation there. He is a wise Lama, and he is thinking far ahead, as he always has, said Brahma Chellaney, an analyst at New Delhis Centre for Policy Research. He is not given to sentimental reasoning. There is nothing about his trip to Arunachal Pradesh that is sentimental in its nature. Tawang is home to the Monpa people, who practise Tibetan Buddhism and once paid tribute to rulers in Lhasa. Though the towns population is about 11,000, officials said they were expecting as many as 60,000 to gather for the Dalai Lamas appearances at Tawangs monastery this weekend. We have been preparing for the last two months, said Lobsang Khum, secretary of the monastery. Everybody wants to see him, get his blessings, touch his feet. For us, the Dalai Lama is more important than our lives. The most treasured lore among the Monpa surrounds Tsangyang Gyatso, who in 1682 became the sixth Dalai Lama. People here make pilgrimages to his childhood home, where a stone is displayed with a faint footprint said to be his, and speak longingly of the possibility that it could happen again. That is the dream of many people here, that the next Dalai Lama should be born in Tawang, said Sang Phuntsok, Tawangs Deputy Commissioner. Tsering Tashi, a local legislator, said that, as a layman, he had no business commenting, but in the end he could not restrain himself. I wish that the reincarnation of the next Dalai Lama happens in Tawang, he said. Thats all I can say. The Dalai Lama has been enigmatic about how his successor will be chosen. In the past, monks have turned to visions and oracles to lead them to a child conceived just as the previous Dalai Lama died. Having identified a child, they administer tests seeking to confirm that he is the reincarnated lama, such as asking him to pick out objects belonging to his predecessor. But that method would leave Tibetan Buddhism without a leader for at least a year, allowing China to identify and promote its own candidate. The Dalai Lama has hinted that he may instead opt for a nontraditional selection process, selecting a child or an adult to succeed him while he is still alive. Ageing Tibetan Buddhist lamas have, in some cases, visited places where they would later be reincarnated as babies, and the Dalai Lamas visits to Tawang and Mongolia seemed to fall into that pattern, said Robert J Barnett, a historian of modern Tibet at Columbia University. This is a way of getting under the skin of the Chinese, of probing them, and reminding them that they have no control over where the next reincarnation occurs, he said. As the Dalai Lamas arrival in Tawang grew closer this week, Chinese statements grew increasingly bellicose, a tactic that has succeeded in pressuring officials of many countries to snub the Tibetan leader. Chinese frustration On Wednesday, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said India had obstinately arranged the Dalai Lamas visit, causing serious damage to bilateral ties. On Thursday, The Global Times, a China-run tabloid, suggested that China could retaliate by supporting the anti-Indian militancy in Kashmir. Can India afford the consequence? it asked sarcastically. With a GDP several times higher than that of India, military capabilities that can reach the Indian Ocean and having good relations with Indias peripheral nations, coupled with the fact that Indias turbulent northern state borders China, will Beijing lose to New Delhi? Though India is typically wary of provoking China, several officials have been unusually pugnacious in their responses. Pema Khandu, the Chief Minister of Arunachal Pradesh, took the unusual step this week of stating that an independent Tibet, not China, is Indias true northern neighbour. Let me get this straight, Khandu told journalists. China has no business telling us what to do and what not to do, because it is not our next-door neighbour. The Dalai Lama, for his part, has been characteristically jovial to the crowd of journalists trailing after him, expounding cheerily on subjects from quantum physics to global warming. He hardly needs to do more, Barnett said. He doesnt have to do anything except exist and be his usual beaming self to embarrass the Chinese, he said. He will be right on the border, he will be a complete free person, he will be only metres away from Chinese territory, but they cannot do anything about it. The Dalai Lama also revisited his escape from Tibet in 1959, when he fled a Chinese military crackdown in Lhasa. Disguised, and with a small group of aides, he crossed the mountain passes to safety in Tawang. He was reunited this week with Naren Chandra Das, 76, an Indian soldier who escorted him on the last three days. The two embraced before the cameras: the former soldier painfully thin, his eyes clouded by cataracts; the monk apple-cheeked and jovial. I became old, but he stays the same, Das said. He is a big man, the king of Tibet. The state government is learnt to have decided to speed up the process to re-structure administrative zones in the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) and increase their number to 10 from eight. An expert committee on re-structuring the BBMP headed by former chief secretary B S Patil has been directed to soon submit the revised proposal for increasing the number of zones. The three-member committee has been asked to carve out new zones, besides increasing their numbers to 10 for providing effective administration. The committee has been asked to submit the revised proposal at the earliest. The panel has been asked to set right anomalies in the existing administrative zones to ensure effective delivery of services to people, Additional Chief Secretary to Urban Development Department Mahendra Jain said. The committee had submitted its proposal on carving out new zones in December 2015. But many Congress MLAs from Bengaluru had pointed anomalies in the proposal and asked the government to set them right. Some Assembly constituencies such as Yeshwanthpura were spreading across more than two proposed zones. Besides, number of wards were not evenly distributed; some proposed zones had more than 45 wards, while some had only 6. The government is keen on re-structuring BBMP zones as its bill the Karnataka Municipal Corporation (Amendment) Bill, 2015 seeking to abolish the BBMP and establish more than two corporations is pending before the President of India for his assent. Re-structuring the BBMP is one of the promises that was made by ruling Congress during 2013 Assembly elections. A PIL has been filed challenging the appointment of only persons belonging to the Muslim community to head the Karnataka State Minorities Commission since its inception in 1983. The petitioner Vinod B, an advocate, has contended that Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Zoroastrians (Parsis) and Jains are identified as minorities. But since the inception of the commission, only Muslims are being appointed as chairpersons. The petitioner has sought quashing of the appointment of Balkhees Banu as the chairperson of the commission arguing that it is in violation of Article 16 (Equality of opportunity in matters of public employment) of the Constitution of India. A division bench headed by Chief Justice S K Mukherjee directed the petitioner to give a representation to the Principal Secretary, Minority Welfare Department, in the matter. Countering the RBI governors statement against farm loan waiver in Uttar Pradesh, the BJP farmers cell said it was a one-time decision to mitigate the agrarian crisis. Uttar Pradesh (UP) Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had on April 4 announced a Rs 36,000 crore relief package to fulfil the poll promise. Farmers cell chief Birendra Singh Mast said, The RBI governor made the comment from the business view point. But, the government has to deal the crisis the farmers are facing. Singh also said that Patel should go through a report on the banking sector which clearly points out that as high as 95% loan recovery is from the farmers, and that villagers and rural inhabitants contribute the maximum towards bank deposits. The MP from Uttar Pradesh also said the government should work towards uplifting the farmers. On Thursday, Patel had said writing off farm loans undermines honest credit culture, impacts credit discipline and plugs incentives for future borrowers to repay. In other words, waivers engender moral hazard. He also said it entails transfer from tax payers to borrowers. Adityanaths decision has put pressure on other states to come up with similar bailout packages. The BJPs ally Shiv Sena has now urged the Maharashtra government to offer similar assistance to distressed farmers. Overall, 3.5 lakh farmers have committed suicide in the country as they could not pay off loans. Industries Minister R V Deshpande on Friday criticised the remark by Goa Tourism Minister Manohar Ajgaonkar to evict Lambanis, a nomadic tribe from Karnataka, from the beaches of Goa, terming it anti-democratic. In a press statement, Deshpande said the remark made by the minister is an attack on the very foundation of the federal system in the country. Ajgaonkar had reportedly said that Lambanis should be banned from Goa because they damage the reputation of the state and do not fit into the Goan culture. Deshpande said the remark reflected the anti-democratic attitude of the BJP government in Goa. Karnataka Tourism Minister Priyank Kharge hit out at his Goa counterpart asking If BJP really claim to be Sab ka saat, sab ka vikaas, then why the Lamanis are out of that, in his twitter handle @priyankK-harge. Kharge charged Ajgaonkar of unfairly stereotyping an entire community. The residents of Nuh tehsil in Haryana close to the Rajasthan border are terrified and shocked after the death of Pehlu Khan, who was beaten up by cow vigilantes on April 1. The house of the 55-year-old dairy farmer is located in Jaisinghpura, 15 km from Nuh tehsil headquarters. The incident has shocked not only his eight children but also the entire tehsil. Khans eldest son, Irshad, who was witness to the brutal incident, told DH, Cow vigilantes mercilessly used sticks, rods and belts to attack my father. We were stopped near Behror by some people (cow vigilantes) as we were on our way back to Alwar in the pick-up jeeps, said Irshad, who was returning with his father from Jaipur cow fair. Irshad said the vigilantes told them that they were from the Shiv Sena and the Bajrang Dal. They tore our documents We had all the relevant papers to show that we were carrying the cows for dairy farming. We showed them the receipt of sale and purchase. But they were in no mood to listen to us. They tore our documents and attacked my father in front of my eyes, Irshad said. For Khans relatives, wife and children, it is hard to believe that he is no more. Irshad is clueless on how he is going to console his siblings. My youngest brother is 5 years old and its very difficult to explain to him that Abba will never return. When we left for Jaipur, our father told him that we will return with new cows to produce more milk. But now I dont have an answer to their questions. Most of the villagers are into dairy farming and visit Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh to buy cows and buffalos. But now most of them are in shock after Khans killing. The nondescript Jaisinghpura village, which has about 5,000 population, is in southwest Haryana and is dominated by Muslims. On Friday, the Rajasthan government sent a report to the Union Home Ministry that a special police team has been constituted to arrest the accused in the lynching of a Muslim man in Alwar. On Thursday, members of the medical board, which performed the postmortem, confirmed that Khan died of injuries and cardiac arrest was secondary. The Rajasthan Police on Wednesday night arrested three youths in Alwar in connection with Khans death. Unaccounted for cash of Rs 20 lakh was seized from a car belonging to Manojkumar Karjagi, Director of North West Karnataka Road Transport Corporation, near Hotel Gateway, in the town, on Friday. It is said that BJP workers waylaid and checked the car belonging to Karjagi, a close confidante of Mines and Geology Minister Vinay Kulkarni and found the unaccounted for money. They alerted the police and election officers immediately. Manojkumar Karjagi has been taken into custody for enquiry. In another incident, election officials duty seized Rs 3.14 lakh cash from the supporters of BJP leader M P Renukacharya at Hirikati check-post in the taluk on Friday. Following a tip off, the police intercepted a multi utility vehicle coming from Gundlupet town. During inspection, the authorities found unaccounted for money. The police said they have taken three persons Basavaraju, Mahesh and Sadananda Murthy said to be supporters of Renukacharya, into custody for transporting the money. However, the police confirmed that Renukacharya was not in the car. A case has been filed at Begur police station. When contacted, Renukacharya said he has no link to the case and he had travelled in his vehicle. The BJP on Friday claimed that RJD president Lalu Prasad too was involved in the land and soil scam and charged him with amassing property worth crores when he was railway minister in the UPA-I government. The charges were made close on the heels of BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi accusing Lalus son Tej Pratap, who is the forest and environment minister in the Nitish Cabinet, of being involved in the Rs 90 lakh soil scam. When Lalu Prasad was the railway minister, an industrialist Harsh Kochar was given two railway hotels one in Ranchi and the other in Puri (Odisha). In return, a piece of land in Patna of around two acres was transferred in February 2005 to Delight Marketing Private Limited whose director was RJD MP Prem Chand Gupta, Lalus key aide, said Modi. Lalus two sons Tej Pratap and Tejaswi Yadav and daughter Chanda Yadav were made directors of the company. Later, on November 12, 2016, Delight Marketing Private Ltd was renamed Lara Projects Private Limited (Lara after Lalu and Rabri). Land worth crores is now under absolute control of Lalu and Rabri and their family members, said Modi. The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) on Friday came down heavily on cow vigilantes, saying self-proclaimed volunteers are creating an atmosphere of fear by taking the law into their hands. The NHRC said the state has the responsibility to remain vigilant to prevent such activities and the offenders should be dealt with strictly. The NHRCs remarks came as it sought a report from Rajasthan over the murder of a man by suspected cow vigilantes in Alwar and asked the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to explain the measures taken to deal with such incidents. The commission has observed that the contents of the media reports are painful. This is a serious issue of violation of human rights of the victims. Self-proclaimed volunteers creating an atmosphere of fear in society by taking the law into their hands are required to be dealt with strictly as per law, it said. The NHRC said the incident was not the first of its kind. In a similar incident in Gujarat, four Dalit boys, possessing beef, were severely beaten up in July 2016. The commission said it has issued a notice to the chief secretary of Rajasthan asking for a detailed report in the matter. A notice has also been issued to the Union home secretary, calling for a response as to what steps have been taken or proposed to be taken by the Centre to deal with such incidents in the country. The response is expected within four weeks, an NHRC spokesperson said. The commission said a group of cow vigilantes attacked some people on the pretext that they were cattle smugglers, though they were dairy farmers carrying cows legally purchased under a receipt and stamp of the Jaipur Municipal Corporation. The assault resulted in the death of a person. However, the Rajasthan Police have registered an FIR against the victims for illegally transporting cattle for slaughter, it said, quoting media reports. Reportedly, the family members of the deceased, a dairy farmer, stated that the victims showed the attackers the receipt of legally purchased cows but they continued to thrash them. They snatched their wallets and cash, about Rs 1 lakh, as well as mobile phones, the NHRC said. The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to examine whether notice has to be issued to former Karnataka chief minister B S Yeddyurappa and senior Congress leader and Energy Minister D K Shivakumar in a case pertaining to denotification of land in Bengaluru. A bench of Justices A K Sikri and Ashok Bhushan fixed the matter for consideration on May 4 as advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for complainant-petitioner Kabbalegowda, pleaded for issuing of formal notice to both the leaders, among others. Senior advocates Kapil Sibal, appearing for Shivakumar, and Sidharth Luthra, representing Yeddyurappa, opposed the plea saying their arguments have to be heard before passing any order in this regard. The court then put the matter for consideration on May 4. The issue relates to denotification of 4.20 acres in 2010 in contravention of the Karnataka Restriction of Transfer of Land Act, 1991 and in violation of the Prevention of Corruption Act and Indian Penal Code . In a special leave petition, Kabbalegowda, a social worker from Ramanagaram district, has challenged the Karnataka High Courts order of December 18, 2015, quashing the proceedings initiated against the two leaders as well as Hamed Ali, who was then working as sub-registrar at Bengaluru South taluk, and others. The Nippani police in the district on Friday arrested six people, including four from Mumbai, and seized gold ornaments worth Rs 2.54 crore and Rs 1.57 crore cash. The police arrested the six near Mangur Cross on Pune-Bengaluru national highway in Chikkodi taluk while they were carrying the gold ornaments and cash from Mumbai to Belagavi without proper documents. The police said that they laid a trap following a tip off that huge quantity of gold ornaments and cash were being brought to Belagavi from Mumbai without proper documents. The police intercepted the car in which the six persons were travelling and seized the gold ornaments and cash. The police identified the arrested as Sripal Champalal Chavan, a resident of Balanwadi in Mumbai; Ranjitsingh Khemsinghji and Kantilal Sunilal Kumawath, both from Pali in Rajasthan and residents of Mumbai; Darsheeth Lalit Parmar of Lower Parel, Mumbai; Harsh Sripal Porwal of Sheri Galli in Belagavi and Praveen Bansilal Porwal of Maruti Galli in Belagavi. They were carrying gold ornaments weighing 8.77 kg worth Rs 2,54,59,100, cash of Rs 1,57,48,000, cell phones worth Rs 69,000, the police said. The police also seized the car in which they were travelling. While stories of Kashmiri youths throwing stones at security forces are making headlines, far away from media gaze, thousands of youngsters are turning up for army recruitment rallies throughout the Valley. Defying diktats of the Hurriyat and militants to boycott the recruitment drive, hundreds of youth from across the Valley converged at 10 Sector Rashtriya Rifles headquarters in Haiderbeig, Pattan, 32 km from here, on Tuesday and Wednesday to become a part of the third-largest armed force in the world. The army is holding such rallies in all 10 districts of the Valley from April 4 to 12. Nearly 19,000 people have registered online for these rallies. There are no avenues of employment in Kashmir and joining the armed forces is the best option. We have to find a means of livelihood for ourselves and our families. Why should we listen to the calls of Hurriyat leaders, who have themselves made a fortune in the name of so-called azadi, Ashraf, one of the participating candidates from south Kashmir, told DH. Like Ashraf, dozens from south Kashmir in the age group of 18-22 years lined up for the recruitment. A total of 2,300 MW of power has been generated in the current year following the commissioning of three units, which is a record of sorts, Karnataka Power Corporation Limited (KPCL) Managing Director G Kumar Naik said on Thursday. He was speaking after setting in motion the second unit of the Yeramarus Thermal Power Station which has the capacity to generate 800 MW of power. We have written to the Krishna Bhagya Jala Nigam Ltd (KBJNL) seeking water supply for the functioning of the YTPS and the RTPS (Raichur Thermal Power Station). There was some confusion on the matter because of lack of clear information, he said. The YTPS project has been executed by the Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL), the managing director informed. The Air India (AI) Cabin Crew Association has demanded that Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad tender an unconditional apology before he is allowed to fly. In a letter to AI Chairman and Managing Director Ashwani Lohani, the association warned that a decision in favour of Gaikwad without an unconditional apology would affect the employees morale. Unless he tenders an unconditional apology to AI employees, and undertakes in writing to abide by the Chicago and Tokyo Conventions and Rules of the Air and follow all cabin safety and public behaviour norms, we must not let him on board, the letter stated. The 110-year-old Siddaganga Mutt seer Shivakumara Swamy has been selected for the first Sri Bhagwan Mahaveer Peace award instituted by the Department of Kannada and Culture. According to an official press release, the award is being presented to the seer in recognition of his services in providing free food, education, and shelter to children irrespective of their religion, caste or creed. The award will be presented on Sunday in Bengaluru or Tumakuru, on the occasion of Mahaveer Jayanthi. Kannada University, Hampi, vice chancellor Prof Mallika Ghanti has been selected for the Akkamahadevi award for the year 2016 in recognition to her contribution to the field of literature. Prof Ghanti has many works of poetry and literary criticism to her credit. The award will be presented on April 11 in Bengaluru, on the occasion of Akkamahadevi Jayanthi. Both the awards carry a purse of Rs 3 lakh each and a citation. Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha MP Dola Sen was caught in a controversy on Friday following claims by Air India that she delayed a Delhi-Kolkata flight by around 40 minutes over disputes on the seating arrangement. Dola had booked seats for herself and her mother on an Air India flight to Kolkata scheduled for Friday afternoon. The MP had booked a ticket for her mother in the front row so that she gets enough leg space. The airline said that as the seat was near the emergency exit, it could be allotted only to physically fit passengers as per the rules. The national carrier said that although Dola had paid extra for the required seats, while booking the tickets through a travel portal, she had not informed them that a wheelchair-bound passenger would be travelling. The crew requested her that her mother be shifted to another seat. According to the airline, Sen objected to it as she had paid extra for the front row seats. An airline official said the MP started screaming at the crew even though they offered her mother a business class seat, which she refused. The US-based agri major Monsanto has been accused of adopting an illegal route to push for its genetically engineered Roundup Ready cotton seeds in five states to create an artificial demand for its proprietary pesticide and eventually for its gen-next GM cotton seeds. The allegations were made by the RSS-backed Swadeshi Jagran Manch, which claims to have found evidence after suspected samples were tested positive in the Central Institute of Control Research, Nagpur an institution under the Indian Council of Agriculture Research. The saffron camp claimed that Monsanto released the Roundup Ready Flex (RRF) cotton seeds into lakhs of acres in Gujarat, Odisha, Maharashtra, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh after transferring the RRF trait into several local varieties. The cotton plants which have the RRF traits would not be killed by Roundup herbicide which would kill all the other weeds in the field. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday made a departure from convention and received his Bangladesh counterpart Sheikh Hasina at the airport himself as she arrived a four-day visit. With New Delhi walking the extra mile to accord a warm welcome to her, Hasina sought to make sure that her visit would see India and Bangladesh making some progress on the stalled negotiation for a proposed deal to share the water of the river Teesta. Receiving the Bangladesh prime minister at the airport is a special courtesy that Modi has extended only to former US president Barack Obama and Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan. A minister of state of the Union government is generally deputed to receive foreign leaders at the airport. The prime minister along with the President receives the visiting leader at the ceremonial welcome at the Rashtrapati Bhavan. Sources told the DH that the prime minister departed from the conventional practice and received Hasina at the airport to underline the importance India attaches to its relations with Bangladesh. She will be staying in the Rashtrapati Bhavan during her stay a rare courtesy New Delhi reserves only for the leaders of the nations with which India shares a special friendship. On the eve of her visit, New Delhi Municipal Corporation renamed Park Street in New Delhi after Hasinas late father and founder-leader of Bangladesh, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Hasina referred to the shared culture, heritage and resources of India and Bangladesh in an article published in an Indian newspaper on the first day of her visit to New Delhi. In the article, she wondered why if the two neighbouring nations could share so much, they cannot agree on sharing the water of a river. Her words on Teesta signalled that an agreement with India on water-sharing remained a key expectation of Bangladesh, as both nations are keen to take the bilateral relations to new heights. Officials in New Delhi almost ruled out the possibility of an agreement on the sharing of water during the current visit of the Bangladesh prime minister. Sources, however, told DH that the joint statement that will be issued after the meeting between Modi and Hasina will signal New Delhis resolve to build consensus within the country for clinching the much-awaited deal with Dhaka. Modi has invited Trinamool Congress supremo and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to a lunch he will host for the Bangladesh prime minister at the Hyderabad House in New Delhi on Saturday. Mamata had in September 2011 opted out of the then prime minister Manmohan Singhs entourage to Bangladesh, protesting against New Delhis bid to strike a deal on Teesta. The Sena stepped up pressure on the government and the MP sent a letter regretting his action to Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju, which the national carrier treated as an apology to its employees. As the government faced criticism for going soft on Gaikwad, the Ministry of Civil Aviation said it is amending the Civil Aviation Regulation Rules to deal with unruly passengers in a more effective manner and establish a National No Fly List. In view of the apology tendered by Shri Gaikwad (sic) and the undertaking of good conduct given by him, Air India and other Airlines are advised to lift the ban imposed on him for air travel, the ministry instructed AI through a letter. Other airlines are expected to revoke the ban soon. An AI spokesperson said, Air India is committed to ensuring that its employees are not assaulted or misbehaved with. We will take strong action to preserve the dignity of our employees. The spokesperson added that investigations against the MP would continue. The instruction came as the Air India Cabin Crew Association demanded that Gaikwad should not be allowed to fly until he tenders an unconditional apology. The Indian Commercial Pilots Association, too, demanded an unconditional apology, failing which they have threatened to not fly him. Gaikwad faced the wrath of AI and six other airlines for his behaviour and became the first passenger in Indias aviation history to be banned from flying. Hours before the ban was lifted, AI said it had thwarted two attempts by Gaikwad to book tickets for travel on April 17 and 24. But Gaikwad said he did not book any tickets and requested AI not to penalise citizens or encroach upon their rights just because their surname or name resembles his and to stop defaming him. Air India on Friday lifted the ban on flying imposed on Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad after he expressed regret for assaulting its manager a fortnight ago. The Supreme Court on Friday sought the response of the Central government and six State governments, including Karnataka and Rajasthan, on a plea for immediate action against cow protection groups indulging in violence. The apex court action comes days after a Muslim man, Pehlu Khan, was allegedly killed on suspicion of transporting cows in Alwar in Rajasthan. A three-judge bench presided over by Justice Dipak Misra considered it appropriate to seek a formal response from the governments after senior advocate Sanjay Hegde, appearing for a PIL petitioner, pointed to the killing of Pehlu Khan last week. The issue required immediate attention since cow vigilantism seemed to be left unchecked in various states, leading to violence and hooliganism, the counsel said. The recent incident in Rajasthan showed the gravity of the situation, he added. The bench then asked Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar if formal notices had been issued on the PILs, filed last year separately by Robert Vadra's kin Tehseen Poonawalla, and two others. After PM Narendra Modi's strong rebuke to the groups resorting to violence in name of cow protection, Poonawalla had on August 13, 2016 approached the SC through his PIL. The petition first came up for hearing on October 21. The court then decided to examine the matter and directed the petitioner to hand over a copy of the petition to respective states and Union government's counsel. Kumar said that though the court had asked the Centre and six state governments to appear in the matter, no formal notices were issued. The bench then issued notices to the Centre and state governments of Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka and Jharkhand. It sought their responses within three weeks and also agreed to list the matter for hearing on May 3. The petitioners sought direction to declare the provisions of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Karnataka laws unconstitutional, as they granted recognition to the vigilante groups for cow protection. They claimed the vigilante groups were operating beyond the realm of law. The Gujarat Animal Prevention Act provided that all persons exercising powers under this Act shall be deemed to be public servants within the meaning of Section 21 of the Indian Penal Code. Ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modis forthcoming visit to Tel Aviv, India has signed a $2 billion (nearly Rs 12,880 crore) contract with Israel Aerospace Industries for supply of air defence missiles to the Indian Army. The principle component of the deal is a mega contract worth over $1.6 billion, under which the Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) will provide Barak-8 medium-range surface-to-air-missile (MR-SAM) defence systems to the Indian Army. The missiles reportedly have a range of 70 km. This is the largest defence contract in the history of Israels defence industry, whose presence is growing steadily in India. In addition, the company will also provide air defence missiles for Indias latest aircraft carrier Vikrant, which is currently under construction in Cochin shipyard. The MR-SAM is an advanced ground-breaking air and missile defence system that provides protection against a variety of aerial threats. It includes an advanced phased-array radar, command and control, mobile launchers and missiles with advanced RF seekers. Similarly surface-to-air-missiles are being used by the Navy and Air Force, which in the past inked contracts with the IAI worth Rs 2,600 crore and Rs 10,000 crore respectively to protect themselves from enemy strikes. The current contracts represent an enormous expression of confidence by India in IAIs capabilities and advanced technologies which are being developed with our local partners as part of the Make in India policy, Joseph Weiss, IAIs President and CEO, said in a statement. The current version of MR-SAM is operational with the Indian Air Force, Navy and Israel Defence Forces. The MR-SAM was jointly developed by the IAI and the Defence Research and Development Organisation in collaboration with Rafael and IAI/Elta. Former BJP MP Tarun Vijay ended up fuelling a controversy on Friday while trying to douse another. He argued that if Indians were racist, why would they live with those from the south, who are blacks. Vijay, a former editor of the RSS mouthpiece Panchjanya, made the remarks on al Jazeeras online show The Stream while defending the Narendra Modi government over the attacks on Africans in Greater Noida last month. Vijay said: If we (Indians) were racist, why would we have the entire south? Which is you know... completely Tamil, you know Kerala, you know Karnataka and Andhra. Why do we live with them? We have blacks, black people all around us. A group of 44 African envoys had dubbed the mob violence xenophobic and racial. They had also accused the Centre of not taking known, sufficient and visible action that could deter future possible assaults. The government had stated that the assaults on African students were merely criminal acts. The Congresss leader in the Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge ridiculed Vijay for his comments which he insisted showed the BJPs inclination to discriminate between the people of its own country. DMKs former MP Kanimozhi described it as an anti-national statement. I hope the BJP takes strict action against him, she said. DMKs organising secretary T K S Elangovan was more critical. Racism is not in colour, racism is in culture. This is funny that people living in Tamil Nadu or Kerala are black. He has chosen a wrong word to define south Indians, he said. Forced onto the back foot after the video went viral, Vijay tendered an apology on his official Twitter handle. My words perhaps were not enough to convey this. Feel bad, really feel sorry, my apologies to those who feel i said different than what I meant, Vijay tweeted. In another tweet, he said, I can die but how can I ridicule my own culture, my own people and my own nation? Think before you misinterpret my badly framed sentence. Yes. Interestingly, Vijay also posted a photograph showing him with former Tamil Nadu chief minister O Paneerselvam last December to thank Late CM Jayalalithaa for helping Thiruvalluvar statue at Haridwar (sic). An embarrassed BJP spokesperson Shaina N C felt the former MP could have phrased his statement differently. Maybe he (Vijay) could have worded it differently...For whatever words (used by Vijay), India continues to be a diverse country, she said. Del Mar could save $365,000 per year, reduce police response times and improve police service overall by ending its contract with the Sheriffs Department and instead start its own police department, a report by city staff has concluded. The report was presented to the City Council at its meeting on Monday, April 3. Although the report was unequivocal in recommending the benefits of a stand-alone police department versus the current contract with the San Diego County Sheriffs Department, Mondays discussion highlighted deep divisions both within the community and on the council, and the issue remains far from settled. One of the leading opponents to the idea is Councilman Dave Druker, who was re-elected to the council last November after previously serving on the panel. Monday, he noted that during the run-up to the November election, three candidates came out in favor of Del Mar launching its own police department, and, not one of them is sitting on this dais tonight. The public is not in favor of having a police department, said Druker. Theyve made their minds up. Last week, Druker sent out an email to Del Mar residents, outlining his objections to a proposed police department, and asking them to email the city if they agreed with his position. City Clerk Ashley Jones reported that the city had received 106 emails opposed to the police department proposal, and two in favor. Mayor Terry Sinnott took Druker to task for his email to constituents. From my perspective, you are throwing up every possible suggestion, idea, and thought out of the blue to try to stop this effort from going forward, Sinnott said. The email got everybody excited, agitated and inflamed when we hadnt had a chance to discuss it. Sinnott said he favored going out to the community over the next several months, having a robust discussion of the issue and then bringing the proposal back to the council for a decision. I think we owe it to our community to really allow them time to learn about it, Sinnott said. Councilman Dwight Worden said he had three main questions about the proposal to start a police department: can police services be provided at the same or lesser cost, will it provide better service and will the city be able to manage the potential liability and pension costs? I think the report answers all three of those yes, he said. Theres a lot of appeal to pursuing this further, a lot of benefits are potentially there. It would be very premature and inappropriate to end the dialogue tonight. After listening to City Manager Scott Huths report, public testimony and having its own discussion, the council voted 5-0 to hold a special workshop on the police department proposal before deciding whether to launch a community outreach effort. Huths report said, a stand-alone Police Department... would allow for a community based policing model that provides Del Mar with continuity, better response times and additional staff at a reduced annual cost. The city, which covers 1.8 square miles and has some 4,100 residents, spends $2.7 million annually on its current contract with the Sheriffs Department. A Del Mar Police Department budget would run $2.3 million, said the report. Start-up costs of $2 million to $3 million would be recouped in five to seven years. The city report said Sheriffs response times to priority 4 calls, the least serious types of incidents, which could include loud parties, trespassing or petty theft, average 47.6 minutes. One reason is that the deputy assigned to Del Mar is actually handling calls outside city limits about 40 percent of the time. This dynamic leads to longer response times in Del Mar and also impacts the law enforcement presence in our community, the report said. Another benefit of a city police department, said the report, is that it would end the high turnover rate that currently exists among sheriffs personnel assigned to the city. Huth told the council that during his five-year tenure with the city, the Sheriffs Department has had four different captains in charge of the Encinitas Sheriffs station, a position that equates to chief of police for contract cities such as Del Mar. The report proposed a department with the equivalent of 19 full-time positions, up from the 15.8 now available under the sheriffs contract. In his email, Druker listed a number of reasons he is against the proposal, including: Increased city staffing; the need to build a police station and jail or holding tank, possibly at the site of the new City Hall; that Del Mar residents would be subject to increased ticketing for traffic violations; and the council would have to spend more time dealing with law enforcement issues. He also said that city management would want pay raises because of the increased responsibility of supervising a police department. Residents, said Druker, dont want to change the way Del Mar works that substantially. The public was also divided. The residents of the beach community need help, said Robin Crabtree, who described scenes of chaos on weekends, when no law enforcement support is available. The status quo is unacceptable. Laura DeMarco, however, said she would rather see the city spend its money on such projects as undergrounding utilities or developing the Shores Park, rather than on a new police station. She also warned of escalating pension costs that could bite the city if it forms a police force. That is a train coming down the tracks you dont want to be on, she said. The developer of a pioneering contact lens has spoken of how the device could tell people with type 1 diabetes when they need to take medication. Dr Gregory Herma, from the Oregon State University research team, presented his research at the American Chemical Society meeting in California. Herman explained how clear biosensors fitted into the lens could help people measure the sugar levels in their tears, which would help them adjust their treatment. Previous research has shown that glucose levels in tears goes up and down in proportion to blood sugar levels. Speaking to The Independent, Herman said: The lens will let people know when to give themselves injections and for patients wearing insulin pumps the signal can provide information for self-regulation. While Hermans team began the project to help with diabetes, it is now thought the eye-wear could potentially be used by doctors to identify other medical conditions. Since we can include more sensors we can check for other biomarkers well beyond just glucose, he said. For example, we have shown that the technology works for uric acid as well, which is an indicator for renal disease. Our goal is to incorporate hundreds of sensors into a single contact lens. These transparent biosensors can also detect changes to pH or acidity levels, but at the moment a prototype tested in laboratory studies has only been able to detect glucose levels. Still, the findings could be significant for people with diabetes and provide a non-invasive way of measuring glucose levels. Herman and colleagues next plan to test whether the transparent biosensor can detect sugar levels in animals. Should this be successful, human trials will follow. There are a number of other research teams working on contact lenses as an alternative to blood sugar monitoring. These include the University of Waterloo, whose lens can transmit data to a users phone, and Googles collaboration with Novartis however Novartis have since pulled out from this deal. Russian meat and feed producer Cherkizovo is acquiring NAPKO, which is a large grain producer in that country. Cherkizovo said, among other assets, it would acquire NAPKO's agricultural land of 147,000 hectares located in the Lipetsk, Tambov and Penza regions. Following the acquisition, Cherkziovo said its total operating land bank would rise to 287,000 hectares. "As part of the transaction, the group will also acquire the supporting production infrastructure to cultivate the land and store the grain," the company said. Chief executive Sergey Mikhailov said while organic growth was Cherkizovo's priority, the deal was an example of the strategic M&A opportunities it was ready to explore to further strengthen its vertical integration, supply chain and business model generally. "By extending our land bank we will increase our self-sufficiency in grain and focus on synergies and efficiencies to reduce our unit production costs," said Mikhailov. "Following this acquisition, we expect to increase our self-sufficiency in grain to 60% in the next few years from 30% at the end of 2016." Specialist commercial and dispute resolution services provider to the construction and engineering industries, Driver Group , updated the market on its half year to 31 March on Friday. The AIM-traded firm issued the trading update as investors gathered in the City of London for the companys annual general meeting, taking place later in the day. The board is pleased to confirm that since the equity fundraising announced in mid-February the group's underlying trading performance has remained much improved on the equivalent period last year and consistent with market expectations for the year as a whole, it said in the update. Group net debt at the interim period end was approximately 3.5m. Greece reached a deal on economic reforms with creditors over its 86bn bailout, marking an important step towards avoining a potential bankruptcy in July. The agreement included a commitment to make economic reforms, including making the tax base wider and unpopular cuts to pensions 2019 and 2020. The measures, confirmed at a meeting of eurozone ministers in Malta on Friday, amount to 2% of Greece's GDP in 2019 and 2020. The big blocks have now been sorted out and that should allow us to speed up and go for the final stretch, eurogroup finance minister president Jeroen Dijsselbloem told reporters after the meeting. "We have an agreement on these overarching elements of policy in terms of size timing and sequencing and reforms, he said. The agreement also clears a path for the International Monetary Fund to join the country's bailout programme. "We need to see progress on the reform package, on the Greek side, on the behalf of the Greek authorities, and debt relief, credible debt relief commitment for the IMF to go forward," IMF spokesman Gerry Rice said on Thursday. Greece Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras warned earlier this week that a summit of euro leaders would be needed by the end of April if a deal was not reached soon. The stricken country faces a 6bn debt repayment in July. Gold sprinted higher early on Friday and held its ground as investors scurried for the defensive asset on news of a targeted US missile strike on an airbase in Syria apparently used for a chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held town. News of a deadly truck terror attack in Stockholm, Sweden, mid afternoon also caused the yellow metal to flutter again. Details of this attack and its fatalities -- so far estimated as at least three -- were emerging. These events -- the US missile strike drawing criticism from Russia -- overshadowed the summit between US President Donald Trump and China President Xi Jinping in Florida. At about 15:22 GMT, on Comex, gold was up 1.16% to 1267.90 an ounce. Silver rose 0.65% to $18.37 an ounce, and copper fell 1.37% to 262.15 cents a pound. "The precious metal is having one of its best days and a lot of tail winds is mainly driven by the political instability," said Naeem Aslam, chief market analyst at Think Markets UK. "Investors are concerned if the current situation could be contained or not and what the reaction of Russia would be given that Russian helicopters were at the hangar when the US attacked the Syrian airbase," said Aslam. FXTM research analyst Lukman Otunuga added that with risk aversion set to heighten as markets pondered the ramifications of the US airstrike, safe-haven assets might receive a solid boost. "From a technical standpoint, bulls need a solid daily close above $1260 for a further incline higher towards $1300," said Otunuga. Mike van Dulken, head of research at Accendo Markets observed that nil-yielding gold was off its best levels on Friday, but still holding a $1260 breakout. "No stranger to conflict, this is nonetheless military, not politics or twitter." Three-month industrial metals on London Metals Exchange were mostly lower. Zinc fell 1.87%, copper lost 0.63%, aluminum slipped 0.41% and tin rose 1.09%. At about 15:22 GMT, Nymex-priced WTI crude was up 0.77% to $52.10 a barrel, while Intercontinental Exchange-traded Brent was 0.56% up to $55.20 a barrel. Aslam of Think Markets UK, said the "black gold" had become a favorite trade for investors on the back of US strike on Syria. "The attack is bringing a major threat to oil production, given that Russia holds a major prominent position on the ground in the Middle East," he said. "We think that the target of $54-$55 (for WTI) could be achieved in the coming weeks if this situation escalates further." Otunuga at FXTM noted the bullish appearance of WTI's price rise on Friday, but cautioned its bearish fundamentals remained intact. "With the oversupply concerns still a dominant theme in the oil markets, extreme upside gains may be limited," he said. "For the upside to continue and display sustainability, a solid breakout and daily close above $53 (for WTI) will be needed. In an alternative scenario, bears have a chance to reclaiming control back below $51." Microblogging site Twitter is set to bring legal action against the US government after demands from the administration to identify the owner of an account which was critical of President Donald Trump . Twitter user @ALT_uscis has posted a series of tweets criticising Trumps immigration policies since he took over the Oval Office in January, and has claimed it is run by employees of the employees of the federal governments Citizenship and Immigration Services. The social media company has argued that the administrations request was an attack against free speech. "The rights of free speech afforded Twitter's users and Twitter itself under the First Amendment of the US Constitution include a right to disseminate such anonymous or pseudonymous political speech, the company argued. Oh @seanhannity 2013 is not that long ago. Did your presidential position on presidential golfing evolve? https://t.co/wL8c1U6Wid ALT Immigration (@ALT_uscis) April 7, 2017 Twitters statement added that it should not be required "to disclose information regarding the real identities of these users without first demonstrating that some criminal or civil offense has been committed". The government made the request to hand over the information by 13 March, but Twitter did not receive it until the day after the deadline. The company led by Jack Dorsey has consistently remained strong against government demands to hand over information, previously suing the Department of Justice in 2014 after it sought permission to access details from users. A Romanian woman who fell into the Thames during the terror attack in Westminster in March has dies from her injuries, police said on Friday. Andreea Cristea, 31, had her life support turned off on Thursday afternoon, the Metropolitan Police said in a statement. She had been visiting London when the attack occurred on March 22. She is the fifth victim of the attack, in which Khalid Masood drove into crowds on Westminster Bridge then stabbed a policeman to death inside the Carriage Gate of parliament, before being shot dead himself. A joint statement from the her family and her partner Andrei Burnaz spoke of the "crushing pain and emptiness that is left in our hearts". They added that money raised to help pay for her recovery would now be donated to charity. "Our family, together with Andrei, are deeply touched and eternally grateful for the unimaginable efforts and never-ending dedication provided to her and us by the entire medical personnel of each and every hospital involved. Their kindness and empathy are beyond compare," the added. Markets in Asia finished mixed after a turbulent session on Friday, with the Japanese benchmark falling to a four-month low early on and oil prices rocketing ahead, after the US sent dozens of cruise missiles towards a Syrian airfield. The Nikkei 225 finished up 0.36% at 18,664.63, having earlier reached a four month low of 18,517.43 after news of the missile strike on Syria broke to markets. The yen was stronger on the greenback once again, and was last ahead 0.13% at JPY 110.67. On the mainland, the Shanghai Composite added 0.18% to 3,287.02, as traders in the Peoples Republic watched their President Xi Jinping visit his US counterpart Trump at his Mar-a-Lago family resort in Florida, in what was set to be a tense meeting. President Xi arrived in West Palm Beach early on Friday, with the talks widely expected to focus on the US trade deficit - which Trump blames China directly for - and the constant belligerence from North Korea. Having spoke about how the meeting would be difficult earlier in the week, Trump told media before a dinner with Xi that he thought he would have a very, very great relationship with him. South Koreas Kospi was down 0.05% at 2,151.73, while Hong Kongs Hang Seng Index finished down 0.03% at 24,267.30. In Seoul, shares in Samsung Electronics finished 0.58% lower after the company issued first quarter guidance, indicating it expected profits to rist almost 50% year-on-year. On the political front, the US fired 59 tomahawks from naval destroyers in the Mediterranean Sea, at an airfield near Homs in Syria, where they reportedly hit aircraft and vital infrastructure. The attack occurred as President Donald Trump was hosting his Chinese counterpart.. In a statement after the attack, Trump said he called for the military action in response to a chemical attack earlier this week in the rebel-held northern Syria. That attack was apparently perpetrated by Syrian regime forces - something the US stood by as a fact, though no concrete evidence has been presented to that effect yet. Oil prices soared in the wake of the Syrian airstrike, with Brent crude last Australias S&P/ASX 200 was down 0.11% at 5,862.47, while over the Tasman Sea in New Zealand the S&P/NZX 50 fell 0.63% to 7,243.76. Both of the down under dollars were weaker against the greenback, with the Kiwi last retreating 0.1% to NZD 1.4361, and the Aussie off 0.29% to AUD 1.3292. European stocks ended mostly higher, while safe-haven assets rallied amid rising geopolitical tensions after the US launched a missile attack on a Syrian airfield, despite a weaker than expected US non-farm payrolls report for March. Heading into the Easter holiday-shortened week, the benchmark Stoxx Europe 600 index edged 0.13% higher to 381.26, while France's CAC 40 rose 0.27% to 5,135.28 and the Dax was 0.05% lower to 12,225.06. Meanwhile, crude oil futures were pushed higher on the back of the American strike amid worries about disruptions to supplies from the region, with West Texas Intermediate ended up 1.05% to $52.25 a barrel and Brent crude was 0.74% firmer at $55.30. Safe haven assets were also in demand as market participants looked for somewhere secure to park their cash, with gold up more than 1%. The yellow metal rose to a fresh five-month high of $1,269 an ounce following news of the air strike. Non-farm payrolls in the States increased by 98,000 in March, undershooting the consensus forecast of 174,000 by a very wide margin, amid downwards revisions to the data for January and February. The unemployment rate on the other hand fell back by two tenths of a percentage point to 4.5% - its lowest register since 2007. Economists for the most part seemed to brush off the weakness in the NFP figure as mostly a weatehr-induced setback. "Monetary policy implications of this report should be limited. Nobody anticipates a rate hike for the next meeting, early May, anyway. And ahead of the subsequent meetings, the Fed will get further evidence about the state of the labor market, which should corroborate our view that the true underlying dynamic lies somewhere between the too strong numbers in January and February, and the too weak number in March. We thus continue to expect two further rate hikes in the remainder of this year," said Dr. Harm Bandholz, chief US economist at UniCredit Research following the release of Friday's report. US President Donald Trump said he ordered the missile strikes after the deadly chemical attack that took place earlier in the week. Acting as a backdrop, the air strike came during a two-day summit between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, with trade and North Korea's military programme on the agenda. Earlier, figures from Destatis showed German industrial output rose 2.2% in February from the month before, beating expectations for a 0.3% decline. On the corporate front, German consumer goods group Henkel edged higher even as it said it will keep looking for acquisitions to boost its business. French drug maker Sanofi was also on the back foot, retreating 0.75% despite receiving FDA clearance for a smartphone app with an insulin dose calculator. Regulator reopens probe into how much bank knew about fraud Lloyds Bank said it would set aside 100m to compensate victims of a 245m loan scam at its HBOS unit that destroyed hundreds of small businesses and saw six people jailed. The Financial Conduct Authority said it was also reopening its investigation into the fraud. It had been asked to suspend the probe by Thames Valley police pending the outcome of the trial. "The FCAs investigation is focusing on the extent and nature of the knowledge of these matters within HBOS and its communications with the Financial Services Authority after the initial discovery of the misconduct," the regulator said in a statement. Lloyds said it would make the payments for "economic losses, distress and inconvenience" and the write down would be included in its first quarter figures on April 27. As recently as January HBOS was still refusing to acknowledge the full scale of the fraud or offer any compensation. The compensation package included providing interim payments on a case-by-case basis to help those in day-to-day financial difficulty as a result of the fraud, reasonable fees for professional advice to customers and writing off remaining business and personal debts owed to the bank and not chasing payments for outstanding debts. Lloyds bought HBOS during the financial crisis of 2008 triggered by poor lending practices by banks. The government had to spend 20bn to take a 43% stake in the group to prop it up. The taxpayer now holds less than 3%. Lloyds chief executive Antonio Horta-Osorio apologised to victims of the fraud. We are absolutely determined that victims of the crimes committed at HBOS Reading are fairly, swiftly and appropriately compensated. We take responsibility for putting right the wrongs that were committed at HBOS Reading at the time. That is why today we are providing an additional package of measures to ensure that customers have all the help they need as we resolve their cases as quickly as possible. The fraud began in 2003 when Lynden Scourfield, a senior HBOS banker at its Reading office, forced small firms that needed loans to use a turnaround consultancy led by his associate David Mills. Cash was then sucked out of those businesses in fees by Mills and three others, including his wife Alison. If owners refused to comply they were told the bank would pull the plug on funding. The trial heard how, in return for the business referrals, Scourfield and another HBOS banker, Mark Dobson, enjoyed luxury holidays in Barbados and Thailand, trips in the Mediterranean on the Mills's 2m yacht and sex parties. In February, Scourfield was sentenced to 11 years and three months in jail. Mills received 15 years and his wife three-and-a-half years. Judge Martin Beddoe described David Mills as the "devil to whom you (Scourfield) sold your soul. For sex, for luxury trips with and without your wife; for bling and for swank". He said David Mills was a "thoroughly corrupt and devious man, adept at exploiting the weaknesses of others, particularly where that weakness is money, and adept too in getting others to do your dirty work for you". Dobson was sentenced to four-and-a-half years, while Mills's associate Michael Bancroft was jailed for 10 years. A sixth man, John Cartwright, 72, was given three-and-a-half years for money laundering. Phoenix Spree Deutschland has sold a portfolio of non-core properties in Bavaria, Germany, for a total of 35.25m in cash, as it moves to further focus its operation on capital city Berlin. It said had exchanged contracts for the portfolio of 17 non-core properties in Nuremberg and Fuerth, having acquired them in 2007 and 2008 for a total price of 13.9m. Proceeds from the sale represented an 11% premium to the end-2016 valuation by Jones Lang LaSalle. They would be used to reduce debt, fund further acquisitions in Berlin and invest in the existing portfolio. As a result, properties located in Berlin would represent about 82% of Phoenix Spree Deutschland's portfolio value. The company said the disposal was expected to have a positive impact on EPRA NAV after transaction costs and taxes. Chief executive Joerg Schwagenscheidt said the transaction was another important milestone. "The disposal represents a profitable exit from the region, releasing capital from non-core assets which can be redeployed to increase our exposure to the attractive Berlin residential market." "We will maintain our highly disciplined approach to acquiring properties in Berlin, targeting those which fit our strict return criteria and where we can continue to add value." At 14:22 GMT, shares in Phoenix Spree Deutschland were down 0.22% to 232p each. Save my User ID and Password Some subscribers prefer to save their log-in information so they do not have to enter their User ID and Password each time they visit the site. To activate this function, check the 'Save my User ID and Password' box in the log-in section. This will save the password on the computer you're using to access the site. Note: If you choose to use the log-out feature, you will lose your saved information. This means you will be required to log-in the next time you visit our site. Subscriber content preview PENDLETON, Ore. (AP) Plans to find a new home for the Oregon State Police crime lab in Pendleton because of a gnat infestation authorities have been unable to eliminate are gaining momentum, but there are disagreements about where it should go. Some elected officials in eastern Oregon want it moved to Blue Mountain Community College from its current home in downtown Pendleton, while Gov. Kate Brown has proposed closing the lab and moving its staff to forensic facilities in Bend, Portland or Central Point, The East Oregonian reported Monday. . . . Subscriber content preview BOSTON (AP) Old Ironsides is headed back to Boston's waters after being dry docked for repairs these last two years. Navy officials on Wednesday said restoration work on the USS Constitution is nearly complete. The world's oldest commissioned warship afloat is slated to return to the waters at the Charlestown Navy Yard in late July. . . . Niamey 2000 is a 1,700 square meter housing development, which was designed in response to the current housing crisis occurring in Niamey, the capital of Niger. By increasing density, the project proposes a new model for urban housing. View gallery Author Photography Torsten Seidel Published 07 April 2017 SHARE PIN IT Author Photography Torsten Seidel Published 07 April 2017 SHARE PIN IT Author Photography Torsten Seidel Published 07 April 2017 SHARE PIN IT Author Photography Torsten Seidel Published 07 April 2017 SHARE PIN IT Author Photography Torsten Seidel Published 07 April 2017 SHARE PIN IT Author Photography Torsten Seidel Published 07 April 2017 SHARE PIN IT Author Photography Torsten Seidel Published 07 April 2017 SHARE PIN IT Author Photography Torsten Seidel Published 07 April 2017 SHARE PIN IT Author Photography Torsten Seidel Published 07 April 2017 SHARE PIN IT Author Photography Torsten Seidel Published 07 April 2017 SHARE PIN IT Author Photography Torsten Seidel Published 07 April 2017 SHARE PIN IT Author Photography Torsten Seidel Published 07 April 2017 SHARE PIN IT united4design, Niamey 2000, Niamey, Niger, 2017 SHARE PIN IT united4design, Niamey 2000, Niamey, Niger, 2017 SHARE PIN IT united4design, Niamey 2000, Niamey, Niger, 2017 SHARE PIN IT united4design, Niamey 2000, Niamey, Niger, 2017 SHARE PIN IT united4design, Niamey 2000, Niamey, Niger, 2017 SHARE PIN IT united4design, Niamey 2000, Niamey, Niger, 2017 SHARE PIN IT united4design, Niamey 2000, Niamey, Niger, 2017 SHARE PIN IT /Users/Mariam/Box Sync/Projects/NM2000/09 Working Model and Drawings/Plans/NM2000_plans_01092015.dwg united4design, Niamey 2000, site plan SHARE PIN IT /Users/Mariam/Box Sync/Projects/NM2000/09 Working Model and Drawings/Plans/NM2000_plans_01092015.dwg united4design, Niamey 2000, ground floor SHARE PIN IT /Users/Mariam/Box Sync/Projects/NM2000/09 Working Model and Drawings/Plans/NM2000_plans_01092015.dwg united4design, Niamey 2000, upper floor SHARE PIN IT /Users/Mariam/Box Sync/Projects/NM2000/09 Working Model and Drawings/Plans/NM2000_plans_01092015.dwg united4design, Niamey 2000, section SHARE PIN IT /Users/Mariam/Box Sync/Projects/NM2000/09 Working Model and Drawings/Plans/NM2000_plans_01092015.dwg united4design, Niamey 2000, section SHARE PIN IT The project provides privacy for its inhabitants; however, it strives to address more than the need for culturally appropriate housing. It takes a firm position on material selection by using unfired, earth masonry and passive cooling techniques to protect against Nigers scorching temperatures. As is the case in many parts of the world, local materials have been increasingly abandoned in urban centers in favor of concrete. The contemporary design of Niamey 2000 reintroduces locally derived resources to the construction industry and offers affordable homes to a broader range of the citys growing population. united4design, Niamey 2000, Niamey, Niger, 2017 As Niamey continues to grow, and more foreign investors pledge funds for building public as well as private infrastructure, large-scale housing projects are on the horizon. A few, well-conceived projects in the capital using local expertise and production methods could set a valuable precedent for Niameys future. united4design, Niamey 2000, Niamey, Niger, 2017 Former telephonists who worked in the exchange in Letterkenny hope to hold a reunion of former colleagues this June. They want to get the word out to the telephonists who worked in the exchange in the Letterkenny Post Office in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. The reunion is being planned for Sunday, June 11th, at Castle Grove Country House Hotel in Letterkenny. The women are gauging interest now and would like to hear from anyone who would like to attend. They held a reunion about 20 years ago that drew about 50 former colleagues to what is now the Mount Errigal Hotel in Letterkenny. We had quite a good day. It was nice to see everybody again, Majella, one of the former Letterkenny telephonists behind the upcoming reunion, said. She said she ran into a friend recently who suggested, Maybe its time we had another one. Majella said the busy Letterkenny office was the main exchange in the county, handling phone calls that came in from across Donegal to different parts of the county and country. Letterkenny was the head office for all the other suboffices in the county and it was a very busy office, she said. We had a lot of people from the west of Ireland there, from Roscommon they were transferred from all over Ireland, really. Telephonists would connect the calls manually the only automation at that time was found in Dublin and the larger cities. A caller would tell the telephonist where they were ringing, and you had a little folder here and all the little codes you had to put in to get through, Majella said. It was extremely busy, extremely busy. The 24 hour service was staffed by women during the day though there were men telephonists who more often worked the overnight shift, she recalled. Any former telephonists from the Letterkenny exchange who are interested in attending the reunion should contact 086 260 3144 or 086 067 8920. We thought wed see how this goes and if we dont get a response a few of us will go ourselves, Majella said. But we are hoping that people will see it. The new contract for recently appointed Enterprise City Schools Superintendent Greg Faught was approved at the special called meeting of the ECS Board of Education on Thursday after rounds of discussion. The original motion was to use the former superintendents contract, which had a starting base salary plus incentives set at $150,000. Board Vice President Daniel Whitaker and board member Gloria Jones voted in favor of the contract, while members Bob Doerer and Bert Barr were against it. Board President Dorothy Richardson abstained from voting. I am not opposed to anything in this contract whatsoever except for the annual salary, Barr said. Former superintendent Dr. Camille Wrights base salary was $142,500 with a car allowance of approximately $7,200 a year, according to board counsel Merrill Shirley. Nothing against Mr. Faught by no means, but what I dont want to do is set a precedent here, Barr said. Going back to degrees [Wright] was a doctor and its about $150,000 and thats just my thoughts. Whitaker said that he did some investigating into various superintendent salaries around the state. The state average superintendent was $143,842, according to Whitaker. He said he also broke down the salaries based on 13 school systems similar in size to Enterprise, which included Alabaster, Aliceville, Athens, Decatur, Dothan, Gadsden, Madison, Opelika, Phenix City, Tuscaloosa and Vestavia, all of which has around 5,000-10,000 students. Whitaker said that the average salary was $169,178. The average of superintendents with doctorate degrees was $168,109 and non-doctorates were averaged at $172,740. In Whitakers research, out of the top 25 school systems in the state, which Enterprise ranks at number 10, the average superintendent salary was $162,655. The doctorate average was $168,445 and non-doctorate was $153,971. So thats just some numbers I looked at, so Mr. Faughts salary would actually be under all those even the non-doctorate average in the top 25 school systems, which we are number 10, Whitaker said. Barr said that even though the numbers were higher, there were opportunities in the contract for Faught to receive salary increases. Can I point out also that paragraph 6 section A [in the contract], Barr said. The last sentence of that states, Salary may be increased from time to time as determined by the board. It also gives the superintendent, Mr. Faught, the lead way to create his own staff, kind of develop his own staff and that staff I argue to you if were going up on superintendent price were fixing to go up on assistant superintendent and right on down the line, so in my opinion this is a domino effect that we really dont need at this point in time. It does give the ability to increase from time to time and it also has the evaluation process that Mr. Faught would work with us 6 weeks in advance of the next school year in order to be able to evaluate him in January timeframes in order to move his salary base on performance or any of those metrics we put in place. The contract would also include state increases as determined by the state legislature. Im here because I want to be here, Faught said. I dont want to let a small amount or something thats reasonable get in the way of that. Barr moved that the salary should be set at $142,500. I would like to state Mr. Faught please keep in mind because I know youll be coming back to us with some salary changes because there will be some duties and everything else and thats the salary that everything needs to be pegged and set on and everything needs to go off that number, Barr said. Yes sir, we have a salary schedule that were going to go by here in the central office, Faught said. Im sure you do, but you and I had already discussed that some combined duties and things so job titles might change and there may be some salary changes based on that, so my point is I want it set where its equitable, Barr said. The motion carried 3-0, with Jones not voting. The board ended up going back on its vote to hear the amended figure by Jones. Jones asked for the salary to be moved to $145,000. Were not what you call a poor area, and when people look down those charts and look at us paying the lowest amount theyre going to get a little bad idea about us and I had rather we be paying the head of our school [more], and were going to expect an awful lot of him, Jones said. Jones amended figure did not receive a second, and therefore did not pass. The board voted again on the figure of $142,500 and it received unanimous approval. In 1849, Abner Blackburn and other prospectors heading to the California gold fields discovered the first Nevada gold where Gold Canyon reaches the Carson River at a place that later became Dayton. In the early 1850s, Spafford Hall constructed a log station and trading post to accommodate the needs of emigrants bound for California along the Overland Trail. Halls Station became the center of activity for the Dayton area and was the place where the first dance ever held in Nevada Territory occurred on New Years Eve, 1853. In 1854, Spafford Hall was seriously injured in a hunting accident and sold the station to one of his employees, James McMarlin. Later on, the station was purchased by Major William Ormsby sometime between 1854 and 1860. Ormsby was a supporter of constructing the overland stage route through Nevada Territory and wanted Halls Station to become a stage stop for the Pioneer Stage Line. In April, 1860, when the Pony Express started operation through the territory, Halls Station became Daytons first Pony Express station. Since the Pony Express route did not run through Gold Hill or Virginia City, any mail for the Comstock was taken off at Dayton and brought to the Comstock by a separate carrier. Shortly after the Pony Express started operating, the Pyramid Lake Indian War began. Station owner Major Ormsby was one of the 76 men killed in the first battle of the war on May 12, 1860. This disrupted Pony Express mail service for nearly two months until riders were once again able to make the runs with any degree of safety. Many of the Pony Express stations east of Dayton were attacked by the Indians. Since several of the Pony Express stations out in the desert regions of the territory were burned during the time of hostile Indian attacks, the log structure at Halls Station was likely considered too vulnerable to remain the Pony Express Station. With the death of Major Ormsby, the Pony Express Station for the Dayton area was relocated to a more substantial stone-walled building alongside the present location of the Union Hotel. This was the station for the Overland Stage stop and it then became the second Pony Express station in Dayton. It remained the station until the Pony Express ceased operation in 1861. The site of the original Halls Station was destroyed during the 1930s when it was excavated for a gravel pit and some gold mining activity. There are historical markers near the site of Halls Station and on the Union Hotel and post office building. Both of the sites are now on private property. There is a freestanding rock wall alongside the Union Hotel that was the original wall of the overland stage station and the Pony Express Stop. Originally, the Union Hotel was located across the street near the Odeon Hall. When the hotel burned down in 1870, it was re-built alongside the old stone wall which has remained intact ever since. This massive wall can be seen along the west side of the hotel. A better view can be seen from the rear of the hotel where much more of the wall is visible. Being a Dayton resident, I have taken photos of the remains of the Pony Express station walls to accompany this article. One shows the interior walls now encroached upon by trees and the doorway tall enough for horses to enter. The other photo taken behind the Station shows the brick Union Hotel on the right and the stone wall on the left that extends all the way to Main Street. Mercedes-Benz will fire a unique two-pronged attack at Australia with its fastest four-door missile. The German car maker has confirmed pricing and specifications for its latest Mercedes-AMG E63 which will be offered in two levels of performance, with the flagship E63 S model arriving in showrooms in June while a more affordable, less powerful regular E63 will join the range from December. Apart from with the brand's heroic AMG GT sportscar, it is the first time Mercedes-Benz Australia has offered the same two-tier strategy available to the rest of the world as local demand for best-of-the-best variants has generally been greater in recent years. Pricing starts at $209,900 before on-road costs for the standard Mercedes-AMG E63 and $239,900 for the E63 S - which is substantially more affordable than the model it replaces which cost more than $250k. Power in both variants comes from a twin-turbocharged 4.0-litre petrol V8 produces 420kW and 750Nm in the E63 and 450kW and 850Nm in the E63 S. Both versions are equipped with AMG's nine-speed automatic gearbox, and power is sent to all four wheels via Mercedes-Benz's 4Matic+ system which splits the torque between the front and rear axle for maximum traction. Speed is limited to 250km/h in the E63 and 300km/h in the E63 S, and each is capable of hitting 0-100km/h in 3.5- and 3.4-seconds respectively. The car can be driven in a number of modes, including a new 'drift mode' that pushes power to the rear wheels only. Beyond the E-Class' extensive list of standard safety and ground-breaking technologies, the E63 also gets its own body panels and its engine is hand-built at Affalterbach. The E63 also score 20-inch five spoke AMG alloy wheels, a mechanical limited slip rear differential, an analogue IWC clock and chrome touches. The S version scores 20-inch matte black cross-spoked AMG alloy wheels, the AMG night package external styling, a selectable exhaust system, Nappa leather steering wheel, red brake calipers, Nappa leather touches throughout the cabin and wireless charging. The E63 S, when it arrives in June, will also be able to be optioned with the Edition 1 package. This includes unique paintwork, ceramic composite brakes, AMG side sport decals in matte graphite, black Nappa leather seats with contrast yellow stitching, plus carbon fibre and yellow touches throughout the cabin. The Edition 1 package adds a further $18,900 to the price of the Mercedes-AMG E63 S. Please allow ads as they help fund our trusted local news content. Kindly add us to your ad blocker whitelist. If you want further access to Ireland's best local journalism, consider contributing and/or subscribing to our free daily Newsletter . Support our mission and join our community now. ELKO Elko County will request federal funds to help with the cost of responding to the February flooding, but commissioners said no thanks to help with recovery efforts. FEMA and the State will be in Elko Friday morning to see what government entities want to participate in the grant funding available. Elko County Sheriffs Office Support Services Manager Annette Kerr told the commissioners this funding is only for public assistance, which helps local governments deal with the effects of a disaster. Individual assistance is still under review by FEMA. It could take up to four or five months before we hear anything about the individual assistance, Kerr said. The response process covers from the date the county discovered there was an issue until the close of the emergency declaration. The County has six months to complete any work that happens in relation to the emergency response, such as debris removal and emergency protective measures, Kerr said. The state and FEMA verified about $10,700 was spent to remove debris and $180,000 was spent in emergency protective measures. These numbers included the cities of Elko and Wells and the Elko County School District. The recovery side of the public assistance concerns fixing damaged roads, buildings, water control facilities, utilities, parks, recreation and other public structures. The County estimated about $3.4 million in damage, but the state and FEMA-verified numbers totaled about $2.3 million. Kerr said the commissioners need to be cautious about the recovery money because there are quite a bit of strings or conditions attached to it. Elko County Roads Supervisor Terry Lister said staff has already done work on many of the roads that were damaged. The road to Montello, State Route 233, is being handled by Nevada Department of Transportation, but the streets in Montello, which are handled by the county, are 100 percent done, Lister said. Overall the county roads are sitting at about 70 percent complete, he said. The one thats really hanging out there right now is the Deeth-ONeil Road. We havent really had enough time or resources to get to that one. Despite working on all these roads, the department is still under budget, Lister said. The flooding that affected Montello and the majority of the roads damaged was a result of snowmelt. The Twentyone Mile Dam breach affected the highway and the railroad. Kerr said the FEMA funding could pay for 75 percent of the cost from the flooding and a state grant would decrease the Countys portion to 12.5 percent. However, the Countys portion of any repairs or response must be paid up front. Commissioner Jon Karr asked if there was any reason the County should not apply for the money. Annette alluded to it a bit, those strings that we talked about, are not strings theyre ropes, said Assistant County Manager and Natural Resources Manager Randy Brown. He said FEMA could require the County to fix the roads to a higher standard than they were before the flooding. You have to meet all their criteria, every bit of it, or you lose out in the end, he said. All this money has to come up front. This means the County would have to repair the roads to the standard the federal government requires and would have to use contractors rather than county staff. For example, if the County took recovery money from FEMA there is a chance the County would have to do more work on roads staff has already fixed. Right now we have the authority to go in and maintain our roads and rebuild our roads to the standards we have today, Brown said. If we go outside that realm we have to hire contractors. We cannot do the work ourselves. Brown and Lister told commissioners that staff is putting the roads back to the conditions they were in before the flooding, but they also are looking at drainage issues in certain areas. Staff recommended to the commissioners that they apply for the money to cover the response to the emergency but not apply for the recovery funds. The commissioners agreed. Consultancy firm Royal HaskoningDHV has been contracted for the detailed design of the Marginal da Corimba reclamation and shore protection project in Angolas capital city Luanda. This major contract was awarded by the consortium of Angolan Urbinveste Real Estate and Dutch dredging company Van Oord. The detailed design stage is scheduled to be completed in January 2018. The design of the waterfront also aims to stop the erosion of the beach. New waterfront The growing number of inhabitants in the city of Luanda has driven the need to expand and provide solutions to alleviate current capacity issues, improve accessibility and stimulate economic development through investment in infrastructure. Royal HaskoningDHV has been commissioned to prepare the detailed design for the 400 hectares Marginal da Corimba project, a large-scale waterfront development scheme in Angolas capital city. New highway and fishery port The award builds on the companys earlier involvement in the outline design phase of the project. The new area will be created over a 10 kilometre stretch of coast in front of Luanda, and will serve for the construction of the Marginal da Corimba highway, as well as a fishery port, marina and land development. The new highway will reduce traffic congestion and the new fishery port will provide an improved and safe base for local fishermen. Rapid population growth Gertjan Schaap, Senior project director at Royal HaskoningDHV commented: The main aim of this project is to improve life in Luanda, a city that faces huge infrastructure challenges caused by its rapid population increase. We are pleased to support the project, Schaap continued, and look forward to bringing our extensive industry expertise to the consortium. Reclamation projects such as this are undoubtedly vital to the local economy, and we will work to ensure that we enhance society for the parties involved. The consortium of Urbinveste and Van Oord expects to complete construction of the reclamation which was ordered by the Angola government, mid-2019. This news item was originally published on the website of Royal HaskoningDHV. Read also on this website Van Oord awarded contract Marginal da Corimba land reclamation project in Luanda, Angola, 10 January 2017 Singapore to adopt Dutch polder concept as new land reclamation method at Pulau Tekong, 2 December 2016 UNISDR recognizes city of Hoboken as role model city for flood resilience strategy, 30 April 2015 More information Royal HaskoningDHV Amersfoort, the Netherlands +31 88 348 20 00 www.royalhaskoningdhv.com Since separating from its parent company, last year, and undergoing a digital evolution, Damstra Technology has wasted no time in proving an SME from a country town can go global. The cloud-based, end-to-end workforce management solutions provider was today named as one of Australias 20 high-potential Businesses of Tomorrow by Westpac. According to Damstra Technology founder and CEO, Christian Damstra, the companys platform, which can interface with existing business systems, is delivered as a software as a service (SaaS) meaning the price point is effective for companies with ten employees through to those with tens of thousands. For us, its always about people, he told Dynamic Business. Anything that affects the people on our customers sites, well get involved in. That means everything from looking after their skills, competencies and compliance as well as time keeping, fatigue management and payroll calculation, right through to drug and alcohol detection plus asset management. Our solutions are fuelled by industry experience Although Damstra Technology launched in May 2016, the company began its life 14 years earlier as Damstra Mining Services a labour-hire firm servicing the coal mining industry. In 2006, the company was sold to Skilled Group, which had taken an interest in the business and the technology Damstra and his team had been developing. Having a background in mining, first as an electrician and later as an electrical engineer, Id realised we needed a system that would help us manage workforces, he explained. I also knew that it should by designed somebody who knew the industry rather than a technology provider telling companies in the industry how to operate. Damstra remained with Skilled Group (later bought out by Programmed Maintenance), before reacquiring the company hed founded on the 1st of April, last year, and relaunching it as a purely technology-oriented organisation, which now boasts a team of 30 employees, including seven developers and two business development managers plus the C-suite. Were no longer hamstrung, were priority no. 1 In the twelve months since, Damstra Technologys customer base has grown by over 30%. Damstra attributes this growth, in part, to the fact that is no longer hamstrung by being a non-core business within a large public company. The moment we removed ourselves from that arrangement, we were able to make the business our number one priority again, he said. Consequently, we were able to sign off on some important contracts with some very large customer, including government-backed organisations, which was extremely positive. We were also able to gain our first international client a New Zealand-based company, providing us with access to 26 worksites. We achieved this growth without any direct funding due to the combination of our digital platform and some unique products. Were very good at determining what our existing or potential customers require and were happy to be dynamic and make changes to meet their requirements. People come from the city to join our dynamic SME Damstra said being recognised by Westpac as one of 20 high-potential Businesses of Tomorrow, from a larger pool of promising businesses, is a huge boon for the Damstra Technology, providing both validation and industry exposure. Were based in the Hunter Valley, NSW, meaning we operate out of a country town, he said. Now, a lot of people refuse to believe a business that operates out of a country town can have global reach but we actually do have that ability. In fact, when we advertise jobs, we get approached by applicants from Sydney. We actually have two employees who relocated from a very large metropolitan organisation to be part of our dynamic organisation in the Hunter Valley, where the lifestyle is easier and the cost of living is much better. To be put on a pedestal, for want of a better word, with Westpacs Businesses of Tomorrow program will help us grow. The Westpac initiative will open doors as we grow As with the other 19 high-potential businesses, Damstra Technology will gain access to a tailored mentoring program, where it will be paired with a successful business leader for tailored guidance throughout April and August. The company will also receive a tailored $100,000 professional services package and a global study tour of the USA and China. Were excited to learn who our mentor will be and look forward to being paired someone whose made a lot of difference in their own organisation and who can share their knowledge with us, Damstra said. When it comes to the global study tour, this ties in nicely to our plans for international expansion, he said. Weve already launched into New Zealand, and we have business meetings in the USA, Canada and Chile lined up this year. The tour with Westpac will give us an opportunity to show people in America that were a company worthy of going global. Im of the view that this initiative will open some doors and lead to introductions we can lean on during our next 12 months of growth. As part of its Businesses of Tomorrow program, Westpac has today recognised 200 outstanding businesses, including 20 high-potential organisations, that have demonstrated a clear vision to shape Australias economy as it transitions to a services and knowledge-based economy. The 200 Businesses of Tomorrow, which have a collective turnover of approximately $2 billion per year and supports thousands of employees, were drawn from a pool of almost 2000 applicants nationally by a judging panel following an independent assessment by Deloitte. Each of the 20 high-potential businesses will receive a tailored $100,000 professional services package, a global study tour of the USA and China and access to a tailored mentoring program that will pair them with an influential business leader throughout April and August. Amongst the mentors to be matched to a business are Carla Zampatti, Ita Buttrose, John Eales, Tim Fung and Andrew Vesey. David Lindberg, Chief Executive, Westpac Business Bank, said the judging panel, which included former Microsoft Australia MD Pip Marlow and Reinventure Group MD Simon Cant, were impressed by the calibre of applicants We had so many businesses with the potential to go global, and one of the things we hope to do is support that expansion, he said. Our goal is to look back in 10 years time and be able to confidently say we supported some of the businesses that helped shape our nation. We have identified an incredible group of businesses and business leaders, and I look forward to following their journey and successes for years to come. In support of its Businesses of Tomorrow program, Westpac released a report by Deloitte Access Economics, which found that harnessing the business leadership potential of Australias outstanding businesses represents an opportunity to unlock $70 billion worth of economic potential. This translates into a 4 per cent increase in the nations GDP (PPP-adjusted). To read our interview with the CEO of Damstra Technology, which was recognised by Westpac as one of 20 high-potential Businesses of Tomorrow, click here. For the complete list of Westpacs 200 Businesses of Tomorrow, including the 20 high-potential ventures (bold text) click HERE. Great ideas often come from startups and small to medium enterprises (SMEs), but the difficult question is what to do next, and at what stage should intellectual property (IP) protection be considered? Its important to devise an IP strategy of what to protect and when, and costs can be a factor. Luckily, not all IP strategies need to be expensive and they can safeguard your future income streams. The most common intellectual property rights relevant to startups and SMEs are trade marks, designs, copyright and patents. Copyright is free and overseen by the Department of Communication and the Arts. To learn more about copyright laws visit http://www.copyright.org.au. The prices for trade marks, designs and patents can be found at ipaustralia.gov.au. For startups and SMEs that require a patent, I recommend considering a provisional patent. Provisional patents are relatively cheap, costing a $110 fee to IP Australia plus the cost of having a patent attorney draft your patent specification. Where appropriate (and in particular in the specialised area of patent drafting) its always beneficial to seek professional attorney advice. However, pick an attorney who has familiarity with your product or technology and ensure you get a clear statement of the relevant fees upfront. The Institute of Patent and Trade Mark Attorneys offers a free 30 minute consultation with a specialist Patent or Trade Mark Attorney for IP creators and users. This is a great place to begin for any SME or startup. Provisional patents dont require the application to meet the same level of detail as a full patent. Provisional patents give you a priority application date, which establishes the fact that you are the first person to file a new invention with us. While a provisional application doesnt provide you with the protection of a full patent, it does give you up to 12 months to consider your options and test the market before deciding to proceed with a full patent application. Think of it as a placeholder. The provisional application doesnt require a full description of the claim, meaning you can use the 12 months to fully develop and strengthen your patent claim. Also the application is not published and so never becomes public knowledge, which provides certainty that the knowledge of your product or technology will stay within the control of your company. Having a patent can boost the value of your business to investors. If you can prove you have a new product or technology that is protected by IP rights, investors will be much more likely to finance your venture. IP rights are something that can be monetised. They give investors an asset to back and they are defensible in court. Investors can invest in your business and be certain that it has the rights to license, sell or commercially use the relevant IP. While professional advice is usually the most expensive aspect of securing an IP right, it can be money well spent. However there are ways to help keep a lid on costs and get the best value out of attorney services. Before meeting with an attorney ensure you have a basic understanding of patents. This will help you maximise the efficiency of your meetings. The patents section of IP Australias website can help with this initial research. Some further preparation to do before meeting with an attorney is to research the similarities and differences between competing products or technologies. IP Australia has a tool called IP Nova, which is a simple web based application which allows users to visualise IP data, making it easy for anyone to explore over 30 years of patents or other IP rights information. This will be a good starting point for discussion with your attorney. Its important to remember that applying for a provisional or full patent with IP Australia will not protect your IP overseas. However, if you want to base your overseas patent application on your provisional patent, you will need to submit your Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) application within 12 months of filing your provisional patent. See also: IP Australia adopts image recognition tech to help SMEs better protect their trade marks About the author Patricia Kelly is the Director General at IP Australia, which is an agency of the federal Department of Industry, Innovation and Science. The ousting of Steve Bannon from the National Security Council (NSC) staff is part of a reorganization initiated by President Donald Trumps National Security Advisor, Army Lt. General H.R. McMaster. This move solidifies leadership within the NSC at a critical time in our nations history and it clears the deck for action. My first reaction to the attack on Syrias Shayrat airfield was that President Trump made the foolish mistake of leading by heart rather than mind. Not the case. The attack constituted a carefully, albeit quickly, devised strategic move. The first clue was that the presidents entourage traveling to Mar-a-Lago to meet with China President Xi Jinping included Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, and National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster. The foreign policy A-Team. What does that tell us? In military terms, Trump was stealing the march, a military term for gaining the strategic advantage before the opponent can react. General McMasters 1997 book Dereliction of Duty examined President Lyndon Johnsons national security team from 1964 through 1968 when major decisions led to disaster in Vietnam. President Johnson manipulated his national security team to assure compliance and near-obsequious acquiescence among Joint Chiefs of Staff. For Johnson the conflict in Vietnam distracted from his top priority: Instituting his Great Society. President Johnson got the military leadership he wanted, weak, unobtrusive, and accommodating: the B-team. President Trump turned to his A-team for the first, major foreign policy statement of his presidency. McMaster, who may have masterminded the attack on the Syrian base, studied Johnsons mistakes as the departure point for meeting the challenges President Trump faces. As the president admitted during his April 5 press conference, he inherited a mess. The messes he inherited in Syria and North Korea rank at the top of Trumps national security problems. While LBJ put his domestic political agenda ahead of national security, Trump does not. After completing his doctorate, McMaster served as operations officer for the Armys Opposition Force (OPFOR) based at Ft. Irwin, California in the heart of Death Valley. During the late 1990s, McMaster employed Russian armored tactics and equipment modified to emulate Russian weapons. The OPFOR also excelled at deception. Each tank brigade underwent two weeks of simulated warfare. Almost invariably the visiting brigade was handed its proverbial head on the initial engagement due to the OPFOR stealing the march, doing the unexpected to achieve a decisive advantage. The target was always the mind of the opponent because the brain is where the decisive the strategic fight is won or lost. The brilliance of the attack on Shayrat airfield was its strategic impact. The operational target was the Syrian base from which aircraft took off to drop nerve gas on civilians killing almost 100 many of them women and children. The strategic targets, however, included political leaders in Damascus, Teheran, Moscow, Pyongyang and Chinese President Xi Jinping dining beside President Trump at Mar-a-Lago when 59 cruise missiles started obliterating Shayrat. The attack means leading from behind is over and America is on the path to recovering world leader status. Assad survives for now but needs to think about retiring. Putin will fume and fuss, but should know milquetoast at the White House, hand wringing in Foggy Bottom, and a Pentagon focused on political correctness rather than combat effectiveness are gone. Regarding North Koreas latest missile launch, President Xi probably spent last night reevaluating what his dinner host said 48 hours earlier regarding North Korea, all options are on the table. Its important because, as one of Chinas leading businessmen, Xi knows that after U.S. bunker buster bombs hit North Korean nuclear sites and precision-guided munitions rain down on missile launch sites, communist artillery probably will pummel Seoul a few miles to the south. Within the hour, American and South Korean airstrikes will obliterate most North Korean artillery, but much of Seoul will be shattered. Its likely Republic of Korea (ROK), and a limited number of U.S. ground forces, will be battling the North Korean Peoples Army. U.S. and ROK forces will prevail but Seoul and its economy may be devastated. North Korea will be as well with millions of starving refugees streaming north to become Chinas problem. World leaders hear this: Adult leadership is back in charge at the White House and intent on reclaiming Americas exceptional role in world leadership. The EBRD helps to build integrated economies as a key element of well-functioning markets. It supports investments into modern energy connections and transport infrastructure from the Western Balkans to Central Asia and the southern and eastern Mediterranean. Furthermore, the Bank has designed several financial instruments to support cross-border trade. These activities are backed by EBRD donors and make a tangible difference: they improve peoples everyday lives; lead to higher quality, competitive products and services; help businesses grow and ultimately lead to sustainable economic growth. Renewable energy and better electricity services In 2016 our donors helped to boost the use of renewable energy, ensure energy security for and bring improved electricity services to rural areas. In Mongolias Gobi Desert, for example, the EBRD supports the use of wind power. A US$ 750,000 grant from Japan will help national transmission company NPTG modernise an electricity substation near the site of a planned wind farm. It will connect the wind farm, expected to be co-financed by the EBRD and Japan International Cooperation Agency, to the central grid. Another project allows more than 400,000 people to benefit from better electricity services in the Osh and Batken regions of the Kyrgyz Republic. The European Union and the EBRD are supporting Oshelectro to modernise derelict electricity transmission systems and to install an advanced metering system in about 18,500 households, which will lead to a significant reduction in electricity losses. At the same time, the EBRD is working with its donors to improve energy regulation to create an environment conducive to private investments. In Egypt, for instance, the EBRD Southern and eastern Mediterranean Multi-Donor Account* funded a technical cooperation project to support the New and Renewable Energy Authority (NREA) in preparing the Strategic Environmental and Social Assessment for the Benban solar site. The NREA will use the 37 km2 plot to implement solar projects with a potential total capacity of 1,800 MW. The assessment ensures that the large development planned in Benban is carried out in accordance with best international practice and in a manner which maximises the benefits for the local population and other stakeholders. Improving global transport links The EBRD also continues to improve major transport links to connect people and businesses. These are vital to ensure that goods can flow efficiently across borders, to provide enterprises with access to new markets and to integrate economies regionally and globally. For example, in the Western Balkans the EBRD has worked with the EU and bilateral donors to modernise related infrastructure. In Albania a 36.8 million loan is helping to finance significant improvements to the rail line leading from the capital Tirana to the Adriatic Sea port of Durres. The project also includes a new link to Tirana International Airport along the rail line to ensure better and faster connections between these key destinations. It is supported by a 35.4 million investment grant and additional technical assistance from the Western Balkans Investment Framework. The Banks investments into the transport sector have benefited from technical cooperation activities to efficiently prepare, design and supervise construction works. These have been funded by various donors, including the European Union and the Central European Initiative. Together with the European Union, we are helping business in Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine take full advantage of unrestricted access to the worlds largest market. More videos New trade opportunities In Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, the EBRD and the EU strongly support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in their ambitions to trade abroad. The Bank started in May 2016 to provide 380 million in loans and trade guarantees to local partner banks and other financial institutions for on-lending to businesses, while the EU is making available 19 million for technical assistance, investment incentives and risk-sharing. This will help local SMEs to improve their product quality and services to meet EU standards. The three countries signed Association Agreements with the EU that include the establishment of a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA) between each country and the EU. Access to the EU market, the worlds largest, offers many new trading opportunities to businesses in the three countries. This is why the EBRD and the EU, under the latters EU4Business initiative, support them in many ways: access to finance, expert advice on how to grow their businesses and policy reform to improve the investment climate. Mr Gigla Toloraira who runs World Nuts LTD, a company located in Western Georgia, which offers consumers hazelnut kernels and roasted hazelnuts, is one of the first beneficiaries of the DCFTA-related programmes in the country. Gaining access to the European market of 500 million consumers is both a great opportunity and a challenge for small and medium enterprises in Georgia, said Mr Toloraira. In order to fully exploit opportunities, we are in constant need of enhancing skills, expertise and financial resources. My company was lucky to be involved in a project that helped us introduce quality and food safety management practices that strengthen our company image on local and international markets. The EBRD and its donors are also supporting cross-border trade through the Trade Facilitation Programme (TFP). In 2016, for example, the Bank completed a project in Moldova that focused on studying the potential of factoring as an alternative method of financing for SMEs, with advisory services funded by Luxembourg. *Donors of the Southern and eastern Multi-Donor Account include: Australia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Taipei China and the United Kingdom. Republican Congressman David Trott from Michigans 11th Congressional District has a long and sordid history profiting from the human misery caused when his foreclosure business threw victims of the Bush Recession out of their homes. He didnt just run a foreclosure-based law firm. He created a vertically integrated machine to ensure that he got profit every step of the way: CHRIS HAYES: What money is there to be made the process of [foreclosure]? DAVID DAYEN: Theres not a whole lot of money to be made if youre just doing the legal work. But Trott & Trott had a unique business strategy where they bought up practically every company down the line that gets a little bit of money out of the foreclosure process. Theres a requirement in Michigan that you have to put legal notices out in the newspaper. They bought the newspaper that did that. Theres a requirement that you have to do a title search. They bought the company that does the title searches and they get money off of that. They bought a real estate agency that then sells the houses after they go into foreclosure. So they kind of made money at every step down line and once you add that up, its lucrative. HAYES: Yeah, they created, its sort of a turnkey foreclosure operation for the banks where theyre, basically, at every step in the line, they own it. In 2007, during the height of the housing crisis in this country, Trott went on record as being a BIG fan of the very same subprime mortgages that led to so many of the foreclosures he cashed in on. And why not? It just meant more profit for the multi-millionaire. Well, now that hes in office, Trott is working to enrich himself through his foreclosure business even more. This week he introduced H.R. 1849 the Practice of Law Technical Clarification Act of 2017. This is a bill that, if signed into law, would exempt law firms and licensed attorneys (like Trotts business Trott & Trott) who are engaged in debt collection from consumer protection regulations and oversight. Heres the description of what the bill does: To amend the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act to exclude law firms and licensed attorneys who are engaged in activities related to legal proceedings from the definition of a debt collector, to amend the Consumer Financial Protection Act of 2010 to prevent the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection from exercising supervisory or enforcement authority with respect to attorneys when undertaking certain actions related to legal proceedings, and for other purposes. In other words, Trotts firm could go about its shady business of capitalizing off the financial hardship of families and turn a tidy profit without the nuisance of oversight from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau getting in the way. Canton resident Cori Carr expressed her disgust, saying, Congressman Trotts use of his official office to financially benefit his familys foreclosure company is the reason why people dont trust career politicians in Washington. We elected him to represent us, not to financially benefit his familys foreclosure company. Why isnt Congressman Trott working on protecting our healthcare, creating better paying jobs or responding to the concerns of his constituents? Instead, he appears to be more interested in benefiting his family financially. This is an attempt to rig the system in his favor and we demand that he withdrawal this proposal immediately. Trott wont do that, of course. Hes in a safely gerrymandered district meaning hes unlikely to be held accountable for his self-dealing and profiting from his own legislation. How gerrymandered is the 11th Congressional District? Have a look for yourself: It was very obviously drawn to make sure that the Democratic voters in Pontiac arent anything he has to worry about. However, given the rising awareness of voters in the 11th District and the possible challenge of a dynamic young millennial named Haley Stevens, Trott may have more to worry about from his constituents (many of whom Trotts staff call un-American) than he thinks. In 2013, a new nonpartisan group called CROWDPAC launched a new fundraising model for potential political candidates. Similar to Kickstarter, CROWDPAC allows candidates to raise money through financial pledges. The pledges are not collected unless the candidate actually decides to run, giving them a chance to see how much support they have before making their decision. As an example, Kathryn Allen was considering a run against Utah Republican Congressman Jason Chaffetz so she started a CROWDPAC fundraising pledge drive. She raised about $12,000. Not an insubstantial amount but not nearly enough to run against a sitting member of Congress who Chairs one of the most powerful House Committees. Then Chaffetz had a townhall meeting were he suggested that people were deciding to buy iPhones rather than health insurance. The outrage that resulted from that tonedeaf and absurd comment turned out to be the catalyst for an outpouring of support for Allen. As of today, she has raised over a half million dollars through CROWDPAC for her potential run. Another potential candidate is here in Michigan in the 11th Congressional District. Haley Stevens is a millennial who grew up in the District. She served as chief of staff on the Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry in 2009 for the Obama administration. She was pondering a run against incumbent Republican and notorious Foreclosure King David Trott and, after Trotts outrageous hot mic moment when his staff called his constituents as un-American, she opened a CROWDPAC fundraising pledge drive of her own. In just a few short weeks, she has raised almost $25,000 for her potential bid. I am officially exploring a run for Congress in my home district, where I was proudly born & raised! #Michigan #CD11 #TheFutureIsNow https://t.co/1WFNH1Lk6D Haley Stevens (@HaleyLive) March 27, 2017 Stevens comes to the race with some serious campaign chops. In addition to her work with the Auto Task force, she worked on the campaigns of Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm and U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow. Heres what the lead adviser to the Auto Task force, Steven Rattner, had to say about Stevens in his book Overhaul An Insiders Account of the Obama Administrations Emergency Rescue of the Auto Industry: I made only one other visit to the transition headquarters, coincidentally on the day the Senate agreed to the second $350 billion of TARP funding, January 15. PUshing through the second tranche of the unpopular program was a heady success for an administration that hadnt yet taken office. The news occasioned high-fives in the economics corner of the eighth floor and a victory-lap appearance by Rahm. I met Haley Stevens that day, even younger than Deese and a native of Michigan, who had wanted more than anything to assist with autos and had gotten a mutual acquaintance to send me her resume. Haley had spent most of the three and a half years since graduating from college in one political job or another while also earning a masters degree. After the election, shed worked on confirmations for cabinet-level appointees. Since she was already on the transition teams payroll, Deese and I quickly decided to make her our chief of staff. We would come to find her tireless, cheerful, and blessed with a social conscience and a talent for improvisation. CROWDPAC is an exciting new political fundraising model, one that gives potential candidates a chance to test the waters before committing to run. And with Trotts clear disrespect of and disdain for his constituents, someone with Stevens background, values, and temperament might have a real shot at booting him from his seat and send him back to preying on vulnerable Michiganders in the world of foreclosure. This will be an interesting race to watch. Samsung on Wednesday launched the Galaxy S8 and S8+, its next generation of smartphones. They feature major improvements in design and security processing power, as well as new digital assistant technology that may challenge the best devices on the market. The Galaxy S8 and S8+ are available with 5.8 inch and 6.2 inch screens respectively. Both sport an infinity display using Corning Gorilla Glass, and a bezel-less design that provides a wider viewing area and more immersive experience than traditional smartphones. The phones offer the industrys first 10nm processor, which allows for greater speed and efficiency when multitasking, according to Samsung. Both models have an 8-MP front-facing camera with F1.7 smart autofocus and a 12-MP dual pixel rear camera. They are the first devices to be certified as Mobile HDR Premium by the UHD Alliance, which means viewers can watch TV and movies in vibrant color. Security features, courtesy of Samsung Knox, offer defense-level protection that includes biometric authentication with iris and fingerprint scanning and facial recognition. Click Image to Enlarge Siri Killer The Galaxy S8 and S8+ feature Samsungs new digital assistant technology, called Bixby, which extends artificial intelligence capabilities to touch, vision and text commands. It features contextual awareness, so the device can recognize a local landmark, for example, and recommend nearby restaurants. Bixby understands context. It knows what is happening on your screen, Siriam Thodia, senior director of intelligence and IoT, told attendees at the launch event. Bixby voice commands work with several native Samsung apps ranging from contacts, camera and gallery to settings and messages. It works with some other Samsung and third-party apps as well. The Galaxy S8 and S8+ feature several interactive technologies, expanding the range of features throughout the Samsung ecosystem. The phones unlock the companys new Gear VR with Controller, allowing single-handed navigation with Oculus devices. They also connect to the new Gear 360, which allows the creation of 4K 360-degree video and 15K photos. The phones work with Samsung Connect, which allows them to control IoT-enabled devices using three-step configuration. Samsung DeX allows the phones to provide a secure, desktop-like computing experience. Solid Reception The Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ will be very well received, and it will solidify Samsungs leadership in smartphones, said Werner Goertz, research director for personal technologies innovation at Gartner. That said, none of the hardware or feature sets announced at the event are revolutionary, he told TechNewsWorld. The infinity display, which increases the viewable display to 83 percent, is a good and competitive addition but LG announced the same feature for its G6 at the Mobile World Congress. In terms of recovering from the Galaxy Note recall, Samsung has learned to directly, openly and proactively address the loss of trust it caused, Goertz said. The S8 could be an instant classic, said Jitesh Ubrani, senior research analyst for worldwide mobile device trackers at IDC. Samsung has gone above and beyond in terms of design, he told TechNewsWorld. The Samsung Galaxy 8 and 8+ phones will be available starting April 21. They will come in five colors: Midnight Black, Orchid Gray, Arctic Silver, Coral Blue and Maple Gold. Already under the microscope for claims of sexual harassment and questionable labor practices, Uber this week said it would ban the use of a controversial technology to block regulatory authorities from monitoring its operations. The companys greyballing technology is designed to hide the standard city app view in specific cases for example, from former riders blocked for being abusive, or to prevent fraud. However, some drivers have used it to circumvent local regulators, a practice that Uber no longer will allow, according to Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan. Uber has started a review of the different ways the technology has been used up to now, he said, noting that it will take some time before the prohibition can be enforced fully. A number of organizations have reached out for additional information, Sullivan said, although he did not specify whether they were government regulators or other organizations. Uber will respond to their inquiries after the review is completed, he added. I am baffled that it took Uber public scrutiny and a weeks time to come to this conclusion, said European Parliament member Marietje Schaake. I expect at least full disclosure of every city in which Uber used greyballing for this purpose, so that the relevant authorities can get to the bottom of this and take appropriate actions, she told the E-Commerce Times. Uber has used its greyballing technology to thwart regulators in various U.S. cities, including Boston and Las Vegas, as well as in a number of overseas markets, including Paris, where it has been under scrutiny, The New York Times reported earlier this month. Serious Blowback Uber has faced a heavy backlash in cities where it has faced off against entrenched taxi and private car services that transport tourists, business travelers and local passengers to and from local airports, rail stations and hotels under a completely different set of operating costs and regulatory requirements. Hundreds of taxi drivers in South Africa blocked traffic to the O.R. Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg to protest Uber operations there. Following publication of the NYT story, Schaake last week appealed to the European Commission for an investigation of the greyballing tool in connection with local competition rules. The rule of law should apply to everybody, online and offline. I want to know what the European Commission proposes to do after what we learned about Uber. It should be a no-brainer that if you actively create measures and tools to circumvent local laws, you should be held accountable, she said. Some cities have very rigid rules against the ride-hailing market, Schaake noted. We need rules to ensure principles are preserved and we have a level playing field. As a liberal, I am not in favor of companies that aim to monopolize transport services under the guise of being collaborative companies. Sexual Harassment Claims The greyballling controversy marks the latest disruption for Uber, which has prided itself as the ultimate Silicon Valley disruptor, following a major backlash against the companys coziness with the Trump administration. Uber drew protesters ire in particular when it attempted to circumvent a work stoppage by local taxi drivers at JFK International Airport in January, which was intended to protest the presidents controversial ban on the admission of refugees and visitors to the U.S. from certain Muslim-dominant countries. A big scandal erupted just last month, when a former engineer at Uber alleged widespread sexual harassment that the company allegedly tried to bury before forcing her out. Uber hired former Obama administration AG Eric Holder to investigate the sexual harassment claims, and since has fired Amit Singhal, senior vice president of engineering. Long Lens Uber has committed a rash of unforced errors in recent months, according to Michael Harley, executive analyst at Kelley Blue Book. However, its way too early to bet against Uber weathering the storm. While there will be countless riders who will abandon the app-based company and jump over to rival Lyft, dont discount Uber just yet, he told the E-Commerce Times. Uber just landed a permit to test autonomous vehicle driving in California, which is another potentially lucrative market for the emerging business of ride sharing with driverless cars, Harley noted. Pushing the technology envelope, while carefully managing its public image and next steps, should help extinguish much of the negativity, he said. Uber has certainly been under pressure in recent months, acknowledged Steven Polzin, director of mobility policy research at the University of South Floridas Center for Urban Transportation Research. Still, its prudent to take a longer view of the ride-sharing industrys potential, he said, cautioning against drawing conclusions about Uber and Lyft based on current events. The technology is important and will be around, Polzin told the E-Commerce Times. The pricing and delivery structure, regulatory environment, and capacity remain to be validated and are likely to keep changing. CARSON CITY Among the 1,000-plus bills introduced in the Legislature is a resolution that would do what many lawmakers have been trying to do for years in Nevada: allow them to meet more frequently. Senate Joint Resolution 11, proposed by seven Democrat leaders of the Senate, would shrink the session in odd-numbered years to 90 days, creating a 30-day session in even years. Being an amendment to the Nevada Constitution, the resolution not only has to pass this legislative session but also the next regular session, then be put to a vote of Nevada citizens. Many in the state are understandably skeptical, as this is by no means a unique piece of legislation. Similar bills date back at least as far as 1959 when Gov. Grant Sawyer of Elko was in office. The most recent attempt was begun in the 2013 session by Senators Tick Segerblom, Pat Spearman and Joyce Woodhouse all repeat sponsors this session. After being passed by the Senate Legislative Operations and Elections Committee of 2015, the bill died upon adjournment, never reaching the floor of either house for debate or vote. Additional sponsors in 2017 are senators Aaron Ford, Patricia Farley, David Parks and Mo Denis. Prior to that, Assembly Joint Resolution 2 of the 2011 session again introduced by then-Assemblyman Tick Segerblom called for a 90-day session in odd-numbered years and a 60-day session in even years. That bill died in committee, having been placed on four agendas and never receiving any action from the session in which now-senator Pete Goicoechea was the Assembly Minority Leader and Assemblyman John Ellison was a freshman legislator. In 2009, Segerblom introduced Assembly Joint Resolution 6, calling for a 120-day session in odd-numbered years and 60 days during even years. He was joined by Speaker Barbara Buckley and Majority Leader John Oceguera, as well as Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford, all of whom have since termed out of the Legislature. Earlier efforts An identical bill labeled AJR7 was sponsored in 2003 by a lengthy list of legislators from Nevadas past and present, including then-Assemblymen Pete Goicoechea and Mark Manendo, both current senators. That bill made it further than any of its descendants, passing the Assembly and being read by the Senate and sent to committee before dying at the adjournment of the Legislature. Twenty years ago, in 1997, a list of legislators including Brian Sandoval, Barbara Cegavske, Mark Amodei, Barbara Buckley, Joe Dini Jr., and Tick Segerbloms mother Gene sponsored Assembly Joint Resolution 5, which actually passed both houses in 1997. The bill was then amended and passed in 1999. It passed the Assembly of 2001 before it died in the Senate Government Affairs Committee, failing to receive enough votes to go before the Senate Floor. Even as far back as 1971, a Nevada State Journal article told of the State Senate rejecting a proposal for annually held legislative sessions. While that bill may or may not have had the Segerblom name attached as a sponsor, it demonstrates a common trend in Nevadas legislative history, likely dating back to the years after the passage of the Nevada Constitution. Grant Sawyer When former Elko County District Attorney Grant Sawyer took office as governor in 1959, he advocated for annual sessions. In his opinion, the additional time should be devoted to fiscal issues. The idea was approved by the voters but only one regular session was held, in 1960. Looking back on the session in his oral history Hang Tough!, Sawyer said, Not satisfied with being restricted to things fiscal, the legislators broadened their interpretation of the law until they had what amounted to a regular session, staying in Carson City for God knows how long and passing every bill in the book. The public and I were so disgusted with this butchery that they soon repealed the law, and there never has been another scheduled annual session which may be unfortunate. Currently, 33 of the 50 state legislatures in the nation employ legislators for 70 percent or more of the time that a standard full-time job would take, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Nevada is among a minority of states possessing an unprofessional legislature. Despite the opinion of some, this is not in reference to the behavior of the body, but rather to the fact that those in it are not necessarily career politicians, but rather ordinary people with jobs. Without career politicians, many feel Nevadas Legislature is kept in the hands of the people of Nevada, while allowing for annual sessions would remove the legislators too far from the voting populace. Comments against SJR11 submitted online claim that if the Legislature can talk about changing the name of McCarran International Airport and pass the Equal Rights Amendment, then it has too much time. In one respect, the idea of annual sessions can be seen as the cockroach of the Nevada Legislature; no matter how many apocalypses it has faced, it continues to come before the body biennium after biennium. Currently, no exhibits have been submitted on SJR 11, and no testimony in support has been provided. 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The Sierra Club was quick to point out that this sum was minuscule compared to the budget cuts Trump has proposed on the Interior, which will amount to a 12 percent slash in funding, or about $2 billion overall. If Donald Trump is actually interested in helping our parks, he should stop trying to slash their budgets to historically low levels, said Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune. This publicity stunt is a sad consolation prize as Trump tries to stifle Americas best idea. The BLM manages streams and rivers, hiking trails, oil and gas fields, and coal mines. The shift from green mountains to dingy coal on their website might signify, therefore, that the little funding they have left will go to the latter. BLM spokesperson Jeff Krauss said, however, that the new image is simply part of an IT redesign, which allows for rotating photos of the many public lands BLM manages. The hype surrounding the switch comes as no surprise, as the BLM has been a political target for decades. Under President George W. Bush, the organization received backlash from environmental groups for approving the expansion of oil drilling on public lands. More recently, the organization has been slammed by Standing Rock activists for similar moves on the Dakota Access Pipeline. In February, the Trump administration completed the largest lease sale of oil drilling rights in years128 parcels, mostly in Wyoming, for $129.3 million. So it seems, whether its coal or mountains, that the BLM is just following government orders. By Lena Brook What can Americas most iconic fast-food chicken chain do to fight the growing epidemic of drug-resistant infections? Set a strong antibiotics policy for its chicken supply! More than 70 percent of medically important antibiotics in the U.S. are sold for use on livestock and poultry. And more than 96 percent of those drugs are routinely distributed en masse in feed or water, often to animals that are not sick, to speed up growth and help animals survive crowded and unsanitary conditions on industrial farms. When livestock producers use antibiotics again and again, some bacteria become resistant, multiply and spread to threaten humans. Its a practice that is fueling the increasing failure of the drugs we rely on to treat a wide range of infections. Unfortunately, federal policy regulating antibiotics use in agriculture has not stopped this misuse. But U.S. food companies are responding to growing consumer concern and committing to ending the use of medically important antibiotics in their chicken supplies. Today KFC becomes the newest addition to this leaders circle, announcing that after 2018, the company will only sell chicken raised without antibiotics important to human medicine. This is great news for fried chicken lovers and, most importantly, for public health. The Natural Resources Defense Council has been calling on the company to set a meaningful antibiotics policy for its chicken supply since May 2016, when we launched our Get KFC Chicken Off Drugs campaign. Allies like U.S. Public Interest Research Groups, Consumers Union and Food Animals Concern Trust have also been pressing the company to clean up its supply chain. Given that KFC is the nations largest chicken-on-the-bone quick-service restaurant in the U.S., we know its commitment to responsible antibiotics use will have an impact throughout the chicken industry. Today we give KFC kudos for taking a strong stand that will help to protect the public against the growing threat of antibiotic-resistant infections. We are also glad to know that consumers will be able to verify that the company is keeping its word, since the antibiotics practices of KFC suppliers will be regularly audited under the U.S. Department of Agriculture Process Verified Program. We look forward to updates from KFC on its implementation progress in the year to come. KFCs announcement means that 11 out of the top 15 fast-food and -casual restaurant chains in the U.S. have now committed to some level of responsible antibiotics use for their chicken supply. KFCs promise is especially important because the company only purchases a portion of the chickens from any given flock, due to standards for the birds they buy. This means its change in policy will affect a larger number of chickens than what the company purchases itself, since farmers have to raise all the birds in the same barn the same way. KFCs new policy is good news for all of uschicken lovers or notbecause drug-resistant infections (or superbugs) are becoming increasingly widespread. Conservatively, at least two million Americans get antibiotic-resistant infections every year and at least 23,000 die as a direct result, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A recent Reuters investigation suggests that these numbers significantly underestimate the scope of resistant infections in the U.S. Fortunately, the tremendous momentum weve seen in the chicken industry demonstrates that more responsible antibiotic practices are achievable and affordable. Looking at data from a 2017 WattPoultryUSA survey, the Natural Resources Defense Council estimates that more than 42 percent of the U.S. chicken industry is either under an antibiotics stewardship pledge or has already converted to responsible practices. KFCs new policy will likely move this number even higher. We are heartened by KFCs decision to join the fight against drug-resistant superbugs. The transition to responsible antibiotics use in the chicken industry has happened in the span of just four years, proving that where there is a will, there is a way. I hope this will inspire other sectors of the livestock industry, like pork and beef producers, to follow suit. Lena Brook is a food policy advocate at the Natural Resources Defense Council. (Photo: UNHCR)Syrian women and children recently displaced from East Aleppo take shelter at the nearby Al-Mahalij industrial zone in late 2016. The World Council of Churches general secretary Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit has urged all parties in the Syrian conflict to cease hostilities and commit to peace talks toward a transitional governance within the framework of international law. Tveit said he was speaking April 7, in response to U.S. missile attacks on Syria launched overnight in response to bombings, attributed to the Syrian air force, using chemical agents and killing dozens of civilians in the Syrian province of Idlib. "As we have stressed time and time again, there is no military solution to the situation in Syria," said Tveit. "The only path to peace for this devastated country is through nonviolent action and peaceful dialogue among the parties to the conflict. Two wrongs - the bombing of civilians with chemical weapons and retaliation with further bombing - do not make a right. "They do not advance the interests of the Syrian people, who have already suffered so much; nor do they pave the way for a future of peace," he said. The American attack on Syria on April 6, unraveled well laid plans by China for a summit meeting with Donald Trump that would present President Xi Jinping as a global leader on par with the U.S. president. The could see him stealing the spotlight from Xi and putting him in a difficult position: choosing between condoning the kind of unilateral military action that China has long opposed, or rebuking his host, The New York Times speculated. Xi's dilemma was also acute because China has generally sided with Russia in defending Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and because it worries that Trump might be prepared to order a similar strike on North Korea, Chinese and Western analysts said. The day before his April 7 statement Tveit had urged the U.N. Security Council to put an end to the impunity of the warring parties by investigating their crimes and establishing mechanisms to ensure that all those responsible are held accountable. In order for the Security Council to agree on Syria, Russia and the United States need to reach an agreement on the way forward on Syria. URGENT CALL TO UN SECURITY COUNCIL "Now, in light of this unilateral response by the U.S. and the risk of this already disastrous conflict escalating and spreading regionally and internationally, I call urgently on the UN Security Council to fulfil its unique collective responsibility for promoting peace and security for all." "And I call on all Christians and all people of faith around the world" he added, "to join together in prayer for peace and an end to conflict and bloodshed in Syria." On April 6, after the reports of a horrific chemical weapons attack in the Idlib Governance of Syria, Tveit had called for a cultural shift in the region as he expressed deep sympathy to the families of the victims. More than 70 people were reported to have died, including 20 children, in the village of Khan Sheikhoun. "This attack and many other airstrikes have been targeting civilian populations, including vulnerable children and women," said Tveit. "The World Council of Churches believes that these attack, as well as so many other war crimes, crimes against humanity and unbearable atrocities, are sadly still taking place against an innocent civil population because the culture of impunity is maintained in Syria and the whole region." A New Zealand school has apologised to the family of two male students who had their throats slashed with a razor during a school production of Sweeney Todd. The incident, which took place in April 2016 at Saint Kentigern College, located in Auckland, involved a genuine razor blade covered in tape, which was used as a prop. The students were immediately rushed to hospital with life-threatening injuries, but recovered well and were later released. One year on, the school has released a statement apologising for the blunder and the emotional and physical harm it caused to the students and families involved. Many of you will recall the serious accident that took place last year on the opening night of the college musical during which two students were very seriously injured, the school said in a statement. This was a difficult and most distressing time for the boys and their families, and the staff and other students involved in the production. On Wednesday, a WorkSafe New Zealand report found the school breached the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 by failing to ensure the health and safety of students was not put at risk. However, despite the multiple failings on the school's part, the regulator agreed the school could use an enforceable undertaking agreement instead of facing conviction over the incident. As part of the agreement, the school is to pay an unspecified amount of money to the victims, as well as spending around $80,000 on processes to improve health and safety standards at the school, and across New Zealand. Commenting on his decision to let the school avoid prosecution, WorkSafe general manager of operations, Brett Murray, said that while the injuries were very serious and the school failed in its duty to the two students, it was an isolated incident. A recent move by Congress has quietly opened a loophole that could allow states to avoid publicly identifying some of their high school dropout factories for intervention and support. It happened last month when Congress voted to dissolve accountability regulations written by the Obama administration for the Every Student Succeeds Act. With his signature, President Donald Trump finalized that move March 28. When lawmakers dumped the accountability rules, they eliminated a key clarification of a fuzzy portion of the underlying law: It spelled out exactly how states must calculate their high schools graduation rates to see which ones need comprehensive support. The Every Student Succeeds Act says that states must identify for comprehensive support all public high schools in the state failing to graduate one-third or more of their students. It is an attempt to identify and support schools with high dropout rates. But the way ESSA is written could allow states to use graduation-rate calculations that inflate the numbers, such as those that include students who finish in five or six years, or those who receive GEDs instead of diplomas. Under former President Obama, the U.S. Department of Education closed that loophole when it created regulations for the law . The rules specified that when states identify their high schools with low-graduation rates, they must use the four-year adjusted cohort graduation rate, which tracks the proportion of each freshman class that earns regular diplomas four years later. With those rules now set aside, states could theoretically use other kinds of graduation-rate calculations that identify fewer schools for improvement. Thats not OK, and its a problem, said Phillip Lovell, the vice president of policy development and government relations at the Alliance for Excellent Education, an advocacy group that focuses on high school issues. I hope states dont look at this as an opportunity to game the system. New Guidance Allows Leeway Other sections of ESSA that pertain to graduation rates are clear: They require states to use the four-year cohort rate as an indicator in their accountability systems, and in calculating long-term and interim goals. But no such specificity exists in the section about identifying high schools for improvement. How Many High Schools Qualify for Intervention? The Every Student Succeeds Act requires states to identify high schools with low graduation rates for comprehensive support. Based on 2014 data, 15 states would have more than 50 schools that graduate less than 67 percent of their students in four years. Seven of those states would have more than 100 such schools. Source: Building a Grad Nation 2016, Civic Enterprises and the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University It also doesnt exist in the guidance that the Trump administration issued to replace the accountability regulations . Like ESSA itself, the new guidance says states must use the four-year adjusted-cohort graduation calculation as an indicator in their accountability systems and in setting goals. But the section about identifying high schools for support says only that schools must describe their methodology for identifying all high schools failing to graduate one-third or more of their students. There was great clarity about the grad rate requirements under the [Obama accountability] regulations, but this is an area where it isnt as clear now, said Bethany Little, a principal at EducationCounsel, a consulting firm that is advising states and districts on ESSA implementation. People are asking questions about what they can do now. Its causing confusion. Some activists who focus on high school issues dont anticipate that states will lower the bar in identifying schools with high dropout rates. Amanda Karhuse, the director of advocacy for the National Association of Secondary School Principals, said states are so accustomed to using the four-year-cohort method for their accountability systemssomething required by regulations issued in 2008, at the request of the nations governors that she doesnt think its likely theyll suddenly use a different calculation for the purpose of identifying schools for support. Anne Hyslop, who worked on the Obama accountability regulations as an Education Department staffer, said theres risk in identifying too many schools for comprehensive support. Not all states will have long lists of schools that fail to graduate two-thirds of their students in four years. But in those that do, states will be very hard-pressed to have the capacity to serve all those schools, said Hyslop, who is now a senior associate for policy and advocacy at Chiefs for Change. While inaction is never acceptable when students attend schools with high dropout rates, the question is, what is our capacity to support the schools identified for improvement? Thats what states will have to think about, she said. A Far-Reaching Problem A 2016 report on high school graduation patterns, called Building a Grad Nation, calculated that of the nations high schools enrolling 100 or more students, 2,397 have four-year graduation rates of 67 percent or less. (ESSA requires states to report graduation rates of high schools of that size or larger.) Robert Balfanz, the Johns Hopkins University researcher who led that study, said its definitely a potential concern that setting aside the ESSA accountability regulations could allow states to use more-permissive calculations to identify their low-graduation-rate schools. What it opens the door to is states deciding that high school is too late, that theyd rather take the Title I money for school improvement and put it in the early grades, he said. And if you want to do that, youd want to identify fewer high schools [for improvement]. But hes hoping that the prospect of getting federal money to improve schools, without the restrictions of the Obama administrations School Improvement Grant program, will encourage states to use the four-year graduation rate when they decide which high schools need support. A Look at States Plans More detail on how states will identify their schools with high dropout rates will emerge as they file their ESSA plans, which are due either this month or in September. According to Building a Grad Nation, 22 states would have lists of 20 or fewer low-grad-rate schools. But seven states would have 100 or more high schools on the list of those needing comprehensive improvement. Contacted by Education Week, most of those states said they are still drafting their plans and couldnt yet say how theyll calculate their high schools graduation rates to decide the issue of comprehensive support. But Arizonas and Ohios draft plans make it clear theyll use the four-year cohort rate. I dont think the notion of a shortcut was anything that crossed our minds, said Chris Woolard, the senior director for accountability and continuous improvement in Ohios education agency. Woolard said it makes no sense to have an accountability system based on one set of metrics, and an improvement system based on another. Were trying to move away from a system thats compliance-focused to one thats support-focused. John White, the superintendent of schools in Louisiana, said he doesnt think states need the accountability regulations to deal effectively with identifying high schools with low graduation rates. His state is taking a different tack: It will provide comprehensive support to any school that earns D or F grades in its accountability system. Under that system, White said, it wont be possible for any school with a four-year cohort graduation rate of less than two-thirds to be avoid being identified as needing support. Joseba would rather start the interview by not talking. Id like you to listen to this, then you can ask me whatever you want, he suggests, putting on a song by the Basque-born songwriter Tontxu on the car radio, before driving off to an undisclosed location. The song title is En el medio (In the middle), and Joseba says that the lyrics capture the way he feels about the story he wants to tell the world today. Joseba with one of the extortion letters from ETA. Javier Hernandez Juantegui And he had been wanting to tell his story. To start letting go. To pay his dues to himself. Recently, when he heard about a new study about Basque business people who suffered extortion from ETA for years (Misivas del terror, or Letters of terror), Joseba decided that it was now or never. By the time the song ends, this sturdy-looking 50-year-old man has tears in his eyes and a lump in his throat. Thats how I feel: in the middle. I didnt pay, but I have come to understand, which is not the same as to justify, those who did, both the victims [of extortion] and even those who pulled the trigger, he reveals. You have to go through it in order to understand it. The police didnt protect you if you didnt pay. And if you paid, you were a criminal The first letter from ETA that he remembers arrived at his parents house when he was a child. Yet it was not the first one that his family had received. The first letters had been addressed to his grandfather back in the 1970s. The family patriarch had been a Basque fighter on the Republican side, and he had gone on to create a business that employed around 10 people. This made him a capitalist in the eyes of ETA, which asked him for a contribution to the armed struggle in the Basque Country. The sum: 10 million pesetas, the equivalent of over 60,000. In 1981, Josebas grandfather received one last written warning, telling him that if he did not pay up within 20 days, he would be executed. But Grandpa didnt pay. And so, when Josebas father received a letter of his own demanding payment of 36,000, that is when I began to get weighed down by my own baggage. Joseba sees it as the inheritance that he received from his elders. But his aita (Basque for father) didnt pay, either. And one day, when he was already married with children and a business of his own, Joseba went out to lunch with his widowed mother. The latter handed him an envelope with his name on the front and his dead fathers name scrawled on the back. Joseba knew that his time had come. He felt surprised, even though you always know that as a middle-class entrepreneur, you are a target. They didnt dare go after the big fish. But you still wonder why me? You think: my family are good people, Ive been flying the ikurrina [Basque flag] ever since I was a child, I went to school without speaking a word of Spanish, I am Basque down to the marrow of my bones, I dont deserve this. In 2011, ETA announced a permanent end to its decades of violence. And the others did deserve it? Im not saying that, but when they put you into a game of Russian roulette, you dont feel empathy. You just hope that you wont get the bullet when its your turn. Joseba, clearly, is not one to beat about the bush. And as soon as he opened up the letter demanding 41,675, which he assumed was his inherited debt plus interest, he made a decision. I wasnt going to pay, ever. It was a matter of principle. I suppose that the fact that neither my father or grandfather paid also had an influence. We didnt talk about it. Were not the type to give our children explanations. We act, and thats all, he explains. I did not hesitate when I started getting more letters, either. Once you make a decision, thats it. A Basque never retreats. And there were more letters indeed. The last one arrived in 2005 and in it, Joseba was officially declared an operational target of ETA. In other words: he was in their crosshairs. And that is when Joseba became lame. Living under a death threat is like being lame. It happens to you, and you learn to live with it, he says. You cant be scared shitless for all of eternity From that moment on, besides always looking under the car and changing his routes a practice that he eventually abandoned because you cant be scared shitless for all of eternity Joseba began building up his emotional shield and loading his baggage with more rocks. Back then, everyone in the Basque Country knew what was going on, and everyone knew that everyone knew, but everyone kept quiet and pretended that nothing was happening. You cant go around crying on peoples shoulders, says Joseba. Its just not a topic of conversation. Of course I know people who paid: the father of a friend of mine paid, not once but several times, because once you entered the circle, ETA never let you go. It was between 6,000 and 18,000 every time. Either that, or they told you to go to a travel agency and pay for the bus that would take relatives of ETA prisoners to the penitentiary for a visit. Joseba told his wife at the time, and his children, about his situation. Later, when the marriage broke up, he told his other partners. It was practical information so they could take whatever precautions they deemed necessary. After that, though, the matter was no longer discussed. He certainly never told the national police about it: They didnt protect you if you didnt pay. And if you paid, you were a criminal. Instead, he told the regional police force, the Ertzaintza, who at least gave you options and did not force you to file a complaint. Joseba did not want to do that, precisely because of that complicated overlapping web of family, friends and acquaintances who made him feel trapped in the middle of two sides. Traitor to one side, collaborator to the other. The abandoned nuclear power plant at Lemoniz. El Pais I know cases of people who were victims of reprisals by the Civil Guard. I am not justifying it, but I understand the fact that some people became radicalized. That is why I have even come to understand the [ETA commandos] who pulled the trigger. Their crimes, like their extortion, were nothing personal, the victims were just viewed as symbols. ETA, for instance, did not kill women. There were female Civil Guards who were murdered. They also killed [former ETA leader] Yoyes. They didnt see them as women, but as Civil Guards. And they viewed Yoyes as a traitor within their own home. I am not justifying it, I am explaining it. An act of contrition Joseba remembers that every day there was an ETA attack was a gloomy day for him, even if it was sunny out. Just like the day when the young Popular Party councilor Miguel Angel Blanco was laid to rest, after being kidnapped and executed on July 13, 1997. That was the day that the Basque people began to show some balls in the fight against ETAs terror, says Joseba. They didnt show any before that? Maybe they didnt. Or maybe that was just the last straw. In 2011, when ETA announced a permanent end to violence, Joseba should theoretically have felt the target on his forehead melting away. But it was then that he really began paying some of his old dues: to begin with, he paid 8,000 in psychologist fees to try to get rid of years worth of accumulated tension. Its been a lot more expensive than if Id paid up [to ETA], he jokes. Then he gets serious again. I am neither proud nor ashamed. I am not a victim, not a hero, not a martyr. Its just something that happened to me; but I do think that Im a decent, average guy. The car trip ends. Joseba stops in Armintza, in the province of Biscay. From the top of a hill, we see the waves crashing against the walls of the old Lemoniz nuclear power plant, where construction ended 32 years ago after ETA murdered two of its directors. It is a good symbol for the uselessness of 50 years of terrorism. Joseba, whose real name is not Joseba, believes that in order to start healing wounds in Basque society, whats required is a collective act of contrition. He feels that he has done his part. Theyre not kicking me out of my land. English version by Susana Urra. The new Netflix series "Ingobernable" - "Ungovernable" - is set in Mexico. But when it came time to start filming the Spanish-language drama last summer, the show's star had a problem: She couldn't go there without risking arrest. Kate del Castillo, one of Mexico's best-known actors, was wanted by authorities for having met with Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, Mexico's best-known drug lord, while he was on the run in 2015. The actress, 44, shot to fame after starring in a string of popular soap operas. The drug lord, thought to be in his early 60s, started out as a street vendor and came to lead the world's most powerful and murderous criminal syndicate. Their relationship, based on mutual fascination and formed over a series of secret text messages, became Guzman's undoing, eventually landing him in a U.S. prison awaiting trial on charges of drug trafficking and murder. Less publicised are the problems it has caused for Del Castillo, who was vilified by Mexican officials for befriending Guzman, and who said her career has suffered in the fallout. For "Ingobernable," producers worked around the situation, shooting Del Castillo's parts in San Diego and using a double for her street scenes in Mexico. The show is a none-too-subtle critique of her home country. The first season unfolds against the backdrop of a bloody drug war, rampant government corruption and forced disappearances - much like the real Mexico. The main plot point is a thinly veiled reference to the disappearance of 43 students in Ayotzinapa in 2014. n February, the attorney general's office announced that in compliance with a court ruling, it had cancelled the order to find and question De Castillo. But the actress said she believes the government is planning a new case against her and said her lawyers have told her it is not safe for her to go back to Mexico. She said she'll return only "when my layers give me a green light, and I can go without any risks." Spanish police have located a key part of an important 15th-century Spanish religious artwork missing for decades about to be auctioned in London. The alabaster relief, called Templanza (Temperance) by Sebastian de Toledo, is considered one of the finest examples of Spanish Gothic art and was removed from Alcala de Henares cathedral in the years following the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939. The tomb of Toledo Archbishop Alonso Carrillo de Acuna, where the frieze was positioned. The delicately sculpted work was placed in the cathedral at Alcala de Henares, a historic town some 30 kilometers northeast of Madrid, some time before 1489 by the archbishop of Toledo, Alonso Carillo de Acuna, who died in 1482 and who was, according to the historian Arsenio Lope Huerta, a very important person in the city. The piece was originally located alongside the archbishops tomb. The Archbishopric of Alcala was informed of the upcoming auction in London and contacted the Spanish Civil Guard, which, along with the Culture Ministry, was able to have the auction postponed in conjunction with Interpol. The appearance of the piece in London has led to the discovery of another part of the relief in the Arrese Foundation museum in Corella, in Navarre, which has reportedly agreed to cede it to Alcala cathedral. The cathedral says it plans to clean and restore the piece, which was damaged during the Spanish Civil War and in its subsequent travels after it went missing. The cathedral has set up a fund asking for 10,645 to buy the work, and has so far collected more than 1,700. English version by Nick Lyne. Twitter filed a federal lawsuit to stop an order by the US government to know who is behind President Donald Trump's immigration policies. Trump has promised to build a wall along the border with Mexico and to deport millions of illegal immigrants. The social media firm cited freedom of speech as its basis for not turning over the records. The Twitter account US CIS refers to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services which describes itself as "immigration resistance." Since January, there have been feeds that borrowed the names and logos of government agencies which challenge the views of the president. They are called the "alt" accounts. The @ALT_uscis currently has more than 40,000 followers according to CNN. However, after the lawsuit became public, it has increased to 89,000. The lawsuit states that an agent of the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) faxed a summon to Twitter to request an account login, phone number, mailing address and IP address of the account concerned. However, the summon did not state that Twitter should keep the document private. The CBP agent concerned have not yet issued a statement on the matter. Nick Pacilio, a Twitter spokesman, declined to comment whether the government had demanded information of other anti-Trump accounts. However, Twitter said in a statement that the rights of free speech afforded to the users under the First Amendment of the US Constitution include a right to disseminate anonymous or pseudonymous political speech. The Department of Homeland Security also refused to comment on the lawsuit filed by Twitter pending litigation. The Justice Department has no immediate comment as well. This is not the first time Twitter sued a government agency. In 2014, it filed a lawsuit against the US Department of Justice which sought permission to publicly disclose more information about its users. The case was partly dismissed last year according to a report by Reuters. Ameriabank: At the Vanguard of Armenia's Banking Sector STATEMENT OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF THE REPUBLIC OF ARTSAKH SUBSCRIBERS OF UCOMS ALL TIME BEST OFFER TO ENJOY ADDITIONAL BENEFITS Armenia-Azerbaijan: EU sets up monitoring capacity along the international borders PACE co-rapporteurs on Armenia concerned by reports of alleged war crimes or inhuman treatment perpetrated by Azerbaijans armed forces There is still 35% gender pay gap: Sona Ghazaryan Global Finance Names Ameriabank the Safest Bank in Armenia Mikayel and Karen Vardanyans provided 136 million AMD support for the overhaul of the Myasnikyan statue, which was in unsafe state of disrepair Believe me, as a representative of a country which uses the Schengen system very often, it is quite important. Vardanyan I really look forward to having answers from the Azerbaijani side for these alleged gross human rights violations: Secretary General I call on Armenian and Azerbaijani parliamentarians to use this Assembly as an agora of opportunities President Tiny Kox UCOMS SPECIAL OFFER OF THE UNLIMITED INTERNET IS NOW TERMLESS There is no place for the death penalty in a State that respects human rights: PACE General Rapporteur EU and CoE call on two Member States that have not yet acceded to this Protocol Armenia and Azerbaijan to do so without delay An urgent debate requested on "The military hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan". UCOM AND PES-PES CONTINUE COOPERATION WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF EDUCATIONAL PROJECT Google Ad The statement of the meeting between Prime Minister Pashinyan, President Aliyev, President Macron and President Michel of October 6, 2022 Largest Corporate Bond Program at the Securities Market of Armenia Completed Successfully The statement of the Defender on the video of the execution of Armenian PoWs by the Azerbaijani armed forces LEVEL UP ONLY FOR STUDENTS: UCOM OFFERS X2 AND X3 MORE INTERNET STATEMENT BY SECRETARY ANTONY J. BLINKEN This criminal act is another proof that the Armenophobia policy. Tatoyan Nikol Pashinyan, Nancy Pelosi discuss a number of issues related to the Armenian-American agenda and regional developments Delegation by Nancy Pelosi Accompanied by Alen Simonyan Visits Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi Arrives in Yerevan Armenian Revytech, global technology leader SAP and financial services software specialist SAP Fioneer sign a cooperation agreement With 120 million drams donated by Mikael Vardanyan, the defenders of the homeland will be treated in a new building OSCE Chairman-in-Office and OSCE Secretary General call for immediate cessation of hostilities along Armenia-Azerbaijan border Statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Artsakh After the backlash during the 2016 US Presidential Elections, Facebook focuses its efforts on preventing fake news from proliferating on its website. However, it is actually more complicated than it sounds as thousand of fake news articles and websites are popping up all the time. According to a report from BBC, Facebook has launched a brand new resource that actually gives users different tips on how to spot fake or false news items. Users from over 14 countries, including the United States, Germany, Italy, the UK, Philippines, Brazil, Taiwan, Brazil, and France will be seeing a new pop-up on their news feeds that will link to the company's new resource page. The resource page shows some basic tips on how to immediately spot false news reports and steps on how to directly report it to Facebook. One of the tips calls on users to immediately check a website's "about" page to make sure that they are a legitimate source for news. It also advises users to always check the website URL to make sure that it isn't a fake or cloned site with a slightly tweaked name of a credible publication. According to Fortune, Facebook actually launched several other campaigns in the past few months to stop fake news. Some of the campaigns include a revamp of how "trending topics" are shown on people's feeds and a brand new "disputed" tag that is prominently shown on posts that have been found to be false. The company has been seeking the help of third-party groups such as academics, non-profit organizations, researchers, and journalist to help it figure out how to go about solving the problem. Facebook has reportedly partnered with Craigslist's founder, Craig Newmark, to launch a $14 million initiative to regain their user's trust in news reports posted on their website. Volkswagen is actually one of the pioneering foreign automotive manufacturers that have sold cars in China. Due to this fact, it comes as no surprise that the German brand has now announced a $180 million investment in a relatively new Chinese startup company called Mobvoi. The money that Volkswagen is putting up will reportedly be for a joint-venture with the smart automotive technology startup company to further "develop and apply AI technologies to automotive industry." Volkswagen and Mobvoi will reportedly share a 50-50 ownership of the venture. Mobvoi is relatively new in the automotive tech market as they are actually best known for their Ticwatch smartwatch, which the company originally launched on Kickstarter. The company was founded by former Google employee, Zhifei Li. Prior to Volkswagen announcement, the tech startup had already raised close to $75 million from different investors, which reportedly includes an undisclosed amount from Google in 2015. The company recently developed a smart rear-view mirror last year that caught the eye of the German carmaker. Being one of their more popular products, a report from Tech Crunch reveals that Mobvoi's smart rear-view mirrors may be one of the first products that may be developed specifically for future Volkswagen vehicles. Mobvoi's smart mirror is integrated with several functionalities, including messaging, navigation, notifications, and other features. Aside from the smart rear-view mirror, CNBC claims that Volkswagen may be looking into integrating Mobvoi's artificial intelligence and voice recognition technology into their vehicles. "We are impressed by Mobvoi's innovative approach of AI technology, and we are pleased to form this joint venture to explore the next generation of smart mobility," the CEO of Volkswagen China, Dr. Jochem Heizmann, mentioned in a statement. Volkswagen's success in the Chinese market continues up to this day as the company reportedly sold more than 10.3 million vehicles in the country last year. That figure officially made Volkswagen the biggest automobile seller, not just in China, but across the world. US launches missile strikes in response to chemical 'attack: Russia condemns the move With this move, Washington gives a blow to US-Russian relations, which have already worsened, said Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dimitri Peskov. On Friday morning, the US has carried out a missile attack against an air base in Syria in response to a suspected chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held town, BBC reports. Fifty-nine Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired from two US Navy ships in the Mediterranean, the Pentagon said. President Donald Trump said they hit a base from which the Syrian government launched Tuesday's chemical attack. Trump said he had acted in America's "vital national security interest" to prevent the use of chemical weapon The Kremlin, which backs the Syria government, has condemned the US strike. Dmitry Peskov called it "an act of aggression against a sovereign nation". The Pentagon said the Russian military, which supports Syrian government forces, had been informed ahead of the US action. In a statement it said missiles fired from Navy destroyers USS Porter and USS Ross had targeted aircraft, aircraft shelters, storage areas, ammunition supply bunkers, air defence systems, and radars at Shayrat airfield in western Homs province. The Pentagon added that the strike was intended "to deter the regime from using chemical weapons again". It did not give details of damage or casualties but the governor of Homs province said there had been deaths and parts of the base were on fire. At least 80 people were killed in a suspected chemical attack on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun in north-western Syria on April 4. Hundreds suffered symptoms consistent with reaction to a nerve agent after what the opposition and Western powers said was a Syrian government air strike on the area on Tuesday morning. The Syrian military denied using any chemical agents, while its ally Russia said an air strike hit a rebel depot full of chemical munitions. Something went wrong, please try again later. Invalid email Something went wrong, please try again later. For daily updates and all the latest breaking news sent straight to your inbox sign up to our daily newsletter A prospective councillor for South Woodham Ferrers has pledged to donate more than half of his councillor's allowance to a local GP surgery should he win the upcoming election. Kyle Jannece, of Leeward Road, is standing as the UKIP candidate for the borough in the upcoming Essex County Council election on May 4. Mr Jannece has promised to give 51 per cent of the allocated councillor allowance directly to the Greenwood Surgery , on Tylers Ride. The surgery, run by Dr John Cormack , has struggled in recent years as a result of substantial budget cuts. Writing on Facebook, Mr Jannece said: "The UK Independence Party have asked me to stand as their candidate in the upcoming Essex County Council Elections on May 4th - I have willfully answered their calling. "If elected, I will be giving 51 per cent of the allocated Councillor allowance directly to Greenwood Surgery in the town centre. I have made this clear to Dr John Cormack and his staff. "I am not in this race for profit, I am purely passionate about making positive change. "Any of you that truly know me will believe I am up to the fight and ready to ruffle some feathers." At the end of the Facebook post in which he thanked his wife and daughter for their patience, Mr Jannece says he believes he will have done a good job if he could provide additional funding for the GP surgery . In response to Mr Jannece's pledge, Dr Cormack said: "I am not affiliated to any political party, my aim is to bring people together to improve healthcare in the town and that ambition is best served by being a lone wolf rather than running with the pack. "But I do support anyone and everyone who sets out to make improvements here. "I am most grateful to Kyle for his generous offer which shows commitment to the cause I espouse." The Iranian leadership started the celebrations of Nowruz, the Persian New Year, by throwing the usual anti-American rhetoric. Foreign Minister Javad Zarif took the opportunity to emphasize that his country would walk away from the 2015 nuclear deal if the United States fails to comply with its commitments under the agreement formally known as Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The new US administration clearly got Tehran thinking about Irans main predicament its strategic loneliness. Therefore, the time seems to be ripe to turn to one possible partner the European Union. In general, Iran has, by and large, neglected its ties with the old continent. Due to decade-long negotiation efforts about the nuclear deal, Brussels has not been very relevant for Tehran, which mostly preferred bilateral relations with individual EU member states. Engaging with the EU, however, presumes understanding of the nature of this multi-layer actor and its international outlook including its strong interest in a transatlantic partnership. From Tehrans perspective, there are three sets of European players worth engaging the member states, the European External Action Service (EEAS), and the European Commission and Parliament. The member states are important for Iran from a trade perspective they promote a re-establishment of economic ties with the country. Last year, following the nuclear deals entry into force, Iran-EU trade almost doubled compared to 2015. The current trade volume of 13.7 billion, however, still stands at only half of its 2011 value, while Iranian crude exports have more than tripled, albeit from a very low base. Member states are also important for Iran because of the gas companies they host French Total, Anglo-Dutch Shell, German Siemens or Austrian OMV. When it comes to the EEAS, its Secretary-General, Helga Schmid, was the focal point of the multilateral talks and is a trusted interlocutor for the Iranians. The EEAS also includes the dedicated Iran Task Force that chairs meetings of the Joint Commission established under the JCPOA and which oversees the implementation of the deal. The European Commission and the European Parliament have so far been largely perceived as two secondary actors by European foreign policy standards but they are getting important for the development of the blocs comprehensive policy towards Iran. In order for the EU and Iran to develop a more comprehensive relationship and broader external relations, both institutions must be involved. It is the EU Commission that holds the key to EUs decision-making in all walks of life. When Federica Mogherini visited Tehran in April 2016, she explored, together with Iranian policymakers, areas of potential engagement including economic relations, energy, environment, migration, drugs, humanitarian aid, transport, civil protection, science and civil nuclear cooperation, as well as culture. However, developing a stronger partnership with the EU will not happen in a vacuum it can only come to fruition within the EU-Iran-US triangle because one side (EU-Iran) cannot prosper if the other (US-Iran) deteriorates. Thus, the EUs incredibly challenging task is to guard and preserve the nuclear deal in a time of great uncertainty. Tehran Starts to Grasp the EUs Value in the Face of Trump Op-Ed by Cornelius Adebahr Carnegie Europe. (The Op-ed can be downloaded here) The European Parliament gave its final approval to a visa waiver for the Ukrainian nationals who will now have up to three months of visa-free travel rights across the Schengen area. The measure is expected to come into effect in June after it is formally adopted by the Council ministers. There are, however, mounting concerns that this move could cause an influx of refugees following Russias invasion of southeastern Ukraine. Polands Prime Minister Beata Szydlo said that there were 1 million migrants from Ukraine in 2016 but she was immediately accused of exaggeration. The EU has prepared for this contingency with the Commission having the right to suspend Ukraines visa waiver in case of a large increase of asylum requests. The Ukrainian crisis has lasted since November 2013 when pro-Moscow President Viktor Yanukovichs government abandoned an Association Agreement with the EU, thus giving preference to Russia. Mr. Yanukovich was removed from power after 88 people were killed in two days in the countrys capital, Kiev. EUs rapporteur on the visa-free proposal Mariya Gabriel commented that Ukraine has achieved all the benchmarks, so the visa requirement should be lifted. She also added that the move sends another very strong message that Ukraine is a key partner for the European Union in the Eastern Partnership. The political part of the Association Agreement was signed in March 2014 by the new Prime Minsiter Arseniy Yatsenyuk after which the EU tried to stabilize the country by providing generous financial assistance. The economic part was signed by the new President Petro Poroshenko who described the move as Ukraines first but most decisive step towards EU membership. He also set 2020 as a target for an EU membership application. In June 2016, the country joined the Deep and Comprehensive Trade Area with the bloc. EU-Ukraine relations are currently governed by the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP). Brussels is increasingly seeking a close relationship with Ukraine, going beyond cooperation, towards piecemeal economic integration and deepening of political cooperation. The gathering of 27 EU leaders on 25 March to mark the Rome Treatys 60th anniversary was hardly a visionary affair, least of all on defence and security. Brexit and the French elections put rather a dampener on vision. Yet Europe could use some vision right now. The forces undermining the continents security have not been so great, or so grave, for decades. And the EU is sitting on a visionary idea, not knowing quite what to do with it. Last Julys EU Global Strategy on Foreign and Security Policy nurtures the ambition of strategic autonomy for the European Union. And last October EU member states fully committed to the Global Strategys implementation. Unfortunately, the end goal of strategic autonomy is nowhere defined. So the effect is corrosive for intra-EU, EU-NATO and transatlantic trust rather than visionary about Europe taking responsibility for its own defence and security. But the idea of being able to look after ones own security is not strange. Why should the planets biggest economy, with most of its richest societies, enjoying some of its strongest institutions, with almost 20% of the worlds military spending and two nuclear powers, not be able to act autonomously on its own defence? There are four reasons why not, but these should not be the end of the story: First, since 1945 Europeans have depended on the US: two world wars radically diminished their interest in hard military effort. So, at a strategic level, Europe doesnt appear to have the military capability to defend itself by itself. It lacks enough of essential things like communications, precision guided munitions, sea and air lift, air-to-air refuelling, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance that only the Americans can provide in sufficient quantity. Second, although the EU is strong on many aspects of security, it depends on a different institution for large-scale hard defence: NATO. So in a strategic sense, institutionally the EU cannot be fully autonomous. Third, if the EU and its member states ever agreed to do high-end security all on their own, this would take a long time to build up. NATO planners assess that, best case, by the early 2030s European Allies will still depend on the US for over one third of the military capabilities required to defend Europe. Europeans will depend on Americans for quite a few decades yet. Fourth, with the departure of the UK goes 25% of the military capability in principle available to the EU. If they were serious about strategic autonomy, Paris and Berlin would want defence arrangements that engaged the UKs considerable military capabilities. So that would not be inside the EU, even if the EU continued to provide most of the continents softer security. But suppose the EUs 27 remaining leaders reframed the strategic autonomy vision for their meeting with President Trump on [25] May? Suppose instead of saying that the EU should be strategically autonomous they were slightly more modest and said that by, say, 2049, one hundred years after NATOs Washington Treaty was signed, Europe should be strategically autonomous and that the EU would play its full part? They might add that they looked forward to working with NATO on a roadmap to get there. That would put them in the lead on a vision that should please everybody. For those like the British Government who think the EU arrogates too much to itself and is unrealistic about European construction, this would recognise that Europes security and defence depends on EU-NATO collaboration. Recognising the time, effort and realism required for European autonomy would be politically healthy, not least in the Brexit debate. For those who fear that talking about US disengagement will hasten the day, this says nothing about putting NATO out of business or of wanting to work less with the US. The best way to keep the US engaged is for Europeans to show that they can be stronger Allies by taking more security responsibility. For Americans frustrated at Europeans lack of commitment to their own defence, this would be a European political undertaking which outlasts the ten year 2% of GDP defence spending pledge, and a welcome dose of realism about the time and effort required. Money alone wont buy US love. What successive US administrations have sought is a strong Europe not a militarily dependent one. For those Europeans frustrated at a perceived lack of autonomy, a roadmap to real, rounded European defence and security capabilities is better than more EU rhetoric. What is needed is a serious commitment on both sides of the Atlantic to unlock the European assets now locked into NATOs integrated military structure, and to create a genuine European defence and operational pillar as the basis for strategic autonomy. This would mean a major European investment in the sort of enabling capabilities on which Europe is so comfortably dependent on the US. Rather than Europeans just responding to pressure from President Trump on 2%, autonomy might be a goal that actually mobilises further burden-sharing. Though NATO is far from obsolete, it was clear before Donald Trump took office that the transatlantic link cannot continue as is indefinitely. For the health of the transatlantic relationship, as well as the future of NATO, change is necessary, or the risk of obsolescence will become real. Spelling out now that by 2049, a century after the US came enduringly to Europes rescue, Europe intends to stand on its own two feet, would do a power of good for the transatlantic, EU-NATO and intra-European defence debates. The EU and Europeans in NATO should stop travelling unconvincingly and instead set a destination, with a roadmap and timetable. Europe needs vision right now. And collective security is a good place to start. The opinions articulated above represent the views of the author(s), and do not necessarily reflect the position of the European Leadership Network or any of its members. The ELNs aim is to encourage debates that will help develop Europes capacity to address the pressing foreign, defence, and security challenges of our time. Hello guys, My name is Sebastien and I am a scalp tattooing artist in Belgium. I do tattoos and I also give training's in this area. I would like to know how I could do my training's and tattoo in the US. This may take several days, or several weeks. What visa would be adequate? Then, through my activity, I would like to move NY to live and practice my profession. My dream would be to go there permanently but what would be the steps to go there temporarily and permanently? Many thanks for all your responses. Sebastien Varuzhan Hoktanyan: Electoral commissions worked at lightning speed (video) If we believe that the voter turnout in the April 2 parliamentary elections in Armenia was 60.86 percent, it means electoral commissions worked at lightning speed. This gave rise to doubts among observers because it turns out that there were at least four voters at each polling station in 200 seconds, the executive director of Transparency International Anticorruption Centre told A1+. Varuzhan Hoktanyan conducted two studies during the elections. He was particularly interested in the abuse of administrative resources and electronic monitoring of the elections. Mr Hoktanyan will present his findings in a report at the end of April. During the monitoring the anti-corruption centre revealed many strange things. We saw that a lot of people lived at the given address. There were many apartments and homes were 10-15 people were registered. We warned the political parties and urged them to check the information, but they were engaged in campaigning and had no time. Transparency International presents the facts and leaves their study and analysis on the forces participating in the elections. This is probably a consequence of laziness of the thought. Well, we have what we have, people voted for them and the like Who will go and check the electoral lists to see whether so many people went to the polls or not? Who will check the recordings to see whether there were cases of open voting or double voting, whether the new devices worked properly or not? I hear that the political forces are holding news conferences and giving their assessment of the elections but they should be checking the voter lists instead." Mr Hoktanyan says the five political forces that failed to pass the electoral threshold had not had a realistic assessment of the situation to have a clear idea of their electorate. Instead of showing their excitement at the campaign rallies at the number of participants and their cheers, they had better try to understand underlying problems and analyze the situation. The parties must not only give pledges and meet with voters before elections but they must work for many years and get seriously prepared for the next elections. Oh no please no - not those two. One who is obsessed with the most trivial and meaningless gossip to the extent I suffer brain leakage after two minutes of wittering on, and as for the other one, well, you know those people in the UK everyone takes the mickey out of for beards and tweed jackets ... that their aspiration. If anyone wants an example of where Generatrion X and Y went wrong...... I'd rather listen to an Arabic station as I may not understand a word they say, but it makes more sense than those two. I still listen to Catboy even though we are in Abu Dhabi now. Tax avoidance and tax evasion are two entirely different things.. Tax matters are entirely dependent on which country the OP is from.. For instance, if the OP were from India, he could very well open a non-resident bank account in India and get the $ earnings into that account. If the OP were to be non-resident for the financial year (outside India for more than 6 months), he wouldn't have to pay any taxes on the foreign income received in that non-resident account for the year. That way, the foreign earnings needn't hit a UAE personal bank account, and is a perfectly legitimate way to avoid paying taxes in your home country as well. @OP.. I have no clue about how taxes work in your country, so am not qualified to comment. With the official process now underway for the UK to leave the European Union, some new research shows how certain sectors are reliant on workers from the EU and will need to recruit new workers going forward.Immigration and access to jobs as well as the rights of EU expats currently living and working in Britain has been confirmed by both sides as the most important negotiation that needs urgent attention. There has not been much information on how many EU expats actually work in certain industries but the latest edition of Mercers workforce monitor reveals that 33% of accommodation and food services staff are from abroad, 23% of manufacturing workers and 20% of transport staff.The UK is likely to impose more stringent migration controls in the future and this will reduce the number of overseas workers available. While we have focused on 11 industries in this report, the fact is that every company in every sector in the UK will be competing for a reduced pool of available workers. Problems in one sector will impact on a variety pf others, so organizations need to understand the make-up of their workforce, the risks and plan how to address this challenge, said Gary Simmons, a partner at Mercer.According to Mercer, manufacturing, despite being one of the larger employers of EU and non-EU workers, may be less impacted by the talent crisis as its employee base has already dropped by 25% since 2000 and any workforce shortage could accelerate further automation, and spur relocation. A major risk to the UK is that manufacturers move offshore in response to this talent scarcity and possible Brexit-related trade restrictions.The bulk of new jobs in the accommodation and food services industry has gone to non UK workers since 2000 and it now relies heavily on a large volume of low skill employees and the nature of this work means that relocation to other countries is unlikely. The biggest impact will likely be on small businesses, which are unable to afford scarce resources and may not be able to find solutions in automation.Any decline in workforce availability in the information and communication industry poses a major risk more broadly for the UKs competitiveness, attractiveness and productivity, the report suggests, adding that high demand will make skilled workers expensive due to increasing wages.In the financial and insurance sector it suggests that while demand for many of the traditional roles, including broking, customer services and sales, will decline as a consequence of automation and digitisation there will be large increases in management, computer and mathematical roles and the competition for the talent needed to support digital, regulatory and cybersecurity needs is expected to be intense.Demand for workers in the health sector is expected to dramatically increase to manage the needs of an ageing population. The report says that increasing demand will require a further substantial increase in employment by 2030. The main priority for the sector will be to attract and retain staff, and this is particularly important as one third of doctors plan to retire by 2020.The net result could range from a massive reduction in available workforces for all other sectors, to a huge shortfall in health and care professionals as others sectors build more attractive jobs, enhance their valuation propositions, offer more flexibility and can afford to pay more. Gail Hathaway, who was fired as CEO and executive director of Workforce Solutions Alamo in November, is now suing the organization for up to $1 million for breach of contract, slander and emotional distress. Hathaway lays most of the blame for her firing on former WSA spokeswoman Eva Esquivel, accusing her of harassment. The lawsuit filed this week in Bexar County district court says Esquivel made anonymous hot line calls complaining about Hathaway to the state agency that oversees Workforce Solutions Alamo and spread rumors about the ousted executive that Esquivel knew werent true. Esquivel falsely accused Hathaway last year of awarding a janitorial contract to Hathaways neighbor and of having an illicit sexual relationship with another unnamed employee, the lawsuit states. These false allegations were made intentionally, knowingly and with ill will, actual malice and reckless disregard for their truth of falsity, according to the lawsuit. The allegations damaged Hathaways reputation and exposed her to public hatred, contempt, ridicule and financial injury, she said in the lawsuit. The lawsuit says Esquivel was terminated at the agency after she physically assaulted a co-worker. Esquivel declined to immediately comment on the lawsuit, saying she needed to speak with her lawyer first. Hathaway, who was fired by the WSA board Nov. 7, said the organization could have avoided litigation had the board given her 14 days written notice or provided written reasons for her firing. Hathaway said in the lawsuit that neither of those things happened. Hathaway is seeking roughly $200,000 in actual damages, as well as attorneys fees and punitive damages for the shame and humiliation, emotional distress, mental anguish, and other psychological damages which Plaintiff has suffered in the past and which she will, in reasonable probability, suffer in the future, the lawsuit states. Hathaway was terminated following a scathing report from a state agency that criticized the organizations contracting practices and cited a culture of fear, suspicion and retaliation among staff, which she disputes. Then-Chairman Rudy Garza said during the Nov. 7 board meeting that TWC had found discrepancies in procurement procedures and allegations of a hostile workplace environment. Hathaway defended her performance at the agency before the board voted to fire her. She was hired in 2014 with a two-year contract and two one-year optional extensions. If its your desire to have someone different, then so be it, Hathaway said at the meeting. Im tired of working my tail off and then made out to be the bad guy and scapegoat. The changes at WSA were needed and are already making a difference. I hope you think long and hard about what you really want to do. Starting over every time is not always the best answer. Voter Guide: What to know for the midterm election Your guide to the Texas and San Antonio races and candidates on the Nov. 8 ballot. After firing Hathaway, the board hired former WSA Executive Director Alan Miller, who had retired, to operate the agency as interim CEO and executive director until a permanent replacement is named. The board is scheduled to announce a finalist for the position during its April 21 meeting. Calls seeking comment from Miller and WSA lawyer Frank Burney were not immediately returned Thursday. The San Antonio agency serves 12 counties, including Bexar. The board and staff govern a network of service providers and contractors that match people with jobs. The agency also provides child care, career counseling, job-search workshops, training, job fairs and labor market information services. dhendricks@express-news.net Congress decided last week to extend the Veterans Choice Program, which was due to expire in August. The program was meant to reduce wait times at the Department of Veterans Affairs medical facilities but has had troubles with long wait times of its own, according to a recent report by the Government Accountability Office. The VAs goal was for veterans to meet with a doctor within 30 days, but on average veterans waited 64 days between entering the Choice program and seeing a caregiver. The GAO report noted that the program currently allows up to 81 days of potential wait time for veterans. The Choice Program allows veterans to see participating doctors outside the VA system if theyve waited more than 30 days for care or live more than 40 miles from a VA facility. Congress funded the program with $10 billion three years ago. Roberto Bobby Barrera, who served as national commander of the Disabled American Veterans organization, told the Express-News he uses the Choice program to see a local doctor in Del Rio when minor issues arise. A lack of providers in Del Rio means Barrera often ends up driving to San Antonio for care anyway. The Choice Program the intentions were good, but I dont think it is an adequate program, Barrera said in December. You have to find a doctor that is willing to take the pay, and even if you do find a doctor that accepts the pay, then in some instances you have waiting times. Wait times on average were 64 days and potentially up to 81 days, according to a March report from the GAO. Once a VA clinician determines a veteran is eligible for the Choice Program, they have up to seven days to offer a referral to the program. They then have 14 days to reach the veteran to confirm they want to be in the program. In one case, a pregnant female veteran wanted to use the VA Choice Program to schedule a prenatal exam. Almost a month and a half elapsed from the time of her initial pregnancy confirmation to when the VA sent authorization to a contractor for scheduling. It then took two weeks for the contractor to attempt to schedule an appointment. By that point, the veteran was almost 15 weeks pregnant. At 18 weeks pregnant, she finally scheduled her initial rental appointment, almost three months after her pregnancy was confirmed by the VA. In other cases noted by the GAO, one veteran waited six months for an MRI of his neck and lower back, and another veteran who was diabetic waited five months for a retina exam. The extension passed by Congress Wednesday would allow the VA to operate the program until money in that account runs out, expected early next year, instead of expiring this year with nearly $1 billion left over, according to the Associated Press. The bill calls for fixes to alleviate some of the problems, by helping speed up VA payments and promote greater sharing of medical records, the AP reported. U.S. Rep. Will Hurd, R-San Antonio, cheered the extension in a release. Hurd has supported bills to expand the pool of private health care providers who accept the Veterans Choice Card and to open up the program to more people. Hurd called the Choice Program a critical tool in his district, which includes military installations from Fort Bliss near El Paso to Laughlin AFB near Del Rio to San Antonios joint bases Fort Sam Houston, Lackland and Randolph. I agree that the VA needs to do a better job serving our nations veterans, which is why I have hosted multiple informational sessions throughout the district to educate veterans and their families on how to use the Choice Program, Hurd said in a statement. While the program is not perfect, it continues to improve and Ill continue to hold the VA accountable so that veterans needs are being met. jlawrence@express-news.net This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate When San Antonio Colleges nursing program began, it enrolled 170 students in a small building. Almost all were women working toward capping ceremonies, when they would receive the tall striped hats of professional nurses. Fifty years later, enrollment has doubled and the program has become San Antonios largest. Students treat high-tech simulation mannequins that breathe, moan, cry and give birth. The capping ceremonies have become pinning ceremonies. The program celebrated its 50th anniversary Thursday in the Nursing and Allied Health Complex with reflections from leaders of the Alamo Colleges and current and former students. You are not only a signature program for SAC, said Jothany Blackwood, the colleges vice president for academic success. You are a jewel in the crown of this community. SAC has been providing our community a steady stream of nurses since the first crop of students. Robert Inman was in the Air Force in the 1990s when he enrolled in the program under Project LINC, or Ladders in Nursing Careers, a partnership that placed active-duty airmen in SACs licensed vocational nurse program. Inman is now a nursing professor at the college. The Air Force made me the man I am today, but SAC made me the professional that I am today, Inman said. Tonya Maunsell, also an instructor, graduated 12 years ago from SACs nursing program. We were not in this beautiful building, Maunsell said. We were in a building the size of a shoe box. We did not have a computer room. We did not have a simulation room, but what we did have was faculty that believed in us, and that is what helped to make a difference. The Nursing and Allied Health Complex, a three-story building, was constructed in 2008 with money from an Alamo Colleges bond issue. Voters rejected an earlier bond issue that would have built the facilities in the Medical Center on the Northwest Side instead of at SAC and St. Philips College in the inner city. The new buildings allowed the Alamo Colleges to expand its nursing programs and eliminate admission wait lists. SACs facility is designed to imitate a real-world hospital, with labs, exam rooms, an ambulance bay and an emergency room. In the event of a crisis, it can be turned into a fully functioning hospital. The nursing program at SAC offers two tracks: a four-semester generic sequence for students with no prior experience and a three-semester sequence for licensed vocational nurses and military medical personnel. Graduates receive an associate degree in nursing and are eligible to sit for the Registered Nurse exams. The Alamo Colleges, a district of five community colleges, is lobbying the Legislature for authorization to offer bachelors degrees in nursing, citing a pervasive local shortage SACs nursing program has become respected in the community, with a network of alumni who help students on the cusp of graduation, Inman said. Those students include Leslie Salinas and Vanessa Silva, both 19, who enrolled in the program after graduating from high school, where they earned college credits through the Alamo Academies. Weve managed to learn how to adjust to the level of stress, Salinas told dozens of onlookers Thursday. We still havent learned how to she began, then paused. Study, I guess, she finished, earning laughter. Silva said the difficulty stems from nursings uniqueness. Learning how to take these tests that are different from whatever weve done before, and studying, its a whole new world, Silva said. Were so excited to go in this summer and start working after we take boards. amalik@express-news.net in this place of San Antonio is a spring of water which is about three-fourths of a league from the principal river. In this location, in the very spot on which the villa of Bejar was founded, it is easy to secure water, but nowhere else. - Father Francisco Celiz, 1718 Next year, 2018, marks the 300th anniversary of the founding of the Spanish village of villa de Bejar near San Pedro springs, as well as Mission San Antonio de Valero. Native people had come to the springs for thousands of years and knew the bounty of the area with fresh water and wildlife. The Spanish followed as did others through the centuries. Fresh water, essential for survival, ran on top of the ground from the springs into creeks and the river from a huge underground aquifer. The story of San Antonio is a story of water. The San Antonio River begins at the blue hole springs located on the grounds of the University of the Incarnate Word, flowing through Brackenridge Park, winding through downtown San Antonio, past all of the five Spanish Missions, and on to the Gulf of Mexico. Archaeological research shows people came to the springs as early as ten thousand years ago. Their names for the place are lost but there were surely many. When the Spanish passed through in 1691, a village of Payaya people stood near the springs. On June 13, 1691, Father Damian Massanet named the springs and the stream flowing from them San Antonio de Padua. San Pedro springs and San Pedro Creek were named in 1709 by Franciscan Father Isidro Felix de Espinosa. From this small beginning, five missions, a church and the village of San Antonio came into existence. San Antonio surrounds and follows the San Antonio River and is now the seventh largest city in the United States, and a powerful influence. San Pedro springs and the creek are no longer the city center, but water is. To control the water of the San Antonio River, the Spanish built the Acequia Madre de Valero, the first of a number of artificial diversion ditches of river water in the area. The Acequia Madre, or Mother Channel, sent water to the fields of Mission San Antonio de Valero, after its move in 1724 from San Pedro Springs to the present location on the east side of the San Antonio River. The Payaya people, under the direction of the Spanish, dug the irrigation channel. The Acequia Madre de Valero started at a bend of the San Antonio River known as Paso de Tejas, a shallow crossing now at the north end of what is now the Witte Museum grounds. Today Broadway Street follows the path of the Acequia Madre to North Alamo Street, where the water channel turned and ran past Mission San Antonio de Valero, now called the Alamo. The Acequia Madre emptied back into the San Antonio River 3 miles downstream from where it began. The water ditch was 6-feet wide and 3-4 feet deep. Work on the channel started in 1719 and took three years of digging and moving rocks to complete. The Acequia Madre served as a public water supply for the City of San Antonio from 1836 through the 1840s and 1850s. The channel carried water until 1912 when the City of San Antonio filled it in downtown, denying those along the Acequia Madre access to free water. In the years following 1912, the Acequia Madre all but disappeared. In 2010 the Center for Archaeological Research of the University of Texas at San Antonio was contracted by Ford Powell and Carson Architects and Planners to perform testing and a survey on the Witte Museum campus to relocate the Acequia Madre and the retention dam. Large stones of the retention dam, which some called the Alamo dam, were found as well as the path of the Acequia Madre de Valero. Large cypress trees on the Witte Museum grounds still stand around the location of the pond that sent water to Mission San Antonio de Valero, and later, the City of San Antonio. Some of the large stones of the diversion dam still extend into the San Antonio River at the north end of the Witte Museum grounds. These stones are the ruins of the oldest man-made structure in San Antonio. A stone formation showing the path of the diversion dam and Acequia Madre has been recreated on the grounds of the Witte Museum and also a concrete channel behind the Mission San Antonio de Valero chapel, the Alamo. A tile map underwritten by Susan Toomey Frost and located by the Bodine Gates entrance at the Witte Museum shows the historic path of the Acequia Madre from a map drawn in 1764 for Spanish captain of the presidio San Antonio de Bexar, Luis Antonio Menchaca. Almost three centuries after its completion, it is fitting that the exhibit 300 Years of San Antonio History: Confluence and Culture will open at the Witte Museum, on the grounds where the original Acequia Madre branched from the San Antonio River carrying water to Mission San Antonio de Valero. Visitors will learn the stories of San Antonio through interactive experiences, exhibits of historic artifacts, and film. Through time, San Antonio has attracted people of many cultures and nationalities, adding to the history and the changing and evolving identity. The transformation has not been easy or without conflict. But those drawn to the river have stayed and lived like the waters, sometimes turbulent, sometime slow and crystal clear. Without the springs and the river, there would be no San Antonio. 300 Years of San Antonio History: Confluence and Culture is presented by the John Santikos Charitable Foundation, a fund of the San Antonio Area Foundation, and supported by Texas A&M University-San Antonio. Bruce Shackelford is the curator of South Texas Heritage at the Witte Museum. COMING SUNDAY: The hard journey for Canary Islanders coming to their new home. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A jury in the federal wrongful-death lawsuit filed by the family of Marquise Jones sided Thursday with San Antonio Police Officer Robert Encina and the city after three hours of deliberation. No damages will be awarded to the family, though the family has maintained that the case was not about money but about getting justice for Jones. We have to go back to the drawing board and see what were going to do, but its far from over, said Daryl Washington, an attorney for the Jones family. Its definitely not over. Encina fatally shot Jones, 23, in the back Feb. 28, 2014, at the Chachos and Chaluccis restaurant on Perrin Beitel Road. The jury considered whether Encina used excessive force; Encina maintained that he fired because Jones was carrying a gun and Encina feared for his life and for those around him. Were always sorry that anyone loses a family member, said Mark Ralls, an attorney for Encina, as he left the courthouse. Its unfortunate that it was his actions that caused this. Encina, wearing sunglasses, a yellow dress shirt and a blazer, smiled as he walked out of the federal courthouse after the verdict was read. He refused to comment. Several hours after the verdict was read, Jones family all dressed in black T-shirts that read I Am Marquise Jones gathered on the steps of the federal courthouse to remember Jones, a recent father who hoped to pursue a career in music at Northwest Vista College. Around 13 supporters of the family gathered on the steps as well with a black banner that read Arrest Robert Encina. Today is a very hard day for me, said Cheryl Jones, Jones mother, through tears. They made him into someone who was not perfect, but to me, he was perfect. I know my son didnt pull a gun on that officer, Jones added. God was there that night. He sees everything. Earlier in the day, Marquise Jones aunt Debbie Bush said the family was angry, disappointed and hurt. Its another slap in the face by the city of San Antonio and Robert Encina, Bush said. Its like reliving that night all over again. To get a call from my sister, and shes wailing, it sounds just like the night that I got the call. Washington said he would be reviewing trial records and considering what actions to take next. Around a month ago, Chachos and Chaluccis, which previously settled with the family, was again made a defendant in the lawsuit for allegedly refusing to hand over indoor surveillance video from the night of the shooting. That portion of the lawsuit could still be tried separately, although it is unlikely, officials said. In a previous statement, a lawyer for the restaurant said the allegations were without merit. In a statement, City Manager Sheryl Sculley said the city agrees with the jurys verdict but that she recognizes that there is never any victory in a fatal shooting. Our condolences continue to be extended to the family of Marquise Jones on the loss of a loved one, Sculley said. The mayor, City Council, city staff and the San Antonio Police Department will continue on the path toward building stronger relationships with the communities we serve. Only through a partnership with the community can we achieve a safe and trusting environment for all. Mike Lowe, a community activist and friend of the Jones family, said it will be interesting to see how the citys African-American community reacts to the verdict. The community says unfortunately he deserved it although he didnt deserve it, said Lowe, who founded SATX4, an organization similar to Black Lives Matter. It wasnt like he was a perfect individual. Ive heard it said to me that you have to look at his past. I say it doesnt matter if hes an angel or a saint. We lost a young black man. Jones was on probation when he was killed. He had been arrested several times on charges of theft and drug possession and once on an assault charge. The federal jury of four men and four women was allowed to review evidence and hear testimony about Jones past, including that he was using cocaine when he ran from the scene of a fender bender in the Chachos parking lot. Taj Matthews, a community activist who is on the Mayors Council on Police-Community Relations, said it is frustrating that city leadership has not publicly supported Jones family. There are people in authority who could have spoken out but did not. They are politicians that are playing politics, Matthews said. We had people in leadership who look just like us who are not doing anything. Matthews declined to identify anyone by name. Jones was in the front passenger seat of a car involved in the minor accident in the drive-thru lane of the restaurant, where Encina, dressed in his police uniform, was working off-duty as a security guard. Jones ran from the car and was shot in the back after Encina said Jones turned around with a gun in his hand. Seven eyewitnesses testified during the trial: Three, including Jones sister and friend, said Jones didnt have a gun; two said they didnt see Jones with a gun; and another two said Jones did have a gun. One of the witnesses who said Jones had a gun initially said he didnt but changed her story during a deposition. SAPDs internal investigation of the shooting found that Encina was justified in using force. A grand jury declined to indict him on any criminal charge. eeaton@express-news.net Staff Writer Elizabeth Zavala contributed to this report. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The race to succeed City Councilman Ray Lopez, who is stepping down in District 6 because of City Charter term limits, has drawn a full field of eight candidates competing to represent an area spanning the citys northwest quadrant. City services, traffic congestion, education, the economy and possible annexation or incorporation of the Alamo Ranch subdivisions near Loop 1604 at Culebra Road are among the issues looming in the diverse, fast-growing district, which extends from the near West Side to neighborhoods on the far Northwest Side. Ropal Anderson, who listed his occupation when filing as a metadata analyst, has discussed efforts to better promote VIA Metropolitan Transit bus service as a way to relieve congestion. He said he has been married for 26 years and has two daughters attending college. Greg Brockhouse, a Jay High School graduate, served in the Air Force and worked in banking before shifting to business and political consulting. He has served as a chief of staff and constituent services manager for members of the City Council. More Information District 6 candidates Eric Gosset Age: 26 Occupation: Logistics Education: Bachelor's degree in finance from UTSA Family: Single Elected or appointed government posts: None Ricardo "Rick" Trevino Age: 32 Occupation: Teacher Education: Bachelor's degree in political science from UTSA; master's in educational leadership from Trinity University Family: No children; in a relationship with Monica Juarez Elected or appointed government posts: Former secretary, Bexar County Democratic Party Melissa Cabello Havrda Age: 42 Occupation: Attorney Education: Attended Taft High School; bachelor's degree in political science from St. Mary's University; Juris Doctor from St. Mary's School of Law; MBA from UTSA Family: Married to Jason Havrda, an administrator at Jones Middle School; three children Elected or appointed government posts: None Joseph Cortez Age: 33 Occupation: Consultant Education: Graduate of Central Catholic High School; bachelor's in political science from UTSA; master's in political science from St. Mary's University Family: Married Elected or appointed government posts: Former senior policy adviser for current Councilman Ray Lopez Ropal Anderson Age: 47 Occupation: Metadata analyst Education: Bachelor's degree in accounting from UTSA Family: Married; two daughters Elected or appointed government posts: None Greg Brockhouse Age: 44 Occupation: Self-employed Education: Bachelor's degree from Texas State University; completed the Certified Public Manager program at the Hobby Center for Public Service at Texas State Family: Married to Annalisa Brockhouse; five children Elected or appointed government posts: None Robert Castaneda Age: 41 Occupation: Payroll analyst Don Page Age: 55 Occupation: Retired pastor Education: Bachelor's degree in computer information systems from St. Mary's University Family: Married for 35 years to Rosiland (Denard) Page, early childhood teacher in the San Antonio Independent School District; two grown children. Elected or appointed government posts: None See More Collapse On his campaign website, he vowed to never stop listening to what matters most to those in our community and to work as a humble fighter whose main goal is to deliver exactly what the community wants. He has focused on public safety, streets and sidewalks, neighborhoods, jobs, education and care for seniors. Robert Castaneda listed his employment as a payroll analyst in filing documents and indicated that he has lived for nearly 27 years in District 6. He did not respond to requests for more information. Joseph Cortez, a former senior policy adviser for Lopez, is a graduate of Central Catholic High School and has bachelors and masters degrees in political science. He has billed himself as the most qualified candidate, with a background in city government and policy issues. His campaign website lists an endorsement from Lopez in the race and says Cortez is fully prepared to hit the ground running on day one if elected. His campaign has focused on public safety, education, job creation and training, transportation and funding for senior centers. Eric Gosset, with a degree in finance and past work in logistics, said his background includes the experiences needed to represent the growing needs of District 6. Gosset, who is single, vowed to make council service my full-time job and be a proven, self-disciplined representative that will go above and beyond for District 6. Because of its size and population, the district needs an energetic voice on the council, he said. He has emphasized efforts to maintain streets and sidewalks, steer youths toward positive outcomes and help the homeless re-enter the workforce. Melissa Cabello Havrda, an attorney specializing in federal disability laws, is married and has three children. Her campaign has focused on public safety, streets, sidewalks and efforts to attract jobs with competitive salaries. According to her website, she has fought as an attorney for the rights of working families, helping senior citizens and the disabled secure their Social Security benefits. She has talked about her leadership abilities and past work in city constituent services, monitoring city contracts and helping taxpayers get speed bumps on busy streets. Don Page, a retired pastor who founded Faith Community Baptist Church in 2008, has promised, if elected, to continue to fight for needs of the least among us, and to serve people from every portion of our diverse community. In a statement, he said he has helped maintain a partnership with local shelters and nonprofits, enabling his church to impact thousands challenged by homelessness in the San Antonio area. Ricardo Rick Trevino, a U.S. history and geography teacher at Sam Houston High School since 2012, has promoted a three-pronged platform to seek to raise salaries in the district to a living wage, empower neighborhoods and improve ethics at City Hall. On his campaign website, he has said he would continue his civic work and advocacy on behalf of the citys most vulnerable individuals. The Laredo native has vowed to fight for working families and help build a better future for our children and families. shuddleston@express-news.net Twitter: @shuddlestonSA This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate KERRVILLE A lawsuit that accused Bandera officials of improperly authorizing construction of a municipal skate park there was dismissed Thursday, but the plaintiffs arent throwing in the towel yet. State District Judge Rex Emersons ruling followed a hearing where Banderas code enforcement officer testified he feared losing his job over his initial refusal to issue a building permit for the Silver Spur Skate Park. Robert Koimn, a former Bandera city councilman who took the city job in January, said he felt pressured to issue the permit by Councilwoman Rebeca Gibson. She told me to issue the permit and I said no, Koimn recalled. Gibson later denied pressuring Koimn, but confirmed she told him shed sign the permit herself if he balked, citing authority she has as mayor pro tem. The lawsuit accusing city officials of cutting corners in approving the $134,000 facility, arose after residents complained of being blindsided by a little-noticed decision last October to change the location of the skate park from City Park to a city-owned lot near their homes. Ground was broken in February, but the city halted construction March 22, the day the suit was filed by residents Janet Henry and James Fawks. After construction started, I wasnt comfortable with what was being done, testified Koimn. He also felt heat over holding up the permit from defendant Art Crawford, president of the Bandera Economic Development Corporation board, which revived the long-dormant project last fall. He was upset about it and stated that he was going to build it anyway, Koimn said. Crawford, the only other witness to testify, said, In my opinion, we dont need a permit. Gibson said she mediated the dispute by obtaining a supplemental engineering report to satisfy Koimn, who signed the building permit March 9. Emerson granted the motion by Scott Tschirhart, the citys attorney, to dismiss the suit on the grounds that the city enjoys sovereign immunity and that the plaintiffs lacked legal standing to sue. Tschirhart also asserted the suit should be barred because the plaintiffs did not exhaust their administrative remedies by appealing to the city before heading to court. The plaintiffs did file an appeal this week to the citys board of adjustments, but their attorney, Roger Gordon, expressed little hope of prevailing because it members are the same as the City Council. Gordon said he plans to ask Emerson on Friday to outline the basis for the order so he can determine his next step. A sign in City Park had for years marked the skate parks future location. Henry and Fawks filed suit after belatedly learning the BEDC and the city council had moved it,. The suit claimed the new site doesnt comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act and city codes. Gordon also accused city officials of meeting secretly on the project, utilizing walking quorums at informal gatherings to sidestep the need to hold public meetings of both the council and BEDC on the issue. Crawford testified he discussed the park in separate conversations with Gibson, Glenn Clark and Toni Kunz, who are all council members. Kunz and Clark are also on the BEDC board. Gibson claimed the talks occurred before they were elected to the council in November. I didnt make any decision outside a meeting, whatsoever, Gibson said. Henry, whose home is within 200 feet of the skate park, said of the ruling, We were very shocked. Crawford said only, Thats great. Besides challenging the procedures by which the site was changed, the lawsuit accused the city of illegally issuing the BEDC a building permit and failing to notify property owners within 200 feet of the new site. Tschirhart, arguing that no notice was required, told Emerson the plaintiffs case amounts to,We dont want a skate park on city land near our home. zeke@express-news.net Congress this month will decide whether to fund the first 48 miles of President Donald Trumps border wall, most of which will likely end up in Hidalgo County. In his request for funding for the rest of this year, Trump asked for $999 million to build 14 miles of fencing in California and 34 miles in South Texas. Of that nearly $1 billion, $498 million would go to what the Homeland Security Department has identified as 28 miles of new levee wall system in Rio Grande Valley Sector. Hidalgo County, which includes the cities of McAllen and Edinburg, is home to a unique kind of barrier authorized under a 2006 law responsible for the existing 650 miles of fencing on the Southwest border. The fencing in the county is merged with flood control levees near the Rio Grande. About 20 miles of levees have fencing, but 30 miles are open. Trumps requested levee walls will likely fill in those gaps. Its unclear where the remaining 6 miles of new border wall system in Rio Grande Valley Sector identified in Homeland Security budget justification documents will be built, costing an estimated $146 million. The company that managed the initial levee wall construction, Dannenbaum Engineering Corp., has proposed spending $378.92 million to fill in the gaps, which would add concrete shores to earthen levees, then erect several feet of fencing on top. The levees are owned by the International Boundary and Water Commission, so the land for construction could be quickly acquired, avoiding the lengthy legal battles sparked in 2008 when the federal government began acquiring land for 36 miles of fencing in the Valley not built on the levees. Some of those disputes are still ongoing. Landowners in western Hidalgo County and Starr County received notices this year that the Justice Department is moving forward on land condemnation cases for segments of wall that were planned under the 2006 legislation but never completed. That law, the Secure Fence Act, authorized at least 700 miles of fencing, which was completed in 2010 as 650 miles of primary fencing and 50 miles of secondary fencing. Because the law set a minimum amount of fencing, but not a maximum amount, Homeland Security can move forward on construction as soon as it gets funding from Congress, said Efren Olivares, racial and economic justice director for the Texas Civil Rights Project, which represented landowners whose property was condemned in 2008. Olivares said construction of the 6 miles of barrier beyond the levee that Homeland Security wants to build quickly most likely will be in one or more of three communities that were slated to receive fencing under the George W. Bush administration. Land condemnation was begun for a 5.26-mile section in Roma, a 7.3-mile section in Rio Grande City and a 1.85-mile section in Los Ebanos, but a dispute with Mexico over building in the flood plain and funding issues derailed the plans. Rather than go on the levees, those segments of fence would run between populated areas and the riverbank. They will try to go with low-hanging fruit, Olivares said. Theyll do whats easiest and most expeditious. A Justice Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the government has not begun condemning any land for border fencing beyond what was planned under the 2006 law. Condemnation notices sent this year to property owners near Roma and Lose Ebanos are part of nearly 100 unresolved lawsuits in the Valley filed in 2008, the official said. Still, Olivares said he believes that the feds are hurrying to wrap up the condemnations for those segments before they get funding for more fence construction. Rio Grande City Mayor Joel Villarreal said the city owns property along the river that he expects will be condemned for a border wall, but the municipal government hasnt received a notice of taking and hes not aware of any private property owners in the city whove been told their land will be condemned. Villarreal said he has concerns about whether the federal government will provide fair compensation to landowners, that the city and private landowners get access to the river to exercise their water rights, and that construction in the Rio Grande flood plain could result in rising waters being diverted to residential areas. In 2011, we had a huge flood, he said. If we had a wall at that time, I dont think it would have survived the flood. It could bring higher consequences to the surrounding area, plus the structure would not have survived at the time. Millions of dollars would have been wasted. Villarreal said hed prefer that the Border Patrol increase its number of agents and technological capabilities, but hes resigned to some wall construction. He said he recently spoke with Manuel Padilla, the Border Patrol chief in the Valley, who told him the Army Corps of Engineers will soon be visiting the area to begin planning. Theyre set to meet again in the next few weeks. Do I believe its going to happen? Yes, Villarreal said. I believe theres going to be some kind of wall built. Do I know what its going to be? Not exactly. But thats why I think its imperative we have some kind of input. Scott Nicol, co-chair of the Borderlands Team for the Sierra Club, said that when local Border Patrol officials asked for fencing during the Bush administration, they requested the construction that was never undertaken in Roma, Rio Grande City and Los Ebanos, but they didnt plan levee wall fencing beyond the 20 miles already completed. The concrete sides on the levee walls make it difficult for animals to escape the Rio Grande when it flows into the flood plain, Nicol said. The levee border wall, from an environmental standpoint, is worse than a regular border wall, he said. Filling in the gaps means animals cant go around the walls. People can get over them. Theres ladders stacked against the walls. But an ocelot cant build a ladder. For an animal that needs to move from one piece of territory to another, they cant go to the end of the wall. Theyre trapped. Thats particularly a problem when you have a big flooding event like we had in 2010. Officials with Homeland Security, the Border Patrol and Dannembaum didnt respond to requests for comment. Raul Sesin, general manager of Hidalgo County Drainage District No. 1, attached the Dannembaum proposal to a letter he sent to members of Congress asking for fence construction that would add concrete shores to the existing earthen levees. Sesin said he doesnt necessarily support the wall but that if the Trump administration is set on building one, hed like it to double as a flood control project. Were saying, if you want to (build in) Hidalgo County, these are the areas that dont have border fence but that can be improved for flood control, he said. Its unclear whether the wall appropriations will make it through Congress. Both houses are expected to vote by April 28 on funding through the end of the fiscal year, but Senate Democrats have threatened to filibuster certain so-called poison pill items, such as funding the wall. U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, whose district includes parts of Hidalgo County and all of Starr County, said that during the Bush administration he worked with Homeland Security to combine the levees and the border fencing. There may be other discrete situations like that, where federal funding for tactical border infrastructure would be helpful, Cuellar said. Heres the key distinction: Those would be careful decisions, driven by local assessments of specific needs, applied in a tailored way with input from security experts and residents. Instead, President Trump is pushing a one-size-fits-none symbolic project that will cost Americans billions and wont make us safer. jbuch@express-news.net Twitter: @jlbuch Washington, D.C., correspondent Bill Lambrecht contributed to this report. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate With 30 days left in the mayoral race, incumbent Ivy Taylor has twice as much money to spend as opponent Ron Nirenberg, the District 8 councilman. The two will continue their fund-raising horse race leading up to election day. Meanwhile, according to a news release from the Manuel Medina campaign, the sitting Bexar County Democratic Party chairman has dropped an additional $100,000 of his own money into his bid to unseat Taylor. Candidates in the May 6 municipal election are required to periodically file financial disclosures that report the contributions they receive and the expenditures they make in a certain period. The reports that were due at 5 p.m. Thursday cover the time period between Jan. 1 and March 27. Medina didnt file his report on time. Late in the evening, it appeared that Medina submitted or attempted to submit his filing, but the citys system said the document was not available. The filings show Taylor raised $128,545 in that time, while Nirenberg raised $122,542. Their spending was on par as well. Taylor spent $167,407 to Nirenbergs $156,815. The big gap comes with the amount left on hand, how much is in their war chests to spend leading up to Election Day. Taylor has $401,032 left on hand while Nirenberg has about half that, $208,408. The mayor's campaign is strong because she has deep support across the city, from the kitchen table to the conference table, Taylor campaign manager Christian Anderson said. We have the resources to get across the mayors message of opportunity for all San Antonians from now through Election Day. But the Nirenberg campaign isnt fazed by the gap. Theyre raising money at the same clip. For him as a challenger against a popular incumbent that speaks volumes, said Kelton Morgan, Nirenbergs campaign manager. She continues to underperform in the polls and fundraising, and he continues to show strength in both of those categories. Both camps are poised to begin running television advertisements in the final stretch of the campaign. Its unclear what, exactly, Medinas contributions and expenditures look like, since he didnt file the required report on the city clerks website on time. The Dominion resident repeatedly has said hes largely self-funding his campaign and has encouraged small-dollar donors to contribute exactly $5.06 to his campaign, an amount that is supposed to signify the date of Election Day May 6. I will be the peoples mayor and accountable to the taxpayers of San Antonio, Medina said in a news release. Not the city manager. Not the paid lobbyists. And, not the special interests. The release states that total cash left on hand is $239,801 a number that could not be verified because the so-called 30-day report hadnt been filed as of press time. OneSA, the campaign for the citys $850 million bond proposal, also raised significant money since the beginning of the year. The campaign received $568,038 in contributions, spent $164,278 and has $429,657 left on hand. No opponents to the bond have posted any disclosures. In the mayoral race, the single biggest expense that appears on the reports for both Taylor and Nirenberg is for the same thing polling. Taylor spent $29,615 with Baselice & Associates while Nirenberg spent $26,500 with Victoria Research & Consulting. The campaigns also spent heavily on campaign consulting and fundraising efforts. On the contribution side, Taylor collected 286 individual contributions while Nirenberg pulled in 607. The average of his contributions was $201.55 while Taylors average was $442.43. The most commonly contributed dollar amount to both campaigns was $100. Meanwhile, a few other mayoral candidates posted reports, including Kevin Roles, who Medina said hed vote for if he werent in the race at a Wednesday forum. Roles took in $1,750 in contributions, including $1,000 from the local firefighters union, which has endorsed Medina. Underdog candidate Stephen Lucke filed a report that he received $991 in contributions and has $314 left on hand. He received $25 from Mr Anonymous N/A, and $1.00 from Mr Dominic Dominguez. The report for Antonio Diaz showed no money raised or spent, but the candidate has $780 in the bank. Other candidates, such as Michael Commander Idrogo, Mama Bexar, Rhett Smith and Gerard Ponce, joined Medina in not filing a report on time. Will McLeods report was filled entirely with $0s. jbaugh@express-news.net Twitter: @jbaugh This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Mayor Ivy Taylor and District 8 Councilman Ron Nirenberg squared off Thursday night in a forum marked by a few contentious moments, particularly when the pair was asked about how theyd tackle the citys affordable housing needs. Not present at the debate, hosted by the Shenandoah Homeowners Association, was Manuel Medina, the often bombastic Bexar County Democratic Party chairman. Medina was scheduled to attend but canceled at the last minute because of a family emergency, according to campaign workers. David Saldana, operations manager of the Shenandoah HOA, said he received a phone call from a Medina campaign worker about 45 minutes before the scheduled forum. Saldana said the campaign worker offered to send in Medinas place former District 10 Councilman Carlton Soules a longtime conservative figure in local politics, whos become an unexpected Medina ally. Ultimately, the HOA declined that offer. Medina campaign workers at Thursdays forum said they had not heard anything about the candidate suggesting Soules represent him in his stead. Overall, the event was fairly calm. Both Taylor and Nirenberg were asked repeatedly about aspects of the 2017 municipal bond, also on the May 6 ballot, which both of them support. This year, the bond includes a new category, $20 million for Neighborhood Improvements, a plan that involves spending money in blighted parts of the city in need of affordable housing and revitalization. Taylor, who has also worked in the affordable housing sector and also launched a housing summit two years ago, has been a major advocate of that bond proposal, calling it a definite step in the right direction. But Nirenberg said Taylor had three years (as mayor) to be aggressive on this issue and weve gotten nowhere. He said he supports the housing bond but called it, and the citys other steps to address housing, a band-aid for the problem when the city needs a tourniquet. The councilman said he would pursue a comprehensive, compassionate housing policy. Taylor fired back sharply. I cant sit here and let the progress that we have made be diminished, she said. As someone who has worked in housing for 20 years, the mayor said, I know from whence we have come, and I know the leadership that I have provided and I know that people wouldnt even be talking about housing the way that we are if I had not provided the level of leadership that I have. The pair also clashed earlier in the forum over a question about whether the city has ignored neighborhood plans in favor of developers who want to do dense, infill housing in the urban core. Taylor lauded the citys adoption last year of the SA Tomorrow comprehensive plan, calling it a way to further manage the citys rapid growth. She also said shes worked with City Manager Sheryl Sculley to revive a city department focused on neighborhoods and their needs. Nirenberg, who chaired a council committee overseeing the SA Tomorrow plan, praised the comprehensive plan but said the city doesnt have leadership to implement the plan goals. Building more bureaucracy is not the cure, he said. The mayor quickly challenged Nirenbergs characterization, saying the city is reallocating existing resources, not creating more red tape, and telling city staff to work closely with neighborhood associations. She noted council voted last week to hire a consultant to develop the next level of SA Tomorrow regional plans. Other topics at the forum, moderated by Texas Public Radios David Martin Davies, included transportation, crime, jobs and education. vdavila@express-news.net This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate An exhibit on Texas involvement in World War I opened Thursday, the 100th anniversary of the U.S. entry in a conflict so destructive it would later be called, by those wanting to avoid repeating it, the war to end all wars. Early 1900s unrest on the U.S.-Mexico border linked Texas to World War I, said Bryan Howard, the director of research, exhibits and collections at UTSA Institute of Texan Cultures, where the exhibit opened. Many National Guard troops who served in Europe got their first taste of service in a U.S. expedition led by Gen. John Black Jack Pershing into Mexico and military activities on the border, Howard said. Even though most people dont think of that as part of the war, there definitely was a relationship, including Germanys effort to convince Mexico to be allied against the U.S., he said. According to an exhibit text board, the war touched almost every Texan, including 198,000 men and 450 women statewide who served in the war between 1917 and 1919. Civilians volunteered in the war zone, while children saved pennies to buy war bonds. Schools were required to teach patriotism. Although it was harder to find personal family stories this year than last year, when the institute hosted a World War II exhibit, the staff did find letters written in the first world war. One, from a soldier at Camp Travis, later absorbed in 1922 as part of Fort Sam Houston, recounted concerns about diseases spreading among the troops gathered in confined spaces during a rapid buildup to the war, Howard said. As with World War II, Texas and Texans were involved with virtually every step in this war as well, he said. The exhibit, running through Jan. 7, is a collaboration of the institutes staff and students at the University of Texas at San Antonio who attended a special studies class led by history professor Mary Margaret McAllen on the Lone Star States role in the Great War. More than 40 libraries, museums and collections furnished artifacts, photos and other items. It provides historical context, including events dating to the 1870s in Europe that set the stage for the war to begin in 1914, and it includes U.S. war posters, a soundtrack of the most popular songs from 1916 to 1919, and an hourlong video of archival war footage. As early as 1914, a small number of Texans were serving in Europe as volunteers in Canadian, British, French or other Allied armies. The sinking by a German U-boat of the Lusitania, a British liner, convinced many Texans that U.S. involvement was inevitable. By early 1917, 4,755 Texas National Guardsmen had served along the Mexican border. Most of them would be sent to Europe. The Texas Guard mobilized in August 1917. The U.S. entered World War I on April 6, 1917. The early formation of U.S. military aviation, with the first official U.S. reconnaissance flight on the Mexican border, also is highlighted in the exhibit. San Antonians among the featured prominent Texans include Edgar Gardner Tobin, the first Texan to become an ace after downing five aircraft and an observation balloon, and sisters Katherine and Marjorie Stinson, pioneering female aviators who taught Canadian military pilots to fly. The war brought economic stimulation to Texas, as demand increased for cotton and lumber; oil and petroleum for transport and cargo ships; and cattle to feed the troops. After the war ended Nov. 11, 1918, the economic boom in Texas diminished with decreased demand for cotton, lumber, cattle and horses. The war caused 17 million deaths worldwide and left 20 million wounded. There were 117,465 U.S. deaths. Texas lost at least 5,170 men and seven female nurses. The last known World War I veteran in Texas was Kenneth Myers, who served in the Navy aboard the USS Oklahoma. He died in Houston at age 107 in 2005. The war resulted in international political alliances and territorial divisions that remain in effect today, Howard said. Its part of our past, but its also still part of our present, he added. shuddleston@express-news.net This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate WASHINGTON The U.S. military launched about 60 cruise missiles at a Syrian military airfield late Thursday, in the first direct American assault on the government of President Bashar Assad since that countrys civil war began six years ago. Tonight, I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched, President Donald Trump said in remarks at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. The operation, which the Trump administration authorized in retaliation for a chemical attack killing dozens of civilians this week, dramatically expands U.S. military involvement in Syria and exposes the United States to heightened risk of direct confrontation with Russia and Iran, both backing Assad in his attempt to crush his opposition. Trump called on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria. And also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types. We ask for Gods wisdom as we face the challenge of our very troubled world, he continued. We pray for the lives of the wounded and for the souls of those who have passed and we hope that as long as America stands for justice then peace and harmony will in the end prevail. The missiles were launched from two Navy destroyers the USS Ross and USS Porter in the eastern Mediterranean. A senior military official said that 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles had hit the government-controlled Shayrat air base in central Syria, where U.S. officials say the Syrian military planes that dropped the chemicals had taken off. The missiles targeted the bases airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, officials said. They were aimed at Syrian fighter jets and other infrastructure but did not target anything that may have had chemical weapons. There was no immediate damage assessment from the military. The official said no Russian planes were at the airfield and that the cruise missiles didnt target any Russian facilities. Syrian state TV reported a U.S. missile attack on a number of military targets and called the attack an aggression. The Pentagon informed Russian military officials, through its established deconfliction channel, of the strike before the launching of the missiles, the official said. U.S. officials knew when they did that that Russian authorities might have alerted the Assad government. There is a Russian military area at the base that was hit, but the U.S. took precautions not to strike that area, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity. It was the first direct American assault on the Syrian government and Trumps most dramatic military order since becoming president just over two months ago. Announcing the assault from his Florida resort, Trump said there was no doubt Assad was responsible for the chemical attack, which he said employed banned gases, possibly sarin. Assad choked out the lives of innocent men, women and children, Trumped declared. In comparison, the start of the Iraq War in 2003 saw the use of about 500 cruise missiles, and 47 were fired at the opening of the anti-Islamic State campaign in Syria in 2014. The attack may put hundreds of American troops now stationed in Syria in greater danger. They are advising local forces in advance of a major assault on the Syrian city of Raqqa, ISIS de facto capital. The decision to strike followed 48 hours of deliberations by U.S. officials, and represented a significant break with the previous administrations reluctance to wade militarily into the Syrian civil war and shift any focus from the campaign against ISIS. Senior White House officials met on the issue of Syria on Wednesday evening in a session that lasted into early Thursday, and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, the national security adviser, have communicated repeatedly since Tuesdays chemical attack, the officials said. The U.S. Central Command has had plans for striking the Syrian government for years and currently has significant assets in the region, enabling a quick response once a decision was made. While the Obama White House began operations against ISIS in 2014, it backed away from a planned assault on Syrian government sites a year earlier after a similar chemical attack on Syrian civilians. Tuesdays gas attack in northern Idlib, with its widely circulated images of lifeless children, appears to have galvanized Trump and some of his top advisers to harden their position against the Syrian leader. The assault adds new complexity to Syrias prolonged conflict, which includes fighters battling the Syrian government and others focused on combatting ISIS, which despite over two years of American and allied attacks remains a potent force. Within the administration, some officials urged immediate action against Assad, warning against what one described as paralysis through analysis. Others, though, were concerned about second- and third-order effects, including the response of Russia, which also has installed sophisticated air-defense systems in Syria, officials saidl The Trump administrations position on the strongman appears to have quickly shifted in the wake of the chemical attack, as senior officials voiced new criticism of the Syrian leader. Earlier Thursday, Tillerson suggested the United States and other nations would consider somehow removing Assad from power, but he didnt say how. Just a few days ago, the White House had said removing Assad wasnt realistic, with press secretary Sean Spicer saying it was necessary to accept the political reality in Syria. We are considering an appropriate response for this chemical weapons attack, Tillerson said in Palm Beach, Florida, where Trump was meeting Thursday with Chinese President Xi Jinping. It wasnt immediately clear whether Thursdays assault marked the beginning of a broader campaign against the Assad government. While Thursdays operation was the first intentional attack on Syrian government targets, the United States accidentally struck a group of Syrian soldiers in eastern Syria last year in what officials concluded was the result of human error. The New York Times contributed to this report. City elections are right around the corner, and ExpressNews.com sat down with each of San Antonio's mayoral candidates some known, some unknown for exclusive video interviews in an effort to make you, the voter, knowledgeable about your options for Election Day on May 6. Get to know the contenders as we roll out the video interviews each weekday in reverse ballot order. Today, we focus on the incumbent candidate, Ivy Taylor, who was first voted into the mayor's office in 2015 and is looking to secure a second term leading the city. Taylor grew up in New York and attended Yale. As a graduate student studying city planning, Taylor took an internship in San Antonio with the Affordable Housing Association. She met her husband and decided to move permanently to the Alamo City. In 2009, Taylor ran for City Council and won the District 2 seat. She served for five years before being appointed by her fellow council members to serve the remaining 10 months of Julian Castro's third term. She later ran for mayor and became the first black woman mayor of a city with a population larger than 1 million. She is only the second woman to be voted in as mayor in San Antonio's history. OTHER CANDIDATES Antonio Diaz Gerard Ponce See More Collapse Among the things of which Taylor is most proud: *Her work with the police union. "During my time as mayor we've been able to break through the stalemate with the police union so that we can adopt a contract that is both fair to the officers and responsible to the taxpayers," she told ExpressNews.com. *Planning for the future of a city that is growing rapidly. "We've adopted a plan for the future growth of our community called SA Tomorrow that I believe will help us to maintain and even improve quality of life in San Antonio even as we welcome another million citizens." "I think there's still a lot of work to do to continue the momentum in our community," she said. Check back with ExpressNews.com weekdays in April for more exclusive video as we meet our mayoral candidates. Jeff Guinn has written 19 books, covering subjects ranging from the Old West to Charles Manson. But the veteran Fort Worth writer says no project took more out of him emotionally than his new book about Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple. Guinn will be in town Saturday for an appearance at the San Antonio Book Festival. Hell be talking about The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple, a nuanced, painstakingly researched examination of the contradictory figure whose religious movement came to a horrifying end in the jungles of Guyana in November 1978. Ill be moderating Guinns session Saturday, and we talked this week about Jones and the movement he created. Guinn said he came to appreciate the decency and commitment to social justice that he found among the surviving members of the Peoples Temple. It pained him to think that theyd not only been scarred by the biggest mass suicide in American history, but also had been reduced, in pop-culture terms, to sheep who blindly followed Jones orders. People treat it like a freak show, or some mindless zombies who were following an obvious charlatan, Guinn said. And it was just so much more complex than that. While Jones was a demagogue, with a controlling personality and a penchant for paranoia, he wasnt the cardboard caricature, the embodiment of pure evil, found in many media accounts over the years. For one thing, Jones was a seminal champion for civil rights in the early 1950s; a white man who built a predominantly African-American congregation in Indianapolis and played a huge role in integrating that city. I think in our culture, we like our villains to be cut and dried, to be absolutely terrible people that never did a good thing or ever had a positive instinct in their lives, Guinn said. Jim Jones, if he had died at the end of the 1950s hit by a car or struck down by some devastating disease today would be remembered as one of the heroes of the early civil rights movement in America. Jones eventually moved his Peoples Temple to California and built a devoted following there. His political influence became so great that San Francisco Mayor George Moscone appointed him chairman of the citys Housing Authority, and he appeared with Rosalynn Carter, the future first lady, at a September 1976 rally for the presidential campaign of her husband, Jimmy. In 1977, however, growing scrutiny of Jones repressive behavior and questionable financial dealings prompted him (and many of his followers) to relocate to a remote South American jungle. Guyanese officials later explained their approval of the settlement by pointing to letters of recommendation for Jones that had been written by prominent political figures such as Rosalynn Carter and then-Vice President Walter Mondale. When U.S. Rep. Leo Ryan, D-California, led an investigative group to Guyana in 1978, he found several settlers anxious to leave. On their way back to California, Ryan and his group were ambushed at a Port Kaituma airstrip by gun-wielding Jones loyalists. Fully aware the worlds condemnation soon would rain down on his Jonestown settlement, Jones demanded his loyalists take their own lives by drinking cyanide-laced Flavor Aid (not Kool-Aid, as legend would have it), ladled from a vat into paper cups. More than 900 Peoples Temple congregants died in the mass suicide. Its easy to see the tragic end of Jones socialist experiment in Guyana as a dramatic example of how the utopian, counterculture dreams of the 1960s had curdled. In some ways, Jones fits the perfect demagogue, Guinn said. But he got his followers by appealing to the best in them, not the worst. Usually, demagogues are out there saying, Youve got to follow me, because if you dont, this enemy is going to take away everything you have. Its always a selfish motive, really. But Jim Jones told his followers, essentially, you have to give up a lot of the things you have, because we want a society where everyone, of every race, gender, belief, has an equal chance. No one ever got anything by joining Peoples Temple, they gave up things, willingly. For Guinn, the big lesson of his book is that all demagogues, even those who claim good intentions, are dangerous manipulators. Anyone who absolutely claims, Im the only one with the answer, is going to ultimately be leading followers into a bad end, he said. Even if theyre saying, Were not doing this for ourselves, were doing it for everyone else. ggarcia@express-news.net Twitter: @gilgamesh470 MOSCOW -- Russia on Friday condemned a U.S. missile strike against Syrian government forces as an attack on its ally and said it was suspending an agreement to minimize the risk of in-flight incidents between U.S. and Russian aircraft operating over Syria. Even as Russian officials expressed hope that the strike against Syrian President Bashad Assads forces would not lead to an irreversible breakdown in U.S. relations with Moscow, the Kremlins decision to suspend the 2015 memorandum of understanding on the air operations immediately raised tensions in the skies over Syria. President Vladimir Putins spokesman said the risk of confrontation between aerial assets of the U.S.-led coalition and Russia has significantly increased after President Donald Trump ordered the launch of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian air base in retaliation for a chemical attack that killed scores of civilians. Under the now-suspended pact, the two countries had traded information about flights by a U.S.-led coalition targeting the Islamic State and Russian planes operating in Syria in support of the Assad government. Moscow was taking its action, the Russian Defense Ministry said, because it sees the U.S. strike as a grave violation of the memorandum. Putins spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, further claimed that the Syrian government had no chemical weapons and dismissed the Trump administrations explanation as an excuse to enter the conflict. President Putin considers the American strikes against Syria an aggression against a sovereign government in violations of the norms of international law, and under a far-fetched pretext, Peskov told reporters. This step by Washington is causing significant damage to Russian-American relations, which are already in a deplorable state. Of course, Syria is our ally, considering that we are helping the Syrian armed forces at the Syrian leaderships request, Peskov said. The strike creates the possibility of a direct confrontation with Russia, which has forces on the ground and advanced air-defense systems capable of shooting down U.S. aircraft and missiles. The so-called deconfliction channel that Russia suspended was established in 2015 to prevent mishaps, including collisions, after Russia deployed aircraft to a base along Syrias Mediterranean coastline and began carrying out strikes on behalf of the Syrian regime. It calls for a U.S. colonel at an air base in Qatar and a Russian colonel to man a phone hotline and inform each other of where their countries planes are flying. The arrangement has been far from ideal, however, and U.S. military officials have called in recent months for an expansion of deconfliction talks as Russian and U.S. military aircraft fly in increasingly close quarters over Syrian cities such as Manbij. Senior U.S. military officials have said they have resorted to flying advanced F-22 Raptor jets at the top of the stack formations used to carry out airstrikes in part because they can better keep track of incoming aircraft and direct other coalition planes to shift out of the way of incoming Russian aircraft. Two U.S. military officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Friday morning that they were aware of Russias stated intention to suspend the channel, but it was not yet clear how losing it may affect air operations. The Pentagon was still assessing the situation, they said. Before the missile strike, a Pentagon spokesman, Capt. Jeff Davis, said in a statement, U.S. military planners took precautions to minimize risk to Russian or Syrian personnel located at the airfield. There have been no reports of Russian casualties in Fridays strike, but Syrian officials claimed that civilians, including children, were killed in the attack. In Moscow on Friday, a Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, said Russia would help strengthen Syrian air defenses to protect the most sensitive Syrian infrastructure facilities. Konashenkov said the attack destroyed a warehouse, classrooms, a cafeteria, six Mig-23 fighter jets that were being repaired and a radar station. The runway and other aircraft were not affected, he said. Therefore, the military effect of the massive American missile strike on the Syrian air base was extremely small, he said. Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman of Russias Foreign Ministry, also dismissed the U.S. assertion that the attacks were a response to this weeks chemical weapon attack in northern Syria, which left scores dead in a village in Idlib province - one of the last strongholds of anti-Assad factions. It is obvious that the strike by U.S. cruise missiles was prepared well in advance, Zakharova said on Russian state television. It is clear to any specialist that the decision to deliver the strikes was made in Washington before the Idlib events, which were simply used as a pretext for demonstrating force. Putins spokesman said the Russian president considered the attack an attempt to distract attention from the heavy civilian casualties caused by a U.S.-backed offensive to capture the northern Iraqi city of Mosul from the Islamic State group. This step is not taking us any closer to the final goal in the fight against international terrorism, but, on the contrary, it is creating a serious obstacle to the establishment of an international coalition to combat it and efficiently counter this global evil, Peskov said. Under a 2013 Russia-U.S. agreement, Syria agreed to dismantle its chemical weapons stockpile. A U.N. mission in 2014 confirmed that most of Assads declared chemical arsenal had been eliminated. But this weeks attack in Idlib raised questions about whether some arms were held back. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who is due to arrive in Moscow next week, said the attack on Idlib meant that clearly, Russia has failed in its responsibility to deliver on that commitment. So either Russia has been complicit or Russia has been incompetent in its ability to deliver on that agreement, Tillerson said at a briefing late Thursday. Other Russian officials issued grave condemnations of the U.S. strike. This is fraught with the possibility of a clash between Russia and the U.S.A., and the consequences might could be the most severe, including military conflict, Mikhail Yemelyanov, a member of the lower house of the Russian parliament, told the Interfax news agency. Here you cant rule out anything. This will have negative consequences for normalization of the situation in Syria, said Viktor Ozerov, the head of the defense and security committee of the upper house of the Russian parliament. He said the attacks would send the wrong signal to Assads opposition and undermine the peace process. Peskov had told the Associated Press on Thursday that Russias support for Assad was not unconditional, but he insisted that Russia wants to see a full investigation into the use of chemical weapons in Syria before the United Nations takes any action. Putin carefully orchestrated a peace process that brought together Turkey and Iran - regional powers that have backed opposing sides in the civil war. At the same time, the chemical weapons attack suggested that Assad and his Iranian allies have no intention of being party to a power-sharing agreement with the opposition, indicating that Putins deal is all but dead. U.S.-Russian relations are at their lowest point in decades, over Moscows annexation of Crimea and its proxy war in eastern Ukraine, as well as allegations that the Kremlin interfered in the U.S. presidential election last year. Following the election of Trump, Russian leaders expressed measured optimism for an improvement in relations, but Peskov and others have said that so far there has been minimal dialogue. Trump did call Putin on Monday to express condolences after an explosion that Russian investigators have called a terrorist attack killed 14 and wounded dozens more in a St. Petersburg subway train. SALEM, Ohio While the majority of U.S. farms are operated by men, many of those same farms are owned by women who, in turn, lease their farmland to male operators. The trend toward female ownership is difficult to track because most data only records the gender of farm operators, and the amount of farmland that is leased. According to the U. S. Department of Agriculture, only about 14 percent of farms are operated by women, but the number of farms owned by a woman is presumably much higher. Conservation efforts The numbers matter when trying to make a difference on the land especially when it comes to conservation. A group of land experts with the American Farmland Trust and the Great Lakes Protection Fund is studying the trend and recently announced a $1 million grant program to work with women landowners and farmers in the Great Lakes region. Our project focuses specifically on female landowners because women play an increasingly important role in farmland ownership, and they often take a long-term view of their land, seeing it as a valuable community asset that must be managed using conservation practices, said Ann Sorensen, research director and assistant vice president for American Farmland Trust. According to the 2012 Census of Agriculture, 44 percent of Ohios farmland and 27 percent of New Yorks farmland is leased. Because leases are usually just for one year, farmers who lease have to decide whether the cost of improving the land is worth the investment. There has been some evidence that there are fewer conservation practices on leased land, mainly because a lot of farmers are on annual leases, so that immediately brings up the concern about whether or not you implement conservation if you dont know whether youre going to be farming that land in subsequent years, Sorensen said. Knowledge gap The other challenge is the knowledge gap that can exist between women landowners and their tenants. Some owners are removed from the farm and less familiar with todays technology and farming issues. The American Farmland Trust has seen evidence of the knowledge gap when bringing women landowners together to meet with farmers. During preliminary meetings, women landowners were given tours of modern, working farms, and were surprised to see how much has changed. Some of them havent really looked at a tractor in 20 years, said Beth Landers, of the Soil and Water Conservation District in Wood County, a local partner in the project. Landers said the funding is mostly for education and outreach. The plan is to continue holding meetings in the fall, that will bring women and landowners together, to facilitate dialogue and increase their education. The focus will be on conservation practices, as well as the permanent protection of farmland, and helping farmers gain access to affordable land. Learning circles The program is based on an effort in Iowa by the Women, Food and Agricultural Network. The programs learning circles have since spread across Indiana, Illinois, Maryland and Virginia. The group hopes to eventually hold pilot demonstrations in Ohio and western New York, that will benefit both the owners and operators of farmland. Theyre (women landowners) desperate for information, Sorensen said. They want to know enough so that they can have a conversation with their operator. The group is in the process of contacting female landowners and trying to determine how many exist so they can offer services that will assist them going forward. Other partners in the project include Cornell Cooperative Extension, IPM Institute of North America, Agren, and Utah State University. Learn more: To learn more about the American Farmland Trust, visit www.farmland.org. If you are a woman landowner and want to know more about opportunities along the Portage River in northwestern Ohio, contact Beth Landers at 419-352-5172. If you live in or near northwestern New York and want information, contact Joan Petzen at 585-786-2251, Ext. 122. "There are a couple of big lakes here and we can't get around them, so the farmers have been kind enough to let us go through their paddocks to get to their neighbours." Senior research fellow Om Dhungyel, who conducted most of the field research, said there were very good cure rates and at least six months protection if no more than two serogroups were injected at one time. The future of Fauquier Times now depends on community support. Your donation will help us continue to improve our journalism through in-depth local news coverage and expanded reader engagement. Support Were back for another visit with the awesome readers of Female First. We are the authors of the hot, sexy book series, The Secrets of Stone. This month were excited to bring you another book in the series called No Lucky Number. No Lucky Number In this book, our heroine, Talia Periskova, must make a life changing decision. Will she keep her two, sexy, alpha-male bosses at a professional arms length, or will she give into her desire and invite them into her bed? We wont spoil the plot by telling you which option she takes, (we bet you can guess though!) but we will share with you a quick story from each of us that involves life changing decisions that weve made personally. We all have them, right? Those moments you must decide to listen to your heart, or listen to your head. Here are ours: Angel Perhaps one of the craziest things I ever decided to do was an event called the California AIDS Ride. These days, it's called the California Lifecycle, but back in the olden days, that was what they called it. I was a beginner-level bicyclist who wanted to do something in honor of the friends I'd had to bury due to AIDS. This felt significant to me. The event begins in San Francisco and ends 7 days later in Los Angeles nearly 700 miles away. The training was brutalbut it didn't compare to something someone said to me, when I shared what I was attempting to do in honor of my friends. I'll never forget their words. "Why would you ride in support of such a moral choice?" They truly thought AIDS wasn't really a physical disease, just a justification for behavior they didn't approve of. I realized that I had to love that person despite what they didn't know...and maintain with my goal despite someone trying to convince me it was wrong. Along the ride route, I met people of all ages, shapes, colors, and sizes who were HIV Positiveall so thankful for the awareness the riders were giving to a previously stigmatized disease. To this day, I've kept the decorations the children on the route made for my helmet, and the notes of thanks from so many who benefited from the fundraising. Victoria I was a young lady, just 22 years old. I was serving time in the United States Navy and had already traveled to places most people dont see in their entire life. I was happy for the most part, but missing a certain piece to my puzzle. Then I met a man. Yes, at only 22, I had found the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. My mother always told me, when I would ask her how do you know youve found the right man? She simply would answer, Youll just know. So when I called her to tell her we were engaged, after only knowing each other for six months, she pretty much lost her shit. I reminded her that she told me I would just know, and darn it, I was certain he was my person. In July we will be married 23 years. I had to follow my heart, and it didnt steer me wrong. We have two beautiful children, four cats, and an amazing life together. Have there been hard times? Of course. Thats just called living though. I would still choose him today. <3 We hope you will check out the Secrets of Stone books, available at all your favorite retailers! Our stories come from our hearts, and from all the crazy things weve experienced so far in our lives. Of course, we would be thrilled to hear from you personally, too. Check out our social media links below, and dont be afraid to reach out with a big hello! Victoria: Website: http://www.victoriablue.com FB: https://www.facebook.com/victoria.blue.3994 TW: https://twitter.com/MissVictoriaBlu IG: https://www.instagram.com/missvictoriablu/ Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Victoria-Blue/e/B00KJN7SOO/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1480965664&sr=8-1 Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8198798.Victoria_Blue?from_search=true Angel: Website: www.angelpayne.com FB: https://www.facebook.com/authorangelpayne/ TW: https://twitter.com/AngelPayneWrtr IG: https://www.instagram.com/angelpaynewriter/ Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Angel-Payne/e/B008OAE9MS/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1480966148&sr=8-2-ent Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6452869.Angel_Payne Japanese apparel retailer Adastria has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Velvet, LLC, a California based apparel company, which owns the 'Velvet by Graham and Spencer' brand. Velvet is the second investment for Adastria in the US market. Last year, Adastria had bought a minority stake in San Francisco based apparel company Marine Layer, Inc.Velvet by Graham and Spencer is known for its modern, sophisticated staples with laid-back California attitude, both for women and men. Japanese apparel retailer Adastria has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Velvet, LLC, a California based apparel company, which owns the 'Velvet by Graham and Spencer' brand. Velvet is the second investment for Adastria in the US market. Last year, Adastria had bought a minority stake in San Francisco based apparel company Marine Layer, Inc.# Velvet operates eight retail stores in the US, while also being available in multi-brand and department stores in the US as well as UK.The Japanese company founded in 1953, operates 1,358 retail stores in Japan and 108 stores overseas and reported revenues of $1.8 billion in fiscal 2016. (AR) Fibre2Fashion News Desk India The 17China International Dye Industry, Pigments and Textile Chemicals Exhibition (China Interdye) and China International Digital Textile Printing, Printing and Dyeing Automatics Exhibition (China Textile Printing), will be held concurrently in Shanghai from April 12-14. Close to 630 exhibitors from 17 countries will participate in the exhibition. Exhibits are scheduled to include a variety of advanced environmentally-friendly dyestuffs, organic pigments, catalysts, intermediates as well as environmental impact assessment equipment, digital textile printers in addition to printing and dyeing automation technologies and materials. The event is being organised by the China Dyestuff Industry Association, the China Dyeing and Printing Association and China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, Shanghai Sub-Council and co-organised by Shanghai International Exhibition Service Co., Ltd. The exhibition will create a platform for the transformation of the industry while environmentally-friendly technologies become highlights. Huntsman will attend the exhibition with its next-generation dye product Avitera Se, which helps downstream companies reduce water and energy consumption. Honghua Digital Technology has launched a low-cost, zero-emission and easy-to-use digital printer. Transfer Innovative-Material has developed a new water-free printing and dyeing process, in a move to promote the development of Chinas green printing technology. The 17th China International Dye Industry, Pigments and Textile Chemicals Exhibition (China Interdye) and China International Digital Textile Printing, Printing and Dyeing Automatics Exhibition (China Textile Printing), will be held concurrently in Shanghai from April 12-14. Close to 630 exhibitors from 17 countries will participate in the exhibition.# Changzhou Hongdas intelligent control-based high efficiency steam utilisation technology has been included in the list of Chinas Key Energy-Saving and Low-Carbon Technologies by the National Development and Reform Commission. All these companies will focus on the development of processes and technologies that are friendly to the environment as well as the creation of a platform for the transformation of the printing and dyeing industry. Keynote speeches and forums, among them, the 16th National Seminar on New Materials, Technologies, Processes and Products in the Printing and Dyeing Industry, Microreaction Technology A New Approach to Green Development of the Dyestuff Industry, Solutions to Sustainable Development of Green Chemicals, the Seminar on Digital Textile Inkjet Printing and the Sixth Forum on the Development of Safe and Ecological Dyes and Pigments, will focus on new environmentally-friendly printing and dyeing products and technologies, helping promote the sustainable development of the industry. Interdye Asia provides a stage for the industry to explore the international market. The 7th Interdye Asia will return to Indonesia and be held in Bandung, Indonesia's textile centre, from November 1-3, 2017. (KD) Fibre2Fashion News Desk India Diversified global manufacturer Dover has announced that it has acquired Caldera Graphics SAS for total consideration of approximately 35 million, including an amount related to achieving certain performance metrics. Caldera is a software company that develops, markets and supports high-quality technical software for the digital printing industry. Caldera Graphics is a 25-year old company committed to increasing productivity, cost-efficiency and colour output. Caldera's unique capabilities and solutions around image processing, colour management and workflow serve the global textile and graphics markets. Caldera will operate within Dover's Printing and Identification platform, alongside MS Printing Solutions and the JK Group serving the global digital textile printing market. Caldera's annual revenue was approximately 11 million in 2016. Diversified global manufacturer Dover has announced that it has acquired Caldera Graphics SAS for total consideration of approximately 35 million, including an amount related to achieving certain performance metrics. Caldera is a software company that develops, markets and supports high-quality technical software for the digital printing industry.# "We are pleased to have Caldera join Dover as we extend our already strong position in digital textile printing, which began with the acquisition of MS and recent purchase of the JK Group. Moreover, this transaction, following our recent AWTI and Fairbanks acquisitions, demonstrates our desire and commitment to grow our software and service offerings as we continue to deliver expanded differentiated solutions to our customers," Robert A Livingston, president and chief executive officer, Dover. (KD) Fibre2Fashion News Desk India Germanys leading textile machinery firm and manufacturer of flat knitting machines, H. Stoll AG & Co, has announced that the company will be presenting the designs and applications of flat knitting technology at Techtextil, the leading international tradefair for technical textiles and nonwovens, from May 9 to 12, 2017, in Frankfurt, Germany.The new cluster concept for Technical textiles (TT) sport, TT med, TT home, and TT mobility will be unveiled at the expo, along with the new CMS 330 HP W flat knitting machine for TT sport, which is suitable for the manufacture of shoe uppers, orthopaedic supports, and textile accessories with complex shapes. The compact model also boasts a high production speed, exceptional value for money, and options for inlay techniques, intarsia patterns, and plating effects. Germany's leading textile machinery firm and manufacturer of flat knitting machines, H. Stoll AG & Co, has announced that the company will be presenting the designs and applications of flat knitting technology at Techtextil, the leading international tradefair for technical textiles and nonwovens, from May 9 to 12, 2017, in Frankfurt, Germany.# The CMS 330 HP W, therefore, fits in seamlessly with Stolls innovative portfolio of flat knitting machines. No other manufacturing process for textiles combines complex structures, functionality, and aesthetics quite like Stolls flat knitting technology. Whether its for industrial applications or electrically conductive textiles, the demand for which is increasing, the flat knitting technology offers highly-efficient, tailored solutions. Techtextil will provide visitors with the opportunity to get to know Stolls full spectrum of applications. (GK) Fibre2Fashion News Desk India HON PM BAINIMARAMA OPENING ADDRESS TO HIGH-LEVEL DIALOGUE ON BUILDING RESILIENCE TO NATURAL DISASTERS AND CLIMATE CHANGE Honourable Cabinet Ministers;Governors of Central Banks;Representatives of the International Monetary Fund, Asian Development Bank, and Japanese International Cooperation Agency;Representatives from our development partner agencies;Distinguished Delegates;Ladies and Gentlemen.Bula vinaka and a very good morning to you all.This gathering is very timely, as the Fijian Government and Fijian people turn our focus to the enormous responsibility of leading the global negotiations on climate change at COP 23 in November.Our COP Presidency will rally the international community to keep us on course for the full implementation of the Paris Agreement of 2015. It is a mission of vital importance to every Fijian, every Pacific islander and every person on earth. And as we call for all countries to honour their commitments under the agreement, we are also pressing for more radical action to build climate resilience in low-lying and vulnerable countries around the world.As I told our Ambassadors yesterday at our Heads of Missions meeting, even if we limit global temperature rises to the ambitious target of one point five degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, we will still endure stronger and more frequent storms, prolonged droughts, unprecedented sea rises and threats to our food security due to the effects of changing weather patterns on our agriculture.While our adherence to the Paris Agreement will reduce the effects of climate change, its implementation alone will not undo all the damage that has already been done to our planet. We have already experienced some of the worst impacts of climate change and the experts tell us these events are likely to become worse.The impact of Cyclone Pam in Vanuatu and Cyclone Winston in Fiji last year have shown very clearly that the security of every man, woman and child who calls the Pacific home is already at-risk. For we Pacific islanders, climate change outstrips any other threat to our national security in its catastrophic potential, and adapting to this new reality is a matter of life or death. For some nations, it is a threat to their very existence, and it is undoubtedly the most serious impediment to progress and development in Fiji and in every low-lying and vulnerable area of the world.For me, as incoming President of COP23, it has been sobering to take stock of just how little time we have left to adapt to our changing climate. But we cannot delay taking decisive action any longer. It is critical that the multi-lateral consensus on the reduction of carbon emissions agreed to in Paris is fully implemented. And at the same time, we must work together to ensure that those nations most vulnerable to climate change are given every opportunity to adapt to it and build their resilience.This forum will explore how to best achieve resilience here in the Pacific in the face of the growing threat of climate change. Here we can draw on our experiences in dealing with natural disasters and the hard lessons we have learned as a result.Coming together, as we are today, is an important first step. Because while we cannot change the fact that climate change will define our development in the years to come, we can certainly decide the most appropriate and affordable way to meet that challenge.The three-day workshop which ended yesterday examined how to best entrench climate resilience in every aspect of our national development and I am sure this will be further discussed in todays high level dialogue. Because if we are serious about improving the lives of our people, every policy we implement and every strategy we pursue must consider the impact of our changing climate.The alternative is finding ourselves stuck in the cycle of rebuilding our nations and economies from one disaster after the next.The cost of adapting our nations to withstand the increased frequency and intensity of climate-related disasters is immense and cannot be shouldered by us alone. We need access to climate finance through a system that is not bureaucratic and we ourselves, need to be highly sophisticated about how we mobilise our own financial resources to meet this challenge.Tough decisions need to be made. We need to begin work now and we need to stay disciplined about how we plan our national development to adapt to our changing climate. The short-term costs of building resilient infrastructure may be high, but the costs of starting from scratch and rebuilding after extreme weather events are even higher. And the only way to keep our development sustainable is to invest in public sector infrastructure that meets tougher building codes and standards. We cannot tolerate Band-Aid solutions or short-term fixes.In Fiji, we understand better than most the importance of sustainable and resilient development. As I mentioned, last year we were struck by the strongest cyclone to ever make landfall in the Southern Hemisphere, Tropical Cyclone Winston. The storm claimed the lives of 44 of our people and left us with a total damage bill of 1.4 billion US Dollars, or one third of our GDP. While the damage we sustained was immense, without proper planning, it could have been far worse.Despite the cyclone, the Fijian economy rebounded to achieve its seventh consecutive year of economic growth, thanks to our previous efforts to diversify and broaden our economic base and also because it did not largely affect our tourism properties. Had Cyclone Winston struck Fiji in the 1990s, when that base was narrow, our economy may well have contracted by close to 10 per cent. Instead, it grew by 2 per cent last year and is projected to grow by another 3.6 per cent in 2017.That said, we are a long way from putting the Cyclone behind us, and we are still working very hard to reclaim everything we lost to the storm.The scale of the destruction required us to offer direct financial assistance to the tens of thousands of Fijians who were affected. Through our Help for Homes initiative we are giving households the materials and assistance they need to rebuild their homes, and through our social welfare schemes, we increased payments to help cover the basic needs of families in the affected zones.The World Bank has said that 99 per cent of recipients used those funds for disaster relief purposes, and we are very proud that the World Bank backed my Governments judgement that this would eventually prove to be the case.When dealing with large-scale destruction from a cyclone, one of the most pressing concerns is to supply enough building materials to complete the rebuild. The cost of building materials also becomes an issue. This is especially challenging for an island economy like ours. And to address this, my Government provided temporary import duty and VAT exemptions on items donated from organisations, families and relatives living abroad. And we also reduced tariffs on building materials such as electric wiring and supplies, steel cables and timber.A major priority for my Government has been to rehouse in proper school buildings all of our students who lost their schools. Something that compounded the trauma many suffered during the cyclone itself. We allocated $132 million in the 2016-2017 Budget and partnered with a number of professional associations, such as the Fiji Institution of Engineers, to ensure that schools and public buildings are rebuilt to a more resilient standard. And we are constructing many of these facilities to double up as evacuation centres to protect our people during future disasters.So weve had some success. But we know we could have done much better had we had reliable frameworks for accessing climate finance in the first place. So this must be the imperative from now on, and Im very pleased that this issue is what you are here to discuss. Because there is only so much any vulnerable developing nation can do to adapt to the ravages of climate change on their own.Ladies and gentlemen, Ive given you a broad overview of our recovery efforts and our Attorney-General and Minister for Economy will provide you with the specifics in our first session this morning. But I want to leave you with this thought as you begin your deliberations: building resilient infrastructure and a more robust economy, even in a small country like Fiji, will take a great deal of time and effort to achieve, along with vast financial resources. But it is an investment, working with our development partners, that is well-worth making.In accessing the necessary resources, vulnerable nations need the assistance of the international community, development partners, the private sector and multilateral development banks. That assistance must be determined by the degree of vulnerability these nations face.Fiji, as incoming COP President, sees its responsibility to strengthen access to climate adaptation funding for every vulnerable nation in the world. Indeed, we need to ensure an objective vulnerability and fragility index is developed to assist nations to access development finance in times of need.An objective index does not necessarily mean more countries will be deemed to be vulnerable or fragile on a permanent basis but rather will only fall in the vulnerable category when necessitated. We also must recognise the fact that currently an overwhelming portion of climate funds are skewered towards mitigation measures as opposed to adaptation. We must change this permutation. We must also at the same time create new financial models to attract private sector and financial institution participation in adaptation measures.We all have experiences to share, expertise to offer and strategies to add to this vital conversation. The clock is ticking, and the more urgency we give this discussion, the more countries and lives we will save. And I assure you, as incoming COP President, that I intend to give this issue the importance it deserves, as well as my primary task to advance the rulebook for the implementation of the Paris Agreement and hold the current multi-lateral consensus on the need for decisive action together.Thank you for being here to contribute to such an important discussion and I now have great pleasure declare this forum officially open.Vinaka vakalevu. Thank you. India and Pakistan have been at loggerheads right from 1947 and the enmity has swelled up and never reduced. The politicians, media and fringe groups from both the countries feed negative propaganda against each other and sadly, the common people feel everything they hear about each other is true. The truth is, at the end of the day, the common man in both India and Pakistan want a good job, a better life and security for himself and his family and doesn't wish harm on anyone else. You Should Definitely Not Miss These 10 Awesome Pics Of Evelyn Sharma! It's A Pure Joy To Watch Kalki Koechlin is all set to break the stereotype about India Vs Pakistan enmity through her crowd-funded documentary 'Azmaish - Trials of Life'. The documentary will showcase both Indian and Pakistani citizens in their natural way talking about their day-to-day struggles and not the hyped up enmity version which the media, politicians and fringe groups fuel against each other. At the end of the documentary, you'll realize that citizens across both the countries want peace, jobs and security and nothing else. War and enmity is not on their minds! Check out the pictures below. Celebrated Hollywood actor Pierce Brosnan opens up about his sadness, mental struggle and share of heartbreak in his life as he lost both his wife and daughter due to cancer. "I don't look at the cup as half full, believe me. The dark, melancholy Irish black dog sits beside me from time to time." Said Pierce Brosnan in a statement during an interview. Ovarian cancer is the root of his pain as the actor lost his wife, Cassandra Harris, in the year 1991 and then his dearest daughter Charlotte Brosnan, in the year 2013 due to this disease. Brosnan also said that he lacked bonding with his father and he wished his father had spent more time with him during his childhood. "I know what it's like to bring up sons, and it can be a very arduous road. My fatherly instincts are purely my own. They relate back to no one because there was no one." Said the actor. "I had a Sunday afternoon with him," he said. "A story about this and that had a few pints of Guinness, and we said goodbye. I would have loved to have known him. He was a good whistler and he had a good walk ... that's as much as I know about him." He added. "You don't need a big home, you need a good table to sit at, a good bed to sleep in, a view, and a great bottle of wine." Pierce Brosnan stated further. Celebrated Hollywood actress Kate Hudson says that she takes inspiration from the media personage Oprah Winfrey for body positivity. When she was asked about if she follows someone in regards to body positivity, then Hudson said, "I'm going to give the really obvious answer to that, which to me is Oprah. I just think she is forever, that woman. You want to do the healthy thing, but you know what? Women fluctuate." "We give birth to children and carry them and breastfeed them, some of us. We are busy and we're trying to work. Women's bodies are very different than male bodies; the way that we store fat is different, and the way that we lose fat is different." Said Kate Hudson. "We're always trying to keep up and then some of us give up, which is what we don't want to do, I think it's more about tuning into what you need vs. the actual workout, if you're super busy and stressed out, you might need more sleep than the treadmill!" Hudson added. Hudson also stated that doing exercises will have the negative aspect of wear and tear of muscles and overall longevity will gradually reduce. "Obviously as you're working out, you're strengthening your heart, but your brain has to work with all of it, now, if you want to talk about longevity, you can't not talk about exercise." Said the actress. Mohanlal has two big reasons to smile today. First big reason is because of the release of his much anticipated movie 1971 Beyond Borders and the next one came in the form of the announcement 64th National Film Awards. The actor has won a special jury award for his performances in the films Pulimurugan, Munthirivallikal Thalirkkumbol and Janatha Garage. Fans of Mohanlal and the Malayalam film audiences are busy celebrating the actor's achievement. But, criticisms have also started pouring in for neglecting the likes of actors like Vinayakan and Fahadh Faasil. In fact, many are of the opinion that Mohanlal's performance in the films Pulimurugan, Janatha Garage and Munthirivallikal Thalirkkumbol are not worth the National Film Awards. Trollers in social media have already taken up this as the hot topic. Mohanlal is not new to National Film Awards. He has won the title for the Best Actor two times in the past and had also recieved a Special Jury Award for his peformance in the film Kireedom in the year 1989. There might be two opinions regarding the actor's win at the 64th National Film Awards. But, there were certain instances when he was neglected at the award circuits, when he truly deserved it and most of you out there would completely agree to that fact. Here, we list of the 5 movies for which Mohanlal, truly deserved the National Film Award. Read on.. In Zee TV's popular television soap Zindagi Ki Mahek, Shaurya is repenting his past deeds and wants Mahek and her family to forgive him. He has realized that he loves Mahek deeply and wants her in his life no matter what. However, Mahek has lost trust on Shaurya and avoids him. But, Shaurya decorates the entire metro train proposes to her, much to her shock. However, Mahek chooses not to reciprocate to his feelings, as she feels he is not trustworthy. Mahek even feels that her family will never accept him because of his past deeds. To prove his love for Mahek, Shaurya will declare in front of the media that the Sharmas are responsible for his restaurant's success. He gives credit to Mahek's mother, Meera Sharma and her recipes and even states that a street in Old Delhi will be named after her. The high-voltage drama does not end here! In the upcoming episodes, your favourite couple, Shaurya and Mahek will share a passionate lip lock, that too, in front of the Sharma family members! Shaurya will barge into the Sharma house, when they will be seen discussing Mahek's marriage with Sandeep. Infuriated by this development, Shaurya will forcibly pull Mahek towards him and kiss her, much to the shock of the Sharmas, especially Kanta chachi. Soon, the police will arrive and drag him away. This incident will surely leave Mahek disturbed! What will happen next? Stay tuned to this space to know more about the show.... TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 04/06/17 -- Uranium Participation Corporation ("UPC" or the "Corporation") (TSX: U) today filed its Financial Statements and Management's Discussion & Analysis ("MD&A") for the year ended February 28, 2017. Both documents can be found on the Company's website (www.uraniumparticipation.com) or on SEDAR (www.sedar.com). The highlights provided below are derived from these documents and should be read in conjunction with them. All amounts are in Canadian dollars, unless otherwise noted. Selected financial information: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- February 28, February 29, 2017 2016 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Net asset value (in thousands) $ 462,345 $ 649,479 Net asset value per common share $ 3.83 $ 5.62 U3O8 spot price(1) (US$) $ 22.25 $ 32.15 UF6 spot price(1) (US$) $ 64.00 $ 90.00 Foreign exchange noon-rate (US$ to CAD$) 1.3248 1.3523 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- (1) Spot prices as published by Ux Consulting Company, LLC ("UxC"). Overall Performance Total equity, or the value of the Corporation's assets minus its liabilities ("Net Asset Value" or "NAV"), decreased by $187.1 million during the year ended February 28, 2017. This equates to a reduction in the NAV per common share of $1.79. The net loss for year ended February 28, 2017, of $206.0 million, was primarily due to unrealized net losses on investments in uranium of $201.9 million and operating expenses, partially offset by income from lending and/or relocation of uranium, of $4.2 million. Unrealized net losses on investments in uranium, during the year ended February 28, 2017, were caused by decreases in the spot prices of U3O8 and UF6 and a decrease in the U.S. dollar to Canadian dollar exchange rate. Operating expenses of $5.0 million, partially offset by income from lending and/or relocation of uranium of $0.8 million, for the year ended February 28, 2017, represents approximately 0.9% of the Corporation's NAV at February 28, 2017 and 0.6% of the NAV at February 29, 2016. Current Market Conditions In fiscal 2017, the uranium industry continued to face challenges as uranium prices endured their sixth consecutive year of bear market conditions, which emerged following the Fukushima incident in March 2011. The uranium spot price dropped 44% during the fiscal year, starting out at US$32.15 per pound U3O8 at the beginning of the fiscal year, hitting a 12-year low of US$18.00 per pound U3O8 in November 2016 and recovering slightly to US$22.25 per pound U3O8 at fiscal 2017 year end in February 2017. Ten nuclear reactors were added to the global grid during the 2016 calendar year, exceeding the mark set in 2015 for the highest rate of growth of nuclear power capacities in the past 25 years. The World Nuclear Association ("WNA") reports that 447 reactors are operable in 30 countries as of March 2017. These reactors generate 392 gigawatts of electricity and supply over 11.5% of the world's electrical requirements. Currently, 59 nuclear reactors are under construction in 14 countries. Additionally, based on the most recent statistics from the WNA, there are a total of 164 reactors that are either on order or planned, and a further 350 reactors currently proposed to be built in the coming years. The Japanese recovery, while slow and deliberate, now has 12 units approved by regulators for restart and as many as seven reactors could be back on-line by the end of 2017. Although slower than expected - six years having elapsed from the events of Fukushima - the progress is viewed as a positive development for both market fundamentals and sentiment in the uranium industry. The world's fleet of operating reactors, and those nearing construction completion, are now expected to generate a cumulative fuel requirement of 190 million pounds of U3O8 in 2017. While the demand for uranium is fairly steady and predictable, the procurement decisions of utility companies can vary based on the level of current contract coverage, existing inventories, forecasts of future prices and risk tolerance. The previous contracting cycle, brought on by uranium price spikes in 2007 and 2010, resulted in utilities rushing to contract at higher prices and for very long terms. While these old contracts are expiring, the utilities have not been moving to replace their forward coverage, resulting in uncommitted needs continuously building. UxC reports that these unfilled needs total approximately 810 million pounds of U3O8 over the coming ten years and over 75% of expected reactor requirements are uncovered by 2025. According to UxC, in their Uranium Market Outlook - Q1 2017 (the "Q1 Outlook"), global uranium production amounted to 163 million pounds in the year ended December 2016. While this continued the trend of recent annual uranium production increases in the face of low prices, the rate of increase has finally slowed and would support observations that a "peaking" of mine production is occurring. A number of high profile production cutbacks have been announced, including Cameco's Saskatchewan and U.S. operations, Paladin's Namibian Langer Heinrich mine and Kazakhstan's 10% reduction in output, all pointing in that direction. Going forward, it is reasonable to expect further global production cutbacks as higher priced legacy supply contracts, signed in previous cycles, are expiring and ceasing to provide protection for sources of higher-cost production. Furthermore, the incentive price for meaningful new uranium production (new developments or mine expansions) to come to the market is estimated by BMO, in their March 2017 uranium market outlook, to be higher than US$60 per pound U3O8. This, and the prolonged licensing and permitting process required to bring on new production (as much as 10 years or more for a major conventional mine/mill complex), make for an interesting situation as the uranium market is expected to move into a near term supply deficit amidst higher contracting volumes. In the early part of calendar 2017, uranium has bucked the trend of other commodities and spot prices have increased on the improved fundamentals noted above. The spot price climbed from US$20.50 per pound U3O8 at the start of 2017 to a peak of US$26.50 per pound U3O8 in mid-February 2017. Although the price retreated briefly by the end of February to US$22.50 per pound U3O8, it has since recovered to US$23.50 per pound U3O8 as of April 3, 2017. The market is beginning to see increased off-market and public tenders from end-users (including meaningful demand from non-US utilities), and market observers will watch to see if this develops into a trend for the rest of the year. As noted above, the substantial level of uncommitted uranium requirements in the coming years would point to not "if" but "when" that procurement cycle will return to the market to test the supply dynamics of an industry that has failed to be incentivized to develop the next generation of uranium mines. Subsequent event On March 29, 2017, the counterparty to a relocation agreement entered into by UPC, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States of America. Pursuant to this agreement, 300,000 KgU as UF6, which is contained in enriched uranium product ("EUP"), owned by the Corporation, is currently being held at this organization's storage facility. The Corporation continues to hold title to the UF6 that is stored at this facility and pursuant to the terms of the relocation agreement, the counterparty is not permitted to transfer, sell, or assign the EUP containing the Corporation's UF6 to any person. As at February 28, 2017, trade and other receivables included $64,000 of unbilled income related to the relocation of uranium. For the three months ended March 31, 2017, US$74,000 was billed and is payable within 30 days. About Uranium Participation Corporation Uranium Participation Corporation is a company that invests substantially all of its assets in uranium oxide in concentrates ("U3O8") and uranium hexafluoride ("UF6") (collectively "uranium"), with the primary investment objective of achieving appreciation in the value of its uranium holdings through increases in the uranium price. Additional information about Uranium Participation Corporation is available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and on Uranium Participation Corporation's website at www.uraniumparticipation.com. Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements Certain information contained in this press release constitutes forward looking statements or forward looking information. These statements can be identified by the use of forward looking terminology such as "may", "will", "expect", "intend", "estimate", "anticipate", "plan", "should", "believe" or "continue" or the negative thereof or variations thereon or similar terminology. In particular, this press release contains forward-looking information pertaining to expectations regarding uranium spot prices and uranium market factors, including expectations regarding reactor restarts, levels of uncommitted utility reactor requirements, anticipated contracting cycle and market supply and demand, the development of new nuclear power projects and other statements regarding the outlook for the uranium industry and market. By their very nature, forward looking statements involve numerous factors, assumptions and estimates. A variety of factors, many of which are beyond the control of UPC, may cause actual results to differ materially from the expectations expressed in the forward looking statements. For a list of the principal risks of an investment in UPC, please refer to the "RISK FACTORS" section in the Corporation's Annual Information Form dated May 11, 2016 available under UPC's profile at www.sedar.com. These and other factors should be considered carefully, and readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward looking statements. Although management reviews the reasonableness of its assumptions and estimates, unusual and unanticipated events may occur which render them inaccurate. Under such circumstances, future performance may differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward looking statements. Except where required under applicable securities legislation, UPC does not undertake to update any forward looking information. Contacts: David Cates President & Chief Executive Officer (416) 979-1991 Ext. 362 Mac McDonald Chief Financial Officer (416) 979-1991 Ext. 242 NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwired - April 06, 2017) - DOLAT VENTURES, INC. (OTC PINK: DOLV) announces recent corporate developments. The control of the Company was acquired by Mr. DeQun Wang on January 11, 2017 pursuant to an agreement that was entered into on December 2, 2016. On that date Mr. Wang acquired 300,000 shares of the Company's Class C Preferred Stock which is convertible into 750,000,000 shares of the Company's common stock and carries an equal number of votes. Incorporation authorizing the preferred stock, the Company also acquired all of the issued and outstanding shares of Ji Ming Yang Amperex Technology Limited (Ji Ming Yang), a Chinese corporation in exchange for one hundred thousand Class D Preferred Stock convertible into 100,000,000 shares of the Company's common stock. Subject to FINRA approval the Company will reflect the new business combination by changing its name to JB&ZJMY Holding Company, Inc. and seeking a new symbol. About Ji Ming Yang Amperex Technology Limited Founded in March of 2015, http://zhongjimingyang.com/en Ji Ming Yang focuses on the development of batteries for "New Energy Vehicles". The company possesses a number of patents seeking to enhance and extend battery life while also reduce operating costs. The Company seeks to commercialize solutions to the problems faced by all vehicle battery manufactures, such as shortage of battery life, expensive materials, and charging station issues. As part of the acquisition the company will be offering to current and future employees based in the Peoples Republic of China the opportunity to purchase new JB&ZJMY common stock units for $0.10 (Ten Cents USD) per share with one warrant attached exercisable for two years at $0.15 (Fifteen Cents USD) for a total of 10,000,000 (Ten Million) units pursuant to a Regulation S offering on a best efforts basis expiring on July 17 th 2017. The Company intends to file consolidated financial statements reflecting the acquisition during the next two weeks. We thank our shareholders for their interest in the Company and patience while we bring our filings current. Legal Disclaimer This release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27a of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended and section 21e of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Those statements include the intent, belief or current expectations of the company and its management team. Forward-looking statements are projections of events, revenues, income, future economics, research, development, reformulation, product performance or management's plans and objectives for future operations. Some or all of the events or results anticipated by these forward-looking statements may not occur. Prospective investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, and that actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors. Accomplishing the strategy described herein is significantly dependent upon numerous factors, many that are not in management's control. Contact Information Richard Oravec Investor Relations (212) 924-3548 info@pivoassoc.com TORONTO, ONTARIO and PUERTO BARRIOS, GUATEMALA -- (Marketwired) -- 04/06/17 -- A Guatemalan court today acquitted Mynor Padilla of murdering Guatemalan community leader and indigenous activist Adolfo Ich in 2009, when Padilla was the head of security for a large mine in Guatemala then owned by Canadian company Hudbay Minerals. Padilla was also acquitted of the point blank shooting of another community member German Chub, now paralyzed for life. Ich's wife and others are pursuing a lawsuit against Hudbay Minerals in Canada regarding these incidents. The lawsuits in Canada have received worldwide attention as a precedent for holding multinational mining companies liable in their "home" country for abuses at mines they operate abroad. "Unfortunately, this acquittal in Guatemala is what we always expected and predicted," said Murray Klippenstein, one of the lawyers for Ich's widow. "The Guatemalan legal system is corrupt and seeking justice there is, sadly, hopeless, especially against large international corporate interests like Hudbay. It is common for judges to be bribed, witnesses threatened, and powerful interests protected. That's precisely why Angelica's and German's best hope for justice against Hudbay has always been in Canadian courts." In addition to the acquittal, the Guatemalan judge went much farther into unexpected territory by asking for the extreme step that criminal charges be brought against most of those involved in the prosecution of Mynor Padilla, including not only against the victims of the violence, but also various witnesses for the prosecution, and even a prosecutor, for alleged "crimes" such as false testimony, obstruction of justice, forgery of public documents, and document tampering. The court said it would release lengthy reasons for its decision on April 18, 2017. Mr. Klippenstein commented that "This apparent initiation of criminal charges against the victims and the prosecution is alarming and borders on the truly bizarre. We are awaiting the actual written decision and will comment further then, but for now, it seems to us that this turns justice on its head by attempting to convert victims into criminals, and justifies and amplifies the serious consensus international concerns about the dysfunctionality of the Guatemalan justice system. It is also very sad that a Canadian mining company is part of this mess." The "not guilty" verdict comes despite damning eyewitness testimony of the murder, and ballistic and forensic evidence linking both Mynor Padilla and other mine company security personnel under his control to the shooting. The trial featured numerous irregularities and disturbing events, including an order from the judge barring the public and journalists from the court room for alleged "security reasons" for the majority of the trial, the fact that Hudbay funded testimony in support of the accused, and an incident that occurred last September in which the home of Ich's widow and children was the target of a midnight gunfire attack. The acquittal of Mynor Padilla has raised fears that the victims and their families may be subject to acts of retaliation and violence for their role in pursuing justice. The verdict did not change the resolve of Angelica Choc and others to continue pursuing Hudbay Minerals in their Canadian lawsuit. "We never expected justice in Guatemalan courts. We will continue pursuing it in Canadian courts," she said. A Canadian court issued a landmark decision in 2013 allowing the case to proceed against Hudbay in Ontario. Hudbay has been required to turn over to Angelica's lawyers thousands of internal corporate documents, which her lawyers are now reviewing. More information can be found at www.chocversushudbay.com Contacts: Klippensteins, Barristers & Solicitors Murray Klippenstein (416) 937-8634 (cell phone) Cory Wanless (647) 886-1914 (cell phone) WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - In retaliation for a suspected chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held Syrian town that killed dozens of people, the U.S. has reportedly fired a barrage of cruise missiles at a Syrian airfield Thursday night. Media reports citing U.S. military officials said warships in the Mediterranean Sea launched between 50 and 60 Tomahawk cruise missiles targeting the al-Shayrat airbase. Officials told NBC News that people were not targeted and that aircraft and infrastructure at the site, including the runway, were hit. In a brief statement, President Donald Trump claimed the chemical weapons attack earlier this week was launched from the airbase that was struck. Trump argued it is in the national security interest of the U.S. to prevent and deter the spread of use of deadly chemical weapons. 'There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the chemical weapons convention and ignored the urging of the UN Security Council,' Trump said. Trump indicated the missile strike was in response to a 'horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians' by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad 'Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many,' Trump said. 'Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack,' he added. 'No child of god should ever suffer such horror.' The president called on all civilized nations to join the U.S. in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de Illustration of BESS Mitsubishi Corporation Telephone:+81-3-3210-2171 Facsimile:+81-3-5252-7705 TOKYO, Apr 7, 2017 - (JCN Newswire) - Mitsubishi Corporation (MC) is pleased to announce that it will be working through Enspire ME, a fifty-fifty joint venture established between MC and Eneco, an integrated energy company from the Netherlands, to provide services based on a large-scale battery energy storage system (BESS).Enspire ME will construct the BESS in Jardelund, located in the state of Schleswig-Holstein in northern Germany. Construction is slated for completion at the end of 2017. With a maximum storage capacity of approximately 50,000kW, it will be the largest BESS in Europe to be located at one site. The project will use the system to provide capacity reserve(1) and balancing services to renewables, mainly in Germany and surrounding countries. In addition, MC and Eneco will seek to leverage this new system to boost the value of their jointly run offshore wind projects(2).In Europe, the Paris Agreement adopted in 2015 has resulted in the acceleration of initiatives to facilitate a low-carbon society, including the aggressive promotion of environmentally-friendly policies aimed at achieving renewable targets. As solar, wind and other renewable sources, which are intermittent, replace fossil fuels as a source of energy and enter mainstream power grids, stabilizing the power supply also poses a challenge. BESS are considered to be an effective solution to that problem.MC has been strengthening its involvement in the development of businesses that have high environmental value as part of its contribution to the realization of a low-carbon society. The company therefore remains committed to developing businesses that, like BESS, encourage greater use of renewable energy.(1) Transmission system operators (TSOs) in Europe are required to secure a certain number of capacity reserves in order to prepare for sudden power loss or extensive blackout. Capacity reserves are procured through market transactions. The services offered on the market vary according to degree of urgency and duration of charge/discharge.(2) MC and Eneco have established a Long-Term Strategic Partnership Agreement for cooperation in the offshore wind sector and are already jointly engaged in the operation of offshore wind projects in Europe. For more information, please visit the link below.http://www.mitsubishicorp.com/jp/en/pr/archive/2013/html/0000018321.htmlAbout Mitsubishi CorporationMitsubishi Corporation (MC; TSE: 8058) is a global integrated business enterprise that develops and operates businesses across virtually every industry including industrial finance, energy, metals, machinery, chemicals, foods, and environmental business. MC's current activities are expanding far beyond its traditional trading operations as its diverse business ranges from natural resources development to investment in retail business, infrastructure, financial products and manufacturing of industrial goods. With over 200 bases of operations in approximately 80 countries worldwide and a network of over 500 group companies, MC employs a multinational workforce of nearly 60,000 people. For more information, please visit www.mitsubishicorp.com.Source: Mitsubishi CorporationContact:Copyright 2017 JCN Newswire . All rights reserved. BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - Cabinet office is set to release preliminary Japan leading economic indicators data for February at 1:00 am ET Friday. The leading index is expected to show a score of 104.6, slightly down from 104.9 in January. Ahead of the data, the yen held steady against its major rivals. As of 12:55 am ET, the yen was trading at 117.71 against the euro, 138.88 against the pound, 110.03 the Swiss franc and 110.57 against the U.S. dollar. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. SINGAPORE, April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Fusionex, a multi award-winning, leading software solutions provider specializing in Big Data Analytics (BDA), the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence, and Deep Learning, is pleased to announce its latest win with a regional medical supplier. The initial project deal is in the region of USD300,000, and is expected to increase alongside the adoption rate within the client's departments and different offices. An integrated regional medical equipment, supplies, and services supplier,the client has a longstanding history of providing services to a network of thousands of healthcare institutions, including government and private hospitals, surgery centers, specialist and primary care clinics, laboratories, and nursing homes. The client is a member of a multinational group with operations across 50 economies. Fusionex's offerings for this client include the provision of a seamless, data-driven platform to help the client connect with medical professionals and facilitate registrations with introductions of medical equipment. The initiative is designed to increase the awareness, reach and interactivity of the client's presence, providing clear visibility of the client's business through Fusionex GIANT. Fusionex's offerings will present a host of information and insight at the user's fingertips, including product categories, medical events, and events specifically conducted by the client. In addition, Fusionex will power-up the client with data-driven, intelligent e-commerce capabilities to boost the client's turnover and increase convenience for their customers. The holistic platform will be powered with Fusionex Big Data Analytics capabilities, which will enable administrators to monitor user preferences and needs, as well as identify the preferences of medical professionals in terms of equipment, events or reading materials. Being highly data-driven, the platform will enable the client to understand their customers more intimately, resulting in more personalised and better service. More targeted services could also be carried out as a result of this. Ivan Teh, Fusionex Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, commented: "This contract win by Fusionex further demonstrates the capability and applicability of Big Data Analytics to the healthcare industry, a core area that Fusionex believes would benefit immensely with the aid of Big Data Analytics. Fusionex is proud to work with the client to bring insights and benefits to medical professionals, helping their patients. Big Data adoption in healthcare is crucial. We believe that this area is important as it is relevant to each and every one of us." TOKYO, April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Diamond Realty Management Inc. participated in the Private Debt Investor Awards 2016, and was voted as the Real Estate Debt Fund Manager of the Year, Asia-Pacific by readers. This is the second time for Diamond Realty Management to win this award since 2013. (Logo1: http://prw.kyodonews.jp/prwfile/release/M104168/201703300446/_prw_PI1fl_1XZrMKM2.jpg ) The company has won the award for two private funds specializing in mezzanine debts -- DREAM Mezzanine Debt Fund IV and DREAM Mezzanine Debt Fund V -- which the company launched in 2016. For overviews of these two funds, visit the following websites: Launch of DREAM Mezzanine Debt Fund IV (the total of equity investment commitment amounting to about approximately 20 billion yen) http://mc-dream.com/news/649.html Launch of DREAM Mezzanine Debt Fund V (the total of equity investment commitment amounting to 18.5 billion yen) http://mc-dream.com/news/678.html (Image: http://prw.kyodonews.jp/prwfile/release/M104168/201703300446/_prw_PI3fl_4F82382B.jpg ) Diamond Realty Management will continue providing private real estate funds and mezzanine debt funds -- by leveraging our edge as an asset manager being part of the Mitsubishi Corporation Group, a leading trading and investment company in Japan -- to institutional investors both in Japan and overseas in an effort to fulfill its role of a financial mediator between real estate assets and investors. Corporate overview: - Head office: 16-1, Hirakawacho 2-chome, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo - Business services: Sales of private real estate funds/real estate management business/advisory & consulting services - Capital: wholly owned by Mitsubishi Corp. - President and CEO: Takashi Tsuji - Established: October 15, 2004 - Number of employees: 68 (as of the end of December 2016) (Notes) - This press release does not fall under the category of advertisements or the like defined by the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act. - This press release is not aimed at providing investment and fund management services or soliciting investors to buy specific financial instruments. Furthermore, Diamond Realty Management does not use this press release to solicit investors to buy funds or other financial instruments carried in this document. - Diamond Realty Management does not guarantee or promise that descriptions in this press release estimating, predicting or projecting on future matters or expressing views will accord with actual results. (Logo2: http://prw.kyodonews.jp/prwfile/release/M104168/201703300446/_prw_PI2fl_caAhxR7W.jpg ) To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/diamond-realty-management-voted-as-real-estate-debt-fund-manager-of-year-asia-pacific-in-private-debt-investor-awards-2016-300436450.html The Italian energy agency GSE forecasts that a further 1.5 of PV capacity will be installed by 2020. Good business opportunities are also expected to come from the storage sector.Italy's government-owned energy agency Gestore dei Servizi Energetici (GSE), which manages all the five Conto Energia incentive schemes for PV, is expecting that a further 1.5 GW of new PV installations will see the light by 2020. The announcement was given on the occasion of the presentation of the fairs Key Storage e Key Solar, which will take place in Rimini, northern Italy, in November. Gianni Silvestrini, which is the director of the scientific committee of both events and of non-profit Italian organisation Kyoto Club, said at the meeting that the country's solar sector is currently offering good business opportunities such as, among others, the revamping and repowering of existing PV installations. Silvestrini ... 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. CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - The Australian dollar weakened against the other major currencies in the Asian session on Friday. The Australian dollar fell to a 10-day low of 1.4179 against the euro and a 4-1/2-month low of 82.79 against the yen,from yesterday's closing quotes of 1.4106 and 83.60, respectively. Against the U.S., the New Zealand and the Canadian dollars, the aussie dropped to a 4-week low of 0.7516, nearly a 5-week low of 1.0785 and a 1-1/2-month low of 1.0076 from yesterday's closing quotes of 0.7544, 1.0823 and 1.0114, respectively. If the aussie extends its downtrend, it is likely to find support around 1.44 against the euro, 81.00 against the yen, 0.74 against the greenback, 1.06 against the kiwi and 0.99 against the loonie. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. Vilnius, Lithuania, 2017-04-07 08:43 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- On the initiative and decision of the Company's Management Board, the General Shareholders Meeting of the public joint stock company Invalda INVL (identification code 121304349, registered address Gyneju str. 14, Vilnius, Lithuania) is to be held on 28 April 2017 at 9:00 p.m. in the Company's office Gyneju str. 14, Vilnius. Registration of the Shareholders will start at 8:30 p.m. Only the persons who are the shareholders of the Company at the end of the accounting day of the General Shareholders Meeting (21 April 2017) are entitled to participate and to vote at the General Shareholders Meeting. The day of accounting of rights - 15 May 2017. The agenda of the General Shareholders Meeting of the public joint stock company Invalda INVL includes: 1. Presentation of consolidated annual report of the public joint-stock company Invalda INVL. 2. Presentation of the independent auditor's report on the financial statements of the public joint-stock company Invalda INVL. 3. On the approval of the consolidated and stand-alone financial statements for 2016. 4. Regarding the distribution of profit of the public joint-stock company Invalda INVL. 5. Election of the Board members for the new term of office. 6. Regarding approval of the Regulations of the Audit Committee of Invalda INVL. 7. Election of the Audit Committee members for the new term of office. 8. Regarding approval of the remuneration for the Audit Committee members. 9. Regarding the specific number of ordinary registered shares of the public joint-stock company Invalda INVL for which during year 2017 employees shall be offered options contracts and regarding the price of the shares. 10. Regarding purchase of own shares of the public joint-stock company Invalda INVL. The draft resolutions of the General Shareholders Meeting of the public joint stock company Invalda INVL: 1. Presentation of consolidated annual report of the public joint-stock company Invalda INVL. Shareholders of the public joint-stock company Invalda INVL are presented with the consolidated annual report of Invalda INVL for 2016 (There is no voting on this issue of agenda). 2. Presentation of the independent auditor's report on the financial statements of the public joint-stock company Invalda INVL. Shareholders of the public joint-stock company Invalda INVL are presented with the independent auditor's report on the financial statements of Invalda INVL for 2016 (There is no voting on this issue of agenda). 3. On the approval of the consolidated and stand-alone financial statements for 2016. To approve the consolidated and stand-alone financial statements for 2016 of the public joint-stock company Invalda INVL. 4. Regarding the distribution of profit of the public joint-stock company Invalda INVL. To distribute the profit of the public joint-stock company Invalda INVL for 2016 as follows (thousand EUR): 1) Retained earnings (loss) at the beginning of the financial year of 28,642 the reporting period; -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Net profit (loss) for the financial year; 4,770 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Profit (loss) not recognized in the income statement of the reporting 0 financial year; -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Transfers from reserves; 0 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5) Shareholders contribution to cover loss (if all or part of loss is 0 covered by the shareholders) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6) Distributable profit (loss) in total; 33,412 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7) Profit transfers to the legal reserves; -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8) Profit transfers to the reserves for own shares acquisition -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 9) Profit transfers to other reserves; 0 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10) Profit to be paid as dividends; 0 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 11) Profit to be paid as annual payments (bonus) and for other purposes; 0 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 12) Retained earnings (loss) at the end of the financial year. 33,412 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5. Election of the Board members for the new term of office. To re-elect Alvydas Banys, Indre Miseikyte and Darius Sulnis to the Board of Invalda INVL for the new 4 (four) years term of office. 6. Regarding approval of the Regulations of the Audit Committee of Invalda INVL. To approve the regulations of the Audit Committee of Invalda INVL (enclosed). 7. Election of the Audit Committee members for the new term of office. To elect Danguole Pranckeniene and Tomas Bubinas - 2 (two) independent members - to the Audit Committee of Invalda INVL for the 4 (four) years term of office. 8. Regarding approval of the remuneration for the Audit Committee members. To set a rate not higher than EUR 145 per hour for a work in the Audit Committee of Invalda INVL. To delegate to the Board of the Company to determine the remuneration payment procedure for the Audit Committee members. 9. Regarding the specific number of ordinary registered shares of the public joint-stock company Invalda INVL for which during year 2017 employees shall be offered options contracts and regarding the price of the shares. It is offered for the employees of Invalda INVL and of the companies, in which Invalda INVL owns 50 per cent or more of shares, during the year 2017 to make stock options contracts, on the basis of which according to the procedures and terms established in stock options contracts in year 2020 employees will be able to exercise the right to acquire up to 130,000 ordinary shares of Invalda INVL of EUR 0.29 nominal value, by paying for every acquired share 1 (one) euro. The acquisition price of shares is fixed; it does not change depending on performance results of the company and / or other companies' of the group or on ordinary registered share price of Invalda INVL on a regulated market. 10. Regarding purchase of own shares of the public joint-stock company Invalda INVL. Until the day of the General Shareholders meeting the reserve for the purchase of own shares which is equal to EUR 10,013 thousand is not used. To use the reserve (a part of it) for the purchase of own shares and to purchase shares in Invalda INVL under these conditions: 1) The goal for the purchase of own shares - to ensure shareholders a possibility to sell company's shares. 2) The maximum number of shares to be acquired - the nominal value of own shares may not exceed 1/10 of the share capital. 3) The period during which the company may purchase its own shares - 18 months from the day of this resolution. 4) The maximum and minimal one share acquisition price: the maximum one share acquisition price - value of consolidated equity per one share calculated according to the last publicly announced data of the consolidated equity of Invalda INVL before the decision of the Board; minimum one share acquisition price - EUR 1. 5) The conditions of the selling of the purchased shares and minimal purchase price: Purchased own shares may be cancelled by the decision of the General Shareholders Meeting or sold by the decision of the Board upon the condition that minimum sale price for one share isn't lower than value of consolidated equity per one share calculated according to the publicly announced data of the consolidated equity of Invalda INVL before the decision of the Board, and the sale procedure will ensure equal possibilities for all shareholders to purchase these shares. The Board of Invalda INVL, AB is delegated on the basis of this resolution and the Law on Companies of the Republic of Lithuania to organise purchase and sale of own shares, to organise purchase and selling procedure of own shares and to determine an order and timing for purchase and sale of own shares as well as the amount of shares and shares' price, and to complete all other actions related with purchase and sale procedure of own shares. From the date of this resolution the resolution of the General Shareholders Meeting on 29 April 2016 on the acquisition of own shares expires. The documents related to the agenda, draft resolutions on every item of agenda, documents what have to be submitted to the General Shareholders Meeting and other information related to realization of shareholders rights are available at the office of Invalda INVL (Gyneju str. 14, Vilnius) during working hours. The shareholders are entitled: (i) to propose to supplement the agenda of the General Shareholders Meeting submitting draft resolution on every additional item of agenda or, than there is no need to make a decision - explanation of the shareholder (this right is granted to shareholders who hold shares carrying at least 1/20 of all the votes). Proposal to supplement the agenda is submitted in writing by registered mail or delivered in person against signature. The agenda is supplemented if the proposal is received no later than 14 before the General Shareholders Meeting; (ii) to propose draft resolutions on the issues already included or to be included in the agenda of the General Shareholders Meeting at any time prior to the date of the General Shareholders meeting (in writing, by registered mail or delivered in person against signature) or in writing during the General Shareholders Meeting (this right is granted to shareholders who hold shares carrying at least 1/20 of all the votes); (iii) to submit questions to the Company related to the issues of agenda of the General Shareholders Meeting in advance but no later than 3 business days prior to the General Shareholders Meeting in writing by registered mail or delivered in person against signature. Shareholder participating at the General Shareholders Meeting and having the right to vote must submit documents confirming personal identity. Each shareholder may authorize either a natural or a legal person to participate and to vote on the shareholder's behalf at the General Shareholders Meeting. The representative has the same rights as his represented shareholder at the General Shareholders Meeting. The authorized persons must have documents confirming their personal identity and power of attorney approved in the manner specified by law which must be submitted to the Company no later than before the commencement of registration for the General Shareholders Meeting. Shareholder is entitled to issue power of attorney by means of electronic communications for legal or natural persons to participate and to vote on its behalf at the General Shareholders Meeting. The shareholders must inform the Company about power of attorney issued by means of electronic communications no later than before the commencement of registration for the General Shareholders Meeting. The power of attorney issued by means of electronic communications and notice about it must be written and submitted to the Company by means of electronic communications. Shareholder or its representative may vote in writing by filling general voting bulletin, in such a case the requirement to deliver a personal identity document does not apply. The form of general voting bulletin is presented at the Company's webpage. If shareholder requests, the Company shall send the general voting bulletin to the requesting shareholder by registered mail or shall deliver it in person against signature no later than 10 days prior to the General Shareholders Meeting free of charge. The filled general voting bulletin must be signed by the shareholder or its authorized representative. Document confirming the right to vote must be added to the general voting bulletin if authorized person is voting. The filled general voting bulletin must be delivered to Invalda INVL, AB by registered mail (address Gyneju str. 14, LT 01109 Vilnius, Lithuania) or in person against signature no later than before the day of the General Shareholders Meeting. The Company does not provide opportunities to participate and vote at the meeting by electronic means. Information related with the convened General Shareholders Meeting (notice on convocation of General Shareholders Meeting, information about Company's shares, draft resolution, etc.) are available at Company's webpage www.invaldainvl.lt The person authorized to provide additional information is: Darius Sulnis, President of Invalda INVL E-mail: Darius.Sulnis@invl.com Attachment: https://cns.omxgroup.com/cds/DisclosureAttachmentServlet?messageAttachmentId=624473 Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 04/07/17 -- Axion Ventures Inc. (formerly Capstream Ventures Inc.) ("Axion" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE: AXV) is pleased to announce that further to its news release dated October 26, 2016, the Company has closed its investment in Red Anchor Trading Corp. ("Red Anchor"), a company engaged in the business of developing an application known as "HotNow". In consideration for the US$1.5 million investment, Red Anchor issued 9,375 ordinary shares of Red Anchor to Axion at US$160 per share, representing 15% of the post-closing issued and outstanding voting shares of Red Anchor on a fully-diluted basis (the "Investment"). As certain parties were considered non-arm's length parties (within the meaning of TSX Venture Exchange ("TSXV")), as a condition to final TSXV approval, the parties had agreed to hold the majority of the Company's subscription proceeds in escrow until Red Anchor received a minimum of US$500,000 subscription proceeds from arm's length parties. However, Red Anchor was able to close the foregoing minimum arm's length party investment concurrently with the Investment and at the same valuation. "We are very excited to complete the Investment," said John Todd Bonner, CEO and Chairman of the Company. "In the latter part of 2016 and the first quarter of 2017, we focused our team on forming our joint venture with True Corporation Public Company Limited and assisting Axion Games Limited with strategic advice on game development and launch, which are both progressing well. We are also pleased to note the following progress of HotNow: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- At December 31, At March 31, 2017 - Q1 2016 - Q4 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thailand Google Play Store 400+ #1 (Top Free App) Ranking in Lifestyle Category Note: Also #1 for Trending App ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Application Downloads 160,072 277,388 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Merchants(1) 33,372 43,596 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Social Media Following 121,231 145,358 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Redemption (total) Promotions issued(2): Promotions issued(2): 4,564 9,444 Promotions saved: Promotions saved: 3,994 16,453(3) Promotions redeemed: Promotions redeemed: 882 3,230 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- User Acquisition Cost US$1.00 US$0.36 (3-month average) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- (1) Includes various international brands. (2) Promotions issued means content featured on the promotion timeline within the HotNow application. (3) Promotions saved exceeds promotions issued because different parties can save the same promotion. HotNow add-ons since Oct 2016: -- Push notifications that allow merchants to provide offers to specific target audiences within certain proximities. -- Merchant Dashboard. -- Merchant tracking system for consumer data analytics. In connection with the Investment, Axion received: (i) participation rights in any future security offering of Red Anchor that will allow it to maintain its proportionate interest in Red Anchor; (ii) tag-along rights in the event of certain share transfers; (iii) information rights to monthly management reports and financial statements of Red Anchor; (iv) inspection rights; and (v) for so long as Company holds at least 5% of the outstanding shares of Red Anchor, the right to appoint at least one non-executive director to the Red Anchor board of directors. About Axion Axion Ventures is an Investment Issuer with interests in: (i) Axion Games Limited, a private online video games development and publishing company with primary operations in Shanghai, China; (ii) Innovega Inc., a private display technology eyewear and contact lens company with offices in San Diego, California and Bellevue, Washington; (iii) True Axion Games Ltd., a newly formed private video game company with primary operations in Bangkok, Thailand; and now (iv) Red Anchor, a private British Virgin Islands company, which owns and operates the HotNow mobile application. About Red Anchor Red Anchor is a private British Virgin Islands company with primary operations in Bangkok, Thailand. Red Anchor owns and operates the HotNow mobile application, an on-demand marketing automation platform that provides machine learned, optimal promotional means for retailers to reach relevant consumer users of the HotNow application. For the consumer users, HotNow is a discovery and directory application of local retailers and their hottest promotions in genres of their interests and within their proximity. Related Party Transactions John Todd Bonner is the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the board of directors (the "Board") of the Company and beneficial owner of 38.18% of the issued and outstanding voting shares of Red Anchor prior to closing the Investment. Therefore, Mr. Bonner is considered to be a non-arm's length party of the Company within the meaning of the policies of the TSXV. In addition, Nithinan Boonyawattanapisut, a controlling shareholder of the Company, also beneficially owned an additional 38.18% of Red Anchor prior to closing the Investment, and is also a party to the investment agreement to give certain representations, warranties and covenants. Therefore, the Investment is, or may be, considered a related party transaction under Multilateral Instrument 61-101 - Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions ("MI 61-101"). Based on written recommendations prepared by a special committee of the arm's length directors of the Company, the Board, with Mr. Bonner abstaining from voting where required, agreed to the terms of and closing the Investment. There were no materially contrary views, or abstention by any directors other than as set out above and there were no material disagreements between the Board and the special committee. The Company is exempted from both the formal valuation requirement pursuant to s.5.5(b) of MI 61-101 and the minority approval requirement pursuant to s.5.7(1)(a) of MI 61-101. The Investment was completed less than 21 days after the date of this news release, as several material matters were uncertain and not ascertainable until at, or close to, the date of this release. These matters included the closing terms of the Investment, internal approvals of the Company and final approval of the TSXV. Due to, in part, to the foregoing, the Company was unable to issue this release prior to today's date with any certainty, and in the Company's opinion this shorter period was unavoidable as well as reasonable and necessary in the circumstances. On behalf of Axion Ventures Inc. John Todd Bonner, Chief Executive Officer Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibilities for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Information Certain statements contained in this press release may constitute forward-looking information. These statements relate to future events or future performance. The use of any of the words "could", "intend", "expect", "believe", "will", "projected", "estimated", "proposed" and similar expressions and statements relating to matters that are not historical facts are intended to identify forward-looking information and are based on Axion's current belief or assumptions as to the outcome and timing of such future events. Actual future results may differ materially. Various assumptions or factors are typically applied in drawing conclusions or making the forecasts or projections set out in forward-looking information. Those assumptions and factors are based on information currently available to Axion. Risk factors that could cause actual results or outcomes to differ materially from the results expressed or implied by forward-looking information include, among other things: the failure to obtain final TSX Venture Exchange approval; general economic and business conditions; and changes in regulatory regime. Axion cautions the reader that the above list of risk factors is not exhaustive. The forward-looking information contained in this release is made as of the date hereof and Axion is not obligated to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable securities laws. Because of the risks, uncertainties and assumptions contained herein, investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. The foregoing statements expressly qualify any forward-looking information contained herein. Red Anchor Information The information concerning Red Anchor in this news release has been provided by Red Anchor. Although Axion has no knowledge that would indicate that any of such information is untrue or incomplete, Axion does not assume any responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of such information or the failure by Red Anchor to disclose events which may have occurred or may affect the completeness or accuracy of such information but which are unknown to Axion. Contacts: Axion Ventures Inc. John Todd Bonner Chief Executive Officer 604.687.7767 CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - The Japanese yen strengthened against the other major currencies in the Asian session on Friday amid risk aversion, following news that the U.S. has launched cruise missile attacks against Syria in response to a suspected chemical weapons attack by Bashar al-Assad's regime that killed scores of civilians earlier in the week. Investors also remained cautious as they focused on the meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping as well as the monthly U.S. jobs report due later in the day. . In other economic news, data from the Cabinet Office showed that Japan's leading index dropped to a 3-month low in February. The leading index fell more-than-expected to 104.4 in February from 104.9 in January. This was the lowest score in three months. The expected score was 104.6. The indicator measures the future course of economic activity. Meanwhile, the coincident index that reflects the current economic activity, came in at 115.5 in February, in line with expectations, up from 115.1 a month ago. In the Asian trading, the yen rose to a 10-day high of 110.13 against the U.S. dollar and a 3-day high of 137.29 against the pound, from yesterday's closing quotes of 110.79 and 138.16, respectively. If the yen extends its uptrend, it is likely to find resistance around 109.00 against the greenback and 136.00 against the pound. Against the euro and the Swiss franc, the yen advanced to 4-1/2-month highs of 117.31 and 109.67 from yesterday's closing quotes of 117.91 and 110.25, respectively. The yen may test resistance near 116.00 against the euro and 108.00 against the franc. Against the Australian and the New Zealand dollars, the yen rose to a 4-1/2-month high of 82.79 and nearly a 5-month high of 76.66 from yesterday's closing quotes of 82.79 and 76.66, respectively. The yen is likely to find resistance around 83.60 against the aussie and 77.21 against the kiwi. The yen edged up to 82.09 against the Canadian dollar, from yesterday's closing value of 82.60. On the upside, 80.00 is seen as the next resistance level for the yen. Looking ahead, at 4:00 am ET, Bank of England Governor Mark Carney is expected to speak at Thomson, in London. U.K. construction output, industrial production and trade balance, all for February, are due to be released at 4:30 am ET. In the New York session, U.S. and Canada jobs data for March, Canada Ivey PMI for March, U.S. wholesale inventories data for March and consumer credit for February are slated for release. At 10:00 am ET, Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz and Bank of Canada Senior Deputy Governor Carolyn Wilkins will hold a press conference on Monetary Policy Report, in Ottawa. At 11:15 am ET, Federal Reserve Bank of New York President William Dudley is expected to speak on 'The State of Financial Regulation and the Potential for Reform' before a luncheon organized by the Griswold Center for Economic Policy Studies, Princeton University - 1, in New York. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - The Canadian dollar advanced against its major counterparts in the Asian session on Friday, as oil prices rose after the U.S. air strikes in Syria in retaliation to chemical weapon attack that killed dozens of civilians. Crude for May delivery rose $0.60 to $52.30 per barrel. The U.S. government on Thursday launched military attack at the Shayrat Airfield in Homs in western Syria, killing at least four soldiers. Fifty nine missiles were launched from two U.S. warships in the Mediterranean Sea, the defense department said. Investors await the outcome of talks between the U.S. and Chinese presidents as well as U.S. and Canadian jobs data due later in the day. The nonfarm payrolls are expected to show an increase of about 180,000 jobs in March, while the unemployment rate is expected to hold at 4.7 percent. Canadian employment is forecast to slow by 5,700 jobs in March with a jobless rate of 6.7 percent. The loonie has been trading in a positive territory against its major rivals on Thursday. The loonie that ended yesterday's trading at 1.4272 against the euro rose to a 4-day high of 1.4251. The next possible resistance for the loonie may be found around the 1.41 region. Reversing from an early low of 1.3431 against the greenback, the loonie climbed to a 2-day high of 1.3395.The pair finished Thursday's trading at 1.3413. Continuation of the loonie's uptrend may see it challenging resistance around the 1.33 region. The loonie was trading higher at 82.53 against the yen, up from an early low of 82.10. The loonie may possibly find resistance around the 84.00 area. Data from the Cabinet Office showed that Japan's leading index dropped to a 3-month low in February. The leading index fell more-than-expected to 104.4 in February from 104.9 in January. This was the lowest score in three months. The expected score was 104.6 The loonie spiked up to 1.0075 against the aussie, its highest since February 27. Continuation of the loonie's uptrend may see it challenging resistance around the 0.995 level. The latest survey from the Australian Industry Group showed that Australia's construction sector continued to expand in March, although at a slower pace, with a Performance of Construction Index score of 51.2. That's down from 53.1 in February, although it remains above the boom-or-bust line of 50 that separates expansion from contraction. Looking ahead, the Bank of England Governor Mark Carney is expected to speak at Thomso in London at 4:00 am ET. U.K. construction output, industrial production and trade balance, all for February, are due to be released at 4:30 am ET. In the New York session, U.S. and Canada jobs data for March, Canada Ivey PMI for March, U.S. wholesale inventories data for March and consumer credit for February are slated for release. At 10:00 am ET, Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz and Bank of Canada Senior Deputy Governor Carolyn Wilkins will hold a press conference on Monetary Policy Report, in Ottawa. At 11:15 am ET, Federal Reserve Bank of New York President William Dudley is expected to speak on 'The State of Financial Regulation and the Potential for Reform' before a luncheon organized by the Griswold Center for Economic Policy Studies, Princeton University - 1, in New York. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - Hungary's industrial production growth improved unexpectedly in March, preliminary data from the Hungarian Central Statistical Office showed Friday. Industrial production expanded a working-day-adjusted 9.4 percent year-over-year in March, faster than the 7.1 percent rise in February. Meanwhile, economists had expected the growth to ease to 6.0 percent. It was the fifth month of increase in a row. Without adjustment, the volume of industrial production grew 12.8 percent in March from a year ago. Month-on-month, industrial production rose a seasonally and working-day-adjusted 0.4 percent in March, but much slower than the 3.1 percent gain in the prior month. 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. INTU PROPERTIES PLC (the "Company") LEI: 213800JSNTERD5CJZO95 7 April 2017 CONFIRMATION OF DIVIDEND TIMETABLE FOR THE CASH 2016 FINAL DIVIDEND, EXCHANGE RATE AND NOTIFICATION THAT SCRIP DIVIDEND ALTERNATIVE WILL NOT BE OFFERED On 23 February 2017, the Directors proposed a final dividend for 2016 of 9.4 pence per share (the "dividend"). The dividend will be wholly paid as a Property Income Distribution ("PID") which will be subject to deduction of a 20 per cent UK withholding tax unless exemptions apply. Today we are announcing the dividend payment date, 25 May 2017. A scrip dividend alternative will not be offered on this occasion and all shareholders will therefore receive the dividend in cash. For further information regarding their holdings, or the final dividend, we recommend that shareholders contact our registrars in the UK or South Africa as follows:- UK Shareholders: Capita Asset Services, The Registry, 34 Beckenham Road, Beckenham, Kent BR3 4TU (Tel: +44 (0) 371 664 0300). Calls are charged at the standard geographic rate and will vary by provider. Calls outside the United Kingdom will be charged at the applicable international rate. Lines are open between 9.00am - 5.30pm, Monday to Friday excluding public holidays in England and Wales. SA Shareholders: Terbium Financial Services (Pty) Ltd, 31 Beacon Road, Florida-North, Johannesburg, 1709, South Africa (postal address: PO Box 61272, Marshalltown, 2107, South Africa) (Tel: 0860 2222 13). or by download from intugroup.co.uk/en/investors/shareholder-information/dividends/ DIVIDEND TIMETABLE A timetable of events in relation to the dividend is set out below. Currency Conversion Date (Sterling/Rand) Thursday 6 April 2017 Finalisation Date Friday 7 April 2017 Ex-dividend date (SA) Wednesday 19 April 2017 Ex-dividend date (UK) Thursday 20 April 2017 Record Date (both UK and SA) Friday 21 April 2017 Last date for receipt of Tax Exemption Declaration Forms to permit dividend to be paid gross (UK Shareholders only) Friday 21 April 2017 Dividend payment date (UK & SA) Thursday 25 May 2017 SA shareholders should note that, in accordance with the requirements of Strate, the last day to trade cum-dividend will be Tuesday 18 April 2017 and that no dematerialisation or rematerialisation of shares will be possible from Wednesday 19 April to Friday 21 April 2017 inclusive. No transfers between the UK and South African registers may take place from Friday 7 April to Friday 21 April 2017 (both days inclusive). EXCHANGE RATE AND SCRIP CALCULATION PRICES (i) Shareholders receiving the dividend in cash: The Company confirms that the South African Rand exchange rate for the 2016 final dividend will be 17.35450 ZAR to 1 GBP. Shareholders will receive a cash dividendper ordinary share which will be paid wholly as a PID as follows: UK Shareholders SA Shareholders Gross amount of PID GBP pence 9.4p 163.13230 ZAR cents Less 20% withholding tax*/20% SA dividends tax** GBP pence 1.88p 32.62646 ZAR cents Net PID dividend payable GBP pence 7.52p 130.50584 ZAR cents *Certain categories of UK shareholder may apply for exemption, in which case the PID will be paid gross. **This is the net position after SA Shareholders have claimed back 5% from HMRC under the double tax agreement between the United Kingdom and South Africa (ii) Notes for South African shareholders A 20 per cent UK withholding tax will be deducted from the cash PID. The Company will account to Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs ("HMRC") in sterling for the total UK withholding tax deducted. SA dividends tax, at the rate of 20 per cent will apply to the cash PIDs payable by the Company unless the beneficial owner of the dividend is exempt from SA dividends tax. Under the double tax agreement between the UK and South Africa, the maximum tax payable in the UK is 15 per cent. Therefore on application by South African shareholders, 5 per cent of the PID (i.e. one quarter of the 20 per cent UK withholding tax deducted from a PID) is claimable from HMRC, resulting in an effective UK withholding tax rate of 15 per cent. Settlement of any claims for refund will be calculatedand settledin sterling by HMRC. As UK withholding tax will be applicable at an effective rate of 15 per cent, the SA dividends tax liability will be reduced to 5 per cent. In such cases the overall tax deducted will therefore be 20 per cent (15 per cent in the UK and 5 per cent in South Africa). The information given in section (i) above will assist with applications for refunds. For information on PIDs and refund claims, including claim forms and guidance on how to complete them, visit intugroup.co.uk/en/investors/shareholder-information/real-estate-investment-trust/. The number of shares in issue as at the declaration date was 1,355,040,243 ordinary shares of 50p each. The above information, and the guidelines on the taxation of dividends, including when taken as scrip shares, contained in the Scrip Dividend Scheme Booklet, is provided as a general guide based on the Company's understanding of the law and practice currently in force. Any shareholder who is in any doubt as to their tax position should seek independent professional advice. BRUSSELS/FRANKFURT/PARIS (dpa-AFX) - European stocks fell broadly on Friday, with banking and mining stocks pacing decliners, after the U.S. military launched strikes inside Syria, fueling concerns of an escalation in the Syrian civil war. Also, market participants awaited the release of the latest U.S. jobs report and the outcome of talks between the U.S. and Chinese leaders. In economic releases, German industrial production expanded unexpectedly in February from the previous month, official data showed today, while the country's exports grew at a slower pace in the month. French industrial production declined for the third straight month in February while U.K. house prices increased at the slowest pace since May 2013 in the three months to March from prior year, separate reports showed. The pan-European Stoxx Europe 600 index was down 0.4 percent at 379.35 in opening deals after rising 0.2 percent on Thursday. The German DAX was losing 0.6 percent and France's CAC 40 index was declining 0.4 percent while the U.K.'s FTSE 100 was little changed with a negative bias. Miners Anglo American, Antofagasta, BHP Billiton, Glencore and Rio Tinto fell 1-2 percent while banks Commerzbank, Barclays and Lloyds Banking Group dropped around 1 percent each. German consumer goods group Henkel declined 2 percent after its new CEO said the company will keep looking for acquisitions to bolster its business. Gold miner Randgold Resources jumped more than 2 percent as gold prices hit five-month high on safe-haven demand. Standard Life shares rose about 2 percent after the British insurer said it is considering moving its European Union hub to Dublin. 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. Three year Pre-FEED and FEED contract Global onshore and offshore engineering services Reinforces long-term customer relationship Amec Foster Wheeler announced today that it has been awarded a global framework contract by BP International to provide engineering, procurement support and project management services for pre-FEED (front end engineering and design) and FEED work across a range of projects. The award will allow Amec Foster Wheeler to use its deep experience and culture of innovation to deliver large, complex and integrated projects for BP. The scope of services for the contract covers onshore, offshore, subsea, drilling, greenfield and brownfield upstream engineering services in Alaska, Angola, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Gulf of Mexico, Indonesia, Oman, Trinidad and the United Kingdom. The contract is for three years with an option to extend for two additional years. John Pearson, Amec Foster Wheeler's President, Oil, Gas Chemicals, said: "This global framework reinforces Amec Foster Wheeler's long-term relationship with BP, allowing global access to our expertise, technology and More 4 Less approach to safe, efficient, predictable delivery." Amec Foster Wheeler's proven 'More 4 Less' lean engineering methodology has delivered customer savings of up to 60% in time and cost, compared to traditional approaches. ENDS Notes to editors: Amec Foster Wheeler (www.amecfw.com) designs, delivers and maintains strategic and complex assets for its customers across the global energy and related sectorsEmploying around 36,000 people in more than 55 countries and with 2016 revenues of 5.4 billion, the company operates across the oil and gas industry from production through to refining, processing and distribution of derivative products and in the mining, power and process, pharma, environment and infrastructure markets. Amec Foster Wheeler offers full life-cycle services to offshore and onshore oil and gas projects (conventional and unconventional, upstream, midstream and downstream) for greenfield, brownfield and asset support projects, plus leading refining technology. Amec Foster Wheeler shares are publicly traded on the London Stock Exchange and its American Depositary Shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Both trade under the ticker AMFW. Forward-Looking Statements This announcement contains statements which constitute "forward-looking statements". Forward-looking statements include any statements related to the timing, results and success of contracts, and are generally identified by words such as "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "intend," "estimate," "will," "may," "continue," "should" and other similar expressions. Forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties, many of which are difficult to predict and generally beyond the control of Amec Foster Wheeler, that could cause actual results and developments to differ materially from those expressed in, or implied or projected by, the forward-looking statements. Amec Foster Wheeler does not undertake to update any of the forward-looking statements after this date to conform such statements to actual results, to reflect the occurrence of anticipated results or otherwise. Publication on Website A copy of this announcement will be made available on Amec Foster Wheeler's website at www.amecfw.com by no later than 12 noon (London time) on the business day following publication of this announcement. For the avoidance of doubt, the contents of this website are not incorporated into and do not form part of this announcement. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170407005186/en/ Contacts: Amec Foster Wheeler Jane Gospel +44 (0) 7740 938 983 jane.gospel@amecfw.com or Achilleas Georgiou +44 (0) 20 7429 7511 achilleas.georgiou@amecfw.com MILTON KEYNES, England, April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The NHS Improvement agency (NHSI) has instructed NHS Trusts across the UK to apply an HMRC Rule known as IR35 incorrectly and unjustly to all self-employed health care workers who have been working in NHS organisations. They provide a crucial service filling in gaps caused by the severe lack of staffing in the NHS. Changes to locum doctors' and nurses' contracts which result in the loss of 30% to 50% of their income have been made with no discussion and with little or no warning. The NHS is short-staffed. To fill the gaps the NHS brings in locum doctors - self-employed doctors who work through agencies. Locum doctors get a raw deal. Healthcare workers who are directly employed by the NHS enjoy full employment rights. Locums, in contrast, have no pension provision, no annual leave, no study leave, no sick leave, no maternity leave, no death-in-service benefits and no job security (contracts can be terminated with a week's notice, sometimes just a day's notice). Many have to travel long distances to work where they're needed or spend time away from their families in temporary accommodation. They are often asked to work to job plans that are outside the professional Royal Colleges' guidelines. And locums still have to pay the fees to attend courses and meetings to fulfil their annual appraisal requirements. The disparity in benefits between the NHS's permanent staff and its locums justify the higher pay rates that locums earn. But the new rules change everything. The imposition of IR35 treats locum doctors as 'employed' for tax purposes. They lose the tax benefits of being self-employed but don't enjoy any of the benefits of being 'employed'. Locums now have to pay national insurance contributions twice over - as employer and employee employee Locums now have income tax deducted at source and cannot claim relief for any of their legitimate expenses such as travel, accommodation, subsistence, training fees, professional subscription fees etc. Within the past six months, locum doctor pay rates have been reduced or capped by NHS trusts. The IR35 contracts are cutting another 30% to 50% off their incomes. For many, being a locum is no longer a viable option. The changes make them worse off than NHS doctors in permanent employment, yet they're expected to do the same vital work. Many locum doctors have rejected the contracts and stopped working. Their union, the Locum Doctors Union, is preparing a legal challenge to the blanket imposition of the IR35 rule. Notes to editors The Locum Doctors Union (LDU) is the voice of self-employed doctors who provide services under short-term contracts to the NHS and other healthcare organisations in the UK. The LDU is a newly formed and apolitical professional organisation, and an independent trade union. It represents locum junior and senior doctors from all branches of medicine across the UK helping them deliver the highest standards of care. Regulatory News: Gecina's (Paris:GFC) shareholders are invited to attend the Combined General Meeting to be held on: Wednesday April 26, 2017, from 3 pm at Pavillon Cambon, 46 rue Cambon, 75001 Paris, France The meeting notice, containing the agenda and proposed resolutions, was published in the French official gazette (BALO) on March 10, 2017. The notice to attend was published in the French official gazette (BALO) and the French legal announcements journal "Les Petites Affiches" on April 7, 2017. The Company will be sending out the postal, online and proxy voting forms directly to all shareholders. The preparatory documents for this General Meeting, and particularly the documents covered by Article R. 225-83 of the French commercial code (Code de commerce), are available to shareholders, in accordance with the legal and regulatory provisions in force. All shareholders may ask the Company to send them these documents with written requests to be sent to the Company's registered office or faxed to +33 (0)1 40 40 64 81 up until the fifth day (inclusive) before the General Meeting, i.e. April 21, 2017. They may also be consulted at Gecina's registered office. The documents relating to this General Meeting covered under Article R. 225-73-1 of the French commercial code are available on the Company's website at www.gecina.fr. The Board of Directors Gecina French limited company (societe anonyme) with a share capital of 475,759,800 euros Registered office: 14-16, rue des Capucines, 75002 Paris, France Paris trade and companies register: 592 014 476 View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170407005199/en/ Contacts: Gecina Laurent Le Goff, Tel: +33 (0)1 40 40 62 69 LONDON (dpa-AFX) - Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY.L, LYG) said Friday that it set aside a further 100 million pounds to compensate customers who lost money in a fraud scandal. Six people, two of whom had worked for Halifax Bank of Scotland - owned by Lloyds - were jailed in February. The court heard they stole hundreds of millions of pounds from small businesses who were their clients. Meanwhile, the Financial Conduct Authority or FCA announces that it is investigating events surrounding the discovery of misconduct within the Reading-based Impaired Assets team of Halifax Bank of Scotland or HBOS. This resumes an FCA investigation that was placed on hold in early 2013 at the request of Thames Valley Police pending the outcome of the Thames Valley police investigation and any resulting prosecutions. Lloyds Banking noted that it will fully cooperate with this investigation. LBG said it has already suffered losses and/ or provided for at least 250 million pounds of credit losses in relation to those impacted cases at HBOS Reading in previous financial periods. LBG currently anticipates that compensation for economic losses, distress and inconvenience will be in the region of 100 million pounds and a provision will be included in our Q1 Information Management Statement on 27 April 2017. Lloyds Banking Group Chief Executive Antonio Horta-Osorio said,'As I have stated before, we would like to express our deep regret and apologies to any customers directly affected by the criminal behaviour of these individuals.' Horta-Osorio said, 'We are absolutely determined that victims of the crimes committed at HBOS Reading are fairly, swiftly and appropriately compensated. We take responsibility for putting right the wrongs that were committed at HBOS Reading at the time. That is why today we are providing an additional package of measures to ensure that customers have all the help they need as we resolve their cases as quickly as possible.' LBG also announced it will appoint a senior independent lawyer to consider whether the issues relating to HBOS Reading were investigated and appropriately reported to authorities at the time by LBG, following its acquisition of HBOS. LBG's independent legal assessment will cover the period following HBOS's acquisition by LBG, in January 2009, through to the conclusion of the criminal trial. In addition, Lloyds will appoint an independent lawyer, Professor Russel Griggs, to determine whether the bank investigated the crime properly at the time. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - The pound drifted lower against its major rivals in early European deals on Friday, as U.K. industrial production dropped unexpectedly and trade deficit widened in May, casting doubts over the nation's economic recovery. Data from the Office for National Statistics showed that UK industrial production fell unexpectedly in May. Industrial output fell 0.1 percent month-on-month in May, confounding expectations for an increase of 0.4 percent and reversed a 0.2 percent rise registered in April. At the same time, manufacturing output dropped 0.2 percent, offsetting a 0.2 percent rise in April. Output was forecast to gain 0.5 percent. Separate data from the same agency showed that the U.K. total trade deficit jumped by GBP 1 billion to GBP 3.1 billion in May. The UK visible trade deficit widened to GBP 11.86 billion from a revised GBP 10.60 billion in April. Economists had expected a shortfall of GBP 10.85 billion. Data from the mortgage lender Halifax and IHS Markit showed that UK house prices declined for the first time in five months in June. House prices fell unexpectedly by 1 percent on a monthly basis, reversing a 0.3 percent rise in May. This was the first decline since January. Prices were forecast to grow 0.2 percent. Risk sentiment dampened on falling oil prices as well as rising global yields after hawkish ECB minutes. Traders now await U.S. jobs data later in day, after weak private payrolls data suggested a possible slowdown in labor market activity. The pound showed mixed performance in the Asian session. While the pound held steady against the franc and the euro, it fell against the greenback. Against the yen, it rose. The pound declined to 0.8839 against the euro, its weakest since June 28. This marks a 0.4 percent decline from Thursday's closing value of 0.8807. Continuation of the pound's downtrend may see it challenging support around the 0.90 region. Data from Destatis showed that German industrial production grew at the fastest pace in four months in May. Industrial production grew 1.2 percent month-on-month in May, faster than the 0.4 percent increase seen in April and exceeded economists' forecast of 0.2 percent. The pound dropped to a 2-day low of 1.2913 against the greenback, compared to 1.2970 hit late New York Thursday. If the pound-greenback pair extends decline, 1.28 is likely seen as its next support level. The pound that closed yesterday's trading at 1.2457 against the franc dropped to a weekly low of 1.2431. The pound is poised to target support around the 1.22 level. Pulling away from an early nearly 2-month high of 147.61 against the yen, the pound eased to 146.84. The next possible support for the pound-yen pair is seen around the 143.00 mark. Preliminary data from the Cabinet Office showed that Japan's leading index strengthened in May, while coincident index fell from April. The leading index that measures the future economic activity, rose to 104.7 in May from 104.2 in April. The score was forecast to rise to 104.6. Looking ahead, U.S. jobs data for June is due in the New York session. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de Major contract win for Amec Foster Wheeler as U.S. cleans up historic contaminated land Win builds on EPC portfolio for water treatment projects a major growth area for the business Amec Foster Wheeler announces that it has been awarded a US$48.4million design-build contract by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to upgrade the water treatment plant at the Bunker Hill Superfund site near Kellogg, Idaho. Under the contract, Amec Foster Wheeler will design and construct an expansion of the currently operating Central Treatment Plant, including new reactors, a sludge thickener and pressure filter system. It will also design and construct an 8,000-foot slurry wall, groundwater collection system with six miles of piping, and a ten-acre sludge impoundment area. The company will also provide operation and maintenance of the facility throughout design, construction, and commissioning and for one year after. The work is part of required remedial action under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) efforts to clean up historic contamination in the Silver Valley, one of the largest historical mining districts in the world. With more than US$2 billion of similar remedial work required in many abandoned mining sites across the western part of the U.S., Amec Foster Wheeler has developed unrivalled experience and expertise in mining system design and delivery of innovative remediation approaches. Winning this engineer, procure and construct (EPC) contract recognises Amec Foster Wheeler's position as a leading company for abandoned mines remediation or closure contracts. Ann Massey, President of Amec Foster Wheeler's Environment Infrastructure business, said: "Using our experience and expertise in remediation works, we are best placed to help our clients address their environmental liabilities. We use safe, energy-efficient and innovative treatment methods designed to optimise performance for the next 50 years, minimise the environmental impact and restore areas which have been under stress due to heavy mining activity. We're pleased to have been commissioned by USACE to do this remedial work, which can be rolled out in other parts of the U.S." ENDS Notes to editors: Amec Foster Wheeler (www.amecfw.com) designs, delivers and maintains strategic and complex assets for its customers across the global energy and related sectorsEmploying around 36,000 people in more than 55 countries and with 2016 revenues of 5.4 billion, the company operates across the oil and gas industry from production through to refining, processing and distribution of derivative products and in the mining, power and process, pharma, environment and infrastructure markets. Amec Foster Wheeler offers full life-cycle services to offshore and onshore oil and gas projects (conventional and unconventional, upstream, midstream and downstream) for greenfield, brownfield and asset support projects, plus leading refining technology. Amec Foster Wheeler shares are publicly traded on the London Stock Exchange and its American Depositary Shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Both trade under the ticker AMFW. The Bunker Hill Mining and Metallurgical Complex Superfund Site also known as the Coeur d'Alene Basin clean up is located primarily in northern Idaho. It was first added to EPA's National Priorities List of contaminated sites in 1983. At the EPA's request, the Seattle District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, supports the EPA in managing design and construction of specific projects in the Coeur d'Alene basin. Forward-Looking Statements This announcement contains statements which constitute "forward-looking statements". Forward-looking statements include any statements related to the timing, results and success of contracts, and are generally identified by words such as "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "intend," "estimate," "will," "may," "continue," "should" and other similar expressions. Forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties, many of which are difficult to predict and generally beyond the control of Amec Foster Wheeler, that could cause actual results and developments to differ materially from those expressed in, or implied or projected by, the forward-looking statements. Amec Foster Wheeler does not undertake to update any of the forward-looking statements after this date to conform such statements to actual results, to reflect the occurrence of anticipated results or otherwise. Publication on Website A copy of this announcement will be made available on Amec Foster Wheeler's website at www.amecfw.com by no later than 12 noon (London time) on the business day following publication of this announcement. For the avoidance of doubt, the contents of this website are not incorporated into and do not form part of this announcement. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170407005234/en/ Contacts: For further information contact: Amec Foster Wheeler Lauren Gallagher +1.602.757.3211 lauren.gallagher@amecfw.com or Achilleas Georgiou +44 (0)20 7429 7511 achilleas.georgiou@amecfw.com VANCOUVER, BC--(Marketwired - April 07, 2017) - Solar Alliance Energy, Inc. ('Solar Alliance') or (the 'Company') (TSX VENTURE: SAN) (OTCQB: SAENF) is pleased to provide preliminary results for the Company's California solar operations for the month ended March 31, 2017. The Company expects to record a profit of approximately $18,258 for the month of March 2017. "Solar Alliance has continued its strong results for our California operations. We believe these results illustrate the competence of our team," said Chairman and CEO Jason Bak. "As we expand our operations and assess new opportunities, we're doing it from a platform of strength and profitability. We are committed to growing our business profitably and building a sustainable solar company which generates positive and real returns for our shareholders." The Company is pleased to report positive progress with respect to the Letter of Intent signed for the acquisition of certain assets of a U.S. solar company (the "Seller"). Due diligence work is on track to acquire the Seller's team of employees and acquire the Seller's pipeline of in-process residential solar projects. In 2016, the team that the Company is acquiring sold more than 7 MW of residential solar systems, generating US$ 34,305,000 (unaudited) in revenue. The following unaudited results for the Solar Alliance U.S. operations are subject to the completion of Solar Alliance's quarterly closing and review procedures, as well as the regular annual audit by the company's independent registered public accounting firm, and are therefore subject to change. The results noted below for the month of March 2017 are in U.S. dollars. Selected Item Unaudited March 2017 (US$) Revenue $ 372,094 Cost of Goods Sold $ 196,699 Gross Margin $ 175,395 Net Income $ 18,259 Key Ratios Gross Margin % 47% Net income % 5% Jason Bak Chairman and CEO About Solar Alliance Energy, Inc. (www.solaralliance.com) Solar Alliance is a sales, marketing and development company focused on residential, commercial and industrial solar installations. Since we were founded in 2003, we have developed wind and solar projects that provide enough electricity to power 150,000 homes. Solar Alliance is committed to an exceptional customer experience, effective marketing campaigns and superior lead generation in order to drive sales and generate value for shareholders. Our passion is improving life through ingenuity, simplicity and freedom of choice. We make solar simple and our goal is to install solar on every available rooftop in America. Statements in this news release, other than purely historical information, including statements relating to the Company's future plans and objectives or expected results, constitute Forward-looking statements. The words "would", "will", "expected" and "estimated" or other similar words and phrases are intended to identify forward-looking information. Forward-looking information is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the Company's actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements to be materially different than those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. Such factors include, but are not limited to: uncertainties related to the ability to raise sufficient capital, changes in economic conditions or financial markets, litigation, legislative or other judicial, regulatory and political competitive developments and technological or operational difficulties. Consequently, actual results may vary materially from those described in the forward-looking statements. "Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release." For more information: Solar Alliance Investor Relations Spyros Karellas Pinnacle Capital Markets (416) 433-5696 spyros@pinnaclecapitalmarkets.ca CALGARY, ALBERTA -- (Marketwired) -- 04/07/17 -- Precision Drilling Corporation ("Precision" or the "Company") (TSX: PD)(NYSE: PDS) announced that Robert (Bob) Phillips, Chairman of the Board of Directors (the "Board") will not be standing for re-election and will retire from Precision's Board at the conclusion of Precision's Annual and Special Meeting of Shareholders on May 17, 2017 (the "Annual Shareholders Meeting"). Steven Krablin, a current member of the Board will succeed Mr. Phillips as Chairman, subject to his re-election as a director to the Board at the Annual Shareholders Meeting. Mr. Phillips joined the Precision Board in 2004 and was appointed Chairman in 2007. He has served on the boards of publicly-traded and private corporations for more than 25 years, including several oilfield service companies. "For the past decade I have had the distinct pleasure of leading Precision's Board of Directors. Throughout my tenure as Chairman, our Board members have challenged one another and the Company's management team to foster a world-class organization with a unique culture and true leadership position within the oilfield services industry. I am proud of the Company's continued focus on delivering shareholder value through operational excellence, financial discipline and transparency in public disclosure, all important factors that support the reputation Precision enjoys today," said Mr. Phillips. "I commend my fellow directors, management and employees for all their efforts in Precision's success," he added. "I would like to thank Bob for his insightful leadership of the Precision organization. His focus on shareholder interests has always been front and center as he has guided the Board and management through challenges and opportunities over his tenure. Bob has been instrumental in helping Precision define and develop our High Performance, High Value strategy, an integral part of our growth. He navigated our transition from a trust to a corporate structure; helped re-launch Precision's international expansion; completed a large acquisition in the U.S.; and oversaw the re-investment in our high specification fleet of 239 Super Series Tier One rigs. His leadership, honesty, humility and integrity have shaped Precision's culture from the day he joined our Board, and his influence on Precision will be enduring," said Kevin A. Neveu, President and Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Krablin was appointed to the Board in May 2015. He has over 30 years of experience as a corporate executive in the energy industry. He served as President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of T-3 Energy Services, Inc., an oilfield service company that manufactured products used in the drilling, production and transportation of oil and gas. He also served as Chief Financial Officer of other oil and gas service and manufacturing companies, including National Oilwell, Inc. and Enterra Corporation. Mr. Krablin is currently a director of Hornbeck Offshore Services, Inc. and Chart Industries Inc. "We are pleased to have Mr. Krablin transition from Board member to become our new Chairman of the Board," continued Mr. Neveu. "Steve's extensive executive and board level leadership experience in the energy industry has proven to be a very good fit for Precision throughout Steve's tenure as a Board member and he is ready to assume leadership of the Board and stewardship of the organization." About Precision Precision is a leading provider of safe and High Performance, High Value services to the oil and gas industry. Precision provides customers with access to an extensive fleet of contract drilling rigs, directional drilling services, well service and snubbing rigs, camps, rental equipment, and wastewater treatment units backed by a comprehensive mix of technical support services and skilled, experienced personnel. Precision is headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Precision is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the trading symbol "PD" and on the New York Stock Exchange under the trading symbol "PDS". Contacts: Precision Drilling Corporation Kevin A. Neveu President and Chief Executive Officer 403.716.4566 403.716.4755 (FAX) www.precisiondrilling.com HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA -- (Marketwired) -- 04/07/17 -- Immunovaccine Inc. (TSX: IMV)(OTCQX: IMMVF), a clinical stage immuno-oncology company, announced that Chief Executive Officer Frederic Ors will present an update on the Company's recent progress and future strategy at the Bloom Burton & Co. Healthcare Investor Conference 2017 in Toronto, Canada. Details of the presentation are as follows: -- Date: Monday, May 1, 2017 -- Time: 11:00 am ET -- Location: Hall B, Lower Concourse Level of the Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel, Toronto, Canada About the Conference Bloom Burton & Co. is hosting its sixth annual Healthcare Investor Conference on May 1 and 2, 2017 at the Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel, Toronto, Canada. The Company aims to showcase approximately 60 of the premier Canadian healthcare companies to its network of investors, who generally come from across Canada, the U.S. and Europe. The conference includes networking sessions, keynote speeches and panel discussions with venture capital, public equity and strategic investors. The event attracts investors who are interested in the latest developments in Canadian healthcare companies. Investors will have the opportunity to obtain corporate updates from presenting companies and participate in the 1-on-1 meeting system with company management. About Immunovaccine Immunovaccine Inc. is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company dedicated to making immunotherapy more effective, more broadly applicable, and more widely available to people facing cancer and infectious diseases. Immunovaccine develops T cell activating cancer immunotherapies and infectious disease vaccines based on DepoVax, the Company's patented platform that provides controlled and prolonged exposure of antigens and adjuvant to the immune system. Immunovaccine has advanced two T cell activation therapies for cancer through Phase 1 human clinical trials and is currently conducting a Phase 1b study with Incyte Corporation assessing lead cancer therapy, DPX-Survivac, as a combination therapy in ovarian cancer. An investigator-sponsored Phase 2 study is currently assessing the safety and efficacy of DPX-Survivac combined with an approved anti-PD-1 drug in advanced ovarian cancer. The Company is also exploring additional applications of DepoVax, including DPX-RSV, an innovative vaccine candidate for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), which has recently completed a Phase 1 clinical trial. Immunovaccine also has ongoing clinical projects to assess the potential of DepoVax to address malaria and the Zika virus. Connect at www.imvaccine.com. Contacts: MEDIA Mike Beyer, Sam Brown Inc. T: (312) 961-2502 mikebeyer@sambrown.com INVESTOR RELATIONS Pierre Labbe, Chief Financial Officer T: (902) 492-1819 info@imvaccine.com Patti Bank, Managing Director, Westwicke Partners O: (415) 513-1284 T: (415) 515-4572 patti.bank@westwicke.com LONDON (dpa-AFX) - UK industrial and construction output declined unexpectedly in February, signaling a slowdown in the first quarter. Moreover, the visible trade deficit widened to a 5-month high. Largely reflecting weak energy demand, industrial output dropped unexpectedly by 0.7 percent month-on-month in February, figures from the Office for National Statistics showed Friday. Economists had forecast output to grow 0.2 percent after falling 0.3 percent in January. Manufacturing output dropped only 0.1 percent after easing 1 percent in January. Nonetheless, the drop was in contrast to the expected growth of 0.3 percent. Year-on-year, industrial production growth slowed to 2.8 percent from 3.3 percent in January. Economists had forecast a 3.7 percent increase. Meanwhile, growth in manufacturing accelerated to 3.3 percent from 2.6 percent, but slower than the expected 3.9 percent. Driven by a fall in all new work, construction output decreased 1.7 percent from January, confounding expectations for an increase of 0.1 percent and marked the biggest fall since March 2016. Year-on-year, output rose 0.5 percent. In a separate communique, the ONS said the visible trade deficit increased unexpectedly to GBP 12.46 billion in February from GBP 11.97 billion in the prior month. The shortfall was forecast to narrow to GBP 10.9 billion. This was the biggest deficit since September 2016. Including goods and services, the trade gap widened to GBP 3.66 billion from GBP 2.97 billion in January. The increase reflects a GBP 0.4 billion decrease in exports and a GBP 0.3 billion increase in imports. The trade in services showed a surplus of GBP 8.78 billion compared to GBP 8.99 billion in previous month. Despite the disappointing data in February, with temporary factors at play, Ruth Gregory, an economist at Capital Economics, said she remains optimistic that there should be some bounce back at the end of the first quarter. IHS Markit Economist Howard Archer, said a disappointing package of data for the UK economy which fuels suspicion that GDP growth slowed markedly, largely due to consumers becoming more cautious. The economist suspects UK GDP growth in the first quarter of 2017 slowed to 0.4 percent. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 04/07/17 -- BeWhere Holdings Inc. (TSX VENTURE: BEW)(OTCQB: BEWFF) ("BeWhere" or the "Company") today announced it has signed an agreement with an international provider of armoured car transportation to provide asset management solutions for its fleet of armoured cars in the United States. BeWhere has been engaged to provide compliance, safety and security solutions. This is an end-to-end solution that delivers effective monitoring and superior operational visibility. The initial installation has begun and is expected to complete by the end of 2017. Owen Moore, Co-Founder and CEO commented, "This agreement is with one of the most trusted security and logistics brands in the world and is a meaningful endorsement of our solutions. We look forward to growing our business with them as they operate in over 100 countries worldwide." Chris Panczuk, Co-Founder and COO added, "This initial rollout shows the importance of tracking assets and personnel associated with the vehicle. This initial contract is a huge endorsement of our capabilities and the team's expertise, I'm very proud we were chosen." About BeWhere BeWhere (TSX VENTURE: BEW)(OTCQB: BEWFF) is an Industrial Internet of Things ("IIOT") solutions company that designs and manufacturers hardware with sensors and software applications to track real-time information on movable assets. The company develops mobile applications, middle-ware and cloud based solutions that stand-alone or that can readily be integrated with existing software. Its solutions enable end-users a level of operational visibility that is more easily accessible and significantly easier to implement than in the past. Contacts: BeWhere Inc. Owen Moore CEO 1 (844) 229-4373 info@bewhere.com DUBLIN, April 07, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Tea and Ready-to-Drink Tea: U.S. Retail Market, 6th Edition" report to their offering. "Tea and Ready-to-Drink Tea: U.S. Retail Market, 6th Edition" focuses on the dynamic market for packaged tea, particularly with respect to the impact of current product, marketing, and consumer trends. The report offers market size and growth projections for tea and features the results of an exclusive national online consumer survey of tea drinkers' tendencies, preferences, and purchase influences. The tea market in the U.S. continues to enjoy mass appeal in the U.S. The category's performance in the last couple of years, particularly in ready-to-drink segments, has shown the strong durability of the market. Tea is experiencing growth, impacted by factors including: an interest in tea culture at foodservice; new products that emphasize tea's functionality; trends towards premium and specialized products in bagged, loose and ready-to-drink tea; and Starbucks' push into RTD tea through its partnership with Anheuser-Busch. Market trends and market size estimates within Tea and Ready-to-Drink Tea: U.S. Retail Market, 6th Edition are based on both public and syndicated data sources. Sales, market size, and consumer data sources drawn upon include: Key Topics Covered: CHAPTER 1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Scope of Report Report Methodology Tea Sales Rise to $7.3 billion Tea by Channel IRI-tracked Tea Shoots Up Looking Ahead Tea Culture Blossoms Functional: The Next Wove Consumer Shifts Create Opportunity and Peril Powerhouse Brands Target RTD Tea Tea Market Shore Spread Out Marketing Trends Product Trends Retail Trends Tea Market Share Spread Out Tea Consumption Trends Hot and Cold Tea Usage by Gender CHAPTER 2 TEA TRENDS & OPPORTUNITIES KEY OPPORTUNITIES Tea Culture Blossoms Gourmet Gear Functional: The Next Wave FACTORS TO MARKET GROWTH Consumer Shifts Create Opportunity and Peril Powerhouse Brands Target RTD Tea CHAPTER 3 MARKET SIZE AND PROJECTIONS MARKET SIZE AND SEGMENTATION Tea Sales Rise to $7.3 billion Tea by Channel.. IRI-trocked Tea Shoots Up lB Looking Ahead CHAPTER 4 THE MARKETERS MARKETER SHARES Tea Market Share Spread Out Pepsi Lipton Tea Partnership Tops RTD Tea Gold Peak Tops Refrigerated Tea Lipton Tops Bagged/Loose Tea Segment Four Players with Double Digit Share in Single-Cup Tea Private Label Tea Market Feels the Pain CHAPTER 5 MARKETING AND NEW PRODUCT TRENDS RANGE OF Approaches Global Positioning at Lipton Experiential Effort for Lipton Sparkling Ice Tea Pure Leaf Moves into Television Brisk Targets Urban Teens Gold Peak Takes It Home Snapple Goes Madcap "Butterflyz"at Fuze Arizona and Marketing The Honesty Index Celestial Makeover Misstep PRODUCT TRENDS Expanding Premium Tier Natural Strategies Sparkling Products in the Spotlight Tea Lattes Proliferate Exotic Flavour Directions Speciality Teas Advancing Matcha: The Super/Food Tea Unrest in Kombucha Single-Serve Form Instant Tea Segmentation in Hot Tea CHAPTER 6 RETAIL TRENDS CHANGING RETAIL LANDSCAPE Consumer Mindsets Are Shifting Developments in Mass Channels Tea Retailers Tea Cafes Online Channel CHAPTER 7 THE TEA CONSUMER Tea Consumption Trends Hot and Cold Tea Usage by Gender Gender Differences in Frequency of Consumption Tea Channel Shopping by Gender Tea Type Preferences Brand Preference Trends Tea Consumer Demographics For more information about this report visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/xg2krq/tea_and 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 WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Gold futures were sharply higher Friday morning as a U.S. strike on Syria was set to overshadow today's jobs report. President Donald Trump indicated the missile strike was in response to a 'horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians' by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The U.S. incursion has upset Russia. Traders are looking ahead to the March jobs report at 8:30 am ET. Economists expect the latest report to show an increase of about 180,000 jobs in March, while the unemployment rate is expected to hold at 4.7 percent. However, a pair of just-released reports signal even stronger growth -- the ADP reported private sector jobs growth of 263,000. Gold was up $11 at $1264 an ounce, near its best level since November. 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. MUNICH, April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Further investment from leading Silicon Valley VC Internal round led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) Funds will be used for new product features and market entry in further European countries Dr. Greg Papadopoulos , Venture Partner at NEA, joins Board of Directors CEO Andreas Kunze : "Show of confidence by existing investors" Munich-based IIoT startup KONUX announced today that it has raised another $9 million from existing investors, led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA). This internal round was the third and final close of their Series A financing, bringing the total raised to $16 million. Other participants in the comprehensive Series A include: MIG, Upbeat Ventures, Andy Bechtolsheim, Michael Baum, UnternehmerTUM, Warren Weiss and Lothar Stein. KONUX is one of the very few German based startups that were able to attract leading Silicon Valley VCs. KONUX also announced that Dr. Greg Papadopoulos, Venture Partner at NEA and former CTO at SUN Microsystems, will be joining its Board of Directors. "KONUX has the potential to have a massive impact on the industrial world through its AI solutions," said Papadopoulos. "It will significantly change the way companies approach their asset management and maintenance processes. KONUX has demonstrated impressive progress with its predictive analytics solution for railway operators and has successfully installed its first systems in the field - giving us the confidence and excitement to increase our original investment." KONUX combines smart sensors and AI-based analytics to help customers know their assets' performance in real-time and switch to predictive maintenance. The company's vision is to enable a data-driven industrial world. "Predictive analytics for critical assets is one of the largest opportunities for industrial companies in the era of digitalization," stated Board Observer Dr. Torsten Kreindl, Managing Partner at Upbeat Ventures and former longtime Swisscom board member. "KONUX has managed to find a huge market and to profit from its roots in two innovative technology hubs: Its product development is based on both the executional speed of Silicon Valley and the quality of German engineering." Board Member Dr. Soren Hein, Venture Partner at MIG and former Vice President of Infineon, stressed KONUX' in-house expertise: "KONUX has built a team of both young entrepreneurs and senior professionals who have decades of experience in the field of engineering and AI. This combination of innovative ideas and deep technical know-how is clearly reflected in their solution." KONUX has recently achieved several important milestones, including the start of its work with Deutsche Bahn (DB), Europe's largest rail operator. The company has also begun its successful expansion into further European markets. The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) startup enables rail operators to digitize their network through condition monitoring of switches, the most critical part of railway infrastructure. The smart sensors and analytics solution will help them predict maintenance needs in advance and react in time, thereby increasing network availability and punctuality. Over the last months, KONUX was awarded the German Mobility Price as well as the German Digital Price "Spark Award" for its predictive analytics solution. The startup and its founders furthermore made it into the "AI 100" list by CBInsights and the "Forbes 30 under 30". The additional funding will be used primarily for the development of new product features and the market entry in further European countries. "Over the last year, we've made significant progress with our customer projects," stated KONUX CEO Andreas Kunze. "We aim to continue this strong momentum and drive IoT implementation with real business results. We feel very proud to have our current investors believing in us and supporting us on our journey. This additional funding is a true show of their confidence." About KONUX Munich-based IIoT company KONUX integrates smart sensor systems and AI-based analytics to deliver asset insights in real time and enable its customers to switch to predictive maintenance. The end-to-end solution uses artificial intelligence to help clients continuously monitor their infrastructure, identify maintenance needs ahead of time and improve operational efficiency. KONUX empowers industrial and rail companies to reach a new level of asset performance. Since its foundation in 2014, KONUX has raised a total of $18M in funding from world leading investors and has built a team of currently 35 employees. For more information visit: konux.com About NEA New Enterprise Associates, Inc. (NEA) is a global venture capital firm focused on helping entrepreneurs build transformational businesses across multiple stages, sectors and geographies. With nearly $17 billion in cumulative committed capital since the firm's founding in 1977, NEA invests in technology and healthcare companies at all stages in a company's lifecycle, from seed stage through IPO. The firm's long track record of successful investing includes more than 200 portfolio company IPOs and more than 320 acquisitions. For additional information, visit www.nea.com About MIG MIG Verwaltungs AG is a leading German VC investor with an investment focus on early to mid-stage technology and life science companies. The portfolio of the funds managed by MIG currently comprises 26 companies. For additional information, visit www.mig.ag; www.mig-fonds.de About Upbeat Ventures Upbeat Ventures invests in leading technology companies in both Europe and the US, always with a transatlantic view. It considers itself a strategic, high-value add investor for its entrepreneurs that leverages both its large senior executive network and long-lasting tier-one VC relationships for its portfolio companies. The Upbeat team combines many years of and lessons from successful European and West Coast VC investment practice, international business leadership and significant governance experience. About UnternehmerTUM UnternehmerTUM Fund invests in young technology companies across Germany in the fields of Industry 4.0, Enterprise Software, and Mobility & Smart Cities. Portfolio companies benefit from UnternehmerTUM's longstanding experience in developing young companies. The UnternehmerTUM Fund has in-house industry experts and a unique network of connections in industry and to other venture capital investors. www.unternehmertum.de/vc Media Contact: Andreas Kunze Chief Executive Officer Tel: +49-159-04155111 andreas.kunze@konux.de TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 04/07/17 -- Energizer Resources Inc. ("Energizer" or the "Company") (TSX: EGZ)(OTCQB: ENZR) announced today that effective April 19, 2017 the Company will change its corporate name to NextSource Materials Inc. as part of its rebranding initiative and anticipates its shares will commence trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) and the U.S. OTC Market Group (OTCQB) under the new name and ticker symbols upon the opening of the markets on Monday, April 24, 2017. As the Company is expected to shortly complete the Detailed Engineering Study on its Molo Graphite Project, the new brand identity signifies an important shift in the evolution of the Company from an exploration-stage company into a mine-development company. New Trading Symbol on TSX: NEXT The name change was approved by stockholders at the annual general meeting of the stockholders of the Company held on December 19, 2016 and has been conditionally approved by the TSX. The Company anticipates its common shares, which are currently trading on the TSX under the symbol "EGZ", will commence trading under the new ticker symbol "NEXT" upon the opening of the market on Monday April 24, 2017. The CUSIP number assigned to the Company's shares following the name change is 65342W109 (ISIN: US65342W1099). New Trading Symbol on OTCQB The Company anticipates its common shares, which are currently trading on the OTCQB under the symbol "ENZR", will commence trading on the OTCQB under a new ticker symbol upon the opening of the market on or around the same date that the common shares commence trading on the TSX. The Company has applied for a new trading symbol and will notify U.S. stockholders in the coming days what the replacement trading symbol will be and the confirmed date that the common shares will commence trading. New Website As part of the rebrand, the newly designed corporate website will launch on April 24, 2017 to coincide with the commencement of the Company's common shares trading under the new ticker symbol "NEXT" on the TSX. The new domain name will be nextsourcematerials.com. No Action Required by Stockholders No further action is required by stockholders with respect to the name change. Outstanding stock certificates will not be affected by the name change and will not need to be exchanged. Certain changes in the CUSIP number may cause a temporary interruption in electronic trading in the United States and/or with the Depository Trust Company. The Company encourages any concerns in this regard to be directed to the stockholder's respective broker or agent. More Than Just Graphite The Company's decision to change its corporate name to NextSource Materials Inc. ("NextSource") is firstly, to better reflect the evolution of the Company from an exploration-stage company into a mine-development company. Secondly, it is to better reflect the Company's 100%-ownership of completely separate and stand-alone graphite and vanadium deposits, both of which the Company considers as strategic "energy minerals" for batteries for the electric vehicle and large-scale energy storage markets. The global quest to efficiently harness renewable energy into a battery has been described as the "holy grail" of energy storage and the growth opportunities for efficient energy storage systems are substantial. The Company has always believed in the market demand for both graphite and vanadium, as these "energy" minerals are key materials in battery chemistries for large-scale energy storage systems. This was evident in 2010 when the Company put the development activities of its Green Giant Vanadium Project on hold to focus its efforts exclusively on advancing the Molo Graphite Project based on the high-growth demand forecasts for flake graphite and on the lower capital and operating costs required to bring a flake graphite mine into production as compared to a vanadium mine. Although the development of the Molo Graphite Project into a mine will remain the primary focus of the Company, it continues to believe strongly in the market potential of vanadium redox flow batteries (VRB), a leading technology for large-scale megawatt energy storage systems. In particular, we believe in the off-take potential for a high-purity vanadium pentoxide (V2O5) concentrate from our Green Giant Vanadium Project, which is a key precursor material to produce the electrolyte that powers a VRB battery. Serendipitously, the two main material inputs in a VRB are vanadium and flake graphite. As such, the new name NextSource Materials exemplifies the Company's ambitious goal of providing the next source of strategic battery materials that will change the world. Detailed Engineering Study The Company will be providing an update shortly on the completion of the Detailed Engineering Study for the Molo Graphite Project, which was initiated in January 2017 on the basis of the positive results of the Front End Engineering and Design Study, which itself was completed in November 2016. About Energizer Resources Energizer Resources is a mine development company based in Toronto, Canada, that is developing its 100%-owned Molo Graphite Project in southern Madagascar. The Molo Graphite Project is a Full Feasibility-stage project and ranks as one of the largest-known and highest quality flake graphite deposits in the world. The Molo Feasibility Study was completed in February 2015 and confirmed that the Molo Graphite Project could be a lowest-quartile producer due to its low-cost open pit operation and negligible stripping ratio. For more details, please refer to the Feasibility Study titled, "Molo Feasibility Study, National Instrument 43-101 Technical Report, on the Molo Graphite Project located near the village of Fotadrevo in the Province of Toliara, Madagascar" prepared by DRA Projects (Pty) Limited, effective date February 6, 2015, on SEDAR at www.sedar.com or on the Company's website at www.energizerresources.com. Safe Harbour: This press release contains statements that may constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable Canadian and United States securities legislation. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are related to the anticipated timing and completion of the proposed name change, the completion of the Detailed Engineering Study in respect of the Molo Graphite Project, and the expected results thereof, funding of the development of the Molo Graphite Project and any potential plans or forward statements regarding its Green Giant Vanadium Project. These are based on current expectations, estimates and assumptions that involve a number of risks, which could cause actual results to vary and in some instances to differ materially from those anticipated by the Company and described in the forward-looking statements contained in this press release. No assurance can be given that any of the events anticipated by the forward-looking statements will transpire or occur or, if any of them do so, what benefits the Company will derive there from. The forward-looking statements contained in this news release are made as at the date of this news release and the Company does not undertake any obligation to update publicly or to revise any of the forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as may be required by applicable securities laws. Contacts: Energizer Resources Inc. +1.416.364.4911 Brent Nykoliation Senior Vice President, Corporate Development bnykoliation@energizerresources.com Craig Scherba President and CEO cscherba@energizerresources.com WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Crude oil futures climbed to their highest in more than a month Friday morning, as U.S. air strikes on Syria raised concerns about a wider conflict in the Middle East. Oil supplies may be interrupted if the Syrian situation escalates. President Donald Trump indicated the missile strike was in response to a 'horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians' by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov accused Trump of ordering the strikes under a 'far-fetched pretext.' WTI light sweet crude oil was up 47 cents at $52.17 a barrel. Geopolitical tensions may overshadow today's March jobs report. Economists expect the latest report to show an increase of about 180,000 jobs in March, while the unemployment rate is expected to hold at 4.7 percent. Baker Hughes releases its U.S. rig count data this afternoon. 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. BERLIN (dpa-AFX) - Germany's industrial production grew at the fastest pace in four months in May, Destatis reported Friday. Industrial production grew 1.2 percent month-on-month in May, faster than the 0.4 percent increase seen in April and exceeded economists' forecast of 0.2 percent. This was the largest growth since January, when output climbed 1.7 percent. Excluding energy and construction, industrial output grew 1.3 percent. Energy output advanced 2.9 percent in May, while that in construction dropped 1.0 percent. Among other sectors, capital goods output rose 2.6 percent and the production of consumer goods by 1.4 percent. Meanwhile, the production of intermediate goods showed a decrease of 0.2 percent. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. TORONTO, April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Bill Downe intends to retire as CEO after steering bank through transformative decade Planned transition taking place against a backdrop of strong performance, driven by a focus on customers and continued operating discipline Board expresses confidence in transition plan, current leadership structure and team Robert Prichard, Chairman of BMO Financial Group (TSX:BMO)(NYSE:BMO), today announced that Bill Downe has shared his intention to retire as Chief Executive Officer of the bank on October 31, 2017.Mr. Prichard also announced the Board's intention to appoint Chief Operating Officer, Darryl White, as the successor to Mr. Downe, effective November 1, to correspond with the start of the new fiscal year. Mr. Downe will serve as CEO for the remainder of fiscal 2017 and will work closely with Mr. White to ensure a smooth succession. "This planned succession will provide continuity for our bank as we focus on the strategic priorities that have been set, in this, our 200th year of serving customers," said Mr. Prichard in announcing the succession."Darryl White's leadership has been steadfast and successful at every juncture of his banking career and he will maintain and build on our positive momentum. Darryl has spent more than two decades at BMO directly engaged with clients and global markets. He is a natural and authentic leader and the right person to lead the bank in a time of change in the wider economy. His varied experience will serve him well as he assumes the role of Chief Executive Officer," added Mr. Prichard. "The leadership team we have assembled represents an exceptional combination of strengths and is among the most capable in the industry. They are achievement oriented, act early on business opportunities and have driven strong performance in the businesses. Individually and collectively, this team put the bank on a path of sustained growth, and Darryl is eminently qualified to lead them further down that path," said Mr. Downe. "Darryl possesses a deep understanding of the financial industry. His command of the bank's fundamental performance drivers and what constitutes opportunity for the organization is distinctive," added Mr. Downe. Mr. White has progressed through a series of key leadership roles at BMO. Currently, he provides strategic leadership for the bank's Personal, Commercial and Wealth businesses across North America and globally.He is also accountable for ensuring BMO's marketing strategy contributes strongly to the bank's overall growth plans, while ensuring the bank's technology function delivers strategic capabilities to all businesses. Mr. White is also responsible for ensuring consistent operating discipline in every part of the bank with a focus on expanding BMO's agility and responsiveness to market opportunities. He is accountable for driving strategies that grow the bank's customer base, while ensuring that all BMO businesses and functional areas operate as one bank to introduce business models and technologies to unlock new sources of value for customers and shareholders. Additionally, Mr. White is a Director of BMO Financial Corp., the entity that has overall responsibility for the activities of the bank in the United States. Prior to being appointed Chief Operating Officer, Mr. White delivered strong performance as Group Head, BMO Capital Markets, in a competitive and rapidly changing context. Mr. White has spent considerable time in the United States deepening the group's strategy and U.S. presence. He has had a direct hand in shaping the success of BMO Capital Markets, bringing this operating group closer to the bank and strengthening its culture. Mr. White has strong community ties. Mr. White is a longstanding volunteer with the United Way of Greater Toronto and York Region and currently serves on the organization's Campaign Cabinet as Chair of the Finance Sector. In 2016, he was honoured by the United Way of New York City at its annual Gridiron Gala. Mr. White also serves as a Director of St. Michael's Hospital and of the Montreal Canadiens, and is a past Member of the Advisory Council of Women in Capital Markets. Mr. Prichard expressed the Board's confidence that all of BMO's stakeholders will continue to benefit from proven and steady leadership throughout the succession process. After the conclusion of his tenure as CEO, Mr. Downe will remain engaged with the bank in an advisory capacity for a brief period. "I am energized by the opportunities ahead both for BMO's customers and for our employees. Bill Downe's leadership has been extraordinary on every level. I think I speak for everyone at BMO when I say we are extremely fortunate to have such an accomplished Chief Executive Officer leading the bank," said Mr. White. "I am deeply appreciative of the Board's confidence and look forward to spending the remainder of the fiscal year working alongside Bill. The bank's leadership team is first-rate and BMO employees are, quite simply, the greatest. I also look forward to working with them and doing my part as we continue to build on our momentum," added Mr. White. Mr. Prichard expressed the Board's gratitude for the steady leadership shown by Bill Downe throughout his more than ten years of service as BMO's CEO. "Bill Downe is a globally respected CEO who has driven high quality growth across every BMO business. Thanks to his leadership the bank is in its strongest financial and strategic position in our history and well positioned for future success," said Mr. Prichard. "Bill has steered a transformation in the bank's approach to customer experience that included an unprecedented investment in forward-thinking technology infrastructure in addition to fostering a vibrant brand and culture of which employees are proud to be a part. He has also consistently championed the values of community giving and improving corporate diversity, particularly with regard to improving the representation of women in senior leadership roles," added Mr. Prichard. Over the last ten years, adjusted earnings[1]have grown from $2.8 to $5 billion CAD. The bank's U.S. footprint has doubled. Book value per share has grown by 7.5% annually and total shareholder return grew at a rate of 8.5%, nearly double that of the TSX on a calendar year basis. "Business and community leaders alike applaud Bill's leadership as the bank's most senior officer for the last decade. As we look ahead, we take confidence in the continuity that Darryl brings to the leadership team. He represents the best of BMO's values and is ready to lead the bank from strength to strength," concluded Mr. Prichard. "One of the key responsibilities of a CEO is to work with the Board of Directors on a strong leadership succession plan; the process BMO has in place is second to none. I have complete confidence in Darryl to continue to build on our bank's success," said Mr. Downe. "In the coming months I look forward to working closely with him to ensure a smooth transition. The bank is very well positioned and the timing is right for BMO and its customers," concluded Mr. Downe. Caution Regarding Forward-Looking Statements This document contains forward-looking statements. All such statements are made pursuant to the "safe harbor" provisions of, and are intended to be forward-looking statements under, the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and any applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking statements may involve, but are not limited to, comments with respect to our succession plans, objectives and priorities for fiscal 2017 and beyond, our strategies or future actions, our expectations for our financial condition, and outlook for our operations. By their nature, forward-looking statements require us to make assumptions and are subject to inherent risks and uncertainties. There is significant risk that predictions, forecasts, conclusions or projections will not prove to be accurate, that our assumptions may not be correct and that actual results may differ materially from such predictions, forecasts, conclusions or projections. We caution readers of this document not to place undue reliance on our forward-looking statements as a number of factors could cause actual future results, conditions, actions or events to differ materially from the expectations, estimates or intentions expressed in the forward-looking statements. Please see the Enterprise-Wide Risk Management section on pages 79 to 112 of BMO's 2016 Annual Report, which outlines certain key factors and risks that may affect Bank of Montreal's future results. Investors and others should carefully consider these factors and risks, as well as other uncertainties and potential events, and the inherent uncertainty of forward-looking statements. Bank of Montreal does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements, whether written or oral, that may be made from time to time by the organization or on its behalf, except as required by law. The forward-looking information contained in this document is presented for the purpose of assisting our shareholders in understanding our plans, strategic priorities and objectives, and may not be appropriate for other purposes. About BMO Financial Group Established in 1817, and currently marking its 200th year of operations, BMO Financial Group is a highly diversified financial services provider based in North America. With total assets of $692 billion as of January 31, 2017, and more than 45,000 employees, BMO provides a broad range of personal and commercial banking, wealth management and investment banking products and services to more than 12 million customers and conducts business through three operating groups: Personal and Commercial Banking, Wealth Management and BMO Capital Markets. [1 ]Adjusted earnings is a non-GAAP measure. Readers are cautioned that adjusted earnings does not have a standardized meaning under GAAP and is unlikely to be comparable to similar measures used by other companies. Reported net income for 2006 and 2016 was $2.7 billion and $4.6 billion, respectively. A discussion of non-GAAP measures as well as the rationale for their use, and a reconciliation of adjusted earnings to reported net income for 2016 can be found on page 33 of BMO's 2016 Annual MD&A, which is available on our website athttp://www.bmo.com/investorrelations. For News Media Enquiries: Paul Gammal, Toronto, paul.gammal@bmo.com , +1-416-867-3996 Frederic Tremblay, Montreal, frederic1.tremblay@bmo.com , +1-514-877-1873 For Investor Relations Enquiries: Jill Homenuk, Toronto, jill.homenuk@bmo.com , +1-416-867-4770 Christine Viau, Toronto, christine.viau@bmo.com ,+1-416-867-6956 Internet:http://www.bmo.com WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - The US air strike on a Syrian airbase in retaliation for the deadly chemical weapons attack evoked mixed response from US lawmakers. While it received bipartisan support, some others raised constitutional concerns, saying that Congress should have been taken into confidence before initiating military action. After President Donald Trump ordered the attack on Al-Shayrat Air Base Thursday night, from where the chemical attack on Syria's Idlib province was launched Tuesday, nearly 60 Tomahawk missiles were fired from U.S. Navy ships in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. A statement issued by the Syrian army said six people died in the attack, and caused significant damage. They called it 'a blatant act of aggression.' Top Democrats, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin, offered their support for the air strike, but made clear they believed any escalation would require the approval of Congress. Rand Paul of Kentucky said the President needs congressional authorization for military action as required by the Constitution, and called on him to come to Congress for a proper debate. 'Our prior interventions in this region have done nothing to make us safer, and Syria will be no different,' he added. The Assad regime's use of chemical weapons is abhorrent, but a military response is not the answer, according to Senator Brian Schatz. Libertarian-minded Republican Senator Mike Lee demanded, 'President Trump should make his case in front of the American people and allow their elected representatives to debate the benefits and risks of further Middle East intervention to our national security interests'. 'If President Trump wants to escalate U.S. involvement in yet another war, he should immediately send a new Authorization for Use of Military Force to Congress and Speaker Ryan must bring it to the House floor for debate and vote without delay,' Rep. Barbara Lee said. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. FREDERICK, MD -- (Marketwired) -- 04/07/17 -- BioElectronics Corporation (OTC PINK: BIEL), the maker of advanced noninvasive bioelectronic pain management medical devices, is pleased to announce that its devices are being featured at the 2017 Australian Pain Society 37th Annual Scientific Meeting, Sunday April 9th, 2017 - April 12th, 2017 http://www.dcconferences.com.au/aps2017/index.asp. The conference is focused on the basic science and treatment of pain for physicians, nurses, physical therapists, and researchers. The meeting participants include Mundipharma, Pfizer, GE Healthcare, Halyard, Abbott and leading Australian pain researchers. BioElectronics' flagship product ActiPatch Musculoskeletal Pain Therapy is a drug-free, wearable nonprescription medical device that provides 720-hours of on/off therapy to relieve chronic pain. "We are making excellent progress in achieving product placement in our major pharmacy chains. This pain conference is an exceptional opportunity to create product awareness in the medical community," said Rob Gourlay of Evomed, the distributor of Actipatch in Australia and New Zealand. www.evomed.com.au About BioElectronics Corporation BioElectronics Corporation is a leader in biophysics and the maker of ActiPatch Therapy for back pain and other musculoskeletal complaints, RecoveryRx Devices for chronic wounds and post-operative wound care, and Allay Menstrual Pain Therapy. For clinical and more information, please visit www.bielcorp.com. Contact: Paul Knopick 940.262.3584 pknopick@eandecommunications.com TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 04/07/17 -- Augusta Industries Inc. (the "Corporation") (TSX VENTURE: AAO) is pleased to announce that its wholly owned subsidiary, Fox-Tek Canada Inc. ("Fox-Tek"), has successfully completed the development of a new laboratory system based on the Corporation's electric field mapping ("EFM") technology. The new system was specifically developed for the use in research and/or testing applications. It is anticipated that the new system will be used in research labs to measure the change in mass of a sample affected by a corrosive solution. The unit consists of two components with the first being the EFM acquisition unit and the second being a constant current source. By having two separate units, it allows the user to easily custom configure the system to allow the external current source to be sized for any given application. The laboratory unit does not require any specialized power supply. A typical system will have the ability to work with sensor arrays of up to 64-pins and by adding additional analog multiplexer modules, it will have the capability to cover arrays up to 128-pins. For temperature compensation, the unit will have the capability to sense temperature from up to 5 RTDs. Control of the various control parameters will be entered by the end user via the newly developed, PC based software. This software will provide the end user with enough flexibility to set up the instrument to their exact requirements while remaining intuitive in use. The Corporation intents is to deploy the new system for field work by outfitting the unit in a field ruggedized case which will allow FOX-TEK to deploy the unit to remote areas in all types of extreme conditions along with offshore platforms and/or refineries. The new portable system will be targeting clients that do not require continuous monitoring capabilities but are looking for reliable solutions to meet their requirements and their budgets. "With both the new laboratory and the field ruggedized EFM units, the Corporation will be able serve two entirely new markets," stated Allen Lone, President of the Corporation. "The Corporation will continue to develop engineering and hardware solutions that will continue to meet, if not exceed, current industry requirements for continuous and/or periodic non-intrusive wall loss monitoring." About the Corporation Through its wholly owned subsidiaries, Marcon International Inc. ("Marcon") and Fox-Tek, the Corporation provides a variety of services and products to a number of clients. Marcon is an industrial supply contractor servicing the energy sector and a number of US Government entities. Marcon's principal business is the sale and distribution of industrial parts and equipment (Electrical, mechanical and Instrumentation.) In addition to departments and agencies of the U.S. Government, Marcon's major clients include Saudi Arabia-Sabic Services (Refining and Petrochemical), Bahrain National Gas Co, Bahrain Petroleum, Qatar Petroleum, Qatar Gas, Qatar Petrochemical, Gulf of Suez Petroleum, Agiba Petroleum and Burullus Gas Co. FOX-TEK develops non-intrusive asset health monitoring sensor systems for the oil and gas market to help operators track the thinning of pipelines and refinery vessels due to corrosion/erosion, strain due to bending/buckling and process pressure and temperature. The Corporation's FT fiber optic sensor and corrosion monitoring systems allow cost-effective, 24/7 remote monitoring capabilities to improve scheduled maintenance operations, avoid unnecessary shutdowns, and prevent accidents and leaks. The TSX Venture Exchange has in no way passed upon the merits of the proposed transaction and has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this press 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 Corporation's periodic reports filed with the Ontario Securities Commission and other regulatory authorities. The Corporation 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: Augusta Industries Inc. Allen Lone President, CEO (905) 275-8111 Ext 226 atlone@fox-tek.com During March 2017 AB Klaipedos Nafta (hereinafter - the Company) reloaded 368 thousand tons of petroleum products into its storage tanks of Klaipeda and Subacius oil terminals, i.e. less by 52.9 per cent compared to March 2016, when 782 thousand tons were reloaded. The reduce in transhipment volume is explained by the planned turnaround of AB ORLEN Lietuva refinery and respectively temporary reduction of petroleum products export by this company also by the reduce in transit cargos from Belorussia refineries in connection with reduction of crude oil supply into these refineries. During the first three months of 2017 the Company in total reloaded 1,554 thousand tons of petroleum products into its storage tanks or less by 33.0 per cent compared to the same period of 2016 when 2,321 thousand tons were reloaded. In the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) terminal of the Company during March 2017 re-gasified and supplied to the natural gas transmission system total 652 thousand MWh of the natural, while in March 2016 - 2.313 thousand MWh. During the first three months of 2017 the Company in total re-gasified and reloaded 1,542 thousand MWh of the natural gas (during the same period of 2016 - 5,088 thousand MWh). The LNG terminal activity level decreased in relation with lower capacities ordered by the terminal users. The preliminary sales revenues for March 2017 of Klaipeda and Subacius oil terminals comprise EUR 3.3 million and are less by 23.3 percent compared to the same period of 2016 (EUR 4.3 million). The preliminary sales revenues for January-March 2017 of the Company's oil terminals comprise EUR 8.7 million and are less by 28.2 per cent compared to the same period of 2016 (EUR 12.1 million). The preliminary sales revenues of the Company's LNG Terminal for March 2017 comprise EUR 5.4 million (March 2016 - EUR 5.8 million). These revenues comprise from the part of security supplement dedicated for compensation of LNG terminal exploitation expenses, as well as regasification and reloading tariffs.. The preliminary revenues of the LNG terminal for the first three months of 2017 comprise EUR 18.5 million and increased by 2.2 per cent compared to the same period of 2016 (EUR 18.1 million). Total preliminary sales revenues of the Company for the 2017 comprise EUR 27.2 million, i.e. 10.0 per cent less compared to same period 2016 (EUR 30.2 million). Petroleum products transshipment and LNG re-gasification and reloading March January - March -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2017 2016 Change, 2017 2016 Change, % % -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Petroleum products transshipment, 368 782 -52.9% 1,554 2,321 -33.0% thousand tons -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- LNG re-gasification and reloading, 652 2,313 -71.8% 1,542 5,088 -69.7% thousand MWh -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Preliminary revenues of the Company, EUR million March January - March ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2017 2016 Change, % 2017 2016 Change, % ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Klaipeda oil terminal activity 3.1 4.1 -24.4% 8.1 11.4 -28.9% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subacius oil terminal activity 0.2 0.2 0.0% 0.6 0.7 -15.7% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- LNG terminal activity 5.4 5.8 -6.9% 18.5 18.1 2.2% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total: 8.7 10.1 -13.9% 27.2 30.2 -10.0% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Acting General Manager Marius Pulkauninkas, tel. +370 46 391763 Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de On 6 April 2017 the Board of AB Vilkyskiu pienine (hereinafter "AB Vilkyskiu pienine" or "the Company") decided: - To approve the draft of the audited annual separated and consolidated financial statements of the Company for the year 2016 and to propose to the Company's Annual General Meeting of Shareholders to approve the draft of the Company's annual separate and consolidated financial statements for the year 2016. In 2016, AB Vilkyskiu pienine Group sales revenue amounted to mEUR 90.5, up by 7 percent from mEUR 84.4 in 2015. In 2016, net profit reached mEUR 4.5, a rise form mEUR 1.2 the year before, showing an increase of 3.8 times. The increase in sales revenue and profit was caused by the balance between demand and supply of dairy products in export markets in the second half of 2016, an increase in prices and changes in cheese production technologies. - To approve the Company's Consolidated Annual Report for the year 2016, prepared by the Company and assessed by the auditors, and to propose to the Company's Annual General Meeting of Shareholders to approve Company's Consolidated Annual Report. - Taking into consideration the successful financial results of the Company in 2016, the dividend policy approved by the Company and the decision of Company's shareholders not to pay dividends for the year 2015, Board of the Company proposes for the annual shareholder meeting to approve dividends in the amount of mEur 1.433 for the year 2016. Board of the Company emphasizes that allocation of mEur 1.433 of consolidated profit (2016) for the payment of dividends would enable the return of long-term dividend policy execution (the dividend payout ratio should correspond to the minimum of 25% of the Companies consolidated net profit) . Also this decision would compensate missed dividend payments for the year 2015 according to the dividend policy approved by the Company. - To approve the allocation project of the Company's audited net profit under IAS for the year 2016 and to propose it to the Company's Annual General Meeting of Shareholders to approve. Resolution: To approve the audited net profit allocation under IAS for the year 2016 as follows: thousan d EUR -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1) Non-appropriated profit (loss) at the end of the year 2015 9,681 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Approved by shareholders dividends of the year 2015 - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Transfers to reserves provided by law 0,454 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Portion of the profit allocated to the reserve for the purchase of - own shares -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5) Non-appropriated profit (loss) at the beginning of the current 9,681 financial year after dividends payout and transfer to reserves -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6) Net profit (loss) of the reporting period 6,991 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7) Transfers from reserves 150 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8) Total profit (loss) to be appropriated: 16,822 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - portion of the profit allocated to the legal reserve - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - portion of the profit allocated to the reserve for the purchase of - own shares -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - portion of the profit allocated for payment of the dividends 1,433 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - portion of the profit allocated to the other reserves - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 9) Non-appropriated profit (loss) at the end of the current financial 15,389 year carried forward to next financial year -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - To approve a decision with regard to the purchase of own shares and to propose to the Company's Annual General Meeting of Shareholders to approve: a) To purchase up to 10 percent of the Company's shares. b) The purpose of acquisition of own shares - to maintain and increase the price of the Company's shares. c) Period during which the Company may acquire own shares - until 27 April 2018. d) To set the maximum price per share of own shares to be acquired - at 2.10 EUR, at the same time setting the minimum acquisition price per share equal to the nominal value of a share, i.e. 0.29 EUR. e) To commit the Board to organize the purchase of own shares, to determine the procedure for purchase and sale of shares, time, number of shares and price, as well as to perform other actions relating thereto in compliance with the terms set in this resolution as well as in accordance with the requirements established in the Republic of Lithuania Law of Companies. - To convoke the Annual General Meeting of Shareholders at the office of Vilkyskiu pienine AB (P.Lukosaicio g. 14, Vilkyskiai, LT-99254 Pagegiu sav., Lithuania), at 15.00 on 28 April 2017, and to propose to the Annual General Meeting of Shareholders' the following draft agenda: 1) Company's consolidated annual report for the year 2016. 2) Company's auditor's report of 2016 (financial accountability). 3) Approval of Company's annual separate and consolidated financial statements for the year 2016. 4) Net Profit appropriation of the year 2016. 5) Regarding the purchase of own shares. 6) Election of the independent member of Audit Committee. 7) Election of the company's audit firm and setting the conditions of payment. Vilija Milaseviciute Economics and Finance Director phone +370 441 55102 Attachment: https://cns.omxgroup.com/cds/DisclosureAttachmentServlet?messageAttachmentId=624684 Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de Draft decisions for the Ordinary General Meeting of Shareholders of Vilkyskiu pienine AB to be held on the 28 April 2017, proposed by the Board of the Company: Item 1 of the Agenda: Approval of Company's annual report for the year 2016. Draft resolution: To approve the separated and consolidated annual report of the Company for the year 2016. Item 2 of the Agenda: Auditor's Report regarding the Company's Financial Statements for 2016. Draft resolution: Heard. Item 3 of the Agenda: Approval of Company's annual separated and consolidated financial statement for the year 2016. Draft resolution: To approve of Company's annual separated and consolidated financial statements for the year 2016. Item 4 of the Agenda: Profit (loss) appropriation for the year 2016. Draft resolution: To approve the non-appropriated profit (loss) appropriation under IAS for the year 2016 as follows: thousan d EUR -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1) Non-appropriated profit (loss) at the end of the year 2015 9,681 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Approved by shareholders dividends of the year 2015 - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Transfers to reserves provided by law 0,454 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Portion of the profit allocated to the reserve for the purchase of - own shares -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5) Non-appropriated profit (loss) at the beginning of the current 9,681 financial year after dividends payout and transfer to reserves -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6) Net profit (loss) of the reporting period 6,991 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7) Transfers from reserves 150 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8) Total profit (loss) to be appropriated: 16,822 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - portion of the profit allocated to the legal reserve - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - portion of the profit allocated to the reserve for the purchase of - own shares -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - portion of the profit allocated for payment of the dividends 1,433* -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - portion of the profit allocated to the other reserves - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 9) Non-appropriated profit (loss) at the end of the current financial 15,389 year carried forward to next financial year -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- it will be allocated 0.12 eur per ordinary registered share. In total to the dividends payout Eur 1,433,160 eur. Item 5 of the Agenda: A decision on the purchase of own shares. Draft resolution: A decision with regard to the purchase of own shares has been approved: a) To purchase up to 10 percent of the Company's shares. b) The purpose of acquisition of own shares - to maintain and increase the price of the Company's shares. c) Period during which the Company may acquire own shares - until 27 April 2018. d) To set the maximum price per share of own shares to be acquired - at 2.10 EUR, at the same time setting the minimum acquisition price per share equal to the nominal value of a share, i.e. 0.29 EUR. e) To commit the Board to organize the purchase of own shares, to determine the procedure for purchase and sale of shares, time, number of shares and price, as well as to perform other actions relating thereto in compliance with the terms set in this resolution as well as in accordance with the requirements established in the Republic of Lithuania Law of Companies. Item 6 of the Agenda: Election of the independent member of Audit Committee. Draft resolution: To elect the independent member of Audit Committee Vilma Morkaitiene, the accountant of the Company "Bonus modus" UAB Item 7 of the Agenda: To elect [__________________] as the audit company for the audit of Vilkyskiu pienine AB for the year 2017-2018-2019 and to pay for audit services no more than [_______________] (VAT not included). According to the article 25 part 4 of the Law on Companies, the draft decision will be replenished when the procedures of the audit company selection will be finished. About the changes of the draft decision you will be informed according the law on Securities of the Republic of Lithuania. Additional information authorized to provide Economics and Finance director Vilija Milaseviciute, phone +370 441 55102 Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., wants lawmakers to postpone their Easter break and return to Washington following the U.S. missile strike on a Syrian airbase. In a letter sent to House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., on Friday, Pelosi requested he call the House back into session to debate an Authorization of the Use of Military Force for military actions taken in Syria. The request from Pelosi comes after President Donald Trump ordered a missile strike on a Syrian airbase the U.S. claims launched a suspected chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held Syrian town earlier this week. Reports said U.S. warships in the Mediterranean Sea fired 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles targeting the al-Shayrat airbase in central Syria. 'The President's action and any response demands that we immediately do our duty,' Pelosi said. 'Congress must live up to its Constitutional responsibility to debate an Authorization of the Use of Military Force against a sovereign nation.' Pelosi said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's chemical weapons attack on his own people was heartbreaking but argued the crisis in Syria will not be resolved by one night of airstrikes. 'The killing will not stop without a comprehensive political solution to end the violence,' Pelosi said. 'The American people are owed a comprehensive strategy with clear objectives to keep our brave men and women in uniform safe and avoid collateral damage to innocent civilians in Syria.' A number of other lawmakers have also called for Congressional debate on the attack on Syria, although it remains to be seen if Republican leaders will summon their colleagues back to Washington. 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. Carnival Corporation & plc Increases Quarterly Dividend And Authorizes Additional $1 Billion Share Repurchase Program MIAMI, April 7, 2017 --Carnival Corporation & plc (NYSE/LSE: CCL; NYSE: CUK)has announced a 14 percent increase in its quarterly dividend to $0.40 per share from the previous dividend amount of $0.35 per share. Additionally, the company's board approved the re-authorization of up to $1 billion in share repurchases covering both Carnival Corporation common stock and Carnival plc ordinary shares. Since resuming the share repurchase program in late 2015 the company has repurchased more than 56 million shares valued at $2.7 billion. "The increased dividend, along with another $1 billion share repurchase authorization, reflects continued confidence in our outlook and our ongoing commitment to return value to our shareholders," said David Bernstein, chief financial officer for Carnival Corporation & plc. The board approved a record date for the quarterly dividend of May 26, 2017 with a payment date of June 16, 2017. Holders of Carnival Corporation common stock and Carnival plc ADSs will receive the dividend payable in U.S. dollars. The dividend for Carnival plc ordinary shares will be payable in U.S. dollars or sterling. In the absence of instructions or elections to the contrary, holders of Carnival plc ordinary shares will automatically receive the dividend in sterling. Dividends payable in sterling will be converted from U.S. dollars at the exchange rate quoted by the Bank of England in London at 12 noon on June 1, 2017. Holders of Carnival plc ordinary shares wishing to receive their dividend in U.S. dollars or participate in the Carnival plc Dividend Reinvestment Plan must elect to do so by May 26, 2017. The share repurchase authorization covers both Carnival Corporation common stock traded on the New York Stock Exchange and Carnival plc ordinary shares traded on the London Stock Exchange. Repurchases will take place in the open market or privately negotiated transactions in accordance with applicable laws, rules and regulations. The stock repurchase is subject to prevailing market conditions and other considerations. Carnival Corporation & plc is among the largest, most profitable and financially strong leisure travel companies in the world, with a portfolio of 10 cruise brands in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia, comprised of Carnival Cruise Line, Fathom, Holland America Line, Princess, Seabourn, AIDA Cruises, Costa Cruises, Cunard, P&O Cruises (Australia) and P&O Cruises (UK). Together, these brands operate 103 ships visiting over 700 ports around the world and totaling 230,000 lower berths with 18 new ships scheduled to be delivered between 2017 and 2022.Carnival Corporation &plc also operates Holland America Princess Alaska Tours, the leading tour companies in Alaskaand the Canadian Yukon. Traded on both theNew Yorkand London Stock Exchanges,Carnival Corporation &plc is the only group in the world to be included in both the S&P 500 and the FTSE 100 indices. Additional information can be found on http://www.carnival.com/ , http://www.fathom.org/ , http://www.hollandamerica.com/ , http://www.princess.com/ , http://www.seabourn.com/ , http://www.aida.de/ , http://www.costacruise.com/ , http://www.cunard.com/ , http://www.pocruises.com.au/ and http://www.pocruises.com/ . CONTACT: MEDIA CONTACT, Carnival Corporation & plc, Roger Frizzell, 1 305 599 2600, ext. 67862; INVESTOR RELATIONS CONTACT, Carnival Corporation & plc, Beth Roberts, 1 305 406 4832 VALLEY COTTAGE, New York, April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Future Market Insights' recently published report on global market for aircraft refurbishing projects that during a forecast period from 2016 to 2026, the market shall exhibit a steady revenue growth at 5.8% CAGR. The report estimates that in the years to come, the luxury quotient of airline interiors will surge as the number of wealthy air travellers is slated to increase. Frequent air travel by well-heeled people is also prompting aircraft companies to opt for refurbishing of VIP cabins. Setting aside the impact of wealthy travellers on refurbishment of VIP aircraft cabins, the demand for aircraft refurbishing is also expected to gain traction due to its benefits for the aircraft's operational efficiency. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161020/430874LOGO ) According to the report, airline companies aiming to improve performance of their aircrafts are refurbishing the interiors & lowering gross weight of the aircraft. This results in lesser fuel consumption and maximum power retention, thereby upgrading the aircrafts operational performance. Owing to such factors, the global aircraft refurbishing market, which is presently valued at a little over US$ 4 Bn, will bring in more than US$ 7.13 Bn revenues by the end of 2026. Request a Sample Report with Table of Contents: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1617 Middle East & Africa to Record Rapid Sales of Aircraft Refurbishments During this ten-year forecast period, around 890,000 units of aircraft refurbishments will be consumed across the globe. The demand for aircraft refurbishing is projected to remain relatively high across the US and Canada. Through 2026, North America is likely to dominate with more than 30% share on global revenues. However, in terms of volume, the aircraft refurbishing market in Asia-Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) region will register a relatively rapid growth at nearly 6% CAGR. The report also projects that by the end of 2026, the demand for aircraft refurbishing will rise across Western Europe, Latin America and Japan. But, during this period, the Middle East & Africa (MEA) aircraft refurbishing market is expected to incur fastest revenue growth. Registering a value CAGR of 6.9%, the MEA aircraft refurbishing market will gain traction during the latter half of the forecast period. Higher concentration of wealthy individuals across Middle Eastern countries such as the UAE or Saudi Arabia is likely to fuel the refurbishment of VIP cabins among aircrafts commuting through this region. Preview Analysis on Global Aircraft Refurbishing Market Segmentation Aircraft Type - Wide Body Aircraft, Narrow Body, Aircraft, Large Body Aircraft; Refurbishing Type - Passenger To Freighter Refurbishing, VIP Cabin Refurbishing, Commercial Cabin Refurbishing; Fitting Type - Retrofit, IFEC, Passenger Seats: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/aircraft-refurbishing-market Retrofit Refurbishments Likely to Garner Surplus Demand The report, titled "Aircraft Refurbishing Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment, 2016-2026," further reveals that more than half of the market's global revenues will arise from refurbishment of narrow body aircrafts. While large body and wide body aircrafts will collectively account for more than 40% share, refurbishing revenues emanating from narrow body aircrafts will register highest value CAGR - 6.1%. Based on the type of refurbishment, commercial cabin refurbishing will hold the majority of global revenues with 83% share, while VIP cabin refurbishing will witness a marginal decline in terms of its contribution to global aircraft refurbishing revenues. Speak with Analyst for any Report Related Queries: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/askus/rep-gb-1617 More than two-third of aircraft refurbishing revenues collected from across the globe are presently accounted by retrofit fittings. While this share is likely to incur a slight downtrend towards the end of 2026, the global aircraft refurbishing market will witness an uptick from fitting segments such as passenger seats and IFEC. The report has also profiled prominent manufacturers of aircraft refurbishments, which include B/E Aerospace, Inc., Diehl Stiftung & Co. KG, Gulfstream Aerospace, Ltd., Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering Company Limited, JAMCO America, Jet Aviation AG, Lufthansa Technik AGm Sabreliner Aviation LLC, SCI Cabin Interiors, United Technology Corporation, SIA Engineering Co. Ltd, and Zodiac Aerospace SA. More from FMI's Cutting-edge Intelligence: Benelux Power Tools Market Segmentation By End-Use - Industrial Power Tools and Household Power Tools; By Mode of Operation - Electric, Pneumatic Power Tools; By Country - Belgium , Netherlands and Luxembourg : http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/benelux-power-tools-market Mobile Cranes Market segmentation By Type - Truck Cranes, All Terrain Cranes, Rough Terrain Cranes, Crawler Cranes and Others; By Application - Construction Industry, Oil & Gas Industry, Shipping & Port Building and Others: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/mobile-cranes-market Bulk Terminals Market Segmentation By Bulk Type - Dry Bulk (Grain, Coal, Iron Ore and Others), Liquid Bulk (Oil and Gas): http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/bulk-terminals-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 Industrial Automation & Equipment Market Insights Contact Us 616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018, Valley Cottage, NY 10989, United States T: +1-347-918-3531 F: +1-845-579-5705 T (UK): +44-20-7692-8790 Sales: sales@futuremarketinsights.com Press Office: Press@futuremrketinsights.com Website: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com FMI Blog:http://www.fmiblog.com/ LONDON (dpa-AFX) - Twenty-First Century Fox, Inc. (FOX, FOXA) said Friday that it received approval from the European Commission for proposed acquisition of Sky plc. (BSY.L, SKY.L). 21st Century Fox noted that It now looks forward to continuing to work with UK authorities and is confident that the proposed transaction will be approved following a thorough review process. In December, 2016, Twenty-First Century Fox said that it reached agreement with Sky plc on the terms of a recommended pre-conditional cash offer by 21st Century Fox for the fully diluted share capital of Sky which 21st Century Fox and its affiliates did not already own. As per the terms of the Acquisition, Sky shareholders wpi;d be entitled to receive for each Sky share 10.75 pounds in cash. The Cash Consideration implied a value of about 11.7 billion pounds or $14.8 billion. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. PHILADELPHIA (dpa-AFX) - Members of the Federal Communications Commission voted Thursday to move forward with efforts to repeal the net neutrality rules implemented under President Barack Obama. The 2 to 1 vote came down along with party lines, with Republican Chairman Ajit Pai and Commissioner Mike O'Rielly voting in favor of the measure and Democratic Commissioner Mignon Clyburn opposed. The proposal would eliminate the requirement that internet service providers like Verizon (VZ) and Comcast (CMCSA) treat all web traffic equally. The companies have been critical of the regulations, which they claim have inhibited investment in broadband infrastructure. 'Today we propose to repeal utility-style regulation of the Internet,' said Pai. 'The evidence strongly suggests this is the right way to go.' However, consumer advocates have argued that weaker rules would allow internet service providers to abuse their position as gatekeepers by blocking or slowing down certain websites. 'The endgame appears to be no-touch regulation and a wholesale destruction of the FCC's public interest authority in the 21st century,' Clyburn said in her dissent. Today's action by the FCC triggers a public commenting period before the proposal is put to a final vote later this year. 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. PLYMOUTH, MI--(Marketwired - April 07, 2017) - TruStone Financial Federal Credit Union is proud to announce four employees taking top honors in the Scotsman Guide Top Originator 2016 list. The employees, Aaron Gerber, Larry Lasch, Kara Askey and Derek Bostrom placed third, fourth, seventh and tenth respectively. Together they funded a volume of nearly $68 million in Home Equity loans. The TruStone Financial employees work for the credit union's relationship lending department known as the TruPartner Network Team (TNT). They partner with real estate professionals to provide borrowers with a variety of home equity solutions. In 2016, TNT originated 1,255 home equity loans for $114 million. "This is the second year in a row TruStone Financial has had a TNT employee recognized in the Scotsman Guide. We are pleased to see Aaron Gerber joined this year by three of his colleagues," said Tom Barkley, Assistant Vice President, Relationship Lending Manager. "Their recognition was well-earned through their diligent commitment to delivering top tier service and building strong partnerships within the financial services community. I am proud to see the success this team has created -- and continues to create -- every day for the credit union, our community and our industry partners. " Each year the Scotsman Guide publishes a comprehensive list of the nation's top producing mortgage brokers and bankers. Nearly 3,000 entries from 385 companies were submitted for consideration in 2016, a record number for the Scotsman Guide. TruStone Financial is the only Minnesota-based company on the Top Originator 2016 list for HELOC volume. Review the Scotsman Guide rankings. About TruStone Financial TruStone Financial is one of the fastest growing credit unions in the Midwest with assets of $1.17 billion and exceeding 103,000 members. There are 14 branches across Minnesota and Wisconsin. The credit union is headquartered in Plymouth, Minnesota. For more information and full membership criteria, visit TruStoneFinancial.org. Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2017/4/7/11G135377/Images/GroupShot_withTom-bca8bd6f3040aed3a85129dab90d4f25.jpg Katie Grindeland Senior Vice President, Director of Marketing and Communications Phone: 763.595.4002 Email contact Regulatory News: Euronext (Paris:ENX) (Amsterdam:ENX) (Brussels:ENX) today announced that its Annual General Meeting (AGM) will take place on Friday 19 May 2017 at 10.30am CET, at Beursplein 5, 1012 JW Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The agenda for the meeting is as follows: 1. Opening 2. Presentation of the Chief Executive Officer (discussion item) 3. Annual report 2016 a. Explanation of the implementation of the remuneration policy (discussion item) b. Explanation of policy on additions to reserves and dividends (discussion item) c. Proposal to adopt the 2016 financial statements (voting item 1) d. Proposal to adopt a dividend of EUR 1.42 per ordinary share (voting item 2) e. Proposal to discharge the members of the Managing Board in respect of their duties performed during the year 2016 (voting item 3) f. Proposal to discharge the members of the Supervisory Board in respect of their duties performed during the year 2016 (voting item 4) 4. Composition of the Managing Board a. Appointment of Paulo Rodrigues da Silva as a member of the Managing Board (voting item 5) 5. Proposal to appoint the external auditor (voting item 6) 6. Proposal to designate the Managing Board as the competent body: a. to issue ordinary shares (voting item 7); and b. to restrict or exclude the pre-emptive rights of shareholders (voting item 8) 7. Proposal to authorise the Managing Board to acquire ordinary shares in the share capital of the company on behalf of the company (voting item 9) 8. Any other business 9. Close The AGM will be conducted in English. Registration date Pursuant to Dutch law and Euronext N.V.'s Articles of Association, the persons who will be considered as entitled to attend and vote at the AGM are those persons who are registered as such in the administrations held by their financial intermediaries (the "Shareholders") on Friday 21 April 2017, after processing of all settlements on that date (the "Registration Date"). Registration Shareholders holding their shares through Euroclear France S.A. (i.e. the public) who wish to attend the AGM, provide instructions or grant a power of attorney to vote on their behalf, must complete the form (voting form attendance card request) provided for this purpose by their financial intermediary or by Euronext Securities Department BNP PARIBAS Securities Services. The Shareholders should be aware that these documents must be received, no later than Friday 12 May 2017 by their financial intermediary for receipt no later than Monday 15 May 2017 by BNP Paribas Securities Service CTS Assemblees Generales, 9 rue du Debarcadere 93761 Pantin Cedex, France. The financial intermediary should deliver to the Shareholder a certificate of holding containing: name and city of residence of the Shareholder; number of shares; name and city of residence of the attendee (if different from the Shareholder) and declaration that the shares were in custody with the Euroclear France admitted institution on the Registration Date. This certificate will serve as the admission certificate for the AGM for the Shareholder. Shareholders holding their shares through Interbolsa in Portugal who wish to attend the AGM, provide instructions or grant a power of attorney to vote on their behalf, must complete the form (voting form attendance card request) provided for this purpose by Euronext Securities Department BNP PARIBAS Securities Services. The Shareholders should be aware that these documents must be received, no later than Friday 12 May 2017 by their financial intermediary for receipt no later than Monday 15 May 2017 by BNP Paribas Securities Services, PT Local Team, Edificio ART'S Av. D. Joao II Lote 1.18.01, Bloco B, 1998-028 Lisboa, Portugal. The financial intermediary should deliver to the Shareholder a certificate of holding containing: name and city of residence of the Shareholder; number of shares on the Registration Date; name and city of residence of the attendee (if different from the Shareholder). This certificate will serve as admission certificate for the AGM for the Shareholder. We advise Shareholders to make contact with their financial intermediary for any questions. Persons without a valid admission certificate will not be given access to the meeting. Attendants may be asked for identification prior to being admitted. At the time of the publication of this convening notice, Euronext's total issued share capital in number of issued shares and in voting rights is published on Euronext's website: https://www.euronext.com/investors/share/capital-shareholding AGM Documentation The AGM Documentation (i.e. this convening notice, the agenda and the explanatory notes thereto including the information on the person to be appointed to the Managing Board in accordance with clause 3.4.2 of the Dutch Corporate Governance Code, as well as the Annual Report 2016) is available: at the registered office of Euronext N.V.: Beursplein 5, 1012 JW Amsterdam, The Netherlands at the following addresses in Belgium: Euronext, Rue du Marquis, 1, bte 1 Markiesstraat 1, b1, 1000 Bruxelles 1000 Brussel, Belgium in France: Euronext, 14, place des Reflets, 92054 Paris La Defense Cedex, France in Portugal: Euronext, Av. da Liberdade, n. 196 7, 1250-147 Lisboa, Portugal in the United Kingdom: Euronext, Juxon House, 100 St Paul's Churchyard, London EC4M 8BU, United Kingdom on Euronext's website https://www.euronext.com/investors/general-meetings at BNP PARIBAS Securities Services CTS Assemblees Generales 9 rue du Debarcadere 93761 Pantin Cedex, France + 33 1 57 43 02 30 Managing Board and Supervisory Board of Euronext N.V. Beursplein 5, 1012 JW Amsterdam, The Netherlands Registered at the Dutch Chamber of Commerce, under number 60234520 About Euronext Euronext is the leading pan-European exchange in the Eurozone with nearly 1,300 listed issuers worth close to 3.3 trillion in market capitalisation as of end December 2016, an unmatched blue chip franchise consisting of 25 issuers in the EURO STOXX 50 benchmark and a strong diverse domestic and international client base. Euronext operates regulated and transparent equity and derivatives markets. Its total product offering includes Equities, Exchange Traded Funds, Warrants Certificates, Bonds, Derivatives, Commodities and Indices. Euronext also leverages its expertise in running markets by providing technology and managed services to third parties. Euronext operates regulated markets, Alternext and the Free Market; in addition it offers EnterNext, which facilitates SMEs' access to capital markets. For the latest news, find us on Twitter (twitter.com/euronext) and LinkedIn (linkedin.com/euronext). Disclaimer This press release is for information purposes only and is not a recommendation to engage in investment activities. This press release is provided "as is" without representation or warranty of any kind. While all reasonable care has been taken to ensure the accuracy of the content, Euronext does not guarantee its accuracy or completeness. Euronext will not be held liable for any loss or damages of any nature ensuing from using, trusting or acting on information provided. No information set out or referred to in this publication may be regarded as creating any right or obligation. The creation of rights and obligations in respect of financial products that are traded on the exchanges operated by Euronext's subsidiaries shall depend solely on the applicable rules of the market operator. All proprietary rights and interest in or connected with this publication shall vest in Euronext. This press release speaks only as of this date. Euronext refers to Euronext N.V. and its affiliates. Information regarding trademarks and intellectual property rights of Euronext is located at www.euronext.com/terms-use. 2017, Euronext N.V. All rights reserved. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170407005453/en/ Contacts: Euronext Analysts investors: Stephanie Bia, +33 1 70 48 24 17 sbia@euronext.com or Press : Pauline Bucaille (Europe), +33 1 70 48 24 41 pbucaille@euronext.com Alice Jentink (Amsterdam), +31 20 721 4488 ajentink@euronext.com Pascal Brabant (Brussels), +32 2 620 15 50 pbrabant@euronext.com Sandra Machado (Lisbon), +351 210 600 614 smachado@euronext.com Aichata Tandjigora (Paris), +33 1 70 48 24 43 atandjigora@euronext.com A.M. Best has affirmed the Financial Strength Ratings (FSR) of A (Excellent) and the Long-Term Issuer Credit Ratings (Long-Term ICR) of "a+" of Lloyd's Syndicate 2623, Lloyd's Syndicate 623, Lloyd's Syndicate 3623 and Lloyd's Syndicate 3622 (the syndicates) (United Kingdom). Concurrently, A.M. Best has affirmed the FSRs of A (Excellent) and the Long-Term ICRs of "a" of Beazley Re Designated Activity Company (Beazley Re) (Ireland) and Beazley Insurance Company, Inc. (BICI) (Farmington, CT). The outlook of these Credit Ratings (ratings) is stable. Syndicates 2623, 623, 3623 and 3622 are managed by Beazley Furlonge Limited, and their ratings reflect the financial strength of the Lloyd's market, which underpins the security of all syndicates. In addition, syndicates 2623 and 623 benefit from a track record of excellent operating performance and strong positions in the Lloyd's market. Syndicates 2623 and 623 underwrite business at Lloyd's in parallel, with their individual shares of combined business split according to each syndicate's portion of overall combined capacity. The capital of syndicates 2623, 3623, 3622 is provided by Beazley plc (Beazley) [LSE: BEZ] via its corporate member, whilst syndicate 623 is supported by third-party capital. The excellent performance of syndicates 2623 and 623 is demonstrated by a five-year average combined ratio of 83% (2012-2016). Syndicate 3623 writes accident and health business, and reinsures Beazley's U.S. admitted carrier, BICI. Syndicate 3622 is a dedicated life syndicate, writing life business associated with Syndicate 3623's accident and health portfolio. The performance of these two smaller syndicates historically has not matched that of the larger Beazley syndicates. However, A.M. Best expects Syndicate 3623's performance to improve over the medium term, as Beazley's admitted business in the United States attains scale, and remedial actions in accident and health lines take effect. Beazley Re reinsures 75% of the profit of Beazley's Lloyd's corporate member after a deductible. Therefore, it shares in the strong profile and combined profitability of syndicates 2623, 3623 and 3622. Beazley Re is viewed to be integrated and strategically important to Beazley, reflecting its role as the group's internal reinsurer. In addition, Beazley Re is expected to obtain a license to write third-party insurance business during 2017, which will enable the group to offer non-Lloyd's underwriting capacity in the European Union in the future. The company's risk-adjusted capitalisation is supportive of the ratings. BICI's role as an expanding admitted U.S. carrier is strategically important to Beazley Re and to the Beazley group. A.M. Best expects BICI's importance to increase over the medium term, as the company's premium and earnings base become more material to the overall group. This press release relates to Credit Ratings that have been published on A.M. Best's website. For all rating information relating to the release and pertinent disclosures, including details of the office responsible for issuing each of the individual ratings referenced in this release, please see A.M. Best's Recent Rating Activity web page. For additional information regarding the use and limitations of Credit Rating opinions, please view Understanding Best's Credit Ratings A.M. Best is the world's oldest and most authoritative insurance rating and information source. For more information, visit www.ambest.com. Copyright 2017 by A.M. Best Rating Services, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170407005495/en/ Contacts: A.M. Best Myles Gould, +44 20 7397 0267 Senior Financial Analyst myles.gould@ambest.com or Edin Imsirovic, +1-908-439-2200, ext. 5740 Senior Financial Analyst edin.imsirovic@ambest.com or Christopher Sharkey, +1-908-439-2200, ext. 5159 Manager, Public Relations christopher.sharkey@ambest.com or Jim Peavy, +1-908-439-2200, ext. 5644 Director, Public Relations james.peavy@ambest.com LONDON and MILAN, April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- - Unparalleled Omni-channel Services for the Most Discerning Luxury Customers VALENTINO and YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP (YNAP) have partnered to create a new omni-channel business model - NEXT ERA - to elevate the customer experience by reinventing the relationship between luxury brands and online retailers. NEXT ERA is built on YNAP's unique understanding of the evolving luxury consumer ecosystem. It is a new business model that has its foundations in the valentino.com Online Flagship Store (powered by YNAP, a long-term partnership formed in 2008). This next generation model will enable VALENTINO customers' unprecedented online access to its products by leveraging the inventory from VALENTINO boutiques and logistic centres as well as YNAP's global network of eight fulfilment centres across the globe, stretching from New York and Dubai to Milan and Shanghai. NEXT ERA will capitalize on YNAP's unique distribution channels, specifically designed for the luxury industry. Through this all-encompassing platform, VALENTINO customers will gain access to an even more extensive product assortment, in-store mobile features (smooth checkout flow, full product information and availability of online inventory), and faster delivery, with an enhanced service available in major cities where orders can be fulfilled from VALENTINO boutiques. NEXT ERA combines YNAP's state-of-the-art technology with a leading-edge Order Management System in partnership with IBM that offers VALENTINO a single view of its inventory and a comprehensive profile of its customer base. Utilising the Group's unparalleled knowledge of online luxury customer behaviour, YNAP will create a fully revamped valentino.com, creating a superior retail experience with a mobile-centric interface, a new look and feel and new functionality powered by Artificial Intelligence such as on-site personalisation and contextual search, enabling customers to use natural language to interact with the digital store. The scope of this initiative is broad-reaching. Beyond the apparent benefits to be enjoyed by VALENTINO customers, the model unlocks enormous service improvements to customers of both NET-A-PORTER and MR PORTER. By integrating the VALENTINO Online Flagship Store inventory with the one allocated to NET-A-PORTER and MR PORTER the circa 10 million unique visitors of the world's leading fashion e-commerce sites will have access to an unrivalled assortment of VALENTINO product with enhanced express delivery options around the world. Building on the strengths of NET-A-PORTER and MR PORTER, the VALENTINO collections will continue to be brought to life through award winning content, superior product photography and video and expert styling and will be delivered in the stores' hallmark packaging. NEXT ERA is a pioneering initiative that has at its heart YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP's innovative, service-centric approach and its dedication to its ever-growing and highly discerning customer base and brand partners. NEXT ERA will launch in early-2018 (see appendix). Briefing Note for Media Definition of new functionalities Integrated Inventory Brands will have a unified view of their inventory across stores and warehouses, allowing them to manage their inventory more efficiently. This also allows customers to see what is available in-store and online, from wherever they are browsing. In the future, brand-owned and YNAP-purchased inventory could even be viewed across the same system, increasing the opportunities to sell full-price by selling inventory from either the brand or YNAP across each other's stores. Mobile in store Mobile in-store has a variety of functions: Smooth the checkout flow by carrying out full payment via mobile to avoid the friction and discomfort created by transacting with in-store staff If customers want to shop undisturbed, or the sales staff are occupied, help customers find the items they are looking for in the sizes they want and suggest items that might work for them via the mobile Alternatively, direct customers or sales staff to one another to maintain the personal touch associated with luxury Pick up and return in store They can then order online and pick up or return their items in store, giving them new ways to fulfil their orders as they see fit. When customers enter the shop the brand can create more opportunities for them to shop. Fastest Fulfilment Fast delivery is the ultimate in luxury service. Customers will receive their orders faster than ever before as the platform will automatically select the best fulfilment option to satisfy the customer's order. Single Customer View VALENTINO will gain a single view of its customers' interactions in-store and online, enabling them to continually optimise the experience, from product, store and site, to marketing and service. Multi-Fulfilment Give customers the option to fulfil their purchases however suits them. If a customer wants to return something they bought online in store, decides to buy a pair of swimming trunks to take to the beach that day, and also wants a pair of shoes that is only available in another country to be delivered to their city address in another country, the brand can fulfil the orders exactly as the customer wants. Briefing Note for Media VALENTINO Online Flagship Store Merchandising Facts When did our Online Flagship Store division first start to run valentino.com? VALENTINO Online Flagship Store opened in 2008 with first season SS08 (spring summer 08) 2. Most expensive VALENTINO items sold SS16 - Embroidered Rock Jacket 4,200 FW16 - Long dress in embroidered tulle 9,900 VALENTINO In-Season Merchandising Facts When did we first stock VALENTINO on NET-A-PORTER and MR PORTER? SS06 for NAP, FW12 for MR P Most expensive VALENTINO item sold on NET-A-PORTER SS16 - 14,500 CRSS17 - 5,000 YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP Media contacts Analyst/Investor contacts Silvia Scagnelli Corporate Development & Investor Relations Director T +39-02-83112811 investor.relations@ynap.com Finsbury Edward Simpkins, James Thompson, Benita Barretto T: +44(0)207-251-3801 ynap@finsbury.com Image Building Giuliana Paoletti, Simona Raffaelli T +39-02-89011300 ynap@imagebuilding.it YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP is the world's leading online luxury fashion retailer. The Group is a Global company with Anglo-Italian roots, the result of a game-changing merger, which in October 2015 brought together YOOX GROUP and THE NET -A-PORTER GROUP; the two companies had revolutionized the luxury fashion industry since their birth in 2000. YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP is a unique business with an unrivalled offering including multi-brand in-season online stores NET-A-PORTER and MR PORTER, and multi-brand off-season online stores YOOX and THE OUTNET, as well as numerous ONLINE FLAGSHIP STORES, all "Powered by YNAP". Through a joint venture established in 2012, YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP has partnered with Kering to manage the ONLINE FLAGSHIP STORES of several of the French group's luxury brands. In 2016, YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP joined forces with Symphony, an entity controlled by Mohamed Alabbar's family, to establish a groundbreaking joint venture to create the Middle East's undisputed leader for online luxury retail. Uniquely positioned in the high growth online luxury sector, YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP has an unrivalled client base of more than 2.9 million high-spending customers, 29 million monthly unique visitors worldwide and combined 2016 net revenues of 1.9 billion. The Group has offices and operations in the United States, Europe, Japan, China and Hong Kong and delivers to more than 180 countries around the world. YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP is listed on the Milan Stock Exchange as YNAP. For further information: http://www.ynap.com | LinkedIn: YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP | Twitter: @YNAP VALENTINO VALENTINO Press Office Alice Zampolli alice.zampolli@valentino.com VALENTINO The house of VALENTINO is nested in the heart of Rome, the Eternal City, and expresses a point of view on the contemporary world using history as a playground and the Atelier as a place that produces both beauty and thought. The story began in 1959. 2016 marks a new beginning, under the Creative Direction of Pierpaolo Piccioli. A new set of values, that are both of the moment and faithful to its heritage, are created: grace and delicacy, both as an attitude and as a silhouette; a celebration of individuality; emotional beauty; the blending and merging of different languages. Style is essential and impalpable. The idea of contemporary humanism leads a creative quest that revolves around the personality of the wearer. Vision, products, retail spaces share the same traits: from the one-of-a-kind Haute Couture creations to women's and men's ready-to-wear and accessories, from eyewear to fragrances to the boutiques, Valentino is synonymous of elegance, pureness, craftsmanship, uniqueness. TOKYO, Apr 7, 2017 - (JCN Newswire) - Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, Inc. (TEPCO) has announced a 500,000 equity investment in Moixa Energy Holdings, the UK's leading residential battery company (CEO: Simon Daniel, Headquarters: London)."We are excited to welcome Moixa to our modest, but growing portfolio of innovative companies," said Hirokazu Yamaguchi, Executive General Manager, Global Innovation & Investments at TEPCO. "Moixa has developed a robust battery storage and smart energy-sharing platform. We look forward to gaining hands-on experience for the benefit of our customers."David Thomlinson, Chairman of Moixa and former Global Head of Energy at Accenture, said, "Having previously worked with TEPCO, I am particularly pleased to be able to partner with this leading Japanese corporate, to bring the Moixa technology to new markets."The energy industry is undergoing a fundamental change, empowered by new technologies and driven by consumers. Technologies such as distributed solar and batteries are enabling innovative new ways of producing, consuming and sharing energy. This in turn permits consumers to increasingly and proactively engage the energy industry as "prosumers" who both produce and consume energy.Moixa offers a compact and affordable smart battery for residential customers that helps households save money by storing spare solar or cheap tariff electricity. In addition, their innovative cloud-based GridShare platform helps manage and aggregate distributed storage resources, thereby delivering grid services and savings for the energy system.About Moixa EnergyMoixa Energy Holdings, the UK's leading residential battery company, invents, manufactures and distributes smart energy technology. To date the company has installed Moixa Smart Batteries in more than 800 homes in the UK with a combined capacity of over 1.3MWh and five million hours of use. For more information, visit http://www.moixa.com.About TEPCOTokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, Inc. (TEPCO; TSE: 9501), headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is the largest utility in Japan serving more than 29 million homes and businesses. Worldwide the company has more than 74 subsidiaries and affiliates in 8 countries and employs approximately 43,330 people. For more information, visit http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/corpinfo/index-e.html.Source: TEPCOCopyright 2017 JCN Newswire . All rights reserved. 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 Swiss stock market ended the final trading session of the week with a small increase. The market got off to a weak start due to geopolitical concerns, after the U.S. carried out a military strike against a Syrian airbase in retaliation for Syrian President Assad's use of chemical weapons on a rebel town. Reports of a terrorist act in Stockholm in the afternoon also contributed to the negative mood among investors. Investors turned more risk averse Friday and flocked to safe havens like gold. The release of the weaker than expected U.S. jobs report for March further disappointed investors. However the market recovered ground in the afternoon after the weak jobs data failed to dent markets on Wall Street. The Swiss Market Index increased by 0.03 percent Friday and finished at 8,640.91. The Swiss Leader Index dropped 0.03 percent, but the Swiss Performance Index gained 0.03 percent. Galenica weakened by 4.5 percent after it completed the spin-off of Galenica Sante. Galenica Sante had a successful IPO today, ended the session with an increase of 10.3 percent against the issue price. Geberit and Kuehne + Nagel declined by 0.6 percent each, Sonova surrendered 0.4 percent and LafargeHolcim lost 0.3 percent. Financial stocks were under pressure after the weak U.S. jobs report. Credit Suisse dropped 0.7 percent and UBS slipped 0.1 percent. Baloise declined 0.9 percent and Swiss Re fell 0.4 percent. Among the index heavyweights, Novartis slipped 0.1 percent and Roche decreased 0.2 percent. Meanwhile, Nestle increased by 0.3 percent. Aryzta was among the best performing stocks of the session, with a gain of 2.7 percent. The stock has lost nearly a quarter of its value this year due to profit warnings and a management shakeup. Adecco climbed 1.0 percent and Richemont rose 0.6 percent. Givaudan advanced 0.5 percent and Actelion added 0.3 percent. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de The report provides an in-depth analysis of the EU training shoes market. It presents the latest data of the market size and volume, domestic production, exports and imports, price dynamics and turnover in the industry. The report shows the sales data, allowing you to identify the key drivers and restraints. You can find here a strategic analysis of key factors influencing the market. Forecasts illustrate how the market will be transformed in the medium term. Profiles of the leading companies and brands are also included. Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - April 7, 2017) - Nebu Resources Inc. (TSXV: NBU) ("Nebu" or the "Company") announces that it has been advised by the TSX Venture Exchange (the "Exchange") that soon after the dissemination of this news release that the Exchange will be issuing an Exchange bulletin resuming the trading in Company. In addition, Nebu has received notice from the TSX Venture Exchange (the "Exchange") advising Nebu of a deficiency in the Exchange's Tier 2 listing requirements as it has a negative working capital, has not completed sufficient exploration or development expenditures and does not have any active operations. The Exchange has placed the Company on notice, with a deadline of June 7, 2017 by which time the Company is required to provide a submission to the Exchange evidencing that it meets the Tier 2 continuing listing requirements. If the Company is not able to satisfy the Exchange that it meets all Tier 2 continuing listing requirements by June 7, 2017 and has not provided a satisfactory submission, the Exchange will proceed to transfer the Company's listing to NEX, without further notice. NEX is a separate board of the Exchange for companies previously listed on the Exchange which have failed to maintain compliance with the continued listing requirements of the Exchange. NEX has been designed to provide a forum for the trading of publicly listed companies while they seek and undertake transactions in furtherance of their reactivation as companies which will carry on an active business. About Nebu Resources Inc. Nebu Resources Inc. is a junior exploration company focused on gold exploration in the Timmins Gold Camp and the West Kirkland Area of Ontario, Canada. For further information, contact: Paul Crath, Interim CEO and Director, 416-504-4128. Neither the TSX-V nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX-V) accepts responsibility for the adequacy of this news release. No stock exchange, securities commission or other regulatory authority has approved or disapproved the information contained herein. SAN DIEGO, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 04/07/17 -- For the ninth year in a row, Rosemont Media is attending the AACD Scientific Session, and for the seventh year running, the dental marketing firm is partnering as a Corporate Sponsor of the event. During the conference, which will be held from April 18th through the 21st at the Venetian Resort Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, the team of experienced consultants led by CEO Keith Humes plans to unveil a robust social media marketing package designed expressly for dental practices. Additionally, Rosemont Media looks forward to maintaining existing client relationships as well as forging new ones. Part of the allure of attending the AACD annual conference, Rosemont Media explains, is the opportunity to have face-to-face interactions with existing clients and develop connections with new ones. In the relaxed atmosphere of the Exhibitor Hall, dentists can learn more about a wide range of SEO products and services. Located at Booth #426, Rosemont Media will be demonstrating to attendees how elite dental marketing strategies can achieve or strengthen a practice's dominance in its online market and improve the patient experience. Dentists can discuss their options with the Rosemont Media team of consultants on the following days and times: Wednesday, April 19th from 11:00 AM until 7:00 PM Thursday, April 20th from 11:00 AM until 7:00 PM Friday, April 21st from 9:00 AM until 2:00 PM Rosemont Media has been appearing at the annual AACD Scientific Session since 2009; the Director of Dental Marketing, Chris Brown, has been attending since 2006; and Humes is an 18-year veteran. Brown and Humes believe the conference assists Rosemont Media in maintaining long-standing relationships and gives them a fantastic forum to exhibit the latest digital marketing tools. "Our entire dental team is very excited for this year's meeting in Las Vegas," Brown says. "Each year the AACD allows us to spend quality time with our customers who are active members, including past presidents, board members, and accredited members. The meeting also gives us a great opportunity to meet in person other members who are looking for a new website or online marketing approach, or seeking to take their digital marketing to the next level." About Rosemont Media As a dental and medical Internet marketing agency, Rosemont Media provides an extensive selection of digital products and services for physicians and dentists seeking solutions to the dynamic issues facing these industries. Located in San Diego, Rosemont Media designs customized responsive websites, develops cutting-edge strategies for content and social media marketing, and delivers reputation management options. Rosemont Media offers market exclusivity to professionals across all medical and dental fields, including cosmetic dentists, plastic surgeons, orthopaedic surgeons, ophthalmologists, dermatologists, bariatrics surgeons, and others in the US, the UK, and beyond. To learn more about Rosemont Media, visit rosemontmedia.com and facebook.com/rosemontmedia. Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=3127539 Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=3127542 Rosemont Media Keith Humes Email Contact (858) 200-0044 CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - President Donald Trump's decision to order a missile strike on a Syrian airbase in retaliation for a suspected chemical weapons attack on civilians has drawn a mixed international reaction. U.S. allies in the Middle East and around the world have roundly favored the attack, while the move has been condemned by Syrian allies such as Russia and Iran. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quick to weigh in on the strike, saying in a post on Twitter that Israel fully supports Trump's decision. 'In both word and action, @POTUS sent a strong and clear message today that the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated,' Netanyahu tweeted. Netanyahu said he hopes Trump's resolve in face of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's horrific actions resonates not only in Damascus but in Tehran, Pyongyang and elsewhere. British Prime Minister Theresa May also praised the attack, calling it 'an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime.' Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey, Japan, Australia, and several U.S. allies in Europe also expressed support for the strike on the al-Shayrat airbase in central Syria. However, the attack has drawn a far different response from Russia, which provides military assistance to the Syrian government. A statement from the Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir Putin regards the airstrikes as an act of aggression against a sovereign state and claimed the Syrian Army has no chemical weapons. The statement said the attack has dealt a serious blow to U.S.-Russian relations, which it described as 'already in a poor state.' Separately, the Russian Defense Ministry said it has suspended cooperation with the Pentagon and will seek to improve the effectiveness of the Syrian's air defense system. Iran, another Syrian ally, also condemned the U.S. attack, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi saying the 'unilateral action is dangerous, destructive and violates principles of international law.' Ghasemi argued that the strike will strengthen terrorists in Syria and complicate the situation in the country and the region. Meanwhile, China expressed its opposition to the use of chemical weapons as well as the use of force in international affairs. 'The latest developments in Syria again speak to the urgent need for a political settlement to resolve the Syria issue,' said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying. She added, 'We call on all relevant parties to resolutely stick to promoting a political settlement and not abandon efforts to find a political settlement.' The comments from the foreign ministry spokeswoman come as Chinese President Xi Jinping is meeting with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 04/07/17 -- 10:00 a.m. Press Conference Queen's Park Media Studio 12noon Equal Pay Coalition Rally, College and University Ave. Toronto, Ontario Fay Faraday, co-chair Equal Pay Coalition Jan Borowy, co-chair Equal Pay Coalition Deena Ladd, Workers Action Centre, $15Fairness Patty Coates, Secretary-Treasurer, Ontario Federation of Labour On Equal Pay Day, a woman, on average, has worked enough to earn as much as a man made the previous year. The Gender Pay Gap in Ontario is a shocking 30% for the average woman. On average, women need to work 15.5 months to make up the gender pay gap. But this "average" figure does not capture the depth of the discrimination working women experience. The gender pay gap for Indigenous women is approximately 57%. Racialized and immigrant women face a gap of 37% to 39%. Women who are recent immigrants earn, on average, 57% as much as a white man. Women with disabilities face a 46% pay gap. The Equal Pay Coalition calls on the Ontario Government to take concrete action now to close the Gender Pay Gap and redress this human rights crisis. -- Four years have passed since Ontario first officially marked Equal Pay Day. -- Six Ministers in the Ontario Cabinet have an explicit mandate to develop a Gender Wage Gap Strategy that will end gender wage discrimination and ensure economic empowerment for women at all economic levels. -- Two years have passed since Ontario announced its Gender Wage Gap Review. Ontario's huge wage gap persists with no government or business plans yet in place to close it. Action is needed now. Contacts: Fay Faraday Co-Chair Equal Pay Coalition 416-389-4399 Jan Borowy Co-Chair Equal Pay Coalition 416-985-2069 Follow the new campaign on Facebook, Twitter and Twibbon: @EqualPayON Billionaire Philanthropist is Suing US for Leaking to the Media False Information Linking Him to Terrorist Organization WASHINGTON, April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --Gilbert Chagoury today responded to the US Government's motion to dismiss the complaint he filed in September 2016 in US District Court for the District of Columbia. Mr. Chagoury's lawsuit charged the United States Government with leaking false information to the media, causing great damage to his reputation and property, and denying his Constitutional right to due process. The US government's motion to dismiss was filed with the court Wednesday, April 5, 2017. "The government's illegal leak caused great harm to Mr. Chagoury's reputation, property and business interests," said Stewart Baker of Steptoe and Johnson, LLP, attorney for Mr. Chagoury. "Taking the government to court is already helping to undo some of that harm." The government's motion admits that unauthorized leaks like the release of Mr. Chagoury's information are improper and a violation of law. The government admits at several points in its motion that Mr. Chagoury has not been placed on any Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) or OFAC sanctions lists, the usual sanction for individuals linked to terrorism.It also insists that it is not trying to prevent banks or other institutions from doing business with Mr. Chagoury. For example, the government's motion at page 15 states that Mr. Chagoury "was not and never has been on the SDN list." It goes on to argue that Chagoury's complaint is not litigable because it is "undisputed that plaintiff was never placed on the SDN List or any other OFAC sanctions list." While Chagoury and his counsel welcome the government's admission that he is not on any official US Government lists linking him to terrorism, they reject the government's arguments. "It's a shame that I have had to sue the US Government in order to get them to admit that it has never imposed terrorism sanctions on me and that its unauthorized leaks to the media violated the law," said Chagoury. "But even with this welcome admission by the US government, the fact remains that severe damage has been caused to me and my family by the illegal leaks of false information. American justice demands due process, yet I still have been given no explanation for having my reputation dragged through the mud and no opportunity to rebut these falsehoods. That is not the America I know and love. I deserve my day in court in order to clear my good name." As the original complaint makes clear, despite his well-known love of the United States and his numerous, generous charitable contributions over 35 years of visiting America, Gilbert Chagoury was denied a visa by the United States Department of State in 2015. This decision was based on false information. This injustice was compounded when anonymous employees of the US Government leaked information to the media about the denial of Mr. Chagoury's visa application, including the false information that led to the visa denial. Because Gilbert Chagoury is a successful businessman, an influential advocate for religious freedom, a global philanthropist and a friend of prominent political leaders including many here in the United States, the LA Times published the story. In its just filed motion to dismiss, the government acknowledges that, "Unauthorized government leaks violate the law and are subject to criminal prosecution." At the same time, the government argues that it cannot be held responsible for the damage done to Mr. Chagoury's reputation and property because financial institutions would not have faced any government imposed sanctions. "The government claims that because Mr. Chagoury is not on any government lists linking him to terrorism, the financial institutions that ceased doing business with him were under no legal requirement to do so," said Baker. "That argument rings hollow. Bankers read the newspapers and watch television. Mr. Chagoury's reputation was publicly smeared and his business and property interests damaged through outrageous, illegal leaks by anonymous government officials who knew exactly what they were doing." The intentional leak to the media of false information about Mr. Chagoury repeats a similarly unlawful incident from 2010, when he was wrongly placed on the no-fly list, without notice or opportunity to be heard, and his placement on the no-fly list was leaked to the media. When challenged with facts, the U.S. Government reversed that decision and formally apologized. It should be noted that Chagoury had to amend his original 2016 complaint and withdraw the Judicial Redress Act motion after the US Department of Justice, in the wake of the United Kingdom's decision to exit the EU, would not certify that British citizens such as Mr. Chagoury have standing under the Act (even though the law was enacted before the UK voted to exit the EU).While US citizens have long been protected by the Privacy Act, until recently, foreign nationals have not had recourse under that statute when their privacy has been violated by the US Government. The Judicial Redress Act extends those Privacy Act protections to citizens of European countries to sue the United States for unlawful disclosure of personal information under the terms of the Privacy Act. CONTACT: Mark Corallo Corallo Media Strategies, Inc. 703-838-9705 mark@corallomediastrategies.com DUBLIN, Apr. 07, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Global Respiratory Complications Therapeutics Market to 2022 - Innovative Pneumonia and Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension Therapies Dominate Varied Disease Market" report to their offering. "Global Respiratory Complications Therapeutics Market to 2022 - Innovative Pneumonia and Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension Therapies Dominate Varied Disease Market" provides an introduction to the respiratory complications therapeutics market, including disease epidemiology, symptoms, etiology, pathophysiology, co-morbidities and complications, diagnosis and prognosis. In spite of a small late-stage pipeline, the respiratory complications market is forecast to grow moderately over the forecast period, from a value of $21.8 Billion in 2015 to $30.2 Billion in 2022, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.7%. This growth will be predominantly driven by already marketed products, rather than the approval of pipeline products, which are expected to have a limited impact on the market. Furthermore, generic impact on the market will be limited in terms of value, given the very low cost of generics typically used. There are few drugs that generate substantial revenue in the current respiratory complications market, with only one generating over $1 Billion from revenues specific to these complications. This is the Prevnar family pneumococcal disease vaccine, which has been approved for a broad spectrum of patients, ranging from six-week-old infants to adults of 50 and over. In 2015 the vaccine family generated $6.3 Billion, and this level of revenue is expected to remain relatively stable over the forecast period. Pfizer is expected to maintain its position as market leader throughout the entire forecast period. Although the company has a large number of drugs active in this area, spread across pneumonia and pulmonary embolism, it is predominantly the pneumonia vaccine Prevnar that drives its revenue derived from respiratory complications. Pfizer is expected to generate $7.3 Billion by 2022, rising from $6.9 Billion in 2015 at a CAGR of 0.8%. This marginal growth is attributed to the limited revenue growth of Prevnar, as well as some revenue growth for the anticoagulant Eliquis (apixaban), which is expected to generate $642.8m from respiratory complications by 2022. Key Topics Covered: 1 Introduction 2 Therapy Area Introduction 2.1 Symptoms 2.2 Diagnosis 2.3 Etiology and Pathophysiology 2.4 Epidemiology 2.5 Comorbidities and Complications 2.6 Prognosis 2.7 Treatment 2.7.1 Antibiotics 2.7.2 Antiviral Drugs 2.7.3 Vaccines 2.7.4 Antihypertensive drugs 2.7.5 Anticoagulants 2.7.6 Non-Pharmacological Treatments 3 Marketed Products 3.1 Overview 3.2 Prevnar 13 - Pfizer 3.3 Synflorix - GlaxoSmithKline 3.4 Uptravi - Actelion 3.5 Opsumit - Actelion 3.6 Eliquis - Bristol-Myers Squibb and Pfizer 3.7 Xarelto - Bayer 3.8 Synagis - Medimmune 3.9 Ventolin - GlaxoSmithKline 3.10 Infanrix and Boostrix - GlaxoSmithKline 4 Pipeline Landscape Assessment 4.1 Overview 4.2 Pipeline Development Landscape 4.3 Molecular Targets in the Pipeline 4.4 Clinical Trials 4.4.1 Failure Rate by Stage of Development, Indication, Molecule Type and Molecular Target 4.4.2 Clinical Trial Duration by Stage of Development, Indication, Molecule Type and Molecular Target 4.4.3 Clinical Trial Size by Stage of Development, Indication, Molecule Type and Molecular Target 4.4.4 Aggregate Clinical Program Size by Stage of Development, Indication, Molecule Type and Molecular Target 4.4.5 Conclusion 4.5 Assessment of Key Pipeline Products 4.5.1 Solithera - Cempra 4.5.2 Carbavance (meropenem and vaborbactam) -The Medicines Company 4.5.3 Respiratory Syncytial Virus Vaccine - Novavax 4.5.4 Conclusion 5 Multi-scenario Market Forecast to 2022 5.1 Overall Market Size 5.2 Generic Penetration 5.3 Revenue Forecast by Molecular Target and Drug Category 5.3.1 Vaccines 5.3.2 G-Protein Coupled Receptors 5.3.3 Enzyme Targets 5.3.4 Bacterial and Viral Targets 5.4 Revenue and Market Share Analysis by Company 5.4.1 Pfizer - Prevnar Dominates Respiratory Complications Revenue 5.4.2 Actelion - Rapid Growth of PAH Therapies to Create a Strong Market Position 5.4.3 GSK - Vast Product Portfolio Will Help Maintain a Strong Market Position 5.4.4 Bayer - Despite Limited Portfolio, Xarelto Performance Sufficient to Establish Strong Market Position 5.4.5 Bristol-Myers Squibb - Growing Eliquis Revenue to Improve Respiratory Complications Market Position 5.4.6 Novavax - Approval of RSV Vaccine Will Help Establish Market Presence 5.4.7 United Therapeutics - Variant Treprostinil Formulation to Form Cornerstone of Market Presence 6 Company Analysis and Positioning 6.1 Company Landscape 6.2 Marketed and Pipeline Portfolio Analysis 7 Strategic Consolidations 7.1 Licensing Deals 7.1.1 Deals by Region, Value and Year 7.1.2 Deals by Stage of Development and Value 7.1.3 Deals by Molecule Type, Mechanism of Action and Value 7.1.4 Licensing Deals Valued Above $100m 7.2 Co-development Deals 7.2.1 Deals by Region, Value and Year 7.2.2 Deals by Stage of Development and Value 7.2.3 Deals by Molecule Type and Value 7.2.4 Co-development Deals Valued Above $100m 8 Appendix 8.1 Bibliography 8.2 All Pipeline Drugs by Phase of Development 8.2.1 Discovery 8.2.2 Preclinical 8.2.3 IND/CTA-filed 8.2.4 Phase I 8.2.5 Phase II 8.2.6 Phase III 8.2.7 Pre-registration 8.2.8 Unknown 8.3 Abbreviations 8.4 Methodology 8.4.1 Coverage 8.4.2 Secondary Research 8.4.3 Market Size and Revenue Forecasts 8.4.4 Pipeline Analysis 8.4.5 Competitive Landscape Companies Mentioned - Actelion - Bayer - Bristol-Myers Squibb - GlaxoSmithKline - Medimmune - Pfizer For more information about this report visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/3v8bdd/global Media Contact: Research and Markets Laura Wood, Senior Manager press@researchandmarkets.com For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470 For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900 U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907 Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716 WEST JORDAN, UT--(Marketwired - April 07, 2017) - Mountain America Credit Union was recently honored with nine Diamond Awards recognizing outstanding marketing and business development achievements in the credit union industry. The awards were presented by the Credit Union National Association (CUNA) Marketing & Business Development Council, a national network comprised of over 1,200 credit union marketing and business development professionals. Awards are given in 30 categories ranging from advertising to community events and beyond. Mountain America earned Diamond Awards in nine different categories. The Epic Visa Campaign won in four categories: Commercial Video -- Single or Series, Complete Campaign, Cutting Edge and Video. Additional awards included: Business/SEG Development for a business partner video highlighting special employer group benefits Direct Mail -- Single or Series for the Fortune Cookie Visa campaign One-Time Event for a kid-focused event with members of Real Salt Lake Digital Advertising for the Grass is Greener campaign Financial Education for a VIP Night at the Loveland Living Planet Aquarium "We have so many talented, hard-working members on the Marketing team. I am always impressed to see their skills and creativity shine brightly," says Sharon Cook, chief marketing officer at Mountain America. "Every year the bar is raised and every year the team steps up to help Mountain America achieve its bold vision of growth for our membership." "The credit union industry has no shortage of marketing and business development talent, but as the name of the award suggests, these professionals shine the brightest," said Chair of the CUNA Marketing & Business Development Council's Diamond Awards Committee and VP Marketing & Communications at 1st MidAmerica CU Amber Scott. "Bold, inventive and fearless in the face of uncertainty, the 2017 Diamond Award winners inspire us to aim higher and try new approaches." Award winners were recognized at the council's 24th annual conference held March 29-April 1 in San Antonio, Texas. For more information on the Diamond Awards or to view the entire list of winners, go to www.cunacouncils.org/awards. For more information about Mountain America Credit Union, visit www.macu.com. About Mountain America Credit Union Mountain America Credit Union has more than $6.4 billion in assets and serves more than 650,000 members, wherever they are, through online and mobile banking, in 86 branches across five states and with access to more than 50,000 surcharge-free ATMs and 5,000 shared-branching locations nationwide. With roots dating back to the 1930s, Mountain America offers a variety of financial products and services for consumers and businesses, including savings accounts, auto loans, checking accounts, mortgage loans, business checking, student loans, SBA loans and retirement options. Visit www.macu.com for more information. CUNA Marketing & Business Development Council The CUNA Marketing & Business Development Council is a member-led community of marketing and business development professionals dedicated to providing relevant resources and tools essential for success to its members. The CUNA Marketing & Business Development Council is one of six CUNA Councils, a network of more than 6,800 credit union professionals. For more information, visit www.cunacouncils.org. Media Contact: Bryan Packer 801-325-6439 Email contact BEIJING (dpa-AFX) - Following an expanded bilateral meeting with the Chinese President Xi Jinping, President Donald Trump said he thinks tremendous progress has been made in the U.S. relationship with China. 'My representatives have been meeting one-on-one with their counterparts from China. And I think, truly, progress has been made,' Trump said. 'We'll be making a lot of additional progress.' 'The relationship developed by President Xi and myself I think is outstanding. We look forward to being together many times in the future,' he added. 'And I believe lots of very potentially bad problems will be going away.' Trump thanked Xi for his visit to the U.S., calling it a tremendous honor to host his Chinese counterpart and his representatives. The highly anticipated meeting between the two leaders at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida has largely been overshadowed by the U.S. missile strike on a Syrian airbase. Ahead of the meeting, a statement from the White House said Trump and Xi would discuss global, regional, and bilateral issues of mutual concern. Trump repeatedly attacked U.S. trade relations with China on the campaign trail and has criticized China for failing to do more to deal with North Korea. (Photo: Marc Nozell) Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - April 7, 2017) - Opawica Explorations Inc. (TSXV: OPW) (the "Company") announces the following drill hole results from the Company's 100% owned Bazooka East gold property contiguous to the western boundary of the Kinross-Yorbeau Rouyn property situated 7 kilometres south of Rouyn Noranda, Quebec. The initial Phase I drilling program consisted of five holes totalling 2,172 metres of drilling. Hole From To Interval g/t Au OP-17-01 306.2 361.0 54.8 0.65 Including 306.2 313.5 7.3 0.41 Including 319.5 325.5 6.0 2.02 Including 333.0 336.0 3.0 2.16 Including 345.0 348.0 3.0 2.69 Including 354.0 361.0 7.0 1.09 Hole 01 intersected a wide zone of gold mineralization approximately 185 metres east of a Lake Shore Gold Corp. ("LSG") hole drilled in 2004 (BA-03-02A) which returned several narrow high grade gold intercepts with visible gold along with intermittent anomalous gold values. In addition, drilling completed in 2011 by RT Minerals Corp. ("RTM") intersected this favourable horizon (zone) about 50 metres east of current Opawica drilling. This historic hole intersected 17 metres of core length at 7.86 g/t Au (RTM June 21, 2011 press release). With the 54.8 metre wide zone intersected in current drilling a further review of the historic LSG hole has resulted in the restating of the LSG hole at 1.68 g/t Au (uncut) (including 17 metres at 3.59 g/t Au) and 0.95 g/t (cut to 31 g/t Au) over 48 metres. The current Opawica hole and the historic LSG hole both contained fuchsite and arsenopyrite and are in close proximity to the Cadillac Larder Lake Break ("CLLB"). Hole 02 in the current program intersected highly anomalous gold values (0.17 g/t Au) over the same zone for 39.9 metres. Hole 03 also intersected the same zone returning anomalous gold values (0.12 g/t Au) over 20.5 metres. Hole 04 also hit the same zone returning anomalous gold values and Hole 05 intersected the zone over a width of 65.5 metres containing highly anomalous gold values (0.24 g/t Au). All of the above current and historic intervals are estimated at approximately 85% to 95% true widths. Assaying was completed by Swastika Laboratories Ltd. of Kirkland Lake, Ontario. The presence of wide and narrow occurrences of gold mineralization in this zone warrants further drilling. It appears that this gold bearing unit is open on strike and to depth as Archean units of this kind are known to extend several thousand meters in vertical depth. A program consisting of down hole geophysics to better define drill targets as well as defining areas for infill drilling in and around known historic gold mineralization in the vicinity of the Bazooka shaft is now planned. The purpose of the infill drilling is to attempt to outline resources in the vicinity of the Bazooka shaft. A complete and detailed program will be announced in the next two weeks. Opawica's Bazooka properties cover 7 kilometres of the prolific CLLB. The Bazooka properties are bound to the west by the Wassamac gold property which is 100% owned by Richmont Mines Inc. In addition, the Opawica Bazooka properties are bound to the east by the Kinross-Yorbeau Rouyn property which has been optioned by Kinross Gold Corporation ("Kinross"), whereby Kinross has the option to acquire a 100% interest in Yorbeau's Rouyn property for consideration that includes exploration expenditures of Cdn $12 million; cash payments of USD $25 million plus 2% of the prevailing gold price multiplied by the number of ounces of gold in measured, indicated and inferred identified in a resource estimate, yet to be completed; as well as other considerations (see Yorbeau press release dated October 25, 2016). Finally, Opawica also owns 100% of the McWatters property which adjoins the eastern border of the Kinross-Yorbeau Rouyn Property. Mr. Yvan Bussieres, P.Eng., is the Qualified Person who has prepared or supervised the preparation of the information that forms the basis for the scientific and technical disclosure in this news release. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Fred Kiernicki President and Chief Executive Officer Opawica Explorations Inc. Telephone: 604-681-3170 Fax: 604-681-3552 Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Service Provider (as the term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy of accuracy of this news release. Forward-looking Statements Certain statements in this press release relating to the Company's exploration activities, project expenditures and business plans are approximate and are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of securities legislation. The Company does not intend, and does not assume any obligation, to update these forward-looking statements. These forward looking statements represent management's best judgment based on current facts and assumptions that management considers reasonable, including that operating and capital plans will not be disrupted by issues such as adverse market conditions, mechanical failure, unavailability of parts, labor disturbances, interruption in transportation or utilities, or adverse weather conditions, that there are no material unanticipated variations in budgeted costs, that contractors will complete projects according to schedule, and that actual mineralization on properties may not achieve any category of resource(s). The Company makes no representation that reasonable business people in possession of the same information would reach the same conclusions. Forward looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. In particular, fluctuations in the price of gold, equity markets or in currency markets could prevent the Company from achieving its targets. Readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. There is no guarantee that drill results reported in this news release or future releases will lead to the identification of a deposit that can be mined economically, and further work is required to identify resources and reserves. We seek safe harbour. NEW YORK, NEW YORK -- (Marketwired) -- 04/07/17 -- Brookfield Global Listed Infrastructure Income Fund Inc. (NYSE: INF) and Brookfield Real Assets Income Fund Inc. (NYSE: RA) (each, a "Fund," and collectively, the "Funds") today announced that their Boards of Directors declared their monthly distributions. Brookfield Global Listed Infrastructure Income Fund Inc. declared a monthly distribution of $0.0817 per share, payable on April 27, 2017 to stockholders of record on April 20, 2017. The ex-distribution date is April 18, 2017. Based on the NYSE closing price of $13.41 on April 6, 2017, the Fund's annualized distribution rate was 7.31%. Brookfield Real Assets Income Fund Inc. declared a monthly distribution of $0.1990 per share, payable on April 27, 2017 to stockholders of record on April 20, 2017. The ex-distribution date is April 18, 2017. Based on the NYSE closing price of $23.03 on April 6, 2017, the Fund's annualized distribution rate was 10.37%. Shares purchased on or after the ex-distribution date will not receive the distribution discussed above. Please contact your financial advisor with any questions. Distributions may include net investment income, capital gains and/or return of capital. The distribution rate referenced above is calculated as the annualized amount of the most recent monthly distribution declared divided by the stated stock price. Any portion of the Fund's distributions that is a return of capital does not necessarily reflect the Fund's investment performance and should not be confused with "yield" or "income." The tax status of distributions will be determined at the end of the taxable year. Brookfield Investment Management Inc. (the "Firm") is an SEC-registered investment adviser and represents the Public Securities platform of Brookfield Asset Management. The Firm provides global listed real assets strategies including real estate equities, infrastructure equities, real asset debt and diversified real assets. With more than $13 billion of assets under management as of December 31, 2016, the Firm manages separate accounts, registered funds and opportunistic strategies for institutional and individual clients, including financial institutions, public and private pension plans, insurance companies, endowments and foundations, sovereign wealth funds and high net worth investors. The Firm is a wholly owned subsidiary of Brookfield Asset Management, a leading global alternative asset manager with approximately $250 billion of assets under management as of December 31, 2016. For more information, go to www.brookfield.com. Brookfield Global Listed Infrastructure Income Fund Inc. and Brookfield Real Assets Income Fund Inc. are managed by Brookfield Investment Management Inc. The Funds use their website as a channel of distribution of material company information. Financial and other material information regarding the Funds are routinely posted on and accessible at www.brookfield.com. Contacts: COMPANY CONTACT Brookfield Global Listed Infrastructure Income Fund Inc. Brookfield Real Assets Income Fund Inc. Brookfield Place 250 Vesey Street, 15th Floor New York, NY 10281-1023 (855) 777-8001 funds@brookfield.com Western is an integrated Canadian forest products company, and is the largest coastal British Columbia woodland operator and lumber producer. The Company has an annual available harvest of approximately 6.1 million cubic metres of timber, of which approximately 5.9 million cubic metres is from Crown lands. Western has a lumber production capacity in excess of 1.1 billion board feet from seven sawmills and one remanufacturing plant. Principal activities conducted by the Company include timber harvesting, reforestation, sawmilling logs into lumber and wood chips, and value-added remanufacturing. Substantially all of Western's operations, employees and corporate facilities are located in the coastal region of British Columbia, with sales worldwide. 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. DUBLIN, Apr. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Cloud Computing Market in Europe" report to their offering. The European Cloud Computing industry is expected to generate total revenues of $18.9bn in 2016. Whilst not on the scale of the industry in US, European Cloud computing continues to be a quickly developing and fast growing industry. Organizations have sought cloud solutions to reduce expenditure, widen productivity and scale, and increase computing power in light of Big Data issues. Western European countries are ranked significantly higher on the World Economic Forum Network Readiness rankings than those in the East. Who Should Read This Report Executive leaders and business unit leaders, procurement managers, advisors, Investors who have responsibilities to set their organization on a Digital transformation and cloud journey. Readers will get a deeper understanding of the current adoption level, market drivers and challenges of cloud services in European organizations which would help IT vendors to market their products and services effectively in Western and Eastern European region. The report covers the impact of Brexit and how cloud services vendor can penetrate European market keeping in mind other issues related to data privacy and protection, data accessibility laws, email spam laws etc. Cloud service providers can look into the IT spend areas by countries and their forecasts till 2021. With growing adoption of cloud services, European enterprises continue to see IT security as a major barrier to adoption which is continuously haunting the enterprises. Key Topics Covered: 1. Europe Cloud Computing Market - An Overview 2. Europe Cloud Computing Market Size and Forecast 3. Europe Cloud Computing Market, By Cloud Models 4. Europe Cloud Computing Market, By Country Breakdown 5. Europe Cloud Computing Market - Market Approach Post Brexit 5.1. Adoption of Cloud in Europe 5.2. Competitive Analysis - Cloud Services Players 5.3. Europe Cloud Computing Market Trends and Challenges 5.3.1. Data Issues 5.3.2. Accessibility Issues 5.3.3. Marketing and Email Issues 5.3.4. Legal Contract Issues 5.3.5. Brexit Issues 5.3.6. GTM Approach 6. Europe Cloud Computing Adoption Trends 6.1. Western Europe Cloud Market Insights 6.1.1. Cloud Deployment Plan 6.1.2. Key Cloud Adoption Drivers 6.1.3. Key Cloud Adoption Challenges 6.1.4. Key Cloud Services Adoption Methods 6.1.5. Investments in Bundled Services 6.1.6. Hybrid Cloud Usage 6.1.7. Key Drivers for Public Cloud Services Adoption 6.1.8. Key Challenges for Public Cloud Services Adoption 6.1.9. SaaS Adoption 6.2. Eastern Europe Cloud Market Insights 6.2.1. Key Drivers of Cloud Services Adoption 6.2.2. Cloud Services Adoption, by Cloud Type (SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS) 6.2.3. Cloud Services Budgets 6.2.4. Key Benefits of Cloud Services Adoption 6.2.5. Key Challenges for Cloud Services Adoption 6.2.6. Infrastructure Migration to Cloud Timeline 6.2.7. Key Recommendations 7. UK - Cloud Computing - An overview 8. UK Government Cloud Spending 9. UK Cloud Computing - Market Size and Forecasts 10. UK Cloud Computing Market, By Cloud Models 11. UK Cloud Computing Market - Competitive Analysis 11.1. Amazon.com, Inc. 11.2. International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) 11.3. Microsoft Corporation 11.4. Salesforce.com, inc. 12. Germany Cloud Computing Market - An Overview 13. Germany Cloud Computing Market Size and Forecast 14. Germany Cloud Computing Market, By Cloud Models 15. Germany Cloud Computing Market - Competitive Analysis 15.1. Amazon.com, Inc. 15.2. International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) 15.3. Microsoft Corporation 15.4. Salesforce.com, inc. 16. Cloud Security: Continues to Remain a Concern 17. Key Aspects for Cloud Service Provider (CSP) Selection 18. Key Recommendations 19. Europe Cloud Service IT Spending (US $ Million), By Countries, 2014-2020 For more information about this report visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/d8bv4n/cloud_computing 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 Konux, a Munich, Germany-based IIoT startup, raised an additional $9m in in the third and final close of their Series A financing. The $16m totalling round was led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) with participation from MIG, Upbeat Ventures, Andy Bechtolsheim, Michael Baum, UnternehmerTUM, Warren Weiss and Lothar Stein. In conjunction with the funding, Dr. Greg Papadopoulos, Venture Partner at NEA and former CTO at SUN Microsystems, will be joining Konux Board of Directors. The company intends to use the funds for new product features and market entry in further European countries. Led by CEO Andreas Kunze, Konux combines smart sensors and AI-based analytics to allow customers know their assets performance in real-time and switch to predictive maintenance. The company has started working with Deutsche Bahn (DB), Europes largest rail operator, to digitize its network through condition monitoring of switches made via Konux smart sensors and analytics solution. Founded in 2014, Konux has raised a total of $18M in funding and has a team of currently 35 employees. FinSMEs 07/04/2017 Amazon, the Indian subsidiary of the US-based online marketplace company, continues to put up a spectacular show in the country's fast-growing ecommerce space even as home-grown rivals Flipkart and the struggling etailer Snapdeal face pressure on the back of dwindling sales and liquidity crunch. Shrugging off the growing concerns that online sales have taken a beating post the noteban exercise in November last year, Amazon India has bounced back sharply in the first quarter (Jan-Mar) of 2017, clocking a robust 85 percent rise in gross sales volume over a year-ago period, a Mint report said. Further, the US-based etailer's gross sales in terms of value jumped around 65-70 percent during the quarter, even as the overall online market sales expanded 15-20 percent, the report said. Compared to this, India's largest online marketplace firm Flipkart Internet's gross sales, including that of Jabong and Myntra, rose 25 percent in the quarter under review. Amazon's robust gross sales performance cannot be strictly compared with Flipkart as it has come on the back of a low base of last year. Also, both Amazon and Flipkart's improving sales is also due to disappointing performance of the country's third largest ecommerce player, Snapdeal, whose sales have been comparatively disappointing. Snapdeal, the New Delhi-based online marketplace has come under tremendous pressure off late, with slow sales and investors' cash burn through heavy discount offerings over a period of time which has led to a cash squeeze in the company. Since the beginning of the year, the Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal-promoted firm has been in talks with its Japan-based investor, SoftBank and other investors to raise capital, but to no avail. Early this month, there were report that the company is looking to raise just over $100 million from existing shareholders including Japan's SoftBank and new investors. From a peak valuation of around $6.5 billion, Snapdeal's valuation could be around $1 billion. In February, the firm also laid off 600 employees and its founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal stopped drawing salaries. Earlier this week, several media reports also suggested that Japanese investor SoftBank has been mulling selling Snapdeal to Flipkart, although two early-stage investors are opposed to the deal. With lingering woes surrounding Snapdeal, the stiff competition between Amazon and Flipkart is expected to heighten this year as well. In fact, Amazon's overall performance in two months of last year was better than that of Flkpkart as the latter's sales slipped in successive months during the first half of last year. Flipkart, too, is gearing up for competition against its US-based rival and China's Alibaba, with the Bengaluru-headquartered ecommerce major looking to snap up US-headquartered eBay's India operations. Expanding its presence in India, Amazon.in also said it has set up seven new warehouses (Fulfilment Centres or FCs) to cater exclusively to its large appliances and furniture category, a move that will create 1,200 new jobs. When Jammu and Kashmir Finance Minister Haseeb Drabu once went on a round of his constituency, he decided to check out some anganwadi centres. He entered a small room which could not hold more than 10 children. He asked how many children were enrolled there and was told 60. He then asked to see the plates the children ate from. He was told the children get their own plates. He asked about vessels used for cooking. There were none. There was no place to wash the plates or utensils. It is a complete racket, Drabu said as part of his opening remarks at a national conference on basic income organised by SEWA Bharat and the India Network for Basic Income on 29-30 March in New Delhi. Anganwadi centres, Drabu went on to relate, were almost all given to workers of political parties; the allotment of one was the first request any MLA or MP had to deal with. Worse, there was an active market in these centres. And then there is the issue of overstaffing. There is an anganwadi worker, a helper to the anganwadi worker and a supervisor for the helper! Drabu wasnt the only one relating horror stories from the field. Baijayant Panda, Janata Dal MP from Odisha, talked about large numbers of ghost students enrolled under the mid-day meals scheme and the enormous leakage in wheat and kerosene distributed through the public distribution system (though the distribution of rice is flawless because of personal monitoring by chief minister Naveen Patnaik). If such blatant corruption can take place in flagship schemes (there will be many far more horrifying stories across the country), what would be the fate of hundreds of others that are below the radar? Drabu pointed out that Jammu and Kashmir has 26 merit-cum-poverty scholarship schemes, 14 marriage assistance schemes, half a dozen widow pension schemes, all of which could total up to Rs 80-100 crore. There is no clue about who is getting it or not getting it. This raises a pertinent question: How long should `welfare be allowed to be a cloak for unchecked leakage, diversion and corruption from government programmes? Never mind that the benefits are not going to the groups for whom these programmes have been designed. The idea of a universal basic income (UBI) floated in the Economic Survey 2016-17 can possibly help address such issues. Such a programme, where money goes directly to the beneficiary could cut out the nexus between bureaucrats, politicians and vested interests whose welfare alone these schemes appear to be catering to, as of now. As Junaid Ahmed, country director, World Bank, pointed out at the conference, a cash transfer cuts out patronage politics and takes away the power of price manipulation as an instrument of politics. Indeed, that is one of the reasons why even BJP-ruled state governments were not willing to take up pilot programmes on cash transfer in lieu of subsidised grains through the public distribution system (PDS). These pilots have now been implemented only in three Union Territories Chandigarh, Puducherry and Dadra and Nagar Haveli. A cash transfer is hardly likely to give, for example, Chhattisgarh chief minister Raman Singh as evocative a moniker as chawal wale baba. But the welfare hardliners refuse to even consider this. If there has to be an UBI, they argue, it has to be an add-on to existing welfare schemes and should absolutely not replace them. If the fiscal math does not allow replacement, well, then junk UBI and keep the welfare schemes, this group argues. Yes, yes, there are huge problems, but fix those, dont junk these schemes, they say. Worse, even pilot programmes are not being given a chance. The cash transfers in PDS pilots kicked off in 2015 and have been attacked on grounds of poor implementation within less than six months. There have been teething problems (this writer has written about them) but these are being waved around as proof of the unsoundness of the very idea. The latest attack has come from Reetika Khera in a column in the Indian Express. She cites the findings of a concurrent process evaluation of the cash transfer programmes by the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), which shows that one-fifth of the beneficiaries did not receive any cash and that most wanted to go back to the PDS. She also rightly points out that the government is not making these figures public and that shows it has something to hide. But, at the national conference on basic income, Karthik Muralidharan of J-PAL and University of California San Diego (who is overseeing the evaluation exercise) showed that the receipt of cash was showing a steady improvement and the preference for DBT over PDS had grown from 33 percent in early 2016 to 65 percent this year. The welfare hardliners, however, will only focus on the fact that 35 percent are still not in favour of cash. A new idea is not even given two to three years to prove itself, while schemes which have proven to be deeply flawed over decades are supposed to continue. Drabu has been the first state finance minister to talk about wanting to experiment with a basic income programme in Jammu and Kashmir. The way he has it worked out, it will not involve any extra expenditure or even a cutting down of welfare spending; it only involves a restructuring of expenditure. He plans to target just the below poverty line population (roughly 3.5 lakh in his state) and give each Rs 1 lakh a year. That should involve an expenditure around Rs 5,000 crore, when the current social spending of the state government is between Rs 5,000 crore and Rs 7,000 crore. With the same amount of money we can do much better delivery, Drabu noted. And he can even leave social intervention programmes like mid-day meals untouched. The savings to the government will come from a scything of administrative costs; there are now 3,500 people just monitoring the very many welfare schemes, and clearly not doing a very good job of it. For Drabu, its a no-brainer to move away from what we are doing currently. Can this be replicated in other states? The conditions would be quite different. Jammu and Kashmir is a smaller state, Drabu pointed out, and the numbers involved (3.5 lakh BPL families) are manageable. The state also does not have the abject deprivation or deep social divisions that are present in other states. But perhaps it is time that other states take up the challenge of trying out some form of basic income transfer to see if it delivers welfare better than the current regime does. The government is set to begin aerial mapping of 800,000 square kilometres of area with geological potential to scout for natural resources and transform it into a business opportunity for Indias growth story. This is a first-of-its-kind initiative as prior to this, no aerial mapping of land had been done in the country to find out the geological potential of its underground products (UGPs). Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Power, Coal, New and Renewable Energy and Mines, Piyush Goyal on Thursday said that the government would initiate the process of aerial mapping of 800,000 square kilometres out of Indias total area of 3.3 million square kilometres of land mass in a day or two. The government expects to complete the exercise within a period of two-and-a-half years and put up the data of its findings for exploration of mineral resources. "We have determined around 800,000 square kilometres with obvious geological potential the UGP areas. Either today or tomorrow, aerial mapping will begin and over the next two-and-a-half years, we hope to complete the process. The entire 800,000 square kilometres of Indias geological potential area will be mapped aerially to get a fair idea of the locations which can be further explored," Goyal said while addressing the second day of the two-day Global Natural Resources Conclave organised jointly by Network 18 and CII. Natural resources exploration: A part of Indias growth story The Ministry for Power, Coal, New and Renewable Energy and Mines wants to convert the findings of the mapping exercise into a tangible business opportunity through the exploration of natural resources that can be a part of Indias growth story. "After the mapping of the specific area, well give out contracts for exploration in those particular locations. I would urge companies across the world to look at the contracts. One will be paid for whatever one spends on exploration, along with a potential upside. If minerals are found from the efforts to explore the piece of land, there is a significant upside being offered along with these contracts," explained Goyal. The ministry will put all of the exploration data in the public domain and invite entrepreneurs and companies from India and across the world to be a part of this growth story. "The natural resource wealth of this country will go on to serve the people of India, the poor whos at the bottom of the pyramid," he added Government focuses on Indias eastern belt Simultaneously, the Narendra Modi government wants to focus its attention on the eastern belt of India, which has rich natural resources. "As the prime minister often says unless the eastern part of the country progresses, the country cant progress. Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha, Chhattisgarh largely the eastern part of India is blessed with rich mineral resources. We are making a focussed and concerted effort to bring it out and we want all the stakeholders in this sector to make the exploration activities faster. The GDP of India comprises 2.4 percent of mineral wealth. The need is to double this potential by expanding the frontiers of mining efficiently and effectively so that the next generation can see a far more developed India," added Goyal. N R Narayana Murthy, the founder of Infosys, must be congratulated for questioning the current practices that have sent the compensation package of the top company officials into the stratosphere. Murthy has expressed his concern for a second time in two months. Though Murthy has raised the issue both times in the context of the payments to the top officials of Infosys, Indias premier tech company, his argument holds good for the larger corporate environment in India today as well. Given Murthys larger-than-life profile in India as a founder of a company that was based on fair play and justice a company that created wealth for the nation, for the top officials and also for those at the bottom of the organisational pyramid (remember the drivers and other service staff members became millionaires when the company went public) his objections to the huge salary gap within the company he founded has been taken note of by the mainstream media. It is indeed an irony that in a poor country like India, the exorbitant payment to the CEOs has never been a matter of public debate in politics, academia or media; this is in sharp contrast to the rich Western world, in the USA, for example, where CEO salaries have zoomed over the years and where such debates are all too frequent in the public sphere. These debates might not have wielded any concrete results so far, but at least they have ensured that the issue remains etched in public consciousness. In USA, every four years, the presidential candidates usually pay lip service to the larger concern of the inequity in salary division in various companies, though they usually get bullied into silence by vested interests after they get elected. In his campaign manifesto, Putting People First, in 1992, Bill Clinton had called for a ceiling on tax deductibility of executive compensation. His election plank was that he had no authority to cap the salaries of the private executives, but he vowed that, if elected as President, he would ensure that no business expenses above 1 million dollar would be eligible for corporate tax deduction. But when Clinton got elected, he was persuaded by a majority of the cabinet colleagues the stellar exception was his Labour secretary Robert Reich -- to leave a loophole in his tax proposal to the effect that any performance-based pay in the form of stock options and bonuses would continue to enjoy tax deduction. The result was that companies began to put a cap on a one-million dollar salary (which was a tiny portion of their actual salary) and paid the overwhelmingly large part of the compensation as pay for performance. Take the case of John Stumpf, CEO of Wells Fargo. He received huge bonuses from this international financial services company year after year in the name of performance pay. Between 2012 and 2015 alone, his employer-bank enjoyed $54 million in tax subsidies related to just this one mans bonuses. The American corporate history tells that there is a total disconnect between pay and performance. Many Wall Street CEOs who amassed big fortunes left their companies worse off when they departed. Take the case of J P Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, for example, who cashed in $23 million in fully deductible stock options at the peak of the subprime crisis in early 2010. What was his performance for this pay? The bank had to pick up a tab of more than $28 billion in mortgage and other financial misconduct settlement fees, all thanks to the extraordinary stewardship of Dimon! This sordid situation arises because companies have no clearly discernible performance metrics. J K Galbraith, the well-known US economist, summed it up well: The salary of the chief executive of a large corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself. Donald Trump, himself a billionaire entrepreneur, in his campaign trail as President echoed Galbraiths sentiment when he called high CEO pay a total and complete joke and disgraceful, and argued that CEOs stack boards with their buddies who rubber-stamp excessive pay. Even Hillary Clinton, known for her pro-establishment views, lamented: Theres something wrong when the average American CEO makes 300 times more than the typical American worker. In India, no political party or leader has made the CEO pay an issue despite the more distressing scenario in India compared to that in the USA. Look at the statistics in India: All the top 10 CEOs draw a salary more than 300 times that of the median worker of their respective companies. And Vishal Sikka, the Infosys CEO, tops the chart of all -- when his annual salary in 2015-16 was Rs 49 crore, he earned 930 times that of the median salary of his company. From 2017, Sikkas salary has skyrocketed to Rs 73 crore a whopping 50 percent increase. Imagine what would be the ratio now between his salary and the median salary of his company which increased on an average of six percent in the Sikka regime. By international standards, it is atrocious. By the Infosys standard, which in the first 30 years maintained a salary gap of just 50 to 60 times between the highest paid employee and the median worker, it is plain shameful. No wonder Murthy, who laid the foundation of a cash-rich and prosperous Infosys (he excelled in the performance matrix) and at the same time established a fair and just compensation system for all employees, is enraged by the current developments. Two months ago, he rightly questioned the Rs 23 crore severance package (two-years salary) that was handed out to the then CFO Rajiv Bansal, unprecedented in Indias corporate history. He, in fact, wondered if the gossip in corporate circles was true that Bansal was paid hush money to keep quiet about unethical practices in Infosys to which he was privy. The salary hike to Pravin Rao, chief operating officer at Infosys, is the latest flashpoint. An Infosys veteran whom Murthy had recruited in the '80s, he was given a spectacular raise from Rs 4.5 crore a year to Rs 7 crore a year, an almost 70 percent raise. To argue that it is performance-linked does not carry conviction. The performance matrix is skewed everywhere in India and the rest of the world. It would still be acceptable if the average employee of the company would have got similarly spectacular raise. But when the average increment in the company in the last three years has hovered around 6 percent and the buzzword created by the company for the average employee is sacrifice now for prosperity later, should the big guns in the company be allowed to run away with the bulk of the booty now, without waiting for the future? That is a burning question N R Narayana Murthy has propelled us to ponder over. Jerusalem: State-owned Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) has struck a deal worth almost $2 billion to supply India's army and navy with missile defence systems, the company said on Thursday, describing it as Israel's largest ever defence deal. IAI said in a statement it would supply an advanced air defence system, including medium-range surface-to-air missiles, launchers and communications and control technology, to the Indian army for around $1.6 billion. An additional naval defence system, including long-range surface-to-air missiles, would be deployed on India's first aircraft carrier, which is still being built, the statement said. The value of that deal was not disclosed, but IAI said the total package was worth nearly $2 billion. Israel is one of the top three arms suppliers to India, which shares borders with nuclear-armed China and Pakistan. Between 2008-2015, India was the world's second largest developing-world arms purchaser, according to the U.S. Congress. Until recently, India kept its defence ties with Israel under wraps, largely out of fear of upsetting Arab countries and its own large Muslim population. But Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose nationalist party sees Israel as an ally against Islamist militancy, has openly cultivated warmer ties, and is due to visit Israel later this year. Mumbai: Actor Akshay Kumar, who has won his first National Film Award, says winning the honour has made the film Rustom even more special for him. Akshay was named the Best Actor for Rustom at the 64th National Film Awards, announced here on Friday. The 49-year-old actor's performance in crime thriller Rustom - a film loosely based on the Commander KM Nanavati case - has been lauded for "a perfect portrayal of a character caught in personal and social turmoil". In a video posted on his Twitter handle, Akshay said, "Thank you seems like a very small word right now, but I don't know how else to express what I am feeling right now. I am truly humbled by this honour. I would like to thank the National Award jury and all my fans from the core of my heart for believing in my talent. Rustom was a very special role to play. Getting to wear the country's Navy uniform is in itself special... Be it for a film. And now this National Award has made this even more special." Akshay dedicated his award to his parents, family and wife Twinkle Khanna. Twinkle retweeted Akshay's video, and wrote, "I don't know if I am crying or laughing - emotions all over the place. So proud of you Akshay Kumar - you smart, humble, amazing creature." Akshay said it was "double celebration" on the sets of Padman, as Sonam Kapoor - who has won a special mention for her role in the Best Hindi Film Neerja - was with him. "As I speak, this National Award-winning actress Sonam Kapoor... The best thing is she is with me now. So it's a double celebration for us today," he added. Akshay captioned the video, "National Film Awards: Best Actor for Rustom, countless emotions, very hard to express my gratitude right now but still tried, a big thank you!" #NationalFilmAwards : Best Actor for Rustom,countless emotions,very hard to express my gratitude right now but still tried,a big THANK YOU pic.twitter.com/Wo7mfi6dI8 Akshay Kumar (@akshaykumar) April 7, 2017 Akshay began his acting career in the 1990s, he primarily starred in action films and was known for his appearances in films of the Khiladi series as well as other action films such as Waqt Hamara Hai, Mohra, Elaan, Suhaag, Sapoot and Jaanwar. His performances in comedy films such as Hera Pheri, Mujhse Shaadi Karogi, Bhool Bhulaiyaa and Singh Is Kinng have been much appreciated. He was feted with the Padma Shri in 2011. Since filmmaker Neeraj Pandey's third directorial with Akshay Kumar Crack has been postponed to later next year owing to Kumar's busy shooting schedule, Pandey has announced his next film with Sidharth Malhotra and Manoj Bajpayee. Titled Aiyaary, the film will revolve around the relationship of a mentor and his protege, played by Bajpayee and Malhotra respectively. Malhotra is excited to collaborate with Pandey for the first time as he will be seen playing an army espionage agent in the film. Malhotra took to Twitter to unveil the motion poster of the film. Here is our #Aiyaary motion poster ! Excited to start shoot @neerajpofficial https://t.co/LUcuKmkDdq Sidharth Malhotra (@S1dharthM) April 6, 2017 DNA quotes him as saying, "I am really excited to announce this new project with Neeraj. Neerajs films have always been inspired from true events and I have admired his films from the beginning as he is a content-driven director with an amazing story-telling ability. Aiyaary is also based on a story of true events and I am thrilled to venture into this new role of espionage and military intelligence with him. This will also mark Bajpayee's first collaboration with Malhotra. The former has collaborated with Pandey twice, in his 2013 heist crime thriller Special 26 and in his production that released last month, Shivam Nair's action thriller Naam Shabana. Bajpayee has yet another film, Ram Gopal Varma's political drama Sarkar 3 lined up for release next month on 12 May. Malhotra is also gearing up for Raj and DK's action entertainer Reload slated to release on 25 August. He is currently shooting for Abhay Chopra's remake of his father BR Chopra's 1969 film Ittefaq. He is also considering a film under Salman Khan's production house. The Times of India reports that Aiyaary will be shot on real locations in London, New Delhi and Kashmir. The leading lady and other supporting actors of the film have not been finalised yet. It will go on floors in May and is slated to release on 26 January, 2018. It's finally the moment One Direction fans have all been waiting for: Harry Styles' first solo single has arrived. Since One Direction went on hiatus last summer, Harry Styles has been a busy little bee, after landing a role in Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk and going to Jamaica to record his debut solo album. Styles officially dropped 'Sign of the Times' on Friday , 7 April 2017 and it is amazing. Styles had teased the song last week through Instagram: SIGN.OF.THE.TIMES // 7.APRIL.17 // A post shared by @harrystyles on Mar 31, 2017 at 5:02am PDT Styles also talked to BBC about his forthcoming album, "Its a bit weird, I feel like Ive been hibernating for so long now and you hear it in the safety of the studio and now its time to give birth its the song (debut single) Im most proud of writing." Although Styles never gave any hint about how his solo material would sound, he delivered a true space-age rock ballad in 'Sign of the Times,' something that might fit in more with David Bowie's catalog or perhaps even an epic '90s ballad like Pink Floyd's 'Wish You Were Here' than it does with today's top 40. Though it doesn't sound like your typical One Direction song, we are all in for Harry Styles' new avatar. Listen to the audio here: Nivea recently put out an ad in the Middle East for which it received a lot of flak on social media for being racist. This ad was released barely days after Pepsi put out ad featuring Kendall Jenner, which was criticised for making light of the Black Lives Matter movement. Nivea FB post yest (they took it dwn) and the Pepsi ad 2day. These glaring missteps are directly related to lack of internal inclusiveness pic.twitter.com/jyB17i9tM8 Sakita Holley (@MissSuccess) April 4, 2017 The ad was for its product Black & White deodorant and featured the words, "White is purity" as a caption on a picture of a woman with her back to the camera sitting in front of a window. It did find support and appreciation among some people. A significant number of Twitter users, however, called out Nivea for propagating a racist notion. Come on #Nivea. This is so racist that I do not even know where to begin. Speechless. In future, refer to clothes or products, not colors. pic.twitter.com/m0KTSALFKo Scott Bellows (@ScottProfessor) April 4, 2017 Some even pointed out that this is routine when it comes to companies that sell skin lightening cosmetics. large multinationals have ALWAYS profited off racist, light-is-right colorism in asia and the middle east. Jaya Sundaresh (@jayaist) April 5, 2017 Many even joked about how Nivea has outdone Pepsi with this ad. The Pepsi ad featured Kendall Jenner offering a can of the soft drink to a police officer at a protest against police brutality, which people criticised for undermining the struggle of Black rights activists such as Martin Luther King Jr. Pepsi "Nobody can upset so many people with an ad as well as we can" Nivea "Hold my beer" pic.twitter.com/iCaHCCvYx9 Angela Night (@Angelheartnight) April 5, 2017 This week in advertising. Probably time for me to kick start my "Ask a Black Person" consulting firm. #Pepsi #Niveapic.twitter.com/dMY41ZZQjr Michael Gravesande (@OldBlackHack) April 5, 2017 The Pepsi Ad, PlayStation Ad, Nivea Ad, and now this. Is it what-can-we-do-to-purposely-insult-Black-people-week? Am I missing something? https://t.co/r7aXeFQ15i African Renaissance (@JJ_Bola) April 6, 2017 In the past, Nivea has been criticised for an ad that portrayed an African American man "re-civilvised" when he ditched his Afro hairdo, instead going for a regular hairdo. By Nidhi Verma | NEW DELHI NEW DELHI India's Iran oil imports jumped to a record high in 2016/17 topping half-a-million barrels per day (bpd) as refiners boosted purchases after lifting of some Western sanctions against Tehran last year.India, Iran's biggest oil buyer after China, was among a handful of countries that continued to deal with Tehran despite Western sanctions over its nuclear programme.Refiners shipped in about 541,000 bpd of Iranian oil in the fiscal year to March, a growth of about 115 percent over the previous year, ship tracking data obtained from sources and data compiled by Thomson Reuters Oil Research & Forecasts showed.Iran was India's second biggest oil supplier - a position now belonging to Iraq - before economic sanctions aimed at Iran's nuclear programme hampered its trade relations, forcing the South Asian nation to tap alternative suppliers. Purchases by Indian refiners, including Reliance Industries that resumed imports last year after a multi-year lay-off, helped Iran regain some of the lost market share.Imports from Iran could ease in this fiscal year as state-refiners have agreed to cut their annual imports deal with Iran by a fifth to put pressure on Tehran to award the Farzad B gas field to an Indian consortium.Iran, in turn has decided to cut the credit period on oil sales to 60 days from 90 days and cut freight discounts from 80 percent to 60 percent. India imported 18.7 percent less oil from Iran in March at about 526,000 bpd oil compared to the previous month, data showed. Volumes were however 4 percent higher than a year ago.Overall, India's oil imports rose 4.7 percent in March from the previous month, and by about 4.9 percent from a year ago. In March Iraq emerged as the second biggest oil supplier to India, a position it ceded to Iran the previous month. Saudi Arabia continued to be the top oil supplier to India in March.In the first quarter of this year India's oil imports from Iran surged by about 92 percent to 573,400 bpd as some OPEC producers had cut supplies, the data showed.Iran was exempted from an OPEC deal to reduce output by 1.2 million bpd starting Jan. 1, a victory for Tehran which argued it needs to regain the market share it lost during sanctions. (Reporting by Nidhi Verma, editing by David Evans) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Chants of death to the dictator grow louder as Iran protests intensify The protests in Iran that were sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini have now entered the 42nd day. The demonstrations are more powerful than ever and so is the crackdown by Iranian authorities. Thousands of mourners defied heightened security measures as they made their way to Aminis burial site in Dhaka: Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Friday embarked on a four-day visit to India which will see signing of at least 25 bilateral agreements including in key areas of civil nuclear cooperation and defence. During her visit, which comes after a gap of seven years, Hasina will hold wide-ranging talks with her Indian counterpart Narendra Modi on Saturday during which India is also set to announce a line of credit of USD 500 million to Bangladesh for military supplies. "The upcoming visit is expected to further expand the cordial and cooperative relationship between India and Bangladesh and build on the strong ties of friendship and trust between the two leaders," a joint statement issued by the two countries said earlier. Hasina will also call on President Pranab Mukherjee and meet opposition leader Sonia Gandhi. She will visit Ajmer on Sunday and will meet Indian business leaders on Monday. She will also join a function at Manekshaw Centre to honour Indian Armed Forces members who embraced martyrdom in Bangladesh's War of Liberation in 1971. Diplomatic quarters of both sides expected that the reciprocal visit of the Bangladesh premier would take the Dhaka-New Delhi "historic relations" to a new height unveiling newer dimensions of cooperation in various sectors including trade and commerce, economy and connectivity. It will be Hasina's first bilateral visit to India in her current term as prime minister. Ramping up cooperation in defence and security will be a major focus area of the talks between Modi and Hasina and apart from an MoU to provide USD 500 million credit, another pact is likely to be inked to formalise regular defence engagements. Issues like combating terrorism, containing radicalism and enhancing security cooperation between the two countries are likely to figure prominently besides stalemate over the Teesta pact during talks between Modi and Hasina. Liberation War Affairs minister AKM Mozammel Haque, Water Resources Minister Anisul Islam Mahmud, Law Minister Anisul Haque, Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali, the Premier's Economic Affairs Advisor Moshiour Rahman and State Minister for Foreign Affairs Shahriar Alam are accompanying Hasina for the visit. These are not random exercises in prejudice. These are part of a pattern and BJP leader Tarun Vijays comments about Indians not being racist, see, see, we all live with South Indians, arent we gracious, is not just an indictment of the man but enough misconduct to have him flung out of the party. Why would the party want to be associated with such a man? For one, it is his geography. How are Indians different from south Indians? Are they some sort of sub-species living in the country at the benediction and grace and courtesy of we Aryan North Indiansat the pleasure of the superior whiter race. Whats this, Natchez, Mississippi? And then this benighted leader goes on to describe them as black people as if up north in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh and Punjab and Haryana and Bengal everyone is bathed in skinfair cream. If this person had stood on a mountain and read out a scroll which said, Hear ye, hear ye, I am as racist as a slave-owner in the American south, as nasty and ugly in my mind as the reddest of rednecks and amplified his thoughts he could not have done a better job of shooting himself in the foot. And that is the point. If BJP frontliners are thinking like this what price this partys sense of unity and oneness and its expressions of overdeveloped impropriety. After spilling the toxic waste in his mind he obviously rushes to apologise. For what? Even saying sorry makes one sick to the stomach. That Mr Vijay is how you think. At least accept that. When will suitable action be taken against such people for their utterances. The sheer dishonesty of it all is what is staggering. Vijay denies that the bashings of African students in Greater Noida were racist and the tangible proof of this lies in our tolerance of south Indians because they are also dark. Yes, sure. One can see all the bruised and battered Africans saying, right, man, got your point, just an error in judgment, after all, you are tight with your black people, so do the math, you must be tight with us tooand there we were thinking its racist, thanks so much for putting us back on track. If he had said, you know what, lets be blunt, we do have a big brother attitude to the south and yes people of dark colour are victims of ugliness all over India and it is a damn disgrace that we should think like this and it is time it stopped, I would have been the first to shake his hand and say, thank you Sir, for saying it like it is and enough is enough. But he did not do that. He said something so politically outrageous, so alarmingly lacking in knowledge and common sense and so mean-spirited that unless we Indians are prepared to wake up and understand that we are facing a huge ethnic, casteist, religious divide fanned by the very people voted in to create togetherness as the bedrock of a new India we will lemming over the cliff and it will be too late by the time we figure out how hatred and contempt are the new fragrances in our country. Let me tell you something, Tarun Vijay. I am from the Punjab. My wife is from Kerala. North and South. And in the 37 years she has been married to me its not as though she was permitted by me to stay in the house, you silly fellow, or that I was doing her some huge favour in kindness, or that she was in some way being given a gift of my beneficence. Even in trying to explain this idiocy one gives you uncalled for credit by recognising you. I dont know, why do we even try saving a lost causethis hatefulness, this pettiness keeps growing like a poisonous weed and all we do is write about it when we should be rooting it out. Merely days after a Muslim man brutally beaten up by cow vigilantes in Rajashtan's Alwar district died from his injuries, the Supreme Court on Friday issued notices to Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Jharkhand and Karnataka to respond on the issue of cow vigilantism in three weeks. A bench comprising Justices Dipak Misra and AM Khanwilkar issued the notices on a plea seeking a ban on cow vigilante groups in the six states. The bench has fixed the matter for hearing on 3 May. This notice comes after 55-year-old Pehlu Khan died on Monday night after he and at least four others were injured when a mob attacked nearly 15 persons in Alwar, Rajasthan, over suspicion that Khan and the others were involved in illegal cow smuggling. Khan was beaten up despite the fact that he produced documents to show that they had bought the cows and were not involved in illegal cow smuggling. During the brief hearing in the apex court, the counsel appearing for the petitioner referred to the recent incident at Alwar. The counsel claimed that the ground-level situation in these states was worrisome as the cow vigilante groups were resorting to violence there. Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar, appearing for the Centre, told the bench that formal notices were not issued to the states on the plea after which the apex court sought response from these six states. The Supreme Court had on 21 October last year agreed to examine the plea which sought action against cow vigilantes who were allegedly indulging in violence and committing atrocities against Dalits and minorities. Activist Tehseen S Poonawalla, in his plea, said violence committed by these 'Gau Raksha' groups have reached to such proportions that even Prime Minister Narendra Modi had declared them as people who are "destroying the society". The plea also alleged that these groups were committing atrocities against Dalits and minorities in the name of protection of cows and other bovines and they needed to be "regulated and banned in the interest of social harmony, public morality and law and order in the country". "The menace caused by the so-called cow protection groups is spreading fast to every nook and corner of the country and is creating disharmony among various communities and castes," the petition said. The plea sought to declare as "unconstitutional" section 12 of the Gujarat Animal Prevention Act, 1954, Section 13 of Maharashtra Animal Prevention Act, 1976, and Section 15 of Karnataka Prevention of Cow Slaughter and Cattle Preservation Act, 1964, which provide for protection of persons acting in good faith under the Act or rules. "These laws and the protection granted therewith act as a catalyst to violence perpetrated by these vigilante groups," it said. Seeking action against the vigilantes, the petition said the atrocities committed by them were punishable under various provisions of IPC and under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of atrocities) Act, 1989. A week ago, the punishment for those found guilty of cow slaughter in poll-bound Gujarat was enhanced to life term under a more stringent law passed on Friday by the state Assembly. With the passing of the Amendment Bill, Gujarat became the first state in the country to make cow slaughter punishable with a life term. Cow slaughter had also been made a non-bailable offence. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's direction to police officials to prepare an action plan for closure of illegal slaughter houses across the state had sparked controversy and even furore in the Rajya Sabha, as a TMC member said that due to the "arbitrary clampdown", the livelihood of thousands of people had been affected. On Thursday, BJP MLA Mangal Prabhat Lodha said in the Maharashtra Assembly that cow slaughter should be punishable by death. He was speaking during a debate on Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Maharashtra Amendment) Bill which regularises the bullock cart races in Maharashtra. "Cow slaughter should be punishable by death and beef export should be stopped," Lodha said. With inputs from PTI New Delhi: Two events connect Delhi with the Se La in Tawang within a space of 24 hours. In roughly two hours from the time of writing, the Dalai Lama is expected to cross Se La. He is on his way to the Galden Namgey Lhatsey monastery in Tawang. A large gathering is waiting to welcome him at Se La which also marks the beginning of Tawang district and is around two hours away by road from the town. Se La, often written as the Sela Pass, is a 13,700-foot-high crossing on the highway that connects Tawang to Tezpur. In 1962, when the Chinese invaded India, a lone soldier, Sepoy Jaswant Singh Rawat, waged a valiant battle at the pass. When a woman from a nearby village brought him food, she found him dead. Then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru told Indians on the radio that his heart went out to the people of Assam. New Delhi and India had all but given up on what we call the "North East". The second event was in New Delhi on Thursday evening. At the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Major-General Jarken Gamlin was the first military officer from Arunachal Pradesh to be conferred with the Ati Vishist Seva Medal for, according to the citation, "distinguished service of an exceptional order". The the first general from Arunachal Pradesh, Gamlin belongs to the 2/8 Gorkhas, the battalion that carries Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw's legacy. China has taken umbrage at one of the two events: The visit of the Dalai Lama. It might as well find it offensive that Gamlin Gambo to his friends is being conferred a high medal. Gambo should be Chinese if Beijing's claims over Arunachal Pradesh are credible. After all, China does refer to Arunachal Pradesh as 'South Tibet'. Some 2,500 kilometres west of Tawang, in Ladakh, where, the India-China frontier extends, there is a funny game that is played. It is played on land and in the water. At the Pangong Tso, the lake that the two countries dispute, either side whirlpools the other's patrols with speed-boats. The border is not marked on the waters. At Se La in Arunachal, around which there are believed to be a hundred lakes, the Dalai Lama on Friday afternoon will be received by monks of his own Gelug sect of Tibetan Mahayana Buddhism, as well as the townspeople of Tawang. Despite the insistence of the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi that the Dalai Lama's visit to Arunachal was a religious and spiritual mission, he has indeed referred to China obliquely. The visit is at once political and strategic. At Dirang in Arunachal Pradesh on Wednesday, he told journalists, going from the general to the specific that: The situation inside Tibet is tragic. The situation in the 21st Century will be miserable if it continues like this. The world suffers from short-sightedness which is not good. We should not bully each other. The fulminations of China's state-run media, specifically the Global Times, may not be misplaced. The publication, believed to be the medium of choice for international correspondence of the Chinese Communist Party, threatened, among other things, that "(if) New Delhi ruins the Sino-India ties and the two countries turn into open rivals, can India afford the consequences?" War is an option, unlike what peaceniks believe. It is but an option of last resort. In Ladakh last August, this correspondent was eyewitness to the many pillboxes and bunkers dug into a brown and barren ridge along the Pangong Tso that were not there three years back. There were also new regiments of armoured vehicles. On the other side of the unmarked border, were the Chinese highways and state-ways. India believes it is only catching-up with China's border infrastructure. By late on Friday afternoon, when the Dalai Lama finally reaches Tawang, the monastery in which he took refuge while fleeing from Tibet in 1959, a monastery run by his own Gelugpa (the Tibetan Mahayana Buddhist sect), some more mortar and concrete has rolled up the Himalayas. What mystifies is New Delhi's new attitude to Beijing: Monk and menace, pontiff and peace. Former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda on Thursday claimed that he was a victim of "political vendetta" and maintained that he had done no wrong after the CBI registered a case of criminal conspiracy and cheating against him. The CBI has registered a case against Hooda and Associated Journals Ltd (AJL), which runs National Herald, for alleged irregularities in the land allotted to the newspaper. "I have said this earlier too that political vendetta is being unleashed against me. This is vendetta and witch-hunt. Nothing wrong has been done during my tenure (as CM) and in this case too, the rules were followed," the two-time former chief minister said over phone when asked to comment on the CBI lodging FIR against him. AJL is reportedly controlled by senior Congress leaders including the Gandhi family through Young India Limited. AJL founded by Jawaharlal Nehru runs National Herald newspaper. The CBI has taken over the FIR registered by State Vigilance Bureau of Haryana related to charges of criminal conspiracy, cheating and corruption against the then chairman HUDA (the then chief minister Hooda), then chief administrator, HUDA, the then administrator, financial commissioner, town and country planning department, AJL and others. As per the procedure, the agency takes over the FIR registered by a state police or state department and carries out its own investigation. The conclusions are reached by the agency independently which may differ from the line of investigation by the state police. Based on its conclusions, the CBI might charge sheet the accused, it may add or delete an accused in the charge sheet or file a closure report if no crime is proved. The complaint from Haryana Government, which is now part of the CBI FIR, alleged that AJL was allotted a plot in Panchkula in 1982 on which no construction took place till 1992 prompting the Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA) to resume the plot. The FIR alleged that the then chief minister Hooda as chairman of HUDA abused his position, contravened the policies and went against the advice rendered by the official to re-advertise the plot and re-alloted it to AJL at original rates plus interest on 28 August, 2005. The Haryana state vigilance bureau had registered a case of cheating and corruption against Hooda and four officials on 5 May, 2016. The vigilance bureau found in its investigation that the institutional plot No. C-17 in Sector-6 of Panchkula was re-allotted by Hooda in an arbitrary manner and in complete violation and disregard to the rules by causing loss to the state. Hooda, however, claimed that the plot was not given at original rates and the interest amounting to several lakh rupees was paid by the AJL. Last year, CBI had carried out searches at 20 locations including the residences of Hooda in a case of alleged irregularities in acquisition of land in Gurugram in which farmers were allegedly cheated to the tune of Rs 1,500 crore. Hooda had then termed the CBI searches at his residences as "political vendetta" unleashed by the BJP government. The former CM had also dubbed the institution of a Commission of Inquiry, which probed grant of land licences to some companies, including that of Robert Vadra, the son-in-law of Congress president Sonia Gandhi in Gurugram, as "politically motivated" and an act of "political vendetta". With inputs from agencies Jaipur: Three persons arrested in connection with the death of a man after he was beaten up by so-called cow vigilantes in Rajasthan's Alwar district were sent to 14-day judicial custody on Friday. Kalu Ram (44) of Ratanpura, Vipin Yadav (19) and Ravindra Yadav (30), both from Behror, were produced in a court, which granted their custody and they were sent to jail, Alwar SP Rahul Prakash told PTI. He said no fresh arrest has been made in the case and that police teams are looking for other accused named in the FIR. The three were on one-day police remand, after they were booked under sections 302 (murder), 143 (unlawful assembly), 308 (culpable homicide), among others of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). They have identified on the basis of a video footage and are among the prime accused in the case. Last Saturday, Pehlu Khan (55) and four others, including his two sons, were brutally beaten up by so-called cow vigilantes who suspected that they were smuggling cows. As many as 16 people were transporting 36 bovine animals in six pick-up vans. They were on their way to Haryana from Jaipur when they were stopped on Jaipur-Delhi national highway. Khan died on Monday during treatment. New Delhi: Air India revoked its flight ban on Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad with immediate effect, two weeks after he had assaulted an airline staffer onboard a plane. An airline spokesperson said the move follows a written order from the Ministry of Civil Aviation. Aviation sources said that with the national carrier revoking the ban, private airlines may follow suit. The 56-year-old Osmanabad MP had written a letter to Minister for Civil Aviation Ashok Gajapathi Raju on Thursday, expressing regret over the "unfortunate incident" on 23 March. "I write to convey my regrets for the unfortunate incident that took place on 23rd March, 2017 in the Air India Flight No. AI-852 seat No.1F," Gaikwad had said in the letter. The ban was lifted by Air India, hours after it thwarted an attempt by Gaikwad to book a ticket for the seventh time in the last two weeks. However, the MP, in a statement denied having made any attempt to book a flight. An airline head on the condition of anonymity said it has been agreed that police investigation will continue and the MP will give a commitment that he will show acceptable behaviour in the future. Gaikwad had assaulted an Air India employee and had boastfully claimed on national TV about having hit him with slippers 25 times. He was banned by the airline on 24 March. He, however, played the victim card, claiming he had only retaliated when provoked. The MP, who had attended the Lok Sabha for the first time since the incident on Thursday, denied any "wrongdoing" on his part and instead accused Air India officials of misbehaving with him, and saught action against them, especially the airline's CMD. He struck a somewhat conciliatory note when he tendered an apology to Parliament but insisted he owed no apology to the airline officials. In his letter to the civil aviation minister, the MP had stopped short of tendering an apology to either the national carrier or the staffer concerned. A combative Shiv Sena had threatened to disrupt AI operations in Mumbai and Pune and forced repeated adjournment of the Lok Sabha over the issue. The party had also declared it would not attend the April 10 meeting of the NDA if the ban was not lifted. Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina has landed in India. She was received at the airport by her Indian counterpart Narendra Modi, who tweeted: Delighted to welcome H.E. Sheikh Hasina, the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, on her State Visit to India. pic.twitter.com/yPOlNQA4nw Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) April 7, 2017 Ahead of this significant state visit, it's worth revisiting relations between the two South Asian neighbours: India and Bangladesh, two South Asian democracies, neighbours with the longest common border of over 4,000 km have shared a complex equation with their share of highs and lows in the last few years. The partners in progress and development and have, over the last seven years, been able to sketch out an increasingly deepening engagement trajectory. India was the first country to recognise Bangladesh as a separate and independent state and established diplomatic relations with the country immediately after its independence in December 1971. Indias connections with Bangladesh are cultural, social, civilisational and economic. President Pranab Mukherjee said on Wednesday, "It is a matter of satisfaction that the close relations between India and Bangladesh have substantially expanded in recent years. We have succeeded in enhancing and intensifying our cooperation in areas of our shared interest." However, according to a Hindu Business Line report, Bangladesh-India relations are perhaps the most complex bilateral equations in the subcontinent. Despite its role in Bangladeshs independence in 1971, India is often seen as serving its own self-interests against neighbouring Pakistan. Here are some of the primary issues that define their tumultous equation. Border issues Illegal immigration has always been a primary problem for India since the partition of Bengal. In view of this, recently, the Supreme Court asked the Centre complete the fencing of the India-Bangladesh border soon to check illegal immigration from Bangladesh into Assam. The apex court on Wednesday also directed it to release funds for it. A bench of Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice RF Nariman was told by the Centre that on 10 March, the Expenditure and Finance Committee would have a meeting, which would also be attended by Home Secretary, to decide the issue of releasing funds. In March, the Border Security Force (BSF) had sounded a high alert all along the India-Bangladesh border in view of a terror attack in Bangladesh. Apart from terror attacks, cattle smuggling ia slo an issue. On 3 March, more than 100 head of cattle were seized and a Bangladeshi smuggler arrested along the India-Bangladesh border in Meghalaya, a BSF official said. Border Security Force (BSF) spokesman Sushil Kumar Singh had said 107 head of cattle, meant to be smuggled to Bangladesh, were captured from South West Garo Hills and East Khasi Hills districts on Thursday night. The Insitute of Defence Studies and Analysis says, a report sent by the Bangladesh government to Indias Ministry of Home Affairs noted that approximately 2,010 operatives of the Harkat ul Jihad al Islami Bangladesh (HUJI-B) and Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) had entered India through the porous India-Bangladesh border. While nearly 720 men made a safe passage through the Bengal border, the remaining 1,290 are suspected to have entered through Assam and Tripura. The number of such infiltrations through the Indo-Bangladesh border in 2014 and 2015 stood at 800 and 659, respectively. "Cattle haats along the India-Bangladesh border are becoming a source of cattle for smuggling," Singh said, even as he revealed that there is sudden spurt of cattle smuggling in Garo Hills region. The BSF has increased its vigil at border keeping in view of the increased attempts of cattle smugglers, he added. Teesta row Both India and Bangladesh, as good neighbours, have moved forward on other sectors like power, investment and security but the Teesta waters issue remains a vexed problem. Though an agreement on sharing of the Teesta waters was drafted ahead of then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Bangladesh, it was withdrawn at the last moment when West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee protested against the accord. Banerjee's position is that the treaty would render north Bengal dry and affect Indian farmers. She is of the view that with Bangladesh having its largest irrigation project, the Teesta Barrage, running, the country does not deserve more water. Despite the bilateral bonhomie, Bangladesh is unhappy about the lack of resolution on all the common rivers. While India did put the river Teesta on the bilateral discussion table, the federal political dynamics has prevented the Centre from resolving the issue of water-sharing overruling Bengal's position. Irrespective of the number of outstanding bilateral issues being resolved, lack of resolution on the contentious issue of sharing of common river waters tends to create despair if not suspicion of India's intention in Bangladesh. This issue has been rankling since 2015 and a recent attempt by the Narendra Modi government to renegotiate with Bengal over this appears to have drawn a blank. While New Delhi can legitimately move ahead on a bilateral resolution, it may not want to give Bengal, led by the feisty Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, a handle to spin yet another round of dance and drama just now as she had done earlier over the Teesta water-sharing issue. Though Banerjee is scheduled to join a banquet dinner hosted by Mukherjee in honour of Hasina, she will not attend the bilateral summit to be held at Hyderabad House. Though a host of bilateral agreements are expected to be signed during Hasina's visit to India a key agreement on Teesta waters about which there has been wide speculation is unlikely to be inked, it is reliably learnt. The Teesta waters issue apart, the Bangladesh side is also very keen about a Ganga Barrage and talks in this regard are expected during the summit. Bilateral Trade India-Bangladesh relations have seen a steady growth in trade in the last few years. According to the data of Ministry of External Affairs, Indias exports to Bangladesh in 2015-16 (July-June) were US$ 5452.90 million and imports from Bangladesh during the same period were US$ 689.62 million. In the five years (from FY 2011-12 to FY 2015-16), total trade between the two countries has grown by more than 17%. More details on bilateral trade statistics are on the website of High Commission of India in Dhaka. There are more than 50 bilateral institutional mechanisms between India and Bangladesh. Connectivity is another issue of mutual interest and an MoU is likely to be signed on running passenger and goods trains which will be of benefit to Bangladesh and northeast India. Ahead of Hasina's visit to India this week, the Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved various bilateral MoUs on river transport, judicial cooperation, audio-visual cooperation and media. Among these Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) is one on the development of Ashuganj-Zakiganj stretch of Kushiyara river and Sirajganj-Daikhawa stretch of the Jamuna river to improve connectivity between the two countries. An official release said the MoU will help reduce logistics cost of cargo movement to northeast India and also reduce congestion through the Siliguri's Chicken's Neck corridor. Both countries will undertake necessary dredging jointly via the India-Bangladesh protocol route. Another MoU pertains to passenger cruise services on coastal and protocol routes between India and Bangladesh to ferry people on water crafts between the two countries. The MoU that got the nod aims at strengthening mutual cooperation between the judiciaries of the two countries through exchange of knowledge in infrastructure and information technology. During Hasina's visit, a bus service and a train service between Kolkata and Khulna will also be launched as a rail link from Radhikapur in north Bengal. Defence and power Among the 25 to 30 agreements that are expected to be signed during the visit, there will be two memorandums of understanding on defence. While an MoU will be signed on defence cooperation under which New Delhi will extend a line of credit of $500 million to Dhaka to buy defence equipment from India, the second MoU will be on setting up training colleges. Cooperation on defence training between India and Bangladesh has been very strong with a set of standard operating procedures in place. Energy cooperation between the two sides has also shown a lot of positivity with India already transmitting additional power to its eastern neighbour. Tripura is ready to supply an additional 60 MW of power to Bangladesh. The transmission is likely to start during Hasina's four-day visit to India, a Mminister said here on Thursday. "We are ready to supply the additional 60 MW power to Bangladesh. Our engineers have tested the transmission lines... and given an okay," Tripura Power and Transport Minister Manik Dey said. He said: "Since last week, on experimental basis, additional electricity was supplied to Bangladesh for several days. Formal supply of power is likely to start during Hasina's visit that begins on Friday." Tripura has been supplying 100 MW of electricity to Bangladesh since 23 March, 2016, in addition to the 500 MW the country is receiving from West Bengal since 2013. According to the minister, NTPC Vidyut Vyapar Nigam Ltd (NVVN) and Tripura State Electricity Corporation Ltd (TSECL) are the two nodal agencies who will coordinate supply of electricity to Bangladesh. "Bangladesh has sought additional 100 MW electricity from India to solve its power crisis in the eastern part of the country. As Tripura government was ready to provide this additional power... India informed Bangladesh accordingly," Dey said. "Considering their existing technical feasibility now, they would take 60 MW electricity," he added. According to a report published by The Diplomat, while Dhaka does have some legitimate grudges against New Delhi it cannot be defined as having an anti-Indian stance, nor has the country ever neglected historical and cultural commonalities. Bangladesh has not been excessively dependent on any one neighbouring country, ensuring a degree of autonomy in its foreign policy unlike some of Indias other neighbours. With inputs from agencies India is planning a red carpet welcome for Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina following her arrival on a four-day state visit. Bangladesh is one of Indias close friends in the neighbourhood, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants to make sure that this equation remains intact, more so with China hovering in the wings with its cheque book diplomacy. The Opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) that has always dubbed her an 'Indian stooge' will be watching the visit with interest, and will pounce on her for any perceived concession. With national elections slated for 2018, the BNP is looking for any weakness to exploit in its attack on the Awami League. The partys closeness to India has always been exploited during elections. Already, knowing that the Teesta water sharing issue is hanging fire, thanks to West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjees intransigence, BNP secretary-general Mirza Fakrul Islam has already f fired the first salvo a couple of weeks earlier, maintaining that without finalising the Teesta agreement the prime ministers trip will be meaningless. Mamata will be in the capital for the luncheon organised by Modi for Hasina. There is hope that Teesta water-sharing will also be discussed. And while no one is expecting a deal to be signed, there is hope for some forward movement. President Pranab Mukherjee, who has excellent ties with both Hasina and Mamata, is also hoping to play a role in persuading the chief minister. "Teesta water-sharing is a work-in-progress. It is a challenge we will continue to pursue," Sripriya Ranganathan , joint secretary for Bangladesh and Myanmar in the MEA, said at a news briefing on Thursday. India is hoping to make Hasinas trip a major success. Around 20 agreements, including a defence framework pact, the announcement of additional train and bus routes, an MoU on supply of high-speed diesel, cyber security and upgradation of existing projects. An agreement on nuclear energy, including the setting up of small nuclear power plants in Bangladesh is also on the cards. India and Bangladesh already have excellent anti-terror cooperation with intelligence agencies of both countries working closely together. The details of the defence agreement are not known but according to news reports from Dhaka, India wanted a 25-year long agreement that the Hasina government was not prepared to sign. Ranganathan however denied this, saying such agreements are generally signed for a five-year period and are reviewed by both sides for further extension if need be. Apart from the framework MoU on defence, the other agreement will be sourcing defence suppliers from India. This means Delhi will begin supplying equipment to Bangladesh. Defence research and development will also be one part of the component. But those opposed to the Awami League are uncomfortable with a defence agreement. "There is deep resentment about the possibility of a defence pact, because it does not make sense for Bangladesh. For a smaller neighbour, the thought that there will be a Big Brother looking over your shoulder at all times isn't welcome," Fazal Kamal, a prominent Bangladeshi analyst said. India scrambled to get the defence agreement going, after Bangladesh bought two refurbished submarines from China at the competitive price of $24 billion. Red flags were raised in India about Chinas growing footprint in Indias immediate neighbourhood. Chinese president Xi Jinping, during his visit to Dhaka last October, extended a $24 billion loan to Bangladesh. All this falls in with New Delhis concerns about China spreading its wings and getting all its neighbours to fall in line with the 'One Belt One Road' vision of the Chinese president. During Xis visit, relations between China and Bangladesh were elevated from "comprehensive partnership cooperation" to "strategic partnership cooperation". "Hasinas visit is an important one. With Xi already showering her with gifts, India will extend another line of credit, but naturally on a smaller scale. But there will be a fresh line of credit and hopefully with Mamata flying in to meet the visiting dignitary, there will be some forward movement on the Teesta, although the deal will not be signed and sealed," said former foreign secretary Lalit Mansingh. India is aware that with national elections next year, Hasina cannot go back emptyhanded. The Awami League hopes India will play a part in ensuring that elections will be free and fair. The Opposition and many BNP supporters in the country believe that Indias support to the Awami League helped it to ride roughshod over the Opposition and do whatever it wanted to remain in power. The BNP and its allies had boycotted the 2013 elections, because the Awami League had refused to put in place a caretaker government. The voter turnout was at a dismal three to five percent, and most of the candidates were elected unopposed as no candidate could be found to contest. "Keeping in mind what happened last time, the expectation is that New Delhi will encourage the Awami League to work toward an inclusive political process," Kamal said. Hasinas ceremonial welcome and talks with Modi will take place on Saturday. Tibetans have made India their home since 1959 when they crossed the Himalayas along with their spiritual leader the Dalai Lama. Fleeing the Chinese invasion of their homeland, the Tibetans have become an ubiquitous part of Indian life. It is hard to miss their influence in our cities and the Dalai Lama has become inseparably associated with how most Indians view Buddhism. However, by granting refugee status to the Tibetan people in 1959 meant that India stood up to the communist Chinese. Our protection of the Dalai Lama has become a bone of contention between the two nations. Especially when it comes to the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which the Chinese call "South Tibet". The dispute stems from a tripartite agreement between what was then British India, Tibet and China regarding the boundary in that region. The Chinese view the boundary as a colonial agreement that was forced upon a weak China and therefore refuse to honour it. They further maintain that Tibet was never truly sovereign and therefore not competent to enter into the agreement. India views the boundary as a settled question and abides by the terms of the treaty. As the lawful successor state of British India, India succeeded numerous boundary treaties negotiated by the British Crown. Most of Uttarakhand was won via these treaties These disputes led India and China to fight a war in 1961 which ended in a stalemate on the territorial question. However, India continues to host the Dalai Lama and receive Tibetan refugees. The Dalai Lama is currently visiting Arunachal Pradesh on a visit. As usual, the Chinese are protesting vehemently. This however, is a good time to also discuss the status of Tibetan refugees in India, who live in a legal limbo. India does not have a well-defined refugee policy nor is it party to the Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons or Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees or the Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees. India's Tibetan population therefore exist as foreigners, who have all be granted Residence Permits by local authorities when they arrive. When they have to travel, they have to obtain identity certificates from the Ministry of External Affairs on the recommendation of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. They then need to apply for an exit permit to leave the country and before they do, they also need to make sure they have a re-entry permit so they can come back. This is called a NORI or a "No Objection to Return to India" stamp. These identity certificates are not passports or travel documents: Since India is not a party to the convention, these documents cannot count as refugee travel documents. Lastly, these identity papers are not accepted by all countries. In 2016, Sweden stopped accepting the identity certificate as valid travel document. Further, since Tibet is not recognised as a state and Tibetan refugees are not Indian citizens or Chinese citizens, no country exercises clear diplomatic protection over them. For example, tomorrow if an Indian Tibetan refugee is travelling abroad and was to be deported, based on their certificate of identity, authorities in a country friendly to China, could potentially deport them to China. Which would be a horrible fate for someone who has fled Chinese persecution. It's high time India rationalised its refugee policy and created a formal framework instead of ad hoc mechanisms. That may still be a long way away, but in the short run, since there is an all-party consensus that having Tibetan refugees in India is a good thing, it might make sense to at least provide for a legislative framework for their stay in India. While granting Tibetans Indian nationality may be counter-productive given their fight for Independence from Chinese rule and Indian foreign policy interests, formally exercising protection could be a bold foreign policy move. Indian law can be amended to give Tibetan refugees a form of nationality that is short of Indian citizenship, such as the status of a protected persons. This status can be granted after negotiation with the Dalai Lama. After that, the refugees can be issued Indian travel documents and can enjoy diplomatic protection while overseas. India formally exercising a protection over Tibetans will send a clear signal to Beijing that it will not bow down to its bullying over what is clearly an internal matter for India. Who we host within our home is of no concert to anyone else. Lucknow: There were not many takers when new Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath warned that he was a workaholic and only those who can work 18-20 hours a day can keep pace with him. Less than a month since, the state's elite bureaucracy has learnt the lesson the hard way, that they can even be asked to report in the dead of night, literally. Soon after assuming charge, Adityanath had given a stern message to officials that those who were not prepared to work 18-20 hours a day were free to make way. "The state government will not tolerate any laxity in implementation of its schemes. Officers willing to work 18-20 hours a day can continue with the government or else, they are free to leave," he had declared on his home turf of Gorakhpur. "I am a workaholic and the bureaucrats will have to deliver too. Those ready to work hard should continue and the non-performers should leave," he had said clearly. But many had taken it as a rhetoric as the state bureaucracy was not used to such a style of functioning. Adityanath, who took over the reins of the state on 19 March, got cracking in no time and went on a reviewing spree of the working of various key departments. He has been taking up four to six departments a day during meetings which often start around 6 pm. Officials, on the condition of anonymity, say the idea is that after the routine work of the day, the meetings would start in the evening, so that work is not disturbed. These meetings, at times, continue well past midnight. The one on the working of the education department earlier this week went on till 12.30 am. The unusual timings have also kept state information department officials on their toes. They are sending press releases till 2 am, leaving media persons wondering as to whether to file the story at night or keep it for the morning. A senior official was called twice while he was getting into his official vehicle at the portico of the secretariat annexe as the chief minister wanted certain clarifications. Though some in the bureaucracy feel that things will soon settle down and the functioning of the government will return to its "normal" speed, others are a little sceptical as they have heard of Adityanath's routine of waking up at 3 am and not returning to bed before 11 pm. Some officials feel that less than eight hours of sleep a day will affect their health in the long run. Those who wanted to return to the state cadre after the change of guard are a little disheartened that there will be no time for themselves in this action-packed routine. Adityanath's Cabinet colleagues are also taken aback that the chief minister has been burning the proverbial midnight oil to honour the BJP's motto of "sabka saath, sabka vikas". Adityanath had earlier told them bluntly to not use hooters and sirens in their vehicles as it added to the noise pollution and disturbed the public. World Health Day is celebrated on 7 April this year and it is centred around the theme 'Depression: lets talk'. Cases of depression have ballooned almost 20 percent in the last decade, making the debilitating disorder linked to suicide the leading cause of disability worldwide. Rates of depression have risen by more than 18 percent since 2005, but a lack of support for mental health combined with a common fear of stigma means many do not get the treatment they need to live healthy and productive lives. Which is why it is important to understand depression and break the stigma around it. "These new figures are a wake-up call for all countries to rethink their approaches to mental health and to treat it with the urgency that it deserves," WHO chief Margaret Chan had said in a statement. Recently, a 24-year-old student from Mumbai, Arjun Bhardwaj, had committed suicide by jumping off the 19-storey room of Hotel Taj Lands End in Bandra, highlighting the need raise the dialogue on depression. Understanding depression Depression is a common mental illness characterised by persistent sadness and a loss of interest and lack of ability in everyday activities and work. It affects around 322 million people worldwide. According to WHO, depression is different from usual mood fluctuations and short-lived emotional responses to challenges in everyday life. Especially when long-lasting and with moderate or severe intensity, depression may become a serious health condition. It can cause the affected person to suffer greatly and function poorly at work, at school and in the family. Depression also increases the risk of several major diseases and disorders including addiction, suicidal behaviour, diabetes and heart disease, which are themselves among the world's biggest killers. "For someone living with depression, talking to a person they trust is often the first step towards treatment and recovery," said Shekhar Saxena, director of the WHO's mental health department. To understand the common misconceptions and myths around depression in India, Firstpost spoke to Prachi Akhavi, a clinical psychologist working with Ehsaas, a psychotherapy Clinic at Ambedkar University Delhi: "In India, there are many myths around depression. Quite often, it is dismissed as 'just sadness'. This leads to a belief that it's a choice one has made and can be stepped out of without professional or even familial help," "As with most mental health issues, the perception exists that someone has to be held responsible... more often than not, the parents or the family is blamed, which creates a resistance towards accepting depression as a serious issue," Akhavi said. Types and symptoms Depending on the number and severity of symptoms, a depressive episode can be categorised as mild, moderate, or severe. Recurrent depressive disorder: This disorder involves repeated depressive episodes. During these episodes, the person experiences depressed mood, loss of interest and enjoyment, and reduced energy leading to diminished activity for at least two weeks. Many people with depression also suffer from anxiety symptoms, disturbed sleep and appetite and may have feelings of guilt or low self-worth, poor concentration and even medically unexplained symptoms. Bipolar affective disorder: This type of depression typically consists of both manic and depressive episodes separated by periods of normal mood. Manic episodes involve elevated or irritable mood, over-activity, pressure of speech, inflated self-esteem and a decreased need for sleep. Diagnosing and treating depression According to the WHO, although there are known, effective treatments for depression, fewer than half of those affected in the world (in many countries, fewer than 10 percent) receive such treatments. Barriers to effective care include a lack of resources, lack of trained health-care providers, and social stigma associated with mental disorders. Another barrier to effective care is an inaccurate assessment. In countries of all income levels like India, people who are depressed are often not correctly diagnosed, and others who do not have the disorder are too often misdiagnosed and prescribed antidepressants. The burden of depression and other mental health conditions is on the rise globally. "In the present day and age, a highly functional form of depression is prevalent. Because of the capitalistic structure of MNC culture, where one is mechanised into a productive functional ability, this affective disability/illness gets missed very easily," Akhavi said. There are effective treatments for moderate and severe depression. Health-care providers may offer psychological treatments such as behavioural activation, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), and interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT) or antidepressant medication (such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs). "A better understanding of depression and how it can be treated ... is just the beginning," said Saxena. "What needs to follow is sustained scale-up of mental health services accessible to everyone, even the most remote populations." Some facts about depression: - India is one of the most depressed countries in the world. According to the WHO, close to 36 percent of India are likely to suffer from major depression at some point in their lives. - As per a WHO report, in 2012, India accounted for the highest estimated number of suicides in the world. - One in four children in the age group of 13-15 years suffers from depression. - Depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide, and is a major contributor to the overall global burden of disease. - More women are affected by depression than men. - On average just 3 percent of government health budgets is spent on mental health With inputs from agencies, WHO By Nisha Susan Among the sharpest things the great Alice Walker ever wrote were these lines: He said come/Let me exploit you;/Somebody must do it/And wouldn't you/prefer a brother? Ive held on to these lines like a talisman through my 20s, spent among lefties, revolutionaries, revolution-lite-types and Hunter S Thompson-wannabes. Walker wrote it in the context of being betrayed by her fellow male travellers during the Civil Rights movement. Her description of the situation as the age-old dilemma for the masculine of what to do with the feminine after political change is made and woman clearly intends to remain by man's revolutionary side was one that I found useful everyday among activist men. Take three pieces of news on Thursday, 6 April 2017: Vikas Bahl, director of Queen, has been accused of molestation. Kumar Sundaram, an anti-nuclear activist, has been suspended from work at the leftie site India Resists because of extremely serious instances of sexual harassment. The Kochi Mayor Soumini Jain has filed a police complaint against Malayalam director Jude Anthany Joseph for abusing and threatening her when she refused him permission to shoot in a park. Among the responses to each of these cases is a strong streak of surprise that liberal men would behave in this way. Even Josephs own defence on Facebook takes the position that it is excusable that he raged at the Mayor because he had the noble intention of making a film about child sexual abuse. Back in the day, I clutched at Alice Walker to remind me that just because a man called himself a liberal didnt mean that he believed in my liberation. It taught me to trust my instincts if I didnt like being in a closed room with a man, never mind if he was the toast of the sexual revolution or the environmental movement. And certainly, it allowed me to feel utterly sourpuss about explanations from liberal gents such as he beats his wife but subalterns feel so oppressed that rage must go somewhere. Or he has had such a difficult life, you dont know. If he has had a difficult life, how does it get better by pawing/enslaving/torturing young women? My friend Paromita Vohra points out, Women need to introspect about why they are fascinated by these characters also. If you look for a progressive man, let him be progressive in love, not in world-changing ideas. So often for women, especially young women, the road to freedom, whatever that freedom looks like, may lie in the shape of a man. The man may be someone who tells you that being a Kalma-reading woman is the path to resisting a world in which you are struggling with Islamophobia. He may be someone who tells you that studying continental philosophy is the way to escape the dullness of your Kolkata college life. He may be someone who tells you that shaving your head and not shaving your armpits is the way to freedom from your petty bourgeoisie life. Or he may be the man who thrills you with his knowledge of a golden-age India you would have liked to live in, before the Mughals or the Brits or the Congress when we were all tolerant, caste-free Hindus. All keys to your way out might seem man-shaped so its hard to remember that the doors that keep you shut in are also man-shaped. What will we do if all liberal men get arrested for rape, wailed a much-admired feminist figure to me. So we are shocked, totally shocked, that a man who made Queen or the man who ran Tehelka or the man who revived dastangoi or a man who worked on nuclear non-proliferation or a man who chronicled caste wars would be violent to a woman. But should we be? We may be saddened at the loss of people we admire but we cant be so sad that we dont want them to be punished. We cant have a painful, clannish response of what is happening to our men, followed by the idiotic response of: this is a political conspiracy. We cannot be clannish about men, sisters, because men are not our clan. The liberal end of American media has been shocked recently at the snippet that US Vice-President Mike Pence doesnt dine with a woman other than his wife. Where does that leave his staff or professional acquaintances? Does this mean he is saying he cant hold himself back if he is alone with a woman, op-eds asked? In the second cycle of coverage, think pieces argued that it doesnt make Pence creepy look he has a history of hiring women. This is just how he chooses to live his life so who are we to judge, they argued. More interestingly, a piece or two argued that his is an explicit acknowledgement of the complications of workplaces where men and women work together. Liberals are so silly to pretend they dont exist, was the subtext. Does this mean that a man on the right-wing end of the spectrum is to be trusted more? Certainly, I have found it extremely pleasant to be friends with some conservative men single and married who would never talk sleaze. They had the emotional vocabulary and sense of security in their personal choices that they could talk of me as their dost, and of their dosti with me with open, unqualified pleasure. Did I find this pleasant because of my incipient prudery? No. It was from being sick of being around boys and men for decades whose idea of 2-minute instant-intimacy were sexual references, sexual jokes, sexual competitiveness. My vrat-keeping, arranged-marriage-loving pals were a wonderful contrast to encounters such as the time I was unexpectedly alone with a senior oh-so-radical male colleague. We were having a great work chat, I thought. I certainly gabbed on about layout, content and the amazing ideas I had just got from a young male designer I had met that week. He listened for a bit and then replied: Well, he is a good designer, but the question is, is he good in bed? I was shell-shocked. Not because I am a wilting maiden but he might as well have said, I am so bored by you, I am just going to be obnoxious in shutting you up. Should we instead trust the men in our lives who go to church/mosque/temple regularly and are comfortable calling themselves traditional or conservative? Please, no. Though I love them, if trapped in a design discussion with me, my conservative pals are also likely to make some lame reference to my Jhansi-Ki-Rani tendencies, or how glad they are that their wives have not put on weight after marriage. Alice Walker had a line for this moment too: No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow. The man may be a card-carrying anything but sisters, dont look at the card or the man for freedom. This is hard to do when even sensible people are engaged in this search for good men. My friend Arundhati Ghosh says her mother has a line, 'Shujoger obhabe choritrobaan' (good character only because of lack of opportunity). In this hilarious line lies a hard-packed truth. Male oppression comes in every shade of the political rainbow. A young woman once told me about the story of how she fell in love with a self-proclaimed radical who taught her the word patriarchy and helped her see the extreme discrimination she faced at home. Against much opposition she married him. Now, she spends a chunk of her time struggling with him. He would like her to eat what he likes to eat, to support him financially and otherwise in his political causes, be silent about his berating her lucrative work and of course, is wildly jealous of any men in her life. Liberated was just a box he ticked like another man would have ticked fair. In some ways, women who are in relationships either professional or personal with men who they dont think of as ideologically pure/purer in any way are likely to have a better deal. Is it because your expectations are just low? No, possibly its because you are not blinded by the idea that something larger than both of you will protect you and your interests. Its because you know you are the one in a permanent state of revolution. The Ladies Finger (TLF) is a leading online womens magazine The election to the municipal corporations in Delhi should be about the performance of the incumbent party in the civic bodies, right? The BJP heads all three corporations and during election time it should be facing tough questions about the generally awful civic affairs in the capital state. Interestingly, it's the Arvind Kejriwal-led state government that is facing all the heat. The MCD election is gradually taking shape of a referendum on the two-years-old Aam Aadmi Party government rather than a test of popular approval for the BJP which has been in power in the corporations far longer. Both the Congress and the BJP have been busy attacking the AAP government. The Shunglu Committee report, which finds several lapses in the conduct of the government, has provided them fresh ammo. The findings of the committee it was set up in 2016 by former Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung to look into several decisions taken by the government after it assumed power has little positive for a party planning to make a big bang entry in the MCDs. From appointments to residential accommodation to salaries to hand-picked people, the panel finds irregularities in the 404 files it studied. No matter which course the findings take later on, they will impact the AAP's prospects in the local elections. How? The findings take the sheen off the party which never stops claiming it is different from others, particularly in the area of corruption. The opposition is certain to take it to people aggressively even if it has little to do with civic affairs. The aim would be to damage whatever positive perception the party has left among masses. The AAP will be too engaged clarifying its position on the allegations to launch its own assault on the BJP. Looking at it objectively, the AAP has nothing much to lose in the MCD elections. It's making its debut this time and whatever seats it gets would count as gain for the party. If its win at least one of the three MCDs, it would be a bonus. According to poll watchers, East Delhi Corporation could land in AAP's bag if it campaigns right. However, a poor performance would mean it has made no actual gains in terms of popularity in Delhi. The massive assembly election victory two years ago - it won 67 of the state's 70 assembly seats - was a flash in the pan. It would also mean Arvind Kejriwal is no more the strong emerging political force he was made out to be. Now that the civic body election is turning out to be a referendum on his government, by implication it means it is a referendum on Kejriwal. Any honest assessment of him would reveal that he has only managed to send confusing signals about himself ever since he took over power, most of it negative. Once a hero of the middle class and the underclass, it's not clear who he represents now. While a few of his measures such as mohalla clinics and efforts to revamp school education have been appreciated, it is not clear where he stands as a political idealist or grassroots reformer. His compulsive obsessive Twitter attacks on Naredra Modi, many times without rhyme or reason, surely has not won him many friends. The MCD election would be a reality check for him and his party. If he wins handsomely, it would be clear that both have entrenched themselves in Delhi's politics and the BJP and the Congress can no more treat them as political upstarts. If they lose, then it's a spiral downward. The government would still be there for two more years but it would remain without any moral justification for being there. Ravindra Gaikwad has been allowed to fly again, after Air India lifted the ban it imposed on the Shiv Sena MP, for assaulting a 60-year-old staffer last month. The national airline carrier had demanded that the party and the MP should apologise for the act, and on Thursday, had said the ban would stay in place though Gaikwad "expressed regret". But one day later, it seems to have softened its stand, perhaps following threats issued by Shiv Sena, which threatened to boycott the NDA dinner to be hosted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday. In a letter dated April 6 addressed to Civil Aviation minister, he(Gaikwad) has conveyed his regrets for the unfortunate incident: Air India ANI (@ANI_news) April 7, 2017 Declared persona non grata by all major domestic airlines, Gaikwad on Thursday tendered an apology to the Lok Sabha for the incident and also voiced "regret" over the "unfortunate incident", while a combative Shiv Sena threatened to disrupt AI operations in Mumbai and Pune forced repeated adjournment of the House over the issue. It also declared it would not attend the 10 April meeting of the NDA if the ban was not lifted. Gaikwad, who attended the proceedings for the first time since the incident when he assaulted an Air India employee and boastfully claimed on national TV about having hit him with slippers 25 times, played a victim on Thursday, insisting he had only retaliated against provocation. As the ruling NDA ally made an all-out attempt to get the ban lifted, a string of meetings followed to break the impasse, with first signs of a possible resolution emerging when Home Minister Rajnath Singh assured the House that discussions will be held with the stakeholders to find an "amicable solution" at the earliest. On Thursday evening, Gaikwad wrote a letter to Union Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapthi Raju voicing "regret" over the "unfortunate incident". "I write to convey my regrets for the unfortunate incident that took place on 23 March, 2017 in the Air India Flight No. AI-852 seat No. 1F," Gaikwad said. "It could have been no one's intention to have let the situation aggravate to the level that it eventually did. While the on-going investigation will bring out the factual sequence of events to fix responsibility, this incident may kindly not be seen as a reason for likely recurrence of such an event in future also," he said in the letter. The letter, according to official sources, followed a meeting in Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan's chamber in Parliament where Shiv Sena MPs were told that if Gaikwad issued a statement committing that he would not engage in any such incident in future, the government could intervene and have the ban revoked. "As the restriction on flying is affecting the effective discharge of my duties and responsibilities, I would request you to lift this restriction and let the investigation eventually determine the circumstances which led to the incident," Gaikwad said. With inputs from PTI Some furious calculations are taking place in the O Panneerselvam camp as I write. That arithmetic exercise will determine what happens in the RK Nagar assembly constituency in the next 48 hours. The constituency that elected Jayalalithaa as its representative last year, goes to polls on 12 April. On the grid are placed the number of votes the AIADMK and the DMK bagged in May 2016. Jayalalithaa got 97,218 votes while the DMK candidate Shimla Muthuchozhan had 57,673 votes in her kitty. All the parties involved believe that this time, the DMK candidate Marathuganesh will hold on to the 57,000-odd hardcore DMK vote and could even net another 8,000-odd of the neutral RK Nagar vote. The race among the three branches of the AIADMK TTV Dhinakaran, E Madhusudanan and Deepa Jayakumar is to win a majority of the 97,000-odd votes that Jayalalithaa netted last year. The math is not complicated. Any one of them has to win more than 65,000 of the 97,000-strong AIADMK vote bank in order to pip DMK to the post. Otherwise, the DMK candidate Ganesh gains from the three-way split in the AIADMK vote. Almost all surveys done by media houses and political parties have predicted that the OPS camp is ahead of Team Sasikala. But coming second in the race will not help Panneerselvam. For him to win comfortably over the DMK, Team OPS has to ensure Dhinakaran does not get more than 20,000-odd votes. Assuming Deepa will take away another 5,000-odd vote, this will leave Madhusudanan with about 70,000-odd votes, a buffer of just about 5,000 votes over the DMK. That is the worry. The OPS camp alleges massive money distribution by Dhinakaran's men in the past week. The Rs 4,000 per vote that it alleges has been given, it fears, could force voters to choose the hat, Team Sasikala's symbol. If that increases Dhinakaran's vote share from 20,000 to about 35,000 votes, Panneerselvam's game will be up. The trick is to ensure Dhinakaran does not breach the 20,000 barrier. The OPS camp, with some help from the BJP-led government at the Centre and Dhinakaran, with the Tamil Nadu government machinery working overtime, are engaged in pushing their numbers. The administrative structure is being used in every possible way to win this high-stakes battle. The income tax raids on Health minister C Vijayabaskar and actor-turned-politician Sarath Kumar on Friday are seen as an indication. Only yesterday, Sarath Kumar had extended his support to Dhinakaran. Vijayabaskar is one of the most vocal critics of Panneerselvam and a staunch Sasikala loyalist. Vijayabaskar has alleged that the I-T department is harassing him and Sarath Kumar has said the sleuths did not find anything at his place. There is no clarity yet on what tip-off led to the early morning raids at 35 locations in Tamil Nadu, including 21 in Chennai and whether it was linked to the RK Nagar election. But the multiple signals that are being sent out are important. The nature of the I-T raids seems to indicate that in the AIADMK vs AIADMK battle for supremacy if you are not on Panneerselvam's side, you are a marked man. The fact that a senior minister and a top actor have been raided is to convey that no one is out of reach. The messaging is also intended for the voters who have been bribed and could well have an impact on voter psyche ahead of polling day. Transfer of senior police officers is the norm during an election but this time, virtually the entire rank and file has been moved out. Even the revenue department has seen officers moved out of RK Nagar. The municipal corporation's assistant and executive engineers have been shunted out. Five observers have been deployed just in one constituency, the highest in India's electoral history. These unprecedented measures are aimed at cutting off any channel that provides political oxygen supply of any kind to Dhinakaran. Not that the Dhinakaran camp is sitting silently. The arrest of one of Chennai's most high-profile realtor KR Anerudan on Wednesday in an old cheating case is seen as tit-for-tat as he is reportedly close to a senior leader in the OPS camp. Puthiya Thalamurai, one of the leading Tamil news channels, found itself facing the rough end of the stick when it was switched off in 15 districts in Tamil Nadu. This after it aired a survey that showed an overwhelming preference for the OPS group. Though the government-controlled Arasu cable denied having anything to do with it, no one buys the claim of innocence. Sources say the I-T raids may have achieved twin purposes. One, possibly prevented any plan to go in for the second round of distribution of money over the weekend. Not that the other parties are not distributing money. Their plan reportedly is to go in for targeted bribing which means paying money only to select 70,000-odd voters who they think will certainly vote for them. While it is not clear if and what kind of evidence the I-T teams have got from the multiple raids, it is quite possible that if large-scale bribing is detected, the Election Commission could reason that the situation in RK Nagar is not conducive to conduct the by-election. A precedent was set in Aravakurichi and Thanjavur last year when elections were countermanded after raids unearthed a lot of cash and bribing of voters. Dhinakaran alleges that the raids are with an eye to postpone the elections. Tamil Nadu is not new to a rainfall of goodies at election time. In 2003, sarees, utensils and cash were distributed in Sathankulam in Tuticorin district and the ruling AIADMK won the by-poll. Six years later, the DMK returned the compliment with what is now infamously known as the Thirumangalam formula in the constituency in Madurai district. Guided reportedly by Karunanidhi's son MK Alagiri, money was put in an envelope along with the DMK sign and attached to the newspaper on the morning of the election. DMK won the election. So while it is lottery time for the 2 lakh voters in RK Nagar, what is galling is that this farce of a democratic exercise will then determine the political future of Tamil Nadu. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has sparked controversy yet again. In his first television interview since he became chief minister, Adityanath told public broadcaster Doordarshan that there is nothing wrong with the idea of a Hindu rashtra (country). "I want to say something clearly. That is, the idea of Hindu rashtra is not wrong. A full bench of the Supreme Court has clearly ruled that Hindutva is not a... religion, or a ritual but a way of life. If this rashtra (nation) and raasta (road) helps to improve the lifestyle of people, to bring them happiness, then there should be no reason why anyone should hesitate to adopt it," NDTV quoted the Uttar Pradesh chief minister as saying in the interview. Both BJP and RSS backed Adityanath's remarks. "For far too long, we have been pseudo-seculars who frowned upon anything that is Hindu. Whats wrong in the CMs statement? He said that he would follow the path of peace and progress. Hinduism has always stood for peace," Hindustan Times quoted UP BJP general secretary Vijay Bahadur Pathak as saying. "There can be a new mode of worship and that mode of worship cannot disconnect, disown, deride, the pre-religious status of a culture, history, intellectual legacy of a nation. The Hindu rashtra is a secular, democratic and an inclusive concept," ANI quoted RSS leader Rakesh Sinha as saying. Meanwhile, Adityanath has also assured that those who abided by laws had nothing to worry about. "Those who abide by the law have no reason to worry. But those who don't believe in the rule of law ought to be worried," The Times of India quoted him as saying. Adityanath has also said that anti-Romeo squads were meant to save girl students from harassment and not to harass consenting adults. Adityanath has also appealed to people to not take law in their own hands during protest against shifting of liquor vends from highways to populated areas. The chief minister made the appeal while reviewing with police, excise and administrative officers some alleged incidents of outburst of people's anger during protest against shifting of liquor shops to populated areas following a Supreme Court order banning sale of alcohol near highways, an official spokesman had said. You can watch Yogi Adityanath's full interview with DD News here: With inputs from PTI By Steve Holland | PALM BEACH, Fla. PALM BEACH, Fla. U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday he had made progress in talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping and expected them to overcome many problems, a marked contrast to the stridently anti-China rhetoric of Trump's 2016 election campaign.Sitting across from Xi on the second day of a Florida summit overshadowed by U.S. missile strikes in Syria overnight, Trump declared that his relationship with the Chinese leader was outstanding after they discussed trade irritants and concerns about North Korea's nuclear program.Trump had said he intended to raise concerns about China's trade practices and press Xi to do more to rein in North Korea's nuclear ambitions during his visit to the Spanish-style Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, though no major deals on either issue are expected.The Republican president, who took office on Jan. 20, tweeted last week that the United States could no longer tolerate massive trade deficits and job losses and that his meeting with Xi "will be a very difficult one."On Friday, there was a change of tone. "We have made tremendous progress in our relationship with China," Trump said as the two delegations met around tables flanked by large U.S. and Chinese flags. "I think truly progress has been made. We will be making additional progress. The relationship developed by President Xi and myself I think is outstanding.And I believe lots of very potentially bad problems will be going away," he added.The highly anticipated U.S.-China summit has been upstaged, however, by U.S. missile strikes overnight against a Syrian air base from which Trump said a deadly chemical weapon attack had been launched. It was the first direct U.S. assault on the Russian-backed government of Bashar al-Assad in six years of civil war. The swift action in Syria could be interpreted as a signal especially to defiant nuclear-armed North Korea and by extension, its ally China as well as other countries like Iran and Russia of Trumps willingness to use military force if deemed necessary.U.S. security concerns with China also focus on Beijing's expansive territorial claims in the strategic South China Sea. A senior administration official said Trump informed Xi about the strikes as their dinner concluded on Thursday night. Trump then made a televised statement on the operation he said he ordered in retaliation for the poison gas attack, which killed scores of people, including children, in a rebel-held area on Tuesday.In Beijing, China's Foreign Ministry urged all parties in Syria to find a political settlement.Trump and Xi, politicians with distinctly different styles and experience levels, appeared cordial and businesslike in their initial interactions, with no outward sign of tensions.The protocol-conscious Chinese earlier had privately expressed concerns that the unpredictable Trump might publicly embarrass the veteran Communist Party chief. (Writing by Matt Spetalnick and David Brunnstrom; Editing by Howard Goller) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Basque separatist group ETA said it will fully disarm on April 8 after the Basque parliament asked it to disarm as soon as possible, the BBC reported, citing a letter from ETA. The group said its members will hand over their weapons on Saturday, but added that "the enemies of peace" might block the process. bbc.in/2o2HRDr ETA declared the end of its 40-year bid to establish an independent Basque state in northern Spain and southern France in 2011 but has handed over only part of its weapons cache to authorities. (Reporting by Parikshit Mishra in Bengaluru; Editing by Dan Grebler) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Palm Beach: President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping opened their high-stakes summit at Trump's Florida beach resort on Thursday, with the urgent threat of North Korea's nuclear ambitions and tensions over trade on the agenda for the first meeting between the leaders of the world's two largest economies. Trump and first lady Melania Trump greeted Xi and his wife at the Mar-a-Lago estate before making their way to dinner. The meeting kicked off amid suggestions the Trump administration was considering military action against Syria in response to a chemical weapons attack that killed more than 80 people. The president pointed to the crisis in North Korea as a top priority in the meetings with Xi, telling reporters on Air Force One on his way to Florida on Thursday that he thinks China will "want to be stepping up" in trying to deter North Korea's nuclear ambitions. Still, Trump appeared lighthearted as he greeted Xi, gesturing and pointing to journalists as they tussled to get a shot of the two leaders together for the first time. Ahead of the dinner, Trump said he and Xi already had had a long discussion and had "developed a friendship," and then joked, "I have gotten nothing, absolutely nothing." The White House said the location was selected to give the two days of discussions a more relaxed feel. A number of Trump's top advisers were in attendance, including his daughter, Ivanka Trump, and son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Outside the dining room where the two delegations gathered for a lavish dinner, Mar-a-Lago club members packed the patio for dinner. While Trump would not say what he wants China to do specifically with regard to North Korea, he suggested there was a link between "terrible" trade agreements the US has made with China and Pyongyang's provocations. He says the two issues "really do mix." The president has said that if China doesn't exert more pressure on North Korea, the US will act alone. Both as a candidate and president, Trump has taken an aggressive posture toward China, labeling Beijing a "tremendous problem" and arguing that lopsided trade deals with China shortchange American businesses and workers. Last week, the president predicted in a tweet that his meeting with Xi would be "very difficult." The White House has downplayed expectations for a breakthrough on issues like trade and tariffs, insisting that the 24-hour summit is mostly an introductory meeting for the two leaders. And within Trump's administration, there are still divisions over how to approach China. According to US and foreign officials, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and economic adviser Gary Cohn are leading the charge for boosting ties and exploring the potential for greater economic cooperation. But economic adviser Peter Navarro, author of the book Death by China: Confronting the Dragon a Global Call to Action, prefers trying to isolate China, in keeping with Trump's "America First" mantra. Patrick Cronin, a China expert with the Centre for a New American Security, said the Trump administration does not have "a reconciled trade and economic policy yet, and the differing views on China in the White House underscore that." Ahead of the summit, Trump signed a pair of executive orders focused on reducing the US trade deficit. The moves appeared to be a shot at China, which accounted for the vast bulk $347 billion of last year's $502 billion trade deficit. Chinese exports to the US totaled some $388.1 billion last year. Anthony Ruggiero, an East Asia expert at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, said China may be more willing to accommodate Trump on trade and economic issues than on regional security issues, including North Korea. Xi, a shrewd political operator, is unlikely to want to rock the boat ahead of a Communist Party conclave later this year that will install new leadership. Xi is also expected to seek assurances that Trump will not interfere in the territorial dispute over the South China Sea or question the "One China" policy by reaching out to Taiwan's leader again, as he did during the transition. The move infuriated Beijing, leading Trump to eventually reiterate his commitment to the decades-old policy. Previous White Houses have held China accountable for its human rights record, something this administration has made very little mention of, whether in China or elsewhere. It also remains to be seen whether the Obama administration's deal with Beijing to curb Chinese cybertheft for economic gain and its hacking of US companies will be addressed. United States of America President Donald Trump's sudden decision to order airstrikes against the Syrian government was an overnight evolution for a president who long warned against deeper American involvement in one of the world's most stubbornly violent conflicts. As he soberly announced the Thursday night assault, Trump argued that the move was still within the framework of his "America First" foreign policy agenda. The United States, he said, has a "vital national security interest" in stopping the proliferation of the kinds of chemical weapons the Syrian government used against its citizens earlier this week. Yet Trump's actions left no doubt that at least in this instance his view of America's role in the world has been altered. Trump is hardly the first president to reconsider his views after assuming the responsibility of controlling the world's most powerful military. But with a major shift coming just 77 days into his presidency, his may be one of the fastest transformations in recent memory. After spending years warning US leaders that Syria was a dangerous quagmire, Trump is said to have been moved by the gripping images of young Syrian children's listless bodies that were beamed across the world following the chemical attack. He mourned the "beautiful babies" were among the dozens killed by the deadly gases and accused Syrian President Bashar Assad of having "choked" his own citizens. His sentiment the United States' "responsibility to protect" echoed those often used by some Trump's ardent detractors. That doctrine, espoused most notably by President Barack Obama's former ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, holds that world powers have an obligation to defend civilians from conflict, particularly from their own governments. Trump campaigned on a wholly different vision for the nation's foreign policy, one that bordered on isolationism and centered on recalibrating trade deals with international partners. He has specifically said the Middle East is one region of the world he hoped to avoid. Yet in the short term, Trump's decision to plunge the US deeper into the Syria conflict won him plaudits from his own party. Even some Democrats were muted in their response, a signal of how frustration with US inaction in Syria has permeated both parties. "The question now is what the consequences and reactions will be, and what are the president's strategic and long-range goals and plans with respect to US involvement in Syria," said Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee. Trump's decision was all the more remarkable for his strident public opposition to launching a strike on Syria when the decision weighed on his predecessor. In September 2013, Trump repeatedly took to Twitter to urge Obama to not to attack Syria after another chemical weapons attack. "AGAIN, TO OUR VERY FOOLISH LEADER, DO NOT ATTACK SYRIA - IF YOU DO MANY VERY BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN & FROM THAT FIGHT THE US GETS NOTHING!," he wrote. He followed two days later with another tweet declaring, "There is no upside and tremendous downside" to an attack. Obama nearly ordered strikes, but ultimately pulled back. He called for a vote in Congress that never came, then rallied behind a Russian-backed plan to remove Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles an agreement that appeared to have failed, given this most recent attack. Though Trump castigated Obama for appearing weak and indecisive, he maintained as a candidate that Syria was a morass the US should avoid. As recently as a week ago, Trump's top diplomats, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, both indicated the US might take a hands-off approach to a civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and forced millions more from their homes. The long-term implications of Trump's sudden policy shift are deeply uncertain. But his supporters seemed willing to accept his decision. "President Trump has tonight more than earned a second or third look from a lot of doubters both at home and abroad," said Kevin Kellems, a Republican strategist who briefly worked on Trump's campaign and also advised former Vice President Dick Cheney. Kellems singled out in particular "the speed and precision of the decision to strike." In addition to the blunt message sent to Assad, the strikes are also a signal to Russia and Iran, Syria's main benefactors, as well as China, which the US believes isn't doing enough to stop North Korea's nuclear pursuits. Trump ordered the attack while hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida amid an ongoing struggle between Washington and Beijing over how to rein in Pyongyang's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. "This clearly indicates the president is willing to take decisive action when called for," Tillerson said. Palm Beach (Florida): The cruise missiles that crashed down before dawn on a Syrian air base sent a clear message to President Bashar Assad: The use of chemical weapons will be met with US force. The outcome is less clear: Assad's grip on power is as firm as ever and he has lost little of his ability to carry out more chemical attacks. President Donald Trump said the goal of the military action was deterrence. Officials said strikes targeted the Shayrat air base to prevent it from being used to launch attacks like the one this week that killed more than 80 people and provided sickening images of individuals suffering from exposure to a sarin-like nerve gas. The base's airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas were struck. The United States is not at war with Syria at least not yet. The intervention was extremely limited, giving Assad's military the ability to end it there by changing its behavior and allowing for Washington to incrementally expand its military action if required. But the surprise barrage of missiles raises questions about where US Syria policy is headed after Trump's rapid reversal of positions in recent days. Just last week, his administration stressed that removing Assad from power was no longer a priority and that America's focus was entirely on defeating an Islamic State insurgency in the north of the country. But on Thursday night Trump appeared to endorse a new, open-ended commitment to respond to any use by Assad of weapons of mass destruction. "It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons," Trump said. Such declarations carry risks. No US officials declared the threat of more chemical weapons eliminated. If Assad isn't deterred, more attacks would mean more scenes of people foaming at the mouth in agony and bodies lying in heaps. The United States may have little option but to up the ante militarily. Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said the US was still assessing the result of the 59 Tomahawks it fired, expressing hope that Assad's government learned a lesson. He said it was ultimately "the regime's choice" if more US military action would be needed. That raises the potential for Assad to suck the US deeper into the Arab country's brutal, six-year civil war. The conflict has killed hundreds of thousands of people, contributed to the worst refugee crisis since World War II, and shows no end in sight. Assad's forces are locked in battle with a bitter, if weakening, opposition camp. Under President Barack Obama, the United States spent most of the war trying to stay out of the fray. Engaging the Syrian government as an enemy means Damascus can respond in kind. That creates added danger for US forces on the ground in northern Syria waging a separate war against the Islamic State group, and American aircraft targeting extremist groups from Syria's skies. Up to now, despite public complaints, Syria's government and its allies Russia and Iran have essentially given the United States and its coalition partners a free pass to conduct their counterterrorism mission. And if Trump is now willing to protect Syrians from chemical attacks, will he feel compelled to shield others from what has been Assad's more pervasive slaughter? Perversely, the US strikes also risk emboldening Assad to use even greater brutality if he senses Washington's intrusion as a threat to his rule. "One strike against one air base may be enough to deter him from using sarin gas again, but it will not deter his effort to target civilians, target hospitals," said Jennifer Cafarella, a Mideast expert at the Institute for the Study of War. The United States is also in a murky situation now with Assad's two key international backers. Keen to avoid any accident that would create a confrontation with Moscow, Trump administration officials told their Russian counterparts of the impending attack and warned them to stay away. US officials, meanwhile, said little about Iran, a country that could retaliate against the United States and its allies in a variety of ways, from interfering with Persian Gulf shipping to provoking Israel. But Edward Djerejian, a former US ambassador to Syria and professor at Rice University, said Trump's message to the region's potential foes was clear. "Assad thought he had a green light to do what he needed to do in Syria to counter the opposition to his regime," Djerejian said. "By proceeding with this attack, it's a signal to Assad, to the Russians, it's a signal to the Iranians, to Hezbollah and all those supporting Assad's regime that this is not a free playing field. There are limits." By Michel Rose and Bate Felix | PARIS PARIS The board of French state-controlled utility EDF on Thursday chose not to vote on a motion that could have closed its aging Fessenheim nuclear plant for good, meaning a 2012 election pledge by President Francois Hollande will not be met. Hollande had promised to end power production at France's oldest atomic plant by the end of his five-year term in May.EDF board members instead authorized its chief executive to seek a decree from the government that would keep Fessenheim open at least until six months before the start-up of a new, third reactor at the company's Flamanville site. That reactor is still being built and is expected to start production around the end of 2018. That is well into the next president's term, meaning any closure decision could in theory be reversed."The decision of the board ... enables EDF ... to have the nuclear fleet necessary to fulfil its obligations to supply its customers," EDF's CEO Jean-Bernard Levy said in a statement. EDF also said it would only close Fessenheim if keeping it open meant French nuclear output would exceed the legal ceiling of 63.2 gigawatts of power - though Emmanuel Macron, the frontrunner to be France's next president, said he would shut it down if he won. "Broadly speaking this is a snub to the government in that the closure of Fessenheim is not formally signed and sealed," Laurent Langlard, a CGT union official at EDF, told Reuters."In concrete terms, Fessenheim continues to operate ...and we'll see when Flamanville starts producing which unit is disconnected from the grid. But it won't necessarily be Fessenheim."'OLD AND DANGEROUS'? Environment Minister Segolene Royal, who has long pushed for Fessenheim to be closed, said in a statement that the shutdown process was inevitable, adding the government would seek legal means in the coming days to endorse the decision. On Wednesday, she had warned EDF's board against trying to prevent the closure of the plant, on the Franco-German border."The government owns more than 80 percent of EDF. A board which does not respect a shareholder which has an extremely large majority, that's unprecedented," Karine Berger, an MP for the ruling Socialist party, said on Twitter. Macron, tipped to secure the presidency in a runoff vote in May, said on Thursday that Fessenheim would be shut down if he won. "Fessenheim must be closed," the independent centrist candidate said in a television interview.Environmental groups have long suspected EDF of playing for time, seeking to prevent the closure from becoming irreversible before the end of Hollande's presidency."The conditions laid down by EDF are unacceptable," Greenpeace said in a statement. "In addition to being old and dangerous, Fessenheim's reactor number 2 has been offline for almost a year, since a serious anomaly was detected there. The immediate halt is therefore necessary," Greenpeace said.Fessenheim's two 900-megawatt reactors each bring EDF about 200 million euros ($213 million) per year in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA). (Additional reporting by Jean-Baptiste Vey; Editing by Adrian Croft and John Stonestreet) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. BRUSSELS The European Union and countries across the continent offered Sweden support and solidarity on Friday following what the Swedish government said appeared to be a terrorist attack using a vehicle in central Stockholm."An attack on any of our member states is an attack on us all," said President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker. "One of Europe's most vibrant and colourful cities appears to have been struck by those wishing it and our very way of life harm. "We stand shoulder to shoulder in solidarity with the people of Sweden and the Swedish authorities can count on the European Commission to support them in any which way we can.""My heart is in Stockholm this afternoon," President of the European Council Donald Tusk tweeted. "My thoughts are with the victims, and their families and friends, of today's terrible attack."German government spokesman Steffen Seibert also reacted to the news. "Our thoughts are with the people in Stockholm, the injured, relatives, rescuers and police. We stand together against terror," he said in a tweet.The French government said President Francois Hollande expressed his horror and outrage at the attack. "France expresses its sympathy and solidarity with the families of the victims and all Swedes," the Elysee Palace said in a statement.Sweden's Nordic neighbours also expressed their horror."Terrible news from Stockholm. Our thoughts are with our neighbours and friends in Sweden," Finland's Prime Minister Juha Sipila wrote in Swedish on his Twitter account. Danish Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen, speaking in Vienna, expressed his sadness and called for more cooperation between countries to combat attacks."It's so horrible to learn about this terror attack ... It's horrible, it's disgusting and we have to fight this terror appearing in Europe," he said."And one thing we can do is to cooperate even closer on exchanging data, exchanging information about what we learn of those terror cells or terrorists," Samuelsen added."Terrible event in Stockholm," Norwegian Finance Minister Siv Jensen tweeted. (Reporting by Alastair Macdonald in Brussels, Francois Murphy in Vienna, Ingrid Melander in Paris, Gwladys Fouche and Terje Solsvik in Oslo, Tuomas Forsell in Helsinki; Editing by Andrew Bolton) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. By Adrian Croft and Sudip Kar-Gupta | PARIS, PARIS, France's presidential race is tightening in its final weeks with a far-left and a conservative candidate narrowing the gap on long-time frontrunners Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, two polls showed on Friday.An Odoxa poll for Le Point magazine showed 23.5 percent of voters set to back centrist Macron in the April 23 first round, a fall of 2.5 percentage points in a week.Macron was just half a point ahead of far-right National Front leader Le Pen, whose score was down 2 points.Right behind them, conservative candidate Francois Fillon, whose campaign has struggled against nepotism allegations, gained one-and-a-half points to 18.5 percent while far-left veteran Jean-Luc Melenchon was up two points to 18 percent.Only the top two candidates go forward to a May 7 runoff, where Macron is tipped to easily beat Le Pen.Odoxa analyst Gael Sliman said the polls underlined Macron's paradoxical situation. The former economy minister was "assured of winning in the second round, but no longer so sure of qualifying for it," he said in a note. Many voters, particularly on the left, remain uncertain of who they will vote for, pollsters say.Le Pen's plans to ditch the euro and hold a referendum on European Union membership have spooked many investors, who fear a "Frexit" after British voters opted last year to leave the EU.A second poll by Harris Interactive showed Macron on 24 percent, down two points in two weeks, just ahead of Le Pen on 23 percent, also down two points in two weeks. Fillon was on 19 percent, up one point, but the big gainer was Melenchon who was up 4.5 points in two weeks to 18 percent.The 65-year-old Melenchon, a skilled speaker backed by several small leftist groups, aims to take France out of NATO and overhaul the EU.Viewers rated him the most convincing among the candidates in their televised debate last Tuesday. He produces a popular weekly YouTube video and Odoxa said his campaign website had the most hits of all contenders. He won only 11.1 percent of votes in the first presidential round in 2012, less than what opinion polls had predicted.Macron, a pro-European former banker who has never held elected office, aims to transcend the traditional left-right divide in French politics and reduce public spending and taxes.Opponents say he is too inexperienced for the top job.Bogged down by allegations of financial scandal, Fillon got a boost on Friday from an endorsement by former president Nicolas Sarkozy, whom he beat in the conservative nomination."There is no longer any room for hesitation or moods," Sarkozy said on Twitter. "Francois Fillon is the only candidate with the experience to ... bring about the change that France needs so much." (Additional reporting and writing by Richard Balmforth, Emmanuel Jarry and Dominique Vidalon; Editing by Tom Heneghan) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. BEIRUT Polarised by years of civil war, Syrians were split on Friday over a U.S. strike on a government airbase, with those in rebel-held areas cautiously welcoming it but Damascus residents decrying it as Western aggression.The cruise missile strike near the city of Homs early in the day came in response to what Washington and its allies said was a chemical weapons attack this week by Syrian forces. Damascus has strongly denied using chemical weapons.Some residents of Idlib province, where the chemical attack took place killing scores of people, said they hoped the U.S. strike would weaken Assad's government. "The American strike was good, it's positive - we support any strike against the Syrian regime," 29-year-old Alaa al-Zir said."We hope there will be more strikes - and other action - to follow ... so the revolutionaries can advance further and these massacres against civilians can stop," he said.Another man, Qadi Hajj Qadur, said the strike was likely too little, too late from the United States under new President Donald Trump, but that it was still a positive development and signaled hope for an end to the conflict."It's been seven years and we've experienced killing and they (the international community) didn't impose a no-fly zone, they didn't do anything. "Now America has come and wants to defend us. Is Trump a friend? I don't know. But hopefully something good will come from him, and there will be a (peace) agreement, and this corrupt regime which slaughtered people can be gone."Syria's opposition has long urged the creation of a no-fly zone or provision of anti-aircraft weapons to rebel groups, and criticised what it saw as U.S. inaction under Barack Obama.Trump's decision to launch missiles at a Syrian government target marks a dramatic departure and was welcomed by the opposition, who called for further strikes.Syria's government controls most of the west of the country including its largest population centres, but rebels still hold Idlib province as a stronghold, with pockets of control in other areas including outside Damascus. The Damascus government said the U.S. strike was "rash" and an act of "flagrant aggression", but did not expect a bigger escalation. In an interview with the Lebanese TV station al-Mayadeen, Assad aide Bouthaina Shaaban said any Syrian who welcomed the strike was a traitor.DAMASCENES DEFIANT Damascus residents struck a defiant tone, echoing the government's vow to escalate the pace of its attacks on insurgents and to win back the whole country. Others said the U.S. attack was no surprise and vowed to stand up to Washington."Talk in the U.N. Security Council about (Syria using) chemical weapons is lies, and Syria knows this. They just wanted to have an excuse to strike," said a Damascus fireman, who did not give his name."It doesn't make a great difference anyway. What the militants (rebels) have done to our country has more of an effect than Tomahawk missiles.""The blood of martyrs is what waters the earth of the country. Either we die, or we win," he said.Abu Haidara, a media student, said Syria should strike back."The Syrian government should ... wage a war with them - with any dog who thinks he can attack Syria or the army or anyone and violate its sovereignty," he said. (Reporting by Reuters visuals journalists; Writing by John Davison; Editing by Tom Heneghan) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Maldives police arrested an opposition leader on accusations of plotting to overthrow the government, they said on Friday, days after the opposition failed in a bid to impeach the speaker of parliament. Qasim Ibrahim, the leader of the Jumhooree Party and a former presidential candidate, was remanded for six days by a Male court. Denying the allegations, his lawyer said Qasim had acted lawfully.The largely Muslim island chain with a population of 400,000 and a reputation as a tourist paradise has been mired in political unrest for years. The impeachment motion against Speaker Abdulla Maseeh Mohamed, a close ally of President Abdulla Yameen, was defeated by 48 votes to zero in parliament after all opposition lawmakers walked out in protest at their colleagues' expulsion from the chamber for unruly behaviour.A second impeachment vote, against the deputy speaker, is scheduled for Monday. Police in their charge sheet said Qasim was arrested for allegedly of bribing and "undue influencing of parliament members and state security forces" in the impeachment vote against the speaker. Police also cited "unlawful incitement to the removal, from office, of the legitimate government". Hussein Shameem, Qasim's lawyer, said his client was an opposition whip and was by law entitled to try to convince lawmakers to vote a certain way. "He has not used undue influence and no unlawful activities were done. He acted within the law," Shameem told Reuters. Qasim, a tourism tycoon who ran for the presidency in 2013, backed Yameen in the second round of the poll against former president Mohamed Nasheed. Yameen won by a slim margin. After he and Yameen fell out, Qasim formed an opposition coalition along with former presidents Nasheed and Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, a half brother of Yameen.The Maldives has been plagued by unrest since Nasheed, its first democratically elected leader, was ousted in disputed circumstances in 2012. He was later sentenced to 13 years in jail on terrorism charges after a widely criticised trial and now lives in exile.Many potential challengers to Yameen in elections due in 2018 have been arrested for alleged security offences. The opposition alleges his administration is trying to cover up corruption including money laundering.The government denies this and says it does not influence law enforcement.Significant numbers of radicalised Maldives youths have enlisted to fight for Islamic State in the Middle East. (Reporting by Shihar Aneez and Ranga Sirilal; Editing by Nick Macfie and John Stonestreet) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Rangoun: An official working for Aung San Suu Kyi's government was sentenced to six months in jail by a Yangon court on Friday for criticising Myanmar's army chief in a Facebook post. It is the latest verdict to highlight lingering limits on free speech in the young democracy, where the military remains a powerful player despite the end of junta rule. Myo Yan Naung Thein, a researcher for Suu Kyi's ruling party, was arrested in October for urging the head of the army to resign over deadly raids on police posts in the north of Rakhine state. The attacks, by a militant group claiming to represent Myanmar's stateless Rohingya Muslims, sparked an army crackdown so brutal that UN investigators believe it may amount to crimes against humanity. In a Facebook post just days after the October raids, Myo Yan Naung Thein said senior general Min Aung Hlaing was shameless for allowing the raids to happen and called for his resignation. The 43-year-old appeared calm as he heard the verdict read out in Yangon's Kamayut township court on Friday, flanked by military officers. But he struck a defiant note as he left the court, criticising the army's continued grip on power even after Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) won the first free elections in half a century in 2015. Under a junta-era constitution, the military still controls a quarter of parliament seats and the ministries of home affairs, defence and borders. "It's obvious that we have two groups ruling Myanmar, not only our (elected) government," he told journalists. Myo Yan Naung Thein has been held in jail since his arrest and will be able to walk free in a few weeks because of time served. Prosecutions under a controversial online defamation law have soared since the NLD took power in March 2016, targeting both those who have criticised the army and the new civilian administration. The law was originally passed by the previous military-backed government as part of a raft of measures designed to attract foreign investment in Myanmar's telecoms sector. But activists say it is increasingly being used to stifle free speech and criticism of the government, dashing hopes the NLD would usher in a new era of openness after half a century of repressive military rule. At least 46 cases have been brought over the past year, compared to just seven between when the legislation was passed in 2013 to when the NLD took power. They include cases against two officials from one of the country's biggest media groups, a man who called the president 'crazy' on Facebook and another who wrote curses about the army on his car. Last month a mother launched proceedings against her own son for writing insulting comments about her relationships on Facebook. Washington: The Senate confirmed Neil Gorsuch to become the newest associate justice on the Supreme Court on Friday, elevating Donald Trump's nominee following a corrosive partisan confrontation that could have lasting impacts for the Senate and the court. Vice-President Mike Pence was presiding, as the Senate voted 54-45 in favor of Gorsuch, a 49-year-old veteran of the 10th US Circuit of Appeals in Denver whose rulings make him an intellectual heir to the late Justice Antonin Scalia, whose seat he will fill. Gorsuch won support from 51 of the chambers' Republicans as well as three moderate Democrats up for re-election in states Trump won last fall: Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Donnelly of Indiana. GOP Senator Johnny Isakson of Georgia did not vote. The outcome was a major win for Trump, his biggest congressional victory to date, as well as for Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, who kept Scalia's seat open after the justice's death in February 2016. McConnell refused to hold hearings for President Barack Obama's nominee. After he is sworn in, Gorsuch will restore the court's conservative voting majority that existed before Scalia's death. Republicans exulted in the victory. "He's an exceptional choice," McConnell said. Democrats denounced the GOP's use of what both sides dubbed the "nuclear option" to put Gorsuch on the court, calling it an epic power grab that would further corrode politics in Congress, the courts and the US. Many Republicans bemoaned reaching that point, too, but they blamed Democrats for pushing them to it. "I believe it will make this body a more partisan place," Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, said on the Senate floor ahead of the vote. "It will make the cooling saucer of the Senate considerably hotter, and I believe it will make the Supreme Court a more partisan place." Gorsuch is expected to be sworn in within days, in time to hear the final cases of the term. He was nominated by Trump shortly after the January inauguration. The Senate change, affecting how many votes a nominee needs to advance to a final confirmation vote, will apply to all future Supreme Court candidates as well. Trump himself predicted to reporters aboard Air Force One that "there could be as many as four" Supreme Court vacancies for him to fill during his administration. "In fact, under a certain scenario, there could even be more than that," Trump said. There is no way to know how many there will be, if any, but several justices are quite elderly. Even as they united in indignation, lawmakers of both parties, pulled by fierce political forces from the Left and Right, were unwilling to stop the confirmation rules change. The maneuvering played out in a tense Senate chamber on Thursday, with most members in their seats, a rare and theatrical occurrence. First Democrats mounted a filibuster, denying Gorsuch the 60 votes needed to advance to a final vote. Then McConnell raised a point of order, suggesting that Supreme Court nominees should not be subjected to a 60-vote threshold but instead a simple majority in the 100-member Senate. McConnell was overruled, but he appealed the ruling. And on that, he prevailed on a 52-48 party-line vote. The 60-vote filibuster requirement on Supreme Court nominees was effectively gone, and with it the last vestige of bipartisanship on presidential nominees in an increasingly polarised Senate. The developments were accompanied by unusually bitter accusations and counter-accusations. And yet in many ways the showdown had been preordained, the final chapter in years of partisan warfare over judicial nominees. Even as senior Republicans lamented the voting change, McConnell and some allies argued that all they were doing was returning to a time, not long ago, when filibusters of judicial nominees were unusual, and it was virtually unheard-of to try to block a Supreme Court nominee in that fashion. New York: Nikki Haley, the tough-talking and blunt US Ambassador to the UN, was heckled during an annual summit on women here as she spoke about President Donald Trump and Russia. Haley was speaking at the 'Women In The World' summit on Thursday, a premier annual gathering of influential women leaders, politicians and activists organised by media personality Tina Brown in association with the New York Times. As she was answering questions during the session titled 'Trump's Diplomat: Nikki Haley' moderated by MSNBC anchor Greta Van Susteren, Haley was booed and heckled on several occasions. At one point someone in the audience shouted "what about refugees" while another said "when is the next panel." During the nearly 22-minute-long session, a woman in the audience shouted "when is the next panel," to which the 45-year-old smiled and exclaimed "wow" as the audience tried to shush the heckler. She was heckled again when asked how America deals with some of the world leaders who are dictators. "You call them out when they do something wrong and you work with them when you can find ways to work with them." As some members of the audience shouted at her remarks, Haley said "we have to express America's values. We are always the moral conscience of the world," to which someone from the audience shouted "what about the refugees", cutting off Haley. Haley went silent. Van Susteren paused, and then said, "Moving on." At the end of the day's programme, Brown commended Haley for attending the event even as she got a "boisterous reception" and for remaining gracious as she was heckled. "We often complain and sneer and say Republicans never want to come on any kind of forum except Fox News or places where they can be asked questions that are soft," Brown said, adding that Haley did not put on any pre-conditions and sat very "graciously" while the audience heckled. " She didn't get agitated about it, and she's in the middle of a lot of world crises. So I feel that we should really applaud the fact that she did come." Van Susteren asked Haley why the world has not heard much from Trump about Russia, a question that drew a thunderous applause from the audience. Haley said, "first of all keep in mind that I work for the Trump administration," a response that generated boos and heckles from the audience and prompted Van Susteren to ask the audience to "hold on, hold on. We got to get people fix these problems." Haley added that she has "hit Russia over the head more times than I can count. It's because if they do something wrong we are going to call them out on it. If they want to help us defeat terrorism, fine." "But the things they have done with Crimea and Ukraine, the things they have done with how they have covered up for (Syrian President Bashar) Assad, we are not going to give them a pass on." Haley said she has had conversations with Trump "where he very much sees Russia as a problem and I think if you look at his actions, everybody wants to hear his words but look at his actions. The two things that Russia does not want to see the US do is strengthen the military and expand energy and the President has done both of those." She gave out a smile as her comments again drew prolonged boos from the audience. On the chemical weapons attack on a Syrian town, Haley said Russia blamed it on a container of chemical weapons that IS had. In stark contract to the often hostile reception Haley received, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wowed the crowd. The self-declared feminist won cheers for his gender-balanced cabinet, condemnation of the recent chemical weapons attack in Syria and his country's welcome of Syrian refugees from a crowd already converted to his brand of politics. With inputs from PTI and AFP US forces fired a barrage of cruise missiles at a Syrian airbase Friday in response to what President Donald Trump called a "barbaric" chemical attack he blamed on the Damascus regime. The massive strike the first direct US action against President Bashar al-Assad's government and Trump's biggest military decision since taking office marked a dramatic escalation in American involvement in Syria's six-year civil war. It followed days in which images of dead children and victims suffering convulsions from the suspected sarin gas attack in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhun shocked the world. Syria's regime has denied any use of chemical weapons and state media on Friday described the US strike which was reported to have pulverised the base and killed at least four servicemen as an "act of aggression". Pentaon, the US military headquarters, has confirmed the strike on a Syrian military base in the early hours of Friday. Here is the statement from Pentagon Spokesman Captain Jeff Davis: Bonds, gold and the yen jumped in Asia on Friday, while stocks retreated, as investors fled to safe assets after the United States launched cruise missiles against an airbase in Syria, raising the risk of confrontation with Russia and Iran. The U.S. dollar dropped as much as 0.6 percent, while gold and oil prices rallied hard, though the early market panic ebbed when a U.S. official called the attack a "one-off", with no plans for escalation. "It was a knee-jerk reaction because markets are starting to come back a little, as it doesn't seem like there will be further retaliation coming," said Christoffer Moltke-Leth, head of institutional client trading at Saxo Capital Markets in Singapore. European stocks were also poised for a negative start, with financial spreadbetters expecting Britain's FTSE 100 and France's CAC 40 to open down 0.2 percent, and Germany's DAX to start the day 0.3 percent lower. U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the strikes on Thursday against an airbase controlled by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces in retaliation for a chemical attack, launched from the base on Tuesday, that killed at least 70 people. Facing his biggest foreign policy crisis since taking office in January, Trump took the toughest direct U.S. action yet in Syria's six-year-old civil war. A Syrian human rights monitor said the missile strike had almost completely destroyed the airbase near Homs, and the city's governor said five had been killed and seven wounded. While U.S. allies including Britain, Australia and Saudi Arabia, as well as Syria's opposition group, welcomed the move, Russia and Iran condemned the attack. A Russian lawmaker said the nation would call for an urgent meeting of the United Nations Security Council, adding the strikes could be viewed as an "act of aggression" against a U.N. member. "The action adds a complexity to geopolitics that wasnt there before, given Russias support for Syria and Trump's pre-election pledges to try and repair relations with (Russian President Vladimir) Putin," Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets in London, wrote in a note. "The U.S. would now appear to be on a collision course with Russia." MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was down 0.4 percent after earlier sliding as much as 0.85 percent to a 2-1/2-week low. The index is set to end the week down about 0.2 percent. E-mini S&P 500 futures lost 0.3 percent, having earlier tumbled as much as 0.7 percent, in unusually sharp moves for Asian hours. But Japan's Nikkei reversed course to close up 0.4 percent, narrowing losses for the week to 1.3 percent. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson noted the attack was "proportionate", suggesting no follow-up was planned. "The unexpected and unequivocal nature of the U.S. response to the sarin-centric carnage in Syria by President Trump was very much in keeping with his promise not to telegraph his military options to the world in advance of taking action," wrote Peter Kenney, senior strategist at Global Markets Advisory Group in New York. Investors had already been on edge with Trump set to begin talks on Friday with Chinese leader Xi Jinping over flashpoints such as North Korea and China's huge trade surplus with the United States. Markets are also bracing for U.S. non-farm payroll data for March later in the session, with economists forecasting a significant drop in job gains from February. Stockholm: A truck drove into a crowd on a shopping street and crashed into a department store in central Stockholm on Friday, killing three people and wounding eight in what the prime minister said appeared to be a terrorist attack. Part of central Stockholm was cordoned off and the area was evacuated, including the main train station. All subway traffic was halted on orders from the police. "Sweden has been attacked. Everything points to the fact that this is a terrorist attack," Prime Minister Stefan Lofven told reporters during a visit in western Sweden. He was immediately returning to the capital. Many police and emergency services personnel were at the scene, a Reuters witness said. Nobody has been arrested in connection with the attack police said. There was no immediate claim of responsibilty. Several attacks in which trucks or cars have driven into crowds have taken place in Europe in the past year. Al-Qaeda in 2010 urged its followers to use trucks as a weapon. In London on 22 March, a man in a car ploughed into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, killing four, and then stabbed a policeman to death before being shot by police. Islamic State claimed responsibility for both an attack in Nice, France, last July, when a truck killed 86 people celebrating Bastille Day, and one in Berlin in December, when a truck smashed through a Christmas market, killing 12 people. A government source told Reuters that all Swedish government offices had been closed. All ministers were safe, the source said. "We were standing by the traffic lights at Drottninggatan (Queen Street), and then we heard some screaming and saw a truck coming," a witness, who declined to be named, told Reuters. "Then it drove into a pillar at Ahlens City (department store) where the hood started burning. When it stopped we saw a man lying under the tire. It was terrible to see," said the man, who saw the incident from inside his car. Radio Sweden reporter Martin Svenningsen said he saw three dead people "but probably more". A Reuters witness saw a number of body-like forms covered by blankets at the scene. Police confirmed three deaths and eight people injured. King Carl Gustaf, Sweden's head of Sexpressed his horror at the attack. "Our thoughts are going out to those that were affected, and to their families," he said in a statement from the royal palace. In Brussels, the European Union offered Sweden support and solidarity. "An attack on any of our member states is an attack on us all," said EU chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker. "One of Europe's most vibrant and colourful cities appears to have been struck by those wishing it, and our very way of life, harm." The Syrian Army said on Friday that six people were killed and serious damage was caused by a US missile strike on a Syrian air base in the centre of the country. The strike was the first direct US military action against President Bashar al-Assad since the start of Syria's war in March 2011. It came after a suspected chemical attack against a rebel-held town that killed at least 86 people and left dozens more suffering convulsions, vomiting and foaming at the mouth. Syria's government and army denied any use of chemical weapons or involvement in the incident. This aggressive stance taken by the US is a stark contrast to its stance earlier. And President Donald Trump believes that the current situation is a result of the earlier policies under Barack Obama. "Years of previous attempts at changing Assad's behaviour have all failed, and failed very dramatically. As a result, the refugee crisis continues to deepen and the region continues to destabilise, threatening the United States and its allies," Trump said. "Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women, and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror," he also said. Trump's decision to strike at the Syrian regime in retaliation for a chemical attack comes four years after his predecessor Barack Obama faced a similar challenge from Damascus and chose to back down. There was no doubt among the international community on 21 August, 2013 that Obama's "red line" had just been crossed in Syria with a chemical weapons attack outside Damascus that was almost certainly the work of Bashar al-Assad's regime. Two years earlier, Obama had vowed that the use of such weapons would "change my calculus" to justify military intervention in Syria. Britain and France agreed, embracing the president's rhetoric. So when the massacre took place in Ghouta, an eastern suburb of the Syrian capital where US intelligence said some 1,400 were killed by a sarin gas attack, all eyes turned toward Washington. Two days later, Obama said he was ready to strike. But to surprise in the United States and around the world, he said he would put any decision over military action in Syria to a vote in Congress, essentially ruling out any immediate attack. Then, his ally British Prime Minister David Cameron who had also submitted a decision over military action to his country's lawmakers backed out after parliament voted against taking part. In the end, Obama's White House would never directly intervene militarily against the Assad regime, anxious to maintain the region's crumbling geopolitical and military balance. Washington instead agreed to a last-minute deal with Damascus brokered by Moscow to dismantle Syria's chemical weapons arsenal and ship it to Russia starting in October 2013. Under the aegis of the United Nations Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) awarded the Nobel Peace Prize that year the operation theoretically ended the Syrian government's ability to use chemical weapons against its own citizens or anyone else. But clearly, the operation does not seem to have been successful. In fact, as this article in Weekly Standard points out, the Obama administration's credibility took a hit with the latest suspected chemical attack as former national security adviser Susan Rice had said in January that Obama administration had been successful in removing chemical weapons in Syria. On the other hand, it is true that direct military intervention can have some unwanted repercussions for the US, much like the kind of consequences of the 2003 Iraq war. On his part, Obama said before stepping down in January that he was "proud" of his decision to refrain from military action in Syria. "The perception was that my credibility was at stake, that America's credibility was at stake," he told The Atlantic magazine. "And so for me to press the pause button at that moment, I knew, would cost me politically." "The fact that I was able to pull back from the immediate pressures and think through in my own mind what was in America's interest, not only with respect to Syria but also with respect to our democracy, was as tough a decision as I've made," he added. "I believe ultimately it was the right decision to make." Only time will tell. With inputs from AFP United Nations/United States: Russia's UN envoy accused the United States on Friday of violating international law by carrying out military strikes in Syria. "The United States attacked the territory of sovereign Syria. We describe that attack as a flagrant violation of international law and an act of aggression," Deputy Ambassador Vladimir Safronkov told the Security Council. The council was meeting in an emergency session after the United States launched a barrage of missile strikes on a Syrian air base in retaliation for a suspected chemical attack. France and Britain said the US response was "appropriate" and laid the blame on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Eighty-six people including at least 27 children died in the suspected attack on Tuesday in Khan Sheikhun, a rebel-held town in Syria's Idlib province. Results from post-mortems performed on victims point to exposure to the deadly sarin nerve agent, according to Turkish health officials. The council meeting was called by Bolivia, which also branded the US strikes a violation of international law. Bolivian Ambassador Sacha Lorenti said the United States had behaved like "investigator, attorney, judge and executioner" in Syria. "This is not what international law is all about," he told reporters. President Donald Trump's decision to strike the Syrian regime in retaliation for a chemical attack comes four years after his predecessor Barack Obama faced a similar challenge from Damascus and chose to back down. There was no doubt among the international community on 21 August, 2013: Obama's "red line" had just been crossed in Syria with a chemical weapons attack outside Damascus that was almost certainly the work of Bashar al-Assad's regime. Two years earlier, Obama had vowed that the use of such weapons would "change my calculus" to justify military intervention in Syria. Britain and France agreed, embracing the president's rhetoric. So when the massacre took place in Ghouta, an eastern suburb of the Syrian capital where US intelligence said some 1,400 were killed by a sarin gas attack, all eyes turned toward Washington. Two days later, Obama said he was ready to strike. But to surprise in the United States and around the world, he said he would put any decision over military action in Syria to a vote in Congress, essentially ruling out any immediate attack. Then his ally, then British prime minister David Cameron who had also submitted a decision over military action to his country's lawmakers backed out after parliament voted against taking part. In the end, Obama's White House would never directly intervene militarily against the Assad regime, anxious to maintain the region's crumbling geopolitical and military balance. Washington instead agreed to a last-minute deal with Damascus brokered by Moscow to dismantle Syria's chemical weapons arsenal and ship it to Russia starting in October 2013. Under the aegis of the United Nations Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) awarded the Nobel Peace Prize that year the operation theoretically ended the Syrian government's ability to use chemical weapons against its own citizens or anyone else. Obama's controversial decision precipitated an avalanche of criticism in the United States and abroad for his paralysis over Syria. On Tuesday, following a new suspected chemical weapons attack that killed least 86 Syrian civilians including 27 children that Washington attributed to Assad's regime, Trump said his predecessor bore some responsibility. "These heinous acts are a consequence of the past administration's weakness and irresolution," he said in a statement. Obama had issued a "blank threat," Trump followed up on Wednesday, which "set us back a long ways." This week's attack, he said, "crosses many, many lines." After Tuesday's suspected attack on the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhun, Trump was standing in Obama's shoes from almost four years ago and he decided to step in a different direction. On Thursday, Trump ordered a massive military strike against Syria in retaliation for the attack that Washington said involved a sarin-like nerve agent. Fifty-nine precision-guided missiles hit Shayrat Airfield in Syria, where the United States believes Tuesday's deadly attack was launched, targeting aircraft and runways at the base. Support from US lawmakers Senior US lawmakers from both parties expressed support Thursday for Trump's ordered military strike on a Syrian air base, but some rank-and-file members warned against further action without congressional authorisation. Trump told the American people he ordered air strikes on Syrian forces in retaliation for a "barbaric" deadly chemical attack on civilians that he blamed on the country's strongman Assad. John McCain and Lindsey Graham in a statement said: "Unlike the previous administration, Trump confronted a pivotal moment in Syria and took action. For that, he deserves the support of the American people." Marco Rubio called the strike an "important decisive step...It is not a message...It is a degrading of the capability of the Syrian regime to carry out further chemical attacks against innocent civilians." He also tweeted: "Be sure of this: The wicked will not go unpunished" Proverbs 11:21 #SyriaChemicalAttack Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) April 7, 2017 Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, said, "Making sure Assad knows that when he commits such despicable atrocities he will pay a price is the right thing to do." He added: "It is incumbent on the Trump administration to come up with a strategy and consult with Congress before implementing it. I salute the professionalism and skill of our Armed Forces who took action today." However, not all the lawmakers were happy with Trump's actions. Ted Lieu from California said that there was no debate in the Congress and no explanation was given to the American people. If true, this is UNCONSTITUTIONAL. Congress never authorized @POTUS to engage in war on #Assad in #Syria. https://t.co/Q39BSgaFYq Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) April 7, 2017 This was done with no debate in Congress & no explanation to the American people. 50 Tomahawk missiles launched at #Assad regime is war. https://t.co/wWH5Qo8XUQ Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) April 7, 2017 Assad is still in power. What was purpose of strike? How much did this cost? Was Assad a threat to US homeland? How does this achieve peace? https://t.co/D3mstYwqh8 Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) April 7, 2017 .@realDonaldTrump campaigned to get US out of foreign wars. His actions in Syria, Iraq & Yemen show he is acting like a warmonger. https://t.co/grwuQNfK5M Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) April 7, 2017 "Making sure Assad knows that when he commits such despicable atrocities he will pay a price is the right thing to do," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the country's top Democrat and a frequent critic of the nascent Trump administration, said in a statement: Please see my statement following the US military strike in Syria: pic.twitter.com/MmiFY1LNxS Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) April 7, 2017 Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan called the action "appropriate and just," adding that the strikes "make clear that the Assad regime can no longer count on American inaction as it carries out atrocities against the Syrian people." Several lawmakers, including Ryan and Schumer stressed the need for Trump to consult with Congress on forging the appropriate US military strategy against Syria. Senator Ben Cardin, the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said the targeted bombings "send a clear signal" of US resolve. "However, and I cannot emphasise this enough, any longer-term or larger military operation in Syria by the Trump administration will need to be done in consultation with the Congress," he said. Democratic congressman Adam Schiff is among several lawmakers who have long sought a new, more narrowly defined congressional authorisation for US military action in the aftermath of the attacks on 11 September, 2001 and the fight against terrorism. "I will be re-introducing an authorisation for use of military force against Islamic State and al-Qaeda when Congress returns to session" after its two-week recess which begins Friday, Schiff said. Democrat Barbara Lee, part of an anti-war coalition along with some isolationist Republicans who opposed president Barack Obama when he sought approval for intervention in Syria in 2013, was more blunt. "This is an act of war," she wrote on Twitter. This is an act of war. Congress needs to come back into session & hold a debate. Anything less is an abdication of our responsibility. https://t.co/GvHML3ByeI Rep. Barbara Lee (@RepBarbaraLee) April 7, 2017 "Congress needs to come back into session and hold a debate. Anything less is an abdication of our responsibility." Senate Republican Rand Paul added that "while we all condemn the atrocities in Syria, the United States was not attacked." Trump "needs congressional authorisation for military action as required by the Constitution," he said, adding that intervention in Syria would do "nothing to make us safer." An important point to note here is the vote taken in 2002 to authorise force in Iraq, a whopping majority of 77 members had voted 'yes', only 23 had voted 'nay'. According to New York Times, the Iraq vote by and large bipartisan, however the vote "highlighted a sharp split in the Democratic party over how and when to use force," and this is true in case of the 2017 Syria airstrikes, where a similar split along similar lines can be seen. With inputs from AFP By Johan Ahlander | STOCKHOLM STOCKHOLMA truck drove into a crowd on a shopping street and crashed into a department store in central Stockholm on Friday, killing three people and wounding eight in what the prime minister said appeared to be a terrorist attack.Part of central Stockholm was cordoned off and the area was evacuated, including the main train station. All subway traffic was halted on orders from the police."Sweden has been attacked. Everything points to the fact that this is a terrorist attack," Prime Minister Stefan Lofven told reporters during a visit in western Sweden. He was immediately returning to the capital.Many police and emergency services personnel were at the scene, a Reuters witness said.Nobody has been arrested in connection with the attack police said. There was no immediate claim of responsibilty.Several attacks in which trucks or cars have driven into crowds have taken place in Europe in the past year. Al Qaeda in 2010 urged its followers to use trucks as a weapon. In London on March 22, a man in a car ploughed into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, killing four, and then stabbed a policeman to death before being shot by police.Islamic State claimed responsibility for both an attack in Nice, France, last July, when a truck killed 86 people celebrating Bastille Day, and one in Berlin in December, when a truck smashed through a Christmas market, killing 12 people.A government source told Reuters all Swedish government offices had been closed. All ministers were safe, the source said. "We were standing by the traffic lights at Drottninggatan (Queen Street) and then we heard some screaming and saw a truck coming," a witness, who declined to be named, told Reuters."Then it drove into a pillar at Ahlens City (department store) where the hood started burning. When it stopped we saw a man lying under the tire. It was terrible to see," said the man, who saw the incident from inside his car. Radio Sweden reporter Martin Svenningsen said he saw three dead people "but probably more". A Reuters witness saw a number of body-like forms covered by blankets at the scene. Police confirmed three deaths and eight people injured.King Carl Gustaf, Sweden's head of state, expressed his horror at the attcak."Our thoughts are going out to those that were affected, and to their families," he said in a statement from the royal palace.In Brussels, the European Union offered Sweden support and solidarity."An attack on any of our member states is an attack on us all," said EU chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker. "One of Europe's most vibrant and colourful cities appears to have been struck by those wishing it and our very way of life harm. (Reporting by Stockholm newsroom,; editing by Angus MacSwan) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. By Johan Ahlander | STOCKHOLM STOCKHOLM A truck ploughed into a crowd on a shopping street and crashed into a department store in central Stockholm on Friday, killing three people and wounding eight in what the prime minister said appeared to be a terrorist attack.Swedish police said no-one had been arrested in connection with the attack. They showed a picture of a man wearing a grey hoodie and said they were looking for him. They did not rule out the possibility that other attackers were involved. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. "I turned around and saw a big truck coming towards me. It swerved from side to side. It didn't look out of control, it was trying to hit people," Glen Foran, an Australian tourist in his 40s, told Reuters. "It hit people, it was terrible. It hit a pram with a kid in it, demolished it," he said. "It took a long time for police to get here. I suppose from their view it was quick, but it felt like forever."Part of central Stockholm was cordoned off and the area was evacuated, including the main train station. All subway traffic was halted on police orders. Government offices were closed."Sweden has been attacked. Everything points to the fact that this is a terrorist attack," Prime Minister Stefan Lofven told reporters during a visit in western Sweden. He was immediately returning to the capital.Many police and emergency services personnel were at the scene, said a Reuters witness who saw policemen put what appeared to be two bodies in body bags. Bloody tyre tracks on Drottninggatan (Queen Street) showed where the beer truck had passed. The truck had been stolen while making a delivery to a restaurant further up Drottninggatan, Spendrups Brewery spokesman Marten Lyth said. A masked person jumped into the cab, started the truck and drove away. "We were standing by the traffic lights at Drottninggatan and then we heard some screaming and saw a truck coming," a witness who declined to be named told Reuters."Then it drove into a pillar at Ahlens City (department store) where the hood started burning. When it stopped we saw a man lying under the tyre. It was terrible to see," said the man, who saw the incident from his car. Several attacks in which trucks or cars have driven into crowds have taken place in Europe in the past year. Al Qaeda in 2010 urged its followers to use trucks as a weapon. In London on March 22, a man in a car ploughed into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, killing four, and then stabbed a policeman to death before being shot by police.Islamic State claimed responsibility for an attack in Nice, France, last July, when a truck killed 86 people celebrating Bastille Day, and one in Berlin in December, when a truck smashed through a Christmas market, killing 12 people.Radio Sweden reporter Martin Svenningsen said he saw three dead people on Friday "but probably more". Police confirmed three deaths and eight people injured."Our thoughts are going out to those that were affected, and to their families," Sweden's King Carl Gustaf said in a statement.The attack was the latest to hit the Nordic region after the 2015 shootings in Copenhagen, Denmark, that killed three people and the 2011 bombing and shooting by far right extremist Anders Behring Breivik that killed 77 people in Norway. Sweden has not been hit by a large-scale attack, although in December 2010, a man blew himself up only a few hundred yards from the site of the latest incident in a failed suicide attack.Swedish authorities raised the national security threat level to four on a scale of five in October 2010 but lowered the level to three, indicating a "raised threat", in March 2016.Police in Norway's largest cities and at Oslo's airport will carry weapons until further notice following the attack. Denmark has been on high alert since the February 2015 shootings."An attack on any of our member states is an attack on us all," European Union chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker said in Brussels. "One of Europe's most vibrant and colourful cities appears to have been struck by those wishing it -- and our very way of life -- harm.Neutral Sweden has not fought a war in more than 200 years, but its military has taken part in U.N peacekeeping missions in a number of conflict zones in recent years, including Iraq, Mali and Afghanistan.The Sapo security police said in its annual report it was impossible to say how big a risk there was that Sweden would be targeted like other European cities, but that, if so "it is most likely that it would be undertaken by a lone attacker". (Reporting by Stockholm newsroom; Writing by Gwladys Fouche; Editing by Catherine Evans) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. By Steve Holland and Phil Stewart | ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE/WASHINGTON ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE/WASHINGTON U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday that "something should happen" with President Bashar al-Assad after a deadly poison gas attack in Syria, as the Pentagon and the White House launched detailed discussions on military options.While Trump stopped short of calling on Assad to leave office, the comments were his strongest suggestion yet that the United States may be edging toward a stronger stance against Assad, an ally of Iran and Russia, whose country has been torn apart by six years of civil war. "I think what Assad did is terrible," Trump told reporters travelling with him on Air Force One en route to Florida."I think what happened in Syria is a disgrace to humanity and hes there, and I guess hes running things, so something should happen," Trump said.The poison gas attack on Tuesday in the rebel-held Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun killed at least 70 people, many of them children, and presented Trump with his biggest foreign policy crisis since he took office in January. Washington has blamed the attack on the Syrian government, putting it at odds with Russia, which has air and ground forces in Syria. Trump has until now focussed his Syria policy almost exclusively on defeating Islamic State militants in northern Syria, where U.S. special forces are working with Arab and Kurdish armed groups. Only last week, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said the U.S. diplomatic policy on Syria for now was no longer focussed on making Assad leave power.The gas attack in Idlib province outraged the world. Trump said on Wednesday it had caused him to think again about Assad.MILITARY OPTIONS A U.S. official said options being discussed by the Pentagon and White House after the gas attack could include grounding aircraft used by Assad's forces, the official added. Such options would also include the use of cruise missiles, allowing the United States to strike targets without putting piloted aircraft in the skies above Syria. Striking Assad could put the United States on a collision course with Russia, which intervened on the Syrian president's side in 2015, turning the tide of the conflict against mostly Sunni Muslim rebel groups in his favour.The U.S. official did not comment on how likely military action might be or suggest which, if any, options might be recommended by the Pentagon. The official added that U.S. Defence Secretary Jim Mattis and White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster had already been in talks on the matter.Mattis will presumably discuss the options when he meets with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago retreat in Florida, the official said. Mattis is due in Florida later on Thursday as part of a scheduled trip. U.S. intelligence agencies suspect that Assad kept some of the chemical weapons or components that he agreed to surrender under a U.S.-Russian deal that followed a chemical weapons attack on the outskirts of Damascus in 2013, a U.S. intelligence official said on Thursday."We have never taken the Assad regime at its word that it declared its entire chemical weapons stockpile," the official said. Turkey would welcome U.S. military action in Syria following the gas attack and would be ready to assist if needed, President Tayyip Erdogan was quoted as saying. Ankara has been a steadfast opponent of Assad and repeatedly called for his ouster.French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday a U.N.-authorized international military force should intervene in Syria if it is proven that Assad's government used chemical weapons. (Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton in Washington; Writing by Alistair Bell; Editing by Yara Bayoumy and Peter Cooney) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. By Steve Holland and Phil Stewart | ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE/WASHINGTON ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE/WASHINGTON U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday that "something should happen" with President Bashar al-Assad after a deadly poison gas attack in Syria, as the Pentagon and the White House studied military options.Facing his biggest foreign crisis since taking office in January, Trump suggested he may be taking a stronger stance against Assad, an ally of Iran and Russia, whose country has been torn apart by six years of civil war. "I think what Assad did is terrible," Trump told reporters travelling with him on Air Force One en route to Florida."I think what happened in Syria is a disgrace to humanity and hes there, and I guess hes running things, so something should happen," Trump said, stopping short of calling on Assad to leave office. The poison gas attack on Tuesday in the rebel-held northern Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun killed at least 70 people, many of them children. Washington has blamed the attack on the Syrian government, putting it at odds with Russia, which has air and ground forces in Syria. The Syrian government has denied it was behind the attack. Striking Assad could put the United States on a collision course with Russia, which intervened on the Syrian president's side in 2015, turning the tide of the conflict against mostly Sunni Muslim rebel groups in his favour.Trump has until now focussed his Syria policy almost exclusively on defeating Islamic State militants in northern Syria, where U.S. special forces are supporting Arab and Kurdish armed groups. Only last week, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said the U.S. diplomatic policy on Syria for now was no longer focussed on making Assad leave power, one of former President Barack Obama's aims.Trump said on Wednesday the gas attack in Idlib province, which angered people around the world, had caused him to think again about Assad.MILITARY OPTIONS Going further than Trump's comments, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said there may be no future for Assad as Syria's leader. Assad's role in the future is uncertain, clearly, and with the acts that he has taken it would seem that there would be no role for him to govern the Syrian people, he said. A U.S. official said detailed military options being discussed by the Pentagon and White House after the gas attack could include grounding aircraft used by Assad's forces.Such options would also include the use of cruise missiles, allowing the United States to strike targets without putting piloted aircraft in the skies above Syria. Assad appears militarily unassailable in the areas of western Syria where he has shored up his rule with decisive help from Russia and Iranian-backed militias. The U.S. official did not comment on how likely military action might be or suggest which, if any, options might be recommended by the Pentagon.The official added that U.S. Defence Secretary Jim Mattis and White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster had already been in talks on the matter.Mattis will presumably discuss the options when he meets with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago retreat in Florida, the official said. Mattis is due in Florida later on Thursday as part of a scheduled trip.Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday it was unacceptable to make "groundless" accusations over the Idlib attack. Moscow has suggested it will publicly stand by Assad and says the chemical weapons incident was likely caused by a leak from a depot controlled by Syrian rebels.European Union governments called on the U.N. Security Council to strongly condemn the attack. Turkey would welcome U.S. military action in Syria following the gas attack and would be ready to assist if needed, President Tayyip Erdogan was quoted as saying. Ankara has been a steadfast opponent of Assad and repeatedly called for his ouster.French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday a U.N.-authorized international military force should intervene in Syria if it is proven that Assad's government used chemical weapons. (Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton in Washington; Writing by Alistair Bell; Editing by Yara Bayoumy and Peter Cooney) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. U.S. allies expressed support on Friday for Washington's missile strikes on Syria, calling them a proportionate response to Syria's suspected use of chemical weapons.The strikes were denounced as illegal by Syria and its allies Russia and Iran. Iraq criticised "hasty interventions" in an apparent comment on the U.S. action.But a wide range of U.S. allies from Asia, Europe and the Middle East expressed support, if sometimes cautiously, in similar terms."The U.K. government fully supports the U.S. action, which we believe was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime and is intended to deter further attacks," a British government spokesman said.Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters: "Many innocent people became victims from the chemical attacks."Japan supports the U.S. government's determination to prevent the spread and use of chemical weapons," he said.Turkey viewed the strikes positively and the international community should sustain its stance against the "barbarity" of the Syrian government, Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said. In an interview with Turkish broadcaster Fox TV, Kurtulmus said Assad's government must be punished in the international arena and the peace process in Syria needed to be accelerated.French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said Russia and Iran needed to understand that supporting Assad made no sense and that the escalation of the U.S. military role in Syria was a "warning" to "a criminal regime"."Use of chemical weapons is appalling and should be punished because it is a war crime," Ayrault told Reuters and France Info radio. French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel issued statements saying Assad was solely to blame for the air strikes.The Dutch government said: "The United States has given a clear signal that the use of poison gas crosses a line." It also labelled the strikes a "proportionate" response."U.S. strikes show needed resolve against barbaric chemical attacks. EU will work with the US to end brutality in Syria," the chairman of the council of EU leaders, Donald Tusk, said on Twitter.Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the strikes sent "a vitally important message" that the world would not tolerate the use of chemical weapons. "The retribution has been proportionate and it has been swift," he told reporters in Sydney. "We support the United States in that swift action."Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which back rebels fighting Assad, said they supported the U.S. strikes and held only the Syrian government responsible for the attacks.Other Gulf countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait, also expressed support for the attacks. Some countries expressed reservations about the U.S. decision to launch strikes without authorisation from the U.N. Security Council.Indonesia, home to the world's largest Muslim population, condemned the use of chemical weapons in Syria. "At the same time, Indonesia is concerned with unilateral actions by any parties, including the use of Tomahawk missiles, in responding to the chemical weapon attack tragedy in Syria," Foreign Ministry spokesman Armanatha Nasir said in a text message."Military actions, undertaken without prior authorisation of the U.N. Security Council, are not in line with international legal principles in the peaceful settlement of disputes, as stipulated in the U.N. Charter." (Additional reporting by Kanupriya Kapoor in Jakarta, Parisa Hafezi in Ankara, Guy Faulconbridge in London, Andrew Osborn and Jack Stubbs in Moscow, John Irish in Nouakchott, Mauritania, Colin Packham in Sydney, Tulay Karadeniz in Istanbul, Maher Chmaytelli in Erbil, Aziz El Yaakoubi and Sami Aboudi in Dubai and Marcin Goettig in Warsaw; Writing by Nick Macfie; Editing by Clarence Fernandez, Sonya Hepinstall and Giles Elgood) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. By Steve Holland, Andrew Osborn and Tom Perry | PALM BEACH, Fla./MOSCOW/BEIRUT PALM BEACH, Fla./MOSCOW/BEIRUT U.S. cruise missile strikes on a Syrian air base were one step away from clashing with the Russian military, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev charged on Friday, underscoring the risks in U.S. President Donald Trump's first major foray into the Syrian civil war.U.S. officials informed Russian forces ahead of the strikes, which were intended to punish the Syrian government for what they said was a chemical weapons attack, and avoided hitting Russian personnel.In the biggest foreign policy decision of his presidency, Trump ordered a step his predecessor Barack Obama never took: targeting the Syrian military. Washington says Syrian government forces carried out a poison gas attack in northern Syria this week that killed at least 70 people.The U.S. action catapulted Washington into confrontation with Russia, which has military advisers on the ground aiding its ally, President Bashar al-Assad.Satellite imagery suggests the Shayrat air base that wasstruck by dozens of U.S. missiles is home to Russian special forces and military helicopters, part of the Kremlin's effort to help the Syrian government fight Islamic State and other militant groups.Medvedev, on social media, said the strikes were illegal and had been "one step away from military clashes with Russia."Trump has frequently called for improved relations with Russia which were strained under Obama, but the U.S. president said action had to be taken against Assad. "Years of previous attempts at changing Assads behaviour have all failed and failed very dramatically," Trump said as he announced the attack from his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, where he was meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping."Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack," he said, adding: "No child of God should ever suffer such horror." Assad's office said Damascus would respond by striking its enemies harder.The United Nations Security Council was to meet on Friday to discuss the U.S. cruise missile strikes, diplomats said. The meeting of the 15-member council will be public.U.S. officials said the strike was a "one-off" intended to deter future chemical weapons attacks, and not an expansion of the U.S. role in the Syria war.Tomahawk missiles fired from the USS Porter and USS Ross struck the airstrip, aircraft and fuel stations on the air base, which the Pentagon says was used to store chemical weapons.The swift action is likely to be interpreted as a signal to Russia, as well as to countries such as North Korea, China and Iran where Trump has faced foreign policy tests early in his presidency, that he is willing to use force. The strikes could cheer Assad's enemies, after months when Western powers appeared to grow increasingly resigned to his staying in power. But opposition figures said an isolated assault was far from the decisive intervention they have long sought.The Syrian government and Moscow have denied that Syrian forces were behind the gas attack, but Western countries have dismissed their explanation that chemicals leaked from a rebel weapons depot after an air strike as not credible. The Syrian army said the U.S. attack killed six people and called it "blatant aggression" which made the United States a partner of "terrorist groups" including Islamic State. There was no independent confirmation of civilian casualties.RAISING STAKES IN THE SKIES "President Putin views the U.S. strikes on Syria as aggression against a sovereign state in violation of the norms of international law and on a made-up up pretext," said a Kremlin statement. "This step by Washington will inflict major damage on U.S.-Russia ties." Moscow suspended communication with U.S. forces designed to stop planes colliding over Syria.A Russian frigate carrying cruise missiles sailed through the Bosphorus Strait into the Mediterranean Sea, although there was no indication it was directly in response to U.S. action.Several Western allies of the United States described the U.S. strikes as a proportionate response to Assad's suspected use of poison gas. Iran, Assad's other main ally, denounced it. Washington has long backed rebels fighting against Assad in a multi-sided civil war that has killed more than 400,000 people and driven half of Syrians from their homes since 2011.The United States has been conducting air strikes against Islamic State militants who control territory in eastern and northern Syria, and a small number of U.S. troops are on the ground assisting anti-Islamic State militias.Russia joined the war on Assad's behalf in 2015, action that decisively turned the momentum of the conflict in the Syrian government's favour. Although they support opposing sides in the war between Assad and rebels, Washington and Moscow both say they share a single main enemy, Islamic State.Tuesday's attack was the first time since 2013 that Syria was accused of using sarin, a banned nerve agent it was meant to have given up under a Russian-brokered, U.N.-enforced deal that persuaded Obama to call off air strikes four years ago.Video depicted limp bodies and children choking while rescuers tried to wash off the poison gas. Russian state television blamed rebels and did not show footage of victims. (Additional reporting by Phil Stewart, Idrees Ali, Yara Bayoumy, Jonathan Landay, John Walcott, Lesley Wroughton, Patricia Zengerle, Roberta Rampton, David Brunnstrom and Matt Spetalnick in Washington, Megan Davies in New York and Jack Stubbs in Moscow; Writing by Peter Graff and Alistair Bell; Editing by Peter Millership and Giles Elgood) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Senior US lawmakers from both parties expressed support for President Donald Trump's ordered military strike on a Syrian air base, but some rank-and-file members warned against further action without congressional authorisation. Trump told Americans that he ordered air strikes on Syrian forces in retaliation for a "barbaric" deadly chemical attack on civilians that he blamed on the country's strongman President Bashar al-Assad. "Making sure Assad knows that when he commits such despicable atrocities he will pay a price is the right thing to do," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the country's top Democrat and a frequent critic of the nascent Trump administration, said in a statement. Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan called the action "appropriate and just," adding that the strikes "make clear that the Assad regime can no longer count on American inaction as it carries out atrocities against the Syrian people." Senator John McCain, a national security hawk who for years has advocated a more muscular policy against the Syrian regime, hailed the strike as a "credible first step." "Unlike the previous administration, President Trump confronted a pivotal moment in Syria and took action." Several lawmakers, including Ryan and Schumer stressed the need for Trump to consult with Congress on forging the appropriate US military strategy against Syria. Senator Ben Cardin, the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said the targeted bombings "send a clear signal" of US resolve. "However, and I cannot emphasize this enough, any longer-term or larger military operation in Syria by the Trump administration will need to be done in consultation with the Congress," he said. Democratic congressman Adam Schiff is among several lawmakers who have long sought a new, more narrowly defined congressional authorization for US military action in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks of 2001 and the fight against terrorism. "I will be re-introducing an authorization for use of military force against Islamic State and al-Qaeda when Congress returns to session" after its two-week recess which begins Friday, Schiff said. Democrat Barbara Lee, part of an anti-war coalition along with some isolationist Republicans who opposed president Barack Obama when he sought approval for intervention in Syria in 2013, was more blunt. "This is an act of war," she wrote on Twitter. "Congress needs to come back into session and hold a debate. Anything less is an abdication of our responsibility." Senate Republican Rand Paul added that "while we all condemn the atrocities in Syria, the United States was not attacked." Trump "needs congressional authorization for military action as required by the Constitution," he said, adding that intervention in Syria would do "nothing to make us safer." House Democrat Ted Lieu agreed that Trump needs approval for his military action. "Congress authorised (the president) to use force on terrorists. We NEVER authorised force to enforce chemical weapons treaty," he tweeted. The missile strike against a Syrian air base marks the first time the United States has directly attacked the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Here is what we know so far about the target and the outcome of the strike. The target At around 8:40 pm Eastern Time (0040 GMT) on Thursday, the US military fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at the Shayrat airfield near Homs in western Syria. According to the Pentagon, the facility was used to store chemical weapons and Syrian aircraft. The Tomahawks targeted aircraft, hardened aircraft shelters, petroleum and logistical storage, ammunition supply bunkers, air defense systems and radars, the Pentagon said. Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain Jeff Davis said the strike lasted "a couple of minutes." US intelligence agents believe aircraft from Shayrat conducted the chemical weapons attack on 4 April. National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster said measures had been put in place to avoid hitting sarin gas stored at the airfield. "So that would not be ignited and cause a hazard to civilians or anyone else," McMaster said. How it was launched The strike was launched from the destroyers USS Porter and USS Ross in the eastern Mediterranean. Russian forces were warned ahead of the strike using a special military-to-military hotline. Davis said the strike was designed to avoid casualties. "Every precaution was taken to execute this strike with minimal risk to personnel at the airfield," he said. There was no immediate indication that Russia had tried to shoot down any of the missiles. The result According to the Pentagon, initial indications showed the strike had severely damaged or destroyed Syrian aircraft, infrastructure and equipment at Shayrat. Davis said the runways themselves were not targeted. US officials stressed the strike was a direct reaction to the chemical attack, and not the beginning of a broader military front against Assad. "The strike was a proportional response to Assad's heinous act," Davis said. Legal concerns The strike was launched at the order of President Donald Trump and was a "proportional response to what was a violation of international war by the Assad regime," Davis said. But critics questioned whether the action amounted to a declaration of war and said Trump should have gone to Congress first. America is currently hitting Islamic State targets in Syria under a 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF). But attacking the government of a sovereign nation raises legal questions. "President waging military action against Syria without a vote of Congress? Unconstitutional," Democratic Senator Tim Kaine wrote on Twitter. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Friday that an attack by the United States on a Syrian airbase from which it said a chemical weapons attack was launched this week was 'understandable' given the Syrian people's suffering. "The attack of the United States is understandable given the dimension of the war crimes, given the suffering of innocent people, and given the blockage in the UN Security Council," Merkel said. She described the strikes as "limited and targeted". The United States had fired cruise missiles on Friday at a Syrian airbase from which President Donald Trump said a deadly chemical weapons attack had been launched, the first direct US assault on the government of Bashar al-Assad in six years of civil war. In the biggest foreign policy decision of his presidency so far, Trump ordered the step his predecessor Barack Obama never took: directly targetting Assad's military as punishment for the chemical weapons attack which killed at least 70 people. That catapulted the United States into a confrontation with Russia, which has military advisers on the ground assisting its close ally Assad. The swift action is likely to be interpreted not only as a signal to Russia, but also to other countries such as North Korea, China and Iran where Trump has faced foreign policy tests early in his presidency. The Syrian army said the US attack killed six people at its air base near the city of Homs. It called the attack "blatant aggression" and said it made the United States a "partner" of "terrorist groups" including Islamic State. Homs governor Talal Barazi said the death toll was seven. In the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhun, site of an alleged chemical weapons attack, residents still mourning their dead on Friday welcomed US strikes as a way to pressure Damascus. "God bless Trump," said Abu Ali, in his forties, hours after the US launched a barrage of cruise missiles at a Syrian government air base in the central Homs province. "God willing, these strikes will be a clear warning to (President) Bashar al Assad, to tell him: Bashar, enough killing and injustice against these people," he said. The attack ordered by President Donald Trump was the first direct US military action against Syria's government since the conflict began six years ago. It came after a devastating suspected chemical weapons attack on Khan Sheikhun on Tuesday that killed at least 86 people, among them 30 children, and left hundreds suffering symptoms including convulsions, vomiting or foaming at the mouth. On Friday, the neighbourhood hit in the attack remained empty, with survivors decamping to other parts of the rebel-held town in the northwestern province of Idlib. Across the town, there was little foot traffic or other movement, with relatives of those who perished still receiving condolences at halls. Amidst the quiet and the sadness, residents said they welcomed the American attacks. "We consider these strikes not only as a reaction, but a way to avenge the blood of the martyrs who fell here in Khan Sheikhun," said Haj Kassar, a merchant in his fifties. "They're above us, threatening us again," he said, as warplanes circled overhead, carrying out at least one strike outside the town. 'An end to suffering' "It doesn't deliver even a small part of the justice the martyrs deserve," added 37-year-old Abu Mohib, an army officer defector. "But it does lift the morale of the families of the dead," he said. Syria's conflict began in March 2011 with anti-government protests, but has since spiralled into a bitter and complex civil war that has drawn in international players and jihadist fighters. Since last year, opposition forces have suffered a series of defeats, and many in rebel-held territory expressed hope that US strikes could reverse the situation. "We hope that this will change the balance of power and deal the decisive blow to the Assad regime," said Ali al-Khaled, a resident of the area hit in the suspected chemical attack. "We are grateful to the American airforce and for the American response to the massacre in Khan Sheikhun," he said. If confirmed, Khan Sheikhun would be the second deadliest chemical attack in the Syrian war, after a 2013 attack believed to have killed hundreds of people in Eastern Ghouta near Damascus. The Eastern Ghouta attack was blamed on Syria's government and prompted then-US president Barack Obama to threaten military action, though he ultimately held off after a deal for Damascus to turn over its chemical arsenal. In the Eastern Ghouta town of Douma, residents welcomed the US attack on Friday, but urged more military action. "We hope that any foreign intervention... would be an intervention to bring an end to the suffering of the Syrian people -- not just a single hit followed by more crimes and killing," said 30-year-old Abu Shahid. 'Not enough' "There should be a bigger deterrent to killing people than this," added resident Abu Khalil. "I don't think this is enough." And others expressed hope that Washington could ground all Syrian government planes. "In reality, Syrians don't care about military strikes as much as they care about a no-fly zone for all aircraft," said 27-year-old Hassan Taqiddin. "In the end, these strikes have very limited impact. They hit this airport, then what?" More than 320,000 people have been killed and over half the country displaced since Syria's conflict began, shattering families. "Part of the Syrian people has fled, part is buried underground, another part is out chasing humanitarian aid," said Abu Ali in Khan Sheikhun. "We just want Trump and his administration to put an end to this farce." Washington: Senator Marco Rubio said the next step in Syria should be to work with Sunni governments to discuss "an alternative" government in Syria, even as US President Donald Trump poured scorn on Bashar al-Assad for "chocking out the lives of helpless men". Rubio is a Florida Republican and onetime rival of US President Donald Trump. The conservative told NBC's Today Show that Trump should reach out to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates as well as Turkey, to discuss ways to get Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down and create a new regime. Assad has not responded to diplomatic pressure in the past, but Rubio says the military strikes could change that. "We need to now move forward through a combination of diplomacy and, quite frankly, the support of groups on ground, particularly non-jihadist Sunni groups, to create alternatives to the Assad regime." President Donald Trump cast the United States assault on a Syrian air base as vital to deter future use of poison gas and called on other nations to join in seeking "to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria". The US blasted the air base on Thursday night with a barrage of cruise missiles in fiery retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. It was the first direct American assault on the Syrian government and Trump's most dramatic military order since becoming president just over two months ago. The strikes also risk thrusting the US deeper into an intractable conflict that his predecessor Barack Obama spent years trying to avoid. Announcing the assault from his Florida resort, Trump said there was no doubt Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the chemical attack, which he said employed banned gases and killed dozens. "Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children," Trump declared. The US strikes 59 missiles launched from the USS Ross and USS Porter hit the government-controlled Shayrat air base in central Syria, where US officials say the Syrian military planes that dropped the chemicals had taken off from. The US missiles hit at 3:45 am on Friday morning. The missiles targeted the base's airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, officials said. The Syrian military said at least six people were killed and several were wounded in the strikes on the air base. Trump ordered the strikes without approval from Congress or the backing of the United Nations. US officials said he had the right to use force to defend national interests and to protect civilians from atrocities. The United States blasted a Syrian air base with a barrage of cruise missiles Thursday night in fiery retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. President Donald Trump cast the US assault as vital to deter future use of poison gas. It was the first direct American assault on the Syrian government and Trump's most dramatic military order since becoming president just over two months ago. In a brief televised address delivered hours after the UN Security Council failed to agree on a probe into the apparent chemical attack, Trump confirmed the US strike on Syria and urged "all civilised nations" to unite to end the bloodshed in the country. Here is a transcript of US President Donald Trump's remarks Thursday night after ordering a massive missile strike against a Syrian air base: "My fellow Americans: On Tuesday, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad launched a horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians. "Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women, and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror. "Tonight, I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched. It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. "There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention, and ignored the urging of the UN Security Council. "Years of previous attempts at changing Assad's behavior have all failed and failed very dramatically. As a result, the refugee crisis continues to deepen and the region continues to destabilise, threatening the United States and its allies. "Tonight, I call on all civilised nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria, and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types. "We ask for God's wisdom as we face the challenge of our very troubled world. We pray for the lives of the wounded and for the souls of those who have passed. And we hope that as long as America stands for justice, then peace and harmony will, in the end, prevail. "Goodnight. And God bless America and the entire world. Thank you." The US military fired dozens of cruise missiles at the Shayrat Airfield at 8.45 pm Eastern Time (0000 GMT), officials said. A White House official said 59 "precision munitions" had been blasted at the base, while a US defence official said "dozens" of Tomahawk cruise missiles were launched. The missiles were fired from the USS Porter and the USS Ross, which belong to the US Navy's Sixth Fleet and are located in the eastern Mediterranean. A US official said the missiles targeted aircraft and runways at the base. The sudden US military action against the Assad regime marks a stunning development in Syria's brutal, six-year conflict and a sudden about-face for Trump. It came despite a warning from Russia of potential "negative consequences" if Washington strikes Syria. "All responsibility if military action occurs will be on the shoulders of those who initiated such a doubtful tragic enterprise," Russian Ambassador to the UN Vladimir Safronkov said. A US official said Washington had informed Russia ahead of the Syria strike. US secretary of state Rex Tillerson had earlier vowed an "appropriate response" to the attack in Khan Sheikhun in rebel-held Idlib province, which killed at least 86 people, including 27 children. The White House official said the United States assesses that the Assad regime used a chemical nerve agent consistent with sarin in Tuesday's attacks. "I think what happened in Syria is one of the truly egregious crimes and shouldn't have happened and it shouldn't be allowed to happen," Trump told reporters travelling on Air Force One to Florida, where he was holding a two-day summit with Chinese president Xi Jinping. The strike came as Trump was hosting Xi in meetings focused in part on another pressing US security dilemma: North Korea's nuclear program. Trump's actions in Syria could signal to China that the new president isn't afraid of unilateral military steps, even if key nations like China are standing in the way. Trump has advocated greater counterterrorism cooperation with Russia, Assad's most powerful military backer. Just last week, the Trump administration signaled the US was no longer interested in trying to push Assad from power over his direction of a conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and led to the worst refugee crisis since the Second World War. US military officials sought to portray the strikes as an appropriate, measured response. But the assault still risks plunging America into the middle of Syria's conflict, complicating the safety of the hundreds of US forces fighting a separate campaign against the Islamic State group in the north of the country. If Assad's military persists in further gas attacks, the Trump administration might logically pursue increased retaliation. Russia and Iran, Assad's allies, pose other problems. Russian military personnel and aircraft are embedded with Syria's, and Iranian troops and paramilitary forces are also on the ground helping Assad fight the array of opposition groups hoping to topple him. The world learned of the chemical attack earlier in the week in footage that showed people dying in the streets and bodies of children stacked in piles. The international outcry fueled an emotional response from Trump, who appeared to abandon his much-touted "America First" vision for a stance of humanitarian intervention, akin to that of previous American leaders. "I think what happened in Syria is a disgrace to humanity," he said on Thursday. Trump seemed to rapidly reconsider his feelings about Assad, saying: "He's there and I guess he's running things, so something should happen." The show of force in Syria raises legal questions. It's unclear what authority Trump is relying on to attack another government. When Obama intervened in Libya in 2011, he used a UN Security Council mandate and Nato's overall leadership of the mission to argue that he had legal authority arguments that many Republicans opposed. Trump can't rely on either justification here. Unclear also is whether Trump is adopting any broader effort to combat Assad. Trump and his top aides had acknowledged in recent days the "reality" of Assad being in power, saying his ouster was no longer a priority. But the chemical weapons attack seemed to spur a rethink. In Florida on Thursday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said of Assad: "There's no role for him to govern the Syrian people." With inputs from agencies United Nations: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged restraint and a renewed push for peace in Syria as the Security Council called an emergency meeting to discuss the US missile strikes on a Syrian air base. "Mindful of the risk of escalation, I appeal for restraint to avoid any acts that could deepen the suffering of the Syrian people," Guterres said in a statement. "These events underscore my belief that there is no other way to solve the conflict than through a political solution." The Security Council was set to meet at 11:30 am at the request of Bolivia, to hear a briefing from UN political chief Jeffrey Feltman. US Ambassador Nikki Haley, who holds the council presidency this month, said the discussion would be held in an open session despite Bolivia's request for a closed-door meeting. "Any country that chooses to defend the atrocities of the Syrian regime will have to do so in full public view, for all the world to hear," Haley said in a statement. Russia had also demanded an emergency meeting after angrily denouncing the military action as an "aggression against a sovereign state." US President Donald Trump ordered cruise missile strikes on a Syrian air base in response to a chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held town that killed 86 people and shocked the world. The strike, the first direct US action against President Bashar al-Assad and Trump's biggest military decision since taking office, marked a dramatic escalation in American involvement in Syria's six-year war. The Security Council failed during a meeting on Thursday to agree on terms for an investigation of the suspected sarin gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhun. Russia's deputy ambassador Vladimir Safronkov had warned of "negative consequences" from the US military action, which he described as a "doubtful, tragic enterprise". "Look at Iraq, look at Libya," he said, referring to Western interventions that unleashed years of chaos in those countries. Eighty-six people including at least 27 children died in the suspected attack in Khan Sheikhun. Results from post-mortems performed on victims point to exposure to the deadly sarin nerve agent, according to Turkish health officials. Guterres called on the council to unite and agree on a way forward on Syria. "For too long, international law has been ignored in the Syrian conflict, and it is our shared duty to uphold international standards of humanity," he said. "This is a prerequisite to ending the unrelenting suffering of the people of Syria." The US military strike on Syria was widely hailed by the world community, with nations like the UK and Israel backing it as a "just" response to the chemical attack by President Bashar Al-Assad's regime, but Russia and Iran strongly condemned the unilateral move. The UK government said it "fully supports" the US missile strike against an air base in Syria over a suspected chemical weapons attack on Khan Sheikhun on Tuesday, in which 86 people, including 27 children, were killed. A 10 Downing Street spokesperson said, "Overnight, the US has taken military action against the Syrian regime, targeting the airfield in Shayrut which was used to launch the chemical weapons attack earlier this week. The UK government fully supports the US action, which we believe was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, and is intended to deter further attacks." UK defence secretary Michael Fallon told the BBC that the UK had been in "close contact" with the US over the last few days and that British Prime Minister Theresa May had been "informed throughout". He said that the British government had not been asked to take part in the strike. China condemned the deadly chemical weapons attack in Syria. "We condemn the recent chemical attack in Syria, and we support the independent and comprehensive investigation conducted by the relevant UN agencies into... the use or suspected use of chemical weapons so as to reach a conclusion that stands the test of history and facts on the basis of solid evidence," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said. "We have noted the latest developments. What is urgent now is to prevent the situation from deteriorating and uphold the hard-won political process to settle the Syrian issue," she said, without mentioning the US military strike which came as China's President Xi Jinping met his American counterpart Donald Trump in Florida. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he supports the "strong and clear message" sent by the US strike. "In both word and action, President (Donald) Trump sent a strong and clear message today that the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated," a statement from Netanyahu's office said. "Israel fully supports President Trump's decision and hopes that this message of resolve in the face of the Assad regime's horrific actions will resonate not only in Damascus, but in Tehran, Pyongyang and elsewhere." Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said, "The Australian government strongly supports the swift and just response of the United States. This was a calibrated, proportionate and targeted response." Turnbull added that the US had informed Australia before the strike. He said Australia was not involved in the strike, but remained fully committed as a coalition partner to ongoing military operations in Iraq and Syria. Russia, one of the the closest allies of the regime of Assad, said it considers the US strike as aggression against a sovereign State, which will further harm US-Russia ties. "President Putin considers American strikes on Syria aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international norms, and under an invented pretext," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. "The Syrian army does not have any chemical weapon stockpiles." Peskov said. "The fact of destruction of all chemical weapon stockpiles of the Syrian armed forces was recorded and confirmed by the (Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons)." "This step by Washington inflicts considerable damage to US-Russia relations, which are already in a lamentable state," Peskov said, also called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss the US missile strikes. Iran also "strongly condemned" the military strike. "We condemn all unilateral military action and the missile strike by US warships against Shayrat airbase under the pretext of Tuesday's suspected attack on Khan Sheikhun," foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghassemi told the Fars news agency. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande issued a joint statement in response to the US air strike and blamed Assad for the US action. "President Assad alone bears the responsibility for this development. His repeated use of chemical weapons and his crimes against his own people demand sanctions which France and Germany already asked for in the summer of 2013 after the massacre at Ghouta," they said. Italy gave its support to the US action, saying it was a suitable response to Syrian aggression and a deterrent against the use of chemical weapons by its leader. European Union President Donald Tusk said the US missile strikes demonstrated "needed resolve" against chemical attacks. The bloc will work with the US to "end brutality" in Syria, he said. Nato head Jens Stoltenberg blamed Syria for the US missile strikes. "Any use of chemical weapons is unacceptable, cannot go unanswered, and those responsible must be held accountable," he said. Saudi Arabia said it "fully supports" US strikes, terming it a "courageous decision" by Trump in response to the use of chemical weapons against civilians. "A responsible source at the foreign ministry expressed the Kingdom of Saudi Arabias full support for the American military operations on military targets in Syria, which came as a response to the Syrian regime's use of chemical weapons against innocent civilians," a statement carried by state news agency SPA said. Turkey's Foreign Ministry said it viewed US missile strikes against a Syrian air base "extremely positively" and added that Turkey would fully support steps that would ensure accountability for the Syrian regime. Meanwhile, Turkish President Recap Tayyip Erdogan's spokesman called for the creation of a no-fly zone and safe zones within Syria. US forces fired a barrage of cruise missiles at a Syrian airbase on Friday in response to what President Donald Trump called a "barbaric" chemical attack that the Damascus regime had launched on its own citizens. The massive strike the first direct US action against President Bashar al-Assad's government and Trump's biggest military decision since taking office marked a dramatic escalation in American involvement in Syria's six-year civil war. The missile assault followed days after images of dead children and victims suffering convulsions emerged from the suspected sarin gas attack in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhun shocked the world. Syria's regime has denied any use of chemical weapons and state media on Friday described the US strike which was reported to have pulverised the base and killed at least four servicemen as an "act of aggression". Russia too denounced the US action, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying President Vladimir Putin considered it "aggression against a sovereign state" that would inflict "considerable damage" on US-Russia ties. Trump announced the strike in a brief televised address delivered hours after the UN Security Council failed to agree on a probe into the suspected chemical attack. Declaring it in America's "vital national security interest" to prevent the spread of chemical weapons, Trump accused Assad of a "very barbaric attack" in which "even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered." "Tonight I call on all civilised nations to join us in seeking to end this slaughter and bloodshed in Syria and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types," Trump said. Officials said the US fired 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Shayrat Airfield at 3:40 am Syrian time on Friday. While most nations backed the sudden decision of the Trump administration to attack the Syrian airbase, there were world leaders and nations who were not very supportive of the move. From strong messages of support to fierce condemnation, here are the main global reactions to the strike in response. First let's take a look at what the nations against the strike said: Russia Unsurprisingly, the main ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was robust in its opposition to the strike. The strikes were an "aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international norms," the Kremlin said. In addition, the action has inflicted "considerable damage" to already "lamentable" US-Russia ties, the Kremlin warned in a statement. Moscow announced on Friday it was halting an agreement with the United States aimed at avoiding clashes between their forces in the skies over Syria in response to Washington's strike in the war-torn country. "The Russian side is halting the effect of the memorandum for prevention of incidents and ensuring safety of air flights during operations in Syria which was agreed with the US," a statement by the Russian foreign ministry said. Russia also demanded an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss the strike. "We call upon the UN Security Council to hold an extraordinary meeting to discuss the situation," the foreign ministry in Moscow said in a statement, calling the strike a "gross... violation of international law." "President Putin considers American strikes on Syria aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international norms, and under an invented pretext," Peskov was reported as saying by Russian agencies. "The Syrian army does not have any chemical weapon stockpiles," added Peskov. "The fact of destruction of all chemical weapon stockpiles of the Syrian armed forces was recorded and confirmed by the (Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons)." "This step by Washington inflicts considerable damage to US-Russia relations, which are already in a lamentable state," Peskov said. Iran The Iranian regime said it "strongly condemned" the strike as it condemns "all unilateral military action". It said the action was taken under the "pretext" of the chemical strike."We condemn all unilateral military action and the missile strike by US warships against Shayrat airbase under the pretext of Tuesday's suspected attack on Khan Sheikhun," foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghassemi told the Fars news agency. Its spokesman said that the US strike would merely "help the terrorist groups, which are on the back foot, and further complicate the situation in Syria and in the region." Apart from Russia and Iran, here are reactions from the countries which backed the strike, which was the first direct assault by US. Britain The close American ally said it "fully supported" the strikes, judging them an "appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack". It said the strikes were "intended to deter further attacks." "The UK government fully supports the US action, which we believe was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime," the spokesman said in a statement on Friday. He also said the US strikes were "intended to deter further attacks". Britain, France and the United States are pushing for a vote at the United Nations Security Council on a resolution demanding a full investigation of the suspected chemical attack in Syria. British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson on Tuesday said the attack bore "all the hallmarks" of action by government forces and called for those responsible to be "called to account". Turkey Nato ally Turkey, which is a key player in the Syria conflict and has endured choppy relations with Washington recently, welcomed the strikes as "positive." The deputy foreign minister added: "We believe that the Assad regime must be punished completely in the international arena." Welcoming the US missile strike, Turkey called for a no-fly zone in the country to prevent further bloodshed. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said the strike against the Sharyat airbase in Homs, northern Syria, was "a positive response" to the "war crimes" of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. "In order to prevent similar massacres from happening again, it is necessary to enforce a no-fly zone and create safe zones in Syria without further delay," he added in a statement. He said the destruction of Sharyat airbase marked "an important step to ensure that chemical and conventional attacks against the civilian population do not go unpunished." Saudi Arabia A foreign ministry official hailed US President Donald Trump as "courageous" for taking action when "the international community has failed to put a halt to the regime's actions." Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel "fully supports" the "strong and clear message" sent by the air strikes. He added that the message should "resonate not only in Damascus, but in Tehran, Pyongyang and elsewhere." With inputs from AFP and The Associated Press Samsung today launched Galaxy C7 Pro (SM-C7010), successor of the Galaxy C7 in the Galaxy C Series in India. It was announced in China earlier this year, and packs a a 5.7-inch 1080p Super AMOLED display, is powered by an Octa-Core Snapdragon 626 14nm SoC, runs on Android 6.0.1 (Marshmallow) with Samsungs own UI on top, has a 16-megapixel rear camera with f/1.9 aperture, dual-tone LED flash and a 16-megapixel front-facing camera. It has a unibody metal design and has a fingerprint sensor on the front embedded into the home button. It packs a 3300mAh battery with support for fast charging that lets you charge the phone from 0 to 100% in 100 minutes. Samsung Galaxy C7 Pro specifications 5.7-inch (19201080 pixels) Full HD Super AMOLED 2.5D display with Corning Gorilla Glass 4 Protection 2.2GHz Octa-Core Snapdragon 626 14nm processor with Adreno 506 GPU 4GB RAM, 64GB Internal Storage, expandable memory up to 256GB via micro SD card Android 6.0.1 (Marshmallow) Hybrid Dual SIM (nano+nano/microSD) 16MP rear camera with dual-tone LED flash, f/1.9 aperture 16MP front camera with f/1.9 aperture Fingerprint sensor Dimensions: 156.5 x 77.2 x 7.0mm; Weight: 172g 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11ac (2.4 + 5GHz), Bluetooth v 4.2, GPS, NFC, USB Type-C 3300mAh battery with fast charging The Samsung Galaxy C7 Pro comes in Gold and Navy Blue colors, is priced at Rs. 27,990 and will be exclusively available on Amazon.in from April 11th. Commenting on the launch, Sandeep Singh Arora, Vice President, Online Business, Samsung India, said: At Samsung, we are committed to meaningful innovations that delight our consumers. Galaxy C7 Pro is a slim and stunning device, which comes packed with powerful features for unparalleled multitasking and multimedia experience making it a Lean and Mean machine for the millennials. Arun Srinivasan, Director, Consumer Electronics (Category Management), Amazon India, said: We are pleased to be the partner of choice for Samsung and offer our customers a chance to own the exclusive access to Galaxy C7 Pro. Smartphones are one of the fastest growing product lines and have repeatedly been one of the top selling categories on Amazon.in. What happened? It's not easy to bring both sides of the political aisle together these days, but PepsCo's (NYSE: PEP) latest online ad seems to have done just that -- and not in a way that the company is likely to celebrate. The food and beverage giant released a protest-themed advertisement for its namesake soda on April 4, with the spot playing on social divisions that have dominated media cycles and culminating with model Kendall Jenner bridging the apparent divide between a group of hiply styled protesters and the police by handing an officer a Pepsi. The video quickly went viral for all the wrong reasons, with a wide range of politicos and social media users dinging the spot for its somewhat tone-deaf marriage of hot-button issues and product promotion. Pepsi has pulled the ad following the negative reception. Image source: Pepsi. Does it matter? While the controversial ad doesn't reflect especially well on Pepsi's in-house content creation team, the promo will probably have little in the way of long-term significance when it comes to the company's performance. Branding is very important for Pepsi, but, taken in isolation, the backlash created by a single advertisement is not likely to have a meaningful impact on its outlook. Controversies tend to come and go quickly in the social media age, and Pepsi is a strong company that can withstand a promotional misstep, but the backlash surrounding the pulled spot does highlight the complex situation that big brands are increasingly facing at the intersection of politics, advertising, and social media. Pepsi has halted the rollout of additional ads in the campaign, and seems to have learned something from the pushback, so the controversy shouldn't be a big concern for investors unless additional marketing missteps point to the development of a trend. 10 stocks we like better than PepsiCoWhen 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 PepsiCo wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys. Click here to learn about these picks! *Stock Advisor returns as of April 3, 2017 Keith Noonan has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends PepsiCo. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Terrence Duffy, the CEO of the worlds largest futures market operator, the CME Group, said the markets see President Trumps Syria strike as a warning sign. This is a shot over the bow as they call it in the business, I guess, and now we are going to have to take a wait and see attitude like everybody is saying and thats what the markets are doing, Duffy told the FOX Business Networks Maria Bartiromo. Stock futures fell as much as 143 points Thursday night after the U.S. launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at an airbase in Syria in response to a chemical attack earlier this week. Duffy said market volatility is common with geopolitical events. The markets, I think, are doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing. They are not overreacting, he said and added that the sharp rise in oil and gold prices is something you expect to see. Duffy added, in addition to Washington policy, global policies are also influencing the U.S. markets. Its not just Brexit which everybody likes to talk about. We need to talk about the French elections. We need to talk about the German elections. What does that mean for the European Union? he asked. So many participants from around the worldmanage their risk in the United States of America that they have with their own sovereign countries. There's no two ways about it: As an investor, you'd struggle to find an industry with a more appetizing long-term growth rate than legal marijuana. According to cannabis research firm ArcView, North American legal sales increased by 34%, to $6.9 billion in 2016, albeit black-market sales still totaled $46.4 billion. As more U.S. states push to legalize, and with Canada potentially on the precipice of legalization by 2018, the expectation is more that this $46 billion-plus in illicit sales will shift to the legal and regulated markets in the years to come. By 2026, investment firm Cowen & Co. anticipates total legal sales could reach $50 billion. If that's the case, we're talking about more than 23% annual growth for a decade. It's these figures that are attracting businesses and investors to marijuana stocks in droves. Image source: Getty Images. Investing in individual marijuana stocks is incredibly risky However, marijuana stocks, by themselves, are more often than not dangerous investments. The vast majority of marijuana stocks are losing money and are burning through their cash on hand. Also, most pot stocks are trading on the over-the-counter (OTC) exchanges as opposed to a more reputable and visible exchange, like the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Even though the OTC exchanges have improved their reporting and listing standards in recent years, it can still be difficult to get accurate and up-to-date info on OTC-listed stocks. Most marijuana stocks are penny stocks, too, which means they're highly volatile and usually avoidable.What's more, many are facing two key disadvantages. For example, companies that sell federally illegal substances -- which includes cannabis, a schedule 1 drug at the federal level -- are disallowed from taking normal business deductions. This means that most weed companies are paying tax on their gross profits as opposed to net profits, leaving the few that are profitable with less capital left over to reinvest and hire more workers. Image source: Getty Images. Cannabis businesses also get the short end of the stick when it comes to obtaining basic banking services. Financial institutions in the U.S. are often regulated by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which is a federal entity. If a bank supplies a line of credit, or even a checking account, to a marijuana company, it could be construed as money laundering, and set that financial institution up for fines and/or criminal charges. Within the U.S., there's also the potential for a recreational marijuana crackdown, as signaled by White House press secretary Sean Spicer back in February. Though the Obama administration was relatively lax with regard to allowing states to regulate their medicinal and recreational laws, the Trump administration seems to have signaled that it'll be tougher on pot, albeit we're not certain to what extent. However, with ardent marijuana opponent Jeff Sessions as U.S. attorney general, we can only assume that federal enforcement will be stepped up. In short, buying individual marijuana stocks has appeared like a far-too-risky strategy. Say hello to the very first marijuana stock ETF However, this past week brought a first for the investment world -- a medical marijuana electronic-traded fund (ETF) made its debut. An ETF is a security that buys a basket of assets and gives investors the opportunity to effectively diversify their holdings without buying each and every stock, bond, or asset represented in a fund. The ETF, the Horizons Medical Marijuana Life Sciences ETF (TSE: HMMJ), debuted on the Toronto Stock Exchange this past Wednesday. Its objective is to mirror the return of the North American Medical Marijuana Index, net of expenses, and it's currently doing this with 14 marijuana stocks in its basket. Image source: Getty Images. Here are its current holdings, along with respective weighting: Canopy Growth Corp. (NASDAQOTH: TWMJF): 9.95% (NASDAQOTH: TWMJF): 9.95% Scotts Miracle-Gro (NYSE: SMG): 9.95% (NYSE: SMG): 9.95% INSYS Therapeutics (NASDAQ: INSY): 9.95% (NASDAQ: INSY): 9.95% Aurora Cannabis : 9.95% : 9.95% Aphria (NASDAQOTH: APHQF): 9.95% (NASDAQOTH: APHQF): 9.95% GW Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: GWPH): 9.89% (NASDAQ: GWPH): 9.89% Zynerba Pharmaceuticals : 8.45% : 8.45% Cronos Group : 8.02% : 8.02% Cannimed Therapeutics : 5.56% : 5.56% Organigram Holdings : 5.38% : 5.38% Supreme Pharmaceuticals : 4.70% : 4.70% Emblem Corp. : 3.79% : 3.79% Emerald Health Therapeutics : 2.31% : 2.31% ICC International Cannabis: 2.10% There are quite a few interesting aspects worth noting about this ETF. For starters, despite being a North American marijuana stock ETF, it actually has 11 Canadian-based companies and just three U.S.-based pot stocks. That's not necessarily a bad thing, with Canada possibly on the verge of legalizing recreational cannabis, but the recreational and medical market potential in the U.S. is considered to be much larger -- so the weighting is a bit odd. The ETF also isn't strictly comprised of medical marijuana stocks. Though there's clear cannabis product and oils representation with the likes of Canopy Growth, Aurora Cannabis, and Aphria, there are also biotechnology stocks in the mix, such as INSYS, Zynerba, and GW Pharmaceuticals, which focus on developing therapies based on cannabinoids found in the cannabis plant. Along those same lines, some of the companies that comprise this ETF have little to do with medical marijuana. Scotts Miracle-Gro, for example, primarily earns its keep from professional lawn care, and is only in this ETF for its recent push into hydroponics. INSYS Therapeutics had the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approve its oral cannabinoid-based chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting medicine Syndros in July, but it generates practically every cent in sales right now from Subsys, a sublingual pain med that has nothing to do with cannabinoids or cannabis. In effect, it's a bit of an imperfect marijuana stock ETF. Image source: Getty Images. Should you be a buyer? Of course, the big question is whether or not you should be a buyer. From a practical standpoint, the threshold question is whether you can buy the ETF. Because the shares trade only on the Toronto Stock Exchange, you'd have to have a brokerage account that lets you trade Canadian-listed securities in order to buy. If you can buy, the next question is whether it's a good decision. On one hand, Horizons has done a good job of adding the few marijuana stocks that are generating positive earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) -- Canopy Growth and Aphria -- and the one that has the best chance of earning significant profits -- GW Pharmaceuticals -- into the mix. Canopy Growth and Aphria have both been working to expand their production capacity, with Canopy Growth doing so by acquisition and Aphria doing so organically. Canopy Growth recently completed its acquisition of Mettrum Health, which boosted its growing capacity, while Aphria began phase 3 of its expansion that's designed to add 200,000 square feet of space. These two positive EBITDA marijuana stocks could see even more benefits if Canada chooses to legalize recreational weed. GW Pharmaceuticals, which is arguably the premier cannabinoid drug researcher in the world, is relying on experimental cannabidiol-based drug Epidiolex to deliver significant profits. Epidiolex met its primary endpoint in two separate phase 3 trials, each for patients with Lennox-Gastaut syndrome and Dravet syndrome, two rare childhood-onset forms of epilepsy). If approved by the FDA, Epidiolex has a shot, along with label expansion, at hitting $1 billion or more in annual peak sales, and pushing GW Pharmaceuticals safely into recurring profitability by the year 2020. Additionally, non-traditional cannabis stocks INSYS and Scotts Miracle-Gro are healthfully profitable. But the aforementioned tax, banking, and political disadvantages still remain, making an investment in a medical marijuana ETF pretty risky -- albeit seemingly less risky than buying any individual marijuana stock. If we were to see more of these companies turning healthy profits, or at least generating positive cash flow, there might be a case for consideration. However, with both the U.S. and Canada still viewing pot as illegal, your best bet as an investor is to remain safely on the sidelines until one or both of these countries definitively changes its stance on weed. 10 stocks we like better than GW PharmaceuticalsWhen 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 GW Pharmaceuticals wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys. Click here to learn about these picks! *Stock Advisor returns as of April 3, 2017 Sean Williams has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. The United States fired cruise missiles on Friday at a Syrian airbase from which President Donald Trump said a deadly chemical weapons attack had been launched, the first direct U.S. assault on the government of Bashar al-Assad in six years of civil war. In the biggest foreign policy decision of his presidency so far, Trump ordered the step his predecessor Barack Obama never took: directly targeting Assad's military as punishment for the chemical weapons attack which killed at least 70 people. That catapulted the United States into a confrontation with Russia, which has military advisers on the ground assisting its close ally Assad. "Years of previous attempts at changing Assads behavior have all failed and failed very dramatically," Trump said as he announced the attack from his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, where he was meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping. "Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack," he said of Tuesday's chemical weapons strike, which Western countries blame on Assad's forces. "No child of God should ever suffer such horror." The swift action is likely to be interpreted not only as a signal to Russia, but also to other countries such as North Korea, China and Iran where Trump has faced foreign policy tests early in his presidency. The Syrian army said the U.S. attack killed six people at its air base near the city of Homs. It called the attack "blatant aggression" and said it made the United States a "partner" of "terrorist groups" including Islamic State. Homs Governor Talal Barazi told Reuters the death toll was seven. A spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin said the strike had seriously damaged ties between Washington and Moscow. Putin regarded the U.S. action as "aggression against a sovereign nation" on a "made-up pretext", spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. Russian television showed craters and rubble at the site of the airbase and said nine aircraft had been destroyed. ATTACK SAID TO BE "ONE-OFF" U.S. officials said they had taken pains to ensure Russian troops were not killed, warning Russian forces in advance and avoiding striking parts of the base where Russians were present. Western allies of the United States spoke out in support of the decision to launch the strikes. Several countries said they were notified in advance, but none had been asked to take part. Iran, Assad's other main ally, denounced it. U.S. officials described the attack as a one-off that would not lead to wider escalation, and Syrian officials and their allies also said they did not expect the attack to lead to an expansion of the conflict. "No doubt this will leave great tension on the political level, but I do not expect a military escalation. Currently I do not believe that we are going toward a big war in the region," a senior, non-Syrian official in the alliance fighting in support of Assad who declined to be identified told Reuters. For years, Washington has backed rebel groups fighting against Assad in a complex multi-sided civil war under way since 2011 that has killed more than 400,000 people. The war has driven half of Syrians from their homes, creating the world's worst refugee crisis. The United States has been conducting air strikes against Islamic State militants who control territory in eastern and northern Syria, and a small number of U.S. troops are on the ground assisting anti-Islamic State militias. But until now, Washington has avoided direct confrontation with Assad. Russia, meanwhile, joined the war on Assad's behalf in 2015, action that decisively turned the momentum of the conflict in the Syrian government's favor. Trump's decision to strike Syrian government forces is a particularly notable shift for a leader who in the past had repeatedly said he wanted better relations with Moscow, including to cooperate with Russia to fight Islamic State. However, Trump had also criticized Obama for setting a "red line" threatening force against Assad if he used chemical weapons, only to pull back from ordering air strikes in 2013 when Assad agreed to give up his chemical arsenal. Russian media long portrayed Trump as a figure who would promote closer relations with Moscow. At home, Trump's opponents have accused him of being too supportive of Putin. LIMP CORPSES, CHOKING CHILDREN On Friday, a warplane hit the town of Khan Sheikhoun where Tuesday's chemical attack took place. An activist working at an air raid warning service in opposition areas told Reuters it caused only material damage. Tuesday's attack was the first time since 2013 that Syria has been accused of using sarin, a banned nerve agent it was meant to give up under the Russian-brokered, U.N.-enforced deal that persuaded Obama to call off air strikes four years ago. The Syrian government and Moscow have denied that Syrian forces were behind the attack, but Western countries have dismissed their explanation - that chemicals leaked from a rebel weapons depot after an air strike - as beyond credibility. Video and pictures of the aftermath of Tuesday's chemical attack were shown around the world this week, depicting limp bodies and children choking while rescue workers hosed them down to try to wash off the poison gas. In Russia, state television blamed rebels and did not show footage of victims. Tomahawk missiles were fired from the USS Porter and USS Ross around 0040 GMT, striking multiple targets - including the airstrip, aircraft and fuel stations - on the Shayrat Air Base, which the Pentagon says was used to store chemical weapons. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the strike did not mean the wider U.S. policy on Syria had changed. "This clearly indicates the president is willing to take decisive action when called for," he told reporters. "I would not in any way attempt to extrapolate that to a change in our policy or our posture relative to our military activities in Syria today. There has been no change in that status." The attack was a "one-off," a U.S. defense official told Reuters, meaning it was expected to be a single strike with no current plans for escalation. "CHEMICAL WEAPONS APPALLING" U.S. allies were strongly supportive of the U.S. strikes. French Foreign Minister Francois Ayrault said: "The use of chemical weapons is appalling and should be punished because it is a war crime." Over the previous few months, many Western countries had been quietly backing away from long-standing demands that Assad leave power, accepting that rebels no longer had the power to remove him by force. But after the chemical weapons attack on Tuesday, several countries said Assad must go. Among the countries strongly backing the strikes and calling for Assad to be removed from power was Turkey. Long one of Assad's principal foes, Turkey had in recent months reached a rapprochement with Russia and had been co-sponsoring Syrian peace talks with Moscow; its change of tone could make it harder for Russia to put forward a peace plan that would keep Assad. The attacks spurred a flight to safety in global financial markets, sending yields on safe-haven U.S. Treasury securities to their lowest since November. Stocks weakened in Asia and U.S. equity index futures slid, indicating Wall Street would open lower on Friday. Prices for oil and gold both rose, and the dollar slipped against the Japanese yen. (Additional reporting by Phil Stewart, Idrees Ali, Yara Bayoumy, Jonathan Landay, John Walcott, Lesley Wroughton, Patricia Zengerle, Roberta Rampton, David Brunnstrom and Matt Spetalnick in Washington, Megan Davies in New York and Jack Stubbs in Moscow; Writing by Peter Graff, editing by Peter Millership) The United States took a very measured step that was "fully justified" when it fired missiles at a Syrian air field over a deadly toxic gas attack, said U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley on Friday. "We are prepared to do more, but we hope that will not be necessary," she told the U.N. Security Council. "The United States will not stand by when chemical weapons are used. It is in our vital national security interest to prevent the spread and use of chemical weapons." (Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by James Dalgleish) This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. 2022 FOX News Network, LLC. All rights reserved. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Market data provided by Factset. Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions. Legal Statement. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by Refinitiv Lipper. Cuba Gooding Jr. has responded to the infamous skirt-lift that sent social media in a frenzy. I have two sons in college and I say to them, Guys, the internet, its a beast. Its an information highway without regulation. Any image you put on there can be interpreted any way it wants to,' said the 49-year-old Oscar-winning actor to PEOPLE Magazine a week after last weeks mishap during a panel at Los Angeles PaleyFest. I said to my sons again, I said, The only thing you can do is represent your moral compass and who you are. Because images are going to be out there without your control, so continue standing in your integrity.' CUBA GOODING JR. CAUSES UPROAR BY LIFTING SARAH PAULSON'S DRESS ON STAGE Gooding caused a stir when he lifted Sarah Paulsons dress while she stood on stage to greet a fellow cast mate. The moment was captured on camera when Paulson got up to dramatically greet Kathy Bates. Paulson threw her arms wide open and kicked up her leg to welcome Bates. Gooding then lifted her dress from behind. Paulson didnt seem to notice at first, but once she did she hit her skirt to push it down and let out a shriek. The moment may have come across as a joke for Gooding Jr., but it was no laughing matter for many Twitter users. FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE ENTERTAINMENT NEWS I love the lady that is Sarah Paulson, said Gooding. We have a banter like brother and sister, which is how the spirit of that whole panel was. Yet that image was taken out to represent some kind of sexual misconduct, and that wasnt my intent. Gooding also revealed to the celebrity news publication that he reached out to Paulson after the event. The first person, when I heard about the fervor, I called Sarah, I said, I love you, I see you as my sister, and she said, I feel the same way about you, he added. And so I let it go. IndyCar driver James Hinchcliffe, who finished a surprise second on last season's "Dancing with the Stars," is racing along a steady track of love with actress girlfriend Becky Dalton. He gushed to Fox News about Dalton, who has appeared in Hallmark Channel movies. "Our ability to laugh together is what attracted us right from the get go," he said. "And we're both very driven. "I put my life on the line to compete." The couple recently bought a house together, but Hinchcliffe said during one moment his mother called his girlfriend "a sugar-coated arsenic pill." Speaking to us ahead of the Long Beach Grand Prix, Hinchcliffe said, "Evidently I get my competitive nature from my mother and we were playing a friendly family game of Monopoly Deal and I guess Becky pulled some sly move on Mama Hinch and she didn't take too kindly to it and that's when the line was drawn. It was all in jest and good fun over a card game. He added that regularly, "They get along very well. The Canadian-born race car driver impressed "DWTS" fans last fall by finishing runner up to gymnast Laurie Hernandez. Since then, he's been racing constantly for IndyCar. Hinchcliffe's former "DWTS" partner Sharna Burgess is now training Bonner Bolton during season 24-- and rumors are flying she might be dating the bull rider. (They've said they're just friends) "That's their business," Hincliffe laughed. "If that's the case, I hope they're happy." When Joelle Carter took on her first acting role as a co-ed involved in a prostitution ring in a 1996 episode of Law & Order, the actress had no idea she would be reunited with producer Dick Wolf again 21 years later. Since starring as outlaw Ava Crowder in the hit series Justified, which came to an end in 2015, the now 44-year-old nabbed a recurring role on Scandals fifth season until she was asked to fight crime as Laura Nagel. Fox News spoke with Carter about her show Chicago Justice and whether we can expect a Justified reunion: Fox News: What made you take on Chicago Justice? Joelle Carter: The Dick Wolf franchise speaks for itself. I was pretty honored to be offered a part. I started off with him in Law & Order, and it was my first job in the industry, so I was thrilled to work with him again. And I think a change of pace from living the life of a criminal on the other side of the law was intriguing for me, especially to become a character that wants to serve justice. I also wanted to study what it was really like to be a cop. Fox News: Many fans definitely still remember you from your days on Justified. How are Laura and Avas personalities different? Carter: Ava was more of a free-spirit. She really was quite sexual and flirtatious. Even with everything shes been through in life, she had a way of dealing with things in a lighter, more innocent way Laura is definitely worldlier and has dedicated her life to a system that Ava would never respect. Shes really married to her job and isnt really looking for love. Ava was very much seeking that other person in the world that she can walk along with in life. Ava wasnt afraid to dive into a love affair. Laura, on the other hand, has a child and responsibilities. Its certainly interesting for me because both women are so different from each other. FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE ENTERTAINMENT NEWS Fox News: In order to join Chicago Justice, you had to give up a recurring role in Scandal. Carter: Well for me, Chicago Justice offered a more permanent role, which intrigued me more, honestly. I had to just go for it and see how the chips would fall. The scheduling with Scandal just didnt work out. Fox News: Whats your relationship like with your current cast? Carter: I love these guys. Theyre really wonderful actors and I couldnt ask for a better lead to our show like Philip [Winchester]. He has such a positive attitude, he lifts up the crew when everyone is tired or feeling down. He even helped me learned that courtroom dialogue... And Jon [Seda] is the best partner anyone can have. I couldnt ask for a better person to be my partner in law. He showed me the ropes because hes had more experienced in a role like this one than I have. He even showed me the technique of handcuffing someone because hes been doing it for years. Fox News: How did shadowing a top female investigator in Chicago helped you prepare? Carter: She was a valuable resource. She really showed me how dangerous it was out there. Shes a total spitfire. Half the time she doesnt even ride with a partner. She really knows how to connect and talk to people, which is one of her biggest assets... most of the people she has to talk to already have their guard up. I wanted to adapt that to my character. Fox News: Was it hard for you to say goodbye to your Justified family? Carter: I have not said goodbye! I refuse. It was really hard. I was in Los Angeles actually a few weeks ago and I tried to get a big dinner together so we can have a reunion, but everyones working all over the world. They all said, Try summertime! So Im going to work on that and try again. Im on it and will track everyone down. "Chicago Justice" is on Sundays on NBC. Rap icon Tupac Shakur has been dead for more than 20 years, but the artist infamously shot and killed on the Las Vegas strip in 1996 is still making headlines-- and not just because of his music. Thursday, details surrounding the rappers murder were unveiled in a confession letter allegedly penned by one of the shooters who opened fire on Shakurs vehicle in the Septemeber 1996 incident. The letter, provided to the media by documentary director RJ Bond, names the supposed killers of Shakur and cleared former Tupac friend and hip hop dealmaker Suge Knight of any involvement. And on the same day, a new movie trailer was unveiled promoting Shakurs upcoming biopic All Eyez on Me. The film, set to be released in June, features actor Demetrius Shipp Jr. as the rapper. IS THIS NEW YORK CITY RESTAURANT THE BEST IN THE WORLD? Both events occur as restaurateurs prepare to serve customers this weekend at a Tupac-themed pop-up cafe in New York City. Sweet Chick in Brooklyn is highly rated for its soul food-- but its traditional menu will take a backseat from April 7 to April 9 as the eatery is converted to the Powamekka Cafe. The name comes from the late rapper, who reportedly wrote down several ideas and designs for a cookbook and restaurant. Some of those ideas from Tupac's own notebook will be on display this weekend at the eatery. On the menu: Fried chicken wings (one of the artists favorite meals) will be served while poetry and other memorabilia are displayed. Tupacs creative vision was limitless, Tupac Shakur estate trustee Tom Whalley told Rolling Stone. He was constantly working on ideas and plans that reached far beyond music and film. One of the things he was extremely passionate about was opening a restaurant...We are proud to bring Tupac's Powamekka Cafe to life. This weekend won't be the first time Powamekka Cafe has served fans of Makaveli. The estate of Tupac Shakur unveil Powamekka Cafe https://t.co/ZM44dW3NgN pic.twitter.com/jhbonuJvEJ Music Week (@MusicWeek) April 4, 2017 Last September, Take 3 Burgers at the Fulton Mall in Fresno, Calif. transformed into a version of the Tupac-themed restaurant for one day to honor the 20-year anniversary of the musicians death. Menu items included a California Love chicken sandwich, Hennessy apple butter chicken wings, a macaroni and cheeseburger and champagne cake pops with Alize-flavored frosting. Some fans of the late hip-hop artist are treasuring the opportunity to celebrate his life and ideas in a new way. But others are finding fault with the restaurant's theme and message. In general, however, using a dead celebrity as a marketing tactic to sell anything can be tricky. It is more on a case-by-case basis, brand strategist amd marketing expert Leonard Kim told Fox News via e-mail. If it was a huge company like Nestle or Pepsi capitalizing off of a celebrity that has passed, then it would be seen as exploitative unless it was done in really good taste, which is next to impossible for a corporation to incorporate into their brand message, he said. According to Kim, the idea of capitalizing on a celebrity thats passed should be a temporary tactic. For a permanent location, the only place a venue like this could survive is a heavily trafficked tourist location that already has other forms of reincarnated celebrities, like Las Vegas, he said. If it wasn't just a popup and a long term business in New York, it would lose its appeal quickly and fail." FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS Still, the appeal of Shakur and his music may be timeless, regardless of any food or restaurant tie-ins. Says Kim, When it's a die-hard fan celebrating the anniversary of a celebrity through their own form of art, like the pop-up restaurant that was in Fresno for his 20 year anniversary and is coming to New York, then it works, because even though some people may see it as exploitative, true fans are able to see beyond that and gather together to celebrate a special occasion together. The New York City cafe's opening coincides with yet another milestone for the Shakur's estate. On Friday, the rapper will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. A San Diego woman who died in March had visited a naturopathic practitioner who administered an IV of turmeric solution to treat eczema, authorities said. Jade Erick, 30, became unresponsive after Dr. Jim Kelly began administering 250 mL of the mixture at his office, NBC 7 reported. Kelly administered CPR and called 911 for Erick, who was later diagnosed with severe anoxic brain injury secondary to cardiopulmonary arrest, most likely due to turmeric infusion, an autopsy released on Thursday revealed. A medical examiners report listed food allergies to soy protein, lactose and gluten, as well as hypothyroidism and pre-diabetes, but it was not clear if any of that contributed to her death, NBC 7 reported. She died after six days of hospitalization. WOMAN DIES AFTER DRINKING TOXIC TEA, OFFICIALS SAY Turmeric is used by naturopathic doctors to treat inflammatory issues like arthritis, though it was Ericks first time having it infused, NBC 7 reported. Her mother reportedly told investigators that she had used it in capsule form. Im not trying to imply defending him or being critical, Steve Schechter, a naturopathic practitioner who knows Kelly, told NBC 7. Every doctor, every therapist I know at times, has made mistakes, every person I know has used things correctly and you get that incredibly small percent of people who are hyper-reactive. Ericks death is being ruled accidental, and the San Diego County Sheriffs Department told NBC 7 theyre not involved in any criminal investigation. No administrative charges have been filed regarding Kellys death. Students and staff at Fairfield University came together last week to surprise a sophomore student with a new wheelchair equipped with communicative technology, meaning she could ditch her damaged unit, which was being held together with duct tape. I was not expecting any of this, Meg Moore, 20, told the schools media department, with the help of a communication device. My mom and I were still trying to fight the insurance, and the old motorized wheelchair was falling apart. Sgt. Rob Didato, of the Connecticut universitys public safety department, said he and others in his department noticed Moore struggling with the outdated chair, and decided to step in and help her. TEEN WITH CEREBRAL PALSY GETS HELPING GETS HELPING HAND FROM 'MODERN FAMILY' STAR A couple of guys just got together and said its ridiculous that this girl cant get a new chair, I guess it was insurance issues, and they said, 'We should start a campaign, Didato said in a shared video. Didato said that, in addition to Moores classmates pitching in and helping to raise thousands in funds, two Fairfield alumni, Bryan LeClerc 84 and Robert Bercham 62, stepped in to help negotiate the price of the $60,000 chair with the manufacturer. Without those two gentlemen getting involved, I dont know if we would be presenting Meg with the chair so soon, Didato said in the video. Moore, who lives with her mother in a handicap-accessible dorm on campus, is a Deans List student and takes a regular class load. She also is a member of the schools Varsity Pep Band and is a Campus Ministry lector, The Fairfield Daily Voice reported. Moore founded the schools Yes You Can Club, which connects students with cancer patients and disabled members of the community to form a support group. FAMILY IN RACE AGAINST TIME TO SAVE TODDLER FROM 'CHILDHOOD ALZHEIMER'S' LeClerc, who was able to negotiate the price of the chair down to $40,000, said it felt good to help Moore and bring the Fairfield community together. Thats something we learned a long time ago from the Jesuits when we came here helping others and doing good for other people, its nice to do that for Meg, LeClerc said in the video. Moore was presented with the chair in a ceremony last Friday that included a blessing from one of the Universitys resident Jesuits. The safety department as well as many members of the schools staff were on hand. The Fairfield community came out of the woodwork at just the right time, and I could not be more grateful, Moore said in the video. There are some really wonderful people here. There's no getting away from it, your bathroom is rife with germs. No amount of obsessive cleaning can ensure your toilet, sink and bath are entirely spotless, but where should you be focusing your elbow grease? You might go for the obvious spots, the toilet seat or the floor. But the worst offender, according to a new investigation, is your toothbrush, closely followed by the bath. To help you navigate the hotbed of bacteria and keep your bathroom at its cleanest, designer bathroom specialists Soakology used a heat map to scope out where the germs are loitering. 5 MISTAKES YOU'RE MAKING WHEN YOU AIR-DRY YOUR HAIR And the grime map showed your bathroom is secretly harbouring a world of filth you knew nothing about. The most common types of bacteria found in any bathroom are bacteroidaceae, or bacteria from poo, E.coli, streptococcus and salmonella. We are regularly exposed to these types of bacteria on daily basis, not just in the bathroom, so the best way to prevent them spreading is to wash your hands. While this all may seem rather grim, dont run screaming from your bathroom yet. Not all of the bacteria are harmful and, in fact, germs make up a good portion of the human body. Philip Tierno, director of clinical microbiology and diagnostic immunology at Tisch Hospital, New York University Medical Center, told WebMD: There are more germs than body cells on the human body, by a factor of 10. So 90 per cent of the total number of cells on your body are actually germ cells. We cant live in a bubble and avoid germs. According to the NHS it is important that our bodies have the right balance of exposure to good and bad germs in our everyday environment to make sure our immune system is trained to deal with different illnesses. ARE TAMPONS BAD FOR YOU? The toilet Yep, you guessed it, the toilet is a haven for bugs and germs. But, the humble throne should not be seen in its entirety when it comes to bacteria. Swabs taken showed different levels of bug infestation on the flush, toilet seat and in the bowl itself. Unsurprisingly, deep inside the toilet bowl is a hive of germy activity with 3.2million bacteria per square inch found. But when it comes to the bits you actually come into contact with, the flush and seat didnt fare so badly in the grand bathroom grime scheme of things. The average toilet seat is covered in about 295 bacteria per square inch. Now that you have come into contact with all those germs, remember you are also touching the flush handle afterwards too. A flush handle can be home to in as much as 83 bacteria per square inch, so it is important to remember to wash your hands. Your toothbrush Arguably the most disturbing finding was this your toothbrush, that item you put in your mouth every day, is awash with bacteria. Your toothbrush can contain at least 200,000 bacteria per square inch thats more than a toilet seat. According to a previous study at the University of Manchester your toothbrush can be home to staphylococci bacteria and E. coli, but you dont need to panic because it still contains fewer bacteria than your mouth. Most of the germs already exist in your mouth, so you probably wont get sick from them. But if you are worried, make sure you store your toothbrush somewhere it can dry out between uses and replace it regularly. You wouldnt lick a toilet seat so why put a dirty toothbrush in your mouth. 5 FOODS TO WHITEN YOUR TEETH NATURALLY THAT AREN'T DAIRY PRODUCTS The bath Again, another obvious germ palace but dirtier than you may think. You, and everyone else in your household, washes in the bath so there are bound to be germs. The dirtiest place being the plughole, which makes sense because that is where all the water carrying the bacteria ends up. The average plughole contains 120,000 bacteria per square inch. So it might be time to get the drain cleaner out. And it is not just the bath that carries germs. The grout in between the tiles is a safe haven for bacteria, as is the sealant around your bath and bathroom taps, so dont forget those when you next do the cleaning. Airborne bacteria Some bacteria can be released into your bathroom just by flushing the loo. A 2013 peer review study, published in the journal Prime, found that when you flush the toilet potentially infectious bugs can be released into the air. Some of the bugs remain in the air as droplets and the others settle on surfaces, however the study stressed that there was no conclusive evidence it plays a role in the spreading infections or illness. The best way to avoid nasty germs being released into the bathroom is to close the lid when your flush. The bathroom floor Surprisingly, the floor isnt as dirty as you might think. Still, you wouldnt eat off it. The average floor has about 764 bacteria per square inch, so dont forget to mop it regularly. AGING ISN'T KILLING US, LACK OF SLEEP IS Bathroom surface Yes, even the surfaces that you probably wipe down regularly arent safe. A bathroom counter top is home to 452 bacteria per square inch. That means everything you put on your bathroom surface is going to pick up bacteria. So it is recommended you keep your make-up out of the bathroom, ladies. The last thing you want is to be blending your foundation with a highlight of bacteria. The sink You go to the toilet, you wash your hands. The germs from your hands, which you picked up on the porcelain throne, get washed into the sink. While the soap youre (hopefully) using kills them on your hands, they are still left to fester in the sink. So much so that it could be harbouring 2,733 bacteria on just one square inch. FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS Taps You touch them before and after you wash your hands, so you are transferring germs onto taps every time. They actually contain a staggering 6,267 bacteria per square inch. Thats more than you find in your sink! The light switch Yes, even the humble light switch isnt clean. But, if you think about it, it makes sense. You pick up bacteria from every surface you touch in the bathroom, even if you was your hands, so when you turn the light switch off and on your are transferring germs to that too. A light switch can be covered in 217 bacteria per square inch, so remember to wipe it down next time you clean. Its not just bathrooms that can be rife with germs how dirty do you think your commute is? Earlier this week we revealed which modes of transport youre more likely to catch bus on. First published on The Sun. After the invasion of Iraq in 2003, David Petraeus, the general commanding coalition forces in the north, famously asked tell me how this ends? Its plaintive appeal for a political end state toward which military force is one contributory element haunts and should haunt strategists at the commencement of military operations. President Obama allowed not having a comfortable answer to prevent him from using military force to punish the Assad government from using chemical weapons against the Syrian people; President Trump either has a secret plan for Syria (which has been his claim since before his election), or greater risk tolerance. The administration continues to send mixed signals about what the stand-off strike on Shayrat airbase means in the broader context of Syria. The president was expansively Wilsonian in his statement on Thursday evening, suggesting more to come. National Security Adviser Gen. H.R. McMaster called the attack a big shift in policy, but provided little illumination of what the new policy entailed. U.N. Ambassador Nikkey Haleys statements in the U.N. Security Council on Friday also portended further action. But the president evidently selected the most restrictive of the attack options offered by the Pentagon. Secretary of State Tillerson disavowed any change in policy. Secretary of Defense Mattis said nothing. It would be understandable if the administration was still working through to an understanding of where this ends. Theyre still relatively new in office no Deputy Secretaries in either Defense or State, a national security adviser in place just a couple of weeks, everyone finding their footing and policy reviews underway but not complete. The Syrian governments chemical weapons attack isnt the first of their war crimes, but it was a particularly odious one, deserving of retribution by civilized powers. It recovered initiative, forcing adversaries to adjust. As Peter Feaver has pointed out, it increases U.S. leverage on a variety of fronts. Trump neednt have solved everything to have done something beneficial Thursday. Still, they will need and soon to explain how Thursdays attack squares with what appeared to be a policy of focusing on the defeat of ISIS and leaving Bashir al Assad in power. Mike OHanlon has suggested several smart adjustments to policy that have the potential for real progress in bringing the Syrian war to an end: more assistance to Kurdish and Sunni groups fighting ISIS and Al Qaeda (with post-war assistance conditioned on weapons returns to mollify Turkey), with temporarily protected autonomous governance zones for Kurds and Sunni in a federated Syria. These and others should be considered if a shift in policy is genuinely underway to involve the U.S. more directly in the Syrian war. A one-off attack to punish chemical weapons use is also a defensible policy. It establishes boundaries within which states are constrained even in fighting protracted civil wars, puts other potential WMD users on notice that the U.S. will enforce the norms that preclude them. It reassures allies reliant on American security guarantees that we are willing to run risks for our interests and the broader good. It shows the Russians, Iranians, and other potential adversaries that we are not hesitant to use force even in complicated circumstances where we risk confrontation with them. Moreover, the president approved the attacks while also meeting with the Chinese President, demonstrating the U.S. can manage many problems simultaneously. President Trump has claimed keeping strategy secret as a virtue. As with so many things the president says, there is some truth to it: free societies fight at a disadvantage when they telegraph all their actions. But public debate and legislative oversight are essential for building a stable basis of support for the presidents policies. The president ought to explain to the nation how this ends. In February President Trump made a promise to people of faith across the fruited plain. Click here for a free subscription to Todds newsletter: a must-read for Conservatives! My administration will do everything in its power to defend and protect religious liberty in our land, the president said at the National Prayer Breakfast. When he campaigned for the White House he stated that the first priority of my administration will be to preserve and protect our religiously liberty. The First Amendment guarantees our right to practice our faith as we see fitall the time, always, wherever, he went on to say. It was partly because of that promise that Trump garnered the support of evangelical Christians. I wrote about this very promise in my book, The Deplorables Guide to Making America Great Again. And now House Republicans are calling on President Trump to fulfill the promise he made to Christians on the campaign trail. I have exclusively obtained a letter signed by more than 52 House Republicans urging the president to sign an executive order on religious liberty. To continue reading Todd's column, click here. In spite of a scorched-earth campaign by Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Neil Gorsuch has been confirmed to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by Justice Antonin Scalias untimely death last year. Gorsuchs nomination was one of the most significant actions of the Trump presidency so far, and his confirmation will now have profound implications for our nation over the next several decades. Here are four reasons why American citizensespecially Evangelical conservativesshould consider Gorsuchs confirmation a great victory and why he might be better even than Scalia, whose place on the bench he would take. 1. He as a proven record defending religious liberty. The First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution declares, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. This amendment is deeply significant because it declares that every citizen is free to hold his or her own convictions about ultimate reality, align his or her life with those convictions, and do so openly and without fear. Justice Gorsuch has a proven track record defending religious liberty, stronger in fact than Scalias, as Nathan Diament noted recently. Two of the weightiest examples are Hobby Lobby (2013) and Little Sisters of the Poor (2015), cases heard by Judge Gorsuch and the 10th Circuit of Appeals. In both cases the defendants successfully invoked the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (1993) as reason to overturn the Obamacare contraceptive mandate, arguing that the mandate would force them to be complicit in actions that their faith prohibits. 2. He will interpret the law rather than arbitrate morality. In a 2009 speech entitled, Mullahs of the West: Judges as Moral Arbiters, the late Justice Scalia lamented that many Americans have placed their faith in Supreme Court justices to give our nation moral guidance. Yet, the Constitution of the United States specifically guards against giving the justices such mullah-like power; it gives the We the People the right to decide questions of moral profundity. Sadly, certain federal judges have taken this right away from us by embracing a living document view of the Constitution. This progressive view contends that judges have the right to reinterpret the Constitution in light of the times. Its overall effect is that a SCOTUS majority can remove things from the Constitution that they do not like and insert things they do. The living document view enabled the Roe v. Wade (1973) and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) decisions. We are not saying that the Constitution might never need to be revised or updated again in light of the times. Instead, we are saying that our Founding Fathers made clear amendment to the Constitution must reflect the will of the people; an amendment requires an overwhelming Congressional majority and ratification by three-fourths of the state legislatures. Justice Gorsuchlike Justice Scalia before himrejects the living document view. He would refrain from the type of judicial activism that bypasses the will of the people. 3. He may be willing to reject unconstitutional precedents. The most contentious debate, however, concerns the legal principle of stare decisis. A Latin phrase, stare decisis means that judges should respect legal precedents by letting them stand instead of overturning them. It is important to note, however, that stare decisis is not found in the Constitution or the Bill or Rights; it is not the law of the land, but a rule of thumb. As Constitutional lawyer Robert McFarland points out , a number of Democratic congressmen have taken a sudden interest in this legal principle. But for what reason? There is no evidence that these Congressmen have an affection for the legal principle, in and of itself. They wouldnt want to let Plessy v. Ferguson (which established segregation) stand, would they? Of course not. Were they concerned about it during Obergefell v. Hodges? No, not a peep. Yet, suddenly they are interested because a strict adherence to stare decisis might safeguard certain of the lefts favorite decisions, even if those decisions were unconstitutional or poorly reasoned. Justice Gorsuch likely would not adhere strictly to stare decisis; there is reason to believe he would reject the precedent of previous SCOTUS decisions if and when he thinks the courts have gotten it wrong. 4. No Need for Mullahs on the Supreme Court Americansespecially Evangelicalsstand to benefit from Judge Gorsuchs confirmation. He will defend religious liberty. He will confine himself to interpreting the law rather than setting himself up as a moral arbiter. And he may be willing to overturn bad legal precedents in which former jurists set themselves up as moral arbiters. In so doing, he will send a message to the political community that we have no need for mullahs at 1 First Street in Washington. Senator Rand Paul may be a fine doctor, but his knowledge of the law and Constitution appears misguided. He proved it when he accused President Trump of acting unconstitutionally by launching a military strike against a Syrian airbase without congressional approval. Senator Paul is mistaken. The Constitution It is true that under Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitutional, only Congress has the power to declare war. But a singular strike against a limited asset hardly constitutes war. It is a military action intended to confront hostilities which does not rise to the level of a declared war as the Founders envisioned. It is clear that the Framers recognized there would be times when the President needs to use immediate military force unilaterally and without the extensive time it might take for Congress to consider the matter, then debate it and approve it. They chose to withhold from him only the power to declare war, not make war which was regarded as a vital emergency power allowed the president to counter or thwart foreign threats. Hence it is perfectly consistent with the Constitution for President Trump to have taken action against the brutality of Bashar Al-Assad to prevent the spread and repeated use of chemical weapons. It is not only Syrian civilians the Commander-In-Chief is endeavoring to protect, but U.S. troops in the region and other American assets, all of whom stand in jeopardy. Congressional Acts In 1973, Congress passed The War Powers Act in reaction to the Vietnam War, which was never a declared war even though roughly 60,000 American soldiers were killed. In relevant part, the law permits the president to launch a military strike on his own, as long as he notifies or consults with Congress within 48 hours. This President Trump did. An argument can also be made that the president has latitude to take action against Syria under a 2001 law passed by Congress following the 9/11 attacks. Called The Authorization for Use of Military Force, it gives him permission to direct military force to prevent future terror attacks against the U.S. Presidents Bush, Obama and Trump have used an expansive view of this authority to fight both Al Qaeda and ISIS in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere. The law is not limited to terror groups. It encompasses any nation which engages directly or indirectly in terrorist acts or harbors terrorists. The Syrian chemical attack against innocent people can surely be described as an act of terrorism. And again, the U.S. has vulnerable troops in the region helping in the fight against ISIS. They might be the next target of an Assad chemical attack should he not be deterred by the use of American force. President Obamas Actions President Trumps immediate predecessor, as most presidents before him, used military force in a foreign venue without congressional authorization. The same basic reasons and justifications were cited. He launched attacks against Libya even though Congress refused to grant permission, arguing he had the constitutional and statutory power to do it anyway. Two years later, when Assad launched a deadly chemical attack on his own people, President Obama once again asserted he had clear authority to act unilaterally. But he didnt. He subsequently backed down electing to abdicate his responsibility to Congress which he knew would decline to act. It is hard to reconcile the reasoning behind his decisions. More Precedence Across the history of this nation, presidents have used military force without express congressional approval on more than 125 occasions. None of these actions were held to be unconstitutional. Hence, there is ample precedence for President Trumps decision to strike a military base in Syria. Some of these presidential actions proved unwise, like President Woodrow Wilsons military invasion of Veracruz, Mexico, a bloody conflict which lasted for months and, arguably, achieved little except embarrassment. But presidents are allowed to make mistakes of judgment, as long as they abide by the constitutional framework set forth by the Founders and the statutory requirements imposed by Congress. President Trump has done so. Devin Nunes, Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, announced Thursday that he is stepping down from leading the investigation into Russias interference in our election, and allegations that the Obama White House used surveillance information on Trump associates for political purposes. It is a terrible mistake, and a blow to Republicans. The optics are terrible, suggesting that in pursuing information which has tied former National Security Adviser Susan Rice to the unmasking of people involved with the Trump campaign, Nunes has done something wrong. Nothing could be further from the truth, but his withdrawal will buttress Democrats efforts to distract from the damaging findings, which tend to support to President Trumps charge that President Obama had him wiretapped. Democrats and their enablers in the liberal media have been pulling out all the stops to keep the public focused on suggestions that someone in the Trump campaign colluded with Russian agents in an effort to undermine the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. This narrative has occupied center stage since the election, comforting those who will never understand why Mrs. Clinton lost to an upstart political neophyte who crossed every politically correct boundary imaginable. An upstart, as it turns out, that said what millions of Americans were ready to hear. More recently, the media has continued to pump up the Russian connection story, even though FBI Chief James Comey and a former Director of National Intelligence have both said there is absolutely no evidence that any collusion took place. At the same time, Democrats have attempted to discredit and ignore growing indications that the Obama White House collected possibly damaging information about the Trump team from incidental surveillance, which it then disseminated to media and political organizations. While the trail grows cold on the hunt for the Russian connection, it has grown steadily hotter leading to President Obama and his confederates. Chairman Nunes was alerted to the involvement of Susan Rice by the White House Counsels office, and reviewed in situ the logs which confirmed that it was she who requested to know the identities of individuals picked up through surveillance. Her probes may have been legal, but they are suspicious. They had nothing to do with Russia according to Nunes, and they extend back almost a year before the election. She has been asked to testify before the House Intelligence Committee. When she appears before its members she will have to explain why the unmasking requests were appropriate under the guidelines that determine how such secure material is to be handled. Several activist groups have charged Nunes with violations before the House Ethics Committee accusations he called entirely false and politically motivated. It should be noted that such allegations are easy to register, even if there is no supporting evidence of misdeeds. They assert that in going to the White House and then speaking to the president, Nunes improperly put politics first. He has been accused of using his power to help Trump, rather than to conduct an unbiased investigation. It is a laughable charge. The logs were physically located at the White House; that is where they had to be viewed. It would have been better, in retrospect if Nunes had invited the ranking minority member Adam Schiff to join him at that visit; hindsight is always helpful. The reality is that Nunes was following a legitimate lead; Democrats simply dont enjoy where it has led. Nunes role will be taken up by Texas Congressman Mike Conaway, assisted by Trey Gowdy. Conaway is an ardent conservative and long-time ally of George W. Bush; he is also known as tough on Russia. Though he may be the perfect person for the role, the fact is that he is not well known, and does not bring the clout carried by Nunes to this role. He will be facing off before Adam Schiff, who has shown himself to be a political infighter. Democrats are delighted because Conaway has not been a Trump loyalist. Republicans will be thankful that former prosecutor Trey Gowdy, best known as the head of the Benghazi inquiry, is at Conaways right hand. The most negative aspect of this leadership change is that many Republicans will see Nunes decision as yet another failure of a squishy GOP leadership to stand up to Democrats. For years conservatives have railed at Republicans in Congress for going along with higher debt ceilings, higher taxes, and generally ceding victory to President Obama even as they took over the House in 2010 and the Senate in 2012. Now that they occupy the Oval Office and have majorities in both houses of Congress, those on the right are ready for some wins. The expected confirmation of Neil Gorsuch is a big win for conservatives and for the GOP. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is well aware that had he allowed Democrats to broker a deal allowing the confirmation of Gorsuch but hamstringing future Supreme Court fights, which they had proposed, he would have been run out of town on a rail. Republicans want their leaders to show some backbone; McConnell, in invoking the nuclear option, did just that. So did Nunes, in ferreting out Susan Rices role in unmasking the Trump team. And then he caved. The good news is that Freedom Watch, a right-wing activist group, is taking up the fight. They have filed a strongly-worded ethics complaint against Adam Schiff, accusing him of trying to cover up unlawful surveillance and other violations for partisan purposes. The ranking minority head of the Intel Committee praised Nunes for stepping away, and allowing the investigation to go forward in a less partisan manner. Will he follow suit? Every American condemns the atrocities in Syria, and we cannot help but be shaken by the images of innocent women and children dying. It is also true that often in foreign policy, things are not as simple as they appear, and actions often have consequences well beyond the obvious. It is for this very reason that the Founders wanted a deliberate, thoughtful foreign policy, and when military action was needed, they wanted it debated and authorized by Congress. Make no mistake, no matter who is president or what their party is, it is my firm belief that the president needs congressional authorization for military action, as required by the Constitution. I call on this president to come to Congress for a proper debate over our role in Syria, just as I did in 2013 when President Obama contemplated acting in Syria. RAND PAUL DISCUSSES SYRIA ISSUE WITH FOX NEWS' BRIAN KILMEADE I believe that nothing about this situation has changed. Military action is not in our national security interest and should not be authorized. Our prior interventions in this region have done nothing to make us safer, and Syria will be no different. There is no doubt Assad is a brutal dictator. But if we seek to remove him, we must ask what comes next. Assad is fighting radical Islamic rebels, including large parts of ISIS. Who would take over Syria if Assad is deposed? Experience in Libya tells us chaos could reign, and radical Islamists could control large parts of the country. Make no mistake, bombing Assad means the United States is fighting on the same side as ISIS and other radical Islamists in Syria. This is a dangerous and morally wrong policy. But no matter your view of the merits of engaging in Syria, every member of Congress should stand up today and reclaim our Constitutional authority over war. The Constitution clearly states that it is Congress that has the power to declare war, not the president. Even the War Powers Resolution, shoved forward by hawks as justification, clearly states criteria under which the president may act a declaration of war, a specific statutory authorization, or a national emergency created by an attack on the United States. Thats it. Absent those criteria, the president has no authority to act without congressional authorization. Congress must stand up and assert its authority here and now. No president is above the law or the Constitution. I said so when it was Barack Obama, and I will say so when it is Donald Trump. Our Founding Fathers had this right, and we should heed their wisdom about allowing the president to have war powers. They were concerned the president could rule like a king. Madison wrote that the Constitution supposes what history demonstrates that the executive is the branch most interested in war and most prone to it. The Constitution, therefore, with studied care, vested that power in the legislature. Before any act of war, we should have a serious and thoughtful debate over the ramifications. In Syria what is our goal? What happens if we depose Assad? Will the Islamist rebels, as they have threatened, turn their weapons and attention elsewhere, including Israel next door? I will hold accountable and oppose the actions of any president who takes military action without proper legal authority and congressional consent. President Trumps limited, proportional missile strike on a single Syrian air base had a clear purpose: Punish Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for having launched a chemical weapons attack that killed over 85 of his citizens and deter him (and others) from engaging in similar WMD-related war crimes. The strike was not aimed at toppling Mr. Assad or ousting his minority Alawite regime, at least, not yet. Removing Mr. Assad would undermine what Mr. Trump has long called his key foreign policy objective defeating the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and the other most dangerous Islamists who have destabilized much of the Middle East. But the launching of some 59 sea-based Tomahawk cruise missiles against the Syrian Air Forces base of Shayrat sends a strong message not only to Syria but to several other states and groups with a stake in the outcome of that countrys brutal civil war. To North Korea, the strike is a warning that Mr. Trump is willing to match action with his tough tweets warning that the U.S. will not permit Pyongyang to threaten American security by marrying its small nuclear arsenal with intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching our shores. North Korea is also believed to possess chemical weapons which it could reign down on Seoul and American forces stationed near the South Korean capital in the event of conflict. To China, it shows that Mr. Trump is prepared to make good on his pledge to take unilateral action against North Korea if Beijing is unwilling to pressure its mercurial neighbor into suspending, if not dismantling its own nuclear program. And perhaps most important, the strike shows Russia that President Trumps unlikely bromance with Russias autocratic ruler Vladimir Putin has its limits, and that Mr. Trump is likely to insist that Mr. Putin stop making excuses for his brutal client and contain Mr. Assads most outrageous conduct. Military action which throws Moscow off-balance could not come at a better time for Mr. Trump, whose administration is beset by multiple investigations into whether his campaign officials colluded with Russia in interfering in Americas presidential election and whether such collusion helped elect Mr. Trump over his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. Hours after the strike, Russias senior spokesman Dmitry Peskov blasted the strike as a violation of international law and demanded an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council. He continued to deny that Syrian government forces possessed chemical weapons. Mr. Putin called the strike an act of aggression against a sovereign nation. But neither immediately cancelled U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillersons planned visit to Moscow next week, so the extent of Russian fury is still hard to gauge. Perhaps Mr. Putin was somewhat mollified by the Trump administrations decision to give Moscow advance warning of the strike through deconfliction or military channels. Americas Tomahawk sea-launched cruise missiles apparently avoided targeting buildings on the airbase associated with Russian personnel and equipment. Unlike President Reagans 1986 bombing raid on Libya which was aimed at killing then President Muammar el-Qaddafi, Mr. Trumps strike was not aimed at taking out Syrias leadership, nor even its militarys command-and-control structure. It was was directed at the one air base where U.S. intelligence believes deadly sarin gas was loaded into Syrian aircraft for Tuesdays deadly raid. Mr. Assad continues to live to fight another day, but if he heeds Donald Trumps dramatic warning, not with chemical weapons. Mr. Trumps broader strategic objectives in Syria are still unclear. His administration, slow to appoint the assistant secretaries and other senior officials who make and oversee policy, is still a work in progress. Mr. Trump himself and several of his senior officials have made conflicting statements about what they hope to achieve. While candidate Trump seemed to endorse the creation of safe zones in Syria to protect civilians fleeing the bloody conflict, President Trump has not recently spoken of such havens, which would probably require the deployment of more American soldiers to protect. Until recently, Mr. Trump also seemed determined not to involve America more deeply in the civil war, even diplomatically. But after Thursday nights strike, he appeared to recast Americas interest in the Syrian conflict, saying that in addition to Assads chemical weapons, the regions instability was threatening the United States and its allies. That seemed to open the possibility that he intends to pursue enhanced diplomacy to resolve the seven-year war which has killed an estimated 500,000 people, displaced millions more, and destabilized Europe through a flood of refugees. Thursdays strike tells us only that developing and using WMD remains for Mr. Trump, as for previous presidents, a red line that nations dare not cross without potential consequences. But that, as Mr. Trump would say, is yuge. President Trumps decision to launch Cruise missiles against Syria was made without informing other world leaders, including his guest at Mar-a-Lago, Chinese President Xi Jinping. Does Trump know he wouldnt have those missiles at his disposal without China? He should. The guidance systems on the Tomahawk Cruise missiles used to destroy the air base at Al-Shayrat, rely on rare earth elements (REEs) that are made almost exclusively in China. Those substances are used to make permanent magnets, which oscillate in the tail fins of the Tomahawks, guiding them accurately to their target. They are also used in fighter jets, precision guidance, radar and antimissile defense systems. Highly developed magnets have proven more reliable than electronic guidance systems. But just like commercial consumers, the Pentagon is wholly reliant on China for imports of the 17 metals and minerals that are collectively called rare earths because they are usually found together. Having demonstrated his willingness to use military force, Trump must now think about how to ensure that force is always available. This is a reminder to the Pentagon that rare earths are used in expendable weaponry, says Jeff Green, a defense industry consultant. And those munitions are used in a shooting war, when supplies are most likely to be cut off. It is unlikely that President Xi will suspend deliveries to the United States because of Trumps action Thursday night in Syria. But the U.S. administration is also talking tough about North Korea, which recently tested its own version of a Cruise missile and other weapons, in contravention of U.N. sanctions. China is North Koreas sole patron and keeps it afloat with economic aid. Should Trump signal to Xi that he is considering military action against North Korea at their Florida summit, China might decide to flex its own muscle. Cutting off Americas supply of REEs might be one way of doing that. The Pentagon said that some 60 Cruise missiles were used in Thursdays attack. Its estimated that the U.S. has a stockpile of 3,000 left. Thats a large, but not an infinite amount. And REEs are also crucial in the production of AIM Sidewinder and Phoenix missiles used by U.S. warplanes, as well as smart bombs like the Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM). The United States used to produce its own rare earths, which are found in abundance on American soil. But once China began competing, without regard to the environmental hazards involved, it undercut American companies and drove them out of business. Relying on China for materials vital to our national security is short-sighted. And attacking Syria with Cruise missiles, while hosting Xi, whose country controls the worlds supply of rare earths, is a vulnerability that should not be lost on a president who promised to make America great again. Dr. Scott Gottlieb, President Trumps nominee for Food & Drug Administration commissioner, did well at his hearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions this week. He withstood fire from Democrats over his perceived conflicts of interest with the pharmaceutical industry and the FDAs failure to address the nations opioid epidemic, which he vowed will be his highest and most immediate priority if approved. Regarding his ties to drug companies, Gottlieb has filed an ethics agreement stating he will recuse himself for one year from agency decisions that involve more than 20 health companies he has been connected to. Gottlieb has been endorsed by the National Consumers League, the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship (he is a survivor of Hodgkins Lymphoma), the Global Healthy Living Foundation, the Alliance for Aging Research and by former FDA Commissioners Margaret Hamburg, Robert Califf and Mark McClellan. Based on his experience as deputy FDA commissioner during the George W. Bush administration and as an entrepreneur who founded a successful cancer biotech company, Gottlieb understands the importance of the FDA in establishing and policing successful treatments. He has written extensively about the importance of timely vaccines for dangerous diseases, including influenza. A few weeks ago, I had breakfast with Gottlieb at a trendy spot in New York. I forgot to make reservations, so we had to grab a table by the bar good food, but hardly exclusive. Scott has always struck me as easygoing and accommodating, and our breakfast did nothing to change that impression. We slid in beside others just as easily as we might have taken a window table in the more exclusive dining room. He instantly passed my George W. Bush test he was just as comfortable with waitresses as with millionaires. He came across as very straightforward, and he processed information more quickly in person than in front of a TV camera. We discussed pharmaceuticals, and it was clear that his associations informed his vast knowledge base without biasing him. He does not appear to be the kind of person or physician who would ever let anyone ply him for favors. He also displayed confidence and certainty, which will keep those who report to him from grabbing authority for themselves. Scott Gottlieb will never be asleep at the switch. He has a history of mixing personalized, creative solutions with comprehensive data analysis. Perhaps most importantly, for a practicing physician like me, he is known to believe in sharing information about off-label uses of drugs. Dont get me wrong FDA labeling is crucial. But most of us develop our greatest treatments from years of experience with off-label uses in the medical trenches. The FDA does not regulate my practice of medicine, but I would love for it to be more directly on the receiving end of what I discover from using the various treatments and medical devices theyve approved. As FDA commissioner, Gottlieb can also play an important role in integrating discoveries in the university setting with discoveries in the drug labs. Better communication can lead to faster approvals when appropriate, especially in keeping with the new 2016 law for that purpose. Gottlieb said he believes in speedier review and approval of generic drugs, which could help bring down prices, but he also said most FDA regulations are there for a reason. In other words, speed often must be sacrificed to ensure safety. He is familiar with the issues that surround drug pricing and the role the middleman pharmacies play in negotiating. He has written extensively about the need for FDA transparency, including explaining why it rejects a drug. In this day of genetically modulated immunotherapy and a future that may well hold a different health pill for each of us, it is hard to think of a candidate better suited to head the FDA than patient-and-doctor-centric Dr. Scott Gottlieb. His experiences as a cancer patient and his work as a practicing hospitalist also count. And if he acquired some of the essential tools he needs at the very source of drug creation, all the better. Oh, by the way we split the check. Relentless, harsh and wholly unmeritedsuch were the attacks against Judge Neil Gorsuch. Yet Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) held firm to his promise to hold a full-Senate vote on the judges nomination and today we have, once again, a full complement of justices on the U.S. Supreme Court. Hopefully, Gorsuchs confirmation means that the court once again has the crucial fifth vote needed to sustain the Constitution as written and to protect fundamental rights like religious freedom, free speech, and the right to bear arms. Once he is sworn in, Justice Gorsuch will arrive at the Court just in time to hear the April 19 oral arguments in Trinity Lutheran Church v. Pauley. It is a case of stark, blatant religious discrimination by the government. The state of Missouri provides grants to help nonprofit organizations resurface their playgrounds with rubber from recycled tires. The goal is to provide safer play areas for kids. But Missouri denied a grant to the licensed preschool and daycare center at Trinity Lutheran solely because it is a church. Missouri said the grant would violate separation of church and state. In reality, it violated prior Supreme Court precedent. Given the hostility to religious freedom expressed in prior decisions like Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (2014) (the contraceptive mandate case) and Town of Greece v. Galloway (2014) (the town council opening prayer case) by the four liberal justices on the Court, Gorsuch is needed in the Trinity Lutheran case to prevent an injustice from occurring. Excluding churches from an otherwise neutral and secular government aid program clearly violates the First Amendment. Gorsuch may also make a difference in the Courts decisions about which of the pending petitions it will accept for appeal. Each term, the Court accepts only a little over 70 of the roughly 7,000 petitions it receives. It will be helpful, therefore, to have another justice who understands the importance of constitutional issues and will vote to accept the most important cases for review. Among the petitions currently pending is Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, an important case about an individuals right to not be forced by the government to act in violation of his or her religious beliefs. Another petition is Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute. In this case, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an erroneous decision, misinterpreting federal law to prevent the state of Ohio from cleaning up its voter registration list. This is an especially important case for improving election integrityand one which Justice Gorsuch may be inclined to take up. Another petition that could help assure election integrity is North Carolina v. North Carolina NAACP. Here, a three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals erroneously threw out North Carolinas voter ID law as well as numerous other election reforms. Justice Gorsuch may also make a difference on petitions to comesuch as the emergency appeals of the numerous injunctions issued against President Donald Trumps executive order temporarily suspending travel from terrorist safe-havens. As five dissenting judges from the Ninth Circuit pointed out, those decisions confound Supreme Court precedent and the constitutional and federal statutory provisions that authorize the presidents actions. Neil Gorsuch should be the fifth vote needed to quash this judicial activism that interferes with the presidents authority as commander-in-chief to protect the nation. In recent years, Justice Antonin Scalia provided the crucial fifth vote in numerous critical decisions. Were talking about decisions that uphold the Second Amendment [e.g., McDonald v. Chicago (2010) and District of Columbia v. Heller (2008)] and First Amendment rights of political speech, [e.g., Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010) and McCutcheon v. FEC (2014)]. Without Justice Gorsuch there to hold the constitutional line, those decisions could be jeopardized in future decisions. To anyone who watched Justice Gorsuch answer a long string of questions at his lengthy confirmation hearing, it was obvious that he knows a lot more about constitutional law than any of the senators quizzing him. He came; he saw; he conquered. The result is a new Supreme Court justice who gives us every reason to believe he will uphold the Constitution, enforce the Bill of Rights, and rein in an administrative state that has expanded its power and reached far beyond its constitutional and legal authority. It was a grueling process from President Trumps nomination of U.S. Circuit Judge Neil Gorsuch in January to the Supreme Court seat left vacant at Justice Antonin Scalias death to the Senates confirmation of him on Friday. But now comes the really hard work. With less than a month left in the courts current sitting, Gorsuch will have to jump into hearings on a number of controversial issues that will not only gauge the 49-year-old Colorado natives conservative credentials but also lay bare how he compares to his predecessor, Scalia. Scalia was not a monochromatic justice and I dont think that Gorsuch is that way either, Stephen Wasby, a professor emeritus at the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy at the University of Albany, told Fox News. Here is a look at five cases that Gorsuch will hear in his first month, his responses to which will shed light on what kind of Supreme Court justice he will be: Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Pauley Dubbed by many observers as the hot-button issue case of this Supreme Courts sitting and arguably the biggest church-state case in recent memory, the justices will be asked to address the question, Whether the exclusion of churches from an otherwise neutral and secular aid program violates the Free Exercise and Equal Protection Clauses when the state has no valid Establishment Clause concern. In laymans terms, the preschool at Trinity Lutheran Church in Missouri filed suit after being denied state funds to improve a playgrounds surface used by its preschool by replacing gravel with softer recycled rubber. The state funds are from a program that gives grants to nonprofits seeking a safer recreational environment for children. Missouri's law -- similar to those in 37 other states -- prohibits direct government aid to educational institutions that have a religious affiliation. Trinity Lutheran and its supporters are hoping that given his past rulings on religious liberty cases, Gorsuch will tip the scales in favor of the parochial schools. While Gorsuch has not publicly weighed in on this case, many observers say his ruling on the Hobby Lobby Stores v. Sebelius case indicates where he stands. In that case where Hobby Lobby sued to challenge the Affordable Care Acts requirement that employers insurance must cover all forms of birth control Gorsuch wrote in his opinion that courts cant decide whether a religious teaching about complicity imposes too much moral disapproval on those only indirectly assisting wrongful conduct. Gorsuchs 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that federal law prohibited the ACA requirement from applying to closely held corporations and the ruling was later upheld in the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision. Gorsuch seems to be on the side believing that government programs should treat religious freedoms fairly and should recognize the rights of religious organizations to participate in public welfare-type programs, Stephen Wermiel, a professor at American Universitys Washington School of Law told Fox News. Weaver v. Massachusetts and Davila v. Davis Both of these cases deal with the Sixth Amendment, the right to a speedy and public trial, and both center around a defendants rights and counsel being misused. In the case of Kentel Weaver, who as a 16-year-old in 2003 murdered a 15-year-old boy, his legal team argues that his Sixth Amendment rights were violated and he had inadequate representation. A court officer kept the public, including his family, locked out for two days while a jury was selected and Weavers trial lawyers did not object to the move. Lawyers for Erick Davila a Texas gang member convicted of killing a five-year-old girl and her grandmother in a drive-by shooting question both whether he was provided with ineffective counsel and what legal remedies are afforded to capital defendants. The Stanford Law Review called Gorsuchs rulings on Sixth Amendment cases both restrained and interpretive, noting that his opinions have stated a well-developed position on at least one aspect: ineffective assistance of counsel claims. Gorsuchs idea of judicial restraint and pragmatism differentiates him from Scalia, whose time on the bench saw him frequently rule in favor of the defendant. The Supreme Court has long held that a defendant who pleads guilty based on bad advice can show prejudice by demonstrating a reasonable probability that, but for counsels errors, he would have insisted on going to trial, the Stanford Law Review noted. While he admitted that counsel can be ineffective at the plea bargaining phase, Gorsuch would only find a Sixth Amendment infringement where that ineffectiveness denied the defendant his constitutional entitlement to a trial. The review added: [A] criminal defendant with Sixth Amendment claims can fairly expect an uphill battle to win his vote. Maslenjak v. U.S. In the last scheduled argument of the term, the justices will hear the case of Divna Maslenjak of Ohio -- an ethnic Serb from Bosnia who was stripped of her U.S. citizenship for lying about the circumstances that brought her to this country. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled -- in direct conflict with the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 1st, 4th, 7th and 9th Circuits -- that a naturalized American citizen can be stripped of her citizenship in a criminal proceeding based on immaterial false statements. Gorsuchs record on immigration cases shows that he is neither a staunch defender nor a critic of immigrant rights. During his time on the bench in the 10th Circuit, Gorsuch handled only a few prominent immigration-related cases and ruled in favor of the immigrant slightly less than half the time. When hearing Alejandre-Gallegos v. Holder last year, Gorsuch initiated disciplinary proceedings against an attorney who he stated had repeatedly done a poor job representing immigrants. Gorsuch, however, in the case Porro v. Barnes overturned a ruling in a lower court favoring an immigrant who had been shot with a Taser by jailers. While Gorsuch said that the jail did ignore federal policy that prohibits the uses of Tasers on immigration detainees, he ruled that this action did not violate the persons constitutional rights. California Public Employees' Retirement System v. ANZ Securities, Inc. Another case Gorsuch will hear centers on whether certain class-action securities lawsuits can be barred because they were filed too late. The retirement fund in California has sued various financial institutions over their alleged role in the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers. How the justices rule in this case is expected to have serious consequences for institutional investors and also will determine whether putative class members must file individual complaints before the three-year period imposed by Section 13 of the Securities Act has run out. Fox News Bill Mears contributed reporting to this piece. Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho, told Fox News' "The First 100 Days" Thursday night that U.S. military action against Syrian President Bashar Assad "would probably take place," but did not specify what form that action might take. "I think the question right now is, what does it look like? How big is it? How broad is it?" Risch, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told host Martha MacCallum. "How surgical? How long? How short? And what kind of a coalition do they bring together to do it?" TILLERSON SAYS COALITION FORMING TO TARGET ASSAD, TRUMP HEARING MILITARY OPTIONS Risch spoke after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced that "steps are underway" to form an international coalition aimed at forcing Syria's leader from power after this week's deadly chemical weapons attack. Assad's regime is backed by Russia and Iran. "Ill tell you, the ones that are going to be wringing their hands over this are the people in Moscow right now," Risch told MacCallum, "because theyre going to have to make some serious choices as to how much capital theyre going to spend on this. Their expenditures are going to go up pretty dramatically." "In addition, the world is watching," Risch went on. "We have a new president, our enemies and our friends are weighing every move thats made to see whether they can count on the United States. I guarantee you that North Korea, they are weighing this very heavily and their future actions are going to be dictated by how the president responds to this." President Trumps decision to strike an Assad airfield drew swift praise Thursday night from Republican senators who had urged him to take action in response to the chemical weapons attack in Syria. They said it sends an important message to the regime. Unlike the previous administration, President Trump confronted a pivotal moment in Syria and took action, Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said in a joint statement. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said Trump has made it clear to Assad and those who empower him that the days of committing war crimes with impunity are over. The statements came as the U.S. launched dozens of cruise missiles at a Syria airfield in response to the chemical attack that killed dozens of civilians. It was the first direct strike on the Assad government since the start of the countrys civil war. The base targeted is believed to be the point from where Tuesdays chemical attack was staged. US LAUNCHES MISSILES INTO SYRIA IN RESPONSE TO CHEMICAL WEAPONS ATTACK We salute the skill and professionalism of the U.S. Armed Forces who carried out tonights strikes in Syria. Acting on the orders of their commander-in-chief, they have sent an important message the United States will no longer stand idly by as Assad, aided and abetted by Putins Russia, slaughters innocent Syrians with chemical weapons and barrel bombs, McCain and Graham said in a statement. The strikes a military response that was quickly put into action are sure to touch off a revived debate over whether Congress should approve a formal authorization for use of force. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., already has called on Trump to ask Congress for a proper debate. The President needs Congressional authorization for military action as required by the Constitution, he tweeted. SYRIA AIRSTRIKES: TRUMP SAYS MILITARY ACTION IN 'VITAL NATIONAL SECURITY INTEREST' Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex., called on Trump to present his case for military action to Congress. "Any military action in Syria must be justified as protecting the vital national security interests of America including decisive action to prevent chemical weapons from falling into the hands of radical Islamic terrorists," Cruz said in a statement. For the near-term, more hawkish lawmakers praised Trump for taking a step his predecessor did not a strike on the Assad government in response to a chemical weapons attack, which former President Barack Obama once described as a red line. Obama did not respond with military force, and instead struck a deal meant to remove the Assad governments chemical weapons capability. McCain and Graham on Thursday called the strikes on Assad a credible first step, while calling to follow through with a new, comprehensive strategy in coordination with our allies and partners to end the conflict in Syria. The first measure in such a strategy must be to take Assads air forcewhich is responsible not just for the latest chemical weapons attack, but countless atrocities against the Syrian peoplecompletely out of the fight. Earlier Thursday, McCain and Graham had called for grounding Assads air force. An extensive and complex paper trail for requests to the National Security Agency about the identities of people in President Trumps transition team in sensitive intelligence surveillance probably exists, including requests made by former National Security Advisor Susan Rice, according to information sharing procedures signed into law by the outgoing Obama Administration. The revamped procedures, approved in the last days of the Obama Administration, also specifically warn U.S. government agencies against sharing any personal information from raw NSA intelligence with the White House for the purpose of affecting the political process in the United States, according to a slightly redacted copy of the document examined by Fox News. Questions about what intelligence can be shared are supposed to be settled through consultations that involve the General Counsel of the Director of National Intelligence, with numerous sign-offs and a memorandum of agreement governing its availability and how it will be used. The same rules demand that an agency that obtains the raw SIGINT, as electronic monitoring programs are known, must ensure that anyone with access to the material uses it appropriately and that the constitutional rights, especially Fourth Amendment rights, of any American citizen who is monitored are respected. All of those safeguards, and many more, are contained in the controversial, 23-page document after it was signed by the Obama Administrations Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, and Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, and went into effect on January 3, 2017just two weeks before the Trump Administration took office. CLICK HERE FOR THE DOCUMENT The document states that those guarantees should be in place for every request involving such sensitive informationincluding the information requests made by Rice to unmask the redacted identities of people associated with the victorious Trump presidential campaign who were caught up in incidental communications collection by NSA. The identity of Michael Flynn, briefly the Trump Administrations National Security Advisor, was subsequently leaked and Flynn resigned amid revelations that he had misled Vice President Michael Pence regarding telephone conversations he had held with Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kisliyak. Rice has strenuously denied any involvement in the leaking. Lawmakers with the House and Senate intelligence committees are currently complaining that the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency are not cooperating with their requests for information that bears on the leaks, an accusation that all three agencies deny. Rice has defended her requests to unmask such identities in a number of surveillance transcripts as routine and said that the names were needed to provide context in order to understand the importance of the report and understand the significance. Officials from previous Administrations who had made similar unmasking requests in the past have noted that they are rare and anything but routine, given the paperwork involved. John Bolton, a former Assistant Secretary of State and U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., told Fox News that during four years in government he made ten such requests in all, while examining thousands of intelligence reports where such identities were restricted. (Bolton is a Fox News contributor.) He added that at least in the past the unmasking did not extend to everyone who subsequently read the surveillance documents, but only to the person who requested the specific identity. It is not revealed in any other intercept, he said. Moreover, he noted, any intended use of the unmasked material beyond what was covered in the written requests for it would amount to false statements to a federal agency, itself a crime. As it happens, Rices public explanation that the identities were needed for context tracks closely with one of that rationales mentioned on page 12 of the procedures document for releasing what is called U.S. person information, or USPI: to understand the foreign intelligence or counterintelligence information or assess its importance. A nonexclusive list of examples that follows that heading largely points to cases where the U.S. person might be engaged in spying or unauthorized disclosure of classified information, narcotics trafficking, or be the target of hostile intelligence activities of a foreign power. In cases involving a senior official of the Executive Branch of the U.S. Government, the document advises, normally only the officials title will be disseminated. The document adds that a high-level official of the recipient [requesting agency] will ensure that domestic political or personal information that is not necessary to understand foreign intelligence r counterintelligence or assess its importance is not retained or disseminated. The procedures document also strictly ordains that a [requesting agency] receiving raw SIGINT [unredacted surveillance information] under these Procedures may not further disseminate the raw SIGINT it obtains without authorization from the Director of National Intelligencea decision that involves further consulting with NSAs General Counsel about whether that is possible. In other unspecified cases, even more sign-offs, from the National Security Division of the Department of Justice and the General Counsel of the Department of Defense, may be required. The same thicket of oversight is also supposed to be applied to the sensitive raw information once it has been handed over to whoever asked for it, through the requestors oversight and compliance program --which must be reviewed and approved by the Director of National Intelligences Civil Liberties Protection Officer. Among other things, this compliance program is supposed to ensure that the [requesting agency] does not improperly retain and/or disseminate USPI it had received. George Russell is Editor-at-Large of Fox News. He is reachable on Twitter at @GeorgeRussell and on Facebook at Facebook.com/George.Russell U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley forced Bolivia to "defend the atrocities of the Syrian regime" in "full public view" on Friday, after the country's ambassador requested a closed session to discuss President Trump's strikes in Syria. Trump ordered the missile strikes in response to a chemical weapons attack by Syrian President Bashar Assad Tuesday which killed dozens in northern Syria. Haley revealed the Bolivian ambassador's request for a private emergency session of the U.N. Security Council in a written statement Friday morning. She countered: "The United States, as president of the Council this month, decided the session would be held in the open. Any country that chooses to defend the atrocities of the Syrian regime will have to do so in full public view, for all the world to hear. At the session, Haley stood by the U.S. actions, and said that when the international community fails to act, it is up to individual states to act themselves. The moral state of the Assad regime could no longer go unanswered. His crimes against humanity could no longer be met with empty words. It was time to say enough. But not only say it, it was time to act, she said. Haley also questioned Russias role in carrying out a deal to remove chemical weapons -- arguing that either Moscow knew about the weapons, was incompetent in removing them, or was played for fools by Assad. She went on to warn that more U.S. action could be on the table. The United States took a very measured step last night. We are prepared to do more. But we hope that will not be necessary, she said. "The United States will no longer wait for Assad to use chemical weapons without any consequences. Those days are over." - @NikkiHaley pic.twitter.com/PMb24zpPId Fox News (@FoxNews) April 7, 2017 The session itself was fiery. Russian ambassador Vladimir Safronkov blasted the United States for trying to impose an irresponsible geopolitical project on the world, and warned of extremely serious consequences. Meanwhile Syrian Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari condemned what he called a barbaric, flagrant of aggression and a violation of the U.N. charter. This act makes America a partner of ISIL, Al-Nusra and other terrorist groups, he said. The visibly aggravated Bolivian ambassador -- Sacha Sergio Llorenty Soliz used his time to tear into what he called an extremely serious violation of international law and an imperialistic action by the United States. We believe it is the duty of the Security Council, of the United Nations organizations, to defend multilateralism we are here to defend it, he said. He went on to brandish not only a copy of the U.N. Charter, but also a large photograph of former Secretary of State Colin Powell addressing the Security Council in 2003 about the alleged threat of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. Soliz went on to argue that there were no WMDs found in Iraq then, and that the council should therefore be skeptical of the United States now. Solizs remarks were immediately met by stern criticism by U.K. Ambassador Matthew Rycroft, who backed the U.S. action and claimed the Bolivian ambassador was more outraged at the United States than the Assad regime. The United Kingdom supports the U.S. airstrike because war crimes have consequences, he said, calling the strike a proportionate response to unspeakable acts. Perhaps Russia has now learned hard lesson that backing a war criminal comes with its own consequence: humiliation. @MatthewRycroft1 #Syria pic.twitter.com/gat8sFaIxZ UKUN_NewYork (@UKUN_NewYork) April 7, 2017 Rycroft also mocked the Russians, saying Assad had thumbed his nose at Russias calls for Assad to engage in peace talks. Russia sits here today humiliated by its inability to bring to heel a puppet dictator, he said. Other members took more restrained approaches. Italian Ambassador Sebastiano Cardi called for the Security Council to redouble its efforts to seek a U.N.-led political transition from the Assad regime, while French Ambassador Francois Delattre said Assads crimes should not go unanswered, and renewed calls for the U.N. to take charges to the International Criminal Court but noted that such efforts have been vetoed by Russia. Delattre called the strikes by America a legitimate response and a sign that use of chemical weapons will not be tolerated, but warned that a solution will not be reached by military means alone. Marie Harf, a former State Department spokesman during the Obama administration, on Friday said President Trumps response to Syrias use of chemical weapons was correct, but warned that there are still unanswered questions. Tonight, great response, Harf said in an interview with Fox News Shepard Smith. But what if they (Syrian military) do it again? What if they use barrel bombs? What are we going to do for Syrian refugees who we say cant come to the U.S., but were willing to drop bombs on their country? I hope the Trump administration is thinking this through. The U.S. launched nearly five dozen cruise missiles at a Syrian airfield Friday in response to a chemical weapons attack that killed dozens of civilians. Trump said the base was used as the staging point for Tuesday's chemical weapons attack on rebel-held territory. Harf worked closely with former Secretary of State John Kerry and President Obama when the administration had an opportunity to take military action in Syria in 2013. The administration did not get the approval from Congress to send boots on the ground, which led Obama to go the diplomatic route. A lot of us do wish there were times we were more militarily engaged in Syria, Harf said. She added that the Obama administration was looked at all possible consequences of possible military action in the region at the time, including the possibility of Hezbollah attacking U.S. military bases. In a region that is on fire, now with the addition of ISIS as a huge threat to the region, there are a lot of things that could happen if the U.S. gets more militarily involved, Harf said. What we are seeing right now, in the wake of Donald Trump launching retaliatory airstrikes against Syria, is a rally-round-the-president effect. As the media shift to war footing, the tone of the coverage has dramatically changed, from whether Trump is a bumbling leader to how decisive he was in responding to Bashir al-Assads horrifying chemical attack. And the natural instinct to support the commander-in-chief when he orders military action is a good thingas long as it doesnt go too far. Trump is benefiting from two factors. One is the stark contrast with Barack Obama, who declared a red line against Syria and failed to enforce it in 2013, settling instead for a deal on chemical weapons that obviously didnt remove all of them from the country. The other is Hillary Clinton, earlier in the day, saying that the U.S. should bomb Syrian airfieldsthus making it harder to argue that no cruise missiles would have been launched if the election had gone the other way. Naturally, some journalists are asking about Trump changing his position on intervening in the Middle East, something he argued against during an America First campaign in which he stressed his opposition to the Iraq war. In fact, he opposed military action against Syria when Obama was considering it four years ago. TO OUR VERY FOOLISH LEADER, DO NOT ATTACK SYRIA - IF YOU DO MANY VERY BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN & FROM THAT FIGHT THE U.S. GETS NOTHING! Trump tweeted then. These are fair questions, along with Trumps approach of seeking to temporarily bar, and then severely limit, refugees fleeing Assads brutal regime. But the press is not using these questions as a club to pound the president, as on so many other issues. Trump now says Assads fatal gassing of innocent men, women and children had a profound impact on him, and told the country it is in Americas interest to stop the spread of chemical weapons. The bottom line is that these questions look very different when you are president than when you are a candidate or reality show star. But its imperative that the media ask the larger questions: What is Trumps larger strategy? What is he willing to commit in terms of military resources? What risks is he prepared to take? What if Americans are captured in this effort? Can the United States really affect the Syrian civil war without boots on the ground, and without a confrontation with the Russians, who are on the ground? Conversely, if the missile strike was more about sending a powerful signal, was it ultimately symbolic? As retired generals flood the airwaves to praise the airstrikes, the media must avoid getting swept away as they were in 2003, when most news organizations covered the runup to the Iraq war with minimal skepticism. The media consensus of the moment is that President Trump took bold and necessary military action. But it doesnt get any easier from here. The U.S. missile attack against a Syrian airbase late Thursday added a new dynamic to talks held Friday between President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. In launching the strikes, Trump might have sent a message to the rogue North Korean regime and its lone ally in Beijing. "I dont believe the president sat there and said I am going to do this to send a message to North Korea," Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said Friday on "Fox & Friends." However, he said, "I do believe it sent a message to North Korea. If you are Kim Jong Un and you are watching tonight you are realizing we have a different thing going on here. I think he is worried, the former presidential candidate added. On Friday morning, Trump did not specifically address the impact of the strikes on discussions between him and Xi, but told reporters the two leaders could make potentially bad problems go away. The relationship developed by President Xi and myself I think is outstanding. We look forward to being together many times in the future. And I believe lots of very potentially bad problems will be going away, Trump said. During his Thursday night briefing, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the strikes were a kinetic military response to Syrias use of prohibited chemical weapons and did not represent a change in our policy or our posture relative to our military activities in Syria today. But, Tillerson added, it does demonstrate that President Trump is willing to act when governments and actors cross the line, and cross the line on violating commitments they have made and cross the line in the most heinous of ways. I think it is clear that President Trump has made that statement to the world tonight. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also argued taking decisive action would send a strong and clear message to other rogue nations, including North Korea and Iran. Israel fully supports President Trumps decision and hopes that this message of resolve in the face of the Assad regime's horrific actions will resonate not only in Damascus, but in Tehran, Pyongyang and elsewhere, he said. In light of the Syria strike, some analysts believe China may take the U.S. more seriously. China now likely views Trumps threat to take unilateral action against North Korea as more credible, M. Taylor Fravel, an associate professor of political science in the security studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told the Japan Times. While he argued China may be more willing to take actions, either by itself or with others, to slow the pace or even halt Pyongyangs nuclear and missile programs, Fravel noted that North Korea is a much greater challenge militarily that cannot be solved with symbolic strikes. Devin Nunes, who recused himself from the House intelligence probe yesterday, is primarily a victim of his own political clumsiness. Theres no evidence that Susan Rice committed a crime, as President Trump suggests, but her initial denial on television has undercut her credibility. As the investigations of President Trump, Russia and surveillance lurch forward, there are so many conflicting narratives that its hard to untangle them all. And the latest developments come as the president is grappling with the Syrian chemical attack, his meeting with the Chinese president, the Senate going nuclear over Neil Gorsuch and an elusive compromise on the failed health care bill. But the subplots and sideshows involving the Russia investigations continues to permeate the media coverage day after day. In stepping aside, Nunes issued a statement ripping several left-wing activist groups who filed charges against him with the congressional ethics office. He called those charges entirely false and politically motivated, essentially saying he was stepping down from his committees probe to avoid becoming a distraction. But even some Republicans and conservatives had urged Nunes to take precisely that step. The problem was that the California congressman acted more like a Trump ally than the chairman of a bipartisan investigation. He secretly went to the White House grounds to view classified information related to the surveillance probe, then made a show of going back to the White House to brief the president and announce his concerns to the press. When the New York Times disclosed that it was White House officials who showed Nunes the stuffbut not, for several days, the panels top Democratit looked like the chairman was carrying the administrations water. And then he started canceling hearings. So the most diplomatic way to put it is that Nunes had indeed become a distraction. Susan Rice insisted on MSNBC that she had no political motive for unmasking Trump or his aides when they were picked up on foreign intercepts, and flatly denied leaking anything about them. But the reputation of the woman who infamously and wrongly blamed the Benghazi attack on a video was undermined by the fact that she earlier told PBS she knew nothing about the Trump unmasking allegations. It was extraordinary for Trump to tell the New York Times that Rice probably committed a crime, without citing evidence. But there are questions about her motivations, and why she ordered the unmasking, that can only be resolved by her testifying before Congress. Will any of thisTrumps original wiretap claim, alleged surveillance of him as a candidate and president-elect, purported collusion between his team and Russiaturn out to be more than just smoke? We have no way of knowing at the moment. But the thing about investigations is that they take unexpected twists and turns, sometimes even snaring those who are doing the investigating. Democrats on Thursday responded to reports that President Trump authorized a cruise missile strike on an airbase in Syria, and the reaction appeared to be mixed. "I support the administration's strike on the air base that launched the chemical attack. I hope this teaches President Assad not to use chemical weapons again," Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., said. Trumps quick action was in response to the chemical attack that left as many as 72 civilians dead, including woman and children. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., and former vice presidential candidate, issued a statement: Congress will work with the President, but his failure to seek Congressional approval is unlawful. The statements came as the U.S. launched 59 Tomahawk missiles targeted at an airbase at Shayrat. The attack was targeted at the airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas in the base, officials said. "Any further action will require close scrutiny by Congress," Sen. Dick Durbin, D- Ill., said. Please see my statement following the US military strike in Syria: pic.twitter.com/MmiFY1LNxS Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) April 7, 2017 Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., also commented on the importance of Congressional approval, saying, "Any longer-term or larger military operation in Syria by the Trump Administration will need to be done in consultation with the Congress." This weeks unspeakable chemical weapons attack is only the latest in a long series of horrors perpetrated by Bashar al-Assad on innocent men, women and children, Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said in a statement issued on the attacks in Syria. Tonights strike in Syria appears to be a proportional response to the the regimes use of chemical weapons. If the President intends to escalate the U.S. militarys involvement in Syria, he must to come to Congress for an Authorization for Use of Military Force which is tailored to meet the threat and prevent another open-ended war in the Middle East. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement that, "making sure Assad knows that when he commits such despicable atrocities he will pay a price is the right thing to do." "It is incumbent on the Trump administration to come up with a strategy and consult with Congress before implementing it. I salute the professionalism and skill of our Armed Forces who took action today," Schumer added. While most came out in support of the strike, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-HI, released a statement on Thursday condemning the attack. Trumps military strikes in Syria are reckless and short-sighted. -TGhttps://t.co/xM2NMwIgHF Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiPress) April 7, 2017 It angers and saddens me that President Trump has taken the advice of war hawks and escalated our illegal regime change war to overthrow the Syrian government, Gabbard said, adding that, this escalation is short-sighted and will lead to more dead civilians, more refugees, the strengthening of al-Qaeda and other terrorists, and a direct confrontation between the United States and Russiawhich could lead to nuclear war. Gabbard said the Trump administration had acted recklessly without care or consideration of the dire consequences of the United States attack on Syria without waiting for the collection of evidence from the scene of the chemical poisoning. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., member of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, condemned the Syrian chemical attacks, saying their actions underscore why the United States should embrace innocent people who are fleeing in terror. The Constitution gives the power to authorize the use of military force to the legislative branch. Expanded military intervention in Syria requires action by Congress, Warren said in a statement on the U.S. strikes on Syria. If President Trump expects such an authorization, he owes the American people an explanation of his strategy to bring an end to the violence in Syria. We should not escalate this conflict without clear goals and a plan to achieve them. Susan Rice and other former Obama administration officials are taking heat for past claims that their 2013 Syria agreement successfully led to the Assad regime purging its entire chemical weapons stockpile -- in the wake of this week's alleged sarin gas attack. On Thursday, President Trump launched a targeted strike at a Syrian airfield in response to what he called a barbaric chemical attack on innocent civilians at the hand of Syrian President Bashar Assad. There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention and ignored the urging of the U.N. Security Council, Trump said. Video footage from the chemical attack scene immediately raised credibility problems for claims made by members of the Obama administration that the prior agreement had rid the war-torn country of chemical agents. During an interview this past January with National Public Radio, former National Security Adviser Rice touted the success in Syria, in striking a deal with Russia's help that resulted in the prior administration dropping the threat of military action. We were able to find a solution that didnt necessitate the use of force that actually removed the chemical weapons that were known from Syria, in a way that the use of force would never have accomplished, she boasted. We were able to get the Syrian government to voluntarily and verifiably give up its chemical weapons stockpile. Rice has come under fire for making misleading comments in the past. Most recently, she grabbed headlines for allegedly being tied to allegations of improper surveillance of the Trump team prior to his inauguration. Rice isnt the only Obama-era official who made self-congratulatory statements about removing chemical weapons from Syria. In July 2014, then-Secretary of State John Kerry went on NBCs Meet the Press to discuss the September 2013 deal that resulted in Russia agreeing to help confiscate and then destroy Syrias stockpile. We struck a deal where we got 100 percent of the chemical weapons out, Kerry claimed. At the time, the fact-checking website PolitiFact found Kerrys comments to be mostly true. However, given new evidence that Assad had recently used chemical weapons against his own people, PolitiFact was forced to revisit and revise its assessment of Kerrys claims. We dont know key details about the reported chemical attack in Syria on April 4, 2017, but it raises two clear possibilities: Either Syria never fulling complied with its 2013 promise to reveal all of its chemical weapons; or it did, but then converted otherwise non-lethal chemicals to military uses. One way or another, subsequent events have proved Kerry wrong, the site ruled. In August 2016, a U.N. report revealed that Assad had used chlorine gas against civilians on two separate occasions since the 2013 deal a clear violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention. Despite that report, members of the Obama administration continued to claim they had been successful in disarming Assads chemical weapons arsenal. They routinely touted the diplomatic nature of the joint U.S.-and-Russia brokered deal. Obama issued his infamous red line warning to Syrias leader in 2012 not to use chemical weapons. In 2013, when reports surfaced that Assad used sarin gas to kill his people, the deal to remove chemical weapons was intended to avert military action. The president himself on Aug. 18. 2014 said that the most lethal declared chemical weapons possessed by the Syrian regime were destroyed by dedicated U.S. civilian and military professionals and that it had been done several weeks ahead of schedule. On Jan. 6, 2015, then-White House Press Secretary John Earnest praised Russia for its role in destroying the chemical weapons stockpile of the Assad regime. That was an important step, because it reduced, or essentially eliminated, the proliferation risk from that declared chemical weapons stockpile, that we could essentially destroy those chemical weapons and ensure that terrorists would not be able to get their hands on them and use them in other places. Five months later on June 17, 2015, Earnest said that the declared chemical weapons stockpile that Assad previously denied existed has now been acknowledged, rounded up, removed from the country and destroyed precisely because of the work of this administration and our successful efforts to work with the Russians to accomplish that goal. On Thursday night, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson slammed Russia for failing to do its part in preventing the Syrian government from using chemical weapons, despite the 2013 agreement to remove weapons from the country. Either Russia has been complicit or Russia has been simply incompetent, Tillerson said. Three Democrats broke ranks Friday to support Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court. They are: Sens. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Joe Donnelly, D-Ind. All are moderate Democrats facing challenging reelection bids next year in red states. Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., who voted to cut off debate Thursday and had co-introduced Gorsuch -- also from Colorado -- at his confirmation hearing, voted against Gorsuch in the end. All Republicans present voted for Gorsuch. The final tally was 54-45. While most Democrats adamantly opposed President Trumps nominee, he advanced to a final vote after Republicans overcame a Democratic filibuster by changing Senate precedent and allowing the nomination to advance with just a simple majority of senators. Gorsuch is expected to be sworn in Monday. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson charged Thursday that Russia was either complicit or incompetent in its role overseeing Syrias supposed removal of chemical weapons, on the heels of a U.S. strike on an Assad airfield in response to a deadly chemical attack. Tillerson, speaking with reporters, said the U.S. has a high level of confidence the attack earlier this week was carried out by Assad regime aircraft and involved sarin nerve gas. He indicated this flies in the face of agreements the Syrian government made to surrender chemical weapons under the supervision of the Russia government. Clearly Russia has failed in its responsibility to deliver on that commitment, Tillerson said. Either Russia has been complicit or simply incompetent on delivering its end of that agreement. The comments reflect an increasingly tough tone toward Russia in recent days from the Trump administration. Earlier Thursday, Tillerson said Russia should consider carefully its support for the Assad regime. Tillerson added that the response from the airstrikes has been overwhelmingly supportive. Russia, aside from its ongoing support for the Assad government, was a key part of the agreement struck by the Obama administration in 2013 for Syria to dispose of its chemical weapons. The agreement helped avert any military confrontation between the U.S. and the Assad government at the time. Controversial conservative commentator Tomi Lahren is suing her former supervisor, Glenn Beck, and his firm, The Blaze, for wrongful termination over her pro-choice comments on ABCs "The View." According to Lahrens lawsuit, filed Friday in Dallas County, her show was canceled after she made comments on the ABC talk show indicating her pro-choice beliefs: "I can't sit here and be a hypocrite and say I'm for limited government but I think the government should decide what women do with their bodies," Lahren said on "The View." However, The Blaze wanted to keep paying Lahren, the lawsuit says, "presumably hoping they could find an exit strategy to sanitize their unlawful conduct" in breaking Lahren's two-year employment contract, which was to continue through Sept. 30, reports the Dallas Morning News. Lahren seemed to make reference to the lawsuit in a tweet Friday. Lay down and play dead really isn't my style. #FinalThoughts Tomi Lahren (@TomiLahren) April 7, 2017 The Blaze, however, said that she was not terminated. "It is puzzling that an employee who remains under contract (and is still being paid) has sued us for being fired, especially when we continue to comply fully with the terms of our agreement with her," a Blaze spokesman told the Dallas Morning News. The suit also says that her former employer won't allow Lahren access to her Facebook page, where she has 4.2 million followers, which has "irreparably harmed" Lahren. Lahren is asking a judge to grant her a temporary restraining order, which would protect her right to speak freely as well as block The Blaze from destroying any evidence related to what transpired. She's asking for attorneys' fees and costs, "as well as all other relief ... which she may show herself justly entitled," according to the Dallas Morning News. President Trumps decision to strike an Assad airfield drew bipartisan praise from some of his biggest critics while also renewing the dormant debate over Congress role in approving military actions. Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., swiftly applauded the president, saying he took action to confront Bashar Assad unlike the previous administration. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who has been critical of Trumps past statements defending Russias Vladimir Putin, had nothing but positive words for the U.S. president on Friday morning. As the Trump administration now takes a firmer stance against Russias support for Assad, Rubio told Fox & Friends the missile attacks on the airfield thought to be the staging point for this weeks deadly chemical weapons strike was the right choice. It had to be done, Rubio said. Rubio also defended Trumps authority to launch the strikes. We dont have 535 commanders-in-chief, we have one, he said, stressing that the cruise missile strikes do not constitute a declaration of war. Some lawmakers, though, contend that Congress has a role here an argument that last played out when Syria action was considered under the Obama administration. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., a member of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, both called on Trump to come to Congress. The Constitution gives the power to authorize the use of military force to the legislative branch. Expanded military intervention in Syria requires action by Congress, Warren said in a statement. If President Trump expects such an authorization, he owes the American people an explanation of his strategy to bring an end to the violence in Syria. We should not escalate this conflict without clear goals and a plan to achieve them. The War Powers Resolution, enacted in 1973 required the president to consult with Congress before sending U.S. armed forces into combat unless there already had been a declaration of war. The troops could not stay more than 90 days unless lawmakers backed the decision. The law also sought to give the president "leeway to respond to attacks or other emergencies," according to the Council on Foreign Relations. Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and now Trump have used that leeway to their advantage. Following the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, Congress gave Bush authority to attack any countries or groups involved in the attacks, which was generally accepted to mean Al Qaeda. Obama used that same authority to fight the Islamic State militant group, which emerged in 2014 as an outgrowth of Al Qaeda. Trump has used that same authority to continue military action in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. In February 2015, Obama asked Congress to formally authorize war against the Islamic State. His resolution would have limited authorization to three years, with no geographic restrictions for U.S. forces. Congress held a few hearings, but never acted on the proposal. Several Democrats praised Trumps missile strikes Thursday night, following bipartisan outrage over what officials assert was a sarin gas attack by the Assad regime that killed civilians earlier this week. Making sure Assad knows that when he commits such despicable atrocities he will pay a price is the right thing to do, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement. It is incumbent on the Trump administration to come up with a strategy and consult with Congress before implementing it. I salute the professionalism and skill of our Armed Forces who took action today. His House counterpart, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., also said the strike appears to be a proportional response to the regimes use of chemical weapons. However, she noted that if Trump plans to escalate U.S. military involvement in Syria, he must to come to Congress for an Authorization for Use of Military Force which is tailored to meet the threat and prevent another open-ended war in the Middle East. She followed that up with a letter Friday to House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., calling for the House to be summoned back into session to debate a formal authorization. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Senior U.S. military officials said Friday the Pentagon is looking into whether Russia played a role in the chemical weapon attack in Syria that prompted retaliatory action from the Trump administration. The U.S. officials said they were reviewing evidence regarding the attack on the northern Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun, where more than 80 people were killed. They said a drone belonging either to Russia or Syria was seen hovering over the site of the chemical weapons attack Tuesday after it happened. The drone returned late in the day as citizens were going to a nearby hospital for treatment. The hospital was bombed shortly afterward, officials said, possibly in an effort to cover up evidence of chemical weapons usage. The U.S. says a sarin-like nerve agent was used. Syria denies the claim. And the Kremlin says Syria's government wasn't responsible. The U.S. officials also said they're aware of Russians with chemical weapons expertise who've been in Syria. The United States and Russia, meanwhile, will maintain a hotline aimed at preventing midair collisions of their warplanes in Syria, senior U.S. military officials said Friday, contradicting Moscow's claims that it has suspended the "de-confliction" talks in protest of America's cruise missile strikes on a Syrian air base. Officials blamed Russia for failing to control the Syrian government's use of chemical weapons or to account for chemical agents that were supposed to have been eliminated under a 2013 agreement, and questioned whether Russia may have been complicit in Tuesday's horrifying strike that involved the use of a sarin-like nerve gas. In Moscow, the Russian government on Friday initially announced it would cut the hotline that was established after Russia joined Syria's civil war in 2015 to help Syrian President Bashar Assad's government against opposition groups. The hotline's primary intent is to ensure Russian planes conducting combat missions in Syria's skies don't stumble into an accident or confrontation with aircraft flown by the U.S.-led coalition fighting an Islamic State insurgency in the north of the country. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova reportedly said later Friday that Moscow would consider reactivating the memorandum with the United States on preventing air incidents in Syria. "Today, everyone heard the statement of the Defense Ministry, which gave a clear assessment of this step and what motivated it," she was quoted as saying on Russian television station NTV. "We will proceed from the real situation." But the senior U.S. military officials, who weren't authorized to speak publicly on the matter and demanded anonymity, said U.S.-Russian discussions have continued since Thursday night's attack on the Syrian military base. They said American officials asked to make sure the military talks would continue, and the Russians said they would. Pressed on whether the Russians were actively participating in the safety calls, one official said conversations were ongoing. Neither side had previously expressed an interest in severing the line of communication. Even when the U.S., under President Barack Obama, briefly halted talks with Russia on a Syrian peace process, both sides maintained the military communications. Eliminating the hotline could enhance the risk of an accident involving the two nuclear powers. Fox News' Lucas Tomlinson and The Associated Press contributed to this report. Since its first demonstration last year of the hyperloop technology that could one day propel travelers in underground pods at jet-like speeds, the startup Hyperloop One has upgraded its test track in the Nevada desert to make its case for what it hopes will be the future of intercity transportation worldwide. Hyperloop One put the finishing touches on its 1,640-foot testing tube in North Las Vegas this week. Inside the tube, pods filled with passengers and cargo will magnetically levitate and accelerate via electric propulsion to speeds approaching those of a commercial airliner. Such high speeds are attainable because of the tube's low atmospheric pressure, which contributes to reduced aerodynamic drag. The company plans to have a team of 500 engineers, fabricators, scientists, and other employees working on its technology by the end of the year. That's a big increase from last year, when the company had fewer than 100 engineers, many of them ex-NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory employees based at the company's headquarters in California. Last May, those engineers demonstrated their propulsion technology in front of hundreds of journalists. A small white sled accelerated to more than 100 miles an hour over a straight track of a few hundred meters, and the entire test lasted less than five seconds. One of the ex-JPL engineers, Cassandra Mercury, said at the time that the company was looking forward to testing the completed design. "We're going to have it levitating, in a tube, with a pod, at vacuum," she told PCMag. "That's why they're calling it the Kitty Hawk moment." With the tube now completed, those tests can begin, although the company did not offer a timeframe. In addition to overcoming technological hurdles, the company has also faced legal ones: co-founder and CTO Brogan BamBrogan, along with other former employees, sued the company last summer for wrongful termination, alleging, among other things, that they were forced out for speaking to investors about cultural issues within the futuristic firm. Hyperloop One CEO Rob Lloyd said in a statement on Wednesday that the technology will "transform transportation as we know it." He is currently promoting the hyperloop as a feasible alternative to driving or flying between cities in the same region, such as Los Angeles to San Diego, Miami to Orlando, and Seattle to Portland. This article originally appeared on PCMag.com. Astronomers have detected an atmosphere around the super Earth-like planet GJ 1132b, a discovery which could help pave the way to finding life outside our solar system. A team of researchers led by Dr. John Southworth of Keele University in the U.K. used the ESO/MPG telescope in Chile to capture images of the planets host star, GJ 1132. By measuring the slight decrease in brightness as the plant passed in front of the star, they noted that GJ 1132b and its atmosphere absorbed some of GJ 1132s starlight. While this is not the detection of life on another planet, it's an important step in the right direction: the detection of an atmosphere around the super-Earth GJ 1132b marks the first time that an atmosphere has been detected around an Earth-like planet other than Earth itself, Southworth explained, in a statement. ASTRONOMERS DISCOVER 60 NEW WORLDS, FIND 'SUPER EARTH' Prior to this research, the only previous examples of exoplanet atmospheres involved gas giant planets reminiscent of Jupiter and Saturn. GJ 1132b is located 39-light-years from Earth. A light year, which measures distance in space, equals 6 trillion miles. By way of comparison, the recently-discovered Earth-like planet Proxima b, which orbits the red dwarf Proxima Centauri, is about 4-light-years from Earth. 'SUPERFLARES' LIKELY MADE PROXIMA B UNINHABITABLE LONG AGO The study to identify GJ 1132bs atmosphere has been published in the Astronomical Journal. The discovery makes the planet one of the highest priority targets for further study by space research facilities such as the Hubble Space Telescope, the ESOs Very Large Telescope, as well as the James Webb Space Telescope, according to the research team. NASAs James Webb Space Telescope launches next year. Southworth told Fox News that GJ 1132b has already been observed by the Hubble Space Telescope and the Very Large Telescope. "I look forward to the results from these studies - which I am not personally involved in - which will further increase our understanding of this planet," he explained, via email. "It looks like several groups have been studying this planet, which is turning out to be very popular!" FOR THE LATEST TECH FEATURES FOLLOW FOX NEWS TECH ON FACEBOOK In addition to Southworth, experts from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, the University of Cambridge, the University of Rome Tor Vergata and Stockholm University participated in the research. Earlier this year an international team of astronomers found 60 new planets orbiting stars close to Earths solar system, including a rocky super Earth. The experts also found evidence of an additional 54 planets, bringing the potential discovery of new worlds to 114. Visiting a graveyard can be quite a creepy experience, especially if your visit occurs when daylight is fading. But they are set to get even more creepy thanks to a Slovenian company updating the humble tombstones to become interactive. The company is called Bioenergija and was created by Saso Radovanovic. With the help of Milan Zorman, a computer professor at the University of Maribor, they have put a modern twist on the ancient tombstone. Rather than simply a name, dates, and some loving words in memory of the person buried below, the Bioenergija tombstones embrace digital content. Each tombstone will have a display embedded into it, with the example given to Reuters being a 48-inch panel. From a distance they look like normal tombstones, but these new ones are aware. If you stand in front of one it detects your presence using built-in sensors and starts interacting. What is shown on the display is up to the family of the deceased, or the deceased themselves if they had time to plan this out. It could be scrolling text, video, audio, or a mix of all three. There's even going to be a smartphone app allowing audio to be streamed to your device rather than having speakers in the tombstone. As for the cost, the 48-inch display tombstone is roughly $3,200 and Bioenergija is apparently receiving orders following a successful prototype. They are weather and vandal-proof, but what isn't clear is how the interactive tombstones are powered. It would be difficult to dig up a graveyard and lay power cables without disturbing other residence there, so a battery seems most likely. If that's the case, do these tombstones have an ongoing maintenance plan covering regular recharging? For now, Bioenergija doesn't seem to have a way for you to order a tombstone online. The website for the company looks to be called i-ternal and you can contact them for more information. But will they prove popular? Maybe there's individuals out there who want to leave behind more than a stone with some words chipped into it. This article originally appeared on PCMag.com. Archaeologists in Norway are using laser scanning technology to help reveal the ancient Viking settlement hidden beneath a saint-kings church. Last year researchers in Trondheim, Norway unearthed the church where Viking King Olaf Haraldsson was first enshrined as a saint. Experts uncovered the stone foundations of a wooden stave church where Haraldsson was likely enshrined after he was declared a saint in the 11th century. Olaf Haraldsson, or Olaf II of Norway, is the countrys patron saint and the discovery was heralded as a significant find. ALTAR OF VIKING SAINT-KING DISCOVERED IN NORWAY The church, St. Clements, dates from around 1015, but it was demolished in the 13th century. Its location remained a mystery until Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU) archaeologists unearthed the site, which was dated to the time of Olafs rule. The second phase of the excavation began in February and experts are now surveying a larger area. Below the ruins of the church lie more archaeological remains, according to NIKU, which include an even older church, as well as an ancient settlement. "We have identified rich remains of an Iron Age settlement on the site, most likely belonging to a Viking Age kaupang, sealed under thick deposits of natural sand that have been formed by a flooding of the river Nidelva, NIKUs excavation leader Anna Petersen explained in a statement emailed to Fox News. A kaupang was a Viking trade center. GLADIATOR GAMES: EXPERTS HARNESS TECH TO REVEAL ROMAN CITY'S SECRETS Before accessing the kaupang site, however, experts have a lot of work to do. The oldest of the two churches is constructed with heavy posts dug down from the upper horizon of the sand, Petersen added. Archaeologists plan to dismantle the stone ruins of St. Clements to gain access to the layers below. In order for the stones to be removed, the ruin is being laser and photo scanned with the data used to create an exact model of the ruin. Archaeologists also plan to use 3-D models of the site in a future visitor center. We will soon begin to remove the remains of the upper church and are eager to find more posts and postholes relating to the previous building in the sand, Petersen explained. And as the last of many highlights from this spectacular site we will explore the Viking Age settlement." FOR THE LATEST TECH FEATURES FOLLOW FOX NEWS TECH ON FACEBOOK Excavation work at the site is expected to finish by the summer. Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers If you have noticed an uptick in the media-Trump hatred, it is no accident. After a few rocky weeks, the President has had a very good few days. He met with the President of Egypt and the King of Jordan. Both men praising him lavishly. This is important because Egypt and Jordan are helping America in the fight against ISIS. Also, Mr. Trump got an enormous break when the Susan Rice story hit. Whether the former National Security advisor under President Obama did anything wrong or not, story has taken attention away from allegations about the Russia-Trump campaign stuff. So, even though the left-wing media doesn't want to cover the Susan Rice story, that's obvious, fair news agencies like the FOX News Channel are discussing it. And the American people are aware of it. That helps deflect liberal bias against President Trump. And then, then is looming appointment of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Democrats in the Senate blocked the vote today but now, Republicans have changed the rules and the judge is likely to be confirmed tomorrow. That is a big win for President Trump because the Judge is a traditional man who will not rule, not rule on his political beliefs as some Supreme Court justices now do. Gorsuch is despised on the Left because they know he could be on the court for decades that he is not going to carry water for anyone. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if some conservative Americans are disappointed by Justice Gorsuch because he is not a political guy. All in all, President Trump is nominated a fair amount of the court, a person who will not buy into the myth of the United States need to be changed in dramatic ways. Finally, Mr. Trump will meet with the Chinese president, an avowed communist, over the next few years in Palm Beach, Florida. I don't know if there are any other communists in Palm Beach, may be. As he hopes to get China's hope to subdue North Korea, which has become a major threat to the world. Mr. Trump also wants to modify trade deals, some more American products are sold in China, which is the most populated country on earth, nearly 1.5 billion people. So, things have gone very well this week for Donald Trump. But as you know, every day is an adventure. However, it is safe to say the Trump haters are very frustrated this evening. And that is "The Memo". An Airbnb host in Big Bear, Calif., backed out of a deal to rent her home to a young woman because of the would-be guest's ethnicity but Airbnb isnt having it. Dyne Suh, an Asian-American woman from Southern California, says she booked reservations at an Airbnb host's cabin in Big Bear about a month before she planned to arrive for a snowy ski weekend with friends. But just moments before pulling up to the Airbnb rental, she was informed by the host that she was no longer welcome because she was Asian. Christopher Nulty, an Airbnb spokesman, has since confirmed to NBC4 that the host who denied Suh has been permanently banned from the hospitality app for her abhorrent and unacceptable behavior. ARE AIRBNB'S 'ACCEPTANCE RINGS' THE NEW LIVESTRONG WRISTBANDS? A newly-released video of Suh and her friends, taken as the ordeal was unfolding, tells a more complete story of the would-be ski weekend. As Suh explains, she originally made reservations for just two people, but reached out to the host to ask if an additional two friends would be acceptable. The woman stipulated that there would an additional charge, which Suh agreed to pay. During the drive which was plagued by snow and flash floods Suh reached out again to confirm that her lodging arrangements were in order, but this time, she got an altogether different answer. Absolutely not, the woman wrote back. Suh asked why, and the host responded by accusing the 23-year-old of being high if she thought four guests could get a room for $50 per night on a busy weekend in Big Bear. The host also accused the renter of being a con artist. When Suh argued that the woman was clearly backing out of a deal they had previously agreed to, the host replied with a racist comment. I wouldnt rent to (you) if (you) were the last person on earth, the host wrote, as seen in screenshots provided by Suh. One word says it all. Asian. I will not allow this country to be told what to do by foreigners, the host continued. Its why we have (T)rump, she later added. FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS In the video, a tearful Suh who told NBC4 that shes lived in the U.S. since she was 3 expressed her frustration with the hosts racist sentiments. It stings, Suh says in the video. It stings that after living in the U.S. for over 23 years, this is what happens. No matter if I follow the law, if Im kind to people, no matter how well I treat others, it doesnt matter. If youre Asian, youre less than human. People can treat you like trash. Nulty, the Airbnb spokesperson, also told The Huffington Post that, in addition to permanently banning the racist host from using their platform, the company had offered to set Suh up with alternate lodging, but Suh and her friends had already made other arrangements. As the online home rental booking platform continues to grow, Airbnb has been on the frontlines of implementing anti-discrimination policies amid reports of hosts allegedly turning away guests of a certain race or sexual identity. Airbnb was not immediately available for comment. Rescue crews from the U.S. Coast Guard are currently searching for a 32-year old man who went overboard from his cruise ship in waters near the Bahamas. Reco Scott, of Decatur, Ga., went missing from the ninth deck of the Carnival Liberty at around 5 a.m. on Friday morning, according to a news release issued by the Coast Guard. The ship, which departed from Port Canaveral, Fla., was about 10 miles northwest of Barry Islands, Bahamas, when Scott first went missing. #BreakingNews Missing from the Carnival Liberty cruise ship is Reco Scott, 32, of Decatur, Georgia. Read more at https://t.co/9SWvDy9OTr USCGSoutheast (@USCGSoutheast) April 7, 2017 Per the release, the cruise ship launched a search for Scott upon learning of the man's disappearance. They also contacted officials at the Seventh Coast Guard District Command Center, who arranged to send a Coast Guard helicopter crew and a Coast Guard vessel to the area. FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS The Coast Guard has also confirmed that the Norwegian Jade, of Norwegian Cruise Lines, is currently aiding in the search efforts. A spokesperson for Carnival also told WJXT in Jacksonville, Fla., that the Carnival Liberty itself has turned back from the search area. The U.S. Army announced Friday that approximately 1,500 soldiers from Alaska will deploy to Afghanistan later this year. The deployment of the 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, is part of a regular rotation of forces in support of Operation Freedom's Sentinel. "As the only U.S. Army Airborne brigade in the Pacific, our Spartan Brigade paratroopers are exceptionally capable, well trained and a well-led organization," Maj. Gen. Bryan Owens, the commanding general of U.S. Army Alaska, said in an Army press release. "These soldiers train rigorously in a wide range of climates and environments. I am fully confident in their ability to excel and overcome any challenges they will face during this deployment." The Army also announced its intent to retain the 4-25, stationed at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, as a full brigade combat team and not convert it to an airborne task force. In 2015, the service ordered the 4-25 to downsize to an airborne task force of 1,046 paratroopers as part of a structure initiative to develop a smaller, more agile force. The plan to retain the 4-25's current size is based on emerging mission requirements and the fiscal 2017 National Defense Authorization Act directing the Army to ensure its active force of 476,000 soldiers, according to the release. U.S. troops in Afghanistan are split between two missions -- NATO's Resolute Support mission to advise Afghan security forces and the separate Freedom's Sentinel, the U.S. counter-terrorism operation against the remnants of al-Qaida; an emerging offshoot of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS; and other terror groups. -- Matthew Cox can be reached at matthew.cox@military.com. A Chinese real estate scion charged with orchestrating the murder of her children's father was released from a San Francisco Bay Area jail after posting $35 million bail, a highly unusual financial transaction that startled and angered the victim's family and friends. Tiffany Li will remain out of custody after family, friends and her mother's business associates raised $4 million cash and pledged Bay Area properties worth a combined $62 million to post her bail. Courts require double the bail amount when property is pledged instead of cash. "Nothing about this seems right," said Angela Dunn, a close friend of the victim who shared her home with him in the six months before his death. Dunn said the victim's mother is taking Li's release especially hard. Court records show 15 properties being pledged. Li's attorney Carr said the properties are owned by family and business associates of Li's mother, who spends most of her time in China where she profited from real estate investments. Li, 31, is charged with directing her boyfriend and another man to kill Keith Green, 27, and dispose of his body, which was found in May with a bullet wound to the neck 80 miles north of the suburban San Francisco mansion he and Li once shared with their two young daughters. Prosecutors say Li feared she would lose custody of her daughters. Li and the two men were arrested shortly after Green's body was found and the trio is scheduled to stand trial in September. Li has pleaded not guilty. A bodyguard ushered Li out of jail and into a waiting Cadillac Escalade Thursday afternoon, three hours after a judge ordered her released. The two men charged in the case remain in jail and haven't asked for bail to be set because they don't have the financial backing Li has, Li's attorney Geoff Carr said. "They have great resources and we are just regular folks," Dunn said. The bail system in the United States has been under legal and legislative attack in recent years. A number of class action lawsuits have been filed across the country challenging the constitutionality of requiring defendants to post cash bail to go free before trial. Critics of the system argue that cash bail schemes like the one found in California state court unfairly disadvantage poor suspects who can't afford to post bail while allowing wealthy defendants like Li to go free pending trial. Authorities in neighboring San Francisco County say they are examining cash bail requirements there after inmates filed a lawsuit. Two California legislators have introduced bills seeking to dramatically overhaul the state's bail requirements, eliminating cash demands in most cases and taking into account a suspect's income in cases still requiring money bail. The California lawmakers and supporters of their bills argue that the current system keeps many innocent people behind bars, disproportionately affects minority defendants and encourages some suspects to plead guilty simply to get out of jail. Li is charged with directing her boyfriend Kaveh Bayat and Olivier Adella to kill Green and dispose of his body last year. Li and Green had an acrimonious split in October 2015 after Green discovered Li's relationship with Bayat, Dunn said. Li kicked Green out of the multimillion dollar home they shared with their children in Hillsborough, a suburb of mansions and large houses 20 miles south of San Francisco. Carr said all defendants except those accused of death penalty-eligible crimes are entitled to "reasonable bail." The $35 million bail is the highest ever in San Mateo County's history, a county official said. San Mateo District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said he's concerned Li is a flight risk and is disappointed the judge didn't set the bail even higher. His office asked for $100 million. "If convicted she faces the rest of her life in prison," Wagstaffe said. "That's plenty enough incentive to flee back to her native China." Li will be required to turn over her passports, wear an electronic monitor and remain under house arrest. Carr says the people who posted Li's bail believe she is innocent and will not flee. If she does go on the lam, the court can confiscate the property and cash. next Image 1 of 2 prev Image 2 of 2 A man must stand trial on third-degree murder and other charges after leading police on a Thanksgiving Day chase that ended when he collided with a car that burst into flames, killing the driver, his fiancee and her toddler daughter, a judge ruled Friday. Demetrius Coleman, 23, of Pittsburgh, was traveling at least 82 mph (132 kph) in a 40 mph (64 kph) zone when he broadsided the victims' car at a busy intersection on Route 30 in North Versailles, about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) from where police in East McKeesport had stopped him for making an illegal left turn, according to police testimony at his preliminary hearing. North Versailles Officer Norman Locke, the closest officer giving chase, was hundreds of yards away when he saw through traffic part of the crash that killed David Bianco, 28; Kaylie Meininger, 21; and her 2-year-old daughter, Annika, as they were driving to a holiday dinner that afternoon. "I saw the white vehicle spinning," Locke said, referring to the car Coleman was driving, "and an immediate fireball erupted upward." Allegheny County coroner's reports indicated that Meininger and her daughter were badly burned and died of various trauma injuries; Bianco died of head and neck injuries. Locke estimated Coleman was driving 100 mph (161 kph) during the pursuit. Cpl. John Weaver, a state police accident reconstructionist who testified Coleman's speed was "at least 82 to 84 mph" at impact, said Bianco's car was hit so hard it traveled 42 to 48 mph (68 to 77 kph) sideways after impact. Coleman has also been charged with driving under the influence because police found marijuana in his system after the crash. Coleman's female companion was found with heroin and faces separate charges, and authorities have said the couple was driving around selling drugs in the hours before the crash. East McKeesport Officer Scott Lowden testified he pulled over Coleman for making the illegal turn, and both cars stopped in a convenience store parking lot. Coleman didn't have a license it was suspended or registration for the car, and Lowden learned of the drug warrant when he ran Coleman's name through a police records check. Lowden had just gotten Coleman's birth date and Social Security number so he could confirm Coleman was the man wanted for arrest when Coleman sped away. Locke had been called in for backup and gave chase. Two other officers, one driving to work in a private vehicle and another from North Versailles, Officer Daniel Gallo, were driving toward the traffic stop when Coleman came speeding by weaving into and around their cars in the opposite lanes of travel moments before the crash. Coleman remains jailed without bond. His lawyer didn't comment on the judge's decision. The victims' relatives attended the hearing but left without commenting. A dog that was assumed drowned during a fatal boating accident on April 3rd was found by two California firefighters on a rocky beach Thursday. Brian Phidat Ho, a 47-year-old San Jose resident, died when his 13-foot Boston whaler capsized in rough surf at the mouth of Tomales Bay in northern Marin County. MAN CHARGED IN DEATHS OF 9 DOGS, STARVING 13 OTHERS IN NY Two dogs and another man also were in the boat when it was capsized by waves; the second man and one of the dogs were recovered shortly after the incident by Sonoma County Sheriffs Office personnel. At 11:30 a.m. Thursday, Marin County Fire Battalion Chiefs Chris Martinelli and Graham Groneman were riding on rescue watercraft just offshore, scouting locations during a water rescue orientation for firefighters. MAN WIELDING SAMURAI SWORD ARRESTED IN TEXAS They were about a quarter mile north of Dillon Beach when they spotted a pale yellow object on the beach. They were hugging the coastline when they saw the dog hunkered down under a rocky outcropping, said Battalion Chief Bret McTigue. They went on shore and put a lifejacket on him. He was wet and shivering after a few days out in the elements. The dog, a young yellow Labrador retriever named Yoda, matched the description of the missing dog from Mondays capsizing. Click here to read more at Fox 2. A North Carolina man found dead in 1993 was murdered by his father-in-law who confessed 24 years to the day after the crime, investigators said. Sydney Gregory, 32, was found bludgeoned to death in a mobile home in Seven Springs on February 7, 1993. Authorities said Allen Deaver, 74, told them on February 7, 2017, that he killed Gregory and then set the home on fire. Deaver was arrested in Livingston Parish in Louisiana where he was living. CALIFORNIA MURDER SUSPECT POSTS UNPRECEDENTED $35M BAIL AFTER FRIENDS, FAMILY HELP OUT Maj. Tom Effler of the Wayne County Sheriffs Office in North Carolina told FoxNews.com on Friday that Deaver claimed he killed Gregory because his son-in-law had abused his wife and his children, who were 2 and 5 at the time. Gregory was married to Deavers daughter. Effler said the woman and the children denied ever being abused. HOME INVADER KILLED IN SHOWER MAY HAVE THOUGHT HE WAS IN FRIEND'S HOUSE, PROSECUTORS SAY WNCN-TV reported Thursday in an interview Effler said that Deaver may have wanted to clear his conscience after becoming ill and being hospitalized. I dont know if he wanted to try to make things right before he met his maker, or what it was, but I think his conscience was bothering him, Effler told the station. WNCN reported that Gregory and Deaver were next-door neighbors when Gregory was killed. Effler said investigators quizzed Deaver and his wife at the time but they were uncooperative. Deaver and his wife soon left Wayne County and never returned, the station reported. A Wayne County grand jury indicted Deaver on Wednesday on a charge of first-degree murder. Effler says deputies from the Livingston Parish Sheriff's Office arrested him on a fugitive warrant Wednesday, and he's being held in Louisiana without bond at the parish jail. The Associated Press contributed to this report. A 51-year-old Florida man, who says he killed a Walmart diaper thief because he feared for his life, has been charged with manslaughter. Arthur Adams, 19, was shoplifting diapers at the Walmart in Pine Hills, Florida, on February 4 when he was shot and killed, according to reports on Thursday. Deputies say his assailant was a Walmart shopper, Lonnie Leonard, 51, of Apopka. Leonard also was arrested on two weapons charges. Adams' two accomplices fled and were never caught. What we have at this point is that the individual felt threatened one of the suspects reached for something [and he] thought that it was a weapon or firearm, Orange County Sheriffs Office spokesman Angelo Nieves said at the time of the shooting, according to Fox 35 Orlando. SHOPPER WITH GUN KILLS SUSPECTED DIAPER THIEF AT FLORIDA WALMART Deputies now say Adams was shot in the back. They said he and the accomplices were unarmed. The Orlando Sentinel reported that Leonard was armed with a 9 mm Winchester Luger and fired nine shots. Adams was struck twice. Adams was a gang member who was planning to sell the stolen diapers, the paper reported. Leonard thought he was catching a bad guy, his brother, Gary, told Fox 35. He thought people was robbing Walmart, Leonard said. It's a little nerveracking because he thought he was doing the right thing, and it turned out to be the wrong thing that he done, so he says from now on he's going to mind his own business. Leonard was ordered held in the Orange County jail on Thursday after failing to post bail. An 88-year-old Indiana man is helping to keep the children of his community warm, one blanket at a time. Clayton Shelburne, 88, has made several dozen blankets, enough to provide one for every patrol car with the Zionsville Police Department and the Boone County Sheriff's Office. HIGH SCHOOL CHOIR HONORS AMERICA WITH NATIONAL ANTHEM AT ELLIS ISLAND "I just felt there was a need," Shelburne told Fox 59, adding that he remembered a story about a father leaving his sleeping son in a broken-down car along a highway while the father went to get help. Shelburne says his wife, Delores, started making blankets with a camping club, which would donate the blankets to different organizations in the area. Clayton joined her and the couple made blankets together for about ten years. DOG RESCUED THREE DAYS AFTER HORRIFIC BOATING CRASH IN CALIFORNIA "She was the seamstress," he told the station. "I was never a seamstress. This is a new ballgame because I was always an outside person. Delores Shelburne passed away in May 2015. "My time is nothing," said Shelburne. "Im 88 years old, I can do this when its raining outside and I enjoy doing it. Im sure if my wife was here she would be happy Im doing this too. Shelburne decided to make the blankets for police after talking with his son, a Zionsville police officer. Police said the blankets would go a long way. We could show up to a crash and the weather could be like it is now where its nice and cold and that blanket will come in real handy when you wrap it around somebody in need," Sgt. Adrian Martin of the Zionsville Police Department told Fox 59. "For an individual, a civilian for that matter, to take it upon themselves to not only to take their time and invest their money and their personal stake into a product or event that benefits any law enforcement agency, particularly Zionsville, we appreciate that. Click for more from Fox59.com. A man has been charged with animal cruelty after authorities say nearly two dozen French mastiffs were found dead or starving on a rural upstate New York property. Valdez Bentley was charged Thursday with 22 counts of failure to provide sustenance to his dogs. The 55-year-old was released from the Fulton County Jail after posting bail. Authorities say they were alerted to the situation by a contractor taking photos of a dilapidated home in the town of Stratford, in the southern Adirondacks. Troopers say when they arrived they found nine of the dogs dead and another 13 extremely emaciated. Police say the dogs had no food or water. The surviving dogs are being cared for at a local humane society. It couldn't be determined if Bentley has an attorney. A juvenile in Michigan is facing charges after a mother said her son killed himself after his 13-year-old girlfriend faked her own suicide in a social media prank. Katrina Goss said Thursday that she found her son, Tysen Benz, hanging by the neck March 14 in his room after seeing social media posts and texts that his 13-year-old girlfriend had killed herself. He died Tuesday. Goss said the girl and some of her friends orchestrated the prank. DOG RESCUED THREE DAYS AFTER HORRIFIC BOATING CRASH IN CALIFORNIA The juvenile, who was not identified, is being charged in Marquette County with telecommunication services-malicious use and using a computer to commit a crime, Marquette city police Capt. Michael Kohler said in a news release. Goss told People magazine that the accused juvenile was Tysens girlfriend. TWO TEENS KILLED AFTER FALLING FROM SC BEACHFRONT HOTEL BALCONY The magazine attempted to reach the girl Goss claims has been charged, but was not immediately successful. Tysen was being kept alive on machines at a hospital in Ann Arbor, People reported. We had to let him pass on, Goss told the magazine. He was severely brain-damaged and the doctors told us he would never recuperate, that it wasnt even really him anymore. I was at his bedside for three weeks. We are utterly devastated, and we will never get over it. She added, He was amazing an amazing athlete who was super fun and had a great sense of humor. He was extremely social; the whole community is upset. Goss said that after seeing posts about his girlfriend, Tysen replied over social media that he was going to kill himself. She said those involved in the prank didn't tell an adult even then. "The whole thing happened in about 40 minutes," Goss said. "He was fine and then I found him. I don't know what she said she did to herself." She said social media harassment, bullying, and pranking is a huge issue. The way it's used nowadays, kids are desensitized to social media, and it really does hurt people, she said. The Associated Press contributed to this report. TRUMP ORDERS AIRSTRIKE IN SYRIA President Trump, who warned against Syrian intervention as a candidate, authorized airstrikes aimed at a Syrian airbase that hit the country at about 3:45 a.m. local time. The Trump administration appeared to be cautious about its approach to the Syrian conflict, but Trump said that seeing images of babies gasping for air after Tuesday's attack made him change his views on President Bashar al Assad. Shortly after the airstrikes, Trump told reporters that, "No child of God should ever suffer such horror." (WATCH FOX NEWS AND FOXNEWS.COM FOR COMPLETE COVERAGE OF THE AIRSTRIKE) Early reports from Syria indicate that the U.S. airstrike punished the intended target: the airbase at Shayrat. A human rights group in the country said the missile attack damaged over a dozen hangars, a fuel depot and an air defense base. At least seven Syrian soldiers were killed in the airstrike, the group said. PHOTOS: US LAUNCH 59 CRUISE MISSILES INTO SYRIA It is believed the Syrian government launched the chemical attack from the runways at Shayrat. Syria has denied involvement. FOX NEWS OPINION ROBERT CHARLES, the former assistant secretary of state under President George W. Bush, writes that Trump struck the perfect balance. He made clear his revulsion at Syrian use of sarin. This is not an incidental win, this is critical. Credible deterrence of sarin worldwide depended on as swift, meaningful American response, particularly in view of past disappointments. WORLD LEADERS REACT President Trump called on all "civilized nations" to join the U.S. in seeking to end this slaughter and bloodshed in Syria. World leaders reacted: RUSSIA: Airstrike was an "aggression against a sovereign state" and in violation of international law. SYRIA: State TV called the attack an "aggression" that lead to "losses." ISRAEL: PM Netanyahu said "in both word and action" Trump "sent a strong and clear message" that "the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated." AUSTRALIA: PM Trumbull said government supported the swift and just response of the U.S. TURKEY: Airstrike an "important and meaningful" development, but urged the world to take an even tougher stance on Assad. IRAN: Foreign Ministry spokesman: "Unilateral action is dangerous, destructive and violates principles of international law. WATCH EXPERTS WEIGH IN OVERNIGHT GEN. JACK KEANE REACTS TO AIRSTRIKES JUDITH MILLER SAYS AIRSTRIKE SIGNALS TO RUSSIA: CONTROL YOUR CLIENT SECRETARY OF STATE SAYS US POLICY TO SYRIA DOES NOT CHANGE FOX CONTRIBUTOR MARIE HARF COMPARES TRUMP RESPONSE TO OBAMA FNC'S JENNIFER GRIFFIN REPORTS ON INTEL THAT LED TO AIRSTRIKE SEN. MARCO RUBIO SAYS TRUMP HAD MORAL AUTHORITY TO ATTACK POLITICIANS RESPOND SEN. BILL NELSON, D-FLA: I hope this teaches President Assad not to use chemical weapons again. SEN. TIM KAINE, D-VA: Congress will work with the President, but his failure to seek Congressional approval is unlawful. REP. NANCY PELOSI, D-CA: Strike in Syria appears to be a proportional response to the the regimes use of chemical weapons. SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER, D-NY: "Making sure Assad knows that when he commits such despicable atrocities he will pay a price is the right thing to do." CLINTON TALKED ON SYRIA BEFORE STRIKE Hours before reports started to surface about Trump's decision to bomb a Syrian airfied, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton talked about Assad in an interview, saying, "I really believe we should have and still should take out his air fields and prevent him from being able to use them to bomb innocent people and drop sarin gas on them. GORSUCH SET TO BE CONFIRMED President Trumps selection to replace Antonin Scalia is expected to win confirmation Friday and be sworn in soon after to hear the final cases of the term. The Senate will resume debate on Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch on the morning, and a vote is expected about midday. He is expected to win confirmation after the Senate went nuclear. COMING UP ON FOX NEWS CHANNEL 9:30 AM ET: The Senate meets aand proceeds to executive session to resume consideration of Neil Gorsuch to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. Watch live on Fox News Channel and FoxNews.com NOON ET: Former Vice President Joe Biden attends a public celebration at the Univ of Delaware following the launch of the Biden Institute. Watch live on FoxNews.com. 1 PM ET: Hillary Clinton is the featured speaker at an Annie's List Luncheon event. Watch live on FoxNews.com 4 PM ET: Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch delivers the keynote address at Harvard Kennedy School's annual Black Policy Conference. Watch live on Fox News Channel and FoxNews.com COMING UP ON FOX BUSINESS 8:30 AM ET: The government releases the monthly jobs report. Economists expect 180,000 nonfarm workers to be added to payrolls in March. Watch "Mornings With Maria" for full coverage. 9:45 AM ET: Gary Cohn, the chief economic adviser to President Tump, interviewed on "Varney & Company." Here's a look at the most popular stories this week on Military.com: At a conference near Washington, D.C., in February, the commander of all Navy special operations units made an unusual request to industry: Develop and demonstrate technologies that offer "cognitive enhancement" capabilities to boost his elite forces' mental and physical performance. By Hope Hodge Seck | Read more Former 12th Air Force Command Chief Master Sgt. Jose A. Barraza was charged Thursday with 15 violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, according to an Air Force statement. By Tara Copp | Read more The Defense Department is adding two new award devices -- a C device for personnel who distinguish themselves under combat conditions and an R device for service members such as drone pilot who "remotely, but directly, contributed to a combat operation," according to the chief of the Army awards branch. By Matthew Cox | Read more Army Shows Off Its Lightest Combat Helmet Ever Parents: Green Beret Son Was Murdered in Crime Complicated by Politics Navy Instructor Pilots Refusing to Fly Over Safety Concerns Navy SEAL Loses Rank, Gets Jail Time for Assaulting Ex Group Files IG Complaint Over Blog on Incoming Academy Commandant Air National Guard F-16 Crashes Near Washington, DC Marines to Offer Retention Bonuses for F-35, V-22, F-18 Pilots Marines Killed in Chattanooga Shooting to Receive Heroism Medal These 'Swimming Bullets' Can Obliterate a Target Underwater Marines Testing Polymer Solutions to Cut Ammo Weight These Foreign Tanks Now Match the M1 Abrams, US General Says In Innovation Push, Navy Brass Look to Repurpose Seabasing Vessels Boeing Ramps Up Bomb Production as Stockpiles Decrease Future V-22 Weapons May Range from Lasers to Sonic Waves Bob Seger Rethinks the Vietnam War The 13 Funniest Military Memes of the Week 4/5/17 10 School Tips for Military Families With Gifted Children 5 Things This Military Mom Learned As a Military Kid Dentists Warn New Tricare Rates Will Cause Drop in Providers Coast Guard to Congress: Don't Move Us to Pentagon -- Justin Sloan can be reached at Justin.Sloan@monster.com. Follow him on Twitter at @JustinMSloan. Police in North Carolina say someone attempted to set fire to a Nepali Indian grocery store and left a note signed "White America" that threatened to torture the owners if they didn't leave town. Charlotte-Mecklenburg police said in a statement Friday that a window pane in the store's front door had been broken, but a small fire had burned itself out. The statement said authorities are investigating the act as a possible hate crime. The store is located in Charlotte. Surveillance video captured a possible suspect, but there have been no arrests. No one was hurt. Four people were killed Friday when a small plane crashed in Harrisburg, Ore. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said a single-engine Piper PA46 crashed under unknown circumstances about 5 miles east of Mahlon Sweet Field Airport in Linn County at around 11 a.m. local time. The Register-Guard newspaper reports the plane was approaching the Eugene Airport when it crashed about 10 miles (16 kilometers) north of the airport. The Linn County Sheriff's Office told FOX 12 that it received reports of the plane flying low, but the callers did not report signs of mechanical issues. Marty Nill, who operates a private airfield near Harrisburg with his brother, told the Associated Press in a phone interview that conditions were very windy. However, investigators are not yet sure what role the high winds played in the crash, if any. Click for more from KPTV.com. In a law of unintended consequences, an over-the-counter treatment for diarrhea, typically seen as commonplace and harmless, is accounting for a rising number of overdoses, reports the Atlantic magazine. One reason for the overdoses is the desperate need of people experiencing opioid withdrawals to turn to something that -- in large doses, such as dozens or hundreds of pills daily creates a buzz or provides relief from severe withdrawals pains. Its a cheap, legal and easily accessible opioid alternative, William Eggleston, a clinical toxicologist at SUNY Upstate Medical University, said. The number of calls to poison centers regarding the ingestion of dangerous levels of the diarrhea treatment, known as loperamide, doubled between 2010 and 2015, the magazine reported. The FDA even has notified doctors to monitor loperamide abuse. As recently as 2012 loperamide abuse was still not widely known. Raminta Daniulaityte, a researcher at Wright State University, wrote a paper raising alarms about the medicine. There was no research at all and nobody really knew about it, she said. Some patients who commented on an online forum the researcher used to post the study results, defended it, saying it helped them deal with opioid withdrawals. Another person said: Its a cheap, legal and easily accessible opioid alternative. The Atlantic said that loperamide, in safe doses, works well to control diarrhea, but not in cases where people seek a buzz. Eggleston said hes heard of people taking 400 or 500 tablets a day. They put it in a blender and make a smoothie and drink it over one or two hours, he said. While loperamide does not reach the brain cells, it can cause death in some cases, as well as drowsiness and struggle breathing. Large doses can block calcium channels, making it difficult for the heart to maintain a steady rhythm. One doctor, Somwail Rasla, an internal medicine resident at Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island, described a young man in his late 20s who arrived with an abnormal EKG. Theres no reason such a young patient should have it, except as a congenital abnormality or medication induced, said Rasla. As it turned out, the patient was taking up to 150 tablets of loperamide daily, landing him in an intensive care unit and a nine-day stay in the hospital before he was released. The problem of misuse of the medication didnt come onto the publics radar until recently because it was only in the last few years that people began taking massive quantities of it, the magazine reported. Experts fear it will get worse before it gets better. We will see more cases because the more restrictions [there are] on opioids, the more doctors are afraid of trying to extend their prescriptions, the more people will seek different substances, said Rasla. After a 4-year-old girl was kidnapped and sexually assaulted, police were searching Friday for "the heartless monster" who committed the crime. At a news conference Friday, New Castle County police Chief Col. Vaugh Bond Jr. was visibly shaken when he said, "I can assure the public that this incident is by far the No. 1 priority for New Castle County Police Department." Authorities were called to a home in Pike Creek, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) west of Wilmington, about 7 p.m. Thursday. The girl was playing outside with other children when a man drove up and starting talking with her, Bond said. The man lured the girl into the car and drove off. A passer-by saw the girl about 8:45 p.m. walking near the tree line in Banning Park, Bond said. She was "without very many garments," the chief said. The girl was taken to a hospital, where medical personnel determined she had been sexually assaulted. She was treated and released to her family. Bond described the suspect as a white or Latino male driving a dark-colored, four-door sedan with tinted windows. He asked that any residents with surveillance cameras check the footage for anything that might be linked to the kidnapping. "Every member of the New Castle County Police Department is committed, regardless of their assignment, to solving and apprehending this heartless monster," Bond said. "We're going to do everything in our power. We're going to take any assistance we can get." Police in Delaware say a 4-year-old girl who was kidnapped while playing outside was sexually assaulted. New Castle County police Chief Col. Vaugh Bond Jr. said at a news conference Friday that a passer-by found the child near a park about two hours after she was abducted Thursday. Bond says the girl was taken to a hospital, where medical personnel determined she had been sexually assaulted. The child was treated and released to her family. Bond says the girl was outside with other children about 7 p.m. Thursday in the town of Pike Creek when a man in a dark-colored, four-door sedan with tinted windows approached her. Investigators say the man took the child into his car and drove away. Police are looking for a white or Latino man. A pregnant Texas teenager who was killed last month by her step-father who was also the babys father was fewer than two weeks away from giving birth to their second child together, reports said. Recently released police documents revealed that the unborn baby of 15-year-old Jennifer Delgado still had a pulse when first responders arrived at the San Antonio, Texas, home she shared with her step-father Armando Garcia-Ramires, a 36-year-old illegal immigrant from Mexico, the San Antonio Express News reported. CLOISTERED NUN RAPED, IMPREGNATED BY HANDYMAN IN CHILE SUES ARCHDIOCESE According to police, the teenager had revealed to her biological mother that Garcia-Ramires was the father of her unborn child and her 1-year-old baby boy. The man had impregnated the 15-year-old about a month after ICE agents released him from custody for the second time. The mother, who has not be identified, apparently did not go to police with the news. Police said that on March 6, Garcia-Ramires called his ex-wife so they could meet so he would give her some money that they had been arguing about. The two met at a creek near her apartment, after he allegedly threatened to kill himself. He allegedly told the woman that he could not live without her and then shot himself. Garcia-Ramires was taken to University Hospital with a gunshot wound to his chin. WOMAN CHARGED WITH CHOKING TEEN FOR BLOCKING VIEW AT DISNEY FIREWORKS SHOW Police said they checked in on Delgado after they were informed of the incestuous relationship. When they arrived at her mothers apartment, first responders found the teens body with her 1-year-old child sitting next to her. Garcia-Ramires allegedly shot her at least four times in the head and once in the chest, police said. Delgado was reportedly taken to the hospital for an emergency C-section, but the child could not be saved. Garcia-Ramires has been charged with two counts of capital murder. According to the Washington Times, Garcia-Ramires was allowed to stay in the U.S. following two arrests by immigration agency, most recently in April 2015 after he allegedly attempted to smuggle five illegal immigrants into the US. next Image 1 of 2 prev Image 2 of 2 Pope Francis has dismissed a Roman Catholic priest from New Hampshire who was convicted of stealing $300,000 from a hospital, a bishop and a deceased priest's estate. Monsignor Edward Arsenault, who served as the face of the church in the state during a sex abuse scandal, pleaded guilty to three theft charges in 2014 and is serving a jail sentence. The Diocese of Manchester said Friday that Arsenault no longer has "faculties to act, function, or present himself as a priest." Prosecutors said Arsenault billed the church for lavish meals and travel for himself and often a male partner. He was convicted of writing checks from the dead priest's estate to himself and his brother and billing a hospital $250 an hour for consulting work he never did. One of World War IIs greatest untold stories began on April 8, 1942 when Lt. Gen. Jonathan Wainwright, the commander of the U.S. Army in the Philippines, ordered the evacuation of military and civilian nurses to the island of Corregidor. A month later, Corregidor fell and 77 American nurses were captured by the Japanese, becoming the largest group of female prisoners of war. Known as the Angels of Bataan and Corregidor, the group continues to hold the distinction of not losing a single member during their three years in the Santo Tomas Internment camp. It is not that they were some of the first women POWs that made them special, but that they were average American from average towns and they survived in a horrific environment while never losing their commitment to serving their patients, says Bernice Fischer, granddaughter of U.S. Army nurse Mary Bernice Brown-Menzie. Fischer tells Fox News her grandmother entered the prison camp in 1942 weighing 130 pounds but had dropped to 75 pounds when she was liberated in February 1945. Many of the women sought assignment in the Philippines prior to December 1941 when the Pacific was relatively peaceful and where they enjoyed dances and other luxuries. But that changed after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and then launched an invasion of the Philippines. For months the nurses faced constant attack by Japanese planes, deteriorating conditions and dwindling rations. There were 77 American women who became POWs and there were 77 who walked out in 1945. This is unprecedented, particularly for women who had no formal survival training, says Elizabeth M. Norman, who chronicled the nurses in the book, We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of American Nurses Trapped on Bataan. According to Norman, under the informal leadership of World War I veteran nurse Capt. Maude Davison, the women always kept to strict schedules waking every day and dressing in uniforms they fashioned themselves. The discipline combined with a singular dedication to care for their patients, some of whom had been among the 75,000 American and Filipino soldiers captured on April 9, 1942 and forced on a 68-mile death march in 100-degree temperatures without food or water. The nurses cared for the men, known as The Battling Bastards of Bataan, despite suffering from starvation and other diseases themselves. Fischer tells Fox News her grandmother and the other nurses never thought of themselves as heroic because they saw their patients as the real heroes. Many of the nurses kept diaries, which document the emotional trauma they endured as they witnessed the torture by their Japanese captors. In one entry, Bernices grandmother writes about a soldier who was bound and tied up outside in the heat for three days before being shot in the back. Whether he died instantly or wounded and bleeding lived on until he finally died, we will never know. But this cruel, heartless and brutal treatment filled us all with deep grief and sorrow, she wrote. A gritty refusal to give in and a commitment to care was life-sustaining for nurses, says Lt. Col. Nancy Cantrell, an historian with the Army Nurse Corps, They were a tough bunch, Cantrell added. They had a mission. They were surviving for the boys and each other. That does give you a bit of added strength, Cantrell told Soldiers Magazine. Despite the experience, some of the women carried on after the war without any bitterness. I have never been bitter, and I have always known that if I could survive that, I could survive anything, Mildred Dalton Manning, who died in March 2013 at the age of 98, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Norman believes those Angels she interviewed for the book recognized that there was little time to get their stories out. The women told me that not a day went by that they did not think about it, but didnt speak about it, Norman tells Fox News. Some of the women remained in the military,but even the military never asked these women. It was like they did not exist. By the time I spoke with them, they were in their 80s and realized that if they did not tell their story, no one would. They were not seeking recognition, but they wanted their experiences preserved, adds Norman, who is a professor at New York University. Another reason they spoke was to clear up myths, such as suggestions they had been raped.They also wanted to clear up facts that had been romanticized in such movies as "So Proudly We Hail" (1942), and "They Were Expendable" (1945). These women never sought recognition. They never took to the spotlight. It was the men they served with who actually sough to gain recognition of these women after the war, says Fischer. A South Carolina college cheerleading team has been suspended during an investigation into allegations its members worked as strippers and escorts. Local news outlets report Friday an investigatory report obtained under an open records request includes text messages in which current and former members of the Coastal Carolina University cheer team discuss jobs as strippers. The investigator also wrote that the cheerleaders were paid up to $1,500 for escorting men to events and were also paid in gifts including clothes and designer handbags. The report noted the cheerleaders did not have sex with clients. The entire team has been suspended from cheering during the investigation into its activities. According to the investigatory report, university officials began looking into the team after receiving an anonymous letter. Syrians opposed to the Damascus regime Friday lauded the U.S. airstrikes that destroyed an airfield believed to have been used by Assads forces to drop chemical bombs on Idlib earlier this week. The surprise attack marks the first time the U.S. military, which has been devoted to only attacking ISIS posts in the north, has directly targeted Syrian forces amid the country's six-year war. "I am so happy. People are happy. They have hope the U.S. can end this war by stopping the regime aircraft from more bombs," 27-year-old aid worker in Idlib, Ali Essa, told Fox News. "We wish for the peace." At least 50 U.S. Tomahawk missiles struck an airbase at Shayrat, located outside of Homs, believed to be the originating point for Tuesday's chemical weapons onslaught that took the lives of more than 72 civilians, with scores of women and children among the casualties. For Essa, this was symbolic. "This airbase killed many of our friends and neighbors," he said. Another doctor on the ground treating chemical victims, Dr. Mohammad Alhamwj, noted that the strikes in the very least tells Iran, Russia and Syria that the U.S. intends to be "the main player on the land in Syria," and that what they really need is a complete ban on the flying of all warplanes to stop the bloodshed. But for others, this simply wasn't enough. "The death of 100 people by nerve gas is vindicated only through shelling a small airport in suburbs Homs? A very modest intervention that does not rise to the crimes," humanitarian volunteer Rania Kisar, lamented, noting that he hopes now America will "go back to being a great nation like it was before the leadership of Obama." The former U.S. president is routinely condemned by regime opponents for failing to intervene in the Syrian conflict. Idlib local, Suhaib Zakour, concurred that the one set of strikes "will not stop" more deaths at regime hands. "Some were hoping for more," he said. A source connected Damascus told Fox News immediately after the attack that the U.S.'s hard and fast reaction came as a "great surprise" to top Syrian intelligence and Generals who did not expect that the U.S. would take such a route so quickly. Several civilians Fox News spoke to Damascus seemed unaware of the attack, even hours later, suggesting it was downplayed in supporter circles. However Russian officials -- staunch allies to the Syrian regime -- were said to have been anticipating U.S. military momentum and were hinging on trying to establish some kind of negotiations, but terms were not met in time. Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman confirmed that the Russians were notified in advance, and while no personnel was injured, equipment and infrastructure was damaged this diminishing the ability to launch chemical attacks. Both Syrian and Russian authorities have staunchly denied accusations of engaging in chemical warfare, instead blaming the armed resistance -- or terrorists in their wording -- as the instigators behind the brutal violation of international law. However, U.S. radar intelligence established that Syrian planes were in the air and did drop bombs in and around the time and place of the chemical attack, according to multiple reports. The Kremlin said later in a statement Friday that the U.S. airstrike carried out on a Syrian airbase is aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law. The statement added that Putin believes the U.S. authorized the strikes under far-fetched pretext. President Trump -- who did not announce the attacks in advance -- called the retaliation a "vital national security interest" of the United States, and called on "civilized nations" to join "seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria." "Years of previous attempts at changing Assads behavior have all failed, and failed very dramatically, the president said Thursday from Florida, in reference to Syrian President Bashar Assad. "As a result, the refugee crisis continues to deepen, and the region continues to destabilize, threatening the United States and its allies. This marked a sharp turnaround from earlier this week, when Trump administration officials publicly vowed that it was no longer going to be U.S. policy to seek regime change in the embattled country. It also raises questions over the future of U.S-Russian relations, given that both Trump and Putin advocated hopes for closer ties moving forward. "Many Syrians have a lot of respect for this move by President Trump," Susan Baaj, the chairwoman for the nonprofit Syrian Institute for Progress said. "We needed someone to take action, not just say they would take action. This is a real turning point." Dr. Souheil Abbal of the Syrian American Medical Society, too, praised the military response as long overdue. "This what Obama should have done when Assad crossed the red line," Abbal told Fox News, referring to the chemical attack in 2013 in which Obama warned of retaliation but did not act upon it. "The U.S.A. now has great supporters in Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Gulf states and Iraq. Even Lebanon was waiting for such action to signal serious containment of Hezbollah. This is the moment of truth in the Middle East." However, Syrian-American political activist and President of Syrian Christians for Peace, Ayman Abdel Nour, cautioned that while the strikes do send a "very clear message to Assad," this one time "cannot be the last." "If they do just attack once, this will only empower Assad and Russia and Iran that the U.S. is weak. This must continue to end the war," Nour said. "And they must show the people in the army that they can no longer blindly follow this regime." However, others fear that the U.S. may have opened a can of worms that will only embolden the extremists opposition factions in the country. "It's unclear how big the US military response will be. I hope it's limited to sending a signal to Assad that he cannot attack the population with impunity," added Max Abrahms, professor of political science at Northeastern University. "My concern is that if Assad is toppled the power vacuum will be filled with Al Qaeda-type terrorists. A key question is what has been negotiated between the U.S. and Russia. Can they find agree on an alternative to Assad that won't empower the terrorists?" In an unusually swift move, the Vatican on Thursday decided to dismiss a French bishop days after Catholic officials in the country were informed of alleged "inappropriate" gestures and words from the prelate with young people. The bishop's superior, Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, announced in a statement that the Holy See had asked Monsignor Herve Gaschignard "to submit his resignation." The French Conference of Bishops said in a separate statement that Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Gaschignard, bishop of Aire and Dax in southwest France, and that French bishops understand the "gravity" of the pontiff's decision. Cardinal Ricard, the archbishop for the region, said he reported the bishop's alleged doings to the local prosecutor but that no complaints have been filed so far, making the pope's decision even more notable. The French bishops' statement said concerns about Gaschignard made it difficult for him to continue in his duties and that the papal nuncio in France "suggested" that he resign. Last month, Cardinal Ricard, archbishop of Bordeaux, received two pastoral representatives working with young people in the diocese of Aire and Dax. "They shared with him their questions and even the unease felt at the attitudes and words from Bishop Herve Gaschignard toward young people," Ricard's office said in a statement. Gaschignard's behavior caused "emotion and confusion in a number of these young people who have spoken to their families", it added. Father Jean Rouet, Ricard's assistant in Bordeaux, told The Associated Press that some young people and their pastoral supervisors in the local diocese may have felt as inappropriate some "gestures", "words" and "closeness" from Gaschignard. Rouet said that while the papal decision was not a conviction of Gaschignard or a canonical trial, "the climate was such in the diocese that Bishop Gaschignard could no longer exercise his ministry as a bishop." Paul Perromat, in charge of press relations in the diocese of Aire and Dax, insisted in a phone interview that Gaschignard's behavior is "not at all" a case of pedophilia or sexual abuse, and said "the bishop was in a state of shock when he heard of the rumors against him." A few months before he was promoted to bishop in 2012, Gaschignard fell under similar suspicions in the southern diocese of Toulouse, where he officiated as assistant bishop, said the Rev. Herve Gaignard, the general curate of the diocese. The archbishop of Toulouse, Monsignor Robert Le Gall, had reported allegations about Gaschignard to the local prosecutor and police investigated, but the case was eventually dismissed for lack of evidence of any criminal offense, Gaignard told The AP. President Trump's swift and telegraphed action to punish Syria for a suspected chemical weapons attack earlier this week, by pummeling a key air base with missiles, was roundly praised by leaders around the world. Trump, who authorized the launch of 59 Tomahawk missiles from Navy warships in the Mediterranean Sea on an air base near Homs at 3:45 a.m local time, had said his thinking on Syria had changed following Tuesday's chemical attack that left scores of civilians dead. SYRIA MISSILE ATTACK: SATELLITE PHOTOS SHOW MAJOR DAMAGE TO AIRFIELDS Although Russia and Syrian state television blasted the move as "aggression," leaders from around the world solemnly praised the act as a measured and fair response to dictator Bashar al-Assad's suspected use of chemical weapons in the town of Idlib on Tuesday. "This was a calibrated, proportionate and targeted response." Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement that "In both word and action" Trump "sent a strong and clear message" that "the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated." Israeli President Reuven Rivlin praised the U.S. for its airstrike aimed at an airbase called Shayrat. He called on the world to bring an end to the atrocities committed by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. SYRIA AIRSTRIKES: TRUMP SAYS MILITARY ACTION IN VITAL NATIONAL SECURITY INTEREST "In the face of the terrible use of chemical weapons against innocent civilians, the clear and determined steps of the US Administration and Military under the leadership of President Trump, constitute a fitting and appropriate response to such unthinkable brutality, Rivlin said. Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressed support for the U.S. missile attack on Friday saying that the country understood and supported the strategy. Abe added that the strikes were "a means to prevent further deterioration of the situation" referring to the suspected chemical attack. A Saudi foreign ministry official praised "the courageous decision by U.S. President Donald Trump to respond to the (Syrian) regime's crimes against its people in light of the failure of the international community to stop the regime from brutalizing its people." Saudi Arabia is a leading supporter of the rebels fighting to overthrow Assad. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told reporters that the Australian government supported the swift and just response of the U.S. airstrikes. "This was a calibrated, proportionate and targeted response. It sends a strong message to the Assad regime, and ... has been struck at the very airfield from which the chemical attack was delivered, Turnbull said. Turkey welcomed the airstrike, calling it an important and meaningful development, but urged the world to take an even tougher stance on Assad. We see the (airstrikes) as positive, but we believe that this should be completed," Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said. "The Assad regime's barbarism must immediately be stopped." The attack was criticized by the Syrian government, as well as Russia and Iran, which back Damascus in the grinding, seven-year civil war that has ravaged the nation. Assad's office denounced the U.S. strike as "reckless, irresponsible behavior." The Syrian military called the attack a "blatant aggression" that would undermine Syria's "fight against terrorism." The government refers to all groups fighting against it, including mainstream rebels, as terrorists, and has denied any involvement in the chemical attack. The Kremlin said in a statement Friday that the airstrike was an aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law. President Vladimir Putin believes that the U.S. authorized the strikes under a far-fetched pretext, the statement said. Russian deputy envoy to the U.N., Vladimir Safronkov, said Russia had warned the U.S. to "think about what military actions have led to in Iraq, Libya and other countries," according to the Interfax news agency. Iran also condemned the airstrikes. Iran Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi said in a statement that the missile strike the unilateral action is dangerous, destructive and violates principles of international law. Meantime, Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese group, which has sent thousands of fighters to Syria to bolster Assad, claimed the "foolish" strike would lead to a "dangerous escalation in the region." The Associated Press contributed to this report. The United States fired nearly 60 Tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian airfield early Friday in response to a chemical weapons attack earlier this week that killed dozens of civilians. The cruise missiles were fired from both USS Porter and USS Ross, a U.S. official told Fox News. The missiles were the latest model: the Tomahawk E or Echo version, defense officials said. The missiles have two-way satellite communication allowing reprogramming in flight if needed. A top military contractor, Massachusetts-based Raytheon, makes the Tomahawks. On the missile manufacturers website, they call todays model, Modern, Mature, Powerful, adding that it can circle for hours, shift course instantly on command and beam a picture of its target to controllers halfway around the world before striking with pinpoint accuracy. US LAUNCHES MISSILES INTO SYRIA IN RESPONSE TO CHEMICAL WEAPONS ATTACK The Tomahawk has been in use since the Persian Gulf War in 1991, and carries a 1,000-pound-class warhead. Each missile costs more than $1 million. The cruise missiles are designed to fly at extremely low altitudes at high subsonic speeds, and are piloted over an evasive route by several mission-tailored guidance systems, according to the Navy. Tomahawk missiles can be launched from Navy destroyers up to 1,000 miles away, providing a strategic attack option when facing an enemy's jets in the air, The Washington Post reports. Raytheons website says, launching the weapon from such a long distance helps to keep sailors out of harm's way. Former commanding officer of the U.S.S. Cole, Kirk Lippold told Fox and Friends on Friday that the U.S. forces aboard the destroyers were well prepared. Before they even deployed, they spent months getting trained and certified in being able to fire these weapons, he said. They are very familiar with the procedures, for any incidence that may occur, misfires, rapid changes in targeting. SYRIA AIRSTRIKES: TRUMP SAYS MILITARY ACTION IN 'VITAL NATIONAL SECURITY INTEREST' While the cruise missiles that hit Syria were launched from two US Navy surface ships, one of the most intriguing platforms than can fire the Tomahawk is the submarine. Specifically, converted ballistic missile submarines. Four Ohio-class guided-missile submarines, originally designed to launch nuclear missiles, were converted between 2003 and 2007. The USS Florida (SSGN 728) was converted in August 2003, the USS Michigan (SSGN 727) in October 2004, the USS Ohio (SSGN 726) in December 2005, and the USS Georgia (SSGN 729) in December 2007. According to the U.S. Navy, combined, the four SSGNs represent more than half of the Submarine Force's vertical launch payload capacity with each SSGN capable of carrying up to 154 Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles. Additionally, the converted submarines can carry and deploy as many as 66 special operations personnel. In contrast the USS Porter and Ross, combined, can carry up to 90 Tomahawks each. The four converted submarines can carry up to 616 tomahawk missiles, or over ten times the number launched on Syria. Adding up to as 265 special operators, like Navy SEALs, and these sea going vessels are, according to the Navy, land attack and SOF [Special Operation Forces] platforms. Lippold explained that the Tomahawk is so precise, that with the help of G.P.S. technology, it could target and strike the 10th floor of a building. It is a very accurate weapon and the reason we want to use that, obviously, is to nail the target and not have the civilian casualties that come with setting off large bombs. The missiles were last used in October, when the military launched strikes in Yemen against three coastal radar sites in Yemen after Houthi rebels there fired missiles at several U.S. ships over several days. Fox News' Lucas Tomlinson and Jennifer Griffin contributed to this report. The United States launched nearly five dozen cruise missiles at a Syrian airfield early Friday in response to a chemical weapons attack that killed dozens of civilians, the first direct assault on the Damascus government since the beginning of that country's bloody civil war in 2011. "It is in the vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons," President Donald Trump said in a statement. "Tonight I call on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria, and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types." Fifty-nine Tomahawk missiles targeted an airbase at Shayrat, located outside Homs. The missiles targeted the base's airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, officials said. Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis said initial indications were that the strike had "severely damaged or destroyed Syrian aircraft and support infrastructure and equipment ... reducing the Syrian Government's ability to deliver chemical weapons." Trump said the base was used as the staging point for Tuesday's chemical weapons attack on rebel-held territory, which killed as many as 72 civilians, including women and children. "Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children," Trump said from Mar-a-Lago, Fla. "Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror." National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said the strike should cause a "big shift in Assad's calculus." "Obviously the regime maintains a certain capability to commit mass murder with chemical weapons beyond this air field," McMaster said. "But it was aimed at this airfield because we could trace that attack back to this facility. It was not a small strike." The U.S. missiles hit at 8:45 p.m. Eastern time, 3:45 a.m. Friday morning in Syria. Syrian state TV reported a U.S. missile attack on a number of military targets and called the attack an "aggression." U.S. military officials said they informed their Russian counterparts of the impending attack in an effort to avoid any accident involving Russian forces. Nevertheless, Russia's Deputy U.N. ambassador Vladimir Safronkov warned that any negative consequences from the strikes would be on the "shoulders of those who initiated such a doubtful and tragic enterprise." Davis, the Pentagon spokesman, confirmed that "there are Russians at the base," but said they had been warned "multiple times" to leave. He did not know whether Russian aircraft were at the base when the missiles hit. The U.S. also notified its partner countries in the region prior to launching the strikes. U.S. defense officials tell Fox that two warships based in the eastern Mediterranean, the USS Porter and the USS Ross, have been training for the past two days to execute this mission. Our forward deployed ships give us the capability to quickly respond to threats," said a Navy official. "These strikes in Syria are a perfect example - this is why we're there." The original plans called for two targets, the airbase and a chemical weapons storage facility. However, Pentagon planners decided late Thursday to target just the airbase. As a candidate, Trump warned against against the U.S. getting pulled into the Syrian civil war. But the president earlier in the week appeared moved by the photos of children killed in the chemical attack. "I think what happened in Syria is one of the truly egregious crimes and shouldn't have happened and it shouldn't be allowed to happen," Trump told reporters traveling on Air Force One to Florida earlier, where he was holding a two-day summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Late Thursday, a U.S. government official told Fox News that the intelligence community has high confidence that the attack was carried out by Syrian government aircraft. The official said the analysis was consistent with eyewitness reports that fixed-wing aircraft launched the strike. The official described the use of sarin gas in the attack as a watershed. The Assad government had agreed to disband its chemical weapons capability by 2014 under an agreement coordinated with the Obama administration and Russia. Tuesday's attack was considered a breach of that agreement. The Turkish Ministry of Health says preliminary test results show the use of sarin gas. Sarin is a colorless, odorless liquid and is highly volatile while moving from its liquid state to a gas. Unlike chlorine, which the Assad government has used on a regular basis, sarin does not dissipate quickly. The victims in Tuesdays attack showed all the hallmarks of a sarin attack including twitching, jerking and foaming at the mouth. Trump's decision to attack Syria came three-and-a-half years after President Barack Obama threatened Assad with military action after an earlier chemical weapons attack killed hundreds outside of Damascus. Obama had declared the use of such weapons a "red line." At the time, several American ships in the Mediterranean were poised to launch missiles, only for Obama to abruptly pull back after key U.S. ally Britain and the U.S. Congress balked at his plan. He opted instead for the Russian-backed plan that was supposed to remove and eliminate Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles. The world learned of the chemical attack earlier in the week in footage that showed people dying in the streets and bodies of children stacked in piles. The U.S. show of force in Syria raises legal questions. It's unclear what authority Trump is relying on to attack another government. When Obama intervened in Libya in 2011, he used a U.N. Security Council mandate and NATO's overall leadership of the mission to argue that he had legal authority arguments that many Republicans opposed. Trump can't rely on either justification here. Unclear also is whether Trump is adopting any broader effort to combat Assad. Under Obama, the United States largely pulled back from its support for so-called "moderate" rebels when Russia's military intervention in September 2015 led them to suffer a series of battlefield defeats. Instead, Obama sought to work with Russia on a negotiated transition. Trump and his top aides had acknowledged in recent days the "reality" of Assad being in power, saying his ouster was no longer a priority. But the chemical weapons attack seemed to spur a rethink. In Florida on Thursday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said of Assad: "There's no role for him to govern the Syrian people." Fox News' Catherine Herridge and the Associated Press contributed to this report. next Image 1 of 2 prev Image 2 of 2 Police in Myanmar say at least 20 people died when a ferry boat capsized in the Ayeyarwaddy delta. Police officer Nay Lin Tun said more than 40 people were on board the ferry when it capsized Friday evening. He said police and firefighters were attempting to rescue passengers in the Ngawun River, where the accident occurred. The cause of the accident was being investigated. No other details were immediately available. The young refugee girl whose tweet about her experiences in Syrian civil war captivated much of the world earlier this year, turned back to Twitter Friday to declare her support for President Donald Trump. Seven-year-old Bana Alabed, who lives in Turkey after escaping war-torn Aleppo, tweeted that she "welcomed" the U.S. airstrikes on the Shayrat air base. "I am a Syrian child who suffered under Bashar al Asad & Putin. I welcome Donald Trump action against the killers of my people," Alabed wrote on Twitter. She followed the comment with a series of tweets explaining why she supported the missile strike. "Putin and Bashar al Asad bombed my school, killed my friends & robbed my childhood. It's time to punish the killers of children in Syria," she said. "We don't want WORLD WAR THREE. we don't want the war in Syria. let's stand together & end all wars." SYRIA MISSILE ATTACK: SATELLITE PHOTOS SHOW MAJOR DAMAGE TO AIRFIELDS Trump authorized 59 missiles to strike an air base southeast of Homs in retaliation to a chemical attack in northwest Syria that killed more than 80 people. Alabed had directly tweeted at Trump the Tuesday of the deadly chemical attack asking, "Do you love this?" Friday's tweet was the first time the girl has shown support for Trump's actions. Alabed previously criticized the U.S. president in February after he issued an executive order banning citizens and refugees from eight Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States. My name is Bana, I'm 7 years old. I am talking to the world now live from East #Aleppo. This is my last moment to either live or die. - Bana Bana Alabed (@AlabedBana) December 13, 2016 Alabed drew worldwide attention last year when her tweets detailing her life while living in East Aleppo went viral. With the help of her mother, she posted photos and videos showing the devastation she experienced, often updating her followers on if she was still alive. YOUNG SYRIAN ACTIVIST REPORTEDLY SAFE AFTER FEARS OVER HER DISAPPEARANCE Last December, Alabed was feared dead when her Twitter account was deleted and went silent on social media. It was later confirmed she and her mother were evacuated from Aleppo and relocated to Turkey. The armed Basque separatist group ETA, inactive for more than five years, is to hand over its arms Saturday, a finishing touch to a 43-year violent campaign that claimed 829 lives, mostly in Spain. Disarmament is the second-to-last step demanded by France and Spain, which want ETA to formally disband. The organization hasn't said if it will do that. While disarmament is a crucial step to ending the Basque conflict, it remains to be seen whether the gradual fade-out on one of the Europe's last standing violent nationalist conflicts can help heal the decades-old social divisions it caused in Spain and its northern Basque region. There's also an issue of what to do with the hundreds of jailed ETA members and the handful still on the run. Hundreds of killings also remain unsolved and the arms could help lead to some of the perpetrators. Here's a glance at the conflict and the disarmament plan. ETA AND ITS AIMS ETA's name is a Basque-language acronym for Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, meaning Basque Homeland and Freedom. It emerged in the late 1950s during the dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco, which repressed Basque and other cultures in Spain. The group's stated aim was to form an independent state from Basque areas on both sides of the Pyrenees. Basques have a distinct culture and an ancient language, Euskara. ETA's first victim was a Civil Guard police officer killed in 1968. The second was a police commissioner. ETA later began to target politicians, civil servants and journalists, as well as business representatives who refused to pay the "revolutionary tax" demanded to finance the group. In 1973, ETA killed Franco's designated successor, Adm. Luis Carrero Blanco, by bombing his car in central Madrid. Democracy formally returned to Spain in 1978, three years after Franco's death, but ETA's campaign intensified. One of its most notorious attacks killed 21 people in a supermarket bombing in Barcelona in 1987. Shadowy death squads, meanwhile, killed more than 60 people in what was known as the Spanish government's "dirty war" against the group. While ETA may have enjoyed some support during the Franco dictatorship, social rejection increased over the years and then erupted massively in 1997 following the kidnapping and brutal slaying of Miguel Angel Blanco, a 29-year-old small town-councilor. THE FRENCH CONNECTION ETA carried out most of its attacks in Spain while using southwestern France as a hiding place for its members and arms stashes. Increased cooperation by French authorities in the 1990s helped Spain's police and judiciary go all out against ETA and its supporters, leading to the closure of newspapers close to the militants and the banning of political and social groups seen as speaking for ETA. Over the years there were cease-fires and some fruitless negotiations with the Spanish government, only for the bombings and shootings to resume. Depleted by arrests and wracked by divisions among its members and political allies, ETA announced a definitive cease-fire in December 2011. Its hope of beginning negotiations with France and Spain was rebuffed. Both countries also rejected ETA's suggestion that an independent commission of experts should verify the decommissioning of its arms, which would have shielded the weapons from police investigating more than 200 unresolved killings. THE HANDOVER ETA says it has now placed the disarmament in the hands of intermediaries that call themselves "peace artisans." By Saturday, this group has pledged to provide the International Verification Commission with the means to locate the arms under ETA's control, which will then be confiscated by French authorities. Some stashes could be missed because the group's current leaders may not have records. The Basque regional government, which has helped mediate the process, says "ETA's disarmament will be complete, definitive and carried out in one single act." Experts view the disarmament as symbolic, saying ETA's arsenal is already diminished and much of it obsolete. Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, the former Spanish interior minister who directed the police crackdown that led to the 2011 cease-fire, estimates that ETA had fewer than 200 guns at the time. He believed that materials to build explosives could be expired by now. VOLUNTARY ACT OR RENDITION? Saturday's weapon handover will not be public and no Spanish or French government representatives with participate. In the afternoon, thousands of supporters of Basque independence supporters are expected to join in a demonstration in the French town of Bayonne to cap the event. Spain has accused the organizers of trying give the impression that the arms are being handed over voluntarily when in reality, it argues, this is surrender. China's foreign currency reserves rose in March for a second month, suggesting Beijing did little to intervene in exchange markets, a politically volatile issue as U.S. President Donald Trump meets with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping. Official data Friday showed the reserves rose by $4 billion to just over $3 trillion. That is a reverse from last year's monthly declines in the tens of billions of dollars. The central bank has been spending foreign currency to shore up the yuan after expectations that the Chinese currency would decline prompted investors to move money out of the country. Trump promised during his campaign to declare that Beijing manipulated the yuan, opening the way to possible sanctions. Trump and Xi were to meet for a second day Friday in Florida. next Image 1 of 3 prev next Image 2 of 3 prev Image 3 of 3 A college student has been shot dead during a protest outside Venezuela's capital city. Jairo Ortiz was killed during a late Thursday night protest in the city of Carrizal, just outside Caracas. The protest was part of a week of unrest that has followed a Supreme Court ruling nullifying congress. That decision was walked back. But the economically embattled country has since seen near-daily protests by people calling for new elections. The local mayor's office said Ortiz was a 19-year-old student at a local university. He is the first person to be killed in this round of protests. Similar anti-government protests in 2014 left dozens dead. Congo's prime minister has stepped down three months after being chosen by President Joseph Kabila, as tensions mount over the fate of a political agreement with the opposition. Kabila on Wednesday said he would name a successor to Samy Badibanga within 48 hours if the opposition could not agree on a candidate. Under the agreement reached in December, the prime minister post should go to someone within the opposition coalition known as the Rassemblement. But divisions within the coalition have complicated efforts to choose a candidate. Longtime opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi died in February and talks were temporarily put on hold. Other key provisions of the peace deal call for elections to be held before the end of the year, without Kabila as a candidate. Lawmakers in ethnically divided Cyprus have amended a controversial law about a commemoration in Greek Cypriot schools that angered breakaway Turkish Cypriots and led to reunification talks breaking off. The amendment, which gives the education minister full discretion over such commemorations, was passed Friday by a vote of 30-20 with the support from the two largest Greek Cypriot parties. The move clears the way for peace talks to resume April 11 after a near two-month break. The law had made the brief schoolroom commemoration of a 1950 referendum for the island's union with Greece mandatory. Turkish Cypriots saw it as a deviation from the stated goal of reunifying the island as a federation, something that Greek Cypriots strongly denied. Turkish Cypriots said talks could restart after the law is repealed. Iran "won't be quiet" after the U.S. missile attack that hit a number of military targets in central Syria, Iran's parliament news agency, ICANA.ir, reported Friday. Alaeddin Boroujerdi, head of parliamentary committee on national security and foreign policy, declared "Russia and Iran won't be quiet against such acts which violate interests of the region," according to the report. Boroujerdi warned serious consequences would follow the U.S. action. SYRIA CALLS MISSILE ATTACK 'RECKLESS IRRESPONSIBLE BEHAVIOR' Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif took to Twitter on Friday to denounce the strikes, saying: "Not even two decades after 9/11, U.S. military fighting on same side as al-Qaida & ISIS in Yemen & Syria. Time to stop hype and cover-ups." Zarif also called the allegation that the Syrian military used chemical weapons as bogus. ABOUT 20 SYRIAN JETS DESTROYED IN AIRSTRIKE, DEFENSE OFFICIALS SAY "US aids Saddam's use of CW against Iran in 80's; then resorts to military force over bogus CW allegations: 1st in 2003 and now in Syria, Zarif tweeted. The U.S. strike came in fiery retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. About 60 U.S. Tomahawk missiles hit the Shayrat air base, southeast of Homs, a small installation with two runways, where aircraft often take off to bomb targets in northern and central Syria. The U.S. missiles hit at 3:45 a.m. Friday morning and targeted the base's airstrips, hangars, control tower, and ammunition areas, U.S. officials said. Iran Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi said Friday the U.S missile strike was dangerous, destructive and violates the principles of international law, the semi-official ISNA news agency reported. Ghasemi described Iran as "the biggest victim of chemical weapons in recent history," referencing Iraqi use of the weapons during its 1980s war with the Islamic Republic. He said Iran condemned the missile launch "regardless of the perpetrators and the victims" of Tuesday's chemical weapons attack in Syria. He also warned it would "strengthen terrorists" and further add to "the complexity of the situation in Syria and the region." Iran is one of the biggest supporters of embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Its hardline paramilitary Revolutionary Guard is deeply involved in the war. America's Sunni Arab allies in the Gulf view Syria as a proxy conflict between it and Shiite power Iran. The Associated Press contributed to this report. ISIS sympathizers took to social media Friday to question the motives behind the U.S. missile strike against Syria. Many speculated on Facebook, Twitter and the messaging app Telegram that President Trumps show of force was carried out to divert attention from poor approval ratings and other issues plaguing his administration. Others said that while praise was heaped on the president for a single action against Assad, the Islamic State is scorned for its attacks over the years against the Syrian regime. A series of these postings were provided to Fox News by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), which identified many of the posters as supporters of ISIS. "The U.S. hit empty airfields after forewarning both Russia and Assad... you will hear no more of this type of action from Trump, wrote ISIS supporter Aabir Bakr on Facebook along with a doctored photo of Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Trump riding double on horseback. It was all staged to misguide you... All 3 will continue to kill members of our Ummah [Muslim community]." Another sympathizer wrote on the social media site: "Let's see how far this goes or if it's simply all show..." "I heard America finally striked Bashar Assad just now, American ISIS supporter Khair Muwahhid Al Ghuraba posted Thursday night on Facebook. Wow they did it under the anti-Islam Dictator Donald Trump but never under the so called good democrat 'Obama. Lol Donald Trump supporters are now turning against him because he bombed Bashar army airbase. Lmao see these people only want to support those who kill Muslims but when it comes to bombing tyrant soldiers then it's a problem for them LOL." The pro-ISIS Telegram channel Tawheed Network posted the following to its users: "So Trump administration decides to drop Tomahawk missiles on Syria regime positions because they used chemicals on innocent civilians. Maybe they should start off by dropping it on their own heads first for their atrocities against the people of Fallujah then they could drop it on Israel for their atrocities against the people of Gaza. Do not be fooled by their actions. Democracy is hypocrisy and none practices it more than the Americans." A user on another pro-ISIS Telegram channel wrote how he thought the attack was launched by Trump as a distraction. "As if Trump cares. Likely just a diversion from his awful presidency. Do hope some Assad pigs got fried tho." On Twitter, sympathizers criticized any accolades Trump received for going on the offensive against the Assad regime. "One shot by Trump against Assad, and he is hero, Ibn Haneefah tweeted. ISIS have been striking Assad for 5 years, they're enemies because they say Shariah!" An Al-Sham fighter with the handle @TouringInSyria said in a tweet, "59 cruise missiles and only around 4 soldiers killed. A hand grenade would do more." Another sympathizer on Twitter also questioned the effectiveness of the missile launch. "Is this really impact of Tomahawk missile? tweeted Rami al-Lolah along with photos allegedly from the attack site. The entire surroundings are totally intact. It is a well dirty play between #USA #Russia & Assad." Kosovo's president has bowed to international pressure and agreed to postpone the transformation of the nation's security force into a regular army. NATO and the United States had warned they would scale back military cooperation with Kosovo if the government passed the law without amending the constitution. Hashim Thaci said Friday that "strategic international partners" would assist in urging ethnic monitories, including Serbs, to agree to constitutional changes. Serbia has protested that Kosovo's plan was contrary to the U.N. resolution that ended the war in Kosovo in 1999. The draft law sent to parliament in March does not require voting approval from Kosovo's ethnic Serbs and other minorities as constitutional amendments do, which the international community considered as an indispensable step to take. next Image 1 of 3 prev next Image 2 of 3 prev Image 3 of 3 The Latest on events in Syria (all times local): 5:50 a.m. Israel's prime minister has welcomed the U.S. attack on a Syrian air base saying he "fully supports" President Trump's decision. Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday in a statement that "In both word and action" Trump "sent a strong and clear message" that "the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated." Israel's Channel 2 TV said Israel along with other allies was notified about the U.S. strike. The attacks in neighboring Syria have worried Israel, which has warned against "game-changing" weapons reaching Hezbollah in Lebanon from the country, which supports the militant group. Last month Israel shot down an anti-aircraft missile fired at its planes as they struck a suspected Hezbollah weapons convoy. Israel also has treated several thousand Syrians wounded in fighting and provided humanitarian aid to some Syrian communities near the Israeli frontier in the Golan Heights. next Image 1 of 3 prev next Image 2 of 3 prev Image 3 of 3 Serbia's defense ministry says an air force jet has crashed in western Serbia and two crewmembers are missing. The ministry says the G-4 trainer aircraft crashed in western Serbia, near the village of Slatina, at 10:30 local (8:30 GMT) Friday during a routine training flight. It says a search for the pilots is continuing. The G-4 Super Galeb (Seagull) was made in former Yugoslavia in the 1980s in a factory in Mostar, Bosnia. The cause of the crash was being investigated. Its brands are some of the best known in the U.S.: names like Coty, Jimmy Choo, Krispy Kreme, Keurig Green Mountain, and now Panera Bread. But the same can't be said of Luxembourg-based JAB Holdings Co. and the low-profile, wealthy family behind it. JAB's $7 billion acquisition of Panera Bread earlier this week extends a four-year campaign during which the investment holding company has bought up companies and brands associated with coffee: Peet's Coffee & Tea, Caribou Coffee Co., Stumptown Coffee and Krispy Kreme Doughnuts. Those holdings come on top of a 9 percent stake in Reckitt Benckiser Group PLC, a consumer health company which does business in most of the world's countries and sells brands including Calgon, Cillit Bang, Gaviscon and Air Wick. The instant recognition factor in premium brands is part of JAB Holding's approach to investments, as the company puts it on its website. It describes itself as "a privately held group focused on long-term investments in companies with premium brands, attractive growth and strong margin dynamics." Something in that formula appears to be working. The Reimann family behind JAB has risen on Germany's annual rich list. The family was ranked second on the 2016 list issued by Manager Magazin with wealth estimated at 29 billion euros ($31 billion) behind only Susanne Klatten and Stefan Quandt, siblings who inherited a large chunk of automaker BMW. The Reimanns' business has its roots in the chemical business founded by Johann Adam Benckiser in Pforzheim in 1823. He was later joined by chemist Ludwig Reimann, who wound up owning the company. In spite of the years of high-profile business, the Reimanns have kept a very low profile. When Bild, Germany's largest daily newspaper, published a list of rich Germans, the Reimanns went unillustrated. "There are no photographs of the publicity-shy family," Bild noted. Panera CEO Ron Shaich doesn't consider JAB secretive. "I think JAB is relatively humble and doesn't need to blow its own horn. Who they are speaks for itself," he said. Other investors, including BDT Capital Partners, joined JAB B.V., the company's investment vehicle, in investing in Panera. "They are very much long-term growth investors, operating in a Warren Buffett model," Shaich said, pointing to the extensive corporate experience of JAB's managers. JAB's public face is its three senior partners with extensive corporate experience and high-powered business educations: CEO Olivier Goudet, former CFO of Mars, chairman Bart Brecht, a former CEO of Reckitt Benckiser, and senior partner Peter Harf. Harf, a 1974 Harvard MBA and University of Cologne Ph.D. who joined JAB in 1981, served as board chairman of beer company Anheuser-Busch InBev from in 2002-2012. One key part of JAB Holding's business is the Reckitt Benckiser stake. Moody's Investors Service described the stake as "a strongly performing asset, both from a cash flow and a market value perspective," that supports JAB Holding's credit rating. Moody's said the Panera acquisition made strategic sense and fitted with JAB's investment policy of focusing on defensive and fast-moving consumer goods holdings that is, businesses that tend to turn in steady profits and dividends, and which deal in consumer items that sell fast and in high volumes. "Over the last 18-24 months JAB has visibly begun to transform itself from a company dependent on Reckitt Benckiser into a more balanced investment holding company with three key businesses," it said, highlighting its moves into the fields of beauty and fragrance, wholesale coffee and retail coffee. ___ Choi contributed from New York. Fox News has obtained photos of a man considered to be a close aide to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and who also oversaw the country's chemical weapons activities. Bassem Al-Hassan, the head of the Syrian clandestine unit for special assignments, was appointed to the position after Muhammad Suleiman, another key aide to Assad, was assassinated in his home in August 2008, Western intelligence sources told Fox News. The close aide to Assad had been on the U.S. radar, and is one of the individuals named on the Office of Foreign Assets Control Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List (SDN). The list names individuals and companies who pose as a national security threat to the U.S. Hassan also is considered a very close friend and contact to Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard general, and has connections with Russian officials. WILL UNITED STATES BE DRAWN FURTHER INTO SYRIAN CIVIL WAR? Western intelligence sources said Hassan was the head of Unit 450, Syria's chemical weapons unit, and was responsible for any activities, including producing and ordering the weapons for the department. INITIAL REPORTS INDICATE SYRIAN AIRBASE 'ALMOST COMPLETELY DESTROYED' AFTER STRIKE Syria agreed in 2013 to destroy its stockpiles of chemical weapons as part of a deal brokered between former President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin. A year later, then-Secretary of State John Kerry said that Syria's chemical weapons were "100 percent" destroyed. The statement came into question on Tuesday when a chemical weapons attack in an opposition-held town in northern Syria killed more than 80 people, including at least 30 children. The U.S. blamed Assad for the attack. GET COMPLETE COVERAGE OF SYRIA AIRSTRIKES ON FOX NEWS President Donald Trump on Friday authorized to launch 60 U.S. Tomahawk missiles on the Shayrat air base, southeast of Homs, in retaliation for the chemical weapons attack. The Pentagon said the airstrikes will not eliminate the country's chemical weapons supply completely, but will reduce the government's ability to deliver them. Fox News' Jennifer Griffin contributed to this report. A Russian warship has entered the eastern Mediterranean Sea Friday and is heading toward the two U.S. Navy destroyers that launched missile strikes into Syria, Fox News has learned. The Russian frigate, Admiral Grigorovich RFS-494, crossed through the Bosphorus Strait a few hours ago from the Black Sea, according to a U.S. defense official. WORLD REACTS TO MISSILE STRIKES The Russian warship is now steaming in the direction of the U.S. warships. The Admiral Grigorovich is armed with advanced Kalibr cruise missiles. TRUMP SAYS MILITARY ACTION IN VITAL NATIONAL SECURITY INTEREST Also Friday, one of the American destroyers that launched the missiles into Syria started heading to an undisclosed location to rearm. The U.S. struck a Syrian airbase in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians, including infants and small children, military officials said. The frigate was bound for the Syrian port of Tartus on a routine voyage, the Russian news agency TASS reported Friday, citing a military-diplomatic source. "The Russian ship armed with cruise missiles Kalibr will visit the logistics base in Tartus, Syria," the source said. The ship was near the Black Sea straits, Tass reported. It left on a voyage after stopping at Novorossiisk for supplies and taking part in a joint exercise with Turkish ships in the Black Sea. Hours after a hijacked beer truck slammed into a department store in central Stockholm on Friday, killing at least four people and wounding many more, Swedish police said they arrested a man in the northern part of the city. Police spokesman Jan Evensson told a news conference the suspect had been featured in a photo authorities released earlier Friday of a man wearing a greenish hood at the top of an escalator. Evensson said the man "in the vicinity" of the crash and was "someone whom we are particularly interested in." The suspect was spotted by a police patrol and arrested in Marsta, close to Stockholm's international airport, Arlanda. Sky News also reported two men have been questioned in relation to the attack. Police spokesman Lars Bystrom said: "I can confirm that we have taken in two people for questioning, but that does not necessary mean that they are suspects." PHOTOS: TRUCK PLOWS INTO SWEDEN DEPARTMENT STORE As many as 15 people were hurt, nine of them seriously, according to the Stockholm County Council. Police late Friday raised the death toll from three to four. Sky News reported that police believed the attacker had run away toward the subway station. All subway traffic was halted. "Sweden has been attacked. Everything points to the fact that this is a terrorist attack," Lofven told reporters during a visit in western Sweden. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Friday's attack, but vehicles have been common weapons in recent extremist attacks. SWEDEN TRUCK ATTACK FOLLOWS STRING OF SIMILAR VEHICLE ASSAULTS Police said a truck ran over the crowd at Ahlens department store in the afternoon. People in the downtown area ran in panic, and Stockholm's Central Station for trains and the subway, which is a few hundred yards from the scene, was evacuated. Spokeswoman Towe Hagg would not confirm reports of shots fired in other parts of the city. A government source told Reuters all Swedish government offices had been closed. All ministers were safe, the source said. Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf said in a brief statement that the Swedish royal family had noted the attack "with dismay" and sent condolences to the families of the victims and injured. "We follow developments but as of now our thoughts go to the victims and their families," he said. SWEDEN TORN OVER HOW TO HANDLE INCOMING TERRORISTS U.S. Homeland Security officials say they are monitoring the situation. Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman said the German government's "thoughts are with the people in Stockholm, the injured, the relatives, first responders and police." Steffen Seibert said Friday on Twitter following the apparent attack in Sweden: "We stand together against terror." Russian President Vladimir Putin has sent a telegram of condolence to Sweden's monarch saying "Russians mourn together with the people of Sweden." Photos from the scene showed a beer truck sticking out of the department store, and Aftonbladet daily reported that Swedish beer maker Spendrups said one of its trucks had been carjacked earlier Friday. "It's one of our distribution vehicles which runs deliveries. During a delivery to the restaurant Caliente someone jumped into the driver's cabin and drove off with the car, while the driver unloads," communication director Marten Lyth told TT news agency. POLICE IN NORWAY TO BEGIN CARRYING WEAPONS AFTER STOCKHOLM ATTACK Live television footage showed smoke coming out of the upscale Ahlens department store on Drottninggatan Street, which the truck smashed into. The department store is part of Sweden-wide chain. "We stood inside a shoe store and heard something ... and then people started to scream," witness Jan Granroth told the Aftonbladet daily. "I looked out of the store and saw a big truck." A witness said the truck came out of nowhere, Sky News reported. I went to the main street when a big truck came out of nowhere. I could not see if anyone was driving it but it got out of control, the person said. I saw at least two being run over. I ran as fast as I could from there". Europe has reeled from a string of terror attacks involving drivers ramming trucks into populated areas. In July 2016, a truck plowed into a crowd at a waterfront promenade in the French tourist hotspot of Nice, killing 86 people. Police killed the driver, Mohamed Lahouiaej Bouhlel. The Islamic State terror group claimed responsibility. Just over two weeks ago in London, a driver linked to radical Islam crashed his rented SUV into a crowd on Westminster Bridge before attacking an officer on the grounds of Parliament. A fifth victim of his rampage died Friday: a Romanian woman who fell into the river below. Dozens of other people were wounded. The killer, Khalid Masood, was shot dead at Parliament. AHLENS DEPARTMENT STORE FAST FACTS At about this time last year, the Iraqi government warned Sweden that ISIS may have been plotting to attack civilian targets in Stockholm, NBC News reported. Sweden has produced more ISIS fighters per capita than almost any other European nation, the International Center for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence reported last year. Friday's crash is near the site of a December 2010 attack in which Taimour Abdulwahab, a Swedish citizen who lived in Britain, detonated a suicide bomb, killing himself and injuring two others. Abdulwahab rigged a car with explosives in the hope that the blast would drive people to Drottninggatan the street hit Friday where he would set off devices strapped to his chest and back. The car bomb never went off, and Abdulwahab died when one of his devices exploded among panicked Christmas shoppers. Fox News' Catherine Herridge and the Associated Press contributed to this report. As investigators piece together a possible motive in Friday's apparent terror attack in Stockholm, government officials have disagreed on the right way to handle terrorists entering the country with one lawmaker suggesting they should be integrated back into society. Swedish Minister of Culture and Democracy Alice Bah Kuhnke, reportedly made the remarks in early March. First of all there are suspicions of crimes, they need to be investigated and any such crimes should be punished, Kuhnke said. But after that we need structures locally, such as social services, around our country to integrate them back into our democratic society. Liberal Party leader Jan Bjorklund called the comments ignorant. Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said Kuhnke's words were misinterpreted, and that security for Sweden's citizens was paramount. This week, the Gatestone Institute on International Policy Council, which describes itself as nonpartisan and nonprofit, pointed out that the Muslim Brotherhood is well established in Sweden, citing a report ordered by the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency. A Gatestone analyst warned Sweden that it would be wise to take the report extremely seriously, and not discard it. At about this time last year, the Iraqi government warned Sweden that the Islamic State terror group may have plotted to attack civilian targets in Stockholm. An Iraqi official said that the planned attack on Stockholm involved seven or eight Iraqi citizens who were former members of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, NBC News reported. The U.S. Embassy in Stockholm confirmed last year that Swedish Police were actively investigating a potential terror threat against Sweden. Sweden has produced more ISIS fighters per capita than almost any other country in the European Union, CBS News reported last year. An apparent terror attack in Sweden would be the latest in a string of deadly high-profile Europe attacks involving powerful vehicles over the past several months. A hijacked beer truck plowed into a crowd at a Stockholm shopping center on Friday, killing at least three and injuring several more. Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said all signs pointed to an act of terror and confirmed that at least one person had been arrested in connection with the crash. No terror group has come forward to claim responsibility, but the incident comes on the heels of a similar type of attack in London last month. Khalid Masood drove an SUV into a crowd on Westminster Bridge before he stabbed a police officer. Five people were killed and dozens more were injured by Masood, who was shot and killed by police that day. AT LEAST 3 KILLED AFTER TRUCK PLOWS THROUGH CROWD IN SWEDEN WARNING GRAPHIC IMAGES: PHOTOS OF THE SCENE AFTER FATAL TRUCK ATTACK Masood was known to authorities in London and had ties to violent extremism, British Prime Minister Theresa May told police. Amaq, the ISIS-affiliated news agency, referred to Masood as a soldier of the Islamic State. Back in July, ISIS also claimed responsibility for a truck attack in Nice, France, which killed 86 people as they celebrated Bastille Day. More than 400 others were injured in the crash, which was carried out by Mohamed Lahouiaej Bouhlel, who was killed by police. ISIS has long promoted vehicle-style assaults on innocent civilians. A November issue of the groups Rumiyah magazine said, "Vehicles are like knives, as they are extremely easy to acquire. But unlike knives, which if found in one's possession can be a cause for suspicion, vehicles arouse absolutely no doubts due to their widespread use. Two weeks after the issues publication, Somali refugee Abdul Razak Ali Artan plowed into a crowd on Ohio State Universitys campus before stabbing pedestrians with a butcher knife, wounding a total of 11 people. He was subsequently shot by police. ISIS claimed responsibility for this attack. Charlie Winter, a senior research fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence, told the Associated Press in March that vehicle attacks are frightening because of their lack of sophistication. "You don't need to know someone who can make you a bomb or buy you a gun in order to carry out an attack, he said. It's a very difficult thing to fight against. There is no quick fix." The Associated Press contributed to this report. The war in Syria has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions of civilians -- turning the country into fertile ground for ISIS militants to seize territory. Syrias President Bashar al-Assad is connected to thousands of civilian casualties and has used chemical weapons against his own people. Last night, President Donald Trump authorized U.S. forces to launch 59 tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian air base in response to the chemical weapon attack. A look at the current state of Syria: Assad Regime Syria has been ruled by the authoritarian Assad regime since 1970. Assad was originally touted as a potential reformer, his part in the crackdowns on Arab Spring protesters, which led to the Syrian Civil War, brought calls from the EU and U.S. for him to stand down. President Obama first called for Assad to step down in August 2011. Russia began military action to prop up the Assad regime in Syria in September 2015. Civil War Civil war broke out in Syria in March 2011 amid nationwide protests calling for President Assads resignation. Government security forces attacked protesters, inciting opposition supporters to take up arms. Since the war began, almost 5 million Syrians have fled the country and 465,000 people have been killed or are missing. The United Nations estimates there are currently 13.5 million people in need of humanitarian assistance in Syria. Russian Support Russian military support for Syria dates back to the 1950s during the height of the Cold War. Russia is Syria's largest arms supplier with at least $3.4 billion in weapons deliveries since 2008. The Russians have vetoed seven U.N. Security Council resolutions against Syria since the conflict began in 2011. The Russian military began airstrikes in support of the Assad regime in September 2015. Chemical Weapons There have been approximately 10 chemical attacks carried out in Syria since 2013. At least four chemical attacks on civilians are connected to the Assad regime. Obama warned Assad the use of chemical or biological weapons would cross a "red line" for the U.S. in 2012. The largest-scale use of chemical weapons to date was reportedly a nerve gas attack in August 2013 which the U.S. estimated killed over 1,400 people - the attack has been blamed on the Syrian government. U.S. Involvement The U.S. is the largest bilateral provider of humanitarian assistance to the crisis, providing almost $6 billion since 2011. The U.S. and coalition forces began conducting airstrikes on ISIS in Syria in September 2014. U.S. special operations forces have been on the ground in Syria since November 2015. Sources compiled by Fox News Research, Associated Press Russia announced Friday that it will suspend a deal it made with the United States in 2015 to prevent a mid-air collision over Syria just hours after President Trump announced he authorized a missile attack on an airbase. Under the memorandum, signed after Russia launched an air campaign in Syria, Moscow and the U.S. had exchanged information about their flights to avoid incidents in the crowded skies over Syria. Russia said it will help Syria strengthen its air defenses after U.S. strike. Ric Grennell, a former adviser to four U.S. ambassadors to the United Nations, told Fox News that Russia appears to be attempting to escalate the situation. They (the Kremlin) want to make it clear that they have interest inside Syria, he said. So its going to have to take diplomacy right now. Russia has several dozen warplanes and batteries of air-defense missiles at its base in Syria. Grennell said that Turkeys support can be pivotal in getting Moscow to relax its support for President Bashar al-Assads administration. As Russian President Vladimir Putin suggests the U.S. airstrikes in Syria would do "significant damage to US-Russian ties," there's a growing focus on how Russia's role in Syria has evolved over time. It was toward the end of September 2015 that Russia approved airstrikes in Syria after a reported request for assistance from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Just days before, President Obama had told the UN General Assembly that he believed "while military power is necessary, it is not sufficient to resolve the situation in Syria." Putin had previously announced that Russia would strike ISIS targets, but a senior U.S. defense official told Fox News at the time that there was no ISIS presence in the areas that Russia wound up targeting in their opening salvo. SYRIA STRIKES: INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY REACTS TO US BOMBING OF AIRFIELD Russia's airstrikes also came after a terse meeting between U.S. and Russian officials, during which the U.S. rejected a request from Russia to clear out of Syrian airspace. Then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter compared Moscow's actions to throwing "gasoline on the fire" that is the Syrian civil war, and suggested their actions could wind up "escalating the civil war in Syria and with it, the very extremism and instability that Moscow claims to be concerned about." Sergei Ivanov, then-chief of Putin's administration, suggested that the authorization was made "not in order to achieve some foreign policy goals" but "in order to defend Russia's national interests." He added that Russia believed its airstrikes were legitimate because they came at Assad's request, and that the airstrikes being conducted by the U.S. and others were in violation of international law. RUSSIAN WARSHIP STEAMS TOWARD US DESTROYERS THAT LAUNCHED SYRIA STRIKES Why did Russia become involved in Syria? Experts suggest Russia likely got involved for very different reasons. "Russia intervened in Syria to constrain the freedom of action of the U.S. and our allies," according to Genevieve Casagrande, the Syria research analyst for the Institute for the Study of War. She added that Russia's deepening footprint in Syria and along the Mediterranean "gives Putin the foothold he needs to threaten American interests across the wider Middle East." When asked about Russia's involvement, President Obama said at the time that he believed "Mr. Putin had to go into Syria not out of strength but out of weakness," and to prop up Assad. "We are not fooled by the current strategy," the president added. A week after the initial airstrikes, Russian warships launched a round of cruise missiles in what was the first combined air-and-ground assault with Syrian government forces. Reacting to both Russia's actions and then-candidate Trump's suggestion that we should "let Russia bomb ISIS," Gen. Jack Keane told Fox News Neil Cavuto that he'd be in support of that position if that's what Russia was actually doing. "Their focus in Syria, as we all know by the evidence of where the strikes are going, is against the moderate [anti-Assad] forces," Keane said. Praise from Assad, and a condemnation from Putin In late October 2015, less than a month after Russia entered the fray, Assad was thanking Putin for his military support, and praising his Russian counterpart for helping in the fight against what he reportedly called "the terrorism that is spreading in the region." On November 24, 2015, Putin was accusing the nation of Turkey of being "accomplices of terrorists" after a Russian warplane was shot down by a Turkish F-16 jet. It was the first time a NATO country and Moscow had been involved in a direct fire incident during the Syrian conflict. Putin called the action a "stab in the back," and warned of "serious consequences." Turkish officials claimed that two planes had entered their airspace, and were warned 10 times over the span of 5 minutes to change direction. The human toll By that time, Russia's presence in Syria had effectively doubled going from some 2,000 personnel in September to an estimated 4,000 by early November 2015. And by the end of the month, reports that Russia was considering ground troops started making their way into the press. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimated that by the end of 2015, Russia's strikes on Syria had resulted in the deaths of more than 2,000 people, including nearly 800 civilians and 180 children. The figure also included an estimated 924 opposition fighters, some of them from rebel groups backed by the U.S. INITIAL REPORTS INDICATE SYRIAN AIRBASE 'ALMOST COMPLETELY DESTROYED' AFTER US STRIKE Critics suggest that some of those rebel groups actually contain elements of terror groups such as the Nusra Front, Al Qaedas Syrian arm, and U.S. officials have acknowledged those concerns. As the airstrikes continued into 2016, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev reportedly told a security conference in Munich that he rejected the notion Russia had hit civilian targets in Syria, and that he believed "we have fallen into a new cold war." Medvedev was responding to accusations from the U.S. and others that if Russia didn't stop their activities within Syria, a lasting peace would never be achieved. Then-Secretary of State John Kerry suggested at the same security conference that the world was at "a hinge point" in the Syrian conflict, and that "if the wrong choices are made, they can open the door to even wider conflict." By March 2016, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimated that the number of people killed by Russian airstrikes over the course of the conflict had skyrocketed to more than 4,000. That same month, Putin announced he would be withdrawing the majority of his country's troops from Syria, suggesting they had achieved their initial objectives of helping the Syrian government reclaim territory that had been lost to so-called terrorists. Syria cannot slaughter its way to legitimacy Russia continued its support of Syrian government forces throughout 2016 as they worked to recapture major cities like Aleppo, the largest in Syria. The loss of Aleppo in December deprived rebels of what was seen as their last major stronghold. President Obama had some harsh words for both Russia and Syria during his final press conference of 2016. After accusing Russia of preventing international efforts to stop the Syrian conflict, President Obama suggested the Syrian regime could not "slaughter its way to legitimacy. "The world shall not be fooled, and the world will not forget," the president said. In January 2017, Russia, Iran and Turkey finally agreed to a ceasefire pact between the government and non-Islamist rebels. Experts like Valerie Szybala, executive director and co-founder of The Syria Institute, suggested that the ceasefire wouldn't be the end. "Syria isnt over yet," Szybala wrote in a piece for FoxNews.com. And while she suggested that the path forward in Syria would be "difficult and complicated, she believes it is a path that the U.S. must forge because there is no other actor up to this task." The office of Syrias President Bashar al-Assad on Friday denounced the U.S. missile strike against one of its air bases as reckless and irresponsible. The statement claimed the strikes were shortsighted and reflected a continuation of policy based on targeting and subjugating people, regardless of which administration is in charge. U.S. LAUNCHES MISSILES INTO SYRIA IN RESPONSE TO CHEMICAL WEAPONS ATTACK The U.S. military blasted the Shayrat air base near Homs with a barrage of cruise missiles in fiery retaliation for this weeks gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. More than 80 people were killed during the chemical attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun. Syria's Foreign Ministry called the U.S. attack a flagrant aggression to weaken the strength of the Syrian army in confronting terrorist groups. The ministry also described the chemical attack as a premeditated action that aimed to justify the launching of a U.S. attack on the Syrian army. The U.S. strikes 59 missiles launched from the USS Ross and USS Porter hit the government-controlled air base, where U.S. officials say the Syrian military planes that dropped the chemicals had taken off. It was the first direct American assault on the Syrian government and President Donald Trump's most dramatic military order since becoming president just more than two months ago. The strikes also risk thrusting the U.S. deeper into an intractable conflict that his predecessor spent years trying to avoid. ABOUT 20 SYRIAN JETS DESTROYED IN AIRSTRIKE, DEFENSE OFFICIALS SAY Talal Barazi, the governor of the province of Homs, said on Friday that the dawn attack killed at least seven people and wounded nine. The attack also caused extensive damage to the air base. Jamil al-Saleh, a rebel commander in the central Hama province, called for more strikes, saying "Bashar's regime only understands force." He said he hoped the missile attack "is a turning point and not a passing thing." The Syrian Coalition, an opposition group, said the U.S. attack puts an end to an age of "impunity" and should herald the start of a larger campaign. The victims of Tuesday's chemical attack in the northern town of Khan Sheikhoun, which killed more than 80 people and wounded dozens more, welcomed the strike, but said they feared it would be a one-off. Alaa Alyousef, a 27-year-old survivor, called for a no-fly zone to protect civilians, saying that confining the strikes to one air base was merely an "anesthetic." Khaled al-Khaled, whose 16-year-old son is struggling to recover from the attack, said he rejects foreign intervention in Syria, but that "the regime has forced us to join hands with enemies. ... No one is supporting the Syrian people. Only God is on our side." President Trump defended Thursday nights attack as vital to deter future use of poison gas and called on other nations to join in seeking "to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria." Announcing the assault from his Florida resort, Trump said there was no doubt Assad was responsible for the chemical attack, which he said employed banned gases and killed dozens. "Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women, and children," Trump declared. Trump ordered the strikes without approval from Congress or the backing of the United Nations. U.S. officials said he had the right to use force to defend national interests and to protect civilians from atrocities. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Russia has agreed to keep the communication channel between U.S. and Russian military operations in Syria open on Friday despite claiming it would be shut down following the missile strike at a Syrian airbase, senior U.S. military officials said. Russia initially claimed it would be suspending the "deconfliction" channel in retaliation against the Syrian airstrikes that killed at least seven people, Fox News Channel reported earlier Friday. The "deconfliction" channel was established in 2015, when Russia intervened militarily to prevent an accident or confrontation between the countries' military operations inside Syria. INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY REACTS TO BOMBING OF AIRFIELD TRUMP: AS LONG AS UNITED STATES STANDS FOR JUSTICE, PEACE WILL PREVAIL The overnight missile attack, which marked the first time the U.S. has directly targeted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces, was condemned by Russia and Iran, but welcomed by the Syrian opposition and its supporters, who expressed hope that it signaled a turning point in the devastating six-year civil war. The Kremlin called the airstrikes an "aggression against a sovereign state," and said that it's in violation of international law. President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin believes that the U.S. has dealt the strikes under "far-fetched pretext." About 60 U.S. Tomahawk missiles hit the Shayrat air base, southeast of Homs, a small installation with two runways, where aircraft often take off to bomb targets in northern and central Syria. The U.S. missiles hit at 3:45 a.m. Friday morning and targeted the base's airstrips, hangars, control tower, and ammunition areas, U.S. officials said. COMPLETE COVERAGE: GET THE LATEST ON SYRIA FROM FOX NEWS Russian military personnel were given about an hour notice before the strikes. The missiles were fired from two warships in the Mediterranean Sea in retaliation for Tuesday's deadly chemical attack, which officials said used chlorine mixed with a nerve agent, possibly sarin. Fox News' James Rosen and The Associated Press contributed to this report. U.S. troops taking fire and returning it. Moving through houses, room by room. Casualties down and ground taken. While it might looks like the real thing, its just one of many military exercises involving some of the 28,000 American forces along with their South Korean counterpartsnot far from the demilitarized zone. Theyre getting ready for any provocation from North Korea. We respect the potential of the forces to the North, Maj. Gen Theodore Martin of the Second Infantry Division told Fox News. But we like to say that our job here is to deter that aggression. Again though, this is just training. Even though they are using sophisticated radar that detects hostile incoming projectiles. Or old-fashioned, long-range artillery pieces that require elbow grease to send a shell down range. Or patrols working out of Bradley Fighting Vehicles. Defending territory. Watching backs. When we come here we know what the mission is, said Capt. David Saxton. We treat the mission seriously. All this, of course, drives North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un and his regime crazy. They see it as a rehearsal for invasion. China, North Korea's most important ally, has suggested if the drills stop maybe Pyongyang would pause its nuclear and missile programs. There doesnt appear to be takers for that idea among U.S. forces. More exercises are planned for next week. Weve got to be prepared, Col. Dave Foly told Fox News, to bring our might and our capabilities wherever our nation calls for it. If those cruise missiles launched against Syria prove that the military option is alive in the Trump administration, the U.S. military on the ground here show that they could up to the task, as well. President Donald Trumps airstrike attack of a Syrian military air base near Homs on Thursday night added another layer to an already complicated civil war, and marked the U.S.'s first direct attack on the Syrian government. Developments over the last six years are key to understanding how anti-government sentiment escalated to civil war in Syria. SYRIA MISSILE ATTACK: SATELLITE PHOTOS SHOW MAJOR DAMAGE TO AIRFIELDS Protests The Assad family has been in control of Syria since 1971, when Hafez al-Assad became president. In February 1982, he ordered a nearly month-long military besiegement of Hama to crack down on the Muslim Brotherhoods anti-government uprising. The attack left about 30,000 civilians dead, according to the Syrian Human Rights Committee. When Hafez al-Assad died in 2000, his son and current president, Bashar al-Assad, took control of the country. In 2011, inspired by Arab Spring protests against then-Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Syrians took to the streets in anti-government protests. The turning point came in March 2011, when security forces arrested and tortured a group of boys for painting anti-government graffiti on their school, according to Al Jazeera. The response from the Syrian government in follow-up protests were violent, including security forces firing upon demonstrators in Darra later that month and raiding a sit-in in Homs in April 2011. Protesters began to arm themselves as a result. Power struggle As the anti-Assad rebellion grew, local militias and Syrian Armed Forces defectors formed the Free Syrian Army an armed group aimed at toppling the Assad regime. MCCAIN CALLS FOR RENEWED SUPPORT FOR FREE SYRIAN ARMY, ESTABLISHMENT OF NO-FLY ZONES Beyond policy, anti-government sentiment began taking sectarian tones as the majority of opposition fighters were Sunni Muslims, according to the BBC. Sunni Islam is the most popular religious domination, but Assad is part of the Shia Alawite sect. Instability in the area with gunfights and indiscriminate attacks spreading across the country also were compounded with the growing Islamic State movement. Attacks conducted by the Islamic State gained global attention, leading to the U.S. conducting airstrikes against the jihadist group in September 2014. Danger and violence from these factions have forced at least 5 million Syrians to flee their homeland since the conflict began, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, sparking an ongoing global humanitarian crisis as refugees seek safety in other countries. Chemical weapon attacks Suspected state use of chemical weapons is a recurring issue. In March 2013, a sarin nerve gas attack killed 26, including government soldiers in Khan al-Assal, Syria. Then, in August 2013, hundreds were killed after ground-to-ground missiles filled with sarin nerve gas struck the rebel-held civilian suburbs of Damascus. Then-U.S. President Barack Obama said in 2012 that the use of chemical weapons would change his stance on intervening in Syrias civil war. REVEALED: FIRST PHOTOS OF ASSAD AIDE HEADING SYRIA'S CHEMICAL WEAPONS UNIT Facing possible intervention and pressure from the U.N. Security Council, in October 2013, Bashar al-Assad agreed to add Syria to the Chemical Weapons Convention. The agreement aims to eliminate an entire category of weapons of mass destruction by prohibiting the development, production, acquisition, stockpiling, retention, transfer, or use of chemical weapons by member states. In turn, member states are expected to enforce the chemical weapons prohibition within their jurisdiction. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the implementing body of the Chemical Weapons Convention, reported in June 2014 that all of Syrias chemical weapons were removed. But Syrian opposition officials contested the finding, stating that not all the weapons were accounted for. In August 2015, at the behest of the United Nations, the OPCW was deployed to investigate reports of state chlorine gas attacks against civilians in rebel-held areas. The panel eventually found that the Syrian government used helicopters to launch chlorine gas in civilian areas of the northern Idlib province. Foreign players Russia has backed Assad by offering arms and political support. To complicate matters, it is suspected that Russias involvement in anti-Islamic State airstrikes actually have targeted opposition-held areas, including hospitals and schools. Amnesty International reported evidence of "at least six deliberate attacks on hospitals, medical centres, and clinics in the northern part of the Aleppo Countryside governorate in the past 12 weeks." RUSSIAN WARSHIP STEAMS TOWARD US DESTROYERS THAT LAUNCHED SYRIA STRIKES Syria also finds support in neighboring Iran. Other countries in the region, including Saudi Arabia and Turkey, have backed Syrian rebels. The U.S. also helped to arm rebels to dually fight the Assad regime and Islamic State militants. U.S. airstrike on Syrian airbase The order of missile strikes on an airbase near Homs was in response to Syrian President Bashar al-Assads suspected chemical weapons attack on civilians Tuesday that choked out the lives of helpless men, women, and children, Trump said in a televised address. The assault marks Trumps most significant military action since taking office in January. The morning after President Trump launched dozens of cruise missiles at a Syrian military air base in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack earlier this week, much of the worlds mainstream news media endorsed the strike, though there were notable dissenters. Australias largest daily newspaper praised the attack. Many critics argue that the Obama administration was always wrong to trust Russian President Vladimir Putin. They also wonder why Mr. Trump trusted him as well - at least until this week, the editorial board of the Sydney Morning Herald wrote. An op-ed piece in Torontos Globe and Mail newspaper quibbled with some of the optics of the attack but refrained from any direct criticism of it. The New Zealand Herald offered a generally supportive editorial on Trumps action, but also warned that the immediate future will be challenging for him. Before the attack, some news agencies had demanded that strong action be taken, which could be read as a call for the kind of action the U.S. took. The many images from Syria of dead children and despairing civilians have left the world all but numb to the horrors of the countrys more than six years of civil war, the South China Morning Post wrote before the missiles were launched. But a chemical attack on Tuesday demands attention as much for the heart-wrenching pictures and videos of the victims as for the need to determine who was behind it and hold them accountable. A war crime has been committed, one so cruel that to do nothing, as has happened too many times during the conflict, is to give tacit approval for even greater levels of barbarity. Not all voices were positive. Besides the predictable opposition to the attack from supporters of Syria, like Iran, some Western newspapers, while not directly critical, published negative editorials. Donald Trump, the man who just over a month ago wanted to bar entry of all Syrian refugees into the United States, now wants us to think that he cares deeply about Syrian children. I dont believe it, Moustafa Bayoumi wrote for the Guardian. Ibrahim Al-Marashi, a history professor for California State University-San Marcos, wrote in an opinion piece for Al Jazeera that the attack will probably do more for President Trumps approval ratings that it would to end the conflict in Syria. Trump authorized this attack to ostensibly demonstrate that he will take a harder line against Syria, unlike his predecessor Barack Obama, Al-Marashi wrote in his column. While Trumps actions represent the first time the US has attacked Assads forces since the civil war began six years, this military strike is embedded in a deeper history of America disciplining countries from the air over their weapons of mass destruction facilities. Trump is in fact carrying on the legacy of President Bill Clinton. Russias state-funded news agency RT published an op-ed that said Trump will, prove to be no better than Hillary Clinton, while the author criticized his decision to strike. The question remains though, after the Idlib chemical attacks and the airstrikes against Assads military base in Homs, will this thin-skinned president do a full 180-degree change in his policy toward Assad and revert to Obamas doctrine? Or were the strikes a one-shot PR gift horse which he couldnt resist, writes Martin Jay. Trump badly needs a Middle East initiative which brings him positive press coverage and feeds his febrile need for attention, in a period where his ratings have hit a record low mark, Jay adds. It may well be Obamas so-called 'red line' in Syria which could be the basis of a new strategy there, given that his previous safe zones plan seems to have been shot out of the sky. In the U.S., major newspapers that have sometimes been intensely critical of Trump held their fire. The New York Times, published an op-ed article entitled After the Missile, We Need Smart Diplomacy, by Antony J. Blinken, a former deputy secretary of state from the Obama administration. Blinken applauded Trumps decision to strike. President Donald J. Trump was right to strike at the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for using a weapon of mass destruction, the nerve agent sarin, against its own people, Blinken writes. Mr. Trump may not want to be president of the world but when a tyrant blatantly violates a basic norm of international conduct in this case, the ban on using chemical or biological weapons in armed conflict, put in place after World War I the world looks to America to act. Mr. Trump did, and for that he should be commended. The Washington Posts editorial board offered qualified support for Trumps action. The Syrian war, a cauldron of complexity and misery, is not an easy knot to untie, reads the editorial. This is the first direct strike on Syrian forces since the civil war began six years ago. The next steps will have to be carefully considered so a spasm of reaction does not simply make things worse on a battlefield where Russia and Iran are backing the Syrian regime. President Trump's decision to rain Tomahawk missiles on Syrian airfields in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack being pinned on Damascus followed near-unanimous international condemnation of the Syrian government. Just hours before the move, the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Turkey and even China, whose president, Xi Jinping, was at Trump's estate in Florida, all blasted the Syrian government over its suspected use of chemical weapons this week. A Chinese government statement expressed "horror" at Tuesday's attack in Khan Sheikhoun that caused "large-scale loss of life." US LAUNCHES MISSILES INTO SYRIA RESPONSE TO CHEMICAL WEAPONS ATTACK British Prime Minister Theresa May called the chemical weapons attack that prompted the U.S. action "despicable." "If it is the case that it has been conducted by the Assad regime, it shows the barbarism of that regime and what I would say is all those who are backing that regime, including Russia, need to use their influence to stop Assad from bombarding and dealing with his people in such a horrific way," May said Thursday. German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday called the chemical attack "barbaric" and a war crime. Although she said it must be investigated, Merkel said early indications were that Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was behind it. Some 60 Tomahawk missiles, launched from Navy warships in the Mediterranean Sea, fell near Homs, targeting runways, aircraft and fueling facilities, according to Pentagon officials. The strikes came at 3:45 a.m. local time, and were apparently in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack earlier this week that killed scores of civilians, and which Trump blamed on Assad. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, speaking just one hour before the U.S. action, called the chemical attack a "war crime of the worst sort" that "cries out for a strong response." SYRIA AIRSTRIKES: TRUMP SAYS MILITARY ACTION IN VITAL NATIONAL SECURITY INTEREST In Syria following the attack, state-run television blasted "American aggression." Russia, Assad's ally in the grinding, seven-year civil war, perhaps sensing Trump's first military action, warned earlier of "negative consequences." "We have to think about negative consequences, negative consequences, and all the responsibility if military action occurred will be on the shoulders of those who initiated such doubtful and tragic enterprise," said Russian Deputy UN envoy Vladimir Safronkov, just hours before the attack. A U.S.-educated ISIS recruiter wanted by the FBI was killed in a coalition airstrike in January, the Islamic State announced Wednesday. Ahmad Abousamra, a 35-year-old dual U.S.-Syrian citizen who was pivotal in running an online media campaign aimed at recruiting ISIS sympathizers around the world, was on the FBI's "most wanted" list since 2013. Abousamra, who was born in Paris but brought up in Boston, was wanted by U.S. authorities for conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and conspiracy to kill U.S. soldiers overseas. According to ISIS, Abousamra was killed in early January when a missile struck a house north of the Syrian city of Tabqa where he was staying. The terror group made the announcement Wednesday in Islamic State publications, including the English language online magazine, "Rumiyah," which Abousamra helped to create. Abousamra traveled to Yemen, Pakistan and Iraq before returning to the U.S., but later fled after his plans for an attack on U.S. soil were discovered, according to Reuters. Abousamra joined the Al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front during the start of the Syrian conflict in 2011 before later becoming a member of the Islamic State. The FBI said Abousamra was indicted after taking multiple trips to Pakistan and Yemen where he allegedly attempted to obtain military training for the purpose of killing American soldiers abroad. On Nov. 5, 2009, a federal arrest warrant was issued for Abousamra after he was charged with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and conspiracy to kill in a foreign country, among other charges. The FBI had offered a reward of $50,000 for information leading directly to the capture and return of Abousamra, who was the son of a prominent Boston endocrinologist and who graduated in 2006 from the University of Massachusetts-Boston with a degree in computer science. A piece entitled, "Among the Believers Are Men" -- in the latest edition of Rumiyah published Wednesday -- the terror group eulogized Abousamra as one of the founders of the online magazine. ISIS said the publication's goal is to "expand the Islamic States reach by releasing one magazine in several languages." This beacon of light marks the festive days in April for both the Netherlands and Vietnam. This lighting project - jointly organized by the Hanoi city Peoples Committee and the Netherlands Embassy in Hanoi, and sponsored by Dutch company Philips Lighting - will serve as proof of friendship and close cooperation, especially in the field of water management, between the two sides. Photo:kenh14.vn Both Vietnam and the Netherlands have a history of living with water, and are now working on sustainable solutions for the future. This combination of new technology and history comes together at the Hang Dau water tower, one of Hanois beautiful historic landmarks dating from 1894. It no longer provides Hanois people with fresh water, but its usefulness has not been forgotten. With lighting the cylindrical water tower, the partners bring a fresh and innovative look to the landmark and remind local people of its beauty and original purpose. And with an eye on the future, Dutch company Philips Lighting - a global leader in energy - efficient city lighting - uses state-of-the-art technology to bring the tower back to life. Philips Lighting is also working on the smart lighting of another, more recent Hanoi landmark: the Nhat Tan bridge, gateway to Hanoi. It is foreseen to being completed on April 30th, Vietnams Reunification Day. Themed Vietnam-Holland: Partners in water, the orange spotlights reflect the strong bilateral partnership on climate change and water management. The Netherlands actively supports Vietnam in the implementation of the Mekong Delta Plan which provides a long-term vision for the sustainable development of this crucial region. As planned, Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister Trinh Dinh Dung will visit the Netherlands to discuss the implementation of the Strategic Partnership Agreement on Water Management and Climate Change between the two nations./. The United States launched nearly five dozen cruise missiles at a Syrian airfield early Friday in response to a chemical weapons attack that killed dozens of civilians, the first direct assault on the Damascus government since the beginning of that country's bloody civil war in 2011. "It is in the vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons," President Donald Trump said in a statement. "Tonight I call on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria, and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types." Fifty-nine Tomahawk missiles targeted an airbase at Shayrat, located outside Homs. The missiles targeted the base's airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, officials said. Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis said initial indications were that the strike had "severely damaged or destroyed Syrian aircraft and support infrastructure and equipment ... reducing the Syrian Government's ability to deliver chemical weapons." There was no immediate word about any casualties. Trump said the base was used as the staging point for Tuesday's chemical weapons attack on rebel-held territory, which killed as many as 72 civilians, including women and children. "Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children," Trump said from Mar-a-Lago, Fla. "Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror." National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said the strike should cause a "big shift in Assad's calculus." "Obviously the regime maintains a certain capability to commit mass murder with chemical weapons beyond this air field," McMaster said. "But it was aimed at this airfield because we could trace that attack back to this facility. It was not a small strike." The U.S. missiles hit at 8:45 p.m. Eastern time, 3:45 a.m. Friday morning in Syria. Syrian state TV called the attack an "aggression" that lead to "losses." U.S. military officials said they informed their Russian counterparts of the impending attack in an effort to avoid any accident involving Russian forces. Nevertheless, Russia's Deputy U.N. ambassador Vladimir Safronkov warned that any negative consequences from the strikes would be on the "shoulders of those who initiated such a doubtful and tragic enterprise." Davis, the Pentagon spokesman, confirmed that "there are Russians at the base," but said they had been warned "multiple times" to leave. He did not know whether Russian aircraft were at the base when the missiles hit. The U.S. also notified its partner countries in the region prior to launching the strikes. U.S. defense officials tell Fox News that two warships based in the eastern Mediterranean, the USS Porter and the USS Ross, have been training for the past two days to execute this mission. Our forward deployed ships give us the capability to quickly respond to threats," said a Navy official. "These strikes in Syria are a perfect example - this is why we're there." The original plans called for two targets, the airbase and a chemical weapons storage facility. However, Pentagon planners decided late Thursday to target just the airbase. As a candidate, Trump warned against against the U.S. getting pulled into the Syrian civil war. But the president earlier in the week appeared moved by the photos of children killed in the chemical attack. "I think what happened in Syria is one of the truly egregious crimes and shouldn't have happened and it shouldn't be allowed to happen," Trump told reporters traveling on Air Force One to Florida earlier , where he was holding a two-day summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Late Thursday, a U.S. government official told Fox News that the intelligence community has high confidence that the attack was carried out by Syrian government aircraft. The official said the analysis was consistent with eyewitness reports that fixed-wing aircraft launched the strike. The official described the use of sarin gas in the attack as a watershed. The Assad government had agreed to disband its chemical weapons capability by 2014 under an agreement coordinated with the Obama administration and Russia. Tuesday's attack was considered a breach of that agreement. The Turkish ministry of health says the preliminary results show the use of sarin gas. Sarin is a colorless, odorless liquid and is highly volatile while moving from its liquid state to a gas. Unlike chlorine, which the Assad government has used on a regular basis, sarin does not dissipate quickly. The victims in Tuesdays attack showed all the hallmarks of a sarin attack including twitching, jerking and foaming at the mouth. Trump's decision to attack Syria came three-and-a-half years after President Barack Obama threatened Assad with military action after an earlier chemical weapons attack killed hundreds outside of Damascus. Obama had declared the use of such weapons a "red line." At the time, several American ships in the Mediterranean were poised to launch missiles, only for Obama to abruptly pull back after key U.S. ally Britain and the U.S. Congress balked at his plan. He opted instead for the Russian-backed plan that was supposed to remove and eliminate Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles. The world learned of the chemical attack earlier in the week in footage that showed people dying in the streets and bodies of children stacked in piles. The U.S. show of force in Syria raises legal questions. It's unclear what authority Trump is relying on to attack another government. When Obama intervened in Libya in 2011, he used a U.N. Security Council mandate and NATO's overall leadership of the mission to argue that he had legal authority arguments that many Republicans opposed. Trump can't rely on either justification here. Unclear also is whether Trump is adopting any broader effort to combat Assad. Under Obama, the United States largely pulled back from its support for so-called "moderate" rebels when Russia's military intervention in September 2015 led them to suffer a series of battlefield defeats. Instead, Obama sought to work with Russia on a negotiated transition. Trump and his top aides had acknowledged in recent days the "reality" of Assad being in power, saying his ouster was no longer a priority. But the chemical weapons attack seemed to spur a rethink. In Florida on Thursday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said of Assad: "There's no role for him to govern the Syrian people." Fox News' Catherine Herridge and the Associated Press contributed to this report. A 19-year-old man died after being shot in the chest during violent riots in Venezuelas capital Thursday evening. According to published reports, the bullet that killed Jairo Ortiz came from National Guard troops as they were trying to clear up a road blockade by protesters. The violent clashes came as the country's fragmented opposition gained new impetus against a socialist government it blames for the country's social and economic collapse. VENEZUELA'S SOCIALIST LEADERS SEIZE BAKERIES IN 'BREAD WAR' The demonstrations were sparked by Supreme Court action last week to assume control of the country's opposition-led congress in what demonstrators said was a lurch toward dictatorship. While the widely condemned decision was quickly overturned, the opposition has stepped up street protests against President Nicolas Maduro, despite such demonstrations having achieved little in the past. Thousands of people blocked a main Caracas highway on Thursday, chanting "Out with Maduro!" and "No more dictatorship!" and vowed to march to the office of the state ombudsman, the government's principal human rights advocate. VENEZUELA OPPOSITION CALLS ON MILITARY TO INTERVENE AFTER 'COUP' RULING "The human rights advocate has to stop being the Socialist Party advocate!" opposition leader Henrique Capriles said in an online broadcast as he marched wearing a hat in the Venezuelan colors of yellow, red, and blue. Protesters threw stones and petrol bombs while security officials fired tear gas and dispersed the crowds by mid-afternoon. The opposition called for another nationwide march on Saturday. Maduro critics are demanding the removal of seven Supreme Court justices who signed last week's decision. They accuse the government of stalling elections for state governors, which polls suggest would not go well for the ruling Socialists. TRUMP CONFRONTS VENEZUELAS MADURO BY CALLING JAILED NEMESIS POLITICAL PRISONER State ombudsman Tarek Saab on Thursday evening shot down a censure measure against the Supreme Court justices that had been approved by the opposition-controlled assembly this week, saying the controversial ruling had been "clarified" by the reversal of the decision. Maduro said in a televised address that authorities had detained 30 people involved in the demonstration. Reuters contributed to this report. Leading Venezuela opposition leader Henrique Capriles announced Friday that he has been banned from running for office for 15 years. He said on his Twitter account Friday that he had just been notified of the decision. There was no immediate comment from the government. Capriles is the most recognizable of the leaders behind the protest movement that has been roiling the embattled country this week. He is the governor of Miranda State and lost a hard-fought presidential election to Hugo Chavez in 2012. The following year, was again the opposition's presidential candidate, and lost to current president Nicolas Maduro by a small margin. Among the opposition, he's considered the more moderate of leaders, having criticized a wave of protests in 2014 that led to scores of deaths. Leopoldo Lopez, the leader of those protests, has been held in prison for the past three years after having been sentenced on what are widely seen as trumped up charges of inciting political unrest. VENEZUELA'S HEALTH CRISIS NEARING CATASTROPHE, GOVERNMENT PLEADS FOR HELP The most recent wave of protests claimed its first victim Thursday night. College student Jairo Ortiz was shot dead by an unknown assailant during a protest outside Venezuela's capital city. The protest was part of a week of unrest following a Supreme Court ruling nullifying congress. That decision was walked back. But the country in the midst of an economic crisis has since seen near-daily protests by people calling for new elections. Ortiz was a 19-year-old student at a local university, the local mayor's office said. Similar anti-government protests in 2014 left dozens dead. The opposition has been calling for immediate elections. With both Capriles and Lopez now out of action, it's unclear who the leading candidate in such an election would be. President Trump addressed the media shortly after launching the strikes. He mentioned the chemical attack in Syria and said, 'No child of God should ever suffer such horror.' 5 Images US fires missiles at Syrian base The United States fired cruise missiles on Friday at a Syrian airbase from which President Donald Trump said a deadly chemical weapons attack had been launched, the first direct U.S. assault on the government of Bashar al-Assad in six years of civil war. Being held by Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union of Ho Chi Minh city, the event was among activities to mark the 50th anniversary of Vietnam - Cambodia diplomatic ties and the 55th anniversary of Vietnam - Laos diplomatic ties. The cultural exchange (Source: VNA) Vice chairwoman of Ho Chi Minh city Peoples Committee Nguyen Thi Thu sent best wishes to Lao and Cambodian students in the city. She also said that the city always paid much attention to them. She hoped that the cultural exchange would be held regularly, encouraging students to study the cultural traditions of each country and the history of fine relations, solidarity and friendship between the three countries. Thorhongliachi, a Lao student, from Ho Chi Minh city Law University, appreciated the sentiment of the city leader, people and students for Cambodian and Lao students in the city. Over the past time, they have always found favourable conditions for their studies and daily life./. Its not really out in the middle of nowhere, but it can feel like that if thats what youre looking for. About five miles from State Route 208 and just off Robert E. Lee Drive in Spotsylvania is 8920 Olde Meadow Way18 acres you might not want to leave once you get there. There is a lot to like here, from the luxury home with more than 8,000 square feet of living space, to the custom Mennonite-built six-stall horse barn, to the large pond and surrounding scenic vistas with white-fenced rolling acreageall of it impeccably maintained. There are six bedrooms, six full bathrooms and a half-bath. Since 2008, two years after it was built, the property has been the home and comfort zone of Kevin and Debbie Corwin. But with children in college and on their own now, the couple has decided its time to downsize and has listed the property with Matt Romani of Long & Foster Real Estate. The asking price is $1.25 million. From just beyond the gated subdivision entrance to Olde Meadow Way, a gravel drive winds between low stone walls, alongside the picturesque pond with a couple of Canada geese standing watch. The driveway leads back to the horse barn or turns onto the paved circular drive, with a fountain at the center, that leads to the homes main entry. The house was built initially as a model home in 2006 by Donald Schley, who also developed the large-lot Olde Meadow subdivision. The model was intended inside and out to demonstrate the builders attention to detail in the design and construction of the house. As a result, it offers a full array of high-level of features and materials throughout. The sprawling homes exterior is a handsome combination of stone and stucco with white trim and a complex roof covered in architectural shingles. Debbie Corwin said she was told the house was built to withstand anything nature could possibly throw at it. The high level of luxury materials used is evident as soon as one enters through the etched glass double door with arched transom above. The floor is marble tile and shadowbox wainscoting rises nearly seven feet on the surrounding walls. To the right is a formal dining room with a large picture window that provides a broad view of the immediate surroundings. Moving from room to room it becomes evident that every window offers a lovely view of the landscaped grounds. A hallway leads from the foyer to a large, well-appointed open area that includes the family room, kitchen and breakfast area, each in its own nicely defined space. The focal point of the two-story family room is the stone back wall with windows and one of the homes four gas fireplaces. Exposed, finished wood ceiling beams lend a handsome, lodge-like look to the space. Top-of-line everything make the kitchen an inviting place to cook or simply hang out. Pendant and recessed lighting illuminate the area. The center island and counters are covered in a mottled, mostly light-colored granite. Light and dark cabinetry with rope molding offer contrast, and the stainless-steel appliances include a double wall oven. Bar stools pull up to the other side of the raised portion of the peninsula counter. A granite-covered wet bar is nearby. The breakfast area, used for most day-to-day family dining, overlooks the stone rear patio and stand of trees in the distance. Adjacent to the family room is a sunroom, and next to that, back toward the foyer, is a parloror in this case a music roomthat currently holds a baby grand piano. It features a coffered ceiling, fireplace and twin, wood-trimmed arched entries. Across the hall from there is a room used as a home office. The master suite forms a wing at this end of the house. The sleeping area shares space with a sitting area and has outdoor access to the patio. A tray ceiling conceals indirect rope lighting. The master bath has a side for him and a side for her. At the center is the shower with opposing glass doors to enter from either side. Each side has its own vanity and water closet. The floor is tile as is the detailed pedestal that holds the jetted, heated tub. The tile and light Corian that tops the vanities creates an attractive contrast with the medium-dark cherry wood cabinetry. All of the fixtures are solid brass. There is a smaller secondary bedroom with full bath at this end as well. At the opposite end of the house is the secondary bedroom wing. It begins with a mudroom area at the interior door to the attached four-car garage. With six unique metal coat hooks on the wall and baskets above for organization, this is where the kids deposit their stuff when they arrive home. Nearby are three secondary bedrooms, each with its own full bathroom. HEADED DOWNSTAIRS The basement is an expansive and attractive space with the sixth bedroom and full bathroom. There is a fully equipped kitchen with bar here with whats described as a Formica copper and leaf countertop. Complementing that is the kitchens faux-copper coffered ceiling. There is a wide-open recreation space as well as defined spaces for game tables and the like, served by a double-sided gas fireplace. There is a back room with mirrored closet doors that was probably intended to be an exercise room. A flat walkout and a well entry both provide outdoor access. There is a large, cedar-lined closet down here and plenty of unfinished storage and utility space. The house has a three-zone conventional heating and cooling system, central vacuum and is wired for sound. The upgraded water treatment system is designed to make well water as pure as it can be. A short distance from the house is a detached three-car, carriage-house-type garage with a two-bedroom caretaker apartment with bathroom and kitchen above it. THE HORSE BARN The custom horse barn and stable was designed by Debbie Corwin and built by a Mennonite construction crew. It has six stalls, a birthing stall, a tack room and an office thats heated and cooled. Overhangs provide outdoor cover for horses on one side, and cover for tractors and equipment on the other. Its designed to have a ceiling/hay loft added if needed in the future. Attention was given to every detail, including the metal covered wood posts that prevent chewing and various gates and enclosures that prevent horses from accidentally getting free. A former Ruther Glen resident fresh off of a lengthy prison term in Kansas for attempted rape and burglary now has a 48-year prison sentence to serve for sex offenses he committed in Caroline County. Robert Lee Oatis, who was extradited to face trial in Caroline Circuit Court, was convicted on Friday for committing sex offenses against a child in 2007, according to a news release from Commonwealths Attorney John Mahoney. The 50-year-old Oatis was ordered to serve 48 years of a 120-year sentence for three counts of aggravated sexual battery and three counts of forcible sodomy against a child. Oatis has completed his sentence in Kansas and now will serve his Virginia sentence. A King George detective and a Virginia State Police special agent were honored this week for their roles in a nationwide fraud case that resulted in federal prison sentences for three California defendants. Detective Drew Massey began his part of the investigation in late 2015, when both the Ninde and Jersey post offices in King George were broken into. Hundreds of pieces of mail, postal money orders and several keys were stolen. Banking and personal information stolen from multiple box holders was used to make wire transfers and to open fraudulent credit card accounts resulting in thousands of dollars worth of loss to the victims, police said. Sheriff's spokeswoman Kecia Wharton said that among the stolen keys was a master parcel locker key, which opens all postal mailboxes in central Virginia. The key was eventually recovered, Wharton said, but it would have cost the U.S. Postal Service about $250,000 to replace all the locks if it hadn't been found. Massey and state police special agent Steve Sclafani eventually searched a rental home in Colonial Beach that belonged to the California suspects. That search turned up evidence linking the suspects to financial crimes and mail thefts in multiples states, including California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia and Virginia. Joseph J.M. Maybrier, 26, Jessie D. Berry, 23 and Jessica Anne Tyree, 25, all of California, were all arrested in Savannah, Ga., and convicted of such crimes as bank fraud, aggravated identity theft and receiving stolen mail. All three are currently serving nine-year federal prison sentences. Authorities said they had more than 1,100 victims, including people and businesses, and stole in excess of $1.3 million. U.S. Postal Inspector Marydith Newman said information gathered by Massey was essential to the arrests. Massey and Sclafani were recognized at a ceremony this week at the King George Sheriff's Office. A consulting firms recommendations for two sections of Fredericksburg will be the subject of two public information meetings to be held this month. Streetsense, a Washington design and strategy firm, has been studying the types of development that should be considered for whats officially known as Planning Area 6 and Planning Area 3 in the citys comprehensive plan, and what would need to be done to attract that development. City planning staff will present the findings for Area 6 at 7:30 p.m. on April 18 at the Dorothy Hart Community Center, 408 Canal Street. That section includes the U.S. 1, Fall Hill Avenue and Princess Anne Street corridors and adjacent neighborhoods, which include Normandy Village, Riverside and Fall Hill between the Rappahannock Canal and the Rappahannock River. The meeting for Area 3 will be held at 7:30 p.m. on April 19 at the Idlewild Club House, 2280 Idlewild Blvd. It covers the State Route 3 corridor between Interstate 95 and Westwood Drive, including the neighborhoods of Idlewild, Altoona and Great Oaks. Streetsense will be recommending some very creative ideas to encourage a diverse maker corridor along Princess Anne Street, the evolution of the old shopping centers along both Routes 1 & 3 into combined residential and commercial areas, and the long-term development of the 100 acres on the east side of I-95, between Route 3 and Cowan Boulevard, into an employment center with some residential uses, said Chuck Johnston, director of the citys Community Planning and Building Department, in an email. These recommendations also include protecting the stable residential neighborhoods adjacent to these commercial corridors. The City Council and City Planning Commission will hold a joint session on Streetsenses proposals at 6 p.m. on April 12 in the conference room on the third floor of Executive Plaza, 601 Caroline St. Adoption of the plans and any associated ordinances would come after future public hearings. The city also plans to request proposals for one contract to do all eight remaining planning areas in the second quarter of this year. The next area planned for study would encompass the downtown core and four adjoining neighborhoods with the outer limits being the Rappahannock River, the canal, the University of Mary Washington and Hazel Run. U.S. Rep. Rob Wittman was scheduled to appear at a private town hall meeting Thursday evening to discuss health care with employees of LifeCare Medical Transports in Stafford County. But the meeting took a more public turn after word spread on liberal Facebook groups about the Republican congressmans appearance. About 20 concerned constituents showed up to LifeCares headquarters off U.S. 17 to challenge Wittman on everything from health insurance to federal funding for Planned Parenthood. The meeting got off to a rocky start after a woman said disagreeand held up a piece of paper with the same messageas Wittman delivered his opening remarks. The congressman had just said the country does not have the necessary resources for those men and women that serve. After the interruption, Wittman stood silently for more than 20 awkward seconds until LifeCare President Kevin Dillard asked attendees to refrain from any outbursts. This was a private event that we allowed other people to come to so I would appreciate it if yall dont hold up any signs or anything like that and show the congressman respect, Dillard said. Wittman finished the rest of his remarks uninterrupted. About 40 people in all, including LifeCare employees, attended the meeting. Most attendees politely addressed the congressman, though emotions did flare at times. Some attendees took particular issue with Wittmans stance that Planned Parenthood should not receive federal funding. I am pretty adamant that there shouldnt be federal dollars going to perform abortions, Wittman said. And Ill say that Im adopted, so I believe Before Wittman could finish his statement, a woman interjected: The Hyde Amendment! That provision generally bars Medicaid recipients from using federal funds to pay for abortions. If you defund Planned Parenthood, youre going to have more people who need abortions who are going to be getting them in alleys, another woman told Wittman. That comment was followed by several seconds of silence before the same woman who said disagree earlier in the meeting chimed in. You dont respond to constituents when they need to speak with you, said the woman, who declined to give her name to The Free LanceStar. She later added: Its not disrespectful to disagree with you, sir. Im glad to answer your questions, but I cant talk while someone else is talking, Wittman said. He said he has held multiple telephone town hall meetings and has talked with constituents throughout his 1st District, which includes much of the Fredericksburg region. He and other Republican congressmen have faced criticism in recent months for declining to hold public town hall meetings to address concerns about Republican President Donald Trump. Several attendees expressed support for a single-payer health care system, which Wittman and other Republicans strongly oppose. Fredericksburg resident Chuck Koch said some federal money for what he called the imperial military industrial complex force should go to health care instead. There is an easy way, and we can afford it, and we have to, and its Medicare for all, Koch said. Stafford resident Kristen Tuxbury echoed that comment, saying capitalism and health care do not mix. But Wittman was undeterred. While on the surface it sounds good, the question then becomes, how do you control the cost? he said. He also emphasized that Medicare does not cover all costs for patients. The federal health insurance program, for instance, would not pay for a certain treatment at a cancer certain in Montross, Wittman said. People whose lives were on the line said, Ill pay out of my pocket because Medicare will not cover this, he added. Another rural hospital was on the verge of closing because of inadequate Medicare reimbursements, he noted. Wittman said he thinks Congress should approve health care bills in what he called digestible chunks that people can understand. He opposed Trumps failed proposal to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. The meeting ended on a tense note, with Stafford resident Patricia Joshi asking why Wittman could not attend a health care forum later this month. The congressman replied that he had another commitment that day. Joshi said she learned about the meeting from Stafford Supervisor Laura Sellers, who posted the time and place on the Stafford Huddle Facebook page. We had some bottled up emotions, she told Dillard after the meeting. The working session between officials of Vietnam's Ministry of Public Security and Mozambique's Ministry of Interior (Photo: Vietnamese Embassy in Mozambique) The Vietnamese delegation, led by Director of the ministrys external relations department Major General Tran Van Tat, had a working session with officials of the Mozambique Ministry of Interior. They noted with satisfaction the progress in cooperation between the two public security forces, particularly in personnel training, information exchange, police logistics, and combating crimes, including transnational and environmental crimes. They agreed to assign the Interpol Vietnam Office and Mozambiques National Criminal Investigation Service to take charge of sharing information about crime combat. Major General Tat highly valued the trust and fruitful cooperation between the two sides. Meanwhile, local interior officials voiced their hope for stronger ties with Vietnam in personnel training, police logistics, criminal investigation, and consultative activities. To reinforce the legal framework for anti-crime cooperation, the two sides agreed to accelerate the negotiation on an agreement on mutual judicial assistance in criminal matters, an extradition agreement, and another on the transfer of convicted and sentenced persons. During the visit, the Mozambique Ministry of Interior, the Vietnamese Embassy in the country and the Wildlife Conservation Society held a seminar sharing experience in combating transnational organised crime and wildlife trafficking crime. The event drew a number of local police and law enforcement officers, along with representatives of foreign governments and international organisations./. Speaker Urban Ahlin welcomes Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan. (Photo: VGP) On April 6, Vietnamese NA Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan and a high-ranking delegation from the Vietnamese NA arrived in Swedens capital Stockholm, starting an official visit to the country at the invitation of Swedish Speaker of Parliament Urban Ahlin. According to NA Chairwoman Ngan, Vietnam and Sweden set up fine traditional and cooperative relations over the past nearly half of century. During the Vietnamese struggle for national liberation and reunification, the image of thousands of Swedish people on strike against the war in Vietnam was always in Vietnamese peoples hearts. Vietnamese leaders and people always remember the great assistance from Sweden, of which projects and constructions in Vietnam have become symbols for the friendship and precious assistance that Sweden puts aside for Vietnam, Chairwoman Ngan said. Congratulating Sweden on being elected as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council term 2017-2018, NA Chairwoman Ngan expressed her belief that Sweden would make active contributions to promote peace and security, prevent conflict and accelerate compliance with international law. She also suggested that Sweden should support Vietnams candidacy as a member of the UN Security Council term 2020-2021; promote the European Unions prompt signing and adopting the free trade agreement between Vietnam - EU; and promptly recognize Vietnam as a market economy to create new opportunities for the two countries businesses to expand cooperation and investment. She urged Sweden to share experience with the Vietnamese NA in law making and supervision of State apparatus. During the talks, Speaker Urban Ahlin said he was happy with the development of the two countries relationship, especially in economics, trade, investment, traffic and healthcare. The two sides agreed that they needed to promote trade and investment relations to meet the two countries potentials; work together to inspect and accelerate the implementation of agreements signed by the two Governments; support the cooperation among Swedish and Vietnamese localities; and cooperate in environmental protection. They added that the prompt signing of the free trade agreement between Vietnam and EU would contribute to increasing bilateral trade and benefit participants, including Vietnam and Sweden. On this occasion, the two sides discussed gender equality and womens role in society as well as corruption prevention. Speaker Urban Ahlin confirmed that Sweden would be willing to share experience with Vietnam in inspecting the operations of State agencies, building smart cities, protecting the environment, reducing gas emission, and boosting bilateral cooperation in research, education and training./. Mr. Lai Ngoc Doan speaking at the event (Photo: VNA) The event created a playground to help foreign students understand more about Vietnam and the role of Vietnam in APEC, as well as to encourage future Russian diplomats who have chosen Vietnam as their study major. Speaking at the opening ceremony, Director of the ASEAN Centre under MGIMO Viktor Sumsky noted that the event attracts not only students at MGIMO, but also those from other universities in Moscow. Mr. Lai Ngoc Doan, a representative of the Vietnamese Embassy in Russian Federation, congratulated MGIMO students on organizing a meaningful event. He also lauded MGIMO as one of the leading international relations training establishments in the world, where dozens of Vietnamese students are studying. Many alumni of the university now hold senior leadership positions, as well as strong professionals in Vietnams state agencies. Deputy Head of the Department of Politics, Associate Professor of Oriental Studies Anna Kireeva, said that Vietnam is a strategic partner and a country that plays an important role for Russia in the East Asian region. Today Russia is increasing its efforts to strengthen relations with all countries in Southeast Asia, in which Vietnam plays the role of a bridge. According to her, "Vietnam Day" at MGIMO was an exciting event, helping students from both countries better understand each other, evoking new interests, and these would be very important bricks to contribute to the firm foundation in the bilateral relationship. The Vietnam Day included a round-table seminar on Vietnams role as host of APEC Year 2017, a traditional souvenir fair, a photo exhibition APEC Year 2017 in Vietnam, a knowledge competition on Russia and Vietnam, and an introduction of Vietnamese food. With the success of three years of organization, this activity has truly created a corner of Vietnam in a multicultural environment like MGIMO, which contributes to strengthening the relations between Vietnam and Russia./. CULPEPER COUNTY officials should read the handwriting on the wall. Though that expression comes from the Bible, in this instant it applies to U.S. District Judge Norman Moon's opinion in the federal case over the county's rejection of a local Muslim group's plans to build a mosque. The opinion makes it clear, given the evidence so far presented, that county officials erred in denying the Islamic Center of Culpeper's application based on the fact that the new worship center would require a pump-and-haul sewage removal system. The system would be needed because the land along State Route 229 on which the center wants to build won't adequately perk for an on-site septic system. All involved, including center leaders and county officials handling the land transaction, were aware of that from the beginning. Probably because it wouldn't perk, the one-acre parcel cost only $15,000, a price the center could afford to pay with cash. That was important because the group is forbidden for religious reasons from borrowing money on which it would have to pay interest. If the pump-and-haul arrangement meant the center could proceed with construction, then center officials had no problem with it. Why would they? The system works like any septic system, except that it must be pumped out periodically before it reaches capacity. And there's an alarm that sounds well ahead of time to alert the owner. Culpeper officials claimed that they had rejected the permit application because the pump-and-haul process would present a threat to public health. Never mind that the county granted all 26 such permit applications it had been presented from 1992 to 2016. Never mind that the vote on the Islamic Center's request was delayed in order to obtain a legal review, something that had never been needed before. Indeed, the judge noted, the county had never given such intense scrutiny to these applications. In his opinion, Judge Moon states clearly that Culpeper's record of routinely approving such pump-and-haul applications made its denial of this one stand out as baseless and arbitrary. Weave in the anti-Muslim statements made by public hearing attendees to the Board of Supervisors prior to its 43 vote to deny the application, and the judge said he can reach no other conclusion: The denial was intended to prevent the center from exercising its right to freedom of religion, and was the result of "religious hostility," as he put it. Judge Moon is simply applying the law to a situation that was blatant and obvious enough from the beginning that the U.S. Justice Department last December sued the county over its action. The case is scheduled to go to trial in January 2018. At a recent hearing before Judge Moon in Charlottesville, both sidesthe Culpeper supervisors and federal prosecutorsindicated that they would look at negotiating a settlement. Confidential talks to reach a deal were scheduled this week. From the supervisors point of view, a settlement should be priority No. 1. There is little chance of victory here, and the longer they attempt to defend their indefensible position, the more expensive the toll of legal costs will be on Culpeper County taxpayers. Culpeper officials should settle now and approve the center's application as soon as reasonably possible. Last month, the Islamic Center filed its own lawsuit against the county. The parties should work together to resolve this suit, perhaps with financial consideration for time lost on account of this embarrassing episode. There is a lesson here for government at all levels, across the country. There is no excuse for elected leaders to take any action based on this sort of prejudice. When such ugliness spews from the mouths of their constituents, it is up to these leaders to reject it, and to offer up a lesson on constitutional rights, and what it means to be an American. Dr. Tim Powell, a truly Good Samaritan A man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho fell among robbers. Now it happened that Drs. Dave Brat and Rob Wittman (not really doctors) were going that way. Approaching the wounded man, they noted that he had neither gold, nor silver, nor health insurance, and so passed by on the other side. Virginia lawmakers also came that way. They had compassion for the man, but afraid that Caesar would eventually renege on his promise to pay the province for health care for the poor and destitute, especially if their party of Pharisees were to gain all the levers of government, they too passed by, on the other side. Finally, Dr. Tim Powell (the kind of doctor the man really needed) came along, had pity on the man, and felt called to spend at least two days wages to care for him. The good doctor does so perhaps because of his knowledge of Genesis, and the first question man asks of God: Am I my brothers keeper? A recent letter writer reflects the concerns of the Pharisees, that medical care for all Americans cannot be a right because it would cost too much. Dr. Powell seems motivated by other concerns. Which man, do you suppose, proved neighbor to the man who fell among thieves? Don Bley Spotsylvania Themed Hanoi - Destination of Vietnamese tourism, the fair showed businesses support for Hanois efforts to promote tourism as its key economy, said Vu The Binh, Vice Chairman of the Vietnam Tourism Association, Chairman of the Vietnam Society of Travel Agents (VISTA) and head of the organising board. He added that most of products at the event focus on promoting tourism of the capital city, helping to attract more tourists to Hanoi. The event saw the participation of over 650 enterprises and tourism agencies from 43 cities and provinces of Vietnam and 25 countries and territories around the world. Besides traditional markets such as Japan, the Republic of Korea, Western Europe and ASEAN, the fair welcomed travel firms from the US Tourism Association. US travel enterprises will have a meeting with Vietnamese travel companies and sign a cooperation deal with the Vietnam Tourism Association. The deal is expected to help Vietnamese travel companies attract more American tourists as well as open up more opportunities for Vietnamese to travel to the US. Additionally, there will be more than 150,000 low-cost air tickets and 15,000 package tours at reasonable prices offered by travel companies and airlines at the fair./ Formula 1 will not be returning to Sepang after this year's Malaysian Grand Prix, F1 commercial boss Sean Bratches has announced. The race has been on the calendar since 1998, and was one of the first exotic fly-away events, and a lucrative one at that, initiated under the Bernie Ecclestone era. But Malaysia had struggled in recent years with its attendance figures and suffered by the arrival of the very popular Singapore Grand Prix which made its debut in 2008. "It's always sad to say goodbye to a member of the Formula 1 family," Bratches said. "Over nearly two decades, the Malaysian Formula 1 fans have proven themselves to be some of the sport's most passionate supporters. "I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the Sepang International Circuit for their hospitality and professionalism over the years, and their ongoing commitment to motorsport." Grand Prix racing will still include a 21-race schedule next season, with Germany and France both making a welcome return to the calendar. Gallery: All the pics from Friday's action in China Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter Story Highlights Eighteen EU countries more disaffected, short on hope than U.S. Among EU countries, France high on both indicators Greece tops ranking on both disaffected and short on hope WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Ahead of President Donald Trump's election in the U.S., slightly more than one in four Americans (26%) lacked confidence in their national government and were discouraged about their own future -- a condition that a new Gallup analysis suggests may be useful in understanding the recent rise of populism in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world. In a global context, this condition was present and higher than the percentage in the U.S. in 18 out of 27 countries in the European Union, which is currently experiencing its own wave of populism. Disaffected and Discouraged Citizens in the EU and U.S., 2016 No Confidence in National Government (Disaffected) Future Life Poorly Viewed Relative to Current Life (Discouraged) Disaffected and Discouraged % % % Greece 81 67 54 Italy 75 62 46 Slovenia 75 60 45 France 70 64 43 Romania 76 51 40 Bulgaria 67 53 36 Spain 69 52 34 Belgium 57 62 34 Hungary 55 58 33 United Kingdom 56 57 32 Austria 55 56 31 Slovakia 51 61 31 Estonia 57 51 29 Finland 48 60 28 Netherlands 42 67 28 Lithuania 65 44 28 Czech Republic 45 60 27 Germany 43 60 27 United States 69 38 26 Portugal 57 44 25 Denmark 53 51 25 Cyprus 60 39 23 Poland 49 47 23 Sweden 49 50 23 Luxembourg 30 67 22 Ireland 38 58 21 Latvia 57 38 21 Malta 37 45 17 Note: Croatia was not included in the current ranking because of a lack of available data for 2016. Gallup World Poll Following the groundswell of support for anti-establishment candidates in numerous countries worldwide, many analysts want to understand and predict the success of populist movements. A team of Gallup analysts is analyzing various measures from its global and domestic survey research with the goal of capturing the scope of potential populist support among different populations. Two of the measures the team is looking at closely are people's confidence in their national government and people's ratings of their lives in five years relative to their ratings of their current lives. Gallup's initial analysis reveals that people in countries with recent populist movements tend to have a combination of low trust in government and low or static expectations for their future lives. (Gallup measures life evaluations by asking respondents to rate their current and future lives on a ladder scale based on the Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale.) Gallup terms those who lack confidence in their national government as "disaffected" and those who rate their lives on the same footing or worse in relation to their current lives as "discouraged." The analysis did not include people who give both their current and future lives the best possible rating in this discouraged category. Europe No Stranger to Populist Movements Europe has experienced several populist movements on the ideological left and right in the past decade. In 2010, European Council President Herman Van Rompuy identified populism as one of the biggest dangers facing Europe. Years later, Europe is facing political tests such as Brexit and a row of crucial elections in 2017: presidential and parliamentary elections in France and Germany, respectively; general elections in the Czech Republic; presidential elections in Slovenia; and local elections in the UK, where Brexit, rather than local issues, is expected to take precedence. The Netherlands just conducted a general election in which the populist Party for Freedom came in second. Results were met with relief from mainstream political parties across Europe, but experts also cautioned that the highly divisive campaign might make it difficult to govern. Three of the countries with imminent elections -- France, the UK and Slovenia -- rank in the top 10 EU countries with the highest percentage of disaffected and discouraged residents. Germany and the Netherlands both rank in the lower tier of EU countries, with 27% of Germans and 28% of Dutch residents expressing these feelings. In all of the seven EU countries with 2017 elections, the magnitude of these sentiments shows little change between 2015 and 2016. Disaffected and Discouraged Citizens in EU Countries With 2017 Elections Disaffected and Discouraged (2015) Disaffected and Discouraged (2016) Change % % pct. pts. France 44 43 -1 Germany 22 27 5 Netherlands 25 28 3 United Kingdom 26 32 6 Slovenia 43 45 2 Czech Republic 29 27 -2 Bulgaria 38 36 -2 Gallup World Poll Results from the disaffected-and-discouraged indicator line up well with actual electoral outcomes. In a comparison of seven major European countries, those that ranked high on the indicator also ranked high on electoral support for populist parties. Rank Comparison With Recent Election Results in Seven Major EU Countries Discouraged and Disaffected Rank* Electoral Support for Populism Rank Greece 1 1 Italy 2 2 France 2 2 Spain 3 3 United Kingdom 3 4 Germany 4 5 Netherlands 4 4 *Countries that rank within five percentage points of each other are assigned the same rank because the differences are statistically small. Gallup World Poll Gallup used results from the most recent national or European election (Germany and France). European elections (electing members of the European Parliament) should not be considered fully equivalent to national ones as they have key differences (e.g., turnout levels). However, the proportion of support won by populist parties is often a reliable indicator of domestic discontent against the political establishment. The UK Independence Party won 26.7% of the national vote in the 2014 election to the European Parliament -- its best electoral performance ever, and the first time since 1910 when one of Britain's two major parties did not win a UK-wide election. Two years later, Britain narrowly voted to exit the EU. Percentage of Disaffected, Discouraged Americans Up Over Past Decade Trump's inaugural address included many of the elements of classic populist rhetoric. It introduced a "new way" of doing politics: a direct Twitter-based connection between the people and himself -- without media outlets, political parties or other institutions serving as intermediaries. At least some of the preconditions for the populist wave were, however, in place much earlier than 2016. An initial surge in disaffected and discouraged citizens in 2007 and 2008 points to the possibility that the Great Recession triggered a social phenomenon that has not yet subsided. President Barack Obama's election resulted in a temporary reprieve, as the majority of residents expressed optimism about the future. The disaffected and discouraged indicator began climbing again in 2009, reaching its peak of 28% in 2011, and then again in 2015. Implications Preliminary findings suggest that growing deficits of hope and trust are more likely to be prevalent in countries experiencing a rise in populism support. A recent analysis by the Economist Intelligence Unit similarly finds that distrust in major institutions has been a major factor in the rise of populism in Europe and North America. Gallup will further test additional indicators of populism and anti-establishment attitudes using available data from all world regions. Different regions may have contextual differences that analysts will further explore to develop a predictive model of populism support adaptable to country contexts. Future publications in the populism series will report such findings. Jesus Rios, Mathilde Lugger, Imen Berrached and David Llanos contributed to the analysis for this article. The data in this article are available in Gallup Analytics. Story Highlights Republicans and Democrats strongly endorse family leave, infrastructure Majorities of Americans also agree with middle-class tax cuts, school choice More disagree than agree with border wall proposal, cutting federal regulations WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Americans are far more likely to agree than disagree with President Donald Trump's proposals to require companies to provide family leave for parents of a newborn and to spend $1 trillion on infrastructure. A majority also agree with his proposal to significantly cut income taxes for the middle class and to provide federal funding for school-choice programs. At the same time, Americans disagree more than agree with Trump's proposals to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, to cut federal regulations, to freeze federal civilian hiring and to eliminate funding for international organizations that provide abortions. These results are based on a March 9-29 Gallup poll, which asked Americans if they agreed, disagreed or didn't know enough to have an opinion about 15 actions that Trump has taken or proposed. Complete results and question wording are at the bottom of this article. A key but not unexpected finding is the vast partisan gulf in opinions about most of the proposals. Republicans and independents who lean Republican are more likely to agree than disagree with all 15 proposals, although to varying degrees. Democrats and Democratic leaners are more likely to disagree than agree with all but four of the proposals. Americans Show Net Agreement With Four Trump Proposals Americans overall show net agreement with four of the proposals tested, which constitute the clear winners for Trump's nascent administration. Requiring companies to provide family leave to parents after the birth of a child is highly popular with Americans. This is one of only two proposals with majority net agreement among Democrats, and the only proposal that is more popular with Democrats than with Republicans. Trump included a family leave proposal in his January address to Congress. Democratic leaders have since introduced a family leave bill in the Senate and have challenged Trump to support it, but he has not recently included it as one of his major policy emphases. There is also little disagreement from Americans about spending $1 trillion on infrastructure, the other proposal that finds overall net majority support. Trump is aware of this strong support, telling The New York Times this week that "Infrastructure is so popular that I might want to use it for another bill," indicating that he might leverage it to help pass healthcare or tax reform. The other two Trump proposals that generate more agreement than disagreement from Americans are cutting taxes for the middle class and providing federal funding for school-choice programs that allow students to attend any private or public school. Republicans strongly support both of these proposals, and Democrats are more likely to agree than disagree with them, although by slim margins. Trump often called for middle-class tax cuts during his campaign, and recently Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has reiterated the administration's support for the idea. The Trump administration team is attempting to move forward on tax reform, but it is not clear when such legislation will be finalized in Congress. Trump's 2018 budget proposal included $1.4 billion for school-choice programs, a policy strongly advocated by Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. Trump Actions/Proposals With Net Agreement National adults net agreement* Republicans/Leaners net agreement* Democrats/Leaners net agreement* pct. pts. pct. pts. pct. pts. Require companies to provide family leave for parents after the birth of a child 71 62 79 Enact a $1 trillion program to improve U.S. infrastructure, such as roads, bridges and tunnels 64 78 54 Significantly cut federal income taxes for the middle class 35 70 12 Provide federal funding for school-choice programs that allow students to attend any private or public school 33 60 8 *% agreeing minus % disagreeing Gallup, March 9-29, 2017 Mixed Views of Seven Proposals Americans overall have generally mixed sentiments about seven other proposals tested, all of which generate significant support from Republicans but net disagreement among Democrats. Two of these are the controversial Trump executive orders to impose a 90-day ban on issuing new U.S. travel visas for citizens of six predominantly Muslim nations, and to stop all refugee resettlement in the U.S. for 120 days. Americans are slightly more likely to disagree than agree with these, reflecting the mix between strong Republican agreement and strong Democratic disagreement. Trump's executive order implementing these policies is currently on hold as a result of a ruling from a federal judge in Hawaii. Americans break even in their views of the proposal to replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) with a new healthcare plan, fueled by the biggest partisan gap of any of the 15 measures tested. Republicans strongly agree with the idea, while Democrats strongly disagree. Trump and the Republicans failed to agree on a replacement plan late last month, and efforts to move forward are now on hold until after Congress' forthcoming Easter break. Americans are also mixed in their agreement with the proposal to spend $54 billion more on defense, to authorize construction of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, and to withdraw from participation in the Trans-Pacific trade Partnership. Trump has included the defense spending increase in his budget proposal and has issued orders greenlighting the pipelines and withdrawing U.S. participation from the TPP. Americans tilt slightly more negative than positive about Trump's promise to reduce the corporate income tax rate, an effort that has become bogged down in negotiations and planning with Republican leaders in Congress to pass broad tax reform. Trump Actions/Proposals on Which Americans Are Divided National adults net agreement* Republicans/Leaners net agreement* Democrats/Leaners net agreement* pct. pts. pct. pts. pct. pts. Increase military spending by $54 billion 5 70 -46 Replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, with a new healthcare plan 0 72 -62 Authorize construction of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines -3 53 -47 End U.S. participation in the Trans-Pacific trade Partnership or TPP -3 29 -25 Reduce the corporate income tax rate -5 43 -46 Stop all refugee resettlement in the U.S. for 120 days -6 56 -56 Impose a 90-day ban on issuing new U.S. travel visas for citizens of six Muslim-majority nations -7 64 -62 *% agreeing minus % disagreeing Gallup, March 9-29, 2017 Net Disagreement With Four Proposals Significantly more Americans disagree than agree with four of Trump's proposals, resulting from strong disagreement among Democrats and relatively tepid agreement among Republicans. Americans give their lowest overall net agreement of any of the 15 actions tested to the proposal to begin the construction of a wall between the U.S. and Mexico. Democrats evaluate this proposal more negatively than any other, and the proposal scores well below average among Republicans. Trump has signed an executive order authorizing the beginning phases of the construction of a wall, although his administration has admitted that it is unlikely that a physical wall will be built along the entire 2,000-mile border. Americans also have net-negative views of Trump executive orders that froze most civilian hiring by the federal government and that required that two federal regulations be eliminated for every new regulation proposed. They also show net disagreement with the executive order that eliminated U.S. funding for international organizations that provide abortions. Trump Actions/Proposals With Net Disagreement National adults net agreement* Republicans/Leaners net agreement* Democrats/Leaners net agreement* pct. pts. pct. pts. pct. pts. Put a hiring freeze on most civilian jobs in the federal government -13 36 -51 Eliminate U.S. funding for international organizations that promote or provide abortions -18 43 -59 Require that for every new federal government regulation put in place, two existing regulations must be eliminated -19 35 -58 Begin the construction of a wall between the U.S. and Mexico -20 46 -73 *% agreeing minus % disagreeing Gallup, March 9-29, 2017 Implications The implications of these measures of public opinion about a number of Trump's actions and proposals depend on the president's philosophical position on the role of the presidency. To the degree that Trump believes he should represent the wishes and desires of all Americans, he would focus on pushing through an infrastructure bill, cutting middle-class taxes, providing family leave and allocating federal funds for school-choice programs. He would pull back from his promises to build a wall, his efforts to streamline federal government and vetting international organizations based on their funding of abortion. If Trump views himself as primarily representing Republicans, then he is essentially on target with all of his proposals, particularly passing an infrastructure bill, repealing the ACA, spending more on the military and cutting taxes for the middle class. Practically speaking, Trump has been able to move forward on a number of the proposals using executive orders, bypassing the need to seek bipartisan agreement or agreement within the factions of his own party. But for his major proposals to replace the ACA, reduce taxes on the middle class and businesses, and increase infrastructure spending, Trump needs congressional legislation. As the effort to come up with a new healthcare bill has shown, arriving at a consensus on such legislation presents a significant challenge that the president will need to continue addressing in the weeks and months ahead if he is to see these promises come to fruition. Survey Methods Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted March 9-29, 2017, with a random sample of 1,526 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is 3 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. For results based on the total sample of 632 Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, the margin of sampling error is 5 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. For results based on the total sample of 710 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, the margin of sampling error is 5 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. All reported margins of sampling error include computed design effects for weighting. Each sample of national adults includes a minimum quota of 70% cellphone respondents and 30% landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas by time zone within region. Landline and cellular telephone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods. View survey methodology, complete question responses and trends. Learn more about how the Gallup Poll Social Series works. Americans' Views of President Trump's Proposals and Actions Agree Disagree No opinion % % % Require companies to provide family leave for parents after the birth of a child 81 10 9 Enact a $1 trillion program to improve U.S. infrastructure, such as roads, bridges and tunnels 76 12 12 Significantly cut federal income taxes for the middle class 61 26 13 Provide federal funding for school-choice programs that allow students to attend any private or public school 59 26 14 Increase military spending by $54 billion 47 42 11 Replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, with a new healthcare plan 44 44 12 Impose a 90-day ban on issuing new U.S. travel visas for citizens of six Muslim-majority nations 40 47 13 Stop all refugee resettlement in the U.S. for 120 days 40 46 14 Reduce the corporate income tax rate 38 43 19 Begin the construction of a wall between the U.S. and Mexico 36 56 7 Authorize construction of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines 36 39 25 Eliminate U.S. funding for international organizations that promote or provide abortions 35 53 12 Put a hiring freeze on most civilian jobs in the federal government 33 46 20 Require that for every new federal government regulation put in place, two existing regulations must be eliminated 27 46 27 End U.S. participation in the Trans-Pacific trade Partnership or TPP 27 30 43 Each item asked of a randomly selected subsample of approximately 800 respondents; margin of error 4 pct. pts. Gallup, March 9-29, 2017 Republicans' Views of President Trump's Proposals and Actions Agree Disagree No opinion % % % Require companies to provide family leave for parents after the birth of a child 76 14 10 Enact a $1 trillion program to improve U.S. infrastructure, such as roads, bridges and tunnels 85 7 8 Significantly cut federal income taxes for the middle class 79 9 12 Provide federal funding for school-choice programs that allow students to attend any private or public school 74 14 12 Increase military spending by $54 billion 81 11 8 Replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, with a new healthcare plan 81 9 10 Impose a 90-day ban on issuing new U.S. travel visas for citizens of six Muslim-majority nations 76 12 12 Stop all refugee resettlement in the U.S. for 120 days 71 15 14 Reduce the corporate income tax rate 63 20 17 Begin the construction of a wall between the U.S. and Mexico 68 22 10 Authorize construction of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines 66 13 21 Eliminate U.S. funding for international organizations that promote or provide abortions 65 22 13 Put a hiring freeze on most civilian jobs in the federal government 58 22 20 Require that for every new federal government regulation put in place, two existing regulations must be eliminated 54 19 27 End U.S. participation in the Trans-Pacific trade Partnership or TPP 43 14 43 Each item asked of a randomly selected subsample of approximately 800 respondents; margin of error 4 pct. pts. Gallup, March 9-29, 2017 Readers, we need your help to prove a merry Christmas for victims of domestic violence. Benton Countys budget for the next two years could rise by nearly $24 million over the previous biennium. On Monday, Benton County budget manager Pat Cochran will propose a $242.7 million budget for 2017-19, up 10.8 percent from an adjusted $219 million for 2015-17. The budget proposal is based on funding requests from county department heads and outside agencies balanced against expected revenues. The proposal includes $220.2 million in expenditures, up 11.6 percent from $197.4 million in the last biennium, and $22.5 million in reserves, up 4 percent from $21.6 million. It also includes a slight increase in the county work force, from 471.01 full-time-equivalent positions to 476.79 FTE. We have a budget that is balanced, Cochran said. We have a budget that in general funds is very close to balancing revenues and expenses. Mondays budget presentation, scheduled for 6 p.m., will be the first in a series of meetings of the Benton County Budget Committee. All the meetings are open to the public and will be held at the Sunset Building, 4077 SW Research Way in Corvallis. (See full meeting schedule on Page A2.) The Budget Committee is composed of the three county commissioners and three appointed citizens: David Dowrie, Phyllis Lee and Curtis Wright. The committee is scheduled to adopt a proposed budget and maximum property tax rate on May 22 or 23. County Commissioners Anne Schuster, Xan Augerot and Annabelle Jaramillo will then vote to formally approve the budget. A link to the complete budget proposal will be available starting Monday on the homepage of the countys website, www.co.benton.or.us. The county will have some extra money to work with in its general fund, the portion of the budget that comes primarily from property taxes and pays for discretionary spending. The general funds unrestricted balance will be $13.8 million for 2017-19, up 10.6 percent from about $12.5 million in 2015-17. The main reason for that increase is revenue from a number of new construction projects, most notably The Retreat, a 1,000-bedroom student housing complex near Oregon State University, and a number of smaller off-campus developments that cater to students. The recovering real estate market also contributed to an increase in real market value, Cochran said, generating more revenue and lifting some properties out of compression, allowing the county to capture up to 3 percent of that increased value in cases where assessments had been frozen by flat real estate values. I expect this to be another good biennium in terms of real market value growth, Cochran said. But, looking out, its probably going to slow down somewhat. The county also is anticipating a one-time increase of $1.1 million in landfill surcharge revenue from an extra half-million tons of garbage coming our way over the next year from Metro, the Portland-area regional government, which is experiencing a short-term capacity crunch. All told, the county is anticipating 10.8 percent growth in total resources for the biennium, enabling some modest hiring increases. The biggest of those by far is slated to come in the main county health clinic, which is expected to add the equivalent of 9.7 full-time positions over the previous biennium. The need is fueled in part by increasing demand for services over the last few years from an expanded Medicaid population, which is also pumping more revenue into the clinic. The Public Works Department is expected to add about 1.23 FTE, the fairgrounds 1.0, health management services 1.13, mental health 0.89 and the District Attorneys Office 0.75, while a few departments will see smaller increases. Others will see a net loss in personnel, including just under 4 FTE from the Sweet Home and Lebanon clinics (which are operated by Benton County), 2.15 from Public Health and 1 from the Juvenile Department. Over the course of the budgeting process, various county departments will be making their case for adding staff, citing a growing workload and other factors. But Cochran said it will be tough for the county to staff up any further, in large part because of sharp increases in benefits costs specifically for health insurance and Public Employee Retirement System payments. Its going to be a continuing challenge to add personnel because of what were looking at for PERS and health insurance, Cochran said. As usual, there are plenty of uncertainties about how much funding support to expect from the state, which is facing a $1.6 billion budget shortfall. And with a new administration in Washington, D.C., federal funding is also difficult to predict. The bad news is we dont know what all the state funding issues are, Cochran said. And who knows whats going to happen at the federal level. One area of uncertainty looms particularly large: The possibility of losing federal dollars if President Donald Trump carries through on his promise to withhold funding from sanctuary communities. Benton County which issued a declaration of sanctuary for immigrants in December received about $5.5 million in federal grants for the 2015-16 fiscal year, according to Cochran. That does not include the countys largest federal funding stream Medicaid payments or other payments such as pass-through funding for transportation projects. Police are investigating recent ATM skimming incidents at Oregon State Credit Union branches in Corvallis, Philomath and Dallas in which account information was stolen from customers. All of the incidents have occurred in the last 45 days. The last reported incident took place March 29. Were not sure how much money was lost yet. Were still getting a handle on that, said Mike Corwin, Oregon State Credit Union assistant vice president of public relations and business development. Since its part of a crime, were leaving that to the authorities and police. Philomath Chief of Police Ken Rueben couldnt give any exact numbers, but as of Thursday, more than 350 customers had seen funds withdrawn from their accounts combined at the four ATMs that were hit in Corvallis, Philomath and Dallas. Rueben said the number could surpass 500. Philomath police took reports from about five victims, Rueben said, when it became clear that something was dramatically wrong. At that point, the police told victims to check in first with the credit union. The credit union first saw skimming activity back on Feb. 11-12 at its Ninth Street branch in Corvallis. Skimming followed at the Philomath branch March 17-18 and then at the Dallas branch later on March 18. The most recent activity was detected March 29 at the Oregon State University branch on 25th Street. Corwin said less than 1 percent of the credit unions more than 100,000 customers have been impacted. Were trying to contact customers on a one-by-one basis, making phone calls to each member and working with them on an individual basis to make sure their funds are safe, so were being proactive about it, he said. Skimming is a process thieves use to steal debit card information while a customer completes an ATM transaction. Hidden electronic devices store or transmit personal identification numbers and other information and the thieves then take those details, create their own cards and make ATM withdrawals. The devices can look so real that people stopping by for quick access to their cash probably would not notice them. One of the Philomath victims saw $1,500 disappear over a two- to three-day period. Corwin said criminals often install skimming devices for only a short period of time to avoid detection, which he said appears to be the case in the recent incidents. He said card skimming is an industrywide issue and not unique to one type of ATM. Officials are able to figure out which customers may have been affected through the security system during the times when the skimmer was known to have been on an ATM. I think weve got a pretty good handle on it and were doing all we can to cooperate with Corvallis and Philomath law enforcement, Corwin said. Our first priority is the membership and well be making sure we take care of them first. Corwin said Oregon State Credit Union uses a third-party security company along with its own staff to monitor ATMs. In addition, fraud-monitoring services can quickly spot potential problems when it comes to the accounts of customers. Surveillance videos revealed the skimming devices and that footage has been shared with investigators. Corwin said that while the credit unions ATMs have been cleared of any devices and are safe to use, credit union management and law enforcement officials are urging people to use caution, monitor their accounts and report suspicious activity. First and foremost, our priority is with our members. They are protected and we will work toward a timely and efficient recovery of their involved funds, Oregon State Credit Union Chief Operating Officer Rhonda Heile-Brown said in a press release. As much as any financial institution goes the extra mile to prevent fraud, all of us need to stay diligent and keep track of our account balances. Heile-Brown said that if potential fraud is identified, people should contact one of the credit unions branches or call the 24-hour line at 800-732-0173 as soon as possible. ROSE (roz) n. One of the most beautiful of all flowers, a symbol of fragrance and loveliness. Often given as a sign of appreciation. RASPBERRY (razbere) n. A sharp, scornful comment, criticism or rebuke; a derisive, splatting noise, often called the Bronx cheer. We hereby deliver: ROSES to the four winners of the Golden Apple Award, presented every year by the Corvallis Public Schools Foundation to outstanding teachers and school staff members. Honored this year were Sheila Mulligan, a math teacher at Cheldelin Middle School; Kathee Kunke, operations assistant at College Hill High School; Sarah Thompson at Lincoln Elementary School; and Amanda Filloy Sharp at Corvallis High School. The foundation used to present these awards, supported by the Pastega Family Foundation, at a back-to-school event just before the start of the school year. For the last couple of years, however, the awards have been presented at surprise assemblies at each of the winner's schools. It's made for a nice change. ROSES (or tulips, in this case) to the newest piece of public art on the Oregon State University campus. "Tulips for Tebeau," by Portland sculptor Pete Beeman, was recently installed outside Tebeau Hall. The work is meant to honor William Tebeau, the first African-American male to graduate from OSU. Like many of Beeman's works, the 32-foot-tall sculpture is meant to be interactive: It features a hand-turned crank that allows users to open or close the petals at the top of the work. (If Beeman's work sounds familiar, it might be because he had an exhibit in 2007 at what is now The Arts Center in Corvallis.) The fun and whimsical piece is a fine addition to OSU's collection of public art. To see a photo of the piece, check out the online version of Roses. RASPBERRIES to the unnamed protester who did something remarkably dopey (and potentially quite dangerous) at a meeting this week of the Portland City Council. That council has been the target of disruptive protests lately, so it was surprising that Wednesday's meeting was going relatively smoothly. That is, until a protester with one hand in his jacket pocket rapidly approached the dais and pulled out of his jacket a can of Pepsi, which he presented to Mayor Ted Wheeler. What a funny stunt! Somehow, however, Wheeler was not amused: "Not a good move," he told the protester and then reminded him that making a move like that with a hand in a pocket seemed like a good way to get into a clash with police, with potentially disastrous results. The Pepsi, of course, was a reference to an equally dopey Pepsi commercial in which Kendall Jenner, who apparently is famous for being famous, presents a can of Pepsi to a police officer during a protest. Pepsi has since pulled the ad. RASPBERRIES to those Oregon motels who have gone back on deals they struck months ago with tourists coming to the state to view Aug. 21's solar eclipse. Consumers have complained about hotels canceling reservations they made long ago, claiming rebranding or new ownership, then charging much higher rates for rebooking. What's happening, of course, is that some hotel owners didn't understand the rush of tourists the eclipse would bring to the area until they had booked all their rooms. At that point, an honest hotel owner might have thought, "Well, I could have gotten more for my rooms, but at least I'm full." Unscrupulous hotel owners apparently had a different thought: "If I cancel all these reservations, even though they were made in good faith, I could rent these rooms for $600 or more. Now, what sort of excuse can I generate to cancel the reservations?" It doesn't seem likely that those hotel owners will get their comeuppance: A spokeswoman for the state attorney general said that the hotels could face a $25,000 fine, but probably wouldn't because the problem appears to be widespread. (mm) Local police are investigating a recent ATM skimming incident at the Oregon State Credit Union branch in Philomath in which account information was stolen from customers. The credit union also had skimming incidents at two ATMs in Corvallis and another in Dallas all in the past 45 days and in Philomath, within the past two weeks. Were not sure how much money was lost yet. Were still getting a handle on that, said Mike Corwin, Oregon State Credit Union assistant vice president of public relations and business development. Since its part of a crime, were leaving that to the authorities and police. Philomath Chief of Police Ken Rueben couldnt give any exact numbers but as of Thursday, more than 350 customers had seen funds withdrawn from their accounts combined at the four ATMs that were hit in Corvallis, Philomath and Dallas. Rueben said that number could surpass 500. Philomath Police took reports from about five victims, Rueben said, when it became clear that something was dramatically wrong. At that point, the police told victims to check in first with the credit union. The credit union first saw skimming activity back on Feb. 11-12 at its Ninth Street branch in Corvallis. Skimming followed at the Philomath branch March 17-18 and then at the Dallas branch later on March 18. The most recent activity was detected March 29 at the Oregon State University branch on 25th Street. Corwin said less than 1 percent of the credit unions 100,000-plus customers have been impacted. Were trying to contact customers on a one-by-one basis, making phone calls to each member and working with them on an individual basis to make sure their funds are safe, so were being proactive about it, he said. Skimming is a process thieves use to steal debit card information while a customer completes an ATM transaction. Hidden electronic devices store or transmit personal identification numbers and other information and the thieves will then take those details, create their own cards and make ATM withdrawals. The devices can look so real that those stopping by for quick access to their cash probably would not notice. One of the Philomath victims saw $1,500 disappear over a two- to three-day period. Corwin said criminals often install skimming devices for only a short period of time to avoid detection, which he said appears to be the case in the recent incidents. He said card skimming is an industrywide issue and not unique to one type of ATM. It has become prevalent at many financial institutions in recent years. Officials are able to figure out which customers may have been affected through the security system during the timeframe when the skimmer was known to have been on an ATM. I think weve got a pretty good handle on it and were doing all we can to cooperate with Corvallis and Philomath law enforcement, Corwin said. Our first priority is the membership and well be making sure we take care of them first. Corwin said Oregon State Credit Union utilizes a third-party security company along with its own staff to monitor ATMs. In addition, there are fraud monitoring services that can quickly spot potential problems when it comes to the accounts of their customers. Surveillance videos revealed the skimming devices and that footage has been shared with the investigators. Corwin said that while the credit unions ATMs have been cleared of any devices and are safe to use, credit union management and law enforcement officials are urging people to use caution, monitor their accounts and report suspicious activity. First and foremost, our priority is with our members. They are protected and we will work toward a timely and efficient recovery of their involved funds, Oregon State Credit Union Chief Operating Officer Rhonda Heile-Brown said through a press release. As much as any financial institution goes the extra mile to prevent fraud, all of us need to stay diligent and keep track of our account balances. Heile-Brown said that if potential fraud is identified, contact one of the credit unions branches or call the 24-hour line at 1-800-732-0173 as soon as possible. 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. Attack in the Siegaue : Rapist used a branch saw Bonn After an extensive police search, the weapon used in the attack on the young couple in the Siegaue has been found. It was stolen from near Bonn north bridge. Teilen Teilen Weiterleiten Weiterleiten Tweeten Tweeten Weiterleiten Weiterleiten Drucken Police have found the weapon used in Saturday nights attack on a couple camping in the Siegaue. The perpetrator is still on the run. Police spokesman Robert Scholten said it was a branch saw of about 50 centimetres in length. It had been described by the couple as a machete-like knife. Late yesterday afternoon, police also received information about four blankets, of which photos had been released. They and the knife had been stolen late on Saturday evening from the area close to the Bonn north bridge. The items were in a rucksack and a duffel bag belonging to a 22-year-old man. A barbeque party was taking place at the time below the north bridge in the Siegaue. Police had found the four blankets at the location of the incident on Sunday. The criminal police are assuming the perpetrator may still be in possession of the duffel bag shown on the photo and the rucksack. It is manufactured by Deuter, model Giga Office Pro, is mainly black and grey with very small reflectors and two bottle holders on the side and has a plastic cord. Police are asking anyone who has seen a person with the duffel bag or rucksack in the last few days to contact them. They also want those attending the barbeque party to contact them. Police meticulously combed the area in the Siegaue near the Autobahn 565 on Thursday morning. They were supported by a team in a helicopter. We dont know exactly where the perpetrator went and also still don't know whether he planned the incident in advance, said Scholten. Bonn police have now received around 180 tip-offs. According to GA information, the 23-year-old and her 26-year-old boyfriend, both students from Baden-Wurrtemberg, had met up with friends in the region. On Saturday evening they decided to stay overnight in a tent on a field in the Siegaue. Around 12.30am, the perpetrator, who was described as dark-skinned, apparently threatened them with the branch saw. He forced the woman out of the tent and raped her. An opportunity for foodies and beer lovers to get lost in a world of food and drink from a hand-selected range of food trucks and breweries from around New Zealand. Ukraine in January-March 2017 exported electricity for $68.12 million, including $19.355 million in March alone. According to the State Fiscal Service, electricity delivered to Hungary amounted to $55.218 million in January-March 2017, to Poland to $11.101 million, and Romania to $1.286 and other countries - $516,000. Thus, in money terms exports of Ukrainian electricity in January-March 2017 grew by 51.2% compared to January-March 2016 ($45.053 million). In addition, in January-March 2017 Ukraine imported power worth $619,000 ($596,000 from Russia, $14,000 from Belarus and $9,000 from Moldova). As reported, Ukraine in 2011 exported electricity for $399.963 million, in 2012 for $574.819 million, in 2013 for $580.195 million, in 2014 for $487.185 million, and in 2015 for $150.056 million and in 2016 - $152.063 million. 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. Ukrainians sell $191 mln more than they buy in March NBU Ukrainians in March 2017 bought currency worth $265 million from banks, while sold forex worth $456.1 million, the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) said on its website. According to his data, in comparison with February of this year, the volume of currency purchase increased by 41.9%, sales by 67.1%, and in comparison with March of the past year by 6.7 times and by 52.2% respectively. The NBU noted Ukrainians last month bought U.S. dollars for $206.4 million, and sold for $335.9 million. In January-March 2017, Ukrainians sold $330.4 million more than bought, including $181.1 million more U.S. dollars. In April the NBU increased the upper limits for transactions with cash foreign currency a day from UAH 12,000 to UAH 150,000. The regulator said that on the interbank market in March trading grew by 19.4% compared to the previous month and fell by 45.5% year-over-year, to $3.21 billion. The National Bank in February purchased currency for $128.3 million, not entering the market to support the hryvnia. In January-March 2017, central bank interventions on the market totaled $179.6 million compared to minus $235.2 million a year ago. kacylee at 7-04-2017 08:13 AM (5 years ago) (f) Nigeria is listed among 18 countries where North Korean hackers have allegedly been attacking banks to get funds for sponsoring nuclear programme. Cyber security firm Kaspersky disclosed this in a new report. The organisation said this could be regarded as the biggest bank heists in history. The finding comes after more than a year-long investigation into the activity of Lazarus, a hacking group allegedly responsible for the theft of $81 million in US currency from the Central Bank of Bangladesh last year. The suggestion that North Korea could have been behind the attack, or at least involved, has added to concerns that the Hermit Kingdom is becoming more bold it its cyber attacks against global financial institutions. Nigeria is listed among 18 countries where North Korean hackers have allegedly been attacking banks to get funds for sponsoring nuclear programme. Cyber security firm Kaspersky disclosed this in a new report. The organisation said this could be regarded as the biggest bank heists in history. The finding comes after more than a year-long investigation into the activity of Lazarus, a hacking group allegedly responsible for the theft of $81 million in US currency from the Central Bank of Bangladesh last year. The suggestion that North Korea could have been behind the attack, or at least involved, has added to concerns that the Hermit Kingdom is becoming more bold it its cyber attacks against global financial institutions. And the massive amounts of stolen money North Korea pilfers is likely being spent on advancing its development of nuclear weapons, two international security experts told CNN. This is all for their nuclear weapons and missile programs. They need this money for building and researching more ballistic missiles, said Anthony Ruggiero, a senior fellow for Foundation for Defense of Democracies who specialises in North Korea. The US has long been suspicious of the ties the Moscow-based company has to Russia but on the surface Kaspersky Lab is one of the worlds leading cybersecurity and antivirus firms. The companys report which it presented this week at a cybersecurity conference in the Caribbean claims it found evidence of the same hacking operation launching attacks on financial institutions in Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Gabon, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Poland, Taiwan, Thailand, and Uruguay. And the massive amounts of stolen money North Korea pilfers is likely being spent on advancing its development of nuclear weapons, two international security experts told CNN.This is all for their nuclear weapons and missile programs. They need this money for building and researching more ballistic missiles, said Anthony Ruggiero, a senior fellow for Foundation for Defense of Democracies who specialises in North Korea.The US has long been suspicious of the ties the Moscow-based company has to Russia but on the surface Kaspersky Lab is one of the worlds leading cybersecurity and antivirus firms.The companys report which it presented this week at a cybersecurity conference in the Caribbean claims it found evidence of the same hacking operation launching attacks on financial institutions in Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Gabon, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Poland, Taiwan, Thailand, and Uruguay. Post Reply I have been reporting for several years now and I am very interested in visual news reportage with strong inclusion of photos and video multimedia. Posted: at 7-04-2017 08:13 AM (5 years ago) | Addicted Hero clarajancita at 7-04-2017 11:32 AM (5 years ago) (f) Hon. Salihu Shadafu Adamu, a House of Representatives member representing the Bosso/Paiko federal constituency in Niger State narrowly escaped death on Monday, April 3, when aggrieved youths in his constituency beat him to a point of coma. Hon. Salihu Shadafu Adamu, a House of Representatives member representing the Bosso/Paiko federal constituency in Niger State narrowly escaped death on Monday, April 3, when aggrieved youths in his constituency beat him to a point of coma. The federal lawmaker, who sustained serious injuries was admitted at a private medical hospital in the Tunga area of the state capital before being taken for further medical attention in Kaduna State. The vehicle in which he was travelling was also damaged by the youths. It took the intervention of men of the Niger State Police Command which was invited by some good Samaritans several minutes to save the lawmaker from the clutches of his attackers. It was gathered tha the lawmaker had driven into one of the villages in his constituencies to attend a political meeting. However, the youths who were said to have been angry because the lawmaker had failed to visit them since he was elected almost two years ago, advised him to leave but he ignored the them. The federal lawmaker, who sustained serious injuries was admitted at a private medical hospital in the Tunga area of the state capital before being taken for further medical attention in Kaduna State. The vehicle in which he was travelling was also damaged by the youths.It took the intervention of men of the Niger State Police Command which was invited by some good Samaritans several minutes to save the lawmaker from the clutches of his attackers.It was gathered tha the lawmaker had driven into one of the villages in his constituencies to attend a political meeting. However, the youths who were said to have been angry because the lawmaker had failed to visit them since he was elected almost two years ago, advised him to leave but he ignored the them. Quote "One of the youths first slapped him, another hit him in the stomach making him to fall to the ground, an eyewitness said. "I t then became a free for all as every youth there tried to take their pound of flesh from the politician. The spokesperson for Niger State State Police Police Command, Bala Elkana, who confirmed the story said it was a "politically-motivated attack, Elkana said, adding that three suspects had been arrested in connection with the incident. t then became a free for all as every youth there tried to take their pound of flesh from the politician.The spokesperson for Niger State State Police Police Command, Bala Elkana, who confirmed the story said it was aElkana said, adding that three suspects had been arrested in connection with the incident. Post Reply I am a metro reporter on Gistmania, I have been publishing news materials for over 5 years Posted: at 7-04-2017 11:32 AM (5 years ago) | Hero Honor 6C vs mid-range smartphones: MotoG5, Redmi Note 4, Moto G5, Galaxy J5 Prime, Oppo a57 and more Features oi -Harish Kumar Honor 6C, the latest budget smartphone that offers decent specifications and will fight the like sub Rs. 16,000 smartphones. Chinese smartphone maker Huawei has a successful run in the Indian market. The company's Honor series of handsets- Honor 6X, Honor 8, Honor 5C, etc. come loaded with features and have made a good business in the budget and mid-range price segment. The company has now announced Honor 6C, the latest budget smartphone that offers decent specifications and will fight the likes of Moto G5, Moto G5 Plus, Xiaomi Redmi Note 4, Lenovo K6 Power and other sub Rs. 16,000 smartphones in the market. Honor 6C is a dual-SIM device that features a 5-inch HD (720x1280 pixels) AMOLED display, and is powered by a 1.4GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 435 processor paired with 3GB of RAM. Honor 8 Pro, Oneplus 3T, Samsung Galaxy C9 Pro and more: Best smartphones with 6GB RAM So let's find out how this smartphone compares with other mid-range Android handsets with the help of this comparison. Best Mobiles in India Idea offers 10 GB data at Rs. 100 News oi -Priyanka The plan can be availed by users with 4G enabled mobile phones. Interestingly, there is another value pack which is available at Rs. 348 and it is offering free calls across all networks in India With an aim to counter Reliance Jio, Kumar Mangalam Birla- led Idea Cellular has launched its new Data Jackpot offer for postpaid customers in which users will get 10 GB of 4G data per month for Rs. 100. This offer is already available with one month's validity and the new offer is valid for 3 months only, which means 30GB for Rs 300. "Postpaid customers who wish to avail the offer need to apply through the My Idea app available on Android Play store and iOS," the company said in statement "The free data benefit will be applicable only on available Idea network as per following: Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra & Goa, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh East, Uttar Pradesh West, Jammu & Kashmir - 4G/3G/2G | Assam, Bihar, Karnataka, Mumbai, North East, Orissa, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal - 4G/2G | Delhi, Kolkata - 3G/2G," the statement added. Opera Mini launches new feature "Opera Cricket" for IPL The company has recently revised its Rs. 348 plan for prepaid users and now Idea is offering unlimited voice calling, bundled with the 1GB 4G data usage per day. The plan can be availed by users with 4G enabled mobile phones. Interestingly, there is another value pack which is available at Rs. 348 and it is offering free calls across all networks in India alongside 50MB of data. The same tariff plan provides its users with 1 GB of data along with the voice benefit. The plan will be valid for 28 days. Meanwhile, Reliance Jio is now withdrawing its new offer "Summer Surprise" on the advice of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). According to the press statement by the company, "Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has advised Jio to withdraw the 3 months complimentary benefits of JIO SUMMER SURPRISE." Adding that " it is in the process of fully complying with the regulator's advice. The offer will be withdrawn over the next few days." The company also said that all customers who have subscribed to JIO SUMMER SURPRISE offer prior to its discontinuation will remain eligible for the offer. 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. German Ukrainian Fund (GUF) and Germany's KfW bank on April 6, 2017 signed a currency risk hedging agreement, according to a posting on the Ukrainian government's website. According to the report, Deputy Finance Minister of Ukraine for European integration Yuriy Butsa, GUF Executive Director Oleh Strynzha and KfW Office Director in Ukraine Lutz Horn-Haacke signed the agreement. GUF credits small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) via partner banks. The funds of GUF to provide loans to banks are formed mainly thanks to long-term loans pegged to euros issued by the German government via KfW. During conversion of the currency-pegged loans into hryvnias for crediting partner banks and SME GUF would face currency risks. "The European Union, understanding the importance of stirring up crediting of SME in Ukraine, has proposed took a part of the currency risk of GUF in the amount of EUR 5.2 million under the EU4Business programme. According to the signed agreement, the European Commission is ready to refund up to 30% of the loss to GUF via KfW that could appear due to the unfavorable chance of the hryvnia exchange rate to the euro under the GUF credit programs for the amount of up to EUR 17 million," reads the report. KfW acts as an agent of the European Commission introducing the hedging scheme for GUF. In April 2017, GUF starts crediting under the new programme: thanks to a loan raised from the German government via KfW in the amount of EUR 10 million. GUF will provide long-term loans in hryvnias to banks, which would stimulate the speeding up of SME crediting. Germany investigates 20 suspected of spying for Turkey Iran Press TV Thu Apr 6, 2017 1:11PM German prosecutors have launched an investigation into a case involving 20 people suspected of spying for Turkey on alleged followers of a cleric whom Ankara blames for the last year coup attempt. Germany's Interior Ministry said Thursday that the suspects had been investigated by federal prosecutors on suspicion of denouncing to Ankara the people believed to be supporters of US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen. "At the moment, a total of 20 accused and persons unknown are under investigation over suspicions that they worked as secret service agents on the orders of the Turkish government, and spied on followers of the Gulen movement," said the ministry in response to a query in the German Parliament from the Left party. Turkey accuses Gulen of masterminding the failed coup in July 2016, during which more than 270 people lost their lives. Gulen has denied any involvement. Immediately after the coup, Ankara launched a crackdown, which has seen more than 40,000 arrested and over 110,000 others discharged from their jobs. Turkey's post-coup clampdown has strained ties with Germany. Berlin says Ankara has acted beyond the rule of law in the clampdown while Turkey says Germany has failed to duly condemn the coup. The German Interior Ministry said the 20 people included 16 known suspects and four others but did not elaborate as to how many were still in the European country because the probe was still going on. It also did not say whether those under investigation included preachers working in Turkey-backed religious centers across Germany. Four clerics were arrested in Germany in February as part of a similar espionage probe. Authorities said at the time that the clerics were suspected of spying on Turkish government opponents. The clerics, whose documents were confiscated during a raid into their houses, were affiliated with the union of Turkish-Islamic cultural organizations in Germany, or DITIB. Berlin says Turkey has been steadily sending more clerics to DATIB, a sign that Ankara may have intensified espionage activities in Germany. Germany and Turkey have also been at odds over a number of other issues, including Berlin's alleged support for Turkish Kurdish militants. Germany has also barred senior Turkish government officials from attending demonstrations in the country to rally support for a referendum in April on changes in Turkey's constitution. Germany is home to more than three million ethnic Turks, the largest population of Turkish expats in the world. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Embattled U.S. Congressman Steps Aside From Russia Probe RFE/RL April 06, 2017 The head of the Intelligence Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives has said he will temporarily step aside from his role leading the committee's investigation of Russia's alleged involvement in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Devin Nunes (Republican-California) on April 6 said he was recusing himself from the investigation because of complaints of impropriety that have been filed against him with the Office of Congressional Ethics. He blamed "left-wing activist groups" for the ethics complaints, calling them false and politically motivated. He said he was stepping aside to address the ethics complaints. Congressman Mike Conaway (Republican-Texas) will take over the leadership of the House committee's investigation into Russia's alleged interference in the election and any potential links to the campaign team of U.S. President Donald Trump. Nunes said he will continue his other work with the committee. The ethics complaints against Nunes stem from a controversial series of actions he took on March 22. After viewing intelligence reports at a secret White House meeting, he held a news conference to discuss the information. He then said he went back to the White House to brief Trump. He said some of the information he'd been shown supported Trump's claims that he had been under surveillance by the administration of former U.S. President Barack Obama -- two days after FBI Director James Comey told Congress that no such surveillance took place. Many Democrats and even some Republicans criticized Nunes's contacts with the White House while he was leading an investigation that involved the Trump team, prompting calls for him to recuse himself from the probe. Nunes, who himself served on the Trump presidential transition team in 2016, had resisted calls to step down until now. House Speaker Paul Ryan (Republican-Wisconsin) said he supports Nunes's decision because the ethics questions "would be a distraction." "It is clear that this process would be a distraction for the House Intelligence Committee's investigation into Russian interference in our election," Ryan said in a statement. "Chairman Nunes has offered to step aside as the lead Republican on this probe, and I fully support this decision." The top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff of California, said Nunes's decision to step aside provided an opportunity for the panel to make a "fresh start." The ethics committee made its decision to investigate Nunes after two watchdog groups -- Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and Democracy21 -- filed complaints against him, saying he had disclosed classified information in violation of House ethics rules after his White House meeting. Nunes denounced the groups as "left-wing organizations" in a statement and rejected the allegations. "The charges are entirely false and politically motivated and are being leveled just as the American people are beginning to learn the truth about the improper unmasking of the identities of U.S. citizens and other abuses of power," Nunes wrote. With reporting from AP, Reuters, dpa, and AFP Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/nunes-steps-aside-russia -probe-trump-election/28414557.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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Germany Opens Probe Into Spying by Turkish Nationals on Gulen's Followers Sputnik News 19:02 06.04.2017(updated 19:03 06.04.2017) German authorities have opened an investigation into 20 Turkish nationals who are suspected of conducting espionage activities on followers of Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen in Germany, local media reported Thursday. MOSCOW (Sputnik) The 20 Turkish nationals, along with several unknown persons, are suspected of spying on Gulen's followers in Germany at the request of Turkish government, the Die Welt newspaper reported, citing a reply on the matter, obtained by the newspaper, of the German government received by a Die Linke party lawmaker. The "unacceptable careless approach" of the government toward the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB) resulted in spies' ability to return to Turkey and avoid criminal prosecution, Die Linke lawmaker Sevim Dagdelen told the newspaper. DITIB, established in 1984 in Cologne, is one of the largest Islamic religious organizations in Germany, and has imams and religious teachers sent from Turkey. The organization funds 900 mosques across the country. According to the statistics presented on its website, the association represents over 70 percent of Muslims living in Germany. In February, the homes of four Turkish imams and members of DITIB were raided on the suspicion that they had been spying on community members and German teachers in order to detect Gulen's supporters. The July 15 Turkish military coup attempt has been blamed by Ankara on Gulen, who has been living in the United States since 1999, and his followers. Since July, Turkey has arrested hundreds of military personnel, activists and journalists on suspicion of links with Gulen. Relations between Turkey and a number of European countries, including Germany, have worsened recently after several pro-referendum rallies held by Turkish officials, aimed at gaining support from Turkish citizens living abroad, were canceled in Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Following such bans, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan compared German, and later, Dutch, authorities to Nazis. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Materials Viewed by Nunes Available to US House Int'l Committee - Schiff Sputnik News 17:53 06.04.2017 The documents seen by US House of Representatives chairman at the White House have now been made available to the rest of the Committee, ranking member Adam Schiff told reporters on Thursday. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) The documents seen by US House of Representatives Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes at the White House have now been made available to the rest of the Committee, ranking member Adam Schiff told reporters on Thursday. "As I understand now the materials that the chairman viewed at the White House that I subsequently viewed are now being made available to the full committee," Schiff stated. "I think that's a very positive step." On March 22, Nunes told journalists the US Intelligence Community had incidentally collected information on President Donald Trump's transition team. Nunes then briefed Trump on the findings, but did not share the information with the rest of the Intelligence Committee. Schiff saw that information for the first time last week. Earlier today, Nunes announced he will temporarily step down from his role as Intelligence Committee chairman for the investigation into Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 US presidential election. Russia has denied any involvement in the US election. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US House Intel Committee Chairman Nunes Temporarily Steps Down From Russia Probe Sputnik News 16:41 06.04.2017(updated 19:57 06.04.2017) US House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes has temporarily stepped down from the probe into President Donald Trump administration's alleged ties with Russia. Nunes said that the decision was made due to "entirely false" accusations against him. "Despite the baselessness of the charges, I believe it is in the best interests of the House Intelligence Committee and the Congress for me to have Representative Mike Conaway, with assistance from Representatives Trey Gowdy and Tom Rooney, temporarily take charge of the Committee's Russia investigation while the House Ethics Committee looks into this matter," Nunes stated. He said that he wants to speak with the Office of Congressional Ethics as soon as possible to "expedite the dismissal of these false claims." Meanwhile, the US House of Representatives Committee on Ethics announced on Thursday that it will investigate whether Nunes revealed classified information in connection with the committee's investigation into connections between President Donald Trump and the government of Russia. "The committee is aware of public allegations that Representative Devin Nunes may have made unauthorized disclosures of classified information in violation of House Rules, law, regulations or other standards of conduct," the statement said. "The Committee, pursuant to Committee Rule 18(a), is investigating and gathering more information regarding these allegations." On March 28, the groups Democracy 21 and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington asked the Office of Congressional Ethics for a preliminary inquiry into whether Nunes disclosed classified information in connection with the Russia investigation. Earlier, many Democrats and at least one Republican in the US Congress have called for Nunes to recuse himself from the investigation. Late March, the White House said that it sees nothing wrong in Congressman Nunes conducting the investigation into Russia and its alleged role in the 2016 US election. Nunes has been criticized over the fact that he told reporters that the information about Trump team was "incidentally collected" during the transition period. Following the announcement, the intelligence committee chair visited the White House and briefed the US president on the findings. Later, Nunes explained why he decided to brief the press and US President Donald Trump on new intelligence information before telling the ranking Democrat on the committee. These actions triggered immediate criticism of the panel's members, who have not been notified in advance about the additional documents related to Trump's wiretapping claim. By surmising the surveillance may have been prompted by a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant, Nunes may have revealed classified information. Last week, House Speaker Paul Ryan said that Nunes learned about the surveillance of Trump's presidential campaign team from a whistleblower source. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Nunes to Step Down From Russia Hacking Investigation By VOA News April 06, 2017 The Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes says he is temporarily stepping down from the panel's investigation into alleged Russian hacking during the 2016 election campaign, after ethical complaints were lodged against him. The House Ethics Committee is investigating whether Nunes may have made an unauthorized disclosure of classified information last month during a hastily arranged news conference. Nunes said he had come into the possession of classified material that indicated members of Trump's campaign had conversations "incidentally collected" by U.S. intelligence agencies while surveilling foreign targets. Nunes said "several leftwing activist groups" filed accusations of impropriety against him with the Office of Congressional Ethics, and he would temporarily step back from the investigation until the charges are cleared up. Two government watchdog groups, Democracy 21 and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, filed the complaint, which alleges Nunes's characterization of what was in the classified documents violated House ethics rules, even though he didn't disclose the specific information found in the documents. Nunes called the accusations "baseless" and politically motivated, though he said he would step down from the investigation of the charges because it is "in the best interests of the House Intelligence Committee and the Congress." He said he would continue to fulfill his other duties as committee chairman, but said Representative Mike Conaway will take charge of the investigation, with assistance from Representatives Trey Gowdy and Tom Rooney. The House Ethics Committee released a statement acknowledging the investigation, though it cautioned it "does not itself indicate that any violation has occurred, or reflect any judgment on behalf of the Committee." Anyone can file a complaint with the OCE. It is up to the office to determine the validity of the complaint and forward it to House Ethics Committee when appropriate. Nunes did not brief the top-ranking Democrat on the committee, Rep. Adam Schiff, on the documents before sharing them with President Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan, a move that led Schiff and other Democrats to question Nunes's ability to run an independent investigation. Schiff said Thursday he was appreciative of Nunes's decision to step down and said it would give the investigation "a fresh start moving forward." "As I understand it now, the materials that the chairman viewed at the White House, and that I subsequently viewed, are now being made available to the full committee. I think that's a very positive step, as well," he said. Ryan also applauded Nunes's decision to step down, saying it would be a distraction if stayed on the investigation while dealing with the ethics complaint. "Devin Nunes has earned my trust over many years for his integrity and dedication to the critical work that the intelligence community does to keep America safe," Ryan said. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Coalition to Support Legitimacy in Yemen issues a statement on grave humanitarian situation in areas controlled by coup forces Saudi Press Agency Thursday 1438/7/9 - 2017/04/06 Riyadh, Rajab 8, 1438, Apr 5, 2017, SPA -- The Coalition to Support Legitimacy in Yemen said in a statement today that it recognizes the grave humanitarian situation in the areas still being controlled by the coup forces in Yemen, adding that it is doing its best to ensure food and medicine supplies to the Yemeni people. The Coalition stressed that it shares the concerns of the United Nations about the status of Hodeidah Port as being one of the most important Yemeni ports to deliver supplies and assistance, as this important port is under the control of Al-Houthi rebels, it is now being used to smuggle weapons and people, while Al-Houthi militias are taking over the convoys of food and humanitarian supplies and selling them at double price to Yemeni citizens to finance their ongoing hostilities to undermine the legitimate government. The Coalition pointed out that it has demanded from the United Nations on more than one occasion to exercise its control over the port of Hodeidah to ensure the free flow of humanitarian aid and access to its beneficiaries, confirming the existence of other ports such as Aden, Mukalla, a number of airports and land crossings that have been rehabilitated and are open to deliver supplies and humanitarian needs. --SPA 12:24 LOCAL TIME 09:24 GMT NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address MQ-1, MQ-9 aircrews help liberate Manbij By Senior Airman Christian Clausen, 432nd Wing/432nd Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs / Published April 06, 2017 CREECH AIR FORCE BASE, Nev. (AFNS) -- In 2016, U.S. Air Force MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper aircrews assisted coalition partners in the reclamation of Manbij, Syria, from Islamic State of Iraq and Syria forces. Pilots and sensor operators assigned to squadrons across the 432nd Wing and the 432nd Air Expeditionary Wing provided the close air support and reconnaissance needed for coalition partners to drive ISIS fighters out of the city. In January 2014, ISIS took control of Manbij, a northern Syrian city, and for more than two years used the city as a central coordination hub for logistics flow of foreign fighters to funnel in and out of Iraq and Syria, as well as, coordinating operations in Europe and elsewhere. When thousands of U.S. backed fighters of the Syrian Democratic Forces launched an offensive in late May to take back the city, the MQ-1 and MQ-9 aircrews were there for support. "From May to August 2016, over the two month campaign to free Manbij from the rule of ISIS, MQ-1Bs and MQ-9s flew nearly 500 sorties from our cockpits in the continental United States," said Col. Case Cunningham, the 432nd WG/432nd AEW commander. "Those sorties resulted in nearly 11,000 hours of persistent attack and reconnaissance in direct support of our partnered forces on the ground." The aircrews began supporting with battlefield preparation by focusing on reconnaissance to help support the battle plan. As the partnered forces encircled the city, the MQ-1 and MQ-9 aircrews reinforced with armed over watch and attack capabilities. While supporting the partnered forces on the ground, aircrews experienced some challenges during the urban engagements in built-up areas. "It was significantly difficult in the end because there were snipers and improvised explosive devices in the city center, making it hard for the SDF to advance," said 1st Lt. Gregg, a 432nd WG MQ-9 pilot. "We had to maintain very specific look angles down alleys while maintaining a close eye for civilians. That required very precise strikes and MQ-1 and MQ-9s were able to fulfill that role." Not only did the aircrews have to employ within close proximity to civilians, but ground forces as well. "One of the things I saw in Manbij that was truly unique was the proximity we were finding a lot of the targets to friendly forces," said Lt. Col. Ronnie, a 432 WG squadron commander. "They were sometimes within 100 meters and sometimes inside of 50 meters." Ronnie expressed that employing weapons so close to friendlies, while nerve-racking, required the best his aircrews could deliver. "During a danger close event, we have to be very cognizant of where the friendlies are in real time, if they're moving or not, where the enemy is and how the trajectory of the weapon will impact," Gregg said. "It takes more brain bytes to keep everything in order because you want to eliminate the enemy, but also don't want to jeopardize the friendlies. It's more stress than in other shots." Gregg also said working together as a crew is key to a successful employment. Understanding the joint terminal attack controller and the ground commander's intent in real-time and being proactive as a cohesive unit keeps the ground forces safe while protecting civilians. "The (coalition) had to trust that we were able to precisely put munitions where they needed without harming them or civilians," Gregg said. This represents the biggest challenge for sensor operators who are responsible for successfully guiding the weapons by laser to the target. "We would be doing a normal scan and then go right into a troops in contact situation. Within three minutes we would engage the enemy," said Staff Sgt. John, a 432nd WG MQ-9 sensor operator. "The hardest part was staying mentally and physically focused because at any minute we would have to engage the enemy." During the Manbij offensive, MQ-1 and MQ-9 aircrews employed over 300 AGM-114 Hellfires against ISIS, which accounted for approximately 40 percent of the total kinetic strikes conducted by any coalition aircraft during the two-month battle. MQ-1 and MQ-9 aircrews also guided weapons from other coalition strike aircraft by using their laser to designate the target. Despite the large number of strikes, the MQ-1 and MQ-9 aircrews employed through precise engagement with the use of Hellfire missiles, designed for low collateral damage. "The people we were fighting were not the residents of Manbij," Ronnie said. "We didn't want to completely uproot the populace and, ultimately, as a fighting force we wanted for them to have a home to go back to." By the middle of August of 2016, the MQ-1 and MQ-9 aircrews, with coalition partners successfully eradicated the ISIS presence in Manbij. Aircrew knew they had a significant impact when they saw footage of the locals reclaiming their city. "Initially you don't realize the impact you've made, but upon reflection, you realize it's a significant achievement to take the city back from ISIS," Gregg said. "Being able to see civilians return home to live their normal life is an amazing feeling." While under ISIS rule, men were forced to grow their beards and women were forced to wear face-covering veils. Upon the reclamation of their town, men cut their beards and women burned their veils in celebration. "It's an amazing experience to have such a role in this offensive and bring peace back to Manbij," John said. "I know every day when I go to work I'm making a difference. Regardless of if I'm gathering intelligence or on the front line dropping munitions, I know that when I go home we did something to better the world." The aircrews also knew it wouldn't have been possible without the intelligence and precision guided weapons provided. "What we do is absolutely critical," said Lt. Col. Erik, a 432 WG squadron commander. "The effects we have mean real effects for people on the ground, for not only our friendly troops but for innocent civilians trapped under ISIS rule. The work we do and can provide directly enables our friendly forces to come home, for them to push ISIS out and for people to get on with their lives." These engagements are made possible by a set of determined, precise and professional Airmen whose skills improve every day while keeping friendlies safe. "Our aircraft is very capable because it has persistence, sensors that can see a lot of detail and provide coverage, as well as, weapons that can provide a low collateral damage strike, but ultimately it's the people," Erik said. "It's our crew's training, our professionalism and dedication to the mission that enables us to achieve these effects over the battlefield." According to Cunningham, the Airmen flying MQ-1s and MQ-9s in these combat operations are just one more part of a joint and coalition team waging a dedicated, diligent and disciplined fight to free local populations from the rule of ISIS day in and day out while protecting civilians in a way that is unprecedented in the history of warfare. "For the past 70 years, the Air Force has been breaking barriers as a member of the finest joint warfighting team on the planet and what the joint warfighting team accomplished in Manbij with our coalition partners in the air and partnered forces on the ground is evidence of the fact that the military defeat of ISIS is inevitable," Cunningham said. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Officials Provide Details of Latest Counter-ISIS Strikes From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release SOUTHWEST ASIA, April 6, 2017 U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria yesterday, conducting 29 strikes consisting of 85 engagements against ISIS targets, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today. Officials reported details of yesterday's strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports. Strikes in Syria Coalition military forces conducted 20 strikes consisting of 28 engagements against ISIS targets in Syria: -- Near Dayr Az Zawr, four strikes destroyed five ISIS wellheads, two pumpjacks, an oil storage tank and an oil equipment piece. -- Near Raqqa, two strikes destroyed an ISIS vehicle. -- Near Shadaddi, a strike engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed a fighting positon. -- Near Tabqah, 13 strikes engaged nine ISIS tactical units; destroyed two fighting positions, two vehicles, a tactical vehicle and a tunnel; and damaged two supply routes. Strikes in Iraq Coalition military forces conducted nine strikes consisting of 57 engagements against ISIS targets in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of the Iraqi government: -- Near Haditha, a strike engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed a vehicle-borne bomb and a vehicle. -- Near Mosul, six strikes engaged four ISIS tactical units; destroyed five mortar systems, three vehicle-bomb factories, three ISIS-held buildings, two anti-air artillery systems, two supply caches, a tactical vehicle, a vehicle and a weapons facility; damaged nine supply routes; and suppressed six ISIS mortar teams. -- Near Tal Afar, a strike engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed two ISIS-held buildings and a supply cache. -- Near Qaim, a strike destroyed two anti-air artillery systems and two ISIS held-buildings. Part of Operation Inherent Resolve These strikes were conducted as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the operation to destroy ISIS in Iraq and Syria. The destruction of ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria also further limits the group's ability to project terror and conduct external operations throughout the region and the rest of the world, task force officials said. The list above contains all strikes conducted by fighter, attack, bomber, rotary-wing or remotely piloted aircraft; rocket-propelled artillery; and some ground-based tactical artillery when fired on planned targets, officials noted. Ground-based artillery fired in counterfire or in fire support to maneuver roles is not classified as a strike, they added. A strike, as defined by the coalition, refers to one or more kinetic engagements that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single or cumulative effect. For example, task force officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIS vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against a group of ISIS-held buildings and weapon systems in a compound, having the cumulative effect of making that facility harder or impossible to use. Strike assessments are based on initial reports and may be refined, officials said. The task force does not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Air Force C-130 Aircraft Deploy to Peru for Flood-Relief Mission By Jose Ruiz, U.S. Southern Command DORAL, Fla., April 6, 2017 At the request of the Peruvian government, two U.S. Air Force C-130 Hercules aircraft from Little Rock Air Force Base, Arkansas, flew to Lima, Peru, April 4 to support ongoing U.S. disaster assistance to communities devastated by floods resulting from torrential rainfall in the country's northern region. Flooding, Landslides Flooding and landslides in Peru that began in March have killed more than 100 people and left over 150,000 people homeless. The aircraft will support the transport of aid and personnel to areas impacted by the floods and will join the ongoing U.S. relief mission led by the U.S. Agency for International Development to help alleviate human suffering in Peru. DoD Donates Money for Equipment The Defense Department has also donated $270,000 for the purchase of water purification systems, portable solar generators and water pumps distributed to flood-affected areas in Peru. As part of its partnership with Peru, U.S. Southern Command previously provided disaster preparedness assistance to the South American nation, including the construction of 13 regional emergency operation centers used by Peruvian relief personnel supporting victims of the recent floods. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Atlasjet Ukraine airline (the Atlasglobal brand) plans to return to its development plan and investment by the parent company if there is a chance of basing its planes in Kyiv and Odesa thanks to being assigned to the flights to these cities, Atlasjet Ukraine Executive Director Ovunc Horasans has said. "In 2014, we had concrete plans. We intended to have the same infrastructure as Atlasglobal has in Turkey. There were plans to create a servicing company, a handling company and a school of pilots. This strategy is not out-of-date today, but we have difficulties with assignments to Kyiv and Odesa and the implementation of the strategy is delayed," he said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine. He said that for the airline that has only two planes is not profit-making to invest such sums of money. "When we have 10 planes we would create these organizations. The plan has not disappeared from the agenda. In addition, we plan to invest in hotels in Odesa region, as the investor in the airline has a 20 year experience in the luxury hospitality business segment. We would like to bring this experience to Ukraine," he said. Asked what volume of funds has been invested in the airline since the moment of its launch and how much will be invested if the plan is realized, he said that over $25 million has been invested and if the assignment plan are realized, this will be at least $100 million within several years. Atlasjet Ukraine was registered in Ukraine on September 13, 2013. Today the airline flies from Kharkiv, Lviv, Zaporizhia to Istanbul. Thai king endorses new junta-backed constitution Iran Press TV Thu Apr 6, 2017 3:26PM Thailand's King Vajiralongkorn Bodindradebayavarangkun has finally signed the country's new constitution despite criticisms that the charter will allow the military and unelected people to keep their grip on power for a long time. Bodindradebayavarangkun rubber-stamped the charter on Thursday during a ceremony at Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall in the Thai capital of Bangkok. Senior members of Thailand's military government as well as foreign diplomats attended the elaborate event, which came on Chakri Day, the annual holiday marking the establishment of the Chakri dynasty. Bodindradebayavarangkun, who inherited the throne from his father, King Bhumibol Adulyadej after he died in October, will see his powers increased in the new constitution. The charter is the 20th approved in Thailand since the country celebrated the collapse of absolute monarchy in 1932. The Thai people had approved the charter in a public referendum last August. The junta government, which grabbed power three years ago in a coup, has promoted the new constitution as a major step towards holding new elections in Thailand. It has said that the votes would come no later than November 2018, although previous promised poll dates have been delayed. The new constitution has also been touted as a necessity for Thailand to move past more than a decade of political unrest and social division. Critics, however, fear that the charter, which was drafted by a panel of junta-backed experts, would deepen divisions in Thailand. They have also censured the undemocratic mechanisms devised in the document, saying unelected bodies would be empowered by limiting the power of voters as the constitution allows the appointment of a senate that would include military commanders while it neuters the authority of elected officials. Many said that the major ceremony held Thursday and the fact that high-profile figures were in attendance raised hopes that Thailand would at least rely on the new constitution for a longer time compared to the previous charters. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Philippine government, communist rebels reach interim truce deal Iran Press TV Thu Apr 6, 2017 5:59AM The Philippines' government and communist rebels in the country say they have agreed on an interim truce during ongoing peace negotiations in the Netherlands. Government negotiators and those of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) announced on Wednesday that they had signed a document titled the Agreement on an Interim Joint Ceasefire in the western Dutch town of Noordwijk aan Zee. Both delegations also said in a joint press conference in the Dutch city that the temporary ceasefire would take effect once the two warring sides had ironed out the guidelines and ground rules, adding that the parameters would then be effective until a permanent truce was reached. The government of President Rodrigo Duterte had earlier threatened to step up attacks on the rebel group following an escalation of deadly clashes that erupted earlier this year between fighters from the New People's Army (NPA), the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) an NDFP affiliate and the government troops. "This is another step closer to our dream. There are still many steps that we have to work on but this is a very important step," said Jesus Dureza, the presidential adviser on the peace process, during the presser in Noordwijk aan Zee. Jose Maria Sison, the founder of the CPP, for his part, also congratulated both sides for the progress in the negotiations. "This will go a long way in building trust and confidence, and generating the atmosphere for the accelerated plans of the associations on socio-economic reforms, and political and constitutional reforms," he said at the press conference on Wednesday. As another confidence-building measure, the NDFP and Manila also agreed on swapping a number of prisoners, namely four soldiers and police officers under rebel custody and 23 political inmates under government custody. Peace negotiations have been held on and off for the last three decades. The rebels and the government had declared separate ceasefires last year, which allowed the government to withdraw troops from battlefields to focus on an offensive against the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group, which is now a Daesh affiliate, and other extremist outfits in the country's south. The resumption of the peace talks with the 4,000-strong communist rebel group had been a high priority for the government in Manila since Duterte took office on June 30 last year. Talks with the rebels had collapsed in 2013 after the government of former president Benigno Aquino refused to release some key rebel commanders. The communist insurgency in the Southeast Asian country began in 1968 and is one of the longest-running in the world. It has claimed an estimated 30,000 lives, according to the military. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Moscow Statement Endorses West Jerusalem As Israeli Capital RFE/RL April 06, 2017 In what is being hailed by Israeli media as an "unexpected, unprecedented, and curious move," Russia has said it envisions West Jerusalem as the future capital of Israel and East Jerusalem to be the capital of a future Palestinian state. The Russian Foreign Ministry statement on April 6 appears to represent a shift in Russian policy. Previously, Moscow has formally stated that Jerusalem should be under permanent international control. In stating its support for a two-state solution to the long-standing conflict, the Foreign Ministry wrote: "We reaffirm our commitment to the UN-approved principles for a Palestinian-Israeli settlement, which include the status of East Jerusalem as the capital of the future Palestinian state. At the same time, we must state that in this context we view West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel." Palestinians regard Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. Israel has annexed East Jerusalem and declared all of the city as its capital, a move never recognized by the international community. Under the partition plan of 1948, Jerusalem was designated as a "special international regime" under United Nations administration, although the policy was never put into effect. In 1995, the U.S. Jerusalem Embassy Act recognized the city as the capital of Israel, but that law was also never put into effect. Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama did not recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, claiming the congressional act infringed on the executive branch's authority over foreign policy. Although Israel considers Jerusalem its capital, nearly all foreign embassies are in Tel Aviv as countries have refrained from recognizing that status until it is agreed in future peace talks. The Russian statement could be seen as a mixed blessing for Israel. On one hand, Israel has a stated goal of having Jerusalem recognized as its capital. On the other hand, it sees the entire city as its capital, not just the western portion. The future of Jerusalem's status is a sensitive issue and has come under the spotlight since U.S. President Donald Trump suggested he might move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which would be a tacit recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital. In a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington in February, Trump said he'd "love" to see the embassy moved to Jerusalem, adding that "we're looking at that very, very strongly." Trump's announcement angered Palestinians and their allies, and the U.S. president has subsequently backed off the suggestion. The Times of Israel said it regarded the Russian statement as an "unexpected, unprecedented, and curious move." The Israeli Foreign Ministry was taken aback by the statement. "We are studying the matter," the paper quoted a ministry spokesman as saying. The Times wrote: "Recognizing only the western part of it would appear to deny Israel's claims to the eastern part, including the Old City, which it captured in 1967 and subsequently annexed." The Jerusalem Post called it a "surprise" announcement. It reported that Russia's ambassador to Israel will meet with Foreign Ministry officials in the coming days to discuss the announcement. It said there is no plan to move Russia's embassy to Jerusalem at this time. With reporting by The Times of Israel, The Jerusalem Post, and AP Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/russia-statement -endorses-east-jerusalem-as -israeli-capital/28414981.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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Bogota, ELN Rebels Conclude 1st Peace Talks Round With Mine Clearing Agreement Sputnik News 23:50 06.04.2017 The Colombian government and ELN insurgents have agreed to carry out humanitarian mine clearing operations. MEXICO CITY (Sputnik) The Colombian government and left-wing National Liberation Army (ELN) insurgents have agreed to carry out humanitarian mine clearing operations following the first round of peace talks in Ecuador, a joint communique said Thursday. "In the next cycle of talks we will work on implementing a pilot program on humanitarian mining clearing," the statement reads. The peace talks began in early February after a mid-January agreement to settle the decades-long conflict between the libertarian communist rebels and the government. The next round has been slated to start on May 3. The talks started after last year's peace deal with Colombia's main rebel group the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which followed years of grueling talks but was still rejected in a national referendum. Colombia's decades-long struggle has left the country ranked the second in the world by the number of landmines after Afghanistan, according to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL). Over 11,000 people have been killed by landmine explosion since the early 1990s in the Latin American country. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Russia's Provision of Battle Tanks to Nicaragua 'Disquieting' - US Commander Sputnik News 19:21 06.04.2017 The Russians are engaging in some disquieting behavior in Central America in one instance providing battle tanks to Nicaragua, US Southern Command chief Admiral Kurt Tidd stated in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) In April 2016 Russia delivered 20 of the 50 tanks the Nicaraguan government requested. The price for the 50 T-72B's is $80 million, nearly the yearly defense budget for the impoverished nation. "The Russians are also engaging in some disquieting behavior, such as providing battle tanks to Nicaragua, which impacts regional stability," Tidd said. "This could cause its neighbors to divert vital resources needed to fight threat networks, and address developmental challenges, to maintain parity." Russia and Nicaragua have improved diplomatic relations since Daniel Ortega returned to the presidency in 2007. In 2016 Russia began construction of a new embassy complex, anti drug training center and satellite facility in Nicaragua. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Duterte Orders Philippine Troops, Military Construction on S China Sea Islands Sputnik News 16:45 06.04.2017(updated 19:03 06.04.2017) On Thursday, President of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte ordered the country's military to occupy all Philippine-claimed islands in the South China Sea. Duterte added that he ordered building structures and raising the Philippine flag on the islands claimed by Manila. "We tried to be friends with everybody but we have to maintain our jurisdiction now, at least the areas under our control. And I have ordered the armed forces to occupy all these," the president said at a military camp on Palawan island. Thus, Philippine structures will be built not far from seven artificial Chinese islets in the area. He also said that he would visit the island of Thitu, the largest of the Philippine-controlled Spratly Islands, and barracks will be built for Philippine servicemen operating in the area. The Spratly archipelago consists of over a hundred small islets, with the largest, Taiping Island, having an area of about 46 hectares. The archipelago sprawls over a total area of over 400,000 square kilometers. "In the coming Independence Day, I may go to Pagasa island [the local name for Thitu] to raise the flag there," he was quoted as saying by Reuters. The Philippines marks the 119th anniversary of independence on June 12. "It looks like everybody is making a grab for the islands there, so we better live on those that are still vacant. At least, let us get what is ours now and make a strong point there that it is ours," he added. China and some other regional players, including Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines, have differences over the maritime borders and areas of responsibility in the South and East China Seas. Beijing says that the Philippines and Vietnam deliberately use Washington's support to escalate tensions in the region. In July 2016, the Hague's Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled that China has no rights for territorial claims in the South China Sea. According to the ruling, the disputed Spratly Islets are not an exceptional economic zone. China has not recognized the ruling. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US, Afghan Forces Promise to Finish IS and Contain Taliban in 2017 By Ayaz Gul April 06, 2017 The United States military, in partnership with Afghan forces, has promised to eliminate Islamic State terrorists in Afghanistan this year and contain a resurgent Taliban, citing recent battlefield successes against the two groups. U.S. counterterrorism airstrikes in support of Afghan operations against IS strongholds in the eastern border provinces of Nangarhar and Kunar have killed more than 200 IS militants in March alone, Navy Captain Bill Salvin told a joint news conference Thursday in Kabul. In March, Slavin told VOA's Afghan Service that the goal in 2017 is to defeat IS in Afghanistan. Salvin speaks for both U.S. and NATO's Resolute Support military missions in the country. Salvin reiterated there is no U.S. military intelligence available suggesting IS is present elsewhere in Afghanistan. The Middle East-based terrorist group launched its extremist operations in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region two years ago, naming it Islamic State Khorasan, or IS-K, and basing it in volatile southern parts of Nangarhar. Salvin, however, said that counterterrorism operations, with Afghan forces in the lead, have since reduced IS-controlled territory by "two-thirds" and the number of its fighters by "more than 50 percent." He estimated that currently there are fewer than 800 IS loyalists in Afghanistan and they remain under military pressure. But Analysts caution that U.S. and Afghan officials may be overly optimistic when speaking of containing IS's spreading influence in Afghanistan. "Ultimately, we should applaud U.S. efforts to cut down the presence of IS fighters in Afghanistan," said Michael Kugelman, a South Asia specialist at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. "But the broader problem is the ideologies of hate that keep IS strong. Taking aim at the ideological drivers of IS will be very difficult." U.S. training The U.S. spokesman also shared details about efforts to train and equip Afghan National Defense and Security Forces, or ANDSF, under NATO's mission to enable them to fight the Taliban more effectively this year. The recent introduction of new planes continues to enhance the Afghan Air Force and has led to "a dramatic improvement in the ability of the ANDSF to conduct combined armed operations across the country," Salvin noted. "The Afghan air force is flying more missions than the U.S. Air Force and the Afghan pilots are making a critical difference for the Afghan troops on the ground. during the winter, thousands of [Afghan] soldiers have completed additional training, many of these soldiers are already back in the fight." Speaking for his forces, Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman Dawlat Waziri told reporters that since launching springtime counter-insurgency offensives in mid-March, Afghan forces have killed more than 1,000 Taliban insurgents, including dozens of their commanders, and destroyed scores of hideouts. Waziri added that a new military offensive, called Khalid, has also been unleashed in 14 of the country's 34 provinces, where months of insurgent activities have led to a deterioration in security conditions. Salvin said that NATO's train-advise-and-assist teams are also supporting the Khalid operation. "This operation will isolate insurgent strongholds across the country so that the ANDSF can protect population centers, maintain flexibility to reposition and resupply forces based on conditions on the battlefield and deny resources and illicit funds to insurgent groups," Saldin said. Taliban support Waziri and Salvin again criticized Russia, Iran and Pakistan for maintaining overt contacts with, and secretly supporting, the Taliban. "Support to reconcile the fighting in Afghanistan, that support needs to go to the Afghan government. Supporting the Taliban, or providing meeting space, or providing overt legitimacy to the Taliban is ultimately not helpful," cautioned Salvin. Moscow and Tehran have publicly acknowledged their links with the insurgents, insisting such links are meant only to encourage the insurgents to engage in peace talks with the Afghan government to end hostilities. For their part, Pakistani officials deny the presence of Taliban sanctuaries on their land, insisting insurgents have long relocated themselves to Afghan territory currently under their control, although Kabul and Washington dismiss Islamabad's assertions. The U.S. military estimates that the Afghan government is in control of less than 60 percent of its territory, while the Taliban control 10 percent and the rest is contested. Most of the poppy-growing Afghan province of Helmand is controlled by insurgents. Helmand is among several provinces bordering Pakistan. VOA's Noor Zahid contributed to this report. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US Launches Dozen of Cruise Missiles at Syrian Airbase By Ken Schwartz, Ken Bredemeier April 06, 2017 U.S. media are reporting that the United States has launched airstrikes on Syria in the wake of a chemical weapons attack blamed on President Bashar al-Assad's forces killed about 100 civilians. According to those reports, 50 Tomahawk cruise missiles were launched from U.S. Navy destroyers in the Mediterranean. Flying to his talks in Florida with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump told reporters that what happened in Syria was "a disgrace to humanity," and that with Assad "running things ... something should happen." "What Assad did is terrible. I think what happened in Syria is one of the truly egregious crimes, and it shouldn't have happened and it shouldn't be allowed to happen," he said. Trump added that he might "at some point" talk about Syria with its biggest military ally, Russian President Vladimir Putin. Last week, the White House backed away from the former Obama administration's stance that Assad must be removed. Tillerson: Assad must go While Trump did not say whether he now thought, in the wake of the gas attack, Assad should be driven from power, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Thursday that Assad had to go. Tillerson told reporters there was "no role for him to govern the Syrian people" in the future. "The process by which Assad would leave is something that requires an international community effort, both to first defeat ISIS [Islamic State extremists] within Syria, to stabilize the Syrian country to avoid further civil war, and then to work collectively with our partners around the world through a political process that would lead to Assad leaving," he said. U.S. officials said this week that there was no doubt the Syrian military was behind the apparent sarin gas attack on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun, which also sickened 350. Television pictures showed horrifying scenes men, women and children foaming at the mouth, convulsing uncontrollably and struggling to breathe. Some families, including babies, died in their beds. Doctors showed that the pupils of the victims' eyes were tiny pinpoints that did not react to light a clear sign of sarin gas poisoning. Alleged warehouse strike U.S. officials rejected Russian and Syrian claims that the gas had come from a missile strike on a rebel-controlled warehouse where chemical weapons had been stockpiled. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem said his country did not use chemical weapons during airstrikes on Khan Sheikhoun. He insisted they would never be used, "even against terrorists." But Dr. Annie Sparrow, a public health specialist and a critical-care pediatrician at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York who has carried out many studies on Syria, said a "chemical cocktail" was used on the town. She gave this chilling assessment to the VOA Turkish service: "It's quite possible that Assad and Putin are using this ... as a kind of experiment to test out new combinations of lethal chemical weapons." She said there was no way the Syrian rebels could have been responsible for the attack. "Of course Russia and the Assad regime will deny this, because they know they are war crimes in the same way they deny attacks on hospitals and targeting civilians," Sparrow said. "So they're not going to fess up because they are war criminals conducting war crimes." Accusations 'unacceptable' The Kremlin said Putin, in a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, "underlined that it's unacceptable to make unfounded accusations against anyone until a thorough and unbiased international investigation" has been conducted. But a Putin spokesman also said that Russia's support for Assad was not unconditional. Jordanian King Abdullah, meeting with Trump at the White House on Wednesday, said, "This is another testament to the failure of international diplomacy to find solutions to this crisis." Britain, France and the United States strongly condemned Russia on Wednesday during an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council. The fate of a draft U.N. resolution condemning the attack written by the three Western powers remained in limbo, as Russia's envoy said at the emergency session he did not think the time was right for such action. VOA's Carla Babb and Mehmet Sumer contributed to this report. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US Attacks Syrian Airbase in Retaliation for Chemical Weapons Attack By Steve Herman, Jeff Seldin, Carla Babb April 06, 2017 The U.S. military fired a barrage of missiles into Syria Friday morning in retaliation for a gruesome chemical weapons attack blamed on President Bashar al-Assad's forces that killed about 100 civilians. It is the first direct U.S. assault on Syrian government forces. The 59 Tomahawk missiles were fired from the USS Porter and the USS Ross, a U.S. military official told VOA. Both destroyers are deployed in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. A Navy official said the Shayrat Airfield in western Syrian was targeted because it was most likely used to launch Tuesday's chemical strikes, which U.S. officials believe contained a nerve gas, possibly sarin. 'Sarin nerve gas' We have a very high level of confidence it was carried out by aircraft of the Bashar al-Assad regime and high degree of confidence it was sarin nerve gas," U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Thursday. In a prime time address to the nation, U.S. President Donald Trump discussed the strikes. "On Tuesday Syrian President Bashar al Assad launched a horrible chemical attack on innocent civilians using a deadly nerve agent. ... Tonight I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched," Trump said. "It is in this vital national security interest of the Untied States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons," he added. U.S. Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham released a statement shortly after the U.S. strike, saying, We salute the skill and professionalism of the U.S. Armed Forces who carried out tonights strikes in Syria. Acting on the orders of their commander-in-chief, they have sent an important message the United States will no longer stand idly by as Assad, aided and abetted by Putins Russia, slaughters innocent Syrians with chemical weapons and barrel bombs." National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster spoke after the airstrikes Thursday. Obviously, the regime will retain a capacity to commit mass murder with chemical weapons beyond this airfield, he said adding that this is the first time the United States has taken direct military action against the Assad regime. "This was not a small strike, he added. Calls on civilized nations Trump, speaking to reporters at his presidential retreat in southern Florida, called on all civilized nations to join the U.S. "in seeking an end to the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria." The airstrike came as Trump entertained Chinese President Xi Jinping at the president's Mar-a-Lago retreat. Trump did not announce the attacks in advance, although he and other national security officials ratcheted up their warnings to the Syrian government throughout the day Thursday. The surprise strike marked a sharp reversal for Trump, who, as a candidate, warned against the U.S. getting pulled into the Syrian civil war, now in its seventh year. But the president appeared moved by the video and photos of children killed in that chemical attack, calling it a "disgrace to humanity" that crossed "a lot of lines." Flying to his talks in Florida with the Chinese president, Trump told reporters that what happened in Syria was "a disgrace to humanity," and that with Assad "running things ... something should happen." "What Assad did is terrible. I think what happened in Syria is one of the truly egregious crimes, and it shouldn't have happened and it shouldn't be allowed to happen," he said. Trump added that he might "at some point" talk about Syria with its biggest military ally, Russian President Vladimir Putin. Last week, the White House backed away from the former Obama administration's stance that Assad must be removed. Tillerson: Assad must go While Trump did not say whether he now thought, in the wake of the gas attack, Assad should be driven from power, Secretary of State Tillerson said Thursday that Assad had to go. Tillerson told reporters there was "no role for him to govern the Syrian people" in the future. "The process by which Assad would leave is something that requires an international community effort, both to first defeat ISIS [Islamic State extremists] within Syria, to stabilize the Syrian country to avoid further civil war, and then to work collectively with our partners around the world through a political process that would lead to Assad leaving," he said. U.S. officials said this week that there was no doubt the Syrian military was behind the apparent sarin gas attack on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun, which also sickened 350. Television pictures showed horrifying scenes men, women and children foaming at the mouth, convulsing uncontrollably and struggling to breathe. Some families, including babies, died in their beds. Doctors showed that the pupils of the victims' eyes were tiny pinpoints that did not react to light a clear sign of sarin gas poisoning. U.S. officials rejected Russian and Syrian claims that the gas had come from a missile strike on a rebel-controlled warehouse where chemical weapons had been stockpiled. UN discussions At the United Nations, diplomats met earlier Thursday to discuss three draft resolutions responding to the gas attack. One put forward by the U.S., Britain and France, a competing draft put forward by Russia, and a third compromise draft from the 10 nonpermanent members of the council. Discussions ran late into the evening Thursday, but no consensus was reached and council members departed, many looking tense. Russia's deputy U.N. Ambassador Vladimir Safronkov said "negative consequences" must be considered if the U.S. were to take unilateral military action. "All responsibility, if military action occurred, will be on [the] shoulders of those who initiated such [a] doubtful and tragic enterprise," Safronkov said in response to reporters' questions. "I was here with Hans Blix in 2003," Sweden's envoy Olof Skoog said, referring to the Swedish U.N. weapons inspector who told the Security Council that year that his team had found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. "We're worried," Skoog said, adding he had spoken to the U.S. ambassador about it. Denies allegations Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem said his country did not use chemical weapons during airstrikes on Khan Sheikhoun. He insisted they would never be used, "even against terrorists." But Dr. Annie Sparrow, a public health specialist and a critical-care pediatrician at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York who has carried out many studies on Syria, said a "chemical cocktail" was used on the town. She gave this chilling assessment to the VOA Turkish service: "It's quite possible that Assad and Putin are using this ... as a kind of experiment to test out new combinations of lethal chemical weapons." On Wednesday, Russia and Syria claimed that the nerve gas attack actually occurred after a rebel-controlled warehouse stockpiling chemical weapons was hit by a missile, a claim that U.S. officials rejected. Sparrow said there was no way the Syrian rebels could have been responsible for the attack. "Of course Russia and the Assad regime will deny this, because they know they are war crimes in the same way they deny attacks on hospitals and targeting civilians," Sparrow said. "So they're not going to fess up because they are war criminals conducting war crimes." Accusations 'unacceptable' The Kremlin said Putin, in a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, "underlined that it's unacceptable to make unfounded accusations against anyone until a thorough and unbiased international investigation" has been conducted. But a Putin spokesman also said that Russia's support for Assad was not unconditional. Jordanian King Abdullah, meeting with Trump at the White House on Wednesday, said, "This is another testament to the failure of international diplomacy to find solutions to this crisis." Britain, France and the United States strongly condemned Russia on Wednesday during an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council. The fate of a draft U.N. resolution condemning the attack written by the three Western powers remained in limbo, as Russia's envoy said at the emergency session he did not think the time was right for such action. VOA's Mehmet Sumer contributed to this report. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Two Serbian Military Pilots Killed In Training Crash April 07, 2017 The Serbian Defense Ministry says two pilots were killed when their warplane crashed southeast of the capital, Belgrade. Officials said the Yugoslav-made single-engine Super Galeb G-4 crashed on April 7 near the village of Slatina, about 50 kilometers from Belgrade during a routine training flight. The ministry said the cause of the crash was not immediately known and that an investigation had been launched. The Super Galeb G-4 is used for training, as well as military missions. Serbia has 22 Galeb aircraft from the Yugoslavia era, but only nine are still in service, officials said. The plane that crashed was made in the 1980s, state media reported. The Associated Press quoted witnesses as saying the jet was flying low over the area before diving toward the ground. Based on reporting by AP, AFP, and dpa Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/serbian-military-pilots -killed-in-training-crash/28416995.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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address We are making efforts to make low-cost carriers to come to Ukraine - Poroshenko The country authorities are making efforts to make trips to Europe for Ukrainians cheaper, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said. "I can tell you that the work does not end here [on a visa-free regime].We will make trips for Ukrainians cheaper, low-cost carriers come to Ukraine," the president said at a meeting with young scientists and President of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine Borys Paton. According to the official, Ukrainians should be able to travel to the EU using their passports without formalizing visas, without overpaying for tickets, and spending only EUR 30-60. Norwegian Navy Chief Wants NATO to Explore New Naval Operating Capabilities Sputnik News 00:01 07.04.2017 Norwegian Navy Chief Rear Admiral Lars Saunes claims that securing the northernmost parts of NATO territory requires new naval operating capabilities as well as support from Norway's NATO allies. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) Securing the northernmost parts of NATO territory requires new naval operating capabilities as well as support from Norway's NATO allies, Norwegian Navy Chief Rear Admiral Lars Saunes said at the Norwegian-American Defense Conference on Thursday. "In any given situation, our ally support will be crucial to secure NATO's northern flank," Saunes said. "This support comes across the ocean and demands an ability to establish sea control and sea denial in the North Atlantic, the Bering Sea, and in the Arctic, so we need to look into new capabilities." Saunes said that because of the recognition of Norway's need to expand its naval capabilities, the Royal Norwegian Navy is purchasing three new ocean-going vessels for its Coast Guard. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address If there was anything that Syria did, it was to validate the fact that there is no Russia tie. Donald Trumps son Eric Trump, The Daily Telegraph, 10 April 2017 Syria - Tomahawk Strike 06 April 2017 The United States fired 60 Tomahawk missiles at Syria on 06 April 2017 from the USS Porter and the USS Ross [59 headed towards targets, while one failed soon after launch]. Donald Trump notified the Kremlin an hour in advance of the attack so the Russians could get their personnel, and Syrian personnel, out of harms way. Donald Trump's national security advisor Herbert McMaster said in a statement after the US missile strike that the United States "took great pains" to avoid Russian casualties. The missiles struck the Syrian military airfield in Ash Sha'irat located about 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the city of Homs in retaliation for the regime of Bashar Assad using nerve agents to attack his own people. Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt. Jeff Davis issued a statement providing details of the strike. It took place at about 8:40 p.m. EDT -- 4:40 a.m. April 7 in Syria, he said. "Every precaution was taken to execute this strike with minimal risk to personnel at the airfield. Russian forces were notified in advance of the strike using the established deconfliction line, Davis said, and US military planners took precautions to minimize risk to Russian or Syrian personnel at the airfield. Syrian military personnel, as well as equipment, were evacuated from the Shayrat (Ash Shairat) Airfield in Homs Governorate, Syria, prior to the late Thursday US missile attack, media reported. The missile strike damaged runways, towers and traffic control buildings at the airbase, but personnel had been evacuated and equipment was moved ahead of the strike. Syria's state-news agency SANA gave a death toll of nine civilians, including four children. On April 4, the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces said some 80 people were killed and 200 injured earlier that day in a chemical weapons attack in Khan Shaykhun, Idlib province, blaming the Syrian army for the incident. The Syrian army rejected the accusations and blamed militants and their patrons for the attack. Russia's Defense Ministry said Syrian aircraft hit a militants' arms warehouse with chemical weapons to be delivered to Iraq. Critics raised doubts about what became the official White House narrative on the chemical attack in Idlib. Former US intelligence officers, including Ray McGovern, Phil Giraldi and Bill Binney [aka the ususal suspects], even wrote a memo to Trump calling for an honest, independent investigation as Lavrov would discuss in his press conference with Tillerson. The official narrative was also debunked by MIT professor Ted Postol as "totally false." The attack on Al-Shayrat Air Base, the base from which the chemical attack on Syrias Idlib province was launched from U.S. Navy ships in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. Bashar al-Assad launched a horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians, Trump said in a statement to the nation. Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror. "We were informed of the attack in advance. Moreover, Moscow and Damascus have an agreement on the division of authority in Syria, and Russia's air defense systems are responsible only for protecting our soldiers and technology. It's Syrian air defense troops that are responsible for protecting Syrian bases," said Sergei Rogov, a scholar at the Institute of the U.S. and Canada. The strike was conducted using Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles, or TLAMs, launched from the destroyers USS Porter and USS Ross in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, Davis said in his statement. A total of 59 TLAMs targeted aircraft, hardened aircraft shelters, petroleum and logistical storage, ammunition supply bunkers, air defense systems, and radars. Shayrat is located 200 kilometers inside the territory of Syria, away from the Russian air defense. Part of the missile could pass in the Golan Heights, part of Lebanon by using the terrain for cover. So, the missiles were at an altitude of about 50 meters straight through the valley. Russian air defense, stationed in Tartous and Hmeymim not seen missiles that are in radar blind spot. Russia's Ministry of Defense said that only 23 of the 59 missiles had reached their target. Photos posted on social media appeared to show unexploded ordnance around the air base and in surrounding civilian areas. The Russian Defense Ministry said the American missiles destroyed key Syrian Air Force infrastructure: runways, refueling stations and MiG-23 planes in their hangars. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the attack destroyed an equipment depot, a training building, a cafeteria, six MiG-23 aircraft in servicing hangars and a radar station. According to the Syrian and Russian military, six Syrian soldiers were Killed, nine civilians in a nearby village were killed or wounded and nine Syrian jets were destroyed. A Sputnik correspondent reported earlier in the day from the scene of the attack that some hardware had been salvaged, including five Syrian fighter jets. The runway also seemed to have been spared, he said, as well as a few hangars, but eight others were taken out of service. "Turns out everything is maybe not as bad as it seemed in the beginning, because at first there was fire and smoke, and we still are unable to get everywhere, because there can be unexploded projectiles," the employee said. ImageSat International experts determined that 58 of the 59 Tomahawk missiles that were launched hit their targets. Theie imagery also revealed that 34 of the targets were completely destroyed: 13 protected aircraft hangars for warplanes and aircraft, 5 hangars for repairing aircraft, 10 ammunition supply bunkers, 5 anti-aircraft SA6 batteries and the Syrian Armys radar system. The rest of the targets were damaged. Russia rejected Western claims that President Assads regime carried out the chemical attack, and blamed rebel fighters for the incident. Russian President Vladimir Putin called the attack an "aggression against a sovereign nation" on a "made-up pretext." The Kremlin said in a statement the U.S. action had inflicted "considerable damage" to already "lamentable" U.S.-Russia ties. Russias Foreign Ministry suspended an airspace safety memorandum with the United States for Syria. The agreement, which minimized the risk of accidents by communicating flight paths, was made after Moscow in September 2015 began a bombing campaign against rebels and jihadists in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Despite having anti-missile systems in Syria, and the warning time, Russia apparently made no attempt to intercept the Tomahawks. Syrian Armed Forces General Staff said that the US missile strike on Syria's military airfield was a violation of international law. Homs Governor Talal Barazi said that the airbase had suffered insignificant damage after the overnight attack with US cruise missiles. According to Barazi, the attack left five servicemen and two civilians dead. Iran "strongly condemned" the U.S. strike, saying the "unilateral action is dangerous, destructive and violates the principles of international law." ISNA news agency quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi as saying "Iran strongly condemns any such unilateral strikes ... such measures will strengthen terrorists in Syria ... and it will complicate the situation in Syria and the region". North Korea considers Syria as a key ally and criticized the US action. The North's foreign ministry on Saturday called the missile strike a "clear and unforgivable act of aggression against a sovereign state," and proof "a million times over" that the North's decision to strengthen its military power was the right choice. China's Foreign Ministry has called on all sides to stick to political settlements. UN Secretary-General said in a statement he appeals for restraint in Syria after the United States launched a missile attack on an airfield in the country and has called on the relevant parties to renew their commitment to the Geneva talks to achieve lasting peace. Britains Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said Faced with this first test of the slaughter of nearly a hundred people, including children, from a gas attack by the regime, the Trump administration has acted and we believe rightly and we fully support that actiony. German Foreign Ministry Spokesman Sebastian Fischer said "No one can say that no other roads were tried to prevent or to end the use of chemical weapons." German Chancellor Angela Merkel said "The attack of the United States is understandable given the dimension of the war crimes, given the suffering of innocent people, and given the blockage in the U.N. Security Council. French foreign minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said the "use of chemical weapons is appalling and should be punished because it is a war crime." French President Francois Hollande said: "I consider this operation a response, which must now be pursued at the international level within the Framework of the United Nations. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Ankara is ready to work with Washington in a more assertive policy towards the Syrian regime. He also criticized Moscow for its ongoing support of Damascus. "What happened in Idlib on Tuesday proved again that the bloody Assad regime show complete disregard for the prospect of a political transition and efforts to enforce the ceasefire," read a statement by presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin. Saudi Arabia said it "fully supports" the strikes, adding that it was a "courageous decision" by President Donald Trump in response to the alleged use of chemical weapons against civilians in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, in northwestern Syria. "A responsible source at the foreign ministry expressed the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's full support for the American military operations on military targets in Syria, which came as a response to the Syrian regime's use of chemical weapons against innocent civilians," a statement carried by state news agency SPA said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he supports the "strong and clear message" sent by the US strikes. The Israeli military said it had been informed in advance of the attack. "In both word and action, President (Donald) Trump sent a strong and clear message today that the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated," a statement from Netanyahu's office said. "Israel fully supports President Trump's decision and hopes that this message of resolve in the face of the Assad regime's horrific actions will resonate not only in Damascus, but in Tehran, Pyongyang and elsewhere." Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said his government supports the U.S. action as a means to "prevent further deterioration of the situation." Italy also gave its support, saying it was a suitable response to Syrian aggression. The strike was "a commensurate response ... and a signal of deterrence against the risks of further use of chemical weapons by Assad", Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano said in a statement. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull also weighed in, saying that he supported the strike, calling it a "proportionate and calibrated response". In a televised statement, he also called on Russia to play its part in bringing peace to Syria. "Having launched missile attacks on the Syrian airbase, Trump demonstrated pure madness, impulsiveness and a total geopolitical ignorance. This decision gives Russia and China no other choice but to form a strategic military and economic alliance. This is what Washington has tried to prevent in recent years," Konstantin Sivkov, head of the Russian Academy of Geopolitical Problems, told Radio Sputnik. If Assad isnt deterred, more attacks would mean more scenes of people foaming at the mouth in agony and bodies lying in heaps. Days earlier, the Trump administration had stressed that removing Assad from power was no longer a priority and that Americas focus was entirely on defeating an Islamic State insurgency in the north of the country. Russia recorded hits of only 23 of the 59 Tomahawk cruise missile launched, representative of the Russian Defense Ministry, Major-General Igor Konashenkov said at a briefing in Moscow. "According to the Russian means of the objective control, to the Syrian air base cried down the whole place 23 missile drop the remaining 36 cruise missiles is not known." - he said. "Thus, the combat effectiveness of the US massive missile attack on Syrian air base - is extremely low," - he added. According Konashenkova, Syrian Air Force lost six MiG-23. In addition, radar and other property were destroyed. "As a result of the impact destroyed the warehouse logistics property, educational building, dining room, six were in the repair hangar aircraft MiG-23, as well as radar runway, taxiways and aircraft of Syrian Air Force in parking lots are not damaged.", - said the general. "Panorama shooting with Russian drone shows that the main blow fell on the perimeter of the base, and there are craters hit at a distance of 50 to 100 meters away from most of the runway, taxiways and base infrastructure objects". Just a day after it was struck by cruise missiles, the Syrian air base targeted by the US was operating again. The governor of Syria's Homs province confirmed that Syrian warplanes had taken off from Shayrat and that the air base has resumed flights. A joint command center made up of the forces of Russia, Iran and Lebanon's Shiite group Hezbollah supporting Syrian President Bashar Assad issued a statement 09 APril 2017 slamming the U.S. strike on a Syrian air base Friday and saying that Washington had already crossed many "red lines" in Syria. "America waging an aggression on Syria is a crossing of red lines, read the statement issued in Arabic and published by the group on media outlet Ilam al-Harbi (War Media). From now on we will respond with force to any aggressor or any breach of red lines from whoever it is and America knows our ability to respond well." Russia and Iran will not allow America to dominate the world and impose a unipolar system through its direct assault on Syria by violating international laws and not working within the framework of the United Nations, the statement warned, adding that the two allies would stand up to America no matter what. The US strike came 77 days into Donald Trump's presidency, two and a half months marked by unprecedented hostility between the US media and a new administration. But nothing changes the narrative quite like pictures of a few Tomahawk missiles being launched into the night sky. And the tone shifted. Journalists praised Trump's decisiveness, his morality, and the might of the US military. He was described as something he'd seldom been accused of - being 'presidential.' There are plenty of media angles in this story: from the haunting images of victims of chemical weapons, the impact the pictures are said to have had on Trump, to the video supplied by the Pentagon from those warships that is now driving the story. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address BGM-109 Tomahawk - Operational Use On 13 April 2018, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States took action to strike the Syrian chemical weapons infrastructure. The bombardment, a coordinated effort involving both Britain and France, began at 9 PM Eastern Daylight Time (Washington time) Friday [4:00 am 14 April 2018 Syrian time, shortly before dawn prayers] and rained down more than 100 cruise missiles on Syrian facilities in the capital, Damascus, and the city of Homs. Late on 06 April 2017, starting around 8:40PM Easter Time (4:40 a.m., April 7, in Syria), the United States military launched 59 Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles (TLAMs) at the Shayrat Airfield in Syria's Homs governorate. Targets struck included the airfield's aircraft, hardened aircraft shelters, petroleum and logistical storage, ammunition supply bunkers, air defense systems, and radars. The missiles were launched from U.S. Navy destroyers (USS Ross (DDG 71) and USS Porter (DDG 78)) located in the eastern Mediterranean. The strike came in retaliation for a chemical attack on April 4 in Khan Sheikhoun which killed scores of civilians earlier. According to the DoD, Shayrat Airfield had been used to store chemical weapons and Syrian air forces. The U.S. intelligence community assessed that aircraft from Shayrat conducted the chemical weapons attack on April 4. The strike was intended to deter the regime from using chemical weapons again. Russian forces were notified in advance of the strike using the established deconfliction line. From the 1991 Persian Gulf War to late 2001, the US fired about 1,100 Tomahawks, including up to 70 against Taliban and al-Qaeda targets in Afghanistan. Tomahawk was used extensively during Desert Storm in 1991, in Iraq in January and June 1993, in Bosnia (Deliberate Force) in 1995 and in Iraq (Desert Strike) in 1996. Four hundred Block II and Block III missiles were fired on five separate occasions. Two submarines and a number of surface ships fired Tomahawk cruise missiles during the Gulf War. According to initial US Navy reports, of 297 attempted cruise missile launches, 290 missiles fired and 242 Tomahawks hit their targets. The speed, stealth, endurance and firepower of today's nuclear submarines were demonstrated in 1991 during America's participation in Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm. Used primarily as surveillance platforms, USS Chicago and USS Louisville operated in conjunction with Allied Naval Forces in the Red Sea. On January 19, 1991, USS Louisville made the transition from passive surveillance to active combatant, becoming the first submarine in history to launch a Tomahawk cruise missile against an enemy target. But TLAM performance in Desert Storm was well below the impression conveyed in DOD's report to the Congress, as well as in internal DOD estimates. During Desert Storm, a TLAM mission was loaded 307 times into a particular missile for launch from a Navy ship or submarine. Of those 307, 19 experienced prelaunch problems. Ten of the 19 problems were only temporary, thus these missile were either launched at a later time or returned to inventory. Of the 288 actual launches, 6 suffered boost failures and did not transition to cruise. Despite initial strong positive claims made for TLAM performance in Desert Storm, analysis of TLAM effectiveness was complicated by problematic bomb damage assessment data. The relatively flat, featureless, desert terrain in the theater made it difficult for the Defense Mapping Agency to produce usable TERCOM ingress routes, and TLAM demonstrated limitations in range, mission planning, lethality, and effectiveness against hard targets and targets capable of mobility. According to President Clinton, he ordered some 23 Tomahawk missiles to be fired into Iraq to send a message to the government of Iraq and other terrorists. "On June 26, 1993, at my direction, U.S. naval forces launched a Tomahawk cruise missile strike on the Iraqi Intelligence Service's (IIS) principal command and control complex in Baghdad. This facility is the headquarters for the IIS, which planned the failed attempt to assassinate former President Bush during his visit to Kuwait in April 1993." The Gulf War and subsequent contingency operations, including the September 1996 attacks on Iraqi military installations, demonstrated that long-range missiles can carry out some of the missions of strike aircraft while they reduce the risk of pilot losses and aircraft attrition. Although the number of ships (including attack submarines) capable of firing the Tomahawk grew only slightly--from 112 to 119--between 1991 and 1996, the Navy's overall ability to fire these land-attack missiles has grown considerably. This is because a greater number of the ships capable of firing the missile are now surface ships and surface ships are able to carry more Tomahawks than submarines. As of the beginning of 1996 the US Navy had 140 Tomahawk-capable ships with 6,266 launchers), of which there are 72 SSN's (696 launchers) and 70 surface ships (5,570 launchers). There were over 4,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles in the inventory in 1996. Block III, with its improved accuracy and stand alone GPS guidance capability, was first used in the September 1995 Bosnia strike (Deliberate Force) and again in the September 1996 Iraq strike (Desert Strike). Success rates for both strikes were above 90%. In all, Tomahawks firing power showed a greater than 85% success rate. Submarine operations went from routine patrols to aggressive strike on August 20, 1998. Submarine and surface ships of the USS Abraham Lincoln Battle Group launched Tomahawk cruise missiles against Sudan and terrorist training camps in Afghanistan 13 days after terrorists bombed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. On Aug. 20, President Clinton launched Operation Infinite Reach. US attack submarines fired Tomahawk Land-Attack Missiles at two targets linked to bin Laden's terror network - a training camp in Afghanistan 60 miles south of Kabul and the Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan. The Shifa plant was believed to produce a precursor to the chemical weapon agent VX. As justification, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Henry H. Shelton, said, "Osama bin Laden's network of terrorists was involved in the planning, the financing, and the execution of the attacks on the US embassies." After the Aug. 7 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the U.S. launched more than 75 Tomahawk land-attack missiles from ships and submarines against terrorist targets in Afghanistan and Sudan. Then on December 16, 1998, USS Columbus (as part of the USS Carl Vinson Battle Group) participated in cruise missile attacks against military targets in Iraq in Operation Desert Fox. On December 16, 1998, United States Central Command (USCENTCOM) military forces launched cruise missile attacks against military targets in Iraq. These strikes were ordered by the President of the United States and were undertaken in response to Iraq's continued failure to comply with United Nations Security Council resolutions as well as their interference with United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) inspectors. Operation Allied Force, in the spring of 1999, occurred when inventory levels of Tomahawk missiles were at critical levels due to previous combat expenditures of 811 missiles prior to 1999. Navy Tomahawk land attack missiles played a critical role in the 1999 Kosovo air campaign. Used selectively throughout, they were sent to destroy over 50 percent of key headquarters and electrical power station targets. Launched from the sea to shape the battle inland, Navy Tomahawks achieved a 90-percent success rate against these vital targets in all-weather conditions. All TLAMs expended during Operation Allied Force were the Block III configuration. Tomahawk missiles utilize a solid propellant rocket motor to accelerate the missile through the initial boost phase of flight until the turbofan engine takes over for the cruise and terminal phases. Two versions of TLAM were used in this operation. The TLAM-C has a conventional unitary warhead, while the TLAM-D carries conventional submunitions. TLAMs were continuously present in the theater, and could be used to execute timely attack. This gave the joint force commander the ability to utilize the principles of surprise, initiative, and massed firepower on key enemy targets. Six ships and three submarines from two U.S. Navy battle groups and one UK submarine launched 218 missiles in preplanned and quick-reaction strikes. Target types ranged from traditional headquarter buildings and other infrastructure targets to relocatable targets such as aircraft and surface-to-air missile launchers. Tomahawk was often a weapon of choice for targets with the potential for high collateral damage, and was used to attack numerous targets in Belgrade. In response to the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the United States initiated military actions in afghanistan by means of operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). Early operations used land-based B-1, B-2, and B-52 bombers; carrier-based F-14 and F/A-18 fighters, and Tomahawk cruise missiles launched into Afghanistan from both U.S. and British ships and submarines. Gen. Richard B. Myers, the JCS Chairman, announced the action at an Oct. 7 DOD news briefing. He said, "About 15 landbased bombers, some 25 strike aircraft from carriers, and US and British ships and submarines launching approximately 50 Tomahawk missiles have struck terrorist targets in Afghanistan." USS PHILIPPINE SEA (CG 58) participated in Operation Enduring Freedom by launching the first wave of Tomahawk Missiles into Afghanistan. Following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, USS Key West was within the Fifth Fleet Operating Area and was the first ship to arrive off the coast of Pakistan, firing Tomahawk cruise missiles into Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. When Operation Iraqi Freedom commenced in March 2003, USS Cheyenne became the first U.S. warship to fire Tomahawk cruise missiles into Baghdad. Intelligence reports seemed confident that Hussein, his influential sons Uday and Qusay, and other regime leaders were in the same bunker at the same time and that the coalition knew where it was. The allies seized upon this opportunity to decapitate Saddam's regime with a single blow. The first Tomahawk missile to be fired into Iraq in the second Gulf War roared off from the San Diego-based cruiser Bunker Hill at 5.25am, March 20. Simultaneously, thirty-six Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles (TLAMs) hit the complex early in the morning on March 20. Unfortunately, later reports proved that the intelligence was faulty: Hussein and his sons were not in the bunker. Three other SUBPAC submarines, USS Louisville, USS Columbia, and USS Key West, also participated in the very successful strike mission responsible for the early successes of coalition forces. Coalition forces fired more than 725 Tomahawk cruise missiles by early 2003, one-third of the entire number in the inventory. Alfredo Beltran Leyva Sentenced to Life in Prison for Leading an International Drug Trafficking Conspiracy Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Wednesday, April 5, 2017 Alfredo Beltran Leyva, also known as Mochomo, one of the leaders of the Beltran Leyva Organization, a Mexican drug-trafficking cartel responsible for importing multi-ton quantities of cocaine and methamphetamine into the United States, was sentenced today to life in prison for his participation in an international narcotics trafficking conspiracy. Acting Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Blanco of the Justice Department's Criminal Division, Assitant Director Stephen E. Richardson of the FBI's Criminal Investigative Division, Special Agent in Charge James J. Hunt of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) New York Division and Executive Associate Director Peter T. Edge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) made the announcement. "For well over a decade, the defendant commanded a major Mexican drug trafficking organization that imported ton-quantities of cocaine and methamphetamine into the United States and led a campaign of violence and fear that gripped communities across North America," said Acting Assistant Attorney General Blanco. "Through close cooperation with our foreign counterparts, the United States brought this international drug-trafficker to justice, significantly disrupted the flow of narcotics into the United States and stemmed the tide of destruction wrought by this violent cartel." "Alfredo Beltran Leyva spent decades at the head of a criminal organization responsible for trafficking large amounts of cocaine and methamphetamine into the U.S.," said Assistant Director Richardson. "Today's sentencing marks an end to Alfredo Beltran Leyva's reign of terror, and demonstrates that the FBI and our law enforcement partners around the globe will aggressively pursue and bring justice to those individuals who use violence and intimidation to threaten our communities." "Alfredo Beltran Leyva is one of the 'Goliaths' of Mexican drug traffickers known for his savage business tactics and responsible for flooding the United States with illegal drugs," said Special Agent in Charge Hunt. "This sentencing exemplifies law enforcement's commitment to bringing justice to the victims of drug abuse through successful prosecutions of the highest echelon of drug traffickers." "Today's sentencing dealt a major blow to the Beltran Leyva Organization by taking out one of its leaders. It is with tireless joint enforcement efforts like this one that we can remove drugs from America's streets and make our communities that much safer," said HSI Executive Associate Director Edge. "HSI and our law enforcement partners, both in the United States and around the world, will not waver in our resolve to dismantle and cripple violent drug organizations, and remove their leadership." Beltran Leyva, 46, was indicted on Aug. 24, 2012, for conspiracy to distribute cocaine and methamphetamine for importation into the United States. The defendant was extradited from Mexico to the United States on Nov. 15, 2014, and pleaded guilty on Feb. 23, 2016, before U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon of the District of Columbia. Judge Leon imposed today's sentence and ordered Beltran Leyva to forfeit $529,200,000. In court, Beltran Leyva admitted that he was part of a conspiracy to import large quantities of drugs into the United States. At his plea hearing and during pre-trial conferences, the government proffered evidence that from the early 1990s until his indictment in August 2014, the defendant was a leader of the Beltran Leyva Organization, a global criminal enterprise responsible for importing multi-ton quantities of cocaine and methamphetamine into the United States. Beltran Leyva admitted that he and his organization obtained tonnage quantities of cocaine from South American suppliers, which the defendant and his organization helped finance and which were transported to Mexico via air, land and sea. Once the cocaine reached Mexico, the defendant's organization transported it to key points in Mexico, including Culiacan, Sinaloa, which was also the central point for the collection of billions of dollars from drug trafficking proceeds in the United States. At sentencing, the government's evidence showed that the organization used weapons and carried out acts of violence, including murders, kidnappings, tortures and violent collections of drug debts, in order to sustain the drug importation operation. On May 30, 2008, the United States added the Beltran Leyva Organization to the Department of Treasury's Office of Foreign Asset Control's Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons list, pursuant to the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act. On Aug. 20, 2009, the United States specifically designated Beltran Leyva as a specially-designated drug trafficker under the same act. The FBI's El Paso, Texas, Division led the investigation in partnership with the DEA's New York Division and HSI's Special Agent in Charge, New York office as part of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force. Acting Deputy Chief Amanda Liskamm and Trial Attorney Adrian Rosales of the Criminal Division's Narcotic and Dangerous Drugs Section and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Marcia M. Henry and Andrea Goldbarg of the Eastern District of New York prosecuted the case. The Criminal Division's Office of International Affairs provided valuable assistance in the case. 17-363 Criminal Division Topic: Drug Trafficking NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Northcom, Southcom Work with Partners to Defend the Homeland By Cheryl Pellerin DoD News, Defense Media Activity WASHINGTON, April 6, 2017 The men and women of U.S. Northern Command and U.S. Southern Command are ready to defend the United States against adversaries and work with a range of partners to safeguard the homeland, the commands' commanders told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee here today. Testifying before the panel were Northcom commander Air Force Gen. Lori J. Robinson, who also commands the North American Aerospace Defense Command, and Southcom commander Navy Adm. Kurt W. Tidd. The men and women of NORAD and Northcom are ready to defend against adversaries who seek ways to extend their operational reach into North America and to hold the nation at risk, Robinson told legislators. Countering Adversaries Northcom's adversaries include North Korea, the general said, "where [North Korea's leader] Kim Jong-un has conducted nearly three times as many ballistic missile tests as his father and grandfather did, combined." North Korea, she said, uses what it learns from each test to improve its missile capabilities, and Iran is developing a space program with potential dual-use technology. "Northcom is prepared to counter ballistic missiles should North Korea attempt to launch an attack on the United States," Robinson said, noting that Northcom can defend against such attacks today and must keep improving. "Russian cruise missiles can reach us from greater ranges than ever before, she added, " but I'm also confident in NORAD's layered approach to cruise missile defense. We are working in close partnership with the Missile Defense Agency to improve our sensors and the reliability of our ground-based interceptors." Defending Borders Robinson described for the panel the "incredible variety of terrain along the Southwest border" and how transnational criminal organizations and their networks exploit the terrain. To counter such networks, she said, Northcom partners with law enforcement agencies, Southcom, other combatant commands, the intelligence community and military partners such as the Mexican Secretariat of the Navy. At the nation's northern border, Robinson said, Northcom and NORAD -- the U.S.-Canadian binational organization charged with aerospace warning and control for North America -- are two distinct commands unified in a common purpose. "The men and women of NORAD and Northcom stand ready to face the threats of the United States and Canada today," the general said, "and we are evolving to face the threats of tomorrow." Extending Defense In his remarks, Tidd said, "General Robinson and her team are directly responsible for defending our homeland [but] Southcom extends that defense well beyond our borders throughout our southern approaches." Among Southcom's most immediate adversaries are members of a threat network that move drugs through the Southcom area of responsibility and across the U.S. border, he said. "On average, one metric ton of cocaine will kill 10 Americans every year and harm hundreds more. Last year we watched almost 450 tons pass freely toward our country [but] these adaptive threat networks can move anything," the admiral said. Members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria have encouraged their followers to exploit the pathways leading directly into the United States to move weapons of mass destruction, he told the panel. Addressing the Challenge "To address this challenge we're changing our approach to better understand and disrupt the immediate threats," Tidd said. Southcom is working with partners to reduce vulnerabilities that allow the networks to exist and to expand information sharing and build the capacity of partners to better secure their territory against these challenges, the admiral explained. Other issues include extremist networks like those of ISIS that are radicalizing and recruiting individuals to conduct attacks on the United States and on partner interests in the Southcom. "Russia, China and Iran are actively engaging in Latin America," he added. "While most of their activities aren't military threats yet, some do warrant examination. Even seemingly benign activities can build malign influence." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Eight Detained, Apartment Searched In St. Petersburg Subway-Bombing Probe RFE/RL April 06, 2017 Russian investigators have searched a St. Petersburg apartment where a number of citizens of unspecified Central Asian countries who reportedly had been in contact with subway bombing suspect Akbarjon Jalilov lived. Federal Investigative Committee spokeswoman Svetlana Petrenko on April 6 said six people were detained in St. Petersburg and two were being held in Moscow in connection with the April 3 bombing that killed 14 people, including the suspected suicide bomber. The names and nationalities of the detainees were not made public. A committee statement said security forces had searched a St. Petersburg apartment where the men were living and seized a bomb, firearms, and ammunition. The bomb, it said, was "identical" to one that was found at the Ploshchad Vosstania metro station on the day of the deadly attack. The investigation into the blast, which also injured 50 people, continued as thousands gathered in officially sanctioned events in St. Petersburg, Moscow, and other cities to remember the victims. There has been no claim of responsibility for the blast. However, the Investigative Committee on April 4 said it had determined that Jalilov, 22, set off a bomb that exploded on a subway train between two stations in central St. Petersburg and that his remains were found at the scene. Traces of his DNA were also found on a bag containing the bomb that was successfully defused at the Ploshchad Vosstania station, investigators said. Jalilov was an ethnic Uzbek who was born in Kyrgyzstan and held Russian citizenship. Authorities are also investigating any links between the bombing and the Islamic State (IS) extremist group, which has claimed responsibility for several deadly attacks in the Middle East and Europe. IS on April 6 claimed responsibility for a separate attack this week that killed two Russian traffic-police officers in the southern city of Astrakhan. Meanwhile, people clutching flowers and white balloons gathered outside St. Petersburg's Tekhnologichesky Institut subway station, near where the train was traveling when the bomb exploded. "I came to show that we will not be frightened," Valentina Zlobina, 48, told the AFP news agency. "We will become even more united in this tragedy." The first funeral for a victim of the blast was held outside of St. Petersburg on April 6. About 50 people gathered to mourn the death of 50-year-old puppet maker Irina Medyantseva. She was on the subway train with her daughter, Yelena, who is recovering in a hospital. "We had just bought a flat near here in a beautiful building. Our daughters were doing well, and then this happened," her husband, Aleksandr Kaminsky, told AFP. With reporting by Interfax, fontanka.ru, AFP, and AP Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/russia-petersburg -bomb-defused/28413952.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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Stockholm Police Seek Driver After Truck Attack Kills Three RFE/RL April 07, 2017 Swedish police were searching for the driver of a beer truck that was driven into a crowded department store in central Stockholm, killing at least three people and injuring eight, in a suspected terror attack. Police released a photo from a surveillance camera near the scene of April 7 attack that showed a man wearing a white sweater, a dark hoodie, and a green military jacket. Police also said they were questioning two people in connection with the attack but cautioned that they were not necessarily suspects. Swedish authorities said the investigation was in the "preliminary" stages and that they had no details about the attacker or attackers and that no one was in custody. The Swedish capital was reeling after the deadly attack on the Ahlens department store in the Stockholm city center. Authorities were treating it as a terrorist attack. "Sweden has been attacked. This indicates that it is an act of terror," Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven. Police also said it appeared to be an act of terror. "Given what has happened in other parts of Europe, we cannot currently exclude that this is a terrorist crime," a police statement said.. The Aftonbladet newspaper quoted a spokesman for the Spendrups brewing company as saying the truck involved in the incident had been stolen while the driver was unloading goods during a delivery earlier in the day. The company said the driver was safe. A witness told Aftonbladet that the truck came "out of nowhere." "I couldn't see if anyone was driving, but it was out of control. I saw at least two people get run down. I ran as fast as I could away from there," he said. Television footage showed smoke coming out of the upscale Ahlens department store on the city's pedestrian street Drottninggatan after the truck smashed into the store at about 3 p.m. local time. Police have not released an official casualty toll, but multiple reports say at least three people were killed and eight injured. "I saw at least three dead, but probably more," Radio Sweden reporter Martin Svenningsen said. Swedish national broadcaster SVT reported at least five people were killed, but that could not immediately be confirmed.Reuters reported eight people were injured. Police asked locals to avoid the center of the city and shut down the city's subway system for several hours. It was later reopened. Authorities ordered the evacuation of the nearby central train station, although they did not say why. Officials of national rail company SJ said all trains to and from Stockholm's central station would be canceled for the rest of the day as a result of the attack in the city. Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf said the royal family viewed the attack "with dismay." "We follow developments, but as of now our thoughts go to the victims and their families," he said. International Reaction Among the early reactions from abroad, a spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel issued a statement saying: "Our thoughts go out to the people in Stockholm, to the injured, their relatives, rescuers and police. We stand together against terror." Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Union's chief executive, said, ""We stand shoulder to shoulder in solidarity with the people of Sweden." "One of Europe's most vibrant and colorful cities appears to have been struck by those wishing it and our very way of life harm," he added. Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose country on April 3 suffered its own terrorist attack when 13 people were killed by a suspected suicide bomber in St. Petersburg's subway system, sent a note of condolences to the Swedish king. "In our country, people know, and not by hearsay, about the atrocities of international terrorism. At this difficult time, Russians mourn together with the people of Sweden," Putin said. Sweden's Scandinavian neighbors reacted by increasing security in public areas. Norwegian police said officers at the Oslo airport and in in the country's major citieswould be carrying weapons until further notice following the Stockholm attack. Norwegian police normally do not carry weapons. In Finland, police in the capital, Helsinki, said they were increasing patrols. There have been several recent terrorist attacks involving vehicles ramming crowds in Europe, all of them claimed by the Islamic State (IS) terrorist organization. Five people died as a result of a knife-and-vehicle attack in London on March 22. On December 19, 12 people were killed and 48 injured when a truck was driven into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin. In July 2016, 86 people were killed when a truck slammed into crowds in the French city of Nice. Based on reporting by AP, dpa, AFP, the BBC, and Reuters Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/vehicle-crowd- swedish-capital/28416610.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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address DoD Enhances Space Capabilities, Work Tells Symposium Audience DoD News, Defense Media Activity WASHINGTON, April 6, 2017 The Defense Department is enhancing its space-based capabilities, Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work told an audience of about 200 military and industry representatives yesterday at the 33rd Annual Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colorado. In a statement, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Courtney Hillson, a spokesperson for the deputy secretary, said Work discussed the capabilities and the challenges associated with the space domain during the symposium's classified forum, and that he described the steps DoD has taken to meet those challenges. "The deputy secretary noted we must continue to ensure the many benefits derived from space-based capabilities are available to our warfighters without interruption," Hillson said. "If an adversary attempts to deny us the capability, we must be able to respond in an integrated and coordinated fashion. Space forces are a key element in the department's emerging multidomain battle concept." Vanguard of Third Offset Strategy Work told the audience that space warriors should think of themselves as the vanguard of the Third Offset Strategy in integrating new capabilities, such as artificial intelligence and autonomy, and new concepts of operations, Hillson said, and she provided excerpts from his remarks: -- "We are safeguarding the availability, security, and resiliency of our assets at all times and through all phases of conflict." -- "Cyber and space-based capabilities ensure we project strength in all domains of warfare." -- "Space control capabilities should be considered to ensure survivable and resilient space operations necessary for the execution of war plans and the defense of our allies." -- "While we rely heavily on space capabilities, in both peace and war, we must continue to emphasize space control as challenges arise." Work also visited with airmen of the 50th Space Wing at Schriever Air Force Base, Colorado, during the trip. A component of Air Force Space Command, the wing is responsible for the operation and support of 175 DoD satellites and provides installation support to 16 major tenant units. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Brazil Interested in Extra Batch of Russian Mi-35 Helicopters - FSMTC Sputnik News 15:25 06.04.2017 Brazil is interested in buying a Russian Mi-35 helicopters batch, Deputy Director of Russia's FSMTC Anatoliy Punchuk said on Thursday. RIO DE JANEIRO (Sputnik) Brazil is interested in buying an additional batch of Russian Mi-35 helicopters, and negotiations are underway, Deputy Director of Russia's Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation (FSMTC) Anatoliy Punchuk said on Thursday. "The Brazilians express interest, but the financial issue is rather sensitive. They say that Mi-35s are very suitable for them. It is early to say that we have agreed on something particular, the negotiations are ongoing," Punchuk told reporters at the Latin American Defense and Security International Exhibition (LAAD) in Brazil. The contract for Brazil's current supply of 12 Russian Mi-35M military helicopters ceased in 2008, with the last helicopter being delivered in 2014. The Mi-35M multirole attack helicopter is a modified version of the Mi-24V helicopter developed by the Mil Moscow Helicopter Plant, and has been produced by Russia's Rostvertol plant since 2005. The helicopter ensures combat use of guided and unguided weapons and is able to conduct missions at a moment's notice in nearly all weather conditions, provide transport of military personnel, medical assistance, and the movement of military supplies and other such cargo. The LAAD-2017 is held in the city of Rio de Janeiro on April 4-7. Some 200 official delegations from 30 countries are taking part in the event. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Trump, Xi Begin Highly Anticipated Summit in Florida By Steve Herman April 06, 2017 U.S. President Donald Trump is greeting Chinese President Xi Jinping at his Florida resort Thursday for a two-day summit at which the U.S. leader hopes to pressure Beijing into doing more to rein in North Korea's nuclear weapons development. In remarks to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump said the roughly $310 billion U.S. trade deficit with China is high on the agenda. "We have been treated unfairly and have made terrible trade deals with China for many, many years. So that's one of the things we're gonna be talking about." But he also appeared to link that issue with U.S. concerns over North Korea's nuclear weapons program. "The other thing, of course, is going to be North Korea and somehow they will mix. They really do mix. So we're going to be talking about trade, North Korea and many other things," he said. He did not elaborate. Earlier this week Trump warned, "If China is not going to solve North Korea, we will." His administration is considering sanctions against Chinese banks and companies that give Pyongyang access to international financing. China supplies North Korea with almost all its fuel oil, imported foods, consumer goods, and the raw materials used to construct its weapons program. But China has also grown weary of the militaristic aspirations of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who has yet to visit Beijing during his six-year rule. A series of U.N. sanctions against North Korea have not deterred it from a string of missile tests, the latest this week. Trump and Xi, who oversee the world's two largest economies, are meeting for the first time and are set for a day of talks on Friday after having dinner Thursday with their wives at Trump's Mar-a-lago estate. The U.S. president said Thursday he is not sure how the summit might play out, telling Fox News, "Well, it's going to be interesting. Nobody really knows." On Wednesday, Trump said dealing with North Korea's nuclear development program could have "been made a lot easier if it was handled years ago." But the U.S. leader, in office less than three months, said he welcomed the challenge. "We have a big problem, we have somebody that is not doing the right thing, and that's going to be my responsibility," Trump said. According to advance thoughts on the summit from Beijing, Xi could offer the United States more Chinese investments, which would create more American jobs, a key Trump campaign pledge. Under former U.S. President Barack Obama, Chinese-American relations were often focused on curbing greenhouse gas emissions in the two biggest polluting countries in the world. But Xi and Trump have taken sharply divergent paths on curbing pollution. The Chinese government recently canceled construction of more than 100 coal-fired power plants and is investing at least $360 billion in green energy projects by 2020. Trump, meanwhile, has vowed to bring back mining jobs that have been lost through automation and closure of U.S. mines as the country has turned to the use of cheaper natural gas. Trump in the past has described global warming as a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese to hurt the U.S. economy. Last week, he signed an executive order aimed at rolling back Obama-era policies regulating carbon emissions. Beijing appears to be focused more on atmospherics and slogans at the summit. From what analysts and officials in Beijing say, China will be watching closely for telltale signs that Washington may be adopting its view of relations between the two countries, the so-called "new style of major power relations." China expects Trump to reaffirm a pledge that was made by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson last month, during his visit to Beijing. "The two presidents are going to define the nature of the relationship between China and the United States as characterized by this phrase, no conflict, no confrontation, mutual respect and win-win cooperation," said Wang Dong, a political scientist at Peking University. Wang said China hopes the informal get together will inject some stability into the relationship and help reduce the uncertainties that have arisen during the transition to the new administration. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Prime ministers of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania express their firm support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders, strongly condemn Russia's aggression against Ukraine and emphasize that sanctions imposed against the Russian Federation must remain in force until the Minsk agreements are fully implemented and the sovereignty and territorial integrity are restored in Ukraine. This is stated in a joint statement of Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Groysman, Prime Minister of Estonia Juri Ratas, Prime Minister of Latvia Maris Kucinskis and Prime Minister of Lithuania Saulius Skvernelis, which was adopted following the results of the quadripartite meeting in Kyiv on Thursday, the Information and Communications Department of the Cabinet of Ministers Secretariat said. "We will never recognize the attempt of annexation of the integral part of the territory of Ukraine the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and city of Sevastopol and demand from the Russian Federation restoration of the respect to the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine and return to unconditional fulfillment of its commitments under international law. We call on the international society to continue active political and diplomatic efforts for restoring the Ukraines territorial integrity in its internationally recognized borders in interests of stability and security of the entire Europe," a statement says. The premiers also called upon the Russian Federation to immediately release all citizens of Ukraine who are illegally detained in the territory of the Russian Federation, in the temporarily occupied Crimea and certain areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine which are beyond the control of the government of Ukraine. The prime ministers of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania welcome the progress made by the Ukrainian government in carrying out the necessary reforms, the important steps taken in the energy sector, judicial reforms and formation of new anti-corruption institutions. "We consider further implementation of the reforms with continued international support as paramount. Successful reforms are also indispensable in improving the business climate and attracting foreign direct investments," the statement reads. They also state that they will firmly support the course of Ukraine to the European and Euro-Atlantic integration. "In the run-up to the next Eastern Partnership Summit in Brussels in November 2017 under the Estonian Presidency of the EU, we reaffirm our joint commitment to this Partnership and underline its importance to stability, democracy and prosperity of the region, bringing also concrete benefits for our people," it says. The premiers underline the need to take swift decisions on granting visa-free travel to Ukrainian citizens for short stays to the Schengen area. They also note the efficiency of the application of the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area provisions of the Association Agreement, advantages of which are obvious both for Ukraine and the EU. "Ensuring successful implementation of the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement is a major common task. Therefore, we stand for the speediest finalization of the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement ratification process," the document says. "We will continue to further strengthen the cooperation on the basis of mutual trust and respect, openness and comprehensive cooperation for the benefit of the people of our countries," the PMs said. Trump Hails 'Outstanding' Relationship With China, Without Citing Specifics RFE/RL April 07, 2017 U.S. President Donald Trump says he has made "tremendous progress" in relations with China after meeting with President Xi Jinping of China, a country Trump has heavily criticized in the past. Without citing specifics, Trump on April 7 said that "we have made tremendous progressI think truly progress has been made." The comments at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in the southern state of Florida were in contrast to the harsh words repeated often during Trump's presidential campaign, in which he accused China of currency manipulation and unfair trade practices that were costing U.S. jobs. Just last week, Trump wrote in a Twitter message that the United States could no longer tolerate massive trade deficits and job losses and that his meeting with Xi "will be a very difficult one." The two-day meeting of the two presidents also came at a time of high tensions around the globe. The U.S. military overnight conducted a missile strike against a Syrian air base in retaliation for its suspected use of chemical weapons. And they came two days after China ally North Korea test-launched a ballistic missile in violation of United Nations resolutions, raising protests from the United States, South Korea, Japan, and other nations. During the second and final day of meetings with the Chinese leader, Trump's tone had appeared to soften, and Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported that Trump had accepted Xi's invitation to visit China. "We will be making additional progress," Trump said as the second day of talks winded up. "The relationship developed by President Xi and myself, I think, is outstanding." "And I believe lots of very potentially bad problems will be going away," he added. The timing of the U.S. action against the Syrian government could be taken as message to the Chinese -- and the North Koreans -- about the Trump administration's willingness to use military power. Days before his meeting with Xi, Trump said he was ready to deal with North Korea alone if China did not do more to restrain Pyonyang. Nevertheless, any military action against North Korea would be substantially more difficult and risky. The rogue nation has tested nuclear weapons, and the U.S. military has about 28,500 troops stationed in South Korea, whose capital, Seoul, is within the North's artillery range. With reporting by Reuters, AP, and AFP Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/trump-xi-summit-florida-day-two/28416179.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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address N Korea to deliver 'ruthless blow' to US provocation: Pyongyang Iran Press TV Thu Apr 6, 2017 6:2PM North Korea's ambassador to Moscow says Pyongyang is ready to deliver the "most ruthless blow" to any provocative move by the US during an ongoing joint military drill with South Korea and Japan in waters off the troubled Korean Peninsula. "Our army has already said that if there will be even the smallest provocation from the United States during exercises, we are ready to deliver the most ruthless blow," Kim Hyong-Jun told the Interfax news agency on Thursday, adding, "We have the readiness and ability to counter any challenge from the US." The United States, South Korea, and Japan on Monday started a joint military exercise on the Korean Peninsula to simulate countering a North Korean submarine-launched missile attack. The drill began after US President Donald Trump warned that Washington would act unilaterally to deal with Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs if China, which is North's most important ally, proved unwilling to help. North Korea's Foreign Ministry on Monday criticized the US for its tough talk and for the ongoing military exercise. The "reckless actions" are driving the tense situation on the Korean peninsula "to the brink of a war," a ministry spokesman was quoted as saying by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). North Korea sees joint military drills between the US and its regional allies as a dress rehearsal for invasion. A statement released by the South Korean Defense Ministry on Tuesday said that North had launched a ballistic missile into the Sea of Japan. Pyongyang has so far conducted five nuclear tests and numerous missile launches. The US, which has military forces in South Korea, has recently started the installation of an advanced missile system at an air base in the South, further stoking tensions with the North, as well as China. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Russia Can Be Helpful to Pressure North Korea on Nuclear Program - State Dept. Sputnik News 21:54 06.04.2017 According to a senior US Department of State, Russia can help pressure North Korea on its nuclear program with sanctions. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) Russia can help pressure North Korea on its nuclear program with sanctions and the United States is willing to explore other measures, a senior US Department of State official said on Thursday. "They can be helpful as well, both to put pressure through sanctions and through the strict implementation of sanctions, but there may be other measures they can take, and we can explore some of those with the Russians," the official stated. Since the beginning of 2016, North Korea carried out a number of missile launches and nuclear tests, prompting worldwide criticism, including from Beijing. As a result, the UN Security Council tightened the sanctions regime for North Korea in an attempt to force Pyongyang to stop ballistic missile launches and nuclear tests, including imposing a measure intended to affect the country's trade, export of natural resources, arms trade and banking sector. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address EU Increases Curbs on Investment, Services to North Korea Over Arms Tests Sputnik News 16:00 06.04.2017(updated 16:20 06.04.2017) The European Union announced on Thursday new curbs on investment and services to North Korea's industries linked to its military after new ballistic missile tests. MOSCOW (Sputnik) On Wednesday, North Korea reportedly launched a ballistic missile from Sinpho, South Hamgyong province, in the direction of the Sea of Japan. Media reported, citing a US Defense Department official, that the ballistic missile fired by Pyongyang was a Scud-ER and that it presumably had gone out of control soon after the launch. According to South Korea's military, the ballistic missile flew a distance of 37 miles and reached an altitude of 117 miles. "The EU decided to expand the prohibition on investments in the DPRK to new sectors, namely the conventional arms-related industry, metallurgy and metalworking, and aerospace. The Council also agreed to prohibit the provision of certain services to persons or entities in the DPRK, namely computer services and services linked to mining and manufacturing in the chemical, mining and refining industry," the the Council of the European Union said in a statement. The Council has also added four people to the list of persons it has targeted for travel bans and asset freezes, bringing the total to 41. "The EU calls again on the DPRK to re-engage in a credible and meaningful dialogue with the international community, to cease its provocations, and to abandon all nuclear weapons," the statement added. North Korea has already carried out several missile test launches this year, in violation of UN resolutions, triggering an escalation of tensions on the peninsula. Last year, Pyongyang carried out two nuclear tests and over two dozen test launches using ballistic missile technology. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address UN Condemns North Korean Missile Test By VOA News April 06, 2017 The U.N. Security Council on Thursday strongly condemned North Korea for its ballistic missile test this week. In a statement, the council said it was concerned about Pyongyang's "highly destabilizing behavior and flagrant and provocative defiance of the Security Council." Earlier Thursday, the European Union imposed new sanctions in retaliation for North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile tests, including its launch of a rocket into the Sea of Japan on Wednesday. The new sanctions include investment bans on aerospace, metalworking and conventional arms-related industries, as well as prohibitions against providing computer services to people involved with mining and chemical industries. An EU statement said the new sanctions were imposed because North Korea had violated multiple U.N. resolutions and constituted "a grave threat to international peace and security." The European Union asked North Korea to "cease its provocations and to abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs," and to begin talks with the international community. Four people were also added to the EU visa ban and asset freeze list. Their names were not released. On Wednesday, North Korea launched a projectile about 60 kilometers into the Sea of Japan. Last month, North Korea fired four ballistic missiles into the sea in response to annual U.S.-South Korea military drills, which the North sees as a preparation for war. Any launch of objects using the ballistic missile technology is a violation of Security Council resolutions, but the North has defied the ban as an infringement on its sovereign rights to self-defense and pursuit of space exploration. The sanctions announced Thursday were the second round imposed on North Korea by the European Union since late February, when Kim Jong-nam, the estranged half brother of leader Kim Jong Un, was assassinated in Kuala Lumpur. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address India Signs Almost $2 Bln Air Defense Missile Contract With Israeli Company Sputnik News 16:49 06.04.2017(updated 16:55 06.04.2017) Months before Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Israel visit, the Indian government has signed an almost $2 billion contract with Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) for supplying advanced medium range surface-to-air missile and missile defense system to the Indian Army. NEW DELHI (Sputnik) The contract is considered to be the largest defense deal ever for Israeli defense industries. The missiles will be produced by BDL in partnership with L&T, BEL and other Indian companies. However, it is not clear who will own the intellectual property rights of the missile. 200 medium range surface-to-air missiles are expected to be deployed by 2023. "The system includes an advanced phased-array radar, command and control, mobile launchers and missiles with advanced RF seekers. Medium range surface-to-air missiles (MRSAM) were developed jointly for the Indian Army by IAI and India's Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) in collaboration with RAFAEL and IAI/Elta, and worked with various Indian companies including BEL, L&T, BDL and other private vendors," read an IAI statement. "Along with our partner in India, we will supply to the Indian Army an advanced, sophisticated and innovative system that will provide the best operational solution. This complex development, reflects technological innovation, creativity, vision and remarkable personal dedication of all those involved in the development of the system both in Israel and India," Boaz Levi, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Systems, Missiles & Space Group, said. The missiles can shoot down rival aircraft, drones or any other air-borne threat at a strike range upto 70 kilometers. It is considered that approximately 80% content of the missile will be indigenously built. The MRSAM will replace the Russian Kvadrat and OSA-AKM. In its existing version, MRSAM is operational with the Indian Air Force, Indian Navy and Israel Defense Forces. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Hojjatoleslam Raeisi to run for president: Representative Iran Press TV Thu Apr 6, 2017 2:46PM Hojjatoleslam Seyyed Ebrahim Raeisi, who is the current custodian of the Holy Shrine of Imam Reza (PBUH) in the northeastern Iranian city of Mashhad, has declared his readiness to run for president in the forthcoming presidential election, his representative has said. "Raeisi has accepted the request to run as candidate [for president] and his plans will be announced soon," said Hojjatoleslam Raeisi's representative, Seyyed Sowlat Mortazavi, who is also the mayor of Mashhad, adding that Raeisi had officially announced his candidacy after receiving several requests to this effect. Mortazavi made the remarks on Thursday during the second meeting of the national assembly of the Popular Front of the Islamic Revolution Forces, held at Shahr-e Aftab Complex, south of the capital, Tehran. During the meeting, the participants shortlisted their five final candidates for the forthcoming presidential poll through voting. The shortlist included Hojjatoleslam Raeisi, who garnered 2,147 votes, followed by Alireza Zakani, a former lawmaker, with 1,546 votes, Mehrdad Bazrpash, also a former lawmaker, with 1,404 votes, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, who is the current mayor of Tehran, with 1,373 votes, and Parviz Fattah, the current head of the Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation, with 994 votes. The five were elected from a total of ten candidates, who had been chosen in the first meeting of the assembly, which was held at the same venue on February 23. Iranians will go to the polls on May 19 to take part in the country's 12th presidential election. Two major political camps are at the heart of Iran's politics, which are known as Reformists and Principlists. All other possible candidates not affiliated with any one of these two camps are considered as independent. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address In Iran, Emerging Hard-Liner Stakes Future On Unseating Rohani Golnaz Esfandiari April 06, 2017 After weeks of speculation, Ebrahim Raisi, the head of Iran's wealthiest state charity, has officially announced his intention to run in the country's presidential vote next month. His candidacy could galvanize conservatives and pose a serious challenge to President Hassan Rohani, who campaigned in 2013 on reform pledges and has helped relative moderates make gains after years in the political wilderness. A religious judge who helped condemn liberals and political opponents to death in mass executions in the late 1980s, Raisi is thought to be regarded highly by Iran's highest political, military, and religious authority, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. "Based on his tough stances, we can say he's a hard-line figure in line with the centers of power, ranging from the highest authority to the intelligence branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC)," Paris-based political analyst Morteza Kazemian told RFE/RL. Rohani's administration has faced intense scrutiny from conservatives opposed to the conclusion on his watch of a major deal with world powers to trade curbs on Iran's nuclear program for sanctions relief, and his calls for greater rights for women and the release of prisoners that hard-liners regard as "seditionists." "Raisi is among the symbols of authoritarianism in Iran. He is against political and cultural reforms and development," Kazemian said, adding, "Regarding the economy, he's been bringing up populist themes like ending poverty and unemployment." Rohani has announced a news conference for April 10 at which he is expected to officially launch his reelection bid ahead of the presidential vote on May 19. Tehran-based political analyst Sadegh Zibakalam told the daily Etemad recently that "if Raisi announces his candidacy, Rohani will have to take him very seriously and double his campaign efforts." Raisi has gained prominence recently amid speculation that he was being considered by Iran's Assembly of Experts as a possible successor to the aging Khamenei. Such an inside track on the supreme leader's position could be boosted by a victory in a direct election -- or threatened in the event of defeat. That could raise the stakes in a tightly orchestrated election process just eight years after a presidential vote marred by irregularities sparked the biggest street protests Iran has seen since iconic student demonstrations in 1999. Raisi's name appeared alongside four others, including the head of the Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation, Parviz Fattah, on a short list of candidates issued on April 6 by a newly established coalition of conservatives aiming to unify the right and present a single candidate to challenge Rohani. Fattah has also been described by observers as a serious potential rival to Rohani. There appears to have been a coordinated effort in Farsi media recently to suggest that the Iranian public wanted Raisi to run. Pictures popped up on social media of young people -- some of them women wearing head scarves far more loosely than Iran's conservative arbiters of morality would like -- holding pictures of the 56-year-old Mashhad native with the hashtag #RaisiCome in Persian. There was also a call by 60 or so conservative student groups for the cleric to stand in the vote and "take firm steps on the path of the ideals of the Islamic Revolution." Despite holding senior posts in one of Iran's main centers of state repression -- the hard-line judiciary -- Raisi kept a low profile until his appointment by Khamenei last year to be the custodian of the Astan Qods Razavi charity that oversees the majority-Shi'ite country's holiest shrine. The stern-faced cleric has been taking a more public role in recent weeks: visiting the poor, opening an apartment complex for the families of Afghan fighters killed in Syria, and presenting a report of his first year in his new post in an interview with state-controlled television. Raisi's father-in-law is Ayatollah Ahmad Alamolhoda, who is Khamenei's representative in the eastern province of Khorasan-Razavi. Raisi is notorious for his role in the 1980s mass executions of regime opponents. He was a member of the so-called death committee that questioned prisoners about their religious beliefs and political affiliations and sent thousands of Iranians to their deaths. A native of Mashhad, like Khamenei, Raisi rose quickly through the ranks to become prosecutor-general of Karaj at the age of 20, two years after the 1979 revolution. Two years later, in 1982, he became the prosecutor of Hamedan. In 1985, Raisi moved to the capital and became a deputy to Tehran's prosecutor-general. He held the post in the summer of 1988 when an estimated 5,000 political prisoners, including students and leftists, were executed following an order by the founder of Iran's Islamic republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Raisi's official biography says that after serving three years as a deputy prosecutor in Tehran, his work drew the attention of Khomeini, who tasked Raisi and a judge at Evin prison with handling several "important" judicial cases. Raisi later became Tehran prosecutor and first deputy to the head of the judiciary, a post he held for nearly a decade. Raisi was a state prosecutor in 2016 when Khamenei appointed him as the custodian of Astan Ghods Razavi, which among other things administers the Imam Reza Shrine with its millions of pilgrims every year. He is currently a member of the Assembly of Experts, the unelected body that supervises the work of the supreme leader, including the powers of dismissal or naming a new individual to the post. He is also the head of the Special Clergy Court that prosecutes clerics who are accused of transgressions. That court recently sentenced the son of dissident Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri to prison for releasing an audio file of his father shedding light on the 1980s executions of dissidents. Raisi has not commented publicly about his role in the judicial killings. In public speeches and comments, he has warned about the "enemies" of Iran who he says are engaged in a so-called soft war and infiltration efforts against the Islamic republic. Raisi has referred to the United States as "the Great Satan" and said that it cannot be trusted. "We don't count on U.S. promises in our calculations," he was quoted as saying in February on the anniversary of Iran's 1979 revolution that ousted the shah and replaced him with a theocracy. Raisi's views appear to be close to those of Supreme Leader Khamenei, who is deeply suspicious of Washington and issues frequent warnings of alleged "infiltration" attempts by Iran's enemies. Raisi has expressed support for the house arrests of opposition figures Mir Hossein Musavi; Musavi's wife, university professor Zahra Rahnavard; and reformist cleric Mehdi Karrubi, whom he has accused of insulting Islamic and revolutionary principles. The three have been under house arrest since February 2011 for challenging the establishment over the disputed 2009 presidential vote and also for highlighting human rights abuses. Raisi has said that the Iranian establishment has acted with "compassion" in the face of the "unforgivable crimes" by opposition figures. Raisi has also spoken in support of a resistance economy, which Khamenei has emphasized is needed for the country to become self-sufficient and confront threats. "As a servant of Astan Quds Razavi, I see the activation of a resistance economy as the only way to end poverty and deprivation in the country," Raisi said in a recent interview with state television. But Raisi's lack of executive experience could work against him, according to some analysts. "Raisi has been only involved in the judiciary. He doesn't have any major management experience like the presidency -- and this could lead people to ask with what management background is he ready to take up such responsibility," Qom-based cleric and Rohani supporter Mohsen Gharavian said in a recent interview with the Shargh daily. Raisi has yet to announce a campaign program. RFE/RL Radio Farda broadcaster Vahid Pourostad contributed to this report Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/iran-presidential-election- candidate-hard-liner-ebrahim-raisi/28414689.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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Iraqi Special Forces Liberate Western Yarmuk District of Mosul From Daesh Sputnik News 19:27 06.04.2017 Iraqi special counterterrorism forces have completely recaptured the Yarmuk district of western part of Mosul city from Daesh, Lt. Gen. Abdul-Amir Yarallah, chief of the Joint Operations Command operations, said Thursday. MOSUL (Sputnik) The Iraqi operation to recapture Mosul, the key stronghold of Daesh in the country, began in October 2016 and resulted in the liberation of Mosul's eastern part this January. Fighting continues in the city's west. "The terrorists suffered serious losses," Yarallah said. In March, Iraqi government forces said that Daesh terrorist were completely besieged in Mosul as the army severed communications with its cells in Syria. According to the Iraqi forces, two thirds of the western part of Mosul have been recaptured. Daesh has managed to seize large territories in Syria since the start of the civil war in the country in 2011. In 2014, the terrorist group launched a full scale offensive against Iraq, seizing a number of cities and towns including Mosul. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Libya's UN-Backed Government Head Meets with US Officials By Carla Babb April 06, 2017 The head of the U.N.-backed Libyan Government of National Accord (GNA) has met in Stuttgart, Germany with top U.S. officials, in hopes of finding a way forward for what one analyst is calling "the Obama administration's Iraq." Chuck Prichard, a spokesman for U.S. Africa Command, told VOA that GNA Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj sat down Wednesday with U.S. General Thomas D. Waldhauser, the commander of U.S. Africa Command, and U.S. Ambassador to Libya Peter Bodde at the U.S. Africa Command headquarters. "The point was to catch up on how things are going in Libya and to brief about how civilian rule and military organizations work together," Prichard said. It was Sarraj's second visit to U.S. Africa Command headquarters. The visit comes as Russian military officials have deployed to an airbase western Egypt, in what U.S. officials say appears to be a bid to support Khalifa Haftar, the military commander of Libya's rival eastern government. U.S. officials told Reuters news organization last month that the United States had observed what appeared to be Russian special operations forces and drones at Sidi Barrani, about 100 kilometers from Egypt's border with Libya. When asked whether the U.S. Africa Command supported collaboration between the GNA and Khalifa Haftar, Prichard said the command was "not really advocating a position one way or the other." "We're just trying to facilitate stability so that the Libyan people can sort out their government," he said. 'Irresponsible' approach But this approach to allow Libyans to wade through political waters on their own has been "irresponsible," especially when the Obama administration realized that U.S. allies in Europe were not going to effectively aid the Libyans, says Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow for defense strategy at the Brookings Institution. "I think we've done a horrible job in Libya. I think it's the Obama administration's Iraq," O'Hanlon said, adding that the U.S. helped overthrow Libyan dictator Moammar Ghadafi with "just the hope that once we eliminated a bad guy, things would get better." He said that approach was the same type of mentality that then-President George W. Bush had toward overthrowing Iraq's Saddam Hussein in the early 2000s. However, while the United States sent more than a hundred thousand troops into Iraq, analysts say U.S. forces in Libya lack the capacity and numbers to properly train Libyan forces on the ground. According to a U.S. official, only small numbers of U.S. forces are spread out in areas including Tripoli, Misrata and Benghazi. "To stabilize the country, there's no way these people [U.S. forces] can do what is needed because our basic political strategy doesn't hold water," O'Hanlon said. The last six years of volatility left a window of opportunity for Islamic State militants to gain a foothold. Months of fighting, and eventual aid from U.S. airstrikes in and around Sirte, pushed the militants out of country. Russian intervention? But as the country still lacks a stable form of government, Libya is ripe for Russian intervention, according to Russian expert Dmitry Gorenburg of CNA, a nonprofit research and analysis organization based in Arlington, Virginia. He said Russia's support of Haftar would be a method to both increase its influence in Libya, where it once had an ally in Ghadafi, and build relations with Egypt. "They [Russia] see an opportunity to regain some influence in a country that was pretty much lost to them post - and even to some extent prior - to Ghadafi's overthrow," Gorenburg noted. Any thought of the U.S. working with Russia to stabilize Libya, however, has been complicated by a recent gas attack in rebel-held Idlib, Syria, which has killed scores of people, including children. "It's pretty clear the U.S. and Russia are going to take much more opposed points of view on Syria after the chemical attack," Gorenburg said. Moscow has been Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's principal supporter, but U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday accused Assad's government of going "beyond a red line" with the poison gas attack, alluding to former president Barack Obama's threat to attack Assad if he used such weapons against civilians. "My attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much," Trump said. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Pavlo Klimkin is sure that the process of visa liberalization between Ukraine and the European Union will take up to two months, and also thinks that it is possible to increase the number of trips of Ukrainians to Europe up to 150 million trips per year. "I suppose two months plus or minus are necessary to finalize the EU procedures. This is approximately the way which it will take place," he said on 1 plus 1 TV channel on Friday morning, speaking of the approximate terms for the completion of the procedure for introducing a visa-free regime of Ukraine with the EU. Klimkin also recalled that the completion of the process of liberalization of the visa regime requires several procedural points, in particular, the confirmation of this issue by the Committee of Permanent Representatives of the Member States of the European Union (COREPER), as well as the preparation and adoption of a decision by the Council of the EU. The foreign minister said that after this the document should be signed by the President of the European Parliament and the representative of the country presiding in the EU (Malta) and published in the official journal of the EU. "Last year, we had about 15 million trips to the EU. My ambition is 100-150 million trips. Of course, biometric passports are necessary for such trips," the minister said. He also stressed that after the entry into force of this decision, Ukrainians will be able to cross the border with the EU having a biometric passport. "In fact, you do not need to take a large pack of documents to the border. On the border, you only need a biometric passport, a ticket and an insurance policy. Border guards are required to confirm the purpose of your trip, especially at the first stage [...] They may ask if you have the financial means," Klimkin said. As reported, at a meeting of the European Parliament on April 6, 521 European deputies voted "for" granting the EU visa-free regime for Ukrainians, 75 were "against" and 36 abstained. Myanmar rejects ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims Iran Press TV Thu Apr 6, 2017 10:26AM Myanmar's government has refused to recognize as ethnic-cleansing the ongoing persecution of Rohingya Muslims, who have been subject to a heavy-handed crackdown by the country's military over the past months. In a televised interview with the British media on Wednesday, Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi expressed opposition to labeling the ongoing crackdown against the country's Muslim minority group as ethnic cleansing despite widespread reports of abuses. "I don't think there is ethnic cleansing going on. I think ethnic cleansing is too strong an expression to use for what is happening," she said. Suu Kyi claimed that Myanmar's government had made efforts to restore calm in Rakhine State, where the Rohingya Muslims are mainly based. The Noble Peace Prize winner has been subjected to mounting pressure over the mistreatment of the Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine. Nearly 75,000 people have fled from the Muslim-majority northern part of Rakhine to Bangladesh since Myanmar's military launched a crackdown there in October 2016, according to the UN report. The crackdown was launched after deadly attack on the country's border guards on October 9 left nine policemen dead. The government blamed the Rohingyas for the assault. There have been numerous accounts by eyewitnesses of summary executions, rapes and arson attacks against Muslims since the crackdown began. The military has blocked access to Rakhine and banned journalists and aid workers from entering the zone. The United Nations has warned that the ongoing human rights violations against the Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine could be tantamount to "crimes against humanity." In February, a report by the UN human rights office said Myanmar's months-long crackdown on its Rohingya Muslims could amount to crimes against humanity and "ethnic cleansing." Rakhine has been the scene of communal violence at the hands of Buddhist extremists since 2012. Hundreds of people have been killed and tens of thousands have been forced from their homes to live in squalid camps in dire conditions in Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. The government denies full citizenship to the 1.1 million-strong Rohingya population, branding them illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Rohingya Muslims are believed to be a community of ancient lineage in Myanmar. According to the UN, the Rohingya Muslims are one of the most persecuted minorities in the world. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Pakistani Islamist Leader Calls on Taliban to Join His Political Party By Noor Zahid, Madeeha Anwar April 06, 2017 A Pakistani lawmaker and deputy leader of a conservative religious party, accused of links with militant groups, has invited the Pakistani Taliban to join his Islamist political party. As a three-day gathering of religious devotees and political followers got under way Thursday, the secretary general of Pakistani's Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F), Abdul Ghafoor Haidari, called on the Taliban in Pakistan to lay down arms and pursue its objectives through political means. Speaking to reporters the previous day in the northwestern restive city of Peshawar, Haidari said, "We invite them [Pakistani Taliban] to join JUI-F and achieve their objectives with the help of a peaceful and political struggle." Over a quarter million people, including foreign guests, were expected to attend the gathering in Naushera, near Peshawar, which began to celebrate the centenary of the conservative party. "We have sent invitations to 52 countries and have also invited ambassadors from Muslim and European Union countries," Jalil Jan, a spokesperson for JUI-F, told VOA's Deewa service. "Guests from 20 countries have already arrived. More guests are arriving today and tomorrow morning." The guest list also includes the deputy Imam of the Kaaba the Muslim holy place in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Headed by Maulana Fazal-ur-Rahman, JUI-F is an offshoot of a Muslim Sunni clerics' political movement founded in British India by the Deobandi madrassa in 1919, which opposed the formation of a separate homeland for Indian Muslims today's Pakistan. Rahman's father, Mufti Mahmoud, was one of the leading members who parted ways with the party in 1945 and supported the creation of Pakistan. The party has been a strong advocate of Sharia law in the country and has opposed liberal initiatives in the parliament. According to Haidari, the gathering is being held to demonstrate to the world that there is no space for extremism in Islam, Pakistani media said. "Islam's revered beliefs cannot be made controversial. It clearly states that the killing of one person means the murder of all humanity," said Haidari, who is also the vice chairman of Pakistan's senate. Taliban agreement seen as unlikely Analysts say the Islamist party's message is unlikely to appeal to Taliban members. "This will not make TTP [Pakistani Taliban] surrender their arms or leave their movement and ideology," Amir Rana, a security and political analyst in Islamabad, told VOA. "Those who have joined the Taliban might not come back." Peshawar-based political analyst Khadim Hussain said the Taliban does not believe in Pakistani government institutions or its constitution, nor do they accept democracy. "How can Taliban join the political scenario of Pakistan while having such ideologies against the state?" Hussain told VOA. Hussain added that unless the Islamist party condemns all forms of terrorist groups, including those that are fighting to topple the government in neighboring Afghanistan, its message would fall on deaf ears. JUI-F has historically supported the Taliban in Afghanistan. "Fazal-ur-Rahman believes that Afghan Taliban are fighting for freedom or imposing Sharia in Afghanistan and it's justified," Hussain said. "But on the other hand, he has a completely different stance on Taliban active against the state in Pakistan. For JUI, if Taliban is used against Afghanistan, that's right, but if they fight against the state of Pakistan, it's wrong." JUI-F has strongly opposed American drone strikes targeting militants in Pakistan's tribal areas, viewing it as a violation of Pakistan's sovereignty. Following the 2011 U.S. raid in Abbottabad that killed al-Qaida's leader Osama bin Laden, the JUI-F condemned the drone strikes, calling on the government to stop the passage of supplies to U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan through Pakistan. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address European Parliament Blasts Russia Over Navalny, Protest Clampdown Rikard Jozwiak April 06, 2017 BRUSSELS -- The European Parliament has overwhelmingly approved a resolution calling for the "immediate release and dropping of all charges" against Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny "and all the peaceful protesters and journalists detained after the recent demonstrations in Russia." The April 6 declaration, which was supported by all political groups in the European Union's Strasbourg-based parliament, also condemned what it called Russian police operations that it said were "attempting to prevent and disperse peaceful anticorruption demonstrations and detaining hundreds of citizens." Tens of thousands of people took part in peaceful anticorruption demonstrations in dozens of Russian cities on March 26, the largest protests against President Vladimir Putin's government in five years. Police detained more than 1,000 people in Moscow alone, including Navalny, who was sentenced to 15 days in jail for resisting police and fined the equivalent of $350 for organizing the protest in the capital. The European Parliament resolution condemned "the constant efforts to silence Aleksei Navalny" and expressed support for his Anticorruption Foundation's "efforts to raise awareness of and combat corruption in public institutions and among political representatives and public office holders." It also expressed "deep concern" over a February court decision that it said "effectively excludes Aleksei Navalny from the political arena," a reference to his conviction upon retrial in a financial-crimes case under which he initially received a five-year suspended sentence in 2013. Authorities say the conviction bars Navalny, who is seeking to run for president in March 2018, from public office. Navalny denies wrongdoing and says the case, like another one in which he was convicted in 2015, is politically motivated Kremlin retribution for his anticorruption activities and his opposition to Putin. The European Parliament resolution also urged the EU and its member states to develop "a strong unified policy toward Russia that commits the member states and EU institutions to a strong common message on the role of human rights in the EU-Russia relationship." Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/russia-navalny-eu-parliament -condemns-protest-clampdown/28414246.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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address After U.S. Strikes Syrian Air Base, Russians Ask: 'Where Were Our Vaunted Air Defense Systems?' Tom Balmforth April 07, 2017 MOSCOW -- In confirming the deployment of its S-300 and state-of-the art S-400 missile-defense systems in Syria, the Kremlin boasted six months ago that it had secured the country's air bases from American cruise missiles. But after a barrage of U.S. Tomahawk cruise missiles hit the Syrian government air base at Shayrat on April 7, where some Russian military personnel were stationed, consternated Russians took to social networks asking: "Where the hell were the vaunted S-400s?" "Am I the only one who doesn't understand why our S-400s. didn't shoot down the American rockets?" asked one Twitter user. The Kremlin first deployed the "Triumph" S-400 system in Syria in 2015 after Turkey in November that year shot down a Russian warplane Ankara said had strayed into Turkish airspace. The system uses a package of four different types of missiles to account for various incoming weapons and aircraft: one has a long range of 400 kilometers, and another a range of only 40 kilometers, providing overlapping blanket coverage. The system is capable of downing aircraft, drones, and cruise missiles including Tomahawks, the RIA state news agency reported at the time. Russian and Western military analysts, however, say that the system was positioned too far away from the Shayrat air base to be effective against the April 7 strike, which used cruise missiles that skim the earth at about five meters off the ground, fly at subsonic speed, and follow their own flight paths. "All this talk that we have secured the whole of Syrian airspace is artistic whistling," said Pavel Felgengauer, a Moscow-based military analyst, and suggested this boasting was intended to boost the sale of arms showcased in Syria. "They certainly can't [intercept cruise missiles] at that distance from their location. At the very most, they can defend the nearest approach of the base where they are located," he said. The S-400 air-defense systems are located at Russia's air base at Latakia and its naval base at Tartus. The strike, which hit the Shayrat air base near Homs more than 75 kilometers away from the city of Tartus and more than 120 kilometers from Latakia, meant the American cruise missiles were safely out of the Russian air-defense system's effective range for cruise missiles, he said. "You can more or less defend a perimeter of about 40 kilometers." Justin Bronk, a defense analyst at the London-based think tank Royal United Services Institute, agreed, saying that despite the sophistication of the S-400's radar -- which covers up to 400 kilometers at higher altitudes -- the system would encounter problemswith targets at low altitudes farther away. "Any rough terrain between the radar and the flight path of the cruise missiles will prevent that system, in this case at Latakia and Tartus, engaging," said Bronk. "Also, while the S-400 is advertised as having an anti-cruise missile capability, it is more geared toward ballistic missiles coming in from very high angles, very quickly, and other tactical aircraft," he said. "It's more geared toward those kinds of targets than subsonic, land-skimming missiles." Another observer, however, left open the possibility that the system very well could have worked, but that Moscow opted not to activate it. Moscow-based military analyst Aleksandr Golts noted that U.S. officials notified Russian forces of the strike ahead of time in order to minimize losses to Russian and Syrian personnel -- in compliance with an airspace safety memorandum between Russia and the U.S.-led coalition in Syria, which is conducting separate air campaigns in the country. "We don't know whether the Russian military was not able [to intercept it] or if it did not want to," Golts said. "As far as we can see, the memorandum on preventing incidents was operating. The Americans complied with it by informing the Russians two hours before the attack. In such a situation, again, we don't know if Russia wanted to or didn't want to use their air-defense system." 'Not Idiots' Aytech Bizhev, the former deputy commander-in-chief of the Russian Air Force, told Interfax that the "flight path was set to bypass our missile-defense system so that they would not enter our strike range. The Americans are also not idiots." He told the Russian news agency that the Tomahawks would have been much less effective had they entered the range of Russian air defense. "We can't rule out that a part of the rockets would be able to get through with such a huge mass strike, but we have not only S-400s there, but also Pantsirs that are very effective against these kinds of cruise missiles at low altitudes. It would have been an entirely different picture." Russia's Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said on April 7 that Russia would beef up Syria's air defenses "very soon in order to defend the most vulnerable objects of Syrian infrastructure," Interfax reported. Nonetheless, the perceived inefficacy of the S-400s prompted an outburst of snarky commentary on Russian language social networks, with one Twitter user writing: "Listen, I just want to check -- is Moscow also secured by S-300 and S-400s?" Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/weher-was-the-s-300-s-400- missile-defense-systems/28417014.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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Syrian FM dismisses any use of chemical weapons by Damascus IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency Damascus, April 6, IRNA -- Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem said on Thursday that Damascus condemns use of chemical weapons adding Syria 'did not and will not use this kind of weapons'. Muallem stressed that the Syrian Army has mentioned its stance against using nuclear weapons in a recent letter sent to the United Nations Security Council and Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Addressing a news conference on Thursday, he added that Damascus has joined Chemical Weapons Non-Proliferation Treaty and has so far presented precise reports thereof to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons which has approved their accuracy. The Syrian foreign minister made the remarks while commenting on recent allegations levelled against the country by certain states about its alleged use of chemical weapons against Syrian civilians in Khan Shaykhun region in Idleb, north of Syria. The oppressive allegations were made at a time when terrorists invaded Jouber and northern Hamah, Muallem said. He further contended that the fifth round of Geneva talks took place concurrent with attacks on Jouber and Hamah and the Riyadh-based opponents have had only one demand which was to take over government. When their efforts were defeated, they started lying about Damascus use of chemical weapons in Khan Shaykun. 'Al-Nusra Front and ISIS (IS) and other organizations continue to store chemical weapons in urban and residential areas,' Muallem added. 'I stress to you once again: Syrian Army has not, did not and will not use this kind of weapons--not just against our own people, but even against the terrorists that attack our civilians with their mortar rounds,' he said. Damascus will never change its stance regarding keeping up fighting terrorism and get access to diplomatic solution accepted by the country's nation, he said, noting that Syria is determined to take part in Astana talks. 8072**1394 NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Syria FM confirms airstrike on rebel depot containing chemical weapons People's Daily Online (Xinhua) 20:07, April 06, 2017 Syria's Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said on Thursday that the Syrian airstrike on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun struck a rebel depot containing chemical materials, denying that the air force fired toxic gas during the attack. In a press conference held to comment on the international accusation to Syria of allegedly firing toxic gas on Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib Province on Tuesday, al-Moallem said the news reports are "lies." He said it's not logical to use chemical weapons at a time when the Syrian government was optimistic that the international community was becoming closer to realizing the size of conspiracy on Syria. He questioned how come world powers were so quick to hurl accusation at the Syrian government, just an hour after the attack. The minister repeated his government's denying line that "the Syrian army forces haven't and will not use chemical weapons," and that the forces are no longer in possession of such weapons. Al-Moallem said al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front and like-minded groups have been storing chemical materials they brought into Syria from Iraq. Meanwhile, the minister said there were probably several reasons behind the accusation. The first is to reverse the opinion of U.S. President Donald Trump, who said after the attack that his opinion toward the Syrian government has changed, after previous remarks by the U.S. administration that toppling President Bashar al-Assad was no longer a priority. The second reason, al-Moallem said, is to exert pressure on Russia, which has failed after Moscow said it will continue to aid the Syrian army in the fight against terrorist groups. The third reason is to exert pressure on Damascus, which he said has also failed as the Syrian government will not change its approach to fighting terrorism and will work on political solution at the same time. The minister said a change in the stance that Trump talked of could have been achieved by the attack. "I realize the seriousness of the American remarks and maybe their aim is to practice pressure on the Russian and Chinese sides toward the UN draft resolution" put forward on Wednesday, he said. The draft resolution, proposed by United States, France and Britain, called on Syria to provide flight plans, flight logs and other information on its military operations on the day of the assault. Damascus would be asked to provide the names of all commanders of helicopter squadrons to UN investigators and allow them to meet with generals and other high-ranking officials within five days of their request, the draft resolution said. According to the draft, Syria would also allow UN and Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) teams to visit air bases from which the attacks involving chemical weapons may have been launched. It also threatened to impose sanctions under chapter seven of the UN charter. Russia rejected the draft resolution. About the possibility of forming an international probing mission to investigate the attack, the minister said the mission should be organized and not politicized and "then there will be nothing wrong with that." He added that his government is fully coordinating with the Russian side. In October 2013, OPCW officials arrived in Syria to monitor the dismantlement of the Syrian chemical weapons arsenal, after Damascus officially joined the organization. The OPCW later said the Syrian government has made its chemical weapon production facilities inoperable. The dismantlement came after a U.S.-Russian understanding, the first of its kind between the two powers on the Syrian conflict. Since then, reports of poisonous gas attacks have kept emerging once in a while. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address China supports comprehensive, fair probe into use of chemicals as weapons in Syria: envoy People's Daily Online (Xinhua) 08:59, April 06, 2017 UNITED NATIONS, April 5 (Xinhua) -- China supports the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and related UN entities in carrying out comprehensive, objective and fair investigations into uses of chemicals as weapons in Syria, said a Chinese envoy here on Wednesday. Liu Jieyi, China's permanent representative to the UN, made the remarks at a Security Council emergency meeting on alleged chemical weapon attack in Syria. It is reported that at least 70 people were killed, 200 others were wounded Tuesday in a gas attack in a rebel-held area in Syria's northwestern province of Idlib. Liu said that China is "profoundly shocked" by the suspected use of chemicals as weapons which has resulted in enormous civilian casualties. He said there have been several cases of use of chemicals as weapons in Syria, and therefore China supports OPCW in conducting the probes into all cases so as to reach conclusions based on substantive evidence that can "stand the test of time and facts." "China firmly opposes the use of chemicals as weapons by any country, any organization or any person under any circumstances," said Liu. "We strongly condemn any attacks against civilians." "It is essential to hold to account all the related perpetrators and responsible parties in cases of chemical weapons," he added. Liu also reiterated that political settlement is the only way out of the Syrian question. "It is the hope of China that all the parties will create conditions for the political settlement rather than creating trouble or difficulties," he said. The 15-nation council is working on a draft resolution which asks for an inquiry into the alleged attack. However, due to disagreements among Security Council members, more time is needed for negotiations on the text before it is put to a vote. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Putin slams 'unacceptable' accusations over alleged chemical attack in Idlib Iran Press TV Thu Apr 6, 2017 9:21PM Russian President Vladimir Putin has condemned as unacceptable the "unfounded accusations" about a purported chemical attack in Syria's northwestern province of Idlib earlier this week, calling for an international probe. During a telephone conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday, "the two sides exchanged views on the chemical incident that took place on April 4," the Kremlin said in a statement. Putin "pointed out that it was unacceptable to make groundless accusations against anyone without conducting a detailed and unbiased investigation." Earlier on Thursday, Israeli Minister for Military Affairs Avigdor Lieberman told Hebrew-language Yedioth Ahronoth daily that he was sure Syrian government forces were behind the "chemical weapons attack." At least 86 people, including 30 children and 20 women, were reportedly killed in the suspected chemical incident in the town of Khan Shaykhun in Iblib province on Tuesday. The United States and its allies have put the blame on the Syrian government. Syria's Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem has dismissed any accusations that the Syrian army deployed chemical weapons in Idlib. He told a press conference in Damascus on Thursday that foreign-sponsored Takfiri terrorist groups continue stockpiling chemical weapons in the country's urban and residential areas. Al-Nusra Front, also known as the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, Daesh "and other terrorist organizations continue to store chemical weapons in urban and residential areas," Muallem said. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and the UN's Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic are both investigating the Khan Shaykhun attack. Muallem said Syria would provide the OPCW and the UN with "intelligence on the transfer of chemical substances from Iraq into Syria, or from Turkey into Syria." He said Damascus needs assurances that any fact-finding mission into the Idlib attack would not be politicized, adding that his country's past experience with international inquiries had not been "encouraging." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Trump administration considering military action against Syria Iran Press TV Thu Apr 6, 2017 6:32PM The administration of US President Donald Trump is considering military action against Syria over this week's alleged chemical attack in the Arab country and declared that President Bashar al-Assad has no future in leading Syria. Trump said Thursday that "something should happen" with regard to Assad in the wake of Tuesday's attack, which US officials say Assad perpetrated. "I think what Assad did is terrible. I think what happened in Syria is one of the truly egregious crimes. It shouldn't have happened. It shouldn't be allowed to happen," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. "I think what happened in Syria is a disgrace to humanity. He's there, and I guess he's running things, so something should happen." US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson also warned that Assad must leave. The US priorities in Syria would be a "political process that would lead to Assad leaving," Tillerson told reporters in Florida, ahead of Trump's summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.. Earlier Thursday, Trump told some lawmakers in Congress that he is considering military action against Syria in retaliation for the attack. US officials tell CNN the Defense Department has several options to strike Syria's chemical weapons capability and has presented those options to the Trump administration. On Tuesday, a suspected chemical attack targeted the town of Khan Shaykhun in Syria's northwestern Idlib Province, which reportedly killed over 70 people and injured dozens more. The attack was followed by alleged air raids that struck a hospital where victims of the assault were being treated. Speaking on Wednesday at a joint press conference with Jordan's King Abdullah II in the White House, Trump called the attack a "heinous" act. "Yesterday's chemical attack, a chemical attack that was so horrific in Syria against innocent people, including women, small children and even beautiful little babies, their deaths were an affront to humanity," Trump said. Western countries have pointed the finger at Damascus over the attack while Syria's opposition has accused the Syrian government of bombing Khan Shaykhun with chemical munitions. Syria's Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem said Thursday that terrorist groups continue stockpiling chemical weapons in the country's urban and residential areas. Muallem assured that Damascus did not and would not use chemical arms, even against terror outfits. The top Syrian diplomat also noted that the Syrian military had carried out an airstrike on a depot, where terrorists stored chemical weapons. Since March 2011, Syria has been gripped by militancy it blames on some Western states and their regional allies. Russia has been assisting the Syrian army in its counter-terrorism operations. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Tillerson calls on Russia to rethink support for Syrian government Iran Press TV Thu Apr 6, 2017 8:49AM US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has called on Russia to rethink its alliance with the government of Bashar al-Assad following an alleged chemical attack in northwestern Syria. Tillerson made the remarks on Wednesday, a day after the suspected assault targeted the town of Khan Shaykhun in Idlib, leaving more than 70 people, including children, dead and dozens more injured. The foreign-sponsored militants active in the area as well as US officials blamed the attack on the Syrian military whereas Damascus rejected the allegation, insisting it "has never used them [chemical weapons], anytime, anywhere, and will not do so in the future." Tillerson told reporters that "there is no doubt in our mind that the Syrian regime under the leadership of Bashar al-Assad is responsible for this horrific attack." "And we think it's time that the Russians really need to think carefully about their continued support of the Assad regime," he added. Earlier, US President Donald Trump indicated that the attack has made him rethink Washington's policy on Syria. "It crossed a lot of lines for me." he said at a joint press conference with Jordan's King Abdullah II in the White House. "It is very, very possible, and I will tell you it's already happened, that my attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much," added Trump, who has claimed to be a critic of former President Barack Obama's Syrian policy. In response to Tillerson's comments, Russia vowed to keep supporting the Syrian military in its fight against terrorism, and called for the formation of a fact-finding mission to probe the attack. "The Russian Federation and its military are continuingto support the anti-terrorism operation and liberation of the country, which is being conducted by the Syrian armed forces," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday. The United States and its allies have repeatedly used chemical weapons as a pretext to pressure the Syrian government. Damascus volunteered to destroy its chemical stockpile in 2014 following a poisonous attack outside the capital. The allegations of chemical arms use are still made against Syria even as the dismantling of the country's entire stockpile of chemical weapons as well as relevant production facilities was supervised by the UN. Foreign-backed militants have repeatedly used chemical weapons against Syrian troops, some of which have been verified by UN officials, but the attacks have often been ignored by Western governments. In December 2015, a cousin of former Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi said that chemical weapons used in Ghouta which were blamed on the Syrian government were in fact stolen from Libya and later smuggled into Syria via Turkey. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address NATO daily learns to confront hybrid threats based on the Ukrainian experience, NATO Deputy Secretary General Rose Gottemoeller has said. "Over the past three years, Ukraine has been the target of those who unleashed a hybrid war. We see these hybrid manifestations in Crimea and Donbas. I am amazed by the pace of building up the capacity of young military forces to confront threats in the east of Ukraine. NATO is learning to combat hybrid manifestations using Ukrainian experience. We are also developing a platform to combat hybrid attacks," Gottemoeller said during the 10th Kyiv Security Forum on Friday. At the same time, she said that Ukraine-NATO relations are mutually beneficial cooperation. "The alliance is helping Ukraine develop and strengthen the Armed Forces, which are already strong enough. Ukraine is also assisting NATO to strengthen its resources and capabilities," the NATO deputy Secretary General said. "I note that our cooperation has become particularly intensive in 2014, after the start of Russian aggression and the annexation of Crimea," Gottemoeller said. Russia pledges to stand by Syria in anti-terror battles Iran Press TV Thu Apr 6, 2017 5:59AM Russia has vowed to keep up support for the Syrian military in its fight against terrorism, calling for the establishment of a fact-finding mission to probe a reported chemical attack in the Arab country's northwestern Idlib Province. "The Russian Federation and its military are continuingto support the anti-terrorism operation and liberation of the country, which is being conducted by the Syrian armed forces," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday. He was responding to a question whether Russian policy had changed following the suspected chemical weapons attack, which left over 70 people dead in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib on Tuesday morning. The militants operating in the area were quick to accuse Syrian government forces of striking the town using chemical munitions. A number of Western states also sided with the militants and repeated the claims, which have not been backed up by any evidence. Damascus, however, strongly denied using "any chemical or toxic material" in the town, adding that it "has not used nor will use in any place or time, neither in past or in future." The Russian Defense Ministry also said the Syrian air force recently hit a depot used by terrorists to make and store ammunition, including chemical weapons, at the site of the incident. Syria has already turned over its entire chemical stockpile under a deal negotiated by Russia and the US, in a process overseen by the supervision of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). Peskov further reiterated the Russian Defense Ministry's report that the chemical contamination, if any, may have been caused by damage to a militant chemical weapons storage site. Peskov's remarks came after US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said it was time for Russia to think carefully about its support for Assad. 'Let's not jump to the conclusion' Meanwhile, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Wednesday that the Security Council should urge the OPCW to launch a fact-finding mission to look into the incident provided that full access to the incident site, which is controlled by militants, is allowed. "It is crucial to call upon an OPCW fact-finding mission in charge of investigating the use of chemical weapons in Syria to collect evidence of the incident under the following condition the composition of the fact-finding mission will be submitted to the UN Security Council for approval, and it will be balanced in terms of geographical [representation]," Zakharova said. On Wednesday, the UN Security Council held a meeting to discuss the reported chemical attack in Idlib, but the session hit an impasse amid deep divisions between Russia on the one side, and Britain, the US and France, on the other. The trio delayed a vote on a draft resolution they had submitted to the council, which would condemn the attack and blame the Syrian government for the deaths, to allow time for negotiations with Russia. Moscow denounced the Western-proposed resolution as "unacceptable." Also commenting on the Idlib tragedy was Staffan de Mistura, UN special envoy for Syria, who said reliable evidence would be needed to confirm if any chemical weapons were actually used, let alone establish who was responsible for it. "We have no yet any official or reliable confirmation," he said on Wednesday. "We will be stimulating all those who have the capacity of finding out technically what had happened." In an interview with al-Mayadeen television channel on Tuesday, Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal al-Miqdad said Damascus, a few weeks ago, provided the OPCW with information on the transfer of toxic substances into Syria by the Takfiri Jabhat Fateh al-Sham terrorist group. He emphasized that Syria stands against any use chemical weapons "by anyone, anywhere, and under any circumstances." Assad not a beneficiary This is while political experts have questioned the logic behind the militant and Western accusations against the government of President Bashar al-Assad, whose forces have currently the upper hand against terror groups across the country. They argue that the Syrian government has no rational reason to resort to such attacks amid ongoing peace efforts on the diplomatic scene, which has seen several rounds of negotiations between Damascus and opposition groups with the support of the UN as well as Russia, Iran and Turkey. Speaking to Press TV on Wednesday, Marwa Osman, a journalist and political commentator, drew a parallel between the current anti-Damascus accusations to those made in 2013, when a deadly chemical attack took place in Syria's East Ghouta. "The Russian army said that they have evidence that this sarin gas that was used on civilians in Idlib was delivered from Iraq. Therefore ISIS (Daesh) has a hand in there because previously throughout 2012 up until now ISIS has attacked several civilian targets with sarin gas without the UN ever calling for an emergency meeting," he said. He further asked, "What kind of geopolitical benefit Idlib is for the peace talks to find a resolution for the war on Syria? What kind of a weight does Idlib have? It has no weight compared to what Aleppo for example had or what now Raqqah has." Michael Lane, founder of American Institute for Foreign Policy, also told Press TV that "We do not know exactly what happened yet. There is still an investigation to be done." Russia and Syria say the militants operating to topple the Damascus government have on several occasions launched gas attacks against civilians, including the ones in Ghouta and Aleppo, where Russian military experts took samples in late 2016. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address U.S. Reportedly Mulling Military Response In Syria April 06, 2017 The United States is reportedly weighing possible military responses to the apparent use of chemical weapons by the military of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on April 6 that the incident was "a serious matter" and "it requires a serious response." U.S. President Donald Trump said the same day that "something should happen" in response. "I think what Assad did is terrible," Trump told journalists. "I think what happened in Syria is a disgrace to humanity." A U.S. official speaking on condition of anonymity told Reuters that the Pentagon and the White House were in intense discussion of possible options, including a no-fly zone for Syrian military aircraft or cruise-missile strikes. The source said Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and national security adviser H.R. McMaster had met on the topic and that Mattis was scheduled to fly to Florida to brief Trump, who is meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The White House said Trump would not "telegraph" his decisions in advance. Speaking at the UN Security Council on April 5, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said "when the United Nations consistently fails in its duty to act collectively, there are times in the life of states that we are compelled to take our own action." Syria denies carrying out a chemical attack, saying its warplanes struck a factory where chemical weapons were being stored. Syria's ally, Russia, has endorsed this explanation. Western analysts, however, have rejected it. French chemical-weapons expert Olivier Lepick told AFP that Syria's explanation is "completely fanciful." He said the way the gas was dispersed was consistent with "aerosolization," an effect that can only be created with military-grade chemical weapons and specially designed delivery systems. At least 86 people were killed and dozens injured in the April 4 chemical incident in Syria's Idlib Province. Based on reporting by Reuters, AP, and AFP Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/us-mulling-military -response-syria-chemical-attack/28415026.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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US: No Doubt Assad is Behind Chemical Attack, Considering 'Serious Response' Sputnik News 21:55 06.04.2017(updated 01:15 07.04.2017) On the eve of a meeting between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters that the US is convinced Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will be held responsible for the recent chemical attack in the Idlib province of Syria. Speaking in West Palm Beach, Florida, on the day of a major meeting between the world's two largest economic powers, Tillerson called the chemical weapons explosion a "tragedy" that would "require a serious response" commensurate with the damage inflicted. At the same time President Trump was aboard Air Force One on the way to Florida, he told journalists that reports of him discussing military options in Syria were not true. When questioned about Assad's legitimacy as the leader of Syria, Trump said, "I think what Assad did is terrible," and that the recent tragedy constitutes a "truly egregious" crime. "I think what happened in Syria is one of the truly egregious crimes. It shouldn't have happened. It shouldn't be allowed to happen." When asked whether Assad should leave power, Trump replied, "He's there and I guess he's running things, so something should happen." Trump said he has yet to speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin about the situation in Syria, "but at some point, I may," he said. "No steps are underway" for ousting Assad from power, Tillerson said. According to him, any plans to remove Assad would require international cooperation and would not be an operation undertaken by the US alone. Tillerson went on to add that the Russian government should "carefully" consider its support of the Assad administration. Its not clear what kind of response the US will take Washington's leaders are only saying that it will be "appropriate" and "serious." The Syrian government denied it used chemical weapons in Idlib. According to Syrian officials, the Syrian Arab Army gave up its entire arsenal of chemical weapons under the supervision of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in August of 2014. The destruction of Syria's chemical arsenal was confirmed by the UN's inspections. Russia's Ministry of Defense alleged that exposure to chemical materials in Idlib occurred after Syrian jets bombed a warehouse where rebels produced their own chemical weapons. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Turkey Will Support US Military Op in Syria if Launched - Erdogan Sputnik News 20:26 06.04.2017(updated 20:45 06.04.2017) If Washington decides to launch a military operation in Syria, Turkey will support the move, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan saoid Thursday. Earlier in the day, CNN reported that US President Donald Trump is considering a military action option in Syria after the alleged chemical attack in Idlib. The media outlet did not specify which exactly "military action" the US leader is mulling. "May Trump's words about the [possible US] intervention in Syria not remain words. We are ready to support the US operation if it has come to this," Erdogan said broadcast on Kanal 7. Syrian opposition claimed Tuesday forces loyal to President Bashar Assad had used a chemical gas on people in the northwestern province, killing nearly 80 and injuring 200. Assad argued his government has no chemical weapons after agreeing to have them destroyed in 2013. He also ruled out having used chemicals against own people. Opponents of President Bashar al-Assad have claimed that the Syrian Arab Army had used chemical weapons against civilians intentionally, something Syrian authorities strongly deny. No evidence has been provided to support the claims. On Wednesday, Trump said that the Idlib attack won't be tolerated and "crosses many lines," adding that his attitude to Assad has changed. Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that the incident needs to be cleared up before making any accusations. In 2013, the Syrian authorities agreed to transfer its stockpiled chemical weapons to international control for their subsequent destruction, so as to prevent them from falling into the hands of militants operating in the country. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Reports of Chemical Attack Appeared Before Syrian Airstrike in Idlib - Syrian FM Sputnik News 14:56 06.04.2017(updated 16:23 06.04.2017) The accusations against the Syrian government army allegedly using chemical weapons in the incident in the Syrian province of Idlib make no sense since Damascus has been succeeding in fighting terrorism on all fronts, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said Thursday. "In such context [of government's army success] would it be logical for us to use chemical weapons," Muallem said. Moreover, the first reports of the chemical attack in the province of Idlib appeared a few hours before the Syrian Air Forces conducted an airstrike on an al-Nusra Front ammunition depot on April 4, Walid Muallem noted. "The chemical attack in Khan Shaykhun was reported at 06:00 am, while the first airstrike by the Syrian army on an ammunition depot of al-Nusra terrorists with chemical weapons inside it was carried out at 11:00 am," Muallem said. On Tuesday, the Syrian National Coalition of Revolution and Opposition Forces reported that some 80 people were killed and 200 injured earlier on that day in a chemical weapon attack in the town of Khan Shaykhun in Idlib, blaming the Syrian army for the incident. A source in the Syrian army later told Sputnik that the army did not have chemical weapons and the allegations could be part of anti-Damascus propaganda. Following a 2013 chemical weapon attack in Syria's East Ghouta, Syria joined the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. This was the result of an agreement between Russia and the United States on the destruction of chemical weapons in the Arab country under the control of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). In January 2016, the OPCW announced that all chemical weapons in Syria had been destroyed. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US: No Role for Assad to Govern Syrian People By Ken Bredemeier April 06, 2017 U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called for the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Thursday in the aftermath of the chemical-weapons attack this week that killed nearly 100 people in a rebel-held town and sickened another 350. "The process by which Assad would leave is something that requires an international community effort, both to first defeat ISIS [Islamic State extremists] within Syria, to stabilize the Syrian country to avoid further civil war, and then to work collectively with our partners around the world through a political process that would lead to Assad leaving," Tillerson told reporters in Florida. Signaling an abrupt shift in U.S. policy about Assad's future in Syria, Tillerson said there would be "no role for him to govern the Syrian people." Tillerson's remarks contrasted with comments at the White House just last week, where spokesman Sean Spicer said President Donald Trump's administration is moving away from the stance taken by former President Barack Obama, who had called for Assad's removal. "There is a political reality that we have to accept in terms of where we are right now," Spicer said Friday. "We lost a lot of opportunity [during] the last administration, with respect to Assad." Spicer said then, as Tillerson had, that Assad's fate should be decided by "the Syrian people" comments taken by the world as a signal that Washington no longer attached a top priority on dislodging Assad from power in Damascus. Trump was in accord with Tillerson's new position on Syria, as he arrived in Florida late Thursday for a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The president said Assad is "running things" in Syria, and clearly in charge there, "so something should happen" in response to the chemical weapons attack. A day earlier, Trump deplored the gas attack in Syria as "an affront to humanity that cannot be tolerated." The attack killed untold numbers of children, sparking global moral outrage against Assad and Russia, Syria's biggest ally. "We are considering an appropriate response" to the chemical attack in Syria, Tillerson said, and the United States is consulting with other countries to determine how best to respond. "It's a serious matter; it requires a serious response." U.S.: Assad 'responsible' for attack The top U.S. diplomat said Tuesday's attack "horrified all of us. ... There is no doubt in our minds, and the information we have supports this, that Syria, the Syrian regime" under Assad, is "responsible for this attack. And, I think, further it is very important that the Russian government consider carefully their continued support for the Assad regime." The U.S. military said Syrian attack planes dropped the chemical bombs on a rebel-held town. "People on the ground were observed reacting to a nerve agent, and the building hit was determined to be a hospital," a U.S. military official told VOA. The official said that Syrian fixed-wing aircraft carried out the attack, and rejected Russian and Syrian claims that the target hit was a rebel-controlled warehouse stockpiling chemical weapons. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem said in Damascus his country did not use chemical weapons during airstrikes on Khan Sheikhoun, and insisted they would never be used, "even against terrorists." He repeated Russia's report that the airstrikes hit a warehouse, not a hospital. The Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, "underlined that it's unacceptable to make unfounded accusations against anyone until a thorough and unbiased international investigation" has been conducted. But a Putin spokesman also said that Russia's support for Assad is not unconditional. Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said in Ankara that autopsy results on three Syrians killed in the attack show they died as a result of exposure to chemical weapons. The three were among at least 30 others who were sent to Turkey. Bozdag said the autopsies were conducted by officials from the World Health Organization late Wednesday in Adana. Moallem demanded any investigation into the bombing not be politicized, stressing that it begin in Damascus, not Ankara. Jordanian King Abdullah II, meeting with Trump at the White House on Wednesday, said, "This is another testament to the failure of international diplomacy to find solutions to this crisis." Britain, France and the United States strongly condemned Russia on Wednesday during an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council. The fate of a draft U.N. resolution condemning the attack written by the three Western powers remains in limbo, as Russia's envoy said at the emergency session he did not think the time was right for such action. Expert analysis When asked about the validity of Russia's assertion that Syrian warplanes struck a facility housing chemical weapons possessed by rebel forces, American expert Craig Williams told VOA, "Anything is possible, though it strikes me as a bit far-fetched." Williams, an informal adviser to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, a U.N. agency, says it is possible that sarin gas stored in a building and hit by an airstrike using conventional weapons could be released. "That could be one scenario, but it is not the most likely," he said. "If sarin was stored there and hit by a missile, it would most likely be consumed in the subsequent fireball, but if any sarin molecules escaped and weren't consumed in the explosion, then they would disperse. There are too many variables to take into account, and I have no way of knowing from afar. "I think the most likely cause is that an agent was dropped by regime warplanes," he said. VOA's Margaret Besheer, Jeff Seldin, Jamie Dettmer, Peter Heinlein and Carla Babb contributed to this report. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Utter Disregard for Rights Seen in Cruelty of Syrian War By Jamie Dettmer April 06, 2017 Tuesday's alleged chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun, Syria, which has left dozens dead, was the latest outrage in a conflict marked by human rights violations carried out on an industrial scale, rights activists say. From the start, the conflict saw a disregard of the rules of war the world has tried to establish since World War II. The warning signs came quickly. A series of massacres occurred in spring 2012 in three districts of Homs involving government soldiers and members of the notorious Shabiha militia, ultra-loyal enforcers of the regime drawn from President Bashar al-Assad's minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam. First came a siege, then homes were raided by assailants who raped and killed, according to locals interviewed by VOA shortly afterward and rights organizations. Dead bodies were burned, corpses were mutilated and rights activists documented the killing of at least 224 civilians, including 44 children and 48 women. Months later, this correspondent interviewed Saima, a 38-year-old woman who had survived the massacre. Brandishing her scarred hand, she said she'd been shot in it, seen her husband's first wife slain by Shabiha and a neighbor raped. She and her three daughters escaped only because an Alawite militiaman took pity on them. Other girls weren't so lucky. A mound of death "They raped teenagers," Saima told me almost in a whisper, claiming that the day after the massacre she saw naked girls in a hospital piled up dead. A 2015 report by the the U.N.'s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic concluded the war had been "characterized by a complete lack of adherence to the norms of international law." From medieval-style torture in jails and detention centers, to the imposition of "surrender or starve" sieges aimed at denying whole communities food and medical supplies, to indiscriminate artillery bombardments and airstrikes on towns and villages, including the dropping of earth-shaking barrel bombs on residential areas, to the release of sarin and chlorine gases, the war has plumbed the depths of depravity. Since World War II, few conflicts have come close to matching what's been happening in Syria. Rights experts and historians mention the conflicts in Biafra, the Congo, the Balkans and the 1994 Rwanda genocide as competitors in infamy. The list of authoritative reports into rights abuses and war crimes in Syria is long. They include a 2014 U.N. report; a 2015 independent report on the credibility of allegations about torture and executions in Syrian jails; and a 2013 U.N. report on allegations of the use of chemical weapons. As early as 2013, then-U.N. human rights commissioner Navi Pillay warned that the scale of viciousness "almost defies belief." She accused Assad of being implicated in war crimes. Assad and his top officials have denied responsibility for rights violations. In an interview with the BBC in 2015, Assad denied his forces dropped barrel bombs. "I know about the army. They use bullets, missiles and bombs. I haven't heard of the army using barrels, or maybe, cooking pots," he said. Atrocities in plain sight What makes the Syria conflict different from Biafra, the Balkans or Rwanda is that war crimes have been happening in plain sight for the world to witness in real time, thanks to the internet, social media, cellphones, satellite imagery and digital cameras, say analysts. And some of the armed groups have been all too happy to brag about their barbarity especially the Islamic State terror group, which has used videos of the beheadings of Western journalists and aid workers, the hurling of gay men off roofs, and the fatal burnings and stonings of foes to scare opponents and recruit foreign fighters. For those looking at Syria's six-year conflict from the outside, the slaughter appears to have had little or no pattern. U.N. investigators monitoring human rights abuses have accused rebel militias as well as jihadists of grave crimes, too. Rebel war crimes have included recruitment of child soldiers, shelling of civilian-populated areas and hostage-taking, as well as the slaughter of members of religious minorities. A May 2013 U.N. report confirmed that rebel groups had used sarin gas. But U.N. panels have been adamant that despite the killings by IS, the Syrian government has been responsible for many more deaths. In 2015, a survey by the Syrian Network for Human Rights, a nonprofit based in Britain whose reports are considered highly reliable, broke down the details of 56 major massacres displaying obvious sectarian or ethnic-cleansing traits since the start of the war. Of those, 49 were carried out by forces linked to the Syrian government, undermining the narrative crafted by the regime, which has depicted itself as a bulwark against extremism. U.N. investigators have compiled a list of government officials they say have been implicated in war crimes, and they have called on the Security Council to refer human rights violations to the International Criminal Court at The Hague. A growing number of Western politicians have called also for an ICC referral, peaking in 2014 when 55,000 photos of detainees' bodies taken by a forensic photographer, code-named Caesar, who worked in Assad jails were published. Veto from Russia, China Syria isn't a signatory to the treaty that set up the ICC. The court would have legal authority to investigate and prosecute war crimes in Syria only if directed to do so by the Security Council, but in 2014 Russia and China vetoed a proposal to involve the ICC. In December, the U.N. General Assembly voted to establish an independent panel to assist in the investigation of those responsible for war crimes in Syria. The resolution was approved by 105 member countries; 15 voted against the resolution's adoption, and there were 52 abstentions. But a single prosecution mechanism still remains elusive for war crimes committed in Syria. An option Western diplomats have discussed is setting up a U.N. tribunal like those established for the Cambodia and Rwanda genocides, but few hold out hope that such a tribunal would escape a Russian veto. In the meantime, individual European states, including France, Germany and Spain, have been exploring ways to prosecute war criminals when they can, if only piecemeal, and are conducting investigations. All states have universal jurisdiction rights when it comes to war crimes. In 2015, two rebels who fled to Sweden were sentenced for crimes they committed in Syria. "Six harrowing years on, there's no excuse for allowing the horrific crimes under international law that are being committed in Syria to go unpunished," Amnesty International's Samah Hadid said last month. But it will likely be some time, if ever, before senior Syrian officials see the inside of a courtroom. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Syrian Foreign Minister Denies Assad Government Used Chemical Weapons By Edward Yeranian April 06, 2017 Syria's foreign minister, Walid Moallem, says the government was not responsible for the alleged chemical weapons attack in the northern Idlib town of Khan Sheikhoun. Walid Moallem refuted allegations his government dropped chemical bombs against Khan Sheikhoun, now under the control of the Jabhat al-Nusra group, earlier this week. During a news conference Thursday in Damascus, he said the accusations were faulty. Moallem says that the first allegations of a chemical weapons attack took place more than five hours before the Syrian Air Force attacked the Jabhat al-Nusra-held town. He says Syrian warplanes bombed an arms depot under Jabhat al Nusra's control that may have contained such weapons. Moallem maintained his government "has not and will not use chemical weapons against its own people," adding it has "no interest" in using poison gas in any case. He asks if it is "logical" the government would use chemical weapons at a time when it is starting to win on the ground and beginning to convince others of the merits of its cause. The veteran Syrian foreign minister says he understands the implications of U.S. President Donald Trump's warning to Syria about taking "unilateral action," but pointed out that permanent United Nations Security Council members are "bound to uphold" the U.N. Charter and not "take unilateral action." Moallem also says U.S.-led coalition forces have struck civilian targets in the town of Mansoura, near Deir ez Zor, and in Raqqa. "If the United States wants to apply humanitarian criteria [in the Khan Sheikhoun case]," he said sarcastically, "then let them start by applying it to themselves." The U.S.-led coalition apologized for what it said was an "accidental" attack on Syrian government positions near Deir ez Zor, late last year. Moallem went on to allege that a notorious case of chemical weapons usage in 2013 against the eastern suburbs of Damascus was "perpetrated by Qatar and Turkey." The Syrian government supposedly gave up most of its chemical weapons stockpile following the incident. Western governments accused Damascus of that attack. The Syrian foreign minister told another journalist that his government was "willing to accept an international investigation" of the Khan Sheikhoun attack, "provided that it is not politicized," that it includes a "wide array of different parties," and is "not based outside of Syria, especially in Turkey," whose "hostility" toward Syria, he alleged, "knows no boundaries." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address U.S., Russia Trade Accusations In Wake Of U.S. Missile Strike In Syria RFE/RL April 07, 2017 Russia and the United States continued to trade barbs and accusations in the wake of a U.S. missile strike against a Syrian air base that Washington suspected was used by the Syrian military to launch a deadly chemical-weapons attack on civilians earlier this week. In a post on social media on April 7, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said the U.S. move brought the country to "the brink of combat clashes with Russia." Medvedev criticized U.S. President Donald Trump for acting "in defiance of international law, without approval from the United Nations, and in violation of [America's] own procedures that require Congress to be notified of a military operation." He said Trump's decision to authorize the missile strike showed he was "dependent on the opinion of the Washington establishment, which the new president criticized so sharply in his inauguration speech." Speaking at the United Nations, Russian deputy UN envoy Vladimir Safronkov said the missile strike was "a flagrant violation of international law." He said Moscow was calling on Washington to "immediately stop the aggression and join the efforts on a political settlement in Syria." Safronkov added that Moscow remains willing to work with the United States to combat terrorism, provided Washington stops dealing in "ultimatums." Meanwhile, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said that the U.S. missile strikes were "a very measured step" and warned that Washington is "prepared to do more -- but we hope that is not necessary." Britain's UN ambassador, Matthew Rycroft, said Russia bears substantial responsibility for the apparent chemical-weapons attack. "Russia has given [Syrian President Bashar al-]Assad everything he could dream of," Rycroft said. "Without Russia's seven vetoes in the Security Council, defying the views of other members of this council, Assad would have faced sanctions and justice." In Moscow, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the planned April 12 visit to Russia of U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson remains on the schedule. "Let him come and tell what strange things they did," Zakharova said. Earlier, Tillerson said Moscow deserved some blame for the apparent chemical attack because it has failed to live up to a 2013 agreement that was intended to strip Syria of its chemical-weapons stockpiles. "Either Russia has been complicit or Russia has been simply incompetent in its ability to deliver on its end of the agreement," Tillerson said. Nonetheless, Russia's Foreign Ministry also said Moscow was open to the possibility of resuming an agreement with the United States on preventing midair conflicts of Russian and U.S. aircraft over Syria. Earlier, Moscow said it suspended the agreement in the wake of the U.S. missile strike. U.S. military officials, however, said the hotline between the two countries' militaries remains open despite Moscow's earlier statement. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said the U.S. military attache in Moscow had been summoned and informed that the hotline would be cut off "as of April 8." Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior U.S. official told journalists that the United States "suspects" the Syrian military "had help" in carrying out the attack, but he did not explicitly accuse Moscow. "At a minimum, the Russians failed to control the activities of their Syrian client," the official said. U.S. military officials reported that a drone was observed over the area shortly before the chemical-weapons incident and then again afterwards, shortly before a hospital treating the wounded was also targeted by a Syrian air strike. The officials said they did not know whether the drone was Syrian or Russian. U.S. Strike The overnight missile strike was the first direct U.S. attack targeting Assad's government in six years of civil war and was Trump's most substantial action abroad since he took office in January. The U.S. strike sharply increased tension between the United States and Russia, which immediately denounced the move as an "act of aggression" that would harm bilateral ties and serve the interests of terrorists. Moscow said it would condemn the U.S. action at the next session of the cease-fire task force of the International Syria Support Group, which meets in Geneva. The Syrian military said the U.S. strike killed six soldiers and caused extensive damage to the Shayrat Airfield in western Syria, which the Pentagon says was used to store chemical weapons. Syrian state news agency SANA said nine civilians were killed in villages near the air base, including four children, and that seven others were wounded. "What America did is nothing but reckless and irresponsible behavior, which only reveals its short-sightedness and political and military blindness to reality," Assad's office said in a statement. Russia and Iran, Assad's chief allies in the Middle Eastern country's civil war, quickly condemned the strike in strong terms. Washington's NATO and regional allies voiced support for the U.S. action. Russian President Vladimir Putin "considers the American strikes on Syria an aggression against a sovereign state in violation of...international law," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. He claimed the decision to strike was based on "an invented pretext." "This step by Washington will deal a substantial blow to Russian-American relations, which are already in a lamentable state," and will "create serious obstacles to the creation of an international coalition for the fight" against terrorism, he said. The Pentagon earlier said it told Russia in advance of the strikes and that it took pains to avoid hitting parts of the air base where Russian forces were stationed. "Russian forces were notified in advance of the strike using the established deconfliction line," Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain Jeff Davis said, referring to a special military hotline. Iran, which has given Assad's government major military and economic support, said the assault would "strengthen terrorists in Syria" and "complicate the situation in Syria and the region." Iran condemns the use of chemical weapons but "believes it is dangerous, destructive, and [a] violation of international laws to use it as an excuse to take unilateral actions," the ISNA news agency quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi as saying. Support For Strike U.S. allies threw their support behind the U.S. action. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande said in a joint statement that Assad bears "sole responsibility" for the U.S. action. "Any use of chemical weapons is unacceptable, cannot go unanswered, and those responsible must be held accountable," NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said. "The Syrian regime bears the full responsibility for this development." European Council President Donald Tusk said the strike demonstrated "needed resolve" against "barbaric chemical attacks." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted: "In both word and action, [Trump] sent a strong and clear message today that the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated. Israel fully supports President Trump's decision." Saudi Arabia gave "full backing" to the U.S. move, the official news agency SPA reported, citing an unnamed official at the Saudi Foreign Ministry. Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus also welcomed the strike, saying Assad's government should be punished and voicing hope "that this operation by the United States will contribute to peacemaking," state-run Anadolu news agency reported. A spokesman for the British government said "the UK government fully supports the U.S. action, which we believe was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical-weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime." Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said his government "supports the U.S. government's determination to strongly oppose the spread and use of chemical weapons" and understood the strike as "an effort to prevent further deterioration of the situation." 'Crossed Many Lines For Me' After what is believed to have been a nerve-gas attack on the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun on April 4 that killed more than 80 people, Trump said he was moved by photos of children being killed, which he said had "crossed many lines for me." "Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad launched a horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians. Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children," Trump said in a brief televised statement. "It is in the vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons," which Assad used in violation of international law, he said. "I call on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria," Trump said. "We hope that as long as America stands for justice, then peace and harmony will, in the end, prevail." The U.S. military launched 59 Tomahawk missiles from two Navy destroyers in the Mediterranean Sea, the USS Porter and USS Ross, at about 0040 GMT on April 7, targeting the Shayrat base. "These missiles targeted aircraft, hardened aircraft shelters, petroleum and logistical storage areas, ammunition supply bunkers, air defense systems, and radars," Pentagon spokesman Davis told the media "Initial indications are that this strike has severely damaged or destroyed Syrian aircraft and support infrastructure and equipment at Shayrat Airfield, reducing the Syrian government's ability to deliver chemical weapons," Davis said. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that the "air base was almost completely destroyed -- the runway, the fuel tanks, and the air defenses were all blown to pieces." The Reuters news agency quoted a U.S. official who spoke anonymously as saying the cruise-missile was a "one-off," suggesting that no further strikes are currently planned. Russia and Syria claim that the toxic gas was released when air strikes by government forces hit a rebel weapons depot, an assertion the United States and others reject. Peskov, Putin's spokesman, asserted that "the strikes were de facto carried out in the interests of IS, the Al-Nusra Front, and other terrorist organizations." "It can be said unequivocally that these strikes have damaged the cause of fighting terrorism," Peskov said ahead of a meeting of Putin's Security Council to discuss the situation. Russia's Defense Ministry, meanwhile, said that Syrian air defenses -- which rely in part on Russian antimissile systems -- will be strengthened. "To protect Syria's most sensitive infrastructure, a complex of measures will be implemented in the near future to strengthen and improve the effectiveness of the Syrian armed forces' air defense system," said ministry spokesman Konashenkov. He also claimed that the U.S. strike's effectiveness was "extremely low," saying that "only 23 missiles reached the air base. It is unclear where the other 36 fell." Trump did not announce the attack in advance, though he and other national security officials issued warnings to the Syrian government throughout the day on April 6. "I think what happened in Syria is one of the truly egregious crimes and shouldn't have happened and it shouldn't be allowed to happen," Trump told reporters traveling on Air Force One to Florida, where he was meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The air strikes won approval from some leaders of both parties in the U.S. Congress. "It is critical that Assad knows he will no longer enjoy impunity for his horrific crimes against his own citizens, and this proportional step was appropriate," said Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker. "Making sure Assad knows that when he commits such despicable atrocities he will pay a price is the right thing to do," said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer. But some U.S. lawmakers criticizing Trump for ordering the use force without seeking their approval. "Congress will work with the president, but his failure to seek congressional approval is unlawful," said Senator Tim Kaine, the 2016 Democratic vice presidential candidate. With reporting by AP, AFP, Reuters, TASS, RIA Novosti, Interfax, and NBC News Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/us-strikes-syrian- airfield-used-launch-deadly-chemical- weapons-attack-trump/28415581.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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address After Trump's Syria Strikes, Russia Warns Of Iraq Redux, Conspiracies Carl Schreck April 07, 2017 Hours after the United States struck a Syrian air base with a barrage of cruise missiles on April 7, Russian officials and Kremlin surrogates homed in on U.S. President Donald Trump's stated opposition to the Middle East military interventions of his predecessors. As President Vladimir Putin's Kremlin denounced Washington's "aggression" against its ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Russian state media, lawmakers, and Kremlin loyalists fanned out to warn that Trump was repeating the mistakes of George W. Bush and Barack Obama in Iraq and Libya, respectively. "In the 21st century, each U.S. president has had his own war in the Middle East, sometimes two," Aleksei Pushkov, a prominent foreign policy voice in Russia's upper house of parliament, wrote on Twitter. "If Trump goes into Syria, he will stand side-by-side with Bush and Obama." Throughout last year's presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly denounced Bush's 2003 invasion of Iraq and Obama's 2011 decision to intervene militarily in Libya as part of a NATO-led operation, both of which were supported at the time by his Democratic opponent in the race, Hillary Clinton. Trump has also vowed to end "our current strategy of nation-building and regime change," a pledge that echoed Russia's critical view of U.S. intervention abroad, and to "stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about." In a televised statement late on April 6, Trump said the Syria operation was "in the vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons" that Assad used in violation of international law, he said. Leonid Slutsky, the head of the international affairs committee in Russia's lower house of parliament, said the attack on the Syrian base shows that Washington "is ready to overthrow President Assad's regime at any price." Slutsky likened Trump's justification for the missile strikes -- namely, a suspected chemical-weapons attack against Syrian civilians this week that Washington blames on Assad -- to former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's 2003 argument for the Iraq intervention based on false claims that Baghdad had weapons of mass destruction. "Apparently, the United States did not learn its lesson from the Iraq campaign, in which weapons of mass destruction were ultimately never found," Slutsky was quoted by the state-run TASS news agency as saying. "And the methods of the American political elite to remove rogue regimes remains the same." Conspiracy Theories Other prominent voices in Russia's political establishment hinted at a kind of deep-state conspiracy to force Trump to back regime change in Syria one week after Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, said that "our priority is no longer to sit there and focus on getting Assad out." "You got the impression that neither people in the Pentagon nor in the intelligence services agreed with this message, and Trump was immediately placed against the wall of 'irrefutable evidence,'" Konstantin Kosachyov, head of the foreign affairs committee in Russia's upper house of parliament, wrote on Facebook in a reference to Powell's 2003 speech in the UN. Sergei Markov, a prominent Kremlin-connected political analyst known for positing conspiracy theories, said that this week's deadly chemical attack was "most likely" organized by "American agents," the Al-Qaeda affiliate previously known as the Al-Nusra Front, and the search-and-rescue group known as the White Helmets. This alleged conspiracy was a trap set by Trump's "domestic enemies," Markov claimed in a short blog post. He provided no evidence for the claim. Russian state television weighed in with references to previous U.S. military interventions, as well. While Washington received support for the Syria strikes from Britain, France, and Japan, among other countries, the Rossia network stressed the operation was "not agreed upon with the international community and had no UN mandate." "The unilateral night action was in the spirit of attacks on Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Libya," a Rossia reporter said, referring to the 1999 NATO-led military intervention in Yugoslavia that was fiercely opposed by Moscow. Rossia also posted a screen grab of a Trump tweet from 2013 in which he told Obama: "DO NOT ATTACK SYRIA -- IF YOU DO MANY VERY BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN." The other leading state-run network, Channel One, said in a report that "it's clear that this act of aggression by the States was carried out before they even got around to making sense of the situation." Throughout his presidential campaign, Trump said repeatedly that he would like to improve bilateral ties with Russia that have been badly strained over the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria. Trump has highlighted the prospects of teaming up with Moscow to fight Islamic State militants in the region. Those overtures were greeted with optimism in Moscow, which wants Washington to lift its sanctions on Moscow over Russia's seizure of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula and backing of separatists in eastern Ukraine. So far, the Trump administration has shown no signs that it is backing down on the sanctions, maintaining the policy inherited from Obama that insists on the return of Crimea and demands that Moscow halt "destabilizing" actions in eastern Ukraine. At least one well-known Kremlin opponent criticized Trump's action in Syria, as well. Vladimir Milov, a former deputy energy minister and leader of the opposition Democratic Choice party, wrote on Twitter that Trump is conducting "PR air strikes" with "no particular strategy." He likened the operation to U.S. air strikes ordered in the 1990s by President Bill Clinton in Afghanistan and Sudan. "There's still no solution to the Assad problem," Milov wrote. 'He Bombed Someone Somewhere!' Following Trump's election, Russian state television frequently defended Trump against his domestic political opponents and U.S. media reports, most notably in connection with what U.S. intelligence calls a Kremlin-directed hacking and propaganda campaign to help Trump defeat Clinton. (Russia denies the allegation.) Following the April 7 missile strikes on the Syrian base, the editor in chief of Russia's state-controlled international network RT tweeted that "for the first time in six months, the American media is writing positively about Trump." "He bombed someone somewhere! Whew, they exhaled with relief," Margarita Simonyan wrote. She subsequently tweeted that the United States had "spectacularly f@cked up" chances for a rapprochement between Washington and Moscow. The well-known Russian photographer Ilya Varlamov reminded his 260,000 followers of Simonyan's tweet the day after Trump's election, in which she said she wanted to "drive around Moscow with an American flag in the car window." On the morning of election day, when Clinton was widely expected to defeat Trump, Simonyan had tweeted: "Democracy. RIP." Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/russia-trump -syria-strikes-iraq-redux- conspiracies/28416474.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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) in Dnipropetrovsk region has detained residents in the towns of Kryvy Rih and Kamenkse who administrated a dozen social media groups spreading anti-Ukraine propaganda. The SBU's press center on Friday said that since 2014 a 52-year old woman and a 45-year old man were active participants in anti-Ukraine social media Internet groups. They were recruited by agents from Russian special services in 2016, the press service said. "Working on tasks assigned by their bosses, the suspects created and administered 12 social media groups, which were created to disseminate propaganda to discredit Ukrainian authorities. They incited interethnic hatred and called for southern and eastern Ukrainian regions to become part of Russia," the press service said. Administrators of the groups were tasked with gathering information about the location of Ukrainian military unites and information about employees of Ukrainian law-enforcement agencies. Agents seized computer equipment substantiating the charges during searches of the suspects' dwellings. A criminal case was opened pursuant to Part 1 of Article 110 (infringing on Ukraine's territorial integrity and sovereignty) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. The investigation continues. European Allies Offer Cautious Welcome to US Missile Strikes, Urge UN Action By Henry Ridgwell April 07, 2017 U.S. allies in Europe offered a cautious welcome to the American missile strikes on a Syrian military base overnight Friday. The U.S. action was in response to a chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held town, which the West blames on the regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad. Washington acted alone in targeting Syria's Shayrat air base, where it's believed the aircraft were based that launched the chemical weapons attack. But key European allies offered Washington their backing. "Faced with this first test of the slaughter of nearly a hundred people, including children, from a gas attack by the regime, the Trump administration has acted and we believe rightly and we fully support that action," Britain's Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said Friday. Germany echoed those words of support. "No one can say that no other roads were tried to prevent or to end the use of chemical weapons," German Foreign Ministry Spokesman Sebastian Fischer told reporters. "The attack of the United States is understandable given the dimension of the war crimes, given the suffering of innocent people, and given the blockage in the U.N. Security Council," German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters. Jean-Marc Ayrault, the French foreign minister, said the "use of chemical weapons is appalling and should be punished because it is a war crime." Proportionate response French President Francois Hollande suggested Washington's response was proportionate. "I consider this operation a response, which must now be pursued at the international level within the Framework of the United Nations," he said in a television address Friday. President Trump had previously backed away from the Obama administration's position that Bashar al-Assad must leave power. But the Trump administration abruptly shifted that position in recent days following the chemical weapons attack. There is some nervousness in Europe over the apparent unpredictability of current US foreign policy. "US policy in Syria, in particular military intervention, has an impact on key issues for Europe including both security when it comes to issues like terrorism, but certainly also migration. In this case we certainly don't see a major escalation of US military intervention," Jonathan Wood of analyst group Control Risks told VOA. Syria's ally Russia has rejected Western claims that President Assad's regime carried out the chemical attack, and blames rebel fighters for the incident. Russian President Vladimir Putin called the attack an "aggression against a sovereign nation" on a "made-up pretext." The Kremlin said in a statement the U.S. action has inflicted "considerable damage" to already "lamentable" U.S.-Russia ties. The air strikes against President Assad will impact the West's already fractious relations with Moscow over its actions in Ukraine, says Jonathan Wood. "We would not be surprised to see some continuation of the increased frequency of Russian snap military exercises in that region certainly Russian posturing and even sabre-rattling in north-eastern Europe as a result of these strikes. But fundamentally they're unlikely to result in a major change of the status quo in Europe." Analysts say US allies are waiting to see if this is a one-off attack, or the start of a longer military campaign against the Syrian government. More reactions Iran "strongly condemned" the U.S. strike, saying the "unilateral action is dangerous, destructive and violates the principles of international law." Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Ankara is ready to work with Washington in a more assertive policy towards the Syrian regime. He also criticized Moscow for its ongoing support of Damascus. Saudi Arabia said in a statement Trump's move was a "courageous decision." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said "this message of resolve in the face of the Assad regime's horrific actions will resonate not only in Damascus, but in Tehran, Pyongyang and elsewhere." Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said his government supports the U.S. action as a means to "prevent further deterioration of the situation." China's Foreign Ministry has called on all sides to stick to political settlements. Dorian Jones and Edward Yeranian contributed to this report NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Taiwan maintains close contacts with U.S. on Trump-Xi summit: MAC ROC Central News Agency 2017/04/06 22:00:22 Taipei, April 6 (CNA) Taiwan is in close contact with the United States on the upcoming meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, a spokesman for the Council of Mainland Affairs (MAC) said on Thursday. "The government will keep in close contact with the United States and respond properly to possible future developments at the Trump-Xi meeting in order to safeguard the interests and dignity of the Republic of China (Taiwan)," said Chiu Chui-cheng (). Chiu also urged Washington to uphold the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) and its six assurances to Taiwan, while calling on Beijing to appreciate the results of exchanges and interactions between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait over the past few years, respect cross-strait reality, handle cross-strait issues in a positive manner and seek to settle differences through dialogue and communication. The TRA was enacted in 1979 to maintain commercial, cultural and other unofficial relations between the U.S. and Taiwan after Washington switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing. The TRA also requires the U.S. "to provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character." The six assurances, which were given to Taiwan in 1982 by U.S. President Ronald Reagan, include pledges not to set a date for ending arms sales to Taiwan, not to hold prior consultations with China regarding arms sales to Taiwan and not to play the role of mediator between Taiwan and China. They also include assurances that the U.S. will not revise the TRA, alter its position on Taiwan's sovereignty, or pressure Taiwan to enter into negotiations with China. Referring to the Trump-Xi meeting, Chiu predicted that the discussions would focus mainly on future U.S-China ties, the establishment of a bilateral interaction mechanism and framework of cooperation, as well as important regional issues. Trump is scheduled to host Xi for a summit on Thursday and Friday at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. This will be their first meeting since Trump took office in January. (By Miao Chung-han and Romulo Huang) Enditem/AW NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Trump-Xi meeting will not involve trade-off on Taiwan: official ROC Central News Agency 2017/04/06 10:43:19 Washington, April 5 (CNA) A White House official on Wednesday gave an assurance that an upcoming meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping () will not involve a trade-off on the Taiwan issue. Trump had already reaffirmed in February the United States' "one China" policy, which is consistent with the three U.S.-China communiques and U.S. obligations under the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), said Matt Pottinger, senior director for Asia at the National Security Council. "I can say that there is no such thing as some kind of a trade along the lines of what you just mentioned, though," he said in a briefing at the Foreign Press Center in Washington, D.C., in response to a question on the possibility that Xi might want Trump to abide by the "one China" principle in exchange for China's cooperation on the North Korea issue. In his first phone conversation with Xi in February, Trump committed himself to honoring the "one China" policy at Xi's request, after having suggested in December that U.S. backing for the policy might be contingent on a trade deal with Beijing. Under its backing of the "one China" policy -- diplomatic acknowledgment that there is only one government of China -- the U.S. continues to recognize the People's Republic of China rather than the Republic of China (Taiwan) as the seat of the Chinese government. Asked if Trump will discuss the "one China" policy with Xi, Susan Thornton, acting assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, said the Chinese may raise the issue, although Trump is probably not going to raise it. In the Trump-Xi phone conversation and in subsequent high-level meetings between U.S. and Chinese officials, the U.S. side has reaffirmed its longstanding "one China" policy, which is based on the three joint China-U.S. communiques and the TRA, Thornton said. Washington has also made it clear that it stands by all the commitments that it has undertaken in the context of the TRA, she said. The law passed by the U.S. Congress just months after Washington switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing governs U.S. relations with Taiwan in the absence of official ties. "So I don't think that there's going to be any lack of clarity on what our 'one China' policy is in the context of the meeting upcoming," she added. Trump is scheduled to host Xi for a summit Thursday and Friday at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. This will be their first meeting since Trump took office in January. (By Tony Liao and Y.F. Low) ENDITEM/J NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Erdogan Threatens New Military Incursions Targeting PKK By Dorian Jones April 06, 2017 Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to launch military operations in Iraq and Syria against the Kurdish rebel group the PKK, which Ankara considers a terrorist organization. In a television interview to curry support for next week's referendum to extend his presidential powers, Erdogan announced the military is preparing new cross-border operations against the PKK. He said Turkey's ending of Operation Euphrates Shield, which targeted both the PKK and Islamic State in Syria, was not the end of such incursions into its southern neighbor. Erdogan said, "...future operations would have an Iraqi dimension along with a Syrian dimension." Observers point out that a tough stance against the PKK, which is fighting for minority rights, plays well with Turkish nationalists being courted by Erdogan in the referendum. Ankara has pledged to eradicate the Syrian Kurdish group the PYD and its YPG militia, which it accuses of being affiliated with the PKK. The PYD controls large swathes of territory along Turkey's border and the Turkish army has deployed a large military force on the frontier. The United States and Russia strongly back the Syrian Kurdish fighters who comprise the backbone of Syrian Democratic Forces besieging Raqqa, Islamic State's self-declared capital. Washington's deepening collaboration with the SDF, has seen it stepping up its presence in the PYD controlled region, "We see now four operational forward bases constructed by the United States, in addition to an extended airbase which will be operational," said Aydin Selcen, a former senior Turkish diplomat who severed widely across the region. Selcen warned such a deployment has implications for Ankara too, "The U.S. presence is definitely an insurance policy for the Kurds near future." Voices are increasingly warning any Turkish military incursion into the Syrian Kurdish region would risk serious repercussions beyond its fight against the PKK. "It's not only going to be a matter of Turkish Kurdish relations, it's going to be Turkish Arab relations, Turkish Russian, Turkish American, Turkish Iraqi Turkish Syrian," predicted Ertugral Kurkcu a deputy for the pro-Kurdish HDP in the Turkish parliament. "And maybe it's the abyss for Tayyip Erdogan if he cannot refrain from such miscalculated attempts. If this happens it's going to be total disaster for everyone. But I think others will help Turkey to refrain from such actions." Erdogan warns Turkish troops may intervene against PKK backed militia in the Iraqi Sinjar region, as well as also targeting its bases deep in Iraqi Kurdistan. Observers point out such operations are fraught with military risks and the possibility of further exacerbating already tense relations among neighbors. Despite such risks some analysts don't rule out such a military operation, "It's very difficult to know, if the president has been reckless enough to accuse Germany of Nazi like behavior you wonder how much rationality has been left in this administration," political consultant Atilla Yesilada of Global Source Partners pointed out. "I think it's a non-negligible possibility that there would be some kind of move against the Kurds directly from the border. I am very afraid of it because it would create a fire storm in the world community and it would mean war with the Syrian Kurds and could spread to Kurds in Turkey," he said. Observers point out Turkish foreign policy is increasingly falling victim to the referendum campaign. With opinion polls indicating the result remaining too close to call political calculations could well trump all other considerations in the coming days. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Defence Secretary boosts Welsh jobs on visit to Aston Martin and GDUK 6 April 2017 The Defence Secretary today announced a 330 million contract to design the next-generation of battlefield communications on a visit to Wales. The Defence Secretary, Sir Michael Fallon, today announced a 330 million contract to design the next-generation of battlefield communications on a visit to Wales. Sir Michael also formally handed over the St Athan 'Super Hangar' to Aston Martin. Both the Morpheus battlefield communications contract with General Dynamics UK (GDUK), and Aston Martin's investment in St Athan will create and support a thousand jobs across south Wales. Visiting the General Dynamics UK (GDUK) site at Oakdale, the Defence Secretary spoke of the MOD's new Morpheus programme, a 330 million investment in innovative new tactical communications systems for our Armed Forces, which will support 250 high-tech jobs in South Wales. While in Wales, the Defence Secretary handed over the former MOD Super Hangar to Aston Martin at a special ceremony at St Athan. The redevelopment of the site into a state of the art manufacturing facility for the British luxury carmaker will directly create 750 new jobs in South Wales, and support thousands more as production starts in 2019. Speaking at General Dynamics UK's Oakdale site in South Wales, Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon said: "This 330 million contact for the next generation of battlefield communications, supporting 250 high skilled jobs, underlines the importance of Wales to our Armed Forces." "Backed by a rising defence budget, last year MOD spent 870 million with Welsh businesses helping to build a stronger economy and keep Britain safe." "As well as investing in new equipment we are also investing in a Better Defence Estate for our Armed Forces. Aston Martin's decision to build a new facility on land we no longer need will bring more high skilled jobs to Wales." This state of the art communications system will be integrated on to the Army's new Ajax vehicles, currently under construction by GDUK, and allow British troops to rapidly deploy new radios and applications to connect with commanders and allies. The system will also be used by the RAF and Royal Navy on a range of platforms, and provide our personnel with modernised command and control networks they need to keep Britain safe. Secretary of State for Wales, Alun Cairns said: "Wales is quickly establishing a strong reputation as an important hub of high skilled manufacturing. General Dynamics UK has long been instrumental in putting Wales on the front line when it comes to supporting our country's defence and security needs." "And thanks to the close partnerships between the UK Government and the prestigious Aston Martin brand, the St Athan site is springing back to life as a significant centre of employment, bringing with it valuable skills and a lasting legacy for the entire region." "Today's announcements are testament to this Government's determination to strengthen every part of the United Kingdom, and are a strong indicator that Wales is open for business, open for trade, and open for investment." The MOD is investing 3.5 billion in Ajax, which will be in service with the Army from 2020. With new innovative equipment like Ajax and Morpheus, and new ways of working the Army of the future will be able to successfully tackle a wider range of threats and keep the UK safe. Army Chief Information Officer, Major General Richard Semple, said: "Becoming the owner of architecture for MOD's tactical command and control systems is critical to getting up-to-date, ever evolving, battle-winning technology into the hands of our soldiers, sailors and airmen on operations; this is a critical component of digital transformation in the Army and Land Environment." The Defence Secretary also met with some of GDUK's apprentices, who play an important role in the Defence Industry. The MOD is the largest provider of apprentices in the UK, enrolling 14,200 new apprentices across the Armed Services and in the civil service over the last year, and is committed to encouraging defence suppliers to support apprenticeships across their business. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Armed Forces Minister underlines UK commitment to Africa 6 April 2017 Armed Forces Minister Mike Penning has reaffirmed the UK's commitment to Africa following a multi-country visit. From engineering support to the UN in South Sudan, to helping counter the threat from terror in Somalia, the Minister was able to see the breadth of the UK's role in Africa. In Mogadishu, Mr Penning met British troops working with the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), which is building stability, and tackling the threat posed by Al-Shabaab. Following travel to Bentiu and Malakal, the Minister was greeted by UK military personnel providing support to the UN Mission in South Sudan, which is working to achieve stability in the East African nation. Up to 400 personnel will deploy this year making it one of the UK's largest operational deployments in the world enabling the building of a field hospital to support UN peacekeepers. As the visit moved to Uganda and Kenya, Mr Penning watched pre-deployment training of their military personnel, many of who go on to serve in AMISOM. Minister of State for the Armed Forces Mike Penning said: "It has been a privilege to see our Armed Forces operating across multiple countries, in different environments, in support of our African partners. The training and support provided by our dedicated men and women clearly demonstrates that Britain has genuinely global reach. This is no less so in South Sudan where we are playing a major role in the international peacekeeping effort, meeting the commitment made by the Prime Minister last year to double our support to the United Nations." Throughout the visit the Armed Forces Minister met with Government ministers and UN representatives to help deepen Defence relationships, and discuss shared interests and regional challenges. In Somalia, The Minister met President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed Farmajo, Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khayre, National Security Minister Mohamed Abukar Islow, and Mr Penning became the first international Minister to meet Somalia's new Defence Minister Abdirashid Abdullahi Mohamed. He also spoke with UN Special Representative Michael Keating. After leaving Bentiu and Malakal, the Minister travelled to Juba and met Defence Minister Kuol Manyang Juuk, UN Special Representative David Shearer, and Commanding Officer of the UK engineers in South Sudan Lt Col Jason Ainley. Uganda and Kenya provide important contributions to AMISOM, and in both countries Mr Penning saw UK delivered pre-deployment training. In Uganda, the Minister saw Ugandan troops receiving training at the Peace Operations Training Centre, Singo, before meeting Defence Minister Adolf Mwesige in Kampala. Finally, in Nairobi, the Minister met personnel from the British Army Training Unit Kenya, which trains thousands of UK troops every year. Mr Penning also visited the Humanitarian Peace Support School and British Peace Support Team Eastern Africa, which deliver AMISOM pre-deployment and other training to international military personnel, before meeting Kenyan Defence Minister Raychelle Omamo. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Alan Burkitt-Gray speaks to Don MacNeil, chief operating officer of GTT, about its company restructuring after coming out of Chapter 11 and its strategic roadmap for the next 12 months. An international platform for the return of the occupied Crimea under Ukraine's control can be created either on the basis of the G7 (United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Canada, U.S., France and Japan) or involving the EU or the Geneva format (Ukraine, EU, U.S., Russia), Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Pavlo Klimkin has said. He says all sides agree, except for the Russian Federation. "The idea of creating a separate format [on Crimea] concerns the idea of constructing this either on the G7 platform with the involvement of the European Union, or with the involvement of the Geneva format. Today, we have the consent of all partners, except, of course, the Russian Federation, which is trying totally block this issue," Klimkin said during an hour of questions to the government in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine on Friday. The minister added that Ukraine is working with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Council of Europe to have access to the territory of the temporarily occupied Crimea, and said that Kyiv is now placing particular emphasis on the issue of human rights. "We want to start with key issues that relate to human rights - what we are doing - on international platforms and gradually add other issues to already existing ones," Klimkin said. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine supports the U.S. actions in Syria to prevent the commission of war crimes in the future, the ministry said in a statement. "The U.S. actions should be supported to prevent new war crimes of the regime, in particular those against the civilian population," the statement says. Kyiv says that any use of chemical weapons as one of the types of weapons of mass destruction is a flagrant violation of international law and a war crime. The perpetrators must be unconditionally brought to justice. "Impunity of a violator of international law that uses chemical weapons leads to new crimes on its part. The sponsors and advocates of the criminal Syrian regime also bear responsibility for the use of the weapons of mass destruction and for the casualties among civilian population in Syria," it says. The Foreign Ministry states that Russias consistent blocking of the UN Security Councils work is an inappropriate practice that requires proper assessment. MARTINSVILLE At some point in the future, the New College Institute (NCI) is going to have to change its name. Eleven years after it was established to help Southern Virginia residents earn bachelors and masters degrees, the New College isnt new anymore, state Sen. Bill Stanley, R-Franklin County, said during the NCI boards meeting this week. Stanley is the boards chairman. Having an appropriate name will be important in efforts to market the state-funded institute in uptown Martinsville to prospective students, according to officials. But as NCI continues to evolve, now is not the time to consider a name change, according to another board member, Del. Danny Marshall, R-Danville. Rebranding is about No. 10 on my list of things for NCI to do right now, Marshall said. Asked tongue-in-cheek by Stanley to elaborate, Marshall said he does not have a formal list. But if he did, the first thing on it would be to get the public to know what were doing here, he said, so NCI can attract more students and generate more support in the community. A lot has happened at NCI in the past year, Marshall said. Yet during the institutes open house for its Center for Advanced Manufacturing, held immediately before the board meeting, a lot of people told him, I didnt know this was here in Martinsville, he said, referring to high-tech manufacturing equipment in the center. Marketing and Communications Director Autumn Morris detailed ways in which NCI plans to market itself. They include communicating with the media more often about happenings at the institute and emphasizing former students testimonials about how the school has helped them to be successful. The testimonial campaign will be called Why NCI? she said. NCI already has testimonials on the homepage of its website, www.newcollegeinstitute.org. Morris said she hopes to be able to add more. As part of its growth and development framework, the institute plans to begin marketing itself across Virginia and into North Carolina. It might increase its use of billboards to market itself locally. Morris said advertising professionals have told her that billboards are especially effective in smaller communities like Martinsville. However, the Internet will be crucial to NCIs future marketing efforts, she indicated. Morris mentioned that a video posted on YouTube entitled You Can Do It! NCI Can Help! has been viewed more than 42,000 times. In terms of helping to attract students, if theyre (the views) coming from (people in) California, thats one thing. If theyre coming from Ridgeway, thats something else, Marshall said. He asked if NCI can track where people viewing its online videos are. To some degree, it can. Based on what she has seen, Morris said most people viewing the videos seem to be within about 30 miles of Martinsville. NCI also aims to maintain an active presence on social media, she said. Its a free, no cost way to reach people, she added. Morris recalled that shortly after a photo and information about a program recently was posted on Twitter, NCI received a call from someone inquiring about the program. Overall, NCI must take advantage of every opportunity possible to tell its story in ways that will raise its profile among higher education institutions, according to Stanley. Weve got to go tell it on the mountain, he said, raising his left arm above his head for emphasis. New U.K. Treasury chief Jeremy Hunt has reversed most of an economic package announced by the government just weeks ago, including a planned cut in income taxes. Hunt said Monday he was scrapping almost all the tax cuts announced last month by the Conservative government of Prime Minister Liz Truss, and also signaled that public spending cuts are on the way. It was a bid to soothe turbulent financial markets spooked by fears of excessive government borrowing. The move raises questions about how long the beleaguered prime minister can stay in office, though Truss insisted she has no plans to quit. She vowed to lead the Conservatives into the next general election, but many in the party want her gone. TORONTO, Apr 6, 2017 - Atacama Pacific Gold Corp. (TSX VENTURE:ATM) ("Atacama Pacific") announces that it has received a US$1.8 million payment from a subsidiary of Gold Fields Ltd. ("Gold Fields") related to the sale of water assets in northern Chile. Under the terms of the 2013 agreement with Gold Fields, Atacama Pacific received a payment of US$60,000 per litre/second ("l/s") of water for the 30.6 l/s approved by the Chilean water authority for use by Gold Fields. A further 12.7 l/s of water are available for permitting; however, there are no assurances that further permits will be forthcoming.As announced in July 2013, Atacama Pacific entered into an agreement to purchase 80 l/s of water from Aguas Chanar S.A.'s Copiapo facility for the development of its Cerro Maricunga oxide gold deposit. Atacama Pacific also has the right of first refusal for any additional water from the facility. With a secure and sustainable source of water arranged for Cerro Maricunga, Atacama Pacific undertook to monetize it water exploration assets in Chile by entering into the Gold Fields agreement.The Cerro Maricunga oxide-associated, breccia-hosted gold deposit hosts total Proven and Probable mineral reserves of 294.4 million tonnes grading 0.40 grams per tonne for 3.74 million ounces of gold representing one of the largest undeveloped oxide gold deposits in the world. Before commencing a feasibility study, Atacama Pacific is reviewing development options for Cerro Maricunga with the goal of reducing capital and operating costs through the elimination of the secondary and tertiary crushers, by using valley fill leaching at a location adjacent to the open pit and by commencing operations at a lower production rate of approximately 40,000 tonnes per day over the first years of production ramping up to 80,000 tonnes per day. The project also will be re-examined in light of current lower input costs for items such as electricity, fuel, labour, metallurgical consumables, equipment, etc.As defined by National Instrument 43-101 ("NI 43-101") of the Canadian Securities Administrators, the Qualified Person for the Cerro Maricunga program is Sergio Diaz, a resident of Santiago, Chile. Mr. Diaz is a Public Registered Person for Reserves and Resources N 51, in Chile, and is also registered in the Colegio de Geologos de Chile under N 315. Mr. Diaz has reviewed and verified the technical contents of this press release. Maria Leticia Conca Benito, Mining Engineer, Universidad de Chile, Registered Member of Chilean Mining Commission, CEO and Project Director, Alquimia Conceptos S.A., was the independent qualified person, as defined by NI 43-101, responsible for the overall compilation of the information and preparation of the 2014 Prefeasibility Study.This news release contains forward looking statements, including predictions, projections and forecasts. Often, but not always, forward looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as "plans", "planning", "expects" or "does not expect", "continues", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "potential", "anticipates", "does not anticipate", or "belief", or describes a "goal", or variation of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved. Forward looking statements involve known and unknown risks, future events, conditions, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, prediction, projection, forecast, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward looking statements. Such factors include, among other items, the timing of the completion of the feasibility study, the impact of proposed updated mining conditions, including crushing and processing methods and mining rates, the results of due diligence activities, changes in economic parameters and assumptions, the interpretation and actual results of current exploration activities; changes in project parameters as plans continue to be refined; the results of regulatory and permitting processes; future prices of gold; possible variations in grade or recovery rates; failure of equipment or processes to operate as anticipated; market conditions, labour disputes and other risks of the mining industry; the results of further economic and technical studies, delays in obtaining governmental approvals or financing or in the completion of exploration, as well as those factors disclosed in Atacama Pacific's publicly filed documents. Although Atacama Pacific has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward looking statements, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that forward looking statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward looking statements. 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. Carl B. Hansen, President and CEO416-861-8267info@atacamapacific.comwww.atacamapacific.com VANCOUVER, BC--(Marketwired - April 06, 2017) - Rizal Resources Corp. (TSX VENTURE: RZL) ("Rizal" or the "Company") is issuing the following press release to clarify its previous disclosure as a result of a technical disclosure review by the British Columbia Securities Commission ("BCSC"). The BCSC advised the Company that certain technical disclosure regarding production and development at the T'Boli project, including in its previous news releases, Management's Discussion and Analyses and website (collectively, the "Technical Disclosure"), contained information that was not in compliance with National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101"). In particular the BCSC noted that the Company's disclosure included references to the terms ore, development, revised or detailed mine plan, economically viable reserve and similar references in connection with the Company's discussion of its current and proposed production plans and activities. Such references are typically supported by a technical report on the results of a preliminary economic assessment, pre-feasibility study or feasibility study, prepared in accordance with NI 43-101. The Company is currently working to obtain an independent technical report on a preliminary economic assessment ("PEA") of the T'Boli project. Until such a technical report is available, past references in the Company's disclosure to "detailed mine plan" or "revised mine plan" and "economically viable reserve" and similar statements are hereby retracted and should not be relied upon. The Company advises that the T'Boli project has an inferred mineral resource but at this stage has no mineral reserves. Readers are cautioned that production in the absence of a feasibility study of mineral reserves demonstrating economic and technical viability is associated with an increased risk of failure of the mining operation due to increased uncertainty of results. Readers are further advised not to rely on the elements of a preliminary economic assessment disclosed in the technical report entitled Technical Report on the T'Boli Gold and Silver Project, South Cotabato, Mindanao, Philippines filed March 12, 2013. On Behalf of the Board, Peter Main, President and CEO pmain@rizalresources.com For further information please visit our website at www.rizalresources.com, email us at info@rizalresources.com, or Phone: 778-370-1372 Fax: 604-608-5442 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 Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine has launched criminal proceedings in connection with the illegal detention of 60 people in the market in Simferopol on Thursday morning. "When monitoring the media... we came across a report that on April 6, 2017, on the territory of the Central Market in Simferopol employees of enforcement agencies, which were illegally created on the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine, wearing OMON riot police uniform illegally detained more than 60 people. A record about this crime was made in the unified register of pre-trial investigations on the grounds of a criminal offense under Part 2 of Article 146 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (unlawful deprivation of liberty of two or more persons)," the Prosecutor General's Office said. The pre-trial investigation will be conducted by the Main Directorate of the National Police for the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol under the supervision of prosecutors of the Crimean Prosecutor's Office. "Everyone who committed a crime on the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine will be inevitably brought to justice," the Prosecutor General's Office stressed. Social networks earlier reported that riot policemen detained people who don't look Slavic on the market and took their fingerprints. During the operation, the market was cordoned off. A day earlier, a similar operation was conducted in another Crimean town of Koktebel. The Ukrainian law-enforcers believe fingerprints might be later used when terrorist attacks are simulated. Canada's Ambassador to Ukraine Roman Waschuk has said that Canada expects the government and civil society to agree on the abolition of electronic declaration requirement for members of non-governmental organizations. "We hope that during the next weeks the president and non-governmental organizations will be able to achieve mutual understanding about the need to change the adopted law, which in our opinion wrongly extends the obligation of e-declaration to encompass public activists," Waschuk said during the third annual round table meeting of city mayors in Kyiv on Friday. According to the ambassador, the government and civil society should work together to develop the country's economy and fight corruption. The UTSA softball team will close out an eight-game home stand this weekend when it hosts FIU in a Conference USA series at Roadrunner Field. First pitch in a Saturday doubleheader is slated for 1 p.m. followed by a single game at the same time the following afternoon.The Roadrunners (14-23) will be looking to bounce back from Tuesday's 5-3 setback in nine innings to Houston Baptist. UTSA took two of three games from UTEP last weekend to improve to 4-8 in the league, which ties them with the Miners and Southern Miss for fourth in the West Division.A trio of freshmen continues to lead a potent UTSA offense that is hitting .312 as a team, which ranks second in C-USA.tops the chart with a .403 batting average, 22 runs scored and 14 stolen bases, whileis hitting .385 with five doubles, 22 runs and 13 swipes.owns the best power numbers with 11 doubles, eight home runs, 34 RBIs and a .600 slugging percentage to go along with a .308 batting average.In the circle,owns a team-best 4.15 earned-run average and 46 strikeouts, whileleads the squad with nine wins and 28 appearances (17 starts).The Panthers are 31-8 overall and tied for second in the C-USA East at 7-2. FIU saw a 17-game win streak snapped by Florida Atlantic in the second of a three-game series last weekend in Boca Raton, and it eventually dropped two of the three contests to the Owls.FIU boasts the league's top pitching staff with a 1.62 ERA and 245 strikeouts. Abby Summers is 9-0 with a 1.62 ERA and 59 Ks, Megan Kugelmann is 11-2 with a 1.75 ERA and 44 strikeouts, while Shannon Saile is 10-6 with a 1.82 ERA and a team-best 137 punchouts.Jackie Schoff leads the offense with a .455 average, 45 hits, 37 runs and 20 stolen bases. Steph Texeira is batting .385 with six doubles, nine home runs and 34 RBIs.The Roadrunners and the Panthers have met just three times previously in a 2014 league series that FIU won, 2-1, in Miami. What are governors' plans for their employees this year? A strong sense of that can be garnered from their State of the State speeches.All but one of the governors have given these addresses this year. ('s John Bel Edwards will address the legislature next week). Not every one is formally dubbed a "State of the State," but they all lay out their achievements and challenges of the past as well as their priorities for the future.Most of the executives gave praise to public employees for their hard work, but it wasn't always complemented with promises of better pay or benefits. Meanwhile, some governors are still focused on reducing their workforces and freezing salaries.Let's begin with the good news first.In, Gov. Nathan Deal wants to give all state employees a 2 percent pay raise -- just a year after giving 3 percent merit-based raises. His budget also calls for increasing wages for Department of Family and Child Service caseworkers by 19 percent.Looking back, he reminded Georgians that he announced a 20 percent raise for state law enforcement personnel in September. That action, he said, elicited more state trooper applications in October than all of the previous year.Thats a good example of latching onto the affirmative, he said, invoking the lyrics of Georgia native songwriter Johnny Mercer: You've got to accentuate the positive/ Eliminate the negative/ Latch on to the affirmative/ Don't mess with Mister In-Between.Police are also likely to get a well-deserved pay raise" in, where Gov. Eric Holcomb promised as such.Gov. Brian Sandoval began his State of the State by citing the bad times the state endured from 2010 to 2015, including furloughs, pay cuts, benefit reductions and loss of merit and longevity pay. But he ended on a high note by announcing that his budget includes a 4 percent cost-of-living increase and more funding for health benefits to recognize the shared sacrifice and dedication of our state employees.Promises like those, though, tended to come from governors of states with higher-performing economies. For those with weaker economies, and declining revenue estimates, the message was just the opposite.In, for example,which went an entire year without a state budget, Gov. Tom Wolf acknowledged in his speech that his budget contains the largest cuts to and consolidations of government bureaucracy in our history. Among other things, he wants to offer early retirement incentives to modernize our state workforce and to eliminate funding for "bureaucratic positions that are currently vacant."Faced with a slowdown in state revenues,'s new governor, Eric Greitens, cut $146 million from his proposed budget the day before his speech. He pointed out that Missouri is the worst in the nation for state employee pay and claimed that the only way to get salaries up is to cut the workforce.Our best state employees are being hurt by a big bloated bureaucracy, he said, complaining that Missouri has 92 state employees for every 10,000 people, which is more than any other Midwestern state. We need to reward the greatest in government service with better pay.Greitens also said he's committed to civil service reform, which was the only mention of that in any of the governors' State of the State speeches.has already seen its workforce shrink by 3,000 since Gov. Bill Walker took office in 2014. Now, he has proposed legislation to freeze the salaries of some state employees while we address our fiscal challenges. But Walker will share in the struggle: Hes reducing his own salary by one-third.Better days will come, said Walker. "Until then, we must make difficult adjustments.Last but not least are unions. They were criticized by a handful of state leaders, including Gov. Terry Branstad ofBranstad decried his states antiquated collective bargaining system that has led to over 500 health-care plans, many of which are inefficient and way too costly for public employees and Iowa taxpayers. He said replacing the current system with one comprehensive statewide health-care contract would spread the risk and dramatically reduce costs.Several governors, on the other hand, bragged about successful union negotiations.Gov. Bruce Rauner pointed out the 20 innovative new contracts his administration has signed with unions and how they emphasize pay based on productivity rather than just seniority. He also touted a change in those contracts to when overtime pay clicks in -- at 40 hours rather than 37.5. In addition, he said the state has laid the groundwork for allowing volunteers to work at our state parks and health facilities.After months of debate,Gov. Charlie Baker touted the compromise the state made with its largest union: the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority.This is a win-win for all involved. Riders and taxpayers have a competitive contract that respects market standards, while union members have predictability and achievable groundrules for measuring performance," he said. Both sides could have turned this into an epic brawl. Instead, they chose to be part of the answer.Of course, some governors made promises that will be difficult to keep.and, for example, have troubling economies, yet their governors talked about raising teacher pay. Billionaire entrepreneur and investor J.B. Pritzker launched his bid for the Democratic nomination for governor Thursday, framing his candidacy as one about progressive values rather than personal fortune and calling Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner a "failure."On the first day of Pritzker's candidacy, the Rauner-backed state Republican Party also appeared to try to frame a potential 2018 matchup between the two. Though Rauner has said he could support a tax hike if Democrats approve his political and economic agenda, the Republican Party called Pritzker a tax-raising "lapdog" for powerful Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan.The early sparring between Pritzker and Rauner underscored the high stakes and likely high cost of the upcoming race for governor. Pritzker, an heir to the Hyatt Hotel fortune, has vowed to spend heavily out of his own pocket. Rauner, a wealthy former equity investor, spent tens of millions on his 2014 campaign and in December put $50 million into his re-election.At the same time, Pritzker's fellow Democratic primary contender Chris Kennedy, a Chicago businessman from the iconic political family, said his campaign had raised $1 million since making his bid official in early February. Kennedy also put $250,100 into his own campaign last month, a move that eliminated caps on the size of campaign contributions the candidates can collect.Two other Democratic candidates, Northwest Side Ald. Ameya Pawar and state Sen. Daniel Biss of Evanston, pointedly noted Pritzker's wealth in welcoming him to the contest. Pawar sent a fundraising email to supporters titled "A billionaire enters the race," while Biss questioned whether "the future of the Democratic Party will be a vehicle for the very rich."The early Democratic contest clearly is split. On one side are two moneyed candidates who represent the party's establishment and can use their personal wealth to compete with Rauner's deep pockets. On the other are two candidates with less personal wealth trying to appeal to progressive populist activism. The race so far reflects the latest outgrowth of the divide seen nationally among backers of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in last year's Democratic primary for president.Pritzker is a longtime fundraiser for Democrats at the national level who twice financially backed Hillary Clinton's presidential bids. He used the first day of his campaign to try to move himself toward the progressive column and link Rauner to President Donald Trump."This campaign isn't about money. It's about values. It's about progressive values. That's what I've stood for my whole life. I grew up a progressive Democrat. I've fought for progressive Democratic values," he told reporters after his speech."You heard me say onstage what I believe and it's a whole lot different than Bruce Rauner and Donald Trump."In an announcement speech of less than 14 minutes at the Chicago Park District's Grand Crossing Gymnasium on the far South Side, Pritzker recounted to a couple of hundred supporters his efforts to improve early child care and early learning for at-risk children, help build the Illinois Holocaust Museum to fight "bigotry, hatred and intolerance," endow a center on wrongful convictions, expand community health services and found the tech hub 1871."What do these things have in common? I identified a problem and went to work with others," Pritzker said, adding the progressive values he has been instilled with "led me to do big things that have had a lasting impact on people's lives."In contrast, Pritzker said, "Gov. Bruce Rauner is a failure. He promised a turnaround and all we got was the runaround. He said he would stand up to the special interests and instead, he's become his own special interest."Citing the state's historic budget stalemate, Pritzker accused Rauner of holding the state "hostage to his right-wing agenda." Rauner has made changes in state law involving collective bargaining and workers' compensation -- issues that go to the heart of Democratic allies in organized labor and civil injury attorneys -- preconditions for a tax increase and full state budget.Pritzker also contended progressive values are "under siege" by Trump and Rauner. He called Rauner the "local partner" of Trump and said the GOP governor is "just too afraid to stand up" to the president. Attempts to link Rauner to Trump are expected to be a constant theme for Democrats in the 2018 contest.The state Republican Party, which Rauner has heavily subsidized, hit back at Pritzker early and often Thursday with several missives that labeled Pritzker "a pawn" and "Madigan's billionaire." It was consistent with a longtime GOP theme in Illinois, trying to tarnish Democratic candidates by seeking to link them to Madigan, who is Rauner's chief political nemesis.The state GOP released what it said was a recording of Pritzker speaking at a Chicago event hosted by state Sen. Kimberly Lightford of Maywood on March 21. In the recording, Pritzker discusses how returning the state's personal income tax rate to 5 percent from the current 3.75 percent "doesn't get you everything you need, but it's a good way toward, you know, toward getting real revenue in the state.""One can only imagine the devastation Mike Madigan could do with a lapdog billionaire at his side. Pritzker puts the insiders first and the taxpayers last," Kirsten Kukowski, a state GOP spokeswoman, said in a statement.At his kickoff event, Pritzker told reporters, "I think that we ought to start with the millionaires and billionaires and make sure that they're paying taxes first, and then we're not going to be talking about raising taxes on middle-class families until we take care of that problem."But to impose such a tax would require voter approval of a state constitutional amendment to allow for a graduated income tax rate to replace the state's current flat tax. That's something unlikely to appear on a statewide ballot until 2020 at the earliest and therefore wouldn't address Illinois' immediate budget problems.The state GOP released another recording of Pritzker from the same Chicago event in which the Democrat said, "so let's just talk about this flat income tax, because we're not going to be able to turn it into a millionaire's tax, a fair tax. It's going to take us three years."Pritzker contended Rauner has backed a Republican legislative proposal that, if it met his preconditions, would boost the state personal income tax rate to 4.99 percent "and he wants to raise it on everyone."Pritzker is a founder of Pritzker Group, a private investment firm. Forbes estimates his wealth at $3.4 billion.It is the second time Pritzker has made a bid for public office. In 1998 he lost a primary bid for the Democratic nomination for Congress to Jan Schakowsky, who remains the officeholder in the North Shore's 9th District.But Pritzker has long been involved in politics. In the 1990s, he founded a national group aimed at attracting voters under age 40 to the Democratic Party. In 2008, he was a national co-chair of Clinton's presidential campaign against then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.In the 2008 campaign, Pritzker found his sister Penny backing Obama's presidential bid. After he won, she became his commerce secretary.In 2016, Pritzker donated millions of dollars to Priorities USA, a group that heavily backed Clinton in her unsuccessful bid against Trump. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and U.S. Vice President Michael Pence during a phone conversation have coordinated the schedule of bilateral contacts at the highest level. The Ukrainian president briefed the U.S. vice president about the aggravation of the security situation in Donbas, in particular the violation of ceasefire regime by Russia, Poroshenko's press service reported. "Vice President Pence emphasized that the United States fully backs Ukraine in its struggle for restoration of sovereignty and territorial integrity," the report reads. Poroshenko, for his part, expressed the support of the U.S. actions aimed at preventing the future war crimes of Bashar al-Assad's regime against civilians in Syria. Pence thanked Ukraine for its solidarity with the U.S. after a chemical attack in Idlib. Pence also congratulated Poroshenko on the disbursement of another IMF tranche noting the success of the Ukrainian authorities in the implementation of important reforms. Rising Demand Not for Everyone BALTIMORE Anthony Green says he woke up one morning in January and decided to quit drinking. I said to myself, If I want something better, Ive got to do better. Thats what landed him at Gaudenzia, a residential drug and alcohol treatment center here in North Baltimore.Green, 38, went through alcohol withdrawal on his own and two weeks later walked into Gaudenzias recently constructed one-story gray and white clapboard building. He was admitted the same day and the city agreed to pay his bill through a limited grant for city residents.Anthony was extraordinarily lucky, said Greg Warren, regional manager of Gaudenzias treatment centers in Maryland, Delaware and Washington, D.C. Walking in and getting admitted the same day almost never happens.That motivational moment Anthony had is fleeting, Warren said. If you dont capture that moment, people will disappear.But in the throes of an opioid epidemic that killed more than 33,000 people in 2015 alone, the nations supply of residential treatment slots falls far short of the number needed to serve everyone who walks in, gets dropped off by police, or is transferred from a hospital or crisis center. Waitlists persist almost everywhere, primarily because of a growing number of people addicted to heroin and prescription painkillers.To boost the number of beds available for low-income residents, the federal government has granted California, Maryland, Massachusetts and New York a waiver of an obscure Medicaid rule that prohibits the use of federal dollars for addiction treatment provided in facilities with more than 16 beds. Seven other states Arizona, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Utah and Virginia are seeking similar permission.In March, the Trump administrations new Health and Human Services secretary, Tom Price, told governors that the agency would continue the Obama administrations waiver policies for residential facilities with 16 or more beds.For Gaudenzia, which has four residential treatment centers in Maryland, the waiver is a game changer, Warren said. Its going to explode access.The 16-bed provision was originally intended to discourage investment in what the 1965 Medicaid law called institutions for mental disease, and to instead promote the expansion of smaller, community-based mental health and substance abuse centers.But for Gaudenzia and other behavioral health providers struggling to meet the surging demand for addiction services, the rule has curtailed much-needed federal funding to accommodate all the people who needed help.Sidestepping the 16-bed prohibition means millions in new federal Medicaid dollars will flow to treatment centers that now rely on limited state and local grants.The federal government is encouraging all states to seek a waiver of Medicaids residential treatment rule, but only if the care is offered as part of a comprehensive set of addiction services for low-income people.In addition to offering inpatient treatment to patients who need it, state Medicaid addiction programs must include all available addiction medications, intensive outpatient therapy, recovery support services such as job training and housing, substance abuse prevention programs, case management and physical health services.States also must prove that adding more residential treatment slots to the list of Medicaid treatment options will cost no more than continuing to prohibit it.That should be easy, said Chuck Ingoglia, senior vice president for public policy at the National Council for Behavioral Health, which represents treatment providers. The long-term cost of not treating people with addictions far exceeds the cost of all levels of treatment, including residential care.According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, every dollar invested in addiction treatment yields a return of up to $7 in reduced drug-related crime and criminal justice costs. When health care savings are included, the return on investment can exceed $12.An estimated 22 million Americans have a drug or alcohol addiction that needs treatment, yet only one in 10 receive it. Because loss of income is a symptom of addiction, inability to pay is among the biggest barriers.The Affordable Care Act, with its Medicaid expansion to non-elderly low-income adults a group that is more susceptible to substance abuse than the general population went a long way to making treatment more available, at least in the 31 states and Washington, D.C., where the option has been adopted.Medicaid expansion, plus the federal health laws requirement that all insurance carriers reimburse for addiction services, along with the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Acts requirement that addiction treatment be paid for at the same level as medical and surgical services, together hold out the potential that billions of dollars for addiction treatment will be available in the years ahead.Lifting the 16-bed limit will free even more federal money, making it possible for addiction treatment providers to expand their capacity, Ingoglia said. But, he said, its not likely to result in treatment on demand overnight.California was the first state to receive a federal Medicaid waiver, in December 2015. More than two years later, Californias counties, which operate separate Medicaid programs, are still ironing out details on reimbursement rates and quality standards.Marylands waiver program, approved in December, is slated to take effect July 1. In the meantime, the state will set licensing and staffing requirements, and develop reimbursement rates and billing rules.Gaudenzias Warren said its uncertain whether the rates Maryland adopts will adequately cover new staffing requirements. But he already has plans to triple the number of beds available for people who want to withdraw from the substances they are addicted to.Thats a critical first step in the path to recovery that has been a bottleneck here in Baltimore and in many other places. Next, he said, Gaudenzia plans to double the number of slots for 28-day residential therapy following withdrawal.In Massachusetts, the new waiver program is projected to increase the number of residential treatment beds by 20 percent in the first three years, said Vic DiGravio, CEO of the state Association for Behavioral Healthcare, which represents treatment providers. Unlike Maryland, Massachusetts has an adequate number of detox beds for people who want to withdraw from drugs or alcohol, but not enough beds for intensive 28-day treatment after that.We have a four-lane highway leading into detox, DiGravio said. But it quickly turns into a one-lane gravel road into lower levels of residential care. As a result, too many people cycle through detox, he said. Adding more follow-up residential treatment slots will lower patient relapse rates, which ultimately will save the state money.In Baltimore, Green voluntarily committed himself to six months of residential care to beat his alcohol addiction. He said he was drinking a fifth of vodka and at least two 40-ounce beers every day, and his life was going downhill fast.He tried to stay sober after a three-year stint in prison that ended in 2008. But the frustration of repeatedly being rejected for jobs because of his criminal record led him to drink again, he said.This is the first time in my life Ive been so sincere about anything. I want to get back on track and move my life forward, Green said. Staying at Gaudenzia and attending motivational classes six hours every day feels right, he said.They push you to want better and achieve your best even if you dont believe you can do it. Outside these doors, that doesnt happen.But not everyone with a drug or alcohol addiction wants or needs residential treatment. Unlike other addictive substances, including cocaine and amphetamines, opioid addiction can be kept at bay with medications and outpatient therapy. Medications also can successfully treat alcohol addiction, but depending on a patients home environment and support system, medications alone may not work.For Green, staying away from his community made the most sense. I dont want anyone to distract me, he said. I have to distance myself away from friends because a lot of my friends dont want what I want, and I know that road all too well.Although greater use of addiction medications, including methadone, buprenorphine and Vivitrol, has been advocated at the federal and state level, residential care is still considered an essential treatment option for many.It can be the only effective option for people with addictions to alcohol, cocaine, amphetamines or marijuana, for example. And it is often needed for people with opioid addictions who are also hooked on other substances, according to treatment guidelines set by the American Society of Addiction Medicine.In general, publicly funded residential care is recommended for people at high risk of harm from their addictions, including those who have recently been released from jail or prison, pregnant women, people who have mental health conditions and the homeless.In public hearings on the Medicaid waiver in Maryland, state Medicaid Director Shannon McMahon said, We heard no objections, only screaming loud supportive voices. Gov. Larry Hogan avoided a confrontation with Democratic lawmakers on Thursday by allowing more than a dozen bills to become law without his signature -- including measures that give money to the attorney general to sue the federal government and require the state to fund Planned Parenthood if it loses federal funding.The Republican governor declined to comment on the bills he elected not to sign or veto. Several drew stiff opposition from Republican lawmakers as they passed through the General Assembly.Some of the other measures set to become law will prevent the state from opening oyster sanctuaries to harvesting until a population study is done and repeal a requirement that the state mass transit system get a certain portion of its income from fares paid by riders.Hogan also let two of the state's budget bills become law without his signature -- signaling his dissatisfaction that lawmakers refused to grant him relief from funding formulas and spending requirements that tie his hands in future budgets.Meanwhile, Hogan's sole veto so far -- of a bill that would limit some school reforms -- was swiftly overridden on party-line votes in the House of Delegates and state Senate on Thursday. The bill sets guidelines for how the state identifies low-performing schools and limits actions the Maryland State Board of Education can take to help those schools.Supporters of Planned Parenthood said Maryland is the first state in the nation to guarantee funding for the nonprofit health organization, which has been criticized by Republicans in Congress and Trump administration officials. Planned Parenthood serves 25,000 patients at nine centers in the state."We must remember that a state solution does not change the fact that politicians in Congress are trying to prohibit millions of people from accessing care at Planned Parenthood," said Karen J. Nelson, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Maryland, in a statement.Environmentalists were happy that oyster sanctuaries will be protected until a population study is completed. The Hogan administration had been considering giving watermen periodic access to the sanctuaries."We have so few oysters left, we can't randomly increase harvesting especially on sanctuaries," said Alison Prost, Maryland executive director of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. "Those areas are our insurance policy for the survival of oysters in the Chesapeake."Transit advocates cheered passage of a law that will end the Maryland Transit Administration mandate known as farebox recovery, which set a goal of financing 35 percent of the agency's operations through fares. Republican lawmakers have long sought to keep that standard as a way of holding down taxpayer subsidies for public buses and trains, but supporters of transit programs have insisted the goal is unrealistic."The farebox recovery mandate repeal will remove a steep impediment to a more reliable, affordable public transportation system for the citizens of Baltimore and residents of Maryland," the Get Maryland Moving Coalition said in a statement. "Maryland was one of the few states that legally required a transit system to cover a certain percentage of operating costs from fares. Maryland has no such mandate in place for other modes of transportation receiving public investment such as roads and highways."Another bill becoming law without Hogan's signature extends the EmPOWER Maryland energy efficiency program. Under that program, customers are charged a fee on their utility bills that utility companies use for energy efficiency programs such as home energy checkups, rebates and bill credits for reducing electricity use and efficient appliances.The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy praised lawmakers and the governor for continuing EmPOWER Maryland."EmPOWER Maryland means more electricity savings for consumers, reduced operating costs for employers and increased jobs across the state," said Brendon Baatz, a policy manager for the council who has studied the effectiveness of EmPOWER.Hogan's decision to avoid most of his possible veto fights this year is a concession to the political reality that Democrats hold super-majorities in both the House and Senate and can override his vetoes anytime they remain united.That's what happened on Thursday, as lawmakers easily overrode Hogan's veto of the Protect Our Schools Act, which prohibits the state from enacting some school reforms.On largely party-line votes of 90-50 in the House and 32-15 in the Senate, lawmakers upheld the measure, which they passed last week.The bill had become a contentious political issue in the waning days of the session.Hogan, the state school board and Republican lawmakers argue that it will trap students in troubled schools and tie the hands of the state when it tries to help. Democrats and the state teachers union, meanwhile, say the bill is necessary to prevent the state from taking over and privatizing troubled schools.Del. Nic Kipke, an Anne Arundel County Republican who is the House minority leader, said the education bill has gotten caught up in the fervor to combat Republican President Donald J. Trump's administration. U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos supports some of the controversial reforms that the measure would prohibit Maryland from enacting.Kipke said school children are becoming "collateral damage in the war on Washington, D.C."Del. Eric Luedtke, a Montgomery County Democrat who sponsored the bill, said the Protect Our Schools Act will lead to "a new era in education" that isn't overly reliant on standardized tests and keeps decision-making on how to help struggling schools at the local level.The bill will protect students from "vouchers and other quick fixes," said Sen. Paul Pinsky, a Prince George's County Democrat.The measure will guide the state's plan for complying with the federal Every Student Succeeds Act, which is due in September. Under the act, the plan would not include the ability for the state to convert low-performing schools into charters, bring in private operators, give the children vouchers to attend private schools or putting all of those schools into a statewide "recovery" school district.The measure also sets a formula for identifying low-performing schools that includes a mix of standardized tests and other factors, such as attendance and quality of the curriculum. The state would report how schools are ranked on the factors but would not be allowed to assign letter grades to the schools.Hogan responded to the veto override with a posting on his Facebook page, saying he was "sad" for children who will be trapped in failing schools and concerned the state could lose education aid if the federal government finds Maryland's plan to be insufficient."This will long be remembered as a low point in Maryland's legislative history," Hogan wrote. Facing the possible end of his political career and potential criminal charges, Gov. Robert Bentley went to God Friday. His attorneys went to court.In his first public statement since the Alabama Ethics Commission found evidence Bentley violated ethics and campaign finance laws -- and hours before the expected release of a report beginning hearings on his impeachment -- Bentley said he had faced major struggles in the past year, and asked Alabamians to "please forgive me.""Once again, let me say to the people of the state how sorry I am," Bentley said. "There's no doubt I have let you down. All I ask you continue to pray for me, and I will continue to pray for you."While Bentley sought forgiveness, his attorneys put the finishing touches on legal briefs. In a filing Friday morning, the governor's attorneys asked Montgomery Circuit Court Judge Roman Shaul to issue an restraining order against the release of the report and impeachment hearings scheduled to start next week. The filing argued that the House Judiciary Committee, which will decide whether to recommend impeachment to the full chamber, had not given Bentley the opportunity to mount a defense -- including notice of charges and the ability to cross-examine witnesses -- and violated his due process rights.In doing so, the attorneys argued, the House had exceeded its authority.The filing called the articles of impeachment "impermissably vague and ambiguous.""Clear United States and Alabama Supreme Court precedent establish that the governor is entitled to due process protections in impeachment proceedings brought against him," the filing stated, noting the House's adopted rules on impeachment last year.Shaul, appointed by Bentley in January, held a hearing on the motion Friday morning. Ross Garber, an attorney representing Bentley, argued in court that other states that tried to impeach governors laid out an orderly process for doing so. Garber cited the 2009 impeachment and conviction of Democratic Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, and the 2004 attempt to impeach Connecticut Democratic Gov. John Rowland, who resigned before the impeachment process could take place. Arizona Gov. Evan Mecham, a Republican, was impeached and removed from office in 1988."It should be clear we're not asking the court to be able to manage the Legislature in this respect," Garber said. "The fundamental question is, does due process apply?"Othni Lathram, the director of the Alabama Law Institute and an attorney with the House Judiciary Committee, said Bentley was seeking "extraordinary relief.""You have a branch of government, the executive branch, who has come to a separate branch of government attempting to enjoin the proceedings of a third, co-equal branch of government," Lathram said.The hearing was continuing as of late Friday morning.Bentley's remarks -- as much religious testimony as political statement -- were an emotional opening to what could be an embarrassing day for the state of Alabama. The House Judiciary Committee's special counsel should give the committee a report before 5 p.m. today expected to touch on allegations that Bentley pursued an affair with senior political adviser Rebekah Caldwell Mason; used state resources to pursue it and attempted to prevent a law enforcement official from signing an affidavit in a criminal investigation of then-House Speaker Mike Hubbard, R-Auburn.Bentley has acknowledged making inappropriate remarks to Mason, but both deny a sexual affair or any misuse of resources. But the governor Friday hinted that the report might go into detail about the relationship."Exposing embarrassing details of my past personal life, as has happened in the past, and as I'm told will happen again, will not create one single job, will not pass one budget," Bentley said. "It will not help any child get a good education. It will not help a child get good health care."The governor, who served for years as a deacon in a Baptist church, repeatedly invoked his religion during his six-minute statement, saying he had asked God to "take these struggles" from him in a private moment last May. Bentley, whose wife Dianne divorced him in 2015 after 50 years of marriage, said he had tried to rebuild his relationship with his family.At the same time, Bentley also criticized those who had "taken pleasure in humiliating and shaming me, and shaming my family (and) shaming my friends.""I really don't understand why they want do that," he said. "It may be out of vengeance, jealously, (or) anger; it may be out of personal political benefit. I would ask them to please stopThe Ethics Commission report -- which found evidence Bentley had misused his campaign funds and state resources -- appeared to galvanize legislators Thursday. Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh, R-Anniston, who generally avoided direct comment on Bentley's woes, called on the governor to resign, saying he could no longer be effective.The governor did not directly address the Ethics Commission's decision to refer charges to the Montgomery County DA Friday. But he insisted he did not violate any laws."Once again, let me say I do not plan to resign," he said. "I have done nothing illegal. If the people want to know (whether) I misused state resources, the answer is simply no, I have not." An attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice said in federal court in Baltimore on Thursday that the department has "grave concerns" about its proposed consent decree with the city and whether it will improve public safety, and needs more time to assess it.John Gore, deputy assistant attorney general in the agency's Civil Rights Division, said the department "certainly agrees that there is a critical need for police reform" in Baltimore, but that reform is "really the job of local officials."He said the Justice Department is not sure the existing agreement strengthens law enforcement and public safety, citing recent increases in crime in Baltimore. He said the department has similar concerns about such police reform agreements nationwide.In response to the comments, acting city solicitor David Ralph said the city stands by the deal, which he said was crafted with deep input from the community, careful consideration of public safety and measures to better train and equip police officers."We don't believe delay is necessary," Ralph said. "We would like to move forward."The two parties spoke at the beginning of a public hearing, before city residents and representatives of local civil rights organizations and community groups began voicing their thoughts on the proposed consent decree.Many called for the consent decree agreement to move forward, including mothers of individuals who had been shot and killed by police in the city.Several speakers denounced racist and discriminatory policing affecting black residents in Baltimore. A diverse set of residents asked the court not to let the police department off the hook, and to maintain a role in forcing reforms through the consent decree.The hearing began at 9:30 a.m. and concluded about 1:15 p.m., after all members of the public present _ 49 in total _ had their chance to speak.On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar denied a motion by the Trump Justice Department for a 90-day pause so attorneys could further brief leaders within the new administration on the proposed reform deal.The motion had cited Attorney General Jeff Sessions' recent directive to top deputies within the department to review a range of law enforcement efforts in the country _ including consent decrees _ to see whether they are in line with President Donald Trump's renewed focus on crime reduction.Bredar denied the request as "untimely," writing that granting such a delay "at the eleventh hour would be to unduly burden and inconvenience the Court, the other parties, and, most importantly, the public."The consent decree must be approved by the court to become binding.At the end of the hearing, Bredar asked the city and the Justice Department attorneys if they had anything to add."We maintain our request for additional time to conduct the review and assessment of the consent decree," Gore said for Justice Department.He asked Bredar to "hold off" on signing the agreement for "at least 30 days" so that new leaders within the Justice Department could "analyze it and re-engage with the city if necessary."Bredar simply responded, "Thank you, Mr. Gore. I understand your viewpoint."The deal was reached after a sweeping investigation of the Baltimore Police Department by the Obama Justice Department and a scathing report last summer that outlined widespread unconstitutional and discriminatory policing in the city _ particularly in poor, predominantly black neighborhoods.At Thursday's hearing, the first speaker, Alecia Dean, began with a statement: "Indeed, justice delayed is justice denied," she said.The second speaker, Monique Dixon, of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, urged Bredar to accept the consent decree and issue it as an order of the court. Dixon said attempts by the Baltimore Police Department to reform itself have been unsuccessful, and have done little to reduce excessive force and racial profiling by officers.Two mothers spoke of their sons being shot and killed by Baltimore police officers in past years."You have no idea how much pain I experience every day," said Marcella Hill, who said her son was shot and killed by an officer in 2012.Hill said the officer who shot her son should have gone to jail, but never did. She said real reform is needed, not just a "dog and pony show."Greta Carter-Willis said her 14-year-old son was fatally shot by a Baltimore police officer in her home in 2006. She called the consent decree "a step in the right direction.""Please do not delay it," she said. "We need reform in this city, especially in the use of force, to (encourage) de-escalation."Carter-Willis said her son was shot simply "for holding a plastic dust pan" in his hand."A plastic dust pan," she repeated, as her body began to shake and her voice tremor. "He took my son's life for a plastic dust pan!"Outside the courtroom, she slumped on a couch and wailed in the arms of a loved one.The hearing Thursday provides the second opportunity for members of the public to share thoughts about the proposed deal. The first involved 47 individuals and a dozen organizations who submitted written comments to the parties and the court. Most of the written comments were in favor of the deal, with a few suggestions for tweaks, and a few were opposed to it.City leaders and civil rights organizers had urged residents to ask the Trump Justice Department to remain committed to the deal, which was negotiated in the waning days of President Barack Obama's presidency.The city and the police department had invited the Justice Department into Baltimore in 2015 after the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray from injuries suffered in police custody and the subsequent unrest and rioting.One of the first residents to arrive Thursday morning to sign up to speak was Prudence Johnson, chair of the Baltimore region of United Democratic Women of Maryland. She feels a pause in the consent decree process "would be bad.""It is very important that our community as well as the police, our fire, all of our local officials have great relationships with the community. Like I always say, I want Officer Friendly to come back," Johnson said. "I remember when police were your friends, they came out on career day and everybody wanted to be a police officer, and the police helped you, and they got along well with the community. When there were problems in the community, the police were there. When we had rec parties, the police came out to contribute. Police knew who the bad guys were, and they knew who the good guys were. But they were great role models in our communities." Five years after the U.S. Justice Department found Seattle police officers too often resorted to excessive force, the federal monitor overseeing court-ordered reforms issued a glowing report Thursday concluding the department has carried out a dramatic turnaround.Crediting Mayor Ed Murray, Police Chief Kathleen O'Toole and, most of all, the Seattle Police Department's men and women, the monitor, Merrick Bobb, found overall use of force is down and, when officers do use it, it is largely handled in a reasonable way consistent with department policies.As a result, Bobb found the department to be in substantial compliance -- formally known as initial compliance -- with core provisions of a 2012 consent decree that required the city to adopt new policies and training to address excessive force."The significance and importance of this finding cannot be understated, as this report makes clear," Bobb wrote in the 102-page assessment. "It represents a singular and foundational milestone on SPD's road to full and effective compliance -- and represents Seattle crystallizing into a model of policing for the 21st century."Moreover, use of force has dropped even as officer injuries have not gone up and crime, by most measures, has not increased, Bobb and his monitoring team write in the report.O'Toole shared the results in a departmentwide email Monday afternoon, saying, "In short, the Monitor's assessment confirms the data that SPD reported on earlier this year: of the hundreds of thousands of unique incidents to which SPD officers respond every year, only a small fraction of one percent result in any use of force."The report, which has been in the works for some time, comes days after U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered Justice Department officials to conduct a review of reform agreements with more than a dozen police agencies nationwide to determine whether they, among other things, undermine officer safety and crime fighting.While the order could undercut newer agreements reached under the civil-rights emphasis during the Obama administration, officials have said it is unlikely to affect Seattle's pact because it is under the firm control of a federal judge.The judge, James Robart, has shown an unwavering commitment to Seattle's consent decree, even declaring "black lives matter" during a court hearing, and earlier this year halted the Trump administration's first travel ban.In a statement Tuesday, Murray said, "Our progress under the Consent Decree cannot be undone by empty bureaucratic threats. Our police department is well into the process of reform and will continue this work. We are too far along for President Trump to pull us away from justice."O'Toole, in her email, said the monitor's "remarkable results are not the result of de-policing, as some have charged, nor do they correlate to an increase in crime, as some predicted would occur."Rather, dispatch data show the productivity of officers on 911 calls or active patrols is increasing and that crime is down by 10 percent over last year, her email said.At the same time, the rate of injuries to officers has not increased, the chief added."In other words, this reduction in the use of force cannot be attributed to anything other than what can now be statistically shown: officers in the field are de-escalating volatile situations with regularity and skill, putting in practice the training that has established Seattle as a national leader in policing reform," O'Toole wrote.Bobb's report is the most significant so far in a series of ongoing assessments he has been conducting on the department's progress."This positive assessment is a credit to the men and women of SPD, from line officers to command staff. They have embraced reform, made it their own, and fundamentally changed what is happening on the streets of Seattle," Annette L. Hayes, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington, said in a statement.The report, for the first time, examines how officers are using force under new policies and training. Previously, Bobb has found the department to be in initial compliance with other parts of the consent decree, including procedures for crisis intervention, identifying problem officers and investigating and reviewing use of force.Robart has suggested the department could be found in full compliance with the consent decree next year, but Bobb must complete key reviews regarding discriminatory policing and how people are stopped and detained.Bobb's report notes that just a few years ago, force often went unreported or, when documented, it was "on paper stuffed, unreviewed, in file cabinets." If investigated, inquiries were typically incomplete or inadequate, the report says.But with the department now reporting and examining use of force "as never before," it can be analyzed by quantity and quality, Bobb concludes.Citing data and case samples over a 28-month period, the monitor found overall use of force dropped both across time under the consent decree and when compared to the period that led to the Justice Department's findings in 2011.In contrast to the 2011 numbers, there has been what appears to be a net decrease of 743 incidents -- a 60 percent drop -- in the use of moderate and high-level use of force. Of 2,385 incidents, 39, or 1.6 percent, stemmed from the most serious type of force, including 15 officer-involved shootings.The report also notes the use of batons has dramatically declined, as has the use of Tasers.While the lowest levels of force generally grew over time, the monitoring team surmised that is at least partly due to better reporting that didn't occur before the consent decree and less use of higher-level force."Even with expanded or increased reporting, the use of force is an unusual event," the report says.Of officers who used force, about one-third were involved in one incident and the vast majority of the remaining officers in one to three incidents, Bobb found.The monitor found some racial disparity in the use of force, but no statistically significant difference in the type or severity. Officers are more likely to point their gun at minorities but are more likely to go "hands-on" with whites, according to the report. The firearm issue deserves more study by the department and others, the report says.Bobb attributes the overall statistical decrease in the frequency and type of force to the fundamental changes in the use of de-escalation and crisis-intervention techniques, in contrast to the 2011 Justice Department finding that officers would escalate even minor offenses, particularly with people in crisis.Injuries to officers were flat or went down slightly, prompting the monitoring team to conclude the "decreased use of force has not placed officers at any higher risk or made officers less able or willing to use force to defend themselves from threats or harm."During the most recent half of the study period, officers used force consistent with policy 99.27 percent of the time, the report found.Many issues identified in the Justice Department investigation have been eliminated or substantially so, it says, with none touching on prohibitions on using force against people who solely engage in verbal confrontations with officers.In every case where the monitoring team believed officers acted outside policy, the department's Force Review Board independently reached the same conclusion, Bobb found."As this report ... makes clear, police officers in Seattle are frequently tasked with addressing individuals and situations that the rest of the social service fabric has failed, left out, or left behind," Bobb writes. "Their ability to innovate, change approaches, and change the course of the Department while addressing these fundamental duties is commended."Seattle City Councilmember M. Lorena Gonzalez, who chairs the council committee that oversees police matters, said in a statement: "Today's report proves the efficacy and importance of consent decrees."Councilmember Tim Burgess, a leader on police reform who hailed the report as "great news," said in a statement: "Changing culture is slow-going and hard work, but our city's efforts are bearing real, positive results. The officers who are on the street every day deserve all the credit." Description GIS 06 April 2017 : Some 60 pieces of fitness equipment namely treadmills, rowing machines and exercise bikes, as well as eight computers have been donated by the All-China Women's Federation to the National Women's Council following a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between the two organisations. The equipment was handed over by the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Peoples Republic of China to Mauritius, Mr Li Li, to the Minister of Gender Equality, Child Development and Family Welfare, Mrs Fazila Jeewa-Daureeawoo, during a ceremony held yesterday at the National Women Development Centre in Phoenix. The fitness equipment will be distributed to women empowerment centres to encourage women from all corners of Mauritius to engage in keep-fit activities. In her address, the Minister of Gender Equality, Child Development and Family Welfare lauded the Chinese Government for its constant support to Mauritius, stating that the Peoples Republic of China is a friend that can be relied on. We are honoured and grateful to receive this generous donation of equipment, said Mrs Jeewa-Daureeawoo. The Minister stated that this relation of friendship and cooperation has been translated by the positive outcomes of the 10th Sino-Mauritius Joint Economic Commission held in Beijing in November 2016 which include the financing of key projects and the provision of technical expertise from the Chinese side together with the signature of MoUs for extended collaboration in the fields of trade and investment, and ocean economy. Mrs Jeewa-Daureeawoo was also thankful to the Peoples Republic of China for its assistance in the capacity building of officers of the Ministry in women's development and empowerment issues. Speaking on the importance of promoting healthy lifestyle among women, the Minister is of the view that sports, as a means to build body image and self-esteem, play a key part in the emancipation of women. She added that the fitness equipment will enable women to enhance their quality of life. Moreover, the use of the gifted IT equipment to increase productivity of the officers of the Ministry and provide women access to technology was highlighted by Mrs Jeewa-Daureeawoo. For his part, Ambassador Li Li stressed that the social, economic and political independence of women is a reality in China. Mr Li Li pointed out that 68% of women in China were in employment, while the number of women who have earned their masters degree and PhD stands at 51.6% and 36.9%, respectively. The Ambassador commended Mauritius for its efforts in raising the representation of women at all levels and in combating domestic violence. He reiterated the continuous support of the Peoples Republic of China in endeavours geared towards the welfare of women. There is still a long way to go in the fight against discrimination and prejudice against women; therefore let us work together to build a better future for both our countries and their people, Mr Li Li concluded. What About Enterprise Security Metrics? Maintaining Impactful Metrics Almost 4.2 billion records were exposed in 4,149 data breaches in 2016, according to a recent report from Risk Based Security . The worst-hit sectors were businesses at 51 percent of reported breaches, surpassing unknown (23.4 percent), government (11.7 percent), medical (9.2 percent) and education (4.7 percent) industries. While the number of data breaches remained about the same in 2015 and 2016, the number of records compromised skyrocketed last year, according to the report.But wait, the Identity Theft Resource Center said there were 1,093 reported data breaches in 2016 40 percent more than the 780 breaches in 2015. Confusing things further, the Privacy Rights Clearing House counted 538 breaches occurring in 2016 with just over 11 million records lost.To be sure, there are plenty of explanations , different definitions, regional exceptions and so on to account for the conflicting numbers. But how do we easily explain this to business leaders?Whats my point? The security industry has a metrics problem and not just with counting breached records. If you add in disparate definitions of security incidents, numbers of vulnerabilities, threats or even whats included under cybersecurity, you will see that different organizations use different terms, accounting and approaches, making apples-to-apples comparisons very hard.But enough about tabulating industrywide security metrics. How are you doing at measuring risk in your organization?Sadly the gap between management expectations and reality usually gets worse when serious academic rigor is applied to measuring local cybersecurity programs. Many governments are just happy to have any security metrics at all. Often, easy-to-find items like spam emails blocked or viruses detected and eliminated are the only things counted, since network and security tools easily capture these cyberalerts. But is this practice acceptable?Digging deeper, is your security health report truly measuring risk and evaluating future investments in people, process and technology? No doubt, reporting big numbers to managers (often measured in the millions of hostile data elements removed) looks impressive on management reports, but has anyone asked tough questions about these reports lately?Have you ever matched the metrics youre collecting to management decision-making? Are the relevant definitions clear and consistent? Is the threat intelligence data reliable? What is the process for creating security action items and priority levels? Who is (truly) looking at the captured data in a timely manner? Where can leadership turn for answers during an incident?What can be done? Here are three steps you can take to strengthen cybersecurity metrics, communicate risk levels, and recommended actions to the right people up and down the management chain.your enterprise security data, collection capabilities, policies and current reports. Who is doing what regarding your organizations metrics collection processes now? Review risk assessments and security operation capabilities that are already in place from an end-to-end perspective. Ask what reports are really being read and used, and by whom.to top executives, financial staff, external partners and your internal team about must have, nice to have and wasteful metrics. What compliance reports are required by auditors? How can internal and external partners help? What risk-measuring results are expected? Consider if cyberinsurance checklists and processes can help document risk-reducing steps that lower premium costs.(and use) a meaningful security dashboard for executives. Make sure the detail behind the metrics are real. As you build your future metrics model, examine best practices and talk with industry peers to understand what is working in your business sector. A few years back, the National Governors Associations Resource Center for State Cybersecurity helped to build a template that can be used for government security dashboards. These templates are a helpful start. The Center for Internet Security consensus metrics are also valuable.Building security metrics, measuring risk and improving cyberincident communications arent one and done processes. Seek to constantly improve and refine cybersecurity metrics, while maintaining your historical data and capturing trends.Dont just check the box, recheck your cybermetrics. (TNS) -- Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate announced this week his office will supply tablet computers for all 99 counties to assist election officials with Americans with Disabilities Act provisions required at polling places.Pate's office will distribute the tablets, equipped with the ADA Checklist Program application, to every auditor's office in Iowa.A statement released Wednesday by a spokesman for Pate said "technology provided by the app will allow county auditors to more easily identify accessible polling locations in all 1,681 precincts across the state.""We applaud this effort to assist county auditors and election officials to employ the standards in the Americans with Disabilities Act to better evaluate and ensure the accessibility of Iowa's precinct polling places," said Rik Shannon, public policy manager for the Iowa Developmental Disabilities Council."The curb cuts and automatic doors that we all take for granted today were intended by the ADA to give individuals with disabilities greater access to the community. Similarly, this renewed focus on polling place accessibility will benefit not only Iowans with disabilities but all voters."Des Moines County auditor Terri Johnson said her office expects to receive the tablet May 12.Johnson, elected auditor in the November general election, said the county currently uses a paper checklist to keep track of ADA requirements."Some areas of the City are hard to find alternative locations that are ADA compliant with an adequate parking area," said Johnson. "A majority of our precincts are churches and concerned about ADA access for their members, so I would say a majority of them would still pass the ADA requirements."Once the auditor's office received the tablet and learned the app, Johnson said they would start contacting precincts and begin a review of the county's ADA practices.Polling place accessibility is required by the Americans with Disabilities Act, enacted in 1990.The ADA Checklist for Polling Places will provide guidance to election officials to determine whether a polling place has the basic accessibility features required for voters with disabilities, or can be made accessible on Election Day, according to the statement.Features of the app include the ability to take pictures of polling place structures, provide guidance for making temporary accommodations, assist counties with polling place layout, reports and tracking supplies needed for individual polling sites."I value our partnership with the county auditors and I want every eligible Iowan to cast a ballot," Pate said in a statement Wednesday. "This app will be a valuable tool for election officials to help ensure all 1,681 precincts in the state are accessible for voters with disabilities."A 2015 study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated 53 million adults in America live with a disability, the most common disability being limited mobility.The tablets were funded through a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Election Assistance to Individuals with Disabilities grant.In other election news, a bill requiring voters present a government-issued identification card when casting their ballot is awaiting a final decision from Gov. Terry Branstad.Similar versions of House File 516 passed the Senate and House of Representatives in March. The 18F Way Cooperation Et al What it means for vendors Will they spread? Flexibility. If theres one thing that everybody involved in government procurement chief information officers, procurement officials, vendors and civic tech folk appear to agree on, its that the future of governments technology-buying should be more flexible.The trend in that direction seems well underway too. Consider, implores longtime public-sector IT specialist Sherry Amos, the cloud.Ive seen a maturity in the last five years, maturity not only of acceptance of cloud solutions but of [the] necessity of cloud solutions, not only for cost containment but because fundamentally its the only way to use certain solutions, said Amos, the managing director of industry strategy for education and government at Workday.And the cloud, even more than traditional government tech work, is a kind of symbol of flexibility. The whole software-as-a-service model is built around the concept of buying something available over the air instead of installed via disk; purchased through subscription as opposed to bought outright; updated weekly rather than released in a new version every year.The cloud isnt the only driver here. Government technology procurement is, in the timelines of the digital age, an ancient quagmire. The process differs from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but generally goes something like this: Agency X has a tech need. It spends a really, really long time trying to write down its needs in a request for proposal. It requires vendors to take on as much risk as possible in the process. The vendor gets a massive check and a deadline, often a year or longer depending on the system, to deliver the goods.Everybody has something bad to say about this approach. It takes too long. It costs too much. It favors the entrenched tech giants over innovative smaller players. It delivers products that users find difficult to navigate. It props up a paradigm of slow replacement cycles resulting in legacy systems that become more difficult to keep running over time. The list goes on.So how are state and local governments working to create a better system? 18F was always, in its genetic matrix, meant to be disruptive. The digital consultancy set up within the U.S. General Services Administration in 2014, essentially co-opted talent and ideas from the private tech sector in an attempt to fix government procurement.Now its ideas are showing up at the state level first in California and Ohio , and potentially on its way to Indiana and Oklahoma.In California, it first took the form of a request for a new case management system from Child Welfare Services (CWS) an important tool, since its the nexus through which the state checks in on tens of thousands of children suffering abuse and neglect each year. The agency took years crafting exactly the kind of RFP everybody complains about. Those familiar with the project say even the people who wrote the RFP didnt think it would end with a good system.Then, Code for America got involved. It took, more or less, two ideas from 18Fs way of doing things. First, it broke up the contract into pieces. Second, it retooled the vendor qualification process.The approach we wanted to use in the Child Welfare Services process was in embedded technology delivery, not just project and contract management, said Dan Hon, who was at Code for America when the project got underway.Breaking up the contract into modules opened the door for a system that could be built with continual evaluation. A big system delivered all at once may or may not have actually spent time in front of users. According to Hon, that was a central component of the CWS project.The state took these prototypes and put them in front of state employees and allowed them to complete a test, he said.Also key to the projects success was the shortening of schedules. The team asked for vendors to rapidly develop prototypes that could be tested. That was the test for prequalification if the prototypes performed well, it served as a foundation of trust. The state could put them in a pool with other vendors who could then pitch their bids for each modular RFP as they were released.A funny thing happened. Some vendors thought the prototyping sprints were too fast, others thought they were too slow.There were some vendors who informally provided feedback saying two-week sprints would be difficult for them, and I would characterize those as traditional government software vendors. And the state saw interest from a new class of vendor they hadnt seen before who said they would have interest in working against weekly sprints, Hon said.These concepts, though far from being canon among California state agencies, have already spread to at least two more projects. The Treasurers Office is looking for a new debt management system, and two departments charged with regulating newly legalized recreational marijuana are looking for the means to use the same licensing platform.The Treasurers Office project in particular is similar to the CWS project, according to California Chief Information Officer Amy Tong.They were looking to replace a legacy system and instead of going for a single system integrator, they too have grouped their functionalities in smaller scope and then they sequenced those scopes based on the priority of the business, Tong said. So that kind of approach is similar to what Child Welfare Services is doing. The difference is instead of the state entity [becoming] an integrator managing these multiple smaller contracts they hired another vendor that has the sole purpose of managing and integrating these various contractors.With the marijuana licensing project, she said, the two agencies are seeking one vendor to perform integration work instead of putting out separate bids for each.For both that project and the treasury one, the emphasis is on speed and adaptability.Each contract has a much shorter timeframe from the get-go, which allows the state entities to have more flexibility to continue with the contractor if they perform well. As opposed to in the past, its a much longer contract, and if the contractor doesnt perform well, we have to figure out a way to get out of the contract, she said.The result, according to Tong, is projects that are described in terms of months rather than years.In Ohio, 18Fs ideas took the shape of a statewide push for data analytics tools. And the emphasis, according to Ohio CIO Stu Davis, was on revisiting the terms and conditions that make it tough for small vendors to compete for awards.That included things like liability and insurance stipulations, as well as a requirement that vendors must have performed work for states similar in size to Ohio of which there are about eight.We still have some of those [requirements] in there, but its pretty broad-brushed, Davis said.The general idea is to open up the process so smaller groups with a broader range of perspectives and ideas can pitch suggestions for how to solve problems. It also means involving procurement officials in the process earlier on, and opening up peoples minds about what kinds of solutions might work rather than asking for a specific solution.It costs money for vendors to submit these proposals. ... We need to do our due diligence and make sure our criteria is as tight as possible and we dont disqualify them for crazy ideas, he said.Another possible new way of doing procurement is actually an old one: cooperative purchasing.Thats when a group of government agencies, working through a central group such as the National Association of State Procurement Officers (NASPO), all jump in on the same RFP. One agency takes the lead, with others sitting in to ensure they agree with the terms, and then once the RFP is finalized the participating entities can all take advantage of the process. Its economies of scale at the government procurement level.It's just that now, it appears more governments are turning to the process. And the cooperative purchases may be getting bolder.For example, there was the NASPO ValuePoint cooperative RFP for cloud services launched in September 2016. It was a big blanket , covering infrastructure as a service, platform as a service and software as a service vendors were put into those categories, many of them in two or all three and 35 states signed on. So far, there are 29 vendors in the pool.In a way, its not far off from the prequalification idea underway with the California CWS project.Its like a convenience store for the companies that have already been awarded these services, said Tony Encinias, vice president of technology at ViON and the former CIO of Pennsylvania Amos and Encinias both said they think government is starting to use cooperative purchasing more. The last couple of years, a number of states really started to understand that they cant procure modern technology and cloud-based technologies the way they used to, Amos said.Steve Emanuel, public-sector adviser for Alliant Technologies and the former CIO of New Jersey , agrees. And he sees the change as a matter of necessity. Cloud purchasing doesnt make sense under the terms of traditional procurement take unlimited liability, for example. A company that hands off a disk to a customer can take liability. A customer that provides a service tied into other services, running off a third-party platform and storing data on an enormous network of servers is another matter entirely.How can you hold the vendor at the other end of the Internet accountable for [distributed denial of service] attacks? And not just to them, but to other people, Emanuel said.There are several other ideas for fixing procurement making the rounds in state and local government.Another one from 18F that might have potential, especially at the local level, is micropurchasing. 18F has developed a program for putting out small programming requests not very much work, and at low enough cost that it can be charged to a card. So small it doesnt have to go out to bid.At the local level, theres already a mechanism in place that works something like that at least, insofar as it avoids the need to go out to bid or authorize big payments. That would be pricing services so they come in under the RFP-triggering threshold.That was the strategy of Binti , a startup that came out of San Franciscos Startup in Residence program. The company developed software to help foster care agencies process people applying to house children. Then it priced the software so that most counties in California wouldnt need to go out to bid to buy it. Within five months, 19 counties signed on as customers.Startup in Residence is, itself, a way to find new solutions to problems and work faster to implement them. The program, which is spreading outside the San Francisco Bay Area, involves bringing in entrepreneurs to work closely with city officials to solve problems.Somewhat akin to that idea is the Citymart model. Citymart, a startup aimed at changing procurement , seeks to center the process of buying technology around problems putting the emphasis on what needs to happen, then getting creative in finding possible solutions.This is a kind of situation we find over and over again, that you actually realize that youve just been renewing and adding more and more stuff to a problem instead of really thinking, Can this be done in a different way? said Sascha Haselmayer, CEO of the company.Take, for example, a street lighting purchase. Its not that you dont know the 30 vendors who can give you a street light, its that you dont know the 30 alternatives to the street light, Haselmayer said.Its far from certain what the future of procurement will look like. But if its generally moving in the direction of greater flexibility, there are some guesses for what that will mean for vendors.For one increased competition. The NASPO cloud contract has a big pool of vendors jockeying for business. The California vendor prequalification scheme calls for faster development on smaller projects, ultimately meaning more projects to work on.And it means that the big companies, often accustomed to moving slower, will have to keep up with the little ones.You can never be too comfortable, as an incumbent, if you arent continuing to innovate on some level, Amos said.That will likely mean an increased emphasis on user-centered design and agile development processes.It is my understanding that during the [California CWS] evaluation process, some prototypes failed because users were not able to complete the tasks based on the design of those prototypes, Hon said. And when we come back to a high-level strategic vision for the quality and the goals of government technology, then when we say we need to get the job done, getting the job done also means the software actually allows end users to complete the tasks they have to complete.It also means technology development processes might be a little more fluid overall. That is, vendors might have to work with each other more, they might have to respond more to customers calling for help even if its on part of the system another vendor developed.You have to know where the limits are and know that there are some gray areas and know that the companies that go that extra mile in the gray area are going to be the ones that are touted as more flexible and the ones that more people want to do business with, Emanuel said.Most people involved with these ideas think that whether or not they spread or even become the norm in future government tech procurement relies on how successful they are. Still, change is hard.If [the California CWS] demonstrator is successful, it will stand as a good example and the intent, from my external point of view, is that it would serve as a brilliant case study for other states and other governments, Hon said. But ultimately [its] harder than saying, We want to do things in that way because it requires not only organizational change management, but it requires rather hard work in looking at the procurement environment.There is some indication that they are already spreading after all, people from Indiana and Oklahoma have reached out to Ohio for more information about its data analytics project, according to Davis. Californias modular, agile approach seems to be making its way from department to department. And some think procurement change is inevitable when it comes to new tech because some new tech is incompatible with the old processes.And then theres the sheer complexity of some of the problems government is trying to solve. Technology, especially with potential disruptors like machine learning and blockchain, offers government the potential to navigate such tangled forests as opioid addiction, infant mortality and homelessness but only if the government can access it and use it effectively.We have to look at this completely differently from how we have in the past, Davis said. U.S. Immigration Agency Will Lose Millions Because It Cant Process Visas Fast Enough NYC Funding Program to Support Health Tech Startups The New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYEDC) has launched its 2017 Digital Health Marketplace, a program that will award $250,000 to growth-stage health tech startups in the city. The initiative's goal is to support both growth-stage and early-stage startups to ultimately boost the digital health sector in New York City, while the money should help tech startups pilot their technologies within health-care institutions. Over three cycles of the program to date, alumni have gone on to create more than 140 jobs and raise more than $195 million in venture capital funding. In partnership with HITLAB , NYCEDC has also announced the selection of four companies that will participate in the Digital Health Breakthrough Network, an initiative for early stage startups to test products with users while simultaneously strengthening connections to both the health-care and technology sectors. This years cohort includes companies developing wearable tech and smart injection devices, among other projects. These two initiatives work in tandem, according to a release from the NYCEDC. The digital health sector is one of the fastest growing segments of our tech economy and has the potential to be a major job creator for a wide range of New Yorkers, said NYCEDC President and CEO James Patchett in the release. More importantly, the sector is leveraging New York Citys unique tech talent to develop solutions that will impact the health of people around the world. Were proud to continue to support the growth of the digital health industry, and were excited to see how it continues to shape our economy and quality of life." San Franciscos Crime Data Portal Aims to Improve Community San Francisco has launched a platform that allows users to geographically query crime data in a more efficient way than its open data portal has previously allowed. Officials praised the portal in a recent blog post , providing insight into the development process and praising its ability to enable the public to geographically query incident data in a way that saves time while also increasing access to info. The launch of the program was twofold; Code for San Francisco released a beta version in early 2017, and significant improvements to search capabilities were added in February. These improvements allowed users to conduct a polygon search, which is the ability to draw an irregular shape around a local campus example, for example, in order to focus searches on crime incidents in immediate areas. According to the blog, future enhancements will bolster other aspects of the platform, including reports on campus safety-related crime incidents. The timeline provided by the blog says improvements will continue to be made through 2017, with a projected completion date of mid-January 2018, which is when 2017 SFPD annual crime data is available. The San Francisco Crime Data portal was born after Joy Bonaguro joined the city in 2014 as its first chief data officer and noticed that staff with the San Francisco Police Department were spending hours doing custom geographic queries to answer public record requests. At that time, the portal didnt let users interface with info geographically. Colorado Statewide Internet Portal Authority Awards 22 Micro-Grants The Colorado Statewide Internet Portal Authority (SIPA) has awarded $113,000 in micro-grant funding to 22 local governments throughout the state to help them implement new technologies and better digital government services.The recipients will be announced at a ceremony Tuesday, April 18. In past years, the authority has given micro-grants to a diverse set of beneficiaries. Last years crop, for example, included the 4th Judicial District Attorneys Office, Morgan County, the Governors Office of Information Technology, and the town of Silt, among others. A large portion of this grant money is made possible by SIPAs self-funded contract with Colorado Interactive, the team behind the official website of Colorado . SIPA itself was established in 2004 by the Colorado General Assembly to be the states most comprehensive delivery channel for digital government services. This years group of applicants totaled 58 state agencies, counties, municipalities, institutions of higher education and special districts. The ultimate point of the money is so that public service bodies can develop better citizen-facing information services online. This over-arching commitment to improving life for residents with better digital services can also be seen in a pair of recent appointments the governor has made. In November, Brandon Williams was named the states first digital transformation officer, and in March, Tony Neal-Graves was made executive director of the states broadband office The Hiring Challenge Changing Licensing Workaround Solutions Many Minnesota employers say they cant find skilled workers with the right career training. Meanwhile, high schools are cutting career and technical education courses because they cant find qualified teachers.The jobs are there, and were not preparing our kids well enough to get into those jobs because the system has not allowed us to, said Stephen Jones, the superintendent of schools in Little Falls, Minnesota. His district hasnt had to cancel any courses for lack of instructors, but he says smaller districts in the state have.Nationally, career and technical education (CTE) isnt the area with the worst teacher shortage thats special education. But two-thirds of states are currently reporting a shortage of CTE teachers in at least one specialty, according to aanalysis of federal data . Many states, such as Minnesota and South Dakota, have had a shortage of CTE teachers for a decade. Some states, such as Maine, Maryland and New York, have had a shortage for almost 20 years.To address the problem, legislators in Minnesota and other states have pursued changes to teacher licensing that would make it easier for people who work in industry to transition into teaching, or to teach part-time.But there are many other reasons for the shortage that are harder to tackle: Teacher salaries are too low to compete with salaries in technical fields. Too few young people are specializing in career and technical education in college. And its hard to attract teachers to isolated schools in rural areas.Theres no one answer, said Kate Kreamer, deputy executive director for Advance CTE, a nonprofit that represents the leaders of state career training programs. Although alternative certification is increasingly a strategy states are using, its obviously insufficient in addressing the overall teacher shortage issue.High schools can prepare students to step into jobs that require some extra training but not a college degree, such as home health aides , a profession expected to grow by 38 percent over the next decade, or entry-level jobs in construction and the skilled trades. The construction sector , like health care, is expected to grow faster than the national average in the years to come.As lawmakers push secondary schools to add classes in occupational areas short on workers, many school districts are devising workaround solutions such as partnering with community colleges.The challenges Minnesota schools face in filling career and technical teacher positions are typical of schools in many states, as are the reasons for the shortage.This year, a report from a state task force co-chaired by Jones, the superintendent, found that across five in-demand specialties, a third of all CTE teachers had been hired on short-term special permission licenses. In some of those specialties the share was higher: nearly 40 percent for manufacturing, 50 percent for construction and 54 percent for medicine.Jones wasnt surprised that so many positions were filled by emergency hires. Schools are working the system to keep their programs running, he said.His rural district northwest of the Twin Cities has had to find solutions when job candidates are scarce. One of our [agriculture] teachers is retiring this year, and were actually having him back part time next year because of our difficulty finding people, he said.The task force report said that Minnesota colleges and universities have been shuttering their CTE teacher preparation programs as enrollment has dropped. Its hard for schools to recruit people with technical expertise away from industry jobs.And people from industry that are interested in teaching might be reluctant because of strict teacher licensing rules. Minnesota teachers must have a bachelors degree to get licensed, although many people in fields such as nursing or automotive technology only hold a two-year degree.Advance CTE found similar challenges nationally when it asked directors of state career tech programs what barriers they face in recruiting people in industry to be teachers or to help out in other ways say to serve as mentors or offer internships to high school students. The No. 1 problem directors identified was lack of funding for salaries and other financial incentives, such as bonuses.Yet few state directors said their state had tried to attract people from industry with financial incentives. In states that did try it, they said, the approach wasnt effective.States may be avoiding increasing pay or offering bonuses because of their tight budgets, said Ashleigh McFadden, state policy manager for Advance CTE. Incentive programs also are hard to sustain long term. They tend to be eliminated in the next budget crisis.Tennessee has adopted a promising approach. It allows people who have worked in industry to count their years of work experience as years of teaching experience. They dont enter on a beginning teacher salary, although they are beginning teachers, McFadden said.Minnesota state Sen. Greg Clausen, a former high school principal and a member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, supports creating a middle category of licenses for career and technical education teachers between a full license and an emergency credential. A proposal for revamping the entire teacher licensing system in the state would allow someone with an associate degree, an industry credential or at least five years work experience to get a one-year license to teach CTE. Longer-term licenses would be available to candidates with more teacher training. ( A separate bill Clausen has proposed would require Minnesota colleges and universities to create a two-year preparation program for CTE teachers.)Clausen said that schools would have to offer mentorship and on-the-job support for such teachers. Theyve got the experience, theyve got the skills. They just dont have the teaching credential and the classroom skills, Clausen said of people who come from industry.The Virginia Legislature and the boards of education in New York and South Dakota have adjusted CTE licensing requirements in recent years to make it easier for people to start teaching. Last year, North Carolina and Virginia created licenses that allow technical workers to teach part time. People from industry in Alabama, Florida, Kentucky and Ohio already have a similar option.In the Advance CTE survey, directors of state career and technical education programs ranked alternatives to traditional teacher certifications as the most successful strategy for getting people from industry into the classroom. They ranked part-time teacher certifications second.Changes to teacher licensing can be controversial. In Connecticut, the union that represents teachers at technical high schools opposes a bill that would reduce the amount of work experience people need to become technical high school teachers. The union argues that changing licensing requirements would reduce the quality of education students receive, according to theStates that rethink licensing need to ensure that new teachers are still prepared to manage a classroom, teach concepts and assess students, said Jennifer Zinth, director of high school and science, technology, engineering and mathematics education at the Education Commission of the States, a nonpartisan policy group.When teachers of any subject quit, its usually not because of low salaries, Kreamer said. Its because somethings not right in their school environment. Teachers who feel supported by their school and have someone to turn to for advice are more likely to stay, she said.School districts looking to expand their career programs may have to pursue a number of employment arrangements.Take the city school district in Marion, Ohio. Although a technical career center in the county offers high school programs, Harding High School (named for President Warren Harding, who is buried in Marion) has bulked up its own CTE offerings as part of a plan to ensure students graduate and go on to good-paying jobs, further education or the military.Simply graduating with a high school diploma is not enough in todays economy, said Stephen Fujii, the director of college and career success for the district. Ohios superintendent of public instruction, Paolo DeMaria, has praised the district for exposing students to potential careers.Harding High has some teachers with traditional CTE certification. The school also has recruited people with technical expertise to teach by themselves or with a credentialed teacher from another field. The logistics course, which covers supply chains, is co-taught by a math teacher and an employee of a local company, Marion Industrial Center, who comes to campus a few times a month, for instance. The robotics and production technology courses are taught by a full-time teacher who used to work in the industry.Fujii said the district has had to reassure its teachers union that hiring teachers with alternative credentials wont reduce the quality of education students receive. Although it can be hard to convince people with full-time jobs in industry to help teach a class, the district has built relationships with local employers that make such partnerships possible, he said.Schools also can expand CTE instruction without hiring more teachers. They might partner with community colleges to allow students to take technical classes there for both college and high school credit. Or they might expand work-based or internship opportunities that allow students to learn on the job.At Harding High, students can transfer to the local career center in the 11th or 12th grade if they are interested in a technical subject the high school doesnt offer. Since the high school started expanding its career programs two years ago, Fujii said, more students have moved over to the career center to further their studies. (TNS) -- Silicon Valleys newest self-driving car startup, Voyage Auto, boasts an impressive pedigree.Voyage is being spun off from Udacity, the online learning company that offers a course in programming autonomous cars. Udacity was founded by Sebastian Thrun, who started Googles self-driving vehicle program and has been one of the fields biggest names for 10 years.Thrun wont join Voyage. But it will be led by Oliver Cameron, Udacitys vice president of engineering. He announced the companys formation Wednesday on social media, following a report on Voyage in Business Insider. Were deploying autonomous taxis to real users very, very soon, Cameron wrote on his Facebook and LinkedIn pages. According to Voyages LinkedIn page, the startup has four employees, Cameron included.Other, more established companies are pursuing the same goal.Uber has been testing robotic taxis (with humans behind the steering wheel) in Pittsburgh. Ford Motor Co. CEO Mark Fields committed his company last year to building autonomous taxis by 2021. Electric-auto maker Tesla also plans a fleet of self-driving cars that can be hailed for rides. Voyage will focus on retrofitting cars with self-driving technology rather than designing and building its own car from scratch.Udacity already has a self-driving car created as part of its programming course, which now has 6,600 students worldwide. But Udacity executives told Business Insider that Voyage wont use technology developed by Udacity students.Thrun told Business Insider he isnt taking part in the new company because of personal conflicts.A Udacity spokeswoman declined to say Thursday what those conflicts are. But the self-driving industry has seen at least two lawsuits recently over high-profile engineers leaving one company to start another.Wishing Oliver and his team all of the best! Thrun wrote Wednesday night on Facebook. (TNS) -- As hundreds of police officers swarmed Pocono woodlands in the late summer and early fall of 2014, searching for accused sniper Eric Matthew Frein, many thousands of Northeast Pennsylvanians were dialed in to news coverage of the hunt.Now, as Frein stands trial in Pike County for allegedly killing state police Cpl. Byron K. Dickson II and wounding Trooper Alex T. Douglass in the Sept. 12, 2014, attack at the Blooming Grove barracks, public interest remains strong.Yet the courthouse door is partially closed. Pennsylvania is among the states that continue to bar cameras from courtrooms. It does so even though the excuses for the ban have been eclipsed by technology, and obviated by vast experiences in more progressive states.Opponents of courtroom cameras traditionally have employed two principal arguments: that the camera operation would be a distraction and that lawyers or witnesses might play to the cameras rather than to the court, in some cases.The technology issue once was valid. But video technology long ago reached the point that it is like wallpaper part of the environment.As for the conduct of lawyers, witnesses, jurors and others in the courtroom, that is no less the province of the judge in a courtroom with cameras than in one without cameras.On the federal side, the Supreme Court of the United States has authorized multiple experiments with cameras in district and appellate courts around the country. Most recently, arguments before District Judge James L. Robart in Washington state, which resulted in a rejection of President Donald Trumps travel ban against residents of seven Muslim countries, were on live television. And the appeal at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco streamed live online.Despite those and other successful demonstrations, the SCOTUS still refuses to authorize cameras in all federal courts.It and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court should recognize that its 2017, and that there is no valid excuse for limiting the broadest possible public access to the courtroom. (TNS) -- AUGUSTA The Maine Senate voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to end the states opposition to federal Real ID requirements and to begin the process of redesigning the states drivers licenses.Without legislative action, Maine residents will likely be unable to use their drivers licenses to board commercial airplanes starting next January because the state has yet to implement the stronger security standards. On Thursday, the Maine Senate voted 31-4 in support of a bill that directs the Secretary of States office to issue new drivers license that comply with the federal Real ID rules.The bill, L.D. 306, is now headed to the House for consideration.If you want to see disruption and chaos back home because we didnt act not just this year but for the past 10 years knowing full well that the deadline was before us then we will see that and we all will hear that. And we should, said bill sponsor Sen. Bill Diamond, D-Windham, a former secretary of state.Maine is one of a handful of states that have refused to comply with the Real ID law and not received extended waivers from the federal government. Federal officials insist that the additional requirements including digitized images of the card holder as well as federal access to a database of birth certificates and photographs are necessary to help thwart terrorism.Opponents of Real ID, including current Secretary of State Matt Dunlap, have warned that the federal mandates could violate Mainers privacy without enhancing security Sen. Shenna Bellows, a Manchester Democrat who formerly headed the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine, said it was madness for our state to spend millions of taxpayer dollars to set up what will be a treasure trove for identity thieves.With any centralized database, particularly when there are not enough resources to keep pace with the technology developed by hackers and thieves, it is not a question of if the data will be breached, but when and to what consequences, Bellows said.Both Sen. Eric Brakey, R-Auburn, and Sen. Ben Chipman, D-Portland, called Real ID a giant unfunded mandate because Dunlaps office has estimated it would cost $2 million to $3 million to implement.Instead, opponents said that Mainers can use passports or passport cards to get through airport security or gain access to federal facilities.But lawmakers are under increasing pressure to adopt the Real ID requirements because some people are already being impacted. Several hundred veterans have been turned away from a Department of Veterans Affairs health clinic on the former Pease Air Force Base in New Hampshire while other workers have been denied access to Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and other federal facilities.Gov. Paul LePage, a Republican, recently vetoed a bill that would have provided $15,000 to help low-income veterans obtain passport cards so that they can access the New Hampshire VA clinic. LePage, instead, called on the Legislature to pass Diamonds bill rather than provide case-by-case carve-outs for groups being affected by Real ID.An attempt to override LePages veto failed in the Maine House earlier this week Searching for a soda can? Is DNA like your license plate? Just the first step (TNS) -- Syracuse, N.Y. -- When blood, skin or some other genetic clue is left at a crime scene, that DNA is immediately searched in a database of ex-offenders.It's a precise check for a hit among the 625,000 convicts in New York and 13 million convicts nationwide whose genetic profile sits in an FBI database. The crime scene evidence must match the convict's exact DNA profile in up to 20 areas stored in the database.There is only one match, and that match is a powerful weapon to solve a crime.But in cases where there is no exact match, what if authorities could cast a wider net?What if authorities lowered the standard for the computer's DNA search? What if the check brought back dozens of names of ex-offenders who are not guilty of this crime, but could share some genetic link to the true perpetrator? Maybe, among all those low-grade hits, is the brother or son of the criminal.New York authorities are considering approval of such a DNA dragnet, called "familial searching." It's a new tool that would use existing technology to crack difficult cases. It would give investigators new leads to chase down on important cases that have grown cold.It's a controversial idea. Civil libertarians and others say it exposes dozens of innocent people with no connection to the true criminal to intrusive investigations. It unfairly victimizes families of ex-convicts who have done nothing else to arouse suspicion, they argue.A New York panel is considering allowing familial searches. It could vote on the proposal as early as Wednesday. The searches could begin after a 45-day public comment period.The proposal limits familial searching to investigations of homicides and the worst forms of kidnapping, arson and sex crimes, as well as terrorism or crimes posing a "significant" ongoing public safety threat. A search would require state approval and could only be conducted at a state crime lab.Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming already perform the searches. On the other hand, Maryland and Washington, D.C., outlawed them a decade ago on civil liberties grounds.Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick is a member of the panel that will decide on the use of these searches, the state's Commission on Forensic Science . He supports the expanded searching.Fitzpatrick said it could reopen virtually any cold-case murder in which DNA was left at the scene, such as: Jill-Lyn Euto , 18, stabbed to death in 2001 in a Syracuse apartment building, and Jacqueline Saunders and Mary Anne Marzullo , 14-year-olds who went missing in 1967 while walking in North Syracuse. They were found dead the next morning.He guessed that hundreds of familial searches would be requested statewide each year, with a hundred or so taking place.Nationally, familial searching has a proven, if limited, track record. There's the "Roaming Rapist" in Sacramento, who spent six years raping women before authorities caught him through his imprisoned brother's DNA. Or the "Grim Sleeper" serial killer in Los Angeles, whose son had been convicted on a weapons charge. Or a woman beaten to death in Colorado whose perpetrator was caught after leaving DNA on the hammer.The Denver police have a 30-percent rate in finding possible leads when doing a familial search on cold cases, according to an expert there. Not all led to convictions.New York's current DNA searching is "like going to your favorite fishing hole in a rowboat and hoping fish will jump into your boat," Fitzpatrick said. With familial searching, "you're setting a lure and casting and reeling in fish."Familial searching, at best, only gets you to an unknown relative of a criminal; you need to turn that information into a suspect, and then you need that suspect's DNA to compare against the crime-scene evidence. Remember: Your suspect is not in the computer.The easiest way for law enforcement to quickly collect DNA, without a person's cooperation, is to stake out a target's trash. Discarded items are considered public domain, so Dumpster diving for DNA is legal.A straw, toothbrush or soda can often provide the needed saliva to collect DNA.Do citizens really want the government to go "snatching a soda can out of the trash" to obtain someone's DNA? wondered Brad Mauer, a Manhattan public defender who opposes the idea.Fitzpatrick counters that authorities don't do that because it's not worth the effort unless there's another reason that person is under suspicion, he said."If I really want your DNA, I can get it," Fitzpatrick told a Syracuse.com reporter. "I can find your DNA, your wife's DNA."But Maurer called that process "deeply troubling."The other way to get someone's DNA is by asking him for it. That has its own set of problems, Maurer said: It's coercive (If you don't provide your DNA, what are you hiding?) and it's unsettling to be investigated for a crime, Maurer said.In one case, a Michigan resident was caught up in a DNA dragnet targeting 150 people in a serial rape case between 1992 and 1994. The perpetrator's description? Black, between 25 and 35 years old and 5-feet, 7-inches to 6-feet, 2-inches tall.One target, Blair Shelton, said he felt compelled to give a "voluntary" blood sample after a detective told him it was the only way to clear his name, according to a lawsuit filed later.Police came to his workplace at TJMaxx and told his boss that Shelton was a suspect in a serial rape investigation, the lawsuit states.He waited three months for the DNA to clear his name. In the meantime, he was fired from his job and was cast to his co-workers as a possible rapist. Shelton later won his lawsuit and regained control to his DNA after the actual rapist was caught.William Moffitt, past president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said there's very little voluntary about a voluntary dragnet. When do the ends justify the means?"I suggest to you that if we ran a police state, we would be much more successful at solving crime," he told CBS News in 2004, speaking of DNA dragnets.In the most well-known case of familial searching gone awry, a New Orleans filmmaker was placed under suspicion for a month after being considered a suspect in the sexual assault and murder of an Idaho woman in 1996.How did authorities find him? Michael Usry's father had submitted DNA as part of a Mormon church genealogy project that had been acquired by Ancestry.com. DNA from the crime scene cleared the father, but suggested a family member might be responsible.Usry became a promising suspect: His sisters had attended college about 25 miles from the crime scene in Idaho, he had friends in the state, and his films, like "Murderabilia," trafficked in the macabre.Even though he was innocent, Usry said he spent a month in suspense until the DNA cleared him.But a Long Island case shows how familial searching could help solve crime.There, police believed a jailed inmate had sexually assaulted a woman in her home, Suffolk County prosecutor Robert Biancavilla said recently. When the suspect was released from jail on an unrelated charge, police scoured the trash in his cell for DNA.The resulting DNA was not a match in the assault case, but it was close. It turned out the suspect's brother was the perpetrator, Biancavilla said.How different is DNA from the license plate on your car?Some law enforcement argue that DNA is nothing more than any other attribute: your job, your home or your car.After all, wouldn't police chase down a lead from a bank robbery if a witness provided a partial license plate? Wouldn't innocent people be scrutinized simply for having a license plate that resembles that of the criminal?Just like a license plate, DNA can exonerate people as easily as it can convict them, they argue.But collecting DNA is far deeply personal, critics respond.If DNA was such an important crime-fighting tool, why isn't everyone compelled to give the government their DNA?Why not scrutinize all DNA databases -- of crime victims, or law enforcement, or military, or even crime lab personnel - for leads? All of their DNA is kept on file, but it's kept under the strongest assurances of privacy.Why should relatives of criminals be singled out?A familial search can create a list of hundreds of convicts with similar genetic makeups, ranked by their likelihood of being a relative of the wanted suspect. A second DNA test on a particular convict's DNA narrows the list considerably. But it could still lead to the scrutiny of dozens of a convict's family members, some who may be quickly ruled out but others who may become suspects after a traditional investigation.The draft rules in New York would require a multi-step process for law enforcement to perform a familial search. It would require a joint application from police and prosecutors to the state Division of Criminal Justice Services. If approved, the DNA search would be done only by the state police crime laboratory.The proposal limits familial searches to only the most serious crimes and requires training for police and prosecutors. That "strikes a balance between enhancing public safety without compromising individual protection," DCJS spokeswoman Janine Kava said.Advocates say a familial search is only the first step in a long process. It's a lead, like a tip from an informant, Fitzpatrick said.After the initial familial search, the lab would then pick a possible profile for further testing.A second, specialized DNA test on that profile determines whether a specific Y chromosome - passed down nearly unchanged from father to son -- matches the crime-scene DNA. Because Y chromosomes are only found in men, that test is unable to identify a female suspect.If the Y-chromosome test comes back a match, that information could be passed on to law enforcement. Authorities could then rule out people in the target family based on a routine investigation: maybe a brother was on vacation in California, Fitzpatrick said. Or someone is the wrong gender, age or lacks the physical ability.Authorities might obtain DNA from remaining male family members.Maurer, the public defender, expressed concern that familial searching would unfairly target poor communities of color, which typically have a higher percentage of convicted criminals. Innocent minority families would most fall under suspicion, he said.Fitzpatrick said the tool would help communities of color the most. The fact is that 95 percent of Onondaga County's homicide victims are black or Hispanic, the DA said."This process will bring justice to those families," he said.Another opponent of familial searching is the Innocence Project, which has used DNA itself to exonerate wrongfully convicted people.Attorney Susan Friedman expressed concern that the searches unfairly put suspicion on innocent people.Interestingly, another group that probes miscarriages of justice, the Medill Innocence Project at Northwestern University, supports familial searching as a way to find the actual perpetrator after a wrongful conviction.Law enforcement, including Fitzpatrick, cast familial searching skeptics as naysayers who have always opposed DNA initiatives. Previous battles include the creation of the criminal database in 1996 and its expansion in 2012 to nearly all convicts of crime in New York.Each step has caused some invasion of privacy and some disproportionate effect on poor, minority communities.In 2010, the state allowed DNA labs to alert authorities if they stumbled across a near-match in the system. That's called a fortuitous partial match. But that has proven to be very infrequent, Fitzpatrick said. Authorities could not go in and look for near-matches.Opponents want familial searching to be voted on in Albany. But the forensic science commission - that includes Fitzpatrick - is expected to make the final ruling. A DNA subcommittee drafted the proposal that will be discussed at the commission's meeting Wednesday. (TNS) -- ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. The city of Albuquerque was bilked out of about $420,000 in March after falling for a scam in which payments meant for a vendor were sent to the scammer via wire transfers.We have vendors that we make electronic payments to, and basically, those payments were compromised through electronic wire transfers, said Rob Perry, the citys chief administrative officer. Were working with the Albuquerque Police Department and FBI cybercrimes unit to conduct a preliminary investigation into this matter.The fraudulent transfers were made in mid-March, and the city discovered that it had fallen victim to the scam about a week and a half ago, Perry said. He said the APD, the FBI and the citys inspector general were notified promptly, and the Office of the State Auditor was notified Thursday.Perry said he is looking into whether the $420,000 loss will be covered by insurance. Although the city is self-insured, he said, it does have third-party cybercrime coverage that may cover the loss.No other vendor payments appear to have been compromised.Weve conducted (an) extensive search of other potential vulnerabilities in payments, and we havent discovered anything that indicates it goes any further than this particular fraud, Perry said.He said he couldnt go into specifics about how the fraud was perpetrated, but the Office of the State Auditor said in a news release that the city had complied with a fraudulent request to change vendor payment information that diverted the public funds to the scammer.Unfortunately, the city of Albuquerque was hit by a scam that cost it over $400,000 in taxpayer dollars, state Auditor Tim Keller said in the release. This is now the second entity in New Mexico that we are aware of that was tricked into diverting money to imposters posing as legitimate businesses.An almost identical scam resulted in the loss of more than $200,000 in construction funds for a project at San Antonio Elementary School in Socorro, the Auditors Office said in its release.That incident prompted Keller to issue an alert earlier this week, urging government employees to use best practices his office has previously outlined to prevent this type of fraud.Those best practices include verifying the legitimacy of any request to change payment or banking information before processing the change. The Auditors Office recommends that vendors be contacted directly through a phone number or contact person obtained through a known source, such as their public website. The agency said government employees shouldnt use phone numbers included in emails requesting the change to verify the legitimacy of the request.He said an investigation is underway into whether city policies and procedures were followed in this matter.Theres nothing thus far in the investigation to indicate that there was any wrongdoing by city employees, Perry said. Weve put heightened security measures in place regarding all electronic payments.Asked whether hes confident that the new measures will prevent this type of thing from happening again, he said, Id like to say Im confident, but I live in a world where hackers are able to get into CIA computers, all the national banks, and a lot of other governments.It just seems to me that when we talk about computer crime and cyberfraud, were constantly evaluating our security procedures and protocols, and theyre always challenged, and theres always attempts to compromise them.Albuquerque and the Socorro school district arent the only government agencies to fall victim to scammers.In May, San Miguel County in northern New Mexico was bilked out of $38,000. A county employee fell for a fraudulent email purporting to be from the county manager directing her to transfer those funds to an outside account. (TNS) -- In an effort to protect users from being unmasked by the government, Twitter has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security after agents demanded that the social media company hand over information on one of several accounts identifying themselves as alt or rogue federal workers.Its a strong statement from Twitter, one of the last big social networks that allows users to use fake names or remain anonymous, and one that is meant to signal to users that Twitter will defend their right to privacy and free speech, experts said.These tech companies have so much really personal information about all of us, and part of what we do when we give them this information is trust them to be stewards of it, said Emma Llanso, the director of the Free Speech Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology. For Twitter to fight back against such a broad demand from the government to unmask is really significant.Twitter received a summons March 14 from Customs and Border Protection Agent Adam Hoffman ordering the social media company to produce records related to an account known as @ALT_USCIS . Like other such alt-gov accounts, its handle refers to the agency about which the user claims to have knowledge in this case, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is housed under Homeland Security.The summons demanded that Twitter produce all records regarding the account @ALT_USCIS to include, user names, account login, phone numbers, mailing addresses and IP addresses, according to the lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court on Thursday afternoon.Customs and Border Patrol has limited jurisdiction outside U.S. border crossings, except for investigating the importation of goods. The agency told Twitter it was investigating the account to ascertain the correctness of entries, to determine the liability for duties taxes, fines, penalties or forfeitures, and/or to ensure compliance with the laws or regulations it administers.It was not clear from the filing what alleged violations the agency was investigating.Revealing @ALT_USCIS identity would have a grave chilling effect, Twitter wrote, on it and other accounts created to voice dissent to government policies.Since President Trumps inauguration in January, several of these accounts have appeared on Twitter. Some self-identify as federal employees who do not agree with how their agency, or the government at large, is being run. Others claim to be former federal workers, and still others say they are private citizens.Nearly all are run anonymously or use fake names and identifiers which makes it hard to tell whether these accounts are legitimate or not.Social media allows people who feel their speech might be limited by their jobs to create alternative personas to express alternative views, said Dana R. Fisher, a sociology professor at the University of Maryland. And the way these alt and rogue accounts have taken off and come to represent a kind of resistance from within is really fascinating.The @ALT_USCIS account was registered in January, according to its Twitter profile.Most of its tweets have been sharply critical of the Trump administrations immigration polices, including the presidents promise to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and recent attempts to ban immigrants from several Muslim-majority nations.Twitters policy on turning over user information to law enforcement requires that government agencies provide a subpoena or court order to justify why the agency requires the information.The government cant invade someones right to free, anonymous speech just because they dont like what theyre saying, Llanso said.The American Civil Liberties Union announced Thursday it will join Twitters case.This is not the first time the social media company has been at odds with the government.In 2012, Twitter defended an Occupy Wall Street protester in a New York appeals court after the government requested the company turn over tweets and personal information.Two years later, Twitter sued the federal government, challenging Obama-era policies that barred the social media company from publishing information about how user data was being used in government surveillance.By late Thursday, the Twitter account at the center of the lawsuit had pinned an image of the First Amendment to the top of their Twitter feed.FYI, the user wrote , some refugees became refugees out of fear of being unmasked by dictators because of dissent/opposing views. Lets not have that here. Monisha Kaltenborn has hit back at rumours there is definitely more to the story regarding Pascal Wehrlein's supposed lack of fitness. The young German missed Australia, is sitting out this weekend's Chinese grand prix, and is also not guaranteed a return in Bahrain or beyond following his winter back injury. The 22-year-old pulled out citing a simple lack of physical fitness, but it's a story that has some eyebrows furrowed in the F1 paddock. "If I felt such difficulties, I would try to overcome them," said 18-year-old rookie Lance Stroll, "but I don't want to comment on his situation. "Maybe he has serious problems, but of course I hope not," Stroll added. Others fear that a serious political issue has arisen for Wehrlein, the Mercedes-backed driver who for now is being replaced by Antonio Giovinazzi, the reserve driver for Sauber's engine partner Ferrari. Asked if Wehrlein's full-time seat is now on the line, Sauber team boss Monisha Kaltenborn told the German broadcaster RTL: "Of course not." Another recently mentioned possibility is that Wehrlein is not sufficiently motivated, with voluntarily stepping out the car perhaps indicative of his often controversial personality. "This is all not true," Kaltenborn insisted. "The fact is that he had his (race of champions) accident in America, and his spine was compressed quite hard. And of course you don't take these things lightly," she added. "Actually it surprised us that Pascal got the green light to drive so quickly afterwards, but the truth is that it simply takes a while for the body to recover. "He simply has to catch up on the training deficit as a result from the injury," said Kaltenborn. Indeed, fellow driver Romain Grosjean said he sympathises with Wehrlein. "While everyone else was working extensively, Pascal could not train," said the Frenchman. "If I got at the wheel of one of these cars in the form I was in last year, I would have had problems too," Grosjean said. "And if I can't drive the car properly, I don't want to take risks and endanger myself and others." Kaltenborn continued: "It is not fair to question his (Wehrlein's) motivation and I cannot understand how he is criticised for his decision." But for now, Wehrlein is on the sidelines, in doubt for Bahrain next weekend and with no guarantee that he will be back in action in Russia either. "At the moment, he is completing an intensive training programme with the Mercedes junior team. After this weekend, we will get together and see where we stand," said Kaltenborn. (GMM) Stoffel Vandoorne says he doesn't know how long it will take McLaren-Honda to fix its current problems. So dire is the Anglo-Japanese collaboration's situation early in 2017 that rumours of a split are rife. Indeed, after Melbourne, team figures have warned that Shanghai will be even worse for the 2017 package, with up to a 160hp deficit possible after halfway down the long straight. So when asked how long it will take for a fix, rookie driver Vandoorne answered: "It's too early to make predictions. "But it's true that between the tests and the first race Honda already made progress. My car got to the finish and Fernando's almost did, although there is still much to be done. "How much time will it take? I'm not sure but let's see what will happen. McLaren and Honda are doing everything possible, as quickly as possible to solve the problems and make the car faster," said the Belgian. Indeed, already in Shanghai a radical new 'T-wing' has been added to the car, although Vandoorne admitted that one driver will sometimes have to go without the new parts. "For myself and Fernando, in this situation, we will go all out and squeeze everything out of the car. Hopefully one day our efforts will be rewarded," he said. (GMM) Felipe Massa says it would be "good" if a buyer for Brazilian grand prix venue Interlagos is being lined up. Reports this week have claimed that former F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone is interested in buying the famous track near Sao Paulo, after he said recently that the popular race could be lost to the sport. "As far as I know, it's an idea that is under discussion," Brazilian driver Massa, when asked about Sao Paulo's plans to sell Interlagos, said in Shanghai. "Let's see how events develop, but if someone is interested in buying, it's good for the track and the city. "I heard that Bernie is interested, and because I know him well I can say he is not a person who will buy something if he does not believe in its success. So if Bernie is interested, I fully support him," the Williams driver added. (GMM) Sergio Marchionne's plan to step down as president of the Ferrari parent Fiat Chrysler appears on track. Reports in Italy said news that the 64-year-old's Italian-Canadian would step down in 2019 was already known. "We have many good people who are able to succeed him," the Ansa news agency quoted Fiat Chrysler chairman John Elkann as confirming on Friday. Earlier in 2017, La Gazzetta dello Sport said Marchionne "will stay at Ferrari until at least 2021, even after his planned exit from Fiat Chrysler". (GMM) Guests break ground for CRRCs Chicago plant. (Photo by Gao Shi from Peoples Daily) A mockup of the Orange Line car made by Chinese train maker CRRC Corporation made a debut to its future passengers on Monday at City Hall Plaza in Boston. It is the latest victory of the rail car builder to expand the US market. Since the China-based rail car builder accessed to the US market in 2014, CCRC has grabbed 1,359 subway car and commuter train car orders in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia. The past half year witnessed 184 subway car orders in Boston and Los Angeles, as well as 45 commuter train car deals in Philadelphia. CCRC President Liu Hualong said that the company not only expands the US market, but also boosts China-US cooperation in rail transit. The manufacturer is building a plant in Springfield of Massachusetts, once the US manufacturing base. The city is also where Chinas earliest overseas students like Rong Hong and Tien Yow Jeme started their dreams and careers. When the Springfield plant broke ground on September 3, 2015, an old US man named Mike hang a banner writing Welcome CRRC on the wall of his bar to express a greeting to the Chinese maker. The plant also retained the century-year-old buildings to show a respect to local culture and tradition. The decision was applauded by local residents. The old industrial cluster located in southeast Chicago recorded the glorious days of the citys manufacturing industry, but at the same time witnessed the far-flung decline of the countrys Rust Belt. But after Qingdao-based CRRC Sifang Co Ltd came to the land, the railway locomotive manufacturing industry of the city revitalized after 36 years of silence. A ground-breaking ceremony of the makers plant was held in the city on March 16. Rahm Emanuel, mayor of Chicago, held up his thumb for the manufacturer at the ceremony, saying that CCRC can not only serve the city, but provide made-in-Chicago products to more US cities by stretching to the western and central part, and even the whole US market. We thank CCRC for bringing the rail car manufacturing projects to Chicago, he added. While attending the ceremony with retired brother, Sean Williams said that they have been proud for the subway facilities in Chicago, and will be proud if rail cars assembled in the city could run on rail lines around the world in the near future. His family has been committed to railway locomotive for three generations. As a hub of dimensional transport, Chicago drives the economic growth of the Greater Chicago region, US Senator Richard J. Durbin told the Peoples Daily, adding that the city, a manufacturing base of rail cars 50 years ago, now renews its glory thanks to CCRC. In order to better serve the US market, CCRC decided to set up research and manufacturing centers for rail transit in the US. Its staff were hired and trained in the US as well. Rahm Emanuel, mayor of Chicago, delivers a speech at the ground-breaking ceremony of CRRCs Chicago plant. (Photo by Gao Shi from Peoples Daily) The 418 subway cars to be delivered to Boston will be produced in the Springfield plant that is expected to be completed in 2017. The Chicago facility, upon completion, will build at least 168 subway trains each year. It means the China-made locomotives will be endowed with US descent. Liu Chengyong, general manager of CRRC Sifangs American branch, commented that it will rejuvenate the 125-year-old subway system of Chicago, and fuel a common prosperity of the upstream and downstream of the rail transit industry. Located in 41.8 N, Chicago often flirts with cold weather. To ensure the safety of passengers in such a unique environment, the Chinese maker applies the technologies of the Lanzhou-Xinjiang high-speed railway who is also always threatened by cold fronts. The company, in Los Angeles, also introduced products made by transportation and equipment accessory manufacturers based in Guangzhou, Shenzhen and other Chinese cities. It, as a result, gave a boost to Chinas total export of rail products covering the whole industrial chain. These companies, by providing automotive, heating, ventilation, air conditioning, lighting equipment to the US rail manufacturing industry, also created more job positions for local community, and as a result broadened the prospects of Chinese firms in the US market. Research center founded for study of South Manchuria Railway Co. during WWII A research center focusing on South Manchuria Railway Co. during World War II opened in northeast China's Jilin province Thursday. The research center, under the Jilin provincial academy of social sciences, will focus on the conduct of the occupying forces in northeast China, especially in terms of economy. The company was founded in 1906 under the auspices of "economic development." By 1945, when the Japanese surrendered, it was linked to the exploitation of a substantial amount of energy and economic resources. According to Xue Xueshi, a 90-year-old researcher, the company also collected information for the Japanese Army. "It was the largest organization formed by the Japanese, and spanned politics, military, economy and culture," he said. "In a way, people from the company were invaders without military uniforms." After the Japanese pulled out of China, a lot of evidence of their wartime crimes was left by South Manchuria Railway. The Jilin academy of social sciences has 28,000 files of evidence on paper and microfilm. Jin Yilin, vice head of the Institute of Modern History, said studying South Manchuria Railway could help people understand Chinese society before and during World War II. During the war of resistance against Japanese aggression, China suffered a total of 35 million military and non-military casualties, accounting for a third of the total casualties of all the countries in WWII. Starting this spring, Chinese textbooks include the phrase "14-year Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression," instead of "eight-year," as an official acknowledgment that Japan invaded northeast China on Sept. 18, 1931 as the start of the war. Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli(4th R) speaks at a conference on coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (Jing-Jin-Ji) region, in Beijing, capital of China, April 6, 2017. (Xinhua/Pang Xinglei) BEIJING, April 6 (Xinhua) -- Vice Premier Zhang GaoliThursday called for strict controls on property development in Xiongan New Area, urging high-standard planning for the newly announced area. He said the area should see a "reasonable pace of development" while underscoring that large-scale real estate development and illegal construction would by no means be allowed. Zhang was speaking at a conference on coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (Jing-Jin-Ji) region. He demanded measures that would strictly control housing prices, population and planning in regions around the new area, guard against speculation in the land and property markets and control industries seeking to establish a presence there. China announced plans to establish Xiongan New Area on Saturday, as part of measures to integrate Jing-Jin-Ji development and cure "urban ills" such as traffic congestion and air pollution in the capital. Located some 100 km southwest of downtown Beijing, Xiongan New Area will mainly cover the three existing counties of Xiongxian, Rongcheng and Anxin in Hebei Province. Saturday's announcement has already driven housing prices up in the area. Authorities acted fast to address the frenzied speculation, with dozens of estate agents ordered to close and seven people detained as of Tuesday. Zhang said the planning of the new area should feature "high standards and high quality," and stressed innovation, policy support, and environmental protection. The decision to set up Xiongan New Area was made in a "scrupulous, prudent, methodical and democratic" way, Zhang told the conference, noting that the area should be developed in an orderly manner to stand the test of time. Xiongan should be "a green, livable modern urban area, a region led by innovation-driven development, a demonstration area of balanced development and a pioneering region of open development," he said. The decisions to build Xiongan New Area and Beijing's "subsidiary city center" are two strategic moves in advancing the coordinated development of Jing-Jin-Ji, Zhang said, quoting President Xi Jinping. The subsidiary city center will be located in the eastern suburbs of Tongzhou. Quoting Xi, Zhang said authorities should coordinate all efforts like the moves in a chess game, and phase out "non-capital functions" from Beijing in an orderly way. On integrating the development of the Jing-Jin-Ji region, Zhang demanded progress in integrating transportation, protecting the environment as well as upgrading and transferring industries. Regional planning should be systematic, Zhang noted, and there should be stronger land, real estate and population controls. Work should be expedited to build a pilot area to explore innovation and reform, while basic public services must be shared across the region, he said. China initiated in 2014 a strategy to integrate the development of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei for a better economic structure, cleaner environment and improved public services. With that strategy, authorities intend to transform the region into a new growth pole as China's economy slows. The Government of Canada is awarding $1,625,000 in funding for the construction of two public hydrogen stations in the Greater Toronto Area to support a new Canadian market for fuel-cell vehicles. The project proponent, Hydrogenics Corporation, is a Canadian company that has been involved since 2000 in more than 50 hydrogen refueling station projects around the world. Budget 2016 allocated $16.4 million for the deployment of electric vehicle recharging and alternative fuel refueling infrastructure. Once successfully completed, the projects under this funding will establish more than 80 new charging units for electric vehicles, as well as nine natural gas and three hydrogen refueling stations along key transportation corridors. PSA Group is beginning operations in the US with the introduction of carsharing services in Los Angeles. The progressive entry into North America is a 10-year project within the Push to Pass plan of the Group. The first launch of mobility services in North America is through Free2Move, PSA Groups mobility brand and its partner Travelcar, a start-up founded in 2012. The car sharing service for travellers is initially available at Los Angeles airport. This offer is designed to optimize cars ensuring they rarely go unused, providing advantageous solutions to car owners (free or advantageous-price parking in addition to the benefit from the rent) and to car users (rental price approx. 50% less expensive than with a traditional car rental offer). The subsequent step will be to develop mobility solutions with PSA Group cars, before selling vehicles directly in North America, identifying regional sourcing opportunities when appropriate. Larry Dominique is the new Senior Vice President & Head of the North American entity. He has more than 30 years experience in the US automotive industry, having worked at General Motors, Chrysler, Nissanand most recentlyserving as President of Automotive Lease Guide (ALG) and Executive Vice President of TrueCar. The PSA North American entity reports to PSA Groups Corporate Planning and Programs, led by Executive Vice President Patrice Lucas. South Korean major yet to decide if it would appeal the ruling on patents A Chinese court has ruled Samsung Electronics Co Ltd's Chinese subsidiaries must pay 80 million yuan ($11.6 million) to Huawei Technologies Co Ltd for patent infringement. The court ruling marks the Chinese smartphone maker's first victory in safeguarding its intellectual property in the local market. Huawei filed a lawsuit against Samsung's two units in China, one in Huizhou in Guangdong province and the other in Tianjin, as well as Samsung China Investment Co Ltd and two Fujian-based electronics companies, claiming that more than 20 models of Samsung smartphones and tablet products, including the flagship Galaxy S7 and the Galaxy S7 Edge, have infringed its patents. The Quanzhou Intermediate People's Court in Fujian has ordered the five companies to stop infringing patents and asked the three subsidiaries of Samsung to compensate for the loss. Huawei said it fosters industrial innovation and healthy development of the industry by respecting and protecting intellectual property. Samsung declined to comment on whether it will appeal the ruling. The judgment is the first of a series of lawsuits filed by the Chinese tech giant against Samsung. In May 2016, Huawei filed lawsuits against Samsung in Shenzhen and California for patent infringements. Huawei said several of its cellular communications technology and software inventions have been used in Samsung smartphones without permission. Wang Yanhui, secretary-general of the Mobile China Alliance, said Huawei is a patent giant in the global market, and has been planning to collect copyright fees from domestic and foreign telecom companies. Huawei has signed reciprocal patent agreement with Apple Inc in 2015. "The smartphone patents were dominated by foreign telecom firms including Qualcomm Inc, Ericsson AB and Nokia Oyj in the past, and China has no right of speech in this sector. Huawei, as a rising and top-ranking Chinese telecom equipment and smartphone maker, has played a bigger role in standards setting, especially with 5G, and boasted more patents in recent years," said Wang. The patent wars among tech giants are common. Apple and Samsung have been battling over patents since 2011. Both companies have said that the other has violated its patents related to mobile technology and design. Wang said there is no doubt Huawei's stance will set an example for its rivals, and highlight the significance of innovation and patents. Ma Si contributed to this story. 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. Myanmar President U Htin Kyaw arrived in Chengdu, capital of the southwestern province of Sichuan, on Thursday to start his six-day trip in China. Myanmar President U Htin Kyaw (front, left) arrives in Chengdu, capital of southwest China's Sichuan province, on April 6, 2017. [Photo: huaxi100.com] At the invitation of Chinese President Xi Jinping, U Htin Kyaw will pay a state visit to China from April 6 to 11, according to China's Foreign Ministry. He is accompanied by a delegation of over 30 members, including ministers of Myanmar's commerce and construction departments. China is the largest trading partner and the biggest source of foreign funding for Myanmar, and the two countries maintain close high-level contacts. Myanmar's State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi had a five-day official visit to China last August. GREENSBORO A recent gala for the Eastern Music Festival raised more than $34,000 for its student scholarship fund. This is a substantial contribution to our annual scholarship fundraising efforts, EMF Executive Director Chris Williams said in a news release. Each summer, more than 220 students from across the globe gather at Guilford College for the festivals five-week intensive classical music training and performance program. About 80 percent require financial assistance to attend. During the 2016 festival, students received about $350,000 in scholarships. The March 31 gala Prelude to Paris included Parisian-themed items that were auctioned to fortify the Young Artists Scholarship Fund. Approximately 220 people attended the event. EMF also honored the LeBauers for their commitment to the 56-year-old music festival. Since the festival began in 1961, Sam and Joan, Joe and Gene and Gail LeBauer have served EMF faithfully as leaders, advisors and champions, Williams said. They have enlightened us with their vision, for which we are the better, Music Director Gerard Schwarz said in the news release. EMF plans to make the LeBauer Award an ongoing recognition for festival leadership, commitment and vision. The United Nations' weather agency says the state of Earth's climate is bad and getting worse faster than before, especially with sea level rise accelerating. Sunday's World Meteorological Organization report helped open international climate negotiations in Egypt on a somber note. The report, which centralizes climate data and extreme weather reports already known, says that the rate of sea level rise is more than twice as fast as it was in the 1990s. It points out that the last eight years are the hottest on record. Greenhouse gases are at record high levels, with melting ice and hotter oceans. Chinese President Xi Jinping met with his US counterpart Donald Trump at the Mar-a-Lago resort on Thursday in the first face-to-face contact between the leaders of the worlds two biggest economies. President Xi arrived at the Palm Beach International Airport earlier in the day, where he was greeted by US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. President Xi and his wife Peng Liyuan were also welcomed by Trump and First Lady Melania Trump at the oceanfront resort, also known as the Winter White House, before making their way to a banquet hosted by the Trumps. During his two-day stay in Florida, Xi is scheduled to hold talks with Trump over bilateral ties and major regional and global issues of common concern. Under the current international circumstances, "the meeting will be of great significance to charting China-US relationship in a new era, advancing the development of bilateral ties in a healthy and stable way from a new starting point, and promoting peace, stability and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region and the world at large," Vice Foreign Minister Zheng Zeguang told a press conference last week. Late last month, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said at a press briefing that Trump sees the meeting as an opportunity for him "to develop a relationship in person with President Xi." The US president, he added, "looks forward to meeting with President Xi and exchanging views on each other's respective priorities, and to chart a way forward on a bilateral relationship between our two nations." An expected return to lower sales volumes for traditional cigarettes occurred during March, according to Nielsen data released Tuesday. The data covered a four-week period that ended March 25. The Big Three U.S. manufacturers Reynolds, Philip Morris USA and ITG Brands LLC all raised their list prices in November by 8 cents a pack. The list price is what wholesalers pay manufacturers for their products. The increases typically are passed on to customers. Not even market-share gains by Newport, the No. 2 selling brand, and Natural American Spirit, the top super-premium brand, were enough to offset an overall 1.6 percent decline for Reynolds. The data showed Reynolds had a 5.8 percent decline in sales volume, the impact of which was lessened by a 4.4 percent pricing increase. By comparison, Philip Morris had an 0.7 percent overall decline and the industry an overall 0.6 percent decrease. Newport had a 0.7 percent sales gain during the period and a 12.8 percent market share as of March 25, up 0.3 percentage points over the previous period. Reynolds spent $29.25 billion in June 2015 to buy Greensboro rival Lorillard Inc., essentially to acquire Newport, the top-selling menthol cigarette and No. 2 cigarette overall. Since the completion of the deal, Reynolds has increased sharply the amount of marketing for Newport. By comparison, Lorillard was content with a status-quo market share of about 12 percent. After having sales gains of 4.3 percent during the first half of 2016 when Newport was still new to Reynolds year over year the gains have moderated with direct apples to apples comparisons. Wells Fargo Securities analyst Bonnie Herzog projects Newport increasing its market share to at least 15 percent. Meanwhile, top-selling cigarette Marlboros market share fell 0.1 percentage point to 46.9 percent. Natural American Spirit sales rose 4.4 percent over the four-week period. GREENSBORO A man found lying in the road on Wiley Street in December died from a gunshot wound to the head, according to an autopsy report released Friday. Renwick Earl Davis, 29, no permanent address, was shot early in the morning of Dec. 8. He was dead when police arrived about 2:40 a.m. Davis was shot in the right side of the head just above his ear, according to the autopsy. He also suffered from blunt force injuries to his torso and both sides of his face. Police responded to the area after getting a call about a person in the street. The 911 caller told dispatchers she was afraid to leave her porch in the middle of the night to check on the man. Dispatchers asked if she could see what kind of injuries the man had. His feet are up on the curb, she said. The rest of his body is going down into the road, so I dont know. When police pulled up and shined lights on the scene, she was certain. I can see by the cops got their lights on, she said. Hes dead. Initially, police said Davis had head trauma similar to a gunshot but they weren't sure if that was what killed him. "There's no evidence around the body consistent with a gunshot," Capt. Nathaniel Davis said Dec. 8. HOUSE VOTES Along with roll-call votes this week, the House also passed a resolution, reaffirming the United States-Argentina partnership and recognizing Argentinas economic reforms; it also concurred in the Senate amendment to the Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act, to improve the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations weather research. NORTH KOREAN NUCLEAR WEAPONS: The House has passed a resolution condemning North Koreas development of intercontinental ballistic missiles. The vote, on April 3, was 398-3. YEAS: Ted Budd (R-Advance), Mark Walker (R-Greensboro) NORTH KOREA AND TERRORISM: The House has passed the North Korea State Sponsor of Terrorism Designation Act to require the State Department to report to Congress on whether to designate North Korea as a government sponsor of terrorism. The vote, on April 3, was 394-1. YEAS: Budd, Walker EMPLOYEE OWNERSHIP OF PRIVATE FIRMS: The House has passed the Encouraging Employee Ownership Act to require the Securities and Exchange Commission to change its rules by raising the threshold amount for private companies to issue stock to employees as part of an employees compensation package. The vote, on April 4, was 331-87. YEAS: Budd, Walker EMPLOYER SELF-INSURANCE: The House has passed the Self-Insurance Protection Act , which would exempt stop-loss self-insurance health programs instituted by employers for their employees from being defined as health insurance coverage for federal regulatory purposes. The vote, on April 5, was 400-16. YEAS: Budd, Walker REGULATING VENTURE CAPITAL: The House has passed the Supporting Americas Innovators Act, sponsored by Rep. Patrick T. McHenry (R-N.C.), which would exempt venture capital funds with less than $10 million and fewer than 250 investors from federal securities regulation as an investment company. The vote, on April 6, was 417-3. YEAS: Budd, Walker SENATE VOTES Along with roll-call votes, the Senate also passed a bill, to amend Veterans Access, Choice, and Accountability Act of 2014 to modify the termination date for the Veterans Choice Program. FIRE SAFETY AND PADDLEWHEELERS: The Senate has passed the Old Vessels Exemption Act, whichl would exempt the Delta Queen, a historic wooden paddlewheel boat operating on the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, from a federal fire-safety law and apply regulations specific to the Delta Queen. The vote, on April 3, was 85-12. YEAS: Richard Burr (R), Thom Tillis (R) HOMELAND SECURITY DEPUTY: The Senate has confirmed the nomination of Elaine C. Duke to serve as Deputy Secretary at the Homeland Security Department. The vote, on April 4, was 85-14. YEAS: Burr, Tillis DEBATING GORSUCH NOMINATION: The Senate has rejected a cloture motion to end debate on the nomination of Neil M. Gorsuch to serve as a judge on the U.S. Supreme Court. The vote to end debate, on April 6, was 55-45, with a three-fifths majority needed to end debate. YEAS: Burr, Tillis DEBATING NOMINATIONS: The Senate has rejected a motion to overturn a ruling by the Senate Chair to change the threshold for approving cloture to end debate on Supreme Court nominations from a three-fifths majority to a simple majority. The vote, on April 6, was 52-48. NAYS: Burr, Tillis SECOND GORSUCH VOTE: The Senate has, upon reconsideration, passed a cloture motion to end debate on the nomination of Neil M. Gorsuch to serve as a judge on the U.S. Supreme Court. The vote, on April 6, was 55-45. YEAS: Burr, Tillis MOORESVILLE Cubmaster Doug Balog says he is frustrated at the decision made by Coddle Creek Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church in Mooresville to pull the charter of his Cub Scout Pack 169 and Boy Scout Troop 169, which have been with the church for about 10 years. The troop has been at the church for a decade, and I joined five years ago, Balog said. Weve never had any issues previously, and the pastors two sons are in the pack. Hes even said how happy and pleased they are to come, looking forward to the meeting each week. Balog said he was told that the churchs decision to force the Scouts to leave stems from the Boy Scouts of Americas decision in January to admit transgender boys, accepting the gender that parents fill out on their application form. Pastor Andrew Shoger of Coddle Creek ARP and other church officials could not be reached Thursday. However, he explained the decision in an email to the Charlotte Observer Wednesday evening. Due to decisions by the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) regarding matters of homosexuality and gender identity, the church has determined that our church can no longer continue as partners of BSA, he wrote. Quite simply, we cannot partner with an organization that embraces what Gods Word clearly labels as sin. Balog said the troop and pack, part of the Piedmont Council of Boy Scouts, were told April 4 that their charter was being pulled. They wont pull it until the end of the year, so we have time to find a new place to move to, but they wont renew it, he said. Hes been in talks with local fire departments to find a regular spot to go, and says he wont be looking for another church. Im disappointed, because the Boy Scouts are one of the only boys youth organizations that even brings God to the table, he said. God is in the bylaws, and if we start narrowing down who can come to church, well, thats not welcoming to me, especially from a place that preaches acceptance and love. Balog pointed out that he was not bashing the pastor, as he has enjoyed getting to know Shoger, but that the decision came from the church elders, or the session. It was a group ruling, not made by one person, Balog said. I just dont think our boys will understand why this is happening, though. Theyre not going to get why the church kicked them out; theyre just going to remember that they did. Balog said he did not know if any other troops or Cub packs in the Gemstone District, which includes Iredell and the Charlotte area, have encountered similar situations with churches they are affiliated with. Gemstone District commissioner Mike Bernhardt could not immediately be reached. A Kansas abortion clinic that was among the first in the country to open after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade has been inundated with patients. Some drive 10 hours or more to get there, coming from Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas and even Louisiana. But thats only if they can get an appointment. Planned Parenthood clinics in the state, including this newest one, are only able to take about 10% to 15% of the patients seeking abortions. Kansas is one of the few states in the region still providing abortions in the wake of the court's ruling. BRUSSELS, April 6 (Xinhua) -- The European Commission decided on Thursday to impose anti-dumping duties on hot-rolled flat steel products from China. The European Commission, or the European Union (EU)'s executive arm, said these products had been sold in Europe at heavily dumped prices. The new anti-dumping duties range between 18.1 percent and 35.9 percent and will be in place for an initial five years. A Chinese Ministry of Commerce statement on Thursday quoted Wang Hejun, head of the ministry's trade remedy and investigation bureau, as saying that the EU continued the use of the unfair and unreasonable "surrogate country approach" in the investigation, which resulted in artificially-determined high anti-dumping duties for Chinese products and thus seriously undermined Chinese enterprises' interests. Wang said the EU's conclusion lacks factual grounds, urging the EU to correct wrongdoings. He said China will take necessary measures to protect the interests of Chinese enterprises. Hot-rolled flat steel is commonly used in construction, gas containers, cars, pressure vessels and energy pipelines. (Xinhua) 13:22, April 07, 2017 The photo taken on April 3, 2017 shows the blast site at a metro station in St. Petersburg, Russia. At least 10 people were killed, 50 injured and 7 stations were shut down after blasts. [Photo: Xinhua] Six people in St. Petersburg and two others in Moscow were detained Thursday for suspected involvement in a deadly blast in the St. Petersburg metro Monday, the Russian Investigative Committee (RIC) said in a statement. An explosive device similar to the one found at the Ploshchad Vosstania metro station in St. Petersburg, along with firearms and ammunition, was seized at the detainees' residences, said the statement. The RIC offered names of the eight suspects but did not disclose their nationalities or whether they have links to terrorist groups. A blast took place on Monday afternoon in a train carriage in the tunnel between metro stations Technological Institute and Sennaya Ploshchad in St. Petersburg, Russia's second largest city, killing 14 people and wounding dozens. The RIC said Tuesday that 22-year-old Akbarzhon Dzhalilov carried out the deadly bomb attack, and he left an additional bomb at the Ploshchad Vosstania station, which was defused later by investigators. Dzhalilov himself died in the blast and he was widely-reported as a Kyrgyz-native. On Wednesday, six Central Asian nationals were detained in St. Petersburg on suspicion of facilitating terrorist activities and recruiting their compatriots for the Islamic State and other terrorist groups. Their connections with Dzhalilov are still under investigation. Both sides called it a win-win. Photo: Gustavo Caballero/Getty Images for SOBEWFF At last, after two years of legal battles, chef Jose Andres and the Trump Organization, now run by Eric and Donald Jr., have reached a settlement. A refresher: Andres, an immigrant from Spain, had planned on opening a restaurant inside the Trump International Hotel at the Old Post Office Pavilion in Washington, D.C. After Trump spoke out against Mexican immigrants, Andres left the project; Trump sued him for $10 million in damages; then Andres countersued for $8 million, refusing to back down, and arguing that Trumps comments prohibited him from hiring Hispanic staff or attracting Hispanic customers. In February, the chef confidently told Grub, If were going to do this, Im going to win this case. While the terms of the settlement arent being disclosed, Donald Jr. is calling it a win-win for both of our companies. Andres went as far as to say, Going forward, we are excited about the prospects of working together with the Trump Organization on a variety of programs to benefit the community. He also sent out a tweet of relief, echoing the win-win statement: Happy to put this chapter behind us, a win-win for both sides and now time to focus on the issues that matter. https://t.co/aaGUK50NNT Jose Andres (@chefjoseandres) April 7, 2017 After all, Andres did also say to Grub, Winning has never been about destroying others. Its about bringing everybody along with you, as far-fetched as it seems that hed ever again collaborate with the Trump family. HTC's U Ultra comes in two versions. One has 64GB of storage and Gorilla Glass 5 on top of the display, while the other boasts 128GB of memory and a sapphire crystal glass on top of the screen. The former has been out in many markets for some time now, but the latter has so far been confined to the company's home of Taiwan. That's about to change, though. Starting on April 18, the sapphire-clad U Ultra will become available in Europe. This is true at least for Germany and Switzerland. As you'd expect, it will be anything but cheap. In fact, you'll need to shell out a whopping 849 or CHF 849 for one. To put things in perspective, the regular U Ultra with Gorilla Glass costs 699. So that's a 150 premium you'd be paying for the additional storage and fancy screen protection. Speaking of which, while sapphire crystal ranks very highly on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness, scoring a 9, it's more brittle than Gorilla Glass. So you won't be able to scratch it with anything except a diamond, but it might shatter upon an impact easier than if you went with the alternative U Ultra option. 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Ferguson, President, Greater China and Korea, the Coca-Cola Company Peoples Daily: What is your view on Sino-US Presidents summit and the future of bi-lateral relations and trade? Curt A. Ferguson: Trade happens both ways. We hope the summit will focus on reducing and eliminating trade barriers to enable fair trade. The US is strong in agriculture business, building airplanes and IT technology. The economies of both countries complement each other and they both need each other. We think government people could learn from entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs would usually go beyond politics and see opportunities. If one entrepreneur has a great idea, more people will act on that great idea and make it even better. We think the US economy is on the right track. Jobs are coming back. US economy is consumption driven. Both countries are coming out of a very serious recession and cooperation will benefit both sides. Trade happens both ways, as long as the rules are fair and clear, trade will happen and develop. We think China and the US need each other and they also need to learn from each other. In my old university where there are 40,000 students, over 10% are Chinese. This exchange and learning from each other is making the world even flatter and will contribute to the economic growth. Peoples Daily: Could you share some thoughts on globalization with us? Curt A. Ferguson: My career with The Coca-Cola Company has put me overseas for over 30 years. We are very pro trade. As long as the rules are fair and transparent, entrepreneurs will see the opportunities and take advantage of them. Before moving to China, I noticed that in Egypt and other countries, people have more connections with China than you expect. Many people come to China to source materials or look for production partners. When Jack Ma met with President Trump, he promised that Alibaba will create one million jobs for the US. I hope healthy Sino-US exchange and trade can produce much more jobs and add more zeros to the one million. I have a lot of respect for Chinese culture. I just moved to China last winter so I'm still new but I'm learning a lot. I thought after being in the coke business for so many years I understand consumers and I am a Ph.D. in serving consumers. But it was the Chinese that has taught me a new way of enjoying coke: warm coke with ginger in it. I feel like going back to school to further the studies in serving consumers. It is great news that we have recently launched Coke Ginger, adding to the portfolio. In my previous job I used to organize business school learning camp where I invited 100 MBA students to DC to show them around Washington and arrange meetings with government agencies (and think tanks). We also showed them around in our Atlanta campus and then asked them to discuss how they can better develop their own countries. I have been thinking of how to copy this in China, maybe instead of having Chinese students visit the US, we could invite US MBA students to visit China. Haiti - Matthew : US aid in the South exceeds $100M Following the passage of Hurricane Matthew early October 2016, the United States has provided to date, more than $ 100 million for emergency response and ongoing recovery efforts in the Great South of Haiti. This includes $ 11.3 million from the US Department of Defense and $ 90 million from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). 6 months following the passage of Hurricane Matthew, American Embassy Charge d'Affairs, Brian Shukan, traveled to southern Haiti to assess USAID hurricane response and recovery activities. The United States is the single largest donor to the Hurricane Matthew emergency response effort, with humanitarian assistance totaling more than $101.3 million to date and distributed through over 20 local organizations and UN agencies. The Charge visited the Charles Lassegue School, a recipient of emergency assistance in Boudet, Les Cayes. Partnering with UNICEF, 50 schools in the region received furniture, repairs and decontamination, and educational materials for approximately 45,000 students and 1,000 teachers. The Lassegue School received roof repairs, school equipment and furniture, and psychosocial support to students and training for teachers. In Coteaux, the Charge visited a USAID Build Back Safer initiative carried out by Catholic Relief Services (CRS). The program is enabling communities to repair their damaged homes using improved building techniques with the assistance of trained and certified construction technicians and carpenters. Build Back Safer is operated in other zones with additional partners-- Medair, J/P RHO, and ACTED-- and expects to benefit some 6,000 households throughout the southern region. Food security is a prime concern for US support and Mr. Shukan also visited areas where smallholder farmers are provided with cash vouchers to buy quality seeds. USAID support seeks to address immediate food needs as well as medium-term farming recovery. USAID is funding a consortium of nongovernmental groups led by CARE to provide cash transfers for the monthly needs of more than 85,200 hurricane-affected households in the Grand'Anse, Nippes and Sud departments. USAID also funded the distribution of high-yield pigeon pea and black bean seeds as well as improved maize seeds. In his speech for the occasion, American Embassy Charge d'Affairs, Brian Shukan Charge Shukan indicated steadfast US support for the affected region and acknowledged the efforts communities themselves were making to recover: "We were here during the hurricane and will continue to work towards not only recovery, but resiliency and the mitigation of future risks to lives and livelihoods." HL/ HaitiLibre The new Japanese law on preserving remote island areas may escalate the territorial spat between China and Japan, as well as jeopardize Chinas maritime security and sovereignty over Diaoyu Islands, according to experts. The law, which took effect on April 1, is designed to boost the declining population on remote islands, in addition to enhancing Japans border security. According to Fox News, the Japanese government plans to legally designate Diaoyu Islands, which are claimed by both China and Japan, as an inhabited border territory following the enactment of the new law. After enacting the law, Japan may dispatch its coast guard and soldiers to Diaoyu Islands. Its possible that the country will also deploy weapons, including radars or even missiles, on the islands, which would significantly improve Japan's combat capability. It would also promote Japans military normalization, Major General Du Wenlong from the PLA Academy of Military Science told CCTV. Cao Weidong, a Beijing-based military expert, told CCTV that instead of carrying out peaceful negotiations with China, Japan has chosen to try to strengthen its grip on Diaoyu Islands through military means, which may lead to a military confrontation between the two nations. The new law will take aim at more islands in the future so that Japan can seize additional maritime interests, as well as forge its military containment in the region, said Cao. According to the Straits Times, Japans government plans to designate 148 outlying islands close to its borders as inhabited outlying border islands, seeking to nationalize them and boost their population. Haiti - Politics : The Iles Cayemites, soon a new commune Thursday, senators adopted in first reading, the bill tabled in August 2016, by the former senator of Grande-Anse, Andris Riche, creating the commune of the Iles Cayemites. The Senators followed the recommendation of the Senate Committee on the Interior, Local and Regional Authorities, Border Development and Regional Planning, which was responsible for the examination of this bill, which in its report recommended that the Assembly vote favorably this bill "[...] considering the inability of the commune of Pestel, on which the Iles Cayemites depend, to provide basic services to the population of this locality, and taking into account the will of the population of the Islands to acquire its administrative and financial autonomy, the Committee on the Interior, Local and Regional Authorities, Border Development and Regional Plannin recommends to the Senate to give a favorable vote to this bill with a view to raising the Iles Cayemites to the rank of commune." This bill will be forwarded to the Lower House, which will in turn have to pronounce and ratify in the same terms before it becomes a law after publication by the Executive in the official newspaper Le Moniteur. In the event of changes, the bill will be returned to the Senate for ratification in the same terms (shuttle). Learn more about the Iles Cayemites : The Cayemites are located south of the Gulf of Gonaive, about 35 km east of Jeremie, in the department of Grand'Anse, constitute the 6th communal section of the Commune of Pestel. The Cayemites are a set of two islands the Grande Cayemite to the East and the Petite Cayemite in the West, which represent a total area of 51.29 km2 and an estimated population of around 10,000 inhabitants. The Cayemites have a Peace Court, a Health Center and three national schools. The main activities of the population are fishing, livestock and agriculture. HL/ HaitiLibre Haiti - Tourism : Towards ethno-tourism and memory tourism Wednesday, Haitian artist Erol Josue, Hougan and Director General of the National Bureau of Ethnology (BNE), accompanied by his Technical Director Jerry Michel and dancer and choreographer Linda Francois met with Colombe Emilie Jessy Menos, the Minister of Tourism tto promote ethno-tourism and memory tourism in selected regions of the country During this meeting, several points were discussed, in particular the prospects of the BNE and the new challenges it could meet with the collaboration of the Ministry of Tourism. Minister Menos clearly expressed her enthusiasm for the ideas of Erol Josue and warmly congratulated the work already accomplished. She expressed her support and said she was open to a partnership with the BNE, notably in promoting ethno-tourism. The Department of Artibonite could be, a priori, the pilot zone for the development of this particular type of tourism in Haiti. Learn more about BNE : The National Bureau of Ethnology (BNE) is a transversal institution that is concerned with different aspects of the life of the nation. Whether it is history, culture or tourism, the BNE, "laboratwa syans pep la", brings its stone to the strengthening of the Haitian cultural edifice known for its richness and diversity. See also : https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-20132-icihaiti-culture-visit-to-the-bne-ethnographic-museum.html https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-19820-haiti-tourism-erol-josue-celebrates-the-national-holiday-of-vodou-in-benin.html https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-19738-haiti-news-zapping-politics.html SL/ HaitiLibre Haiti - News : Zapping... Minister of Commerce in the Senate On Wednesday, Minister of Commerce and Industry Pierre Marie du Meny answered questions from Senators of the Commission "Economy and Finance" around the execution of the roadmap of the government https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-20544-haiti-politics-roadmap-of-the-minister-of-trade-and-industry.html . The Commission wanted to know more about the strategies that will be implemented to create jobs in the country, strengthen domestic production and upgrade our national currency. DG of Ministry of Education replaced Pierre Josue Agenor Cadet, Minister of National Education announced the appointment and installation of a new Director General in the ministry, following the publication on the social networks of compromising photos of the outgoing Director Louis Marie Cador... The new DG, Mr Meniol Jeune was installed this Friday. Strengthening of diplomatic ties In order to strengthen the ties of cooperation between members of the diplomatic corps in Haiti, Prime Minister Jack Guy Lafontant received visits from the Cuban Ambassador Luis Castillo Campos, the Spanish Ambassador to Haiti, Manuel Lorenzo Garcia-Ormaechea and Monsignor Eugene Martin Nugent, the Apostolic Nuncio. The exchanges focused on the fields of intervention of the various ambassadors through the bilateral relations between their respective countries and Haiti. The Senate intends to invite a minister every week The Senate intends to invite every Wednesday a member of the government in plenary to explain to the senators their roadmap. This initiative is part of Parliament's monitoring mission, said Senator Youri Latortue, President of the Upper House. Minister of Health in the Lower House Marie Greta Roy Clement, the Minister of Public Health responded to an invitation from the Health Commission of the Lower House to discuss the functioning of public hospitals and the procedure for administering the last official examinations tof nursing students. Minister Clement announced the creation of a Transitional Commission to evaluate the final examination of graduating students in nursing where less than 4% of the 2,880 nursing students passed the tests https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-20348-haiti-training-less-than-4-of-nursing-students-passed-the-state-exam.html Laurent Lamothe in Miami On Wednesday, former Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe, accompanied by his brother, Ruben and his mother, attended to the Little Haiti Cultural Center in Miami at a press conference to present the plans for the 2nd annual Global Empowerment Mission (GEM). On this occasion, a video was projected to highlight some of the humanitarian actions that are taking place in the rural villages of Haiti. HL/ HaitiLibre Published on 2017/04/06 | Source ""Chicago Typewriter" is like a combination present" Advertisement Writer Jin Soo-wan's newest drama starts on the 7th. Yoo Ah-in showed a lot of passion for "Chicago Typewriter" despite the issues regarding his military service, while Lim Soo-jung is appearing in her first drama in 13 years since "Sorry, I Love You". Where is the source of confidence in these people? "Chicago Typewriter" is a human romance comedy about a bestselling writer named Han Se-joo (Yoo Ah-in) who is going through a bad time, his ghost writer Yoo Jin-oh (Go Kyung-pyo) and a fan that goes anti named Jeon-seol (Lim Soo-jung). The words ' fantasy human romance drama' is enough to draw attention. It's a complex genre that doesn't fit anywhere else. Director Kim Cheol-gyoo said, ""Chicago Typewriter" has no rules and it has many colors, tones and episodes". "It starts off with a cheery note but as the story goes, it becomes serious. There's thick mellow, the sorrows of youths whose nation is stolen from them during times of hardship, painful love, comradeship between patriots and the tragic end makes up the words human, mellow, comical and fantasy. This drama is a combination set". "Chicago Typewriter" goes back and forth present and past. The latest trend of fantasy code is in there. "Guardian: The Lonely and Great God" was also a complex drama. The director claims he wondered what would differentiate this drama from others. It's a lot of pressure; all the attention, but the drama gets more and more interesting as the secret weapon is revealed. "Chicago Typewriter" starts on the 7th at 8PM. BEIJING, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Of China's more than 30 provincial localities, 27 have completed discipline inspections on the agencies they directly administer, the Communist Party of China's (CPC) disciplinary agency announced Friday. CPC organizations and departments directly administered by the provincial level authorities were inspected, according to a report posted on the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) website. The inspections focused on the implementation of central authority rules and regulations. Inspectors in Hubei Province, central China, were despatched to 300 Party organizations and found 12,567 pieces of evidence that led to the investigation of 4,362 officials. In Jilin Province, northeast China, inspectors reviewed the work of 242 Party organizations and found supporting evidence that linked 1,565 officials to violations. The current CPC Central Committee will finish inspecting agencies directly under its administration before the end of the first half of the year. All central and provincial level CPC committees are required to conduct inspections within their tenure of five years. The remaining provincial regions are expected to complete their inspections before new provincial Party committees are elected, according to the CCDI. Comparing it to "a physical examination" of the Party, the CCDI said inspection was a powerful weapon in the fight to resolve internal CPC problems. Finding problems is both a major task and the appraisal standard for inspections, the CCDI said, adding that the inspection was by no means "a gust of wind." I'm Umm Salihah, I am a Muslim, I am mama to my five cheeky sweethearts (Little Lady 17, Little Man 15, Gorgeous 13, Darling 8 and Baby 6). A private school in Xinxiang, Henan province has been thrown into the spotlight after investing more than 1 million RMB in an on-campus zoo. The zoo, which is home to more than 30 animals including deer, alpacas and peacocks, is designed to create a better study environment for the school's students, according to a report by Beijing Youth Daily. Our boarding school is far away from the city. By building the zoo, students from rural areas have a chance to gain firsthand knowledge about animals. The zoo may also keep them happier while they're far away from their parents, a teacher surnamed Han told Beijing Youth Daily. According to the report, the school has not yet obtained permission from the government to open the zoo. We have already contacted local veterinarians, so they can help us if the animals get sick. We will also apply for permission from the local government as soon as possible," said Han. (China Youth Daily) China to upgrade robot industry in next few years Robot NK01 performs in a festival in Beijing, April 2, 2017. Standing 2.2-meter-high and weighing 200kg, the NK01 has made many appearances since it was created in 2015. (Photo: China News Service/Fu Tian) China is poised to elevate the domestic robotics industry, according to a senior official. More than 800 enterprises that provide products and services spanning electronics, machinery, chemicals and medical services have already laid sound foundations for the upgrade, said Xin Guobin, deputy head with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. China produced 72,400 industrial robots in 2016, up 34.3 percent year on year. Sales are expected to exceed 50 billion yuan (about 7.26 billion U.S. dollars) in 2020, according to industry insiders. Xin said the ministry will further integrate new technology, support the recruitment of talent, increase the quality and credibility of key machine components, and support the use of robots in emerging industries. The ministry will expedite related regulations and industry organizations will offer guidance to local authorities, all in accordance with the "Made in China 2025" plan. The ministry will also set the criteria for market entry and consummate the evaluation system for robotics, to boost industrial development, according to the vice minister. The "Made in China 2025" blueprint was announced in May 2015 as a way to move manufacturing up in the value chain, promoting development in 10 key sectors including robotics. How Well Funded Are Pension Plans in Your State? by Morgan Scarboro and Jared Walczak, Tax Foundation, April 5, 2017 According to preliminary 2015 data, state and local pension debt now exceeds a combined $1.5 trillion. Strong returns on investment (averaging 17 percent in 2014) have helped to reduce the debt, but the message is still clear: many states are facing a pension crisis. States vary in the way they structure their pension systems, but some states are transitioning new employees into defined contribution or hybrid plans rather than more traditional, and more costly, defined benefit plans. Defined contribution plans give employees control of their own investment account, while defined benefit plans promise employees a lifetime annuity. This move toward defined contribution plans can be a step toward fiscally sound pension plans for states; however, it doesnt address existing pension debt. This weeks map uses data from The Pew Charitable Trusts that measure the funded ratio of public pension plans by state. The funded ratio measures the level of assets in proportion to accrued liability. Low funded ratios indicate the states pension plans are not currently adequately funded. Low funding levels are challenging not only because of the large contributions required to make up the debt, but also because they generate less in investment earnings. Both Kentucky and Illinois have a funded ratio of 41 percent and are tied for the lowest funded ratio in the country. On the other end of the spectrum, three states South Dakota (107 percent), Oregon (102 percent), and Wisconsin (103 percent) have funded ratios above 100 percent. Pension obligations must be fulfilled eventually. Policymakers should consider that reform now may be less costly and less painful than coping with a larger crisis later. HDOT WORKING TOWARD RESOLVING CLAIMS OF COMPANIES LEFT UNPAID BY CONTRACTOR News Release from HDOT, Apr 4, 2017 HONOLULU The Hawaii Department of Transportation (HDOT) thanks the State Senate Ways and Means Committee for passing HB1022 HD1 SD2 today. This bill appropriates funds for the State to settle claims. One of the claims approved in the bill today will allow HDOT to directly pay subcontractors who supplied labor and materials on the project to construct a Hawaiian Airlines Terminal Maintenance and Cargo Facility at the Honolulu International Airport, but were never paid. The subcontractors who provided the work were supposed to be paid by the general contractor. By law, HDOT pays the contractor who in turn pays subcontractors for the work performed. HB1022 would allow HDOT to pay $10 million to as many as 47 subcontractors directly. HDOT understands many of the subcontractors are local companies and not being paid what is owed can create hardships and it wants to ensure companies are compensated for the services provided. This measure helps prevent potentially costly litigation for both the State and the subcontractors. We want businesses to succeed. With the help of Governor Ige and the Office of the Attorney General, we have been aggressively working to resolve the issues with the project and the subcontractors, said Ford Fuchigami, Hawaii Department of Transportation Director. Because the contract was with the general contractor, we had to find another avenue to pay the subcontractors. HB1022 is that venue. Settling these claims now spares all parties years of litigation and lets HDOT use existing project monies to pay subs for the work that was done, said Doug Chin, Hawaii Attorney General. The money to be paid to subcontractors will come from the existing project budget, which did not use state taxpayer money. HDOT is self-sustaining and the Airports Division does not receive funding from the States General Fund. Instead, the Airports System generates its own revenues and pays for its own expenses from concession and airline revenue. Primary sources of funding includes, landing fees, terminal rentals, parking revenue, and passenger facility charges and concessions. Project Background: HDOT contracted with DCK Pacific Construction LLC (DCK), to build the Hawaiian Airlines Terminal Maintenance and Cargo Facility. The project fell behind schedule. HDOT learned subcontractors were not sending employees to the job because DCK was not paying the subcontractors. This violates section 103-10.5, Hawaii Revised Statutes and an identical provision in the general contract. HDOT provided DCK time to remedy the situation. When DCK failed to do so, HDOT terminated the general contractor for cause. The last day of work was Dec. 28, 2015. HDOT had paid DCK through Sept. 30, 2015. HDOT learned that DCK had kept more than $3 million that should have been paid to suppliers and subcontractors up to that point. The State is pursuing litigation to the fullest extent possible to recover the funds from DCK, in addition to paying legal fees and expenses associated with the case. HDOT referred the matter to the DCCA Regulated Industries Complaints Office for appropriate action. HDOT is also working with the State Procurement Office on barring DCK from working on future State projects. For more information regarding HB1022 click here. ### GOVERNOR APPROVES ENERGY CODE THAT WILL SIGNIFICANTLY REDUCE ENERGY USE HONOLULU Gov. David Ige has approved a Hawaii Administrative Rule that requires the use of the updated 2015 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) for the construction of state buildings. The updated code will reduce energy use by almost two-thirds and make a significant contribution toward achieving Hawaiis clean-energy goals. Its important that the state lead by example as we move toward a 100 percent clean energy future for Hawaii, Ige said. Improving the energy efficiency of our buildings will allow us to reduce Hawaiis dependence on imported oil, while protecting our environment and strengthening our economy. The new energy code is the result of work done by the Hawaii Building Code Council to adopt the 2015 IECC with Hawaii-specific amendments. Buildings that were constructed to the 2015 code use about 30 percent less energy than those built under the 2006 code. Hawaiis amendments reduce energy use by another three percent. Gov. Iges signing of the new IECC will pave the way for the eventual adoption of the code by Hawaiis counties, requiring that all new commercial and residential construction meet the code. The greatest energy savings in the residential sector will come from decreasing cooling loads, increasing comfort with natural ventilation, and eliminating electric water heating. The payback period for homes built in Hawaii to the new code is estimated at 4.3 years, according to a study by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The first-year energy cost savings for homes built to the new code is $1,097 when compared to the 2006 IECC. Over 25 years, the savings would be $27,425. ### ($1097 x 4.3 = $4717.10 increase in cost of home construction.) PNNL Study: Hawaii Says Aloha to Building Energy Savings China condemned the chemical attacks carried out in Syria recently and supports the United Nations in launching an independent investigation, a foreign ministry spokesperson said Friday. Hua Chunying said China always opposes the use of chemical weapons by any country, organization or person for whatever purposes, and China's position will remain consistent. China condemned the chemical attacks in Syria on Tuesday, which killed more than 70 people and wounded scores of others, most of whom were civilians in Syria's northwestern province of Idlib. The United States accused the Syrian army of being behind the toxic attack targeting the town of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province, an allegation denied by Damascus. In response to the chemical attacks, the United States on Friday struck the Syrian air base in Homs with 59 Tomahawk missiles. Hua said China supports the United Nations in launching an independent and comprehensive investigation on the issues in order to come to a conclusion that stands the test of history and reality. China called on all sides to prevent the deterioration of the situation in order to ensure the political solution in the Syria crisis, the spokesperson said. President Xis state visit of Finland had the international media stirring this week, inspiring a slew of articles from all directions. The Global Times wrote about the growing economic relationship between China and Finland, while the Financial Times reported on Finlands role in improving Chinese-American relations. In other news, a Finnish artist draws attention to tax avoidance and phenomenon-based learning is rumored to be heading to Finland. Oh, and did you hear about the giant pandas? Finland fears trade war between US and China, urges compromise Financial Times Finland has warned it is highly concerned about the prospect of a global trade war and urged compromise from Beijing and Washington. Kai Mykkanen, Finlands trade minister, who met Chinese president Xi Jinping on Wednesday, told the Financial Times that the world was at a critical juncture after the end of a two decade-long golden time for globalisation, and amid the rise of nationalist and protectionist sentiment. This is one of the most crucial years [since the collapse of the Soviet Union]. Maybe this nationalism goes further and we enter into something that might be very uncomfortable for our lifestyles. Or we find a synthesis between the US and China, he added. Original article was published by on 06/04/2017 and can be found here. Finnish industries attractive to Chinese firms Global Times The economic relationship between China and Finland has seen burgeoning growth in recent years thanks to the development of competitive Finnish industries such as clean energy and advanced manufacturing, officials and company executives said. They also noted that an increasing number of Finnish firms are looking to expand their presence in the Chinese market due to the huge consumer base and the government's agenda of promoting an industrial upgrade and green economy. "The speed at which Chinese firms' investments have flowed to Finland in the last two years is remarkable, and that made the country jump to the fifth largest destination for foreign investment in Europe last year," Yang Erlin, the chairman of Chinese Enterprises Association in Finland, told the Global Times over the weekend. Original article was published by on 04/04/2017 and can be found here. Finnish artist satirizes tax avoidance loopholes in Finland Business Insider Nordic A few years back, Hanna Arvela was at her summer cottage in central Finland trying to relax, but she was unable to get something out of her mind. She had gotten wind of legal tax evasion practices that she thought only existed in locations far from her beloved Finland. While most people show their outrage with an I cant believe that happens! or a sharply placed angry emoji, Arvela decided to do something about it. In 2015, she released Pieni veronkierto-opas (Little guide for tax avoidance), which was presented in her more familiar comic book form. This is only one of Arvelas many projects to highlight the issue of avoiding tax in Finland by using holding companies. Original article was published by on 05/04/2017 and can be found here. Finland to get rid of school subjects? Collective Evolution Finland, a longstanding leader in education, is in the process of completely reforming its education system. Finland will be adopting a phenomenon-based learning system, allowing students to drop the standard subjects and experience more holistic, interdisciplinary learning. Phenomenon-based learning takes a very different approach to education, dropping the classic divide amongst subjects like math and science. Instead, students take one particular phenomenon or concept and look at it through multiple lenses, applying it to whatever subjects pertain to it such as geography, history, or economics. Original article was published by on 04/04/2017 and can be found here. China gives giant pandas to Finland gbtimes Finland will receive two giant pandas from China as a gesture of friendship during the Nordic countrys 100th anniversary of independence this year. The two countries today signed a cooperation agreement over giant panda research and protection as part of Chinese President Xi Jinpings official state visit to Finland. The agreement means that a giant panda couple will be sent from China to Ahtari Zoo, which is located in the western part of Finland. Original article was published by on 05/04/2017 and can be found here. Dan Anderson HT Photo: Lehtikuva / Antti Aimo-Koivisto The EMN highlights in its annual report on migration and asylum that the number of individuals who applied for asylum in the country fell from 32,476 to 5,651, representing a year-on-year decrease of over 80 per cent. Finland recorded a sharp decrease in the number of asylum applications filed at its borders between 2015 and 2016, according to the European Migration Network (EMN). Iraqis, Afghans and Syrians remained the largest groups of asylum applicants by nationality in Finland in 2016, with 1,247, 757 and 602 applicants respectively. The unprecedented influx of asylum seekers witnessed one year earlier was reflected in statistics on asylum decisions. Last year, the Finnish Immigration Service (Migri) issued a total of 28,208 asylum decisions, granting 27 per cent and turning down 51 per cent of the applications. Migri turned down fewer than one-fifth (18%) of the 7,466 applications it processed in 2015. Roughly one-seventh (14%) of the applications processed last year either were withdrawn by the asylum seeker or dismissed on account of the asylum seeker disappearing from the reception centre. Almost one-twelfth (8%) of the applications were left unprocessed, likely indicating that the asylum seeker was transferred to another country under the Dublin Regulation. The EMN also reports that a total of 39,317 foreign nationals received their first residence permit or registered as residents in Finland in 2016. The most common grounds for granting residence were family ties (21%), international protection (18%), study (16%) and employment (15%), according to the report. In 2015, the number of foreign nationals who received a residence permit or registered as residents in Finland stood at 33,568. Aleksi Teivainen HT Photo: Emmi Korhonen Lehtikuva Source: Uusi Suomi We talked more about human rights and the principle of the rule of law than pandas, he asserted in a news conference yesterday, responding to suggestions that most of the media attention on the historic meeting had focused on the couple of giant pandas promised to Finland by China. President Sauli Niinisto has expressed his bemusement with the criticism aroused by his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Helsinki on Wednesday. Niinisto revealed that he talked with his counterpart for a total of three-and-a-half hours and pointed out that the joint declaration issued by the heads of state draws attention to the importance of respecting human rights and the principle of the rule of law. Finland, he asserted, is by no means scared to address difficult issues, such as human rights issues. He also discussed the special circumstances under which his joint news conference with Xi was organised on Wednesday. The decision not to allow members of the media to ask questions was unusual but not outright unprecedented, he said, calling attention to his visit to the White House in 2016. We settled for issuing a joint declaration and unilateral statements on our discussions. Questions were not allowed, he described his meeting with US President Barack Obama. Finland is the most open country in the world. Whats natural for us isnt natural for everyone, he added. Aleksi Teivainen HT Photo: Seppo Samuli Lehtikuva Source: Uusi Suomi 1.5k SHARES Facebook Twitter For senior high school students, this is the time of the year when their life can make a huge turn. This is the moment when they will start to receive the results of their application to prestigious colleges and universities that they wanted to attend. Some might not be that lucky to get accepted and some might get the letter of approval. LBut for this New Jersey teenager, the results she got are more that what she could ask. Ifeoma White-Thorpe has to make a tough decision very soon. She needs to decide on which Ivy League school to attend in the fall. The problem is, she needs to choose only one of the eight schools that accepted her application. Yes, all of the Ivy League schools (eight of them) approved her application. She now has to choose between Harvard University, Yale University, Cornell University, Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, Dartmouth College and Brown University. In one of her multiple interviews, Ifeoma White-Thorpe said she was really shaking upon receiving the eight letter of acceptance. I was like, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, like this might be eight out of eight and I clicked it and it said Congratulations and I was like oh my goodness! White-Thorpe said. Ifeoma White-Thorpe is arguably one of the best students that ever attended Morris high School in Rockaway. She is the student government president at her school. She said that she wanted to pursue a career in global health. And because all of the Ivy League schools have great research and study facilities she decided to apply to them all hoping that at least one of them will approve her application. I want to go into global health and study biology and so many of them have great research facilities, so I was like, I might as well just shoot my shot and apply, Ifeoma said. Little did she know that all eight of them are more than willing to let her become one of their students. Now that Ifeoma White-Thorpe has been accepted to the eight schools, she now has to decide which one she will actually attend when she graduates in June this year. I got into Harvard early action so I figured Ill just go there, so then I got into all the others and I was like, wait now I dont know where I want to go, Ifeoma said in one interview. Since all of the schools approved her application, the decision now lies which one could give her scholarships and financial aid. At this point none of the schools Ive applied to said they give merit scholarships, so Im praying that they give me some more financial aid or some money, shout out to all of those schools, please give me something, Ifeoma said. via CNN, abc7ny, sacbee.com Myanmar is studying how to participate in the Belt and Road Initiative, as an increasing number of countries are taking part, according to the Myannmar president. President U Htin Kyaw made the remarks Friday during his visit to Xi'an, capital city of northwest China's Shaanxi Province. Xi'an is the starting point of the ancient Silk Road, and home to the world-famous Terracotta Warriors. Shaanxi is also a core area for the Belt and Road Initiative, which was proposed by China in 2013 with the aim of building a trade and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa, along and beyond the ancient Silk Road trade routes. U Htin Kyaw, who visited the Terracotta Warriors on Friday afternoon, expressed hope of enhancing cooperation with Shaanxi in areas such as trade and vocational training. The Myanmar president, currently on a six-day visit to China from April 6 to 11, is accompanied by a delegation of over 30 members, including ministers from the country's commerce and construction departments. Visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday called on China and the United States to bring the two peoples more benefits as the world's two biggest economies develop ties. Addressing a welcome banquet hosted by U.S. President Donald Trump and his wife Melania, Xi said he and Trump held good talks earlier in the afternoon, reaching important consensus for the development of China-U.S. ties. The two countries are willing to expand cooperation in trade and investment, diplomacy and security, law enforcement and cyber security, cultural and people-to-people exchanges on the basis of mutual respect and benefit, said Xi. He also urged the two countries to manage differences and address sensitive issues in a constructive way. During the speech, Xi expressed his readiness to lead, together with President Trump, people who have good wishes and passion to upgrade China-U.S. relations. Trump congratulated Xi on his achievements in leading China's development, and the international respect Xi earned in the process. Trump said he had a good discussion with Xi in their first meeting, exchanged opinions on a wide array of topics, and established a warm personal rapport. Xi arrived in the southeastern U.S. coastal town of Palm Beach on Thursday afternoon, starting his first meeting with Trump in a bid to push forward China-U.S. relations from a new starting point. The two leaders exchanged in-depth views with each other on major global and regional issues of common concern. They are to further their discussion on Friday. The man (37) attacked the girl at their home in west Dublin, beating her repeatedly about the face. (Stock picture) A dad who "battered" his teenage daughter, leaving her covered in bruises, has been jailed for four months. The man (37) attacked the girl at their home in west Dublin, beating her repeatedly about the face. He was prosecuted after the victim went to gardai with another family member and reported the assault. Judge David McHugh said the man had beaten his daughter to a "considerable degree". The accused admitted one count of assault causing harm to her. Gda Thomas Conway told Blanchardstown District Court that the victim went to a garda station on March 3 last year with her aunt. She said she had been assaulted by her father at his home. She told gardai she had been punched a number of times about the head and had severe bruising to her face, body and legs. She received medical attention and had no lasting injury. Sorry The accused was arrested and charged. He had no previous convictions and had never come to garda attention before. A probation report had been ordered and the accused had been "more than co-operative", his solicitor John O'Doherty said. He asked the judge to follow a suggestion in the report and adjourn the case. He said he wished to bring documents to court in further mitigation. "This gentleman battered this lady about the face continuously," the judge said. "I accept that he's sorry for what he's done, but in the final analysis he has beaten his daughter to a considerable degree." The judge added that he also accepted the accused was unlikely to come to garda attention again, but said: "There is no peace without justice." The judge refused to put a stay on the sentence to give the accused time to put "his affairs in order." He set bail terms in the event of an appeal. An associate of the Hutch family was the alleged target of an Estonian national charged with conspiracy to murder. Dublin man James Gately was yesterday named in court as the man Imre Arakas (58) had allegedly come to Ireland to kill. Mr Arakas of Sopruse, Tallinn, Estonia, appeared before a special sitting of Dublin District Court late yesterday afternoon. He was charged with conspiring, along with others not before the court, to murder Mr Gately at an address in Northern Ireland between Monday, April 3 and Tuesday, April 4. Mr Arakas was transferred for the hearing from Blanchardstown Garda Station with a massive garda escort. The convoy included members of the Armed Support Unit. Bandage Giving evidence in the crowded courtroom, Detective Garda Alan Monaghan of the Garda Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau (DOCB), said Mr Arakas had made no response when charged. When Judge Grainne Malone asked if Mr Arakas had been offered the opportunity to speak with a solicitor while in garda custody, Det Gda Monaghan said this had been done on numerous occasions but Mr Arakas chose not to speak with a legal representative. Mr Arakas, wearing a navy T-shirt, black jeans and a bandage on his left arm, addressed the court briefly a number of times during the sitting. Before the hearing began, the presiding judge asked if he required an interpreter but the garda giving evidence said that Mr Arakas had good English. Judge Malone then explained court procedure to Mr Arakas, before asking if he would wish to speak to a solicitor. "Where should I?" he asked, looking around the courtroom. "No, I don't," he added. However, after the legal aid scheme was explained to him, he opted to consult with a solicitor. "Yes, I wish. I'm pretty new here. I don't know where to find (a solicitor)," Mr Arakas told the court. During a second calling, a solicitor for Mr Arakas told the court the nature of the charge meant he could only apply for bail in the High Court. Counsel also applied for legal aid to be granted given the serious nature of the charge and that the accused has no means to get a lawyer. He was remanded in custody in Cloverhill to appear again before Dublin District Court on Wednesday, April 12. After the hearing, Mr Arakas was taken to the west Dublin remand centre under armed guard. Mr Arakas was arrested following an operation involving the DOCB, the Special Crime Task Force, the Emergency Response Unit and the Armed Support Unit. Threat Gardai searched premises in Blakestown, west Dublin on Tuesday morning where Mr Arakas was arrested with two other men. These individuals have since been released from garda custody while a file is being prepared for the DPP. The intended target of the alleged murder conspiracy, James Gately, appeared before Dublin District Court last week in relation to dangerous driving offences in May of last year. The 30-year-old said that his life was under an undisclosed "serious threat" but was subsequently given a two-year driving ban. An Irish fishing boat skipper has been jailed for 16 years for his role in the biggest cocaine bust in Britain last year. Michael McDermott (68), from Waterford, tried to smuggle more than 94m of cocaine into the UK. The haul, weighing 939kg and up to 70pc pure, was the UK's biggest single seizure of cocaine last year. McDermott was convicted of drug importation offences following a week-long trial at Bristol Crown Court. Admitted His shipmates David Pleasants (57), from Grimsby, and Gerald Van de Kooij (27), from Holland, previously admitted the offences. All three were arrested on August 18 last year. McDermott was jailed for 16 years, Pleasants for 14 years and de Kooij for 12 years. Speaking after McDermott's trial, Mark Harding, senior investigating officer from the National Crime Agency's border investigation team, said: "This was a huge quantity of cocaine, the biggest single seizure made in the UK in 2016. "Michael McDermott used his specialist skills as a sailor to attempt to evade border controls. "We provided solid evidence that led to his conviction and have taken out another means of transport used by organised criminals to bring drugs to Britain. "His was a crucial link in a chain that leads from cocaine manufacturers in South America to drug dealers in the UK. Gangs "In stopping this consignment, we have prevented further criminality by the gangs who bring violence and exploitation to our streets." McDermott's boat, the Bianca, was intercepted as it entered UK territorial waters off the coast of Cornwall and officers boarded, detaining the crew. They found 38 bales of cocaine, each weighing between 25 and 30kg, hidden under bags of sand and gravel in the boat's fish hold. The cocaine was between 60 and 70pc pure and, if cut to street purity, would be worth over 90m. Investigators were able to establish that McDermott had bought the Bianca in Whitstable, Kent, for 20,000, 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 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 around 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. Mooney, of Barnville Park, Ballyfermot, pleaded guilty at Blanchardstown District Court to deceiving a man into buying a stolen Opel Astra. Stock Picture A Dublin man sold a stolen car to another man who answered an advertisement for the vehicle on a website, a court has heard. Keith Mooney (31) met the man in a hotel car park after the victim arranged to buy the vehicle. Mooney, of Barnville Park, Ballyfermot, pleaded guilty at Blanchardstown District Court to deceiving a man into buying a stolen Opel Astra. The offence happened at the Red Cow Moran Hotel car park on June 3, 2015. Sergeant Maria Call-aghan said the DPP had directed summary disposal of the case at district court level. Contacted Sgt Callaghan said the victim contacted the seller of a car on the Done Deal website and arranged to meet. He met the accused at the hotel car park and Mooney presented the car to him. The victim bought it for 2,400. Judge David McHugh accepted jurisdiction to deal with the case. This means it can be finalised in the district court instead of being sent to Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, which has greater potential sentencing powers on conviction. Defence solicitor Simon Fleming asked the judge to adjourn the case for sentencing. The judge put it back to a date in May. Mooney was remanded on continuing bail. Jordan Lee was jailed for three months for assault A teenager who broke a Luas passenger's nose when he was confronted for smoking on a tram has been jailed for three months. Jordan Lee (19) punched the victim in the face as he lashed out at another passenger who asked him to stop smoking on the Red Line. Judge David McHugh sentenced him for the "disgusting" unprovoked attack. Lee, of Slievenamon Road, Drimnagh, admitted assault causing harm to a man at Suir Road on February 17 last year. Blanchardstown District Court heard that Lee got on to the tram and started smoking a cigarette. One of the passengers told him to stop, and as a result Lee lashed out at the passenger and hit the victim. Gardai were called and the man was taken to hospital suffering from a nose injury and cuts and bruises to his face. Gardai viewed CCTV footage and the defendant was arrested at a later date. The court heard that the victim had suffered a broken nose, and while he had made a good recovery he still complained of issues with his breathing and had pain on the bridge of his nose in cold weather. Disgusting Lee had a previous conviction for assault and was under a suspended sentence. He made full admissions when interviewed and identified himself to gardai on the CCTV footage, his solicitor told the court. He apologised for his behaviour, which he himself described as "disgusting". A garda said the accused had not handed himself in and it was by a "stroke of luck" that he was noticed walking near Parkgate Street. Lee had had a traumatic upbringing, the court heard. He was originally from Ballymun, his parents led a chaotic lifestyle and he had lived in a succession of "transient" accommodation before staying with his step-grandfather in Drimnagh. In an assessment, the defendant was found to have a mild learning disability due to having missed education while absconding. He had "low-level" intellectual function, his solicitor said. Lee had taken steps to address his anger management and substance abuse issues. "This is his second outing with what would appear to be very violent assaults on people," said Judge McHugh, who added that he accepted Lee had had a "terrible background". People queue at the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration service on Burgh Quay. Photo: Gerry Mooney Dublin's population is continuing to mushroom at a faster rate than anywhere else in the country. Fingal has become the fastest growing area in the country and also boasts the youngest population, according to Census 2016. The average age in Fingal county now stands at 34.3 years - in contrast to the national average of 37.4. Fingal grew by eight per cent in the five years since the last census - more than twice that of the state overall. Expanding Meath in the commuter belt came closest at 5.9pc, while Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown grew at 5.7pc, with Dublin city and South Dublin both expanding by 5.1pc. Expand Close Dun Laoghaire Rathdown grew by 5.7pc in five years / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Dun Laoghaire Rathdown grew by 5.7pc in five years Only Cork city, at 5.4pc, came anywhere close to the growth rate of the capital. Nine other counties grew at a rate of less than 2 per cent, with Donegal and Mayo showing a fall in population. Overall, Leinster accounted for 55.3pc of the national population in 2016, compared with 54.6pc in 2011. In all, there were 62,552 more people living in Dublin in 2016 than five years previously - up from 1,110,627 in 2011 to 1,173,179 in 2016. However, the census pointed to the growing urbanisation in other counties, with Cork showing an increase of over 10,000 people, with more modest increases in Limerick, Galway and Waterford cities. The results showed an increase of 48,269 people living in the largest towns in the country. The census revealed that Dublin's share of the urban population has actually declined in the past 50 years, at the expense of the large towns. In 1966, Dublin had 51pc of the urban population in the country while in 2016, it had just 39pc. When it comes to the gender breakdown, Dublin city had 96 men for every 100 women, while the lowest in the country is Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown and also Galway city, which both stand at just 92 men per every 100 women. Dublin city did not top the table for marital breakdown - with Cork city and Galway city showing a marginally higher rate, at 11.9pc and 11.8pc respectively, while Dublin's marital breakdown rate stands at 11.7pc. The capital showed a lower number of children per family, compared to the rest of the country, with an average of just 1.17 children per family in Dublin city as against the national average of 1.38 children. Meath showed the higher number of children in the country, with an average of 1.51, followed by Monaghan at 1.50 and Laois at 1.49. Overall, the Census results showed the population of Ireland has risen in the past five years, edging closer towards the five million mark for the first time since the foundation of the state. In April 2016 it stood at 4,761,865 which is an increase of 173,613 since April 2011. The total number of non-Irish nationals fell slightly to 535,475 or 11.6pc of the population - the first decline since the introduction of this question in 2002. Rise This could be explained in part by the rise in number of people with dual-Irish nationality - increasing by 48,879 to 104,784 since April 2011. The number of Irish residents born outside Ireland continues to increase, standing at 810, 406 in 2016. Some 82,346 people moved to Ireland in the year to April 2016 and of these, most were returning Irish nationals from the UK, Australia and the USA. A further 54,203 were non-Irish immigrants, mainly from the UK, Brazil and Poland. The census also shows that Dublin has the largest number of Travellers in any county, at 6,006, with 37pc in Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown and 7pc in South Dublin. Additionally, 10pc of the population now consider themselves to have no religion - increasing massively from 269,800 to 468,400. The number of Catholics now comprises 78.3pc of the population, standing at 3,729,100 - down from 3,861,300 in 2011. Over 18pc of homes in Ireland still have no internet connection, with Leitrim emerging as the county with the lowest broadband internet access. The figures confirm the serious urban rural divide, with 76.2pc of the State's urban households having broadband compared with 61.1 per cent of households in rural areas. Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown boasts the country's highest number of households with broadband internet access, at 86pc. Smaller fishing vessels are being warned not to join this weekends search if sea conditions are not suitable Local fishermen are coming together to help in the search for the two missing crew members of Rescue 116. More than 60 boats from the west and north-west are expected to take part in a major operation this weekend in the hope of locating the helicopter's winch operator Ciaran Smith (38) and winchman Paul Ormsby (53). The two Irish Coast Guard members have not yet been recovered from the sea near Blacksod, Co Mayo, where the helicopter went down. The latest move comes after Mr Smith's sister called for local fishermen to join in the search. Nightmare "To all fishing vessels big and small, from Achill Island to Aran Mor, we are appealing to them to please come to help us now," Orla Smith told the Herald. "We need them, we need their knowledge and we need them in the ongoing efforts to find Ciaran and Paul." A flotilla of boats will spend the weekend searching for the two crew members, who have been missing since their helicopter crashed off the Mayo coast in the early hours of March 14. However, smaller fishing vessels have been advised not to risk going to sea in unsuitable conditions. It is hoped that the search operations, co-ordinated by the Irish Coast Guard, can be carried out tomorrow at first light. In a statement, the Killybegs Fishing Organisation said safety was "paramount" and it did not want further tragedies to happen. "We fully understand that a large number of vessels want to get involved in the search, but we would ask that fishermen do not risk going to sea in small vessels when the weather conditions are unsuitable," it said in a statement. Ms Smith described recent weeks as "a living nightmare", but added that support from the local community had helped the families through a difficult time. "It is a living nightmare for all of us. For all of my family and Paul Ormsby's family it is a living nightmare," she said. An underwater robot was deployed yesterday to carry out exploratory searches of the area around the crash site near Blackrock Island. The Air Accident Investigation Unit (AAIU) is expected to release its preliminary findings late next week. Inspectors have already determined that the Sikorsky S-92 aircraft suffered no mechanical anomalies before it went down, but have yet to establish what caused the tragedy. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 7 By Elena Kosolapova Trend: Azerbaijan is a leader in the Eastern Partnership region in cooperation in twinnigs with the EU, said Malena Mard, head of the EU Delegation to Azerbaijan. We are celebrating the 10 years anniversary of twinning in Azerbaijan and I think the results have been very positive for the EU and Azerbaijan, Mard told reporters April 7. She noted that the EU have implemented or are implementing 45 twinnings in Azerbaijan. Twinnings have very strong and good results in the strengthening cooperation in different areas. We are benefiting both the EU and Azerbaijan from our colleagues gaining knowledge from each other about very specific areas, Mard said. She went on to add that at least a thousand of European Unions expats have been working in Azerbaijan in twinning projects of different capacity during the last five years. She also noted that Azerbaijan and the EU have a very strong base of cooperation on very many different areas besides twinnings: in statistics, environment, social issues, safety, constructing standards. Follow the author on Twitter: @E_Kosolapova Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 7 Trend: Independent Franch journalist Romain Mielcarek visited the Azerbaijani territories occupied by Armenia observing the laws of Azerbaijan. The French journalist appealed to Azerbaijans Foreign Ministry for accreditation and permission to travel to the occupied territories for journalism activities, said the ministrys Spokesman Hikmat Hajiyev. Hajiyev noted that the French journalist was Azerbaijan on March 3-7, visited the line of contact, met with refugees and IDPs, obtained information about the position of the Azerbaijani side, and visited the occupied territories on March 19-20. The journalist, in his letter sent to the Azerbaijani ministry, noted that he respects the territorial integrity, sovereignty and laws of Azerbaijan, and guaranteed that he wont illegally visit the occupied territories in the future. 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, April 7 By Leman Zeynalova Trend: The European Union (EU) has a well-known position that the status quo in the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is not sustainable, Head of the EU Delegation to Azerbaijan Malena Mard told reporters in Baku Apr. 7. We support the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs in their efforts. I know they were here [in Baku] on a visit recently. We also hope for a visit of Herbert Salber, the European Unions representative on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, added Mard. 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: @Lyaman_Zeyn It's been 125 years since Dracula was published. And it's still scary. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 7 By Anakhanum Hidayatova Trend: Ukraine supports the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Azerbaijan, said Ukrainian Ambassador to Azerbaijan Alexander Mishchenko. He made the remarks at a press conference in Baku April 7. It is impossible to completely understand the difficulties Azerbaijan faced until one gets in a similar situation. We stand for peaceful solution to conflicts, the envoy said. He wished the Azerbaijanis to soon return to their homeland. Mishchenko further said Ukraine appreciates Azerbaijans friendship and support. 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 Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts. There were several important events that occurred in the South Caucasus over the past few days: a year has passed since the beginning of April clashes for Karabakh, parliamentary elections were held in Armenia on the same day, and President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev visited Baku the next day. The deputy director general of MIA Trend, political scientist, Arzu Nagiyev, discussed these events and how they are connected in an interview with Vestnik Kavkaza. - What are the main results of clashes for Karabakh that happened on April 2-5, 2016? - One of the highlights of four-day war in Nagorno-Karabakh was an unprecedented rise in the morale of Azerbaijanis. After the escalation many people have realized that the myth of invincibility of the Armenian army, which was created over the years, has been dispelled. It became clear that the problem can be resolved through military means, and most importantly, that Azerbaijan can force the aggressor to sit down at the negotiating table. In addition, the fact that citizens supported the army so much showed how Azerbaijan cares for every soldier. Soldiers also realized that the entire country is behind them. - What can you say about recent parliamentary elections in Armenia, held on the anniversary of April clashes? - During the election campaign, the authorities have once again used the Karabakh problem to ensure their victory. Karabakh was their trump card. It's no coincidence that the elections were scheduled exactly on the anniversary of above mentioned clashes. I believe that the results don't mean that this is the choice of Armenians, because President Serzh Sargsyan's party, the supporters of military and political protraction of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, actually won. The fact that "Dashnaktsutyun" party was elected to the parliament shows that nationalism will be the main part of Armenian authorities' policy. Humanism has faded into the background. If we connect both events on April 2, 2016 and 2017, it becomes clear that status quo in the Karabakh issue will continue for a long time after these elections, since the parliament is full of those who aren't interested in resolution of this crisis. At the same time, Armenian authorities understand that Azerbaijan will never agree to the creation of second Armenian state on its territory, and I think this is the main result of April events. - Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev visited Baku this week. During the meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev he once again confirmed the commitment of Kazakh authorities to the implementation of four resolutions of the UN Security Council on the de-occupation of Azerbaijani territories. How Baku assesses Kazakhstan's position? - Kazakhstan is one of those states that have always supported the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan. Any participation of Kazakhstan in the peace negotiations and its support for Azerbaijan are of great importance for us. Today Astana is a platform of international negotiations, in particular negotiations on the Syrian crisis settlement. So Azerbaijan benefits every time Kazakhstan expresses its opinion on Nagorno-Karabakh as the CSTO representative. Within the CSTO framework Astana can influence Yerevan politically and make Russia and other CSTO member countries do the same. - How important was this visit for the Azerbaijani-Kazakh relationship? - First of all, presidents discussed the Caspian issue, after all, we all are united by the economic issues of the Caspian Sea, where we're implementing joint projects, including through the North-South international transport corridor. Baku International Sea Trade Port will later become a large transport hub, which Kazakhstan will be able to use to export its goods to Europe. In addition, both countries represent the Turkic world, and we support each other here. Again, it's important that Kazakhstan, the CSTO member, constantly supports Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement. Overall, today Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan are partners, so Nursultan Nazarbayev's visit was of great importance for us. (The first version posted on 10:01) Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 7 By Elena Kosolapova - Trend: Azerbaijan and the European Union plan to hold next round of talks on the new strategic partnership agreement within the next two weeks, Head of the EU Delegation to Azerbaijan Malena Mard told reporters in Baku Apr. 7. We are very happy with the visit of President [Ilham] Aliyev to Brussels which was the start of the negotiation on the new legal basis of cooperation between the EU and Azerbaijan. And we hope within a couple of weeks we will have another meeting, Mard said. She noted that the both sides are very ambitious about this meeting and the experts from Azerbaijan and the EU are very busy preparing for this round of negotiation. According to Mard, the meeting will most likely take place in Baku. The European Council adopted a mandate for the European Commission and the high representative for foreign affairs and security policy to negotiate, on behalf of the EU and its member states, a comprehensive agreement with Azerbaijan in November 2016. The new agreement should replace the 1996 partnership and cooperation agreement and should better take account of the shared objectives and challenges the EU and Azerbaijan face today. The agreement will follow the principles endorsed in the 2015 review of the European Neighborhood Policy and offer a renewed basis for political dialogue and mutually beneficial cooperation between the EU and Azerbaijan. The new agreement envisages the compliance of Azerbaijans legislation and procedures with the EUs most important international trade norms and standards, which should lead to the improvement of Azerbaijani goods access to the EU markets. Follow the author on Twitter: @E_Kosolapova Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 7 Trend: Under the instruction of Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev, the countrys Emergency Situations Ministry will send humanitarian aid to Djibouti in the coming days, said the ministry Apr. 7. Preparation is underway to send the humanitarian aid, which will be delivered with the help of Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL), according to the ministry. A new Haggadah that builds on the Exodus and teaches the Israel connection A new Passover Haggadah is being distributed by StandWithUs, an international Israel education organization, that emphasizes not only the themes of slavery and freedom but also underscores Jews' 3,000-year-long connection to their ancestral homeland, Israel. The Haggadah, "From Ancient Egypt to Modern Israel," is the brainchild of StandWithUs co-founder and COO, Jerry Rothstein. "According to a Pew research survey, 70 percent of Jews in America from all denominations will likely participate in a Passover seder," states Rothstein. "This statistic is greater than participation on Yom Kippur, on Rosh Hashanah, or during the lighting of Shabbat candles. What better time to reach high numbers of Jews of all ages as well as their non-Jewish friends who will be attending their seders?" The new StandWithUs Haggadah contains the traditional service and adds beautiful original artwork, Hebrew text with English translation, and updates the language to modify the text from "you should tell your sons" to "you should tell your children." StandWithUs is also preparing to distribute this Haggadah published in other languages. "While all Haggadahs do a great job focusing on the Jewish suffering during slavery and the miracle of the escape from Egypt, the subsequent arrival in the ancestral land of Israel (immediately following the Exodus) should also be taught at the Passover table," adds Rothstein. There has been an overwhelming response to the new StandWithUs Haggadah. Learn more about this one-of-a-kind Haggadah and to purchase your own, visit: over3000years.org/ or call 310-836-6140 ext. 0. For any questions please contact JerryR@standwithus.com. "Meeting Moses," the first in a new series of children's picture books, is releasing just in time to delight children ages 5-8 for Passover. Author Robert Chasin and illustrator Matt Roussel are excited to team up for the Meeting Bible Heroes series, which introduces kids to important Bible characters from the Torah in an entertaining manner. "I cannot think of anything more rewarding than inspiring children to look within, and to develop their own special relationship with God. My intention with 'Meeting Moses' has been to create a fun story for kids, while providing them with excellent role models, and positive life messages," said Chasin. In "Meeting Moses," a boy named Max accidentally travels to ancient Egypt in his father's time machine. There, he meets a young Moses and the two quickly become friends. Together, they experience events from the book of Exodus, overcome obstacles, and learn to have faith in God. "Meeting Moses" is a great way to inspire kids to want to learn more about the Bible. Heritage news editor Christine DeSouza found the story inviting, "taking the reader back in time" in an almost realistic way. Illustrator Roussel creates almost 3-D images in his artwork, which will hold a child's attention. Rated as "Faith Based Friendly" for all ages by the Dove Foundation, "Meeting Moses" is an excellent teaching tool for parents, religious schools and for homeschooling; especially with free download materials from the publisher's website. Parents will also like that Max's friends who will be joining him on upcoming adventures, learn to deal with their own issues such as low self-esteem, fear and anger. The printed hardcover picture book (40 pages) has been discounted for this holiday season at $14.99 (SRP $16.95). Group discounts are also available directly at meetingbibleheroes.com (currently U.S. Market only). You can purchase smaller quantities of the hardcover book and eBook on Amazon. Plans for the Meeting Bible Heroes series includes animation. Chasin is a creative entrepreneur and business consultant with experience in advertising, marketing and promotions. Roussel is internationally recognized for his 3D illustrations. Roussel has worked with book publishers such as Scholastic, Macmillan, Nelson, Gallimard, and Hachette. BFF's Susan Livingstone (l) and Marlene Adler, in 2015 when Susan was Fashion Show honoree and Marlene keynote speaker. This year the two friends switch places, with Marlene as honoree, and Susan as speaker. If you are looking for Jewish Pavilion Fashion Show honoree Marlene Adler try giving her BFF, Susan Livingstone, a call. That's how Marlene's husband, Lee Adler, recommends finding her when she doesn't pick up her own phone. Marlene calls Livingstone, "My sister separated at birth, though one of us was born in Brooklyn and the other Dublin. The best way to tell us apart is by our accents." It is no coincidence that Adler and Livingstone are both Fashion Show honorees, the former the current honoree for 2017, the latter honored in 2015. Just after last year's fashion event, Livingstone nominated Adler as "resident funny woman" and Friends Board secretary. With the "Spring into Fashion Show" just around the corner on April 20 at Bloomingdale's in Orlando, the pair of friends are getting ready for updates to their wardrobes. Adler, usually clad in jeans or navy blue, jokes that the event will take place in the "denim section." The two women offer a bit of 'yin and yang' to the monthly Monday Morning Pavilion Friends meeting. Livingstone delivers the meeting's D'var Torah, a moving monthly inspiration that brings pause, gratitude, and tears or a smile. Meanwhile, Adler's quip-filled note-taking (which she credits Lee with typing) brings out an appreciation for the lighter side, guaranteeing a smile and some belly laughs as the group reviews the (sometimes) lengthy agenda. Both woman enjoy volunteering with the Pavilion as Adler explains, "It's a place where every skill is needed. Some of us visit with seniors, some of us bake treats, knit blankets, help behind the scenes in the office, or even take photos. Everyone is welcome and appreciated." Recently, Lee and Marlene have added 'volunteer photography' to their list of contributions, with Lee photographing seniors and honorees, and Marlene assisting and helping make subjects feel comfortable. Adler and Livingstone met relatively soon after each arrived in Orlando. Adler comments, "Susan and I met in the 1980s. Susan didn't have a car, so I started taking her around." Livingstone reports, "Just 10 days after arriving in the country from Ireland, I met Marlene at a synagogue function. While many members said they would call after the event, it was Marlene who reached out to me two days later, inviting me to a sisterhood meeting. It turns out we were neighbors in the same Altamonte Springs subdivision. When I told her I didn't have a car, she drove me, and that began our friendship and driving adventures." The two friends became active in Hadassah together and five years ago, Adler joined Livingstone on the Jewish Pavilion's Friends Board at the suggestion of mutual friend Ruth Darvin. Adler and Livingstone share lunches, holidays, Mahjong games and more, with their now adult kids growing up together like family. Livingstone shares that with a two-minute walk between houses, if their kids didn't like what was in their own refrigerator, they would walk to the Adler's and check out theirs (and vice versa). With the recent passing of Livingstone's beloved husband, Ron, the pair has never been closer. Livingstone will deliver the keynote address on behalf of her friend at the fashion event, just as Adler did for her. Get ready for some friendly inspiration that will bring pause, gratitude, and tears along with smiles. The entire community is invited to The Jewish Pavilion's "Spring into Fashion" and enjoy a morning of friendship, fun and finger foods, generously sponsored by the Adler family, while helping raise funds for seniors in long-term care in more than 70 facilities throughout Greater Orlando. The Jewish Pavilion's Spring into Fashion Show will be held on Thursday, April 20, at 10:45 a.m. at Bloomingdale's Orlando, Sutton Level 2. Couvert: $25, general admission; $50, Fashionista-enjoy front row seating; $100, Couture Patron-enjoy front row seating, be entered in a drawing to win gifts from Bloomingdale's; $500, Benefactor-enjoy front row seating, be entered in a drawing to win gifts from Bloomingdale's, have your name listed in an ad honoring Susan Livingstone. Please RSVP at http://www.jewishpavilion.org or call 407-678-9363. WASHINGTONOn the morning of March 30, JCC Association of North America and a delegation of Jewish leaders met with Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The meeting comes in the aftermath of 88 Jewish Community Centers or day schools that share campuses with them, in 36 states and four Canadian provinces, receiving 134 threats over the past three months, as well as threats to other Jewish institutions. The delegation had requested a meeting with the attorney general to discuss the investigation, federal and local law agencies support for Jewish Community Centers and other Jewish institutions, the safety of Jewish institutions, and next steps. Other groups represented at the meeting included the Anti-Defamation League, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Jewish Federations of North America, and Secure Community Network. Also in attendance were JCC executives from Rockville, Md.; Wilmington, Del.; Baltimore, and Birmingham. JCC Association of North America President and CEO Doron Krakow shared the following comment after the meeting, On behalf of JCC Association of North America and JCCs across the continent, we are pleased by the ongoing engagement from Attorney General Sessions, the FBI, and other federal agencies on this case. The attorney general heard our call for continued vigilance. We were gratified to hear from Attorney General Sessions that every incident is significant and wont be tolerated. We are appreciative that he understands the continued impact these threats have had on Jewish institutions and the role law enforcement can play in helping to prevent further acts of terror. Added Stephen P. Seiden, chairman of JCC Association of North Americas Board of Directors, We are looking forward to continued collaboration with government at all levels as we ensure that our JCCs are following the very best safety and security protocols, and that JCCs can continue serving as vibrant and welcome community gathering places for all members of the communityboth Jewish and many members of the wider public. We are confident, at the centennial of JCC Association of North America this year, that JCCs are safer today than ever before. Other members of the delegation also shared their appreciation for the continued hard work being done by the Department of Justice and other law enforcement agencies. Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said, We thank the attorney general for meeting with us. We shared our gratitude for his work and the efforts of the Department of Justice and the FBI in response to recent bomb threats. We were very encouraged to hear the attorney general commit to the enforcement of existing hate crimes laws in light of ongoing incidents targeting Jews and other minorities. Richard Stone, a previous chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said, The attorney general was extraordinarily sensitive to the growing threat of anti-Semitic incidents in the United States and expressed a serious intention to do everything the Justice Department can do to ensure both the safety and the quality of the American Jewish community. The Conference of Presidents was glad that it could join our colleagues from JCC Association, JFNA, ADL and SCN in such an encouraging and important meeting. Jerry Silverman, president and CEO of the Jewish Federations of North America, said, Jewish Federations of North America was privileged to join our partners at JCC Association for this meeting with Attorney General Sessions. We were very appreciative to hear from the attorney general who truly cares and wont tolerate hostility and hate. We thank federal law enforcement for their support and commitment. WASHINGTON (JTA)-The Trump administration will not allow a repeat of last year's United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israel for its settlements, U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley told AIPAC. "Never again do what we saw with resolution 2334 and make anyone question our support" for Israel, Haley said Monday at the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference, where she earned the warmest reception of any speaker with an extended standing ovation. The Obama administration allowed through the anti-settlements resolutions in December as one of its last acts, triggering bitter recriminations from Israel's government. Haley described her determination to help steer the course of the United Nations and its agencies from anti-Israel bias, noting her intervention keeping Salam Fayyad, the former Palestinian prime minister, from becoming the body's envoy to Libya, and in getting U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to withdraw a U.N. affiliate's report likening Israel to an apartheid state. Haley was one of a number of speakers at AIPAC who drew a sharp contrast at the conference between President Donald Trump's administration and his predecessor, Barack Obama. "We had just done something that showed the United States at its weakest ever," she said of the resolution. AIPAC has striven to promote bipartisanship as a theme this conference, seeking to heal wounds with Democrats opened over divisions with Obama over settlements and the Iran nuclear deal. But Republican speakers have not been able to resist digs at Obama. "What I wanted to make sure of was that the United States was leading again," Haley said. "I wear high heels. It's not for a fashion statement, it's because if I see something wrong I will kick it every single time." Paul Ryan, the U.S. House of Representatives speaker, also spoke Monday evening, saying Obama had "damaged trust" with Israel. "President Donald Trump's commitment to Israel is sacrosanct," he said. Ryan described the Iran nuclear deal, which swapped sanctions relief for Iran's rollback of its nuclear program, as an "unmitigated disaster." But like Vice President Mike Pence, who spoke Sunday, he stopped short of proposing dismantling the deal, as Republicans consistently had during last year's campaign. Instead, Ryan endorsed AIPAC-backed bipartisan legislation that would increase non-nuclear-related sanctions on Iran for testing nuclear missiles and backing terrorism and other disruptive activity. The top two foreign operations officials in the House struck a bipartisan note, appearing together Monday to back AIPAC's bid to stop Trump's proposed cuts to foreign assistance. Reps. Kay Granger, R-Texas, a moderate Republican who is the chairwoman of the foreign operations subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, and Rep. Nita Lowey, the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee and on the committee, have worked together on foreign assistance for years. Without naming Trump, they said his proposal to slash foreign assistance funding by almost a third-even while preserving present levels of assistance for Israel-would harm U.S. interests. "Foreign assistance supports a crucial role in national security," Granger said, "and makes up just a small portion of the national budget, less than 1 percent." Added Lowey: "The United States gets a major payoff." AIPAC says the broader foreign assistance package advances U.S. leadership, better enabling Israel's ally to defend it in international forums and to open doors for Israel in countries that might otherwise be wary of ties. Foreign aid came up again later in the evening when Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., the minority whip, joined Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., the majority leader, to deliver what has become the standard declaration at AIPAC conferences of bipartisan support for Israel by House leadership. The leaders spoke of working closely on Israel, including their leading tours of Israel for House freshmen sponsored by the American Israel Education Foundation, an AIPAC affiliate. Arne Christenson, who manages public policy for AIPAC, asked both leaders to comment on overall foreign aid. McCarthy, a conservative who was among the first congressional leaders to back Trump last year, avoided an answer, focusing only on the need for assistance to Israel. Hoyer, like Lowey and Granger, argued that foreign assistance is a means of securing U.S. leadership in the world, but also argued that diminishing foreign assistance while maintaining current levels of assistance for Israel, as Trump has proposed, would be counterproductive for Israel. "To the extent that Israel [aid] is a larger and larger focus, it will raise controversy," he said. WASHINGTON (JTA)-"Many voices, one mission." If AIPAC's 2017 annual policy conference slogan, popping up on the conference app on activists' smartphones, isn't clear enough, the morning pick-me-up video it runs before conference business begins is pretty straightforward. In the video, activists are gravitating through sunny streets here toward the convention center, and titles float above them: Democrat, Republican, Independent, country music, classic rock, straight up coffee, triple-shot latte-but they're all pro-Israel. "Elements on each side of the aisle are trying to fracture our movement," AIPAC'S president, Lillian Pinkus, said at the outset of the conference Sunday morning. "We will not allow, frankly cannot allow, the same divisiveness." Not everyone got the memo. A "ding, dong, Obama's gone" flavor has pervaded some speeches-and not just by Republicans. Top Israeli officials have rejoiced in the change at the White House, and AIPAC activists have responded occasionally with enthusiasm. Here are three awkward moments at the AIPAC conference when a call for bipartisanship dissipated into cheers for Trump. Israel's ambassador wants you to know things are finally good. Ron Dermer spoke to the opening plenary soon after Pinkus' impassioned plea to please omit partisanship. Dermer paid lip service to bipartisanship-he name-checked multiple Republicans scheduled to address the conference, and the single Democrat he named was New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez, whom he called a "true friend" of Israel. Menendez, however, is something of an outlier among Democrats: He was one of only four Senate Democrats who sought to block the 2015 Iran nuclear deal reviled by Dermer. More recently he was one of only two Democrats who voted to confirm David Friedman as ambassador to Israel. Friedman, a longtime lawyer to Trump, had offended much of the Democratic caucus-and left-leaning Jewish groups-with broadsides against liberal Jews. Dermer went on to praise Nikki Haley, the new ambassador to the United Nations, which was natural enough-in her short time on the job she has been an outspoken defender of Israel. But he really wanted the crowd to know that things had changed. "We'll hear from a woman who has finally brought some moral clarity to the United Nations," Dermer said. "Armed with that moral clarity we can finally get serious about the U.N.'s anti-Israel bias." And he wasn't shy about praising Trump at his predecessor's expense. "Perhaps for the first time in many decades there is no daylight between our two governments," Dermer said. An Israeli Embassy tweet sent out as he was speaking said "years" rather than "decades"-perhaps wary that Dermer was referring as well to Obama's predecessor pro-Israel favorite, GeorgeW. Bush. Mike Pence is among friends. Sunday evening's session, in the cavernous Verizon Center, was launched with another encomium to bipartisanship, this time by Howard Kohr, AIPAC's executive director. "We're here because we are the bipartisan voice needed in America to help keep Israel safe in a dangerous world," Kohr said. Pence's speech, wrapping up the session, was a fierce paean to all things Trump, however, and he presumed that folks in the room agreed with his sympathies for the boss. "Thanks to the support of so many in this room, President Trump won a historic victory," he said. "All of you helped elect a president I know will make America great again." Trump's campaign slogan earned applause, although many in the hall refrained. Benjamin Netanyahu likes a tight budget, except when it comes to Israel aid. Monday morning's session included a briefing by three top AIPAC staffers about the next day's agenda for activist lobbyists. The staffers spoke of a three-item agenda: lobbying for new Iran sanctions, for an anti-boycott Israel bill-and not just for assistance to Israel, but for foreign aid in general. "We will ask members to support a robust overall foreign aid budget," said Brad Gordon, the director of policy and government affairs at AIPAC. Foreign aid is "a cost-effective method to ensure America's leadership around the world." That's a critical message for AIPAC, as Trump has proposed slashing the foreign assistance budget by nearly a third while leaving in place defense assistance for Israel-rising to $3.8 billion next year from its current $3.1 billion. AIPAC has always made Israel and broader foreign assistance inseparable, in part because a robust U.S. presence abroad helps its ally, Israel, establish relationships with countries that might otherwise be wary. But that message has also become sensitive in recent years as Republicans have distanced themselves from an embrace of foreign assistance-while carving out a place for Israel. Now, as Trump embodies that isolationist trend, the rubber is meeting the road. So when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke just minutes later via video link from Israel, there may have been some wincing in the dark convention hall. Netanyahu praised Trump's commitment to Israel. "You see it in the budget request submitted by President Trump," he said. "It leaves assistance for Israel fully funded, even as the fiscal belt is tightened, and we appreciate that." Israel critic Peter Beinart has announced that when his children near adulthood, Ill encourage them to visit the West Bank. Why? So they can see for themselves what it means to hold millions of people... without free movement or due process, he wrote in his column for The Forward. The Beinart children are in for quite a surprise. In his various articles and media appearances, Papa Beinart regularly accuses Israel of occupying and oppressing the Palestinians. I imagine thats what the Beinart kids hear at the dinner table, too. But when the young Beinarts arrive in Judea and Samaria, they will discover that dear old dad wasnt telling them the whole story. In fact, he wasnt even telling them a small piece of the story. Despite all the stuff they heard at home about Israels military occupation, theyll discover that, in fact, the Israeli military governor of the territories left long ago. The Israeli military administration in the territories has long since been dismantled. The Israeli army was withdrawn, by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, 22 years ago. Papa Beinart is a little behind the times! If the younger Beinarts dare to venture into Ramallah, Bethlehem or Shechem (Nablus), they wont see any Israeli soldiers. Instead, theyll see Palestinian policemen and security forces. Theyll see that in the areas where more than 98 percent of the Palestinian Arabs reside, it is the Palestinian Authority (PA), not Israel, which is the ruling power. The mayors are Palestinians. The judges in the courts are Palestinians. So are the folks who guard the jails, staff the hospitals and teach in the schools. There are no Israelis to be found anywhere. The Beinart children may find themselves feeling like theyve just stepped into Bizarro World. Everything their father taught them is the exact opposite of reality. Will they believe their eyes, or their prevaricating father? Beinart was right when he said that his kids will see what it means to hold millions of people... without free movement or due process. But its the PA, not Israel, that is depriving the Palestinians of things such as free movement and due process. Last year, a group of civic-minded Palestinians tried to join a rally staged by striking Palestinian teachers. (They were striking because the corrupt PA regime hadnt paid them in many months, although it has plenty of money to arm one of the largest per-capita security forces in the world.) The PA police set up roadblocks outside the rally, and arrested those who tried to reach the demonstration. Free movement, huh? Due process from the PA? Dont make me laugh. Even groups that are strongly sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have reported how the PA routinely jails its critics, holds detainees without trial and brutally tortures prisoners. Just months ago, a female member of the Palestinian parliament, Najat Abu Baker, hid in the parliament building for 17 days after the PA police sought to arrest her for criticizing PA President Mahmoud Abbas. Her crime? According to The New York Times, she said that Abbas should resign and suggested that there would be money to pay educators if ministers were not so corrupt. The Beinart children may wonder why their father seldom writes about subjects like the PAs totalitarianism, and why he accuses Israel of the crimes that the PA commits. I wonder, too! Stephen M. Flatow, a vice president of the Religious Zionists of America, is an attorney in New Jersey. He is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. At first glance, it was one more example of why the United Nations is a cesspool of anti-Semitism and hatred for Israel. The publication of a report commissioned by the U.N.s Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia broke new ground by not merely unfairly criticizing Israel, but taking the position that its existence as a Jewish state is illegitimate and, in and of itself, a justification for being branded as guilty of the crime of apartheid. Though this was more evidence of the rise of a new anti-Semitism that masquerades as anti-Zionism, what happened next should give pause both to Israels enemies and Jewish critics. The strong pushback from the U.S. and, even more remarkably, the disavowal of the report by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterreswho not only demanded it be taken down from the U.N. website, but then forced the resignation of the bureaucrat behind itsent a surprisingly strong message to the Palestinians. Though much of what goes on at the U.N. with regard to Israel remains an outrage, the notion that the Palestinians and allied Israel-haters have carte blanche from the international community may no longer be true. If so, the prediction of doom for Israel unless it bows to the demands of its foes is wrong. The report is a compendium of half-truths and outright lies about Israel and the terrorist war that is still being waged against it. Written by well-known anti-Israel extremist Richard Falk of Princeton University and Virginia Tilley of the University of Southern Illinois, the screed will be a gift to supporters of the BDS movement, which seeks to wage economic warfare on Israel. Yet with it being expunged from the U.N.s official website, the report becomes just another piece of recycled anti-Israel propaganda. Falk and the Palestinians saw the U.N. seal of approval on the apartheid libel as an important step in mobilizing the international community behind their efforts to treat Israel as a pariah nation. Instead, it is the Palestinians who have been dealt a setback that reveals to the world that support for their lies isnt as strong as they hoped. Part of the credit for this development must be given to the Trump administration. Guterres and the U.N. bureaucracy know that in President Barack Obama, they lost a genuine admirer of the world body and all its work, and that his replacement is not exactly a fan of their institution. Obamas tilt against Israel at the U.N. in his final weeks in office only served to encourage the Jewish states enemies to redouble their efforts. Trump is deeply unpopular around the world, but the U.N. is stuck with him for the next four years. That means they need to avoid giving him excuses to go to war with the U.N., since he has made it clear he has no intention of allowing Israel to be pressured in the way Obama preferred. But Trump is only part of the explanation. Guterress reaction is similar to the way even Western European nations that are generally critical of Israel have pushed back against some of the Palestinians more egregious efforts. Just like when they sought to have UNESCO brand Jewish holy sites in Jerusalemincluding the Temple Mount and Western Wallas exclusively Muslim, the apartheid smear was a bridge too far for many Europeans. While they may be prepared to criticize Israel over settlements and other issues, they have begun to catch on to the fact that the Palestinian goal isnt really to attain a state alongside Israel, but to replace and destroy the Jewish state. Although critics of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu government insist that Israel must surrender territory even without a guarantee of peace, the countrys diplomatic position isnt so weak as they think. Israel will never have the love of the international community, but the Palestinians are wrong if they think the U.N. is going to give them what they wantunless they give up their extreme demands and show a willingness to recognize Israels legitimacy. What weve just learned is that with the world getting sick of the Palestinians intransigencea sentiment that is shared by many Arab nationsand the U.S. determined to stick by its sole democratic ally in the Middle East, Israel can afford to wait for real peace rather than surrendering its rights for a deal that will give them neither peace nor security. Jonathan S. Tobin is opinion editor of JNS.org and a contributing writer for National Review. Follow him on Twitter at: @jonathans_tobin. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 7 Trend: President of the Arab Republic of Egypt Abdel Fattah Al Sisi has sent a congratulatory letter to President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev. I convey my heartfelt congratulations on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Egypt and Azerbaijan. I would like to take this pleasant opportunity to emphasize strong ties that link our governments and people, said the Egyptian president in his letter. Relations between Egypt and Azerbaijan have been developing in many areas in recent years, particularly in the field of energy. We are working to elevate these ties to the level of good political relationship between our countries, he noted. The visit of the foreign affairs minister of the Republic of Azerbaijan to Cairo in November 2016 and preparations for the meeting of the Joint Intergovernmental Commission, which will take place in Cairo in July 2017, increase our joint efforts towards developing relations between our countries. Once again I congratulate Your Excellency. I wish to convey my best wishes for your success, and for the continued prosperity and well-being of the friendly people of Azerbaijan, added Al Sisi. David Friedman was confirmed March 23 by the U.S. Senate as Americas ambassador to Israel. But that was only after a highly contentious debate, and unfortunately, only because there is a Republican majority in the Senate. The same was true of Friedmans prior approval by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The committees minority leader, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), voted against him, as did every single Democrat on the committee. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), wrote March 6 that Friedman lacks the necessary temperament to serve in such a crucial position, and that his divisive rhetoric and dangerous positions are contrary to long-held policy and would undermine our national security by inflaming tensions in the region. In mid-February, five former U.S. ambassadors to IsraelThomas Pickering, Edward Walker, James Cunningham, William Harrop and Daniel Kurtzerwrote a letter to the Foreign Relations Committee casting doubts upon President Donald Trumps nominee for those exact same reasons. What made Friedmans nomination so contentious? Among the reasons outlined by Sen. Feinstein is that he has supported recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He has directly supported settlement activity, because he was president of the American Friends of Bet El Yeshiva, and he has questioned the wisdom of the Oslo Accords. In the summer of 2005, I was in Israel, in the days of the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. I watched and listened as the nation was engaged in a gut-wrenching and internally divisive debate. I saw how Israeli soldiers had been trained not to feel, as they forcibly removed Israeli settlers from their homes. One of those soldiers confided in me, This is not what I signed up for. I listened to the radio when one mother said, Mr. Prime Minister, will you pack up my sons room? I have not been able to go into it since he was killed in Lebanon. Will you uproot the tree in my yard that was planted in my sons memory? Jewish philanthropists funded the greenhouses so that there would be an economic infrastructure for the young, nascent Palestinian enterprise, and many rabbis argued that we should keep the synagogues, to turn them into mosques, because, After all, we all pray to the same God. As soon as the last vestige of a Jewish presence was removed from Gaza, and the blue-and-white Israeli flag was lowered, the greenhouses and synagogues were all destroyed in a frenzied atmosphere of hate-infested anarchy. Yet the government of Israel and most of the Western policy world were convinced at the time that this will finally prove to the world how far Israel is willing to go for peace, even in the absence of a negotiating partner. Since then, Gaza has been used as a launching pad for thousands of Hamas rockets into Israel, necessitating several wars and much loss of life on both the Palestinian and Israeli sides. In southern Israel, when an alarm siren is sounded, Israelis have 15 seconds to find shelter. By now, the rockets have a trajectory that can reach anywhere in the state of Israel. Israels morality during the two Gaza wars has been questioned in the court of international public opinion, largely because of Hamass sinister use of children and women as human shields, which inflates their civilian death count. In shaping America foreign policy, most Americans would like to believe that certain ethical qualities are in the mix, such as intellectual honesty and moral integrity. These qualities, whether part of an individuals nature or those of national policy, often necessitate some difficult introspection. Sometimes it even involves the painful admission that one has been wrongeven if one has been wrong for an extremely long time. It is human nature that the longer the time, the deeper the resistance to change. Our foreign policy experts have clung to certain misguided theories for generations now, such as land for peace. What we have seen through decades of empirical, and often heartbreaking experience is that this formula simply hasnt worked. If the objective is peace, one must honestly ask oneself if any of the politically gut-wrenching and internally divisive land withdrawals from the Sinai, Gaza, southern Lebanon and parts of Judea and Samaria have actually brought us any closer to that objective of peace. Rather than challenge the premises of this formulation, those in the State Departments echo chamber simply dug their feet in further and rationalize its failure. Each time, there is another excuse. Israel hasnt given enough land, or Gaza was without a negotiating partner. All of the State Department apparatchiks who stubbornly clung to this mantra were completely in favor of each of these withdrawals. Then, when those land withdrawals did not bring us closer to the designated objective, the diplomats came up with convenient, after-the-fact rationalizations. Any scientist with an ounce of intellectual integrity would say we have reached the null hypothesis, and that it is time to re-examine the premises of the equation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. David Friedman, a fresh voice, is a step in the right direction. Sarah N. Stern is founder and president of the Endowment for Middle East Truth, which describes itself as an unabashedly pro-American and pro-Israel think tank and policy institute in Washington, D.C. This site uses cookies from Google to deliver its services, to personalize ads and to analyze traffic. Information about your use of this site is shared with Google. By using this site, you agree to its use of cookies. Learn more here Grand Prize Winner: Donna Rickey Blog Winners: A Song for her Enemies by Sherri Stewart: Mary Ann Hake Spies & Sweethearts by Linda Shenton Matchett: Connie Ruggles Sword of Trust by DebbieLynn Costello: Brenda Walters Justice for Julia by Donna Schlachter: Natalya Lakhno Party Prize winners: Sherri Stewarts Winners A Song for her Enemies: Angie Pool Bottle of Dutch Syrup: Carol Koch Alscheff Corrie ten Boom book: Deb Gramie Burgess Linda Shenton Matchetts winners: $5.00 gift card to online retailer or choice (Kobo, B&N, AppleBooks, Amazon): Karen Hadley A Bride for Seamus: Carol Osterhouse Wotring DebbieLynn Costellos winners: Sword of the Matchmaker: Melissa Planas Sword of Forgiveness: Paty Hinojosa Gomez Shattered Memories: Charlene Zall Capodice Sword of the Perfect Bride: Licha Haney Donna Schlachters winner: Leather Journal: Lisa Turley GIVEAWAY RULES Winners must leave their email address and will be notified by email and the winners name will be announced in the days comments. No one under 18 can enter our giveaways. No purchase is necessary. All winners have one week to claim their prize. USA shipping only. Offer void where prohibited. Odds of winning vary due to the number of entrants. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 7 Trend: President of the Republic of India Pranab Mukherjee has congratulated President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of establishment of diplomatic relations between Azerbaijan and India. It is with great pleasure that I extend warm greetings to Your Excellency and the people of the Republic of Azerbaijan on the occasion of the 25th Anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Republic of India on February 28, 2017, said Pranab Mukherjee in his congratulatory letter. I am glad that during these 25 years, our cordial bilateral relations have progressed well. Our expanding relations in all fields and our cooperation including political, economic, energy, cultural as well as our people-to-people exchanges have been mutually beneficial and contributed significantly to the peace, stability and prosperity of our respective regions, noted the Indian president. It is my sincere belief that as we look to the future with hope, Indias diverse ties with Azerbaijan will effectively build upon the achievements of these years and attain newer heights, said Mukherjee. I wish to convey my best wishes for your good health and well-being, as also for the continued progress and prosperity of the people of the Republic of Azerbaijan. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 7 Trend: President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev met with TV and radio host of All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company Vladimir Solovyov Apr. 7. Solovyov said he is visiting Baku for the first time, describing the Azerbaijani capital as a very beautiful city. He said he is deeply impressed by rapid development processes in Baku. President Ilham Aliyev highlighted development processes in Azerbaijan, saying active work is being done to increase the world communitys awareness of the countrys realities. The president spoke of historical and present realities of Azerbaijan, and outlined the countrys position on the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. President Aliyev said Azerbaijan and Russia enjoy successful cooperation in all areas, including in humanitarian and media spheres. Solovyov thanked the president for providing comprehensive information. He expressed his great interest in familiarizing himself with the ongoing processes in Azerbaijan. This domain has expired. If you owned this domain, contact your domain registration service provider for further assistance. If you need help identifying your provider, visit https://www.tucowsdomains.com/ WHAT: Here be Dragons, a group show WHERE: Sakshi Gallery, 6/19, Grants Building, 2nd Floor, Arthur Bunder Road, Colaba WHEN: April 13 to May 31, 10.30 am to 7 pm. Closed on Sunday Call: 22 6610-3424 ENTRY IS FREE Here Be Dragons sounds like it could be a line from Game Of Thrones. But it actually harks back to Medieval times, when the world wasnt fully explored, leaving cartographers in a fix. It was purportedly inscribed on maps to denote unchartered or potentially dangerous territories, says curator Meera Menezes. While we now know that there are no dragons lurking in dark corners of the world, Menezess exhibition at the Sakshi Gallery focuses on the fascinating subject of maps and map making. She invites close to a dozen artists to create maps on subjects that capture their imagination and are interpreted in their own artistic language. The show offers them the chance to code the world and play cartographer by mapping times, spaces, constellations, human bodies, histories or even memories. In doing so, they make unexpected linkages and re-imagine the world as we know it, says Menezes. So artist Varunika Sarafs work, Map of Pain, shows tiny human figures with guns, troubled with water woes, shrunk in size for lack food, and floating heads. Its based on poet Dante Alighieris vision of hell as illustrated by Sandro Botticelli. Saraf says it reflects the systemic repression of the marginalised in modern India.It maps time, history, memory, through figures borrowed from different periods, she says. It is not clear whether Swiss-German artists Paul Klees famous New Angel, also illustrated in my painting, is falling into a bottomless pit or rising above the destruction of the past. The painting was created in the hope that we learn from the past and reshape the future before it is too late. Raj Jariwalas drawings weave in satellite maps alongside cartographic ones. The two highlight the how countries define their territories. Gulammohammed Sheikhs works employ the format of a mappa mundi, a medieval European map of the world, which served as an encyclopaedia of knowledge. It intertwined biblical tales, flora and fauna with history and mythology. Sheikh uses the format to highlight more contemporary concerns. Other artists in the show include Anju Dodiya, Arpita Singh, Madhvi Subrahmanian, Marie Velardi, Mithu Sen, Nilima Sheikh, Shilpa Gupta and Zarina Hashmi. Read: Gieve Patel on juggling disciplines, railway stations, and his memories of Bombay in the 60s It may pong, but Italys Shit Museum has the whiff of success about it: here in Castelbosco, farmers are transforming sloppy cowpats into plates you can eat off. Once upon a time there was a large farm about a hundred kilometres (62 miles) south of Milan. The farmer had not only hundreds of cows, but veritable mountains of excrement -- stinking slops he thought he could do something with. The idea came from the need to take advantage of animal dung in an ecological way. We managed to transform it into something useful, farmer Gianantonio Locatelli, 61, told AFP. Gianantonio Locatelli, founder of the Shit Museum (Museum of Poop), poses on march 28, 2017 at the Castelbosco castle of Gragnano Trebbiense, which host the Museo della Merda. (AFP) Over his various farms, 3,500 cattle produce 550 quintals (55 tonnes) of milk a day to make Grana Padano, a hard cheese comparable to Parmigiano Reggiano. They also generate 1,500 quintals of waste. Rather than wallow in it, Locatelli came up with an ingenious way to make use of the pungent matter. The excrement is collected into so-called stool digesters, immense vats where bacteria transform everything organic into methane. A picture shows cows in the farm of the Shit Museum (Museum of Poop) at the Castelbosco castle of Gragnano Trebbiense, on march 28, 2017. (AFP) The methane is then burned to produce electricity, which is sold by the farm. The daily faeces output produces three Megawatts an hour, enough to turn on the lights of a village of 3,000 to 4,000 inhabitants. The water used to cool the engines heats to 100 degrees celsius, which is then used to warm the farm, stables and digesters, which must be kept at a constant 40 degrees. Part of the dung left over after the bacteria have had their fill is then used as fertilizer, with the Merdame brand set to hit supermarket shelves soon, says Locatelli. A picture shows bricks made from Merdacotta on march 28, 2017 at the Shit Museum (Museum of Poop) in the Castelbosco castle of Gragnano Trebbiense. (AFP) But the most sophisticated stool success is the line of tableware and everyday objects created out of the left-over faeces, dubbed merdacotta -- literally baked shit, a play on the clay-based earthenware Terracotta. The recipe? Pungent poo mixed with Tuscan clay and rounded off with a little secret touch -- a formula Locatelli fiercely protects -- to make bricks, hexagonal and rectangular tiles, flowerpots, plates or jars. A picture shows potteries made from Merdacotta on march 28, 2017 at the Shit Museum (Museum of Poop) in the Castelbosco castle of Gragnano Trebbiense. (AFP) Coming perhaps to a dining table near you soon, the clean-lined, simple Merdacotta creations are a revolutionary product... halfway between plastic and Terracotta, Locatelli says. The objects take pride of place in the museum, which was founded on one of the farms in 2005 and has as its logo a dung beetle, that six-legged creature that uses dung balls as both a food source and a breeding chamber. The museum also boasts artworks, from paintings in liquid excrement, to an extract from Luis Bunuels film The Phantom of Liberty. Designed with the architect Luca Cipelletti, it aims to capture the philosophy of an art-loving farmer who studied agriculture in Canada and rubbed shoulders with Andy Warhol in New York before becoming an amateur collector of conceptual works. Excrement is seen as something vulgar, nauseating, as the most ignoble matter, says Locatelli, who intends to rehabilitate the word and transform opinions of it across the board. The Merdacotta collection won a prize at Milans design fair last year, justifying his bet to turn shit into something graceful, he says. And while the farms have been hit in recent years by a sharp drop in the price of milk, Locatelli says he can rely on his unusual sideline to keep his business buoyant. For that, I can only thank shit, he said with a chuckle. Follow @htlifeandstyle for more It has been 58 years since she made her blockbuster debut with Dil Deke Dekho (1959). But even now, you cant miss the aura and splendour in Asha Parekhs personality. Well, I was lucky. God has been very kind to me. I received good films and very nice music in all my films, says the veteran actor, who is set to launch her autobiography, The Hit Girl, on April 10. Do you feel your autobiography is a new chapter in your life? Absolutely, it will be a new chapter because people feel that Im just an actress. But, I have done a lot of other things in life too, which people dont know about. Asha Parekh started her career with Dil Deke Dekho with Shammi Kapoor. How was the experience of putting together a book? I was lucky to have Khalid Mohamed doing the writing part so it was quite easy. He would ask me questions one after the other so it took me a little time to recollect everything from my past. Still, I think we did it fast, in just eight months. Are you happy with the way it has turned out? Yes, it has turned out very beautifully. Also, this is the right stage to come out with it. After living a full life, when you write your book, you have ample things to speak about. But it was a little difficult to put my life out in public. Salman Khan is going to launch the book in Mumbai... I know the Khan family very well, so I asked Salim Bhai (Khan) and he agreed. Salman has, in fact, written the foreword also. Aamir Khan is going to launch the book in Delhi. Watch O Mere Shahe Khuban - Love In Tokyo You have worked with the best of stars right from Shammi Kapoor to Shashi Kapoor, and Jeetendra to Rajesh Khanna. Do you see any difference in the way stars function nowadays? Nowadays, the way a crowd chases an actor or a star is very shocking with girls even fainting and all. In our times, we never had that sort of thing, where the girl faints and the parents are taking them out. Its very weird. I am sure you can control your emotions even if you like a person. These are the things that have changed a lot and thats why I realise they need bouncers around them because of the way the crowd behaves. Its absolutely insane. I see people clicking pictures of Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khans house even if the person isnt there. Its so funny. So, craziness has gone to that extent now. Asha Parekh starred alongside Shammi Kapoor in a number of films. But you also have had many crazy fans Yes, we also had crazy things happening, but our fans never went to that extent. I had a Chinese fan, who took a liking for me and parked himself outside my gate and refused to budge. I had to call the police commissioner, who put him in the Arthur Road jail. From there the fan wrote to me, Please get me out. So, I did that, but I dont know what happened ultimately. Watch Sayonara Sayonara - Love In Tokyo Your co-star Rajesh Khanna had a crazy fan following... I witnessed that, too. We were shooting for Kati Patang (1970) in Nainital, (Uttarakhand) and the crowd was uncontrollable. It was very difficult for us to shoot on the boat. It took two days for us to get into the boat to shoot. How do you look back at your journey in the industry? It has been a beautiful journey. I have no regrets. If God ever asked me, what I would like to do in my next life, Id say that I would like to do the same thing again, but avoid all the mistakes that I committed in life. Asha Parekh starred alongside Joy Mukherjee in Love in Tokyo. Is it true that you were supposed to make your debut with Goonj Uthi Shehnai (1959), but film-maker Vijay Bhatt felt you werent star material? Yes, that is true. I was selected, because I worked with Vijay Bhatt for Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (1954) as a child. After that, he called me for Goonj Uthi Shahnai and I was given `11 as a signing amount. I shot for it for two or three days with IS Johar, who also wanted me to work for him in Bewaqoof (1960). But after three days, they suddenly said, Youre not star material and we want to change you. So they cast Ameeta, whose film Tumsa Nahin Dekha (1957) had just released. In fact, I also missed out on Johar saabs film. Hear O Haseena Zulfonwali Jaane Jahan - Teesri Manzil Were you heartbroken? Naturally, it was heart-breaking. But after a week, I signed my first film, when Sashadhar Mukherjee saw me and wanted me for his film, Dil Deke Dekho (1959). You also refused a number of films that went on to become huge hits. Any regrets? Yes, I refused films such as Andaz (1971) and Tumse Achha Kaun Hai (1969). Not doing Seeta Aur Geeta (1972) and Aradhana (1969) was regretful. I turned down Aradhana because I didnt want to take the risk of playing the mother as well as the heroine. It was a miscalculation and a bad [decision] on my part. Hear O Mere Sona Re Sona Re | Teesri Manzil What do you think about todays films? Technically, we are very superior, and the entire system has changed for the better, as actors are now doing one film at a time. But somewhere, some films have lost their soul. The soul is missing. The same goes for music; you wont remember todays music for very long, because its more about drums, beats and a lot of noise (smiles). Asha Parekh starred in several films such as Kati Patang alongside Rajesh Khanna. Would you like to see a biopic on your life? I would be very happy if someone made one. Deepika (Padukone) and Priyanka (Chopra) can play me; and even Alia Bhatt for that matter because she has been doing all these glamorous roles and tomboyish parts that even I used to do. So, Alia could also be a good choice. Asha Parekh starred with Dharmendra in Aya Sawan Jhoom Ke. Apparently, you regret not being able to work with Dilip Kumar? Yes, I will always regret it, because I missed out on working with him. I was a great fan of his. I used to admire him a lot. We had started working on Zabardast, and Yusuf saab (Dilip Kumar) did shoot for two-three days, but then the film was scrapped. Also, you never got married? I would just say that I wasnt destined to get married. Now, when I look back, I feel I am happy that I never married. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Megastar Amitabh Bachchan, who was supposed to launch a book by film archivist P.K. Nair here on Thursday, couldnt turn up as he is suffering from high fever. However at the book launch by the Film Heritage Foundation, the countrys only non-government film archive, the other invited celebrities such as Naseeruddin Shah, Shyam Benegal and Vidhu Vinod Chopra were present and did the honours. Big B, who had to cancel his appearance at the last moment, sent a letter of apology to the organisers which the foundations founder Shivendra Singh Dungarpur shared with the media. The letter read: I have suddenly and quite unexpectedly developed a high fever .. I regret profusely that I shall be unable to attend your event this evening .. a shame really because I was looking forward to it .. As a country we have shied away from the luxury of documentation.. leave alone its restoration and preservation - for films at least ..!! What you and your foundation have initiated is indeed a most selfless, but very important and necessary element, so assiduously worked upon by Mr Nair .. I send my best wishes on the launch of your book on him and do stand by my commitment to be of service to this noble cause. Your idea of constructing an Institute, the design for which I have greatly appreciated, is most laudable and one that I hope shall receive patronage not just from the film fraternity but indeed from the City of Mumbai - the Film Capital of the Nation .. The 64th National Film Awards were announced on Friday. Sonam Kapoors hijack drama Neerja bagged the Best Hindi film for the year 2016. Akshay Kumar was also among the big winners grabbing the Best Actor award for Rustom. Live: Best Hindi Feature Film is 'Neerja', directed by Ram Madhvani : https://t.co/FGKzVlbknz 64th #NationalFilmAwards MIB India (@MIB_India) April 7, 2017 Marathi film, Kasav, won the award for Best Feature Film. Filmmaker Priyadarshan was the chairperson of the jury in feature films category, while nationally acclaimed cinematographer and a writer Raju Misra was the chairperson in non-feature category. The jury considered 344 films from 26 languages for the feature films category of awards. Directed by Ram Madhvani, Neerja is based on the life of a brave airhostess Neerja Bhanot who was killed during the hijack of Pan Am Flight 73 in Karachi, Pakistan, on 5 September 1986. The film was praised by the critics and the audience alike. Read Neeraj movie review Akshay Kumars Rustom was loosely based on a true story and he played a naval officer in the film who is accused of killing his wifes lover. Read Rustom movie review Best Actor of the year conferred to Shri @akshaykumar for film #Rustom 64th #NationalFilmAwards MIB India (@MIB_India) April 7, 2017 Amitabh Bachchans Pink got the Award for Best Film on Social Issues. Read Pink movie review Nagesh Kukunoors Dhanak grabbed the Best Children Film while The Eyes Of Darkness received a Special Mention. Read Dhanak review Surabhi C.M. was named Best Actress for Malayalam movie Minnaminungu - The Firefly. Surabhi has been honoured for showcasing her brilliance in portraying pain and ecstasy of a mother in a deplorable social condition in the Malayalam film. The movie also won the Best Film Award in Non Feature category. Manipuri film, Loktak Lairembee, won the Award for Best Film on Environment Conservation. In the Best Supporting Actor category, veteran actor Manoj Joshi has won for Marathi film Dashakriya, and among the actresses, Kashmiri actor Zaira Wasims portrayal of a female sportspersons battle with the society with utmost maturity in Dangal has been awarded by the jury. Zaira had played young Geeta Phogat in Dangal. Rajesh Mapuska was named the best director for his Marathi film Ventilator while the Marathi film Kaasav was named the best National Film Awards. Read Ventilator movie review Special Jury Award in the Feature category was given to Mohanlal for his mastery in dealing with characters of various shades with unparallel acting brilliance. Sathamanam Bhavathi received the award for Best Popular Film providing Wholesome Entertainment. The state of Uttar Pradesh was awarded the Most Film Friendly State award for implementing a unique film policy. The states film policy includes various measures to create a suitable environment, which not only invited shooting of films on a large scale in the State but also promoted other activities related to various aspects of film production including financial incentives for filmmakers. The state of Jharkhand bagged Special Mention Award for their film policy which provides growth opportunities to the local filmmaking talent from within the State. Also read: 64th National Film Awards: Heres the complete list of winners Follow @htshowbiz for more UNEC Rector, Professor Adalat Muradov and the teaching and student staffs of the university travelled to the town of Horadiz and Lalatepe height on the occasion of the victory gained last year within the April battles. Visiting the National Leader Heydar Aliyevs monument in Horadiz, UNEC staff laid a wreath at the statue within the trip organized by the Ministry of Defense and Executive Power of Horadiz Region. After they left Heydar Aliyev park, they joined triumphal march which took place until the memorial Monument to April Martyrs constructed on the edge of Horadiz- Jabrayil road. After the triumphal march, together with Unit Commander, Major- General Mais Barkhudarov, Honored Art figure, Colonel Abdulla Gurbani, Member of Parliament, Head of UNEC Department of Price and Pricing Kahnhuseyn Kazimi UNEC staff went to the strategically important Lalatepe height which was liberated from the occupation of the Armenian armed forces. Major- General Mais Barkhudarov expressed proud for Azerbaijani Army within the meeting with soldiers and officers: April battles proved once again that our army is eager to prevent all the provocations of the enemy decisively. It is in defense of our lands, people and it is ready to release our occupied territories as soon as possible by the Supreme Commanders order. Pointing out the UNEC staff is the first that visited Lalatepe, Major- General appreciated the initiative highly: I know this is not UNEC staffs first visit to frontline. We follow from the media that UNEC regularly implements successful projects for the young peoples growth in patriotic spirit. UNEC Rector, Professor Adalat Muradov expressed with pride that the year 2016 is included to our history as the first year of victory gained by Azerbaijan Army after many years. As a response to the provocations of the Armenian armed forces, Azerbaijan soldier gave adequate response to enemy by counter- attacks at the beginning of the month of April. The victory gained in April fights became possible through the Azerbaijan President, Mr. Ilham Aliyevs farsighted diplomacy, successful domestic and foreign policy, military skills, professionalism of soldiers and officers of Armed Forces covered by the Supreme Commanders constant attention, moral and psychological readiness, fighting spirit, patriotism and a monolithic unity of people with the army. Rector Adalat Muradov spoke about the frequent trips made by UNECs academic staff and students to the frontline with support of the Ministry of Defense and their meetings with the liberators of our lands; he expressed readiness of UNEC staff for Supreme Commanders order for the liberation of our lands. Colonel Abdulla Gurbani and Member of Parliament Khanhuseyn Kazimi spoke about the heroism Azerbaijan army, courage demonstrated by our troops within the battles. Highlighting the significance of the victory gained in April over the enemy, they expressed confidence that our people would achieve greater victories. UNEC student, the participant of April battles shared his memories of the incident: I got severe shrapnel wounds on my chest, however, did not leave the trench. I am proud that took part in such important operation and I have got my own portion of victory. I fulfilled my duty decently within the operation. Martyr Giyas Guliyevs brother who was killed in Tapgaragoyunlu province of Goranboy region, UNECs teacher Ibrahim Guliyev also spoke about his brother. He talked about his fearlessness, patriotism and expressed pride of his brother. UNEC staffs congratulation was addressed to soldiers and officers after the speeches were made. They were introduced gifts on behalf of university personnel. 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. Entering the digital space with her upcoming web series, The Test Case, Nimrat Kaur says the massive success of The Lunchbox did not stop her from experimenting in her career. I always want to try new things in life. Yes, this is a new avenue and most people will have this question about why a film actor is going to an online space? But, never in my life I believed in pre-set notions and I really dont think there is need for any actor anywhere in the world be calculative about these kind of things. You connect with something and you just do it, said Nimrat. Nimrat, who has done two international projects -- Homeland and Wayward Pines --besides Bollywood films like Airlift, agrees that people still recognise her for the role of a lonely housewife in The Lunchbox. I guess thats a cross for most actors to bear when something works tremendously for them. I want to undo this immediately by presenting myself in different ways, which is actually the real fun of being an actor. The fact is that the process of re-invention goes on forever and one can learn so much from Imitable Bachchan and Kareena Kapoor regarding this. So, yes I dont want to repeat the success of Lunchbox again, and what I wish for now is something better, bigger and more enriching, she says. Far from being nervous about the web series, the 35-year-old actress, who is in the city for the launch of the new Audi A3 Sedan, says she can safely bank on Nagesh Kuknoors vision and Ekta Kapoors astute sense of what works for the audience. We are extremely proud of what we are presenting. We have made it with lot of love and integrity. And to me, it has been a win-win situation all this while since I gained so much by just being in the show. The web series, to be aired in Ekta Kapoors Balaji Telefilms digital space initiative ALTBalaji, will see Nimrat playing an army officer for the very first time. Actor Shatrughan Sinha, BJPs most outspoken representative, has spoken out against the national carrier Air Indias decision to ban Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad from flying with it, demanding to know which law allowed the airline to do so in order to teach an individual a lesson. Gaikwad has allegedly behaved in an unruly manner when taking a Mumbai-Delhi Air India flight in March, assaulting a senior staff member after the flight landed in New Delhi. In later developments, he expressed his regret, but the Air India staff issued a statement against the MP, asking for an unconditional apology. The Air Indias Cabin Crew Association said: We as cabin crew must only point out that Ravindra Gaikwad is and will continue to be a risk to flight safety, flight operations and to cabin crew safety on board, and hence [the] Government must think long and hard about letting him back on. In fact, unless he tenders an unconditional apology to AI employees, and undertakes in writing to abide by the Chicago and Tokyo Conventions & Rules of the Air and follow all cabin safety and public behaviour norms, we must not let him on board. Very recently, Air India cancelled Gaikwads ticket for a flight that he intended to take. Sinha reacted to that decision, asking, By whose consent is this MP grounded? I believe Air India and other airlines have banned the MPs travel. I want to know which law of this land prevents any individual from flying by any airline. Even the most hardened criminals, politicians with countless cases imposed on them, are free to travel by any airline. Why then is Mr Gaikwad being singled out for this unique punishment.And whose punishment? The outspoken parliamentarian, who has the film industry nickname Shotgun Sinha, wants to make it clear that he doesnt condone the assault, but that any penalty should come from the right quarters. If Mr Gaikwad is guilty, let the law of the land deal with him. Why are the airlines acting like a collective judiciary? I am worried about what precedence Mr Gaikwads flying ban can set. Tomorrow, some airlines may object to Sanjay Dutt flying, just because he has been to jail.Or they can stop me from flying. Follow @htshowbiz for more The alphabet i, ninth of 26 from a to z, shot into italicized fame when Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad, in April 2010. Since then, i has blossomed into the capital letter I. Significantly, instead of being merely a catchy prefix linked to products, I leads the English language today in spelling extraordinarily important concepts. Innovation, the theme of this thought-provoking book written by self-confessed un-intellectual Kiran Karnik, is one of these concepts. In the first paragraph, Karnik concedes the point that buzzwords usually have short lives. The rest of the book tells us why innovation is an exception: Its longevity and appeal are probably indicative of it having real substance, rather than being the flavour of the month. I agree for two reasons. First, the application of the concept has spread well beyond corporate effort to break glass ceilings in product and service designs Googles driverless cars and Richard Bransons Virgin Galactic are splendid contemporary examples. Second, the appeal of innovation has crashed through the lead-lined, almost impenetrable tall wall that hampers entry of new ideas into echelons of government. Surprise! This includes the government of India! However, even techno-savvy Indian citizens are not quite aware that India has declared 2010-2020 as the Decade of Innovation. To take this agenda forward, the Union government at its highest level is developing a national strategy on innovation with a focus on an Indian model of inclusive growth. The idea is to create an indigenous blueprint of development suited to Indian needs and challenges. To do so a National Innovation Council (NIC) has been created with State Innovation Councils (SICs) in every state and union territory. (Uttarakhand and West Bengal dont figure in this list yet.) Theres more, 24 sectoral councils have been set up with respective nodal ministries responsible for mapping innovation prospects in their domains. I guess bureaucrats are working hard to innovate a hydra-headed monster as coordinator between so many over 50! councils, but let that be. Against this not-so-encouraging pro-innovation climate, Karniks subtitle Creating an Innovative Society italics mine) makes good sense. So too does the tantalizingly provocative title. The adjective crooked doesnt mean rascally but deviant from conventionally defined modes. It makes sense because Indians Innovation Quotient is provenly high. Karnik furnishes proof: Indian immigrants comprise the leading company founding group in Silicon Valley. They founded 13.4 per cent of Silicon Valleys start ups and an astonishing 6.5 per cent of those nationwide in the United States. This is particularly surprising, Karnik notes, because Indian immigrants constitute less than 1 per cent of the US population. Karnik painstakingly explains why and how leadership in innovative technology has rapidly emerged as a vital component diminishing the role of ownership of capital as measure of wealth and power of individuals and countries alike. Technological know-how, guarded by intellectual property rights, is itself a tradable commodity of high value, says Karnik. Kiran Karnik (Courtesy Rupa & Co) With this perspective, it is but natural that country after country is now on the innovation bandwagon. As cited above, so is India. Where does India stand in the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO)s widely respected Global Innovation Index (GII) in 2016? At number 66, India trails each fellow member in BRICS: Brazil (64), Russia (62), China (35) and South Africa (58). Asian countries Japan (22), South Korea (18), Malaysia (12) as well as Gulf nations Saudi Arabia (42), UAE 38), Qatar (48) and Kuwait (50) are way ahead of India. (For the record, Switzerland is number 1 among 142 WIPO members.) Read more: Entrepreneurship Simplified: From IDEA to IPO by Soota, Gopalan: Making ideas work Clearly, in education lies the key to bootstrap India into the league of innovative nations. Karnik is even-tempered in his comments and analyses of successive Union governments irrespective of political hue failing to spend the targeted 6 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as annual expenditure on education. Reading about national shortcomings leaves discerning, patriotic Indians gnashing teeth in despair. Sujoy Gupta is a corporate biographer and corporate historian. A bill to save lives by ushering in radical reforms in the motor vehicles law to slap heavy penalty on traffic violators, protecting good samaritans and making vehicle-makers responsible for design defects to cut road accidents, today drew support from all sections of the Lok Sabha. The basic aim of the Motor Vehicle (Amendment) Bill 2016 is to save human lives, Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari said, adding that a whopping five lakh accidents took place every year claiming around 1.5 lakh lives across the country. Moving the bill for consideration and passage, Gadkari said it would bring about much-needed reforms in the transport and road sectors through maximum governance with minimum government. It also addresses issues like third party insurance and regulation of taxi aggregators. Cutting across party lines, members complimented Gadkari for taking the views of all stakeholders in drafting the comprehensive bill. However, many of them made suggestions on certain provisions as Congress member K C Venugopal said some of them were very, very good. Even if you are a minister and you violate the traffic rules, a letter (citing a penalty) will come to your home, Gadkari said. He said around 30 per cent of total licenses across the country were bogus and, under provisions of the new law, a transparent online system for grant of license will be put in place under which everybody will have to undergo certain tests for getting it. The bill, he said, seeks to make services like issuance of license totally transparent and online and provides for punitive action against officials in case of delay in issuing of the document to eligible applicants. The proposed legislation also seeks to put in place an automated intelligent traffic management system under which anyone flouting traffic rules will face action. Under the new system, every one -- from a political leader to a film actor -- will have to go to the license issuing authorities under an uniform procedure and if license is not issued in 3 days, then the RTO will have to face action, he said, adding that a learners license can be availed online sitting at home. The bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha on August 9, 2016 and then referred to the Standing Committee on Transport, Tourism and Culture, headed by Mukul Roy. The Motor Vehicle Act was a 30-year-old instrument which has not kept pace with the change of dynamics of road transport & information technology, he said, adding that it specifically targets traffic offenders with stringent penal provisions. The bill has identified priority areas for improving road safety. Stricter penalties have been proposed for high risk offences such as drunken driving, dangerous driving, overloading and non-adherence to safety norms by drivers like not using seat belts or helmets. Gadkari said the process for registration of vehicles will be made transparent and people will be able to access various transport-related documents online. If police stops you and asks for documents, you will be able to access them using your phone. It will be very convenient, the Minister said. Expressing serious concern over the burgeoning road fatalities, Gadkari said the government has identified 786 black spots across the country and will spend Rs 11,000 crore on them to curtail accidents. Asking the MPs to resolve to ensure that no road accident takes place in their constituencies, Gadkari said there will be a committee headed by local MP in each district of the country to recommend measures for road safety. The minister said the government will set up a National Road Safety board and the states have been told to incorporate chapters in the curriculum on road safety and added that changes were also being brought about for insurance sector. At present, there is no fear for traffic law and it is not a good sign. We have made the law studying traffic laws in the US and some other countries, he said. Talking about loopholes in the existing licensing system, he said India is a country, where it is easiest in the world to get a license and the new law will address these issues. Participating in the debate, Congress member K C Venugopal called some of the provisions of the bill very very good and said all the roads in the country should be brought under the new law. He also suggested incorporation of certain provisions in the bill like ensuring parking space for heavy vehicles and to bring doctors and nurses to treat accident victims under the ambit of good samaritan. Demonetisation, which aimed at hitting out at the cash element in the economy to curb corruption and black money, has had a mixed impact, according to the EY Fraud Survey 2017. While a majority of the respondents in EYs Europe, Middle East, India and Africa (EMEIA) Fraud Survey support the stance taken by regulators and the government to curb corruption and bribery, the youth is still willing to make payments in cash to help their businesses survive. One of out of every four of generation Y (25-34 years old) could justify offering cash payments to win or retain business, said the EY survey. In India, however, 32% of youth are willing to deal in cash to help businesses survive. The survey was conducted between November 2016 and January 2017, the period when India was going through the demonetisation exercise . A huge 73% of youth feels that unethical action can be justified to help a business survive, adds the EY survey. Unethical behaviour at the workplace has become a serious concern for corporate India as employees refuse to report fraud, bribery and corruption to enhance career prospects, the report suggests. There is also a sense in youth that their colleagues are willing to act unethically to better their careers, said Arpinder Singh, partner and national leader, Fraud Investigation & Dispute Services, Ernst & Young LLP. This kind of tendency stems from the deep rooted belief that corruption is part of the society. The EY survey identified three reasons to justify unethical behaviour uncertainties in the business environment, augmenting pressure to meet financial targets and aspirations to achieve unprecedented career growth. Companies generally take to checking emails, call records, tracking social media profile as monitoring tools. 89% of people surveyed by EY consider this as a breach of privacy. There needs to be a clear policy, to what extent a firm can monitor, Singh said. A huge 79% of participants in India said that prosecuting individuals would help deter fraud, bribery and corruption, while 78% said that bribery and corruption is widespread. The government could consider increasing the import duty on wheat from the present 10%. Agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh said in the Rajya Sabha during the Question Hour that the government could look at increasing the import duty if required. He was responding to JD(U) member Harivanshs statement that despite the government imposing an import duty, the importers were reportedly finding buying of wheat from abroad cheaper. Singh said that for the first time, import duty had been imposed by the present government. It was removed last year in view of the shortage of wheat, he said, adding that the duty was introduced to up to 10%. In his reply tabled in the House, Singh said the government has raised import duty on wheat from zero to 10% with effect from 28, March, 2017. Speaking about pulses, the Agriculture Minister said that a bumper crop was expected this time, but it would still be less than the demand. He said that steps had been taken to encourage domestic purchase of tur dal. He also said that a committee has submitted a report on the process through which Minimum Support Price (MSP) is determined may be revised. The ministry is already considering the suggestions of the committee, Singh said. Congress member Jairam Ramesh had asked Singh to review the cost of production of wheat so that the right MSP could be set. He said to increase the income of farmers, measures like providing irrigation and seeds were too important. Often it is seen that various states spend less on farmers than what is earmarked, Ramesh said. To this, Singh said we are going to release data on how different states have released the money, which was meant for the welfare of the farmers. For technology startups, its investors and other internet entrepreneurs, this can be a moment of cheer, after all the gloom and doom, funding crunch and closures in the start eco-system. According to a report titled The $250 billion digital volcano put out by the US-headquartered Boston Consulting Group and The Indus Entrepreneurs (TIE), Indias internet economy will double to $250 billion by 2020. India already has 391 million internet users and that number is expected to surge to 690 million by 2020, comparable to what China has at present. India has already crossed the number of internet users the US has, and according to Mary Meekers 2016 report showed India as the silver lining in global internet growth. According the BCG-TIE, high speed mobile internet adoption will be used by 550 million users by 2020, which is almost 85% of the total mobile internet users. Average data consumption is projected to reach 7 to 10 GB per user per month. Internets contribution to the countrys gross domestic product is also set to grow from 5% to 7.5%. However, the report said that India continues to lag in internet usage compared to developed countries, despite four fold rise in smartphone penetration. Average data consumption per user continues to be low, standing at less than 1 GB data per month vis-a-vis developing Indonesia and Brazil at 2 to 3 GB per month and developed economies like Japan and US at 9 to 11 GB per month. That is despite Reliance Jios offering of free internet services, and incumbents such as Airtel, Idea Cellular and Vodafone lowering data tariffs. However, things are changing fast. By 2020, 4G enabled devices are expected to grow six times to 550 Mn devices, constituting 70% devices in use. Also, reliable high-speed data is becoming both ubiquitous as well as mass affordable (data rates have reduced to less than one-third in just four to five months), said Nimisha Jain, a BCG partner and the author of the report. Geetika Dayal, executive director of TiE Delhi-NCR said, The conversation has moved from Internet of Things to Internet of Everything, and digitisation presents a great opportunity for multiple stakeholders. All digital services, the report said, will grow alongside. For example, digital payment transactions could go up by 30% to 40% by 2020. Digital economy will have a much broader influence beyond the direct economic impact. Digital adoption will deliver several citizen-centric social benefits like enhancing ease of doing business, improving access to services and products and transforming governance, the report said. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Advised by the telecom regulator, Reliance Jio on Thursday said it will withdraw the three months complimentary benefits of Jio Summer Surprise, as soon as operationally feasible, over the next few days. Today, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has advised Jio to withdraw the three months complimentary benefits of Jio Summer Surprise, the company statement said. Jio accepts this decision. Jio is in the process of fully complying with the regulators advice, and will be withdrawing the three months complimentary benefits of Jio Summer Surprise as soon as operationally feasible, over the next few days, the statement added. Here are five things you need to know about Reliance Jio and its offer: 1) What is the offer? On March 31, Jio announced its Jio Summer Surprise offer. Under this offer all Jio Prime members making their first recharge payment of Rs 303 (or higher) plans got three months complimentary services in addition to the benefits of their purchased plan. The company on March 31 in a statement said: Every Jio Prime member, when they make their first paid recharge prior to April 15 using Jios Rs 303 plan (or any higher value plan), will get services for the initial three months on a complimentary basis. The paid tariff plan will be applied only in July, after the expiry of the complimentary service. Looking at the unprecedented rush of subscription, the company had also extended the deadline to buy Jios Rs 303 (and other) plans till April 15. 2) Those who have offer already wont be hit All customers who have subscribed to the aforementioned offer prior to its discontinuation will remain eligible for the offer. Trai had previously found nothing wrong with its extended promotional offers of free data and voice that had helped Jio clock 100 million customers. 3) 72 million signed up for Jio Prime in one month Reliance Jio had announced that in just one month, over 72 million Jio customers have signed up for Jio Prime, making it one of the most successful customer privilege programmes anywhere in the world. With 72 million subscribers enrolling for prime membership till March 31, Reliance Jio will remain disruptive given its aspirations, investment banking firm Jefferies said in its recent report. The newcomer in the industry has over 100 million customers. 4) Where it all began The newcomer, Reliance Jio, had launched a free voice and data plan in September 2016 and had extended it till March 31, 2017. Reliance Jio had launched the Welcome Offer on September 5, 2016, which was valid for 90 days with extended benefit till December 31, 2016. In December, Jio extended the freebies till March 31, 2017, much to the ire of other operators who alleged that such freebies not only hit their profitability and disrupted the market but were also against the regulations. 5) Trai says new quality norms for cellular services soon Telecom regulator Trai has said it will bring out in the next few weeks its order on the revised quality of service norms for mobile services, including benchmarks for newer technologies like VoLTE. On quality of service norms and parameters, on how to redefine them, what should be the values, the granularity... should the call quality be measured at the level of service area, or towers, or district... on all those issues, we had held consultations and we will take a decision in a few weeks, Trai chairman RS Sharma said. Sharma, who was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a Ficci event, said the decision will come in the form of a regulation or order by Trai. Two teenagers of a four-member group reportedly drowned at Girgaum Chowpatty on Friday. The body of a 16-year-old boy was fished out of the Arabian Sea by a rescue team. At the time of going to press, the team was looking for the body of his friend. Local fishermen had saved the others. The police said the teens, all Dharavi residents, ignored the fishermens warnings. We learnt that the group came to the beach as they had finished their final examinations on Friday. Fishermen saw the four of them screaming for help and successfully rescued two, said an officer from DB Marg police station. The body of Atharva Kharulkhar was taken to GT Hospital. Police, lifeguards and the fire brigade are still on the lookout for Dheeraj Lokres body.Surviving members Abhishek Kokane and Aniket fled after they were rescued. The lifeguard then informed the local police about the incident. A case of accidental death was registered by the DB Marg police. Senior police inspector Pandurang Shinde from DB Marg police station said the police are trying to ascertain whether the group came to the beach directly from school. He added that they were trying to contact Kokane. Read Child drowns, mother survives after stroll on Juhu beach Two drown at Juhu Beach in Mumbai, third such incident in past 30 days SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Yogi Adityanath-led government in Uttar Pradesh issued an order on Friday to include yoga as part of the curriculum in government schools across the state from the new academic session. On Tuesday, Adityanath directed officials to ensure that compulsory yoga education programmes start at all state government schools while chairing a meeting of education department officials. Deputy chief minister Dinesh Sharma said students of Class 5 to 12 will learn the ancient Indian exercise as part of physical education in their schools. He had announced that yoga will be included as part of school curriculum at the inauguration of Yoga Mahotsav at Indira Gandhi Pratishthan in Lucknow on March 29. I issued the directive to include yoga under physical education in all the schools from the new session three days ago, but the order has been formally issued by the principal secretary today (Friday), Sharma, who is also minister for secondary education, told Hindustan Times. However, no one will be forced to do any asanas (postures) like Surya Namaskar. Anyone who wants to join yoga will be welcomed, he added. Plans to introduce yoga in schools earlier had faced opposition by some Muslim organisations who said it is essentially a Hindu religious practise and that chanting Om or performing the Surya Namaskar is against Islam. Sharma said yoga should not be branded as communal and added that it is a way of life. It will benefit the students in handling day-to-day stress, besides making them physically strong. Even the Islamic countries celebrate World Yoga Day on June 21. We are trying to improve the quality of education and this is a step in that direction, he said. Sharma was referring to the annual International Day of Yoga that Prime Minister Narendra Modi pushed to be celebrated worldwide soon after winning power in 2014. We have fulfilled the promise of including yoga in the curriculum. Sanskrit board will be constituted too, Sharma, who had also promised that a separate board to promote Sanskrit education would be set up in the state, said. The minister added the process to form a panel for Board of Sanskrit Secondary Education was on and that the board will affiliate, conduct examinations and make available grant-in-aid to the schools following its curriculum. It will be the first of its kind in the country. The state already has a Sanskrit Board but it is more or less defunct. Only a handful of officials are running it, but now I will appoint some noted Sanskrit scholars, intellectuals, professors and writers to upgrade it, he said. Ramdevs Patanjali Vidyapeeth had organised the Yoga Mahotsav in March and the yoga guru had requested the state government to establish a Sanskrit university in Uttar Pradesh and improve the condition of Sanskrit schools. He had also demanded the inclusion of yoga in schools. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 7 By Samir Ali Trend: The Nasimi District Court in Baku, during a legal proceeding, extended the detention term of blogger Alexander Lapshin for three months, Lapshins lawyer Eduard Chernin told Trend. The lawyer added that Lapshin was also present at the proceeding. Chernin noted that he inquired about the bloggers detention conditions. Lapshin said he had no complaints regarding his detention conditions and health. Alexander Lapshin is a citizen of several countries and has had a criminal conspiracy with Armenians living in the occupied Azerbaijani territories. He also illegally visited these territories. Lapshin is accused of violating Azerbaijani laws on state border in April 2011 and October 2012. On Jan. 17, 2017, Alexei Stuk, deputy prosecutor general of Belarus, issued a ruling on Lapshins extradition to Azerbaijan. Lapshin was brought to Azerbaijan on Feb. 7. Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina arrived in New Delhi on Friday on a four-day visit, and was received by PM Narendra Modi at the airport. Modi welcomed Hasina with a bouquet at the Delhi airport. Both the sides would be signing at least 25 pacts in various key sectors including civil nuclear cooperation and defence but there was unlikely to be any agreement on the Teesta water sharing. Strengthening attack on the Arvind Kejriwal-led Delhi government over findings of the Shunglu Committee, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday demanded CBI and CVC probes into illegal decisions of the AAP dispensation as flagged by the panel in its report. The party also demanded Lieutenant Governor (L-G) Anil Baijal to set aside all appointments of AAP functionaries in the Delhi government, made without the L-Gs approval. Vijender Gupta, leader of opposition, said the committee report had established that the AAP has committed the greatest breach of public trust. The report has proved that there was violation of constitutional and legal provisions, and nepotism. The government misused public money. It is gross misuse of power committed by AAP, he said. The committee headed by former CAG VK Shunglu was set up in August 2016, to ascertain the functioning of the AAP government. Delhi Congress chief Ajay Maken had accessed the report through an RTI in February. BJP leader Meenakshi Lekhi alleged that Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal looted public money to benefit AAP functionaries. We demanded CBI and Central Vigilance Commission probes into the three-member Shunglu panel report, which has flagged the AAP-led Delhi governments various illegal decisions including appointment of party functionaries, and allotment of land to AAP for its office, she said in a press conference. Gupta also raised 10 points pertaining to its unconstitutional approach, violation of rules in selection of government lawyers, arbitrary appointments of relatives of AAP ministers or workers, and facilitating huge financial benefits to them. Is it not true that CM and his colleagues did their best to demean and demoralise senior IAS and DANICS Officer and weakened the positions of the bureaucracy? Is it not true that Delhi government did its best to compromise the supremacy of the L-G, the administrator appointed by the President of India for the city? he asked. The BJP leader also alleged that the AAP government exercised statutory powers without any constitutional or legal backing. It sought refuge in councils decisions taken without following due procedures. A number of decisions were deliberately taken at CMs level, which required L-Gs approval, Gupta said. On Thursday, BJP demanded suspension of the AAP government, which enjoys a massive mandate of 65 out of 70 seats in the assembly. Now the LGBTQ community in the city will have a safe space to express themselves, receive counselling, and intervention during a crisis. The Humsafar Trust, one of the oldest gay mens and LGBTQ rights organisation in India is setting up a Delhi centre. The organisation, primarily based out of Mumbai, was founded by Ashok Row Kavi, a journalist and activist who was one of the first persons in India to declare his sexual orientation in 1984. There are several organisations that are working with men having sex with men and transgender people, but their main focus is on prevention of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. However, there is no one in the city focussing on mental health issues, said Yashwinder Singh, manager of the CONNECT project under Humsafar Trust. If I have problems in integrating with the society, if I am being bullied or if I am being evicted from my house for my sexual orientation, HIV would be the last thing on my mind. I would want to speak to people like me. That is the gap Humsafar Trust will be filling in, Singh said. The drop-off centre at Humsafar Trusts office in East of Kailash will be a safe space for people from LGBTQ community to meet, talk about their issues, take part in various activities and express themselves without any fear. The centre will also provide primary counselling and is in the process of tying up with mental health experts across the city for counselling on various mental health issues. Mental health issues are a double whammy for the LGBTQ community. As such in India, people do not readily speak about or seek help for mental illnesses. It becomes more difficult for gay men or transgender people to reach out, Singh observed. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Delhi Police detained three men on Friday for the attack on a 45-year-old freelance journalist. The three are alleged drug addicts and live in JJ Colony in Ashok Vihar. The detention came two days after journalist Aparna Kalra was attacked in a public park, where she had gone for an evening walk. Sources said one of the men had attacked Kalra with a stone after she objected to them drinking in the park. Kalra had raised an alarm, following which one of them hit her with a stone and fled. The stone used in the attack was found near the spot. Police had registered a case of attempt to murder. In a brief conversation soon after the attack, Kalra told the police she was assaulted by two people.The police are reportedly looking at robbery, harassment and personal enmity and have questioned more than 100 suspects in Ashok Vihar, Bharat Nagar and nearby areas. Kalra was admitted to the hospital with severe head injuries. She was stable, conscious and talking, doctors said on Friday. Kalra is being treated at the intensive care unit (ICU) for haematoma or blood clot in her brain. She is conscious, and is speaking, said a source in the hospital. Kalra suffered severe brain injuries after she was attacked by an unidentified person at a public park in northwest Delhis Ashok Vihar on Wednesday. She was found lying unconscious in a pool of blood by passersby, one of whom informed the police. Kalras sister had brought her to the Fortis Hospitals emergency at 9.20pm on Wednesday. She suffered frontal-lobe fractures in her skull. Residents had found her lying unconscious in a pool of blood at an Ashok Vihar park on Wednesday evening, where she had gone for her evening stroll at around 6.15pm. She was brought in by her sister, who had earlier taken her to Deep Chand Bandhu Hospital, which referred her to Fortis. She had a lot of fluid (cerebrospinal fluid) collection in her brain cavities, and underwent an emergency surgery to remove it at late night, said a doctor treating her at Fortis. A 50-year-old street food vendor was brutally stabbed to death in full public view, allegedly by a 23-year-old stalker of his daughter at the slum near Amar Colony at around 10 pm on Thursday. The accused identified as Bal Karan Yadav, who was jailed in 2013 in a molestation case filed by the vendors daughter. A senior police official said Yadav had allegedly developed animosity against the vendor and his family ever since he was arrested on the molestation charges. He did not let go of the resentment against them even after he was bailed out in November 2014. After he got out of the jail, Yadav was not only looking for an opportunity to settle scores, but also continued to harass the girl whenever he got a chance. Yadavs family had also been pressuring the girls family to withdraw the case, and warned them of consequences if they didnt. The girl had even stopped stepping out of home because of the harassment. Yadav and his friends used to stalk her and pass lewd comments at her, said the officer. Following this, the girls family lodged a fresh complaint on January 31, in which they named Yadav and his friends. This aggravated Yadavs anger towards the family. On Thursday night, the vendor was selling snacks at Kalicharan Camp area when Yadav picked up an argument with him over withdrawal of the complaint. When the vendor refused to budge, Yadav stabbed him in front of a large crowd 24 times in with a 13-inch-long knife till the man collapsed. When Yadav tried to flee after the attack, some witnesses chased him. He was running along the main road towards Modi Mill flyover with the knife, blood stains and a crowd behind him, when he was intercepted by Okhla police station head constable Jitender, who was patrolling the area on a motorcycle, said DCP (south-east) Romil Baaniya. When Jitender asked him to surrender, Yadav threatened to kill him as well. When the constable took out his service pistol and aimed at him, the accused threw stones at him. However, Jitender overpowered him. He seized the knife as well, said Baaniya. Meanwhile, relatives of the deceased alleged that despite them filing a fresh complaint of sexual harassment and threats, the local police failed to take any action. Our family members were being harassed and threatened for long and we had been seeking police intervention. But our requests remained unheard, said a relative. Delhi vs Mumbai? You must be joking. Theres absolutely no competition between these two cities. Delhi is by far oh well, we cant lose out on our Mumbai readers, after all. Instead, we shall simply bark and boast by riding on the coattails of Neha Kumar, the poet behind Delhis reply to Bombayyes, thats a poem and one hell of a Delhi-Bombay poem. We met Neha at her beautiful home in South Delhis Vasant Kunj where she lives with her cats Oh Dear and Oh My. (Oh Dear, the fatter of the two cats, has her own rocking chair, while Oh My is a hopeless wanderer whom we saw hiding under the dining table). Neha, who works in the field of green investment, usually writes poems on her phone as responses to friends messages. Delhis reply to Bombay was her reply to Harnidh Kaurs poem Dear Bombay that was sent to her on WhatsApp by a friend who lives in Delhi but is from Bombay. As soon as Neha finished reading it, she immediately replied to her friend, WhatsApping, Oh, delicious but then she realized that these two words alone could not be her response. So she started tapping verses after verses on her smartphone and her poem was ready in 15 minutes flat. Delhis reply to Bombay Oh, delicious, but that cannot be my only response. You know how I breathe the hot air of Delhi, sometimes Choking at Safdarjung Enclave in the fumes of a long day And, flirting at the traffic signal at Ber Sarai With the idea of going straight down on Asaf Ali Road Or turning right, past JNU, where the Freedom Square holds My anti-national spirit aglow in the evening sun That turns the skies peach and white, over The Nelson Mandela Marg un-congested and wide Like the morning walk in the Biodiversity Park I love you like the delight at seeing the lake in Deer Park After all these years of loving and quarrelling with Munirka, Patparganj, Civil lines and Jor Bagh I love you like Lutyens and I love you like Lajpat Nagar I love you like the shade of that tree at Humayuns tomb I love you like the burst of bougainvillea and Amaltas That make the summer feel gentle when it is scorching gloom I love you like the rhythmic echoes from the past Of horses that must have trotted across the Red Fort I love you in an undying manner of sorts Wounded and healed and happy and sad Like the memory of that aircraft touching down At Jumbo Point. I will love you like a girl lost In the pleasures of vada and coffee I will love you like a woman loves her man Between the wild desires of ShapurJat And the placid curves of Chankayapuri. I will love you while holding And I will love you while leaving. Let me. Unlike most amateur poets, Neha is very modest about her poetic skills and insists she is absolutely untrained in the art of poetry writing. Her lines, she says, are mere outpourings, and are not metered and dont follow particular poetic rules. That said, Neha has written quite a few poems and they all are accessible exclusively to her Facebook friends (we are not counting those lucky friends who receive the first draft of her poems as her WhatsApp messages.) Nehas parents live in western Uttar Pradesh while she herself has been living in Delhi since 1997. She first arrived in the city as a student in Jawaharlal Nehru University. Since then she has been a veteran resident of many sectors in Gurgaon and many sectors in Vasant Kunj. In other words, her anti-national spirit was experienced enough in Delhi to muse confidently on the wild desires of Shahpur Jat as well as with the flirting at the traffic signal at Ber Sarai. Delhi -born actor Manjot Singh won hearts with his performances in films such as Oye Lucky, Lucky Oye (2008) and Fukrey (2013). How this Delhi boy became an actor is an interesting tale, which he narrates with signature Delhi swag. Har Dilli waale mein chull hoti hai, ki agar kuch ho raha hai, toh woh bolenge haan main bhi kar loonga, says the actor, recalling that his friend was going to the audition of Oye Lucky, Lucky Oye. I told him, mera bhi kara de audition (laughs). I auditioned for a small role previously, but was later called for a proper audition. This was my first attempt at an audition. I had never done acting or participated in school plays before, says Singh, who was in ninth grade at that time and considered the field to be tough and full of struggles. I did my graduation with correspondence.Everyone tells me that I missed my college life While his acting fetched him awards, his dream of graduating from Delhi University (DU) was left unfulfilled. I did my graduation through correspondence from DU. I got admission in Hindu College, but unfortunately, for some reason, they hadnt released the list for Dramatics (Extra-curricular activities) quota. And when they called me again for auditions, I was shooting for Student of The Year (2012). So, I couldnt go for it and lost the opportunity. Everyone tells me that I missed my college life. The actor, who has been previously invited to SRCC and Hansraj College as chief guest for various cultural events, says hes proud of the fact that he has come a long way. Its a great feeling. I love the appreciation that comes my way. I feel Im part of the industry when popular actors know me by name, says Singh who has been a part of films such as Fukrey(2013),Student of the Year(2013). Mention his hometown Delhi and the actor cant stop raving about his favourite hangouts and the famous Delhi lingo. My favourite hangout spots are Khan Market, Connaught Place, and Cyber Hub in Gurgaon. I miss my family, and especially the home-cooked food that I used to get back in the Capital. Its a proud feeling when I shoot for my films in the city. I feel lucky that I was born and brought up here and have the Delhi lingo.Bombay ki Hindi, is not up to the mark. Sometime I correct people, ki aise nahi aise, says Singh, who shifted to Mumbai in 2016. Follow @htshowbiz for more SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON In a brutal murder inside a temple in south Delhis Ambedkar Nagar on Thursday night, four men allegedly pulled out a sword on display next to the statue of a deity to repeatedly stab a 30-year-old man. The killers had brought along knives with which they also used to allegedly stab Permal 14 times, killing him inside the temple. The brutal murder happened in the presence of Permals wife who too was allegedly beaten by the killers. It was on her statement that the police registered a murder case. The four alleged killers and their victim lived in the same locality in Dakshinpuri Extension. All of them are from Tamil Nadu and do odd jobs or work with private firms for a living. A senior police officer said that Permal and the four accused were involved in quarrels and scuffles in the past. Locals intervened before the situation got out of hand. At around 10pm on Thursday, Permal was in the temple with his wife and friend when the four suspects walked in. One of them allegedly passed a remark at Permals friend, raking up their past differences. That soon snowballed into a scuffle in which Permal tried to intervene. It soon turned into bloody violence as some of these men used knives while one of them pulled out a sword next to a deitys statue to stab Permal. His wife tried to intervene and save him, but she was allegedly beaten up. Hearing Permals cries, locals rushed into the temple, but the assailants had escaped by then. Romil Baaniya, DCP (South-East), said the police were informed at 10.11pm. Armed with the identities of the suspects, police formed two teams to nab the killers. We have arrested R Sriniwas, R Shekhar and R Nateshan. The fourth accused is on the run, but we hope to nab him soon, said the DCP. Police have narrowed down three plausible motives behind the attack on a 45-year-old freelance journalist by unidentified people at a public park in northwest Delhis Ashok Vihar that left her with severe brain injuries. Doctors have said Aparna Kalra, who is being treated at the intensive care unit (ICU) of a private hospital for haematoma or blood clot in her brain, is stable, conscious and talking. She also underwent an emergency surgery to remove fluid in her brain cavities late on Tuesday night. In a brief conversation soon after the attack, Kalra told the police she was attacked by two people. Police said they have registered a case of attempt to murder and that the attack was possibly carried out with iron rods but were clueless about possible suspects. Robbery, harassment by drug addicts and personal enmity are the three angles the police are probing even as they have questioned more than 100 suspects in Ashok Vihar, Bharat Nagar and nearby areas. Investigators initially ruled out robbery as the motivation behind the crime as Kalra did not carry her mobile phone, wallet or any valuables when she went to the park, Picnic Hut, at 6.15pm on Wednesday. They were forced to consider these options as the DDA park, where the crime happened, is said to be a hotbed of drug addicts and local criminals. But drug addicts in this area are notorious for attacking people even for as little as Rs 50. It is possible that the attacker first wanted to knock the woman unconscious before searching her for cash and mobile phone, a senior investigator said about the line of the probe. Harassment by drug addicts frequenting the park also appears likely, police said. Doctors have confirmed there was no sexual assault on the woman, but we are probing if she was attacked for hitting out at any advances by unwanted elements in the park, said the officer. Police are also probing whether personal enmity prompted the murder attempt. They have deployed teams in her neighbourhood to find out if any service provider, neighbour or relative held any grudge against her over even the slightest of issues that sometimes lead to brutal attacks. It is likely that someone was waiting to target her and found the huge park as the perfect place to attack her without immediately alerting people. We are also waiting to speak to her to know about her all possible enmities, said the officer. Kalras family, however, has said they were not aware of her enmity with anyone. Doctors treating her at the Fortis Hospital in Shalimar Bagh have not permitted the police to speak to her yet. Doctors have told us she is stable. Another CT-scan of her brain is set to be conducted before afternoon, Kalras uncle, HC Bhatia, said on Friday morning. Northwest district police said more than 100 personnel are trying to identify and nab the assailants and that they have released all suspects, barring about a dozen men with criminal past or drug addiction, after questioning them. We have deployed our sources in all the slums within a three-kilometre radius of the park where the woman was assaulted. About 12-15 of the 100 suspects rounded up by us continue to remain under our radar, said another investigator. A woman scrap dealer and another, the daughter of a man who was one of the initial members of the BJP in the 80s are among the five Muslim candidates contesting the Delhi municipal elections on a BJP ticket. The party fielded 6 Muslim contestants, one more than what they had in 2012 MCD election. The election commission rejected the nomination of one candidate on Wednesday evening because of an error in his form. The Muslim names in the list created a buzz in the backdrop of the saffron party not fielding even a single Muslim candidate in the recently-concluded assembly elections to the five state assemblies. For these chosen five, the challenge would be besides beating a decade-old anti-incumbency against the party to communicate BJPs agenda to a group which is not known to support the party. Some of the issues that unite them are their praise for UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath and his anti-Romeo squads, and their opposition to cow slaughter and triple talaq. Locked in an unprecedented six-cornered fight, HT tracks the six odd balls and asks them what their plan of action is. Rubina Begum,52, Ward: Quresh Nagar Rubina Begums mother and brother have both represented the ward in the municipality. Rubina Begum is the only exception to the partys pre-poll claim of not fielding relatives of sitting candidates. Last month, the BJP had claimed that tickets would not be given to the relatives of the present councillors. Though there are some candidates related to BJP leaders, Begum will be fighting in place of her mother. She is the daughter of Hoor Bano, BJPs sitting councillor in ward 89 N Quresh Nagar. Begum familys said her father was a supporter when BJP founders were still a part of the Janta party. Begums father was Delhi metropolitan council member (equivalent to an MLA today) when Delhi was not a state. Before her mother, her brother Ismail was a councillor in 2007-12. We are hardworking grass root party workers and have got the ticket. The familys good work is the reason for the exception, said her relative Haroon Ismail. Begum, a twelfth pass, mother of three, is married to a businessman in Sadar Bazar. Unlike other wards, where the party has fielded Muslims, Quresh Nagar in north Delhis Bara Hindu Rao has a sizeable Hindu population. The ward has around 60,000 voters. Around 35,000 are Muslim voters. Begum, contesting for the first time will be fighting a ten year anti-incumbency of two terms led by her elder brother and mother. The AAP and the Congress have also put up Muslim faces in this ward, reserved for women. Kunwar Rafi,37, Ward: Zakir Nagar Kunwar Rafi runs a computer shop in Nehru place. He does not hold BJP responsible for Muzaffarnagar riots. Rafi, who runs a computer shop at Nehru Place, is associated with the BJP for the past 10 years. Rafi, who has studied up to Class 12, plans to induct his other Muslim friends into the party. The country is doing well under the BJP rule. There is no corruption, no riots. Why shouldnt we too be part of our countrys growth? he asks. Rafi is a resident of Muzaffanagar, Uttar Pradesh where riots broke out in 2013. Rafi does not buy allegations that BJP leaders were behind the violence. The BJP was not at the Centre then. I always tell this to my brothers. Rafi claims that he helped the local residents during the last years outbreak of dengue and chikungunya and it will now help him win their support. Fahimuddin Saifi,30, Ward: Delhi Gate Saifi is the youngest among the five Muslim BJP candidates. Saifi claims he has been a party worker since July 2011. I am a businessman and have been inspired by former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Modiji, when he was still a chief minister. I joined the BJP when I realized that in all these years, Muslims have only gotten poorer. Most parties only exploited Muslims for votes. Saifi, runs a steel business, says he supports the anti-romeo squads in UP. This is actually what Muslims should have been doing -- ensuring that no one sleeps hungry or dare to harass our sisters. Yogi Adityanath is doing it. Anti-Romeo squads can ensure incidents like the Bulandshahr highway rape are not repeated, he said. Saifi claims he was once a part of the Congress, but did not hold any party post. Sartaj Ahmed, 43, Ward: Chauhan Bangar Sartaj Ahmed campaigns in Chauhan Bangar area. (Raj K Raj/HT PHOTO) This month marks Sartaj Ahmeds 11th year in the BJP. Ahmed, who runs a metal box manufacturing firm, had joined the BJP in April 2006. Ahmed held many posts in the local unit of the party. This is my first election. I am happy that the party has given foot soldiers like me a chance. Ahmed says people in this Muslim-dominated area know him for his round-the-clock work in helping residents get ration cards, solve power problems. Ahmed has never met Modi or BJP president Amit Shah but says the fact that he has got a ticket has only strengthen his resolve to work for the party. Sabra Malik, 42, Ward: Mustafabad Sabra Malik campaigns in Mustfabad area. She says that besides local issues she would also raise the issue of triple talaq. (Raj K Raj/HT PHOTO) A woman who till recently helped her husband dismantle scrap outside their home, Sabra Malik, a mother of five, has taken a break from work and is busy campaigning. The lone Muslim woman in the BJP list is contesting from the Mustafabad ward in northeast Delhi. Malik says her family has been a supporter of BJP for the past 17 years. Besides local problems, Sabra says she will raise the issue of triple talaq. She also supports the ban on slaughter house in Uttar Pradesh. The law is the same for everyone. Anything illegal should be banned. Legal meat shops are not being closed, she said. Sabras husband, Yusuf Malik, claims he supports the BJP stand on triple talaq. How can a woman be thrown out just because her husband repeated a word thrice. I hope my wifes stand will find resonance with the Muslim women in the area. SELF-PROFESSED SUSHMA FAN LEFT OUT Jamal Haider,52, Ward: Abu Fazal Enclave Jamal Haider had offered to donate his kidney to Union external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj. His nomination was rejected due to an error in his papers. (Burhaan Kinu/HT PHOTO) I have two gods, one above and Sushmaji below, said Jamal Haider who had offered to donate his kidney to Sushma Swaraj when she was in AIIMS. However, Haiders god was with him, fate wasnt. Haiders nomination was rejected by the Election Commission because of an error in his form. A party worker since 1988, Haider was one of the first to write to AIIMS offering to donate his kidney to the union external affairs minister last year. When HT met him on Tuesday, Haider was confident of a win and thanked Swaraj for giving a ticket. She is a great leader. The party has given foot soldiers like me a ticket. I have been part of protests and social work all these years. The party has rewarded me, he had said. In his resume submitted to the party office, the last line read: Was the first to offer kidney to Sushma Swaraj. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 6 By Azad Hasanli Trend: The Asian Development Bank (ADB) forecasts Azerbaijans GDP growth at 1.2 percent in 2018, according to an ADB report titled "Asian Development Outlook 2017: Transcending the Middle-Income Challenge". GDP is projected to contract by 1.1 percent in 2017, said ADB, adding that however, it is forecast to turn up by 1.2 percent in 2018 with the onset of production from the Shah Deniz gas field and some recovery anticipated among private firms. According to the report, gas condensate production within the Shah Deniz Stage 2 will help industry expand by 1 percent in 2018. Meanwhile, ADB experts forecast Azerbaijans net exports to improve in 2017 and particularly in 2018. Total exports are projected to grow by 22.6 percent in 2017 with the projected improvement in oil prices and expand by a further 15 percent in 2018 as the Shah Deniz gas field starts producing. Imports are expected to contract by 6.2 percent in 2017, then expand by 12.5 percent in 2018, says the ADB forecast. According to ADB, which lists Azerbaijan as a Central Asian country in its report, the growth in Central Asia is projected to accelerate to 3.1 percent in 2017 and 3.5 percent in 2018. ADB, based in Manila, was established in 1966 and is dedicated to reducing poverty in Asia and the Pacific through inclusive economic growth, environmentally sustainable growth and regional integration. Azerbaijan became an ADB member on Dec. 22, 1999. An Air India flight from Delhi to Kolkata was delayed by 39 minutes on Friday after a Trinamool Congress MP Dola Sen allegedly triggered a ruckus on board. Sources said the AI staff had requested Sen, a Rajya Sabha member, to shift her mother from the emergency exit, but the MP refused. Sen had booked the flight through online portal and was seated on the 11 row, which was the emergency exit. Safety regulations do not allow elderly people to sit next to the emergency exit. Pilot of the flight had to interfere & even offered a seat in business class. Passengers also objected giving example of Gaikwad. @htTweets Faizan Haidar (@FaiHaider) April 7, 2017 The incident came close on the heels of Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad landing in the eye of the storm after allegedly assaulting an Air India staffer on board. He was grounded by six airlines, and had to express regret in a letter to the civil aviation minister in the face of fierce criticism. Air India later lifted the flight ban on him following the Centres intervention. On Friday, the pilot of Sens flight intervened in the matter and offered to shift her mother to business class. However, Sen refused, saying that she too should be shifted along with another accompanying passenger. The airline was unable to comply, leading to an argument on board. The flight got delayed by 39 minutes as TMC leader wanted written assurance that no one will blame her for delay. The flight got delayed by 39 minutes as TMC leader wanted written assurance that no one will blame her for delay. @htTweets @htdelhi Faizan Haidar (@FaiHaider) April 7, 2017 Sources said that other passengers objected, citing the example of Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad, who had assaulted an Air India manager last month. Gaikwad was banned from flying by Air India and five other airlines. The ban was lifted just this afternoon after the civil aviation ministry intervened, following a ruckus in Parliament. Lack of sufficient calibrated data and general apathy among the civic society are probably some of the biggest challenges to combating air pollution in India, say experts. According to some experts and studies, Delhi-NCR region would need around 100 monitoring stations to detect the quality of the air residents breathe. But there are about only 30. In fact, Indias average number of monitoring stations per major city is around two, as compared to Chinas eight, or the USs five, said Sameera Kumar Anthapur of World Research Institute (WRI) India. In Delhi, there are six operational air quality monitoring stations run by the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC), and by the end of this year, 20 more stations are expected to be added on the Supreme Courts directions. The addition will be pivotal to measuring and monitoring of air quality, which will help in the fight against pollution. If there is not enough data, we cant identify the problems and propose solutions, said Abhishek Pratap, programme director of Center for Environment and Energy Development (CEED), during a roundtable discussion about air pollution on Friday at the Connect Karo 2017 conference organised by the WRI. But the kind of data that is available also matters a lot, said B Sengupta, former member secretary,Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB). Sengupta called for speciation of chemicals and pollutants, identification of pollutants that go beyond the regular particulate matter, proper training of personnel who deal with the monitors, and ensuring the monitoring devices are placed at suitable locations to give realistic readings. The challenge does not end with monitoring and measuring, as action plans need to be constituted to ensure air quality standards are maintained. Anumita Roychowdhury, executive director of the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), who was at the conference on her way back from the Supreme Court, where the Environment Pollution Control Authority (EPCA) had submitted its final draft of the comprehensive action plan to deal with air pollution in NCR, reiterated the importance of a good action plan. Soft options are over today. We need tougher action plans, she said. But the best of plans will fail unless the civic society can be made a part of the conversation and they support the initiatives too; take the example of the attempts to pedestrianise Connaught Place, the experts said. Somehow, because of public pressure, we could not do it. People wanted to park their cars right in front of the shops... There will be a lot of good work done by a lot of good people, but unfortunately people still do not know what they want... We need to connect with the people... People do not like to skip air pollution news, but there is also a rising apathy, said Parthaa Bosu, lead adviser India for Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). The Syrian civil war has taken another turn with the massive cruise missile strike by the United States on an airbase of the Bashar al-Assad government. The proximate cause of the attack was a horrific chemical gas attack on civilians near the province of Idlib, an attack that was likely carried out by the Assad regime. The question is whether this signifies a fundamental change in the US policy towards the Syrian conflict. That is not clear yet, especially given the highly personalised and mercurial nature of President Donald Trumps policy-making. Nonetheless, there are three observations that can be made about the attack. One, the attack has sent a strong signal that the Trump administration will no longer remain aloof as the Syrian war seemed to be headed towards an Assad victory and, therefore, a success for his Iranian and Russian backers. This does not mean Washington is again seeking Assads overthrow. Mr Trump noticeably called for a larger international effort to bring an end to the war. But the US now seems prepared to help the non-extremist rebels have a stronger hand in any future negotiations. Two, though designed to help other rebel factions the attack will give some breathing space to the Islamic State (IS). While the overthrow of the terrorist State remains the number one US strategic goal, the fact the IS as a territorial entity is now clearly on its last legs means more traditional geopolitical considerations are beginning to surface in the USs policy calculations. Three, there has been growing evidence, most notably the eviction of Mr Trumps chief strategist Stephen Bannon from the National Security Council, that the US presidents more ideologically-driven advisers are slowly being marginalised in the US government. Their influence remains and the Trump administration is likely to remain unpredictable and mercurial in many matters given the character of the president. But the Syrian attack, the increasing hostility to Russia, the return to a one-China policy and the seeming decision to not rip up the Iran-US nuclear agreement are among the signs that mainstream foreign-policy thinking is slowly seeping back into the White House and the line ministries below. With almost every major foreign policy and security position in the government whether the intelligence agencies, the Pentagon, the National Security Advisers post and the State Department held by seasoned veterans of the US establishment this should not come as a total surprise. The US ship of State is now starting to show an increasing tendency to hew to a straighter and more predictable course. This alone is a welcome development: Capriciousness at the highest level is unsettling in small countries, but with a superpower it is dangerous. Mr Trump is not the type to embed something like the Syrian attack in any larger strategic explanation, however, his actions give a sense of business as usual. A 21-year-old mans quest for justice was answered on Wednesday after some divine intervention, or so he claims. Ram Shankar Yadav, a 21-year-old resident of Bihar, was turned away by three police stations in Delhi and one in Gurgaon when he tried lodging a case of cheating against three men. That was when Yadav decided to write an emotional letter on January 10 this year to the Prime Ministers Office addressing Narendra Modi as his bhagwan (god) and himself as a bhakt (devotee) in distress. Almost three months after, his prayers seem to have been answered with Yadav getting a call from the Metro police station in Gurgaon on Wednesday for lodging a case on his complaint. Yadav claimed that he was duped by three men in a Metro train when he was on his way to New Delhi station to board a train to Bihar on January 2. Turned away by police, this loot victim thought of Bhagwan, sent letter to @narendramodi & got response, video by @Sanjeeverma786 @htTweets pic.twitter.com/mW2TMUCmQp Rashpal Singh (@rashysingh) April 7, 2017 Yadav, who works as an office boy in Gurgaons Sukhrali, said in his complaint that he met three people at MG road metro station who told him that they were also going to Bihar. One of the accused told Yadav that his uncle was a travelling ticket examiner (TTE) and they could get him a train ticket easily. The trio then asked Yadav to de-board to Kashmere Gate metro station and took him to Subhash Nagar on the pretext of getting him a ticket. There the accused apparently assaulted Yadav, snatched Rs 2,200 in cash, forcibly made him tell them his ATM pin and withdrew Rs 6,000 from his account. The accused also took away his bag that contained his original education certificates. I am doing graduation through correspondence and was going to my village in Madhubani district to correct a gaffe in attendance. Due to the incident, I have lost all my academic certificates now, Yadav told HT. After being robbed, Yadav got in touch with his employer who in turn asked him to file a police complaint. I went to Subhash Place police station from where I was sent to Kashmere Gate metro police station. From there I was referred to Rithala police station, where too no one listened to my plea. I also approached a local police station in Gurgaon, but nothing happened, Yadav said. It was then that he wrote a letter to the PMO, almost a week after the incident. Wo (Modi) raja hain aur raja bhagwan hote hain (he is king and king is god), Yadav said. Following the PMOs intervention, the police at Metro police station in Gurgaon filed a case under sections 406 (criminal breach of trust) and 420 (fraud). We are trying to retrieve CCTV footage and identify the accused, said sub-inspector Balwant Singh of Metro police station. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Following the direction of the Haryana government, the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) has notified a policy to regularise nursing homes running in residential areas of the city and grant permission to new ones. The new notification has brought uniformity in guidelines with regard to setting up nursing homes in residential areas and streamline by-laws. Areas falling under the Haryana urban development authority (Huda), Housing Board and licenced colonies would not be covered under this policy. As per MCG officials, the existing nursing homes had been operating under the Haryana Municipal Corporation Act, 1994, and the Haryana Municipal Act, 1973. The guidelines for nursing homes in these by-laws differed from each other, adding to confusion and lack of clarity and not enabling officials to act against those flouting the norms. Sudhir Singh Chauhan, Senior Town Planner, MCG said provisions for regularisation would not apply to nursing homes that have been operating before 1973 when there were no by-laws for them. Under the new policy, owners of nursing homes would also have to seek permission before changing or adding to the construction. The existing nursing homes (built after 1973), which do not fulfil the policy parameters, will be allowed to continue at the present site for 10 years on the condition that they would conform to the policy, Chauhan said. Read I Haryana to allow nursing homes in select residential sectors Chauhan added that if the nursing home owners do not conform to the policy in 10 years, the establishments will be sealed and a stiff penalty will be imposed on the owners. As per the guidelines under the new policy, the building parking space for four wheelers at the nursing homes should exceed the number of beds. In cases where the nursing home operators are tenants, one years annual conversion charges would have to be paid in advance to the MCG before the start of the new financial year or, failing which operating licence would lapse automatically. The percentage of men and women who use tobacco every day has dropped in most nations since 1990, but the total number of smokers and tobacco-related deaths has increased, a consortium of researchers reported Thursday. Mortality could rise even further as major tobacco companies aggressively target new markets, especially in the developing world, they warned in a report, published in the medical journal The Lancet. One in four men and one in 20 women smoked daily in 2015, according to the Global Burden of Diseases report, compiled by hundreds of scientists. That was a significant drop compared to 25 years earlier, when one in three men, and one in 12 women, lit up every day. But the number of deaths attributed to tobacco -- which topped 6.4 million in 2015 -- went up by 4.7% over the same period due to the expanding world population, the report found. More than 930 million people smoked daily in 2015, compared to 870 million in 1990 -- a 7% jump. Smoking causes one in ten deaths worldwide, half of them in just four countries: China, India, the United States and Russia. Together with Indonesia, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Japan, Brazil, and Germany, they account for fully two-thirds of global tobacco use. Smoking remains the second largest risk factor for early death and disability after high blood pressure, said senior author Emmanuela Gakidou from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, in the US northwest. Some countries have seen sharp reductions in smoking driven by some combination of higher taxes, education campaigns, package warnings and programmes to help people kick the nicotine habit. Brazil was among the leaders over the 25-year period examined, with the percentage of daily smokers dropping from 29 to 12% among men, and from 19 to 8% among women. But Indonesia, Bangladesh and the Philippines -- where 47, 38 and 35% of men smoke, respectively -- saw no change from 1990 to 2015. In Russia -- where tobacco control policies were not put into place until 2014 -- the percentage of women who smoke climbed by more than four percent over the same period. Similar trends are emerging in much of Africa, the authors cautioned. The World Health Organization (WHO) projects that the number of men and women smoking in sub-Saharan Africa will go up 50 percent by 2025, compared to 2010 levels. Future mortality in low- and middle-income countries is likely to be huge, John Britton from the University of Nottinghams UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies wrote in a comment, also in The Lancet. Responsibility for the global tobacco epidemic lies mainly with a handful of multinational based in rich countries, he said. The modern tobacco industry profits from enslaving children and young people in poor countries into a lifelong addiction, and ultimately taking their lives for profit, he told AFP. The global response -- including a 180-nation tobacco control treaty inked in 2005 -- has focused mostly on users and not the supply, he added. The WHO has noted that tobacco is the only legal drug that kills many of its users when used exactly as intended by the manufacturers. It is estimated that half of daily smokers will die prematurely due to their tobacco habit unless they quit. Follow @htlifeandstyle for more April 6: A 36-year-old DTC driver shared his very first video message with his father over WhatsApp at Bindapur in southwest Delhi. It was a dying declaration, blaming some relatives for driving him to suicide. Before his father could react, he heard a scream. It was too late already. April 3: A 23-year-old man jumped off the 19th floor of a hotel in Bandra, Mumbai, after uploading a suicide tutorial on Facebook. The video has gone viral. April 1: Ten days after his wife committed suicide, a 30-year-old man from Kailash Nagar in East Delhi decided to follow suit. He was found hanging from the same ceiling fan that claimed her life. While a handful of suicides make it to the news, a majority is reduced to becoming mere statistics on the police departments crime data sheet. On many occasions, nobody even bothers to scrutinise the psychiatric issues that may have driven the person to taking the extreme step. Untreated depression is the leading cause of over 788,000 suicides that occur worldwide every year, roughly corresponding to one death in every 45 seconds. According to the Global Burden of Disease Study, it became Indias tenth-biggest cause of early death in 2015 rising two positions from 12th in 2005. Most of the cases took root in undiagnosed and untreated depression. This mental disorder affects nearly one in 20 people across India, the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates . It has declared Depression: Lets talk as the theme for World Health Day in an attempt to encourage people to come forward for treatment. In conversation | Dr. Hank Bekedam, WHO India Head on World Health Day Depression is not a rare disease. It affects 4-5% people across the globe. In India, it is everywhere. Depression affects not only the patient, but also those close to them, says Dr Henk Bekedam, WHO representative to India. The number of people living with depression in India has increased by 18.4% between 2005 and 2015. Urbanisation is definitely a cause, as is minimal interpersonal interactions and the modern way of living (inactivity). Take, for instance, the case of a 42-year-old Delhi woman living behind locked doors with her daughter ever since her husband died in a road accident in 2013. When police finally rescued them on March 23, both weighed just 25 kg each. Bekedam described depression as an ailment that few people like to talk about. Those with depression find it difficult to come forward, and those around them find it difficult to recognise, he said. It is more common among women (5.1%) than men (3.6%), and they are less likely to seek help or avail of treatment. DEPRESSION Down and Out Symptoms: Feeling low, social withdrawal, low self-worth, disturbed sleep, changes in appetite (eating too much or too little), fatigue, listlessness, poor concentration, irritability and short temper. Feeling low, social withdrawal, low self-worth, disturbed sleep, changes in appetite (eating too much or too little), fatigue, listlessness, poor concentration, irritability and short temper. If symptoms last for over two weeks, seek professional help. Mind the Numbers World Over 322 million (or 4.4%) suffer from depression. Its more common among women (5.1%) than men (3.6%). Has seen 788,000 suicide deaths, accounting for nearly 1.5% of all deaths worldwide. India Over 58 million people (or 4.5%) people suffer from depression. Suicide is the 10th most common cause of early death. Mental problems are the fifth-highest non-communicable cause of disability after heart disease, infections, neonatal disorders and cancer. Many in India still dont recognise depression as an ailment that can be treated and controlled. It is one of the leading causes of human rights abuse in the country, with affected people being locked up in rooms, tied to beds, kept isolated in hospitals or prisons or treated through traditional medical practices. However, things are already taking a turn for the better. Indias new reformist mental healthcare bill decriminalises suicide and empowers the mentally ill to choose a mode of treatment, refuse institutionalisation, and nominate somebody to ensure that their wishes are carried out. It also bans the use of degrading treatments including shock therapy on children, and specifies that adults be subjected to them only after the administration of anaesthesia with the district medical boards consent. The government-run Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences (IHBAS) in northeast Delhi runs the worlds busiest psychiatric out-patients department with over 900 people being treated every day. Despite the rush, hospital authorities remain sensitive to the needs of their patients. Even more remarkable is the fact that less than 1% people referred to this tertiary hospital from places across northern India are hospitalised. Even though most of the people brought here are critically ill, 99% get treated at home. If any patient does get hospitalised, its for a maximum of two to three weeks. Very rarely are they admitted for several months or years, said Dr Nimesh Desai, IHBAS director. Most long-stay patients are here because they have been abandoned by their families, or have no idea where they come from. Bollywood celebrities and popular media channels have played a laudable part in spreading awareness on depression over the last two years, spurring more people to seek treatment. Source: The New England Journal of Medicine Psychiatrists wrote over 9.4 million new prescriptions for antidepressants in 2016, up 12% from 8.4 million in 2015. Data provided by AIOCD Pharmasofttech AWACS, a pharmaceutical market research company, shows that the sale of these drugs has shot up by over 30% in the last four years from Rs 760 crore in 2013 to Rs 1,093 crore in 2016. Still, a majority of the affected people remain undiagnosed. Mental illnesses are chronic ailments that affect patients and their families for life. Psychosocial stressors social attitudes, discrimination and deprived opportunities add to the challenge of managing the illness. So we actively counsel patients and their families on the nature of the illness, treatment and possible side effects, says Dr Jahanara M Gajendragad, associate professor and head of psychiatric social work, IBHAS. Treating mental health disorders is a lifelong commitment for the patient, his/her family and the community as a whole. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Former Bond girl Gemma Arterton says she took up all sorts of roles at the start of her career but she isnt proud of them all. The 31-year-old actor says she is grateful for being offered all those films because they helped her grow, reported ES magazine. Coming from a working-class background - we were poor - then going to a drama school where they tell you, and rightly so, that youre probably not going to work most of the time, and suddenly being given all these opportunities when I left... Arterton and Jake Gyllenhaal in a still from Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. For the first seven or eight years of my career, I was doing stuff because I thought I should, or I thought I was lucky to get that part. And I am grateful - it set me up. But it sits really badly with me when I make something Im not proud of, or doesnt say what I want to say, says Arterton. Follow @htshowbiz for more As news of Don Rickless death spread, stars including Tom Hanks, Bob Saget and Amy Schumer, took to social media to pay their respects to the legendary comedian. Rickles died of kidney failure on Thursday at his home here, his publicist Paul Shefrin said. He was 90. The master of the comic insult, Rickles rose to fame in the 1950s through his association with the Rat Pack. Don Rickles, left, pretends to strangle fellow comedian Red Buttons prior to an Annual Stag Roast in Los Angeles. (AP) Although he was widely known as an insult comic, stars, especially those in the comedy world, refuted that with stories about his kindness. In a statement, Bob and Ginnie Newhart expressed their shock and condolences regarding Rickles death, reports variety.com. The statement read: He was called The Merchant of Venom but in truth, he was one of the kindest, caring and most sensitive human beings we have ever known. We are devastated and our world will never be the same. We were totally unprepared for this. Rose Marie, co-star of The Dick Van Dyke Show, also said: One of my dearest friends is gone. What a talent! He was remarkable and one of our favourites to work with on The Dick Van Dyke Show. I have known him since he came to California. I will miss him something terrible. Dick Van Dyke also paid tribute to the late comic. Those were the days, my friend Don. We thought theyd never end. We loved you so, Van Dyke tweeted. Those were the days, my friend Don. We thought they'd never end. We loved you so. Love, Dick and Arlene Dick Van Dyke (@iammrvandy) April 6, 2017 David Letterman said of the late comic: Don coming on our show was always a highlight for me. Just endless mischief and nonsense, and a guy who would make the audience go completely crazy. Such a professional, such a gentleman. I already miss him. Director Martin Scorsese, whom Rickles worked with in his 1995 crime drama Casino, appreciated the fact that he was able to see the evolution of Rickless comedy. Tom Hanks tweeted: A God died today. Don Rickles, we did not want to ever lose you. Never. Hanx. A God died today. Don Rickles, we did not want to ever lose you. Never. Hanx. Tom Hanks (@tomhanks) April 6, 2017 Jimmy Kimmel also posted: 90 years with Don Rickles werent enough. One of the sweetest and most lovely people I had the pleasure of knowing. We miss you already. 90 years with Don Rickles weren't enough. One of the sweetest and most lovely people I had the pleasure of knowing. We miss you already Jimmy Kimmel (@jimmykimmel) April 6, 2017 He was later a frequent and outrageous guest on The Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts, which ran on NBC from the mid-1970s to the mid-80s. The comedian, sarcastically nicknamed Mr Warmth, starred in Pajama Party and Kellys Heroes among other films, and was the voice of Mr Potato Head in the popular Toy Story. Mel Brooks tweeted: Don Rickles. One of the bravest, funniest, and sweetest guys that ever performed. A dear pal that we will all sorely miss. Don Rickles. One of the bravest, funniest, and sweetest guys that ever performed. A dear pal that we will all sorely miss. Mel Brooks (@MelBrooks) April 6, 2017 Mark Wahlberg said Don Rickles was an absolute legend, my favourite comedian, and also my friend. Rest in peace. #DonRickles was an absolute legend, my favorite comedian, and also my friend. Rest in peace. Mark Wahlberg (@mark_wahlberg) April 6, 2017 David Arquette said death wont stop Rickles from doing what he does best. Follow @htshowbiz for more Days before his body was spotted floating in Goas Mandovi river on November 5, 2015, Father Bismarque Dias had circulated a video naming builders, real estate agents and politicians, and said they should be held responsible if he died suddenly. This is what family and friends of the former Goan Catholic priest and activist are clutching on to, refusing to bury his body because they suspect he was murdered. The body has been lying in the morgue at Goa Medical College for nearly 17 months. On Monday, Goa human rights commission directed Diass remains be formally laid to rest, but his backers are resisting the move. Differences with the church over sale of land to a firm had seen Dias being disrobed, but he remains Father for many. Father Bismarque Dias knew his life was under threat. We were fighting several cases against the land mafia and builders who had occupied land in Vaxim, St Estevam and Tiracol. The way he used to criticise the church also earned him enemies, said Sudeep Dalvi, a close aide of Dias and also a petitioner seeking an inquiry into his death. He was murdered and we are not going to rest till his murderers are behind bars. A relative of Dias who did not want to be named said, Why is the government so worried about the body? Where was this concern when police beat up his supporters seeking probe into his murder? His family is planning to challenge the rights commissions orders in court. Diass fight had found expression in music. His friend, composer Jackson Dias, said, I used to write and compose songs, which his group Musical Warriors would sing to draw peoples attention to environment, land grabbing and the rights of villagers. We cannot abandon the fight. The issue is not about the burial, it is about giving him justice. The Musical Warriors, a group established by Bismarque, holds a memorial service for him. (HT Photo) Dias was 52 when he died. The then superintendent of police (North Goa), Umesh Gaonkar, under whom the case was investigated, said it was a clear case of accidental death. Whatever the police had to say is well represented in the documents which are being put in the court. As the matter is before the court, I prefer not to say anything, said Gaonkar. The police are going by the version of two boys who went swimming with Dias that night and insist he drowned as he was under the influence of alcohol. People in Diass hometown, St Estevam, about 25 km from Panaji, dismiss such claims as smear campaign. St Estevam is an island village in Cumbharjua constituency from where Dias had contested the 2012 assembly elections as an independent candidate. He lost, but managed to upset calculations of established parties with his election agenda Kindness For All. People give money to voters so that they can win elections, but for Father Dias, people volunteered to make posters and campaign for free, said St Estevam resident Janet Fernandes. A similar volunteer effort is sustaining the fight over Dias body. Signs of anger in the Goan community over the tardy probe into his death are visible in posters and pamphlets across tourist spots in Panaji and old Goa. Goans settled abroad launched a crowdfunding initiative last year to finance the fight of his friends and activists who filed the petition with the Panaji bench of Bombay high court demanding a fair probe into his death. The initiative has raised more than Rs 7 lakh so far. On burial of Diass body, his supporters insist the decision rests with his family. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 7 By Azad Hasanli Trend: Investments of European countries in Azerbaijan's economy almost reached $20 billion in 10 years, said Azerbaijani Deputy Economy Minister Sahil Babayev. He made the remarks Apr. 7 in Baku at a conference dedicated to the 10th anniversary of launching EUs twinning projects in Azerbaijan. Babayev noted that the mentioned amount of investments make up for 45 percent of all funds invested in Azerbaijan over this period. The EU countries are our main investors. Over 10 years, European countries have invested about $20 billion in our economy, including nearly $3 billion in the non-oil sector, he said. We have extensive economic cooperation with the EU countries. European states are the main trade partners of Azerbaijan. In January-February 2017, 42 percent of Azerbaijans trade turnover [$866.6 million, according to the State Customs Committee] accounted for the EU countries, Babayev added. The deputy economy minister noted that Azerbaijan and the EU have the potential to expand the current cooperation. Trade turnover between Azerbaijan and the EU countries amounted to $6.17 billion in 2016, $3.95 billion of which accounted for export to these countries, according to Azerbaijans State Customs Committee. Questioning the sincerity of the Haryana government, the Punjab and Haryana high court on Thursday asked the state as to why probe of 2,100 FIRs registered for February Jat quota violence should not be given to the police of some other state. The courts observation came after the state told it that out of 2,048 FIRs, only 182 odd are of serious nature. The states response had come after the court asked it to supply a list of serious offence cases. The serious offence was neither defined by the state nor the court. The high court bench of justice SS Saron and justice Darshan Singh was hearing a suo motu petition initiated following widespread violence of February 2016. As per a government appointed panel 20,000-crore loss was reported across the state. As many as 1,196 shops were set ablaze, 371 vehicles were damaged or set on fire, 30 schools and colleges were burnt, 75 houses were set afire, 53 hotels and marriage palaces were devastated, 23 petrol pumps were attacked and 15 religious institutions vandalised. Do you have objection if other state (police) is asked to get the investigation done. We can ask Himachal or Rajasthan policeas CBI cant probe due to large number of cases, the high court bench asked when apprised by the impartial adviser in the case, senior advocate Anupam Gupta that out of 1,212 FIRs registered in Rohtak, the government says only 30 are serious and in Sonepat, out of 192, there are only 12 cases of serious nature. Gupta pointed out that Prakash Singh panel in its report had highlighted 128 FIRs out of 192 in its report on Sonepat, while government say there are only 12 cases of serious nature. .. Which benchmark they have followed I am unable to make out. DGP Haryana is helpless person. He was part of Prakash Singh committee. But now he does nothing, Gupta said. The state government, on the other hand, maintained that in large number of cases culprits could not be identified as acts were that of mobs. Our officers have made their own assessment. If court thinks it not proper, it can re-examined, additional advocate general Pawan Girdhar said. The high court bench stressed that it wanted the state police to complete the probe. It will be dumped and degraded forever (if probe given to police of some other state), the HC bench observed. Later it asked the state government to supply names of some senior officers who would supervise the investigation independent of the government. The high court also asked the government to consider suggestion of Gupta that Prakash Singh be made as head of the SIT. Three persons arrested in connection with the death of a man after he was beaten up by so-called cow vigilantes in Rajasthans Alwar district were sent to 14-day judicial custody on Friday. Kalu Ram (44) of Ratanpura, Vipin Yadav (19) and Ravindra Yadav (30), both from Behror, were produced in a court here which granted their custody and they were sent to jail, Alwar SP Rahul Prakash told PTI. He said no fresh arrest has been made in the case and that police teams are looking for other accused named in the FIR. The three were on one-day police remand on Thursday after they were booked under IPC sections 302 (murder), 143 (unlawful assembly), 308 (culpable homicide), among others. They have identified on the basis of a video footage and are among the prime accused in the case. Last Saturday, Pehlu Khan (55) and four others, including his two sons, were brutally beaten up by so-called cow vigilantes who suspected that they were smuggling cows. As many as 16 people were transporting 36 bovine animals in six pick-up vans. They were on their way to Haryana from Jaipur when they were stopped on Jaipur-Delhi national highway. Khan died on Monday during treatment. The Rajasthan government briefed the Union home ministry in a report on Friday that the state has formed a special police team to arrest all the suspected cow vigilantes involved in the lynching of a Muslim dairy owner in Alwar. The state government said three people have been arrested for the incident in which a 55-year-old man, Pehlu Khan, was beaten to death in Alwar district allegedly by a group of gou rakshaks, or cow protectors, on April 1. The police team will try to arrest the remaining accused, sources said. The attacked happened when 16 people were allegedly transporting 36 cows and calves from a cattle fair in six pickup vans. Dairy farmer Khan and another four people, including his two sons, were beaten brutally at Behror in Alwar, suspecting they were smuggling cows, police said. The incident rocked both Houses of Parliament. The Congress alleged that BJP-ruled states were violating the Constitution in the name of cow protection. Union minority affairs minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi clarified in the Rajya Sabha that the fatal attack did occur and an FIR has been filed. His remarks follow his statement in the Upper House the day before that the incident was not accurately presented. He was responding to the Oppositions charges that cow vigilantes in Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat were committing excesses. Naqvi said on Friday the NDA government at the Centre does not condone violence and hooliganism. Criminals, murderers, goons or a rowdy, should not be seen as a Hindu or a Muslim; a criminal is a criminal. He assured that home minister Rajnath Singh would make a statement in the Rajya Sabha on Monday. But his assurance did little to placate the Congress parliamentarians, who rushed to well of the House, shouted slogans and demanded an apology from the minister. Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad reminded the ruling coalition about Prime Minister Narendra Modis outbursts against gau rakshaks last August when he blamed them for flaming tension in society and called for action against them. But the BJP workers are not paying heed, he said. A person accused of slapping someone is remanded in police custody for 14 days. But in this case, the accused have been in custody for a single day. That indicates the intention to end this case, he alleged. Vigilante groups have been accused of insulting and beating men they accused, often without proof, of slaughtering cows, which is banned in many states. Such acts of vigilantism are seen by many as a threat to the social and religious stability needed for Indias economic advancement. The Congress welcomed the Supreme Courts directive to Rajasthan on the Alwar incident. Besides, the court issued notices to Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Jharkhand all BJP-ruled states. The directive came after a petition seeking a ban on gau rakshaks and inquiry into all incidents of cow vigilantism in these states. The Supreme Court has taken the right decision because gangs of gau rakshaks are enjoying extra-constitutional powers and they dont seem to have any fear at all, Congress leader Madhusudan Mistry said. (With inputs from agencies) SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Supreme Court issued a notice to the Rajasthan government on Friday nearly a week after a Muslim man was allegedly killed by cow protectors (gau rakshaks) over suspicion of transporting cows in Alwar. The top court has sought the states reply on the matter within three weeks. Besides Rajasthan, the Supreme Court also issued notices to the Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Jharkhand governments. Last week, Pehlu Khan, 55, along with four others had gone to a weekly animal market in Jaipur to buy milch cows. They were attacked by a group of gau rakshaks on NH-8 while on the way back to their village, Nuh, in Haryana. The group -- suspected to be from the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal -- alleged that the cattle were being smuggled for slaughter. Khan succumbed to his injuries in Alwars Kailash Hospital two days later. The four other victims were discharged and allowed to return to Nuh. Three persons were arrested on Wednesday for the assault. The Supreme Courts directive came on a petition filed by activist Tehseen Poonawalla seeking a ban on gau rakshaks and an investigation into all incidents of cow vigilantism in these states. The matter has been posted for further hearing on May 3. Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama is scheduled to reach Arunachal Pradeshs Tawang, which China claims as its own and wants desperately enough to offer a swap for Aksai Chin, on Friday afternoon. The exiled leader was to have reached Tawang by chopper from Guwahati on April 4, but bad weather forced him to take the 550 km road from Guwahati. His first stop was Bomdila, the headquarters of Arunachal Pradeshs West Kameng district, from where the Chinese soldiers began retreating after the 1962 war. After a day of delivering sermon in Bomdila, he spent two days at Dirang, about 40 km north, where he consecrated the Thupsing Dhargye monastery. His Holiness left Dirang in the morning (Friday), and though the drive to Tawang takes five hours, he is likely to take longer as people are eager to meet him on the way, said an officer of the West Kameng district administration. State police and paramilitary personnel are keeping vigil along the 140-km stretch between Dirang and Tawang, particularly at Sela (13,700 feet) en route. A 30-km stretch at Sela is partly snow-covered, wet because of melting snow, muddy and slippery. A series of religious discourses by the Dalai Lama begins on Saturday. He will stay at the Tawang monastery for four nights before leaving on April 11, Sang Phuntso, the deputy commissioner of Tawang district, told HT. Security has been strengthened around the monastery, the Yid-Ga-Choezin ground where the spiritual leader will deliver his sermon. The town of some 11,200 people otherwise has only one police station with 15 personnel at most. Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama delivers teachings at the Thupsung Dhargyeling Monastery in Dirang on Thursday. (AP) The 336-year-old Tawang monastery is the largest monastery in India and second largest in the world after the Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet. Perched on a cliff at 10,000 feet, Tawang monastery is known in Tibetan as Tawang Gaden Namgyal Lhatse that means a celestial paradise chosen by the horse. It belongs to the Gelugpa school of Mahayana Buddhism and had a religious connection with Lhasas Drepung Monastery that continued during the British rule. Beijing refers to this connection to claim Tawang as part of China after invading and taking over Tibet in 1950. The Dalai Lama was compelled to flee Lhasa in 1959 and cross over to India by foot via the Tawang sector. Tawang monastery, though, has been in focus more for political reasons than spiritual. Monks of the monastery are allegedly divided into pro-dam and anti-dam groups. A young lama was killed on May 2 last year after police fired at anti-dam protestors who laid siege to the Tawang police station where a senior monk, Lobsang Gyatso, had been detained for allegedly inciting unrest in the district. The Save Mon Region Forum, a group that Gyatso heads, wants several big dams in the district to be scrapped. They include one that is feared to destroy the nesting ground of the black-necked crane, considered sacred by the Buddhists. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The BJP and the Left-Congress members were engaged in a verbal duel in the Lok Sabha after a member of the saffron party raised the issue of the CPI(M)-sponsored terror in Kerala and sought the state governments dismissal. During the Zero Hour, Poonam Mahajan raised the issue of a worker of the BJPs youth wing headed by her being brutally attacked by Left workers and alleged that several RSS and BJP workers have been killed by them. Taking a dig, she said the Left parties should speak on the issue of intolerance only after they start practicing it in states ruled by them. Mahajan asked the Speaker to lead a group of MPs to the southern state to assess the situation herself. Her remarks agitated the Left members and also those of the Congress from the state as they targeted the RSS. KC Venugopal (Congress) said the RSS was behind killings as well, including one last night in his constituency. MB Rajesh (CPI-M) said the Hindutva outfit workers had recently killed a youth and a Muslim priest. Parliamentary affairs minister Ananth Kumar said he was unable to understand why Venugopal was critical of the BJP members remarks as he himself had yesterday raised the issue of political violence in the state. As Kumar said political murders were happening in Kerala and it was not acceptable, Rajesh accused him of misleading the House. On Thursday, members of the Congress and the Left from Kerala had clashed in the House over an incident in Thiruvananthapuram where the police had ill-treated the parents of a student who had allegedly committed suicide. Among other issues raised in the House during the Zero Hour, Prem Singh Chandumajra (SAD) expressed concern over the menace of stray cattle and said stray dogs recently killed a woman in her constituency. He said people earlier used to cull stray dogs with medicines, a reference to poisonous substance used to kill them, but our minister has banned it. He was apparently referring to Union Minister Maneka Gandhi, a strong votary of animals rights. It is a serious issue but the government is not taking it seriously, Chandumajra said. Rajeev Satav (Congress) sought loan waiver for farmers in Maharashtra and also in the rest of the country like Uttar Pradesh. More farmers commit suicide in Maharashtra than any other state, he said seeking relief for them. Former BJP parliamentarian Tarun Vijay waded into a racism row on Friday after a video of the politician making apparently racist remarks about south Indians went viral on social media. Vijay was invited by news channel Al Jazeeras online show The Stream to discuss a string of recent attacks on African students in Greater Noida. During his defence of India and its culture, the former Rajya Sabha MP made the controversial remark. If we were racist, why would we have all the entire southTamil, Kerala, Karnataka and Andhrawhy do we live with them? We have black people around us, the politician was heard as saying in the video. The comments come amid escalating tensions between a group of African nations which have accused India of doing little to stop the assault and the government that has called the accusation unfortunate. Vijay took to Twitter to apologise for the remarks and said he meant to highlight Indias composite culture that worshipped the dark-skinned god, Krishna. Feel bad ,really feel sorry, my apologies to those who feel i said different than what I meant. Mywords perhaps were not enough to convey this.Feel bad,really feel sorry, my apologies to those who feel i said different than what I meant https://t.co/I7MddEJk5W Tarun Vijay (@Tarunvijay) April 7, 2017 I feel the entire statement sas this- we have fought racism and we have people with different colour and culture still never had any racism. Tarun Vijay (@Tarunvijay) April 7, 2017 The row erupted last month after a group of Nigerian students were thrashed in Greater Noida by residents who were enraged after a local teenagers death of a suspected drug overdose. The locals say the Africans supplied the drugs to the boy. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi on Friday admitted that the Alwar incident in which a Muslim man was thrashed by alleged cow vigilantes and later succumbed to injures did happen and the Rajasthan government has filed FIRs. The statement made in Rajya Sabha comes a day after the minister stoked a controversy by stating on the floor of the House that the incident was not accurately presented. Even as the Opposition rose in uproar, Naqvi tried to clarify his earlier statement by saying he was referring to the Congresss charges that excesses were being conducted by alleged cow vigilantes in Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat. He also stressed that the Centre does not condone violence and hooliganism. "Criminals, murderers, goons or a rowdy should not be seen as a Hindu or a Muslim; a criminal is a criminal," he said. Naqvis assurance that home minister Rajnath Singh would make a statement on the issue on Monday in Rajya Sabha did nothing to placate the Congress MPs who stormed into the Well, raising slogans. They demanded an apology from Naqvi for misleading the House. Leader of the Opposition, Ghulam Nabi Azad, also accused the minister of misleading the house and "undermining Rajya Sabha". "The central government should not protect these kind of hooligans," Azad said. He went on to say that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had last year spoken harsh words for cow vigilantes but actions on the ground seem to suggest that BJP workers have been given a free hand. A person accused of slapping someone is remanded to 14-day police custody but in this case, the accused have been remanded to just one-day custody, which indicates the intention to end this case," Azad said. Madhusudan Mistry, MP from Gujarat, had on Thursday raised the issue of cow vigilantes in Alwar stopping a truck carrying cows from a cattle fair and assaulting its occupants, which led to the death of a Muslim man, Pehlu Khan. In response, Naqvi had said that the incident was not being correctly presented, which infuriated Congress MPs and prompted deputy chairperson PJ Kurien to seek a report from the home ministry. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Election Commission on Friday dismissed allegations of EVM tampering in Madhya Pradeshs Bhind and said the accuracy of voting machines was beyond doubt, as it sought to douse a political storm over the sensitive issue. The poll panel cited a special teams inquiry report to dismiss as completely false allegations that an EVM printed slips voter-verified paper audit trail or VVPAT with the BJP poll symbol lotus multiple times on pressing different buttons. The row erupted after a purported video of an electronic voting machine (EVM) demonstration ahead of by-polls in two constituencies showed the paper trail generating a receipt for the BJP when state chief electoral officer Saleena Singh pressed the button for the Samajwadi Party candidate. The Congress and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had expressed doubts that the EVM was brought from Uttar Pradesh, implying that the BJP winning a brute majority in the recent assembly polls might have been due to EVM manipulation. The poll panel said the special inquiry team led by Bhanwar Lal, the chief electoral officer of Andhra Pradesh, found no anomaly or tampering in EVM and VVPAT used during the demonstration in Ater (Bhind) on March 31. The committee said the accuracy of the functioning of EVMs and VVPATs including the said EVM/VVPAT is beyond doubt. The EC also said that the VVPAT used in the demonstration were brought from Uttar Pradesh but not the EVMs. Bringing the VVPAT from UP is not in violation of law. As per the law, only the EVMs used in the poll and the VVPAT slips contained in the box are required to be preserved for the period of 45 days in a secured manner for the purpose of election petition, if any, the report said. A VVPAT allows a voter to know if the machine registered a vote for the candidate selected. The slip is visible for seven seconds before it drops into a box. The report said the EC may like to fix responsibility on the district election officer and returning officer who allegedly did not replace the previous data with names and symbols of dummy candidates in the VVPAT as per norms. In the video of the purported EVM trial in Bhind, state chief electoral officer Singh was seen looking surprised on seeing the VVPAT receipt. She is also purportedly heard laughing and warning journalists that they could face police detention if the incident was reported. HT couldnt independently verify the authenticity of the video clip. Singh, however, dismissed the charges and said the EVM wasnt fully calibrated. The EC later asked the Andhra Pradesh chief electoral officer to supervise the by-elections in Madhya Pradesh. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Civil Aviation ministry is learnt to have asked private airlines, which have barred Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad from flying after he assaulted an Air India employee, to revoke the ban. Air India on Friday lifted the flying ban on Gaikwad following an order from the Civil Aviation ministry, a day after the Osmanabad MP expressed regret over the unfortunate incident on March 23. On March 24, a day after the incident at the Delhi airport, Air India had barred Gaikwad from flying with it. Following suit, the Federation of Indian Airlines (FIA) had also imposed a ban on him. Jet Airways, SpiceJet, GoAir and IndiGo are part of the grouping. Sources said the Ministry has asked Air India as well as other airlines to lift the ban imposed on Gaikwad citing the undertaking of good conduct given by him. However, there has been no official word from any FIA member on the issue. A senior official at an FIA member airline said it has been agreed that police investigation would continue and the MP would not engage in any such unruly conduct in the future. When FIA had imposed a flying ban on Gaikwad, two non- member carriers -- Vistara and AirAsia -- had said they were with the industry on the issue. When contacted, full service carrier Vistaras spokesperson said, We are reviewing the series of events, related to this case, that took place recently. We have not taken a decision as yet. No-frills carrier AirAsia Indias spokesperson said its stand on the ban remains the same, adding that it has not heard anything from the FIA so far on the matter. Headline changed, details added (first version posted at 10:59) Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 7 By Azad Hasanli Trend: Azerbaijan and the European Union will start implementation of seven more twinning projects in the near future, Azerbaijani Deputy Economy Minister Sahil Babayev told reporters in Baku. He made the remarks Apr. 7 on the sidelines of a conference dedicated to the 10th anniversary of launching EUs twinning projects in Azerbaijan. Babayev said the new projects will cover tax and financial administration, social insurance, regional development and economic management. Budget for projects is different it usually varies within the range of 700,000-1.5 million euros for such [twinning] projects, he added. Implementation period of twinning projects is about two years. During this period, representatives of one of the EU countries, which won the tender, will visit Azerbaijan and work with us for two years, assist in the modernization of legislative acts and application of administrative practice. Babayev noted that since 1992, the EU has allocated 582 million euros to Azerbaijan for implementation of various projects, twinning projects as well. Azerbaijan is a regional leader by twinning projects. During the cooperation with the EU, we have started working on 45 of such projects. Twenty-six of them have already been completed, 12 are being carried out and the implementation of seven projects will start in the near future, he said. If the information and broadcasting ministry agrees to a proposal by Prasar Bharti its broadcast arm India will have a digital channel to tell the India story to challenge the anti-India narrative in foreign media. In a report submitted to the ministry on Wednesday, a Prasar Bharati Committee on establishing a Digital Platform for India has suggested a platform that will report on international news to a global digital audience with an India perspective. Targeted at English speaking audiences, global opinion makers and influences and the Indian diaspora, the digital channel will change the narrative that presents India as a constant point of conflict between Hindu nationalists and so-called secularism, said A Surya Prakash, Prasar Bharti chairman who also headed the committee. Pegged to cost over Rs 75 crore, the digital platform will have correspondents across the globe to bring news to Indian audiences as well as present new of the new India that is emerging. It will be a 24x7 operation on internet platforms. The big story is that India is the most diverse and vibrant democracy; lot of things are happening, we have a government that would get a better rating than many others (governments). Yet, the whole discourse seems to be the constant conflict between Hindus and Muslims, which is totally bogus, Prakash told HT on Thursday. New Delhi is peeved at international media reports that they claim to portray India negatively. Recently, a spokesperson of the ministry of external affairs questioned the wisdom of The New York Times for criticising Prime Minister Narendra Modis choice of Yogi Adityanath as the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. All editorials or opinions are subjective. This case is particularly so. The wisdom in doubting the verdicts of genuine democratic exercises, at home or abroad, is questionable, the external affairs ministry spokesperson was quoted as saying. The NYT had published an editorial, titled Modis Perilous Embrace of Hindu Extremists. Conceptualised by Shashi Shekhar Vempati, a member of the Prasar Bharati Board, the digital channel will be created through an appropriate corporate structure under the Companies Act 2013 to ensure both financial autonomy and global competitiveness. On whether the new channel would be Indias answer to foreign news media channels such as the BBC, CNN, CCTV and Al Jazeera, Prakash said, We must begin to see the world through an Indian lens. We need a digital platform that will help us find our place among major news channels of the world, which have their own agenda. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Patidar reservation stir leader Hardik Patel will try to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his visit to Surat on April 17, to raise the unresolved issues concerning his community. Despite making several representations to the Gujarat government in the past about various issues of the Patel community, there is still no solution forthcoming, Hardik stated in a message circulated to the media on Thursday. Since the Prime Minister is coming to Surat, I will meet the Collector to seek PMs time during his visit, so that I can make a representation to him about these issues, he said. Hardiks close aide Alpesh Kathiria said the former would meet the Surat district collector tomorrow in bid to get an appointment with the Prime Minister. Modi is scheduled to visit Gujarat on April 17 to inaugurate various projects, including a hospital in Surat, a cattle feed plant in Tapi district and Sauni project in Botad district of Saurashtra region. The Kiran Hospital in Surat is built by Samast Patidar Aarogya Trust, a trust formed by the prominent businessmen belonging to Patidar community of Surat. Since his return to Gujarat in January this year after the six-month exile imposed on him by the High Court as part of his bail condition in sedition cases, Hardik has been trying to revive the quota stir by addressing rallies in different parts of the state. Apart from the core issue of reservation for Patels under OBC quota, Hardik has taken up other issues like seeking loan waiver for farmers, unemployment etc. He also vowed to get justice for a woman who was allegedly gang-raped in Bhavnagar district. Hardik had remained highly critical of the BJP government in the past. In his first rally after returning to Gujarat in January, he had appealed to Patels to unitedly fight against prevailing autocracy in the state, an oblique reference to ruling BJP. He had asked his community members to be prepared for the repeat of the GMDC-like dangal (fight), a reference to his 2015 rally that had galvanised Patels across the state. As Gujarat is going to polls later this year, the BJP government has been trying hard to solder its fractured ties with the Patel community, considered as loyal voters of the BJP. Hardik had earlier slammed the Centre for demonetisation, claiming it only increased the hardships of the common man. He had also met Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar in Patna last year. He had called on Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray at the latters residence in Mumbai in February this year. Interestingly, Thackeray, whose party is at loggerheads with the ruling ally BJP despite being an NDA partner, had announced that Hardik will be Senas face in the poll-bound Gujarat. Hardik had brought a churn in Gujarat politics when he galvanised Patels in Modis home state and led them in massive agitations, marked by violent clashes between police and the Patel community members, in 2015. He was subsequently booked in two cases of sedition by police. The National Human Rights Commission on Friday issued notices to the Centre and the Rajasthan government over the lynching of a man allegedly by cow vigilantes in Alwar. The commission termed the incident as painful and serious violation of human rights saying self-proclaimed volunteers are creating an atmosphere of fear in the society. In the notice issued to the Rajasthan chief secretary, the commission has called for a detailed report in the matter along with action taken against the culprits. A notice has also been issued to the Union home secretary, calling for a response as to what steps have been taken or proposed to be taken by the Centre to deal with such incidents in the country. They have been asked to respond within four weeks. Suspected cow protection vigilantes attacked two vehicles carrying 10 bovine two cows and their calves in one, and three cows and their calves in the other alleging that the cattle were being smuggled for slaughter. Fifty-five-year-old Pehlu Khan succumbed to his injuries in Kailash Hospital in Behror. He was with his two sons, Arif and Irshad, at the time of the attack. Azmat Khan, who survived the assault, said that the men began beating them up without giving them a chance to explain or show their valid permits. Police had arrested three people they identified from videos of the assault that were shared on social media. An FIR was also registered against six others apart from naming 200 unidentified accused. The Hyderabad city police on Friday arrested a 19-year-old woman here for allegedly selling her baby. The woman who bought the 3-month-old baby boy and another woman who acted as the `broker were also arrested. G Kavitha, resident of Secunderabad, sold her child due to financial problems on March 28 through Sumalatha, police said. Kavithas husband G Raju was away at the time. Sumalatha took them to Bellampalle town where the baby was sold to her (Sumalathas) relative, Anjali, who has no child though married for 14 years. Anjali paid Kavitha Rs 10,000, said inspector T Laxmi Narayana of Tukaramgate police station here. When her husband returned home yesterday, he asked about their son and Kavitha confessed to him that she sold the baby. Raju then lodged a complaint with the police and a case was registered under the Juvenile Justice Act. Police today arrested Kavitha, Sumalatha and Anjali while the baby was retrieved, the inspector said. Further probe is on. Police stopped a prayer attended by more than 150 people, including 11 American tourists, at an Uttar Pradesh church on Friday after the right-wing Hindu Yuva Vahini complained that the event was a cover for religious conversion. The youth group, set up by chief minister Yogi Adityanath in 2002, filed a complaint against Yohannan Adam, the pastor of the church at Dathauli of Maharajganj district. The organisation accused him of converting Hindus to Christianity, a charge the pastor denied. No prior permission was taken before the meeting. We stopped the meet after a complaint was registered. A probe is underway and appropriate action will be taken if the charges are correct, said police officer Anand Kumar Gupta. The US tourists were let off after police checked their visas and relevant documents. The presence of US nationals indicates that innocent and illiterate Hindus were being converted by the missionaries, who lured them with money to change their religion, said Krishna Nandan, a Hindu Yuva Vahini leader who surrounded the church with his supporters in the afternoon. They dispersed after police promised a probe and adequate action, though Nandan was not happy that the Americans were cleared. The church authorities dismissed the conversion allegations. The charges are absolutely baseless. The people were attending a prayer meeting voluntarily. We prayed. Nothing else was done, pastor Adam said. The Hindu right wing has been at loggerheads with Christian missionaries, accusing them of converting people through coercion and allurement to their faith. Several Hindu organisations have conducted ghar wapsi or homecoming of such people, which minority groups say is a couched term for re-conversion. Earlier this year, Hindu Yuva Vahini activists attacked the Full Gospel Church in Gorakhpur, accusing it of religious conversion. Just days before the crucial assembly bypoll in Chennais RK Nagar on April 12, income tax sleuths on Friday raided the houses and offices of Tamil Nadus health minister C Vijayabhaskar, film actor Sarathkumar, former MP C Rajendran, and Dr MGR Medical University vice-chancellor Dr Geethalakshmi. The premises of friends and relatives of the health minister were also being searched by income tax sleuths. The raids that began around 5.30am came after a spate of reports about rampant use of money in RK Nagar by AIADMK Amma (Sasikala faction) candidate TTV Dinakaran. According to sources, a huge amount of money, running into crores of rupees, was recovered from the residence of the health minister. A few lakh rupees were also recovered from Sarathkumar, a leader of the Sammuthuva Makkal Katchi party who has extended support to Dinakaran in the poll, sources said. Paramilitary personnel accompanied by police were put on guard outside the premises being raided. Sarathkumars actress wife Radhika is said to have been present when the raids took place. Besides, income tax investigators also raided a hotel in Egmore in Chennai where voters from RK Nagar were allegedly being handed out money. In all, raids were carried out in 21 places in Chennai alone, 11 places in Pudukkottai, two places in Tiruchirappalli and one place in Namakkal. Income tax department sources indicated that several documents related to the byelection were seized from the premises being raided. Vijayabhaskar has been on the income tax radar for some time now, sources said. It is alleged that he had played a key role in guarding MLAs at the Kuvathur resort before the floor test in the assembly after the formation of the Edapaddi Palaniswami government supported by VK Sasikala. Sources said five MLAs from the ruling party were also under the scanner. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Indian militarys capability to take down hostile aircraft and missiles has received a significant boost, with India and Israel signing deals worth $2 billion for advanced surface-to-air missile systems. Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) will provide the Indian Army with advanced medium-range surface-to-air missile (MRSAM) systems as part of the deal, announced by the Israeli firm on Thursday. The Prime Minister-headed Cabinet Committee on Security had cleared the deal in February. IAI said it was the single largest contract in Israels defence industry history. Hindustan Times gives you a lowdown on the missile systems: What is the MRSAM? The IAI describes the MRSAM as an advanced ground breaking air and missile defence system that provides the ultimate protection against a variety of aerial threats. The MRSAM is operational with the Indian Air Force, Indian Navy and Israel Defense Forces. The system includes advanced phased-array radar, command and control systems, mobile launchers and missiles with advanced RF seekers. What is its range? The MRSAM will allow the army to shoot down aircraft, missiles and drones at ranges of up to 70 km. The MRSAM is the army version of the long-range surface-to-air missile (LR-SAM) deployed on Indian warships. LRSAM has been co-developed by India and Israel under a Rs 2,606-crore programme. Who has developed it? MRSAM has been developed jointly by the IAI and Indias Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). Other firms involved in the project include Rafael, Bharat Electronics Limited, Bharat Dynamics Limited and L&T. What are the components of the deal? IAI will also supply surface-to-air missiles to be fitted on indigenous aircraft carrier Vikrant being built in Kochi. The new deals will strengthen the position of Israel in the Indian defence market. Israel currently is the fourth-largest arms supplier to India after the US, Russia and France. India is also in the final stages of inking a Rs 3,200-crore deal with Israel for Spike anti-tank guided missiles, manufactured by Rafael Advanced Defence Systems Ltd. A 12 year old Japanese girl emerged as an instant celebrity in the south central Bihar Buddhist pilgrimage town of Bodh Gaya, last weekend, when she set up a stall to give free hand outs of a delicacy from her country, to raise funds for poor children inhabiting dalit villages in the area. Nanai Sugamito, who put up her stall near Birla Dharamshala in Bodh Gaya on April 2, immediately caught the attention of passersby with her free of cost offering of Khakigori a Japanese shaved ice dessert flavoured with syrup and a sweetener, often condensed milk. Khakigori is very popular in Japan and is often dished out in flavours such as strawberry, cherry, lemon, green tea, grape, melon, Blue Hawaii and sweet plum. With the temperature in Bodh Gaya soaring above 35 degrees celsius, it was not long before tourists and locals thronged her stall to taste the unique offering by the Japanese girl, accompanied by other members of her immediate family. Sugamito, resplendent in a colourful dress, with flowers in her hair, politely urged each visitor of her stall to drop something in the donation box kept there, making it clear the collection would be spent on the education and health of rural kids of Bodh Gaya. Many offered donations while several others left the scene after taking the ice cream but without turning towards the donation box. But Sugamito had no complaint against anybody. In fact, she was profuse in thanking those among locals who had helped her realize her dream. The stall ran from April 2 to April 6. But how much she collected during this period will be known only after the donation box is opened later in the presence of members of a committee that would be constituted to run the social service venture. However, the local community was forthcoming in supporting the cause she had propounded. Her venture is for a good cause and we must support it, said Jitendra Tiwari, a social activist of Bodh Gaya. Sugamito later told reporters she had learnt the art of preparing Khakigori from her parents. She also revealed what had prompted her to take up the cause of poor children in a mission mode. During my visit to Bodh Gaya last year, I had noticed poor children from nearby villages loitering around restaurants and stalls, picking up leftover eatables thrown outside. I then decided to do something for such children, she said. We are trying to make Nanani Sugamitos Khakigori stall a permanent feature in Bodh Gaya, said Santosh Kumar, her friend and tourist guide. Kumar said Sugamito, after the trial run of her stall, had left for Goa to explore the possibility of setting up a similar venture there. It was her long-cherished dream is to spread the venture Buddhist pilgrimage centres across the country, he added. From Goa, Sugamito was scheduled to return to Japan and would return to Bodh Gaya next month. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Indias oldest civil case pending in a court since 1956 is in the Rajasthan high court. This is followed by the Jharkhand high court where a civil case is pending since 1958, and the Orissa high court, where a civil case is pending since 1961. For criminal cases, the Allahabad and the Jammu and Kashmir high courts have the oldest backlog. In both the high courts, a criminal case has been pending since 1976. In Rajasthan, the oldest criminal case pending for disposal is from 1981. Union minister of state for law and justice PP Chaudhary made these revelations while responding to a query in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday. This has come at a time when Chief Justice of India JS Khehar had asked judges to work for at least five days during holidays to clear the pile-up. In Rajasthan, the new chief justice of the high court, Pradeep Nandrajog, also stressed on reducing the backlog of cases after he took over. Chaudhary said in the Parliament that as on March 31, 2017, the oldest criminal matter pending in the Supreme Court was of 1991. The oldest civil matter pending is of 1982. The government has adopted a coordinated approach to assist the judiciary for phased liquidation of arrears and pendency in judicial systems, which, inter-alia, involves better infrastructure for courts, including computerisation, increase in strength of judicial officers, judges, policy and legislative measures in areas prone to excessive litigation and emphasis on human resources development, Chaudhary told the House. Veteran anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare said on Friday that he was pained to read about the allegations against Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal in the Shunglu Committee Report. He was my colleague in the fight against corruption... At that time, I felt the educated, new generation could help rid the country of graft. But it was a big dream -- and my dream lies shattered, Hazare said in an anguished note. Hazare said when Kejriwal launched the (Aam Aadmi Party) political outfit, it was the Lord who gave him wisdom to keep away (from Kejriwal) or even my reputation would be ruined. Since then, and even after he became the chief minister, I never felt a desire to meet him. Now, I understand why he always used to address me as his Guru. The Lord has saved me, the 79-year-old said in a statement from his village Ralegan-Siddhi in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra. Details added (first version posted at 12:22) Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 7 By Anvar Mammadov Trend: Azerbaijan is interested in investment cooperation with Estonia, said Rufat Mammadov, head of the Azerbaijan Export and Investments Promotion Foundation (AZPROMO). He was addressing an Azerbaijan-Estonia business forum in Baku April 7. "We are very interested in the presence of Azerbaijani goods in the Estonian market, Mammadov said. We are also very interested in investment cooperation with Estonia. We invite Estonian companies to take advantage of this business forum and expand ties with Azerbaijani enterprises. Currently, the volume of mutual investments is at a very low level, according to the AZPROMO head. At present, the volume of Azerbaijani investments to Estonia is about $300,000-400,000. In turn, Estonia invested about $1 million in Azerbaijan's economy. This is a very low indicator, Mammadov said. He also noted that the Azerbaijan-Estonia trade turnover does not reflect the existing potential of the bilateral relations. Last year, trade turnover between our countries was slightly more than $3 million. This is an unsatisfactory indicator as there is great potential between our countries to expand trade relations. Trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Estonia amounted to $541,130 in January-February 2017, which is 2.2 times more than in the same period of 2016, according to Azerbaijans State Customs Committee. Air India once again denied Ravindra Gaikwad permission to fly on the airline and cancelled his tickets between Mumbai and Delhi booked for April 17 and 24. The Shiv Sena parliamentarian had allegedly assaulted an Air India manager on March 23 . Gaikwad, an MP from Osmanabad, was banned by six airlines after the incident last month. He also admitted on TV hitting the Air India employee with his slippers 25 times. This is the seventh attempt on the part of Gaikwad to book a flight on the airlines. There was an attempt to book a ticket at 5 AM today through our web portal. The reservations were being made for April 17 for travel from Delhi to Mumbai and for April 24 from Mumbai to Delhi, said an airline source. We have installed filters in our booking system and six different name combination of Gaikwad have been filtered. Whenever anyone tries to book tickets using these six names, our staff receives an alert , said an Air India official. Ravindra Gaikwad, R Gaikwad, Prof V Ravindra Gaikwad and Prof Ravindra Gaikwad are the names filtered by our system, the official said. Today, the ticket was being booked under the name Ravindra Gaikwad and we were alerted through our tracker, he said. Yesterday, Gaikwad, in a letter to civil aviation minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju, had conveyed his regrets over the unfortunate incident, but stopped short of tendering an apology to either the national carrier or to the staffer concerned. The Air India Cabin Crew Association responded by saying that Gaikwad should not be allowed to fly until he tenders an unconditional apology. In a letter to the AI chairman and managing director Ashwani Lohani, the association has said that a decision by either the ministry of civil aviation or parliament to lift the ban will affect the morale of the employees. Unless he tenders an unconditional apology to AI employees, and undertakes in writing to abide by the Chicago and Tokyo Conventions & Rules of the Air and follow all cabin safety and public behaviour norms, we must not let him on board, says the letter. Ravindra Gaikwad is and will continue to be a risk to flight safety and flight operations and to Cabin Crew safety on board, and hence Government must think long and hard about letting him back on, the letter added. The association said it would be a crying shame if he is let off without even a rap on the knuckles. The Indian Commercial Pilots Association, one of the unions of pilots of Air India, has also demanded an unconditional apology from the Shiva Sena MP, failing which they have threatened to not fly him. ICPA strongly condemns his misconduct and demands an unconditional apology for the same, failing which we will be constrained to direct our members not to operate any flight which has Mr Ravindra Gaikwad on board in the interest of the safety and security of our own people, they wrote in a letter to the Civil Aviation Minister. . SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Politics over names of government schemes is being played out in Uttar Pradesh with Yogi Adityanath-led BJP government deciding to shed the Samajwadi prefix from all the projects initiated by the previous regime. Chief minister Adityanath asked officials to submit a list of all the state governments schemes having Samajwadi in their name before the cabinet. The government plans to replace the word Samajwadi from the names of these schemes with mukhya mantri (chief minister) sources said. While reviewing the work progress of the 343km-long ongoing Samajwadi Poorvanchal Expressway project, the monk-turned politician on Thursday late evening ordered to rechristen it by removing the prefix associated with the name of the previous ruling party. The ambitious eight-lane to connect Ballia and Azamgarh with the state capital Lucknow was initiated by the erstwhile Samajwadi Party-led government. Adityanath asked the senior state government officials, who made a presentation before him, to expedite implementation of the project. Yes, the word Samajwadi will be dropped from the name of the Poorvanchal Expressway project. All the government schemes having Samajwadi in their names will be placed before the state cabinet. Samajwadi will be replaced with the word mukhya mantra, said a senior officer emerging from the meeting. Names of the Samajwadi Ambulance Swasthya Sewa and the Samajwadi Pension Scheme are among those in line for a change of name. The health scheme is a free-of-cost, round-the-clock emergency ambulance service while the pension scheme provides a financial aid of Rs 500 per month to a woman head of about 50 lakh eligible poor families. Other schemes that may face a change of name in coming days include the projects named after the SP ideologues Dr Ram Manohar Lohia and Dr Janeshwar Mishra such as the Lohia Samagra Gram Vikas Yojana and the Janeswar Mishra Gram Yojana. This is, however, not for the first time that the state is going to witness politics over names. The erstwhile Congress-led UPA government at the Centre and the Samajwadi Party government in the state had indulged in a war of letters over the use of Samajwadi in the ambulance scheme. The then central government had even threatened to withdraw funding for the scheme if the prefix was not removed from its name. The SP government on its part decided to run the scheme from its own resources. The SP leaders, including the then chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, had argued that the word Samajwadi was mentioned even in the preamble of the countrys constitution and hence should not be linked with any party politics. After assuming office in 2012, the Akhilesh Yadav government had rechristened eight districts named after the BSP ideologues. The SP government had also decided to restore the name of the states prestigious medical university as KGMU that the erstwhile Mayawati-led BSP government had named as Chhatrapati Shahuji Maharaj Medical University. The sensitivity over the name is, however, not a state-specific phenomenon. Narendra Modi-led NDA government at the centre too has renamed a number of central schemes after the BJPs ideologues. These include - Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (for Rajiv Gandhi Gramin Vidyutikaran Yojana), Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (for JNNURM) Rural Eletrification Scheme), Pradhan Mantri Gramin Awas Yojana (for Indira Awas Yojana), Deen Dayal Upadhyay Antyodaya Yojana (for National Urban Livelihood Mission) and Deen Dayal Upadhyay Gramin Kaushal Yojana (for National Skill Development scheme) to name a few. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Supreme Court on Friday refused to set aside Prashant Kishors appointment as Bihar chief ministers advisor, forcing the petitioner who challenged it to withdraw his plea. He is the chief minister. He can seek advise from anyone he trusts or has confidence in. He can pay anybody he wants to. Whats the legal question involved here? a bench headed by Chief Justice JS Khehar told the petitioner. After winning the 2015 Assembly election, Nitish Kumar had appointed Kishor as his advisor and awarded him with a cabinet rank. Kishor had strategised and spearheaded Kumars campaign that successfully helped him wrest power in the state. Kishor was given the charge of Bihar Vikas Mission (BVM). State BJP leader Sushil Modi had also raised the question about Kishor being given a cabinet rank, despite he not attending any meeting of the council of ministers. Read | Elections 2017: Prashant Kishors fall from grace as kingmaker is complete The petitioner before SC said Kishors appointment was invalid because he had not taken oath as required for a state cabinet minister. He charged that taxpayers money was being utilised to pay a private employee. There was no necessity to engage his services because there was a complete bureaucratic machinery to advise the CM, the petitioner contended before the court. The Supreme Court asked the central government and five BJP-ruled states on Friday to say within three weeks why cow protection groups shouldnt be banned amid growing outrage against vigilantes accused of violence and even murder. The directive came on a petition filed by Congress leaders Tehseen and Shehzad Poonawalla, who called for cow protection groups to be declared illegal, saying there has been a spike in instances of vigilantism. The court sought responses from Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Jharkhand and Rajasthan all BJP ruled as well as Congress-run Karnataka, setting May 3 for the next hearing. It also asked the Centre to reply. The move came as the opposition attacked the government in Parliament for a second straight day for not doing enough to curb a spike in cow vigilantism. In Rajya Sabha, the Congress demanded an apology from Union minister of state for parliamentary affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi for denying the lynching of a Muslim man by so-called cow protectors in Rajasthan last week. In October, the court had orally asked the states and Centre to file a response to Poonawallas petition. However it received no response. On Friday, Poonawallas counsel, Sanjay Hegde, insisted on a response, citing last weeks lynching of the Muslim man to particularly push Rajasthan to reply. The National Human Rights Commission also took suo motu cognizance of the attack and issued notice to the Rajasthan government demanding a detailed action report. Cow vigilante groups became active after the BJP-led government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi took over at the Centre. They claim to protect cows from being taken to slaughterhouses. Critics, however, accuse these vigilante groups of targeting people, mostly from the Muslim and Dalit community. There has been a string of cow-related violence but various state governments have defended the action on the grounds of the sentiment attached to the animal, considered holy by many Hindus. In Rajya Sabha, opposition members created a ruckus over the lynching in Rajasthans Alwar and sought an apology from Naqvi for his earlier comments on the incident. Naqvi said he had only denied any such violence in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh and had not referred to Rajasthan. A criminal, a murderer, a hooligan, or a rowdy should not be looked at as a Hindu or a Muslim. A criminal is a criminal, Naqvi told the House. In his petition, Poonawalla said violence committed by these gau raksha groups have reached such proportions that even Modi called them out as people who were destroying the society. The plea alleged that these groups were committing atrocities against Dalits and minorities in the name of protection of cows and they needed to be regulated and banned in the interest of social harmony, public morality and law and order in the country. It sought a direction to remove alleged violent content uploaded on social media and hosted by the cow protection groups. It also asked that laws protecting cow vigilantes in Gujarat, Maharashtra and Karnataka be declared unconstitutional. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The CBI carried out searches at 16 locations in Ahmedabad after booking 12 people, including Axis Bank employees, for alleged illegal cash deposits of around Rs 100 crore post demonetisation. The cash deposits of Rs 100.57 crore in purported shell companies accounts in Axis Banks Memnagar branch in Ahmedabad were in violation of RBI notifications issued after November 8 last year, when the government, in a sudden move, scrapped Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes. The CBI has booked branch manager Yasha Mehta, operations head Ahbhimanyu Singh Naruka and customers relations officer Rita Kumar and nine others, including the cash handlers. The agency teams swooped down on 16 locations in Ahmedabad at offices and residences of the accused. There were three groups of cash handlers who were depositing demonetised Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes in the accounts of purported shell companies at the bank, CBI sources said. CBI spokesperson RK Gaur said the notes were allegedly being deposited by a group of people in name lending accounts with the help of the branch manager and other bank officials. The first group was Sanjay Manu Soni, Saurin Soni and Sameer, the second was Himanshu Agarwal, Jaideep, J D Shroff and Afzal and the third was Kiran Parekh and Hitesh Parekh, he said. The bank officials allegedly abused their position by allowing huge amount of unauthorised transactions in accounts of shell companies between November and December last year, he said. Owners of the so-called shell companies as well as those who were used for depositing the huge amount of cash in the said accounts were people of no-means and whose profile was non-commensurate with the quantum of such huge suspicious deposits, the FIR said. The accused were creating such accounts for lending purposes for depositing cash on commission basis and converting black money into white, they said, adding huge cash deposits were made in the bank several times during a day by one person. It is alleged that the first group of cash handlers deposited Rs 55.70 crore, the second group deposited Rs 41.62 crore and third group Rs 3.25 crore, they said. At many such instances, they deposited huge amount of cash by way of submitting multiple deposit slips in one go, with cash value of less than Rs nine lakh, per slip, as per the advise of the bank officials, Gaur said. It was also alleged that cash deposit slips of approximately Rs 13 crore are not available with the bank, he said. These suspicious deposits were transferred to bullion traders and jewellers by way of RTGS, sources said, adding these bullion traders and jewellers will soon be called for questioning. The RBI guidelines issued after November 8, mandated that cash could have been deposited either by the account holder or their authorised representatives on production of suitable identity document. ...in the above cases, a majority of the pay in slips bear forged signatures of the account holders, which were ignored by bank officials, Gaur said. He said the accused in active connivance with the bank officials had failed to disclose their unaccounted wealth, in accordance with the amnesty schemes declared by the government and has converted black money into white by misusing the banking channels. PATNA Senior BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi, on Friday, dared chief minister Nitish Kumar to dismiss from the state Cabinet his deputy Tejashwi Prasad Yadav and health minister Tej Pratap Yadav, in the wake of documentary evidence to show that an upcoming mall, from where soil worth Rs 90 lakh was supplied to Sanjay Gandhi Biological Park without tender, belonged to them. What surfaced as a financial irregularity in the supply of soil has now turned out to be a matter of disproportionate assets. The question is: How Lalu Prasads family came to acquire assets worth 200 crore and how they are building a mall worth Rs 750 crore? Why did they not disclose it in their election affidavit or to the government? the former deputy CM asked, while addressing media persons here on Friday. Distributing documents, Modi said, deed papers and sequence showed how 105 decimal of land near Saguna Mor, had been transferred by Harsh and Vinay Kochar to Delight Marketing Pvt Ltd (DMPL) in 2005 after the two brothers were awarded two hotels belonging to the Railways, at Ranchi and Puri. DMPL, Modi said, was owned by RJD Rajya Sabha member Prem Gupta and his family. However, the process of inducting Lalus five family members, namely, Rabri Devi, her two sons and two daughters (Chanda and Ragini), as directors, had started in 2014, he claimed. Modi said the name of the company was changed to LARA Projects (an acronym for Lalu and Rabri) in 2016. A clause for construction related activities was also added to the aims and objective of the company in 2017 to facilitate the joint venture for the upcoming mall. Now, a limited liability partnership (LLP) company, both Chanda and Ragini have been eased out from the company and Rabri Devi and her two sons had been placed in full control since then, Modi alleged. Modi said this was an example of a shell company turning black money into white. The companys turnover remains the same as it was in 2005-06. The income-tax department should take cognizance, he said, thanking WRD minister Rajiv Ranjan Singh, alias Lallan Singh for bringing Delight Marketing into the limelight in 2008, that helped in the unearthing of the link. To a question whether the Centre would take cognizance of the matter as part of its drive against benami property, Modi said the matter had been exposed now. But the rapid change in the companys ownership is indicative of an effort to beat the benami law, he said and added, it also explains Lalu Prasads strong opposition to demonetisation and crackdown on black money. Modi said he was ready to face a defamation case as threatened by Tej Pratap Yadav, but would also welcome Lalu Prasads promise to transfer the said property in his name, if his expose was true. Initially, similar attempts were made to cover up fodder scam and bitumen scam, he said, reiterating he was on solid ground with over 250 pages of documentary evidence to back his charge. He also rubbished Tejashwi Prasad Yadavs charge that his (Modis) son Utkarsh had anything thing to do with another upcoming mall in Lodipur, reciprocating Lalus offer to hand it over to him if proved otherwise. QUOTE The question is: How Lalu Prasads family came to acquire assets worth 200 crore and how are they building a mall worth Rs 750 crore? Why did they not disclose it in their election affidavit or to the government? SUSHIL KUMAR MODI, senior BJP leader SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Conservation of cows in Rajasthan will entail a cost for those making rent agreements, mortgage papers and lease agreement as they will now pay a surcharge of 10% on stamp duty for cow protection. The surcharge has been imposed on all non-judicial instruments for the conservation and propagation of cows in BJP-ruled Rajasthan. Following Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje announcement in Budget 2017-18, the states Finance Department has imposed surcharge on all such instruments that are non-judicial in nature, an order of which was released on March 31. In exercise of the powers conferred of the Rajasthan Stamp Act, 1998 and in supersession of this departments notification, state government hereby order surcharge at the rate of 10% on stamp duty payable on all instruments for the purposes of conservation and propagation of cow and its progeny, states the order. In her budget speech last year, Raje had proposed surcharge for development of basic infrastructure facilities and protection and propagation of cows. However, judicial stamps, revenue ticket and insurance ticket have been excluded from this order. Three soldiers trapped in an avalanche in Jammu and Kashmirs Batalik were found dead on Friday. Multiple avalanches tore through Batalik sector on Thursday as the Valley reeled under unprecedented rain and snow that swelled rivers and inundated vast areas. Two civilians are also missing after a vehicle they were travelling in skidded of the road and fell into a stream in Anantnag district. Five other passengers were rescued. The administration declared floods in Kashmirs summer capital Srinagar where the Jhelums water level rose alarmingly and shut education institutions for three days, officials said. Kashmir experienced rare snowfall in April with vast areas blanketed in white due to the freak weather phenomemon. An army spokesperson said the heavy snowfall triggered multiple avalanches, burying one post in the Batalik sector. Two out of five trapped soldiers missing were rescued on Thursday. Specially trained and equipped avalanche rescue teams were deployed for the operations in the area. Kashmir has seen devastating avalanches this year with fourteen soldiers swept away in Gurez, Bandipora and an army major in Ganderbal on January 25. Five more soldiers buried under snow on January 28 were pulled out alive in the Macchil sector of Kupwara. They, however, succumbed to their injuries two days later. Incessant rains also forced closure of the arterial Jammu-Srinagar National Highway as the rains triggered landslides and shooting stones at several places along the 300-km road. The Jhelum river, which had breached its banks in 2014, originates in south Kashmirs Sangam area of Anantnag district. Then its passes through capital Srinagar and Asham in Bandipora before crossing into Pakistan. Police also established emergency helplines across the valley. Police have put its men on high alert to meet any possible challenge and eventuality and has established emergency control rooms in all the districts of the valley to provide help to the people in need, a police spokesman said. According to the met department, Srinagar received 98mm rainfall, Kokernag 106mm in Kokernag and tourist resort Pahalgam 87 mm since Wednesday morning. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Uttar Pradesh, where the BJP government is clamping down on illegal slaughterhouses, accounts for more than half of the approved abattoirs and meat processing plants in the country, the Centre said on Friday. Minister of State for Health Faggan Singh Kulaste in a written reply in Lok Sabha said licenses have been issued to around 1,700 slaughterhouses by the countrys food regulator FSSAI. According to figures given by Kulaste, Uttar Pradesh has 42 out of the total 76 approved abattoirs-cum-meat processing plants or standalone abattoirs. Maharashtra is second with 13 abattoirs while Punjab and Andhra Pradesh had five approved abattoirs each. As per the information available in the Food Licensing and Registration System (FLRS) of the Food Safety Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), the total number of slaughter houses (mechanised or non-mechanised) for which license or registration have been issued under Food Safety and Standards (FSS) Act, 2006 is 1,707, Kulaste said. He said the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) registers integrated abattoir-cum-meat processing plants or standalone abattoirs engaged in export. Asked whether any domestic need assessment was done before such licenses were granted, he said, No such assessments are carried out before grant of licences. In terms of section 31 of the FSS Act 2006, all food business operators have to obtain license or registration for commencing any business, he added. After coming to power, new UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath has ordered the closure of illegal slaughterhouses and strict enforcement of the ban on cow smuggling to fulfil a key electoral promise of the BJP, which led to their closure. This has reportedly created scarcity of meat in the state leading to the shutting down of many meat shops, according to reports. Uttar Pradesh plans to introduce English in government schools from nursery instead of Class 6 as part of a broader overhaul of the states education system that will blend nationalist and modern curricula, chief minister Yogi Adityanath has said. In an interview to online portal Khabare.com, the 44-year-old leader said he had asked officials to prepare an education roadmap to enrol more students in schools, check cheating in examinations and introduce foreign language options from class 10. The traditional and the modern should blend. We should have an education system which promotes nationalism but is modern, he told the website. The controversial leader who heads an influential Hindu sect in eastern Uttar Pradesh has taken charge roughly two weeks ago but has already hogged headlines for anti-romeo squads, groups of policemen and women who patrol public spaces in cities and help thwart harassment. But many say they are little more than a moral policing gang that violate privacy. But the CM defended the steps, saying there was no discrimination or harassment. We are not taking decisions based on faces of people so, no one who is following the law should worryif people are sitting in parks, they are not committing any crime, he told the portal. Adityanath a surprise CM pick that apparently stumped many in the party told the web portal that he was in the dark about his nomination and was initially on a parliamentary delegation for Port of Spain but was asked to stay back by the prime minister . On March 17, I got a call from Amit Shah asking me where I am. When I told him that I was in Gorakhpur, he asked me to come over to Delhi. I told him that the last train from Gorakhpur had already left. He sent a chartered flight on the morning of 18th. I reached his home where I was told that I should take up the job of chief minister. He said he asked for the two deputy chief ministers Keshav Prasad Maurya and Dinesh Sharma because he didnt have administrative experience. And I intend to travel across the state. Someone would be required in the state capital. He also leaned against large-scale bureaucratic rejigs a normal with political changes in India and said there were officers who were prevented from working. Transfers are no solution. They dont mark any change. The new CM also blamed the previous Samajwadi Party government for not following the Supreme Courts orders on banning liquor stores and said he was opening to cancelling licences. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 7 By Anvar Mammadov Trend: Expansion of exports and imports, as well as transit cargo transportation, is the most priority direction in the development of relations between Estonia and Azerbaijan, Kaupo Reede, director of the Economic Development Department of the Estonian Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications, told Trend Apr. 7. He said that both countries have great opportunities to achieve these goals. First of all, we see great potential for cooperation between our ports, Reede said. Our delegation in Baku also included the management of the Paldiski Northern Port, which has the status of a free economic zone since 2011. We know that Baku is also creating a free economic zone in the port of Alat, and our representatives arrived in Baku to expand cooperation in this area. At the same time, we are interested in expanding transportation by rail. He also noted that Estonia is very interested in cooperating with Azerbaijan in the field of technologies. We are very interested in everything related to the e-government, and we are studying all opportunities for cooperation in this area, Reede said. Besides, we have a great potential for cooperation in the field of engineering. To date, the Azerbaijani investment to Estonia stands at about $300,000-$400,000. In turn, Estonia has invested about $1 million in the economy of Azerbaijan. Trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Estonia was $541,130 in January-February 2017, 2.2 times more compared to the same period last year, according to the State Customs Committee of Azerbaijan. A week ago, Azmat Khan used to scoop his one-year-old daughter in his arms and play with her for hours together. Today, after being beaten mercilessly by a mob of gau rakshaks (cow protection activists) and then spending an entire day without treatment at the Behror police station, the 22-year-old needs help even to stand. He spends his time lying on a cot, staring blankly at the grief-stricken faces of relatives and on occasion resignedly answering questions posed by mediapersons visiting his Mewat residence. My brother was admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) of a private hospital after losing consciousness in the attack. Two days later, he and three others were brought to the police station where they were kept for an entire day without treatment, said Yousuf, his brother, adding that Khans condition worsened because of that. Khan and a few others were attacked by gau rakshaks on April 1, while they were returning to Jaisinghpur village after buying milch cows from a Jaipur market. One of the victims, Pehlu Khan (55), succumbed to his injuries later. I was made to sleep on the police station floor. They didnt give any reason for bringing me there, and didnt let me return to the hospital either, he told HT. Khan was released the following day. After the death of Pehlu Khan, we went to the Behror station and begged police to release my brother as well as the other three. Azmat was in such bad state that he had to be admitted to another hospital immediately afterwards, said Yousuf. Khan and his family havent heard from the police since then. Here in Mewat, Hindus and Muslims have lived in harmony for hundreds of years. We still cant bring ourselves to believe this. Its shocking that Azmat, all of 22, has been bedridden, said Mangal Ram, a neighbour. Azmats relatives are yet to come to terms with the events that occurred over the last few days. Gau rakshaks attacked innocent people, and killed one of them. Instead of arresting them, police took one of the severely injured victims from the hospital ICU and kept them in custody for an entire day without treatment. What kind of law enforcement is this? asked Haji Mohammedin, another close friend of the family. Behror deputy superintendent of police Parmal Singh denied the charge. This is a false accusation. Why will we take someone out of the ICU? he asked. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON For the rest of his life, Dalit man Vijay Kumars wedding anniversary will remind him of the attack and humiliation he and his kin were subjected to by a group of Rajputs. Kumars wedding procession was attacked by Rajputs in Gundusur village of Rajasthans Churu district on Wednesday evening for allegedly playing music on a loudspeaker. Ten people, including women, were injured in the attack. Three had to be referred to a government hospital and they were discharged later, police said. The incident happened a day after a Dalit groom was attacked in Haryanas Charkhi Dadri on Tuesday for mounting a horse. We were going to the Sati Mata temple at around 5.30 pm before leaving for Nagaur, and on the way there were some houses of Rajputs. They came out and told us to stop playing the music and hurled abuses at us, said Ram Niwas, uncle of the groom. The Rajputs then slapped the loudspeaker operator, turned the machine off and blocked our way to the temple, he said. They said tum bhangi, joota khane wale, kaise baraat nikaal rahe ho DJ ke saath (You scavengers, you have been kicked with boots, how dare you take a wedding procession with DJ and loudspeakers), said Niwas. When the procession turned around to return, the Rajputs started manhandling the women in the procession and attacked the men who went to save them with sticks, said Niwas. He also said that the attackers snatched the mobile phones and jewellery of the women. The groom was safely escorted away by some men in the procession as soon as the disruption began. They wanted to assault the groom. One of them said, Dulhe ko pakdo, zyada dulha ban raha hai (get hold of the groom, he seems to be too audacious), said Niwas. The police has arrested four accused, Jagdish Singh, Rajender Singh, Gopal Singh and Banna Singh. A case has been lodged against them under the SC and ST Act, and for outraging womens modesty and assaulting them, said Tejaram, head constable at Sandwa police station. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON BJP national secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya has dared the Mamata Banerjee government to arrest BJP state president Dilip Ghosh, who was booked on Thursday by West Midnapore district police for carrying a sword during a Ram Navami procession on April 5. Ghosh was booked under non-bailable sections of Arms Act and other sections of the Indian Penal Code, hours within chief minister Mamata Banerjee warning legal action against those carrying weapons during political or religious processions. Read: Sangh Parivar organise unprecedented Ram Navami celebration across Bengal We are not going to take it lightly. Let them try and arrest him, Vijayvargiya said in East Midnapore district on Friday. Ghosh and Vijayvargiya are in East Midnapore district since Thursday. The chief minister has been playing a very negative role since Trinamool leaders started landing in jails for their links with various chit fund scams. They are targeting Ghosh, whereas Trinamool leaders were also seen carrying weapons. They are also looking the other way when people from other communities are carrying weapons, Vijayvargiya said. Many women and children participated in processions carrying swords and axes. (HT Photo) Ghosh, too, criticised the Mamata Banerjee government for being partial. What action are they planning against former Trinamool minister Madan Mitra, who was seen with a sword during a Muharram procession? he asked. The chief minister, however, showed no sign of going soft on BJP that she now identifies as her opponent number one. BJP does not know Bengals culture, not even Indias. If they knew, they would have worshipped in temples instead of carrying out processions with swords. They are trying to pollute Bengals culture. We are not going to tolerate this, and the law will take its own course against people who organise rallies with weapons, she reiterated from a rally in Burdwan district on Friday. Read: Muslim clerics in Bengal demand ban on RSS, say Ram Navami processions with weapons illegal Bengals ruling party has been at loggerheads with the saffron camp over the celebration of Ram Navami when nearly a hundred processions were taken out across the state by various rightwing Hindutva outfits. Many leaders of BJP and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) participated in these rallies. The chief minister accused BJP of trying to hijack the religious programme and playing politics in the name of religion. Are you feeling low, lethargic, dont feel like working? Feeling depressed? Come out and speak about it, as it is curable. To spread awareness about depression, this years theme of World Health Day has been chosen as Depression: Lets talk. Dr Sandeep Grover, psychiatry department, PGIMER, talks about the disease. What is depression? Depression is a mental illness, which is characterised by different symptoms that are present for more than two weeks. Symptoms like sadness accompanied by lack of interest in day-to-day activities. A person feels lethargic, fails to concentrate on work, his appetite and sleep reduces. Other symptoms are low self esteem, negative ideas about himself, future and people around him. Ideas of guilt, worthlessness, and thoughts of suicide start overpowering. How is depression different from sadness? Sadness is a disappointment for a brief period and it does not impact routine functioning and a person automatically comes out of sadness after a while. But in depression, a person cannot overcome it without help and it is persistent for more than two weeks. What triggers depression? There are multiple causes and the most important is stress or any negative life event. Depression depends on combination of things- personality, social support, social situation, and genetic vulnerability. Why few people are more vulnerable than others? People with poor coping ability are vulnerable to stress. When they are put under stress they break down and get into depression. This vulnerability depends upon genetics, coping abilities, personalities and life experience. Any particular age, which is more vulnerable? One can go into depression at any age group. But incidence is high among people in late 20s and mid 30s. As probably they are exposed to more stress. Is it that youth glued to gadgets are more vulnerable to depression? Definitely, in virtual world they dont learn lesson of failure. When they come across failure in real world, it leads to stress and makes them vulnerable to depression. What is the scenario in PGIMER? Depression constitutes a major chuck of our patients. Nearly 1/3 of our patients at the psychiatry department are suffering from depression and every year there has been an addition of 10% to 15% new cases. Last year, around 13,000 new cases were seen at the psychiatry department. Do you believe that people are hesitant visiting psychiatrist? There is lack of awareness and stigma attached to it. People are not happy visiting psychiatrist; they still think that it is the department which treats insane people. They do not consider depression as a lifestyle disease. Can depression be cured? Depression can definitely be treated. There are lots of strategies like medication, psychotherapies, change in lifestyle, relaxation and combination of all this. In severe cases, patient may require electroconvulsive therapy or brain stimulation. Any message for depressed people reading this article? You are not alone. Depression is common and can be easily treated. More than 98% patients can be treated with only anti-depressants or psychotherapies. People should continue taking their treatment and never stop it in between, else the symptoms will reoccur. They should come out and seek help. Make your aspirations to the level of your ability and stop expecting too much from yourself. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON She is possibly eight, prefers to walk on all fours, and screeches to express herself much like the monkeys that raised her in Uttar Pradeshs Katarniyaghat wildlife sanctuary until she was rescued. At the district hospital in Bahraich, where she is learning to be human, the child is lovingly called the girl Mowgli after the much-adored, wolf-raised protagonist of Rudyard Kiplings iconic childrens tale The Jungle Book. She was first spotted by villagers foraging in the forests of the sanctuarys Motipur range in January. The child was naked with a mop of matted hair, tanned by exposure to the elements, and claw-like nails. She was with a troop of monkeys; and was at ease with her wild family. The locals informed police about the unusual sighting and a team brought her to civilization. But the rescue was not easy as the monkeys put up a stiff resistance. The girl was scared of humans and screamed at anyone approaching her. She had wounds on her body. Our priority is to give her proper medical care and look for her parents, additional superintendent of police Dinesh Tripathi said. Two months at the Bahraich hospital has helped the girl overcome her fears. A little, of course. She was unable to communicate or understood any language. She has spent many years with animals and, so, behaved like them, said chief medical superintendent DK Singh. Now she understands signals and is able to identify the ward boy, nurse and other medical staff. It seems the girl had been abandoned in the forest area at an early age. Singh said he had sought help to put the girl in an institution where she could learn human behaviour and language. But the authorities turned down my request. The child is adapting fast to her new environment, though she often gets down on her all fours to move around the ward. She recognises hand signs, said Renu Devi, a health worker looking after Ms Mowgli. Real-life stories similar to Kiplings famous tale abound around the world. A woman in England said last year she had been brought up by monkeys in the jungles of South America after being ditched by child traffickers. A Ukrainian woman, Oxana Malaya, was rescued from a kennel after being raised by dogs when her alcoholic parents abandoned her as a child. Called a feral child, she behaved like dogs running on all fours and panting with her tongue out. Navi Mumbai residents can expect 5-star hotels to come up around the citys proposed airport, much before the terminals are even built. Though the proposed Navi Mumbai International Airport is expected to be ready only by 2019, the City and Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra (Cidco) is already gearing up to sell plots on which these hotels can be constructed. The corporation has reserved three plots, 15 to 20 minutes from the airport a 16,000-square-metre plot next to the traffic police chowky at Kalamboli Circle on the Sion-Panvel highway, a 12,000-sq-m plot opposite Khandeshwar railway station and a 10,000-sq-m plot at Pushpaknagar plot 1. Cidco vice-chairman and managing director Bhushan Gagrani reportedly inspected these plots. Officials said they will have to tackle large-scale encroachment at Kalamboli Circle to pave the way for these hotels. The corporation plans to complete the tender process within the next four months. Cidco officials said they hope top international figures from the hospitality industry will show interest. The hotels are expected to boost the realty market in Kalamboli, Pushpaknagar and Kamothe. Despite the economic slowdown owing to demonetisation, developers have not reduced the prices of properties in the city. Keeping this in mind, Cidco officials said they are confident they will get a good price for these plots too. CIDCO can expect at least Rs1 lakh per square metre, said Manohar Shroff, secretary, Maharashtra Chamber of Housing Industry, Navi Mumbai. Bidders recently offered Rs85,000 per square metre for a Cidco-owned residential-cum-commercial complex in Kharghar. With developers willing to pay large sums, the prices of Cidcos land are skyrocketing, he added. Taking into account the needs of international travellers, the corporation plans to construct 5-star hotels near the airport. We want the hotels to be on a par with international standards. They must be equipped with modern amenities, said Mohan Ninawe, senior public relations officer, Cidco. There are no 5-star hotels in Panvel. We have started planning for them now so they can be constructed by the time the airport is completed, he added. Ninawe said the revenue earned from the sale of these plots will be used for the welfare of residents. 1. Mumbais mangroves to be cordoned off by 10-foot compound wall In the wake of 63 cases of destruction of mangroves in Mumbai from January to March this year, the state government has upped efforts to protect mangrove trees. The Maharashtra Coastal Zone Management Authority (MCZMA) permitted the state mangrove cell, during a meeting on Wednesday, to construct 2.6 metre-high (10-foot) compound walls across the 5,800 hectare mangrove cover in Mumbai. However, environmentalists have raised doubts about the flow of tide water to the mangrove areas that might end up destroying the trees. 2. Dog blood donation camp at Bombay veterinary college It was a unique blood donation drive at the Bombay Veterinary College in Parel on Thursday as the institutes student council aimed to boost their blood bank for dogs. 3. Maharashtra government considering anti-conversion law The Maharashtra government is considering an anti-conversion law to curb the alleged cases of conversion by Christian evangelists, the government told the Assembly on Friday. It also said it would hold a debate among the stakeholders to discuss the issue. 4. Maharashtra government aims at integrated development of railway stations with surrounding areas If the Railways undertakes to revamp a station, the state government will also redevelop the surrounding areas, including restructuring the traffic infrastructure and building more facilities. 5. 230 bars on Panvel highway shut; 15,000 lose jobs A Supreme Court order has led to the closure of 230 bars and country liquor shops along the Panvel highway and around 15,000 people have lost jobs. On December 15 last year, the apex court had ordered the closure of all liquor shops along national and state highways across the country. The Ghatkopar police on Wednesday arrested a 55-year-old tailor for allegedly molesting a 12-year-old girl from his neighbourhood under the pretext of taking measurements for stitching her clothes. According to the Ghatkopar police, the incident took place at a chawl in Ghatkopar west. The survivor and her friend had gone to the tailors home to stitch clothes. The tailor asked the girls friend to wait outside and then molested her. The survivor then went home and informed her parents who immediately took her to Ghatkopar police station. An FIR was registered under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) POCSO . The accused was arrested within 24 hours of the incident. We will produced him before a sessions court to gain his custody for further probe, said senior police inspector Venkat Patil of Ghatkopar police station. Read POCSO court asks Mumbai police to trace missing girl raped by father and auto driver The recently introduced Mental Health Bill 2016, which seeks to empower and protect patients by giving them and their nominated representatives more say in their treatment, has created a sharp divide among psychiatrists and other mental health professionals. The new bill specifies two types of people will mental illness independent patients, who dont need support to take decisions, and supported patients, who are highly dependent and suffer from severe mental ailments that affect their judgment. The bill categorically places more emphasis on independent patients and has a long set of procedures to admit supported patients, said a senior psychiatrist at a government-run hospital. According to the bill, a supporting patient can be admitted only after one psychiatrist and one mental health professional or medical practitioner independently confirm that the patient may cause bodily harm to himself or others, has a tendency to behave violently with himself or others, or is unable to care for himself to the extent of putting himself or others in harms way. The consent of a relative is also required to treat such a patient. If no relative is available, the patient may be admitted, but for only 30 days. After this, their condition must be reviewed and communicated to the medical board, which will decide whether the person needs institutionalised care. This board, mental health professionals say, includes only one psychiatrist and none of its other members have medical backgrounds. Criticism Some mental health professionals have criticised the move, saying those who suffer from serious psychological disorders such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder often lack the ability to make sound decisions and dont always have a relative to speak on their behalf. Dr Sagar Mundada, who has an MD in psychiatry, told HT about one such case, in which the police found a man in a gutter in Mazgaon and took him to JJ Hospital. There, doctors learnt that he was an engineer who suffered from schizophrenia. He was treated and soon returned to his hometown of Kolkata. Dr Yusuf Matcheswalla, head of psychiatry at Masina Hospital and GT Hospital, who has admitted and treated patients at GT and JJ hospitals on his own accord, said that the new bill, if enacted will complicate the process of admitting a patient. While the bill gives lot of power to the authorities when it comes to admitting and treating schizophrenics and those with bipolar disorder, it will increase the amount of time it takes to admit such patients. These problems are due to the fact that no leading practitioners, who are aware of the ground realities of admitting and treating mental health patients, were consulted on the bill, said Matcheswalla. He said that since doctors will wait for the bill to become law and then see how they can work under its ambit. Every bill is meant to be in the best interests of the people. If it affects the quality of treatment provided, there will certainly be amendments that will make it workable, he added. Dr Harish Shetty, a prominent psychiatrist, said, There are no such regulations for neurologists, gynecologists or experts in any other medical field. Why the government is doing this in our field is beyond my knowledge. The bill has to achieve a balance. Too many filters while admitting or treating a patient will delay the process and will have negative consequences for the patient. He added that while there ought be to rules governing voluntarily admissions by doctors, the ultimate goal of providing treatment to patients shouldnt be affected. The new bill also introduces some new concepts, which doctors fear may end up increasing red tape and taking away doctors decision-making powers. The most controversial of these is the concept of advanced directive. Advanced directive gives patients more power to decide aspects of their treatment how they do and dont wish to be treated for a mental ailment. It also gives patients the power to nominate a representative to take decisions on their behalf. Dr Mundada said the concept of advanced directive was blindly picked up from the West without consideration for local factors such as existing mental health resources and lack of awareness about mental illness in India. In Western countries, where the concept originated, mental ailments are not considered taboo. Here, apart from the fact that the field is largely limited to the public sector, there is an acute shortage of resources. In such a situation, doctors are in the best position to take decisions because patients or their nominated representatives have limited knowledge on mental health and mental illness, said Dr Mundada. On the flip side However, others have welcomed the proposed new rules, saying they will combat the exploitation of patients, an all-too-common occurrence given the superstition, lack of understanding and social stigma associated with mental illness in India. Dr Rajesh Nagpal, neuro-psychiatrist from Delhi who worked on the bill, said it was an attempt to bring Indias mental health laws up to date. The bill is fantastic. There are some loopholes in it but it will regularise the field of psychiatric, which is necessary. The guidelines have been set according to global standards and if we want to have international-standard services, we have to have laws that match international standards as well. There will be a lot of funds required after the bill becomes law but all of it will be in the best interests of patients, said Dr Nagpal. Dr Vishal Sawant, director of Juno Clinic, which provides mental health advice online, said concepts such as advanced directive will combat unscrupulous rehabilitation centres that exploit patients. There are some bad practices in the field, which were restricted by the Mental Health Act, 1987, but continued because the law wasnt implemented. The new bill is the governments attempt to bring institutions that exploit mentally ill patients under the ambit of the law. Yes, there is a little additional paperwork and doctors may have to change certain practices, but in the long run, it will be in the best interest of patients, said Dr Sawant. Will set up more centres to help those in need: Dr Vijay Satbir Singh, additional chief secretary, health From using yoga to setting up centres in rural areas, the state has various plans to create awareness about mental ailments, said Dr Vijay Satbir Singh, additional chief secretary, health. Excerpts from an interview: Taking the prevalence of mental ailments and limited resources into account, is there a need to allocate more funds for mental health? There is a need to create awareness about mental ailments. We plan to spend a large part of the budget on developing various communication channels for it. We will also review the existing Information, Education and Communication scheme of the Centre and train our staff to reach out to the rural population How will the state tackle manpower shortage? We are training the Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) workers. They will visit households with a simple questionnaire which can help detect signs of depression. The patient can then be referred to psychiatrists. We are also training our helpline staff to address the issue of depression across professions and classes, so they can get counselling. Many district or sub-district level hospitals dont have sufficient number of psychiatrists. Is there a plan to increase the number? We are planning discussions with psychiatrists to understand the issue and come up with a solution. Psychiatrists will be hired on a contractual or honorary basis and the ones working for us will undergo additional post-graduate degree programmes. We will also get experts from different fields such as Aayurveda, Siddhha and other alternate medicine degree-holders to join our scheme. Paramedical staff and social workers will be trained to fill the void. What will be the role of district and sub-district hospitals in creating awareness? We have a large network of small and large medical establishments across the state, which will house a wellness and counseling centre each. Yoga and meditation will be promoted as an effective tool. A well-connected chain of 2,000 diagnostic centres, to be set up at a cost of Rs150crore, will come into action in the next two months. How will you spread the reach? Telemedicine will be used effectively. Conference centres will be built in the most tribal and distant areas, so experts can connect with people through video-conferencing. Many pilot projects are underway. The network will gradually grow. READ MORE Dismiss depression at your own peril The World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared that depression will be the theme for this years World Health Day, which is being marked today. HT spoke to Professor B N Gangadhar, director of the National Institute of Mental Health & Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS) at Bangalore, who has been working on spreading awareness about mental health disorders. What, according to you is the biggest hurdle that prevents people from getting help for psychiatric disorders in India? There are two things poor awareness and the stigma associated with mental illness. While people approach doctors for major psychiatric disorders, in which the symptoms are easily recognisable, very few with mild to moderate depression reach out for help. Read: World Health Day: Dismiss depression at your own peril What are the main treatments for depression? The main treatments for depression are counselling and taking medications called anti-depressants. The medicines balance the release of chemicals called neurotransmitters in the brain, and are prescribed for moderate to severe cases. Studies have shown that yoga and meditation can also help combat depression. Read: World Health Day: The real message is lost in the cacophony Is psychiatric treatment in India affordable, compared to Western countries? Yes, treatment in India is more affordable than in most western countries as medicines are cheaper. In the United States, though psychiatric disorders are covered by insurance, the number of times one can visit a doctor is limited. Read: World Health Day | The great depression: Understanding the cause of suicides in India Is there a dearth of studies on mental health disorders in India? No, I dont think there is a shortage of studies related to mental health disorders in India. The 2015-2016 survey by NIMHANS was very comprehensive and covered all zones. One of the major recommendations of the report was that the treatment gap needs to be bridged. Read: World Health Day: Where the mind is without fear The WHO Mental Health Atlas 2011 states that the governments expenditure on mental health in India was only 0.06% of the total health budget. Do you think there is a need to spend more? I think the governments entire health budget needs to be increased. Once that is done, the budget for mental health care will increase. Read World Health Day: 6 common issues afflicting India Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 7 By Maksim Tsurkov Trend: Azerbaijans sales gas output stood at 4.8 billion cubic meters in 1Q17, stable compared to the same period of 2016, the Natural Gas World quoted Khoshbakht Yusifzade, first vice-president of the countrys state oil company SOCAR, as saying. Yusifzade noted that Shah Deniz Stage 1 produced about 2.5 billion cubic meters of gas, less than in 1Q16. Meanwhile, associated gas deliveries from the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli block to SOCAR increased by 0.4 billion cubic meters as compared to the same period of 2016. Azerbaijans gross gas production was 29.4 billion cubic meters in 2016, including 18.71 billion cubic meters of sales gas, of which 6.754 billion cubic meters was exported. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @MaksimTsurkov Three Bangladeshi youngsters with a rare genetic disorder, which incapacitates muscles leading to early death, will quite literally walk out of hospital in a few months thanks to Mumbai doctors, Air India and the Union Ministry of External Affairs. It all began in January, when Bangladesh resident Mohammad Tofazzel Hossen demanded his two sons Abdul, 24, and Rahinul,14, and his grandson Shohrab,7, be euthanised with permission from the government. The three boys suffer from Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD), a genetic disorder characterised by progressive muscle degeneration and weakness. The issue had broken into an international debate in January. Caused owing to the absence of dystrophin, a protein that helps keep muscle cells intact, patients are likely to survive until the age of 25, said doctors from NeuroGen Brain and Spine Institute (NBSI), Navi Mumbai, which treated the three on a pro-bono basis. After the international media highlighted Hossens desperate plea for euthanasia in January, Dhaka-based human rights organisation, Ain O Salish Kendra, started helping the family by connecting with experts across the world to seek options for medical treatment. By then, 55-year-old Hossen, who lives with his wife, two sons, daughter and grandchild in a one-bedroom house in the Meherpur district of Bangladesh, had sold his local shop and exhausted all the monetary options to avail treatment for youngsters. I had lost all hope. Available medical facilities couldnt help my children; my life savings were no where close to meet the treatment needs for my sons, said Hossen. Hossens fate changed overnight after doctors from NBSI, which specialises in stem cell therapy for rare neurological disorders, in collaboration with Meditourz, a medical tourism company, intervened to treat the patients free of cost. Doctors said till date, the hospital has treated more than 1,000 patients with similar disorders across 40 countries, with their first patient being a 31-year-old who is able to walk on his own. Air India, on the hospitals request, agreed to fly the three patients and three attendants free of cost from Kolkata to Mumbai for treatment. The Indian Ministry of External Affairs made sure the requisite visa documentation for the three patients and their relatives to travel to India was approved on priority. The family travelled by road to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport, Kolkata, and arrived in Mumbai on April 2. Not only were the tickets arranged, but senior officers of Air India were present at both Kolkata and Mumbai airports to arrange hassle-free travel by arranging wheelchairs and other medical help. The three youngsters, who were wheelchair-borne and had started to lose mobility of the limbs, underwent stem cell therapy on Tuesday. Doctors said within three to six months, all three of them will gain mobility and will be able to walk. The therapy restricts the disease progression and thus increases muscle capacity gradually, said Dr Alok Sharma, director of the medical facility, adding that the three patients will be discharged next week and will return for a follow-up next year. They [doctors and Indian government machinery] are Gods gift to us. I will remain indebted to the Indian government all my life for saving my children, Hossen told HT. I was left with no option but to tell the doctors to euthanise my children. It is the most painful thing I have ever had to say, but it is only fair that if I am responsible for their ill-health, it is I who should set them free, he said. India gave my sons and grandson a new life, something which our doctors or system failed to do, said Hossen. Read Bangladeshi father seeks mercy killing of sons, grandson The Maharashtra Assembly on Friday revoked suspension of 10 opposition legislators who had been suspended for unruly behaviour while the budget was being presented in the House. On April 2, the Assembly had revoked the suspension of five NCP and four Congress MLAs and with Fridays decision, suspension of all the 19 MLAs has been revoked. The resolution for revoking suspension was passed by the ruling members BJP and Shiv Sena even as the Opposition was absent in the lower house on the last day of the budget session. The Opposition boycotted the proceedings to protest against the suspension and to support the farm loan waiver. The 10 legislators who were reprieved are Amar Kale, Vijay Wadettiwar, Harshwardhan Sapkal, Jaykumar Gore, Kunal Patil from Congress and Bhaskar Jadhav, Jitendra Awhad, Madhusudan Kendre, Rahul Jagtap and Sangram Jagtap from NCP. Nineteen opposition legislators were suspended on March 22 for disrupting the proceedings and burning copies of the budget. The legislators had created a ruckus inside the Assembly demanding a loan waiver for the farmers while the state finance minister Sudhir Mungantiwar was presenting the annual budget. Taking cognisance of their unruly behaviour, the government moved a motion to suspend the 19 unruly MLAs for nine months. Following this, the Opposition leaders boycotted Assembly proceedings. Also read: Maharashtra legislative Assembly revokes suspension of 5 NCP, 4 Congress MLAs SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON If the Railways undertakes to revamp a station, the state government will also redevelop the surrounding areas, including restructuring the traffic infrastructure and building more facilities. Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis told the legislative assembly that the state government has taken a decision of integrated development of suburban railway stations, going beyond just a makeover of the stations. The CM said that the state government has taken the decision to allot additional FSI and other dispensations for the integrated development of the stations with surrounding areas. While replying to a calling-attention motion, raised by Parag Alwani, Ashish Shelar, Atul Bhatkhalkar (all BJP) and others on the MUTP-2, in the legislative assembly, chief minister Devendra Fadnavis told the house on Thursday that the government was aiming at the integrated development of the stations. In a recent meeting held, we have decided not to restrict ourselves only to the development of the stations mandated in the MUTP-2, but to also extend the plans to the comprehensive development of the surrounding areas. While making the stations equipped with facilities, the traffic-management system and other infrastructure will also need to be looked at. We are in favour of not only the FSI, but also the dispensation needed from the state government, Fadnavis said. Fadnavis informed the house that the extension of the harbour line between Andheri and Goregaon will be completed by the end of the year. The 5th and 6th line between Thane and Diva stations will be completed by March 2019, while the 6th lane at Mumbai Central and the 5th and 6th line between CST and Kurla will be completed by March 2021, he said. The chief minister said that the Centre has approved the MUTP-3 with the estimated cost of Rs10,947 crore, for which the process to avail a multi-agency loan was in progress. The 50% of the expenditure to be shared by the state, will have to be borne by the MMRDA and Cidco at Rs5,444 crore and Rs4,748 crore respectively. The CM said that the Railways and state government have also decided to fund the elevated rail corridors between Bandra and Virar, CST and Panvel, Virar and Panvel. Read Soon, Mumbais suburban stations to get 100-plus escalators SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A college in Kandivli has filed a petition at the Bombay high court against the University of Mumbais grievance cell, saying that it does not take strict action against attendance defaulters, often allowing them to appear for exams even after colleges bar them for low attendance. The hearing for the petition filed this week is slated to take place on April 10. Kandivali Education Societys Shroff College, the petitioner, has told the court that students with less than 50% attendance were also allowed to write their exams. The college said that more than 100 first-year BCom students had been debarred from writing their exams this year, because they did not have the required attendance percentage. Of them, 38 students approached the universitys grievance cell (commerce) and it asked the college to allow the defaulters to take the exams despite the fact that they had less than 50% attendance. We are very strict with the attendance and cannot change our rules for anyone. The university also has a rule that mandates 75% attendance for every student. We only detain students who dont even meet the 60% mark, said Lily Bhushan, principal of the college. In March last year, 97 TYBCom and 20 TYBA students of Mithibai College in Vile Parle were not allowed to appear for their final examinations because of low attendance. These students had moved court, but were denied relief. Similarly, students of KES Shroff College had pleaded against the institutes decision of debarring them, but to no avail. While 75% attendance has been compulsory for years, three years back, Ordinance 6086 was passed by the University of Mumbai. The ordinance says that only in special cases where the student has health issues or some personal problems can the attendance be brought down, but cannot go lower than 50%. Last year, many students with less than 50% attendance, were allowed in the exam hall by the MU grievance cell. This year the number of attendance defaulters is very low, but fact remains that there still are students who expect to be allowed to take their exams despite appropriate attendance. Our teachers and staff work on maintaining attendance records throughout the year, only to be shot down by the university later, which is unfair, said Anju Kapoor, principal of UPG College, Vile Parle. She added that attendance defaulters receive monthly reminders about their dwindling performance and parents too have been informed regularly, but to no avail. Why have an ordinance in place if it is not to be followed? she asked. The management of KES Shroff College is hoping to win the case in court. This case will serve as a clear warning for students across all colleges, added Bhushan. READ MORE University of Mumbai invites bids for digital assessment of answer sheets for the third time Mumbai university not among Indias top 150 institutes SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON n the wake of 63 cases of destruction of mangroves in Mumbai from January to March this year, the state has upped its efforts to protect mangrove trees. During a meeting on Wednesday, the Maharashtra Coastal Zone Management Authority (MCZMA) permitted the state mangrove cell to construct a 10-foot-high compound wall across the 5,400-hectare mangrove cover. However, environmentalists have raised doubts about the flow of tide water to the mangrove areas that might end up destroying the trees. Mangroves are salt-tolerant plants, trees, shrubs or ground fern of tropical and subtropical intertidal regions of the world. They are a breeding ground for a variety of marine animals. Apart from controlling floods, they absorb carbon dioxide by making air cleaner to breathe. Mangrove cell officials said they will be starting the fencing process in areas most prone to encroachments. Areas along the western and central suburbs of Mumbai such as Manori-Gorai, Marwe, Kandivli, Borivli, Charkop, Chitta camp, Kannamwar Nagar, and some parts of the eastern suburbs, will be the areas where the walls come up first, said N Vasudevan, additional principal chief conservator of forest, state mangrove cell. Currently, Mumbai has 5,800 hectares (ha) of mangrove cover 4,000 ha on government-owned land and 1,800 ha in private areas. While Navi Mumbai and the eastern end of Thane creek have a cover of 1,471 ha, the western bank of Thane creek has 1,500 ha. On January 16, HT had reported that the state forest department had tied up with the Indian Space Research Organisation to track mangrove destruction through real-time satellite imagery across Maharashtra, a first in India. Mangrove cell officials added that once the fencing process is complete, CCTV cameras will be installed along the boundary walls of the mangrove patches. We will use our satellite-based technology to monitor these areas closely once they are cordoned off. Additionally, our department will have more officers on patrolling duty, said Makarand Ghodke, assistant conservator of forest, state mangrove cell. We will ensure that not a single source of natural water feeding the mangroves. will be blocked, he added Environmentalists said that the entire wetland needs to drain properly and tide water will be blocked by the walls inadvertently. The wall will surely interfere with the natural flow of water and this is not acceptable. They can use the same method used along the eastern expressway by fencing the areas using barbed wire, which will not only stop violators from entering and also allow tide water to flow in, said Stalin D, director, NGO Vanashakti. Nowhere across the world have mangroves been protected by walls. 63 cases of mangrove destruction from Jan to March In the first three months of this year, Mumbai has seen 63 cases of mangrove destruction 57 cases at mangroves located on private land (under the revenue department) and 6 cases on government land (forest department) Violators have gone undetected as no arrests have been made in any of the cases yet. First-information-reports (FIRs) were filed in all six cases on government land No action yet taken yet on cases on private land Last year between April and December, Mumbai saw 244 mangrove destruction cases with no arrests or convictions in all cases. (Source: Mumbai Mangrove Conservation Unit under the state mangrove cell) What the law states The destruction of mangrove forests across the state and construction within 50m of mangrove areas was banned by the Bombay high court in 2005, after a public interest litigation (PIL) was filed by the NGO Bombay Environment Action Group. In 2014, after Vanashakti filed another PIL on the protection of wetlands, the HC banned all reclamation and construction on wetlands. Read Mumbai wetland destruction: 5-acre wetland patch destroyed through debris dumping, Thane collector to ensure action SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has asked the state urban development department to change the mansions reservation from a green zone to pave the way for a memorial for late Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray at the mayor bungalow in Dadar (West). The sea-facing Shivaji Park bungalow and its surrounding areas were marked as a green zone in the Development Plan (DP) 1967 and DP 1991. Construction is prohibited in the areas demarcated under the green category. We had sent a letter (to the state government) a few months ago. We have sent another reminder to it after the resolution was passed by the corporation, said a senior civic official said. The corporation passed the resolution to convert the bungalow, which has been home to Mumbais mayors for the past five decades, into a memorial for Thackeray in February. According to the resolution, the bungalow will be leased out to a government-constituted trust at a nominal annual rate of Rs1 for the next 30 years. While the current mayor has to be shifted to a bungalow in Byculla zoo, the civic body is yet to undertake the renovation of the bungalow. The Development Plan 2034 is a 20-year infrastructure blueprint for the city. It is yet to be passed by corporation. With only 33% of the 1991 plan implemented, most of the reservations from the previous plan have been included in the new draft plan. Meanwhile, after the state legislative Assembly, the legislative council on Thursday unanimously passed a bill to amend the Mumbai Municipal Corporation Act. The passage of the bill will allow the construction of the memorial. The BMC can now grant the plot at the nominal rate to the Bal Thackeray Memorial Trust, which is headed by Uddhav Thackeray. Structure was once used by Bikaner royals The grade-II heritage structure at Shivaji Park in Dadar was used by the royal family of Bikaner in the late 1920s and was taken over by the civic body a decade later. It was initially used as a municipal office before it became the mayors official residence. The bungalow in Byculla zoo premises, currently vacant, is also a heritage structure. It will house new city mayor Vishwanath Mahadeshwar Read Maharashtra Assembly clears bill to lease out plot for Bal Thackeray memorial Mumbai bungalow given for Bal Thackeray memorial, where will the BMC mayor stay now? Decks cleared for Thackeray memorial at Mumbai Mayors Bungalow SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON htmetro@hindustantimes.com A 24-year-old youth was arrested on Thursday for allegedly murdering a man after a heated argument during a card game in a chawl at Santacruz (West). According to the police, the incident occurred around 4.30pm at Mangalwadi chawl off Juhu Tara road on March 27 and the victim, Amarkumar Shamanand Prasad alias Bhiku, passed away on Wednesday. According to the police, Bhiku, who worked as a helper in the film industry, and the arrested accused, Stephen Lobo, who did odd jobs for a living, both residents of Mangalwadi, were playing a card game with others. Bhiku suspected that Lobo was cheating and so confronted him. The police said Lobo and Bhiku had such confrontations in the past also. This led to a heated argument and in the spur of the moment, Lobo picked up a stone and smashed it on Bhikus head. Lobo, however, did not stop and hit Bhiku repeatedly on his head. Bhiku was rushed to a government hospital and slipped into coma owing to the injuries. He passed away on Wednesday, after which murder charges were added. Lobo was then booked for causing grievous assault and managed to escape before police could nab him. On Thursday, he was traced and arrested. He was produced before a magistrates court and has been remanded in police custody till April 10. Read Youth held in Mumbai with barking deer skin worth 1 lakh Dozens of parents protested against the alleged fee hike by Amity International School in Sector 1 Vasundhara on Friday morning. The protest by parents comes in the wake of a series of protests and demonstrations by parents groups against various private schools across Delhi-NCR over increase in fee. Parents whose children study at Amity International School alleged that the fee has been hiked by 170% in the past eight years. When I enrolled my daughter in 2009, the school fee was Rs 24,000. Now, this has been increased to Rs 61,000 , which works out to a 170% hike. Compared to last year, the hike is 25%. It is not possible for parents to cope with the unfair hike every year, said Hridesh, a parent. Parents also alleged that the school management hiked the bus fare after installing air-conditioners in them. The ACs have been installed without our permission and the school now charges Rs 7,000 for three months as bus fare. Similarly, they charge Rs 20,600 as annual charge which was Rs 13,000 in 2009. This hike is unjustified, said Neeraj, another parent. When a child is admitted, they charge a heavy amount in the name of admission fee and building fee. Then what is the point of an annual charge apart from the school fee? They also charge Rs 16,400 as activity fee, said Hridesh. Amity International School principal Mrs Balachandran was unavailable for comment. We have received a representation from the parents and have taken cognizance of the matter, said Savita Mehta, spokesperson, Amity group of institutions. Parents have demanded the setting up of a state regulatory body to control the fee hike in private schools. In the wake of continued protests by parents, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath held a meeting with representatives of the state education department in order to find a solution to the crisis. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A one-year old boy was attacked by a stray dog while the child was playing outside his house in Lajpat Nagar locality in Ghaziabad on Thursday night. The dog also injured the boys grandmother who tried to chase the dog away. The family said hearing their cries for help, several passersby chased the dog away and beat it up. The incident took place around 8.45pm on Thursday when Mayank was playing outside his house. Hearing the boys cries, his grandmother Manju Rani rushed to his rescue. The dog turned on her and attacked her. The boy suffered severe injuries on his face while his grandmother suffered injuries on her hands, said Mohit Jaiswal, the boys uncle. Later, some passersby came and chased the dog away. The dog attacked them too. We fear that the dog may have suffered severe injuries. However, we immediately went to the hospital and got the two injured treated. Stray dogs are a menace in Sahibabad area, he said. Animal rights activists said in case the crowd injured the animal, it would attract legal provisions against them. Injuring or killing an animal would invite legal action. To curb the stray dog menace, sterilisation of canines has to be undertaken. This procedure helps reduce the attacking tendencies in dogs. The locals in respective areas should stress on sterilisation rather than inflicting injuries on stray animals, said Saurabh Gupta, from People for Animals. According to records available with the Ghaziabad municipal corporation, around 2,621 stray dogs were sterilised during the period from February 2013 to July 2016. However, the menace has not abated and residents have taken up the issue with the authorities on numerous occasions. In September last year, residents of Indirapuram, Crossings Republik and other localities in Ghaziabad had handed over a petition comprising nearly 3,000 signatures to mayor Ashu Verma, seeking his intervention in the issue. There have also been frequent protests and candlelight marches in Indirapuram over the issue. In December 2014, several stray dogs in Sikroda, near NH-24, had attacked and killed a seven-year-old boy. Sterilisation is the only solution to the stray dog menace. We are also trying to rope in more agencies who can take up sterilisation drives at the earliest, Verma said. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Ghaziabad district magistrate on Friday recommended deduction of a days salary of 22 government employees who failed to appear at the tehsil diwas programme held in Loni on Thursday. The staff remained absent even though they were assigned duties at the tehsil diwas function. The action against them was recommended by the sub-divisional magistrate. Tehsil Diwas is held in different tehsils on specified days and senior police and administrative officials from different departments visit and listen to complaints of locals. They also initiate action regarding complaints or refer them for further inquiries. The 22 staff members remained absent and their one days salary will be deducted. We also conducted a surprise inspection at the government school in Didauli. There, three teachers were found sitting idle while children were playing. A days salary will be deducted for them too, said Nidhi Kesarwani, district magistrate. We also inspected the mid-day meal served to students and it was found to not be of proper quality. In this connection, we have ordered to cut a days payment of the NGO that supplies meals in the entire region. At the school, a cleaning staff member too was not present and we were told that he remains absent. We have ordered his suspension, she added. During the inspection, tehsildars were also instructed to initiate a survey by lekhpals about small and marginal farmers from the district who wish to sell wheat at government centres. In the first cabinet meeting held in Lucknow recently, it was decided that 5,000 wheat centres will be set up in the state and monitored by ministers for smooth procurement of the crop this season. Barama Hackathon 2017 project organized by Barama Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center and supported by Azercell Telecom LLC and Pasha Bank has launched. The project is designed as training course and competition for junior programmers. Hackathon is a globally recognized competition in which developers collaborate as a team to develop digital recourses in a short time frame. It is regularly held by gigantic companies, such as Google, Netflix, Facebook, HP and Microsoft. This time, developers will be tasked to develop a new mobile application by using cellular phone features. The competition will start at 9.00 AM on April 22 and last for 36 hours until 21.00 PM on April 23. The developed mobile applications will be presented to the board of judges on April 25 and the top 3 winners will receive valuable awards and presents from Azercell and Pasha Bank. If you wish to take part in the project, you need to go to hackathon.barama.az and fill in the registration form. In total, 10 teams will compete in Barama Hackathon 2017. The deadline for registration is April 18, 2017. Ozsut restaurants will provide catering services during the project and portal technote.az will provide the official media support. Last year, Barama Hackathon 2016 was held by Barama Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center. The project is aimed to promote the IT industry in the country and provide the talented youth an opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge and skills in this sphere. The leader of the mobile communication industry of Azerbaijan and the biggest investor in the non-oil sector Azercell Telecom LLC was founded in 1996. With 48% share of Azerbaijans mobile market Azercells network covers 80% of the territory and 99,8% of population of the country. Currently, 4,5 million subscribers choose Azercell services. Azercell has pioneered an important number of innovations in Azerbaijan, including GSM technology, advance payment system, 24/7 Customer Care, online customer services, GPRS/EDGE, M2M, MobilBank, one-stop- shop service offices Azercell Express, mobile e-service ASAN signature, etc. Azercell deployed first 4G LTE services in Azerbaijan in 2012. According to the results of mobile network quality surveys of Global Wireless Solutions company and international systems specialized in wireless coverage mapping such as Opensignal and Testmy.net, Azercells network demonstrated the best results among the mobile operators of Azerbaijan. Theres fresh hope of revival of the long-proposed Jewar airport project in Greater Noida after Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath, on Thursday, directed officials to expedite work on the project along the 165-km Yamuna Expressway. In 2001, then UP chief minister and now union home minister Rajnath Singh had proposed a greenfield Taj international airport and aviation hub (TIAH) at Jewar. Though governments changed at the Centre and the state over the last 16 years, the project failed to kickstart. Chief minister Yogi Adityanath has instructed all officials concerned to coordinate with the civil aviation ministry to get necessary approvals, so that the project is completed at the earliest. The project is crucial because it will help in bringing investment, setting up industries and creating jobs in the region along Yamuna Expressway, Suresh Rana, minister of state (Independent), sugarcane, sugar mills and industrial development, said. Officials hope that the project will be a reality soon as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is in power in both the Centre and the state. In the last 16 years, the mantle of administration at the Centre and the state passed from one party to another, delaying the project. Over the last five years of the Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party (SP) government, the project did not see much progress because of the dispute over airport location between the state and the Centre. While the state wanted the international airport near Agra, the Centre wanted it at Jewar. This kept delaying the ambitious project, said a senior official of the Yamuna Expressway Industrial Development Authority (YEIDA), which has the mandate to provide the 5,000 acres of land for the project. The Union government had, in July 2016, sought an obstacle limitation survey (OLS) of the airport site at Jewar from the state government. But the state is yet to send that report to the civil aviation ministry. The state was supposed to take a decision whether OLS will be done by the state or by YEIDA. Now, we will take a call and get it done soon, said Amarnath Upadhyaya additional chief executive officer of the YEIDA. Dr Mahesh Sharma, Union minister of state for tourism and culture also met UP CM Adityanath to discuss the airport project in Lucknow on Wednesday. Former chief minister Rajnath Singh had conceived this airport project in 2001. And our government will speed up the implementation of the project. Everybody knows why the previous governments did not take the project forward, Sharma said. Read I Jewar airport: Civil aviation asks for survey to study area Industrial and realty sectors are upbeat following the UP CMs push to revive this project. If and when the airport project at Jewar becomes a reality, this area will emerge as a logistic hub. The project will spur demand for residential, commercial and institutional property. It will have a positive impact on the realty sector. The best part is that it will create a positive sentiment among property buyers, Amit Modi, vice-president of the realtors body CREDAI (Western UP), said. The Yamuna Expressway authority said it will begin acquisition of land from farmers once it gets official instructions from the UP government. The airport project at Jewar will benefit manufacturing units and other business in Noida and Greater Noida immensely. Gurgaon and Manesar witnessed growth just because these were close to Indira Gandhi airport at Delhi. Similarly, Jewar airport along the Yamuna Expressway will have a similar impact on the economy. Foreign investment in Noida, Greater Noida and Yamuna Expressway will go up by leaps and bounds once the airport becomes a reality, Vipin Malhan, president of Noida Entrepreneurs association, said. Timeline: Different governments at the state and the Centre failed to get the Jewar airport project off the ground 2001: Then Uttar Pradesh chief minister Rajnath Singh proposes a Greenfield Taj international airport and aviation hub (TIAH) at Jewar 2010: Chief Minister Mayawati supports the aviation project at Jewar 2012: The UPA government at the Centre says an airport cannot come up within 150 km of the IGI Airport in Delhi 2013: The UP government shifts the project to Agra, 200 km away from the IGI airport 2014: Dr Mahesh Sharma, BJP leader and Gautam Budh Nagar MP, promises to revive the project at Jewar 2015: Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav expresses willingness to implement the project and the Yamuna Expressway industrial development authority (Yeida) reserves 5,000 acres of land for it 2016: The state and central governments pledge support to the project April 2016: UP civil aviation director Devendra Swarup conducts site inspection June 2016: Union Ministry of Defence clears the project September 2016: State government asks Yeida to conduct Obstacle Limitation Survey (OLS) in the area SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The postings to police posts in Ghaziabad will now be done only after the darogas (sub-inspectors) appear for an interview before a panel of officers headed by senior superintendent of police (SSP). The move comes ahead of a probable round of transfers in the state after the new government took over under chief minister Yogi Adityanath. On Thursday, 18 sub-inspectors were called for an interview for postings at four police posts. The interview was conducted at the official residence of the Ghaziabad SSP after a call for applications was flashed over the RT-set. The move took many by surprise. Four sub-inspectors decided not to appear when they heard about the interview before the panel. The panel consists of two IPS officers and also the deputy SP of the police post concerned. The procedure is presently is applicable only for postings at police posts and not for police stations as we already have a limited number of inspectors who can be given charge of police stations. After the interview, the sub-inspectors were graded and those qualifying will be given charge of the police post, said Deepak Kumar, SSP, Ghaziabad. During the interview held for four police posts under Indirapuram, Sahibabad and Link Road police station areas, the candidates were asked specific questions about record keeping, police regulations, sections and procedures under the IPC and the Criminal Procedure Code. We also looked to their record, appearance and ability to deal with the public. Their background was also checked to ascertain whether their record during previous postings. Of the 18 who were called to appear, only 14 attended. Four who get the highest grade will get posted, the SSP said. The officials said the new procedure was put in place as decisions of postings often draw criticism On March 25, the officials also ordered an immediate shuffle of 607 police personnel. The officials said this was done in compliance of a previous 2010 government order, that allows the transfer of personnel posted for three years or more at a particular police station. A couple of days before the decision, the district police chief also suspended 44 personnel, constables and head constables on charges of irregularities and non-compliance with duties. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Two years ago, 30-year-old Neeta Rastogi (name changed) suffered from post-partum depression soon after the birth of her son. She felt hounded by negative thoughts and thought she wasnt being a good mother or wife for her family. Six months after her delivery, Rastogi started getting suicidal tendencies. She couldnt tell if it was day or night. She started hallucinating about being in a long, dark tunnel with no light. She was surrounded by negative vibes to the extent that she thought she wasnt able to take care of her baby, said Dr Mrinmay Das, senior consultant, behavioural medicine department, Jaypee Hospital. Rastogi now dreaded the prospect of joining her office post her maternity leave and resisted all efforts by friends and family to help her. Finally, a house help was hired to take care of the baby and Rastogi started seeing Dr Das for counsel. She came to me after 10 months of delivery, in an extremely vulnerable state. We started her counselling on a weekly basis and she described her difficulties, fear, stigma and other negative aspects. Soon, we got to know that she had gone through a troubled childhood. We recommended her antidepressant pills to cope, said Dr Das. After six weeks of therapy, a confident Rastogi returned to her work and family life with positivity after overcoming her mental illness with medical counsel and support of her husband. Like Rastogi, millions of people across the world suffer from depression but are often unable to recognise and acknowledge the mental health problem due to the stigma attached to it. For World Health Day this year on April 7, the World Health Organisation (WHO) too has chosen depression as the theme. According to a WHO report, five crore people are suffering from depression in India itself. The most important aspect is to acknowledge the problem, only then can we begin the counselling. Often, we hesitate from seeing a specialist due to the stigma attached with mental health. That is why so many people are unable to overcome depression, said Dr Das. Recently, the Lok Sabha also passed the Mental Health Bill 2016, which apart from decriminalising attempt to suicide, aims to provide mental healthcare and services for persons with mental illness and ensure that they live a life with dignity by not being discriminated against or harassed. According to medical experts, depression can be caused by multiple reasons at different stages of life. There is no single causative factor as various genetic, biological and psycho-social factors interact to play a role in the aetiology of the illness. An imbalance in the regulation of a neurotransmitter called serotonin in the brain is correlated with depression across all ages. Many psychological and social stressors such as trauma, loss of a dear one, difficulties in relationship, and life challenges can be a trigger for a depressive episode, said Dr Samir Parikh, director, mental health and behavioural sciences, Fortis Health care. Experts say the family and society should catch early symptoms of depression. Lack of interest in eating, working or communication with people are some of the common symptoms of depression. Today, in India, 33% people have been affected by depression at some point of time in their lives. It is crucial that these symptoms are recognised and properly dealt with, said Dr Sunil Awana, secretary, Indian Medical Association, Noida. Experts also believe that it is equally a societys responsibility to fight depression and celebrate mental health. One needs to provide support, empathy and a listening ear to patients of depression. We must try and empathise with the person and try to understand what he/she is going through. We must encourage the depressed person to seek the support of mental health experts to ensure adequate intervention and prevent adverse outcomes, said Dr Parikh. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON After the BJPs stunning victories in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarkhand and its success in forming governments in Goa and Manipur, the saffron brigade is now seeking to spread its wings across the country. The decline of the Congress as a national party provides the BJP a historic opportunity to take its place and the Modi-Shah combine is not willing to miss out on any opportunity. The failure to win Bihar in 2015 and the success in winning Assam in 2016 has combined to make West Bengal the key link in the chain for Modi-Shahs Drang Nach Osten (push eastward), as the BJP starts preparing for the 2019 Parliament polls. West Bengal has 42 seats and the BJP feels it is important to clip the wings of Mamata Banerjee who fancies herself as the leader of a future Federal Front based on anti-Hindutva secular politics. So the BJP has designed Operation Mamata with a three pronged assault strategy. One, the saffron brigade has gone for a massive politics of mobilisation centred round the recent Ram Navami celebrations a statewide upsurge with rallies, melas, marches and what have you. BJP state president Dilip Ghosh had suggested the march with swords and trishuls to raise the level of Hindu militancy to not only counter the strong arm tactics of Trinamool Congress but to raise Hindu consciousness which will, he thinks, help the BJP in future electoral battles. This mobilisation complements the RSS drive to double its membership in Bengal in the next one year. Banerjee has not only threatened to hit back at the politics of divisivenesss using her party grassroots muscle and her law and order machinery but has asked TMC leaders to take steal the saffron thunder by organising Ram Navami programmes. That is a smart tactical move to ensure the TMC is not seen as anti-Ram or anti-Hindu, even as it seeks to curb saffron militancy. But it is clear that Banerjee is pushed on the defensive by this aggressive religious mobilisation. Two, the Centre has decided to work the many pressure points of Banerjee the Saradha-Narada scams now investigated by the CBI, stepping up the gas on accountability in management of public finances and much else. That not only helps the BJP expose the Mamata regime as corrupt and irresponsible, but also helps it address voters with a give us a chance appeal. The Left and Congress have ruled Bengal before, Mamata is into her second term, only the BJP can ask for a chance. Three, the Modi government has decided to push Mamata to agree to clear the Teesta river water negotiations. Banerjee has alleged that Delhi was planning to sign the deal on May 25, ignoring her. Banerjee suspects that Modi might go ahead with the Teesta and Ganges Barrage deals with Bangladesh on his own. The BJP gains by such an action because the Congress and the Left cannot oppose the Teesta or Ganges deals. Former PM Manmohan Singh initiated the Teesta deal, Jyoti Basu was the architect of the 1996 Ganges water sharing treaty. Both parties have pushed for the river water accords with an Indian-friendly regime in Bangladesh. If Mamata keeps up her opposition and Modi goes ahead with the deals, he ends up splitting any larger anti-BJP consolidation that was emerging after demonetisation. It was an attempt to emerge as the champion of anti-racism but how horribly it backfired on former BJP MP Tarun Vijay. In his foolish bid to prove that Indians were not racist, Vijay asked if this were so, why do we live with south Indians? We presume that Vijay in this impassioned intervention on Al Jazeera was speaking about us Madrasis who are all presumed to be black. Of course, the Twitterverse has exploded in outrage with just the odd colour commissar saying that poor Vijay was trying to prove Indias non-racist credentials. Being from the south myself, I am not at all surprised by his remarks and there is nothing to be outraged about. He has just said what many people who should know better believe to be true. That south Indians, for whatever reason are black. I remember the decidedly odd views on this subject from a former edit page editor of mine, a man who presided over the opinions of a powerful newspaper where I once worked. He was outraged that I and another colleague from Kerala could look so different from each other. Why, he wondered aloud, was I not black and had straight hair while my colleague was, in the words of this eminent editor, black and had wiry hair. This question, which we did not deign to answer really perplexed the poor man who brought it up on a couple of occasions only to be met with silence from me and my colleague. I also recall in my Madrasi mind a time when my son was at a very well known school and came home quite agitated one day. His teacher, he said, had said south Indians were black because of the weather in the south. My son, in what he thought was a valiant defence of his mother, informed her that I was not black and wondered if she might be wrong. She was not, she assured him, saying that his mother may be an exception. But before you think that we Madrasis are a noble and suffering lot, let me tell you that we are as racist as they come. The demand for fair brides is boundless with those of darker shades being looked upon with pity and their would-be grooms deserving of a higher dowry to soften the blow. Have you ever seen a matrimonial ad in the south which said the bride in question or even bridegroom was dark? No, he or she will be wheatish, whatever that means. In fact, it is quite a compliment in the south for a woman to be told she looks like a Punjabi because that suggests that she is fair. So, the government might dismiss incidents of violence against people from African countries as not being motivated by racism. But colour matters very much to us and many of our choicest abuses are based on this. How often I have heard this, again in the so-called enlightened south she is not bad looking even though she is black. The parents of girls who happen to be dark are commiserated with quite openly, poor things, how difficult it will be for you to find a good match. So take heart Tarun Vijay. You have spoken out bravely about living with black people all around, of living with the whole, yes not parts, of south India. For this, the organisation of which you are an ideologue and whose magazine you edited for many years, the mighty RSS, that arbiter of Indian culture and tradition, will surely fete you. So bash on regardless, you are in the company of many like-minded souls even in the south, that bastion of blackness according to you. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Since childhood Mamata Banerjee has lived beside Adi Ganga, which is regarded as one of the original courses of the Hooghly river. Though it is a matter of speculation whether that proximity has lent her extra sensitivity to matters related to rivers, the Bengal CM has taken a decision on the Teesta water-sharing deal with Bangladesh, which has struck rare political unanimity in the state otherwise marked by sharp political faultlines, and even put the BJP in a bind. Just hours ahead of the Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasinas visit, opposition leaders in Bengal were saying that the CMs stand of Bengal first is correct and that Delhi will find it difficult to ignore. The point to remember is that the Centre cannot be accused of unconstitutionality if it concludes the Teesta water- sharing agreement with Dhaka. But then, Banerjee is only too aware that Indian foreign policy takes the relevant states on board while dealing with neighbours, which is why Tamil Nadu is important while dealing with Sri Lanka, J&K with Pakistan and Bengal (and the North East) when dealing with Bangladesh. All opposition leaders without exception in Bengal also concede that the Centre cannot read should not do anything that compromises the interests of Bengal. They also point out that the Centre should have made the first move to study the technical parameters availability of water in the river in different seasons and the domestic needs and prepare the ground in consultation with the state government. They also concede, since the onus of striking the agreement is on Delhi, that the Centre should have prepared the ground by taking Bengal on board long ago. In a recent statement, Banerjee categorically said she has not heard anything at all from the Centre on the matter. This is one issue where she loses nothing by sitting tight. Even if Delhi ignores her concerns and goes ahead, she can say that BJP does not think twice before sacrificing the interests of Bengal. As the war between Trinamool Congress and BJP intensifies before the 2018 rural polls and 2019 Lok Sabha polls, it can translate into a political windfall for the embattled Bengal chief minister. However, Banerjee is also aware that Delhi needs Dhaka by its side in its fight against terrorist elements entering India through the porous borders of Bengal. It will be only to Delhis interest that the Awami League and Sheikh Hasina return in power in the 2019 elections in Bangladesh, and the water-sharing treaty can be a handy tool in her hands to refute charges at home that she is unnecessarily soft towards India. There can also be compulsions that may silently be at play. With CBI launching investigation into the Narada footage, where about a dozen leaders of Trinamool Congress MPs, ministers, MLAs, Kolkata mayor were seen accepting cash, the Bengal CM is facing the biggest embarrassment of her four-decade long political career. With the BJP loading the guns against Trinamool before the 2019 Lok Sabha and 2018 rural polls, one cannot rule out extraneous factors flowing down the course of the Teesta river. There is only one cost more appropriately, opportunity cost that Banerjee may have to bear. Sheikh Hasina reportedly indicated that she will allow export of Padmas Hilsa to India if the water flows from the Teesta. However, Mamata Banerjee also hopes that Bengalis will put Bengal ahead of their favourite fish. avijit.ghosal@hindustantimes.com SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Three children, including a brother and a sister, were among four people killed when a school bus and a pick-up jeep collided near Singhpur village on the Dasuya-Hajipur road, 50 km from here, on Friday morning. Ten students were injured when the potato-laden Mahindra pick-up jeep rammed into the bus of Cambridge International School, Dasuya, at 7.45am. The bus was taking the children from Talwara and nearby places to Dasuya. Police said Surabhi Kumar, 7, her brother Anirudh, 4, and another student, Tanish Sharma, 12, besides bus driver Ranjit Singh died on the spot. They were all residents of Talwara, 25 km from Dasuya. Eyewitnesses said the jeep was overtaking a motorcycle when the accident occurred. Its driver, Dharam Singh, and cleaner were injured. All injured were rushed to the Civil Hospital at Dasuya from where six students were taken to a private hospital in Hoshiarpur. The jeep driver was referred to Government Medical College and Hospital in Amritsar. A police officer at the spot on Friday. (Pardeep Pandit/HT Photo) Dasuya sub divisional magistrate Himanshu Aggarwal was at the spot to oversee relief and rescue. Heartrending scenes were witnessed in the hospital as parents in panic looked for their children. We had been asking the school authorities to replace this bus. Despite assurances, they didnt do so, said an inconsolable Rohit Kumar, who lost both his children in the mishap. School owner Sanjiv Wassal, who accompanied the injured to the Hoshiarpur hospital, said the bus was four years old and had been cleared by the motor vehicle department recently. The 42-seater bus was in good shape and was carrying 36 students at the time of the accident. The bus driver tried to avoid the jeep but it rammed into our vehicle, he said. Deputy superintendent of police Rajinder Sharma said a case was registered against the jeep driver under Section 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) of the Indian Penal Code. The vehicle was impounded. Union minister and local MP Vijay Sampla mourned the deaths and asked the deputy commissioner and senior superintendent of police to ensure all schools adhere to road safety norms. Local MLA Arun Dogra visited the injured in the hospital. FATAL SCHOOL BUS ACCIDENTS March 8: Prabhjot Singh, 5, was run over by his school bus outside SM International School on the Patiala-Rajpura road. Reason: Negligence as driver did not spot him while reversing the vehicle. Attendant and conductor were not paying attention. February 24: Arshdeep Singh, 6, of Dashmesh School was run over by his school bus while he was getting down near his house at Bambiha Bhai village in Faridkot. Reason: Driver Harpreet Singh failed to notice him, crushing him under the rear wheel of the bus. September 20, 2016: Seven schoolchildren killed and 20 injured after bus of DAV Public School, Neshta, near Amritsar falls into canal off a bridge that didnt have railings. Reason: Speeding. Bus driver Charanjit Singh was speeding and driving rashly. He joined duty recently. March 27, 2016: Gursimran Kaur, 5, of Guru Har Rai Public School, Mukandpur in SBS Nagar, was dragged to death by her school bus. Reason: Negligence. Her bag got stuck in the door while she was alighting. Unaware, the driver drove on for a few metres till alerted. No conductor in the bus. School principal arrested A day after Khalsa University, Amritsar, decided to go ahead with the admission process, the Punjab government on Thursday asked the varsity management to hold admissions till it gets its statutes approved. The higher education department sent a communication to the university management on Thursday, enquiring whether it had got its statutes and regulations approved from the state government, sources said. As per the Khalsa University Act, 2016, the governing body comprising the chancellor, vice chancellor, educationists, experts and secretary higher education, or his representative, is empowered to make statutes for smooth functioning of the university. These have to be submitted to the state government for nod. A spokesman of the Khalsa College Governing Council (KCGC) said the management had not received any letter. Khalsa University registrar JS Dhillon also told HT that he had not received any communication from the higher education secretary in this regard. I was not in my office during the second half. I will let you know about it tomorrow, he said. The varsity, which started its first session in August 2016, has been in the eye of a storm since KCGC initiated the move to set up the university. Amarinder Singh, who was then Amritsar MP, had publicly questioned the move, saying it would subvert the heritage status of Khalsa College. As chief minister, he has declared that the government would scrap the Khalsa University legislation. We dont want children to suffer. The university should not enrol new students until its own future is known, he had said on Tuesday. Punjab police on Friday arrested three alleged drug peddlers in possession of arms and ammunition reportedly from the residence of a BJP mandal chief in Shahabad village in Batala sub-division of Gurdaspur district. On secret information, it is learnt, a police team raided the house of village head Harinder Singh, also a BJP mandal chief in Gurdaspur area, and arrested his son Hussandeep Singh along with his two associates Gurcharan Singh and Harmandeep Singh police said. Police also recovered 87 grams of heroin, one German-made 12-bore pistol, one rifle and five live cartridges and a car. A case under the NDPS and the Arms Act has been registered against them, police said. Hussandep and his father Harinder were involved in a firing incident on August 8 last year in which a shop owner was injured. Harmandeep was involved in a murder case, while Gurcharan Singh in a kidnapping case, police said. Three students of GCM-11 taken into preventive custody; released later. Students from some city colleges continued their protest on Thursday against the fee hike, which has been recently approved by the Panjab University (PU) senate. Three students of Government College for Men, Sector 11 were also taken into preventive custody on Thursday afternoon but were released after an hour. Contrary to the situation on Wednesday, the protests were relatively peaceful on Thursday. Students sat on a dharna and later took out peaceful marches outside their respective colleges. Most of the protests went on for about six hours. However, the protesting students indulged in a lot of sloganeering. Bharati, a student of GCG-11, said, No matter what people might think but we want to keep the protest peaceful. The last thing we want is violence or anyone being harmed or getting hurt. While 12-15 students marched outside DAV College, a group of 250 students at GCM, Sector 11, said they were keen to meet the PU vice-chancellor. However, only four-five students were allowed to get out of the college to submit a memorandum to the V-C. Aditya, a second year college student here, lamented about how the police officials werent letting them move out of the entrance gate. They say we can do whatever we wish inside the college but arent letting us go outside, he told HT. Heavy police force was deployed outside these colleges. A group of 40 girls of PGGCG-11 engaged in constant sloganeering aimed at the V-C. Many of the lines were taken from Bollywood songs and localised with the situation hinting at how they didnt want to suffer in the name of fee hike. SIDELIGHTS STUDENT COUNCIL PREZ NOT ALLOWED TO SPEAK Accusing Panjab University Campus Students Council (PUCSC) president Nishant Kaushal of a sell-out, SOI campus president Prabhjit Kamruwala almost entered into a scuffle with him. On SFS president Damanpreets request, he was allowed to speak. Supporting the students, he said he would suggest a model of fee-concession to the V-C. WILL MOVE COURT We will move court for a stay on fee hike, said PUSU campus president Nirjog Mann. REVOLUTIONARY SLOGANS RAISED Slogans of Long Live Revolution, Down with Modi Government and Education Is Not For Sale were raised. WHY THE STUDENTS ARE PROTESTING Ever since Panjab University has decided to hike tuition fee, student groups have been protesting against the decision. Earlier, NSUI and SFS had protested over the issue. But Thursdays protest brought all the students bodies together and their ire was targeted against the vice-chancellor and the Modi government. Even college students have joined protests, though there is no hike in college fees. But they say they have to pay when they would come to PU. There is hike across all the courses but there is much more in professional courses. Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Apr. 7 By Huseyn Hasanov Trend: Ashgabat hosted a meeting of the Turkmenistan-South Korea intergovernmental commission on commercial, economic, scientific and technological cooperation, said the Turkmen Foreign Ministry in a message Apr. 7. The Turkmen side was headed by Deputy Prime Minister Maksat Babayev, the South Korean side by Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy Joo Hyunghwan. The meetings agenda included the issues of development of relations in the spheres of economy and trade, standardization and control of the financial system. The two sides also discussed the issues of cooperation in the areas of energy and hydrocarbon resources, construction, agriculture, healthcare, transportation and communication. As part of events, a business forum was held, which was attended by heads of such companies as Hyundai, LG, Samsung, Daewoo and others. A delegation from South Korea, including about 40 heads and specialists of financial exchange, leading Korean companies and corporations, as well as big scientific and educational centers, arrived in Turkmenistan to participate in these meetings. South Korean companies are successfully operating in various sectors of the Turkmen economy. The construction of a plant for desulfurization of natural gas at the Galkynysh field, modernization of oil refining complex in the city of Turkmenbashi, construction of a gas chemical complex for production of polyethylene and polypropylene in the Kiyanly settlement are among the big projects with participation of the South Korean companies. The second phase of modernization of the Turkmenbashi complex of oil refineries, construction of a plant for the production of liquid fuel from natural gas are among joint projects being developed. A Batala-based non-government organisation, Sarbat Da Bhala Humanity Club, on Thursday paid Rs 4 lakh against the fine imposed on two Pakistani sisters, who have completed their 10-year jail term at Amritsar jail in a drug case. This is a step closer to release of the sisters, Fatima Bibi and Mumtaj, who, besides the jail term, had been fined Rs 2 lakh each in 2006. Fatima and her younger sister Mumtaj were arrested from the Samjhauta Express on May 8, 2006, at the Attari railway station for carrying drugs. The sisters completed their jail term in November last year. Navtej Singh Gaggu of the NGO deposited the money in the central jail account and handed over the receipt to jail authorities in presence of advocate Navjot Kaur Chabba. Even as the sisters are eligible to be released, but certain formalities remained to be completed. The file of the case will be sent to Union ministry of home affairs and it will then go to the ministry of external affairs. After clearing the file, the foreign ministry will take up the matter with the Pakistan high commissioner, Chabba said. On the status of Fatimas 10-year-old daughter Hena, who took birth in the jail, Chabba said, By birth, she is an Indian citizen. Now, Pakistan government has to take a call. I dont think she will have any problem in going to Pakistan with her mother and aunt whenever that happens. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The decision of Panjab University (PU) to hike tuition fee has led to protests by student groups. On Thursday, students gate-crashed into vice-chancellor AK Grovers office complex, blockading it for six hours, demanding rollback of the hike. The V-C invited representatives of several student bodies including the ABVP and office-bearers of PU Campus Students Council for talks. However, the students walked out. Hindustan Times talked to the V-C over this issue of fee hike, and here is what he said: Was a fee hike the only solution? Examination fee and tuition fee are necessary for sustenance. Even private institutions sustain themselves on engineering and management courses. The hike will generate additional Rs 8-10 crore a year. We have targeted all courses.Students are demanding a complete roll back. I cannot give any false hope as I only facilitate decision-making. There is a 10-fold hike in some courses. Will poor students not be able to study here? No student shall be refused admission. The university cannot run without good students. We have asked the Student Council to suggest a model to provide more concession to students. We can also work to provide part-time jobs to students. Have you approached the new Punjab government for help? I have written two letters to (chief minister) Captain Amarinder Singh. Students have been alleging that PU has been increasing fee on UGC/MHRD directions? According to the UGC, the per-student subsidy in PU is Rs 1.3 lakh and expenditure per student here is more than neighbouring universities like the GNDU and Punjabi University. You cannot beat this argument. Panjab University (PU) students gate-crashed into vice-chancellor AK Grovers office complex, blockading it for six hours, demanding the roll back of tuition fee hike on Thursday. The increase is manifold for many courses. For instance, the annual fee for a BA that a new student will pay this year will be Rs 10,000 against Rs 2,200 now. Some students received minor injuries after facing lathi-charge and water cannons. No detention of students whose attendance is and short and recruitment of teachers are other demands. Students caught in scuffle with the police at Panjab University in Chandigarh on Thursday. (Anil Dayal/HT Photo) Students for Society (SFS) had given the call for protest, but the Students Organisation of India (SOI), the National Students Union of India (NSUI), Panjab University Students Union and NSUI-SF joined it. Members of All India Students Association from Khalsa College, Sector 26; DAV College, Sector 10, and Post Graduate Government College, Sector 11 also joined the protest. DEMANDS Roll back of fee hike that is manifold in some courses. For instance, BA fee Rs 10,000 new; now Rs 2,200 No detention of students who are short of attendance Recruitment of teachers V-C invited students for talks that failed At 11am, the V-C invited representatives of all student bodies including the ABVP and office bearers of PU Campus Students Council for talks. However, the students walked out. SFS president Damapreet said, The V-C justified the fee hike, saying that the government was not funding the varsity and that there was no option. It was then that he gave a call to cross barricades. At this, police resorted to lathi-charge. Some turbans were removed, even as students also threw slippers and sandals. Ever since Panjab University decided to hike tuition fee, student groups have been protesting against the decision. Earlier, National Students Union of India (NSUI) and Students for Society (SFS) had protested over the issue. But later protests brought all student bodies together and their ire was targeted against the vice-chancellor and the Modi government. Even college students have joined protests, though there is no hike in college fees. But they say they have to pay when they would come to PU. Hindustan Times talked to SFS president Damanpreet Singh regarding the fee hike and other related issues. Here is what he said: If PU rolls back fee hike, how will it pay salaries? The question is framed wrongly. We (the varsity authorities) have submitted before the Central government. We have to stop dancing to the Centres tune. What will you do if the decision is not reversed? Social changes will happen as marginalised sections will not come to study at the university. Students will prevent this privatisation model from happening. The varsity says it has provided concessions for EWS. Students come in cars and can pay. Education is not a commodity. It is a social right and both the rich and poor should have equal access. Do you support central university status for PU? IITs and NITs have also hiked fee manifold. The issue is of policy and also of why now? If, after converting PU into a central university, the government refuses funding, then the varsity is left in the lurch. Your call has united all student bodies? A protest is not anyones property. We want all to participate. A Ludhiana court on Friday deferred the decision on whether or not to summon Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh in connection with a complaint filed against him by the income tax department to April 24. The prosecution complaint the departments equivalent of a police chargesheet was filed last year under I-T Act section 277 (false statement in verification) and Indian Penal Code sections 176 (omission to give notice or information to public servant), 177 (furnishing false information), 193 (false evidence) and 199 (false statement made in declaration which is by law receivable as evidence). During the previous hearing on March 27, heated arguments were witnessed in court on whether or not the CM should be summoned to appear in the case when arguments on framing of charges will be heard. Coincidentally, the next hearing of two similar complaints against Captains son Raninder Singh filed separately by the tax department is also on April 24 in the same court. Raninder Singh (HT File Photo) The department claims its investigations have found Amarinder to be the beneficiary of a trust and other properties owned and created by his son in a foreign territory and that, when questioned about these, Amarinder gave a false statement on oath about the ownership of these assets. It has accused Amarinder of being actively involved in the creation of these undisclosed trusts and assets. The probe further said Raninder is a direct beneficiary of assets maintained and controlled through foreign business entities. These include accounts with HSBC Private Bank, Geneva (Switzerland). Raninder is also a trustee of the UK-based Jacaranda Trust, states the complaint. The complaint states that Raninder was the settler (donor) of the Jacaranda Trust, UK, and the owner of business entities Mulwala Holdings Limited, Limerlock International Limited, Chillingham Holdings Limited and Allworth Venture Holdings Limited. The authorities in British Virgin Islands (BVI) informed the department that the business entities were holding substantial financial assets, including bank accounts in HSBC, Geneva, and properties in the UK and Dubai. The BVI authorities provided the IT department with a copy of the trust deed which showed that the settlement was made on July 22, 2005, in British Virgin Islands between Raninder and HSBC Trust Company (BVI) Limited. Raninder acted as a trustee. Jharkhands backward Sahebganj district is all set to emerge as a new industrial hub with Prime Minister Narendra Modi laying the foundation stone for a multi-modal terminal (MMT) and a six-kilometre bridge over the Ganga on Thursday. The MMT is the part of the Centres ambitious 1,620-km inland waterways project worth Rs 467 crore on the Ganga between Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh and Haldia in West Bengal, which will touch important cities like Kolkata, Varanasi and Sahebganj. The terminal will play a significant role in transportation of coal, iron ore, stone chips, minerals and fertilisers to other parts of the country. The waterways project will also open the door of international trade through the Bay of Bengal, Modi said Union minister for road transport, highways and shipping Nitin Gadkari said the first phase of the project spanning 1300 km from Varanasi to Haldia is underway and the Centre has already sanctioned Rs 280 crore in this regard. The project envisages improving navigability of the river as it passes through four states Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal. The proposed terminal at Sahebganj is the second out of three multi-modal terminals planned under the Ganga Jal Marg Vikas Project. The other terminals would be built at Haldia and Varanasi. Gadkari said the terminal at Sahebganj will have facilities, including berthing space for two vessels, stockyard for storing, belt conveyor system with fixed hoppers, barge loader, shore protection works, roads, ramps and parking area, and terminal buildings. Gadkari said several items such as soya bean oil, which will come from Haldia, will cost Rs 2 less from the current market price due to cheaper transportation cost. If transportation cost through road is Rs 1.5 and rail Re 1, it will cost only 20 paise through waterway, Gadkari said. With the targeted completion of Phase-1 in 2019, the state-of-the-art terminal will have a cargo handling capacity of 2.28 million tonnes per annum (MMTA). The terminal will prove to be a growth engine for Jharkhand and Sahebgaj will emerge as industrial hub, Gadkari said, adding if the state government provides land, we would like to develop a new smart city in Sahebganj. Besides three multi-modal terminals, two ultra-modern terminals will be established at Gazipur and Kalughat and build 40 terminals at Rs 2250 crore, he said. The inland waterways project will generate five lakh jobs, Gadkari said, adding, the river information system would be set up like ATC for air services. Gadkari said the government will also start Roll-on Roll-off (RoRo) crossing services in seven places. Jharkhand chief minister Raghubar Das said the proposed six-km bridge over the Ganga river and a multi-modal terminal at Sahebganj will give a new strength to the state economy. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON At least 11.1% population of Jharkhand suffered from mental disorders, a survey conducted by the Ranchis Central Institute of Psychiatry (CIP) in collaboration with the union ministry of health and family welfare has found. Prevalence of mental disorders in Jharkhand was a shade higher than the national average of 10.6%. The CIP released the findings on World Health Day on Friday. The survey further revealed that 12% of the population in Jharkhand was suffering from substance abuse disorders, and tobacco was the most common substance used. Doctors from CIP on Friday expressed concerns over the alarmingly growing cases of depression in the state. They said that by 2030, depression will be one of the major reasons for deaths in India. Dr Nishant Goel, eminent psychiatrist, sharing findings of CIPs survey on mental health. (Parwaz Khan/HT Photo) WHO has found that depression will be one of the major reasons for death by 2030. It is alarming and needs immediate attention, said Dr. Nishant Goyal, associate professor, clinical psychiatry, CIP. The survey also found that treatment gap for common mental disorders and substance abuse illness was 75% in Jharkhand, which means that 75 of 100 patients either didnt get the needed facility or didnt approach psychiatrists. Only four out of the 24 districts in Jharkhand run district mental health programmes, which showed the negligence towards mental health here, doctors said. The survey also found that 13.5% of youths (between 13 to 17 years) staying in urban metros suffered from mental disorders. On the other hand, only 6.9% of the youths in rural areas suffered from mental health issues. Lack of interpersonal relationship was one of the major reasons for the high figures of mental disorders among urban youths. Unhealthy lifestyle, lack of communication with parents also contributed to the illness, said Dr. Goyal. A total of 3022 were interviewed during the survey in Jharkhand. The survey results, however, represent the mental health symptoms in 80% of the states population, the doctors said. Meanwhile, Empower Jharkhand, a local NGO organized a mental health checkup camp at Bariatu old age home in which the doctors found high stress and anxiety disorders among the inmates. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Syrian President Bashar al-Assad bears sole responsibility for the US strike on a regime airbase, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande said in a joint statement on Friday. After the chemical weapons massacre of April 4 on Khan Sheikhun in northwestern Syria, a military installation of the Syrian regime was destroyed by a US air strike last night, the statement, issued after a morning phone call, said. President Assad bears sole responsibility for this development. His repeated use of chemical weapons and his crimes against his own people call for sanctions, which France and Germany already demanded in the summer of 2013 after the massacre of Ghuta, the site of another chemical weapons attack. US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Porter conducts strike operations in the Mediterranean Sea which the US Defense Department said was a part of cruise missile strike against Syria. (Reuters) They added that France and Germany, together with their partners and within the framework of the United Nations, will continue their efforts to hold President Assad responsible for his criminal deeds. Berlin and Paris jointly call on the international community to join forces for a political transition in Syria in accordance with United Nations Security Council Resolution 2254 and the Geneva Communique, they said, referring to a statement issued on June 30, 2012 by the UN-backed Action Group for Syria. Merkel and Hollande were each informed one to two hours before the strikes, a source close to the French presidents office said. German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel earlier said the strike was understandable after the UN Security Council was unable to clearly and unequivocally respond to the barbaric use of chemical weapons against innocent people in Syria. His French counterpart Jean-Marc Ayrault, with Gabriel on a trip to Mali, said he hoped the strikes would show Syrias allies Russia and Iran that they should withdraw their support for Assad. The Russians and the Iranians must now understand that they cannot prop up Bashar al-Assads regime... it cannot go on, it makes no sense, Ayrault told France Info radio. China on Friday stopped short of directly criticising the US for carrying out a military strike in war-torn Syria, calling instead for calm and restraint and emphasising the need for a political settlement to resolve the six-year crisis. Chinas reaction came in the backdrop of a summit between Presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump at a Florida resort and gave rise to the question whether the US leader had spoken to his Chinese counterpart before launching the tomahawk missiles. China all along opposes use of force and maintains peaceful means in settling issues. We hope all parties stay calm exercise restraint, was as far as Hua Chunying, foreign ministry spokesperson, said at the regular ministry briefing on Friday. China has mostly sided with Russia on the Syria crisis, especially blocking UN Security Council (UNSC) actions. Hua said the five members of the UNSC US, China, Russia, UK and France were engaged in close consultations and communications on relevant matters. She said China hoped that relevant parties stay calm, exercise restraint and avoid doing anything that might raise tensions. The latest developments in Syria again speak to the urgent need for a political settlement to resolve the Syria issue. We call on all relevant parties to resolutely stick to promoting a political settlement and not abandon efforts to find a political settlement. On the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government, which the US has said triggered the decision to launch the missiles, Hua said China was in favour of an evidence-based impartial UN probe into the allegation. Chinas position on the issue of chemical weapons is consistent. We oppose the use of chemical weapons by any country, organisation or individual under any circumstance or for any purpose, Hua said, adding: We condemn the chemical attack. We support relevant UN agencies in conducting and independent and comprehensive investigation on the use or supposed use chemical weapons and on the basis of solid evidence...that stands the test of history and facts. What is urgent now is to prevent further deterioration and uphold the hard-won political process to settle Syrian issue, she said. On the Xi-Trump meeting, she said: We hope the meeting will enhance mutual understanding between the two leaders and chart the course for future China-US relations...Of course, they will discuss most pressing and urgent international issues. After the first round of talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping, President Donald Trump griped, in a lighter vein, that he got nothing out of it but added that the two of them did develop a friendship that should serve them well in the long term. But that he said just after the first round, before the two leaders met for dinner with their spouses Melania Trump and Peng Liyuan and other members of their delegationwhich included Trumps son-in-law Jared Kushner and chief strategist Steve Bannon. We had a long discussion already, Trump said before the dinner, adding, So far, I have gotten nothing. Absolutely nothing! But we have developed a friendship. I can see that. I think, long-term, we are going to have a very, very great relationship and I look very much forward to it. Trump and Jinping will meet again on Friday in what is easily the new presidents most consequential encounter with a foreign leader, and a leader of a country he had railed against during campaign as a presidential candidate, saying it was raping the US. The President is expected to raise chiefly the issues of unequal trade between the two countries in which China has a trade surplus of $347 billion and related matters of currency manipulation, besides North Korea, a Chinese protectorate. Trump has said he expects the Chinese to use their influencegreat influenceover North Korea give up its nuclear weapons programme. But, he has added, he was prepared to go alone if Beijing did nothing about it. US officials dont expect many deliverables from these meetings and have insisted they were mostly about the leaders of the worlds two largest economies getting to know each other, strike a personal rapport and a working relationship. Thats why the meetings were taking place at the Presidents Florida resort Mar-a-Lago, away from Washington DC and all of the close scrutiny and intense media attention it would have brought. The venue of the visit is very important, and the two Presidents want to get to know one another, Susan Thornton, a state department official told reporters earlier this week. This will be their first meeting. They want to build up the type of personal rapport and working relationship that well be able to count on in times of opportunity, but also in times of crisis, she had said. The two leaders seemed to have accomplished that limited objective on Thursday, according to President Trumps brief account of their first meeting. Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Apr. 7 By Huseyn Hasanov Trend: At the initiative of the Turkmen side, a phone conversation has been held between Russias Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Turkmenistans Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Rashid Meredov, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a message. The sides discussed the current issues of bilateral agenda and praised the Russian-Turkmen cooperation in political, trade and economic, cultural and humanitarian spheres within the context of the 25th anniversary of establishment of diplomatic relations between Russia and Turkmenistan. Russia is among leading big foreign trade partners of Turkmenistan. More than 190 enterprises with Russian capital have been registered in Turkmenistan. These enterprises are implementing more than 240 investment projects. The United States fired cruise missiles into central Syria early Friday morning, striking an Assad government-controlled air base where US officials say the Syrian military launched a deadly chemical attack that killed dozens of civilians earlier this week. Trump ordered the strikes just a day after he pointed the finger at Bashar al-Assad for this weeks chemical attack, which killed at least 70 people, many of them children, in the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun. The Syrian government has denied it was behind the attack. Here is the sequence of events related to the US missile strikes: *About 60 US Tomahawk missiles hit the Shayrat air base, southeast of Homs, a small installation with two runways, where aircraft often take off to bomb targets in northern and central Syria. *The US missiles hit at 3.45am Friday morning and target the bases airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas. *The missiles are fired from two warships in the Mediterranean Sea -- USS Ross and Porter -- in retaliation for Syrias deadly chemical attack that officials said used chlorine mixed with a nerve agent, possibly sarin. *Though the US targets some of Syrias formidable air defences, it does not do so largely beyond al-Shayrat or in a sustained barrage, as it typically does before launching a concerted airpower campaign. *The Pentagon says it attacked aircraft, hardened aircraft shelters, petroleum and logistical storage, ammunition supply bunkers, air defense systems, and radars at the airfield. *Before the strikes, US informs its Russian counterparts of the impending attack. The goal is to avoid any accident involving Russian forces. The US also notifies its partner countries in the region prior to launching the strikes. *Syrian state TV reports a US missile attack on a number of military targets and calls the attack an aggression. A truck crashed into an upscale department store in central Stockholm on Friday, killing at least three people, according to Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, who said all indications were that it was a terror attack. People in the downtown area fled in panic, and the countrys intelligence agency said a large number of people were injured. Swedish radio put the death toll at three. Sweden has been attacked, Lofven said. This indicates that it is an act of terror. Swedish broadcaster SVT said shots were fired at the scene, though it wasnt clear by whom and police said they could not confirm that. Sweden's police officers guard in the central Stockholm. (REUTERS) Live television footage showed smoke coming out of the upscale Ahlens department store on Drottninggatan Street, which the truck smashed into. The department store is part of Sweden-wide chain. The building includes several stores at street-level. Crowds running from scene of incident in #stockholm after car ramming attack pic.twitter.com/3uoeGbH3vR StandWithUs (@StandWithUs) April 7, 2017 We stood inside a shoe store and heard something ... and then people started to scream, witness Jan Granroth told the Aftonbladet daily. I looked out of the store and saw a big truck. Passers react at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan. (AFP Photo) Ambulance on a street in central Stockholm where a truck was driven into a crowd. (REUTERS) Photos from the scene showed a beer truck sticking out of the department store, and Aftonbladet daily reported that Swedish beer maker Spendrups said one of its trucks had been carjacked earlier Friday. Several people were injured when a truck crashed into department store Ahlens on Drottninggatan. (TT News Agency (Via Reuters)) Fridays incident is near the site of a December 2010 attack in which Taimour Abdulwahab, a Swedish citizen who lived in Britain, detonated a suicide bomb, killing himself and injuring two others. The United States fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria Thursday night in retaliation for this weeks gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians, US officials said. It was the first direct American assault on the Syrian government and Donald Trumps most dramatic military order since becoming president. The strikes hit the government-controlled Shayrat air base in central Syria, where US officials say the Syrian military planes that dropped the chemicals had taken off. About 60 US Tomahawk missiles, fired from warships in the Mediterranean Sea, targeted an air base in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack that American officials believe Syrian government aircraft launched with a nerve agent, possibly sarin. Below are the highlights (in IST): 12:00pm: British defence secretary Fallon says do not see the strike in Syria as the start of a different military campaign 11:49am: Polish government spokesman: United States are guarantor of world peace, there are times when you need to react 11:43am: Kremiln says the strikes will inflict considerable damage to US-Russia ties 11:41am: Iran strongly condemns US strikes in Syria: AFP quotes spokesman 11:30am: Turkish deputy PM Kurtulmus says hopes US Operation in Syria contributes to achieving peace, process must be accelerated 10:40am: Syrias opposition hails US strike, calls for continued action 10:20am: Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says the Australian government strongly supports the swift and just response of the United States in launching a rocket attack on a Syrian air base 10:00am: Head of Russian upper house of Parliament defence committee says US air strikes could undermine efforts to fight terrorism in Syria 9:40am: Israels prime minister welcoms the US attack on Syrian air base saying he fully supports President Trumps decision 9:22am: US defence official calls US strike on Syria a one-off 9:19am: US strike on Syria airbase caused deaths, says Homs governor: AFP 9:09am: Bolivia requests United Nations Security Council meet on Friday on US strikes in Syria: Reuters quotes senior diplomat 8:25am: Russias deputy UN ambassador says the US decision to cancel a vote on a UN resolution that would condemn the reported chemical weapons attack on a Syrian town opens a window of opportunity to find a compromise, reports Associated Press 8:10am: US secretary of state Rex Tillerson says, Russia has failed to deliver on preventing chemical weapons attacks in Syria 8:05am: markets ahve reacted strongly to the air strike. Oil prices have soared and gold hit 5-month peak 7:55am: Syrian state TV has called the attack an aggression. Meanwhile, governor of Syrias Homs said US attack serves the goals of armed terrorist groups and Islamic State 7:44am: US informed Russia forces ahead of cruise missile strike on Syrias Shayrat airfield: Pentagon 7:22am: Oil prices jump after US launches missile strike in Syria 7:20am: US President Trump says there can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons 7:19am: Trump says strike on Syria in the vital national security interest of the United States. 7:16am: I call on all civilized nations in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria: Trump 7:15am: US President Donald Trump addresses nation. Tonight I ordered a targeted military strike on airfield in Syria from which the chemical attack was launched, says Trump. 7:12am: Targets on syria airbase included airstrip, aircraft and fuel stations: Reuters quotes US official 6:46am: US launches cruise missiles in Syria, missiles targeted airfield near Homs A man has been charged with animal cruelty after authorities say nearly two dozen French mastiffs were found dead or starving on a rural upstate New York property. Valdez Bentley was charged on Thursday with 22 counts of failure to provide sustenance to his dogs. The 55-year-old was released from the Fulton County Jail after posting bail. Authorities say they were alerted to the situation by a contractor taking photos of a dilapidated home in the town of Stratford, in the southern Adirondacks. Troopers say when they arrived they found nine of the dogs dead and another 13 extremely emaciated. Police say the dogs had no food or water. The surviving dogs are being cared for at a local humane society. It couldnt be determined if Bentley has an attorney. Senate Republicans on Thursday crushed a Democratic blockade of President Donald Trumps US Supreme Court nominee in a fierce partisan brawl, approving a rule change dubbed the nuclear option to allow for conservative judge Neil Gorsuchs confirmation by Friday. With ideological control of the countrys highest court at stake, the Republican-led Senate voted 52-48 along party lines to change its long-standing rules in order to prohibit a procedural tactic called a filibuster against Supreme Court nominees. That came after Republicans failed by a 55-45 tally to muster the 60-vote super-majority needed to end the Democratic filibuster that had sought to deny Gorsuch confirmation to the lifetime post. The Senates action cleared the way to confirm Gorsuch by simple majority on Friday, with a final vote expected by late morning. Republicans control the Senate 52-48. The rule change was called the nuclear option because it was considered an extreme break with Senate tradition. Trump had encouraged Republican senate majority leader Mitch McConnell to go nuclear. Confirmation of Gorsuch would represent Trumps first major victory since taking office on January 20, after setbacks on healthcare legislation and the blocking of his order that sought to ban travellers from several Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States. Senate confirmation of Gorsuch, a Colorado-based federal appeals could judge, would restore the nine-seat courts 5-4 conservative majority, enable Trump to leave an indelible mark on Americas highest judicial body and fulfil a top campaign promise by the Republican president. Gorsuch, 49, could be expected to serve for decades. This will be the first and last partisan filibuster of the Supreme Court, McConnell said on the Senate floor, accusing Democrats of trying to inflict political damage on Trump and to keep more conservatives from joining the high court. In 20 or 30 or 40 years, we will sadly point to today as a turning point in the history of the Senate and the Supreme Court, a day when we irrevocably moved further away from the principles our founders intended for these institutions: principles of bipartisanship, moderation and consensus, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor. Members of Democracy Spring demonstrate against the Supreme Court nomination of Neil Gorsuch on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Reuters Photo) Schumer ridiculed McConnells contention that the Democratic action was unprecedented. He noted that the Republican-led Senate refused last year to consider Democratic former President Barack Obamas nomination of appellate judge Merrick Garland for the same seat that Trump selected Gorsuch to fill. With three of the courts justices 78 or older, Trump told reporters he hoped to appoint as many as four Supreme Court justices, a move likely to make it overwhelmingly conservative. In fact, under a certain scenario there could even be more than that, Trump said aboard Air Force One en route to a meeting with Chinas president in Florida, adding that the Senate rule change would not alter how he picks court nominees. CONSERVATIVE INFLUENCE A conservative-majority court is more likely to support broad gun rights, an expansive view of religious liberty, abortion regulations and Republican-backed voting restrictions, while opposing curbs on political spending. The court also is likely to tackle transgender rights and union funding in coming years. A 60-vote threshold giving the minority party power to hold up the majority party has forced the Senate over the decades to try to achieve bipartisanship in legislation and presidential appointments. In the final procedural vote that paved the way for confirmation, three Democratic senators up for re-election in 2018 in states won by Trump last year - Indianas Joe Donnelly, West Virginias Joe Manchin and North Dakotas Heidi Heitkamp - broke with their party and voted with Republicans to bring about a confirmation vote, although they opposed the rule change. A fourth Democrat, Michael Bennet, who represents Gorsuchs home state of Colorado, voted with Republicans on Thursdays first procedural vote to bring debate to a close. But he stuck with fellow Democrats in opposing the final vote to end the filibuster, the one that succeeded following the rule change. Republicans have called Gorsuch superbly qualified and one of the nations most distinguished appellate judges. Democrats accused him of being so conservative as to be outside the judicial mainstream, favouring corporate interests over ordinary Americans in legal opinions, and displaying insufficient independence from Trump. Demonstrators from Democracy Spring protest against Judge Neil Gorsuch's nomination to the Supreme Court. (AFP Photo) What Republicans did to Obamas nominee Garland was worse than a filibuster, Schumer said. Schumer said Republicans denied the constitutional prerogative of a president with 11 months left in his term. The nuclear option was used by Senator McConnell when he stopped Merrick Garland, Democratic Senator Richard Durbin said on the Senate floor. What we face today is the fallout. McConnell blamed the escalation of fights over judicial nominees on the Democrats and their opposition starting three decades ago to nominees made by Republican former Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. Experts said eliminating the filibuster for Supreme Court appointments could make it more likely that presidents, with little incentive to choose centrist justices who could attract support from the other party, will pick ideologically extreme nominees in the future. Ending the filibuster also would make it easier for future Supreme Court nominees to be confirmed when the president and Senate leadership belong to the same party. The filibuster in one form or another dates back to the 19th century but assumed its current form in the 1970s. While Democrats opposed the rule change and accused Republicans of a power grab, it was their party that first resorted to the nuclear option when they controlled the Senate in 2013. In the face of Republican filibusters of Obama appointments, they barred filibusters for executive branch nominees and federal judges aside from Supreme Court justices but still allowed it for Supreme Court nominees and legislation. The Republican-backed rule change maintains the ability to filibuster legislation. Relations between Canada and India suffered a body blow on Thursday in the Ontario Assembly as it became the first legislature in Canada to carry a motion that described the 1984 anti-Sikh riots as genocide. This came as a shock to New Delhi, which termed it misguided, as the motion was moved by a Member of Provincial Parliament or MPP belonging to the ruling Liberal Party of Ontario, which had voted down a similar motion last summer. We reject this misguided motion which is based on a limited understanding of India, its constitution, society, ethos, rule of law and the judicial process, said external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay. He said the views of the government have been conveyed to the government and political leadership in Canada. The private members motion was moved by Harinder Malhi, the MPP from the riding (as constituencies are called in Canada) of Brampton-Springdale, near Toronto. After a debate, the motion was carried with 34 MPPs (the equivalent of MLAs) voting in favour and just five against. Those present at a vote numbered just about a third of the assemblys total strength of 107. Indias Consul General in Toronto Dinesh Bhatia, under whose jurisdiction this falls, had spent a frantic couple of days trying to prevent this occurrence. A senior Indian official said this matter could have a negative impact on bilateral ties. Frustrated over the lack of action by prime minister Justin Trudeaus lieutenants, an official said, If they cant manage their own partythey have to own the responsibility. That was for allowing the MPP to proceed with the motion, thereby creating a platform for attacks on India over its intolerance. In introducing the motion, Malhi said the Legislative Assembly of Ontario should condemn all forms of communal violence, hatred, hostility, prejudice, racism and intolerance in India and anywhere else in the world, including the 1984 Genocide perpetrated against the Sikhs throughout India, and call on all sides to embrace truth, justice and reconciliation. While speaking on the matter, she said events following the assassination of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi could only be described as genocide. Among those supporting the motion was Jagmeet Singh, MPP of the New Democratic Party or NDP, who had unsuccessfully moved a similar motion in June 2016. Singh, who is considered a serious contender to be the next leader of the national NDP, also criticised the Narendra Modi Government. The NDP politician who was refused a visa to travel to India at the end of 2013, also said, This is a country that continues to use visa denial as a form of silencing its critics. Sikhs gathered in the Assembly gallery to view the proceedings greeted the outcome with cheers and slogans. The pro-Khalistan activist group Sikhs for Justices Director of International Policy Jatinder Singh Grewal stated, All Sikhs applaud Ontario today and give thanks to Premier Kathleen Wynne and Liberal MPP Harinder Mahli for hearing us, appreciating the evidence that exists and officially recognizing that the murder of tens of thousands of Sikhs was an attempt at genocide. We will continue to press upon other governments here in Canada and globally to stand with us in Ontario on the side of justice. Mukhbir Singh, president of the World Sikh Organisation, noted in a release that, For years, the term 1984 anti-Sikh riotswas used to describe the events of November 1984 which was a distortion and wrongly implied unorganized communal violence. Recognizing the state-sponsored violence that targeted Sikhs across India in 1984 is an important and historic step towards justice, accountability and reconciliation which we hope will be an example to other governments. While the Ontario Liberals under Premier Kathleen Wynne, who travelled to India early last year, were blamed by Indian officials for allowing the motion, they also warned that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, shared the onus for this damaging of ties. Several prominent Indo-Canadian organisations, including the Canada-India Foundation, Panorama India and India Canada Chamber of Commerce had written to Wynne and their representatives asking them to oppose the motion. However, this concerted lobbying effort failed when it came to the final count. And the result will cast a serious shadow over the recent surge in bilateral ties between the two countries. (With inputs from Jayanth Jacob, New Delhi) SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Pakistan defence minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif on Friday claimed that Indias influence is the reason behind the strained ties between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Speaking to a private news channel, the minister claimed the strained relations between the two countries was due to Indian influence on Afghanistans side. He emphasised the sacrifices of the Pakistan armed forces in the countrys war on terror, adding that every possible step would be taken to flush out militants and the menace of terrorism from the country, Express Tribune reported. He also appreciated the armed forces for extending their services during the census process. When asked about former army chief General Raheel Sharifs appointment as head of Saudi-led military alliance, Asif said the decision of the coalition forces was yet to be taken. Relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan appear to be back on track after months of tensions and war of words, as the Prime Ministers Advisor on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz reported progress in his recent talks with senior Afghan officials in London. Briefing the National Assembly Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Aziz said the London meeting with Afghan National Security Advisor Hanif Atmar had helped break the ice. A Pakistani petrol station attendant was stabbed to death during an absolutely horrific crime spree in Australia with counter-terror police investigating Friday. The 29-year-old man was found with multiple stab wounds late Thursday after allegedly being attacked by two boys, aged 15 and 16. Police believe the pair, from Queanbeyan where the petrol station was located, went on a rampage, allegedly stabbing another man in the stomach, hitting a third with a tyre iron and a fourth with a beer bottle. The two teens were arrested after being chased by New South Wales state police into the Australian Capital Territory. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the attacks were concerning enough to involve the Joint Counter Terrorism Team, while describing the incidents as shocking. It doesnt need to be said, but it doesnt get more serious than this, Monaro local police commander superintendent Rod Smith told reporters. Its an absolutely horrific series of events, and wed just like to reassure everybody that there are two people that we believe are involved, and both of those people are currently in custody. New South Wales police deputy commissioner Catherine Burn speaks about a Pakistani petrol station attendant who was stabbed to death, at a media conference in Sydney. (AFP Photo) The Sydney Morning Herald reported that one of the teenagers mothers thought her son had been radicalised in recent weeks. Police have not yet confirmed links to religious extremism. Counter-terrorism police have made a series of arrests since late 2014 across Australia, with the young age and radicalisation of many of those detained a growing concern for authorities. Canberra has become increasingly worried about home-grown extremism and parliament last year passed new legislation to lower from 16 to 14 the age at which people can be subject to a control order. The order aims to prevent a terror attack by limiting a persons movements, communication and activity. Pope Francis has dismissed a Roman Catholic priest from New Hampshire who was convicted of stealing $300,000 from a hospital, a bishop and a deceased priests estate. Monsignor Edward Arsenault, who served as the face of the church in the state during a sex abuse scandal, pleaded guilty to three theft charges in 2014 and is serving a jail sentence. The Diocese of Manchester said Friday that Arsenault no longer has faculties to act, function, or present himself as a priest. Prosecutors said Arsenault billed the church for lavish meals and travel for himself and often a male partner. He was convicted of writing checks from the dead priests estate to himself and his brother and billing a hospital $250 an hour for consulting work he never did. The United States fired 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles into Syria Thursday night in a massive retaliatory strike against the horrific sarin nerve gas attack that killed more than 70 people, a third of them children, earlier in the week. The missiles targeted an airfield used by Syrian government aircraft that had dropped the bombs carrying gas on Idlib province, and they were fired late on Thursday around the time President Donald Trump was meeting president Xi Jinping. President Trump announced the strikes in a statement, saying it was in vital national security interest of the US to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. Here is the full text of his remarks: On Tuesday Syrian President Bashar al-Assad launched a horrible chemical attack on innocent civilians using a deadly nerve agent. Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered at this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror. Tonight I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched. It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention and ignored the urging of the UN Security Council. Numerous previous attempts at changing Assads behavior have all found and failed very dramatically. As a result, the refugee crisis continues to deepen and the region continues to destabilize, threatening the United States and its allies. Tonight I call on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types. We asked for Gods wisdom as we face the challenge of our very troubled world. We pray for the lives of the wounded and for the souls of those who passed. And we hope as long as America stands for justice and peace and harmony will in the end prevail. Good night and God Bless America and the entire world. The strike targeted Shayrat Airfield in Homs and used Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles, Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said in a statement, launched from destroyers USS Porter and USS Ross in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. A total of 59 missiles targeted aircraft, hardened aircraft shelters, petroleum and logistical storage, ammunition supply bunkers, air defense systems, and radars, he added. The Pentagon believes Shayrat Airfield was used to store chemical weapons and Syrian air forces and the US intelligence community assessed that aircraft from Shayrat conducted the chemical weapons attack on April 4. The strike was intended to deter the regime from using chemical weapons again, Davis said. Russians stationed at the air base were notified in advance of the strike using the established deconfliction line, but the US insisted there was no direct contact with Moscow. US military planners took precautions to minimize risk to Russian or Syrian personnel located at the airfield, Davis said. On way to Florida to meet Xi, Trump had signaled an impending attack when he told reporters on Air Force One, I think what happened in Syria is a disgrace to humanity, and hes (Bashar al-Assad) there, and I guess hes running things, so I guess something should happen. He had added: What Assad did is terrible. What happened in Syria is truly one of the egregious crimes and it shouldnt have happened. And it shouldnt be allow to happen. The bombing followed a few hours later. The president had refused to discuss details of his plans, but multiple US media outlets had reported defense secretary James Mattis and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Joseph F Dunford had prepared options for the president to chose from. Security experts had, before the strikes, flagged the risk of hitting Russian and Iranian military personnel known to be working with Syrians, which the president will have to consider before ordering a strike to prevent an unintended escalation. But the administration looked determined to respond in some fashion. We are considering an appropriate response for this chemical weapons attack, Secretary of state Rex Tillerson told reporters. A serious matter requires a serious response. Tillerson, who only days ago said Syrians will decide Assads fate indicating the US was dropped its regime-change policy, effected a quick re-turnaround when he said it would seem there would be no role for him to govern the Syrian people. He went on to say, We are considering an appropriate response for this chemical weapons attack. That remark was being taken to indicate the likelihood of a military strike which might not cause Assads exit, but could deal him a massive blow. Two Republican senators, John McCain and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, praised the strike and urged the president go after Assads air force which is responsible not just for the latest chemical weapons attack, but countless atrocities against the Syrian people completely out of the fight. Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Apr. 7 By Demir Azizov Trend: Uzbekistans Foreign Ministry hosted a meeting with the Azerbaijani delegation led by Deputy Foreign Minister Khalaf Khalafov, who arrived in Tashkent to participate in the next meeting of the CIS Council of Foreign Ministers, the Uzbek Foreign Ministrys press service said. The two sides discussed the current state and prospects of the Uzbek-Azerbaijani relations in political, trade and economic, cultural and humanitarian and other spheres of mutual interest. Special attention was paid to the cooperation within international and regional organizations, such as the United Nations and CIS. The sides reaffirmed their mutual interest in further development of cooperation, first of all, in the trade and economic sphere, and supported the intensification of contacts of the two countries businessmen, diversification of the range of mutual supplies of goods. Pakistans foreign policy chief Sartaj Aziz has said the government did not take harsh steps against Lashkar-e-Taiba founder Hafiz Saeed for fear that he would be let off by the courts. In an interview with German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle posted this week, Aziz defended Pakistans decision to limit its actions against Saeed to house arrest - a move the interviewer referred to as a slap on the wrist - saying, If we do more, he will get acquittal of the court. Three times he has got acquittal of the court. Hafiz Saeed, suspected mastermind of the Mumbai attacks, is under house arrest in Pakistan. Aziz: "If we do more he will be acquitted." pic.twitter.com/rvUQqIy3EC DW Conflict Zone (@dw_conflictzone) April 6, 2017 Saeed, accused of masterminding the 2008 Mumbai attacks, was placed in preventive detention or house arrest by Pakistan on January 30 and was listed under the Fourth Schedule of the Anti-Terrorism Act by the government of Punjab province in February. Saeed currently heads the Jamaat-ud-Dawah, which has not been banned but is on the watch list. The US and the UN Security Council have already declared the JuD and its sister organisation, the Falah-e-Insaniyat Foundation, as fronts for the LeT. In the interview, during which the 88-year-old Aziz was grilled on the governments failure to execute laws against terrorism, he insisted that Pakistan was committed to fighting terror groups but denied that Saeed was behind the Mumbai attacks. His name is not directly involved. We have asked for additional evidence which they [India] have not given us, he said. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON New Zealand Prime Minister Bill English defended his love of pizza topped with tinned spaghetti and pineapple on Friday after the recipe sent fans of the Italian treat into an outraged frenzy. English posted pictures of his unorthodox tastes on Facebook this week, saying he prepared the dish for his family. The internet melted down faster than buffalo mozzarella as purists poured online scorn on his spaghetti speciality. I'm fascinated by the Prime Minister of New Zealand putting spaghetti hoops on his pizza pic.twitter.com/jqh95vOILl Ned Donovan (@Ned_Donovan) April 5, 2017 Why on earth would you promote such garbage? Would you serve this stuff to your international guests??, one user posted. Another said: Sorry Bill, any man who puts spaghetti on a pizza is not fit to run my country, you cannot count on my vote come election time. Even US talk show host Jimmy Kimmel got in on the act, urging New Zealanders impeach that man immediately!. That is so offensive. That is an act of war. I think he just declared war on Italy, and maybe Hawaii too, Kimmel told his audience. New Zealand is currently making international headlines because our prime minister put spaghetti on pizza....I really need to move Gliscor101 (@gliscor101) April 7, 2017 Italys embassy in Wellington declared a vendetta, or blood feud, over the desecration, tweeting a picture of New Zealands beloved pavlova dessert covered with salami. Vendetta for PM's pizza with tinned spaghetti and pineapple#salamipavlova pic.twitter.com/bj65jQMhLd Italy in New Zealand (@ItalyinNZ) April 6, 2017 Vendetta for PMs pizza with tinned spaghetti and pineapple, it said. English was unfazed by the criticism, saying his recipe may have cooked up strong opinions but plenty of people were on his side. Read | Biryani in your pizza is not just a sad story, it is a trend Everywhere I go now I meet people who put spaghetti and pineapple on their pizza, he told NewstalkZB. They come up to me spontaneously when Im walking through the airport and tell me. 'Sorry Bill, any man who puts spaghetti on a pizza is not fit to run my country, you cannot count on my vote com... https://t.co/jIxXwHEaU8 Thus Spake (@thus_spake) April 6, 2017 The culinary kerfuffle comes after Iceland President Gudni Johannesson revealed in February that he hated pineapple topping on pizzas and would ban it if he could. Pineapple does not go on top of pizza..... https://t.co/lhD6aliOV8 Gordon Ramsay (@GordonRamsay) April 4, 2017 English was unaware of that controversy but admitted he had been puzzled recently about how many times he had been asked whether he liked pineapple on pizzas. We answered the question, the nation was clearly interested, but theyll probably move on pretty quickly now, he said. via GIPHY A truck ploughed into a crowd on a shopping street and crashed into a department store in central Stockholm on Friday, killing four people and wounding 15 in what the Prime Minister said appeared to be a terrorist attack. (Highlights) Swedish police said they had arrested one person after earlier circulating a picture of a man wearing a grey hoodie. They did not rule out the possibility other attackers were involved. We have a person who is arrested who may have connections to the event in Stockholm earlier today, police spokesperson Towe Hagg said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. I turned around and saw a big truck coming towards me. It swerved from side to side. It didnt look out of control, it was trying to hit people, Glen Foran, an Australian tourist in his 40s, told Reuters. It hit people, it was terrible. It hit a pram with a kid in it, demolished it, he said. It took a long time for police to get here. I suppose from their view it was quick, but it felt like forever. Part of central Stockholm was cordoned off and the area was evacuated, including the main train station. All subway traffic was halted on police orders. Government offices were closed. Sweden has been attacked. Everything points to the fact that this is a terrorist attack, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven told reporters during a visit to western Sweden. He was immediately returning to the capital. Many police and emergency services personnel were at the scene, said a Reuters witness who saw policemen put what appeared to be two bodies into body bags. Bloody tyre tracks on Drottninggatan (Queen Street) showed where the truck had passed. When it stopped we saw a man lying under the tyre. It was terrible to see. The truck had been stolen while making a beer delivery to a tapas bar further up Drottninggatan, Spendrups Brewery spokesman Marten Lyth said. A masked person jumped into the cab, started the truck and drove away. We were standing by the traffic lights at Drottninggatan and then we heard some screaming and saw a truck coming, a witness who declined to be named told Reuters. Then it drove into a pillar at Ahlens City (department store) where the hood started burning. When it stopped we saw a man lying under the tyre. It was terrible to see, said the man, who saw the incident from his car. Police said four people had died and 15 were injured. National news agency TT said those hurt included the delivery driver, who had tried to stop the hijack. Several attacks in which trucks or cars have driven into crowds have taken place in Europe in the past year. Al Qaeda in 2010 urged its followers to use trucks as a weapon. Bodies are seen after a truck crashed into a department store Ahlens, in central Stockholm, Sweden. (REUTERS) Islamic State claimed responsibility for an attack in Nice, France, last July, when a truck killed 86 people celebrating Bastille Day, and one in Berlin in December, when a truck smashed through a Christmas market, killing 12 people. Magnus Ranstorp, head of terrorism research at the Swedish Defence University, told Reuters the attackers approach was similar to those in Berlin and Nice: Hijacking a truck, that has happened before. And this is a pretty cunning modus operandi, he said. To drive to Ahlens (department store) and stop ... There is a way down to the subway just a few metres away from there, and then you ... can jump on any train you want and quickly disappear. Swedens King Carl Gustaf said in a statement: Our thoughts are going out to those that were affected, and to their families. An attack on any of our member states is an attack on us all, said European Union chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker. Stockholmers opened up their homes and offered lifts to people who were unable to get home or needed a place to stay. The attack was the latest to hit the Nordic region after shootings in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2015 that killed three people and the 2011 bombing and shooting by far right extremist Anders Behring Breivik that killed 77 people in Norway. Sweden has not been hit by a large-scale attack, although in December 2010, a man blew himself up only a few hundred yards from the site of the latest incident in a failed suicide attack. In February US President Donald Trump falsely suggested there had been an immigration-related security incident in Sweden, to the bafflement of Swedes. Police officers work at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm. (AFP Photo) Swedish authorities raised the national security threat level to four on a scale of five in October 2010 but lowered the level to three, indicating a raised threat, in March 2016. Police in Norways largest cities and at Oslos airport will carry weapons until further notice following the attack. Denmark has been on high alert since the February 2015 shootings. Neutral Sweden has not fought a war in more than 200 years, but its military has taken part in U.N peacekeeping missions in a number of conflict zones in recent years, including Iraq, Mali and Afghanistan. The Sapo security police said in its annual report it was impossible to say how big a risk there was that Sweden would be targeted like other European cities, but that, if so it is most likely that it would be undertaken by a lone attacker. The US hit a Syrian military air base on Thursday night with a volley of 60 Tomahawk missiles, launching its first direct attack against the Bashar al-Assad. In an address to the nation, US President Donald Trump said, Tonight I ordered a targeted military strike on airfield in Syria from which the chemical attack was launched. The air strike sent ripples across the international community. While Syrias allies Russia and Iran condemned the attack, Trumps order received support from the governments of the United Kingdom, Israel, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Russia Russia, which is a prime ally of the Assad government in Syria and provides military support to the Syrian army, condemned the air strikes. An official statement from the Kremlin said that the airstrikes dealt significant damage to US-Russian ties, which are already in a deplorable state. President Vladimir Putin regards the strikes as aggression against a sovereign nation, Putins spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian media. Peskov added that the strikes were carried out in violation of international law, and also under an invented pretext. Israel Israel fully supported the air strikes, according to a strongly-worded statement by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In both word and action, President Trump sent a long and clear message today that the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated, said the statement. Netanyahu further added that Israel hoped that Trumps message would resonate not only in Damascus, but in Tehran, Pyongyang and elsewhere. Iran Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Bahram Qasemi condemned the strike. Qasemi censured the use of chemical weapons, but said that the air strikes would not only complicate the situation in Syria, but the entire region. Tehran considers this excuse for unilateral action as dangerous, destructive and violation of fundemental principles of international law, he said. United Kingdom Britains government fully supports US strikes against a Syrian air base launched after a suspected chemical attack on Tuesday, a spokesman said. The UK government fully supports the US action, which we believe was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, the spokesman said in a statement on Friday. He also said the US strikes were intended to deter further attacks. China China proceeded with caution, urging calm in dealing with the Syrian conflict. What is urgent now is to avoid further deterioration of the situation, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Hua Chunying said during a regular press briefing. She continued: We oppose use of chemical weapons by any country, organisation or individual in any circumstance, for any purpose. Turkey Turkey, which is a key player in the Syria conflict and a NATO ally, welcomed the strikes as positive. The deputy foreign minister added: We believe that the Assad regime must be punished completely in the international arena. Saudi Arabia A foreign ministry official hailed US President Donald Trump as courageous for taking action when the international community has failed to put a halt to the regimes actions. Australia Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told reporters that the government supported the airstrikes, calling them a swift and just response. This was a calibrated, proportionate and targeted response. It sends a strong message to the Assad regime, and ... has been struck at the very airfield from which the chemical attack was delivered, Turnbull said. Khan Sheikhun is a ghost town, its streets deserted and silent as though mourning the victims of the atrocity that occurred here two days earlier . The only reminder of what happened is a small, blackened, crater near the northern part of town, where a rocket laced with a nerve agent fell, killing more than 70 people in one of the worst mass casualty chemical attacks in the six-year war in Syria. All that remains of the attack on the town in rebel-held Idlib province is a faint stench that tingles the nostrils and a small green fragment from the rocket. The houses nearby are emptied of the living. The victims symptoms are consistent with sarin, the nerve agent that was dropped on an opposition-held area near Damascus in 2013 , killing more than 1,000 people. After that attack the regime supposedly gave up its chemical weapons arsenal. Men ride a motorbike past a hazard sign at a site hit by an airstrike on Tuesday in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, Syria. (Reuters Photo) Moscow, Bashar al-Assads principal backer in the war, said the Syrian government had bombed a rebel-run toxic gas manufacturing plant in Khan Sheikhun, and that the gas had subsequently leaked out. The Guardian, the first western media organisation to visit the site of the attack, examined a warehouse and silos directly next to where the missile had landed, and found nothing but an abandoned space covered in dust and half-destroyed silos reeking of leftover grain and animal manure. Residents said the silos had been damaged in air raids six months ago, and had stood unused since then. You can look at it ; theres nothing there except maybe some grain and animal dung, and theres even a dead goat there that suffocated in the attack, one person said. Residents responded in disbelief to the Russian allegation. There was no evidence of any building being hit in recent days or weeks near where so many people were killed and wounded by a nerve agent. The homes across the street appeared undamaged from the outside. There was no contamination zone near any building. Instead, the contamination area radiated from a hole in a road. The Guardian interviewed witnesses, first responders, victims relatives and the wounded in an effort to reconstruct the attack. They offered fresh details that shed light on an incident that has prompted worldwide condemnation and refocused attention on the brutality of the Syrian war. It was like Judgment Day, said Hamid Khutainy, a civil defence volunteer in Khan Sheikhun. Witnesses said the air raids began shortly after 6.30am on Tuesday, with four bombings around the town. Initially they thought it was just another airstrike, until the first responders who arrived at the scene began falling to the ground. Khutainy said: They told us HQ, we are losing control. We had no idea what they were trying to say. Then they said, come save us, we can no longer walk. So the second and third teams went with just face masks. We could smell it from 500 metres away. People described a scene of utter horror at the attack site . The wounded were shaking and convulsing on the ground, foaming at the mouth, their lips blue, passing in and out of consciousness. I found children lying on the ground, in their last breaths, their lips going blue, said Abu al-Baraa, who lives nearby and rushed to help when the full extent of what had happened dawned on him. Standing across the street from the crater left by the missile, he added: People on the rooftops and in the basements. People on the ground in the street. Wherever you looked there were dead human beings. The suffocating patients and those who had died were taken to the nearby civil defence centre and the adjacent clinic built into the side of a rocky mountainous outcrop to withstand potential airstrikes. The dead were laid in a nearby shed while emergency workers hosed down the injured with water, and administered atropine, a nerve agent antidote. But while medical workers were trying to come to grips with the crisis, between eight and 10 airstrikes targeted the medical facility and civil defence centre. The shed collapsed on the dead, and the site was put out of service. Maybe the pilots heard the myth that you could come back to life 48 hours after dying from sarin, so they decided to bomb them again just in case, said an official from the Ahrar al-Sham rebel group who was on the scene. Thank God there is a Day of Judgment in the afterlife. The Guardian visited the destroyed medical facility and civil defence centre briefly. Local people said reconnaissance planes had been spotted in the sky earlier and believed the area might be targeted again later in the day. The site was filled with rubble. Inside, hospital equipment, beds, surgical instruments and small boxes of medicine lay covered in dust or broken on the ground. There were no weapons in sight, and the rooms inside the cave were darkened with the electricity knocked out. A civil defence member breathes through an oxygen mask, after what rescue workers described as a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, Syria. (Reuters Photo) In a nearby cemetery, the graves were still fresh from funerals the day before, the red soil still upturned. In one corner 18 new graves were set up, the names barely etched with a rough chisel on the tombstones. They contained the bodies of 20 people, including two children who were buried with their mother. They were all from the same family. Abdulhamid al-Yousef, one of the few survivors in the family, was receiving condolences at his home in Khan Sheikhun, a day after burying his wife and nine-month-old twins, Ahmed and Aya, fighting back tears. Yousef had rushed to help the other victims of the attack. He came back instead to find that much of his family had perished, including siblings, nephews and nieces. His wife and children had rushed down to the bomb shelter in their basement, only for the toxic gas to seep into it, which killed them all. That evening at the cemetery, he insisted on carrying his two infants in his arms to bury them himself. Almost in a trance Yousef repeated the childrens names, choking as he did so. Aya and Ahmed, my souls. Yasser and Ahmed, my brothers who had my back. Ammoura and Hammoudi, Shaimaa, so many others, he said. The missile strike against a Syrian airbase marks the first time the United States has directly attacked the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Here is what we know so far about the target and the outcome of the strike. The target Around 8:40pm eastern time on Thursday, the US military fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at the Shayrat airfield near Homs in western Syria. According to the Pentagon, the facility was used to store chemical weapons and Syrian aircraft. The Tomahawks targeted aircraft, hardened aircraft shelters, petroleum and logistical storage, ammunition supply bunkers, air defence systems and radars, the Pentagon said. Pentagon spokesman Navy captain Jeff Davis said the strike lasted a couple of minutes. US intelligence agents believe that aircraft from Shayrat conducted the chemical weapons attack on April 4. National security advisor HR McMaster said measures had been put in place to avoid hitting sarin gas stored at the airfield. So that would not be ignited and cause a hazard to civilians or anyone else, McMaster said. How it was launched The strike was launched from the destroyers USS Porter and USS Ross in the eastern Mediterranean. Russian forces were warned ahead of the strike using a special military-to-military hotline. Davis said the strike was designed to avoid casualties. Every precaution was taken to execute this strike with minimal risk to personnel at the airfield, he said. There was no immediate indication that Russia had tried to shoot down any of the missiles. The result According to the Pentagon, initial indications showed the strike had severely damaged or destroyed Syrian aircraft, infrastructure and equipment at Shayrat. Davis said the runways themselves were not targeted. US officials stressed the strike was a direct reaction to the chemical attack, and not the beginning of a broader military front against Assad. The strike was a proportional response to Assads heinous act, Davis said. Legal concerns The strike was launched at the order of US President Donald Trump and was a proportional response to what was a violation of international war by the Assad regime, Davis said. But critics questioned whether the action amounted to a declaration of war and said Trump should have gone to Congress first. America is currently hitting Islamic State targets in Syria under a 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF). But attacking the government of a sovereign nation raises legal questions. President waging military action against Syria without a vote of Congress? Unconstitutional, Democratic senator Tim Kaine wrote on Twitter. Three people were killed when a truck drove into a crowd on a shopping street and crashed into a department store in central Stockholm on Friday, police said. Prime minister Stefan Lofven said everything indicated the crash was a terrorist attack, according to the national news agency TT. Part of central Stockholm was cordoned off and the area was evacuated. Large numbers of police and emergency services were at the scene. Follow our live updates on the Stockholm attack Live television footage on Friday showed smoke coming out of the upscale Ahlens department store on Drottninggatan Street, which the truck smashed into. The department store is part of Sweden-wide chain. The building includes several stores at street-level. We stood inside a shoe store and heard something ... and then people started to scream, witness Jan Granroth told the Aftonbladet daily. I looked out of the store and saw a big truck. I saw at least three dead, but probably more, Radio Sweden reporter Martin Svenningsen said. TT reported that police confirmed the three deaths. A Reuters witness saw a number of body-like forms covered by blankets at the scene of the incident. Several attacks in which trucks or cars have driven into crowds have taken place in Europe in the past year. Al Qaeda in 2010 urged its followers to use trucks as a weapon. In London on March 22 this year, a man in a car ploughed into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, killing four, and then stabbed a policeman to death before being shot by police. Islamic State claimed responsibility for both an attack in Nice, France, last July, when a truck killed 86 people celebrating Bastille Day, and one in Berlin in December, when a truck smashed through a Christmas market, killing 12 people. In 2014, IS spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani called for attacks on citizens of Western countries and gave instructions on how they could be carried out without military equipment, using rocks or knives, or by running people over in vehicles. There have also been false alerts, however. Earlier Friday, Belgium dropped terrorism charges against a driver who sped into a crowded shopping area in Antwerp last month, which sparked fears of a copy-cat terror attack. Chinese state media say US President Donald Trump has accepted an invitation from his Chinese counterpart to visit China later this year. The official Xinhua News Agency reported late Thursday that Trump will travel to China at an early date in 2017 but gave no details. Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are holding their first meeting this week at Trumps Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. During last years election campaign and afterward, Trump talked tough about extracting better trade deals out of China and pressuring Beijing to do more to deter North Koreas nuclear program. Trump joked at a formal dinner with Xi on Thursday that he had gotten nothing in long talks with the Chinese president but said they had developed a friendly rapport. Tulsi Gabbard, the first Hindu lawmaker in the US Congress has described the massive American military strike on a Syrian airbase as reckless and short-sighted amid bipartisan support from the House of Representatives to President Donald Trumps punitive action. It angers and saddens me that President Trump has taken the advice of war hawks and escalated our illegal regime change war to overthrow the Syrian government, Gabbard, the Democratic Congresswoman from Hawaii, said in a statement. Gabbard is a Iraq war veteran and a member of the powerful House Foreign Relations Committee. In January Gabbard travelled to Syria to meet Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, thus making her perhaps the only senior US official to meet the Syrian leader. This escalation is short-sighted and will lead to more dead civilians, more refugees, the strengthening of al-Qaeda and other terrorists, and a possible nuclear war between the US and Russia, she said. This administration has acted recklessly without care or consideration of the dire consequences of the US attack on Syria without waiting for the collection of evidence from the scene of the chemical poisoning, Gabbard said. If President Assad is indeed guilty of this horrible chemical attack on innocent civilians, I will be the first to call for his prosecution and execution by the International Criminal Court. she said. However, because of our attack on Syria, this investigation may now not even be possible. And without such evidence, a successful prosecution will be much harder, Gabbard, who is also a co-chair of the Congressional India Caucus said. Gabbard appeared to be the lone voice in opposing Trumps decision to carry out missile strikes against the Syrian regime. Trump appeared to have bipartisan support to his military decision, which came in less than 100 days of him taking over the office of presidency. On Trumps orders, US warships in the Mediterranean Sea launched between 50-60 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Shayrat air base, in Homs governorate, where the warplanes that carried out the chemical attacks are based. The attack was in retaliation to a barbaric chemical attack on civilians allegedly by Assads regime. This action was appropriate and just. These tactical strikes make clear that the Assad regime can no longer count on American inaction as it carries out atrocities against the Syrian people, said House Speaker Paul Ryan. Resolving the years-long crisis in Syria is a complex task, but Bashar al-Assad must be held accountable and his enablers must be persuaded to change course. I look forward to the administration further engaging Congress in this effort, Ryan said. Unlike the previous administration, President Trump confronted a pivotal moment in Syria and took action. For that, he deserves the support of the American people. Building on tonights credible first step, we must finally learn the lessons of history and ensure that tactical success leads to strategic progress, said Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham in a joint statement. Making sure Assad knows that when he commits such despicable atrocities he will pay a price is the right thing to do? It is incumbent on the Trump administration to come up with a strategy and consult with Congress before implementing it, said Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer. Assad was warned, repeatedly, by the US and the UN that the intentional targeting of innocent men, women and children is intolerable, said Congressman Ed Royce, Chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee. Now Assad has been caught red-handed carrying out another abhorrent chemical attack, and the administration has taken a measured response. Moving ahead, the administration must work with Congress and lay out clear policy goals for Syria and the region, Royce said. By acting decisively against the very facility from which Assad launched his murderous chemical weapons attack, President Trump has made it clear to Assad and those who empower him that the days of committing war crimes with impunity are over, said Senator Marco Rubio. Senator Dick Durbin said this was a measured response to the Syrian nerve gas atrocity. Senator Bob Corker, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee applauded Trump for taking decisive action following the latest chemical weapons attack. These military strikes against Assads arsenal send a clear signal that the United States will stand up for internationally accepted norms and rules against the use of chemical weapons, said Senator Ben Cardin. Tonights strike in Syria appears to be a proportional response to the regimes use of chemical weapons. If the President intends to escalate the US militarys involvement in Syria, he must to come to Congress for an Authorisation for Use of Military Force which is tailored to meet the threat and prevent another open-ended war in the middle east, said Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi. House Democratic Whip Steny H Hoyer said the airstrikes, launched in response to the horrific atrocity of the use of chemical weapons, are not a sufficient answer on their own to the challenge posed by the civil war in Syria and the Assad regimes war crimes. President Trump must follow them with the presentation of a clear and coherent strategy and the articulation of what discernible goals these strikes were meant to advance, he said. Trumps decision to strike the Assad regimes air base where chemical weapons were deployed against the innocent people of Syria earlier this week sends a clear signal to the world that war crimes such as these will not be tolerated. I support the presidents swift and decisive action to punish this dictatorship for the atrocities committed, said Senator Johny Isakson. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy applauded US troops for their professionalism in carrying out these strikes. Assad has made his disregard for innocent human life and longstanding norms against chemical weapons use crystal clear. Tonights strikes show these evil actions carry consequences, he said. The UN Security Council met in an emergency session on Friday following the US missile strikes in Syria, with France and Britain voicing support for Washingtons military response to a suspected chemical weapons attack. France and Britain called for a renewed push for political negotiations to end the six-year war in Syria. The United Kingdom fully supports the United States action overnight, which was an appropriate response to such a heinous crime, a war crime, British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft said as he headed into the meeting. US President Donald Trump on Thursday ordered cruise missile strikes on a Syrian air base in response to a suspected chemical attack on a rebel-held town that killed 86 people and shocked the world. The strike -- the first direct US action against President Bashar al-Assad and Trumps biggest military decision since taking office -- marked a dramatic escalation in American involvement in Syrias six-year war. Describing the US strikes as appropriate, French Ambassador Francois Delattre expressed hope the US action would be a game changer and help boost the political negotiations. The council meeting was called by Bolivia, which branded the US strikes a violation of international law. Bolivian Ambassador Sacha Lorenti said the United States had behaved like investigator, attorney, judge and executioner in Syria. This is not what international law is all about, he told reporters ahead of the meeting. Russia angrily denounced the military action as an aggression against a sovereign state. - Push for political talks - UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres urged restraint and a renewed push for peace in Syria, saying in a statement that there is no other way to solve the conflict than through a political solution. It is it is time now to focus on the political process, Rycroft echoed. Eighty-six people including at least 27 children died in the suspected attack in Khan Sheikhun. Results from post-mortems performed on victims point to exposure to the deadly sarin nerve agent, according to Turkish health officials. Guterres called on the council to unite and agree on a way forward on Syria. For too long, international law has been ignored in the Syrian conflict, and it is our shared duty to uphold international standards of humanity, he said. This is a prerequisite to ending the unrelenting suffering of the people of Syria. The Security Council failed during a meeting Thursday to agree on terms for an investigation of the suspected sarin gas attack in Khan Sheikhun. Russias Deputy Ambassador Vladimir Safronkov on Thursday warned of negative consequences from the US military action, which he described as a doubtful, tragic enterprise. Look at Iraq, look at Libya, he said, referring to Western interventions that unleashed years of chaos in those countries. Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Apr. 7 By Demir Azizov Trend: Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev received chairman of the executive committee, Executive Secretary of the CIS Sergei Lebedev on Apr. 6, Uzbekistans national news agency (UzA) reported. Lebedev arrived in Tashkent to attend a meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the CIS member countries. During the meeting, Mirziyoyevnoted the importance attached to expanding and strengthening of the mutually beneficial cooperation within the CIS, which is a unique platform to exchange ideas and mull topical issues of multifaceted cooperation, as well as promote joint programs and projects in various economic sectors. Lebedev appreciated Uzbekistan's active participation in the preparation and holding of the meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the CIS states in Tashkent. Uzbek President Mirziyoyev, in turn, wished fruitful work to the participants of the forthcoming meeting of the CIS foreign ministers. The Trump administration opened a new military front Thursday when it ordered dozens of cruise missiles against a Syrian air base, adding to a growing list of recent US military forays. A look at where the United States has fought in the 21st century: Afghanistan After al Qaeda attacked the US on September 11, 2001, the US led an invasion of Afghanistan that ousted the Taliban. Though the US and NATO formally ended their combat mission in Afghanistan at the end of 2014, the war now in its 16th year drags on. Some 8,400 American troops are deployed in Afghanistan, where they train the countrys military and perform counterterrorism operations. Iraq Under former president George W Bush, the US invaded Iraq in 2003 and toppled Saddam Hussein. Bushs successor, president Barack Obama, pulled US troops out of Iraq in 2011 after failing to reach an agreement with Baghdad to leave a residual US force behind. But the US sent troops back three years later after the Islamic State group, a successor to al Qaeda in Iraq, seized Iraqi territory and sought to declare an Islamic caliphate. Drone wars Under Obama, the US dramatically increased the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, also known as drones, to launch counterterrorism strikes without the need for a large US military presence on the ground. The CIA and Defense Department have launched strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya, some of them covert. Intense criticism from civil liberties advocates led Obama to create legal parameters for drone use that he hoped future presidents would respect. At least 117 civilians were killed from 2009 to 2016 by drone strikes outside of traditional warzones, the US intelligence community has said. Other estimates place the toll higher. Libya The US and European allies launched an air campaign in Libya in 2011, aiming to prevent atrocities by strongman Moammar Gadhafi against Arab Spring-inspired opponents. The bombing campaign toppled Gadhafi, but Libya slid into chaos and infighting. The Islamic State group later gained a foothold. The US has continued to carry out airstrikes in Libya that Washington says has diminished the number of IS extremists operating there. Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria After IS captured a wide swath of Iraq and Syria in 2014, Obama announced that the US could target the group wherever they are. The US started sending small numbers of military advisers to help Iraqs weakened military fight IS. The number has crept up to around 7,500 US troops. IS has lost much of its former territory. In Syria, the US has conducted airstrikes against IS since 2014. More recently, the US has dispatched growing numbers of special operations forces to assist Kurdish and Arab forces fighting IS. Roughly 500 US fighters are in Syria, plus additional, temporary forces that rotate through. Syria Even while fighting IS in Syria, the US has avoided wading into Syrias civil war by directly confronting Syrian President Bashar Assad until now. On Thursday night, US warships in the Mediterranean Sea launched some 60 Tomahawk missiles at an air base in response to a chemical weapons attack blamed on Assads forces. The strikes mark the first direct US attack on Syrias government, which has waged a six-year civil war against opposition groups. It also puts the US into a de facto proxy battle with Russias military, which is on the ground in Syria and has propped up Assad. US President Donald Trump may not have reached that place yet where the entire country rallies behind him, critics and all, but the strikes he ordered against the horrific chemical weapons attack in Syria on Friday might be the closest he has gotten to it, with reactions ranging from welcomed to cautiously welcomed. Criticism, of which there was no shortage from both liberals and conservatives, came mostly on the grounds that the presidents actions launching military strikes against another country amounted to an act of war and he should have sought congressional approval for it, as laid down in the constitution. For the most part though, even Trumps critics were supportive. The president was right to strike at the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for using a weapon of mass destruction, the nerve agent sarin, against its own people, wrote Antony J Blinken, deputy secretary of state in the Obama administration, in an op-ed in The New York Times, in which he went on to argue for the need for smart diplomacy now. Blinkens one-time boss Obamas refusal to follow up on his threat of US retaliation when Syrian President Bashar al-Assad crossed a red line by ordering a chemical weapons attack in 2013 was among his most egregious foreign policy failures, and many in his administration and the party had felt frustrated by it. Eliot Engel, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was one of them, who had felt let down then. Tonights missile strike was an appropriate response to Assads most recent chemical weapons attack on the Syrian people, he said in a statement, adding, War crimes have consequences. And there were those who wanted more. Republican senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham praised the strikes and urged the president to go after Assads air force which is responsible not just for the latest chemical weapons attack, but countless atrocities against the Syrian people completely out of the fight. Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat in the US Senate, was among those who offered support, but cautious support: Making sure that Assad knows that when he commits such despicable atrocities he will pay a price is the right thing to do. He went to ask the president to follow up the strikes with a strategy and consult congress before implementing it. The point about congressional consultation and approval was made by many others on both sides of the aisle, such as Democratic Senator Tim Kaine, a former vice-presidential candidate, and Republican senator Rand Paul, a presidential candidate and a libertarian historically loathe to inserting America into conflicts and situations abroad. There were those such as Elizabeth Warren, the firebrand Democratic senator, who said that while Assad needed to be held accountable for the chemical weapons attack, the United States must embrace innocent people who are fleeing (Syria) in terror. That was a reminder to the Trump administration which had proposed to ban refugees from Syria indefinitely. And there was Tulsi Gabbard, the Democratic member of the House of Representatives who is among the highest-ranking US functionaries to have met Assad in person recently. She condemned the strikes saying it could lead to a possible nuclear war between the United States and Russia. Moreover, she added in the statement, the Trump administration had acted recklessly without waiting for the collection of evidence from the scene of the chemical poisoning, suggesting it might have been the handiwork of someone else. But, if Assad was indeed responsible for it, she would call for his prosecution and execution, the congresswoman said, but by the International Criminal Court and, not, she left unsaid, by the United States acting unilaterally. US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping opened their high-stakes summit at Trumps Florida beach resort on Thursday, with the urgent threat of North Koreas nuclear ambitions and tensions over trade on the agenda for the first meeting between the leaders of the worlds two largest economies. Trump and first lady Melania Trump greeted Xi and his wife at the Mar-a-Lago estate before making their way to dinner. The meeting kicked off amid suggestions the Trump administration was considering military action against Syria in response to a chemical weapons attack that killed more than 80 people. The president pointed to the crisis in North Korea as a top priority in the meetings with Xi, telling reporters on Air Force One on his way to Florida on Thursday that he thinks China will want to be stepping up in trying to deter North Koreas nuclear ambitions. Still, Trump appeared lighthearted as he greeted Xi, gesturing and pointing to journalists as they tussled to get a shot of the two leaders together for the first time. Ahead of the dinner, Trump said he and Xi already had had a long discussion and had developed a friendship, and then joked, I have gotten nothing, absolutely nothing. The White House said the location was selected to give the two days of discussions a more relaxed feel. A number of Trumps top advisers were in attendance, including his daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner. Outside the dining room where the two delegations gathered for a lavish dinner, Mar-a-Lago club members packed the patio for dinner. While Trump would not say what he wants China to do specifically with regard to North Korea, he suggested there was a link between terrible trade agreements the US has made with China and Pyongyangs provocations. He says the two issues really do mix. The president has said that if China doesnt exert more pressure on North Korea, the US will act alone. US President Donald Trump interacts with Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago state in Palm Beach, Florida. (Reuters Photo) Both as a candidate and president, Trump has taken an aggressive posture toward China, labeling Beijing a tremendous problem and arguing that lopsided trade deals with China shortchange American businesses and workers. Last week, the president predicted in a tweet that his meeting with Xi would be very difficult. The White House has downplayed expectations for a breakthrough on issues like trade and tariffs, insisting that the 24-hour summit is mostly an introductory meeting for the two leaders. And within Trumps administration, there are still divisions over how to approach China. According to US and foreign officials, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and economic adviser Gary Cohn are leading the charge for boosting ties and exploring the potential for greater economic cooperation. But economic adviser Peter Navarro, author of the book Death by China: Confronting the Dragon a Global Call to Action, prefers trying to isolate China, in keeping with Trumps America First mantra. Patrick Cronin, a China expert with the Center for a New American Security, said the Trump administration does not have a reconciled trade and economic policy yet, and the differing views on China in the White House underscore that. Ahead of the summit, Trump signed a pair of executive orders focused on reducing the US trade deficit. The moves appeared to be a shot at China, which accounted for the vast bulk $347 billion of last years $502 billion trade deficit. Chinese exports to the US totaled some $388.1 billion last year. Anthony Ruggiero, an East Asia expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said China may be more willing to accommodate Trump on trade and economic issues than on regional security issues, including North Korea. Xi, a shrewd political operator, is unlikely to want to rock the boat ahead of a Communist Party conclave later this year that will install new leadership. Xi is also expected to seek assurances that Trump will not interfere in the territorial dispute over the South China Sea or question the One China policy by reaching out to Taiwans leader again, as he did during the transition. The move infuriated Beijing, leading Trump to eventually reiterate his commitment to the decades-old policy. Previous White Houses have held China accountable for its human rights record, something this administration has made very little mention of, whether in China or elsewhere. It also remains to be seen whether the Obama administrations deal with Beijing to curb Chinese cybertheft for economic gain and its hacking of US companies will be addressed. Moscow considers the US strike on a Syrian airbase early on Friday as aggression against a sovereign state, which will further harm US-Russia ties, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. President Putin considers American strikes on Syria aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international norms, and under an invented pretext, Peskov was reported as saying by Russian agencies. US President Donald Trump ordered a massive military strike on a Syrian air base, in retaliation for what he said was a very barbaric attack on Tuesday that is suspected to have contained a nerve agent. The Syrian army does not have any chemical weapon stockpiles, added Peskov. The fact of destruction of all chemical weapon stockpiles of the Syrian armed forces was recorded and confirmed by the (Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons). This step by Washington inflicts considerable damage to US-Russia relations, which are already in a lamentable state, Peskov added. A White House official said 59 precision-guided Tomahawk missiles hit the Shayrat airfield, from where the US believes the attack was launched. A monitoring group said the base was nearly destroyed with four soldiers killed. Iran also said it strongly condemns the US air strike on the Syrian government airbase . We condemn all unilateral military action and the missile strike by US warships against Shayrat airbase under the pretext of Tuesdays suspected attack on Khan Sheikhun, foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghassemi said. Iran with Russia is the closest ally of the regime of Syria President Bashar al-Assad and has provided money, weapons, military advisers and trainers, as well as volunteer militiamen to support it in the six-year civil war. The US missile strikes on Syrian military positions serve the goals of armed terrorist groups and the Islamic State, the governor of Syrias Homs province said on Friday. Syrian leadership and Syrian policy will not change, Homs governor Talal Barazi said in a phone interview with state television. This targeting was not the first and I dont believe it will be the last, he added. US President Donald Trump said he ordered missile strikes against a Syrian airfield from which a deadly chemical weapons attack was launched this week, declaring he acted in Americas national security interest against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. US officials said the military fired dozens of cruise missiles against the airbase in response to the suspected gas attack in a rebel-held area that Washington has blamed on Assads forces. The Syrian government has strongly denied responsibility. Homs governor Talal al-Barazi said the US missile strike is not believed to have caused big human casualties. (Reuters File) The armed terrorist groups and Daesh failed to target the Syrian Arab Army and Russian military positions, Barazi said, using the Arabic acronym for Islamic State. The Syrian government describes all armed groups opposed to it as terrorists. The US strikes targeted military positions in Syria and in Homs specifically in order to publically serve the goals of terrorism in Syria and the goals of Israel in the long run, Barazi added. A Syrian military source said earlier the attack on the Syrian air base had led to losses. Barazi later told Reuters the US missile strike is not believed to have caused big human casualties but has caused material damage. I believe - God willing - that the human casualties are not big, but there is material damage. We hope there are not many victims and martyrs, he said by telephone. He said rescue and fire-fighting operations had been going on for two hours. Thai police on Friday reported 22 attacks, including at least five small bomb blasts, in Muslim-majority southern Thailand only hours after King Maha Vajiralongkorn signed a new constitution on Thursday as a step towards ending military rule. There were no immediate reports of casualties in the attacks in the region where there has been a recent upsurge in a decades-old Muslim separatist insurgency. Parts of the region voted against the new constitution at a referendum last year. The incidents are to create disturbances. They want to destroy the governments credibility and create fear among people, said Pramote Prom-in, spokesperson for local security forces. There was no immediate claim of responsibility and security forces said they did not know who was to blame. Thailands king signed a military-backed constitution into law on Thursday, an essential step towards an election the junta has promised will restore democracy after the 12th successful coup in little over 80 years. The new constitution is the Southeast Asian countrys 20th since the end of absolute monarchy in 1932 and critics say it will still give the generals a powerful say over Thai politics for years, if not decades. Voters in the most heavily Muslim parts of Thailand were among the few to reject the draft constitution in last years referendum. Security forces said five bombs had exploded on electric poles, causing local power cuts, and there had been a number of tyre-burning incidents. Details were not immediately available of all the attacks. A large number of co-ordinated attacks in the region is unusual. A Malay Muslim separatist insurgency in the provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat has claimed more than 6,500 lives since it escalated in 2004, according to independent monitoring group Deep South Watch. On Monday, police reported what they described as the biggest attack by insurgents in the south in years. They said about 30 insurgents had fired more than 500 shots into a police booth. In February, the government of the Buddhist-majority country struck a deal with MARA Patani, a long-standing umbrella group that claims to speak for the insurgents, but other separatists rejected it. Everyone who appears for a job interview walks in expecting this question: What is your current salary? What you answer determines the offer, all further salary negotiations and your final pay package. But what if this question was taken out of the interview process? Well, the New York City Council has done just that. On Wednesday, the council voted to ban employers from asking what salary job applicants drew in their last jobs, the Washington Post reported. While applicants can volunteer their salary figure, the new measure strictly prohibits employers from trying to find out the applicants salary from previous employers or public records. Equal pay advocates have long argued that when employers ask applicants their past salary, they end up negotiating around the same figure. This tips the balance heavily against women, people of colour and minorities, who are often underpaid, even when they do the same job. Since the quoted figure is low, companies make an offer based on the baseline, rather than what the candidate is worth. The Post article quotes New York citys Public Advocate Letitia James as saying that the move would affect about 3.8 million workers when it takes effect in six months. Being underpaid once should not condemn one to a lifetime of inequity, James said in a statement. New York isnt alone in the bid to ban queries regarding past salaries. Massachusetts was the first to pass a Pay Equity Bill last year, that barred employers from screening candidates based on their previous salary or asking salary-related questions. Earlier this year, Philadelphia passed the Wage History Bill that prohibits employers from asking about the salary history. The bill -- which is being challenged in court by the business community -- was aimed specifically at reducing the gender pay gap. While HR experts have argued that asking about previous salary isnt a way to cheat employees, but get them the best deal, many companies are open to striking off this question from their interview checklist of their own volition. They reason that without a previous salary figure hovering over the discussion, companies will have a chance to assess future employees on their market value. Which brings us to a vital question: Indian companies, are you listening? SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A Chinese real estate scion charged with orchestrating the murder of her childrens father was released from a San Francisco Bay Area jail after posting $35 million bail, a highly unusual financial transaction that startled and angered the victims family and friends. Tiffany Li will remain out of custody after family, friends and her mothers business associates raised $4 million cash and pledged Bay Area properties worth a combined $62 million to post her bail. Courts require double the bail amount when property is pledged instead of cash. Nothing about this seems right, said Angela Dunn, a close friend of the victim who shared her home with him in the six months before his death. Dunn said the victims mother is taking Lis release especially hard. Court records show 15 properties being pledged. Lis attorney Carr said the properties are owned by family and business associates of Lis mother, who spends most of her time in China where she profited from real estate investments. Li, 31, is charged with directing her boyfriend and another man to kill Keith Green, 27, and dispose of his body, which was found in May with a bullet wound to the neck 80 miles (129 kilometers) north of the suburban San Francisco mansion he and Li once shared with their two young daughters. Prosecutors say Li feared she would lose custody of her daughters. Li and the two men were arrested shortly after Greens body was found and the trio is scheduled to stand trial in September. Li has pleaded not guilty. A bodyguard ushered Li out of jail and into a waiting Cadillac Escalade on Thursday afternoon, three hours after a judge ordered her released. The two men charged in the case remain in jail and have not asked for bail to be set because they dont have the financial backing Li has, Lis attorney Geoff Carr said. They have great resources and we are just regular folks, Dunn said. The bail system in the United States has been under legal and legislative attack in recent years. A number of class action lawsuits have been filed across the country challenging the constitutionality of requiring defendants to post cash bail to go free before trial. Critics of the system argue that cash bail schemes like the one found in California state court unfairly disadvantage poor suspects who cant afford to post bail while allowing wealthy defendants like Li to go free pending trial. Chinese real estate scion Tiffany Li accused of murder. (AP Photo) Authorities in neighbouring San Francisco County say they are examining cash bail requirements there after inmates filed a lawsuit. Two California legislators have introduced bills seeking to dramatically overhaul the states bail requirements, eliminating cash demands in most cases and taking into account a suspects income in cases still requiring money bail. The California lawmakers and supporters of their bills argue that the current system keeps many innocent people behind bars, disproportionately affects minority defendants and encourages some suspects to plead guilty simply to get out of jail. Li is charged with directing her boyfriend Kaveh Bayat and Olivier Adella to kill Green and dispose of his body last year. Li and Green had an acrimonious split in October 2015 after Green discovered Lis relationship with Bayat, Dunn said. Li kicked Green out of the multimillion dollar home they shared with their children in Hillsborough, a suburb of mansions and large houses 20 miles (32km) south of San Francisco. Carr said all defendants except those accused of death penalty-eligible crimes are entitled to reasonable bail. The $35 million bail is the highest ever in San Mateo Countys history, a county official said. San Mateo district attorney Steve Wagstaffe said he is concerned Li is a flight risk and is disappointed the judge didnt set the bail even higher. His office asked for $100 million. If convicted she faces the rest of her life in prison, Wagstaffe said. Thats plenty enough incentive to flee back to her native China. Li will be required to turn over her passports, wear an electronic monitor and remain under house arrest. Carr says the people who posted Lis bail believe she is innocent and will not flee. If she does go on the lam, the court can confiscate the property and cash. International leaders united in sympathy and condemnation on Friday after a man ploughed a truck through a crowd into the front of a department store in central Stockholm. Police said there were deaths and many wounded in the attack, without giving precise figures, while Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said everything pointed to it being a terror attack. - Germany - Chancellor Angela Merkels spokesman said Germany stood together against terror with Sweden, and offered sympathy for those involved in the attack. - Russia - In our country, we are well familiar with the crimes of international terrorism. At this difficult time, Russians weep with the Swedish people, President Vladimir Putin said in a statement. - United Nations - UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres condemned the attack and voiced sympathy for the victims families. We hope that those responsible for the attack will be swiftly brought to justice, he said. - European Union - European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said the attack was a blow struck against all EU countries. An attack on any of our member states is an attack on us all, Juncker said in a message of condolences to the victims, adding the aim appeared to strike at our very way of life. Antonio Tajani, the head of the European Parliament, said on Twitter that he was shocked by the terrible news from Stockholm. - France - President Francois Hollande expressed his horror and indignation at the attack. France expresses its sympathy and solidarity with the families of the victims and all Swedes, he said. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo announced on Twitter that the Eiffel Tower, which is normally illuminated, would go dark for a minute at midnight in honour of the victims of the attack. - Netherlands - Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte called the attack terrible news and said he had conveyed his countrys condolences to his Swedish counterpart. Our thoughts go out to the victims and survivors, he said in a message on his Twitter account. NL stands ready to help where needed. - Hungary - The foreign ministry in Budapest condemned the attack in a statement to AFP, saying that the Swedish people can count on Hungary in the fight against terrorism. It is unthinkable that innocent people are walking in a city centre street, and then suddenly they are the victim of a brutal attack. We condemn this appalling act, the statement said. -India- India Prime minister Narendra Modi also condemned the terror attack in Stockholm, saying India stood firmly with the people of Sweden in this hour of grief. We condemn the attack in Stockholm. My thoughts are with the families of the deceased and prayers with those injured, Modi wrote on his Twitter account. India stands firmly with the people of Sweden in this hour of grief, Modi added. Violence erupted for the third straight day during protests against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, leaving one demonstrator dead amid escalating tension over moves to keep the leftist leader in power. Police said a 19-year old youth died after being shot in the chest during a demonstration in the capital. The teen, Jairo Ortizo, died from a gunshot wound when National Guard troops tried to disperse crowds of protesters who had blocked a road on the outskirts of Caracas, authorities said. Outraged dissidents called the shooting, which occurred at the end of day-long demonstrations in Caracas, yet another sign of the violent oppression they are subjected to under the Maduro regime. In addition to the slain youth, dozens of people were injured Thursday, including at least 19 who required medical attention, mostly for breathing problems after inhaling tear gas. Venezuelan activists clash with police during a protest against the government of President Nicolas Maduro. (AFP) AFP reporters also witnessed a National Guard soldier lying unconscious after having been struck by a large rock. Maduro, who issued a televised appeal for order, said 30 people had been detained by late Thursday and that more arrests were possible. We are looking for all of them -- weve identified them all, he said of opposition activists who had scattered after skirmishing with police. One by one, they are going to fall and face justice, Maduro declared on state television. No more dictatorship! Earlier on Thursday, protesters chanting No more dictatorship! hurled stones at National Guard riot police who blocked them from marching on central Caracas. The police responded with tear gas and water cannons, prompting chaos on the eight-lane highway where some 10,000 protesters had tried to break through security barricades. Scores of protesters were also hurt at violent protests on Tuesday and Wednesday, with the opposition vowing to return to the streets Saturday as a political crisis in the volatile oil-exporting country is raising concerns about democracy and stability. Street protests are among the few options left for the centre-right opposition to pressure Maduro, whom they blame for the countrys descent into economic calamity. Negotiations have failed and he has resisted international pressure, while retaining backing from the military and control over most state institutions. A Venezuelan opposition activists wears a gas mask during clashes with police in Caracas. (AFP) The opposition is accusing pro-Maduro Supreme Court judges of attempting an internal coup detat for attempting to take over the opposition-majority legislatures powers last week. The socialist presidents supporters held counter-demonstrations on Thursday, condemning Maduros opponents as imperialists plotting with the United States to oust him. Tired of dictatorship Last week, the Supreme Court issued rulings transferring the National Assemblys legislative powers to itself and revoking lawmakers immunity from prosecution. The court later reversed the rulings after an international outcry, but kept in place other measures limiting the assemblys powers. Opposition lawmakers launched an effort to impeach the judges on Wednesday. But that would require a green light from the attorney general, prosecutor general and comptroller, all Maduro allies. They refused Thursday to give the go-ahead -- though the attorney general had sharply criticized the Supreme Court rulings, in a rare display of dissent in Maduros camp. On the streets, protesters said they want to get rid of Maduro. Venezuelan police clash with opposition activists during a protest against the government of President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas. (AFP) Were tired of this dictatorship, said Yoleidy Rodriguez, a 22-year-old university student. Were not afraid. A group of protesters eventually managed to march up to the metal police barricade, their hands in the air, and spray paint Freedom on it in blue letters. An opposition politician, Roberto Enriquez, meanwhile fled to the Chilean ambassadors residence in Caracas, alleging political persecution. Chile vowed to protect Enriquez, the head of the Christian social democratic party, whom Maduros allies accused of plotting a coup. Days of protest Scores of people were hurt on Tuesday when riot police used tear gas and water cannons to disperse a protest march in Caracas, opposition groups said. On Wednesday, similar clashes broke out in the western city of San Cristobal, the scene of deadly riots and looting last year, and in the city of Valencia. The wave of protests has revived fears of broader unrest in Venezuela, where 43 people were killed during riots in 2014. The country has undergone three attempted military coups since 1992. Maduro is resisting opposition efforts to hold a vote on removing him from power. Venezuelas next general election is due in December 2018. Regional elections last December were postponed indefinitely, and no date has been set for local polls due this year. The collapse in energy prices has sapped the countrys revenues, prompting shortages of food, medicine and basic goods along with a surge in violent crime. The opposition blames Maduro for the economic crisis. He says it is due to a capitalist conspiracy. Although he has retained the crucial support of the army so far, that could be changing, political analyst Luis Salamanca said. At this point, Maduro cant say hes sure of anyones support, he said, including the armed forces. Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Apr. 7 By Demir Azizov Trend: Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has decreed to appoint Azim Akhmedkhadjaev as chairman of the State Committee for Investments. Akhmedkhadjaev has previously served as chairman of the board at Uzbekistans Asaka Bank. The State Committee for Investments was created by Shavkat Mirziyoyevs decree in late March 2017. The committee is responsible for coordination, formation and implementation of a unified state investment policy and attracting foreign investment. Do wars cause empires and societies to collapse? Historys answers are never black and white. Warfare is frequently blamed for the collapse of empires. But historical examples of societies that fell after warfare can be placed in two categories. In one, societies that were strong and thriving and showed no signs of being on the verge of collapse become embroiled in a conflict with an adversary of superior manpower or armaments. Had the attack or war not occurred, the defeated society probably would have continued to thrive for the foreseeable future. In these instances, war or aggression clearly led to the demise of empires. Prime examples are the Persians, defeated by the forces and strategies of Alexander the Great in 330 BC; Carthage and its final fall to Rome in 146 BC, and the Aztecs, who could not survive the onslaught of the conquistadors under Hernan Cortes in the early 16th century. In the other category are societies that held foreign aggressors at bay for many centuries while dealing with their own internal problems. Finally, those problems weakened them to the extent that they could no longer fend of the enemy. The fall of the Khmer Empire, centered in present-day Cambodia, is a classic example. Coalescing in the early ninth century, it came to dominate the region. Impressive builders, the Khmer constructed monumental temple complexes in their capital, Angkor, at the time the largest city in the world. They also created an elaborate water system of reservoirs and canals. Vital to agricultural production, the system was difficult to maintain: Silting and other operational problems, exacerbated by the increased variability of the Asian monsoonsunprecedented wet years interspersed with unprecedented dry onesbegan to take a toll. Meanwhile, Thai interlopers, driven themselves by invaders from the north, began to encroach on Khmer territory. By the early 15th century, climatic pressures, a failing water system, and warfare with the Tai had led to the decline of the Khmer Empire. The Western Roman Empire suffered a similar fate, though scholars continue to debate the real cause of its demise. Clearly, by the third century ad, internal and external problems had begun to create fissures in the great Roman edifice. The empire suffered from a debased currency, chronic successional and environmental problems, and geographic limitationsit could no longer fill its coffers by conquering rich neighbors. And then the barbariansGermanic tribes in the north and Huns in the eastwho had been at Romes frontiers for many centuries, pressed in. Some historians believe Rome fell because those barbarian forces had become more numerous or better organized or armed than a Rome of unchanged strength; other scholars feel that Romes growing internal problems had left it weakened and no longer able to defend itself against the barbarian wave. History is never black and white, and the gray continuum of internal and external pressures generally applies to the collapse of societies. Simply put, when a societys internal problems weaken it, hostile neighbors see an opportunity for conquest. Geographer Jared Diamond is the Pulitzer Prizewinning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997) and Collapse (2005). Originally published in the April 2014 issue of Military History Quarterly. To subscribe, click here. Suleimans proxy, pirate Khair ad-Din Barbarossa, bet that he could defend Tunis against Charles Vs massive invasion force. He was mistaken. In the winter of 15331534, hundreds of skilled craftsmen filled the shipyards and armories of Constantinople, transforming lumber, hemp, unrefined metal, pitch, sulfur, and saltpeter into galleys, cable, guns, and gunpowder. These workers sat cross legged and stitched sails and tents, carved oar blades and gun stocks, and hammered steel into scimitars. Overseeing their work, a white-haired, barrel-chested man stomped among them, making sure that all work was done on time, on budget, and according to his exacting specifications. Khair ad-Din, called Barbarossa by Christendom and King of Evil by his Spanish enemies, was Sultan of Algiers, newly appointed kapudan pasha, admiral of the Ottoman Empire. At the request of Suleiman the Magnificent, he was creating a feet worthy of the superpower. The origin of this industrial spectacle reached back 40 years to 1492, when the grandparents of Charles V, Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain, conquered the last of Muslim Spain. Many of the defeated, refusing to abjure their faith, fled to North Africa and used their knowledge of coastal Spain for piracy. Their success attracted ambitious upstarts from other areas, including, in 1512, Muslim brothers Aroudj and Khair ad-Din from the Greek island of Lesbos. In less than a decade, these two rose from being merchant sailors to minor pirates to rulers of Algiers. So successful were they that Charles had to strike back. Aroudj was killed; Khair ad-Din put Algiers under the protection of Suleiman the Magnificent and spent the next 10 years raiding throughout the western Mediterranean, but with the official imprimatur of the Ottoman Empire. Suleiman preferred a land conquest and was happy to let Khair ad-Din hector Spanish and Italian ships on his own. Charles V was too shorthanded in the 1520s to stop the predation, but late in the decade he found two strong alliesthe Genoese admiral Andrea Doria, then seeking employment, and the crusading Knights of St. John, still seeking Muslim blood. Rootless since Suleiman had ejected them from Rhodes in 1522, the knights were now, thanks to Charles, established in Malta and Tripoli, and eager to get back to sea raiding. Allowing them to do so was Charless great error. In 1532, the knights and Doria sailed east and stormed Coron, Modon, and other Ottoman cities in the Peloponnese. Strategically, it was a serious blunder. Charles had put his stamp of approval on what was, in effect, a smash-and-grab operation. The raids only alienated the resident Christians who otherwise might have made good allies in the fight against Islam. Worse, these raids brought the western Mediterranean theater to Suleimans attention. Heretofore, he had been largely content to let the likes of Khair ad-Din and his followers trouble the Spanish. The Ottoman feet was busy policing the Levant and the Red Sea. Now, Suleiman would need to expand his navy, and to that end, he summoned Khair ad-Din, the most experienced and knowledgeable sailor in the Mediterranean, to Constantinople. The call was a triumph for the old corsair, and he played it for all it was worth. He arrived in galleys bursting with gold and silk and slaves. The job interview was short, and within days the title of kapudan pasha had been bestowed and Khair ad-Din was building a fleet suitable for an empire. When it was completed, he sailed west. No one had seen anything like this fleet, and no one dared oppose it. The Knights of St. John at Malta failed to step up. Doria remained at anchor. Unchecked, Khair ad-Din worked his way up the Italian coast as far north as Naples, burning villages and kidnapping people for the slave markets of Algiers. All this mayhem, however, was a preliminary. Khair ad-Dins real goal was Tunis. Tunis, under the rule of the fiercely independent Berber Hafsid dynasty, was a cosmopolitan city of Muslims, Jews, and Christians, all with an interest in trade, not all of it legitimate. Khair ad-Din knew the city well. Decades before, when he and his brother Aroudj were just starting out, they used its markets as their clearinghouse, handing over a fifth of their stolen goods to the Sultan. That was then. The current ruler was Sultan Muley Hassan, a man whom a Spanish witness described as given to pleasures so vicious that they cannot be described. In 1532 he killed his father and 40 siblings to get the throne. One surviving brother, Raschid, escaped and managed to buttonhole Khair ad-Din just as Khair ad-Din was leaving for Constantinople. Would the great corsair and even greater sultan help restore the rightful heir to Tunis? Khair ad-Din assured Raschid that they would. This was no mere act of compassion. Ottoman chroniclers cite Khair ad-Dins note to Suleiman: If the domain of Tunis is devolved on Rashid and the harbor of Golettataken and protected by the [Ottoman] sovereign, the imperial feet could be stationed in it most of the time. In that case, with the help of God the Sublime, it would become feasible to conquer and subdue Spain from there. From a military perspective, the plan had a great deal to offer. Geography favored defense. Tunis lay at the far end of a wide salt marsh, the narrow approach of which was guarded by a strong two-towered fortress called La Goletta. Nothing could get in or out without passing under the watchful gunners of that fort, certainly not the massed ships of the Ottoman feet. Khair ad-Din made certain word reached Tunis that the rightful heir had Suleimans backing. The commanders at La Goletta permitted the admirals armada into the harbor, and only then learned that Rashid was, in fact, safely back in Constantinople (imprisoned or possibly assassinated, said the Spanish chroniclers; happily pensioned of, according to the Ottomansthe truth is unknowable) and would remain there until things settled down. In the meantime, Khair ad-Din would be in charge. Tis did not go down well in Tunis. Muley Hassan may not have been a local favorite, but he was at least a native. Allegiance shifted back to him, and as the invaders marched from La Goletta into Tunis proper, they met fierce resistance. Although local knowledge initially gave the Tunisians the upper hand, numbers eventually told. Muley Hassan and his family fed across the desert, and on August 16, 1534, the city fell. It was not only the native Tunisians who were unhappy with the new order. Christian Europe was also alarmed. Tunis may have had a record of abetting light piracy, and even had a number of Christian prisoners languishing in prison cells, but that was purely business. Unlike the Ottoman sultan, Muley Hassan had no territorial ambitions. So long as he, or another traditional Hafsid ruler remained, as they had for over 300 years, the city was not a threat to the Spanish empire. The Ottomans, however, were a different story. In the previous hundred years, their empire had tripled in size and was still growing, and the Spanish king could read a map just as well as Khair ad-Din. Little surprise then that Muley Hassan and Charles V should make common cause. In this case, geo politics trumped religion for Charles, and when the exiled sultan wrote to the Spanish monarch for help, Charles cordially addressed Muley Hassan as king and referred to Khair ad-Din as a hostis humani generis, enemy to all peoplea distinction that classified him as a pirate and therefore beyond legal protection. Initially, Charles wanted to take the city on the cheap by making an alliance with Khair ad-Din, or, failing that, assassinating him. An envoy was instructed to try one, and then the other, but he failed at both and was executed, leaving a more expensive plan B: full scale invasion. Amphibious assaults are always risky and Charles was taking no chances. From Genoa, from Naples, from Sicily, he gathered a fleet of 400 ships and an army approaching 27,000 men and horse. On June 17, 1535, they landed near the twin towers of La Goletta. Men wrestled the gunslarge, very beautiful, and in great number, according to Guillaume de Montoiche, who accompanied Charless expeditionof the boat and toward the fort. The corsair Aydin Reis, called Caccia Diavolo, or Devil Hunter, for his ferocity, and Synan of Smyrna, Khair ad-Dins chief lieutenant, directed all active defense. They dispatched raiders to trouble the offloading and later fired cannons back on their besiegers. Montoiche described the grisly results: Many soldiers were wounded, some burned with powder, others cut down by gunfire from harquebuses and large and small cannon who were taken from the fight at [La Goletta]. Their arms, hands, legs, and feet were broken and crushed; some had all their limbs torn of entirely, others had limbs hanging from the body by a scrap of skin or attached only by nerve tissue, such that as surgeons cut and seared with glowing hot iron one could only gaze on such misery that arises from such a fall in fortune with pity, compassion, and sorrow. Some days in, Muley Hassan appeared at Charless camp, of good stature, thick torso, yellow in color, truly manly, a Spanish observer noted. Assuring the emperor of his good faith, he abased himself before Charles, kissing his hand and offering help. Not that he had much to give, and in the event, he gave very little. Charles was gracious, but material assistance would be superfluousCharles had other plans for his new ally. It took four weeks, but the Spanish guns eventually created breaches large enough to exploit. On July 14, Charles ordered a two-pronged attack by the Knights of St. John by sea, all others by land. The knights advanced in their galleys, then climbed onto fat-bottomed skiffs for the final approach. Small-arms fire punctured the surface of the water and bullets rang against their armor. The skifs ran aground on sandbars, forcing the men to jump of and slog their way toward the rubbled wall and engage the enemy. German and Spanish troops, meanwhile, attacked by land. The Muslim forces put up a stout resistance for some hours, but in the end the fort fell. Though the two corsair commanders escaped, Charles captured 300 cannons and 82 galleys of Suleimans new feeta triumph all around. It remained only to finish the job. The troops now marched on Tunis proper. Khair ad-Din watched them from the high walls, affecting unconcern: If they see my turban on a hill, they will run for a month. Perhaps they didnt see him. They certainly did not fee. His determination notwithstanding, Khair ad-Din was in an awkward situation. The walls of Tunis were not strong. The citizens of Tunis did not love him. Ten there were the 12,000 Christian slaves locked inside the bagnios of Tunis, who would see Charles as a liberator. If they got loose, Khair ad-Din would be between two forces. To be on the safe side, he considered a quick mass slaughtergunpowder and immolation were discussedbut was talked out of it. These prisoners, after all, had market value; to slaughter them would be a significant capital loss. Khair ad-Din turned his attention to the battle. He still had a few advantages. The road from La Goletta to Tunis was nine miles, and marching that distance under the high sun, Charless men would be thirsty, tired, and hot; they would surely drink from the cisterns Khair ad-Din had poisoned on their route. It would be a quick matter for native soldiers, in greater numbers and better rested, to overwhelm the enemy at a spot of Khair ad-Dins own choosing. As Charles approached, Khair ad-Din brought his troops outside the wall and ordered a contingent of Berber horsemen to charge the enemy. In theory, and by all rights, the battle should have been a walkover for Khair ad-Din. The Berbers however, had never faced the trained harquebusiers and pikemen who, when combined in tripartite units, formed the all but unbeatable configuration of the Spanish tercio. Heat and fatigue and even poison had not slowed them, and neither would the enemy cavalry charge. Between a gleaming hedge of pikes and a volley of gunshot, the Berber attack was broken, leaving maimed and dying men and horses shrieking on the sand. Now Khair ad-Dins infantry took its turn. Charles V described what followed to his sister in remarkably simple prose for such a florid age: They fired their artillery. We responded in kind. They fired their harquebuses. We fired back in equal measure. They fell back. We did not stop advancing until we had reached their guns and taken them. Khair ad-Dins only chance was to defend the city and outlast a siege, but he found new and unexpected complications. While the battle had raged outside, Christian prisoners sat in their prison, listening to muffled gunfire, waiting for news. One citizen, perhaps anticipating the battles outcome, hurried down to the prison and sprang the locks. If there were any guardsand the record is unclearthey were quickly overpowered. Among the inmates was Paolo Simeoni, a Knight of St. John and a natural leader of men. He roused the prisoners, broke into the armory, and led them to the city walls. Let Khair ad-Din return if he would. Tunis was now in their hands. Trapped between two forces, Khair ad-Din and his remaining soldiers fed for the hills. Charles was confident that the corsair would not get far. Andrea Doria was in charge of the imperial feet both outside of La Goletta and a little farther down the coast at Bona to the west, where some 15 of Khair ad-Dins ships were still stationed. As far as the Charles V was concerned, the campaign was over. His men now abandoned the fight, rushed the open wooden gates, embraced the liberated prisoners, then turned their attention to their traditional rightsthree days of unrestricted pillage. Guillaume de Montoiche reported that they looted shops and mosques, from which they tore apart and ruined many beautiful booksdecorated and written in Arabic script, in gold and azure. They prized gray jasper and other precious stones from the pillars in mosques, though they did not touch a small Christian church. Charles took it all in stride, but Muley Hassan watched with grim satisfactionhe felt his people had betrayed him. Tunis was again his to rule, but now as a vassal of Spain, and on Spains terms. There would be no more slaves from Charless empire. There would, however, be Spanish troops in charge of La Goletta, with Muley Hassan picking up the tab. The list went on, sounding very much like formal treaty of surrender, and Muley Hassan had no choice but to accept. In the Muslim world, he was all but friendless. (He would later be overthrown, blinded, and exiled to Italy.) By late afernoon, pillaging and celebrations in the city were winding down. Charles visited his men in their camps and played the part of king as fellow soldier. That evening he dined aboard the flagship of the Knights of St. John, the Santa Anna, where knights and soldiers were said to have danced Moorish dances to the music of the ships orchestra. The city was safely in Spanish hands, even if Khair ad-Din was not. Khair ad-Din did indeed head toward the port of Bona and found his 15 galleys intact and managed to sail away just as Dorias feet arrived. For reasons still unclearsome chroniclers claim it was fear, others that money changed handsthe commanders of the fort did nothing to stop the admiral from heading back to Algiers in his ships. Doria showed up at Bona shortly thereafter and expressed angeragain, unclear if genuine or feigned. Many believed that the two men had tacitly agreed never to attack one another. All Spain cheered. In Minorca, a favorite target of the corsairs, the locals gathered at the port of Mahon to celebrate, and included a bit of stagecraft: a condemned criminal dressed up as Khair ad-Din was cheerily beaten as prologue to his eventual execution. When unfamiliar ships with Spanish pennants eased into the harbor of Mahon, they were welcomed. Only as the real Khair ad-Din and his men debarked with guns and scimitars did the celebrators understand just how limited Charless victory had been. Too late. After a brief fight, the entire population of Mahon was carried back to the slave markets of Algiers, an event that seems to have mollified Suleiman against the loss of Tunis and his feet. Gods will was inscrutable. There would be other opportunities to expand the empire. For Charles, the incident in Minorca did not greatly detract from his North African triumph, perhaps his greatest. He went to considerable expense to have broadsides printed, songs composed, paintings commissioned, and even tapestries woven commemorating his success. In time, all these would fade or be forgotten, as history robbed his achievement of any long-term significance. It was in fact a missed opportunity to crush the Barbary corsairs and cripple the incipient Ottoman navy, perhaps even to retake the undermanned city of Algiers. Had both cities been taken (Charles would suffer a catastrophic defeat at Algiers in 1541), pliant sheiks and sultans and kings all along the coast and in Europe might have swung his way and Islam would have lost the 11 remaining years of the old corsairs life, years in which he trained a new generation of corsairs who would trouble Christendom far more than Khair ad-Din ever had. The Barbary corsairs, all in a direct line from Khair ad-Din, would terrorize the Mediterranean for the next 300 years. Bruce Ware Allens article on the 1521 Siege of Rhodes appeared in the Autumn 2006 issue of MHQ. He is currently writing a book on the 1565 Siege of Malta. Originally published in the January 2014 issue of Military History Quarterly. To subscribe, click here. In the midst of the Civil War, President Lincoln personally decided who among 303 convicted Dakota warriors would hang. As the sun rose over Mankato, Minnesota, on the morning of the day after Christmas 1862, a door guard allowed a small party of missionaries and newspaper reporters to enter the ground floor of a riverfront warehouse, where they found 38 Dakota Indians chained to the floor and to each other, in pairs, by ankle irons. The reporters were there to take statements from men about to die, men who over the past several weeks had become both the embodiment of evil and the objects of keen fascination to the white people on what was then Americas Northwestern frontier. The Dakotas, most of them speaking through interpreters, had plenty to say. They told the reporters how cheerful and happy they were, how unconcerned they were about the prospects of their demise. They asked that this message be delivered to their wives and children. Then they began painting their faces. Later, when white soldiers arrived, the Dakotas began their death song, a deep, dissonant singing and chanting that continued as their chains were struck away and their arms pinioned, elbows tied behind and wrists in front. A Catholic priest read a prayer. Ten the prisoners were fitted with long eyeless caps made of white muslin. For a Dakota this was an immense indignity, the sign of a bad death; they would meet their fate with heads hooded, in the dark. Just before 10 oclock the men were led out the door and across a wide lawn toward a towering square scaffold designed to hang all of them at once, made of enormous wood crossbeams with 10 notches for 10 ropes on each side. They could see the rows of spectators stir and hear the sudden shift in sound as they stepped into the unusually warm winter sunlight. Delivered to the officer of the day at the foot of the gallows, they shoved at each other as they climbed the steep steps, making another exaggerated show of their unconcern, and then they were maneuvered into position. In one direction, beyond the town, they could see prairie. In another direction, below them, the narrow, winding Minnesota River, on whose banks a large, shallow grave had already been dug. All around, 5,000 whites had gathered, crowding the lawn, hanging from windows, and seated on roofs, all separated from the condemned Dakotas by a double row of U.S. cavalry troopers forming a square around the scaffold. Rough hands slid 38 separate ropes over their heads to rest heavily on their shoulders. Their caps were rolled down over their faces, and one by one they lost sight of the world. All of existence became their own singing and the sounds of the murmuring crowd. Sixteen minutes had elapsed since the prisoners had emerged into the light. In the hush, a sharp spoken order was given, followed by three deliberate drumbeats. Exactly three months before the Christmas executions of 1862, on September 26the same day that news of Lincolns Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation first appeared in Minnesota newspapersa militia colonel named Henry Hastings Sibley and a small group of aides rode into a crowded refugee camp alongside the Minnesota River, a narrow, winding tributary of the Mississippi. Many things were happening in that moment: A Union military force behind Sibley was celebrating victory in a short but harrowing Indian war; a small group of Dakota warriors and their leaders were fleeing to the west to escape the white soldiers; more than 300 women and children, whites and mixed-bloods, were about to end a long ordeal of captivity; and 2,000 Dakotas who had not fed wondered what Sibleys arrival would mean. Beyond the camp, for hundreds of miles in every direction, a white populace demanded vengeance, immediate and final. The war that was ending herea war historians have called by many different names, including the Sioux Uprising, the U.S. Dakota War, the Minnesota Massacre, and Little Crows Warhad begun on August 18, 1862, with a random killing of five settlers in Acton, near the center of the state. For most citizens of Minnesotaa state only four years oldthe Dakota War was a demonstration of the true savagery of the Indian bands that had preceded them on the farmlands and river valleys they now called home. For the states more than 8,000 Dakota residents, the war was much more complicated in its causes, origins, progress, and conclusion. Little Crow, a former village leader and tribal spokesperson, had served as the Dakotas ostensible leader. But he spent much of the war at loggerheads with the wartime tiyotipi, or soldiers lodge, a council of young men unshakably in favor of violent resistance to white encroachment and scornful of talk of negotiation or caution. Thousands of other Dakotas and mixed-bloods had gone along with the war or watched with divided or shifting loyalties. Some had killed whites; some had protected whites; but most wanted nothing to do with whites. While a few hundred Dakota warriors had fought a series of battles against townspeople and soldiers, an even smaller group had committed sudden and deadly attacks on white settlements. The death toll over six weeks totaled more than 40 Dakotas, more than 100 soldiers, and more than 600 settlers, many of them women and children, whose bodies were sometimes impaled or dismembered. While decision makers in Saint Paul absorbed the anger of an entire populace and pondered the economic prospects of a state soon to be emptied of Dakota Indians, the wars toll sat heavily on Sibleys shoulders as he rode into the camp of white survivors and Dakota refugees. Foremost among the many decisions he would make today was to determine what, in this situation, would constitute the proper dispensation of justice. Those decisions, rendered during some of the most crucial moments of the Civil War for the Union, would eventually bring the personal involvement of President Lincoln and result in the largest mass execution in American history. Sibleys decisions shaped a moment in the history of American war, law, and race relations that has generated unanswered (and perhaps unanswerable) questions for 150 years. Henry Hastings Sibley came to the Northwest from Detroit in 1834 as an ambitious young clerk for a subsidiary of John Jacob Astors American Fur Company. Over the next 14 years, he had experienced as many aspects of Dakota life as was possible for a white man. He became a regular companion to the Dakota, accompanying warriors close to his own age, including Little Crow, on hunts and living in Dakota villages for months at a time. In 1841, at 30, he had fathered a girl with a village chieftains daughter named Red Blanket Woman. Tough the mother would die of unknown causes a few years later and the child would be placed with a white foster family, in Dakota eyes Sibley had bound himself to them with the tightest possible knot. That was many years ago, however. In the interim, Sibley served as the Minnesota Territorys first congressional delegate (18491852) and the states first governor (18581860), all the while playing an instrumental role in negotiating treaties that established an ever-tightening system of credit and debt while shrinking the Dakotas land from several million acres down to one 40milelong and 10milewide strip on the south side of the Minnesota River. After his single term as governor, Sibley had moved into a kind of political consultancy, working to influence national politics on behalf of Minnesota interests. That is what he was doing on August 19 when a messenger sent by Governor Alexander Ramsey rode up to his stately three-story brick home in Mendota, across the river from Saint Paul, with urgent news: The Dakota had risen and would need to be met with force. With no prior military experiencebut with firsthand knowledge of the participants and of the regions historySibley rode downriver with four companies of the newly created 6th Minnesota Regiment to take command of 1,400 men, most on foot, most with no experience in battle and no ammunition to match their rifles. Over the next two weeks Sibley had stewed through delays, waiting for supplies, arms, and horses. He was finally able to set out for the Dakota reservation along the south side of the Minnesota River in early September, but soon afterward he found himself saddled with John Pope, the self-aggrandizing and exasperating federal general who had been sent to Minnesota by President Lincoln to deal with the Dakota after his failure to repulse Robert E. Lee at Second Bull Run. Pope arrived in Saint Paul in mid-September a bitter and bilious man, determined to take out his personal and professional frustrations on the Dakota, pushing Sibley with ever more impossible demands delivered in an endless stream of hectoring letters. In the field, meanwhile, Sibley came across the bodies of settlers and soldiers, sent messages to Little Crow, and made promises of protection under a white fag to friendly Dakotas, promises that would later become one of the most contentious points of the postwar legal proceedings. Finally, on September 24, beside a small lake near the border of the Dakota Territory, his forcesnow augmented by 270 paroled infantrymen from the battletested 3rd Minnesota, a small batch of federal enlistees from Wisconsin, and a handful of six-pound cannonshad defeated those of Little Crow in the wars final and decisive battle. Four days later, Sibley formed a military commission made up of five officers under his command who had fought in the Dakota War. Over the first two or so weeks of trials, held initially in a large covered tent at the center of the plateau and later in a brick summer kitchen, standard courts-martial protocols were followed, including arraignments, specification of charges, and pleas. By the trials end at the beginning of November, though, with winter coming on and General Pope pressing hard for a quicker resolution, such niceties were cast aside and as many as 40 trials were held in a single day. In six weeks, the commissions prairie courthousethe first-ever military commission established to try Indian combatants en massetried more than 400 Dakotas on charges that at first focused on murder or rape but later included inciting others to violence and the act of firing, or even holding, a gun on a field of battle. Toward the end of the trials, evidentiary standards had shrunk to the level where the word of a five-year-old boy saying that he had seen a particular Dakota warrior in a particular place was admissible. In the end, 303 Dakota were condemned to death by Sibleys military commission, though none was told of his fate until much later. For many Minnesotans, 303 was not enough, and extermination became an oft-used word. For some, it meant something like expulsion from the state, while for others it meant working to remove all traces of Indian customs and culture. For still others, including many of those in power in Saint Paul, it meant the utter annihilation of the Dakota people. White voices opposing these views were few, though many Christian missionaries among the Dakota, including Henry Benjamin Whipple, the states first Episcopal bishop, spoke out loudly against the rush to indiscriminate vengeance. Presbyterian John P. Williamson, whose father, Tomas, had founded the territorys first Indian mission, outlined his frustrations in a letter to his mission board: 400 have been tried in less time than is generally taken in our courts with the trial of a single murderer. Again in very many of the cases a mans own testimony is the only evidence against him.They are not allowed any counsel. They are scarcely allowed a word of explanation themselves, and knowing nothing of the manner of conducting trials if a mistake occurs they are unable to correct it. And often not understanding the English language in which the trial is conducted, they very imperfectly understand the evidence upon which they are convicted. Chief Justice John Marshall had introduced the phrase domestic dependent nations into the countrys legal lexicon in delivering the majority opinion in the 1831 Supreme Court case of Cherokee Nation v. the State of Georgia, as a way of describing the relationship of the federal government to Indian tribes. Marshall wrote that it was a relationship unlike that of any other two people in existence. His wording was carefully wrought to deny states the right to individually dispose of Indian matters via treaty without congressional ratification, while aiming to avoid the complex legal and diplomatic tangle that would result from defining tribes as foreign nations. Marshalls Solomonic decision settled nothing, and over the 19th century it would lead generals, politicians, and lawyers into any number of legal and philosophical thickets. In 1862, as the Dakota War came to end, it meant that Henry Sibley had little precedent on which to base his actions. Sibleys Special Order Number 55, issued the day the trials began, convened his military commission to try, summarily, the Indians and mixed-bloods, now prisoners, who may be brought before them by direction of the colonel commanding, and pass judgment upon them if found guilty of murder or other outrages upon the whites during the present state of hostilities. On Christmas Dayone day before the executiona 64-year-old public intellectual and Columbia College professor named Francis Lieber would begin work on a new set of the Laws of War, at Lincolns behest, designed to match old ideas to new ways of fighting. Until then, the Articles of War, established by the Second Continental Congress, got bent this way and that as the president and his advisers struggled to deal with a type and scale of conflict they had never encountered or imagined. General Winfield Scott had set a precedent for military commissions during the Mexican-American War, in order to try Mexican civilians accused of crimes against U.S. soldiers. But his precedent provided little guidance during this, the first flare-up of the Indian Wars in the Northwest. And Special Order 55 is notable for what it did not say and for what it fudged: It did not specify what it meant by other outrages. Nor did it mention external review, stating only that the proceedings of the commission to be returned immediately after their conclusion for the consideration of the colonel commanding, meaning Sibley himself, despite the fact that the Articles of Waralready revised twice since the start of the Civil Warcalled for executive review of all death penalties decided in the field. The Minnesota prairie was a long way from Washington, but Lincoln and his cabinet watched the trials with a close eye. As they went on, Pope, along with Governor Ramsey, was sending messages in both directions: to Sibley, demanding that he and his weary forces be four places at once in order to try the Dakota, capture Little Crow, round up stragglers in the settlements, and house and feed the refugee Dakota; and to Lincoln, asking for ever more supplies and expressing his certainty that hangings were imminent and would be numerous. Popes messages to Washington had an effect opposite of their intent: The tenor of his communications was so close to hysteria that they seemed to call out for a rebuke. At Lincolns October 14 cabinet meeting, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton read aloud one of Popes especially strident dispatches, upon which the assembled officials agreed that the letter was not the production of a good man or a great one. This was a pivotal moment. Shortly thereafter, in a telegram lost to history, someone in Lincolns cabinet reminded Pope of the necessity for executive review of capital sentences and encouraged him not to count on speedy executions. Reluctantly, Pope complied, and forwarded the commissions verdicts and trial transcripts to Washington in early November. As the Dakota refugees were moved to a fenced enclosure at Fort Snelling near Saint Paul and the condemned warriors placed in a separate enclosure near Mankato, Lincoln bent to the task of sifting through 303 death sentences. Lincolns review of the Dakota War trials has often been painted as an example of his extraordinary compassion, but the evidence makes clear that in this instance his attention was engaged as a man to whom the law was sacrosanct. He gathered a team of Interior Department attorneysGeorge Whiting and Francis Ruggles, under the direction of Assistant Secretary James P. Usherto whom he gave specific instructions to look closely for cases of rape and murder of white civilians, and to set aside the commissions death sentences of those convicted only of participating in a battle between Indian forces and the white army. With these stipulations, Lincoln was drawing a clear line between civilian crimes and the actions of military combatants, in effect rejecting the commissions decision to delegitimize the Dakota right to wage war against white encroachment. Lincolns legal team spent much of the end of November and the first week of December poring over the trial documents. On December 5, Minnesota senator Morton S. Wilkinson, aware of these deliberations, stood in Congress to demand that Lincoln furnish the Senate with all the information in his possession touching the late Indian barbarities in the State of Minnesota and delivered an oration detailing some of those barbarities, expressing the opinion that Sibley ought to have killed every one of the Indians rather than holding any trials. Wilkinson ended with dark threats of vigilante justice: If this Government will not protect the whites of Minnesota, he said, they will protect themselves. It is human nature, and I could not stop it if I wished to do so. Lincoln, however, was already past all that. On the same day that Wilkinson spoke to Congress, the president sat at his desk and addressed an extraordinary document to Henry Sibley. He wrote: Ordered that of the Indians and Half-breeds sentenced to be hanged by the Military Commissionlately sitting in Minnesota, you cause to be executed on Friday the nineteenth of December, instant, the following named, to wit He then transcribed the names of 39 Dakotas to be hangedtaking pains to spell their Dakota names correctly according to the trial transcripts, each name placed within quotation marks and followed by a trial number and the words by the recordand instructed Sibley: The other condemned prisoners you will hold subject to further orders, taking care that they neither escape, nor are subjected to any unlawful violence. The judgment was made. He called his secretary, John Nicolay, into his office and asked him to copy the message and to send that copy to Sibley by special messenger. Lincoln and his lawyers concluded that of the 303 sentences, 264 had failed to meet reasonable standards of evidence or procedure. They left 39 death penalties in place. (One additional stay would be issued in the week before the execution, after a personal appeal from several Minnesota missionaries.) These were not commutations; they did not set the men free or specify an alternate sentence or any other resolution. His decision issued, Lincoln moved on, checking the telegraph daily for news from Vicksburg, where Major General William Tecumseh Sherman seemed poised to loosen Confederate control of the lower Mississippi. No man on Earth hated blood as Lincoln did, wrote David R. Locke, a newspaper editor and famous Civil War humorist much quoted by the president, and he seized eagerly on any excuse to pardon a man when the charge could possibly justify it. The generals always wanted an execution carried out before it could possibly be brought before the President. More than 1,600 court-martial convictions came across his desk during the war, and Lincoln exasperated many of the governmental and military leaders closest to him by giving them such serious consideration, applying his signature mix of compassion, logic, and legal acumen: If a man had more than one life, I think a little hanging might not hurt, Lincoln wrote, but after he is once dead we cannot bring him back, no matter how sorry we may be. In the case of Minnesotas Dakota Indians, just as in his dealings with mutinous, or otherwise criminally inclined soldiers, Lincoln was willing to sanction executions where he felt reasonable moral standards had been violated and reasonable legal standards of the time upheld. Lincoln lost sleep over the questions of war and emancipation, but not over the many death sentences he confirmed or commuted. Just as the president was famous for his willingness to reconsider capital convictions, he was also well known for his reluctance to discuss such cases once they had been settled. The historical evidence suggests that once he handed the black list of 39 names to Nicolay, Lincoln was done with the Dakota War. Not so, however, the people of Minnesota who mourned the loss of loved ones nor the thousands of Dakota who mourned the loss of an entire way of life. A brief spasm of righteous indignation greeted the news of Lincolns decisionas well as a great many threats of private revengebut in the end the whites of Minnesota calmed. They had had their execution, after all, and they were also mollified by the rosy picture of the states economic future, which now seemed ever more promising and secure. Meanwhile, the 2,000 Dakotas being held at Fort Snellingmost of whom had had nothing do with the crimes that prompted so many whites to call for their exterminationwere placed on crowded steamboats and train cars for an arduous 700 mile trip to a nearly barren reservation near Crow Creek, South Dakota. Many would die during or in the wake of this exodus, part of a Dakota diaspora that sent tribal members all over the Western states and territories and as far away as the Pacific coast of Canada. Today, many monuments to soldiers and settlers killed in the Dakota War stand in southwestern Minnesota. Recently, Dakota descendants, many of whom see Sibleys military commission as just one bead on a string of historical agonies, erected a monument to the 38 hanged men, declaring them martyrs rather than villains. In summer 2012, the Minnesota Historical Society mounted an ambitious exhibition, The U.S. Dakota War of 1862, as part of what it calls a truth recovery effort, using archival texts and artifacts to create a narrative of the war that does justice to the viewpoints of the white, Dakota, and mixed-blood communities of Civil War Minnesota. Two artifacts in the MHS collection, however, were kept out of view: a length of rope purported to be one of the 38 nooses used in the Christmas hangings, and a large piece of wood said to be one of the crossbeams from the scaffold in Mankato. Questions of authenticity aside, both items were judged too contentious for display, a choice vocally challenged by some and as vocally supported by others. One hundred and fifty years after the events, it seems that the questions about justice remain a raw subject. Scott W. Berg, a writing professor at George Mason University, is the author of 38 Nooses, a 2013 book about the Dakota wars and the largest mass execution in U.S. history. Originally published in the January 2014 issue of Military History Quarterly. To subscribe, click here. You can run from it, and it will catch you and eat youor you can face it. At the height of the war, more than 500 journalists were in Vietnam, most ensconced in Saigon, listening to official military briefings. Only a dozen or so were in places where guns were firing around them. One of those was Joe Galloway, co-author with retired Army Lt. Gen. Harold Moore of We Were Soldiers Once And Young, an up-close account of the November 1965 Battle of Ia Drang, the first clash between large forces of the U.S. and North Vietnamese armies. The book, published in 1992, has sold more than 1.2 million copies. It was made into a 2002 movie with Barry Pepper as Galloway and Mel Gibson as Moore, a lieutenant colonel at Ia Drang in the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile). During the battle, napalm bombs were inadvertently dropped on Moores troops, and two soldiers were burning in the inferno. Galloway, joining others running through enemy gunfire to rescue them, grabbed the ankles of one burned soldier and pulled him out. In 1998, he received a Bronze Star with a V (for valor) for that actionthe only civilian awarded a valor medal by the Army during the war. Galloway discussed the wars impact on his life and views with Editor Chuck Springston. When did you and General Moore decide to write We Were Soldiers? We planned to write this book from the day we were leaving Landing Zone X-Ray [one of the Ia Drang battle sites]. We didnt state it, but it was in both of our minds. In 1976 I was on my way to an assignment as Moscow bureau chief for UPI. I stopped in Washington to take briefings from the State Department, the CIA and others. General Moore was the deputy chief of staff for personnel for the Army and invited me to dinner. We shook hands and made an agreement that when I finished wandering around the world and he got out of the Army, we would pick it up and run with it. I spent three years in Moscow and then was transferred to Los Angeles as the bureau chief. He had retired from the Army in 1977 and moved to Crested Butte, Colorado, where he was manager of a ski resort. In the winter of 1980, I was in my living room in Los Angeles, flipping through the channels and found the sequel to American Graffiti. It begins where they left off in the first movie. The kid with the horn-rimmed glasses had been drafted, sent to Vietnam with the 1st Cavalry Division and was listed missing in action. All of a sudden the screen was filled with a mass Huey helicopter air assault. I found myself sitting in my chair, shaking like a leaf, with tears rolling down my cheeks at the sight and the memories. I thought, you can run from it, and it will catch you and eat youor you can face it. I picked up the phone the next morning and called General Moore at his home in Colorado. Are you ready to start work on this book? He said, I sure am. I said, Ill be there tomorrow. We talked about what we wanted in the book. That was the beginning of 10 years of research. How did your divide up the research? When we started, we knew where about 15 people were. We wrote a questionnaire about two pages long and asked them to write their memories of the battle. General Moore did the early work of going to 1st Cav reunions, finding the guys who were veterans of Ia Drang and taping interviews with them. I was trying to find other people. It was remembering somebody who remembered that old Joe came from Texas or Florida. You would call the VFW there, and youd call information and see if there was a phone number with that last name. Maybe youd call five or 10 people in that town and ask, Do you know this guy? Sometimes we hit the jackpot. Before it was over, we interviewed over 250 individuals. When did you start the writing? I pitched a story on the 25th anniversary of the Ia Drang battle to my bosses at U.S. News, and they agreed to send me, the general and a photographer to Vietnam. We went in August-September 1990. The North Vietnamese were not as cooperative as we had hoped. They were sending us to places they sent the usual visiting reporterforeign ministry, trade and economics guy, people like that. They did give us two guys that were useful. One was Gen. [Vo Nguyen] Giap [North Vietnams top general during the war]. One was Gen. Hoang Phuong, the Army chief of history. He was very helpful, but we still did not get who we wanted: Hal Moores opposite number at X-Ray, Gen. [Nguyen Huu] An, who at the time of the battle was a lieutenant colonel. We also wanted the overall commander, General Chu Huy Man, and we couldnt get him. So we said, How about can we go to the battlefield? Our minder at the foreign ministry said that would be a very bad idea and refused permission. I wrote a cover piece for U.S. News on Oct. 29, 1990. I went up to New York to accept the magazine editors association award for best feature story that year, our Ia Drang article. I ran into Harold Evans, who had just become president of Random House. He had been the senior editor over all of U.S. News. He said, I want to publish that book. I said, What book? And he said, The one youre going to write. The book needed to be handed in before Christmas of 1991. I took a leave of absence from my job at U.S. News in August of that year. The general was staying with his wife over at his sons house, about 15 miles from my farm in Virginia. I got a cable from Hanoi saying if you will come back again, well give you the people you are asking for: General An, General Man, several others. We were in the middle of writing the manuscript and decided it was worth the gamble. We went back [October-November 1991], and they put us in a guesthouse inside the walls of the defense ministry compound. Every morning we would sit down with one of those guys and run the tape recorder for four or five or six hours. We got a long interview with General Phuong, the historian. It was really fascinating to see the other side. Why were they more inviting in1991 than during your first visit? They had seen that cover story in U.S. News. They began to get the idea we werent after propaganda. We werent digging up old bones. We were trying to genuinely research a slice of history in both our countries. So they decided to give us what we wanted. How did you come up with the books title? FedEx brings me a package at the farm in Virginia. In it is the cover of our book, and its got the title, One Valley Too Far. General Moore was in the next room. I called him in and said, Look at this. He said, Over my dead body. And I said, OK, were going to have to go to New York City and give them a better title. We had been kicking round titles for the whole year and had a list of 30, not one of which was One Valley Too Far. On the train to New York from D.C, we got it down to the last line of the prologue: We were soldiers once, and young. We went to Random House headquarters and walked into Harold Evans office. He had the chairman of the board, every editor and graphics editor in this office. He says, Joe, we understand you dont like our title. I said, Harry, its not that we dont like your title; its that we like our title better than your title. He said, And what would that be? Looking at a graphics editor because I knew she had read the whole book, I said, very carefully, We were soldiers once and young. And I saw a tear roll down her cheek, and I knew we had them. Evans looked around at the rest of them and said, Well, we could certainly change that cover, couldnt we? What was the source of the We Were Soldiers phrase? It percolated off a little quartet of poetry from A.E. Housman. It goes like this: Here dead we lie/Because we did not choose/To live and shame the land/From which we sprung. Life, to be sure, /Is nothing much to lose,/But young men think it is,/And we were young. What was it like to see yourself portrayed on film? It was a little strange in the beginning. When I met Barry Pepper, he had a thousand questions. Did I wear dog tags? Yes. What was my blood type? I said, Why do you want to know that? He says, Im going to have one [set of dog tags] made, and Im going to wear it while Im filming this movie. He said, What did you carry in your pack? I said, A block of black-and-white film, a block of Kodachrome negative color, three lenses, two cameras, some socks and a change of underwear, four canteens, 20 magazines for an M16 and a couple of books. He says, What are the titles of the books? I said, Street Without Joy, by Bernard Fall, and This Kind of War, by T.R. Fehrenbach. Once again I said, Why do you want to know this? He said, Im going to get all of those things and put them in my pack. I said, Barry, nobodyll know theyre there. He said, Ill know theyre there. I told this to Hal Moore, and he said, Joe, Im really worried. Mel Gibson hasnt asked me one question. Two different styles of acting. Gibson just hung around Moore, normal talking and soaked him up. Moores kids will tell you that they could sit in a dark theater, close their eyes, listen to Gibson talk and hear their dad. What made you, a journalist noncombatant, rush into the fray when napalm bombs struck Moores men? Pure instinct. I had no time to think. I felt the heat from the napalm fire on my face, and I could see two men dancing in that fire. I had no thought other than to go into that fire and help pull one of those boys out. I pulled out a kid named Jim Nakayama from Rigby, Idaho. He died two days later. He had a baby girl born that week of the battle. Did other journalists ever criticize you for stepping into the action, rather than just observing it? Were you criticized for carrying a gun? Never. Never. I saw the same 15 or 20 reporters, photographers and TV guys on every operation, in every battle. They spent their time with the soldiers and the Marines, sharing the dangers. There were battalion commanders who would say, Look I dont have this detail of two guys to be your body guards. Youve got to protect yourselves. If youre not carrying a weapon, you cant come with us. So most of those 15 or 20 also carried a weapon. What did the press get right in Vietnam, and what did the press get wrong? Mostly the press got it right. The people I knew, who were with the soldiers and Marines, were reporting on the war in front of us. And what you see is what you see. I dont see that [Associated Press reporter] Peter Arnett or Joe Galloway or Walter Cronkite lost that war. We never had enough men on the ground to win that war. To win, you would have to invade, occupy North Vietnam. And that doesnt take into account what Lyndon Johnson most feared: The Chinese would come in as a participant as they did in Korea. How many men would it have taken, and how long would we have been occupiers? Would my sons and grandsons be over there now? After the U.S. started sending military advisers to Vietnam in the mid-1950s and early 1960s, was it still possible to stop the escalation to combat troops? Absolutely. When I went there in April 1965 we had 12,000 to 13,000 advisers on the ground. We could have stopped at that point and continued to train and supply the South Vietnamese until we could see either they could do it [on their own]. If they couldnt, then pull out. Do you think South Vietnam could have survived if we had continued to fund its military after U.S. troops withdrew in 1973? There are those who say [South Vietnam fell because] Congress stopped further aid in 75, but at that point a lifeline of aid was already on the way, probably a years worth, so it wasnt like the Vietnamese had no bullets left or gasoline for their fleets or fuel for their aircraft. They had plenty of it. What they didnt have was the ability to stand up to the North Vietnamese Army. What do you see as the lessons of the Vietnam War? I would say the most important is dont go to war against someone without understanding the culture and history and preferably having at least 100,000 Americans who speak the language. If wed understood that a little clearer, we might not have decided to get involved in a civil war in that country. In a civil war with Communists on one side and a supposedly democratic regime on the other, didnt it make sense for the U.S. to support the anti-Communist forces? Instead of supporting them, training them and arming them, we came in with our own troops in 1965 and basically told the Vietnamese: Get out of the way and let the big boys take care of this. And it didnt work. Do you think there are any parallels between the Vietnam War and recent wars? Afghanistan is another country where, if you understand its history and culture, you dont go in thinking you can put a lot of troops on the ground and succeed. It didnt work for Alexander the Great. It didnt work for Queen Victoria, or for the Russians. They all got their asses kicked, and we just go happily marching in. Were going to establish Jeffersonian democracy, and youve got a bunch of people who have no desire to become democratic. Culture and history. Know it before you get involved. To a lesser extent that applies in Iraq That place is ribboned with tribal and religious schisms. Once again, the lessons were there in Vietnam. We paid a terrible tuition: 58,315 American dead; 300,000 wounded. A lot of people came home with PTSD. We can learn a lot, but it doesnt help unless the leadership in Washington learns something too. Is there any particular political or military leader that you admire? When I was a 19-year-old kid reporter in Kansas City, one of my mentors and friends was former President Harry Truman. I thought he had done a terrific job as president, and I sat and listened to him quite a lot. How did you get to know him? My first day of work the boss said, Youre going to be on the night shift, and eventually the New York desk is going to want you to call Harry Truman and ask him a question. Heres his home phone number. A couple of weeks later, sure enough, there was the New York desk, saying call Harry Truman and ask him this question. With trembling hands, I dialed the number, and Mr. Truman answered his own phone. I was apologizing like crazy for disturbing him at 9:30 at night, and he said, No, no son, thats OK. I like reporters. Its editors I hate. Ask your question. [Afterward], he said, Come see me some time at the library. A couple of weeks later I wondered over to the [Truman presidential] library and talked to him, listened to him really. I made that journey quite a few times. You got your first journalism job at a paper in Texas when you were just 17. How did you do that? I had been a campus stringer at the community college in Victoria for about six weeks of my entire college career. I was bored out of my mind with college and wanted out of Refugio, Texas. I browbeat my mother to let me enlist in the Army. Because I was 17 she had to come along and sign the papers. We were driving by the newspaper office, and she said, Joe, what about your journalism? I said, Good call, Mom. Shut off the car. And I walked in and went up the managing editor. He hired me on the spot. Its ironic. That journalism job ultimately put you in a war zone probably as deadly as anything you would have experienced had you joined the Army. Ive thought about that through the years. Born: Nov. 13, 1941, Refugio, Texas Residence: Concord, North Carolina Journalism career: Victoria Advocate in Texas, 1959-1961; United Press International, 1961-1982, covered India-Pakistan War in 1971; U.S. News & World Report, 1982-2001, covered Gulf War 1990-91; Knight Ridder Newspapers, 2002-06, covered Iraq War 2003 and 2005-06; retired 2006, but wrote column for McClatchy/Tribune Syndicate until 2010 In Vietnam: April 1965-September 1966, January-March 1971, six months 1973, January-April 1975; five postwar visits researching books Government: Special consultant to Secretary of State Colin Powell, 2001-02 Today: Boards/advisory boards of 1st Cavalry Division Association, National Infantry Museum, Army Aviation Museum, Americans in Wartime Museum First published in Vietnam Magazines February 2017 issue. Russia has been criticized by other world powers at the UN Security Council in New York over the chemical weapon deaths in Syria. The UK's foreign secretary together with a rebel commander and a weapons expert stated that evidence pointed to an attack by the Syrian government, Russia's ally. It turns out that 70 donor nations are discussing aid efforts in the war ravaged country. After the chemical incident at Khan Sheikhoun in Idib province, 20 children and 58 adults were reported to be killed. It is also considered as one of the biggest chemical attacks in Syria since Ghouta in August 2013. According to BBC, footage from the incident showed civilians choking and foaming from their mouth, out of which many were children. Some of the victims were also treated across the border in Turkey. The gas made the victims feel dizzy and sick affecting them from shortness of breath. It is believed that they were exposed to a neurotoxin agent known as Sarin gas. There is still no count on how many had been affected, because victims had travelled far to get treatment. Russia has acknowledged that Syrian attacked Khan Sheikhoun but it says that the aircraft struck a depot producing chemical weapons. The government of Syrian President had denied its forces launched a chemical weapons attack. UK's Ambassador Mathew Rycroft told the Security Council that Mr. Assad had humiliated Russia by making a mockery. The incident was considered as a horrific and senseless attack. Russia along with China has blocked attempts to impose sanctions on Syria. The Russian Deputy Ambassador Vladimir Safronkov, accused the Syrian rebels of fabricating evidence and accused the UK for being obsessed. As for the US Ambassador, Nikki Haley, she said Syrian chemical attacks will continue if nothing was done. The French UN envoy had also blamed the Assad government for the attack saying it was a destructive madness. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Apr. 7 By Demir Azizov Trend: A wide range of issues was discussed at the meeting of Council of Foreign Ministers of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), held in Tashkent on Apr. 7, said Uzbek Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Kamilov. Kamilov, who chaired the meeting, told reporters that the meeting of the CIS Council of Foreign Minister has been successfully completed in Tashkent. The minister added that a wide range of issues from cooperation of CIS countries to topical international issues was discussed during the meeting. Meetings of the CIS Council of Foreign Ministers are one of the key stages in the preparation of meetings of the CIS Council of Heads of Government, which are held twice a year. In 2017, next meetings of the heads of state will be held in Moscow in October, as well as in Kazan in May and in Ashgabat in November. The Tashkent meeting of the CIS Council of Foreign Ministers was attended by foreign ministers of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, deputy foreign ministers of Azerbaijan, Moldova and Turkmenistan, as well as CIS Executive Secretary Sergey Lebedev. H aving made a fortune in the tanneries of Kidderpore in India, in the 1840s leather trader John Teil returned to England in search of a home. After years of heat and dust, Teil was looking for a green and pleasant retreat. He commissioned a grand country house a mile from Hampstead Heath. Built in 1843, he called it Kidderpore Hall. Teil spared no expense on his huge Greek Revival mansion, with its grand colonnaded entrance. The magnificent central staircase, with wrought-iron balustrade and hardwood handrail, was lit from above by a glass rooflight with elaborate floral etchings. The house was a thing of beauty as were the timeless views across the Heath and towards the city. THE RAVAGES OF TIME Unfortunately, the years were not kind to Teils London retreat. The trader died in 1857, and in 1889 Kidderpore Hall was bought by the founders of Westfield College, a pioneering women-only botany college thats now part of Queen Mary University of London. New red-brick buildings were added and ugly fluorescent lights were drilled into the delicate ceilings. Students were based there until 2014. Faded grandeur: tall curved windows / David Butler The columns are still standing but the central staircase is collapsing. Floorboards are sinking underfoot, while the lime plasterwork bears the blush of damp and sections of paper hang from the walls. Magnificent cornicing is all but hidden under many coats of paint, as fine curved sash windows rot in their frames. 17 MILLION FAMILY HOME Builder Mount Anvil bought the hall as part of a three-acre estate in 2015. By the end of next year 156 new homes will have been built around it, called Hampstead Manor. Grade II listing means 11,000sq ft Kidderpore Hall itself cannot be carved up into flats, so Mount Anvil wants to sell it either as a whole property to one buyer for about 17 million, or possibly to two buyers interested in splitting it into two very large duplex apartments priced at about 9 million apiece. In either case, the hefty price tag includes about 10 million of restoration work 5 million for each duplex which has already been approved, but is not a job Mount Anvil is keen to do itself. Great vistas: the hall was positioned to maximise fabulous views across the Heath and towards the city / David Butler It would be amazing to find somebody who wants to use it as a family home, says Jon Hall, the developers sales director. We are after someone who is going to appreciate the building with its beautiful curved window panes and fabulous cornicing. It does not take much imagination to see that this could be a beautiful four-storey, seven-bedroom home, on a very grand scale. ULTIMATE RENOVATION PROJECT Ground-floor rooms have ceilings more than 11ft high, the doors are 7ft 6in tall, while the half moon-shaped bay windows are works of art. There will be the chance to get involved with the fun elements of this kind of project, choosing flooring and finishings, colour schemes and room layouts, the latter subject to the correct planning consent. Disrepair: the once-magnificent central staircase / David Butler From the top the roof needs to be re-insulated and repaired, the windows need to come out and be refurbished because a lot of them are warped, and the same goes for the original shutters, says Andrew Blacklock, senior technical manager, whose job it is to oversee the renovations. The cornicing and architraves have years and years of overpainting and a lot of the detail has been lost. The existing staircase is in need of stiffening, there is some rot and water damage and balustrades need to be repaired. SNIFFING OUT THE DAMP Precisely how long the work will take is not possible to say with asbestos removal, rewiring, plumbing, and the countless other fixes required. Surveys have been done and a sniffer dog was brought in to pinpoint areas of damp, in a more gentle technique than gouging holes in delicate plasterwork. Old houses can throw up endless problems hidden beneath their rotting floorboards but its a challenge someone with deep pockets might just relish. R ents in London continued to drop at the start of this year, while across the country rental asking prices have been rising at the slowest rise in three years. The average cost of renting a home in the UK remained almost the same as at the start of 2016, rising just 1.8 per cent, compared to the 3.9 per cent annual growth recorded a year ago, thanks to a significant increase in the number of properties available. The 12 per cent jump in the number of rental homes available compared to the same period in 2016 has been caused by last springs spike in buy-to-let purchases, which saw investors rush to beat the stamp duty surcharge on second properties. Wider choice for tenants means properties are taking longer to let than this time last year, which is pushing prices down, according to a report from Rightmove. The supply boost following last years buy-to-let frenzy in the first few months of the year has continued through to 2017, introducing more competition in the market, says Sam Mitchell, Rightmoves head of lettings. RENTAL AFFORDABILITY IN LONDON In London, where rents are by far the most expensive in the country, prospective tenants saw prices fall 4.2 per cent year on year, yet the average cost of a two-bedroom home in the capital has now reached 1,937 per month. Rents in the capital continue to eat up a significant portion of renters incomes following a decade of steady growth in which rents have risen by more than 30 per cent, while wages have gone up by only 18 per cent on average in the same period. Separate research from Clydesdale and Yorkshire Banks found that almost a third of Londoners aged between 18 and 40 do not save any money in an average month because of the high cost of rent. LONDON RENTERS ARE COMMUTING FURTHER The five areas with the highest demand for rental homes in the first quarter of 2017 were all in traditionally cheaper neighbourhoods attracting renters priced out of more central areas. Bexleyheath (average monthly rent 1,113) and Belvedere (1,086 per month), both in the south-east London borough of Bexley, were the two most popular areas for renters, while Hainault (1,314), Hornchurch (1,276) and Rainham (1,189) completed the top five. Its a trend weve been seeing for quite some time. As rents in central London have become higher and less and less affordable, youve seen tenants moving further out to where they can find more affordable rents, says Mitchell. Its not uncommon for tenants to commute increasingly long distances. NOW COULD BE THE TIME TO MAKE YOUR MOVE FOR CHEAPER RENT However, Londoners may now find it easier to negotiate a rent reduction as properties are taking a week longer to let now than they were this time last year. And while rents have fallen annually thanks to the increased number of homes available, Mitchell warns that forthcoming tax changes are likely to encourage many landlords to sell up, taking their homes out of the rental market. If you think youre paying too much rent, nows the time to move because every indicator is pointing towards rents going up over the next couple of years, he says. 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 Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 7 By Emil Ilgar Trend: Iran strongly condemned the United States missile strike on Syrian airbase, where allegedly Bashar Asads forces conducted deadly chemical attack on civilian people, resulted to the death of at least 70 civilians in rebel-held area. Two U.S. warships fired 59 cruise missiles from the eastern Mediterranean Sea at Khan Sheikhoun airfield on Apr.6. The spokesman of Irans Foreign Ministry Bahram Qasemi said that Tehran considers the unilateral strike over Syria by US - an excuse to launch a strike in response to suspicious chemical attacks, and that is an abuse of international laws." Qasemi added that such actions from the US are "dangerous" and "destructive". He added that the US attack would lead to acceleration of terrorist activities and security complexity in Syria, IRNA reported Apr.7. Iran and Russia are Bashar Asads major allies. Meanwhile, the US reportedly informed Russia about its missile launches prior to the attacks. However, Russia has called on to hold an urgent UN Security Council meeting regarding the US strikes on Syria. Yury Shvitkin, deputy head of the Russian lower house of parliament's defense committee said that air strikes by the US on Syrian airfield show Washington is guilty of political double standards. On Wednesday, April 5, a tornado touched down in Shelbyville, Tennessee. Shelbyville is a hub of Tennessee Walking Horse breeding and training, and the storm hit just 200 yards from a breeding farm called Rising Star Ranch. Just hours later, a new colt joined the herd. Get Our Free Weekly Enewsletter About Horses Breeding manager David Williams told News Channel 5 that he believes the change in air pressure helped induce labor and hopes that some of the other mares on the farm who are nearing their due dates will respond similarly after a tumultuous weather week. The Shelbyville tornado was confirmed to have had a clockwise rotation, which is relatively uncommon in the northern hemisphere and is known as an anticyclonic tornado. The tornado was rated an EF-1, which denotes moderate damage. There are no known injuries as a result of this tornado, although one woman was injured by another tornado that touched down in Warren County, to the east of Shelbyville, during Wednesdays severe weather. Homes near the farm did have some damage due to the storms, but Rising Star Ranch was largely spared. More than 100 horses were on the ranch at the time that the tornado hit. The mare who gave birth after the storm is called, appropriately, Rain Delay. Her colt is yet unnamed, but Williams suggested that it could end up being something weather related, like Storm Chaser. Leslie Potter is a writer and photographer based in Lexington, Kentucky. www.lesliepotterphoto.com Twin Falls, Idaho My Place Hotels of America is pleased to announce MPI Investment Group, LLC. (MPI) broke ground on their first My Place Hotel in Twin Falls, ID! Community members joined MPI principals and My Place supporters to commemorate the start of construction with a ceremonial earth moving on March 30th. Magic Valley's newest hotel will be conveniently located at 440 N Haven Drive, close to the city's diverse retail, dining and recreational opportunities. Thanks to a concerted effort between economic development and tourism, Twin Falls has seen significant growth in recent years. While existing businesses in Twin Falls are expanding, and new ones are moving in, Shawn Barigar, Mayor of Twin Falls and President of the Twin Falls Area Chamber of Commerce, said My Place is poised to serve a crucial need in the expanding city, which doubled its population in the last 20 years. "We're growing here in Twin Falls as well, and we're super excited to welcome My Place," Barigar said. "We've seen a lot of economic prosperity in Twin Falls for many years. As we see new people and businesses coming into town, My Place will have many opportunities to serve the growing needs of the community." The brand new three story, 64-room Economy Extended Stay Hotel is anticipated to open by Fall of 2017. Independently owned by MPI, My Place Hotel-Twin Falls, ID will be operated by Venerts Hotel Management, Inc. While MPI collectively offers a diverse mix of business ownership from the previous 35 years, Venerts offers a history of success with the My Place brand, having won the brand's Property of the Year Award in 2016. Having long established roots in the Twin Falls area as a business owner with experience as an independent hotelier, MPI Principal Spencer Smith is not only encouraged by the market's growth and strength, but the brand's as well. The My Place difference is not only one that he observes as an owner, but a difference all guests and community members will feel as well. "In comparison to my experience with independent hotels, there wasn't this kind of support and consideration," Smith said. "It is absolutely wonderful to have the support system that My Place provides. The fact that you have a sales and marketing team as well as experience from people who have been in this industry for so long to draw from is an amazing difference. I haven't met anyone at the brand who hasn't been a well of information and positive energy." Terry Kline, My Place EVP of Franchise Development, said the brand is thrilled to welcome MPI aboard as My Place continues its aggressive campaign for US expansion. "We are extremely proud to announce the construction of a new My Place hotel in Twin Falls, ID,"Kline said."As we continue with the rapid expansion of many new My Place locations across the country, we look forward to working with Spencer Smith, Todd Ames and MPI Investment Group LLC. Our guests in Twin Falls and other future Idaho locations can look with confidence to My Place Hotels to provide them with extraordinary service and accommodations!" All My Place Hotels offer modern amenities at an affordable price including nightly, weekly and monthly rate options. Each extended stay guest room will feature a My Kitchen, complete with a two-burner cooktop, a microwave and a full refrigerator. The property is pet friendly and will also include on-site laundry facilities, complimentary high speed Internet service and a 24-hour My Store, located in the hotel lobby and stocked with an array of supplies for the guests' convenience. Additionally, guests are invited to enjoy the new Breakfast in Bed option for a minimal cost. My Place Hotels of America, LLC is a Franchise company that focuses on providing a clean and comfortable facility, with modern amenities, and great customer service, all at an affordable price. My Place Hotels of America, LLC is based out of Aberdeen, SD, and offers franchisees a new construction brand, designed to ensure quality, consistency and the highest of standards for delivering marketplace value. For more information on becoming part of our growing franchisee family, please visit myplacehotels. com or contact Terry Kline at (605) 725-5685. About My Place Hotels All My Place Hotels locations offer modern amenities at an affordable price including nightly, weekly and monthly rate options. Each guest room features a My Kitchen, complete with a cooktop, a microwave and a full refrigerator. My Place Hotels offer pet friendly accommodations, include on-site laundry facilities, complimentary high-speed internet service and a 24-hour My Store, located in the hotel lobby and stocked with an array of supplies for the guests' convenience. My Place Hotels of America is a franchise company that focuses on providing a clean and comfortable facility, with modern amenities, and great customer service, all at an affordable price. The company is based out of Aberdeen, S.D., and offers franchisees a new construction brand, designed to ensure quality, consistency and the highest of standards for delivering marketplace value. The brand currently has 47 hotels open across 21 states with over 120 hotels in the pipeline. For more information on franchising with My Place Hotels, please visit myplacehotels.com/franchising or contact Terry Kline at (605) 725-5685. To book your stay at My Place, please call the toll-free reservation line at: (855) 200-5685, or visit myplacehotels.com. In celebration of our partnership with the American Hotel and Lodging Association, we invite you to Stay Rewarded. Earn 1,000 points by enrolling using this link by Independence Day: myplacestayrewarded.com/SignUpKiosk?kioskcode=AHLA Please click here to get up to date with the latest news from My Place Hotels! Heather Schmidt EVP Sales & Marketing 605-725-5261 My Place Hotels of America It looks like you've reached a page that doesnt exist (anymore). Please use the navigation or search above to find content on Hospitality Net. Go back to home Tehran, Iran, April 7 By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend: As part of a vast series of objections to a recent US rocketing of Syrian positions, a number of Iranian lawmakers including head of the National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Alaeddin Broroujerdi called the attack to be against the UN charter, warning that they will not remain idle and will react. The attack was a stupid move, Boroujerdi said, adding that it will not doubt have serious consequences because countries like Russia and Iran will not stand idle against actions that threaten regional expediency, ICANA news agency reported April 7. In the meantime, Friday prayer leaders, who represent Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in cities across Iran, said the US attack was meant to rear the front of terrorists in the region. The United States fired 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at Syria overnight in response to what it believes was a chemical weapons attack that killed more than 100 people. At least six people were killed, Syria claimed, but the Pentagon said civilians were not targeted and the strike was aimed at a military airfield in the western province of Homs. Iran has dismissed the idea of Syrian government having chemical weapons, saying that it has already been disarmed by the UN. The Cleveland rapper took to social media to announce his latest album, Bloom, set for release on May 12th. While details surrounding the album are scarce, the cover is certainly intriguing. Judging from the soft color palette and the gruesome image of MGKs hand being impaled by thorns, its hard to say what kind of vibe were going to get. the thorns in my hand were done by a special FX make up artist, tweets Kelly, that wasnt photoshopped. The rappers third studio album is dropping sooner, which generally means a single will be forthcoming. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 7 Trend: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani condemned the United States missile strike on Syrian airbase. "The tragedy of Khan Sheikhoun is horrifying & must be condemned. It reminds Iranians, victim of CW for years, the attacks in Sardasht. US aggression against Shayrat strengthens regional extremism and terror, and global lawlessness and instability, and must be condemned. I call on the world to reject such policies, which bring only destruction and danger to the region and the globe," the president said in his official Twitter account. The United States military launched 59 missiles during the early hours of April 7, targeting an airbase in Syria. The strike was the Pentagon's first direct attack against Syria since the beginning of the conflict in 2011. On President Donald Trumps order, the US launched the strike on the Syrian airfield in response to an alleged chemical weapons attack in the town of Khan Sheikhun in Idlib province earlier this week. Damascus has categorically denied carrying out a chemical attack. Houston-based CenterPoint Energy is seeking a rate increase for electricity distribution to recoup nearly $480 million it spent on its distribution system in 2016, the company said Thursday. The rate increase - which would add at least 80 cents for 1,000 kilowatt-hours used a month - must be approved by the Public Utility Commission and city governments, and could affect all of CenterPoint's customers. Collectively, the rate increase will bring $44.6 million to CenterPoint. Individual bill increases would vary based on electricity use, said Alicia Dixon, a spokeswoman for CenterPoint. The Gulf Coast Coalition of Cities, a group that advocates for consumer rights, also filed a request on Thursday for the PUC to intervene in the case. If approved, the rate would go into effect by Sept. 1, and become the third electric rate increase for CenterPoint customers since September 2015. Overall, electricity distribution bills for CenterPoint customers have gone up $1.60 a month for 1,000 kilowatt-hours since 2015. The proposed increase would mean that Houston residents could see both their gas and electricity distribution bills rise this year. Last year, CenterPoint announced that it would seek a rate increase for gas distribution in the Houston area. Under that proposal, the bill of an average customer using 3,400 cubic feet of gas a month would rise by $2.59 a month by mid-2017. The average increases, however, would vary depending on where customers live, ranging from about $1.11 a month in coastal cities and other towns east of Houston, to $6.04 in Conroe. The increase would be the second in two years for more than 1 million customers. Last month, the city of Houston rejected CenterPoint's proposed increase. CenterPoint can appeal that decision to the Railroad Commission of Texas, which oversees gas utility regulation along with the state's oil and gas industry. CenterPoint is seeking the gas rate increase as part of a comprehensive ratemaking process it must go through every five years to justify its charges. Once the process is complete, the utility will be able to seek additional increases for gas distribution costs over the next five years without going through the exhaustive process. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A relatively small number of Texas companies are seeking contracts to build President Donald Trump's border wall, even though the state currently has the longest frontier with Mexico without a physical barrier. The tepid response among local companies to the Department of Homeland Security's request for proposals to build a "solid concrete border wall" suggests that the multibillion-dollar project is unlikely to have a lasting impact on the state economy, analysts said. Of the 226 companies seeking some of the work, only 35 Texas-based companies - 10 of them from Houston - put themselves on a list of interested vendors for the project. Although the prime contractors chosen likely will need local subcontractors, much of the profits from the construction job likely would flow out of state. It also would exacerbate a labor shortage in the construction industry, and raise the cost of projects around the state. With the Texas unemployment rate below 5 percent and the energy industry hiring again, it's also unclear where workers to build sections of the wall in remote areas will come from, said Tom Fullerton, an economics professor at the University of Texas - El Paso. "The timing on this is really bad, because there are already construction worker shortages throughout the U.S.," Fullerton said. "With the oil patch coming back, it's a pretty safe bet that they'll make more on an oil rig than building an ill-advised wall out in the middle of the desert." The border wall was Trump's signature campaign promise, along with a pledge that Mexico would pay for it - at a cost of at least $21.6 billion, according to a Homeland Security estimate. Trump has yet to offer a plan to extract payment from Mexico, but his administration has pushed the procurement process forward. Most of the Houston companies submitting proposals are small design and construction contractors, with the exception of Woodlands-based CB&I, which was the country's fourth-highest-grossing engineering firm in 2016, according to the Engineering News-Record, a trade publication. CB&I did not respond to a request for comment. Many large companies are already staying away from the border wall worried about blowback from other clients considering the controversy over the wall, and more broadly, Trump's immigration policies. For example, Bechtel, one of the country's biggest engineering and design companies, has said it does not plan to bid on the project. The Department of Homeland Security is expected to narrow down the proposals for the concrete wall later this month and invite firms to build prototypes before they make final awards. At the same time, the agency has also invited concept proposals for walls made out of materials other than concrete, and may decide to go with one of those instead. More Information By the numbers 226 Companies bidding to build a wall along the border with Mexico. 10 Companies from Houston among those 226. $21.6 billion Estimated cost to build the wall, according to a Homeland Security Department estimate. See More Collapse KBR, a leading construction and engineering firm based in Houston, did not submit a proposal for a concrete wall. The company declined to comment. Fluor Corp., a multinational construction and engineering firm based in Irving, said it does not comment on bidding. Among the local companies submitting proposals was NZ Control Specialists, which provides entry and exit technology and other services. The company owner, Ronald Hale, said he put together a comprehensive proposal, and hopes to be one of the 20 or so prime contractors assigned a section of the wall. Aubrey Campbell, a Gulf War veteran who works as a private investigator and security consultant in Houston, said he partnered with an engineering firm to submit a concept design and thinks he could put together a team to handle a big chunk of the project. The request for proposals includes points for subcontracting with veteran, minority and women-owned companies, which Campbell said he plans to do. "We want the small guy to be involved in this," he said. Each $1 billion spent on the wall would employ 14,450 people for the duration of the project, which is expected to last for five years, according to Fullerton, the UTEP economist. But given Texas' unemployment rate, it's unclear where those workers would come from, he said. Labor shortages could also be exacerbated by another factor: The local construction industry depends heavily on undocumented immigrants, who would likely not be allowed to work on the border wall, given Trump's rhetoric. That means workers will have to come from farther north, and would likely return home when the project is finished, Fullerton said. Services such as hotels and catering would get a bump, but that spending would be short-lived and wouldn't stimulate further investment in the way that a transportation or urban development project likely would. Meanwhile, economists said, other local projects could be sidelined, if a spike in demand for materials and workers raises prices too much. "It is going to create unnecessary bottlenecks in the labor market," Fullerton says of the border wall, "and it's going to crowd out viable projects that probably have better usages of those goods and materials." David Hunn contributed to this report. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Most people can't imagine a world that relies solely on the sun's energy, whether it is from the rays, wind or ocean waves, but John Goodenough can. And while many may say Goodenough is just a dreamer, he's also the scientist who made random access memory possible for computers in the 1950s, co-invented the lithium-ion battery in the 1970s and announced a major breakthrough in battery technology this year. "I'm interested in putting the oil and gas industry out of business," Goodenough, emeritus professor at the Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, said with a laugh. "I believe that modern society has to find a way to free itself from its dependence on fossil fuels." Goodenough studied mathematics at Yale and nuclear physics at the University of Chicago, where he wrote a doctoral thesis on solid-state physics. His deep understanding of materials is what led him into computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1950s, where researchers needed an alternative to magnetic tape for digital storage. Goodenough delivered the solution. From 1976 to 1986, he worked at the University of Oxford leading the Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory, where he developed the basis for the lithium-ion battery. Many companies ignored his invention, until Sony Corp. commercialized the battery that is now used in almost every mobile phone and laptop computer. President Barack Obama awarded him the National Medal of Science, the highest U.S. honor for scientists, engineers and inventors. "One of the things that I am most pleased about is that I was able to participate and contribute to bringing the concepts of physics and the concepts of chemistry together in the service of engineering," said Goodenough, who has taught at UT since 1986. "Electrochemistry is only now coming in to its own, and it will bring a big revolution." Goodenough's new lithium- or sodium-glass battery technology promises to speed that process. Working with Maria Helena Braga, an engineering professor at the University of Porto in Portugal, his team has built a battery that can hold three times more energy, charges in minutes rather than hours, works in hot and cold weather, can last for more than 1,500 charging cycles and poses no fire hazard, as current lithium-ion batteries do. The breakthrough came from an alkali-doped glass developed by Braga that replaces the liquid electrolyte currently used in batteries to separate the positive and negative poles. The researchers published their peer-reviewed findings in the U.K. Royal Society of Chemistry's journal, and Goodenough promises there are more breakthroughs to come. "We believe that this can give you the volumetric energy density that is the maximum that you can get and is still cheap," he said in interview. "We're in the process of demonstrating and patenting how we can do that. The patent is being typed today." If the technology can be commercialized, these batteries will easily compete with internal combustion engines. They could also store wind and solar energy and truck electricity from place to place. For those who may doubt that battery technology can replace coal, oil and natural gas, Goodenough says: "One has to be careful of one's prejudices." "Ninety-nine and 44/100ths of the things people do or think about are not practical. I quite agree with that," he said. "But I'm old enough at 94 to know that you don't just dismiss something without investigating it a little bit." That open mind is what led Goodenough to consider Braga's glass as a possible electrolyte. It was the product of a failed experiment to solve a different engineering problem, but she recognized that its unique qualities could help with batteries. "Every once in a while, manna comes from heaven and you're able to keep going with a new tack, and that's what we've done," he said. The new technology is attracting attention. Donald Sadoway, a pre-eminent battery researcher at MIT, told the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers magazine Spectrum: "When John Goodenough makes an announcement, I pay attention." Google CEO Eric Schmidt tweeted: "John Goodenough, inventor of the lithium battery, has developed the first all-solid-state battery cells. Promising!" Goodenough says he's too old to worry about making money from the invention. Instead, he's only interested in launching humanity on the path to clean energy. "We have to move toward emancipating ourselves from fossil fuels, and that will go in steps," he said. "Electricity is the cleanest form of energy, but you don't want to generate that energy with combustion." Goodenough said the university is negotiating with battery manufacturers, and his new batteries could be on the market in as little as two years. For all of his dreaming, though, Goodenough is realistic about changing the world, something he's done twice before. "That will take time, so the people in Houston can relax," he said. "Because they will still make a lot money from fossil fuels until their retirement." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Talk to Ceron, and his speech is peppered with the rich and savory flavor of Mexico. Then, in midsentence, he drifts into something that sounds a bit French - haughty and sophisticated. Try to pin down his place of origin, and the hairstylist laughs and tosses back his perfectly layered, shoulder-skimming hair. Women pay good money for a style like his. "I was born and raised in Mexico City, and I lived in Paris for 10 years. I've been in Texas so long, I don't speak French very well, and I don't speak Spanish very well either." He speaks "Ceron." That's what his friends call it. One of Houston's most noted coiffeurs, Ceron, 53, is a man of the world who has spent the past decade building his Ceron Hair Studio in Uptown Park. He's been in the hair game some 25 years. "I never thought I'd be in Houston. I never thought I would like living here, especially because of the heat," he says as he pours a tall glass of Topo Chico mineral water. "Have you ever tried Topo Chico? It's fantastic," Ceron proclaims, as if it's best thing since keratin hair-straightening treatments. He's standing in the luxury Memorial Heights area townhome, which he shares with husband and event-planner extraordinaire Todd Fiscus, looking dapper in Adidas sneakers, Michael Kors gray flannel pants, a Rick Owens turtleneck and Hermes belt. Their living room is dominated by an enormous two-panel "Cheval Surprise" wall painting that Ceron snagged from Hermes when the store relocated to Post Oak Boulevard. The two zebra-print chairs that flank the piece were a present from designer Renea Abbott when he and Fiscus tied the knot in 2013. "They were going to throw the painting out!" he blurts. "Can you believe it? Look at it, what do you see?" The painting is an optical illusion, so it a takes few minutes before images of large black horses come into focus. With his arms folded, Ceron explains how the painting strategically conceals the massive television. He hates exposed TVs in the living room - so not chic. For Ceron, this is a place for cozy conversation, not gazing at a flat screen. Ceron and Fiscus built the two-bedroom townhome in 2014. It was originally designed with three bedrooms, but Ceron needed more space for his enormous wardrobe, including more than 150 pairs of shoes. Luckily, the couple shares similar tastes in shoes, as well as the same shoe size. "We're always fighting over who gets to wear the shoes first, but it's so much fun," said Ceron, who confesses to purchasing a pair of $5,000, over-the-knee Vetements boots from Barneys New York. The couple also owns a home in Dallas, where Fiscus' business is based and where Ceron has a salon in Neiman Marcus at NorthPark Center. Fashion is as much a part of Ceron's world as hair is. Take the time he went for his U.S. citizenship exam in 2010. Ceron studied for weeks and could fire off the names of presidents and states. He arrived at the government office wearing a luxurious Ralph Lauren camel suede jacket, a pair of bell-bottom pants (from the women's department at Neiman Marcus because the men's section had none) and a Louis Vuitton bag. The woman handling his case was in awe. She looked him up and down, even sideways. "Fabulous, just fabulous!" she pronounced as she stamped his citizenship papers. "I begged her to ask me one question. I even told her I can sing the national anthem. She just laughed." The Mexico City native was born Gonzalo Javier Ceron to a mother, Violeta Estrada, who had four boys by four men. Ceron never met his father and says he got his love for fashion and luxury from his mom. As a teen, he worked at the front desk at a luxury hotel in Mexico City, but his mother died during a hysterectomy at age 38 and left him with his three younger brothers and his grandmother, who was raising them. "My brothers were very young, so I had to grow up immediately. It made me stronger in everything I did in my life," he said. At the time, the Mexican government allowed students to study and work in France, Ceron said, so he moved to Paris at age 19. Almost immediately, he met and married a French woman, Corrine Surge, though he quietly struggled with his own sexuality. "I come from Mexico and a very Catholic family. We were dating, and her parents hated me. She was so adorable. I was a child. I thought it was the right thing to do," he said. They eventually split, but never divorced. Ceron went on to work with French hairstylist Frederic Gebhardt, who told him he was "too old, Mexican and fat" to do hair. Undeterred, he found a mentor in hairstylist Jean Saberny, who schooled him on all of the "b.s." he needed to know to make it in the business. It was Ceron's grandmother who urged him go by one name, since so many people mispronounced his full name. While in Paris, he met Houstonian Francie Willis, who at the time owned Urban Retreat spa and salon in Houston. She needed a stylist and encouraged him to move to Houston. Ceron took her up on the offer, relocating in 1994. Here, the social set, including Becca Cason Thrash, embraced the young hairstylist. The late Mickey Rosmarin, owner of Tootsies, became a father figure. Through the years, Ceron's clients have included super models like Cindy Crawford, actresses like Fran Drescher, and local media personalities like Dominique Sachse, who "changes her hair every three months. She is never afraid of change." Standing in his kitchen with the half-empty glass of Topo Chico, Ceron gushes about his marriage to Fiscus. But wait, wasn't he already married? Ceron explains: Just before he and Fiscus exchanged vows, Surge stopped by his hair salon one day out of the blue. They hadn't spoken since the breakup in Paris. She reminded him that they were still husband and wife. "Oh, my God, I didn't realize we never got a divorce," he told her. "So we were married for 30-something years! I had no idea. We had to a get a lawyer and everything. It was dramatic." Today, Ceron and Fiscus - and their 7-year-old pug, Pippa - split their time between Houston and Dallas. Fiscus cooks most nights when they are together, and Ceron does the grocery shopping. "When Todd told me he cooked, that was the day I forgot how to boil water," he said. Ceron's next chapter includes a second Houston salon in the Memorial and Gessner area opening in the fall - and an expanded family. "We both have worked so hard," he said. "We still have things we want to do, and having a family is one of them. I would love to have a little girl." No doubt she'll be wearing something fabulous. There on my newsfeed was the annual link about a high school senior who had been accepted to all eight Ivy League schools and like a fool I clicked on it. Stories about students who are accepted to all the Ivies are a scourge on the college application process, yet it's usually the adults who make everything so insane. On a field trip to New York City five years ago, I took a group of my student newspaper editors to The New York Times, where we met with an online editor. One of my students asked what kind of articles they post when they want to boost readership. "Easy," he said. "Anything related to Harry Potter or how to get your kid into an Ivy League school." I will not begrudge Ifeoma White-Thorpe from Rockaway, New Jersey, for applying to those prestigious colleges (she also got into Stanford), but if you are applying to every one of the Ivies, then you haven't done your research. There's a significant difference between Dartmouth and Brown, between Columbia and Cornell. And none of them offers merit aid an important detail that the articles bury until the very end. According to White-Thorpe, "none of the schools I've applied to said they give merit scholarships, so I'm praying that they give me some more financial aid or some money." It would be a shame if White-Thorpe could not attend any of these schools if it is financially unfeasible. I can just imagine some administrator or counselor at her high school calling up the local news media in order to ride the coattails of her accomplishments. But where were these people when she was compiling her college list? Did anyone sit down with the family and ask about finances, or what she wanted to study, or in what kind of student environment could she thrive? News flash: The Ivy League does not have a monopoly on excellence. When the media reports on stories like this, they contribute to the Ivy lust that makes the college search process so pernicious. And when we click, read and share these articles, we are perpetuating the belief that those are the only schools worth considering. Schools that are famous for being famous. In December, White-Thorpe was accepted by Harvard via Restrictive Early Action, which is nonbinding. But then she went ahead and applied to all the other Ivies. If you really want to make the parents of high school seniors apoplectic, tell them that your child got in early to her dream school, but she is still going to apply to eight more highly selective schools ... just to see if she gets in. Now you're messing with the fate of other students, and they will not appreciate it. According to the American School Counselor Association, the recommended student-to-counselor ratio is 250:1. Only three states (Wyoming, Vermont and New Hampshire) meet that level of coverage. The national average counselor-to-student ratio is 491:1, with Arizona (941:1) and California (822:1) cited as the worst. The average in Texas was 465:1 in 2013-2014. Across the country, there are almost 850,000 high school students who have no access to any college counselors at all. In one recent investigation, 28 Houston high schools didn't have a single counselor or college advisor, so in HISD, the student-to-counselor ratio was more like 1,800:1. A knowledgeable school counselor, teacher, administrator or parent could have advised White-Thorpe to look beyond the Ivy League. If financial aid was a concern (which it is for a vast majority of students since four years of college Ivy or otherwise can cost upward of $250,000 over four years), then someone should have advised her to diversify her applications the way Roland Nelson did in 2015. Nelson, then a senior at a public school in Germantown, Tennessee, got into all the Ivy League schools, Stanford and Johns Hopkins and he turned them all down in favor of a full-ride scholarship to The University of Alabama. That was a story worth celebrating. There should be more stories about high school seniors who make thoughtful college choices based on their interests and abilities without buying into the hysteria of applying to the Top 25 schools listed in US News & World Report. But that wouldn't get the page clicks. And those clicks send the wrong message to everyone involved especially the students. I'm a high school English teacher and journalism adviser who works extensively on college essays with kids from many schools in Houston. The kids I helped this year, including my own son, were worth the effort. Helping them get into colleges they wanted was way more gratifying than trying to collect a complete set of Ivy League acceptance letters. David Nathan, a Houston teacher, is working on a book about college admissions. Bookmark Gray Matters. It's related to Harry Potter. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The package came in January: An anonymous letter and a stack of government records, stuffed in a yellow envelope with no return address and mailed to her late mother's home in Damon. Cris Chapa ripped it open and began to cry. She thought of the day, March 12, 2015, when medical staff at Kindred Hospital Sugar Land sat her down in a waiting room. They'd said there was nothing anyone could have done. Led her to believe her 87-year-old mother's death had been the inevitable result of her bout with pneumonia. The stranger's letter told a different story: Her mother hadn't died peacefully, it said. Instead, a doctor had attempted a procedure without Chapa's knowledge or legal consent, and it had gone badly. Blood poured from a tube in her mother's neck. Soaked her hospital gown. Caused her heart to stop. Why hadn't anyone told her what happened? Why didn't anyone tell her three months later, when the state sent someone to investigate? Why didn't anyone tell her a few weeks after that, when the federal government cited the hospital for violating her mother's rights? For nearly two years, Chapa and her family had been kept in the dark. Until now. Family photo She didn't know it then, but the stranger who'd written the letter had mailed duplicates to two of her siblings. Chapa's hands shook as she studied the documents, looking for clues to who'd sent them, but found only an email address. That night, she logged onto her computer and typed a message: "Can you call me?" *** Linda Patton read the email twice, unsure how to respond. She'd been hesitant to contact Chapa in the first place, even anonymously. She'd already lost so much. This wasn't the life she'd hoped for when she accepted a job as a nurse practitioner at Kindred Hospital Sugar Land in September 2014. She knew it had been a risk leaving Houston Methodist Hospital for a less-prestigious facility, but Kindred had offered her a more senior position and an opportunity to mentor young nurses, which was her passion. Patton noticed problems right away, she said. On daily rounds, she'd quiz nursing staff on what medications patients were taking. What side effects they should be looking for. Basic stuff. Routinely, though, nurses didn't know the answers, and some seemed agitated by her attempts to educate them. "That just kind of shocked me," Patton said. She hadn't realized her new hospital had a history of mistakes. In the three years leading up to her first day at Kindred, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services had cited the facility for 10 separate violations of state rules governing patient care. Among the citations, obtained by the Houston Chronicle through a public records request: Kindred nurses weren't adequately trained or supervised. Patients had been unnecessarily restrained. Others had suffered infections after staff mishandled contaminated materials or failed to properly wash hands. Administrative safeguards weren't in place to prevent future mistakes. In 2012, according to one citation, a patient in Kindred's intensive care unit became disconnected from a breathing machine and was left to die, even as an alarm sounded, alerting staff of the problem. One staffer who heard the beeping said she didn't know what it meant. J. David Cross, the chief executive officer of Kindred's Houston-area district, defended the hospital's quality of care, noting that the facility exceeds national benchmarks for complication rates. "We take seriously any issues brought to our attention by regulatory authorities, and work with them to address any concerns," Cross wrote in an email to the Chronicle. "We share the same goal to provide quality care to our patients." Patton was troubled by the problems she saw but felt she'd begun to make progress. Some nurses had become receptive to her on-the-job training, she said, and hospital leadership initially seemed to appreciate her efforts to instill a more professional culture. She'd been there seven months when Cris Chapa brought her mother, Manuela, to the hospital with pneumonia. Patton checked on her daily and saw her condition grow worse over the course of two weeks. The illness put a strain on her frail heart. Her lungs began to fail. So did her kidneys. Before leaving for the day on March 12, 2015, Patton checked in on Chapa once more. It seemed clear to her that she might not recover. Patton assumed doctors would soon be meeting with the woman's family to discuss their options. *** The next morning, as she arrived at work, a respiratory therapist grabbed Patton by the arm and pulled her aside: "Oh my God, Linda," she said. "It was terrible." The therapist had been in the room the afternoon before, when Dr. Yassir Sonbol, an interventional cardiologist, tried to insert a catheter in a major vein in Chapa's neck, in the hopes of starting dialysis. The treatment might have eased the burden on Chapa's kidneys but it also came with risks. On his first attempt at inserting the line, according to medical records and witnesses, Sonbol couldn't get the catheter to stay in the vein. So he tried again on the right side, but this time, the wire got stuck, and Sonbol struggled to get it out. Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle As the doctor fidgeted with the line, Cris Chapa and one of her brothers showed up at the entrance to the hospital room, unaware their mother was being operated on. She said medical staff blocked them from entering and whisked them away: "You can't be here right now." Inside, Manuela Chapa's heart had stopped as blood spilled from her. The medical team revived her once, but when her heart quit again minutes later, there was no bringing her back. According to medical records reviewed by the Chronicle, a nurse filled out a consent form for the procedure and printed Cris Chapa's name on it, but the signature line is blank. Chapa, who'd been legally designated to make all of her mother's health care decisions, said she was never consulted. The line where the physician is instructed to sign, certifying that he discussed the procedure and risks with the patient's legal representative, also is blank. Through an attorney, Sonbol denied any wrongdoing and declined to be interviewed for this story, citing patient privacy concerns. Cross, the Kindred CEO, said he couldn't answer detailed questions due to pending litigation. He denied the hospital did anything improper in Chapa's care. Patton was horrified the next day as she reviewed the medical file and learned more about the incident from others who were there. She figured the hospital would investigate and take action to discipline those responsible. That's usually what happened after mistakes when she'd worked at hospitals in the Texas Medical Center. A couple weeks later, when Patton realized no one had been punished and that the family still hadn't been told what happened, she said she raised the issue with a superior, but the woman brushed it aside. "That upset me," Patton said. "It matters in this business what you do when nobody's looking." A month later, when still nothing had changed, Patton wrote a note to Kindred's corporate office in Kentucky. Corporate's response was swift, Patton said: Within a couple of weeks, a manager flew down to meet with her. Only, she wasn't interested in hearing about the circumstances of Chapa's death. "She told me that was none of my concern and to just let leadership handle it," Patton said. Instead, the official scolded Patton for sharing her concerns about the incident via email. That constituted a violation of the patient's privacy rights, the official said. She ordered Patton to take an online refresher course on medical privacy laws. Soon after that meeting, Patton started hearing whispers from other nurses that her job was in jeopardy. "At that point," Patton said, "I'd talked to leadership. I'd talked to corporate. They still hadn't done the right thing." *** One night, while searching online for ideas on how to resolve the situation, Patton found a study suggesting medical errors are likely the third leading cause of death in the United States, but the incidents often go unreported. One reason, according to experts: Medical professionals are hesitant to report mistakes, for fear of reprisal. That was in the back of Patton's mind in May, when she wrote to the Department of State Health Services, the Texas agency authorized to investigate hospital misconduct, and detailed what had happened to Chapa. She also reported an incident from that February, when Kindred nursing staff failed to monitor a 66-year-old's blood-sugar after giving medication, resulting in the patient's death. Patton signed her name to the letter but asked that her complaint be kept anonymous. In June, the state sent an investigator to the hospital. Although Texas law requires the investigator's report be kept secret, the findings from the visit were spelled out in a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services citation issued a couple weeks later: The hospital, according to the federal report, had violated Chapa's rights by failing to get consent from her daughter before operating. The agency also cited the hospital in the earlier patient death reported by Patton. A spokesman for DSHS, which has authority to fine hospitals for such violations, confirmed that the agency had substantiated Patton's complaint, but it took no enforcement action. He said he's barred by law from discussing the matter in more detail. RELATED: Texas law keeps parents from knowing what happened before their son's suicide The Texas Medical Board, the state agency that licenses and disciplines physicians, conducted its own review and cleared Sonbol of wrongdoing. In a confidential letter obtained by the Chronicle, the board said a full investigation was not warranted because it had received "medical records and affidavits" showing that Sonbol had received legal consent to perform the procedure. Neither Chapa nor Patton were interviewed by the board, and a spokesman for the agency said he was unable to comment. Two years later, only one person involved in Chapa's care has been dismissed: Kindred terminated Patton a little more than a month after the state sent its investigator in 2015. Hospital leaders told her that her position was being eliminated due to budget cuts, Patton said. But when she requested to be transferred to another Kindred hospital in Houston, she got no response from the hiring manger. Later, Patton learned from DSHS that her name had been passed on to Kindred, along with her written complaint. She asked the agency about its whistleblower policy but was told there was nothing that could be done. The Texas law that requires hospital investigations be kept secret includes no such protections for those who step forward to report wrongdoing. *** Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle Hours after receiving the email from Cris Chapa in January, Patton picked up her phone and dialed. "Hello, Ms. Chapa?" she said, then introduced herself. Patton told her about losing her job and how, a few months later, she'd filed a wrongful termination lawsuit in Fort Bend County, which remains pending. In the suit, she details her attempts to get the hospital to respond before going to the state. In response, the hospital filed a motion denying the allegations. Chapa, 64, told Patton about the grief she felt after her mother's death. The sense of guilt that she hadn't done enough for her. The rage she felt now after learning what had really happened. It didn't matter that her mother might not have lived much longer. She didn't deserve to suffer at the end, Chapa said, and nobody other than her children had the right to make that decision for her. "As her oldest daughter, it was my job to protect her, and they took that away from me," Chapa said. At the end of the call, Chapa and Patton made plans to meet in person, and since then, have become friends. Chapa has taken to calling her "my warrior nurse." The two met again last week, this time at a conference table at the law office of Jack McGehee. After hearing Patton's story, and reviewing the medical records, the lawyer had agreed to represent Chapa in a malpractice lawsuit against Kindred and Sonbol. The lawsuit, filed last month in Harris County, alleges not only that the hospital failed to get consent before operating on Chapa, but that someone altered some of her medical records afterward to conceal what happened. McGehee believes the facts show that Chapa's mother "was killed by a procedure that wasn't warranted and wasn't consented to." But taking the case was not a smart financial decision, he said. Texas caps malpractice damages at $250,000, which is about how much it will cost his firm to litigate, McGehee said. "We don't expect to make money on this," he said, then nodded toward Patton: "We're here because people more noble than myself set an example of courage that's pretty hard to match." Patton batted her hand, dismissing the compliment. She didn't do this looking for recognition, she said. She initially didn't even want to talk to a reporter and refused to be photographed for this story, fearing publicity could keep her from finding work again in health care. She spoke up, she said, only because so many others didn't. "In the back of my mind, I kept hoping someone else would," said Patton, who got her start in medicine two decades ago while serving in the Air Force. "That's what you keep hoping for, that someone would do the right thing, but that just didn't happen." After losing her job, Patton thought that was the end of it. She'd done her duty. Then, in December, her mother became ill. Patton went home to Louisiana to be with her in the hospital, watching suspiciously as medical staff took her behind closed doors for heart bypass surgery. She sat in the waiting room, worried something might go wrong. She imagined how she'd feel if a doctor had made a mistake or attempted a risky operation without her consent, and then tried to keep it from her. "I would want to know what happened," Patton said, her eyes damp with tears. "You would want to know if it was your mom." Later, after her mother had been discharged from the hospital and Patton had returned home to Houston, she sat down at her computer and began to type a letter. ___ Mike Hixenbaugh writes about health care and medicine for the Chronicle. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. Send him tips at mike.hixenbaugh@chron.com. The Department of Defense identified the USS Porter and the USS Ross as the two US Navy destroyers that fired Tomahawk cruise missiles into Syria on Wednesday in retaliation for the Assad regime's use of nerve agents on its own people. Commander Andria Slough, a 1998 graduate of the US Naval Academy, is the captain of the Porter. Her counterpart on the USS Ross is Commander Russell Caldwell, according to the web pages for both ships. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate SAN DIEGO (AP) One potential bidder on President Donald Trump's border wall with Mexico wanted to know if authorities would rush to help if workers came under "hostile attack." Another asked if employees can carry firearms in states with strict gun control laws and if the government would indemnify them for using deadly force. With bids due Tuesday on the first design contracts, interested companies are preparing for the worst if they get the potentially lucrative job. A U.S. official with knowledge of the plans who spoke on condition of anonymity because the details haven't been made public said four to 10 bidders are expected to be chosen to build prototypes. They will be constructed on a roughly quarter-mile (400-meter) strip of federally owned land in San Diego within 120 feet (37 meters) of the border, though a final decision has not been made on the precise spot, the official said. The government anticipates spending $200,000 to $500,000 on each prototype. The process for bids and prototypes are preliminary steps for a project that will face deep resistance in Congress and beyond. Trump repeatedly said during the campaign that Mexico would pay for the wall, but he has since requested that Congress approve billions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer funds. Democrats vow to oppose any wall funding, and many Republicans are also wary of his plans for a massive brick-and-mortar barrier. The Border Patrol and local police would establish a buffer zone around the construction site if necessary, the U.S. official said. The San Diego police and sheriff's departments said Monday they will respect constitutional rights to free speech and assembly for any peaceful, law-abiding protesters. Enrique Morones, executive director of Border Angels, said his group plans to protest. "There will be a lot of different activity protests, prayer vigils on both sides of the wall," said Morones, whose immigrant advocacy group is based in San Diego. "We pray and hope that they're peaceful." Michael Evangelista-Ysasaga, chief executive of The Penna Group LLC, a general contractor in Fort Worth, Texas, said he has received about a dozen death threats since publicly expressing interest in bidding, including one from a woman who told him she hired a private investigator to trail him. Evangelista-Ysasaga said he bid in part because he wants broad immigration reform. Securing the border, he said, is a prerequisite for granting a path to citizenship to millions in the U.S. illegally. "We didn't enter this lightly," he said. "We looked at it and said we have to be a productive part of the solution." Building a wall on the Mexican border was a cornerstone of Trump's presidential campaign and a flashpoint for his detractors. The multibillion-dollar project along the 2,000-mile border has many outspoken critics, including the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Mexico, which said last week that Mexican companies expressing interest were betraying their country. U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement that it would pick multiple contractors to build prototypes by around June 1 and will name only the winning bidders. The agency said last month that the prototypes should be about 30 feet (9 meters) long and 18 to 30 feet (5.5 to 9 meters) high. The winning bidders must submit a security plan with details including "'fall back positions, evacuation routines and methods, muster area, medical staff members/availability, number of security personnel, qualifications, years of experience, etc. in the event of a hostile attack," according to the solicitation. A chain-link fence with barbed wire around the construction site is required. The agency said it won't provide security. Bidders are also asked to demonstrate experience "executing high-profile, high-visibility and politically contentious" projects. The agency, responding to questions from companies on a website for government contractors, said the Border Patrol would respond as needed if there is a hostile attack, but companies were responsible for security. The government won't allow waivers from state gun laws or indemnify companies whose workers use deadly force. The website for contractors lists more than 200 companies that signed up for email notifications on the design contract but it's unclear how many of those will apply. Bidders must have done border security or similar projects worth $25 million in the past five years to qualify. Ronald Colburn, Border Patrol deputy chief when hundreds of miles of fences were built under President George W. Bush's administration, said companies should plan on training workers to know when to seek cover and stay put and when to retreat. "Most of those organizations are probably fairly accustomed to that," said Colburn, who retired in 2009. "Some of them may be learning for the first time, that kind of risk at the borders." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Parents will put up with almost anything to protect their kids. And therein lies a lesson, perhaps, in the politics of red-light cameras. The use of mounted cameras to document and cite motorists who run red lights generates widespread, intense opposition. The internet seethes with the outrage of critics -- an unlikely coalition of libertarians, conservatives and some liberals -- who denounce the cameras as an intrusive, ineffective government money-grab. Voters rejected Houston's 4-year-old camera program in 2010, leading to costly litigation between the city and its vendor. Four years later, voters in Cleveland, Ohio, made the same decision by a 3-to-1 margin. But the cameras continue to focus their unblinking eyes on drivers in the Houston suburbs of Sugar Land and Tomball. Bob Stein, a Rice University political science professor who has studied red-light camera programs extensively, has a theory about why. Many suburban communities "have a disproportionate number of school-age children," said Stein, noting that Sugar Land also enforces a ban on texting while driving. "This is all about protecting kids." Any distinction between urban and suburban attitudes will cease to matter in Texas if a statewide ban on red-light cameras, approved by the Senate last month, secures House approval and is signed into law. Sugar Land Police Chief Doug Brinkley testified against the measure, telling the Senate Transportation Committee that accidents had declined by 58 percent at intersections in his city where the cameras are in place. That figure, like virtually every data point on this topic, has been disputed. Stein acknowledges a lack of consensus among the many studies. So many variables can affect traffic safety that isolating the effects of any one factor, like the presence of a camera, is difficult. But on balance, said Stein, "I think there is a very qualified but still strong result that a sufficient number of cameras have a deterrent effect on violations and can reduce severe collisions that lead to death." Sugar Land has used red-light cameras since November 2007. The number of cameras and their locations have varied; the city now has cameras at six intersections, spokesman Doug Adolph said. And while the program has survived, it certainly has opposition. Two residents sued Sugar Land and three of its officials in February, asking a state district judge to declare red-light camera citations unconstitutional. One of the plaintiffs, H.F. Van Der Grinten, has fought the program for years using a variety of tactics: He has refused to pay fines himself. He started an organization called the Houston Coalition Against Red Light Cameras. And he wrote the lyrics to a song, "Red Light Cameras Gotta Go," featured on the coalition's website. The level of Van Der Grinten's dedication to his cause is impressive, but his zeal is hardly unique. I asked former Houston Mayor Annise Parker, whose administration dealt with the 2010 referendum and its aftermath, if she could explain the intensity of opponents' feelings on this topic. "I find it absolutely mystifying," said Parker. "I think that red-light cameras save lives." When she was campaigning to retain the cameras, Parker recalled, she often asked a series of questions at civic gatherings: Does everyone agree that running red lights is dangerous? (Yes.) That if I have a choice of putting a cop at that intersection or a camera that doesn't take a lunch break or charge overtime, the camera is more efficient? (Yes.) Do you support-red light cameras? (No.) For my own part, I cannot pretend to be objective about this subject. In 1985 a car struck me as I walked across a street in Spring Branch to get a soft drink for my wife during a break in a childbirth training class. The driver had run a red light. I spent months recovering from my injuries, and complications during surgery permanently damaged my health. If red light cameras had been around in 1985, would the driver who struck me have been more attentive? There is no way of knowing, of course. And obviously I can't expect elected officials to make policy based on my personal experience. But if nothing else, recalling what happened to me is a reminder that this is not some abstract discussion. Maybe the cameras are a little creepy. Maybe someone is cited unfairly from time to time. I don't really care. The evidence that their use can reduce fatal accidents may not be conclusive, but shouldn't local officials at least retain the option of using them? A foolproof solution remains available to anyone worried about enforcement tactics: Don't run red lights. Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 7 By Orkhan Quluzade Trend: Turkey is positive regarding the US missile strikes on a Syrian airbase, Turkish media outlets quoted Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus as saying April 7. US President Donald Trump has earlier ordered missile attacks against Syria, targeting an airbase close to Homs province. This weeks chemical attack in Idlib was supposedly launched from Homs. The US operation will contribute to settling the crisis in Syria, Kurtulmus said, adding safety zones should be established in some Syrian regions. Clad in a sequined hat, Anna Richelle ran her fingers across the plastic covering of a room full of mattresses Thursday afternoon. The 70-year-old said she felt quite at home as she adjusted the drawers of a bureau and then wrapped the cord of a lamp around its base. Richelle has been a regular at the Houston Furniture Bank since 2014. She began as a shopper but quickly became a volunteer, dusting and sweeping for the old facility on Hussion Street before a fire destroyed it in 2015. "My husband had a stroke, and Oscar (the manager of HFB's thrift store operation) gave me a scooter for him to ride," Richelle said. "I told him I didn't think he'd ride it, but my husband got on it. After that day, there was never another scooter. We just got lucky. The place is a miracle." The nonprofit dedicated to "Making Empty Houses Homes" debuted its new warehouse at 8220 Mosley with a ribbon cutting Thursday. The 75,000-square-foot space is more than triple the size of the old facility and aims to serve up to 500 families a month within the next two years under a more aggressive business model. Mayor Sylvester Turner, who spoke to an audience of HFB volunteers, partnering agencies and customers, identified with the Houston Furniture Bank's theme of charity. During his time at Harvard Law School, he needed a mattress and all he could afford was one from Goodwill, he said. "I came to say thank you to the Houston Furniture Bank for stepping up when the City of Houston needed organizations to do so," he said. 'Like a phoenix' The nonprofit began in 1992 as a pilot project aiming to help 140 families under the Mental Health Mental Retardation Authority of Harris County. When Executive Director Oli Mohammed realized its potential, he proposed creating a furniture bank to serve the community. In 2003, the furniture bank became an independent agency, and it opened its first outlet in 2008. Through partnerships with over 85 agencies, it serves between 100 and 150 families a month - an effort that was stalled by the devastating fire at the Hussion warehouse. At the time, Mohammed, promised the nonprofit would rise from the ashes "like a phoenix." "I knew that there were poor people in America, but when I saw the condition that people were living in, it was unacceptable," said Mohammed, who arrived in Houston from Bangladesh in 1987. "That challenge, that unfilled need. It's very understandably prevalent. If you want to see it, you see it. And it's a condition that doesn't need to exist. That's the point. That's what keeps me going, the thought that 'This is not something that needs to happen.' " About 600,000 mattresses going to landfills and 300,000 children sleeping on floors would seem to fit in his home country, Mohammed said. In America, it doesn't make sense. The furniture bank's Designing Interiors - Volunteers At your Service, or DIVAS program, is the creative arm of the nonprofit that transforms local families' homes with donated items. Challenging stigmas DIVAS member Connie Hizem said they interview the family like an interior designer would, finding out their needs and furnishing the home accordingly. "The first house I went to, when we were finishing the apartment, it was interesting because they had this little boy - he was 5 - and there were no books in the house," Hizem said with regret. "Last Friday, we went in with a woman and she had a newborn baby, she was 8 weeks old and premature, and I brought books for the baby." Founded in 2003 by two Houstonians looking to help the community, the DIVAS soon joined forces with the Houston Furniture Bank. Member Connie Page said she'll never forget the home she furnished for a veteran who moved to Houston to help her mother afflicted with Alzheimers. "My husband passed away a couple of years ago. We would always donate furniture and clothing and do what the DIVAS are actually doing now," Page said. "I used to always say to my husband before he died, that that's what we should do - help other people - and I'm so happy to be doing it now, even though he can't see it." Hizem said the stigma surrounding poor people is something that is immediately challenged by the work. After helping a client in need, she goes home and hugs her children. "You can't imagine that feeling. We're ridiculously lucky," she said. AUSTIN The Texas House approved its multi-billion budget early Friday morning in a 131-16 vote, following more than 15 consecutive hours of debate over hundreds of proposed changes regarding everything from foster care to arts programs. The two-year House budget includes $106.7 billion in state revenues and uses $2.5 billion from the state's savings account, while the competing Senate version spends $106.3 billion and does not touch the savings account. The Senate approved its version last month in a unanimous vote. Over the next two months, negotiators from both chambers will iron out their differences before the legislative session ends in May. The House largely avoided several controversial issues that were expected to come up late Thursday, including imposing restrictions on public bathroom use based on someone's sex listed on their birth certificate. Such an initiative has been a pet project of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick's and the GOP-controlled Senate, which passed a so-called 'bathroom bill' in March. House leadership, including Speaker Joe Straus of San Antonio, has denounced the idea as a waste of the legislature's time. Rep. Valoree Swanson, a Republican from Spring, pre-filed an amendment that would have added language similar to the Senate's into the House budget, but she withdrew her proposal after Democratic and Republican leaders struck a compromise to end the night earlier than expected. The deal: Before an up-or-down vote on the document, Republicans approved an amendment explicitly stating that money from the budget would not go to any individuals or entities which perform abortions. The measure passed 101-43 with no vocal Democratic challenge. In exchange, Democrats won a concession from GOP leaders that Swanson would pull her bathroom amendment. The move allowed the remaining 100 or so pages of proposed amendments still on tap to be folded into the budget's wish list article, a catch-all area of last resort. Dodging votes on a statewide 'sanctuary cities' prohibition and a repeal of in-state tuition benefits for undocumented students at Texas colleges, the House took up a vote on their entire budget shortly after the abortion measure, finally passing their funding proposal around 1:30 a.m. Here are some highlights: In one of the first votes Thursday, the House approved a measure that would zero out funding for the Texas Enterprise Fund, a $43 million pot of money the governor can use to lure businesses to the state. The amendment by Rep. Sergio Munoz, a Democrat from Mission, would split the funds equally between the Child Protective Services agency and the program that funds therapy services for children with disabilities. That set off a pitched war of words between the chamber's presiding officer and a group of tea party Republicans who had plans to direct the enterprise money to other causes in a later revision. A vote was called on the Munoz amendment and it passed on a voice vote without opposition while the tea party-aligned members were distracted huddling over the outcome for a previous amendment. By the time they realized what had happened, the House had moved on to other issues. Tea party members tried to challenge the vote, but Speaker Joe Straus' representative presiding over the chamber overruled them leading Rep. Jonathan Stickland, R-Bedford, to deliver a personal privilege speech lambasting the process. "(Voters) have a right and an expectation to know where every single one of us stand on every single issue," Stickland said. "This is one of the most offensive things and disgusting things that I have ever seen in this body." At several points during the debate, Democrats tried to flex their political muscle in the chamber where they are outnumbered by Republicans 95 to 55. A handful of Democratic members unsuccessfully sought to cripple Attorney General Ken Paxton's efforts to defend the state in a redistricting lawsuit filed by civil rights groups. They argue the Texas Legislature intentionally discriminated against black and Latino voters. Rep. Chris Turner, D-Grand Prairie, proposed an amendment that would have barred Paxton's office from using any budget funds to appeal a decision in Texas' redistricting case. Democrats said that federal judges, appointed by Republican and Democratic presidents, have ruled many times that the Legislature intended to consolidate and dilute the voting power of Latinos and African Americans when lawmakers drew state district maps. The aim, the courts have ruled, was to protect Republican majorities at the Capitol. Republican Rep. Larry Phillips of Sherman argued that Paxton has a responsibility to defend the Legislature's work. He objected to Democrats' assertions that lawmakers approved the maps with discrimination in mind. "I voted for those maps," Phillips said. "I didn't intend to discriminate." However, Democratic Rep. Rafael Anchia of Dallas said the amendment was based on what several judges have ruled, not on partisan claims by the minority party. The amendment failed 90-55. Another proposed revision, by Rep. Tony Tinderholt, R-Arlington, would have taken money from the Texas Commission on the Arts and put it into general revenue. Tinderholt said he supports the arts, but services such as protecting abused and neglected children are more important. Tinderholt's amendment failed, with Rep. Diana Arevalo, D-San Antonio, speaking against it. "As a music educator myself I am deeply offended by this amendment," she said. Peggy Fikac of the San Antonio Express-News contributed to this report This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Local activists jumped into action Thursday as word spread of U.S. airstrikes in Syria. Sarah Syed, the 26-year-old community organizer behind a Sunday candlelight vigil slated for Bagby Park at 7 p.m., said she felt whipsawed. "To me, I feel like President Trump is playing both sides. I feel like this is something that he originally did not endorse," she said. "That was my first thought. My second thought was what is the next step, how is Russia going to react to this?" A Muslim daughter of two immigrants, Syed worked in refugee camps in Greece last year, which is what prompted her to put together Sunday's event. "I wish we could do more from here," she said. Shireen Jasser, 32, a member of the Syrian American Council-Houston Chapter, said she is pleased that Trump used military force. "The chemical attacks that have been happening against civilians, women and children is horrifying and completely violating international law and human rights," said Jasser, who has lived in Houston for seven years. US MISSILES BLAST SYRIA: Trump demands 'end the slaughter' More for you Analysis: Syrian opposition leader says Trump must match words with deeds "We welcome President Trump taking military action against Assad military targets," she said. "We're glad that someone is looking out for these innocent women and children." David Michael Smith, a local activist, was moved to organize a protest scheduled for Friday at 5 p.m. outside the Galleria. "I'm angered and disgusted by Trump bombing Syria," he said, questioning the president's motives. "More than one observer will question whether Trump is striking out against the Syrians and their Russian supporters to change the conversation, to move it away from Trump's ties to Russia." Tilman Fertitta, a billionaire who also serves as chairman of the University of Houston Board of Regents, called the University of Texas System's purchase of hundreds of acres in Houston a "case of having too much money." "You see what happens to arrogance sometimes. You lose," he said before the Texas Senate's nominations committee Thursday morning. Sen. Brian Birdwell, a Granbury Republican, asked Fertitta what he would do if faced with competing interests - from his university system and Texas' citizens. Birdwell called UT's decision to purchase the property for more than $200 million "the elephant in the room." "That may have been in the best interest of the UT system but maybe not in the best interest of the state of Texas," he said. "I answer to three Gods here," Fertitta responded. "I answer to the Legislature first, the students second and the administration third. And when I say you guys first, that's the citizens of Texas. If I have an issue with anything, it's not going to happen." He said he wouldn't have "tried to go around" the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board or the Legislature before making a big decision. The University of Houston slammed UT's land purchase in Houston from the outset as potentially presenting unfair competition for top faculty and students. "What happened there is the case of someone having PUF funds and too much money," he said, referring to the permanent university fund, a state-owned investment fund that gives billions to Texas A&M University and the University of Texas at Austin. The University of Houston has tried for years to access that money, a change that would require amending the state Constitution. In March, UT Chancellor William McRaven called off plans to expand in Houston. An advisory group tasked with determining how the system should use the land put forward a 76-page plan for a data science institute focusing on energy, education and health. The UT System did not respond to a request for comment on Fertitta's characterization of the purchase. Fertitta, who owns one of the nation's largest restaurant companies, has been on the UH board since 2009 and was nominated for reappointment in August 2015. He appeared Thursday morning as a confirmation hearing for that appointment, which occurred after the 2015 legislative session ended. At the hearing, he said UH must improve campus diversity and its graduation rate. He added later that he didn't like the premise of tenure, through which some faculty cannot be fired without cause. "You can't sit on the payroll forever," he said. UH's faculty senate chair did not respond to a request for comment. He said bonuses are "the greatest way to motivate people." He said Renu Khator, chancellor of the University of Houston System, is "underpaid." She was the top-paid public university leader in the country in 2015, earning $1.3 million as both chancellor of the system and president of its flagship. Part of that sum was a $200,000 bonus. U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said Tuesday that the planned border wall wouldn't go on the U.S. side of the Rio Grande River, according to E&E news. In remarks given to members of the Public Lands Council, Zinke also said the wall wouldn't be built in the middle of the river. That would mean just one place for it. Though Zinke didn't say it directly, his remarks implied that the border wall would have to go on the southern side of the Rio Grande River in Mexico. DEATH THREATS: Hispanic firms that offered to build border wall get heated response "The border is complicated, as far as building a physical wall," Zinke said Tuesday. "The Rio Grande, what side of the river are you going to put the wall? We're not going to put it on our side and cede the river to Mexico. And we're probably not going to put it in the middle of the river." The wall is one of President Donald Trump's more contentious proposals. He campaigned heavily on it, promising he would make Mexico pay for the construction. But while his rallies frequently featured crowds chanting "Build the Wall," support for a complete border wall is scant in Congress. Support is even harder to find across the border, where Mexican officials have repeatedly said they won't be paying for the wall. Mexican officials, including former President Vicente Fox, have declared emphatically that Mexico won't be spending a dime on it. Read more about the border wall here: None of the 38 Texans in Congress offered a full-throated endorsement of a complete border wall, a position popular with President-elect Donald Trump's supporters, a Texas Tribune delegation-wide survey found in December. At the U.S.-Mexico border, scientists say existing fencing is hurting endangered wildlife and warn that a continuous wall could devastate many species. This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune. The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans and engages with them about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate SAN DIEGO - One bidder wants to cover President Donald Trump's border wall with solar panels. Another suggests building a wall large enough for a deck that would offer tourists views of the desert. In the competition to build the wall, traditional bids are interspersed with more whimsical ideas. As Tuesday's deadline for bids passed, U.S. Customs and Border Protection declined to identify bidders or say how many there were, which is standard practice in government contracting. The federal government expects to announce around June 1 which companies will be hired to build prototypes. Designs must be able to repel pickaxes and sledgehammers for at least an hour and be aesthetically pleasing from the north side. Trump's multibillion-dollar plan promises potentially big profits but also risks inviting a backlash from people who oppose the project. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Mexico said last week that Mexican companies expressing interest were betraying their country. "This isn't the kind of project that you'd want to put in your portfolio, said Gene Grabowski, a partner in kglobal, a Washington public-relations firm. "Unlike a dam or bridge, this is one where the risk of being associated with the political philosophy of the administration can be damaging to current and future business." That did not stop some companies from releasing their plans - some traditional, some more imaginative. Concrete Contractors Interstate proposed a polished concrete wall augmented with stones and artifacts that are tailored to different sections of the 2,000-mile border. "The idea is to make the wall a piece of art," said Russ Baumgartner, chief executive officer of the San Diego-based company. Gleason Partners LLC of Las Vegas said its solar panels would generate 2 megawatts of electricity an hour. "For the younger generation, they say if there is going to be a wall, let's have it be green," said Gleason Managing Partner Thomas Gleason. The other specifications, like preventing people from digging tunnels beneath the wall, will eliminate some designs. Winners must have done border security or similar work worth $25 million or more in the past five years. A U.S. official with knowledge of the plans who spoke on condition of anonymity because the details have not been made public said four to 10 bidders are expected to be chosen to build prototypes for $200,000 to $500,000 each. President Donald Trump's surprise decision to launch 59 missiles at a Syrian airfield, and his call for "all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria," angered some of his staunchest supporters - paleo-conservatives, noninterventionist libertarians, and the self-identified members of the "alt-right" nationalist movement. During Trump's presidential bid, the once-isolated antiwar voices on the right often thought they'd found an ally. As a pundit (largely on Twitter), he criticized military intervention, occasionally positing that it was being done to help Barack Obama's presidency in the polls. In 2013, Trump tweeted: President Obama, do not attack Syria. There is no upside and tremendous downside. Save your "powder" for another (and more important) day! --- As a candidate, Trump won primaries despite denouncing the Iraq War - something that seemed outside the bounds of Republican politics. And in the final stretch of the campaign, he embraced an argument popular on the antiwar right, that Hillary Clinton's bellicosity would lead to a war, and he would prevent one. Obama's 2013 climb-down on attacking Syria was celebrated by anti-interventionists. And this week, in the first hours after news spread of a chemical weapons attack, anti-interventionists stuck with their notion that Trump's victory over Clinton would mean a less aggressive foreign policy. In a report about Clinton's Thursday interview at a Women in the World summit, where she called for airstrikes, Alex Jones's InfoWars website told readers that "while sarin gas has been suspected in the attack, the actual chemical used has not been confirmed." Hours later, the Trump administration ordered the airstrikes, and the president gave a statement that could have been uttered by George W. Bush, calling on nations to unite against terrorism. The Twitter account of race- and immigration-focused website VDare, a wellspring of Trump support, suggested that Trump had made a strategic blunder that would benefit terrorists, tweeting: Sixteen years after September 11, we're Al-Qaeda's air force. --- Justin Raimondo, the libertarian editor of AntiWar.com tweeted, Trump supporters: In view of his campaign promise to stop our "regime change" policy in Syria, what's your view of Trump's attack on Syria? --- That prompted Daniel McAdams, a director of former U.S. representative Ron Paul's think tank, to chide Raimondo for ever believing Trump was opposed to intervention. @JustinRaimondo Are you serious? I'd think a "mea culpa" is in order, Justin. --- Paul Nehlen, a businessman who ran an unsuccessful, Trump-like primary campaign against Speaker of the House Paul D. Ryan, suggested that the airstrikes contradicted Trump's "America First" message, tweeting: What happened to America First? --- Richard Spencer, the president of the National Policy Institute and the coiner of the "alt-right" brand, denounced the airstrikes tweets; he then recorded a video message, full of worry that Trump had betrayed his voters by signing off on a policy favored by hawks. "Millions of people voted for Donald Trump so we could avoid nonsense on this," said Spencer. "Millions of people voted for Donald Trump because we saw an authenticity in his opposition to these kinds of wars." Jones had a similar response, following up on days of speculation that the chemical attack was a "false flag" meant to start a war with disbelief that Trump could fall for it. "It's incredibly evil to know that Hillary started it all with Obama, and now we've got to see our media, clearly with a false flag, selling all this, and then Trump about to do it," he said. But the clamor on the antiwar right was largely drowned out Thursday night by praise from outlets - and politicians - who normally had little good to say about Trump. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Rep. Jessica Farrar, D-Houston, may not have been surprised when her bill to regulate the masturbation habits of men set Texas buzzing. However, she may not have expected one of the most famous and powerful women in the world to take notice. During a speech at an Annies List luncheon in Houston on Friday, former first lady, senator, secretary of state and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton gave Farrars proposal a shoutout. WHERE IT STANDS: Texas masturbation bill is now in the hands of the Texas State Affairs Committee I dont know, Clinton said after praising Farrar. The bill may be satirical but the message sure resonated. Like Farrar herself, Clinton used the proposal as a springboard into serious issues of women's health in Texas and across the country. Farrar discussed the bill with Chron.com in March, saying A lot of people find the bill funny. What's not funny are the obstacles that Texas women face every day, that were placed there by legislatures making it very difficult for them to access healthcare." The 11-term Democrats bill contained a number of provisions meant to subject Texas men to conditions she felt were similar to those faced by Texas women, including the following: *The state must create a booklet called "A Man's Right to Know" that contains information on the benefits of and risks of vasectomies, Viagra prescriptions and colonoscopies. A man must review the booklet before getting the procedure. INTRODUCED: New Texas bill takes aim at men's masturbation habits * A doctor must get consent from the man before providing any of the treatments. The man may only get the treatment after waiting 24 hours and reviewing "A Man's Right to Know." * A man will be fined $100 for "unregulated masturbatory emissions." The fines will benefit children in the care of the Department of Family and Protective Services. * A man must receive a rectal exam and an MRI of his rectum before receiving treatments. * A man can't sue a doctor for refusing to provide these treatments if the procedure violates the doctor's "personal, moralistic, or religious beliefs." * The state must establish a registry of nonprofit organizations and hospitals that provide abstinence counseling, a supervising physician for "masturbatory emissions," and semen storage. * "Masturbatory emissions" must be stored for the wife to use for conception at a later time. The bill can be read in full here. Annie's List is a group that works to elect Democratic women in Texas. The luncheon honored Amber Mostyn, a top Democratic donor who has long been involved with Annie's List. The Basque parliament on Thursday urged ETA to disarm as soon as possible, focusing attention on a pledge by the separatist group to surrender its entire arsenal two days before that handover is due to take place, Reuters reported. ETA declared the end of its bid to establish an independent Basque state in northern Spain and southern France in 2011 but has only handed over part of its weapons cache to authorities. It has said it will give up the rest in the French city of Bayonne on Saturday. However, it is not yet clear how the handover will be organized and if it will be formally accepted by the Spanish and French governments. The Basque regional parliament in Vitoria-Gasteiz voted by 65 to 9 in support of a motion urging ETA to "carry out a single act of unilateral, complete, definitive and verified disarmament as soon as possible". It also called for an international verification commission, which was set up when ETA declared a ceasefire in 2011, to continue supporting the process. Spain's ruling Popular Party (PP) refuses to negotiate with ETA, instead calling for its total dissolution. Its representative in the Basque parliament, Alfonso Alonso, said the planned handover was "a dramatization of surrender". "ETA lasted such a long time because it had social and political support. The process of socially disarming ETA is not over," Alonso said. The Spanish state prosecutor has asked the High Court to examine any arms cache for murder weapons used in unresolved cases, but the judge has yet to give a ruling, a court spokeswoman said. AUSTIN -- House Democrats unsuccessfully tried to cripple Attorney General Ken Paxton's efforts to defend the state in a redistricting lawsuit filed by civil rights groups which argue the Texas Legislature intentionally discriminated against black and Latino voters. The amendment, by Democratic Rep. Chris Turner of Grand Prairie, came up as House lawmakers were considering more than 400 amendments to their two-year, $218.2 billion budget. Turner's proposal would have barred Paxton's office from using any budget funds to appeal a decision in Texas' redistricting case. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate AUSTIN - Reacting to a tragic Houston case that touched off a national scandal, the Texas Senate on Wednesday unanimously approved legislation designed to prevent crime victims from being jailed to ensure they testify in court without proper legal protections. Called "Jenny's Law" in honor of the mentally ill Houston rape victim whose case became a dominant issue in last year's Harris County district attorney's race, Senate Bill 291 was quickly approved without debate and sent to the House for consideration. Approval is also expected in the House, where the handling of the case has also drawn criticism from lawmakers statewide. "This addresses a critical problem we discovered in Harris County but one that can happen any place in Texas," said state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston. "This should never happen again." In December 2015, Harris County prosecutors jailed a 25-year-old rape victim in order to secure her testimony against her attacker. The victim, identified as Jenny publicly by her attorneys and family, agreed to testify in the trial against her assailant, serial rapist Keith Edward Hendricks. However, the victim, who has long suffered from mental illnesses, suffered a psychological breakdown while testifying about her 2013 attack and was taken to a hospital for treatment. Upon her release, she was jailed for 27 days at the request of prosecutors who wanted to ensure she would testify against Hendricks at his trial in January 2016. In July, Jenny filed a federal lawsuit against prosecutors and Harris County, claiming that her constitutional rights had been violated and that her jailing amounted to being "re-raped." She further claimed that the court order - called an "attachment order" - used to jail her was illegally obtained. A Houston Chronicle investigation published this week about the case - "Serial Indifference" - revealed that for nearly eight years, Hendricks was accused of raping homeless women in Harris County. Authorities arrested him for those crimes more than once, but flaws and failure in the criminal justice system allowed him to go free, leading to more alleged crimes. Lawyer required Whitmire said the bill requires that before anyone can seek a writ of attachment to hold a victim or witness in jail, "that person, an innocent person, has to have a court-appointed lawyer to protect their interests." It also requires a public court hearing, not a hearing in a judge's chambers, and a re-hearing of the case after 15 days, Whitmire said. Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg has endorsed the legislation, as have other prosecutors and justice-advocacy groups. She won her election challenge over incumbent Devon Anderson, whose office authorized putting Jenny behind bars. Ogg said she was gratified to learn of the Senate's quick and unanimous support for the bill and looked forward to a similar reception by the House. "No victim of crime should ever again be made to suffer the trauma, indignity and indifference that attended Jenny's case," Ogg said. "This new law will ensure it won't happen to anybody else." April Mitchell, chief executive officer for the Dallas Area Rape Crisis Center, applauded Texas lawmakers for honoring the rights and dignity of victims. "Their example of unanimously passing bi-partisan legislation on behalf of vulnerable populations is a victory in the battle advocates fight on a daily basis," Mitchell said. She added that in an effort to provide protection and social justice for sexual assault victims, lawmakers have also created an ongoing conversation that can have lasting effects. "We fight for a future of social justice that ensures protection from sexual violence and being re-victimized," she said. 'A lasting legacy' Despite support in both the Senate and House, some prosecutors have raised concerns that the Houston case should have been addressed with a local policy change rather than a new state law. Whitmire and state Sen. Joan Huffman, a Houston Republican and former Harris County prosecutor and district judge, insist the change in state law involving writs of attachment is something that should be changed now to prevent what happened to Jenny from happening again. In addition, Whitmire said Jenny's case highlights several issues in Texas' criminal justice system: that jails hold too many mentally challenged people and are sometimes the largest mental health centers in a county; that violence is too pervasive in correctional settings; and that too many people who should be out on bond are held in jails because they can't afford it. "Jail was not the place for Jenny and it's not the place for a lot of other people, certainly not victims and witnesses who can obviously be victimized again in that setting," Whitmire said. Passage of the bill will give victims, especially sexual assault victims, peace of mind, knowing the criminal justice system is working on their behalf, said Andy Kahan, a victim advocate for the city of Houston. "We can't go back and change what happened to Jenny," he said. "But at least she will have a lasting legacy knowing what happened to her will not happen to any other victim in the foreseeable future." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Hillary Clinton called on President Donald Trump's administration Friday to develop a strategy to end Syria's civil war in a manner consistent with American values, following a United States missile strike on the country late Thursday. The former secretary of state and Democratic presidential candidate also condemned Syrian President Bashar Assad's chemical weapons attack on his country this week, which prompted the U.S. strike on a Syrian air base. "It is essential that the world does more to deter Assad from committing future murderous atrocities. But the action taken last night needs to be followed by a broader strategy to end Syria's civil war," Clinton said, speaking at a 2,500-person Houston luncheon for the Texas women's political group Annie's List. "I hope this administration will move forward in a way that is most strategic and consistent with our values, and I also hope that they will recognize that we cannot in one breath speak of protecting Syrian babies and in the next close America's borders." Clinton, who did not elaborate what she meant by American values,added that the attack "reminds us and, certainly, the last 100 days are a reminder that politics matter enormously." Clinton focused her 30-minute speech on rallying Texas Democrats - particularly women - to be politically active, fight Republican policies she views as harmful to women, and work on turning Texas blue. Clinton zeroed in on Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. "The activism is more important than ever, and it's working. Think of the thousands of people who flooded into town halls helping to bring down the Republicans' terrible health care bill," she said. "When you're talking about empowering women, well, that's a hollow gesture when your actions endanger women's lives." She also nodded to a bill by state Rep. Jessica Farrar, D-Houston, titled the "Man's Right to Know Act," which would fine men $100 for masturbating. "The bill may be satirical, but the message sure resonated," Clinton said. Farrar has said she filed the bill - named after an booklet Texas physicians are required to give women considering an abortion - out of frustration over male lawmakers' approaches to women's health care. The former secretary of state kept a relatively low profile in the months after losing last year's presidential election to Trump, opting to spend time "walking in the woods," as she put it. Clinton, however, has spoken at several events geared toward women in leadership in recent weeks. "Nothing in politics in a Democracy is permanent," she told the packed downtownballroom primarily composed of Democratic women. "Even though things may feel bleak, just turn off the TV. That's my advice for the short term." Clinton helped turn Harris County blue last November despite under-performing national expectations, defeating Trump by more than 12 points and carrying local Democrats with her. The party won every countywide position on the ballot. Harris County still is considered the nation's largest swing county, however, and Democrats face a steep uphill battle across the state. Texans last elected a Democrat to statewide office in 1994, and the party holds just 36 percent of the seats in the state Legislature, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Women are outnumbered on both sides of the aisle. Just 20 percent of Texas state legislators are women, per NCSL, putting the state 33rd in the nation for female representation. Clinton focused on Texas women who have held elected office, naming leaders like former Gov. Ann Richards, former Mayor Annise Parker and a slew of current representatives. "I think right here in Texas, we can do a lot to build those bridges of common purpose and shared values," she said. "If we grasp and stay true to that vision, I believe with all my heart that this state will be as blue as the big Texas sky." Last year's presidential election never was far from view Friday. Roughly a dozen Trump supporters demonstrated outside the Marriott Marquis ahead of Clinton's appearance, and attendees repeatedly harkened back to her November upset. Annie's List Executive Director Patsy Woods Martinintroduced Clinton as "the woman who should be president," and luncheon honoree and top Democratic donor Amber Mostyn praised the former senator for her fight. "Sec. Clinton, you withstood everything they had to throw at you, and you did it for us," Mostyn said. "Like you, like (former state) Sen. Wendy Davis, like many of the women in this room, you did it, you tried. And if you fall short, you get right back up again fighting for the things that you believe in." Texas doesn't have any official state color, though there's probably plenty of folks arguing for maroon or burnt orange. But here's another color that's true-blue Texas - green. No, not green as in mean, from University of North Texas. We mean green as in the 11,000-plus wind turbines that can produce more than 20,000 megawatts of energy - triple the capacity of any other state. We mean green as in the natural gas that's helped the United States reduce our carbon footprint. We mean green as in the carbon-capture technology that NRG Energy built at a coal-fired power plant in Fort Bend County. Unfortunately, our politicians only seem able to look at our state in black and white terms. Or, more accurately, they view it in terms of blue or red - Democratic or Republican. Just look at how U.S. Sen. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz have reacted to the Trump administration's planned rewrite of the Clean Power Plan, which was signed in an executive order last week. That Obama-era energy rule created state-by-state guidelines for reducing emissions of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that traps heat and contributes to rising global temperatures. Cornyn said that eliminating the EPA regulation prioritizes "job creation over catering to environmental activists," and Cruz claimed that the Clean Power Plan would "slow the economy, and crush job creation." Maybe they mean jobs in West Virginia, because Trump's EPA order is likely to hurt the natural gas and wind industries here in Texas. An analysis by the Energy Information Administration lays out two futures - one under the Clean Power Plan where natural gas remains the dominant energy source in the United States. And another, without the rule, where coal clings on as older, dirty plants aren't retired. If Cornyn and Cruz cared about Texas-made energy, they'd be lamenting the EPA rollback. Instead, our senators repeat the party line by advocating for special treatment and policy handouts that help Rust Belt states. They're not the only Texas politicians who seem to have a vacation home in coal country. At a University of Houston energy symposium this week, Railroad Commissioner Wayne Christian touted the 6,500 coal jobs that the Trump administration saved by repealing the Clean Power Plan. No word on how the plan would affect jobs in wind or natural gas. And things are only going to get worse for Texas-style energy. If Washington abandons its federal responsibility to regulate carbon emissions, states are going to pick up the slack on their own terms. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, just signed a bill to ban fracking in his state. There's similar efforts in Pennsylvania, California and New York. Republicans won't hold a majority in Washington forever. Regulations on carbon will be passed one way or another, and a swinging pendulum might end up driving towards an across-the-board ban. Texans in Congress should be working now to lay a long-term foundation for Texas energy by supporting environmental regulations that fit with our state. In fact, there's already a plan on the table - a carbon tax. White House officials have floated the idea of a tax on carbon emissions as a way to balance out a corporate tax cut, and Cruz and Cornyn should give it serious consideration. Black gold may still be the shade that colors our state in the national imagination, but Texas has become a leader in environmentally sound energy production. Our elected officials should be working to keep us in first. When it comes to immigration and border security, the Nativist-in-Chief in the White House is committed, it seems, to a strategy that relies on spreading chaos, fear and debilitating apprehension throughout immigrant communities. His immigration and border security agencies feel unleashed. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in particular seem to be taking a perverse pride in the fact that the acronym ICE on the back of their navy-blue uniforms has come to symbolize bullying law-enforcement tactics we more commonly associate with authoritarian regimes in other countries. The characterization may be unfair, and yet daily stories reinforce that reputation. Here in Houston, the latest outrage involved two doctors from India who were informed by immigration officials last week they had 24 hours to leave the United States. Never mind that they both were working legally in Houston, that both had been here more than a decade and are highly specialized in their fields. Never mind that scores of patients rely on their expertise. A new policy, they were told, no longer allowed them to extend their temporary permission to stay while they waited for permanent authorization. "I was breaking down every two hours," Dr. Pankaj Satija told the Chronicle's Lomi Kriel. Satija, a 40-year-old neurologist, helped found the Pain and Headache Centers of Texas and performs about 200 operations a month. His wife, Dr. Monika Ummat, also is a neurologist; she specializes in epilepsy at Texas Children's Hospital. They have two young, U.S.-born children. Despite their skills, despite their service to this country and this community, despite their exemplary lives - they've never gotten so much as a parking ticket and pay their taxes quarterly rather than yearly - Customs and Border Protection officials told them on Wednesday of last week they had 24 hours to pack their bags, collect their children and return to India, where they haven't lived in 15 years. They were at Bush Intercontinental Airport ready to depart when customs officials told them the agency had reversed course. Satija and Ummat were fortunate to have connections, not only capable attorneys but also support from the local medical community and access to the media. They had help from the offices of U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and U.S. Rep. John Culberson, R-Houston. "The doctors are extremely lucky to have had the resources that they had," Satija's attorney, Amber Garcia of the Quan Law Group, told Kriel. "But most people don't have those resources. This shows that things are only going to get more difficult." How are these people a threat to national security? How are we made safer by a fear-mongering president or by faceless bureaucrats implementing harsh and unreasonable policies? Who benefits when a society tolerates bullying police tactics? These are grave questions we have to address at a time when President Trump and his ethnonationalist minions seek to shut down the country in the name of national security. Obviously, we have an obligation to protect our borders and to implement appropriate standards of entry, but as Houstonians well know we live in a world increasingly interconnected by trade, business and cultural ties, as well as obligations under international law to assist refugees with a "well-founded fear" of persecution (including being gassed by one's own government). As a purely practical matter, America needs doctors like Ummat and Satija; small towns increasingly rely on foreign physicians willing to live and work outside the big cities. We need individuals with technical skills, and, yes, we need agricultural workers to perform the vital tasks Americans are unwilling to do. We could fix our broken immigration system if we were so inclined. Fix it so that skilled doctors would not fear deportation. Fix it so that farmers and ranchers could rely on a labor pool, workers from other countries who couldn't be exploited because of their precarious legal position. Fix it so that law-abiding undocumented immigrants who have lived and worked in this country for years could continue contributing to their communities without fear of ICE agents banging on their doors or arresting them at schools or courthouses or other public places. This White House and this Justice Department and this Department of Homeland Security are not so inclined. Given that stark reality, it falls to local communities to resist with every legal means available the harsh and unreasonable policies that almost ensnared two talented doctors. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Stop Assad Regarding "Chemical attack in Syria stirs outrage" (Page A1, Wednesday), more than 500,000 people have been killed in Syria mostly due to Assad regime crimes - shelling, torture, starvation, dehydration. Now a chemical attack in Idlib killed at least 58 and injured more than 300. More egregiously, the hospital treating the chemical weapons survivors was also targeted. This heinous act came just days after White House press secretary Sean Spicer made disturbing remarks stating that the U.S. will no longer call for the removal of Bashar Assad from power in Syria. Similar statements made by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley essentially, meant a green light for Assad. The world must take bolder steps against the dictator Assad to protect civilians. Russia and Iran, which are key Assad enablers, deserve censure and consequences. I believe Americans can take an active role to protect civilians in Syria by contacting their congressional representatives and demanding accountability for the chemical attack. Legislation in Congress, the "Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2017" that calls for sanctions against Assad and safe-zone protection for civilians is worthwhile. As long as there is no political leadership to address Assad's criminal regime, we can unfortunately expect to see the horrors and death-toll mount. We need to heed an important history lesson of people getting gassed to death: Never again. Shireen Jasser, president, Syrian American Council, Houston Chapter Numb to gassing It is tragic that we live in a time when chemical weapon attacks on civilians have become so normal. President after president, our elected leaders have grown too comfortable with and impotent about images of shivering children being gassed by the Syrian dictator. I so wish that John McCain was our elected president. Max Sammon, Houston A dangerous business Regarding "Tipster in hitman case fears for safety" (Page A4, Thursday), Houston City Councilman Michael Kubosh's attack on the Harris County District Attorney's office because his name was revealed in a hearing last week smacks of politics as usual. Kubosh seems to have timed his public outrage to coincide with District Attorney Kim Ogg's office moving forward on bail reform that might stifle the flow of easy money business to his firm. Bail bondsmen deal with a number of dangerous characters. I find it impossible to believe that he hasn't already taken steps to protect his family many years ago. Is the good councilman afraid for his life or just his pocketbook? Susan Miller Jackson, Houston Investigative report Regarding "Serial indifference" (beginning Sunday), well done! Your four-chapter series detailing serial rapist Keith Edward Hendricks and the struggles to bring him to justice was an example of excellent reporting. While long, it was necessary to provide a clear understanding. Thank you for doing a first-class job of investigative reporting. Bill Pratt, Deer Park Skilled immigrants fearful Regarding "Reprieve spares doctors facing removal to India" (Page A1, March 31), this story of highly skilled, specialized doctors from India - a section of immigrants many thought would be safe from the harsher immigration policies Trump promised during his campaign - is yet another example of how dangerous it is to cling to an illusion of safety based on income, skill level or immigration status. While this case has ended in a granting of humanitarian parole, allowing the doctors to stay in the country, the government is determined to plow forward with immigration policies that deliver a simple message: No immigrants should feel safe, and anyone can be subject to deportation. This message has dire consequences. In late February, two Indian engineers were shot in a Kansas bar, one of them fatally. In early March, another Indian man was shot and killed in South Carolina. Both are suspected hate crimes. It is important for people to understand the connection between ICE raids on undocumented communities and the bureaucratic attacks on skilled immigrants like these Indian doctors. Both of these policies work together as part and parcel of a fascist program, represented by President Trump, Vice President Pence and a coalition of people around them who, to varying degrees, aim to re-configure American society under the signboard of "America First." There are many definitions of fascism, but they all have in common an appeal to xenophobic nationalism and demonization of minority groups. Travis Morales, Houston Innovative thinking Regarding "Texas lawmakers might let community colleges offer bachelors' degrees" (Chron.com, Thursday), as long as the academics are on par with other universities, this is a great opportunity for students wanting to stay close to home and who do not have the resources for a four-year university. This would mean less crowding in our state universities, lower student debt and more access to students of all economic backgrounds. Kudos for thinking out of the box! Wendy Tomascik Ruiz, posted via Facebook Privacy rollback Regarding "Played for a sucker/Republicans sell out the American people by rolling back online privacy rules" (Page A16, March 31), if there ever was a question as to who the GOP represents, here's proof without a shadow of a doubt. There is not a single person of any age, gender or political persuasion anywhere in the country that wants their browsing history and personal information marketed without their knowledge or permission. Yet that's what the GOP in Congress just approved. We no longer have a government "of the people, by the people, for the people;" we now have a government "of special interests, by special interests, for special interests." Venu Rao, Houston White House economic adviser Gary Cohn said he backed bringing back the Glass-Steagall Act, a Depression-era law that would revamp Wall Street banks by splitting their consumer-lending businesses from their investment arms, Reiters reported. The National Economic Council director, also a former Goldman Sachs (GS.N) president, expressed support to lawmakers for a banking system where firms would focus primarily on trading and underwriting securities or issuing loans. Big banks have strongly opposed such a move that would fundamentally overhaul their business. Reinstating the law, which was repealed in 1999, has not attracted significant attention in Congress, but advocates in the White House and both parties now argue it would provide critical safeguards to prevent another financial crisis. Critics of that approach say it lacks nuance and would not have prevented the last financial meltdown. The fact Cohn, widely viewed as one of Wall Street's own, was willing to push that position spooked big banks' representatives in Washington. The White House confirmed Cohn's remarks in a private meeting with lawmakers on Wednesday. A spokesperson said he was "simply discussing the President's previously stated position" in favor of a "21st century Glass-Steagall." Cohn's remarks were first reported by Bloomberg. The Trump administration has indicated support for a return to Glass-Steagall. The White House has stuck by the idea since it was included in the Republican Party platform during the presidential campaign, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin expressed interest in a modernized version of the law. When asked on Thursday when large financial institutions should begin to worry about Glass-Steagall becoming a reality, one industry representative said, "Right now." Subscribing to our services is a three step process. First you have to create an account and then you have to pick if you want to subscribe to digital and or print. Some people only want to be a digital subscriber to get access online and others want to also receive the print edition. If you are already a print subscriber and want online access, it is free, you simply have to create an online account and then attach your print subscription account number to the online account you create. As an existing print subscriber it is easy to get FREE access to all our online content. When you click get started below it will walk you through creating an online account to attach your print subscription number to. After your account is created it will ask you to either add a subscription for online access or click on the print subscriber button. Click the print subscriber button header and it will open a dropdown, now click on get started. The page will reload and you will be prompted to enter an account number and a zip code. IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO USE THE NUMBER OFF OF THE MOST RECENT ISSUE OR ANYTHING AFTER JANUARY 28, 2019 TO GAIN ACCESS! OLD ACCOUNT NUMBERS WILL NOT WORK The account number and zip code are easily available on your most recent issue of the High Plains Journal or Midwest Ag Journal in the address fields as is shown here. Sometimes the account number has extra zero's in front of it, just ignore those. Prime Minister Binali Yildirim reiterated on Friday his call for a safe zone to be established in war-torn Syria, Anadolu reported. The truth is revealed one more time; a safe zone in northern Syria should absolutely be formed and Syrians who are fleeing from the war should be secured there, Yildirim told a crowd at an inauguration ceremony in Turkeys southeastern province of Hakkari. We reiterate our proposal to the international community, and we are also making preparations on the issue in our own capacity, he added. Yildirim also said Turkey supported and welcomed what he termed the U.S. response to Tuesdays chemical weapons attack in Idlib. U.S. forces fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian military air base which American officials believe was used to carry out the deadly chemical attack on Tuesday. More than 100 civilians were reportedly killed and 500 others -- mostly children -- were injured in Tuesday's attack on Khan Shaykhun town in Syrias northwest. Yildirim said Syria needed a permanent, political solution to end the brutality of the six-year civil war. Last month, the UNs Syria envoy said the Geneva V peace talks had ended with "serious challenges" remaining to find a peace deal. In the span of a single generation Singapore has rapidly grown from a newly independent city-state to one of the worlds highly developed economies and striking a balance between pro-business and pro-worker policies has helped the country achieved that feat. At the launch of the Tripartite Alliance for Dispute Management (TADM) last Friday, Minister for Manpower Lim See Say recalled how Singapore did not have anything during its early days of industrialisation in the 60s. Under the leadership of former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, the country resorted to a strategy of borrowing. We did not have technology, market, capital, nor jobs and we borrowed from the world - US, Europe, Japan and we talked to the MNCs [Multi-National Corporations]. Because of this borrowed strategy, we get to where we are today. But the Minister said Singapore also had to be pro-worker so that Singaporeans would also benefit from the development and progress. The answer lied in Tripartism cooperation between businesses, workers, and the government. He described Tripartism as a very simple concept thats also very difficult to implement. This is the reason why until today, Tripartism is still a secret weapon. Our challenge is to continue to build on it. Over five decades after independence, he said Singapore still coutns own Tripartism as a policy for the future. As we move towards the future economy, we need to create more and better jobs. We set up the sectoral tripartite committee, sector by sector, for 23 sectors, with the Labour Movement, the industry, and government agencies. We turn to Tripartism to help us to create better jobs, in every sector of our economy. Among other things, Tripartism has influenced the Adapt and Grow inotoatove, raised re-employment age, and flexible work arrangements for women who return to work. It has also helped enhance the well-being of low-wage workers, through sectoral tripartite committees for landscaping, security and cleaning sectors. Lim spoke during the launch of the Tripartite Alliance for Dispute Management (TADM), which provides advisory and mediation services for salary-related disputes. TADM also operates a Short Term Relief Fund for low wage workers. This aims to provide quick relief to such earners who are owed salary by employers in financial difficulties or facing business failure. He also announced the formation of Tripartite Alliance Limited (TAL). The company is jointly owned by MOM, NTUC and Singapore National Employers Federation. The three parties will collate our resources, pool our expertise and work together as one tripartite alliance to serve the interests of our workers to the best of our ability, not just today, but into the future. We want to ensure that the unfair practices in Singapore are eliminated, Lim said. Through tripartite efforts, Singapore launched the Human Capital Partnership (HCP) about two months ago. Today, the number of companies under the Watchlist is longer than the list of Human Capital Partners - 250 under the watchlist and 74 under the HCP today. The ratio is 3:1. Through tripartite efforts, we believe we can reverse this such that the HCP list will be much longer than the watchlist. A Calgary family's vandalized SUV is the latest example of the city's growing hate-crime graffiti trend. According to Calgary police, graffiti targeting certain ethnicities and religions is becoming more common. In 2017 alone, police have investigated six cases, including one high-profile incident where Islamophobic and anti-Semitic phrases were written at a public park. Advertisement This latest instance occurred Thursday morning. The family woke up to see the windows of their SUV smashed in and anti-Islam comments such as 'F. ARAB' and 'F. ISLAM' written on the vehicle. Calgary police said it was the only vandalized property in the neighbourhood, and they're asking anyone with information to come forward. "These are not minor offences," Senior Const. Craig Collins said in a Facebook post Friday. Advertisement "We take it very seriously and will pursue the people responsible to try to prevent other families from being victimized in the same way, simply because of their ethnicity or religion." Hateful graffiti isn't the only form of Islamphobia on the rise in Alberta. In February, a Muslim man from Edmonton found a note on his car that targeted his ethnicity. "Can't just tie up your camel anywhere over here...," read the note. "Adapt or go back." In a December 2016 case, an Edmonton man was caught slipping anti-Islam flyers into mailboxes around the city. The same month, a man threatened hijab-wearing Muslim women with a noose at a transit station. Also on HuffPost With a second chance at life, one 18-year-old girl from Edmonton finally got to visit her sponsored sister in Ethiopia thanks to the Childrens Wish Foundation of Canada. After being diagnosed with thyroid cancer at the age of 16, Isabel Schuppli went through several intense rounds of treatment and surgery before being declared cancer-free this year. Advertisement While she was still being treated, the Foundation heard of Schupplis journey to recovery and wanted to grant her one wish. With the help of her mom, Schuppli decided that the only thing she wanted was to travel to Ethiopia and visit Kidist Meskele, a 17-year-old girl who has been sponsored by Schupplis family through Compassion Canada for five years. Once the idea of going to visit Kidist came about, I thought that was the best wish, Schuppli told CBC Edmonton. Advertisement Schuppli and Meskele had been in contact all those years by sending each other letters and photos, but never had the chance to meet in person. After close to a year of planning, the Childrens Wish Foundation of Canada and Compassion Canada were finally able to make Schupplis wish a reality, according to CBC Edmonton. A few days after receiving the news that she was cancer-free, Schuppli and her family arrived in Ethiopia to finally meet Meskele. In an interview with 100 Huntley Street, Schuppli described their first encounter as being very emotional. It was crazy. There were so many kids everywhere and right in the centre was Kidist. It was so different. She looked just like her picture but so much not like her picture, said Schuppli. Advertisement Despite the language barrier, Schuppli notes that both she and Meskele were very much alike and were able to click very easily, according to the Edmonton Journal. We couldnt really communicate as seamlessly as you would be able to from someone who spoke your language, so it was difficult, Schuppli told the Vernon Morning Star. It was amazing to just be there and to kinda get to know her in other ways besides just talking. Just hanging out with her and (learning) her mannerisms and kind of understanding what shes like was kind of interesting. When speaking to the Edmonton Sun, Schuppli said that now, its going to be easier to ask more personal questions (in letters) since we know more about her. Curtis Allen, a videographer from Kelowna, B.C., went with the family to shoot a video of the trip, which can be seen below. Advertisement Jenna Rego, one of the coordinators for the Childrens Wish Foundation, told CBC Edmonton that Schupplis request pushed her into uncharted territories and that out of all the wishes the foundation grants, her wish was very unique. In Meskeles town, Schuppli and her family had the opportunity to visit the centres where she receives tutoring, recreation and healthcare, thanks to Compassion Canada. This trip made me see how important all these organizations are, said Schuppli to the Edmonton Sun. In case youve forgotten , there is still a lot of good in this world. Anyone who can and wants to, can easily sponsor a child of their own through Compassion Canadas website. Advertisement Also on HuffPost H&M announced this week that it will be investing in clothes made out of poop. (Yes, you read that right.) In an effort to up its eco-friendly game and become 100 per cent sustainable by 2040, H&M announced that it plans to only use recycled materials and renewable resources and yes, that means cow manure. Advertisement Apparently cow poop can be turned into a soft, sturdy material by extracting cellulose found in dried dung. Natural liquid plastic can also be made from wet manure by extracting acids from it to create cellulose acetate, Dezeen reports. While many have dubbed this new material poop fabric, inventor Jalila Essaidi is calling it Mestic. The Netherlands designer originally came up with the idea to turn manure into haute couture after she realized there was a growing surplus of manure globally. Advertisement This is not the first time that scientists are looking for ways to solve the manure problem, she told Dezeen last year. But it is the first time that manure is being considered as a valuable resource. Essaidis unique idea was picked up by the Swedish retailer after it was entered into H&M Foundations second annual Global Change Awards. These awards are given to scientists who come up with big, innovative ideas in fashion. This year, Essaidi was one of five winners. Who's ready for glammed-up days and long, balmy nights? #HM A post shared by H&M (@hm) on Apr 6, 2017 at 12:11am PDT Besides manure couture, other winning ideas included grape leather, which uses waste materials from winemaking to make fake leather, and solar textiles, which manufactures nylon using sustainable resources such as water, plant waste and solar energy. Speaking about H&Ms plans to go green and their new quirky ideas, CEO Karl-Johan Persson told Vogue: We want to get there so it means something. But it also means pushing the ambition and being visionary, taking the lead in these topics. We want to see yearly improvements, so that its not just, lets set the goal of 2040 and see what happens. Advertisement Thanks to sustainability, the future of fashion is shaping up to be an interesting one. Also on HuffPost Stacks of lumber at a Home Depot store in Los Angeles. (Photo : Getty Images News) Jimmy Lee, a Chinese, is buying lumber mills in Western North Carolina to provide China with hardwood to satisfy consumers' taste for quality products brought about by recently acquired wealth. Advertisement Lee owns 11 mills in the United States that include the Stanley Furniture plant, which once had the distinction of being the largest employer in Graham County. He also has facilities in North and South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia, where he processes lumber for the Chinese market. The Chinese market helps provide jobs for timber workers, such as mill workers, loggers or exporters. Furthermore, the Chinese market boosts the value of timber, which consequently encourages landowners to grow and manage timberlands rather than converting them for planting more traditional crops. North Carolina's timber exports to China, as well as those of other U.S. states, have drastically increased in recent years. More timber is being harvested in the U. S. to be shipped to China, where it is made into furniture, flooring and other high-value products. According to John Hammond of the North Carolina Department of Agriculture, about 40 percent of timber from North Carolina is now destined for China. In the last five years, the average value of Tar Heel wood and wood products sent to China is $165--almost 30 times than the prices in 2000. Lee began his education and career in the timber business in China before moving to the United States in late 2003. At that time, lumber shipped to China often came back to the United States as furniture or other finished wood items. However, China's emerging economy has reversed the situation. It was ten years ago when China began consuming more lumber to manufacture flooring, furniture and other wooden products. In 2014, it was reported that there was a growing demand for rosewood furniture in China over the previous decade. Lee noted that just five years ago, China makes furniture with yellow poplar, a very low-end chipper wood, and ships it back to the U.S. But when it comes to expensive wood, like Walnut and Red Oak, most of it stay in China. In that same decade, North Carolina's furniture declined due to competition from lower-priced imported goods with the 600,000-square-foot Stanley Furniture plant being among the casualties. Lee bought Stanley Furniture plant in 2014, and last year had $8.3 million in sales from that facility. This year, he hopes the former Stanley Furniture plant, now renamed Oak Valley Hardwoods, hits $12 million in sales. The MTV Movie Awards as you know them will soon cease to exist. This year's show, which is set to air live from the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on May 7, 2017, is undergoing a major revamp, from its title to its categories. Now known as the MTV Movie & TV Awards, this year's show not only recognizes television series, it will also pit male and female actors against each other in their new, non-gendered acting categories. Advertisement That means "Stranger Things" star Millie Bobby Brown, for example, is going head-to-head against "The Walking Dead's" Jeffrey Dean Morgan for Best Actor in a Show. The MTV Movie Awards has Tv now and they also have me as a host!!!! There was no other actor who was as accomplished as I in both movies AND tv! Also, Chris Pratt is super busy. May 7th! Live! I'm not nervous about that at all! A post shared by Adam Devine (@andybovine) on Apr 5, 2017 at 8:31pm PDT "We have to constantly be pushing ourselves to not only respond to culture but lead it," MTV president Chris McCarthy told CNNMoney on Thursday. "If we're going to do an award show that celebrates content, why would we not modernize what that looks like?" Though eliminating gender-specific divisions does reduce the list of potential nominees (generally there were six people nominated in each one), MTV has apparently countered that by introducing new categories that include both film and TV, like Best Tearjerker, Best Duo, Best American Story and Best Fight Against The System. Advertisement Once upon a time, a "Best Fight" award was very much focused on an action sequence, but these days McCarthy says the fight is more about activism. "Today, we see what's happening whether it's Black Lives Matter, the Women's March. Young audience members are reviving an activism voice that we haven't seen in years, and we want to celebrate that and encourage it." Your MTV Movie and TV Awards host, @andybovine Catch the #MTVAwards on Sunday, May 7th at 8/7c on MTV! A post shared by MTV (@mtv) on Apr 5, 2017 at 4:00pm PDT The argument for scrapping gender-specific awards is nothing new. In 2008, U.K's National Television Awards dropped their best actor and actress categories in favour of gender neutral ones, only to bring them back temporarily in 2012 and 2013. "A great performance is great regardless of gender and we think that dropping the male/female division has made the drama performance category more exciting," Kim Turberville, executive producer and founder of the NTAs said. Advertisement Even North American TV's biggest award show, the Emmys, was once gender neutral. The division only began in 1951, when awards for lead actor and actress were handed out, Variety reports. We couldn't think of a better time to bring back gender-neutral awards. And hey, if it cuts down on the length of the show too, we're all the more for it! Also on HuffPost Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus government has declined to help fund a basic income experiment on Prince Edward Island. The legislature in Canadas smallest province voted unanimously last December to ask the federal government to partner with the province on a basic income trial. Advertisement But in an update on its efforts on Thursday, the provincial government said federal Families, Children and Social Development Minister Jean-Yves Duclos offered to provide data to support P.E.I. in developing a pilot but did not offer any financial support. The federal Liberals voted last year to make efforts towards a universal basic income a part of party policy. But that does not mean it is government policy. During a town hall with The Huffington Post Canada last month, federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau said that a basic income is not something we are looking at. Advertisement Morneau said he favours the current system of targeted government benefits. We are looking at how we can encourage people to be engaged in the workforce, he said. Prince Edward Islands government says it would need federal help to fund an island-wide basic income trial. Provincial Green Party Leader Peter Bevan-Baker, who first put forward the basic income proposal in the provincial legislature, said he was disappointed with Ottawa's response. "Sadly I take away from that that it's unlikely we're going to see any material change here," he said, as quoted at CBC P.E.I. Bevan-Baker said he hoped the province would continue pressing Ottawa for funding. Advertisement Thats exactly what P.E.I. Premier Wade MacLauchlan plans to do. We continue to work on that and we continue to hope for it, MacLauchlan said in question period, as quoted at the Charlottetown Guardian. The provinces Family and Human Services Minister, Tina Mundy, said shes keeping an eye on the basic income pilot project in Ontario, details of which are to be announced this spring. Bevan-Baker suggested P.E.I. could choose to run a smaller-scale project. "Pick a region, pick a community. Of course I'd love to see it tip to tip, but you know, if we have to settle for something smaller that could be funded solely through the provincial treasury, then at least that would be something." Also on HuffPost Pierce Brosnan knows what its like to lose loved ones. The James Bond star lost his first wife, Cassandra Harris, to ovarian cancer in 1991. Twenty-two years later, he lost his daughter, Charlotte, to the same disease. In a recent interview with Esquire, the 63 year old opened up about the tragedy and how the heartbreak still stays with him today. Advertisement I don't look at the cup as half full, believe me, he said. The dark, melancholy Irish black dog sits beside me from time to time. Pierce Brosnan, Cassandra Harris, daughter Charlotte and son Christopher in 1985. Brosnan and Harris tied the knot in 1980 and were together until she passed away at the age of 43. They had one son together, 33-year-old Sean, who grew up to be an actor like his father. Brosnan also adopted Harris two children Chris, 44, and Charlotte from a previous marriage. The kids took his last name after their own father died in 1986. Four months after Harris passed away, the actor told People magazine: There is an incredible cruelty in it all, losing a person you shared everything with. This is the first time in my life Ive ever experienced bereavement, and its overwhelming. Advertisement Brosnan later married his wife Keely Shaye Smith and had two more kids: Dylan, 20, and Paris, 16. Pierce Brosnan and wife Keely Shaye Smith at the 29th European Film Awards. Gushing about Smith to Mirror U.K. in 2013, Brosnan said: She is the most beautiful woman and someone who has been my North Star for many a day and a year now. However, the actor added that while he is happy now, he still lives with his loss: Ups and downs are what life is all about. But the memory of Cassie and her fight against cancer is never forgotten. Sadly, tragedy struck again in 2013 when Brosnan's daughter Charlotte lost her battle with ovarian cancer, just like her mother. She was 41 years old. Advertisement Pierce Brosnan and his daughter Charlotte in 2006. The actor has always spoken fondly of his kids with Harris. We just clicked as a family, he recalled to the Daily Express in 2013. I was Pierce then I was daddy Pierce and then I became dad. Charlotte and Chris have just been amazing in my life. Since losing his first wife and daughter, Brosnan has been an active member of Stand Up To Cancer, a charity which raises funds for cancer research. During Stand Up To Cancers telethon in 2014, the actor said: To watch someone you love have his or her life eaten away bit by bit by this insidious disease, that part of your sorrow becomes an indelible part of your psyche. Let's build that future where we hold our loved ones hands, watch them grow old as it should be, after a long life fully lived. Also on HuffPost Sick Kids Hospital Watching your child go through an illness is all but impossible, and when that illness is severe enough to warrant time in the hospital, the lack of control can make any parent break down. In honour of Mother's Day this year, SickKids Hospital in Toronto released a PSA documenting the strength of moms who are going through exactly that, literally picking themselves up off floors to prepare themselves to be tough for their kids. Advertisement Based around five mothers' real life stories, the ad is straightforward in its agony everyday scenes that are anything but typical, showing the mamas facing down the reality of their child's illness. There's Jessie, whose son Everest suffered a head trauma at six months and had to have emergency neurosurgery, shown in the last scene, and Sarah, whose daughter Jamieson was born with cystic fibrosis and had surgery just after birth to clear away bowel obstructions, in the chapel. Advertisement Diane's slide down the laundry room wall is nothing short of heartbreaking. Her son Jonathan was born with an abdominal defect, causing some of his internal organs to grow outside of his body and spent most of his first year of life at SickKids. Hilary's daughter, Willa, was premature and must still be fed with a feeding tube, the two still regularly visit the hospital for checkups as shown in the second-last scene. And Natashas daughter, Selena, who was diagnosed with a rare childhood cancer of the kidneys at age five and underwent 36 weeks of chemotherapy, is shown as a silhouette in an armchair. The stories are a testament to the incredible medical care the children can receive at SickKids (this is, after all, a request for donations towards the hospital), but also an almost too-real look behind the scenes at what these mothers endured, and continue to endure, as their children grow up. "If the child is ostracized in some way, it's the family who has to protect them from that or explain it." Dr. Edward Schor In 2016, CNN debuted a documentary entitled "The Super Parents," showing the lives of families with chronically ill children. Advertisement "I tend to not look on the lives of children with special needs as a child issue so much as it is a family issue," said Dr. Edward Schor, senior vice-president of Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health, which produced the film. "If the doctor says, 'Make an appointment to see a specialist,' it's the parents who have to make the appointment and then take off work and make that additional appointment. If the child is ostracized in some way, it's the family who has to protect them from that or explain it. So, it's really all about the family." If the thought of having to make small talk with your cab driver leaves you feeling a little tight in the chest, this new service from Japanese taxi company Miyako Taxi might be just what you need. According to RocketNews24, the company is rolling out a "silent taxi" service where drivers only speak to passengers to greet them, confirm routes and notify them in the event of an emergency. Advertisement A post shared by (@miyakotaxi) on Apr 5, 2017 at 2:17am PDT Ten cabs, which look exactly like regular taxis save for a sign informing riders they are in a silent taxi, are currently on the road in Kyoto and have been for two weeks with the potential for more to roll out. A spokesperson for the company explained that the new cabs are intended to provide a more comfortable experience for passengers who wish to enjoy their ride in silence. Though some might think the concept creates a barrier between drivers and passengers, some introverts argue that small talk does the exact same thing. Advertisement Introverts do not hate small talk because we dislike people, Laurie Helgoe, author of Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength, writes in her book. We hate small talk because we hate the barrier it creates between people. Introverts tend to look for meaning in conversation, something that doesn't always come about in a 10-minute cab ride. So Miyako's new service might seem especially appealing for people in that situation, as well as for those with social anxiety. Of course, on the other hand, if sitting in silence makes you uncomfortable, you can always hop into one of the regular cabs and chat away. Also on HuffPost JEWEL SAMAD via Getty Images Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau arrives for a meeting with United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres at the UN headquarters in New York on April 6, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / Jewel SAMAD (Photo credit should read JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images) April 6 is the hundredth anniversary of Prime Minister Borden's speech to the soldiers about to take part in the Battle of Vimy Ridge. He promised those men that there was a moral obligation to them if they were to return home injured. Since then the Liberal and Conservative governments have argued against those words. With the recent budget, I will be entering my 11th year without a life long disability pension, 9 years under the Conservatives and now two with the Liberals. The Trudeau government campaigned on the reestablishment of these pensions. Three times they made public overtures to that effect that in fact if and when they formed government they will re-establish the life long pensions that they took away in 2006 to begin with. Advertisement As hundreds of Canadians flock to the Vimy Memorial to commemorate the sacrifice of so many great Canadians, they will also be fighting the surviving veterans of later conflicts in court. Talking to Prince Harry about the upcoming Invictus games while using tax payer dollars in court arguing the legal definition of moral obligation. That is why at the next stakeholder summit I am calling for a vote of confidence in Minister Hehr. The vote will be conducted the first evening of the summit, by an anonymous vote. All stakeholders voting must be also a veteran and there will be one person arguing in favour of voting in favour of the minister and another arguing against. If the minister gets a vote of no confidence, then the next morning at a press conference the following list of items that need to be addressed will be given to the government to regain the trust of the stakeholders and repair the irreparable damage Prime Minister Trudeau has done to the veteran community: Immediately replace Minister Hehr The new Ministers office will have to have to hire veterans. The immediate retirement or transfer of the author of the New Veteran's Charter Bernard Butler The transition of the Department headquarters back to Ottawa The three objectives to be prioritized Life Long Pension, Care, Transition. Once these objectives are met then can the veterans truly begin to trust that the Liberal government are going to begin to be true to their word. In the last two years the inexcusable treatment at the hands of the government should be admonished. Instead, dignitaries are going to fly half way across the world to commemorate the centennial of the sacrifice and the watershed moment that helped create a Canadian identity. Advertisement All while ignoring the Prime Minister Borden's promise but three days prior to the battle for the ridge. The shame in which these people should feel knows no bounds. The utter disregard for the promises made not just by previous administrations but out of their very mouths is deplorable. To justifiably stand in front of a memorial while demonstrably desecrating the moral obligations all Canadians stand by shows not only how unfit for the role these people are, but also just how low they are willing to go to use an iconic anniversary to their own benefit. That is why the committees and the stakeholders do not feel comfortable being used by the government when they claim that the decisions this government makes at the detriment of the veterans was consulted and approved by veterans. We have a moral obligation to those we represent both past and future and we want to show our peers and future generations that we have their backs. We refuse to believe that our voices will be used to harm those that we have served with. We did not march, fight, and bleed alongside our fellow brothers and sisters to be used by the likes of you. You will not use us to shield your unpatriotic decisions. Advertisement Long before Justin Trudeau spoke about electoral reform (ER), another Trudeau tackled the issue. It was in 1979 and that Trudeau was Pierre Elliot. In November 1979, during the nine months between his two tenures as prime minister of Canada, the elder Trudeau said he was "convinced Canada needs a system of proportional representation if the federal government is going to be able to identify itself with the whole country." As you can see, the senior Trudeau did not vaguely address the topic of ER like our current PM has. He had a specific vision and explained it stressing on the importance of regional proportional representation for Canada's federal system. The model of ER the elder Trudeau supported was very much the same as the mixed member proportional system currently proposed by most advocates -- proportional representation. Advertisement After Justin Trudeau scrapped the whole idea of ER, it became clear that he was not interested in improving Canadian democracy, making "every vote count" or achieving a "fair" system that results in a Parliament the composition of which reflects voters' first choices. It became clear that our current PM wanted to reform the electoral system if and only if it would serve the Liberal Party. Thus, when it became clear that the preferential ballot model will not fly, he scrapped the whole thing. The difference between the visions of the two Trudeaus is clear. One was based on how to make the federal system more robust and more representative, while the other was based on self (party) interest. It is time that we see ER for what it is. It is not a luxury or an intellectual exercise. It is a need for a country where absolute power can be in the hands of a party that has the confidence of only 35 per cent of the voters. When you look at it like this, you realize it is not democracy -- where the power is in the hands of the people. Advertisement Canada cannot and should not be left behind under an undemocratic and flawed system. In our current situation, Justin Trudeau can make decisions while he and his party were NOT the choice of over 60 per cent of Canadians who cast their ballots in October 2015. This is simply wrong, and fixing it should NOT be an optional choice of a party or a PM. Especially when that PM promised on the campaign trail to "make every vote count." The debate on ER must continue and the Canadian electoral system must be reformed into a system that represents the will of the population. When the first past the post (FPP) model was adopted in the U.K. and inherited by Canada, the world was a different place. At the time, it was a huge step forward to give male property owners the power to choose their representatives in Parliament, and for the representative with the most support to be given power over the country's direction. It was a huge step forward from the absolute rule of the monarch. But democracy continued to evolve and many other steps followed. The right to vote was extended to other men, then to all men, and then to women -- who would eventually be allowed to run for office as well. The obvious next step is proportional representation. There is no need or justification to limit the influence of a voter in their riding. I am not saying that there be no local MPs who are connected and accountable to their constituency. This can be safeguarded while at the same time the composition of the Parliament as a whole proportionally reflects the choice of the people through the MMP system. Advertisement Countries like Cyprus, Denmark, Germany, Malta, New Zealand and South Africa have left FPP and moved on to better, more democratic systems. None of the young democracies around the world are adopting FPP. Canada cannot and should not be left behind under an undemocratic and flawed system. Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook Also on HuffPost: Robots on Display at a Trade Show (Photo : Getty Images News) The "geek culture" in China could help Americans get a better appreciation of the technological innovations in that country, according to Jack Zhang, founder and CEO of GeekPark, a Beijing-based tech innovation advocacy forum. He noted that the concept of "geek" in China is different from what Americans think. Advertisement According to Zhang, being called a geek is a compliment in China as someone who is "super cool" and knowledgeable about technology, and doesn't mean being weird or socially awkward. Zhang hopes to inform Americans that technological advancements have changed Chinese society and culture in recent years, and on how the two countries can learn from each other. He added that people in the U.S. misunderstand what's happening in China. In the last 10 years, China was changed drastically by the Internet and mobile technology from a country with very basic social services systems and an immature media industry to one where anyone can order whatever they want online and have it delivered for free in 24 hours. Today, the Chinese are getting 10 times more information, which means society will be more open and equal, and people will be more intelligent. Zhang said that he's not aware of how much money the Chinese government is spending in this area but a "new era of intelligence" is happening in China with a great private sector investment in artificial intelligence and new technology like IoT. A report released in December by the National Security Agency and the Department of Energy of the United States expressed concern that China may surpass the U.S. in the area of high-performance computing by 2020. Last October, the National Science and Technology Council of the U.S. revealed that China published about 350 scientific papers on artificial intelligence in 2015. Zhang said Americans can learn from Chinese companies like Mobike to build intelligence into products, and create more advanced products. Mobike is a dock-less city bicycle-sharing system that allows people to leave their bikes wherever they want because these have built-in intelligence that gives the operator information on where the bicycle is located, its status, and the usage. However, Zhang admits there are still many things China can learn from the United States in technology innovation, bringing technology into business, and the spirit to try different things, which is called the "Silicon Valley spirit." April is oral health month in Canada. Ads remind us to book an appointment with our dentist for a regular dental exam and to get our teeth cleaned by a dental hygienist. But in Canada's private dental care system, you have to pay to access both of these oral health services. So what if you can't afford to see a dentist or dental hygienist? Well you're not alone. Approximately one in six Canadians has difficulty getting oral health care because they can't afford the cost, they don't have dental insurance or it's too expensive to travel to the nearest provider. Advertisement In Ontario, it's estimated that two to three million people have not seen a dentist in the past year -- the main reason cited being cost. Ontario has some public dental programs, but only for children under 18 years of age in very low income families. There's also a patchwork of basic dental programs for people receiving social assistance. There are no dental health provincial programs for low income adults and seniors. It's the most vulnerable people in our communities who don't have access to dental care: low wage workers and their children; seniors and the institutionalized elderly; new Canadians; and Indigenous people. So it should come as no surprise that these are the groups in Ontario who have the highest rates of tooth decay, dental pain and gum disease. Oral diseases affect a person's general health and overall well-being. There is a link between poor oral health and the severity of chronic conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. Oral diseases and missing teeth also affect a person's sense of self-worth and their ability to get employment. It's tough to look for a job while experiencing dental pain or if you're missing front teeth. Advertisement So what are people doing when they're in dental pain but can't afford to see a dentist? Many people turn to their family doctors in the hope they can get help. Some in desperation try to treat the pain themselves or go to black market dentists who are not qualified to provide dental care. In 2014, there were almost 222,000 visits to Ontario physician offices for teeth and gum issues. That means that approximately every three minutes across the province, someone went to a doctor's office seeking care for a dental problem. But physicians are not trained or equipped to deal with diseases affecting teeth and gums, so they cannot provide appropriate treatment. OHIP pays a doctor a minimum of $33.70 per 15-minute patient visit. So these visits added up to at least $7.5 million of additional costs for Ontario's health care system in 2014 alone, with no proper treatment of the underlying health issue. This is a waste of healthcare resources, physicians' valuable time and public funding. Advertisement It's time to develop an effective public solution to this oral health care problem. It's time to acknowledge that the private dentistry model does not meet the needs of low income and vulnerable people. And it's time to stand firm and say the status quo is unacceptable. Let's build on this evidence and work toward the goal of equitable access to oral health care for everyone living in Ontario. A recent survey by the Ontario Oral Health Alliance found that in communities across Ontario, many private dental practices refuse to accept adults who are on social assistance programs. Many private dentists admit they are frustrated because low income people cannot pay and often miss appointments. Academic research shows that most people living on low income prefer to be treated in public dental clinics where they are welcomed and valued and don't experience stigma. Let's build on this evidence and work toward the goal of equitable access to oral health care for everyone living in Ontario. Advertisement Public health care dollars spent on acute care for oral health in ERs and physician offices would be better spent if invested to expand public oral health programs to low income adults and seniors delivered through models that are truly accessible for the elderly, people living on low incomes, newcomers and Indigenous people. Such models include delivering services within community health centres, Aboriginal health access centres, public health units and via public mobile dental buses. In other words, in places where many vulnerable people already access their health and social services. At community health centres, low income people can get their teeth checked while also being referred to other appropriate services, such as diabetes management programs, the mental health team, nutrition programs and primary health care all delivered at the same location. So this April, let's talk about how to best meet the oral health needs of people in our communities who cannot afford private dental care -- because we all deserve a healthy mouth and smile. Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook This weekend Canadians mark a significant anniversary in our nation's history -- the centennial of the Battle of Vimy Ridge. Vimy has been hailed as a nation-defining moment in Canadian history, as it was on the battlefields of Vimy that our soldiers proved to the world that we were a nation, ready and willing to take the enemy head on. Yet, just as we are set to mark the 100th anniversary of this momentous battle, a recent survey revealed that Canadians' awareness of Vimy is surprisingly low. Only 54 per cent of Canadians correctly knew that Vimy was fought in France (one in 10 thought Vimy is in Canada) and as many as three in five didn't know it was a battle in the First World War. Advertisement On April 9, 1917, 100,000 Canadian soldiers fought at Vimy and 3,598 of those died -- the most Canadian deaths recorded in the war. A century later, it appears many have forgotten their sacrifice. Worse still, many like me (until recently) don't even know they have a link to the battle. I very recently discovered that my ancestor, William Thorogood, was like many other young men who perished on the fields of Vimy during the first day of battle. A young farmer, William signed up on Dec. 15, 1915 in Toronto, Ont. A private in the 38th Infantry battalion, he was shot in the head by an enemy bullet. He was only 20 years old. Advertisement Finding out that I have a personal connection to Vimy makes the anniversary more poignant and real. But a personal connection is not necessary to appreciate the sacrifice of so many young soldiers. As a family history expert and general history buff, I have come to realize how our own personal story is intricately intertwined with the stories of where we live; of our communities, our cities and our country. Learning about our nation's history is not just something that happens in a classroom. It is something we can do each and every day. While many Canadians may not have (or know if they have) a direct link to Vimy, the values of leadership, collaboration and tenacity continue to live on in our country. I am proud to be Canadian and to mark this significant occasion this weekend by learning more about it. I encourage you to do the same. Advertisement Do you have a family connection to Vimy? You can discover more with resources like Ancestry (that offers a 14 day free trial) and The Vimy Foundation. Vimy 101 Canada joined the war when Britain declared war on Germany and her allies on Aug. 4, 1914. Over the course of the next four years, Canada raised more than 600,000 men and women for service with the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF). The Canadian assault on Vimy Ridge was one objective in a much larger offensive known as the Battle of Arras. The Canadians arrived on the Vimy front in early 1917. Under the leadership of Lt.-Gen. Sir Julian Byng, ambitious plans were soon laid down for a Canadian attempt to dislodge the Germans from the Ridge. Following a massive artillery bombardment of German positions, the Canadians attacked the Ridge on the morning of April 9. Over the course of the next four days, they pushed the Germans off the Ridge, captured more than 4,000 enemy soldiers and secured the heights. Four Canadians were awarded the Victoria Cross, the Empire's highest honour for bravery. In the early 1920s, Vimy Ridge was chosen as the location for Canada's national war memorial. Designed by architect Walter S. Allward, it took 15 years to erect the memorial on Hill 145, where some of the toughest fighting for the Ridge had taken place. Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook Facebook: [www.facebook.com/blakefergusonphotog]Instagram: [instagram.com/b.fphotography]Twitter: [twitter.com/bf_images]500px: [500px.com/bf_images] All content provided are under rights of copy. No image is to be alter-edited, cropped or enhanced in anyway unless admitted to do so. Content is available for repost or personal use. " data-caption="Connect with me at:Facebook: [www.facebook.com/blakefergusonphotog]Instagram: [instagram.com/b.fphotography]Twitter: [twitter.com/bf_images]500px: [500px.com/bf_images] All content provided are under rights of copy. No image is to be alter-edited, cropped or enhanced in anyway unless admitted to do so. Content is available for repost or personal use. " data-credit="Blake Ferguson/500px"> Toronto City Council is asking federal regulators to force Canada's Big Three wireless carriers to offer unlimited data, according to a report from MobileSyrup. Advertisement Uh, good luck with that. Councillors last week voted 27 in favour, four opposed and six absent in favour of making a motion to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. They pointed to the unlimited data plans now proliferating in the United States and expressed exasperation that such offers aren't available here. "There is no legitimate reason for consumers in Canada not to have the option of reasonably priced unlimited data plans for their mobile devices," said a background document released by the council. While Toronto's elected officials can be admired for their pluck, their knowledge of how things work in telecom is another matter. Put simply, their motion is dumb in so many ways. The popular meme about walking into Mordor comes to mind: Advertisement What councillors are asking for is price regulation of the wireless market, which is pretty much the nuclear option. And just like dropping an A-bomb, it's not going to happen until every other measure is tried first. A likelier first step might be a new wholesale regime, which a number of consumer advocate groups are pushing for. Such a system would allow independent third-party companies to deliver their own wireless services via networks owned by Bell, Rogers and Telus. It's similar to how home internet works. Indie service providers such as Teksavvy and Distributel rent portions of phone and cable providers' networks to serve their own customers. There's some tangible benefit to it - home internet prices are arguably lower thanks to the additional competition than they would be otherwise. Unfortunately on the wireless side, the CRTC has rejected the idea of mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) several times in the past few years. The regulator has instead espoused the "fourth carrier" approach favoured by the previous Conservative government. Advertisement It's possible MVNOs could be put onto the table once again some time soon, given the clear breakdown of the fourth-carrier strategy - Bell has taken out Manitoba's MTS and Shaw doesn't appear interested in actually competing via Freedom Mobile. But it's also possible that the status quo will continue indefinitely. The odds of the CRTC wading into regulating retail wireless prices without first trying to engineer a wholesale market are approximately zero. If, by some chance, the regulator did change its stance and implement MVNOs, it would have to give that system a decent chance to work before trying anything else. Say, 10 years or so? Finally, if all else failed, would we really want the CRTC setting wireless prices? They tried that with cable TV and skinny basic service last year and it turned into an abject disaster. Talk about your nuclear options. Unlimited data at a reasonable price is a nice pie-in-the-sky wish, but with the status quo being what it is, it's not going to happen until the Big Three have a business case for offering it. Sadly, it's hard to imagine that case presenting itself anytime soon. Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook Also on HuffPost: Worldwide, there are over 62 million girls who do not have the chance to attend primary or secondary school. In the time it has taken you to read this sentence, a girl under 18 has been married. That means nearly 15 million early or forced child marriages each year. This week, the Women in the World Summit in New York is focusing on some of the biggest problems like these that we collectively face, and putting the spotlight on some of the most influential women in the world. This week's event reminds me of my own recent experience in New York, attending the Youth Forum at the United Nations' (UN) 61st Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) last month. Joined by nearly 1,000 youth from 58 countries, I had the privilege of attending the Youth Forum with Plan International Canada. Together we learned about ways that youth can lead change in their communities at home and abroad to achieve gender equality -- and the other Sustainable Development Goals -- by 2030. Advertisement Delegates participate in a session at the CSW61 Youth Forum. At the CSW Youth Forum, we heard from women and girls who are defying the odds and making their voices heard. Women like Malvika Iyer, a bomb blast survivor who, with both of her hands amputated, is completing her PhD studies in social work. Women like Mengdi Wu, a young entrepreneur who designed a backpack to keep girls and their belongings safe. Or girls like 11 year-old Elizabeth who, while explaining why she stands for gender equality, likened love to a doughnut: sweet, enjoyable, and something to be shared with others, otherwise why is it in your hands? Through these conversations, we came to better understand the power that we, as youth, have to effect change for girls and women around the world. Create a space for your voice One of the most effective ways we can bring about that change is through advocacy. When it comes to advocacy, the word 'empower' comes up a lot, but what are the barriers that keep us from seizing power in the first place? For meaningful youth participation to happen, boys, girls, and young men and women must be involved in all levels of decision-making and governance -- beyond tokenism -- in order to shift social attitudes and norms and create an intergenerational dialogue. Even when that power is not easily accessible, Lakshmi Puri, Deputy Executive Director of UN Woman, urges youth to "demand it, transform it, and disrupt it." It's not enough to tell women and girls to feel empowered. Instead, let's act powerful. Because we are. Whether standing on stage at the UN or voicing your opinion in a classroom, it can be daunting to feel like you are representing an entire generation of youth in your actions and decisions. But being part of Plan International Canada's Youth Advisory Council has taught me the importance of speaking for yourself and owning your voice as a young leader in the community. We are all learning to find our voices and we are all advocates for a cause, whether or not we realize it. So take up space, and raise your voice. If you don't know what to say, then sing, dance, or build something. Find a way to tell your story. Embrace dissatisfaction We have come a tremendous way in achieving a more equal world, yet women are still often thought of in association with family units rather than as individuals. Women have fewer opportunities to pursue their dreams because of tradition, a sense of obligation to those around them, and harmful gender stereotypes. Achieving gender equality by 2030 will take all of us, and progress on a global scale rarely arises from satisfaction. It arises from dissatisfaction. Advertisement In order to reach our milestones, targets, and goals, we also need to remind ourselves of the underlying problem: inequality that shapes the lives of girls and women around the world. This is why it is important for youth to play an active role in keeping government accountable. Especially in times where there is a lack of effective response, youth need to take action. Plan International Canada CSW61 Youth Forum attendees in Times Square. From right: Youth Advisory Council members Christina and Tony with Kate, Special Projects Manager for Plan International Canada. On the last night before we left New York, we visited Times Square. Between the constant stream of taxi horns, the rush of pedestrians, and blinding billboards that towered above us, it seemed that every available space had been claimed and was vying for our attention. In the distance, we could hear the faint melody of a soulful tune: a girl nearby was singing a cappella. There was no instrumental accompaniment and no need for it either. Standing in the middle of Times Square, her voice was strong and pure and powerful. People stopped to listen, and for a few minutes, her song made the windy night a little warmer. Sometimes standing in the middle of the commotion in our daily lives, it is easy to feel insignificant and lost, yet I knew in that moment that we were a part of something profound. Youth are the future, but as we learned at the Youth Forum, we are also the present. Through CSW61 and similar events like the Women in the World Forum, I hope that youth around the world will be inspired to speak out for gender equality and take up space with our voices. One voice can pierce through the commotion and the noise and make a difference. The world needs us now more than ever. Christina Luo is a second-year business student majoring in Strategic Management and Organization at the University of Alberta. As a member of Plan International Canada's Youth Advisory Council, she is passionate about education, health, and economic empowerment. She enjoys tackling problems with an entrepreneurial mindset and believes in including interdisciplinary approaches to poverty alleviation and achieving gender equality. jerom400 via Getty Images Final rehearsal prior to a military parade at a Canadian military air force base in Trenton, Ontario, Canada. Canadians depend on the men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) to defend us at home and abroad. In dangerous times they are prepared, if need be, to die protecting us. That is why it was disheartening and not at all good news to hear the Canadian Forces Ombudsman claim that the Department of National Defence (DND) is hampering and undermining his work. The office of the Ombudsman was set up after the infamous Somalia Inquiry some eighteen years ago to increase transparency in the Canadian Forces and the DND. It was mandated to act as an independent third party investigator of the complaints from the military personnel regarding their issues with the CAF and the DND. The originally contemplated review of the mandate and the regulations governing the office after the first six months of its operations was never done. The office deals with about 13000 calls from active and retired military personnel. It currently has a workload of 1900 cases relating mainly to the transition to civilian from military life. Advertisement The Ombudsman Gary Walbourne has submitted to the government the report, "A Case for a Permanent and Independent Ombudsman Office," arguing that since the office investigates and holds to account the DND headed by the minister of national defence, the Ombudsman should not be reporting to the minister whose department it investigates and reports on. In addition to the Ombudsman reporting to the Minister of National Defence, the defence officials control the purse strings of Ombudsman's office. In a nut shell, the office that is supposed to be an independent and neutral third party to hold the DND accountable actually reports to its minister. Furthermore, and to make matters worse--and highly questionable in terms of any independence that the Ombudsman should have and be seen to have--DND, the subject of the Ombudsman's investigations oversees the Ombudsman's budget. Under this less than ideal or independent arrangement, it wasn't at all surprising to read a National Post story [April3,2017] reporting an ongoing battle between the Ombudsman and the DND wherein he accused officials of the department of "insidious attacks whenever his office release(d) a report critical of the department". Mr. Walbourne has claimed that the attacks by the department affect his ability to do his job. The subservient arrangement under which it operates is not conducive to the absolutely essential independence of the Ombudsman Office; and to any independent and objective observers the problems enunciated by the Ombudsman do not at all come as a surprise. The current budgetary arrangement was the result of a negative report of the auditor general under the previous Ombudsman. Mr. Walbourne argues that the mess left by the previous occupant has been cleaned up but still the unnecessary financial strictures continue which, he argues, constrain and undermine the office's independence and ability to properly carry out its mandate. Advertisement The reporting and budgetary arrangements undermine both the appearance and fact of the independence, including operational independence of the Ombudsman's office. The Ombudsman says "the department's tight grip on his office's finances" is being used against his office and its work. He states that "You can almost trend my administrative burdens and the way this office is received with my systemic reviews when I release them and there is a challenge to the department to change something...The administrative burden gets a little bit more. Things get delayed a little bit. It's insidious." If the allegations made by the Ombudsman are true, and one has no reason to believe otherwise, the whole arrangement makes a mockery of the office's "operational independence" that is fundamental to doing the right thing for our military personnel. The Prime Minister Justin Trudeau should be concerned about what the Ombudsman says and not allow his very serious complaints linger unaddressed. If as claimed by the DND minister Harjit Sajjan, the government believes in the operational independence of the Ombudsman's office, it should have no hesitation or difficulty in implementing Mr. Walbourne's proposal to make the office answerable to Parliament. Not for a nanosecond should it remain accountable to the minister and government whose department and actions it is meant to investigate. The appropriate functioning of the Ombudsman Office demands and deserves complete operational independence; and the country owes it to the CAF's men and women it is designed to serve. Carlos Barria / Reuters Many have welcomed the US airstrikes against Syria, with some compelled to express a new found admiration for President Trump. While the suffering of the Syrian people naturally inspires sympathy and a desire to see "something" done, these airstrikes will actually do little to positively influence the situation on the ground, and shouldn't prompt a reappraisal of Trump's character. Since 2011 the Assad regime has demonstrated its contempt for international law, human rights and global public opinion. In his desperate bid to survive, Assad has repeatedly plumbed new depths of depravity and unleashed horrific suffering against the people he claims to serve. Few can, in good conscience, defend his behaviour. Advertisement Yet, while Assad's crimes are well known and widely reviled, blame for the degeneration of the situation in Syria cannot be levelled at him alone. Russia's support has clearly been essential to Assad's survival, but the external factors that have enabled the situation to reach this point also includes those states that have irresponsibly encouraged the anti-Assad forces, while repeatedly failing to actively support them. The latest US airstrikes constitute more of the same. From the beginning, the strategy of the rebels in Syria was influenced by the mistaken belief that Western states would intervene on their behalf. This was not illogical; the intervention in Libya in March 2011 was justified by various Western leaders on the basis that they could not "stand by" while a government massacred pro-democracy protestors. Unsurprisingly, many in Syria took this commitment at face value; in the wake of the Libyan intervention the aims of the anti-Assad protestors shifted from reform to regime change through military insurgency. Initially Western states expressed their support for the anti-Assad forces, dismissed multi-lateral efforts, and repeatedly signalled their commitment to facilitating the removal of Assad. Central to the West's narrative was the possibility of future military intervention; promises that "all options are on the table" and Obama's now infamous "red lines", naturally encouraged those who believed the West would come to their rescue, to continue their ill-fated armed struggle. This proved to be a horrifically costly miscalculation. In the wake of yesterday's airstrikes, this belief has been reborn; expressing his delight at the strikes, Ahmad Ramadan, spokesman for the Syrian National Coalition, declared "We hope for more strikes...that these are just the beginning." Sadly, the evidence suggests that these hopes will be dashed. Advertisement To assess whether these strikes are "just the beginning" and signal a meaningful shift in US foreign policy towards Syria, we must look at the broader context. While Trump declared that the images of "beautiful babies" killed by toxic gas in Khan Sheikhun, Idlib on Tuesday prompted him to act, it is difficult to reconcile this compassion with Trump's record of active hostility towards the protection and promotion of human rights, and overt disdain for pursuing any foreign policy not directly in the US narrow national interests. More broadly, US policy towards the Middle East has for decades been characterised by a willingness to support regimes guilty of the most heinous human rights violations. In recent years, the US has steadfastly supported the government of Bahrain despite its brutal suppression of domestic dissent, while also supplying arms to support the Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen. In short, a great many "beautiful babies" have been killed by the US's closest allies; Trump's new found altruism is simply not credible. Additionally, the nature of the strikes themselves don't inspire much confidence. Bombing one airstrip - after first warning those stationed there - is hardly a robust show of force. Such meek tokenism, will clearly not in itself compel Assad or Russia to change their tactics; if anything it highlights the very limited extent to which Trump is willing to militarily commit to the conflict. I will never forget the first time I saw the infamous Vietnam War protest poster, titled "Q: And babies? A: And Babies." As a young girl, I stared transfixed at the photo in the book I had found on my parents' shelf. In the graphic image of the My Lai Massacre, taken by Ronald L. Haeberle in 1968, a mass of contorted civilian bodies lay strewn across a dirt road. Those couldn't be real babies could they? Could they? Now, with the horrific footage which emerged from Khan Sheikhoun of the Sarin gas attack which killed 72 civilians, 20 of them children, it seems Donald Trump has had his own "And babies?" moment. Last week, removing Bashar al-Assad was not a priority. This week, Trump has finally realised Assad is a very bad man. In an unusually eloquent statement, Trump declared Assad's actions against "beautiful little babies" to be an "affront to humanity." When adjectives fail him, Trump usually turns to repetition. In this case, the Syrian attack provoked him into a rare triple: it was a "horrible, horrible, horrible thing. Unspeakable." Advertisement A US military campaign in Syria has now begun, with a cruise missile strike on an air base "directly linked to the horrific chemical weapons attack". While Trump's trigger finger has been itching since his days as a nominee - "If we have nuclear weapons, why can't we use them?" - his intervention will be a relief for the millions of us who have watched the slaughter of innocents in Syria for years, enraged at the lack of action from Obama and our own spineless Parliament. Donald Trump is not a highly literate man. Reading is not his forte, he shouts out his tweets for staffers to type, and regularly decries newspapers as fake news. Trump prefers the visual medium of television to inform himself of global affairs, watching the news in his dressing gown. Automation is already reshaping industries beyond all measure as we move deeper into the machine age, and not just in manufacturing. One area of automation gathering pace is AI, with Europe leading the way. The replacement of human workers by robots, however, has been a contentious subject across a broad range of industries and service sectors, as artificial intelligence (AI) breakthroughs continue to gather pace. While many take a "doom and gloom" approach to these advances, my view is that new technology such as AI, robotics and processes such as automation should be embraced, not feared. According to a 2016 World Economic Forum survey, an estimated 1.6 million manufacturing and production jobs will be replaced globally due to automation between 2015 and 2020. If deployed correctly, AI has already been proven to boost productivity, create new employment opportunities for digital skills, and enable human talent to flourish. The recent report from consultancy firm PwC went one-step further. It found that 30% of jobs in Britain (served by more than 10 million workers) are likely to become automated within the next 15 years. We should treat this as an opportunity to establish a nationwide transformation programme to re-skill and up-skill existing workers and create new training and apprenticeship schemes. Advertisement So my view is that the debate shouldn't be on whether we embrace this next wave of machines: it is an inevitable industrial revolution coming just as the steam engine, the automobile and mass production assembly line, and client-server computing did before it. The question will be how we prepare the workforce for its arrival. Businesses must now equip their staff with the digital tools and expertise they need to keep pace with these technological advances. Employees are looking to their employers to demonstrate responsible and responsive leadership. With the fourth major industrial revolution (4IR) well under way, it is critical that companies provide employees with the support they need to navigate any new digital responsibilities in the workplace. The key to achieving skills for the new business era is for employers to invest in transformation programmes that offer workers exciting and engaging digital experiences. A digital workplace can improve employee focus and boost productivity by establishing new leadership targets and methods of measuring employee performance. Team collaboration tools are a great example: by merely simplifying communication and digital processes with new chat-based tools, we can use this technology to improve workplace productivity. However, BMC's own research found that many UK workers don't feel as though they are capable of keeping pace with the speed of technological change affecting today's economy. Almost half of all respondents we surveyed (40%) said they were concerned that they did not possess the skills necessary for the workplace of the future. AI has now rushed in to fill the void left by humans' lack of digital skills, leaving employees' positions increasingly exposed to replacement. Businesses need to do more to rectify this. Advertisement At present, according to the Government's Science and Technology Committee, the UK is experiencing a digital skills crisis. This issue is not just rooted in manufacturing and service-related jobs however, as white collar and professional services jobs are vulnerable to replacement by automation too. Widespread action is needed across the UK economy to address the risks emanating from this digital deficit that threatens to deplete both our national productivity and competitiveness. With this in mind, the government must tailor its digital strategy to remedy the fact that 12.6 million adults in the UK lack basic digital skills. Given that 90% of jobs now require digital skills to some degree and the skills gap is costing the economy around 63bn a year in lost income according to the Committee's Digital skills crisis report, this is particularly pressing. UK businesses must treat this digital skills deficit and the new wave of machines as a clear call to action to invest more in and provide better training for digital skills at all levels of education. By focusing on providing employees with the relevant digital skills this will both guard against job losses and strengthen workers' digital skills for success in jobs of the future. I recently bought a flat in London. Well, whoop-de-doo for me. Not so far out of town (Wolverhampton, for instance) that even an estate agent with their talent for hyperbole would have trouble pretending it was really London. No, this is the genuine article. The heart of the East End; Whitechapel to be precise, where the Krays and Jack the Ripper once roamed. There's no point pretending it's a pretty area. It isn't. There's no point pretending it's a tranquil area. It isn't. There's no point pretending it's a crime free area. It isn't. There's no point pretending it's a tidy area. It isn't. And there's definitely no point pretending it's a cheap area. It isn't. Not any more. I won't embarrass myself by revealing how much I paid for my property. For much less though, I could be on my own island in the Outer Hebrides. Advertisement Whitechapel has always been a diverse place - a melting pot of religions, races and cultures, making it a favourite with immigrants. In the 19th and early 20th century, it was the centre of the the city's Jewish community. In the latter half of the 20th century, it became the centre for British Bangladeshis and so it remains. Muslims far outweigh any other group. Does this concern me? Do I sense, as Donald Trump asserted, that I'm living in a 'No Go' area? Of course not. That'd be ludicrous. And yet... I moved in and I found out that directly in front of my building there's to be a giant three storey Mosque extension. Also, in the corner of the site and plainly visible from my balcony and on a clear day, Mecca, there'll be an 85 foot high Minaret that these days is simply a decorative folly. Out of interest, this will be the second biggest Mosque in Tower Hamlets. The largest, with a 7,000 capacity, is a mere 5-10 minutes walk away. Why then the need for another one so near and in a cheirfly residential area? To cut a long story short, despite planning permission initially being declined, it was subsequently granted with head spinning speed a few months afterwards. All this suspiciously at a time when the Tower Hamlets former disgraced Mayor, Lutfar Rahman was in power. The same Lutfar Rahman who is again to come under the spotlight with further investigations into "major failings" over the 2014 mayoral race which he won through illegal and corrupt practices. Advertisement Weirdly, my local authority property search threw up nothing, leaving me and other residents desperately trying to do something, including fruitlessly roping in local and national politicians. Baroness Warsi, who herself rails against the building of ugly Mosques and in particular Minarets, intervened on our behalf, but ultimately couldn't apparently do anything. Not that it matters, but I'm an atheist, believing, as do other non-believers, that religion is responsible for many of the world's problems. However, be it Christianity, Catholicism, Hinduism, Islam or Scientology, I'm not against anyone praying and having an appropriate place within which to do so. What I do object is the sexual segregation of those who visit venues of veneration, which is what happens with Mosques. It's widely acknowledged that in the Muslim faith, women play second fiddle to their menfolk, but should this mean they can't worship together? One of the reasons this new Mosque got the green light is because it will feature a women's prayer hall. Forget a huge leap forward in liberation, a giant step back might be more like it. I checked why men and women can't pray together and supposedly it's due to the fact that men are lustful and will think inappropriate thoughts about women. By being separated, men are able to keep their thoughts pure and focus on praying to Allah. But what if men have inappropriate thoughts about other men? Perhaps best not to go there, although as a member of the LGBTT community, I wish we could address the issue and reduce ingrained homophobia. Advertisement On reflection, I'd have to admit, and it goes against every fibre of my being, that I now find myself looking at the Muslim community with slight puzzled resentment. Furthermore, I dislike myself for doing so. And it's all thanks to some crazy planning decision that never should have happened. To be honest, I regret ever buying my latest home. I worry about the environmental impact of increased traffic, the prospect of greater societal tension, plus, from a purely selfish perspective, the flat's worth. Being so close to such a mammoth Mosque will, according to the agent who sold me it, reduce its value considerably. Carlos Barria / Reuters I think Donald Trump is about to have the best weekend of his life. And that scares me. No more crazy Trump. No more ineffective Trump. Instead, it'll be resolute Trump. Decisive Trump. Mr Trump goes to war. Better yet: China's president, Xi Jinping, is his guest at Mar a Lago. What a way to impress him! 'Excuse me, Mr President, I just need to give the order to launch a cruise missile attack.' But we need to take a deep breath. So do the news channels. Above all, so does Mr Trump. Because what has changed? Well, Mr Trump has changed, that's for sure. In August 2013, when Barack Obama was considering whether to launch missile strikes after a chemical weapons attack, Mr Trump tweeted: 'The President must get Congressional approval before attacking Syria -- big mistake if he does not!' Advertisement In another tweet, he wrote: 'President Obama, do not attack Syria. There is no upside and tremendous downside.' So he has changed his tune. He saw the reports (presumably on Fox News) of the attack on Khan Sheikhun and said that as a result, 'my attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much'. The implication that he hadn't taken much notice until now of what was happening there is deeply worrying. The 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles that landed on the al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs were Mr Trump's signal -- to President Assad and, even more importantly, to President Putin -- that he is not Barack Obama. But what exactly did they signal? Advertisement The Pentagon says it warned the Russians ahead of time what was coming. Presumably the Russians warned the Syrians. Anything that could be moved out of harm's way will have been moved. Result? One airfield out of commission. It is not always a bad thing for political leaders to give the impression that they are unpredictable. It makes it much more difficult for their enemies to calibrate responses. But Donald Trump is not unpredictable in a good way. He is erratic. His aides have no way of assessing what his next move will be. As a result, they can't plan ahead. Do they have any idea what they're going to do next, now that they moved the Syria conflict into a new phase? I doubt it very much. The US is now at war in Syria with both sides at the same time. It is attacking IS and other anti-Assad jihadi groups, as well as Assad's own air force. This is not what you might call a coherent strategy. The award-winning Muslim American writer Moustafa Bayoumi wrote in The Guardian: 'At its best, Thursday's reckless and largely ineffective bombing does little but make US lawmakers feel good about themselves. At its worst, it deepens a war which the US has no idea how to end.' Advertisement Next week, Mr Tump's all-but-invisible secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, will be in Moscow for talks with President Putin. He will, no doubt, be lectured about the US's 'illegal aggression'; what he will not hear, I suspect, is that Mr Putin is likely to be mightily irritated by Assad's renewed use of chemical weapons. Just when things were going so well... Back in 2013, Mr Obama's secretary of state, John Kerry, was roundly mocked for suggesting that if the US did take military action then in response to the chemical weapons attack in Gouta, it would be an 'unbelievably small, limited kind of effort'. Looking back, it seems to have been a pretty accurate description of what President Trump authorised last night. The fact remains, though -- given that I wouldn't trust Mr Trump with a water pistol, I'm far from thrilled that he's now authorising missile attacks. McLaren-Honda driver Fernando Alonso (Photo : Getty Images News) McLaren-Honda team manager Eric Boullier admits that the weaknesses of his team will be exposed at Shanghai International Circuit's long back and pit straights during the Chinese Gran Prix this weekend. Among their woes is the lack of power in the Honda engine. Boullier noted that the Chinese Grand Prix will be unpredictable since the Shanghai International Circuit is tough on cars, tires and power units. Advertisement According to Boullier, the Shanghai International Circuit with its long, fast straights is very different from the Albert Park in Melbourne, which was used in the Australian Gran Prix, and will likely expose their weaknesses more than the latter. Boullier insists that McLaren-Honda will "attack the race" with their "usual fighting spirit" and that they will ensure reliability with both cars before putting their focus on performance. He added that the weather is often precarious. The Woking-based McLaren-Honda team had a woeful start in 2017 due to reliability problems during winter testing. While McLaren avoided the major reliability issues that dogged them in winter testing, their speed remained poor in Australia, with Stoffel Vandoorne being the slowest through the speed traps in qualifying and with Alonso third to the last. Fernando Alonso, who had exceeded expectations at Albert Park by doing well for much of the race before being forced to retire late on due to problems with suspension, revealed that during testing he felt the McLaren-Honda team was 30 kph slower than their rivals. Honda F1 chief Yusuke Hasegawa agrees that a tough weekend is ahead for their team, noting that the changeable weather conditions will affect the set-up and balance of cars. He also pointed out that the Shanghai track's slow- and medium-speed corners and a couple of very long straights put a lot of stress on the power unit. The key, according to Hasegawa, will be "preparation and set-up." Meanwhile, Antonio Giovinazzi is expected to suit up for Ferrari in Shanghai. Giovinazzi, who is a reserve driver for Ferrari, raced for Swiss team Sauber in the Australian Grand Prix. He replaced Sauber's main driver Pascal Wehrlein who pulled out from the race. The thorny issue of whether parents should be able to take children out of school for term-time holidays is back in the news. The case of Jon Platt, who took his primary school aged daughter on a week's holiday, without the head teacher's permission reached the Supreme Court this week. Mr Platt was fined 60 which increased to 120 with non-payment, after which he faced prosecution. In a case brought by the Isle of Wight council, the Supreme Court ruled against Mr Platt, who had won earlier legal battles. The court rejected his argument that despite missing a week of school for a holiday, his daughter had regularly attended over the course of the year, with an attendance rate of over 92%. The judges did not accept this interpretation and said parents would have to comply with the rules set by schools and education authorities. The Platt case has echoes of James and Dana Haymore who in 2014, were refused permission to take one of their children out of primary school for a family reunion in America intended to commemorate Mrs Haymore's grandfather who had died. The Haymore case was dropped. The current rules prohibiting parents from taking children out of school unless circumstances are "exceptional" have been in place since 2013, with then Education Secretary Michael Gove wanting to crack down on holiday absences. Prior to this, head teachers had the discretion to allow up to 10 days authorised absence from school. This is still the case in Wales and in Scotland there are no fines for parents who take their children on holiday in term-time. Similarly, in Northern Ireland term-time holidays are considered as an unauthorised absence but parents are not fined. The rules do not apply to parents who educate their children privately. Advertisement This is an issue with strong feelings and sensible arguments on both sides. The Department of Education cites evidence which indicates that every extra day of school missed can affect a pupil's chances of achieving good GCSEs, which in turn has a lasting effect on their life chances. The National Union of Teachers, however, has suggested there are important cultural and social benefits to going on holiday and that this should not become the preserve of the middle classes. Since the rules were changed, numerous polls have indicated how unpopular the blanket ban is with parents. A YouGov poll found that 58% of people think parents should be permitted to take their children on holiday during term time. This figure is up from 53% in 2014. The Local Government Association has said families often struggle with the high cost of trips outside term-time and has called for a common sense approach. No child should be denied an education and in the face of yet more, austere, Conservative cuts, our schools face an uncertain and vulnerable future. A recent report by the Education Policy Institute found all schools in England were likely to face real-term cuts to funding by 2019-20, with about half facing a reduction per pupil of 6-11%, in line with the Government's proposed funding formula and the Prime Minister has been warned she faces a revolt by Conservative MPs over the slashed budgets. Advertisement So I can't help feeling that the ban on term-time holidays doesn't get to the heart of the real problems. It's hard to disagree with the argument that consistent, lengthy periods of absence from school are detrimental to a child's education. But a blanket term-time holiday ban doesn't address the deeper and more complex social problems that contribute to some children repeatedly missing school. If anything, it distracts attention from this more difficult and multi-layered issue and from the funding cuts schools face. And the ban does, disproportionately affect parents on lower incomes and those with family abroad. As the current debate around rights for EU nationals post-Brexit highlights, plenty of children in the UK have a parent who is not a British citizen and are therefore more likely to have grandparents, cousins, aunties and uncles to visit abroad. The Easter holidays are upon us and with them exam season begins to raise its ugly head once more. It's the time of year when students freak-out, their parents lose sleep and whatever hair they had left and tutors rub their hands with glee as the work pours in. However, whilst students understandably might want to banish the beast with a flick of a wand and a Depulso spell, in my opinion exams such as GCSEs are a necessary evil. And with the right approach they can be tamed. Firstly, let's not dance around the issue: exams have problems. Many students, including very bright ones, find the pressure almost unbearable. In 2015/16 alone Childline conducted 3077 counselling sessions on coping with exam stress. College and University places are determined by exam results, as are schools' rankings and reputations. The pressure isn't going to go away any time soon. Advertisement In addition, it's hardly a level playing field. Students who are ill-prepared by their schools have to compete against peers who have been spoon-fed the answers by their teachers or family members and private tutors. I once had a student find out a week before his GCSE English Literature exam that his teacher hadn't taught his class the poetry section. Another student I tutored from a different school had teacher-curated mind maps for each poem. What's more, schools can pick and choose from five different examination boards at GCSE and there have been disturbing reports in the past about some boards actually hinting at upcoming questions to teachers at expensive seminars. Moreover, the entire UK education system is skewed to elevate logical subjects above more creative ones. Maths trumps History. Science tramples over Art. All that being said, whilst exams are far from perfect, there has to be some form of objective assessment of pupils. Otherwise, we're left with a system of subjective teachers' reports and nepotism. More coursework is often mooted as an alternative, but as a tutor, I've been asked so many times by families to basically do their child's coursework for them. I always refuse, but I'm sure not everyone has these scruples. Alternatively, if that coursework is shifted inside school to prevent cheating then we're back to what is in effect an even longer exam. That is not to say that the situation can't be improved. As far as the examination system is concerned, we could make some relatively simple changes. For example, we could have one exam board so that every student in the country sits the same exam. We could also ensure that all subjects are treated with the same respect so that students value the results of the subjects they excel at. And take GCSE maths - a working knowledge of maths is obviously important to one's functioning effectively in society. But does GCSE maths as we know it actually provide this? Mightn't it be better to split maths into two parts: practical maths and abstract maths and have a separate grade for each? Practical maths would address real world skills: what you need to know to make informed decisions and not be ripped off. Abstract maths would cover all the rest, algebra, trigonometry etc: the stuff that isn't actually going to feature in most people's everyday lives. Advertisement Students could also be encouraged to use revision techniques that take the pressure off. Here are five: 1) Tackle your files: You come home with bulging lever arch files of notes thinking you have no hope of memorising all of their contents. The truth is, you don't have to. Take the syllabus as your Bible, and then go through your files ensuring that you have notes covering this and nothing more. Random bits of homework, that unnecessary photocopied pie-chart can all be binned, leaving a far less intimidating volume of work. 2)Make friends with mark schemes: These are invaluable as they tell you what the examiner is looking for. Go through them and adapt your notes accordingly. 3)Take breaks: There is nothing to be gained from just sitting there, frying your brain. Switch off between study sessions. Read a book, get some exercise. Advertisement 4)Eat breakfast: You won't be able to focus if you don't fuel your brain. I used to eat boiled eggs and fish fingers before morning exams. Part protein, part superstition, but it worked. naveen0301 via Getty Images Research has shown high rates of suicide among young South-Asian women within the UK. Some studies have reported a two to three fold increased risk of suicide compared to that of British white women (within the 15 -35 age range). Asian women who have attempted or completed suicide are also less likely to have had a mental illness diagnosed. They are more likely to attempt suicide by setting fire to one-self. Yet, despite these alarming statistics, there is a numbing silence about mental health within British Asian communities. Priya, 24-years-old, lives in London with her self-described 'modern Indian' family. She recalls when she had her first bout of severe depression, her parents dismissal, and their anger when they found she was taking medication. She says they were unable to understand it as an illness and to this day her father has refused to speak about it. Advertisement There is widespread ignorance and misconceptions among the Asian community. In Urdu and Punjabi there isn't a word for 'mental illness'; instead often derogatory labels such as 'crazy' or 'weak of mind' are used. Some believe it to be a result of misdemeanours in a previous life, or that the individual is possessed by spirits known as 'jinn'. These harmful beliefs have been perpetuated by some religious leaders, advocating that ceremonies or increased attendance at the mosque or temple will rid the symptoms. Stigma within the community weighs down on individuals affected. Priya feels that, despite eight years of appointments & patient information leaflets, there still remains a visible reluctance within her family to speak openly about it. For young women, there are deep fears that openness about her mental health will affect her marriage prospects. Secrecy and shame are recurring themes found in the research. Seema, a British-born Sikh lawyer, explained her mental health deteriorated after her 'introduction' marriage to a British-Asian man. Soon after moving in with his family, she became the victim of relentless daily abuse at the hands of her mother-in-law. She felt unable to speak out, and was essentially told by her family she must put up with it, rather than endure the shame of divorce. It is still common for the bride to move in with the husband's family, and domestic abuse from the mother-in-law remains hidden but prevalent. Social isolation that can occur after marriage can make the young bride vulnerable. Alarmingly, there are still a few that believe the bride to be the property of her husband and his family. One study found that three-quarters of the Asian women that self-harmed conveyed marital difficulties. Asian victims of domestic violence are less likely to seek help from authorities, due to a multitude of factors. Sexual violence is prevalent yet grossly under-reported, particularly within the domestic setting. Yet appallingly, some community leaders still refuse to acknowledge the existence of marital rape. Advertisement A further factor, carefully trod upon in the research using the finely coined term 'intergenerational cultural conflict'. It is apparent that in most of the suicide attempts of young Asian women, there was a conflict between 'traditional' parents and 'westernised' daughters. This term, of course, encompasses a large spectrum, from discontent with their daughters choice of clothes and boyfriends, to the other extreme of so-called 'honour' based violence. The unfortunate fact remains that there are many girls born in this country that are denied their rights and forced into marriages against their will. The charity Karmanirvarna stated they received on average per month 250 new cases of honour-based violence or forced marriages. This is likely to be just scratching the surface. The curtailing of freedom and disempowerment of these girls is strong risk factor self-harm and suicide. The digital natives...are going native Platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Reddit, Tumblr and even old-school Facebook have become the social life-blood of the so-called 'digitally native' generation - with new channels constantly springing up. For millions, communication by social media puts them instantly in touch with a network of people they call friends online. But a couple of recent studies have highlighted the potentially isolating effects of spending too much time online, and catapulted the 'growing epidemic' of loneliness in our society - and among younger people in particular - back into the headlines. First came widespread news coverage of a report from charities Relate and Relationships Scotland which found that almost half (45%) of adults felt lonely at least some of the time and almost a fifth (18%) felt lonely often or all of the time; and that youngsters in their late teens and early 20s are now three times more likely than people of retirement age to spend most of their time alone and isolated. Advertisement You're Not Alone - The Quality of the UK's Social Relationships, based on the findings of an online YouGov poll of 5000 adults across the UK, suggested that younger people are more likely to report feeling lonely than older people. Almost two-thirds (65%) of 16- to 24-year-olds said they felt lonely at least some of the time, compared to 32% of those aged 65 or over; and almost a third (32%) of the younger respondents felt lonely often or all the time - nearly three times the number of over-65s (11%) who said the same.* The report's authors pointed to the Facebook generation's reliance on social media as a key contributing factor to their feelings of loneliness - one in ten teenagers said they have zero friends real life. In the headlines a few days later was research by the University of Pittsburgh showing rocketing levels of loneliness among young adults who spent large amounts of time on social media. The study of 1787 19-32 year olds found that the more time they spend online the more likely they are to feel cut off from the rest of society. More than two hours of social media use a day doubled the chances of a person experiencing social isolation compared to those spending half an hour or less. And frequent visitors to social media platforms - 58 visits or more per week - had more than three times the odds of feeling socially isolated versus those who visited fewer than nine times per week. The rise of (Anti-)Social Media The University of Pittsburgh academics did not draw firm conclusions as to why maxing out on social media leads to loneliness: do people go online in an attempt to feel less lonely? Does seeing curated photos of friends enjoying 'perfect lives' or attending an event to which you have not been invited encourage feelings of envy, exclusion and FOMO (fear of missing out)? Or does spending a lot of time on social media leave less time for building real-life relationships? Advertisement The latter hypothesis was also mentioned by Relate counsellor Barbara Bloomfield: "The relationship skills we build as young people are crucial to how we form our relationships later in life. But the way those early relationships are conducted has changed immeasurably in the last ten years, leaving a gulf between this generation and the previous ones. Social media is a great way for keeping in touch with friends but it shouldn't be used as a replacement for face-to-face contact. Our friendships are built largely on shared experiences and it is important that at least some of these are taking place away from the screen." We know that feelings of loneliness and isolation transcends all ages and backgrounds - offline and online- and there are all sorts of theories as to the underlying causes (as the Pittsburgh academics highlight). But one thing that these studies do provide, is irrefutable evidence of the fact that when it comes to tackling these feelings there is no substitute for genuine, real-world interactions. And indeed, replacing offline relationships with online 'friends' can be detrimental to your health and wellbeing. 'It's good to talk': a step back (or forward) in time? This is no surprise to us at The Silver Line. Every day we hear about the transformative powers of human contact and real conversation, both from the 10,000 older people who call our helpline every week and through the thousands more Silver Line Friendship calls that take place. They tell us that communication by email, text and IM has its place but nothing can replace actually speaking to another person and hearing a human voice. Many of the older people who call us have seen their social networks dwindle away through retirement or immobility, have lost partners for various reasons including divorce, and now find themselves going for days without speaking to anyone else. The front door eventually becomes a barrier to social interaction, rather than a gateway...and yet a single phone call can break down that wall. Some have called us 'a lifeline'. Even when older people have families and friends they don't want to bother busy ''children'' who are already juggling demanding jobs and caring for their own youngsters, or friends who are preoccupied. So when the text comes ''R U OK?'' mum or dad just text back a ''Yes'' rather than "I'd love a chat". Advertisement There are well-established links between social isolation and mental (as well as physical) health, which our helpline team increasingly encounters among the older generation - especially during the loneliest night time hours; and it's no surprise that the US researchers say this is presenting in younger social media addicts too. This week sees the Jo Cox Commission on Loneliness launch their spotlight on older people, which runs through to April and which we are very proud to be a part of. Under the slogan 'Start a Conversation', its aim is to not only raise public awareness of loneliness among older people, but also act as a 'call to action' to mobilise individuals and communities help tackle it - whether through talking to a neighbour, visiting an old friend, or just making time for people they meet...watch this space. In the meantime, as a school tells parents to turn off their phones at the gates, and Nokia starts selling an old-style phone-only mobile once again, maybe it's time we all remembered the truth of the old slogan: "It's good to talk". Even the digital natives among us are fundamentally social - as opposed to social media - beings. Sophie Andrews is Chief Executive of The Silver Line A Chinese dairy farmer tends to his cows. (Photo : Getty Images News) China Huishan Dairy Holdings Co Ltd (Huishan Dairy), one of China's biggest dairy companies, is now struggling to keep afloat amid increasing liabilities and a short-term debt squeeze. The company's shares plummeted 85 percent in a single day last month--wiping $4 billion off its value. Advertisement Huishan Dairy's woes began after embracing an "innovative financing" scheme such as the sale and leaseback of its cows and selling wealth management products for rich investors. Last November, Huishan Dairy pledged its 40,000 dairy cows to a financial leasing firm for a 750 million yuan loan, which it promised to repay in 10 installments beginning May. The company's top shareholder Champ Harvest, which is controlled by Huishan dairy chairman Yang Kai, pledged almost all its shares to secure loans and financing help. Huishan Dairy finance executive Ge Kun, who was in charge of treasury functions and cash, said the company would consider adopting "innovative tools in the future" just right after leasing its cows. Ge is now missing. Shawlin Chaw, Control Risks analyst focused on Greater China, noted that Huishan Dairy's case is not unique as there could thousands of similar cases at a smaller scale in less developed provinces and counties. In 2013, after Huishan's $1.3 billion Hong Kong listing attracted many investors, the Liaoning provincial government became very vocal in supporting the company with slogans proclaiming that it would create tens of thousands of jobs. After Huishan Dairy missed its debt payments to 23 creditor banks, including big companies such as Bank of China Ltd, AgBank and Ping An Bank Co Ltd., the Liaoning provincial government had to broker meetings between the concerned parties. The creditors assured Huishan Dairy that it "would continue to have confidence" in them. Huishan Dairy was further burdened by the region's falling milk prices and rising feed costs. Shan Jiawu, a dairy farmer for over a decade in Zhangwu, commented that 2017 is the worst he's seen for the dairy cattle industry. Hurlburt Field building dedicated to last surviving Doolittle Raider The name Richard E. Cole is one that comes with a legacy of service, sacrifice and bravery. It is a name that will forever be cemented in Air Commando and Hurlburt history after a building renaming and dedication ceremony here, April 7. In front of Air Commandos, past and present, and his daughter Ms. Cindy Chal, Retired Lt. Col. Richard E. Cole and Lt. Col. Allison Black, the commander of the 319th Special Operations Squadron, unveiled the new name for the 319th SOS building which now reflects Richard E. Cole Building. Cole is the last surviving Doolittle Raider whose Air Force roots date back to the origination of the 319th SOS. Eleven days from now, it will be 75 years to the day, that then 26-year-old Lieutenant Cole climbed into the airplane to get after the Raid on Tokyo, Special Mission number 1, Black said. Sir, you inspired all of us here today. I know youve said in the past that you are not a hero, you are not brave, that we were just guys doing our job. That epitomizes the humble, incredible, approachable nature of who you are, and what makes all of you as Air Commandos very special. In early 1942, Cole volunteered for Special Mission Number 1, which trained at Eglin Air Field, and on April 18, 1942, he served as then-Lt. Col. James H. Doolittles co-pilot during the Raid on Tokyo. Cole became Doolittles co-pilot by chance while training at Eglin. The pilot who Cole was training with fell ill, and the co-pilot chosen to fly with Doolittle was also unable to fly. Everyone wanted to go on that mission, he said. They all went to the [operations] officer and explained the situation. It ended up that Doolittle took [the seat of the pilot who fell ill] because we already had the crew. The Doolittle Raid was an air raid where 16, U.S. B-25 bombers launched from the USS Hornet 650 miles east of Japan to attack the Japanese mainland. The raid, while it caused only minor damage, let the Japanese know America had just begun to fight. Doolittle, Cole and the crew bailed out into the dark, storm-blowing night. As Cole parachuted to safety, his parachute got stuck in a pine tree, leaving him suspended 12 feet above the ground. After cutting himself loose, he walked all day to find a Chinese village, where he was picked up by Chinese troops. Subsequently, Cole continued serving in the China-Burma-India (CBI) Theater until June 1943. He then volunteered for Project 9, which was the birth of the 1st Air Commando Group. In a July 2016 interview with Air Force Television, Cole said back then he didnt know what it meant to be an Air Commando, but he would soon understand. I was flying The Hump, and I got the opportunity to know a [Lt. Col. John] Alison who was later one of the commanders when they decided they were going to form commando unitsand they were looking for people who had been flying in the China-Burma-[India] area, he said. Since I had done that, Alison gave me a call and told me what I would be doing. I got back with him, and it wasnt long until I learned what was happening. After his conversation with Alison, Cole volunteered for and served as an original Air Commando in the Transport Section of Project 9, 5318th Provisional Air Unit, of the 1st Air Commando Group in the CBI Theater. The Transport Section later became the 319th Troop Carrier Squadron, which was the antecedent for the 319th SOS. Having your name on our building symbolizes a few things, Black said. It is going to allow the incredible men and women of the 319th SOS, every day, rain or shine, to think of what you all sacrificed. Not only the 319th SOS Slayers, but every Air Commando and every joint partner who walks this path up to these doors will have the chance to reflect on the history that you created. You paved the way for how we conduct business. Cole retired from active duty with a list of accomplishments and awards that includes: the Distinguished Flying Cross with two oak leaf clusters, the Bronze Star medal, the Air Force Commendation medal, the Chinese Army, Navy, Air Corps medal, Class A, 1st Grade. On May 23, 2014, President Barrack H. Obama issued the Congressional Gold Medal to Cole along with three other living Doolittle Raiders at the White House. Cole provided 319th SOS Air Commandos with parting advice, If you decide this is what you want to do, get yourself educated, keep abreast of knowledge the best you can and press on. (Research provided by Keith Alexander, 1st Special Operations Wing Historian, and additional reporting by Air Force Television) Man seriously injured Sunday in head-on crash with semi on U.S. 50 The WEF report stated that in 2016, China received approximately 57 million tourists. (Photo : Getty Images) On Monday, the Chinese Tourism Bureau had ignored the issues on the decrease in the number of Chinese mainland visitors, pointing out that the additional NT$42.8 billion income from international tourists had offset the decline on a large scale. Advertisement The statement was released by the bureau as a response to local news reports. The total revenue of the country has reportedly decreased to NT$55.8 from the time the Democratic Progressive Party came back to power May of the previous year. The sharp decrease in the number of inbound mainland Chinese tourists is pointed as the main contributing factor to the revenue drop. However, tourism officials said that the number of tourist arrivals from other countries had a sweeping 1.06 million annual increase in the same period. Thai tourists had the highest annual growth of 57.26 percent. Tourists from Vietnam ranked second with a 34.33 percent rise, followed by South Korea, Japan and Malaysia with 34.25 percent, 16.5 percent and 9.95 percent increase, respectively. Officials attributed the significant growth rates in foreign tourist arrivals from other Asian countries to the bureaus efforts to expand its markets to diverse countries. The bureau is now focusing on expanding Chinese travel market by promoting Taiwan to Europe and North America. Travel agencies which cater services chiefly to Chinese mainland tourists can also avail of assistance offered by the bureau. In related news, Chang Chih-ben, chairman of the Taichung Tour Bus Association, said that at least 1,000 tour buses are now up for sale around the island. Chang said in an interview with China Times that the decrease in the number of tourist groups from mainland China and the carrying out of the One Fixed Off, One Flexible Day Off labor policy are responsible for the bus sales. He added that some tourist bus companies had attempted to use their buses in paying off bank loans. However, their efforts were unsuccessful as creditor banks expressed little interest on the buses. The Tourism Bureau is directing its efforts to diversify its markets with the decline of mainland visitors. Superior Court Briefs: March 31 - April 5 Cases heard before Judge John Agostini on Friday, March 31. Jason Pennell, 28, of Holyoke had not guilty pleas entered on his behalf on single counts of possession of heroin with intent to distribute - his second offense - and conspiracy to violate drug laws. He was ordered to be held at the Hampden County House of Correction on $5,000 bail. The charges stem from the execution of a search warrant in Williamstown on January 18, 2017. Terry Martizna, 26, of Lanesborough pleaded guilty to single counts of illegal possession of a large capacity feeding device, armed career felon, illegal possession of a firearm, and possession of ammunition without a firearm identification card. He was ordered to serve three and a half to four and a half years at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Cedar Junction on the illegal possession of a large capacity feeding device, armed career felon, and illegal possession of a firearm. He was given concurrent time at the Berkshire County House of Correction on the ammunition charge. The charges stem from a motor vehicle stop in Pittsfield on December 12, 2016. A single count of illegal possession of a loaded firearm was dismissed by the state. Gregory Frye, 45, of Pittsfield had not guilty pleas entered on his behalf on single counts of illegal possession of a firearm - his second offense - illegal possession of a loaded firearm, and armed career felon. He was ordered to be held at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Cedar Junction on $50,000 cash or $500,000 surety bail. Frye allegedly was in possession of a firearm when he was arrested in Williamstown on January 9, 2017 on a parole violation. James Scace, 48, of Dalton was found guilty on four counts of assault and batter, and a single count of disturbing the peace. He was ordered to serve two years of probation on three assault and battery charges and the disturbing the peace charge. He was given a one-year suspended sentence at the Berkshire County House of Correction on the remaining assault and battery charge. Scace assaulted four youths - ages 18,16,16, and 14, - in Dalton on October 24, 2015. He was found not guilty on two counts of assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon and a single count of intimidation of a witness. Cases heard before Judge Daniel ford on Wednesday, April 5. Devyn Banister, 23, of Pittsfield had not guilty pleas entered on his behalf on single counts of motor vehicle homicide while under the influence of drugs and negligently operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol. He was ordered to be held at the Berkshire County House of Correction on $10,000 bail. Banister is accused of operating a motor vehicle on West Housatonic Street in Pittsfield on December 8, 2016 when it struck Arthur Meyrick, 74. Meyrick died on January 28, 2017 from the injuries. The use of Community Preservation funds to fix the foundation of historic First Congregational Church again ran into concerns but was approved 4-1. Williamstown Fin Comm Votes Recommendations on Town Meeting Articles Michael Sussman chairs Wednesday's Finance Committee meeting. WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. The Finance Committee on Wednesday recommended passage of all the fiscal warrants for May's Annual Town Meeting, but not until after it revisited a few of the arguments that punctuated budget season at Town Hall. Most of the discussion at its final meeting before the May 16 town meeting revolved around the warrant articles that the committee saw for the first time on Wednesday night: those related to the town's allocation of Community Preservation Act funds. Members of the Fin Comm raised and rehashed some of the same issues that were raised during the deliberations of the Community Preservation Committee, which sends those warrant articles to town meeting for approval. The First Amendment church-state issues, for example, were revisited when the Fin Comm reached Article 26 on the 41-article warrant. After a lengthy debate, the Community Preservation Committee in January decided on a 6-2 vote to endorse an appropriation of $5,700 to support restoring the foundation on the historic First Congregational Church. Elaine Neely started the Fin Comm's discussion by indicating her discomfort with spending taxpayer dollars on a church. Daniel Gendron, who occupies the Fin Comm's seat on the preservation panel, shared that members had the same hesitation but that the committee had reviewed documentation demonstrating precedent for using Community Preservation Act funds to preserve historic structures that happen to be houses of worship. The Fin Comm's newest member, who joined the committee mid-cycle, made light of the request. "I'm surprised to see this," Steve Sheppard said. "If a request from [pizzeria] Hot Tomatoes came to the committee to maintain their building, would it be acceptable?" "If it was housed in an historic building," Fin Comm Chairman Michael Sussman answered. "It looks like an old building to me," Sheppard replied. The First Congregational Church on Main Street is more than just old . The structure dates back to the early 20th century but has its roots in the town's original 18th-century meetinghouse. Gendron said it was the building's historical significance that allowed the majority of the CPC to support the appropriation. Fin Comm member Paula Consolini noted that while it is a church, "First Congo," as it is known around town, doubles as a community center and plays a prominent role in many secular activities. Four of the nine Fin Comm members declared a personal conflict of interest on the question and sat out the vote. The remaining five voted to recommend the article to town meeting with Neely voting in the minority. Most of the expenditures on the town meeting warrant are funded by local property taxes and were previously reviewed in detail by the Fin Comm. CPA expenditures are a special case. The town's CPA account is funded by a property tax surcharge of 2 percent with an exemption for the first $100,000 of property value. In other words, a $200,000 home is taxed only on $100,000 of its value with a bill of $2,000. Another exception is the town's customary appropriation to the Williamstown Chamber of Commerce. Town meeting in recent years has allocated 10 percent of the town's revenue from the commonwealth's Room Occupancy Excise Tax to the chamber. This year, that 10 percent translates to $48,126, a bump of 2.89 percent from the fiscal year 2016 appropriation that probably is attributable to the rise in visitors during 2015 to see the Clark Art Institute's Van Gogh exhibit. The Fin Comm opened its discussion of Article 13, the Chamber of Commerce appropriation, by asking Town Manager Jason Hoch what had become of the other promotional group that has come to the town looking for financing, the Destination Williamstown website. Hoch replied that he was talking to representatives of Destination Williamstown about distributing to them some money from a special project budget over which he has discretion. "That seems like a one-time fix," Sussman said. "We were hoping there would be collaboration between [Destination Williamstown] and the Chamber," Fin Comm member Susan Clarke added. Hoch noted that while the organizers of the website and Chamber leadership are communicating, neither is a town department under his control. Fin Comm members then discussed whether the town needed to "send a message" about fiscal responsibility by cutting back on the outlay to the Chamber of Commerce. "It's a message that should be sent to a lot of budget centers," Gendron said. "We are going to have to make some hard choices. Probably everyone at this point should spend 2.5 percent if they can." Consolini said she thought the message already was received. "I would rather try a positive approach first," she said. "If you send a 'signal,' it may be taken as a bit of a slap. It's a small enough town where people are buzzing and trying to get these folks to work together." Ultimately, the Fin Comm voted to recommend passage of Article 13 and all the financial warrant articles it considered. The Board of Selectmen will review and vote all of its recommendations for the Town Meeting warrant articles at its April 10 meeting. A concrete panel in the flood control chute on the Mass MoCA campus collapsed recently. An adjacent panel is tipping outward from the wall. Looking west over the South Branch as it runs through the campus. PreviousNext North Adams Plans Emergency Fix of Collapsed Flood Chute Panel NORTH ADAMS, Mass. The city is planning an emergency repair of the 70-year-old flood control chute near Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. One of the large concrete panels collapsed into the Hoosic River recently exposing the banking along the foundation of the museum's massive Building 6 near the convergence of the North and South branches and a second is precariously tilting outward. According to an email on Thursday apprising the Hoosic River Revival group about the collapse, Conservation Commissioner Andrew J. Kawczak said he and Chairman Jason Moran had met with the Mass MoCA officals and personnel with the Department of Public Works and contractors to review the problem area. Mayor Richard Alcombright on Friday said a preliminary engineer is assessing the site for an emergency repair with excavation contractor D.R. Billings Inc. "Right now, we're going to spend and go back to the council for money," the mayor said. "What they're suggesting is we need to put some structural steel as cribbing from the wall here to the wall here, and in front and in back ... We've got keep those two panels in place before they go ... "The problem is they can't get in there because the water's too high. They're afraid if they put rocks in there they're just kind of going to move." The panel is believed to have failed because of saturated soils from the recent heavy precipitation, the aged infrastructure and runoff from the building and excavations related the museum's $65 million expansion and renovation project. The plan is to fill that section with rip rap and concrete blocks to hold everything together until the Army Corps of Engineers can address it. "After we get this stabilized, we're going to have to get someone from the Army Corps out here to have a conversation with us how we keep this safe and productive over time and how it can be funded," the mayor said. Write-thru of an article published on April 6, 2017. David McGowan of Brookline, Mass., has been named the new executive director of the Williamstown Rural Lands Foundation. Williamstown Rural Lands Foundation Names New Director WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. The Williamstown Rural Lands Foundation has named David McGowan of Brookline, Mass., as its next executive director. McGowan has dedicated his career to conserving land throughout Massachusetts. After receiving his graduate degree from Antioch New England University in 1996, he worked at the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation. There, he worked on projects throughout the commonwealth securing critical inholdings at Bradley Palmer State Park and Willard Brook State Forest, and helping conserve the 900-acre Spectacle Pond Farm at Otis State Forest. In 2006, McGowan took a position with The Nature Conservancy in Massachusetts. Many of his projects at the Conservancy focused on adaptation to climate change, including a project to provide flood storage along the Taunton River, and the protection of an 800-acre property in Copake, N.Y., that creates a large wildlife corridor within the Berkshire-Taconic landscape. Following a productive year at Mass Audubon, McGowan joins the Williamstown Rural Lands Foundation in July with an eye toward continuing the work of the organization in the areas of land conservation and nature education. Rural Lands will continue to provide meaningful engagement for the citizens of Williamstown. Historic Artists Homes and Studios Program Names New Program Manager STOCKBRIDGE, Mass. The National Trust for Historic Preservation has announced that Valerie Balint will join the organization as the new program manager of the Historic Artists' Homes and Studios (HAHS) program, based at Chesterwood in Stockbridge. Balint's mission is to enhance the relevance and reputation of HAHS member sites in their communities so as to contribute to a national conversation on the arts in American public life. "With Valerie's strong curatorial expertise and interest in working in artists' homes and studios, she will be a great asset to the HAHS program and its membership," said Donna Hassler, executive director of Chesterwood and administrator of the HAHS program. The HAHS program manager is a new, full-time position with a three-year tenure, funded by the Henry Luce Foundation. Balint will be responsible for implementing a new strategic plan and overseeing the internal and external communications for the program. Seychelles and Its Majestic Beaches (Photo : Getty Images) Seychelles, a country in South Africa, sees a great potential in China travel market. Shanghais nearby cities of Hangzhou and Suzhou both represent a rising market. Travelers from these areas have high income and demand for premium and high-end travel experiences. Advertisement A two-day workshop was conducted in Hangzhou and Suzhou by the Seychelles Tourism Board (STB) in partnership with Best Island, a business-to-business (B2B) division of QULV.com. The training sessions earlier this month was attended by 76 travel agents from Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province and Suzhou, Jiangsu Province. It was STBs first time to hold intensive training in the two Chinese cities. The Shanghai office of Ethiopian Airlines, the Constance Ephelia Seychelles and Constance Lemuria Resort were also at the event to provide assistance. According to STB, it is important for them to grab the opportunities from emerging markets in China except for the cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Chengdu. However, the STB keeps on giving attention to these five cities for they provide the largest pool of outbound Chinese tourist market. To ensure the steady growth of Seychelles tourism market, the STB will conduct a series of projects this year. During the 2017 Chinese New Year, Best Island has increased its Seychelles product sales by 12 percent. Best Island is one of STBs important trade partners in China. Jean-Luc Lai-Lam, the marketing manager of STB in China, said that the training was very productive. He explained that the training gave high-end trade partners an increased understanding of the products and services offered by Seychelles. It also gave their partners tools which will help them market the destination better. Best Islands Africa, Middle East & Islands department manager Ada Wang introduced the wide range of Seychelles product packages to travel agents participating in the workshop. An overview of Seychelles tourist attractions and hotels was also given to participants by Sam Yu, an officer from STBs Chinese office. A Wedding Expo and a honeymoon package exhibition were held in Shanghai from March 11-12 shortly after the trade training sessions. Best Island sold a number of Seychelles holiday packages during the expo. Seychelles is expecting an increase of tourists from the China travel market with the recent trade training. Houses in Xiongan (Photo : Getty Images) Xiongxian County, a residential and industrial area previously unknown to many suddenly became a focus of interest for real estate agents and speculators in China's property market. Advertisement This came as China declared on Saturday, April 1, that the area that spans three counties about 80 miles of Beijing will become the Xiongan New Area, an economic driving force that is expected to push the country's future growth. The new area will cover about 800 square miles when completed and will serve as a model for urban progress that will spur redevelopment in areas around Beijing, according to the government. The government declaration immediately set off a surge in property buying and raising the stakes of construction companies, the New York Times reported. This prompted the local government to freeze property buying in the area and temporarily shut down some real estate offices. According to the report, prices for an apartment in Baigou, about 12 miles north of Xiongxian, increased from 8,750 renminbi per square meter to 12,000 renminbi (or more than $160 per square foot) within hours after the government announcement. Wen Yunlong, a real estate agent, said that it rose by an additional 3,000 renminbi on Sunday, April 2. In the Hong Kong exchange, shares of BBMG Corporation, a cement maker based in Beijing, rose by nearly 35 percent on Monday, April 3. Shares of other firms engaged in property development also rose but only slightly. In China, a property is considered a major investment, but government restrictions on the movement of money overseas and an unpredictable stock market have resulted in soaring home prices and the risk of a property bubble. Chinese President Xi Jinping told media that Xiongan will "a demonstration area for innovative development". The area will become part of the country's grand plan to integrate development in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei region. The area called Jing-Jin-Ji, which includes Xiongan, is envisioned to became an economic hub that will drive Hebei's dependence on traditional industries, such as steel making, and someday compete with Shenzhen or Pudong. But currently, the Xiongan area's economic output is only less than 1 percent of Beijing's and now, it is more popularly known for its donkey burgers. Kaspersky Lab experts reconstruct an ATMitch case and discover a mysterious way to cash out with ATMs One day bank employees discovered an empty ATM: there was no money, no traces of physical interaction with the machine, and no malware. After Kaspersky Lab experts spent time unwinding this mysterious case, they were able to not only understand the cybercriminal tools used in the robbery, but also reproduce the attack themselves, discovering a security breach at the bank. In February 2017 Kaspersky Lab published the results of an investigation into mysterious fileless attacks against banks: criminals were using in-memory malware to infect banking networks. But why were they doing this? The ATMitch case has given us the whole picture. The investigation started after the banks forensics specialists recovered and shared two files containing malware logs from the ATM's hard drive (kl.txt and logfile.txt) with Kaspersky Lab. These were the only files left after the attack: it was not possible to recover the malicious executables because after the robbery cybercriminals had wiped the malware. But even this tiny amount of data can be enough for Kaspersky Lab to run a successful investigation. Erase / rewind Within the log files, Kaspersky Lab experts were able to identify pieces of information in plain text that helped them to create a YARA rule for public malware repositories and to find a sample. YARA rules basically search strings help analysts to find, group, and categorize related malware samples and draw connections between them based on patterns of suspicious activity on systems or networks that share similarities. After a day of waiting, experts found a wanted malware sample "tv.dll", or ATMitch as it was later dubbed. It was spotted in the wild twice: once from Kazakhstan, and once from Russia. This malware is remotely installed and executed on an ATM from within the target bank: through the remote administration of ATM machines. After its installed and connected to the ATM, the ATMitch malware communicates with the ATM as if it is legitimate software. It makes it possible for attackers to conduct a list of commands such as collecting information about the number of banknotes in the ATMs cassettes. Whats more; it provides criminals with the ability to dispense money at any time, at the touch of a button. Usually criminals start by getting information on the amount of money a dispenser has. After that, a criminal can send a command to dispense any number of banknotes from any cassette. After withdrawing money in this curious way, criminals only need to grab the money and go. An ATM robbery like this takes just seconds! Once an ATM is robbed, the malware deletes its traces. Whos there? It is still not known who is behind the attacks. The use of open source exploit code, common Windows utilities and unknown domains during the first stage of the operation makes it almost impossible to determine the group responsible. However, "tv.dll", used in the ATM stage of the attack contains a Russian language resource, and known groups that could fit into this profile are GCMAN and Carbanak. The attackers may still be active. But dont panic! Combatting these kinds of attacks requires a specific set of skills from the security specialist guarding the targeted organization. The successful breach and exfiltration of data from a network can only be conducted with common and legitimate tools; after the attack, criminals may wipe all the data that could lead to their detection leaving no traces, nothing, said Sergey Golovanov, Principal Security Researcher at Kaspersky Lab. To address these issues, memory forensics is becoming critical to the analysis of malware and its functions. And as our case proves, a carefully directed incident response can help solve even the perfectly prepared cybercrime, Golovanov added. Kaspersky Lab products successfully detect operations using the above tactics, techniques and procedures. When it comes to military drones, China has already established itself as its largest exporter. (Photo : Getty Images News) When it comes to military drones, China has already established itself as its largest exporter. The Chinese drone market, however, has the potential to reach even higher heights with a new model ready to be released on the international market, China Daily reported. Advertisement Called the TYW-1, the new model is an unmanned aerial vehicle developed by Beihang University, one of the leading institutes in China for science and technology. According to developers, the TYW-1 will be largely used for reconnaissance and combat missions. Beihang University developed the new drone model on the same vein as BZK-005, another one of their developments that specialize on high altitude and long range reconnaissance. Based on reports by foreign media, the Peoples Liberation Army has been using the BZK-005 on a number of operations. TYW-1 is scheduled to make its maiden flight in September and will be released on the international market next year, according to Wang Jianping, chief designer and deputy general manager of Beihang Unmanned Aircraft System Technology. We aim to tap the markets in neighboring nations, as well as in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, Wang told China Daily. He is confident the TYW-1 will fare well against competition once it is made available for sale. Taking advantage of the good design of the BZK-005, the TYW-1 will be able to fly for about 40 hours. With a maximum takeoff weight of 1,500 kilograms, it will be capable of carrying six missiles of bombs with a total weight of 300 kilograms, Wang said. Additionally, the TYW-1 model possesses a high level of automation, and learning how to operate the drone will only take a month, Wang added. Although Beihang University is not alone when it comes to selling drones to foreign buyers, it will be the first university from China to sell an UAV of a large size on the international market. Kaspersky Labs researchers have discovered an emerging and alarming trend: more and more cybercriminals are turning their attention from attacks against private users to targeted ransomware attacks against businesses. At least eight groups of cybercriminals involved in encryption ransomware development and distribution have been identified. The attacks have primarily hit financial organizations worldwide. Kaspersky Labs experts have encountered cases where payment demands amounted to over half a million dollars. The eight identified groups include PetrWrap authors, who have attacked financial organizations worldwide, the infamous Mamba group, and six unnamed groups also targeting corporate users. It is worth noting that these six groups were previously involved in attacks targeting mostly private users and used affiliate program models. Now, they have refocused their efforts on corporate networks. According to Kaspersky Labs researchers, the reason for the trend is clear criminals consider targeted ransomware attacks against businesses potentially more profitable than mass attacks against private users. A successful ransomware attack against a company can easily stop its business processes for hours or even days, making owners of affected companies more likely to pay the ransom. In general, the tactics, techniques and procedures used by these groups are very similar. They infect the targeted organization with malware through vulnerable servers or spear phishing emails. Then they establish persistence in the victims network and identify the valuable corporate resources to encrypt, subsequently demanding a ransom in exchange for decryption. In addition to their similarities, some groups have their own unique features. For instance, the Mamba group uses its own encryptor malware, based on the open source software DiskCryptor. Once the attackers gain a foothold in the network, they install the encryptor across it, using a legal utility for Windows remote control. This approach makes the actions less suspicious for security officers of the targeted organization. Kaspersky Labs researchers have encountered cases where the ransom amounted up to one bitcoin (around $1,000 to the end of March 2017) per one endpoint decryption. Another unique example of tools used in targeted ransomware attacks comes from PetrWrap. This group mainly targets major companies that have a large number of network nodes. The criminals carefully select targets for each attack that can last for some time: PetrWrap has been persistent in a network for up to 6 months. We should all be aware that the threat of targeted ransomware attacks on businesses is rising, bringing tangible financial losses. The trend is alarming as ransomware actors start their crusade for new and more profitable victims. There are many more potential ransomware targets in the wild, with attacks resulting in even more disastrous consequences, said Anton Ivanov, Senior Security Researcher, Anti-Ransom, Kaspersky Lab. In order to protect organizations from such attacks, Kaspersky Lab security experts advise the following: Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse Loughrey Get our The Life Cinematic email for free Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the The Life Cinematic email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} An extensive new trailer for the forthcoming Tupac Shakur biopic All Eyez on Me has just been released, coinciding with his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame today (April 7). Tupac rose to fame during the 1990s with rap hits such as 'California Love' - which features in the trailer - and 'Hit 'Em Up'. However, he was murdered in 1995 at the age of 25, leading to endless conspiracy theories surrounding his death and a lasting legacy as a cult rap icon. The two-minute preview gives a glimpse into the late American rappers life, chronicling his rise to the top of the industry as he battles crime and the pressures of stardom. Why are the cameras all on me? Why me? Because I'm Tupac?, asks Demetrius Shipp Jr., who stars in the lead role. Recommended Biggie gets tribute in the US House of Representatives All Eyez on Me marks the debut movie performance for the Tupac doppelganger. Meanwhile Jamal Woolard has reprised his role as Shakurs friend turned enemy, Notorious B.I.G., having also played the rapper - real name Christopher Wallace - in the 2009 film biopic Notorious. The Walking Dead actor Danai Gurira stars as Pacs mother, Afeni Shakur, with Jamie Hector playing his on-screen stepfather, Mutulu Shakur. The trailer opens with him telling a young Tupac: You must stand for something, you must live for something, and you must be willing to die for something. Mutulu was recently denied parole after serving half of his 60-year sentence for organising a chain of deadly armed robberies, New York Daily News reported. Films to get excited about in 2017 Show all 13 1 /13 Films to get excited about in 2017 Films to get excited about in 2017 Star Wars: The Last Jedi Director: Rian Johnson Rian Johnson Cast: Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, and Lupita Nyong'o Plot: No details yet, but it will continue directly on from Rey coming face-to-face with Luke at the end of The Force Awakens. Release Date: 15 December 2017 Films to get excited about in 2017 Thor: Ragnarok Director: Taika Waititi Taika Waititi Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Cate Blanchett, Tessa Thompson, Jeff Goldblum, Karl Urban, and Mark Ruffalo Plot: Story details are minimal as of now, but Thor's third return to screen has already been teased to feature a loose adaptation of the famous 'Planet Hulk' storyline. Release Date: 27 October 2017 Films to get excited about in 2017 You Were Never Really Here Director: Lynne Ramsay Lynne Ramsay Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Alessandro Nivola Plot: A war veteran's attempt to save a young girl from a sex trafficking ring goes horribly wrong. Release Date: Unknown Films to get excited about in 2017 Annihilation Director: Alex Garland Alex Garland Cast: Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tessa Thompson, and Oscar Isaac Plot: A biologist's husband disappears. She thus puts her name forward for an expedition into an environmental disaster zone, but does not quite find what she's expecting. The expedition team is made up of the biologist, an anthropologist, a psychologist, and a surveyor. Release Date: Unknown Films to get excited about in 2017 Wonderstruck (image from Far From Heaven) Director: Todd Haynes Cast: Julianne Moore, Michelle Williams, and Amy Hargreaves Plot: The story of a young boy in the Midwest is told simultaneously with a tale about a young girl in New York from fifty years ago as they both seek the same mysterious connection. Release Date: Unknown Films to get excited about in 2017 Mother (image of Darren Aronofsky) Director: Darren Aronofsky Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Michelle Pfeiffer, Domhnall Gleeson, and Ed Harris Plot: A couple's relationship is tested when uninvited guests arrive at their home, disrupting their tranquil existence. Release Date: Unknown Films to get excited about in 2017 The Killing of a Sacred Deer (image from The Lobster) Director: Yorgos Lanthimos Cast: Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, and Alicia Silverstone Plot: A surgeon forms a familial bond with a sinister teenage boy, with disastrous results. Release Date: Unknown Films to get excited about in 2017 Blade Runner 2049 Director: Denis Villeneuve Denis Villeneuve Cast: Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Robin Wright, and Jared Leto Plot: Thirty years after the events of the first film, a new blade runner, LAPD Officer K, unearths a long-buried secret that has the potential to plunge what's left of society into chaos. K's discovery leads him on a quest to find Rick Deckard, a former LAPD blade runner who has been missing for 30 years. Release Date: 6 October 2017 Films to get excited about in 2017 Lady Bird (image of director Greta Gerwig) Director: Greta Gerwig Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, and Lucas Hedges Plot: The adventures of a young woman living in Northern California for a year. Release Date: Unknown Films to get excited about in 2017 The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara (image of director Steven Spielberg and star Mark Rylance) Director: Steven Spielberg Cast: Mark Rylance, Oscar Isaac Plot: The Kidnapping Of Edgardo Mortara recounts the story of a young Jewish boy in Bologna, Italy in 1858 who, having been secretly baptized, is forcibly taken from his family to be raised as a Christian. His parents' struggle to free their son becomes part of a larger political battle that pits the Papacy against forces of democracy and Italian unification. Release Date: Unknown Films to get excited about in 2017 How to Talk to Girls at Parties Director: John Cameron Mitchell John Cameron Mitchell Cast: Elle Fanning, Ruth Wilson, and Nicole Kidman Plot: An alien touring the galaxy breaks away from her group and meets two young inhabitants of the most dangerous place in the universe: the London suburb of Croydon. Release Date: Unknown Films to get excited about in 2017 The Dark Tower Director: Nikolaj Arcel Nikolaj Arcel Cast: Idris Elba, Matthew McConaughey, and Tom Taylor Plot: Gunslinger Roland Deschain roams an Old West-like landscape in search of the dark tower, in the hopes that reaching it will preserve his dying world. Release Date: 28 July 2017 Films to get excited about in 2017 Suburbicon Director: George Clooney George Clooney Cast: Matt Damon, Julianne Moore, Josh Brolin, and Oscar Isaac Plot: A crime mystery set in the quiet family town of Suburbicon during the 1950s, where the best and worst of humanity is hilariously reflected through the deeds of seemingly ordinary people. When a home invasion turns deadly, a picture-perfect family turns to blackmail, revenge and betrayal. Release Date: 24 November Gurira's Walking Dead actress Lauren Cohan also has a small role while Kat Graham stars as Pac's lifelong friend, Jada Pinkett. The film is directed by Benny Boom and produced by Morgan Creek Productions, which is run by father-son duo James G. Robinson and David C. Robinson. The film takes its name from Tupacs fourth studio album, which was released only months before his death in 1996. The US release date of All Eyez on Me coincides with what would have been his 46th birthday. Tupacs death has long been shrouded in mystery, however, new rumours have been circulating since the release of Tupac Assassination 3: Battle for Compton. Suge Knight, the former Death Row Records boss, has supported the documentary's claims that his own ex-wife, Sharitha Knight, and the music label's security chief, Reggie Wright Jr. are behind the murders, according to Billboard. Sharitha Knight has since shunned the claims as ridiculous. Knight is currently serving a prison sentence following a hit-and-run incident in 2015, CNN reported. Sign up to Roisin OConnors free weekly newsletter Now Hear This for the inside track on all things music Get our Now Hear This email for free Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Roisin OConnors email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} "Everythings happening really quick, I dont know what the hells going on." Bassist and songwriter Thundercat is struggling to get his head round the huge response to Drunk, his third album. "I was kinda not expecting it," he says after a soundcheck at Heaven in London. He rocked up around 6pm in shades and heavy dark coat, stopping to take pictures with a cluster of fans already waiting outside the venue. Born Stephen Bruner, Thundercat began his career as a session musician working with Kendrick Lamar, jazz artist Kamasi Washington, and Erykah Badu before being encouraged to put out his own solo work. Drunk is one of those rare albums you can return to again and again and discover new things. Even the vinyl edition is fantastic, featuring sleeves for each side with artwork created by his friend, Atlanta illustrator and comedian Zack Fox. They shot the artwork, one of the best album covers of the year, in Flying Lotus's pool: "It felt totally natural," Thundercat says. "It felt good. Like searching for someone." As he talks someone tries to open the door to the makeshift interview room and he loses track of what he was saying. Then an alarm goes off from somewhere outside. Good God, he says, shaking his head at the noise. So how much of that 'leaked' Kendrick Lamar tracklist is real? He bursts out laughing at the question, then someone tries to open the door again and he shoots out of his chair, muttering to himself: "I swear to God, you motherf***er Dumbasses. Satisfied the door is shut, he comes back and takes a seat again: "I cant give away too much about the Kendrick record, you know..." he begins. "But Im just as excited as everybody else. Surely hes on it? "I dont know," he says, flashing a Cheshire cat grin. "Maybe. Maybe not." "How about DAngelo?" I pester. "Is he on it?" Thundercat wont budge of course he wont. But he does feel sorry for anyone else dropping a record on the same day. Enjoy unlimited access to 70 million ad-free songs and podcasts with Amazon Music Sign up now for a 30-day free trial Sign up "Ain't nobody talking about sales, nobody talking about nothing but pure skill," he says. "And you dont want do that with Kendrick [drop an album on the same day]. Yall already had nothing on him." He says he doesn't know who Kendrick is talking about in the diss that got everyone talking on his new track The Heart Part 4, "but whoever it's about, Kendrick meant it". Talk of a so-called revival of jazz in the mainstream bugs him, but he nods at the suggestion that artists like Kendrick are finding new ways to explore the genre, by bringing musicians into the studio rather than sampling famous records. "Its a hard line," he says. "The truth is hip hop has always complemented jazz and vice versa but theres always been this communication barrier that exists based on music to lyrics. "A lot of the time if you dont have cats that are wanting to see something change, see something different which nobody for the most part has. But were coming from a generation where things are mixed up a bit and we dont let that be a reason to hold you back." For Drunk, Thundercat brought in Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald: artists who have suffered from the media trying to compartmentalise them as yacht rock, a term that makes Thundercat grimace. "The media put them in this thing so they can sell the idea. And when you get older you realise you just like the music you like, and you wish it didnt have a genre because you start looking for things that the artists were into and it sends you down this rabbit hole. Its a blessing and a curse at the same time, the idea of genre." Thundercat was the one who introduced Kedrick to Miles Daviss incendiary Live-Evil in particular his track Little Church. "I remember it stopped him dead in his tracks to hear it. Its something that affected him. "There are two moments: one where youre looking for inspiration, and one where youre trying to work out how it can translate, a part where it sparks something. And Ill never forget seeing it Kendrick walks real fast and he just stopped in his tracks, and he stood there for a minute. "That song got him, he was like What is that? And he asked me to play it again then walked off. I was happy I could play him something that he dug." While you couldnt really call it a scene, there is this fantastic camaraderie between artists like Thundercat, Kamasi Washington, Flying Lotus, Kendrick and Brandon Coleman ("he can play his ass off," Thundercat says of the latter). They pop up on one another's work at random, when it makes sense, or, more importantly, when they feel like it. Flying Lotus film Kuso, which features a soundtrack involving many of the aforementioned artists, definitely caused a stir when it premiered at Sundance film festival, after a review claimed there were "mass walkouts" and branded it the "grossest film ever made". (Flying Lotus later confirmed on Twitter that it was actually only around 20 journalists who left the screening.) Asked if hes seen it Thundercat nods, 'yeah', then bursts out laughing again. "Oh yeah, man, the media couldnt wait to write about it," he says chuckling. "Im so happy that he did it, you know? I had to step back in the process, because he can be like I wanted you to be there more! Ive heard him talk about it for years hes always been a film student and I think that affected me. "Lotus usually has a hand in everything. I run it through the Lotus test. Even if he thinks it sucks, I respect his opinion a lot." His sense of humour comes across brilliantly on Drunk, but there also quiet moments of intense beauty, like on The Turn Down, the penultimate track on the record, which features Thundercat's hero Pharrell. I was going to work with him on some stuff. We were talking about it, trying to think of ways we could make that work. And then Pharrell heard 'Them Changes' it was so great to see that." There's a fantastic episode of the OTHERtone Beats1 show where Anderson .Paak and Pharrell break into an insane acapella rendition of the track. "That messed me up, because Pharrell is my hero," Thundercat says. "His contribution to music, to art its beyond. You forget how much he contributes. So we were in the studio and I was playing him a bunch of music, and he had a strong reaction to Turn it Down. So I basically laid it out there, that I wanted to write with him. Im pretty sure everybody tells him that, but for me the worst thing that could happen is that he said no. If it doesnt happen Im not mad. I was just happy I got to tell the guy who he was to me face-to-face." "My mom would say give me my flowers while Im still alive," he adds. "I got to tell him 'thank you', that was more important to me than just the album." Theres a beautiful line on The Turn Down where Thundercat wonders if everything we do is weak. It captures that overwhelming feeling of looking around at the world and wondering, "what the hell is going on?". Theres another factor to it which Im not really mentioning," Thundercat says. "I was happy with it, it was a really big song for everybody. But theres this juxtaposition that exists for an artist that sometimes you talk about, sometimes you dont. "I felt like Pharrell was going through something. It seemed like he was experiencing something that was difficult for him. So on 'The Turn Down', he felt that. Its this bizarro cross-paths thing." Them Changes, one of the stand-out tracks on Drunk, was first released on his 2015 EP The Beyond/Where the Giants Roam. It has that hook that got Pharrell and Anderson .Paak so excited, where Thundercat follows his instinct, rather than trying to stick to a traditional song structure. It's the same instinct that blows his audience away when he plays live: where his hands seem detached from his body and start to blur on a bass solo as he tilts his head back, eyes closed, just feeling the music. Then on Drink Dat ft. Wiz Khalifa, theres a whole other mood: "See thats the side of Wiz that nobody knows, Thundercat says. "The side that goes to Pablo Escobars grave and pisses off a whole country." He stops for a moment, laughing: "Thats like the most 'metal' moment Ive ever seen! Who pisses a whole country off of Instagram? Columbia was like, F*** you, Wiz! "But yeah that song was a great meeting point for me and him," he adds. "If there was another title for that song it would be The Smoker and the Drinker. "The way we would connect was like separate but together," you know? "This guy is a superstar. And then theres my little weird ass" as he cracks another grin. Drunk by Thundercat is out now Sign up to Roisin OConnors free weekly newsletter Now Hear This for the inside track on all things music Get our Now Hear This email for free Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Roisin OConnors email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A British DJ has been sentenced to a year in jail after he placed a dance remix of the Muslim call to prayer at a nightclub in Tunisia. London-born DJ Dax J was charged with public indecency and offending public morality by a Tunisian court, but had already fled the country before the court case. After footage emerged of the event over the weekend - which was held in Nabeul as part of Orbit Festival - outrage was sparked on social media and the nightclub was shut down, the BBC reports. The footage showed clubbers dancing to music played by two DJs, including a dance version of the call to prayer, the religious act performed by Muslims five times a day. When the club was shut down, the governor of Nabeul, Mnaouar Ouertani said: 'We will not allow attacks against religious feelings and the sacred." A court spokesperson told AFP news agency that the court had dismissed charges against the nightclub owner and an event organiser. However the prosecution has appealed and said that the two should have checked what Dax J was planning to play. The DJ has offered his "sincere apologies to anyone who may have been offended by music that I played at Orbit Festival in Tunisia on Friday". "It was never my intention to upset or cause offence to anybody," he said. Organisers of Orbit Festival apologised earlier in the week on the event Facebook page, but said they did not accept responsibility for the playing of any offensive music. Sign up to Roisin OConnors free weekly newsletter Now Hear This for the inside track on all things music Get our Now Hear This email for free Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Roisin OConnors email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Gorillaz aren't cutting corners when it comes to their big musical comeback, having been largely absent from the scene for over half-a-decade. The band recently announced new album Humanz, alongside the release of a six-minute animated film titled Saturnz Barz (Spirit House), which features four tracks from the upcoming album: 'Saturnz Barz in full, plus highlights of Ascension, Andromeda and We Got The Power. The video saw the band's animated members visit a dilapidated home that inevitably is unveiled to house a host of strange phantasms; an experience the band is now hoping to replicate for fans. Brooklyn, Amsterdam, and Berlin are each set to house an immersive, pop-up 'spirit house' themed around the video (via Dazed), offering fans the chance to experience "exclusive music and visuals through physical installations and projection mapping technology". "Come and bathe in high-tech sound, feast on unearthly visuals, and let the experience take you on the ultimate trip," bassist Murdoc Niccals said in a statement. The pop-up will appear in Brooklyn from 21-23 April, Berlin from 28-30 April, and Amsterdam on 6 May. Entry is free, but attendees will be required to RSVP here. Sign up to IndyEat's free newsletter for weekly recipes, foodie features and cookbook releases Get our Now Hear This email for free Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the IndyEats email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} When you really think about it, drinking alcohol is a pretty daft thing to do. One minute you're messily dancing in a nightclub, then next you can barely stomach water, your dehydrated face looks swollen like a Cabbage Patch Kids, and a dull ache is burrowing deeper and deeper into your skull. Meanwhile, your liver is trying to battle the toxic alcohol that has poisoned you. Drinking is great idea: until you have to face the pesky consequences. When alcohol reaches the liver, it produces a toxic enzyme called acetaldehyde which can damage that organ, as well as the brain and stomach lining. By drinking regularly and heavily, the bodys ability to metabolise alcohol changes and this can cause liver disease. But a company in the US claims to have made a miracle happen. It has invented vodka that creates the same buzz as regular alcohol but doesnt damage your liver as much. The brains behind the operation is Harsha Chigurupati. He dreamt up alcohol that doesn't damage the liver but creates the same wooziness when he was a business management student at Boston University, minoring in psychology. I come from a pharmaceutical background, and so because of that I had some experience with pharmaceuticals growing up. But Im not a scientist, he tells The Independent, adding with a laugh: In fact I hated it growing up. Chigurupatis family owns Granules India which produces drugs including paracetamol and ibuprofen: both of which can damage the liver. When the business created a drug which they claim causes less harm to the liver than others, Chigurupati put two and two together and decided to try to develop alcohol with the same effects. The most important thing is not sacrificing the buzz factor. If you dont have that, guess what? no one will drink it!" he says. "If it affects the buzz it wont be a mainstream product. Im not interested in doing anything niche, but only mainstream products that affect everyone. Teetotal celebrities on why they don't drink Show all 7 1 /7 Teetotal celebrities on why they don't drink Teetotal celebrities on why they don't drink Ruby Rose Rose explained her decisions for quitting booze in an column for News.Com.Au, which ranged from cost to health, after deciding sobriety was the path forward following a heavy night with the singer. Remember when Katy Perry and I crashed the year 12 formal? I don't. I had been off the grog for 30 days - my first attempt at sobriety - and I was out partying with Katy. What I do remember thinking was: "I'll have a drink tonight, I deserve one. I mean, what's the worst that could happen?" Well, not stopping at one drink, or ten, and then vomitting on Katy's foot was the answer. What was worse was I don't normally spew (I don't know why, I just don't), so clearly the universe wanted to punish me. I can't say for certain how much money I've wasted on getting wasted but I'm sure the figure would hit me harder than any hangover. REX Features Teetotal celebrities on why they don't drink Blake Lively In 2012, the Cafe Society actress told Allure magazine drinking is never something she has enjoyed. "I don't drink. I've never tried a drug. ... It's just something that I genuinely don't have a desire for." Getty Teetotal celebrities on why they don't drink Daniel Radcliffe The Harry Potter actor told GQ quitting alcohol came as he became increasingly dependent on it to feel confident in social situations. I became so reliant on [alcohol] to enjoy stuff. As much as I would love to be a person that goes to parties and has a couple of drinks and has a nice time, that doesnt work for me. I do that very unsuccessfully. AFP/Getty Images Teetotal celebrities on why they don't drink Jennifer Lopez Lopez is careful about her health and diet. I don't drink or smoke or have caffeine, she told US Weekly in January. Getty Teetotal celebrities on why they don't drink Kate Beckinsale The actress told Parade her decision not to drink was her true beauty secret. I dont really drink alcohol and I always take my makeup off at night! Getty Images Teetotal celebrities on why they don't drink Kim Kardashian Kimberly does not drink alcohol whatsoever," her sister Khloe has said. Pregnant or not, she's just never been into it." Kardashian herself has said she has never liked the taste of alcohol. Getty Teetotal celebrities on why they don't drink Jim Carry "I rarely drink coffee. I'm very serious about no alcohol, no drugs. Life is too beautiful." - In an interview with CBS in 2004 Getty images The result is NTX, or No Tox. Last year, he teamed up with an alcohol firm to create Bellion Vodka. Chigurupati says this drink gives the liver less of a kicking than regular booze. According to Chigurupati, NTX contains mixture of additives - glycyrrhizin which comes from from licorice, D-mannitol which is a type of alcohol, and the preservative potassium sorbate - that enables the body to metabolise alcohol better, which in turn lessens the organ's workload. The vodka and its lofty promises are available in 11 US states, and it hopes to roll out gin, bourbon and other drinks, too. But the firm is awaiting federal rubber-stamping before it can market NTX as a substances that reduces damage to the liver, the DNA, and also provides antioxidant and inflammatory support. Asked whether NTX is good for the liver, Chigurupati says that, of course, it isnt. It protects the liver from alcohol-induced damage. Its a safer way to drink. But if you dont drink, dont start. At the end of the day alcohol wreaks havon on the liver. The firms claims are currently being reviewed by the USs Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) and the Food and Drug Administration. Recommended Bartenders reveal the most shocking things drunk customers have done Experts are sceptical, however. The firm's health claims are based on 70 separate studies into the separate components of NTX. A study that is said to prove the powers of this combination in NTX is based on 12 people consuming one vodka containing the substance and one which didnt. It was carried out by Chigurupatis company, and was peer-reviewed and published in the journal Psychotherapy Research. Marsha Bates, a professor and director of the Center of Alcohol Studies at Rutgers University told the Scientific American magazine that the study is small, and further research is needed to understand the long-term effects of drinking NTX. Dr Gautam Mehta, Honorary Consultant and Senior Lecturer at UCL, suggested that it is irresponsible to try to link alcohol with any health claims. He told The Independent: It is, in my opinion, very dangerous to ascribe unproven health claims to an alcoholic drink such as this, particularly as alcohol is now the third commonest cause of preventable death worldwide and rates of liver disease continue to rise. Chigurupati says that anything that shakes up the status generally takes a while to be accepted into the mainstream. And starting with the verdict from the TBB, hes happy to wait. Sign up to IndyEat's free newsletter for weekly recipes, foodie features and cookbook releases Get our Now Hear This email for free Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the IndyEats email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Britains 10 best takeaways - according to an online delivery service - have been revealed. The entire shortlist is made up of independent restaurants from a range of cities including London, Manchester, Derby, Birmingham and Cardiff. After scouring the UK and analysing over 12,000 restaurants, it was Londons Thai Metro that took the top spot in Hungry House's awards. Known for its colourful twists on classic Thai dishes, Thai Metro won the coveted crown for its five star ratings, glowing reviews and unprecedented customer return rate. Thai Metro owner Ekkachai Somboonsarn has cooked at festivals like Glastonbury and Reading Owner Ekkachai Somboonsarn said, We are a family owned business, so to receive both this recognition and exposure is an unbelievable honour. We pride ourselves on serving up delicious Thai cuisine at good value, all made with high quality ingredients. We look forward to delivering to even more hungryhouse.co.uk customers very soon. Ranked on factors like restaurant popularity, customer reviews, return sales and hygiene standards, trendy burger and chicken restaurant Benz Burgers in Kensal Green, London, sits in second place despite having only been in business for a year. In third place is Glasgows Home Wok, which serves up a variety of authentic Chinese, Japanese and Korean cuisine. The staff at Benz Burgers which ranked second in the shortlist Alice Mrongovius, Hungry House CEO, said Not only is it a great pleasure to support these local family businesses, who often don't get the exposure they deserve; it also unearths the best hidden gem restaurants and dishes for our customers to tuck into." Home Wok in Glasgow cinched third place with its Chinese, Japanese and Korean cuisine Other restaurants that made the top 10 included Mish Mash in Birmingham, La Mama in Manchester, Oriental Chef in Nottingham, Himalayan Gurka in Derby, Mr Chans in Clerkenwell, London, The Fryery in Cardiff and Hana in Kensal Green, London. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The US has launched an unexpected attack on Syria, provoking destruction on the ground and divisions across the world. To do so, it fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at the airbase. That brand of weapon is one that packs importance even beyond its deadly force and one that indicates just how significant the decision to shoot them into Syria could be. Each of those missiles cost $1.5 million, and in all, those 59 missiles cost $90 million. But the US army sees that price tag as worth it for a weapon that offers untold accuracy, destruction and symbolic importance. In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Show all 7 1 /7 In pictures: US missile strike against Syria In pictures: US missile strike against Syria The guided-missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG 78) launches a tomahawk land attack missile in the Mediterranean Sea AP In pictures: US missile strike against Syria The United States military launched at least 50 tomahawk cruise missiles at al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs, Syria, in response to the Syrian military's alleged use of chemical weapons in an airstrike in a rebel held area in Idlib province EPA In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Shayrat airfield in Syria Getty Images In pictures: US missile strike against Syria US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile in Mediterranean Sea Reuters In pictures: US missile strike against Syria US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile in Mediterranean Sea Reuters In pictures: US missile strike against Syria President Donald Trump speaks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., after the US fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians AP In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Syria's President Bashar al-Assad Reuters The Tomahawk missile has been in use since it was developed in the late 1970s. While it has undergone a range of different upgrades since then adding in more recently developed technologies that help increase its devastating accuracy, for instance it maintains the same basic design that dropped as part of the first Gulf War in 1991. And the system for firing them is much the same too. The missiles weighing in at 3,500 pounds and measuring 20 feet long are flung at 550 miles an hour from the cruisers, destroyers and submarines that carry them. When theyre on board their ships, they look like a huge, military sausage, and are placed into a launch tube ready to be shot out using their on-board rocket engine. But once they hit the air they open out 3.5-foot wings, allowing them to trundle along quietly, close to the ground, until theyre needed. Strapped to the missiles are a set of explosives, ready to destroy wherever they land. But they also carry with them a host of technologies: GPS and other mapping tools, satellite connections and a navigation system and connection that means that they can loiter around in the air, awaiting the message that they should drop down and be flown into specific locations once they are. That is important when looking to respond to and destroy chemical weapons programmes run by the USs enemies. Destroying such weapons isnt a simple feat, and doing so in the wrong way can inadvertently spread the chemicals out and creating an attack of its own and so the precision of the Tomahawk allows the military to fly into chemical weapons facilities in such a way as to destroy, not unleash, any capability. Doing so was intended as a message to Syria over its chemical weapons programme, and the fact that it had used it on its own people. It was far from the first time that US had done so the country has used Tomahawks as warning letters in previous conflicts in Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Sudan, Yemen and Libya. The chart below/above, created for The Independent by statistics agency Statista, shows the times those weapons were used and the sheer number that were fired. (Statista (Statista) The same thing that makes them so useful and so fearsome their power, precision and price is also what makes them such a significant statement. Preparing and firing a Tomahawk is a costly and careful procedure, one that is only activated when the US and its navy intends to make a destructive and deadly point. "Though I'm no Trump fan, this is exactly the kind of response that should have met Assad and his forces the first time they used CW on an innocent population, said Peter Felstead, editor of Jane's Defence Weekly. The fact that the US and UK didn't act then was shameful and probably led Assad to believe he could get away with it again. Tomahawk cruise missile attacks are a powerful message that US attitudes to that under the Trump administration have changed. Syria missile strike: Trump calls on 'all civilised nations to end the slaughter and bloodshed' And that message may not be finished: the country has a stockpile of Tomahawk land-attack missiles, to give them their full name. In all, the US Navy is thought to have more than 3,500 of them ready to fly, carried on ships around the world. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Rupert Murdochs 21st Century Fox has been given the green light to take over European broadcaster Sky, paving the way for the creation of a media empire that will span two continents and take on major emerging rivals. The company struck a preliminary deal to snap up the 61 per cent of Sky that it does not already own in December last year. The offer of 10.75 a share in cash, valuing the deal at 11.7bn, was at the time backed by Skys independent directors but became subject to intense scrutiny on concerns that a deal might breach competition rules. In March, Culture Secretary Karen Bradley said she had concerns relating to media plurality and the combined companys commitment to broadcasting standards. She referred the deal to Ofcom and the European Commission on Friday said the regulator now has until 16 May to investigate and report on whether the transaction is, or may be, against the public interest of ensuring a sufficient number of people are in control of media enterprises. But on Friday the EU offered it its seal of approval unconditionally. The commission concluded the transaction would raise no competition concerns in Europe, it said in a statement. Fox and Sky are mainly active in different markets in the Austria, Germany, Ireland, Italy and the UK, it added. They compete with each other only to a limited extent, mainly in the acquisition of TV content and in the wholesale supply of basic pay-TV channels. 21st Century Fox in a statement said that it welcomed the EUs decision. We now look forward to continuing to work with UK authorities and are confident that the proposed transaction will be approved following a thorough review process, it said. The takeover comes five years after Mr Murdoch's last tilt at taking full control of the business through News Corporation and will likely strengthen the position of James Murdoch who is both chief executive of Fox and chairman of Sky in his fathers media empire. Reuters last year reported that Fox will take on about $10bn of debt to fund the acquisition. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Twitter has filed a lawsuit against the US government to prevent the Trump administration from forcing the company to reveal who's running an account that has criticised the President. In a case filed in San Francisco on Thursday, Twitter said it wants to prevent an arm of the Department of Homeland Security from unlawfully abusing a limited-purpose investigatory tool in an effort to unmask the identity of the person, or people, behind the @ALT_uscis account. The account claims to be run by federal immigration employees at the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service and calls itself immigration resistance. Recommended Visitors to US to be forced to hand over phones and social logins The company argues that users are protected under the First Amendment of the US Constitution with the right to anonymous or pseudonymous political speech. The motivations these users have for preserving their anonymity presumably include a desire to speak freely and without the fear of negative consequences that may flow from being identified as the source of controversial views and commentary concerning the administration and its agencies, the company wrote in a complaint. Twitter added that the Government may not force the company to disclose information regarding the real identities of these users without first proving that some criminal or civil offence has been committed that unmasking the users identity is the least restrictive means for investigating that offence, that the demand for this information is not motivated by a desire to suppress free speech, and that the interests of pursuing that investigation outweighs the important First Amendment rights of Twitter and its users. The defendants have not come close to making any of those showings, Twitter said according to the complaint. After the lawsuit became public, @ALT_uscis tweeted a copy of the First Amendment and a picture of part of the lawsuit. According to Reuters, the account's followers nearly tripled to 89,000 in the hours after the news broke. On Friday morning, it had about 123,000 followers. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said it was representing the anonymous Twitter user. The ACLU said it was glad to see Twitter pushing back against the request. 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 Well be going to court to defend this users right to anonymous speech, the union tweeted. The Department of Homeland Security, which is a defendant in the lawsuit, declined to comment on pending litigation when approached by Reuters. President Xis state visit, which will run for three days, was upon the invitation of Sauli Niinisto, the president of Finland. (Photo : Getty Images) President Xi Jinping and First Lady Peng Liyuan arrived at Helsinki Airport on Tuesday afternoon, April 4, for President Xis scheduled state visit to Finland, China Daily reported. The state visit is hoped to improve mutual trust, bilateral ties, and cooperation between China and Finland. Advertisement Now, as we are building and promoting a future-oriented new type of cooperative partnership, our relationship faces new development opportunities, Xi told the media waiting at Helsinki Airport. President Xis state visit, which will run over the course of three days, was upon the invitation of Sauli Niinisto, the president of Finland. The last time a Chinese head of state visited Finland was approximately 22 years ago. Aside from meeting with President Niinisto, President Xi will also hold a meeting with Speaker of the Finnish Parliament Maria Lohela and Prime Minister Juha Sipila, according to China Daily. I look forward to meeting with President Sauli Niinisto, Speaker Maria Lohela and Prime Minister Juha Sipila, during which we will have an in-depth exchange of views on China-Finland relations and other issues of shared interest and draw the blueprint for the growth of our relations, Xi said in his arrival statement. Ties between China and Finland have enjoyed a long history and friendship. One of the first Western countries to establish diplomatic relations with the Peoples Republic of China was Finland. In addition, Finland was also the first Western country to forge an intergovernmental trade agreement with China. Both of the countries serve as each others trading partners in their respective regions. During President Niinistos state visit to China in 2013, the two countries also expanded their ties to a future-oriented new-type cooperative partnership. Now, Finland and China have successfully worked together in various fields, including clean energy, Arctic research, innovation, and high technology. It has set an example of friendship and win-win cooperation between countries that have different size, population, history, culture, social system, and development level, Xi said about China and Finlands relationship. I am confident that, with the joint efforts of China and Finland, this visit will be a great success, Xi added. Sign up for a full digest of all the best opinions of the week in our Voices Dispatches email Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Voices Dispatches email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Almost 150,000 families were hit with penalties for their taking children out of school without permission during the last school year, with councils raking in a total of almost 9m in fines, exclusive figures reveal. Data obtained from 145 councils in England also unveils a postcode lottery for fines, with some local authorities issuing many thousands of penalties while others did not hand out any. Suffolk and Lancashire councils topped the chart for number of fines issued at more than 5,600, bringing in around 340,000 for each authority. At the other end of the scale, Richmond Council in London recorded no penalty notices at all during the 2015-16 academic year. The new figures are revealed as a landmark judgment by the Supreme Court ruled against term-time pupil absences. Jon Platt was prosecuted by Isle of Wight Council after he refused to pay a penalty fine for taking his daughter out of school to go on holiday in April 2015. Local magistrates initially found there was no case to answer, and two High Court judges later upheld the decision, stating that Mr Platt had not acted unlawfully because his daughter had a good overall attendance record of more than 90 per cent. But judges ruled on Thursday that regular attendance had to be in keeping with individual school rules, after the local authority challenged the meaning of regular attendance. The decision divided opinion, with teaching unions and school heads arguing there were better alternatives to issuing penalty fines as a way of addressing the growing issue of unauthorised absences. Responding to the ruling, Mr Platt said the outcome was shocking. If you share custody of your child, as I do, with a former partner, and they are late to school on a day you don't have them, you have committed a criminal offence under this judgment, he said. The issue is no longer if it ever was about term-time holidays, it is about the state taking the rights of parents away when it comes to making decisions about their children. Father reacts to Supreme Court ruling on term-time holidays While overall absence rates declined in 2015-16, the number of pupils in England taking leave for unauthorised family holidays rose to a five-year high, government figures revealed last year. The new figures on fines issued to parents collated by law firm Simpson Millar using Freedom of Information requests found councils handed out a minimum of 8.8m worth in fines during 2015-16. The north-west of England issued more than 25,000 penalties alone, more than in any other region. This equates to more than 1.5m, calculated on the basis that each 60 fine is paid within the required 21 days. Lancashire County Council alone reported sending out 5,654 individual penalty notices and Bradford issued 4,985. Some 5,668 families in Suffolk were fined for pupil absenteeism up from a reported 4,500 last year. Nottinghamshire County Council also experienced a dramatic rise, issuing 2,240 penalty notices up from just 371 the year before. Redbridge Borough Council issued the highest number of penalties of the London region, at 3,182, with Newham and Havering close behind each issuing more than 131,000 worth of fines. In separate figures released earlier this week, it was revealed that almost 20,000 people were taken to court for failing to ensure their child attended school in 2015. The rise in both fines issued and court prosecutions follow the introduction of stricter rules issued by the Department for Education to crackdown on pupil absences in 2013. Until that point, headteachers were able to use their discretion to allow parents to take children out of school for up to 10 days per year. But new rules from the Department for Education now state that headteachers must only authorise absences in exceptional circumstances such as funerals. If parents break the rules, the local council can issue a fine of 60, which doubles if it remains unpaid after 21 days. An absence for the bereavement of a close family member, a funeral or important religious holidays can be counted as exceptional circumstances. Parents argue that holidays taken in peak periods are up to four times more expensive, however, costing the typical family the equivalent of 1,771 extra per trip. In the past 12 months alone, the number of parents facing court action for their child missing school without permission increased by more than a fifth, with 75 per cent of parents found guilty in court. The Department for Education states that penalty notices are one way of deterring pupils from being out of school without permission. Fines are issued and collected by local authorities, and any money gleaned must be reinvested in education. Supreme Court rules against term-time holiday father Mr Platt was initially fined 60 after his request to take his daughter out of school was denied. This was later doubled to 120 when he refused to pay it. When the case was heard at the Supreme Court earlier this year, the Isle of Wight local authority argued that an unauthorised absence for even a single day, or even half a day could be unlawful. But Mr Platt's representatives argued that it was unacceptable to interpret the rules in a way that would criminalise so many parents. Ministers argue that allowing parents to take children out of school in term-time is disruptive to their learning and caused problems for teachers and the rest of the class when pupils returned and had to be helped to catch up. A Department for Education spokeswoman said: Our position remains that children should not be taken out of school without good reason. That is why we have tightened the rules and are supporting schools and local authorities to use their powers to tackle unauthorised absence. Kevin Courtney, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said: Fining parents is entirely the wrong route to be going down. Many parents will be able to afford the fine and it will not be a deterrent. This is yet another example of top-down measures being imposed on schools causing unnecessary tensions between head teachers and families. A Suffolk County Council Spokesperson commented: Following the Supreme Court ruling, Suffolk County Councils position on school attendance remains that children should not be taken out of school without good reason. It is up to the headteacher to decide whether or not to authorise an absence. Fixed penalty notices are issued as a result of a referral from the school for unauthorised absence, in line with the attendance policy of the school and it is Suffolk County Councils policy to support schools. We are pleased that the Supreme Court ruling reflects our position. Bob Stott, Lancashire County Council's Director for Education, Schools and Care, said: Lancashire has more schools than any other local authority so we are always likely to appear high up in lists like this. The decision to authorise absence or not rests with the headteacher of the particular school, who has the option to ask the local authority to issue a penalty notice. "In line with stricter government guidelines, headteachers are now only able to authorise absence in exceptional circumstances. Although each request is taken on its merits, the starting point is always that term time is for education. Government legislation is very clear that local authorities can only use money raised to pay for the administration of the penalty notice scheme, and the cost of any further action needed if a penalty notice isn't paid. Sign up for our free Health Check email to receive exclusive analysis on the week in health Get our free Health Check email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Health Check email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A doctor taking a well-earned rest after 28 hours of emergency surgery has been praised for his diligence by Chinese social media users. Luo Heng, a surgeon at a hospital in Dingyuan, an area in Chinas eastern Anhui province, was pictured curled up asleep on the floor. He had worked overnight to perform two urgent operations, followed by three more the next day, according to a number of Chinese news sites including those of China Central Television and China Daily. Pictures of Dr Luo were widely shared on Chinese social network Weibo with beating heart emojis and comments commending his dedication. However, others pointed out the dangers of doctors working extremely long shifts. I admire such dedicated people, but I do not advocate this, wrote one user on the social network. My point of view is: rest is good to be able to work better. Dr Luo (Weibo / ) You can see the effort put into working to give the best outcome for the patient, wrote another, while a separate user wrote: They are always worthy of our respect. Most Chinese hospitals are run by the government, but there are also private clinics in the country of 1.4 billion. There are 2.9 million doctors licenced to practise in China, according to 2014 figures published by Statista. Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UK Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Brexit and beyond email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Britain should prepare for a possible shortage of up to 42,000 nurses after Brexit, a leaked internal document from the Department of Health has claimed. The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) urged the Government to move fast to prevent staffing levels hitting unsafe levels after the estimate a worst-case scenario figure produced by civil servants was revealed by the Health Service Journal. If nurses from EU and non-EU countries stop coming to the UK in 2019, the forecast said within six years there would be a nursing staff shortage of between 26,000 and 42,000. Recommended Record numbers of nurses from EU quitting their NHS jobs The journal said the numbers were presented to ministers last month and quoted information they had seen as saying: The analysis indicates that there is a severe risk of undersupply if immigration rules change and international inflows stop. Janet Davies, the RCNs chief executive, said decisions would have to be made about what would we be able to provide if such a shortage materialised after leaving the EU. You wouldn't want to keep running an unsafe service that was so short of nurses, she said. This is a large problem that is coming at us quickly and we need to move fast. What we are not seeing is any real action." More than 2,700 nurses left the NHS in 2016, according to freedom of information requests compiled by the Liberal Democrats an increase of 68 per cent since 2014. There are already around 24,000 vacant nursing positions in the NHS, according to the RCN. A spokesperson for the Department of Health said: As you would expect, the department and others are focused on workforce planning to ensure the NHS has the staff it needs to continue to provide good care. The Secretary of State has always made clear that EU nationals who work in the NHS make a valuable contribution and this will be taken into account during Brexit negotiations. MP Jonathan Ashworth, Labour's shadow health secretary, said: When Parliament returns the Secretary of State must update the House on his response to this independent civil service analysis and finally outline his plans for the NHS staffing and Brexit. It's time for an 'NHS guarantee' for these workers ensuring their rights offering these workers who care for our sick and elderly the certainty that they deserve. The Liberal Democrats have demanded an NHS passport to secure rights of the 59,000 EU citizens who work in the NHS as doctors and nurses. Additional reporting by Press Association For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A fifth victim of the Westminster terror attack has died, police have said. The 31-year-old had been receiving urgent medical care in hospital after she was injured in the 22 March attack. Her life support was withdrawn yesterday afternoon. Police named the woman as Andreea Cristea, a Romanian national visiting London when Khalid Masood, 52, drove a car into crowds on Westminster bridge. Ms Cristea, an architect who was in the capital with her boyfriend Andrei Burnaz to celebrate his birthday, fell into the Thames during the attack. It is not clear whether she leapt into the water to escape the violence or if she was thrown from the bridge as part of it. After fighting for her life for over two weeks, our beloved and irreplaceable Andreea wonderful daughter, sister, partner, dedicated friend and the most unique and life loving person you can imagine was cruelly and brutally ripped away from our lives in the most heartless and spiritless way, said Ms Cristeas family in a statement. She will always be remembered as our shining ray of light that will forever keep on shining in our hearts. In pictures: Westminster attack Show all 9 1 /9 In pictures: Westminster attack In pictures: Westminster attack An air ambulance lands after gunfire sounds were heard close to the Palace of Westminster in London PA wire In pictures: Westminster attack MPs wait until the situation is under control in Westminster. 'The alleged assailant was shot by armed police,' David Lidington, leader of the House of Commons, told the house. BBC News In pictures: Westminster attack Crowds gather in Westminster after shooting incident, which police are treating as terror attack BBC News In pictures: Westminster attack Police were also called to an incident on Westminster Bridge nearby AP In pictures: Westminster attack Early reports indicate the car, which mounted the pavement on Westminster Bridge and mowed into around a dozen people, was the same vehicle which then rammed into the railings of the Palace of Westminster, just around the corner Reuters In pictures: Westminster attack Security sources described the suspected assailant as a middle-aged Asian man, who is understood to have left the car before attacking a police officer with a seven-to-eight inch knife PA wire In pictures: Westminster attack Police have asked people to avoid the immediate area to allow emergency services to deal with the ongoing incident AP In pictures: Westminster attack One woman has died and a number of others, including the police officer, have been hurt, according to a junior doctor at St Thomas' Hospital Reuters In pictures: Westminster attack At least three gun shots were heard by those inside Westminster, and proceedings in the House of Commons have been suspended AP The attacker stabbed a policeman, named as PC Keith Palmer, to death before being shot dead himself. US tourist Kurt Cochran, retired window cleaner Leslie Rhodes and Aysha Frade, who worked at a London sixth-form college, also died when Masood drove his car into people walking across the bridge. Ms Cristeas family said they would like money donated to her recovery to be given to charity. Mr Burnaz suffered a broken foot during the attack but has since left hospital. The Romanian ambassador to the UK, Dan Mihalache, has said Mr Burnaz had planned to propose to Ms Cristea on the day of the attack. Deeply saddened to hear of the death of Andreea Cristea. Londoners hold her and her loved ones in our thoughts today, said mayor of London Sadiq Khan. Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Morning Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A young mother has spoken out about the extreme financial difficulties the sudden death of her husband had on her family, and said that the Government's decision to silently usher in cuts to bereavement benefits risks committing children to a life of poverty. Sara McCarthy, 31, was in the early stages of starting a family when the sudden death of her husband transformed her life into a living nightmare. Six months pregnant and with a three-year-old, she was left shocked and devastated last autumn when she heard that her fit and healthy partner, Robert, had gone to the gym only to not return having died of unknown causes. Amid the excitement of buying their own flat in Jersey and the anticipation of having their second child, the death of Robert, 41 known to his loved ones as Bertie came as a sharp emotional shock for Sara, whose daughter, Elsie, is now four and whose son, Barnaby, is just three months old. I woke up in the middle of the night to find that he wasnt home. It turned out hed gone to the gym in the evening and not come back. I couldn't believe it when I found out it was because hed died of unclear causes, Sara told The Independent. We were just starting our lives as a young family. Wed bought a house; we were expecting our second child. Wed been married five years. We were just really settled excited and happy. Life was busy, hectic, but wonderful. But I went from just starting this life to waking up in a nightmare and not being able to snap out of it. It was a living nightmare. You dont expect it you really dont. Aside from the grief of losing a husband and a dad, Sara and her children were quickly hit by the often under-reported complexities of the financial struggle that comes with the death of a breadwinner. Elsie, pictured with her father a few years before his death, is now four-years-old (Sara McCarthy) Robert had been a mental health nurse working on a zero-hour contract, while Sara, six months pregnant at the time of his death, was working as a social worker but was soon set to go on maternity leave. Following Roberts death, Sara was signed off on compassionate leave for three months. Since giving birth to her son Barnaby at the start of January, she has taken stress leave, and said her economic situation has been extremely difficult, with her only additional income being the Widowed Parents Allowance (WPA) a benefit that has been quietly slashed by the Government to offer it to people for a limit of 18 months instead of 20 years. My childcare costs were 600 a month when Rob died, because we were both in work. Obviously we immediately dropped an income. Rob was on a zero-hours contract as a mental health nurse, so we didnt have any destined service benefits as a result, so there was no pay-out from that sense, Sara said. Its been extremely difficult financially. I get 170 a month from Robs pension, and because I was pregnant with Barnaby when he died we dont get anything for him. We had a very simple funeral, but it cost 5,000. We got 2,000 bereavement benefits upfront and that was really helpful, but it went straight towards the funeral. And then I get 394 a month from the Widowed Parents Allowance. That pays for food, clothes, nappies for the children everything the children need. Recommended Cuts to benefits for bereaved families are both cruel and unnecessary With my husband a nurse and me a social worker, we were always strong believes in a welfare state that supports the vulnerable. We never thought that we would be the family that became the ones needing support. As a social worker and a nurse you strive to offer people support, but you never think youll need it yourself. Financial difficulties aren't unusual for widowed parents, with more than seven in 10 saying their bereavement had a serious or negative financial impact on them and their family. But while Sara and other bereaved families who lost their loved ones prior to 6 April will receive financial support from the Government for up to 20 years, families who suffer the death of a parent will now will receive the benefits for just 18 months. The Government has branded it a move to "modernise" the current system by making it "simpler and tax-free". However, the changes are expected to save approximately 100 million a year, which appears to contradict a pledge ministers previously made that funding for bereaved parents would not be cut, and has prompted concerns that for families like Sara, it will see financial support cut off at a time when it is still much-needed. Sara said her priority now, six months on from Roberts death, is the wellbeing and security of her two young children, and that WPA is critical to her being able to do this. They went from a very safe, loving warm environment to Daddy disappearing overnight and Mummy being heartbroken, and thats tough on them. They went from having resilient, safe, secure early years to all of a sudden becoming vulnerable, she said. I couldnt work. Im a social worker for the NSPCC, and I wouldnt be able to effectively and safely make decisions about other peoples lives when I am this heartbroken and in such profound grief and trying to rebuild my life. The Widowed Parents Allowance helped me to support my children, give them the support and stability by being at home on maternity leave for a bit longer. Thats a priority. Sara was six months pregnant and with a three-year-old when her husband died (Sara McCarthy) Im hoping to go back to work part-time, but I dont know if Ill be able to afford to do that at the moment. I definitely wouldnt be able to do that without the benefits. Our children need me to be as financially secure as possible, to be able to overcome this and to raise these children around this horrendous tragedy that weve experienced. And the Government should support us to do that." Sara said she finds it upsetting that bereaved parents will from today be given just a year and a half of financial support to help them adapt to a life without their partner. We've suffered an incomprehensible loss. I couldnt have imagined it before this. Life is ruined, and money is not the answer there is no answer but it massively helps in a dark, dark time. I cant get my husband back, my children cant have their father back," she said. "But what they can have is me back; I can try and rebuild our lives and grow around this grief. And in order for widows and widowers to be able to do this and to support their children effectively and safely, we need other things in our lives to be as easy as possible. Whats so upsetting is that after 18 months they expect widows and widowers to adapt to this new life. In my case, because I own a flat for example, were not entitled to other benefits or support. Without the benefits, I would have to sell my house. Id have to spend my deposit money, which we worked so hard to save, and then live in private rented, which does not afford my children the stability or security that I need. Without the support, I think people will really, really struggle. Because its such a change, you go from being capable, independent functioning members of society to broken-hearted and at the point of despair. Its so important. It affords my children stability. It affords me the practical support to give my children the emotional support that they need to overcome this tragedy and to grow around it. With these changes, many bereaved parents like me will have to pick between forcing themselves back to work or committing their children to a life of poverty. Adding that the new policy made her feel isolated as a widow, Sara said the Government are able to silently usher in the cuts because those who would benefit from it in the future don't yet necessarily know how much they will need the support, because of the unforeseen nature of losses such like that of her husband. It makes me feel isolated, like no one has a clue. Not even the people running the country have a clue how devastated and broken we are. They think theyll be fine, and were not. It makes you feel very alone. I dont know how were going to recover from this. We will, but we need to practical support to do so, and from today bereaved families will not have that. Theyll be under such an immense amount of pressure, she said. Robert and Elsie enjoy a day out shortly before Robert's death (Sara McCarthy) No one thinks this is going to happen to them. I didnt think my perfectly healthy husband would go to the gym and then not come home. The Government is silently ushering it in because people dont know that its going to affect them until its too late. Its awful. A spokesman for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) said the changes were intended to modernise the support" the benefits offer, and described the new Bereavement Support Payment as "simpler, easier to understand and tax-free". He added that after the 18 months the welfare system would continue to be a "safety net" for those who need it most including those who are bringing up children alone, living on low incomes or struggling to get back into work but failed to outline how. Frank Field, Labour MP and chair of Parliaments Work and Pensions Committee, meanwhile said the Government has reneged on a promise not to cut funding for bereaved parents. He has written to ministers to complain about the policy saving a hundred million pounds a year despite a previous pledge that there would be no reduction to the overall amount spent, and is planning to launch a campaign to compel it to "fulfil its initial intention". Speaking to The Independent, Mr Field said: "The Government has disguised these cuts as a shake-up to the system, when that is not the case. They said they weren't going to make money out of it but they are. And it will mean grieving partners mainly women will lose a hundred million. We got them to move a tiny bit from a 12-month limit to 18 months. It's shocking that initially they were going to take the money away on the anniversary of the death. I hope we're going to build up a good and effective campaign. The Government is in a vulnerable position here, because it has said one thing and is doing another. The most ridiculous reasons people had their benefits sanctioned Show all 16 1 /16 The most ridiculous reasons people had their benefits sanctioned The most ridiculous reasons people had their benefits sanctioned "One case where the claimants wife went into premature labour and had to go to hospital. This caused the claimant to miss an appointment. No leeway given" The most ridiculous reasons people had their benefits sanctioned "Its Christmas Day and you dont fill in your job search evidence form to show that youve looked for all the new jobs that are advertised on Christmas Day. You are sanctioned. Merry Christmas" The most ridiculous reasons people had their benefits sanctioned "You apply for three jobs one week and three jobs the following Sunday and Monday. Because the job centre week starts on a Tuesday it treats this as applying for six jobs in one week and none the following week. You are sanctioned for 13 weeks for failing to apply for three jobs each week" The most ridiculous reasons people had their benefits sanctioned "A London man missed his Jobcentre appointments for two weeks because he was in hospital after being hit by a car. He was sanctioned" 2011 Getty Images The most ridiculous reasons people had their benefits sanctioned "Youve been unemployed for seven months and are forced onto a workfare scheme in a shop miles away, but cant afford to travel. You offer to work in a nearer branch but are refused and get sanctioned for not attending your placement" 2013 Getty Images The most ridiculous reasons people had their benefits sanctioned "You are a mum of two, and are five minutes late for your job centre appointment. You show the advisor the clock on your phone, which is running late. You are sanctioned for a month" The most ridiculous reasons people had their benefits sanctioned "A man with heart problems who was on Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) had a heart attack during a work capability assessment. He was then sanctioned for failing to complete the assessment" Rex The most ridiculous reasons people had their benefits sanctioned "A man who had gotten a job that was scheduled to begin in two weeks time was sanctioned for not looking for work as he waited for the role to start" The most ridiculous reasons people had their benefits sanctioned "Army veteran Stephen Taylor, 60, whose Jobseekers Allowance (JSA) was stopped after he sold poppies in memory of fallen soldiers" 2014 Getty Images The most ridiculous reasons people had their benefits sanctioned "A man had to miss his regular appointment at the job centre to attend his fathers funeral. He was sanctioned even though he told DWP staff in advance" 2014 Getty Images The most ridiculous reasons people had their benefits sanctioned "Ceri Padley, 26, had her benefits sanctioned after she missed an appointment at the jobcentre - because she was at a job interview" Jason Doiy Photography The most ridiculous reasons people had their benefits sanctioned "A man got sanctioned for missing his slot to sign on - as he was attending a work programme interview. He was then sanctioned as he could not afford to travel for his job search" 2012 Getty Images The most ridiculous reasons people had their benefits sanctioned "Mother-of-three Angie Godwin, 27, said her benefits were sanctioned after she applied for a role job centre staff said was beyond her" The most ridiculous reasons people had their benefits sanctioned "Sofya Harrison was sanctioned for attending a job interview and moving her signing-on to another day" The most ridiculous reasons people had their benefits sanctioned "Michael, 54, had his benefits sanctioned for four months for failing to undertake a weeks work experience at a charity shop. The charity shop had told him they didnt want him there" Getty The most ridiculous reasons people had their benefits sanctioned "Terry Eaton, 58, was sanctioned because he didnt have the bus fare he needed to attend an appointment with the job centre" Getty Images It's all happened during the Easter vacation, when Parliament is not around, but this will clearly affect people even if it's people who don't know it yet. Rio Ferdinands programme shows that grief doesn't just turn itself off at a set time. The goal should be to get that money spent, and extend the life of the benefit. We've got to make sure the Government fulfils its initial intention. Georgia Elms, chairman of WAY Widowed and Young, a UK charity that helps parents under 50 who have lost their partners, said in response to the changes: Eighteen months is just not long enough. It feels like a kick in the teeth from the Government and just shows that the people who have developed this new bereavement support payment are not considering the long-term needs of the families impacted by a loss. Whats more, the latest bereavement support changes have been positioned by the Government as a move to modernise an outdated system, yet unmarried couples with children wont be entitled to the new benefits. Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Morning Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A vegan mother who wanted her sons to live a "toxin free" life will be forced to make them receive routine vaccinations after the High Court overruled her objections. "I am truly sorry that the mother will regard the decision as wrong, but my objective duty is clear," Judge Mark Rogers said, before ordering that the boys, aged two and four, be given injections against diseases including diphtheria, polio, meningitis, measles, mumps and rubella. The mother had said that she feeds her children only natural products. She said: Their bodies are as free of toxins as I can possibly make them." Recommended High Court rules sisters must have MMR jab against their and their The older of the boys had had some vaccinations, but the mother told the court she believes he has suffered side effects including cradle cap, a persistent cough and eczema as a result. But the boys father told the court their mother is obsessive, over-protective and narrow-minded and has a suspicion of all conventional medicine and does not allow them to have paracetamol-based medication designed for children like Calpol. The mother, who cannot be named to protect the anonymity of the children, told the court: What I have learned is that yes, vaccines do work some of the time, but there is a definite risk with vaccination. The vaccine manufacturers have cited that vaccines are unavoidably unsafe.' There is a very rare risk that either of the children will ever catch one of the diseases listed in this report. Both children have strong immune systems which definitely helps in protecting them from diseases. Speaking of her ethical beliefs, she said: No vaccine is vegan. No doctor will criticise the action of a vaccination or they will be afraid of losing their job. It is not natural to be injected with metal elements and a vegan it goes against my beliefs for my child to be injected with something that is grown on animal cells or something that has been tested on animals. Judge Mark Rogers said the mother had been unable to get a doctor to appear in court to support her views and ruled in favour of the father, meaning the boys will receive routine vaccinations for measles, mumps and rubella as well as diphtheria and polio. The judge said in his ruling published yesterday: I have serious concerns as to (the mothers) ability to look objectively and even-handedly. He upheld the decision that the children should be vaccinated under the terms of the 1989 Childrens Act, which allows courts to overrule a parent for the welfare of the child. A test case in 2013 at the High Court found that two sisters aged 11 and 15 should be given the MMR vaccine even though they and their mother did not want them to have it. In 1998, a study by Dr Andrew Wakefield published in respected medical journal The Lancet suggested the MMR jab could be linked to autism and bowel disease. The report and the media frenzy that followed prompted many parents to decide against having their children vaccinated with the three-in-one injection. In 2010 Dr Wakefield's research was found by the General Medical Council to have been dishonest and has since been entirely dismissed by the medical profession. Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UK Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Brexit and beyond email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Scotland should join Canada if it decides to leave the UK after Brexit, an author has suggested. Ken McGoogan said the idea made sense as in the modern era technological advancements made geographical boundaries irrelevant. If Scotland was to become a province of Canada it would be the third largest and make up 12.6 per cent of the population, compared with the eight per cent it represents in the UK, the Canadian author wrote in a comment piece for The Globe and Mail newspaper. Ruth Davidson claims the Scottish people are 'sick to death' of the games and do not want another referendum He added that the country would have much more autonomy under the Canadian provincial system. No, Scotland would not become fully independent," he wrote. "But even as a typical Canadian province, it would have more powers than it does now." He added: Provincial legislatures have jurisdiction over their internal constitutions and direct taxation for provincial purposes, including for municipalities, school boards, hospitals, property and civil rights, administration of civil and criminal justice, and the list goes on". Under the terms of the Canadian Constitution, Scotland would be able to keep its oil revenues from the North Sea because provinces control their own natural resources, he said. If they included the 4.7 million Canadians who claim Scottish descent they could make up a power block of nearly 25 per cent of the countrys population, he added. In pictures: European parliament Brexit discussions Show all 12 1 /12 In pictures: European parliament Brexit discussions In pictures: European parliament Brexit discussions European commission member in charge of Brexit negotiations with Britain, French Michel Barnier listens at the President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker speaking at the European Parliament in Strasbourg Getty Images In pictures: European parliament Brexit discussions Frank-Walter Steinmeier, President of the Federal Republic of Germany, delivers his speech at the European Parliament in Strasbourg EPA In pictures: European parliament Brexit discussions European Union's chief Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt, President of the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), addresses the European Parliament during a debate on Brexit priorities and the upcomming talks on the UK's withdrawal from the EU Reuters In pictures: European parliament Brexit discussions Michel Barnier, European Chief Negotiator for Brexit reacts during a meeting at the European Parliament in Strasbourg EPA In pictures: European parliament Brexit discussions Member of the European Parliament and former leader of the anti-EU UK Independence Party (UKIP) Nigel Farage wears socks with Union Jack flag at the European Parliament in Strasbourg Getty Images In pictures: European parliament Brexit discussions Nigel Farage, United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) member and MEP, addresses the European Parliament during a debate on Brexit priorities and the upcoming talks on the UK's withdrawal from the EU Reuters In pictures: European parliament Brexit discussions European commission member in charge of Brexit negotiations with Britain, French Michel Barnier gestures during speeches at the European Parliament in Strasbourg Getty In pictures: European parliament Brexit discussions The President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker (L) speaks with European commission member in charge of Brexit negotiations with Britain, French Michel Barnier at the European Parliament in Strasbourg Getty In pictures: European parliament Brexit discussions European Union's chief Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt, President of the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), addresses the European Parliament during a debate on Brexit priorities and the upcomming talks on the UK's withdrawal from the EU Reuters In pictures: European parliament Brexit discussions Getty In pictures: European parliament Brexit discussions German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier delivers a speech during a plenary session at the European Parliament in Strasbourg Getty In pictures: European parliament Brexit discussions The European Parliament in Strasbourg, eastern France Getty Images He also pointed out that Edinburgh is closer to St Johns, a city on an island off the Canadas eastern coast, than it is to Athens in Greece. Scotlands First Minister Nicola Sturgeon called for a second independence referendum, after Britain as a whole, voted to the leave the EU. Pointing out that almost two thirds of her countrymen had voted to Remain, she said Brexit meant a significant material change to Scotlands constitutional position, especially if Prime Minister Theresa May opts for a hard Brexit ending access to the single market. Recommended This is what Scottish independence could actually look like Mr McGoogan, whose titles include How the Scots Invented Canada, insisted that Scotland would not necessarily have to give up its bid to rejoin the European Union if it joined his home country. He said: What if, after Brexit, Scotland applied to rejoin, not as a nation of 5.3 million, but as part of a country of 41.8 million. Obviously, it would have more clout. For Canadians, Scotland would establish a foothold in multicultural Europe. So, while the Tories in Britain and the Republicans in the United States set about creating a neo-liberal Anglosphere anti-egalitarian, avowedly Christian, pro-Big Business, pro-military Scotland becomes part of Canada and helps lead the way to a more progressive world. Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The European Parliaments biggest political grouping has said it supports the introduction of a European Union-wide ban on Islamic face veils The European Peoples Party adopted the measure as an official policy at its annual congress in Malta this week, claiming that the ban should be introduced both for reasons of security and because seeing one anothers faces is an integral part of human interaction in Europe. The EPP, a centre-right liberal conservative grouping, holds 216 seats in the 751 member European Parliament and is affiliated with major governing parties such as Angela Merkels CDU, the French Republicains and Spains Peoples Party. The provisions for the banning of face coverings appear to explicitly target Muslims, being contained in a resolution named "For a cohesive society: Countering Islamic extremism" and mentioning the burqua and niquab by name. Speaking to the German media following the passage of the resolution, Manfred Weber, the groups leader in the European Parliament, said: We want a total ban of face covering in the EU. Mr Weber is a member of Angela Merkel's CDU/CSU alliance in Germany. The UKs Conservative party was previously a member of the European Peoples Party but it left to form the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists in 2009 because the EPP was not seen as eurosceptic enough. Other provisions contained in the motion include calls for the avoidance of concentrating thousands of third-country nationals in any one location and a proposal to link welfare benefit payments to unspecified mandatory integration requirements. Manfred Weber, the leader of the European Parliament's biggest political grouping (Getty) (Getty Images) The EPPs resolution is not binding on any of its member parties but it gives an indication of the direction of its membership. An EPP source said the proposal should be discussed at EU level but accepted that such a ban would not be within current EU competencies. The section relating to face coverings reads: The EPP calls for A ban on full-face veils (i.e. the burqa or niqab) in public places, both for reasons of security and because seeing one anothers faces is an integral part of human interaction in Europe. What's the European Parliament ever done for us? Show all 5 1 /5 What's the European Parliament ever done for us? What's the European Parliament ever done for us? A cap on the amount of hours an employer can make you work The Working Time directive provides legal standards to ensure the health and safety of employees in Europe. Among the many rules are a working week of a maximum 48 hours, including overtime, a daily rest period of 11 hours in every 24, a break if a person works for six hours or more, and one day off in every seven. It also includes provisions for paid annual leave of at least four weeks every year Getty Images What's the European Parliament ever done for us? Helping the people of Britain to avoid smoking In 2014 MEPs passed the Tobacco Products Directive strengthening existing rules on the manufacture, production and presentation of tobacco products. This includes things like reduced branding, restrictions on products containing flavoured tobacco, health warnings on cigarette packets and provisions for e-cigarettes to ensure they are safe What's the European Parliament ever done for us? Helping you to make the right choices with your food Thanks to the European Parliament, UK consumers have access to more information than ever about their food and drink. This includes amount of fat, and how much of it is saturated, carbohydrates, sugars, protein and so on. It also includes portion sizes and guideline daily amount information so people can make informed choices about their diet. All facts must be clear and easy to understand What's the European Parliament ever done for us? Two year guarantees and 14-day returns policy for all products Consumers across the EU have access to a number of rights, from things which are potentially very useful, to things which used to be annoying. For example, shoppers in the UK receive a two-year guarantee on all products, and a 14-day period to change their minds and return a purchase, these things are useful www.PeopleImages.com-licence restrictions apply What's the European Parliament ever done for us? Keeping your air nice and fresh (and safe) Believe it or not, although the situation is improving, some areas of the UK have appalling air quality. A report by the Royal College of Physicians released on 23 February says 40,000 deaths are caused by outdoor air pollution in the UK every year. Air pollution is linked to a number of illnesses and conditions, from Asthma to diabetes and dementia. The report estimates the costs to British business and the health service add up to 20 billion every year Face covering bans have been introduced in a number of European countries in recent years. Some bans have been justified on the basis of secularism and others on the basis of security, but all have effectively targeted Muslim women. France passed a ban on face coverings in 2010, as have some areas of Switzerland. In February, when asked in the House of Commons about the status of headscarves such as the hijab, Theresa May said: "I believe that what a woman wears is a womans choice. Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} US missile strikes on a Syrian airfield risk escalating the civil war in the region still further, the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has said. Describing the nerve gas attack on the Idlib province of the war-ravaged region as a horrific war crime, Mr Corbyn added there was a need for an urgent independent United Nations investigations and that those responsible must be held to account. But he added: Unilateral military action without legal authorisation or independent verification risks intensifying a multi-sided conflict that has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. What is needed instead is to urgently reconvene the Geneva peace talks and unrelenting international pressure for a negotiated settlement of the conflict. The terrible suffering of the Syrian people must be brought to an end as soon as possible and every intervention must be judged on what contribution it makes to that outcome. He also urged Theresa May to urge restraint on the Trump administration and throw its weight behind peace negotiations and a comprehensive political settlement". On Thursday Mr Corbyn had called for the various protagonists of the Syrian war to come together around the negotiating table in Geneva in order to bring peace to the war-ravaged region and end the six-year civil war, which has claimed the lives of more than 300,000 people. "I think that's best brought about by looking at the sources of support for the various protagonists in the war, the role that's played by neighbouring states, by Russia and others, but basically, get around the table in Geneva." His comments risked opening divisions in the party, however, after his deputy, Tom Watson, backed the United States military assault on the airbase near Homs in the early hours of Friday for appearing to be a direct and proportionate response to a clear violation of international law the Syrian regime. U.S. airstrikes on Syria, explained Mr Watson told the Birmingham Mail: "It's clear from the nerve gas attack in Khan Sheikhoun earlier this week that President Assad had retained a chemical weapons capability, contrary to what was agreed in 2013. Indiscriminate chemical weapons attacks on civilians can never be tolerated and must have consequences. It's vital that the United States is now clear about its intentions and that the whole international community works towards a political settlement in Syria. But Stop the War Coalition, which Mr Corbyn used to chair, called for an emergency protest outside Downing Street on Friday evening over the assault, which it described as xenophobic and reactionary and the worst possible way to respond to the nerve gas attack on the village of Khan Sheikhun. In a statement, the group added: As well as deeping the tragedy of the Syrian people, this utterly irresponsible act threatens to widen the war and lead the West into military confrontation with Russia. Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, earlier urged Russian officials to use its influence over Assad and learn from what happened last night. But he denied that the US offensive was the start of a new military campaign in Syria and was rather intended to deter the Syrian dictator from carrying out any further chemical weapons attacks. He also confirmed the UK was in close contact with Mr Trumps administration throughout Thursday and informed of the decision to strike the airfield in advance. This strike was very limited to one airfield, Mr Fallon added. It was entirely appropriate, its designed to deter the regime from carrying out further chemical weapons attacks. So we dont see it as the start of a different military campaign. "President Assad and the Syrian regime have continued to flout international law. We've caught them using chemical weapons and gases elsewhere, and this latest incident in which nearly 100 people seem to have been killed is yet another example of, if action is not taken, innocent civilians are going to die at the hands of this appalling gas. His comments were echoed by Downing Street, who insisted the UK Government fully supports the military assault, adding they believed was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, and is intended to deter further attacks. Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrat leader, said the assault on the Syrian airfield was a proportionate response to the barbarous attack by the Syrian government on its own people. In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Show all 7 1 /7 In pictures: US missile strike against Syria In pictures: US missile strike against Syria The guided-missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG 78) launches a tomahawk land attack missile in the Mediterranean Sea AP In pictures: US missile strike against Syria The United States military launched at least 50 tomahawk cruise missiles at al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs, Syria, in response to the Syrian military's alleged use of chemical weapons in an airstrike in a rebel held area in Idlib province EPA In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Shayrat airfield in Syria Getty Images In pictures: US missile strike against Syria US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile in Mediterranean Sea Reuters In pictures: US missile strike against Syria US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile in Mediterranean Sea Reuters In pictures: US missile strike against Syria President Donald Trump speaks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., after the US fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians AP In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Syria's President Bashar al-Assad Reuters The British Government rather than just putting out a bland statement welcoming this should now follow it up and call an emergency meeting of the Nato alliance to see what else can be done, be that more surgical strikes or no fly zones. Evil happens when good people do nothing, we cannot sit by while a dictator gasses his own people. We cannot stand by, we must act. Paul Nuttall, the Ukip leader. added he hoped for better from this administration and that the action was rash, trigger happy, nonsensical and will achieve nothing. In a statement, he continued: The whole world rightly condemns the use of chemical weapons in Syria, but the US attack on the Assad regime does nothing to lower tension, nor will it hasten peace in that country. Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Labour splits over military action in the Middle East have been torn open after senior party figures backed US missile strikes in defiance of Jeremy Corbyn. After the Labour leader criticised the strikes as risking enflaming the Syrian conflict, a string of former shadow cabinet members voiced their support for action. Hilary Benn, whose departure from the frontbench sparked a leadership challenge against Mr Corbyn, said he hoped Syrian dictator Bashar Assad might now think twice about using chemical weapons, while ex shadow minister Michael Dugher mocked his leaders slow response to the strikes and Mary Creagh accused leftwingers of preferring inaction..to stopping a murderous tyrant. There were also reports that Mr Corbyn may have disagreed with advice given by his current shadow defence secretary Nia Griffiths in formulating his response, while Deputy Leader Tom Watson said chemical weapon attacks from the Assad regime must have consequences. Labour infighting also flared ahead of the last vote to take action against the Islamic State in Syria in 2015, with Mr Corbyn opposing it while Mr Benn made a passionate speech that was hailed by supporters of intervention. As Mr Corbyn was still considering how to respond on Friday morning, Mr Benn tweeted: Let's hope Syria will now think twice before deciding to gas its own people again. Priority must be humanitarian assistance for civilians. Hilary Benn receives standing ovation He was backed by London Labour MP Wes Streeting. Meanwhile, former Treasury minister Angela Eagle said: The limited, targeted action taken against Syrian air assets today was morally justifiable in response to a crime against humanity...and compliant with our Responsibility to Protect. She added: Inaction has a cost in lives too. John Woodcock MP also called the action proportionate calling for the UK to take a lead ensuring aid can reach Syrians. Following on from recent public criticism of Labours communications operation, Mr Dugher launched an attack on the leaders chief spokesman Seumas Milne. In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Show all 7 1 /7 In pictures: US missile strike against Syria In pictures: US missile strike against Syria The guided-missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG 78) launches a tomahawk land attack missile in the Mediterranean Sea AP In pictures: US missile strike against Syria The United States military launched at least 50 tomahawk cruise missiles at al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs, Syria, in response to the Syrian military's alleged use of chemical weapons in an airstrike in a rebel held area in Idlib province EPA In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Shayrat airfield in Syria Getty Images In pictures: US missile strike against Syria US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile in Mediterranean Sea Reuters In pictures: US missile strike against Syria US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile in Mediterranean Sea Reuters In pictures: US missile strike against Syria President Donald Trump speaks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., after the US fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians AP In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Syria's President Bashar al-Assad Reuters The former shadow transport secretary said: Stop criticising Corbyn's slow response: it takes time for Seamas [sic] to run the draft statement by the Kremlin, Stop the War + the Morning Star. Ex-international development secretary Mary Creagh said: UK govt right to support US action against Homs airbase after Idlib chemical weapons attack on civilians. Hope this ends Assad's impunity. Our inaction in 2013 allowed Assad's war crimes against his people to continue unchecked. 500 000 dead 12m refugees. Her words were later backed by ex-home secretary Jacqui Smith on Twitter. Leading Ms creagh to go further saying: Amazing how some sections of the left- and right -prefer inaction in Syria to stopping a murderous tyrant and his genocide. Stella Creasy, who faced intense criticism from the leftwing activists after backing strikes in Syria in 2015, said on Friday: This is what is happening in Syria. World cannot ignore suffering Assad inflicting. UN now must lead what happens next to protect civilians. In a statement released on Friday, Mr Corbyn said: Unilateral military action without legal authorisation or independent verification risks intensifying a multi-sided conflict that has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. What is needed instead is to urgently reconvene the Geneva peace talks and unrelenting international pressure for a negotiated settlement of the conflict. Confucius statue (Photo : Getty Images) Beijings city gates, which have been demolished a long time ago, are now available for the viewing pleasure of many Chinese and tourists thanks to augmented reality, the Xinhua News Agency reported. Advertisement Li Yangchao, a 34-year-old augment reality engineer at Baidu, worked with a group of more than 20 developers to come up with the virtual history lessons. According to Li, he was inspired by his 4-year-old daughter Miduo, who, one day, asked why many of the stops on Beijings Subway Line Two have the word gate in their names. The work on the augmented reality technology took Li and his co-workers to 13th-century Beijing, when the city had a total of 20 city gates designed to serve as passageways for the citys different social classes. In the 1960s, however, the city gates and old city wall were torn down to pave the way for the capitals expansion and for the construction of new roads and subways. The only gate left is Zhengyangmen near the southern end of Tiananmen Square, according to Xinhua. To help with the project, Li and his colleagues sought artists to paint pictures of the nine lost gates built during the Ming Dynasty. Subway commuters also joined the effort by scanning the pictures to give the developers a better, clearer picture of the areas where the gates once stood. Li and his colleagues launched the augmented reality experience in December, much to the delight of commuters. It (augmented reality) helps people to learn about the citys history and the changes made, said Hu Daxin, deputy curator at the Beijing Planning Exhibition Hall, where the app is featured in one of the exhibits. The more you learn, the stronger your sense of belonging. Although the project gained fans, other people criticized the augmented reality experience for allegedly providing inaccurate information, citing incorrect arches and angles and other structural mistakes. To his defense, Li and his colleagues said they based their information on available works of art, thereby not guaranteeing complete accuracy, Xinhua reported. Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} In the early hours of Friday morning a barrage of 59 Tomahawk missiles, fired from US Navy vessels located in the Mediterranean sea, hit the al-Shayrat airbase near Homs. It is claimed the base was responsible for launching the deadly chemical attack on Tuesday, which killed dozens of civilians in the Idlib province of the war-ravaged country. As Donald Trump urged other so-called civilised nations to join the US in its effort to end the slaughter and bloodshed in the region, the Independent examines the position of the UK Government, the opposition parties and whether it is likely Britain will now step up its military intervention in Syria. What is the reaction from the UK Government? As news of the airbase assault filtered through, Downing Street, which was notified beforehand by the American administration, hastily issued a statement saying it fully supported the actions of the US President in the early hours of Friday morning. Government sources added they believed the action was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, and is intended to deter further attacks. Will the UK get involved in further military action? Despite Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, reiterating Downing Streets position that the Government was fully behind the offensive, it is unlikely any further military action will be taken. Speaking on Friday morning, Mr Fallon added that the US strike against the Syrian airbase near Homs was intended to deter Bashar al-Assad from carrying out any further chemical weapon attacks but was not the start of a new military campaign. We dont see last nights strike like that, he said. He continued: Weve not asked to be involved in this, this was not a matter for the coalition thats in Syria and Iraq fighting Daesh. What is Labours position? Jeremy Corbyn has condemned the strike on the Syrian regimes airbase, suggesting the assault could escalate tensions in the regions on-going, bitter civil war, which over the last year has claimed over 300,000 lives. He described the nerve gas attack on the Idlib province as a horrific war crime but said unilateral military action without legal authorisation or independent verification of the chemical attacks risks intensifying the multi-sided conflict. What is needed instead is to urgently reconvene the Geneva peace talks and unrelenting international pressure for a negotiated settlement of the conflict, he added. But splits in the party rapidly became apparent as a string of former Shadow Cabinet members voiced their support for Mr Trumps actions in Syria, including Labours deputy leader Tom Watson, who said the attack appeared to be a direct and proportionate response, adding chemical weapon attacks must have consequences. What is the UKs current involvement in the region? In a major blow to David Camerons authority in 2013, MPs voted against the Government to take military action in Syria against Assads regime to deter the use of chemical weapons. He was defeated by 258-272 votes and a total of 30 Conservative MPs voted against the party whip. But in a separate vote in 2015 a vote was passed to join the United States-led coalition campaign in Syria and Iraq to tackle the threat from the terrorist group Isis and remove the snakes head. It means that RAF planes are currently involved in military action in the region but do not target Assads regime. What would it take to escalate military involvement? The Government has repeatedly insisted it has no plans for military action and is instead working with the international community to look at how to bring an end to the six-year civil war. But if Theresa May wished to become further involved in the military offensive and attacks Assads regime she would likely have to seek a mandate to do so in the Commons and her victory would not be guaranteed. In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Show all 7 1 /7 In pictures: US missile strike against Syria In pictures: US missile strike against Syria The guided-missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG 78) launches a tomahawk land attack missile in the Mediterranean Sea AP In pictures: US missile strike against Syria The United States military launched at least 50 tomahawk cruise missiles at al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs, Syria, in response to the Syrian military's alleged use of chemical weapons in an airstrike in a rebel held area in Idlib province EPA In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Shayrat airfield in Syria Getty Images In pictures: US missile strike against Syria US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile in Mediterranean Sea Reuters In pictures: US missile strike against Syria US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile in Mediterranean Sea Reuters In pictures: US missile strike against Syria President Donald Trump speaks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., after the US fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians AP In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Syria's President Bashar al-Assad Reuters Speaking on Friday, Mr Fallon added: Were not committed to military action against Syria. Our Parliament considered that before, back in 2013, and turned it down. While many of the Tory MPs who defied the party whip in 2013, then voted to back the offensive against Isis in the region in 2015, they are considerably more divided when it comes to launching an offensive against Assad and the prospect of regime change. Many believe an escalation in conflict could also lead to the UK stumbling into a proxy war with Russia as Vladimir Putins forces are supporting the Assad regime in its ongoing battle with the rebels. Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Nigel Farage has criticised Donald Trump for the first time following the US Presidents order for military action in Syria. The former Ukip leader who enjoy close ties with Mr Trump said he was surprised by the move and thought the Presidents supporters would be wondering where will it all end?. He warned Prime Minister Theresa May against following the Americans into another military intervention in the Middle East. Mr Farage has been hailed by the US President, who asked the Ukip leader to speak at election campaign rallies, as well as inviting him to become the first British politician to meet him after his shock victory. But following the missile strike on the Syrian airbase, anti-interventionist Mr Farage said: I am very surprised by this. I think a lot of Trump voters will be waking up this morning and scratching their heads and saying 'where will it all end?' As a firm Trump supporter, I say, yes, the pictures were horrible, but I'm surprised. Whatever Assad's sins, he is secular. THAT photo, showing Arron Banks (second from left) and Andy Wigmore (second from right) outside Donald Trump's gold-plated front door Twitter/Leave.EU (Twitter/Leave.EU) He then urged Britain not to get involved in any further strikes, saying: Previous interventions in the Middle East have made things worse rather than better. In the immediate aftermath of Mr Trumps election win, Mr Farage caused embarrassment in Downing Street when he became the first British politician to meet the soon-to-be US President. Mr Trump even broke all diplomatic convention by suggesting the ex-Ukip leader could become the new British ambassador in Washington. Trump orders missile strike on Syria after chemical weapon attack on civilians Mr Farages words followed comments from Ukips current leader Paul Nuttall, who said: The whole world rightly condemns the use of chemical weapons in Syria, but the US attack on the Assad regime does nothing to lower tensions, nor will it hasten peace in that country. Too often rash responses to horrific situations are about the conscience of the attacker, rather than a clear-headed response to an awful situation. There are currently no good options in Syria. Assad or Isis is not a choice anyone would wish to make. But firing off missiles in an enraged response shows weakness not strength in the face of horror. I hoped for better from this administration. Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Defence Secretary Michael Fallon has said the US military strike against a Syrian airfield was intended to deter Bashar al-Assad from carrying out any further chemical weapons attacks but was not the start of a new military campaign. The barrage of 59 Tomahawk missiles, fired from two US Navy vessels located in the Mediterranean sea, hit the Al Shayrat airbase near Homs in the early hours of Friday. It is claimed the base was responsible for launching the deadly chemical attack on Tuesday, which killed dozens of civilians in the Idlib province of war-ravaged country. Asked if the strike was the start of a new military campaign, Mr Michael Fallon replied: We don't see last night's strike like that. This strike was very limited to one airfield, it was entirely appropriate, it's designed to deter the regime from carrying out further chemical weapons attacks," Mr Fallon told ITV. So we don't see it as the start of a different military campaign. Emphasising the UK Government fully supports the US military operation, he added: We've not been asked to be involved in this, this was not a matter for the coalition that's in Syria and Iraq fighting Daesh. Mr Fallons comments come after Downing Street said it fully supports the military offensive by the US President, adding they believed was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, and is intended to deter further attacks. They added: Overnight, the US has taken military action against the Syrian regime, targeting the airfield in Shayrut which was used to launch the chemical weapons attack earlier this week. Downing Street also sources confirmed that they were in close contact with the US administration throughout Thursday and were told of the strikes on the Syrian regimes airbase in advance. Speaking from Florida, Mr Trump announced his strike in an emotional message to the public, evoking images of children dying. Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children, he said. It was a slow and brutal death for so many. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. The US President also called on other civilised nations to join his effort in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria. George Osborne, the former Chancellor, added that the new assault on Syria provided a chance to make amends for the terrible vote in the House of Commons in 2013, in which David Cameron ruled out the prospect of British involvement in any military action in the region after the Government was defeated by 272 voted to 285. So it takes Donald Trump to re-establish the Wests 100 year old redline against the abhorrent use of chemical weapons, Mr Osborne added. Crispin Blunt, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee in Westminster, who supported the action in 2015 to attack Isis but voted against the 2013 strike, added the strike appeared to be carefully collaborated. Speaking on the Today programme, he added: I think we should we continue on the track we are on. It will have the consequence of putting further pressure on the Syrian regime in the Geneva talks. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The newly elected president of Somalia, Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, declared war on the al-Shabab militant group on Thursday and offered amnesty to fighters, whom he referred to as brainwashed youth, if they surrendered within 60 days. The country is in a state of war, said Mr. Mohamed, widely known by his nickname, Farmajo. We want to attack them and liberate the areas they are in, Mr. Mohamed said, referring to the al-Shabab militants. His announcement came just over a week after President Trump signed a directive that declared parts of Somalia an area of active hostilities. The order temporarily relaxes some rules for preventing civilian casualties when the American military carries out counter-terrorism strikes in Somalia. Recommended Somalia says 110 dead from hunger in past 48 hours Somalia has been marred by severe draughts, terrorism, corruption and a new spike in piracy. In the face of those challenges, the presidents cabinet on Thursday replaced the chief commanders of the army, the police and national intelligence, as well as the mayor of Mogadishu, the capital. The shake-up was greeted with scepticism among Mogadishu residents. The reshuffling of security officials looks like business as usual, said Hafzina Omar, a 22-year-old Mogadishu resident. If Somali forces work honestly, al-Shabab attacks will be stopped, she 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 At least six people were killed on Wednesday after a suicide car bomber targeted a cafe frequented by government officials near the Internal Security Ministry and the Ministry of Youth. The New York Times Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Donald Trump's air strikes on Syria could be a "set piece" concocted in collusion with Moscow to '"kill the narrative he's in bed with Putin", MSNBC political analyst Chris Matthews has claimed. The Hardball anchor suggested the attacks might have been set up or staged, in the hope of undermining Democratic claims that Russian hacking and espionage swung the 2016 US Presidential election in Mr Trump's favour. He is contradicted by a spokesperson for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who said the assault would "inflict major damage on US-Russia ties". Recommended Russia suspends agreement that prevents direct conflict with US forces An agreement to prevent clashes between Russia and America in Syrian airspace has now been suspended by the Kremlin, in response to the cruise missile bombardment which destroyed at least nine jets in a Syrian airbase. Launched in response to an apparent chemical weapon attack on a rebel-held town, which left over 80 people dead, it was the first direct assault on President Assad's forces by the United States since the outbreak of civil war six years ago. President Trump said he hoped to "deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons" like the sarin or chlorine allegedly used in the "barbaric" bombing. In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Show all 7 1 /7 In pictures: US missile strike against Syria In pictures: US missile strike against Syria The guided-missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG 78) launches a tomahawk land attack missile in the Mediterranean Sea AP In pictures: US missile strike against Syria The United States military launched at least 50 tomahawk cruise missiles at al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs, Syria, in response to the Syrian military's alleged use of chemical weapons in an airstrike in a rebel held area in Idlib province EPA In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Shayrat airfield in Syria Getty Images In pictures: US missile strike against Syria US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile in Mediterranean Sea Reuters In pictures: US missile strike against Syria US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile in Mediterranean Sea Reuters In pictures: US missile strike against Syria President Donald Trump speaks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., after the US fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians AP In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Syria's President Bashar al-Assad Reuters But speaking on MSNBC, veteran analyst Chris Matthews said: "Maybe it's cynicism but i thought... if there was a way for [Mr Trump] to kill the narrative he's in bed with Putin it would be this. "Take on Putin's warm freshwater port [in Tartus], take on his satellite, his loyal ally Assad. And that would be a way of saying I was never in bed with this guy, i never planned any kind of coalition in Moscow." The Russian naval base in Tartus gives Mr Putin vital access to the Eastern Mediterranean basin, allowing for Russian warships and submarines to pass from the Black Sea into Western waters and potentially providing a route to untapped natural gas resources. It's the only Russian naval base on foreign soil, and maintaining control of Tartus was perhaps the principal reason for Mr Putin's entry into the Syrian arena of war. Mr Matthews continued to speculate that Mr Trump and Mr Putin may have "have had a phone-call this evening, and they worked this thing out, and it was a set piece that was not meant to be particularly antagonistic to Moscow." U.S. airstrikes on Syria, explained Russian forces were admittedly warned of the strikes 30 minutes before they took place, using the so-called "deconfliction line" used to prevent clashes between the two superpowers in Syrian airspace. No Russian casualties have been reported, though their personnel were stationed on the base where six Syrian soldiers lost their lives, along with nine civilians in a neighbouring village. But Mr Putin has now suspended the deal to prevent conflict between American and Russian forces and called for a UN security council meeting to discuss the strikes. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said President Vladimir Putin considers the strikes an "act of aggression" made on a "made-up pretext". He said the strikes would "inflict major damage on US-Russia ties", and suggested they were intended as a distraction from mass civilian deaths allegedly caused by US bombing in Iraq. Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} After what many expected to be an awkward meeting between Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping given recent spats between the country and the US President Mr Trump has claimed the two leaders made great progress. I think lots of potentially very bad problems will be going away, Mr Trump said on Friday, less than 24 hours after Mr Xi arrived at his Palm Beach home. Mr Trump who previously accused China of raping the United States called his relationship with Mr Xi outstanding and said they made tremendous progress. Mr Xi, his wife, and a number of advisors met with Mr Trump on Thursday and Friday to discuss trade, environmental protocol, and international policy. Top Trump advisors, including Defence Secretary Jim Mattis, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, were also in attendance. In the days leading up to the summit, Mr Trump predicted the talks would be very difficult. The discussions, however, were largely overshadowed by Mr Trumps surprise call for air strikes on Syria. Mr Trump ordered the air strikes Thursday night, in response to the suspected use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government. The Chinese government condemned the use of chemical weapons Friday, but did not offer support for the US strikes. Instead, China's foreign ministry urged all sides to find a political, rather than military, solution to the problem. China has long voted to keep the United Nations from interfering in the conflict. Syrian President Bashar Assad recently called China, a real friend. The strikes, however, could have a silver lining for Mr Trump: He was expected to pressure Mr Xi to take action on North Korea and experts say the strikes may show how serious he is. I suspect Xi will treat Trumps threat against North Korea as more serious than before this, provided the behind the scenes body language does not counteract it, Douglas H. Paal, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told The New York Times. Mr Trump declined to answer questions about the air strikes Friday. The two leaders also discussed Chinas trade policy, which Mr Trump criticised frequently during his presidential campaign. The president has previously accused China of undervaluing its currency to boost trade, and accused the country of stealing American jobs. Taking a more moderate approach, Mr Trump was not expected to present Mr Xi with his campaign promise of a 45 per cent tax on Chinese goods. The Trump administration also has not moved to formally label China a currency manipulator. The New York Times, however, reports Mr Trump will sign a trade order targeting China soon after Mr Xi leaves. The details of the order are unknown, but it is predicted to be a block on countries like China that dump steel into the US market. Mr Trump gave no indication of this move on Friday, telling reporters it was a tremendous honour for me and all of my representative to host the president and his representatives. According to Chinese state media, Mr Xi told Mr Trump that, "we have a thousand reasons to get China-US relations right, and not one reason to spoil the China-US relationship." Mr Trump reportedly accepted the leader's invitation to visit China next year. Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Donald Trump's near-weekly visits to his Mar-a-Lago resort are set to bankrupt a local small business, the firm's owner has said. Jorge Gonzalez says a 10-mile no-fly zone surrounding the President means his sky-writing ad company, Skywords Advertising, cannot fly the aircraft while the leader is staying at his Florida base. "Every weekend he's here we have to shut down, and right now that's every weekend," he told the BBC. Mr Gonzalez claims he has lost about $65,000 since Mr Trump became president, as the billionaire tycoon has paid seven weekend visits to the private members' club across his first 10 weeks in office. Trump 'feels great' about Mar-a-Lago trips "About 97% of my business occurs on the weekends, and I make 80% of my revenue between January and May," Mr Gonzalez said. "We were told to expect him to come once a month. We never imagined it would be every weekend. "At this rate we might survive through the summer, but I don't see the company lasting much beyond that." Mr Trump's frequent vacations have also caused significant financial losses to flight schools and businesses based at nearby Lantana Airport, whose 200 employees in a range of small businesses receive no pay for the duration of their visits. The President is known to refer to Mar-a-Lago as his "Southern White House", hosting visitors such as Chinese President Xi Jinping in the luxury resort instead of the White House itself or the traditional Presidential retreat, Camp David. Kanye West meets Donald Trump in Manhattan Show all 22 1 /22 Kanye West meets Donald Trump in Manhattan Kanye West meets Donald Trump in Manhattan Kanye West and President-elect Donald Trump speak with the press after their meetings at Trump Tower December 13, 2016 in New York. Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images Kanye West meets Donald Trump in Manhattan Kanye West and President-elect Donald Trump speak with the press after their meetings at Trump Tower December 13, 2016 in New York. Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images Kanye West meets Donald Trump in Manhattan Kanye West and President-elect Donald Trump speak with the press after their meetings at Trump Tower December 13, 2016 in New York. Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images Kanye West meets Donald Trump in Manhattan Kanye West and President-elect Donald Trump speak with the press after their meetings at Trump Tower December 13, 2016 in New York. Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images Kanye West meets Donald Trump in Manhattan Kanye West and President-elect Donald Trump speak with the press after their meetings at Trump Tower December 13, 2016 in New York. Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images Kanye West meets Donald Trump in Manhattan Kanye West and President-elect Donald Trump speak with the press after their meetings at Trump Tower December 13, 2016 in New York. Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images Kanye West meets Donald Trump in Manhattan Kanye West and President-elect Donald Trump speak with the press after their meetings at Trump Tower December 13, 2016 in New York. Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images Kanye West meets Donald Trump in Manhattan Kanye West and President-elect Donald Trump speak with the press after their meetings at Trump Tower December 13, 2016 in New York. Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images Kanye West meets Donald Trump in Manhattan Kanye West and President-elect Donald Trump speak with the press after their meetings at Trump Tower December 13, 2016 in New York. Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images Kanye West meets Donald Trump in Manhattan Kanye West and President-elect Donald Trump speak with the press after their meetings at Trump Tower December 13, 2016 in New York. Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images Kanye West meets Donald Trump in Manhattan Singer Kanye West arrives at Trump Tower December 13, 2016 as US President-elect Donald Trump continues to hold meetings in New York. Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images Kanye West meets Donald Trump in Manhattan Singer Kanye West arrives at Trump Tower December 13, 2016 as US President-elect Donald Trump continues to hold meetings in New York. Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images Kanye West meets Donald Trump in Manhattan Singer Kanye West arrives at Trump Tower December 13, 2016 as US President-elect Donald Trump continues to hold meetings in New York. Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images Kanye West meets Donald Trump in Manhattan Singer Kanye West arrives at Trump Tower December 13, 2016 as US President-elect Donald Trump continues to hold meetings in New York. Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images Kanye West meets Donald Trump in Manhattan Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images Kanye West meets Donald Trump in Manhattan Singer Kanye West arrives at Trump Tower December 13, 2016 as US President-elect Donald Trump continues to hold meetings in New York. Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images Kanye West meets Donald Trump in Manhattan Singer Kanye West arrives at Trump Tower December 13, 2016 as US President-elect Donald Trump continues to hold meetings in New York. Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images Kanye West meets Donald Trump in Manhattan Singer Kanye West arrives at Trump Tower December 13, 2016 as US President-elect Donald Trump continues to hold meetings in New York. Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images Kanye West meets Donald Trump in Manhattan Singer Kanye West arrives at Trump Tower December 13, 2016 as US President-elect Donald Trump continues to hold meetings in New York. Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images Kanye West meets Donald Trump in Manhattan Singer Kanye West arrives at Trump Tower December 13, 2016 as US President-elect Donald Trump continues to hold meetings in New York. Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images Kanye West meets Donald Trump in Manhattan Singer Kanye West arrives at Trump Tower December 13, 2016 as US President-elect Donald Trump continues to hold meetings in New York. Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images Kanye West meets Donald Trump in Manhattan Singer Kanye West arrives at Trump Tower December 13, 2016 as US President-elect Donald Trump continues to hold meetings in New York. Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images But Mar-a-Lago is a waterfront, terraced resort, not a naval base like Camp David, and the increased security costs occasioned by Mr Trump's frequent visits to Florida have cost around $23 million. He is on course to spend more on travel in a single year than the $97 million Barack Obama spent during his eight years in office, racking up travel bills at roughly 10 times the rate of his predecessor. Mr Trump often castigated Mr Obama for his travel spending during his presidency, forcing Press Secretary Sean Spicer to defend the new leader's far greater expenditure as "just part of being President". Membership at Mar-a-Lago currently costs $200,000, while guests must pay up to $2000 a night for a room. At least three of the club's 500 members are being considered for ambassadorships by President Trump. The business turns over about $30 million annually, with Mr Trump reportedly pocketing around $15 million a year from membership fees and private rentals. Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The 59 Tomahawk Cruise missiles fired from the USS Porter and USS Ross into the Sharyat airfield in western Homs could be seen as defining Donald Trumps campaign declaration that he would do the unexpected in foreign policy, and that Americas enemies can expect swift retribution for acts of aggression. But what has unfolded also illustrates the contradictions and confusion which have characterised the new administration. On this occasion it starts with the fundamental question of who exactly is the enemy; who is running foreign policy in Washington, and just how effective and even just how unexpected the strikes were by the time they took place in the early hours of the morning. Follow the latest updates on the American attack on Syria in our live blog Just a few days ago, US officials were confiding that regime change in Damascus was not something that Washington was contemplating, and Isis remained the target. Last night Rex Tillerson, the Secretary of State, said that Bashar al-Assad should no longer stay in power. Mr Tillerson went on to insist that there were no discussions or prior contacts, nor had there been any since the attack with Moscow, the Syrian leaders chief supporter. But this was directly contradicted by the Pentagon which stressed that multiple conversations had taken place with the Russians on Thursday. There are Russians at the base and we took extraordinary precautions to not target areas where the Russians are, said Captain Jeff Davis. In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Show all 7 1 /7 In pictures: US missile strike against Syria In pictures: US missile strike against Syria The guided-missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG 78) launches a tomahawk land attack missile in the Mediterranean Sea AP In pictures: US missile strike against Syria The United States military launched at least 50 tomahawk cruise missiles at al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs, Syria, in response to the Syrian military's alleged use of chemical weapons in an airstrike in a rebel held area in Idlib province EPA In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Shayrat airfield in Syria Getty Images In pictures: US missile strike against Syria US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile in Mediterranean Sea Reuters In pictures: US missile strike against Syria US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile in Mediterranean Sea Reuters In pictures: US missile strike against Syria President Donald Trump speaks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., after the US fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians AP In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Syria's President Bashar al-Assad Reuters All the indications are that it was indeed the case that the Kremlin had been kept informed through the deconfliction line from the US military facility at the al-Udeid air base in Qatar set up to avert accidental clashes between the American and Russian militaries in Syria about the assault. Mr Tillerson, supposedly Mr Trumps foreign policy chief, appears to have been kept uninformed about this. There are also strong indications that the Russians passed on information about the impending strikes to the Syrian regime: senior officers had left the base before they took place and some even had time to move their families out of the area. The reported number of casualties, six soldiers dead, is remarkably light for such a barrage. This raises the claim that the attack was largely symbolic. The hopes expressed by the Syrian opposition that the strikes are the first of many are unlikely to be fulfilled. The symbolism may not just be confined to Syria. Xi Jinping is being hosted by Mr Trump at the Mar-a-Lago resort. Beijing is North Koreas only ally and the Chinese President will be asked forcefully, the US administration has said, to halt Pyongyangs sabre rattling with missile launches. The Syrian air strikes will, Washington is likely to hope, act as a deterrent. But there are laws of unintended consequences to symbolic acts. Moscow has announced that it is suspending the deconfliction line in protest at the air strikes. This is likely to be temporary, but in the meantime there remains the possibility of an inadvertent clash between American and Russia. The Russians have installed advanced surface-to-air defences in Syria with both sides busy in the skies above. What has happened will also raise questions about the next phase of diplomacy between the US and Russia. Mr Tillerson is due to be in Moscow next Thursday preceded by Boris Johnson earlier in the week --- and the visit was being viewed as setting the framework for future relations. But the seeming lack of the Secretary of States knowledge about liaison with the Kremlin over the Syrian strikes has reinforced doubts about just how much of a stewardship he is allowed over Americas foreign policy. Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Hillary Clinton called for the United States to "take out" Syrian government-controlled airfields just hours before Donald Trump launched air strikes against Bashar Assad's regime. Speaking in her first public interview since losing the US election in November last year, Mrs Clinton said Mr Assad's aerial power had been the key component behind widespread civilian deaths since the start of the civil war in 2011. President Trump launched a barrage of cruise missiles in the early hours of Friday morning on a Syrian air base thought to be behind this week's chemical weapons attack. Speaking to the New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, Mrs Clinton said she believed the US had been wrong not to have previously launched such an offensive. She said: "Assad had an air force, and that air force is the cause of most of the civilian deaths, as we have seen over the years and as we saw again in the last few days. "And I really believe that we should have and still should take out his airfields and prevent him from being able to use them to bomb innocent people and drop Sarin gas on them." Tuesday's chemical attack on Idlib province in northern Syria drew the ire of several United Nations member states and received widespread condemnation across the globe. More than 72 people are thought to have died in the attack, which is believed to have constituted a mix of chlorine gas and the deadly nerve agent Sarin. However, America's retaliatory strike was angrily condemned by Russia, Assad's principal international backer, as an "aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law". Friday's offensive, in which 59 missiles were launched from two US navy warships in the Mediterranean sea, marks the first time America has directly intervened in the conflict. Asked by Mr Kristof if she felt not acting more decisively on Syria had been her gravest foreign policy mistake, Mrs Clinton said she had been aware the conflict could become "one-sided" in the first stages of the Syrian conflict. She said: "When I was secretary of state I teamed up with Dave Petraeus, then director of the CIA, Leon Panetta, then secretary of defence, to present a plan for us to move more aggressively to support protesters to provide some back up in what I thought could turn out to be a very one-sided battle. "This was before Isis really came to public awareness with their plan for a caliphate and their setting up of headquarters in Raqqa. "I believed then, and I've said this repeatedly, I believe we should have done more at that point." In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Show all 7 1 /7 In pictures: US missile strike against Syria In pictures: US missile strike against Syria The guided-missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG 78) launches a tomahawk land attack missile in the Mediterranean Sea AP In pictures: US missile strike against Syria The United States military launched at least 50 tomahawk cruise missiles at al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs, Syria, in response to the Syrian military's alleged use of chemical weapons in an airstrike in a rebel held area in Idlib province EPA In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Shayrat airfield in Syria Getty Images In pictures: US missile strike against Syria US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile in Mediterranean Sea Reuters In pictures: US missile strike against Syria US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile in Mediterranean Sea Reuters In pictures: US missile strike against Syria President Donald Trump speaks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., after the US fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians AP In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Syria's President Bashar al-Assad Reuters Despite Barack Obama warning that a chemical weapons attack would mark the crossing of a red line in 2012, his administration ultimately pulled back from proposals to launch an offensive when reports of a deadly Sarin attack emerged in August 2013. In an emotional speech announcing the offensive on Friday, President Trump spoke of the "barbaric" chemical attack in which at least 20 children died. "Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many," he said. "Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. "Tonight, I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched. "It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. "There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons." Downing Street later said that it "fully supports" the US action. PA Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} President Donald Trump son-in-law and top adviser, Jared Kushner, omitted meetings with top Russian officials from his security clearance form, it has been reported. US leaders seeking top security clearance are required to complete a lengthy questionnaire on all of their meetings with representatives of foreign governments. But, in the midst of a probe into the Trump teams possible ties to Russia, Mr Kushner reportedly failed to disclose his meetings with two powerful Russian officials. According to the New York Times, Kushner omitted one meeting with Russian ambassador Sergey I. Kislyak, and another with Sergey N. Gorkov, the head of a Russian state-owned bank. Mr Gorkov is a graduate of Russia's internal security agency, and his bank, Vnesheconombank, has been accused of playing host to a Russian spy ring. When Mr Kushner and Mr Gorkov met, Vnesheconombank was under US sanctions for Russian aggression in Ukraine. Mr Gorkov said in a statement that he met with Mr Kushner in his capacity as as the then-chief executive of Kushner Companies, and did not discuss sanctions. White House spokeswoman Hope Hicks characterised the meetings as routine diplomatic encounters. It really wasnt much of a conversation, she told the Times. Mr Kushners lawyer similarly downplayed the meetings, claiming Mr Kushner had omitted them from the questionnaire on accident. She said that, after learning of the error, Mr Kushner volunteered to provide the FBI with more information about the contacts. He has yet to do so. The Senate Intelligence Committee announced 27 March that they would question Mr Kushner on the meetings as part of their investigation into alleged Trump-Russia ties. Omissions of this nature can result in a loss of security clearance, or even prosecution, though such actions are rare. Two of Mr Trumps officials have already faced repercussions for failing to disclose communications with Russia. Mike Flynn, Mr Trumps first national security advisor, stepped down after it was revealed that he misled the vice president regarding his conversations with Mr Kislyak. Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from any Russia investigations after he failed to disclose his meetings with the ambassador. Mr Kushner who advises the president on everything from Mid East policy to government organisation will hold an interim security clearance until he supplies the FBI with additional information. Investors observe stock market movements at an exchange hall on Jan. 6, 2016, in Beijing, China. (Photo : Getty Images) After years of convincing the world that it has overtaken the U.S. as the singular dominant economic superpower, China has lost that distinction to its Western rival, according to a survey of 16 countries by the Pew Research Center. China has consistently topped surveys in terms of economic process. As recently as 2012, the data showed that most countries polled chose china over the United States, Japan, and the EU, as "the world's leading economic power," the Quartz news website reported on Tuesday citing the survey Advertisement Of eight countries asked this question every year since 2008, French is the only one to still see China as the world's most powerful economy. In contrast, 2013 saw respondents from six of those eight countries more likely to choose China over the U.S. Even Americans picked China over their country that year, the report said. This year, however, the latest release of the survey had only three of 16 countries picking China over the U.S., France, Canada and Australia. In another Pew survey announced today, more than half of respondents said that the U.S. is more concerned with China's economic strength than its military strength. 89% of Americans think that the U.S. debt to China is "somewhat serious" or "very serious," while 84% expressed concern over the loss of American jobs to China. Analysts have long criticized the perception of China as an economic superpower, arguing that Beijing focuses too much on economic and military expansion and overlooks other key sectors such as science, education, governance, and technology. "To be a true global power a nation must not only possess dominance in the hard skills of industry and military, but in the soft skills of culture and normative values as well," Seth Kaplowitz, a lecturer at San Diego State University's College of Business Administration, wrote in a column for Fortune magazine in 2015. A year later, the Council on Foreign Relations published an essay describing China's rise to becoming a superpower "wishful, or fearful thinking". "Economic growth no longer translates as directly into military power as it did in the past, which means that it is now harder than ever for rising powers to rise and established ones to fall. And China--the only country with the raw potential to become a true global peer of the United States--also faces a more daunting challenge than previous rising states because of how far it lags behind technologically," it said. Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The US military is said to be investigating whether Russia took part in the chemical weapons attack that killed up to 100 Syrian civilians and sparked a barrage of missile strikes in response from the US. As the US military sought to reestablish a back-channel communication with the Russians used to avoid accidents involving Russia and US airplanes in Syria, officials said an investigation was underway into whether Moscow had any role in last Tuesdays chemical weapons attack, allegedly launched by Syrian forces. Mr Trump had called on all civilised nations to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria". The Associated Press said US military officials at the Pentagon said a drone belonging to either Russia or Syria was seen hovering over the site of the chemical weapons attack in Idlib province. Both Russia and Syria have rejected involvement in any such incident. Russia said it was shutting down the so-called deconfliction channel after the missile strikes on Moscows regional ally. Vladimir Putin said Thursdays nights strikes involving 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles, broke international law and threatened to damage US-Russia relations. The US had given Russian forces in the area a warning of up to one hour that a strike was imminent. At the UN, Russias deputy envoy, Vladimir Safronkov, told an emergency meeting of the security council, that American aggression was strengthening groups such as Isis. The White House claimed the US strikes at the Al Shayrat airfield believed to have been used to launch the chemical weapons attack that left up to 100 people dead, sent a strong signal to the world. However, it declined to say whether Mr Trump would approve additional strikes or actions against the Assad government. Syria: What led to the US airstrikes? I think that the president's actions were very decisive last night and were clear about what he thinks needs to get done, said White House spokesman Sean Spicer. First and foremost, the president believes the Syrian government, the Assad regime, should at the minimum agree to abide by the agreements they've made not to use chemical weapons. I think that should be a minimum standard set around the world. The president approved the strike while in Florida for a two-day summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. He did not respond to shouted questions about the assault from reporters as he opened meetings with Mr Xi on Friday. The strikes, launched from the USS Ross and USS Porter which were located in the eastern Mediterranean, hit Shayrat at around 8.45pm Eastern Standard Time, according to US officials. Syria said that up to ten people were killed in the strikes, which hit an air strip, Syrian planes and fuel dumps. The missiles also targeted hangars, a control tower and ammunition areas. British Prime Minister Theresa Mays office says the action was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, and is intended to deter further attacks. France, Italy and Israel also welcomed the strikes. In Washington, Republican leaders applauded Mr Trumps actions, despite the president launching the strike without congressional authorisation. Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell called Trumps decision entirely correct. I think the president had the authority to do what he did, and Im glad he did it, he said. Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A lawsuit filed on Thursday has accused Seattle Mayor Ed Murray of sexually molesting a teenage high-school dropout in the 1980s, and in interviews with The Seattle Times, two other men claim he abused them. The mayor denied the allegations through his personal spokesman Jeff Reading. These false accusations are intended to damage a prominent elected official who has been a defender of vulnerable populations for decades, said a statement issued by Reading. It is not a coincidence that this shakedown effort comes within weeks of the campaign filing deadline. These unsubstantiated assertions, dating back three decades, are categorically false. Murray was elected mayor in 2013 after a long career in the Legislature, where he led efforts to legalise gay marriage in the state. As mayor he pushed to increase the city's minimum wage to $15 an hour and address the homelessness crisis in Seattle. In the lawsuit filed in King County Superior Court, a 46-year-old man, identified only by the initials, D.H., said Murray raped and molested him over several years, beginning in 1986 when he was 15 and addicted to crack cocaine, and when Murray was in his early 30s. The man said he met Murray on a city bus, and Murray invited him back to his apartment, propositioning him for sex and haggling over the price. Murray paid him $10 to $20 for each of at least 50 encounters over the next four to five years, the lawsuit said. I have been dealing with this for over 30 years, the man, now sober for a year, told the Times. He said he was coming forward as part of a healing process after years of the shame, the embarrassment, the guilt, the humiliation that I put myself through and that he put me through. The man also said his father's recent death freed him of a desire to keep the abuse secret. The newspaper also reported that two other men said they knew Murray when they lived in a Portland, Oregon, centre for troubled children. Jeff Simpson and Lloyd Anderson accused Murray of abusing them in the 1980s and paying them for sex and said they'd be willing to testify about it, the Times said. The Times said one of them talked with a social worker and detective at the time. No charges were filed and an entry in an old Multnomah County district attorney's database indicates the office considered but rejected a felony third-degree sodomy case in May 1984. Any other police and child welfare records would have been destroyed by now, officials said. Simpson and Anderson raised the allegations a decade ago in calls to reporters and Washington state lawmakers, and they repeated them in recent interviews with the Times. Reading's statement acknowledged those accusations. The two older accusations were promoted by extreme right-wing anti-gay activists in the midst of the marriage equality campaign, and were thoroughly investigated and dismissed by both law enforcement authorities and the media, the statement said. Simpson, 49, said Murray whom he thought of as a father raped him over several years, starting at age 13, and in later years, paid him. I would really like for him to admit it and to take responsibility, Simpson told two Times reporters who visited him unannounced in Portland. I don't necessarily think that he destroyed my life but I believe a lot of the problems I have stemmed from this. Simpson tried to bring a lawsuit against Murray in 2007, with Anderson's support, but his lawyer withdrew from the case. In 2008, Simpson started calling media organisations and lawmakers in Olympia, saying Murray, then a state senator, was a paedophile who had sexually abused him. 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 Before his political career, Murray one of seven children in an Irish Catholic family considered the priesthood. He spent a year at a seminary in 1976 before studying sociology at the University of Portland, a private Catholic institution, according to news profiles. Having sex with a child under 16 the age of legal consent in Washington in 1986 and today constitutes rape of a child under state law. The statute of limitations on any crime would have expired long ago. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and says D.H. has not previously made any financial demands of Murray. Associated Press Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Washington email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Donald Trump has called on "all civilised nations to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria" after he ordered a military strike on the country. The US leader said he the targeted airfield was the one from which a chemical attack was launched on Syrian civilians. Speaking at his Mar a Lago resort in Florida, he added that it was in the vital national security interests of the US to prevent and deter the spread and use of chemical weapons. Recommended Trump orders missile strike on Syria after chemical weapon attack There was "no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons," he said. Mr Trump had said earlier that the deaths of more than 70 people in Khan Sheikhoun had changed his opinion of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whom US intelligence says is responsible for the attack. "Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of hopeless men, women, and children," he said. "It was a slow and brutal death for so many. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of god should ever suffer such horror." He added that "years of previous attempts at changing Assad's behaviour have all failed and failed very dramatically." He continued: "As a result, the refugee crisis continues, and the region continues to destablise, threatening the US and its allies. Tonight I call on all civilised nations in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types." Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Show all 12 1 /12 Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War A man crosses a street in Aleppo, December 12, 2009 Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War A vendor sits inside an antique shop in al-Jdeideh neighbourhood, in the Old City of Aleppo, December 12, 2009 Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War A view shows part of Aleppo's historic citadel, overlooking Aleppo city, Syria Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War A view shows part of Aleppo's historic citadel, Syria Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Visitors walk inside Aleppo's Umayyad mosque, Syria Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War People walk inside the Khan al-Shounah market, in the Old City of Aleppo, Syria Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War A man walks past shops in al-Jdeideh neighbourhood, in the Old City of Aleppo, Syria Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War People walk along an alley in al-Jdeideh neighbourhood, in the Old City of Aleppo, Syria Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Visitors tour Aleppo's historic citadel, Syria December 11, 2009 Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War A general view shows the Old City of Aleppo as seen from Aleppo's historic citadel, Syria December 11, 2009 Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War People walk near Aleppo's Bab al-Faraj Clock Tower, Syria October 6, 2010 Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War A man stands inside Aleppo's historic citadel, overlooking Aleppo city, Syria December 11, 2009 Reuters The Syrian government, and its Russian allies, have denied that the regime possesses chemical weapons stocks, which were handed over to the Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) after a deadly sarin gas incident in rebel-held Ghouta in 2013. The strikes sent "an important message", according to Republican senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who have long pushed for stronger action against Syria, have issued a joint statement. They saluted the US forces carrying out the strike, adding: "They have sent an important message the United States will no longer stand idly by as Assad, aided and abetted by Putins Russia, slaughters innocent Syrians with chemical weapons and barrel bombs". Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Washington email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping began a high-stakes summit at the US leader's Florida beach resort, amid suggestions the US leader's administration was considering military action against Syria. With a pair of broad smiles, the leaders of the world's two biggest economies shook hands at the president's Mar-a-Lago retreat in Palm Beach. The pair then formally posed with their wives, Melania Trump and Peng Liyuan, on the steps before making their way to dinner. The meeting kicked off the US leader deliberated on how to respond to a chemical attack that killed more than 80 people. The President pointed to the crisis in North Korea as a top priority in the meetings with Mr Xi, telling reporters on Air Force One that he thinks China will "want to be stepping up" in trying to deter North Korea's nuclear ambitions. Ahead of the dinner, Mr Trump said he and Mr Xi already had had a long discussion and had "developed a friendship," and then joked, "I have gotten nothing, absolutely nothing." The White House said the location was selected to give the two days of discussions a more relaxed feel. A number of Mr Trump's top advisers were in attendance, including his daughter, Ivanka Trump, and son-in-law, Jared Kushner. While Mr Trump would not say what he wants China to do specifically with regard to North Korea, he suggested there was a link between "terrible" trade agreements the U.S. has made with China and Pyongyang's provocations. He says the two issues "really do mix." The president has previously suggested that if China doesn't exert more pressure on North Korea, the US will act alone. Recommended China is worried that the US is about to escalate with North Korea Both as a candidate and president, Mr Trump has taken an aggressive posture toward China, labeling Beijing a "tremendous problem" and arguing that lopsided trade deals with China shortchange American businesses and workers. Last week, the president predicted in a tweet that his meeting with Xi would be "very difficult." The White House has downplayed expectations for a breakthrough on issues like trade and tariffs, insisting that the 24-hour summit is mostly an introductory meeting for the two leaders. And within Trump's administration, there are still divisions over how to approach China. The urgency about North Korea is expected to be at the forefront of the leaders' discussions. A senior White House official said this week that the "clock has now run out" on Pyongyang, though officials have not detailed what steps Trump is willing to take to halt North Korea's nuclear ambitions. Like his predecessors, Mr Trump is pressing China to exert more economic pressure on its secretive Communist neighbour, though there is no sign he will be any more successful than past American presidents. Mr Xi is also expected to seek assurances that Trump will not interfere in the territorial dispute over the South China Sea or question the "One China" policy by reaching out to Taiwan's leader again, as he did during his presidential transition. The move infuriated Beijing, leading Mr Trump to eventually reiterate his commitment to the decades-old policy. Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Washington email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The US Senate has confirmed Neil Gorsuch, Donald Trumps selection for the countrys highest court, after a historic change to the congressional bodys rules. The final vote count was 54 in support to 45 in opposition, passing a simple majority all that was needed after Republicans voted to trigger the so-called nuclear option, which changed Senate rules. If Republicans had not deployed the nuclear option, Mr Gorsuch would have needed to reach 60 votes to be confirmed. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who made the decision to change Senate rules, said Mr Gorsuch would make the American people proud. Mr Gorsuch, 49, occupies the seat of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative stalwart. He previously served as a judge in the 10th circuit appeals court and is expected to interpret the US Constitution in much of the same way Mr Scalia did: a strict and literal reading of the document. During his confirmation hearing, several Democratic Senators questioned the conservative about his stance on landmark cases like Roe v. Wade, which protected a womans right to get an abortion. Mr Gorsuch repeated his claims that he respected the precedent set by the Supreme Court in that case and others. However, Democrats still had reservations about his views and record on key issues such as voting rights laws and euthanasia for terminally ill patients, among others. They were also in opposition to Mr Gorsuch because of what Senate Republicans had done in denying a hearing to Merrick Garland, a judge nominated by former President Obama in 2016. No nominee had ever been denied a hearing in front of the Senate. It appeared to Democrats to be a blatantly political move on the part of Republicans who said Mr Obama was simply trying to push his nominee through during the hotly contested presidential election. They retaliated and filibustered Mr Gorsuchs confirmation vote on 6 April, another first in American history. As a result of the rules change voted on by Republicans, every Supreme Court nominee going forward will only require 51 votes in order to be confirmed. Some worry that the future of the top court in the country will become more polarised as a result, because more ideological nominees would make it through the confirmation process rather than those more committed to an independent judiciary. However, Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at the University of Virginias Miller Center and a former judicial fellow at the US Supreme Court, told The Independent every president has nominated ideological jurists and that the current courts voting record shows justices exercise independence from politics. Dr Perry is more concerned about the politicisation and public opinion of the filibuster and nuclear option. Typically, a majority of Americans has approved of the Supreme Court, she said. Those ratings are sliding below 50 per cent now, an indication that dragging the judicial nomination process into the muck and mire of Washington politics is not advantageous. Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Washington email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Russia has said Donald Trump's "aggression" in Syria is actually strengthening terrorist groups like Isis. Russia's deputy envoy to the UN Vladimir Safronkov demanded that members of the Security Council, including the US, stop their "unprofessional arguments and accusations against my country." Nikki Haley, the US Ambassador to the UN, has been open in her criticism of Russia in light of the latest chemical attack in the Idlib province of Syria, resulting in up to 100 deaths. Video in the wake of the attack showed several children among the victims. Ahead of the session she said that any country that chooses to defend the atrocities of the Syrian regime will have to do so in full public view, for all the world to hear. Mr Safronkov said the US actions and the support of allies in the Security Council were an "irresponsible geopolitical project." "[Mr Assad] did this because he thought he would get away with it, he thought he could get away with it because he knew Russia would have his back," Ms Haley said in her statement, looking over to the Russian envoy. There was no love lost between she and Mr Safronov as he looked down at his phone while Ms Haley was speaking. Ms Haley said the US was "fully justified" in launching nearly 60 missiles onto an air field where the latest chemical attack is thought to have originated. She said that sometimes states are forced to take action when the international community cannot come to a solution, referring to Russia's use of their veto power in the Security Council seven times to stop any kind of deal on Syria in the past. Russia was intended to be "a guarantor" in assuring chemical weapons would be removed by Mr Assad's regime. Ms Haley presented three reasons why they may have failed in this task: that Russia was knowingly allowing weapons to remain, that Russia is "incompetent," or that the "Assad regime is playing [them] for fools." Ms Haley said the missile attack was a measured response, but that the US is "prepared to do more." Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Washington email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The air strikes ordered by Donald Trump on Syria have made one of the most vicious wars in recent years even more volatile, raising the spectre of a confrontation between the world's two most powerful international military powers. The launch of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles from the USS Porter and USS Ross at Sharyat airbase, supposedly used for the chemical attack by the regime on Idlib, was an operation limited in scope. But what then unfolded has ratcheted up tension between the US and Russia to a combustible level. Moscow suspended the communication system under which the US and Russia exchange information on operations to avoid inadvertent clashes between their respective forces in Syria. Vladimir Putin, who denounced the air strikes, as an illegal act of aggression also ordered the frigate, Admiral Grigorovitch, armed with cruise missiles, to move from the Black Sea to the Syrian port of Tartus and for a fresh batch of the S-400 and S-300 surface-to-air missiles, which are already stationed in Syria in large numbers, to be sent to protect Russian and regime forces. The Kremlin accused Mr Trump of abandoning his election campaign pledge to form a common front in Syria against terrorism. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said: Instead of the previously touted idea of a joint fight against the main enemy Islamic State the Trump administration has shown that it will carry out a fierce battle against the lawful government of Syria. The developments came on a day when: - The US envoy to the UN, Nikki Haley, said America was prepared to do more if necessary and would not stand by while chemical weapons were used - The Pentagon said it was investigating whether Russia took part in the chemical weapons attacked that killed up to 100 civilians in Idlib on Tuesday - The UK Government said it fully supported President Trumps air strikes - The Russian Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev, warned the US strike came within an inch of sparking military clashes with his countrys forces - The governor of Homs province claimed that the American strikes killed seven people, including four children The Russians did not activate their anti-aircraft missiles during the Idlib air strikes, but the angry stance taken by Moscow was seen as sending a message that further assaults on its Syrian allies may not be treated with such forbearance. Russia's Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said the missiles came 'within inches' of his country's forces (Getty) Vladimir Putin has built up a reputation as a tough leader who stands by his friends. He cannot maintain that reputation if he allows repeated American air strikes on Assads forces: the Trump administration needs to be careful about that, said Robert Emerson, a security analyst. The Syrian opposition expressed hope that the attack will be the first of many. Mohamed Alloush, a senior official of the Jaish al Islam militia, said hitting one airbase is not enough, there are 26 airbases that target civilians. Saleh Khatib, an activist, demanded to know What is the difference between Bashar murdering a hundred people with Sarin and burning them to death with barrel bombs? Stopping his planes from flying will stop people, women, children, being killed. Surely, the Americans must know that. US airstrikes in Syria: How the world reacted The Pentagon stated that further military strikes by the US would not be necessary as long as Bashar al-Assads regime desisted from using chemical and biological weapons. It stated that all attempts had been made to ensure there were no Russian casualties. There are Russians at the base and we took extraordinary precautions to not target areas where the Russians are, said spokesman Captain Jeff Davis. However, Rex Tillerson, the Secretary of State, was unaware of this, adding to a sense of confusion in the decision-making process in Washington. He insisted there were no discussions or prior contacts, nor had there been any since the attack with Moscow. The level of accusations and recriminations rose through the day and the US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, lashed out at the Syrian regime and its backers, Iran, as well as Russia. President Assad, she said: Is not the only guilty party The Iranian government bears a significant responsibility. The Russian government also bears considerable responsibility. Every time Assad has crossed the line of human decency, Russia has stood beside him. The world is waiting for the Russian government to act responsibly in Syria. The world is waiting for Russia to reconsider its misplaced alliance with Bashar al-Assad. The United States will no longer wait. Those days are over. The US took a very measured step last night. We are prepared to do more but we hope that will not be necessary. Bashar Jaafari, Syrias ambassador to the UN, accused the US of a barbaric and flagrant act. This treacherous act of aggression is a grave violation of the charter of the United Nations as well as all international laws and norms, he said. Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary-General, urged restraint and appealed for the warring nations to pursue a political, rather than military solution to the crisis in Syria. But the mood continued to be belligerent and combative. Russia and Iran wont be quiet against such acts which violate interests of the region, we cannot tolerate that, said Allaeddin Boroujerdi, head of parliamentary committee on national security in Tehran. In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Show all 7 1 /7 In pictures: US missile strike against Syria In pictures: US missile strike against Syria The guided-missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG 78) launches a tomahawk land attack missile in the Mediterranean Sea AP In pictures: US missile strike against Syria The United States military launched at least 50 tomahawk cruise missiles at al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs, Syria, in response to the Syrian military's alleged use of chemical weapons in an airstrike in a rebel held area in Idlib province EPA In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Shayrat airfield in Syria Getty Images In pictures: US missile strike against Syria US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile in Mediterranean Sea Reuters In pictures: US missile strike against Syria US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile in Mediterranean Sea Reuters In pictures: US missile strike against Syria President Donald Trump speaks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., after the US fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians AP In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Syria's President Bashar al-Assad Reuters In Moscow, Major-General Igor Konashenkov, defence minister spokesman, warned that Russia would strengthen the Syrian air defence system and increase the efficiency to protect Syrias most sensitive infrastructure facilities as quickly as possible. But a former head of the British Army has said US missile strikes against the Assad regime could provide an opportunity to push Russia towards a negotiated peace in Syria. Richard Dannatt told The Independent the display of American military might had demonstrated the US was now prepared to act and show leadership in Syria. Ex-Defence Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind agreed, claiming the unexpected US attack could fundamentally change Russian and Syrian decision making in the Syrian conflict. The pair were speaking ahead of high-profile meetings between Western and Russian diplomats, including a trip by Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson to Moscow next week. Lord Dannatt said the missile strikes were the right thing to do, adding: It says that Donald Trump is not Barrack Obama. Thats actually quite reassuring, Trump has been banging on about America first and all the rest of it, but it actually shows that the worlds most powerful country and most economically successful country is willing to show a bit of leadership. He added: Diplomacy is always better when it is backed up by strength. The velvet glove needs to have an iron fist within it. So I dont think this should take us in to further military activity inevitably, but should take us more enthusiastically to Geneva around the conference table. Donald Trump needs to think very carefully what hes next going to say to Vladimir Putin, who is a bit stuck on this. The head of the army between 2006 and 2009 argued that the Russian Presidents diplomatic and political credibility had been damaged by Assads use of chemical weapons, given that the country had vouched for the regimes claim that they were all destroyed. Recommended Tomahawk missiles have significance beyond their precision and power Sir Malcom said that the military action had created a platform for a new diplomatic push against Moscow. He said: The Russians have seriously miscalculated. It would have been much smarter for them to say we are appalled and we will make sure this cannot happen again, thats what they did in 2013. They didnt say Syria doesnt have chemical weapons, they said to Obama we can do a deal, we can get rid of them. The ex-cabinet minister said the last thing Moscow wants is a military confrontation with the United States in Syria and up to now Mr Putin had assumed he could avoid one. But Sir Malcolm added: Now they are in a mess because they had thought that by vetoing in the UN Security Council, that would in practise prevent the Americans from doing anything. That has been shown to be a false assumption. Mr Johnson will head to Moscow within days on a trip that had been scheduled before the US action. His trip will be followed by one from US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson later in the week. Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Washington email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The US missile strike on Syria "targeted aircraft, hardened aircraft shelters, petroleum and logistical storage, ammunition supply bunkers, air defense systems, and radars", a Pentagon spokesman has said. Captain Jeff Davis said the attack on Shayrat Airfield in Homs governorate was conducted at the direction of US President Donald Trump "in response to the Syrian government's chemical weapons attack". A total of 59 Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles had been "launched from the destroyers USS Porter and USS Ross in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea," he said. "As always, the US took extraordinary measures to avoid civilian casualties and to comply with the Law of Armed Conflict," he added. "Every precaution was taken to execute this strike with minimal risk to personnel at the airfield." Captain Davis also confirmed that Russian forces in the region had been pre-warned about the attack. US military planned had taken precautions to "execute this strike with minimal risk to personnel at the airfield," he said. Although they were still assessing the results on the strike, Captain Davis said initial indications were that it had "severely damaged or destroyed Syrian aircraft and support infrastructure and equipment at Shayrat Airfield, reducing the Syrian Government's ability to deliver chemical weapons." In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Show all 7 1 /7 In pictures: US missile strike against Syria In pictures: US missile strike against Syria The guided-missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG 78) launches a tomahawk land attack missile in the Mediterranean Sea AP In pictures: US missile strike against Syria The United States military launched at least 50 tomahawk cruise missiles at al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs, Syria, in response to the Syrian military's alleged use of chemical weapons in an airstrike in a rebel held area in Idlib province EPA In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Shayrat airfield in Syria Getty Images In pictures: US missile strike against Syria US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile in Mediterranean Sea Reuters In pictures: US missile strike against Syria US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile in Mediterranean Sea Reuters In pictures: US missile strike against Syria President Donald Trump speaks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., after the US fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians AP In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Syria's President Bashar al-Assad Reuters He added: "The use of chemical weapons against innocent people will not be tolerated." Syria decried the attack calling it an "aggression" that led to "losses." A military official quoted on state TV said material damage had been done to the base. Another statement, also attributed to an unnamed official, referred to "losses." The officials did not elaborate. Talal Barazi, the governor of Homs province, where the targeted air base is located, said that most of the strikes appeared to target the province in central Syria. He told Al Arabiya TV that a fire raged for two hours in the base, until it was put out. Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Venezuelan authorities have vowed to investigate the killing of a 19-year-old man during anti-government demonstrations, the first protest death since a controversy over the Supreme Court began. Thousands of Venezuelan opponents of President Nicolas Maduros socialist government marched to protest a decision by the administration-leaning top court to assume control of the opposition-led congress in what demonstrators said was a lurch toward dictatorship. While the widely condemned decision was quickly overturned, the opposition has stepped up street protests against Mr Maduro, even though such demonstrations have achieved little in the past. Thursdays march culminated in clashes, and opposition leaders said Jairo Ortiz was shot in a Caracas suburb that night by security forces that were breaking up a protest there. The state prosecutors office confirmed on Friday that Mr Ortiz was shot in the hilly, low-income Carrizal area of capital Caracas, known for its state-provided housing, while he was at a protest. Officials of the Bolivarian National Guard and the Bolivarian National police approached the area, the office said in a statement, adding it would investigate the incident. During this situation, Ortiz... received a bullet that caused his death. Local media reported Mr Ortiz was a university student planning to emigrate from Venezuela, like so many in the middle class that have fled to Colombia, Panama, Chile or the US city of Miami amid the economic crisis and political turmoil. A galvanised opposition, buoyed by the latest international outcry against Mr Maduro, is planning another protest in Caracas on Saturday. Legislators gathered on Friday in front of the state human rights ombudsmans office at dawn, wrapping red tape emblazoned with the words danger, do not enter around the building in a surprise protest. We declare this office closed because its back is to the people, tweeted opposition legislator Milagros Paz. Jairo Ortiz died in the hands of this regime. The opposition, which accuses ombudsman Tarek Saab of being an extension of Mr Maduros government, was blocked on Thursday from marching to the ombudsmans office. Mr Saab condemned Mr Ortizs death on Friday, calling it a vile assassination. It came as opposition leader and two-time presidential candidate Henrique Capriles said on Friday that he had been banned from holding political office for 15 years, amid what critics say is a crackdown on dissent by the leftist government. Over the last few days, authorities have accused Mr Capriles of fomenting violence and bloodshed by leading protests against Mr Maduro. A ban on holding office would prevent Mr Capriles from running for president again in elections currently scheduled for late 2018. URGENT: I inform the country and international public opinion that I am being notified at this very moment of a BAN for 15 years, tweeted Mr Capriles, who is currently the governor of the central coastal state of Miranda. There was no immediate comment from authorities. The Mr Capriles decision will likely stoke tensions in Venezuela, where more than 100 political prisoners are now being held, according to the opposition and rights groups. Fellow opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, Venezuelas best-known prisoner, was himself barred from office in 2008, when he was the popular mayor of a Caracas district. Mr Lopez had been expected to challenge late leader Hugo Chavez in the 2012 presidential election but handed the baton over to Mr Capriles, who lost that vote and another against Mr Maduro in 2013 after Mr Chavezs death. Mr Capriles, youre trying to ignite the country, Socialist Party official Freddy Bernal said during a government rally on Thursday. Youre looking for deaths. Dont then come like a sissy saying that youre a political prisoner. Dont then come crying that youre being persecuted. Mr Maduros government has said foreign-backed opposition lawmakers are seeking to agitate protesters in hopes of stoking a coup to get their hands on Venezuelas crude oil reserves, the worlds largest. Mr Maduro said in a televised address on Thursday that authorities had detained 30 people involved in the demonstration. Reuters For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A renegade elephant reportedly killed its owner and destroyed six houses after tourists asked it to be released from its chains for a photo. The animal, named Atork, was later shot dead by officials, after failed attempts to keep it away from a village in the Cambodian jungle. Authorities had planned to tranquillize and capture Atork, but his aggression and the slow response of wildlife officials meant he was killed. The incident began on Thursday, when the elephants owner, Choeung Team, 47, released him from his shackles at the request of a tourist group he was guiding in Sen Monorom, in the eastern Mondulkiri province. Elephants rescued after getting stuck in mud The elephant walked off while the tourists were preparing food and Mr Team followed it. The animal had apparently always been of mild temperament but experts believe he was on heat, known in elephants as musth. The condition stems from high levels of reproductive hormones and is characterised by aggressive behaviour. The owner was killed by his elephant when it was in rut, Police officer Norng Chanthea told the Phnom Penh Post. Mr Team's nephew, Saroeun Naro, 37, told the newspaper: Atork used his trunk to beat him and trampled on him. I do not know why it was angry with my uncle. Villagers chased the elephant into the forest, using fireworks to scare him off, and an operation was launched to capture it. Vets from the Phnom Tamao Wildlife Rescue Centre planned to tranquillize the elephant. But the animal later returned from the forest and began to cause mayhem in the village. He smashed down six houses and was completely uncontrollable, said Jemma Bullock of the Elephant Livelihood Initiative Environment, which attempted to help the villagers. 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 She told the Cambodia Daily: Police and a fire truck came to help, and were firing warning shots and trying to scare him back to the forest. But when he kept attacking the house one police officer fired on his leg to stop him. The animal later died. Police Chief Kan Peng of Sen Monorom City said the killing was necessary because the elephant had killed a human and destroyed property. He also said the wildlife experts took too long to arrive. Elephant tours are a popular attraction in Cambodia, particularly in Mondulkiri. More than five million people visited the country last year. Dilraba Dilmura (Photo : Dilraba Dilmurat/YouTube) Ao Jiao & Pian Jian, the Chinese remake of the online novel Pride and Prejudice, would premiere in China on April 21. Among the stars of the film is Dilraba Dilmurat, one of the most popular actresses on television who stood in for AngelaBaby as co-host of Hurry Up, Brother, Season 5 when the Chinese actress gave birth to her first baby. Advertisement Other stars of "Ao Jiao & Pian Jan" are Zhang Yunlong and Gao Weiguang. The movie is about the romance of an online novelist with an heir of a wealthy family business, China Daily reported. Dilrabas Career Path Besides pinch-hitting for AngelaBaby in the Chinese version of the popular Korean variety show Running Man, 25-year-old Dilraba Dilmurat starred in the 2013 TV series Anarhan which was her ticket to fame. Her acting career was further boosted by Dilrabas starring role in Eternal Love, based on another online novel, The Lives Three Worlds, Ten Miles of Blossoms. Dilraba starred in Pretty Li Hui Zhen, the Chinese remake of the 2015 hit Korean drama She Was Pretty. In early 2017, Pretty Li Hui Zhen was the number one TV drama on its time slot, Soompi reported. Another Chinese Remake of Korean Drama The drama series revolved around the love story between a former beauty and her childhood friend whose fortunes reversed. Years of a hard life made Li Hui Zhen look haggard, while it was the other way around for her short, chubby and unpopular childhood friend Bai Hao Yu, played by Peter Sheng, who has become handsome and successful as an adult. Bai looks for Li Hui, but because of her current physical appearance, Li Hui sends Xia Qiao, played by Sierra Li, who is her stylish roommate and best friend, to instead meet with Bai. However, Li becomes an intern at a fashion magazine with Bai as her boss, so she has to hide again her true identity. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A young girl discovered in a forest in northern India is said to behave like a primate, having reportedly been living with monkeys. Believed to be between 10 and 12 years old, the youngster was found naked and emaciated, in Katarniaghat forest, Uttar Pradesh, by a group of woodcutters who alerted the authorities. She was unkempt and wounds on her body. Doctors are reportedly now trying to look after the girl and humanise her behaviour, while police are reviewing records of missing children in an attempt to identify her. The woodcutters said "the girl was naked and was very comfortable in the company of monkeys, police officer Dinesh Tripathi told The Associated Press. He continued: When they tried to rescue the girl, they were chased away by the monkeys." An attending police officer was attacked by the monkeys but was able to rescue the girl, according to Mr Tripathi. He sped away with her in his police car while the monkeys gave chase," he added. The girl reportedly behaved in a similar fashion to a monkey during her time in hospital, where she was placed two months ago. She was unable to communicate and screamed loudly if doctors tried to reach out to her, according to Dr DK Singh of the Bahraich District Hospital, the New Indian Express reported. Other doctors reported hearing her make monkey-like noises. The way she moved, even her eating habits were like that of an animal, Dr Singh told AP. She would throw food on the ground and eat it directly with her mouth, without lifting it with her hands. "She used to move around using only her elbows and her knees. Medical staff reported that the girls behaviour made treatment difficult. Other officials speculated she had been living in the forest since birth, though the precise length of time is currently and known and will likely be difficult to quantify. However, the girls condition appears to have improved after several weeks in hospital. She has begun to walk and eat normally. 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 "She is still not able to speak, but understands whatever you tell her and even smiles," Dr Singh said. If the girls condition continues to improve and she is given a clean bill of health, responsibility for her will likely be handed to social services. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} US and Kuwaiti security officials helped Philippine authorities identify and arrest a Middle Eastern couple with suspected links to Isis who may have been planning bomb attacks, Filipino officials said Friday. Philippine army intelligence agents, along with police and immigration authorities, arrested Hussein Aldhafiri and Rahaf Zina Dhafiri late last month in an upscale commercial district in Taguig city in metropolitan Manila. Their arrests were not announced until late Thursday, when the handcuffed suspects were presented to reporters but not allowed to speak. Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II said the arrests were kept private to allow Philippine authorities to identify the pair's local contacts and avoid the risk of their capture prompting possible accomplices to advance any planned attack. He said information provided by the US and Kuwait made the arrests possible. I believe since nothing happened, we were able to nip whatever terrorist intention they have in the bud, Aguirre said at a news conference in Manila. Aldhafiri, a 40-year-old Kuwaiti, allegedly was an Isis bombmaker who was helping plot attacks in Kuwait and possibly in the Philippines, Aguirre and other officials said, citing information provided by Kuwait. As he was led away at Thursday's announcement, Aldhafiri said he needed a lawyer. Aldhafiri, who last entered the Philippines in January, first travelled to the country last year as a tourist and later got a work visa. Officials said the Kuwaiti government plans to cancel his passport to allow the Philippines to deport him. They said he would most likely face terrorism charges in his country. Dhafiri, a 27-year-old Syrian, was reportedly the widow of a top Isis commander in Syria and later became Aldhafiri's partner. After her arrest, she told authorities that she was pregnant and she was sent to a hospital. She will likely be deported to Qatar, where she last came from before flying to Manila, Philippine Immigration Commissioner Jaime Morente said. Earlier this year, the couple travelled to southern Davao city, President Rodrigo Duterte's hometown, and the central city of Cebu, staying for a few days in each city, Morente said. Aguirre said the two have had no known contact with Filipino Muslim militants. World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty A number of radical Islamic armed groups in the country's south, including some commanders of the brutal Abu Sayyaf group, has pledged allegiance to Isis in recent years in a bid to secure funds and training and project an image of strength and relevance amid years of battle setbacks, the military says. Associated Press For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Donald Trump supporters have been accused of opportunism after using the Stockholm lorry attack to claim he was right all along about Sweden. In February the US President made a seemingly confused reference to a non-existent terror attack when he told a rally of supporters: Weve got to keep our country safe Look at whats happening in Germany, look at what happened last night in Sweden. They took in large numbers [of immigrants], theyre having problems like they never thought possible. The president was widely ridiculed because nothing of particular note and certainly no terrorist attack - had happened the previous night in Sweden. Former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt mockingly asked: What has he been smoking? Mr Trump later clarified that he had in fact been referring to a Fox News item which included a clip from a film by a documentary maker who had said he wanted to investigate why Sweden has become the rape capital of Europe after admitting over 350,000 Syrian refugees. Which only led to the rapid debunking of the claim that Sweden was the rape capital of Europe. President Trump cites terrorist incident in Sweden that never happened But within hours of the Stockholm attack claiming the lives of at least three people, Trump supporters were using social media to declare that the US president had been right all along. Apparently ignoring Mr Trumps backtracking that he had been referring to the rape, not terror threat in Sweden, his supporters claimed that he had prophetically warned everyone. While some supported the notion, others accused those posting of opportunism. While others pointed out a few flaws in the arguments of those seeking to claim that Mr Trump had been right all along. The debate has some similarities to that which occurred two days after Mr Trump made his rally comments, when rioting broke out in the Stockholm suburb of Rinkeby. This prompted right-wing commentators to argue that Mr Trump had been right to criticise a Swedish immigration policy that saw the country admit 163,000 asylum seekers in 2015, more refugees per capita than anywhere else in Europe. In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Show all 15 1 /15 In pictures: Stockholm truck attack In pictures: Stockholm truck attack 3 people dead when a truck crashed into Ahlens department store in central Stockholm, Sweden Rex In pictures: Stockholm truck attack People were killed when a truck crashed into department store Ahlens on Drottninggatan, in central Stockholm Reuters In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Special Police forces work at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Getty Images In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Woman is assisted at the scene after a truck crashed into an Ahlens department store in Stockholm Rex In pictures: Stockholm truck attack A policewoman in a gas mask operates at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Getty Images In pictures: Stockholm truck attack People react at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Rex In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Reports say three people have died after a truck crashed into an Ahlens department store in Stockholm Rex In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Armed police operates at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Getty Images In pictures: Stockholm truck attack People react at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Getty Images In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Emergency services close to the scene of an incident in Drottninggatan, a street in the centre of Stockholm, Sweden Lasse Gare/PA Wire In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Passers react at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Getty Images In pictures: Stockholm truck attack People killed in incident when a truck was driven into a department store in central Stockholm Reuters In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Police officers work at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Getty Images In pictures: Stockholm truck attack A general view shows a Ahlens department store after a truck reportedly crashed into it, at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm, Sweden EPA In pictures: Stockholm truck attack A view of a street after a truck reportedly crashed into a department store in central Stockholm, Sweden EPA At that stage, though, the right-wing commentators were at pains to stress that it was incorrect to say Mr Trump had been referring to terrorism. They instead emphasised that he had been talking about a break down in law and order in Sweden. They said that Rinkeby, where more than 90% of residents were born abroad or have foreign-born parents, was known locally as Little Mogadishu. One police officer was quoted as saying he watched the riot and suggested to a colleague: Perhaps Trump was right after all. He later insisted, however, that he supported Swedens open immigration policy. Right-wing commentators also argued that Swedens relatively low overall crime rates masked areas of high crime, ethnic isolation and joblessness. They quoted figures showing that while only five per cent of 15-74-year-old Swedish-born workers are jobless, foreign-born workers are three times more likely to be unemployed, and 22.5 per cent of immigrants from outside the EU are out of work. Others, however, sought to put Swedens problems into perspective among them those in Rinkeby itself. Jamal Raheem, visiting Rinkeby on a two-week holiday from his home in east London told The Guardian: Rinkeby is not dangerous. Its a lot more dangerous in Stratford. Official figures suggested he might be right. With 2,405 violent crimes reported per 100,000 residents in 2016, the Rinkeby-Kista district was the most dangerous place in Stockholm outside the city centre. But even that figure comparatively high by Swedish standards was below the reported violent crime rate of 2,900 per 100,000 for the UK as a whole. The US records violent crime in significantly different ways to the Sweden and the UK, but its murder rate has historically been far higher than in the other two countries. Close Scene after the truck attack in Stockholm sees crowds flee For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A lorry has been driven into crowds in central Stockholm in what police are treating as a terror attack. Here are the latest updates: Manhunt for suspect in green jacket after lorry kills three and injures 'many' more Witnesses describe horror of attack where hundreds fled for their lives Police say lorry was hijacked earlier today and incident is being treated as terror attack Why Sweden - and was it Isis? Everything we know so far A lorry has crashed into a crowd of people in central Stockholm killing at least three people, Swedish police have said. Armed police rushed to the scene and shots have been fired, Swedish radio reported. The incident occurred at Ahlens Mall in Drottninggatan, a shopping area of the city, which has been cordoned off. A witness told Swedish daily paper Aftonbladet: I went to the main street when a big truck came out of nowhere. I could not see if anyone was driving it but it got out of control. I saw at least two being run over. I ran as fast as I could from there. Another witness told the paper they saw hundreds of people running for their lives outside the shopping centre. A vehicle has injured people on Drottningatan, police spokeswoman Towe Hagg told Reuters. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Witnesses to the Stockholm lorry attack have told of their terror as they watched the truck career towards crowds in the centre of the Swedish capital. At least three people are reported to have been killed and more injured when the lorry was driven into people on a busy street around 3.00pm local time on Friday. Reports suggest the truck, belonging to Swedish brewery Spendrups, had been hijacked earlier in the day. "I turned around and saw a big truck coming towards me. It swerved from side to side. It didn't look out of control, it was trying to hit people," Glen Foran, an Australian tourist in his 40s, told Reuters. "It hit people, it was terrible. It hit a pram with a kid in it, demolished it. "It took a long time for police to get here. I suppose from their view it was quick, but it felt like forever." One witness, Jan Granroth, told told Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet: "We stood inside a shoe store and heard something ... and then people started to scream. I looked out of the store and saw a big truck." Another, named Anna, described seeing hundreds of people running from the lorry. I saw hundreds of people run, they ran for their lives. I turned and ran as well, she said. One British tourist described a lifeless body lying on the ground, covered with a blanket. Harriet Rose-Gale, a reporter, told The Sun: "We were literally 100 or 200 metres away having lunch when a couple of police cars went by followed by about 20-30 emergency vehicles continuously. "I walked up the road and we could just see a lorry, a truck, and what we could only assume was a lifeless body in front of it. It had a peach or orange towel covering it and there was another body with a white sheet in the middle of the road. In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Show all 15 1 /15 In pictures: Stockholm truck attack In pictures: Stockholm truck attack 3 people dead when a truck crashed into Ahlens department store in central Stockholm, Sweden Rex In pictures: Stockholm truck attack People were killed when a truck crashed into department store Ahlens on Drottninggatan, in central Stockholm Reuters In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Special Police forces work at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Getty Images In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Woman is assisted at the scene after a truck crashed into an Ahlens department store in Stockholm Rex In pictures: Stockholm truck attack A policewoman in a gas mask operates at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Getty Images In pictures: Stockholm truck attack People react at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Rex In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Reports say three people have died after a truck crashed into an Ahlens department store in Stockholm Rex In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Armed police operates at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Getty Images In pictures: Stockholm truck attack People react at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Getty Images In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Emergency services close to the scene of an incident in Drottninggatan, a street in the centre of Stockholm, Sweden Lasse Gare/PA Wire In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Passers react at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Getty Images In pictures: Stockholm truck attack People killed in incident when a truck was driven into a department store in central Stockholm Reuters In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Police officers work at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Getty Images In pictures: Stockholm truck attack A general view shows a Ahlens department store after a truck reportedly crashed into it, at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm, Sweden EPA In pictures: Stockholm truck attack A view of a street after a truck reportedly crashed into a department store in central Stockholm, Sweden EPA "There were armed police running past us and shouting in Swedish. The police officer said to just keep walking. They are sending people away from the scene. "We were trying to find out what happened but there was so much panic because of what's just happened in London. Everyone is on high alert. "There were crowds of people flooding along the street to get away and lots of police officers with guns and lots and lots of sirens. Serwan Saleme, who witnessed the aftermath of the attack, told Sky News: There was a lot of cars, people were very confused. People were everywhere and they [the police] were shouting at people to stay away from the roads. All the major stations are closed right now. There is a lot of chaos going on right now. Everyone is shocked. Swedish PM says Stockholm has been victim of terror attack John Backvid was on the scene moments after the attack before emergency services arrived. Some people were on the ground doing CPR, he told BBC News. The first thing I felt was a bit of smoke in the air. I saw a gathering of people and the car on fire it was deep in the store and the store fire alarm was on. It was quite chaotic. I could not see if anyone was driving it but it got out of control. I saw at least two being run over. I ran as fast as I could. Swedish police say they believe the incident was a terrorist attack and are searching for a man pictured near the scene of the incident wearing a green jacket, grey hoodie and white shoes. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A man has been arrested in connection with the Stockholm lorry attack, with reports suggesting he was detained in Marsta, around 25 miles north of the Swedish capital. Swedish media are reporting that he admitted being involved in the attack and was captured wearing a balaclava, but officers do not believe he was the driver of the truck. He is reported to be a 39-year-old Uzbek national whose registered address is in suburban Stockholm. The man is said to work in the building industry and have four children, but acquaintances said he had never discussed politics or religion with them. Some reports suggested he had previously posted pro-Isis propaganda on his Facebook page. But friends told Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet they did not believe he had anything to do with the attack. At least four people are confirmed to have have been killed and 15 are being treated in hospital after a truck was driven into crowds in the centre of the city on Friday afternoon. In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Show all 15 1 /15 In pictures: Stockholm truck attack In pictures: Stockholm truck attack 3 people dead when a truck crashed into Ahlens department store in central Stockholm, Sweden Rex In pictures: Stockholm truck attack People were killed when a truck crashed into department store Ahlens on Drottninggatan, in central Stockholm Reuters In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Special Police forces work at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Getty Images In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Woman is assisted at the scene after a truck crashed into an Ahlens department store in Stockholm Rex In pictures: Stockholm truck attack A policewoman in a gas mask operates at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Getty Images In pictures: Stockholm truck attack People react at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Rex In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Reports say three people have died after a truck crashed into an Ahlens department store in Stockholm Rex In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Armed police operates at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Getty Images In pictures: Stockholm truck attack People react at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Getty Images In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Emergency services close to the scene of an incident in Drottninggatan, a street in the centre of Stockholm, Sweden Lasse Gare/PA Wire In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Passers react at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Getty Images In pictures: Stockholm truck attack People killed in incident when a truck was driven into a department store in central Stockholm Reuters In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Police officers work at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Getty Images In pictures: Stockholm truck attack A general view shows a Ahlens department store after a truck reportedly crashed into it, at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm, Sweden EPA In pictures: Stockholm truck attack A view of a street after a truck reportedly crashed into a department store in central Stockholm, Sweden EPA Police released an image of a man wearing a green jacket, grey hoodie and white shoes who they are hunting in connection with the attack, but stopped short of formally describing him as a suspect. Jan Evensson of Stockholm police said the man arrested in Marsta "matched exactly" the profile of the person in the image. Eyewitnesses reported seeing a police chase involving 10-15 police vehicles before the man was apprehended. He is said to have been driving a white van. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The Swedish Prime Minister has said a lorry attack that killed at least three people in Stockholm is terror-related. Stefan Lofven said everything indicates that the crash was a deliberate attack. "Sweden has been attacked," he told reporters. "Everything indicates that this is a terrorist attack." Scene after the truck attack in Stockholm sees crowds flee The Prime Minister said the government was being kept continually informed and was doing everything it could to support authorities. No group has yet claimed responsibility for the incident outside the well-known Ahlens department store, on a busy shopping street. Witnesses said they heard a crash and the sound of screaming, with people running outside to find victims lying in the road. Police said they could not confirm any arrests, with a manhunt underway for a suspect described as wearing a green jacket, grey hoodie and white shoes. A large area of central Stockholm has been cordoned off and evacuated by police, with Sweden's parliament evacuated as a precaution and public transport in the capital shut down. The lorry belonged to Swedish brewery Spendrups, which said the vehicle had been hijacked earlier on Friday. Jean-Claude Juncker, the President of the European Commission, was among those sending his condolences to the victims. In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Show all 15 1 /15 In pictures: Stockholm truck attack In pictures: Stockholm truck attack 3 people dead when a truck crashed into Ahlens department store in central Stockholm, Sweden Rex In pictures: Stockholm truck attack People were killed when a truck crashed into department store Ahlens on Drottninggatan, in central Stockholm Reuters In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Special Police forces work at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Getty Images In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Woman is assisted at the scene after a truck crashed into an Ahlens department store in Stockholm Rex In pictures: Stockholm truck attack A policewoman in a gas mask operates at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Getty Images In pictures: Stockholm truck attack People react at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Rex In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Reports say three people have died after a truck crashed into an Ahlens department store in Stockholm Rex In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Armed police operates at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Getty Images In pictures: Stockholm truck attack People react at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Getty Images In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Emergency services close to the scene of an incident in Drottninggatan, a street in the centre of Stockholm, Sweden Lasse Gare/PA Wire In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Passers react at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Getty Images In pictures: Stockholm truck attack People killed in incident when a truck was driven into a department store in central Stockholm Reuters In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Police officers work at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Getty Images In pictures: Stockholm truck attack A general view shows a Ahlens department store after a truck reportedly crashed into it, at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm, Sweden EPA In pictures: Stockholm truck attack A view of a street after a truck reportedly crashed into a department store in central Stockholm, Sweden EPA "One of Europe's most vibrant and colourful cities appears to have been struck by those wishing it and our very way of life harm," he added. "We stand shoulder to shoulder in solidarity with the people of Sweden." The incident came just weeks after a suspected Isis supporter killed five people in London before being shot dead by police. Khalid Masood rammed his car into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, then stabbed a police officer to death at the entrance to the Houses of Parliament. Isis propaganda has continued attempting to incite terror attacks in Europe, the US, Australia and other countries supporting military operations against its fighters. An issue of its Rumiyah magazine issued in November advised jihadis to launch vehicle attacks in an article citing the Nice lorry attack that killed 86 people as a superb demonstration. Police at the scene where a lorry crashed into the Ahlens department store in central Stockholm (Getty Images) Having a secondary weapon, such as a gun or a knife, is also a great way to combine a vehicle attack with other forms, it read. Little over a month later, a failed Tunisian asylum seeker hijacked a lorry and ploughed it into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 11 people. Isis has claimed a previous terror attack in Sweden, which has been preparing for the expected return of some of around 300 jihadis who left the country to fight abroad. It claimed responsibility for a firebombing in Malmo in October that targeted a building used as an assembly hall by Shia Muslims, who Isis have declared apostates and targeted with terror attacks around the world. A 30-year-old Syrian man was charged with terror offences over the arson attack last month, after prosecutors found he had affiliated himself with Isis. No one was injured. The most recent attack in Stockholm was in, 2010, when an Iraqi-born Swede killed himself while detonating two bombs, which failed to cause any other fatalities. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A manhunt is underway after a lorry was ploughed into pedestrians in Sweden, killing at least three people and injuring several more. The vehicle was hijacked from a brewery before being used to commit the atrocity in Stockholm, being left partially embedded in the Ahlens department store. A large area of the Swedish capital was evacuated after what the Prime Minister called a terror attack, with public transport stopped and parliament put on lockdown. What happened? Witnesses said the lorry sped down Drottninggatan (Queen Street), swerving into pedestrians in the busy shopping area before crashing into Ahlens shortly before 3pm local time (2pm BST). I turned around and saw a big truck coming towards me. It swerved from side to side. It didn't look out of control, it was trying to hit people, said Glen Foran, an Australian tourist. It hit people, it was terrible. It hit a pram with a kid in it, demolished it. Police could not immediately confirm how many people were killed or injured but local reports said at least three victims were dead. The driver fled the scene, sparking a huge manhunt for a suspect described as wearing a green jacket, grey hoodie and white shoes. Police released an image of the man but urged the public not to approach him, and call the emergency services immediately with any sightings. A large area of central Stockholm was cordoned off and evacuated by police, with Sweden's parliament put on lockdown and public transport suspended. In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Show all 15 1 /15 In pictures: Stockholm truck attack In pictures: Stockholm truck attack 3 people dead when a truck crashed into Ahlens department store in central Stockholm, Sweden Rex In pictures: Stockholm truck attack People were killed when a truck crashed into department store Ahlens on Drottninggatan, in central Stockholm Reuters In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Special Police forces work at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Getty Images In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Woman is assisted at the scene after a truck crashed into an Ahlens department store in Stockholm Rex In pictures: Stockholm truck attack A policewoman in a gas mask operates at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Getty Images In pictures: Stockholm truck attack People react at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Rex In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Reports say three people have died after a truck crashed into an Ahlens department store in Stockholm Rex In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Armed police operates at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Getty Images In pictures: Stockholm truck attack People react at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Getty Images In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Emergency services close to the scene of an incident in Drottninggatan, a street in the centre of Stockholm, Sweden Lasse Gare/PA Wire In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Passers react at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Getty Images In pictures: Stockholm truck attack People killed in incident when a truck was driven into a department store in central Stockholm Reuters In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Police officers work at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Getty Images In pictures: Stockholm truck attack A general view shows a Ahlens department store after a truck reportedly crashed into it, at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm, Sweden EPA In pictures: Stockholm truck attack A view of a street after a truck reportedly crashed into a department store in central Stockholm, Sweden EPA Who is responsible? Police have not named the suspect but were understood to be questioning workers at the Swedish brewery Spendrups, where the vehicle had been hijacked earlier on Friday. A masked gunman had forced his way into the vehicle, hitting the driver when he attempted to intervene before driving away, Expressen reported. Sweden has been attacked, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven told reporters. Everything indicates that this is a terrorist attack. A CCTV footage image of the suspect was released by police Is it Isis? There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the massacre, but suspicion quickly turned to the so-called Islamic State after its supporters used lorries in attacks in Nice and Berlin. The incident came just weeks after a suspected Isis supporter killed five people in London before being shot dead by police. Khalid Masood rammed his car into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, then stabbed a police officer to death at the entrance to the Houses of Parliament. Isis propaganda has continued attempting to incite terror attacks in Europe, the US, Australia and other countries supporting military operations against its fighters. An issue of its Rumiyah magazine issued in November advised jihadis to launch vehicle attacks in an article citing the Nice lorry attack that killed 86 people as a superb demonstration. Having a secondary weapon, such as a gun or a knife, is also a great way to combine a vehicle attack with other forms, it read. Little over a month later, a failed Tunisian asylum seeker hijacked a lorry and ploughed it into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 11 people. Swedish PM says Stockholm has been victim of terror attack Has Sweden been attacked before? The most recent attack in Stockholm was in, 2010, when an Iraqi-born Swede killed himself while detonating two bombs days before Christmas, which failed to cause any other fatalities. Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly, who studied at the University of Bedfordshire and lived in Luton for almost a decade, supported al-Qaeda and named his son after Osama bin Laden. He used a car bomb and pipe bombs in the explosions at the intersection of Bryggargatan and Drottninggatan, near Fridays attack. Recommended Swedish city to offer returning Isis fighters housing and benefits Minutes before the blast, an email threat had been sent to Swedish security services, referring to the countrys troops in Afghanistan and cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohamed, and his wife later uploaded audio messages to YouTube. There have been several other plots in Sweden, which saw a suspected Isis supporter arrested after planning a pressure cooker bombing in February 2016. A separate plot in 2011 was to target an art festival in Gothenburg to be attended by a Swedish artist who had drawn controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohamed, with three men charged with intending to stab him to death. Isis claimed responsibility for a firebombing in Malmo in October at a building used as an assembly hall by Shia Muslims. The group has declared the sect apostates and targeted followers with terror attacks around the world, but no one was injured in the Swedish attack. A 30-year-old Syrian man was charged with terror offences over the arson attack last month, after prosecutors found he had affiliated himself with Isis. (Getty Images) Is there a high terror threat in Sweden? The national threat level has been set at number three - elevated on a scale of one to five since 2010. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office said there was a "general threat from terrorism" for British travellers and urged people to follow police advice and temporarily avoid central Stockholm. Earlier this year, the head of the countrys counter-terror force said the biggest threat emanated from lone wolves inspired by Islamist groups including Isis and al-Qaeda. The biggest risk we're seeing is the individual player, who has been inspired and perhaps radicalized, almost on their own, said NCT head Mats Sandberg. In our view that risk is greater than a major coordinated attack with several actors similar to Paris for example. Around 140 Swedish foreign fighters are believed to have returned from Syria and Iraq, out of at least 300 who travelled to the region to join Islamist groups. The expected influx has sparked the creation of controversial rehabilitation programmes offering former militants housing, employment, education and financial support. The country is believed to have one of the highest Isis fighters per capita in Europe, although it sits far behind France, the UK, Belgium and Germany in terms of numbers. Methods of dealing with returning jihadis has been a subject of fierce as the terrorist group continues to lose territory across Syria and Iraq, with fears of an influx of militants fleeing a major offensive in Mosul. Around one fifth of the groups militants 3,700 people are residents or nationals of Western Europe, a Kings College London study estimated last year. (Reuters) What effect has the attack had across Europe? Public transport in Stockholm has been shut down, with disruption expected on international train services and at airports. Traffic via the Oresund Bridge linking Sweden and Denmark was also partially limited as police searches continued. The attack has increased the alert in neighbouring Norway, where authorities announced police at Oslo airport would carry guns until further notice. Finland also increased patrols in Helinski as the EU offered Sweden support to catch the culprit. Sweden is part of the Schengen free travel area, meaning he may have fled into neighbouring countries or beyond. Similar circumstances were seen in the aftermath of the Berlin attack in December, when Anis Amri managed to travel from Germany to the Netherlands, Belgium and France, before being shot dead by police in Italy. The Eiffel Tower was to put its lights out at midnight in tribute to the victims, while commemorations were being planned elsewhere. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A US conspiracy theorist Donald Trump Jr said deserved to "win the Pulitzer" has claimed the Syrian gas attack was a false flag operation by deep state agents. Mike Cernovich tweeted that the gas attack which killed up to 100 people in Idlib in Syria on Tuesday was perpetrated by secret Western agents who were trying to provoke sympathy so the US would be dragged into a war against Bashar al-Assad. He also accused the fake news media of spreading the lie despite victims taken over the border to Turkey for treatment blaming the Assad government for the atrocity. Some of them later died of their injuries. According to a post-mortem carried out by Turkish authorities, the victims died of injuries as a result of exposure to chemical weapons which are banned by the UN. Experts say the most likely chemical used would be Sarin gas, which was also used in an attack on the rebel-controlled town of Ghouta near Damascus in 2013 that killed at least 280 people and provoked an international outcry. But Mr Cernovich, who is best known for falsely accusing a New York pizza restaurant of imprisoning children for Democrat party figures to sexually abuse, said there was no way Assad would risk a gas attack on his own people when he had already won the war. He claimed the Syrian regime had already defeated Isis, who he said the media referred to a moderate rebels. He conflates them with other groups operating in Syria such as Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, al-Qaeda and more secular groups such as the Free Syrian Army who are continuing the fight in the six-year Syrian Civil War. He claims Russia backs Assad and Mr Trump is neutral but does not want to drag the US into another Middle Eastern war so it would be illogical for Assad to use gas against his enemies. He said: The Syrian gas attack was done by deep state agents. The fake news media (which works for them) wants you to ignore basic logic and 101 level game theory and strategic thinking to reach an illogical conclusion. Allegations of "deep state agents" plotting behind the scenes have been used frequently by conspiracy theorists to back up their claim that the government is secretly controlled by a cabal of unelected officials who manipulate the US public and their elected representatives. Although the concept has largely remained on the fringes of political discourse most notably surrounding conspiracies about the death of President John F Kennedy in 1963 it has recently been propelled into the mainstream by Mr Trump's support base. 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 In 2013, Assad crossed a red line set by Barack Obama on chemical weapons but the West failed to act as a collective, with a vote for military action falling short in the UK parliament. The West has now effectively dropped its demand for regime change in an attempt to negotiate peace. As an unnamed Syrian minister told The Independent on Thursday: Silence means approval. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Russian President Vladimir Putin has condemned US cruise missile strikes on a Syrian government military target, saying they broke international law and have seriously damaged US-Russia relations. The Kremlin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Mr Putin, a staunch ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, viewed the action taken by Donald Trump as an "act of aggression" against a sovereign state on a made-up pretext to distract the world from civilian deaths in Iraq. Putin views the US strikes on Syria as aggression against a sovereign state in violation of the norms of international law and on a made-up up pretext. Washington's step will inflict major damage on US-Russia ties, Mr Peskov was cited as saying. Recommended Trump orders missile strike on Syria after chemical weapon attack He added that Russia did not believe Syria possessed chemical weapons and that the air strikes would inevitably create a serious obstacle to creating an international coalition to fight terrorism. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov meanwhile said Moscow would demand an explanation from the US over the air strikes. Speaking at a news conference in Tashkent, Uzbekistane, Mr Lavrov described the attack as an act of aggression with an invented pretext, adding that he hoped the "provocation" would not lead to irreparable damage to Russia's ties with the US. Mr Trump ordered the firing of 59 cruise missiles at a military target in Syria on Thursday in a swift retaliatory blow for Mr al-Assads alleged use of chemical weapons on civilians in rebel-held town Idlib earlier this week. The Syrian army said the attack on the Syrian airbase has killed six and led to big material losses. Russia's embassy in Damascus said on Friday it has no information yet on whether Russian citizens were hurt as a result of the missile strikes but was looking into the issue, according to the RIA news agency. The White House described the cruise missile strikes launched from US ships in the Mediterranean as a warning shot that was necessary and appropriate after the alleged chemical weapons attack. The British government has said it fully supports the US in carrying out an air strike on a Syrian government military target, describing the cruise missile strikes launched from US ships in the Mediterranean as a warning shot that was necessary and appropriate. The fact that Ivanka Trump is also an attractive, fashionable woman has made her some sort of an icon for young Chinese women. (Photo : Getty Images) Ivanka Trumps image in the United States is that of a controversial woman embroiled in her fathers business and politics. Its a different picture in China, however, as more and more Chinese become fans of Donald Trumps eldest daughter, the Boston Globe reported. Advertisement Her lavish lifestyle and success as a businesswoman have endeared Ivanka Trump to many Chinese young professionals, who also aspire to live her lifestyle of material wealth and success. The fact that Ivanka Trump is also an attractive, fashionable woman has made her some sort of an icon for young Chinese women. Shes pretty, she has her own career, shes hardworking and she has a beautiful family, Wang Ge, a 26-year-old business student at Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, told the Boston Globe. Her iPads camera roll is full of pictures of Ivanka Trump. She inspires me, Wang said. Ivanka Trump has cut a figure in modern American politics. While her father, Donald Trump, is known for his brash temperament and volcanic image, Ivanka projects a softer yet firm presence beside her father. Aside from young professionals, Chinese working mothers have also come to adore Ivanka, calling her a goddess on social media for her own brand of feminism. A lot of people think Ivanka is the real president, Li Moya, a 31-year-old professional in Beijing, told the Boston Globe. We think she has the brains, not her father. Shes very independent, said 28-year-old Wang Jiabao, who works as a reality television producer in the Chinese capital. She represents what were looking for--to marry into a decent family, to look good, and to also have your own career. Ivanka is not without detractors in China, however. A lot of people are aware of her fathers incendiary remarks against China. Some are critical of her lifestyle, calling her a child of privilege. Other people also view her decision to join the Trump administration problematic. Shes trying too hard and pretending too much, noted 22-year-old Shi Yixuan, an administrative staff member at Peking University. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has said the US air strike on a Syrian air base came within an inch of militarily clashing with their forces. He said the action taken by the Americans was in breach of international law and their own internal procedures, and accused Washington of barely avoiding combat clashes with Russia. In a post on Facebook, Mr Medvedev said the air strike had "completely ruined relations" between the two superpowers. However, the US says it warned Russia one hour before it fired 59 tomahawk cruise missiles at the Shayrat air base. Satellite imagery suggests the base that was struck is home to Russian special forces and military helicopters, part of the Kremlin's effort to help the Syrian government fight Islamic State and other militant groups. No Russian personnel were caught up in the strike. Syrian state media has claimed that a US missile attack on a government air base has killed seven people, including four children. Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said the strike deliberately avoided sections of the base where the Russians were believed to be present. Briefing reporters on the operation, he said the US military had "multiple" conversations with Russian forces on Thursday before the strike, using a line of communication that had previously been established to prevent an accidental clash in Syria during the fight against Isis. U.S. airstrikes on Syria, explained Mr Medvedev's statement in full: "Thats it. The last remaining election fog has lifted. Instead of an overworked statement about a joint fight against the biggest enemy, Isis (the Islamic State), the Trump administration proved that it will fiercely fight the legitimate Syrian government, in a tough contradiction with international law and without UN approval, in violation of its own procedures stipulating that the Congress must first be notified of any military operation unrelated to aggression against the US. On the verge of a military clash with Russia. "Nobody is overestimating the value of pre-election promises but there must be limits of decency. "Beyond that is absolute mistrust. Which is really sad for our now completely ruined relations. And which is good news for terrorists. "One more thing. This military action is a clear indication of the US Presidents extreme dependency on the opinion of the Washington establishment, the one that the new president strongly criticised in his inauguration speech. "Soon after his victory, I noted that everything would depend on how soon Trumps election promises would be broken by the existing power machine. It took only two and a half months." For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The US has defended its cruise missile strike against a Syrian government airbase, threatening that we are prepared to do more if necessary. US ambassador Nikki Haley made the remarks in an emergency meeting of the Security Council on Friday, declaring that the US would not stand by while chemical weapons were used on civilians. The session was called to discuss the ramifications of US President Donald Trumps decision to retaliate to a suspected sarin and chlorine attack in the rebel village of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province, which killed at least 80 people. Syria: What led to the US airstrikes? Ms Haley was defiant that the US had acted appropriately in striking the regime for crossing the red line of chemical weapons use something Mr Trumps predecessor Barack Obama talked about after a suspected regime sarin gas attack killed hundreds of people in rebel-held Ghouta in 2013. [Syrian President Bashar] Assad did this [the Khan Sheikhoun attack] because he thought he could get away with it. He thought he could get away with it because he knew Russia had his back. That changed last night, she said. Ms Haley went on to repeat words she used on Thursday, just before Mr Trump ordered the action. When the international community fails in its duty to act collectively, there are times when states are compelled to take their own action. The use of chemical weapons against innocent civilians is one of those times. The strike on al-Shayrat airbase near the central city of Homs, which killed at least seven people, marked the first direct US act of hostility against President Bashar al-Assad in more than six years of war. The deputy envoy of Syrias ally Russia, Vladimir Safronkov, asked Ms Haley not to insult his country, reiterating the Kremlins assertion that the missile attack near Homs was illegitimate and the move could have severe consequences for both regional and international stability. He described the strike as an attempt to distract attention from the many victims amongst the peaceful population in Iraq and Syria caused by unilateral actions. In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Show all 7 1 /7 In pictures: US missile strike against Syria In pictures: US missile strike against Syria The guided-missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG 78) launches a tomahawk land attack missile in the Mediterranean Sea AP In pictures: US missile strike against Syria The United States military launched at least 50 tomahawk cruise missiles at al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs, Syria, in response to the Syrian military's alleged use of chemical weapons in an airstrike in a rebel held area in Idlib province EPA In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Shayrat airfield in Syria Getty Images In pictures: US missile strike against Syria US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile in Mediterranean Sea Reuters In pictures: US missile strike against Syria US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile in Mediterranean Sea Reuters In pictures: US missile strike against Syria President Donald Trump speaks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., after the US fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians AP In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Syria's President Bashar al-Assad Reuters Syrian ambassador Bashar Jaafari also said that his government viewed the strike as illegal, motivated by propaganda and unobjective data. Both Damascus and Moscow have denied the regime used chemical weapons in Khan Sheikhoun, maintaining that the casualties were caused by gases released after an al-Qaeda-affiliated ammunitions depot was hit by conventional munitions in a government air raid. The shock US decision to launch a strike against a Syrian regime target has further complicated the already dazzlingly complex Syrian civil war. The UNs envoy to Syria, Staffan di Mistura, said on Friday that his office was in full blown crisis management mode, with three years of sustained peace efforts potentially on the line. The White House has stressed that the 59 Tomahawk missiles launched at al Shayrat airbase which a local resident described as causing massive blasts were a necessary and appropriate warning shot in retaliation for the alleged chemical weapons attack. Yet fears of further US direct military action carried out without consultation from Congress are building, both inside Syria and across the world. You will not be able to bomb your way to peace in Syria, Senator Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, told CNN on Friday. Syrians must work out their problems, Mr Cardin said. President Assad must be held accountable for war crimes. Hes lost credibility as a leader. He must leave the presidency. This is not just what America thinks, but the international community. The new US administration had previously appeared content to let Turkey take the lead in peace negotiations with Russia, Iran and the Syrian government, focusing its military efforts in the country on defeating Isis and al-Qaeda rather than Mr Assads removal from power. Since the fall of Aleppo in December 2016, and Mr Trumps arrival in office, most Western players in Syrias war have operated on the understanding that the best outcome rebel fighters can hope for is free elections in which the embattled ruler agrees to step down. The strikes were cautiously welcomed by the USs Western allies, including the UK, as a proportionate response to Mr Assads alleged use of chemical weapons. Syria: Man loses 25 family members in suspected chemical attack While Mr Assad has acted with impunity and is the greatest war criminal of all, UK ambassador Matthew Rycroft told the Security Council, a diplomatic solution must be found to the crisis. The long-term prospects for peace in Syria remain as grim as ever. While a ceasefire has technically been in place across Syria since the end of December between the moderate opposition and the government, both sides have continued to launch attacks, and a fifth round of peace talks in Geneva ended at an impasse at the end of last month. The US, UK and French representatives to the UN on Thursday called for a vote on a new resolution which would impose sanctions on those responsible for the chemical attacks on Khan Sheikhoun. Russia has used its position as a permanent member of the Security Council to veto similar action several times, most recently in February, and is likely to do so again in any new vote. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Members of the Russian armed forces at a Syrian government airbase bombed by the US were given advance warning of the impending military action, the Pentagon has confirmed. Russian forces were notified in advance of the strike using the established deconfliction line. US military planners took precautions to minimise risk to Russian or Syrian personnel located at the airfield, spokesperson Captain Jeff Davis said on Friday. A barrage of 59 Tomahawk missiles fire from US navy vessels in the Mediterranean hit Al Shayrat airbase near Homs in the early hours of Friday. US President Donald Trump said the strike was ordered in retaliation for the suspected chemical weapons attack carried out by the Syrian regime on a rebel village in Idlib province which killed more than 80 people. In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Show all 7 1 /7 In pictures: US missile strike against Syria In pictures: US missile strike against Syria The guided-missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG 78) launches a tomahawk land attack missile in the Mediterranean Sea AP In pictures: US missile strike against Syria The United States military launched at least 50 tomahawk cruise missiles at al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs, Syria, in response to the Syrian military's alleged use of chemical weapons in an airstrike in a rebel held area in Idlib province EPA In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Shayrat airfield in Syria Getty Images In pictures: US missile strike against Syria US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile in Mediterranean Sea Reuters In pictures: US missile strike against Syria US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile in Mediterranean Sea Reuters In pictures: US missile strike against Syria President Donald Trump speaks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., after the US fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians AP In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Syria's President Bashar al-Assad Reuters No people were targeted in what the White House called a warning shot attack, officials said. Syrian armed forces chief of staff General Ali Ayyoub said in a statement that six people had been killed in the strike, and a further seven injured. Russian media broadcast pictures and video of the base after the strike which showed buildings in a state of collapse, debris across runways, and no sign of any jets. One man living near the base in touch with a BBC producer said that the scale of the blasts was "huge," waking him up in terror. "My cousin just texted me from the airfield. He went to check on his mates. It's total devastation," the resident reportedly said. Syria: Man loses 25 family members in suspected chemical attack Russia has provided military assistance to President Bashar al-Assads government since September 2015, and maintains several dozen warplanes and batteries of air-defence missiles in the country which have been instrumental in turning the tide of the six-year-long war in Mr Assads favour. Al Shayrat is an important base for the Syrian air force, from which many strikes against rebels in the north of the country are launched. While a ceasefire has technically been in place since the end of December between the moderate opposition and the government, both sides have continued to launch attacks. Russia has reacted with anger to the attack on its ally. The Foreign Ministry suspended a memorandum in place with the US to ensure flight safety in Syrias crowded airspace on Friday, saying in a statement that the attack violated international law. While the US allies, among them the UK, Saudi Arabia and Israel, have said they support the military action as appropriate, many observers have stressed that the response should send a message to the regime rather than signal the escalation of military hostilities. We are not at war with the Assad regime and the United States have made it clear that they are not seeking to overthrow the Assad regime, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} For President Donald Trump, choosing targets and launching cruise missiles to punish the Syrian regime for using chemical weapons this week may have been a relatively clear-cut decision. The big problem is what comes next. The military had been preparing options for a strike against President Bashar al-Assad since well before 2013, when the Syrian dictator killed more than 1,000 of his own people in a devastating nerve agent attack. A chemical attack Tuesday blamed on the Assad regime killed scores of civilians and has triggered a response from the Pentagon, which launched approximately 50 cruise missiles at a Syrian military airfield late on Thursday. The basic questions haven't changed, said Phil Gordon, a senior official in the Obama White House who took part in many earlier debates about how to punish Assad. Is there a set of military strikes that you can use to degrade the Syrians' ability to deliver chemical weapons and, if you do that, what do they do in response? The biggest difference between 2013, when President Barack Obama last threatened air strikes against Assad, and today is that the risks of widening the conflict are much greater. The initial American war plans to punish Assad in 2013 were aimed largely at his chemical weapons capability, said former US officials involved in those deliberations. A direct strike on the Assad regime's chemical weapons storage facilities was seen as too risky to civilians, because it would have produced a plume of noxious gas. Instead military planners drew up a target list that included Assad's chemical weapons units, and the aircraft and artillery that the regime would need to deliver the ordnance. The intent was to strike the various chemical weapons units, said a former US official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss military planning. We had postured our intelligence units to give us bomb damage assessments - and if we didn't get the effect we were looking for, we would have hit them again. The biggest difference that Trump and his commanders confront now is the presence of Russian troops on the battlefield and Russian air defence systems that are capable of shooting down US planes. Today, Russian troops are intermingled with Syrian forces, and any strike on a Syrian military target could also produce Russian military casualties. Retired Marine General John Allen, who coordinated the campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria during the Obama administration, said that the military strikes could have had a decisive impact on the war had they been launched in 2013. He described Obama's decision not to strike as devastating. It is much harder now, Allen said. The United States has to ask itself a question: How angry do we want to be on this issue? Are we enraged enough morally that we are ready to take action even with the possibility of dead Russians? The other big worries are the Syrian and Russian air defence systems that have not targeted US planes because the American aircraft are largely focused on fighting the Islamic State, a common enemy of the United States and the Syrian regime. Both the Syrians and Russians can act as a spoiler, said Andrew Exum, a former senior defence official in the Obama administration. American and coalition aircraft have flown around and through their air defence systems for the last two years. If you launched a strike against the regime, it would have every excuse to start lighting up coalition planes with antiaircraft systems. At a minimum, such a move by the Syrians and Russians could spook some US coalition partners and cause them to pull out of the fight, Exum said. If US aircraft were shot down or forced to fire back at the Syrian and Russian radar, the United States could get pulled into the middle of Syria's messy civil war. Such an outcome would not only put American lives at further risk, it would make the US war against the Islamic State, which Trump has declared his top foreign policy priority, far more difficult. Trump could mitigate some of those risks by assuring the Russians that the strikes are designed solely to punish Assad for using chemical weapons and not to tip the balance in the broader civil war. It is also possible that the strikes could give the United States added leverage to broker a compromise with the Russians that would end the civil war, some analysts said. The political message a strike would send is that you are using an approach that is completely different than the previous administration, said Andrew Tabler, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute. Such a move would probably induce anxiety inside the Syrian regime that the United States could use to its advantage. In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Show all 7 1 /7 In pictures: US missile strike against Syria In pictures: US missile strike against Syria The guided-missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG 78) launches a tomahawk land attack missile in the Mediterranean Sea AP In pictures: US missile strike against Syria The United States military launched at least 50 tomahawk cruise missiles at al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs, Syria, in response to the Syrian military's alleged use of chemical weapons in an airstrike in a rebel held area in Idlib province EPA In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Shayrat airfield in Syria Getty Images In pictures: US missile strike against Syria US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile in Mediterranean Sea Reuters In pictures: US missile strike against Syria US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile in Mediterranean Sea Reuters In pictures: US missile strike against Syria President Donald Trump speaks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., after the US fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians AP In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Syria's President Bashar al-Assad Reuters Creating uncertainty and being unpredictable might get you a lot more than what the Obama administration was willing to do, which was nothing, Tabler said. Even as they acknowledged the big risks of a strike and their concerns about Trump's erratic nature, some Obama administration officials urged action. If you don't act, you are effectively telling Assad and the regime's backers that you can use as much Sarin as you want, said Gordon, who served as a senior director for the Middle East in the Obama White House. Assad tested Obama. Now there is an early test for Trump. The Washington Post For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A stockpile of sarin was being held at the Syrian airbase targeted by US air strikes following a chemical attack, American officials have said. Dozens of cruise missiles were fired from two American warships stationed in the Mediterranean Sea in the early hours of Friday morning, days after more than 70 people died in a rebel-held town. They hit Shayrat airbase in the province of Homs, killing at least six of Bashar al-Assads troops and destroying planes, ammunition stores and buildings. Donald Trumps national security adviser, Herbert HR McMaster, told a press conference the attack aimed to reduce the airfields ability to continue mass murder attacks against Syrian civilians. There were measures put in place to avoid hitting what we believe is a storage of sarin gas, so that that would not be ignited and cause a hazard to civilians or anyone else, he said. Rex Tillerson, the US Secretary of State, said the administration had a very high level of confidence that the massacre in Khan Sheikhoun was carried out by Assads forces using sarin, which is banned as a weapon of mass destruction under international law. In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Show all 7 1 /7 In pictures: US missile strike against Syria In pictures: US missile strike against Syria The guided-missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG 78) launches a tomahawk land attack missile in the Mediterranean Sea AP In pictures: US missile strike against Syria The United States military launched at least 50 tomahawk cruise missiles at al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs, Syria, in response to the Syrian military's alleged use of chemical weapons in an airstrike in a rebel held area in Idlib province EPA In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Shayrat airfield in Syria Getty Images In pictures: US missile strike against Syria US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile in Mediterranean Sea Reuters In pictures: US missile strike against Syria US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile in Mediterranean Sea Reuters In pictures: US missile strike against Syria President Donald Trump speaks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., after the US fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians AP In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Syria's President Bashar al-Assad Reuters Doctors said victims started to choke, vomit and convulse with foam coming out of their mouths and pin-point pupils, showing symptoms of exposure to the nerve agent, with analysts from international charities supporting the claims. Assads government claims it destroyed its stockpiles of sarin following an international agreement struck in 2013, when the nerve agent was used to kill hundreds of civilians in Ghouta and almost sparked international intervention against the Syrian regime. Its ally Russia also claims Syria no longer possesses or uses chemical weapons, and claimed the toxic gas that killed civilians in Khan Sheikhoun emanated from a rebel warehouse that was struck by legitimate air strikes. Rebels denied the Russian defence ministrys claims, while experts told The Independent they were not credible. Beyza Unal, a research fellow with the International Security Department at Chatham House, said sarin is expensive and difficult to purify and store. Something that needs a certain level of expertise and also money, she told The Independent, saying any facility would need the ability to take oxygen out of the area where sarin is stored. I dont think rebel groups would have the ability governments would have to purify nerve agents to a level that would make them stable, Dr Unal added. The United States military launched at least 50 tomahawk cruise missiles at al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs, Syria, in response to the Syrian military's alleged use of chemical weapons in an airstrike in a rebel held area in Idlib province (EPA) I dont buy the Russian claimsthe story doesnt add up. She added that images of bomb craters in Khan Sheikhoun indicated small payloads, rather than explosives of the type typically used to destroy an entire building. American officials said the attack was traced to Shayrat airbase, with Mr Tillerson describing it as the facility that delivered the bombardment. The Syrian army said at least six soldiers were killed, with state media reporting the additional deaths of at least seven civilians, including four children. Russia was among the countries that also used the base, but the US warned Vladimir Putins forces ahead of the strike and none of the Kremlins troops were killed. A spokesman for Vladimir Putin said the strike had seriously damaged ties between Washington and Moscow, which has pledged to increase the Syrian governments air defences and suspended an agreement aiming to avoid conflict with US forces. Mr Trump announced he had ordered the attack, calling Assad a dictator who had launched a horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians. Shayrat airfield in Syria (Getty Images) Tonight I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched, the President added. It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. Critics voiced their shock over the abrupt decision, days after senior American officials said Assads removal was no longer a priority, and pointed at Mr Trumps previous assertions that a President would have to get Congressional approval to attack Syria. Mr Tillerson said the strike was not an emotional reaction by the President, adding: He came to the conclusion that we could not, yet again, turn away and turn a blind eye to whats happened. The attack was a one-off, a US defence official told Reuters, meaning it was expected to be a single strike with no current plans for escalation. Syrian state television hit out at American aggression, while Assads ally Iran also denounced the attack as a destructive violation of international law. But the UK, Israel and other American allies joined the Syrian opposition welcomed the strikes. It is the only direct action against the Syrian government taken by the US in the six-year civil war, where international attention has increasingly been drawn to the threat of Isis. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The British government fully supports the US in carrying out an air strike on a Syrian government military target, a Downing Street spokesperson has said. The barrage of 59 Tomahawk missiles which hit Al Shayrat air base near Homs in the early hours of Friday were an appropriate response to barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, a UK government statement continued. The White House described the cruise missile strikes launched from US ships in the Mediterranean as a warning shot that was necessary and appropriate after the alleged chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held town earlier this week. Syria: Man loses 25 family members in suspected chemical attack The about-turn in Donald Trumps policy in Syria comes after the US President said that Tuesdays attack on Khan Sheikhoun - in which at least 80 people died after exposure to what the Turkish Health Ministry said was sarin and chlorine gas - had changed his opinion of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Previous attempts at changing Assads behaviour have failed and failed very badly. Tonight, Im calling all civilised nations to help us end the slaughter and bloodshed, he told media late on Thursday EST. The strikes were carried out without congressional approval. The new US administration had previously appeared content to let Turkey take the lead in peace negotiations with Russia, Iran and the Syrian government, focusing its military efforts in the country on defeating Isis and al-Qaeda rather than Mr Assads removal from power. Donald Trump says 'you'll see' when asked about Syria policy The governor of Homs told Syrian state media that five people had died and seven more had been injured in the US strike - the first direct military intervention against the Syrian government taken by the US in more than six years of complicated civil war. Al Shayrat is the base from which it is believed Syrian war planes staged Tuesdays attack on Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province. The Syrian government, and its allies in Russia, have denied carrying out a chemical weapons attack, stating that the casualties were caused by gases released after an al-Qaeda-affiliated ammunitions depot was hit by a conventional strike. Iran and Russia condemned the US strike on Al Shayrat. Russian news agencies reported Friday morning that the Kremlin viewed it as an aggression which significantly damaged US-Russia ties. The US allies, including the UK, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Australia, have reiterated their support for the military action. A poll conducted by Sky News released on Thursday found that 51 per cent of the British public would support British military involvement alongside other Western countries in Syria, while 32 per cent would oppose it. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The first direct US military action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has been both welcomed and greeted with caution by members of Syrias opposition - particularly in Idlib, where a suspected chemical weapons attack killed more than 80 people earlier this week. Fridays strike on al Shayrat airbase - which Homs governor Talal Barazi said killed seven people and wounded nine more - was a retaliation for the Syrian governments suspected role in sarin and chlorine gas casualties in the village of Khan Sheikhoun on Tuesday, US President Donald Trump said. Many civilians who survived regime bombings over the last six years praised the move, including Bana al-Abed, the seven-year-old from Aleppo who gained a global following on Twitter for posting about life behind the government siege barriers. In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Show all 7 1 /7 In pictures: US missile strike against Syria In pictures: US missile strike against Syria The guided-missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG 78) launches a tomahawk land attack missile in the Mediterranean Sea AP In pictures: US missile strike against Syria The United States military launched at least 50 tomahawk cruise missiles at al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs, Syria, in response to the Syrian military's alleged use of chemical weapons in an airstrike in a rebel held area in Idlib province EPA In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Shayrat airfield in Syria Getty Images In pictures: US missile strike against Syria US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile in Mediterranean Sea Reuters In pictures: US missile strike against Syria US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile in Mediterranean Sea Reuters In pictures: US missile strike against Syria President Donald Trump speaks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., after the US fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians AP In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Syria's President Bashar al-Assad Reuters I am a Syrian child who suffered under Bashar al Asad [sic] & [Russian President Vladimir] Putin. I welcome Donald Trump action against the killers of my people Putin and Bashar al Asad bombed my school, killed my friends & robbed my childhood. It's time to punish the killers of children in Syria, she wrote on her Twitter account. Others expressed disbelief at the news. As a Syrian refugee, I never imagined that I'd say this: Thanks [Donald Trump] for bombing the regime who displaced me, please do more, Milad Kawas Cale, a doctor living in Sweden said on the same platform. Across rebel-held Syria, people have been changing their avatars and profile pictures to images of Mr Trump, along with captions such as thank you and we love you. One US based activist who survived a chemical attack in Moadamiya in 2013 told The Telegraph he was going to name his future son after Trump in his honour. This is will give people hope. It's all about hope. This is a game changer; it's a new era that shows that America will actually do something. It shows there are real red lines in Syria, he said. Several rebel groups put out statements welcoming the action they have long called on the US to carry out against the Assad regime, although noted that the one-off warning shot did not go as far as the full-scale military assault they would like. US airstrikes in Syria: How the world reacted Hitting one airbase is not enough, there are 26 airbases that target civilians, a key figure in the Army of Islam faction, Mohamed Alloush, said. The whole world should save the Syrian people from the clutches of the killer Bashar [al-Assad] and his aides. The strike was hailed as justice by many in Khan Sheikhoun, the site of Tuesdays deadly chemical attack, where the town is still grieving. Several dozen people took to the streets on Friday holding placards and pictures of the dead calling for more US intervention. While the West has said all intelligence reports point towards Syrian warplanes having dropped both sarin - a nerve agent - and chlorine gas on the village, Damascus and its allies in Moscow have maintained that the gases were leaked in an explosion after a conventional strike hit a nearby al-Qaeda affiliated ammunitions depot. Alaa Alyousef, who survived the attack but lost 25 of his relatives, was less optimistic. The US missile strike alleviates a small part of our sufferings, he told the AP, although he worried it wouldnt be enough to turn the tide of the war. Punishing Mr Assad for allegedly using chemical weapons did not take into account the hundreds of thousands of people who have died thanks to conventional weaponry in the war, others pointed out - including the regimes use of phosphorous, illegal cluster munitions and bunker bombs. The American warplanes have already targeted hundreds of places and killed hundreds or maybe thousands including civilians like the attack on [al Jina mosque, in which 50 civilians died]. This is the first and only attack on Assads forces, said Wissam Zarqa, a pharmacist turned activist who was forced to leave Aleppo after the government recaptured the city in December. I guess now Im bitterly happy [there is] some kind of satisfaction that the one who killed the most in Syria is finally partially punished." For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Syrian state media has claimed that a US missile attack on a government airbase has killed seven people, including four children, rather than nine, as previously reported. Nine were wounded and seven killed in total, Talal Barazi, the governor of Homs province, clarified on Friday afternoon. An earlier report from the Syrian army's chief of staff General Ali Ayyoub said that the overnight cruise missile strike had killed six people and injured seven more. It was not immediately clear whether those killed were army personnel or civilians. In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Show all 7 1 /7 In pictures: US missile strike against Syria In pictures: US missile strike against Syria The guided-missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG 78) launches a tomahawk land attack missile in the Mediterranean Sea AP In pictures: US missile strike against Syria The United States military launched at least 50 tomahawk cruise missiles at al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs, Syria, in response to the Syrian military's alleged use of chemical weapons in an airstrike in a rebel held area in Idlib province EPA In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Shayrat airfield in Syria Getty Images In pictures: US missile strike against Syria US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile in Mediterranean Sea Reuters In pictures: US missile strike against Syria US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile in Mediterranean Sea Reuters In pictures: US missile strike against Syria President Donald Trump speaks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., after the US fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians AP In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Syria's President Bashar al-Assad Reuters Around 60 US Tomahawk cruise missiles hit al Shayrat airbase near Homs in central Syria in the early hours of Friday in retaliation for a suspected chemical weapons attack carried out by the regime on a rebel-held village earlier this week. At least 80 people died in the incident, in which the Turkish Health Ministry confirmed post mortems showed victims had been exposed to sarin and chlorine gas. A local man living near al Shayrat told a BBC producer that the blasts from the strike were "massive" and that he believed many civilians living near the airfield could have been killed. The strike caused extensive damage to the airbase, footage shot by Syrian and Russian state media showed. U.S. airstrikes on Syria, explained The Pentagon confirmed that members of the Russian armed forces present at the base were given advance warning of the impending military action in order to "minimise risk to Russian or Syrian personnel located at the airfield, a statement echoed by the White House, which said that infrastructure rather than people had been the target of the "warning shot" strike. Russia, Iran and Syria have condemned the military action - the first direct US intervention against President Bashar al-Assad's regime in more than six years of war. Mr Assad called the attack on al Shayrat a "rash" action which the US was "naively dragged into" by a false propaganda. Damascus and Moscow both maintain that the casualties in Khan Sheikhoun were caused by gases released by a conventional strike on a al-Qaeda affillated ammuniton depot nearby. More to follow For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Americas cruise missile strikes are a limited action that will not lead to all-out conflict between the US and Russia over Syria, defence and strategic experts have told The Independent. Despite Donald Trump ordering the strikes after calling the chemical attack in Idlib province an affront to humanity that changed his view of Bashar al-Assad, the bigger picture of US strategy probably remains unaltered, said Middle East analyst Tim Eaton. Mr Eaton, a Middle East research fellow with the Chatham House international affairs think tank, said the missile strikes did not mean the US was now heavily committed to regime change in Syria something that would massively escalate tension with Vladimir Putins Russia, the Assad governments main backer. Its one thing to punish the use of chemical weapons, he said. Its another to commit to the much greater task of regime change. I think we have to see the missile strikes in the context of a targeted and proportionate response to the chemical weapons attack. A broader change in the Syrian conflict seems highly unlikely at the moment. He added that while Nikki Haley, US ambassador to the UN may this week have confronted Russia over the barbarity of the chemical attack, nothing had changed the broader constraints that led her to say a week earlier that the US was no longer focusing on getting Assad out. Mr Eaton said he did not think the priorities of the administration of Donald Trump who on the campaign trail promised to bomb the shit out of Isis would shift towards helping Syrian rebel groups overthrow Assad. My working assumption, he said, is that all the constraints that existed prior to the chemical weapons attack continue to be in place: the American lack of trust in the Syrian opposition forces, because of the fears about the growing influence of Islamist extremists, and combating Isis remaining the overwhelming priority. I dont see that the chemical weapons attack changes any of that. In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Show all 7 1 /7 In pictures: US missile strike against Syria In pictures: US missile strike against Syria The guided-missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG 78) launches a tomahawk land attack missile in the Mediterranean Sea AP In pictures: US missile strike against Syria The United States military launched at least 50 tomahawk cruise missiles at al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs, Syria, in response to the Syrian military's alleged use of chemical weapons in an airstrike in a rebel held area in Idlib province EPA In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Shayrat airfield in Syria Getty Images In pictures: US missile strike against Syria US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile in Mediterranean Sea Reuters In pictures: US missile strike against Syria US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile in Mediterranean Sea Reuters In pictures: US missile strike against Syria President Donald Trump speaks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., after the US fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians AP In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Syria's President Bashar al-Assad Reuters Mr Eaton added that by targeting the airbase from which Syrian regime forces allegedly launched the chemical weapons attack, the US cruise missile strikes seem to be a message that if you use these types of weapons, we will take out your capacity to deliver them. So this seems a response to admonish the Syrian regime and prevent future chemical weapons attacks, not a reconceptualisation of American policy towards the conflict as a whole. Vladimir Putin has responded to the missile strikes by condemning them as an act of aggression against a sovereign state on a made-up pretext. Russia has also suspended a cooperation deal that allowed US and Russian warplanes to stay out of each others way while on combat missions over Syrian airspace. Mr Eaton, however, said such responses seem far more muted than some had feared. The fear was that any token Western intervention would make Russia exacerbate the conflict rather than bring it closer to a resolution, he explained. So far the response seems to be: We as Russia oppose the American actions and we are going to make it more difficult for the US to do these things in the future. Suspending the mechanism for preventing accidental contact between aircraft will have some knock-on effect on bombing raids, so I guess Russia is intimating that any action against the Syrian regime will negatively impact the US-led campaign against Isis. But that to me seems markedly different from saying We will respond in kind in some other way inside Syria. And I am sure that behind closed doors, there has been significant anger from the Russians towards the regime for actions that reflect badly on them. It seems logical that might limit Russias actions towards the West. Mr Eaton added, however, that it was still too early for him to be completely certain of his analysis. We are still in the early hours, he said, so we dont know what might come of this. Despite such potential uncertainty, the US cruise missile strikes were enthusiastically backed by Peter Felstead, the editor of Janes Defence Weekly, who told The Independent: Though Im no Trump fan, this is exactly the kind of response that should have met Assad and his forces the first time they used chemical weapons on an innocent population. The fact that the US and UK didnt act then was shameful and probably led Assad to believe he could get away with it again. Tomahawk cruise missile attacks are a powerful message that US attitudes to that under the Trump administration have changed. It also takes the initiative regarding Syria and its future somewhat away from the Russians, as they probably wont have expected this and are now back to wondering whether their client state Syria under Assad can survive over the long term. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Syrian troops have been killed in US missile strikes on a government air base thought to be the source of a devastating chemical attack. Here are the latest updates: Please allow a moment for the live blog to load Dozens of cruise missiles were fired from two American warships stationed in the Mediterranean Sea in the early hours of Friday morning. They hit Shayrat air base in the province of Homs, killing at least six of Bashar al-Assads troops and destroying planes, helicopters, ammunition stores and buildings. Initial indications are that this strike has severely damaged or destroyed Syrian aircraft and support infrastructure and equipment at Shayrat airfield, reducing the Syrian government's ability to deliver chemical weapons, said Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis. Trump orders missile strike on Syria after chemical weapon attack on civilians In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Show all 7 1 /7 In pictures: US missile strike against Syria In pictures: US missile strike against Syria The guided-missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG 78) launches a tomahawk land attack missile in the Mediterranean Sea AP In pictures: US missile strike against Syria The United States military launched at least 50 tomahawk cruise missiles at al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs, Syria, in response to the Syrian military's alleged use of chemical weapons in an airstrike in a rebel held area in Idlib province EPA In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Shayrat airfield in Syria Getty Images In pictures: US missile strike against Syria US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile in Mediterranean Sea Reuters In pictures: US missile strike against Syria US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile in Mediterranean Sea Reuters In pictures: US missile strike against Syria President Donald Trump speaks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., after the US fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians AP In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Syria's President Bashar al-Assad Reuters The Assad government and its Russian allies have denied civilians were gassed in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun, where up to 100 people died on Monday. The World Health Organisation, Turkish analysts and doctors concluded that sarin was used, a nerve agent banned as a weapon of mass destruction under international law. Donald Trump announced he had ordered the attack, calling Assad a dictator who had launched a horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians. Tonight I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched, the President added. "It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Show all 7 1 /7 In pictures: US missile strike against Syria In pictures: US missile strike against Syria The guided-missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG 78) launches a tomahawk land attack missile in the Mediterranean Sea AP In pictures: US missile strike against Syria The United States military launched at least 50 tomahawk cruise missiles at al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs, Syria, in response to the Syrian military's alleged use of chemical weapons in an airstrike in a rebel held area in Idlib province EPA In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Shayrat airfield in Syria Getty Images In pictures: US missile strike against Syria US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile in Mediterranean Sea Reuters In pictures: US missile strike against Syria US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71) fires a tomahawk land attack missile in Mediterranean Sea Reuters In pictures: US missile strike against Syria President Donald Trump speaks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., after the US fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians AP In pictures: US missile strike against Syria Syria's President Bashar al-Assad Reuters Critics voiced their shock over the abrupt decision, days after senior American officials said Assads removal was no longer a priority, and pointed at Mr Trumps previous assertions that a President would have to get Congressional approval to attack Syria. A spokesman for Vladimir Putin said the strike had seriously damaged ties between Washington and Moscow, which has been supporting the Syrian regime with its own air strikes. The Russian President regards the strikes as an aggression against a sovereign nation on a made-up pretext and a cynical attempt to distract the world from civilian deaths in Iraq, said his spokesman Dmitry Peskov. It is the only direct action against the Syrian government taken by the US in the six-year civil war, where international attention has increasingly been drawn to the threat of Isis. US officials said they informed Russian forces ahead of the missile attacks and avoided hitting Russian troops at the base, but did not seek the Kremlins approval. The attack was a one-off, a US defence official told Reuters, meaning it was expected to be a single strike with no current plans for escalation. Syrian state television hit out at American aggression, while Assads ally Iran also denounced the attack as a destructive violation of international law. But the UK, Israel and other American allies joined the Syrian opposition welcomed the strikes. To compensate for the loss of livelihood, locals of the island have resorted to ecotourism to help alleviate the hunger and poverty in the community. (Photo : Getty Images) Located off Luzon, on the South China Sea coast, the Philippine town of Masinloc struggles to cope with the effects of the ongoing dispute on its local livelihood, VOA News reported. Advertisement Its location on the frontlines of the South China Sea dispute has drastically affected the fishing industry in Masinloc, home to approximately 49,000 people. To compensate for the loss of livelihood, locals of the island have resorted to ecotourism to help alleviate the hunger and poverty in the community. A coastal area covering 7,650 hectares is now put under the protection of the local government to develop marine protection efforts. The project is expected to help restock the waters around Masinloc, which have suffered from overfishing. The health of the corals in the protected area is also hoped to aid the process, as roughly 40 percent of the fish that migrate all over the South China Sea are traced from Masinloc. We have a very big contribution to the coral reef, not only in the Philippines, but we have a big contribution to the coral triangle countries, like Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Olive Ebido-Gregario, a municipal coastal resources management officer, told VOA News. Maybe it contributes to the biodiversity of all other nearby countries, she added. According to local coast guard estimates, Masinlocs fish population has declined by 50 percent since 2010. A National Geographic report collected in 2016 also revealed that about 16.6 million tons of water are fished by trawlers in the area every year. In addition to overfishing, the local marine environment has also been damaged by climate change and overpopulation. A significant portion of the local fishing community use illegal means such as air compressors and sodium cyanide to fish, Ebido-Gregario said. Nowadays, tourism helps the island. Masinloc welcomes about 500 tourists every month, most of whom visit the San Salvador Marine Sanctuary and a 7.5-hectare mangrove island. The local government plans to expand its ecotourism programs and protection work in 2018. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Russia plans to increase air defences in Syria after a US missile strike on a government-controlled airfield, warning the military action had made the risk of conflict significantly higher. The Russian Defence Ministry said it would be beefing up the Syrian army's ability to shoot down enemy warplanes in the wake of strike. To cover the most sensitive objects in Syrias infrastructure a set of measures will be soon implemented to strengthen and improve the effectiveness of the air defence systems of the Syrian armed forces, a statement said. It also mocked the effectiveness of the attack, saying just 23 of the 59 tomahawk cruise missiles fired from US Navy destroyers had hit their target. The ministry said it was unclear where 36 other missiles had landed. "The combat effectiveness of the US massive missile attack on the Syrian air base is extremely low," the statement continued. These actions of the American side are seen as a flagrant violation of the memorandum signed in 2015 on the prevention of incidents and safety during operations in Syrian airspace. Russias Black Sea Fleets frigate, the Admiral Grigorovich, is now heading for the Syrian port city of Tartus in the eastern Mediterranean, according to sources quoted by Russian news agency Tass. The vessel was on a routine operation but would head for Tartus. It is armed with Kalibr cruise missiles. It is not clear if the Russian Defence Ministry was referring to the Admiral Grigorovich in its statement released on Friday morning. U.S. airstrikes on Syria, explained Six MiG-23 fighter jets, a radar post, logistics warehouse, educational building, and dining room had been destroyed in the strike, the statement said. Runways, taxiways and aircraft parking areas of the Syrian Air Force were not damaged, it added. The ministry also accused the Trump administration of planning a missile strike on Syria long before the alleged chemical attack by President Bashar al-Assad this week. It is obvious that the impact of American cruise missiles on the Syrian air base was prepared long before today's events, the statement said. The preparation of such a strike is necessary to conduct a large range of activities for exploration, planning, preparation of flight missions and bringing the missiles into full readiness for launch. For any specialist it is clear that a decision on the missile strike on Syria was taken in Washington long before the events in the village Khan Sheikhoun. Washington, it said, carried out the strike solely for domestic political reasons. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also said phone talks between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump were not being planned. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The news of US missile strikes on a Syrian airbase has been largely welcomed by the international community, though many leaders have maintained calls for a political settlement. However, there was some condemnation from countries allied with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, with Iran calling it dangerous and Russia warning that relations with America were damaged. President Donald Trump ordered the attack on the Syrian airfield of al-Shayrat, near Homs, in response to the Syrian governments alleged use of chemical weapons earlier this week. The US military claimed the airfield was used to launch the gas attack against the town of Khan Sheikhun. Responding to the news, a Downing Street spokesperson said the British government fully supported the US military action in Syria and it was an appropriate response to a barbaric chemical weapons attack. Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said he was contacted by his US counterpart on Thursday evening to warn him of the strikes. Trump orders missile strike on Syria after chemical weapon attack on civilians Turkey, which has long been opposed to the Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad and have supported opposition groups, welcomed President Trumps actions. Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said the strike was positive and that the Syrian government must be fully punished in the international arena. Mr Kurtulmus added that he hoped the US operation in Syria contributed to achieving peace and the process must be accelerated. The government renewed calls for Mr Assad to be removed, forcefully if necessary. "It is necessary to oust this regime as soon as possible from the leadership of Syria," Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters. He added: "If he doesn't want to go, if there is no transition government, and if he continues committing humanitarian crimes, the necessary steps to oust him should be taken." Americas strongest ally in the region, Israel, also welcomed the strikes and said they acted as a global deterrent. "In both word and action, President Trump sent a strong and clear message today that the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. "Israel ... hopes that this message of resolve in the face of the Assad regime's horrific actions will resonate not only in Damascus, but in Tehran, Pyongyang and elsewhere." Saudi Arabia, which also opposes Mr Assad and have supported opposition groups, said it fully supported President Trumps "courageous decision". "A responsible source at the foreign ministry expressed the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's full support for the American military operations on military targets in Syria, which came as a response to the Syrian regime's use of chemical weapons against innocent civilians," a statement carried by state news agency SPA said. But the remarks from European leaders were more measured. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande said in a joint statement that "President Assad alone carries responsibility for these developments" with his "repeated use of chemical weapons and his crimes against his own people." The two leaders said their countries would continue to work with United Nations partners in "efforts to hold President Assad responsible for his criminal acts." They called upon the international community to "join forces for a political transition in Syria" in accordance with the UN resolution. Like the UK, key European allies of the US were informed of the attack. China also called for a peaceful solution, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying calling on all relevant parties to stick to political settlements. The Chinese government said it was urgent to prevent a further deterioration in Syria. A Polish government spokesman said the United States was the guarantor of world peace, and there were times when it had to react. The Australian government called the strikes a proportionate and calibrated response. Meanwhile, Russia who have intervened in Syria on the side of the government - condemned the attacks and said they damaged relations with the US and jeopardised the fight against terrorism. Iran, the main regional ally of Mr Assad, strongly condemned the destructive and dangerous attack on the airbase, according to the INSA state-run news agency. Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Show all 12 1 /12 Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War A man crosses a street in Aleppo, December 12, 2009 Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War A vendor sits inside an antique shop in al-Jdeideh neighbourhood, in the Old City of Aleppo, December 12, 2009 Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War A view shows part of Aleppo's historic citadel, overlooking Aleppo city, Syria Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War A view shows part of Aleppo's historic citadel, Syria Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Visitors walk inside Aleppo's Umayyad mosque, Syria Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War People walk inside the Khan al-Shounah market, in the Old City of Aleppo, Syria Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War A man walks past shops in al-Jdeideh neighbourhood, in the Old City of Aleppo, Syria Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War People walk along an alley in al-Jdeideh neighbourhood, in the Old City of Aleppo, Syria Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Visitors tour Aleppo's historic citadel, Syria December 11, 2009 Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War A general view shows the Old City of Aleppo as seen from Aleppo's historic citadel, Syria December 11, 2009 Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War People walk near Aleppo's Bab al-Faraj Clock Tower, Syria October 6, 2010 Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War A man stands inside Aleppo's historic citadel, overlooking Aleppo city, Syria December 11, 2009 Reuters "Iran ... condemns use of chemical weapons ... but at the same time believes it is dangerous, destructive and a violation of international laws to use it as an excuse to take unilateral actions," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi. He added: "Iran strongly condemns any such unilateral strikes... Such measures will strengthen terrorists in Syria ... and will complicate the situation in Syria and the region." Iranian Revolutionary Guard units have fought extensively in Syria, supporting the governments army, including in the battle for Aleppo. Additional reporting by agencies. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Connor Balthazor, 17, was in the middle of study hall when he was called into a meeting with his high school newspaper adviser. A group of reporters and editors from the student newspaper, the Booster Redux at Pittsburg High School in southeastern Kansas, had gathered to talk about Amy Robertson, who was hired as the high schools head principal on 6 March. The student journalists had begun researching Robertson, and quickly found some discrepancies in her education credentials. For one, when they researched Corllins University, the private university where Robertson said she got her master's and doctorate degrees years ago, the website didnt work. They found no evidence that it was an accredited university. There were some things that just didn't quite add up, Balthazor told The Washington Post. The students began digging into a weeks-long investigation that would result in an article published Friday questioning the legitimacy of the principals degrees and of her work as an education consultant. On Tuesday night, Robertson resigned. In light of the issues that arose, Dr Robertson felt it was in the best interest of the district to resign her position, Pittsburg Community Schools announced in a statement. The Board has agreed to accept her resignation. The resignation thrust the student newspaper staff into local, state and national news, with professional journalists nationwide applauding the students for asking tough questions and prompting change in their administration. Everybody kept telling them, stop poking your nose where it doesn't belong, newspaper adviser Emily Smith told The Post. But with the encouragement of the superintendent, the students persisted. They were at a loss that something that was so easy for them to see was waiting to be noticed by adults, Smith said. In the Booster Redux article, a team of six students five juniors and one senior revealed that Corllins had been portrayed in a number of articles as a diploma mill, a place where people can buy a degree, diploma or certificates. Corllins is not accredited by the US Department of Education, the students reported. The Better Business Bureaus website says Corllinss physical address is unknown and the school isnt a BBB-accredited institution. All of this was completely overlooked, Balthazor said. All of the shining reviews did not have these crucial pieces of information ... you would expect your authority figures to find this. Robertson had been living in Dubai for more than 20 years before she was hired for the position. She said she most recently worked as the CEO of an education consulting firm known as Atticus IS Consultants there. In a conference call with the student journalists, Robertson presented incomplete answers, conflicting dates and inconsistencies in her responses, the students reported. She said she attended Corllins before it lost accreditation, the Booster Redux reported. When contacted by the Kansas City Star after the publication of the students article, Robertson said all three of her degrees have been authenticated by the US government. She declined to comment directly on students' questions about her credentials, because their concerns are not based on facts, she said. In an emergency faculty meeting Tuesday, the superintendent said Robertson was unable to produce a transcript confirming her undergraduate degree from the University of Tulsa, Smith said. During the course of their reporting, the students spent weeks reaching out to educational institutions and accreditation agencies to corroborate Robertsons background, even working through spring break. Their adviser, Smith, had to recuse herself from the story because she was on the committee that hired Robertson. So the students sought the help of Eric Thomas, executive director of the Kansas Scholastic Press Association, and other local and national journalists and experts. Under Kansas state law, high school journalists are protected from administrative censorship. The kids are treated as professionals, Smith said. But with that freedom came a major responsibility to get the story right, Smith said. It also meant overcoming a natural hesitancy many students have to question authority. At the very beginning it was a little bit exciting, Balthazor said. It was like in the movie, a big city journalist chasing down a lead. But as the students began delving deeper into the story, keeping notes on a whiteboard, it really started hitting me that this is a much bigger deal, Balthazor said. The students were among those packed into a school boardroom Tuesday night when the school board president announced Robertsons resignation. After the announcement, a parent in the audience stood up and asked school officials if they would be recognising the student journalists for uncovering crucial details about Robertsons background. The superintendent said he would be meeting with the students Wednesday to personally thank them. Wed broken out of our comfort zones so much, Balthazor said. To know that the administration saw that and respected that, it was a really great moment for us. After local news broke that Robertson had resigned, numerous national journalists including The Posts David Fahrenthold tweeted the students story, congratulating them for their work. Holy crap, Balthazor thought, why are these people paying attention to this little journalism story from southeast Kansas? While the high school junior was leaving track practice Tuesday night, he learned in a group message with his newspaper staff that Todd Wallack, a reporter for the Boston Globe's Spotlight team, had tweeted the students story, saying: Great investigative work by high school journalists. Balthazor sat in his car in the parking lot and immediately called his mom to tell her the news. I honestly thought they were joking at first, Balthazor said. The Booster Redux staff had watched the film Spotlight in class last year, Balthazor said. It was awesome to know that such respected members of the journalism community had our backs. After graduation, Balthazor said, he hopes to pursue a degree in creative writing or filmmaking. Even though he doesnt necessarily plan to stick with journalism, Balthazor said the past few weeks had been surreal. Most high schoolers would never get even close to an opportunity to get to experience something like this, he said. The Washington Post For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} German millennials are the most welcoming of immigrants in all of Europe, in spite of a perceived increase in negative attitudes towards immigrants and refugees in the country. A study of more than one million 18-34 year-olds from 35 European countries, led by German broadcasters ZDF, SWR and Bayerischer Rundfunk, reveals most young people have no confidence in their countries governments and religious institutions, while slightly less than half are pessimistic about their future. On immigration, among more than 200,000 participants from 11 European countries, some 80 per cent of German youth believe that immigration enriches cultural diversity in their country. Overall, an average of 73 per cent of European millennials felt positively about being part of a multi-cultural population. Last year Germany saw a total of more than 3,500 assaults on migrants and asylum seekers, as well as 2,545 attacks against individual refugees last year. Angela Merkel faced numerous criticisms following a series of deadly attacks involving asylum seekers, that some claim are the outcome of her open-door immigration policy implemented in 2015. During the Berlin Christmas market attack last year, a truck driven by asylum seeker Anis Amri ploughed into a crowd killing 12 people and injuring 50. A selection of the most powerful millennials in the world Show all 5 1 /5 A selection of the most powerful millennials in the world A selection of the most powerful millennials in the world Kim Jong-un A selection of the most powerful millennials in the world Mhairi Black A selection of the most powerful millennials in the world Neymar A selection of the most powerful millennials in the world Kim Kardashian-West A selection of the most powerful millennials in the world Alexander Wang Commenting on the survey's findings, Pauline Wipfler, a 21-year-old student from Cologne told The Independent: Most immigrants worked hard to integrate in the German society. I think that the German culture has truly benefitted from new influences especially in bigger cities. Its important for both sides to be open to other cultures so we can learn from each other and also accept cultural differences, she said. "Most Germans can differentiate the few immigrants causing problems from the immigrants doing their best to integrate well, which are the majority in my opinion." Only 24 per cent of people surveyed agreed that in times of economic crisis and low level of employment, jobs should be reserved for their own native citizens. The results of the study came soon after a recent poll from the market research institute Allensbach showed a drop in public support for anti-immigration Alternative fur Deutschland party in Germany. More than a million asylum seekers are believed to have arrived in Germany since the refugee crisis began in 2015. Asylum seekers are now being offered money to return to their home countries amid fears the country cannot cope with the influx and widespread criticism of Ms Merkels open door policy. Sign up to Simon Calders free travel email for weekly expert advice and money-saving discounts Get Simon Calders Travel email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Simon Calders Travel email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Tales of monsters inhabiting the fearful gloom of Slovenias caves stretch back through history. Legends abound of perpetual mist drifting from dark caverns and peculiar half-formed creatures washed into rivers by storm rains pale, blind and hungry. And right now, were face to face with them. Forty miles west of Ljubljana, Saso Weldt, a speleobiologist at Postojna Caves subterranean laboratory, is pointing at the dim waters of the labs vivarium. They already know youre here, he says. They cant see you, but they sense you. The salamander-like olm, or Proteus anguinus, the worlds largest cave adapted animal, can live for over 100 years and grow up to 43cm, meaning we can see them clearly. In the vivarium, at least. When we reach their natural habitat the caves underground waterways we may not have that advantage. Olms arent alone in Postojna. The 4,000,000-year-old system, created by the Pivka River cleaving through the karst landscape, has the worlds richest cave fauna no fewer than 150 animals live here, from water snails to shrimps and slender-necked beetles. Ancient humans, too, sheltered at the caves entrance. Inscriptions around the walls record 14th-century visits, while scholarly records date from the 17th century. The mysterious olms can live up to 100 years old (Postojna Caves) Tourism to Postojna started in 1818 when lamp lighter Luca Cec stumbled upon the caverns. Here is paradise, he raved, and others agreed. In 1868 Thomas Cook himself escorted package tourists to Postojna. To date, 150 kings, queens and emperors have joined almost 35 million visitors. Today, of Postojna's 24km of caverns, 5km are accessible to casual visitors. An electric train rattles briskly from grand iron gates, along narrow tunnels to the main event. A spectacular Murano glass chandelier, installed in the 1920s, lights one of the caverns known as the Ballroom. The chorus of La Scala sang in the Concert Hall, which accommodates 10,000 people, in 1929. But those pale in comparison to the natural formations of Velika Gora (Great Mountain). Stalagmites up to 17m tall grow up to the roof, while thousands of fragile spaghetti-like stalactites hang down amongst translucent curls and folds of curtain deposits. Exploring farther, the Russian Bridge (built by WW1 prisoners of war) leads visitors to the Beautiful Cave, then into the Winter Hall. Here, the startlingly white 5m Brilliant and neighbouring Baroque stalagmites have become symbols of Postojna, and indeed Slovenia. No wonder they deserve their own names. If there is any criticism, its that, served by a railway and illuminated by electric light, theres no real adventure to seeing these caverns. However, there is an alternative, and it lies a short drive away, in a woodland glade where stone steps disappear into the earth. The karst landscape around Postojna is full of entrances to the underworld (Postojna caves) Old technology, but the equipment is new, says guide Miran Mejak, adding lumps of calcium carbide to the lamps canister. Adjust the water one drop every second. The canister tightly closed, he sparks it up. The gas is acetylene. Its a nice light, no? Serious cavers use carbide, even now. A carbide lamp and a foil blanket keeps you warm, even saves your life theres no heat in LED. Down the steps, suited, booted and helmeted, we enter Pivka Cave, following the river. There are few stalagmites here the torrent washes them away but our headlamps pick out sparkling patches on the roof. Cave gold, says Miran. Technically, actinomycte bacteria that has adapted to live in caves, collecting water in reflective beads. At an iron balustrade we meet Mirans fellow guide, Sten Glazar, with an array of climbing harnesses. We abseil down nine metres, crawl through the swollen river to our next pitch: a tunnel hewn by more prisoners of war, these ones Italian. To the left, Miran points to a watery passage. The way to the lake, he says. Today its too much water. You have to dive. Its, you know, not for everyone. Do you cave dive, I ask? Never. Slovenias best cave diver died only 15 metres from an exit. He just took a wrong turn. Recommended How to spend the perfect weekend in Ljubljana Its been a constant nine degrees and 95% humidity; clouds of condensation accompany every breath. Entering Crna Jama (Black Cave), named after stains created by Neolithic forest fires, sooty signatures record earlier visitors Jahn and Franz woz ere, apparently, in 1869 and 1936 respectively. Finally, the great reveal. A bolted metal door opens onto the now familiar cathedral of Postojna's Velika Gora cavern, and the train waiting to whisk us to the surface. To say weve followed in the footsteps of Luca Cec exaggerates both our courage and competence weve only played at adventure. That said, most of us are grinning like idiots as we leave. Regular visitors get the train treatment, though Nick and friends decided to abseil (Postojna Caves) Travel essentials Entry to Postojna Cave, the Proteus Vivarium, the Postojna Cave Karst exhibition and the nearby cave castle of Predjama costs 37.90 per person. The writer took an Adventure Tour, including abseiling, which start from 36. Getting there Wizzair flies to Ljubljana four times a week from London Luton from 44 return. Staying there The four-star Hotel Jama looks a little Yugoslavian from the outside, but the interior is newly refurbished and rooms are top notch. Theres an excellent restaurant and free WiFi throughout. Doubles from 128, including a Classic cave tour for two. More information postojnska-jama.eu slovenia.info Sign up to Simon Calders free travel email for weekly expert advice and money-saving discounts Get Simon Calders Travel email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Simon Calders Travel email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} In a week in which Washington DC and Moscow have locked horns once again, it's intriguing to see the common thread links the most successful European airports so far in 2017: the Cold War. Figures for February just issued by the airports association, ACI Europe, shows passenger traffic up 5 per cent compared with the corresponding month in 2016, even though there was one fewer day in the month this year. But there are some star performers who did much better. Leading the growth: Keflavik airport in Iceland, the main hub for Icelandair and Wow Air. It is a former US Navy air base. When it looked as though the world might not reach the 21st century without a thermonuclear war, distance was crucial: Naskef, as it was known, is just 1,700 miles from Leningrad (now St Petersburg). Today, the main airport for Reykjavik exploits its mid-Atlantic location to connect Birmingham with Boston and Manchester to Minneapolis. It also attracts passengers on northern flights to see the northern lights, if the heavens are willing. Geography is destiny, especially in aviation. Second-fastest growing: the main airport in Kiev. Borispol airport, outside the Ukrainian capital, put on 30 per cent more passengers. (If you are flying to the fine city of Kiev, though, I urge you to take Wizz Air to the citys second airport, Zhuliany, which is almost walking distance from the city centre. Wizz Air goes there from lovely Luton.) Focusing on Europe's bigger airports, St Petersburg grew by 28 per cent, just ahead of Warsaw on 27 per cent. Then there's an anomaly: Lisbon airport (20 per cent more passengers), which wasn't an active participant in the Cold War. But the eastern Europe capitals soon take over again in the growth stakes, with Prague (up 18 per cent), East Berlins Schoenefeld (16 per cent) and Moscow Sheremetyevo (15 per cent). Why have these cities come in from the cold? Partly because if you are in Moscow or Berlin or Prague or Kiev in February, the world to the south looks extremely tempting. Flights to Turkey, Cyprus and Egypt (except from Russia) have soared in the past year to meet the demand for winter sun. Not everywhere is expanding relentlessly. Two countries visited by terror last year have seen a decline: Belgium by 1 per cent and Turkey by 4 per cent. From the terrorists warped perspectives, those figures will presumably be seen as some kind of victory. Despite international uncertainty, and the clouds surrounding the effect of Brexit on aviation, the UK is right on the European average with 5 per cent growth, year on year. But there were some excellent individual achievements. Manchester, now firmly established as the third force in UK aviation, outpaced both Heathrow and Gatwick with growth of 11 per cent. But Gatwick, with 10 per cent, did enough to overtake both Munich and Barcelona. Recommended Everything you need to know about travelling post Brexit At the present rate of progress, the Sussex airport would overtake Madrid to join the top six of European airports within a few years. But that is most unlikely with Gatwicks single runway, which is already used far more intensively than any other strip of concrete in the aviation world. Formerly, it was thought that 40 million passengers a year was the most Gatwick could achieve; last year it managed 43 million, but the gains from airlines deploying bigger planes and making a better job of filling them are not limitless. Four European airports failed to make it into double figures for the month of February. Targu Mures in Romania welcomed 53 passengers; Maribor in Slovenia, a former Ryanair destination, managed only 43; Foggia in Italy, with the unfortunate airport code FOG, saw just 31; and bottom of the list, another Romanian airport, Arad, which had an average of exactly one passenger for each day in February. By contrast, at Heathrow one person flew in or out every 0.46 seconds. Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UK Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Brexit and beyond email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The spring transatlantic crossing of Britannia in 2019 is already on sale. And the final day of the voyage could prove interesting. The P&O cruise ship sails from St Lucia on 9 March, and calls at a series of Caribbean gems including Antigua, Barbados and St Kitts en route to Ponta Delgada, where she arrives on 25 March. That evening, as Britannia sets sail from the Azores port, the UK will be in the European Union; but by the time she reaches Southampton, on 29 March 2019, Britain will have exited (unless all 28 members of the EU agree otherwise). Recommended Historic rail station at Hook of Holland hits the buffers What awaits the passengers when the ship ties up at the Hampshire port? Will they be segregated into British and Rest of the World, with rigorous checks on the latter? Will customs limits apply to purchases made in the beautiful Portuguese island, or will HMRC waive the rules for this particular and unusual Britannia voyage? No-one knows. Travel is unlike most other industries, in that it is perfectly possible to buy something today which will not be delivered in full until we are due to have left Europe. Which is why Abta, the travel association, this week set out its shopping list for negotiations over the next two years, with a publication called Making a success of Brexit for travel and tourism. The Bruno Mars song, Just the way you are, includes the lines: Theres not a thing that I would change/'Cause you're amazing just the way you are. Perhaps some in the UK travel industry have been humming this tune. The trajectory for successful travel, according to Abta, involves steering the same course as now. Flying rights? It is critical to retain or replace these agreements. Medical treatment? Keep the European Health Insurance Card. Mobile roaming charges? Replicate this EU-level agreement. Frontier formalities? An exemption for British travellers from the EUs planned online registration scheme. The travel industry was in aggregate strongly in favour of a Remain vote. It is, after all, by its nature an international business. Freedom of movement for staff is an important component of organising holidays for Brits abroad: Access to labour and the flexibility to use employees across Europe is critical for successful businesses. But Abta sees a few potential benefits from leaving mainly minor tweaks in aviation rules. When Air Passenger Duty was first introduced, it was 5 for flights from the UK and the same for round-trips within the kingdom; but the EU insisted on double taxation, to the considerable detriment of air travel between Britain and Northern Ireland. Abta says that rule should be abolished. EU rules inhibit the ability of the UK Government to support new domestic air routes, says Abta. We urge the Government to take a more proactive stance in supporting domestic air routes and connectivity across the UK post-Brexit. In other words: more subsidies, please. Abta also wants reform in airline passengers rights. Currently generous payments are specified for anyone who arrives at their destination three hours late or more, unless the carrier has a really good excuse. The amount earned can be much more than the cost of the flight. The chief executive, Mark Tanzer, told me: A universal three-hour delay trigger doesnt work. We have to get the right balance, with a reasonable tariff and trigger points to make sure were not punishing future travellers. As we travel into the future, almost nothing is known about our final destination. Government must listen to Mr Tanzer and other wise figures. Otherwise, there is a danger that UKs outstanding travel industry could end up on the rocks. Bon voyage, everybody. Sign up to Simon Calders free travel email for weekly expert advice and money-saving discounts Get Simon Calders Travel email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Simon Calders Travel email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Travel advice provided to Americans by the US State Department says that the Schengen agreement on open borders in Europe makes terrorism more likely in Sweden. The current warning to visitors to the country says: Like other countries in the Schengen area, Sweden's open borders with its Western European neighbours could permit terrorist groups to enter and exit the country with anonymity." However, border checks were re-introduced by the Swedish authorities in November 2015 because of the the number of asylum seekers entering the country. The UK Foreign Office reported at the time: Border controls have been reintroduced at the Oresund crossing [from Copenhagen to Malmo] and on ferries from Denmark and Germany. The US State Department warning for Europe as a whole says: Terrorist groups continue to plot attacks in Europe as foreign fighters return home from Syria and Iraq, while other individuals may be radicalised or inspired by Isis propaganda. European authorities continue to warn of additional attacks on major events, tourist sites, restaurants, commercial centres, places of worship, and the transportation sector, frequently prompting heightened security at notable public venues and coordinated counterterrorism operations. In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Show all 15 1 /15 In pictures: Stockholm truck attack In pictures: Stockholm truck attack 3 people dead when a truck crashed into Ahlens department store in central Stockholm, Sweden Rex In pictures: Stockholm truck attack People were killed when a truck crashed into department store Ahlens on Drottninggatan, in central Stockholm Reuters In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Special Police forces work at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Getty Images In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Woman is assisted at the scene after a truck crashed into an Ahlens department store in Stockholm Rex In pictures: Stockholm truck attack A policewoman in a gas mask operates at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Getty Images In pictures: Stockholm truck attack People react at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Rex In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Reports say three people have died after a truck crashed into an Ahlens department store in Stockholm Rex In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Armed police operates at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Getty Images In pictures: Stockholm truck attack People react at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Getty Images In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Emergency services close to the scene of an incident in Drottninggatan, a street in the centre of Stockholm, Sweden Lasse Gare/PA Wire In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Passers react at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Getty Images In pictures: Stockholm truck attack People killed in incident when a truck was driven into a department store in central Stockholm Reuters In pictures: Stockholm truck attack Police officers work at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm Getty Images In pictures: Stockholm truck attack A general view shows a Ahlens department store after a truck reportedly crashed into it, at Drottninggatan in central Stockholm, Sweden EPA In pictures: Stockholm truck attack A view of a street after a truck reportedly crashed into a department store in central Stockholm, Sweden EPA Immediately after the Stockholm truck attack, the American Embassy in the city warned: US citizens should avoid this area at this time, heed guidance from local authorities, and maintain security awareness. Please monitor media and local information sources and factor updated information into personal travel plans and activities. We strongly encourage US citizens in Sweden to directly contact concerned family members in the United States to advise them of your safety. The UK Foreign Office warned British travellers: There are reports that incidents have occurred in Drottninggatan and Fridhemsplan in central Stockholm. You should stay away from public areas if possible and follow the advice of local authorities. Its current travel advice says: There is a general threat from terrorism. Attacks could be indiscriminate, including in places visited by foreigners. Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The use of chemical weapons is a special crime. It is prohibited by international law. It follows that the sarin gas attack in Idlib, Syria, on Tuesday, ought to have consequences. There is no point in a prohibition of such weapons if it is mere words. On those limited grounds, therefore, it can certainly be argued that the US strike against Bashar al-Assads regime was justified. We understand the objections to Donald Trumps use of cruise missiles to disable the Shayrat airbase: there is a risk that it will make the war in Syria worse or longer; it is not ideal to have the US acting unilaterally as the worlds police force, especially when its chief constable is President Trump; and military action, unless it has to be immediate, ought to be subject to democratic approval, in this case by Congress just as Mr Trump himself insisted when Barack Obama was contemplating it in 2013. None of those objections, however, is decisive. The Syrian conflict is unlikely to be brought to an end without a political agreement, and it is unclear whether the US strike makes that more or less likely. It is at least reasonable to imagine that anything that constrains the power of Mr Assad and Russia in Syria makes them more likely to come to the negotiating table. Nor does one strike by a President, remember, who is opposed to American entanglement in the Middle East mean that the West has taken sides in the Syrian civil war, except the side of those opposed to weapons of indiscriminate civilian slaughter. No one can be comfortable with the idea of America as the enforcer of moral norms, but if there are to be consequences for the use of chemical weapons, who else would administer them? It might also, in theory, have been preferable for Congress to have voted on the strike, but speed is important. The longer the gap between action and reaction, the easier it would be for Mr Assad and Vladimir Putin to argue as they did anyway that the punitive strike by the US was an act of premeditated aggression. To launch a limited strike within two days of the use of chemical weapons is more clearly a direct response to the breach of international law, and so is more likely to deter future transgressions. US airstrikes in Syria: How the world reacted Other objections can be dismissed. It has been suggested, most prominently by the Russian government, that the sarin attack in Idlib was the responsibility of anti-Assad forces. While we are not in a position to be completely certain about Mr Assads complicity in this case, the evidence that it was carried out by his forces is strong. And, of course, he has done it before, which is one of the most powerful arguments for not letting it go this time. In any case, Mr Assads record of terrorising and killing civilians is heinous enough. In the end, the case for action is stronger than the case for inaction. The US and its allies have tried both. In 2013 President Obama said that the use of chemical weapons was a red line and he warned the Syrian President not to cross it. When Mr Assad did, however, he, Congress and the British House of Commons shrank from giving his words meaning. Those who argued then for staying out of the Syrian quagmire claimed vindication the following year when Mr Assad gave up chemical weapons stocks in a deal brokered by Russia, the UN and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. But this weeks atrocity in Idlib exposes the hollowness of any deal unless it is backed up by force. The strike against Mr Assad in itself will not bring the parties in Syria closer to each other; it will not in itself shorten the war; it may not in itself deter other leaders such as Kim Jong-un from using unconventional weapons; and it may not guarantee that Mr Assad will never use chemical weapons again. But it should act as a spur to the international community, which for too long has simply assumed that there is nothing that can be done about Syria, to renew the pressure for a political settlement. It is time to rediscover the political will for peace. Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Donald Trumps intervention in Syria turns the spotlight back to the Wests failure to act against Bashar al-Assad when he used chemical weapons against his own people in 2013. British MPs played a critical role in that fateful decision. David Cameron proposed limited air strikes and told the Commons that the aim was not regime change in Syria but to respond to a war crime. He worked hard to get Ed Miliband, the Opposition leader, onside and thought he had done so. But Miliband had doubts, not least because he wanted to learn lessons from Tony Blairs disastrous intervention in Iraq. He also wanted to keep Labour united; a sizeable number of his MPs would have voted against action, though the Government would have got its way with the Oppositions backing. So Miliband pulled the plug on Cameron and the Prime Minister suffered a humiliating defeat as the Commons voted against action by 13 votes. Thirty Tories also opposed intervention. They did not know it at the time, but the MPs vote would have profound consequences. Barack Obama, who had said Assad using chemical weapons would be a red line, intended to launch a similar one-off attack with cruise missiles fired from US Navy destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean, just as Trump has now done. But the Commons vote caused Obama to pause. He then got cold feet amid doubts in Congress and nothing happened. Some people think those doubts might have stopped him going ahead anyway. But Obama was furious with Cameron and it is clear that the Commons played a big part in letting Assad off the hook. Defence Secretary Michael Fallon says UK backs US airstrikes on Syria The wheel came full circle this week with the horrific gas attack in the rebel-held Idlib province, probably the same deadly nerve agent unleashed in an opposition-held area outside Damascus in 2013. I dont pretend to know what would have happened if the US and UK had intervened in 2013. Perhaps Assad would have survived a proportionate one-off attack by the West. But the Syrian opposition was much stronger then than now and might have moved against Assad. And Russia was not propping up the Syrian President and telling him: We will not let you lose, as Vladimir Putin has promised since. So we have had four wasted years, and the growth of Isis, a terrorist state which exports jihadis to Europe. The death toll of the civil war has risen to an estimated 470,000, with 11 per cent of Syrias population killed or injured. Some 6.3 million Syrians have been displaced internally and 4.8 million have fled the country. The refugee crisis has transformed neighbouring countries and politics in Europe, helping the rise of anti-immigration populists and probably contributing to the Brexit vote. Remember Nigel Farages infamous poster headed Breaking Point: The EU has failed us all, which showed Syrian refugees crossing from Croatia into Slovenia but had nothing to do with Britains borders. Syrian TV shows amateur footage of what appears to be US airstrikes on Syria military bases The MPs who voted against air strikes in 2013 should take a look in the mirror. As George Osborne, the former Chancellor, told an emergency debate on the crisis in Aleppo last December: We are deceiving ourselves in this Parliament if we believe that we have no responsibility for what has happened in Syria. The tragedy in Aleppo did not come out of a vacuum; it was created by a vacuum a vacuum of Western leadership, including American and British leadership. I take responsibility, as someone who sat on the National Security Council throughout those years, and Parliament should also take its responsibility because of what it prevented being done. The MPs decision in 2013 shows that the pendulum swung too far against military intervention after the UKs chastening experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. Labour were not the only ones to make mistakes. Cameron still blames Miliband for blocking action against Assad and the wounds will doubtless be reopened by the gruesome pictures on our television screens this week. But Camerons ill-fated action in Libya is hardly a good advert for intervention either. Perhaps current events in Syria will lead to a reappraisal and the pendulum will stop where it should be bang in the middle, judging each case on its merits. The lesson from 2013 is that inaction can also carry a heavy price. Chinese business professionals project local cultural practices in their business transactions. (Photo : Getty Images) China is one of the top economies in the world, and other countries have taken note. The U.S., in particular, has already forged investment partnerships with a wide range of Chinese companies across different sectors. To nail a business partnership with a Chinese business professional, international protocol expert and cross-cultural consultant Sharon Schweitzer, who wrote Access to Asia, gave the Huffington Post five culture tips to live by. Advertisement The concept of face Even though one doesnt always agree with his colleagues or his company policies, Schweitzer advises businessmen to maintain their own face and that of their colleagues. In the negotiation table, this reflects Chinese business professionals avoiding outright rejection of proposals. Pay close attention to phrases such as I dont know if it is possible, We will need to discuss, and that may be difficult, Schweitzer wrote. Diplomacy is key When negotiating with Chinese professionals, its important to keep ones cool and remain respectful. Becoming emotional or overzealous will detail your efforts, and decrease your standing, so maintain composure at all times, Schweitzer told the Huffington Post. Since the Chinese honor the concept of saving face, diplomacy is the best way to go. Subtle signs Westerns prefer low-context communication, directly stating their views in business. Chinese professionals, however, operate in the high-context sphere of communication. Looking out for nuances such as raised eyebrows or prolonged silences will help in the negotiation process. Humility above all Arrogance is looked down upon in Chinese culture. Schweitzer advises businessmen in the higher levels of management to include their official title and role only on the business card. Avoid going to great lengths to establish your authority and importance. Focus instead on fostering relationships based on common interests and goodwill. Clear goals Before negotiating with Chinese colleagues, its imperative to have a strategy in advance, as meetings can stretch for long periods of time. Setting goals before the meeting, and upon conclusion, asking for a Memorandum of Understanding, helps both sides of the negotiating parties, Schweitzer told the Huffington Post. Trevor Deely before he went missing in 2000 (left), and in a computer-generated age-progression image (right) illustrating how he might look today (Garda) The family of a missing bank worker have called for anyone with information to help end their "relentless nightmare" as a 100,000 euro reward is offered to solve the case. Trevor Deely was 22 when he vanished in south Dublin after calling to his office in the then Bank of Ireland Asset Management building on Wilton Terrace in the early hours of December 8 2000 following a work Christmas party. New enhanced CCTV footage shows a man in black clothing acting suspiciously at the rear entrance to Mr Deely's office block between 3am and 3.34am, just before Mr Deely arrived. His sister Michele Deely said bringing Trevor home would mean the world to the family. "As a family, we have never believed that people can disappear into thin air," she said. "We know someone knows something. We ask that you come forward and put an end to this relentless nightmare. "Many people have over the past 16 years have questioned why we continue to search for Trevor. The answer is simple if you knew Trevor. It can be summed up by saying if the situation was reversed he would never give up on us." Gardai in a cold case unit discovered an old VHS CCTV recording which was digitally enhanced by experts in the UK. It shows the man dressed in black step out on to the footpath outside the offices on Wilton Terrace, a short distance from Baggot Street bridge, at 3.34am. Moments later, Mr Deely can be seen arriving at the rear gates of the bank offices followed by the man and the two of them have a brief conversation. Mr Deely leaves through the same gates carrying an umbrella and stops briefly to fix his jacket. The last sighting of Mr Deely is on CCTV as he passes a Bank of Ireland ATM machine on Haddington Road at approximately 4.14am. Gardai believe that the man who was filmed acting suspiciously outside Mr Deely's workplace is seen walking the same direction down Haddington Road 34 seconds later. The case has remained among the most high profile missing persons investigations in Ireland. Tim Dalton, chairman of Crimestoppers, revealed an anonymous donor has put up a 100,000 euro reward for information which "might prove critical in resolving the case". "It is not Crimestopper money, because we don't have that kind of money," he said. "We do make awards sometimes, but never of that amount. This a private donation." Detective Superintendent Peter O' Boyle, of the cold case unit which took on the missing persons case in 2016, said it has 172 statements in relation to the investigation and re-interviewed almost all those who have come forward in the past. The man dressed in black in the CCTV footage has not contacted gardai. "He's one of the people who spoke to Trevor on the night. We are not focusing our inquiries specifically on one line. It's one that we would like to bring to a conclusion," he said. The Deely family, including his father Michael, brother Mark, and sisters Pamela and Michele, joined detectives from the cold case unit and Crimestoppers to publicise the latest appeal. They also took to the streets around Baggot Street bridge at lunchtime, including Haddington Road where Mr Deely was last seen, to hand out leaflets to workers and passers-by in the hope of finding new information. Posters about the case have regularly been posted on lamp-posts in the area in the 16 years since he disappeared. CareChoice operates six nursing homes at locations in Cork, Waterford and Dublin. Stock image French infrastructure investor InfraVia has snapped up Irish nursing homes operator CareChoice in a deal understood to be worth 70m. InfraVia has a 1bn infrastructure fund at its disposal. It aims to more than double the size of the Irish unit, with plans to build four new care homes and to expand some facilities. CareChoice operates six nursing homes - at locations in Cork, Waterford and Dublin - and is understood to be one of the country's biggest nursing home operator. Four Dublin sites have already been identified for development in the initial phase of the expansion strategy, the companies said. Census data yesterday showed that since 2011 there had been a 19pc increase in the number of over 65s - to 638,000 people. CareChoice management, led by CEO Paul Kingston, will remain in situ after the deal. The new board will feature Jimmy Tolan and Fergus Clancy. Mr Tolan has been chairman of CareChoice for the past two years. He is also chairman of the Rehab Group and a former CEO of VHI Healthcare. Mr Clancy is a former CEO and chairman of the Mater Private Group. The latest accounts filed for the business show CareChoice had a turnover in 2015 of 17.5m. CareChoice is being sold by Emerald Investment Partners, which is based in London, which paid an estimated 33m for the business in 2014. CareChoice's founders included CEO Paul Kingston as well as Michael Lane and his family, who exited along with other investors in the 2014 deal. Alan McIntosh founded Emerald, which also backed stock-exchange-listed house builder Cairn Homes. CareChoice was advised on the deal by Investec. Irish chip designer Decawave has secured 2.5m in funding from the venture-capital arm of tech giant ST Microelectronics. It brings to well over 30m the amount raised by Decawave over the past number of years. In 2015, it raised about 4m in funding to help accelerate its research and development programme for a new generation of chips targeted at the consumer sector. Decawave develops chips that can be embedded in products so they can be precisely located. It's been working with the automotive industry and has seen increased interest in its products on the back of the growth in Internet of Things, consumer and industrial demand. Decawave is headed by Ciaran Connell, and its non-executive directors include former Intel Ireland general manager Jim O'Hara. Investors in the company include financier Dermot Desmond's IIU vehicle; private clients of Bank of Ireland; the wealthy Charnov family in Texas; Korean consumer electronics giant LG; and France-based SC Partners. The investment from ST Microelectronics' venture capital arm is further validation for the firm. The venture-capital unit - ST New Ventures - was established in 2011 and targets investments at startup companies. Among its investment targets are companies such as Decawave, which are fabless chip designers - that is the manufacture of the chips is outsourced. China is on track in its space exploration agenda, as the country is looking to push forward several missions to the moon and beyond by 2030. (Photo : Getty Images) China is on track in its space exploration agenda, as the country is looking to push forward several missions to the moon and beyond by 2030, SpaceNews.com reported. Details of Chinas space exploration plans were made clearer by Yulong Tian, secretary-general of the China National Space Administration (CNSA), during the 33rd Space Symposium on Wednesday, April 5. Advertisement According to SpaceNews.com. CNSA is Chinas leading governmental body when it comes to the development of space activities for civilian use and international space cooperation with other countries. In the symposium, Yulong outlined several points from Chinas 2016 Space White Paper, where the nation sketched out robotic and manned spaceflight projects, commercial space flights, and Earth and space science, for the next five years. China is currently making policy for commercial space activities, Yulong told the audience at the symposium. Yulong also addressed the Beidou navigation system, stating that, by 2020, 30 satellites can provide services for global users. These spacecraft, Yulong said, will monitor land, ocean, and space in the oncoming decade. In addition, Yulong reviewed Chinas space cooperation agreements, of which it has over a 100, with at least 30 countries and space agencies to foster cooperation in climate change research, deep space exploration, space safety and disaster prevention. For the next ten years, China has also set its sights on making deep space missions, sending spacecraft to Venus, Jupiter, and several asteroids. As for projects that are closer to the present, a cargo supply ship latched on a Long March 7 rocket is ready for launch this April. It will head to the Tiangong-2 space lab. The mission is expected to help future building and resupplying missions, particularly for larger space stations. Meanwhile, work on the Change-5 lunar probe is well underway to prepare it for its scheduled liftoff in November. It will launch from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan Province to make its voyage to the moon. Ryanair will start feeding passengers to Aer Lingus and Norwegian flights from September, according to chief marketing officer Kenny Jacobs. Launching Ryanair's latest 'Always Getting Better' plan in London yesterday, Mr Jacobs said that the airline also plans to sign deals with additional carriers in the future. He said Ryanair eventually expects to work with all IAG-owned airlines, which apart from Aer Lingus also include Iberia, British Airways and Vueling. He said Ryanair also expects to eventually have agreements with carriers such as Lufthansa and Air France-KLM. The autumn launch is later than previously anticipated and Ryanair has been talking about sealing agreements with other carriers for some time. Chief executive Michael O'Leary has also held talks with embattled Alitalia about how it might feed its long-haul network. Aer Lingus chief executive Stephen Kavanagh said last year that he anticipated some kind of passenger-sharing deal would be in operation with Ryanair by this summer. However, the logistics and technical aspects of the agreements with Aer Lingus and Norwegian are likely to have delayed their roll-outs. Ryanair is also finally getting around to starting its interlining service for its own passengers this month, according to Mr Jacobs. Last year, the airline planned to trial the service at London Stansted and Barcelona. The interlining service enables passengers to connect, along with their luggage, from one Ryanair flight to another, without having to go through security a second time. That service will be deployed initially at Rome's Fiumicino airport from the end of this month. Using a new function, customers will be able to search Ryanair's website for indirect flights from one destination to another. Currently they have had to search themselves for the connecting flights, and also transfer their own luggage from one flight to another and re-enter security screening at the connecting airport. "We'll start with Rome Fiumicino and then we're going to have more and more bases, and eventually all bases, so you that you can self-connect on Ryanair," said Mr Jacobs. "It's going to be a big deal. It's a big deal for any low-cost airline. "We are going to do exactly the same thing with other airlines. We'll do it with one or two partner airlines this year; I expect that to be from sometime in September onwards. "We've talked about Aer Lingus and we've talked about Norwegian. "These are the first two partners that we're doing this with, and then we would do it with other partners. This would be on both long-haul and short-haul flights and on sale on the website." Mr O'Leary has previously said that one of the issues in such an arrangement for Ryanair is that it does not want to be responsible for passengers' bags if they've lost them with a connecting airline, for instance. Mr Jacobs said that the agreements are a "big new aspect to low cost working with legacy carriers" and he said Ryanair also wants to start selling third-party flights on its website, and even cruise ship tickets from such operators. Meanwhile, a unit of Aer Lingus Regional operator Stobart Air has agreed a sale and leaseback for eight aircraft. It sold them to German Operating Aircraft Leasing & Co for net proceeds of $62.7m. DUNNES Stores has won an appeal over a ruling that it had infringed Aldi's trademark by the use of in-store labelling to claim its products were cheaper. The Court of Appeal set aside a 2015 High Court finding of trademark infringement through the use of shelf-edge labelling because it had failed to objectively compare one or more of the relevant and verifiable features of the Dunnes' products with those of Aldi. Aldi alleged this was in breach of the Consumer Protection Act 2007 and the European Communities (Misleading and Comparative Advertising) Regulations 2007. At the heart of the appeal was whether the summer 2013 price advertising campaign by Dunnes - which employed Aldi's trademarks for identification and comparison purposes - complied with conditions imposed by the regulations when such advertising is carried out, the judge said. President of the Court of Appeal, Mr Justice Sean Ryan, disagreed with the High Court finding that the shelf-edge labelling part of the campaign breached the regulations. He will hear the parties next month on whether there should be a re-trial over this. He agreed with the High Court finding that shop-floor advertising banners were not permissible. Mr Justice Ryan said the court would replace the High Court finding with a declaration that they were not permitted because they did not constitute comparative advertising. In the circumstances of the substantial success by Dunnes in its appeal, the injunctions obtained by Aldi in 2015 should be set aside, notwithstanding the unlawfulness of the shop floor banners, he said. In its submissions to the three-judge appeal court, Dunnes argued the High Court erred in its application of the rules of comparative advertising in the 2007 regulations, he said. Aldi claimed Dunnes' approach was completely misconceived and its advertising, and the way it was done, was misleading. The judge said the High Court had accepted the evidence of Aldi's expert in relation to whether the shelf-edge labelling in relation to 15 chosen products breached the regulations. Mr Justice Ryan said he disagreed with that expert's approach. He also said the rationale of the High Court judge, Mr Justice Brian Cregan, in rejecting Dunnes' expert's opinions was not altogether clear. In circumstances where the High Court relied so heavily on one expert (Aldi's) "to the almost complete exclusion of the opposing witness, it is unsatisfactory not to have the benefit of the judge's reasoning for this preference", he said. He said he would not overturn the High Court finding on this basis alone but the findings in relation to breach of the comparative advertising regulations could not be sustained, he said. The High Court case had concentrated on 15 products, 14 of which were found to be in breach of the regulations. As a result, another 247 labels were condemned for similar infractions. The products included pork sausages, turkey breast mince, yoghurts, day cream, shower gel, toilet tissue, a sparkling orange drink, tomato ketchup, white sauce, tinned beef and chicken dog foods and dry cat food. The High Court found infringement occurred because Dunnes claimed prices for these products were lower than Aldi prices - but did not objectively compare those products as meeting the same needs or as being intended for the same purpose. The High Court judge concluded such information would be likely to cause the average consumer to make a decision to buy, which they would not otherwise make. In a statement, Aldi said it was pleased with the appeal court decision as "it upholds consumer protection and a customer's entitlement to clear and transparent information in retail advertising and that Dunnes Stores had infringed Aldi's trademark in its advertising campaign". The company logo for Unilever is displayed on a screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) Unilever will press ahead with a sale of its Flora and Stork spreads business, slash advertising spending by 30pc and pump cash back to shareholders under a radical restructuring unveiled yesterday. The news rattled markets, sending shares in advertising giant WPP down 4.4pc. Unilever is a major advertising client for WPP, whose Ogilvy & Mather agency makes ads for Dove. The Anglo Dutch giant is even considering scrapping its historic dual structure of maintaining separate corporations in the UK and the Netherlands to create a single global headquarters. Unilever promised a multi-billion euro programme of shareholder rewards yesterday after a corporate rethink sparked by a takeover approach from Kraft Heinz, aiming to prove it can generate lucrative returns as an independent company. Under a restructuring sparked by the rebuffed $143bn US bid, the maker of Dove soap and Knorr soup set out an accelerated cost-saving plan, the sale of its Flora to Stork spreads business - where sales are declining - and a review of its dual-headed Anglo-Dutch structure. Unilever - one of Europe's biggest blue-chip stocks - called the Kraft episode a "trigger moment" to assess its business, as the global packaged-goods industry faces slowing growth and greater competition. Irish M&A analysts said disposals by the owner of brands including Lyons Tea and HB Ice-cream are likely to be on a scale out of reach of most Irish consumer businesses. As well as cutting costs, Unilever will also splash out 5bn on a share buyback and raise its dividend 12pc this year. Some analysts had speculated it would split into two in a dramatic strategy reversal, but executives said the current strategy was working while needing to be speeded up. "We need to accelerate our plans to unlock further value faster, and this was brought home to us by the events of February," chief executive Paul Polman said. "There is no doubt that however... opportunistic it (the Kraft approach) was, it did raise expectations," Mr Polman said. "We are absolutely determined to use it as an opportunity to place Unilever on an even stronger footing." A plan to improve margins will see Unilever's food business combine with the refreshment business, which includes Ben & Jerry's ice cream and Lipton tea. Unilever executives said their strategy of long-term steady growth had found support in talks they had held with investors including all of the group's top 50 shareholders. GAM fund manager Ali Miremadi, who manages two worldwide equity funds that are 2.5pc invested in Unilever shares, said the announcement was in line with expectations. "They're not stretching here, and nor should they. They're in a very strong position and this is hopefully a sign they're going to be a bit leaner and more shareholder-focused," Mr Miremadi said, adding Unilever should be able to deliver the premium Kraft was offering or more over the next four or five years. Unilever's London-listed shares, which hit a record 4,088 pence in recent weeks ahead of the announcement, were up 1.3pc at 3,989p by 10.30 yesterday, beating the FTSE 100. (Reuters) An Irish father has gone viral for sharing photos of his baby daughter Photoshopped into "marginally dangerous" situations. Stephen, a designer based in Dublin, began creating and sharing the photo series when 18-month-old Hannah came out of hospital after receiving a bone transplant at 10 months. "She had a very rare immune disorder called HLH and spent six months of her first year in hospital, receiving chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant, which is the only possible cure," Stephen told Huh Magazine. "Of 27 million worldwide donors, 3 were deemed suitable, and an anonymous German lady donated. Because we missed out on so much normal stuff of the first year, we take tons of photos now that we're able to do normal things out of isolation." Stephen (32) hopes the photos will raise awareness for becoming a bone marrow donor, as well as making people think, "Wait, did he...?" "I thought it would be fun to worry family by putting someone delicate in precarious situations," he said. "Most of the reactions have been positive, with the odd person not getting the joke and commenting I 'should be shot.'" In the photos, little Hannah can be seen holding a steering wheel while driving on a motor way, sitting beside the stove while holding a knife and climbing the stairs into the attic. If these don't make you smile, we don't know what will. For more information on becoming a bone marrow donor, visit giveblood.ie. Award money of 100,000 is being offered for information on the disappearance of missing man Trevor Deely. Crimestoppers today renewed its appeal for any information and said the award money is a once-off amount that is being offered by a donor who wishes to remain anonymous. They added that it is completely separate from the reward system that Crimestoppers normally operates. Gardai are now investigating whether one of Ireland's most high-profile missing people may have been the victim of foul play. Expand Close Trevor Deely / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Trevor Deely Trevor Deely (22) was last seen walking home from a Christmas party in Dublin city centre in the early hours of December 8, 2000. A mystery man is now being traced who gardai believe may have key information about the 16-year-old mystery of the missing Co Kildare man. It is understood that officers are probing the possibility that tragic Mr Deely may have been pushed into the River Dodder, but this is not conclusive. Crimestoppers and Gardai are now renewing their appeal for information on the identity of this male in black as well as information as to the whereabouts of Trevor Deely. Speaking at Harcourt Square today, Detective Superintendent Peter O Boyle outlined; "A complete review of the case has taken place and follow up investigations are now being carried out. "We are placing particular emphasis on the new CCTV that captures a male who can only be described as acting suspiciously in the short period before Trevor enters the bank at 03.35am on the 8th of December 2000. Expand Close Michael Deely father of Trevor Deely who went missing 13 years ago Photo: Gareth Chaney Collins / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Michael Deely father of Trevor Deely who went missing 13 years ago Photo: Gareth Chaney Collins "Our first appeal is for this male if he recognises himself to come forward and secondly for anyone else to come forward who may recognise him to notify us through Crimestoppers on 1800 25 00 25. "I renew my appeal to the public if anyone has any information into the disappearance of Trevor Deely or details as to his whereabouts to come forward." Crimestoppers Chairman Tim Dalton commented, "Members of the public can call Crimestoppers on 1800 25 00 25. Calls to Crimestoppers are completely anonymous. Callers do not need to leave their name or address." "Crimestoppers is offering a reward of up to 100,000 for information as to the whereabouts of Trevor Deely. This is a once-off amount that is being offered by a donor who wishes to remain anonymous. It is completely separate from the reward system that Crimestoppers normally operates. The reward will be given at the discretion of the Gardai." "The Crimestoppers concept is simple - the call is free, there is no need to give ones name, the phone is answered by specially trained Gardai. The Crimestoppers model is a well tried and well developed model in many countries." Disappearance Gardai are now trying to trace a man who waited outside Mr Deely's workplace in the early hours of that morning after he briefly returned to his office on the night of his disappearance. The new development, which senior sources regard as significant, came about as a result of technological advances in the examination of CCTV footage. "This missing person's case could be upgraded to a suspicious death investigation," a senior source said. Last December, gardai began a cold case review, which included reviewing the evidence gathered, reinterviewing witnesses and looking again at CCTV footage gathered as part of the original investigation. Some of that material, VHS footage taken from outside Bank of Ireland Asset Management on the night he disappeared, was recently sent to the UK to be forensically enhanced. The new footage shows a man standing outside the bank's office in the early hours of the morning in question. Mr Deely arrived at the office after finishing his night at Buck Whaley's nightclub on Lower Leeson Street just before 3.30am. He is seen speaking briefly to the man before he goes into the building. Mr Deely was a member of the IT department of the bank and when he arrived he was "drowned wet", said his colleague Karl Pender who was working overnight in IT. He chatted with Mr Pender, briefly logged onto his computer, then went for a coffee with Mr Pender to the office canteen and chatted about the night's Christmas party. Gardai are now aware that a man was standing in the doorway of the office, possibly sheltering from heavy rain, as Mr Deely walked in shortly before 3.30am. The man is seen waiting outside for a short time before crossing the road. When Mr Deely leaves the building after 4am he is carrying an umbrella. The footage then shows a man - who gardai believe is the same man from earlier - following him. Gardai are very keen to speak to this man and hope to identify him as an image of him is set to be released to the public tomorrow. The last image of Mr Deely shows him walking down Haddington Road under an umbrella he got from the office on what was a very stormy night. The young bank worker had been in great form that night, according to his colleagues. It is understood that he was not suffering from depression and was considered a "stable, sensible young man" according to sources. Details of a new award about the case are expected to be announced at a Crime Stoppers press conference tomorrow. Trevor is described as 61 in height and of slim build. He has short red/brown hair and fair complexion. He was last seen wearing a mustard and brown checked shirt, beige/grey corduroy flared trousers, dark deck shoes with white stripes, a green padded jacket. He was carrying a large dark blue umbrella with white ACC Bank lettering. In a wide-ranging interview with Fox News, the president spoke about possible intervention in the case of the Egyptian-American prisoner, as well as discussing regional issues and the Trump administration Fox News' Bret Baier asked the president if her name had come up in discussions with the US administration. "We always act with respect for the law and the judiciary," the Egyptian president told Baier, speaking in Arabic. "I would like to reassure those who are interested in this case, and, by the way, the charge against her is using children in demonstrations, that it is now being looked into in the courts, and as soon as there is a verdict, this will be decided." "As soon as the courts issue a verdict, we will have an opportunity based on my authority as president to act in a suitable way," he said. An Egyptian court has set 16 April for a verdict in the case of Hegazi and six other defendants, who are charged with human trafficking, kidnapping, and the sexual exploitation and torture of children. Hegazi, 29, and her husband Mohamed Hassanein, were arrested in May 2014 over accusations that her NGO Belady Initiative a foundation which aimed at helping street children in Cairo was involved in child abuse and was operating without a licence. Local and international rights groups have criticised the case and complain that the length of time of their detention almost three years -- is illegal. Asking about concerns of human rights groups about Egypt's record, El-Sisi said he spoke with some Congressmen and discussed the issue with them, among others. "We respect our citizens, and we care for them and we fear for them, and I would like to say just as much as you like your citizens, we do too," he told Baier, saying he was responsible for protecting 93 million people. "We have to maintain a balance between our actions to achieve security, stability and to preserve the state, and on the other hand, human rights." Trump 'understands region's realities' Donald Trump has a true understanding of the threat of terrorism and realities in the Middle East, El-Sisi told Baier, when asked about changes under the new administration. Describing him as a "unique personality" El-Sisi said he trusted El-Sisi "wholeheartedly." El-Sisi met with Trump at the White House this week, in the first formal Washington visit by an Egyptian head of state since Hosni Mubarak met Barack Obama in 2010. Rhetoric from both sides since Trump's election in November has been warm, in contrast with relations under the administration of Barack Obama, which grew strained after the ouster of Egypt's Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013. Trump said this week that he was "very much behind" El-Sisi, who he said has a great friend and ally in the United States. "There is true will, a very strong will, to counter terrorism in the world," El-Sisi told Fox, speaking about the new US administration. In response to a question about Trump's plan to cut foreign aid to some countries, El-Sisi said that Trump promised to provide Egypt with "very strong support", and he trusts he will keep his promise. War in Libya, Russia's regional role Relations with Gulf allies, specifically Saudi Arabia, are "strong," said El-Sisi. "We are not just friends, we are brothersand the security of the Gulf area and the whole Arab region is a part of Egypt national security," El-Sisi said. Regarding the role of Iran in the region, the Egyptian president said that Arab nations are capable of achieving their national security and stability in the face of any threats. Baier asked about the Libyan crisis, and whether UN peacekeepers should be deployed, or if the US should be doing more. "We have not used all the resources available. We need to support the national armies existent in the countries facing such turmoil. For more than two years I have been asking to lift the embargo on arming that army, or at least certain aspects of it, to provide them with the necessary equipment to perform that task," he said. "Let's move forward and assist the national army to take this task and assist them in performing that mission. "If the Libyans need and accept to have these peacekeeping forces, then we will not hesitate at all to accept our brothers in Libya," he said, affirming that Cairo is willing to provide all support for the Libyan people who are "held captive by armed extremist groups". The Egyptian president also warned of Libya becoming another stronghold for the Islamic State and other extremist groups to launch attacks against Egypt and even Europe. Asked by Baier if "the vacuum left by the Obama administration enabled Russia to take a greater foothold" in the region, El-Sisi commented: "In fact, many things over the last four years occurred and caused many, many problems." "Who brought extremist groups and made them available in Syria? Did the Syrian regime bring them there?" El-Sisi asked. "The entire region is paying the price [for that], not just Syria." 'True change' in Egypt On Egyptian efforts to combat terrorism in Sinai, the Egyptian president said there had been "great progress" in the past 40 months. "But I always say that it takes a long time to get rid of terrorism completely. Confronting and countering terrorism among civilians is a very difficult thing." In his response to a question about the perception of some Americans that he is an autocrat, El-Sisi stressed his office had term limits. "The person sitting opposite you has approximately a year, a couple of months more, and his term will be over. A dictator stays thirty or forty years, or even ten years, against the will of the people. That is not the case in Egypt. We don't have any more. We have four years. And if the people accept, maybe four more. And there's no third chance." "There's true change in Egypt. And the Egyptian people will not accept to have a president against their will," said the president. Asked what keeps him up at night, El-Sisi replied: "The simple Egyptian person." Speaking about the difficult economic conditions of the country, El-Sisi said that "there are 93 million citizens in Egypt that I want to protect." Search Keywords: Short link: There were chaotic scenes in the Central Criminal Court today after a man accused of murdering his former partner and mother of their two children punched the prosecuting barrister in the face. The accused then leapt across the benches before he was wrestled to the ground by five prison officers who handcuffed him and removed him from the courtroom. Vesel Jahiri (35), originally from Kosovo but of no fixed abode, has pleaded not guilty to murdering Anna 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. Mr Jahiri previously dismissed his legal team and is now representing himself at the trial. This morning, Mr Justice Paul Coffey told the jury that Mr Jahiri was not in a position to call any further witnesses in his trial. The judge then said that Mr Jahiri would not be making a closing speech although he was given an opportunity to do so and for that reason prosecuting counsel, Mr Patrick Marrinan SC, would also not be making a closing speech. At that point Mr Jahiri shouted: The judge is refusing to call witnesses. This trial is not going ahead. You broke the law. This trial is going nowhere Im stopping it now. The judge then told Mr Jahiri that he had given him an opportunity to call witnesses this morning. Mr Jahiri said he needed a phone to call potential witnesses saying: Im in Guantanamo jail. The accused was told by the judge that he has had the last seven weeks to telephone witnesses. Mr Jahiri started to shout: My teeth are sick and everything. Mr Marrinan then stood up and was about to speak when Mr Jahiri, who has been permitted to sit in counsel's bench since he sacked his legal team, reached across to him and punched him in the face. Blood could be seen coming from counsels nose. The accused then leapt across the benches before he was wrestled to the ground by five prison officers who handcuffed him and removed him from the courtroom. The trial was adjourned for twenty minutes before resuming in front of the jury. Mr Justice Coffey addressed the jury saying: "The accused has been removed from court and we will proceed in his absence." Mr Justice Coffey then began charging the jury and spent much of the afternoon summarising the evidence in the trial. In relation to the murder charge the judge told the jury that there were three verdicts open to them, namely; guilty of murder, not guilty of murder or not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter. He said the burden of proof always rests on the prosecution and that for a guilty verdict to be returned the case must be proven beyond all reasonable doubt. If the jury believed Mr Jahiri's defence, that he did not stab Anna Finnegan, was true or could reasonably be true they must find him not guilty of murder. If it is proven that Mr Jahiri stabbed Anna Finnegan they must then consider his intention. Mr Justice Coffey explained that for a murder verdict, the prosecution must prove that Mr Jahiri intended to kill or cause serious injury. In considering Mr Jahiri's intention, Mr Justice Coffey said they should have regard to the fact that Anna suffered only one wound and that the Deputy State Pathologist said the injury could have been caused by "moderate force". They should also consider evidence from other witnesses who said they heard Mr Jahiri threaten to kill Anna earlier on the day and that he kicked in the door of her home before the incident that led to her death. In relation to the charge of assault causing harm to Karl Finnegan, Mr Justice Coffey said the jury must consider if Mr Jahiri believed he was acting in self-defence. If he was acting in self-defence and used no more force than was necessary, they should find him not guilty. If the prosecution has proven that he intended to cause harm and was not acting in self-defence they should find him guilty. Mr Justice Coffey will conclude his charge to the jury of eight men and two women on Monday. The bedroom where the victim was kept in the Armagh House of Horrors Picture: PA A light fitting in the home of Keith and Caroline Baker who have been sentenced to a total of 18 years in prison after they sexually abused a mentally-disordered woman and held her prisoner for six years. Photo: PSNI/PA Wire Handle missing on a door in the home of Keith and Caroline Baker. Photo: PSNI/PA Wire A CCTV camera in the room where the woman was imprisoned Picture: PA Caroline Baker unmasked after a legal challenge by media organisations in Ireland and the UK. This is the face of the woman behind one of Northern Ireland's most shocking sex abuse cases. Caroline Baker was unmasked yesterday after a legal challenge by media organisations in Ireland and the UK. Earlier this week the 54-year-old was handed a three-year sentence for her part in subjecting a disabled woman to horrific sexual assaults. Baker and her husband Keith abused their victim, who had severe learning difficulties, keeping her prisoner in a filthy room for years. Until yesterday a court order banned the media from publishing Caroline Baker's face. Expand Close Caroline Baker in a PSNI-issued photograph (Picture: PSNI) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Caroline Baker in a PSNI-issued photograph (Picture: PSNI) But reporting restrictions were lifted after a joint challenge by the 'Belfast Telegraph', the BBC, UTV and the 'Sunday World'. Read More Olivia O'Kane from Carson McDowell solicitors, who led the challenge, welcomed the ruling. Expand Close Keith Baker and his wife kept a young woman a prisoner in this room for over a decade. / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Keith Baker and his wife kept a young woman a prisoner in this room for over a decade. "The notion that justice must be seen to be done is of significant importance, and the media in acting as the public watchdog, took a media application in this case to ensure that the public could be fully informed," she said. "The role of the media has particular importance in ensuring the administration of justice is transparent and publicly administered." Expand Close Keith Baker / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Keith Baker It has emerged the PSNI may have stumbled upon the shocking case almost by accident when they were called out to a "domestic row" back in January 2013. House of Horrors The woman, who suffered from learning difficulties, endured eight years of sexual abuse at the hands of vile couple Keith and Caroline Baker, who imprisoned her in their outwardly mundane terraced home. Today, the house in Drumellan Mews is occupied by new owners who have no connection to the Baker family. Target marks have been drawn on the side of the house, which has also been partially repainted after the words 'house of horrors' were scrawled on the side. Shocked neighbours said they believed that Keith Baker was the leader of a polygamous cult that treated the two women in the house - wife Caroline Baker and Mandy Highfield, who would later report the Bakers to the police - as servants. "We have lived here for decades and we only saw the third woman a handful of times in all those years," explained one local mother, who wished to remain anonymous. "Even now I can see her wee face. I remember her standing at the window staring straight ahead - it gave me goosebumps. "You could only see her head and she just stood there looking without turning or moving a muscle. She was like a ghost. "It seemed like lots of people went to the house. We saw a car load of men and we thought it was relatives of his from Guernsey. Now it's horrifying to think what might have been happening." Read More The house of horrors was actually two homes knocked into one property - controlling Baker kept girls in one, and boys lived in the other. "My daughter went into the boys' section of the house once and she said it was really, really dirty - full of junk," the woman added. Locals said Keith Baker and his eccentric extended family "kept themselves to themselves", and neighbours in turn left the family alone, believing their unconventional living arrangements were the result of religious beliefs. "We thought Keith Baker was running a cult or a commune as he had a couple of 'wives' and he seemed to be treated like their god," said another woman. "I saw the victim outside once with Mandy Highfield, his 'second wife', and I asked who she was. She looked like she was about 13. She was very childlike and she didn't speak. "Mandy said she was her sister from England, but when I looked up Keith was standing with his arms folded in the doorway of his house staring over, so I left. Keith Baker always seemed to be very controlling - he was like their guard. "I remember another time he had two women outside of his house washing the wheels of his car while he stood in the doorway kissing another woman. They were his skivvies. "Caroline Baker worked as a dinner lady at a local primary school and I remember laughing after I saw her one Sunday as it looked like he had made her dress up in her uniform and hairnet to make the Sunday dinner. But there was never any indication that anyone in the house was being abused or held against their will. "When we found out, we were disgusted. God help that woman. "It just goes to show that you don't know what's going on in anybody's home. "The jail terms were a disgrace. I think Caroline should have got 15 years and he should have got life after what they put that woman through." Another neighbour on the daffodil-lined estate said that she had heard "banging and shouting" emanating from the house, but assumed that it was "kids messing about". "I did see the second 'wife' and she seemed to be a bit scared of Keith," she explained. "This is quite a quiet place, but there were a few men who came to the house. "I think it's disgusting what they did to that woman. I don't know how anybody could do that to a vulnerable person." A local shop worker said that to her the Bakers "seemed like normal people," and recalled seeing them baking and selling buns in aid of Children in Need. "When I first heard what had happened, I just thought that it was rumours, a load of rubbish," she added. "Then I felt sick. There's a general feeling of shock in the community. The kids on the estate would have played together with their kids. "Everyone is shocked to the core. We can't believe this has happened here." While normal life is continuing on the estate, which is popular with families, local people are visibly shocked and upset at the horror that occurred just a few hundred yards away. Another woman echoed the view that the eccentric Baker family had been given a wide berth as the community "thought they were from a different culture, or it was some sort of religious thing". "Apart from that, the house was in good order on the outside and the kids were fed and clothed," she said. "There was no indication of what was going on inside, so how could social services have known? There was nothing to suggest that anything out of the ordinary was going on. "I've been here for over a decade and I didn't see the victim once and never had any indication she existed." As local people came to terms with the evil that flourished unseen in their community, a group of children played innocently on a nearby grassy area. Parents arrived at the gates of Drumellan Community Association to collect their youngsters from the youth centre. The organisation, which houses a Family Learning Complex and Children and Young People's Centre, issued a statement expressing its committee members' "utmost disgust at the sickening and horrific details that emerged from the court." It said: "We are deeply shocked that these awful crimes, inflicted on a defenceless, vulnerable lady, happened on our doorstep. Many residents have approached the association clearly upset and equally horrified at what has taken place. "Drumellan Community Association for many years has worked tirelessly to improve this estate, creating an environment where families feel safe and this we will continue to do." While the court case may now be over, it seems that the trauma which the Bakers' evil actions inflicted on this quiet community will take some time to heal. Garda management displayed "almost total ignorance at the highest level" of the taping of phone conversations at stations, the Fennelly Commission has found. In a stark assessment of the force, Mr Justice Nial Fennelly said it was "most surprising" that Garda bosses knew little or nothing about the existence of a system for recording non-999 calls between 1995 and November 2013. And although the Commission concludes that "in general" no abuse of this system occurred, "it is not possible absolutely to rule out improper use in any specific case". The findings will be a further blow to the reputation of An Garda Siochana, with Government sources last night saying it reinforces the need for a root and branch review of the organisation. Five former commissioners were interviewed by Mr Justice Fennelly, and incumbent Noirin O'Sullivan told him the problems uncovered would be dealt with in a "very different" way "by today's standards". Bandon, Waterford and Wexford garda stations were identified as having taped calls between solicitors and their clients but "the evidence indicates that these recordings occurred inadvertently". "There was no Garda system of snooping, spying or intrusion into private life and certainly not of listening to solicitor/client calls," the report states. It makes implicit criticism of Attorney General Maire Whelan, pointing out that she "presented an alarming picture" in March 2014 that left Taoiseach Enda Kenny "shocked". Ms Whelan had concluded that for decades there was "wholesale extensive recording of telephones calls the length and breadth of the country in garda stations". Government sources defended the AG, arguing the commission found the taping of calls was illegal and therefore her reaction was justified. Mr Fennelly also highlights that Taoiseach Enda Kenny did not have a full narrative of events when he dispatched the then Secretary General of the Department of Justice Brian Purcell to the home of Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan. The morning after that visit Mr Callinan stood down as the police chief. "The commissioner had, several months previously, on his own initiative, caused the recording to stop immediately [when] he learned of its existence. "He had also formally reported the matter in writing to the Department of Justice on March 10. Through mishap, this fact was unknown to the Taoiseach, the Attorney General or the Minister for Justice until after the events of March 24. "If it had been, the events which precipitated the Garda Commissioner's retirement would not have taken place," the report says. "These culminating events exemplify a history of Garda telephone recording which had been beset from its beginnings by misunderstanding, poor communication, imperfect information and a sequence of errors rather than any conspiracy." Taoiseach Enda Kenny received a copy of the 742-page report last Friday but refused to take any questions on it while in Germany for a meeting with Angela Merkel yesterday. Fianna Fail's Lisa Chambers described the lack of a press conference by Mr Kenny as "bizarre" and similar to "the likes of North Korea". Joanna Asia, originally from Poland, has been living here for 11 years. Photo: Damien Eagers For the second consecutive census, the second most common nationality after Irish is Polish. Roughly 122,500 Polish people live in Ireland today. This figure is significantly higher than the number of Polish people living in the UK (103,000). Joanna Asia, a Polish national who moved to Dublin 11 years ago, admits to having been very surprised by the census results. "I knew there were a lot of Polish people living here, but I had no idea that it was this much. My brother and some friends encouraged me to come to Ireland, so I thought I'd give living in a new country a try," she said. "Originally, I was thinking about moving to the UK, but Ireland appealed to me so much more because it's quieter and closer to the sea and mountains." The 36-year-old, who works in Govinda's vegetarian restaurant on Middle Abbey Street, added that she was happy to call Ireland her new home. "I really love living in Ireland. I've made so many new friends here, including my boyfriend who is also Polish," she said. "We both enjoy going on hikes and exploring the Irish wilderness. The Phoenix Park is such a beautiful place to visit and I've recently taken up horse riding there as a hobby." Joanna, who lives on Blessington Street, said that finding a place to call home was the most challenging part about living here. "I'm renting a studio apartment on Blessington Street and it's been a disaster looking for a new home," she said. "However, things are a lot worse in Poland." Ireland has called for renewed peace talks on Syria in the wake of the US missile strikes which have hugely increased tensions in the Middle East and further strained relations between America and Russia. Foreign Affairs Minister Charlie Flanagan carefully avoided either endorsing or condemning the first direct US intervention in the six-year-old Syrian war. The surprise US rocket attacks, which killed some seven people on Friday, were on a Syrian government base which was suspected of being used in chemical weapon attacks last Tuesday which killed 70 people and caused horrific injuries. The attacks represented a major change in US policy and a total reversal for President Donald Trump who had long warned that America should stay out of the bitter conflict. The US attacks were endorsed by the British government and other traditional American allies. But Foreign Affairs Minister, Charlie Flanagan, said it remains clear that there can be no military solution for Syria. The only hope for a resolution to this conflict which has seen the tens of thousands of people killed and maimed, and the millions of people displaced, is negotiation involving all the main international actors and the Syrians. I urge everyone involved to get back around the table at talks in Geneva, Mr Flanagan said. The Foreign Affairs Minister is at talks in Belfast aimed at restoring the power-sharing government in the North. He insisted that the Syrian conflict can only be resolved by international political negotiation. The two Air Corps maritime patrol planes have not been available to help in the search for missing Rescue 116 for more than two weeks because of "scheduled maintenance", it has emerged. Defence Forces personnel have been involved in the search for the missing members of helicopter since it crashed into Black Rock island, Co Mayo in the early hours of March 14. But it has now emerged that two sophisticated aircraft have not been available for the search. In response to a question from Independent.ie, a spokeswoman for the Irish Defence Forces confirmed that they operate two CASA CN235 Maritime Patrol aircraft. However, both are currently out of commission. "One aircraft commenced routine scheduled maintenance on 20th February 2017 and is due to return on 5th June 2017. This maintenance is being conducted with the aircraft manufacturer in Spain and must be carried out every 18 months by law," a statement read. "The other aircraft commenced routine scheduled maintenance in Baldonnel on 20th March 2017 with an expected return to service date of 7th April 2017. Shorter term maintenance must take place every 1,200hrs of flying time." The spokeswoman said the overlap was "unavoidable" as the Air Corps are "compelled by law" to conduct the necessary works. In the absence of both CASA, the Air Corps has used 45-year-old Cessna aircraft and AW139 helicopters for visual searches around the Atlantic. The statement continued: "Additionally the Air Corps continues to provide a broad range of services on a daily basis for a diverse range of tasks such as Army and Naval Service support, the emergency aero-medical service, maritime patrols and fishery protection, the ministerial air transport service, inter-hospital transfers and aid to the civil power duties including the Garda air support unit and security escorts." Last month it was revealed that the Irish Air Corps Casa had been requested to provide 'top cover' to Rescue 118 as it was taking part in a medevac off the coast of Mayo. Read More: The Defence Forces said they were unable to provide the service due to "a loss of experienced personnel (both Air Crew and Air Traffic Control)". Rescue 116 was subsequently sent instead on the ill-fated mission. Searches are continuing this weekend for missing crewmen Ciaran Smith (38) and Paul Ormsby (53). Captain Dara Fitzpatrick was taken from the water on the morning of the accident but later died in hospital. The body of Captain Mark Duffy was later recovered from inside the wreckage of the helicopter. A Bullet hole in the front door of a house at the scene of the shooting of an elderly woman at Oliver Plunkett Avenue, Monkstown, Dublin this afternoon. Picture Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin. Gardai remove evidence at the scene of the shooting of an elderly woman at Oliver Plunkett Avenue, Monkstown, Dublin this afternoon.Picture Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin. A garda investigation has been launched after an elderly woman was shot in South Dublin overnight. The incident took place at her home on Oliver Plunkett Avenue, Monkstown at approximately 11pm. A lone gunman fired several shots at the door and the one of them injured the elderly woman in the leg. She was removed by ambulance to hospital where she is being treated for her injuries which are not believed to be life threatening. Detectives do not believe she was the intended target of the attack. Bullet holes were visible at the entrance to the house this afternoon. Superintendent Martin Fitzgerald, who is leading the investigation, said this evening "a full technical examination of the scene has just been conducted and we will follow all lines of inquiry to detect this very, very, callous attack". Gardai in Dun Laoghaire have launched an investigation. No arrests have been made. "Shortly after 11pm last night the lone gun man presented [himself] at this house and after banging on the door [it was] responded to by the grandmother of the family home a 77 year old woman. "Upon opening the door she was met by this lone gunman who discharged a number of shots into the house," he said at a press conference this evening. "One of those shots injured the 77 year old female in the lower left leg. After which, the lone gunman made his way out of this cul de sac on foot. We have no further information about which direction he took or how his departure was facilitated. "The members of An Garda Siochana from Dun Laoghaire arrived at the scene shortly after receiving the call from the communications centre. The ambulance brought the 77 year old woman to St Vincents Hospital for treatment," he added. Gardai have appealed for information from people in the local area. The culprit who did not speak has been described as: a male in dark clothing, who is 5ft 7 and 5ft 10. His age is not known. "Following our forensic examination at the scene we believe it was a handgun that was used. I have no doubt that this house itself was a target for this direct attack. "The house is occupied by the grandmother of the family. Residing here with here are her two grandsons. Theyre adult grandchildren and one was present at the time. Also in the house was a six-year-old great grandson. "The lone gun man left the scene exiting out of the cul de sac. Beyond that we dont know how he came in or how he made his escape," Superintendent Martin Fitzgerald. El-Sisi met with Trump at the White House on Monday in the first formal visit to Washington by an Egyptian head of state since Hosni Mubarak met Barack Obama in 2010 Egypts President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi has concluded his first official visit to the US as a head of state, returning to Cairo on Friday, the presidents office said. In an official statement on Friday, the presidency announced the presidents return after a five-day visit, during which El-Sisi met his US counterpart Donald Trump and other top US officials. On Thursday, El-Sisi received the chairman of Senate Committee of Armed Services John McCain and the head of the Senates committee of appropriations Lindsay Graham, to whom he expressed Egypts keenness to develop strong strategic bilateral relations with the US. El-Sisi also expressed hopes that his visit would reflect positively on the future of Egypt-US relations, stressing his commitment to continued coordination with congress leaders to keep the US appraised of Egypt's efforts on counterterrorism and economic reform. Both US officials praised the fruitful meeting El-Sisi had with Trump, expressing their appreciation for the pivotal role that Egypt plays in the Middle East. El-Sisi met with Trump at the White House on Monday in the first formal visit to Washington by an Egyptian head of state since Hosni Mubarak met Barack Obama in 2010. Rhetoric from both sides since Trump's election in November has been warm, in contrast with relations under the Obama administration, which grew strained after the ouster of Egypt's Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013. Trump said this week that he was "very much behind" El-Sisi, who he said has a great friend and ally in the United States. During the visit, the Egyptian President met with several other prominent US Congressmen and Senators, including Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan, with whom he discussed regional conflicts. El-Sisi also met with Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats to discuss means of boosting cooperation. The president, accompanied by economics officials in the Egyptian government, also met with World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim and International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde in two meetings for discussions on Egypts ongoing economic reform programme. Search Keywords: Short link: THE President of a union has warned the government to "pay up or face the consequences" of coordinated industrial action by all public servants ahead of crucial new talks. Civil, Public and Services Union President Ann McGee demanded pay rises on top of wage increases that are seen as the restoration of pay cuts suffered during the recession. Speaking this morning at the union's annual delegate conference in Killarney, she said the patience of its 13,000 members is "threadbare" as they enter talks next month on a pay deal to succeed the Lansdowne Road Agreement. She accused the government of being "hell bent on replicating the mistakes of the past" in the property market. "This conference has a significant role to play in driving our campaign for fairness and a real pay increase in the talks due to begin in May," she said. "Let us not shirk the message. Pay up or face the consequences consequences that include co-ordinated industrial action by all public service unions. We have been patient but that patience is now threadbare." She said the union welcomed the government decision to bring forward a pay rise due under the Lansdowne Road Agreement to April 1 this year - from next September. This was to compensate public servants who signed up to the deal who did not get the benefits of a 50m pay package given to gardai to call off strikes. However, she described the payment as a "down payment" of full restoration of pay. She said it is "not enough to address the imbalance" caused by the garda deals brokered late last year. Ms McGee said there is an unquestionable moral justification for the pension levy to be removed and pay to be fully restored to members earning less than 38,000 at the talks. But she said any new deal must go further and give "real" pay increases, especially to those on lower starting points on salary scales introduced during the financial crisis. Read More She said members want the removal of unpaid additional hours being worked as they amounted to an "effective 6pc pay cut". They were told the last year was a period of recovery but you would not think that at meetings at a General Council with their employer, she added. "Government ministers may talk about recovery, about turning the corner but their representatives on earth at General Council dont seem to have heard the message," she said. "We continue to have to battle on even the smallest of issues while management returns to the table relentlessly proposing more changes to our agreements and working conditions." She said while the government talks up recovery there is much evidence that there are two sections in society - a small elite who have and an ever growing majority of citizens who have not. Ms McGee asked what a recovery means if more families are becoming homeless and debts are being passed on to vulture funds. "Even people with decent incomes cannot afford to rent where they need to live," she said. She said lack of common sense by the government on housing and homelessness "only highlights the constant tendency of politicians to talk their way around a situation". "People are not stupid," she said. "The key word used by the government is 'supply', which we are constantly told can only be met by 'the market'. However, the market assumes most people can afford to rent or buy but realistically many cannot." She said a simple answer to the housing shortage would be for the state to build social housing in significant quantities. "As the Irish economy returns to growth, we must ensure that the mistakes of the past are not repeated if we are to build a society on the principles of equality and fairness," she said. "Has all the pain suffered by ordinary people in servicing bank debt and meeting the crippling IMO and EU austerity programmes been in vain?" she asked. She said the union recognised the urgent need to manage its financial resources more tightly and step up recruitment after losing 1,200 staff officer members and their subscriptions worth 500,000. The staff officer grade has been integrated into the executive officer grade and no longer exists. The former staff officers are now represented by another union. However, she said there is unfinished business for lower grade clerical officers, who sought the ring fencing of extra promotions to compensate for the loss of staff officer opportunities. She said the union will not rest until these claims are dealt with. "The recruitment of members is critical to our survival and most importantly for our ability to be successful in dealing with our employers," she said. Meanwhile, the CPSU is due to ballot on proposals later this year to form one union of over 80,000 members by joining forces with the Public Service Executive Union and Impact. Housing Minister Simon Coveney has made a last-ditch bid to resolve the row over water charges, warning that the proposed regime places Ireland "at odds" with the European Union. In a significant intervention last night, Mr Coveney expressed his deep concern over the "direction" being taken by the Oireachtas water committee. He described the decision of the committee to vote against the provision of meters for all new builds as "deeply worrying". Last week, Fianna Fail was in favour in principle of having meters installed in all new builds as a pre-condition. But the party has now changed its stance on this key issue. The minister said that any failure to include the term "excessive usage" in the final report would cause Ireland to breach its obligations under the Water Framework Directive. Fianna Fail and Sinn Fein have united to scrap the term 'excessive usage' and replace it with 'wilful wastage'. "I cannot imagine that the committee members, behaving responsibly, would consciously seek to put forward a set of recommendations that would fail to achieve compliance with our EU obligations," Mr Coveney said in a letter to committee chairman Padraig O Ceidigh. Read More "Please do not take this letter as an attempt by me to in any way seek to interfere with the deliberations of the committee. Rather, I am simply stating the onus on all of us to ensure that we produce a set of recommendations that the Oireachtas will then legislate on that allows us to meet our obligations," he added. The intervention - which is likely to infuriate Fianna Fail - came following another dramatic day in Leinster House as the row over water charges threatens the prospect of an early general election. Senior officials in both Fine Gael and Fianna Fail made contact last night after the committee agreed to postpone a vote on the package until Tuesday. Further legal advice will now be sought on the report in its entirety. There were heated exchanges at the committee between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail politicians. At one stage, Fianna Fail TD Barry Cowen said his party would allow for an adjournment until Tuesday so that Fine Gael members could "consult their three leaders" on the issue of water charges. He was referring to Taoiseach Enda Kenny, Mr Coveney and Social Protection Minister Leo Varadkar. Earlier, Mr Varadkar lashed out at Fianna Fail over its stance on water charges during Leaders' Questions. Sitting alongside Mr Coveney, Mr Varadkar backed his Cabinet colleague over his refusal to implement the report in its current form. He said Fianna Fail - "the party of Lemass" - now had its water policy determined by Sinn Fein and the hard left parties. Fine Gael sources last night said they believed Mr Varadkar had boosted his leadership credentials as a result of his performance. The same sources pointed out that Fianna Fail had this week voted against amendments which it insisted should be included in earlier versions of the report. In contrast, Fianna Fail argued that the whole committee would have collapsed. Party sources said Mr Varadkar was privately undermining Mr Coveney as part of his leadership bid. "Simon Coveney was selling this as a win but when Varadkar started puncturing holes in it and ridiculed anybody who tried to sell it as a win, Fine Gael decided it was better to have a fight over it," one senior Fianna Fail source said. "If Simon Coveney had kept the head, we'd have had a deal that everybody got something from." Education Minister Richard Bruton has alleged that Fianna Fail allocated money for disadvantaged schools based on politics rather than need. While defending the criteria for awarding DEIS funding to schools, Mr Bruton hit out at the main Opposition and suggested past governments abused the system for political gain. "When Fianna Fail was in government and it was addressing this issue it did not use objective criteria," he said. "Its scheme was based on random collection of information. "Political information was also brought to bear, which was not satisfactory. The current scheme is transparent." However, Fianna Fail is likely to seek a correction to the Dail record unless Mr Bruton provides evidence of his claim. The party's Education spokesman Thomas Byrne told the Irish Independent the minister "needs to put up or shut up and will have to provide some evidence for his allegation". "I have no doubt he is merely huffing and puffing because of the criticism he has received," Mr Byrne said. Mr Bruton has been under pressure to explain why some schools were wrongly categorised for rural/urban DEIS money. The department has now written to schools requesting the eircodes of pupils in order to provide more accurate assessments of their economic background. Mr Byrne described the error as a "major mix up", but the minister insisted there was "no discrepancy in the schools listed for inclusion in DEIS". "The only alteration to the lists published involved a change in rural-urban categorisation of four primary schools arising from an improved method of measurement," he said. "It is important to note that the urban-rural categorisation of schools relates to geographical location only and has no bearing on the levels of disadvantage identified within those schools." Evidence of the highly questionable behaviour by gardai was uncovered in a trove of 297 phone calls recorded at Bandon Garda Station (Stock picture) A number of gardai involved in the Sophie Toscan du Plantier investigation were willing to contemplate altering, modifying or suppressing evidence that did not further the belief Ian Bailey was her killer. They included an officer responsible for preparing a report on the investigation for the Director of Public Prosecutions. The Fennelly Commission found officers also engaged in the apparently inappropriate disclosure of information about the investigation to a number of civilians, including a journalist. It also found that four solicitor/client conversations linked to the Toscan du Plantier investigation were recorded at Bandon Garda Station in west Cork. The commission was not able to establish if the calls were subsequently listened to by gardai. Other conversations involving gardai include derogatory remarks about Mr Bailey, who has always maintained he was not involved in the December 1996 murder of the French filmmaker. He is currently battling efforts by French authorities to have him extradited to face trial in Paris. Evidence of the highly questionable behaviour by gardai was uncovered in a trove of 297 phone calls recorded at Bandon Garda Station. Although there was no proof that evidence was altered, modified or suppressed, Mr Justice Nial Fennelly found that suggesting or discussing such a course of action could, in itself, amount to improper conduct. The phone calls included conversations with a potential witness who expressly or impliedly made requests to gardai for the supply of drugs, either to facilitate or in consideration of his assistance in the Garda investigation. There was no evidence from the calls that the gardai involved agreed to the requests. The man who sought the drugs was not named in the report, but has been named in court proceedings as former British soldier Martin Graham. In another conversation a garda indicated a willingness to backdate a statement in relation to an alleged assault committed by the husband of a key witness in the investigation. Mr Justice Fennelly said this disclosed "evidence of improper conduct". The people involved were not named in the report, but a previous court case heard claims from Mr Bailey's legal team that gardai got a local man to withdraw a complaint he was assaulted by Chris Farrell, the husband of key witness Marie Farrell, to "keep her sweet". Although most garda stations examined by Mr Justice Fennelly only had one phone which was recorded, calls relevant to the Toscan du Plantier investigation were recorded on five different lines. The commission found that over the course of one week in June 1997, there were a number of telephone calls involving an officer dubbed Detective Sergeant Alpha and several people, all of them civilians, in which he discussed the investigation. In one call with an unidentified woman on June 18, the detective sergeant suggested Mr Bailey was being shielded by the people he was living with. The following day, in an "off the record" conversation with a journalist working for a UK publication, the officer alleged Mr Bailey was attempting to use the media to build an argument that, due to negative publicity, a fair trial would be impossible. On June 23, in a call to a family member, the detective sergeant discussed the progress of the investigation and referred to Mr Bailey as "a cunning bastard". A day later in a conversation with an employee of the Revenue Commissioners, he made allegations concerning Mr Bailey, including that he had beaten his partner "to a pulp a few times" and that gardai believed he had committed similar assaults in England. On the same day in a call with a local TD, the garda sergeant said Mr Bailey's re-arrest was imminent. Boy or girl? C-section or vaginal? Bottle or breast? Once baby is born, the many questions follow. The method by which a baby is fed can sometimes be a divisive and emotive subject. Mums who bottle-feed and mums who breastfeed can feel pitted against each other to some extent, while feelings of guilt can creep in for mums who are experiencing difficulties or have an inability to breastfeed. It's an already vulnerable time for a new mum, and understanding and education are more productive tools than preconceptions and mummy wars. 'Breast is best' may be the mantra but Ireland continues to have one of the lowest rates of breastfeeding in the world. With only 56pc of new mums even beginning to breastfeed and numbers dropping steeply by the time their babies reach three to four months, it seems Ireland is still a long way from viewing breastfeeding as the norm. My own breastfeeding experiences were and still are positive ones, thankfully. The biggest surprises for me were definitely the lack of awareness about legal rights and entitlements and varied views on socially acceptable breastfeeding time-frames. My youngest is 18 months and still breastfed. I was told by a colleague that breastfeeding a child past the age of four months is disgusting. While her comments didn't bother me, because I felt confident in my choices, her words might have stung a little more had I been a first-time mum. My employer was incredibly supportive and allowed me to work my breastfeeding break entitlements around a pattern that suited me best, albeit that the initial application caused some confusion as the person handling it had never dealt with a similar request before. There is a statutory entitlement to all women in employment who have given birth in the last six months to avail of an hour per day breastfeeding break. The manner in which this hour is taken can vary. Some employers extend the entitlement to breastfeeding breaks up until the child is aged two, reflecting the World Health Organisation's recommendation that children be breastfed until two years of age. Part-time workers can avail of the breastfeeding breaks on a pro-rata basis. Legal entitlements go beyond the workplace, however, and some confusion still seems to exist about where a mother is allowed to breastfeed her child. Pope Francis recently made headlines when he encouraged mothers to breastfeed their hungry babies in the Sistine Chapel. While many applauded his words of encouragement, it seems a pity that they were necessary at all. In Ireland, women are legally entitled to breastfeed in all public places. Melissa Ryan from Dublin is a mum of three: Kaelan (12), Nathan (10) and 14-week-old Charlie. She is currently breastfeeding her youngest son, having bottle-fed her eldest two boys. "I tried to breastfeed my first but found the first 24 hours just too painful," Ryan says. "I wasn't prepared for it. I was completely overwhelmed with him being the first child and I decided no I can't do this, just give him a bottle." The midwife obliged. "There was no encouragement, no 'come on let's work on this', no help - just ok, 'what formula dos you want to give him?'." She was determined to breastfeed Charlie but describes the first three weeks as "torture". "I was just adamant that I wasn't going to give up," she says. "The breastfeeding groups in the local health centre were good, not necessarily the nurses themselves but the other mothers. They were able to give me great tips on compresses, Lansinoh nipple cream and 'breast angels' (nipple shields). "There were times when I was sitting on the sofa with my toes curled, crying with the pain. Between having thrush, the baby having thrush in his mouth, and having mastitis twice, it was really hard. It's hard to get your head around the cluster feeding and growth spurts. If you've bottle-fed a baby before, it's hard to get used to how much more regularly a breastfed baby feeds." But she found the benefits outweighed the negatives. "The bond and closeness is just amazing," she says. "It's not that you love your breastfed child any more than your bottle-fed baby, it's just a different kind of closeness. They're so reliant on you that you have them to yourself that little bit longer." The mother of three has found she has received mixed messages from the professionals. A public health nurse encouraged her to introduce bottles of formula to increase her baby's weight, while a lactation consultant suggested she feed her baby expressed milk only so that she can get an idea of how much her baby is consuming. She also found herself put under pressure to stop, even though she herself has put no time restrictions on it. 'You've given him the best start, would you not make life easier on yourself?', is a comment she frequently hears, and often from family. "I think it's down to the fact that this is new to them, they've never had anyone breastfeed," she says. While Ryan had initial worries about feeding her baby in public, she has no problems doing so now and describes it as "second nature". Pamela Cullen, a phlebotomist (someone trained to draw blood from a patient) living in Offaly, has three children, all of whom were breastfed. "I always wanted to breastfeed my children. My mother was worried about the commitment involved but I think that's just a mother thing and a general lack of understanding because breastfeeding is not our cultural norm," she says. "My first experience of breastfeeding was not easy and wasn't helped by a midwife who told me that being obsessed with breastfeeding wouldn't help. I wasn't obsessed, I just wanted to persevere. It was definitely easier the second and third time around." Breastfeeding in public, however, was an aspect that Cullen struggled with. "I never breastfed in public. It's not that I don't agree with it, it's just on a personal level I felt very exposed and vulnerable," she says. "It would have been much easier if I could have managed it but I coped in my own way". She continued breastfeeding when she returned to work, finding it difficult but not impossible, saying: "My babies refused to take bottles of expressed milk so timing of feeds was everything. I had to make sure my children were established on solids, as well as possible, before my return." Continuing to breastfeed her children until they were two provoked some strange reactions. "I always pointed out that no-one would bat an eyelid if a child still had a bottle at two, so what was the big deal? Other people's opinions on it didn't bother me. I did what I believed was best for my child." The Lactation Consultant's View Nicola O'Byrne, lactation consultant at breastfeedingsupport.ie says there are multiple reasons for Ireland's low breastfeeding rates, including not enough time given to the mum, not enough midwifery staff and not enough lactation consultants for when there is a problem. She explains how the biggest fall off in breastfeeding usually happens in the first three to four weeks. It takes for to six weeks for the mother's milk supply to build up. "What happens in that time dictates the supply the mother will get and how well the baby will feed. That's where the major work needs to happen in supporting the mothers in that time," she says. Attending breastfeeding classes ahead of the birth can be hugely advantageous, O'Byrne believes. "It gives parents an idea about how often they need to feed. Women who might have issues can have them flagged - for example things like inverted nipples. It doesn't mean you can't breastfeed, it just means you might need extra help in the early days. For the dads, the classes give them a chance to be involved and see the normality of it." Unlimited feeding is the best tool for increasing milk supply, says O'Byrne. "The most important thing to learn in the hospital is when the baby is actually feeding and when they're not. Knowing that when your milk comes in, it will build up and up every day is important. You don't get your full milk supply until four to six weeks. The amazing thing is that when you get to your full milk supply, the volume doesn't change for six months." If you are worried about your supply, O'Byrne advises getting your baby weighed. "If you feel that every single ounce of that weight has been really hard work then ask someone to do a full assessment, someone to watch your whole feed, see are you changing sides often enough," she says. When it comes to the claim that 'breast is best', O'Byrne says that "if a baby could choose, they would probably choose breast milk". There are times, however, when stopping is the correct option. "If a mother has postnatal depression and she really wants to stop, that's absolutely the right thing to do but if she has postnatal depression and she doesn't want to stop, it could make her worse." Doing the right thing by mum results in doing "the right thing for baby also. Interaction with her baby is the most important thing for long term health". As for the ability to breastfeed O'Byrne states that "the amount of women that actually, physically cannot breastfeed at all would be very, very small. Then there are women who have medical reasons and cannot breastfeed. Apart from that there are some mothers who will have trouble building up a supply. That doesn't mean that they can't breastfeed, it just means that they can't exclusively breastfeed and I think that's where it's all getting mixed up. "Feeding past the age of one does have big benefits from an immunological point of view as the child is still getting antibodies in the milk." Mum and baby benefits Dr Georgina Connellan GP lists some of the health benefits breastfeeding provides, to both mother and baby Mum Oxytocin encourages the uterus to return to its normal size more quickly The hormones oxytocin and prolactin reduce maternal stress and help aid mother and baby bonding Breastfeeding can help with weight-loss after pregnancy Reduced risk of both breast and ovarian cancer Reduced risk of heart disease Lower risk of developing Type 2 diabetes in the years after delivery Baby Breastfeeding offers protection against: Gastrointestinal infections and diarrhoea Middle-ear infections Urinary tract infections Necrotising enterocolitis in premature babies Late-onset sepsis in pre-term infants Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes Lymphoma, leukaemia, and Hodgkin's disease Breastfeeding also reduces the likelihood of childhood obesity In New York, it's so common that lawyers have a label for it : they call it the "renovation divorce." Man and woman get married. Man and woman buy apartment/house/condo. Man and woman hire architect and go on crazy spending spree (or at least one does - to the chagrin of the other). Both parties kill each other - and their architect and their designers and their plumbers - and the project goes head over heels over budget and kills their future financial prospects. One party in particular is the 'spender', insisting on buying an expensive property in the first place and then plumping for all the most lavish renovations, finishes and fittings, which the couple can't afford. Debt builds up and up. Redecoration becomes an obsession, a point of endless arguments and a cash-weeping financial sore until finally one party walks out, leaving acrimony and bills in their wake. In this way, the 'dream home', or the quest for it, kills the marriage. Often it's the woman who fulfils the 'spender' role that causes the financial grief - but not always. Last year, the second generation Irish author Kate Glanville talked about her recent novel A Perfect Home, which she said was inspired by her experiences with a cottage restoration. She blamed 20 years of renovation, which cost close to 200,000, for the end of her marriage to her husband Duncan, who she said was somewhat obsessed with constantly upgrading their house. "One of the final straws was when Duncan wanted to do up a dilapidated railway carriage he'd found in a field as a guest room - I felt we could use our money better." Glanville, however, claimed to be equally at fault at times: "I was the one who insisted on the right shade of white for the walls and finding authentic window fittings." Ironically, when the house was finally finished, a 'for sale' sign went up on it because they were divorcing. At least she got a book out of it. Studies carried out in Ireland on the causes of divorce show that contrary to what we might expect, money and debt issues are the main causes of marital splits rather than abuse, alcohol or cheating. And through the Celtic Tiger years, much of that debt was run up on the family home in the quest for pitch perfect everything - from paint finishes and designer wallpapers that cost 300 a roll to over-the-top bathrooms with tubs that would sink a battleship. The wreckage of "renovation divorces" are to be seen all over the country today. You'll find plenty of massive houses for sale in the middle of nowhere with an Aga kitchen that cost 80,000, six bathrooms kitted for 50,000 a pop, cinema rooms with technology that's now obsolete, internal vacuum systems and hugely extravagant catering-standard cookers. The common denominator today is that the couple who did this are now broke, the house is repossessed and they are split. And now it's happening again - people I've encountered who recently bought property are going around with frowns and muttering in fluent Tiger. They're fretting about the "right feature wallpaper" and what coloured chip to sprinkle into their poured and polished concrete floors. And I wonder if many of them can really afford the standards they are aspiring to. This often comes with a self-imposed crazy rush to get the property "done" and "perfect" as quickly as possible. It's all so very 2005. And cracking through the tile stores with the newly-weds are a new breed entirely - the separated newly freed and spend-crazy downsizers. The property crash and the recession kept split couples together in the same houses for five or six years. With Tiger-era purchased homes now finally beginning to lift out of negative equity, couples who split way back when are now finally selling up and dividing what spoils are left. Those who have put up with tired homes for so long are now breaking out with a vengeance for their downsize pads, divvy cash in hand. They're hitting the kitchen and bathroom showrooms with vim, spending all around them and making rash upgrading decisions they might later regret. It seems the changed expectations of the Tiger era have stuck - the need to change a sofa or a kitchen, not because its worn, but because it's not as trendy as it was; the expectation that a house bought today must look "perfect" tomorrow or there's something wrong with you. In America (where else?), the stress has spawned another industry - renovation counselling - to ensure marriages survive a property purchase and the resulting refurbs. In a recent article, Californian therapist Lisa Bahar says she encourages couples to start "with a 'reality check' conversation regarding the actual process of what is about to occur". Ahem. Counsellor and former bathroom designer John Wilder has more down to earth and practical advice: "Before renovating, watch the 1986 film The Money Pit together." Then he goes and ruins it by pointing out that the rebuild styles have all dated. Egypt has called on the US and Russia to contain the conflict and reach a comprehensive and final resolution to the Syrian crisis, hours after American airstrikes were launched at a Syrian airbase. Egypt affirms the importance of sparing Syria and the Middle East the dangers of crisis escalation, in order to preserve the safety of the nations that comprise it," read a Friday statement issued by the foreign ministry. "We see the necessity for swift action to end the armed conflict in Syria to preserve the lives of the Syrian people, through a commitment by all Syrian parties for an immediate ceasefire and a return to negotiations under the aegis of the United Nations, it read. On Friday morning, two US warships fired 59 cruise missiles from the eastern Mediterranean Sea at the Syrian airbase controlled by the forces of President Bashar Al-Assad in response to a poison gas attack in a rebel-held area on Tuesday. According to Syria's state owned SANA news agency, the US missile strike killed nine civilians, including four children. The Pentagon has said that civilians were not targeted. Putin, a staunch ally of Al-Assad, said the action was "aggression against a sovereign nation" on a "made-up pretext" and a cynical attempt to distract the world from civilian deaths in Iraq, his spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, was cited as saying by agencies. Trump ordered the strikes a day after he blamed Al-Assad for this week's chemical attack, which killed at least 70 people, many of them children, in the Syrian rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun. The Syrian government has denied it was behind the attack. The Egyptian foreign ministry said that it was calling on the US and Russia in light of the two countries responsibilities for safeguarding international peace and security. In a statement on Thursday, before the airstrikes, the ministry expressed Cairo's deep concern at the state of "polarization" within the UN after the Tuesday attack on Khan Sheikhoun. The UN Security Council will meet on Friday at 11:30 am (15:30 GMT) to discuss the missile strikes on Syria, one day after it failed to agree on terms for an investigation into the suspected sarin gas attack on the town. Search Keywords: Short link: By the turn of the millennium, dormer bungalows had earned a questionable reputation as planners allowed run-of-the-mill one-off dormers to multiply around the west of Ireland, much to the perplexity of tourists in search of the romantic rural idyll depicted by John Hinde's mid-century colour postcards. These days, a scattering of dormer bungalows - albeit smarter, reinvented versions - are making an appearance in new-build developments, including at Castlelynn, a scheme just being completed on the site of an old house off Soldiers Road in Bray. Two of the 11 homes that make up the new enclave in the seaside town famous for its Victorian promenade are four-bed detached dormer bungalows, costing from 545,000 apiece. The layout of the 1,830 sq ft of accommodation is more interesting than 1990s dormers: the main entrance is to the side of the house, so more space could be devoted to the front of the property for a living room and a home office. To the rear is an open-plan kitchen/dining room with another living space. Also on this level is a cloakroom, a lavatory beside the home office, and a separate utility room. All four bedrooms, including a master ensuite, and a family bathroom are on the first floor. Of the remaining nine homes being released at Castlelynn this weekend, eight are three-bed semi-detached properties and one is a two-storey four-bed detached house. The three-beds extend over 1,270 sq ft and are priced from 430,000, while the four-bed detached house measures 1,442 sq ft and is selling for 495,000. Both styles have a glass Juliet balcony to the front of the first floor, off the master bedroom. There is underfloor heating throughout the ground floors of each build. Up top, are attics accessible by a Stira staircase and primed for conversion to another living space. The kitchens come with built-in Neff appliances, including an oven, microwave and dishwasher. The sanitary ware in the tiled bathrooms and ensuites are from Sonas, while the built-in wardrobes fitted to each bedroom come from Kerwood Design, another local company. Kerwood also supplied the kitchens at Castlelynn - these have a large central island, dove-grey cabinetry in a shaker style and Silestone quartz worktops. The A3-rated properties at Castlelynn are 2km south of the Dart station in Bray and convenient to the M11 and M50. The Dart to Pearse Station leaves every 15 minutes and is a 45-minute trip, while the 145 bus route from nearby Killarney Road to Dublin's St Stephen's Green takes 55 minutes. The showhouses will be on view tomorrow, from 2.30pm-4pm, and on Wednesday, between 5pm-6pm. Castlelynn, Bray, Co Wicklow Asking price: 430,000-545,000 Agent: Hooke & MacDonald (01) 6318402 It probably seems like an age since your census enumerator knocked on your door to collect your completed census form. For many people handing over the census form may be the last time the census crosses their mind for another five years. For the CSO, getting the completed census forms back is the starting gun for an intense period of activity. We have been scanning, digitising and storing the responses from each census form electronically for the last 10 months. With the data now finalised, the CSO is embarking on a wide-ranging census publication programme, starting with today's release, which contains many key facts about Ireland's population and society. The population on April 24, 2016, stood at 4,761,865. This is the highest population total since independence, and a 3.8pc increase over the last census in 2011. However, the rate of population growth has tapered off in comparison with previous censuses. The number of births occurring in Ireland has declined and more people left the country than arrived. The population growth was not evenly spread throughout the country. Leinster counties including Meath, Kildare and Dublin led the way, all experiencing increases in population just shy of 6pc. Indeed, within Dublin, Fingal registered an 8pc growth in its population. At the other end of the scale, only two counties saw their population decline in the five-year period. Mayo's population fell marginally (0.1pc), while Donegal's declined by more than 1pc to 160,000. While the population is still growing, it is also growing older. The number of people aged over 65 rose by nearly 20pc, far in excess of the overall population. More people are living longer, and this is especially notable in the case of men. There were 25pc more men aged over 85 in 2016 compared with five years previously. Despite this, there were still over 50,000 more females than males across all ages. Up to the age of 24, males outnumbered females, but among age groups older than this there were more females than males. The county with the highest number of males compared with females was Laois, while Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown had the highest ratio of females to males. The "oldest" counties recorded in Census 2016 were Kerry and Mayo. People living in these counties had an average age of more than 40, six years older than the youngest area, Fingal. Census 2016 marked the reversal of a long-term trend in household size. Since 1966, when there was on average four people in each dwelling, the size of Ireland's households has been declining. Last year this trend was halted with a small increase in average household size to 2.75. This occurred because the relative growth in the population outstripped the growth in the number of households. The number of people declaring themselves foreign nationals fell to 544,357 or 12pc of the population. While this may appear surprising, it should be noted that there was a very sharp increase in the number of people declaring dual Irish nationality, nearly doubling from 56,000 to 105,000. Among this figure were some 17,500 Irish-Americans, 15,400 people of dual Irish-UK nationality and 9,300 Irish-Poles. The Poles remained the largest group of foreign nationals living in Ireland, with more than 122,000 resident. The number of UK nationals continued to decline to just over 100,000. The census data on religion tends to be among the most closely watched figures published. Over three quarters of the population or over 3.7 million people declared themselves Roman Catholic. While this was far in excess of any other religion, the number of Roman Catholics declined by over 100,000 compared with five years previously. Conversely, the number of people declaring no religion jumped to 468,000 comprising 10pc of the population. Strong growth in numbers was also recorded among Muslims (up to more than 63,000 people) and Christian Orthodox (rising to 62,000). Church of Ireland remained the second biggest religion recorded, although numbers declined slightly to 126,000. The census gathers data on housing as well as people. The most common type of dwelling in Ireland remained the detached house, which made up more than 42pc of the occupied stock of housing. Perhaps the most notable change in the type of dwelling households occupied was the increase in purpose-built flats and apartments. There was a 15pc increase, bringing the number of occupied flats and apartments to more than 170,000. More than 60pc of these were in Dublin. The number of households renting their accommodation also increased sharply and reached almost half a million in 2016, with particularly big increases in Cavan (13pc) and Kilkenny (11pc). As recently as 2002 only 230,000 households in Ireland were renting, so there has been a large change in the nature of occupancy in the intervening 14 years. It will come as no surprise that the average rent these households are paying has climbed since 2011. The average weekly rent nationwide in 2016 was 156, a 15pc increase. Finally in the area of housing, nearly 150,000 more homes had access to broadband in 2016. This meant 1.2 million homes had broadband. The number in 2002 was 290,000. There were still however over 300,000 homes with no internet access of any kind in 2016. For those with a data-friendly disposition and an appetite for yet more percentages and proportions, the CSO has released a wealth of additional information from Census 2016. All can be found on www.cso.ie. Today's release represents the tip of the data iceberg from the census. Thematic releases and deeper analysis on areas such as housing, families, commuting and health will be released regularly over the course of the next nine months, building towards a highly detailed picture of Ireland's social and economic conditions last April. We will also be releasing all of our census data at small area level in July. Happy number crunching! Cormac Halpin is a senior statistician with the CSO Last week, there was a lot of deja vu going around. We had several warnings that the economy is beginning to overheat, that we were experiencing a new property bubble and that the rate of house-price increases was back to Celtic Tiger levels. The truth is that the construction industry welcomes these warnings. To us, they are the signs of a healthy early warning system for prudent and sustained economic growth. The Esri, the Central Bank, the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, the EU Commission, the European Central Bank and many others are all circling the property sector keeping a watchful eye on property. All I would say is that in trying to avoid the mistakes of the past, we must watch out for mistakes of the future. Our system is fixated on the housing market to such an extent that we have missed two significant threats to the Irish economy: regional imbalances and a lack of infrastructural investment. They say that generals always fight the last war and that's what we're doing here in Ireland. The chronic lack of investment in infrastructure has the potential to damage the economy more in the long-term than the previous property crash. Ictu has said that the seeds of our current recovery were sown in the early 2000s when successive governments maintained a long-term average investment in infrastructure at around 5pc of GDP. Think about that: it took a full decade for the impact of the investment in roads, rail, air, schools and hospitals to filter through the economy and provide the basis for our current recovery. Now consider this, during the recession from 2007 onwards, successive governments have allowed infrastructure investment to drop below 2pc. This lost decade of underinvestment is hitting our economy like a storm surge at a time when our population has grown by 30pc in one generation and our economy is the fastest growing in the EU. To paraphrase the Chinese proverb: 'What's the best time to build a road? Answer: Twenty years ago, the next best time is today.' A major road can take 10-13 years from concept to concrete. If tomorrow the Government gave the go ahead to the Cork/Limerick M20, a road that would create an economic corridor to counter-balance Dublin, improve FDI attractiveness and save many lives, it would be five years at least before construction could even begin due to planning and procurement. Every year that this road and others like it are not built, further increases our overall economy's dependence on Dublin, now generating 50pc of Irish GDP. The facts are stark. Ireland is last of the EU28 in terms of GDP invested in infrastructure. The importance of productive infrastructure investment in economic growth is well-established within Irish political culture and until recently in our civil service structures, but more on that later. In the late 1950s, our greatest statesman, TK Whitaker, adopted an economic formula for success by firstly opening our economy to foreign investment and then shifting capital expenditure towards productive infrastructure. We were still following this formula up to 2006 or so. The recession unsurprisingly saw investment drop. But today Ireland is strongly recovering and there is cheap finance available from the EU through the Juncker funds. Unfortunately, we are prevented from increasing investment in this area by the EU's fiscal constraints. It's reprehensible that the EU is dangling funding in front of us while preventing us from accessing it with the fiscal space; especially considering Ireland was more than a model citizen during the EU's banking crisis. Surely, our Government can make a case that a more realistic view of the Irish economy is used to assess the fiscal space, particularly in the face of exceptional threats such as Brexit estimated by the Esri to have the potential to wipe 4pc off GDP over the next 10 years. Developing all-island infrastructure in the face of Brexit might provide a compelling argument for relaxation of the fiscal space if co-operation with the Northern Irish Assembly is possible. What's very frustrating is that there are several tools we could use relatively easily to increase investment even without a relaxation of the fiscal space. Firstly, both industry and Government could work more closely to access EIB and EFSI funding. Our track record of drawdown of these funds isn't very strong and we welcome the opening of an EIB office in Dublin. The review of public-private partnership currently underway is to be welcomed and should be used strategically to help address bottlenecks in the short-term. From a cost perspective, the Government can, by upgrading the public procurement processes, deliver cost savings and value for money for the State. The introduction of the medium-term strategy for public contracts including concepts like early contractor engagement can significantly reduce the time and cost involved in the delivery of infrastructure. The Government could apply for additional fiscal space under the structural reform clause like other countries, such as Lithuania, have. We also recommended amongst other things that a national infrastructure investment target is put in place along with a delivery unit to address bottlenecks and blockages in the system. A national infrastructure commission, delivering under a new National Planning Framework, would insulate investment from the vagaries of the political cycle. It's no coincidence that the UK is trying to build a bridge over the abyss of Brexit. Last December, it announced a 500bn infrastructure pipeline with every project outlined, costed and time lined, unconstrained as it now is by the EU fiscal space. Government should deliver the message to the Commission that infrastructure enables economies to provide opportunity to the very groups becoming disillusioned with politics and the EU project. And before anyone accuses me of simply seeking infrastructure to benefit the construction industry, independent analysis estimates every billion invested in infrastructure yields around 12,000 construction jobs, and generates about 1bn in the domestic economy. That's before the improved connectivity, quality of life, connectivity and attractiveness to FDI is calculated. We believe industry and Government need to work together to ensure growth happens in the most efficient and sustainable way, shaping the economy and society through the NPF and ensuring we generate quality jobs. We strongly encourage the Government to reactivate the construction sector group established under Construction 2020 with a view to setting out a strategy for this industry and ensure it has capacity to deliver for the economy. Tom Parlon is director general of the Construction Industry Federation In a nutshell, the country is older, less religious, more ethnically diverse and the number living in a household is growing. Stock Image: PA The country is evolving - and fast. The housing supply is lagging behind. And the political and social change certainly isn't keeping pace. The Census 2016 summary results released by the Central Statistics Office yesterday reveal startling changes to the demographic landscape of this country: the population is up nearly 4pc to 4,761,865; population growth is bigger in cities; the number of rented homes is up to 497,111; births are down to 67,000 from 77,000; the numbers aged over 65 increased by almost a fifth; the average age is now 37.4 years, up from 36.1; there are 53,000 more females than males; household formation is below population growth; average household size is up to 2.75 persons; children per household is the same at 1.38; the number born outside the State is up to 17.3pc; Catholic numbers are down to 78pc or 3.7m people; the number saying they have no religion is up to 10pc; the non-religion group is now the second largest. In a nutshell, the country is older, less religious, more ethnically diverse and the number living in a household is growing. The results of Census 2016 pose a question for policy makers across the board, particularly in the areas of planning, health, education and care of the elderly. The 'lost decade' caused by the economic downturn has left an awful lot of deficiencies in our infrastructure. The demands on public services will only increase. This snapshot of a nation in flux poses major challenges for our Government and our so-called national parliament, which certainly isn't up to the pace. FF populism shows party has forgotten the bailout Property prices are rising, unemployment is down, builders making a bob - and Fianna Fail is making populist promises. It's like 2002 again. Micheal Martin has been keeping a low profile this week. The party leader hasn't been leading the charge on the policy front. But his party is leading the way in making the public believe there are no consequence from ignoring the advice of the Attorney General and breaching EU law. In a sure sign of what's to come in politics, Fianna Fail has allied itself with Sinn Fein to go beyond not only killing off water charges, but also to ensure water wasters won't even be penalised. Fianna Fail's Barry Cowen manages to keep a straight face when he is challenged on the party's stance on water. But after admitting water charges were necessary when the country was in a bailout, the party has already forgotten the journey the country has travelled. Fine Gael's Leo Varadkar quite justifiably invoked the ghost of Sean Lemass to point out the party's abandonment of its traditions of taking responsible decisions in the best interests of the country. "The party of Lemass, the party that was once proud to stand up for things, that would do the right thing for the Irish people, is now in a position that it determines its position on water solely out of its fear of you and Sinn Fein," he told Solidarity PBP TD Paul Murphy. How the mighty are fallen. Tourists on the top of the Rock in the British overseas territory of Gibraltar. Photo: REUTERS/Jon Nazca The EU's draft negotiation guidelines stipulate: "No agreement between the EU and the United Kingdom may apply to the territory of Gibraltar without agreement between the Kingdom of Spain and the United Kingdom". Whilst I was reading this here in Dammam, Saudi Arabia, I thought that perhaps the sunshine had affected my brain or it was an April Fool's Day joke and someone had substituted Gibraltar for Northern Ireland and Spain for Ireland. Unfortunately, it was Gibraltar and not Northern Ireland that had received official EU recognition as a concern for another fellow member state, ie Spain. Now we have a situation where the strategically important but economically insignificant rock could be an important factor in the forthcoming Brexit negotiations, with Spain being granted official veto rights by the EU, whereas Ireland's role in the future of Northern Ireland's path outside Brexit is that of an outside plea bargainer. This situation unfolds despite more than 40pc of Ireland's economic output being UK focused; and the possibility of a return to a 'hard' Border creating the serious prospect of a return to the Troubles. Such a situation deserves and requires the full support of all our EU partners during the Brexit negotiations. Allow me to paraphrase Padraig Pearse: "O wise men, riddle me this: what if the dream come true?" And if during Brexit negotiations Irish officials with the full support of the EU press for a united Ireland within the EU or at least an all Ireland referendum for same? We can only speculate how Mr Pearse would have expressed his aspirations for a united Ireland had he lived in the 21st century. Let us hope that our local politicians and Irish diplomats will do their utmost to ensure that the Northern Irish situation receives as much attention and support by the EU as is given to Gibraltar during the forthcoming Brexit negotiations. Winfried Eamon Scheidges Al Khobar, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (Formerly of Newcastle, Co Galway) Rewarding incompetence As a senior citizen in exile on a brief visit home, I am bewildered with the negative action concerning a Garda Commissioner, who admits to incompetence within her ranks. I have spent 50 years in industry, from junior clerk in Dublin in 1938 to senior management in London in 1988, and incompetence was always rewarded with instant dismissal. What is keeping Dail Eireann from awarding her the Order of the Boot... before she does more damage. Or is it jobs for the boys...sorry, girls! Patrick White Preston, England Axing tax relief is ill advised People who pay private health insurance pay for our health care three times. We pay taxes, which are supposed to fund the public health system. We pay expensive private insurance premiums. And then every fee paid to a general practice subsidises the care of people with medical cards or GP visit cards, because the State underfunds general practice. We do not jump queues. We leave the public queue, making space for someone else, and go to a private practice or private hospital which receives no State funding. Every visit to a consultant's private practice helps to keep that much-needed consultant in the country. Doctors and surgeons need to treat a minimum number of cases to maintain their professional standards of excellence. Frequent closures of wards and operating theatres in public hospitals make it impossible for consultants to maintain their optimum case load without access to private practice. The proposal to remove tax relief on health insurance will mean many people giving up their cover. This will have consequences for the Exchequer - increasing the already obscene length of public waiting lists decreases the patients' chances of returning to the workforce. More people will be drawing disability benefit and fewer people will be able to work and pay income tax. A significant drop in the number of insured people will cause a loss of business for the insurance companies, and the private hospitals and clinics, possibly leading to job losses. Any job loss has a dual financial impact on the Exchequer; there is a loss of PAYE and PRSI, and an increase in social welfare claims. Can any of our politicians explain the benefit of removing the minimal tax relief and forcing people to stop paying for their own health care? Anne P Byrne Bray, Co Wicklow Treat Bus Eireann workers fairly As the bus strike continues to rumble on for more than two weeks, it is amazing the contrasting attitude of Government towards those workers in comparison to that expressed towards gardai when they sought improvement to their pay and conditions. The bus drivers are only striving to hold what they have, while gardai sought and received pay increases and improved conditions. The Department of Justice engaged with gardai, yet the Department of Transport and Minister Shane Ross have refused to get involved in trying to resolve the bus dispute. Since then we have seen the incredible revelations in relation to what could be described as myriad deceptive practices by gardai who are supposed to be our guardians and protectors of justice, with the result that public confidence in them has been irreparably damaged. Yet they have been financially rewarded and it is almost guaranteed that none of them will ever be reprimanded or held accountable in any way for the serious misdemeanours they are alleged to have been involved in. If the Government is serious about protecting life in rural Ireland, it is imperative that Bus Eireann workers are treated fairly as the company provides a valuable service to rural Ireland that is not being provided by private bus operators who only operate the prime routes. Christy Kelly Templeglantine, Co Limerick USC pension double whammy Can I draw your readers' attention to a very great injustice in our tax system. For those of you responsible people who are putting money away in a pension scheme for your old age, consider this: You pay USC on your income. You save a portion of the balance in a pension scheme. When the time comes to take benefits from that pension scheme you pay USC again on the income. In other words, you pay USC twice on the same money. Kieran Burke Ashbourne, Co Meath Western RPG's have, in some part, taught us that the typical RPG experience is set in vast, high-fantasy worlds such as those brought to life in The Elder Scrolls and The Witcher. For anyone feeling fatigued at the thought of slogging through another 80-hour fantasy epic, perhaps turn your attention towards Japanese RPG's, or the newly-released Persona 5, to be specific. Like its predecessors, Persona 5 is part social simulator, part dungeon crawler. By day, you experience life as a high school student - taking classes, visiting cafes, hanging out with friends etc. By night, you assume another persona, taking on the guise of the leader of the Phantom Thieves, a troupe of idealistic teenagers that infiltrate a parallel reality known as the Metaverse. The job of the Phantom Thieves is to find and steal Treasures from locations known as Palaces, which are themselves manifestations of the corrupted hearts of adults. It's a very typically Japanese concept - the innocence of youth coupled with matter-of-fact reasoning that leads to an odds-defying reformation of society. It may be typical, but it is an incredibly engaging ride from start to finish. It is also in the Metaverse that you will meet the Personas themselves - representations of people's personalities manifesting as angels, demons or monsters of all shapes and sizes. Physical moves can be used to chip away at health points incrementally, but exploiting an elemental weakness elevates battles from turn-based slapsies to a flurry of crushing combos. Persona 5's combat draws inspiration from all the best elements of previous Persona games and is absolutely riveting as a result. While simply walking around and taking in Persona 5's version of Tokyo is often breathtaking and always rewarding, you will always have your eye on the deadline by which you must steal Treasures. As such, it is up to the player to prioritise after-school and weekend activities. Attributes such as Knowledge, Charm, Proficiency, and Guts can be improved by studying, working in part-time jobs, crafting tools, or watching DVDs. In turn, these enable you to build deeper bonds with other characters to strengthen yourself and your cause. Persona 5 is a deeply complex and deeply rewarding game. Surely, it is the best JRPG released in the past 5 years and ranks among the best from the past decade. If you are weary of the horse and sword, perhaps Persona 5 can convince you to take a jaunt into the wacky world of JRPG's. A new book that 'explores Ireland's most enchanted places' features the Land of Legends - Louth - with particular emphasis on Cooley and the Boyne Valley. 'Legendary Ireland - Myths and Legends of Ireland' has just been published by The O'Brien Press and author Eithne Massey says writing the book was a labour of love and 'a product of a lifelong attachment to the places and stories of my native Ireland'. The book is divided into the provinces and The Cattle Raid of Cooley features prominently. Massey writes: 'The Cooley peninsula carries resonances of past battles and ancient divisions. From the time of the great epic of the Tain Bo Cuailigne, it marked the borderland between Ulster and Leinster, north and south. 'To the north of the peninsula lies Newry; to the south lies Dundalk. Yet it is, to an extent, a self-enclosed world of its own; the physical action of travelling from the urban sprawl of either town to the misty beauty of the hills gives the impression of leaving one world and entering another. 'It is very east to imagine it as a self-enclosed kingdom. The town of Carlingford with its lovely harbour provides a pleasant base for time spent exploring the area. Once an important defensive town, Carlingford is of Norse origin and has preserved its ancient buildings to a degree that is unusual in Irish towns. Massey goes on to say the peninsula is 'ideal for the hill-walker' and points to a number of other sites including the Long Woman's Grave and Proleek Dolmen. She also notes: 'This part of the county is very different from the area around prosperous Ardee, but the people still speak with the same slow musical accent, and still seem to take a long time in considering a basic question such as a request for directions. 'Perhaps such hesitation is a result of having been so long a people of the borderlands, between North and South, between Celt and Norman, between a world of quiet farms and lovely hill, and one of great heroism and tragic battles'. Legendary Ireland is available to buy in hardback priced 16.99. Sean Kelly, Sarah McClancy, Orla Sheridan and Johan Crawford at the launch of the Darkness into Light campaign. Picture: Ken Finegan The launch of Dundalk's first ever 'Darkness Into Light' walk was held at Market Square last weekend. Darkness into Light is a unique, early morning experience which begins in darkness at 4.15am as thousands of people walk or run a five kilometre route while dawn is breaking. The early dawn represents hope and is symbolic of the work of Pieta House; bringing people from darkness back into the light. In 2016, over 130,000 people took part in over 50 venues across Ireland. Dundalk will host its very own Darkness into Light for the first time in 2017 with Dundalk Institute of Technology being selected as the venue. Speaking at the launch at the Market Square on Saturday, Event Director for Dundalk, Sean Kelly, said 'Darkness Into Light is a people's event organised by local committees all over the country and luckily this year a group of volunteers have got together in Dundalk to organise it. It's a fantastic opportunity to raise much needed funds for an issue that affects so many lives especially here in Dundalk. While suicide is a devastating tragedy, we must not forget that there is hope, there is help, and Pieta House will be there to provide both.' The campaign is a vital fundraiser for Pieta House as demand for the service continues to grow. With more than 80% of Pieta House's income depending on public donations, funds raised during Darkness into Light are essential for Pieta House to continue to provide a free service for the increasing numbers seeking help. To register to take part please visit dil.pieta.ie/event-information/venues/dundalk Egyptian female travellers, children and men over 49 will be allowed to enter Sudan without a visa Sudan will now require Egyptian men aged between 18 and 49 years old to apply for visas in order to enter the country, the country's ambassdor to Egypt, Abdel-Mahmoud Abdel-Halim, said on Friday. The decision was issued on 3 April, the ambassador told Ahram Online, describing the measure as "a technical procedure among those which are regularly revised, which organise the entrance of travellers from fraternal countries to Sudan." However, Egyptian women, children and men over 49 years old will be allowed to enter Sudan without a visa. The visa, which can be obtained from Sudanese embassies and consulates, will be free of charge, said the ambassador. Abdel-Halim said the visa issue was "not new" as Egypt has applied a similar measure on Sudanese men for the last fifty years. "Male Egyptians from 18-49 already have to take permission from [Egyptian] security [officials] to travel," he said. Egyptian citizens who wish to travel to Sudan must seek security clearance from the Egyptian government, under rules imposed recently that have mandated similar measures for Egyptians looking to travel to a number of countries in the Middle East and Africa. The spokesman of Egypt's foreign ministry was not available for an immediate comment. Recent media spats Last month, several media outlets in Egypt and Sudan engaged in a sparring match after Sudans media minister was reported as saying that his country's civilisation is "older than" that of Egypt. Media figures have also argued over the Halayeb Triangle border region, which comprises three cities and currently falls under Egyptian authority. The area has been a source of tension for decades, with rows reoccurring over which country has the right to manage the area's natural resources. The two countries' foreign ministers stated in March after the recent media spat that they reject "unacceptable transgressions" that could drive a wedge between the two countries. In 2004, Egypt and Sudan signed the Four Freedoms Agreement, which in theory allows Egyptians and Sudanese citizens to freely move across the border separating the two states, and the rights to reside, work and own property in either country without a permit. Several Sudanese officials have asked Egypt over the past years to fully implement the agreement provisions, according to Sudanese media reports. Search Keywords: Short link: An innovative programme aimed at helping young people explore their creative capabilities and explore their potential as leaders and mentors has just been completed at O Fiaich College. And on Monday, former governor of Mountjoy Prison, John Lonergan, gave an inspiring speech as 27 of the course's participants received their certificates. The six week programme, called 'Create the Great in You' was devised by former DkIT student Mark McCormack. He said: 'The idea of our mentoring workshops and peer-based conversations is to provide a space where young people get an opportunity to express themselves and work in teams. 'The O Fiaich College programme was the pilot one and we were delighted with the level of interest and engagement from the Transition Year students who participated. We feel the programme can be adapted to suit people of all ages and could be used in a variety of different settings including community groups, clubs and corporations'. Mark, who is a father of three from Ardee, returned to education as a mature student and graduated from DkIT in 2015 with a BA in Social Care Work. He had previously worked as a doorman for years. He was awarded the President's Prize that year for his outstanding contribution to the college and the community. In addition, he co-authored, with Dr Bernadette Brere, a paper about the importance of mentoring in education that was chosen to represent Ireland at the European Sociological Education Conference which took place in Finland last year. He said: 'Having worked on door security for many years, I could see first hand some of the problems that young people were having and to some extent, that was reflected in my own life. I found myself wanting to help guide the next generation and I think that is where the logic in putting this programme together came from. 'Essentially, it is about getting to know yourself, how you can fit into society, how you can help people'. It was through his social care work that Mark first got to know Mr Lonergan and the pair have a good relationship. The former governor was delighted to come to Dundalk on Monday to make the certificate presentations. O Fiaich students, over the course of the six week programme, were able to focus on issues before they became problems. There was a trip to Carlingford included as well as a comedy workshop and poetry workshop where students were able to express themselves in new and innovative ways. In addition, there were workshops on community and creativity as well as an introduction to mentoring so that students were able to see the skills they have which can help those younger than them. Mark said: 'It was really interesting and successful and I am grateful to O Fiaich College TY co-ordinator Audrey Flood and principal Padraig McGovern for being supportive of the programme. For more information on the 'Create the Great in You' programme, contact Mark at markmaccormack@gmail.com Declan Breathnach TD with shopkeepers, Benny Gilsenan from Bennys Shop, North Circular Road, on the left, and Brian OCarroll, owner, Spar Shop, Lower Liffey Street, on the right Border retailers know all about the cost of the black economy. From illicit alcohol to counterfeit cigarettes to the relatively new phenomenon of solid fuel, smuggling continues. And as government agencies on both sides of the border struggle to keep on top of it, Louth TD Declan Breathnach is this week bringing forward legislation that aims to target those who buy illicit goods. One of the key measures proposed under Mr Breathnach's Sale of Illicit Goods Bill, that is due to be put before Leinster House today (Tuesday), is to make it an offence for a person to buy illicit alcohol, illicit tobacco or illicit solid fuel. The bill also makes it an offence for a person to buy alcohol, tobacco or solid fuel from an unregistered retailer. In addition, this bill, which is supported by the more than 3,000 members of the Retailers Against Smuggling (RAS) organisation, introduces an on-the-spot fine of 100 which will be imposed where a person buys alcohol, tobacco or solid fuel which is illicit, or where a person buys alcohol, tobacco or solid fuel from a retailer who is not registered or licensed. Mr Breathnach told the Argus: 'I am sponsoring this bill on behalf of Retailers Against Smuggling, a 3,000 retailers-strong association that looks to raise awareness and bring to the fore issues that directly impact retailers specifically relating to smuggling and the black market. 'The bill will introduce an on-the-spot fine for those who purchase illicit alcohol, tobacco and solid fuel where tax has not been paid or where the product has not been purchased from a legitimate and registered retailer. 'This proposal is about affecting consumer behaviour by getting those to realise that purchasing the cheaper illicit products is illegal and hopefully it will deter people from doing it, in turn cutting the supply of profit to criminal gangs in our cities and along the border'. These are proposals Mr Breathnach has been working on for some time. Recently, he met with retailers in Dublin to hear first hand how illicit trading is affecting their business. He said: 'Tobacco sales are a large part of the business of many small shops. Government excise duties have increased the cost of a 20 pack of cigarettes to an all-time high. This in turn has turned customers towards illegal traders who are selling illegal, and sometimes unsafe, products at a much lower price'. And it's not just cigarettes and alcohol that are being smuggled. Solid fuels are too. The introduction of the carbon tax in the Finance Act 2010 has had the direct effect of increasing prices for fuel products throughout Ireland. Mr Breathnach said: 'As a consequence the growth of illicit trade in solid fuel products such as coal, peat briquettes and sod peat has been evident, particularly in border regions. 'This is not a victimless crime. The Hardware Association of Ireland are greatly concerned. To understand the scale of the problem, they have provided an example as follows: a standard truck carrying 20 tonnes of coal from Northern Ireland to the South without the application of Carbon Tax and the differential in VAT means that the perpetrator saves 1,195.61 in Carbon Tax alone. 'The difference in VAT increases the evasion 'prize' to 2,005.61. They have concerns that this is too tempting for too many. Not alone does the Irish exchequer lose the tax income, but the legitimate trade can no longer compete. 'According to the Hardware Association of Ireland this is only part of the problem. There's now an active online forum which explains how consumers can ring a courier company based in Dublin and arrange collection of coal from a coal warehouse in Co. Tyrone. 'Customers are also encouraged to 'like' the Facebook page, and it now has 7,726 likes. 'The problem is that many consumers are genuinely unaware that, if they do not personally accompany solid fuel for their own domestic use across the border, they cannot import it without paying Carbon Tax'. Mr Breathnach said: 'The cheaper price of illicit goods remains the incentive for the supply and demand of illicit products. Hopefully this new legislation will act as a deterrent to those considering purchasing goods from an illicit source as it makes it an offence to purchase illicit goods. 'While the bill is focusing on illicit trade in alcohol, tobacco and solid fuel, there are other areas where illicit trade is increasing. For example, while use of illegal diesel has gone down, there is evidence that there is an increase in trade of illegal home heating oil. RAS told the Argus they welcome Mr Breathnach's Sales of Illicit Goods Bill and said it is 'a significant step in combating smuggling into Ireland - a problem that cost the exchequer as much as 2.4bn in 2015. RAS spokesman, Benny Gilsenan, welcomed the bill as a means of protecting small retailers: 'This bill will help protect small retailers by deterring the purchase of illicit goods. 'This goes some way to closing the gaping holes in Irish legislation that have existed until now. 'While RAS welcome the draft legislation, we also recognise that Revenue officials and An Garda Siochana need more resources to combat smuggling in the coming years: 'Brexit has created a political atmosphere that will likely make cross-border smuggling more lucrative, with a fluctuating sterling and potential tariffs. 'The bill ensures that a major gap in the legislation surrounding the illicit trade is closed - the next steps are to ensure that retailers and Revenue do not lose out on yet more money to criminals'. The draft legislation will be tabled in Dail Eireann by Mr Breathnach and Robert Troy Longford/Westmeath, on Tuesday. Mr Gilsenan said: Retailers Against Smuggling would like to thank and commend Mr Breathnach for his dedication in drafting a bill that is important to the economy of our island during these uncertain times'. In just over eighteen months, the church of St. Oliver Plunkett in Blackrock was for the second time, the scene of a tragic funeral, where a community and a country mourned the loss of a hero who lost his life in the line of duty. The death of Garda Tony Golden, who was murdered in Omeath in October 2015 was recalled at the funeral of Captain Mark Duffy. Parish Priest, Fr. Padraig Keenan welcomed mourners to the church on Thursday last, saying: 'In the early hours of Tuesday 14 March, a dark cloud descended over the island of Ireland following the tragic accident of R116. None more so was that darkness felt than within the families and communities of the four crew members.' He added: 'As we share this liturgy in remembering Captain Mark Duffy, we keep in our thoughts and prayers, the late Captain Dara Fitzpatrick, and those who are missing: Winchman Ciaran Smith and Paul Ormsby. We bring to mind their family members who are present with us and their colleagues in the Irish Coast Guard.' 'By our presence together, we are in solidarity in prayer with you Hermione, Esme, Fionn and your wider family circle at this time. May God hold each of you in the palm of his hand. By your presence with us today, President Higgins, I welcome you once again to this church, bringing to mind the Funeral of the late Garda Tony Golden on your last occasion.' Meanwhile, the work which Captain Duffy had done to promote organ donor awareness, and transporting sick children to hospital in London for transplant was remembered in the Seanad last week. Senator Keith Swanick said during Senate debates last week: 'The dignity with which Captain Mark Duffy, from Rescue 116, was borne ashore on Sunday last is something that will stay with me forever. He gave his life so that others might live. Along with his colleagues, he was a hero and somebody to hold up as a role model to our children. Heroes do not arrive out of nowhere. They are the embodiment of their family and often their communities. Captain Mark Duffy will be laid to rest tomorrow in his home village of Blackrock in County Louth. It is striking that his funeral notice reads: 'Mark's wish would be for you to carry an organ donor card.' It is very fitting that this notice by the Duffy family comes just at the start of Organ Donor Awareness Week that has been organised by the Irish Kidney Association. He added: 'Approximately 700 people in Ireland await life-saving heart, lung, liver, kidney and pancreas transplants. Thanks to the gift of organ donation over 3,000 people in Ireland enjoy an extended life. Just like the thousands rescued by the Irish Coast Guard, they too have been rescued and given a new lease of life.' The coffin of Captain Mark Duffy is carried from Oliver Plunkett Church in Blackrock following his funeral A lone piper led the solemn procession of mourners to the church of St. Oliver Plunkett, Blackrock, from where coastguard pilot, Captain Mark Duffy made his final journey. The remains of Capt. Duffy, the coastguard pilot who perished with the crew of helicopter Rescue 116 off the coast of Mayo two weeks ago, had been brought back to the community he loved in Blackrock, and the family he cherished, his wife Hermione, daughter Esme and son Fionn. And on Thursday morning last, hundreds of people lined the road outside Blackrock church to honour a man who was remembered as a 'hero' to all. Amongst the mourners were President Michael D Higgins, Catholic Primate of All Ireland Eamon Martin and the Taoiseach's aide de camp. As the funeral service began, Captain Duffy's two children brought symbols to the altar which reflected Mark's life including his slippers, his helmet, his wedding band, and a trio of rings which he had bought his wife Hermione for her 40th birthday, a rugby ball, which reflected the pride he had in his son Fionn's playing with Dundalk Rugby club, and a selection of cards which his children had made for him over the years. Celebrating the funeral mass, Fr. Stephen Duffy, an uncle of Mark's, said it was 'one of those occasions where words are not only inadequate, but are entirely useless.' He spoke of the 'shared loss, and shared grief' that the whole community felt. 'We are, all of us, steeped in our own personal grief at the loss of Mark, it is a community catastrophe.' He described the pilot as 'one of the best and finest people who has been taken from us,' adding 'When I learned that Mark and the crew of 116 were missing, I really for the first time truly understood the cry of Jesus when he said 'My god, my God, what have you forsaken us?' It seemed so unfair while the rest of us were untouched, a young man such as Mark - happy, generous to a fault, beloved of his wife and children and family, should have been so tragically removed from among us.' 'Mark was special because he was a father, and like all good fathers, his thoughts were always for his children.' Fr. Duffy described him as 'one of God's finest creatures. He was kindly, humble, pure of heart, peace loving, good-natured, He had a vivacity, a tremendous sense of fun, a desire in all things to help and be of service.' 'On this terribly sad day what more can I say, we are all so deeply and personally sad that Mark should have died so young and so unexpectedly, except that Mark will help us to carry the heavy cross of his terrible loss.' He recalled Mark's late father, Jimmy, who died 'suddenly and also so unexpectedly in 1979,' saying that they will be reunited. Prayers were offered for the whole crew of Rescue 116, and all of those who took part in the search and rescue mission for the fallen crew, for the people of Blacksod for their 'outstanding support and compassion', and for the community of Blackrock who have endured the loss of one of its finest members. Sympathies were also expressed to the 'family of the Irish coastguard,' who had endured the tragedy of searching for 'their missing friends.' There were poignant moments as Mark's wife Hermione had asked that the poem by W.B Yeats 'An Irish Airman Forsees His Death' be recited. Ed Shivnen, a fellow coastguard pilot, and friend of Mark's, told how 'from an early age, he loved aviation, but specifically helicopters, and when they first met as they began their training for search and rescue missions, they discovered a shared passion for old television shows such as Airwolf, and Blue Thunder.' 'We worked really well together during our initial training, and became good friends. We got fitted out with cool helmets and flight suits and we were living the dream.' 'After a few years Mark earned his captaincy, and you could see by the look on his face, he loved flying that helicopter.' 'But during his 24 hour shifts, he would always phone home to talk to Hermione and Esme and Fionn. They were his world.' He added: 'During Mark's sixteen year career as a coastguard helicopter pilot, Mark has aided and helped and saved so many people, in all weather conditions by using his steady hand along with the bravery and skill of his crew to cradle those in fear, those in danger on land or on the sea, back to the safety of his Sikorsky helicopter and back home.' He told how Mark had recently begun transporting sick children who were in need of transplants to London for treatment, and how he had become vocal about the need for more organ donors. 'Mark embodied safety, and professionalism, whether it was on land or in the air, and was unwavering when it came to making a safe decision.' He was also a great ambassador for cross border co-operation with the emergency services on both sides of the border, and was highly involved in setting up exercises. 'The outpouring of compassion and support from services across the whole island for Mark and his crew Dara Fitzpatrick, Ciaran Smith and Paul Ormsby, was as a result of his hard work and his dedication and friendships.' Another friend of Mark's, Garda Declan Whelan said 'We all know that Mark loved flying, it wasn't just his job, it was his passion. But in his downtime, his family came first.' He spoke of Mark's love for hiking, and the memories they shared climbing the Cooley mountains in particular. He read out the poignant words on behalf of Mark's wife Hermione: 'The sea, it pulled Mark to it, it's ebb and flow, the waves, the stillness, the rage, the low tides, the high tides, it was part of our lives. Our home by the sea was our wee world, where Mark would come in after a 24 hour shift and say 'Oh Hermione, I love coming home to you and the kids, but I love flying that helicopter. He then shut the door behind him and engrossed himself in our home life. Mark and I did everything together as a team, he always allayed my worries. He put a safety net around our home, he lived consciously each day, and lived for the moment. He was a trove of information, from politics to suspension bridges, from music to flying. Our house is full of music every day, we danced, we laughed, we sang, and we hugged. He gave me so much, but most of all we had our children. Living here by the sea was absolute contentment for him.' 'We had the conversation that should anything every happen, he told me to be strong. He told me I could do it.' She recalled his steely reserve and selflessness, his 'desire to do everything right,' and said they would always remember him as their 'charming, bashful daddy hero.' The bastion of the British left, the Guardian newspaper, had readers puzzled after Prime Minister Theresa May triggered Article 50 with a 'too clever by half' front page that, while striking, seemed to show Dundalk and other parts of Ireland leaving the EU along with Britain. Under the headline of 'Britain steps into the unknown', the anti-Brexit Guardian used missing pieces of a jigsaw of Europe to represent Britain leaving the EU. But thanks to a lack of a 'Northern Ireland' shaped jigsaw piece, closer examination of the graphic showed the removal of not only Dundalk but Donegal, Leitrim, Cavan and Monaghan, along with a bit of Wicklow. Twitter was quick to catch the mistake, with a number of humorous comments posted. Richard Chambers tweeted: 'Jesus. They really are leaving. And by the looks of things, they're taking Donegal and Dundalk with them', while Colin O'Connor said: 'Britain steps into the unknown' and they're taking Donegal and part of Cavan with them it seems'. Even the DUP's Jeffrey Donaldson also got in on the act: 'Looks like Donegal is coming with us . .. my cousin Daniel will be pleased'. And not everyone was sorry to see Dundalk potentially go - Aidan Geraghty tweeted: 'Losing Wicklow is only a small price to pay for taking Dundalk off our hands'. The Guardian's editor, Katharine Viner, who was bombarded with tweets, blamed the offending graphic on 'bloody jigsaws' on her Twitter account. Sinn Fein MEP Matt Carthy says the European Commission is not dealing adequately with the consequences for Ireland of the British decision to exit the European Union. He said the Commission has been unable to provide any assurance that major roads crossing the Irish border will remain free of custom posts and border checks after Brexit. Mr Carthy, whose constituency covers the entire border area from Donegal to Louth, recently submitted a question asking the EU Commission to outline its proposals for ensuring the roads remain free from custom posts and border checks. He said: 'On the island of Ireland there are at least 12 primary roads which cross the border from the South into the North. These include the N1/A1. Given that the Irish government will not be a negotiating partner in the Brexit negotiations, I asked the Commission to outline specifically what proposals it has to ensure that these roads remain free from custom posts and border checks after the UK leaves the European Union. 'The Commission has been unable to provide me with an answer. 'On the eve of the Article 50 notification by Britain, this is simply not good enough and will cause further deep unease in Ireland, particularly in border counties. 'It also raises major concerns regarding the assurances so far provided by the Irish and British Governments. 'As someone who lives in the border region, I know that it would be unworkable to have a new EU frontier dividing communities stretching from Dundalk to Derry. 'There is growing concern among businesses, workers, students and farmers in the border region about customs tariffs and the restriction of the movement of goods, services and people. 'It is incumbent on the EU Commission to state clearly their position and to do everything in its power to ensure freedom of movement of people and goods in Ireland'. An aspiring young Wexford chef has taken top honours in Manor Farm 21 minute cookery challenge. Joseph Roche, aged 22, a DIT Culinary Arts student from Enniscorthy, competed against four other finalists from the prestigious school of culinary arts on Cathal Brugha Street in Dublin this week. Vincent Carton, managing director of Irish chicken producer Manor Farm said the standard was exceptionally high this year. 'I was particularly impressed by the creativity of the dishes. 'The temptation for most is to cook foods that are already partly prepared so that dinner becomes an assembly line rather than an activity where you're cooking fresh foods from scratch. This important competition proves how limited time shouldn't limit taste and nutrition.' The five finalists from Laois, Dublin, Wexford, Meath and Sweden attracted high praise from the judges, who included Vincent Carton, Dr Frank Cullen, Head of the DIT School of Culinary Arts and Caitriona Redmond, food writer and blogger of Wholesome Ireland. Each student was tasked to cook a tasty, low cost and nutritious meal in 21 minutes or less. The timing is based on research that shows 21 minutes is the average time a working mother has to cook a mid-week evening meal. The winning dish was Joseph's Mexican inspired Pan fried Ras el Hanout chicken leg oyster with Mexican style mixed vegetables. 'I had to keep sight of creating a dish that was nutritional, easy to prepare and also one that would be liked by the whole family, especially young children,' said Joseph, who won 1,000 as a result of his culinary adventure. All of the recipes are available to view on manorfarm.ie. Free Fire is a trigger-happy free-for-all which becomes wearisome in the end Essex-born filmmaker Ben Wheatley gets into a Reservoir Dogs groove with this giddily entertaining shoot-out set in a 1978 Boston warehouse that draws blood with breathless action sequences as well as verbal grenades. The trigger-happy free-for-all becomes wearisome before the final bullet reaches its intended target, and sinewy subplots to connect characters sometimes feel contrived, but as an exercise in controlled mayhem, Free Fire hits more than it misses. Wheatley and co-writer Amy Jump have keen ears for snappy dialogue, whether it be one gunman petulantly refusing to lay down his weapon - 'It's too late, I've been insulted.' - or another thug, high on heroin to dull the pain of a swollen black eye, likening his appearance to someone who has recently enjoyed sexual congress with 'a reluctant panda bear'. A rich vein of jet black humour courses beneath the surface of each exchange of gunfire and the script delights in upending gender stereotypes by casting Oscar winner Brie Larson as the solitary woman in a hyperviolent world of testosterone-crazed fools. 'We can't all be nice girls,' she snarls at one associate, aiming her revolver squarely between his terror-filled eyes. Chris (Cillian Murphy) and fellow Irishman Frank (Michael Smiley) need to source several cases of M16 rifles to arm their IRA brethren. They head to an abandoned warehouse to complete a deal flanked by hired muscle Bernie (Enzo Cilenti) and Stevo (Sam Riley), under the escort of suave American middle man Ord (Armie Hammer) and his sassy associate, Justine (Larson). The suppliers are emotionally volatile South African dealer Vernon (Sharlto Copley) and his Black Panther associate Martin (Babou Ceesay), who have drafted in two stooges - Harry (Jack Reynor) and Gordon (Noah Taylor) - to even the numbers. The exchange goes sour when Vernon attempts to palm off AR-70 assault rifles in place of the promised weapons. Tempers fray and Justine deflects sexist barbs aimed to undermine her position. 'I'm IIFM - in it for myself,' she calmly reminds both sides. When bullets fly as a result of an unfortunate personal connection, fragile alliances disintegrate, rivalries resurface and Vernon loses his slender grasp on reality. 'He was misdiagnosed as a child genius and never got over it,' wearily notes Justine. Free Fire sets out its action-oriented intentions, reducing most of the cast to the shuffling wounded, who crawl around the warehouse floor with blood seeping from bullet wounds as they search for an exit from the mayhem (other than an early grave). Copley overacts with wild abandon, largely to comic effect, while Murphy and Larson spark a simmering on-screen chemistry that thankfully never boils over into a superfluous dalliance. The film's enduring romance is between hot-headed men and their loaded weapons. Unlike many of the characters, that love never dies. Irish Water has been given the go-ahead by Wexford County Council for upgrade work at the borehole site at Barnadown Upper, Gorey. The planned works include the removal of existing fencing; the installation of new 2.4 metre high mesh panel type fencing and a gate; and improvements to the vehicular access surfacing. The plan also involves upgrades to well-head chambers; the decommissioning of the existing treatment works; upgrades to meica equipment; and associated ancillary works. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday called on US President Donald Trump to back up his harsh words against Syria with actions, following a suspected chemical attack this week. An analysis of victims being treated in Turkey suggests they were exposed to the deadly nerve agent sarin, the country's health ministry said Thursday. "Trump said it was impossible to close your eyes against the Assad regime's hateful actions. Thank you, but don't limit yourself to comments, we need action," Erdogan told Turkey's Kanal 7 television. "If it truly is a matter of actions, then Turkey is ready to take its responsibilities. We will not back down," he said. Trump said Wednesday that he was so shocked by the horrific attack in Idlib Province, which killed at least 86 people, that he was considering unilateral US action against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. "When you kill innocent children, innocent babies, little babies... that crosses many, many lines, beyond a red line, many, many lines," he warned. But Trump did not go into detail about what any US response to the atrocity would be -- and he has previously opposed deeper US military involvement in Syria's civil war. Former US president Barack Obama had also warned Syria that chemical attacks in the country's civil war would cross a "red line", but later refrained from taking military action against the regime. Search Keywords: Short link: A descendant of Bishop Thomas Ram, the man generally credited as being the founder of Gorey almost 400 years ago, paid a visit to his tomb in the historic graveyard in Market Square last Friday afternoon. Nicholas Charlesworth from Cornwall, and his wife Judy, were on their first visit to Gorey and were shown various sites of historic interest associated with the Ram and Stopford families, by historian Michael Fitzpatrick. Nick explained that his grandmother, Mary Frances Ram, was daughter of George Stopford Ram, a descendant of Dr Thomas Ram, Bishop of Ferns. Bishop Ram was twice married, and Nick can trace his ancestry back thirteen generations to Abel Ram, son of Bishop Ram. In 1623, Bishop Ram wrote the Town Charter of Newborough, but the town eventually returned to the old name of Gorey. Michael Fitzpatrick explained that the town's coat of arms was the work of Bishop Ram. He died of apoplexy in Dublin in 1634, and was brought back to Gorey and interred in a tomb inside the ancient church in the cemetery. This church survived until 1819, and was replaced by another church on the site until 1859, and this in turn was replaced by Christ Church further up the town in 1861. Bishop Ram's tomb and headstone survived, and there are five Ram family burials recorded in the cemetery. Ten years ago, the grave, near the centre of the cemetery, was uncovered from dense overgrowth by a team of Gorey Tidy Towns volunteers. It can be identified by the ornate railing around it. 'I hadn't realised he was so prominent,' said Nick. 'The writing on the tombstone is not really legible now, but you can pick out a few words.' Other locations shown to the visitors included Courtown, Marlfield House, the gate lodge at Ballinatray, Clonattin, and Ramsfort Park. Michael said that two of Bishop Ram's sons, George and Andrew Ram, funded the construction of Gorey's Market House in 1709. Another descendant, Stephen Ram, planned the layout of Gorey as we know it in the late 1700s. The seats of the Ram family were in Ramsfort and Clonattin, and these mansions were destroyed in the 1798 rebellion. Ramsfort House was rebuilt and is now in private ownership. It was state-owned from the 1930s to the 1980s when it served as Colaiste Garman. At the Brexit Forum hosted by James Browne TDin The Talbot Hotel: Charlie McConalogue TD, Cllr Joe Sullivan, Phelem O'Neill, Irish Farmers Journal, Rowena Dwyer (IFA), Dara Calleary, Fianna Fail spokesman for Public Expenditure and Reform, James Browne TD, Cllr Pip Breen, Cllr Willie Kavanagh and Cllr John Fleming Brexit was top of the agenda at two meetings in Wexford last week, both called by members of Fianna Fail. Enniscorthy Deputy James Browne hosted a Brexit Forum in Wexford town on Friday, March 24, the meeting called following the news that Cllr Malcolm Byrne was hosting a conference on the same issue in the town on Thursday, March 30. Deputy Browne's forum took place at the Talbot Hotel while Cllr Byrne's was held at Clayton Whites Hotel. The deputy's forum focussed in particular on the implications of Brexit on Agriculture and Tourism in Wexford and the South East region, and also the repercussions to the wider economy and political landscape. Malcolm Byrne said it was unfortunate that the two events were so close. 'I had been planning Thursday's event for a number of months. In some ways, they complimented each other. The one I have organised was deliberately open and inclusive and focused on the impact on Wexford and the South East - that is why there is the broad range of speakers with an understanding of Wexford. 'The purpose of James' event was to influence party policy and he had a number of Fianna Fail spokespeople involved. If the two events result in County Wexford being better prepared for the Brexit challenge, all the better, he said. Deputy Browne said there is deep concern about the impact of Brexit on the economy of Wexford and the South East region. 'We need to be ready, we need our voices heard. This is the most serious matter for this country in a generation.' Guest speakers at Deputy Browne's forum included Rowena Dwyer, Chief Economist with the IFA, Phelim O'Neill, Markets Specialist with the Farmers Journal, Joe Dolan, President of the Irish Hotel Federation and Niamh Lyons, Political Editor of the Irish Edition of The Times. It will was also attended by Fianna Fail frontbench spokespersons, Charlie McConalogue (Agriculture), Dara Calleary (Public Expenditure & Reform) and Stephen Donnelly (Brexit). 'It is vitally important that there is discussion and a plan and strategy put in place for our county, region and country to absorb the immediate hit once the UK begin the negotiations to leave the EU', said Deputy Browne. Cllr Byrne's conference, Opportunities and Challenges of Brexit for County Wexford, had a primary focus on identifying issues that are of w specific concern to the county. He said he wanted the non-political event to be as inclusive as possible adding he believed that Wexford could benefit in certain areas from Brexit while also dealing with significant challenges. 'Brexit will be one of the biggest political, economic and social challenges facing Wexford, Ireland and Europe over the next decade. In everything from movement of people and goods at our ports and airports; through the impact on agriculture and industry; to student exchange and research partnerships, Brexit will provide challenges. But there are also opportunities. Wexford companies will now be at an advantage competing in the EU compared to UK companies. We may also be able to attract more continental tourists.' Speakers at Cllr Byrne's conference included former MEP Avril Doyle, Tom Enright, Chief Executive, Wexford County Council, Karl Fitzpatrick, President, Wexford Chamber, John Lynch, General Manager, Rosslare Europort, Verona Murphy, President, Irish Road Haulage Association, barrister and columnist Noel Whelan and James Kehoe, Wexford IFA Chair. Disposable income in Wexford households is on the increase, with the growth rate the third highest in the county according to the latest CSO figures. Minister Paul Kehoe credits a growing economy, with more people back at work, for this positive development. 'The most recent CSO data shows that in 2014, all regions across the country showed increases in disposable household income. 'Here in Wexford there was a 5.1 per cent increase in disposable household income in 2014 compared to 2013, which is the third highest increase in the country. 'Across the South East region it increased by 4.4 per cent in the same period. 'This positive development is thanks to our growing economy, which has seen more people back at work. Unemployment has fallen to 6.6 per cent down from a high of 15.2 per cent back in 2011.' Minister Kehoe said the increase in disposable income obviously has a positive knock on effect in Wexford as people have a little more money in their pockets, which is good news for local businesses and services. 'We are seeing the evidence of this in the latest Enterprise Ireland figures, which show that 197 new full and part-time jobs were delivered in 2016 by the 187 small businesses in Wexford that have been supported by the Local Enterprise Offices. 'These businesses support a total of 1192 jobs here in Wexford. No doubt they will benefit from this increase in household disposable income locally, and we will see further jobs created by small businesses,' he said. He's eight years old, has a mane of ginger locks and is the every day hero for Enniscorthy woman, Catherine Leacy. Meet Ivan, the golden retriever, who is one of seven guide dogs currently working in County Wexford. The organisation has also funded and trained 10 working assistance dogs who improve the lives of autistic children in the county. This week, the Irish Guide Dogs for the Blind will hold their 'Future Hero' campaign, and Ivan, Catherine and the team of volunteers will be out and about fundraising to help transform the lives of other people 'one heroic dog at a time'. On Friday and Saturday, April 7 and 8, Catherine and a team from the Wexford Branch of Irish Guide Dogs for the Blind will be based in Tesco Wexford selling Labrador pins as part of the campaign. The Wexford branch are very active in fundraising, and organiser-in-chief, Catherine is very grateful for their ongoing generosity. 'Last year in County Wexford we raised 25,579.75c. Those 75 cent are important. Every single thing we raise goes towards training a dog,' she said. The cost of buying a Guide Dog is 38,000 but the value they give to their owners is priceless. Catherine, who is registered blind has been using guide dogs for the last 13 years having previously been 'mammy' to Ivan's predecessors Perry and Ashley. 'Having a Guide Dog gives me independence to get out and about and enjoy life,' she says. 'I am the organiser of the Wexford branch, and we get great support from our volunteers. We are delighted with the support that the people of Wexford have continuously given us and Ivan and his other furry friends look forward to seeing them again in Tesco on April 7 and 8,' she said. Those who cannot visit Tesco next weekend can contribute 4 to the Future Hero campaign by texting WOOF to 50300. Gorey artist Stephen Nolan is getting set to hold his first solo exhibition in his home town this week. '12 Common Life Mistakes' will run in the upstairs chamber of the Market House on Main Street for two weeks. It launches at 6 p.m. on Thursday, April 6, and all are welcome. It then runs Monday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday, 12 midday to 4 p.m. The 39-year-old from Clonattin is currently the Paul Funge artist in residence at Gorey School of Art. The residency was set up by Paul Carter, director of Gorey School of Art, to support artists' careers by providing a 24 hour studio, with the support of the school. Stephen studied art with Eamon Carter at Gorey Community School, and later went on to complete the degree course at Gorey School of Art, graduating in 2008. He has exhibited at various locations across the country, primarily around north Dublin and Drogheda, but until now, he has never held a solo show in Gorey. Stephen said he works mainly in oil, painting landscapes and townscapes, and he estimates that approximately half of the works that will feature in the exhibit will relate to his home county. He said the residency has been a great help, and he was delighted when Conor McDonald of the Gorey Town District Park arts initiative approached him about putting together an exhibit. 'Stephen deals with the urban landscape, in Gorey which is constantly in flux,' said Conor. 'He has worked on some of the pieces for over three years. Nearly all are works in progress. They're mixed media layered on top of each other.' He added that Stephen's knowledge of architecture is 'phenomenal.' 'Stephen's work is almost that of a performance artist in his process,' he commented. 'Notebooks fill his studio, documenting what to some might seem the most banal, mundane, everyday activities and observances.' 'However, it is these moments of awareness that Stephen Nolan brings to his paintings,' he continued, 'allowing the viewer in, only to twist our perception, so we can see familiar surroundings, buildings and people anew once more.' Seal Rescue Ireland in Courtown is planning several fun activities over the Easter holidays. On Easter Saturday and Sunday there are full days of family fun for only 5 per child with an egg hunt at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m.; a seal release at 1 p.m. (weather permitting); photos with Selkie the seal; face painting; Easter games; and crafts. Marine movie screenings will be held from Monday to Wednesday at 6 p.m. on both weeks of the holiday. See family favourites including 'Finding Nemo', 'The Song of the Sea' and 'Happy Feet.' Admission is only 5 and includes free popcorn. Children can learn all about seals as they complete the Easter discovery trail and receive a sweet reward. This is available every day for only 2. Established in 2010, Seal Rescue Ireland is the only facility in the Republic of Ireland dedicated to the rescue, rehabilitation and release of common and grey seals. Katherine Orton of Seal Rescue Ireland said the centre is currently caring for 46 seals. She stated that this has been their busiest season yet as they received 107 seals from all corners of the coastline. The service is completely funded by the generosity of public. It is open every day for tours, education and events. Follow the Sea Rescue Ireland Facebook page for more information, or contact 053 9424980. Good preparation and commitment have spelled longevity and growth for Burnside Autocyl one of the many Enterprise Ireland supported companies in Germany The fact that we learned the language was a good symbol of our commitment and showed that we were prepared to make a monumental effort to make it easy to do business with us Co Carlow based engineering firm Burnside Autocyl was so serious about succeeding in the German market that members of its senior management team decided to learn the language. When the company made the strategic decision to sell into Germany in 1990, chairman and founder Paddy Byrne, his brother Anthony Byrne and daughter Caroline Kelly went to night classes to acquire the language skills they needed to do business there. After that, more of the team started to take classes and Burnside Autocyl recruited German-speaking sales, service and engineering personnel as it could find them. Today, there are five German speakers at its headquarters in Tullow, Co Carlow in addition to the team at its office in Geldern in Germany, which it opened in 1992. Although most business people in Germany speak English, they prefer to have the option of dealing with suppliers in their own language, says Kelly, who is sales director at Burnside Autocyl. The fact that we learned the language was a good symbol of our commitment and showed that we were prepared to make a monumental effort to make it easy to do business with us. Burnside Autocyl designs and manufactures customised hydraulic cylinders for all types of mobile equipment and machinery, which it exports into 16 different countries. Applications include forklifts, excavators, access platforms, refuse trucks and demolition equipment. From humble beginnings in converted livestock sheds in 1974, the group has expanded to six manufacturing locations five in Co Carlow and one in the US and employs a total of 750 people. Expand Close Caroline Kelly Burnside / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Caroline Kelly Burnside Clear understanding Making German language proficiency a priority from the early days is just one aspect of Burnside Autocyls well thought-out strategy, which has brought it to a point where Germany now accounts for 40% of total sales. It has combined careful targeting of potential customers with consistent and flexible after-sales support. As a company we primarily sell to original equipment manufacturers in the materials handling, environmental and construction sectors, says Kelly. We learned a lot about the importance of being clear about identifying potential customers in Germany through training with Enterprise Ireland. We knew we had to be sure that our production capability and product offering matched their requirements. Heike John, market adviser at Enterprise Irelands Dusseldorf office, says the companys emphasis on understanding customer needs and company culture along with how it has embraced the German business culture generally has been a key success factor for Burnside Autocyl in Germany. Burnside Autocyl is still working with companies that it first started selling to in 1990. There have been changes in these companies over this period, with many becoming more international, for example, she notes. It has accompanied its customers through these changes by working intensively with them and consistently showing a willingness to make itself relevant as a supplier. John adds that client relationships often involve working with many different people within each organisation, for example, from the engineering, purchasing and research and development divisions. This is necessary for the type of bespoke solution Burnside Autocyl provides. It is not an off-the-shelf solution it has to meet customer needs and that includes delivery times and unforeseen changes, notes John. From the early days we recognised that we had to be credible and reliable to succeed in the German market, says Kelly. Flexibility is something that Irish companies are really good at. It has been our unique selling point and one of the main secrets of our success, which is still important today. Because of the bespoke nature of Burnside Autocyls offering, the company has found the direct approach to selling and after-sales support has worked best in Germany, according to Kelly. Trade fairs such as Bauma or CeMAT have often provided the first point of contact with prospective customers. Rather than dealing through distributors, it uses its sales and marketing office in Geldern as a contact point for clients. Teams also travel regularly from the companys Tullow base to work with German clients and Burnside Autocyl welcomes customers to its manufacturing facility in Co Carlow to allow them to see its capability, know-how and research and development (R&D) first hand. The high level of support Burnside Autocyl provides to its customers differentiates it from many competitors, says John. It has become highly regarded for its technical expertise and understanding of customer needs. In this regard, innovation has been very important to the company, which recognised the need to invest more in this area a number of years ago. This has been a driver of new business growth. You cant just choose to be a company that simply makes a product. You need all the capability to identify client needs and design solutions to meet those needs. We need to invest in R&D to validate those solutions, says Kelly. We now have a dedicated R&D team and facility within the organisation that focuses on both product and process R&D. Improving processes allows us to make products more efficiently. We are also developing products ourselves looking at evolving our hydraulic cylinders for more sophisticated applications through the incorporation of sensor technology for example. Kelly says Burnside Autocyl aims to continue to grow its German market by looking after the business it has won to date as well as fighting to secure more by staying competitive. We have built up a nice portfolio of high profile customers which has opened doors to smaller customers. Burnside Autocyl is one of many Irish companies which should be well placed to grow in Germany in the coming years. The German economy is doing well at the moment -- GDP is expected to grow by 2.2% in 2017, according to economic forecasts, says John. There is opportunity for Irish companies with innovative offerings which really understand the market and are happy to take time to develop it. Tips for success in Germany Caroline Kelly, sales director at Burnside Autocyl, shares her top pieces of advice for Irish companies keen to tap into the German market Be confident about your product or service before going into the market. We have always been focused on the parameters of our product offering we make hydraulic cylinders with a bore diameter of 32mm up to 200mm and up to eight metres in length. We offer a wide range of products, but it is still finite at the same time. Get feedback from market experts and existing players in Germany on your product Enterprise Ireland can help to arrange this. You need to convince potential customers in Germany of the three Cs i.e. that you are capable, competent and committed and able to interface with them on all levels. Many companies are good at selling, but not so many are good at both selling and supporting clients on a technical level. After-sales service is hugely important as you are looking at a relationship that goes on for years in our case for the lifespan of the machine incorporating our hydraulic cylinders. When you are lucky enough to win German customers, mind them like gemstones. They are hard to win so you dont want to do anything to lose them. Bad news travels faster than good, so try to exceed what they might expect from suppliers on their own doorstep. Be as good, if not better, than local suppliers in terms of quality and consistency of service. This article is part of a series being published as part of Enterprise Irelands Global Ambition campaign. To read more about Burnside Autocyls exporting strategy and other case studies go to https://ambition.enterprise-ireland.com/ Sponsored by: Prince Harry leaves after watching the UK team trials for the Invictus Games Toronto 2017 at the University of Bath Sports Training Village in Bath Prince Harry leaves after watching the UK team trials for the Invictus Games Toronto 2017 at the University of Bath Sports Training Village in Bath Prince Harry leaves after watching the UK team trials for the Invictus Games Toronto 2017 at the University of Bath Sports Training Village in Bath Prince Harry watches the UK team trials for the Invictus Games Toronto 2017 at the University of Bath Sports Training Village in Bath Meghan Markle has reportedly "unofficially moved into" Kensington Palace with boyfriend Prince Harry. The Suits actress (35) has been spending more and more time at her royal boyfriend's residence as their relationship continues to heat up. It was believed that Markle was set to move into the property this summer after renovations were completed, but fresh reports say the couple are happy with the cosy size of the home and are already setting up together. It's worth pointing out that the couple are currently residing in Nottingham Cottage, the same property where Kate Middleton and Prince William lived after their wedding while they waited for their apartment at the palace to be renovated. Expand Close Meghan Markle in Toronto / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Meghan Markle in Toronto "The fact is, Harry and Meghan have been living together for awhile. Meghan came to England on December 27 last year and was over here for abouts seven weeks," an insider told Grazia. "She spent the whole time with Harry at Nottingham Cottage, where they have pretty much set up home together. They are very comfortable there and neither of them needs a bigger place at the moment." It might have been Harry's place first but the American actress, who plays Rachel Zane on the popular legal drama, is making her presence felt - putting some finishing touches on the decor and adding "creature comforts so it feels like her home too." "Meghan had a wardrobe of clothes and quite a few of her things flown over because of the amount of time she was spending in London," the source added. Expand Close Prince Harry leaves after watching the UK team trials for the Invictus Games Toronto 2017 at the University of Bath Sports Training Village in Bath / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Prince Harry leaves after watching the UK team trials for the Invictus Games Toronto 2017 at the University of Bath Sports Training Village in Bath It comes as no surprise that the couple's relationship is moving apace despite being together less than a year - she has already received the seal of approval from his father Prince Charles, his sister-in-law Kate and of course, Prince George. Britain's Queen Elizabeth, who has yet to meet Meghan, is said to be "delighted to see Harry in a loving relationship." Video of the Day And she is the only girlfriend of his to spend long periods at the palace - his ex Cressida Bonas spent a handful of evenings there while Chelsy Davy, whom he dated for six years, never stayed there. A roadside bomb has killed at least 20 people in a minibus in Somalia's Lower Shabelle region, the local governor said, blaming the extremist group al Shabab. Most of the victims were women, Ibrahim Aden Ali said, calling the blast a "national disaster". Six other people were injured, regional security official Nur Abdullahi said. The bomb, buried beside the road, struck the vehicle near Golweyn village and largely destroyed it, Mr Abdullahi said. "It's a horrible incident. Bodies are lying in a pool of blood, and some of them were burnt beyond recognition," he said. Isaq Haji, a nurse at a hospital in Marka town, 55 miles south of the capital, Mogadishu, said they had received four victims with "horrific" wounds. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Al Shabab claims control over parts of the largely coastal Lower Shabelle region, which has been a focus of efforts to counter the group by a 22,000-strong multinational African Union force. Read More Earlier, Somalia's new president declared the country a war zone and replaced its military and intelligence chiefs while instructing the army to prepare a new offensive against al Shabab. The shake-up is an attempt to improve the worsening security situation as the al Qaida-linked group steps up bombings in Mogadishu since President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed was elected in February. A car bomb blast on Wednesday at a restaurant killed at least seven people. The Somali-American president wore a military uniform as he declared the new offensive and offered young extremists a chance to surrender. "We tell the young, brainwashed al Shabab fighters that they have a 60-day deadline to lay down the arms which they use to kill their people and come to us," Mr Mohamed said. "We shall welcome them with open arms." He said the government will focus on the security of the capital first, then the rest of the country. The changes come roughly a week after the Trump administration approved greater US military authority to pursue al Shabab in Somalia, including more aggressive air strikes as parts of southern Somalia will be considered areas of active hostilities. Russia has suspended its memorandum of understanding on air safety over Syria with the United States following the deadly US missile attack on the Sha'irat airfield, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Friday. "Russia suspends the memorandum on the prevention of incidents and ensuring air safety during operations in Syria reached with the US," the ministry said in a statement. The United States launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Syrian military airfield in Ash Sha'irat near Homs late Thursday. US President Donald Trump said the attack was a response to the alleged chemical weapon use in Idlib on Tuesday, which Washington blames on Damascus. Search Keywords: Short link: Dax J left the country before his conviction. London-born DJ Dax J has been charged with public indecency and offending public morality after playing a dance remix of the call to prayer during his set in the predominantly Islamic Tunisia. The footage from the Orbit Festival in Nabeul where he was performing on Sunday sent shockwaves through the orthodox country, and the DJs Twitter page was soon closed after he received death threats. After the video was posted on social media, the club was forced to shut down and an investigation was launched, which has culminated in Dax J being charged by a Tunisian court. According to the BBC, the DJ left the country before the court case, but was still sentenced to a year in prison in Tunisia. Il est lun des plus attendus, et le premier Il est lun des plus attendus, et le premier arrive ! Dax J est en Tunisie les amis ! According to the AFP news agency, the court has dismissed charges against the nightclub owner and event organiser, but the prosecution has since appealed. Earlier this week, Orbit Festival posted its apologies for the incident on Facebook but did not accept any responsibility. It said in French: We do not want to involve ourselves in the religious debate. The BBC reports that Dax J has apologised for playing the music, saying: It was never my intention to upset or cause offence to anybody. His Soundcloud page says he runs his own studio in Berlin where he also works as a sound and mastering engineer, as well as touring around the world as a DJ. Its thought at least five people have been killed, including civilians. The United States has unleashed a barrage of cruise missiles on Syria which President Donald Trump has called in the vital national security interest. Heres everything you need to know: Whats happened? The US has launched dozens of cruise missiles at a Syrian government air base from where America says the Syrian military initiated a deadly chemical attack. About 60 US Tomahawk missiles hit the Shayrat air base south east of Homs. Its a small installation with two runways, where aircraft often take off to bomb targets in northern and central Syria. The US missiles struck at 3.45am on Friday, Syria time, and targeted the bases airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, American officials said. They were fired from two warships in the Mediterranean Sea in retaliation for Tuesdays deadly chemical attack that officials said used chlorine mixed with a nerve agent, possibly sarin. Why? Donald Trump said in a statement that the strike was to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. On Tuesday, the northern opposition-held town of Khan Sheikhoun was attacked, killing 80 people. Turkey said samples from the victims indicate they were exposed to sarin, a highly toxic nerve agent. The Syrian government maintains it did not use chemical weapons, instead blaming opposition fighters for stockpiling the chemicals. Similarly, Russias defence ministry said the toxic agents were released when a Syrian air strike hit a rebel chemical weapons arsenal and munitions factory. But British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said he had seen absolutely nothing to suggest the attack was carried out by anyone but the government of Syria. How many casualties are there? Its thought to be five a Syrian official said the attack killed three soldiers and two civilians, while seven others were wounded. Talal Barazi, the governor of Homs province, said a fire raged at the air base for over an hour following the barrage of missiles. A Syrian opposition monitor said the attack killed four soldiers, including a general. How has the UK responded to the missile strike? Britain has backed the US missile strike as an appropriate response to Bashar Assad regimes barbaric chemical attack. A No 10 spokeswoman said: The UK Government fully supports the US action, which we believe was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, and is intended to deter further attacks. What about Russia? Russia condemned the attack, calling it an aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law. President Vladimir Putins spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said Putin believed the US had carried out the strikes under a far-fetched pretext. Russia has also said it is suspending a deal with the US to prevent mid-air incidents over Syria in response to the strike. And the media? Trump has received tentative support from one of his biggest critics in the US media, The New York Times. The paper, which has also been repeatedly criticised by Trump since he took office, published an opinion piece saying the president should be commended for the military action. It makes reference to photos of some of Trumps meetings. Turns out Hillary Clintons favourite meme sums her up perfectly. In a conversation with New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof, at the Women in the World conference in New York on Thursday, Clinton revealed her favourite meme (which she mistakenly called a gif) is the dogs sitting around the table and the caption was now we will discuss feline health. Here is the meme in question: It makes reference to similarly framed photos taken at some of Trumps meetings which have been made up of many white men, often discussing issues which affect women and people of colour. This picture shows all-male members of the Republican Freedom Caucus discussing a new healthcare bill, which includes reforms to pregnancy and maternity care. It wasnt just a lighthearted conversation. Clinton also discussed the investigation into links between Russia and the Trump campaign, Syria and misogyny in America. Rape Crisis Scotland and Scottish Womens Aid will both refuse to sign form NCC1 4/17. Members of Scotlands largest rape support charities will not sign forms exempting women from the Governments third-child tax cut. Rape Crisis Scotland and Scottish Womens Aid will both refuse to sign form NCC1 4/17, which exempts children born of non-consensual sex from cuts to child tax credit. Chief executive of Scottish Womens Aid Marsha Scott said: Organisations that are most trusted by women are being used as tools to get the Government off the hook of doing some thing untenable, which is cutting women off of child benefit after their second child. Participating in this would be saying that we are willing to be a part of re-victimising women and children. After a wide consultation with support groups and others, the Government measures came into force across the UK on Thursday, cutting child tax credit and Universal Credit for third or subsequent children. A number of exemptions to the new rules are in place, including multiple birth, adoption and non-consensual pregnancy. The so-called rape clause means women who were the victim of rape or conceived while in a coercive relationship will have to prove their third child was born as a result of this in order to qualify for an exemption. In order to prove this, a six-page form must be filled out by a third party professional. These are healthcare professionals, social workers and support workers from approved organisations, including rape support services. Scott added that as far as she knew, nobody in NHS Scotland or in Scottish social work has said that they will co-operate with this. In a joint statement on Wednesday, Scott and Sandy Brindley, of Rape Crisis Scotland, said: Weve been asked why, if the policy is going ahead, we arent willing to help those women who need it and play our part. We hope that to make clear that in doing so we would be jeopardising the most critical relationship we have, the one we share with women who have experienced violence or abuse. The risk is far too great. In a statement, Rape Crisis Scotland, who is also refusing to act as third party professionals to sign the form, said: To act as verifiers for example by ascertaining/deciding whether someones date of conception was consistent with a pregnancy resulting from rape, would fundamentally change the nature of our relationship with the survivors we support. Having control over whether, who and when to tell someone about having been raped is a vital part of the healing process, and being forced to do so in order to receive tax credits is completely at odds with that. We believe the connection this policy makes between disclosure and the receipt of benefits/avoidance of poverty is completely iniquitous and potentially traumatising and damaging to survivors, as well as being morally indefensible in the choice it forces them to make between disclosure and poverty. A Department for Work and Pensions spokesman said: This exception is crucial to protect women who are faced with very difficult circumstances. This reform ensures people on benefits have to make the same choices as those supporting themselves solely through work. But we have always been clear this will be delivered in the most effective, compassionate way, with the right exceptions and safeguards in place. The policy was debated, and voted on, in Parliament, and the exceptions were consulted on widely. Parents who take their children out of school for term-time holidays can be prosecuted, the British Supreme Court has ruled as a "stubborn" father lost his landmark case yesterday, whilst appealing to parents not to follow his example. Delivering their verdict, the judges ruled that Jon Platt (inset), a businessman from the Isle of Wight who took his six-year-old daughter on a seven-day family trip to Florida in April 2015, should have paid a 120 (140) fine for his daughter's unauthorised absence. The judges said he had shown a "blatant disregard of school rules" and that his approach had been a "slap in the face" to "obedient" parents who abide by the law. Their ruling means that parents who take their children out of school on holiday - even if their child has regular attendance - can be prosecuted if they do not receive permission from the headteacher. Speaking after the ruling, Mr Platt apologised to his wife for his stubbornness, adding that he was "not at all surprised" by the verdict. However, he said that he felt the decision was "outrageous" and "shocking", as he warned parents with outstanding fines to pay them or face "ending up here in two years' time". Mr Platt said the decision symbolised the "state" wrestling parents' rights over their children's welfare away from them. He now faces legal costs of more than 10,000 and could be fined a maximum penalty of 1,000 when the case is re-examined at the Isle of Wight Magistrates' Court later this year. The UK's Department of Education tightened the rules in 2013 in response to the rising numbers of parents taking their children out of school during term-time in order to avoid the surge in prices charged by travel companies during the peak holiday seasons. Until the ruling, many parents presumed they could escape prosecution for truancy, providing they could demonstrate that their child had regularly attended school. But that question was unequivocally answered, with the judges ruling that unless a child is sick, absent due to religious observance reasons, or unable to attend because their school transport did not arrive, they must attend school - unless the headteacher has stated otherwise. It means that even half-a-day's absence, unauthorised, could lead to prosecution - although the judges noted that "trivial" breaches of the law would likely receive a lesser sentence, such as a fixed-penalty notice or an acquittal. It comes two years after Mr Platt was unsuccessfully prosecuted by the Isle of Wight Council after he failed to pay a 120 fine, leading the authority to pursue the case through the High Court and then the Supreme Court. His request for permission to take his daughter out of school was refused. After the holiday, he was issued with a fixed penalty notice, but did not pay the 60 by the initial deadline, and was sent a further invoice for 120, which he also did not pay. Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022] A "possessive" ex-boyfriend who tried to stab his former partner to death and murdered her new lover has been jailed for life. Matthew Sharpe, 40, had been in a relationship with 27-year-old Charna Knights for nine years, but she ended it on New Year's Day this year partly due to his controlling nature, Cambridge Crown Court heard on Friday. A long-term friend, 28-year-old Andrew Hasler, offered Miss Knights temporary accommodation at his flat and they then confided they had feelings for one another, prosecutor Peter Clark said. The court heard Sharpe saw Miss Knights and Mr Hasler together, "could not accept it" and had said "if I can't have her, no one can". He went into a branch of Tesco Extra and bought a pack of three sharp knives and one larger boning knife at around noon on January 8 and launched his attack half an hour later at Mr Hasler's home in St Ives, Cambridgeshire. He told Miss Knights "I'm sorry" then grabbed her round the neck and stabbed her in the chest, narrowly missing her heart. Mr Hasler "bravely intervened" and tried to save her and Sharpe "went at him, stabbing and slicing at him," Mr Clark said. Mr Hasler, who suffered 13 stab wounds including one to the heart, died and then Sharpe attacked Miss Knights again. Neighbour Andrew Phelps, who had heard a commotion, entered the flat through the unlocked back door and wrestled the knife from Sharpe, saving Miss Knights's life. Sharpe fled and was detained by police after jumping into a river and was found to have cut his wrists and neck. Judge David Farrell awarded Mr Phelps 1,000 for his "outstanding and courageous act" of bravery. Sharpe, who appeared by prison videolink, admitted the murder of Mr Hasler and the attempted murder of Miss Knights at an earlier hearing. Judge Farrell described the attack as "brutal" and sentenced Sharpe to life in prison with a minimum term of 25 years. He told Sharpe: "You would not accept her rejection of you and you would not move on as you had been asked to do. "The jealousy and possessiveness in your character drove you then to a decision which you voiced at the time of the act, that 'if I can't have her, no one else can'." He said that Sharpe was "controlling and possessive". "A common theme that ran through the relationship was the way you sought to control everything she did, from managing the money to telling her what time she had to be home after a night out," he said. Sharpe, of Humberley Close, Eynesbury, Cambridgeshire, had been engaged to be married to Miss Knights. In a victim impact statement, she said: "Although I knew he had a temper, I had no idea he could commit such an evil attack." William Carter, mitigating, said: "He simply lost it. He can provide no better explanation than that." Sharpe was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 25 years for murder and life with a minimum term of 20 years for attempted murder, to be served concurrently. Miss Knights and Mr Phelps were in court for the sentencing and made no comment as they left. A US missile strike on an airbase in central Syria early on Friday was "foolish and irresponsible," President Bashar al-Assad's office said. "What America did is nothing but foolish and irresponsible behaviour, which only reveals its short-sightedness and political and military blindness to reality," a statement said. The US fired a barrage of 59 cruise missiles at the Shayrat base in response to a suspected chemical attack on a rebel-held town on Tuesday widely blamed on the Damascus regime. The US missile strike targeting an airbase in central Syria killed nine civilians, including four children, on Friday, state news agency SANA reported. The agency said five of the civilians, among them three children, were killed in the village of Shayrat just outside the base of the same name. "An American missile also hit the village of Al-Hamrat, which killed four civilians including a child," it added. "Another seven civilians were wounded when a missile hit homes in Al-Manzul, four kilometres (two and a half miles) away from the Shayrat air base," it added.The Syrian government has categorically denied the accusation, saying it had struck an arms depot belonging to a jihadist group. Assad's office said the government would redouble its efforts against rebel groups after the US strike -- the first direct military action by Washington against the Damascus regime. "This aggression has increased Syria's determination to strike these terrorist agents, to continue crushing them and to speed up the pace of work on this, wherever they are on Syrian territory," it said. "The disgraceful act of targeting a sovereign state's airport demonstrates once again that different administrations do not change deeper policies." The massive strike -- US President Donald Trump's biggest military decision since taking office -- marked a dramatic escalation in American involvement in Syria's six-year civil war. It followed days of outrage at images of dead children and victims suffering convulsions from the suspected sarin gas attack on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhun. Search Keywords: Short link: The colour-by-numbers image of Adolf Hitler before, left, and after been coloured in. Photo: AP A Dutch pharmacist has apologised after it unwittingly sold copies of a colouring book featuring Adolf Hitler. Retail chain Kruidvat said it "deeply regretted the incident" and had pulled the book from its shelves after a flurry of complaints. The colour-by-numbers book features a cartoon image of the Fuhrer scowling as he gives a Nazi salute while wearing a swastika armband. A spokesman for the book's Belgian publisher, Trifora, pointed out that it included less controversial figures to colour in, such as Nelson Mandela and Abraham Lincoln. "It is a nasty combination of circumstances. We check the book on translations, but do not check all the colouring pictures," he said. "My suspicion is that the man who created the colouring book got a book of famous people out of the closet and selected a pair, which unfortunately included Adolf Hitler. Maybe he did not recognise him." He added that the printers in India had made a "horrible mistake" and that the company apologised "unreservedly". Dozens of copies of the book were bought before it was taken off the shelves and the pharmacy has offered refunds to those who return it. Disgruntled customers took to the shop's Facebook page to show their disdain. "What a mega-crazy action from your part," wrote one man. "Well done...are you proud of this?" said another. It is not the first time the German dictator's image has caused grave offence among parents. Last year, an Australian private school apologised after a child was allowed to dress up as Hitler for 'Book Week' and paraded in front of his Jewish classmates. The unnamed pupil was then handed an award for being the "best dressed child" at the event. Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022] Pamela Anderson and Julian Assange, as she has revealed her fears over his health after visiting him at the Ecuadorian Embassy Credit: Steve Parsons/PA Wire Is THIS the strangest celebrity 'couple' of the century? Pamela Anderson has opened up somewhat about her relationship with Julian Assange, which blossomed as she brought him vegan food to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he is hiding from Swedish authorities. While remaining quite coy about the nature of her relationship with the fugitive, she said: "Julian is trying to free the world by educating it. It is a romantic struggle - I love him for this. "I understand that our 'affair' and the curiosity surrounding that might bring some attention, but I'd rather not go into private details. Let's just say everyone deserves love." She described her relationship with Mr Assange as "challenging", but she enjoys the deep conversations they have together. Ms Anderson said: "He's a very good teacher. Julian is one of my favourite people. He is a refugee. He might be the most famous refugee of our time - famous for being persecuted." Expand Close Pamela Anderson visits Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Pamela Anderson visits Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London The 'Baywatch' star commented on her similarities with the WikiLeaks founder. "I'm very concerned about his well-being and safety," she said. "I'm very moody. I wouldn't say I'm a happy person. I'm tormented and love sick always. It's hard to find relief sometimes. "I'm trying to not feel lonely. But, I hurt a lot about so many things. I'm a romantic - it makes my stomach hurt." Russian authorities raided an apartment building in St Petersburg yesterday and found explosives similar to those used by a suicide bomber who blew up a metro carriage killing 14 people, two security sources said. The discovery of the explosives raises the possibility that a string of bomb attacks was being planned in the city involving a group of plotters. Investigators said they had detained several suspected accomplices of Akbarzhon Jalilov, born in mainly Muslim Kyrgyzstan, who is the suspected bomber in Monday's blast. It was not immediately clear if the suspected accomplices were the same people detained at the apartment building. Security officials searching the apartment complex where the men were detained also found an explosive device, which was made safe by bomb disposal experts. Security sources said that the explosives discovered at the building, in the east of the city, bore similarities to a bomb which was found inside a fire extinguisher at Ploshchad Vosstaniya metro station. That bomb did not detonate. State investigators said they believed the device had been left at the station by Jalilov before he went on to another part of the subway network and detonated a bomb he was carrying. Russian is still reeling after the attack, which took place on the day that Russian President Vladimir Putin was visiting St Petersburg, his home city. The attack has put renewed focus on the large number of emigrants from mostly Muslim central Asian states, who have moved to Russia to work. Russia's state investigative committee, a body with sweeping powers that is looking into the bomber's background, said it was looking into the backgrounds of people it suspected of being accomplices. Three people killed in incident when a truck was driven Friday April 7 2017 into a department store in central Stockholm, Sweden April 7, 2017. TT News Agency/Andreas Schyman/via Police corden off street where truck rammed into shoppers Photo: REUTERS People killed in incident when a truck was driven Friday April 7 2017 into a department store in central Stockholm, Sweden April 7, 2017. TT News Agency/Noella Johansson/via REUTERS People killed in incident when a truck was driven Friday April 7 2017 into a department store in central Stockholm, Sweden April 7, 2017. TT News Agency/Jessica Gow/via REUTERS Handout photo taken with permission from the Twitter feed of Lasse Gare of emergency services close to the scene of an incident in Drottninggatan, a street in the centre of Stockholm, Sweden. PRESS ASSOCIATION People killed in incident when a truck was driven Friday April 7 2017 into a department store in central Stockholm, Sweden April 7, 2017. TT News Agency/Noella Johansson/via The truck is believed to have been hijacked from a brewery company Photo credit: Getty images/Jonathan Nackstrand Three people killed in incident when a truck was driven Friday April 7 2017 into a department store in central Stockholm Photo: TT News Agency/Andreas Schyman/via REUTERS A truck have crashed into a department store Ahlens at Drottninggatan in the central of Stockholm, Sweden April 7, 2017. TT News Agency/Andreas Schyman/via REUTERS Police release image of person of interest in Stockholm truck crash A picture of the truck which the owner reports was stolen before the incident Swedish police said they have arrested one person in connection with a deadly truck attack in central Stockholm. "One person has been arrested who may be connected with the incident," police said in a statement. Separately, national news agency TT said police had confirmed that four people had been killed in the attack, which also left more than a dozen injured. Four people have been confirmed dead, while 15 people were injured. Nine people have been left with serious injuries according to police. Earlier police released an image of man they wished to speak to in connection with the incident. An official has said that the man arrested resembles the man in the CCTV image. The man has been identified, police say. Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Police want to speak to this man in connection with today's attack Police release image of person of interest Police release image of person of interest in Stockholm truck crash / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Police want to speak to this man in connection with today's attack Sky News reports that the man was arrested after a member of the public contacted police after noticing the man acting strangely. A manhunt is still underway for the driver of the lorry. Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close People killed in incident when a truck was driven Friday April 7 2017 into a department store in central Stockholm, Sweden April 7, 2017. TT News Agency/Jessica Gow/via REUTERS Emergency personnel load a person into an ambulance, centre, at the scene after a truck crashed into a department store injuring several people in central Stockholm, Sweden (Fredrik Sandberg/TT News Agency via AP) A police officer in a gas mask attends the scene as crowds look on after a truck crashed into a department store injuring several people in central Stockholm, Sweden, Friday April 7, 2017. (Jessica Gow, TT News Agency via AP) The truck is believed to have been hijacked from a brewery company Photo credit: Getty images/Jonathan Nackstrand A truck have crashed into a department store Ahlens at Drottninggatan in the central of Stockholm, Sweden April 7, 2017. TT News Agency/Andreas Schyman/via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS IMAGE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY. FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY. NOT FOR SALE FOR MARKETING OR ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS. SWEDEN OUT. NO COMMERCIAL OR EDITORIAL SALES IN SWEDEN. NO COMMERCIAL SALES. Three people killed in incident when a truck was driven Friday April 7 2017 into a department store in central Stockholm Photo: TT News Agency/Andreas Schyman/via REUTERS Police corden off street where truck rammed into shoppers Photo: REUTERS Central Station was evacuated Photo: TT News Agency/Anders Wiklund/via REUTERS Emergency personnel load a person into an ambulance, centre, at the scene after a truck crashed into a department store injuring several people in central Stockholm, Sweden, Friday (Fredrik Sandberg/TT News Agency via AP) People killed in incident when a truck was driven Friday April 7 2017 into a department store in central Stockholm, Sweden April 7, 2017. TT News Agency/Noella Johansson/via REUTERS Handout photo taken with permission from the Twitter feed of Lasse Gare of emergency services close to the scene of an incident in Drottninggatan, a street in the centre of Stockholm, Sweden. PRESS ASSOCIATION People killed in incident when a truck was driven Friday April 7 2017 into a department store in central Stockholm, Sweden April 7, 2017. TT News Agency/Noella Johansson/via Prime minister Stefan Lofven makes a statement after people were killed when a truck crashed into department store Ahlens on Drottninggatan, in central Stockholm, Sweden April 7, 2017. TT News Agency/Thomas Johansson/via REUTERS / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp People killed in incident when a truck was driven Friday April 7 2017 into a department store in central Stockholm, Sweden April 7, 2017. TT News Agency/Jessica Gow/via REUTERS A police spokesman said: "The driver of the lorry, we have not made contact with him." Mats Lofving, head of Swedish police's National Operations Department (NOA) said the picture, was taken close to the time of the incident, in the vicinity of the attack. Crowds running from scene of incident in #stockholm after car ramming attack pic.twitter.com/3uoeGbH3vR StandWithUs (@StandWithUs) April 7, 2017 "I have a picture of a person who has been seen at the location at this point in time. We want to get in contact with this person," he told a news conference. The grainy image shown by police showed a man wearing a jacket with a dark hood over a bright t-shirt and dark trousers. Police said there were no indications that an attack was imminent. Police evacuated people from surrounding buildings, who were required to stay there in the immediate aftermath of the incident. The Swedish Prime Minister, who earlier said everything indicated that the attack was terror related, has said the country is united. Stefan Lofven said the Nordic country was united in grief and anger and vowed that hatred would never be allowed to undermine the country's values. "These kinds of actions will never succeed. We know that our enemies are these atrocious murderers and not each other," he told a news conference. "Our message will always be clear: you will not defeat us, you will not govern our lives, you will never ever win." Stockholm's subway service has been cleared to restart but all bus traffic in the city centre remains at a standstill, the public transport authority said. Expand Close Swedish news channels reporting on the incident / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Swedish news channels reporting on the incident The incident occurred near Queen Street in Central Stockholm shortly before 3pm, local time. A vehicle drove onto the pedestrian street Drottninggatan and into a department store building. Several deaths and injuries have resulted but police said they were unable to confirm the number of fatalities on Friday afternoon. It is understood the truck was hijacked or stolen from a brewery company Kall Ol. In the immediate aftermath panic ensued and people fled the area. Elsewhere, there are reports of a shooting on a separate street in the city. Police are now also investigating this incident. Towe Hagg, a spokeswoman at Stockholm police command center, said earlier: "Police were alerted at around 2.53pm (local time). "We have initial information that people are injured and we are here to find out more." No further reports of gunshots emerged and it is not clear what happened in the second reported incident. All subway traffic has now been closed down in Stockholm following the attack and trains into the city have been cancelled. Police have also ordered a lockdown on the city's central train station. Government offices have been evacuated and all cabinet ministers have been brought to safety. Read More Witnesses Newspaper Aftonbladet quoted a witness saying they saw hundreds of people running for their lives near the Ahlens mall. Another witness told the newspaper that the out-of-control truck ran over at least two people. A shocked witness told Swedish Television News they saw two people lying on the ground after the truck ploughed through the pedestrian street. They said: "We walked past and then there are two people on the ground. "Then the truck continued on Drottninggatan, then we did not see where it went." Another bystander described the scene as "chaos." Marie Karlberg SVT Nyheter: "We were in H&M and a truck was driving in the pedestrian zone right into Ahlens. "It's pure chaos and it burns on Drottninggatan." Another bystander said police were screaming at people on the street, roaring; "Back, back, this is no joke." Another eye-witness told Aftonbladet about having to run to safety. The person, who has been named as Dimitris, said: "I was on the main street when a big truck came out of nowhere. "I could not see if anyone was driving it but it went out of control. "I saw at least two people being run over. I ran as fast as I could from there." Another witness told TT news agency they saw medical personnel helping injured people. They said: "I also saw people with blankets over them. Read More "Their whole bodies was covered." Office worker JP Hanson described the scene as mayhem and said his building has been put into lockdown. "Right now, inside here we have maybe 40 people," he told BBC News. "The mood is quite positive, obviously people are afraid - but I would say it's a strong mood." Witness Jan Granroth told Aftonbladet that "we stood inside a shoe store and heard something ... and then people started to scream." He said: "I looked out of the store and saw a big truck." Another witness quoted by the paper said: "When I came out I saw a lorry standing there, with smoke coming from it, and there were loads of bits of cars and broken flower pots along the street." Solidarity The European Union has offered Sweden support and solidarity. "An attack on any of our member states is an attack on us all," said EU chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker. "One of Europe's most vibrant and colourful cities appears to have been struck by those wishing it and our very way of life harm. "We stand shoulder to shoulder in solidarity with the people of Sweden and the Swedish authorities can count on the European Commission to support them in any which way we can." "My heart is in Stockholm this afternoon," EU summit chair Donald Tusk tweeted. "My thoughts are with the victims and their families and friends of today's terrible attack." We need your consent to load this Social Media content We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content. Manage Preference King Carl Gustaf, Sweden's head of state, expressed his horror at the attcak. "Our thoughts are going out to those that were affected, and to their families," he said in a statement from the royal palace. The Armed Forces in Sweden are currently monitoring the situation The crash is close to the scene of a terror attack in 2010 when Taimour Abdulwahab, a Swedish citizen who lived in Luton, blew himself up. The terrorist, who police concluded acted alone, died on December 11 2010 in the Bryggargatan area. No-one else was killed. Following today's incident, police in Norway's largest cities and at Oslo's airport will be carrying weapons until further notice following an attack in Stockholm on Friday, Norwegian police said in a tweet. Police officers in Norway, which borders Sweden, do not usually carry guns on them. In Finland, police increased patrols in the capital Helsinki. Meanwhile, Sweden's national rail company SJ said all trains to and from Stockholm's central station would be cancelled for the rest of the day as a result of the deadly truck attack in the city. "No SJ trains will go either to or from Stockholm Central for the rest of the day," SJ said in a statement. Prime minister Stefan Lofven makes a statement after people were killed when a truck crashed into department store Ahlens on Drottninggatan, in central Stockholm, Sweden April 7, 2017. TT News Agency/Thomas Johansson/via REUTERS Taoiseach Enda Kenny has offered Ireland's support to Sweden following today's suspected terror attack. "Following the tragic events in Stockholm earlier today I want to offer my solidarity and that of the Irish Government to Stefan Lofven and the Swedish people," he said. "We stand with Sweden, and the rest of Europe, in united determination that our values will not be defeated. "The cowards who perpetrated this attack place no value on our freedom and way of life here in Europe and their view has no place in our society. Expand Close Emergency personnel load a person into an ambulance, centre, at the scene after a truck crashed into a department store injuring several people in central Stockholm, Sweden, Friday (Fredrik Sandberg/TT News Agency via AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Emergency personnel load a person into an ambulance, centre, at the scene after a truck crashed into a department store injuring several people in central Stockholm, Sweden, Friday (Fredrik Sandberg/TT News Agency via AP) Minister for Foreign Affairs Charlie Flanagan also issued a statement. "I was shocked and saddened by reports of a serious incident this afternoon in Stockholm which has resulted in a number of fatalities. I wish to offer my sincere condolences to the families and loved ones of those killed and injured in this horrific incident," he said. "While the nature of the incident has not yet been officially confirmed, I understand that it is being treated as a terrorist attack by the Swedish authorities. I wish to express my own and the Governments solidarity and support to the people of Stockholm and Sweden at this time. The European Union and countries across the continent offered Sweden support and solidarity on Friday following what the Swedish government said appeared to be a terrorist attack using a vehicle in central Stockholm. "An attack on any of our member states is an attack on us all," said President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker. "One of Europe's most vibrant and colourful cities appears to have been struck by those wishing it and our very way of life harm. "We stand shoulder to shoulder in solidarity with the people of Sweden and the Swedish authorities can count on the European Commission to support them in any which way we can." "My heart is in Stockholm this afternoon," President of the European Council Donald Tusk tweeted. "My thoughts are with the victims, and their families and friends, of today's terrible attack." German government spokesman Steffen Seibert also reacted to the news. "Our thoughts are with the people in Stockholm, the injured, relatives, rescuers and police. We stand together against terror," he said in a tweet. Sweden's Nordic neighbours also expressed their horror. "Terrible news from Stockholm. Our thoughts are with our neighbours and friends in Sweden," Finland's Prime Minister Juha Sipila wrote in Swedish on his Twitter account. Danish Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen, speaking in Vienna, expressed his sadness and called for more cooperation between countries to combat attacks. "It's so horrible to learn about this terror attack ... It's horrible, it's disgusting and we have to fight this terror appearing in Europe," he said. "And one thing we can do is to cooperate even closer on exchanging data, exchanging information about what we learn of those terror cells or terrorists," Samuelsen added. "Terrible event in Stockholm," Norwegian Finance Minister Siv Jensen tweeted. Additional reporting by Reuters Three people killed in incident when a truck was driven Friday April 7 2017 into a department store in central Stockholm, Sweden April 7, 2017. TT News Agency/Andreas Schyman/via Three people killed in incident when a truck was driven Friday April 7 2017 into a department store in central Stockholm Photo: TT News Agency/Andreas Schyman/via REUTERS Witnesses have described their horror after they witnessed an "out-of-control" truck ploughed down a busy pedestrian street. At least three poeple have been confirmed dead and several are understood to be injured. Newspaper Aftonbladet quoted a witness saying they saw hundreds of people running for their lives near the Ahlens mall. Another witness told the newspaper that the out-of-control truck ran over at least two people. A shocked witness told Swedish Television News they saw two people lying on the ground after the truck ploughed through the pedestrian street. They said: "We walked past and then there are two people on the ground. "Then the truck continued on Drottninggatan, then we did not see where it went." Another bystander described the scene as "chaos." Marie Karlberg SVT Nyheter: "We were in H&M and a truck was driving in the pedestrian zone right into Ahlens. "It's pure chaos and it burns on Drottninggatan." Another bystander said police were screaming at people on the street, roaring; "Back, back, this is no joke." Another eye-witness told Aftonbladet about having to run to safety. The person, who has been named as Dimitris, said: "I was on the main street when a big truck came out of nowhere. "I could not see if anyone was driving it but it went out of control. "I saw at least two people being run over. I ran as fast as I could from there." Another witness told TT news agency they saw medical personnel helping injured people. They said: "I also saw people with blankets over them. "Their whole bodies was covered." The area has now been cordoned off. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday urged restraint and a renewed push for peace in Syria as the Security Council called an emergency meeting to discuss the US missile strikes on a Syrian air base. "Mindful of the risk of escalation, I appeal for restraint to avoid any acts that could deepen the suffering of the Syrian people," Guterres said in a statement. "These events underscore my belief that there is no other way to solve the conflict than through a political solution." The Security Council was set to meet at 11:30 am (1530 GMT), at the request of Bolivia, to hear a briefing from UN political chief Jeffrey Feltman. US Ambassador Nikki Haley, who holds the council presidency this month, said the discussion would be held in an open session despite Bolivia's request for a closed-door meeting. "Any country that chooses to defend the atrocities of the Syrian regime will have to do so in full public view, for all the world to hear," Haley said in a statement. Russia had also demanded an emergency meeting after angrily denouncing the military action as an "aggression against a sovereign state." US President Donald Trump on Thursday ordered cruise missile strikes on a Syrian air base in response to a chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held town that killed 86 people and shocked the world. The strike -- the first direct US action against President Bashar al-Assad and Trump's biggest military decision since taking office -- marked a dramatic escalation in American involvement in Syria's six-year war. The Security Council failed during a meeting Thursday to agree on terms for an investigation of the suspected sarin gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhun. Russia's Deputy Ambassador Vladimir Safronkov on Thursday warned of "negative consequences" from the US military action, which he described as a "doubtful, tragic enterprise." "Look at Iraq, look at Libya," he said, referring to Western interventions that unleashed years of chaos in those countries. Eighty-six people including at least 27 children died in the suspected attack in Khan Sheikhun. Results from post-mortems performed on victims point to exposure to the deadly sarin nerve agent, according to Turkish health officials. Guterres called on the council to unite and agree on a way forward on Syria. "For too long, international law has been ignored in the Syrian conflict, and it is our shared duty to uphold international standards of humanity," he said. "This is a prerequisite to ending the unrelenting suffering of the people of Syria." Search Keywords: Short link: President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, with their wives, first lady Melania Trump and Chinese first lady Peng Liyuan are seated during a dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Thursday, April 6, 2017, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) Undated handout photo issued by the US Navy of USS Porter (DDG 78) firing a tomahawk land attack missile from the Mediterranean Sea. Seaman Ford Williams/US Navy/PA Wire Undated handout photo issued by the US Navy of USS Porter (DDG 78) firing a tomahawk land attack missile from the Mediterranean Sea. Seaman Ford Williams/US Navy/PA Wire Ivanka Trump, second from right, the daughter and assistant to President Donald Trump, is seated with her husband White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, right, during a dinner with President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, at Mar-a-Lago, Thursday, April 6, 2017, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, sit with their wives, first lady Melania Trump, left, and Chinese first lady Peng Liyuan, right, before a meeting at Mar-a-Lago, Thursday, April 6, 2017, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, with their wives, first lady Melania Trump and Chinese first lady Peng Liyuan are seated at the center, during a dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Thursday, April 6, 2017, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, with their wives, first lady Melania Trump and Chinese first lady Peng Liyuan are seated at the center, during a dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Thursday, April 6, 2017, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) Ivanka Trump, second from right, the daughter and assistant to President Donald Trump, is seated with her husband White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, right, during a dinner with President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, at Mar-a-Lago, Thursday, April 6, 2017, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, with their wives, first lady Melania Trump and Chinese first lady Peng Liyuan are seated during a dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Thursday, April 6, 2017, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) Undated handout photo issued by the US Department of Defense of USS Ross (DDG 71) firing a tomahawk land attack missile from the Mediterranean Sea. MC3 (SW) Robert S. Price/US Department of Defense/PA Wire U.S. President Donald Trump said he ordered missile strikes against a Syrian airfield from which a deadly chemical weapons attack was launched, declaring he acted in America's "vital national security interest". At least five people have died and seven others were injured after the US missiles attack, officials have claimed. 1. What happened? About 60 US Tomahawk missiles hit the Shayrat air base south east of Homs - a small installation with two runways, where aircraft often take off to bomb targets in northern and central Syria. The US missiles struck at 3.45am on Friday, Syria time, and targeted the base's airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, American officials said. They were fired from two warships in the Mediterranean Sea, in retaliation for Tuesday's deadly chemical attack that officials said used chlorine mixed with a nerve agent, possibly sarin. Expand Close The US fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria Thursday night in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians, the first direct American assault on the Syrian government and Donald Trump's most dramatic military order since becoming president. Photo: AP / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The US fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria Thursday night in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians, the first direct American assault on the Syrian government and Donald Trump's most dramatic military order since becoming president. Photo: AP 2. What else do we know? A Syrian official said the attack killed three soldiers and two civilians while seven others were wounded. Talal Barazi, the governor of Homs province, said a fire raged in the air base in Homs for over an hour following the barrage of missiles. A Syrian opposition monitor said the attack killed four soldiers, including a general. 3. Why did the US attack that air base? US President Donald Trump said on Thursday he ordered a targeted military strike against an airfield in Syria from which a deadly chemical attack was launched this week. Trump ordered the strikes just a day after he pointed the finger at Assad for this week's chemical attack, which killed at least 70 people, many of them children, in the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun. The Syrian government has denied it was behind the attack. 4. Could there be any other reasons why Trump targeted the air base? The relatively quick response to the chemical attack came as Trump faced a growing list of global problems, from North Korea and China to Iran and Islamic State. Expand Close A crater is seen at the site of an airstrike, after what rescue workers described as a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, Syria. Photo: Reuters / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp A crater is seen at the site of an airstrike, after what rescue workers described as a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, Syria. Photo: Reuters It has been suggested the attack may have been intended to send a message to friends and foes alike of his resolve to use military force if deemed necessary. Read More 5. What has Donald Trump said about the incident? Trump has defended the attack, saying: "Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad launched a horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians ... "Tonight I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched. "It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons... "Years of previous attempts at changing Assads behavior have all failed and failed very dramatically." 6. How have Syrian officials reacted? Syrian state TV said that "American aggression" had targeted a Syrian military base with "a number of missiles and cited a Syrian military source as saying the strike had "led to losses." The governor of Syria's Homs province, where the airbase is located, said the strikes were not believed to have caused "big human casualties" but had caused material damage. Governor Talal Barazi told Reuters the attack served the interests of "armed terrorist groups" including Islamic State, adding that the targeted air base had been providing air support for army operations against Islamic State east of Palmyra. "I believe - God willing - that the human casualties are not big, but there is material damage. We hope there are not many victims and martyrs," he said by telephone. 7. Have any nations condemned the action? Expand Close A Syrian doctor treats a child at a makeshift hospital in the town of Khan Sheikhoun following the suspected chemical attack (Edlib Media Centre/AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp A Syrian doctor treats a child at a makeshift hospital in the town of Khan Sheikhoun following the suspected chemical attack (Edlib Media Centre/AP) Iran is one of the biggest supporters of embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad and its hard-line paramilitary Revolutionary Guard is deeply involved in the war. Iran's state news agency IRNA quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi as saying: "Iran strongly condemns any such unilateral strikes... Such measures will strengthen terrorists in Syria ... and will complicate the situation in Syria and the region." Russian President Vladimir Putin believes that U.S. cruise missile strikes on a Syrian air base broke international law and have seriously hurt U.S.-Russia relations, news agencies cited the Kremlin as sayin. Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov was cited as saying that the Russian leader, a staunch ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, regarded the U.S. action as "aggression against a sovereign nation" on a "made-up pretext" and as a cynical attempt to distract the world from civilian deaths in Iraq. Peskov was quoted as saying that Russia did not believe that Syria possessed chemical weapons and that the U.S. move would inevitably create a serious obstacle to creating an international coalition to fight terrorism, an idea that Putin has repeatedly pushed. Russia also said it is suspending a deal with the US to prevent mid-air incidents over Syria in response to the US missile strike. Read More 8. Who is supporting the US action? The Syrian Coalition opposition group welcomed the US attack, saying it put an end to an age of "impunity" and should be just the beginning. Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the US attack, saying he "fully supports" Mr Trump's decision. Mr Netanyahu said "in both word and action" Mr Trump "sent a strong and clear message" that "the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated". A British government spokesman said: "The UK Government fully supports the US action, which we believe was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, and is intended to deter further attacks." Saudi Arabia said it "fully supports" U.S. strikes on military targets in Syria, saying it was a "courageous decision" by President Donald Trump in response to the use of chemical weapons against civilians. Expand Close President Bashar al-Assad. Photo: AP / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp President Bashar al-Assad. Photo: AP "A responsible source at the foreign ministry expressed the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's full support for the American military operations on military targets in Syria, which came as a response to the Syrian regime's use of chemical weapons against innocent civilians..." Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull supported the U.S. air strike on a Syrian airbase, calling it a "proportionate and calibrated response". In a televised statement, he also called on Russia to play its part in bringing peace to Syria. Read More 9. How have the stock markets reacted? Bonds, gold and the yen jumped in Asia on Friday, while stocks retreated, as investors fled to safe assets after the United States launched cruise missiles against an airbase in Syria, raising the risk of confrontation with Russia and Iran. The U.S. dollar dropped as much as 0.6 percent, while gold and oil prices rallied hard, though the early market panic ebbed when a U.S. official called the attack a "one-off", with no plans for escalation. "It was a knee-jerk reaction because markets are starting to come back a little, as it doesn't seem like there will be further retaliation coming," said Christoffer Moltke-Leth, head of institutional client trading at Saxo Capital Markets in Singapore. European stocks were also poised for a negative start, with financial spreadbetters expecting Britain's FTSE 100 and France's CAC 40 to open down 0.2 percent, and Germany's DAX to start the day 0.3 percent lower. World Health Organization experts work as they take part in an autopsy conducted in a hospital in Adana, Turkey. President Bashar Assad's government came under mounting international pressure yesterday after a chemical attack in northern Syria, with even key ally Russia saying its support is not unconditional. Turkey, meanwhile, said samples from victims of Tuesday's attack, which killed more than 80 people in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, indicate they were exposed to sarin, a highly toxic nerve agent. Syria rejected the accusations, and Moscow warned against apportioning blame until an investigation has been carried out. The United States said it hopes for a vote late last night on a UN Security Council resolution that would condemn the chemical attack. President Donald Trump hinted at military action and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Mr Assad should no longer have a role in governing the Syrian people. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview that "unconditional support is not possible in this current world." But he added that "it is not correct to say that Moscow can convince Mr Assad to do whatever is wanted in Moscow. This is totally wrong." Expand Close World Health Organization experts work as they take part in an autopsy conducted in a hospital in Adana, Turkey. / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp World Health Organization experts work as they take part in an autopsy conducted in a hospital in Adana, Turkey. Russia has provided military support for the Syrian government since September 2015, turning the balance of power in Mr Assad's favour. Moscow has used its veto power at the Security Council on several occasions since the civil war began six years ago to prevent sanctions against Damascus. The two countries "enjoy a relationship of cooperation, of exchange of views and full mutual support," said Peskov, a spokesman for President Vladimir Putin. Mr Assad and his army are "the only real power in Syria that can resist terrorists on the ground," he said. Read more: Syria maintains it didn't use chemical weapons, blaming opposition fighters for stockpiling the chemicals. Russia's Defence Ministry said the toxic agents were released when a Syrian airstrike hit a rebel chemical weapons arsenal and munitions factory on the eastern outskirts of Khan Sheikhoun. "I stress, once again, that the Syrian Arab Army did not and will not use such weapons even against the terrorists who are targeting our people," Syria's Foreign Minister Walid Moallem told reporters in Damascus. Turkish officials said nearly 60 victims of the attack were brought to Turkey for treatment and three of them died. Victims showed signs of nerve gas exposure, including suffocation, foaming at the mouth, convulsions, constricted pupils and involuntary defecation, the World Health Organization and Doctors Without Borders said. Paramedics used fire hoses to wash the chemicals from the bodies of victims. Mr Assad said there is no "option except victory" in the country's civil war in an interview published yesterday, saying the government could not reach "results" with opposition groups that attended recent peace talks. The interview with Croatian newspaper 'Vecernji List' appeared to have been conducted before President Trump accused him of crossing "many, many lines" with the poison gas attack. "If we do not win this war, it means that Syria will be deleted from the map," Assad said. "We have no choice in facing this war, and that's why we are confident, we are persistent and we are determined." US First Lady Melania Trump (R) and President Donald Trump (2nd R) pose with Chinese President Xi Jinping (2nd L) and his wife Peng Liyuan (L) upon their arrival to the Mar-a-Lago estate in West Palm Beach, Florida, on April 6, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / JIM WATSONJIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump and Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping have opened their high-stakes summit at the US president's Florida beach resort, with the urgent threat of North Korea's nuclear ambitions and tensions over trade on the agenda. Mr Xi's visit was overshadowed though, by the US missile barrage on an air base in Syria in response to this week's chemical weapons attack against civilians, which Mr Trump blamed on Syria's president Bashar Assad. The US announced the missile attack shortly after Mr Xi and his wife left the Mar-a-Lago estate on Thursday night. Mr Trump appeared light-hearted earlier as he greeted Mr Xi at Mar-A-Lago, gesturing and pointing to journalists as they tussled to get a picture of the leaders together for the first time. Ahead of the dinner, Mr Trump said he and Mr Xi already had had a long discussion and had "developed a friendship", then joked: "I have gotten nothing, absolutely nothing." The White House said the location was selected to give the two days of discussions a more relaxed feel. A number of Mr Trump's top advisers were there, including his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner. Outside the dining room where the two delegations gathered for a lavish dinner, Mar-a-Lago club members packed the patio for dinner. Speaking on Air Force One on the way to Florida, Mr Trump pointed to the crisis in North Korea as a top priority in the meetings with Mr Xi. He said he thinks China will "want to be stepping up" in trying to deter North Korea's nuclear ambitions. While he would not say what he wants China to do specifically, he suggested there was a link between "terrible" trade agreements the US has made with China and Pyongyang's provocations and said the two issues "really do mix". He has said that if China does not exert more pressure on North Korea, the US will act alone. Read More Both as a candidate and president, Mr Trump has taken an aggressive posture towards China, labelling Beijing a "tremendous problem" and arguing that lopsided trade deals with China short-change American businesses and workers. Last week, the president predicted in a tweet that his meeting with Mr Xi would be "very difficult". The White House has downplayed expectations for a breakthrough on issues like trade and tariffs, insisting that the 24-hour summit is mostly an introductory meeting for the two leaders. Within Mr Trump's administration, there are still divisions over how to approach China. According to US and foreign officials, treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin and economic adviser Gary Cohn are leading the charge for boosting ties and exploring the potential for greater economic co-operation. But economic adviser Peter Navarro, author of the book Death By China: Confronting The Dragon - A Global Call To Action, prefers trying to isolate China, in keeping with Mr Trump's "America first" mantra. Read More Patrick Cronin, a China expert with the Centre for a New American Security, said the Trump administration does not have "a reconciled trade and economic policy yet, and the differing views on China in the White House underscore that". Anthony Ruggiero, an east Asia expert at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, said China may be more willing to accommodate Mr Trump on trade and economic issues than on regional security matters, including North Korea. Mr Xi, a shrewd political operator, is unlikely to want to rock the boat ahead of a Communist Party conclave later this year that will install new leadership. He is also expected to seek assurances that Mr Trump will not interfere in the territorial dispute over the South China Sea or question the "One China" policy by reaching out to Taiwan's leader again, as he did during the transition. The move infuriated Beijing, leading Mr Trump to eventually reiterate his commitment to the decades-old policy. Previous White Houses have held China accountable for its human rights record, something this administration has made very little mention of, whether in China or elsewhere. It also remains to be seen whether the Obama administration's deal with Beijing to curb Chinese cyber-theft for economic gain and its hacking of US companies will be addressed. A 42-year-old man has choked to death while taking part in a doughnut-eating contest. Denver man Travis Malouff died during the contest that requires participants to consume a half-pound of glazed doughnut in less than two minutes, authorities and media said on Monday. Reuters reported that Mr Malouff died on Sunday "from asphyxia, due to obstruction of the airway," at the Voodoo Doughnut shop, the office of the Denver medical examiner said in a statement. The doughnut was the "size of a small cake", witness Julia Edelstein told local TV stations. Read More Winners of the contest get the doughnut for free and a button saying they won the challenge. Voodoo Doughnuts, said they are now suspending the contest, according to statement given to Denver news station KUSA-TV. Mr Malouff's death occurred in the same week as 20-year-old Caitlin Nelson, who choked at a separate event in Connecticut on March 30. She starts to choke on pancake on someone recognized it one of the nursing students at the competition and she caught her and brought her slowly to the ground, Fairfield police Lt. Robert Kalamaras told The New York Post. And then she began CPR, basic life support, until officers showed up less than two minutes after the emergency call was made by one of the nursing students. Ms Nelson was rushed to hospital but died three days later. In a Facebook tribute to her, a family member said it was the second tragedy to hit the family. Heaven got another angel and we are sad beyond belief for Caitlins family, one user wrote. No family should have to endure the loss of a child ever and they already lost her dad on 9/11, its heart wrenching. Ms Nelsons father, James, was a Port Authority police officer who died during the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center when Caitlin was just 5-years-old. US First Lady Melania Trump (R) and President Donald Trump (2nd R) pose with Chinese President Xi Jinping (2nd L) and his wife Peng Liyuan (L) upon their arrival to the Mar-a-Lago estate in West Palm Beach, Florida, on April 6, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / JIM WATSONJIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images DONALD Trump will today tell Chinas Xi Jinping that North Korea has become a strategic liability and demand trade concessions at a high stakes Florida summit between the leaders of the worlds two biggest economies. Mr Xi arrived at Mar-a-Lago, Mr Trumps holiday retreat, last night for the first face-to-face meeting between the two men. The meeting comes after North Korea carried out a ballistic missile test on Wednesday, and as Mr Trumps supporters demanded he fulfil his campaign promise to bring manufacturing jobs back from China. Speaking hours before sitting down to dinner with Mr Xi and his wife Peng Liyuan, Mr Trump told Fox News: We have not been treated fairly on trade, no presidents taken care of that the way they should have. And we have a big problem on North Korea, so were going to see what happens. Asked if he hoped to leverage China into action over North Koreas nuclear programme, Mr Trump said: Ill tell you well be in there pitching, and I think were going to do very well. A US official said the potential for ramping up secondary sanctions against Chinese banks and companies that do business with Pyongyang would be an early topic of conversation. The feeling on our side is that this problem has really now become urgent, the official said. Patience has basically come to an end. We need to do something proactive. A White House National Security Council official added: Its in Beijings interest. We think that North Korea long ago ceased to be a strategic asset for China. It is now quite clearly a strategic liability. The US trade deficit with China last year was $347bn (326bn), more than two thirds of the entire US deficit. During the election Mr Trump accused China of stealing US jobs and factories, and of being a currency manipulator. Meanwhile, Senate Republicans yesterday crushed a Democratic blockade of Mr Trumps US Supreme Court nominee in a fierce partisan brawl, approving a rule change dubbed the nuclear option to allow for conservative judge Neil Gorsuchs confirmation by today. With ideological control of the nations highest court at stake, the Republican-led Senate voted 52-48 along party lines to change its long-standing rules in order to prohibit a procedural tactic called a filibuster against Supreme Court nominees. That came after Republicans failed by a 55-45 tally to muster the 60-vote super-majority needed to end the Democratic filibuster that had sought to deny Mr Gorsuch confirmation to the lifetime post. The Senates action paved the way to confirm Mr Gorsuch by simple majority, with a vote expected this evening. Republicans control the Senate 52-48. Confirmation of Mr Gorsuch would represent Mr Trumps first major victory since taking office, after setbacks on healthcare legislation and his blocked order to prevent people from several Muslim-majority nations from entering the US. Also yesterday, the Republican head of a congressional inquiry into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election said he would temporarily step aside from the probe because he is under investigation for disclosing classified information. Devin Nunes, chairman of the House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and an ally of Mr Trump, characterised charges that he made unauthorised disclosures of classified information as entirely false and politically motivated. The surprise disclosure that Mr Nunes was under investigation injected new uncertainty into the wider Russia probe by his committee. The investigation is one of several in Congress examining whether Russia tried to influence the election in Mr Trumps favour. Russia denies the allegations, which Mr Trump also dismisses. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson welcomes Chinese president Xi Jinping at Palm Beach International Airport in Florida (Lynne Sladky/AP) A man breathes through an oxygen mask as another one receives treatments, after what rescue workers described as a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, Syria Photo: Reuters/Ammar Abdullah A Syrian child receives treatment following a suspected toxic gas attack in Khan Sheikhun, a rebel-held town in the northwestern Syrian Idlib province, on April 4, 2017 A crater is seen at the site of an airstrike, after what rescue workers described as a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, Syria. Photo: Reuters Aya Fadl, who lost more than a dozen family members in the suspected chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun, wears an oxygen mask to heal breathing difficulties (Aya Fadl/AP) US First Lady Melania Trump (R) and President Donald Trump (2nd R) pose with Chinese President Xi Jinping (2nd L) and his wife Peng Liyuan (L) upon their arrival to the Mar-a-Lago estate in West Palm Beach, Florida, on April 6, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / JIM WATSONJIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images The US fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria Thursday night in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians, the first direct American assault on the Syrian government and Donald Trump's most dramatic military order since becoming president. Photo: AP President Donald Trump speaks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida after the US fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria Thursday night in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. Photo: AP US President Donald Trump said on Thursday he ordered a targeted military strike against an airfield in Syria from which a deadly chemical attack was launched this week. US officials said the military launched dozens of cruise missile strikes against an airbase controlled by Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad's forces in response to the chemical attack on Tuesday in a rebel-held area. Facing his biggest foreign policy crisis since taking office in January, Trump took the toughest direct US action yet in Syria's six-year-old civil war, raising the risk of confrontation with Russia and Iran, Assad's two main military backers. Some 50 Tomahawk missiles were launched from US Navy warships in the Mediterranean Sea, striking multiple targets - including the airstrip, aircraft and fuel stations - on an airbase in Homs, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Further details and damage estimates from the strikes, which were conducted at 8:45 pm EDT (00:45 GMT Friday), were not immediately known. Trump ordered the strikes just a day after he pointed the finger at Assad for this week's chemical attack, which killed at least 70 people, many of them children, in the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun. The Syrian government has denied it was behind the attack. Expand Close The US fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria Thursday night in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians, the first direct American assault on the Syrian government and Donald Trump's most dramatic military order since becoming president. Photo: AP / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The US fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria Thursday night in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians, the first direct American assault on the Syrian government and Donald Trump's most dramatic military order since becoming president. Photo: AP Trump appeared to have opted for measured and targeted air attacks instead of a full-blown assault on Assad's forces and installations. Trump, who was attending a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping at his Florida resort, said earlier on Thursday that "something should happen" with Assad but did not specifically call for his ouster. Officials from the Pentagon and State Department met all day to discuss plans for the missile strikes. US military action put the new president at odds with Russia, which has air and ground forces in Syria after intervening there on Assad's side in 2015 and turning the tide against mostly Sunni Muslim rebel groups. Trump has until now focused his Syria policy almost exclusively on defeating Islamic State militants in northern Syria, where US special forces are supporting Arab and Kurdish armed groups. The risks have grown worse since 2013, when Barack Obama, Trump's predecessor, considered and then rejected ordering a cruise missile strike in response to the use of chemical weapons by Assad's loyalists. Only last week, US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said the US diplomatic policy on Syria for now was no longer focused on making Assad leave power, one of Obama's aims. But Trump said on Wednesday the gas attack in Idlib province, which sparked outrage around the world, had caused him to think again about Assad. Expand Close A Syrian child receives treatment following a suspected toxic gas attack in Khan Sheikhun, a rebel-held town in the northwestern Syrian Idlib province, on April 4, 2017 / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp A Syrian child receives treatment following a suspected toxic gas attack in Khan Sheikhun, a rebel-held town in the northwestern Syrian Idlib province, on April 4, 2017 Speaking just before the strikes were announced, Russia's deputy UN envoy, Vladimir Safronkov, warned of "negative consequences" if the United States went ahead with military action, saying the blame would be on shoulders of those who initiated such doubtful and tragic enterprise. The deployment of military force against Assad marked a major reversal for Trump. Obamas set a red line in 2012 against Assads use of chemical weapons. When Obama then threatened military action after a 2013 chemical attack, Trump issued a series of tweets opposing the idea, including Do NOT attack Syria, fix U.S.A. Obama backtracked on the air strikes, and after the latest attack, Trump was quick to blame his Democratic predecessor for weakness and irresolution that emboldened Assad. Twitter said its users have a constitutional right to disseminate 'anonymous and pseudonymous political speech' (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu) Twitter Inc on Friday dropped a lawsuit it filed the previous day against the US. Homeland Security Department, saying the government had withdrawn a summons for records about who was behind an account critical of President Donald Trump. A lawyer for the social media company, Mark Flanagan, wrote in court papers that a US Justice Department lawyer told Twitter about the withdrawal of the summons on Friday and that the demand "no longer has any force or effect." It was not immediately clear why the government had withdrawn the summons, or whether it had closed an investigation it said it was conducting. The Justice Department, which defends federal agencies in court, declined to comment. The Homeland Security Department, which issued the summons, had no immediate comment. The abrupt end to the dispute may indicate that Justice Department lawyers did not like their chances of succeeding in a fight about speech rights, said Jamie Lee Williams, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which advocates for digital rights. "It seemed like a blatant attempt to censor or chill the people behind this account, or to retaliate against people who are speaking out against this administration," Williams said. "This could have been a huge loss for the administration in court," she added. Twitter cited freedom of speech as a basis for not turning over records about the account, @ALT_uscis. The people behind the account have not disclosed their identities, but the use of "ALT" with a government agency acronym has led many to assume government employees are behind such tweets. The lawsuit said the account "claims to be" the work of at least one federal immigration employee. The acronym US CIS refers to US Citizenship and Immigration Services, and the account describes itself as "immigration resistance." Trump has vowed to build a wall along the US border with Mexico and has promised to deport millions of illegal immigrants. Following Trump's inauguration in January, anonymous Twitter feeds that borrowed the names and logos of more than a dozen US government agencies appeared to challenge the president's views on climate change and other issues. They called themselves "ALT" accounts. A Twitter spokesman declined to comment beyond the court papers, and the company has declined to say whether it has received demands about other anti-Trump accounts. Social media companies frequently receive requests from governments under seal, though the requests are typically about a criminal proceeding or national security matter. This summons came from an office that investigates employee corruption, misconduct and mismanagement. Lawmakers of both parties questioned the propriety of the summons. Republican senators Cory Gardner of Colorado and Mike Lee of Utah sent a letter on Friday to Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, asking what protocols existed to protect free speech in agency investigations. Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, sent a separate letter on Friday to US Customs and Border Protection, which is part of Homeland Security, requesting an investigation into why and how the summons was issued. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has said the US air strike on a Syrian air base came within an inch of militarily clashing with their forces. He said the action taken by the Americans was in breach of international law and their own internal procedures, and accused Washington of barely avoiding combat clashes with Russia. In a post on Facebook, Mr Medvedev said the air strike had "completely ruined relations" between the two superpowers. However, the US says it warned Russia one hour before it fired 59 tomahawk cruise missiles at the Shayrat air base. Satellite imagery suggests the base that was struck is home to Russian special forces and military helicopters, part of the Kremlin's effort to help the Syrian government fight Islamic State and other militant groups. No Russian personnel were caught up in the strike. Syrian state media has claimed that a US missile attack on a government air base has killed seven people, including four children. Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said the strike deliberately avoided sections of the base where the Russians were believed to be present. Briefing reporters on the operation, he said the US military had "multiple" conversations with Russian forces on Thursday before the strike, using a line of communication that had previously been established to prevent an accidental clash in Syria during the fight against Isis. On Friday senior US officials said Russia has not suspended a military communications channel meant to help US and Russian forces to avoid inadvertent clashes in Syria. The senior US military officials, who spoke to Pentagon reporters on condition of anonymity, also said US military operations against Islamic State in Syria were unchanged following the cruise missile strike. The officials said there had been no retaliatory action by Syria or Russia taken against American forces in Syria since the strikes against the Syrian airbase. Meanwhile, a visit to Moscow by US. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is on the agenda for the coming week, Interfax news agency cited a Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman as saying on Friday. Maria Zakharova said the ministry expected Tillerson to explain Washington's stance in light of the US missile strike on Syria. "Let him come (to Moscow) and tell what strange things they did", she said, according to Interfax. The White House has said that the attacks sent a "strong signal to the rest of the world". They were "decisive, justified and proportional" a spokesperson said. The United States took a very measured step that was "fully justified", said UN Ambassador Nikki Haley on Friday. "We are prepared to do more, but we hope that will not be necessary," she told the U.N. Security Council. "The United States will not stand by when chemical weapons are used. It is in our vital national security interest to prevent the spread and use of chemical weapons." A bill that would see Texas men fined $100 (94) for masturbating has taken a step closer to becoming law after it received its first reading in the states House of Representatives. Under section 173.010 of House Bill 4260, the Mans Right to Know Act, Texas men would only be allowed to masturbate under supervision, inside approved health care and medical facilities. Any unregulated masturbatory emissions outside of a womans vagina, or created outside of a health or medical facility, will be charged a $100 civil penalty for each emission, and will be considered an act against an unborn child, and failing to preserve the sanctity of life. The bill, created by state representative Jessica Farrar of Houston, would also promote fully abstinent sexual relations and create a Hospital Masturbatory Assistance Registry to provide fully-abstinent encouragement counselling, supervising physicians for masturbatory emissions, and storage for the semen. Allowing Texas men only occasional masturbatory emissions inside the approved facilities, the bill would insist that the resulting semen be stored for the purposes of conception for a current or future wife. After receiving its first reading, the bill has now been referred to the Texas House State Affairs Committee. Ms Farrar has proposed that it become law on September 1. But before the men of Texas panic, (or head obediently to their nearest health facility), they should note that Ms Farrar is not being entirely serious. The Texas Democrat knows her bill has no hope of becoming law, and has introduced it to satirise how women have been affected by targeted healthcare legislation in her state, particularly relating to abortion. Hence the references to sanctity of life and anti-masturbation clauses that appear to take Monty Pythons advice that every sperm is sacred to its logical, legal conclusion. Her bill, Ms Farrar has claimed, mirrors real Texas laws and health care restrictions faced by Texas women every legislative session. Emphasising the need for full male abstinence, it comes three months after Republican Tony Tinderhold proposed criminalising abortion in Texas, arguing it would make women more personally responsible about their sexual behaviour. Ms Farrars bill also insists that any doctor providing a vasectomy or prescribing Viagra must first read a Mans Right to Know booklet with the patient. This, Ms Farrar has said, is a response to current Texas law which obliges doctors to give women considering an abortion a Womens Right to Know booklet. Ms Farrar has criticised this as a guilt mechanism to get the woman to change her mind. She has also criticised the Texas law requiring a woman to have a trans-vaginal ultrasound before she can have an abortion as an invasive, medically unnecessary procedure [where] one of the state's objectives is to guilt her into changing her mind." So her bill also insists: An attending physician must administer a medically-unnecessary digital rectal exam and magnetic resonance imagining of the rectum before administering an elective vasectomy or colonoscopy procedure or prescribing Viagra. When in less satirical mood, Ms Farrar has previously sought to abolish the death penalty in Texas and is currently trying to get a bill passed that would require healthcare facilities to provide information on emergency contraception to sexual assault survivors. The near-impossibility of her satirical Mans Right to Know bill becoming law is underlined by the fact that for it to pass, the Texas House State Affairs Committee chairman, Republican Byron Cook, would have to hold a public hearing on the measure. Which is unlikely given that Mr Cook has filed or supported some of the bills criticised by Texas abortion rights activists. For Ms Farrar, though, that might just sharpen the satire. Eta said it has given up its arsenal of weapons Spain has said it will not offer anything in return for the disarmament of Basque separatist group Eta and urged the militants to disband and help police clear unsolved crimes. In a letter on Friday to the BBC, Eta declared itself a weapons-free organisation after giving up its entire arsenal to civil society groups. It confirmed the mediators would complete the disarmament on Saturday. Spain said Eta does not need to be applauded for the move because the hard work of police and judges had already defeated the group, leading to a ceasefire in 2011. The conservative government's cabinet spokesman, Inigo Mendez de Vigo, said that Eta members should help its victims' relatives by cooperating with hundreds of unresolved cases. Eta has killed 829 people over 43 years of armed struggle. "After giving up all its weaponry (arms and explosives) to Basque civil society representatives, it is now a disarmed organisation," the militant group said in the letter published by the BBC. The letter, dated Friday and signed with Eta's seal, is the group's first public communique in more than five years, since it gave up the violence it waged to achieve an independent Basque state in southern France and northern Spain. A group of activists self-appointed as "peace artisans" had already announced a disarmament strategy in south-western France, but Eta had not confirmed it directly. Two of the mediators, speaking anonymously, said they considered Eta's statement legitimate. Spain and France consider Eta to have been defeated and therefore refuse to engage in the disarmament process. In the letter, Eta accuses both governments of being "stubborn" and persisting in a "winners and losers scheme". It also warns that the disarmament could still be derailed. "We want to warn that still the process can be attacked by the enemies of peace," Eta said, calling Saturday "disarmament day". "The only real guarantee to succeed are the thousands of people gathering tomorrow in Bayonne supporting the disarmament," the group added, referring to the south-western French town where thousands of pro-Basque independence supporters are expected to take part in a demonstration to cap the disarmament. Experts view the disarmament as symbolic, saying Eta's arsenal had already been diminished, with much of it obsolete. Earlier on Thursday, the Basque regional parliament also called for a disarmament to be "unilateral, complete, definitive and verified". AP Syria has condemned a US missile strike on one of its air bases that left at least seven people dead. The office of Syria's president called the strike "reckless" and "irresponsible". The statement said the strikes were "short-sighted" and reflect a continuation of policy, regardless of which administration, that is based on targeting and "subjugating people". State TV also said the strikes on the Shayrat air base were an "aggression" but the Syrian opposition welcomed the military action against President Bashar Assad after a chemical attack earlier this week killed over 80. The US strike followed Tuesday's gruesome chemical attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, where more than 80 people were killed. Initial reports said about 60 US Tomahawk missiles hit the base south-east of Homs, a small installation with two runways, where aircraft often take off to bomb targets in northern and central Syria. Expand Close The US fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria Thursday night in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians, the first direct American assault on the Syrian government and Donald Trump's most dramatic military order since becoming president. Photo: AP / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The US fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria Thursday night in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians, the first direct American assault on the Syrian government and Donald Trump's most dramatic military order since becoming president. Photo: AP However, Russian defence ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov claimed that "the combat efficiency of the US strike was very low", adding that only 23 of the 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles reached the base. He said it destroyed six MiG-23 fighter jets of the Syrian air force which were under repair, but did not damage other Syrian warplanes at the base. He added that the base's runway was left undamaged. Major General Konashenkov also said the Russian military will help Syria beef up its air defences following the US strike. He said that a "complex of measures" to strengthen Syrian air defences will be done shortly to help "protect the most sensitive Syrian infrastructure facilities". The missiles hit early on Friday morning and targeted the base's airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, US officials said. They were fired from two warships in the Mediterranean Sea, in retaliation for Tuesday's deadly chemical attack, which officials said used chlorine mixed with a nerve agent, possibly sarin. Announcing the strike, US President Donald Trump said that Assad "choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children". "Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. Expand Close A crater is seen at the site of an airstrike, after what rescue workers described as a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, Syria. Photo: Reuters / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp A crater is seen at the site of an airstrike, after what rescue workers described as a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, Syria. Photo: Reuters "Tonight, I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched. "It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons." The Syrian military said at least seven people were killed and nine wounded in the US strike. A Syrian opposition monitor put the death toll at four, including a general and three soldiers. Syria's state TV showed footage of the missile strike, as a fast sequence of orange flashes lit the dark sky. The Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir Putin believes the US strike is an "aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law". "Washington's move deals a significant blow to the Russia-US relations, which are already in a deplorable shape," Mr Peskov said. He added that the attack creates a "serious obstacle" for creating an international coalition against terrorism. Russia's foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said no Russian servicemen were hurt in the missile attack but insisted the strike violated international law. A US-led coalition has been bombing Islamic State targets in Syria since 2014, while Russia's air force has been striking both extremist groups and Syrian rebels in order to aid Assad's forces. A Syrian opposition group, the Syrian Coalition, welcomed the US attack, saying it puts an end to an age of "impunity" and should herald the start of a larger campaign against Damascus. Major Jamil al-Saleh, a US-backed rebel commander based in the area where the US attack took place, said he hoped the strike would be a "turning point" in the six-year-old war, which has killed an estimated 400,000 people. Assad's government had been under mounting international pressure after the chemical attack, with even key ally Russia saying its support is not unconditional. Syria rejected the accusations, and blames opposition fighters for stockpiling the chemicals. Russia has said the toxic agents were released when a Syrian air strike hit a rebel chemical weapons arsenal on the eastern outskirts of Khan Sheikhoun, and that blame should not be apportioned until a full investigation has been carried out. Russia's intervention in Syria since September 2015 has turned the balance of power in Assad's favour, and Moscow has used its veto power at the Security Council on several occasions to prevent sanctions against Damascus. Mr Trump had said the chemical attack crossed "many, many lines" and put the blame squarely on Assad's forces. Speaking on Thursday on Air Force One, Mr Trump said the attack "shouldn't have happened, and it shouldn't be allowed to happen". Later, Syrian opposition activists said warplanes had carried out their first air strike since the US missile attack. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the air strike hit the northern edge of the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun where the chemical attack took place. The Observatory and Turkey-based activist Ahmad al-Ahmad said Friday's air strike caused material damage but no casualties. They said it was not immediately clear if the warplanes were Syrian or Russian. Later, the US military rejected the Russian claims, saying 58 of the 59 missiles struck their intended targets. A US official said the initial assessment suggested one of the missiles malfunctioned. The official said the missiles hit multiple aircraft and hardened aircraft shelters and destroyed the fuel area. In Geneva, the UN envoy for Syria said his office is in "crisis" mode after the strike, and that he would soon convene an urgent meeting of a Syrian ceasefire task force chaired by the United States and Russia. Staffan de Mistura said Russia requested the meeting, which was "agreed upon" by the United States. The envoy has been spearheading peace-making efforts for nearly three years, with little progress. A Syrian doctor treats a child at a makeshift hospital in the town of Khan Sheikhoun following the suspected chemical attack (Edlib Media Centre/AP) The US attack on a Syrian air base came after years of heated debate and deliberation in Washington over intervention in the bloody civil war. Chemical weapons have killed hundreds of people since the start of the conflict, with the United Nations blaming three attacks on the Syrian government and a fourth on the Islamic State terror group. One of the worst yet came on Tuesday in rebel-held northern Idlib and killed dozens, including women and children. That attack prompted US president Donald Trump, on day 77 of his presidency, to dramatically shift US policy, with the first direct American attack on the Syrian government. Mr Trump blamed Syrian president Bashar Assad for the attack and called on the international community to join him in trying to end the bloodshed. Here is a timeline of events in Syria leading up to Tuesday's attack. :: March 2011: Protests erupt in the city of Daraa over security forces' detention of a group of boys accused of painting anti-government graffiti on the walls of their school. On March 15, a protest is held in Damascus' Old City. On March 18, security forces open fire on a protest in Daraa, killing four people in what activists regard as the first deaths of the uprising. Demonstrations spread, as does the crackdown by Bashar Assad's forces. :: April 2011: Security forces raid a sit-in in Syria's third-largest city, Homs, where thousands tried to create the mood of Cairo's Tahrir Square, the epicentre of protests against Egypt's autocrat Hosni Mubarak. :: August 18 2011: US president Barack Obama calls on Assad to resign and orders Syrian government assets frozen. :: Summer 2012: Fighting spreads to Aleppo, Syria's largest city and its former commercial capital. :: August 20 2012: Mr Obama says the use of chemical weapons would be a "red line" that would change his calculus on intervening in the civil war and have "enormous consequences". :: March 19 2013: The Syrian government and opposition trade accusations over a gas attack that killed 26 people, including more than a dozen government soldiers, in the town of Khan al-Assal in northern Syria. A UN investigation later finds that sarin nerve gas was used, but does not identify a culprit. :: August 21 2013: Hundreds of people suffocate in rebel-held suburbs of the Syrian capital, with many suffering from convulsions, pinpoint pupils, and foaming at the mouth. UN investigators visit the sites and determine that ground-to-ground missiles loaded with sarin were fired on civilian areas while residents slept. The US and others blame the Syrian government, the only party to the conflict known to have sarin gas. :: August 31 2013: Mr Obama says he will go to Congress for authorisation to carry out punitive strikes against the Syrian government, but appears to lack the necessary support in the legislature. :: September 27, 2013: The UN Security Council orders Syria to account for and destroy its chemical weapons stockpile, following a surprise agreement between Washington and Moscow, averting US strikes. The Security Council threatens to authorise the use of force in the event of non-compliance. :: October 14 2013: Syria becomes a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention, prohibiting it from producing, stockpiling or using chemical weapons. :: June 23 2014: The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons says it has removed the last of the Syrian government's chemical weapons. Syrian opposition officials maintain that the government's stocks were not fully accounted for and that it retained supplies. :: September 23 2014: The U.S. launches air strikes on IS targets in Syria. :: August 7 2015: The UN Security Council authorises the OPCW and UN investigators to probe reports of chemical weapons use in Syria, as reports circulate of repeated chlorine gas attacks by government forces against civilians in opposition-held areas. Chlorine gas, though not as toxic as nerve agents, can be classified as a chemical weapon depending on its use. :: August 24 2016: The joint OPCW-UN panel determines the Syrian government twice used helicopters to deploy chlorine gas against its opponents, in civilian areas in the northern Idlib province. A later report holds the government responsible for a third attack. The attacks occurred in 2014 and 2015. The panel also finds that IS used mustard gas. :: February 28 2017: Russia, a stalwart ally of the Syrian government, and China veto a UN Security Council resolution authorising sanctions against the Syrian government for chemical weapons use. :: April 4 2017: At least 58 people are killed in what doctors say could be a nerve gas attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun in the rebel-held Idlib province. Victims show signs of suffocation, convulsions, foaming at the mouth and pupil constriction. Witnesses say the attack was carried out by either Russian or Syrian Sukhoi jets. Moscow and Damascus deny responsibility. :: April 4 2017: US president Donald Trump issues a statement saying that the "heinous" actions of Assad's government are the direct result of Obama administration's "weakness and irresolution". :: April 5 2017: Trump says Assad's government has "crossed a lot of lines" with the suspected chemical attack in Syria. :: April 6 2017: The US fired a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria in retaliation for the gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. It is the first direct American assault on the Syrian government and Mr Trump's most dramatic military order since becoming president. Mr Trump says the strike on Syria is in the "vital national security interest" of the United States. AP Henrique Capriles has been banned from running for office for 15 years (Fernando Llano/AP/PA) Leading Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles has been banned from running for office for 15 years, a move sure to ratchet up tensions amid a growing street-protest movement. Mr Capriles reported the ban on his Twitter account, saying he had just been notified of the decision. There was no immediate comment from the government. Leaders in the ruling socialist party had accused Mr Capriles in recent days of inciting violence through his leadership of a week of near-daily protests, many of which have ended in tear gas and rubber bullets. President Nicolas Maduro called out Mr Capriles on his television show on Thursday night after tens of thousands of Venezuelans shut down capital city Caracas with a march against the socialist administration. He said followers of "little Capriles" were seeking a bloodbath. Authorities have been investigating Mr Capriles since the beginning of the year for what they say are administrative irregularities, including taking suspicious donations from abroad. Mr Capriles is the most recognisable of the leaders behind the protest movement that has been roiling the country this week. He is the governor of Miranda State and lost a hard-fought presidential election to Hugo Chavez in 2012. The following year he was again the opposition's presidential candidate and lost to current president Mr Maduro by the slimmest of margins. Among the opposition, he is considered moderate, having criticised a wave of protests in 2014 that led to scores of deaths. Leopoldo Lopez, leader of the sometimes bloody 2014 protest movement, has been held in prison for the past three years after having been sentenced on what are widely seen as trumped-up charges of inciting political unrest. This week's protests claimed their first victim on Thursday night as college student Jairo Ortiz was shot dead by an unknown assailant during a protest in a poor area on the outskirts of Caracas. Mr Ortiz was a 19-year-old law student at a local university and had been planning to move to Colombia this summer, according to local news reports. The protests were touched off by a Supreme Court ruling in late March nullifying congress. The decision was walked back amid fierce domestic and international criticism, but opposition leaders say it revealed the government's authoritarian nature. The opposition has been calling for immediate elections. With both Mr Capriles and Mr Lopez now out of action, it is unclear who the leading candidate in such an election would be. AP Wells Fargo continues its long-standing support of NorthEast Foundation, over half of a million dollars in total giving, with its most recent contribution of $75,000 to Cabarrus College of Health Sciences Masters in Occupational Therapy Program. The gift will enable Cabarrus College of Health Sciences to continue to provide financial assistance to students in the growing Masters of Occupational Therapy Program. The program, which began in the fall of 2014, has graduated 15 students who are currently employed as occupational therapists in various settings throughout the region. We are extremely grateful to the many years of support from Wells Fargo to the NorthEast Foundation, said Charlie Sastoque, NorthEast Foundation President. As a community partner, Wells Fargo has impacted our hospital through their generosity for over 20 years. They are strong supporters of our mission and dedicated to exceptional health care for all. This special gift will impact our community right here at Carolinas HealthCare System NorthEast and the Cabarrus College of Health Sciences. Leaders from Wells Fargo, CHS NorthEast and NorthEast Foundation all joined at the NorthEast Foundation Annual Meeting to announce this gift. Wells Fargos corporate social responsibility efforts are focused on three priorities: economic empowerment in underserved communities, advancing diversity and social inclusion, and environmental sustainability. The Chronicle of Philanthropy, on its most recent list of the top corporate cash philanthropists, ranked Wells Fargo No. 3. In 2016, Wells Fargo donated $281.3 million to 14,900 nonprofits, and Wells Fargo team members volunteered 1.73 million hours with 50,000 nonprofits. NorthEast Foundation was created in 1994 to support Carolinas HealthCare System NorthEast. Actor Tiger Shroff who has been busy shooting for Sabbir Khan's upcoming film 'Munna Michael' will soon start working on the sequel of 'Baaghi'. The film's first installment had received fair reviews from the critics. Tiger was especially praised for his high-octane stunts and performances in the film. The first part was made by Sabbir Khan but this time it's choreographer-turned-director Ahmed Khan who will direct the film. Tiger always comes up with something new for the audience and this time as well the stunts wouldn't be the same as seen in Baaghi. Tiger is being mentored by a special martial arts director Tony Ching to learn special stunts. As per reports in media, the movie will have many stunts like it's first outing and director Ahmed Khan wanted them to be something new and fresh from what the audience had seen before. The 'Baaghi' actor will undergo training in Bak Mei, Choy Li Fut and Wing Chun to learn different styles of Wushu and will be there for a month. (Credits: DNA) New Delhi, Apr 7 (IBNS) : Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina arrived in New Delhi on Friday on a four-day visit to India, reports said. In what is being viewed as a break from his normal practice, Prime Minister Narendra Modi received Hasina at the airport. Ever since he became the PM, Modi has received only two other foreign dignitaries- former US President Barack Obama and UAE crown prince Sheikh Mohammad Bin Zayed. "Delighted to welcome H.E. Sheikh Hasina, the Prime Minister of Bangladesh on her state visit to India," Modi tweeted. Expressing hopes for cementing the bilateral relationship, Modi said in another tweet : "PM Sheikh Hasina and I are determined to take the relationship between our nations to a new level." India is set to announce a line of credit of USD 500 million to Bangladesh for military supplies during the talks between the two leaders. Also, launch of a new passenger service, making Maitree Express fully air-conditioned and facilitation by Indian Railways for launching a container train service are announcements likely to be made during the meet. During Hasinas visit to India, agreements in different areas, including the rail sector, are expected to be firmed up, among other things. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi is calling on Congress to immediately return to debate whether to authorize President Donald Trump to take military action against Syria. Pelosi supports Trump's missile strike on a Syrian airfield in response to President Bashar Assad's chemical weapons attack against civilians. But the California Democrat says in a letter to Speaker Paul Ryan that "the American people are owed a comprehensive strategy with clear objectives." The House departed Thursday for a more than two-week spring break, but Pelosi wants lawmakers to "debate any decision to place our men and women in uniform in harm's way." Ryan's office says he has no plans yet to reconvene the House. Search Keywords: Short link: The United States on Friday threatened to take further military action in Syria following its missile strikes on an air base in the war-wracked country in retaliation for a suspected chemical attack. "The United States took a very measured step last night," US Ambassador Nikki Haley told the UN Security Council. "We are prepared to do more, but we hope it will not be necessary." Search Keywords: Short link: Four people were killed and 15 injured when a stolen truck ploughed into a crowd of people outside a busy department store in central Stockholm Friday, police said, adding that one man had been arrested in connection with the attack. It was the latest in a string of similar assaults with vehicles in Europe, including in London, Berlin and the southern French city of Nice. Children were among the injured, Stockholm's regional health care authorities said in a statement. "Sweden has been attacked. Everything points to a terror attack," said Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, who cut short a visit in southwestern Sweden to return to Stockholm after what, if confirmed, would be the country's first deadly terror attack. Police had earlier released a grainy picture of a suspect they did not have in custody. Police spokesman Lars Bystrom refused to say whether the man who was later arrested was the man in the picture, and would not confirm media reports that he had confessed to the attack. Police had earlier said two people had been taken in for questioning. Pictures taken at the scene showed a large blue truck with a mangled undercarriage smashed into the Ahlens department store. A spokeswoman for beer company Spendrups told AFP that the truck "had been stolen during a delivery to a restaurant." Witnesses described scenes of terror and panic. One witness identified only as Dimitris told the Aftonbladet daily the truck came "out of nowhere." "I couldn't see if anyone was driving but it was out of control. I saw at least two people get run down. I ran as fast as I could away from there," he said. Another shopper, 66-year-old Leander Nordling, was at Ahlens when he suddenly heard a loud bang. "It sounded like a bomb exploding and smoke starting pouring in through the main entrance," he told daily Aftonbladet. He and fellow shoppers took refuge in a storage room inside the department store. "After that the building was evacuated ... There were a lot of guards who took care of us outside and they urged us to leave the scene immediately," Nordling said. Video footage taken from above showed scores of people streaming down the street in terror. The attack occurred just before 1300 GMT at the corner of the store and Drottninggatan, the city's biggest pedestrian street, above ground from Stockholm's central subway station. Thick smoke billowed from the scene, while the area was blocked off by police and crowds gathering around the police cordon. Police vans circulating in the city using loudspeakers urged people to go straight home and avoid large crowds. The centre of the usually buzzing city was in lockdown, with the central train station evacuated and other stores quickly emptied of shoppers. The Stockholm metro was also completely shut down for several hours before resuming in the early evening, with the attack taking place at the city's T-Centralen station, through which all the city's lines pass. Cinemas, shopping malls and other public buildings were also evacuated. The area around the attack was cordoned off, but other streets in the city were packed for hours with pedestrians trying to find a way home. Helicopters could be heard hovering in the sky over central Stockholm, and a large number of police cars and ambulances were dispatched to the scene, witnesses said. Another section of Drottninggatan was also the scene of Sweden's only other terror attack, in 2010, when a suicide bomber blew himself up, killing himself and slightly injuring several others. European politicians expressed solidarity, with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker saying that it was an "attack on us all." A spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said: "Our thoughts go out to the people in Stockholm, to the injured, their relatives, rescuers and police. "We stand together against terror." French President Francois Hollande voiced his "horror and indignation" over the assault. The attack followed a string of similar massacres in Europe by people using vehicles as weapons. The deadliest came last year in France on the Bastille Day national holiday of July 14, when a man rammed a truck into a crowd in the Mediterranean resort of Nice, killing 86 people. He was shot dead by police, and the Islamic State (IS) militant group later claimed responsibility. Last month, Khalid Masood, a 52-year-old convert to Islam known to British security services, drove a car at high speed into pedestrians on London's Westminster Bridge before launching a frenzied knife attack on a policeman guarding the parliament building. The incident killed five people, while Masood himself was shot dead by police. And in December, a man hijacked a truck and slammed into shoppers at a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 people. That attacker was shot dead by police in Milan four days later, and the rampage was claimed by the IS. In 2014, IS called for attacks on citizens of Western countries and gave instructions on how they could be carried out without military equipment, using rocks or knives, or by running people over in vehicles. Attacks have not been limited to Europe. In 2014, a Muslim convert used his car to mow down two soldiers near Montreal, killing one of them. The attacker was shot dead by police as he climbed out of his wrecked vehicle brandishing a knife. There have also been false alerts, however. Earlier Friday, Belgium dropped terrorism charges against a driver who sped into a crowded shopping area in Antwerp last month, which sparked fears of a copycat terror attack. Search Keywords: Short link: PDS board approves interim dividend of Rs2.50 per share PDS Limited has informed that the Board of Directors of the Company on Monday has approved an Interim Dividend of Rd2.50 per share. The Company adopted a dividend distribution policy... November 07, 2022 | 07-11-2022 3:10 pm Rajesh Exports incorporates 100% subsidiary ACC Energy Storage; Stock climbs 2% Rajesh Exports Ltd. has announced that it is foraying into Advanced Technology Solutions with a focus on Energy Storage Solutions. REL has been selected by the Government Of India as one ... November 07, 2022 | 07-11-2022 2:42 pm Markets under selling pressure with Nifty around 18,100-levels Domestic benchmark indices trading mixed after a gap-up opening on Monday. Both the Sensex and Nifty benchmarks are marginally lower in the afternoon market session. On the sectoral front... November 07, 2022 | 07-11-2022 2:00 pm Rupee rises 23 paise to 82.12/ $ Early on Monday, the rupee strengthened versus the US dollar by 23 paise to 82.12 amid rising local stocks and falling oil prices. The native currency rose 23 paise from its previous close to t... November 07, 2022 | 07-11-2022 1:20 pm Cineline India opens 5-Screen multiplex, MovieMAX in Mumbai; Stock jumps 3% Cineline India Limited stocks in the fast lane after announcement of opening of 5-Screen multiplex at Sarvodaya Mall Kalyan, Mumbai. In a regulatory filing, the company informed the ... November 07, 2022 | 07-11-2022 12:47 pm As the Syrian conflict entered its seventh year on Wednesday, the United Nations Human Rights Chief Zeid Raad Al Hussein termed the crisis as the "worst man-made disaster the world has seen since World War II." With the recent chemical attack that killed 58 people in Syria of which 11 were children, the savagery took another plunge deep into the human heart. The heart that knows no love and knows only violence; the heart that kills children and derives pleasure in robbing Syria of its future. reuters The haunting images flooding our screens today are reasons enough for us to spring into action before (God forbid) an entire nation is wiped clean off the map. It may seem like an impossible task to help the millions of war-inflicted men, women, and children from where we sit but it's not. Supporting aid organisations, who are doing incredible work to provide relief in the war zone, can be a start. Listed below are seven charity organisations that you can donate to. 1. Save The Children The organisation works on the ground by distributing millions of food and medical kits to Syria's children and their families. Last year in December, they issued a global appeal for $27 million in aid to help children in Aleppo. reuters Of all the funds that are donated, ten percent is allocated to specific emergencies via their Children's Emergency Fund. You can donate here. 2. United States Fund For UNICEF UNICEF has been on the ground since the day the carnage began and today has over 200 staff stationed in the region who risk their lives every day to support Syria's children. reuters Driving the largest humanitarian relief operation in history, UNICEF provides "education, water, health care and immunizations, physical protection, psychological support and clothing to children in Syria and Syrian refugee children in Iraq, Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt and Europe." You can donate here. 3. International Rescue Committee The IRC offers emergency and long-term relief aid to displaced Syrian families and Syrians who have stayed back. They lead their programs via Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon, and Iraq where thousands of Syrians fled after the conflict began. reuters The committee also works in the United States where it helps rehabilitate Syrian refugees. It supports displaced families with money, food, and medicines, runs counselling camps for children, operates clinics, and creates safe places for women and girls. You can donate here. 4. Syrian American Medical Society An active medical organisation working inside Syria, SAMS treats the injured and the sick. In 2016 alone, the agency treated 2.6 million Syrians. reuters It operates over 100 facilities and donations made to the agency are immediately funneled to support its doctors and healthcare professionals. You can donate here. 5. Islamic Relief USA The relief community has served over 9.3 million Syrians in need, both inside Syria and in neighboring countries. They have dispensed essential commodities like food, medical aid, water, blankets, mattresses, etc. ap IRUSA also offers livelihood support to refugees within the USA by helping them find jobs and receive job skills training. You can donate here. 6. The White Helmets The White Helmets is a group of volunteers based in Syria who spring into action to save lives when calamity strikes. Otherwise known as the Syria Civil Defense, the group has saved over 78,529 lives. afp The group's incredible work earned them a Nobel Peace Prize nomination in 2016. All donations are made to the White Helmets Hero Fund that support victims' families and is also used to procure rescue equipment. You can donate here. 7. Doctors Without Borders Also known as Medecins Sans Frontieres, the organization provides medical care to victims of war. Even after having its hospitals destroyed in attacks in Aleppo and other regions, the organisation continues to respond to emergencies like no other. Doctors Without Borders Donations given to the group are promptly allocated to its medical facilities allowing the doctors to treat a larger number of victims. You can donate here. The call has been made to the international community - it's imperative that it comes forward to support and create a safe world for Syrians. Aamir Khan starrer Dangal is one of the finest films that Indian cinema has ever made. It portrays an inspiring yet realistic story of the struggle of wrestler Mahavir Singh Phogat and his daughters Geeta and Babita in fighting against the odds but in a lighter tone. Its a film, that people shouldnt miss, and the sad part is Pakistani audience won't get to watch it. The censor board of Pakistan has put forth its demands to cut two scenes from the movie for it to be released in the country. They want the scene showing Indias national flag as well as the anthem to be cut. However, Aamir Khan is keen that he wouldnt release the movie without these two scenes. ndtvimg.com Mobashir Hasan, Pakistan's Central Board of Film Censors (CBFC) head, told IANS: Yes, the board unanimously decided to skip two scenes. Why, you ask? Because the decision is the collective wisdom of the board, he said. Now, the fate of the film in Pakistan lies in the hands of local distributor Geo Films who will decide if it has to be released in the country or not. amazonaws.com But Aamir Khan has decided not to release the film in Pakistan without these two scenes. His spokesperson said on his behalf that the demanded cuts were crucial for the spirit of the movie. 1. 64th National Awards: Akshay Kumar Wins Best Actor, 'Pink' And 'Neerja' Sweep Top Honors Screenshot While the awards have been announced today, the official ceremony will take place on 3rd May. The awards will be given by the President of India. Big B's Pink, Sonam Kapoor's Neerja and Dangal have managed to get some top honors. Here is the complete list of the awards. 2. Aamir Khan Puts His Foot Down, Refuses To Release Dangal In Pakistan Without National Anthem UTV The censor board of Pakistan has put forth its demands to cut two scenes from the movie for it to be released in the country. They want the scene showing Indias national flag as well as the anthem to be cut. However, Aamir Khan is keen that he wouldnt release the movie without these two scenes. 3. Twinkle Khanna Had The Most Adorable Reaction To Akshay Kumar's National Award Victory! Instagram Twinkle like always had the most adorable reaction. She took to Twitter to express her feelings about Akshay's win. She posted, I don't know if I am crying or laughing-emotions all over the place-So proud of you @akshaykumar you smart, humble, amazing creature. 4. Irrfan Khans Hindi Medium Is A Humorous Dig At India's Undying Obsession With English Language Screengrab The two-and-a-half minute trailer shows the struggle of a Hindi-speaking man portrayed by Irrfan Khan and his English speaking wife portrayed by Saba on ensuring that their daughter gets the best education by getting her admitted to a fancy school. 5. Bipasha Basu Is All Set To Open Self-Defense Schools For Women Across India Twitter A TOI report claims that Bipasha is gearing up for a new project where she is planning to open self-defense schools for women by next year. Bipasha will be starting this venture in Mumbai which will be followed by two centers - one in Delhi and the other in her hometown Kolkata. Lets start off by accepting the fact that being depressed is not something that you need to be embarrassed about and neither is a sign of weakness. Even though recent stats reveal that India sits at the top of the list when it comes to accounting for the number of people who face depression in Southeast Asia, often times the symptoms revolve around a state of mind that can be changed. With depression being the main topic of discussion on World Health Day our Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself has come out and spoken about the urgent need to open up about depression, in his most recent Mann Ki Baat. mattmorris.com Here's how you can self-induce happiness into your life and change your mindset! Colour your life yellow! sophiehowardinteriors.co.uk Yes, colour does impact how you feel. The journal BMC Medical Research Methodology revealed that the colour grey was associated with anxiety or depression, while shades like yellow are associated with happier people. Small doses of the yellow every day have been known to boost levels of alertness and happiness. Colour your walls with these colours to create an emotionally healthier environment at home and workplace: Use warm tones such as red and yellow for your living rooms and dining space; calming colours such as blue, green, and lavenders for your bedroom and office space; warm colours such as white for your bathroom and kitchen. Exercise is proven to be more effective than anti-depressants revo.fi A comprehensive study by the University of Toronto that looked into 25 research studies came to the conclusion that exercise can conclusively keep depression at bay. One such study revealed that depressed people who exercised regularly had a low relapse rate of 9 percent as compared to people on anti-depressants who had a relapse rate as high as 38 percent. Use Social media to empower yourself! The University of Leuven in Belgium in a recent study cited on how photo sharing on Instagram by teenagers can help fight depression since this age group is naturally susceptible to depressive symptoms. Deepika Padukone, who came out in the open about her strife with depression not too long ago, is an example of how to harness the power of social media to empower yourself and others who are battling with the same struggle. Use music as an outlet to alleviate yourself from pain Difficulty in oversleeping or sleeping itself is common for sufferers of depression. Music is a proven resource, which if used effectively, can go a long way in keeping you happy and helping you sleep blissfully! as stated by an article published by the American Psychological Association called Music as medicine. The article speaks about how the frequencies and vibrations in music can being used to release pain, reduce stress, and sleep better. There is a plethora of music you can stream from the internet; so go crazy! Build your career on your strengths for the ultimate satisfaction, happiness, and success carolroth.com Are you focusing on your strengths or still performing tasks only to oblige your parents or your boss? Several studies, such one published in The Journal of Positive Psychology in 2012, state that the best way to keep inviting positive experiences at work or in life is by working to your strengths. The ability to exploit your full potential is not only one of the best ways to find happiness, but also makes the world a better place through your contributions. Writing down why you are grateful can give you instant gratification argentarium.com Our brains are naturally hardwired to focus on negative thoughts that result from tragedies, worries, failures, and discontentment. Which is why it makes sense to list down things you are grateful about soon after you wake up in the morning. Write them down in a notebook or through a post on social media if you feel more inclined to doing that. You could even call a significant other who you wish to express your gratitude to for being there for you in times of need. Pay more heed to your experiences rather than your possession flyingthenest.tv How often do you end up comparing your possessions with something better that you could have? You end up demoralising yourself and ruining the initial pleasure you got when purchasing that new car or T.V., states a study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Treasuring your experiences, on the other hand, is not nearly as destructive, as they give you innate joy and remain exclusive in your mind and boundless happiness. Be happy from within, instead of expecting others to give you happiness merisaheli.com How often do we let ourselves down by building unrealistic expectations from people? We feel miserable if we dont get what we feel we areentitled to. Rather, if you accept life as it is and stop thinking of what should be like instead, you will begin to experience joy from the little things that come as a welcome surprise. This will also help you fend of disappointment. Stop chasing happiness and start living life! escritosmeus.com.br Enjoy your life instead of pursuing a vague idea of happiness. You may always want more money, more clothes, a better relationship, a better job; the list is endless. But you often realise that you either still feel depressed when you get everything that makes you happy or will always find a reason to be miserable. Although wanting more is fine, it is equally important to start living in the present. The aviation ministry on Friday ordered the Air India to immediately lift the two-week-old ban on grounded MP Ravindra Gaikwad. The airline complied with the order and now private airlines, which were waiting for AI's decision, will follow suit. The government move came despite the AI management telling the aviation ministry on Thursday that Gaikwad must apologise to the airline and its employees. AI cabin crew termed him a flight risk and the pilots said they did not want to fly him unless he apologised. Read more 1. It's Air India vs MP Once Again. Now TMC's Dola Sen Causes Flight Delay Over Seating Issue With less than an hour after Air India lifted the flight ban on Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad, yet another case of a rogue politician has surfaced. Dola Sen, a TMC MP allegedly caused a 40-minute delay to a Delhi-Kolkata flight on Friday. The MP who was travelling with her wheelchair-bound aged mother allegedly insisted on having the seat next to the emergency exit. When the Air India crew citing security protocol asked the MP to shift her mother to another seat, she allegedly created ruckus on board. Read more 2. Ontario Officially Recognises 1984 Riots Sikh Genocide, Demands All Sides To Embrace The Truth In a move that could impact the bilateral relations between India and Canada, the government of Ontario passed a motion in the Legislative Assembly to officially recognise the 1984 anti-Sikh riots as Sikh genocide while calling upon all sides to embrace truth and reconciliation. The motion which was forward by Liberal Member of the Legislative Assembly Harinder Kaur Malhi (Brampton-Springdale), was recieved with cheers from the Sikh community present at the Assembly. Read more 3. After Muslim Man Was Killed By A 'Gau Rakshak' Gang In Haryana, SC Asks Why Shouldn't These Groups Be Banned Days after a 55-year-old Haryana farmer was beaten to death in Rajasthan by the so called 'Gau Rakshaks' the Supreme Court has issued notices to Centre and six states seeking their response on why these self-styled groups not be banned. The SC has given three weeks to the Central government and governments of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Karnataka and Rajasthan to respond to the notice. Read more 4. US Hits Syrian Air Bases With 59 Missiles After Assad's Forces' Chemical Attack On Civilians The Shayrat air base in central Syria's Homs province was hit by at least 59 US Tomahawk missiles on Thursday night. The surprise US move was in retaliation to the deadly chemical weapons attack on civilians in rebel-held Idlib earlier this week. US believe that it was from the Shayrat air base that the Syrian Army launched the gas attack on its own people. Read more 5. Indians Are Helping This Pakistani Woman And Her Daughter To Go Home After 11 Years In An Indian Prison 10-year-old Hena will be soon in her home in Pakistan, a homeland which she has never seen. That is because she was born in India, where her mother, Fatima Bibi, and aunt Mumtaz, have been jailed since 2006. The duo was arrested by police at the Attari railway station for allegedly possessing contraband. Read more Hundreds of cars and buses were stuck on Slovenia's border with Croatia on Friday as tough checks on the EU's external frontiers came into force to stop suspected Islamist militants returning from Iraq and Syria. The new directive coincided with the onset of the Easter break in Austria, Germany and Switzerland, leaving many frustrated holidaymakers on their way to southern Europe stranded in long traffic queues. At the Obrezje crossing, people faced waiting times of at least two and a half hours to leave the passport-free Schengen area, according to the country's traffic information website. Meanwhile buses crossing from Croatia -- which is part of the EU but not Schengen -- were stuck for around three hours or more. Slovenia controls 670 kilometres (420 miles) of the external border with Croatia and was a key transit country along the so-called Balkan migrant trail until the route was shut in March last year. "Until now systematic border controls were carried out only for non-EU citizens but now they also apply to EU citizens," Slovenian police chief Marjan Fank told journalists on Thursday. "As a result there will be four times more work for border police and, consequently, longer waiting times," he added. Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic called on people to be "patient" while the new system was being implemented. The EU said Thursday the systematic checks at the bloc's Schengen borders were designed to tackle "foreign fighters" returning from Iraq and Syria. Search Keywords: Short link: Air India has reportedly cancelled two Delhi-Mumbai and Mumbai-Delhi tickets booked by Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad for April 17 and 24, An Air India spokesperson said in an interview with ANI. The Shiv Sena, however, denied the reports and said the MP hasn't booked any tickets for the said dates. The development comes a day after Gaikwad expressed regret on Thursday for assaulting an Air India staff member during a flight last month, describing it as an "unfortunate incident". ANI In his letter to the Civil Aviation Ministry, Gaikwad said, "I write to convey my regrets for the unfortunate incident that took place on March 23, 2017, in the Air India flight AI-852, seat number 1F. It could have been no one's intention to have the situation aggravate to the level that it eventually did.While the ongoing investigation will bring out the factual sequence of events to fix responsibility, this incident may kindly not be seen as a reason for likely recurrence of such an event in future also." Meanwhile, the national carrier is sticking to its guns. The All India Cabin Crew Association said Gaikwad won't be allowed to fly until he tenders an unconditional apology. bccl In a letter to Air India CMD Ashwani Lohani, the association said, "We as Cabin Crew, must only point out that Mr Ravindra Gaikwad is and will continue to be a risk to Flight Safety and flight Operations and to Cabin Crew safety on board, and hence Government must think long and hard about letting him back on. In fact, Unless he tenders an unconditional apology to AI employees, and undertakes in writing to abide by the Chicago and Tokyo Conventions & Rules of the Air and follow all Cabin safety and public behaviour norms, we must not let him on board." Air India unions also thanked Lohani for sanding with the employees. "Our CMD has boosted the morale and confidence of employees of AI... such unwarranted statement from senior leaders will contribute in a negative manner for the turnaround of AI. Employees have full confidence in our CMD," the Air Corporations Employees Union wrote in an open letter. BCCL Gaikwad had hit a 60-year-old AI staffer with his footwear and tried to push him off the plane at Delhi airport, resulting in widespread outrage, a police case and a flight ban that restricted his movement, forcing him to travel by train. Also Read: Airlines Take The Fight Against Shiv Sena MP To Next Level! After Air India, Now Indigo Cancels His Ticket His attempts to take a flight since were repeatedly thwarted. In a unique gesture about 1,700 uniformed men belonging to Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) from Madhya Pradesh have signed for organ donation. This is probably the first time that such a large number of people have signed up for organ donation. bccl/representational image Officials said the process is still on and the number is increasing. CRPF men in MP have got their organ donation cards from National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (NOTTO). bccl/representational image They keep the cards with them so that in case of any casualty while handling violence or terror acts their organs could be donated before handing over their bodies to families. bccl/representational image The movement was started in October last year, after CRPF director general wrote a letter to around 3 lakh CRPF personnel posted in the country asking them to express their views on organ donation. Workshops on organ donation were organised in every CRPF sector and as a result of it 1,700 CRPF men posted in the state signed up. The jawans were told their body organs will be harvested only after their death. 10-year-old Hena will be soon in her home in Pakistan, a homeland which she has never seen. That is because she was born in India, where her mother, Fatima Bibi, and aunt Mumtaz, have been jailed since 2006. The duo was arrested by police at the Attari railway station for allegedly possessing contraband. They were travelling from Pakistan to Uttar Pradesh to meet their relatives. BCCL/ Representative Image They were sentenced to ten years imprisonment and a fine of Rs 2 lakhs each. Fatima who was pregnant delivered the baby in jail. The two women completed their jail term in November but continued to be behind the bars as they were unable to pay Ts 4 lakh as fine. Their release was made possible after the intervention of a Batala-based NGO 'Sarbat Da Bhala' which offered to pay the fine on their behalf. Advocate Navjot Kaur Chhaba, from Society for Women Empowerment and Green Cause who appeared for the two women said, "We filed an appeal in the Punjab and Haryana High Court seeking permission for Fatima to talk to her family members in Pakistan. But her husband said he cannot afford to pay, and sought our help, after which we decided to pursue the case." "Both of them are very happy with their early release and have expressed gratitude towards everyone pursuing their case and have also urged the Pakistan government and Pak NGOs to come forward to help Indians lodged in Pak jail," she said. In a love story which ended in tragedy, Reshma Bhanu, 19, of Hampasagara village was killed allegedly by her parents on March 24. She was a student of Nandi PU Private College of Hagaribommanahalli in Ballari district. bccl/representational image According to sources, Reshma and K Nagaraj, a II PU student and resident of Bharampura of Hiriyur taluk (Chitradurga district), participated in a summer camp last year at Nandi PU College. Both became good friends and stayed in touch. Reshma's parents noticed that she spent a lot of time on the phone and eventually found out about the affair. Family elders counselled her and convinced her to end the relationship. She promised to stop chatting with Nagaraj. Last month, she contacted him and explained her inability to talk to him. She expressed her desire to marry him and Nagaraj reciprocated her feelings. On March 24, Nagaraj went to her house but her family assaulted him. Despite Nagaraj's protestations of eternal love, her parents thrashed him using iron rods and wooden sticks. He was severely injured and Reshma rushed to protect him. Reshma was brutally beaten up too and died on the spot. Her shocked parents tried to cover up the crime. They feared that Nagaraj too had died. They shoved his bloody body in a bag and kept it under a tamarind tree of G Kodihalli village limits near Hampasagara. Reshma's parents conducted her last rites hastily, telling relatives she had died of an illness and doctors had advised a quick funeral. afp/representational image Residents of G Kodihalli found blood flowing from the bag and informed police. Police rushed Nagaraj to the Hagaribommanahalli Government Hospital, and using his mobile, they contacted his parents. Nagaraj's parents rushed to the hospital and suspected an attempt to murder. But police refused to investigate. Nagaraj was shifted to a private hospital but doctors told his parents to take him to Manipal Hospital. On March 31, he died in hospital. Hanumanthappa, a resident of G Kodihalli village, filed an FIR on Nagaraj's body being found. Tambrahalli police did not investigate the case and Mangu Naik, PSI, did not report it to his officers. R Chethan, SP, went to Tambrahalli police station to know more about the case. On Thursday, he suspended Mangu Naik for dereliction of duty. "The case is being probed and we have filed one case of murder. We're working on Nagaraj's mobile contacts and will interrogate more people.We can't say it's a case of honour killing," he said. The dance of death does not seem to be ending in the war-torn Syria. Whether it is the ISIS or Assad regime - which is backed by Russia and Iran - all the parties seem to be in a competition of targeting the innocent civilians who have nowhere to go. On Tuesday, a northern rebel-held area of Idlib in Syria turned into a toxic zone in an alleged chemical bombing. We are trying to put together a story about the suffering that the people in Idlib went through, with the help of some pictures. #1 AFP #2 Heart-wrenching footage of the attack posted online by activists and residents showed dozens of people, including children, floundering to breathe. Some could be seen writhing, choking, gasping or foaming from the mouth after breathing in poison that possibly contained a nerve agent or other banned chemicals. REUTERS #3 Doctors, rescue workers were witness to bombs that were dropped from warplanes in the early hours of April 4. REUTERS #4 Some rescue workers too fell ill and were left unconscious due to the proximity to the dead. REUTERS #5 Reports suggest that as many as 100 have been killed and over 400 civilians are seriously injured and left with respiratory problems. AFP #6 The Union of Medical Care Organisations, a coalition of international aid agencies that funds hospitals in Syria, said that the death toll is likely to rise. AFP #7 Witnesses said that the attacks began around 6.30 am. REUTERS #8 The airstrikes also hit clinics treating victims, who had been relocated to smaller hospitals and maternity wards as the areas largest hospital was severely damaged by an airstrike two days earlier. REUTERS #9 The deadly attack is likely to dampen the peace talks overseen by United Nations in Geneva and by Russia and Turkey. AFP #10 REUTERS #11 REUTERS #12 AP The Syria war, which began in 2011, has killed more than 4.5 million forcing more than 4 million to relocate, according to the United Nations and the Arab League Envoy to Syria. The grief-stricken father cradled his 9-month-old twins, Aya and Ahmed, each in the crook of an arm. Stroking their hair, he choked back tears, mumbling, Say goodbye, baby, say goodbye to their lifeless bodies. AP Then Abdel Hameed Alyousef took them to a mass grave where 22 members of his family were being buried. Each branch of the clan got its own trench. Another member of the family, Aya Fadl, recalled running from her house with her 20-month-old son in her arms, thinking she could find safety from the toxic gas in the street. Instead, the 25-year-old English teacher was confronted face to face with the horror of it: A pick-up truck piled with the bodies of the dead, including many of her own relatives and students. AP Ammar, Aya, Mohammed, Ahmad, I love you my birds. Really they were like birds. Aunt Sana, Uncle Yasser, Abdul-Kareem, please hear me, Fadl said, choking back tears as she recalled how she said farewell to her relatives in the pile. I saw them. They were dead. All are dead now. My heart is broken. Everything was terrible. Everyone was crying and couldnt breathe, Fadl told The Associated Press on Wednesday. We had many circumstances in Syria and we had many difficult situations. This is the most difficult and most harmful situation I ever had. Alaa Alyousef said his family was sleeping and woke to the sound of the impact only a few hundred yards (meters) away. The first thing they saw was smoke. His father went outside then rushed back in. He had seen a woman walking near the strike suddenly collapse. The family frantically closed windows and dampened cloths with water and apple vinegar to put over their faces. AFP They were lucky, the wind went in the other direction, Alyousef said. The Alyousefs brought their dead to a family members home that was outside the worst attack area. The courtyard was turned into a makeshift morgue where surviving relatives tried for hours to resuscitate loved ones already dead. Thats when Fadl finally collapsed, she said, only to wake up in a medical center. While Fadl recovers along with her son at her parents home in a town north of Khan Sheikoun, her husband is still looking for survivors from his extended family. We are still in shock, a big shock. Our family is devastated, the 27-year-old said. Many are still missing. We are afraid to enter homes sometimes lest we find more people dead. On Tuesday, he and other family members buried the clans dead in the mass grave. On the way to the grave, Abdel Hameed Alyousef asked a cousin to video his farewell to his twin son and daughter as he sat in the front seat of a van being loaded with bodies. When the airstrikes hit, he was with the twins. I carried them outside the house with their mother, the 29-year-old shop owner told the AP. They were conscious at first, but 10 minutes later we could smell the odor. AP The twins and his wife, Dalal Ahmed, fell sick. He brought them to paramedics and, thinking they would be OK, went to look for the rest of his family. He found the bodies of two of his brothers, two nephews and a niece, as well as neighbours and friends. I couldnt save anyone. Theyre all dead now, he said. More than 80 people, including at least 30 children and 20 women, were killed in the chemical attack on the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun early Tuesday, and the toll could still rise. The Alyousef family, one of the towns main clans, was hardest hit. The Shayrat air base in central Syria's Homs province was hit by at least 59 US Tomahawk missiles on Thursday night. AFP The surprise US move was in retaliation to the deadly chemical weapons attack on civilians in rebel-held Idlib earlier this week. US believe that it was from the Shayrat air base that the Syrian Army launched the gas attack on its own people. AFP/ File The Tomahawk missiles fired from warships in the Mediterranean Sea hit at 8:45 p.m. in Washington, 3:45 a.m. Friday morning in Syria. The missiles targeted the base's airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, officials said. Confirming the strike, US President Donald Trump said, "Assad choked out the lives of innocent men, women and children.'' Reuters Thursday's strike came just a day after US President Trump, to many observers reversed his position on Assad. AFP Just days before the chemical attack in Idlib, the US administration had said that removing Assad from power was not the country's priority. But after the chemical attack which killed over 80 people including 20 children, Trump had changed his stands and had warned of retaliation. Syrian state TV reported a U.S. missile attack on a number of military targets and called the attack an act of "aggression.'' AFP Before the strikes, US military officials said they informed their Russian counterparts of the impending attack. The goal was to avoid any accident involving Russian forces. Nevertheless, Russia's Deputy UN ambassador Vladimir Safronov warned that any negative consequences from the strikes would be on the "shoulders of those who initiated such a doubtful and tragic enterprise.'' A few days after images of a set top box leaked online, information has just been posted on the Reliance Jio website, confirming the companys expansion to both the television and broadband markets. Separate tabs have appeared under the Quick Recharge section of the website, which now offers two new recharge options for Home Broadband and Jio Link, alongside pre-existing offerings. Home Broadband The company was reportedly testing fibre-based home internet connections in Mumbai and Pune in September, a fact it later confirmed. However, we never received any more information about the plan prices, speeds or even a launch date. The update to the Jio website now suggests the service may be introduced very soon, likely within the a weeks time, at least in a few key areas. There are still no other details available unfortunately. The only possible clue is that Jio head Mukesh Ambani had earlier suggested the company would eventually launch 1Gbps internet services in India. Jio Link Jio Link, on the other hand, is almost certainly the name for the set-top-box we got sneak peek of earlier this week. Its still not clear whether Jio will be offering DTH or IPTV (Internet Protocol Television), though it might perhaps be both, considering the box also has an Ethernet port. Again, there are no details of a pricing plan or launch date here. Considering how Reliance Jio has been marketing its mobile services, with freebies galore, its not too hard to imagine the company will follow the same policy for its home broadband and IPTV offerings. Likely itll take the form of packages combining these services with mobile data, as opposed to time-bound free usage, but well have to wait and see. Less than a day after introducing its Summer Surprise offer, Reliance Jio has been forced to retract the freebie offering thanks to a directive from telecom regulator TRAI. With this, Jio Prime members will not be able to avail the scheme offering three free months of services. Reliance Jio had initially begun offering customers six months of free services with the three month Jio Welcome offer followed by the Jio Happy New Year offer over the following three months. Those free services were scheduled to end April 1, according to a February announcement, though the company issued another announcement on the expiry date for the Summer Surprise offer. According to the latest scheme, customers who purchased the Rs 99 Jio Prime subscriptions and a follow up recharge of Rs 303 or higher, were set to receive an additional three months of free service. In addition, users who purchased plans of Rs 999 or more were also promised an 100 GB of 4G data of the 90 day period without the daily cap limitation present with lower tier plans. Now, TRAI has ordered Reliance Jio to cancel the latest freebie, meaning Prime customers will officially begin paying for their connections for the first time in six months. The company has responded saying it will withdraw the offer as soon as possible, over the next few days. However, despite the cancellation of the Summer Surprise offer, the last date to subscribe for Jio Prime remains April 15. Its important to note, however, that youre money hasnt gone to waste if youve already done the necessary recharges to claim the Summer Surprise offer. Reliance Jio said in a statement that all its Jio Prime customers who managed to subscribe to the scheme before the discontinuation order will still be eligible for the three months of free services. Again, if youve subscribed to Jio Prime for Rs 99 and then purchased a recharge of Rs 303 or higher before today, you still have the free data till July that was promised. Its just that Prime customers will not see the offer available to them on the companys app or website anymore. If you ask experts robots are going to be claiming a lot of human jobs in the future. However, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau believes he has a plan to deal with this eventuality, in a way that doesnt leave hordes of people lining up at the unemployment office. According to guys like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Stephen Hawking, everything from factories to taxis to even some office jobs will eventually be fully automated, putting a lot of people out of business. Each has their own idea of a solution Bill gates even suggested taxing factory robots that snag jobs belonging to humans. Now, Canadas PM Justin Trudeau details his own plans for dealing with an impending robotics-fuelled job shortage in the country. He posted his answer on knowledge-sharing website Quora, in response to a question asking what governments should do to prepare for the technological automation of human jobs. We know that the job market is changing, and instead of resisting in vain, were focused on funding research and innovation, like in AI and quantum computing, thatll help lead the change here in Canada, Trudeau wrote. And while we do that, were preparing Canadians to find good jobs through investments in education and training. The prime minister also answered a few other questions on the site, ranging from feminism to his stance on artificial intelligence research. In particular, Trudeaus plan is similar to Bill Gates suggestion for the US; instead of taxing robots, he advocates setting up an Employment Insurance fund in Canada which would support people pushed out of a job by computer and allow them to train themselves in a different capacity. Reuters To be clear, a number of major countries are contemplating their plan of action for when the inevitable job shortage hits. Both AI research and robotics are progressing at an exponential rate, making us likely to see robots taking human jobs within the next 10 years. The economic burden it would place on a country could be insurmountable if not adequately prepared for. The one redeeming factor is that, where robots would take a lot of existing jobs, it would also open up a space for new jobs in the tech and manufacturing industry, where everything from software technicians, to maintenance experts, and more would be needed to keep the robots running smoothly. You can read Trudeaus entire response to the question here. Egypt's strategic supply of rice will cover more than six months' worth of domestic consumption, state news agency MENA reported on Friday. The average price stands at EGP 6.5-7.5 per kilogram, and the food staple will be available in amounts to meet consumer needs, MENA reported Ragab Shehata, the head of the rice division at the Egyptian Federation of Industries, as saying. He added that the [rice] market is currently stable and will not see a price hike before the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which begins in May. Egypt's annual consumption of rice is about 3.95 million tones. while production is around 5.1 million tonnes, according to a United States Department of Agriculture report. Last month the government reached an agreement with private rice mills to produce white rice domestically, potentially ending a standoff over the buying price of last year's crop that has led to millions of tons of paddy sitting idle since the harvest. The supply ministry has said that it had agreed to pay private mills EGP 6.3 per kg of white rice, which the government would then sell at its outlets for EGP 6.5 per kg. The new agreement means that private mills will instead buy up the paddy at the current market price of about EGP 4,200, before selling it on to the government. Last year the irrigation ministry decreased the land area used for the production of the water-consuming crop in the 2017 season to 704,500 feddans, in comparison with 1,076,000 feddans in 2016. Search Keywords: Short link: A two day programme hosted by the Ministry of Solid Minerals Development. The programme will feature a series of keynote speeches, panel discussions and technical sessions that address strategic-level industry topics within the West African Mining sector. There has never been a better time to engage the Nigerian mining space. With a new Administration in place the Nigerian Federal Government will be introducing and implementing a regime of robust mining legislations, pro-growth policies and supporting regulatory framework in an attempt to create a globally competitive platform for local and International stakeholders in Nigerias mining and mineral processing sector. With top Federal support the programme will attract representation from the key Nigerian states who will play a leading role in developing the mining and mineral sector over what is set to be a defining decade of diversification from oil for Nigeria. The Nigerian mining sector already plays a catalytic role on many of the neighbouring countries in the ECOWAS region, the programme will also focus on the crucial role the mining and mineral sector has on the these countries economies, including the challenges major stakeholders are currently facing in the industry. Who you will meet: Top government officials, State Governors, Directors of mining operators, Legal advisors, Geologists, Exploration managers, CEO/directors of key industry service providers, Senior representatives from international and regional institutions. Since its fourth edition in 2015, the Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival (D-CAF) has introduced shows highlighting disability into its vast programming. In this context, the festival already included events such as Italys Mission Roosevelt (2015), which involved the participation of the public on wheelchairs; Austrias Madeeh (2016), which worked on movement, dance and explored physicality with a few dancers on the wheelchairs; and Gaze (2016) by the UKs Stopgap Dance Company, which employed disabled and non-disabled actors; among other shows. Now, for the third consecutive year, the Arts and Disability segment of D-CAF in its sixth edition aims to challenge perceptions of the disabled by including people with disabilities and showcasing international artistic practices with the disabled. This year the festival included a Swiss play entitled Disabled Theatre, staged on 21 and 22 March at AUCs Ewart Memorial hall. The performance brought together ten actors from HORA Theatre, a Zurich-based troupe which since 1993 has used art and theatre to support and promote the creative and artistic development of people with learning disabilities, according to the programme notes. HORA Theatre raises the publics awareness of mental disabilities, and provides people suffering from disabilities with a platform for self-realisation and creative expression. In addition to the performance, a workshop entitled Into the Wild was held between 15 and 19 March by the members of the HORA theatre. Created by choreographer Jerome Bel, the 90-minute-long Disabled Theatre begins with the actors aged 24-46, and seated on the stage presenting themselves one by one, providing name, age and profession, which is actor for all of them. Then, again taking centre stage individually, the actors begin to describe their disability in a few sentences. Some mention aspects such as hyperactivity, communication frustration, problems with attention, memorisation or learning deficiencies, compulsive and/or obsessive behavioural traits, while others reveal how the community, be it the closest family or a larger social circle responds to their disability, and how at times they feel emotionally alienated or misunderstood. We soon discover that the various behavioural and social aspects surrounding their lives being depicted are but different components of the same condition: Trisomy 21, a genetic disorder popularly known as Downs syndrome. This lengthy yet remarkable introduction allowed the audience to get closer to the world of the actors and others faced with the challenge of disability. The second part of the performance gave voice to their creative expression, walking the viewers through the individual dance routines that each actor or actress choreographed and chose the music for. The audience was taken on a captivating journey through well-known disco and pop songs from the Swiss and international repertoire, from Michael Jackson to Justin Bieber through instrumental hits. The actors fused their professionalism with passion and energy, making the audience reflect on values much deeper than just a performance tailored to a mentally disabled cast. As the HORA theatres website reveals, Bels work is known to stand beyond sheer theatrical and dance representation. It also challenges the perception of disability that constitutes the limit against which the category of normality runs up. The highly successful, world-touring performance questions our own perception of people with mental disability and puts our understanding of what we coin normal to test. It doesnt take long for the viewer to realise that when we categorise people through the prism of what we see as normal we are placing a limitation on our own minds. On the artistic level, the performance invites us to revisit the rules which we set for theatre, dance or art in general, and look into our pre-defined expectations, since they too, become walls with which we surround ourselves and which choke our perception of life, people and creativity. We can see how the HORA theatre actors are not forced to fit into a model that is preconceived so the participants look good in a pre-defined theatrical setting; the show is built around them and their abilities. It is their abilities that shine with striking honesty, spontaneity, artistic openness, as well as obvious professionalism. They all communicate beauty, and powerful human and creative ability, expressed through an artistic freedom. And as the performance teaches us to look differently at disability, we question ourselves and revise the different angles of abilities that we often overlook or fail to understand. If in the social and medical parameters, most of us are considered fully-abled people, how come we are often unable to look into or embrace difference? And, in this context, who is it that is disabled? The performance definitely pushes us out of our comfort zones and raises numerous burning questions which, even if HORA Theatre suggests answers to them, remain open for thousands if not millions of people across the world. In Egypt, where the misconceptions surrounding the differently abled are a major problem yet to be addressed, the performance provided by the Swiss troupe is an important eye opener. It needs to step out of the American University in Cairos walls and reach out. Last year, launching a crowd-funding campaign for an international troupe that works with dancers who have physical disabilities, the festival explained, Around 10 percent of Egyptians have a disability; one third of them are children, and many have no access to rehabilitation services and suffer from misconceptions of their conditions in our society. Egypt was rated one of the six most intolerant countries worldwide for disabilities in 2015. The numbers are as shocking as they are saddening. They should trigger the artistic players as well as associations working with the differently abled to take action. Ahmed El-Attar, the festivals artistic director, explains that his long experience in theatre does not include working with the differently abled. He came across HORA three years ago when they performed in Theatertreffen, a large German-speaking theatre festival held annually in Berlin. I was impressed by the Swiss show that back then was called simply Disabled, on two levels. Artistically, I found it to be a very pertinent reflection on contemporary dance. On the human level, it was a very strong message, El-Attar explains, commending the actors for their professionalism and strong presence on stage. Determined to bring the show to Egypt, El-Attar started exploring creative routes to embracing disabilities, something that has been obvious for three editions of D-CAF. The HORA Theatre remained on El-Attars mind, yet he needed time to make their arrival possible. For the funders, bringing over this play looked like a big challenge, a responsibility they probably feared. Equally, the actors families had their share of worries regarding the long journey, security and all that, El-Attar explains. While visiting Zurich last year, El-Attar was invited to attend a whole day of HORA Theatres rehearsals. The day concluded with a meeting attended by the art managers as well as the parents of the actors. The parents expressed their opinions, but the actors also had their share of thoughts and spoke about their interest to perform in Egypt. The discussion in itself was a great experience. In his exploration of the arts and disability, El-Attar began understanding that here was a different category of performer: They are not better or worse, they are just different and we must embrace that. I was happy that we could finally bring over this show. I also hope that this performance will make institutions working with the differently abled look at those people as impressive members of the society and not through the filter of pity. Look what art can do and how it benefits the actors! We also see an audience that is very receptive, yet people in general are always receptive, he cncludes. This article was first published in Al Ahram Weekly 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 Search Keywords: Short link: Syria: New U.S. Air Support On Request Scheme For Al-Qaeda By Moon Of Alabama April 07, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - " Moon Of Alabama " - On this day one hundred years ago the U.S. joined World War I. Last night the U.S. attacked a Syrian government airport in an openly hostile and intentional manner. The strike established a mechanism by which al-Qaeda can "request" U.S. airstrikes on Syrian government targets. It severely damaged the main support base for Syria's fight against the Islamic State in eastern Syria. The event will possibly lead to a much larger war. On April 4 Syrian airplanes hit an al-Qaeda headquarter in Khan Sheikoun, Idleb governate. Idleb governate is under al-Qaeda control. After the air strike some chemical agent was released. The symptoms shown in videos from local aid stations point to a nerve-agent. The release probably killed between 50 and 90 people. It is unknown how the release happened. It is unlikely that the Syrian government did this: In 2013 the Syrian government had given up all its chemical weapons. UN inspectors verified this. The target was militarily and strategically insignificant. There was no immediate pressure on the Syrian military. The international political atmosphere had recently turned positive for Syria. Even if Syria had stashed away some last-resort weapon this would have been the totally wrong moment and totally wrong target for using it. Over the last six year of war the Syrian government army had followed a political and militarily logical path. It acted consistently. It did not act irrational. It is highly unlikely that it would have now take such an illogical step. The chemical used, either Sarin or Soman, was not in a clean form. Multiple witnesses reported of a "rotten smell" and greenish color. While the color would point to a mixture with Chlorine the intense smell of Chlorine is easily identifiable, covers up most other odors and would have been recognized by witnesses. Both Sarin and Soman are in pure form colorless, tasteless and odorless. The Syrian government once produced nerve agents on a professional, large scale base. Amateurishly produced nerve-gases are not pure and can smell (example: Tokyo subway incident 1995). It is unlikely that the Syrian government experts would produce a "rotten smelling", dirty, low quality stuff in an unprofessional and dangerous process. The nerve agents in Khan Sheikoun, should they be confirmed, came either from stashed ammunition at the place attacked by the Syrian government or it was willfully released by the local ruling terrorist groups -al-Qaeda and Ahrar al-Sham- after the strike to implicate the Syrian government. The relatively low casualty numbers of mostly civilians point to the second variant. Several reports over the years confirm that Al-Qaeda in Syria has the precursors and capabilities to produce and use Sarin as well as other chemical agents. This would not be their first use of such weapons. Al-Qaeda was under imminent pressure. It was losing the war. It is therefor highly likely that this was an intentional release by al-Qaeda to create public pressure on the Syrian government. For a release incident of powerful chemical weapons the casualty numbers were low, lower than the casualty numbers of recent conventional U.S. air strikes in Syria and Iraq . Despite that fact a huge international media attack wave, seemingly prepared in advance, against the Syrian government was released. No evidence was presented that the incident was caused by the Syrian government. The only pictures and witness reports from the ground came from or through elements, like the White Helmets, who are known to by embedded with al-Qaeda and ISIS (video) and are acting as their propaganda arm. Last night U.S. president Trump "responded" to the incident by ordering the launch of 59 cruise missiles on the Syrian military airport Al Syairat ( vid ). The cruise missiles were launched from sea in a volley designed to overwhelm air defenses. According to the Syrian and Russian military only 23 cruise missiles reached the airport. The others were shut down or failed. Six Syrian soldiers were Killed , nine civilians in a nearby village were killed or wounded and nine Syrian jets were destroyed. The airport infrastructure was severely damaged. The Syrian and Russian governments had been warned before the strikes hit and evacuated most men and critical equipment. (Was the warning part of a deal ?) The air attack coincided with an Islamic State ground attack east of the airport. The Pentagon alleges , without any evidence, that Sarin had been stored at the airport and a chemical attack launched from it. Both seems highly unlikely. The airport was accessible for UN inspectors. It is not as well covered by air defenses as other Syrian airports, for example in Latakia governate. Its ground approaches are not completely secured. Some medium range air defense system near al Syairat was recently used against Israeli planes attacking Syrian forces fighting ISIS near Palmyra. Al Syairat lies in Homs governate, 150 km south of Khan Sheikoun in Idleb governate. It is the main support and supply airport for the besieged Syrian government enclave in Deir Ezzor which will now again be in even more serious trouble. It was also used to launch attacks on the Islamic State which fights the Syrian government troops in east Homs. Al-Qaeda and its sidekick Ahra al-Sham welcomed the U.S. strikes and Abu Ivanka al Amriki on their side. The theocratic dictatorship of Saudi Arabia offered its full support as did its British creators. The U.S. airstrike delivers a message to al-Qaeda. Whenever under military pressure al-Qaeda can now stage or fake a "chemical attack" and the U.S. will act to destroy its enemy, the Syrian government. Acts as the one last night are then direct military support by the U.S. on al-Qaeda's request. No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is Independent Media Get Our Free Daily Newsletter A similar scheme had earlier been established on the Golan heights. Al-Qaeda, fighting against Syrian government positions, would launch a mortar round that would land within Israeli controlled territory. Israel would then launch artillery strikes against Syrian government positions because "the Syrian government is responsible for what happens in the area". Al-Qaeda then used the battle field advantage created by the Israeli strike. The scheme and the Israeli military "reasoning" was published several times in Israeli media : A number of mortars have landed in Israeli territory as a result of spillover fighting over the last several years, raising fears among residents near the border. The IDF often responds to fire that crosses into Israel by striking Syrian army posts. Israel maintains a policy of holding Damascus responsible for all fire from Syria into Israel regardless of the source of the fire. The U.S. administration has now established a similar mechanism, on a larger scale, of direct military U.S. support for al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Syria. The Trump presidency had been held hostage by unfounded allegation of "Russian interference" in the U.S. elections in support of the Trump candidacy. The air strikes on Syria might have been the ransom that was demanded for the release of the hostage. His opponents are now gushing about him. The allegation of any Trump-Russia connections may now die down. Yesterday major Democratic leaders in Congress supported strikes on Syria. Despite that they are also likely to attack Trump over them. The strikes are a "strong man" gamble. As Trump said when Obama ordered strikes such are a desperate move. Most parts of the State Department and the NSC were not consulted about them. The chances that these will "blow back" politically as well as strategically are high. Trump is the third U.S. president in a row who promised less belligerence during his campaign only to deliver more after the election. The "democratic" veil of the U.S. oligarchic rule thus rips further apart. Open U.S.-Russian cooperation in Syria will now cease . U.S. planes in Syrian airspace are from now on constantly under imminent danger. There will also be some larger revenge against the U.S. for last night's strikes. Likely not in Syria but in Iraq, Afghanistan or at sea. A "message" will be send. The U.S. reaction to that "message" will be a decision over a much larger war. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House. Trump Has Surrendered - Will Putin Be The Next? By Paul Craig Roberts April 07, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - Update: Washington has reopened the conflict with a Tomahawk missile attack on Syrian Air Force Bases. The Russian/Syrian air defense systems did not prevent the attack. The Washington Establishment has reasserted control. First Flynn and now Bannon. All that are left in the Trump administration are the Zionists and the crazed generals who want war with Russia, China, Iran, Syria, and North Korea. There is no one in the White House to stop them. Kiss good-bye normalized relations with Russia. The Syrian conflict is set to be reopened. That is the point of the chemical attack blamed by Washington on Syria despite the absence of any evidence. It is completely obvious that the chemical attack is a Washington orchestrated event. According to reports US Secretary of State Tillerson has warned Russia that steps are underway to remove Syrian president Assad. Trump agrees. The removal of Assad allows Washington to impose another Washington puppet on Muslim peoples, to remove another Arab government with an independent policy from Washington, to remove another government that is opposed to Israels theft of Palestine, and for Exxons Tillerson and the neoconservative hegemonists to cut Russian natural gas off from Europe with a US controlled gas pipeline from Qater to Europe via Syria. By ignoring all of these US advantages, the Russian government dithered in completing the liberation of Syria from Washington-backed ISIS. The Russians dithered, because they had totally unrealistic hopes of achieving a partnership with Washington via a joint effort against terrorism. This was a ridiculous idea as terrorism is Washingtons weapon. If Washington can move Russia out of the way with threats or more Russian misplaced hopes of cooperation with Washington, terrorism will next be directed against Iran on a large scale. When Iran falls, terrorism will start to work on the Russian Federation and on the Chinese province that borders Kazakhstan. Washington has already given Russia a taste of US-supported terrorism in Chechnya. More is to come. If the Russian government had not dithered in cleaning out ISIS from Syria when Russia unexpectedly took the lead from the West, Syria would not face partition or renewed US determination to overthrow Assad for the reasons given above. But the Russians, mesmerized by dreams of cooperating with Washington, have put both Syria and themselves in a difficult position. The Russians grabbed the initiative and surprised the world by accepting the Syrian governments invitation and entering the conflict. Washington was helpless. The Russian intervention immediately turned the tide against ISIS. Then suddenly Putin accounced a Russian pullout, claiming like Bush on the aircraft carrier, Mission Accomplished. But mission wasnt accomplished, and Russia reentered, still with the initiative but set back somewhat from the irrational withdrawal. If memory serves, this in and out business happened a couple of times. Then when Russia has the war agains ISIS won, they hold back on the finish in the vain belief that now Washington will finally cooperate with Russia in eliminating the last ISIS stronghold. Instead, the US sent in military forces to block the Russian/Syrian advances. The Russian Foreign Minister complained, but Russia did not use its superior power on the scene to move aside the token US forces and bring the conflict to an end. Now Washington gives warnings to Russia not to get in Washingtons way. Will the Russian government ever learn that coopertion with Washington has only one meaning: sign up as a vassal? No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is Independent Media Get Our Free Daily Newsletter Russias only alternative now is to tell Washington to go to hell, that Russia will not permit Washington to remove Assad. But the Russian Fifth Column, which is allied with the West, will insist that Russia can finally gain Washingtons cooperation if only Russia will sacrifice Assad. Of course, Russias acquiescence will destroy the image of Russian power, and it will be used to deprive Russia of foreign exchange from natural gas sales to Europe. Putin has said that Russia cannot trust Washington. This is a correct deduction from the facts, so why does Russia keep putting itself in a quandry by seeking cooperation with Washington? Cooperation with Washington has only one meaning. It means surrender to Washington. Putin has only part-way cleaned up Russia. The country remains full of American agents. Will Putin fall to the Washington Establishment just as Trump has? It is extraordinary how little of the Russian media understand the peril that Russia is in. Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West , How America Was Lost , and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order . 'Ukraine on Fire': Oliver Stone Documentary Finally Available in the West VIDEO Covered by Western media as a people's revolution, it was in fact a coup d'etat scripted and staged by nationalist groups and the U.S. State Department. "The film was originally released in 2016, but unsurprisingly, Stone came up against problems distributing the film in the US and western countries. A Russian-dubbed version was available almost immediately and was aired on TV in Russia, but people in the 'free world' were left without access to the full film." Posted January 18, 2018 Never Miss Another Story Get Your FREE Daily Newsletter ==== Join the Discussion Home US Attack On Syria Was Largely Symbolic By The Saker April 07, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - " The Saker " - I have an important update: based on Russian sources, including video footage and the reports of one Russian journalist on the ground, Evgenii Poddubnyi, it has become clear that the US strike was largely symbolic. Here is the evidence: The Russians were given a warning which they, of course, passed on to the Syrians. The Americans must have assumed that this would happen. The Syrian airbase was lightly damaged: a few number of aircraft were damaged or destroyed, but many of these were in repairs and could not fly. Fuel storage tanks were destroyed. A number of aircraft bunkers were damage or destroyed. A few barracks were also destroyed. There were 6 or 7 casualties, which is very little. Crucially, the runways did not suffer. Now here is the really intriguing thing: it appears that only 23 out of a total of 59 US cruise missiles hit the base. The rest are unaccounted for. This could be due to all sorts of reasons, including Syrian and Russian air defenses or Russian electronic warfare. I tend to believe that the latter is the cause. But then, this begs another question: why did the Russians let 23 of the cruise missiles through? Possibly to appease Trump and not force him to re-strike. Other possibility, to make sure that the political fallout from this stupid and reckless attack still come back to hurt the United States (had they destroyed all the cruise missiles this would not happen). As for the Russian political reaction, I find it rather flaccid: Russia has condemned the attack and suspended the Memorandum of Understanding on Prevention of Flight Safety Incidents in the course of operations in Syria signed with the US. Meh, I am rather unimpressed. Here is the full Russian MoFA statement: The United States conducted strikes against Syrian government troops in the early hours of April 7, using chemical weapons attacks in Idlib Province as a pretext. The US opted for a show of force, for military action against a country fighting international terrorism without taking the trouble to get the facts straight. It is not the first time that the US chooses an irresponsible approach that aggravates problems the world is facing, and threatens international security. The very presence of military personnel from the US and other countries in Syria without consent from the Syrian government or a UN Security Council mandate is an egregious and obvious violation of international law that cannot be justified. While previous initiatives of this kind were presented as efforts to combat terrorism, now they are clearly an act of aggression against a sovereign Syria. Actions undertaken by the US today inflict further damage to the Russia-US relations. Russia has expressed on numerous occasions that it was ready to cooperate on resolving the most urgent issues the world is facing today, and that fighting international terrorism was a top priority. However, we will never agree to unsanctioned action against the legitimate Syrian government that has been waging an uncompromising war on international terrorism for a long time. Seeking to justify military action Washington has totally distorted what had happened in Idlib. The US could not have failed to grasp the fact that the Syrian government troops did not use chemical weapons there. Damascus simply does not have them, as confirmed a number of times by qualified experts. This was the conclusion reached by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). Over the recent years this organisation inspected almost all the facilities linked or possibly linked to Syrias chemical weapons programme. As for Idlib, the terrorists operating there used to produce toxic land mines intended for use in Syria and Iraq. These manufacturing facilities were put out of operation in a military operation carried out by the Syrian air force. The US pretends that it does not understand obvious things, turning a blind eye to the use of chemical weapons in Iraq, officially confirmed by Baghdad. The US refuses to believe the evidence provided by certified documents confirming the use of chemical weapons by terrorists in Aleppo. In doing so, the US is abetting international terrorism and making it stronger. New WMD attacks can be expected. There is no doubt that the military action by the US is an attempt to divert attention from the situation in Mosul, where the campaign carried out among others by US-led coalition has resulted in hundreds of civilian casualties and an escalating humanitarian disaster. It is obvious that the cruise missile attack was prepared in advance. Any expert understands that Washingtons decision on air strikes predates the Idlib events, which simply served as a pretext for a show of force. Russia suspends the Memorandum of Understanding on Prevention of Flight Safety Incidents in the course of operations in Syria signed with the US. We call on the UN Security Council to hold an emergency meeting to discuss the latest developments. Again, I am very underwhelmed to put it mildly. I hope that the outrage inside Russia will force Lavrov to cancel his planned meeting with Tillerson. The usually sleepy Duma seems to be uncharacteristically outraged. No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is Independent Media Get Our Free Daily Newsletter On a personal note, I will be gone all day and most of the week-end I will be attending Church services for the feasts of the Annunciation and the Entry of our Lord into Jerusalem. You can expect an analysis by Monday or Tuesday at the latest. The Saker PS: needless to say, no chemical weapons or chemical weapon storage facilities were damaged: we know that since NOBODY, including the Russian reporters, were even carrying, nevermind wearing, any gas masks or, even less so, full chemical protection suits. This is hardly surprising since, of course, they never existed in the first place. PPS: just for the record, this attack was a direct and clear violation of US national law (Trump never got Congress to authorize this attack) International law (Trump is now a criminal guilty of the crime of aggression) The UN Charter In other words, Trump is now a war criminal and the USA a rogue state (again). The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House. Click for Spanish , German , Dutch , Danish , French , translation- Note- Translation may take a moment to load. What's your response? - Scroll down to add / read comments Please read our Comment Policy before posting - It is unacceptable to slander, smear or engage in personal attacks on authors of articles posted on ICH. Those engaging in that behavior will be banned from the comment section. Click here to comment on our Facebook page Before the gates of a fascinating building overlooking Lake Geneva stand sculptures depicting the struggles of workers against exploitation and glorifying those who labour. This is somewhat perplexing as the statues now decorate the building of the World Trade Organisation (WTO)the body that took over the premises of the International Labour Organisation in blunt symbolism of the path of the 20th century. The ILO was created in 1919, right after the First World War, to ensure that peace would prevail through the dissemination of social justice. This meant giving the wage earners the socially oppressed, the fuel of wars a voice and fair remuneration. The organisation remained in this premises until the late 1990s when it was replaced by the WTO, a creation of the corporate globalisation era. The ILO is celebrating its centenary in two years 100 years of regulating the world of work. In preparation for the event, the organisation's Director-General Guy Rider launched in 2013 the Future of Work initiative, a long-term research project based on discussions between the world's top researchers, politicians, employers and trade unions on issues concerning labour. The outcome of these discussions and results of the project are planned to be announced at the centenary ceremony. The ILO is currently hosting one of these discussions, "Global debate: the future of work we want," on 6 and 7 April. The four axes of this global debate lie at the heart of Egypt's economic struggle: work and society, decent work for all, organisation of work and production and the governance of work. The unemployment curse If we take unemployment as one of the major challenges of today's economically troubled world, the world is losing the contribution of around 200 million. This number is increasing now by two million every year. Egypt is part of the region with the highest rate of unemployment. At least one in every 10 unemployed persons lives in the Arab region. In Egypt, unemployment has never dipped below 9-10% over the past three decades. Only two of every 10 highly educated young people can find a job, while eight are left to languish in their homes for long years, provided for by their extended families. Like all other parts of the world, unemployment hits the young educated population hardest. It is not difficult to link this phenomenon with extremism, frustration and social uprisings, which have all emerged especially after the Arab Spring in the developed and developing worlds alike. The world is now debating the reasons behind this lack of jobs. One explanation often prevails: blame the technology. It is the same explanation that was advanced during the Great Depression of the early 20th century, when the use of modern machines was en vogue. But history belied this interpretation, because the technology boom of that time in fact led to new job opportunities and the creation of more jobs than those that disappeared. The future of work and the policies that are needed thus depend on finding the right answer to this question. The world is also looking into ways and means of protecting those who work in international supply chains. How can we develop and enforce a policy that protects workers against new forms of exploitation, in which the lords are located in multinational companies based mostly in developed countries, as opposed to the colonial exploitation of the 18th and 19th centuries? Egypt is also concerned by this debate. Egypt is a middle-income country that, despite many reforms aimed at shaping it into an export hub integrated into the supply chains of food and textiles, is struggling to develop its economy. In this, it is much like the majority of its peers. In this context, supply chains have been revealed as the form exploitation takes in globalised capitalism. A company based in a developed country (with many subsidiaries in different parts of the world) buys most of its goods and services from small firms in developing countries. It is there that goods can be bought at very low prices, as opposed to at home where there exist some kinds of social protection for wage earners. Companies then sell these products at many times their original prices, adding their own labels and collecting phenomenal profits. Meanwhile, more and more people are forced into unemployment in the developed country, even as millions of workers are exploited and overworked in the developing world. All developing countries race against each others, to produce this good or that service for the big corporates: who will provide the cheapest shirts for Zara or Gap or other brands? Is it China, Bangladesh or Egypt? The more the labour force is exploited, the more contracts a country gets, and the faster its indicators improve in terms of GDP growth, exports, and job creation. The question is, is this good or bad for the economy and for the country as a whole? It feels good to hear the success stories of factory owners, about how they managed to penetrate a certain market, build successful companies and produce an exporting miracle for such-and-such country. But, when you read about the mothers having to leave their kids with relatives in rural areas for years to be able to provide for little food and poor education, by working over 14 hours a day with no weekends, and when these stories are piled into labour market indicators around the world, we can see the return of slavery in its worst forms. The Egyptian paradox is that it took all the necessary steps to become a hub of these sweat shops, in order to join the development rail, but it is failing: the labour force has not been fairly treated, nor has the industrialisation by export model succeeded. This curse will remain as long as the decision makers don't realise that the best way to progress is to ensure labour rights. The work curse As the Roman saying goes: "work is a curse unless one is a warrior or a philosopher"-- both of whom have gained status and wealth around the world whether through hard work or talent. But this is not the case in Egypt, where work is a curse unless you are a senior government official or private sector executive-- jobs which are rarely landed through competence and merit here. Today, the relationship between employers and wage earners seems to be much the same as in the early days of the West's Industrial Revolution. Countries like Egypt seek purely exploitative relations in an effort to emulate the success of South Korea. The problem is that times are different from those that supported the once-poor Asian country's incredible rise. This effort has contributed to a higher number of working poor in Egypt, where half the working force are in poverty, according to data provided by the World Bank in 2010. The high number of poor workers goes hand-in-hand with a higher average of weekly working hours in the country, which rose between 2002 and 2012 to reach an average of 53 hours a week for government employees and 56 for private sector employees, data from Egypt's official statistics agency CAPMAS shows. Dwindling wages have prompted these workers to compromise between 13-16 hours of their leisure time every week in order to meet basic needs. Even this has failed to help many make ends meet--given the high poverty rates in all three work sectors: public, private and informal. This has been coupled with a waiting army of unemployed people or those with intermittent jobs, if any a commonplace phenomenon even in developed countries known as a the coexistence of underdevelopment/overdevelopment. Half of wage earners receive less than EGP 1,520 a month on average, according to the National Wages Council. The figure is much lower in the private sector, where employees are paid on average less than EGP 910 a month. Yes, exploitation goes hand in hand with the growth of the private sector in Egyptwhich lacking supervision from active labour unions, gives employees the leftovers of what is earned. While some argue that the productivity of workers is weak or that some projects are not making enough profits to push up salaries, the World Bank's data on work share of GDP over the past decades largely disproves such arguments. "The functional income distribution continued to shift towards capital. Much of the growth over the past decade has been captured by higher profits and rents rather than wage income," the bank said in its 2015 Systematic Country Diagnostic report "The gross operating surplus of companies rose from 43 percent of GDP in 2000-02 to 50 percent of GDP in 2008 while the compensation of employees declined to around 25 percent of GDP and has remained around that level," it added. That is to say, capital share (profits of project owners) went up by 75 percent. According to a study by former finance minister and expert of work policies Samir Radwan, work share stood at an average 40 percent of capital under Mubarak. Drawing an international analogy, the developed world has recently been disturbed by a considerable disparity between incomes, with wages falling to 60 percent of GDP while capital share saw a steep rise to 40 percent of GDP--up from 30 percent in the two decades following World War II. All of such wealth, around the world and in Egypt, is centralized in the hands of the so-called 1 percent controlling the world through ballot boxes and large media outlets, capturing parliamentary democracy itself. The future of work cannot be disassociated from that of capital in Egypt or elsewhere. The most balanced link between them was seen in the wake of the two world wars that destroyed capital and wealth, wiped out empires and killed millions. At the time, the quest for social justice was equated with the need to survive, and those were the golden years of the International Labor Organization. Will the new centennial mark the peaceful start of a more balanced relationship between work and capital, led by the organisation? Or will the major capitalist crises now and the new century's mounting inequality prompt new world wars? Will the world choose to empower the ILO to restore social balance to today's turbulent work world? Or will its isolation contribute to the fall of the world, as was the case in the 20th century? Which scenario will shape the future of work: peace or war? Search Keywords: Short link: An overwhelming majority of Americans of all political persuasions thought broadband privacy rules should never have been repealed. But the FCC is not only doubling down on that decision, it's setting its sights on the next target, net neutrality -- another hugely popular set of regulations -- and bolstering its case with a set of alt-facts. A poll by YouGov showed that 80 percent of Democrats, 75 percent of Republicans, and 69 percent of independents thought President Trump should have vetoed the repeal bill that was rushed through Congress. In these divided states of America, it's cause to cheer when we can actually agree on something. So remind me again whose interests the FCC and Congress are serving? Because it sure looks like a handful of powerful telecom companies are calling the shots on matters that affect us all. Just the alt-facts, ma'am This week FCC Chairman Ajit Pai penned an opinion piece for the Washington Post that embraced a set of dubious claims in service of the telecom industry. As Gigi Sohn, a former adviser to previous FCC chief Tom Wheeler, said in an interview: "[Pai]'s a great guy to have a beer with, but don't be fooled. He's in favor of dismantling net neutrality and other consumer-friendly policies, and he'll do it with a smile." In his editorial, Pai couched the repeal as a pro-privacy move (not an April Fool's joke). He insisted it "simply cleared the way for us to work together to reinstate a rational and effective system for protecting consumer privacy." Stripping the FTC of jurisdiction over ISPs was "a mistake" that "weakened Americans' online privacy," he wrote. Throwing privacy under the bus This repeal had nothing to do with protecting consumer privacy. Telecom lobbyists -- and Pai himself -- argued earlier that the FCC's broadband privacy rules were unfair to ISPs because other internet companies were held to a less stringent set of privacy rules by the FTC. How exactly does returning authority to the FTC improve our privacy? It doesn't. Pai was ensuring the continued stream of data to telecoms' targeted-ad programs. The FCC commissioner attempted to wrap his argument in a cloak of bipartisanship, writing that the double standard on privacy was criticized by the Obama FTC as "not optimal." Indeed, it wasn't. But more important is what that FTC comment on privacy said directly after "not optimal": The FTC has repeatedly called for Congress to pass additional laws to strengthen the privacy and security protections provided by all companies, including through baseline privacy, data security, and data breach notification laws applicable to all entities that collect consumer data. The FTC, which unlike the FCC cannot pass regulations itself, thought stronger privacy laws were needed, and it "commend[ed] the FCC's focus on transparency, consumer choice, and data security." A truly pro-privacy move would have been for Congress to pass a law that treated all internet companies equally, not repeal the FCC's attempt to enforce stronger rules. The real goal is to gut net neutrality Pai never mentions net neutrality by name in his editorial -- a smart move because outside of Congress, it's supported by Democrats and Republicans alike. But the real crux of the piece was his opinion that stripping the FTC of jurisdiction (code for re-classifying ISPs under Title II, which gave the FCC authority to pass net neutrality rules) was bad. "As we feared, this 2015 decision [to treat the internet like a public utility] has not turned out well for the American people," Pai wrote, equating the American people to telecom giants like AT&T and Verizon. The mythical land of broadband competition One alt-fact underpins the FCC chairman's oft-stated opposition to net neutrality: Regulations are unnecessary because the market will take care of things. "Others argue that ISPs should be treated differently because consumers face a unique lack of choice and competition in the broadband marketplace. But that claim doesn't hold up to scrutiny," Pai wrote. "Google dominates desktop search with an estimated 81 percent market share (and 96 percent of the mobile search market), whereas Verizon, the largest mobile broadband provider, holds only an estimated 35 percent of its market." Does it really need explaining that dominant market share is not the same as a lack of competition? Raise your hand if you suffer from a lack of choice for desktop search. There's so much choice that 12 search engines promise not to track your online behavior. While there is competition among wireless providers, when it comes to wired broadband how many of you have even two ISPs to choose between? If you lived in Nice, France, you'd have a choice of six internet providers -- Americans can't imagine such a scenario -- and your rates would be lower. That's what competition looks like, and American ISPs are determined to avoid it by carefully carving up the country. (Here's what that looks like in a map.) According to the FCC's own statistics, 76 percent of American households have either one ISP provider or none at all offering fixed broadband at speeds of 25Mbps. Pro-consumer Wheeler spoke out repeatedly about a broadband market essentially devoid of competition, but Pai spins an alternate fairy tale. Then again, he lives in a rare, magical place where there actually is choice. "Pai's address [in the Virginia suburbs of Washington] is serviced by both Comcast and Verizon, with Xfinity download speeds up to 200Mbps, and Fios speeds up to 500Mbps," The Verge reports. That doesn't change the fact that the rest of "America is a still in a desert of competition for internet access." This is what pro-consumer looks like Wheeler, who like Pai came from the telecom industry, surprised us. He put the interests of American businesses and consumers first, passing net neutrality rules to keep an open internet and privacy rules that would have given consumers more control over the collection and use of their personal data. He tried to pre-empt telecom-funded state laws that forbid community-owned broadband from expanding services and competing against entrenched telecoms. He investigated zero-rating plans that violate net neutrality, and ran out of time in trying to open cable set-top boxes to competition. It's clear that Pai intends instead to protect telecom players. Since being named commissioner he ended the investigation into zero-rating, took the open cable box plan off the table, revoked a condition of the Charter merger with Time Warner that would have required the cable giant to expand into areas where it would be forced to compete, and supported the repeal of privacy regulations. In telecoms we trust Next comes net neutrality. We're meant to trust in the (nonexistent) free market and ISPs' own pledges to behave. With regard to privacy rules, Verizon recently earnestly vowed: "Verizon is fully committed to the privacy of our customers. We value the trust our customers have in us so protecting the privacy of customer information is a core priority for us." This would be the same Verizon that for two years operated a secret tracking program that injected undetectable, undeletable "supercookies" into customers' mobile traffic, without mentioning a word in its privacy policy or giving customers a way to opt-out. After being caught with its hand in the proverbial cookie jar, Verizon issued a statement, saying "[we] take our customers' privacy seriously." Now that's chutzpah. Don't forget that it was Comcast's throttling BitTorrent traffic that started the FCC down the road to net neutrality 10 years ago. Or that two years ago AT&T filed a patent for an internet "fast lane." When telecoms talk about dismantling regulations to free up innovation, this is the kind of invention they have in mind. Hold them accountable It's unclear whether the FCC will try to repeal its own net neutrality rules -- which could be a lengthy process -- or urge Congress to gut them. But either way, the fight is coming. In the days ahead, look for Pai to step up the chant that net neutrality rules hinder investment. Don't believe it. Business Insider looked at the state of investment in the two years since the rules passed and found that Comcast invested more in infrastructure; Verizon's infrastructure investment remained flat; AT&T's spending sank, "but a chunk of that was due to the completion of a network upgrade that was planned before Title II was a reality"; Sprint's networking spending fell; and both T-Mobile's and Charter's increased. The notion that telecom companies will not invest in their own businesses if they are regulated doesn't hold water. Vocal support by internet users helped to get net neutrality rules passed in the first place. It's going to be needed now to defend them. The repeal of Obamacare looked like a sure bet before public protest gave politicians cold feet. Net neutrality supporters may soon need to remind them that while telecom companies have deep pockets full of lobbying dollars, internet users vote. Update: Since this article posted, the FCC disclosed a proposal that would roll back the classification of broadband providers as common carriers, which was the basis for the agency's net neutrality rules, and would instead require ISPs to promise to preserve net neutrality principles. Greece: Airlines cancel flights for general strike Wednesday AP - 1 hour ago Greeces main airlines have announced domestic and international flight cancellations and schedule changes due to labor unions for air traffic controllers and civil aviation workers participating in... $SPX : 3,806.80 (+0.96%) $DOWI : 32,827.00 (+1.31%) $IUXX : 10,977.00 (+1.10%) Renault, China's Geely announced powertrain joint venture AP - Tue Nov 8, 12:17AM CST Renault SA and Chinas Geely say they plan to launch a joint venture to produce gasoline-powered and hybrid powertrains, adding to a series of partnerships between global automakers to share soaring... $SPX : 3,806.80 (+0.96%) $DOWI : 32,827.00 (+1.31%) $IUXX : 10,977.00 (+1.10%) S&P500 (ES) Weekly MACD Positively Crossing Tradable Patterns - Tue Nov 8, 12:02AM CST The S&P500 (ESZ22) is consolidating a 2 day bounce, and appears to be gearing up this week for a retest of the October high and the 50% Fib retrace of the August to October slide. Any reclaiming of... ESZ22 : 3,828.25 (+0.34%) SPY : 379.95 (+0.96%) SPXS : 23.70 (-2.87%) SPXU : 17.99 (-2.86%) SPXL : 62.52 (+2.88%) Hog Commentary Walsh Trading - Mon Nov 7, 5:00PM CST Hog markets rallied significantly today with the Dec contract up over $4 and the Feb contract up over $2.50, hitting a high of $89.65 before settling at 89.05 on the day. This rally comes after speculation... Cotton Closes in Black on Monday Barchart - Mon Nov 7, 4:46PM CST Mondays cotton trade added 16 to 87 points to the rally. December ended the day up by 56 points and to levels not seen since 10/11. NASS reported 62% of the cotton crop was harvested through 11/6. That... CTZ22 : 87.05 (-0.50%) CTH23 : 85.21 (-0.72%) CTK23 : 84.38 (-0.81%) Mamaroneck Self Storage in Mamaroneck, N.Y., recently hosted a group of London-based insurance brokers who specialize in insuring self-storage operations. Designed to give the English team a birds-eye view of select U.S. storage facilities, the gathering included a property tour. The event was arranged by Jacquelyn Nash, agency director of On The Move Insurance Agency (OTMA), which provides self-storage-specific business coverages as well as a tenant-protection program. Mamaroneck Self-Storage is an amazing facility, Nash said. Our insurers were very impressed by the cleanliness, construction and security features at their facility. Opened in 2015, Mamaroneck Self Storage operates with numerous green initiatives, including DOW Powerhouse Solar Shingles, which are a combination of roof shingles and a solar-panel system. Since opening, the family-owned business has hosted several community and industry events. OTMA provides insurance coverages including builders risk for new construction , business-owners policies, and property and casualty. It also offers contractual liability insurance as the Secure Lease Tenant Protection Program. Its a part of family-owned On The Move Inc., which has been in the storage industry for more than 25 years and also offers a self-storage truck rental program for facility operators. London insurance brokers on a property tour with Jacquelyn Nash (seen here in red) and the Mamaroneck Self Storage team. Photo by Anna Diop-Dia. Edgar Nehme is leaving KAUST Investment Management Company to become chief investment officer at a Robert Bass family office, according to a person familiar with his plans. Nehme didnt immediately respond to requests for comment. Nor did a representative from Oak Hill Capital Partners, one of Bass family offices. Bass has a net worth of about $4 billion, according to Forbes, which says he built his fortune off an inheritance from his oil tycoon uncle Sid Richardson. Texas billionaire Bass and his family have multiple offices, the best known being Oak Hill, which began investing in 1986. He also co-founded Acadia Investment Management in 2013, with Mark Anson. Anson was CIO of the Bass family office until he left to become CIO of Commonfund, an asset manager in Connecticut that assists non-profit organizations, in January 2016. Institutional Investor could not immediately confirm which Bass family outpost Nehme will lead as CIO. Nehme joined KAUST, which manages the endowment of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, in 2010. The research university opened in 2009 with a $10 billion endowment, according to an NPR report at the time. The endowment was set up with a grant from King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the former King of Saudi Arabia, who died in 2015. In his 2016 book, Out of the Desert: My Journey From Nomadic Bedouin to the Heart of Global Oil, author Ali Al-Naimi, the former Saudi oil minister, described how he persuaded the King to double his initial allocation to the university endowment to $20 billion. Prior to joining KAUST, Nehme, 45, was a managing director at Crestline Investors, an alternative-investment firm in Texas, for about five months, according to his LinkedIn bio. Before that, he was head of credit and event strategies at UBP from March 2008 to March 2010. J.P. Morgan Asset Management has joined buy-side firms in reducing human traders in favor of robots managed by tech-savvy handlers. The acknowledgement came in an interview with Kristian West, the firms global head of equity trading, who emphasized the increasing importance of quantitative researchers within the business since 2015. In a statement following the call, a spokeswoman for J.P. Morgan Asset Management, declined to specify the number of human trading roles that had been cut but acknowledged there are fewer, pure, traditional traders. Asset managers are increasingly bowing to pressure to cut costs by automating jobs, with BlackRock and PNC Capital Advisors disclosing plans in the last two weeks to give computers and data science a more significant role. All areas of trading at J.P. Morgan Asset Management are becoming more quantitative, with quant practices within equity migrating to other asset classes such as fixed-income, according to the spokeswoman. Our trading team has become a mix of traders, quants and technologists, with the latter two groups becoming a bigger part of the mix, the spokeswoman said. That transition should continue. J.P. Morgan Asset Management has 69 traders globally, including 24 in fixed-income and 45 in equities. If you visit our offices in London, we now have nine traders, surrounded by 15 technologists, West said. That is quite profound to see. Going forward, [we want to] have the traders and the quant team come together. The new quant research staff now has a global role, with two individuals in New York, London and Hong Kong, according to West. The spokeswoman said the firm expects the expanded quantitative research team to continue to grow in importance and size over time. Wests colleague, Kenneth McLeish, global head of equities trading technology, said in an interview that trading is moving from an art to a science as firms work on using data to drive decisions. It is about being analytical about how we do things, analyzing how the traders are working, he said. PNC Capital Advisors is placing its large-cap mutual funds under the leadership of a factor-based computer model, according to Douglas Roman, managing director of PNCs Large-Cap Equity Advantage investments. He said earlier this week that the move to quant will help the firm expand its business with mainstream investors, in part because quantitative models are a less expensive way to manage portfolios. BlackRock announced March 28 that it was converting some of its funds managed by stock pickers to pools run by quant models, underscoring the challenge active managers face in beating gains produced by low-cost passive funds. Funds across Asia plan to increase their allocations to alternative managers, particularly in managers outside their own markets. Hedge fund managers, take note: If you want to raise money from investors, you might want to look into state pension funds in Korea. According to a new report from asset management research firm Cerulli Associates, Asian instituions (excluding Japan) are looking to invest more with alternative managers, with Korean state pension funds leading the charge. One, the Korea Teachers Pension Fund, already had put 16 percent of its assets in alternatives through the end of 2015 and plans to increase this to 40 percent over the next three years, Cerulli notes in the report. Along with Korea Teachers Pension, the National Pension Fund, which manages the equivalent of $493 billion in assets, may be inspiring other Korean plans to follow its push into alternatives, Cerulli says. The NPFs alternatives and overseas equities investments posted the highest returns in its portfolio in 2016, according to its website. Already burdened by their growing liabilities, many state pension funds in the region are taking a blow from slumping returns on their traditional investments and are facing greater pressure to deliver better investment performances, the report states. In response to the persistent low-yield environment, the Korean government in August directed state pension funds to raise foreign and alternative investments by two to three percentage points annually. Like the Korea Teachers Pension, Cerulli notes some funds have already planned to increase allocations ahead of the directive. One is the countrys sovereign wealth fund, Korea Investment Corporation, which allocated 12.4 percent to alternatives in 2015 and will target 20 percent by 2020. The top alternative investment strategies sought by Korean institutional investors are private debt, private equity, and infrastructure assets, according to the report. In China, the China Investment Corp., its sovereign wealth fund, intends to ramp up its investments in private equity and hedge funds, with an emphasis on doing more direct investing. It may also consider investing in U.S. infrastructure projects and the manufacturing industry, the report said. Meanwhile, Chinese insurers are investing more in alternatives, although they are making those investments in more domestic managers. In Taiwan, pension fund targets for alternative investments in 2017 were more tepid compared with those of Korea. The Labor Insurance Fund will target 10 percent allocation this year, up marginally from 9.2 percent last year, while the National Pension Insurance Fund is targeting 5 percent in 2017, up from 4.1 percent. The underfunding crisis of Taiwanese pensions is becoming critical, Cerulli said, as it faces an aging demographic much like that of Japan. The funds are expected to increasingly diversify into alternatives as well as and passive investments to reduce costs, the report stated. This content is from: Video The president will take a more aggressive stance with China and Russia if Republicans win the House or the Senate, according to BCA Researchs Matt Gertken. ASIC has cancelled the Australian Financial Services (AFS) licence of Rural & General Insurance Broking.The Parramatta-based firm saw its licence suspended in November 2016 for failing to comply with its legal obligations and licence conditions.ASIC found that Rural & General failed to lodge annual financial statements and auditors reports for the financial years ending June 30, 2014 and 2015.The annual lodgement of audited accounts is an important part of a licensee demonstrating it has adequate financial resources to provide the services covered by its licence and to conduct the business lawfully, ASIC deputy chairman Peter Kell said.The former director of Rural & General, Timothy Charles Pratten, was suspended from providing financial services and from engaging in credit activities in 2016.Pratten was found guilty in 2015 and was sentenced to five years in jail with a two-year non-parole period in April 2016 for seven counts of fraud.Prattens conviction followed an investigation by the Australian Taxation Office, which found that he had failed to declare income amounting to approximately $5 million from 2003 to 2009.Rural & General had held an AFS licence since March 2003. In Queensland: Queensland Building and Construction Commission at www.qbcc.qld.gov.au; and In New South Wales: Master Builders Association of NSW at www.mbansw.asn.au. The Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) is urging builders and tradespeople in areas hit by Tropical Cyclone Debbie to take part in an insurer-funded rebuilding work, potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars.Qualified builders and tradespeople who want to be considered for the reconstruction effort should register with the following:Insurers recognise local workers who participate in the reconstruction response provide a vital economic boost in communities that have taken a severe financial hit from this catastrophe, said ICA CEO Rob Whelan.In the aftermath of disasters, insurers first priority is to their policyholders, and making sure repairs and rebuilding work are done to the highest standard in the shortest possible time.For this reason, many insurers have strategic arrangements with building companies, suppliers and project managers to undertake repairs and building works. These companies often sub-contract work to local builders and tradespeople if they are qualified, reputable, price competitive and have capacity. Some insurers also have a policy to use local firms where possible.The ICA boss said policyholders in need of repairs should contact their insurer before commissioning any work, even for emergency repairs, as unauthorised work may not be covered by the policy. A California-based provider of on-demand insurance for individual items has acquired new financing to support its global expansion efforts.The company is among a growing number of tech-enabled start-ups that aim to disrupt the insurance industry.Trov has raised $45 million from strategic investors Munich Re HSB Ventures and Japans second largest insurer, Sompo , as well as Oak HC/FT, Suncorp Group, Guidewire, and Anthemis Group, bringing its war chest to roughly $90 million to expand its global reach, TechCrunch reported.The industry disruptor currently operates in Australia and the UK through agreements with Suncorp and AXA Insurance respectively; and now with Munich Res backing, it is set for expansion in the rest of the world. In Japan, Munich and Sompo are working jointly on the Trov product.The new money will also be used to finance the companys move into new types of coverage - including autonomous vehicle insurance where people only pay for the amount of time theyre in the vehicles. USI Insurance Services has announced its acquisition of Cameron M. Harris & Company, a middle market insurer which has a long history within the North Carolina market.Harris & Company specializes in personal and commercial coverage, business services, surety bonding, employee benefits and group products. The firm will remain in its current location in Charlotte, where its employees are based.Terms of the deal were not disclosed.This acquisition reinforces our continued investment in the Southeast and our pledge to helping local clients grow their businesses. I am thrilled to have such a respected pool of professionals join our growing family James W. Dunn, USI Southeast regional chief executive, said in a company statement.We have always believed that a policy is a promise, that each client deserves superior coverage and service, and that insurance is more than a transaction. Through our partnership with USI, we will continue to deliver on these founding principlesThis is an exciting and new chapter for us Cameron Harris, president and founder of Cameron M. Harris & Company added. Sometimes theres something just a little off with one of your claims. Something about it just doesnt sit right. So when you need to get to the bottom of it, you might end up hiring a private investigator.Insurers have used private eyes for decades, but the case crackers are no longer the classic Shamuses of old, slinking around in trench coats some modern PIs are using social media to track down insurance fraud.Take Joseph Jones, for example. The Californian PI and vice president of Bosco Legal Services is carving a small niche for his business in the insurance world, solving cases through a mixture of extensive online searches and good old-fashioned surveillance. The 30-year-old holds degrees in social and behavioral sciences and psychology, plus multiple certifications in open source and cyber intelligence.A couple of years ago we really got heavy into social media investigations and open source intelligence investigations. Were not the only ones doing it, but theres very few solid investigation agencies that really do it well. Because of that, weve had insurance agencies reaching out to us, saying we need this service, he said.What were able to provide in the way of evidence, its so good. The way it kind of started was your typical workers comp issue, where somebody is saying theyve got the neck and the back problems and they really dont, or your car accidents. Thats like the bread and butter - those are the cases that come constantly. But were also working fraud and things like that, and were using whats available online to link people together.The firm gets deep into social media, spending hours trawling for information on a person, often through friends and acquaintances pages searching for comments, pictures or videos that might incriminate the claimant.Social media users, Jones has found, will post information for their friends that contradicts what theyre trying to claim from their insurers, including: vacations, physical fitness, social events, hobbies, employment, and potentially incriminating places they frequently visit.Jones said 10-20 hours of targeted online investigations can often yield more than a weeks worth of surveillance. But when social media fails, there are always the private eye fall-backs, like tailing, watching, interviewing and doorknocking. Transportation officials in Maryland plan to move flammable materials stored under bridges after a raging fire caused part of a busy interstate to collapse in downtown Atlanta. The Maryland Department of Transportation said in a news release Tuesday that the agency is identifying any similar material stored under a state-owned bridge for relocation. Transportation Secretary Pete Rahn says in a statement that officials are determined to prevent what happened in Atlanta last week from happening in Maryland. Crews will be deployed through Maryland to remove any combustible materials stored under 2,564 state-owned bridges. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Maryland S&P Global Ratings has raised its long-term counterparty credit and financial strength ratings on Aviabel Cie. Belge dAssurances Aviation to A from A-, following the completion of its acquisition on April 1 by AXIS Capital. Confirming a stable outlook for Aviabel, S&P also removed its ratings from CreditWatch, where it had placed them with positive implications on Dec. 6, 2016. S&P said it raised Aviabels ratings because it is now part of a larger group with diverse product offerings and geographic spread, which will strengthen Aviabels credit quality. Aviation Strategy This transaction fits into AXIS growth and diversification strategy since it will increase its reach in the global aviation sector, S&P said, noting that AXIS aviation and aerospace insurance totaled more than $50 million and contributed 1 percent of the groups gross written premium in 2016. As a result of the Aviabel acquisition, AXIS aviation business turnover will double, S&P confirmed. Thanks to its long presence in the industry and its technical capabilities, Aviabel has developed strong know-how and a sound reputation in the general aviation market, both in its traditional home market of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg and internationally, said S&P. S&P noted that Aviabel will continue to use its brand name, which is a strong asset, even though it will start communicating on its new ownership structure via a co-branding strategy. AXIS will protect Aviabel with strong internal reinsurance agreements, as it does for its other Europe-based subsidiaries, S&P said, explaining that this coverage will complement Aviabels current external reinsurance program. Aviabels reliance on aviation business makes it more sensitive to the currently difficult operating environment, characterized by continuous excess capacity, which has contributed to downward pressure on pricing, S&P continued. As a result of the transaction, however, S&P expected Aviabels competitive position to benefit from the groups larger balance sheet, strong reputation in markets where it operates, wider business and geographic diversification and economies of scale. We also foresee benefits to risk management and reserving as Aviabel is integrated into AXIS. Source: S&P Global Ratings Topics Mergers & Acquisitions Carriers Aviation Miller has hired David Maule in a business production and senior broking role, which the London-based broker said will add considerable strength to its trade credit and political risks capabilities. Maule will work with colleagues in the London, Paris and Singapore offices to develop new business with lenders, traders and corporations, particularly in Germany and Asia, Miller said in a statement. He has a breadth of experience covering trade and political risks, having begun his career at Investment Insurance International (the first exclusive political risks broker in the London market) in 1977, before working in Paris and Dusseldorf. He returned to the London market in 1990 and has held senior positions at Arthur J Gallagher since 2003. Maule specializes in the German export market and speaks fluent German and French. David will bring a fresh perspective and drive our growth plans in targeted regions. His wealth of experience in the market and this sector will complement the strengths of our dynamic team in London, commented Tim Press, head of Special Risks at Miller. Source: Miller Topics Agencies London A.J. Gallagher ABC Broadcasting has lost a last-ditch bid before South Dakotas highest court to avoid a trial in a beef producers $5.7 billion defamation case over reports about a product that critics call pink slime. The order signed on April 3 by state Supreme Court Chief Justice David Gilbertson denied ABCs petition to appeal a recent ruling letting plaintiff Beef Products Inc (BPI) take its case to a jury. In February, Judge Cheryle Gering of the Union County Circuit Court in Elk Point, South Dakota, said ABC, a unit of Walt Disney Co, and its reporter Jim Avila must defend against claims that they damaged BPI by referring in a series of reports to BPIs lean finely textured beef product as pink slime. Gering did not rule on the cases merits, nor did the Supreme Court. ABC declined to comment while BPI said in a statement it looked forward to holding the defendants accountable. The case is scheduled to go to trial on June 5 and could last eight weeks. Lean, finely textured beef is made from beef chunks, including trimmings and exposed to tiny bursts of ammonium hydroxide to kill bacteria. At the time of the ABC News broadcasts, few Americans realized the product was a mainstay of fast-food burgers, school lunch tacos and homemade meatloaf. BPI said ABCs reports in March and April 2012 implied that the South Dakota-based companys product was not safe, not nutritious and not even meat. The network has called BPIs lawsuit an attempt to chill media coverage of the industry and inhibit free speech. BPI has claimed up to $1.9 billion of damages, which could be tripled to $5.7 billion under South Dakotas Agricultural Food Products Disparagement Act. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has called BPIs product safe. But some retailers, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc, stopped selling ground beef containing it after the ABC reports. Several other defendants were previously dismissed from the case, including a former Agriculture Department microbiologist said to have coined the term pink slime in a 2002 email. The case is Beef Products Inc et al v. American Broadcasting Cos et al, First Judicial Circuit Court of South Dakota, Union County, No. 12-292. Reporting by P.J. Huffstutter; Editing by Jonathan Stempel in New York and Bill Trott Related: Topics Agribusiness Hanover Stone Partners, a risk management services firm, has established a dedicated, national practice group to help employers manage workers compensation costs. Barry E. Thompson, who has more than 30 years of experience in all areas of workers compensation cost management, will lead the new practice. Known as WorkersComp Guard, the new practice will work in collaboration with employers to reduce costs and improve claim outcomes. The practice will provide strategies and methods to assess employer safety culture and practices, evaluate risk financing options, implement best claims management practices, and leverage data for program measurement and more effective resource deployment. Thompson said WorkersComp Guard is independent and offers an alternative for employers who have hit a wall in working with their vendors to lower costs. In addition to leading WorkersComp Guard, Thompson concurrently is president of Risk Acuity, LLC, a national consulting firm specializing in workers compensation, which he founded in 2002. Previously, he was National Practice co-leader with Deloitte where he co-founded the firms National Disability Management Services Unit. Earlier, he was vice president and managing consultant with Aon, where he was among the founders of the Aon Management Institute, a practice built around workers compensation cost containment and education. He began his career with Liberty Mutual where he became senior claims adjuster before joining Marsh in 1986 as assistant vice president and claim account representative. He also served as a claim manager with Air Express International. Headquartered in New York City, Hanover Stone Partners is a risk management advisor and specialized risk management services firm. Topics Workers' Compensation QBE North America has appointed Richard Friesenhahn as head of Multinational for North America. Based in New York, Friesenhahn will support the companys expansion of multinational services and offerings. Friesenhahn has more than 38 years of industry experience with various affiliates of Amercian International Group, including as executive vice president of U.S. Casualty Lines. Last April he assumed the role as chief executive officer for Attune, a technology-oriented startup formed by AIG, Hamilton Insurance Group and Two Sigma Investments for the small to medium-sized enterprise market. He will report to Kathleen O. Zortman, president, Property & Casualty. Attune recently named James Hobson, formerly chief operating officer of online small business lender OnDeck, to be its new chief executive officer. ProPublica and Consumer Reports have issued a response to the opinion column by Insurance Information Institutes James Lynch criticizing their report, Minority Neighborhoods Pay Higher Car Insurance Premiums Than White Areas with the Same Risk. As reported by Insurance Journal, the report claims insurers overcharge drivers in minority zip codes compared to drivers in other zip codes with similar payouts on claims. The I.I.I.s criticism, I.I.I.: Why ProPublica Auto Insurance Report Is Inaccurate, Unfair and Irresponsible, heavily criticized the reports methodology and conclusions. The following is the unedited reply to I.I.I. and Lynch by ProPublica and Consumer Reports: ProPublica and Consumer Reports read with interest James Lynchs Op-ed Why ProPublica Auto Insurance Report Is Inaccurate, Unfair and Irresponsible (April 5th, 2017). While we appreciate that Mr. Lynch and the industry may disagree with our findings and conclusions, we want to correct for readers several errors he made in describing our work. In fact, we released a detailed methodology of our study, primarily to be as transparent and forthright as possible about what we did and did not do, and about the limitations of our analysis. Mr. Lynch writes that we concluded that auto insurers charge unfairly high rates to people in minority and low-income communities. In fact, we found that the disparities were not limited to low-income communities and persist even in affluent minority neighborhoods. Mr. Lynch writes that we made a mistake by comparing the losses of all drivers within a ZIP code to the premium charged to a single person. This assertion does not properly characterize what we did. We compared the average premium in minority zip codes to the average premium in neighborhoods with similar accident costs and a higher proportion of white residents. Mr. Lynch writes that insurance companies do not set rates based on race or income. Our article does not say that they do. However, as our article pointed out, companies can use such criteria as credit score and occupation, which have been shown to result in higher prices for minorities. Mr. Lynch writes that we did not address how auto insurers priced policies where data about the policyholders and a ZIP codes loss costs was thin. In fact, we analyzed in detail Californias system of allowing insurers to set rates for sparsely populated rural areas by considering risk in contiguous ZIP codes. Mr. Lynch writes that we do not consider that an auto insurers individual loss costscould vary from the statewide average. In fact, we acknowledged this point in our article as a potential limitation of our study, while noting that the internal data of one insurance company, Nationwide, showed a greater disparity than the statewide average. Mr. Lynch also implies we only applied our analysis to a 30-year old driver. As we acknowledged in our methodology, we could not take every variable into account. We did repeat our analysis for more than 40 driver profiles that differed by age, gender, number of drivers, and number of cars. When we ran the numbers, we found consistent results. Our methodology was developed over more than a year and reviewed by a variety of independent experts in the field (including academics, statisticians, and former regulators), whose feedback we incorporated. We were transparent with the Insurance Information Institute and with the firm the trade group hired, providing all our data and even our code to ensure they could fairly respond. We would welcome the same transparency in return. While the industry criticizes ProPublica and Consumer Reports for not using company-specific data, such as individual insurers losses in each zip code, it does not make this information available. If the industry would release it, we would welcome the opportunity to take a look and continue the conversation. ProPublica and Consumer Reports Related: Topics Carriers Auto The National Weather Service has confirmed that at least 17 tornadoes struck Louisiana during a severe weather outbreak that began on Sunday, April 2 and ended the next day. A Sunday morning storm flipped a Breaux Bridge mobile home, killing 38-year-old Francine Gotch and her 3-year-old daughter, Nevaeh Alexander. Its rated EF-1 on the enhanced Fujita scale, with top winds of 110 mph and a path less than a mile long. One storm, with top winds of 105 mph ran 5.4 miles through Alexandria, causing light damage. One person was injured when a mobile home flipped in Catahoula Parish, while two were injured in Franklin Parish. Tornadoes also hit Caldwell, LaSalle, Madison, Richland, Sabine, St. Tammany and Tensas parishes. The systems flooding rains damaged homes in Alexandria and elsewhere. Related: Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Louisiana Twenty-four people 23 of them fourth-graders were sent to Southeast Texas hospitals after an accident involving their school bus, a pickup truck and an 18-wheeler. The afternoon crash on Wednesday, April 5 happened on U.S. 69 in Lumberton, about 15 miles north of Beaumont, as the Beaumont school district bus was taking 44 Charlton-Pollard Elementary School students and four adults back to school from a Big Thicket field trip. The wreck occurred when a school bus struck two other vehicles and careered into a ditch in southeast Texas. Lumberton police say the bus struck the rear of a tractor-trailer then a pickup truck, before traveling into the ditch on the opposite side of the road. Beaumont school district spokeswoman Nakisha Burns says one student was airlifted to a trauma hospital in Houston and remained hospitalized on Thursday. A hospital spokeswoman says most of the others went to Christus St. Elizabeth Hospital for examination. The other children were released but, a teacher remained hospitalized on Thursday. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Texas Education A bill that would require seat belts on new school buses in Tennessee continues to advance in the Legislature, but lawmakers remain skeptical about the restraints. Questions about the cost of the measure and concerns about whether the restraints might trap children if the bus caught on fire continue to dog the proposal. Lawmakers from Chattanooga, however, remained committed to fight for the bill that came as a result of deadly crash that killed six children in that city in November. The Senate Education Committee voted on Wednesday to pass the bill and moved it along to the Senate Finance Committee. The bill, which has been amended to keep costs down, would now require that only new school buses purchased after July 2019 have the restraints. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Legislation Tennessee The Food and Drug Administration has suspended a Kentucky facility after it was linked to an E. coli outbreak involving a peanut butter substitute. The Kentucky Enquirer reports the FDA suspended the facility March 28 because items produced at the Dixie Dew Products Inc. in Erlanger could be contaminated. The facility produces I.M. Healthy SoyNut Butter products, which were recalled last month after 12 cases of E. coli were linked to the product. The Glenview, Illinois-based I.M. Health SoyNut Butter Co. voluntarily recalled its SoyNut Butter products after E. coli cases were reported in Arizona, California, Maryland, New Jersey and Oregon. The newspaper reports the FDA found unsanitary conditions that could lead to E. coli contamination during a March inspection. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Kentucky Whether one entity can legally grow and sell marijuana at the retail level in California is emerging as one of the biggest conflicts state authorities are wrestling with as they move to streamline regulations and adopt the same rules for medical and recreational pot use. Gov. Jerry Browns administration released documents this week outlining proposed changes to square the states new recreational pot law with its longstanding law on medical marijuana. The two laws took different approaches in many areas, including whether one entity could hold multiple licenses to grow, manufacture, distribute and sell in retail stores. The governor is seeking to harmonize those regulations. The Democrat governors administration has stressed that one regulatory framework is needed to avoid duplicating costs and confusing businesses in a marijuana economy expected to grow to $7 billion in annual sales annually after recreational sales become legal in California next year. The governors attempt to reconcile the two laws hasnt met any formal opposition, though the proposal is lengthy and complicated and groups such as the Los Angeles Cannabis Task Force, comprised of Southern California marijuana businesses, is still reviewing the plan. This takes us another step closer to a uniform industry and puts this state in a position to set the national standard, Avis Bulbulyan, president of the group, said in an email. Hezekiah Allen, president of the California Growers Association agreed but said his marijuana farmers organization is concerned about Browns proposal to allow single entities to hold licenses to grow and sell marijuana. Medical marijuana providers are currently prohibited from hold both licenses but Brown proposes to lift that restriction after it becomes legal to sell recreational pot in California on Jan. 1. It could lead to mega-manufactures and mega-chain stores, Allen said. Browns plan would temporarily ban a single business from owning more than three retail stores and having a farm larger than four acres (1.6 hectares). California last November joined a growing number of states in legalizing recreational marijuana use for adults. The regulations and rules governing the emerging legal market will cover issues ranging from where and how plants can be grown to guidelines on tracking marijuana buds from the fields to retail stores. People 21 and over are allowed to possess up to one ounce of marijuana and grow six marijuana plants at home. This proposed legislation helps build an effective statewide regulatory system for cannabis to achieve our goals of protecting public safety with clear and consistent rules that are not overly burdensome, said Lori Ajax, head of the states marijuana agency. It harmonizes the many elements of the two main statutes governing medicinal and adult-use cannabis, while preserving the integrity and separation of those industries. Those changes must be approved by the Legislature. Earlier this year, Brown proposed spending more than $50 million to establish programs to collect taxes and issue licenses while hiring dozens of workers to regulate the industry. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics California Legislation Cannabis Representatives for ridesharing companies Uber and Lyft are pushing a bill that would ensure the state of Oregon regulates them instead of individual cities. The Eugene Register-Guard reported representatives said at a hearing this week that the bill would set statewide rules for the companies that would allow them to expand to cities such as Eugene and Springfield, where they are not currently operating. Local governments such as the city of Eugene have voiced opposition to House Bill 3246, which would reverse their authority over taxis and ridesharing services. Under the bill, drivers for companies such as Lyft and Uber are considered independent contractors instead of employees. Those employers dont have to pay payroll taxes, compensate drivers at minimum wage, or provide them with benefits and workers compensation insurance. Eighteen Democrat and Republican lawmakers are sponsoring the bill. Related: Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Legislation Oregon A federal judge in Seattle, Wash. has temporarily blocked the citys first-in-the-nation law allowing drivers of ridesharing companies such as Uber and Lyft to unionize over pay and working conditions. U.S. District Judge Robert Lasniks ruling came after he heard arguments last week in a case brought by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He said his decision is not an indication of how he will ultimately rule. The issues raised in this litigation are novel, they are complex, and they reside at the intersection of national policies that have been decades in the making, Lasnik wrote. The public will be well-served by maintaining the status quo while the issues are given careful judicial consideration as to whether the citys well-meaning ordinance can survive the scrutiny our laws require. It requires companies that hire or contract with drivers of taxis, for-hire transportation companies and app-based ridesharing services to bargain with the drivers, if a majority shows they want to be represented. The legislation approved by the Seattle City Council in late 2015 was seen as a test case for the changing 21st century workforce. The city has been a national leader on workers rights, gradually raising the minimum wage to $15 and requiring most employers to provide paid sick leave. The chamber sued to block the law before this weeks deadline for the companies to provide information about their most active drivers to the Teamsters union, launching the first step to unionization. Disclosing that sensitive information could hurt the companies by potentially making it available to competitors, the chamber said. A group of 11 Seattle Uber and Lyft drivers opposed to the law also sued to block it. Lasnik said his ruling applies to both cases. Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Foundation, which is representing the drivers, called the judges decision a critical first step toward protecting the rights of drivers who dont want Teamsters organizers to have their private contact information, and especially oppose having union so-called representation forced on them against their will. Brooke Steger, general manager for Uber in the Pacific Northwest, said the company looks forward to the courts full consideration of the many serious legal questions about this ordinance. The chamber argues that federal antitrust and labor law trumps the citys statute. The judge said the chamber was unlikely to succeed on those claims or its chances were not clear but he put the law on hold because the lawsuits raised serious questions. Federal antitrust laws allow states or cities to adopt reasonable regulations to protect the public interest, even if they have anti-competitive effects, such as price-fixing for taxi fares. Seattle must adopt such regulations to further state laws, and its not clear that Washingtons laws governing the for-hire transportation industry apply to ride-hailing companies, Lasnik said. There can be no doubt that rideshare companies such as Uber and Lyft have, at a truly startling rate, created havoc in this industry using a business model that simply did not exist before its recent technological development, he wrote. Whether existing state law covers, or was intended to cover, the sort of regulation the city attempts through the ordinance is far from clear. Seattles lawyers said allowing drivers to bargain over their working conditions will make the industry safer and more reliable. City Attorney Pete Holmes said the city will continue its efforts to defeat the lawsuits. City Councilman Mike OBrien, who proposed the law, said he felt encouraged by the judges comments that the ordinance stemmed from reasonable public policy concerns. What weve seen in this industry highlights this continual erosion of what so many folks believe are the rights of workers in this country, OBrien said. These drivers arent guaranteed any minimum wage. Theres no health-care requirements. We were going to see how we could restore that. Related: Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Legislation Twenty-five new member agencies joined the membership ranks of IIABCal in the first quarter of 2017. Bringing in new agencies to IIABCal adds to a growing association network and footprint in California. New members add input and perspectives that fuel the efforts of IIABCal to solve the business problems independent insurance agents wrestle with every day, IIABCal President Dave Nelson said. With our industry in a state of flux with M&A activity, an aging work force, digital technology challenges, and disruptors, its refreshing to see our membership on the rise. The new members are: Al Zeidler Insurance Agency Inc. Auto Insurance Specialists LLC Auto Insurance Specialists LLC Berbower Insurance Agency Buttes Insurance Agency C3 Risk & Insurance Services CalNonprofits Insurance Services CyberPolicy Insurance Solutions David Atkins Insurance Agency Inc. Diablo Valley Insurance Agency Inc. HCF Insurance Agency Hindsight Insurance Services ISU Insurance Services Centinel Agency LLC Jaffe Insurance Agency Jan Loewen Insurance Services Kraft and Lee Insurance Agency Inc. Michael Ehrenfeld Company Insurance Agents and Brokers Monagan/Miller/McCreary Insurance Agency Point West Insurance Associates Scott Louis Cooper Shop Coverages Insurance Solutions Sonora Insurance Agency Inc. Stone Creek Insurance Agency Inc. ThomCo Associates Insurance Services TRAC Risk and Insurance Services LLC Wilson and Company Insurance Services Inc. Topics Agencies Dublin criminal and serial child abuser Stephen "Rossi" Walsh has been refused an enlargement of time to appeal convictions for rape and defilement of a child. Walsh (aged 69), formerly of Belgrave Road, Rathgar in Dublin, was given a 10-year sentence imposed by Mr Justice Paul Carney in February 2010 for raping a nine-year-old girl more than 20 years ago. In November 2010 Judge Patrick McCartan imposed a consecutive three-year sentence on Walsh for indecently assaulting a seven-year-old girl in 1988, while in December 2011 Walsh received another consecutive 12-year sentence for sexual assault and defilement of a child on dates in 2008 and 2009. Walsh brought three motions to the Court of Appeal in recent months seeking an enlargement of time in which to appeal the cases as well as leave to add additional grounds of appeal. Ruling on the motions today, Mr Justice John Edwards said the court deemed him to have lodged an appealed against his conviction which lead to the consecutive three-year sentence in time. However the court refused his application to add additional grounds of appeal. Walsh was now at liberty to proceed with an appeal based on his original grounds of appeal, the judge said. The court refused Walsh an enlargement of time to appeal the other two convictions. It was not necessary in those circumstances to determine the applications to add additional grounds of appeal. Taoiseach Enda Kenny has described the American airstrike on Syria as a "matter of grave concern", writes Elaine Loughlin. Dozens of US cruise missiles were fired at an airbase in Syria from where it is believed a suspected chemical weapons attack was launched earlier this week. The attack, ordered by President Trump, has has raised tensions between Russian and the US. Speaking in Berlin this afternoon, Mr Kenny said the chemical weapons attack which the Assad regime has been accused of is a "war crime". "This is a matter of grave concern internationally in terms of politics," he said. "And obviously American government made its decision as a reaction to the illegal use of chemical weapons. In my view the use of chemical weapons is a war crime. He added that the use of such chemicals is "an act of aggression that is beyond anything to do with what you might call conventional warfare". "Clearly warnings were given by the American government to those in the vicinity of the particular base that was bombed last evening," Mr Kenny said. Spain has said it will not offer anything in return for the disarmament of Basque separatist group Eta and urged the militants to disband and help police clear unsolved crimes. In a letter on Friday to the BBC, Eta declared itself a weapons-free organisation after giving up its entire arsenal to civil society groups. It confirmed the mediators would complete the disarmament on Saturday. Spain said Eta does not need to be applauded for the move because the hard work of police and judges had already defeated the group, leading to a ceasefire in 2011. The conservative government's cabinet spokesman, Inigo Mendez de Vigo, said that Eta members should help its victims' relatives by cooperating with hundreds of unresolved cases. Eta has killed 829 people over 43 years of armed struggle. "After giving up all its weaponry (arms and explosives) to Basque civil society representatives, it is now a disarmed organisation," the militant group said in the letter published by the BBC. The letter, dated Friday and signed with Eta's seal, is the group's first public communique in more than five years, since it gave up the violence it waged to achieve an independent Basque state in southern France and northern Spain. A group of activists self-appointed as "peace artisans" had already announced a disarmament strategy in south-western France, but Eta had not confirmed it directly. Two of the mediators, speaking anonymously, said they considered Eta's statement legitimate. Spain and France consider Eta to have been defeated and therefore refuse to engage in the disarmament process. In the letter, Eta accuses both governments of being "stubborn" and persisting in a "winners and losers scheme". It also warns that the disarmament could still be derailed. "We want to warn that still the process can be attacked by the enemies of peace," Eta said, calling Saturday "disarmament day". "The only real guarantee to succeed are the thousands of people gathering tomorrow in Bayonne supporting the disarmament," the group added, referring to the south-western French town where thousands of pro-Basque independence supporters are expected to take part in a demonstration to cap the disarmament. Experts view the disarmament as symbolic, saying Eta's arsenal had already been diminished, with much of it obsolete. Earlier on Thursday, the Basque regional parliament also called for a disarmament to be "unilateral, complete, definitive and verified". Under a restructuring sparked by the rebuffed $143bn (134bn) offer by its US rival, the maker of Dove soap and Knorr soup set out an accelerated cost-saving plan, the sale of its Flora and Stork spreads business, where sales are declining, and a review of its dual-headed Anglo-Dutch structure. Unilever will also splash out 5bn on a share buyback and raise its dividend 12% this year. Unilever, one of Europes biggest blue-chip stocks, called the Kraft episode a trigger moment to assess its business, as the global packaged goods industry faces slowing growth and greater competition. Some analysts had speculated it would split into two in a dramatic strategy reversal, but executives said the current plan was working, while needing to be speeded up. We need to accelerate our plans to unlock further value faster, and this was brought home to us by the events of February, chief executive, Paul Polman, said. There is no doubt that, however ... opportunistic it (the Kraft approach) was, it did raise expectations, Mr Polman said. Unilever executives said their strategy of long-term, steady growth had found support with investors, including all of the groups top 50 shareholders. Acknowledging the very, very important issues of war and peace that are important to Ireland the German chancellor said this country will be particularly impacted when the UK leaves the EU. Taoiseach Enda Kenny travelled to Berlin yesterday and met Ms Merkel over Brexit. However, he refused to take questions from journalists despite calls in the Dail to react to the publication of the Fennelly report and the mounting crisis around the future of water charges. Ahead of their meeting, Ms Merkel praised Ireland for getting through the financial crisis and said difficult reforms have been successfully mastered. Speaking in German she commended Ireland for its enormous growth rates which she said step by step are proving to be a boon to the people. Turning to Brexit negotiations she said the interests of the remaining 27 states must be safeguarded: We also want to see that all of the commitments are taken care of and when the Irish prime minister is present here today we also have to underline that Ireland is very much affected, and affected in a particular way, by the UK leaving the EU. Apart form the overall discussion of the guidelines we will also speak about the expectations that Ireland has as regards its future. We will also speak about the expectations that Ireland has as regards its future. There is a lot of interconnection, a lot of integration in the economic area, we are also dealing here with questions of peace and security. Mr Kenny said whatever happens in Brexit negotiations nothing should undermine the peace and stability of Northern Ireland. He said: As demonstrated by recent developments stability remains in a fragile state. It is, therefore, critical there is no return to a hard border. This is a political problem and we will have to be both creative and imaginative in dealing with it. Th two also discussed EU-US relations after their recent meetings with president Donald Trump. Mr Kenny will today attend events with Bord Bia and the German Chamber of Commerce in Berlin. In a clinical advisory to GPs, seen by the Irish Examiner, consultant haematologist at Cork University Hospital (CUH), Mary Cahill, said that, as a consequence, they had sought to voluntarily suspend accreditation for the department. Accreditation provides the assurance that organisations are adhering to internationally recognised standards. Prof Cahill said they are working with our medical manpower service to rectify this situation and hope to be able to return to providing a clinical advisory service again in the near future. In the meantime, she said, patient specimens will still be processed as before to a high-quality standard and by the same highly trained medical scientists. GPs were advised of the difficulties at the laboratory by the HSE earlier this week. The inability to provide a clinical advisory service took effect on March 31. John Sheehan, a Cork City GP, said that in the short-term the lack of a clinical advisory service will not make a huge difference because GPs rarely need to utilise it. However, loss of accreditation is potentially a more serious problem, he said. Its a worrying sign, said Dr Sheehan. It doesnt sound encouraging. For instance, you may not have anyone looking at new assays [laboratory tests to find and measure a specific substance]; or it could mean the lab will function without certain key personnel that would be required for accreditation. If they no longer fulfil the accreditation criteria, it means they cant meet certain standards. Despite the staffing problems, Prof Cahill said test results will be available in the same timeframe as previously and available through normal channels, such as electronic means. She said if the interpretation of a laboratory result falls outside the users experience, then staff should seek any additional necessary information or interpretation prior to applying a result to patient care. If a laboratory result appears to be discordant with the clinical situation, initial discussion with senior clinical laboratory personnel in biochemistry and/or with the patients consultant is warranted, she said. The letter to GPs is also signed by Brendan OReilly, laboratory manager at CUH. Last year, the head of the department of clinical biochemistry, consultant clinical biochemist John OMullane, retired. A replacement has yet to be appointed. In 2014, the Irish Examiner reported that CUH had written to GPs saying the hospital could not stand over test results for some patients because of a major IT glitch. A final sign-off on an Oireachtas Committee report on the funding of the future of water services has now been delayed to allow for more advice to be sought and questions to be answered. A war of words has broken out between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail over the final report from the committee. The row over whether there is an excessive use charge and whether new homes are metered is now also threatening to collapse the government support pact between the two parties. Housing Minister Simon Coveney says Fianna Fail reneged on a deal for the report and instead have abandoned proposals for an excess charge and new meters. The recommendations, agreed by the cross-party committee, could leave Ireland open to huge fines for breaching EU law, he says. The committee on water has asked for further legal advice by Monday and members have until 12pm today to submit more questions. Fine Gael sources said yesterday they would ensure that the advice received included a check on if any recommendations specifically complied with EU laws. Members could push for a senior counsel specifically with EU law knowledge to examine the recommendations, on their suspicion that they breach the waterframe directive. There will then be a final committee meeting next Tuesday where the advice will be discussed. Government party sources said they hoped Fianna Fail over the weekend and others would consider the action of implementing illegal laws on water. However, there was no sign of the division over the report abating last night. Right2Water TDs said the recommendations to scrap charges was a major victory, which would encourage people to take to the streets this weekend. Fianna Fails Barry Cowen did concede that he may be willing to accept government legislation on water, as long as it reflected what the committee had recommended. The policy which Fianna Fail is supporting is legally, environmentally and financially sound as proven repeatedly in the evidence and independent advice obtained by the Oireachtas Committee. Fianna Fail has honoured its confidence and supply agreement in full and without gameplaying. We will, however, not accept any attempt by Fine Gael to change its terms to suit the interests of manoeuvring in an internal party contest, he said. Time has now been set aside in the Dail next Wednesday and Thursday for TDs to debate the report, before a vote on it. It will then fall to Mr Coveney to take on board the report, to seek further advice from the attorney general and to potentially come up with fresh legislation on water charges and the future funding of services after Easter, when the Dail resumes. Fine Gael sources expect legislation might not be ready until July. That would mean any standoff on new laws could be delayed by both parties until then. Amanda from Nenagh, Co Tipperary, features in a new HSE QUIT campaign that uses real-life stories to encourage smokers to quit for good. She believes the help she got from the QUIT team helped to break her 20-year smoking habit. The rang me every single week for the first four weeks, and every morning I woke up to a text, which was brilliant because it was really motivational they were there for me, she said. I can firmly say that Im never going to smoke again and if I can give one piece of advice to anybody just take it one day at a time because thats all you can do. Amanda, who is single, started smoking when she was a teenager because it was cool. She thought quitting would be a massive task and something she would never achieve. But, obviously, I am proof now that it can be done. I want to sing it from the rooftops that I am a non-smoker. The best tip she got from the QUIT team was the four Ds delay; distract; deeply breathe, and drink water. Amanda decided to stop smoking after her father died in 2013. Her father did not smoke, but his death made her look at life differently, and at the age of 35, she decided to look at her life in a different way. I went cold turkey and never had a lapse. It is the best thing I have ever done. I feel fantastic. I did put on weight at the beginning, but I have lost it now, she said. Amanda, whose daily water intake has increased to three litres, says quitting is a challenge, but perseverance pays off. Your craving only lasts for three minutes, so if you can distract yourself at all for those three minutes, you surely will get through it. Health Minister Simon Harris, who launched the campaign, said real progress had been made in recent years in reducing tobacco use, but it was still not enough with 6,000 people dying every year from tobacco-related diseases. Eight percent of our children still smoke in this country, so there is absolutely no room for complacency, he said. The message today from the QUIT campaign is all about empowering people to give up and putting out very clear messages about the range of supports that are available to people. Mr Harris encouraged smokers to make an effort to quit. You have support. There is a community of people around you that will help you. There are now more people in Ireland who have quit smoking than actually smoke, but we want to increase that number. National Tobacco Control lead for the HSE, Martina Blake, said they used the words and music of Gloria Gaynorss I Will Survive for the radio and television campaign because it mirrored the feelings of many quitters. ITS the little Cork film thats become a global sensation and now we could be seeing The Young Offenders causing mayhem and high jinks in Spanish and Hindi. Producers from Spain and India have been in contact with the films writer/director, Peter Foot, with the intention of doing versions of the comedy for their own countries. While in Ireland, the movies run is coming to an end following an incredible six-month stint at Cork Omniplex and an impressive box-office just shy of 1.3 million, internationally its story is really only beginning. A strong showing on the international film festival circuit, combined with rave reviews following its recent release on Netflix, means that the local film with universal heart is now being found and cherished in all sorts of unlikely places. Not a bad response for a debut feature and now Foott has become one of the countrys most in-demand filmmakers, with several new projects on the way. We honest to God had no idea it would have the success it had. Even with the accents alone, we thought it might be an issue outside of the country. It just seems to have translated so well not just from an accent point of view but also in terms of the kind of story it is, Foott tells me this week, as he prepares to be reunited with his cast at the IFTA Awards, where TYO is nominated in eight categories. I think the storys a big part of it the characters have big dreams and its just great to see people going out and chasing the dream. Its a feel-good film in that sense. Even though theyre chasing a bale of cocaine, and to get the cocaine itself isnt the most noble thing, the reason theyre doing it is to escape the lives that they have, which arent the most pleasant, and to find better ones. Foott, who like many first-time filmmakers wrapped TYO simply hoping that he would get to make another movie, is now inundated with film-industry interest. He has at least three new projects in various stages of development including a comedy/drama Teaching Vito and a family comedy called The War in the Willows. Hes recently been writing Joyrider, the story of a joyrider who emerges from prison to discover that his best friend, a policeman, is about to marry the woman he loves. The film is being devised as a road trip across Europe, with the final destination the location of the continental wedding. Its been an incredible ride for me. I thought wed make this film and even if it was a hit, then I thought wed go fight and struggle to get our next film made. That was my understanding of how it was going to be. Theres been a lot of meetings to get to where we are but when the film came out they (his management team) set up meetings and agents in the US. Out of that has come loads of opportunities. Teaching Vito is at the first draft stage so were talking to co-producers about it, but Im very excited about that. Ive another called The War in the Willows that Im developing. TYOs success in Ireland was in no small part thanks to the inspired marketing campaign by Patrick ONeill and his team at Wildcard Distribution, who had both faith in the movies appeal and the backbone to release it to a wide number of cinemas nationally, meaning that word of mouth spread fast. At Mahon Point, the movie was the highest-grossing of 2016, beating blockbusters like Finding Dory and Star Wars Rogue One to the top of the charts. For the very last screening, Peter, his actress wife Hilary Rose wonderful as Conors mother in the film and their friend went along for the fun. We heard the last screening was going to be on so we went into it. Mahon Point gave us free tickets and free popcorn, which was great, and got us to sign the posters. At the English Market, fishmonger Pat OConnell is planning to put up a poster signed by all of the crew. While international appeal has been a delight, the reaction at home is what matters most, says Foott. Its been just great. Were getting the impression that Cork is as proud of the film as we are, and thats really special. Regardless of where the cameras roll next, Foott is determined to keep telling stories with warmth and heart, he says. Ive been advised very well about what projects to pick, and what to spend my time working on. I love working with actors, I love working with projects that have a lot of heart. Those two things where I get to work with actors and where the audience gets to fall in love with the characters, thats really my only remit. When I look at projects thats what Im looking for the whole time, and keeping on that road. The IFTA awards take place tomorrow. Highlights will be shown on RTE One on Tuesday night Life after release: What the Young Offenders have been doing since Pj Gallagher, Hilary Rose, Alex Murphy, director Peter Foott, Julie Ryan (producer) and Chris Walley. Picture:Brian McEvoy The stars of The Young Offenders say they have been thrilled by the worldwide response to the movie. A recent Netflix release and the films popularity at international festivals mean the film is growing globally. We hoped it might garner a little bit of attention, but its been kind of overwhelming, laughs Hilary Rose, who plays the mother in the film and is also the wife of director Peter Foott. It just seems to keep on giving new life all the time. UK reviews gave it new life and now its a whole Netflix audience, an online audience, which is different again. Sometimes you sit back and go: God this feels as if its happening to other people! For Rose, being singled out in a review by top UK critic Mark Kermode was particularly special. I listen to Mark Kermode every week, I love his show, and I know that he can be quite cutting. I think I was actually jumping around the room, it was one of those little moments. Chris Walley spent this week playing another young offender hes playing one of the Kray brothers in a stage-fighting course as part of his training at London acting school RADA. The reaction has been brilliant, he said as he prepared to dust down his suit for the IFTAs (both leading actors are nominated). Ive been getting messages from people in Mexico, and from a 12-year-old boy in Cork who went to see the fish stall in the English Market after seeing the film. It showed at the London Film Festival recently and my whole class came along, which was great fun. Like Chris, Alex Murphy has been getting lots of industry attention but is currently focusing on his full-time acting studies, in Dublins Lir Academy. The hours are long but Im doing what I love and hopefully making friends for life. Its nearly two years now since we made it and I was only 17. I dont think Ill ever really know how lucky I am to have this movie under my belt. Im really looking forward to having a good night reuniting with everyone at the IFTAs and my mum and dad are coming along too. Donald Trump wants the issue of Russian influence in the 2016 election to vanish. He has called it a hoax in his tweets. But its not a hoax. Its real and might take years to resolve. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been on the case since July. Its chief, James B Comey, is creating a headquarters task force to co-ordinate the work of at least three field offices to find the facts. The federal investigators, and platoons of the nations best journalists, have a long battle ahead. Mr Comey made clear to the House Intelligence Committee that this is a spy-catching case, involving Russian intelligence and suspected American agents of influence. It takes time to solve such mysteries. The FBI spent two decades uncovering a Russian mole in its own ranks. And this investigation is more complex than Watergate, a domestic case of political espionage that took more than two years before it felled then-president Richard Nixon. Its more intricate than the Iran-Contra imbroglio, when the Reagan administration sold weapons to Tehran and slipped the profits to Central American rebels, and which took six years to conclude in court. The Russia case, like Watergate, starts with a break-in at Democratic headquarters only Moscow did it, virtually, with cyberwarfare. Like Iran-Contra, it involves interplay among foreign agents and the National Security Council in this case, retired Lt Gen Michael T Flynn, the cashiered NSC director. Lt Gen Flynn has offered to tell his version of the story to the congressional intelligence committees in exchange for immunity from criminal prosecution. I would not necessarily take him at his word. At the last job he lost, running the Defense Intelligence Agency, his subordinates called his version of the truth Flynn facts untruths. Heres one indisputable fact about Lt Gen Flynn: He was paid by firms linked to Russia, including the state-run RT TV, and failed to disclose those payments in official White House financial forms filed in February, right before he was fired. Heres another: He was let go for misleading vice-president Mike Pence about his conversations during the presidential transition with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak. These included five phone calls on December 29, the day the US retaliated for Moscows meddling in the election. He denied discussing the thorny issue of sanctions with Kislyak, although he did just that. Three years ago, former president Barack Obama imposed severe economic sanctions on Russia for seizing Crimea and threatening Ukraine, both territories of the old Soviet Union. These measures targeted Moscows financial institutions and Russian leader Vladimir Putins inner circle the oligarchs. Mr Putin wants these sanctions to vanish. Why have key members of Team Trump, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions and presidential son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, kept their lips zipped about meetings with Team Putin? And why is Trump denying that the Russia story is a reality other than to quash the idea that Moscow wanted him to win the election? Be prepared for an epic struggle before we have straight answers. The House Intelligence Committees investigation has been derailed. The Republican chairman of the committee, Devin Nunes, has canceled or postponed key hearings. He has undermined himself by reviewing classified documents on White House grounds, discussing the reports with Mr Trump while stiff-arming the committees top Democrat, then misrepresenting the fact that he got the documents from a former counsel to the committee, now a White House lawyer, and the senior director for NSC intelligence. A Democratic member of the intelligence committee warned: This is what a cover-up to a crime looks like. Devin Nunes What crime? We may not know for many months if one exists. If Lt Gen Flynn knows, and if he wants to barter for immunity, he had better be ready to deliver evidence directly to the FBI that people above his pay grade were party to a conspiracy. Mr Comey and his FBI agents are out to gather evidence that could be used in a court of law against members of Team Trump. It will be extraordinarily difficult: Cases touching on international espionage, electronic eavesdropping, political warfare, or the power of the president can involve information too sensitive to reveal at trial. But the FBI went after Mr Nixon and Watergate, the Reagan administration and Iran-Contra, and Bill Clinton respectively toppling a president, winning indictments against top national security aides, and bringing evidence that led to an impeachment. The president of the United States may think its fake news, but its the truth. The FBI is not going to let this case go away. And its investigation may last as long as the Trump administration. Tim Weiner is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter. His books include Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA and One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon. This week we were treated to two further pieces of evidence showing just how hot the residential housing market is becoming. The basis for the heat is clear; demand is totally outstripping supply and this is manifesting itself in spiralling rents in a pretty dysfunctional rental market and spiralling prices for those who want to buy. On the demand side, there are easily understood factors such as demographics, the strong labour market and the general buoyancy of the economy driving demand. What is less clear at this early stage is the impact that the politically-influenced relaxation of the Central Banks lending criteria last year, and the introduction of the help-to-buy scheme are having. However, logic would suggest that if you put more money into the hands of a first-time buyer or indeed any buyer, then the price of houses will inevitably rise. Rather than grilling the Governor of the Central Bank, the political system should accept blame for these policies, but such a development would not be a characteristic of our increasingly populist and dysfunctional political system. On the supply side, it would appear that we do not have the capacity to deliver the level of supply that is required. In its blanket approach to developers, it is certainly arguable that a situation has been created whereby we do not have enough developers with the willingness or capacity to satisfy housing demand. It cannot be healthy to have an agency such as Nama with such a stranglehold and position of excessive control over the property market. However, the expression of such views will not win any plaudits from official Ireland, but it is something that our political system needs to think about. The invocation of Article 50 last week has placed a focus back on Brexit and the opportunities and challenges that it presents for Ireland. The crisis in the housing market will not enhance our ability to exploit the positives, but I suppose that is just stating the obvious. Two areas of the economy have been affected by Brexit thus far, namely the food and beverage sector, and the auto industry. Bord Bia showed us in January the hit that food and beverage exports took in the second half of last year on the back of sterling weakness. New car sales are also being affected to some extent, as evidenced by the latest data from the Society of the Motor Industry (SIMI). New car sales in the first three months of the year were 8.3% down on the same period in 2016, but the outcome would have been considerably worse but for a surge in registrations in the dying days of March. The cynics might suggest that this is a case of the industry pushing registrations through before the end of the first quarter. However, there are also timing issues involved. Easter was much earlier last year and registrations of hire drive cars always increase before the holiday season is effectively launched. It is only in recent days that this phenomenon is occurring due to the lateness of Easter this year. Interestingly, used car imports from the UK are soaring again this year and were up by 56.1% in the first quarter. Continued sterling weakness is driving this trend, and while many of the imports are relatively old, they are still likely to be displacing some new car sales. From the perspective of the Revenue Commissioners, there is a hit here because the VAT and VRT receipts on used car imports are just over a third of the receipts from new car sales. The outlook for the auto industry was always going to be uncertain coming into 2017, given the issues created by sterling weakness, the uncertainty around Brexit, and the fact that the market had recovered strongly over the past three years. However, the new car market is proving more difficult than anticipated, despite the fact that the typical economic factors that drive sales such as economic growth, the labour market and the availability of car finance are all very strong. "Prison Break" finally had its most-anticipated return last Tuesday on Fox and the fast pace of events in the premiere episode did not actually give the answers that the fans are waiting for. The upcoming "Prison Break" season 5, episode 2 though might start delving into what happened to Michael as Sara Tancredi seeks T-Bag's help to investigate on her former lover. C-Note and Lincoln realize that Michael is not planning to get himself out of prison, but who are they helping to escape? Fans are still clueless on how Michael Scofield ended up in a prison in Yemen. This will, however, be slowly revealed in the upcoming episodes including how he supposedly escaped death years ago. Who sent T-Bag the letter and why choose him to convey the message to Lincoln? Why did Michael conceal his survival? Why are they being tapped for help after they were forgotten? The answers to all these will come down as Sara Tancredi starts to get herself involved in the new episode. Looking back at the premiere episode of "Prison Break," Lincoln Burrows firmly believes that his brother survived his terminal illness and electrocution years ago although he is still not sure how. He dug into Michael's grave and with his body missing, Lincoln became more convinced that his brother is indeed alive. Flying to Yemen, Lincoln was able to come face to face with Michael at the end of the premiere episode. Unfortunately, Michael Scofield denied his identity and his relationship with Lincoln. The first episode has definitely left a major cliffhanger and theories are out on how Michael Scofield become that changed man. There are those who believe that Michael is trying to protect his brother Lincoln from grave danger as he is being used to break someone notorious from prison. A second thought is that Michael is not really alive and his image was only used to get Lincoln to work for someone in Yemen. In a promo for "Prison Break" season 5, episode 2, Lincoln Burrows and C-Note are still in Yemen but they now find themselves questioning who are they breaking from the Yemen prison. Michael can also be seen plotting an escape with his cellmates. Sara, on the other hand, tells T-Bag that she stumble on revelations and asks his help to investigate the situation. The synopsis of the next episode also notes that Sara will have a reunion with Paul Kellerman who was running for the presidency in season 4. His involvement in the new struggles of Sara, Lincoln, and Michael is not yet known but some enthusiasts suspect that he is connected to the people hunting them down. "Prison Break" season 5, episode 2 will air on Tuesday, April 11 on Fox. Following the announcement last month of launching a third super-sized Pixel 2, Google made a subtle slip and confirms the successor of Pixel. The revelation comes as a welcoming news to those who have become fans of the tech giant's phone product. Despite it being arguably the ugliest-looking smartphone that costs more expensive than regular phones in the market, Pixel makes up for it with its powerful performance and a camera that is surprisingly more than satisfactory. In its accidental revelation, the tech giant unveils the details of two new "normal" models that are currently being developed. Even code names of the work-in-progress models have been fished out from the Android Open Source Project Gerrit. In the open source team code collaboration software, the names muskie and walleye have surfaced as internal code names of Pixel's successors. Interestingly, Google names its smart products according to its known obsession on fish. According to the Forbes, the tech giant has been naming their gadgets fish names, which always have a connection to their size. So while they remain just code names at this stage, we already have ideas on how big these two new Pixels are going to be. This most likely means that the 2017 Pixels fishy codenames walleye and muskie are going to have large screen respective of their sizes. What's more exciting is the other new revelation of another code name, taimen, which is a monstrous fish. We speculate this could be a new tablet or a laptop rather than a smaller smartphone. According to BGR, there is very sparse detail about Google's new super-sized Pixel and Pixel XLs successors. The hardware will most likely feature Qualcomms Snapdragon 821, and also featuring unique color options with a more casual approach. The company says that the new products will most likely launch after fall. Mota's JetJat Ultra pocket-sized microdrone is a powerful fast flier that can take selfies and recharge faster than any other drones out there. It is perfect for taking great selfies and Instagram clips to impress your friends. However, it could be a little difficult to fly even around the house, making it unsuitable for micro drone races that you might want to try while hanging out with friends. Acquiring a drone requires a flight license from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). However, it only specified registration for drones that weigh over 0.55 pounds (or 250 grams). Incidentally, micro drones can be much smaller and lighter, weighing as little as 15 grams AUW (All Up Weightreferring to their weight, with battery, once in the air). According to The Escapist, due to their miniature status, such as the JetJat Ultra micro drone which weighs less than an ounce, it lets them bypass the law requiring drone registration, and has led to their sudden rise in popularity in the gadget-flying community. So in this particular gadget review, we check out this micro drone's capabilities, as well as its disadvantages. Let's start with its main advantage by stating that this cool gadget can easily fit in your jacket pocket. It is a micro drone in the truest sense, allowing to take it anywhere just by keeping it in your pocket. Another cool thing about this flying device is that it comes with a super fast charger. It only takes 20 minutes to charge it, giving you maximum time to enjoy the aviation experience of this tiny tech gadget. According to the Wired, Mota's JetJat Ultra micro drone flies for four to six minutes on a charge, giving you plenty of time to get your adrenaline fix. However, it is not for racing due to some performance restrictions. This makes it strictly for taking selfies and clips. Fans of Dragon Ball Super might be pleased to know that Goku and Android 17 have been rumored to be meeting for the very first time. As reported, their meeting will be heated as they will trade blows to measure each others strength. Android 17 Is Not Dead To those who havent followed Android 17 after his death in Dragon Ball Z, heres what had happened. During the Cell Saga, it was shown that Android 17 died and wasnt revived. However, off screen, Android 17 was resurrected and it was shown in the later part of Dragon Ball Z when he was giving energy to Goku to kill Buu. Apparently, like his twin, Android 17 is living a normal life. The vicious Android has been a park ranger since he stopped fighting. Goku vs Android 17 Is Going To Be Epic At this point of time, it is hard to believe that Android 17 and Goku have never fought together. With regards to fighting skills, Android 17 is a lot better than the other fighters in Universe 7. His fighting style is very unique and at the same time, shows no remorse against his opponent. Their battle with Piccolo is still regarded as one of the best hand to hand combat in Dragon Ball history. Fans are still intrigued on why he chooses to be a park ranger. Goku also asked the same question to his twin Android 18, but even Android 18 cannot give Goku a clear answer. Going back, Goku is still the strongest fighter in Universe 7. Fighting Android 17 for the first time will give Goku an idea about how gifted Android 17 is. Also, Akira Toriyama stated that the Androids has the capability to surpass their limits. Technically, Android 17 and Android 18 are still humans which were converted to Androids by Dr. Gero. Bringing Android 17 to their team will bring a new dimension and a ruthless fighter who knows how to fight. Two powerful U.S. lawmakers are pushing President Donald Trump administration's to tell them how many of the country's residents are under surveillance by the National Security Agency. In a letter sent Friday, Representatives Bob Goodlatte and John Conyers Jr. asked the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to provide an estimate of the number of U.S. residents whose communications are swept up in NSA surveillance of foreign targets. Goodlatte, a Republican, is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Conyers is the committee's senior Democrat. Committee members have been seeking an estimate of the surveillance numbers from the ODNI for a year now. Other lawmakers have been asking for the surveillance numbers since 2011, but ODNI has failed to provide them. The law that gives the NSA broad authority to spy on people overseas expires at the end of the year, and it's "imperative" that lawmakers understand the impact on U.S. residents before they extend the surveillance authority, the letter said. Some digital rights groups and lawmakers believe the communications of millions of U.S. residents are caught up in NSA surveillance programs when they talk with overseas targets. The lawmakers asked the ODNI to update them on the status of their request by April 24. Goodlatte and Conyers want the ODNI to provide them with "real numbers," not just the percentage of communications collected that is from U.S. residents. They plan to share the numbers with the public, they wrote. ODNI should also publicly release its methodology for counting the number of U.S. communications, they said. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act prohibits the NSA from targeting people inside the U.S., but the agency, in "incidental" collection, gathers information from U.S. residents who are communicating with the agencys overseas targets. The law then allows the FBI and other intelligence agencies to search those U.S. communications for evidence of crimes, including crimes not connected to terrorism. Many digital rights groups, along with some lawmakers, want to end this so-called backdoor search of Section 702 records. The American Civil Liberties Union applauded Goodlatte and Conyers for pressuring ODNI to release details. "It is astounding that even Congress still remains in the dark when it comes key information relating to Section 702," ACLU legislative counsel Neema Singh Guliani said by email. "It is past time for the intelligence community to publicly release information regarding the number of Americans who have their information collected under the program and the number of times the FBI searches Section 702 databases for information about Americans." An NSA spokeswoman didn't immediately provide a comment on the letter. Section 702 surveillance has generated controversy during Trump's presidency. In early March, Trump, in a series of tweets, accused former President Barack Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower in New York City during the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump has provided no evidence of the bombshell charge, and his staff later suggested the Trump campaign was simply under surveillance. It appears that the NSA intercepted some of his campaign staffers' communications when they talked to foreign surveillance targets. That type of surveillance would be legal and authorized by Section 702. Business users get access to their own version of the Windows 10 beta program this week. On Friday, Microsoft unveiled the Windows Insider Program for Business, alongside its first post-Creators Update Windows 10 beta. The program will let business users sign up for beta updates with their Azure Active Directory credentials, rather than a personal Microsoft account. The new feature is designed to provide IT professionals with a path for giving Microsoft business-specific feedback on Windows 10 features. That, in turn, should help business users shape feature development. Creating a business Insider Program is Microsofts response to IT pros requests for a connection with the Windows development team. Windows 10 got off to a rocky start with some systems administrators who werent thrilled by Microsofts policy of only providing cumulative updates to the operating system rather than letting administrators pick and choose which patches to apply. In a support document, the company said this program isnt separate from the main Insider Program, but instead a way for businesses to better engage with the existing community of people testing new versions of Windows. In addition, Microsoft believes the new program will help businesses with their internal testing of Windows updates by giving early access to future patches. Microsoft plans to do more to engage with IT teams in the future, Windows Insider Program chief Dona Sarkar said in a blog post. Fridays update starts laying the groundwork for Microsofts next major Windows 10 update, which is expected to arrive later this year. It comes four days before the company is slated to roll out the Creators Update, which will bring a flotilla of new features and functionality, to non-beta users. The new bits released on Friday to members of the Windows Insider Programs Fast ring dont add much in the way of functionality to Windows 10. For the most part, the release is focused on updates to OneCore, the appropriately named systems at the core of Windows 10. As is the norm with many Insider releases, there is a fleet of known issues in build 16170. Users can expect to see issues including one bug that prevents Windows Defender from opening when double-clicked. Right clicking it and choosing open will still launch the app. Users who want to avoid bugs can move over to the Windows Insider Programs Slow ring, which will give users increased reliability in exchange for delayed access to new updates. Today Sunshine to start, then a few afternoon clouds. High 79F. Winds SSW at 15 to 25 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph. Tonight Partly cloudy skies. Low 61F. Winds WSW at 15 to 25 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph. Tomorrow Sunshine along with some cloudy intervals. Slight chance of a rain shower. High 69F. Winds W at 10 to 20 mph. A NEW principal has been appointed at Cowes Enterprise College. Rachel Kitley will take on the role from outgoing principal John Peckham in September. Formerly a co-headteacher at Kingsbury High School, London a school rated good by Ofsted, where 65 per cent of students last year achieved good GCSEs compared with the national average of 59.3 per cent Ms Kitley will move to the Isle of Wight with her husband and two children. She said: "I am thrilled to be joining Cowes Enterprise College and the Ormiston Academies Trust family. It is a privilege and an honour to be appointed as principal, to build on the amazing work that John has overseen at the academy in recent years. "Like John, I believe in the power of education to transform lives for all and I will do everything I can to enable students at Cowes to achieve excellent outcomes at school." John, who will remain at the school until February to provide advice and support, said: "Rachel Kitley is the perfect fit for our academy, and I look forward to working closely with her in the coming months as she settles in to the new role. "I am proud of the solid foundations that have been put in place for sustained improvement at the academy, and I look forward to watching it continue to go from strength to strength. "Cowes Enterprise College is quickly becoming a school of choice on the Island, with Year 7 applications up 13 per cent since 2014. The number of students completing Year 13 has trebled and more students than ever before are going on to Russell Group universities. "Rachel is joining at a great time and I know the academy community will join me in welcoming her with open arms." Ormiston chief executive Toby Salt said: "Rachel has the experience, passion and commitment to continue to drive the success of the academy and to build on the brilliant leadership team which has already achieved such great results." Cowes' chair of governors David Sword said: "After a highly competitive recruitment process, we are delighted to appoint Rachel Kitley. She has the drive, ambition and vision to continue to build on the foundations that John has laid and take our academy forward." Email Links to our top local news stories of the day, Monday through Saturday. A Senate bill modifying the states two economic-incentive programs would limit the most prosperous counties to a combined 50 percent of annual program funding. Senate Bill 660 was introduced by Sens. Harry Brown, R-Onslow, Danny Britt Jr., R-Robeson, and Michael Lee, R-New Hanover. It has Sen. Erica Smith-Ingram, D-Edgecombe, as a co-sponsor. State law requires the Commerce Department to annually rank the economic health of all 100 counties. The law calls for ranking the 40 most distressed counties as Tier 1, the next 40 counties as Tier 2 and the 20 most prosperous counties as Tier 3. Forsyth, Mecklenburg and Wake have been Tier 3 counties each year since the rankings began in 2007. However, Guilford dropped in tier ranking from Tier 3 to Tier 2 for 2017. The bill maintains the state economic-incentive funding at $20 million annually in a year without a high-yield project and $35 million in a year with such a project, such as an automobile manufacturer. To qualify as a high-yield project, companies would have to commit to creating at least 2,000 jobs and making a capital investment of at least $750 million. According to the bill, no more than 50 percent may be awarded for projects located in whole or in part in development Tier 3 areas. The limitation does not apply to a grant awarded to a high-yield project. Incentive funding also could not exceed 80 percent of the total just for Tier 1 counties and not exceed 60 percent of the total just for Tier 2 counties. If a project crosses county lines to include two different tiers, the funding would be at the higher tier level. There has been intense philosophical, ideological and often personal debate about the economic tiers. There has been discussion, both within the General Assembly and among economists and analysts, about the bulk of current Job Development Investment Grant incentives going to Durham, Mecklenburg and Wake counties, while only 9 percent goes to rural counties. Some legislators want incentives tied tightly to local job creation, or prorated based on how many employees are brought into N.C. with a relocation or expansion project. Research shows (economic tiers) are important but are trumped by such basic factors as education and training of the workforce, the transportation network, land and construction costs, and the location of supportive cluster firms, said Michael Walden, an economics professor at N.C. State University. Some legislators remain concerned that the incentive grant programs still do not have strict clawback provisions for companies that dont fulfill job creation and capital investment criteria. Tier rankings are based primarily on an assessment of each countys unemployment rate, median household income, population growth and assessed property valuation per capita. The bill would adjust the tiers so that counties would be ranked first to 100 based on those categories. Any county with a performance greater than the four benchmarks would be considered as an attainment area by the state Commerce secretary. The rankings would be reset annually. When it comes to matching funding levels, the state would continue to provide $3 for every $1 in local funding in Tier 1 counties, $2 for every $1 local in Tier 2 counties, and a $1 for $1 match in Tier 3 counties. For attainment area projects, local governments would have to provide $4 for every $1 in state funding. The bill requires Commerce to develop a five-year economic-improvement plan for every county and submit an annual performance evaluation. The bill would not allow companies to include job positions filled by a foreign worker with an H-1B visa or with H-1B status to count toward its full-time job commitment pledge for incentive packages. Several coastal counties have significantly higher assessed property valuation per capita because of beachfront houses, thus skewing the overall tier ranking system. The same holds true for several counties in Northwest N.C. such as Alleghany, Ashe and Avery with mountain housing properties. The One North Carolina Fund is considered as the lesser of the states two main performance-based economic-incentive tools. It does not require a minimum threshold for job creation and retention or capital investment. However, projects typically are required to meet or exceed a local wage level, and the One North Carolina Fund typically requires a local match of state money. Recipients rarely get more than $1 million in financing. By comparison, the Job Development Investment Grant, or JDIG, program can provide up to hundreds of millions of dollars in incentives, typically tax credits received by the company after meeting capital investment and employment goals. RALEIGH The compromise by politicians on North Carolinas bathroom bill is helping return collegiate sporting events to the state. But big-city mayors still dont want their employees traveling there after the replacement law. The mayors of New York, Washington, San Francisco, Seattle, Salt Lake City and other cities announced this week that previous municipal bans on city-funded travel to North Carolina remain in place even though the law known as House Bill 2 is off the books. They agree with civil rights groups who argue discrimination still exists in the replacement law agreed to by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and the Republican-controlled legislature. Thats because the measure left some LGBT restrictions in place, including a moratorium until December 2020 on local governments passing broad nondiscrimination ordinances covering sexual orientation and gender identity. This is not a reset of the law, but another scheme that will allow for state-sanctioned discrimination against a community that is already facing intense pressure, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee said in a statement. New York Mayor Bill de Blasios office tweeted Wednesday a ban on non-essential travel to North Carolina for city employees will remain until the state protects the transgender community. Washington Mayor Muriel Bowsers spokeswoman Susana Castillo said Thursday the D.C. leader has no plans to lift the citys employee travel ban at this time. Thunderstorms and strong winds toppled tree limbs, causing nearly 4,000 power outages Thursday in Forsyth and Stokes counties. Todays forecast calls for a high temperature of 55 degrees in Winston-Salem amid mostly sunny skies. Tonights low temperature will be around 36 degrees. Winds speeds will range from 6 mph to 20 mph. The weather service has issued a wind advisory that will remain in effect in the Triad and central North Carolina until 6 p.m. today. Winds could gust as high as 35 mph. Power lines were down Thursday in the 3300 block of South Main Street, Winston-Salem police said. The outage temporarily shut down the traffic lights at Clemmonsville Road and Main Street and at Clemmonsville Road and U.S. 52. Thunderstorms also toppled a tree and power lines near Hillside and Mowery drives in southeastern Forsyth County, the National Weather Service. Earlier Thursday, there were 981 outages in Forsyth County and 2,918 outages in Stokes County, according to the Duke Energy website. WASHINGTON -- When Gen. Michael Hayden visited a secret intelligence facility in the U.S. a decade ago while he was CIA director, the staff gave him a T-shirt emblazoned with the words: "Admit Nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter Accusations." That motto is much beloved by covert operators. It also seems to be President Donald Trump's rubric for responding to the FBI investigation of whether any members of his campaign team cooperated with Russian hackers. Maybe it's becoming our national slogan. There are now competing narratives for any issue that touches Russia or intelligence. And every day brings a new set of improbable facts: A cloak-and-dagger visit to the White House by a congressman who's supposedly leading an investigation of the president; a secret meeting in the Seychelles Islands between the founder of Blackwater and a Russian emissary. Good grief! The cascade of news is dizzying. It's like living inside a tumbling washer-dryer. Let's unpack some of these Russia intelligence puzzles, starting with Trump's allegation of improper surveillance. He spent months insisting that the Russia affair was a "hoax" and "fake news." But the FBI probe rolled on. Now Trump is arguing that the real scandal is that the Obama White House spied on his team during the transition and "unmasked" their identities to leak damaging information. Trump's claims about surveillance deserve a review by the House and Senate Intelligence committees, which oversee compliance with the legal rules governing disclosure of the names of Americans swept up in legal intercepts of foreign officials. But it shouldn't distract the country (much less the FBI) from the larger problem of how Russian intelligence hacked our political system last year, and whether Moscow had any help from Trump's associates. Intelligence officers describe efforts to shift attention as "deflection," or "misdirection." Magicians use similar techniques to draw viewers' eyes toward "a bright shiny object" and away from the concealed trick, says John McLaughlin, a former acting director of the CIA and an accomplished amateur magician. He notes different variations of this distract-the-audience approach -- a "shell game," where the magician hides a ball beneath rapidly moving cups, or "second-dealing," where the magician pretends to deal himself the top card, but really takes the second one. McLaughlin recalls moments in intelligence history where this process of misdirection was all too successful. In 1962, the Soviets distributed cold-weather parkas to missile crews heading to Cuba; they packed the missiles on ships so that they would look from overhead like vehicles; they stayed off the radio to avoid any signals that could be intercepted. In 1968, the Soviets obscured their invasion of Czechoslovakia by making it look like a military exercise. Deception works. Part of what we're watching these days is the turmoil of a presidential transition -- with a new chief executive who's inexperienced, thin-skinned and likes to counterpunch (even when it's counterproductive). In Trump world, every channel becomes a back-channel, and anything that touches Russia and Trump becomes radioactive. The Trump effect was clear in The Washington Post's scoop about a Jan. 11 meeting in the Seychelles between a prominent Russian and Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater and a Trump campaign contributor. The Russian was visiting the island resort at the invitation of Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, the military leader of the United Arab Emirates. MBZ, as he's known, was interested in encouraging Russia to move away from Iran; Prince apparently hoped to promote quiet contact between Moscow and the new administration. This would probably be a nothing-burger if the FBI's investigation hadn't focused attention on any intersection between Trump and Russia. MBZ has been pursuing better relations with Russia for a dozen years, bringing together Russians, Arabs and prominent Americans from both parties. The Trump administration, similarly, has advertised its interest in better relations. But the overlay of Russian intelligence operations makes ordinary events seem suspect. Trump's entourage began looking to open contacts with Russia many months before the election. Some of these feelers may have been innocent attempts to explore diplomatic options for the new administration. Others may have been inappropriate, or even illegal, undermining U.S. policy and perhaps seeking to aid Trump's election. That's why we're lucky that an FBI investigation is underway -- to sort out what was appropriate from what wasn't. The Russia investigation has become a hammer. That's a good thing in most ways. But it doesn't mean that everything marked "Russia" is a nail. At long last, it has come. There can be no way of comprehensively explaining what this means to those of us who have watched for years on end as a seemingly endless series of sacrifices were made. We witnessed not only a country, but a society that did more than any other to develop and, more broadly, cultivate the New World crumble under the jackboot of a grossly inferior, quintessentially alien power. We saw a particularly destructive form of globalist cosmopolitanism tear away at perhaps the healthiest, and certainly most productive, variant of nationalism humanity has ever known. In short, we stood by as the European Union ate the United Kingdom alive; first by consuming the scraps that fell from its table, then jumping up onto that table and devouring the filet mignon. Next-to-nothing was left for those who sat down for dinner, and if they dared ask to be excused, their chairs were bolted to the floor. Should they have protested, their bodies got tied to their chairs. Once the Brussels monster is allowed to enter the room, as the lyrics from Hotel California go, You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave. Unless, of course, you follow a process so labyrinthine that it was intended to dissuade any rebellious actor; kept on the books only for the sake of public relations so respect for democracy could be feigned. Last year, the folks of the UK finally decided they had enough and, by a total of about 52 percent, voted to exit the dining hall once and for all. The common people took the EUs hypothetical opt-out more seriously than the smartest guys and gals in the room ever did. This triggered many things: the resignation of crypto-then-openly-Europhile Prime Minister David Cameron, the sacking of his cabinet, the already-diminished credibility of the oppositional Labor Party, the determination of Scotlands government to hold another independence referendum, the resurgence of patriotic sentiment, and the tender feelings of an incalculable number of special snowflakes. Most important is that the UKs sovereignty something its citizenry cherished for centuries on end was reasserted. The chief executive would once again be the monarch in concert with parliament under constitutional law. No longer would bureaucrats in Belgium, most of whom are not even from there, effectively function as the lord of our worlds most awesome manor. There can be no understating what an indignity it is to have ones country ruled by those who not only live far from there, but care for it as nothing more than a meal ticket, or perhaps a storage room for the excess baggage of other nations. From high taxation to open borders to a general disregard for longstanding cultural norms, the EU turned the UK into a renter within its own home. Should Britons have had a problem with this system, which millions upon millions obviously did, it could not change without consent of other EU countries. In the unlikely case enough of them sided with the British public, a top-down authoritarian system of appointed rulers made it perilous for any real progress to unfold. This situation is so dire that, in the EUs parliament, legislators cannot even introduce bills. With its departure from the EU, the UK has an opportunity to gain its footing on the world stage once again. Seeing as about 25 percent of our planet was once under the Union Jack, this should hardly be problematic. When Prime Minister Theresa May invoked Article 50, which officially began the Brexit process, she took a stand not only for her constituents, but the cherished ideals of self-governance. As a native Floridian (we do indeed exist), whose home state remained with the Crown even as colonies to our north joined George Washingtons revolution, I am proud to see the UK rediscover those essential principles it imparted on my homeland. Hopefully the UK will build stronger relations with its former possessions from St. Augustine to Auckland and contribute to a safer, healthier, more prosperous world. WASHINGTON -- If there is one operative rule in this city's left-right paradigm, it is to shift the focus of any conversation that seems at risk of revealing something approximating truth -- a game at which the current administration and its media surrogates happen to excel. Thus, the focus early this week was on the "unmasking" of Trump campaign and transition team members who turned up in surveilled communications with foreigners. This unmasking (the naming of said team members) loosely corresponds to Donald Trump's claim that President Obama was wiretapping him during the transition. This back-and-forth history is familiar by now. There was no wiretapping, a James Bond-ish technique by which Trump really meant all forms of surveillance, according to press secretary Sean Spicer. But, as we recently learned, some Trump folks were "incidentally" picked up during the foreign surveillance. We don't yet know whether these included Russians. Maybe they were discussing the high price of kohlrabi, maybe not. Unmasking, it should be noted, is generally not done unless there are serious reasons to think it essential for national security. People captured "incidentally" have their names blacked out in deference to their privacy, such as it remains. Next we hear allegations that former national security adviser Susan Rice sought to unmask the names of Americans affiliated with Trump's team who appeared in foreign surveillance intelligence reports. This doesn't seem to be quite the scandal so many on the right wished it to be. The urgent spin from Trump Quarters was that Rice was conducting a spy operation for political purposes. This would have been intriguing but difficult to pull off unless everyone in the intelligence community were in on the scheme. First, neither Rice nor any other official has the authority to unmask American citizens out of mere curiosity, as she explained Tuesday in an MSNBC interview with Andrea Mitchell. Rice, as well as other officials, could request an intelligence review to determine whether there were legitimate national security reasons to identify them. Were they talking cabbage? Or, were they discussing a potential U.S. withdrawal from NATO? Wouldn't we like to know? Some reports said that Rice did request a review and receive names, but she adamantly denied leaking any names, saying that this would have constituted releasing classified information. One name unmasked in intelligence reports was Michael Flynn, who resigned after it was revealed that he mischaracterized to Vice President Mike Pence conversations he had with the Russian ambassador. Only later did we learn of Flynn's $500,000 public relations job with Turkey. You see how the focus keeps getting directed away from Russia to the Obama administration or any other handy object. Trump continues to blame poor sportsmanship for all his travails, including any fact-based reporting that contradicts his primary intelligences sources, Fox News and Breitbart News. (And, perhaps, his Magic 8-Ball.) If there's nothing to see here, why the constant shifting of public attention from the grizzly bear to the kid with a slingshot? Is there anyone left in America who doesn't think that Russia's hacking and interference with the 2016 election don't deserve a thorough investigation? Yes, there is. On his Fox News show, the formerly bow-tied but still adorable Tucker Carlson is leading a charge that we don't really know that Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee and delivered emails to WikiLeaks that were released at just the right moment to undermine Hillary Clinton's campaign. We only think we know this, and why? Well, because every American intelligence agency has said so. Moving on. Next in the series of "Look Over There!" is a tweet from the president's son Donald Jr. praising the "reporter" who pointed to Rice as an unmasker. "Congrats to @cernovich for breaking the #SusanRice story," he tweeted like-father-like-son-ly. "In a long gone time of unbiased journalism he'd win the Pulitzer, but not today!" Actually, there are several Pulitzers awarded each year, but Mike Cernovich, who has said he became an Alt-Righter when he realized that diversity really meant "white genocide," isn't likely to receive one for pointing out that Rice was doing her job. En fin, the crucial unmasking -- Who is that masked man in the White House? -- is yet to come. For now, we know that the most important aspect of the Russia-hacking-wire-tapping-spying-Susan-Rice story is that Trump's transition team was in contact with Russian operatives and others -- and it would be nice to know that they were only exploring critical questions related to cabbage. ERWIN A. TIMM, Walnut Cove Upholding his oath As a Freedom Works participant who believes in freedom, moral principles and constitutional government, I am happy that U.S. Rep. Ted Budd stood against the Ryancare replacement for Obamacare. Health care is not a power delegated to the federal government, therefore that power belongs to the states, where the free market can make it the best and most affordable. Thanks to Rep. Budd for upholding his oath to the Constitution, which speaks to his trustworthiness. Freedom is on its way back with oath keepers! ****** EVAN FISHER, Winston-Salem Revisiting 1984 I appreciate the April 4 letter The ministry of truth and its capsule summary of 1984, a novel thats been receiving a lot of attention lately. Theres one point made in the novel, though, that Im not sure the letter writer fully understood. The letter writer seems to imply that the Ministry of Truth in the novel is analogous to todays American news media. But in the novel, the Ministry of Truth was managed by the government, largely to control the populace and avoid scrutiny and criticism. There are totalitarian governments that operate in such a way today, like in North Korea. The American news media are nothing like the Ministry of Truth in 1984. They are composed of thousands of independent organizations with no central control telling them what to report. President Trump insists that he, and only he, is to be trusted. He tries to discredit any news organization that disagrees with or criticizes him. Its pretty clear that Trump would like to run his own Ministry of Truth. The media stand in opposition to that. I agree that people need to be vigilant and search for the truth. But too many people today reject what the media report simply because they dont like it and dont want to believe it, and thats a great danger. It plays into Trumps totalitarian hands. ****** TOM RAIF, Lewisville Working hard Many years ago, I worked construction with a guy named Bob. Bob never turned down an opportunity for overtime. When I questioned him why he worked so hard he responded by telling me about his childhood. See, his dad was never around, leaving his mother to take care of his two siblings and him. She was forced to go on welfare. He would often go without lunch because he was too embarrassed to pull out his free lunch card. When his mother would pay for groceries with food stamps, he would often disappear to the car. He was not going to put his two kids through that. I often think about Bob. Especially when people say, we need illegal immigrants to do the work that Americans do not want to do. Do not want to do? Do we really live in a society where it is more acceptable to live on the government dime than to work a manual labor job? WWBD (what would Bob do)? ****** JACQUELINE BRIDGES, Winston-Salem Expanding Medicaid Im happy to see that President Trumps health-care bill got shot down, and that North Carolinians are still pushing for Medicaid expansion in Raleigh. I still cant believe that Republicans are trying to overturn the Affordable Care Act and are pushing to privatize Medicaid. If it werent for Medicare and Medicaid, I would not be able to work because of chronic arthritis and a recent hip replacement. I dont get health care through my job, but because of my husbands Medicare, and my qualifying for Medicaid, my medical expenses are covered. If these were privatized, I would be deep in debt just trying to stay healthy enough to work. As for the ACA, many of my co-workers get their insurance through it, and havent had issues with their costs rising or getting the coverage they need. The whole issue seems to have been blown out of proportion. If something isnt broken, it doesnt need to be fixed. Health care could be more affordable, and North Carolina should expand Medicaid and Medicare, but repealing and privatizing these crucial services would be a disaster for many like my co-workers and me. ****** BUDDY OSBORNE, Winston-Salem A claim Heres what I dont understand. Why doesnt President Trump just claim that he already built the wall along the southern border? His followers would believe him and we could save billions. When You Write The Journal encourages readers comments. 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Box 3159, Winston-Salem, NC 27102. Please include your name and address and a daytime telephone number. A verbal altercation between two drivers escalated into an unidentified victim's demise during the early morning of Nov. 5 in the 100 block of Kensington Place, in the Kings Grant neighborhood of Summerville off Dorchester Road. Read moreLadson man charged with voluntary man slaughter In a still shot taken from surveillance footage recorded in a Central Avenue neighborhood this month, two males are seen tampering with at least two parked vehicles. Summerville police said they need the public's help in identifying the individuals. 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 JURIST Guest Columnist Andreas Kuersten discusses the flawed reasoning of recent legislation that allows Internet Service Providers to sell customers personal information without their consent Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Ajit Pai and Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Maureen Ohlhausen begin their recent op-ed (a bull-headed defense of controversial legislation that, among other things, allows Internet service providers (ISPs) to sell customers personal information without their consent) with the quip that April Fools Day came early last week, as professional lobbyists lit a wildfire of misinformation about Congresss action. Yet given the chairmens obstinate lack of awareness regarding ISPs and the legislation in question, it is more accurate to say that their attempt at April Fools Day trickery came late. In 2015, the FCC voted to regulate ISPs (companies like Comcast, Verizon and AT&T) as common carriers (companies providing public telecommunications facilities and services), moving jurisdiction over these entities from the FTC to the FCC. The FTC had previously allowed ISPs to sell user data (such as their browsing history) except where users proactively opted out of such programs. Under the FCCs oversight, ISPs were prevented from profiting off of customers private data without their consent. This year, however, legislation passed in both houses of Congress on party-line votes (with Republicans supporting and Democrats opposing) and was signed by President Trump on April 3rd undid the FCCs actions and reverted ISP regulation to its previous form. Customers will soon have to proactively opt out of any programs that their ISPs put in place to sell their personal information to advertisers. Pai and Ohlhausens main argument for why recent legislation is a good thing is that the FCCs 2015 actions unfairly treated ISPs differently than Internet browser and search providers and social media companies (like Google and Facebook) who could still freely collect and market user data. The chairmen argue that since ISPs and companies like Google and Facebook have access to much of the same customer information, the FCCs regulations werent about protecting consumers privacy. They were about government picking winners and losers in the marketplace. The chairmens reasoning is seriously flawed for a number of reasons. The FCCs rationale for more strictly regulating ISPs was its determination that they are common carriers akin to public utilities (i.e., companies that provide the public with necessities). In todays Internet-centered society and economy, its hard to argue that Internet access hasnt become a public necessity. Tellingly, Pai and Ohlhausen dont challenge the importance of Internet access in todays world. In fact, Pai is a big supporter of expanding Internet access to rural and poor areas to aid their development. This is a clear acknowledgment of the modern necessity of this resource. Pai has, however, expressed [PDF] the conviction that the Internet has become so important and successful because of a lack of regulation. But this is not an effective argument against ISPs being common carriers. Rather, its simply a preference for how the government can best nurture the expansion of Internet access. In providing access to the Internet, ISPs do something very different than companies like Google and Facebook, which simply aid in ones utilization of the Internet. In the parlance of another public necessity, ISPs are the water companies, whereas firms like Google and Facebook merely help one more effectively use the water they already have access to. In addition, Pai and Ohlhausen are completely incorrect in saying that Americans dont face a unique lack of choice and competition in the broadband marketplace. To support this claim, they put forth that Verizon, the largest mobile broadband provider, holds only an estimated 35 percent of its market. But this data point is completely meaningless. Verizons overall market share is trivial if it is the only ISP in the regions where it supplies Internet access. There is in fact a substantial lack of choice for consumers when it comes to ISPs. According the FCCs latest Internet Access Services Report (pg. 6) [PDF], only 4% of Americans have a choice between three or more ISPs and 20% have a choice between just two ISPs if they want access to Internet download speeds of at least 25 megabits per second (Mbps) (the FCCs benchmark for determining whether an individual has adequate broadband access). 47% of Americans are serviced by only one ISP. Rather than coherently backing up their clearly incorrect claim that American consumers dont lack choice when it comes to ISPs, Pai and Ohlhausen instead curiously put forth that consumers similarly lack choice when it comes to Internet search providers: Google dominates desktop search with an estimated 81 percent market share (and 96 percent of the mobile search market). But again, this data point is irrelevant. Google is not providing Internet access; its not providing a public necessity. Moreover, consumers have a large quantity of options when it comes to Internet search providers (Microsofts Bing, DuckDuckGo and Baidu, to name a few). The fact that they choose to use Google has no bearing on the availability of alternatives. Users can also counter tracking by Internet search and browser providers and websites by disabling the downloading of cookies from these sources that track user activity, and by installing ad blocker software. These actions have no effect on tracking by ISPs. All of the aforementioned shows that the FCC was not picking winners and losers in the marketplace back in 2015, as Pai and Ohlhausen so inelegantly allege. Rather, the Commission was curtailing the degree to which ISPs, which provide a public necessity, could take advantage of a lack of consumer options to trade in customers personal information. The FCC instituted a much clearer and uniform regulatory structure for ISPs, replacing the unclear requirements of and ad hoc enforcement by the FTC, which will now again be the law of the land. It is disheartening that such educated and informed individuals in such positions of power as chairmen Pai and Ohlhausen are so oblivious to the true nature of ISPs, the FCCs previous actions, and recent legislation undoing them. Make no mistake, the law signed by President Trump on April 3rd undermines consumer privacy by allowing the monopolistic providers of a public necessity to much more freely trade in customers personal information. Andreas Kuersten is a law clerk with the US Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces (CAAF). He is a frequent commentator on law and technology. The views expressed herein are solely his and do not represent those of CAAF or the US Government. Suggested citation: Andreas Kuersten, The Hollowness of the Arguments of the FCC and FTC Chairmen Regarding Internet Consumer Privacy , JURIST Hotline, April 6, 2017, http://jurist.org/hotline/2017/04/Andreas-Kuersten-internet-consumer-privacy.php This article was prepared for publication by Yuxin Jiang, a Senior Editor for JURIST Commentary service. Please direct any questions or comments to her at commentary@jurist.org Earthjustice [advocacy website], an environmental law advocacy group filed a motion [PDF] on Wednesday, on behalf of two other environmental groups asking a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit [official website] to order the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) [official website] to ban chlorpyrifos a pesticide widely used for various fruits, vegetables, and wheat grown in the US. The suit comes a week after EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt [official profile] signed an order denying a petition to ban the chemical, saying [press release] it was necessary to provide regulatory certainty to the thousands of American farms that rely on chlorpyrifos, while still protecting human health and the environment. The Pesticide Action Network (PAN) and Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) [advocacy websites] both argue that the EPA has ignored research conducted by EPAs own scientists [press release] indicating that chlorpyrifos is harmful to children and farm workers and has been found in unsafe quantities near schools in agricultural areas. Many environmental other groups have expressed serious concerns over Pruitts appointment as the new head of the EPA. In February, Pruitt vowed [JURIST report] to cut back EPA regulations, saying the agencys Clean Power Plan, Waters of the US rule, and the US Methane rule will all be targets under the Trump administration. Pruitts nomination for head of the EPA was met with consternation from Democrats, who cited Pruitts numerous lawsuits against the EPA while he was the Oklahoma Attorney General. Days before his confirmation by the Senate, Pruitt was ordered [JURIST report] by a federal judge to release thousands of emails between the Oklahoma AG office and various fossil fuel companies. Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court [official website] in The Hague, Netherlands called on judges to hold South Africa accountable for failing to arrest Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir [government website] when he visited the country in 2015. Two arrest warrants [text, PDF; second warrant, PDF] have been issued for Al-Bashir involving numerous charges [materials] including crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes of genocide. Dire Tladi, a law professor and legal representative for South Africa, said [article, PDF] that arresting Al-Bashir would be inconsistent with the pursuit of peace in Sudan. He further states the countrys position that they are not obligated by international law or the Rome Statute [text, PDF] to arrest a non-state-party such as Al-Bashir, A South African law grants immunity [text, PDF] to sitting heads of state who visit the country, according Tladi. This grant of immunity contradicts provisions in the Rome Statute, and the ICC must hold South African officials responsible to carry out the councils most basic function, according to ICC prosecutor Julian Nicholls [official profile]. There has been significant criticism of the Sudanese government and the conflict in the Darfur region . Since 2003 the region has faced civil unrest from conflict between the government and rebel groups. In February, UN Independent Expert on the situation of human rights in the Sudan Aristide Nononsi called for [JURIST report] the Sudanese government to protect civilian rights in Darfur. In January the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and international sanctions Idriss Jazairy praised [JURIST report] former US president Barack Obamas recent decision to lift all US sanctions on Sudan. In September Amnesty International reported that the Sudanese government used [JURIST report] chemical weapons on civilians in a region of Darfur between January and September 9 2016. [JURIST] Icelands Parliament [official website] presented a bill [text, PDF] on Tuesday that would require all public and private companies that employ more than 25 people to prove they provide [AFP report] equal pay for employees. If a company is unable to prove employees are paid equally through an auditing system, the company could receive fines. The legislation would apply to discrimination based on gender, race, national origin, religion, disability, age, sexual orientation and gender identity. While Iceland ranked first in the World Economic Forums 2015 global gender performance [report], this bill aims to eliminate the 7% wage gap that exists in the country and would be the first of its kind in world history. The bill will now be subject [BBC Report] to a series of debates, and if it passes, it will take effect in January 2018. The gender pay gap is an issue that is being addressed across the globe. In 2014, the California legislature found a 16-cent wage gap between mens and womens pay and a wage gap of 44 cents between Latina women and white men. In October of 2015, the California Governor signed [JURIST report] the Fair Pay Act [official text] aimed at closing the wage gap between male and female employees. In March of 2015, the UK House of Lords [official website] debated a bill [JURIST report] passed through Parliament [official website] that would require certain businesses to reveal whether there are differences in the pay of male and female employees. In contemplation of International Womens Day on March 8, 2015, Eurostat [official website], the statistical office of the European Union (EU), revealed [press release] that women, on average, earned 16 percent less than men in the EU, and that the UK has the sixth-largest gender pay gap within the EU. Members of the Ohio Legislature [official website] on Thursday introduced Senate Bill 128 [text, PDF] which would give nuclear power plants in the state credits they could sell because they dont create air pollution. The program is set to last eight periods, that are each two years long. In order to qualify for the credits, it must be shown that if the plant closed, fine particulate levels, carbon dioxide emissions, and carbon monoxide levels would be negatively impacted. The bill also requires that the employment at facilities that receive the credits remain similar to the levels of those that were constructed before 1990. Ohio is one of several states who have been considering or introducing legislation to give nuclear power plants Zero-Emission Credits (ZECs) as a method of giving nuclear power plants credit for their carbon free electricity generation. Connecticuts legislature is currently considering SB 106 [Text and status] which would grant ZECs to the nuclear power plants in that state. New Jerseys legislature is currently considering bill S-3061 [Text] which would require a study to be conducted to consider the feasibility of enacting ZECs. Illinoiss governor signed [JURIST report] a bill in December that granted ZECs to some of the nuclear power plants in that state. In August New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced [press release] the establishment of the Clean Energy Standard. The standard provides assistance to upstate New York nuclear power plants to prevent their closure while also requiring that 50 percent of New Yorks electricity will come from renewable energy by 2030. Samsung head Lee Jae-yong on Friday denied [Korea Herald report] the bribery charges brought against him in his first court appearance before the Seoul Central District Court [official website, in Korean]. Lee was arrested in February and is accused of giving $38.2 million to an adivsor of ousted South korean President Park Geun-hye [BBC backgrounder]. In return for the alleged bribe, prosecutors argue that Park eased regulations, revised relevant corporate laws, and pressured a state agency to back a merger of Samsung C&T and Cheil Industries. The merger was supposed to ease the transition of the Samsung leadership from Lee Kun-hee to Lee Jae-yong. Samsung is the largest chaebol (family-run enterprise) in South Korea, and the outcome of Lees trial could have an effect [CNBC report] on the leaders of other chaebols in the country who have been accused of similar crimes. Lees trial comes after the impeachment and arrest of former President Park. Park was recently arrested [JURIST report] on March 31st on charges of bribery, coercion, abuse of power, and leaking government secrets. Earlier in March, South Koreas Constitutional Court upheld [JURIST report] parliaments decision to impeach Park over a scandal related to government bribes paid by Samsung, which are the subject of Lees current trial. South Korean lawmakers voted [JURIST report] 234-56 to impeach Park in December. In February, Lee was arrested [JURIST report] on charges of bribery and undue influence in connection with the scandal. Five Samsung executives denied the charges [JURIST report] of bribery, embezzlement and corruption that were leveled against them in connection with Park. Earlier in February South Koreas special prosecutor indicted [JURIST report] former culture minister Yoon-sun Choo and former presidential chief of staff Ki-choon Kim on charges of coercion, abuse of power and perjury connected to creation of a blacklist of opposition artists critical to Park. Twenty-six U.S. senators on Tuesday sent a letter to U.S. President Donald Trump urging him to call on Chinese President Xi Jinping to "cease... unfair economic retaliation against South Korea." Beijing has implemented a draconian unofficial boycott of South Korea over its decision to let the U.S. deploy a Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense battery here. The letter from the senators, who include veteran John McCain who chairs the Senate Armed Forces Committee, came ahead of the summit on Thursday and Friday. They urge the president to call on his counterpart to "reexamine his view of the THAAD deployment," "cease unwarranted and unfair economic retaliation against South Korea," and "discuss how China can play a more productive role in efforts to achieve the denuclearization of North Korea." The letter was signed by 25 other senators, including two failed Republican presidential contenders, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren. The South Africa Constitutional Court [official website] dismissed the Department of Environmental Affairss (SADEA) [official website] appeal to maintain the moratorium on domestic trade of rhino horn on Wednesday. The moratorium was issued in 2009 under section 57(2) of the National Environmental Management: Biodiversity Act, 2004 [text, PDF], which was enacted to protect species and ecosystems in danger. The High Courts of South Africas Gauteng Division set aside the moratorium in November 2015, which made domestic trade of rhino horn legal again. SADEAs 2015 appeal was dismissed because the Constitutional Court said it lacked reasonable prospects of success. South Africas Minister of Environmental Affairs Edna Molewa issued a statement [text] explaining the restrictions that will remain on rhino horn trade: In terms of NEMBA a permit is required to among others possess, transport and trade in rhino horns and any derivatives or products of horn. The judgment does not mean that persons are allowed to trade (including selling, donating, or in any way acquiring or disposing of rhino horn) without a permit issued by the relevant provincial conservation department. In addition to the national restrictions, Rhino horn trade remains illegal internationally, in accordance with the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) [official website]. Rhino horn [Save the Rhino backgrounder] is commonly used as medicine in many Asian countries but can also be used to display ones wealth. South Africa is home to the majority of the worlds rhinos [Reuters report], making rhino horn trade an appealing market to South African poachers. Concerns over the welfare of wildlife and the environment has been mounting in the past several years. In December a scientific study [abstract] published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [official website] found that cheetah populations throughout Africa, the Middle East and Asia are declining as habitats are encroached by various human actors. In November the Indonesia Central Jakarta District Court rejected a lawsuit [JURIST report] brought by Acehnese community leaders to protect the Leuser tropical forest from exploitation by mining companies despite conservation groups protests that the forest is home to four endangered species of orangutans, rhinos, elephants and tigers. In October a US federal appeals court ruled [JURIST report] that climate change was sufficient evidence to list bearded seals in Alaska as threatened under the Endangered Species Act of 1973 [PDF] due to the risk of future loss of habitat. [JURIST] Thai King Maha Vajiralongkorn [BBC profile] signed a military-backed constitution [PDF, in Thai] into law on Thursday. The new constitution installs an electoral system for selecting the 500 members of Thailands parliament. In this system, the Thai people will vote for one of 350 candidates. Those votes are than added together to determine which political parties will gain the remaining 150 seats. The system was adopted in the hopes that it would increase the number of seats held by medium-size parties and prevent government take over by historically large and powerful parties. The constitution also creates an un-elected upper house of parliament comprised of 250 seats. These seats will be filled at the discretion of Thailands military. The constitution also grants Vajiralongkorn the power to appoint his own regent for when he is out of the country or in times of political crisis. The constitution has been met with numerous protests [Reuters report] in southern Thailand. The new constitution comes after a decade of political turbulence [BBC backgrounder] in Thailand. Following the 2006 coup, the Thai people approved a new constitution. By 2008, a democratic general election returned Thailand to civilian rule. However, by September of that year, mass public unrest broke out around the country and the recently elected Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej was forced out of office by Thailands Constitutional Court. General unrest continued in the country until 2014 when the military staged another coup. The country remained under martial law until 2016, and, in 2016, voters approved the current constitution in a referendum vote. Although the new constitution is in place, election dates have not yet been determined. The constitution is Thailands 20th since 1932. [JURIST] Twitter, Inc. [corporate website] filed a lawsuit [complaint, PDF] against the US government challenging an order to release the identity of the user operating an anti-Trump Twitter account (@ALT_uscis) [Twitter profile]. This account describes itself as immigration resistance and is openly critical of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) [official website] and the Trump administration, and it is claimed to be operated by employees of the US Citizen and Immigration Service [official websites] within DHS. In the complaint Twitter asserted, The rights of free speech afforded Twitters users and Twitter itself under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution include a right to disseminate such anonymous or pseudonymous political speech. Twitter requests that the US District Court for the Northern District of California [official website] declare the governments request unlawful under both Twitters and the users First Amendment rights. The use of communication surveillance continues to be a security rights issue in many countries. In January Twitter released [JURIST report] two warrantless surveillance orders from the Bederal Bureau of Investigation requesting user data that may have overstepped legal guidelines. In January the European Commission proposed rules [JURIST report] to bolster electronic communications as well as to create new possibilities to process communication data and reinforce trust and security. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled [JURIST report] in December that [g]eneral and indiscriminate retention of e-mails and other electronic communications by governments is illegal, in a decision that many believe could create an opportunity for challenges to the UKs Investigatory Powers Bill. A federal judge in November rejected [JURIST report] the New York Police Departments proposed settlement of a lawsuit accusing the department of improperly surveying the Muslim community. UN Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix [official profile] described the security situation in Mali as alarming during his first briefing [materials] on Thursday. While acknowledging the progress resulting since the Agreement on Peace and Reconciliation in Mali [text, PDF] was signed, Lacroix stated that Mali requires continued support from the international community, including potential changes to UN operations in the country, to overcome increased terrorism. Lacroix specifically pointed to the finding that terrorist groups have been integrating under a new alliance created under the Al-Qaeda banner while IS from Iraq and the Levant have also been gaining ground in Mali. Representatives from many countries voiced similar concerns about Mali and agreed with Lacroix that a sanctions regime targeting drug trafficking or those hindering the implementation of the peace agreement could be a viable option in improving the security situation. But Russias representative warned that stability in Mali cannot be achieved without first resolving the situation in Libya, pointing out that radicals started appearing in Mali only after the destabilization of neighboring Libya. Last month the UN Independent Expert on the situation of human rights in Mali urged [JURIST report] the international community to help protect civilians in the northern and central regions of the country amid growing violence and crime sprees. The Mali crisis [BBC backgrounder] began in 2012 after a military coup was stage. The five primary Islamist rebel groups involved in the crisis are Ansar Dine, Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (Mujao), al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the Signed-in-Blood Battalion and the Islamic Movement for Azawad (IMA). Mujao quickly captured the northern region of Mali, an area known for its drug production. This prompted a French military offensive in January of 2013 to drive the militants out of the region. Another rebel group, known as the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), lent their support to French troops in 2013 and declared the northern region of the country the independent nation of Azawad. The rebel groups signed a peace treaty [Al Jazeera report] with the Malian government in June 2015. The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) [official website] has expressed alarm at the deteriorating condition of South Sudans security [official report] in light of the recent attacks carried out in the the town of Pajok. UNHCR said that homes have been looted by roving militia and the elderly and disabled who could not flee from the conflict were shot dead as ongoing fighting is also reported in the districts of Magwi and Oboo, which are close to the Ugandan border. It also reported Uganda has faced an influx of 6,000 refugees form South Sudan since just earlier this week, and more than 4,000 more South Sudanese are waiting at the Ugandan border for asylum. Uganda is now the main host of the worlds fastest growing refugee crisis because of the conflict roiling in South Sudan. According to Auma Lucy Yubuan, who escaped the fighting and was able to talk to UNHCR, The soldiers were looting, breaking doors and beating people. They would arrest you and ask you to show them where the rebels are. But when you tell them you dont know, they beat you. They killed people. I am so happy even though I have nothing to eat and I have lost everything, my children are alive. I was so scared I didnt know if I would see them again. The bullets were flying everywhere and you couldnt move, you had to lie on your belly. I am very grateful I am alive. South Sudan has spent much of its brief history as a nation in civil war. Last month, the Chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan said [JURIST report] that there is a need to establish courts and bring prosecutions against those who have committed rights abuses throughout the nations conflicts. In January the UN Mission in South Sudan reported [JURIST report] that a violent period in July 2016 left hundreds of civilians dead. In December the UN Security Council failed [JURIST report] to pass an arms embargo against South Sudan. Two weeks earlier a UN spokesperson warned [JURIST report] that South Sudan teeters on the brink of disaster. The UN also said [JURIST report] in December that ethnic cleansing was occurring in South Sudan. In September the UN announced, and South Sudan accepted, an increase in UN peacekeeping forces [JURIST report] in the nation from 14,000 to 18,000 in an attempt to stop civilian killings, sexual assaults, and destruction of both public and private property [JURIST reports]. South Sudan was officially recognized [JURIST report] as an independent nation in July 2011. Democrats in the US Senate [official website] filibustered the nomination [Senate materials] of Supreme Court [official website] potential appointee Neil Gorsuch [SCOTUSblog profile] on Thursday. Republicans countered by changing Senate procedure [NYT article] to secure a vote on the nomination. The procedure change, known as the so-called nuclear option, will allow the Senate to end the debate and force a vote on the nomination with a simple majority. The original procedure required 60 votes. Out of the 100 seats, Republicans hold 52. This requirement of only a simple majority has the means to change the impartiality of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court nomination has been subject to tumultuous debate since the passing of Justice Antonin Scalia in February of 2016. Earlier this week the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to endorse [JURIST report] Judge Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court 11-9. Also this week the Court granted certiorari [JURIST report] in two cases, Jesner v. Arab Bank, PLC [docket; cert. peition, PDF] and Ayestas v. Davis [docket; cert. petition, PDF]. In January former President Barrack Obamas Supreme Court nomination of Judge Merrick Garland expired[JURIST report] following the formal adjournment of the 114th Congress. The average annual salary of women who work for Korea's top 10 business conglomerates stands at just 62 percent of what male workers there earn, conglomerate tracker Chaebul.com said Wednesday. Women earned on average W54.22 million last year and men W87.57 million (US$1=W1,126). Female staff at Samsung made the most money with W72.78 million, which comes to 72 percent of the W101.18 million their male counterparts made. At Hyundai Motor, women earned W66.21 million, also 72 percent of their male counterparts' earnings. Things are much worse at Lotte and GS, where women earn less than half of their male counterparts' wages. Female Lotte staff earned W25.36 million last year, a mere 41 percent of what men made there, though retail floor staff and confectionery production line workers are typically women, which weights the figures towards low-income earners. It is less clear why at GS women workers made only 47 percent of what their male counterparts earned at W28.9 million. By company, Hyundai Motor paid women the best at W75 million a year or 79 percent of men's earning -- the smallest gap among the top 10 conglomerates. The conglomerates employed 498,464 men, 3.7 times more than the 133,235 women who work there. U.S. Vice President Mike Pence visits Korea in mid-April, the Foreign Ministry here said Thursday. It will be Pence's first visit to Asia since he took office. During his stay on April 16-18, he is expected to meet with acting president Hwang Kyo-ahn to discuss a wide range of issues, not least the North Korean nuclear and missile threat and the deployment of a U.S. Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense battery here. He then flies to Japan. Woman paid US$1,350 to fake monks From:Shanghai Daily | 2017-04-07 02:40 THREE men who impersonated Buddhist monks to solicit money from a follower have been arrested for fraud by prosecutors in Jingan District. On January 22, a 60-year-old female Buddhist follower surnamed Ge was in a shop selling joss sticks and candles near Yufo Temple. A bald man dressed like a monk was chanting near a Buddhist statue in the shop. The shop owner surnamed Ding told Ge to give her name, birthday and mobile phone number for monks to pray for her, prosecutors said. Then other men, posing as monks entered the shop and chanted, saying prayers for Ge. The episode lasted about 30 minutes, prosecutors said. When Ge was about to go, Ding demanded 9,300 yuan (US$1,350) from her for the ritual. Ge only had 200 yuan with her, but Ding and the monks scared her, claiming if she didnt pay, bad luck would result, prosecutors said. Ge then withdrew 9,100 yuan and paid up. Realizing that she had been fooled, she called police a few days later. The culprits were soon caught, prosecutors said. They added that Dings uncle was one of the fake monks. The problem of lunch for health-conscious workers From:Shanghai Daily | 2017-04-07 02:40 WHITE-COLLAR workers in Shanghai want healthier and more nutritious meals. The citys consumer rights protection commission, which carried out a survey, said yesterday authorities should expand the white-collar lunch project. Nearly a fifth of respondents said they had their latest lunch at a fast-food restaurant, followed by 19.1 percent who said they had eaten their most recent lunch at a work canteen. The survey said 15.1 percent had bought their last lunch via food delivery apps, while a further 9.3 percent said they had gone to convenience stores. The survey, covering more than 1,300 respondents across the city, was jointly conducted by the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. We found that fast-food restaurants, convenience stores and food delivery platforms are some of the most visited venues of white-collar workers for lunch, and many white-collar workers are not able to enjoy nutritious lunch because their lunch foods are usually simple, lack of vegetables or have too much oil, salt and sugar, said Li Yan, an official with the commission. Where to have lunch is always a headache for me because our company has no canteen, said Jessie Teng, a marketing staff worker at an education training center in Xuhui District. Fast food is not healthy, convenience store food is simple, while small restaurants are not clean, and a big restaurant means a higher cost, she added. Authorities should increase the number of white-collar worker canteens and boost supervision and management of white-collar lunches, according to the commission. Jingan was the first district in the city to introduce a white-collar lunch program. It did so in 2008 to try to resolve the difficulty of where to have meals for white-collar workers. End of an era for a creative park From:Shanghai Daily | 2017-04-07 02:40 THE well-known Red Town creative park on Huaihai Road W. is closing down after nearly a dozen years. Most of the parks creative tenants will depart by the end of June as the land has been sold for new development. The park, formerly Shanghai No. 10 Steel Factory in Changning District, was successfully converted into a home for art galleries, along with cafes, exhibition spaces and offices in November 2005. Red Town won plaudits for its endeavors in regenerating an old industrial area. Sculptures are scattered around the park, especially at the centerpiece lawn. Its artistic ambience has made it a beloved place for local residents to hang out. The whole area is expected to become a commercial office complex, though with a cultural and artistic theme, once put into operation in about five years. Construction is set to start by the end of this year. The current operator of the creative park, Shanghai Redtown Culture Development Co, told Shanghai Daily the tenants had been informed of the decision about three years ago after the land deal transaction. After June the park will be temporarily shut down to prepare for construction work. We will do our best to allow some of the functioning areas, like Shanghai Sculpture Space and some galleries, to reopen to the public about three months later, said Ma Qing, who is the assistant chief executive of the operating company. Shanghai Sculpture Space itself has protected status and any changes to it would have to be approved by Shanghai Administration of Culture Heritage, the authority said. Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum, formerly located in the creative park, has already moved to a new venue on Expo Avenue in the Pudong New Area. We know this for a long time, but its hard to find an ideal place, said a woman surnamed Yang, who works for a health consulting company near the lawn in the park. The place is perfect quiet, artistic and makes you feel comfortable. Many local residents share her feelings. The open space is a place to breathe, said Janine He. I hope it wont be too commercial or too crowded in future. According to a survey from the China Software Test Center (CSTC) under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the operation and management of governmental websites across the nation show substantial improvement, with more open data sharing and diversified services. Among the 903 national and local governmental websites assessed in the survey, more than 30 percent of websites offer open data and data applications. Meanwhile, integrated service is progressing with diversified services available through Weibo, WeChat, various applications, and third-party platforms. Releasing the huge value of governmental data is the main task for construction of governmental websites. The survey shows that about 25 percent of department websites and 32 percent of provincial and city sites have set up special channels or independent platforms for data publication, covering macro-economy, traffic, healthcare, and other sectors. In November last year, the Ministry of Transport worked with Baidu to launch the open cloud platform on comprehensive traffic big data, providing related data on traffic in different provinces for the public. Despite the current progress, ways to standardize the data, balance between publication and confidentiality, and information security protection should be further clarified, said Lv Yanbin, a researcher from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Lv said different new media channels and third-party platforms can offer diversified ways to increase communication for governmental websites, and attract more public attention, for real-time and accurate governmental services. Integrating service modes to meet different public demands is the future direction of governmental websites, said Zhou Liang, assistant director of CSTC. Premier Li Keqiang made a suggestion in the news release of the latest State Council executive meeting, by adding for a population of more than 1.3 billion to the end of the sentence employment is the largest livelihood project. This statement underlined his deep concern about employment for all Chinese people. The State Council meeting on April 5 released policies and measures regarding the promotion of employment and entrepreneurship for the future. At a news conference during the annual two sessions in March, when asked what the most important achievements the government had made in the past four years, the Premier said one of them was the more than 50 million urban jobs that were created. Premier Li reiterated this at the meeting, asking government departments to prioritize employment strategies, and carry out more proactive employment policies, while facing the grim situation this year. He also called for efforts to implement policies already in place while coming up with new measures. The Premier stressed that as a fundamental goal for economic growth employment should be stabilized and further improved. This years new employment policies have responded to what people are concerned most about, such as the inconvenience for overseas returnees to start their own businesses. Premier Li pointed out that miscellaneous procedures for the authentication of foreign certificates have become the reason that many returning overseas students almost give up on the idea of coming back. The meeting decided to simplify the process of authentication. Premier Li said that some of the authentication procedures can be simplified with the help of the internet. Premier Li urged to push forward pre-employment health checkups in designated hospitals and mutual authentication system for the checkup results, to avoid repetitive procedures. The initial task for macroeconomic policies is to boost employment and entrepreneurship, said the Premier. He added that major economic policies concerning finance and tax as well as banking and industries should make comprehensive appraisal of their impact on employment, with the aim to promote coordinative development of economic growth and employment. To support the implementation of employment and entrepreneurship policies on key groups, Premier Li required that laid-off workers should be treated properly as China cuts overcapacity, and he encouraged new graduates to embrace all job opportunities. He also urged related government departments to enhance the fairness of the employment system for urban and rural workers and further implement veteran resettling policies. Premier Li stressed that the work to ensure employment should be regarded as a long-term task instead of a temporary issue since its results will not be seen immediately but will have a long-term impact. Facing an employment peak, China needs a stable employment rate to overcome the middle income trap and realize the growth of individual income and social wealth, Premier Li stated. A mistake has revealed Iowa Regents data on sexual assaults may be incomplete and misleading. Earlier this week, TV9 reported how the University of Iowa reported a drastic increase in sexual assaults on campus going from 16 in 2015 to 49 in 2016. But it turns out those numbers aren't the full picture. The short version is this; Regents ask schools to report the number of sex assaults to campus police. But the University of Iowa reports a much wider scope of sex assaults on campus to the federal government. That second number is what the University of Iowa mistakenly submitted to the Board of Regents. So while the number of sex assaults at the University of Iowa increased last year, it was not nearly as dramatic. In 2015 the University of Iowa reported to the Board of Regents just 16 reports of sex assault. But it told the federal government it had 132 reports of sexual assaults. The numbers also jump at the University of Northern Iowa and Iowa State. At UNI the number of sex assaults goes from 1 to 5 and at Iowa State University the numbers go up from 12 to 25. TV9 News asked a spokesperson for the board of regents why the Clery act numbers are not used in its report. A spokesperson said the board has asked the schools to review the statistics used in its report and says "there will be a recommendation made" on what statistics best track sex assaults on campus. Its not clear the timeline of when the schools will make a recommendation to the subcommittee. KEARNEY David Hendee discovered an interesting way to better understand his home state of Nebraska. County government predates statehood, he said in an interview from his office in Omaha. The Territorial Legislature began establishing county boundaries in the mid-1850s through the 1820s along the Missouri River and then west through the Panhandle. The counties formed as the state filled with settlers of European descent. It took 56 years from when the first county was started until the final county was established, Hendee said. The Omaha World-Herald reporter confessed his love of Nebraskas license plate system, the system of using a number for each of the counties except for several large counties on the east side of Nebraska. I grew up out in Sidney, so Im familiar with the license plate system, too, Hendee said. I always get excited when I see a 39-county license plate, the one for Cheyenne County, or 71 for Kimball County. Hendee spearheaded a creative team on a book called Nebraska: 150 Years Told Through 93 Counties, published by the World-Herald. The writer will talk about his book as part of the 27th-annual Freedom Awards banquet presented by the Kearney Hub at 6:30 p.m. April 18. Tickets for the event are $30. Deadline for purchasing tickets is Monday. Volunteers from 10 categories will be recognized at the banquet following Hendees presentation. The book highlights each county with photographs, a short description and a series of profiles or facts that help illuminate the county. Hendee included another tidbit of information about each county the license plate number. We could have gone with the size in square miles or the population or just about anything else, he said. Someone in this office wisely said that what people really care about is the license plate number. With more than 40 years experience as a reporter and editor at the Omaha World-Herald, Hendee feels a thrill when someone picks up the book and leafs through it. Its been a lot of fun to watch peoples excitement when they see the book or purchase it for themselves, he said. And then theyll come back and buy one for their nephew in California or their kids in Missouri or someplace. Although the first printing sold out quickly, Hendee plans to have copies for sale at the Freedom Awards banquet. As the writer, Hendee looked for unique stories of the counties. So many counties have the same story of how they were founded and their troubles, he said. You cant tell the same story in every county because it would be pretty boring and repetitive. I knew that if I wrote about something in Blaine County that also happened in Dawes County, well, I would have to pick and choose where it fit best. Reading the information from each county will give readers a better understanding of the history of Nebraska, Hendee believes. He also hopes that the readers will be inspired to dig deeper into their own histories. As a teenager in Sidney in the 1960s, Hendee took inspiration from a feature in the Magazine of the Midlands, a section included in each Sunday World-Herald. The feature was based on a series published in the 1930s by the newspaper called Nebraska in the Making. Hendee takes pride in knowing that half a century later he wrote a book that affectionately mimicked the series. This book was a natural for us because of our rich resources in our story and photographic archives, Hendee said. The goal is to give Nebraskans a history book to help them appreciate and enjoy the sesquicentennial. The design that editor Dan Sullivan and designer Christine Zueck-Watkins came up with is really smart and sharp. Its an easy book for people to graze through. HOLDREGE A bill to extend the authority of natural resources districts within river basins designated as fully appropriated and overappropriated, including the Republican and Platte basins, has stalled in the Nebraska Legislature. Among the legislators opposed to the extension are state Sens. John Kuehn of Heartwell and John Lowe of Kearney. Kuehn told the Hub this morning the special levy of up to 3 cents per $100 valuation was put into place by the Legislature in 2005 as a stopgap measure until more permanent projects such as the Water Sustainability Fund and integrated water management plans could be established. It was sold to the Legislature as temporary. Thats why it has a sunset (fiscal year 2017-18), he said. The original 2017 bill, LB98, would have extended the special levy for projects to meet state-required obligations for interstate compacts and other agreements to FY2025-26. A Nebraska Association of Resources Districts summary of legislative action on LB98 says legislators rejected an amendment from state Sen. Mike Groene of North Platte that sought to add language forbidding use of the levy revenue for a state purpose or to stay in compliance with an interstate compact. Two other amendments were offered, but not debated. One by state Sen. Steve Erdman of Bayard would keep the 2017-18 sunset. The other by Kuehn would require each NRD to keep separate records on special levy funds raised and expended on groundwater management and integrated management activities. General Manager John Thorburn said at Thursdays Tri-Basin NRD board meeting that it would not be a problem to comply with Kuehns amendment. Tri-Basin currently uses 1.37 cents of the allowed 3 cents. Speaker of the Legislature Jim Scheer of Norfolk has said he wont schedule more debate on LB98 unless there are the 33 votes needed to end a filibuster. Kuehn listed two other main reasons he opposes a special levy extension. One is that only one of the 23 NRDs has hit the 4.5-cent base levy limit. NRD boards also can vote to exceed that by 1 percent. A big reason NRDs in the fully appropriated and overappropriated areas have room under the base levy to fund water projects, Kuehn said, is the dramatic increase in ag land values. That means each cent of a levy generates more tax dollars. He acknowledged that ending the special levy and increasing the base levy may not change the overall property tax bill, but it would simplify things for taxpayers. Im not sure why there is opposition to it, he said. Kuehns other issue is that, at least in Tri-Basin, landowners not within a fully appropriated basin must pay the special levy. Tri-Basin includes parts of the Platte and Republican basins that benefit from special levy-funded projects and also includes a part of the Little Blue Basin that is not fully appropriated. According to a transcript of his testimony during the March 30 floor debate on LB98 and the amendments, Kuehn said, Im not making any sort of accusation that there has been mismanagement of the (special levy) funds. Im not saying the NRD system has not been highly successful, has not rightfully earned the opportunity to be the envy of other states. At Thursdays Tri-Basin meeting in Holdrege, Tri-Basin and NARD board member Larry Reynolds of Lexington said it seems the special levy issue has gotten lumped in with no increase in property taxes, essentially. Reynolds said the levy extension opposition started with Groenes opposition to the Nebraska Cooperative Republican Platte Enhancement (NCORPE) project. The Lower, Middle and Upper Republican, and Twin-Platte NRDs purchased a large farm in southern Lincoln County to re-purpose the groundwater from irrigation to river augmentation for interstate compact and agreement compliance in both basins. Initially, it probably was opposition to NCORPE, and from there it morphed into a property tax issue, Reynolds said. He added that he saw inaccuracies and misinformation while reading the March 30 floor debate transcript, so education needs to be done with some senators. Reynolds said almost all of the property tax increases for Tri-Basin and other NRDs in recent years have been to meet responsibilities placed on them by the state. Kuehn and Reynolds both said that ending the special 3-cent levy could require NRDs to look at other funding options. One used by the Lower Republican NRD, which has not tapped the special levy, is a $10-per-irrigated-acre occupation tax. Reynolds said he would not support some kind of irrigation tax. Kuehn told the Hub such a tax does have project costs being paid by those who benefit. If youre looking at fairness and equity, I think the occupation tax is a much fairer tax, he said. He had said March 30 that failing to extend the special levy does not alter local control on water issues. If were going to have local control, Kuehn told the Hub, we have to have local responsibility. Its a lament found in rural communities across Nebraska: Weve got the jobs to be filled but not enough housing to meet workers needs. Courtney Dentlinger, director of the Nebraska Department of Economic Development, calls the housing shortage a critical economic development issue in rural areas of our state. She wrote to a state legislative committee that a lack of workforce housing impedes the ability of employers to attract talent to the state to fill thousands of open positions. In turn, employers are unable to fill necessary jobs. Note the volume she cited: thousands of open positions unfilled across the state due to this problem. The Legislatures Business and Labor Committee has heard testimony about a proposal, LB518, to help address the problem. A range of Nebraskans testified about how a lack of adequate housing is hamstringing the ability of rural communities to attract and retain workers. Because of low-quality housing and less variety, it is very difficult to recruit professionals to North Platte, Mel McNea, CEO of Great Plains Health, the local hospital, told the committee. Other testimony focused on people who earn too much for affordable housing assistance but still face difficulty in finding housing. A young married couple with teaching jobs in Gothenburg, for example, couldnt qualify for an adequate home loan because they carry too much student debt. In Schuyler, the rental housing market is so tight, lawmakers were told, that three couples who work different factory shifts take turns sleeping in the same bedroom. The Department of Economic Development has indicated that transferring $10.3 million from a trust fund under LB518 wouldnt harm any future projects for the fund, which was created in 1996 to encourage housing construction for low-income residents. It is funded by a portion of the transfer tax assessed on Nebraska real estate transactions. LB518 is intended to take a one-time withdrawal of unused funds to encourage housing for Nebraskans whose income is above the level considered for affordable housing assistance but who still run into roadblocks in trying to find housing. The Legislature can serve the public interest by passing LB518. Omaha World-Herald We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on! Go to form Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responds to a question on the situation in Syria during question period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Friday, April 7, 2017. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang Image released through the Metropolitan Police on Friday April 7, 2017 of Andreea Cristea. Cristea, a 31-year-old Romanian tourist who was knocked into the River Thames from Westminster Bridge during an attack on Britain's Houses of Parliament more than two weeks ago has died, London police said Friday. (Metropolitan Police via AP) The vice-chancellors had moved the court against the governor's show cause notice asking them to cite reasons why they should not be sacked from their posts. A vigil was held at Lake Casa Blanca Thursday evening to honor both victims and survivors of crime in honor of National Crime Victim's Rights Week. The event was put on by the Webb County Sheriff's Office, along with other city and county officials. The ceremony also brought awareness to the services offered to family members of victims of crime as well. For more information on the crimes victim unit, you can contact the office at 523-4500 or 523-4408. Congressman Henry Cuellar calls President Donald Trump's move to strike Syria a justified act. Cuellar says the U.S. has a responsibility to condemn the horrible actions taken by the Syrian president after he chemically attacked his own people. The congressman adds Tuesday's attack by the Syrian regime on its civilians is just an escalation of the horrific violence endured by them for many years. However, Cuellar tells KGNS if President Trump wants to move forward with military force, he must turn to Congress for authorization. "This is something that I think we owe it to our families, to the men and women," Cuellar said. "Before we put them in harm's way, we should [have] an open debate and have a clear strategy on how we go in and how we go out of Syria." Cuellar believes America has an opportunity to ease human suffering and stand for what is right if President Trump is willing to take those efforts. After months of strained relations, there is a keenness now in Kilkenny to draw a line under the controversial Waterford boundary review and focus on the business of moving the south-east forward as a region. That desire was in evidence at Wednesdays meeting of the Piltown Municipal District, where south Kilkenny councillors reacted to Minister Simon Coveneys announcement with a cautious welcome. The boundary review tested the relationship between the two counties the largest population centres in the south-east. While Waterford supported a redrawing of county lines, Kilkenny fought it every step of the way. On Wednesday, area chairman Ger Frisby said co-operation was vital to progressing everyones interests. All counties need to work together to secure the regions future. There's a lot of details still to be sorted out, but we look forward to working with Waterford on things going forward and we've started that process, he said. Hopefully, this can draw a line under that debate, and we can get back to the real issues, the important issues on the ground. And there are huge issues there in relation to infrastructure through the whole area. We need to drive on now with Tipperary and Wexford to drive the region forward. The Slieverue councillor said that roads such as the N24 and N25 needed to be upgraded. Broadband also needs to be improved, while a university for the region, he said, would be key to everything else. He pointed to the New Ross Greenway as a good example of cooperation between the three counties of Waterford, Wexford and Kilkenny. It's all positive stuff, and we are looking forward to getting on with it now, he said. The area as a whole will benefit. Target-date funds, those one-stop portfolios, are good options for retirement savers who are building their nest egg. But when you quit working, you may want to take a closer look at whether your target-date fund is still the right choice for you in retirement. These autopilot funds are hugely popular, in part because they are often the default investment choice in 401(k) plans, with your money automatically directed to them unless you elect otherwise. Half of all 401(k) plan participants had some money stashed in a target-date fund at the end of 2014, according to the Investment Company Institute (opens in new tab). In a target-date fund, professional money managers make the decisions about how much of your portfolio should be devoted to stocks, bonds or other assets, and which funds to buy. Every year, the pros adjust the holdings to make the portfolio more conservative as you age. Each fund family follows its own so-called glide path for its series of target-date funds, changing the mix in stocks and bonds over time. After these funds hit their target year, some continue to adjust the stock-bond mix, typically for another 10 to 20 years, while others stop shifting entirely. This is the difference between a target-date series that shifts through retirement, and a series that shifts to retirement. Subscribe to Kiplingers Personal Finance Be a smarter, better informed investor. Save up to 74% Sign up for Kiplingers Free E-Newsletters Profit and prosper with the best of Kiplingers expert advice on investing, taxes, retirement, personal finance and more - straight to your e-mail. Profit and prosper with the best of Kiplingers expert advice - straight to your e-mail. Sign up That sounds simple and easy. But for retired investors, target-date funds may not be nimble enough. Here are four reasons it may be worthwhile to reassess your target-date fund holding when you retire. The fund follows a to retirement glide path. Most target-date series follow a through retirement glide path. According to Morningstar, the four largest series by assetsVanguard Target Retirement, Fidelity Freedom, T. Rowe Price Retirement and American Funds Target Date Retirementhold 73% of all target-date fund assets. And each one takes a through glide path. But if you are invested in a series with a to glide path that ends at retirement, you should take a careful look at how the portfolio is split between stocks and bonds to see if it matches your need for return and your risk tolerance. In the target year of JPMorgan SmartRetirement series, for instancethe fifth-biggest target-date seriesthe portfolio has 38% of assets invested in stocks, which falls below the average for all target-date funds. For some investors, that may be as much risk as they want to take. Others, however, may want to invest more in stocks, especially considering that retirement might last for decades. In fact, the general idea behind target-date series that glide to retirement is that youll sell your shares in the fund when you retire and move the money to an IRA, where you have the freedom to invest in other assets, says Todd Rosenbluth, head of mutual fund and ETF research at CFRA, an investment research firm. Youre a different investor today than you were in your thirties (or even your forties or fifties). After you retire, you may feel differently about risk. An investors tolerance for risk can change over time, especially after you leave your job, says Julie Virta, senior financial adviser with Vanguards Personal Adviser Services. For the first time in decades, youre not building that nest egg of yours; youre diminishing it. But Virta cautions investors not to be too conservative in retirement. Youll need some growth to maintain your spending, she says. A glide path that seemed reasonable when you bought the fund may be unacceptable now. The stock-bond divide varies among different series of funds throughout the glide path, but even more so in post-retirement years. According to Morningstar, the typical 2015 portfolio has 40% of assets invested in stocks, for instance. But the range for all 2015 target-date funds stretches from 15% in stocks to close to 60%. Target-date funds are supposed to be one-size-fits-all, but no one really fits one-size-fits-all, says Rosenbluth. You may benefit from a more tax-efficient withdrawal strategy. Sell high, not low, right? It can pay to be strategic about which assets you sell to meet your cash needs. But thats not an option if you have all of your retirement money in a target-date fund, where withdrawals are made proportionately, according to the portfolios prescribed allocation, across all of the funds assets. Even though I love target-date funds for accumulators, says Christine Benz, director of personal finance at Morningstar, most all-in-one funds are suboptimal when it comes to retirement withdrawals because the investor doesnt have discretion over where those withdrawals come from. You want more diversity. The predominant flavor in most target-date funds is plain vanilla. Although some funds may hold preferred stocks, convertibles, futures or options on commodities, for example, most of the money in target-date portfolios is divided between stocks, bonds and cash. That presents a challenge these days. With a low return outlook for both stocks and bonds, whats a target-date fund investor to do? A customized approach to your portfolio in retirement might offer more flexibility. You could, for instance, hold more cash or invest in alternative investments that dont move in lockstep with stocks or bonds. Youll also want to consider whether youll have too many eggs in one fund familys basket. Fund firms often fill their target-date funds with the familys greatest hits, says Rosenbluth. Its up to the investor to determine if those funds are appropriate for them, he says, adding, Do you want to buy all of your clothes at one department store? Professor Holger Puchta is awarded his second ERC Advanced Grant. (Photo: Manuel Balzer, KIT) For the second time in succession, molecular biologist Professor Holger Puchta of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is awarded the renowned ERC Advanced Grant by the European Research Council for his research using molecular scissors in plants. The now funded CRISBREED project covers the simultaneous use of several molecular scissors, so-called CRISPR/Cas systems, to specifically modify genetic information and newly combine certain traits in crops. CRISPR/Cas is an easy-to-handle molecular scissors for various, precise modifications of the DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) that carries genetic information. In this way, genes can be switched off rapidly and precisely or they can be modified. The plants produced by this so-called genome editing do not contain any foreign DNA and cannot be distinguished scientifically from the plants obtaining their properties by natural inheritance. Hence, genome-edited plants cannot be equated with classical genetically modified organisms (GMO). Professor Holger Puchta, holder of the Chair for Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at KITs Botanical Institute, is considered pioneer of genome editing: More than 20 years ago already was he the first scientist worldwide to demonstrate specific modification of plant genomes by the use of molecular scissors. In his first project funded by an ERC Advanced Grant, Puchta established various applications of the then just discovered CRISPR/Cas technology for single gene modifications in plants. The new project Multidimensional CRISPR/Cas-mediated engineering of plant breeding, CRISBREED for short, focuses on the simultaneous use of several CRISPR/Cas systems based on previous experience. Now its getting very exciting: Knowing that the CRISPR/Cas technology is excellently suited for simple modifications, we now want to achieve more complex modifications of plant genomes. In this way, we hope to combine traits that are highly interesting for breeders, but cannot be obtained by classical crossbreeding, Holger Puchta says. In cereals, for instance, half of the genome is not accessible for classical breeding methods. CRISBREED uses the gene pool of the plant species existing in nature. It contains much genetic information on survival under various conditions, e.g. on resistance to pests, diseases, and extreme climatic conditions. Holger Puchta and his team of KITs Botanical Institute work on turning inheritance from a non-directed process into a directed one and on transferring agriculturally interesting traits of wild relatives to related crop plants. This ERC grant for Professor Holger Puchta is one of two ERC Advanced Grants going to KIT after the last call for proposals in 2016. So far, thirteen scientists of KIT have received grants of the ERC, namely, eight Starting Grants, two Consolidator Grants, and three Advanced Grants. ERC Advanced Grants Through Advanced Grants, the European Research Council (ERC) funds ground-breaking projects of established researchers who have a track record of significant research achievements in the last ten years. For their projects, researchers are granted up to EUR 2.5 million for a period of five years. As shown by the last call for proposals in 2016, there is strong competition for funding. In total, around 2400 proposals of high quality were submitted. XX projects were chosen for an Advanced Grant. This corresponds to a funding rate of XX percent. 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. The leaders of the worlds two largest economies will meet, face-to-face, for the first time today. Traders, investors, and market participants will be listening intently as they look to get a sense of the overall tone of this historic meeting. Both Air Force One and the Chinese presidential aircraft have already landed at opposite ends of the airport in Florida. With so much at stake, what happens over the next two days could very much shape the future of economic prosperity of both countries. It is quite evident that there are deep divisions in each countrys trade policies, in addition to distinct differences in the leadership style of both presidents. Content Vs Protocol Inasmuch as the outcome of this first meeting is unknown, according to the White House, the only scheduled event so far is tonights dinner with Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, along with their wives. Whereas meetings will be quite formal, White House sources have said that the dinners will be intimate. The White House has provided very few details regarding a daily itinerary or a listing of meetings that will be held over the next two days. Not knowing whether there is a complex itinerary immediately alludes to some fundamental differences between the United States and China regarding their protocol. According to the South China Morning Post, Summit diplomacy is perceived differently in Beijing and Washington, with Chinese diplomats appearing to attach more importance to protocol and American ones preferring to focus on substance over form, and that raises the stakes enormously. Gu Su, an expert on mainland politics from Nanjing University, said the debate might boil down to differences in political system and ideology. Its been a tradition in China to value these kinds of in-person meetings between important leaders, he said. Small symbols such as their handshakes are all part of our face diplomacy and often cited as diplomatic accomplishments. But in the West, where political systems were more open and transparent, people would want to know wheres the beef? The real question is whether or not Trump and Xi can get along. Noting their distinct and different styles of leadership, many believe it will not be that easy. How Trumps shoot from the hip leadership style matches up with the more reserved demeanor of Xi could be a determining factor. However, with so much at stake, it is essential that both leaders find mutual understanding because without it no real progress can be made. If their collective focus can remain on common ground, there is truly the opportunity for significant progress, which will lead to increased prosperity for both countries. For those who would like more information, simply use this link to go to our website, or to sign up for a free trial. Wishing you as always, good trading, Major miner Agnico-Eagle (AEM) has big plans for Nunavut, which is the largest, and northernmost territory in Canada. Nunavut comprises a major portion of Northern Canada, and most of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Its vast territory makes it the fifth-largest country subdivision in the world, as well as North America's second-largest (after Greenland). AEM acquired the Meadowbank gold project in the Kivalliq region of Southwestern Nunavut from Cumberland Resources in 2007. Three years later, the ribbon was cut on Agnicos $700-million foray into mining in the Canadian Arctic. At that time, Meadowbank was also the only mine operating in Nunavut, and it was the first to be developed on land belonging to the local Inuit community. Since 2010 the Meadowbank mine has produced on average 350,000 oz per year with total cash costs below C$715 per oz in 2016. However, mining at the Meadowbank deposit is expected to wind down in 2018. In February of this year, Agnico Eagle's board of directors gave the go-ahead for construction of the nearby Meliadine and Amaruq gold mines in Nunavut. The company says it expects to invest $1.2 billion in the new mine sites as they continue to build out their Nunavut platform. I was in attendance last month at the 2017 PDAC awards when AEM was given the Bill Dennis award for the discovery of the Amaruq gold deposits in the Amer Lake Basin in Nunavut. It is truly a remarkable achievement to build and operate large-scale operations in such a severe climate. At the rim of the Arctic Circle in Canada, AEM knows first-hand how tough it is to operate in a remote region with temptingly large, high-grade, but frustratingly inaccessible, reserves of precious and base metal minerals. There is virtually no infrastructure in Nunavut, an 810,000 sq mile (2 million sq km) expanse of rock and ice twice the size of Western Europe. Dotted across the territory is a largely unskilled aboriginal Inuit population of only 33,000. However, the Canadian Arctic has now become a niche market where mineral exploration companies with a serious tolerance for risk and adversity are attempting to develop a handful of high-grade major deposits. Sabina Gold & Silver (SBB.TO) is one of those companies as it controls the largest deposit in Nunavut currently owned by a junior developer. In 2011, Sabina sold Hackett River to Xstrata Canada Corporation for C$50 million in cash and retained a significant silver royalty on the deposit. Hackett River is located 45 km west of the company's Back River gold project in Nunavut. Back River is a world class, high-grade discovery with a current mineral estimate (October 21, 2014) consisting of a Measured Mineral Resource of 10.3 million tonnes grading 5.3 g/t for a contained 1.7 million ounces Au, an Indicated Mineral Resource of 18 million tonnes grading 6.2 g/t for a contained 4 million ounces Au and an Inferred Mineral Resource of 7.8 million tonnes grading 7.4 g/t for a contained 1.9 million ounces Au. The property is contained in a district scale land package of an 80km belt and is the only 5 g/t gold project with a major open pit component. The final major permitting hurdle for the Back River Project is the Nunavut Impact Review Boards (NIRB) decision on the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS). The NIRB issues the updated Final Hearing Report for the Back River Project proposal in July 2017. I was asked about my thoughts on Sabina when I was interviewed by Kitco at PDAC in Toronto earlier this March. Since that time, the stock chart of SBB.TO has formed the handle of a 6-month cup & handle pattern which it began to break out of on strong volume this week. Earlier this week, AEM CEO Sean Boyd told European Gold Forum attendees (Nunavut) is clearly a place you can do business..its one of these rare places in the world where you have that unique combination of an ability to do business, and huge mineral potential. Boyd then stated (In Nunavut) 10 years ago we were at 40,000 hectares and now we are at 440,000 hectares while we will continue to add to that position. I believe AEM can ill-afford to have another global miner set up shop by developing a rival operation in Southwestern Nunavut. If I were CEO Sean Boyd, I would not wish to have another major miner come in and threaten my companys monopoly on Nunavut production and exploration. On March 27th, AEM announced that it has agreed to issue and sell 5,003,412 common shares directly to an institutional investor in the United States for gross proceeds of US$220m. Hmmmm Full disclosure: I own shares in Sabina Gold & Silver which I purchased in the open market and added to the position earlier this week. Please do your own due diligence before purchasing shares in any of the companies listed in this article. On a personal note, I launched my new website last week which contains archived links to my previous Kitco articles. Please stop by and sign up for my mailing list which will deliver my weekly Kitco missives directly to your inbox. www.juniorminerjunky.com Gold prices jumped above key levels following U.S. military strikes against a Syrian airbase controlled by President Bashar al-Assad. Spot gold prices rose 1.23% to trade above the key $1,261.70 level at $1266.10. U.S. President Donald Trump addressed the nation on Thursday, saying that he ordered a targeted military strike against an airfield in Syria that was used to launch a deadly chemical attack earlier this week. U.S. Navy warships in the Mediterranean Sea launched an estimated 50 Tomahawk missiles against the Syrian airbase in Homs controlled by President Bashar al-Assad, Reuters quoted a U.S. official as saying. The airstrikes were carried out at 8:45 p.m. EDT. Trump ordered the strikes against Syria just a day after speaking out against Assad and this weeks chemical attack in Syria, which killed at least 70 people, the majority of whom were children. Rio Tinto Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has slapped mining giant Rio Tinto (ASX, LON:RIO) with an additional $337 million tax bill over transfer pricing of commodities to its Singapore marketing hub. The Australian Commissioner of Taxation has issued amended income tax assessments to Rio Tinto for the calendar years 2010 to 2013, requiring the company to pay additional tax of A$379 million ($286 million) plus interest of A$68 million ($51 million), a total of A$447 million ($337 million), the mining company said in a press release. The miner already paid $19.2 billion in taxes and royalties to the Australia government during that period. The tax bill being disputed involves issues surrounding pricing of several transactions between Rio Tinto entities based in Australia and the Groups commercial centre in Singapore. Rio Tinto said it will fight ATOs tax bill, but will pay 50% of the total by the end of April. The mining company noted in the release that the amended assessment was not related to any tax avoidance schemes. Rio Tinto is one of many multinational companies being investigated by the ATO for its past use of Singapore marketing hubs to reportedly lower taxes. Others include mining rival BHP Billiton and tech giants Google and Apple. ATO said it suspects some miners are selling commodities to their own companies at a lower price in order to move profits to locations known as tax havens. Rio Tinto said its pricing is in accordance with the internationally recognized OECD guidelines and Australian domestic law, and added that ATOs assessments result in double taxation. * Japan proposed dialogue with new Trump administration * Some questions remain about agenda * Japan trying to avoid trade friction with U.S. (Adds direct quote, details of dialogue) By Stanley White TOKYO, April 7 (Reuters) - Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso said on Friday that the agenda for his meeting with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence this month is not limited to trade and currencies. Aso said the meeting, known as the U.S.-Japan economic dialogue, will also discuss energy and infrastructure. Aso also said he does not expect the meeting to touch on Toshiba Corp , which is struggling due to large writedowns at its U.S. nuclear unit Westinghouse. Pence will visit Japan April 18-19 for the meeting. "From the beginning Japan has been talking about economic policy, energy, infrastructure investment, and the rules of trade," Aso told reporters after a cabinet meeting. "This is not something that is limited to trade and currencies." The dialogue will be a major test of U.S. President Donald Trump's confrontational approach to trade. Senior administration officials have signalled they would press Japan to remove non-tariff trade barriers and buy more U.S. products. Trump's administration is also focusing more on "currency misalignment," which could leave Japan vulnerable to complaints about the value of the yen and how that affects its exports. A weaker yen tends to boost Japan's exports to the United States, which could form the basis of complaints from U.S. officials and companies. Japan, which proposed the dialogue, had hoped to keep contentious issues like autos and agriculture trade out of the talks by proposing an agenda focused on infrastructure investment and energy. When asked on Friday, Aso said he was still unsure if other cabinet officials would accompany Pence. U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross is expected to join, a Japanese government source told Reuters last month. This suggests that the U.S. delegation will try to make trade a major component of the dialogue. (Reporting by Stanley White; Editing by Chris Gallagher) BUENOS AIRES, April 7 (Reuters) - Argentina's San Juan province has the full support of the national government to make sure that no more incidents occur at Barrick Gold Corp's Veladero mine, the national minister of energy and mining, Juan Jose Aranguren, told Reuters on Friday. Barrick has agreed to an audit and needs to present a plan to overhaul environmental and operating processes after a pipe carrying cyanide solution ruptured on March 28, the third incident involving cyanide at the mine in 18 months. (Reporting by Caroline Stauffer; Editing by Leslie Adler) 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. PRAGUE, April 7 (Reuters) - The Czech crown hit a session high of 26.556 per euro on Friday, strengthening by 0.3 percent on the day in a market described by dealers as shallow. The Czech central bank abandoned its weak-crown policy on Thursday after nearly three and a half years. It had seen a total of around 73 billion euros in interventions. (Reporting by Robert Muller; 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. LONDON, April 7 (Reuters) - European shares fell on Friday, putting them on track for a small weekly loss, as major benchmarks tracked a global pull-back in risky assets. The pan-European STOXX 600 index was down 0.3 with a 1 percent drop for basic resource stocks the biggest drag and all but two sub-sectors in the red on the day. The STOXX 600 is down 0.5 percent this week. Banking stocks were set for their biggest weekly losses in more than a month, down 0.5 percent on the day, in another sign that the so-called "reflation trades" were showing signs of exhaustion. Oil stocks rose 0.3 percent after crude prices jumped more than 2 percent to a one-month high in a knee-jerk reaction to President Donald Trump ordering airstrikes on a Syrian airbase. Investors awaited manufacturing data from Britain and non-farm payrolls from the U.S. later in the session. On the day, Swedish packaging materials firm Billerudkorsnas was a top faller, down 5.1 percent and set for its biggest losses in nine months after it warned on its first quarter operating profit. British online grocer Ocado was down 6.5 percent, the top European faller, after UBS cut its rating on the stock to 'sell' from 'buy'. Meanwhile upgrades from RBC boosted merging fund managers Standard Life and Aberdeen Asset Management up 2.8 and 2.7 percent, the top European gainers. A jump in the price of gold to a five-month high as investors rushed to safe havens sent miner Randgold Resources up 2.1 percent. (Reporting by Helen Reid, Editing by Vikram Subhedar) HANOI, April 7 (Reuters) - Here's a snapshot of Vietnamese dong exchange rates in the official and unofficial markets, indicative SJC gold prices in Hanoi and interbank offered rates at 0421 GMT. April 7 USD/VND mid-point 22,311 USD/VND interbank 22,655/22,665 USD/VND unofficial 22,700/22,720 SJC gold (mln dong/tael) 36.38/36.60 Interbank offered rates Overnight 4.4-5.1 1 week 4.6-5.2 1 month 4.8-5.3 3 months 4.9-5.3 NOTES: As of Jan. 4, 2016 the State Bank of Vietnam has begun setting the mid-point rate on daily basis, allowing dollar/dong transactions to move in a band of +/- 3 percent around the mid point. The dong's exchange rate against other currencies is not restricted by a band. Interbank offered rates are the latest indicative bid/ask prices, quoted from market sources. One tael is equivalent to 37.5 grams or 1.21 troy ounces. SJC gold prices are quoted by state-owned Saigon Jewelry Co. For more interbank rate fixings released at 0400 GMT, click on . For Vietnam market overview click on: Vietnam's bonds market auctions: Bonds auction results: (Compiled by Hanoi Newsroom) ISTANBUL, April 7 (Reuters) - Here are news, reports and events that may affect Turkish financial markets on Friday. The lira stood at 3.7340 against the U.S. dollar at 0505 GMT, weakening from 3.7080 at Thursday's close. The yield on the benchmark 10-year bond was at 11.05 percent in spot trade on Thursday and was at the same level in Friday-dated trade. The main BIST 100 share index fell 0.40 percent to 88,679.04 points on Thursday. GLOBAL MARKETS Safe-haven bonds and the yen jumped in Asia on Friday as stocks slipped after the United States launched cruise missiles against an air base in Syria, raising the risk of confrontation with Syrian backers Russia and Iran. The U.S. dollar dropped half a yen, while gold and oil prices rallied hard, though dealers said the early panic calmed when a U.S. official called the attack a "one-off". U.S. STRIKES ON SYRIA U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday he ordered missile strikes against a Syrian airfield from which a deadly chemical weapons attack was launched, declaring he acted in America's "vital national security interest". In a sharp escalation of the U.S. military role in Syria, two U.S. warships fired dozens of cruise missiles from the eastern Mediterranean Sea at the airbase controlled by President Bashar al-Assad's forces in response to the poison gas attack in a rebel-held area on Tuesday, U.S. officials said. ERDOGAN ON SYRIA Turkey would welcome U.S. military action in Syria following a chemical attack that killed scores in Idlib province, and would be ready to assist if needed, President Tayyip Erdogan was quoted as saying on Thursday. Ankara has been a steadfast opponent of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and repeatedly called for his ouster. ERDOGAN RALLIES President Tayyip Erdogan will attend rallies in the southern provinces of Hatay (1100 GMT) and Adana (1400 GMT) ahead of the April 16 referendum on expanding his powers. YILDIRIM Prime Minister Binali Yildirim will speak at rallies in the southeaster provinces of Sirnak (1030 GMT) and Hakkari (1300 GMT). He will also speak at the opening of the Esendere customs gate (1430 GMT) at the Turkish-Iranian border. CASH BALANCE The Treasury will announce cash balance data for March (1430 GMT). For other related news, double click on: Turkish politics Turkish equities Turkish money Turkish debt Turkish hot stocks Forex news All emerging market news All Turkish news For real-time quotes, double click on: Istanbul National-100 stock index , interbank lira trading , lira bond trading (Reporting by Daren Butler) (New throughout, adds details on mining ministry demands for work plan, comment from Barrick) By Maximiliano Rizzi and Maximilian Heath BUENOS AIRES/TORONTO, April 7 (Reuters) - Argentina mining officials told Barrick Gold it must overhaul environmental and operating processes at its Veladero mine, following last week's cyanide solution spill, while the country's environment ministry asked for a total suspension of operations, according to statements on Friday. National and provincial mining ministries told Barrick executives at a Thursday meeting that the Canadian company's ongoing business in the country hinges on a new working plan for the open pit mine, according to a government statement. The meeting, including Barrick President Kelvin Dushnisky and the governor of San Juan province, came as Barrick confirmed a Reuters story on a deal with China's Shandong Gold Mining Co , which bought a 50 percent stake in Veladero for $960 million. "We have held constructive meetings with government representatives in recent days and have agreed on a path forward that addresses their concerns," said Barrick spokesman Andy Lloyd. A pipe carrying cyanide solution ruptured at the open pit mine on March 28, the third incident at the mine in 18 months involving cyanide-bearing solution. Barrick, the world's largest gold miner, has been temporarily restricted from adding cyanide to the mine's gold processing facility. The Toronto-based company, which counts Veladero as one of its five core mines, said no material impact was expected on the mine's projected 2017 production. The government of Argentina's San Juan province, where Veladero mine is located, said on Wednesday it rejected a work plan presented by Barrick. Barrick's new work plan should include "the complete re-engineering of the operational and environmental processes and standards of the Veladero enterprise," said a translated statement from the San Juan government. It should also have an investment and development plan for Barrick's remaining San Juan assets, a new process to communicate with authorities and local communities and a comprehensive audit mechanism, the statement said. Separately on Friday, Argentina's environmental ministry asked a federal court to halt activities at Veladero, "until there is a guarantee that there will be no environmental damages," it said in a statement. Operations at the high-altitude mine were temporarily suspended last September, after falling ice damaged a pipe and spilled some ore saturated with cyanide solution over a raised bank. One year earlier, more than a million liters of cyanide-contaminated liquid into a nearby river. (Additional reporting by Hugh Bronstein in Buenos Aires and Susan Taylor in Toronto; Editing by Matthew Lewis and Marguerita Choy) By Lee Hyo-sik SK Group will mark its 64th anniversary with little fanfare Saturday as its Chairman Chey Tae-won has been under a prosecution investigation over the group's donations to two controversial foundations, according to company officials Friday. In the past, heads of group affiliates and other top managers have gathered to celebrate, unveiling their plans for the company. But this time, Korea's third-largest family-controlled conglomerate wants to keep things low key as the prosecution may indict Chairman Chey, along with former President Park Geun-hye and Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin. SK is facing allegations it gave 11.1 billion won ($9.9 million) to the K-Sports and Mir foundations, set up and run by Choi Soon-sil, a close friend of former President Park, in exchange for Chey's release on parole. But the group insists that it offered money to the foundations at the request of the Federation of Korean Industries, the scandal-ridden chaebol lobby. It denies receiving any favors from the government in return. "We will not hold any event Saturday to mark our 64th anniversary," a SK Group official said. An executive at one of Korea's largest business associations said it would be best for SK to keep a low profile. "Given the ongoing unstable political environment, it is not good for SK, or any other business groups, to organize events that may draw public attention," the executive said. "SK should remain quiet." On March 18, Chey was summoned to the prosecution and grilled for 13 hours. He has also been barred from leaving the country since Dec. 16, causing a setback for some of SK's overseas projects. After Chey was released from prison in August 2015, he went on trips to China and other countries to meet bureaucrats and business leaders. He also signed investment deals and supervised the group's ongoing overseas projects. But Chey could not attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January and the Boao Forum in China last month. Some of SK's projects, including a joint venture with Sinopec, have foundered, partly due to the absence of the SK leader. Nonetheless, SK Group's 16 units have pledged to invest a combined 17 trillion won this year, up 20 percent from 2016, and hire 8,200 new workers to strengthen core competence and expand market clout. SK hynix plans to invest 7 trillion won this year, up from 6 trillion won the previous year, while SK Innovation will spend 3 trillion won to expand its chemical and refining capacities. SK Telecom said it will invest 11 trillion won from 2017 through 2019 to become a leader in the fourth industrial revolution. SK has also set aside nearly 5 trillion won this year to nurture new growth engines and acquire promising companies. It started as a textile firm in 1953 and expanded its reach to the petrochemical business in 1974 following the global oil shock. In 1984, it acquired Korea Telecom, which has turned into SK Telecom, the nation's largest wireless service provider. In 2012, it acquired hynix from the Korea Development Bank and renamed it SK hynix, which has become a major global semiconductor maker. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has sent a congratulatory message to Syria over the founding anniversary of the country's ruling party, Pyongyang's media said Friday, amid global condemnation against Damascus's suspected chemical weapon attack on civilians. The North's leader sent the message to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to mark the 70th anniversary of the creation of the controlling Ba'ath party, according to Rodong Sinmun, North Korea's main newspaper. The move is seen to be aimed at showing friendly ties between Pyongyang and Damascus as about 90 people were killed by the Syrian government's suspected uses of chemical weapons Tuesday against a rebel-held area in the northern part of the country. "The two countries' friendly relations will be strengthened and developed, given their fight against imperialism," Kim was quoted as saying by the newspaper. North Korea has long been suspected of cooperating with Syria over nuclear programs. The North has built a plutonium production reactor in Syria, though the facility was ultimately destroyed by an Israeli strike in 2007 before it became operational, according to Robert Gallucci, who negotiated a 1994 nuclear freeze deal with the North. Trump, Xi may fall short of tackling Kim Jong-un By Yi Whan-woo U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are unlikely to produce any meaningful deal on North Korea during their summit, analysts said Friday. On the first day of the two-day summit at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, the U.S. military bombarded a Syrian airbase with 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles in retaliation to a chemical weapon attack on civilians. This could leave Xi a bit uncomfortable with Trump increasing pressure on China to make North Korea stop its provocations or it will "act independently." However, analysts say the military action against Syria will still not scare Xi enough. "The U.S. airstrike on Syria was apparently Trump's slap on Xi's face, ensuring that U.S. military options are on the table if China continues to be reluctant on pushing North Korea," said Kim Hyun-wook, a professor at the Korea National Diplomatic Academy, citing that China has opposed sanctions on Syria. "But I don't think Trump can actually strike North Korea as he did Syria because he will need to take South Korea's objection, which is almost certain, into account as well. "Xi may know it too well and the two-day summit at Mar-a-Lago will not be long enough for Trump to persuade him." Some analysts say the Chinese strongman, as he was before, will be concerned about possible setbacks to China's security interests if he concedes to the hot-tempered U.S. leader. For Beijing, collapse of North Korea means losing a buffer zone against U.S. expansion on the Korean Peninsula. They say the summit will fall short of preventing the Kim Jong-un regime from continuing to pursue nuclear and ballistic missile development. Park Won-gon, an international relations professor at Handong Global University, said, "It will take time," echoing Kim's view. "The U.S.-led allies as well as China and Russia took over two decades to denuclearize North Korea but failed. And you can't expect to clear up such a problem in two days." Rep. Ahn Cheol-soo, presidential candidate of the People's Party, takes part in shooting training during a visit to the recruit training unit of the 17th Infantry Division in Bupyeong-gu, Incheon, Friday. / Yonhap His approach to conservative voters is a double-edged sword By Choi Ha-young Rep. Ahn Cheol-soo, presidential candidate of the People's Party, is increasingly reaching out to conservative voters as he closes in on presidential frontrunner Moon Jae-in of the Democratic Party of Korea (DPK). Ahn recently emphasized during a speech that he never participated in street rallies that led to the ouster of Park Geun-hye, which many conservatives thought were politically motivated by liberal forces. He also retracted his previous opposition to the planned deployment of the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), Thursday. These are viewed as part of his campaign strategy to rally support from conservative voters, but this could agitate liberals at the same time especially in the Jeolla region, his biggest support base. Ahn has presented himself as an icon of social integration unlike Moon, who has called for wide-ranging reforms of the established order. As the rivalry between the two candidates heats up, Moon defined Ahn and his followers as "old evils" to be swept up. "This presidential race is a confrontation between myself in changing political power and Ahn in extending the corrupted regime," he said in front of the wreckage of the Sewol ferry, Thursday. During a forum with journalists on Thursday, Ahn said he has changed his stance on the THAAD deployment, saying the country needs the missile defense system to counter threats from North Korea. This was viewed as an approach to differentiate himself from Moon, who has been criticized for ambiguity on the issue. In response, Moon's spokeswoman Rep. Yoo Eun-hae said Ahn is flip-flopping to draw votes. "Ahn is saying that he can change the party platform on his own. His understanding about the in-party democracy is questionable," Yoo said in a statement, Friday. A longtime opponent of the anti-missile system, Sim Sang-jung, presidential nominee of the progressive Justice Party, poured out criticism against Ahn. "Ahn's ever-changing stance, like a chameleon, cannot protect the nation," she said on social media, Thursday. This liberal bloc's criticism could disrupt Ahn who seeks to consolidate his support in the nation's liberal stronghold, the Jeolla provinces including Gwangju. In the general election last year, 23 among 40 of the People's Party lawmakers were elected in the southern area, considered the birthplace of Korean democracy. According to the opinion survey issued by Gallup Korea, Friday, 52 percent of Jeolla voters were favorable to Moon, while only 38 percent of them supported Ahn. Traditionally, liberal candidates had to gain overwhelming support from the area to win presidential elections. However, if Ahn intensifies liberal- leaning policies to satisfy them, the conservative-centrist voters may turn their backs on him or give up their votes. The Gallup Korea poll also showed that 42 percent of conservatives favor Ahn over the two conservative candidates: Rep. Yoo Seong-min of the Bareun Party and South Gyeongsang Governor Hong Joon-pyo. Meanwhile, the controversy between the two leading candidates could disturb Moon as well, pundits said. "Punishment of the ex-President became a past affair, because she is behind bars," a political analyst Hwang Tae-soon said. "From now on, they should compete over their future agendas." Myongji University Professor Shin Yul echoed Hwang's view, that Moon should make efforts to embrace the conservatives rather than exchanging barbs with rivals. "The anti-Moon conservatives, who don't have a competitive conservative candidate are turning to Ahn because they cannot back up Moon." By Rachel Lee South Chungcheong Province Governor An Hee-jung has promised to give his full support to his former in-house rival Moon Jae-in, now the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), Friday. In a meeting at An's office in Hongseong County, Friday, Moon said on behalf of the governor that An expressed his will to fully support him. Due to the election law, it is impossible for An to be directly engaged in campaigning since he is an elected public official who is obliged to stay politically neutral in elections. "Governor An and I have made promises several times to change power and run the government together, and I am still committed to that," Moon said. He also asked for the governor's supporters to join the election campaign. Moon's visit with An came to prevent factional disputes and An supporters from moving toward People's Party candidate Ahn Cheol-soo, a center-left rival who has recently absorbed the support of An who also took a centrist stance compared to Moon. Moon also visited An for a meeting lasting about an hour, Thursday. An expressed regret for not being able to actively support Moon because of the election law. "Accepting the results of primary elections and supporting the winner are principles of democracy," An said. "I also expressed sympathy and support for DPK's visions of the democracy and candidate Moon." During the meeting, Moon said he will reflect some of An's values and pledges in policymaking, especially autonomous, decentralized governance policies on which Moon and An share almost the same view. "I will accept some of An's campaign pledges as my own since we share the same intent," Moon said. "I hope we can make efforts together to expand South Chungcheong Province's public financial disclosure system." Moon also mentioned An's idea of establishing another Cabinet meeting with mayors and governors, praising the pledge as "excellent." "I hope An could let me use it as my own," Moon said. The governor expressed gratitude to Moon for accepting his "core" pledge of all and the second Cabinet meeting will act as more than just a gathering to deliver civil complaints to the president it will play a major role in combining all forces from everywhere for state affairs. Concerns over Korea's diplomatic isolation are mounting after U.S. President Donald Trump assumed office in January. Before his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump talked on the phone with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for 35 minutes and discussed Pyongyang's ballistic missile test from its eastern port of Sinpo. But there was no phone conversation with acting Korean President Hwang Kyo-ahn. The missile test was seen as a way to overshadow the first U.S.-China summit since Trump took office and a possible prelude to a major provocation later this month. On April 15, North Korea will celebrate the 105th birthday of its founder Kim Il-sung, and Pyongyang has used his birthday for military provocations in the past. Even though there is no president in Korea at the moment after Park Geun-hye was removed from office last month, Trump should have communicated with the acting president over security issues on the Korean Peninsula. Since North Korea is a key topic of the U.S.-China summit, Trump should have talked to Hwang about the background of the summit and how he plans to persuade China to play a more active role in sanctioning Pyongyang over military provocations. Talking only to Abe and leaving Hwang out is seen by some Koreans as a sign that Trump is not interested in considering Korea's view in dealing with North Korea. There are other worrisome signs that Korea does not carry as much importance as some other countries in the Trump White House. It has been several months since Trump took office, but he is yet to name an ambassador to Korea, while Washington has announced Trump's picks for top envoys to Japan, China and Russia. The media has coined the term "Korea passing" to describe Korea's diplomatic isolation in the Trump era, but the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said such a term is groundless. U.S. Vice President Mike Pence will visit Korea on April 16. The highest-level visit to Korea since Trump took office should be a meaningful occasion to discuss bilateral security and economic cooperation and reaffirm the ironclad alliance of the two countries. Leading candidates should compete with policies Parties have completed candidate nominations for the May 9 presidential election. The slate of contenders for the five parties with seats in the National Assembly was confirmed earlier this week with the nomination of Ahn Cheol-soo as the candidate of the third-largest People's Party. Already, Moon Jae-in of the Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), Yoo Seong-min of the Bareun Party, Hong Joon-pyo of the Liberty Korea Party (LKP) and Shim Sang-jung of the progressive Justice Party have won nominations. Moon is maintaining a shaky lead over Ahn, who has been rising swiftly in opinion polls. In the latest Gallup poll, Moon was leading with 38 percent, compared with Ahn's 35 percent. But the former software tycoon has started to outrun Moon in a hypothetical two-way race in several polls. In the latest JoongAng Ilbo survey, Ahn had 50.7 percent support and Moon trailed with 42.7 percent. In a YTN survey, Ahn had 47 percent against Moon's 40.8 percent. Amid the lack of support for the conservative candidates, the race for Cheong Wa Dae is shaping up to be an intense battle between liberal candidates. But so far, Moon and Ahn have been immersed in slandering each other rather than competing with policies and visions for the future. Because there is not much time left until the election, candidates shouldn't waste any more time on attacking their opponents. Moon's camp seems to be intimidated by Ahn's soaring popularity. Desperate to keep his lead in the polls, Moon has escalated his personal attacks on Ahn. Moon's camp has raised suspicions that Ahn is linked to gangsters based on a photo Ahn took at a forum with people who are suspected of being connected to organized crime. The Ahn camp has also stepped up its smear campaign against Moon, describing the former human rights lawyer as an "incompetent inheritor" of former President Roh Moo-hyun. Moon has also faced allegations that there might have been irregularities with his son's employment. In the post-Park era, voters want to see a fierce debate on major issues such as the economy, diplomacy and national security. Raising questions about opponents is part of the candidates' verification process in an election. But the questions should be centered on essential issues, such as the candidates' competency, leadership and vision for the future. It is disappointing that Moon refused Ahn's proposal for a one-on-one debate. There is no reason to avoid such a debate if a candidate is fully prepared. The two leading presidential contenders should set an example by engaging in productive policy discussions as much as possible to better inform voters about which candidate is best prepared to build a new Korea. By Stephen Costello The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system is no longer about the THAAD anti-missile system. As the manufacturer states, the system may be very good at protecting specific areas such as military bases. Its range of 200km can be crucial but limited. Missile specialists say public claims about THAAD's radar by the US and China both have some validity. For Korean political leaders the larger question has never been about the THAAD's range or utility. Rather, their assessment of any anti-missile system has been based on threats, probabilities, and various countermeasures available to meet or combat these threats. The possibility that North Korea will launch missiles at South Korea, or at particular targets within the ROK, is real. But that threat also depends on several variables. The two biggest are 1. Will the DPRK leader be willing to pay the price for launching any missile into the South? Put another way, does deterrence work? 2. Would the military, diplomatic, and strategic environment lead the North to attack the South in what would be a suicidal act? Put another way, can the root causes of threats be addressed diplomatically, thus reducing the threat? There is a third variable for South Korean leaders. That is how the threats impact political and ideological calculations, alliance relations with the US, and roles and relationships with neighbors and partners. If one believes (incorrectly) that it was the DPRK, rather than the US, that abandoned the 1994 Agreed Framework (AF), or that North-South engagement "failed," then opposition to talks, agreements and diplomacy is more understandable. If, on the other hand, one knows it was the U.S. administration that abandoned the AF and its ally beginning in 2001, and it was the ROK administration that rejected inter-Korean engagement beginning in 2008, then the US-North and South-North initiatives may have been good deals. In fact, the results of sanctions and military exercises and deployments for the past 16 years are now a spectacular failure. The record of previous diplomatic agreements and follow-through looks better by comparison. Much better. Korean security vs THAAD If evaluated on the basis of deeper and more enduring security, THAAD's impact differs from its basic military utility. If the Korean president accepts the THAAD deployment, he will be fatally compromised by appearing to surrender foreign and security policy, flexibility, and inter-Korean relations to his disgraced predecessor, while at the same time needing to explain the decision to his nervous Chinese neighbor. For the new president to begin his term with THAAD hanging around his neck is to tie his hands before he has begun. THAAD is a good system, but it isn't worth this. If the THAAD deployment is delayed or paused, South Korea can preserve its relations with both the US and China. With the US, there is no logical reason why Obama's THAAD deployment should be a priority for the Trump administration. Korea would be able to stress the security and military dividends that would be paid as North-South dialogue was resumed, and other initiatives were pursued. It could also ensure that U.S. military, diplomatic and commercial opportunities were protected in coming years. With China, the key point must be that its illegal economic boycott must immediately stop. No normal relations can continue until that happens. In parallel, public and private statements must make clear that China will have no impact on Korea's military decisions. Only realistic evaluation of threats will impact policy. Test for the new president The U.S. and South Korea have often been out of step in their policies. That is deeply worrying to specialists in both Seoul and Washington, as the next Korean president may see things differently from President Trump and his advisors. As noted in a previous column however, the bottom line is that neither the U.S. nor China is prepared to lead the next stage of initiatives with North Korea. Seoul must do it, or be buffeted about as a junior player. The worst result of early elections in May would be the election of a president who is not tough enough, inclusive enough, modest enough, or wise enough to take advantage of the current situation. The current levels of threat are extreme largely because there have been years of pressure without serious talks. That may be about to change with a new Korean administration. Now is not the time to make conflict more likely and diplomacy more difficult by deploying THAAD. Stephen Costello is a producer of AsiaEast, a web and broadcast-based policy roundtable focused on security, development and politics in Northeast Asia. He writes from Washington, D.C. He can be reached at scost55@gmail.com. By Frank Ching The meeting between Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, was announced barely a week before it was to be held, suggesting difficult problems ahead. Almost simultaneously, Trump tweeted, "The meeting next week with China will be a very difficult one." Indeed, the difficulties are likely to be much greater than the American president expects. Trump has zero experience in government, in diplomacy or in the military. He has no overall global policy and no Asia regional policy into which to fit a China policy. His foreign policy team is not in place. Aside from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the upper ranks of the State Department remain unfilled. The one person with experience whom Tillerson wanted as his deputy, Elliott Abrams, was rejected because he had criticized Trump. Each administration has a point man on China policy. In the last administration it was Daniel R. Russel, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs. That position is now vacant. For the time being, the point man seems to be Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, who also handles Middle Eastern policy. On the Chinese side, Xi Jinping rose through the ranks, having been governor of Fujian province and party secretary of Zhejiang province and Shanghai before joining the central leadership a decade ago. While Trump has been in power for less than three months, Xi has ruled China more than four years. His foreign policy advisers are solid. Trump wants to "Make America great again" while Xi talks about the "Chinese dream." The Chinese dream involves "the great revival of the Chinese nation" and restoration of the country to a position of dominance, while Trump's vision of America involves reduction of the country's global role. The US withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which accounted for 40% of the world's trade, created a vacuum into which China is moving. Trump likes to depict himself as a solver of problems through deal making. He is boastful, saying he doesn't need daily intelligence briefings because he is a "smart person." But when dealing with China he can't be too well prepared. He cannot be cavalier about the security of the nation. This carefully conjured image of someone far superior to ordinary politicians has been badly tarnished since he assumed office, especially by his failure to repeal Obamacare. Xi is, by contrast, a very careful person, not inclined to reveal his hand and not to speak until he is ready. China remained restrained despite Trump's many rants before and after the election until Trump said he might not abide by the "one China policy." Xi then made it clear that China would not do business with him and Trump was forced to take back what he had said. Some say it is too soon for Trump to meet the Chinese leader. However, Barack Obama met with the then Chinese leader, Hu Jintao, on April 1, 2009, also less than three months after assuming office. But his secretary of state was confirmed the day after his inauguration and his China experts were in place. Trump in his tweet showed that he was most concerned with trade deficits and jobs. The US trade figures with China are distorted and the deficit will be substantially cut by an agreement to calculate it according to the value-added method, which is internationally accepted. An increase in Chinese investment will create American jobs, but the US has always been cautious about the national security implications of such investments, so this is a double-edged sword. A key issue is North Korea. Trump is going to ask China to help resolve the problem of Pyongyang's growing nuclear and missile capabilities. According to the Financial Times, Trump has promised to unilaterally "solve North Korea" if China doesn't do it. The outcome of that discussion will be crucial. Trump has no China policy to speak of except spur-of-the-moment tweets. During the campaign, he threatened to impose a 45% tariff on imports from China, and to label China a currency manipulator on his first day in office. Both turned out to be empty threats. No doubt, such behavior helped Xi to take the measure of the man he is to meet on Thursday and Friday. Speaking of the visit, what will Trump serve his dinner guests, the Chinese president and his wife, Peng Liyuan? When Xi visited the U.S. in 2015, Trump criticized Obama for giving him a state dinner and said, "I would get him a McDonald's hamburger." Now is his chance. Frank Ching is a Hong Kong-based columnist. Contact Frank.ching@gmail.com. By Kang Seung-woo Samsung Electronics is seeking to regain its past success in China with a dedicated version of its new Galaxy S8 smartphone. According to the South China Morning Post, Sunday (local time), Samsung is expected to hold a press conference in mid-April to launch its latest smartphone with a bigger memory of 6 gigabytes (GB) for China exclusively. The Korean tech giant unveiled its two S8 models last week in New York the S8 and a larger S8 Plus both of which came with a 4GB memory. It is not the first news report indicating that Samsung would offer 50 percent more RAM in its smartphone for Chinese consumers who love to play games or watch videos with their handheld devices. The reports came as Samsung has seen its market share falling in the Chinese smartphone market. Samsung was the No. 1 smartphone vendor there in 2013 with a market share of 19.7 percent, but since then, its dominance has steadily declined to 5 percent in 2016 the sixth best due to the meteoric rise of Chinese rivals such as Oppo, Vivo and Huawei, who are offering cheaper yet competitive products. The roadblock system for anti-terrorism installed at the purification plant in Amsa-dong, Seoul. / Courtesy of D&S Technology D&S Technology pioneers security roadblock, seeks overseas expansion By Kim Ji-soo In a video showing D&S Technology's roadblocks being tested in Buffalo, New York, an 8-ton truck is building up speed on a test lane. As the truck races ahead, a roadblock pops up out of the asphalt to stop the truck. "The roadblocks should be able to work again after the crash, and ours does," said Lee Won-woo, president and CEO of D&S Technology.In a video showing D&S Technology's roadblocks being tested in Buffalo, New York, an 8-ton truck is building up speed on a test lane. As the truck races ahead, a roadblock pops up out of the asphalt to stop the truck. The company's roadblocks are installed at state security sites around the country and the world, such as the government complex at Sejong City, the Korean embassies in Beijing, Manila and Tokyo and the Korean Consulate in Shanghai. The roadblocks are also installed at a handful of Korean military bases, water purification centers and nuclear reactor facilities. A captured image of the crash test that D&S Technology's roadblocks underwent last year in New York./ Courtesy of D&S Technology In today's world, where acts of terrorism are not uncommon, these roadblocks have become familiar. But when the company first started in 1989, it was a computer company, and anti-terrorism products were not at the top of its portfolio. Now, anti-terrorism or special security products, such these roadblocks, make up about 80 percent of the company portfolio. "I was studying abroad, but I returned home in 1990 when my mother, who founded the company, asked for help," Lee said. Having studied electrical engineering at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles after graduating from Yonsei University in Seoul, Lee found his mother being isolated by the employees she had recruited. He set out to correct the situation, enlisting the help of lawyers to reset the company. But soon afterward, Lee had to come back to take over his mother's business, as she had grown ill from all the frustration and stress. "I had to start a new business that would bring in money, to alleviate my mother's stress and obsession with money," he said, smiling. Lee Won-woo, president and CEO of D&S Technology Lee, like his mother, went through many trials and errors as a first-time entrepreneur. "I found out it was a jungle out there," he said. But the company had many successes, such as winning a $1 million bid for creating the security system master plan for Incheon International Airport.After pondering what new project to tackle, Lee seized the idea of a smart building, or more specifically an integrated security system (ISS) for buildings. He had attended a course while in the United States about the smart buildings that United Technologies was constructing. He started out by installing an ISS for Daewoo Securities in Gwacheon, during which he won the trust to install an ISS for the POSCO building in Daechi-dong, southern Seoul. The company became known as an academy for ISS during the 1990s, where its employees were later recruited by larger companies. "But as a medium-sized company, I experienced some difficulties," Lee said. Lee exhibited a happy demeanor during the interview, as he explained how his devout Buddhist belief gave him the will to go on. He travels once a week to a temple in Gimhae, South Gyeongsang Province. His ordeals are similar to those of other owners of small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Even for the Incheon International Airport project, he had to cosign with a large company because fellow bid competitors had raised the issue that an SME would not be able to take on a project that involved preparing for national security risks. Lee continuously looks for new business projects, like when he decided to invest in a 900-megawatt radio-frequency identification (RFID) tag project. He poured 10 billion won into the project over five years, only to fail to win a government contract. What really turned the company around, however, was when they earned, in 2006, the patent for a hydrodynamic roadblock, the first for a Korean company. The roadblock is made of a steel H beam, high-tensile steel plate and stainless steel; it has a width of two to four meters, the ability to rise from 65 centimeters to 100 centimeters and an operating time of 1 to 3 seconds. While Sept. 11 heightened the awareness of and preparation for terrorist attacks in the West, North Korea's attack on South Korea's northwestern Yeonpyeong Island in 2010 led to the installation of 60 of D&S Technology's roadblocks at 17 gates in the administrative city. In addition, the performance of its roadblocks at South Korea's provincial reconstruction team in Afghanistan enabled the company to surmount its 10 billion won debt and led to contracts with the Korean military. Last year, it achieved another milestone when it became the first Asian company to earn the U.S. government-approved M50/P1 certification after its roadblocks passed the crash test. With the roadblocks being the company's main product, Lee said D&S Technology achieved 5.2 billion won in sales in 2016. The company is looking to increase its sales figure this year, setting its eyes on U.S. military bases that are slated to relocate to Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, sometime this year. janee@koreatimes.co.kr Lee Joon Gi has renewed his contract with Namoo Actors and proved his loyalty to the agency. In turn, Namoo has pledged to help Lee Joon Gi achieve even greater popularity not just in Korea but throughout the world. A report by Soompi cited a statement the agency about their plans for the actor for the next few years. "We will do everything we can in order to help Lee Joon Gi showcase his talents and realize his full potential." Lee Joon Gi, who appeared in the megahit historical fantasy drama "Scarlet Heart: Ryeo" became a household name in Korea and the US when fans fell in love with his character Wang So. Apart from "Scarlet Heart: Ryeo", he also starred in popular dramas like "Arang and the Magistrate", "Two Weeks", "Scholar Who Walks the Night," and movies like "The King and the Clown." Because of his work in Korea, Lee Joon Gi is also among the list of most popular Korean actors among American K-drama fans. Based on the survey conducted by the Korea Creative Content Agency, he placed second in the list of top actors in Korea next only to "Legend of the Blue Sea" star Lee Min Ho. He has also appeared in his Hollywood debut through "Resident Evil: The Final Chapter" where he played the character of Commander Lee of the Umbrella Corporation, Strait Times reported. Lee Joon Gi put his background in fight scenes to good use as his scene with lead star Mill Jovovich became one of the highlights of the film. As a matter of fact, Milla herself said she was impressed with Lee Joon Gi's portrayal of a villain and his ability to do his own stunts. Moving forward, Namoo Actors will be employing a different strategy for Lee Joon Gi's career. According to the agency, they will have a dedicated content team for international and domestic markets for the actor. They will also be collaborating with a variety of the content creators to come up with the best opportunities for the talented actor. The agency has not yet confirmed whether Lee Joon GI will be exploring further opportunities in the US like GI Joe's Lee Byung Hun. However, fans are looking forward to plenty of great things from Lee Joon Gi's future projects. After dominating the Billboard World Album Chart with their "The Clan Pt. 2.5: The Final Chapter," MONSTA X is set to make a new milestone in their career as they gear for a Japanese debut. MONSTA X has signed with Mercury Tokyo for their much-anticipated debut. According to a report by All Kpop, MONSTA X will debut under Mercury Tokyo Records, a label created Universal Music especially for the group's Japanese debut. The name Mercury Tokyo came from Mercury Records, a Chicago-based label that has been around since 1945. Based on a report by Soompi, MONSTA X's Japanese debut will kick off with the release of their song "Hero," one of the tracks in their second mini album "The Clan Pt. 2: Guilty." They will also release the Japanese version of their song "Stuck" at the same time as "Hero." "MONSTA X has signed with Universal Music's new label Mercury Tokyo and will make their official debut in Japan," their label, Starship Records announced. Starship also announced that MONSTA X's debut date in Japan will be on May 17. To solidify their presence in Japan, they will also be performing at a showcase event in ZEPP Namba in Osaka on June 1. After making it to the top of the list in the Billboard World Album Chart last week, MONSTA X has remained strong in the chart, ranking #3 this week. They are joined by three other K-pop groups on the list. Girl's Generation's "Everyday#5", GOT7's "Flight Log: Arrival" and BTS' "Wings: You Never Walk Alone" also made it to the Top 10, Billboard reported. MONSTA X came out with their comeback album last March with the title track "Beautiful" which boasted of heartfelt lyrics, a visually stunning video and excellent choreography intersped with the boys' signature style. The lyrics depict the feelings of a man who is willing to go through hardships in order to be with the one he loves. KCON USA recently revealed its first line-up performers for the biggest overseas K-Pop event that will be held in New York this June. Trending K-Pop girl group, TWICE, and pop-rock band CNBLUE are going to get East Coaster K-Pop fans screaming for their fantastic performance. Billboard reported that CNBLUE and TWICE will be kicking off the New York show at Prudential Center on June 23-24. The two phenomenal groups will perform alongside a set of performers that will be announced soon. Similar to last year, KCON USA will still feature two days of workshops, panels, food trucks, meet-and-greets, convention and, of course, two days of concerts. KCON also expands its exhibitions in K-Beauty, K-food, and E-Sports in addition to fans' beloved K-Pop. The beauty session will be presented by Korean's prominent skincare mogul, Mr. Son & Park. Meanwhile, CNBLUE has been blasting multiple music charts with their recent album "7N". The group landed the 9th spot on Twitter Top Tracks Chart, and ranked in a high position of Chinese music video chart for their hit track "Between US". CNBLUE reigned the chart alongside several world's renowned musicians like Ed Sheeran, Bruno Mars, and Kendrick Lamar, according to Soompi. The group had also performed in 2014 KCON in LA and will also take on the stage at KCON Japan in May. TWICE has also been making a significant progress since they debuted in 2015. The nine-member-group has landed three of their EP tracks on Worlds Album Chart. Since the debut TWICE has made multiple record-breaking achievements including 500 million collective YouTube views. The girl group had also performed at KCON LA and Japan last year and will bring along their cheerful pop energy to KCON New York on summer. The Los Angeles show will take place at LACC and Staples Center this year. Additional announcements regarding KCON performers and ticketing information will be announced within the weeks and months leading up to the event of both KCON New York and Los Angeles. A Barry County sheriff's deputy died after his patrol car crashed into a school bus on Missouri 37, a half-mile south of Washburn at County Road 1060. The crash was about 10:45 Friday morning. Deputy Carl Cosper, 56, of Pineville, died at the hospital in Cassville about an hour after the crash. The sheriff said the deputy was heading to a domestic disturbance call near Seligman. A witness said the southbound deputy passed him on the highway at high speed before the crash, in which the patrol car ran into the passenger side of the bus. A Highway Patrol spokesman says, however, that troopers' preliminary investigation does not show the crash occurred at high speed. The driver was the only person on the Washburn School bus, and he was not hurt. The Highway Patrol's online report says the eastbound bus, driven by William Reeves, 60, of Seligman, was trying to make a left turn and "failed to yield." After the crash, investigators say, Cosper's car went off the east side of the highway, overturned, and ejected him. The Highway Patrol's report says Cosper was not wearing a seat belt. Cosper's death is a shock to everyone here, including the bus driver. "I did not see a car. I did not see lights. I didn't see a car either way. Just made my regular adventure out on this road," Reeves said. "I did the same today as I do every day. I come from home, pull up here, stop, look both ways. I seen nothing. I pull out as normal." Reeves then clapped his hands. "That noise. That's it," he said, indicating the sound of the impact. "Knowing what I know of Carl, he's probably one of my safest drivers. And it just is a sad day in Barry County. The citizens of Barry County have lost an asset, in my opinion," said Barry County Sheriff Gary Davis. Cosper worked in the Barry County Sheriff's Department for about 10 years. In addition to being a deputy, he was also a firearms instructor, training agent, and taught classes for people who wanted conceal-carry permits. "I've only been sheriff three months, so Carl and I were just really getting acquainted, but I'd already determined he was one of my rocks in this department, a go-to guy, do-anything-to-help-anybody," said Davis. Members of the Barry County Sheriff's Department are, of course, giving lots of hugs and taking this hard. They've received many offers of help from surrounding departments. The Highway Patrol is handling the crash investigation. The prime minister Narendra Modi today received the Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina in New Delhi at the Palam Technical Airport. The Bangladeshi PM is on a four-day visit to India. On her visit, both the parties will have an official talk on various issues including an inter-governmental agreement on civil nuclear energy. During her stay in India, she will be staying at the President House. During her stay in New Delhi, Prime Minister Hasina will call on President Pranab Mukherjee and Vice President Mohammed Hamid Ansari. Also Read: PM Modi calls Mehbooba Mufti for J-K ongoing situation Three soldiers died after Avalanches hit Batalik sector in Ladakh IPL 2017: Rising Pune Supergiant won the match by defeating Mumbai Indians The Springfield Police Departments Leadership Council hosted an awards ceremony Tuesday, April 4, at the Springfield Art Museum. Staff and citizens were commended for their service, and in some cases, their bravery and extraordinary actions. Medal of Valor-Silver This award is for department personnel who distinguish themselves by performing courageous acts of bravery or heroism above and beyond the call of duty in the protection of life or furtherance of justice, in doing so place their own safety in imminent danger. This award goes to Officers Chance Stapp, Brandon Gonzales, Oliver Hoedel, Caleb Schaffitzel, Greg Young, Matthew Thomas, Zach Pugh and Corporal David Shanholtzer On Nov. 15, 2016, Shanholtzer, Gonzales, Pugh, Hoedel, Thomas, Young, Stapp and Schaffitzel responded to Brookhaven Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, 3405 W. Mt. Vernon, after a report of a man who entered the residential care facility armed with a rifle. These officers quickly responded to the location and determined the man, who was demanding to see his estranged girlfriend, posed a threat to staff and residents of the residential facility. These officers immediately formed a contact team and entered the building to attempt to locate the armed man. The involved officers were able to locate the armed man and confront him, allowing the residents to be moved to safety while he was contained. Ultimately, the man took his own life and the incident was resolved without any injuries being sustained by the staff or residents of the residential facility. Each of these officers displayed heroism in placing their own safety in imminent danger so as to protect the lives of the staff and residents of the facility. They each displayed courage and bravery in their willingness to enter the residential facility in order to confront an armed subject. Their quick and immediate actions very likely saved the lives of staff members and residents who were present at the time of the incident. Citizen Service Medal The Citizen Service Medal is for any citizen who displayed an act of bravery and/or courage while providing assistance to the Springfield Police Department. The act must have been necessary to the furtherance of justice or protection of life and related to the overall law enforcement objectives of this department. Sound judgment must have been demonstrated throughout the incident. This award goes to Char Peck, Tammy Sartin, Janet Huffman and Frances Day. On Nov. 16, 2016, an extremely agitated man entered Brookhaven Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, 3405 W. Mt. Vernon. The man was armed with a high-powered, semi-automatic rifle and was looking for his ex-girlfriend, who worked at the facility. The woman had been granted an order of protection against the man the previous day. The man encountered four of his ex-girlfriends co-workers inside the facility: Sartin, Huffman, Peck and Day. These four women selflessly placed their own lives in jeopardy in order to protect their co-worker. Each of them knew of the protection order that had been granted against the armed man and they were committed to making sure he didnt locate their co-worker. They each told the man numerous times that they didnt know where she was and told him to leave the facility. Sartin and Peck were able to exit the facility and call 9-1-1 to report what was happening. Huffman tried to convince the man that his ex-girlfriends whereabouts were unknown. She told him several times that he was not supposed to be there. The man walked away from her and contacted Day at a nearby nurses station. Sartin came back inside the facility and provided real-time information to the 9-1-1 call-taker about the mans description and current location. Day was able to stall the man long enough for the responding officers to arrive and form a rescue element in an adjacent hallway. The man took his own life when he realized the officers had arrived and were approaching his location. These four women displayed courage and commitment to the preservation of life by their selfless actions during this incident. Their ability to remain calm and act quickly were instrumental in protecting the innocent people located inside their facility and greatly assisted the Springfield Police Department. Citizen Service Commendation This award goes to any citizen who, through a single act, provided assistance to the Springfield Police Department. The act must have been related to the overall law enforcement objectives of this department. This award goes to Paul Phillips. On Nov. 1, 2016, a man entered Simmons Bank, 2809 E. Sunshine St., and demanded money from a teller. The teller complied and handed cash to the robber. As the robber was leaving the area in a vehicle, Phillips arrived at the bank in his vehicle. Phillips observed the bank manager in the parking lot pointing at a vehicle leaving the area at a high rate of speed. Phillips interpreted the managers actions that the individual in the vehicle had robbed the bank. Phillips decided to follow the vehicle and called 9-1-1 to assist with aiding law enforcement with the robbers location. Phillips was able to keep dispatch updated with the robbers location until law enforcement officers could arrive in the area. As a result of Phillips willingness to assist in keeping the community safe, law enforcement officers from multiple jurisdictions were able to respond to the correct location to arrest the robber. This award also goes to Tommy Davis. On the evening of Dec. 20, 2016, the Springfield Police Department responded to a report of a missing/endangered 13-year-old girl. The girl had run away from her guardian on foot and was considered endangered due to having autism. There was great concern for her safety due to the cold temperatures, lack of shelter and lack of ability to defend herself. A coordinated search continued throughout the night with family members, Springfield Police officers and local media outlets. On the morning of Dec. 21, the search continued for the missing girl with approximately 50 officers from the Springfield Police Department, Missouri State Highway Patrol and the Greene County Sheriffs Office dedicated to finding her. Media coverage continued with photographs and a description of the missing girl being broadcasted throughout the local area. At approximately 10:30 a.m., emergency dispatch received a call from a City Utilities Transit Division bus driver indicating he had located the missing girl riding with a man in an electric wheelchair on the sidewalk near the intersection of Campbell Avenue at Broadmoor Street. Officers responded to the area and quickly confirmed she was the missing girl. She was taken into protective custody and soon returned to the family. The bus driver, Tommy Davis, said he had seen the media coverage involving the missing juvenile and was looking for her as he drove his route. When he saw the girl riding with the man in the wheelchair, he parked his bus at the intersection. The man in the wheelchair rode up to him and indicated she needed help. Davis immediately brought the juvenile into the bus to keep her warm and the man left the area. Based on information from Davis, the man was located, arrested and was charged with child kidnapping. The actions of Davis not only assisted the Springfield Police Department by locating the missing/endangered juvenile and bringing her to safety, but also helped investigators locate the suspect. On behalf of the Springfield Police Department and citizens of Springfield, we recognize you for your courageous actions and service to your community. This award also goes to Justin Herrell. While attending a Community Partnership of the Ozarks meeting at 330 N. Jefferson Ave., on Dec. 7, 2016, Officer Boomgaarden was approached by staff about an emergency just outside the facility. Staff led Officer Boomgaarden to where Vasile Iacob was found unresponsive after an apparent vehicle accident. Iacob was not breathing and his color was purple. Herrell, a Springfield School District administrator, assisted Officer Boomgaarden in stabilizing Mr. Iacob. Herrell performed chest compressions as Officer Boomgaarden retrieved an Ambu bag from his vehicle to deliver rescue breaths. Officer Mychal Adamson arrived and relieved Herrell and Officer Dylan McKinsey arrived and relieved Officer Boomgaarden while continuing to render aid until the Springfield Fire Department arrived and took over CPR. Officer Boomgaarden had to cut away Iacobs clothing to attach the fire departments AED. One shock from the AED was delivered and Iacobs pulse returned. Iacob was transported to the hospital shortly thereafter. Life Saving Award This award is for department personnel who personally save a life, normally involving one of the learned life supporting processes outside of routine measures. This award goes to Officers Jacob Boomgaarden, Mychal Adamson, Dylan McKinsey. On Dec. 7, 2016, Officer Boomgaarden was approached by staff about an emergency just outside the facility. Staff led Officer Boomgaarden to where Mr. Vasile Iacob was found unresponsive after an apparent vehicle accident. Iacob was not breathing and his color was purple. Justin Herrell, a Springfield School District administrator, assisted Officer Boomgaarden in stabilizing Iacob. Herrell performed chest compressions as Officer Boomgaarden retrieved an Ambu bag from his vehicle to deliver rescue breaths. Officer Mychal Adamson arrived and relieved Herrell and Officer Dylan McKinsey arrived and relieved Officer Boomgaarden while continuing to render aid until the Springfield Fire Department arrived and took over CPR. Officer Boomgaarden had to cut away Iacobs clothing to attach the Fire Departments AED. One shock from the AED was delivered and Iacobs pulse returned. Iacob was transported to a hospital shortly thereafter. This award also goes to Officer Chris Rasmussen. On Dec. 18, 2016, Officer Rasmussen was clearing a call for service and overheard Sgt. Dustin Martin being dispatched to 1024 E. Stanford St. for a medical emergency. Dispatch advised there was a hysterical caller on the phone reporting her husband was just talking and then collapsed on the floor. The man was seizing and foaming at the mouth. The caller could be heard screaming at her husband to breathe and she believed her husband was dying. Rasmussen was just a few blocks from the call and recognized Martin was quite a distance away. Rasmussen responded and contacted Jan Lawson, the wife. Officer Rasmussen immediately began chest compressions, gave instructions for Lawson on performing mouth to mouth rescue breathing, and continued until EMS personnel arrived. EMS personnel continued rescue efforts for some time before they established a pulse and transported the patient. Cheryl Whitsitt, a close friend of the Lawsons, stated Officer Rasmussen was calm and collected and just jumped in and went to work. Lawson later commented, I admire the hard work and dedication of all our law enforcement officers, but Officer Rasmussen showed just how far beyond law and order your jobs extend. That night he saved a family. Missouri state agencies and disaster assistance organizations will open a one-stop shop offering assistance for survivors of the tornadoes in McDonald and Newton counties on Saturday, April 8. Here's the details: MULTI-AGENCY RESOURCE CENTER Goodman Full Gospel Church 202 W. Garner St. Goodman, MO 64843 Saturday, April 8 Hours: 9 3 Caseworkers will be available to help create personal recovery plans, navigate paperwork, and locate assistance for individual disaster recovery needs, such as insurance information, legal services, health and wellness services, emergency financial assistance, assistance in locating temporary housing, emotional & spiritual care, distribution of bulk supplies, assistance for groceries, rent, medicine replacement, SNAP (food stamps) replacement and other needs. Representatives from government, nonprofit and faith-based disaster relief organizations will be on hand to assist survivors. Spanish-speaking caseworkers will be available. Agencies that can assist with long-term recovery needs like rebuilding and home repairs will be available. Families can meet with agencies for possible referrals to other long term recovery agencies. Individuals and families applying for assistance are required to bring identification showing address and proof of residence to be eligible for assistance from some agencies. ---- A consumer specialist from the Missouri Department of Insurance will be at the Multi-Agency Resource Center (MARC) to assist residents impacted by this weeks tornado and severe weather. The specialist will be at the Goodman Full Gospel Church at 202 W. Garner St., Goodman, on Saturday from 9 until 3. The specialist will be able to provide consumers with assistance understanding their insurance policies and the process of filing a claim as well as company contact information. Residents affected by the tornado and severe weather who have not already contacted their insurance agent or company should do so immediately if they have incurred severe damage. Policyholders who have questions or concerns about their insurance coverage should contact the department's Insurance Consumer Hotline at 800-726-7390 or visit insurance.mo.gov. The Department of Insurance offers these tips for consumers affected by the storms: -- Depending on the severity of your loss, you may want to consider obtaining damage estimates to help you determine whether to file a claim. -- Contact your insurance agent or your company's toll-free claims number if you determine you do need to file a claim. If you have lost your insurance company's contact information, the department may be able to help you locate it. Contact the department at insurance.mo.gov or by calling 800-726-7390. -- Make temporary repairs to prevent further damage. For example, a hole in the roof should be covered by a tarp or other materials to keep out rain and animals. The same goes for a broken car window. Otherwise, further damage will likely not be covered by your insurance policy. Keep the receipts for materials you buy, so you can be reimbursed. -- Do not make permanent repairs until your insurance company has inspected the damage. If you do, your company may not reimburse you. -- Once your claim is processed, get estimates from contractors or auto repair shops known to you or recommended by someone you trust. Be suspicious of strangers who offer to do repairs for you. -- Do not let contractors inspect your property if you're not watching. Some unscrupulous companies will cause damage to drive up the repair cost, and your insurance company will likely not cover the additional cost. -- Do not pay the whole repair bill in advance. Pay in full only when the work is completed according to your agreement. -- Business owners can refer to the department's small business insurance page, which offers information on commercial property, business interruption insurance and more. -- If you believe your insurance company has improperly handled your claim, file a complaint with the Missouri Department of Insurance. This transcript appears in the April 7, 2016 issue of Executive Intelligence Review. WHAT ROLE WILL GERMANY PLAY? Worldwide Spirit of Optimism Over the New Silk Road! [Print version of this transcript] At a conference on the centenary of the German-American space pioneer Krafft Ehricke on March 25, 2017 in Munich, Helga Zepp-LaRouche gave the following address. The beauty of the Chinese music has, I hope, put us in the right mood to think about and celebrate Krafft Ehrickes birthday. Krafft Ehricke is without a doubtin my humble opinionone of the greatest Germans who ever lived. That is because he developed a vision of where mankind can go, and I consider it a very great privilege to have been able to get to know him personally. EIRNS/Christopher Lewis In 1982 I had the opportunity to give several presentations with him in various German cities, and I can confirm from personal experience the picture of him which his daughter Krista has drawn of him so incredibly lovingly. He was an incredible humanist, vastly educated in Classical culture; he was a genius so bubbling with ideas that it was really one of the high points of my life to have known such a personality. Fortunately, several of his presentations are available as videos on the Internet, and I urge you all to become acquainted with him yourselves. I am also positive that if Krafft Ehricke were with us today, he would be incredibly optimistic that his vision, which was often contested in his lifetime, is going to be realized. It wasnt just his vision, but the overall continuation of space exploration, that ran up against objections and resistance. He would recognize that we actually have the strategic constellation today to realize his vision in the near future. We have already heard about the Chinese space program, which is perhaps the frog that leaps because the Chinese have a vision of mining helium-3 from the far side of the Moon to fuel a future fusion economy on Earth. That goal has also been discussed by the European Space Agency, but I believe that China is educating the most scientists and researchers in the area of space exploration worldwide, and therefore I am optimistic that this leap-frogging will definitely proceed. Look at the collaboration of the BRICS nations in the area of space exploration: It was mentioned that India has already carried out a successful Mars mission, and, as Prime Minister Modi said, it was done at a tenth of the cost that NASA needed. There are unbelievable developments underway. Krafft Ehrickes idea that the exploration and colonization of space is an evolutionary necessity, without which mankind cannot survive in the long term, is the other point. Its not an option, not a matter of choice; we must do it because in two billion years, at the latest, our Sun will not be so pleasant, and thus we must have found other solutions before that time. But the most important thing about Krafft Ehricke, the reason why he is so enormously relevant today and important, is that his vision, and space exploration as a whole, implies the idea of an open world, that the world is not a closed system with limited resources, but an integral part of the Universe, and that human creativity is a creative, physical force in this Universe. Epochal Change I maintain that we are now experiencing an epochal change, in which this idea is beginning to assert itselfthat is, a revolution in worldview is in process. You have certainly not observed this if you only watch Sonntags-Stammtisch on Bavarian Radio, or read Bild-Zeitung or Spiegel or the FAZ, but that does not mean that it is not reality. This is my thesis: We currently have an epochal change underway, which is no less fundamental than the transition from the Middle Ages to the Modern Age. Just briefly bring to mind the axiomatics of the Middle Agesthe axioms of the scholastics, the peripatetics, superstition, and so onand then came a Renaissance, the Italian Renaissance of the Fifteenth Century, created by thinkers such as Nicholas of Cusa and Brunelleschi, a revival of Platos works which had been totally forgotten in Europe for 1700 years. With the Renaissance came a totally new worldview, which understood the individual and the role of man totally differently, but also laid the basis for the emergence of modern science, Classical art, sovereign nation states, and similar developments, which have nourished us for the past 600 years. We are now experiencing just such an epochal change, perhaps one even more dramatic, and I dare to predict that all the axioms associated with this old paradigm will land in the dustbin of historythe idea of limits to growth; the neoliberal idea that money is wealth; that man only represents a burden on the environment, and the fewer people, the better; the neoconservative idea of geopolitics, that foreign policy must always be a zero-sum game, in which, if one wins, the other loses. All of these ideas will go into the dustbin and a new paradigm will be established, namely, the ideal of a united mankind. And mankind, at least in large part, is now establishing a common ground of reason in which the common aims of mankind are placed before national interests. There are currently two essential dynamics in which this new view is being realized. One isas I will discuss at length later onChinas policy of the New Silk Road, which has become, within three and a half years, the largest infrastructure program in the history of mankind. It already involves 70 nations and 4.5 billion people. It is already 12 times greater than the Marshall Plan of the post-World War II period, and has unlimited growth potential. This new paradigm of the One Belt, One Road Initiative (or the New Silk Road) has already led to unprecedented optimism among many peoples of the world. For example, in Africa, people for the first time have a justified hope that they will soon be able to overcome their underdevelopment with Chinas help. Precisely because this new paradigm is based on win-win cooperationwhere one nation, China, admittedly benefits, but the other cooperating nations profit just as muchit is the basis for world peace in the long run. This is because it is in the interests of every state to have others develop, otherwise ones own development is jeopardized. The New U.S. Presidency The second dynamic which gives cause for optimismand this will surprise quite a few of you and quite a few will not agree with me at first. But I ask your indulgence because I must enter into the degradation of American politics: The second dynamic is Donald Trumps election victory. I would really ask you, for a start, to forget everything that you have read in Bild-Zeitung on page 2, because that is psychological warfare; it is black propaganda of the sort that is only used against the enemy in the time of war. The representatives of the collapsing paradigm, the neoliberal paradigmthe media, the intelligence services, and the British Empireare conducting total war against President Trump. I would like to address just a few aspects of his latest speeches, given in Michigan, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Washington, in which he made an emphatic call for the United States to return to the American System of economy. He especially referenced the first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln who, as a young candidate for Congress at the age of 23, in 1832, promoted the building of a railroad in America, although he had never even seen a steam engine at that time. Thirty years later, as President, he signed the law for the building of the Transcontinental Railroad, which linked the east and west coasts of the United States. In a similar way, Trump cited President Eisenhower who, as an officer after the First World War, travelled in a military convoy along the Lincoln Highway across the country. This made such an impression on him that 30 years later, he signed the law establishing the Interstate Highway system. Then Trump said: We need the American System again today, the policy of George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Henry Clay, and Lincoln. Most people dont know what this American System is, but it was the fundamental American idea in opposition to the British Empire. There are other ideas that Trump has mentionedthat he wants to invest a trillion dollars in infrastructure, that he doesnt want to wage any more wars of intervention such as Bush and Obama did, that he wants to put relations with Russia and China on the basis of cooperation, and others. These are the basic goalssuch as peace with Russia and Chinathat everyone in Germany should be glad about, and say: Finally there is hope that this danger of war can be overcome! But then where does this unbelievable agitation come from? Why is the whole Establishment in such a state of shock? Although Trump was elected four months ago, a war is now being waged against him by Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party, and the neocons. They have invented a so-called narrativea narrative or a concoction of liesas to why Hillary Clinton lost the election, which says she did not lose because she represents the paradigm which leaves a large portion of the people behind, or because she was too arrogant to even travel to campaign among the deplorables in the Rust Belt. But rather, that Trump won the election because Putin helped him do so, by having Russian hackers tamper with Democratic Party emails. What is naturally omitted is what was in the emailsnamely, that the Democratic Party put Bernie Sanders at a disadvantage and gave preference to Hillary Clinton entirely illegally, and also the speech that Hillary gave to the Wall Street bankers, which only then was made known. But several members of the intelligence community, the whistleblowerssuch as William Binney, who developed the NSA surveillance program and thus knows exactly how it functionshave said: No, it is totally clear that if it was Russian hacking, the NSA could have identified the server from which it came with no problem. But these are leaksthat is, the disclosure of classified information to the publicand the question is, who could have done it. The U.S. intelligence services have very obviously concocted dossiers on Trump, with the aid of British intelligenceand not just former MI6 agent Christopher Steelethat were then leaked to the public. The possibility that the British equivalent of the NSA, the GCHQ, did the work for the American intelligence services is now also being investigated. Congress is now investigating everything, and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes, has just said that there is so far only one visible bona fide criminal act, and that is the illegal release of informationand not some hacking. If you read Bild-Zeitung, you read exactly the oppositethat a Watergate is underway and the like. But that will be further investigated. Nunes will hold a closed hearing with the cooperation of the NSA and the non-cooperation of the FBI and CIA. A few days ago, a leading journalist from a public broadcaster told me that there is an internal watchword that no program on Trump may be presented without the inclusion of derogatory remarks. Where does this whole dynamic come from? Is it, as the French intelligence services suspected after Trumps election, that the old Establishment is afraid of losing its privileges, and thus its income stream? Or is there a deeper cause? Obviously I am of the second view, that the conflict concerns what Friedrich Listthe German economist who spent several years in Americaidentified in his time as the total conflict between the British System of Economy and the American System of Economy. The British system is based on free trade, buying cheap and selling dear, control of raw materials, the cheapest possible labor force, the least possible social support, and control of trade. Contrasted to that is the American System, which actually goes back to Alexander Hamiltonthe idea that the real source of wealth is the creativity of the labor force, and that therefore an economy requires the defense of the internal market with protectionist measures, and the maximum development of its own labor force. The American System also includes the national bank, created by Alexander Hamilton, and a credit system dedicated to the general welfare, which includes investments in the real economy, such as infrastructure and scientific and technological progress, with the goal of raising productivity. That is exactly the policy that was carried out by Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Quincy Adams, Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, and to which Trump just now explicitly referred. You should remember: The American Revolution, or the American War of Independence, was fought against the British Empire, with the goal of achieving the right of Americans to have their own manufactures, a right which their colonial master had denied. And the British Empire has never gotten over the loss of its most important colonies, namely those in America, but has constantly tried with all means at its disposal to reverse this process, first through the War of 1812; then through the Civil War against Lincoln, during which Britain was tacitly allied with the southern states, and which was also financed by the British interestGeneral Lee got money directly from banks in Boston and Philadelphia [that financed the cotton trade for Britain]. After the British lost the Civil War against Lincoln, they considered it impossible to win the United States back militarily, but they now had to try subversion, in other words, the open conspiracy (as H.G. Wells called it) to persuade the American establishment to create a unipolar world on the basis of the Anglo-American Special Relationshipa world empire. That was the case between Churchill and Truman, Bush senior and Thatcher, Blair and Bush junior, and Cameron and Obama. In Germany this subject is as little known as is the fact that Bismarck developed the German economy from a feudal state to an industrial nation within a few years on the basis of the American System of economy, because he had learned the theories of Henry C. Carey. This was due to the fact that the head of the German Industrial Association at the time, Wilhelm von Kardorff, was a fierce advocate of Friedrich List and Henry Carey; he took the example of American industrialization under Lincoln as a model for the transformation of Germany. He then wrote a small but very readable book entitled, Gegen den Strom [Against the Current], in which the difference between the American and British systems is very well explained. The New Silk Road There is also a dynamic that, if America returns to its roots and wants, above all, to put relations with Russia and China on a positive basis, essentially everything will be possible. And the potential is absolutely there, because, as I said, the New Silk Road is not only a link between Chongqing and Duisburg, or Yiwu to Hamburg, but there is considerably more in the pipeline. We are not passive observers. We claim the New Silk Road also as our baby, because it is based on the conception which we proposed after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and on which we have worked for the past 26 years. [Figure 1] FIGURE 1 View full size The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridgethats the name of a study which we have published in English, Arabic, and Chineseand which will very soon be published in German. And if you look at how this concept, which Xi Jinping presented for the first time in Kazakhstan in 2013, has exploded over the past three and a half years, then you can see that a total transformation is underway. FIGURE 2 View full size Part of the Silk Road [Figure 2] is the Maritime Silk Road of the 21st Century in the tradition of Admiral Zheng He, who travelled from the Asian Pacific to Venice and to Africa in the 15th Century. Today the ports of all of these Asian states are linked to each other, and further, are linked to Hamburg and Rotterdam. The Silk Road includes six economic corridors. More than 70 nations comprising 4.4 billion people are taking part, and $21 trillion in investments are planned. FIGURE 3 View full size The corridors are growing rapidly. This [Figure 3] is an arrangement among China, Mongolia, and Russia, decided upon during the 2016 meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, that encompasses 32 projects. These [Figure 4] are the Silk Road trains going daily from Chinese cities such as Yiwu, Xian, and Chongqing, to Duisburg, Lyon, Hamburg, and Rotterdam. A train travels daily from Chongqing to Europe. FIGURE 4 View full size This [Figure 5] was the original idea for linking China with Central and West Asian countries. FIGURE 5 View full size This [Figure 6] is a corridor through Bangladesh, India, China, and Myanmar, which means a total transformation of this region of the world. FIGURE 6 View full size This [Figure 7] is the New Eurasian Land-Bridge. FIGURE 7 View full size There are also several components of the Silk Road that are growing insanely fast. For Africa, this development is a total novelty, because the banks which China and the BRICS countries founded, were created with the explicit aim of compensating for the lack of investment in infrastructure by the IMF, World Bank, and others over the last decades; these new banks are exclusively for investment in infrastructure, not speculation. About four weeks ago, Ethiopias first railroadfrom the capital Addis Ababa to Djiboutiwent into operation; it was ready to go last fall, but was then tested and upgraded with security measures. Meanwhile another railroad is under construction, from Rwanda to Uganda to the Congo. Here [Figure 8] is another project, Transaqua, which Lyndon LaRouche and the Schiller Institute have campaigned for, for 40 years. It was originally developed by Italian engineers, and the idea is that man can reverse the drying-up of Lake Chad. Lake Chad has dried up to about 10 percent of its original capacity. You can redirect unused water-flow from the Congo region, at approximately 500 meters altitudenot only the actual waters of the Congo River, but the Congos tributariesthrough a river and canal system into Lake Chad, and thus create arable production through irrigation for twelve adjacent states, and thereby begin the industrialization of Africa. FIGURE 8 View full size This project was recently surveyed for the first time by a Chinese firm, Power China, the same firm that made the Three Gorges Dam a reality. A feasibility study is now under way, and that will lead very soon to allowing 100 billion cubic meters of water to flow into Lake Chad per year. This [Figure 9] is the comprehensive program for South America. The blue line is a program that Lyndon LaRouche proposed in the late 1970s, along with former Mexican President Jose Lopez Portillo, but it was not carried out because of sabotage by Brazil and Argentina. But now this proposal for a transcontinental Bioceanic railroad to Peru is part of the New Silk Road. One positive development is that for the first time, Germany will also participate by investing in the construction of another stretch of the rail in Bolivia. So that is a small glimmer of light. FIGURE 9 View full size The whole conception of the New Silk Road has exploded over the last six months. Initially Russia was very skeptical. The Central Asian nations were skeptical, or have argued, Should the rail lines be built from West to East, or East to Westor from North to South? But now everything has been resolved with good will. On September 2 and 3 of last year, the integration of the New Silk Road with the Eurasian Economic Union took place at a huge economic forum in Vladivostok, where Japan also joined in, with huge investments in the Russian Far East. This process advanced at the G20 Summit in Hangzhou at the beginning of September, then advanced further at the ASEAN meeting in Laos. China clearly took leadership of this process as early as the G20 Summit, at which it said that it wanted to immediately base the world economy on innovation, and to enlist the developing countries in scientific and technological breakthroughs, so that their development will no longer be delayed. China has declared its intention to overcome poverty on the entire planet by the year 2025. The process advanced further at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in Lima, Peru in November of last year, and now even some western think tanks have realized that their former negative evaluation is no longer appropriate. For example, PricewaterhouseCoopers produced a comprehensive study in which it said that at present the Chinese economy is the locomotive of the world economy, and will remain so. Forbes Magazine has had about seven relatively objective articles on the range of projects. This is an unstoppable dynamic, it says. And, as I said, President Trump has invited President Xi Jinping to his estate of Mar-a-Lago in Florida on April 6-7, and there is every indication that the Chinese are prepared to make huge investments in the construction of U.S. infrastructure. There was a conference in Hongkong at which Chinese economists said that Americas infrastructure deficit is not one trillion dollars, but eight trillion. Japan has already said that it wants to participate with $150 billion in the development of American high-speed rail. China has said many timesfor example, Deputy Foreign Minister Madame Fu Ying, the most important woman in China, has said itthat the Silk Road can be the bridge between America and the Eurasian Silk Road, through development of American infrastructure. Thus there are very, very hopeful events in process. A Question of the Image of Man Why is this so enormously important? The entire trans-Atlantic world has been dominated over the last decades by the paradigm of closed systems and zero growth. Take a step back: In the 1950s and 60s, it was perfectly self-evident that poverty in the Third World would be overcome somehow. Then there were the UN Development Decades, in which we would set goals for ten years at a time, then for the next ten years, in order to finally and totally eliminate poverty and underdevelopment on this planet. But this normal, humanistic orientation was discontinued by a whole array of propaganda measures. Probably the most serious was the publication of the Club of Romes book Limits to Growth in 1972. Authors Forrester and Meadows simply determined a desired result, and then programmed their computer model so it came out exactly that way. They used linear equations to get this result, and perpetrated an absolute swindle: They completely left out the idea of scientific and technological progress, and the resulting redefinition of raw materials and production methods. With great fanfare, this book was translated and distributed in all languages, and presented this basic idea: The world was developing up until 1971, and now we have reached a point of equilibrium; we approached it asymptotically, and now we must be sustainable. Now we must conserve; above all, we must conserve energy, and there will be no more technological progress, but rather appropriate technologywhich is then translated as no technology. With this went the idea that we are an Earth-bound system, and that overpopulation is the greatest problem, because people are actually parasites who are a burden on the environment, and the less people, the better. Now these were not totally new ideas, because this issue was implicitly the subject of the American Revolution. In 1751 Benjamin Franklin wrote an essay entitled, Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, in which he argued this: The more people there are, the better, because each person brings his own creative potential with him to human society, and thus enriches society overall. Thomas Malthus, who wrote An Essay on the Principle of Population, embodied the opposite view; as is well known, he had the idea that the numbers of people increase faster than the improvements in agriculture needed to sustain them, and thus the population must always be reduced. And just like all the other British economistsAdam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, David Ricardohe worked for the British East India Company, which earned its riches through trading in slaves and opium. Therefore, what was really at issuethen, and especially nowis the image of man. Lyndon LaRouche has written a great deal about that. I would like you to read my husbands articles, because he has worked out in the clearest way where mankinds creative potential lies. In contrast to all other living species and animals, which are also intelligent, man is the only species which can renew the basis for his existence through scientific and technological progress. LaRouche has presented the relationship between relative potential population density and specifically, the energy-flux density used in production processes. There one can see clearly that since the time when men were mere hunters and gatherers, and the energy-flux density of his technologies was extremely low (sun and wind energy), man has been able to increase in numbers by many orders of magnitude due to the increase in energy-flux density, and has a much better living standard, a higher life expectancy, and all told, more human potential. And the next step is already within reach, because China has taken the lead in developing the EAST Fusion program, and has the idea of very soon mining the Moon for helium-3 as a raw material for the coming fusion economy on Earth. Ehricke and the Next Stage in Evolution What does all this have to do with Krafft Ehricke? Ehricke stated very clearly that the opening up of space and its colonization are the necessary next steps in the evolution of mankind. He developed in a wonderful way how life went from the oceans to the continents with the help of photosynthesis, which he described interestingly as the first industrial revolution, which overcame the limits to growth of the time. He described how creatures which were higher on the evolutionary scale, whose metabolisms had a higher energy-flux density, developed until finally man appeared. And man is absolutely different from all previous forms of life because, according to Ehricke, he has something that he calls information metabolismthe ability to absorb information, to differentiate different aspects of it through abstraction, then accumulate it and make use of it both with mind and with machines. He emphasizes that animals are doubtless intelligent, that they can even learn incredible things, such as how to manipulate human beings, which requires a high level of intelligence. But no animal is capable of abstraction, while man can overcome any limitation. His three fundamental laws of astronautics were already mentioned this morning: The first law is that, under the natural law of this universe, nothing and no one imposes any restrictions on man, except man himself. This is very, very important, for this is the image of man that was once the norm in Europe. This is identical with humanism, with the Classical idea, which is in turn identical with Platonic philosophy and Christianity, which regards man as a boundlessly perfectible being, both with regard to his mental faculties and his character, and with regard to his emotions and his aesthetic development, there are just as few bounds. This was the normal image of Man, and if you read, for example, Plato, Augustine, Nicholas of Cusa, Leibniz, or Kepler, then you will find precisely this image. Today, unfortunately, it is no longer self-evident, but Krafft Ehricke said that the human mind can ceaselessly metabolize information from the infinitesimal to the infinite and, on the infrastructure of knowledge, pursues its moral and social aspirations for a larger and better world against many odds. Through intelligences like ourselves, the universe, and we in it, move into the focus of self-recognition; metal ore is turned into information processing computers, satellites and deep-space probes; and atoms are fused as in stars. And then he says, I cannot imagine a more foreboding, apocalyptic vision of the future than a mankind endowed with cosmic powers but condemned to solitary confinement on one small planet. That is very true. Krafft was inspired as a twelve-year-old boy when he saw Fritz Langs film, The Woman on the Moon. He also enormously inspired my husband, who then made another documentary, The Woman on Mars. It was this idea that man can leave the Earths surface, travel in space, and settle other heavenly bodies that fascinated him. It has already been mentioned that he was present in Peenemundehe was just 25 years oldwhen the first rocket successfully lifted off from Earth on October 3, 1942, and went into space. He was only a hundred yards away, watching the countdown, the ignition, and then the giant roar as the rocket achieved liftoff. And he said, This was an indescribable feeling, which we all had, we were absolutely conscious that this was the beginning of a new epoch, the first day of the Space Age, the beginning of a completely new era. Krafft Ehricke defined the extraterrestrial imperative as the true identity of humanity. He said that the colonization of the Moon is the obvious first step because it is very close, it takes only two or three days to get there, and now its even less, and we can essentially practice on the Moon what we will later do on other planets. And what we can do on the Moon, we can do everywhere. He thought that the colonization of the Moon would take the reverse direction to the evolution on Earth, where the biosphere first developed and then, in a late phase, man had emerged, while on the Moon it would be the other way round: The arrival of man, and then the conditions for his existence. In the first phase, man would bring materials from Earth to the Moon; the second phase would involve the industrialization of the Moon using available resources; and the third would be interplanetary journeys from which new human civilizations would emerge, with completely different characteristics than civilization on Earth. And he then gave an example of his own extra-europeanization, as he called it, to illustrate this difference. He said he grew up in Germany, and received a wonderful Classical education. European culture was what shaped him, and when he then emigrated to the United States with his wife, he met a completely different sort of people there, Americans. His children were quite well Americanized, but still had characteristics of the culture of their parents from Germany, whereas his grandchildren were so Americanized that no difference could be discerned. And he says the same thing will happen in future civilizations in space: The population on the Moon will have completely different physiological and immunological characteristics than the people on Earth. The New Paradigm What is being presented here is really the new paradigm that comes from the continuous development of the human species. Chinese President Xi Jinping has often described it as a community of destiny for the future of mankind, in which the common goals of mankind come first, and the interests of the individual nations come second. This is precisely the principle of win-win cooperation, a confluence of different corridors that benefit from improvements in all of the participating countries because it makes no sense to build a railway from one city to another, and then stop, but rather these systems should be integrated to the advantage of all. Chinas State Councilor Yang Jiechi recently said at the National Peoples Congress in Beijing that the New Silk Road is not a solo for China, but rather a symphony in which all the peoples and nations participate. I am absolutely convinced of this, perhaps because I have the advantage of having been in China for the first time in 1971, in the midst of the horrific Cultural Revolution that made people very unhappy. Compared to that, one can see the enormous development that China has made over the last 40 years, or especially the last 30 years, in which it has replicated a development that took 200 years in the other industrial nations. And this Chinese model of economy is so successful that it is now offered as the New Silk Road for all other states to replicate. Thus we have, for the first time, a chance to overcome poverty and all limitations. All this is based on the ideas of Confucius. I am truly convinced that China is 95% Confucian, and perhaps 5% Marxist or Communistthe essence of China, the Chinese system, is Confucian thought. This includes, for example, lifelong self-improvement, lifelong learningthat every human being should strive to be a Zhizhe, a wise person, and the wise should also define the governing process. Harmony should take place in the development of all, in the family, in the state, and among states. These are ideas that are not only Chinese, but which also belong to the best European tradition, for example, to Nicholas of Cusa, the founder of modern natural sciences in the fifteenth century, who had the idea that harmony in the macrocosm can only exist when all microcosms develop harmoniously, and every microcosm sees it as its own advantage to promote the other microcosms in the best possible way. And that is the concept. This means that geopolitics can be overcome by putting the development of all on the agenda. I am absolutely convinced that if there is a good understanding between Trump and Xi Jinping and Trump and Putinand that is Trumps stated intention, and this is clearly signaled by the Russian and Chinese sidesthen we will really find ourselves in a new phase of the human species and will experience a new era. The Role of Germany The question is, What role should Germany play in this process? Well, those of you who live in Germany know, of course, that this is not the dominant way of thinking here. But I think that the New Silk Road has such leverage that either Germany will have second thoughts and jump on board, or Germany and the Europeans will become completely irrelevant. And this is what the Africans already say: The Chinese, the Indians, the Japanese are all investing in Africa, while Europe comes and preaches about democracy and human rights, but they are not investing in these projects. Perhaps I should bring up this picture [Figure 10] once again: The refugee crisis should be the moral driver for us to adhere to this development perspective. It is only if we develop Africatogether with Russia, China, India, and other countries, hopefully with the United Statesand only if we develop the Middle East and Southwest Asia economically, in the context of the New Silk Road, that we can hope to find a humane solution to the refugee crisis and certainly not by internment camps in Turkey or Egypt or Tunisia, as Mrs. Merkel is attempting to do. FIGURE 10 View full size Federal Ministry for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs The question is also: Will Mrs. Merkel really be the leader of the free West because Trump is now President of the United States? Will she continue the confrontation with Russia if Trump seeks reconciliation? Will she continue to push the confrontation to the borders of Russia? Will she continue to participate in interventionist wars to save democracy? No one believes us anyway. The countries of Asia and Africa have long since ceased to believe that Europe or the EU are an appropriate model for democracy or human rights. Or can we not hope that Germany will play a positive role in the expansion of the New Silk Road? I think that Krafft Ehrickethe image of Man and the vision of the future which he representsshould be the best example for the future of Germany. For Germans were once a people of poets, thinkers, and inventors. And all the many positive contributions made by these many, many great thinkers have irrigated the German economy, the middle class, our standard of living, and culture. And it was this culture that brought forth Krafft Ehricke. Why should not it be possible to revive these ideas?the ideas of Nicholas of Cusa, Kepler, Leibniz, Gauss, Riemann, Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Lessing, Mendelssohn, Schiller, the Humboldts, and the classical culture that Krafft Ehricke represented! And not just for Germany, but in a dialogue of cultures, in which the most beautiful formation, the highest form, enters into a dialogue with the others. We heard it this morning, through German classical music, through classical Chinese music, and that too belongs to the new paradigm, that every child will very soon get to know universal history as it has appeared in all its best forms, and then racism and chauvinism and limitations of all kinds will disappear forever. PRESS RELEASE Russias UN Deputy Envoy Slams Obama Policy over Syria Chemical Attack; Kremlins Peskov Warns of Provocation April 6, 2017 (EIRNS)Russias Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, Vladimir Safronkov, slammed the Obama Administrations policy for the chemical attack provocations in Syria, placing the real blame for the hoked-up crisis where it should be. "The former U.S. Administrations so-called red lines, which should have triggered a military interference in the internal Syrian conflict if crossed, marked a watershed in the history of toxic chemicals in Syria and followed by full-blown poisonous substances," Safronkov said. "That decision became a pivot for further provocations by terrorist and extremist bodies, with the use of chemical weapons." The Wests interest in incidents with chemical weapons "unfortunately has a well-defined ideological slant," he added. "We can say that it is inextricably interwoven with the fabric of anti-Damascus campaign that is still dragging its feet towards the dustbin of history it deserves." "At the time, our Western partners preferred to keep silent, including over the request from Damascus submitted in March 2013 to investigate the use by militants of the sarin nerve agent in an attack on Aleppos outskirts," Safronkov said. "We are hopeful it will not be repeated this time." Russian Presidential spokesman Dimitry Peskov in a statement on April 6 said that accusations against the Syrian government are being made with insufficient and unreliable evidence, and he warned of possible provocation. "No doubt, forces exist that are pushing for de-legitimization of the lawful leadership of the Syrian Arab Republic. And there exist the forces of terrorism and those who support terrorists," Peskov replied to a question about who, in his opinion, stood to gain from exploiting the situation. "This was a dangerous and monstrous crime, but it would be incorrect to hang labels [to identify those who did it]," Peskov told reporters on a conference call. Peskov said evidence about the incident provided by the White Helmets civil defense group could not be considered reliable, saying: "We do not agree with these conclusions." "Immediately after the tragedy no one had access to this region.... Any data which the U.S. side or our colleagues from other countries might have had access to could not have been based on objective facts," Peskov told reporters. "The main idea is to refrain from hasty conclusions," Peskov told journalists. "We need information exchange, to verify the facts and to draw conclusions only after that, but not before. Any conclusion drawn before such exchange of information would be certainly viewed as a conclusion which does not reflect the reality." Peskov also said that the disagreement was unlikely to change the nature of ties between Russia and the United States. John Rechy, his skin still beautifully burnished and brown when I saw him last year, his forearms still powerful, his words unfurling with precise irony and humor, is a writer Ive been thinking about in the evening while looking at the horizon just after the sun has hesitated in the western sky. I was only 18 when I read City of Night, and Rechys fictional view of Los Angeles was one of three that made me believe I too might write about the places in Southern California I hadnt seen in print. (The other two, Wanda Coleman and Carolyn See, we lost last year, and their books I turn to as well.) Rechy had actually written his first novel before City of Night, and last year the Los Angeles Review of Books published a piece of it. Pablo! he called it, probably the bleakest book I ever wrote, and I wrote it when I was 18. He sent it to Grove a New York publishing house he admired cold, not admitting his age, and it was rejected. He rewrote it, sent it again, and was rejected. He went then into the military, serving in the 101st Airborne Division, and did not want to stay in the place where he was born. That was El Paso. Rechy grew up impoverished, with a furiously abusive father born in Mexico who claimed multiple European heritages and pasts and a beautiful mother who loved her children but couldnt protect them from that violence. Like so many writers, Rechy discovered himself through books and film. (His first real attempt at fiction, written when he was 14, was to defend the beautiful Marie Antoinette.) In an interview, he joked, Every writer has to say, We were really poor! Rechys native city was the crossroads of America and Mexico, of race and class. Advertisement Rechys art has always been about power in various incarnations. He went to New York, tried to take a writing course with Pearl S. Buck, was rejected, and, not diminished in ambition, took out an ad in the New York Times as an ex-Army man whod written a novel, seeking employment. He lived in a building called the Casbah and answered the hallway phone for an interview after the ad was published. He arrived at an elegant address, and the editor appeared in a bathrobe, clearly interested not in the novel but the writer. To escape, Rechy, then 21, told the editor he was 17. Pablo! was never published as a book, but City of Night was bought by Grove, published when Rechy was 31, and remains an iconic look at the life of certain men in various locations. Here is his L.A.: Southern California, which is shaped somewhat like a coffin, is a giant sanatorium with flowers where people come to be cured of life itself in whatever way This is the last stop before the sun gives up and sinks down into the black, black ocean and night usually starless here comes down. The first-person narrator heads to Main Street: Instantly, I recognize the vagrant youngmen dotting those places: the motorcyclists without bikes, the cowboys without horses, awol servicemen or on leave. Rechys art has always been about power in various incarnations: the power of class and race, of the body and the intellectual, of the way strength and violence work in American landscapes as varied as a dirt yard in El Paso to an apartment in New York to the streets of Los Angeles. But his newest novel, After the Blue Hour, just published by Grove, is set in a completely different landscape a remote, privately owned island, amid the manipulative swirls of power in one assemblage of people making cynical fun of being a family. The first-person narrator in After the Blue Hour is named John Rechy, is 24 years old in 1960, when the novel is set, a serviceman so recently discharged from the Army that arriving on the island where hes been invited by Paul Wagner, he carries only a military duffel and wears uniform khakis. In eerie echo, Paul wears the khakis of a man who vacations on a private island, and the duality of these men is played out over the course of many dusks and nights filled with intellectual combat and then increasingly graphic and violent sexual gamesmanship. Even Stanty, Pauls entitled and disdainful 14-year-old son, engages in instant competition upon meeting the narrator, asking whether Rechys real name is John or Juan. I didnt change my name a grammar-school teacher couldnt pronounce it its Spanish. Mexican, I clarified. She changed it to John. Actually, Johnny, though I didnt tell him. I marvel that, having just turned 85, he continues to write with such elegance and lyricism, descending into raw scenes of human longing and violence. Why didnt you change it back, then? Was it because you dont look like a Mexican and didnt want to be? the boy says, with meanness, and their own battles begin, eventually ending in physical and sexual confrontation as well. Constantinople, the boys real name, is the son of one of two wealthy women whose family money has allowed Paul, a hustler himself, to become a scion of nothing, father and son whose lives stand in eerie echo to current one-percenters on actual and mythical islands upon which humans like the narrator are amusement and conquest. The other resident is Sonya, a tanned, powerless beauty actually called Beauty by Paul, who bought her after a runway show. These four people engage in battle at a particular time on their inland island, far from the sea: Its not an hour at all, just a few seconds of blue light between dusk and night, I said. They say everything is both clearest and most obscure a light that challenges perception, revealing and hiding. Rechy, the writer, has since the earliest in his long career given readers that hour, the dusk and twilight and melding when people change their natures, and I marvel that, having just turned 85, he continues to write with such elegance and lyricism, descending into raw scenes of human longing and violence. I return to the early pages of City of Night: When I was about eight years old, my father taught me this: He would say to me: Give me a thousand, and I knew this meant I should hop on his lap and then he would fondle me intimately and hed give me a penny, sometimes a nickel. At times when his friends old gray men came to our house, they would ask for a thousand. And I would jump on their laps too. And I would get nickel after nickel. On the island, in the dark, Paul has waited for days to reveal what he wants from the narrator John Rechy, tanned dark, poor, absolutely his equal at quoting from memory literature and philosophy, and the denouement is terrifying not because it is unexpected but because Paul has determined that he will retain the ultimate power. Pauls misogyny, racism and cruelty obviously come from childhood violence as well, but his entire being is one Rechy the writer has been portraying in his fiction for all these years, as well as anyone writes about human frailty and desire: Power, of course, man, sexual power. You wanted power over willing victims, Paul says to Rechy, the hustler, the observer, the narrator of this story and all the others given to readers by a mind so singularly attuned to the layers and landscapes of American life. Last year, Rechy said, upon receiving an award, Autobiographers are the biggest liars in the constellation of liars. He refers to fiction as both factual and fraudulent, but I look out into the California dusk and think he is always writing about how we negotiate with each other, how we maintain the facades of triumph, and how his language remains lapidary and hypnotic, never fading in its own control. Susan Straights most recent novels are A Million Nightingales, Take One Candle Light a Room and Between Heaven and Here the Rio Seco Trilogy. Her memoir will be published this fall. After the Blue Hour By John Rechy Grove Atlantic: 224 pp., $25 Uber told a federal judge Friday that it didnt use stolen trade secrets for its driverless car project, and therefore the court shouldnt force the company to cease that work. Waymo, the driverless car arm of Google, sued Uber in February, accusing it of using trade secrets that had been smuggled away by former Waymo employee Anthony Levandowski. He is now in charge of developing self-driving cars at Uber. Waymo had asked U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup to halt Ubers driverless car project until the case is settled. Advertisement The secrets are related to lidar, a technology that uses laser beams to detect objects and send the images to the self-driving cars computer for processing. It is a key element in autonomous car development. Uber is playing defense on the trade-secrets lawsuit as it reels from a drumbeat of scandals that have pounded its public image this year. In January the company faced customer backlash because of a corporate tweet. It was delivered right after the Trump administrations controversial travel ban. There was plenty of chatter on social channels over whether Uber was using the event to undermine a protest strike by taxi drivers. In February, former Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. was brought in to investigate accusations of systemic gender discrimination and cover-ups at the ride-hailing firm. Later that month, a viral video of Uber Chief Executive Travis Kalanick showed him denigrating an Uber driver who dared to question company policies. The 40-year-old company founder later vowed to grow up. Since its founding in 2009, Uber has been embroiled in controversy for its aggressive tactics and pugilistic attitude toward laws and regulations. In a hearing Thursday, Alsup indicated that hes predisposed to believe Waymos allegation pending evidence to the contrary, and summed up the case this way: Right now the record available to the court under oath is pretty convincing that Mr. Levandowski downloaded 14,000 documents, wiped his computer clean, transferred those documents to a thumb drive and took that thumb drive with him when he went to start a new company. Levandowski has invoked the 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination, according to his lawyer, who said Levandowski could face criminal charges. Last year, he quit Google to found a self-driving truck company, Otto, which was later bought by Uber. Ubers defense team suggested Friday that Google and Waymo are turning to the courts to slow down a competitors progress. Waymos injunction motion is a misfire, Angela Padilla, associate general counsel at Uber, said in a prepared statement. If Waymo genuinely thought that Uber was using its secrets, it would not have waited more than five months to seek an injunction. Waymo doesnt meet the high bar for an injunction, which would stifle our independent innovation probably Waymos goal in the first place. From the bench, Alsup has blasted Uber for insufficient cooperation with his order to search company and employee computers for copies of the documents. Also on Thursday, the judge said hed allow experts chosen by Waymo to examine Ubers technology to check for stolen design. Waymo is especially protective of trade secrets on its lidar technology. Major automakers purchase lidar systems from outside vendors for the autonomous systems they are developing. Google believes that developing proprietary lidar will give it a technology advantage over competitors including Tesla, which has said that its cameras and radars suffice and that it doesnt need lidar. russ.mitchell@latimes.com Twitter: @russ1mitchell The parent company of KFC announced it will stop buying chicken that is raised using antibiotics that are important to human medicine. The move by the giant fast-food chicken chain comes after years of pressure from food safety and consumer advocacy groups, and two years after other industry leaders such as McDonalds, Chick-fil-A, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell made similar pledges to phase out the use of products from animals treated with the antibiotics a practice linked to the rise of super bug pathogens that are resistant to multiple drugs. By the end of 2018, all chicken purchased by KFC in the U.S. will be raised without antibiotics important to human medicine, KFC announced in a statement Friday. This includes our chicken tenders and popcorn chicken; but were especially proud to be the first major chicken chain to extend this commitment to our bone-in chicken. Advertisement The policy change is expected to have a widespread effect on the poultry industry, because KFC owned by Yum Brands buys its chicken from a great many flocks as a food-safety precaution, according to Lena Brook, food policy advocate at the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the groups that pushed for the move. With KFCs shift, more than half of the nations poultry supply chain will be antibiotic-free in the near future, advocates said. This commitment from the nations most iconic fast-food chicken chain will have a major impact on the way the birds are raised in the U.S. and in the fight against the growing epidemic of drug-resistant infections, Brook said. Matthew Wellington, antibiotics program director for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, said the policy change should have lasting effects on the way these life-saving medicines are used in the chicken industry. This announcement is a win for anybody who might someday depend on antibiotics to get well or even save their lives i.e. everybody, Wellington added. Routinely feeding antibiotics to animals raised for food has been linked to the surge in resistant strains of bacteria that cause serious human illnesses, blamed for about 23,000 additional deaths annually and $55 million in healthcare costs, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Earlier this year, Burger King owner Restaurant Brands International pledged to avoid buying poultry that is fed antibiotics considered critically important to human health a more narrow category of drugs than those eliminated by KFC. Two years ago, California poultry producer Foster Farms began eliminating antibiotics from the chicken it sells at supermarkets, following similar steps by fellow poultry giant Perdue, along with restaurant chains McDonalds, Chick-fil-A, Chipotle and Panera, among others. Jean Halloran, director of food policy initiatives for Consumers Union, which also supported the KFC move, called on other fast-food chains to follow its lead. Antibiotics should only be used to treat disease and not wasted on healthy livestock to make them grow faster or to compensate for filthy conditions on factory farms, Halloran said. Its time for all fast-food restaurants to help ensure antibiotics keep working by rejecting meat and poultry suppliers who misuse these vital drugs. geoffrey.mohan@latimes.com Follow me: @LATgeoffmohan MORE BUSINESS NEWS Space start-ups get their Shark Tank moment U.S. employers add just 98,000 jobs; unemployment rate falls to 4.5% 23andMe gets FDA permission to tell customers about disease risks in their genes One thing is becoming clear in the escalating fight between Los Angeles billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong and Tronc Chairman Michael Ferro: The newspaper companys largest publication the Los Angeles Times is at the heart of their dispute. Troncs two largest shareholders have been trading increasingly acrimonious letters through their attorneys in the battle for control of the company, which also owns the Chicago Tribune and San Diego Union-Tribune. In the latest letter filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday, Tronc attorney Yosef Riemer accused Soon-Shiong and his representatives of working to coerce the company into selling [Soon-Shiong] the Los Angeles Times. But the L.A. Times is not for sale. Advertisement The letter states that Soon-Shiong offered to buy The Times in December, but was rebuffed and told he must buy all of Tronc. If [Soon-Shiong] wants to make such a proposal, the board will do its duty and consider it, Riemer wrote. Soon-Shiongs attorney disputed that scenario, saying in a letter Thursday that it was Ferro who approached Soon-Shiong about a possible deal for the L.A. Times. Gabe Kahn, a journalism professor at USC, said the recent back-and-forth could suggest that a negotiation albeit an ugly one is underway. [Ferro] just opened up and said, Im willing to negotiate, but youre going to have to buy the whole package, Kahn said. Riemer also accused Soon-Shiong of organizing a smear campaign and buying Tronc shares without clearance from its top lawyer, in violation of company policy for directors and other insiders. Riemers allegations came in response to a Wednesday letter from John Quinn, an attorney for Soon-Shiong. In that letter, Quinn accused Ferro of attempted self-dealing at Troncs expense. Quinn alleged that Ferro wanted to sell his personal stock holdings in one of Soon-Shiongs companies to Tronc at well above its market price. In exchange for Soon-Shiongs support of the deal, Ferro would persuade the board to grant one of Soon-Shiongs companies 300,000 Tronc shares. Dennis Culloton, a Tronc spokesman, denied the allegation. Soon-Shiong first invested in Tronc last summer, at Ferros urging, to help the company fend off a buyout bid from Gannett Inc. His initial $70.5-million investment gave him a 12.9% stake in the company and a seat on the board. The billionaire biomedical entrepreneur has since increased his holdings to 26.7% and, under an agreement signed with the company last year, cant buy any more shares. He has demanded that he be allowed to buy a 30% stake in the company, the same amount Ferro can own. Ferro currently owns 27.7%. james.koren@latimes.com Follow me: @jrkoren An influential shareholder advisory firm has recommended that Wells Fargo & Co. investors vote against most of the companys incumbent board members in an upcoming election a stinging rebuke that the banks board called extreme and unprecedented. In a report issued Friday, Institutional Shareholder Services said that board members failed to properly oversee the San Francisco bank and could have done more to prevent unsound retail banking sales practices. The firm, which advises big investment firms on corporate governance issues and on how to vote in annual shareholder elections, recommended voting against 12 of the banks 15 board members, including Chairman Stephen Sanger. Advertisement It recommended voting for the remaining three members, all of whom joined the board after the banks unauthorized accounts scandal came to light in September of last year. That includes Timothy Sloan, who joined the board when he was named chief executive in October, and directors Karen Peetz and Ronald Sargent, who joined the board in February. In a response issued Friday, Wells Fargos board said the ISS recommendations fail to account for all the actions the bank and board have taken in the wake of the scandal, in which as many as 2.1 million checking, savings and other accounts were created without customers permission. Those actions include firing several senior managers, canceling pay and bonuses for some executives and scrapping the onerous sales goals that critics blamed for pushing workers to open accounts without authorization. The board also said ISS did not take into account the results of an internal investigation into the banks sales practices and the accounts scandal. The findings of the investigation have not been released, though Wells Fargo officials have said a report will be made available before the companys April 25 shareholder meeting. We strongly disagree with the unwarranted recommendation by ISS to vote against 12 of Wells Fargos 15 directors and urge our shareholders to disregard ISSs director voting recommendations and judge for themselves the findings of the investigation and the strong actions the board has already taken, the boards release said. ISS noted throughout its report that the bank has taken steps to address problems, but emphasized that those steps were taken only after the banks practices were made public in last years $185-million settlement with regulators. The boards actions have been largely reactive, driven by customer complaints and triggered by the consent orders and findings of [regulators], ISS wrote. It went on to say that the failure of various board committees arguably contributed to the hundreds of millions in costs and untold reputational harm at the bank. The report also referenced some of the latest developments in the scandal, including an announcement Monday by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration that Wells Fargo had fired a former manager after he reported potential fraud to the banks ethics hotline. The agency ordered the bank to rehire the manager and pay $5.4 million in back pay, damages and legal costs. Wells Fargo said it will challenge OSHAs decision. Nevertheless, ISS called the case chilling and said it raised grave concerns over processes designed to identify and manage risk at the company. Shareholders have not nominated new candidates to serve on Wells Fargos board, so they only have the option to vote for or against the companys nominees, who must win a majority of the votes cast in the election. Michael Chasalow, a law professor at USC who specializes in business and corporate governance issues, said its unlikely that shareholders will end up booting most of the banks directors from the board. Still, if a significant number of shareholders vote against incumbent board members, it would send a strong message to the bank that shareholders believe that the bank must do more to answer for the accounts scandal and other corporate wrongdoing, he said. This is a little bit of ISS saying, We dont think the board has done enough in the wake of the scandal to take action within the bank, Chasalow said. Maybe what youll see is the board staying in place, but further steps being taken. ISS has also recommended voting in favor of a proposal, submitted by a group of shareholders last month, that calls for Wells Fargo to prepare a comprehensive report on the root causes of the fraudulent activity within the bank. Wells Fargos board has urged shareholders to vote against that proposal, saying such a report would be redundant given the soon-to-be-released report based on the banks own investigation. But ISS noted that because the board has not released that report, and with just a few weeks until Wells Fargos shareholder meeting, it makes sense for shareholders to vote in favor of the proposal. The details and findings of the companys investigation are unknown and will not be publicly disclosed until shortly before this annual meeting, ISS wrote, allowing little or no time for shareholders to compare the scope and findings of that investigation to the comprehensive report proposed by [shareholders]. The board members ISS recommends voting against are all members of the audit, risk and human resources committees, which the advisory firm said failed to provide sufficient timely and effective risk oversight. The members are Sanger, John Baker II, Federico Pena, James Quigley, Susan Swenson, Suzanne Vautrinot, Lloyd H. Dean, Elizabeth Duke, Enrique Hernandez Jr., Cynthia Milligan, John Chen and Donald James. Earlier this week, another shareholder advisory firm, Glass Lewis, recommended voting against four Wells Fargo board members Baker, Dean, Hernandez and Milligan who were members of the banks corporate responsibility committee, which is charged with overseeing reputational risk and customer complaints. Glass Lewis said shareholders should vote against those directors based on the reputational damage inflicted on the company and this committees failure to properly fulfill its stated duties. The firm also recommended voting against board members Chen and Swenson, saying they serve on too many other corporate boards. Shares of the bank closed Friday at $54.84, down 53 cents or about 1%. james.koren@latimes.com Follow me: @jrkoren UPDATES: 3:50 p.m.: This article was updated with names of all board members, comments from Michael Chasalow and details on the Glass Lewis report. This article was originally published at 11:20 a.m. Texas Republican Jeb Hensarling, who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, was trying to be funny. Its the only explanation. Otherwise, were left to assume that Hensarling was being the worlds biggest corporate shill and hypocrite when he accused the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau of abusing his authority. In a contentious hearing this week that bordered on outright abuse, Hensarling told CFPB Director Richard Cordray that the president is clearly justified in dismissing you and I call upon the president yet again to do just that, and to do it immediately. Advertisement American consumers need competitive markets and a cop on the beat to protect them from fraud and deception, he snarled. They dont need Washington elites trampling on their freedom of choice and picking their financial products for them. Make no mistake: Hensarling doesnt give a damn about American consumers and he sure as hell isnt pushing for a cop on the beat to keep banks in line. What he wants is to liberate his deep-pocketed corporate patrons from regulatory oversight thats resulted in billions of dollars being reimbursed to customers. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Hensarling, 59, has been raking in cash from the financial sector since he was first elected to Congress in 2003. The top single donor to his campaign efforts over the years is JPMorgan Chase, which has contributed $106,686. The second-biggest donor is Bank of America, which has ponied up $86,250. Hensarlings third-biggest donor is the rest of the banking industry in the form of the American Bankers Assn., which has given him $85,300. On an industry basis, hes received $1.3 million from commercial banks, $1.4 million from securities and investment firms, $1.4 million from insurers and $703,304 from finance and credit companies. And this is a guy with consumers best financial interests at heart? Jeb Hensarling has a long, long list of contributions from banks and Wall Street firms, Sally Greenberg, executive director of the National Consumers League, told me. He and his committee have set their sights on the CFPB because the CFPB has been so successful at protecting consumers from being ripped off. Since it opened for business in 2011, the bureau says it has recovered about $12 billion fleeced from consumers via illegal and questionable financial practices. It has overseen a revamping of mortgage rules, proposed new regulations for payday lenders and held dozens of firms accountable for fiscal misdeeds. I contacted the Financial Services Committee and said that a consumer advocate had suggested Hensarling might be influenced by his industry ties. I asked if theyd like to respond. Sarah Rozier, a committee spokeswoman, first wanted me to name the consumer advocate, although why that should matter was a mystery. All she had to do was say, no, Hensarling isnt influenced by the millions of dollars hes received from financial firms. So I passed along Greenbergs name and, an hour later, Rozier sent an email dismissing Greenbergs organization as a liberal group backed by labor unions. Instead of explicitly denying that Hensarling is influenced by the money he gets from financial firms, Rozier said that Chairman Hensarling led the fight against the Wall Street bailout in Congress. She also said that legislation proposed by Hensarling would impose the toughest penalties in history for those who commit fraud and insider trading. Um, OK. Hensarling and his Republican colleagues, in their first face-to-face encounter with Cordray since the November election, spent nearly five hours on Wednesday treating the CFPB chief like a pinata. The tone for the beat down was set early when Hensarling said he was surprised that Cordray had shown up, even though the CFPB director is required to do so twice a year when the House Financial Services Committee requests his presence, which it did. In his next breath, Hensarling told Cordray, a former Ohio attorney general, that hed half-expected him to be in his home state running for governor, which he isnt. Perhaps the rumors of your political aspirations are greatly exaggerated, Hensarling remarked. Republicans feel that Cordray has too much power and acts with impunity. Theyre emboldened by a recent court ruling that declared the CFPBs leadership structure unconstitutional. However, that decision will be revisited by the U.S. Court of Appeals. This tyranny must end, Hensarling declared at Wednesdays hearing, reaching deep into his muddy bucket of hyperbole. He and other Republicans want to replace the bureaus single director with a more easily influenced committee and want to control the CFPBs budget, which of course would make it vulnerable to industry lobbying. After the Republicans had taken turns getting in their licks, frequently denying Cordray a chance to respond, Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Mass.) commented, Boy, they really hate you, dont they? Cordray replied that its part of the game. Its not a game. If the CFPB were derelict in its mission of consumer protection, lawmakers would have every right to demand changes. But the bureaus track record is one of unqualified success much to the consternation of big-money banks and financial firms. Chairman Hensarling is furious at the CFPB because its working, protecting consumers and holding banks and lenders accountable for their actions, said Christine Hines, legislative director for the National Assn. of Consumer Advocates. Hes made it clear that his leadership on the Financial Services Committee is strictly for the industrys benefit, she said. Of all House members running for reelection last year, Hensarling was the second-largest recipient of contributions from commercial banks ($274,900), topped only by Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan ($344,399), the Center for Responsive Politics found. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) seemed to put his finger on things when he told Cordray that this weeks hearing was little more than political theater. Its not really about any of this stuff, he said. Its about the CFPB diverting money to the pockets of working Americans and not financial interests. You can take that to the bank. David Lazarus column runs Tuesdays and Fridays. He also can be seen daily on KTLA-TV Channel 5 and followed on Twitter @Davidlaz. Send your tips or feedback to david.lazarus@latimes.com. When the expedition of Spanish explorer Gaspar de Portola came upon the confluence of the Arroyo Seco and Los Angeles River in 1769 their first sight of water after many days of trekking west across the dusty floor of the San Gabriel Valley the scene that greeted them moved Fray Juan Crespi to record that the area was a very spacious valley, well grown with cottonwoods and alders, among which ran a beautiful river. It was a colonial expedition, and the same diaries that were full of evocative descriptions of natural beauty also contained the cold language of conquest. The ability of the land to support a large settlement was duly noted, as was the presence of the native peoples who welcomed the Spaniards with gifts of shells. The site of their camp became a place of transit. The San Fernando Road would be built to connect the pueblo of Los Angeles to the mission in the fertile valley to the north. Then came a stage line and then a railroad, which brought with it the first real estate boom. Advertisement In the 1880s the area would become the community of Cypress Park, and its streetcar connections and proximity to downtown brought suburbanization to the formerly agricultural land. The Southern Pacific Railroad built the mighty Taylor Yard along the banks of the Los Angeles River, and the bulk of L.A.s freight train traffic flowed through Cypress Park for the better part of 40 years. Changing technology led to the disappearance of 5,000 railroad jobs based in the yards over a period of slow decline, until it closed for good in the 1980s. By that time the freeway had become ascendant in L.A. The 5 and the 110 freeways, which follow the course of the river and arroyo, respectively, were built to intersect where the bodies of water meet, near what was Portolas camp. They carried freight and residents out of the city and into the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys. After experiencing decades of economic dislocation in the wake of the areas deindustrialization, Cypress Park is once again moving to the center of things. Efforts to restore the Los Angeles River through expanded parkland are gathering steam, and a new bridge connecting Cypress Park to the Elysian Valley has finally been completed. Most recently, news that Zillow named Cypress Park the hottest neighborhood in L.A. got property values moving up and to the right, along with fears that longtime residents were facing the potential loss of their homes to rising rents. Neighborhood highlights A river renaissance: With the recent purchase of a key riverfront section of the old Taylor Yard, L.A. is now set to restore a mile-long stretch of the rio to something approaching its former glory. A renovators dream: Cypress Park has a wide range of historic housing styles, including American Revival cottages and Craftsman and Mediterranean Revival homes. Downtown-adjacent: For those who want to enjoy the fruits of downtowns revival while owning a home instead of a condo, Cypress Parks close-in location and Gold Line access are a plus. A mom and her toddler give the swings a workout at Rio de Los Angeles State Park. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) Neighborhood challenges Gentrification blues: Cypress Park is 82% Latino, and most households make less than $40,000 a year, meaning that residents could be especially vulnerable to a rapidly changing real estate market. Expert insight Its definitely going through a transformation, kind of like what happened with Highland Park years ago, said Hall & Chambers agent Louis Salazar, who last month sold a Craftsman bungalow in Cypress Park. Gentrification is having an impact on the area, said Salazar, but its also helping to improve it. The property values are going higher, he said. Its truly a nice pocket close to downtown L.A., close to freeways, close to Eagle Rock and Highland Park its very centralized. Like other parts of Los Angeles County, a lack of homes for sale is the biggest hurdle for home buyers. Inventory, always inventory, he said. An honor guard from Lincoln High School takes part in a Veterans Day event. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) Market snapshot In the 90065 ZIP Code, based on 11 sales, the median sales price for single-family homes in February was $845,000, according to CoreLogic. That was a 24.8% increase in price over the same month the previous year. Report card Within the boundaries of Cypress Park are Aragon Avenue Elementary, Loreto Street Elementary and Florence Nightingale Middle, which had scores of 757, 717 and 756, respectively, out of 1,000 in the 2013 Academic Performance Index. Nearby schools include Hillside Elementary, which had a score of 721, and Glassell Park Elementary, which scored 742. Alliance College-Ready Middle Academy No.5 had a score of 768. hotproperty@latimes.com MORE FROM HOT PROPERTY New build in Brentwood has an on-top-of-the-world vibe Spotting the slippery slope: What to watch out for when buying a hillside home What San Diego Countys median home price buys right now in three neighborhoods The Trump administration has rescinded a demand that Twitter Inc. share information about a user who has criticized the new president, the social media company said Friday in a court filing. Twitter received an administrative order to turn over records nearly a month ago, but said it refused to do so without evidence the information was crucial to a criminal investigation. After the government reportedly failed to provide such justification and refused to drop the demand, the San Francisco company launched a preemptive strike Thursday by suing the Trump administration. Twitter sought a court ruling that would call the demand unconstitutional. That wont be necessary now, the company declared. Free speech advocates claimed victory. And the targeted user @ALT_uscis thanked Twitter and attorneys at the American Civil Liberties Union for standing up for the right of free anonymous speech. The account posted a message Friday saying it would take a pause after an extremely difficult and anxiety-filled past few days. Advertisement Claiming to be run by a rogue member of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the account has condemned President Trumps introduction of travel and migrant bans. Its among several accounts that popped up in January purporting to be dissenting federal staffers after the new administration put the kibosh on critical posts from official government Twitter pages. None of the authors appears to have provided evidence that they are government staffers. Twitter declined to comment on legal maneuvers, including why it took the unusual step of going to court before facing a lawsuit from the government. But 1st Amendment experts said Twitters actions sent a clear message to users and the government that it will go to great lengths to protect political activists even if that means going up against a prolific Twitter user such as Trump. The Justice Department, and Customs and Border Protection, the agency behind the initial order, declined to comment. paresh.dave@latimes.com / PGP Twitter: @peard33 ALSO If youre struggling to keep up with all things Trump, youre not alone. This is week 11 Trumps strike on Syria exposes growing GOP divide in Congress on foreign intervention and use of force Devin Nunes says hes temporarily stepping aside from Russia probe UPDATES: 1:45 p.m.: This article was updated to reflect that Customs and Border Protection declined to comment. This article was originally published at 12:05 p.m. Now that society has begun accepting gender as a matter of identity, might we not next adapt a similar flexibility to age identity? Let this weeks Los Angeles Philharmonic program of Sibelius last two symphonies cogently conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen serve as Exhibit A. The notion of late style has long held a special allure in music. Whether it is the concision and far-distance vision of late Beethoven, the heavenly absorption of Schubert, the willed acceptance of eternity in late Mahler, the stillness of late Cage or the flashes of serene paradise that overtook the once-hectic music of Elliott Carter, late implies an intimation of the meaning of life that only comes with the leaving of it. But there is late, later and latest. On the occasion of Carters 80th birthday, I wrote, from the perspective of youth, an appreciation of his then late style. It turned out to be nonsense, since the composer lived to a musically fruitful 103, whereas Schubert died shortly before turning 32. Advertisement And then there is someone like Sibelius, who wrote his farewell Sixth and Seventh Symphonies in his late 50s before pretty much calling it quits as a composer at 61. There is no music of note from Sibelius last 31 years, although he was reputed to have sketched out an Eighth Symphony, never made public and likely destroyed by the composer. What made the Walt Disney Concert Hall performance on Thursday particularly fascinating is that 58-year-old Salonen, who is probably the best-known Finnish musician since Sibelius, is in his prime as both a composer and conductor. Carter, it is worth remembering, wasnt even halfway through his composing career at this age. Salonens Cello Concerto, written for Yo-Yo Ma and premiered by the Chicago Symphony last month, has already been widely hailed in further performances in New York, London and Hamburg. (The L.A. Phil gets it in February.) His stirring performance last fall in Costa Mesa of Sibelius Fifth Symphony with the Philharmonia Orchestra felt as though the force of nature had been inserted in the score. Back with the L.A. Phil for the first time this season and wearing a fashionably contemporary version of traditional tails, Salonen put new vitality into late Sibelius. This wasnt so much a composer coming to an end of the line with his music as it was a composer not knowing how to continue in a striking new direction. This was made all the more striking by placing between the symphonies a rare performance of Sibelius charming six Humoresques for violin and orchestra, played by concertmaster Martin Chalifour and demonstrating just how scary Sibelius new direction must have seemed. For further context, Salonen set the nationalist tone with the earlier heroic Sibelius, beginning the evening with an even more fervent than usual performance of Finlandia, all but Finlands national anthem. Just the opposite in tone, the Humoresques, from 1917 and in two sets (Opp. 87 and 89), tend to be heard, when heard at all, as encore pieces. The third from Opus 89 has a jovial tune that is pure earworm material, particularly seductive in a passage where the soloist plays it in harmonics, as though whistling while skipping carefree through the woods. Others are dancelike or flirtatious, with aspects of Paganini and Fritz Kreisler bonbons. Violinists like to lay the Romanticism on thick with these pieces. Chalifour, instead, brought his characteristic clean elegance, giving them a lean modern sheen, mirrored by Salonens lean accompaniments. That hint of old Finnish furniture with new touches demonstrated a suggestion of something that had already begun invading even Sibelius least troubled music. The Sixth Symphony and the Seventh begin in an airy realm. In the Sixth, the strings hover in gorgeous irresolution. The Seventh seems at first more determined with a quiet timpani thump and low strings marching upward. But that doesnt necessarily mean anyone knows where theyre going. The Sixth, in four traditional movements, is the slightly more formal of the two and ends as enigmatically as it begins. The Seventh proceeds without a break and ends as ominously as it begins. Both symphonies, however, continually thwart symphonic logic, proceeding as though controlled by nature, ideas breaking off suddenly or recombining with the unpredictability of clouds on a windy day. Salonens Sibelius is a composers Sibelius. He points out the qualities such as the exquisite use of instrumental sections, where winds, strings and brass are their own individual sonic habitats that he finds useful in his own works. He reveals a structure whereby the prosaic narrative becomes poetry and drama is not for catharsis but experience. When he turned 50, Salonen had T-shirts printed that read 50 is the new 70. I dont know what that makes 58. But I do know that these are the most illuminating Sibelius performances for our time, with Salonen pulling out of his Finnish forbearers musical mists implications for future Nordic mists. Expect them to remain next week, as Salonen turns to Icelandic music in the L.A. Phils Reykjavik Festival. Los Angeles Philharmonic Where: Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., L.A. When: 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday Tickets: $58-$188 Information: (323) 850-2000 or www.laphil.org mark.swed@latimes.com ALSO Philip Glass, Pat Metheny, k.d. lang, Audra McDonald all turn out for a tribute to a Nonesuch guy From Breakfast at Tiffanys to Pink Panther: The music of Henry Mancini, remembered With some big opera names behind it, Young Artist Program aims even higher Caitlyn Jenner memoirs version of life with Kris Jenner creates a new rift in the family (Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty Images) As Caitlyn Jenners just-published memoir The Secrets of My Life pulls back the curtain on her gender transition and her life among the Kardashians, not everybody is taking it well. Especially not Kris Jenner. Details about the Olympian-turned-reality-stars decision to transition in 2015 from Bruce Jenner to Caitlyn Jenner and confirmation that she had her final gender reassignment surgery are all in the book, but some dishy material about the Kardashian matriarch is reverberating with fans and upsetting the reigning first family of reality TV. The memoir, co-written by Buzz Bissinger, who penned the Vanity Fair article that introduced Caitlyn Jenner to the masses, has some kind words for the momager, including admiration for Kris connections, her business acumen and her ability to perfectly apply lip liner without a mirror. However, Caitlyn also said in the book that she told Kris about her gender issues before they got married and said Kris knew that for 4 years before they met, Caitlyn had been on hormones. Additionally, Caitlyn wrote that she told Kris about her gender problems before they would make love. I told her there had been a woman inside me all my life, she wrote. The couple announced their split in 2013 and finalized their divorce in 2014. During their decades-long union, Caitlyn cross-dressed in front of her ex but was asked by Kris to do it only while traveling, so that their children wouldnt get wind of it. It was something Caitlyn grew to resent, she said, and she would steal her wifes gowns and purses to wear while traveling. (Their differing takes on their marital woes have been a topic of discussion for years.) In a recent episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians, Kris fumed with anger about passages in The Secrets of My Life that claimed she knew Caitlyn was transgender before they wed. None of it makes sense,Kris said to daughters Khloe and Kim Kardashian. I read it and basically the only nice thing she had to say was that I was great socially at a party one time. ... Everything she says is all made up. Why does everything have to be that Kris is such a bitch? She added: Ive never been so angry and disappointed in somebody in my whole life. In response, the Olympic gold medalist said on Good Morning America that the book is extraordinarily honest. It is my perspective, and obviously when you do a book like that, there are different opinions. I have a lot of friends that know the truth and know what Ive been through and know the whole situation, Caitlyn said. She told Andy Cohen that in the wake of publishing, Kris said she didnt want to talk to Caitlyn ever again. (Caitlyn also elaborated on her claims that she was a punching bag on the show and a revelation that Kris had been in charge of her finances.) Honestly, I never had a low point [while doing the show], actually, until the other day when Kris said some of that stuff. It was the first time I was really upset, she said. I had some of the best conversations with my children on that show. ... It forces you to deal with issues. ... It forces you to sit down with your kids and deal with a lot of things. Meanwhile, Kim Kardashian, Kris Jenners second-born child with the late Robert Kardashian, shared her thoughts on the feud on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in an episode that aired Thursday. My heart breaks for my mom, you know, because I feel like shes been through so much and [Caitlyn is] promoting this book and shes saying all these things, Kardashian said. I just dont think its necessary and I just feel like its unfair. Things arent truthful. Kardashian said Caitlyn was dishonest with certain things about Kris in the book. I feel like its taken [Caitlyn] a really long time to be honest with herself, so I dont expect her to be honest about my mom now. But its just so hurtful, she said. I wish her all the success in the world, but not at our expense. Kardashian said she and husband Kanye West have been avid supporters of Caitlyn Jenners transition and wanted to remain respectful of her, but thought there was no need to bash the family. She said she was hurt by her stepfather, whos dad to her half-sisters Kendall and Kylie Jenner, and hasnt spoken to Caitlyn in a few weeks. Kendall and Kylie, thats their dad and I think my moms been so respectful for so long and always wanting Caitlyn around and always wanting to have a great relationship with Caitlyn, Kardashian said. But that doesnt appear to be the case for the rest of the Kardashian brood. Ill always love her. That was my stepdad for so many years. She taught me about character and so much growing up and I just feel like I dont respect the character that shes showing now. Kim Kardashians younger sister, Khloe Kardashian, is also taking it a little tough, Caitlyn said at a book signing, according to RadarOnline. Everyone on the Jenner side is fine. All this stuff tends to work itself out! Someone call Ryan Murphy, because this needs to be turned into a Feud series, stat. ------------ FOR THE RECORD April 27, 3:31 p.m.: An earlier version of this article said Bruce Jenner and Kris Jenner finalized their divorce in 2013. They divorced in 2014. ------------ Lee Strobel became a fundamentalist Christian hero thanks to his 1998 book The Case for Christ, chronicling how his dogged research into Jesus resurrection helped convert him from atheism. Director Jon Gunn and screenwriter Brian Birds film version emphasizes Stobels personal drama over his academic investigation, which makes for a watchable movie but thin theology. Mike Vogel plays Strobel, who at the start of the 1980s was an award-winning Chicago journalist with a happy marriage and a bright future, until his wife, Leslie (played by Erika Christensen), found God. Anxious to get their life back to the way things were, he started interviewing scholars in various disciplines, hoping that by presenting Leslie with the facts, shed back down. Gunn and Bird pull a lot from the books intro and brief asides, telling parallel stories about Strobels marriage, his career, and a newspaper crime story that he botched. The subplots keep the film moving, giving something for even nonbelievers to latch on to. Advertisement But the meat of the movie is in the evidence the reporter amasses, and its here that both the devout and the doubters may be disappointed. Unlike the detailed arguments in the source material, the adaptation skims the surface of what Strobel found, presenting it in the vaguest terms. Give credit to the filmmakers for making a faith-affirming picture that aims to be more thoughtful than maudlin. But what theyve ended up with is a fairly rote Christian redemption narrative albeit with more charts and graphs. ------------- The Case for Christ Rating: PG, for thematic elements including medical descriptions of crucifixion, and incidental smoking Running time: 1 hour, 52 minutes Playing: In general release See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour Movie Trailers calendar@latimes.com You could say that Colossal offers a welcome reminder of what a good actress Anne Hathaway can be, except that some of us never forgot in the first place. Still, it bears pointing out that this goofily, fitfully inspired genre experiment, written and directed by the Spanish filmmaker Nacho Vigalondo, gives the actress her liveliest role in years possibly her best since Rachel Getting Married, a very different movie that also allowed her to get wasted, behave badly and throw both caution and likability to the wind. Neither Hathaway nor the script makes any overt bids for the audiences sympathy in Colossal, which may explain why they earn it so handily. She plays Gloria, a down-on-her-luck drunk whose life has become a series of underachievements and disappointments, until she stumbles on an unexpected road to recovery one that leads across a kids playground and right into the crowded streets of Seoul, where a giant green monster and its robot nemesis threaten to wreak havoc on the local populace. Advertisement Its a setup that might pack a greater metaphorical punch now, amid the political chaos and scandal that have recently engulfed South Korea, than it did several months ago when Colossal premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. But then, real-world implications are not especially high on Vigalondos list of priorities here. He has fashioned a sly, winking homage to Godzilla and other kaiju in the Asian monster-movie canon, and hitched it, in ways both ridiculous and intuitive, to a story about a major American screw-up trying to get her life back on track. Anne Hathaway in Colossal. (Cate Cameron / AP) Gloria was recently dumped by her New York boyfriend, Tim (Dan Stevens), who is beyond fed up with her nonstop drinking, irresponsible behavior and inability to hold down a job since she lost her magazine writing gig a year earlier. (At least your haters on the Internet will leave you alone! he snaps, in a line that must have amused Hathaway no end.) Like a nicer, more scattered version of the self-destructive misanthrope played by Charlize Theron in Young Adult, Gloria returns to the sleepy, nondescript suburb where she grew up. She tries her best to curb her alcoholic, narcoleptic tendencies, though it doesnt help when she runs into an old friend, Oscar (Jason Sudeikis), and takes a part-time job at his bar. Her nightly hangouts with Oscar and his drinking buddies, Joel (Austin Stowell) and Garth (Tim Blake Nelson), carry an undercurrent of jealousy and menace that, in a more straightforward movie, might have played out with a few hurt feelings and broken bottles. But Colossal has something more playful and audacious up its sleeve, which it unleashes once Gloria stops by that neighborhood playground and realizes, to her shock and amazement, that even her simplest actions have incredibly far-reaching consequences. Exactly how Glorias actions might affect the lives of people half a world away is something best left for the viewer to discover. Suffice to say that Vigalondo, whose previous films include the low-budget time-travel thriller Timecrimes (2007) and the insanely convoluted computer-desktop thriller Open Windows (2014), has once again struck upon an ingeniously out-there premise that sometimes struggles to justify its feature-length treatment. Colossal has a killer setup, but stumbles more than once en route to its rousing finish, particularly when it tries to back up its premise with an origin story that urges us to think more about minor details than we should. But while a second, tighter pass at the script wouldnt have gone awry, the movie works well enough as a sly riff on classic kaiju cinema (and a superior version of Power Rangers to boot). Its also a surprisingly convincing satire of mass panic and media overreaction in the viral era. A few buildings get crushed and several bloodless casualties are reported, but the visual effects in this modestly budgeted production are designed less to impress us with their digital shock-and-awe than to deepen the movies verisimilitude. There is something pleasingly subversive, too, about the way Colossal takes an industrial filmmaking genre typically defined by Michael Bays mindless, male-targeted orgies of mass destruction, and turns it into a vehicle for something approaching a feminist critique. While Glorias newfound powers provide her with an immediate reason to stay sober, they trigger the opposite impulse in Oscar, who turns out to be both a self-pitying loser and an intractable bully someone permanently embittered by his inability to look beyond his own disappointing, directionless existence. Sudeikis all but erases the difference between malice and self-pity, making Oscar a uniquely loathsome study in toxic masculinity, and not the movies only one. Tim, played with supercilious wit by Stevens, is in his own way no less sadistic and self-serving. Standing between them is Gloria, whom Hathaway fully embraces in all her wild, unrepentant messiness. By the end, the characters heroic stature is both improbable and undeniable, and it stems less from what shes done than from what shes finally stopped letting others do. Recovery may still be in the cards, but Gloria hasnt found redemption, exactly mainly, the movie suggests, because she never needed it in the first place. ------------ Colossal Rating: R, for language Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes Playing: ArcLight Cinemas, Hollywood; and the Landmark Theatre, Los Angeles See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour Movie Trailers justin.chang@latimes.com @JustinCChang ALSO Justin Chang and Jen Yamato debate Ghost in the Shell and the dangers of Hollywood whitewashing Review: Bodies swap and destinies change in the gorgeous animated Japanese blockbuster Your Name. Review: Chris Evans raises a young math prodigy in the clever but overly calculating Gifted On a stage at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art last April, Jason Reitman stood before a crowd gathered for a live reading of his 2005 screenplay Thank You for Smoking. He had an announcement: It is very hard for me to say tonight that this is going to be the last one, the director said. I have to make movies, guys. After five years and 40-some odd performances, Reitman felt it was time to bring his live read series to a close. Finding actors to perform classic screenplays for free, annotating the scripts, publicizing the events it was fun, but it was taking away from his filmmaking. But then Nov. 8 happened. Reitman was on the Manhattan set of his upcoming film Tully on the night President Trump was elected, and instantly he felt his world shift. It was a very confusing feeling, he recalls, sitting in his two-room office on the Sunset Strip, perched above the city lights. People were crying. It was very hard to work. There were people who wanted to go home, and they had full permission to do so. Fortunately, that night we were shooting at a bar, so the alcohol was available. It felt like Star Wars went the wrong direction like the empire won. It was sad. After production wrapped a few days later, the 39-year-old who is Canadian and cant vote grappled with how best to handle his feelings of frustration. He thought back to the live reads hed done for Film Independent and how well-attended they had been. And I went: Oh, well, we have this great show that we did, and maybe we could use it to raise money for good causes. His idea just happened to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the release of Juno, the Ellen Page-starring teen pregnancy film hed directed in 2007. So he and the actress started talking about putting on an all-female live read of Diablo Codys Oscar-winning screenplay and donating the ticket sale proceeds to Planned Parenthood. Ellen Page and Jason Reitman on the press tour for 2007s Juno, which launched their careers in Hollywood. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times) (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times) We kept coming back to the importance of Planned Parenthood and not its relationship with abortion, but its relationship with womens health, he says. How devastating this new presidential administration has been and could be to women. I thought we could maybe emphasize that note by doing an all-women cast. The event, which takes place on Saturday at the Theatre at the Ace Hotel, will see Page reprise her original role: Juno, a spunky high schooler who decides to give her child up for adoption. Jennifer Garner, who also appears in the film, will again have the part of the hopeful mama ready to take in Junos child. The other parts will be read by new actors: Tracee Ellis Ross as Junos mom (originally Allison Janney), Tig Notaro as Junos dad (J.K. Simmons), Kristen Wiig as Junos older crush (Jason Bateman) and Alia Shawkat as Junos BFF slash baby daddy (Michael Cera). There have only been a couple of live reads in which actors reprised their original roles: Susan Sarandon in Bill Durham, Sam Elliott in The Big Lebowski. Usually, much of the fun of the events was seeing talent offer a fresh take on well-known material. Page has participated in two readings, and each time she played characters wildly different from herself: Han Solo in The Empire Strikes Back and River Phoenixs Chris in Stand by Me. Jason always has a part in mind already, and then Ill just watch the movie the day before, Page says over the phone this week. And I think thats what makes it such a unique and fulfilling experience reading with people you could be meeting for the first time. At first, youre nervous, but you slowly find your way and get in this special zone. Ellen Page, photographed in 2007 before the release of Juno. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times) (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times) With Juno, Page says, she isnt sure if shell deliver her lines the same way she did a decade ago though she imagines that when she sits with Codys script, it will be impossible to not speak in that specific Juno rhythm. When Juno came out, the screenplay was both celebrated and derided for its trendy dialogue, including the now-infamous catchphrase honest to blog? With a made-for-Hollywood back story of her own, Cody who wrote Juno in a Starbucks after giving up her job as an exotic dancer became an overnight success. When the Juno script hit this city, everyone immediately recognized how special it was and I was not the first director hired, says Reitman, who was 28 when he made the film. I would imagine if I was a writer who had been working at it for 40, 50 years and all of a sudden this young writer comes out and is at bat and just connects and hits it out of the park yeah, thatd be frustrating. That doesnt take away from her gifts thats just traditional envy. Its easy to miss how complicated and mature her structural writing was from moment one because its a script about teenagers, and they talk like teenagers. Juno was writer Diablo Codys first screenplay. (Carlos Chavez / Los Angeles Times) (Carlos Chavez / Los Angeles Times) Reitman had just welcomed his first child six months before he went to work on the film but said he didnt respond to the script because it was about parenthood. He liked how it focused on the moment you decide to grow up or not grow up and that it didnt feel like an after-school special. Thats what the folks at Planned Parenthood like about it, too how it offers a realistic take on what its like to be a teenager dealing with an emotional decision. I think what Juno depicts is a young woman who lacked some accurate medical information and is grappling with an unplanned pregnancy, as many women do throughout their lives, says Dinah Stephens, senior director of public affairs for Planned Parenthood in L.A. She makes a decision, and the movie underscores how personal pregnancy is. I think most Americans would agree that women should be able to make that decision at any point in her life. Director Jason Reitman (Michael Owen Baker / For The Times) (Michael Owen Baker / Michael Owen Baker / For The Tim) While Reitman is hopeful the event will raise awareness about Planned Parenthood, which the new administration has threatened to defund, its also an opportunity to celebrate the way in which Juno changed his life. Before Saturday, hell watch the film again for the first time in 10 years, then go through the script, crossing out superfluous stage directions. (He reads them aloud during the performances.) He doesnt allow the actors to meet or rehearse before the reading. Before they go onstage, hell make a couple of remarks about keeping up the pace and having fun. And thats it. I feel like particularly with film actors, you never really get to see what they can do in real time. Youre always seeing an edited performance, he says. So to watch an actor sit down nervous, start to figure it out and then create an entire relationship with another actor right in front of you? Its not like a play where theyve practiced and worked out the beats. Its like jazz instrumentalists finding a way to groove together. And if Saturday night goes well? Reitman may just return to the live read fray. I think it would be great to tie movies with causes that are appropriately themed and invite actors who are passionate about the subjects were trying to tackle, he says. I think a lot of people feel motivated and dont know what to do right now. Thats certainly how I feel. Juno was such a hit that Fox Searchlight turned a touring van into Junos bedroom and drove it around L.A. in 2007. (Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times) (Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times) Juno live read Who: Ellen Page, Jennifer Garner, Alia Shawkat, Tracee Ellis Ross, Tig Notaro, Kristen Wiig, Jason Reitman When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 8 Where: Theatre at the Ace Hotel, 929 S. Broadway, Los Angeles Tickets: $25 to $150; all proceeds to benefit Planned Parenthood Info: acehotel.com/calendar/losangeles/juno-live-read amy.kaufman@latimes.com Follow me on Twitter @AmyKinLA ALSO Vin Diesel goes electric over Charlize Theron in 'Fate of the Furious,' but where's the Rock? Christopher Nolan reveals what makes the war story 'Dunkirk' a great suspense thriller Hugh Jackman puts on the greatest show at CinemaCon Todd Fisher on how the Debbie Reynolds-Carrie Fisher public memorial became a musical revue The further America moves away from its frontier past, the more television wants to revisit it. Here comes The Son. This sweeping western saga about the rise of a family empire is set among the old cattle ranches and new oil wells of 19th- and 20th-century Texas. There are no robots under these cowboy hats a la Westworld, or layers of unspoken subtext like Deadwood. A cowboy is just a cowboy, and an Indian just an Indian in this 10-part period drama, which debuts Saturday on AMC. Deep thinking is not required while traversing the shows beautiful, rugged landscape, which is admittedly a welcome reprieve given the landslide of streaming, network and cable shows that demand we pay close attention or be left behind. Advertisement The Son is adapted from Philipp Meyers 2013 novel. It stars Pierce Brosnan as ruthless land baron and family patriarch Eli McCullough, who is willing to do whatever it takes to become the most powerful or at least richest man in Texas. Eli was born in 1836, the same year as the Republic of Texas. He was raised on the wild frontier by Comanche Indians who killed his settler family when he was a young teen. By living with the tribe, learning from its formidable leader (Zahn McClarnon) and falling in love with a tough woman ironically named Prairie Flower (Elizabeth Frances), he learns what it takes to survive in the largely uninhabited outback that was Mexico and Texas. He also learns that the road to power requires that a man use violence. Lots and lots of violence. The story of how he builds his family dynasty takes place along two timelines. The first starts in 1849, when we see how a young Eli (played convincingly by Jacob Lofland) and Texas were formed. Its the tale of territorial battles and alliances between native Comanche, recently displaced Mexicans and wave after wave of white settlers. The second timeline kicks off in 1915, on the eve of the Mexican revolution, and just after oil was discovered in Texas. Eli has built his empire as a rancher, but declares the era of the cattle baron is over. Hes determined to dominate this new industry, by any means necessary. But theres trouble along the nearby Texas-Mexico border that complicates his plans. Mexicans are breaching white ranchers fences. The law is crippled by rival political factions. Threatened Americans are taking matters into their own hands, stirring up racial division. What a mess we were back then! This is not, however, a drama that relies on obvious parallels to todays political turmoil. It instead works as an engrossing family drama set against a formative era in our nations history. And even if youre not partial to longhorn history, cowboy lore or the abundance of television series about powerful men who rule by fear, the story line (created by author Meyer, Lee Shipman and Brian McGreevy) is strong enough to make 21st-century audiences care about 19th-century problems. The cruel and murderous Eli McCullough is difficult to tolerate, and just when youre ready to hang up your saddle and look for a Netflix superhero to adore, his son and granddaughter step in to serve as his morality and conscience. Pete (played by Henry Garrett) runs the ranch, but hed rather extend an olive branch to old family foes, new threats and neighboring Mexican cattle ranchers than shed more blood (other son Phineas, played by David Wilson Barnes, is a lawyer with more nefarious intentions). But its the curious and whip-smart Jeannie (Sydney Lucas) that embodies the innocence Eli lost long ago. Brosnan is as physically striking as he is imposing refined graying hair and beard, tailored wool vests, dusty riding boots. But the Irish actor, who played James Bond in the 1990s and early 2000s, should never be trusted to do a Texan accent again. His awkward drawl is one of the most jarring mood-killers in The Son, and those twinkly eyes are often more playful than dangerous. Even though the journey may be a bit bumpy, The Son still offers an easy ride into the Old West. The Son Where: AMC When: 9 p.m. Saturday Rating: TV-14-LSV (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 14 with advisories for coarse language, sex and violence) lorraine.ali@latimes.com Look, thats one of the great, amazing things about women, Pharrell Williams mused while hosting a Chanel dinner on Thursday night. They know exactly what rules to bend to make this world a better place. Katy Perry, Lily Collins, and Teresa Palmer were among the women at Giorgio Baldi in Santa Monica, but they werent who Williams was discussing. The musician was reflecting on the legacy of Gabrielle Chanel, the inspiration behind the French fashion houses new Gabrielle bag. Advertisement Gabrielle went against the grain whenever she felt like it, said Williams, who appears as one of the faces of the new campaign, posing with a black crocodile bag. If she liked something, then thats what she would design. There were no real rules for her. The black jacket was based on a bellhops jacket, so when I put it on and I liked it, Karl [Lagerfeld] was like, Actually And he told me the story. Theres a lot of thata lot of her bending the rules whenever she felt like it. Other ambassadors featured in the campaign include Kristen Stewart, Cara Delevingne, and Caroline de Maigret, the latter of whom co-hosted the evening. De Maigret said she was excited to be involved in a project with Williams, the first man to represent a Chanel bag in the history of the brand. Im a unisex girl, said de Maigret. My boyfriend is a musician. Ive always taken all of his pieces in his closet, may it be a leather jacket or boyfriend jeans or a long white shirt. Were all equal, said Rachel Zoe. I almost think everything can be unisex at this point names, clothes, bags, jewelry, why not? Meanwhile, Zoe said Williams was the perfect man for the campaign. Pharrell is one of the all-time coolest musicians and artists of our timeand he has incredible style. Karl can really spot people who are unique and have a different point of view, and not always do whats expected. Every attendee had her own take. I personally love Pharrell because my three year old is obsessed with his songhe sings it all the time, said Teresa Palmer. Everything that he wears is absolutely amazing. Its modern. Its pushing the boundaries, said Kenya Kinski-Jones. I loved him before this, but when he wore the shorts to the Oscars, I was like, Im done. Youre the best, said Kiernan Shipka. He views fashion as art. He takes risks, but hes always true to himself, added Dree Hemingway. I get most of my style inspiration from men, actually, and he has a little bit of that hip-hop and skate vibe that is very much up my alley. Meanwhile, Chanel newbie Sistine Stallone discussed another man, her father, Sylvester Stallone. I dont necessarily take fashion advice from him because, I mean, hes had a couple of weird trends himself, but he has taught me to be an individual when it comes to my style. Over cocktail hour, Champagne flowed and mini meatballs were passed as Bella Heathcote wondered where the night might take her. All the Chanel events Ive been to have been wild, she said. I saw Karen O and Patti Smith sing a duet at a Chanel event once. They know how to throw a party. ALSO Pharrell Williams is the first man to appear in a Chanel handbag campaign On scene: Kim Kardashian West, Nick Jonas, Paris Jackson and Nicki Minaj at Fashion Los Angeles Awards America exports its addiction to bling across the globe; Lauren Greenfield captures it with her camera Cooking is an important skill to have if you are running a restaurant it is ostensibly why everyone is there. So is a generous spirit, supplemented perhaps by a spot of design sense, a feel for your community and the ability to lead by force of example. What tends to get mentioned less often is an aptitude for math your quenelles might be the best in the world, but if the numbers dont add up, your restaurant wont last long. So nobody in the trade was especially surprised when Akasha Richmond, whose flagship restaurant Akasha helped pioneer downtown Culver Citys restaurant row, abruptly closed her Indian restaurant Sambar in the fall and changed it overnight into the Italian restaurant AR Cucina. Everybody had more or less liked Sambar the cocktails were good, the slightly hippie-ish Indian food was tasty, and prime-time reservations were reasonably hard to come by but apparently, people dont tend to spend that much money in Westside Indian restaurants, especially ones mere blocks from some of L.A.s better established Indian restaurants. Now there is late-afternoon aperitivo hour on the patio, and a cheerful wine list, and clever cocktails called things like La Dolce Vita and Tuscan Sunrise. Clare Ward, famous for unusual cocktails tinged with vegetable infusions and Indian herbs, has here applied her keen palate to Negronis, some based on rum, rye whiskey and mescal; all of them nudged with obscure bitters and the barest hint of citrus. Advertisement You can nibble on crisp, bubbly flatbreads baked in a wood-fired oven and sprinkled with black pepper and finely grated pecorino cheese. The delicate fritto misto of calamari, slivered onion and tiny shrimp isnt bad, and while you could probably put the salumi plate together yourself after a quick trip to Whole Foods, the prosciutto di San Daniele, the mortadella from Utahs Creminelli and the Olympia Provisions salami are first rate. When I reviewed Sambar a couple years ago, I mentioned that a lot of Richmonds Indian dishes came pretty close to Italian food. The pork vindaloo was in the form of a roasted rolled pork shoulder that differed from porchetta mostly in its spicing, and the naan seemed closer to pizza than anything that came out of a tandoor. The zucchini balls called kofta, the sauteed greens and the plum salad with pistachios would not have been out of place at any of the neo-Tuscan restaurants in Brentwood. Before Richmond became a guru of conscious cookery, before she opened her restaurant Akasha just around the corner from Sambar, there were years when she may have spent more time in Sardinia than California. She is not a stranger to grilled octopus with pureed chickpeas. She knows as well as any seasoned chef that burrata tastes good with almond pesto and cherry tomatoes or that great broccolini becomes even better when you wilt it in a hot pan with chile flakes and a pinch of lemon zest. And you will forgive her the occasional over-fried Roman artichoke or hazelnut-slugged kale salad its coming from the right place. Is the sauce for her bucatini allAmatriciana too close to a standard issue, over-reduced tomato puree? (Perhaps it is the unique pig-cheek funk of well-cured guanciale was scarcely detectable.) Is the texture of the chunky strozzapreti pasta with mushrooms a bit stodgy? Do the tortelli lack the suppleness of the stuffed pasta at places like Alimento and Angelini Osteria? They do. But the thin, wiry spaghetti cacio e pepe is lovely, a smidge overbuttered but tossed with a properly stinging, fragrant shot of pepper and pungent cheese, and the almost tomato-less Bolognese sauce on the fragile, handmade tagliatelle pasta had the animal cured meat pong you tend to find more in Italy than Los Angeles. If risotto thickened with pureed nettles pops up on the specials menu, you should probably get it the gentle springtime creaminess is just right. The porchetta here, zapped with fennel pollen and sluiced with a too-sweet, underseasoned apple mostarda, may well make you a bit nostalgic for Sambars porchetta vindaloo, and the chicken is nicely roasted in precisely the manner of the dozens of other roast chickens in town. But by the time the meat shows up at the table, you may have already been sated by the crisply fried fingerlings, the tomatoe-y eggplant parmigiana and the roast cauliflower that has been baked into a semblance of rich mac n cheese under a blanket of toasted breadcrumbs and melted whatever. Its not fair that the perceived value of a rack of lamb drops when that lamb is rubbed with spices and cooked in a tandoor. There is no reason why celebrity-farmer spinach should be worth more when it is sauteed with pine nuts and raisins than when it was cooked with homemade paneer. But it can be hard to argue about issues of intersectionality when the rent comes due. Richmond confessed to a trade magazine that the average check at AR Cucina was several dollars higher than it was at the Indian place. And AR Cucina is worth having around. :: AR Cucina One of Akasha Richmonds Culver City restaurants switches to Italian cuisine LOCATION 9531 Culver Blvd., Culver City, (310) 558-8800, arcucina.com. PRICES Antipasti $4-$18; salads $9-$13; pastas $12-$18; main courses $23-$26; vegetables $6-$9. DETAILS Lunch 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Tuesday to Friday; dinner 5:30 to 9:30 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday and Sunday, and 5:30 to 10:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday; brunch 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Sunday. Credit cards accepted. Full bar. Nearby city lot parking. RECOMMENDED DISHES Spaghetti cacio e pepe; risotto verde; cauliflower al forno. MORE FROM JONATHAN GOLD Jonathan Gold tastes transcendent Mexican seafood tostadas at Holbox, a sister stand to Chichen Itza Jonathan Gold follows the Snook Whisperer legend to four restaurants At Manuela in DTLA, Jonathan Gold enjoys a Redneck platter surrounded by fine art jonathan.gold@latimes.com @thejgold It wasnt that long ago that many wondered whether Californias drought would ever end. For five years, the state endured significantly less rain than normal, cutting into the water supply and forcing the state to impose strict limits on water use. That officially ended Friday when Gov. Jerry Brown declared the drought over. Advertisement What was ordinarily a pond on Adam Toledos Central Valley property had been turned into a puddle in 2015. (Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times) So how did the drought end? That seemed pretty quick. The turning point began last winter, when Northern California began to see a significant uptick in rain. Then, this winter, the north had one of the wettest seasons on record. Southern California also saw more rain. Northern California typically gets more rain than Southern California, and the states water system is designed with that in mind; it moves water from the Sierra into cities and farms to the south. Another late-season atmospheric river has pushed Northern Californias water year (Oct. 1 to Sept. 30) to the second wettest ever recorded, the National Weather Service said Friday. The storm has dumped rain from the Bay Area north to Shasta and east to Susanville along the Sierra Nevada, where months of rain and snowfall have filled reservoirs and saturated soils to levels not seen since before the drought. Experts say that for all the concerns, this drought ended like all the rest in California years of dryness followed by a lot of rain. Can I start hosing down my driveway again? Not so fast. Brown and water officials stressed the importance of continued conservation, even after restrictions are lifted. This drought emergency is over, but the next drought could be around the corner, Brown said in a statement. Conservation must remain a way of life. Browns executive order lifts the drought emergency in all California counties except Fresno, Kings, Tulare and Tuolumne, where emergency drinking water programs will remain in place to help communities that ran short of groundwater supplies. The state is maintaining a ban on wasteful practices, such as hosing off sidewalks, and will continue to require urban water districts to regularly report local use. In a related action, state agencies issued a plan to establish long-term conservation measures across California. For now, many local water conservation rules remain in effect. What are some of the legacies of the drought? There are quite a few that will have to be considered long after this emergency passes: Boaters navigate the Middle River in the Sacramento River Delta in 2010. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times) Delta tunnel Brown is still pushing his plan to build two giant tunnels to send Northern California water southward. The 40-foot-wide tunnels have been touted to ensure more reliable water deliveries to city and farm water agencies in Central and Southern California. Opponents include some Northern California water districts and farmers, and environmental groups, which fear losing more water and habitat for salmon, steelhead, sturgeon and dozens of other native fish and other wildlife already suffering under the deltas more than half-century-old waterworks of pumps, pipes and canals. Swaths of conifers succumbed to drought and disease in Sequoia National Park. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) Tree die-off The parched years left a trail of death across the Sierra pine belt. A federal study released last year put the dead tree number at 102 million in what officials described as an unparalleled ecological disaster that heightens the danger of massive wildfires and damaging erosion. Scientists say five years of drought are to blame for much of the destruction. The lack of rain has put Californias trees under considerable stress, making them more susceptible to the organisms, such as beetles, that can kill them. Unusually high temperatures have added to the trees demand for water, exacerbating an already grim situation. The majority of the dead trees are in the southern and central Sierra Nevada region, officials said, though they warned that high mortality levels are also creeping into forests in Northern California, notably Siskiyou, Modoc, Plumas and Lassen counties. An aerial view of the Oroville Dam main spillway in February 2017. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) Rain damage For all the drought costs, the record rains caused problems of their own. Officials estimate it will cost more than $860 million to repair the states roads, bridges and highways damaged from this winters storms. The two spillways of the Oroville Dam were severely damaged in February. Permanent fixes to the facilitys flood control spillways and hydroelectric plant are estimated to exceed $200 million. Have I seen this movie before? In some ways. Californias climate has always included cycles of drought and deluge. Want proof? Here are some very old editorial cartoons The Times published during earlier droughts: ALSO The Antelope Valley poppies have exploded into a spectacular burst of neon, signaling an end to drought Yes, Californias drought is all but over, and the dramatically revived Cachuma Lake proves it Native flowers arent the only plants in super-bloom this spring nasty weeds have also flourished A Canadian escort who made national headlines after she injected a former Google executive with a fatal dose of heroin aboard his yacht in Santa Cruz four years ago will be deported to her home country. Alix Tichelman, 29, pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter, destroying evidence and multiple drug and prostitution charges in 2015 and was sentenced to six years in prison for her role in the death. Tichelman, who had been in custody since 2013, was given credit for time served. After her release, she was taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials on March 29. Advertisement At her removal proceedings Thursday, an immigration judge determined that Tichelmans criminal convictions were grounds for removal and ordered her removed from the United States, the agency said in a statement. Ms. Tichelman will remain in ICE custody pending final arrangements for her removal, the agency said. The Santa Cruz Sentinel reports that Tichelman has Canadian citizenship. According to police, Tichelman had an ongoing prostitution relationship with Forrest Hayes, a former Apple, Google and Sun Microsystems engineer. Hayes, 51, met Tichelman through seekingarrangments.com and set up a date, police said. Security video from the November 2013 meeting showed that Tichelman gave Hayes the lethal injection of heroin then picked up her things and left the 50-foot yacht. Hayes was found dead the next morning by the ships captain. veronica.rocha@latimes.com Twitter: VeronicaRochaLA ALSO Mexican state official is headed to New York to face drug charges I wasnt thinking during those times: MMA fighter Mayhem Miller pleads guilty in 5 cases Twice deported, burglary suspect also has weapons and drug violations A proposal to declare a year-round shelter crisis was presented to the Los Angeles City Council on Friday. Councilmen Jose Huizar and Mike Bonin introduced a motion to extend the recently expired declaration of a winter shelter crisis for a full year. Bonin spokesman David Graham-Caso said the motion builds on an action earlier in the week amending the law that previously restricted the declaration of a shelter crisis to the winter months. Advertisement The declaration of a crisis would remove zoning restrictions that could prevent shelters from opening in some areas. It does not, however, provide additional funding to pay for more shelters. Graham-Caso said Bonin would advocate for more shelter funds in the budget. The motion cites the 2016 homeless count conducted by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority as justification for a crisis declaration. The homeless authority estimated the citys homeless population at 28,000, with about 21,000 living on the street. The motion noted that there are currently just over 9,000 beds in emergency shelter and transitional housing programs in the city. What Bonin has said repeatedly is if we had 21,000 people living on the street because of natural disaster, we wouldnt hesitate to declare it a shelter crisis and get every person housed, if not permanently, temporarily, Graham-Caso said. That is the same urgency we should be treating the homeless crisis with. If adopted, the declaration would allow shelters to be opened as a matter of right on property owned or leased by the city in any zone, without regard to the number of beds or numbers of people served. It would also identify specific zones in commercial, industrial and residential areas where shelters could be opened by right on non-governmental land. These changes would allow nonprofit and faith-based organizations to open shelters without going through a costly process. The motion will next be heard in the councils Homelessness and Poverty Committee. doug.smith@latimes.com Twitter: @LATDoug A Los Angeles city councilman, in a rare move, snubbed a colleague Thursday by endorsing his opponent in next months runoff election. Councilman Mitch OFarrell backed Joe Bray-Ali over Councilman Gil Cedillo in next months District 1 election, saying in a statement that the challenger, a 38-year-old bike activist, would be an independent voice at City Hall. Council members in recent years have generally supported one another at reelection time, often even helping with fundraising. On Wednesday night, City Council President Herb Wesson hosted a fundraiser for Cedillo at a downtown Los Angeles restaurant. Advertisement Cedillo, 63, is seeking a second term representing District 1, which takes in several northeast neighborhoods and stretches down to Chinatown and Pico-Union. The former state senator and assemblyman failed to garner more than 50% of the vote in last months primary, sending him into a runoff with Bray-Ali, a former field deputy for a state legislator. Cedillo campaign spokeswoman Helen Sanchez suggested Thursday that Bray-Ali was a hypocrite for celebrating his endorsement from OFarrell. Hes running as an outsider, but hes touting an insider endorsement, Sanchez said. Hes raging against the machine but making a big deal of getting endorsed by City Hall insiders. Thursdays endorsement fuels an already tense race between Bray-Ali and Cedillo in the largely Latino district. On primary election night, Cedillo said his lead showed that voters were rejecting his rivals trendy, hippy, hipster proposal and agenda. He later said he regretted making those remarks. Also Thursday, Cedillos campaign criticized Bray-Alis party affiliation history. Originally a Democrat, he became a Republican in 2012 and switched back in early 2016, according to a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk. In an interview, Bray-Ali said he had been disillusioned with the Democratic Party and switched parties. But he disputed the Registrar-Recorders record, saying he believes he switched back to being a Democrat before last year. He said there could be an error with the countys records. Cedillo and OFarrells districts each encompass portions of several Eastside neighborhoods, including Echo Park and Elysian Park. They also serve together on two City Council committees. OFarrell declined a request for an interview, saying through a spokesman that the endorsement speaks for itself. The last time a council member endorsed a colleagues opponent was in 2015, when Cedillo backed former county Supervisor Gloria Molina over Councilman Jose Huizar. dakota.smith@latimes.com Twitter: @dakotacdsmith An Oxnard man arrested Wednesday on suspicion of attempted burglary had twice been deported to Mexico and had just reentered the U.S. illegally the day before, authorities said. Guillermo Damaso, 39, was taken into custody by the Port Hueneme Police Department, accused of trying to enter a home through the bedroom window. Police were dispatched to the 1500 block of North Sixth Place on Wednesday morning to investigate reports of a person weaving through several backyards and jumping over fences. Advertisement One resident told police that she heard someone opening her bedroom window and when she drew back the curtains to check, a man in a black hooded sweatshirt was on the outside looking in. Officers searched the area and detained Damaso, who was later identified by the resident as the person trying to enter the home, police said. When police did a background check, they discovered Damasos previous deportations and criminal history. According to police, he had been deported from California and Florida and was on active probation for weapons and narcotics violations. Damaso also had an outstanding warrant from Florida alleging indecent exposure. Damaso told police during interviews that a coyote a migrant smuggler or smuggling group brought him into the country illegally Tuesday. He is being held in Ventura County jail. jeff.landa@latimes.com Twitter: @JeffLanda Downtown residents and business people narrowly defeated a proposal to form a separate neighborhood council for skid row, the citys epicenter of homelessness, but the measure organizers said Friday that they would continue to press for a stronger voice for their community. People with ties to a broad swath of downtown interests voted 826 to 764 against a breakaway council for the 10,000 residents of skid rows tents, renovated slum hotels and apartments, according to an unofficial tally. The results will not be certified until challenges or recount requests, if any, are resolved, according to Stephen Box, the director of outreach and communications for the L.A. Department of Neighborhood Empowerment. Advertisement General Jeff Page, who spearheaded the breakaway vote, said the organizing committee is considering a challenge or grievance over the possible use of city funds by the larger Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council in an opposition campaign. Page also said his committee members may revive protests over the City Councils decision to lift a citywide ban on online voting for the skid row election only, 13 days before polling. Obviously its disappointing for our community that was so excited that we would finally have an outlet to address our much-needed community concerns, Page said. More than 202 voters identified themselves as homeless, but many more who have no permanent housing cast ballots, said Ann-Marie Holman, a communications staffer with the neighborhood council subdivision elections. Paper ballots overwhelmingly broke in favor of a skid row council, 183 to 19. But the online voting tilted 807 to 581 against the proposal, according to the unofficial results. The vote came at a critical juncture for skid row, with high-end development pushing into the 50-block neighborhood even as living conditions for those who reside on the streets reach a nadir. Homeless people and other residents of the largely African American neighborhood had sponsored a drive to break away from two larger downtown councils, saying they had been sorely neglected while the rest of downtown boomed. People with ties to downtown L.A. voted in an election, which concluded Thursday, to determine whether skid row gets its own neighborhood council and, potentially, a stronger voice in shaping its future. People represented by the Downtown Los Angeles and Historic Cultural neighborhood councils were eligible to vote to accept or reject the proposed skid row council district bounded by Main, Alameda, 3rd and 7th streets. People were lined up two hours before the polls opened, and there was a line all day long, Box said. There was a significant amount of engagement. Members of the Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council mounted an online opposition campaign, accusing breakaway organizers of trying to maintain skid row as a homeless haven. As many as 2,000 people live outdoors on skid row sidewalks, and social service providers and police say their plight has never been worse. Homeless people, including many suffering from mental illness or substance abuse, are increasingly confined to overcrowded and violent tent cities as bistros and loft projects eat into skid rows traditional turf. Skid row council organizers had called for subsidized family housing, showers, bathroom access, parks, tree plantings and other amenities for residents of the tents, refurbished welfare hotels and apartments of the neighborhood. Their opponents argued skid row should be integrated into the rest of downtown, with housing aimed at working people with moderate incomes, retail projects and more policing to lift the district out of its misery. Times staff writer Matt Hamilton contributed to this report. gholland@latimes.com Twitter: @geholland UPDATES: 6:25 p.m.: This article was updated with reaction to the vote. This article was originally posted at 4 a.m. The first person was stabbed shortly before noon Friday, on the edge of downtown L.A.s skid row. As police headed toward 7th and San Julian streets, a second stabbing was reported just a few blocks away. Soon there was a third, witnessed by other officers at 6th and San Pedro streets in between the other stabbing scenes, right by the Midnight Mission. Jay Hernandez said he was walking by the mission when he saw a man slash and stab at two other people. When officers approached him, Hernandez said, they told the man to drop the weapon. Advertisement He didnt drop it, he said. A section of skid row is barricaded after stabbings that left three people injured. Police say they saw the third attack and wounded the assailant. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times) Police ultimately shot and wounded the man, ending a chaotic afternoon episode that stretched across several blocks of skid row and sent four people to the hospital. Three people were critically wounded in the stabbings, Los Angeles police said. The man shot by police was in surgery late Friday afternoon. The motive for the stabbings was not immediately clear. Investigators fanned out across the crime scenes, interviewing witnesses and trying to determine if the suspect in the third attack the man shot by police was responsible for the others, said Sgt. Barry Montgomery, a police spokesman. We have three active crime scenes going, he said. No officers were injured. Montgomery said some type of edged weapon was found at the scene of the shooting. Police did not identify the person who was shot or any of the stabbing victims. A small crowd gathered at the edge of the yellow police tape near where the shooting took place, not far from the homeless men and women lingering around the entrance of the Midnight Mission. Tents lined the sidewalks. Skid row, a 50-block neighborhood with an estimated population of 10,000, is widely known as the epicenter of homelessness in Los Angeles. At the scene, some relayed what they had seen in the moments leading up to the gunfire. One man, who asked to be identified only by his first name, Riccolo, said he saw two men arguing outside the mission shortly after noon. Riccolo said he did not know the men or what they were fighting about and could not see a weapon. Riccolo said he saw officers fire five shots at one of the men until the body stopped moving. Location of Fridays shooting by police on skid row. (Joe Fox / Los Angeles Times) Another witness, Miguel Mendez, said he was riding by on a skateboard when he saw police confront a man holding a knife. Mendez did not see any stabbings. But, he said, there was blood everywhere. Mendez questioned why the officers did not use a stun gun to subdue the man, saying he did not see him move toward them with the knife. Interactions between officers and the citys homeless residents often draw scrutiny, a product of lingering tensions between police, homeless Angelenos and their advocates over how to best approach skid row, where people often struggle with mental illness or drug use. Many residents and activists still lament the 2015 shooting of Charly Leundeu Keunang, a 43-year-old man known as Africa who was killed after police say he reached for an officers holstered gun. That shooting was captured on video by a bystander and viewed around the world after it was posted on social media. Homeless advocates also frequently cite a mentally ill homeless man who fell to his death from a downtown rooftop in 2014 after an officer used a Taser on him. Fridays incident came just days after the L.A. Police Commission held a special meeting on homelessness, where police, homeless advocates and others all agreed that law enforcement alone could not solve the citys homeless problems. Marcus Butler, the Midnight Missions director of security, said several employees heard Fridays shooting but none witnessed the altercation. Butler said he did not think the encounter would exacerbate the longstanding tensions between skid row and the police. From what weve gathered so far, its not going to be as bad as it could be, Butler said. He was attacking the community. kate.mather@latimes.com james.queally@latimes.com For more breaking crime news in Southern California, follow us on Twitter: @katemather and @JamesQueallyLAT ALSO Man convicted of killing his sister spits at judge and yells obscenities after his sentencing Escort who gave former Google exec a fatal heroin injection will be deported to Canada Police arrests are plummeting across California, fueling alarm and questions UPDATES: 6:35 p.m.: This article was updated throughout with some additional details about the shooting. 2:25 p.m. This article was updated with more details from the LAPD. 1:10 p.m.: This article was updated with details from other witnesses. 1:05 p.m.: This story was updated with additional details from police about the shooting as well as a comment from a man who said he witnessed people fighting before the shooting. This story was originally published at 12:40 p.m. The attorney general for the Mexican state of Nayarit appeared in San Diego federal court Friday, where he agreed to be transferred to New York to face federal drug-trafficking charges. Edgar Veytia, 46, was arrested on a warrant March 27 as he tried to enter the United States at the Cross Border Xpress a bridge in Otay Mesa connecting San Diego to the Tijuana Airport. Trips here are common for Veytia, a U.S. citizen who maintains a home in Chula Vista, according to Jan Ronis, one of his attorneys. The indictment out of the Eastern District of New York accuses Veytia of conspiring to manufacture, distribute and import heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana. The indictment does not name alleged co-conspirators or an organized crime group. Advertisement The U.S. government is seeking to seize up to $250 million in proceeds linked to the alleged crimes. Veytia, who goes by the nicknames Diablo, Eepp and Lic Veytia, is accused of joining the conspiracy in 2013 the year he took office as Nayarits top law enforcement official. On Friday, he appeared in a rumpled pale yellow dress shirt, brown slacks and ankle restraints, dressed in preparation for his flight under FBI escort to New York later in the day. He admitted he was the same person in the New York warrant and is scheduled to appear at a court hearing in Brooklyn on Saturday. Nayarit is a largely agricultural state bordered by scenic beaches on the Pacific that has developed into a resort destination known as the Riviera Nayarit. The coastline is less populated than Mazatlan to the north and Puerto Vallarta to the south. The state has been the site of increased drug cartel activity, including a gun battle in the capital city of Tepic in February between members of the Beltran-Leyva cartel and the Mexican military in helicopters. The regions reputed Beltran-Leyva boss was killed in the shootout, as were seven associates. Veytia, a close ally of Nayarits governor, projected a law-and-order image and once said his state was not fertile for organized crime. He joins a recent slew of Mexican politicians and law enforcement officials being prosecuted in the United States on corruption charges. kristina.davis@sduniontribune.com Davis writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune State officials said Thursday that they hope to sign a contract for reconstruction of the heavily damaged Lake Oroville spillway by April 17. Were working very fast, said Bill Croyle, acting director of the Department of Water Resources, which is under intense pressure to get the spillway in shape before the start of next winters rainy season. Although Croyle said the department has to conduct in nine months design and construction work that would normally take several years to complete, he expressed confidence that it was possible. Advertisement This is standard stuff that has been used very recently here in California, Croyle said. They can get this done. At a briefing in Oroville, department officials outlined preliminary design plans for rebuilding the upper part of the broken main spillway as well as measures for strengthening the eroded emergency spillway that came close to unleashing a disastrous torrent of water in February. They can get this done. Bill Croyle, acting director of the state Department of Water Resources The state does not yet know the cost of the repairs, which is likely to be higher than the $100-million to $200-million estimate officials made earlier this year. The reconstruction plans, which must be approved by federal regulators, are evolving as crews take rock core samples from the spillway hillside. In some places, Croyle said, the samples have found several feet of concrete beneath the spillway, revealing a more robust structure than anticipated. In February, a huge crater developed in the long concrete chute that serves as the reservoirs main spillway, prompting dam managers to reduce releases. That caused lake levels to rise so high that water started to wash over the unpaved emergency spillway for the first time in Orovilles history. The next day, erosion beneath the lip of the emergency spillway threatened to eat a hole in the side of the overflowing reservoir, prompting the downstream evacuation of more than 100,000 people. Repair plans call for contractors to replace portions of the upper, intact main gated spillway by Nov. 1. The new chute would be designed to handle flows of 270,000 cubic feet of water per second. That is somewhat less than the capacity of the damaged spillway but far more than historic spillway releases. A type of concrete that is pressed into place with heavy rollers would be used to fill areas of eroded rock near the lower chute, which would be partially rebuilt this year to accommodate releases of 100,000 cfs. Any flows above that threshold next winter would tumble down the eroded channel next to the chute. Work would be finished in 2018. Repair options for the emergency spillway include buttressing the cement weir at its head with roller-compacted concrete and laying an apron of the same material that would extend partway down the hillside. To prevent erosion of the head, a concrete wall would be poured underground and anchored into bedrock. The wall, considered the most critical part of the emergency spillway repair, would be constructed this year, and the other parts could be finished in 2018. bettina.boxall@latimes.com Twitter: @boxall With President Trumps decision to launch punishing missile strikes against Syrian leader Bashar Assads forces, the White House has angered Russia and probably dashed any hopes of improving ties with Moscow in the short term. Russia says it will suspend, starting Saturday, a communications hotline intended to help U.S. and Russian warplanes avoid collisions over Syria, and called the Pentagons pounding of a Syrian airfield with 59 cruise missiles an aggression that broke international law. This step by Washington is causing significant damage to Russian-American relations, which already are in deplorable shape, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday in Moscow. He added that the United States violated the norms of international law, under a far-fetched pretext. Advertisement Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned ominously that Trumps attack places the U.S. on the verge of military clashes with Russia, presumably in the crowded battle space of Syria, where the multi-sided war is in its seventh year. Thats it. The leftovers of the pre-election haze are blown away, Medvedev wrote on Facebook. Instead of the much-publicized idea about joint fight against the arch-enemy, [Islamic State], the Trump administration proved that it would fiercely fight against the legal government of Syria. The U.S. anti-Russian rhetoric was just as harsh. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who will make his first official trip to Moscow next week, was blistering in his condemnation of Russian military support for Assad and what he said was Moscows failure to stop Syria from using poison gas. Either Russia has been complicit or Russia has been simply incompetent, Tillerson said Thursday night. Syria agreed to get rid of its chemical weapons under a 2013 accord enforced by a United Nations agency. Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said Friday that Russia either allowed Syria to keep banned chemical agents or was being played for fools by Assad. The world is waiting for Russia to act responsibly, Haley told an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council. As a candidate, Trump repeatedly praised Russian President Vladimir Putin and called for improving ties with Moscow. But with his administration ensnared in a Congressional and FBI investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, Trump has said little about Putin since taking office and done nothing to thaw long-chilled relations with Moscow. According to the Pentagon, U.S. military officials apparently using the hotline that Russia now wants to close warned their Russian counterparts in Syria before the missiles were launched at the Shayrat airbase, northeast of Damascus. An encampment of Russian military helicopters, troops and other facilities at the north end of the sprawling desert base was deliberately not targeted, Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman said Friday. The Pentagon said it also avoided bombing a suspected chemical weapons stockpile at Shayrat because they didnt want to accidentally spread a toxic cloud. However, intelligence officers acknowledged they dont know for certain how much, or even if, nerve agent was located there. A salvo of 59 Tomahawk missiles, launched from two U.S. destroyers in the Mediterranean, destroyed 20 Syrian aircraft, hardened aircraft shelters, fuel storage, ammunition supply bunkers, and advanced Russian-made radars and surface-to-air missile systems, the Pentagon said. The strike was not intended to wipe out Assads air force, but rather to debilitate the Shayrat airfield and deliver a message that the international community will not accept chemical attacks against civilians, U.S. officials said. For its part, Moscow backed Assads claim that a Syrian airstrike hit a rebel cache of nerve gas on April 4, killing dozens of people, strenuously denying U.S. claims that a Syrian government aircraft dropped the lethal chemical agent. U.S. officials said they were investigating if a Russian warplane had dropped the bomb. But several diplomats said Moscow was angry at Assad for launching an operation that could only invite international outrage, at a time when Assads Russian-backed forces were winning the war. Some of Moscows furious reaction may be aimed at a domestic audience in Russia, rather than signaling a worsening of ties with Washington. Just how far-reaching Russian anger goes will depend largely on Trumps next steps. If the U.S. missile strike was a one-time operation, the Kremlin may conclude it was a small price to pay for its continued support for Assad, analysts say. But if Washington escalates its involvement and targets any of Assads other half-dozen or so airfields or its war planes, storage depots, palaces or other major facilities, then further estrangement seems likely. Tillerson said the administration continues to regard the fight against Islamic State the U.S. priority, not the Assad government. Tillerson is scheduled to meet with his Russia counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, while in Moscow. Despite the new tension in ties, he could attempt to use the air strike as leverage with the Putin government, a show of strength to try to persuade Moscow to rein in Assad and work toward a political solution in Syria. Alexander Vershbow, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia and NATO, and now a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Center think tank, said Russia was surprised by the retaliatory strikes but will not seek to escalate tensions further. While they will be very harsh in their rhetoric, and they will continue to deny justification [for U.S. retaliation], they will probably just try to draw a line around this incident, he said. They are not giving up on working with this administration. Trump went and committed the Mother of All No-Nos in Putins book: unilateral, non-U.N.-approved military action; and he did it in Putins new Middle East backyard, said Cliff Kupchan, chairman of the Eurasia risk-assessment organization. But the Russians dont want a war, and they dont want a permanent rupture with the U.S. Times staff writer Wilkinson reported from Washington and special correspondent Mirovalev reported from Moscow. Times staff writer W.J. Hennigan contributed from Washington. tracy.wilkinson@latimes.com For more on international affairs, follow @TracyKWilkinson on Twitter ALSO Syria crisis tests Trumps plan for a new world order U.S. missile strike on Syria: Who supports it and who condemns it Many in Israel cheer U.S. attack on Syria as a welcome sign of a more assertive key ally UPDATES: 4:30 p.m.: Story updated to correct spelling of Shayrat airbase in Syria. Hillary Clinton said she doesnt intend to run for elected office again, but vowed to remain involved in public service and to help Democrats regain control of Congress in the 2018 election. In her first postelection interview, Clinton alluded to the pain of her loss of the presidency to Donald Trump, hinting that there were times she didnt want to get out of bed. The aftermath of the election was so devastating, Clinton said Thursday during the Women in the World Summit hosted by Tina Brown at New Yorks Lincoln Center. I had to make up my mind I was going to get out of bed, yes; I was going to take walks in the woods, yes. Advertisement As a person, Im OK. As an American, Im pretty worried, said Clinton. Hillary Clinton reacts to applause as she arrives on stage at Lincoln Center. (Mary Altaffer / Associated Press) Among her worries, she cited President Trumps policies toward women and healthcare, Russian interference in the election and the downward spiral of Syria. Clinton said she believed it was not too late for the U.S. to declare a no-fly zone and attack Syrian government airfields to deprive President Bashar Assads air force of the ability to bomb civilians. That air force is the cause of most of the civilian deaths, as we have seen over the years and as we saw again in the last few days, said Clinton, referring to Tuesdays chemical weapons strike in Syrias Idlib province that killed more than 70 civilians. I really believe that we should have and still should take out his airfields and prevent him from being able to use them to bomb innocent people and drop sarin gas on them. After months sticking close to her house in Chappaqua, N.Y., Clinton has been emerging more in recent weeks to speak in public, but Thursdays appearance was the first interview. Clinton is interviewed on stage by Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times. (Mary Altaffer / Associated Press) Pressed by columnist Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, Clinton said she has struggled to explain her defeat, including the fact that 53% of white women voted for Trump. She blamed Russian interference in the election, the release of embarrassing WikiLeaks documents, FBI Director James B. Comeys statement about investigating her emails shortly before election day and misogyny as contributing factors. She warned young women contemplating a public career that they had to be prepared for more abuse than their male counterparts. Every woman who enters the public arena needs to grow skin as thick as a rhinoceros. Boy, do I relate to this, said Clinton, paraphrasing Eleanor Roosevelt. By the time they were finished with me, I was Typhoid Mary. barbara.demick@latimes.com Twitter: @BarbaraDemick ALSO Back in the spotlight, Hillary Clinton refocuses on policy and politics and a familiar foe Clinton Foundation donor excluded from the U.S. is not entitled to a hearing, government says If youre struggling to keep up with all things Trump, youre not alone. This is week 11 House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes stepped down Thursday as head of a high-stakes inquiry into Russias interference in last years election, saying he was under an ethics investigation for allegedly revealing classified information. Rep. Nunes announced his recusal minutes before the House Ethics Committee said it had opened a review into whether the Tulare Republican broke House rules last month when he publicly revealed that U.S. intelligence agencies may have picked up communications involving members of the Trump transition team. There were clear signs that Republican leaders, including Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, had pressured Nunes to step down. Advertisement His abrupt withdrawal marked another embarrassing setback for the House Intelligence Committee, which has seen its high-profile investigation collapse amid partisan sniping, and for the White House, which has struggled to emerge from a swirl of allegations involving ties to Russian authorities and Trumps counter-charges of improper surveillance. Nunes is the third prominent GOP victim in the still murky scandal. Michael Flynn was ousted as Trumps national security advisor in February for dissembling about his phone calls with Russias ambassador, and Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions recused himself from the FBI investigation into Russian meddling after he failed to tell senators at his confirmation hearing about his own meetings with the ambassador. Nunes strongly denied any wrongdoing and said he would be vindicated of accusations that he said came from left-wing activist groups. But the ethics investigation served to damage his rising career in Congress at least for the short term. Despite the baselessness of the charges, I believe it is in the best interests of the House Intelligence Committee and the Congress for him to step aside from the Russia inquiry while the Ethics Committee investigates, Nunes said in a statement. He will remain committee chairman but said he would hand the Russia investigation to Rep. K. Michael Conaway of Texas, the next ranking Republican, until the ethics investigation is completed. In a statement, Ryan said he supported Nunes decision to recuse himself, and called him eager to demonstrate to the Ethics Committee that he has followed all proper guidelines and laws. But for Nunes to stay, the speaker added, would be a distraction for the House Intelligence Committees investigation into Russian interference in our election. According to a Ryan aide, the speaker met with Nunes late Wednesday after learning that the Ethics Committee planned to move ahead with its investigation of him. There are very strong signs that Ryan did not have confidence in Nunes ability to continue as head of the Russia investigation, said Mieke Eoyang, a former Democratic aide on the House Intelligence Committee who now works with Third Way, a Washington think tank. Nunes played a prominent role in Trumps transition team, and Democrats and even several Republicans said he was too close to the president to lead a credible inquiry into whether Trumps associates colluded with Russia. In a March 30 interview on CBS This Morning, Ryan gave no indication that Nunes had told him that an aide at the White House was the source for the information that Nunes later said showed the Obama administration had sought out intelligence reports that mentioned Trumps associates. He had told me that like a whistle-blower-type person had given him some information that was new, that spoke to the last administration and part of this investigation, Ryan said. He briefed me about it. Didnt know the content of it; only knew that he was going to brief others. The Republican and Democratic leaders of House Ethics Committee took the unusual step of publicly confirming they had launched an initial review of whether Nunes had improperly disclosed details from those reports. In a statement, Rep. Susan Brooks (R-Ind.), the committee chairwoman, and Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.), the top Democrat on the panel, said they would seek to determine whether he made unauthorized disclosures of classified information, in violation of House Rules, law, regulations, or other standards of conduct. Two nonpartisan ethics watchdog groups Democracy 21 and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington wrote a letter of complaint to the Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent arm of Congress, alleging that Nunes may have mishandled classified information. Brooks and Deutch gave no timetable for completing the review. Nor did they say whether they planned to open a formal investigation of Nunes if they concluded there was evidence his statements violated House rules. House rules specify that a member found to have improperly revealed classified information could face censure, removal from committee membership or even expulsion from the House. Meredith McGehee, an congressional ethics expert with Issue One, a Washington-based watchdog group, said the House Ethics Committees decision to open an investigation, and to announce it publicly, was highly unusual. The House Ethics Committee is quite often a black hole, McGehee said. Nunes came under intense criticism last month when he disclosed at a hastily called news conference that an unidentified source had told him of dozens of intelligence reports from court-authorized surveillance that included the names of Trump transition team members. He said he was going immediately to the White House to brief President Trump on the information. Nunes subsequently admitted that he had received the information in the White House complex, explaining that it was the only safe place to examine the highly classified material. His spokesman later said Nunes did not know whether any transition officials were part of the intercepted conversations or were talked about by others. Although Nunes refused to reveal his source, officials have said that it appeared he had been shown the intelligence by a White House aide who once worked for the House intelligence panel. Democrats asserted that the disclosures were orchestrated by the White House to deflect attention from Trumps discredited claim that he had been wiretapped at Trump Tower by President Obama. On Thursday, speaking to reporters as he flew to Florida for a two-day summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump praised Nunes as a very honorable guy and a high-quality person. He also called Conaway a highly respected man and high-quality, although he said he had never met him. In his statement, Nunes did not back down from his unproven claims that aides in the Obama White House improperly identified Trump associates in intelligence reports that circulated in the government late last year. He called allegations that he revealed classified information entirely false and politically motivated, saying they are being leveled just as the American people are beginning to learn the truth about the improper unmasking of the identities of U.S. citizens and other abuses of power. Democrats, not surprisingly, applauded Nunes decision to recuse himself. Rep. Adam B. Schiff of Burbank, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said, He did so in the best interests of the committee, and I respect that decision. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) was more blunt, saying Nunes was compromised from day one, and he had no business leading the investigation into the Trump-Russia connection. Good for him, said Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is conducting a separate investigation of Russian meddling in the election. He stopped being objective. david.cloud@latimes.com Twitter: @davidcloudLAT Times staff writers Michael A. Memoli and Sarah D. Wire contributed to this report. With yet another police chief under suspicion and on forced leave, Portland, Ore., seems to have taken another step towards becoming a real life Portlandia, the absurdist TV series. Just nine months after being appointed to replace a chief who is charged with accidentally shooting a friend during a beer-fueled camping trip, Interim Chief Mike Marshman was put on paid leave March 24 by Mayor Ted Wheeler in connection with an allegedly falsified department attendance log. Counting Marshmans second-in-command, Lt. Michael Leasure who also is on leave and being investigated for allegedly signing the chief into a training session Marshman didnt attend in March 10 Portland officers are currently on paid leave while internal investigations proceed, the Portland Police Bureau says. Advertisement The probes are not necessarily connected and include two captains who allegedly failed to report discriminatory remarks made by the bureaus diversity manager. The incident involving the diversity manager was originally reported by the Oregonian, and the department later confirmed it is investigating. Another officer is being investigated for allegedly telling a man who refused to come out of his trailer, Im going to shoot you in your head! and then breaking into the trailer with two other officers and beating the man, breaking his nose and eye socket. The investigation into that incident was launched after the beaten man filed a complaint. This comes amid the turmoil of a February police shooting of a black teenage robbery suspect, Quanice Hayes, by a white officer, Andrew Hearst. A county grand jury in March declined to charge Hearst. In a confrontation, the officer shot Hayes, 17, once in the head and twice in the torso with a semiautomatic AR-15 rifle, police said. Hayes had cocaine and other drugs in his system and was on his knees when killed. The officer claimed Hayes appeared to be going for a gun. A gun replica was found at the scene. Hayess mother, Venice Hayes, is now seeking a federal investigation of the death, saying she doesnt believe the police account. Three days after the shooting, a police sergeant made what Mayor Wheeler said were allegedly blatantly racist, violent comments overhead by other officers. The sergeant was put on leave with pay and is among the 10 staffers being investigated. There is plenty of work to do, mayoral spokesman Michael Cox said. When Mayor Wheeler took office, he did so during a time of rapid change in the police bureau a new police chief, a new union contract, and the DOJ agreement, Cox said, referring to the still-evolving 2014 civil rights agreement between the city and Department of Justice to improve the way Portland police handle cases involving the mentally ill. Cox added that Wheeler, who took office in January, had campaigned on a reform agenda, emphasizing the need for increased community policing and teaching officers techniques in deescalation. His predecessor, Charlie Hales, named Marshman interim police chief, leaving Wheeler to search for a permanent chief to head the 1,000-member department. Daryl Turner, head of the Portland Police Assn. union, said in a statement that officers are shocked and disappointed at the unsettling chain of events, but continue to do their jobs. Officers understand that the process in place is equally applied from the chief to the newest recruit, he said. Teressa Raiford, an activist with Dont Shoot Portland, an organization founded in 2014, said the groups protests and demands for police accountability have led to increased force used against them at demonstrations. Still, the tumult over the shooting, demonstrations and alleged leadership misconduct are helping people focus on asserting their rights and filing investigations against officers, including the increased filming of interactions, she said. We want a higher law enforcement agency to investigate our police department. Its been an old boys network and never had to be accountable. Pete Simpson, the police bureau spokesman, said that morale had been steadily improving under Marshman and suffered a setback when he was put on leave. Chief Marshman is well-liked and well-respected among the rank and file and by members of the community, Simpson said. Despite the uncertainty, officers are continuing to work closely with the community to solve and prevent crimes. Marshman promised trust and transparency when he took over as interim chief last year. To show he was serious, Marshman released his personnel file and information on the bureaus 2002 investigation of his own fight with his teen stepson, in which he grabbed the boy by the throat. No charges were filed and the investigation was never publicly reported until now. Still officially chief, Marshman says he hasnt changed his mind about transparency even though hes now being investigated. The day I was sworn in as chief, he said in a statement about the attendance probe, I made a commitment to establishing internal legitimacy and restoring trust, both within our organization and with the community we serve. Part of that commitment is respecting the investigative processes we have in place to ensure accountability at all levels of the organization. These processes apply to me as much as they do to every member of the bureau. Regardless of rank, everyone should be accountable and it starts with me. Actually, it started with Chief Larry ODea, and his camping trip with buddies last year. Opting to retire last June after he allegedly tried to cover up the shooting of a friend, he now faces a misdemeanor charge of negligent wounding. ODea told a county investigator that the friend had somehow shot himself in the back while they and others, sitting in a row of folding chairs, picked off sage rats running past. But an Oregon Fish and Wildlife follow-up investigation quoted the friend as saying ODea later personally admitted to shooting him. The chief had gone to a nearby beverage cooler and reportedly fired his .22-caliber rifle by accident. The wounded man was released from a hospital after a few days. ODea was replaced by Marshman in June. The new, interim replacement for Marshman, Assistant Chief Chris Davis, is the citys fourth chief or interim leader in two years. The search for a permanent chief continues, and Mayor Wheeler has said that Marshman remains a possible candidate. Wheeler says hell likely have completed his nationwide search for a new police leader by this summer. Anderson is a special correspondent. ALSO Hillary Clinton says she wont run for public office again Senate confirms Neil Gorsuch, Trumps Supreme Court nominee Can the U.S. defend against a North Korean missile strike? Vegas Vic hewed close to the strong, silent cowboy types with little regard for a mess of extra words. Hed wave, all friendly-like, to city folk wandering down Fremont Street, and the wink of his right eye suggested he held a secret or two. For about 15 years after settling in his spot in 1951, all he ever said via a loudspeaker was, Howdy, pardner! Pleasant. Genial. Long-winded he wasnt. By the late 1960s, the towering neon casino sign had mostly gone quiet with many attributing Vegas Vics silence to an angry Lee Marvin. The tale thats been spun around these parts was that Marvin had been trying to get some shut-eye in the neighboring Mint Casino during a film shoot of The Professionals. The actor complained about Vics greeting and got him to clam up. Advertisement He stayed silent for decades before the folks who operated Vegas Vic mustered up the will and he began to utter Howdy, Ppardner! again. Sometimes, the sting of rejection takes a while to heal. But eventually he grew quiet again. Pensive, perhaps. Then Vegas Vic like many inanimate objects these days found Twitter. And, seemingly, his voice. It appears he had politics on his mind, but now Vegas Vic is in danger of being silenced again. A two-year run on Twitter by someone using Vegas Vics picture and persona may be coming to an end. Lawyers for the company that owns the rights to the character are in the process of issuing a cease and desist letter to the person that transformed Vegas Vic from friendly cowboy greeter to angry partisan tweeter under the Twitter handle @VegasVictory. Kevin Hanratty, lawyer for the company that owns the image and likeness of Vegas Vic, said they hadnt been aware of the accounts existence until this week. He said that after reviewing Vics posts on Twitter, he concluded that the user of @VegasVictory was in violation of using the trademarked image without permission. Another Twitter account, @VegasVic, appears to be dormant. But the angst may also have to do with what Vegas Vic was saying and how he was saying it. Vegas Vic on Twitter is a hyper-partisan, right-wing cowboy who bills himself as someone who loves Liberty, America and Las Vegas. I am transitioning from Neon Sign to Real Cowboy. Using a flurry of hashtags, Vegas Vic spent much of 2016 eviscerating Hillary Clinton. He ripped Democrats regularly and linked to a website that featured articles, pictures and videos with an anti-Democrat bent. With more than 46,000 followers, Vegas Vic on Twitter was sometimes crudely mocking Clinton throughout the election cycle. He also ripped Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), calling him an angry old man, and has spent considerable time backing conspiracy theories -- including the one about President Obama wiretapping President Trump. Hillary campaign couldve fed 6 million hungry children for a year with the $$$ they wasted, he chided. On Nov. 16: I never anticipated that one of the great jobs of @DJTrump45 election would be the #LiberalMeltdown. This is sinfully delicious fun! Vegas Vic appears to have been a Trump supporter since the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Perhaps less controversially, Vegas Vic also tweets about sports, including updates on the Raiders move to Las Vegas from Oakland. Hanratty said the owners of Pioneer Hotel Inc. a subsidiary of Archon Corp. werent interested in having Vegas Vic take on a partisan tone. The majority shareholders in the company are Paul and Sue Lowden she ran as a Republican for Harry Reids Senate seat in 2010, but lost to Sharron Angle in the primary. But Hanratty said Vegas Vic wasnt an extension of the Lowdens views, and the company isnt happy about the way the image was being used on Twitter. Vegas Vic has held iconic status for decades, representing the Westernized version of Las Vegas before the Strip took off and began exploding with a spate of themed casinos, including the Flamingo, Sahara and the Dunes. Michael Green, associate professor of history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said Vegas Vic was originally brought in by the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce in the late 1940s after he was designed and constructed by Young Electric Sign Co. Hes marketed downtown Las Vegas for years, and hes the grand old man now. Michael Green, UNLV history professor, on Vegas Vic He is one of those figures where, if you see a photo of this neon cowboy, people know its Las Vegas, Green said. He marketed downtown Las Vegas for years, and hes the grand old man now. The cowboy stood tall for years, waving and beckoning visitors from his perch atop the Pioneer Club, jaunty in his yellow-and-white plaid shirt. But after the Pioneer Club closed in the mid-1990s, age caught up to Vegas Vic. He fell into disrepair, but was restored when the Fremont Street Experience debuted in 1995. That renovation included adding a canopy over Fremont Street onto which light shows are projected while restricting the road to only foot traffic. He got a new shirt red and yellow. His red-brown boots and lit spurs stand atop a massive souvenir shop now. He still hasnt kicked his smoking habit. Vegas Vic isnt alone, with sign relatives spread throughout the state: Wendover Will on the Nevada-Utah border and River Rick in Laughlin. None appear to be tweeting. The partisan tweeting (I wouldve thought he mightve been tweeting about public land issues, Green quipped) is generally avoided among brands and iconic images because tourists come from all political stripes. Green said the last thing Las Vegas would want is to have one of its ambassadors alienate a sizable chunk of the population. In our very partisan times, people are capable of reading this the wrong way, he said. It then eventually leads to problems. George Payne, a 69-year-old from New Orleans who was visiting Fremont Street, was taking video and pictures of Vegas Vic on a warm weekday during the March Madness basketball tournament, and said he didnt want to think of the cowboy as a partisan. Payne said he remembered seeing pictures of the waving cowboy in a few movies, and it never occurred to him to attach partisanship to Vic. Payne looked up at the tall cowboy. I think of Texas more than anything, he said. Not politics. Vegas Vic was silent. He just winked. david.montero@latimes.com Twitter: @davemontero ALSO How Las Vegas overcame the NFLs fears to win the Raiders There is a renewed push to remove the McCarran name in Nevada Thirty-five years past a deadline set by Congress, Nevada ratifies the Equal Rights Amendment A lawsuit accuses Seattles mayor of sexually molesting a teenage high school dropout in the 1980s, and in interviews with the Seattle Times, two other men claim he also abused them. Mayor Ed Murrays personal spokesman, Jeff Reading, said in a statement that the allegations are false, politically motivated and that Murray would fight them. In a lawsuit filed Thursday, a 46-year-old man, identified only by his initials, said the abuse began in 1986 when he was 15. Advertisement Separately, the newspaper reported that two other men said they knew Murray when they lived in a Portland, Ore., center for troubled children. They accuse Murray of abusing them in the 1980s. The Seattle Times said one of them talked with a social worker and detective at the time. No charges were filed. Donald Trump, who as a private citizen warned President Obama in 2013 not to launch an attack on Syria, did just that on Thursday and for the same reasons that his predecessor contemplated doing so to punish the regime of Bashar Assad for using chemical weapons against his own people. Whether the attack on a Syrian airfield will cause Assad to desist in the use of such weapons is unclear. Trump also failed to articulate any new strategy for ending the civil war in Syria, vaguely calling on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in that country. But this much is true: The chemical attack that left more than 70 people dead and hundreds more sickened was a gruesome and egregious violation of international norms yet another outrage from a brutal leader who has presided over a six-year civil war that has led to the death of hundreds of thousands of Syrians. Advertisement In a brief address to the nation, Trump spoke with emotion about the dozens of Syrians killed this week in Idlib province apparently by sarin gas mixed with chlorine. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack, the president said. No child of God should ever suffer such horror. An impulsive, emotional reaction is not a good way to make a decision about the use of force. And rarely has an American president seemed more inclined to impulsive responses than this one. But Trump was right when he said: It is in the vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. That statement echoes former President Obamas explanation four years ago for why he planned military action strikingly similar to the action Trump took on Thursday to punish Assad for crossing the red line of using chemical weapons against his people. Obama never carried through with that threat, partly because of resistance in Congress, but also because Russia induced Assad to agree to the internationally supervised destruction of Syrias chemical weapons stockpile. That diplomatic solution seemed to offer a way to solve the problem without resorting to military force. Now, of course, it seems clear that Assad didnt comply completely with that commitment, with horrible results for innocent Syrians. That provides a justification for the action taken by the Trump administration, which, like the Obama administration before it, has been careful not to portray its military action as an attempt at regime change. Meanwhile, the more important and far more difficult question is what the new administrations strategy will be in Syria. Trump has repeatedly promised to reduce U.S. involvement in overseas conflicts and promote an America First agenda instead. Whats more, he has hinted that he believes Assad ought to remain in power, at least for the time being, and that the U.S. should expend its resources fighting the radicals of Islamic State. But now, only 11 weeks into his term, hes already being dragged in, forced to face realities and complexities he had apparently not anticipated. Back in February, Trump learned suddenly that rewriting the healthcare laws was complicated. Now hes learning the same about foreign policy. Lets hope he can find a strategy more effective than his predecessors to help bring this brutal war to an end. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinionand Facebook MORE FROM OPINION My phone was searched at LAX, which apparently is the new normal Congress didnt just nuke the filibuster, it permanently politicized the Supreme Court Theres no guarantee of a credible investigation into Trumps Russia ties, but Nunes departure is a start One of the happiest moments in my life was the day in 1999 when I became an American citizen. Studying for the citizenship test, I had learned to appreciate the Bill of Rights, including the 4th Amendment, which guarantees the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures. More recently I was made to wonder: Does the 4th Amendment apply to Muslim citizens at LAX? On Feb. 23, I arrived at LAX to begin a long trip to Gaziantep, Turkey, where my aged mother and two brothers are living as refugees from the Syrian wars. At the security checkpoint, I was sent to a separate line, where my purse and carry-on were emptied out, and where I was required to remove my back brace and undergo the usual full-body scan, twice, and an aggressive body search, again twice. Advertisement The first body-searcher reached between my legs and groped under my hijab. When I asked the second one to please be gentle with my injured back, she gave me a sharp jab instead. I cried out, lurched forward in pain and demanded to speak to her supervisor. The supervisor released me, but my problems were only beginning. At the gate, I heard a voice over the loudspeaker: Lubana Adi, come to the counter! Several armed men and a woman were waiting for me. I was required yet again to undergo a body search and to have my purse and carry-on emptied. This time, my hands and feet were checked with a paper device that, as was explained, would reveal whether I had recently worked with explosives. My only hope as a Muslim, of course, but primarily as a citizen is to alert my fellow citizens to the ongoing erosion of our rights. Then commenced a rapid-fire cross-examination. I was asked for my name, my husbands name, my childrens names and my destination. On and on it went until one of the agents waved my passport in my face: Where did you get this? I had begun to sense that the purpose of the interrogation was to goad me into an outburst that could be construed as a refusal to cooperate. They came closest with the passport question, but I let it pass: Where do you think I got it? I was allowed to board but barely settled in my seat when two armed men approached from the front of the plane, another two from the back. I was required to undergo a final interrogation in the small open area where the boarding ramp meets the aircraft. This time, one of my interrogators asked in Arabic: Do you have Daesh the Arabic acronym for Islamic State in your city? The introduction of Arabic seemed to be his way of signaling that, to him, I was not an American but an Arab from Hama, Syria, my familys city of origin. I have not laid eyes on Hama in a generation and know nothing at all about Islamic State activity there, and I said so. They allowed me to re-board with a parting promise: Well be waiting for you when you come back. My visit in Gaziantep was the warm reunion I had hoped it would be. My bad back continued to hurt, however, and I did make one trip to a local hospital, where an MRI was taken. The image was provided to me on a CD. To the Customs and Border Protection agents who would conduct a three-and-a-half-hour interrogation upon my return to LAX in March, this CD was highly suspect. Why was the hospitals name not on it? What else was recorded on it? Why had I attempted to open a bank account in Gaziantep? (I had indeed tried, in the hope of facilitating financial assistance to my mother.) Why had I returned home with only $500? I had brought several thousand dollars to Turkey, much of which went to my mother and some of which went to the hospital, to restaurants for large family gatherings, and toward gifts for stateside family and friends. But since when does an American traveler have to account for every dollar she spends abroad? Eventually one of the agents pounced, as if catching me at last in a deception: You went to Gaziantep Gaziantep, a border city! Why Gaziantep? Why Gaziantep? Where else would I go? I was visiting my mother and brothers, and Gaziantep is where they live. I was not allowed to call my husband, who was waiting outside with our children. Instead, an agent seized my phone. When it was returned, nothing worked as it had previously. I am left to assume that its contents were copied. Toward the end of the ordeal, after a 13-hour flight, I put my head down on the table in exhaustion. Then, abruptly, my wallet was returned to me with all my credit cards and identification in a jumbled stack, and I was told to leave. I intend to file no lawsuit, seek no apology. My only hope as a Muslim, of course, but primarily as a citizen is to alert my fellow citizens to the ongoing erosion of our rights. The so-called border search exemption means that the 4th Amendments requirement of probable cause does not apply to customs officials, and the practice of detaining cellphones began under the George W. Bush administration. But cellphone searches by the Department of Homeland Security have exploded in 2017 DHS officials searched more phones in February of this year than in all of 2015. (Four members of Congress introduced a bill this week that would require agents to obtain a warrant before searching a U.S. citizens electronic device.) President Trumps new security regime wastes yet more of our time and our taxpayer money and shows outright scorn for the spirit of the 4th Amendment. To read the article in Spanish, click here Lubana Adi, born in Italy to Syrian parents, cares for her three children in Los Angeles County and volunteers at their neighborhood school. She was assisted in writing this account by members of Church of the Messiah in Santa Ana. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook MORE FROM OPINION Goodbye, U.S. Senate Theres no guarantee of a credible investigation into Trumps Russia ties, but Nunes departure is a start Congress didnt just nuke the filibuster, it permanently politicized the Supreme Court To the editor: Thank goodness for the open and honest words of Robin Abcarian. Her column on Vice President Mike Pences refusal to dine alone with a woman and the possible discriminatory effects of his behavior should be mandatory reading for all. (Mike Pence wont dine alone with a woman whos not his wife. Is that sexist? April 5) How can we say that woman are allowed equal opportunity when we have men in the highest positions of our country who belittle our very existence? Wasnt it bad enough when President Trump used disgusting terms to describe how he treats women? In addition to his dining restriction, Pence will not go without his wife to an event where alcohol is served. Does he imagine that women want to throw themselves at his feet pleading for attention? Advertisement I fear for the future of women during this administration. Judith Braun, Woodland Hills .. To the editor: In the 1950s, I attended college as an accounting major. In those days, accounting, especially auditing, was considered a male profession. I knew that finding a job would be difficult, so I applied for a civil service position in the federal government. I passed the written test with the top score and moved on to the interview. There, I was told that regardless of my stellar test score, a woman could not be hired onto the accounting staff, especially one who wants to go into auditing. The wives of the male staff members would object to me going on a field audit and sharing meals with men. Thanks to the views of wives like Pences, I did not get the job. Donna Handy, Santa Barbara Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook Donald Trumps foreign policy and legislative agenda may be a confused mess due to amateurism, impulsiveness and understaffing, but his administrations attack on the environment is operating with the focus and zeal of the Spanish Inquisition. Led by EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, the Trump team is moving quickly to return national environmental policy to a pre-scientific age. The Trump administrations proposed federal budget would whack the Environmental Protection Agency especially hard a 30% cut. Even some big corporations that are less-than-enthusiastic fans of the EPA are worried the budget stinginess will be problematic for their operations because there wont be enough staff at the agency to process and approve the applications needed to move ahead with environmentally sensitive projects. Nevertheless, Pruitt is intent on a complete neutering of the agency he runs. It came to light this week that the new director is now demanding that all but the most insignificant enforcement measures taken anywhere in the country get a review in Washington, presumably to determine if they are out of step with Pruitts pro-industry cheerleading. Advertisement 1 / 51 la-1491523602-y7ephyarj1-snap-image (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 2 / 51 la-1491368625-0bgh58ihw8-snap-image (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 3 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 4 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 5 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los angeles Times) 6 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 7 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 8 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 9 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 10 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 11 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 12 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 13 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 14 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 15 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 16 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 17 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 18 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 19 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 20 / 51 Trump inspires millions to take to the streets -- to oppose him. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 21 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 22 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 23 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 24 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 25 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 26 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 27 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 28 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 29 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 30 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 31 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 32 / 51 Cartoon caption contest winner at the DENT conference in Sun Valley, Idaho: Jon Duval, executive director of the Ketchum Community Development Corporation. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 33 / 51 Old radicals and big media descend on Selma (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 34 / 51 Horsey imagined the creation of the Ann Coulter phenomenon in this cartoon from 2007. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 35 / 51 This David Horsey drawing is a reconfiguration of a cartoon he first published in 2006. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 36 / 51 Donald Sterling, owner of the L.A. Clippers, should give Cliven Bundy a call. After Sterling loses his NBA franchise and the deadbeat Nevada rancher loses his cattle, the two old racists will both need a buddy. Maybe they can team up together and open an all-white rodeo. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 37 / 51 Besides sending a chill up the spine of the international community, Vladimir Putin has accomplished one other thing by seizing Crimea and threatening the rest of Ukraine: Putin has brought back the bear. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 38 / 51 The right-wing insurrection at the Bundy ranch in Bunkerville, Nev., has taken another weird turn with new revelations about the family history of Cliven Bundy. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 39 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 40 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 41 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 42 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 43 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 44 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 45 / 51 David Horsey / Los Angeles Times (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 46 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 47 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 48 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 49 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 50 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 51 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) EPA scientists who do research into the causes and effects of climate change have been put on notice much like Galileo got put on the spot by the Vatican. When Galileo proclaimed that the Earth revolves around the sun, the church demanded that he recant or be branded a heretic. Like medieval priests, Pruitt and Trump do not want to be contradicted by any scientific findings that refute their belief that climate change is a hoax. That is why Trump has also told NASA to stop collecting climate change data from orbiting satellites. The Republican dogma of unrestrained economic exploitation drives the president and his EPA chief. As a result, climate science has become a heretical activity. It is no wonder government scientists have been very busy since the election transferring vast amounts of research from government computers to private servers. They fear it will all be destroyed by the new Savonarolas in a technological bonfire of the vanities. The central target of the onslaught, Barack Obamas Clean Power Plan, set the United States on a course toward a 26% reduction from 2005 greenhouse gas levels by 2025. Trump has signed an executive order that would scuttle the plan in order to please coal and oil interests. Appearing last Sunday on Fox News, Pruitt attempted to defend the new policy and got serious blowback from interviewer Chris Wallace. What would Pruitt do about the tens of thousands of Americans who get sick or die from environmental pollution who would be saved by curbs on carbon emissions? Without the Clear Power Plan, how are you going to prevent those terrible things? Wallace asked. Pruitt had no good answer and instead yammered on about regulatory overreach. Has the U.S. ever had an EPA chief who is more a stooge of the fossil fuel industry? The only silver lining in the black cloud of stupidity that hangs over the EPA is the fact that the Trump administrations retreat to the ignorant environmental policies of the McKinley era is being offset by the imperatives of the energy market and the enlightened actions of states and cities. In a recent opinion piece, former New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said the U.S. would still be able to meet commitments made in the 2015 Paris accord on climate change that led to the Obama plan. He noted that, no matter what tricks Pruitt and Trump have up their sleeves, they cannot stop the decline in the use of coal. Already, 250 coal-fired power plants are scheduled to be closed or converted to cheaper, cleaner fuel sources, Bloomberg said. That, combined with state and city efforts to cut emissions and commitments from major corporations to do the same, will mean the goals agreed upon in Paris remain in reach, with or without the federal governments help. Which may prove that the anti-EPA crusade is as futile as it is feudal. David.Horsey@latimes.com Follow me at @davidhorsey on Twitter University of California administration is paying excessive salaries and mishandling funds, state audit says UCLA campus (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) The administration of the University of California system pays top workers salaries and benefits significantly higher than that of similar state employees, and failed to disclose to the Board of Regents and the public that it had $175 million in budget reserve funds while it was seeking to raise tuition, a state audit found Tuesday. The audit triggered a dispute with UC President Janet Napolitano, who said charges of hidden funds were false, while two members of the UC Board of Regents charged recommendations to give the Legislature budget authority over the Office of the President encroached on UCs constitutional powers. Among the sticking points, the auditors believe the regents should contract with an independent third party that can assist the regents in monitoring a three-year corrective action plan. The audit of the Office of the President also found that it failed to satisfactorily justify its spending on system-wide initiatives and inappropriately screened surveys submitted by auditors to campus officials. Our report concludes that the Office of the President has amassed substantial reserve funds, used misleading budgeting practices, provided its employees with generous salaries and atypical benefits, and failed to satisfactorily justify its spending on systemwide initiatives, State Auditor Elaine Howle wrote to Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature. Furthermore, when we sought independent perspective from campuses about the quality and cost of the services and programs the Office of the President provides to them, the Office of the President intentionally interfered with our audit process, Howle wrote. The auditor said that because of recent tuition hikes, she recommends the Office of the President should refund available funds in the reserves by returning them to the campuses for the benefit of students. Ralph Washington Jr. president of the U.C. Students Assn. said if any reserve money is found it should go to help students, possibly by killing the tuition increase or helping students who are starving or homeless, but he is concerned legislators may use the audit to say the U.C. doesnt need so much general fund money. Students definitely dont want their tuition to go up, he said. Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount), who serves on the board of regents, said the audit requires more inquiry. The audit of the UC Office of the President appears to have uncovered the same kind of budgetary misrepresentations and executive excess that weve seen before with the State Parks Department and the Public Utilities Commission, Rendon said in a statement. There are many questions that need to be answeredand answered honestly. The audit was requested by legislators concerned about high tuition and complaints of a bloated administration overseeing the UC systems 10 campuses. The reserve included $32 million in unspent funds it received from an annual charge levied on the campusesfunds that campuses could have spent on students, the audit said. Auditors said salaries paid to those in the presidents office are much higher than the pay of comparable positions in other state government jobs. President Napolitano agreed with the vast majority of recommendations for improving budget processes and spending, but denied that $175 million was hidden from the UC Board of Regents. In a letter to Howle, the president said changes were already underway. The recommendations to [the UC presidents office] are helpful, Napolitano wrote. We welcome this constructive input, which aligns with our proactive efforts to continually improve UCOPs operations, and UCOP intends to implement the recommendations. However, Board of Regents Chair Monica Lozano and Regent Charlene Zettel asked Howle to remove recommendations that they feel encroach on the constitutional autonomy of the university system, including proposals to have the Legislature approve the Office of the Presidents budget. As written, we believe these recommendations threaten the Universitys standing as a constitutionally autonomous entity, and the Board of Regents itself, the regents wrote. Administrative salaries amounted to $2.5 million more than the maximum annual salary ranges for comparable state employees, auditors found. For instance, an accounting managers maximum annual salary is $169,000 at UC compared to $156,000 for other state employees. An information system manager can make $258,000 with UC, but $150,000 with other state agencies. The audit said: 10 executives in the Office of the President whose compensation we analyzed were paid a total of $3.7 million in fiscal year 2014-15 over $700,000 more than the combined salaries of their highest paid state employee counterparts. On benefits, the Office of the President provided a regular retirement plan but also offered its executives a retirement savings account into which the office contributes up to 5% of the executives salariesabout $2.5 million over the past five years, the audit found. The Office of the President also spent more than $2 million for its staffs business meetings and entertainment expenses over the past five yearsa benefit that the State does not offer to its employees except in limited circumstances, the audit said.. The audit also said the Office of the President reimbursed questionable travel expenses, including a ticket for a theater performance and limousine services. One person spent $350 per night on hotel rooms, which is above the allowable standard for other state agencies. The audit said the Office of the President has not managed its own budget which amounted to $747 million in fiscal year 201516 in a fiscally prudent or transparent way. Napolitano said the audit was in error in claiming her office failed to publicly disclose tens of millions in surplus funds. In fact, UCOPs budget and financial approaches reflect strategic, deliberate and transparent spending and investment in UC and state priorities, said a statement by the Office of the President. Howle disagreed. Significant reforms are necessary to strengthen the publics trust in the Office of the President, the audit concluded. Read the audit here. President Trump made an about-face in his approach to the Middle East by launching a fiery salvo of cruise missiles early Friday, and with it came relief to American allies and many of the presidents critics at home but its impact in Syria will ultimately depend on what Trump does next. Attacking one airfield at least one of the two runways were still in use Friday hardly diminishes President Bashar Assads military capability. And whatever cache of poison gas or other chemical agents the Syrian government has remains intact, including one at the air base that the Pentagon deliberately didnt target for fear of spreading a toxic cloud. The volatile situation will quickly test the new administrations ability to respond to international atrocities or other provocations while upholding Trumps vow to keep the U.S. military out of prolonged ground wars around the world. Advertisement Already, administration officials are signaling the targeting of the Shayrat airfield was a one-and-done a reassertion of American military might that will not be backed up by a more extensive plan for ousting Assad or protecting Syrian civilians from attacks that involve anything other than banned chemical weapons. But engaging and disengaging in Syria is not that simple. If this is a one-off event, fire-and-forget retaliation against a single incident, it will prove useless, said Frederic Hof, who was a special advisor for transition in Syria during the Obama administration. It will prove ineffective and history will record it as such. Assad has any number of tools to inflict cruelty, even if the U.S. airstrike has him reconsidering the use of banned nerve agents. He could use helicopters to drop the chlorine-packed bombs his forces fashioned to inflict the same level of suffering it had before the United Nations completed its destruction of 1,200 tons of Syrian chemical agents last year. Each new atrocity will undermine Trumps effort to project strength and establish the red line he has declared may not be crossed, drawing Americans into a deeper conflict. This is the beginning, and a lot of hard things have to be done, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told MSNBC on Friday. This is a long, hard slog. Trump now faces exactly the pressures that President Obama sought to avoid when he decided against approving U.S. military strikes in Syria himself in 2013, after Congress refused to authorize them. Except now, Russian troops are in Syria, raising the stakes of an inadvertent clash with a nuclear-armed rival. Trump acted without seeking congressional authorization. He did so swiftly and almost impulsively, driven by his revulsion at the gruesome images of the aftermath of the apparent sarin gas attacks. It moved him to reverse course on his years-long campaign against launching exactly the airstrikes that he approved on Thursday. The decision came after U.S. military radar and surveillance systems picked up a Syrian attack aircraft takeoff before dawn Tuesday from the Shayrat base. The craft flew 75 miles north to a rebel-held area in Khan Sheikhoun, according to the Pentagon. U.S. officials say the aircraft dropped a bomb that quickly left many victims, including children, lifeless. Others writhed in pain, foamed at the mouth or gasped for air. Trucks took victims to the closest clinic, where U.S. systems detected a small drone overhead about five hours later. Soon after, according to U.S. officials, a Russian-made attack jet Pentagon officials believe was flown by Russian pilots dropped a bomb on the medical facility. At Trumps direction, Pentagon officials drew up a menu of three attack options meant to diminish Syrias ability to launch chemical attacks and deter Assad from using nerve agents but not disrupt the tenuous balance of power in Syria for fear that Islamic State or other extremist groups could fill the vacuum. Four hours after Defense Secretary James N. Mattis presented those options to Trump on Thursday afternoon at his ocean-side resort in Florida, two destroyers had launched 60 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Shayrat airbase. They destroyed 20 Syrian aircraft, aircraft shelters, fuel storage units, ammunition supply bunkers, and advanced Russian-made radars and surface-to-air missile systems, according to U.S. officials. Video shows U.S. destroyers Porter and Ross as they launch Tomahawk missiles into Syria. The Pentagon said 59 missiles targeted a Syrian air base. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson conceded that at least one runway was in use Friday but he said it was not a specific target. All but one Tomahawk, which malfunctioned and plunged into the water, hit the intended targets, U.S. officials said. The strike was not intended to wipe out Assads air force, but to debilitate the airfield and deliver a message that the U.S. will no longer accept chemical attacks on civilians, the officials said. This strike was related to the use of chemical weapons only, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said. I dont interpret this as a first step toward anything else in particular other than trying to eliminate or at least to make sure that [Assad] knows there are consequences for doing this again. Derek Chollet, who advised the White House and State Department on Syria during the Obama administration, doubts this will be the end. Now that military action has been taken, he said, pressure on Trump to keep Assad in check will be intense both at home and abroad. Even if Assad stops using chemical weapons or we destroy whatever remaining chemical weapons hes got, there is a slippery slope for Trump to grapple with, said Chollet. The logic of intervention begins to take on a life of its own, he added. Those who believe this should be the beginning of a new approach will raise pressure on the administration. Allies will be thinking that this is a new era. It becomes very difficult for presidents to resist. The Obama administration found itself in a similar predicament in Libya in 2011, where the White House launched an air war to protect civilians from strongman Moammar Kadafi in the Arab Spring uprisings. The mission morphed into regime change, as it often does, and Libya wound up in a civil war that produced a failed state where an Islamic State affiliate has taken root. Even a narrow U.S. mission, focused on chemical weapons only, considerably expands the American role in Syria. The U.S. military will now turn its focus to tracking down stockpiles that were thought to have been eliminated as part of an international agreement in 2013. It is unknown if Assad hid chemical agents or precursors from United Nations inspectors, or acquired them more recently. NEWSLETTER: Get the days top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj As the hunt gets underway, Trump will find himself under pressure to articulate a clear strategy for Syria. The congratulations and encouragement he received from many lawmakers and allies Friday could give way to confusion and concern about the path forward. As heartbreaking as Assads chemical weapons attack on his own people was, the crisis in Syria will not be resolved by one night of airstrikes, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) wrote Friday in a letter to House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.). She called on him to bring Congress back from an 18-day recess to debate whether to authorize use of force against Syria. The American people are owed a comprehensive strategy with clear objectives, she wrote. evan.halper@latimes.com Twitter: @evanhalper willian.hennigan@latimes.com Twitter: @wjhenn ALSO Syrian villagers near U.S. missile strike know the sound of battle but never as horrific as this U.S. missile strike in Syria dashes hope of improving ties with Russia President Trump sees push back from far-right supporters over U.S. airstrike in Syria Editorial: Trump told Obama not to attack Syria; now he does just that Chinese President Xi Jinping had just finished a steak dinner with President Trump in a gilded dining room at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when Trump told Xi that dozens of U.S. cruise missiles had just rained down on an airfield in Syria, a fiery display of U.S. military might that formed an awkward backdrop to a summit intended to introduce the leaders of the worlds two largest economies. Trump had intended to press Xi for trade concessions and urge China to take a more active role in restraining North Koreas nuclear ambitions, but the high-stakes discussions that began Thursday night and continued Friday were overshadowed by Trumps muscular response to a poison gas attack blamed on Syrian President Bashar Assad. Even though China normally opposes any use of U.S. force overseas and has consistently sided with Russia in vetoing any anti-Syrian resolutions by the U.N. Security Council the Syria drama may have been a welcome distraction for Xi, who was under pressure at home not to cede too much to the new U.S. president in advance of a major Communist Party leadership meeting in the fall. Advertisement For President Xi to see this unfold shoulder-to-shoulder is a rare opportunity to get if you think of poker players some very interesting tells John Park, Northeast Asia specialist Seemingly mindful of Chinese cultural mores, Trump eschewed any hint of boastfulness or the bellicose rhetoric he had employed on the campaign trail toward China, instead paying light-hearted tribute to Xis negotiating skills. We had a long discussion already. So far, I have gotten nothing. Absolutely nothing, Trump told reporters after his initial meeting with Xi on Thursday night. But we have developed a friendship. I can see that. I think, long-term, we are going to have a very, very great relationship. Xis trip to Florida lasted less than 24 hours and appeared carefully choreographed to limit the number of public interactions he and Trump would have. The two leaders agreed to a 100-day plan to review the trade relationship with China, to increase cooperation on ending North Koreas nuclear program and concurred that the missile threat from North Korea had reached an urgent stage, according to Cabinet officials who described the meetings. The two sides also agreed to a series of future meetings to tackle additional economic and security issues as well as U.S. concerns about Chinese cyberattacks. Xi invited Trump to visit China later in the year. But events in Syria set the tone for this visit. After dinner, Xi left Trumps resort for his hotel nearby, and Trump walked into a secure room at the resort for a classified update on the impact of the Syria strikes from national security officials. Later, he delivered a sober address to the American people about why he had decided to retaliate militarily against Assad over the gas attack on Tuesday in northern Syria, which left dozens dead, generating gruesome images of victims foaming at the mouth and childrens tiny corpses. Sitting with Trump during a major national security incident gave the Chinese leader an unprecedented opportunity to view at close range how the U.S. leader, less than 100 days into his presidency, acts under pressure, John Park, a specialist on Northeast Asia at Harvard Kennedy School, said in a telephone interview. For President Xi to see this unfold shoulder-to-shoulder is a rare opportunity to get if you think of poker players some very interesting tells, Park said. Chinese intelligence services have a sophisticated understanding of U.S. actions, Park said, and would be able to distinguish between Trumps response to an attack against Syrian civilians using the banned nerve agent sarin and what the U.S.leader might do if threatened by some action by North Korea, which has been regularly test-firing ballistic missiles toward Japan. But there was one message that the Chinese leader likely received. This shows how low a bar there is for the use of military force, Park said. On Friday, Xi returned to the resort in the late morning to meet with Trump and stroll around the grounds of Mar-a-Lago. The two leaders talked as they walked past palm trees and peach-colored stucco walls. News photographers took photos from a distance as Trump pointed out landmarks on his property, which sits between the Atlantic Ocean and the Intracoastal Waterway. Xi left after a lunch with Trump. Photos: More tragedy in Syria as gas attack kills dozens The Chinese leaders public comments were almost studiedly bland. Xi praised Trump for giving him a warm reception and described the visit as holding a uniquely important significance for the relationship between the U.S. and China. The two men had in-depth and lengthy communications, Xi said, and arrived at many common understandings, the most important being deepening our friendship and building a kind of trust. One of the most important things that can come out of an introductory meeting like this one was for Trump and Xi to feel comfortable having difficult discussions in the future, R. Nicholas Burns, a former top diplomat in both Democratic and Republican administrations, said in an interview. With the Chinese it is not a question of friendship, it is a question of trust, Burns said. China is the most consequential relationship the U.S. will have for the next half century, he said. By all accounts Xi Jinping is the strongest, most important Chinese leader since Deng Xiaoping, Burns said. The two men didnt need to bond personally in order for the trip to be seen as successful, said Dean Cheng, an expert on China at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington. The two may not come out of the meeting with a Don and Xiao Xi relationship, Cheng said, using an affectionate nickname for Xi. Xis wife, Peng Liyuan, a famous soprano, visited music classes at a public middle school with First Lady Melania Trump on Friday. After a choir of girls sang Astonishing, Peng repeatedly said Bravo! It wasnt the Chinese first ladys first encounter with an American counterpart. In 2014, she and then-First Lady Michelle Obama visited a Chinese calligraphy class in Beijing and walked together through the Forbidden City. A Chinese official traveling with Xis wife said that developing friendship with Melania Trump is also an important goal. ALSO: Syria crisis tests Trumps plan for a new world order Photos: More tragedy in Syria as gas attack kills dozens High stakes for Californias Chinese connections as summit begins brian.bennett@latimes.com Twitter: @ByBrianBennett noah.bierman@latimes.com Twitter: @Noahbierman Bennett reported from Washington and Bierman from Palm Beach. As a private citizen, Donald Trump eschewed any sort of intervention in Syria. We should stop talking, stay out of Syria and other countries that hate us, rebuild our own country and make it strong and great again-USA, he boomed on Twitter in September 2013. That America first philosophy energized far-right media to rally around his candidacy. Advertisement But that was before Thursday night, when 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles were launched at a Syrian air base on Trumps orders, days after images of people choking to death from a chemical weapons attack flooded international media. Now some of Trumps most ardent supporters right wing media and pundits, to name a few are split over his decision to attack the country where a civil war had raged since 2011. We should stop talking, stay out of Syria and other countries that hate us, rebuild our own country and make it strong and great again-USA! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 13, 2013 He seems to betray his statements and hes betrayed the meaning of his campaign, Richard Spencer, a white nationalist and founder of the term alt-right, said Friday. Spencer, a staunch supporter of Trump throughout the election and into his fledgling administration, said in an interview that the president is effectively risking a world war over peoples feelings. Hes engaging in some sort of human rights dogma war. Its insane, said Spencer, who is reevaluating his support for Trump, adding that he is concerned about comments from the administration suggesting it may take other action against Syria in the future. And hes not alone on the far-right. He told us he would be the president of America, not the world. Could somebody show him pictures of Americans raped & killed by illegals? tweeted columnist Ann Coulter, who supported Trump largely because of his hard-line positions on immigration. While Trump and U.S. intelligence officials have said they have no doubt that the forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad used chemical weapons in an attack that killed at least 70 people, some of the presidents backers even questioned whether such an attack ever occurred. Mike Cernovich, the far-right blogger who was among those touting the debunked PizzaGate conspiracy, which included stories about a nonexistent child sex operation involving Hillary Clinton at a Washington, D.C., pizzeria, urged his Twitter followers to begin the hashtag #SyriaHoax. (Some of Cernovichs work has, at times, been touted by Donald Trump Jr., the presidents oldest son.) #SyriaGasAttack was sponsored by deep state, Cernovich tweeted earlier this week, alluding to a non-existent, secretive, coordinated network inside the government dedicated to undermining the administration. Paul Joseph Watson, an editor at the conspiracy theorist site Infowars, assailed Trump on Thursday night as a deep state/neocon puppet on Twitter. Im officially OFF the Trump train, he added. I guess Trump wasn't "Putin's puppet" after all, he was just another deep state/Neo-Con puppet. I'm officially OFF the Trump train. Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) April 7, 2017 Still, the U.S. attack has gained Trump plaudits from more mainstream Republicans he battled throughout the 2016 campaign. President Trump has made it clear to Assad and those who empower him that the days of committing war crimes with impunity are over, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a moderate Republican, said in a statement. And Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Trump deserves the support of the American people for his actions. Missiles flying. Rubios happy. McCain ecstatic, Laura Ingraham, a right-wing radio host who, tweeted. A complete policy change in 48 hrs. Missiles flying. Rubio's happy. McCain ecstatic. Hillary's on board. A complete policy change in 48 hrs. Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) April 7, 2017 In the hours after the attack, Trump, speaking before reporters, said the chemical attack was a slow and brutal death for so many. Trump added that I call on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria. Some on the far-right urged their listeners and readers, essentially, to take deep breaths and remain calm in the days ahead. President Trump, they say, really hasnt changed all that much. Calm down, its OK, were going to be OK, said the alt-right blogger Tim Treadstone, who works under the pseudonym Baked Alaska, to his 32,000 Periscope video followers. (He also has 155,000 Twitter followers.) The great thing about Trump supporters, we are different, we are diverse. For his part, Treadstone said he did not support the air strikes. kurtis.lee@latimes.com Twitter: @kurtisalee ALSO Trumps strike on Syria exposes growing GOP divide in Congress on foreign intervention and use of force Syrians report 15 dead in U.S. airstrike Timeline: Key moments from the U.S.-led campaign in Iraq and Syria Just one week ago, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, speaking in Turkey, made official a policy shift that President Trump had hinted at since early in his campaign the U.S. would no longer actively seek the ouster of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Four days later, Assads forces, according to U.S. intelligence, launched a sarin-gas attack on a rebel-controlled town in northern Syria. And on Thursday, in retaliation, American missiles rained down on a Syrian airfield. Advertisement It was the first direct U.S. strike against Assads forces in the seven-year history of that countrys civil war. Good afternoon, Im David Lauter, Washington bureau chief. Welcome to the Friday edition of our Essential Politics newsletter, in which we look at the events of the week in Washington and elsewhere in national politics and highlight some particularly insightful stories. AN OVERSHADOWED SUMMIT We cant know yet how this attack ultimately will be seen. Will it be as a successful effort at deterrence a low-cost military strike efficiently executed by the president, Defense Secretary James N. Mattis and national security advisor H.R. McMaster? Or will we look back at Thursday evening as the moment Trump took a fateful first step into Syrias intractable civil war and had to give up on warmer relations with Russia? By Friday morning, Syria was denouncing the attack as aggression, and Russia was vowing to strengthen Syrias air defenses. What we do know is that the 11th week of Trumps presidency marked the point at which he ran up against the harsh realities of a complex world. The week was supposed to be all about Trumps meeting at Mar-a-Lago with Chinese President Xi Jinping and the successful confirmation of the presidents Supreme Court nominee, Neil M. Gorsuch. But events intervened in an unusually brutal fashion. The administration initially had a muted response to Syrias chemical weapons attack, as Bill Hennigan, Nabih Bulos and I reported. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, speaking off camera, denounced the use of chemical weapons as heinous but pointedly noted that the administration was not interested in regime change. Assads hold on power was a political reality, he said. That was consistent with Trumps America First policy of not engaging in moral crusades elsewhere in the world. It was also consistent with Trumps own repeatedly tweeted advice to President Obama the last time Syria used chemical weapons. At the time, in roughly a dozen tweets in late August and early September, Trump bluntly warned Obama not to launch an airstrike in retaliation. One example: Dont attack Syria - an attack that will bring nothing but trouble for the U.S. Focus on making our country strong and great again! But the world looks different from the Oval Office, as Obama repeatedly said. The pictures of dying children had a strong effect on Trump, according to people who talked with him. By the next day, in a news conference with the visiting King Abdullah of Jordan, Trump publicly said that the attack crosses many, many lines and had changed the way he thought about Assad. By that night, the Pentagon had drawn up options, and on Thursday Mattis flew to Florida to give Trump a final briefing. A CROWDED AGENDA At the same time they were grappling with Syria, Trumps advisors were trying to come up with a policy to handle the more existential threat posed by North Koreas nuclear program a main item on the agenda for the summit with Xi. The subject is one where Trumps tough talk will be put to the test, Barbara Demick reported. In advance of the summit, Trump advisors expressed hopes that he and Xi could form a personal bond, Brian Bennett, Noah Bierman and Mike Memoli reported. China experts warned that was unlikely. Chinese officials mostly expressed anxieties about what could go wrong, our colleague Jonathan Kaiman reported from Beijing. Unlike previous U.S.-Chinese summit meetings, this one was not tightly choreographed in advance, White House officials said. That doesnt mean the agenda was simple, though. In the run-up to the summit, both the U.S. and the North Korea have escalated tensions. Pyongyang has launched a series of provocative missile tests. Administration officials, especially Tillerson, who traveled to the region recently, have conspicuously rattled sabers. The rhetoric has been designed, in part, to warn the Chinese that if they dont do more to restrain the North Koreans, the U.S. might take military action. In addition to North Korea, Trump talked publicly about wanting to have a tough conversation with Xi about trade. One problem, however, is that on North Korea and trade, Trump wants concessions from China. Its not clear what, if anything, hes prepared to offer in return. Another problem is that China has tools for leverage. One of the few big accomplishments in U.S.-Chinese relations in the last few years, for example, was an agreement under which the Chinese cut back sharply on industrial cyber-espionage aimed at U.S. firms. In advance of the summit, U.S. cyber experts warned those gains could be reversed, Bennett reported. One issue thats not expected to get a lot of attention is climate change. Under Obama, the U.S. used to push China on global warming. Now the positions have been reversed, Kaiman reported. The Chinese will continue to try to reduce the amount of coal they burn something they desperately need to do to clean up the smog that chokes northern Chinas cities. But whether China can, or is willing to, step into an international leadership role on the issue is a big unknown. Another issue likely to be little mentioned human rights. As Tracy Wilkinson reported, that topic has faded quickly in the Trump era. A RESHUFFLE OR A SHAKEUP? As Trump prepared for the meeting with Xi, he reorganized his National Security Council, removing his political strategist Steve Bannon. As Bennett, Bierman and Memoli noted, the move largely brings a traditional structure back to a White House national security system that has been roiled by leaks, infighting and intrigue since Trump took office. It also strengthened the authority of McMaster, who has pushed to rid the national security staff of political ties. What the move meant for Bannon was less clear. His allies insisted that no demotion was implied. His enemies posited the opposite that Trump had grown annoyed at being portrayed as Bannons puppet, that his influential son-in-law Jared Kushner had arranged to take Bannon down a peg, that within the White House, Bannon had taken the blame for much that has gone wrong the last 11 weeks. One of the most conspicuous of those failures, in which Bannon was heavily involved, was the effort to repeal and replace Obamacare. As Lisa Mascaro and Noam Levey reported, White House officials and congressional Republicans spent much of the week trying to resuscitate their effort to pass a new healthcare law. By weeks end, Congress left town for a two-week recess having made no visible progress. A CHANGED SENATE Amid the storms, one of Trumps initiatives the Supreme Court nomination of Neil M. Gorsuch moved steadily forward. Friday morning, he won a seat on the high court, by 54-45. To get to the goal, Republicans had to invoke the so-called nuclear option changing the Senates rules to overcome Democrats filibuster of Gorsuch. But Democratic hopes that they could make the GOP pay a heavy political price either for the nomination itself or for the rules change never panned out. Unlike healthcare or other nominations, notably that of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, polls consistently showed that conservatives cared more about the court fight than liberals did. Thats been true for years, and probably reflects liberals being reasonably satisfied with the status quo on the high court, even though five of its nine members are Republican appointees. In recent years, for example, the court has legalized same-sex marriage nationwide and struck down state laws that sought to drive abortion providers out of business. Conservatives, by contrast, have tried for years to get justices on the Supreme Court who would push the country in the other direction. That dynamic could change the next time a seat comes open if one of the courts liberal justices or the benchs swing vote, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, steps down. Meantime, the fight over Gorsuch and the rules change further strained relations in the Senate. Under the pressures of a highly partisan age, the Senate has steadily become more like the House. In advance of this weeks votes, Mascaro looked at the question: Will the fight over the filibuster break the Senate? Lost in all the Senate jargon? Mascaro did this useful Q&A on filibusters, cloture motions and what the nuclear option means the future of the Senate. TRUMPS TWEET CLAIMS ANOTHER VICTIM Trumps now infamous tweet in which he claimed that Obama had wiretapped him in Trump Tower a charge made without evidence and denied by law enforcement, Republican congressional leaders and pretty much anyone else who might know has proved deeply costly to the White House. In defense of the boss tweet, administration officials have gone through multiple contortions. The most striking was the decision last month to have House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Tulare) surreptitiously come to the White House, view ambiguous intelligence reports, then make a public show of rushing to the Oval Office to brief Trump about newly discovered evidence that didnt support his claim but could be made to sound like it kind of might have. That stunt brought the Intelligence Committees work to a standstill. Thursday, it became even more costly, as the House Ethics Committee announced that it was investigating whether Nunes had improperly disclosed classified information. Nunes announced that he was stepping aside, and as David Cloud reported, there were clear signs that Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) had pushed him to do so. If you havent already done so, read Cathy Deckers terrific profile of the two worlds of Devin Nunes revered at home, increasingly doubted in Washington. And dont miss the companion piece, Sarah D. Wires also excellent profile of Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank), Trumps public prosecutor. ALL THE PRESIDENTS TWEETS Meantime, speaking of Trumps tweets: Were compiling all of them. Its a great resource. Take a look. SOME FINAL, NOTABLE PIECES As the Trump administration continues its efforts to undo the environmental policies of the last couple of decades, just going to work at the EPA can be an act of defiance, Evan Halper wrote. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said officially what administration officials have previously whispered: Theres not going to be a border wall from sea to shining sea. The administration will build new fortifications, mostly fences, not walls, in some areas, but not everywhere, Kelly testified. In an interview here in our Washington bureau, Sen. Kamala Harris had some interesting observations about Democratic resistance to Trump and the partys path out of the wilderness. As Halper noted, some of what she said flies against her public image. The Justice Department announced it was reconsidering agreements with police departments over use of force. Civil rights groups found that prospect unsettling, Del Quentin Wilber reported. And, finally, Arnold Schwarzenegger has been taking jabs at Trump, who has been punching back. Seema Mehta has been following the action. LOGISTICS That wraps up this week. My colleague Sarah D. Wire will be back Monday with the weekday edition of Essential Politics. Until then, keep track of all the developments in national politics and the Trump administration with our Essential Washington blog, at our Politics page and on Twitter @latimespolitics. Send your comments, suggestions and news tips to politics@latimes.com. If you like this newsletter, tell your friends to sign up. David.lauter@latimes.com @davidlauter A cornerstone of Californias battle against climate change was upheld on Thursday by a state appeals court that ruled the cap-and-trade program does not constitute an unconstitutional tax, as some business groups had claimed. The 2-1 decision from the 3rd District Court of Appeal in Sacramento does not eliminate all the legal and political questions that have dogged the program, which requires companies to buy permits to release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. But environmental advocates dismayed by President Trumps decision to roll back federal regulations in Washington were buoyed by Thursdays victory, which preserves the only program of its kind in the country. Advertisement This is great news for one of the worlds most ambitious climate programs and one of the best tools to solve climate change globally, said Erica Morehouse, a lawyer with the Environmental Defense Fund. We need that kind of positive news more than ever these days. The court case began four years ago and has been a cloud over the states efforts to fight global warming. California has pointed to its cap-and-trade program as an international example of how financial incentives can be used to reduce emissions. Nine states on the East Coast have a similar system, but it applies only to power plants, while Californias program affects nearly its entire economy. The program has also been an important source of revenue for the state, with billions of dollars generated by auctioning off pollution permits. The money is required to be used on projects that reduce emissions, and Gov. Jerry Brown is counting on some of it to help finance the bullet train from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Our climate policies will continue to drive innovation and clean energy, deliver good clean tech jobs, and make it possible to continue to invest in programs, especially in disadvantaged communities, to reduce greenhouse gases and improve the quality of life, said Mary Nichols, chairwoman of the Air Resources Board, the agency that runs cap and trade. Two associate justices on the appeals court panel, Elena J. Duarte and M. Kathleen Butz, sided with state officials who said the cap-and-trade program falls within their power to regulate industry. It is not accurate to liken the auction system to payment for the privilege to stay in business in California, they wrote. It is a payment for the privilege to pollute the air in California. The third associate justice on the panel, Harry E. Hull Jr., agreed with business groups that the program functioned as a tax, partially because of the wide variety of ways the revenue has been used by the state. I can only conclude that the program is a tax in something else clothing, he wrote. The Phillips 66 refinery in Wilmington last year. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times) Its unclear whether the California Chamber of Commerce or the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation, both of which expressed disappointment Thursday, will appeal to the states highest court. We are reviewing the decision and evaluating our options, said Denise Davis, a spokeswoman for the chamber. More challenges remain for the cap-and-trade program, which was created under a 2006 measure requiring the state to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels. Because the law sets a 2020 deadline, some doubt regulators can continue running the program past that point without a new law. State lawmakers are debating whether to extend cap and trade into the future, a step that could require a two-thirds vote in both houses of the Legislature the threshold for approving tax measures to bulletproof the program from any additional legal uncertainty. We have one more mole to whack, said Alex Jackson, a San Francisco-based lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council. chris.megerian@latimes.com Twitter: @chrismegerian ALSO: As the White House changes course on climate change, California stubbornly presses forward Earth sets heat record in 2016 for the third year in a row Updates on California politics Updates from the campaign trail Records show ex-Trump campaign chief Paul Manaforts firm received payout from Ukraine ledger under investgation Last August, a handwritten ledger surfaced in Ukraine with dollar amounts and dates next to the name of Paul Manafort, who was then chairman of Donald Trumps presidential campaign. Ukrainian investigators called it evidence of off-the-books payments from a pro-Russian political party and part of a larger pattern of corruption under the countrys former president. Manafort, who worked for the party as an international political consultant, has publicly questioned the ledgers authenticity. Now, financial records newly obtained by the Associated Press confirm that at least $1.2 million in payments listed in the ledger next to Manaforts name were actually received by his consulting firm in the United States. They include payments in 2007 and 2009, providing the first evidence that Manaforts firm received at least some money listed in the so-called Black Ledger. The two payments came years before Manafort became involved in Trumps campaign, but for the first time bolster the credibility of the ledger. They also put the ledger in a new light, as federal prosecutors in the U.S. have been investigating Manaforts work in Eastern Europe as part of a larger anti-corruption probe. Separately, Manafort is also under scrutiny as part of congressional and FBI investigations into possible contacts between Trump associates and Russias government under President Vladimir Putin during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. The payments detailed in the ledger and confirmed by the documents obtained by the AP are unrelated to the 2016 presidential campaign and came years before Manafort worked as Trumps unpaid campaign chairman. In a statement to the AP, Manafort did not deny that his firm received the money but said any wire transactions received by my company are legitimate payments for political consulting work that was provided. I invoiced my clients and they paid via wire transfer, which I received through a U.S. bank. Manafort noted that he agreed to be paid according to his clients preferred financial institutions and instructions. Previously, Manafort and his spokesman, Jason Maloni, have maintained that the ledger was fabricated and said no public evidence existed that Manafort or others received payments recorded in it. The AP, however, identified in the records two payments received by Manafort that aligned with the ledger: one for $750,000 that a Ukrainian lawmaker said last month was part of a money-laundering effort that should be investigated by U.S. authorities. The other was $455,249 and also matched a ledger entry. The newly obtained records also expand the global scope of Manaforts financial activities related to his Ukrainian political consulting, because both payments came from companies once registered in the Central American country of Belize. Last month, the AP reported that the U.S. government has examined Manaforts financial transactions in the Mediterranean country of Cyprus as part of its probe. Federal prosecutors have been looking into Manaforts work for years as part of an effort to recover Ukrainian assets stolen after the 2014 ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich, who fled to Russia. No charges have been filed as part of the investigation. Manafort, a longtime Republican political operative, led the presidential campaign from March until August last year when Trump asked him to resign. The resignation came after a tumultuous week in which the New York Times revealed that Manaforts name appeared in the Ukraine ledger although the newspaper said at the time that officials were unsure whether Manafort actually received the money and after the AP separately reported that he had orchestrated a covert Washington lobbying operation until 2014 on behalf of Ukraines pro-Russian Party of Regions. Officials with the Ukrainian National Anti-Corruption Bureau, which is investigating corruption under Yanukovich, have said they believe the ledger is genuine. But they have previously noted that they have no way of knowing whether Manafort received the money listed next to his name. The bureau said it is not investigating Manafort because he is not a Ukrainian citizen. Still, Manaforts work continues to draw attention in Ukrainian politics. Last month, Ukrainian lawmaker Serhiy Leshchenko revealed an invoice bearing the letterhead of Manaforts namesake company, Davis Manafort, that Leshchenko said was crafted to conceal a payment to Manafort as a purchase of 501 computers. The AP provided to Manafort the amounts of the payments, dates and number of the bank account where they were received. Manafort told the AP that he was unable to review his own banking records showing receipt of the payments because his bank destroyed the records after a standard seven-year retention period. He said Tuesday the computer sales contract is a fraud. The signature is not mine, and I didnt sell computers, he said in a statement. What is clear, however, is individuals with political motivations are taking disparate pieces of information and distorting their significance through a campaign of smear and innuendo. Leshchenko said last month the 2009 invoice was one of about 50 pages of documents, including private paperwork and copies of employee-issued debit cards, that were found in Manaforts former Kiev office by a new tenant. The amount of the invoice $750,000 and the payment date of Oct. 14, 2009, matches one entry on the ledger indicating payments to Manafort from the Party of Regions. The invoice was addressed to Neocom Systems Ltd., a company formerly registered in Belize, and included the account and routing numbers and postal address for Manaforts account at a branch of Wachovia National Bank in Alexandria, Va. The AP had previously been unable to independently verify the $750,000 payment went to a Manafort company, but the newly obtained financial records reflect Manaforts receipt of that payment. The records show that Davis Manafort received the amount from Neocom Systems the day after the date of the invoice. Leshchenko contended to AP that Yanukovich, as Ukraines leader, paid Manafort money that came from his governments budget and was stolen from Ukrainian citizens. He said: Money received by Manafort has to be returned to the Ukrainian people. Leshchenko said U.S. authorities should investigate what he described as corrupt deals between Manafort and Yanukovich. Its about a U.S. citizen and money was transferred to a U.S. bank account, he said. A $455,249 payment in November 2007 also matches the amount in the ledger. It came from Graten Alliance Ltd., a company that had also been registered in Belize. It is now inactive. The AP reported last month that federal prosecutors are looking into Manaforts financial transactions in Cyprus, an island nation once known as a favored locale for money laundering. Among those transactions was a $1-million payment in October 2009 routed through the Bank of Cyprus. The money was deposited into an account controlled by a Manafort-linked company, then left the account on the same day, broken into two disbursements of $500,000, according to documents obtained by the AP. The records of Manaforts Cypriot transactions were requested by the U.S. Treasury Department Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which works internationally with agencies to track money laundering and the movement of illicit funds around the globe. Dozens of Ukrainian political figures mentioned in the Black Ledger are under investigation in Ukraine. The anti-corruption bureau, which has been looking into the Black Ledger, publicly confirmed the authenticity of the signature of one top official mentioned there. In December, the bureau accused Mykhaylo Okhendovsky of receiving more than $160,000 from Party of Regions officials in 2012, when he was Ukraines main election official. The bureau said it would identify more suspects in the coming months. Bad news for bats: White-nose syndrome, a disease caused by a fungus that has been killing millions of bats across the Northeast, has reached Texas. Conservationists and state and federal wildlife officials confirmed in March that the fungal infection has been detected in bats in the Texas panhandle. The encroachment onto the Southwest has hit three species the tri-colored bat, cave myotis, and Townsends big-eared bat the latter two of which are primarily western species who have been largely unaffected until now. Advertisement It is a turning point, said Jonah Evans, a state mammologist for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. It is the first time that weve detected it in bats with a primarily western distribution. White-nose syndrome was first discovered in New York in 2007, and has spread out from that epicenter in the decade since. The disease is caused by a fungus called Pseudogymnoascus destructans (Pd), which thrives in the cold and damp environments where many bat species typically hibernate in large numbers during the winter. Infected bats typically show white noses, as well as wings, ears or tail, from the fungus. They can often be seen flying in the winter, when theyre supposed to be hibernating in caves. Normally, a bat could preen off much of the invading fungus; in fact, its warm body temperature and active immune system usually fend off any invasion from the cold-loving Pd. But Northeastern bats hibernate during the frigid winter months, in cold caves that are perfect for the fungus and in large numbers that make it easy to spread. While hibernating, bats bodies go into whats known as torpor to preserve precious fat reserves, lowering both their body temperature and their immune system activity. This allows the fungus to spread so much that it finally wakes the animals up, usually in the dead of winter. The weakened bat then must go looking for food in the cold, and often dies of starvation. Theyre sitting ducks, said Jeremy Coleman, national white-nose syndrome coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In some caves in the Northeast, the fungus has killed off around 95% of the bat population, officials said. It is truly the most devastating wildlife disease that we have to deal with right now, said Katie Gillies, director of Bat Conservation Internationals imperiled species program. In North America weve never seen anything like this. (The only thing that compares, she added, is the massive die-off of frogs, toads and other amphibians, also due to a fungus.) Scientists think Pd is an invasive species whose native grounds lie in Europe and Asia. European bats are appear to be resistant to the fungus; American hibernating species, which did not evolve in the presence of this threat, are not. Because this is a cold-loving species that takes advantage of hibernation periods, some scientists hoped that the fungus would remain a northeastern problem, and not make it to warmer regions. But the fungus has since spread to Mississippi and to Georgia, and even to Washington state (a jump probably enabled by a human traveler who brought it into a cave with contaminated gear, clothing or other belongings). I think a lot of people have kind of stuck their heads in the sand hoping that it wouldnt show up in the South and hoping it wouldnt show up in the West, Gillies said. But every single time that people hang their hat on that hope, the fungus dashes it. So scientists have still been preparing for the spread, testing bats in the northern regions of the Lone Star State areas most likely to first see infected bats. The scientists would visit caves and rub cotton swabs across the slumbering bats snouts, causing them to wriggle and squirm and their mouths to gape open. Theyre usually a little crabby about it they kind of squawk at you in really cute slow motion, if you can just picture that, Gillies said of her groggy subjects. Scientists then send them to the lab for genetic analysis. This year, researchers discovered low levels of the fungus presence in three species: the tri-colored bat, cave myotis and Townsends big-eared bat. Except for an isolated eastern subspecies of Townsends called the Virginia big-eared bat, the two latter species have a western distribution and previously had not been infected with the fungus. With a toehold on these two species, the infection could potentially now spread farther west. Texas is a sort of Grand Central station for bats: With 32 species, it has the highest level of bat diversity in the nation. While many bats stick to the eastern states and others stay in the West, the edges of their ranges overlap in the Lone Star State. To ecologists, this makes Texas a worrisome transfer point. They fear that southwestern and western bats will contract the fungus and carry it even farther, to species whose behaviors, movements and reactions to the disease are not well known. We need to continue to develop a wide suite of tools that we can use for those conditions that are slightly different, Coleman said. Texas is home to the Mexican (also known as Brazilian) free-tailed bats; in the summer, the Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin features the largest urban bat colony in North America. While those bats migrate during the winter instead of hibernating, and may not be susceptible to the fungus, they fly long distances and could carry it to other bat species who may be vulnerable to infection. The fungus arrival in the Texas panhandle, then, marks a significant turning point in the fungus advance, scientists said. Pds spread could not only affect the rich diversity of species in North America; it could also have profound economic impacts. Many of these insectivorous bat species eat crop pests, performing vital agricultural services for farmers valued at about $1.4 billion in Texas alone. Across North America, according to a study in the journal Science, bats agricultural contribution is estimated to be around $22.9 billion (with an estimated range of $3.7 billion to $53 billion). In a worst-case scenario if bats such as the Brazilian free-tailed bat and others that are thought to be less susceptible do get hit hard by the disease, it could have significant implications for the economy, scientists pointed out. Thats almost like a national security concern, Evans said. Thats a massive loss if Mexican free-tailed bats are impacted. So were just hopeful that some of our bats are more resilient to it. As the fungus spreads, researchers say they are trying to learn what they can and find ways to save bats or fight the disease, before it spreads deeper south and west. Right now is a rare opportunity; we have this little window of time before the disease is going to get there, Evans said. Its coming, and there are things to do beyond just swabbing for the disease. amina.khan@latimes.com Follow @aminawrite on Twitter for more science news and like Los Angeles Times Science & Health on Facebook. MORE IN SCIENCE Heres what gives kingsnakes the edge in snake-to-snake combat Why would beetles want to look, act and smell like army ants? To eat them, of course Ancient relative of crabs, shrimps and lobsters is named in honor of David Attenborough Over the years Ive shared some of my personal life with readers. One column in particular, back in 2014 about how my husband, Stan, almost died from sepsis, struck a chord with many readers, as I explained how common this deadly condition is. This past week, an interesting article about Dr. Paul Marik, head of the general intensive care unit at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital in Virginia, piqued my interest, as he claims to have found an effective treatment for sepsis. If you dont know about sepsis, you should. It kills millions worldwide, and is the third largest contributor to deaths of adults over 65 in the United States. The National Institute of General Medical Sciences estimates that between 28% and 50% of patients with sepsis die, far more than the number of U.S. deaths from prostate cancer, breast cancer and AIDS combined. Sepsis is a major challenge in the intensive care unit, where its one of the leading causes of death, according to the institutes website. It is also a leading cause of people being readmitted to the hospital. Sepsis arises unpredictably and can progress rapidly. Often misdiagnosed because patients present fever, chills, rapid breathing and heart rate, rash, confusion and disorientation and other flu-like symptoms, the malady can go unchecked and untreated. A patient in full septic shock can die within 24 hours. Sepsis can be caused by kidney or gall stones, an operation, even a tooth extraction. This condition is caused by an overwhelming immuneal response to infection. Immune chemicals released into the blood to combat the infection trigger widespread inflammation, which leads to blood clots and leaky vessels. This results in impaired blood flow, which damages organs by depriving them of nutrients and oxygen. In severe cases, one or more organs fail. In worst-case scenarios, blood pressure drops, the heart weakens and the patient spirals toward septic shock. Once this happens, multiple organs lungs, kidneys, liver may quickly fail, and the patient can die, which is why Dr. Mariks protocol is a potential game-changer. Marik has faced many sepsis life and death situations in his career, but it was in January 2016 that things changed, according to a press release on the Eastern Virginia Medical School Magazine site in March. Trying to save a dying patient, Marik tried something revolutionary. As the site explains, Marik had recently read about Vitamin C as a potential treatment for sepsis, and recalled that steroids, a common treatment for sepsis, might work well in concert with the Vitamin C. Both were safe and FDA approved, so he intravenously administered the Vitamin C and steroid combination. Within hours his patient was recovering. Two days later the patient was well enough to leave the intensive care unit. Two more near-fatal patients were given the protocol and survived. Marik and his team quickly adopted the combination therapy as standard practice. Nicknamed the Marik Protocol, I wondered if Dr. Andre Vovan, executive medical director for acute care at Hoag Hospital, was aware of the findings. Dr. Vovan tells me he knows of Marik, and we are getting in contact with him. He went on to say that Marik is well-published and well-respected, the real deal, in this field. Hoag has a sepsis nurse in the emergency room 24 hours a day and has a high survival rate, Im told. Vovans keeping an eye on Marik and his team, as they continue to collect data. But there havent been any clinical trials as of yet because those could cost millions, and National Public Radio reported March 30 that the treatment, while promising, needed more study before anyone could reach conclusions about its effectiveness. But thats not slowing down Marik Vovan says in the next month or so he will be meeting with the sepsis collaborative of the 17 hospitals in the St. Joseph network, which includes Hoag, to discuss the treatment. Vovan says this could push forward organizing a clinical trial. But as Marik points out in his article, pharmaceutical companies have conducted more than 100 clinical trials and spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the last 25 years in an unsuccessful search for a sepsis treatment. Dr. Vovan remains optimistic about Mariks findings. He is putting all the patients in a data base, and it is good evidence that hes on to something, says Vovan. BARBARA VENEZIA lives in Newport Beach. She can be reached at bvontv1@gmail.com. He remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time the mind behind musical masterpieces he couldnt hear most of his life. Ludwig van Beethoven, the German composer and pianist who was a powerful figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, will be celebrated Saturday in a two-part all-Beethoven chamber program at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa. Cellist David Finckel will join his wife, pianist Wu Han, and musical colleague and violinist Philip Setzer for a two-concert series performing Beethovens six complete piano trios. The concerts will follow Beethovens life and career chronologically, enabling listeners to explore his emotional and musical evolution. This is a journey exploring Beethovens life where one may immerse and give up yourself to some of the greatest musical pieces. Its a privilege to play them, Finckel said. To be a musician or music lover, you cannot avoid Beethoven, Han said. The Beethoven trios were playing are rigorous, incredible music that has changed music history. Han and Finckel, who are considered among the worlds most influential classical musicians, are artistic directors of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York. Finckel, a professor of cello at New Yorks Juilliard School, and Han are past recipients of Musical Americas Musicians of the Year award, one of the highest honors in the music industry. Setzer has received nine Grammy Awards and been a regular member of the Isaac Stern Chamber Music Workshops at New Yorks Carnegie Hall and the Jerusalem Music Center. * IF YOU GO What: Concerts of Beethoven piano trios When: 4 and 8 p.m. Saturday Where: Samueli Theater, Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa Cost: Tickets start at $29 Information: (714) 556-2787 or scfta.org kathleen.luppi@latimes.com Twitter: @KathleenLuppi It was the most awarded new musical of 2015, winner of four Tony Awards and lauded as one of the best shows by theater critics. An American in Paris, the story of an American soldier and a French ballerina yearning for a new beginning in the aftermath of war, featured music and lyrics by brothers George and Ira Gershwin, creators of some of the most memorable songs of the 20th century. And its coming to Segerstrom Center for the Arts for a two-week engagement starting this month. The romantic tale set in Paris even has an Orange County connection: Julie Boardman, a co-producer for the show, was raised in Irvine and performed throughout the county, including a role in Imagination Celebration at the Segerstrom Center. --------------------------------------- FOR THE RECORD 4/11, 11 a.m.: A previous version of this story incorrectly identified Julie Boardman as an associate producer for An American in Paris. She is a co-producer for the show. --------------------------------------- Boardman, who graduated from USC, performed on the national tour of 42nd Street but wanted to produce and create new musicals. She made her Broadway producing debut with An American in Paris and has co-produced three national tours and three Broadway shows. This spring, she will be making her West End debut in London. I grew up loving standards, and what I loved about this musical was watching a city come back to life, said Boardman, in a phone interview from New York. The play and musical, which spotlights classics like I Got Rhythm, 'S Wonderful and But Not For Me, opened to critical acclaim at the Palace Theatre on Broadway in April 2015 after its world premiere at the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris. The New York production closed in October of last year after more than 600 performances. Im hoping audiences can escape daily life and be transported to Paris you dont have to buy a [plane] ticket, Boardman said with a laugh. Its just a really beautiful show. Performances are at 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays and 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sundays from April 25 through May 7. Tickets start at $29. The Segerstrom Center for the Arts is at 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. For more information, call (714) 556-2787 or visit scfta.org. kathleen.luppi@latimes.com Twitter: @KathleenLuppi An unvaccinated Laguna Beach High School student has contracted measles, Orange Countys second case of the year, health officials said Friday. The Orange County Health Care Agency confirmed that the student had contracted the highly contagious disease, spokeswoman Jessica Good wrote in an email. The student was quarantined at home. The student was ill for a number of days, but is doing better now and was not hospitalized, Good said. The students physician reported symptoms to the agency. Good declined to provide the students age or gender, though she did say the student had not traveled abroad. A small number of unvaccinated LBHS students have been instructed to stay home until April 18 as a precaution, Good said. Infected parties are usually contagious from four days before a rash starts to four days afterward, according to the California Department of Public Health. On Wednesday, Laguna Beach Unified School District officials, in collaboration with the O.C. health agency, notified parents of the infection by email. Measles are airborne and also spread easily by direct contact. Simply being in the same room with an infected party is sufficient to become infected, the letter said. Outbreaks typically occur eight to 12 days following an exposure, but the infection can remain dormant for up to 21 days, according to the letter. Measles can cause fever, rash, cough, red and watery eyes. Fevers can reach as high as 105 degrees, while a red blotchy rash that typically appears first on the face along the hairline and behind the ears can spread to the chest, back, thighs and feet. One in 20 measles patients develop pneumonia and, while rare, life-threatening complications can occur, the letter said. Infections can take hold in patients who have never had the disease or received the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. While the MMR vaccine is highly effective, it does not provide 100% protection, the letter added. In the countys other confirmed measles case this year, a vaccinated adult on an international flight was exposed to the disease, said Good, who declined to give the persons age, city of residence and gender. There were no reported cases of measles countywide in 2016. The agency reported 35 cases in the county in 2015, a year in which the U.S. experienced a multi-state outbreak that likely started from a traveler who became infected overseas with measles, then visited an amusement park [Disneyland] while infectious, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website said. Anyone who develops an illness with a fever of 100 degrees or more, a cough, runny nose or red eyes, with or without rash, should immediately contact their healthcare provider and the Orange County Health Care Agency at (714) 834-8180. bryce.alderton@latimes.com Twitter: @AldertonBryce Costa Mesa police officers motto of protect and serve took on a new meaning Thursday night. About 30 officers, with help from a dozen police Explorers, took a four-hour break from crimefighting to serve dinner to customers at Claim Jumper at South Coast Plaza as part of the Tip-A-Cop event to raise money for the Special Olympics. Police departments throughout the country participate in the annual fundraiser. The rules are simple. Officers act as waiters and waitresses, and all the tips they receive throughout the night go to the Special Olympics. Diners could participate in a raffle with prizes donated by South Coast Plaza restaurants and stores, including Tiffany & Co., Sephora and Yves Saint Laurent. A proposal to temporarily use a parcel of land that was formerly a Navy railway as a car storage facility for local auto dealers has sparked outrage among some Huntington Beach residents. About 80 people crammed into a room at City Hall on Wednesday afternoon for a meeting held by Zoning Administrator Ricky Ramos to discuss the citys efforts to use an area that was formerly a railroad between Rancho Road and Springdale Street as temporary storage for up to about 900 cars. The vacant parcel is currently covered in overgrown vegetation, but residents say its a welcome reprieve from city life. Huntington Beach has long-term plans to build a trail on the plot, an idea supported by residents, but lack of funds has put that project on hold while a storage area and the rent that it would bring in is being pursued. Residents said they are concerned with potential public safety issues, dust, noise and diminishing property values posed by the proposed car storage facility. (Ben Brazil / Daily Pilot) People from the neighborhoods that border the area said at the meeting that they were concerned about potential safety issues, dust, noise and diminishing property values posed by a car lot. Resident Dan Jamieson said a lot would encroach on the open space, which is welcomed by residents as a nice break from city life. Its just plain wrong and it should be killed, he said about the citys plans. Christine LeRoy said if the city hopes to continue seeing younger generations buy homes in the community then it needs to preserve open space. She also said she was concerned about harm to property values. Other residents said they were worried that the presence of new cars in the lot would attract criminals and that the mass of vehicles would be a visual blight in the community. But Kellee Fritzal, the citys deputy director of economic development, said a green-screen fence will shield the cars from view. Fritzal, who is acting as the applicant on behalf of the car dealers, added that creating a car lot will not require extensive construction. The City Council approved the acquisition of the land from the U.S. Navy about a year ago with the intent of using the parcel as part of a regional trail system, according to a notification letter sent to residents from the city. While the city explores avenues of funding to move forward with the trail system, officials hope to create in the interim the storage area, which they contend will provide some benefits to the community. The area has been neglected for years, becoming an enclave for crime, trash and homeless, but the storage facility would aid in curtailing these issues, the citys letter says. A car lot would ensure security at the site and allow participating auto dealers to generate sales tax revenues to support the citys public services, the letter says. The application calls for a maximum of five years for the lot and the ability of the city to end the agreement whenever funding for the trail becomes available, the letter says. Fritzal said at the meeting that the storage space would be a revenue source for the future trail system that could produce about $500,000 over the five-year span. Resident Brian Waldbaum said he was skeptical of the citys promise to use the money from the auto dealers for the trail system and wants specific wording to ensure that it is properly earmarked. Fritzal said officials in the zoning administrators office are expected to meet again for a public meeting on April 19 to further discuss and possibly decide the fate of the project. If the plan is approved by Ramos, it can still be appealed to the Planning Commission and the City Council. Councilman Billy OConnell made an appearance at the meeting. He said Thursday over the phone that he will be carefully looking into the project. benjamin.brazil@latimes.com Twitter: @benbrazilpilot Sitting behind a glass partition wearing an orange jumpsuit and a chain around his waist in Orange County Jail, Joshua Waring smiled as he pulled a large paper photograph of his 4-year-old daughter out of a collapsible file. The slightly worn picture, which shows the smiling girl dressed in a fairy costume, is one of Warings most prized possessions while behind bars. His phone calls with her are a bright spot in his otherwise bleak days, he said during a jailhouse interview Wednesday. Ill have days where I feel like this place is bearing down on me, he said. But when I talk to her, it just makes everything better. Her voice just melts my heart. Waring, son of former Real Housewives of Orange County star Lauri Peterson, has been in jail for 10 months in connection with a shooting in June outside a home in Costa Mesa that left a man severely injured. Join the conversation on Facebook Waring faces three counts of attempted murder, one count of unlawfully discharging a firearm at an inhabited dwelling, three counts of assault with a firearm, a count of vehicle theft, a count of shooting at another person from a motor vehicle and a count of evading police while driving recklessly, all felonies. He also faces misdemeanor charges of battery, resisting an officer and hit-and-run with property damage, along with possible sentencing enhancements on allegations of personal use of a firearm and inflicting great bodily injury. If hes convicted at trial in Orange County Superior Court, Waring could end up in prison for the rest of his life. The 28-year-old, who has represented himself through much of his criminal case, said hes not afraid of going to trial. Im not nervous because Im innocent, he said. I didnt do it. Waring was arrested June 20, hours after a shooting at a house in the 2900 block of Babb Street. The house, previously a sober-living home, was a place where drug use and other problems were common, witnesses have said. Sometime after midnight, Waring drove a BMW X3 belonging to his girlfriend, Hayley, to the Babb Street house to pick up a friend whom he refers to as his street sister. The woman had called him to ask for a ride. During Warings preliminary hearing in November, a man identified in court transcripts as Ronald D. testified of becoming angry when he realized Waring was driving the BMW, and he threw the womans belongings into the street outside the house. Someone threw the womans iPhone 6, which Waring said he had recently bought for her, and it smashed against the BMWs window. We left and that was the end of that, Waring said. He said he never returned to the house. An hour or two later, Waring said, he received a news alert on his cellphone that a shooting had occurred on Babb Street. A man identified in court papers as Daniel L. was wounded. He and Waring allegedly did not get along. When Waring found out who was shot, his first thought was, Theyre going to think its me, he said. Authorities have painted a different picture. Witnesses told police that Waring returned to the house around 2:30 a.m. and that shots were fired at three people outside, authorities said. During the preliminary hearing, witnesses described the gunfire and chaos. I turned and started to run the other direction, back toward the main house, a woman identified in the court transcript as Jennifer M. testified. That walkway was like a shooting gallery. It was horrible. About eight hours after the shooting, an Orange County Sheriffs Department helicopter crew saw the BMW and police pursued it through Santa Ana before it crashed into another vehicle, police said. Santa Ana police said in court that Waring ran and hid in the restroom of a nearby business before surrendering to officers. Waring testified that he fled from police because he was heading to pick up drugs. The show took my problems and put a bulls eye on my back for law enforcement. Joshua Waring, son of former Real Housewives of Orange County star Lauri Peterson Waring has a nearly decade-long criminal history in Orange County that includes convictions on felony drug charges and several misdemeanors, including hit-and-run in 2008, battery in 2009, possession of drug paraphernalia in 2009 and drug possession and resisting a peace officer in 2015. Waring said he started drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana when he was 12. His struggle with drugs intensified in his teens and 20s and he began using cocaine, pills and eventually heroin, he said. Warings mother was a cast member of Bravos reality TV series The Real Housewives of Orange County from its debut in 2006 until 2008. Waring and his challenges with drugs were a recurring story line on the series. He said people know him as the black sheep of his family. Waring said hes anxious and socially awkward and that drugs provided an escape. The last 10 years of my life has been focused on how to be a criminal, stay on drugs and feel comfortable, he said. I dont feel comfortable without being loaded. The show took my problems and put a bulls eye on my back for law enforcement. Waring said he still gets cravings but has been off drugs for 10 months and wants to stay that way. Im so far from perfect, he said. I have problems, but when I think about what I want for my future, I have no desire to do it anymore. I want my daughter back. I want to grab Hayley and run away. Warings mother has been caring for his daughter the past few years. The girls mother Warings wife, Hannah Waring, 24 is in Orange County Jail facing a felony robbery charge, according to court records. As of late, Joshua Waring has spent the majority of his time focusing on his case. He said a gunshot-residue test administered by police after his arrest could exonerate him. The test can determine whether a person has recently fired a gun based on residue left behind. Waring said hes confident the test, when processed, will show he did not fire the gun. Hes also agreed to submit to a polygraph test, though authorities have not been interested, he said. Deputy Alternate Defender Ray Chen, who has represented Waring during some stages of his court proceedings, filed a motion Jan. 30 to delay the trial for several months to give him time to prepare Warings defense. Chen wrote in the filing that he reasonably and strongly believes that someone else who was at the house was responsible for the shooting. Waring is due back in court for a pretrial hearing Thursday. Waring said hes not sure what happened that night on Babb Street but that hes certain he wasnt involved. I know myself and I know I wouldnt do this, he said. Waring shuffled court documents and pulled another photo from the folder. It shows a cluster of St. Patricks Day gifts stuffed animals and books left on a doorstep for his daughter. Hayley put them together, he said. Shes just wondering why I cant be there to give it to her, he said of the girl. He brushed a tear from his cheek. It really sucks. hannah.fry@latimes.com Twitter: @HannahFryTCN MORE CRIME & PUBLIC SAFETY Seal Beach police seek help to identify hit-and-run driver Fountain Valley acupuncturist accused of sexual battery on patients 13 people sought in 7-Eleven robbery in January in Huntington Beach Fifty years ago, Veterans Day made its first significant impression upon this budding young patriot. Thursday, Nov. 11, 1965. I was a 20-year-old U.S. Army specialist stationed in Seoul, South Korea. We were on duty that day no rest for the wicked but a 5 p.m. garrison flag retreat ceremony honored Veterans Day at Knight Field in front of Eighth U.S. Army Headquarters. The Eighth Army Band performed, joined by the United Nations Command/U.S. Forces Korea Honor Guard. It was impressive. I remember being moved by the ceremony I felt a deep sense of pride though I wasnt moved to tears. To be fair, nothing moved me to tears in those days. I thought of myself as a hardened soldier. Were I to attend that same ceremony today Id be reduced to a sappy sentimentalist. I remember when Veterans Day was called Armistice Day. On hundreds of occasions as a youngster I saw old men in front of business establishments selling artificial red paper poppies. They even occasionally came to our front door. My mother often bought poppies. She told me the ancient men who were far older than my dad, a World War II vet were WWI veterans. Veterans Day is the current designation for what used to be Armistice Day. Ninety-seven years ago Wednesday Nov. 11, 1918 on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month the agreement that ended World War I was signed in a French railway carriage. The cessation of hostilities marked a victory for the Allies and a bitter pill for Germany. The final peace treaty, the infamous Treaty of Versailles, which many say paved the way for World War II, was signed in 1919. President Woodrow Wilson declared the first Armistice Day in the U.S. on Nov. 11, 1919. In 1954, when I was 9, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed legislation changing the name of the legal holiday from Armistice Day to Veterans Day. Today, Memorial Day, which is observed on the final Monday of May, honors men and women in uniform who died serving this country. Veterans Day honors all whove served honorably, in war and peacetime. Its purpose is to thank living veterans for their service. Veterans Day is dedicated to those Americans who have borne the responsibility of defending our traditions, wrote my commanding officer in Korea, Gen. Dwight E. Beach, in a memo to the troops in 1965. They served their country gallantly and successfully. Now, the responsibility falls on us, and we must dedicate ourselves anew to the principles for which so many have given so much. Our vigilance and preparedness will ensure that their heroic efforts will not have been in vain. An article in the Nov. 8, 1965 edition of the Eighth Army Support Command newspaper of which I was a staff member said: On this day of tribute and remembrance for the nations patriots, we have a two-fold obligation to those who have preceded us: First, to remember their sacrifices, and, second, to draw from their example the inspiration and fortitude which the future will demand of us if we are to secure freedom for ourselves and our posterity. Those words still ring true. As mentioned earlier, as a boy I remember elderly gentlemen wearing red paper mache poppies in their lapels. Why poppies? They grew in abundance in Belgiums Flanders fields, where tens of thousands of WWI soldiers fell. The poppies were memorialized in the lines of Canadian poet John McCraes powerful verses: In Flanders field the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. McCrae, a medical officer with the 1st Canadian Contingent at the battle of the Ypres Salient, wrote his lines in May 1915. He didnt survive the war. Sadly, we no longer recall the message of the humble poppy. And gone are the grizzled gents to remind us. We must not forget them. JIM CARNETT, who lives in Costa Mesa, worked for Orange Coast College for 37 years. In support of undocumented students who attend Glendale Community College and their privacy rights, the schools board of trustees recently passed a resolution affirming that officials will not release identifiable student information or permit campus police to question, detain or arrest students based on their suspected undocumented immigration status. Trustees said they were proud to pass the resolution, which followed a similar one the colleges faculty guild approved in February. We need to have a safe environment, said trustee Tony Tartaglia. The resolution states that officials will not cooperate with any federal effort to create a registry of individuals based on any protected characteristics such as religion, nation of origin, race, gender or sexual orientation. Join the conversation on Facebook The move comes after the California Community Colleges Chancellors Office and the Board of Governors led the 132 colleges statewide to reassure students that the campuses will remain safe, welcoming places for students of all backgrounds to learn, according to a college report. Under Donald Trumps presidency, however, undocumented students have become fearful of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, and have advised their peers not to relay any information to them. In February, students who belong to Glendale Community Colleges VOICES club held a workshop in which they instructed about 150 high school students on knowing your rights, said Greg Perkins, a faculty adviser for the club. VOICES stands for Voices Organizing Immigrant Communities for Educational Success. Theres something in the air where people dont want to be identified. Theyre fearful. Greg Perkins, faculty adviser for Glendale Community Colleges VOICES club, made up of undocumented students The club is made up of students known as AB 540 students those who are undocumented, but who, under the 2001 legislation, pay in-state tuition at any community college, UC or Cal State campus if they meet a set of requirements, including having attended a California high school for at least three years. With about 450 AB 540 students on the Glendale campus, there are mounting fears, Perkins said. Theres a lot of angst and anxiety, he said. That anxiety is also felt by high school students parents, he said, many of whom are refusing to fill out applications for grants or financial aid, even though the California Student Aid Commission vows it does not share information about any students immigration status. The parents dont believe it, Perkins said. Officials have also seen fewer AB 540 students apply for scholarships. Of the several hundred who were eligible to apply to scholarships, only 20 students submitted applications, Perkins said. Theres something in the air where people dont want to be identified, he added. Theyre fearful. kelly.corrigan@latimes.com Twitter: @kellymcorrigan Carrizo Plain National Monument, an out-of-the-way grassland and dry lake bed in a remote area east of San Luis Obispo, has erupted with wildflowers. Nature lovers and birders know this beauty spot, and now, thanks to this years super bloom, a record number of visitors are discovering it too. The Valley floor has endless expanses of yellows and purples from coreopsis, tidy tips and phacelia, with smaller patches of dozens of other species, Bureau of Land Management wilderness specialist and photographer Bob Wick wrote on the agencys Flickr page. Not to be outdone, the Temblor Range is painted with swaths of orange, yellow and purple like something out of a storybook. I have never seen such a spectacular array of blooms. Ever. Its only expected to last another two weeks or so, depending on the weather. Advertisement Your chance to see Southern Californias epic wildflower bloom is running out. Heres where to go The California Bucket List: Your daily guide to the best adventures and experiences in the Golden State Inside the monument, you can visit Soda Lake, the largest remaining natural alkali wetland in Southern California, the foothills (which are ablaze with color) and the San Andreas Fault, which crisscrosses the area. If you plan to go for a wildflower fix, here are travel suggestions from the BLMs Facebook page: The Carrizo Plain is about 170 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles. The 5 Freeway is your best bet, then turn off on a series of highways that lead to the eastern side of the monument. Its best to start your visit at the Goodwin Education Center on Soda Lake Road where you can grab a map and find information. Its open 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Thursdays through Sundays. Youll find it by entering the monument from Highway 58. Dont expect your cellphone to work; coverage in the monument is unreliable. Bring an ample supply of food, water and gas because the closest places to replenish gateway communities of Taft and Santa Margarita are at least 50 miles away. The best way to see the monument is to drive on Soda Lake Road, which has good wildflower shows at the north and south ends. The road runs between Highways 58 and 166. Expect campgrounds to be full if you are planning to stay overnight. Visitors may camp at undeveloped sites in the foothills but are asked to stay off the valley floor. If youre going to stop your car to gawk at flowers, pull far enough off the road so you arent stopping traffic. Info: Carrizo Plain National Monument, (805) 475-2131 Also, check out bloom updates for Southern California and beyond at the Wildflower Hot Line. ALSO Where to see the best wildflower shows around Los Angeles Poppy photographer captures the brightest oranges blanketing fields and fields Heres where to see the magnificent waterfalls that have returned to SoCal after the big rains travel@latimes.com @latimestravel Kayak has rolled out a new tool for those who like to make travel plans when theyre supposed to be working. The popular search engine has designed a platform that looks like a spreadsheet instead of a travel search site. The tool, called @work, or At Work, features search criteria discretely placed in the rows and columns of a convincing spreadsheet titled Travel Problem Solved Report. Only the orange K at the top of the page brands it as Kayak. (You can toggle to the standard layout from this window too.) Whether or not this will fool the boss or get you fired remains to be seen. Advertisement The company says in press materials that its just trying to help workers out. Its data show that 57% of us are planning vacations while at the office, mostly between 11 a.m. and noon. Also, Tuesdays are the most common day of the work week to plan getaways. The @work tool made its debut April 1, prompting BuzzFeed to declare it one of 2017s best April Fools Day pranks on the Internet except it wasnt. Check it out for yourself at www.kayak.com/atwork. ALSO Dont put the skis away yet. Mammoth could get five more feet of snow this weekend Major Highway 1 landslide closure south of Big Sur to continue at least four more weeks Now this is worth traveling to Baltimore to see From the mellow, little Mexican island of Holbox, travelers head out to swim with the worlds largest fish travel@latimes.com @latimestravel China on Friday warned against the escalation of tension in Syria after President Trump launched an airstrike on a Syrian government air base, adding a surprise twist to his two-day summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The U.S. launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the base late Thursday in response to a chemical weapons attack in Syria earlier this week that killed dozens of people in a rebel-held area, many of them children. Thursdays airstrike marked the first direct U.S. military action against the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad since Syrias civil war began in 2011. At least seven Syrians were killed in the airstrike and nine wounded, according to a statement by the Syrian army. Advertisement We are concerned about the current situation in Syria and call for political settlement, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said at a regular news briefing on Friday. We hope all sides will stay calm and exercise restraint to prevent the escalation of tension. In the first face-to-face meeting between the two leaders, Xi is meeting with Trump at the U.S. presidents Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida for a two-day summit that ends Friday. The meeting has so far been cordial; Trump said Thursday that it would kick off a very, very great relationship with the Chinese president. Experts said that the timing of Trumps strike could affect their negotiations over how to handle North Koreas nuclear threat. I think [the strike] may effect Chinas negotiating positions on the North Korea issue, said Zhang Baohui, a professor of international affairs at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. This strike bolsters the credibility of an implied threat by Trump. Trump told the Financial Times last weekend that if China wouldnt help solve North Korea, the U.S. would do it alone, suggesting the possibility of military action. Theres a possibility that [Thursdays airstrike] may push China to do more, to cooperate with the United States, he said. Because China doesnt want a war in the Korean peninsula that would be fundamentally against Chinas interests. He said that China could potentially ratchet up sanctions against its northeastern neighbor, threatening to deprive Pyongyang of fuel, food and capital. Zhang added that Xi may not have been angered by the surprise strike. What Xi wants is the image of a successful summit, he said. So these distractions are not that important. China has for years condemned U.S. use of military force abroad. Beijing blames Washington for destabilizing countries Egypt, Libya, Ukraine and others by inciting unrest to topple non-U.S.-friendly regimes. Beijing worries that similar campaigns could jeopardize its own grip on power. It seems that Western countries, especially the U.S., do not favor incremental but orderly reforms in non-Western countries and are prone to support chaotic revolutions in these countries, the state-run Global Times said in an editorial Thursday. Under this approach, it seems the Syrian conflict could not be resolved peacefully. China has repeatedly voted with Russia against U.S.- and British-sponsored United Nations resolutions aimed at pressuring Assad by imposing sanctions on Syria. In February, Amnesty International called Russias and Chinas vetoes shameful, adding that they have displayed a callous disregard for the lives of millions of Syrians. Last month, Assad said in a rare interview on Chinese television that Syrias relationship with China is going to be on the rise. He called China a real friend, a friend that you can rely on. China responded to this weeks chemical attack by calling for a comprehensive, fair probe by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and other U.N. organizations. Western governments have blamed Assad for the attack. There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, Trump told reporters hours after he ordered the missile strike. Trump informed Xi of the Syria strike at Mar-a-Lago, officals said. Trump also accepted an invitation from Xi to visit China, Chinas official New China News Agency reported Friday. There are a thousand reasons to make China-U.S. relationship work, no reason to break it, Xi told Trump, the agency reported. Nicole Liu in the Times Beijing bureau contributed to this report jonathan.kaiman@latimes.com Twitter: @JRKaiman ALSO Syria and Russia issue rebuke after U.S. airstrike Syrian ally Iran blasts U.S. missile strikes as dangerous, destructive and a violation of international law Syrias government was supposed to have gotten rid of its chemical weapons in 2014. So what happened? A hijacked beer truck plowed into pedestrians in the center of Stockholm on Friday, killing four of them and injuring at least 15 others nine of them seriously as hundreds more ran in fear. Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven labeled the incident a terrorist attack. Sweden has been attacked, Lofven said, asserting that everything indicates that this was a terrorist attack. Swedish police released a photo of a man they wanted to question in connection to the incident, and reported he was still at large Friday afternoon. But later, Swedish media reported an arrest had been made. Advertisement The grainy image shows a man in a hoodie stepping off an escalator. Swedish police also said they were questioning two people but they were not necessarily suspects. The dead and injured lay in the pedestrian area as shoppers and office workers ran for their lives. Swedish media, citing police at the scene, reported that three people were dead and at least eight injured, but authorities would not confirm the figures and only said that a large number of people had been injured. Later, the death toll was officially increased to four dead and 15 injured. Images from the scene appeared to show several bodies covered in orange blankets as medical workers rushed around. 1 / 7 Emergency services personnel work at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store in central Stockholm on Friday. (Fredrik Sandberg / AFP/Getty Images) 2 / 7 Police officers work at the scene Friday where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store in central Stockholm. (Jonathan Nackstrand / AFP/Getty Images) 3 / 7 Police cordon off the truck that crashed into a Ahlens department store in central Stockholm. (Jonathan Nackstrand / AFP/Getty Images) 4 / 7 Emergency crews work at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store in central Stockholm. (Jonathan Nackstrand / AFP/Getty Images) 5 / 7 A truck crashed into an Ahlens department store in central Stockholm. (Andreas Schyman / EPA) 6 / 7 Police work at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store in central Stockholm. (Jonathan Nackstrand / AFP/Getty Images) 7 / 7 Police officers work at the scene where a truck crashed into the Ahlens department store in central Stockholm. (Anders Wiklund / AFP/Getty Images) Photographer Annevi Petersson told the BBC there was a sense of sheer panic as events unfolded in Drottninggatan Street (Queens Street), a busy, pedestrian area in central Stockholm, shortly before 3 p.m. local time. There were bodies on the ground everywhere and the scene of panic, she said. People were standing by their loved ones but also people were running away, mainly to the minor streets.... It got very quiet. There was the noise and then everything got quiet, and then people started screaming and crying obviously people severely wounded. One of Europes most vibrant and colorful cities appears to have been struck by those wishing it and our very way of life harm Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission The vehicle belonged to brewery company Spendrups and had been stolen earlier in the day outside a restaurant in central Stockholm by a man who jumped in the cab and drove off. The company said in a statement that the driver tried to stand in front of the truck to stop the hijacker from driving away, but had to throw himself to one side to avoid being run over. He is slightly injured but obviously shocked by the incident, the company said. A short while later, the truck reportedly plowed into a crowd of people and then struck the Ahlens department store, where it came to a halt. Images on television showed black smoke billowing into the sky as the cab appeared to catch fire. Jan Granroth was on Drottninggatan Street when he heard screams. We were inside a shoe store, and we heard a noise, and people started screaming, he told the Aftonbladet newspaper. So I looked out from the store to see a huge truck slam into the wall opposite. The nearby Swedish parliament was placed on lockdown and the metro was shut down. Bus services were severely disrupted and all train services into and out of Stockholms main station were canceled. Shoppers were locked inside the stores for several hours, and residents outside the impact zone were told to stay home. I encourage everyone to be vigilant and to pay attention to the information from the police, Lofven said. Police clad in riot gear and carrying weapons swarmed the area and helicopters were seen overhead. There were also unconfirmed reports of shots in a different part of the city, but the police denied these at a news conference. They said there had been no prior warning about an attack and were unable to say whether this was a lone wolf attack or something more coordinated. We do not know if it is a single event, or if we can expect more, said Mats Lofving, head of the Swedish polices National Operations Department. Europes leaders were quick to condemn the attacks and express their solidarity with the people of Sweden. One of Europes most vibrant and colorful cities appears to have been struck by those wishing it and our very way of life harm, Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, said in a statement. We stand shoulder to shoulder in solidarity with the people of Sweden. The continent has had to deal with a spate of similar attacks in recent years. In July 2016, a truck plowed into crowds celebrating Bastille Day on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, France, killing 86. Another man drove a truck into shoppers at a Berlin Christmas market last year. And just two weeks ago, a man drove a car into pedestrians crossing Westminster Bridge in central London, killing five people including a police officer who was standing guard outside the Houses of Parliament. The assailant was shot and killed by police. Boyle is a special correspondent. ALSO Syria and Russia issue rebuke after U.S. airstrike Romanian tourist hurt in London attack dies Russian police arrest 3 suspected of links to subway bombing UPDATES: 2:20 p.m.: This article was updated to raise the death toll from three to four and to update the number of injured. 10:30 a.m.: This article was updated to add a location map. 9:30 a.m.: This article was updated with more eyewitness accounts and background on previous attacks. This article was originally published at 7:45 a.m. Iran on Friday condemned the Trump administrations missile strikes against Syria, saying the unilateral U.S. action would strengthen terrorists and further complicate the situation in the Middle East. The Islamic republic, a strong ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad, said that whileit condemned the use of chemical weapons, the U.S. response was dangerous, destructive and a violation of international law. The Pentagon fired dozens of Tomahawk missiles early Friday at a Syrian airfield in retaliation for a poison gas attack against civilians this week that the U.S. believes was carried out by Assads forces. It was the first time the U.S. directly targeted the Assad government since the Syrian conflict began in 2011. Advertisement Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghassemi rejected the conclusion that Assads forces had carried out the poison attack on Tuesday that killed more than 70 people in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, in rebel-held Idlib province. Doctors who treated some of the victims said their symptoms were consistent with exposure to the nerve agent sarin. Ghassemi said the attack was suspicious and its timing, actors and perpetrators are cloaked in a curtain of ambiguity. He invoked Irans history as a victim of chemical warfare, carried out by Saddam Husseins Iraqi forces during a grisly war in the 1980s. At Friday prayers in Tehran, where clerics deliver sermons that reflect the view of the ruling theocracy, Ayatollah Mohammad Emami Kashani echoed the Syrian government account, suggesting that poison gas was released when Assads military targeted a rebel weapons depot that had contained chemical agents. The chemical weapons are in the hands of terrorists and the Syrian army attacks the terrorists, but all are making a hue and cry that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons, Kashani said. It is a sheer lie. Iranian Shiite Muslim militias, along with Russian air power and ground troops, have been among Assads strongest allies against the Sunni rebels, a patchwork of rival forces including extremists from Islamic State as well as more moderate groups trained and financed by the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence. Western experts estimate that Iran spends billions of dollars a year to bolster Assad and support his military. Iran has also recruited Shiite militiamen from Afghanistan and Iraq to fight alongside Syrian forces and help guard Shiite shrines in Assad-controlled areas. Experts in Tehran said that Iranian and Russian support would help keep Assad in power barring a significant escalation by the Trump administration. As long as Russia is supporting Assads regime, these missile attacks are a flexing of muscle by Trump, but they are far from toppling Bashar Assad, said Nader Karimi Juni, a leading political analyst. In fact, America cannot topple Assad unless its ground forces land on Syrian soil. After Friday prayers, a small group of demonstrators shouted slogans denouncing the U.S. while some worshipers called for a strong response against the missile strikes. We should send more defenders of holy shrines to Syria and Russia should retaliate and bombard the American-sponsored terrorists in Syria too, said Karim Hamwarsi, a worshiper. Others were worried about a widening conflict. An elderly man riding Tehrans subway, who gave his name only as Ali, said Irans support for Assad was coming at a high price. I am worried about future and there might be a war between Iran and America, he said. Special correspondent Mostaghim reported from Tehran and Times staff writer Bengali from Mumbai, India. shashank.bengali@latimes.com Follow @SBengali on Twitter for more news from South Asia Syrian officials Friday denounced a U.S. missile strike on one of the countrys air bases in retaliation for a poison gas attack, calling it a blatant aggression that killed up to 15 people and caused significant material damage. This condemned American aggression confirms the continuation of the wrong American strategy and restricts the counter-terrorist operation that the Syrian army is conducting, the General Command of the Syrian Army said in a statement. Syrian officials said the airstrikes had killed six people on the base targeted by U.S. missiles, as well as nine others in surrounding villages, according to the Syrian Arab News Agency. Advertisement Russia joined in condemning the U.S. strike, with President Vladimir Putin calling the attack on Moscows ally an aggression against a sovereign state in violation of the norms of international law executed under a trumped-up pretext, according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. Early Friday, Russias Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Ignorances Konashenkov said the combat effectiveness of the airstrike was very low. Of the 59 missiles dispatched by the U.S. on the Shayrat air base, Konashenkov said, only 23 hit their target. Video shows U.S. destroyers Porter and Ross as they launch Tomahawk missiles into Syria. The Pentagon said 59 missiles targeted a Syrian air base. The place of the fall of the other missiles is unknown, said Konashenkov, according to a report by Russian state news operator TASS. He added that the Syrian armys air defense systems would be reinforced in the near future to protect the most important infrastructure facilities. It is nakedly clear that the attack on a Syrian air base with U.S. cruise missiles had been planned well beforehand, he said. The Russian Foreign Ministry said it was suspending an agreement with the U.S. to prevent incidents and ensure flight safety during military operations in Syria. Under the memorandum, signed when Russia launched its air campaign in Syria in 2015, Russia and the U.S. had exchanged information about planned flights to avoid conflicts during the thousands of airstrikes that have been conducted. Russia suspends the memorandum on the prevention of incidents and ensuring air safety during operations in Syria reached with the U.S., the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. However, officials in Washingto said Friday that the U.S. and Russia are still talking on a communications hotline about aircraft movement in the crowded skies over Syria. The Department of Defense maintains the desire for dialogue through the flight safety channel, Maj. Adrian Rankine-Galloway, a Pentagon spokesman, said in statement. It is to the benefit of all parties operating in the air over Syria to avoid accidents and miscalculation, and we hope the Russian Ministry of Defense comes to this conclusion as well. The Syrian army command said Fridays missile attack on the air base northeast of Damascus made the U.S. a partner of Daesh, Nusra and other terrorist organizations. Daesh is a common acronym for the militant group Islamic State, and the Nusra Front is a former Al Qaeda affiliate in the region, now known as the Organization for the Liberation of Syria. Both are listed as terrorist entities by the U.S. About 60 U.S. Tomahawk missiles were used in the predawn strike on the base, which is used by aircraft striking targets in central Syria. Talal Barazi, the governor of Syrias Homs province, told Al Arabiya TV that a fire raged for two hours at the Shayrat air base, near the city of Homs, before firefighters put it out. President Trump ordered the attack in retaliation for an apparent poison gas attack Tuesday that killed up to 70 people in the northern town of Khan Sheikhoun, about 60 miles from the Syrian border in Idlib province, an opposition stronghold. Turkish experts found evidence that civilians were targeted with chlorine and possibly sarin, a toxic nerve agent. Peskov said the U.S. strike was an effort to divert attention from recent civilian casualties caused by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes in Iraq, and predicted the latest U.S. attack would worsen the conflict in Syria. The Syrian army has no reserves of chemical weapons. The fact of destruction of all the reserves of Syrias chemical weapons has been documented and confirmed, Peskov told reporters in a conference call. Russian officials said military operations in Syria can be conducted only under the authorization of the Syrian government and the United Nations Security Council. Fighting terrorism in the Middle East and North Africa requires coordinated efforts of the international community under the auspices of the United Nations, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. Attempts to pursue geopolitical objectives and violations of the sovereignty of states in the region can only aggravate tensions and further serve to destabilize the situation. Speaking at a news conference in Palm Beach, Fla., where Trump is meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Russia had failed in its responsibility to deliver on a commitment to secure Syrias chemical weapons. Tillerson briefed reporters shortly after the U.S. launched the cruise missiles, saying Russia had either been complicit or simply incompetent in failing to deliver on a 2013 agreement to remove Syrias chemical weapons following an earlier chemical weapons attack in the Damascus suburbs that killed hundreds. The Obama administration had threatened to attack Syrian President Bashar Assads forces after that incident, but never launched a strike. Amar Salmo, a civil defense volunteer in northern Syria, welcomed the new U.S. intervention. For Syrians, any military intervention that will neutralize Assads ability to continue his genocide will fall on our hearts like music, Salmo said by phone Friday. If there will not be a cost for Assad after using chemical weapons, it will be a clear signal for him to continue his genocide, killing the innocent. An opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition, also praised the U.S. missile strike, saying it puts an end to an age of impunity and should be just the beginning. We welcome these strikes, Najib Ghadbian, special representative to the U.S. and the U.N. for the Syrian National Coalition, told the Al Jazeera news service. They are first good steps, but we would like them to be part of a bigger strategy that would put an end to the mass killing, an end to impunity, and eventually we hope that they will lead to a kind of a political transition in Syria, he said. Syrian human rights advocates said they hoped the attack signaled the start of a broader U.S. campaign against Assad. Neighboring Turkey also welcomed the U.S. military move. Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmas told the Daily Sabah that he hoped the strike would ultimately help bring peace to the region. The barbarism of the Assad regime must be stopped as soon as possible, Kurtulmus said. The bombing was Trumps most significant military order since taking office 11 weeks ago. Before the strike, Trump said the Khan Sheikhoun chemical weapons attack crossed many, many lines He blamed Assads forces, saying it shouldnt have happened, and it shouldnt be allowed to happen. U.S. officials had hoped for a vote late Thursday on a U.N. Security Council resolution they and allies had drafted, condemning the chemical attack, but council members postponed the vote after delays negotiating the wording with Russian diplomats. Syrian officials have insisted that they did not use chemical weapons and that it was opposition fighters who stockpiled the chemicals. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem told reporters that a government airstrike hit a rebel chemical weapons arsenal and munitions factory near Khan Sheikhoun that day, noting militant groups have continued to store chemical weapons in urban areas. The Syrian Arab Army did not and will not use such weapons even against the terrorists who are targeting our people, Moallem said at a Thursday briefing in Damascus, adding that we condemn such a criminal act. Russias Defense Ministry also said the toxic agents were released when a Syrian airstrike hit a rebel arsenal outside Khan Sheikhoun. Staff writers W.J. Hennigan and Brian Bennett in Washington contributed to this report. Hennessy-Fiske reported from Irbil and Bulos from Beirut. Special correspondent Mansur Mirovalev contributed from Moscow. molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com @mollyhf ALSO Key moments from the U.S.-led campaign in Iraq and Syria Syria was supposed to have gotten rid of its chemical weapons. What happened? Heres what we know about the chemical weapons attack in Syria UPDATES: 10:15 a.m.: This article was updated with a revised death toll and other new details. 5 a.m.: This article was updated throughout with additional details and background. 3:33 a.m.: This article was updated with new death toll figures. 1:25 a.m.: This article was updated with comments from a Turkish official. April, 7, 1:10 a.m.: This article was updated with information on casualties and additional statements from the Syrian and Russian governments. 11:05 p.m.: This article was updated with a quote from Najib Ghadbian of the Syrian National Coalition. This article was originally posted on April 6 at 10:55 p.m. The U.S. airstrikes in Syria on Friday in response to a suspected chemical weapons attack by President Bashar Assads forces in the rebel-held province of Idlib this week provoked a mix of condemnation, consternation and adulation. Critics expressed outrage and slammed the White House for acting without prior approval from the United Nations or the U.S. Congress. Supporters praised President Trumps quick answer to the Tuesday attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun. Others conveyed concernover what might come next. Here are some of the reactions: Syria: Assad denounced the Friday strike as reckless and pledged to intensify his stand against the rebels. What America did is nothing but foolish and irresponsible behavior, which only reveals its short-sightedness and political and military blindness to reality, his office was quoted as saying. Advertisement Russia: The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin considered the move a violation of the norms of international law. His spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said the action is causing significant damage to Russian-American relations, which already are in deplorable shape. Russia is an Assad ally. China: Beijing warned against the escalation of tension following the strikes. We are concerned about the current situation in Syria and call for political settlement, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said. We hope all sides will stay calm and exercise restraint to prevent the escalation of tension. Iran: Tehran blasted the strikes as dangerous, destructive and a violation of international law. The Islamic Republic, an Assad ally, warned that unilateral U.S. action would strengthen terrorists and further complicate the situation in the Middle East. Australia: Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told reporters that his government strongly supports the swift and just response of the United States, and he described the action as a calibrated, proportionate and targeted response. Israel: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement that, in both word and action, President Trump sent a strong and clear messagethat the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated. Turkey: Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Turkey welcomed the airstrikes as a positive response to the Assad regimes war crimes. Saudi Arabia: The leadership in Riyadh hailed the strikes a courageous decision by Trump and pledged the Arab kingdoms full support of the move. United Kingdom: A spokeswoman for British Prime Minister Theresa May told reporters that the U.K. government fully supports the U.S. action, which we believe was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, and is intended to deter further attacks. France and Germany: In a joint statement, the leaders of France and Germany said Assad alone carries responsibility for this development, because his repeated use of chemical weapons and his crimes against his own population had to be sanctioned. The Associated Press contributed to this report. ann.simmons@latimes.com For more on global development news, see our Global Development Watch page, and follow me @AMSimmons1 on Twitter Just a few days ago, Syrias long-embattled President Bashar Assad appeared to be in his strongest position in years. Members of President Trumps foreign policy circle had signaled a definitive break from the Obama administrations Assad must go refrain the insistence that the departure of Syrias autocratic leader was a precondition to any long-term solution in the violent crisis that has roiled the Middle East for more than six years. Our priority is no longer to sit and focus on getting Assad out, Nikki Haley, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said last week, while Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said it was up to the Syrian people to decide Assads ultimate fate. Advertisement The comments seemed finally to signal a convergence of Syria strategy between Washington and Moscow, longtime antagonists on the question of Syria. Assad, it seemed, could be part of the solution after all. How things have changed. This weeks suspected chemical attack in a rebel-held stretch of northwest Syria has put Assads government squarely back in the U.S. cross-hairs. Washington appears to have concluded that the strike was the work of Assads war planes even before there has been an on-the-ground inquiry into the reported deaths of more than 70 people Tuesday in rebel-held Idlib province. There have been adamant disavowals from Syria and its ally Russia. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem said Thursday it was not reasonable to assume Syria would resort to chemical weapons when government forces have been making substantial gains on the battlefield. We condemn such a criminal act, he said. But U.S. officials have said radar detected Syrian aircraft in the vicinity of Khan Sheikhoun on the morning of the attack there, and by midday Thursday, Trump was already considering military retaliation. Critics of the Assad government said the attack, which left victims gasping for breath and foaming at the mouth, is a continuation of years of scorched-earth tactics meant to eradicate the opposition and ensure total victory. But even if the incident was, as Syrian and Russian officials suggest, instigated by the Syrian opposition to draw international wrath onto Assads head, the effect is undeniable: Assads position is suddenly more precarious than ever. Cooperation with the Assad regime is over, Paul Salem, vice president for policy and research at the Middle East Institute, a Washington think tank, said in a video statement. On Thursday, Moscow reiterated its longtime position that its support for Assad is not unconditional, President Vladimir Putins spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told the Associated Press. Russia demanded a full investigation before any military action is taken. Assad has weathered many storms in six years of conflict. There are few alternatives to his government, which still presides over the vast majority of Syrians, and is a sworn enemy of Islamic extremists. I think youll see some kind of demonstrative strike by the Trump administration and that will be that, said Joshua Landis, who heads the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oklahoma. American generals are not going to be drawn into the Syrian quagmire. Theyve lived through that for years in Iraq and Afghanistan and are sick and tired of it. On the other hand, the chemical incident not only has put the Assad government on the defensive. It may breathe new life into a divided, demoralized rebel force that has been losing territory and has looked to be on the verge of defeat. Many Syrians have become disillusioned with the armed opposition since it became dominated by hard-line Sunni Islamists, some linked to Al Qaeda. Yet all diplomatic efforts to stop the fighting have failed, as outside governments continue to pour arms and money to their favored militias. Now, for the first time since 2013, there is the prospect of U.S. military involvement. A conflict that has already seemed unfathomably complex to many may be headed for a new and potentially more calamitous phase. It would signal a major departure from a U.S. policy that for years saw billions of dollars of covert aid sent mainly to Islamist rebels fighting to oust Syrias secular but authoritarian government. It could also raise the chilling possibility of a direct confrontation between two nuclear powers, the United States and Russia. For years, the Obama administration resisted such an action, in large part because of a fear that Syria could become a reprise of Iraq in 2003, when U.S. forces toppled Saddam Hussein and the country descended into a chaos from which it has yet to recover. The disastrous consequences of that U.S. intervention have always hovered over the escalating tragedy in Syria. The Obama team opted for a middle-ground strategy that kept military pressure on Assad with the hope that a negotiated solution for his departure could be brokered. It never happened. Russias decisive intervention in support of Assad, along with considerable aid from Iran and the Iranian-linked Hezbollah movement in Lebanon, threw a lifeline to Assads once-reeling government. With the recapture earlier this year of the city of Aleppo and the eviction of rebel forces from Homs, Assads forces now control all major cities. Life in the capital of Damascus has returned to something close to normal. But the contorted history of the Syrian conflict demonstrates that no one can predict the consequences of any new escalation. Few who cheered the Arab Spring-style protests that broke out against Assads rule in 2011 expected that it would become a sanguinary struggle that would revitalize Al Qaeda and give birth to the even more violent militants of Islamic State, which soon swept from Syria through much of northern and western Iraq and dispatched radicalized cadres to Europe to spread terror. Critics blame what they call Assads brutal crackdown and refusal to step down for the catastrophic sequence of events. Assads supporters blame a regime change operation backed by Washington and its chief allies, including Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel. They call it a repeat of the 1980s war in Afghanistan pitting U.S.-and Saudi-backed rebels against a Soviet-backed government in Kabul that first gave birth to Al Qaeda. NEWSLETTER: Get the days top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj Trump, during his election campaign, had suggested that Assad and his Russian and Iranian allies could be partners in the U.S.-backed campaign to defeat Islamic State. But in the wake of the chemical incident, the U.S. president on Wednesday had a much different message: My attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much, he told reporters. When you kill innocent children, innocent babies, little babies with a chemical gas that crosses many lines beyond the red line, Trump said. Many, many lines. McDonnell, the Times Mexico City bureau chief, covered the Syrian conflict from 2011-2016. patrick.mcdonnell@latimes.com twitter: @mcdneville ALSO Syrian ally Iran blasts U.S. missile strikes as dangerous, destructive and a violation of international law Heres some of what we know about the apparent chemical weapons attack in Syria Syria and Russia issue rebuke after U.S. airstrike It was less than a couple of hours before dawn when Wael Zefa heard a horrific amount of noise rumbling through the east Syrian village of Shayrat. During the six years of civil war ravaging Syria, Zefa has become used to the sounds of mortar shells and rockets. But nothing like this. What we heard this morning their sound was very, very loud, he said. Advertisement Explosions ripped through the morning. The ground shook. Windows broke. Walls cracked. What Zefa and his neighbors experienced was the pounding of Tomahawk cruise missiles launched by the U.S. to clobber the Syrian governments Shayrat airfield, less than a mile from the village. A total of 60 missiles were fired at 4:40 a.m. Friday in response to an apparent chemical weapons attack this week, blamed by the U.S. on the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad, that killed an estimated 70 people in the rebel-held province of Idlib. Zefas house was shaken so severely that a chunk of the roof broke off and smashed to the ground. There was no way we could stay at home, Zefa, 38, said by phone from where he and his family have sought shelter. Zefa quickly sent his wife and four children to a nearby bunker before running to his roof for a better view. What was unfolding, he would learn later, was a new front in Americas involvement in Syria: After thousands of airstrikes directed at Islamist militants, U.S. missiles for the first time were directly targeting Syrian military assets. This satellite photo from the Department of Defense shows a battle damage assessment image of Shayrat airfield. (HANDOUT / AFP/Getty Images) The Pentagon described the strike as a proportional response to Assads heinous act, possibly involving a nerve agent, directed at the northern town of Khan Sheikhoun. The strike was intended to deter the regime from using chemical weapons again, the Pentagon statement said, adding that the Shayrat airfield had been used to store chemical weapons. The Pentagon said 59 cruise missiles (one fell in the water) hit aircraft, hardened aircraft shelters, petroleum and logistical storage, ammunition supply bunkers, air defense systems, and radars, rendering the military airfield inoperable. Russian forces had been notified of the strike in advance, and had taken precautions to minimize risk to Russian or Syrian personnel located at the airfield, U.S. officials said. But Syrian state news operator SANA said six soldiers had been killed in the attack. It later reported nine civilians had also been killed, including four children, in the surrounding villages, though there was no way of independently verifying the reports. Video shows U.S. destroyers Porter and Ross as they launch Tomahawk missiles into Syria. The Pentagon said 59 missiles targeted a Syrian air base. A grainy nighttime video released on social media Friday depicted the moment of the missiles impact. It shows a succession of glowing lights in the distance, then the shaking of the cameramans hand as a missile apparently makes thunderous contact. Mohammad Zefa, a 41-year-old oil ministry employee, had run outside with his family during the strike. When one of the missiles hit an ammunition warehouse, he said, you stopped knowing where the explosions were coming from. We ran back inside the house. After, we saw a rocket had fallen thirty yards from our house, he said in a telephone interview. All the windows broke, here and at my neighbors house. Some older houses even had cracked walls. A report by Russia24 television from Shayrat airbase showed the strikes results. A number of aircraft parked in concrete hangars appeared unscathed, while other parts of the airfield were a jumble of debris and charred metal chunks. A correspondent with Russia24, Evgeny Poddubnyy, said in an interview on social media that nine hangars had been destroyed, along with six aircraft, as well as a large amount of ordnance. The runway, however, and a number of Russian helicopters and another Syrian aircraft appeared to be undamaged. The loss of the airbase is a significant one for the government. Built in the 1960s, it had 40 hangars and housed a large number of Assads fighters bombers, which often would scramble to attack rebel-held areas near the city of Homs. For residents of Shayrat and other villages, the airbase was instrumental in keeping at bay Islamic State militants hiding in the eastern desert of Homs. Now with the base so severely damaged, Mohammad Zefa, a distant cousin of Wael Zefa, expected Islamic State to try to advance to the village. Women and children have already started to leave Shayrat to go to Homs city. Were not afraid of airstrikes. Our fear is the attack from the east, he said. For him, Fridays attack was proof that the U.S. helps Daesh. He referred to Islamic State by its Arabic acronym. When Islamic State first overran the city of Palmyra in 2015, it celebrated its takeover with a theatrical slaughtering of government soldiers. Mohammad Zefa insisted he would fight before suffering the same fate. Here we are loyalists to the state to the highest degree, he said. Its an existential battle for us. Bulos is a special correspondent. ALSO Syria crisis tests Trumps plan for a new world order President Trump sees push back from far-right supporters over U.S. airstrike in Syria U.S. missile strike in Syria dashes hope of improving ties with Russia Syrias opposition accused President Bashar Assads government of a chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun, a town in the rebel-held province of Idlib. Social media spread gruesome images of the Tuesday attack, which left more than 70 people dead and apparently involved a nerve gas, possibly sarin. Syrias government, however, insisted that no such weapons had been deployed. Advertisement The attack spurred worldwide outrage against the Syrian government, renewing calls for Assads removal from power. Heres some more of what we know: The timing of the attack Activists reported the attack occurred around 6:30 or 7 in the morning local time Tuesday. Pro-opposition groups such as the Edlib Media Center published photos some hours later depicting corpses of children they said had suffocated to death because of toxic gases. One opposition activist, Ahmad Sheikho, said in a WhatsApp conversation Thursday that he had seen the airstrike in the morning. I took pictures of the strike ... it was less than 100 yards from my house, he said. U.S. radar spotted Syrian aircraft in the area around Khan Sheikhoun about 7 a.m. local time Tuesday, according to U.S. officials who requested anonymity because they werent authorized to speak on the intelligence. Both Russia and Syria initially denied their forces had flown in the vicinity of Khan Sheikhoun that day. But Thursday, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem said a Syrian warplane had attacked Khan Sheikhoun at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday hours after the attack apparently took place and a furor had erupted on social media. What do we know about chemical weapons? Four years ago, hundreds of people were killed after what was said to be a sarin gas attack on rebel enclaves near Damascus. The government vehemently denied any wrongdoing, but the U.S. and others wanted Assad removed from power. Russia stepped in with a deal that instead called for the government to surrender chemical material stockpiles to the U.N. under the supervision of Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). The OPCW later said it had destroyed 95% of the Syrian governments chemical weapons, but in the years since there have been incidents where chemical materials usually chlorine have been deployed by the different forces in the country, including the government, the opposition and Islamic State. What about Tuesdays attack? Moallem said the Syrian warplane had targeted a weapons depot belonging to the former Nusra Front, now known as the Organization for the Liberation of Syria. The depot had contained chemical weapons, Moallem said. Moallem said the Syrian army has never used and will never use this type of weapons. John Gilbert, a senior science fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, said the victims seen in video and photographs from Khan Sheikhoun appeared to have been affected by something that caused serious injury, probably fatal, without any physical wounds visible and showed symptoms consistent with the nerve agent sarin. Sarin, if inhaled or exposed to skin in sufficient amounts, is lethal within minutes. Milder reactions include labored breathing and convulsions. Doctors Without Borders, which supports medical clinics in rebel-held areas, said Wednesday that eight patients brought to Bab Al Hawa hospital, located near the Turkish border, had exhibited symptoms consistent with exposure to a neurotoxic agent such as sarin gas or similar compounds. Turkish officials said the results of autopsies on three bodies concluded that chemical weapons had been used. Could Russia and Syrias version of events have happened? A number of opposition activists in Khan Sheikhoun said their groups had had no rebel weapons facilities, though the town has long been a target of government warplanes. Syrian journalist Nizar Nayouf quoted an unnamed doctor who told him there had been a storage area for the rebels in town. It contained a workshop a section to store weapons and ammunition, and even foodstuffs and medical as well as logistical equipment, said Nayouf in a message on social media Wednesday. Another activist, who asked not to be named for security reasons, said in a WhatsApp voice recording Wednesday that a bakery in the eastern part of town had been repurposed as a weapons storage area. But Khaled Ibrahim, a pro-opposition activist, said in an interview that the bakery had been destroyed a year and a half ago in a strike and was unusable. Why would Assad attack now? Moallem insisted it is not reasonable that the Syrian army could use chemical weapons now at the time when it has been achieving victories on various fronts. Militarily, the government has achieved significant gains, while its rebel adversaries are largely in disarray. It has taken back the cities of Aleppo and Homs, and was on the cusp of negotiating issues of aid and reconstruction with world powers under the aegis of the U.N. Why would [Assad] do it? Because he wants to win, said Joshua Landis, director for the Center of Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, in a phone interview Thursday. They want to win, and they thought they would try it. Bulos is a special correspondent. ALSO Syrians confirm losses at air base following massive U.S. airstrike U.S. launches dozens of missiles in response to chemical weapons attack Syrias government was supposed to have gotten rid of its chemical weapons in 2014. So what happened? Theres a mystery at the heart of an apparent chemical weapons attack in Syria this week: Syrias government, suspected of carrying out the attack, was supposed to have gotten rid of all its chemical weapons in 2014. A year earlier, President Obama said Syria had crossed a red line by allegedly using sarin gas near Damascus and Aleppo, killing at least 100 to 150 people. But rather than take military action, Obama agreed to a Russian deal to dismantle Syrias chemical weapons program. Syrias foreign minister has denied that the countrys forces use chemical weapons in its battle with opposition rebels and Islamic State militants, both of whom seek the overthrow of President Bashar Assad. But the effectiveness of the Obama deal is now under new examination. Advertisement How are chemical weapons regulated? The wartime use of chemical weapons was banned by the Geneva Protocol in 1925 after more than 90,000 soldiers were killed during World War I by materials including chlorine and mustard gas. But nations including the United States and the former Soviet Union amassed stockpiles of chemical weapons throughout the 20th century. They largely went unused, with a major exception during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. Thats around when U.S. officials first reported that Syria had produced its own substantial chemical weapons stockpile. The signing of the international Chemical Weapons Convention in 1993 began a phase of worldwide disarmament as almost every nation joined the pact. Syria was one of the few nations that didnt, which raised concerns after the country tipped into civil war in 2011 and chemical weapons were repeatedly used in the conflict. Investigators have accused both the Syrian government and Islamic State of using chemicals in the fight. The Syrian deal The deal between the U.S. (an Assad opponent) and Russia (an ally) was struck in September 2013. Under the agreement, Syria gave a manifest of its chemical weapons and facilities to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the global chemicals watchdog, which moved quickly to decommission the declared facilities and weapons. By the end of 2014, all of Syrias declared chemical weapons were destroyed, along with 24 of Syrias 27 declared production facilities. (The other three have not yet been destroyed yet due to instability, according to inspector reports.) Yet some officials were skeptical. In February 2016, James R. Clapper, Obamas Director of National Intelligence, testified to the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee that Syria had not declared its entire chemical weapons program to inspectors. International monitors continued to receive reports of smaller chemical attacks throughout 2016. On Jan. 12, in the closing days of the Obama administration, the U.S. Treasury department unveiled sanctions against Syrian military, security and research officials accused of being connected to Syrias chemical weapons program or with chemical attacks in recent years. The recent attack Tuesdays attack in the northern Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun left at least 70 people dead and hundreds more affected, with many of them struggling to breathe, according to the World Health Organization, citing medical groups working in Syria. U.S. officials reported seeing fixed-wing Syrian aircraft dropping bombs over the town around the time of the suspected gassing. U.N. officials called it the largest chemical weapons attack in Syria since 2013. With many hospitals damaged due to fighting, local emergency rooms were overwhelmed and some patients were taken to hospitals in southern Turkey, the WHO reported. Doctors Without Borders, the international aid organization, said its possible at least two different chemicals were used in the attack sarin gas and chlorine. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said its investigators have begun gathering information. Markus Binder, a chemical weapons expert at the University of Maryland, said he still had basic questions about the attack that need to be confirmed, including exactly what chemicals were used and whether the Syrian government carried out the attack. Nor did the use of chemicals make immediate sense, given that the government has been using explosives that often kill civilians. Why now? Binder said. It puzzles. ALSO Syrias Assad was in a strong position a week ago. A suspected chemical attack changed everything Heres some of what we know about the apparent chemical weapons attack in Syria Is Islamic State luring U.S. coalition forces into killing civilians in airstrikes? Before the White House ordered airstrikes in Syria, Russia had been the most dominant outside military force, participating in a bloody military escapade aimed at propping up Syrian President Bashar Assad and his government. Since the fall of 2015, Russia has launched airstrikes on opposition strongholds, deployed special forces units on the ground, and supplied Syrian government troops with food and medical aid. And this intervention has been critical to ensuring Assads political survival. The regime was on the verge of collapse, said Matthew Rojansky, director of the Washington-based Kennan Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center and an expert on U.S. relations with the states of the former Soviet Union. Assad had lost almost everything. He was really on the ropes. Compare that to today, when hes even been emboldened enough to use chemical weapons, and its clear the effect Russias assistance has had in the last year and a half. Advertisement It has really enabled the Syrian armed forces to reverse the loses they were suffering at that point, said Daniel Treisman, a professor of political science at UCLA, whose work includes a focus on Russian politics and economics and comparative political economy. Russian military involvement has succeeded in at least temporarily stabilizing the situation, allowing the Assad regime to win back territory that had been taken by the rebels. In this 2012 photo, a Syrian woman kisses a poster of Russian President Vladimir Putin during a pro-Syrian government demonstration in front of the Russian Embassy in Damascus, Syria. (Muzaffar Salman / AP) Russia also succeeded at stymieing any U.S. or NATO intentions to impose a no-fly zone in opposition-held territory, thereby limiting the Wests options for intervening had it chosen to do so, Treisman said. Moreover, Russian President Vladimir Putin intervened in order to draw a line in the sand against uprisings that had American and Western sympathy, said Rojansky. He wanted to prevent that from happening in Syria. An opportunistic intrusion The Kremlins decision to defend Syria was not purely to help Assad, analysts said. The move was largely to benefit Moscow. Syria is important to Russia for several reasons, said Andrew Parasiliti, director of the Center for Global Risk and Security at the Rand Corporation. These include the countrys strategic geographic location in the heart of the Middle East; Russias naval base in the Syrian port city of Tartus, which allows access to the Mediterranean; the Hmeimim Air Base currently operated by the Russians; and the Assad regimes role in helping to counter terrorism from jihadists who could inspire Islamist extremists on Russias doorstep in Central Asia, Parasiliti said. Putin thought that a victory in Damascus for forces he considers terrorists would be a huge victory for Islamist terrorists in the Middle East, said Treisman, the UCLA expert. Also, if Assad fell, that could be perceived as victory of the West over a traditional Russian client and Putin wanted to prevent that, Treisman said. The intention was to preserve the credibility of the image of Russia as a reliable friend. A longtime friendship That friendship dates back to the days of the Soviet Union and has included military and economic cooperation, the trading of arms, people-to-people ties and cultural bonds, among other relations, experts said. There has been over time warmer periods and cooler periods, but that historical relationship has always been there, Treisman said. According to analysts, cooperation between the USSR and Syria strengthened in the 1960s and1970s when the Soviets helped to develop Syrias national industries, including the oil, agriculture and transportation sectors. Soviet scientists, engineers and military instructors were among the workforce dispatched to Syria, along with weapons, machinery, and other equipment, experts said. With the blessing of Hafez Assad, Bashar Assads father who was then president, Moscow opened its naval base in Tartus in 1971, establishing a Soviet military foothold in the Middle East. In 1980, Moscow and Damascus signed a treaty of friendship and cooperation, establishing specific strategic ties. The two nations fell out slightly in 1985 over disagreements related to the Palestinian cause (the Soviets backed the Palestine Liberation Organization, Syria did not) and the Iran-Iraq war (Syria supported Iran). But by the late 1980s, the friendship was back on track with Moscow continuing to provide Damascus with economic and military aid. The early 1990s saw Syria aligning with the U.S. during the Gulf War against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. And Russias new President Boris Yeltsin, who took power in 1991, also sought to establish better relations with America. But by the end of the 1990s, Damascus and Moscow were again tighter with one another than with Washington. A major reinforcement of the alliance between the two countries came in 2005 when Putin agreed to cancel almost 73% of Syrias Soviet-era debt to Russia, according to media reports. It was therefore not surprising when in 2008 Syria threw its support behind Russias military intervention into the former Soviet republic of Georgia. Since then, Damascus has continued to benefit from military cooperation with Russia, including the receipt of armaments, and help with infrastructure development. In 2012, Moscow joined Beijing in vetoing a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for Assad to step down, despite the mounting death toll caused by the Syrian strongmans unencumbered killing of his own people. Moscow has also remained adamant in its rejection of any arms embargo against Syria, arguing that it would give the Syrian opposition an unfair advantage. Today, Syria remains one of Moscows most significant assets in the Middle East, said Parasiliti, the Rand expert. Autocrats in Iraq, Libya and Egypt traditional Cold War-era allies of Russia have all since been toppled. At the core was Syria, Parasiliti said. As a long-term ally, Russia was not going to let this one go. ann.simmons@latimes.com For more on global development news, see our Global Development Watch page, and follow me @AMSimmons1 on Twitter ALSO Syrias Assad was in a strong position a week ago. A suspected chemical attack changed everything Heres some of what we know about the apparent chemical weapons attack in Syria Is Islamic State luring U.S. coalition forces into killing civilians in airstrikes? U.S.-led forces have been carrying out airstrikes against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria since 2014, but have tried to avoid getting drawn into Syrias ruinous civil war. On Thursday, President Trump authorized the deployment of cruise missiles against a Syrian air base in retaliation for an apparent poison-gas attack that U.S. officials say was carried out by President Bashar Assads military. Obama declares a red line in Syria President Obama warns Syrias leaders that using chemical weapons would be a red line for the United States. Hundreds die in chemical attack Hundreds are killed in a poison-gas attack targeting pro-rebel suburbs of the Syrian capital, Damascus. Obama considers a military response, but decides against it when President Bashar Assads government agrees to give up its chemical weapons. An image released by the Syrian opposition Shaam News Network is said to show a woman mourning over a victim of a suspected gas attack in Ghouta, on the outskirts of Damascus. (Shaam News Network) (DAYA AL-DEEN / AFP/Getty Images) Raqqah falls Fighters loyal to Islamic State in Iraq and Syria take control of Raqqah after battling a coalition of rival rebel groups for the northern Syrian provincial capital. Mosul falls Islamic State in Iraq and Syria takes control of Mosul, Iraqs second-largest city, before overrunning much of the northwest of the country. Iraq seeks U.S. help Iraq asks the U.S. to carry out airstrikes against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Islamic State caliphate declared Islamic State of Iraq and Syria announces in an audio recording that the militants have established a caliphate in eastern Syria and northwestern Iraq and are rebranding themselves as simply the Islamic State. Islamic State fighters drive through Raqqah, capital of their self-declared caliphate in Syria. (Associated Press) (Uncredited / AP) Thousands displaced Islamic State drives Kurdish forces out of the Iraqi towns of Sinjar and Zumar, sending thousands of Yazidi civilians fleeing to the countrys semi-autonomous Kurdish zone. Kurdish fighters check vehicles carrying Yazidi families fleeing from Islamic State in Iraq's Sinjar region. (Anadolu Agency / Getty Images) Obama authorizes airstrikes Obama, saying that he is acting to avert a genocide, announces that he has authorized airstrikes against Islamic State militants in Iraq. He also confirms that U.S. cargo planes have dropped supplies to displaced civilians in the area of Mt. Sinjar who faced imminent starvation. Bundles of meals parachute to the ground during a U.S airdrop over Iraq. (Department of Defense) U.S. calls for a coalition against Islamic State Obama vows at a NATO summit to build an international coalition, including Sunni Arab states, to "degrade and ultimately destroy" Islamic State. James Foley beheaded Islamic State posts video online showing the beheading of American journalist James Foley. Islamic State released video said to show the beheading of American journalist James Foley. (Associated Press) Steven Sotloff beheaded Obama orders 350 additional troops be sent to Iraq as video surfaces of the beheading of a second American journalist, Steven Sotloff. Airstrikes begin in Syria The U.S.-led coalition launches its first airstrikes against Islamic State inside Syria. Kobani recaptured Kurdish fighters, backed by U.S. firepower, drive Islamic State from the Syrian border town of Kobani after four moths of fighting. Syrian Kurdish fighters celebrate their victory over Islamic State in Kobani. (European Pressphoto Agency) Tikrit liberation announced Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar Abadi announces the "liberation" of Tikrit, the hometown of former strongman Saddam Hussein, although fighting and looting continue there for days. Iraqi forces fire a rocket at Islamic State positions in Tikrit. (Khalid Mohammed / Associated Press) Palmyra falls to Islamic State Islamic State fighters seize Palmyra and proceed to destroy many ancient ruins near the fabled Syrian town. Russia begins airstrikes in Syria Russian warplanes carry out their first airstrikes in Syria. Russian officials say the attacks in support of Assad's government target Islamic State positions, but Syrian opposition activists say the areas hit are in the hands of other rebel factions, including some backed by the U.S. Ramadi declared liberated The Iraqi military declares that Ramadi has been liberated from Islamic State, although a general in the western province of Anbar tells reporters that the militants still control parts of the city. Sinjar recaptured Iraqi Kurdish forces announce the recapture of the northern Sinjar region from Islamic State. Palmyra back in government hands Syrian government forces recapture Palmyra with the help of Russian air power, but will be driven out again in December. Fallujah declared liberated Abadi announces that the Iraqi city of Fallujah, long a hotbed of Sunni extremism, has returned to the bosom of the nation." The fighting prompted a massive exodus from the city that overwhelmed aid workers. U.S. says coalition mistakenly targeted forces loyal to Assad The U.S. military admits that coalition forces carried out an air raid that mistakenly killed dozens of Syrian-backed troops on Sept. 17 in the eastern Syrian town of Dair Alzour. Dabiq recaptured Turkish-backed Syrian rebels retake Dabiq, dealing a symbolic blow to Islamic State, which believes the town will be the site of a doomsday battle between jihadis and their Western enemies. Mosul offensive begins The Iraqi government, backed by U.S. airstrikes, launches a long-awaited campaign to drive Islamic State from Mosul, the groups last major stronghold in the country. Iraqi forces deploy in the area of Shurah, south of Mosul. (Ahmad al-Rubaye / AFP/Getty Images) (AHMAD AL-RUBAYE / AFP/Getty Images) Syria declares victory in Aleppo Syrias government declares victory in Aleppo after the evacuation of opposition fighters from the citys devastated eastern sector. The rebels had held parts of the city their last major urban stronghold for nearly four years. Hundreds killed in apparent airstrike in Mosul An apparent airstrike in western Mosul kills nearly 300 people. The U.S.-led coalition says it is investigating whether it was responsible; Iraqi officials blame Islamic State. Dozens killed in apparent poison-gas attack The U.S. and its allies accuse Assads government of carrying out an attack using a suspected nerve agent that killed about 80 civilians in the rebel-controlled province of Idlib. President Trump says the attack "crosses many, many lines" and was a consequence of Obama's "weakness and irresolution." A Syrian doctor treats a child after a poison-gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun. (Edlib Media Center) (Uncredited / AP) Cruise missiles launched into Syria The U.S. fires 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian air base that officials said was used to launch the deadly poison gas attack on April 4. The U.S. destroyer Porter launches a Tomahawk cruise missile in the Mediterranean Sea. (U.S. Navy) (Ford Williams / AP) ALSO U.S. launches dozens of missiles in response to chemical weapons attack Here's some of what we know about the apparent chemical weapons attack in Syria Syria's government was supposed to have gotten rid of its chemical weapons in 2014. So what happened? All material is subject to strictly enforced copyright terms & conditions and cannot be repurposed or reproduced. 19882022 Latin American Financial Publications Inc. Brazilian securities regulator delays the offer for up to 30 days after airline gives investors information not in the prospectus After Brazilian regulators suspended the IPO over roadshow materials it had not approved, the airline led by CEO David Neeleman now plans to price the share offering on April 10 Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt Likely To Call Off Divorce; Ex-couple Is Reportedly Patching Things Up staff@latinoshealth.com By Marnelle Joyce Apr 07, 2017 04:57 PM EDT Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt shocked their fans when they announced in September that they will be ending their nearly 12-year relationship. But speculations are suggesting that the "By the Sea" stars are patching things up and no longer pushing through with their divorce. According to E! Online, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are considering the welfare of their six children: Maddox, 15, Pax, 13, Zahara, 12, Shiloh, 10, Knox, 8, and Vivienne, 8. The news outlet also claimed that "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" stars set aside their divorce issue following reports that the ex-couple met in Cambodia. They chose to cool down everything due to the struggles they have encountered that affected their families and fans. "Things have calmed settled between Brad and Angelina. It's not as tense as it had been," an insider told the outlet. "They are focused on the kids and working to do what's best for them," the insider added. The "Maleficent" actress looks healthier and more gorgeous as compared before, a recent report noted. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt divorce highly affected the actress causing her to lose weight. It's not only Angelina Jolie, who has faced physical changes. Brad Pitt appeared to be different when he attended his new movie premiere in LA, The Sun reported. The "Allied" actor has no appeal with his outfit that appeared loose on his so-called thin body. However, some reports are saying that Brad Pitt lost weight because he has been working out. Others have described him as fit and fab. This might be true since he and Angelina Jolie were reportedly in a state of peace after months of divorce issue and custody battle. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt did not comment on their possible rekindling issue, which means it is still unofficial. Fans could be happy about the news but the ex-couple is yet to confirm the speculation surrounding them. Subscribe to the latinos health newsletter! Apr 7, 2017, 4:26pm ET Subaru promises to start making 'emotionally appealing' cars The company is looking to aesthetic design as an area for potential improvement. Subaru has promised to place a higher priority on aesthetic design for future vehicles. The Japanese automaker is experiencing another strong year in the US market, capping a decade-long run of record growth, but the company is still looking for ways to improve and avoid resting on its laurels. Speaking to WardsAuto, Subaru product planning and design manager Matt Wherry suggested the company is for the first time focusing on product design as a competitive advantage. "We've made great cars, but not necessarily the most beautiful," he said. "Now they're really going to be emotionally appealing, to a level they haven't been before." Wherry says the automaker is not worried about losing sales. Instead, the heightened focus on design is said to be a natural next step after the company achieved success in all other major areas. The new Impreza lineup is said to hint at the reprioritization. Designers apparently spent more time choosing key design changes including the Impreza's sculpted doors, new front fascia and interior trim. Subaru is slowly expanding its Tustin, California design center, which currently employs eight full-time designers tasked with looking into the future to help guide the company's styling direction. The team is expected to gain more influence in the coming years, as the US market continues to be the automaker's profit center. Lehigh University leaders are stepping up police patrols and sounding the alarm after four students in the last two months almost died from alcohol poisoning. In an April 5 letter to parents and students, Lehigh President John Simon and top university leaders said they wrote with a sense of urgency and concern for students in light of a string of alcohol-related injuries and hospitalizations. "Specifically, we've had four close calls in the last two months," the letter says. "Without the intervention of (Lehigh campus police) and others, some or all of these students would have died." Lehigh spokeswoman Lauren Stralo said the Bethlehem university is limited in what else it can share about these specific incidents due to federal student privacy laws. The response to the letter has been "overwhelmingly positive," she said. The unusually high-number of hospitalizations and injuries means Lehigh will increase the number police officers on campus and in the surrounding neighborhoods. "We will apply our university policies to enforce the law and stem excessive alcohol consumption. Violators will face arrest and disciplinary action," the letter states. "We know that this news may not be received warmly by some students. However, it is imperative that we act to prevent a senseless death of one of our own." This more direct approach is needed since earlier warnings have not been heeded, officials say in the letter. "We all want the same thing: We want you to have an extraordinary, memorable Lehigh experience that culminates in your graduation, and not in the intensive care unit of a local hospital," the letter says. Earlier this semester, Lehigh officials sought to remind students they would not be punished if they sought medical help for another student. And the university encouraged students to report hazing violations, leading to a crackdown on campus Greek organizations. But it seems students are ignoring these amnesty policies. "It is particularly distressing that while these students (who almost died) bear primary responsibility for their own actions, they were surrounded by others who did not intervene," the letter states. "You, and your promising futures, mean too much to us to tolerate this level of disregard for your own and your fellow students' well-being." Many consider drinking to be a rite of passage in college, but excessive drinking can leave "you more vulnerable to injury, sexual assault, extremely reckless behavior and even death," the letter states. In the first few months of 2017 alone, there have been several alcohol-related deaths on college campuses, including at Penn State, Lehigh noted. Timothy Piazza, 19, of Readington Township in Hunterdon County, died on Feb. 4 after a fall at a fraternity where he was pledging. He was found right away, but an ambulance was not called for nearly 12 hours. "We don't have to look any further than our own campus for cautionary tales. In the last few weeks, we've had an unusually high number of students transported to local hospitals for emergency treatment for alcohol poisoning and serious injuries," the letter states. "In some cases, the blood alcohol levels were so high that attending medical professionals were concerned that the students would not survive." Lehigh officials urged students to exercise common sense and caution for the rest of the semester to avoid an unnecessary tragedy. Sara K. Satullo may be reached at ssatullo@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @sarasatullo and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. Kindergarten-through-fourth-grade students will soon have an arts charter school in Downtown Easton, right next to the city's new police station. And it may not have happened without a late-night episode of "Dragnet." More on that in a bit. Developer Lou Pektor and others gathered Thursday at the North Fourth Street construction site to celebrate another reason the school is happening: financing, specifically $5 million in federal tax credits. Lancaster-based Community First Fund selected the Easton Arts Academy Elementary Charter School being developed by Pektor's Ashley Development Corp. for a share of $45 million in tax credits available to projects in low-income communities across central and eastern Pennsylvania. "Without Community First I think we probably wouldn't be sitting here having a groundbreaking now," Pektor said inside the gutted first floor of what until June 2015 had been home to The Express-Times and lehighvalleylive.com. The news organization moved around the corner to 18 Centre Square, and Pektor had a late-night brainstorm on redeveloping the 30 N. Fourth St. behemoth. He was watching "Dragnet," a 1960s police drama, when he noticed how similar the old newspaper building, which dates to 1923, looked to Joe Friday's police headquarters. Pektor pitched the idea to Mayor Sal Panto Jr., who said the city was looking for a new home for the police force. It ended up making more sense to build a new police station next door to 30 N. Fourth St. and retrofit the old Express-Times home, Pektor said. Enter Thomas Lubben, founder of four Lehigh Valley charter arts schools, who was looking to open an elementary school in Easton. Add in some vision, engineering, design and cooperation on the developer's part, and the Community First Fund saw a project worth investing in. Community First is the recipient of the tax credits from the U.S. Treasury and awards them based on an overall project investment of at least $5 million, a high-impact vision for the community and shovel-readiness, said Dan Betancourt, president and CEO. "What Ashley Development has demonstrated is they have the capacity and the experience to get this project done in a timely basis," Betancourt said Thursday in the gutted first floor of the North Fourth Street building. Fulton Bank is buying the Ashley Development tax credits, which total about 25 percent of the $5 million in equity. In other words, the tax credits are not a $5 million grant for the project, but a way to leverage the mortgage for the project while helping Ashley Development to drive down costs for the $6.5 million school. Easton Arts Academy will lease the building from Ashley Development, which is developing the $7 million police station next door for sale to the city. The police station is on pace to open in June, despite a roof fire last month, followed by the new arts school's completion for the start of the fall semester. Lubben said there's room for more than 400 students inside the 41,149-square-foot school. Kindergarten is full, but spots are available on a first-come-first-served basis for grades first through fourth. When completed, it will contain 24 classrooms, dance and gymnastics studios, a theater, cafeteria and offices. A faculty and staff of 68 full-time workers is anticipated. Those student families and employees will help continue to transform that area of Downtown, which is home half a block east to the year-old Easton Public Market, said Panto. "So this is an economic engine, not just an investment in a building," the mayor said, "but the investment in the people that are going to come here because they are going to reinvest in our city. People spend most of their money in the local area." The New Markets Tax Credit program that is the source of this funding for the school expires in 2019, said April Niver, from the office of U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright, a Democrat whose 17th Congressional District covers Easton. He's optimistic it will be renewed, she said. Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. A corrections officer supervisor at Monroe County prison dropped a packet of heroin Thursday morning inside the facility, leading to her arrest and a lockdown and search there, authorities said. Sgt. Tnishia Antoine, 35, of Blakeslee, Pennsylvania, was running late and the heroin fell from her as she jogged through the lobby, according to the Monroe County District Attorney's Office. A corrections officer lieutenant found the heroin and immediately notified Warden Garry Haidle, who reviewed surveillance video showing the packet fall from Antoine onto the floor, court records say. Confronted, Antoine said she is a heroin user and pulled two more bags of heroin from her bra and gave them to district attorney's office Detective Kim Lippincott, according to court records. A search of her SUV outside turned up a bundle of the same brand of heroin, labeled "Feel the High," in addition to more than $500, drug paraphernalia and two additional packets of heroin stamped "Youto," records say. The search of the prison conducted by narcotics dogs from the Pocono Mountain Regional, Scranton and Pennsylvania State police turned up no additional drugs, according to a news release from the district attorney's office. There was more heroin, however, at Antoine's home in the 100 block of Ryan Road in the Blakeslee section of Tunkhannock Township in Monroe County, she allegedly told investigators. Authorities said they searched the home and found more than 50 bags of heroin, paraphernalia, "a large sum" of cash and an 18-month-old toddler home with Antoine's husband, 36-year-old Ronald J. Brandon. He is wheelchair-bound due to injuries suffered in a car crash earlier this year. Some of the heroin was stored in a diaper/baby bag, endangering the couple's child, authorities said. "This bag was easily accessible to the toddler that was in the residence," Lippincott wrote in court records. "Due to Brandon's limited mobility I believe the toddler could have easily accessed the heroin." The warden had told investigators in May 2016 he suspected Antoine of being involved in illegal drug activity, according to court records. Investigators found Brandon had been arrested in September 2015 for drugs, including oxycodone pills to which he said at the time he was addicted, records say. The couple was selling heroin to support their own habits, which included Antoine using five bags a day, authorities said. A cellphone search revealed communications related to drug sales, authorities said. The child was placed into the custody of Monroe County Children & Youth Services. Antoine was arraigned before District Judge JoLana Krawitz on charges of heroin possession with intent to deliver, possession of heroin and possession of drug paraphernalia. She was sent to Northampton County Prison in lieu of $20,000 bail. Brandon faces charges of heroin possession with intent to deliver, endangering the welfare of a child, criminal use of a communications facility and possession of both heroin and drug paraphernalia. He was sent to the Monroe County prison to await arraignment, the district attorney's office said. In addition the police that provided K-9 teams, the prosecutor's office was assisted by the Monroe County prison staff, the Monroe County Sheriff's Office and members of the Monroe County Drug Task Force. Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. A monthlong investigation into drug distribution has culminated in a raid and six arrests late Thursday in Phillipsburg. Authorities from the town and Warren County Prosecutor's Office at 10:40 p.m. searched an apartment in the 100 block of Chambers Street, town police said Friday in a news release. At one point, an officer was seen on the roof collecting a bag. Five of those arrested resided in the apartment, police said. Authorities reported the following charges: Andre L. Nesmith, 32, is charged with one count each of possessing marijuana and drug paraphernalia, both disorderly persons offenses. Andrew M. Nesmith, 25, is charged with one count each of possessing marijuana, a disorderly persons offense, and cocaine, a third-degree charge. Devon L. Mclean, 27, is charged with third-degree possession with intent to distribute marijuana, and possession of drug paraphernalia, a disorderly persons offense. Mark A. Thompson, 30, is charged with two counts of third-degree possession of cocaine, one third-degree count of intent to distribute cocaine, two counts of possession of marijuana and one fourth-degree count of hindering prosecution. Rashon C. Williams, 28, is charged with one count each of possession of marijuana, drug paraphernalia, third-degree possession of cocaine and fourth-degree possession of a prohibited weapon, in this case a stun gun. Tiffany A. Zrinski, 23, of the 700 block of East Central Avenue in Alpha, is charged with one count each of possession of marijuana, drug paraphernalia, and third-degree possession of alprazolam -- an anxiety medication -- and amphetamine pills. All were issued a summons and released except for Williams, who was sent to the county jail on an outstanding warrant, police said. If convicted, disorderly persons offenses carry penalties up to six months in county jail. Fourth-degree crimes could mean up to 18 months and third-degree five years, both in state prison. Steve Novak may be reached at snovak@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @type2supernovak and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. A California trucker has been indicted for allegedly transporting more than $300,000 worth of marijuana, the first of three major New Jersey State Police drug busts last summer at the Interstate 78 weigh station in Warren County. Eric T. Shan (Courtesy photo) Eric T. Shan, 53, of Baldwin Park, Calif., was arrested Aug. 9 after investigators said they found 54 pounds of the drug worth $324,000 in his tractor-trailer. A Warren County grand jury last month indicted him on charges of possession and intent to distribute more than 25 pounds of marijuana. The distribution charge, a first-degree crime, could carry a sentence of up to 20 years in prison if he's convicted. Within a month of the bust, troopers at the same I-78 weigh station charged two more truckers -- each allegedly hauling millions of dollars worth of drugs. On Aug. 14, 58-year-old Oscar Franco, of Chula Vista, Calif., was accused of hauling $2.8 million worth of heroin. He was indicted in December. On Aug. 22, $5.4 million worth of heroin and cocaine was allegedly seized from 46-year-old Henry A. Cruz Ventura, of Los Angeles. State police have said it was the largest cold-stop heroin seizure in U.S. history. Steve Novak may be reached at snovak@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @type2supernovak and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. The PennEast Pipeline will result in "some adverse environmental impacts," but not enough to warrant killing the project, a federal agency has concluded. The Federal Energy Regulatory Committee on Friday issued its highly-anticipated final environmental impact statement on the 120-mile, natural gas pipeline project proposed to traverse the Lehigh Valley and central New Jersey. It concluded the pipeline can be built provided its developers adhere to a series of measures aimed at reducing its effects on the environment. The consortium proposing the pipeline heralded the FERC decision as the "last major federal regulatory hurdle" that the project needed to clear. "The thorough review conducted by federal regulators assessed impacts on everything from safety to water resources to air quality and wildlife," Dat Train, chairman of the board of managers for PennEast Pipeline, says in a statement. "Their finding is a clear win for the region, business competitiveness, economic growth and job creation." Environmental groups who have been fighting to stop the pipeline from being built decried the decision and labeled it as indicative of an agency that's more interested in supporting the natural gas industry than being good stewards of the environment. "The entire document in a sham," New Jersey Sierra Club Director Jeff Tittel says in a news release. "It does not look at the environmental impacts of this project or the damage it will do." Other groups opposed to the pipeline say they will take their case to court should the project get federal approval. The final environmental impact statement is only a recommendation. FERC still needs to issue an order of approval, but PennEast says it anticipates a "favorable order" now that the recommendation has been issued. "Reaching conclusions without facts in hand tramples on the rights of impacted landowners who will pay the price if FERC conditionally approves a project that only benefits PennEast's investors," says Michael Heffler, board member of HALT PennEast (Homeowners Against Land Taking). "We strongly urge FERC's commissioners to consider these facts before making their final decision on the project." PennEast says the final environmental impact statement is the culmination of three years of scientific review and input from various stakeholders. It points to an issuance of a Water Quality Certification from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection as further evidence that the project will have little impact on the waterways it crosses, a major point of contention among environmental groups opposing the project. The pipeline would cross both the Lehigh and Delaware rivers in Northampton County before entering New Jersey's Hunterdon County. The line starts in Luzerne County, part of the Marcellus Shale region that's become a major source for natural gas. It ends in Jersey's Mercer County. In addition to waterways, opponents also say the pipeline will also destroy preserved open space, farmland and ecosystems. PennEast has changed the pipeline route multiple times in an effort to ease concerns. FERC's environmental impact statement says these changes and other mitigation efforts adequately address the concerns. "The FERC staff concludes that approval of the project would result in some adverse environmental impacts; however, these impacts would be reduced to less than significant levels with the implementation of PennEast's proposed mitigation and the additional measures recommended by staff in the final EIS," the statement says. PennEast, which wants to start construction on the pipeline possibly before the end of the year, says the more than $1 billion project will bring jobs to the region and lower electric bills to its residents all while delivering clean-burning, American-sourced natural gas. Nick Falsone may be reached at nfalsone@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @nickfalsone. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. Laois natve Rory O'Connell who is one Ireland's most experienced cookery teacher, is back on RTE with his third series of How to Cook Well with Rory O'Connell. Rory, from Cullohill, has been teaching people to cook for more than 30 years, having co-founded the famous Ballymaloe Cookery School with his sister Darina Allen. The chef enjoyed great success with his first two series', and the Christmas specials which he has co-presented with Darina for the past three years, have also been hugely popular with viewers. As well as teaching, Rory has worked as a chef in some of the world's top restaurants including Chez Nico, Chez Panisse and with Raymond Blanc at Le Manoir aux Quat Saisons. Rory's first book 'Master It' won the Andre Simon Food Book Award in 2013. I want to give people confidence in the kitchen. When I wrote the book it was about sharing what I do and that's the idea of the TV programme as well. I feel comfortable on television - maybe because I stand up and teach in front of a live audience two or three days a week, he said a head. Each week, in this brand new 8-part series, Rory demonstrates three recipes that combine to make a perfectly balanced meal, but which can also be made and served on their own, or with other dishes. In this first episode of his new 8-part series, Rory prepares a starter of Beetroot and Raspberry Salad with Labneh. This week's main course is Grilled Lightly Spiced Quail with Pomegranate and Walnut Salad, Saute Potatoes with Rosemary and Garlic; with delicious Tuscan Apple Cake to finish. How to Cook Well With Rory O'Connell is produced and directed by David Hare of InproductionTV for RTE and is sponsored by Neff. The first episode of How to Cook Well with Rory O'Connell is broadcast at 7pm on Tuesday 18th April on RTE 1. A Kildare District Court judge has hit out at advertisements for internet gambling after a Waterford man appeared before him on a theft charge. The defendant, a student at Waterford Institute of Technology with an address in Waterford, appeared before Naas District Court on April 5, charged with stealing a Garmin forerunner watch, priced at 358, from Harvey Norman, Newhall, Naas, on December 7, 2016. The court was told that he had no previous convictions. But it heard he had a severe gambling problem which led to the attempted theft. The defendant told Judge Desmond Zaidan that he had got hooked on gambling at the age of 18, several years previously. I didnt realise what I was getting into, he said. Judge Zaidan maintained that nearly every single advert now on the internet is related to gambling. It is all about revenue, he said. You are inundated with betting ads. It was cigarettes and alcohol in the 1980s. Now it is gambling. This was highly addictive, he said, and caused family distress and break up. Cairbre Finan, solicitor for the defendant, asked the court to take a certain view on the offence. His client, he said, had gotten treatment for his addiction. Judge Zaidan said the offence was at the lower end, and was told there was no loss to Harvey Norman as the item had been retrieved by the store. He told the student: You really need help. This is going to dominate your life. It has already taken over your life. He said he would give the defendant a chance. Dont come before this court again. You wont get a second chance, he said. The judge opted to apply the Probation Act and did not convict. Postmasters and the Communities they serve are to protest outside An Taoiseach Enda Kennys constituency office next Tuesday, April 11 demanding clarity on what action Government will take to save 600 Post Offices. The Irish Postmasters Union (IPU) said that the Taoiseach, as leader of the government, must take responsibility for the current political fiasco regarding the Post Office Network and Postmasters will be calling for his resignation if he does not act swiftly to clarify the situation. The protest comes as responsibility for the Post Office Network has fallen into a political limbo say the IPU, after Minister of State Michael Ring handed back responsibility for the Network to Minister Naughten, following a reported heated exchange at the Cabinet. IPU General Secretary Ned OHara has called for a statement of clarity from the Taoiseach on what his Government will do to avoid up to 600 Post Office closures, which An Post is understood to be considering. The IPU said national representatives, together with local Postmasters and communities from across the Taoiseachs own constituency, are to protest outside his Castlebar Office at 12 noon next Tuesday demanding action at the highest political level. Postmasters have also written to the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and the Environment Denis Naughten calling for an immediate meeting to find out exactly what actions he will take. Also, the Government sanctioned Bobby Kerr report on the Post Office Network was finalised last December and to date no steps have been taken to implement its recommendations. IPU President and North West spokesperson Paddy McCann said that the future of the Network is being compromised by a lack of leadership and clarity from Government. There is a lot of talk and no action on the Post Offices Network. Surely, the Taoiseach does not want his legacy to be the closure of hundreds of Post Offices. It is imperative that we have leadership coming from the Taoiseach and Minister Naughten. The Bobby Kerr led Post Office Network Strategy Board report involved input from Postmasters, An Post and Government and is finalised since last December. However, following a new Chief Executive coming to An Post, and separate report he has commissioned from Consultants McKinsey, all this work has come to a halt. This is not acceptable. Communities want their Post Office to stay open and Postmasters will work to honour this. This Government gave its commitment to the Network at election time and in the Programme for Government. It is now time to walk the walk. The social value and role of Post Offices must be recognised and safeguarded by Government. Postmasters will not implement the An Post McKinsey report without consultation and agreement and will not support any significant programme of closures led by An Post. We have invited Minister Naughten to attend Postmasters Annual Conference in Westport on May 6th and 7th. That gives him an opportunity to directly address our members and provide clarity on what he intends to do. If clarity and confidence are not provided, Postmasters will hold a major rally outside the Dail calling for the Taoiseachs resignation and deliver local campaigns in every constituency across the country." Over one hundred primary school children from St Clares Primary school, Gaelscoil Chluainin, Masterson National School, Diffreen National School, Largy National School and Leckaun National School attended a Health and Safety Authority Keep Safe event in Bee Park Community Centre, Manorhamilton, on Thursday, 6th April. Eight state agencies and regional organisations with a safety remit came together to deliver an interactive programme directed at fifth and sixth class pupils. Keep Safe aims to promote safety and community awareness through involving the children in a series of interactive scenarios with a common safety theme. Speaking at the event, Joanne Harmon, Education Manager with the Health and Safety Authority said, We designed the Keep Safe programme to be an enjoyable and interactive way for children to learn and have fun at the same time. We cover issues like water safety, electricity, road safety, fire safety and more. The children are so engaged and interested and it is great to see the discussion carrying on back in their homes, schools and communities. The aims of the one day Keep Safe event are to help children to: become aware of personal and home safety, learn how to react to dangerous situations, foster good citizenship, learn how to recognise hazards and manage risks, and learn how to stay safe within the context of, for example, road safety, water safety, fire safety and site safety. The agencies and organisations that were represented on the day include the Health and Safety Authority, ESB Networks, RNLI, Irish Water Safety, Green Schools, Fire Service, IFA and An Garda Siochana. Yesterday in the House of Lords, Lib Dem peer Anthony Lester spoke about the Liberal Democrat involvement in changing the law, and, more importantly, public opinion on LGBT rights. Here is his speech in full: This year is the fiftieth anniversary of Leo Abses Private Members Bill that became the Sexual Offences Act 1967. It came ten years after the Wolfenden report recommended reform. The Act abolished the crime of sexual love between two men over the age of 21 in private. It had crucial support from the then Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins. But the path of reform has been long and tortuous and has required intervention from the European Court of Human Rights and the European Union. The 1967 Act did not apply to Northern Ireland, and it required a judgment by the Strasbourg Court in Jeffrey Dudgeons case to persuade Parliament to abolish the offence in Northern Ireland. The 1994 Act repealed the clauses in the 1967 Act that made homosexual activity in the armed forces and on merchant navy vessels a criminal offence. But clauses were introduced in this House that provided that nothing in the 1994 Act would prevent homosexual activity from constituting grounds for dismissal. The clauses were approved in Committee by a division on 20th June 1994. The Strasbourg Court ruled in 2000 in Smith and Gradys case that the provisions in the 1994 Act violated the right to respect for private life under a policy that involved investigating whether personnel were homosexual or had engaged in homosexual activity. If so, they were discharged. EU employment equality directives and the Equality Act 2010 dealt with the problem. But the offending provisions remain disfiguring the statute book. As the Minister, Andrew Jones MP, said the Bill addresses a historical wrong and the inadequacy of legislation to keep pace with out culture. When I became a member of the House in November 1993, it was deeply homophobic. Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 was in force. Among other things, it forbade local authorities from teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship. Tony Blairs New Labour government tried to repeal it, with strong Liberal Democrat support, but the government was defeated on 7 February 2000 by a campaign led by Baroness Young, I spoke in favour of repeal. The House also rejected lowering the age of consent to that of heterosexual couples. Baroness Young was supported not only by Conservative and some Labour peers but by religious groups, including the Salvation Army, the Christian Institute, the African and Caribbean Evangelical Alliance, the Muslim Council of Britain, the Chief Rabbi, Dr. Jonathan Sacks, and orthodox Jews, groups within the Catholic Church and the Church of England, and several retired Law Lords. She was also supported by The Daily Mail, The Sun, and The Daily Telegraph. They claimed that section 28 protected children from predatory homosexuals and from advocates seeking to indoctrinate young people into homosexuality. After the death of Baroness Young, and with the appointment of a new liberal generation of life peers by Tony Blair, organized opposition in the Lords was weakened. The House finally voted in favour of repeal in 2003, a year after I introduced my Civil Partnership Bill that led to the Blair governments Civil Partnership Act in 2004. David Camerons politically acrobatic record illustrates how times have changed for the better. In 2000, he opposed the repeal of section 28 and accused Tony Blair of being against family vales and of moving heaven and earth to allow the promotion of homosexuality in our schools. In 2003, he voted against the repeal of section 28. A year later, he supported civil partnership for same sex couples. In 2009, he apologized for having supported section 28. In 2013, he supported same sex marriage that is still not allowed in Northern Ireland. In her important and timely book, The Enemy Within, Baroness Warsi recalled how her party had rabble-roused the party faithful at conferences and meetings against gay people and enacted legislation that stigmatized them from birth. She is deeply ashamed of having been homophobic at a time when homophobia was a so-called British value. But she and her colleagues were not alone. Homophobia was not and is not confined to the Conservative Party and it is driven, here and abroad, by the ideology of orthodox clerics and their adherents in the three Abrahamic religions Judaism, Christianity and Islam. When this Bill becomes law it will rid the statute book of an ugly relic from a bigoted past but it will not of course end the culture of intolerance of gay love. Yes, you read that headline right. This is not a drill. We actually took a seat off UKIP in Aylesbur. Congratulations to Cllr Susan Morgan and her team for a cracking result. Lib Dem GAIN from UKIP in Aylesbury. Cllr Susan Morgan is tonights Market Square Hero LD 785 Lab 151 Con 147 Ukip 111 Green 43 pic.twitter.com/Pmk3DwBq0J ALDC (@ALDC) April 6, 2017 It was one of these eye-watering vote share increases. Elmhurst (Aylesbury Vale) result: LDEM: 63.5% (+37.9) LAB: 12.2% (-10.0) CON: 11.9% (-9.3) UKIP: 9.0% (-14.4) GRN: 3.5% (-4.2) Britain Elects (@britainelects) April 6, 2017 Fantastic. In Walcot ward of Bath and North East Somerset Council, Richard Samuel handsomely increased the Lib Dem vote share to hold the seat. Walcot (Bath & North East Somerset) result: LDEM: 48.6% (+11.2) GRN: 22.2% (+0.4) CON: 22.0% (-0.5) LAB: 7.2% (-7.4) [Share chgs corrected] Britain Elects (@britainelects) April 6, 2017 Also up for a very large gin and tonic the next time we meet up is erstwhile Conference trouble maker Alisdair Calder McGregor who leapt into second place in the safest Tory ward in Calderdale. He was the only candidate whose partys vote share actually went up. Hipperholme & Lightcliffe (Calderdale) result: CON: 60.3% (-4.3) LDEM: 17.1% (+6.8) LAB: 16.5% (-0.5) GRN: 6.1% (-2.0) Britain Elects (@britainelects) April 6, 2017 In St James Ward in Tendring, our vote went up by almost 13% in a ward we hadnt stood in before. St James (Tendring) result: CON: 47.9% (+12.7) UKIP: 22.5% (-16.3) LAB: 15.0% (-1.0) LDEM: 12.8% (+12.8) GRN: 1.9% (+1.9) Britain Elects (@britainelects) April 6, 2017 This is a night when the word wowsers is well and truly merited. * Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings It was quite disconcerting to wake up this morning to see that Donald Trump had launched air strikes. There is no question that Syria needs to be dealt with. You just cant have any government getting away with gassing its own people. I just feel uneasy about Donald Trump being in charge of this. Does he even have a proper strategy? I also feel uneasy about our Government just slipping into line behind him. On Question Time last night, Tim Farron was talking about the importance of establishing no fly zones and of humanitarian aid, but made clear that doing nothing was not an option in the face of an attack as horrific as the one we saw earlier this week. He has since described Trumps action as proportionate but went on to say that our Governments response was not sufficient: The attack by American forces was a proportionate response to the barbarous attack by the Syrian government on its own people. The British government rather than just putting out a bland statement welcoming this should now follow it up and call an emergency meeting of the Nato alliance to see what else can be done, be that more surgical strikes or no fly zones. Evil happens when good people do nothing, we cannot sit by while a dictator gasses his own people. We cannot stand by, we must act. I dont always agree with what they say, but in situations like this, I always look for the views of three people: Paddy, Ming and Julie Smith On Twitter, Paddy said: Trump's cruise attack. The right thing to do. Now we'll see if he can match action with restraint in the follow through. Moscow's move next Paddy Ashdown (@paddyashdown) April 7, 2017 Cruise attack the ingredients. Obama told Assad he would but then he didn't in 2013. Trump hinted to Putin he wouldn't but found he had to Paddy Ashdown (@paddyashdown) April 7, 2017 Moral of the story? In Foreign/Military Policy unpredictability has its uses. But more predictability means less weapons, less deaths. Paddy Ashdown (@paddyashdown) April 7, 2017 I also had a conversation with Julie on Twitter: @caronmlindsay I should have preferred UN discussion and clearly legal response but realise possible Russian veto an issue. Dr Julie Smith (@DrJulieSmith1) April 7, 2017 Ming spoke to Good Morning Scotland: . @mingcampbell said there is no appetite for putting troops on the ground in Syria in the UK or the US #BBCGMS newsdirect (@newsdirect) April 7, 2017 . @mingcampbell said that action in Syria is justified as Assad has clearly breached international human rights law #BBCGMS newsdirect (@newsdirect) April 7, 2017 There was praise for Tim Farron from Rafael Behr: I quite rate Farron for making this call and making it quickly. Cld have overthought it. Trump is still vile and untrustworthy. But Assad.. https://t.co/AUxwu7r6lx Rafael Behr (@rafaelbehr) April 7, 2017 * Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings American bombing in Syria may make Donald Trump a hero on the streets of Idlib. Those fighting for simple democratic rights in Syria felt bitterly let down by the west in 2013 when we failed to take action the first time there was good evidence that the monstrous Bashar al-Assad had used chemical weapons on his own people. We still live with the consequences of that inaction. We were warned our intervention against Assad might make the situation worse. The situation got worse anyway as Assad continued to kill his own people in their thousands with impunity. Millions fled their homes. The sudden rise of Isis/Daesh added a twisted new complication and cover for much larger-scale foreign intervention but by Russia instead of the west. But devastating Russian firepower was aimed much more frequently at the democratic rebels who were pounded into the ground at Aleppo. Increasingly it looked as though Assads relentless brutality had paid off and he could even get away with more chemical attacks in clear breach of international law. So does this make Trump right to strike? Of course there is domestic US politics at play. Trump accused Obama of weakness over Syria so has to look strong himself. And what better way to demonstrate to his accusers in Congress that he is not in Putins pocket? But people can do the right thing for the wrong reason. The people of Idlib wont mind if Trump had half an eye on Capitol Hill. There are more serious reasons to be fearful of Trumps bombing. Putin too has built his domestic image on aggressive nationalism. If conflict with Russian forces accidentally results from US intervention, Putin too will find it difficult to back down. We could suddenly find ourselves in an unpredictable military confrontation between the worlds leading nuclear powers. And by acting unilaterally, Trump has dealt another blow to a rules-based international system whose first resort is the UN not bombing. George Bush and Tony Blair did their bit to undermine it by invading Iraq and set a precedent that Putin and others have gleefully followed. Putin will see no need to go to the UN to justify his response to this bombing. We have to hope that at least Assad might be shocked into caution, Putin into negotiation and the UN into action. Wiser heads in the US should respond. But the unpredictable Mr Trump is taking us down a very dangerous path indeed. * Martin Horwood is Liberal Democrat Member of the European Parliament for the South West of England & Gibraltar. He is a member of the European Parliaments Iran delegation. He is Borough & parish councillor for Leckhampton, Gloucestershire. As far as the proverbial man in the street is concerned, there is very little that separates the extreme right from the extreme left. The results are the same: Power concentrated in the hands of a small circle of political leaders, suppression of human rights and academic freedom, political prisoners, torture, absence of a free press, no free speech, no freedom of assembly, rule by decree, corruption and politically-appointed judges presiding over show trials. That is not say that there are no differences. There clearly are. The left tends to find its suppressive roots in an all-embracing ideology or in some casesa religion which claims to offer solutions to all of mankinds problems. You need only embrace it. The far right, on the other hand, is generally based on a belief that one nation or group of people are superior to all the others, and the inferior people should be treated accordingly. These are the ultra-nationalists. Both groups are adept at conjuring up external threats to justify repression which is really aimed at controlling internal dissent. In modern history we can point to Hitler and the Jews, Stalin and capitalist West, McCarthy and the Reds under the beds. In more contemporary times, several countries stand out as examples of paranoid nationalism grabbing the levers of power. A glaring recent example is Hungary. In the twentieth century Hungary suffered mightily from both fascism and communism. After World War I there was the short-lived Red Terror of Bela Kun before the country was subjected to the White Terror. Then during World War Two it allied itself with Hitler and after the war it was under the Soviet thumb until 1989. One of Hungarys more illustrious countrymen is the billionaire financier and philanthropist George Soros. He fled German-occupied Hungary during World War II, and eventually made his way to America where his financial wizardry netted him billionsmost of which he has given away to liberal causes around the world. His biggest single donation $880 millionwas in 1991 to establish the Central European University in his home town of Budapest. Its purpose was to produce a new generation of politicians, lawyers, journalists and civil servants who were so steeped in Western liberal values and democratic traditions that Hungary would never again veer towards the extreme right or left. Unfortunately, Soros failed to take account of one Viktor Orban, Prime Minister of Hungary from 1998 to 2003 and then again from 2010 until sometime in the future. The leader of the National Conservative Fidesz Party has summed up his political philosophy with the words illiberal democracy. He has expanded on it further by rejecting the liberal emphasis on the rights of the individual. In his view, the state is the means of organizing, invigorating, or even constructing the national community. In his view, countries such as Russia, China andTurkey are models to be admired and emulated. Too many world leaders illiberal democracy is a complete contradiction in terms. How, they ask, can you have a democracy in which liberal institutions such as freedom of the press and the judiciary are suppressed? And Orban is suppressing them. He forced the early retirement of most of Hungarys judges and replaced them with his hand-picked political cronies. He has also forced all media outlets to register with the government. If they print or broadcast something which the government doesnt like than their licenses can be revoked. On top of that, he has passed legislation making it almost impossible for the Hungarian parliament to amend or repeal laws passed by his Fidesz Party. Orbans most visible stand has been over the issue of acceptingor rather rejecting any EU-directed refugees. Razor wire fences have been strung along the border and any refugee who manages to climb through is chased down by dogs. He has become a talisman for the EUs anti-refugee lobby. Not surprisingly, one of Orbans strongest critics is George Soros. It is also no surprise that the Central European University has become an intellectual incubator for the anti-Orban camp. Demagogues hate dissent, so Orban decided to shut it down. Of course, he couldnt just throw out all the students and staff and lock the doors. He had to find a legal ploy. As one was not easily to hand, he created one. The Central European University is based in Budapest but funded from America. Orban this past week pushed a law through parliament banning foreign-based universities from operating in Hungary unless they had a campus in their home country. Surprise, surprise, the CEU was the only such university in Hungary. But knowing George Soros, this fight is far from over. Soros should be receiving support from EU institutions. Hungary joined the European Union in May 2004 as part of EU expansion into Eastern Europe to protect the nascent democracies that sprung up in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Empire. The EU is a democratic club. And like most clubs it has rules which when you sign up to and agree to abide with when you join. These rules are embodied in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and so far it would seem that Hungary is either in breach of orat the very leaston the verge of breaching rules involving personal integrity, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, freedom of press, equality before the law, religious diversity and the right to a fair trial. So far the European Commission, parliament and council have done little more than utter complaining noises. The fate of the Central European University could tip them over the edge and into the murky waters of issuing sanctions against one of its own members. * 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. INTERNATIONAL rugby player CJ Standers parents could be forgiven for resenting Limerick for claiming their son, but the opposite is true for the South African natives, who say that they love Limerick. Jannie and Amanda Stander visited the Limerick Leader office this Wednesday morning ahead of their flight home, following an almost three-week stay in Ireland. They are pleased that their son, who turned 27 on the day of the interview, is putting down roots in Limerick, following the news that he and his wife Jean-Marie have purchased a house in Castleconnell. I told him this morning, youre still my son, and youre still a South African born child, and when you came to Ireland in 2012, you were a boy, but now, youre a real Limerick man! exclaimed Jannie. He has bought a house for himself, and now hes settled. They got the keys last Monday, so they are going to paint it and then move in. We are about 10,000km from CJ and Jean-Marie, and we probably see them once a year, and its good for me to see that they love Limerick, he said. The way that they moved from South Africa to Ireland and especially to Limerick, they loved it. And they wont leave Limerick, I think its for good. When I die, they can come to bury me - otherwise, they can stay! he laughed. Jannie and Amanda met with Mayor of Limerick City and County Council, Cllr Kieran OHanlon, on Tuesday at his office. There, they were presented with a gift by the mayor to mark their visit, and were joined by CJ and his wife Jean-Marie. Stander and his now-wife moved to Limerick as a last-ditch attempt to make rugby work when the Springboks didnt support him, according to his mum. It was a big decision for him to come to Ireland for the first time, and then he wanted to play international rugby, and he said, Ireland is supporting me, because the Springboks didnt support him. From the start, weve been at the three games in South Africa with Irish shirts on, flags, and all our friends have gone with CJ Stander shirts, said Amanda. When CJ was a child, he said, Mum, if I cant play rugby Im not going to school! his mother recalls - and its little wonder, given that both sides of his family have had successful rugby players in the past. The parents said that they were incredibly saddened to hear of Anthony Foleys death. He really helped and believed in CJ when he arrived in Ireland, and Amanda even met Axel and his wife Olive when she was last in Limerick. It was very hard for the whole team, when they were supposed to play that day. CJ called me and he didnt believe it, actually, at first, because he had spoken to him the night before, she said. When asked about their own impressions of Limerick, Jannie and Amanda said that they are enamoured by the historic buildings - including King Johns Castle, which they said looks beautiful - the churches and the warm people. I love the [Milk] market on Saturday mornings. CJ and Jean-Marie were telling me I must go, and every Saturday they send me a photo from when they go there, said Amanda. Jannie said: I love the castles and the churches. And the River Shannon - Im a farmer, I would love if I had the River Shannon running through my farm. You know, I went to the shop to buy a salad while I was here, and when I went a second time, the girl remembered me! You wouldnt get that in South Africa, the people are so nice. You can walk down the street and people are saying hi, he continued. I cant believe there is such a place as Thomond Park. In South Africa, you dont get that atmosphere in a rugby stadium, and the people behave themselves, and they are so quiet when somebody is kicking a goal. I was very impressed, its beautiful, added Jannie, who thinks that his son will make a full recovery before the Saracens clash. The number 8 player is planning to start growing vegetables at his new house - a hobby he has picked up after his farming childhood. Its a lovely back yard. Of course, when they saw the vegetables here, he wanted to show people here how its done. Its in his blood, I think, said Amanda. Jannie said that he is unable to visit regularly because of the farm at home in George, South Africa, but the parents said that they would make the journey again if they hear that they are going to be blessed with a grandchild. When I had CJ, my mum came to help, so we would have to do something if we get a grandchild! said Amanda. TWO vans packed with water, cordial, porridge, soups and crisps made their way to County Mayo this Wednesday to fuel the searchers involved in the Rescue 116 tragedy. As a result of a 19 year friendship between local woman Elaine Wiseman and the late Captain Dara Fitzpatrick, who sadly lost her life in the tragedy, Limerick GAA joined forces with Club Limerick in a bid to collect food donations and other supplies to assist those involved in the recovery mission. Local GAA clubs including Kilmallock GAA, Newcastle West GAA club and Na Piarsaigh GAA club opened their clubhouses on Tuesday evening where they accepted all contributions. Elaine, who lives in Lough Gur, became friends with Dara when they started sharing a house together in Dooradoyle some 19 years ago. Elaines daughter Moya, 5, was Daras Godchild. My wife works with Aer Lingus and Dara was training in Shannon, Elaines husband and well-known photographer Keith Wiseman explained. They travelled all over the world together - Vietnam and Cambodia and Dara would have gone on many trips to America with her as well, he added. This Wednesday morning, Elaine and her friend Debbie Gleeson made their way to the coordination centre in Blacksod, County Mayo. Cunningham Foods in Newcastle West also kindly offered to transport food and supplies. Elaine drove one van which was sponsored by Hogan Motors. The van was full. Cunningham Foods drove up behind them in another van, Keith explained. It was mostly foods for the searchers to put in their backpacks when going out to search. Almost three weeks after the Sikorsky S-92 helicopter crashed off the north Mayo island of Blackrock, the air, sea and search is to continue for Irish Coast Guard winch crew Paul Ormsby, 53 and Ciaran Smith, 38. Rescue agencies have expressed deep disappointment at the failure to find any trace of the two Irish Coast Guard airmen after the wreckage of the Irish Coast Guard Rescue 116 helicopter was lifted from the seabed on Sunday. A senior pilot Capt Dara Fitzpatrick, 45, was recovered from the sea and died within hours of the crash on March 14 some 13 km west of north Mayo. Speaking on Limericks Live 95FM, Elaine recalled how the pair remained firm friends and travelled Asia together, where Dara's red hair always caused a stir. She was always so willing to share [her time], she said of her friend. Dara would also speak to young women about their careers telling them "there is no glass ceiling if you dont let it stop you and it most certainly didnt stop her. Elaine praised the rescue operations in Blacksod and acknowledged the ongoing challenge faced by their families as the search for the final two crewmen continues. A LIMERICK steelworker who suffered near fatal and severe personal injuries has been awarded 675,116 at the High Court. Mr Justice Anthony Barr awarded the sum to John Gardiner, 59, from Limerick city, who took a case against Zinc Processors Limited as a result of an incident on August 9, 2012, at its factory premises at Drombanna, county Limerick. The defendant, which trades as Shannonside Galvanising, accepted negligence in its defence. As part of his work, Mr Gardiner was required to move a jig from a dryer. While carrying out this activity, suddenly the jig became detached from one of the hooks on the crane. The jig then struck Mr Gardiner and he was forced forward into a barrier and pinned between the jig and the barrier. The court heard that he suffered near fatal and severe personal injuries, loss, damage and expense. The plaintiff said that he was shocked, distressed and in pain after the accident, could not breath, and believed that he would die. The court heard that he had six previous accidents at work but did not take any claim for damages in respect of these incidents. Following the incident in 2012, he was rushed by emergency ambulance to the Accident & Emergency Department of the Mid-Western Regional Hospital, Limerick where he was admitted to the High Dependency Unit, and remained in hospital for 10 days. As a result of the accident, he sustained a total of 13 rib fractures, fractures of the vertebrae, two punctured lungs, a fracture of his left scapula, reduced vision, reduced senses of taste and smell, significant respiratory difficulties, post-traumatic stress syndrome, amongst other health complaints. He was out of work for one year after the accident and returned to the workplace in August 2013. He suffered a relapse and was out of work intermittently due to his ongoing physical and psychological difficulties. He was unable to continue working and ceased employment with the defendant in February 2015. He remains out of work and has been awarded invalidity pension benefit. A LIMERICK man has been acquitted by the Special Criminal Court of involvement in an assault during which a 53 year-old was nailed to a kitchen floor. Mark Heffernan, 32, with an address at Swallow Drive, John Carew Park, had denied assaulting Dan Quilligan, causing him harm at 6 Larch Court on September 14, 2015. The court concluded this Friday that the evidence was not of the necessary weight to convict the man. "For that reason alone," presiding judge Mr Justice Tony Hunt said, "the court will acquit the accused." The prosecution had invited the court to draw inferences from the evidence in the case. The court had heard that a tracking-device showed an Audi was parked outside the Larch Court house at the time of the alleged assault, and that Mr Heffernan was the driver. CCTV footage from the day of the assault showed Mr Heffernan in the company of another man, Gerard Mackin. Last month, Mackin, 33, a native of Northern Ireland with an address at Star Court, John Carey Park, Southill, Limerick and Patrick Hayes, 52, Larch Court, Kennedy Park, Limerick, both admitted to the assault. Mr Justice Hunt said that the evidence had showed Mr Heffernan's "continued association with a number the culprits before and after the assault", but that the indictment against the man was framed in a narrow way, such that the court was "not empowered" to convict him. Previously, the court had heard that when Mr Quilligan arrived at the house that afternoon, a group of men was waiting, and he was "immediately set upon". Mr Quilligan was put in a chair in the middle of the kitchen and assaulted. His right shoe was removed and a nail gun was used. His left foot was nailed to the floor. The prosecution had alleged that Mr Heffernan, as driver of the Audi parked outside the Larch Court house, was involved in the assault. The court found that Mr Heffernan was the driver of the Audi on the day in question but the evidence was not of sufficient weight to convict him of involvement in the assault. AN INSPIRATIONAL doctor, academic and soprano will release an album for the first time in 10 years, with proceeds going to the Irish Heart Foundation in order to provide defibrillator training to volunteers. Dr Mary Ryan, consultant endocrinologist at Barringtons Hospital and senior lecturer at University of Limerick, will release her CD The Next Chapter, at the Abbey Court, Nenagh, on April 12. Signified in the title, Dr Ryans album marks a new chapter in her life, following the sudden death of her husband Eamon Prendiville in 2013. I had the privilege of working near home and got a consultants post in Barringtons, and a senior lecturer post at UL. We then bought a beautiful home, and life looked like it was finally beginning to take shape. Alas, that was not to be as my husband died, one year after we moved into our new home. The reason why I called it The Next Chapter because, like everyone, we all go through different things in life and you have to try and get on and do your best. Unfortunately, you either die or you move on and do the next chapter. Thats what I have decided to do, and thankfully I have had the ability to do that, because not everybody is given the ability to do it. And I have received great support from family, friends and patients, and I am lucky in that regard. The title song is sung by one of her twin sons, Micheal, 13. After the launch, she will also perform at UL, where she will be joined by groups such as Amadeus, In Tune For Life, Silvermines Folk Choir, and the Lissenhall Musical Group. Raising funds for the Irish Heart Foundation, she said that she admires greatly the work they do in preventing heart disease. In an environment where services are being cut the role of defibrillators in saving lives is paramount and to date has saved multilple lives. However, there is no point having defibrillators in the community unless people are trained on how to use them and this is where the IHF play a vital role as they train all volunteers. Dr Ryan has three children, twins Micheal and Sean, 13, and Una, 10. Apr 7, 2017, 1 PM The Dashengguan Railroad Bridge in Nanjing (Nanking) was begun in 2006 and completed in 2011. This $1.20 stamp commemorating the bridges opening was issued the same year. Located about 55 miles downriver from the bridge at Wuhan, the Huangshi Bridge is pictured on the second of the four 2000 Bridges stamps. Jiangyin Bridge, the longest bridge of the four shown on the 2000 Bridges set, was completed in 1999. Called the father of modern bridge design, Mao Yishing is shown on this China stamp issued in 2006. China and Turkey participated in a 2012 joint issue to celebrate the Taizhou and Bosporus bridges. China issued a single $1.20 stamp, left, and Turkey served up a souvenir sheet. In 2012, a bridge complex was completed at Taizhou and was featured on a $1.20 stamp issued the same year. The third stamp in the Bridges set of 2000 illustrates the Tongling Bridge, completed in 1995. The Wanxian Bridge, which crosses the Yangtze in Chongqing, is featured on this stamp, one of a set of four issued in 2000. In 2001, China Post celebrated the completion of the Wuhu Yangtze Bridge the previous year with this two-stamp set. In 1957, China issued two stamps to celebrate the completion of the Yangtze River Bridge at Wuhan. By Barry Gartell Note: The pinyin form of Romanization is used throughout this article, but for places whose name is also known by an older form of Romanization, the alternate name is given in parentheses on first mention. Throughout most of Chinas recorded history, a period extending back more than two millennia, the Yangtze River has acted as a virtual barrier to commerce and trade from the north. Because of the problems presented by the volume of water, the width of the river channel, or poor quality of the subsoil, there were no permanent bridges spanning the Yangtze over its last 1,800 miles from Yibin, near the highlands of Sichuan (Szechuan) Province, all the way to Shanghai on the coast where it empties into the Pacific Ocean. The simplified map below shows the locations of the Yangtze and other places and structures discussed in this article. Goods and people crossing the river had to be ferried across. Well into the 20th century, a train of even moderate length could take an entire day to be disassembled, barged to the other side, and then reassembled. Armies had to construct temporary pontoon bridges to move men and materiel across the river, a time- and resource-consuming task. Connect with Linns Stamp News: Sign up for our newsletter Like us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter The first permanent span over the river along this stretch was completed in 1957 in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei Province, about 525 miles upriver from Shanghai. Two stamps, denominated 8 fen and 20f, were issued in the year of the bridges completion to celebrate the event (Scott 319 and 320). Still currently in service, it is a bi-level truss bridge, slightly more than 1 mile in length. A four-lane highway uses the top level; the bottom level carries the double-track mainline of the Beijing (Peking) to Guangzhou (Canton) railroad. The Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge was a seminal event in Chinese civil engineering history. Not only was it the first permanent bridge over that long stretch of the river, but it also cemented the reputation of Mao Yisheng (1896-1989), a bridge engineer trained in the United States. In the mid-1930s, he had designed a similar bridge spanning the Qiantang River in Hangzhou (Hangchow), but the Wuhan Bridge was more complex by several orders of magnitude. Called by many the father of modern bridge design, Mao was honored with the stamp pictured below in 2006 (Scott 3501) as part of the ongoing Scientists of Modern China series. Despite the success of the Wuhan Bridge, during the next 35 years only six more bridges across the river were constructed. However, since 1992, because of massive investment in infrastructure by the central government, no fewer than 68 new Yangtze River bridges and six tunnels have been built. The balance of this article highlights stamps issued since 1992 depicting highway and/or railway bridges across the Yangtze. In 2000, a set of four stamps was issued featuring highway bridges across the river. Three of the four are located within about 300 miles from the mouth of the river in densely populated eastern China. The first stamp of the set (Scott 3013) is the Wanxian Bridge in Chongqing (Chungking), which opened to traffic in 1997. A reinforced concrete arch bridge approximately mile in length, it is the only one of the four located far upriver, approximately 1,000 miles from Shanghai. The second stamp in the set (Scott 3014) shows the Huangshi Bridge located about 55 miles downriver from that first bridge at Wuhan. It is a box-girder bridge of prestressed concrete that took four years to build and opened in 1995. Including approaches, it is 1.6 miles in length and spans a river channel approximately half that distance. The third stamp in the Bridges set of 2000 (Scott 3015) features the Tongling Bridge, also completed in 1995. It is a cable-stayed, reinforced concrete bridge with a length of 3,780 feet. Located about 300 miles upriver from Shanghai, it carries a four-lane expressway that designers intended ultimately to connect the capital of Beijing with Taibei (Taipei), the capital of the Republic of China on Taiwan. This highway will likely not be completed for a long while (if ever), not only for political reasons because it would require either reunification of Taiwan with the rest of China or a degree of inter-governmental cooperation that might never be achieved, but also for engineering reasons because it would need to traverse the 110 miles of the Taiwan Strait by bridge or tunnel, or a combination of the two. The first three stamps in the set each have a denomination of 80f. The fourth 2000 Bridges stamp is a high-denomination $2.80 issue (Scott 3016). Featured in the image below, it pictures the Jiangyin Bridge, the longest bridge of the four and completed in 1999. This structure is a two-mile suspension bridge located only about 100 miles from the mouth of the Yangtze, the furthest downstream bridge until the Sutong Bridge, some 60 miles closer to the sea, was completed in 2008. The Jiangyin Bridge carries the Beijing-to-Shanghai Expressway over the river. It is currently the 10th longest suspension bridge in the world and was the first long-span suspension bridge built in China. It was constructed in just under three years by the British firm Cleveland Bridge and Engineering. In 2001, China Post celebrated the completion of the Wuhu Yangtze Bridge the previous year with a two-stamp set (Scott 3135 and 3136). It is located about 175 miles upriver from Shanghai. The river channel is about mile wide at this point, but the total project length is 6.5 miles. It is a cable-stayed, double-decker bridge whose upper tier carries a four-lane expressway and the lower level two sets of rail tracks. The first 2001 Bridges stamp, an 80f issue, shows a perspective from water level. The other stamp is a $2.80 denomination that pictures the expressways center line on the top level of the bridge. The Dashengguan Railroad Bridge in Nanjing (Nanking) was begun in 2006 and completed in 2011. A $1.20 stamp commemorating the bridges opening was issued the same year (Scott 3929). This double-arch bridge just more than 1 mile in length carries the Beijing-to-Shanghai High Speed Railway over the river. It is located about 175 miles from the sea. The first car of a train-set intended for use on the line is pictured in the foreground. Finally, in 2012 a bridge complex was completed at Taizhou and was featured on a $1.20 stamp issued the same year (Scott 4056). Located about 140 miles upriver from Shanghai, this highway bridge crosses the river in two segments. The northern span is a suspension bridge 4.2 miles in length; the southern part is a box girder construction 1.8 miles in length. The transition between the two bridges is on a large island in the river. Including approaches, this project was 38.5 miles long. It has won multiple international awards for engineering excellence. The second 2012 $1.20 Bridges stamp (Scott 4057) pictures the Bosporus Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey, built in 1973. This stamp was part of a joint issue with Turkey, which issued a souvenir sheet of two stamps picturing the Taizhou and Bosporus bridges (Scott 3319). This article has focused on stamps featuring Yangtze River bridges. In keeping with the bridge theme, next time I will discuss the oldest bridge still in use in China and the Great Hangzhou Bay Cross-Ocean Bridge, completed in 2007, a structure that had to overcome some of the greatest tidal bore forces on the planet. Eleven Madison Park is named the worlds best restaurant After 13 years of European eateries hogging ranking laurels, an American restaurant claims its place at the top /news/talking-point/eleven-madison-park-is-named-the-world-s-best-restaurant-111646837044691.html 111646837044691 story Eleven Madison Park in New York triumphed Wednesday in The Worlds 50 Best Restaurants awards, becoming the first US establishment to win the top spot since 2004. Chef Daniel Humms contemporary American restaurant toppled Italys Osteria Francescana, which came in second after winning the title for the first time last year. Spanish restaurant El Celler de Can Roca came in third. The interiors of the property. Photo: Bloomberg The winners were announced in a ceremony at the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne. The list is decided by a panel of more than 1,000 chefs, food writers and other experts from 26 geographical regions. Humm and co-owner Will Guidara serve a seasonal tasting menu that features dishes such as sea urchin custard with baby squid, bay scallop and apple; and pear poached with honey and acorn. The latest menu costs $295 (around Rs20,000) plus tax for 11 courses. I never in my wildest dreams thought that I could find myself in this position," Humm said shortly after winning. Cuisine has given me everything: I left school at 14 and pursued a craft that no one believed in at the time. Everything I have learnt has been from food: languages, culture. I have travelled the world and met Will, who is my best friend as well as my business partner. It is unbelievable." A bartender of the restaurant creating liquid alchemy. Photo: AFP The awards started in 2002, the product of a brainstorming session in a pub about how to promote the UK-based Restaurant magazine. That first year, the list was compiled informally by calling the magazine editors friends in the hospitality industry. They only realized what they had on their hands when chefs started contacting them to ask about an awards ceremonywhich they hadnt planned. The lists popularity grew quickly, and it became a global phenomenon. When the Copenhagen restaurant Noma first won in 2010, 100,000 people tried to book online the following day. And after El Celler de Can Rocas 2013 victory, its website received 12 million hits. Three extra employees were hired to turn down requests for tables, and the waiting list grew to one year, according to chef Joan Roca. This is the first time that a US restaurant has won since chef Thomas Kellers French Laundry in Yountville, California, took the title in 2003 and 2004. All the subsequent winners have been European. The Worlds 50 Best is published by William Reed Business Media. Among the major sponsors are Australia.com; S. Pellegrino & Acqua Panna; and Diners Club International. The second half of the listrestaurants 51-100was posted earlier online. A re-interpreted crab cake at Osteria Francescana, ranked No.2 this year. Photo: Paolo Terzi *** The top 50 (Last years ranking in parentheses) Eleven Madison Park, New York (3) Osteria Francescana, Modena, Italy (1) El Celler de Can Roca, Girona, Spain (2) Mirazur, Menton, France (6) Central, Lima (4) Asador Etxebarri, Axpe, Spain (10) Gaggan, Bangkok (23) Maido, Lima (13) Mugaritz, San Sebastian, Spain (7) Steirereck, Vienna (9) Blue Hill at Stone Barns, Pocantico Hills, New York (48) Arpege, Paris (19) Alain Ducasse au Plaza Athenee, Paris (58) Restaurant Andre, Singapore (32) Piazza Duomo, Alba, Italy (17) D.O.M., Sao Paulo, Brazil (11) Le Bernardin, New York (24) Narisawa, Tokyo (8) Geranium, Copenhagen (28) Pujol, Mexico City (25) Alinea, Chicago (15) Quintonil, Mexico City (12) White Rabbit, Moscow (18) Amber, Hong Kong (20) Tickets, Barcelona (29) The Clove Club, London (26) The Ledbury, London (14) Nahm, Bangkok (37) Le Calandre, Rubano, Italy (39) Arzak, San Sebastian, Spain (21) Pavillon Ledoyen, Paris (72) Attica, Melbourne (33) Astrid y Gaston, Lima (30) De Librije, Zwolle, Netherlands (38) Septime, Paris (50) Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, London (45) Saison, San Francisco (27) Azurmendi, Larrabetzu, Spain (16) Relae, Copenhagen (40) Cosme, New York (96) Ultraviolet by Paul Pairet, Shanghai (42) Borago, Santiago (36) Reale, Castel di Sangro, Italy (84) Brae, Birregurra, Australia (65) Den, Tokyo (77) LAstrance, Paris (57) Vendome, Bergisch Gladbach, Germany (35) Restaurant Tim Raue, Berlin (34) Tegui, Buenos Aires (68) Hof van Cleve, Kruishoutem, Belgium (53). Bloomberg Kate Krader contributed to this story. Christopher Tucker: The man with the masks How a British make-up artist became a key part of the Ramsay arsenal /news/talking-point/christopher-tucker-the-man-with-the-masks-111646836796256.html 111646836796256 story Do Gaz Zameen Ke Neeche, while injected with elements of horror, was more about villainy and revenge than the sort of creature horror that the Ramsays became synonymous with in the years to come. By Darwaza (1978), however, we start getting a feel of the Ramsay monster, face often in the shadows, rags on the body, claws instead of hands, slow of gaitshuffling, not walkingand the faces, when they are visible, horrible. Lamington Road, once upon a time, had a full-fledged exhibition of these faces, the masks hanging on the walls. Some of them have since been destroyed, some mislaid, some stashed away here and there. But the films exist, and in them we see the faces that so scared filmgoers in the 1980s. While Ajay Agarwal claims he needed only a bit of make-up to look as scary as he did, there were worse horrors in the Ramsay arsenal, and one man behind it all: Christopher Tucker. Tucker is a British make-up artist for theatre and film, specializing in prosthetics, with a history of doing high-quality work in the arts. He has worked on the make-up for Star Wars Episode IV-A New Hope (1978), The Elephant Man (1980his best known work, arguably), Quest for Fire (1981), and, notably, Andrew Lloyd Webbers The Phantom Of The Opera (1986). To date, Tucker has worked in 31 films. His last, according to the IMDb listings, was Black, the 2005 Sanjay Leela Bhansali film. Its just a little upsetting that none of the Ramsay films are listed there, but the reason is that he never really worked in any of them; he didnt do the make-up. What happened, instead, is that the Ramsays told him what they wanted (masks and limbs, usually), placed orders so to say, and he delivered. Tucker doesnt recall the names of any of the Ramsay films he helped out with, but remembers the family fondly. I was already doing work in prosthetics and I dont quite remember how they found me. They never came to me. They wanted me to make horror masks for some films. They wanted specific masks or arms or whatever. So I made a lot of bits and bobs. I cant quite remember all the details, and we did speak a few times, but they had an agent in London, and he came and collected things from me and, I suppose, he shipped things back to India." Hes remembering as we speak. I never actually saw any of their films. In those days, Indian films didnt really come to our part of the world much. Ive been told that the movies were small-budget films. I suppose I never had the time or knowledge to actually see anything like that. They would give me a lot of details in terms of what they wanted. They would tell me that they wanted a mask like someone wore in The Hunchback Of Notre Dame or in a particular Dracula movie. It would always be along the lines of something in a Hollywood film." Arjun was the one who interacted with Tucker the most, discussing the exact plan with his brothers and then explaining it all to Tucker. Its very interesting that all those years ago, instead of finding someone closer home, they found me sitting thousands of miles away," Tucker says. Can you imagine! I must have had some reputation then. For low-budget films at thatits extraordinary really. They (the masks) were not expensive by English standards, but by Indian standards they were not cheap at all." But, as Tulsi explains, the masks made the monster. Like in the case of the music, where having one or two good songs in the film, by a reputed composer ideally, raised the profile of the film, so did good masks. The monsters were our stars," Tulsi says, not for the first time. And they spared no expense for them. According to Arjun, Tucker had various masks ready, and would tweak them a bit to make them fit the Ramsays requirements. Thats not what Tucker says. When Mr Ramsay asked me for something, I started from scratch. Each time. I certainly didnt have finished masks lying around in my studio. You put in the same amount of work in finishing them and then, years later, when you see them, you say, Oh I wish I had done this; it would have been better if Id done that. In a way, nothing of what I have done was ever quite finished. But they are finished, of course." Edited excerpt from Dont Disturb The Dead: The Story Of The Ramsay Brothers. When you give your biometrics to Modi It is amusing that Aadhaar has remained optional for the poor, and has become mandatory for people whose survival does not depend on the government /news/talking-point/when-you-give-your-biometrics-to-modi-111646837104114.html 111646837104114 story It is remarkable that Aadhaar and Al-Qaeda mean the same thing, which is foundation". Its even more remarkable that the sane and neurotic foes of Indias plan to give every citizen a unique identity, or an Aadhaar number", who have tried to defame the programme in every way possible, have missed this tweetable fact. There is some discomfort in the upper classes about Aadhaar. Even though the government does not wish to transfer money into their bank accounts or give them free quinoa and cashew nuts every month, it wants them to let it scan their eyes and take their fingerprints. In return they will get nothing; just a unique number that will reaffirm their existence and financial actions in government records. When the Unique Identification programme was launched in 2009 during the Congress regime, everyone thought it was only for the poor. They would give away their biometrics to the government and in return receive a credible identity. They would find it much easier to open bank accounts, and the government would find it easier to distribute cash and grain to the rightful beneficiaries. But now the Narendra Modi government has made it mandatory for taxpayers to surrender to Aadhaar. In effect, all Indians, except Naga sadhus, will need Aadhaar. People who fear Modi find this ominous. They say that the technology of Aadhaar makes it easy for a strongman like him to spy on his rivals and citizens. The end of privacy," they write in articles that have Modi appearing to peer into your private lives. Nandan Nilekani, the tech billionaire who launched the Unique ID programme and headed it until 2014, and who continues to champion it, told me in a phone conversation that the opponents of Aadhaar can be divided into four gangsthe privacy gang; the-rights-of-the-poor gang; the oh-my-god-1984-has-arrived gang and the Luddites, who are scared of technology." By virtue of being citizens, people surrender a lot of personal information to the government. Absolute privacy is a right that they give up when they choose not to live in the forests. What Aadhaar does is make it easy for the government to have a persons surrendered life all in one place. Recently, there was a spate of claims that the Aadhaar database was leaking information. That was not true though. A banking official had released the information, which was a criminal act. The fact remains that data can be stolen. Closely tied to the privacy gang is the Oh-my-god-1984-has-arrived" gang, which includes people who have actually read 1984 by George Orwell. Those who take Orwell very seriously recently found affirmation in whistleblower Edward Snowden and his revelation of a world where spying is a natural act of the state. But then India does not need the Aadhaar system to be a surveillance state. It now has more efficient ways of spying through communication networks. I cannot substantiate this but I believe that the government illegally spies on inconvenient people all the time. Even the police, apart from visiting soothsayers, illegally eavesdrops on suspects to solve cases. Any device that is connected to the Internet is vulnerable. Apart from this, the defence of Aadhaar has these common ingredients: No system is perfect but organizations that are accountable to the people and have a monopoly over their data have a powerful self-interest in guarding the information; in the modern world everybody is giving away their information, including their biometrics, to American tech companies and foreign governments anyway, so why must there be special suspicions over Aadhaar; it is true that American tech companies and foreign governments cannot coerce you to give away your data to them, but the Indian government is forcing taxpayers to enter the Aadhaar system to make tax evasion difficult. There are 250 million PANs (permanent account numbers)," Nilekani says, but only about 40 million who file returns. Encoiled within the privacy issue are reasonable and overblown fears. A strand of the hysteria does emerge from the self-absorbed, self-important quality of our times where people are in a quest for victimhood because there is no other tribute to themselves that is available to them. The arguments for and against Aadhaar are subordinate to some overarching questions: Does Aadhaar improve the lives of those people who need the government for almost every aspect of their lives? And if it does, are the intellectuals, once again in their lifetime, sabotaging what is good for the poor because they do not like some elements of the reform? And is such sabotage, once again, couched as very serious social concern? Of the four gangs, Nilekani has some regard only for the-rights-of-the-poor" gang, which is led by activists like Aruna Roy, Jean Dreze and Nikhil Dey, who were the forces behind the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. Their concern is that the requirement for Aadhaar would create a situation where some people would be denied their rights to welfare because they did not possess the Aadhaar number, or because of a malfunction of technology. Reacting to such concerns, the Supreme Court has stated that Aadhaar should not be made mandatory to receive benefits. Meanwhile, over the years, the processes of the Aadhaar system have been improving. It is hard to ignore the possibility that some social activists would have seen Aadhaar as a direct threat to their turfs. One way in which rural activists tried to rebuke Nilekani was by reminding him how little time he had spent in the villages of India. Even among them they would fight over who has spent more time in the villages. Spending time in the villages was some great marker for them," he says. It is the way of the world that activists in the social sector dislike the philanthropy of billionaires, especially when they appear to accomplish things in years that activism has not for decades. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, for instance, is a victim of frequent activist condemnation. It is amusing that Aadhaar has remained optional for the poor, and has become mandatory for people whose survival does not depend on the government, including me. I do not have an Aadhaar number because I do not wish to give the government more information than I need to. But, if the middle class claims that its hatred for Aadhaar is chiefly out of concern for the poor (please turn off the canned laughter, I cant focus), it is useful for them to consider every Aadhaar enrolment as a vote of confidence. Over 1.1 billion Indians have enrolled. Only the power of word of mouth can create this level of acceptance. One can argue that the poor are not very smart, that they have been fooled by marketing. Or, maybe, the poor know things about themselves that others do not. Manu Joseph is a journalist and a novelist, most recently of The Illicit Happiness Of Other People. The eye of the outsider, at the Tel Aviv Fashion Week Photographer Mahesh Shantaram visits the Israeli capital's fifth fashion week, and brings back images that the flashbulbs glossed over /fashion/trends/the-eye-of-the-outsider-at-the-tel-aviv-fashion-week-111646836884441.html 111646836884441 story The onlookers: This could be any show, any brand, any label. But the combination of people appealed to me visually. In Mahesh Shantaram, the Gindi Tel Aviv Fashion Week found someone who was really looking at it looking at the nooks and crannies of its backstage area; looking at the people who were looking at the clothes on display; and looking alsoas most journalists dontat his peers. Everyone present at the show was a fashionista. Everything they wore was a statement or expression of some sorteverybody, that is, except me," he says. The Bengaluru-based photographer, and recipient of the 2011 Sony World Photography Award, travelled as part of a group of international journalists at the invitation of the Israeli consulate to cover the fifth iteration of the event, which took place in March. By his own admission, the photographs in this series convey very little information. They are devoid of context. And most frames have no ramps, models, brands, or details of the clothes or accessories being showcased. Instead, the pictures record the overlooked minutiae of a glamorous world steeped in deliberately articulated fashion. Shantaram had a tight itinerary before the fashion week began. He was taken on a guided tour of the citys prominent sites. Despite this, the trip to Israel was incomplete", says the photographer. What we saw was a very Jewish Israel. (But) it is a fact that many Arabs also live there, and Id like to go back to see much more of the Old City, for instance." Here is a look at what Shantaram saw while in Tel Aviv, and what the people he saw there were seeingin his own words. All eyes on the camera All eyes on the camera: I was clear that I absolutely did not want to sit in the photographers booth. I would only get the very standard photograph from that vantageviewers on both sides, a model sashaying down the ramp in the centre, giving me that (deadpan) look. I wanted to move around and immerse myself in the event. I wanted to be an insider at the venue and the event, though I am a total outsider to the industry. When I started moving around, I found the viewers of the show fascinating. Everything that people wore or carried was a well-articulated expression. This phone, for instance, belonged to a Japanese lady who was sitting next to me. A welcome scene A welcome scene: This is at the Wailing Wall, or Western Wall, a sacred spot for Jews. When I reached, I was welcomed by a scene of what looked like hundreds of Hasidic Jews in prayer or contemplation. Id never seen so many people even in popular pictures of this place. From way, way back From way, way back: I was curious about backstage, which was off-bounds, but by the last day I had become friends with some people at the show and so I somehow winged my way in. I was waiting by the curtainswhich are in themselves visually arresting with the silhouettesfor someone interesting to emerge. Out of the ramp and into a tub Out of the ramp and into a tub: One particular event of the Fashion Week here was kept top secret, so much so that neither the security staff nor the media manager was able to tell us what to expect. What greeted us as the doors opened was quite a spectacle. Half-a-dozen bathtubs, with models in each, bathing in what was supposed to look like milk. This was how jewellery and accessory brand Keren Wolf chose to exhibit their collectioninspired by Cleopatras donkey-milk bath and beauty routine. For me, this was a show-stealer. It was most impressive, in terms of its presentation, lighting and design. Seeing red: I was drawn to all the red tones on this fellow journalist. Heres looking at you Heres looking at you: On the first day of sightseeing, we went to the place where the Last Supper is believed to have taken place. Everyone in this picture is a fashion journalist. It was fun to turn the lens on them for a change. Film Review: Colossal The genre hybrid, starring Anne Hathaway, has enough surprises to keep us watching /how-to-lounge/movies-tv/film-review-colossal-111646837094030.html 111646837094030 story Born out of the imagination of Spanish writer-director Nacho Vigalondo, Colossal is a weird genre hybrid. Its a creature feature unfolding in Seoul, South Korea and a rom-com/love triangle/drama which takes place in a small town in middle America. Anne Hathaway plays Gloria, an out-of-work writer partial to the bottle. Thrown out of their New York apartment by her boyfriend Tim (Dan Stevens), Gloria goes back to her empty (unfurnished and unoccupied) childhood home where she reconnects with old school friend Oscar (Jason Sudeikis). Oscar offers Gloria a job as a waitress in his bar and becomes her drinking partner, boss and confidante. Over time, Oscar goes from friendly, to flirty to unhinged as the two find themselves connected by bizarre events revolving around a park and a gigantic, scaly kaiju (imagine Godzilla mixed with a White Walker) wreaking havoc. The monster has been seen before, 25 years prior, as we see at the start of the film. As Gloria manages to figure out her strange and direct connection with the monster linked to a local parka giant robot also makes an appearance. The news channels are closely tracking the story in Seoul. Theres even a 24-hour live feed channel about the monster. If this sounds like a B-grade movie, it could easily have been one. But Vigalondo straddles the two worlds in a way where fantasy and reality coexist. Told from Glorias evolving point of view, the metaphor is serviced by her transformation and resultant epiphany. The reveal of the metaphor and suppressed memories come a little late in a film that becomes a sci-fi, horror-comedy and then wobbles around towards the end. Hathaway is wonderfully watchable as the young woman who finally puts her childhood monsters to rest. Sudeikis is cast against type in a darker role, but, like the script towards the end, he too flails about trying to make sense of his characters motivations. But marks to Vigalondo for the onscreen unexpectedness. A Jharkhand town, as a post-apocalyptic world One of the three projects that won the Getty Images Instagram grant 2016 is now a book /news/talking-point/a-jharkhand-town-as-a-post-apocalyptic-world-111646836661416.html 111646836661416 story A contractual labour, who makes about Rs200 after loading four or five trucks with coal, at one of Jharias coal mines. In the winter of 2013, Kolkata-based photographer Ronny Sen went to Jharia, a coal mining town in Jharkhand, as a local point person for two French film-makers who were there on a commissioned project. He had no intention of shooting any images there, much less of winning an international grant for them three years later, or making a book of it. He stayed in Jharia with the film-makers for close to three months. And ended up taking hundreds of thousands of images" of the vast grey, barren landscape on his iPhone. It was almost a response to the boredom that had set in with the sort of photography he was doing back home in Kolkata, he says. He had been shooting in black and white, and his photographs were busy with people and movement. You can see this in his first artist book, Khmer Din, self-published in 2013. Here the images are fleeting glimpsesblurred faces, quick hand gestures in a freeze-frame, street corners and cycle rides, as if snatched from a place in his memories. Jharia was a different ball game altogether. It overwhelmed me," Sen recalls. There was so much spaceto look at a landscape, and to look at one man in the middle of a landscapeit was all so much slower. I had done nothing like this before," he says. An Ambassador at a coal mine. Coal thieves flee when they see an Ambassador because they think a government official is coming. The stories he was hearing, about the workers, the coal thieves, and about the fire burning underground, were all pretty spectacular", he says. Coal had been discovered in Jharia, a lush green forest, in the late 18th century, and mining started in the early 19th century. The underground coalfield firecaused by the self-heating and oxidation of minerals exposed to coalhas been burning for a century. The flames leap 60-70ft in the air. It was only in April 2016, almost three years after his visit to Jharkhand, that Sen compiled the Jharia photographs in an Instagram account (@whatdoestheendoftimelooklike). In September, Getty picked this and two other projectsone by Uruguays Christian Rodriguez and another by Ethiopias Girma Bertafor its $10,000 (around Rs6,46,000 now) Instagram grant instituted for photographers and artists using Instagram to document stories from underrepresented communities around the world". The project has now been compiled and published by The Nazar Foundation, a Delhi-based non-profit focusing on photographic arts, in a book called End Of Time. The basic idea of the book is that it talks about a post-apocalyptic world: What happens when everything (the coal, and all the other natural mineral resources) in this region has been extracted?" Sen says. He spoke to Lounge about a flux in the world of photography, and how mobile phones are introducing a new vocabulary to the medium. Edited excerpts: Would your images have looked different had you shot on a DSLR ? There would have been no difference at all. Any camera is a good camera. At the end of the day, its really about the images. If somebody would have carried a medium-format camera to Jharia, then maybe they would have made the same images. Yes, the quality would have been better (had it been shot on DSLR) shooting on a mobile phone means you cant print big and (displaying on) the traditional gallery wall then is a problem, but who cares about prints today? Everybody is looking at images on the screen. Photographers hardly print today. We have been going through a massive change in the last five-six years. The way photography is made and shown its all going to change. Will mobile phones play a role in this larger change? Yes, apart from this (Jharia) work, I consider mobile phones to be a breakthrough in photography. The new digital technology (DSLR cameras) could not achieve anything more than the analog days, but phones are very different as far as new vocabulary is concerned. Look at the history of photographyyou will see that different languages (in photography) came in because there was an evolution in technology and photographers took to it. For example, when the Polaroid (camera) came in, people started taking new kinds of photos; when the point-and-shoot-camera came, people started taking images that later became the snapshot aesthetic". After digital, not much could be achieved other than the increase of a few megapixels. End Of Time: By Ronny Sen, The Nazar Foundation, 96 pages; Rs1,500. The whole idea of post-photography now is based on the idea that there is no new image to be made. Even many legends in photography, like Joan Fontcuberta, say this. But I feel like a large part of this was also because of this (stagnation in technology). I have a strong feeling that the phone now can radically change this. What then is the relevance of a photo book such as End Of Time vis-a-vis Instagram, which in itself is perhaps a virtual photo book? My generation has the freedom to do whatever they want to because there is no one way (now) of looking at photography. Ill respect a photographer who is a gallery artist as much as I would someone who does amazing work only on Instagram. That wasnt the case before. Even champions of the gallery world for example, photographer Stephen Shorehave said theyre only going to do Instagram from now. There are so many like that. We do this to get the images out to people, but as for the (commerce) of it, theres still a lot to figure out. A cognac 100 years in the making Alexandre Quintin, from the House of Rmy Martin, on what makes Louis XIII an experience to be savoured /news/talking-point/a-cognac-100-years-in-the-making-111646836652296.html 111646836652296 story There are cognacs and then theres Louis XIII. In the world of high-end spirits, this blended cognac from the House of Remy Martin holds a special place. Drunk by royalty (it was served to King George VI and Queen Elizabeth I in the Palace of Versailles, and to Nicholas II, the last emperor of Russia), and a favourite with former US president Barack Obama and actor Leonardo di Caprio, Louis XIII was the first super-premium" cognac created back in 1874. The Remy Martin family settled in the Cognac region during the reign of Louis XIII, which is why this King of Cognacs" is named after him. Alexandre Quintin, international brand ambassador, House of Remy Martin, was in India recently. Edited excerpts from an interview: How is Louis XIII made? Remy Martin is based in the heart of the Cognac region, the very best place where you have special grapes (Ugni blanc, Folle blanche or Colombard) for making cognac. We make the wine and then distil it twice to get what we call the eau de vie, the life-giving water. The cellar master then selects the eaux de vie with the best aromatic potential, the ones that can age the longest to create more aromas. These are aged in French oak barrels and they will become Louis XIII one day. The cellar master puts these aside for decades, till he retires, and his successor carries on crafting the cognac till its ready, 100 years later. Louis XIII is a blend of more than 1,200 cognacs, of which the youngest is 40 years old and the oldest, 100 years old. So its a very special cognac, almost like a perfume, incredibly rich with a silky texture and a taste that will last for hours. What are the tasting notes? Louis XIII is extraordinary on the palate; the different notes come like waves. There are some rare floral notes such as immortelle, what we call everlasting flowers, honeysuckle, and beeswax, even honey. On the fruity side, you will find tropical fruitslychee and figs, very mature and juicy fruits. These notes come from the fruits and flowers of Cognac and are infused in the eaux de vie. There are oaky notes too, a bit of mushroom and the forest floor, perhaps tobacco and even chocolate. The oaky, spicy notes come from the ageing, from the contact with woodyou may find a hint of vanilla in the young eaux de vie, while the very old ones might give you leather. Its a very complex drink. How do cellar masters work their magic upon the drink? The cellar master is an expert in wine and an incredible taster; his nose is worth a lot of money. He is the guardian of the Remy Martin style and is responsible for the blending and ageing of Louis XIII. Its his job to select the best eaux de vie based on their aromatic intensity, then to select the barrels and the specific cellars in which the cognac will be aged. We have both underground and over-ground cellars in Cognac with different temperatures and humidity conditions. He also has to put eaux de vie aside for the future generations of cellar masters, all the while maintaining the consistency of Louis XIII. Our current cellar master is quite young, just 38 years-old, and has been with us for the past eight years, of which he spent seven as an apprentice to the previous cellar master. The best compliment you can give him is, You havent changed anything." Even the decanters seem special. What goes into making them? The cognac is definitely the most precious part, but yes, the decanters themselves are quite special. In 1936, we commissioned Baccarat to make them. They are all handmade and hand-engraved, with a 24-carat gold neck. Nine master craftsmen at Baccarat are needed to make a single decanter. How does the connoisseur drink Louis XIII? Louis XIII is a very special cognac so we dont recommend any mixology with it. Because theres so much flavour to discover, we suggest that you should drink it neat, ideally at room temperature (18-22 degrees Celsius). Having said that, I have had it in Norway, where it was very chilly, and in Cuba, where the temperature was above 35 degrees Celsius. Drinking Louis XIII was a whole new experience therein Cuba, it was like biting into a juicy fruit, whereas in Norway the oaky and spicy notes were highlighted. You can drink Louis XIII before dinner when your palate is clean and the farthest away from food, when youre most receptive to the aromas and textures of the cognac. Always start with one drop because its very dense and you will have this explosion of aromas. Then your palate is ready and you can drink some more. Louis XIII can also be had as a post-dinner drink. Does it pair particularly well with any food or cigars? Louis XIII pairs beautifully with foods like caviar, lobster, or pata negra ham. We tried it with Indian food the other day, and it was very interesting with tandoori lamb. If youre a cigar smoker, the fruity notes of Louis XIII work very well with Cuban cigars like Cohiba. Louis XIII has been imported to India for seven years. How has the Indian market taken to it? Sula Vineyards is our distributor in India and they have done a great job of showcasing it in all the five-star hotels here. We think there is a lot of potential in India, a market that loves its whisky and single malt, so the palates are already into aged spirits. The move to cognac is natural. Also, Indians travel so much to London, New York, and Dubai, where the Louis XIII brand is already strong, so they have heard of it and perhaps even tasted it. We occasionally organize private dinners and tastings to introduce more Indians to the exquisite taste of Louis XIII, and we are quite hopeful of its success here. Lounge Preview: In search of utopia 'Chakraview', India's entry to the London Design Biennale, comes home /news/talking-point/lounge-preview-in-search-of-utopia-111646836731266.html 111646836731266 story The installation Chakraview is designed to resemble a spiritual journey. Walking through it is meant to evoke the sense of searching for utopia. It is personal, with just your reflection on the mirrored floors for company. As you move from one chakra (wheel) to another, you wade through a cacophony of sounds, languages, colours and textiles to step into the inner sanctum. Chakraview, which was Indias official entry to the inaugural London Design Biennale in September, evoked a host of emotional responses from viewers at Somerset House. People in wheelchairs simply stayed there, looking at themselves in the mirrors. People got lost, some had tears in their eyes. They said that Chakraview had stirred something within them," says Rajshree Pathy, founder of the India Design Forum and curator of the installation. For Christopher Turner, director, London Design Biennale, Chakraview was the highlight of the event. Indias contribution was in one of the largest and tallest of the biennales interior spaces, and viewers were entranced by its riot of colour, reflected in a mirrored floor, which transported them from the UK to India. It was one of the most Instagrammed and popular of the biennale installations," he says in an email interview. And now one can experience this sensorial work as part of the Serendipity Arts Festival 16 In 17 at Bikaner House, New Delhi. For Pathy, this was an opportunity to showcase Indias USP" and she brought together a host of creative people to achieve this. Sumant Jayakrishnan, a New Delhi-based scenographer, designer and installation artist, was brought on board. Jayakrishnan looked for a metaphor to encapsulate the two complex ideas of India and utopia and found it in the chakras. I realized that utopia is something that is never realized, you keep striving for it," says Jayakrishnan, who used the colours and energy associated with the seven chakras (or energy points in the body) to give a structure to the ideathe chakras suspended from the ceiling, with the mirrored floor representing the inner quest for utopia. Deepika Jindal of Jindal Steel pitched in with the material of the mirrored floors. Typographers, the husband-wife team of Hanif Kureshi and Rutva Trivedi, created fonts in different languages on wooden hoops, which are used by women as a base for embroidery. We wanted to show Indias multiculturalism. The hoops were symbolic of Indias craftsmanship," says Pathy. Jayakrishnan adds: Using types in Urdu, Hindi, Tamil, and more, allowed us to talk about the subcontinent without being nationalistic." The main space also features a soundwork with the voices of the young and old about what utopia means to them. Additionally, design strategist Avinash Kumar was brought in to create a film which one could view on reaching the inner sanctum, or the garbhagruha, in the seventh and final chakra. The film, displayed on a circular format, features street life, colour and pop culture and leaves one with an impression of the complexity of utopian India in the context of different cultures," says Jayakrishnan. Will Chakraview be significant enough in carrying Indias design story forward? I truly think it will," says Smriti Rajgarhia, director of the Delhi-based Serendipity Arts Trust, who supported the work when it debuted at the London biennale. According to her, Chakraview, with its multiple layers, presents a cohesive design story from the region, while integrating various formats to create an immersive space. I hope that more people get inspired to find the myriad ways in which we can represent the identity...rooted in our heritage but looking into the future," she says. Chakraview can be viewed till 16 April, 11am-6pm, at Bikaner House, New Delhi. The roots of the Ramsays Sharks, shamans and 'Sholay': the films that influenced the Ramsay brothers /news/talking-point/the-roots-of-the-ramsays-111646836780371.html 111646836780371 story There are some obvious things to be said about the Ramsay Brothers. They made low-budget, tacky-looking horror films, full of things that always seemed in danger of falling apart: haveli doors creaked, buxom women screamed so gustily you worried their tight costumes would pop open, and even the monster masks that begat those screams sometimes seemed like they might fall off in great brown gobs. They specialized in gore and titillation. And of course, they were derivative. Youd be right in thinking that their most immediate inspirations were schlocky B-movies from other cinematic cultures the best-known of which are Britains Hammer horror films. But when you get around to watching the Ramsay films closely, you see how cinematically well-educated and enthusiastic they are, and how they weave some very disparate sources into their work. Execution doesnt always match intent, but thats another matter. Also Read: Ramsays and the birth of desi horror Here are some films whose DNA may be found in the Ramsay cinema including a few you werent expecting. Island of Lost Souls (1932) and The Island of Dr Moreau (1977) One of the Ramsays most atmospheric works, Dahshat a film that somehow manages to be ludicrous and authentically creepy at the same time features the mad Dr Vishal (Om Shivpuri) who conducts nefarious experiments with animals in his laboratory (which never seems to be well-lit, making one worry that he cant see what he is doing; was that fox-head really supposed to go on that frog-body, for example). This subplot owes a debt to the HG Wells story Island of Dr Moreau and its film adaptations, the best of which is the 1932 Island of Lost Souls with Charles Laughton as the doctor but given that Dahshat was made in 1981, it was more likely inspired by the 1977 Burt Lancaster-starrer The Island of Dr Moreau. Also Read: The Ramsays: horror runs in their blood Jaws (1975) In 1982, the Ramsays announced a film that was conceived as a tribute to Spielbergs blockbuster about shark attacks. Its another matter that the underwater monster in Maut Ka Saaya looks more like the doleful Mer-Man from the Masters of the Universe franchise. The poster you see here suggests submarine menace combined with lots of disco-dancing, which makes sense given that Bappi Lahiri had recorded some songs for the film. Sadly, we will never know if he ripped off his own popular Disco Dancer soundtrack for the shark theme (Fishy, Fishy / Aaja, Aaja?"), since the film was never completed. Jaani Dushman (1979) There is something poignant about watching Rajkumar Kohlis wolfman-in-a-village classic and realizing that this is the sort of movie the Ramsays may have made if they had had large budgets and access to big-name actors. Like much of their work, Jaani Dushman contains a subtext about the struggle between tradition and modernity: the story, about a hairy monster abducting and killing brides while they are heading to their marital homes, can be seen as a parable about a conservative societys fear that its young women may become bold enough to choose their own grooms. Given who the monster eventually turns out to be, the film also feels like a commentary on feudalism, a motif of the Ramsay Brothers cinema too. The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920) Its hard to imagine what this impressionistic landmark of silent cinema might look like in colour, and conversely, its hard to imagine what a Ramsay Brothers film would look like in black-and-white, without the bright red blood, the over-decorated havelis and the many-hued tribal costumes. Yet the twain do meet, sort of, in Dahshat: the plump, slightly hunched Dr Vishal bears a physical resemblance to the mountebank Caligari, while his mute, grave-digging servant (known only as goonga") is strikingly similar to Caligaris sallow-faced sleepwalker-assistant. (If you can find any other similarities between the two films, your imagination is wilder than mine.) Friday the 13th, The Evil Dead, and other slasher-film franchises A major horror trope that emerged in Hollywood in the 70s and 80s was the slasher film where horny youngsters went off into the woods together and were picked off by a monster just as things were getting steamy. The Ramsays had to be more conservative when it came to nudity the heroines always showered in swimming costumes but the sex-and-death link is there for anyone to see. Poltergeist (1982) and The Exorcist (1973) It has long been a truism that little girls are among the scariest things you can see in a horror movie. In the 1988 Veerana, young Jasmine starts behaving very strangely after a tantric casts a spell on her in one scene, she attentively watches a TV screen that has nothing but snow" on it. First-world films like Poltergeist could do terrifying things with such a scene, but its effect here is mitigated by the fact that static-watching was the fate of many of us normal" people in the Doordarshan era. An American Werewolf in London (1981) John Landiss horror-comedy has one of the most celebrated man-to-monster transformation scenes ever filmed, with magnificent makeup and special effects employed to realistically" turn the protagonist David into a werewolf. Compare this with similar moments in Ramsay movies with similar transformations being effected through clumsy dissolves and lighting and you see how lack of resources can create a huge gap between ambition and execution. The what if" question arises again. Also Read: Hearing the fear The Shining (1980) What connection can there be between one of the most self-consciously stately of horror films directed by an auteur like Stanley Kubrick, who carefully designed each frame and a Ramsay film? Well, the Overlook hotel, in which Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) slowly goes insane, is said to be built on an ancient Indian burial ground and this theme of a sleek modern monument being haunted by the murky past recurs in the Ramsays Hotel, which was made a year later. And some even more unusual suspects: Purab aur Paschim (1970) The first true Ramsay Brothers film, Do Gaz Zameen ke Neeche (1972), begins with the upright hero rescuing a young woman from goons and letting her stay overnight in his house. Dressed in a western outfit at this point, she changes into a saree just for dinner (before slinking back into a short nightie for bed). Taken together, the five-minute sequence feels almost like a riff on Manoj Kumars Purab aur Paschim, with its misty-eyed view of what the Bharatiya nari should look like. And theres a twist: unlike her counterparts in Purab aur Paschim and other Hindi films of the time, this woman continues to be the predatory vamp taking away her husbands money and plotting murder even after donning sari and sindoor! How diabolically anti-national. (Speaking of which, the films ending mildly resembles the climax of the 1955 French shocker Les Diaboliques.) Sholay (1975) The 1984 Purana Mandir one of the Ramsays better films provides a glimpse of what Sholays Ramgarh village might look like if it had a flesh-eating shaitan looming over it, a supra-villain so scary that Gabbar Singh would have to be recast as a slapstick comedian. A bizarre subplot in Purana Mandir has the twitchy Jagdeep playing a version of Gabbar, not so much terrorizing a village as buzzing around it (Machchar Singh is his name). Rajendra Nath is the armless Thakur Murdaar, and a somewhat glammed-up Lalita Pawar (pushing 70 at the time) is Basanti. How all this ties in with the main plot about nubile youngsters heading to the jungle to confront the ancient demon Samri you must discover for yourselves. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) In the same film, the Ramsays went meta-meta by throwing in a tribute to the Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns that had influenced Sholay. In one comic track in Purana Mandir, Jagdeep and the hunky Puneet Issar play out a version of the scenes in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly where Blondie (Clint Eastwood) rescues Tuco (Eli Wallach) from being executed at the last minute. They couldnt find a poncho for Issar, so he drapes a burlap sack around himself while performing these rescues; much more appealing, though, is the scene where he exercises in tight underwear, a rare example of the Ramsays indulging the Female Gaze. NEW DELHI : Chinese phone maker Xiaomi has impressed with its latest crop of affordable smartphones. Its new phone, the Redmi 4A, priced at Rs5,999, is another shot at the budget segment, but aimed primarily at first-time buyers or casual users. The phone is currently available through flash sale on Amazon.in and Mi.com. Design: Compact and handy The Redmi 4A is a very different looking device from the recent bunch of metal-clad phones. The Redmi 4A is a very different looking device from the recent bunch of metal-clad phones launched by the company. It has a plastic unibody exterior with matte finish. You cant remove the back cover or battery. The phone weighs just 131g and fits comfortably into small hands. It is available in three attractive coloursgold, rose gold and dark grey.The only limitation in the design language is the hybrid SIM tray which allows either two SIM cards or one SIM card and microSD card at a time. The microSD slot is built on the nano SIM slot. The volume and power buttons are placed on the right side and feel a bit stiff. Display: Small but good-looking The phone also offers the usual set of display settings that Xiaomi offers in its high-end phones. The phone has a 5-inch IPS display with a resolution of 1,280x720p. Colours in games, photos and movies look good. The text in web pages and ebooks looks crisp enough to not strain your eyes. Visibility from odd angles is pretty good too. The phone also offers the usual set of display settings that Xiaomi offers in its high-end phones such as the Colours and contrast options which can adjust colour temperature and the Reading mode which can reduce displays background glare when you are reading in a low-lit room. Software: Old Android with a complex UI The Redmi 4A looks a little like Windows phone UI and is a lot simpler to use. The Redmi 4A runs on a slightly older (Marshmallow) 6.0 version of Android with Xiaomis customisable MIUI 8 over it. MIUI has a nice collection of colourful themes and wallpapers but using it can be challenging, especially for first-time users. There is a feature called Second space which allows users to create a separate profile on the same phone but with a different set of apps. The dual apps feature allows two versions of the same app. For example, if you want to have two WhatsApp accounts on the same phone, you can have two WhatsApp icons configured with two different numbers. The Lite mode switches on another interface with bigger icons. It looks a little like Windows phone UI and is a lot simpler to use. Performance: Ideal for casual users The device runs on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 quad-core processor, clocking at 1.4 GHz and paired with only 2GB RAM. The phone was able to handle most everyday tasks well, but struggled a bit during gaming and multi-tasking. The MIUI is a resource-intensive UI and even with no apps running, the system uses about 1.3GB of the RAM. The phone offers 16GB of storage and can accept microSD cards of up to 256GB. All this makes it more suited for users with basic requirements. The battery backup is good. The 3,120mAh battery can muster one day of charge on modest to heavy usage comfortably. Camera: Works well in good light The 13-megapixel camera can take quick shots. The 13-megapixel camera can take quick shots and lock focus on objects correctly with a single tap. In outdoor shots, it captured most colours accurately, but wasnt very good at reproducing detail. Indoor shots with limited light look blurry and distorted. It is not lacking in features, though. It offers live filters, audio in picture mode, beautify mode, the option to set timer, and has a Straighten mode which takes a straight image even if the phone is not held straight. The 5-megapixel front camera can muster clear looking shots if the light is good. The 5-megapixel front camera can muster clear looking shots if the light is good. Verdict The Redmi 4A impresses with its build quality, funky interface, good display and dependable battery life. It has its limitations but at this price point there are other alternatives. If you are willing to spend a little more, you can go for the Coolpad Mega 2.5d (Rs6,999), which offers a bigger 5.5-inch display, is pretty much similar in terms of performance and runs Android 6.0. You can also go for the Redmi 3s (Rs6,999) as it runs on a superior processor and looks more premium due to the metal finish. KOLKATA : Strains of a folk theatre tune float through the darkness as we drive into Kamargaria village in Howrah districts Amta Block II in West Bengal. It is late in the night but members of the local village club are there to welcome us. I am accompanying a group of wildlife conservationists working on the endangered Fishing cat. The elusive, nocturnal creature that was notified as West Bengals state animal in 2012 is known locally by different namesbaghrul, gobagha, adhabagha and machbagha. There are few pictures of it in the wild and studies on its ecology, distribution, population estimates and conservation status within or outside protected areas, including national parks and sanctuaries, are few and far between. It resembles the panther, and is the size of the average street dog, with black patches on its body and long whiskers. It growls like a tiger; its eyes shine like torchlight and its not afraid of humans, says Anil Maity, a member of the Kamargaria local club. Adhya shows images of cat species to a villager. Photo: Partha Dey Its not afraid when we try to chase it away. Instead, it growls and charges at us, says Maity, adding, The cat comes to steal fish from our ponds, especially Catla fish. We have to take turns to keep vigil. An endangered species under Schedule I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, the Fishing cat has long been poached for its skin and meat. The oldest record of its presence in and around Kolkata dates back to 1891. There is no population estimate of the species, which makes it difficult to gauge how many of them survive in the wild. Now conservationists are roping in villagers into protection committees, trying to increase awareness and infuse a sense of pride that the state animal lives in their midst. The Fishing cat is one of the 15 felid species that is found in India and, like other smaller cat species, is poorly understood, says wildlife biologist Tiasa Adhya, member of the Fishing Cat Working Group and the Cat Specialist Group of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Adhya has been conducting research on the Fishing cat since 2010 and now leads a survey with local villagers to estimate the population of this species in the Howrah and Hooghly districts of West Bengal and in Chilika Lake in Odisha. There has been no concerted effort so far to assess the Fishing cats current distribution or the threats to it. Its preferred habitats are the reed bedskhori bonthat surround ponds in villages like Kamargaria. The tall reed here is khori (Saccharum narenga) but the Fishing cat also lives among other types of reeds found in these parts of rural Bengalhogla (Typha elephantina and Typha domingensis), nol (Phragmites vallatoria) and khagra (Saccharum spontaneum). The Fishing cat is a marshland species and is only found where there is sufficient reed cover around water bodies. According to our observation, the Fishing cat usually does not exist where the land is devoid of nol, hogla, khori or khagra even if the place has a large pond, says Adhya. Incidentally, Howrah gets it name from haor, which means marshy wetland. The term haor is still used in neighbouring Bangladesh (Haor basin) to denote a wetland ecosystem. Howrah district is sandwiched between the Rupnarayan and Damodar rivers. The villages here, surrounded by ponds and bamboo, coconut and banana groves, go back 500 years. The khori, which grows in abundance in private waterlogged lands that are unsuitable for crops, is the mainstay of the local economy. The tall grass is harvested, dried and used in betel-leaf (paan) cultivation. The dried reed is also used to construct rectangular shaded structures known as paan boraj, a type of greenhouse where betel vines are grown in rows. Even though fishing is a source of livelihood, the villagers have coexisted with wildlife for centuries, despite attacks on both fish stock and livestock. Apart from the Fishing cat, the khori is also home to otters, jungle cats, the small Indian civet, palm civet, golden jackal and monitor lizard. Scarecrows are a tactic of keep Fishing cats away. Photo: Ananda Banerjee As we visited other villages in Amta Block II, we heard more stories about the Fishing cat. Till a few years ago, reports of poaching and poisoning were frequent, with villagers and tribal hunters unaware of the animals endangered status. Last year, poachers were caught with dead Fishing cats from Munsirhat, after which a directive from the Howrah zilla parishad notified village panchayats to form individual Fishing cat protection committees. Also, sustained efforts were made to sensitize people through road shows, posters and door-to-door distribution of handbills for the conservation of the Fishing cat, says Adhya. In Sarada village, part of the Kushberia gram panchayat, Joydeb Pradhan and Sudhin Adhikari have formed a Fishing cat protection committee under the Sarada Prasad Tirtha Janakalyan Samiti, a non-governmental organization (NGO). For six years, this NGO has been trying to ensure the Fishing cat is not harmed; it has recently started a compensation scheme for villagers who have lost livestock. Villagers setting up camera traps. Photo: Partha Dey Earlier this year, Pradhan was chosen by the Sanctuary Nature Foundation, Mumbai, as one of 12 grass-roots conservation leaders for their inaugural Mud on Boots projecta programme to empower and support grass-roots conservationists in India. Pradhan and his team received a grant of Rs3 lakh, to be used over two years (2017 and 2018) for on-ground conservation work. Adhya and her team say persistent campaigning and conservation work have resulted in the formation of four Fishing cat protection committees at the gram panchayat level and nearly 15 committees at the mouza (administrative block) level. The Ghosh Bari in Kalbansh village (also in Amta Block II) has seen better days. A part of the old mansion overlooking a large pond lies in ruins. Ashim Ghosh, the owner, greets us in an adjacent building, a lovely old house with a courtyard and wells. Its in the vicinity of Ghosh Bari, where Fishing cats can often be spotted at night. The team has been tracking Fishing cats by placing camera traps at various locations in and around his estate. Ghosh narrates how Fishing cats stole around 50 grass carps from his neighbours pond over two months, leading to considerable losses. Despite such losses, however, Amta Block IIs residents have a soft corner for the cat. We suffer losses but where else will the poor animal go to look for food? says pisciculturist Lakhi Kanto Bhattacharya (a.k.a. Daku Babu) of Narit village. Bales of harvested khori in Narit village. Photo: Ananda Banerjee It seems the campaign to save Fishing cats has managed to infuse a sense of pride in villagers. In March, they appealed to the West Bengal Biodiversity Board to consider declaring 15 mouzas under the Kushberia, Jhamtia, Tajpur and Gajipur gram panchayats, an area of around 30 sq. km, as a biodiversity heritage site under the Indian Biodiversity Act, 2002. But while there is now support for conservation in Amta Block II, the story is very different in other wetland areas. In nearby Hooghly district, vast stretches of marshland, spanning hundreds of hectares, along the Durgapur expressway are being lost rapidly to industrial use. Popularly known as the Dankuni wetlands, they are home to many endangered birds and mammals, including the Fishing cat. Since 2013, a Kolkata-based environmental NGO, People United for Better Living in Calcutta (PUBLIC), has been fighting in the Calcutta high court and the National Green Tribunal to get this area notified under guidelines issued by the National Wetland Conservation Programme and the Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules, 2010, of the Union environment ministry. According to PUBLICs legal representative, illegal dumping is still going on despite court orders. Conservationists rue that ecologically unbalanced land policies and land uses, attacks on species due to economic losses and ritual hunts by indigenous tribes are pushing the Fishing cat and other marshland-dependent species to extinction. Can they turn the tide? A weekend of verse The Raza Foundation brings together 45 Indian poets in the first edition of its poetry biennale /news/talking-point/a-weekend-of-verse-111646836621827.html 111646836621827 story At the Chandigarh Literature Festival last November, one of the participating poets, Ashok Vajpeyi, spent a large part of his session reading his poetry, both in the original Hindi and in English translation. This upended the normal format of literary festival panel discussions, but the audience couldnt get enough of it. They applauded as he read, continued to request for more, and in no uncertain words told him that they preferred to hear his verses in Hindi. Vajpeyi, as executive trustee of the Raza Foundation, started by the artist S.H. Raza, who died last year, has set up a formal platform this weekend in New Delhi for 45 poets writing in 15 Indian languages to do the same. As part of VAK: The Raza Biennale of Indian Poetry, the poets get 15 minutes each to read their work in the original language as well as a translation in either English or Hindi. Over the three days of the biennale, which started Friday, discussions are meant to be limited to three sessions critical to the political and literary climate today: Poetry as Memory; Poetry as Freedom; and Poetry as Conscience. VAK has invited poets such as Kutti Revathi and Salma, who have often riled the conservative literary establishment in Tamil Nadu with their patriarchy-resisting poetry, Malayalam poets K. Satchidanandan and Anitha Thampi, Assamese poet Nilim Kumar, whose verses show deep sympathy for the marginalized, and other poets across languages and regions who have lately been speaking of a threat to Indias plurality. I am sure the kind of India that will emerge from their poetry will be different from that imposed on us by this political establishment," says Vajpeyi. There are readings in Kashmiri by Majrooh Rashid, in Manipuri by Ratan Thiyam and Dilip Mayengbam, in Gujarati by Kanji Patel and in English by Arundhathi Subramaniam. In this triptych of poetry biennales, the second edition, in 2019, will focus on Asian poetry, and the third, coinciding with Razas birth centenary in 2021, will explore world poetry. One of Razas abiding interests was poetry, especially in Hindithis, Vajpeyi points out, may have been the reason for their life-long friendship. The artist, who dwelt on the spiritual in his works, would frequently jot down verses that moved him in his diary, and somefrom sources as diverse as the Vedas, Upanishads, verses of Kabir, Mirza Ghalib, Mahadevi Varma, G.M. Muktibodh and Faiz Ahmad Faiz, for instancewould eventually make their way into his canvases as well. He would say that poetry is an art in the contemporary prosaic world which is neither economically viable nor popular in the sense that fiction or non-fiction is, and we must do something about it," says Vajpeyi. The mandate of the Raza Foundation, an art and cultural organization, then, is to promote the visual arts, poetry, music and dancein that order. In Pune, last weekend, the foundation held a day-long reading of Bhakti poetry in English translation by Ranjit Hoskote and Arundhathi Subramaniam, and it has previously organized events to celebrate the poetry of Muktibodh and Shamsher Bahadur Singh. In that sense, VAK is much larger in scale and ambition. Exclusive poetry festivals are in themselves rare, and dwindling public interest in poetry elevates the importance of this event. Vajpeyi points out that there are only a few languages, like Malayalam, Manipuri, Bengali and Urdu, in which poetry still matters. In Hindi especially, the divorce between popular and significant poetry is very deep," he adds. VAK hopes to close that gap. VAK: The Raza Biennale Of Indian Poetry is on till 9 April at Triveni Kala Sangam, 205, Tansen Marg, Mandi House, New Delhi. For more details, visit www.therazafoundation.org Long road, old treasures (Image credit: Historic England) Beneath Britain's longest road lay a treasure trove of rare Roman artifacts. The findings were uncovered in North Yorkshire during construction work to upgrade the A1, which links London to Edinburgh. [Read the full story on the Roman settlement] Glass bowl (Image credit: Northern Archaeological Associates) The archaeologists unearthed a major Roman settlement at Scotch Corner, one of the best known junctions in the country, linking Scotland with England and East Coast with West Coast. The large settlement dates back to 60 A.D., suggesting Romans came to northern England a decade earlier than previously thought. This high-relief glass bowl supports the early date for activity at Scotch Corner. Unique characters (Image credit: Northern Archaeological Associates) This partially recovered toga-clad actor carved from a block of amber is one of the high-status imported items found at the wealthy settlement near Scotch Corner. It is believed to have been made in Italy during the first century A.D. and indeed a similar object has been found at Pompeii. Nothing like this has ever been found in the U.K. Coin molds (Image credit: Northern Archaeological Associates) Over 1,400 clay fragments of molds used for making gold, silver and copper coins have been found at the settlement. The discovery turns the Scotch Corner site into the largest known and most northerly example of coin production in Europe. Shoes and more (Image credit: Northern Archaeological Associates) Finds abounded at Catterick, a town south of Scotch Corner known by the Romans as Cataractonium. Here, the archaeologists recovered several well-preserved leather shoes, along with large sheets of leather, perhaps used for producing clothes. Most likely, Cataractonium was an important leatherworking center that likely supported the Roman military. SIgns of wealth (Image credit: Northern Archaeological Associates) A rare silver ring shaped like a snake that wraps around the finger hints at the great wealth of the people who lived at Cataractonium. More indicators of prosperity (Image credit: Northern Archaeological Associates) This is one of many keys unearthed at Cataractonium. The large amount of various sizes suggest the people who lived there were rather wealthy and locked up their valuable possessions. Educated citizens (Image credit: Northern Archaeological Associates) A pewter inkpot and many styli, the Roman pens, revealed the most people of Cataractonium were able to read and write. Calculated measures (Image credit: Dr Jonathan Shipley) A well-preserved section of Roman road is being excavated. Nearly 2,000 years ago the Romans were using the A1 route as a major road of strategic importance. [Read the full story on the Roman settlement] This color-coded map shows that the majority of American say that climate change is happening. Most Americans believe that climate change is real, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse told his colleagues in Congress on Wednesday (April 5). Seventy percent of people in the United States say they believe global warming is happening, said Whitehouse, D-R.I., as he reviewed data from interactive charts recently released by Yale University scientists. However, a smaller percentage 53 percent think that global warming is caused mostly by humans, Whitehouse said. The speech was the Democratic senator's 163rd "Time to Wake Up" address on climate change that he has delivered to the Senate over the years. [The Year in Climate Change: 2016's Most Depressing Stories] Most of the data Whitehouse pulled came from Yale's 2016 climate opinion maps a series of interactive infographics. The graphics are based on data produced from a statistical model, which is based on the national survey responses of more than 18,000 people from 2008 to 2016. This map shows the percentage of people per state who think that climate change is largely caused by humans. (Image credit: Yale Program on Climate Change Communication) Some opinions don't quite mesh with scientific reality. Just 49 percent of people thought that "most scientists think global warming is happening," the survey found. In reality, 97 percent of all climate scientists agree that climate change is happening and that humans are very likely the cause of it, according to a 2016 study in the journal Environmental Research Letters. However, the majority of respondents some 71 percent trusted climate scientists about global warming, the survey showed. A whopping 82 percent of respondents said the country should fund research into renewable energy sources, and 75 percent said the United States should regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant, the survey found. This held true even in states that produce coal and oil: In West Virginia, 84 percent of respondents wanted to fund research into renewable energy, which is 1 percent higher than the national average. In Wyoming, Texas and Kentucky, support for funding research into renewable energy was 82 percent, 79 percent and 79 percent, respectively. "Despite this support, President [Donald] Trump recently proposed massive cuts, showing once again that the Trump show is not the America show, even in fossil fuel states," Whitehouse said. For instance, Trump's 2018 budget proposal suggests cutting $1.7 billion, or 6 percent, from the Department of Energy's budget, which provides funding for the nation's energy policies and research, including the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado. The budget proposal also cuts $5.7 billion, or 31 percent, from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which in addition to developing and enforcing environmental regulations, runs the Energy Star program that helps buyers find energy-efficient appliances and buildings. The redder the state, the more people there say they support renewable energy. (Image credit: Yale Program on Climate Change Communication) The majority of respondents also supported setting strict carbon dioxide limits on existing coal-fired power plants, the survey showed. However, Trump's March 28 executive order that rolls back the Clean Power Plan eliminates a federal regulation that would have set limits on emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants from power plants, Live Science recently reported. In an interview with Fox's Chris Wallace on April 2, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt defended the executive order against the Clean Power Plan. "The president is keeping his promise to the American people to roll back regulatory overreaches that have been occurring the last couple of years," Pruitt told Wallace. Meanwhile, 34 percent of Congress (both senators and representatives) doubt that climate change is real, according to a 2016 survey given by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, an independent, nonpartisan policy institute and advocacy organization. Whitehouse also noted that in 2009, Trump and some of his children Ivanka, Donald Jr. and Eric signed an advertisement in The New York Times saying that they "supported meaningful and effective measures to fight climate change," which they called "scientifically irrefutable," Whitehouse said. In addition, Whitehouse referenced a 2017 Gallup poll, which found that 71 percent of Americans say most scientists believe global warming is occurring; 68 percent believe global warming is caused by human activities; and 62 percent believe the effects of global warming have already begun. Original article on Live Science. Facts about sarin Like other nerve agents, sarin targets an enzyme within the body's neuromuscular junctions, where nerves meet muscles. Usually, this enzyme deactivates the nerve-signaling molecule acetylcholine. But sarin stops this deactivation by blocking the enzyme. (Image credit: Junko Kimura/Getty) The chemical bomb attack that killed at least 86 people, including 28 children, in Syria on April 4 likely involved sarin, a deadly nerve agent, the Turkish Ministry of Health said in a statement. Sarin is a highly poisonous chemical that kills because it interferes with signaling within the nervous system. Here is the science behind this deadly gas. Pesticide roots Sarin was developed in 1938 in Germany. The chemical was initially created to be a pesticide that would kill insects, not a deadly chemical that would kill humans, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Sarin, along with certain pesticides and other nerve agents, belongs to a family of chemicals called organophosphates. (Image credit: Marco Di Lauro/Getty) Sarin was developed in 1938 in Germany. The chemical was initially created to be a pesticide that would kill insects, not a deadly chemical that would kill humans, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Sarin, along with certain pesticides and other nerve agents, belongs to a family of chemicals called organophosphates. Clear and colorless In its liquid form, sarin is clear, colorless, odorless and tasteless. (Image credit: Brendan Smialowski/Getty) In its liquid form, sarin is clear, colorless, odorless and tasteless. The liquid form of sarin can evaporate into a vapor, which people may then breathe in. During the attack in Syria on April 4, the chemical was spread during a bomb attack, according to news sources. Poisonous chemical Like other nerve agents, sarin targets an enzyme within the body's neuromuscular junctions, where nerves meet muscles. Usually, this enzyme deactivates the nerve-signaling molecule acetylcholine. But sarin stops this deactivation by blocking the enzyme. (Image credit: Junko Kimura/Getty) Like other nerve agents, sarin targets an enzyme within the body's neuromuscular junctions, where nerves meet muscles. Usually, this enzyme deactivates the nerve-signaling molecule acetylcholine. But sarin stops this deactivation by blocking the enzyme. Without the enzyme to switch it off, acetylcholine will repeatedly stimulate nerve cell receptors. This can lead acetylcholine to build up in the muscles, cause excessive twitching and then result in paralysis, said Dr. Lewis Nelson, chairman of emergency medicine at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. If the muscles that control breathing become paralyzed, the person can die, he said. Organophosphate pesticides and nerve agents can also target the same enzyme in glands, which can lead to excessive fluid release. For this reason, people who are exposed to sarin, whether through skin-to-skin contact or inhalation, may experience diarrhea, along with excess fluids running from their eyes, noses, mouths, sweat glands and urinary tract. People who are exposed to sarin may also experience seizures and pinpoint (constricted) pupils Treatment Sarin can cause symptoms within seconds to minutes, depending on its route and exposure levels. (Image credit: Edlib Media Center/Zuma) Sarin can cause symptoms within seconds to minutes, depending on its route and exposure levels. People who are exposed to sarin should quickly decontaminate themselves by removing their clothing and washing their skin with soap and water, Nelson said. They should also flush out their mouth and eyes with water. People who become paralyzed may benefit from an oxygen mask attached to a device that will help them breathe. But sarin affects so many of the body's organs that, usually, an antidote is needed to help people who are exposed to it live. One antidote, atropine, blocks acetylcholine receptors, sparing the body's muscles from overstimulation. The other, pralidoxime, or 2-PAM, removes sarin from the enzyme that stops acetylcholine from accumulating, Nelson said. However, both antidotes must be given within about 10 minutes of exposure in order to be effective, he said. It's banned Sarin and other nerve agents are banned under the Chemical Weapons Convention. More than 190 counties worldwide participate in the convention, Live Science reported previously. To date, nearly 95 percent of declared chemical-weapon stockpiles in countries participating in the convention have been destroyed, according to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which enforces the rules of the convention. (Image credit: Reuters/Alamy) Sarin and other nerve agents are banned under the Chemical Weapons Convention. More than 190 counties worldwide participate in the convention, Live Science reported previously. To date, nearly 95 percent of declared chemical-weapon stockpiles in countries participating in the convention have been destroyed, according to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which enforces the rules of the convention. Subway attack A deadly attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995 made sarin one of the best-known nerve agents in the world. Members of the doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo used sarin in their attacks. Their first victims died in 1994, when the cult poisoned people in Matsumoto, Japan. These people happened to be living near three judges who were overseeing a lawsuit that involved the cult. Later, in 1995, Aum Shinrikyo members filled plastic bags with liquid sarin and placed them under the seats of Tokyo subway cars. The perpetrators punctured the bags and then exited the trains. The subway attacks resulted in 13 deaths and injured at least 5,500 people, news sources reported. The above photo shows the cult's leader, Shoko Asahara (whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto), who was convicted of devising the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway. (Image credit: Junko Kimura/Getty) A deadly attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995 made sarin one of the best-known nerve agents in the world. Members of the doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo used sarin in their attacks. Their first victims died in 1994, when the cult poisoned people in Matsumoto, Japan. These people happened to be living near three judges who were overseeing a lawsuit that involved the cult. Later, in 1995, Aum Shinrikyo members filled plastic bags with liquid sarin and placed them under the seats of Tokyo subway cars. The perpetrators punctured the bags and then exited the trains. The subway attacks resulted in 13 deaths and injured at least 5,500 people, news sources reported. The above photo shows the cult's leader, Shoko Asahara (whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto), who was convicted of devising the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway. Repeat offense Syria had used sarin as a weapon prior to the April 2017 attack. In 2013, the Syrian government reportedly used the gas in the suburbs of Damascus, killing more than 1,000 people, according to The New York Times. In the above photo, Dr. Abu Muhammad treats patients in a secret clinic north of Damascus in 2013. Of the 12,000 sarin gas antidotes his clinic was supposed to receive, just 100 arrived, he told reporters. (Image credit: Kontinent/Zuma) Syria had used sarin as a weapon prior to the April 2017 attack. In 2013, the Syrian government reportedly used the gas in the suburbs of Damascus, killing more than 1,000 people, according to The New York Times. In the above photo, Dr. Abu Muhammad treats patients in a secret clinic north of Damascus in 2013. Of the 12,000 sarin gas antidotes his clinic was supposed to receive, just 100 arrived, he told reporters. This artists rendition of high-tech contact lenses illustrates how transparent biosensors lenses could one day help people track their health. Contact lenses packed with transparent sensors might one day help people with diabetes to monitor their blood sugar levels, a new study finds. These sugar-sensing lenses would give people a way to check their blood sugar levels without drawing blood, according to the scientists who are developing on the ices. Typically, people with diabetes monitor their blood sugar by making a tiny prick in their fingertip to draw blood, and then using a small device to measure blood sugar levels. It hurts, and some have to do this several times a day. [9 Healthy Habits You Can Do in 1 Minute (Or Less)] But the proposed contact lenses could continuously monitor a person's blood sugar levels throughout the day, said study co-author Gregory Herman, a chemical engineer at Oregon State University. Such continuous monitoring could help reduce the risk of diabetes-related health problems, by alerting someone about any major changes in his or her blood sugar levels right when they happen, Herman said. (In an individual who has diabetes, the body cannot effectively transport sugar, or glucose, from the blood to that person's cells. Too much glucose in the blood can lead to medical problems.) Devices that continuously monitor blood sugar levels are available, but they often require the insertion of electrodes under the skin, which can be painful, lead to skin irritation or infections, and must get replaced every several days. Contact lenses that could continuously and noninvasively monitor blood sugar levels could eliminate many of these problems, Herman said. And because contact lenses are virtually invisible, people could use them without feeling self-conscious, he added. From electronics to eyes To make the blood-sugar-monitoring contact lens, the researchers used technology that was originally developed for electronic products. Specifically, the researchers tinkered with a material called indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO), whose electronic properties have recently helped boost the image quality in smartphone, tablet and flat-panel displays while also saving power and improving touch-screen sensitivity. "If you buy an iPhone or an Apple computer or a flat-screen TV nowadays, they use IGZO," Herman told Live Science. He presented his findings on April 4 at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society in San Francisco. In the study, the researchers made contact lenses that included transparent sheets of transistors made with IGZO. To test if the lenses could measure glucose levels, the transistors were coated with an enzyme called glucose oxidase, which breaks down sugar. This meant that when the contact lenses were exposed to glucose, a chemical reaction took place as the enzyme broke down the sugar. The transistors measured this reaction which indicated that glucose was present through changes in the electrical currents that flowed through the lenses. The researchers found that the sensors could detect even very low concentrations of glucose, such as the levels typically found in tears. In theory, more than 2,500 of these sensors could be embedded within a 1-square-millimeter patch of a contact lens, Herman said. And by using Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, the data collected by the lenses could be wirelessly transmitted to smartphones or other devices, he said. [10 Technologies That Will Transform Your Life] Beyond blood sugar But measuring blood sugar levels isn't the only potential use for biosensing contact lenses, Herman said. The lenses could also be used to help monitor a range of other conditions, such as cancer, AIDS, glaucoma, and kidney or liver disease, the researchers said. For example, sensors could be developed to measure a chemical called uric acid, which is found in higher levels in people with kidney disease or gout. Additionally, sensors that measure lactate could help monitor liver disease or sepsis; and sensors for the neurotransmitter dopamine could help monitor glaucoma, he said. "You could also look for molecules related to HIV or cancer," Herman said. "We want to see if there are good ways to catch cancer at very early stages, before it's a fatal disease." Herman cautioned that the lenses are still in the very early stages of development. It could be a year or more before a prototype biosensing contact lens is ready for animal testing, he said. And tests in humans are even further off, he said. Original article on Live Science. In this photo, taken on March 30, 2017, winemaker Orestes Esteves moves a jug of wine, at his house in Havana, Cuba. Cubans have found a homemade solution to making wine without high-tech fermentation tools: They use condoms. Homemade wine is an affordable spirit for Cubans, where a bottle of imported wine in state-run liquor stores sells for at least half of the average person's monthly salary of $25, reported Associated Press. One backyard winemaker, Orestes Estevez, has hundreds of fruit-filled glass jugs capped with condoms. Estevez told the AP he uses the condoms to signal when the juices are ready to be bottled. To ferment grapes into wine, yeast feeds on the sugars found in the fruit and carbon dioxide (CO2) is subsequently released, Kathleen Arnink, a viticulture (science of wine) and enology (study of wine) lecturer at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, told Live Science. The gas inflates the condoms as the fruit ferments, and when the condoms become limp again, Estevez said they signal that fermentation is complete. [Photos: Amazing Microscopic Views of Italian Cocktails] "Putting a condom on a bottle is just like with a man," Estevez told the AP. "It stands up, the wine is ready, and then the process is completed." Estevez, who turned his backyard winemaking into a winery, told the AP he sells an average of 50 bottles a day for about 40 cents each. The tiny winery has become a neighborhood attraction, the AP reports, thanks to the affordable local vino and bizarre sight of condom-capped jugs of wine. In commercial operations, winemakers use fermentation locks that allow the CO2 to escape while still sealing off the wine from oxygen, Arnink said. Winemakers monitor the sugar concentration of the wine during fermentation to determine when the process is complete. Trapping CO2 in a condom does help protect the wine from oxygen, though waiting for the inflatable to deflate is not a precise measure of the fermentation process, according to Arnink. And though it may look strange, at-home winemakers have used inflatables, such as balloons, for their concoctions before. "I have seen balloons used, but anything that will fit on the neck of the carboy [wine jugs] and trap the gas would work," Arnink told Live Science in an email. "I guess manufacturing birth control has been more important in Cuba than making balloon animals, so they had more condoms available than balloons." Though there are better tools available for winemaking, Arnink said using balloons or condoms is an acceptable method for a makeshift fermentation operation at home. Original article on Live Science. A Connecticut woman is crediting her Fitbit with saving her life, after the device detected signs of life-threatening blood clots. The woman, 73-year-old Patricia Lauder, had recently retired and bought a Fitbit to help her get in shape, according to a statement from the University of Connecticut, where Lauder was treated. But then, she began to feel ill, even though doctors' tests for health problems came back negative. She also noticed that her heart rate reading on her Fitbit was gradually increasing, until one day, it spiked to 140 beats per minute. She called 911 and was taken to the hospital, where tests showed that she had a condition called pulmonary embolisms, or blood clots in her lungs. Doctors gave her anti-clotting medication, which got rid of the clots. "If I didn't have a Fitbit on my wrist, I would never have known that my heart rate was getting dangerously high," Lauder told UConn Today, the news website for the university. "And I might not be here to tell my story." [Top 10 Amazing Facts About Your Heart] Experts say that, because some fitness trackers include heart rate monitors, the devices can potentially alert people to certain health problems that cause changes in heart rate. "Heart rate is a general signal for how much stress your body's under," Dr. Allen Taylor, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at Georgetown University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C., told Live Science in a 2015 interview. Like a fever, a high heart rate could be a symptom of many conditions, so it cannot be used by itself to make a diagnosis, Taylor said. But "for certain conditions, [if] patients find their heart rates running faster, it could alert them to say 'something's not right here,' Taylor said. A rapid or irregular heartbeat can be a sign of a pulmonary embolism, according to the Mayo Clinic. The blockage caused by the clots can require the heart to start working harder to pump blood through vessels, and this can also lead to an increase in blood pressure inside the lungs, the Mayo Clinic says. Other conditions that a fitness tracker might detect include atrial fibrillation (an erratic heartbeat), anemia (a low red blood cell count) and an overactive thyroid. All of these conditions can lead to a faster-than-normal heart rate. A normal resting heart rate is between 60 and 100 beats per minute, according to the Mayo Clinic. In September 2015, a high school senior credited his Apple Watch with saving his life, when the device showed he had a heart rate of 145 beats per minute. An exam revealed that he had rhabdomyolysis, a condition in which muscles release a protein that damages the kidneys and other organs. And last year, doctors in New Jersey used data from a man's Fitbit to determine how to treat him when he arrived at the ER with a rapid and irregular heart rate. Still, it's important to note that having a normal heart rate doesn't necessarily mean you're healthy, Taylor said. And fitness trackers like the Fitbit aren't approved medical devices, so they cannot be used to diagnose cardiovascular conditions. A study published last year found that wrist-worn heart rate monitors, which are typically used on fitness trackers, are not as accurate as chest strap monitors. The researchers advised fitness-tracker users to be aware that the devices' heart-rate readings aren't always accurate. Original article on Live Science. In this handout image provided by the U.S. Navy, The guided-missile destroyer USS Arleigh Burke (DDG 51) launches Tomahawk cruise missiles on September 23, 2014 in the Red Sea This week, the United States fired 59 Tomahawk missiles to destroy a Syrian airbase in retaliation against the Assad regime's alleged use of chemical weapons against its people, according to the Department of Defense. The missiles, which were launched from ships in the Mediterranean Sea today local time (yesterday in the United States), were targeted at the al-Shayrat Air Base in Homs province, from which the Syrian military is suspected of deploying the planes that carried out the deadly nerve gas attacks this week. But how do these missiles work, and how were they able to precisely target this location without any pilot nearby? [Killer Chemistry: The Chemical Weapons of World War I] Long-range, fast deployment Tomahawk cruise missiles were first used in Desert Storm in 1991 and have been a popular choice in a number of conflicts, most recently in strikes against Libya in 2011, said Thomas Karako, a senior fellow at the International Security Program, Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. The main advantage of these missiles is their range; some classes of the weapon can travel up to 1,350 nautical miles (1,550 miles, or 2,500 kilometers), according to the U.S. Navy. "It has fairly long legs. It doesn't have the speed of some other missiles, but it has a fairly long reach," Karako told Live Science. "Any time there's some defended airspace and the goal is not to put an aircraft pilot in harm's way, you want a longer-range capability." In this instance, the range allowed the missiles to be fired from a ship in the Mediterranean, which is typical, given that they are carried by submarines or ships, Karako added. These missiles can also be deployed very quickly, said Chris Harmer, a senior naval analyst with the Middle East Security Project at the Institute for the Study of War, a nonprofit organization that provides military research and analysis. "You send an email to the ships saying, 'Send these targets,' you hit a button and it goes," Harmer told Live Science. "With manned aircraft, there's a much longer planning process." Sophisticated navigation To navigate, the missiles use a combination of digital scene matching and global positioning system (GPS) to pinpoint their targets with better accuracy. Digital scene matching takes images captured by the missile while in flight toward its target and matches them to images taken prior to the flight, during mission planning, according to a 1994 paper describing digital scene matching from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, which helped design the system. Another aspect of the system's navigation is a tool called terrain contour matching. This system compares images from a previously acquired contour map and compares them with measurements that a radar altimeter makes on board the missile. Based on input for the terrain-matching algorithm, the system can update its inertial navigation system a set of sensors, such as accelerometers and gyroscopes to measure rotation to reorient itself. Tomahawk missiles can also make real-time updates to their position. "The missile is sending constant emails back to the controlling agency; then the controlling agency can send updated guidance via essentially a data email back to the missile," Harmer said. If something in the terrain changes or the mission gets canceled, the people monitoring the missile can redirect it with a simple command, Harmer said. In the past, historical mapping might have been done by a plane on a reconnaissance mission a week earlier, and the military could only hope nothing had changed. Nowadays, because drones and satellite imagery are ubiquitous, "they're taking live updates until the missile hits the target," Harmer said. The accurate navigation allows the missiles to fly low to the ground, meaning they can fly closer to other objects and often evade radar detection by foreign military. They are also capable of taking a nonlinear route to a target, which makes them well-suited for evading dangerous areas en route to a target, according to the U.S. Navy. Their ability to take a nonlinear route also means multiple missiles can be launched from different locations and all land at the target at the same time, Karako said. The missiles can also be programmed to loiter in an area without dropping a bomb. In yesterday's attack, all 59 missiles reached the target within 1 second of one another, Harmer said. Tomahawk missiles are about 18 feet (5.6 meters) long, and can carry up to a 1,000-lb. (450 kilograms) warhead or a group of 166 tiny "bomblets," which are essentially like grenades. Initially, the missile is propelled by its engine. Once it's in flight, its wings unfold, and it can fly at a top speed of 550 mph (880 km/h). The company Raytheon, which manufactures the Tomahawk missiles, is currently developing an updated version of the missile that could have two-way satellite communication with objects on the ground, such as tanks and ships, as well as more robust and sophisticated navigation systems. In fiscal year 2016, the Navy purchased 214 of the missiles, each of which cost $1.09 million, said Capt. Mark Johnson, program manager for Tomahawk missiles. However, that cost includes past research and development; the "flyaway" cost of a new Tomahawk missile is around $650,000, Harmer said. Originally published on Live Science. A rare parasitic worm that can infect people's brains is causing concern in Maui, where there has been a rise in cases in recent months. So far this year, two residents in Maui and two visitors to the island have become infected with the parasite, and four additional cases are under investigation, according to local media outlet Hawaii News Now. Prior to this year, there were just two infections on the island in the past 10 years. The parasite, called rat lungworm or Angiostrongylus cantonensis, can infect the brain and cause meningitis, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Infected people may experience headaches, neck stiffness, nausea, vomiting and abnormal sensations in their arms and legs. Most people fully recover without treatment, but in rare cases the infection can cause neurological problems or death, the CDC said. [10 Bizarre Diseases You Can Get Outdoors] If you could imagine, its like having a slow-moving bullet go through your brain," Dr. Sarah Park, an epidemiologist at the Hawaii State Department of Health, told the Associated Press. "Theres no rhyme or reason why its going to hang out in this part of the brain or that part of the brain," Park said. The parasite is found in rats, but larvae from the parasite can also infect snails and slugs, the CDC said. People can become infected if they eat raw or undercooked snails or slugs, or by eating contaminated produce, the CDC said. The parasite is prevalent in Southeast Asia and tropical Pacific islands, but in recent years, its geographical distribution has expanded to other areas, including Africa, the Caribbean and the United States, the CDC said. In the past decade, more than 70 cases of rat lungworm were reported in Hawaii, most on the Big Island, according to the Hawaii State Legislature. Original article on Live Science. Nearly two decades after the abduction of 13-year-old Christina Williams gripped and horrified her hometown of Seaside in Monterey County, authorities on Thursday said they had finally solved the case and plan to charge a man with kidnapping, sexually assaulting and murdering the girl. The suspect, Charles Allen Holifield, a 56-year-old sex offender and former resident of the same area, is serving a sentence of 25 years to life at Valley State Prison in Chowchilla (Madera County). Flanked by law enforcement officials who have worked the cold case since Christina vanished in June 1998, Monterey County District Attorney Dean Flippo told reporters at an afternoon news conference in Salinas that his office would charge Holifield in Christinas case by the end of next week. Holifield will be arraigned for first-degree murder with special circumstances and kidnapping, charges that make him eligible for the death penalty or life in prison without the chance of parole if convicted, said Assistant District Attorney Jeannine Pacioni. Holifield was a suspect from the early days of the investigation and had been questioned by police about Christinas disappearance, but prosecutors said previous evidence wasnt strong enough to warrant bringing the case to trial. Once charges are filed, Flippo said he expects Holifield to be extradited from prison to Monterey County a transfer that could take weeks. Flippo declined to say whether he would seek the death penalty, saying that determination would be made only after his office consults with Christinas surviving family, particularly her parents, Michael and Alice Williams. Christina disappeared June 12, 1998, after she took the family dog for a walk around the former Fort Ord Army base. About 45 minutes later, the dog was found with its leash but without Christina. Her disappearance shook the county, and soon after she went missing, celebrities helped bring nationwide attention to the case, while the FBI offered a six-figure reward for information leading to an arrest. Pictures of Christina, along with sketches of possible suspects, were posted around Monterey County, in the Bay Area and beyond. The girls decomposed body was discovered seven months later, on Jan. 12, 1999, by a botany researcher on land belonging to the University of California Natural Reserve system. She was found near where she was last seen. Flippo said DNA evidence linked Holifield definitively to Christinas death after investigators spent years, and thousands of hours of work, trying to establish a connection that would hold up in court. He declined to provide additional details. Holifield was previously convicted of assault with intent to commit rape in Monterey County. His current sentence stemmed from a 1999 conviction for attempted kidnapping and making criminal threats against a woman in 1998, said Pacioni. The charging of Holifield will never bring back Christina Williams, Flippo said, but the very least we can do is work very, very hard to try to present the evidence to a jury. Michael Bodley is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mbodley@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @michael_bodley #Moon-NK dogs Moon returns to state two dogs gifted by N. Korea's Kim Former President Moon Jae-in returned to the state a pair of dogs that he had been in custody of since North Korean leader Kim Jong-un gave them as a gift in 2018, Moon's side and ... #taxi Seoul to increase late-night taxi service amid shortage The Seoul city government said Tuesday it will expand the operation of late-night taxis to cope with the growing demand for taxi service during late hours. Currently, an average... This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate If hankerings for barbecue, cold beer and live music are washing on you like "wave on wave," then you're in luck. Because Texas country star Pat Green is opening a bar and restaurant in his native San Antonio sometime this summer. The Rustic will also be a live music venue. Green's business partner and Rustic co-founder Kyle Noonan told mySA.com the new location is the first extension of the flagship establishment in Dallas and will be open in The Rim this summer. Noonan said a hard date has not been set, but construction began on the restaurant Jan. 3 and July is "circled" on the calendar for a debut. RELATED: Shake Shack coming to San Antonio The Rustic will be near The General Public and Bowl and Barrel, which are also owned by Noonan and his business partner, Josh Sepkowitz. Inside The Rustic's 27,000-square-foot space, guests can order from a menu full of authentic Texas items from barbecue to cold brew. "It'll be a strictly Texas-inspired menu with 40 Texas beers on draft and any Texas liquors we can drum up. We want to highlight all of the Texas cuisines," Noonan said. "We'll have free, live music seven nights a week and every once in a while we'll have a big national act." The owner said customers shouldn't be too surprised to look up from their plates and see the Texas country icon chowing down on a burger at the table beside them. "He'll pop in from time to time," Noonan said of Green. "He loves what we've done. It's become a place he just likes to go." RELATED: Central Texas H-E-B convenience store to get Whataburger drive-thru The Rustic will open its doors with a "big blowout weekend" jazzed up with a schedule of live music and parties. "We love San Antonio, it's been good to us, San Antonio is a huge city and it's often underserved people think to go to Austin, Dallas or Houston," Noonan said. "But San Antonio is vibrant and I don't think it should be looked at as the 'red-headed step child' of Texas cities." Another good reason to start a business here, as Pat Green once said: "The only ten I see ain't in Tennessee, she's waiting for me in San Antonio." Preview what's to come in the gallery up top. mmendoza@mysa.com Twitter: @MaddySkye This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A man accused of killing a 3-year-old girl inside a local motels restroom in 2014 made an appearance Thursday in the 406th District Court as the District Attorneys Office and his defense counsel address motions in preparation for trial scheduled to begin in May. Cristian Yepez is scheduled to stand trial May 15 for the death of his girlfriends daughter, Jasleen Valdez. Yepez, 27, and his girlfriend, Irene Pantoja, face charges of murder, injury to a child and tampering with evidence, all felonies. Laredo police, with assistance from Pantoja, 23, and Houston Police Department detectives, discovered the childs body buried in a shallow grave in the 7300 block of Springfield Avenue in September 2014. She was buried at a construction site north of Mary Help of Christians School. READ MORE: Leader of Melendez drug ring sentenced to life in prison On Thursday, attorney Uriel Druker, counsel for Yepez, requested 406th District Court Judge Oscar J. Hale Jr. reconsider a filed motion for appointment of co-counsel in Yepezs case. Hale granted Druker assistance in the case due to the number of witnesses and expected length of trial. He said the court is aware of the complexity in coordinating with three different counties in two different states. Along with Laredo and Houston, the Chicago Police Department became involved in the case due to a missing persons report filed for Valdez. At the time of the alleged incident, Yepez was working for a vehicle nationalization business that transports vehicles from Chicago to Laredo. He came to Laredo transporting a pickup. A hearing has been scheduled for April 12 to address additional pending motions before Yepezs case proceeds to trial. Assistant District Attorney Linda Garza-Martinez said the prosecution is pushing to get Yepezs case completed before Pantojas case proceeds to trial. Hale previously granted a severance of Yepez and Pantojas cases, meaning they are heard individually before the court. Pantoja, who made an appearance Thursday as well, was told to return to court May 15 at 8:30 a.m. after her counsel announced they had nothing to urge before the court. She is currently out on bond. Yepez has been in custody at the Webb County Jail since his arrest. He is currently held on a combined $875,000 bond. The incident Court records state Valdez was buried in an empty lot, where the land was later developed for construction. The day before her body was found, Pantoja had approached HPD saying that Yepez had killed and buried her daughter. Pantoja assisted the Laredo and Houston Police departments in finding her childs body after she came forward to HPD about the case. She led detectives to a shallow grave Sept. 11, 2014 in the 7300 block of Springfield Avenue. Yepez was later arrested on an unlawful restraint charge in Houston. The criminal complaint states that Yepez would take out his anger and frustration on Valdez. Authorities said Pantoja told them that Yepez bit Valdezs arms while en route to Laredo from Chicago. Pantoja also claimed Yepez dropped the girl headfirst on the floor one time, police recounted in the complaint. An investigation revealed that the trio came down to Laredo from Chicago in mid-August. They checked into the Monterrey Inn, 4820 San Bernardo Ave. Police allege Yepez locked himself with the girl inside the bathroom at the Monterrey Inn. Pantoja told police she could hear her daughter crying and thumps consistent with someone being hit, according to court records. BREAKING TODAY: Regulations to stay in place for Laredo taxi cabs Pantoja claimed Yepez opened the door and had her daughter, who was unresponsive, in his arms. She could only hear a gurgling sound coming from Valdez, the affidavit states. The couple allegedly wrapped the girl in a sheet, put her in the vehicle, left the Monterrey Inn and checked into a local Motel 6. Pantoja told authorities that her daughters body remained in the vehicle, according to court records. Police said a man not identified in court records knocked on the door and made plans to bury Valdezs body at an empty lot. They drove to a dead end on Springfield Avenue behind the water tanks located north of Mary Help of Christians School. Yepez and the man exited the vehicle and walked toward the brush carrying Valdez and a shovel, Pantoja told police. They returned to the vehicle and drove to a carwash to clean the pickup, according to court records. An affidavit states the man drove Pantoja and Yepez to the Tornado Bus Station, where they bought bus tickets to Chicago. Taryn Walters may be reached at 956-728-2528 or twalters@lmtonline.com. LMT Reporter Cesar G. Rodriguez contributed to this report. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, issued a statement Friday morning on last night's airstrikes in Syria carried out by President Trump. An unknown number of Syrians died from the airstrike, which was a response to this week's deadly chemical attack, purportedly ordered by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The AP reports that dozens died. RELATED: Regulations to stay in place for Laredo taxi cabs Cuellar called Trump's action a proportional response, ordered out of compassion for Syria's civilian victims. But if the president plans to "escalate our military involvement," Cuellar said he must come to Congress first. Read Cuellar's full statement: "Bashar al-Assad's chemical weapons attack on Syrian civilians is an absolute atrocity. Like all Americans, I was horrified by the images of innocent children among the victims. The United States has a responsibility to condemn these actions in the strongest terms, and to hold the perpetrators responsible within the scope of international law. "President Trump's decision to attack an airfield held by Assad's forces, in a major reversal from his previous positions, appears to be a proportional response within that framework. If he plans to escalate our military involvement, however, he must come to Congress for a specific Authorization for Use of Military Force. Our troops and their families deserve an open debate and clear objectives before we put them in harm's way. "Unfortunately, this chemical attack is just an escalation of years of horrific violence, endured by the Syrian people at Assad's hands with Russia's complicity. President Trump says he was moved to order airstrikes by compassion for civilian victims. I hope this compassion also inspires him to reconsider his administration's troubling relationship to the Russian government. America has an opportunity to ease human suffering and stand up for what is right; President Trump has an opportunity to lead that effort, if he is willing to take it." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Last week, City Council heard from Laredoans young and old on whether to allow ridesharing companies like Lyft to operate in the city. In an effort to create a fair playing field for Lyft drivers and taxi drivers, council voted to allow both to operate without any regulation enforced by the city. City ordinance lays out that cab drivers must undergo in-depth background checks, have paid all government property taxes, must have liability insurance and must pay a $75 annual fee to renew their registration, among many other rules. When council voted on March 28 to scratch these rules, it would have eliminated an entire article pages and pages of regulations from the code of ordinances. At Mondays meeting, however, council decided not to eliminate these regulations after all. Attorney Zone Nguyen, who spoke on behalf of the taxi drivers, said at the meeting that he understands that councils intentions were good in deciding to eliminate the regulations, but that they exist for public safety reasons. RELATED: Lyft allowed to operate without regulations in Laredo Chapter 32 is a long-standing ordinance and this profession has been in Laredo for 60 plus years, Nguyen said. When council voted to lift the rules last week, city staff began to take up taxi stands, Nguyen said, in preparation of putting up parking meters. Taxi stands are areas along the curb designated exclusively for cabs. In foregoing the taxi regulations, these stands would go away too. Theres a public safety issue, Nguyen said. We have all these taxi cabs and very few stands for them to park. In the end, Nguyen asked that council not deregulate, but instead increase public standards for everyone. Council voted unanimously that these regulations stay in place, but that they not affect ridesharing companies. They also said that over the next six months staff would work on amending this ordinance to be more fair and favorable for taxi drivers. Julia Wallace may be reached at 956-728-2543 or jwallace@lmtonline.com Click through the gallery above to see the most popular Lyft destinations in Texas. A League City native and Texas A&M graduate will be the next commander of the Blue Angles, the U.S. Navy's famed flight demonstration team. The selection of Commander Eric Doyle to lead the squadron was announced this week in Pensacola, Fla., their home base. The official change-of-command ceremony is set for Nov. 12, 2017 at the conclusion of this year's show season, Navy officials said. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate One of the most frequent criticisms of red-light cameras, the subject of my Friday column, is that they lead to more rear-end collisions. The theory is that panicky drivers, aware that a camera is watching, make a last-second decision to slam on the brake, causing the trailing vehicle to plow into them. There is some evidence to support this assertion. But as with all questions about red-light cameras, the answer to whether they contribute to certain types of accidents appears to be: It depends. One factor that influences the risk of a rear-end collision is the duration of the yellow (or amber, if you want to be fussy about it) light. The National Motorists Association, which opposes red-light cameras, has a page on its web site devoted to this topic. In response to my column, several readers emailed to say they had been nailed by a Sugar Land red light camera because the light switched from yellow to red just before they cleared the intersection. "Almost made it," reader Don Moore wrote. "I timed the yellow. 4 seconds. According to traffic experts I researched, the yellow should have been 4.8 seconds in a 50 mile speed zone. At 4.8 seconds I would have cleared the inspection easily." Another reader, Joanne Schmidt, wrote that she was cited at an intersection monitored by a camera while making a right-hand turn as the light turned yellow. "I approached the turn cautiously, aware of the camera, only to have the light go green-yellow-red in split seconds. Some of these cameras don't operate in 'real time,' " she wrote. Sugar Land spokesman Doug Adolph said the timing of yellow lights at all the city's intersections, whether or not they have cameras, is determined by traffic engineers based on state standards. The lights are reviewed regularly, he said. Distrust of city governments that administer red-light camera programs, and of the vendors they hire to install and operate the cameras, was another common theme in the responses to my column. In his email, Moore suggested that cities were "gaming the system" by setting yellow lights to change quickly to red. "I think they should be outlawed throughout Texas!" Moore wrote. The Texas Senate agrees. Lamar University officially dedicated their new Center for Innovation, Commercialization and Entrepreneurship on Wednesday with tours of the 20,000-square-foot building at the corner of Rolfe Christopher Drive and Jim Gilligan Way. The building was funded with disaster relief funds from the 2008 hurricane season. The center was envisioned to bring together the school's science, engineering and business students, along with other economic development resources, to encourage creativity and turn scientific research into businesses. Along with research labs and spaces for group projects, the building also has office space for new business start-ups. WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon launched dozens of Tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian air base late Thursday in retaliation for a gruesome poison gas attack this week that U.S. officials said was carried out by President Bashar Assad's forces. Trump authorized the attack after he was briefed by Defense Secretary James N. Mattis in Palm Beach, Fla., where the president is hosting visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping. Many people fear the jump into homeownership. They worry they dont have enough for a down payment, wont qualify for a competitive rate, or even worse: they wont make enough to cover their monthly mortgage costs. Sadly, these concerns are often enough to drive a qualified potential buyer away from the for sale signs and straight to a local landlord. And while at first, choosing to rent instead of buy may seem like a financially responsible decision, many people fail to consider all the hidden costs that come with a rental property. Though its true, you wont have a looming mortgage payment over your head, you will owe your landlord a substantial chunk of change every month, and more often than not, this equals much more than your average mortgage payment would have been. Couple this with the dozens of other added costs and fees we have listed out below, and youve got yourself a pretty sour deal in the long run. Are you looking at houses for rent in San Antonio? Before you go any further in your search, make sure you know all the facts! Consider these hidden rental costs, for instance: 1. Your landlords profit. You can bet your landlord isnt charging you the bare minimum. They want to cover your propertys mortgage payment, property taxes, and mortgage insurance AND make a buck or two on top of that. So not only are you paying for your house, but youre also paying for some of their income and thats definitely not something you have to worry about when purchasing your own home. (This is why monthly rents are often much more than a mortgage payment would be.) 2. Deposits and fees. Did you have to put down a deposit when you moved in? How about a fee for your pets? Or an application fee or security fee? While some of these may be refundable (years down the line when you move out), many times your landlord will keep them anyway. They may use them to clean the house after you leave, repair anything you may have broken or worn down, or just put it toward back rent you may owe. 3. Storage rentals. Are you considering renting a property that may be a little smaller than ideal? Then youll have to do what many renters are forced to do: rent a storage unit. You can use these to store excess furniture, clothing, decor or even cars until you have a home with additional space, and while theyre certainly convenient, theyre also very expensive. Storage units can range anywhere from $30 to upwards of $100 a month, depending on the size of your unit, its location, and whether it needs temperature control, security or other added features. These costs can add up quickly especially if youre renting them for the long-term! Wouldnt it just be easier (and cheaper) to have all those items in your own home for good? 4. Renters insurance. One thing you dont need when you own your own home is renters insurance, which protects your belongings in the event your rental house is robbed, flooded, burned down, or blown away. And though the minimal coverage doesnt cost a ton, if you have some high-value items (like instruments, expensive furniture, jewelry, etc.) youre going to want to cough up the cash for a better plan. It could be your saving grace should the unthinkable happen. 5. Taxes. When you own a home, you get a tax cut for it. When you rent, that chance goes out the window. Its actually your landlord who will get the tax cut for your property and NOT you. (Bummer, right?) In the end, youll end up paying loads more in income taxes while you rent than you ever would as a homeowner just another reason to ditch the "rent race" and buy when (and as soon as) you can. 6. Home improvements. Sure your landlord will fix the AC when it breaks or replace that old water heater when it stops working, but theyre not going to paint your walls, give you new cabinetry, or install a new ceiling fan. Any home upgrades or improvements you want will be done on your own dime, and thats not even the worst part. When you move out a year or two from now? Youll have nothing to show for it the hard work or money you put into those improvements. 7. Pet rent. I mentioned pet fees and deposits before, but some landlords even go so far as to charge you monthly rent for your furry friends. It may be a little as $10 bucks a month, or it could be $20, $30 or even $50 depending on the number of animals you own and their breeds. Tack that on to your regular rent, your utilities, your storage unit costs, and youve got a pretty hefty bill racked up and thats just for one month. Imagine how much you will be paying over the course of the year! 8. Laundry. Unless your rental comes with its own washer-dryer (which many dont), youre going to rely on the local laundromat for all your washing and drying. Not only is this a huge hassle, taking up a big chunk of your time and your weekend, it also gets expensive especially if youre washing clothes for an entire family. A $.50 load ten times a week can add up over a year. Even if your rental home comes with a laundry room, it most likely will not come with the machine, in which case you will have to buy one. 9. Annual increases. Unless its written into your contract that your landlord cant increase rents, you can bet theyre going to do just that at some point. Maybe your neighborhood has gotten more in-demand, or maybe your landlord just needs a little more cash to stay afloat. Either way, its very common to get a rent increase even after youve been there months or even years. With a mortgage, this is never a worry. While your payments might fluctuate slightly due to escrow changes, youll always know what your loan amount is, how much you still owe, and what your mortgage is. Those are steady and reliable. In some cases, rental properties can be a great option, but you should never jump the gun and assume its the only choice you have. Youd be surprised at how affordable a home mortgage can be (even if you dont have cash for a huge down payment.) Mortgage rates today are at historic lows, and theres never been a better time to buy, so make sure you talk to a financial professional as well as an experienced real estate agent before making any big decisions. Buying very well may be your best (and most affordable) bet! Get the Help You Need Do you want help finding houses for rent in San Antonio, TX? Are you tired of the rent race and want to buy instead? The agents here at Keller Williams San Antonio can help you either way. Contact us today so we can learn about you, your needs and your budget, and well help you find the perfect San Antonio property to fit the bill. Contact us now to get started. At KW San Antonio, we are committed to making sure buyers have all the information they need when buying a home. Whether you're a first-time homebuyer or seasoned pro, it's always good to be informed (or reminded) of the process. Click here to download this FREE Buyers Guide, customized for the San Antonio buyer. Youll find valuable information about finding a REALTOR, connecting with lenders, making an offer, closing costs, and way more. Let us be your guide! Editors Note: This content is made possible by Keller Williams San Antonio. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of The San Antonio Express-News' or mySanAntonio.com's editorial staff. Learn more about our advertising products at www.hearstmediasanantonio.com. Leading timber processing firm, Glennon Brothers welcomed Mr Fergus Ewing, MSP for Inverness & Nairn, and Cabinet Secretary for the Rural Economy and Connectivity, to its plant in the port of Troon (formerly Adam Wilson & Sons), on Thursday March 30 2017. During the visit, Mr Ewing met with Joint Managing Directors, Pat and Mike Glennon, and saw first-hand the ongoing construction of the 14 million investment in a combined heat and power (CHP) biomass facility. The visit aimed to highlight the importance of the sawmilling sector to the Scottish economy, and afforded the Cabinet Secretary the opportunity to engage with Glennon Brothers, on the key issues facing the sawmilling and wider forest products sector. Fergus Ewing MSP said: I welcome Glennon Brothers' substantial investment into their site at Troon which will support jobs and boost the local economy. Their integrated approach is great for the economy and for the environment, in particular when linked to the use of ships to move timber and reduce lorry miles. I am committed to working with the forest industries to reduce the impacts of timber transport and have recently increased the funding to support this with an extra 5 million. Mike Glennon said The construction of a new state of the art Combined Heat & Power (CHP) plant will provide the final link in transforming Glennon Brothers Troon into a fully integrated site. Logs are delivered from the coasts and islands of Scotland by boat, to be processed in the sawmill. Some of this finished timber will then cross the road to our engineered timber facility, Alexanders Timber Design (ATD), to be incorporated into quality timber frame homes. The CHP plant will produce sufficient electrical power to power the whole plant and export up to 2.5MW of power to the National Grid. Pat Glennon said Continuity of raw material supply is essential to the growth and development of the sawmilling sector. We were pleased to have the opportunity to discuss Mr Ewings commitment to the future of forestry in Scotland. We are delighted that the government have pledged further support for the Timber Link service, and that an additional 5 million has been allocated to the Strategic Timber Transport Scheme. Family & Parenting, Local News, Community, Charity & Cause, Travel & Local Attractions, Health & Wellness, Seasonal & Current Events By Diabetes Research Institute Foundation Published: April 07 2017 Hundreds of cars will be on display in downtown Glen Cove to help raise money for the Diabetes Research Institute. Glen Cove, NY April 7, 2017 Get ready to hear the roar of powerful engines and admire the sleek styles of the most stunning Lamborghinis, Porches, Ferraris, Rolls Royce, customized BMWs and other rare vehicles that will line the streets of Get ready to hear the roar of powerful engines and admire the sleek styles of the most stunning Lamborghinis, Porches, Ferraris, Rolls Royce, customized BMWs and other rare vehicles that will line the streets of Glen Cove on Sunday, June 4 for the 9th annual Gold Coast Concours/Bimmerstock exotic car show. The event, which is free to spectators, will also help raise money for the Diabetes Research Institute (DRI) and its mission to find a biological cure for diabetes. Car enthusiasts can view hundreds of shiny, mint condition exotics from 11 am to 4 pm in the Glen Cove Downtown Business Improvement District. The area will be closed to vehicular traffic. The annual Gold Coast Concours/Bimmerstock show is produced by Martino Auto Concepts/MAC Auto Couture and has raised more than $492,000 for research at the DRI. Dont miss an opportunity to show off your four-wheel pride and joy, as online and day of event registration is only $40 per vehicle, with proceeds benefitting a diabetes cure. What a way to kick off the summer by giving people a chance to view or display some of the most rare and beautiful exotic cars in the Northeast and support our event that raises money for such an important cause of curing diabetes, said Joe LaPadula of Martino Auto Concepts and event co-chair. I thank all the sponsors, participants and volunteers that make this event such a success. We look forward to June 4. The city of Glen Coves downtown business district will be closed for Gold Coast Concours/Bimmerstock, which will also feature great music by The Lazy Dog, a variety of food options, and Joe Manfredi from the Old Westbury Web Radio will serve as the events emcee. Nassau County Legislator Delia DeRiggi-Whitton, a DRI Foundation board and event committee member, is excited about this years event and how its fundraising efforts are helping advance the research at the DRI. "As a mom with a daughter with type 1 diabetes, I am starting to feel that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and that a cure will be found in hopefully the not so far future, DeRiggi-Whitton said. It is because of the hard work that people like Joe LaPadula do that I believe we have come so far. Thank you to everyone who makes this fundraiser possible." This years co-chairs are Joe LaPadula and Jon Holzer with Honorary Co-Chair Glen Cove Mayor Reginald Spinello. Committee members are Delia DeRiggi-Whitton, Fara Finkelstein, Anthony Jimenez, Toni Kessel, Richard Valicenti and Bruce Waller. Event sponsors include Roberta and Bruce Waller & Family; and the Peter and Jeri Dejana Family Foundation. To learn more about the event, sponsorships or to register a vehicle, visit www.diabetesresearch.org/gold-coast-concours/bimmerstock or call 516-822-1700. About the Diabetes Research Institute and Foundation The mission of the Diabetes Research Institute Foundation is to provide the Diabetes Research Institute with the funding necessary to cure diabetes now. The Diabetes Research Institute at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine leads the world in cure-focused research. As the largest and most comprehensive research center dedicated to curing diabetes, the DRI is aggressively working to develop a biological cure by restoring natural insulin production and normalizing blood sugar levels without imposing other risks. Researchers have already shown that transplanted islet cells allow patients to live without the need for insulin therapy. Some study participants have maintained insulin independence for more than 10 years. The DRI is now building upon these promising outcomes by developing a DRI BioHub, a bioengineered mini organ that mimics the native pancreas. While various BioHub platforms are being tested in preclinical and clinical studies, the DRI is also developing strategies to eliminate the need for anti-rejection drugs and reset the immune system to block autoimmunity. For more information, please visit DiabetesResearch.org , tweet @Diabetes_DRI Nature & Weather, Local News, Business & Finance, Community, Charity & Cause, Health & Wellness, Politics By Long Island News & PR Published: April 07 2017 Group looking to reduce noise near airports such as including JFK and LaGuardia. The New York Delegation of the Quiet Skies Caucus looks to reduce airplane and helicopter noise near busy airports such as JFK and LaGuardia. New York, NY April 7, 2017 The bipartisan Quiet Skies Caucus, and its entire New York delegation, sent a letter today pressing Congress to fund two important provisions in the Fiscal Year 2018 government funding bill that would help reduce airplane and helicopter noise near our nations busiest airports, including New York City airports JFK and LaGuardia. The caucus requested the House Appropriations Committees Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development provide funding for health studies on the impact of airplane and helicopter noise on communities and that you include report language directing the Federal Aviation Administration to conduct an expedited review of their noise standards. This effort was led by Quiet Skies Caucus Co-Chair Congressman Tom Suozzi (NY-03) and had strong support from Quiet Skies Caucus founding members Congressman Joe Crowley (NY-14), Congressman Gregory Meeks (NY-05) and Congresswoman Grace Meng (NY-06), as well as Congressman Hakeem Jeffries (NY-08), and Congresswoman Kathleen Rice (NY-04). This is a battle people throughout our region have been waging for too long, said Rep. Suozzi. This issue affects all of us Republicans and Democrats so Congress has a responsibility to listen to these people and do the right thing to ensure that noise levels are going down and that people are getting the help they need. I will continue to lead this fight until folks in our region can live in peace and quiet. I wish to thank the other members of the New York delegation for their continued and tireless work on this important matter. The toll aircraft noise pollution takes on communities surrounding our airports is not just a toll on their quality of life. It adds stress to their lives, affects their ability to sleep and can hinder student learning, said Rep. Crowley, Chairman of the Democratic Caucus. We have an obligation to determine the true impact on their health, to review our current noise standards and to work on real solutions for New Yorkers that for too long have had to endure this perennial disruption. Im proud to join my colleagues in the Quiet Skies Caucus in the effort to make sure the resources are available for Congress to act. Communities throughout New York and the nation continue to be negatively impacted by aircraft noise and many of our constituents remain concerned about the effect it has on their health and quality of life, said Rep. Meng. Developing data on the impact of noise and air pollution is a key to mitigating excessive airplane noise and creating a healthier environment. As a founding member and past Co-Chair of the Quiet Skies Caucus, I have spearheaded numerous initiatives to combat aircraft noise and Im proud to support this latest effort to secure health studies and a review of noise standards. It is critical that our request be approved. This Congress must craft an effective solution to alleviate the noise-related stress endured by millions of people across this country, said Rep. Jeffries. The fact that we've been able to work in a bipartisan manner on this issue is a strong step in the right direction, but we must continue to fight the good fight until we have a legislative remedy that makes a difference. Excessive airplane noise is a serious public health and quality of life concern for many of my constituents, and it will continue to get worse until our federal government does something about it, said Rep. Rice. We are urging our colleagues to take action now by providing the resources we need to assess the effects of aviation noise and directing the FAA to conduct an expedited review of noise standards. We know these are steps we need to take, and we cannot allow this problem to be ignored any longer while our constituents suffer the consequences. Tech & Science, School & Education, Local News, Business & Finance, Community, Charity & Cause, Politics By Long Island News & PR Published: April 07 2017 The funding will provide scholarship support for students with an Associate's degree who enroll in a Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) major. Stony Brook, NY April 7, 2017 Congressman Lee Zeldin (R, NY-1) today announced $998,750 in funding has been granted to Congressman Lee Zeldin (R, NY-1) today announced $998,750 in funding has been granted to Stony Brook University from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The funding will provide scholarship support for students with an Associate's degree who enroll in a Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) major at SUNY Stony Brook. The funding will also be used to boost STEM programs in schools and secure a network for students through advisement and other academic support structures. Congressman Zeldin said, I am pleased to announce that Stony Brook University has been awarded $998,750 in funding from the National Science Foundation. This funding will help provide much needed financial support for college students, while boosting participation in the STEM field. The study of STEM is the future and expanding access to STEM programs is vitally important. Students transferring to Stony Brook are very well-prepared to succeed at a major public research University, and this NSF award is an incredible resource that will provide opportunities that may not have existed before, said Samuel L. Stanley Jr. MD, President of Stony Brook University. By providing more STEM educated students an academic experience that includes undergraduate research and career preparation, more doors will open to them to pursue their goals and the big ideas that ultimately will have a transformative impact on our world. Ahmad Abousamra, a US citizen who graduated from the University of Massachusetts in Boston, became one of the Islamic States top propagandists and chief editor of its English-language magazine. His story is told in the the eighth edition of the Islamic States Rumiyah (Rome) magazine, which was released online in several languages earlier this week. He is identified as Abu Sulayman ash-Shami and Shaykh Ahmad Abdul-Badi Abu Samrah in Rumiyah. The cover of the publication, seen above, features him. Abousamra was apparently killed in an airstrike near Tabqa, Syria in January. Press reports previously indicated that he was killed in mid-2015. But if Rumiyah is accurate, then he survived and continued to serve Abu Bakr al Baghdadis cause for nearly two more years. Before his demise, Abousamra rose to become one of the so-called caliphates most prolific English-speaking propagandists. And Abousamra was tasked with another especially important mission. He was one of the chief architects of the Islamic States anti-al Qaeda messaging. Abousamras family is originally from Syria, but he was born in France on Sept. 19, 1981. Rumiyah begins his story much later, with his graduation from UMass Boston, where he studied computer science. Dissatisfied with life in America, Abousamra decided to go forth in the cause of Allah with some of his friends. So they left as muhajirin to Allah, not coordinating their journey with anyone, Rumiyahs profile continues. They roamed between Yemen, Pakistan, and Iraq, hoping to meet someone who would bring them to the mujahidin. But once they became weary of finding the way, and as they feared inciting the suspicions of intelligence agencies, they returned to America, asking Allah to guide them towards their goal. After returning to his home country, Abousamra decided to try and make America itself the frontlines for his jihad and the place for his martyrdom. He and two of his friends plannedto carry out an operation that would target Americans in their own land. So they drew up their plans for their desired operation, including the seizure of some weapons from the Crusaders, which they would then use for an attack behind enemy lines that they hoped would cause the killing of a large number of mushrikin [polytheists]. Their plot was discovered just days before the operations appointed time, according to Rumiyah. However, Allah supposedly saved Abousamra from falling into captivity, allowing him to leave America before the FBI could gather sufficient information to release an order for his arrest at the borders and airports. The FBIs Most Wanted poster for Abousamra, offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to his capture, can be seen on the right. The FBI announced the reward on Dec. 18, 2013, years after Abousamra absconded from the US. Abousamra returned to the birthplace of his fathers in Syria, living in Aleppo for a few years, seeking knowledge, calling his family and friends to tawhid [monotheism], and anticipating his next chance to wage jihad, according to Rumiyah. The university-educated jihadist was keen to avoid the eyes of the intelligence agency and avoid sitting with the evil scholars who were allied with the tawaghit, meaning Bashar al Assads regime, during this time. Interestingly, Rumiyah avoids any mention of one of Abousamras earliest co-conspirators: Tarek Mehanna. Unlike Abousamra, Mehanna did not escape capture. Mehanna was arrested, tried and convicted on terror-related charges after joining Abousamra on a trip to Yemen in 2004. The pair unsuccessfully tried to join the jihad. After a week in Yemen, they were still unable to locate a training camp, so Mehanna returned to the US. Abousamra pressed on to Iraq and eventually elsewhere. Mehanna didnt give up, however. He began translating and posting al Qaeda videos on the Internet. In 2012, he was sentenced to 17 and a half years in prison on terrorism-related charges. Federal authorities found that Mehanna lied about his own trip to Yemen and the activities of another one of his co-conspirators, Daniel Joseph Maldonado. In 2007, Maldonado pleaded guilty to separate charges in a US Court, admitting that he had traveled from Houston to Africa in November 2005 and then on to Somalia in December 2006 to join the Islamic Courts Union and elements of al Qaeda to fight against the Transitional Federal Government to establish an independent Islamic State in Somalia. Maldonado was subsequently sentenced to a decade in prison. Meanwhile, Abousamra remained free. An Islamic State loyalist who fought Assads regime Abousamra joined the fight against the Assad government after popular uprisings swept through Syria in 2011. He was wounded in a battle against the Nusayriyyah [a derogatory term for Assad and his supporters] in a neighborhood of Halab [Aleppo], according to Rumiyah. He then joined Al Nusrah Front, which was an arm of Abu Bakr al Baghdadis Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) at the time, and met with Al Nusrahs leaders. Rumiyah emphasizes that Abousamra knew Al Nusrah was initially comprised of Baghdadis soldiers. This is one of the key themes in Rumiyahs story, because he would remain loyal to Baghdadi even after Al Nusrah broke away from the ISI and announced its direct allegiance to Ayman al Zawahiri, al Qaedas overall emir. Al Nusrah allegedly denied Abousamras request for transfer to Iraq, and also did not allow him to execute an istishhadi [martyrdom] operation against the Nusayriyyah. So he continued to work in Aleppo, participating in raids against Nusayri [Assad regime] positions. Rumiyah portrays Abousamra as an unwavering Baghdadi loyalist who opposed Al Nusrahs treacherous emir, Abu Muhammad al Julani. Until 2013, Julani was one of Baghdadis lieutenants. But he took Al Nusrah in another direction, disobeying an order from Baghdadi to fall in line. After Julani announced his direct allegiance to Zawahiri in Apr. 2013, the greatest rivalry in the history of modern jihadism broke out. Baghdadis enterprise mushroomed into the current Islamic State, challenging al Qaedas authority within the jihadist community everywhere from West Africa to Southeast Asia. Abousamra criticized Al Nusrahs men for their betrayal of the Islamic State and their violation of their covenant and bayah [oath of allegiance] to Amir ul-Muminin [Emir of the Faithful] Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, Rumiyahs propagandists write. He began exposing the truth of the situation to other soldiers, showing them that [Al Nusrah Front] had been trying to hide their original allegiance to the Islamic State, and he explained to them that it was not permissible to stop obeying Amir ul-Muminin or retract their bayah as long as they did not see blatant kufr [disbelief] from him. At this point, Al Nusrah supposedly sought some way to get rid of him, finally giving Abousamra approval for a martyrdom operation. But Abousamra was hip to their alleged scheme, so he left their ranks in order to renew his bayah to Ami rul-Muminin [Baghdadi] and his status as one of his soldiers. Chief editor of Dabiq Abousamra still sought to kill himself in a suicide bombing, but in the name of Baghdadis state, not Al Nusrah. The Islamic Sate finally picked a target, a large group of Bashar al Assads supporters in the heart of the Nusayri regime-held areas inside the city of Aleppo. He was going to sneak into the middle of a gathering and detonate his explosive belt. But Allah supposedly intervened once again. Abu Muhammad al Furqan, one of the Islamic States most senior leaders, discovered Abousamra and concluded that his talents were best put to use elsewhere. Another jihadist was sent to carry out the suicide bombing. It was then decided to bring [Abousamra] to the Media Diwan of the Islamic State, which Shaykh Abu Muhammad was striving to enhance by widening its activities and supporting it with cadres of qualified scholars and technicians, Rumiyahs editors write. Under Furqans command in the media department, Abousamra organized the foreign languages team, which was created by Furqan to inform Muslims in the east and west about the Islamic State and to urge them to perform hijrah to it. Abousamra worked on various videos released by Al Hayat Media Center, one of the groups main media arms, and translated materials into English. Eventually, these efforts evolved into the English-language Dabiq magazine. Dabiq is a town in Syria that has been at the center of the jihadists apocalyptic mythology. It is supposedly a key location where the jihadists enemies will be vanquished. Furqan chose Dabiq as the publications name in order to frustrate the Crusaders of Rome and convey to them their inevitable end by Allahs permission just as Allahs Messenger explained. Every issue of Dabiq carried the words of Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the founder of al Qaeda in Iraq, which evolved into more than one jihadist group, including the Islamic State and Al Nusrah. The spark has been lit here in Iraq, and its heat will continue to intensify by Allahs permission until it burns the Crusader armies in Dabiq, Zarqawi said. The editors of Rumiyah do not highlight for readers the fact that their end-times predictions for Dabiq fell flat. The town was captured by Turkish-backed forces last year. The Islamic State likely knew that Dabiq would be lost for some time. Earlier in 2016, Dabiq magazine was renamed Rumiyah (Rome). And Zarqawis quote was replaced by another from Abu Hamza al Muhajir, who succeeded Zarqawi as leader of al Qaeda in Iraq and established the Islamic State of Iraq in 2006. Each edition of Rumiyah now includes the following line from Muhajir: O muwahhidin, rejoice, for by Allah, we will not rest from our jihad except beneath the olive trees of Rumiyah [Rome]. The group does not explain how it is going to conquer Rome, if it cannot even hold onto Dabiq. Regardless, Abousamra helped establish this English-language propaganda publication, becoming its chief editor and leader of all the foreign language teams. He wrote many articles for the magazine, review[ed] what his fellow editors wrote, and scrutinize[d] any materials that were translated for publishing, spending a great deal of time and effort doing so, Rumiyahs editors explain. Abousamra worked closely with Furqan, who had many responsibilities as a general caretaker of the Islamic State, a role Furqan was appointed to by Baghdadi himself. Therefore, Furqan likely held one of the most senior positions in the Islamic State under Baghdadi. Because Furqan was busy with many matters, he relied on Abousamra for help in drafting treatises and articles which would clarify the methodology of the Islamic State and expose its enemies. Rumiyahs editors claim that Furqan, who was killed in 2016, was impressed by the quality of Abousamras writing and his knowledge of sharia law. Writing under another alias, Abu Maysarah ash-Shami, Abousamra became one of al Qaedas most strident critics. A staunch opponent of al Qaeda Abousamras fierce opposition to al Qaeda is peppered throughout his writings in Dabiq. The cover story in the sixth issue of the online magazine was written by a purported al Qaeda defector known as Abu Jarir ash-Shamali. The piece was a harsh critique of al Qaedas operations, but also revealed some details about the structure of Zawahiris group, including how the committees within its hierarchy have been reshuffled over time. [See FDDs Long War Journal report, The Islamic States curious cover story.] That same issue of Dabiq included a lengthy article by Abousamra, writing under his pen name, Abu Maysarah ash-Shami. A screen shot of the piece can be seen on the right. Weeks earlier, in November 2014, Baghdadi announced the expansion of the Islamic State, declaring that the groups wilayah (provinces) now existed in several countries outside of Iraq and Syria. Baghdadi also claimed that existing jihadist groups in these countries had been nullified, due to the presence of the caliphate. All Muslims owed their loyalty to the Islamic States wilayah, Baghdadi claimed. One of the affected nations was Yemen, where Baghdadis network has a branch to this day. Naturally, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which rejected Baghdadis caliphate gambit, took exception to his declaration. After all, Baghdadi had implied, or even outright stated, that AQAP was no longer legitimate now that the caliphate operated on its turf. Harith bin Ghazi al Nadhari, a senior ideologue, was among the AQAP officials who objected to Baghdadis declaration. (Nadhari was subsequently killed in a drone strike on Jan. 31 in Yemen.) And in the sixth issue of Dabiq, Abousamra took it upon himself to blast Nadhari. Abousamra criticized Nadhari, who is blinded by his spite, for issuing a lengthy rebuttal to Baghdadi, adding that some of the AQAP mans words trickle with blood, forebode evil, and contain wickedness. Abousamra claimed that Nadhari had fallen into a bizarre contradiction by emphasizing his continuing loyalty to Zawahiri. The Baghdadi loyalist argued that Zawahiri doesnt make takfir on the Rafidah [Shiites] to begin with, as the al Qaeda emir excuses them due to their ignorance. Abousamra was referring to one of the key doctrinal differences between al Qaeda and the Islamic State, with the latter excommunicating all Shiites from Islam. Abousamra added that Zawahiri does not make takfir of the supporters of the regimes throughout region, except for those officers who torture Muslims and belong to some specific departments of National Security. In other words, al Qaedas emir is supposedly soft on the jihadists foes an accusation never hurled at the Islamic State, which is known for its us vs. the world mentality. Abousamra believed he found a contradiction in Nadharis stance, as AQAP is warring with the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen and Zawahiri has forbidden the use of violence against Shiite civilians. But in reality, AQAP has attempted to put limits on its fighting. With some exceptions, AQAP confines its operations to predominately military and security targets manned by the Houthis and its other enemies. AQAP has also distanced itself from the Islamic States deliberate targeting of civilian areas. This is consistent with Zawahiris General Guidelines for Waging Jihad, a policy that was adopted by al Qaedas branches around the globe, but rejected by Baghdadi and his men, as they have fetishized attacks on Shiites. Still, once one goes down the jihadist path, the dividing line between permissible and impermissible violence can become murky. And Abousamra complained in Dabiq that AQAP never has a problem cooperating with groups such as the Islah party, an Islamist political group affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. A leading figure in Islah is Shaykh Abd-al-Majid al-Zindani, a longtime al Qaeda ally in Yemen. In some areas of Yemen, Ansar al Sharia, an AQAP front group, fights side-by-side with the apostate army of Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi and the Bankrupt Brotherhood against the Houthis, Abousamra complained. Their forces are even transported between the frontlines in the vehicles of the apostate army. In his Nov. 2014 speech, Baghdadi took a swipe at AQAP, saying that if the Houthis had been confronted by real Muslims, then their evil would not have become exacerbated. (The Houthis began a largely successful offensive in Yemen months earlier.) Abousamra defended Baghdadis dig at his rivals, arguing that if AQAP hadnt adhered to Zawahiris guidelines and engaged in Zawahiri-style fighting, which treats the Houthis as a Muslim faction that is to be fought with the least amount of force required to repel its aggression, then the Houthis would not have gone on the march. Only after the Houthis rose did Nadhari bless a broader war on their forces, Abousamra claimed, and by then it was too late. Abousamra also critiqued al Qaedas bayah (oath of allegiance) to the Taliban, noting that Mullah Omars group had called for and enjoyed good relations with nations such as Qatar and Iran. Such diplomacy is unthinkable from the Islamic States uncompromising perspective. As Baghdadi and his self-declared caliphate rose in prominence throughout 2014, al Qaeda marketed Mullah Omar as the true caliph. Osama bin Laden himself named Omar as the Muslims rightful ruler, al Qaeda reminded jihadists. There was just one problem: Omar was already dead at the time. And by late 2014, when the sixth issue of Dabiq was written, Abousamra seems to have heard that Omar was no longer among the living. The UMass grad explained that he had heard from others that senior commanders in Afghanistan and Waziristandoubt that Mullah Omar is still alive and are convinced that he was either killed or imprisoned, as none of them has seen him since the start of the modern crusader campaign against Afghanistan in late 2001. He faulted the Taliban for issuing statements in Omars name with clear deviation from the truth in them, but recognized its possible that these expressionscame from someone other than Omar. Only months later, in mid-2015, did the Taliban and al Qaeda admit that Omar died sometime in 2013. Abousamra: Al Qaedas leaders and ideologues are the Jews of Jihad Issues 7, 10, and 11 of Dabiq also reference Abousamras anti-Taliban, anti-al Qaeda writings. But if Abousamra is remembered for anything he wrote, it will be his acerbic online essay titled, The Jews of Jihad: Al Zawahiris Al Qaeda. The piece was disseminated online in early Jan. 2016, with the graphic above used to advertise it. Abousamra had seen videos from a pro-al Qaeda shop that featured Islamic State defectors in Yemen explaining the error of their ways. In one such production, a jihadist apologizes to Ayman al Zawahiri and al Qaedas leadership for joining Baghdadis cause. Abousamra complained bitterly about the videos in The Jews of Jihad, portraying them as part of al Qaedas scheme to undermine the caliphate. He was at least partly right. Al Qaeda did launch an international campaign to fight the Islamic States growing influence. But Abousamra relied on anti-Semitic stereotypes to make his point, repackaging an old idea to lambaste his jihadist rivals. Abousamra likened al Qaeda to Jews who fake Islam so that their deviances would live on, just as Paul faked Christianity so that the deviances of the Jews would live on. These Jews supposedly did not enter Islam out of desire, or out of their fear of Allah, but due to hatred for the people of Islam and in transgression against them. In his telling, Paul, a Jew, undermined the pure Christianity from within and other Jews had done the same to Islam. And Al Qaeda was attempting to use this same strategy on his beloved caliphate, Abousamra argued. He pointed to a letter he had received that was authored in the summer of 2014 by the head of Ansar al Sharia Tunisia, Abu Iyad al Tunisi, and addressed to Zawahiri. Tunisi offered a radical proposal: Zawahiri should pledge allegiance to Baghdadi, so that al Qaeda could reform the Islamic State from within. Tunisis letter indicates that he was concerned about the large numbers of jihadist youth in Libya and Tunisia who were defecting to Baghdadis group just weeks after the caliphate declaration. However, Tunisi was no fan of the Islamic States practices. He was particularly troubled by the Islamic States spokesman, Abu Muhammad al Adnani, whom he considered an extremist, and the followers congregated around Adnani. Tunisi believed that if Zawahiri submitted to Baghdadi, then he could reduce Adnanis influence and weaken the extremists of the [Islamic] State who have no project besides murder and takfir. It was Tunisis proposal, in particular, that led Abousamra to describe al Qaeda as the Jews of the Jihad. It is a theme that his successors have continued to promote, including in Rumiyahs eulogy. In its commemoration of Abousamras life, Rumiyah includes images of several al Qaeda leaders and ideologues, all of whom are described as the Jews of Jihad. When Abousamra wrote his essay in 2016, he conveniently left out any reference to Tunisis subsequent letter to Zawahiri, in which he took his plan entirely off of the table. This second letter was released as part of a rebuttal to Abousamras diatribe. The image seen on the right was used by a pro-al Qaeda media outfit to advertise both of Tunisis letters. In the follow-up letter, Tunisi asked Zawahiri to consider my proposal and advice as if it had never existed. The Islamic States murderous ways were greater than what we had imagined and Tunisi no longer found reasons for giving the benefit of the doubt to the good people among them, because they had vanished. Tunisi indicated that two pro-al Qaeda ideologues, Abu Qatada and Abu Muhammad al Maqdisi, had assured him of his position that it was better to turn away from these individuals and expose their extremism. Tunisi added: For I am certain that the [Islamic] State, or the purported Caliphate, is doomed to disappear, Allah willing, and this is a certainty without any doubt. Tunisis letters are interesting for several reasons, especially because the missives demonstrate he was clearly operating within al Qaedas network at the time. In addition to Zawahiri, he had the first letter sent to Abu Qatada and the heads of AQAP and Shabaab in Somalia. He also copied Boko Harams leader and Sheikh Abu al Fadl in Mali. Tunisi said he consulted with senior figures in Al Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb (AQIM), Ansar al Sharia Libya leader Mohammed al Zahawi, as well as Zahawis military official, among others. Tunisis first proposal seemed reasonable to many of these same al Qaeda figures, as they just wanted to preserve their organizations and protect themselves from the infighting that was about to rip its way across the jihadist community. The Islamic State ultimately did carve into al Qaedas membership in North Africa by winning the loyalty of mainly younger jihadis and also some veterans. But while Tunisis proposal was initially entertained by AQIM and Ansar al Sharia Libya, it was ultimately rejected. Both remained part of al Qaedas network, rejecting Baghdadis caliphate. Al Qaeda maintains the loyalty of a number of groups in North and West Africa in 2017. All but one of the other figures named by Tunisi remained in Zawahiris camp. Boko Harams leader, Abu Bakr Shekau, did eventually defect to the Islamic State, but he was quickly replaced as the caliphates representative in Nigeria. Even though Tunisi retracted his somewhat naive plan, Abousamra was enraged. In the The Jews of Jihad, he blamed al Qaeda for mounting opposition to the caliphates expansion. And he named some of Zawahiris henchman, too. He described Sheikh Abdallah Muhammad al Muhaysini as one of Zawahiris preachers, despite the fact that the Saudi cleric was pretending to be independent at the time. Muhaysini is now a member of Hayat Tahrir al Sham, a joint venture that includes the group formerly known as Al Nusrah. Abousamra also named a Kuwaiti, Dr. Hakim al Mutayri, as an advisor of Zawahiris al Qaeda. Abousamra complained that Mutayri had cited evidence justifying al Qaedas rebellion against the Islamic State, but Mutayri had taken [it] out of context and applied to the wrong situation. Mutayri is the head of Kuwaits Ummah Party and has supported the jihadists in Syria. Other ideologues within the Islamic State have sought to undermine al Qaeda and its credibility among jihadists. But none of them has been as prolific, in English, as Abousamra. The eighth edition of Rumiyah contains a poem authored by Abousamra entitled, The Bliss of a Martyr. The poem concludes: The martyrs are living; do not think them dead. Abousamra is dead, but his anti-al Qaeda messaging will undoubtedly live on. Images from the 8th issue of Rumiyah magazine, which describes several al Qaeda leaders and pro-al Qaeda ideologues as the Jews of Jihad: Qasim al Raymi is the current emir of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which opposes Baghdadis caliphate: Abu Muhammad al Maqdisi and Abu Qatada are both pro-al Qaeda ideologues and rejected Baghdadis caliphate claim: The Islamic States propagandists hate Ayman al Zawahiri: Tariq Abdul-Halim lives in Canada and has criticized the Islamic State: Hani al Sibai is an Egyptian jihadist ideologue living in Britain who supports al Qaeda over the Islamic State: This photo of Abousamra appeared at the beginning of Rumiyahs article: Abousamras poem on martyrdom: 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. Sue Thompson Download Image: Web Sue Thompson, Ph.D., a senior lecturer at the National Security College in the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University, will discuss regional cooperation in southeast Asia during the cold war era at a presentation on April 10 at 7:30 p.m. The presentation, which will be held in the Mary Lindsay Welch Honors Hall on the corner of 4th and Basin Streets, is free and open to the public. During her presentation, titled The United States and Southeast Asian Regionalism: 1945-75, Thompson will discuss her research that examines the history of foreign power influences especially American in the post-war evolution of southeast Asian regionalism. Thompson will be releasing a book on the topic, United States Policy on Southeast Asian Regionalism: Collective defense and economic security, 1945-75, later this year. She has published widely in her area of expertise and has recently completed her first book, British Military Withdrawal and the Rise of Regional Cooperation in South-East Asia, 1964-73. Thompson worked as a ministerial adviser at Parliament House in Canberra and then as a journalist in international news for the Associated Press. She completed her doctorate from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London in the United Kingdom. She holds a masters from the London School of Economics and a bachelors the Australian National University. Prior to joining the staff at the National Security College, Thompson worked for the Australian Government Department of Defense as research coordinator for the Asia-Pacific Civil Military Centre of Excellence. The presentation is sponsored by the Department of History and the Global Affairs Affinity Housing Community. The great Gold Rush Music Festival returns to the township of Waihi, with the first nuggets of gold dropping for the highly anticipated return of the 2023 festival. The United States today launched a massive military strike on a Syrian air base in retaliation for a "barbaric" chemical attack on civilians as President Donald Trump appealed to all "civilised nations" to join America to end the "bloodshed" in the war-torn country. On President Trump's orders, US warships launched between 50-60 Tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian government airbase where the warplanes that carried out the chemical attacks were based, US officials said.Speaking inside his Mar-a-Lago resort where he met Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump said he ordered targeted missile strikes at a Syrian airfield from where the chemical attack was launched."Describing the chemical attack on innocent civilians as "horrible", Trump said President Bashar al-Assad took the lives of helpless men, women and children. "It was a slow and brutal death for so many. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror," he said. "It is in vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter use of deadly chemical weapons," Trump told a pool of reporters. There can be no dispute that Syria used the banned chemical weapon violated its obligations under the chemicals weapons convention and ignored the urging of the UN Security Council," he said. Years of previous attempts at changing Assad's behaviour have all failed and failed very dramatically. As a result the refugee crisis continue to deepen and the region continues to destabilise threatening the US and its allies. I call on all civilised nations to join us seeking to end this slaughter and bloodshed in Syria and also to end terrorism of all kinds and types," he said. "We asked for God's wisdom as we face the challenge of our very troubled world. We pray for the lives of the wounded and for the souls of those who passed. And we hope as long as America stands for justice and peace and harmony will in the end prevail. Good night and God Bless America and the entire world," Trump said in his brief remarks. "The strike was a proportional response to Assad's heinous act. Shayrat Airfield was used to store chemical weapons and Syrian air forces. The US intelligence community assesses that aircraft from Shayrat conducted the chemical weapons attack on April 4," Pentagon Press Secretary Capt Jeff Davis said. The strike was intended to deter the regime from using chemical weapons again, he said. He said the US informed Russia ahead of the Syria strike. "Russian forces were notified in advance of the strike using the established deconfliction line. US military planners took precautions to minimise risk to Russian or Syrian personnel located at the airfield," Davis said. The suspected chemical attack left at least 86 people dead in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhun in northwestern Syria. The deaths sparked international outrage with many pointing the finger at the government of President Assad. The Syrian army on Tuesday denied that it had used chemical weapons against Khan Sheikhun. The airstrike has been welcomed by top American lawmakers. Unlike the previous administration, President Trump confronted a pivotal moment in Syria and took action," said Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham in a joint statement. "Acting on the orders of their commander-in-chief, they have sent an important message the US will no longer stand idle as Assad, aided and abetted by Putin's Russia, slaughters innocent Syrians with chemical weapons and barrel bombs," they said. PTI Thanks to NCI I have much appreciation for NCI and Sammy Redd for the many doors they have opened for my family. With my son being a senior, we knew it was time to start thinking about his future, so in September 2016, my son Nickalos and I attended the college fair at Magna Vista High School. During the college fair we stopped by the NCI booth and spoke with Sammy Redd, who gave us his contact information and we had our first appointment with him within a week. In the initial meeting Sammy asked Nickalos his interests in colleges; his ability of talking to a student to discover their exact interest is key in matching a student to the right university. In talking with Nick, Sammy informed him about a reach college, shared open house dates, discussed opportunities to stay on campus and about an opportunity to travel to another state to see a college expenses waived. Carlton College in Minnesota gave Nickalos the opportunity to fly out and absorb college life for a weekend. Our next visit we started discussing topics for essays where he guided Nick in finding out more about himself to help him standout in an essay. Sammy led us in the college journey and without him as a parent I would have been lost. Sammy stayed in contact with us to see how the acceptance to colleges have been, which has kept Nickalos and I on track. As I write this, Nickalos has been accepted to his reach school, William & Mary, which is due in a huge part to Sammy Redd. We didnt even know William & Mary was a possibility and now it is a reality. Nickalos will be the first in our family to attend a university. Thank you Sammy Redd for leading us in this sometimes overwhelming process. NCI and Sammy Redd are changing the culture of Martinsville and Henry County by encouraging students to explore and achieve higher education. I could not imagine this path without NCI and Sammy Redd. So if you question the validity of NCI please look around at your children, grandchildren, or even great-grandchildren and know the priceless resource that we have in NCI and Sammy Redd! Jamie Turner Henry County Museums need federal dollars In response to the April 2 letter to the editor regarding the federal governments proposed cuts to the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS), I broaden the discussion to include the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Altogether, the three agencies employee about 350 people and have a cumulative budget of $526 million far less than a fraction of one percent of the total federal budget. Two hundred and fourteen million dollars of the IMLS $230 budget million went directly to supporting museums and libraries. The Virginia Museum of Natural History currently has a grant proposal submitted to support the housing and conservation of our rock core collection essentially a library of the geology and mineralogical resources of southern Virginia. Without funding for this project, these resources could deteriorate, they would be difficult for researchers and entrepreneurs to access, and they would be unavailable as an educational resource. The cost to conserve and curate is a fraction of the cost to acquire new material. Organizations such as the VMNH-Foundation, MHC Historical Society, Piedmont Arts, Friends of the Blue Ridge Library and Rives Theatre obtained their non-profit or 501(c)3 status by conducting essential services to their communities that either should not, or cannot, be performed by government entities. It is because the willingness of such organizations and their boards to provide their services that corporate and individual donations to non-profits may count as a tax deduction. There have been many discussions about elimination of tax deductions, but this is short-sighted. Instead of direct investment into services rendered by non-profits and their essential functions, proposals suggest the taxes generated by eliminating the 501(c)3 designation will support federal government operation. Non-profits were established for a strategic and well thought out reason. The current proposals to eliminate a number of governmental organizations that bolster the missions of our non-profits, including IMLS, NEA, and NEH, will reduce direct services to communities large and small, and the savings will constitute a reinvestment in federal bureaucracies. Continued support is a small investment in the future of museums, libraries, and the arts with a large return. Research done by the American Alliance of Museums showed a $5 return in tax revenue for every dollar invested in museums at all levels of government. Joe Keiper, Director Virginia Museum of Natural History TODAYS WORD is ramekin (ram-i-kin). When the waiter told me he would bring me a ramekin of ketchup for my fries, I smoothly replied, Huh? THURSDAYS WORD was loquacious. It means talkative; chattering; babbling. Example: Without fail, the person in front of me in line at the bank is always a loquacious individual. Hot dog giveaway First Galilee Missionary Baptist Church on Saturday will offer a free hot dog meal giveaway to show gratitude and appreciation for the churchs supporters. The event will take place at the Rob Lee Community Park on Chatham Road from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., or as long as supplies last. Free community meal Love and Hope Ministry at 1844 Virginia Avenue will host a free community meal on Sunday, April 9 from 12:30-1:30 p.m. TODAY IS: National No Housework Day If youve been looking for an excuse to get out of doing housework, today is your day. On April 7, sweeping, dusting, laundry and dishes are all verboten. What should you instead to with all that free time? Well, today is also National Beer Day, but we mention it only in passing. Pig Cookin tomorrow Just a reminder that the Spencer-Penn Centre will hold its annual Pig Cookin Contest tomorrow from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Competitors from all over Virginia and North Carolina will make their way to the Centre, all following the rules of the North Carolina Pork Association. There will be trophies and cash handed out to the top three in the group. If you want to find out who those competitors are, you can make your way over there tonight, during the Centres Music Night. Theyll be around to talk until 9 p.m. TRIVIA QUESTION: During the late 1970s and early 1980s, the same graphic designer created more than 40 album covers for a variety of bands, including Steely Dan, America, Poco and Crosby, Stills and Nash. As skilled as he was, his greatest fame came after he made a career change in the mid-80s. Who was he? THURSDAYS TRIVIA ANSWER: In 2000, Stockwell Day, the leader of a Canadian political splinter party called the Canadian Alliance, proposed a system where any petition that garnered the signatures of at least three percent of Canadians would trigger an automatic, binding referendum. However, Stockwell Day quickly dropped the idea. Why? In response to Days proposal, Canadian comedian Rick Mercer started a petition to officially change Stockwell Days name to Doris Day. More than 370,000 people signed the petition far more than enough to trigger a referendum and Stockwell Day quickly had a change of heart regarding his proposal. In Defence of Marxism is committed to safeguarding your privacy. At all times we aim to respect any personal data you share with us, or that we receive from other organisations, and keep it safe. This Privacy Policy (Policy) sets out our data collection and processing practices and your options regarding the ways in which your personal information is used. 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Please let us know if you have any queries or concerns whatsoever about the way in which your data is being processed by emailing the Data Protection Manager at webmaster@marxist.com You may be the most cynical, born and bred, citified lefty like meinstinctively skeptical of big concepts like "patriotism," relatively foreign to hunting culture, unused to wide open spaces. But spend any length of time traveling around Montana, and you will understand what all that "purple mountain majesties" is all about. Youll soon be wrapping yourself in the flag and yelling, "America, f*** yeah!" with an absolute and non-ironic sincerity that will take you by surprise. You will understand why and what people fought and died foror at least perceived themselves to be fighting and dying foreither defending Native American hunting grounds against Custer or "defending America" against foreign aggressors. And you will be stunned, stunned and silenced by the breathtaking, magnificent beauty of Montanas wide open spaces. Some people must live in great spaces where the sky goes on forever. Where everyone must bend to the land. Videos and Commentary you wont forget: https://explorepartsunknown.com/destination/montana/ It speaks for itself https://www.blm.gov/ http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/04/06/522924256/blm-replaces-mountain-landscape-photo-with-coal-seam-on-homepage *** Solar panels power Kentucky Coal Museum The museum is installing solar panels on its roof, part of a project aimed at lowering the energy costs of one of the citys largest electric customers. By ADAM BEAM Full Story: http://www.sltrib.com/home/5148639-155/solar-panels-power-kentucky-coal-museum *** Coal CEO urges Trump to stay in Paris Agreement The CEO of Wyomings third-largest coal producer made an impassioned plea to President Donald Trump on Thursday for the U.S. to remain in the Paris climate agreement. In an open letter, Colin Marshall praised the work done so far by Congress and the president to support coal, such as attempting to repeal the Clean Power Plan, but asked the president to focus on crafting coal policies that will withstand changing political whims and support clean coal technology to combat climate change. Marshalls letter paints a dire picture for coal without policies that go beyond reduced regulation. Heather Richards 307-266-0592, [email protected] Full Story: http://trib.com/business/energy/coal-ceo-urges-trump-to-stay-in-paris-agreement/article_22c583db-528c-50c2-bda0-af40ac867bae.html Its very possible there has been no greater commercial made to promote the state of Montana than Robert Redfords film "A River Runs Through It." The opening scenes of the movie show sweeping shots of the Paradise Valley and Gallatin Canyon as the narrator says of Montana it is "more touched by wonder and possibility than any I have since known." Filming movies, television shows and commercials in Montana elevates the awareness about our state and pumps outside dollars in to our stores, hotels, and to industry professionals. In fact, visitors who come to Montana because they saw or heard of Big Sky Country in films or TV spent $25 million in our communities last year. Montana Film Office: http://www.montanafilm.com/ Full Story: http://commerce.mt.gov/News/PressReleases/how-montanas-film-industry-helps-boost-main-street-economies Say ciao bella to Italy next June. Great Falls College MSU is planning an opportunity for students and community members to visit Florence, Verona, Venice and Lake Garda on a 10-day trip. They will be hosting three informational sessions through the month. The program is open to students and community members through a collaboration with the Center for Lifelong Learning. The trip is scheduled for June 1-10, 2018. Sarah Dettmer, [email protected] Full Story: http://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/news/local/2017/04/06/italy-awaits-interested-community-members-students/100137652/ Bear Paw Development Corporation is a private non-profit organization created for the purpose of administering programs to help improve regional economic conditions in Hill, Blaine, Liberty, Chouteau and Phillips Counties and the Fort Belknap and Rocky Boy's Indian Reservations. Former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel critiqued President Trump and explained the sharp divide between Americas political parties during a lecture delivered in the Dennison Theater late Wednesday afternoon. The lecture, hosted by the UM School of Law, was moderated by Robert Bennett, a prominent litigator. Hagel started the discussion off by identifying the current political paralysis stifling governance in D.C. as the greatest threat to the U.S., both internally and externally. "I suspect we havent seen this kind of bitterness or divide since the Civil War," he said. Silas Miller Full Story: http://www.montanakaimin.com/news/former-secretary-of-defense-discusses-trump-and-national-security-at/article_99ffc6d0-1b25-11e7-8e22-478aa3bacf4f.html Les membres du cabinet ont pris note que le nombre de cas de positif au Coronavirus est a 324, que le gouvernement a recu un don de 500,000 tablettes de hydroxychloroquinede lInde, que le couvre-feu sanitaire a pris fin le 15 avril 2020, que le Wage Assistance Scheme et Self-Employed Assistance Scheme seront reconduit pour le mois davril 2020. 1. Cabinet has taken note of the situation pertaining to the outbreak of COVID-19 and the measures taken to contain the pandemic, namely (a) the number of positive cases as at 17 April 2020 was 324 and the number of persons successfully treated to-date was 108; (b) currently there were some 325 patients in the Treatment Centres; (c) all patients attending the Flu Clinics in the Regional Hospitals were being tested for COVID-19. A separate facility would be set up in each Regional Hospital to accommodate a Flu Clinic; (d) the procurement of medical items was being effected from China, Amsterdam and Hong Kong; (e) the Government of India has donated medical supplies (500,000 tablets of hydroxychloroquine) which were delivered by a special Air India flight on 15 April 2020; (f) Jack Mas Foundation has also donated medical items to Mauritius which arrived on 15 April 2020 by a special Ethiopian Airlines flight; (g) the Government of China was also donating medical supplies to Mauritius; (h) the UNDP was assisting Mauritius in the setting up of an Electronic Laboratory Information Management System for COVID-19 patients at the Central Health Laboratory; and (i) the EU would donate an amount of Rs11 Million to the COVID-19 Solidarity Fund. 2. Cabinet has taken note that the Curfew Order in Rodrigues and Agalega lapsed on 15 April 2020 and sanitary and non-sanitary precautions were being taken to ensure that there is no importation of COVID-19 on both islands. 3. Cabinet has agreed to the extension of (a) the Wage Assistance Scheme to cover the month of April 2020. The aim of the Wage Assistance Scheme is to provide financial support to employees of the private sector who became technically unemployed during the COVID-19 lockdown/curfew period. An employer would be debarred from the Scheme if he has benefitted from funds under the Scheme and has not paid his employees for the months of March and April 2020 or he has laid off even one employee during the lockdown/curfew period; and (b) the Self-Employed Assistance Scheme to cover the period 16 April to 30 April 2020. The Scheme gives financial support to the informal sector. Partager et informez vous aussi...... 0 shares Share Tweet LinkedIn Articles similaires The Chinese version of a veteran US entrepreneur's book, Making Elephants Fly, on the process of innovation with practical advice from Silicon Valley, is on the stands. Xing Yi reports. Steven Hoffman believes that Chinese startups will play a vital role in shaping the future of the planet. Recently, the veteran US entrepreneur published a book, Making Elephants Fly, on the process of innovation with practical advice from Silicon Valley. The Chinese edition hit the shelves in March, but the English edition will not be available until this fall. "It is unusual," says Hoffman. "While I was talking to business book agents in the US, I told my Chinese friends that I had just finished a book. "Instantly, I was connected to almost all the top Chinese publishers, and things moved really fast. In China, everything seems to move so fast." Having created three venture-funded startups in Silicon Valley and trained many corporate executives, Hoffman founded a business incubator in San Francisco in 2012. The company opened its first overseas branch in Shanghai last September. Besides giving consultancy, providing shared working spaces, and connecting angel investors with Chinese startups, the Shanghai branch serves as a bridge that helps overseas startups to enter the Chinese market, and the Chinese to go to Silicon Valley. Last year, Hoffman traveled to more than a dozen major cities in China, meeting business partners and giving lectures to startups. The experiences in China enabled Hoffman to do some "localization" in the book's Chinese edition. "I put in special things just for China," says Hoffman. "The core teaching is the same, but there are a lot of Chinese examples." When speaking about commercialization, Hoffman uses Hiibook to make the point. Hiibook is a mobile application which gives email a look and function like WeChat, an instant-messaging app, as Chinese businessmen rely heavily on WeChat to communicate and are not used to email, which is, however, widely used in international business. "They quickly got 10 million downloads in China, but their investor was urging them to add advertisements," Hoffman writes in the book. "This would have been a big mistake. They have to avoid doing things that could harm the growth of users as they are still in an early stage." Hiibook took Hoffman's advice. "If we have to balance user experience and profits, we will give emphasis to the former," says Zhou Gongjin, founder of Hiibook. "Now we have no advertisements. Even if we have to monetize our product in the future, we will find a new way that won't damage user experience." In Hoffman's eyes, the Chinese are natural-born entrepreneurs. "I've met businessmen in South Korea and Japan, and they are more like big company people, whereas the Chinese will do anything to get a business going - there's no hesitation," says Hoffman. He also sees a tendency for "quick money" among Chinese businessmen. "If you want to copy a product, that's great. The Chinese are pretty brilliant at that - take an idea, introduce it to China and run with it," says Hoffman. "When there was not so much competition, in the days of (Alibaba's) Jack Ma and (Tencent's) Pony Ma, that model worked fine." But nowadays, there are so many entrepreneurs. Ever since Premier Li Keqiang called for efforts to boost mass innovation and entrepreneurship at the Summer Davos Forum in September 2014, startups have mush roomed in every corner of the country. Li said at the news conference following the annual legislative session on March 15 that in the past three years, there were more than 10 million new market entities registered each year. "They have to innovate, whether they like it or not, or they won't succeed," says Hoffman. "That will actually be good for China, because it will propel China into being a leader in innovation, as opposed to a follower." "I see that happening right now. That's why I wrote the book and why I am here - to teach the process we follow in Silicon Valley, so that the Chinese can benefit from it and innovate on a global scale." Mao Daqing, founder of a Chinese business incubator, says Hoffman's book answered many of his questions. "Hoffman reflects the success of the Valley, and offers valuable lessons for Chinese startups," Mao writes in the book's recommendation. Besides studying Chinese businesses, Hoffman reads a lot on Chinese history, and finds that China as a society is very good at moving in unison. "But to really innovate, one has to break away from the pack mentality. People have to force themselves to say: 'No, I am not gonna go where everybody is going, I am gonna go where nobody is going or very few people are going'." Marching into uncharted territory sounds frightening, and realizing a new idea that the world have never seen is hard. Hoffman admits that most startups fail, and making a startup succeed is like getting the heaviest animal on earth off the ground. "Peter Thiel's book Zero to One gives you the big picture, telling you what makes a startup successful," says Hoffman. "I give you the little picture. I try to go into detail on what are the exact processes to make that breakthrough happen - to make elephants fly." Contact the writer at xingyi@chinadaily.com.cn Steven Hoffman publishes his latest book, Making Elephants Fly, on the process of innovation with practical advice from Silicon Valley. Provided To China Daily (China Daily 04/07/2017 page18) Writer Liu Zhenyun is selected as the first "reading ambassador" of the 30-year-old Beijing International Book Fair for the next five years. Provided To China Daily Writer Liu Zhenyun returned on Tuesday from a 20-day trip to seven European countries, including the Netherlands, Italy, France and Germany. There he observed obvious changes in Western readers' perspectives about Chinese literature. "Twenty years ago, their interest was only confined to works on Chinese society and politics, which misled a bunch of Chinese writers to go for shortcuts and seek to be opportunists, and thus China became a strange country through their pens," says Liu. "But now, Western audiences care more about the depth of life represented in Chinese literature," he adds. Liu shares how European readers he met analyzed his novel, I Did Not Kill My Husband, translated by Sylvia Li-chun Lin and Howard Goldblatt, which is about a rural woman, Li Xuelian, reclaiming her reputation after being wrongly judged by her husband. "The French readers say they are impressed by Li, who spends 20 years trying to right a wrong," says Liu. The introduction of more Chinese books by top writers to overseas readers has made the change, says Liu. The Chinese Culture Translation and Studies and Support group, under the Ministry of Culture, is one of the main organizations pushing the books abroad, as it offers a joint platform to protect copyright while increasing Chinese writers' overseas influence and appeal. Meanwhile, at its Forum on Overseas Translation and Communication of Famous Works of Chinese Contemporary Literature last week, it focused on works by top writers, and released a guide of 40 recommended works from Chinese contemporary literature under the title Discover Chinese Literature. An introduction in English and selected translations are available in the guide. The Florida Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday that thousands of lawsuits can continue against R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. The decision appears to increase the odds that the U.S. Supreme Court may choose to address the legal disputes in a future session. Reynolds spokesman Bryan Hatchell said Friday the company declines to comment on the ruling. The lawsuits sprang from a decision in 2006 by the Florida Supreme Court that decertified a $145 billion class-action lawsuit initially filed by Howard Engle. That ruling limits former class members to filing individual lawsuits stating that cigarettes caused their respective illnesses. The Florida Supreme Court ruled against Reynolds motion that the Engle cases are preempted by federal law set by Congress, which allows cigarettes to be advertised, marketed and sold at retail. The case involves a $3.48 million jury award in 2013 to the estate of Phil Marotta. Marottas lawyers claimed his lung cancer was caused by his addiction to cigarettes made and sold by Reynolds. The jury, based on liability claims, assigned 58 percent of the blame for Marottas illness to Reynolds and 42 percent to Marotta. The justices ruled that Marottas estate is eligible to pursue punitive damages and remanded the case to the initial trial court. In April 2015, a three-judge panel of the federal 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that federal law preempts certain state product liability and negligence claims since Congress wanted to regulate, but not ban, cigarettes. The panel determined Engle plaintiffs, in order to receive damages, must prove the cigarettes smoked by themselves or relatives were defective. However, in January 2016, a majority of the 11-member appeals court vacated that ruling. The Florida justices said Reynolds contends that Congress, through decades of legislation, has established its intention to regulate cigarettes while foreclosing their removal from the market, and that any state law that conflicts with this objective is implicitly preempted. Reynolds argues that imposing tort liability for the sale of ordinary cigarettes amounts to a ban, and therefore such claims are preempted. However, the justices said Congress only intended to preempt state laws to the extent that they relate to labeling or advertising of tobacco product. We hold that permitting Engle progeny plaintiffs to bring state law strict liability and negligence claims against Engle defendants does not conflict with these objectives. There is no indication that Congress had a clear and manifest purpose to insulate the tobacco industry from state tort liability. The justices determined Engle claims are rooted in accusations that tobacco companies manipulated nicotine levels to attract and then addict smokers. In February 2015, Philip Morris USA, Reynolds and Lorillard Inc. agreed to settle nearly all Engle cases, estimated at 415, that were pending or not yet tried in Florida federal courts. Philip Morris and Reynolds agreed to pay $42.5 million each, while Lorillard agreed to pay $15 million. That settlement did not affect state Engle cases. The manufacturers have said they will continue to defend against those cases, including appealing verdicts. Reynolds fiscal 2016 report listed that 120 Engle progeny cases have been tried in Florida state and federal courts during a three-year period that ended Dec. 31, 2016. Reynolds or Lorillard paid judgments in 37 cases. Reynolds absorbed Lorillards Engle liabilities as part of its $29.25 billion purchase of the company in June 2015. Those Engle payments totaled $297.8 million and included $216.9 million for compensatory or punitive damages and $80.9 million for attorneys fees and statutory interest. Reynolds is not responsible for paying damages while the verdict is under appeal. However, it also could take years, millions of dollars in legal fees and require the placing of a $5 million appeal bond. Analysts have speculated about what level of potential jury damages it could take to convince Reynolds, Philip Morris and ITG Brands LLC to agree to a Master Settlement Agreement-type deal on the Engle cases. The manufacturers have indicated they are comfortable continuing to argue individual Engle cases. Vector Group Ltd. and its Liggett Group tobacco subsidiary reached a settlement in which it will pay a combined $110 million to more than 4,900 Engle plaintiffs in exchange for the dismissals of their claims. Youngsters visit the bird illustrations show in Beijing. Liu Xiangrui / China Daily An ongoing exhibition showcasing illustrations of birds by French missionaries in China in the 19th century is running at the Poly Art Museum in Beijing through April 13. The exhibition, being jointly organized by the China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation and the Poly Culture Group, is part of celebrations to mark the 36th Beijing Bird Loving Week, which began on Saturday, and to enhance public awareness of biodiversity in the country. The show includes 746 illustrations describing 416 species, some of which are extinct. The illustrations combine traditional Chinese painting skills with Western naturalistic techniques to portray different bird species. Calling it a show of "great artwork" on birds in China, British ornithologist Terry Townshend said at the opening ceremony that it was also a good way to engage the public in efforts to protect biodiversity. "People want to protect what they love, but they can only love what they know," he said. The illustration project was run by Pierre Marie Heude, a French missionary priest who came to China in 1868 and helped with the founding of the country's oldest natural history museum in Shanghai's Xujiahui area. Heude traveled throughout China and spent decades accumulating a valuable collection of zoological and botanical specimens. Heude became the first director of the Xujiahui museum and conducted natural history studies with his team. He also wrote several books. The museum is not only the first museum in Shanghai, but a critical part of the history of modern museums in China, Chinese scholars say. Many items at the museum, especially some mammal specimens, were never seen in Europe before, winning the Xujiahui museum the reputation of a top museum in the Far East and "Asia's British Museum", according to researcher Zhang Jie from the Xuhui District Cultural Bureau in Shanghai. In 1930, its collection was moved to the museum of natural history at Shanghai's Aurora University and featured in exhibitions, a library and laboratory rooms in the following years. The former Xujiahui museum had to be closed after most of the foreign missionaries left the country in early 1952. The local government took up the management in the next year, and the items in its collection were transferred to various research institutes and other museums on the Chinese mainland. The ongoing exhibition in Beijing is being held to honor the museum's contribution in boosting natural history research and inspiring public interest in the field in China. "This exhibition has high scientific and artistic value. It not only gives vivid descriptions of the birds but also provides lots of relevant information, which allows us to compare the current distribution of birds with that a century ago," says Zhou Jinfeng, secretary general, China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation. If you go 9 am-5 pm, through April 13. Poly Art Museum, New Poly Plaza, 1 Chaoyang North Street, Chaoyang district, Beijing. Free admission. 010-6500-8117. Atrial fibrillation affects millions of people worldwide and in the United States. New research suggests that women with a larger body surface area may have an increased risk of atrial fibrillation a type of arrhythmia that can have serious cardiovascular consequences if left untreated. Share on Pinterest A new study suggests that older women with a large body size may have a threefold higher risk of A-fib. Atrial fibrillation (A-fib) is a form of irregular heartbeat that affects more than 33 million people worldwide, and approximately 2.7 million people in the U.S. The muscles of a healthy heart contract and relax regularly, pumping blood into the hearts ventricles. In A-fib, however, the atria of the heart (or the upper chambers) beat irregularly, which prevents them from effectively moving blood into the ventricles. If left untreated, the condition can cause blood clots, stroke, and a variety of cardiovascular complications, including heart failure. Approximately 15 to 20 percent of the people who have strokes also have A-fib. A new, large-scale Swedish study presented at EuroPrevent 2017, the annual congress of the European Association of Preventive Cardiology investigates the link between body surface area (BSA) and the risk of A-fib in more than 1.5 million women. Annika Rosengren, professor of internal medicine at the Sahlgrenska Academy of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and co-author of the study, explains that the new research builds on a previous study that she also co-authored. Our research has previously shown that a large body size at age 20, and weight gain from age 20 to midlife, both independently increase the risk of atrial fibrillation in men. In this study, we investigated the impact of body size on atrial fibrillation risk in women. Women with the highest BSA 2.61 times more likely to have A-fib The study looked at 1,522,358 women who had their first pregnancy at an average age of 28 years. The researchers accessed clinical data on these womens height, age, pregnancy, history of diabetes, high blood pressure, and smoking status from the Swedish Medical Birth Registry. The participants were followed clinically for more than 30 years, and data on A-fib-related hospital admissions were accessed from the Swedish Inpatient Registry. During the follow-up period, more than 7,000 women were hospitalized with A-fib. The average age at the time of hospitalization was 49 years. The team calculated the womens BSA in square meters (m2) using a standard formula that considers weight and height. The researchers divided the women into four groups based on their BSA: those with a BSA of between 0.97 and 1.61 m2, those with a BSA between 1.61 and 1.71 m2, a third group with a BSA of 1.71 to 1.82 m2, and finally, those with a BSA of 1.82 to 3.02 m2. In ascending order of BSA, women in the second, third, and fourth groups had a 1.16, 1.55, and 2.61 times higher risk of A-fib compared with the women in the first and lowest BSA group. We found that bigger women have a greater risk of atrial fibrillation. There was a stepwise elevation in risk with increasing body size. The group with the highest body surface area had nearly three times the risk as those with the lowest body surface area. Prof. Annika Rosengren Most couples in long-term relationships remain happy with their sex lives, even into their 60s, new research says. The British Sociological Association's annual conference in Manchester heard that while it was not uncommon for couples to disagree about how often they should have sex, this did not alter the commitment to the relationship. Professor Jacqui Gabb, of the Open University, and Professor Janet Fink, of the University of Huddersfield, surveyed more than 5,000 heterosexual, lesbian, gay and bisexual people aged 16 to 65 to ask about their relationships. They found that: around 60% agreed with a survey statement that sex was an important part of their relationship, with around 15% disagreeing. Others neither agreed nor disagreed. around 33% of women agreed with the statement that their partners wanted sex more than they did, and 40% said this was not the case around 10% of men said that their partners wanted sex more than they did, and 60% said this was not the case. Professor Gabb told the conference that although a minority of couples disagreed about the frequency of sex, they and other couples were still happy with their relationship. "What's really interesting is that couples are saying that differences in sexual frequency and desire are just part and parcel of the relationship cycle and are accepted as not particularly significant," she said. "What couples talk about is finding a compromise - other ways of sharing and expressing feelings, acknowledging issues and accommodating these and, for older couples especially, not taking it all too seriously." The researchers also looked specifically at women's feelings about their sex lives over time. They found that 20% of heterosexual women at the beginning of the relationship said their partner wanted sex more than they did, rising to 45% among women in a relationship for 16 years, but falling to 36% among women in a relationship that had lasted over 20 years. For LGB women, 15% thought their partner wanted sex more than they did at the beginning of the relationship, rising to 36% for those in a relationship had lasted 20 years, falling to 15% for those in one that had lasted over 20 years. When asked what they least liked about their relationship, women were more likely to choose 'not sharing childcare and housework fairly', 'poor communication' and 'money worries' than problems with sexual intimacy. For men, different expectations of sexual intimacy were the second most often problem cited, after 'arguments or conflicts'. The researchers found that for men and women, being given compliments, sharing the housework and being listened to were more important in feeling appreciated than sexual intimacy. The researchers also interviewed 50 couples and found that many older participants still took pleasure in their sex lives even when sex was not as frequent. Professor Gabb said: "Fluctuations in desire are inexorably tied into other life factors, but it is the sharing of a life together, the investment in that joint venture, and the acceptance of change as an integral part of this shared life which enables couples to weather the ebbs and flows that characterise sexual intimacy and the passage of time in long-term relationships. "The longevity of partnerships seems to be connected with couples' capacity to negotiate changing circumstances. For older couples, the first blush of a new relationship may have worn off but the relationship has not tarnished." Quotations from couples interviewed: "In terms of sex, we're probably down to once a week or once every two weeks now, because we have been really busy. We've been together for five and a half years and as you can imagine we would have sex more often when we started going out. The good thing is that we can talk to each other a lot about these things." Heterosexual woman, aged 25-35, childfree "It's not an important part of our relationship, if it's available and it's okay, then we'll do it. I don't ever feel like we're having too much sex or too little sex, we've never had an argument or pressured the other person into sex or anything like that." Gay man, aged 18-24, childfree A woman said that sex was: "one of the prerequisites of a relationship for me. But there are other areas of a relationship which I think need a lot more work and are far more important, like trust, money, love, teamwork." Heterosexual woman, aged 55-65, childfree "It's such a cliche isn't it? [Partner] would like to find more time for that [sex], I'm less bothered because I'm exhausted and sometimes when I get to bed I just want to sleep. I don't always have the kind of emotional energy to get from just being a really tired mum who's got to go to work in the morning to a woman in a relationship - I'd rather just go to bed, whereas [partner] is not like that, like most men, I think. Heterosexual woman, aged 25-34, children living at home "I think it's got better and better. When we were younger it was a lot less frequent, because we were both working hard full-time and were knackered, basically. It's not always been the same, but it's always been a good part of the relationship." Heterosexual woman, aged 35-54, children left home Now is the time to get down to the business of thrashing at the details of this historic project China's leadership is vital for the success of the Belt and Road Initiative (the Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Road). It will not be easy. It will take effort to adjust its inward-looking history of thousands of years. It's been three and half years since Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed the historic initiative in Astana, capital of Kazakhstan. It's been only a short time but work has been on the right track to promote free trade and investment in order to benefit peoples in different countries and regions across the two ancient trade routes. With the same target as the Belt and Road, the Eurasian Economic Union was formed in 2015 as a purely economic union, which currently includes five countries. The EAEU aims to break barriers of the five member states and further deepen economic cooperation within an integrated single market of 183 million people. Kyrgyzstan, one of the five members and a neighbor of China, would like to be a transit country to bridge the Belt and Road, the EAEU, the European Union and beyond. For me, the Belt and Road Initiative is not just about infrastructure. It is actually a comprehensive framework which would use soft power to facilitate communication among related countries and regions and their peoples in terms of economy, culture, science and art. In line with the expectations of leaders from China and Russia, who are the respective pioneers of the Belt and Road Initiative and the EAEU, the two initiatives should find the knowledge to integrate based on natural geographic peculiarities and complementary advantages. We need to meet each other more regularly to research how to harmonize the bilateral procedures already existing between China and members of the EAEU. In May, Beijing will hold the high-level Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation. The participants and the leadership of China should outline practical, executable, concrete projects and develop more discussions around projects, with a straightforward breakdown of where, how and when things will happen. The commitment of the Chinese leadership to the success of this initiative is both expected and persuasive. Things will move in the right direction with financial resources, knowledge and human resources. Facing a bigger international arena, China needs to learn how to do things the right way given its long and rich but mainly inward-oriented history. It's high time for China to accept a leadership role in focusing efforts and attention. The initiative, as a land linkage between China, Eurasia and Europe, is not at all only about infrastructure but also about soft power to advance the understanding of different peoples and countries along the two ancient trade routes. It's not a traditional bilateral system but a truly regional, multinational, multilateral network, and thus it needs to be designed precisely. That's the exact reason think tanks like Emerging Markets Institute are needed to meet the knowledge requirements to support this comprehensive framework and the harmonization of the involved projects in all areas. The author is former prime minister of Kyrgyzstan and now a professor at the Emerging Markets Institute at Beijing Normal University and at Tsinghua University's Schwarzman College. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily. (China Daily European Weekly 04/07/2017 page10) Advertisement Support for People with Depression Increase investment for people with mental health disorder Scale up programs that provide treatment for depression and other mental disorders Funds for research on mental health to facilitate better services Trained health workers for better mental health care Health Risks Associated with Depression Depression in India Depression has been predicted to become a top health hazard by 2020 More than five crore Indians, a gross 4.5% of the population suffers from depression Women are more likely to suffer from depression than men One out of 4 children between the ages of 13 and 15 years suffer from depression Urbanization has increased depression by 20% Seek professional help by consulting a health care worker or a doctor. Exercise regularly Stay connected with loved ones Restrict alcohol and refrain from illicit drugs Eat healthy by avoiding junk foods Sleep for at least 7 hours Currently, more than 300 million people are living with depression. The number of people with depression has increased by 18% between 2005 and 2015. People suffering from depression do not access mental health treatment due to lack of support and fear of stigma. ThusDr Margaret Chan, WHO Director-General, said, "These new figures are a wake-up call for all countries to re-think their approaches to mental health and to treat it with the urgency that it deserves.""One of the first steps is to address issues around prejudice and discrimination. The continuing stigma associated with mental illness was the reason why we decided to name our campaign Depression: let's talk," said Dr Shekhar Saxena, Director of the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse at WHO."For someone living with depression, talking to a person they trust is often the first step towards treatment and recovery."People with depression find it difficult to come forward for help, and people around them also fail to recognize it. The WHO wants to create awareness about depression and for those with depression, they are not alone, many others are also struggling with the same condition.In the past ten years, the number of cases of depression has surged by nearly 20%. To reduce the global prevalence of depression, WHO has come up with some suggestionsIn developing countries, there is little or no support available for people with depression. About 50% of the people living in developed countries do not get treatment for depression. On an average, only 3% of government health budget is invested in mental health.Increasing investment in mental health can lead to treatment for depression and anxiety which in turn can improve health and the ability to work. Mental illness remains a taboo because people are reluctant to seek help for psychiatric illnesses.Depression is linked to other non-communicable diseases and disorders. Depression can increase the risk of substance abuse and diseases such as heart disease and diabetes. It is also an important risk factor for suicide. People with depression have some of the symptoms like change in appetite, reduced concentration, sleeping less or more, fatigue, feelings of guilt and hopelessness and thoughts of self-harm. Treatment for depression involves talk therapy or antidepressant medication or a combination of the two.Dr Saxena, said "A better understanding of depression and how it can be treated, while essential, is just the beginning. What needs to follow is sustained scale-up of mental health services accessible to everyone, even the most remote populations in the world."India doesn't have enough psychiatrists to treat people with depression, especially in rural areas. Urbanization has also increased the prevalence of depression in the country. From rural areas, people have moved to the cities, which has changed their lifestyle. Physical activity has reduced, and work pressure and stress have increased, contributing to depression.Source: Medindia Re-collect the ritual of your rush into a movie theatre. Of selecting the best recliners, buying a mix of cheese + caramel popcorn and being seated, till the the screen reads- 'Please stand up for the National Anthem'. You gently oblige and rise with respect. Trust us, we're all the same and we take our patriotism rather seriously. Our Republic Day parades are family re-unions and blooming a lotus in your backyards is complete normalcy. A-list actor and lead of the blockbuster 'Dangal', Aamir Khan is no different too. Twitter The context in perspective is of his recent release, 'Dangal'. Going forward from raking in rave reviews back home, the producers of the movie were recently approached by local distributors from Pakistan, requesting permission to release the movie in their nation. Of course, the producers of the movie, including Aamir Khan casually obliged and nodded in delight. But what happened next, is nothing short of insane. Facebook According to sources, the 'Dangal' team soon received a statement from Pakistan's censor board, stating"While the release of 'Dangal' would be initiated at the earliest, we'd like to do away with two scenes that appear towards the end of the movie. One, where there's a flash of the Indian flag and two, when the Indian National Anthem is played after the female protagonist's gold medal win." Surprised? Shocked? Aamir and the team, were too. What happened next, was of course, casually, formally, patriotically right. Aamir Khan, along with the producers of Dangal turned down the changes requested our neighbourhood and decided against releasing the biopic in Pakistan. Bravo boy! More power to you and more power to us, Indians. This was nothing more than a cheap nudge at India. Ranveer Singh is an expert in fashion roleplay. He is also one of the biggest style risk-takers in Bollywood, and we can't honestly thank him enough for that. And, especially when A-list actors are hanging on to their basic T-shirt and jeansBaba (as he is known fondly) is out there, prowling the terminals of Chhatrapati Shivaji Airport, in head-to-toe runway looks. Viral Bhayani This straight-off-the-runway, three-piece Khanijo outfitstyled by celebrity stylist, Nitasha Gauravhas the perfect costume-meets-utility-meets-colour balance to fit right into the Indiana Jones franchise. Obviously, a modern day versionset somewhere in Indiawhere the legendary Harrison Ford meets up with the equally legendary Ranveer Singhin some remote corner of the country, in search of the Marshall speaker (LOL!). Viral Bhayani Staying true to his monotone colour scheme, Ranveer topped his crazy look off with white trainers, vintage aviators, and a fedora. Viral Bhayani Don't get us wrong, but we are filing this away in a...umm...daring looks to tryonly at the safety of our homefolder. Because Ranveer Singh is possibly the ONLY human beingapart from a runway modelwho can pull this off. Having said that, we don't mind rocking the complicated pieces as separateslike the safari style shirt paired with selvage denim and white sneakers could result in a brilliant brunch outfit! You never know. Viral Bhayani Although proms are at a very budding stage and not that popular a concept here, but farewell and freshers parties sure are and we do take a lot of consideration in turning that into an unforgettable affair. Some ask our best guy or girl friends to keep us company, while others take this opportunity to ask their crush or significant others for a date. But, Connor Campbell, a junior at Pinewood Prep in Summerville, South Carolina stunned his friends and families when he decided to take his 93-year-old granny as his date to the prom. According to a report published in ABC News, Campbell had been insistent in taking his grandmother, Betty Jane Keene, to his school dance at Middleton Place Plantation held on April 1. And this adorable couple perfectly complemented each other grandma wore a pale pink gown while Connor wore matching outfit. Connors mother, Jacqueline Campbell said, He promised her a year ago. He said, April 2017 Ill take you. For the whole year he kept saying it. Facebook It was, in fact, Connors mother who got his granny ready for the day, did her makeup, nails and hair. This has to be one of the sweetest dates ever and the most cherished one to say the least. It was wonderful. It was really great, said Keene. His granny further added, He had told all his friends. Every boy and girl. It was about 100 children at that dance and it was so lovely and they all came up and shook my hand and then I got Connor to dance with me. Hes not a dancer, but I am. Connors grandma loved every bit of it and was extremely happy for getting the chance to dance with her grandson, which was also said to be her favourite part of the evening. Connors mother further added, It just warmed my heart. They both had a good time. It wasnt like anyones arm was twisted to go. Both of them had a wonderful time and they both said it was the best thing ever. However, Connors granny has declined the offer of being his date next year too, since she wants him to find a girlfriend. Facebook Honestly, in our busy lives, there are times when we tend to unintentionally hurt our parents or grandparents and by the time we realize it, the damage is already done. But, no matter how cheesy it sounds, it is moments like these that make sweet memories worth cherishing for life and brings both generations closer. So guys, leave whatever you are doing and call your grandparents right now. Source: ABC News Extending Belt and Road membership to more countries is not only right, it makes economic sense, too More than three decades ago the world was amazed when China started transforming from an agrarian, self-contained and inward-looking country into a worldwide economic powerhouse. This achievement was the result of the role played by various national champions, China's leaders at the time. Following the path they set of economic transformation and opening-up, President Xi Jinping in 2013 announced a plan to develop the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. China's Belt and Road Initiative now forms the centerpiece of the country's foreign policy. The initiative aspires to put Asia, Oceania, Europe and African nations on a new trajectory of higher growth and human development through infrastructure connectivity, augmented trade and investment. The initiative is nothing less than a Chinese call on the international community to cooperatively work toward a harmonious and inclusive world. The initiative is ambitious, covering almost 65 percent of the world's inhabitants, nearly one-third of global GDP and almost a quarter of all the products and services transported worldwide. The One Belt, One Road (OBOR) concept has expanded immensely as a vision, creating a platform for China to deepen its economic transition, transfer its equipment and technology abroad and integrate into the global economy via investment. The Belt and Road Initiative symbolizes a more proactive approach by Xi in meeting the anticipation of China's global obligations and leadership. It offers tremendous opportunities for international economic cooperation, especially for African nations. Speaking of Africa, as the initiative advances, it is imperative that the African continent is incorporated into this grand vision to further cement historic bonds between the continent and China. For the African nations involved in the Belt and Road Initiative, this means that resources become available in addition to those under the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). But, perhaps more significantly, it also means that the areas of cooperation being promoted under the initiative and FOCAC, such as industrialization and infrastructure, will receive even stronger political backing from China, which may help fast-track these projects. However, Africa is not a major region along the OBOR route, so it may be hard for its economies to completely profit from the initiative. Extending membership to more African countries could help keep manufacturing jobs and investment in China and Africa, as well as addressing the thorny problem of industrial overcapacity in China. This could be crucial in determining how OBOR can complement Agenda 2063 to create the "Africa we want". Economist Justin Yifu Lin asserts that the initiative will offer major opportunities for Chinese companies to expand their foreign markets and says the strategy will bolster African economies, strengthening China-Africa economic cooperation. China attaches great importance to its relationship with Africa but, according to a recent report from World Wildlife Fund for Nature - China's Belt and Road Initiative and Its Implication for Africa - the OBOR document only gives details applying to European and Asian countries. Europe is mentioned 12 times, Asia and its subregions 30 times, Africa gets only six mentions. Nonetheless, the Chinese viewpoint is that Africa is the last stop for the Belt and Road Initiative, which means that more African nations are yet to be included in it. Yun Sun, a nonresident fellow in the Africa Growth Initiative, says in her report, Inserting Africa into the One Belt One Road Strategy, that OBOR does not change the overall direction of China's Africa policy. However, looking at the geographical areas involved, out of the 67 nations, only three are in Africa. In 2015, the meeting of the China-Africa Cooperation Forum (FOCAC), which has served as the supreme platform for China-Africa cooperation since 2000, upgraded China-Africa relations to a comprehensive strategic and cooperative partnership. The OBOR initiative was not incorporated, despite the initiative's aim of promoting connectivity with the African continent. However, considering the openness and flexibility of the initiative, incorporating Africa is a reasonable and desirable option. The lack of clear references to Africa in documents outlining the OBOR vision is a sign that inclusion of the continent was not foreseen and that details remain to be defined. The reference incorporated in the FOCAC Johannesburg Action Plan (2016-18) is that the "African sides welcome the Chinese side's championing the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, which includes the African continent, and that China and Africa will foster a mutually beneficial partnership." This is the only statement that Africa is considered part of the Maritime Silk Road. Since 2013, China's state media has published numerous Belt and Road maps with varying indications of Africa's membership. However, the latest version, published by the Xinhua News Agency, shows that the route has reached East Africa - specifically Kenya. China has nominated Kenya as the African hub for the Belt and Road Initiative because of the country's economic geography, meaning that, with the violence between North and South Sudan far from over, an alternative route to export oil to China is needed. Trade Law Centre data show that none of China's top 10 trading partners in Africa is a member. Even China's main trading and fellow BRICS partner South Africa is not a member. South Africa's membership would make economic sense as it would expand the Belt and Road Initiative beyond its ancient route toward the south. It would also make economic sense to extend membership to Angola because it would further expand on the ancient route, venturing into the Atlantic. Tanzania is another nation that would bring significant influence if membership were extended to it. This is due to the Tanzania-Zambia Railway, constructed by the Chinese in the 1970s, which has great historical significance for China-Africa cooperation and could offer a chance to connect landlocked nations like Zambia. Despite being Africa's most populous nation, Nigeria has not been given priority. But the continent's largest economy has some significance because of Lekki port, due to be completed in 2018. This massive facility could function as a commerce hub, extending the OBOR further to the west of the continent. Togo, on the other hand, could be the anchor point in West Africa if membership were extended to that nation as well. In an interview with Xinhua, Togolese President Faure Gnassingbe said: "Where your heart is, your feet are not reluctant to go." China's heart is always in Africa and Africa's heart is always in China as well, so membership of African countries in the Belt and Road Initiative will potentially offer a valuable opportunity for China and Africa to share development opportunities and further reinforce their relationship. The author is a researcher with the Institute of African Studies, Zhejiang Normal University. The views on this page do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily. (China Daily European Weekly 04/07/2017 page12) Syria has been abandoned, it seems. Along with that, humanity has also been abandoned. Chemical attacks have left the place looking like a post-apocalyptic scene. Maybe this is the apocalypsethe death of humanity. 13.5 million people in Syria have been displaced and are in desperate need of basic humanitarian aid. At least half of these displaced are children. A majority of refugeesnearly 5 million in numberare struggling to meet the most basic needs, having left everything behind. I mean, arent you tired of reading about the death of innocent kids who havent even started walking on their own two feet yet? Would you ever be able to imagine yourself in that situationall limbs in perfect unison? If you were to ever have children of your ownwhether you actually do, is a different scenewould you ever be able to sleep peacefully at night, knowing that hundreds of kids are losing their lives just because they exist in a certain place? How is that right? Forget right; how on Earth is that even human? ABC News True, were living thousands of miles away from them. But, does that mean we remain oblivious to their condition; one that they have been living with for about five years now? Do we really need to see images of dying children and parents sobbing over the lives they created with hopes and dreams? Yes, we may not all be politicos, business tycoons, philanthropists. But, arent we human? Can we not, in some way or the otherhowever small that way may behelp those in Syria? Maybe we can There are various different placesboth online and offlinewhere we can donate to the victims of Syria. Here are a few listed out: 1. The UN Refugee Agency: The agency is helping the most vulnerable with cash for medicine and food, stoves and fuel for heating, insulation for tents, thermal blankets and winter clothing" and they are providing aid to Syria. You can donate here: UN Refugee Agency 2. CARE: The chemical attacks, President Trumps refugee ban and the latest attack on Syria by the US has threatened the stable future of innocent Syrian lives and put thousands of them in limbo. CARE is working towards sustaining these lives in any and every way that they can. The organization has various CARE packages to enable donors to contribute in any way that is within reason to them. Heres where you can donate: CARE ABC News 3. Save The Children: A global action fund that has launched a special campaign for the children of Syria, the organization informs you about the realities of children in the war-torn area and enlightens you on the ways you can help by sponsoring a child, or more. You can make a one-time donation, or sign up for a membership. You can choose the categories of children youd wish to sponsor based on childrens stories recorded on their website. Heres how to sponsor a child: Save The Children 4. Islamic Relief USA: The community has been actively serving more than 9.3 million Syrians in need, in Syria and neighbouring countries by providing items like food, medical aid, water, blankets, mattresses, plastic sheeting, plastic mats, shoes, jackets, hats, sweatshirts, gloves, waterproof coats, socks and other necessities. They have a series of projects that they undertake and even have a regularly updated progress report that is up for review by users. You can donate, create a campaign of your own and keep yourself updated on the number of donations being made, according to the website. Heres how you can donate: IRUSA BBC 5. ActionAid: The community has been working continuously since 2013 on the ongoingand subsequently worseningsituation in Syria. They have been providing food, shelter, blankets, school supplies, and other urgent materials; alongside continual support towards the children and their families across affected areas, providing emergency supplies and helping children who have been traumatized by the conflict. Heres where you can make your donation: ActionAid I think its safe to say that Gordon Ramsays opinion on anything related to food is absolutely correct. This time he decided to weigh in on the biggest food debate of the century whether pineapple belongs on pizza or not. Recently, while hosting The Nightly Show, he asked the audience for suggestions for pizza toppings while ordering a pizza on TV, and one person ended up suggesting pineapple. As soon as he heard pineapple on a pizza, he burst out, You dont put f***ing pineapple on pizza. gordon ramsay said pineapple doesn't belong on pizza so case closed thanks very much end of discussion pic.twitter.com/Oj1Cyyn2ls paul rudd (@philsadelphia) March 29, 2017 This immediately started a Twitter war, obviously, and people were actually defending pineapple pizza. the amount of ppl quoting/responding to this tweet defending pineapple on pizza is disturbing.... i feel unsafe....... pls seek jesus https://t.co/pfK0fN922G paul rudd (@philsadelphia) March 29, 2017 A couple of months ago, the President of Iceland also expressed his distaste for pineapple on pizza. In fact, Guni Th. Johannesson said that if he could, hed pass a law banning pineapple from being used as pizza topping in his country. And, also this pizza place that refused to put pineapple on their pizza. I ORDERED A PIZZA WITH PINEAPPLE AND pic.twitter.com/VkmdaHYBwe ali (@Try2ShootUsDown) March 5, 2017 There are two kinds of people in the world those who enjoy the pineapple toppings, and those who hate it with a burning, all-compassing passion. And, it seems like the latter is winning, since now they have Gordon also on their side. Pineapple does not go on top of pizza..... https://t.co/lhD6aliOV8 Gordon Ramsay (@GordonRamsay) April 4, 2017 But, pro-pineapple people arent backing down. @GordonRamsay @7Skies I mean. Who cares what you like bro? Pineapple on pizza is the shit! (And tuna too). Case closed. Myon (@MyonMuzik) April 4, 2017 So, I guess theres still no solution and we just need to accept the fact the world will always be divided on this topic. Do you like pineapple on your pizza? At least three people have died as a stolen beer truck was steered into a crowd of people in Stockholm, Sweden before finally smashing into a department store. The number of casualties have not yet been determined. The Swedish Parliament was immediately put on lockdown, the train service in the city halted, and the police were urging people to stay inside their homes. AP/Reuters For us in India, the day started with news of Donald Trump attacking Syria with 59 Tomahawk missiles. While some people may have rejoiced at the news that the United States finally had a President who was willing to go the extra mile for peace, others called POTUS out for this retaliation against the Syrian chemical attacks. But aren't we missing the big picture here? Violence is never the solution. In 2016, there were more terror attacks around the world than we want to remember and no matter what the World Leaders have tried nothing seems to be able to stop or even slow them down. It's like the world is jumping, head first, into what looks like World War 3. AP/Reuters While we sit comfortably in our homes enjoying the IPL or complaining about the exorbitant prices at the supermarket, what we aren't noticing is slowly, this world is going to the dogs. If we continue down this path much longer, we won't have to worry about global warming anymore. The world will probably self-destruct in the next few years. If that does happen, think back to today and remind yourself that you sat back and did nothing while the world went up in flames. At least on the brightside, you won't have to worry about putting your kids through college anymore. Bank of China will soon become the first Chinese bank to open a Dublin branch, capturing Ireland's increasingly close business and financial ties with China. This new Dublin branch will support Chinese companies to grow into Ireland and Ireland-based companies to invest and trade with China, providing services such as trade finance, corporate loans and syndications, accounts and cash management. "The branch will facilitate a new and exciting era in the Sino-Irish relationship,"Sun Yu, general manager of Bank of China London branch, said to China Daily in an exclusive interview. "With substantial and increasing economic and financial cooperation, the branch will bridge the entrepreneurs of the two friendly countries in the years to come,"Sun said. Dublin already hosts a handful of Chinese leasing companies, but it so far has no Chinese banks providing financial and corporate services. Being the oldest Chinese bank to establish a branch in London, in 1946, Bank of China again is securing the first mover advantage in Dublin. Although Dublin's financial services industry cannot compare to that of London in scale, its advantageous tax environment has meant many big pharmaceutical, medical and software companies are basing their European headquarters there, including Facebook and Linked In. "We aim to be the preferred bank for those companies when they have transactions related to China, as we have better connection to the Chinese market compared to others,"said Sun. Peter Carroll, a Dublin-based partner at BDO, an accountancy and advisory company, said Bank of China's Dublin expansion fills an existing gap in the market. "In Dublin we are seeing many Irish and other international companies wanting to expand into China. Bank of China is well positioned to help finance their trade and investment with China, and share local Chinese market knowledge with them in ways Western banks in Dublin cannot,"Carroll said. Carroll said Dublin based companies' desire to expand into China has increased amidst Brexit uncertainties. "Uncertain business relationship with Britain has prompted many Dublin based companies to look elsewhere for opportunities and China is a priority. In recent months Ireland's relationship with China strengthened significantly. In March Ireland became a member of the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Last December China's central bank also granted Ireland a 50 billion yuan ($7.25 billion) quota under the RQFII (Renminbi Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor) scheme, which allows for investment into China's onshore bond and stock markets. China is currently Ireland's biggest trading partner in Asia. Last year Ireland exported 845 million euros ($900 millionof food and drink products to China, a figure grown six-fold over six years. In December, China General Nuclear Power's European energy arm signed a 400 million euros deal to acquire 14 Irish wind farms. Meanwhile Chinese tech giants such as Huawei, Tencent, and Lenovo all have operations in Ireland. Sun said Bank of China's Dublin branch should be opening this year. Its application is undergoing regulatory assessment by the Dublin authorities. In London, Bank of China already employs over 500, carrying out a wide range of retail, corporate and financial activities. To contact the reporter: cecily.liu@mail.chinadailyuk.com Editor: Chris Peterson Yes, you can transfer your domain to any registrar or hosting company once you have purchased it. Since domain transfers are a manual process, it can take up to 5 days to transfer the domain. Domains purchased with payment plans are not eligible to transfer until all payments have been made. Please remember that our 30-day money back guarantee is void once a domain has been transferred. For transfer instructions to GoDaddy, please click here. In Tallinn today, Alternate Foreign Minister G. Katrougalos discussed Greece's positions on the future of Europe with particular emphasis on the need for a Social Europe with members of the Estonian government. Mr. Katrougalos met with the Deputy Minister for European Affairs, Matti Maasikas, and Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Kyllike Sillaste-Elling. Greece's positions, which have already been submitted to the European Commission, were discussed with Estonian Ministers, as their country will be assuming the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union for the second half of 2017. Also discussed were the Estonian Presidency's priorities, which emphasize digital economy issues. The two sides ascertained a significant convergence of views. Finally, Mr. Katrougalos met with Metropolitan Stephanos of Tallinn and All Estonia. N. KOTZIAS: Good evening. I would like to welcome my friend, and our countrys friend, Boris Johnson, and I want to thank our interpreter, who always does the most important part of the work. It is a pleasure to have Boris here. Last year, during the summer, I found him on Pelion, across my beloved island of Alonnisos. The relations between Greece and the United Kingdom are historic relations, long-term relations, relations with a great future. Today we stand before an historic turning point, with the decisions taken democratically by the British people and the British Parliament, and I am certain that these decisions will give future historians a great deal to think and write about. I want to say, once again, that we respect the decisions of the British people, and we want to formulate the best possible agreement between the European Union and the United Kingdom. An agreement that serves both sides, with friendship and without malice. We want the Brexit from the European Union to happen in a coordinated manner, with a plan. In a way that keeps the United Kingdom as close as possible to the European Union, with the best possible relations with states like Greece. In other words, we want to minimize the losses there will be from the Brexit and maximize our capabilities. We are not abolishing relations we are redefining our relations within a new framework. To this end, we are having honest and open discussions. I think that the friendly relationship between Boris and myself is based on my admiration for him and on great experience of open and creative discussions. We want the negotiations between the European Union and Britain to be smart and to be carried out in a composed manner. We know that the advantages of an agreement are always accompanied by obligations, and we want to safeguard the collaboration between the two sides in as many sectors as possible, with the maximum possible depth, protecting the rights of our citizens, of course. Greece is interested in three things: in averting negative fiscal repercussions from the Brexit, in safeguarding the rights of Greeks working and studying in the United Kingdom and the rights of the British people living in Greece, who number some 45,000 and we dont want there to be negative repercussions for our trade in goods and services or for tourism, as we host millions of British people every year. I want to say something. The Brexit is not due solely to the decision of the British people. The Brexit is also the result of how the European Union evolved in recent years. A European Union that has crises, including a crisis in establishing the mechanism for resolving these crises. A European Union that lacks adequate vision and that has not redefined its values or how it sees them functioning in the 21st century, and often a European Union in which we limit ourselves exclusively to certain tools of diplomacy and, in fact, some of these are negative. Boris and I talked in depth about the Cyprus issue. We are two people who want to seek correct, just and intelligent solutions. And of course you know our firm view: that we are against third powers rights of intervention, guarantor rights or military in Cyprus. We also discussed about the situation developing in Syria. We talked about the initiatives the UK has taken on this issue in international organizations. We are against unjust wars and terrorism, and we, too, have condemned you saw our announcement and you will also have seen the announcements from the British side the deadly attack in Syria. We also talked about developments in the Western Balkans and how we can support the regions countries heading towards growth. Finally, we discussed about the need for us to find means of stabilization and, if need be, new structures in the eastern Mediterranean. And I made an exception in inviting my friend Boris to come to the meeting of southern European and Arab states in Rhodes, because I know that he loves the Greek islands. I have secret information that he will be on a Greek island in a few days I wont say where, but I was very pleased by his choice. Boris, welcome, you are always welcome, and I thank you very much for being here in Athens. Social Media You can follow us on different types of social media by clicking the links below: YPSILANTI, MI - The grand opening of a shared location for babo and Tiny Buddha Yoga is prompting conversations on what businesses are the right fit for Ypsilanti's Depot Town. The two businesses are joining together under one roof at 17 E. Cross St. with a united mission to offer healthy food, drinks and activities to the community. The grand opening is from 5 to 9 p.m. Friday, April 7, and will include live music, free yoga classes and giveaways. It coincides with Ypsilanti's First Fridays event. Tiny Buddha Yoga's space will include merchandise like yoga apparel and room for hot yoga classes, along with a shared meditation room for customers of both businesses. It is the third location for Tiny Buddha Yoga, owned by Risa Gotlib. It also is the third location for babo, which is currently sold at the Nickels Arcade and a brick-and-mortar shop on Boardwalk in Ann Arbor. Sava Lelcaj owns Savco Hospitality, the umbrella company for babo, and said her side of the business will include a juice bar, grab-and-go takeout offerings and a tea room with products from the Tea Haus. The former babo storefront on Washington Street is now home to Fred's, operated by Lelcaj's brother, and was part of a rebranding of the babo business model. The move to Ypsilanti has prompted a website remodel for babo and conversations with the public on whether the businesses fit in the location. "We've had 90 percent great reactions and 10 percent really, really, really unhappy people," Lelcaj said. From what she understands, some people are not comfortable with the changes happening in Depot Town and the type of businesses filling the space on Cross Street like babo and Tiny Buddha Yoga. Others were confused about the babo concept, and thought the business would be more of a grocery store. Other new business owners have gotten a similar reaction, Lelcaj said, but she and Gotlib are focusing on their mission, "providing great product at a great value, improving the space and the space around us." "That's all we can do, is show these people change is good," Lelcaj said. "Our goal is to improve the community we're in, not to go in and compete with what is already existing." Lelcaj was approached by Gotlib about joining together for the space several months ago. While she was hesitant about the expansion at first, Lelcaj said she decided to be a part of the move once she saw the building in Depot Town. "Of course, I fell in love with the space," Lelcaj said. "We looked at the property together and I could really could see babo fitting in there." She had a vision of people visiting the businesses to get snacks or drinks and heading down to the river to hang out, and thought babo and Tiny Buddha Yoga would complement each other and add to the business community already present in Depot Town. It is a new concept for both owners, for their two businesses to operate in the same building, but Lelcaj said it makes sense for the direction both are trying to go. "It's a great place to try this concept and bring something really fresh to the community," Lelcaj said. "Just like we've done with Ann Arbor, were not looking to impose on the community there. We're looking to add value to the community." So while some residents are worried about pricing, gentrification, "Ann Arbor-ites" and others heading into Ypsilanti, the owners of babo and Tiny Buddha Yoga are focusing on creating jobs and serving the community. They are expecting a good turnout at the grand opening Friday, and Lelcaj said she is expecting to educate many visitors on what the businesses are all about. "There'll be a lot of learning going on right away," Lelcaj said. GRAND RAPIDS, MI - SiTE:Lab, the art group that has created some of the most provocative and creative exhibit spaces for ArtPrize, is moving into the former Grand Rapids Christian High School at 415 Franklin Street SE. The building, which was used as the local offices for Kent County's Department of Human Services from the late 1970s through 2009, will not become a full ArtPrize venue until 2018, according to SiTE:LAB team member Eric Kuhn. The announcement came as ArtPrize announced this year's event will be spread across 182 venues, including 41 new spaces in the downtown area. ArtPrizeNine will be held from Sept. 20 through Oct. 8. Kuhn said SiTE:Lab will use the old high school for several small scale events in 2017 but will not use it as a full ArtPrize venue until 2018. "A lot of the work we do is large scale and it takes a lot of time," he said. The building's classrooms and an interior courtyard will create unique spaces for artists, he said. Previously, SiTE:Lab has hosted ArtPrize entries in the former Junior Achievement building, now the Tower Pinkster Building; the former Grand Rapids Public Museum; and the former Morton Hotel, now a downtown apartment and office complex. For the past two years, SiTE:Lab occupied a neighborhood on Rumsey Street SW the city's near Southwest Side and transformed its old houses, a church and a commercial buildings into works of art and art venues. SiTE:Lab was given permission to use the 3-acre Rumsey Street property by Habitat for Humanity of Kent County while the non-profit housing agency raised funds and planned for the neighborhood's redevelopment. This year, neighborhood residents, former members of the St. Joseph the Worker congregation, and local artists will display in the Rumsey Street venue. The three-story building at 415 Franklin Avenue SE is currently owned by Madison Square Christian Reformed Church, which was given the building and a neighboring parking lot by real estate developer Ed DeVries in 2015. Madison Square Church eventually plans to develop the high school and a neighboring parking lot into a worship center and housing, said Layla Kuhl, a project manager for the congregation. "I think the intent is to raise awareness that we are working to re-develop the buildings and it is not going to remain vacant forever," Kuhl said. "As a church, we believe in community development and engagement and I think SiTE:Lab does a great job of engaging with the community." Although SiTE:Lab's artists have created exhibits that have bordered on bawdy and irreverent, Kuhl said the church does not intend to impose restrictions on the artists. "We pretty much have creative freedom in the space, but obviously, we'll be respectful," said SiTE:Lab's Kuhn. ANN ARBOR, MI - The Washtenaw County Sheriff's Office cautions residents to take care canoeing or kayaking on the Huron River and other rivers in Washtenaw County. Heavy rainfall in the past 10 days has raised water levels in rivers across across Michigan. As of Friday, April 7, the Huron River in Ann Arbor is at 15.3 feet, near the flood stage of 16 feet. The last time the Huron River in Ann Arbor was above 15 feet was in May 2011, when the river reached 16.6 feet, according to the National Weather Service. Mill Creek in Dexter is at 11 feet as of Friday morning. The creek's flood stage is 12 feet. The rising rivers have increased current speeds, according to the sheriff's office. In some areas, the surface water may appear calm but have a strong current underneath. The Washtenaw County Sheriff's Marine Safety Office recommends anyone on the water wear a life jacket and notify a family member or friend of their plans. 400EWashington.png ANN ARBOR, MI - Police are looking for a suspect who carjacked a vehicle at gunpoint early Friday, April 7 in downtown Ann Arbor. At approximately 1 a.m. Friday, Ann Arbor police responded to a report of a carjacking in the 400 block of East Washington Street near South Division. A 30-year-old man was sitting in a parked vehicle when an unknown man opened the passenger door, pointed a handgun at the driver and demanded the vehicle and the man's cell phone, according to Ann Arbor police Detective Lt. Matthew Lige. The driver jumped out of the car, and the suspect got in, drove westbound on Washington at a high rate of speed and crashed into a parked car nearby, Lige said. The suspect fled on foot with the 30-year-old man's cell phone. There was a delay in reporting the incident because the victim did not have his phone, Lige said. Officers arrived at the scene and scoured the area with a K9 unit, but were unable to pick up a track, according to Lige. The suspect was described as a light-skinned black male, between 20-30 years old, about 5 feet 7 inches tall, wearing a dark jacket with a hood, according to Lige. Anyone with information should contact UM Police at 734-763-1131 or the Ann Arbor Police Department tip line at 734-794-6939 or tips@a2gov.org. Melanie Maxwell | The Ann Arbor News School proposals will be on May 2 ballot Ann Arbor Public Schools and Ypsilanti Community Schools will have funding requests on the May 2 ballot, although the school districts are seeking taxpayer support for different reasons. Meanwhile, the AAPS board of education has debated whether to ask voters to support an increase to the district's sinking fund millage, as some trustees worried Ann Arbor residents are experiencing "millage fatigue" from the school district bringing millage requests or presenting requests that compete with millages other entities in the county need. Local funding is crucial to school districts being able to balance their budgets. Scroll down to see what taxpayers contribute right now to Washtenaw Countys nine traditional public schools and the Washtenaw Intermediate School District. Don't Edit Melanie Maxwell | melaniemaxwell@mlive.com Local funding for public schools Washtenaw County traditional public school districts raise anywhere from $3.97 million to $113.4 million a year from property taxes. Michigans school funding model - known as Proposal A - limits how much school districts can tax their residents and aims to close the gap between the highest- and lowest-funded districts, although disparities remain. Across the state, taxpayers may help their local school districts pay off debt, maintain facilities, provide special education services or support recreational facilities. Owners of commercial, agricultural or industrial properties pay another tax that supports schools general operations, and all property owners pay an education tax directly to the state. Don't Edit File Photo | The Ann Arbor News School finance 101 Michigan allocates a per pupil foundation allowance to schools each year, under the Proposal A funding formula passed in 1994. State law says traditional public school districts can support their general funds by levying a maximum of 18 mills on non-homestead properties (anything that is not a primary residence, like commercial, industrial, agricultural and rental properties). The state sets a per pupil foundation allowance each year, subtracts the amount per pupil the district should raise from its 18-mill non-homestead tax, and then the school aid fund covers the difference. Charter schools do not levy property taxes, so the entirety of their per pupil foundation allowance comes from the school aid fund. In addition to owners of non-homestead properties paying their school districts operating millage, all property owners pay a 6-mill education tax that goes directly to the states school aid fund. The Washtenaw Intermediate School District levies two county-wide millages that support its general operations as well as raise money to reimburse school districts for special education services. School districts also can ask their residents to support bonds, sinking funds and recreational millages. Don't Edit Hunter Dyke | The Ann Arbor News Revenue from property taxes The following Washtenaw County school districts raised the most annual revenue from their property taxes in 2016: Ann Arbor Public Schools (17,234 students): $113.4 million Saline Area Schools (5,328 students): $21.1 million Dexter Community Schools (3,560 students): $14.5 million The following school districts raise the least from property taxes: Whitmore Lake Public Schools (854 students): $3.97 million Manchester Community Schools (1,056 students): $4.1 million Milan Area Schools (2,207 students): $4.5 million Data is from the 2016 Washtenaw County apportionment report Don't Edit Junfu Han Varying tax rates The following Washtenaw County school districts had the highest tax rates in 2016, which factors in homestead, non-homestead, debt retirement, sinking fund and recreational millages: Willow Run public schools: 30.9712 mills. Willow Run is no longer a functioning school district, but residents still pay a 13-mill debt retirement property tax that goes toward paying off bonds owed on some of the schools. Non-homestead property owners in Willow Run also pay 17.9712 mills to Ypsilanti Community Schools' operating millage. Milan Area Schools: 30.9694 mills. Homeowners pay 13 mills. Whitmore Lake Public Schools: 28.5475 mills. Homeowners pay 10.5475 mills. The following school districts have the lowest tax rates: Lincoln Consolidated Schools: 25.4494 mills. Homeowners pay 7.4494 mills. Ann Arbor Public Schools: 25.54 mills. Homeowners pay 7.7455 mills. Businesses pay 21.2379 mills. Chelsea School District: 25.9191 mills. Homeowners pay 7.9191 mills. In addition to the tax rates for their respective school districts, all Washtenaw County property owners pay an additional 6-mill state education tax and 5.4509 mills to the WISD. The WISD levies a general operating millage and a special education millage, which reimburses local school districts for special education services. In 2016, the WISD collected a total of $79.5 million in property tax revenue. Data is from the 2016 Washtenaw County apportionment report Don't Edit Don't Edit City of Ann Arbor, Washtenaw County GIS What school millages mean for homeowners Below is a look at what some Washtenaw County homeowners pay in property taxes for public schools, based on the median home value in the area, the local school district millages that apply to homeowners, the WISDs countywide millages and the states 6-mill education tax: City of Ann Arbor (median home value of $240,700): $2,310 a year in property taxes for public schools City of Chelsea (median home value: $182,500): $1,768 Village of Dexter ($236,500): $2,359 Village of Manchester ($138,300): $1,380 City of Milan ($130,800): $1,599 City of Saline ($196,800): $1,997 Whitmore Lake, Census designated place ($115,600): $1,272 City of Ypsilanti ($118,000): $1,148 Michigans homestead property tax credit (for low-income homeowners) and other tax credits help to offset the financial burden for eligible homeowners. Median home value is from the 2015 American Community Survey. Don't Edit Melanie Maxwell | melaniemaxwell@mlive.com Inequities in funding Differing property values give some school districts more capacity to generate revenue than others, said Scott Menzel, superintendent of the Washtenaw Intermediate School District. I think its a mistake to say, Well, they value public schools more in Ann Arbor, he said, referencing AAPS bringing in more than five times the property tax revenue than other Washtenaw County schools. They have the capacity to generate more revenue because of their tax base than a smaller school like Milan or Manchester or Whitmore Lake. The state education tax helps to distribute funding more equitably among schools. All property owners contribute 6 mills to the state education tax, although 6 mills in the City of Ann Arbor will raise more money than 6 mills in the Village of Manchester. That revenue is one source of funding that supports the school aid fund, which is used to make sure every school districts receives a minimum per pupil foundation allowance. Another equitable way to raise more general operating money for local schools would be to pass a county-wide enhancement millage, Menzel said, and then the revenue raised would be distributed to Washtenaw County schools on a per pupil basis. In 2009, voters rejected a proposed 2-mill county-wide enhancement millage. Don't Edit File photo | The Ann Arbor News How does Schools of Choice fit in? Michigans Schools of Choice policy allows families to enroll their children in schools outside the district where they live. School districts decide whether they want to accept transfer students from outside the district. They typically fill empty seats with Schools of Choice students and do not provide transportation for them. The family of a student who lives in Ypsilanti and attends Ann Arbor Public Schools, for example, still pays Ypsilanti Community Schools' debt retirement millage and the 6-mill education tax that goes right to the state. When that Ypsilanti resident becomes an AAPS student, the student brings the foundation allowance assigned to him by the state to AAPS. The foundation allowance for AAPS students was $9,170 per pupil in 2015-16 compared to $7,735 per YCS student. Between the sending and receiving school districts, state law says the transfer student's new school receives the lesser foundation allowance. So AAPS received a foundation allowance of $7,735 for every transfer student from Ypsilanti. AAPS Board President Christine Stead doesnt agree with judging families level of investment in a school by whether or not they pay property taxes to the school district. Growing enrollment is the most effective means AAPS has of increasing its general fund revenue, she said, and she sees Schools of Choice enrollment as a vote of confidence in the quality of education at AAPS. Its a very personal choice where you choose to have your children educated, Stead said. If we fill up a classroom that otherwise would have a couple empty seats, thats actually more money than we would otherwise be getting. From an AAPS perspective, thats actually a more cost-effective position." Don't Edit Junfu Han 'Hold harmless' districts AAPS is granted a higher foundation allowance per pupil because of its property tax levy prior to the approval of Proposal A. Ann Arbor residents supported a tax rate that generated more than the maximum per pupil revenue established by Proposal A, and lawmakers knew communities in that position wouldnt support the new funding formula if it meant a decrease in revenue for their local schools. So Proposal A includes a hold harmless provision that allows districts like AAPS to levy an additional millage - beyond the 18-mill non-homestead operating millage - that also generates revenue for their general fund. All residents in the AAPS district pay another 4.3027 mills for the hold harmless millage, which gives AAPS a higher per pupil foundation allowance. Don't Edit Courtney Sacco | The Ann Arbor News Ann Arbor Public Schools (2016 tax rates) Homestead millage: 4.3027 mills. This is AAPS' "hold harmless" millage that allows the district to maintain the same tax rate it did before Proposal A instated an 18-mill operating millage cap. Non-homestead millage: 17.7951 mills. This applies to commercial, industrial, agriculture and rental properties as well as any other type of property that is not a primary residence. Sinking fund: 0.9928 mills. By law, sinking fund revenue must be spent on purchasing real estate, renovating buildings or facilities or improving infrastructure to accommodate technology installations. Debt retirement: 2.45 mills. Debt retirement is used to pay off bonds, a type of debt that taxpayers agree to repay for the school district. Bond revenue can be used for a variety of purposes, and AAPS residents are currently repaying bonds from 2012 and 2015 State education tax: 6 mills WISD: 0.0978 mills for general operations, 5.3531 mills for special education reimbursement. AAPS will ask voters in May to increase its sinking fund to 2.5 mills for the next 10 years. Data is from the Michigan Department of Treasury Don't Edit Don't Edit Brianne Bowen Chelsea School District Non-homestead millage: 18 mills Sinking fund: 0.9191 mills Debt retirement: 7 mills State education tax: 6 mills WISD: 0.0978 mills for general operations, 5.3531 mills for special education reimbursement. Don't Edit Melanie Maxwell | melaniemaxwell@mlive.com Dexter Community Schools Non-homestead millage: 18 mills Debt retirement: 8.5 mills State education tax: 6 mills WISD: 0.0978 mills for general operations, 5.3531 mills for special education reimbursement. Don't Edit The Ann Arbor News file Lincoln Consolidated Schools Non-homestead millage: 18 mills Debt retirement: 7.35 mills Recreation millage: 0.0994 mills. School districts and municipalities can ask voters to support recreation millages, and the revenue must be spent on maintaining public recreation facilities and playgrounds. State education tax: 6 mills WISD: 0.0978 mills for general operations, 5.3531 mills for special education reimbursement. Don't Edit Lauren Slagter | lslagter@mlive.com Manchester Community Schools Non-homestead millage: 18 mills Debt retirement: 8.5 mills State education tax: 6 mills WISD: 0.0978 mills for general operations, 5.3531 mills for special education reimbursement. Don't Edit Melanie Maxwell | melaniemaxwell@mlive.com Milan Area Schools Non-homestead millage: 17.9694 mills Debt retirement: 13 mills. Milan's debt retirement levy has increased from 8.04 mills since 2014 due to a new state law passed in 2012 that requires schools to pay off outstanding bonds by the final repayment date. Declining property values since 2008 meant many school districts were not on schedule in their loan repayments, so they had to raise their property taxes in order to generate enough revenue to make the payments. Voters did not get a say in the increase. State education tax: 6 mills WISD: 0.0978 mills for general operations, 5.3531 mills for special education reimbursement. Don't Edit Don't Edit MLive file photo Saline Area Schools Non-homestead millage: 18 mills Sinking fund: 0.348 mills Debt retirement: 8 mills Recreational millage: 0.4972 mills State education tax: 6 mills WISD: 0.0978 mills for general operations, 5.3531 mills for special education reimbursement. Don't Edit Amy Biolchini | The Ann Arbor News Whitmore Lake Public Schools Non-homestead millage: 18 mills Debt retirement millage: 8.95 mills Sinking fund: 1 mill. In November 2016, voters passed a three-year, 1-mill sinking fund that will be spent on upgrading the school district's wireless internet infrastructure and other facility upgrades. Recreational millage: 0.5975 mills. Voters passed WLPS' recreational millage in 2003 to support the Community Recreation Center. State education tax: 6 mills WISD: 0.0978 mills for general operations, 5.3531 mills for special education reimbursement. Don't Edit Lauren Slagter | lslagter@mlive.com Former Willow Run schools Non-homestead millage: 17.9712 mills, which supports Ypsilanti Community Schools' general fund. YCS formed in the 2013-14 school year from the consolidation of the former Willow Run and Ypsilanti public schools. Debt retirement: 13 mills. The proposal to consolidate Willow Run and Ypsilanti schools did not include consolidating each school district's current bonds, so Willow Run residents still are paying off the debts of the former school district. State education tax: 6 mills WISD: 0.0978 mills for general operations, 5.3531 mills for special education reimbursement. YCS did take on a combined $18 million deficit in the merger, and that debt was purchased by the state. YCS is required to make $2.1 million annual payments to the state to pay off that $18 million deficit. Those payments come from the district's general fund, not a debt retirement millage. Don't Edit Junfu Han Ypsilanti Community Schools Non-homestead millage: 17.9712 mills Debt retirement millage: 8 mills State education tax: 6 mills WISD: 0.0978 mills for general operations, 5.3531 mills for special education reimbursement. YCS is asking voters to renew its 18-mill non-homestead operating millage in May. The proposal includes no change to the districts current operating millage, and the tax does not apply to primary residences. Don't Edit The Ann Arbor News file More on school funding and property taxes Michigan property tax estimator Washtenaw County May 2 ballot proposals Ann Arbor has state's highest assessed property value in 2016 Bipartisan group looks to fix Michigan's 'broken' school funding system 50 Michigan school districts with biggest per pupil expenditures in 2015-16 A brief history of Proposal A, or how we got here Don't Edit m0714cellmoney1-e80c35e57fbe2703.jpg (MLive File Photo) ROCHESTER HILLS, MI - A Michigan city is home to America's happiest singles. Inspired by the United Nation's annual World Happiness Report that found American citizens are the 14th happiest in the world, EliteSingles.com released a report of America's happiest places for singles. According to the study based on anonymous data collected from more than 100,000 men and woman, the Metro Detroit community of Rochester Hills is the number one place to find a happy partner. EliteSingles examined how highly respondents ranked themselves when asked how happy they felt. From this, the company was able to look at the average result by location, and geographically pinpoint where America's happiest singles are located. "Having a population of approximately 70,000 people, this cheerful community celebrates a happy win against the other top two contenders," the report reads. "Nestled between Lake Erie and Lake Huron it's an easy drive into Detroit." Rochester Hills is the only Midwest city on the list. In fact, all but two of the top 10 are in California, Florida and Texas. Rochester Hills edged Chula Vista, Calif. and Delray Beach, Fla. to claim the top spot. The rest of the top 10 include Corona, Calif., Temecula, Calif., Spring, Texas, Mckinney, Texas, Oak Hill, Fla., Orange, Calif. and Tigard, Ore. With a rise in demand and prices, cement sector has been buzzing of late. To get the exact picture of the business outlook going forward, CNBC-TV18 spoke to N Srinivasan, VC & MD, India Cements. Srinivasan said although the demand for cement has not been significant yet, he is optimistic of seeing an increase in demand going forward. The demand for cement in FY17 was at 7 percent. He said both - increase in volumes and prices are important for a cement industry volumes to satisfy increasing demand and hike in prices, to help manage rising costs. He said although the costs have risen, the company is taking all the necessary steps to protect margins. The invoice price of cement in Andhra Pradesh had gone up from Rs340 to Rs360 per bag but the real increase will be more because the cement was available below the invoice price for some time and that correction will improve the bottomline of cement companies. Governments focus on affordable housing and infrastructure spending has the potential to increase cement demand but it has not yet translated on ground, he said. The company is also aiming to pare debt going forward. The interest paying debt is around Rs 2100 crore. However, he did not specify if they would look at selling some of the land bank to reduce their debt. The group is said to have a huge land bank of 25000-30000 acres. live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More A hostile takeover bid by US major Kraft Heinz recently has led Dutch-British transnational consumer goods-maker Unilever Plc. to evaluate its operations in terms of the value creation for investors. The company, which has a multitude of brands catering to its consumers daily needs, is considering selling off its spreads division and has announced share buyback worth USD 5.3 billion this year, apart from raising dividend by 12 percent. Heres a look at how these decisions by the parent company could affect the Indian arm Hindustan Unilever. HUL, with annual net sales of over Rs 32,400 crore contributes roughly 14 percent to Unilevers emerging markets business. The EM business, in turn, contributes roughly 57 percent to Unilevers total sales. The Indian unit, which had taken to aligning businesses in line with the global structure, had in June last year separated its foods and refreshments business into two categories. Under the new arrangement, these units might have to be re-merged. It is interesting to note that while this business segment contributes nearly 50 percent of Unilevers overall global revenue, in India, it contributes less than one-fifth. However, there is significant growth opportunity for this business. A Goldman Sachs (Asia) report suggested the size of the foods and beverages market in India, including alcohol and tobacco, in 2015 was USD 100 billion. The more challenging part for HUL will be contributing to Unilevers plan to trim costs to achieve an operating margin of 20 percent by 2020. This translates to a jump of over 350 basis points from 16.4 percent posted by the parent in 2016. HUL posted EBITDA margin of 17.5 percent in the nine-month period up to December 2016. While HULs personal care segment is already above the targeted margin, the home care segment, where margins currently languish in single digits, might face the strain. Another area of high competition is the packaged foods business. HUL has had a patchy past in this segment and even as revenues have trebled in the past seven years, it has been unable to grow much in size. This business, covering products like flour, salt, sauce, jams, soups and ice creams under brands like Annapurna, Kissan, Knorr and Kwality Walls, has generated only Rs 2,117 crore in FY16 with margin of barely 5-6 percent. With competitive pressures mounting, forgoing market share for profitability could prove detrimental. So, if the parent insists on meeting targets, HUL might simply have to let go of certain segments. Advertising expenses is an area which the company could contain. Advertising expenses have been about 11-12 percent of its revenues for a little over a year now. But as is the major fallout of any cost-cutting exercise is the measures taken to trim overhead expenses including manpower. An Economic Times report today suggests HUL might be considering job cuts. Layoffs, the report says citing sources, could be to the extent of 10-15 percent and could be accompanied by a freeze or reduction in new hiring. According to its FY16 annual report, HUL has 18,000 employees on board its Indian factories and offices. This includes managerial staff of over 1,500. Analysts suggest while HUL already gives away a chunk of its net cash generated from operations in dividends, the parents drive to increase shareholder value might cause strain on the Indian arm's balance sheet and up the risk of higher royalty pay-out which has already more than doubled in the past four years. As per the royalty agreement, Unilever can increase the payment up to 3.15 percent of HULs turnover by FY18. Jet Airways| RS 4,244 crore loss (Image: Reuters) live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More The financial year 2017 was tough on Jet Airways and reeling under losses, the company has now decided to freeze salary hikes expected by employees at the end of April-March fiscal for at least a quarter, reports Economic Times. According to a Business Standard report, the airline is also introducing a 15-20 percent variable pay component for its top management to save cost on wages. Jet Airways, as compared to its peers, has higher cost structure and as part of a cost control exercise, it will include 100 senior officers under the variable pay scheme. Vistara and SpiceJet are the other players in the aviation space that have adopted the variable pay structure. The airline spent around Rs 2,316 crore in FY17 on salaries of 15,000 employees, out of which 2,000 are pilots that account for nearly half of the wage bill. In addition, employee cost was up by 26 percent on a year-on-year basis for the period. Another cost that is adding to Jets expenses is its mixed fleet. It has both narrow body and wide body planes which results in higher cost. The airlines per unit cost is more than that of IndiGo and SpiceJet. The move by Jet Airways is not going down well with the pilots and they are also questioning the recent hike in salaries of engineers. live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More New launches continued to give a solid boost to retail demand in March with several car makers posting high single-digit jump in sales volumes. The countrys largest car maker Maruti Suzuki grew by 7 percent while Hyundai grew by 9 per cent and Tata Motors grew by a scorching 84 percent during last month. Marutis Baleno was the star performer becoming the second highest seller in the month behind the all-time best seller Alto. The top five best-selling cars - Alto, Baleno, Dzire, Swift and Wagon R - during March belong to Maruti Suzuki. Having discontinued the i10 Hyundai freed up capacity for the Grand i10, Elite i20 and Creta all of which clocked more than 10,000 units in sales last month. Tata Motors outperformed the industry market growth increasing volumes by nearly 83 percent during March followed closely by Toyota Kirloskar with a growth of 81 percent. Tata Motors jump in volumes is due to continued support from the newly launched Tiago as well as incremental volumes coming from the recently launched product Tigor. Despite a fall in volumes, Honda maintained its lead over the others to cling to the fourth spot in March however that may change in this month as Tata Motors ramps up production of the Tigor. The only bright spot for the Japanese company is the City sedan which is the largest selling product in its portfolio. The company does not have any other large volume product at present. Below is an infograph showing the top companies and how the auto industry performed in the month of March year-on-year (YoY). Mobile payments major Paytm today announced that it has invested an undisclosed amount in healthcare startup QorQI. The company offers a solution that gives doctors access to patients health and clinical data at the touch of a button. The startup aims to use AI and big data to improve productivity and care quality of doctors and help patients manage their health and existing ailments better. Commenting on the funding, QorQls Sanjay Singh said, QorQL is pursuing the vision to democratise healthcare access. Our connected health applications are leveraging AI and big data to collect, integrate and interpret data for all users. This not only helps us solve tough problems but also helps our users stay healthy. Paytms investment in QorQl is a huge endorsement of our product vision, technology & markets. We look forward to leveraging Paytms massive reach and bring to market our solutions quicker and at scale, he added. There is a need in the country for quality care at affordable costs and the sector largely works on an acute shortage of information both on the consumer side and on the side of healthcare professionals. Hence, there is a need for real-time data collection and of improving the overall care process with advanced analytics and AI. We are impressed by QorQls vision and the teams ability to solve complex use cases and are happy to be a part of their journey, said Paytms Vice President, Sudhanshu Gupta. Founded in 2015, QorQI has been offering services to over 60,000 consumers. The service is currently available in Delhi NCR, Aligarh and expanding to several Tier II markets across India. It seems that Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal is never far away from controversy. His government recently found itself mired in another political storm after the Shunglu Committee charged his government of illegal allotment of land, unauthorised foreign trips and charges of nepotism. The report was obtained by Delhi Congress president Ajay Maken through a Right to Information (RTI) query filed by him. In August last year, the Delhi High Court ruled that the LG is the administrative head of Delhi and said decisions taken by the Delhi government without consulting him were illegal. On August 30, 2016, former Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung formed a three-member committee headed by former Comptroller and Auditor General V K Shunglu to investigate charges of irregularities in decisions taken by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government. The Shunglu committee scrutinised 404 files of Delhi government and submitted its report to the Lieutenant Governor in November 2016. Some of the key observations made in the report were the appointment of Delhi Health Minister Satyendra Jain's daughter Soumya Jain, who is an architect, who was made an adviser to the Mohalla Clinic project, which has been mentioned as a case of nepotism. The report notes that her CV does not have the expertise she needs to have for the role. Some 24 non-statutory foreign tours were taken by the government ministers and official in 18 months period, alleged Delhi Congress Chief. AAP allotted government bungalow 206, Rouse Avenue for party purposes. The appointment of Nikunj Agarwal, a relative of Kejriwals wife without any vacancy for the post. The AAP government has also been in the news for the payment of legal fees for CM from its pocket in the defamation case filed by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. The Delhi government was also in a controversy for spending 85 percent of money allotted for advertisement outside Delhi. Recent drubbing in state assembly elections and dip in online popularity The party suffered a major setback in the recently concluded state assembly polls of Punjab and Goa. In Punjab, the party was expected to form a government and do reasonably well. But trouble began after the AAP was accused of running the state unit through remote control in Delhi. There was also confusion after speculation arose that Arvind Kejriwal will become the CM of Punjab and remove Punjab head Sucha Singh Chhottepur over bribe allegation, all of which likely weighed on AAP's chances. In Goa, the party was not able to open an account. Ahead of the MCD polls, many party leaders who have not been happy with the central leadership are planning to switch alliances. In a survey conducted by PEW Research last year, the popularity for Arvind Kejriwal has been on a decline with only 50 percent viewing him favourably as against 60 percent in 2015. The report also notes that AAP approval rating is down and its favourability is declining. It needs to be seen whether Arvind Kejriwal can take forward his national ambition or will remain confined to Delhi. Setting aside protocol, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today went to the IGI airport here to receive his Bangladeshi counterpart Sheikh Hasina. The Prime Minister travelled through normal traffic without any route restrictions, official sources said. The Bangladesh Prime Minister is on a four-day visit to India, which comes after a gap of seven years. Hasina will hold wide-ranging talks with Modi tomorrow during which India is also set to announce a line of credit of USD 500 million to Bangladesh for military supplies. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull speaks during a media conference in Sydney, Australia, December 23, 2016 regarding a plot to attack prominent sites in the city of Melbourne with a series of bombs on Christmas Day that authorities described as "an imminent terrorist event" inspired by Islamic State. REUTERS/David Gray - RTX2W89Q Australia will be a reliable provider of coal, uranium, gas and renewable energy technology to ensure India has energy security as it grows into a regional power, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said on the eve of his first visit to New Delhi. "India is undergoing a dramatic economic transformation and our close partnership creates opportunities for both nations," 62-year-old Turnbull said in a speech at the Sydney Institute. He will arrive in New Delhi on Sunday on a four-day visit to India on the invitation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Turnbull, who became Australia's Prime Minister on September 15, 2015, said his first visit to India as Prime Minister is a chance to further co-operate across a wide range of sectors including energy, education and trade. "But there are many more opportunities. India wants to provide energy security through a range of technologies, including nuclear, clean coal, natural gas and renewable energy. Australia is well placed to provide many of the raw materials, and some of the latest technology," he said. Turnbull said he will discuss with Prime Minister Modi the "enormous opportunities" for collaboration in areas like trade and security. "With converging political, economic and strategic interests, we will use the meeting to strengthen our relationship even further for the benefit of both nations." India is the world's fastest growing major economy. Two-way trade exceeded 19 billion dollars in 2015-16. The two countries are currently looking to seal a free trade agreement. There have been nine rounds of negotiations since discussions began in 2011, with the most recent in 2015. Noting that "alongside China, India is a land of immense opportunity for Australia", Turnbull said, "With a growth rate at more than 7 per cent annually, the Indian economy could be as large as that of the United States by 2050." He said his meetings with leading Indian CEOs and business people in Mumbai will focus on growing two-way trade and investment. Turnbull said Australian energy and resources are helping to power India's growth, while the two countries collaboration on innovation and technology will open new business opportunities in the future. "We want Australian businesses to aspire not just to a local market of 24 million Australians, but to a worldwide market of 7.4 billion people... Labor, by contrast, cannot point to one policy which would encourage a business to invest an extra dollar or employ an extra worker," he said. Turnbull, who will be accompanied by Education and Training Minister Simon Birmingham, highlighted the opportunity for Australian universities to provide education services to some of the 400 million people the Indian government wants to train by 2022. "With the Minister for Education and Training, Senator the Hon Simon Birmingham, I will address a dinner to celebrate our partnership in education, recognising how Australian expertise in skills training can help India to meet its goal of training 400 million people by 2022," Turnbull said. Turnbull also highlighted the vibrant Indian community which he said was making a significant contribution to the fabric of Australia's multicultural society. "It provides a vital bridge between our two countries, and this visit will ensure that the ties between India and Australia become even stronger," he said. Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today hailed the passage of GST bills by Parliament and sought to play down the fact that it could not happen during his tenure, saying "let bygones be bygones". Observing that the new indirect tax regime could be a "game-changer", he, however, cautioned that there could be "difficulties" in its implementation. He pressed for constructive cooperation between the Centre and the states in resolving outstanding issues. "There will be pitfalls. But we learn as we go along," he told reporters after Parliament approved four GST-supporting legislations, clearing the decks for the rollout of the historic indirect tax regime from July 1. Asked whether he felt disappointed that it could not happen during his tenure, the former Prime Minister said, "well I think, let bygones be bygones." On whether the measure would help increase the GDP, he said, "it could be a game-changer but we should not assume that there will be no difficulties on the way. There must be a constructive spirit of cooperation between the federal government and the states to resolve the outstanding issues." The Central GST Bill, 2017; The Integrated GST Bill, 2017; The GST (Compensation to States) Bill, 2017; and The Union Territory GST Bill, 2017 were returned by the Rajya Sabha by a voice vote as all parties were on board Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian pitched for increased induction of "outside talent" into the higher echelons of power in the government. Delivering a lecture on the topic 'Indian Economy: Key Issues and Challenges' at the Aligarh Muslim University, Subramanian said that government machinery tends to become insular if there is no free flow of fresh ideas beyond the ambit of existing hierarchies. Subramanian, himself seen as an outsider in the present government, suggested that it would prove useful if there is induction of outside talent in posts above the rank of joint secretaries in the government because they would bring with them a slew of fresh and innovative ideas, which very often do not percolate to the corridors of established bureaucracy. Asked whether he had any serious differences with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on vital issues, including demonetisation, the CEA deftly parried the question. "Let there be some issues which I can narrate in my memoirs after my assignment is over." He said he has a very comfortable relationship with Jaitley because he always gets the opportunity to frankly exchange views with the minister, even when there is a divergence of opinion. Subramanian also said that the issue of growing "economic disparity between the haves and the have-nots" cannot be brushed aside. This growing chasm is because of the steep rise in the incomes of a very miniscule segment of the population, he said. Sounding a note of caution, Subramanian said, "If the gap between the rich and the poor is not narrowed down, the consequences for society could be adverse." Asked about the economic consequences of waiver of farmers' loans, Subramanian sidestepped the question saying "We need some time to evaluate the economic consequences of such a measure. Should Reserve Bank of India (RBI) clear a proposal to introduce Rs 200 banknotes, it is unlikely to circulate the new currency through ATMs, reports Hindustan Times. There was chaos when the Reserve Bank of India introduced new Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes after demonetisation last November as all the ATMs in the country had to be recalibrated. The vast majority of ATMs ran dry, leading to serpentine queues, and the situation has still not completely normalised. To avoid an encore, the central bank now wants to circulate the new banknotes only through bank branches. It follows the same process for Rs 50 and Rs 10 notes. The RBI took up the issue of introducing Rs 200 bank notes at a meeting last month as it sought shore up the availability of lower denomination bank notes after ATM operators reported a shortage. The report quoted a senior banking official as saying that 2.2 lakh ATMs would have to be recalibrated if new notes are to be dispensed and the exercise will take more than a month. The official said that people are still reluctant to take Rs 2000 notes. RBI officials had earlier said that a proposal to reprint Rs 1000 notes is also being considered as a cash crunch is still being reported from different places. Anecdotal reports from many states over the past week suggest that due to a combination of factors, people have been struggling to obtain adequate cash from either ATMs or bank accounts. The worst hit seem Andhra Pradesh and Telangana where many ATMs have run dry. People in Hyderabad have been left stranded as several ATMs across the country displayed a no-cash board. According to a report in Business Standard , a State Bank of India official said that the supply of currency from RBI was far less than the demand. RBI has been supplying Rs 50 crore daily, whereas the demand was Rs 250 crore. live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Structural reforms will help farmers in the long run, not just farm loan waivers, Sudhir Mungantiwar, Finance Minister, Maharashtra, tells Moneycontrol in an interview. He says that some of the policy measures in the agriculture sector initiated by the BJP government has already started showing results. Edited excerpts from the interview: Is your government considering any proposal to waive the loans of the farmers in the state? We are examining all aspects to improve the lot of the farmers, and not just a farm loan waiver. We want to do something that will genuinely help the farmers increase their income. The problem in Maharashtra has been that of very low land holdings. By our estimates, around 2.6 crore people in the state work in the agriculture and allied sectors. Of these, 1.37 crore people can be classified as pure farmers. Around 1.07 crore farmers hold five hectares and less, and within this, around 67 lakh farmers hold 2.5 hectares and less. In 1970-71, the average land holding per farmer was 4.28 hectares. That has now shrunk to 1.44 hectares. To boost yield, farmers increasingly resort to use of chemicals, which starts showing negative results after a couple of years. The government is trying to help farmers with irrigation schemes, better quality seeds, electricity, access to credit, and laws to help them market their produce better. These structural reforms will help farmers in the long run. We are trying to encourage community farming. We have told them that if a minimum of 20 farmersmaximum, unlimitedwith a minimum of 100 hectares between themmaximum, unlimitedcome to us, we will provide all possible support by way of paani, bijli, sadak (water, power, road), cold storage, and marketing. Some of the measures are already showing results. Agricultural growth was -17.5 percent two years ago. It has now increased to 19.3 percent. Our farmers should be able to double their income by 2021, which is ahead of the central government target of 2022 to double farm income. Outside of farming, we are also looking to encourage fishing, poultry and livestock farming sectors. We have made necessary provisions for that in this years Budget. Are you working on a time-line for farm loan waiver? We need to do a detailed study and see how it can best help the maximum number of farmers. If there is some one-time settlement that can be worked out with the banks, we will consider that also. Banks do that for their big customers, so why not for farmers. In 2009, the UPA government waived loans for farmers and eight years later, many farmers are deep in debt. Waivers alone cannot be the solution; we have to make farmers self-reliant. The debt on your books has now risen to more than Rs 4 lakh crore. Is it manageable? You need to see it as a percentage of GSDP (gross state domestic produce). So debt as a proportion of GSDP has actually fallen to 15.5 percent from 16.7 percent. We have been prudent in our borrowings. We are looking at ways to raise the share of non-tax revenues. We will be refinancing some of the high-cost debts. We will use direct benefits transfer to plug leakage of government spend. Within the government itself, we have been reviewed systems and processes to cut down wasteful expenses. Last year, we saved around Rs 3000 crore through cost-cutting measures alone. We will be looking to monetize idle land parcels, and hike lease rentals. In central Mumbai, there are places which have been given out on lease for as low as Rs 1 a month, and which charge Rs 25 lakh to host a marriage. The government is getting nothing out of it. Also, the penalties for law violations are quite low. We will hike that substantially, so that it generates revenue as well as acts as a deterrent. If a man pays such hefty fines more than once, he will automatically become a fine man. Are you planning to divest stakes in companies like MOIL, Mahanagar Gas in which you hold shares? As of now, there is no plan to divest any stake in these companies. The Goods and Service Tax is in its final stages of becoming a reality. The Goods and Service Tax is in its final stages of becoming a reality. Since Maharashtra is a manufacturing state, do you see drawbacks from outweighing benefits? At a net level, GST will be beneficial for Maharashtra. Also, the states are being compensated for any revenue loss they will suffer for the next five years. Most importantly, one nation one tax will be beneficial for states like ours. Many companies were issuing bills in other states with lower value added tax. That will stop. Also, other states were giving tax incentives to attract companies set up plants there. That too will end. And, Maharashtra is a consuming state as well since we account for nearly a fifth of the service tax collected across the country. Will the Supreme Court ban on liquor outlets near national and state highways have a big impact on your revenues? I got a note from the excise department saying that the state could lose around Rs 700 crore as a result of the move. I am not so sure. Just because there is a ban, it does not mean that people will stop consuming liquor. They will go to the places which serve them, even if it means burning extra petrol or diesel to get there. Maharashtra has slipped two places to number 10 this year in the national Business Action Reform Plan (BARP) index. What are you doing to improve the ease of doing business in the state? That is an ongoing process. We have already reduced the number of approvals required from 68 to 24, and we will continue to reduce it to the extent possible. US military missile strikes against a Syrian airbase raised geopolitical concern but investors across the globe behaved in a rational manner and concerns about any retaliation of Russia looks unlikely, Philipp Lisibach Credit Suisse AG said in an interview with CNBC-TV18. Asian markets including India woke up to muted global cues after the US military launched cruise missile strikes against a Syrian airbase controlled by President Bashar al-Assad's forces in response to a chemical attack in a rebel-held area. Investors response to the event was pretty rational. The risks which emanated from US airstrike on Syria airbase is somewhat contained. The fears that Russia will retaliate is not necessarily given at this point in time, said Lisibach. Russian President Vladimir Putin described the US airstrikes on Syria as "an act of aggression against a sovereign state" that "dealt a serious blow to Russia-US relations," according to a Kremlin statement. Russia said it believed Syria had destroyed all of its chemical weapons and the US strikes were based on a "far-fetched pretext." Commenting on the Donald Trump, Lisibach said that he will influence the global economy but no one know in which direction it will go. It seems that he is struggling to introduce relevant health reforms in the US. Bharatiya Janata Party leader Lal Krishna Advani on Friday put an end to the speculation of him being in the Presidential race. "I am not in the race for President," L K Advani told reporters outside Parliament. With President Pranab Mukherjee's term drawing to a close, there were reports that Advani was one of the contenders and that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had proposed his name. Advani's statement comes days after RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat ruled himself out of the race. Earlier, there was speculation that megastar Amitabh Bachchan would replace Pranab Mukherjee, but the possibility was ruled out after his name surfaced in the Panama Papers scandal. Another speculation was that NCP leader Sharad Pawar would be chosen for the second-most important job. For the first time in the nation's political history, it's the BJP that is now set to have a candidate of its choice elected as head of state. After the landslide of the party and its allies in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand and its rise to power in Manipur and Goa, the ruling NDA is just short of 25,000 votes in its electoral college for the presidency. This shortage is quite bridgeable - parties like the Biju Janata Dal and the AIADMK can step in to fill the gap should they wish to. live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More You may now need to pay closer attention to how the oil market is behaving internationally. A report in the The Economic Times says oil marketing companies are mulling whether to start revising petrol and diesel on a daily basis in sync with international prices. The rationale behind the move? A shift to daily revision would mean that prices don't drop or rise sharply, as prices may only change by a few paise everyday and will not lead to a price shock for customers. It may also help the government avoid any political backlash as incremental price changes may go mostly unnoticed. Daily revision of fuel rates is common in various advanced markets. In India, the current trend is to change fuel rates every fortnight. According to one of the state-run oil firms, there have been talks of a daily price change for very long, but the technology has only now been made available to them. Petrol & Diesel Rates Yesterday Petrol Rate in Mumbai Yesterday Current Petrol Price Per Litre 106 106 View more Diesel Rate in Mumbai Yesterday Current Petrol Price Per Litre 94 94 View more Show Earlier, revision of fuel prices would mean companies making phone calls or sending out faxes, but now with various digital means, oil companies can centrally changes prices from one location of all petrol pumps. "Daily price revision is about introducing international standards in the Indian fuel retail market. It helps both customers as well as dealers in managing their purchases," an executive of an oil firm told the ET. India lifted control of petrol prices in 2014 and diesel in 2010, leaving them to be governed by market prices. The government has also encouraging private participation in the sector, with Reliance Industries, Essar Oil and Shell all having plans to ramp up their currently-small presence in the Indian fuel retail market. Between them, Indian Oil BPCL and HPCL control 95 percent of the market. Job loss | The pandemic has wreaked havoc on the job landscape in India. According the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) about 21 million salaries employees lost their jobs during April-August. There were 86 million salaried jobs in India during 2019-20. In August 2020, the count was down to 65 million after 3.3 million jobs were gone in the particular month, mostly among the industrial workers and white collar workers, as per the CMIE. (Image: Shutterstock) Bangalore-based healthcare startup Practo has sacked around 150 employees as a part of its annual performance cycle, The Economic Times reported. "Every year, we follow an annual performance cycle in April where some Practeons leave us to look for opportunities outside. The same has been followed today and 150 of our colleagues are leaving us," a company spokesperson told ET. The Google-funded startup has offered two-month salary to employees who have been asked to leave. Earlier this week, Practo in a blog announced that it plans to expand its services and enable players from areas like insurance sector, medical devices manufacturers and pharmaceuticals on the platform. It competes with the likes of Lybrate and Ziffi in the segment. The company has so far raised USD 179.52 million in funding from investors such as CapitalG (formerly known as Google Capital), Tencent, Sequoia Capital and others. Ashwani Gujral of ashwanigujral.com told CNBC-TV18, "Capital First is the buy with a stop loss of Rs 770 for target of Rs 805. Century Textiles and Industries is also a buy with a stop loss of Rs 1,065 for target of Rs 1,100. TVS Motor Company is a buy with a stop loss of Rs 460 for target of Rs 485." "In last three or four days, Larsen & Toubro (L&T) has moved up very sharply. A fresh entry would require some sort of sideways action before the next round of rally begins because Rs 1,800 was a previous intermediate high. So, maybe we can get closer to Rs 1,800 but out there I think it will again find resistance and probably better news needs to now come in. Lot of hope rallies there and infrastructure was the only space that was lagging. So, possibly Rs 1,800 for the near-term is some kind of a celling for Larsen," he said. "South Indian Bank, as long as I remember hangs around in this Rs 18-24 type of band. I dont think anything significant is there. But these new stocks like Avenue Supermart (D-Mart) or PVR are where people are increasing allocations etc. Escorts is already in strong uptrends and where corrections are getting complete, that is the place where you look at." "In Bharat Financial Inclusion , Rs 770 thereabouts is the 200-day moving average and also previously once it bounced back from these zones, given that market is in some sort of an uptrend, this is just kind of some support coming in. I think Bharat Financial broadly is range bound between Rs 770-830. I think the best stock in the micro finance space remains M&M Financial Services ," he added. live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More The stock price of Avenue Supermarts (ASL), the operator of retail chain D-Mart, touched a record high of Rs 746, up 12.4 percent intraday Friday after JP Morgan has initiated coverage on the stock with a neutral rating and CRISIL upgraded rating on bank facilities. ASL, with a strong execution track record, is a quality play on the Indian F&G retail sector, being the fastest-growing and most profitable retailer, says the brokerage house which expects 27/34 percent revenue/EPS CAGR over FY17-20. Food retailing is about format and execution and according to the brokerage house, ASL has been able to achieve this combination well. It likes ASL's execution capabilities, single format focus, best-in-class productivity metrics (sales densities around 2-3x peers), prudent store expansion strategy and strong focus on customer satisfaction partly aided by its 'everyday low price' positioning. Despite its capital-intensive strategy of ownership (against renting), its asset turns are similar to peers. JP Morgan believes it is a relatively "safe" play on India's consumption growth story, given the non-cyclical nature of the food retail business. Despite low gross margins (owing to low price positioning), ASL has amongst the highest EBITDA margins (against peers) owing to tight control on operational costs (employee, selling, general & administration) and high sales comps, the research house says. "Significant headroom to gain share with prudent store expansion (around 2.1 million sq ft over FY18-20); sustaining healthy average same-store-sales growhth momentum at around 18 percent over FY17-20 (against 25 percent over FY12-16); scope for margin improvement exists with scale benefits, though we build stable margins; and private label growth and contribution from online over the medium term," would be growth drivers, JP Morgan says in its research note. Post the bumper listing (more than 120 percent above offer price), valuations at 55x/42x FY18/19 P/E leave little room for disappointment, it thinks. Hence, it set a target price on the stock at Rs 635 for March 2018, which is far lower than current stock price. E-Commerce threat upside risk to investments in the online channel (global retailers have already witnessed margin erosion with higher E-commerce outlays); high capex intensity; and slower-than-expected network expansion and/or tepid same-store-sales growth could be risks, it feels. Meanwhile, credit rating agency CRISIL has upgraded its rating on the long term bank facilities and non-convertible debentures of the company to AA/stable from AA-/positive. At 14:40 hours IST, the stock was quoting at Rs 742.25, up Rs 78.30, or 11.79 percent amid high volumes on the BSE. Posted by Sunil Shankar Matkar Sushil Finance's commodity report on Gold Gold edged lower on Thursday, pressured by a firmer dollar on the back of upbeat U.S. unemployment data and as some investors sold to redeem profits after bullion's recent advance. Those claims, however, will have no bearing on March U.S. non - farm payrolls data on Friday, which analysts say could be key for short - term direction of the gold market. According to a Reuters survey of economists, non - farm payrolls likely increased by 180,000 jobs last month after rising 235,000 in February. Investors were also cautious ahead of the meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping due later on Thursday, the first between the world's two most powerful leaders. Topping the agenda at Trump's Mar - a - Lago resort in Florida will be whether he makes good on his threat to use U.S. - China trade ties to pressure Beijing to do more to rein in its nuclear - armed neighbour North Korea. U.S. President Donald Trump unleashed military strikes against the air base in response to a deadly chemical attack in a rebel - held area, a U.S. official said on Thursday. We expect gold prices to trade positive on the back of US military strikes in Syria. 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. Read More Representative Image Achiievers Equities' commodity report on Gold Gold trading range for the day is 28542-29040. Gold edged lower pressured by a firmer dollar on the back of upbeat U.S. unemployment data and as some investors sold to redeem profits. Investors digested minutes from Feds policy meeting released which showed that the central bank would start to unwind its $4.5 trillion balance sheet later this year. Investors were also cautious ahead of the meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping due later on Thursday. BUY GOLD JUN 2017 @ 28900 SL 28750 TGT 29050-29180.MCX. 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. Read More In an interview to CNBC-TV18s Latha Venkatesh, Sonia Shenoy, and Anuj Singhal, Deven Choksey of KRChoksey Investment Managers shared his readings and outlook on market and specific stocks. Below is the verbatim transcript of the interview. Anuj: The stock that is leading the market is Reliance Industries. You track it of course, but do you think the risk reward is still favorable or would you advise profit taking here? A: I think Reliance should be seen as an opportunity for next two to three years from now onwards. Probably if the market has risen I think for last three to four months, maybe I think of around 3-40 percent rally has come in the stock price, I would think that it is largely attributed to the capacity that they have expanded in their core businesses both in petrochemical polymer as well as into refining business. So, on one side, they are going to have the volume led growth coming in because of this expansion in capacity, and other side they would have the advantage in the refining margin per se. So, that is basically attributed to the current rally in the price. I would still think that Reliance Jio and Reliance Retail, both these units within the company, I think they hold significant amount of some of the part valuation; maybe in my viewpoint somewhere around Rs 800 per share kind of a valuation between two of them is still not fully reflected into the price. So, if the price improves to that level, maybe one could say that yes they are now finding its value into the price of Reliance. Otherwise, I would think that upside is still there. Maybe two years down the line I think we should be seeing the stock giving a handsome return from current price level itself. Sonia: The other stocks that have been hitting new highs from the heavyweights are names like Larsen and Toubro (L&T), State Bank of India (SBI), etc. What else from the heavyweights do you like now? A: In fact I think these two stocks which you mentioned, between the two of them, definitely SBI looks more convincing at this point of time. Given the kind of a merger that they have done, given the size of the balance sheet that they are having now with the merged units coming up, and also the fact that the non-performing assets (NPAs) is gradually coming down. That is giving me larger amount of comfort. On the contrary, I am waiting for the NPA finding its monetisation through the securitised receipt kind of an instrument which will come up eventually in the market now that the finance bill is passed. I would think that these are some of the positives for banks like SBI and fortunately the stock is available at valuation which has definitely corrected significantly. So, to an extent, I would think that the margin of safety is remaining higher in this particular stock. Maybe I think one could have a 25-30 percent kind of an upside target over next 15-18 months time in this particular stock. Sonia: A quick word on Avenue Supermarts (D-Mart), everyone says it looks quite expensive at Rs 660, but for somebody who is perhaps still not invested in it, would you advise it or stay away? A: The fact is that I think the stock is having relatively less amount of liquidity post listing. I think that is possibly driving the premium valuation. Leave that aside for a while, I think the more important aspect is the fundamentals of the business. The fundamentals of the business basically I think is suggesting that the company is easily expected to grow between 25-30 percent on an organic basis at least I think for next three years as far as the visibility goes. Given that kind of situation, given the kind of supply chain cost benefit that they are enjoying in the product vertical particularly in the food grains, I guess I think the company could possibly register reasonably smart move going forward as far as the profit outlook is concerned. With the interest cost coming down, I think it is going to be all the more beneficial for the company to register better profits. So, given that kind of a scenario, I am not having doubt in my mind about the growth in the profit that the company could register. However, the question remains on the premium valuation. In my viewpoint, some amount of time correction is justified in this particular stock and then probably I think an investor could think of buying the stock with a view of at least two years from now. Rafale fighter jets stand on tarmac during the close air support (CAS) exercise Serpentex 2016 hosted by France in the Mediterranean island of Corsica, at Solenzara air base, March 17, 2016. Serpentex is an annual exercise that involves joint terminal attack controllers (JTACs) from 12 countries from March 7 to March 25, 2016. REUTERS/Charles Platiau - RTSAXBC live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Bharat Electronics (BEL), a Navratna public sector enterprise and one of the oldest companies in the Indian defence sector, is expected to outperform going ahead as it is well placed to capitalise on the emerging defence sector. "We believe the stock will continue to outperform as triggers abound including BEL's favourable positioning as a lead systems integrator augurs well in light of upcoming large projects; focus on beefing up integration capability is a step towards improving delivery capabilities; and higher throughput of manufactured core products (more than 70 percent of sales) imparts strong margin comfort," Edelweiss says. ICICIdirect also says BEL has strong competency in the area of defence electronics. Historically, a large part of defence capital spends (45-60 percent) has been in this segment. High-end technologies in the electronics segment, long gestation periods, heavy capital requirements, and secrecy related to defence projects act as key entry barriers in this segment. This gives companies like BEL a competitive advantage over any upcoming local and foreign completion, it believes. BEL has transformed from being a mere sub-system company to emerge a systems integrator, which has positively surprised Street and resulted in solid around 16 percent earnings upgrade in past 2 years In the past, BEL had been taking on more margin-dilutive systems projects (entails infrastructure scope). However, going ahead, Edelweiss believes the share of core products manufactured by the company will rise and stay higher at 65-70 percent levels, which will aid operating profit marginss. Besides, the company is currently using DRDO/other test facilities, which in future will be done more in-house thereby shortening the delivery cycle, it feels. The brokerage house has strong conviction on BEL's sturdy earnings growth visibility with a sustainable competitive profile. It has maintained buy rating on the stock with increased target price at Rs 200 (from Rs 155 earlier), based on 23x PE given improving earnings growth profile. Edelweiss believes BEL is well set to surprise Street as execution picks up, given improved revenue visibility & better execution capability in systems integration. With rising government focus for procurement of strategic systems like SAMs, it expects BEL to benefit materially over 12-24 months. ICICIdirect also says with continuous inflow of defence orders, Bharat Electronics is the major beneficiary of current government policies. In the anticipation of fresh order inflows from Prime Minister's visit to Israel, it believes the current upmove is likely to continue. Bharat electronics has shown significant resilience even in the market declines seen during demonetisation and after a marginal sell-off, it recovered quickly and made its new life high in December 2016 itself. Since then, the upmove in the stock has continued. After the stock split of 1:10, fresh short build up was observed in the stock. However due to continuous upmove in the stock, it seems short positions are stuck at higher levels. Closure of these positions are likely to prompt another round of upside in the stock, says ICICIdirect which has a target price of Rs 198 on the stock. At 13:34 hours IST, the stock was quoting at Rs 167.15, up Rs 1.50, or 0.91 percent on the BSE. Posted by Sunil Shankar Matkar LOS ANGELES, CA - APRIL 21: Students pray in the aftermath of two apparent racially motivated student brawls at Thomas Jefferson High School April 21, 2005 in Los Angeles, California. A number of students suffered injuries this week while fleeing from a lunch period brawl involving about 200 Latino and African-American students, the second racially charged incident in less than a week. Stepped-up school police and Los Angeles police presence, strict regulation of clothing styles that could be associated with gangs, and a tightened school bell schedule that leaves little time to linger between classes are in effect to curb the violence. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images) Moneycontrol News Former BJP MP and member of the India-Africa Parliamentary Friendship Group Tarun Vijay has kicked a storm by referring to south Indians as blacks. Vijay was on an international channel discussing the attack on Nigerian students in Noida last week. Speaking to Al Jazeera, said that: If India is racist, how do we live with South Indians? He further said: To say that Indians can be racist is the most vicious thing because we worship black gods... Krishna is black. And we have been seeing the descendants of the Africans living amicably in states like Maharashtra and Gujarat. After facing a backlash on the social media, Vijay apologised for his remarks on Twitter. He further said that his words were misinterpreted and all he meant was India has not seen racism despite differently-coloured people across the country. In his opening remarks on the show, Vijay said: To say that Indians can be racist is the most vicious thing because we worship black gods... Krishna is back. And we have been seeing the descendants of the Africans living amicably in states like Maharashtra and Gujarat. He also said that the attack on Nigerian student cannot be termed as a racist attack as there have been such incidents before due several reasons. There have been many such incidents for several reasons like economy or sometimes even without a reason because of the criminalised behaviour doesnt need any logic, he said. Losing His 'Cool', Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad Attacks AI Staffer With Slipper , Leaving from the Parliament on 23march 2017. Express photo by Renuka Puri. The government is working on a national no-fly list to make sure that anybody who brings the safety and security of airline passengers in danger is not able to fly again till he or she takes remedial steps. The Ministry of Civil Aviation is in consultation with the Directorate General of Civil Aviation for preparing the list. The government has been left wiser after the recent manhandling of an Air India duty manager at the Delhi international airport by Shiv Sena Member of Parliament Ravindra Vishwanath Gaikwad. The March 23 incident led to boycott of Gaikwad by all the airlines who refused to fly him till he tendered an apology. It was finally today that Air India lifted the restriction on the MP after Aviation Minister Pusapati Ashok Gajapati Raju accepted Gaikwads apology. In order to deal with the unruly passengers in a more effective manner in future, amendment to CAR (civil aviation requirements) is being drafted by DGCA in consultation with this ministry for establishing a National No Fly List," a letter seen by Moneycontrol, and sent by the ministry to Air India Chairman and Managing Director Ashwani Lohani stated. While Gaikwad wasnt able to fly since another incident this one involving All India Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha member Dola Sen occurred on Friday. Sen was flying Air India from Delhi to Kolkata with her wheelchair-bound mother and had paid extra for a front-row economy class seat for some more leg room. This seat, being next to an emergency exit, could only be occupied by a physically fit passenger. The cabin crew offered Sen a business class seat which she refused. The airline, delayed by 40 minutes, could only fly after the airline relented. Losing His 'Cool', Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad Attacks AI Staffer With Slipper , Leaving from the Parliament on 23march 2017. Express photo by Renuka Puri. Air India has once again rejected a booking attempt by Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad, a day after he expressed regret for slapping an airline staffer last month. Gaikwad's letter on Thursday requested the Union Civil Aviation minister to lift the national carrier's ban on him. However, his efforts to book an Air India flight from Mumbai to Delhi for later this month were once again rejected by the airline. Here is the copy of the cancelled ticket of the Shiv Sena MP. This is not the first time he has tried to book a ticket with Air India and failed. Over the past fortnight, other carriers had also blocked Gaikwad's attempts to a book tickets. The original incident took place on March 23 morning after the Air India flight from Pune landed in Delhi at around 10.30 am. Gaikwad refused to get off the plane as he was forced to travel economy despite carrying a business class ticket and did not accept the airline's explanation that there were only economy seats on the flight. Before issuing a letter on Thursday evening, Gaikwad gave a conditional apology to Parliament but refused to apologise to Air India. "I am not guilty, I have not done anything wrong," Gaikwad, an MP from Osamanabad in Maharashtra, told the Lok Sabha. Gaikwad had claimed that he did not thrash anyone and did not create any ruckus inside the aircraft, but had merely given his seat in the business class to a senior citizen. He alleged that the Air India management changed the story. In reply to his claims, Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapati Raju said that the safety in the flight was compromised. Union heavy industries minister Anant Geete then got into an altercation with Gajapathi Raju. Geete, a Shiv Sena MP, charged towards his fellow minister in the Lok Sabha before cabinet colleagues Rajnath Singh and Smiti Irani held him back before he could do any harm. We will not allow flights to operate from Mumbai, Geete had said. Gajapati Raju will be meeting all the stakeholders to reach an amicable solution to the issue at the earliest, said Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh. The long-pending pact on Teesta water sharing is unlikely to be inked during Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's India visit, beginning today, which will see signing of at least 25 agreements including in key areas of civil nuclear cooperation and defence. During her four-day visit, which comes after a gap of seven years, Hasina will hold wide-ranging talks with her Indian counterpart Narendra Modi on Saturday during which India is also set to announce a line of credit of USD 500 million to Bangladesh for military supplies. It is learnt that the central government will not go ahead with the agreement on Teesta without taking West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on board. Banerjee has been opposing it stridently citing water crisis in West Bengal. "It will be a visit without water," described an official in the know of things. When asked during an interaction with Bangladeshi media persons on possibility of inking of the pact on Teesta and if it would be a surprise, Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar reportedly said, "As of now, there is no indication of any surprise but if there is one tomorrow, then do not blame me." The framework agreement on civil nuclear energy will provide for extensive cooperation in the sector including setting up of nuclear reactors in Bangladesh by India. "It will be a very very special visit. We hope the visit will take the ties between the two countries to new level," Sripriya Ranganathan, Joint Secretary in the Bangladesh- Myanmar division of External Affairs Ministry, told reporters. Ramping up cooperation in defence and security will be a major focus area of the talks between Modi and Hasina and apart from an MoU to provide USD 500 million credit, another pact is likely to be inked to formalise regular defence engagements. Issues like combating terrorism, containing radicalism and enhancing security cooperation between the two countries are likely to figure prominently besides stalemate over the Teesta pact during talks between Modi and Hasina. The West Bengal Chief Minister has accepted an invitation by the government to attend the launch of some projects between the two countries as well a lunch to be hosted in honour of Hasina by Modi. The issue of Teesta is likely to figure during Banerjee's interaction with Hasina. "Teesta agreement remains a work in progress... We have not reached a closure on it," said Ranganathan. The Teesta deal was set to be signed during the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Bangladesh in September 2011, but was postponed at the last minute due to objections by Banerjee. Teesta water is crucial for Bangladesh, especially in the leanest period from December to March, when the water flow often temporarily comes down to less than 1,000 cusecs from 5,000 cusecs. It will be Hasina's first bilateral visit to India in her current term as prime minister. She will be staying at the Rashtrapati Bhavan. The two prime ministers will launch a bus and a train service between Kolkata and Khulna. The two sides are likely to also finalise an agreement on long-term supply of diesel to Bangladesh from India besides holding preliminary talks on linking India's gas grid with that of Bangladesh. To boost trade, the two sides are likely to announce setting up of another set of trade facilitation huts along the borders in the Northeastern region. A raft of other announcements on boosting cooperation in areas of trade investment, transport and energy are expected during the visit. Hasina will visit Ajmer on Sunday and will meet Indian business leaders on Monday. In discussion with Monish Gaurav Chatrath, Managing Partner of MGC & KNAV Global Risk Advisory LLP and a well-known expert on the topic of risk management. Risk, rather erroneously at times, is thought to be a subjective thing. Shaped by the old adage of no risk no gain, we tend to look at the whole concept of risk with a certain amount of cautiousness. Ironically, this approach towards risk management is not merely an individualistic trait but is also visible in how companies and firms deal with risks. In fact, several organisations actively embrace risks as they are supposed to bring disruptions. Considering how good it is to be disruptive, risks can't be that bad, can they? Well, they are not all that bad, till you are hit by them like a Maglev train going at 300mph! Many businesses have lost stakeholder confidence or gone bust, just because they were unable to cope with risks. Risk in companies is like an inevitable force of nature that changes completely within its life span. This is the reason why risk management and mitigation is unavoidable. This is the calling card of EWRM, or what is known as Enterprise Wide Risk Management. The emergence of EWRM The concept of EWRM propagates a much more accepting and open attitude towards risks. Companies are encouraged to look at risk from a new and improved perspective. Instead of being daunted and scared by risk, they should rather grade and manage it effectively. The objective of EWRM is simple - to formulate a holistic plan about the various threats (ranging from inconsequential to existential) and then to manage these threats in a way that they no longer pose a threat. Typically, organisations tend to view risks from a singular financial perspective. Anything that poses a threat to the top-line or bottom-line, needs to be tackled. EWRM on the other hand, goes much beyond the financial purview, encompassing within its ambit, almost all that can negatively impact your organisation.For instance, attrition is a global phenomenon and a threat to almost all organisations and can not be labelled as a risk. But in case, there is a special vulnerability to your company, like it has on its rolls some very highly specialised workforce that are much in demand by the competition, then the two combine (threat and vulnerability) to create a risk (of the people being poached), which then needs to be managed. A threat is an event that could cause a risk, which cannot be completely eliminated and where the likelihood of occurrence can be reduced and/or impact can be mitigated. In contrast, a vulnerability is an error or weakness in the design, implementation or operation of a system that would create a condition, which would allow the threat to materialise, triggering a loss. A risk is the likelihood that a vulnerability will be exploited, or that a threat may become harmful. Having led over 150 EWRM projects for his corporate clients across a wide variety of industrial sectors over the past 27 years, Chatrath is extremely bullish about the ability of Indian companies to embrace EWRM and leverage on its benefits. Compliance or more? The Companies Act, 2013 mandates that companies need to undertake EWRM by setting a specific set of responsibilities for various stakeholders, in the context of internal financial controls and enterprise wide risk management. Yet there remains some ambiguity on the differences between internal financial controls or IFCs and EWRM. According to experts, EWRM is a governance tool that is applied in strategy setting and implementation, in enhancing the effectiveness & efficiencies of operations and in monitoring compliances. On the other hand, IFCs relate to the processes and cycles, which contribute to financial reporting. The impact of the measured EWRM is not only viewed on financial parameters, but also on aspects relating to operations (such as the ability to manage people, processes & technology), reputation, regulatory, quality, health, safety, environmental and employees (including their morale and productivity). The various ports of call for EWRM in India in the Companies Act, 2013 are set out below: As per section 134 (3) (n), the Directors report needs to include a statement on the development and implementation of risk management policy for the company including identification of elements of risk, if any, which in the opinion of the board of directors may pose to be a threat to the existence of the company. As per section 134 (5) (f), the Directors responsibility statement should state whether the directors had devised proper systems to ensure compliance with the provisions of all applicable laws and that such systems are adequate and operating effectively. Section 177 (4) (iv) & (5), which deals with the role of the audit committee states that the audit committee should act in accordance with the terms of reference specified in writing by the board, which should, inter alia, include evaluation of IFC and risk management systems; & Schedule IV requires independent directors to inform themselves on the integrity of financial information and ensure that IFCs & systems of risk management are robust and defensible.Whatever be the impetus, compliance or stratagem, only a company that actively studies and manages risks on a regular basis can do well in this dynamic world that we live in today. EWRM is going mainstream, which in turn, is a good thing for all the stakeholders involved. This is true for all companies, be it small or big.In the end, managing risks is not merely a checkbox item; it is all about strategy and growth. As the legendary investor and billionaire Warren Buffett says risk comes from not knowing what youre doing. Companies and organisations that are able to deal with risks proactively through EWRM are most likely to grow and prosper. Managing risk is all about enhancing the bottom-line. So, theres little reason to not do so. Isnt it? 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, Some of Pennsylvania's largest counties are working to help voters fix mail-in ballots that have fatal flaws such as incorrect dates or lack of signatures on the envelopes used to send them in. Ex-choir director in Bucks County pleads no contest to molesting two students, secretly filming another Rabbis installation at Keneseth Israel will get a boost of student creativity April 07, 2017 Syria: New U.S. Air Support On Request Scheme For Al-Qaeda On this day one hundred years ago the U.S. joined World War I. Last night the U.S. attacked a Syrian government airport in an openly hostile and intentional manner. The strike established a mechanism by which al-Qaeda can "request" U.S. airstrikes on Syrian government targets. It severely damaged the main support base for Syria's fight against the Islamic State in eastern Syria. The event will possibly lead to a much larger war. On April 4 Syrian airplanes hit an al-Qaeda headquarter in Khan Sheikoun, Idleb governate. Idleb governate is under al-Qaeda control. After the air strike some chemical agent was released. The symptoms shown in videos from local aid stations point to a nerve-agent. The release probably killed between 50 and 90 people. It is unknown how the release happened. It is unlikely that the Syrian government did this: In 2013 the Syrian government had given up all its chemical weapons. UN inspectors verified this. The target was militarily and strategically insignificant. There was no immediate pressure on the Syrian military. The international political atmosphere had recently turned positive for Syria. Even if Syria had stashed away some last-resort weapon this would have been the totally wrong moment and totally wrong target for using it. Over the last six year of war the Syrian government army had followed a political and militarily logical path. It acted consistently. It did not act irrational. It is highly unlikely that it would have now take such an illogical step. The chemical used, either Sarin or Soman, was not in a clean form. Multiple witnesses reported of a "rotten smell" and greenish color. While the color would point to a mixture with Chlorine the intense smell of Chlorine is easily identifiable, covers up most other odors and would have been recognized by witnesses. Both Sarin and Soman are in pure form colorless, tasteless and odorless. The Syrian government once produced nerve agents on a professional, large scale base. Amateurishly produced nerve-gases are not pure and can smell (example: Tokyo subway incident 1995). It is unlikely that the Syrian government experts would produce a "rotten smelling", dirty, low quality stuff in an unprofessional and dangerous process. The nerve agents in Khan Sheikoun, should they be confirmed, came either from stashed ammunition at the place attacked by the Syrian government or it was willfully released by the local ruling terrorist groups -al-Qaeda and Ahrar al-Sham- after the strike to implicate the Syrian government. The relatively low casualty numbers of mostly civilians point to the second variant. Several reports over the years confirm that Al-Qaeda in Syria has the precursors and capabilities to produce and use Sarin as well as other chemical agents. This would not be their first use of such weapons. Al-Qaeda was under imminent pressure. It was losing the war. It is therefor highly likely that this was an intentional release by al-Qaeda to create public pressure on the Syrian government. For a release incident of powerful chemical weapons the casualty numbers were low, lower than the casualty numbers of recent conventional U.S. air strikes in Syria and Iraq. Despite that fact a huge international media attack wave, seemingly prepared in advance, against the Syrian government was released. No evidence was presented that the incident was caused by the Syrian government. The only pictures and witness reports from the ground came from or through elements, like the White Helmets, who are known to by embedded with al-Qaeda and ISIS (video) and are acting as their propaganda arm. Last night U.S. president Trump "responded" to the incident by ordering the launch of 59 cruise missiles on the Syrian military airport Al Syairat (vid). The cruise missiles were launched from sea in a volley designed to overwhelm air defenses. According to the Syrian and Russian military only 23 cruise missiles reached the airport. The others were shut down or failed. Six Syrian soldiers were Killed, nine civilians in a nearby village were killed or wounded and nine Syrian jets were destroyed. The airport infrastructure was severely damaged. The Syrian and Russian governments had been warned before the strikes hit and evacuated most men and critical equipment. (Was the warning part of a deal?) The air attack coincided with an Islamic State ground attack east of the airport. The Pentagon alleges, without any evidence, that Sarin had been stored at the airport and a chemical attack launched from it. Both seems highly unlikely. The airport was accessible for UN inspectors. It is not as well covered by air defenses as other Syrian airports, for example in Latakia governate. Its ground approaches are not completely secured. Some medium range air defense system near al Syairat was recently used against Israeli planes attacking Syrian forces fighting ISIS near Palmyra. Al Syairat lies in Homs governate, 150 km south of Khan Sheikoun in Idleb governate. It is the main support and supply airport for the besieged Syrian government enclave in Deir Ezzor which will now again be in even more serious trouble. It was also used to launch attacks on the Islamic State which fights the Syrian government troops in east Homs. Al-Qaeda and its sidekick Ahra al-Sham welcomed the U.S. strikes and Abu Ivanka al Amriki on their side. The theocratic dictatorship of Saudi Arabia offered its full support as did its British creators. The U.S. airstrike delivers a message to al-Qaeda. Whenever under military pressure al-Qaeda can now stage or fake a "chemical attack" and the U.S. will act to destroy its enemy, the Syrian government. Acts as the one last night are then direct military support by the U.S. on al-Qaeda's request. A similar scheme had earlier been established on the Golan heights. Al-Qaeda, fighting against Syrian government positions, would launch a mortar round that would land within Israeli controlled territory. Israel would then launch artillery strikes against Syrian government positions because "the Syrian government is responsible for what happens in the area". Al-Qaeda then used the battle field advantage created by the Israeli strike. The scheme and the Israeli military "reasoning" was published several times in Israeli media: A number of mortars have landed in Israeli territory as a result of spillover fighting over the last several years, raising fears among residents near the border. The IDF often responds to fire that crosses into Israel by striking Syrian army posts. Israel maintains a policy of holding Damascus responsible for all fire from Syria into Israel regardless of the source of the fire. The U.S. administration has now established a similar mechanism, on a larger scale, of direct military U.S. support for al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Syria. The Trump presidency had been held hostage by unfounded allegation of "Russian interference" in the U.S. elections in support of the Trump candidacy. The air strikes on Syria might have been the ransom that was demanded for the release of the hostage. His opponents are now gushing about him. The allegation of any Trump-Russia connections may now die down. Yesterday major Democratic leaders in Congress supported strikes on Syria. Despite that they are also likely to attack Trump over them. The strikes are a "strong man" gamble. As Trump said when Obama ordered strikes such are a desperate move. Most parts of the State Department and the NSC were not consulted about them. The chances that these will "blow back" politically as well as strategically are high. Trump is the third U.S. president in a row who promised less belligerence during his campaign only to deliver more after the election. The "democratic" veil of the U.S. oligarchic rule thus rips further apart. Open U.S.-Russian cooperation in Syria will now cease. U.S. planes in Syrian airspace are from now on constantly under imminent danger. There will also be some larger revenge against the U.S. for last night's strikes. Likely not in Syria but in Iraq, Afghanistan or at sea. A "message" will be send. The U.S. reaction to that "message" will be a decision over a much larger war. Posted by b on April 7, 2017 at 8:22 UTC | Permalink Comments next page The only one that couldn't make it had a pretty good reason not to be there... 2 hours ago Two stories about veterans were in the news during the week of March 27, the first of which concerned veterans of my generation who fought in the Vietnam War. Locally, Vietnam War veterans were invited to the Morganton-Burke Senior Center on Wednesday, March 29, from 9-11 a.m. for special recognition of their service. The pancake breakfast was part of a national movement set in motion by a proclamation given by former U.S. President Barack Obama in 2012 to honor veterans from that era in history. Losing friends and a loved one to the ravages of that particular war hits me particularly hard, so I read all the stories. In the past, most states had celebrated Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans Day on March 29 or 30 of each year, but, this year, President Donald Trump signed the Vietnam War Veterans Recognition Act of 2017," designating March 29 as the official Vietnam Veterans Day. March 29 had been viewed by many as a more appropriate date because in 1973, the last combat troops were withdrawn from Vietnam and the last prisoners of war held in North Vietnam arrived on American soil. It is also the date President Richard Nixon chose for the first Vietnam Veterans Day in 1974. I did my part and made a donation to the Paralyzed Veterans of America (PVA), but in its thank you email, the PVA shared some statistics that gnawed at my conscience and made my contribution miniscule in what Vietnam Veterans have had to deal with daily. No. 1 was that on a given night, 19,700 Vietnam Veterans are homeless, 271,000 today have PTSD, 75,000 returned home severely disabled, and zero are eligible for assistance under the VAs Family Caregiver Program. The PVA and other Veterans Service Organizations are fighting to expand eligibility for the VA Comprehensive Caregiver Program since the program is only available to a veteran seriously injured due to military service on or after Sept. 11, 2001. I had to read that twice. While the tragedies of 9/11 will be embedded in every Americans brain now and for decades to come, what PVA had on its website hit home for all veterans: Congress must eliminate the unjust date of injury requirement and include service connected illness as a criterion for the program, which, in turn, will give the majority of veterans caregivers access to critically needed support services. Think about it does it spur enough of you on to write to your government leaders? The other story had to do with Oscar Davis Jr. Dont know him? I didnt either until I read his story online via the Fayetteville Observer. Mr. Davis, 92, finally received his Purple Heart 70-plus years late. He had served in the 82nd Airborne Division during World War II and was knocked down by a large piece of shrapnel and then a falling tree while serving as a radiotelephone operator. With a significant spinal injury, the young paratrooper would spend three weeks paralyzed from the waist down, but would ultimately rejoin his unit. Davis had long ago been told that he would receive the Purple Heart, but the award paperwork was never signed amid the business of the war. The official medal ceremony was the culmination of nearly two years of work by the Veterans Legacy Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, Harnett County-based volunteer organization here in North Carolina that has helped more than 100 veterans receive military awards owed to them. According to its website, www.vetslegacy.org, its mission is to honor veterans and their service, celebrate their legacies, and inspire patriotism through historical research involving providing documentation of proof of eligibility for awards that may have never been processed or submitted. Volunteers scoured an archive of war reports to find proof of Davis injuries and the Purple Heart was the latest medal the group had recovered for him. In late 2015, the group helped the World War II veteran receive the Bronze Star and other medals that were long overdue. From an initial caseload of two to three several years ago, today the Foundation has more than 170 active cases and the number is steadily increasing. Donations are sorely needed for the group of dedicated volunteers to continue their work. And so, on March 25, 2017, seven decades later, Davis said the medal was worth the wait as Lt. Col. Marcus Wright leaned down to pin it to his jacket. This has been some day, Davis said. I couldnt believe all this was going to happen. I just want to thank the Lord. Im absolutely honored to be here today. No, Mr. Davis. Were honored to have read about you and thankful for your service. Peg DeMarco can be reached at pegdemarco@earthlink.net. This weeks Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony will renew what has become an annual tradition honoring the artists who have made rock 'n' roll. They are punks, rebels, heretics, innovators all of them geniuses on some level. The value of recognizing them cannot be overstated because the guts of any culture is its art. Art at times reaffirms the virtues of a culture by challenging what the culture has become. At times, art reaffirms the virtues of a culture by embodying them artistically. Rock music is an art form that embodies honest expression through showmanship, virtuosity, charisma, sexual energy, poetry of varying styles and, to use producer Jack Endinos phrase, a healthy respect for noise. Yet, rock music is born of a rebellious spirit, not always mainstream. Born out of the blues, which always exposed the underbelly of life, rock music has ricocheted between themes of romance, spirituality, fear, heartbreak, social injustice, teen angst, longing, frustration and raising spirits. The touchstone for rock music has always been honesty. The artists themselves may go through all kinds of personal struggles and be far from perfect, but the art they share deals with the truth. Decades ago, Harlan Howard defined country music as being three chords and the truth. Starting there, rock music could easily be defined by four chords, 12 bars, and the truth. In rock, you have to add the relative minor chord because rock music, lyrically and musically, dances with the dark side. Twelve bars is the history of rock. The straight and raw truth is what defines the genre. While both country and rock have popular streams that have objectified the respective forms, the emerging edges continue to shine spotlights on the truth. Those edgier artists tell the stories that challenge the status quo. They highlight the tragedies brought on by our culture. At its best, rock music is a force for good in the world because it makes room for our truth. This begs the question about whether or not institutionalizing rock music with its own hall of fame is some kind of sell out. Maybe it is. Rock music has always been about sticking it to the man. Record labels are most assuredly the man. So for Ahmet Ertegun, the founder of Atlantic Records, to honor the history of rock by establishing the hall of fame, it might appear that the man is simply co-opting the rogue ethos of rock. Maybe thats what happened. For an anti-establishment art form to be memorialized and honored so officially is at the least a bit dissonant. Many other art forms, powerful art forms, lack their own halls of fame, take literature for example books probably dont make as much money as records or sports. Still, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is a celebration of the rockers whove made the deepest impacts on rock music. Such an institution puts each generations artists in the context of the founders. This shows a tradition in this case the tradition of blowing up traditions and reorienting them for the contemporary circumstances. But capturing and highlighting that traditions, iconoclastic as it is, still serves that deepest of purposes of reminding everyone that no one created themselves and that we all stand on the shoulders of those who came before. The other question that endures is about who gets to choose who belongs in the Hall of Fame and who doesnt. Writers and executives and even other artists are still no better equipped than anyone else at saying which works of art worked and which ones didnt. The temptation might be to look at record sales, but we all know that thats dangerous. In the end, the inductees into the Hall might never have the impact or even social importance of some who dont. The power of art always resides in the eye of the beholder. So, dont let non-membership in the Hall of Fame keep you from listening to someone that would be a pretentious mistake. Likewise, membership in the Hall doesnt mean that an artist deserves your adoration. Ultimately, the Hall of Fame is just an arbitrary title that highlights some of the bigger milestones. We like what we like and the songs mean to us what they mean to us. If the Hall of Fame broadens our horizons and gives us an excuse to listen to artists we might have ignored, then we should listen at will. Jonathan Henley is the host of Road Signs radio show, which airs Sunday nights from 10 p.m. to midnight on 1065 The End. Contact Henley via email at roadsigns@1065.com or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/roadsignsradio. Read past columns and join his blog at www.1065.com/onair/road-signs-51152/. Tuesday night's meeting (April 4) at St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church did not look like the political meetings I've seen on TV. Ronnie Rector, MDPS public safety chief; Mayor Ronnie Thompson; and Catherine Magennis, Charlotte immigration attorney, listened at length to the concerns of the audience and responded in the most positive way possible to heartfelt concerns over recent immigration policy. Local Hispanics shared moving personal stories; Dr. Gandhari Loomis explained health issues that troubled her; and principals Sara LeCroy, of Forest Hill Elementary, and Lora Austin, of Mountain Crest shared facts, compassion and enthusiasm, enough to tempt retires to go back into teaching. The organizers had planned beautifully. And the standing room only audience of many races and faiths was unfailingly polite throughout a long meeting. Thank you to all who participated. The entire evening made me happier than usual to live here. April 5, 2017 (Toronto, ON) -- Casalova and Aviva Canada are pleased to announce an equity partnership that will aid in the growth of Casalovas unique real estate marketplace offering. The investment is being made by Aviva Ventures, Aviva plcs venture capital arm, who have committed to investing $170 million (CDN) globally over the next five years in start-up businesses that will continue to disrupt and transform the insurance industry.A digital first strategy which is an Aviva mandate globally means more than a state of the art website, said Ben Isotta-Riches, Chief Information Officer at Aviva Canada. A true digital focus means looking beyond our industry and partnering with start-ups offering new and creative experiences that add value for our customers and theirs.Casalova is an online end-to-end real estate marketplace streamlining the buying and renting process, allowing users to start their home search, schedule viewings, make offers online, and process payments directly through the platform. Launched in May 2015, Casalova now operates in 140 cities with over 120,000 exclusive and on-market listings across Canada, making it the leading real estate marketplace in the country.The investment is a first outside of the UK and the first in Canada from Aviva Ventures, who kicked off their search for high-potential Canadian digital start-ups with Aviva Pitch Day last October. With a keen interest in disrupting the way customer needs are addressed, Aviva heard from a short-listed group of 10 start-ups vying for their share in a potential $10 million (CDN) investment.Our first investment in the Canadian marketplace is monumental for us, commented Ben Luckett, Managing Director, Aviva Ventures. Were excited to be working with Casalova and to learn from each other to help grow, enhance and continue to disrupt the marketplace. We believe Casalova is making a huge difference in the real estate market at a time where the industry desperately needs it.Casalova recently announced that users now have the option to purchase pre-construction homes online, a first-in-Canada development. They are using this opportunity to level the playing field for buyers, allowing only one unit to be purchased at a time and giving all buyers equal access.We are very excited to be working with Aviva Ventures, said Ray Taaeb, CEO and cofounder of Casalova. Their strategic investment will help us expand and scale our technology to reach millions of Canadians looking to buy, sell, or rent their homes, while keeping them protected along the way. This is a major step forward for the real estate industry to provide Canadians with innovative solutions to archaic problems.Aviva Ventures provides early stage investment to back entrepreneurs with high-growth businesses and, over time, expects to have a portfolio of small investments in a number of companies that have significant potential. Aviva Ventures is part of Avivas digital strategy and, through the investments made, will assist Aviva in identifying new opportunities, the development of innovative business models and new digital insurance services and products, which make insurance simpler for customers.For more information on Aviva Ventures, please visit http://www.aviva.com/about-us/aviva-worldwide/aviva-ventures A broker has taken issue with a recent Toronto Sun column entitled Step away from the housing market, LiberalsEarlier this week, Jerry Agar, a conservative talk radio host, published an article in the Toronto Sun arguing against government intervention in Torontos real estate market.Housing in Toronto is not unaffordable, Agar wrote.He cited March 3 statistics by the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB) that determined half of Toronto buyers are first-timers.Agar argued owners of vacant properties pay their fair share of taxes, and that government suggestions to tax those owners further -- in a bid to cool the market -- are unwarranted.And he also argued that foreign homebuyers are not the problem, citing TREBs stats that they only make up 5% of the market.The article didnt sit well with Toronto broker Craig Howie of Dominion Lending Centres For him to say its a completely free market and the market is managing itself is just incredibly ignorant, Howie told MortgageBrokerNews.ca. The market isnt managing itself; Millenials arent being able to purchase homes and if they are, Id love to know how many of them are purchasing them with their parents.Indeed, it appears a growing number of buyers are turning to family members for help with purchasing a home.According to Mortgage Professionals Canadas most recent Annual State of the Residential Mortgage Market in Canada Survey Report, parental gifts for home purchases have doubled since 2000, with 15% of buyers reporting that sort of familial help.It should be mentioned the MPCs report covers the entire country; it can be assumed that a higher number of buyers requiring parental help are located in pricier markets, such as Toronto.Howie also took umbrage with Agars chosen foreign buyer stats.The stats from TREB and foreign homebuyers (are questionable) purely anecdotally, if you talk to any real estate agent theyre seeing a lot more homes being bought by (foreign buyers), Howie said.Several industry pundits have suggested foreign buyer share is much larger than the number touted by the real estate board.In 2014, developer Brad Lamb estimated foreign buyers make up 50% of the condo market in Toronto.More recently, Carl Langschmidt, president of Condos.ca,suggested foreign investment accounts for about 70% of all condos sold in Torontos CityPlace neighbourhood.To read Agars original column, and to check out his Twitter back-and-forth with Howie, click here In its latest set of data releases, the Toronto Real Estate Board announced that the average price of a detached home in the downtown area increased by 33 per cent year-over-year, up to nearly $1.6 million. This represented the largest annual growth since February 1989.However, Toronto mayor John Tory noted that while the city is taking steps to help address the affordability crisis and improve supply, theres still no consensus on the nature of the forces that are pushing the prices up the way they are, as well as the most effective and appropriate response to the issue.Tory was also hesitant to support the growing calls for a foreign buyers tax, as definite figures on the proportion of non-Canadian real estate investors in Toronto are unavailable.I dont know how you can make a decision on a huge public policy matter that can have an impact on the marketplace without having that data, the mayor said in a Bloomberg interview.Tory added that hes more willing to explore a tax on vacant properties to make more homes available.The TREB data revealed that prices across every major housing type, including condos and townhouses, increased in March. New listings also climbed by 15 per cent (up to 17,051) last month, after a noticeable decline in February.TREB president Larry Cerqua welcomed the citys cautious stance in not implementing anyknee-jerk policies.Policy makers must remember that it is the interplay between the demand for and supply of listings that influences price growth, Cerqua said in a statement. Related stories: Desperate home buyers in Toronto bypassing inspections RBC: Toronto and Vancouver housing affordability still at high-stress levels Posse saddles up to help children Russell Libby describes his golden palomino horse, Sonny, as the calmest, sweetest guy and his best friend for nearly two decades. Sonny is the reason Libby and his wife, Laura,... Kris Kringle to support library programs The Moorpark Friends of the Library is offering the second annual Letter from Santa fundraiser. For a $25 donation to the Moorpark Friends of the Library, children will receive a... Oakmont welcomes new executive director Ronda Wilkin, certified dementia practitioner and a senior living executive, joins Oakmont of Moorpark with more than three decades of experience in health and human services. During her 15 years... A little over a month into his job, Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Ben Carson is aiming to steer his office beyond its role as a maintenance organization, according to a HousingWire report. At HUD, things have changed [W]ere now becoming an organization that propels people to success, Carson said in Dallas during a side stop on his so-called listening tour of communities and HUD offices across the country. Were not just looking at putting a roof over someones head. Were looking at developing our human capital, because every single individual is capital, and they become part of the engine or part of the load. The Senate confirmed Carson as President Donald Trumps HUD Secretary on March 2. He had no housing experience prior to his appointment. FirstCapital Bank of Texas Chairman Ken Burgess is fighting for community banks. For the third time in four weeks, the incoming chairman of the American Bankers Association was in Washington, D.C., to talk with federal officials about the plight of community banks. Were losing almost a community bank per day, and we have done that since Dodd-Frank passed in 2010, he told the Reporter-Telegram on Thursday, one day after he and other bankers from around the country met with Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin and members of the Treasury Department. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was passed in 2010 in response to the Great Recession, but its across-the-board rules and regulations have been hard on community banks and even has FCB concerned as it gets close to various thresholds laid out in federal lending guidelines. Burgess talked with the federal government about the difficulties community banks are having when lending to small businesses. There are a number of lines of businesses that if a bank is involved in it increase the amount of capital they have to hold to be in that area of business. Many of those regulations directly impact our ability to lend to small businesses. Since the presidents primary focus is creating jobs, the last thing you want to do is hurt small businesses. One area is in commercial real estate lending. If you think about a small business that needs a building to operate out of, banks finance those businesses so they can have a place to operate, he said. When you put regulations in place that makes it harder and harder to make those types of loans, that impacts small business. Interim construction guidelines which cover homes, office buildings, shopping centers, hotels, apartment complexes and more dictate that banks cannot exceed 100 percent of capital. When you go in and say all of your interim construction should not surpass 100 percent of capital, youre ignoring that natural diversification thats already there, Burgess said. For FCB, Were right at 100 percent on that particular guideline. Theres a bit of leniency to go past that, but if you go too far past that, theres increased scrutiny and potentially increased capital that we have to hold within the bank because of that. We pay attention to that. Another inhibitor is a 300 percent threshold for all commercial real estate, which includes interim construction. Right now, we are somewhere between 250 percent to 260 percent, so we have to be judicious of the loans we make. FCB is forced to focus on existing customers first because its so close to the threshold. It might not be able to consider new customers who seek loans. This makes it difficult for his bank to facilitate growth in Midland, which has seen an economic uptick in recent months. Facilitating local economic growth is the mission of community banks such as FCB, Burgess said. He added that community banks have better knowledge about commercial real estate in their region than the federal government. He made the point clear to Mnuchin and company, he said. Setting artificial guidelines and ignoring the fact that community banks know their communities, know their customers and know where the risks lie better than a regulator in Washington, D.C., setting a one-size-fits-all policy limit on banks. We need to let the local communities decide where credit should be allocated so we can grow those communities. The result of that is good for our country because growth in our individual communities is going to make our economy better, he said. If given the choice, Burgess said he first would restructure regulations on home lending because people seeking small home loans often get less consideration. From the banks standpoint, its better to do the big loan because, in a lot of cases, we lose money on the smaller loans. We need to fix that so banks are as willing to make small home loans as they are big home loans. He explained that appraisals, inspections, surveys, legal fees and other regulatory requirements cost the bank the same for loans big and small. The ones who are being hurt the worst are the people who are trying to buy the less-expensive houses. When you make it so costly and so hard to make a loan, it gets costly for those small loans because it costs as much for a $50,000 home loan as it does for a $500,000 home loan. Burgess sympathizes with people and businesses seeking small loans. Before he was exposed to the banking business, he worked on a farm. His father started a bank when he was in eighth grade, and he got his first taste of the business when he got the chance to work at the bank when he was a sophomore. When I had an opportunity to work for the bank in high school, I had more fun working there than out driving a tractor or walking out into the field with a hoe in my hand, he said. For Burgess, the pursuit of banking wasnt about becoming wealthy. Hes community-minded, and the industry is his way to make positive impacts. Im not in banking for the money. If I wanted to be in a job where I wanted to make a lot of money, I probably would have been a doctor or an engineer, he said. The thing I enjoy most about banking is I get to help people, I get to help small business owners. I get to see the success from the help Im able to give them. Thats what makes my job enjoyable. Changing federal regulations so small banks can continue serving their communities is why he has spent so much time in the nations capital, having previously met with President Donald Trump and speaking before the House Financial Services Subcommittee. The more we can make things better for our small businesses and our communities, the more everyone will benefit because more jobs are created when our businesses are successful and more individual consumers around the country will benefit, Burgess said. Like Trevor on Facebook and follow him on Twitter at @HowdyHawes. Oil prices were trading sharply higher after the United States launched a missile attack on Syria on Thursday night, according to a press release from the GasBuddy website. Oil rose in after-hours trade by a dollar per barrel to $52.70 after news spread of roughly 50 Tomahawk missiles being launched from two U.S. warships in the Mediterranean Sea, the press release said. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A former Houston Independent School District employee is on the run, after being accused of impregnating a 13-year-old student. Mauricio Orlando Mendoza, 37, was arrested and charged in March for aggravated sexual assault of a child. He had been out on a $50,000 bail since March 23, but his bail was revoked March 31 because he was not living at the address he said he would be or not living with the person he said he would be with, according to court documents. Mendoza has been at-large since. A spokeswoman for the Harris County Sheriff's Office confirmed Thursday that there is an open warrant out on Mendoza. Mendoza's bond said he would live with his wife at their Houston residence. But within weeks, Mendoza's wife also no longer lived at the location provided to the court and said she did not know Mendoza's whereabouts, according to court documents. State District Judge Hazel Jones confiscated Mendoza's passport after she heard the allegations against him. Mendoza has lived in the United States with his wife and children for about five years. He is originally from El Salvador, prosecutors said. Mendoza was an information technology worker in Houston ISD before his arrest on March 22. He is accused of having had sex with the 13-year-old girl in his office and the library at Hartman Middle School. The girl tested positively in a pregnancy test in March. He was arrested after the girl's mother said she found illicit text messages between her daughter and Mendoza in December. He faced the possibility of life in prison. Brian Rogers and Brooke Lewis contributed to this report. James Durbin Concho Resources has sponsored a three-bedroom, two-bath home in Midland that will be the last home to be built on Martin Court in the Habitat for Humanity Cloverdale development. Concho Resources employees began their blitz build April 1 and will be donating their time and skills for a total of three Saturdays during April. F. Marie Halls philanthropy left a mark on health care and the arts in West Texas. Hall, who created the FMH Foundation, died Wednesday in Midland of an undisclosed cause. She was 80. Eileen Piwetz, executive director of the foundation, said Hall made contributions to various Midland entities. She loved West Texas and wanted West Texas to thrive, Piwetz said. There are a number of people able to go to college in terms of scholarships, and there are agencies that have state-of-the-art equipment because of her giving. Hall, a Big Spring native, lived in Midland for the past decade. She formerly worked in law and banking, but her philanthropy focused on other areas. Maries two great interests were health and visual and performing arts, Piwetz said. The reasons they were keen to her were her father was a physician in Big Spring for years and would take her to work and on rounds in the hospital, and her mother was in [the] arts. Throughout the years, Hall and her foundation helped to make possible several local projects, including the recently-opened City of Midland Aquatics FMH Natatorium. Hall valued excellence and innovation, and she chose to support entities that exemplified those qualities, Piwetz said. She felt that Midland was a proactive community, a place where she could make wise investments in the lives of others, Piwetz said. She was very astute in the agencies where she wanted to invest. She was just a legacy of giving. Hall also supported higher education institutions, including Midland College, Howard College and Texas Tech University. We were devastated to hear about Miss Halls passing, said Rebecca Bell, dean of community relations at MC. She was a friend to Midland College as well as a friend to the community. We have two buildings named after her: an academic building and the SimLife Center at Midland College. The philanthropist also helped to establish the college as an All-Steinway School and contributed to the construction of Halls Way, a walkway between the college and Midland Community Theatre, according to a press release. We are collating signatures to petition ... GET OUR APP Our Spectrum News app is the most convenient way to get the stories that matter to you. Download it here. Franklin Attkisson, a former Kissimmee mayor, was killed while he was riding his bicycle Thursday night after being struck by a car, the Florida Highway Patrol stated. Former Kissimmee Mayor Franklin Attkisson died after being struck by car, FHP says Crash remains under investigation; no charges filed Attkisson had long political career At around 6:39 p.m., Kirstie Jean Knoebel, 26, was driving her 2016 Hyun Elantra west on Kissimmee Park Road, west of Lake Tohopekaliga Road, as Attkisson was pedaling in the same direction, the FHP stated. Knoebel's car hit the back of the 61-year-old Attkisson's bike, the FHP stated. Attkisson was taken to the Osceola Regional Hospital where he died. Knoebel wasn't under the influence of alcohol, according to a report. The crash remains under investigations and no charges have been filed. Attkisson had a long career in Florida politics. "Frank was elected as Chairman of the Osceola County Commission in December 2012. He is serving his first term with the Osceola County Commission, which started in November 2010. He has previously served in other local elected offices such as City of Kissimmee Commissioner and Mayor. He was elected to the Florida House of Representatives in 2000 and served eight years until being termed out of office," according to the Osceola County government's website. Attkisson lost his re-election bid to Cheryl Grieb in 2014 by just more than 100 votes. Osceola County Commissioner Fred Hawkins Jr. shared his thoughts and feelings with News 13 about Attkisson's death. "The Osceola community is in shock from the tragic event last night. Frank was a great man devoted to family and served the region and county as mayor of Kissimmee, House of Representatives and then county commissioner. He was my friend," he stated. "I ask for prayers for Juda, his wife their children and the entire Osceola County community as we come to terms with this tragic loss." Frank Attkisson's Political Career Kissimmee City Commission 1990-1992 Kissimmee Mayor 1996-2000 Florida House of Representatives 2000-2008 Osceola County Commission 2010-2014 (chairman 2012-2014) Property valued between $100 and $750 was taken from the 500 block of Wayland between 2-8:15 p.m. Wednesday by an unknown person. --An unknown person stole property valued between $50 and $500 from a building in the 1200 block of West 32nd Street between 8 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. March 2. The crime was reported Thursday. --A gas drive-off occurred about 10 p.m. Wednesday in the 800 block of North Columbia. --A 57-year-old man was held in Hale County jail Friday on $200 bond for simple assault. He was arrested about 7:30 p.m. Thursday in the 1000 block of Denver for intentionally causing unwanted contact with another. --A 22-year-old woman was held in Hale County jail Friday on two bonds totaling $4,000 for unlawfully carrying a weapon and possession of marijuana under 2 oz. She was arrested about 10:45 p.m. Thursday in the 2300 block of El Paso. --An unknown individual stole property of unreported value between 6:15-8:16 p.m. Wednesday in the 900 block of Baltimore. --A known person intentionally or knowingly made contact with another that was regarded as offensive sometime Thursday in the 2400 block of Columbia. The offense was described as a simple assault. --A 33-year-old woman was held in Hale County jail Thursday on two bonds totaling $1,700 on charges of no drivers license and possession of marijuana under oz. Also arrested by police in connection with the same incident Wednesday was a 50-year-old woman. She was held in Hale County jail Thursday on $200 bond for public intoxication. (Anyone with information on crime in Plainview and Hale County may contact the Crime Stoppers Hotline at 293-8477 or 293-TIPS.) WASHINGTON The United States blasted a Syrian air base with a barrage of cruise missiles Thursday night in fiery retaliation for this weeks gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. President Donald Trump cast the U.S. assault as vital to deter future use of poison gas and called on other nations to join in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria. It was the first direct American assault on the Syrian government and Trumps most dramatic military order since becoming president just over two months ago. Announcing the assault from his Florida resort, Trump said there was no doubt Syrian President Bashar Assad was responsible for the chemical attack, which he said employed banned gases and killed dozens. Assad choked out the lives of innocent men, women and children, Trumped declared. The U.S. strikes hit the government-controlled Shayrat air base in central Syria, where U.S. officials say the Syrian military planes that dropped the chemicals had taken off. The U.S. missiles hit at 8:45 p.m. in Washington, 3:45 a.m. Friday morning in Syria. The missiles targeted the bases airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, officials said. Syrian state TV reported a U.S. missile attack on a number of military targets and called the attack an aggression. The surprise U.S. assault marked a striking reversal for Trump, who warned as a candidate against the U.S. getting pulled into the Syrian civil war, now in its seventh year. But the president earlier in the week appeared moved by the photos of children killed in the chemical attack, calling it a disgrace to humanity that crossed a lot of lines. About 60 U.S. Tomahawk missiles, fired from warships in the Mediterranean Sea, targeted an air base in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack that American officials believe Syrian government aircraft launched with a nerve agent, possibly sarin. The president did not announce the attacks in advance, though he and other national security officials ratcheted up their warnings to the Syrian government throughout the day Thursday. I think what happened in Syria is one of the truly egregious crimes and shouldnt have happened and it shouldnt be allowed to happen, Trump told reporters traveling on Air Force One to Florida, where he was holding a two-day summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The strike came as Trump was hosting Xi in meetings focused in part on another pressing U.S. security dilemma: North Koreas nuclear program. Trumps actions in Syria could signal to China that the new president isnt afraid of unilateral military steps. even if key nations like China are standing in the way. Trump has advocated greater counterterrorism cooperation with Russia, Assads most powerful military backer. Just last week, the Trump administration signaled the U.S. was no longer interested in trying to push Assad from power over his direction of a conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and led to the worst refugee crisis since World War II. U.S. military officials sought to portray the strikes as an appropriate, measured response. But the assault still risks plunging America into the middle of Syrias conflict, complicating the safety of the hundreds of U.S. forces fighting a separate campaign against the Islamic State group in the north of the country. If Assads military persists in further gas attacks, the Trump administration might logically pursue increased retaliation. Russia and Iran, Assads allies, pose other problems. Russian military personnel and aircraft are embedded with Syrias, and Iranian troops and paramilitary forces are also on the ground helping Assad fight the array of opposition groups hoping to topple him. Before the strikes, U.S. military officials said they informed their Russian counterparts of the impending attack. The goal was to avoid any accident involving Russian forces. Nevertheless, Russias Deputy U.N. ambassador Vladimir Safronkov warned that any negative consequences from the strikes would be on the shoulders of those who initiated such a doubtful and tragic enterprise. The U.S. also notified its partner countries in the region prior to launching the strikes. Trumps decision to attack Syria came three-and-a-half years after President Barack Obama threatened Assad with military action after an earlier chemical weapons attack killed hundreds outside of Damascus. Obama had declared the use of such weapons a red line. At the time, several American ships in the Mediterranean were poised to launch missiles, only for Obama to abruptly pull back after key U.S. ally Britain and the U.S. Congress balked at his plan. He opted instead for a Russian-backed plan that was supposed to remove and eliminate Syrias chemical weapons stockpiles. Thursday nights strikes were launched from the USS Ross and USS Porter and landed in the early morning Friday in Syria. The world learned of the chemical attack earlier in the week in footage that showed people dying in the streets and bodies of children stacked in piles. The international outcry fueled an emotional response from Trump, who appeared to abandon his much-touted America First vision for a stance of humanitarian intervention, akin to that of previous American leaders. I think what happened in Syria is a disgrace to humanity, he said Thursday. Trump seemed to rapidly reconsider his feelings about Assad, saying: Hes there and I guess hes running things, so something should happen. The show of force in Syria raises legal questions. Its unclear what authority Trump is relying on to attack another government. When Obama intervened in Libya in 2011, he used a U.N. Security Council mandate and NATOs overall leadership of the mission to argue that he had legal authority arguments that many Republicans opposed. Trump cant rely on either justification here. Unclear also is whether Trump is adopting any broader effort to combat Assad. Under Obama, the United States largely pulled back from its support for so-called moderate rebels when Russias military intervention in September 2015 led them to suffer a series of battlefield defeats. Instead, Obama sought to work with Russia on a negotiated transition. Trump and his top aides had acknowledged in recent days the reality of Assad being in power, saying his ouster was no longer a priority. But the chemical weapons attack seemed to spur a rethink. In Florida on Thursday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said of Assad: Theres no role for him to govern the Syrian people. ALBANY (AP) New York is launching a statewide campaign against distracted driving as part of April's National Distracted Driving Awareness Month. Gov. Andrew Cuomo says state and local police will be stepping up patrols and checkpoints through Monday in Operation Hang Up. Last year's effort resulted in more than 18,000 tickets, including more than 2,000 for distracted driving. A McAllen family that last week acquired Inter National Bank in the Rio Grande Valley eventually plans to merge the $1.6 billion institution with San Antonios Vantage Bank Texas. The family of James W. Collins purchased a 100 percent interest in Inter National Bank of McAllen from Grupo Financiero Banorte of Mexico for an undisclosed price. The family already has a controlling interest in Vantage Bancorp Inc., the parent of Vantage Bank, which had almost $500 million in assets at the end of last year. Our intention now is to really combine, long-term, Vantage with INB at the appropriate time period, Collins said in an interview Thursday. Asked when that might happen, Collins said, Were hoping sooner rather than later. No paperwork has been filed with bank regulators, he said. Collins said its advantageous for the banks to combine because of synergies and cost savings. The combined banks would have about $2.1 billion in assets based on year-end reports. That would rank it as about the 42nd-largest bank in the state. INB currently ranks 47th, according to the Texas Department of Banking. Eventually (the plan is) to merge the two, Im sure; if Jim says it, its true, Vantage Bank CEO Guy Bodine said. But what were doing today is operating two separate banks. There have been no definitive conversations around anything about the merger. Bodine noted, however, that the two banks have become affiliates of each other because of the Collins familys controlling interest in both. The Collins family also owns a less than 5 percent interest in both Southwest Bancshares Inc., the parent company of The Bank of San Antonio, and Texas Hill Country Bancshares Inc, the parent of Texas Hill Country Bank in Bandera. In addition, the family has a minority interest in Commerce Bank Texas in Stockdale. Collins does not serve on the boards of the holding companies or the banks. INB was formed in 1985 by a group of six organizers that included Collins. The investor group sold a large stake in the bank to Banorte, one of Mexicos largest financial institutions, in 2006. Banorte purchased the interest as way to expand in the U.S., the McAllen Monitor reported in November. In 2009, Banorte acquired the remaining interest it did not already own in INB. INB CEO and President Samuel Munafo was out of the office and unavailable for comment Thursday. INB has been named as the victim in a number of federal court cases alleging that corrupt government officials from Mexico lied to bank officers in order to deposit bribes into their accounts. Luis Carlos Castillo Cervantes, a U.S. citizen living in Mission who owns a paving company in Mexico, used his position as a 7 percent shareholder in INB to help corrupt politicians and businessmen launder money in the U.S., federal prosecutors have alleged. During Castillos January plea hearing in Corpus Christi, an assistant U.S. attorney said the businessman had an office at INB in McAllen. Castillo was accused of helping former governors and other officials from three Mexican states, as well as a businessman with property in San Antonio, open accounts at INB that were used to funnel tens of millions of dollars in bribe money from Mexico into U.S. banks. Castillo has not yet been sentenced. I would say Inter National tries to do an excellent job of being in compliance and checking for money laundering, Collins said. He said the bank now employs more than 30 people in compliance. I think Grupo Banorte exited because of the increased U.S. regulation, Collins added. The bank will continue to do business with customers on both sides of the border, he said. Collins, who took over as INBs chairman when the transaction closed, said his family believes it can expand the bank throughout South Texas, and possibly beyond. INB lost $185 million last year, but that was due to $203 million in goodwill impairment losses in connection with Banortes planned divestiture of INB. INB has about 400 employees, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.s website. The bank had about $1.3 billion in deposits and more than $1 billion in loans at the end of last year. pdanner@express-news.net Twitter: @AlamoPD Staff Writer Jason Buch contributed to this report. This article has been updated to reflect that the family of James W. Collins has a less than 5 percent interest in both Southwest Bancshares Inc., the parent company of The Bank of San Antonio, and Texas Hill Country Bancshares Inc, the parent of Texas Hill Country Bank in Bandera. In addition, the article was corrected to reflect that Collins does not serve on the boards of the banks or their holding companies. San Antonios USAA Bank has tapped Chad Borton, an executive at Fifth Third Bancorp in Cincinnati, as president, the company announced Friday. Borton, who starts May 15, ran Fifth Thirds retail and business banking, digital banking, auto lending, consumer credit, collection, process improvement and business controls. Chad has the right vision and expertise to lead USAA through one of the most exciting periods in banking, said USAA CEO Stuart Parker in a press release. He brings invaluable insights into changing consumer demands and emerging trends, having directed consumer banking in some of the nations largest financial institutions. The move comes as USAA pairs back its branch network as its members increasingly bank online or through their mobile app. Borton, a former Army officer, previously worked for JPMorgan Chase & Co. where he was the head of branch administration, the chief financial officer of the consumer bank and head of its retail distribution network. Hell report to USAA Chief Operating Officer Carl Liebert and will become a member of the USAA executive council, which manages the day-to-day operations of USAAs companies. Borton replaces Jamie Warder, who left USAA Bank as president in November after 22 months in the position. A former U.S. Army officer, Borton said he has been a USAA member for 25 years. USAAs focus on innovation and its impeccable reputation position it for an exciting future, he said in the release. He holds a bachelors degree in business economics and public policy from Indiana University and a masters degree in business administration from Harvard Business School. The insurance and financial services giant last month reported a 27 percent drop in earnings to $1.8 billion last year, its smallest profit since the Great Recession. The companys members filed a record number of claims following last years hail storms. The company serves current and former members of the military and their families. dhendricks@express-news.net This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate It seems like common sense: People will be less tempted to drink and drive if they have an easier, safer way to get home after a night out. Uber has plenty of incentive to make this case and has reported declines in drunken-driving incidents in several major cities after the company rolled out its ride-hailing services, beginning in San Francisco in 2010. A recent independent study backs this up. It found that in four boroughs of New York City, excluding Staten Island, there has been a 25 percent to 35 percent reduction in alcohol-related car accidents since Uber came to town in 2011, compared with other places where a ride-hailing company doesnt operate. Thats a significant reduction, amounting to about 40 fewer collisions per month in those boroughs. And its good news for Uber, which could use some positive attention after months of hurtling from one public relations crisis to the next. We need more evidence, but the trend seems to be pointing toward ride-sharing reducing drunk-driving incidents, said Jessica Lynn Peck, a doctoral candidate at the City University of New York Graduate Center who wrote the study, a working paper that was published in January. But not all studies have reached the same conclusion. One report, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology last year, looked at 100 densely populated counties across the U.S. and found no correlation between the rollout of Uber services and the number of traffic fatalities. Noli Brazil, a postdoctoral research associate with the University of Southern California who wrote that paper with David Kirk, an associate professor at Oxford University, said common-sense arguments that ride-hailing apps should prevent drunken driving made some sense on an individual level. But he warned against making broader assumptions, especially because those who would drive drunk are not necessarily rational decision-makers. Researchers on the subject, he added, had to deal with a dizzying array of variables, including state laws, time frames and communities access to public transportation. All these can affect a studys conclusions, and there is plenty of opportunity to cherry-pick data. In order to explain our results, we pointed out the fact that the proportion of individuals who use Uber is quite small relative to the number of drivers in a given county, Brazil said. Most studies, like Pecks, have noted a correlation between Uber services and lower rates of alcohol-related accidents. A 2015 report from Temple University found that Uber was associated with a decrease in motor vehicle homicides in California. A report this year from researchers at West Carolina University also found that Uber service rollouts led to declines in fatal accident rates across the country. But none of these reports has been as unequivocal as the one that Uber itself released in 2015. It stated that in several major cities, Uber ridership peaked at times when drunken-driving accidents tend to happen. It also found that in Seattle, the introduction of services was associated with a 10 percent decrease in arrests for driving under the influence. And in places where Uber was launched in California, it reported, the number of alcohol-related crashes every month decreased by 6.5 percent among young drivers. Several independent studies have shown Ubers presence in cities can help reduce drunk driving, a company spokeswoman said. Were glad to provide an alternative to drunk driving that helps people make safer, more responsible choices. Peck, whose research used collisions data from the New York Department of Motor Vehicles and the states Department of Transportation from 2007 to 2013, agreed that the growing body of research suggests ride-hailing services lead to less alcohol-related car accidents. But she noted that analyzing data sets and teasing out causation from correlation is slow and tricky work. I think anyone who does statistics for a living is going to be really careful about saying they are sure, she said. Because we are scientists, and we are never sure. While scientists are known for being cautious, Uber is known for being brash. The young company has disrupted the taxi industry since its founding in 2009 and is reportedly valued at close to $70 billion. As a workplace, Uber came under fire in February amid reports that the company had an aggressive internal culture that allowed some infractions to go unpunished. And Uber has faced a series of scandals recently, with many revolving around the companys chief executive, Travis Kalanick. Brazil said that as Uber becomes more popular across the U.S., a growing body of research could indeed show that the app leads to lower drunken-driving rates but its too early to say for sure. The company made this claim that it made cities safer, he said. We felt like theres not enough people using Uber just yet to make that kind of claim. Midlands influence in the energy industry continues to expand globally. Independently owned Wildcat Oil Tools has announced the formation of its international arm, Wildcat International, with plans beginning this summer to provide rental tools, equipment and services in South America. The move comes at the request of several of the companys customers, said Aron Marquez, Wildcats president. Were so fortunate and blessed to have a strong, loyal customer base, he said. We had several customers who have done exploratory wells off Colombia and asked us to do the same services we provide here but offshore. In response, the company has put together what he called the best engineering team in the world to design proprietary tools to adapt to different depths and long laterals. Were working with our customers to design tools and find avenues to make drilling and completing wells more efficient. More from Oil Report Ares Management announces Development Capital Resources, partners with Endeavor The company has already received inquiries about working in North Africa and the Middle East, as well as in the Gulf of Mexico, Marquez said. Our team will evaluate where we want to go and focus on that expansion and do everything correctly. Its amazing, being an independently owned company. Each new opportunity opens the door to hiring more people, he said. Duane Samford has been hired as president for Wildcat International, and Marquez cited Samfords 36 years experience, including positions with Smith International and Schlumberger and work in international markets. Marquez also praised the addition of Rick Strange as the new companys general counsel. Rick is an incredible asset, sitting in on the negotiations, making sure every t is crossed and every i dotted and working with the management team to make sure were in compliance on everything. The team will focus on technology for downhole tools, remediation and wellbore enlargement, Marquez said. He stressed that those tools will have applications in the Permian Basin as well as offshore and in international waters. Even during the recent downturn, when companies were laying off staff, Wildcat was bucking the trend by hiring because so much talent was coming available, he said. Being independently owned offers stability and enjoys a low turnover rate, he said. I was Employee No. 1, Marquez said. We like to promote from within and encourage our employees to grow. That motivates them to stay. We have a great mixture of people who have been in the industry 30 to 40 years and a lot of young new engineers. The company recently built a $5 million facility in Odessa and has locations in Carlsbad, New Mexico, two in Oklahoma and one in Pennsylvania. Wildcat International will be headquartered in Houston. Even so, Marquez insists the company will remain Permian Basin-focused. Its amazing. We were just in Colombia last week in Cartegena and Bogota and there were people there from Midland, from Odessa, from Hobbs. Theres a lot of skill sets and talent (in the Permian Basin) that the whole world looks upon, Marquez said. Wildcats product lines include BOPs, reverse units, power swivels, open-hole and cased-hole fishing equipment, flow back, foam and nitrogen units, tubulars, whipstocks, inspection services and wellsite consulting services. Odds are, youve at least heard of Venmo, but theres also a good chance you havent used the mobile app or anything else like it to send money to family or friends. But thats likely to change over the next few years, as banks, payment companies and even the likes of Google and Facebook push so-called peer-to-peer, or p2p, payment systems a medium of exchange with revolutionary potential. The apps and online tools could someday overtake cash and checks as the primary way individuals pay each other, and they even could make inroads at the cash register and with businesses that send refunds and other payments to their customers. These systems will get a boost later this year when a coalition of the nations biggest banks roll out Zelle, a mobile and online money-transfer network that will let any customer of nearly every U.S. bank send money to customers of any other bank using only a phone number or email address. Analysts say the bank-led system and the related marketing push should bring online and mobile peer-to-peer payments to a larger audience. Even competitors, notably the popular money transfer app Venmo, say the Zelle rollout could boost their fortunes by making digital-money transfers more mainstream. We dont see it as a winner-take-all scenario, said Josh Criscoe, a spokesman for Venmo owner PayPal. We welcome any effort to move folks to more digital payments and move toward the smartphone as the central point of financial life. The common enemy is cash. Online and mobile peer-to-peer payment systems have grown rapidly over the last few years, and analysts expect that to continue. In a report published in March, finance industry research firm Aite Group estimated that Americans made about $147 billion in digital p2p transfers last year, up from $100 billion the year before. Those are big numbers, to be sure, but last years sum still only accounted for about 12 percent of the more than $1.2 trillion that Americans paid each other that year, mostly in cash. That means theres still plenty of growth ahead, said Talie Baker, an analyst at Aite Group. In her report, she estimated that the volume of digital p2p payments will more than double by 2020, topping $316 billion. Not that many consumers are using mobile payments yet, Baker said, noting that though these payments are more common among young consumers in big coastal cities, theyre not so ubiquitous elsewhere. Im a Gen-X person and I live in Denver I hadnt heard of Venmo until 2015. There are plenty of players in the p2p game. Square Inc., the payments company behind the tiny white credit card reader that plugs into a smartphone, has a p2p service of its own, Square Cash, which launched in 2013. Following the geometric theme, theres also Circle, a Boston firm that started the same year and specializes in cross-border p2p transfers in dollars, euros and British pounds. Facebook and Google, too, allow users to send money to friends. Google has Google Wallet, which started as a mobile wallet app but became a p2p payment tool in 2015, and Facebook users have been able to send money through Facebook Messenger since 2015. Square, Google and Facebook dont report the volume of payments made through their p2p systems, but Facebook in regulatory filings has said that only a relatively small percentage of its users have used the payments feature. Venmo is arguably the biggest name in peer-to-peer transfers. It even has the coveted status, like Google, Uber and a few others, of becoming a verb as in Venmo me. Founded in 2009, the company was acquired in 2012 by payment services provider Braintree, which was acquired the following year by online payments giant PayPal which offers p2p payments under its own name too. But the biggest players in the market are still the banks. Last year, Venmo users transferred $17.6 billion. Thats more than double the volume from 2015, but its also much less than the $28 billion transferred in 2016 through QuickPay, JPMorgan Chases peer-to-peer payment system. And thats just one bank. Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and other major financial institutions have had their own p2p transfer programs for years, though it can sometimes be clunky for bank customers to send money to people with accounts at other financial institutions. Aite Group estimates that of all the digital p2p transfers Americans made last year, non-bank systems such as Venmo accounted for only about 17 percent of that. Banks accounted for the rest, though much of that likely was made through banks websites, not mobile apps, and much of it was money transferred between customers of the same bank. In part, thats a statement about who uses different systems, and what they are used for. Venmo and other non-bank systems are accessed about twice as often as bank systems, but for much smaller transactions, according to Aite Group. The average money transfer on a non-bank system is $135; the average for bank systems is $1,359, according to the report. That might suggest that parents sending money to a student for college tuition, for instance, might be more likely to transfer money through a bank, while students are much more likely to split a restaurant bill or bar tab using Venmo. The payment app is also a social network in its own right, with users sending messages to friends when they transfer money a feature Venmo pioneered. Those messages shed light on whats behind each transaction and indicate that Venmo is most often used among friends over food and drink, said Criscoe, the Venmo spokesman. Pizza is the No. 1 emoji on Venmo; beer is a close follow, he said, adding that other messages suggest users are splitting bigger-ticket items too, such as rent. Though Venmo and other non-bank payment systems are still a small part of the p2p market, banks want to make sure they keep their place in the financial order and keep their customers. This summer, Early Warning, a company owned by some of the nations largest banks, will release Zelle, a payment system built to compete with Venmo and others and, banks hope, to make digital p2p payments more mainstream. Along with the release, Early Warning will kick off a marketing campaign showing not only how Zelle works but how it might be used. Lou Anne Alexander, president of Early Warnings payments group, said the focus will be on appealing to older consumers who might not have tried p2p payments. Were trying to take (p2p) from millennials to the mainstreamcustomers might use a product like this, Alexander said. That might be managing contributions to the high school marching band or it might be renting a home on the beach with friends or family. Zelle traces it roots back to 2011, when Bank of America, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase set out to build a system initially called ClearXchange that would allow their customers to send money to each other using only phone numbers and email addresses. Before, customers could only transfer money to friends and family by entering account and routing numbers information customers often didnt know and might be concerned about sharing. Zelle is essentially a souped-up, rebranded version of ClearXchange. It will be available to anyone with a U.S. bank account, and it aims to overcome some of the limitations and confusion around the ClearXchange system. Sarah Grotta of research and consulting firm Mercator Advisory Group said banks didnt do a great job of explaining that ClearXchange would allow customers to send money to customers of other banks. Part of the problem, she said, was that every bank has its own name for its ClearXchange-powered p2p system, including Chase QuickPay, Wells Fargo SurePay and Capital One P2P Payments. It wasnt well-marketed that someone at Chase could pay someone at Bank of America because they had different marketing and different branding, Grotta said. You could pay someone at any financial institution, but people never realized that. To address that problem, banks over the next few months will begin rebranding their p2p transfer systems to include Zelle in the name. Chase, for instance, will start calling its system QuickPay with Zelle. Customers of more than a dozen big banks representing most U.S. account holders will be able to transfer money through the banks mobile apps. For other banks and credit unions, customers will be able to do so through the Zelle mobile app, set to be released this summer. Once the system is running and the marketing campaign kicks off, Grotta expects Zelle to be a hit. This is going to be a much better user experience than the banks had before, she said. I think it will start to catch on once people see that they can in fact send money to another person at another financial institution. For banks, the stakes are high. Though Venmo and other money transfer apps are tiny by comparison, Baker said banks are rightfully worried about what might happen if their customers interact more often with outside payment companies. If a customer opens an outside p2p payment app once a day and their mobile banking app just once a week, the payment company has more opportunities to sell that customer on products and services the bank would otherwise provide, she said. Once Venmo builds up a strong enough customer base, then it can say, Hey, come get a credit card from us, or Come get a home loan from us, Baker said. Thats the approach some providers are hoping to take. Banks see other advantages too. Mary Harman, an executive in Bank of Americas consumer payments division, said its expensive for banks to process checks and move cash around, so an increase in digital p2p payments could cut costs. She said banks also want to give customers the services and options they want. Some customers, she said, might prefer using Venmo; others might prefer the implied security of managing financial transactions exclusively through their bank. We serve 65-million households in the U.S., and not everyone will act the same way, Harman said. We have to recognize that and have different products available in different places. Leah Millis/The Chronicle A man and woman from Vallejo were arrested in connection with a fatal shooting in San Franciscos Tenderloin neighborhood, police said Thursday. Johnnie Reed, 33, and Tiana Jacobs, 24, were taken into custody Tuesday in Sacramento, officials said. 'Going in Style' Atsushi Nishijima/Associated Press 'Your Name' Funimation Films 'Smurfs: The Lost Village' Sony Pictures/TNS A quick glance at the movie listings suggests this might be the worst weekend in a very bad month for movies. Looks can be deceiving, though. That golden oldie crime caper? It's not bad. And the animated movie you've never heard of? It's something special. Tampa, Fla. Paul O'Neill, who founded the progressive metal band Trans-Siberian Orchestra that was known for its spectacular holiday concerts filled with theatrics, lasers and pyrotechnics, has died. He was 61. University of South Florida police spokeswoman Renna Reddick said O'Neill was found dead in his room by hotel staff at a Tampa Embassy Suites late Wednesday afternoon. She says there were no obvious signs of foul play, and a medical examiner is working to determine an official cause. The band said in a statement that O'Neill died from a "chronic illness." The band calls his death "a profound and indescribable loss for us all." O'Neill was a rock producer and manager who began putting together Trans-Siberian Orchestra in 1996, blending heavy metal with classical music and creating a unique brand of rock theater. He tapped three members of the Tarpon Springs, Florida, band Savatage to be part of TSO and intended for it to be a "supergroup," similar to popular bands like ELO, Pink Floyd and Yes. "The best description of a TSO show I ever saw came from a reporter who said the only way to describe TSO is 'The Who meets Phantom of the Opera with Pink Floyd's light show,'" O'Neill told the Tampa Bay Times in an email interview in 2012. "I would take any one of those alone as a compliment." The band is best known for its hard rock takes on Christmas staples like "Carol of the Bells," but also more experimental, arena-rock songs such as "Christmas Eve (Sarajevo 12/24)," which described a lone cello player playing a forgotten holiday song in war-torn Sarajevo. That song was on the band's 1996 album, "Christmas Eve and Other Stories," which went triple platinum. Fans especially loved the band's Christmas tours, which were heavy on guitar solos and heavier on special effects similar to a Broadway Christmas pageant with a heavy metal soundtrack. One magazine once wrote that "TSO has enough pyro to BBQ an entire school of blue whales" during a show. "My personal theory is it was being in the right place at the right time. It was easier for us to jump the generation gap between all the people before us. There's something magical about watching a 15-year-old kid get into an Al Pitrelli guitar solo and his father jamming out there with him. That's (proof) enough time has gone by that everybody has rock in common now, which simply didn't exist when it was born in the '60s," O'Neill told Billboard. But O'Neill, with his signature flowing locks, sunglasses and leather jackets, was remembered by legions of fans on social media Thursday for something else: his deep generosity. Fans recalled how O'Neill would often approach them before concerts and hand them a silver dollar from the year they were born (he kept a case of them while touring), or sometimes hand out jean jackets. And others recall him tipping waitresses thousands of dollars for a post-show meal, buying drum sets for young fans and on numerous occasions, would not let security guards kick fans out until everyone received an autograph. O'Neill is survived by his wife and daughter. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate It's not all bleak news for San Antonio's public TV station following President Trump's proposal to slash federal funding to public broadcasting, a move that prompted cutback worries at KLRN and other PBS affiliates. Tears, cheers and a whole lot of gratitude marked a KLRN celebration this week that touted a generous gift from the McCombs Family Foundation and introduced a newly named media center. According to KLRN president and CEO Arthur Emerson, the multi-year $500,000 grant from the foundation will enable necessary improvements to the station's production studio and broadcasting capabilities. "With the funding received, our station will be upgraded with new lighting, editing technology and broadcast and production equipment," Emerson wrote in an email. "This grant from the McCombs Family Foundation will ensure that our own public television station continues to operate with excellence," Red McCombs added in a release about the Wednesday event. The main reason for the festivities at KLRN's studios on Broadway, however, was to honor Charline McCombs. She was startled to learn that KLRN's media center now bears her name: Charline McCombs Media Center. The christening recognized the philanthropist for her generous support of public television here and her extensive contributions to the arts in general. "Charline had no idea this was happening," Katrina Kehoe, KLRN's vice president of communications and marketing, wrote in an email. McCombs' response? A face full of tears and shock, Kehoe said. "It was a surprise from Red and the McCombs family foundation. She found out about it while she was at the event! She thought she was coming to KLRN to have her photograph taken. It was so amazing to see her reaction," Kehoe added. "KLRN is fortunate to have the McCombs family as a partner in our community," Emerson stated in a release following the event, which was attended by Mayor Ivy Taylor, Judge Nelson Wolff and other city dignitaries. "This building, dedicated to Charline McCombs, is a symbol of the philanthropy of this family and embodies their support and passion for public broadcasting," Emerson added. The $500,000 grant will be used as seed money for a $1.5 million campaign to raise funds for new studio technology and broadcast equipment. KLRN is currently seeking the remaining funds to complete the upgrade. The celebration took a bit of the sting out of last month's proposal by President Trump to cut funding for public broadcasting, which Emerson said would have a sizable impact on San Antonio's public TV station. "We always worry about the funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. This time it's more severe in that they're completely eliminating the funding as it's presented to the Congress. Hopefully the Congress will see the wisdom of preserving the little bit of money ... it's one penny for every $100," Emerson said in an earlier interview. "That for us is right at $1 million a year, representing about 17 percent of our budget," Emerson added. "If we were to lose that, we'd have to tighten the belt quite a bit." "We provide 6o hours of children's educational programming each week over 30 counties," he said. "This is the only place you can put your child in front of a television set and feel good about it. We want to keep that tradition alive and healthy in South Texas." jjakle@express-news.net Plainview Lions Club Happy Birthday to Lions, Happy Birthday to Lions, Happy Birthday to all Lions, Happy Birthday to you and many more. That is the theme during this year of 2017, as this great organization was founded in 1917 in Chicago, Illinois, by Mr. Melvin Jones, whose vision it was to be a part of a group of young men to serve fellow men. That was back when Hector was a pup, and the beginning of this countrys bleakest years with the Great Depression. In 1929, an active Lions Club in Floydada sponsored the first club in this city in the confines of our Hilton Hotel. Several years passed with hard time hitting this area once again, when the Floydada Lions Club had to shut its doors due to expense and non-attendance. After several years this Plainview Lions Club reversed the favor and re-sponsored the Floydada Lions Club which like our present club, still meet regularly and serves the Floydada community. And as new regulations and growing pains prevailed, doors opened for acceptance of lady Lions joining our ranks, and to this date have shown their abilities to serve fellow men and women, whereas the group is now known to be the Plainview Lions Club. Board of Directors met Wednesday for their monthly feed and growl at the PISD Board Room with Brent Richburg, Jim Tirey, Kevin Carter, Sarianne Beversdorf, Logan Pritchett, Greg Brown, Paul Drager, Doug McDonough, James Belk, Fred Haakensen, Mike Melcher, Travis Thornton, John Bertsch and Misty Rowell in attendance to represent our club of 86 active members. Our District Convention will be held in Snyder on April 21-22 where our club will sponsor Lion James Belk as a candidate for second vice district governor of Lions 2T2. Its great to be a Lion We Serve Ron White Kiwanis International of Plainview Fifteen people met at noon Thursday at Plainview Country Club. Following the Pledge of Allegiance, Randy Kaufman offered a prayer. The board met Wednesday at IHOP. Treasurer Mark Warren presented the financial report. Members decided to become a sponsor for the Stand 4 Kind event on April 28 being hosted by High Plains Radio Network, which is graciously donating proceeds to the club. Mark reported that the process of naming winners of the clubs various scholarships has begun. Rex Redies is serving as the clubs Meals on Wheels delivery driver for April. Kevin Lewis assisted this week with Mark assisting next Monday. April program chairman Mike Finley introduced Plainview Police Officer Julio DeLaGarza, who told the club about the award-winning Cops and Kids event to be held for the third year in a row from noon-5 p.m. Saturday, April 8 at Kidsville. Kevin Lewis Plainview Rotary Club The Plainview Rotary Club met Tuesday at the Plainview Rotary Club. Ted Baker called the meeting to order. Eddie Ashburn led the invocation and Ross Owen led the Pledge of Allegiance. Guests were Melody Brown, Andrew Allison and Fernando Nano Dilli. Members were honored with their club attendance. Those honored include Ross Owen, 33 years; Reagan Manning, 9 years; Jeff Earhart, 4 years The day's program was classification talks given by new members. New member Chris Hanoch, who is employed by Don's Photography, has lived in Plainview for the past 16 years. Don Dickson brought him into the business. Prior to moving to Plainview, Chris was involved in photography in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Chris told the group that he likes to present people in their best life. He takes pride in help keeping family history through family photographs. He loves photographing seniors in high school. Marci Brown is employed by the Hale County Crisis Center. She was raised and grew up in Plainview. Her family was an established foster care family. They had many babies in their home before they were adopted. Because of this she dedicated her life to being a social worker. She got her sociology degree from Texas Women's University, her master's degree from Abilene Christian University. She loves this kind of work. She came back to Plainview 18 years ago. Her goal is to end all domestic violence in Plainview. Leigh Ann Bradley is the director of United Way. She has been director a year and a half. She is married with two sons. She had previously worked in the school system when she took over the United Way. She told the group that United Way opened her eyes with all of the good it does for the citizens of Plainview. Ross led the Four-Way-Test and Ted dismissed the group. --Cynthia Gregory Musica Sacra returns to First Presbyterian The music ensemble Musica Sacra will perform a free concert on Sunday at First Presbyterian Church. Music for Contemplation will feature choral works by Norwegian composer Ola Gjeilo and the Piano Quintet, op.57 by Dmitri Shostakovich. The Sacra Choir will also be assisted by the Midland Odessa Symphony and Chorales Permian Basin String Quartet and pianist Shari Santorelli. Musica Sacra performs one concert a year but skipped 2016 for director Gregory Pysh to pursue a choral scholar study in Italy. The 2015 concert was named one of the top concerts of the year by Midland Reporter-Telegram. The free concert is at 4 p.m. on Sunday at FPC located at 800 W. Texas Ave. Aphasia Center announces 8th Annual Aphasia Awareness Concert This year, the Aphasia Center is going disco with its annual concert. For this years show, the center announced on Wednesday that it will host the tribute band Bee Gees Gold: The Ultimate Tribute to the Bee Gees. We are so excited to bring this legendary music to West Texas. The Aphasia Centers free concert attracts hundreds of West Texans for a family-friendly evening. You cant go wrong knowing that youll help our West Texas neighbors coping with communication challenges after stroke. Ron and Carolyn Stroman, 2017 Honorary Event Chairs said in a press release. The annual concert raises awareness and funds for the Aphasia Center of West Texas which helps area individuals and families coping with a loss of language, often occurring after a stroke or severe trauma. Sponsor tables with reserved seating, valet parking, a catered dinner, plus private bar and more are available at aphasiawtx.org/aphasia-live. Doors will open at 7 p.m. May 5 at the Horseshoe Amphitheater, 2514 Arena Trail. General admission is free. First Methodist chef hosts cupcake event On Saturday, Chef Angelo McCoy along with members of the Texas Chef Association will host children and their parents for its Cupcake Decorating Class at First Methodist Midland. Children are encouraged to go all out with their cupcake designs thanks to the bevy of decorations available. Chefs can also step in to help. The event is $5 per person and also includes lunch. Registration is preferred by contacting McCoy at angelomccoy@firstmethodist.com but payment will be accepted at the door. First Methodist Midland is located at 300 N. Main St. Midland Northside Lions Club hosts 24th Annual Bunny Breakfast This event has become part of the Easter season tradition in Midland as well as benefiting the Lions Clubs endeavors. The 24th Annual Bunny Breakfast will be held from 7 to 10 a.m. Saturday at Midland Park Mall with a menu consisting of food from Texas Roadhouse, Fuddruckers, Sidekicks and Legends along with beverages and Easter candy for children. The event will also feature an appearance by the Easter Bunny, area mascots and Juggles the Merry Phlangster. Tickets are $6 and can be purchased at Abacus Computers, Dillards Customer Service. Liberty Tax Service and Chick-fil-a in the mall. Funds raised from the event will go toward Lions Club projects including eyeglasses for needy children, a Midland College scholarship, the West Texas Lions Eye Bank, the Texas Lions Camp for diabetic and handicapped children, the Lions International Peace Poster Contest, and the Lions International Youth Exchange Program. Midland Park Mall is located at 4511 N. Midkiff Road. The Case for Christ based on Lee Strobels book opens today An atheist journalist sets out to disprove his wifes faith through research and investigation. Based on the book of the same name by Lee Strobel, the author struggles with the unexpected results he faces in his research. The film stars Mike Vogel, Erika Christensen, Academy Award-winner Faye Dunaway and Academy Award-nominee Robert Forster. The films opens today at both Regal Tall City and Cinergy theaters. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate BRIDGEPORT Mayor Joe Ganim admitted Friday that, despite raising money for re-election in 2019, a run for an unspecified statewide office next year is on his mind. The mayor, through a private attorney, asked the state elections watchdog to determine whether a prior conviction for running a pay-to-play scheme out of City Hall makes him ineligible to receive campaign grants through Connecticuts clean elections program. That 11-year-old initiative was aimed at curtailing the influence of big money on races by rewarding participants who agree to contribution and spending limits with state cash for their campaigns. In an already crowded field, Ganim has been said to be eyeing an under ticket spot in 2018, such as lieutenant governor. A recent Hearst Connecticut Media report, cited in the mayors Friday request for a ruling on the matter, concluded he could not receive the state money because of a 2013 law that withholds public financing from candidates convicted of a felony related to their public office. I want to be clear I have not decided to seek statewide office, but it is something I am considering, Ganim said in a statement accompanying his attorney, Arnold Skrettas, correspondence to the State Elections Enforcement Commission. If I should run for such an office I am requesting the honor and privilege of being among those who can say they came to office free of special interest money. Ganim added, I strongly believe the goal of the Citizens Election Program, which is to reduce the corrosive and corrupting influence of money in politics. He knows first hand about that corrosive and corrupting influence. Ernie Newton clause First elected Bridgeports chief executive in 1991, Ganim was convicted in 2003 of trading official acts for high-end wines, suits, trips, cash and home improvements. He served seven years in federal prison. Despite that baggage, Bridgeport voters decided to give Ganim his old job back when he launched a comeback in 2015, unseating fellow Democrat Bill Finch, a former state Senator. A retired FBI agent, Ed Adams, who helped topple Ganim even signed on with his campaign and in return was hired as a top level adviser in the new administration. Candidates convicted of breaking state election law can receive state campaign grants after eight years have passed. But that eight-year carve out is not specified for individuals with Ganims criminal history. The restrictions were passed in response to another fallen Democratic Bridgeport politicians attempted comeback. Ex-state Sen. Ernie Newton was convicted of public corruption in 2005 and, in 2012, mounted an unsuccessful bid to rejoin the General Assembly. Newton qualified for state campaign money and then was subsequently convicted of breaking the law to get that grant. He remains free on appeal. The Citizens Election Program is not the only issue to consider as Ganim weighs higher office. As previously reported, another stumbling block is the fact that, should he win and have to resign before June, 2019, Ganim will miss the 15-year anniversary working for Bridgeport that qualifies him for generous post-retirement benefits. Ganims attorney, Skretta, in his request to the elections commission, outlined a handful of reasons why the 2013 law should not apply to Ganim. He wrote that there is no evidence the restrictions were intended to be retroactive. Skretta also argued that the law is unfair, overly punitive and illogical. If (it) was really about clean elections ... then it would require not ban the participation of individuals like Ganim, Skretta wrote, adding later: (He) lost his law license, spent more than six years in prison, and has had to rebuild his life from scratch. In a tremendous example of second chances he was overwhelming re-elected mayor of Bridgeport in 2015. Yet despite having served his time and dealing with tremendous public stigma and scrutiny, (Ganim) now faces another punitive measure. Although Ganim and Skretta portrayed the 2013 law as blocking the mayors participation in the program, Ganim could still agree to abide by the restrictions. He just would not get a state grant as a reward and have to work harder fundraising. And that, Skretta wrote, is a violation of the First Amendment (Free Speech) and the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the U.S. and Connecticut Constitutions. (The law) identifies a special class of persons that are completely prohibited from taking part in any way, Skretta wrote. The law singles out specific people or, as applied, (Ganim) alone and shuts him out from partaking in the program in which 100 percent of (his) would-be opponents will likely indulge. The Citizens Election Program ... has evolved into a program most candidates whether theyll admit it or not must be part of in order to compete, claimed Skretta. Skretta also said that the law goes against Connecticuts commitment to second chances that is embodied in legislation and state policies. In early 2015, with Ganim inching closer to mounting a primary against Finch, the latters allies tried to pass a bill through the legislature preventing felonious politicians from even running for another office. It died in part because critics argued it left no room for redemption. Newton also tried to run again for the legislature in 2014. He did not try to challenge the 2013 law at the time. I never even thought about that. I didnt want their money at the time, Newton said Friday. But I think its unconstitutional. Im happy that Joe is challenging it. Friday was the first time Ganim publicly confirmed an interest in statewide office. It has been rumored and he has received encouragement from close ally Bridgeport Democratic Chairman Mario Testa. Testa recently told Hearst that if Gov. Dannel Malloy decides not to seek a third term in 2018, Ganim should form an exploratory committee for an unspecified statewide office. On the one hand Ganims criminal past, while overlooked back home, could be hard for Connecticut voters to accept. But strategically the big cities deliver votes for Democratic gubernatorial candidates, and the returned mayors second chance message resounded in Bridgeport. So having Ganim as part of a statewide ticket could help ensure strong support in Bridgeport for whoever the Democratic Party picks to succeed Malloy. Ganims recent fundraiser for a second term in 2019 attracted potential gubernatorial hopefuls state Comptroller Kevin Lembo and state Sen. Ted Kennedy Jr., D-Branford. Skretta is no stranger to statewide Democratic politics. Until last year he was director of compliance and law for the Connecticut Democratic Party. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate An Orcas Island woman accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from a retired astronaut and his wife in an elaborate, long-running embezzlement scheme now faces federal charges. Federal prosecutors in Seattle claim Sarah E. Coffelt embezzled $755,400 from Bill and Valerie Anders, owners of the Heritage Flight Museum in Burlington. Bill Anders, an Apollo 8 astronaut, settled in Anacortes after a career with NASA and in private industry that included a stint as CEO of General Dynamics. The Anders, whose businesses include Apogee Flight Inc., present a collection of warbirds through the museum. Coffelt worked as a bookkeeper for the Anders for more than a decade. Prosecutors claims she began stealing from them sometime after she was hired in 2003 and continued the thefts until they were discovered in 2015. Coffelt, who owned Moon Glow Arts and Crafts in Eastsound, is alleged to have stolen from Apogee accounts while also running up charges on company credit cards. Coffelt would pay Apogee bills and payroll but would appropriate most of the funds for her personal expenses, for gifts for and expenses of her family and friends, and for stock and operating expenses for her business, Assistant U.S. Attorney Susan Roe said in court papers. According to charging papers, Coffelt charged more than 1,500 personal Amazon orders to the Anders. Prosecutors say she went so far as to take out a credit card in Bill Anders name, and regularly transferred large sums of money out of accounts belonging to the Anders into her own. Prosecutors claims closely follow those made by attorneys for the Anders in a bankruptcy action filed in August by Coffelt and her husband. Writing in court papers, attorney Lawrence Engel said the Anders discovered in June 2015 that Coffelt and another employee were abusing company gasoline cards. Engel said Coffelt was fired in April 2016 after more thefts were discovered. In addition to Amazon, Coffelt spent the Anacortes couples money at Alaska Air and Victorias Secret, and to pay her personal bills, Engel said in court papers. Coffelt violated the trust (Bill) Anders and Apogee had placed in her over the years, Engel said in a statement filed in response to Coffelts bankruptcy claim. The Anders have been a fixture in northwestern Washington state for decades and are well known there for their philanthropic work. Bill Anders founded the Heritage Flight Museum, which exhibits more than a dozen military aircraft, including a P-51 Mustang and several jets. He, his sons and others demonstrate the aircraft at airshows. Coffelt has been charged by information with wire fraud. She has not been jailed in the matter. Seattlepi.com reporter Levi Pulkkinen can be reached at 206-448-8348 or levipulkkinen@seattlepi.com. Follow Levi on Twitter at twitter.com/levipulk. As members of Congress left Washington Friday for a two-week Easter recess, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi urged Speaker Paul Ryan to call them back into session to discuss the President Trumps decision to order air missile strikes in Syria. The president ordered the launch 59 missiles Thursday night on a Syrian air base as a response to President Bashar al-Assad regimes use of banned chemical weapons on his own people. Trump called on other nations to join him to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria. In a letter to Ryan, Pelosi said it was critical to debate any decision to place our men and women in uniform in harms way. Congress must live up to its Constitutional responsibility to debate an Authorization of the Use of Military Force against a sovereign nation, she wrote. Ryan hasnt responded to Pelosis demands, however, he released a statement Thursday in support of Trumps actions in Syria. This action was appropriate and just, Ryan wrote. These tactical strikes make clear that the Assad regime can no longer count on American inaction as it carries out atrocities against the Syrian people. A chemical attack, believed to have been directed by Assad, killed nearly 100 people, including children, this week, according to the Associated Press. Trump ordered the strikes without approval from Congress. In his statement, Ryan said, I look forward to the administration further engaging Congress in this effort. Congress is not scheduled to be back in session until April 21 until Ryan orders members back to Washington. Sarah Ravani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani The 2017 Tommy Tune Awards show has not taken place yet, but Klein ISD has something to celebrate. The district's high schools have garnered 20 nominations in 13 categories for the 15th annual Tommy Tune Awards sponsored by Theater Under the Stars (TUTS) in Houston. Klein ISD earned the most nominations in the Houston area. One of the district's leading Tommy Tunes nominations is Klein High, which was nominated for 12 awards in 12 of the 13 categories for Sweeney Todd. Tina Lee Domino is the director of theatre art at Klein High School. The educator is proud of the many theatre students in the fine arts program in the district. "We have extraordinary students that are dedicated to giving it their all. They are passionate about producing the best possible show they can, and I am extremely proud to be a member of the fine arts program in Klein ISD," Domino said. "The satisfaction of a job well done and friendships formed during the musical process are a shared reward among all 45 schools entered." TUTS' Tommy Tune Awards recognizes and reward excellence in high school musical theatre created by students and educators in the greater Houston metropolitan area. The Tommy Tune program also offers scholarship opportunities to students who are pursuing an education in the arts performance, education, or management. Klein Collins High School and Klein Oak High School also earned three nominations each for its performances of Once Upon a Mattress and Curtains, and Klein Forest earned a nomination for its rendition of In the Heights. Domino is passionate about teaching students the art of theatre. She believes theatre teaches across the curriculum and that educators such as herself have a responsibility to their communities. "In theatre we have a responsibility to our communities to give a voice to the human condition. Theatre helps students and audiences develop empathy skills, which is so important in a society that is quickly becoming egocentric and exclusive of people that may be different than ourselves," Domino said. "It is proven that students involved in theatre have higher SAT scores, are more active in their community and are more creative. It's not just a fine arts class, it's lessons in character and life." Some students feel theatre programs offer a positive platform for students interested in the arts. Many of the students find passion in the art of theatre. Ian Tonroy, a senior at Klein High School who played Sweeny Todd, appreciated theatre for its freedom of creativity. "My favorite part of being a theatre student is that through the outlet it offers I am able to express myself creatively," Tonroy said. "Also, I am able to engage in something that I am very passionate about with great people that I love to be around." TUTS is a non-profit based in Houston that offers a musical theatre experience that ranges from full-scale Broadway productions to educational initiatives that extend beyond the stage and into the community. The 2017 Tommy Tune Awards show will take place on Tuesday, April 18. "Theatre gives students a safe place to connect with their peers without fear of judgement. It is a class where there are no wrong answers or choices and every discovery, no matter how small is celebrated," Lauren Ansley said, Klein High School senior. "The theatre program always has open arms for those who want to learn, create and have fun!" TUTS Scholarship e-mail: tta@tuts.com Questions about accommodations or services e-mail: tuts@tuts.com Theatre Under the Stars-Hobby Center for the Performing Arts 800 Bagby St. Houston, TX 77002 Theatre: 713.558.TUTS (8887) The following items are compiled from recent Texas Parks and Wildlife Department law enforcement reports. The One that Got Away A tactical flight officer aboard a Department of Public Safety helicopter on patrol notified a Val Verde County game warden about a gill net being set out in the Rio Grande River. The individual setting out the gill net was observed crossing back and forth between the Mexico and Texas shorelines. The warden quickly responded to the location and observed the gill net stretched across the river and the individual who set it still in the area. It took the warden several minutes to make his way through dense river cane and, upon breaking through, he saw the illegal netter cross back into Mexico with a large fish in hand. The warden seized approximately 50 feet of gill net. Packing Crappie While patrolling late nights along Gladewater Lake's public fishing piers during the first week of March, a Gregg County game warden encountered two separate groups of fishermen attempting to flee the scene as he made contact. Gladewater Police Department officers were also patrolling nearby and quickly apprehended one of the subjects after he unwittingly ran directly toward their patrol vehicle. The other group's runner was also located a short distance from the lake and apprehended with help from Gladewater Police Department officers. Undersized crappie were located in the subject's backpack. Collectively, charges filed included: no fishing license, possession of undersized crappie, possession of drug paraphernalia, failure to ID fugitive, and arrest on other agency warrants. Charges are pending. Stolen and Found A Gregg County game warden was responding to suspicious gunshots in the Little Cypress Creek bottoms near Gilmer when he discovered a stolen cargo trailer concealed in a remote wooded area along the creek. It was learned that the trailer was recently taken from a nearby dealership and used to commit burglaries throughout Gregg, Upshur and Harrison counties. The investigation is ongoing. Those Wascal Wabbits A Bailey County game warden responded to a call regarding shots being fired toward a highway intersection near the Texas-New Mexico state line. Bailey County sheriff's deputies assisting encountered one of the suspects on a county road and detained them until the warden arrived. During interviews, all three subjects admitted to road hunting rabbits and claimed that they didn't think a license was required. They also indicated their father, who sells hunting licenses as a local vendor, told them that a license was not needed to hunt rabbits. The warden advised them to educate their father on licensing requirements. Numerous citations were issued including no hunting license, hunting from a public roadway, and no hunter education. A Turkey Shoot Game wardens responded to a call concerning a turkey shot from the road. A landowner reported he had heard two shots close by, investigated and found a turkey flopping in the bar ditch. He also reported seeing a truck drive by slowly, not long after the shots, and identified the driver as a local man who lived just down the road. An empty shotgun shell was recovered from the roadway. Upon arriving at the suspect's residence, the wardens located a truck that matched the vehicle description and saw two rifles and a shotgun inside the vehicle. While talking to the suspect, the wardens obtained consent to search the truck and located a box of shells that matched the spent shell obtained from the roadway. After a lengthy discussion, the man admitted to shooting the turkey from the road. Citations are pending for hunting from a public roadway and hunting turkey in closed season. Night Moves A Palo Pinto County game warden patrolled the Morris Sheppard Dam on Possum Kingdom Lake to check the restricted area for fishermen after receiving word from Brazos River Authority Lake Rangers that they had caught on surveillance video six individuals recently enter the restricted area and fish for three hours. The warden arrived at the dam just after midnight and watched two subjects with headlamps fishing from the base of the dam. Both were apprehended before they could get rid of their fish or equipment and after questioning admitted to knowing that they were in the restricted area. They were arrested and taken to the Palo Pinto County Jail. Five striped bass ranging from 22 to 33 inches in length were seized and civil restitution is pending. The Old Switcharoo Game wardens were patrolling the Brazos River when they observed a vessel operator and passenger switch positions. The wardens made contact and, after field sobriety tests, the driver was arrested for boating white intoxicated. Four-Wheeling in High Gear While patrolling Lake McQueeney, wardens spotted several ATVs being operated in the Guadalupe River bed. The wardens beached their boat and were able to approach the ATV operators on foot and stop them. Subsequent investigation revealed three of the men to be in possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia. Cases are pending. A Net Loss While patrolling the Gulf of Mexico out of Rockport, game wardens made contact with a shrimp boat approximately 7.5 miles offshore in Texas waters. Upon inspection of their shrimp nets and required TEDs (turtle excluder devices built into nets that allow sea turtles to escape), it was found that all four TEDs were in violation. The vessel with its cargo of over 5,000 pounds of illegally taken shrimp was escorted to Port Aransas where the shrimp and nets were seized. Numerous citations were issued. Just Can't Make This Stuff Up A game warden patrolling Lake Corpus Christi for fishing and water safety violations inspected a small aluminum boat and then checked the fishermen's licenses and catches. When he asked the fishermen what they were using as bait they said woodpecker. Sure enough, there were three dead woodpeckers in their cooler. Further investigation led to the fishermen admitting to killing an eight point buck the previous year, without a license, and using it as fish bait as well. Water safety, fishing and hunting citations were issued. Charges and restitution for the deer and birds are pending. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The three hundred light blue flags lining the Hale County Courthouse lawn are in recognition of the 66,000 Texas children who are victims of abuse and neglect in 2015, including 140 in Hale County. The small flags were placed along the sidewalk ringing the courthouse square late Friday morning by representatives of the Hale County Child Welfare Board, students from Plainview Christian Academy, local churches and other. The symbolic display recognizes April as Child Abuse Prevention Month, and Friday, April 7, as Go Blue Day in Plainview. Plainview Mayor Wendell Dunlap issued a proclamation to that effect outside the courthouse during a brief ceremony at 11:30 a.m. Friday. Dunlaps proclamation explains, Whereas, child abuse is a community problem and finding solutions depends on involvement among people throughout the community; Whereas, over 66,000 Texas children were confirmed victims of child abuse and neglect, including 140 children in Hale County; Whereas, all citizens should become more aware of child abuse and its prevention within the community, and become involved in supporting parents to raise their children in a safe nurturing environment; Whereas, children are the foundation for a prosperous and innovative society, and the foundation for a childs growth and development is established when every community and every citizen takes responsibility for creating healthy environments where children can thrive, Now, therefore, be it resolved, to urge all citizens of the City of Plainview to recognize April 7, 2017, as Go Blue Day to show awareness of abuse and neglect. And to further recognize April as Child Abuse Prevention Month. And to call upon all citizens of the City of Plainview, as well as community agencies, religious organizations, medical facilities, schools and businesses to increase their participation in our efforts to prevent child abuse and neglect, thereby strengthening the community in which we live. An explanatory banner has been affixed to the windmill on the west side of the courthouse. According to local representatives, an average of 185 children are abused each day in Texas. Just this fiscal year, through Feb. 15, 2017, 1,028 abuse/neglect cases have occurred in Region 1, including 45 in Hale County. Some of the signs of abuse include: --Unexplained injuries --Changes in emotional behavior --Returning to less mature/younger behavior --Fear of going home --Changes in sleep patterns --Changes in school performance or attendance --Lack of personal care/hygiene --Risk-taking behavior --Inappropriate sexual behavior Some of the causes of abuse and neglect include: --Poverty --Teen pregnancy --Lack of support --Drugs/alcohol --Mental illness --Family history To report suspected abuse or neglect, call the hotline at 1-800-252-5400, report it online at www.txabusehotline.org or dial 911. A former Montgomery County jailer pleaded guilty Thursday to paying an Indiana woman $15 to watch her perform a sexual on her two-month-old son via Skype. Phillip Wayne Rickard, 51, will spend the next 25 years in prison for the first-degree felony aggravated sexual assault of a child charge. Rickard had previously skipped out on two different court settings where he was supposed to plead guilty. Rickard was arrested in 2016 after an investigation by the Montgomery County Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force and the Tippecanoe County Sheriff's Office in Indiana. Investigators with the Montgomery County District Attorney's Office found that Rickard not only paid this woman but was paying other women online to perform sexual acts. "Phillip Rickard is a sick man who deserves every year of this sentence," Assistant District Attorney Mary Nan Huffman said. "This was one of the worst cases I have seen in my career in law enforcement. What he did was beyond comprehension." The plea was the result of the great work by the investigators with the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, prosecutors said. "The ICAC Task Force continues to remove dangerous sexual predators from within community," Assistant District Attorney Tyler Dunman said. "We are very fortunate to have this team of dedicated law enforcement professionals working so diligently for the safety of our children and community." When Rickard's sentence expires in 2042 he will have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life. Rickard was a former prison guard for Texas Department of Criminal Justice and a former Detention Officer at the Montgomery County Jail. Rickard had no prior criminal history. The woman Rickard paid was sentenced to 42 years in prison in Indiana for the act on her two-month-old as well as another molestation of a five-year-old, according to the Lafayette Journal and Courier. The latest incident at Orange County's jail an inmate found hanging in his cell Thursday has prompted officials to consider changes in operations, County Judge Stephen Brint Carlton said. The inmate, John Victor Marcotte, 59, was in stable condition and is "conscious, alert and speaking with staff," Orange County Sheriff's Office Criminal Investigator Janois Strause Grizzaffi said Friday in a statement. Marcott was brought to Christus St. Elizabeth Hospital in critical condition. The Texas Rangers and the county's Sheriff's Office and District Attorney's Office are investigating, she said. Marcotte is the second inmate found hanging in a cell in two months. According to Grizzaffi, the inmate was housed in the infirmary "after he said he had received a cut on his head when he fell out of his bunk where he had previously been assigned." An on-duty nurse, who was making routine rounds every 25 minutes, found the inmate "in distress" when she arrived five minutes early, she said. Jail and medical staff responded, and reported that "although labored, the inmate appeared to be breathing on his own when Acadian Ambulance arrived," Grizzaffi said. The inmate was arrested by Vidor Police on April 3 on a bond forfeiture warrant that originated from a DWI arrest. Five inmates have died in the county's custody in the past five years, including Rosa Bonilla, 35, who died at Christus St. Elizabeth Hospital on Feb. 26, two days after she was found hanging in her cell. An autopsy was ordered and has not been released. Carlton said he and Sheriff Keith Merritt "have had numerous communications" about Thursday's incident. "Not all these incidents are the same, we're looking at how it occurred and what we can do differently in our jail in the future," he said. LTeitz@BeaumontEnterprise.com Twitter.com/LizTeitz This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate WESTPORT Raised by a single dad in a mostly Italian neighborhood in New Jersey, Brad Spence knew from the time he was 5 years old he wanted to be a chef. At that time, not a lot of young boys wanted to cook, Spence said. And Im not Italian, but when I went out to eat as a kid, it was Italian. I grew up in that environment, and because of the food, because they really celebrated food, I think I fell in love with cooking. Spence is the executive chef of Philadelphia-based Vetri Family of Restaurants, which opened its first Connecticut location in Westport last week. The Roman trattoria, Amis, opened in conjunction with Anthropologie at the Bedford Square Development downtown, marking the second location of the concept, which includes a menu of fresh and seasonally driven small plates, handcrafted pastas, local seafood and antipasti. Urban Outfitters owns Anthropologie and the Vetri group. After a year of waiting and a year of work, its great to see this finally happen, said Spence, who was in town for the opening. Founded in 1998 by chef Marc Vetri and Jeff Benjamin, the Vetri Family owns and operates a range of critically More Information Amis is located at 1 Church Lane, Westport. The restaurant is open for lunch and dinner Sunday-Thursday, from 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m, and Friday and Saturday from 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Reservations are recommended and can be made via OpenTable. Walk-ins are welcome. For more information, call 203-514-4906, visit www.amistrattoria.com, or follow Amis on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. See More Collapse acclaimed restaurants including Tuscan-inspired Osteria; Roman-style trattoria, Amis (Philadelphia and Westport); gastropub, Alla Spina; rotisserie and grill, Lo Spiedo; and neighborhood pizza joint, Pizzeria Vetri (Philadelphia, D.C., King of Prussia). While I believe were a differentiator, I also believe its the reputation of Westport, of supporting a strong restaurant community, that will make Amis a staple for local residents, Benjamin said. A great camaraderie exists among the restaurant community here and we know folks in Westport love good food and beverages. Amis Westport is the ninth restaurant in the Vetri Familys portfolio, which also includes Alla Spina, Amis, Lo Spiedo and Osteria in Philadelphia, along with Pizzeria Vetri, which has two locations in Philadelphia and one in Washington, D.C. We grew up preparing these authentic family recipes, and, at Amis, we reimagine them using simple and time tested techniques, always striving for creativity, Spence said. Were thrilled to introduce the Westport community to Amis, a restaurant where, no matter what the occasion, neighbors will always feel welcome. The Amis menu offers both classic and contemporary Italian dishes, and is broken down into sections of antipasti, including bruschetta, salumi e formaggi, and seasonal small plates, while the entrees feature housemade pastas and larger portions of meat and local seafood. Signature dishes from Spences kitchen include eggplant caponata bruschetta, swordfish meatballs with creamy polenta, farro vignarolla with pecorino, bucatini with jalapeno and almond pesto, tonnarelli cacio e pepe, and scallop pizzaiola. Desserts include updated Italian confections like rice pudding and a classic spumoni sundae. This concept was something I always had in my head, so when I had the opportunity to try it in Philadelphia it was something we wanted to be perfect, Spence said. Our second location, here in Westport, is the same in spirit. The menu will be a little different because we like to use locally sourced ingredients. We just really wanted to get into a neighborhood like this where we know people really appreciate this type of restaurant. Amis is located in the former Westport Firehouse, providing a historic backdrop for the new restaurant. Amis is part of the larger Bedford Square development, which is anchored by the newest location of Anthropologie & Co., also owned and operated by URBN. kkrasselt@scni.com; 203-354-1021; @kaitlynkrasselt As the leader of a business, you're bound to recognize -- hopefully sooner than later -- that the reality is, much of the information you receive is not true. You may suffer due to others' sins of omission or commission, but lies are still lies. Related: Intellectual Honesty Is What Defines Great Companies This may sound harsh or even ridiculous, but the reality is that most people have a difficult time giving critical feedback. Let me share a story from my early years (names and details have been changed to protect the innocent): I had just taken on a new senior leadership role and was trying to get to know the business, so I spoke with a couple of managers on the engineering team. Their boss -- lets call him John -- reported directly to me. And naturally I wanted to ask how things were going. So I asked the managers. Their answer? Good. What was John like as a boss? Again: Good. I came away from the meeting thinking John was doing a solid job and the engineering team was in decent shape. Flash-forward a couple of weeks; I went out for a working lunch with some of Johns team. We chatted, and I casually checked in again on how things were going. This time, the answers I got again were somewhat positive, but the team members' feedback this time seemed inauthentic. Perhaps it was just the relaxed atmosphere, but obviously something wasnt right. It took multiple meetings and more probing questions on my part, but eventually it became clear that John was causing significant issues in the business and we had to make a change. The subtext here? We are conditioned from early childhood to avoid saying anything negative when we have nothing nice to say, and that mantra carries into our professional lives, sometimes causing business leaders to make decisions based on bad data. This article is about how you solve this problem. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate It could take two months before charges, if any, are filed against the 20-year-old driver involved in a bus crash that killed 13 senior members of a New Braunfels church, officials told mySA.com Friday. Federal investigators have collected cellphone records, air bag deployment data and video in their investigation into the March 29 crash in Uvalde County. A 2004 white Dodge dually pickup crossed over the center line of U.S. 83 that afternoon, hitting a church group's bus head-on, killing the bus driver and 12 of the 13 passengers on board. The slideshow above has recently released driver's license photos of the victims killed in the crash. RELATED: South Texas church bus crash victim released from San Antonio-area hospital Jack Young, 20, was driving the pickup truck and was released from University Hospital earlier this week on Tuesday. No charges have been filed against Young, said Uvalde County District Attorney Daniel Kindred. He said charging decisions have to be made once the criminal investigation is complete and items like hospital records and toxicology reports are collected. "There's a lot of moving parts in this case right now," he said. "It happens when it happens." Kindred said the office could decide whether to charge Young within 60 days, although that is a rough "guesstimation." He said officials would have "a lot of ducks in a row by then." The bus passengers were members of the First Baptist Church in New Braunfels and were returning home after attending a choir retreat at the Alto Frio Baptist Camp and Conference Center in Leakey, about 40 miles north of Uvalde. RELATED: 20-year-old driver in fatal South Texas church bus crash released from S.A. hospital Jody Kuchler, who was one of the first people on the scene, said Young told him just after the crash: "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I was texting on my phone." "I told him. 'Son, do you know what you just did?' He just kept saying, 'I'm sorry. I'm sorry,'" recalled Kuchler, 55. Young's father told mySA.com earlier this week he would have no comment. Rose Harris, the only church member to survive the crash, did not immediately return a message left by mySA.com Friday. She was released Tuesday from San Antonio Military Medical Center and was transferred to the New Braunfels Regional Rehabilitation Hospital. "Her vital signs are stable and within normal limits, and she is conscious and comfortable," reads a statement, issued by Lizbeth Chapa, director of marketing and business development for the hospital. RELATED: New Braunfels faithful remember victims killed in crash Each of the victim's bodies were released to their families this week, said Rebecca Hawley, Bexar County Medical Examiner's Office. Staff writer Zeke MacCormack and staff researcher Misty Harris contributed to this report. kbradshaw@express-news.net Twitter: @kbrad5 Kenyon George Eflin, who through his work with aerodynamics at what was then McDonnell Aircraft Corporation and later Martin Marietta helped advance aircraft and space technology in the late 1950s through the early 90s, died March 31 at 84. The oldest of five children raised on a series of farms, Eflin displayed an aptitude for mechanics early on. On the farm, they had to know how to repair things themselves, his daughter Roxanne Eflin said. He always loved fixing things. Experiencing his first airplane flight at about 8, Eflin was immediately entranced. In that moment he fell completely in love with flight and everything to do with it, Roxanne Eflin said. Joining the Air Force after graduating from high school in 1951, Eflin was sent to Lackland AFB for basic training, his first exposure to San Antonio. Leaving the Air Force in the mid-1950s, Eflin moved his family to California, where he attended Northrup Aeronautical Institute, graduating in 1957 with a degree in Aerospace Engineering. From there he was hired by McDonnell as a wind tunnel model designer. He was involved in wind tunnel testing that had never been done before, Roxanne Eflin said. Wind tunnel design work was critically essential to making sure that everything else they were designing could do what they needed it to do on projects involving Navy F4 Phantom jets and the Mercury space capsule. More Information Kenyon George Eflin Born: Jan. 21, 1933, New Sharon, Iowa Died: March 31, 2017, San Antonio Preceded by: Parents Mildred Lunt and Floyd Eflin; a brother. Survived by: Daughters Roxanne Eflin and son-in-law Michael Alvino, Jennifer Willuhn and son-in-law Denis; son Brian Eflin and daughter-in-law Donna Dodd-Eflin; six grandchildren; 12 great-grandchildren; two sisters; and a brother. Services: Memorial at 10 a.m. May 20 at the Evergreen Funeral Chapel, Colorado Springs, Colorado. See More Collapse Moving to Martin Marietta a few years later, Eflin worked on the first U.S. space station, Skylab and the space shuttle. He worked on the solid rocket booster decelerator program, Roxanne Eflin said. It was a really exciting time and we knew our dad was doing very important work. In fact, the projects he worked on literally put man on the moon, his daughter Jennifer Willuhn said. Raising his three children, Eflin employed what the family came to call Kenyonisms. With my dad, you needed to look sharp and spiffy, Roxanne Eflin said. He was a detail-oriented, you-need-to-toe-the-line kind of person; he always said, You need to straighten up and fly right. Moving from Colorado to San Antonio 13 years ago, Eflin nurtured his creative side by continuing his lifelong hobbies of photography, abstract oil painting, stained glass, and music. mheidbrink@express-news.net To the editor: On March 4, visiting 221st Judge Randy Clapp granted dismissal to Craig Doyal, Charlie Riley and Marc Davenport on the alleged charge of violating the Texas Open Meetings Act. Defense counsel Rusty Hardin argued that Section 551.143 of the act is unconstitutional. The state will appeal the decision. I was chief of staff for Chief Justice Warren Burger and worked with or for the chief for nine years. I learned from experience with him volumes about the Constitution, especially, in this case, about the First Amendment and free speech. My thesis here is that the Open Meetings Act in significant measure violates freedom of speech for government officeholders, such as myself, who are subject to the act. The purpose of the act is to make the public's business open and transparent to the public. That's indeed a good and worthy motive, but some of the details of the act have the deleterious effect of widely restricting the free speech of officeholders, especially when such free speech is necessary for officeholders to gain information from colleagues. We cannot in secret tell or urge other colleagues how to vote, but because none of us is omniscient, we should be able to talk with colleagues to gain useful and relevant information. Such knowledge is now suspect, with ignorance seemingly preferred. The fear is that if as a trustee at Lone Star College I talk with another trustee, mine might be a nefarious intent to get that trustee to vote my way. Even worse, such contact is suspected potentially to begin the start of a "walking quorum,'' with each trustee secretly contacting another trustee for support and so on until a board quorum is secretly reached behind the scene. To preclude this nefarious intent, we are advised to talk with other colleagues only about social matters -- never business. And we should avoid seeking information from other trustees. So when I asked, "May I talk with Kyle [a fellow trustee] about a subject he is an expert on?,'' counsel advises, "It would be better if you didn't," showing deep caution. I'm not omniscient; Kyle's expertise is valuable. The sum of knowledge loses here. This restriction of free speech for trustees harms the matter of truth and accuracy in another venue: During the audience-participation segment of our board meetings, a public speaker calls us "unethical" or says that we "discriminate against Hispanics" - flagrantly untrue, but as board members we must, owing to the Open Meetings Act, remain silent to the egregious falsehoods. Why? Because the Open Meetings Act mandates that any such discussion be posted on the board's agenda a week in advance of the trustee meeting for the benefit of the public. If I want to refute the charge that we "discriminate against Hispanics," I must post this subject on the agenda for the board meeting the following month - a long time after the accusation. Similarly, during the audience-participation segment of the board meeting, the American Federation of Teachers sometimes criticizes our Grievance Policy - fine, it's a free country, but we must sit there silent because TOMA will not permit us then to respond because the matter of grievance policy is not on the posted agenda. Free speech in this case is a one-way street. There's something wrong with this picture. In major ways, the Open Meetings Act does not chill free speech: it freezes it. If, for example, we want in a new term to select a new board chairman, how are we to determine who might be interested in candidacy if we cannot talk about such matters in advance of selection? I am reminded of the Old English text, "Ancrene Wisse," rules for a nunnery. The nunnery warned the nuns not to succumb to temptation in the outside world. Better yet, they nailed boards over the windows. That's what the Open Meetings Act does to trustees: It nails boards over speech - even speech that seeks to gain instruction. As a former English professor driven by a deep commitment to free speech, I speak in this piece of course only for myself. Then again, that's what free speech is all about - an opinion given out freely. Ronald L. Trowbridge, Ph. D. Trustee, Lone Star College System Most Bexar County voters might be surprised to know that the May election includes 38 candidates running for seats on five local school boards. Odds are, few voters have heard of these school board candidates, and even more alarming is that even fewer registered voters are aware they are eligible to cast a ballot in those elections. Jennifer Rodriguez, a Judson ISD school board candidate, said she has encountered only one voter while block-walking in her district who knew the name of the school board representative for that neighborhood. That voter just happened to personally know her opponent, incumbent Arnoldo Salinas, through work. School board election are sleepers. They arent sexy or even newsy. Without flashy video, they will never make the top of the evening newscast. Sadly, they tend to generate high interest only in the aftermath of a scandal. Serving on a school board is a selfless community service. The hours are long and the reading material endless, yet there are many rewards. Setting policy that will improve the quality of education in the classroom can yield priceless rewards. The San Antonio Express-News Editorial Board makes recommendations in some of the school board races. Earlier this week we finished the latest round of meetings with candidates in the upcoming election. It is always interesting to see who will accept the invitation. Some candidates obviously dont want to be contacted and leave their phone numbers off the candidate applications. Sometimes they list nonworking numbers. This time around, we had an incumbent fudge the last two numbers so that they were difficult to decipher. It is always refreshing to meet school board candidates who are in it for the children, but it is amazing to see how many come armed with personal agendas. In Bexar County, the more dysfunctional school districts tend to garner a disproportionate number of the headlines. More often than not, it is the antics of the adults rather than the students that draw the publics attention. Such bad publicity hurts public education. It is a turnoff to the voters and potential candidates. No one wants to put their reputation in jeopardy by joining a dysfunctional board. And it is often the lack of choices on the ballot that keeps voters from the polls. Breaking out of that cycle is difficult. We have seen some school districts do it, but the turnaround has not been quick or easy. South San ISD, which is not on the ballot in May, has a troubled history going back decades. But it looks to be on the rebound. It has been fortunate to get a lending hand from City Councilman Rey Saldana and the Southside Chamber. Together, they helped recruit new faces for the board, and the work appears to be paying off. We are finally seeing some much-needed changes in governance. Much of a districts success hinges on the policymakers; that should be sufficient reason to vote in school board elections. But if further convincing is needed, I urge you to look at your tax bill. The biggest portion of that bill goes to support public schools. On Bexar County Tax Assessor-Collector Albert Urestis website, you will find a list of the more than 50 entities for which he collects taxes. Most collect less than $1 per $100 valuation. The city of San Antonio tax rate is 55 cents, and Bexar Countys is 29 cents. The tax rate for the 11 school districts from which Uresti collects taxes range from $1.19 to $1.52 per $100 valuation. Those elected to serve on your school board decide how that money is allocated. The Alamo Heights, Harlandale, Judson, Northside, San Antonio and Southside independent school districts are having school board elections in May. To find out if your school board representative is on the ballot, go the Bexar County Elections website. You cant afford to sit this one out. Texas law does not allow convicted felons and the mentally incapacitated to run for office. Now state lawmakers want to add lobbyists to that group. The bills sponsor, Rep. Giovanni Capriglione, R-Southlake, tells the Express-News that elected officials who are lobbyists present a perception of conflict of interest or actual conflicts. But legislation is not going to eliminate the problem. There always will be potential for a conflict of interest for elected officials due to the family and business ties they bring to their public job. Disqualifying anyone from public office because of that persons profession sets a bad precedent. Stronger ethic rules and strong enforcement of such rules would better regulate the conduct of elected officials. In any case, blocking lobbyists from public office would not keep someone such as Rep. Gary Elkins, R-Houston, off the ballot. Elkins, who has served in the Texas House since 1994, owns a company with 12 payday-lending locations. Elkins has been a vehement opponent of attempts to regulate the predatory lending industry in Texas. One of the best ways to help keep government in check is to maintain strong public meetings and open records laws. Transparency in government is key. Opponents of Caprigliones proposal credibly argue that the legislation would just drive lobbyists underground and push them to stop registering with the state Ethics Commission. They are also concerned about the negative impact it would have on the candidate pool for public office. More worrisome is that success on this legislation could induce lawmakers to target other professions to keep them out of political office. Just dont count on lawyers being on that list. According to a 2015 Pew Charitable Trusts report, Texas has one of the highest number of lawyers in its Legislature compared to other states, with 27 percent of its membership holding a law degree. And theres nothing wrong with that. The U.S. missile strike on a Syrian air base was a warranted response to a heinous war crime Bashar Assads chemical gassing of his own people. Its too early to tell if the strike will deter Assads use of outlawed chemical weapons, but a message had to be sent that he could not use these with impunity. That message was not effectively delivered under the Obama administration. The Assad regime and the Russians who are propping him up in that countrys cruel civil war deny that the Syrian government even possesses such weapons. But the Pentagon says the Syrian government aircraft that delivered the chemical payload on residents of the town of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib Province flew from that base. More than 80 civilians were killed. Images from that atrocity apparently prompted President Donald Trump to change course on military action in Syria, action he opposed as a candidate. Moreover, earlier, his administration signaled a hands-off approach on Assad, with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson saying it was up to the Syrian people to decide his fate. The attack on Shayrat airfield by 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles was the first U.S. military action against Assad forces. It will not topple him and will not materially degrade his ability to war on his own people. Thats why Trump should not lose sight of the harder part here, an endgame. That would be an end to a civil war that has killed thousands and displaced millions. It starts with a negotiated cease-fire. As with President Barack Obama, President Trumps options are limited by the complexities of the region this is essentially a long-existing conflict between Shiites and Sunnis, fought in Syria by proxies. But he is limited also by no desire in the U.S. for extensive U.S. involvement in another Mideast war. The seeds for so much of what ails the region lie in the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The seeds for the endgame likely lie with something Trump has not shown much affinity for or interest in thus far smart and sustained diplomacy. There is, however, cruel irony in this U.S. strike. Those gassed men, women and children whose images stirred Trump to act are the same people whom the president would bar from entering the U.S. as refugees. This strike on the air base was the right thing to do; banning Syrian refugees remains wrong. WASHINGTON Judge Neil Gorsuchs place on the U.S. Supreme Court was assured Thursday, but it came at the cost of the Senate filibuster, a long-standing tactic that allowed the minority party to have a voice in the selections to the high court. Gorsuch is expected to be confirmed Friday on a simple-majority vote, meaning the Senates 52 Republican votes will be more than enough to seat him on the court. The vote was sealed when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky pulled the nuclear option that ended a Democratic filibuster of Gorsuchs nomination. The move, on a 52-48 vote, means that President Trumps choice to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia will need only 51 votes for confirmation. Republicans will not need eight Democratic votes to reach the 60-vote threshold under rules that existed before Thursday. But in the long term, it could give Trump and future presidents the ability to appoint more openly partisan or ideological justices when their party controls the Senate. McConnell took the step after Democrats deployed the filibuster to block Gorsuch in a 55-45 vote. Among those voting to reject the court nominee were California Sens. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, who led her panels opposition to Gorsuch, and Kamala Harris, who took office in January. Only three Democrats broke ranks: Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Each faces re-election in 2018 in states Trump won handily. But other Democrats in the same position, such as Jon Tester of Montana, strode into the chamber giving a big thumbs down on Gorsuch. The rancor in the Senate chamber Thursday was at times palpable. Democrats remain furious at Republicans over their refusal last year to hold a vote on President Barack Obamas choice of Merrick Garland to replace Scalia, instead opting to hold the seat open for the possibility that a GOP president would be elected in November. Garland, a moderately liberal judge, would have altered the courts 5-to-4 conservative majority, and Democrats view the Gorsuch seat as stolen. What goes around comes around, Feinstein said of the filibuster, adding that it was mild by comparison with denying Obama his choice for the courts vacancy. Everybody knew there had to have been a legacy to (denying Obamas nominee), that you don't do something this stark without it following on with something, Feinstein said. Even so, she said, had Republicans consulted Democrats and chosen a more moderate judge than Gorsuch, the elimination of the filibuster might have been avoided. From our end, it was necessary, what we had to do, Harris said after casting her first vote on a Supreme Court nomination. Citing such landmark cases as Roe vs. Wade, which guaranteed women the right to abortion, and Citizens United, which unleashed a flood of anonymous big-money contributions into politics, Harris said the effect of Supreme Court decisions on the lives of everyday Americans is too important to be left to a simple Senate majority. One individual can have a profound impact on the entire court, and the decisions it makes can impact generations to come, she said. So when were talking about whether or not we confirm someone to that court, there should be a level of consensus and not just a simple majority. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called filibusters a guardrail against extremism, warning that removing the 60-vote threshold on a presidents high court nominees will undermine public trust in the Supreme Court and turn it into another partisan body. McConnell retorted that few people outside of New York and San Francisco believe Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is mainstream and Judge Neil Gorsuch is not. Republicans accused Democrats of unprecedented obstruction of a qualified nominee. Gorsuch, a Harvard Law School and Oxford University graduate from Colorado, had swept through the Senate by voice vote in 2006 when then-President George W. Bush nominated him to his current seat on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. At 49, he will become the courts youngest member. As a self-described originalist in the Scalia mode who believes in interpreting the Constitution as it was written in 1787, Gorsuch is likely to restore the courts 5-4 conservative majority that existed until Scalias death in February 2016. The next opening, however, is likely to cement a powerful conservative bloc. Three justices are nearing retirement: liberals Ginsburg, 84, and Stephen Breyer, 78, and the courts swing vote, Anthony Kennedy, 80, a Republican nominee who led the court to approve same-sex marriage. While Democrats will have no power to stop Trumps next nominee in the likelihood he gets one, the elimination of the filibuster works both ways. Republicans also denied themselves the opportunity to block Supreme Court nominees by a future Democratic president. Manuel Miranda, a former Senate Republican judicial aide, said Republicans calculated that they have a unique opportunity with Trump, even if he serves just one term. Trump is probably going to nominate at least one more before the four years is out, so this is the right time, Miranda said. After Obamas election, Miranda said Republicans panicked at the thought that Obama could name not two but three or four justices. I think we dodged a bullet, he said. Carolyn Lochhead is The San Francisco Chronicles Washington correspondent. Email: clochhead@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @carolynlochhead We know what youre thinking real estate is confusing. What do all of these terms mean? What is an as-is property?! How do I purchase an as is (frequently called fixer-uppers or flippers) property? Am I making the right decision financially? If you have no idea, you have come to the right place. Our articles help make sense of the world of real estate, and aid in the process of finding your perfect home. In this particular article, we explore the world of as-is properties; what they are, how to get them, and what you should know about them. With many items (furniture, clothing, homes) as-is denotes that the seller is selling, and the buyer is buying an item in whatever condition it presently exists, and that the buyer is accepting the item with all faults, whether or not immediately apparent. This is the classic buyer beware situation, where the careful buyer should take the time to examine the item before accepting it, or, in a housing situation, obtain expert advice. Though this is the definition of as is in its simplest terms, knowing the definition is not enough- especially when dealing with homes. Its important for homebuyers to understand what an as is property entails. There are many probing questions that buyers will have about buying an as-is property. This article will help guide the questions you should be asking. 1. Has there been a professional inspection? Having a professional inspection before the purchase of any home extremely important on its own terms. However, it is absolutely vital in the case of as is properties. Typically, an inspection will run $200-$500 and is a relatively small price to pay to prevent spending an arm and a leg down the road. If an inspection has not been done on the home, it is in your best interest to talk to your Realtor about hiring one. The inspector will help provide a report of the damages and recommended maintenance on the home. This will help you best decide to either go through with making an offer on the home or reconsider the offer based on the severity of damages or cost of repairs. It is also very wise to include a home inspection contingency in the purchase contract. A home inspection contingency gives the homebuyer an opportunity to back out of the sale based on the results of the home inspection. 2. Have you calculated the cost of repairs? Once you have the results of the inspection- which may be a little or may be a lot- you will have a good idea of what you are in for. Your inspection report should include many aspects of the home, from the propertys electrical and heating systems, to the condition of the roof, foundation and other structural aspects of the home. If the inspection report comes back with something minor like a small roof repair, you may be more apt to continue with the purchase than if the inspection report comes back with something major like a crack in the foundation. If the inspection comes back stating there are multiple major repairs that you weren't prepared for, you may want to re-evaluate the interest and potential offer on this specific home. Ask yourself, is this the deal for you? Of course, this will be something to discuss with your Realtor. 3. Are you prepared financially? When buying an as-is property, being prepared financially is your strongest asset. A lot of times, homes like these will be sold for cash because they are bank owned and the bank is ready to get it off their books. If this is the case, make sure you have cash ready and proof of your funding. Also, when buying an as-is home, ARV (After Repair Value) costs should be expected. There will be some repairs that will seem minor and fly under the radar, until the time comes around to replace the plumbing or repaint the kitchen will turn into a costly bill. It is safe to set aside at least $5,000 dollars to be prepared for these ARV costs so you are not blindsided. 4. Have you called your insurance agent and ask to review the Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange (CLUE) report on the home? Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange (CLUE) is the report on the home to determine if an insurance claim has been made. They are used to look at the claims history to see if the person applying for insurance hasn't disclosed a certain condition or indicator of how the property is being maintained. CLUE reports can serve buyers in unexpected ways-possibly saving you from making a bad purchasing decision. If theres been serious damage or repair to the house, you can let your home inspector know what to look for. 5. Have you asked the neighbors about the home? If you are set on the home, yet skeptical about things like damages, it is advised that you ask the neighbors some questions about anything they may have noticed. If the neighbors live close enough to the home, they may notice things like when maintenance has been made to the home and how long ago. Neighbors are a good way to try to find out whether there are any known problems or issues that the property has. 6. Have you hired the correct Realtor for this kind of home? When buying any home, it is EXTREMELY important to hire a qualified Realtor who is very knowledgeable of the city as well as its market condition. Purchasing an as is home, can be quite confusing, so it is crucial to have a Realtor by your side who can help you ease over the obstacles. A good Realtor will know professional inspectors, trustworthy contractors, how to make a clean offer, and ultimately, how to make your buying experience go as smoothly as possible. Ultimately, making the choice to make an offer on an as-is home is up to you and your needs. Your Realtor is there to help you with this decision and help you decide whether an as is property is the right move for you and your family. Along with our Realtors, there are wonderful home lenders that can help you prequalify and aid in the more difficult financial decisions. Editors Note: This content is made possible by Keller Williams San Antonio. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of The San Antonio Express-News' or mySanAntonio.com's editorial staff. Learn more about our advertising products at www.hearstmediasanantonio.com. The trial of former President Robert Mugabes son-in-law Simba Chikore, who is facing charges of unlawfully detaining former Zimbabwe Airways (Zim Airways) legal head Bertha Zakeyo, has been set for November 14. Chikore, who is being represented by Chris Venturas is being charged together with Simbarashe Mutimbe and the two appeared before magistrate Elisha Singano yesterday. The State represented by Linda Gadzikwa successfully asked the court to merge the two dockets. Venturas opposed to the application, saying the State should have filed a notice to allow him to prepare and respond properly. Singano ruled in favour of the State, saying Chikore and Mutimbe allegedly committed the same offence at the same time and the facts were also the same. Allegations are that on June 7 this year, Mutimbe, who was on duty while acting in connivance with Chikore, unlawfully deprived Zakeyo of her freedom of bodily movement by refusing her exit from Zim Airways premises after she had been fired from work. Chikore, who was Zim Airways consultant, allegedly clashed with Zakeyo after he accused her of selling company secrets and being disloyal to the fledging airline. Zakeyo said she was kidnapped for more than two hours to force her to sign her dismissal letter. NewsDay Breaking News via Email As part of the agreement, 7-Eleven will acquire approximately 1,108 convenience stores located in 18 states. IRVING, Texas 7-Eleven, Inc., announced that it has entered into an asset purchase agreement with Sunoco LP. As part of the agreement, 7-Eleven will acquire approximately 1,108 convenience stores located in 18 states. "This acquisition supports our growth strategy in key geographic areas including Florida, mid-Atlantic states, Northeast states, and central Texas," said Joe DePinto, president and CEO of 7-Eleven Inc., in a press release. "It also provides 7-Eleven entry into Houston, the fourth largest city in the United States, and a strong presence in Corpus Christi and across south Texas." 7-Eleven has 8,707 stores in the United States and Canada. This acquisition is one of the largest in 7-Eleven's history, and will bring 7-Eleven's total number of convenience stores in the United States and Canada to 9,815. Readers, there are way too many links, but I had a lot teed up before Trumps Syria strikes, and I couldnt bear to triage too much. And theres plenty on Syria! lambert. Extraterrestrial Origin Of Fast Radio Burst Phenomenon Confirmed Universe Today Squid and octopus can edit and direct their own brain genes New Scientist Cannibalism not so nutritious for early humans, study finds Japan Times Private equity is breaking records left and right as funds rake in money CNBC. Fund-raising, not returns. Fall, recover, repeat: Munis rebound from sharp drops, again AP Former RBA governor Bernie Fraser says penalty rate cut will produce inequality, not jobs Sydney Morning Herald (DM). Its Lit: A Guide to What Teens Think Is Cool Google (GP). Brexit Somerdale to Skarbimierz LRB Syraqistan Imperial Collapse Watch Police State Watch New Cold War Trump Transition Our Famously Free Press Health Care Class Warfare Your way of life would not be remotely possible without Wall Street LA Times (Re Silc). Does Everyone Always Act in Their Self-Interest? Ian Welsh. The many subtexts of voting against their interests. Antidote du jour, because at a time like this, cats: Cozy! See yesterdays Links and Antidote du Jour here. China President Xi Jinpings visit to the US has set off a lot of mischief. First we had a North Korean missile launch, then the US airstrike on Syria, and now Philippines President Duterte poking a stick in Chinas eye. Even if Duterte doesnt follow through, his latest threat is a reversal of his recent policy of making nice to China. From Reuters (hat tip furzy): Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Thursday ordered troops to occupy uninhabited islands and shoals it claims in the disputed South China Sea, asserting Philippine sovereignty in an apparent change of tack likely to anger China. The firebrand leader, who on the campaign trail joked that he would jet ski to a Chinese man-made island in the South China Sea to reinforce Manilas claim, also said he may visit a Philippine-controlled island to raise the national flag. The unoccupied, which are ours, lets live on it, Duterte told reporters during a visit to a military base in Palawan, near the disputed waters. It looks like everyone is making a grab for the islands there. So we better live on those that are still unoccupied. Whats ours now, we claim it and make a strong point from there. Dutertes plan is unlikely to sit well with China, which lays claim to almost all the South China Sea, especially as it comes amid a fast-warming relationship in recent months. China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Brunei and Vietnam contest all or parts of the South China Sea. This has led to confrontations between China and some of its neighbors over the strategic trade route. Yves here. This article at the Real News Network was written with the correct assumption based on Trumps remarks Wednesday that he would make a military response to a chemical weapons attack in Syria attributed to Assad. It appears to be based on an audio; the rush version had missing apostrophes; hopefully I have caught them all. By Phyllis Bennis,s a Fellow and the Director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C. She is the author of Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer, Before and After: US Foreign Policy and the September 11 Crisis, Ending the US War in Afghanistan: A Primer and Understanding the US-Iran Crisis: A Primer. Her most recent book is Understanding ISIS and the New Global War on Terror: A Primer. Originally published at the Real News Network Lets start with what we dont know. Experts remain uncertain what chemical(s) were involved in the horrific chemical attack, almost certainly from the air, on the village of Khan Sheikhun in Idlib province in Syria. The nerve agent sarin, chlorine, and unknown combinations of chemicals have all been identified as possible, but in the first 48 hours nothing has been confirmed. We dont know for sure yet what it was that killed more than 75 people, many of them children, and injured many more. Crucially, we also dont know who was responsible. Western governments, led by the United States, and much of the western press have asserted that the Syrian regime is responsible, but there is still no clear evidence. Certainly Damascus has an air force, has been known to use chemical, particularly chlorine, weapons in 2014 and 2015. So thats certainly possible. A US military escalation against Syria (because we must not forget that US Special Forces and US bombers are already fighting there) will not help the victims of this heinous chemical attack, it will not bring the devastating war in Syria to a quicker end, it will not bring back the dead children. The Syrian military denies using chemical weapons. Their international backer, Russia, claims that the Syrian military did drop bombs in the affected area but that the chemical effect was not in the bombs dropped but rather from the explosion of an alleged chemical warehouse under the control of unnamed rebel forces. The same report by the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons that found Syrian government responsibility for chlorine attacks also found that ISIS had used another chemical weapon, mustard gas, and investigated at least three other chemical weapons attacks whose perpetrators could not be identified. So that could be possible as well. For a variety of reasons, some of these possibilities dont hold up so well if the chemical used this week was the sarin nerve agent but we dont know yet what it was. There are some other, perhaps even more important things, that we do know. We know that in 2013, at the time of an earlier, even more deadly chemical weapon attack, similar accusations against the Syrian regime were widely made, assumed to be true, and used as the basis for calls for direct US military intervention in the civil war. And we know those accusations were never proved, and that it remains uncertain even now, almost four years later, who was actually responsible. And we know that the bombing of Syria in 2013 was averted, despite President Obamas red line being crossed, because an enormous US and global campaign against such a disastrous escalation made it politically too costly to launch a new US war. This was a president willing but not eager, or driven, to go to war. When Obama turned decision-making over to Congress, hundreds of thousands of people across the United States called and wrote and emailed their representatives, urging them to prevent a new war. In some offices calls were running six or seven hundred to one against a new bombing campaign. And we know that President Obama turned it over to Congress in the first place because the British parliament, facing massive public opposition, made clear that the UK would not join its US ally in going to war against Syria. And eventually, when Congressional opposition became undeniable, Russia provided the US with a way out, arranging for international collection and destruction of Syrias chemical weapons arsenal. Chlorine was not included, and it is certainly possible that Syria didnt declare all of its weapons, or perhaps the precursor chemicals to make them, and but that claim was never proven. Ultimately, though, a US attack was averted. Much is different now from 2013. The state of the Syrian civil war is far different in 2013, the war was still new and uncertain; today it is recognized as the worlds most devastating conflict. There is little chance of UK involvement in a military attack on Syria this time around, so the sudden resistance of a key US ally isnt going to happen. Congress is not being consulted, and it is very unclear whether Congressmembers of either party are prepared to take on challenging a military campaign dressed up as a campaign for justice. At the United Nations, Trumps Ambassador Nikki Haley seemed to be channeling George W. Bush even more than her actual boss. She threatened that if the Security Council did not act according to US demandsmeaning if it resisted authorizing military escalation in Syriathat the US was prepared to go alone. International law, the UN Charter, diplomacy be damned. And this is a president, a cabinet, a White House with no military or diplomatic experience, with no understanding of the complications of the roiling Middle East conflicts or the consequences of war, and with a personal eagerness to demonstrate power. This is not a president accountable to a political party, to Congress and its constitutional role in military decision-making, and certainly less accountable to international law. Trumps incoherent reaction on Wednesday showed the lack of any strategic understanding in his foreign policy. He blames former President Obama for the crisis in Syria, while Trump of course had urged Obama not to attack Syria after the chemical bombing of 2013, tweeting in all caps DO NOT ATTACK SYRIA IF YOU DO MANY VERY BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN. He continued that criticism of Obama, but then switched gears to brag about his flexibility, noting that my attitude towards Syria and Assad have changed very much. It was a clear implication hes considering a military response, although he pulled back from any clarity on that as well. Asked what his message would be to the Iranian militias supporting the Syrian military, Trump first went off on an unrelated attack on the Iranian nuclear deal, eventually circling back to a threatening but vague You will see what the message will be. They will have a message. And the anti-Trump resistance that rose so heroically from the first moments of this presidency faces new challenges on a daily, even hourly basis. The mobilizationsin the streets, at the airports, at the White House, at the Supreme Court and beyondand the letters and petitions and sit-ins and teach-ins and more, have been incredibly powerful. Remobilizing those exhausted millions around an anti-war message will be a huge challenge for anti-war and indeed the whole range of social movements. As usual, much remains unknown. But we know two crucial things, things that were true then, and remain true today. We know that using chemical weapons of any sort, in any war, against any targetis a crime. And we know there must ultimately be accountability for those who use it, regardless of who they are. That will take time. In the meantime we know another truth: that a US military escalation against Syria (because we must not forget that US Special Forces and US bombers are already fighting there) will not help the victims of this heinous chemical attack, it will not bring the devastating war in Syria to a quicker end, it will not bring back the dead children. It will not defeat ISIS or end terrorism, it will create more terrorists. It will almost certainly cause more casualties, more injuries, and more dead. Maybe dead children. There is still no military solution. This is what we know. So the military/surveillance state got its war against Russia after all. My, that was fast. Merely implementing a no-fly zone was widely seen as tantamount to instigating a war with Russia, and this move is far more provocative. Perhaps the US thinks it can engage in a show of muscle and stop there. But as Lambert has pointed out, some things cant be unsaid. Even if this attack was meant as an over-the-top message to Russia regarding its support of Assad, some things cant be undone either. Another line of thought is that this airstrike was meant as a warning shot to Chinese President Xi Jinping regarding North Korea, that the US is willing to take aggressive, precipitous actions. Unlike Syria, North Korea would be a bona fide threat to the US if it succeeds in its efforts to build long-range missiles. From ITV (guurst): The US has fired dozens of cruise missiles at an airfield in Syria in retaliation for Tuesdays alleged chemical weapons attack, US officials have confirmed. Around 60 tomahawk missiles were launched from US Navy destroyers, targeting an airfield near Homs, in the most dramatic military order of Donald Trumps presidency so far. Ryan Grim of the Huffington Post points out via an e-mailed alert that: Donald Trump does not have the legal authority to launch airstrikes against Syria, yet he has done so tonight, multiple news outlets are reporting, and confirmed by an intelligence community source Update 10:15 PM. From the Wall Street Journal: The U.S. military launched a series of strikes against a Syrian air base Friday, a response to mounting calls for a display of force in the wake of this weeks suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria. The strikes represented the first time a U.S. military operation deliberately targeted the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and came a day after President Donald Trump said the chemical attack in Idlib province earlier this week, blamed on Syrian forces, had changed his thinking on Mr. Assad.. U.S. lawmakers had urged Mr. Trump to strike the Assad regime. There is a growing consensus that the regime used banned chemical weapons in the attack, which killed at least 85 people, including 27 children, and injured about 550. CNN reports that Trump will address the nation shortly. Update 12:30 AM: Guest after guest is gushing. From MSNBC to CNN, Trump is receiving his best night of press so far. And all he had to do was start a war. Sam Sacks (@SamSacks) April 7, 2017 I keep reading these Breitbart comments on Syria. Eight thousand new ones in just a few minutes. They are very angry at Trump. Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) April 7, 2017 This is from Howard Beale IV, but I dont have the images to confirm his take. Readers? Note that the US did give Russia a heads up before the bombing. If you see the press pictures of the runway damage of the Syrian airfields, the amount of damage is so minimal theyll be back in operation in under a week. IOW, it was just a very expensive fireworks demonstration. Had Hair Furor really wanted to send a message, they would have had to actually destroy the runway with a bombing mission-thats a very high-risk move, but would have sent a far more serious message that were not fucking around. This may be giving Team Trump way more credit than is due. However, any action against Syria, even if Trump was sold on the idea that this was a warning shot disguised as an apparent act of war, it is first very risk and second has the effect of committing Trump psychologically against Assad, when before he was pretty indifferent. By Georgios Petropoulos, a resident fellow at Brugel with extensive research experience from among other things, holding visiting positions at the European Central Bank in Frankfurt, Banque de France in Paris and the research department of Hewlett-Packard in Palo Alto. Originally published at Bruegel Artificial intelligence (AI) refers to intelligence exhibited by machines. It lies at the intersection of big data, machine learning and robotics. Robotics contributes the necessary design, construction and operational framework. A robot can be defined as a machine capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically, especially one programmable by a computer. Modern robots are often virtual algorithms performing not only physical but also cognitive tasks. Machine learning enables these robots to acquire knowledge and skills, and even improve their own performance. Big data provides the raw material for machine learning, and offers examples on which robots can practice in order to learn, exercise, and ultimately perform their assigned tasks more efficiently. The idea of intelligent machines arose in the early 20th century. From the beginning, the idea of human-like intelligence was key. Following Vannevar Bushs seminal work from 1945, where he proposed a system which amplifies peoples own knowledge and understanding, Alan Turing asked the question: Can a machine think? In his famous 1950 imitation game, Turning proposed a test of a machines ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour equivalent to that of a human. A human evaluator judges a text exchange conversation between a human and a machine that is designed to generate human-like responses. The evaluator would be aware that one of the two partners in conversation is a machine, and all participants would be separated from one another. If the evaluator cannot reliably tell the machine from the human, the machine is said to have passed the test. The specific term artificial intelligence was first used by John McCarthy in the summer of 1956, when he held the first academic conference on the subject in Dartmouth. However, the traditional approach to AI was not really about independent machine learning. Instead the aim was to specify rules of logical reasoning and real world conditions which machines could be programmed to follow and react to. This approach was time-consuming for programmers and its effectiveness relied heavily on the clarity of rules and definitions. For example, applying this rule-and-content approach to machine language translation would require the programmer to proactively equip the machine with all grammatical rules, vocabulary and idioms of the source and target languages. Only then could one feed the machine a sentence to be translated. As words cannot be reduced only to their dictionary definition and there are many exceptions to grammar rules, this approach would be inefficient and ultimately offer poor results, at least if we compare the outcome with a professional, human translator. Modern AI has deviated from this approach by adopting the notion of machine learning. This shift follows in principle Turings recommendation to teach a machine to perform specific tasks as if it were a child. By building a machine with sufficient computational resources, offering training examples from real world data and by designing specific algorithms and tools that define a learning process, rather than specific data manipulations, machines can improve their own performance through learning by doing, inferring patterns, and hypothesis checking. Thus it is no longer necessary to programme in advance long and complicated rules for a machines specific operations. Instead programmers can equip them with flexible mechanisms that facilitate machines adaptation to their task environment. At the core of this learning process are artificial neural networks, inspired by the networks of neurons in the human brain. The goal of the neural network is to solve problems in the same way that a hypothesised human brain would, albeit without any conscious codified awareness of the rules and patterns that have been inferred from the data. Modern neural network projects typically work with a few thousand to a few million neural units and millions of connections, which are still several orders of magnitude less complex than the human brain and closer to the computing power of a worm (see the Intel AI Documentation for further details). While networks with more hidden layers are expected to be more powerful, training deep networks can be rather challenging, owing to the difference in speed at which every hidden layer learns. By categorising the ways this artificial neuron structure can interact with the source data and stimuli, we can identify three different types of machine learning: Supervised learning: the neural network is provided with examples of inputs and corresponding desired outputs. It then learns how to accurately map inputs to outputs by adjusting the weights and activation thresholds of its neural connections. This is the most widely used technique. A typical use would be training email servers to choose which emails should automatically go to the spam folder. Another task that can be learnt in this way is finding the most appropriate results for a query typed in a search engine. Unsupervised learning: the neural network is provided with example inputs and then it is left to recognise features, patterns and structure in these inputs without any specific guidance. This type of learning can be used to cluster the input data into classes on the basis of their statistical properties It is particularly useful for finding things that you do not know the form of, such as as-yet-unrecognised patterns in a large dataset. Reinforcement learning: the neural network interacts with an environment in which it must perform a specific task, and receives feedback on its performance in the form of a reward or a punishment. This type of learning corresponds, for example, to the training of a network to play computer gamesand achieve high scores. Since artificial neural networks are based on a posited structure and function of the human brain, a natural question to ask is whether machines can outperform human beings. Indeed, there are several examples of games and competitions in which machines can now beat humans. By now, machines have topped the best humans at most games traditionally held up as measures of human intellect, including chess (recall for example the 1997 game between IBMs Deep Blue and the champion Garry Kasparov), Scrabble, Othello, and Jeopardy!. Even in more complex games, machines seem to be quickly improving their performance through their learning process. In March 2016, the AlphaGo computer program from the AI startup DeapMind (which was bought by Google in 2014) beat Lee Sedol at a five-game match of Go the oldest board game, invented in China more than 2,500 years ago. This was the first time a computer Go program has beaten a 9-dan professional without handicaps. Probably the most striking performance of machine learning took place in the ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge, which evaluates algorithms for object detection and image classification at large scale. For any given word, ImageNet contains several hundred images. In the annual ImageNet contest several research groups compete in getting their computers to recognise and label images automatically. Humans on average label an image correctly 95% of the time. The respective number for the winning AI system in 2010 was 72%, but over the next couple of years the error rate fell sharply. In 2015, machines managed to achieve an accuracy of 96%, reducing the error rate below human average level for first time. It is important to understand that many of these machines are programmed to perform specific tasks, narrowing the scope of their operation. So humans are still superior in performing general tasks and using experience acquired in one task to deliver another task. Take, for example, the ImageNet challenge. As one of the challenges organisers, Olga Russakovsky, pointed out in 2015, the programs only have to identify images as belonging to one of a thousand categories; humans can recognise a larger number of categories, and also (unlike the programs) can judge the context of an image. Multitask learning and general-task-AI are still lagging behind human cognitive ability and performance. Indeed, they are the next big challenges for AI research teams. For example, a self-driving car which drives a specific route in a controlled environment is quite a different task from a car out in the road amidst varied and unpredictable traffic and weather conditions. Nevertheless, the rapid improvement in the performance of machines through learning is something that is easily observable since 2012, when deep learning neuron networks started to be constructed and operated. Technological advances have increased the rate with which machines improve their function, further accelerating the progress of AI. So what does this mean? AI could bring substantial social benefits, which will improve many aspects of our lives. For example, smart machines can make healthcare more effective, by providing more accurate and timely diagnoses and treatments. The increased ability of machine scanners to analyse images like X-rays and CT scans can reduce the error margin in a diagnosis. It can also lead to great time efficiencies. In the fight against breast cancer, Forbes illustrates how efficient AI can be. So far, women depend on monthly home exams and annual mammograms to detect breast cancer. Cyrcadia Health, a cancer therapy startup, has developed a sensor-filled patch that can be inserted comfortably under a bra for daily wear. Connecting through the womans smartphone or PC, the patch uses machine-learning algorithms to track the womans breast tissue temperatures and analyse this data at the Cyrcadia lab. If it detects a change in pattern, the technology will quickly alert the woman and her healthcare provider to schedule a follow-up with her doctor. The first generation of AI machines has already arrived as computer algorithms in online translation, search, digital marketplaces and collaborative economy markets. Algorithms are learning how to perform their tasks more efficiently, providing a better and higher quality experience for the online users. Such efficiency gains through smart technology lead to high social benefits as reported by numerous studies (for instance, see Petropoulos, 2017 for the benefits from the collaborative economy, which are made possible by AI and machine learning). The final destination of AI research is still uncertain. But machines will continue to become ever smarter, performing the tasks assigned to them ever more efficiently. Depending on their design and construction, they can have many applications. However, they will also interact with humans in sometimes challenging ways. Policymakers and researcher alike need to be prepared for the AI revolution. Printed transistors consisting entirely of 2-D nanomaterials (Nanowerk News) Researchers in AMBER, the Science Foundation Ireland-funded materials science research centre hosted in Trinity College Dublin, have fabricated printed transistors consisting entirely of 2-dimensional nanomaterials for the first time. These 2D materials combine exciting electronic properties with the potential for low-cost production. This breakthrough could unlock the potential for applications such as food packaging that displays a digital countdown to warn you of spoiling, wine labels that alert you when your white wine is at its optimum temperature, or even a window pane that shows the day's forecast. The AMBER team's findings have been published in Science ("All-printed thin-film transistors from networks of liquid-exfoliated nanosheets"). Prof Jonathan Coleman and team have fabricated printed transistors consisting entirely of 2-dimensional nanomaterials for the first time. (Image: AMBER, Trinity College Dublin) This discovery opens the path for industry, such as ICT and pharmaceutical, to cheaply print a host of electronic devices from solar cells to LEDs with applications from interactive smart food and drug labels to next-generation banknote security and e-passports. Prof Jonathan Coleman, who is an investigator in AMBER and Trinity's School of Physics, said, "In the future, printed devices will be incorporated into even the most mundane objects such as labels, posters and packaging. Printed electronic circuitry (constructed from the devices we have created) will allow consumer products to gather, process, display and transmit information: for example, milk cartons could send messages to your phone warning that the milk is about to go out-of-date. We believe that 2D nanomaterials can compete with the materials currently used for printed electronics. Compared to other materials employed in this field, our 2D nanomaterials have the capability to yield more cost effective and higher performance printed devices. However, while the last decade has underlined the potential of 2D materials for a range of electronic applications, only the first steps have been taken to demonstrate their worth in printed electronics. This publication is important because it shows that conducting, semiconducting and insulating 2D nanomaterials can be combined together in complex devices. We felt that it was critically important to focus on printing transistors as they are the electric switches at the heart of modern computing. We believe this work opens the way to print a whole host of devices solely from 2D nanosheets." Led by Prof Coleman, in collaboration with the groups of Prof Georg Duesberg (AMBER) and Prof. Laurens Siebbeles (TU Delft, Netherlands), the team used standard printing techniques to combine graphene nanosheets as the electrodes with two other nanomaterials, tungsten diselenide and boron nitride as the channel and separator (two important parts of a transistor) to form an all-printed, all-nanosheet, working transistor. Printable electronics have developed over the last thirty years based mainly on printable carbon-based molecules. While these molecules can easily be turned into printable inks, such materials are somewhat unstable and have well-known performance limitations. There have been many attempts to surpass these obstacles using alternative materials, such as carbon nanotubes or inorganic nanoparticles, but these materials have also shown limitations in either performance or in manufacturability. While the performance of printed 2D devices cannot yet compare with advanced transistors, the team believe there is a wide scope to improve performance beyond the current state-of-the-art for printed transistors. Hybrid perovskite material could replace silicon to double efficiency of solar cells (Nanowerk News) A new material has been shown to have the capability to double the efficiency of solar cells by researchers at Purdue University and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The material, called a hybrid perovskite, has an inorganic crystal "cage" which contains an organic molecule, methyl-ammonium. (Image: Libai Huang) Conventional solar cells are at most one-third efficient, a limit known to scientists as the Shockley-Queisser Limit. The new material, a crystalline structure that contains both inorganic materials (iodine and lead) and an organic material (methyl-ammonium), boosts the efficiency so that it can carry two-thirds of the energy from light without losing as much energy to heat. In less technical terms, this material could double the amount of electricity produced without a significant cost increase. Enough solar energy reaches the earth to supply all of the planet's energy needs multiple times over, but capturing that energy has been difficult as of 2013, only about 1 percent of the world's grid electricity was produced from solar panels. Libai Huang, assistant professor of chemistry at Purdue, says the new material, called a hybrid perovskites, would create solar cells thinner than conventional silicon solar cells, and is also flexible, cheap and easy to make. "My graduate students learn how to make it in a few days," she says. The breakthrough is published this week in the journal Science ("Long-range hot-carrier transport in hybrid perovskites visualized by ultrafast microscopy"). The most common solar cells use silicon as a semiconductor, which can transmit only one-third of the energy because of the band gap, which is the amount of energy needed to boost an electron from a bound state to a conducting state, in which the electrons are able to move, creating electricity. Scientists at Purdue University and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory have discovered how electrons move in a new crystalline material and this discovery could lead to doubling the efficiency of solar cells. Ultrafast microscope images, such as these, show that the electrons in material is able to move over 200 nanometers with minimal energy loss to heat. (Image: Libai Huang) (click on image to enlarge) Incoming photons can have more energy than the band gap, and for a very short time so short it's difficult to imagine the electrons exist with extra energy. These electrons are called "hot carriers," and in silicon they exist for only one picosecond (which is 10-12 seconds) and only travel a maximum distance of 10 nanometers. At this point the hot carrier electrons give up their energy as heat. This is one of the main reasons for the inefficiency of solar cells. Huang and her colleagues have developed a new technique that can track the range of the motion and the speed of the hot carriers by using fast lasers and microscopes. "The distance hot carriers need to migrate is at least the thickness of a solar cell, or about 200 nanometers, which this new perovskite material can achieve," Huang says. "Also these carriers can live for about 100 picoseconds, two orders of magnitude longer than silicon." Kai Zhu, senior scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, and one of the journal papers co-authors, says that these are critical factors for creating a commercial hot-carrier solar cell. "This study demonstrated that hot carriers in a standard polycrystalline perovskite thin film can travel for a distance that is similar to or longer than the film thickness required to build an efficient perovskite solar cell," he says. "This indicates that the potential for developing hot carrier perovskite solar cell is good." However, before a commercial product is developed, researchers are trying to use the same techniques developed at Purdue by replacing lead in the material with other, less toxic, metals. Leaf vein structure could hold key to extending battery life (Nanowerk News) The natural structure found within leaves could improve the performance of everything from rechargeable batteries to high-performance gas sensors, according to an international team of scientists. The researchers have designed a porous, such as the veins of a leaf, and could make energy transfers more efficient. The material could improve the performance of rechargeable batteries, optimizing the charge and discharge process and relieving stresses within the battery electrodes, which, at the moment, limit their life span. The same material could be used for high performance gas sensing or for catalysis to break down organic pollutants in water. Close-up of a leaf showing its veins. (Image: Christoph Rupprecht) To design this bio-inspired material, an international team comprising scientists from China, the United Kingdom, United States and Belgium is mimicking the rule known as 'Murray's Law' which helps natural organisms survive and grow. According to this Law, the entire network of pores existing on different scales in such biological systems is interconnected in a way to facilitate the transfer of liquids and minimize resistance throughout the network. The plant stems of a tree, or leaf veins, for example, optimize the flow of nutrients for photosynthesis with both high efficiency and minimum energy consumption by regularly branching out to smaller scales. In the same way, the surface area of the tracheal pores of insects remains constant along the diffusion pathway to maximize the delivery of carbon dioxide and oxygen in gaseous forms. The team, led by Prof Bao-Lian Su, a life member of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge and who is also based at Wuhan University of Technology in China and at the University of Namur in Belgium, adapted Murray's Law for the fabrication of the first ever synthetic 'Murray material' and applied it to three processes: photocatalysis, gas sensing and lithium ion battery electrodes. In each, they found that the multi-scale porous networks of their synthetic material significantly enhanced the performance of these processes. Prof Su says: "This study demonstrates that by adapting Murray's Law from biology and applying it to chemistry, the performance of materials can be improved significantly. The adaptation could benefit a wide range of porous materials and improve functional ceramics and nano-metals used for energy and environmental applications." "The introduction of the concept of Murray's Law to industrial processes could revolutionize the design of reactors with highly enhanced efficiency, minimum energy, time, and raw material consumption for a sustainable future." Writing in Nature Communications this week ("Bio-inspired Murray materials for mass transfer and activity"), the team describes how it used zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles as the primary building block of their Murray material. These nanoparticles, containing small pores within them, form the lowest level of the porous network. The team arranged the ZnO particles through a layer-by layer evaporation-driven self-assembly process. This creates a second level of porous networks between the particles. During the evaporation process, the particles also form larger pores due to solvent evaporation, which represents the top level of pores, resulting in a three level Murray material. The team successfully fabricated these porous structures with the precise diameter ratios required to obey Murray's law, enabling the efficient transfer of materials across the multilevel pore network. Co-author, Dr Tawfique Hasan, of the Cambridge Graphene Centre, part of the University's Department of Engineering, adds: "This very first demonstration of a Murray material fabrication process is incredibly simple and is entirely driven by the nanoparticle self-assembly. Large scale manufacturability of this porous material is possible, making it an exciting, enabling technology, with potential impact across many applications." With its synthetic Murray material, with precise diameter ratios between the pore levels, the team demonstrated an efficient breakdown of an organic dye in water by using photocatalysis. This showed it was easy for the dye to enter the porous network leading to efficient and repeated reaction cycles. The team also used the same Murray material with a structure similar to the breathing networks of insects, for fast and sensitive gas detection with high repeatability. The team proved that its Murray material can significantly improve the long term stability and fast charge/discharge capability for lithium ion storage, with a capacity improvement of up to 25 times compared to state of the art graphite material currently used in lithium ion battery electrodes. The hierarchical nature of the pores also reduces the stresses in these electrodes during the charge/discharge processes, improving their structural stability and resulting in a longer life time for energy storage devices. The Bus Eireann X7 Clonmel to Dublin service ceased to operate last Saturday just days after more than 100 people attended a public meeting in Carrick-on-Suir about the company's axing of this bus service. Bus Eireann services across the county remain suspended today (Wednesday) as workers continue their strike over cuts to their pay and working conditions as well as to bus routes. The public meeting in the Nano Nagle Community Resource Centre last Wednesday, March 29 was attended by people concerned about the impact of the loss of Carrick-on-Suir's direct Bus Eireann bus service to Dublin two years ago and the closure of the X7 Clonmel to Dublin service. Carrick people were conntected to the Clonmel/Dublin bus service at Grangemockler via a shuttle bus travelling to and from Carrick since the direct Carrick/Dublin service closed two years ago. Bus Eireann driver Mark Fitzgerald, who addressed the meeting, was appalled at how the needs of rural people were being ignored. He emphasised that the bus drivers not only drove the buses but provided a service as well and knew many of their regular passengers and their needs. Deputy Seamus Healy and his Workers & Unemployment Action Group colleague Cllr Pat English along with Carrick-on-Suir SF councillor David Dunne all attended the meeting. Local people at the meeting spoke of how the cuts to Bus Eireann services were affecting their travel to jobs out of town and to hospital appointments. They highlighted that the cutbacks were affecting all age groups, and in some cases the rural bus journey was the only transport for many including older people living alone, to get to towns for shopping and visiting friends. It was proposed that a web page be set up to enable local people to access up to date information on the bus routes, the ongoing dispute and to voice their concerns. Meanwhile, Bus Eireann has defended its decision to close the X7 Clonmel to Dublin bus route. In a statement, the company said this commercial bus route was restructured in June 2015 but significant losses have continued to accrue since then. "As a result, the route is not viable on an ongoing basis particularly given the current perilous financial situation at the company." The statement added that the National Transport Authority considered the range and availability of alternative public transport services from Clonmel and the other location affected by the withdrawal of the X7Expressway service was considered appropriate to meet demand. A Bus Eireann spokesperson said Clonmel will continue to be served by Bus Eireann's 55 Limerick/ Waterford and 355 Clonmel/Waterford services. She confirmed that five Bus Eireann staff on temporary contracts will lose their jobs as a result of the closure of the X7 bus service. Rang 5, Muinteoir Aine Maire and well-known artist Des Dillon launched their art project H2O go Deo at Gaelscoil Chluain Meala. The childrens families, the Parents Council, the Board of Management and invited guests were in attendance. The school said it was so fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with an artist of the calibre of Des Dillon, who not alone shared his many talents and facilitated the project but did it all as Gaeilge. Not alone did the children experience the excitement and fulfilment of creativity but, through self-expression, their confidence and self esteem has flourished beyond measure. The school community looked forward to Des bi-weekly visits. All involved said that Des Dillon had been a pleasure to work with and the children engaged with him at every stage of the project. Working with such a talented and genuine artist allowed all to see the individuality of the children. We can say, without contradiction, that we achieved all the aims outlined in our initial proposal, says principal Karen Mhic Gearailt. Children added to our initial proposal in a way we could not have foreseen and took ownership of it from the very beginning. This was in no small way due to the flexibility, inspiration and commitment of the artist, who allowed the project to develop organically. We also thank Muinteoir Aine Maire who facilitated the project. In the words of the children It was the best project we ever did as a class. The children presented Des with an English Irish dictionary and a memory book, which they wrote about the project. The school community is also grateful to the Arts Officer in Tipperary County Council, who gave them the opportunity to participate in the Artist in Schools Scheme. NATO Deputy Secretary General Rose Gottemoeller reaffirmed the Alliances strong support for Ukraine in a speech on Thursday (6 April 2017). Speaking at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, she said a recent meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Commission underscored the Alliances ongoing and steadfast support for Ukraines sovereignty and territorial integrity. The Deputy Secretary General said Ukraine is a valued NATO partner and that, NATO does not, and will not, accept Russias illegal and illegitimate annexation of Crimea. And we condemn Russias ongoing destabilization in eastern Ukraine. Ukraine has been an important NATO partner for many years, having joined the North Atlantic Cooperation Council in 1991 and NATOs Partnership for Peace program in 1994. Ms. Gottemoeller said the country is making a great deal of progress on its reform agenda and it could rely on NATOs continued support on this issue. Ms. Gottemoeller highlighted NATOs Comprehensive Assistance Package for Ukraine, which includes more than forty tailored support measures and six different multi-million-euro Trust Funds. Among them is the Medical Rehabilitation Trust Fund, which provides support to wounded soldiers as well as to hospitals and physicians. Only last week, NATO opened a new rehabilitation facility in Kharkiv. In September, a Ukrainian team of athletes whom NATO helped to rehabilitate will compete in the 2017 Invictus Games in Toronto. After her speech, the Deputy Secretary General met Ukraines President Petro Poroshenko, the Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman, Deputy Prime Minister Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze and other senior government figures. (Natural News) Chances are youve seen some videos circulating the web showing Cokes ability to take rust and paint off metal objects or clean toilet bowls. While deep down we all know that sodas arent healthy, many of us still drink liters of the sugary stuff on a daily basis. No matter where you are, Coca-Cola is one of the most recognized drinks in the whole world. In some third world countries, Coca-Cola products such as Coke, Fanta, or Sprite, are even more accessible than clean water. Regular consumers of these soft drinks, however, have more to worry about than just its high sugar content. A Nigerian High Court judge has ruled that some of the soft drinks sold under the Coca-Cola brand could be poisonous when consumed alongside vitamin C-rich foods, drinks, and supplements. Bottles of Fanta and Sprite may soon come with written health warnings After businessman Dr. Emmanuel Fijabi Adebo filed a lawsuit against the regulatory National Agency For Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) and the Nigerian Bottling Company (NBC), Judge Adedayo Oyebanji ruled that high levels of benzoic acid, as well as additives in Fanta and Sprite, could pose a health risk to consumers when mixed with ascorbic acid, or vitamin C. In 2007, Emmanuel Fijabi Adebos company, Fijabi Adebo Holdings Limited, purchased Nigerian Sprite and Fanta to export to the United Kingdom (U.K.) for retail. When the products arrived in the U.K., health authorities ran tests and concluded that they werent fit for human consumption, CNN reported. The shipment was seized and destroyed because the products contained excessive levels of benzoic acid and the food coloring sunset yellow, both of which pose a serious health risk. (RELATED: Find more information about toxic foods and drinks at NaturalNewsIngredients.com.) In their defense, the Coca-Cola Company said the claims are inaccurate and unsupported by science. Lawyers for the Nigerian Bottling Company added that the products were not intended for export to other countries. All our products are safe and strictly adhere to regulations in the countries where they are sold, while complying with our companys stringent global safety and quality standards, a spokesperson for Coca-Cola told the Independent. Judge Adedayo Oyebanji rejected their defense, stating that any manufactured soft drink ought to be fit for human consumption irrespective of color or creed. The Lagos High Court ordered the NBC to place labels on Fanta and Sprite bottles to inform consumers about the possible health risks. Furthermore, the NAFDAC received a fine of $6,350 for failing to ensure health standards. NBC and NAFDAC are appealing against the court ruling Both companies argue that Cokes products dont exceed benzoic acid limits in Nigeria. They cited limits set by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FOA), which may vary by country, depending on several factors such as climate and country regulations. According to them, higher temperatures require higher levels of preservatives. As stated by Sade Morgan, legal, public affairs, and communications director of the NBC, the standard limits of benzoic acid in soft drinks in the U.K. is set to a maximum of 150 mg/kg. Fanta and Sprite products coming from Nigeria, however, have recorded levels of 200 mg/kg, which is lower than the Nigerian regulatory limit of 250 mg/kg. While authorities and the FAO claim that the products are safe, Health Minister Isaac Adewole insisted on opening an investigation into the safety of Coca-Cola products produced in Nigeria. The news has spread like wildfire through Nigeria, resulting in fear among the public. Many Nigerians arent too sure anymore whether they still want to drink soda thats considered poisonous for humans in some parts of the world. While Coca-Cola and the NBC hope for a successful appeal to rebuild their reputation and restore trust, consumer groups are calling for immediate boycotts. Sources: Edition.CNN.com Independent.co.uk (Natural News) Oral bacteria may play a key role in the development of certain types of cancer, various studies have shown. A vast number of studies have long established a link between oral bacteria and cancer, and identifying the mechanism behind this connection may help health experts determine a persons cancer risk just be examining certain bacteria in his mouth. Examining the bodys microbiome composition is a relatively new field in medical science, said Dr. Jiyoung Ahn, an Associate Professor of Epidemiology at New York University School of Medicine. Research from the past five years found that 80 percent of bacteria residing in the human body cannot be cultured in a lab dish. While certain factors such as smoking and alcohol may spur changes in the oral microbiome, it is still hoped that changes in the mouths bacteria may one day play a role in cancer diagnosis and potential treatments, Dr. Ahn added. (Related: Know more about potential cancer treatments at CancerSolutions.news) Oral bacterias link to breast, pancreatic cancer Researchers at the University of Buffalo in New York found that gum disease-causing bacteria may cause the onset of breast cancer. An analysis of 73,000 postmenopausal women revealed that women who had the gum disease had a 14 percent higher risk of developing breast cancer. Data also showed that among women who quit smoking with the past two decades, those with the gum disease had a 63 percent increased risk of breast cancer. According to the scientists, oral bacteria may enter the circulatory system, which then negatively affects breast tissues. A 2011 study also found a connection between oral bacteria and breast cancer onset. Researchers examined more than 3,000 women aged 30 to 40 years. Study data showed that women who had chronic gum disease or had lost teeth due to periodontal disease were more than twice as likely to develop breast cancer compared with women who had healthier gums. The findings were published in the Journal of Pharmacy & BioAllied Sciences. Another study showed that poor oral health may increase the risk of developing pancreatic cancer. Research presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research revealed that people with higher levels of the oral bacteria P. gingivalis had up to 60 percent increased odds of pancreatic cancer than those with lower levels. Data also showed that the oral bacteria A. actinomycetemcomitans was also associated with an increased risk of pancreatic cancer. Esophageal, bowel cancer may be triggered by oral bacteria A study published in the journal Clinical Cancer Research revealed that the oral bacteria F. nucleatum played a role in esophageal cancer development. Researchers at the Kumamoto University in Japan examined DNA in cancer tissue samples of 325 patients and found that patients who tested positive for the oral bacteria had shorter survival times than those who tested negative for the bacteria. This study suggested that the oral cavity bacterium F. nucleatum may be involved in the development and progression of esophageal cancer via chemokines. It should be noted that it is still unknown whether F. nucleatum itself causes esophageal cancer. Further analysis by more institutions, preferably world-wide, is desired since intestinal flora differs between individuals. In future research, after elucidating the role of F. nucleatum in esophageal cancer development in more detail, we should be able to develop new drugs to better treat this form of cancer, said Professor Hideo Baba, the studys lead researcher. A 2016 study also found that an oral bacteria called fusobacterium increased the risk of bowel cancer. The bacteria was known to induce bleeding gums, and was found to be more common in cancerous tumors that normal cells. Sources: DailyMail.co.uk NCBI.gov AsianScientist.com Friday, April 07, 2017 by: News Editors Tags: democracy , quiz , totalitarian This article may contain statements that reflect the opinion of the author (Natural News) The USA is already a Totalitarian State with a Ministry of Propaganda that works overtime to generate a flimsy illusion of democracy. (Article by Charles Hugh Smith from thedailysheeple.com) Is your democracy (or republic) actually a Totalitarian State? That is, is it a democracy or republic in name only? To find out, take this quick quiz. 1. Does your government (federal, state and local) seize citizens assets without due process? In other words, the rule of law is dead; the state is the law. If the answer is yes, Your democracy is already a Totalitarian State. The answer in the USA is a definitive yes. 2. Does your government impose tyranny by complexity? If so, the average citizen lacks the wealth and connections needed to fight the seizure of private property without due process or recourse. In the USA, the answer is yes, the government is a tyranny by complexity. 3. Is your government essentially for sale to wealthy elites? If the answer is yes, Your democracy is already a Totalitarian Stateor more accurately, a fascist Totalitarian State. 4. Does your government spy on its entire citizenry? If the answer is yes, Your Democracy is already a Totalitarian State. The answer in the USA is a definitive yes. Well, you have your answer: the USA is already a Totalitarian State with a Ministry of Propaganda that works overtime to generate a flimsy illusion of democracy. Please read the following links if you seek documentation of these systemic abuses of centralized power. Orwell and Kafka Do America: How the Government Steals Your MoneyLegally, Of Course (March 24, 2015) Government in the USA is expropriating the private property of its citizenry without due process on a vast scale. I have provided documentation of this extraordinary reality many times over the years. The various levels of government have a variety of legal (haha) means to steal your property without due process or recourse: civil forfeiture, absurdly expensive traffic fines that lead to jail sentences in the local debtors prison-gulag, forfeiture of assets, including land, should government agents find the marijuana plants they planted on your property (surprise!), the state steals your money in a bank account and notifies you after the fact that the state suspects you owe it taxes, though they have zero evidence of that claimand on and on. Read more at: thedailysheeple.com Black Insomnia, the "World's Strongest Coffee," has arrived in the United States in cooperation with Amazon. A 12-ounce serving of Black Insomnia coffee has four times the amount of caffeine in a regular cup and is 1.7 times over the recommended daily caffeine limit set by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Black Insomia coffee was founded by Sean Kristafor and was first launched in Cape Town back in July 2016. Kristafor, together with renowned roaster Dr. Gerald Charles, created Black Insomia coffee from Robusta coffee beans and is purely natural without any added chemicals. The result is a blend with very high caffeine and a sweet nutty flavor. It is time to offer something a little different -- something stronger and darker, with an edge," said Kristafor in a press release from Black Insomnia Coffee Company. Listed by Caffeine Informer as one of the "Most Dangerous Caffeinated Products," Black Insomnia has 17,524 milligrams of caffeine per kilogram or 702 milligrams in a 12-ounce cup. Food & Wine notes that this is well beyond the FDA's 400 milligrams per day caffeine limit. Read More: Drinking Alcohol With Energy Drinks Might Actually Kill You, Here's Why In comparison, a normal cup of joe has about 150 miligrams of caffeine, Red Bull has 75 to 80 milligrams, Coca-Cola or Pepsi has 23 to 47 milligrams and DeathWish coffee, the former titleholder of the world's strongest brew, is only at 660 milligrams. "For the same amount of coffee, you will get double the amount of caffeine. This makes it easier to consume more caffeine than you intend to and effects can range from mild to severe, for example, jitteriness, nervousness, restlessness and trouble sleeping," Mary Sweeney from John Hopkins School of Medicine told CNN. "The most serious effect would be cardiac arrhythmia (irregular heartbeat)." To prove the company's claim as the world's strongest coffee, Black Insomnia sent samples to SGS Laboraties. Using High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC), results showed that Black Insomnia is 27 percent stronger than Woodfee and 33 percent stronger than DeathWish Coffee. Black Insomia coffee sells for $19 a pound and is now available on Amazon. Read More: Caffeine Overload: Man Charged with DUI for Too Much Coffee On Friday, the European Commission approved 21st Century Foxs FOXA deal to takeover Sky, a popular European pay-TV company. The deal is worth about $14.5 billion, and the only remaining hurdle left is a British investigation into the bid. The Commission, which is the European Unions executive body, reviewed the deal for antitrust issues and gave it unconditional approval. "[Fox and Sky] compete with each other only to a limited extent, mainly in the acquisition of TV content and in the wholesale supply of basic pay TV channels," the body wrote in its decision. Fox already owns a roughly 39% stake in Sky, and it agreed to purchase the rest of the company back in December. Sky operates in European markets like Austria, Germany, Ireland, Italy, and the U.K. Even though the EU found no competition concerns, the Fox-Sky deal still has to clear a forthcoming investigation in the U.K. According to the BBC, U.K. Culture Secretary Karen Bradley has asked regulators to investigate the deal, and she said Ofcom, a media watchdog, and the Competition and Markets Authority, would get back to her by May with the decision. Part of the investigation will include whether or not Skys possible new owners, Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan Murdoch, who are both joint chairmen of Fox and News Corp. NWSA, are fit and proper. Mr. Murdochs other son, James Murdoch, is chief executive of Fox. Back in 2011, Rupert Murdoch was actually in the process of taking over Sky, but had to abandon the deal amid that years phone-hacking scandal involving journalists at his U.K.-based newspapers. Zacks Best Private Investment Ideas While we are happy to share many articles like this on the website, our best recommendations and most in-depth research are not available to the public. Starting today, and for the next month, you can follow all Zacks private buys and sells in real time. Our experts cover all kinds of trades: value, momentum, ETFs, stocks under $10, stocks that corporate insiders are buying up, and companies that are about to report positive earnings surprises. You can even look inside exclusive portfolios that are normally closed to new investors. Click here for Zacks private trades>> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Twenty-First Century Fox, Inc. (FOXA): Free Stock Analysis Report News Corporation (NWSA): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research An Egyptian archaeological mission working in the Dashur Necropolis has recently announced the discovery of a 3,700-year-old pyramid about 40 kilometers south of Cairo. The said pyramid could be evidence of Egypt's first attempt to build smooth-sided pyramids. Mahmoud Afifi, head of the Ancient Egyptian Antiquities Sector, said in a statement that the newly excavated pyramid, which dates back to the 13th Dynasty, is located north of King Sneferu's famous bent pyramid in the Dashur royal necropolis. King Sneferu is the founder of the 4th Dynasty in Egypt's Old Kingdom. According to Britannica, his Blunted (or Bent) Pyramid was initially constructed with steep sides, but they later reduced the angles of the sides due to "structural faults." The reduced steepness resulted to the bent structure; thus, the pyramid's name. Read Also: Lost Ancient City of Ucetia Finally Found With Iconic Roman Mosaics In a Facebook post, the Ministry of Antiquities said the newly discovered pyramid is in good condition and further excavation will be conducted to learn more about it. Adel Okasha, director general of the Dashur Necropolis, said what the team initially discovered were the internal structures of the pyramid including a corridor that leads to the insides of the pyramid, a hall leading to a southern ramp, and a room in the western end, local news outlet Egypt Independent reported. IFL Science also noted that the archaeologists discovered columns and inner walls with hieroglyphs. The team is currently determining the pyramid's size as well as pinpointing a timeline to determine which Kingdom it belonged to. The Dashur necropolis, where the new pyramid was found, was used as a burial site for Egyptian royals, high-ranking officials and authorities. Read Also: Honduran Jungle Hides a 'Lost City' With Pyramids, Stone Sculptures and a Vanished Civilization What is more adorable than a red panda (Ailurus fulgens)? Three adorable red pandas! On Wednesday, Symbio Wildlife Park, a wildlife sanctuary in New South Wales presented to the public three adorable red panda cubs. According to Huffington Post, the cubs were born on Christmas eve last year. Illawa Mercury reported that the zookeepers kept mum about their birth to give the cubs some time to adjust and bond with the first-time mother, Kesari. National Geographic noted that young red pandas remain in their nests for about 90 days, during which time their mother cares for them. Symbio Wildlife Park general manager Matt Radnidge said they are grateful that Kesari gave birth not only to one but three red pandas, citing that three cubs born in one delivery is rare. "There has only been eight occurrences, including this, of triplets born in Australasia over the past 30 years, and this is only the third time ever in Australia," Radnidge said. "We are extremely proud to be contributing to the breeding program in such a miraculous way, the care and dedication from our zoo keeping team has been clearly evident through the delicate process of assist feeding the cubs, and ensuring the health of Kesari," he added. Unlike the giant panda, red panda is smaller in size. Live Science said they typically grow to the size of a house cat and weigh around 12 to 20 lbs, but they may appear longer because of their long, bushy tails, which they use to balance on trees or warm their bodies on winter. World Wildlife Fund describes them as elusive, but skillful and acrobatic mammals. They usually stay on trees so they are mostly found on temperate forests. Almost 50 percent of the red panda's habitat is in the Eastern Himalayas. In total, there are only less than 10,000 red pandas in the wild, making them an endangered species. Their population decline is mostly due to habitat loss due to human activities. An actor on the television show "Empire" has been arrested on a misdemeanor domestic battery charge in Chicago. Police say 46-year-old Morocco Omari was arrested Wednesday afternoon. They say officers were called to the Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side by a 24-year-old woman who identified herself as Omari's girlfriend. She told officers Omari pushed her to the ground several times during an argument, causing scratches on her neck and chest. The Cook County State's Attorney's Office says Omari appeared in court Thursday. His next court date is April 20. A representative for Omari did not immediately return a call for comment. On the show that's filmed in Chicago, Omari plays FBI Agent Tariq Cousins. He's the half-brother of Lucious Lyon, who's played by Terrence Howard. - By Sangara Narayanan Amazon's (AMZN) international expansion has been rapid in the last several years as the company moved into 13 countries with plans to add more to the list. Amazon has so far kept its focus on countries with large economies, knocking one big economy after the other. Amazon is operational in all the top 10 economies of the world and a few more, but the last two countries where Amazon is entering shows a significant change in Amazon's international strategy, and it will benefit the company's overseas operations in a big way. Amazon is in the process of setting up its operations in Australia, the 12th-largest economy in the world according to world bank's 2015 data. While that makes a lot of sense because Australia is a big country with a population of 24 million to reach out to, the next two moves by Amazon, to enter Singapore and the Middle East, are interesting. Singapore is one of the smallest countries in the world with a population of 5.6 million spread over 277.6 square miles. In terms of size and population it is smaller than New York City. Amazon also bought Souq, an e-commerce company with operations in the Middle East. The Dubai-headquartered Souq covers United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Saudi and Kuwait. (Dubai) United Arab Emirates and Kuwait have small populations to address. But there are two other metrics that are common to both Singapore and Dubai: high per capita gross domestic product (GDP) and high internet penetration, apart from the shared characteristics of small populations to serve. If you are an e-commerce company, potential customer base and internet penetration are the parameters you will be looking for. And if all your potential customers live in a small area, that is even better. Amazon has now clearly made a shift from covering countries to covering specific cities that qualify on these criteria. It is a smart move by Amazon because the company does not want to spread itself thin by moving into country after country, where building logistics and supply chains alone will take time. Story continues By targeting smaller yet strong geographies, Amazon can not only address those markets effectively, but also make sure that international revenues keep moving north. Although operating loss in international markets expanded from $699 million to $1.283 billion between full-fiscals 2015 and 2016, net sales for the segment grew from $35.418 billion to $43.983 billion during the same period. That growth is now being ably supported by Amazon's new international expansion strategy as they move into high GDP markets like the United Arab Emirates and Singapore. Disclosure: I have no positions in the stock mentioned above and no intention to initiate a position in the next 72 hours. Start a free seven-day trial of Premium Membership to GuruFocus. This article first appeared on GuruFocus. The Norfolk District Attorney's Office and Dedham police are asking for the public's help in identifying the remains of a woman found in the woods in Dedham, Massachusetts. District Attorney Michael Morrissey said a resident found some bones in a wooded area of High Street near the Brookdale Cemetery on Tuesday. Police, along with a K-9 unit, searched the area and found several bones, almost enough for a full skeleton. An anthropologist working with the medical examiner's office determined the bones were the remains of a young black woman in her late teens or early twenties who was roughly 56 tall. "The body was significantly deteriorated," Morrissey said. The victim was wearing a Marist College sweatshirt, a pair of Atmosphere brand sweatpants, a charm bracelet engraved with the word "peace" and a ring. Local authorities are working with police at the college and officers in Poughkeepsie, New York, where the school is located. The condition of the bones led investigators to believe the woman died several months ago. At this point, they are not ruling out foul play, but have not been able to determine much about how she died. Investigators said there were no obvious signs of violence. "We are not here to say that this is a homicide," Morrissey said. "It is an isolated area a bit out of the way, so obviously, we are concerned." There are few clues regarding the woman's identity. "This is really the appeal to the public right now because we really need a break," Morrissey explained. Anyone with information is asked to contact the district attorney's office at 781-830-4990 or Dedham police at 781-751-9300. A new report named the safest private or non-profit four-year colleges in each state based on a study of crimes on college campuses. Driven by electronic security company ADT, the report tallied crimes reported by the schools in the categories of violent crime, property crime and violence against women. The report "weighed the crimes by severity and divided the schools crime score by enrollment to calculate total per-capita crime." The calculation was used for schools across the country, determining the "safest" in every state. Northeastern Illinois University took that honor in Illinois. "Once you arrive, feel safe throughout your degree with N-Safe, NEIUs rapid emergency notification system, and its thorough safety guides for everyone from cyclists to web users," the report finds. Illinois runners up were listed as Saint Xavier University in Chicago and Dominican University in River Forest. See other Midwest schools below. View the full list here. Illinois: Northeastern Illinois University (Chicago, IL) Runners up: Saint Xavier University, Chicago Dominican University, River Forest Indiana: Indiana University-Kokomo (Kokomo, IN) Runners up: Indiana University-Southeast, New Albany Purdue University-North Central Campus, Westville Wisconsin: Concordia University-Wisconsin (Mequon, WI) Runners up: Viterbo University, La Crosse Edgewood College, Madison Michigan: Baker College of Flint (Flint, MI) Runners up: Baker College of Muskegon, Muskegon Baker College of Jackson, Jackson Minnesota: St. Catherine University (Saint Paul, MN) Runners up: Metropolitan State University, Saint Paul University of Minnesota-Crookston, Crookston Iowa: Morningside College (Sioux City, IA) Runners up: Clarke University, Dubuque Iowa State University, Ames An Ohio man was arrested after he allegedly chased a family member with a hatchet. Noel E. Dawson, 63, of Toledo, was charged Tuesday with domestic violence, assault, criminal damaging, and failure to disclose personal information. The Toledo Blade reports that Dawson allegedly chased a relative Sunday with a hatchet, swinging the small ax at the man. Dawson tried to hit the man but missed, striking his car instead leaving a large dent in the hood, according to the Blade. Dawson refused to give the arresting officer his information and shouted obscenities, court records show. Dawson has pleaded not guilty. A Toledo County judge ordered him held Tuesday on $50,000 bond. Attorney information was not immediately available. Thousands will head out with their rods and reels on Saturday for the start of the trout fishing season in Connecticut. Hopefully anglers will have some luck; the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection has been stocking rivers, streams, lakes and ponds with more than 306,000 fish since February. Opening Day is an exciting time for Connecticuts many trout anglers, and they can look forward to a great fishing season, said Susan Whalen, Deputy Commissioner of DEEP. The fish are in excellent condition, our trout waters are stocked and anglers can enjoy a wide range of fishing options. Additionally, Opening Day is a special time for many families, the traditional first time to get outdoors together after winter. Anglers can use an interactive trout stocking map to plan their fishing trips, which will state the number of days since the last stocking at each body of water. DEEP will continue to stock throughout mid-May, reaching a total of about 530,000 trout. More than 200 bodies of water in Connecticut are expected to be stocked. However, there will be a decrease in trout stock compared to last spring. A list of the waters that were dropped from this springs stocking schedule can be found here. Due to ongoing drought-related water flow issues, fiscal and staffing constraints at hatcheries and the need to complete pond repairs at Quinebaug Hatchery, weve had to temporarily reduce production at our hatcheries, said Pete Aarrestad, Director of DEEPs Fisheries Division. We are addressing this decrease with modest reductions in the numbers of fish stocked at many areas, and by removing a number of smaller and less popular areas, mostly streams or sections of streams, from the stocking schedules. There are 11 designated trout parks in Connecticut that have been stocked, and 8 of those will be re-stocked for opening day. Trout Parks are easily accessible, have picnic areas and other amenities nearby, and are stocked frequently so that there are plenty of trout for children, families, and novice anglers to catch, said Bill Hyatt, Chief of DEEPs Bureau of Natural Resources. And as an added feature, families and young anglers will be able to help stock trout at eight of the Trout Parks on Opening Day. We have found that these stocking events are a real highlight for many families. Please come help us stock trout on Opening Day. When planning trips, anglers should take into consideration that the recent rains may affect fishing this weekend. Although the recent rains mean at least short term relief from the ongoing drought, it also means that some rivers and streams may be difficult to fish effectively or safely this weekend due to high flows. Anglers should definitely use extra caution if attempting to wade their favorite spots, and may need to consider fishing other locations, Aarrestad said. For more information about DEEP Fisheries and Wildlife, visit the CT Fish and Wildlife on Facebook. An injured bald eagle found last week is doing well and expected to be released soon, the Suffield CT Police Department said. Construction workers in Suffield noticed the obviously injured bald eagle and notified police. Suffield Police reported it to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Connecticut State Environmental Conservation Police who came to assess the bird. Officials found out she had a number of wounds on her back which likely occurred from another eagle, police said. She was taken in for treatment and rehabilitation and is doing well. The bald eagle is expected to be released next week. NASCAR has ended its sanctions with the New London-Waterford Speedbowl after allegations that its owner was involved in a human trafficking ring. The announcement was made after the Speedbowl's owner, 63-year-old Bruce Bemer, of Glastonbury, was charged with patronizing a trafficked person. The charge is linked to a human trafficking ring out of Danbury that, police said, may have been operating for decades. Because of the termination of these sanctions, the Speedbowl needs to remove all NASCAR and Whelen Engineering branding immediately. Drivers will also need to reassign their NASCAR license to another track, or they are eligible for a refund. The facility was closed on Thursday, despite winter hours usually being 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Since the announcement, seven Speedbowl officials have resigned, according to the Norwich Bullentin. Despite several attempts, NBC Connecticut could not independently confirm. A former concession manager, Lynn Ivory, who worked for Bemer, said several drivers and fans frequent her Hamilton Market in New London. "Its going to affect us as well (if the Speedbowl closes)," Ivory said. "It was shocking. It really was shocking. I mean, I would have never expected that." Dave Trudeau has been racing at the Speedbowl since 1998. He doesn't think it will be open this season and he's planning on taking his NASCAR license and race to Thompson Speedway with his son. "Its a shame because of what he was doing with the track. Cleaned it up a bit," Trudeau said. "I never thought anything like this. Its absurd." An attorney for the Speedbowl said that they are disappointed about NASCAR's decision and they're in the process of responding to the organization. Bremer's attorney, John Droney, said he and his team are looking into everyone who made an allegation to figure out why they filed the claims and assess whether they're credible. NBC Connecticut also discovered U.S. Legend Cars and INEX have terminated their sanction agreements and races with the Speedbowl, too. Anyone who registers a vehicle out of state to avoid property taxes in Connecticut is the target of a pair of bills advancing through the legislature. This comes after a series of reports by the NBC Connecticut Troubleshooters on the issue. Tax assessors tell us their cash strapped towns and cities are losing out on millions of dollars per year because of this problem. A number of studies on this actually have cited NBC Connecticut's stories over the past few years and legislators are responding with some creative approaches. State Representative Tony Guererras transportation committee has passed a bill tweaking our states vehicle registration law. It would make it easier for officers to give a summons for having a vehicle improperly registered out of state to skirt property taxes. Right now officers can only do this for a vehicle that is running. The bill would allow them to go after ones not being driven. Senator Michael McLachlan of Danbury got a bill through the planning and development committee that would tap the Connecticut Department of Motor Vehicles to help towns get registration information from DMVs in other states where they believe Connecticut vehicles have been registered. The state tax assessors association has tried to get that information on its own, but most states would not hand it over. A Connecticut DMV spokesperson tells the NBC Connecticut Troubleshooters, we are monitoring this legislation as it proceeds through the legislative process. Both these bills, if they advance, could go through a lot more changes before they reach the governors desk. Construction is set to begin Monday that will redesign the front entrance to the New Haven Animal Shelter on Fournier Street. We havent had a remodel since the mid-1980s, New Haven Municipal Animal Control Officer Joseph Manganiello said. Each year the shelter takes in about 800 cats and dogs with the hope of finding them forever homes. While theyre here, its our job to kind of take care of them, said Debby Wan, the president of the Friends of the New Haven Animal Shelter. The organization made up of 35 to 40 volunteers successfully applied for a $95 thousand grant from John T. and Jane A. Weiderhold Foundation to fund improvements to the second largest municipal animal shelter in the state. We have done all the design work, all the prep work is done so its just a question of getting everything actually finished, Wan told NBC Connecticut. As of Friday, noise absorbing panels have already been installed above the dog kennels. When the dogs are barking its actually bouncing off the concrete causing an echo, Manganiello said. One of the major changes will be moving the cats to a more spacious area. You can see as theyre opening the cages theyre actually, theres only a couple feet for them to visit and its very confined, almost like a closet type of an area, Manganiello said. The current reception area will become the new home for the cats with the addition of a new welcome desk for prospective pet owners right where you walk in the front door. Our whole reception area, and our whole front lobby will just be more inviting and better for the animals, and better for the guests and also better for the staff, Manganiello said. This round of upgrades is expected to be finished by the end of May. Only the beginning, Manganiello said, because the rest of the building is still very old and needs a lot of work. Anyone looking to support renovations at the New Havens Animal Shelter, visit the Friends of the New Haven Animal Shelter website. Prosecutors said an ex-Drug Enforcement Administration special agent in South Texas must serve seven years in federal prison for downloading child pornography. James Patrick Burke was sentenced Thursday in Houston. The 39-year-old Burke, formerly based in McAllen, pleaded guilty last June to access with intent to view child pornography. Burke was charged following a 2015 search of his McAllen home. Law officers confiscated two computers. A criminal complaint says the case involved viewing and downloading videos of children having sex with adults. Burke, who's from Massachusetts, had been with the DEA's office in McAllen for two years when he was arrested. He was freed on bond but taken into custody following Thursday's sentencing. Burke was also ordered to pay $4,000 in restitution to a known victim. The response from political leaders in North Texas to the U.S. military's strikes on a Syrian air base has been largely supportive across party lines. Still, there are questions about consulting Congress before taking such action and what is next. U.S. Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX): "I'm glad to see President Trump take action against this butcher, Bashar al-Assad, who has killed 400,000 of his own people and has now used chemical weapons in violation of international law against his own people, including these innocent children. But this is perhaps the easiest part. The hard part now comes by United States Congress engaging with the White House in a conversation about exactly what should our policy be, and how do we devise a strategy where we know how this will end. That's the hard part, as we've seen from the conflicts we've been involved with in Iraq and Afghanistan. How does this end?" U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX): "Today, after eight years of Obama foreign policy failures, Syria is a humanitarian disaster. Bashar al-Assad is a monster, a puppet of Russia and Iran, and he has once again used chemical weapons against his own citizens, murdering innocent men, women, and children. "Our prayers are with Assad's victims, and with the victims of the ISIS and al Qaeda terrorists ripping Syria apart. And, as always, our support and prayers are with the brave Americans in uniform who carried out the military strike tonight. "Any military action in Syria must be justified as protecting the vital national security interests of America including decisive action to prevent chemical weapons from falling into the hands of radical Islamic terrorists and I look forward to our Commander-in-Chief making the case to Congress and the American people how we should do so in the days ahead." U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Dallas): "Yesterday, the President made it clear that we will not stand idly by while Bashar al-Assad barbarically uses chemical weapons to take the lives of innocent men, women and children. President Trump's decision to launch a targeted airstrike on the airfield where Assad launched the deadly chemical attack on Monday shows a strength and responsibility that we have not seen in eight years. While the complexity of the situation in Syria grows daily, I believe this is a solid first step, and I look forward to working with the president and my colleagues in Congress to hold the Assad regime accountable for its heinous actions." U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Fort Worth): "The world was shaken by the images that resulted from Bashar al-Assad's latest chemical attack against his own people. Despite my support for the goals of last night's airstrike, the crisis in Syria will not be resolved by one night of airstrikes. It is imperative that President Trump consults with Congress about the long-term strategy in Syria, the repercussions of last night's actions and any future planned military operations. With last night's actions, it is urgent that Congress debate the need to update the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) to reflect the global threats abroad. When Congress enacted AUMF in 2001, the world was not operating under the threat of ISIS, Russia's aggression in Europe, provocations by North Korea and violations of missile treaties. That is why Congress must now debate how these new realities will shape any updated authorizations for future military actions." U.S. Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Rockwall): "The Assad regime's horrific attack on innocent civilians earlier this week was in complete defiance of international law barring the use of chemical weapons. I applaud President Trump for his decision to call for a military strike on the airfield where this chemical attack was launched. His action was an appropriate, direct and proportional response to this heinous assault on innocent life. Through his decisive action, the president has signaled a clear departure from the many years of failed policies that have allowed for further destabilization in the Middle East. As a Member of Congress, I will stay actively engaged as we move forward with the Trump administration in addressing any further involvement in Syria." U.S. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Dallas): "On April 6, 2017, without the authorization of Congress, President Trump ordered airstrikes in Syria as a response to the recent horrific use of chemical weapons by Bashar al-Assad. Although the United States does not support the actions and treatment of Bashar al-Assad, President Trump and his Administration must first consult with Congress to develop a comprehensive strategy that clearly states the United States' intent in interactions with Syria. We have a larger issue that needs to be addressed and one night of attacks does not end the continuous troubles seen in Syria. "The Administration needs to work with Congress in finding a solution to handle the humanitarian crisis that continues to devastate Syria and find a way to protect the Syrian people from continuous violence. Our country should not force an escalated situation by putting innocent lives at risk." U.S. Rep. Roger Williams (R-Austin): "Over the past six years the United States stood by hoping the conflict in Syria would somehow resolve itself. Redlines were crossed and still, action was never taken the most powerful nation in the world refused to show leadership. Last night, President Trump responded swiftly to a heinous and illegal act of cowardice and evil by President Assad. I support this emergency response. Now that we have sent a message to the world, if President Trump has a long term strategy he should come before Congress before any additional military action is taken." A Swedish prosecutor says a person has been formally identified as a suspect "of terrorist offenses by murder" by driving a hijacked truck into a crowd of pedestrians, killing four people and wounding 15 others. The prosecutor, Hans Ihrman, said Saturday that the unidentified suspect should face a pre-trial custody hearing before midday Tuesday or be released. Ihrman and police spokesman Lars Bystrom said only one person had been arrested in the case. The Aftonbladet newspaper and Swedish radio reported that the suspect is a 39-year-old man from Uzbekistan. Police were not immediately available for comment on the report. Earlier, Swedish police said the man they arrested "resembles the person we earlier have sought after" in the truck attack. "We do not comment on what we have seized," said Bystrom, declining to confirm or deny media reports that a bag with some kind of explosives had been found in truck. Police say the suspect isn't necessarily identical with the man seen in photos released after the incident. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack. The stolen beer truck traveled for more than 500 yards along a main pedestrian street known as the Drottninggatan before it smashed into a crowd outside the upscale Ahlens department store about 3 p.m. Friday. It came to rest in the entrance to the building. TV footage showed smoke coming out of the store after the crash. "People were screaming and running in all directions," said Brandon Sekitto, who was in his car nearby. "(The truck) drove straight into the Ahlens entrance." "I saw the driver, a man in black who was light around the face," Brandon told Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter. "Some women were screaming, 'Run! Run!'" AP reporter Pietro DeCristofaro in Stockholm contributed to this report. The girlfriend of the late Miami Marlins player Jose Fernandez said raising their newborn daughter brings her happiness, but she also feels the weight of her boyfriend's absence. You have days that you look at her, and you feel happiness and gratitude. And then there are other days where you feel afraid, and you feel lonely, and you feel the weight of his absence again, Maria Arias said in an interview with People magazine this week. "He makes such an impact in your life that his absence just feels so heavy." Last September, before the birth of their daughter, Fernandez was killed when his power-boat struck a rocky jetty in waters off Miami Beach. The crash instantly killed Fernandez and two other passengers on board Eduardo Rivero and Emilio Jesus Macias. After a six-month investigation, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission concluded that Fernandez had been driving the boat at the time of the crash and found traces of cocaine in his system. The investigation also found he had a blood alcohol level of .147, nearly twice the legal limit. The two other passengers also had cocaine and alcohol in their systems, according to the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner's Office report. Arias said her relationship with the MLB star "was definitely not love at first sight." The two met years ago through family, became fast friends, and eventually fell in love. The couple learned they were expecting in June 2016, but Arias said she was scared initially, because the relationship was so new. "He made me feel so good about the pregnancy that I didnt care what I had to face," Arias said of Fernandez's excitement. Arias gave birth to Penelope Jo Fernandez, a name selected by the newborns late father, on Feb. 24, surrounded by her mother and the late ballplayers mother. "He loved her from the moment she was conceived," Arias said of their baby. The new mother says shes devoted to telling Penelope everything she can about her father. Students at three South Florida schools will now be able to play their favorite instruments thanks to a generous donation made on Friday. On Friday morning, a shipment of electronic keyboards were gifted to a students music class at Frances Tucker Elementary School. "I feel glad because now our program can evolve and everyone can learn how to play the keyboard," said fourth grade student Latrice Nelson. Frances Tucker, Miami Springs and Earlington Heights Elementary Schools are all the recipients of a brand new electronic keyboard lab. The award comes from the New York-based not for profit 42nd Street Development Music and the Brain Grant. "We've had the assistance of another foundation the Al and Jane Family Foundation, they provided support as well so we were able to train the music teachers, bring the program and provide the equipment and materials to help them get going," said Lisala Beatty, Music and the Brain Manager. Now students will have the opportunity to play their favorite instruments. "Now we're playing the piano and showing the guests how to play the first song on our book," Nelson explained. The MATB was established 20 years ago and this is the first time the group comes to Miami-Dade County. "I never had this opportunity in elementary school so I'm so thrilled every time I see young people in public schools being able to learn this and develop skills," Beatty said. U.S. and China have agreed to increase cooperation on trying to get North Korea's to abandon its nuclear weapons program, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters Friday after President Donald Trump's two-day summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago. Tillerson said the two leaders noted the urgency of the threat of North Korea's weapons program. They reaffirmed their commitment to a denuclearization of the divided Korean Peninsula. On trade issues, Trump also called for China to "level the playing field" for American workers, stressing the need for reciprocal market access. Trump also noted the importance of protecting human rights, and asked China to adhere to international norms in the seas of East Asia. President Donald Trump said it's been "very interesting" to spend time with Chinese President Xi Jinping and his delegation as they visit Trump's estate in Florida Friday. Trump said in brief remarks to reporters at Mar-a-Lago that he and Xi made "tremendous progress" over dinner Thursday, and he predicted that even more progress will be made before Xi departs later Friday. He called their relationship "outstanding." Xi said a few words afterward in Chinese, but no translator was present. Trump jokingly said he agrees with whatever Xi said. Their first-night summit dinner wrapped up shortly before the U.S. announced the missile barrage on an air base in Syria in retaliation against Syrian President Bashar Assad for a chemical weapons attack against civilians caught up in his country's long civil war. Before Thursday's night's dinner with their wives, Trump said he and Xi already had had a long discussion and had "developed a friendship," and then joked, "I have gotten nothing, absolutely nothing." Xi apparently got something out of dinner, though. Chinese state media reported late Thursday that Trump has accepted Xi's invitation to visit China this year. The official Xinhua News Agency reported that Trump will travel to China at an "early date" in 2017, but gave no details. The White House downplayed expectations for a breakthrough on issues like trade and tariffs, insisting that the 24-hour summit is mostly an introductory meeting for the two leaders. Within Trump's administration, divisions remain over how to approach China. Still, North Korea was a top priority for Trump in the meetings with Xi. The American president told reporters traveling with him to Florida that he thinks China will "want to be stepping up" in trying to deter North Korea's nuclear ambitions. While Trump would not say what he wants China to do specifically, he suggested there was a link between "terrible" trade agreements the U.S. has made with China and Pyongyang's provocations. He said the two issues "really do mix." Trump has said the U.S. will act alone if China doesn't exert more pressure on North Korea. The missile strikes on Syria bring more weight to that statement. Both as a candidate and president, Trump has taken an aggressive posture toward China, labeling Beijing a "tremendous problem" and arguing that lopsided trade deals with China shortchange American businesses and workers. Last week, the president predicted in a tweet that his meeting with Xi would be "very difficult." He also last week signed a pair of executive orders focused on reducing the U.S. trade deficit, an apparent shot at China, which accounted for the vast bulk $347 billion of last year's $502 billion trade deficit. For his part, Xi was expected to seek assurances that Trump will not interfere in the territorial dispute over the South China Sea or question the "One China" policy by reaching out to Taiwan's leader again, as Trump did during the transition. President Donald Trump's sudden decision to order airstrikes against the Syrian government was an overnight evolution for a president who long warned against deeper American involvement in one of the world's most stubbornly violent conflicts. As he soberly announced the assault Thursday night, Trump argued that the move was still within the framework of his "America First" foreign policy agenda. The United States, he said, has a "vital national security interest" in stopping the proliferation of the kinds of chemical weapons the Syrian government used against its citizens earlier this week. Yet Trump's actions left no doubt that at least in this instance his view of America's role in the world has been altered. Trump is hardly the first president to reconsider his views after assuming the responsibility of controlling the world's most powerful military. But with a major shift coming just 77 days into his presidency, his may be one of the fastest transformations in recent memory. After spending years warning U.S. leaders that Syria was a dangerous quagmire, Trump is said to have been moved by the gripping images of young Syrian children's listless bodies that were beamed across the world following the chemical attack. He mourned the "beautiful babies" were among the dozens killed by the deadly gases and accused Syrian President Bashar Assad of having "choked" his own citizens. His sentiment the United States' "responsibility to protect" echoed those often used by some Trump's ardent detractors. That doctrine, espoused most notably by President Barack Obama's former ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, holds that world powers have an obligation to defend civilians from conflict, particularly from their own governments. Trump campaigned on a wholly different vision for the nation's foreign policy, one that bordered on isolationism and centered on recalibrating trade deals with international partners. He has specifically said the Middle East is one region of the world he hoped to avoid. Yet in the short term, Trump's decision to plunge the U.S. deeper into the Syria conflict won him plaudits from his own party. Even some Democrats were muted in their response, a signal of how frustration with U.S. inaction in Syria has permeated both parties. "The question now is what the consequences and reactions will be, and what are the president's strategic and long-range goals and plans with respect to U.S. involvement in Syria," said Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee. Trump's decision was all the more remarkable for his strident public opposition to launching a strike on Syria when the decision weighed on his predecessor. In September 2013, Trump repeatedly took to Twitter to urge Obama to not to attack Syria after another chemical weapons attack. "AGAIN, TO OUR VERY FOOLISH LEADER, DO NOT ATTACK SYRIA - IF YOU DO MANY VERY BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN & FROM THAT FIGHT THE U.S. GETS NOTHING!," he wrote. He followed two days later with another tweet declaring, "There is no upside and tremendous downside" to an attack. Obama nearly ordered strikes, but ultimately pulled back. He called for a vote in Congress that never came, then rallied behind a Russian-backed plan to remove Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles an agreement that appeared to have failed, given this most recent attack. Though Trump castigated Obama for appearing weak and indecisive, he maintained as a candidate that Syria was a morass the U.S. should avoid. As recently as a week ago, Trump's top diplomats, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, both indicated the U.S. might take a hands-off approach to a civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and forced millions more from their homes. The long-term implications of Trump's sudden policy shift are deeply uncertain. But his supporters seemed willing to accept his decision. "President Trump has tonight more than earned a second or third look from a lot of doubters both at home and abroad," said Kevin Kellems, a Republican strategist who briefly worked on Trump's campaign and also advised former Vice President Dick Cheney. Kellems singled out in particular "the speed and precision of the decision to strike." In addition to the blunt message sent to Assad, the strikes are also a signal to Russia and Iran, Syria's main benefactors, as well as China, which the U.S. believes isn't doing enough to stop North Korea's nuclear pursuits. Trump ordered the attack while hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida amid an ongoing struggle between Washington and Beijing over how to rein in Pyongyang's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. "This clearly indicates the president is willing to take decisive action when called for," Tillerson said. A judge says New York City is legally allowed to destroy personal documents associated with its municipal identification program. However, the judge also issued a stay Friday - postponing any action until April 17, pending an appeal. Two state Assembly members have sought to prevent the destruction of documents, such as copies of foreign passports, used to verify a person's identity to obtain the IDNYC card. "With this decision the State Supreme Court protected the personal information of a million New Yorkers," Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement Friday. "IDNYC was created to protect people and connect them to vital services and today's decision ensures it will continue to do just that. We applaud the ruling and will fight any attempt to appeal it." According to The New York Times, Judge Philip G. Minardo says purging the documents would not be a threat to national security as the legislators have claimed. The card can be used by people without a driver's license or an American passport. Advocates say keeping the documents could lead authorities to the applicants, putting them at risk of deportation. The Legal Aid Society praised the ruling and said the municipal ID card helps their clients avoid detention. "IDNYC is an incredibly important form of identification for our clients, who are often eligible for no other form of government-issued photo ID," the nonprofit said. "In certain situations, lack of identification can set into a motion a nightmarish sequence of events for immigrant communities sometimes leading to detention or deportation. IDNYC helps avoid those dire consequences." An NYPD police official defended the city's intention to destroy personal records of holders of its immigrant-friendly municipal ID cards in January, a month after an appeals court ordered the city to retain the records of more than one million current cardholders. John Miller, deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism, testified in a courtroom that the ID is not a terrorist tool and that few people have tried to obtain it fraudulently or use it to commit crimes during the two years since it was first issued. "Criminal implications over the trial period were de minimis," Miller said. The identification cards are available to any New York City resident but were aimed particularly at people without other forms of ID, including the estimated 500,000 immigrants living illegally in the city, the nation's biggest. In drafting the legislation for the ID, the city included a provision for destroying personal information partly out of concern about the possible election of a Republican president such as President-elect Donald Trump, whose campaign promises included deporting millions of people living in the U.S. illegally. De Blasio has said city officials wouldn't "allow ourselves to be in a situation where those records would be turned over to the federal government." According to a recent city report, of the more than one million New Yorkers who have the ID, just 102 fraudulent applications have been detected. Municipal ID programs began in 2007 in New Haven, Connecticut, and have expanded to about 10 cities, including Los Angeles and San Francisco. New York's program is the most ambitious. The shops and restaurants at Grand Central Terminal are celebrating National Beer Day Friday with drink and snack specials. Here's a look at some of the deals: Cafe Spice is celebrating with a samosa and beer special two potato samosas with any choice of beer for $5.99. Central Market New York: All draft beers (10 oz) for $3 all day while supplies last. Great Northern Food Hall will be offering its entire list of craft beers at The Bar and Grain Bar for $8 each (normally $8 - $16) during lunch and dinner. In addition, theyll also be serving a special pairing of beer and a roasted pork sandwich with apple and red cabbage for $20. La Chula is celebrating with half-price Mexican beers and a taco special. Michael Jordans The Steakhouse N.Y.C. will honor National Beer Day with complimentary tastings of seasonal beers from Anheuser Busch. A beer ambassador will be on hand to discuss the flavor profiles and Anheuser Busch will provide a limited amount of glassware for giveaways. Tastings will feature complimentary hot pretzels and all beers will be available to purchase at the main bar for $5. Murrays Cheese is offering a beer and cheese pairing guide as well as 20% off their two favorite cheeses to eat with beer. Prova Pizzabar will offer a bucket of Montauk Beer for $25 all day. Every purchase of a Montauk bucket will serve as a raffle entry and winners will receive Montauk swag. Shake Shack is giving away a free koozie with any beer purchase while supplies last. Shiro of Japan is celebrating with 12 oz Sapporo Beer Cans for $1.99 with purchase of any chirashi or poke bowl while supplies last. Beer Table To Go is offering 20 percent off all draught beer. The beer is available to go in reusable growlers or capped mason jars. Cafe Spice is celebrating with a samosa and beer special. You can get two potato samosas with any choice of beer for $5.99. Central Market New York: All 10 ounce draft beers are $3 all day while supplies last. Great Northern Food Hall will be offering all of its craft beers for $8 each during lunch and dinner. Theyll also be serving a special pairing of beer and a roasted pork sandwich with apple and red cabbage for $20. La Chula is celebrating with half-price Mexican beers and a taco special. Michael Jordans Steakhouse will celebrate National Beer Day with complimentary tastings of seasonal beers from Anheuser-Busch. Attendees will have access to complimentary glassware, hot pretzels and all beers will be available for purchase at the main bar for $5. Murrays Cheese is offering a beer and cheese pairing guide as well as 20 percent off their two favorite cheeses to eat with beer. Prova Pizzabar will offer a bucket of Montauk Beer for $25 all day. Every purchase of a Montauk bucket will serve as a raffle entry and winners will receive Montauk swag. Shake Shack is giving away a free koozie with any beer purchase while supplies last. Shiro of Japan is selling 12 ounce Sapporo Beer Cans for $1.99 with purchase of any chirashi or poke bowl while supplies last. [NATL] Wildest Food Crazes: Emotional Support Chicken What to Know The United States launched dozens of cruise missiles at a Syrian airfield, killing at least six people, according to the Associated Press New government statistics show that 25 percent of men have the strain of HPV, that causes cancer, NBC News reported Emmy-Award winning comedian Don Rickles died of kidney failure at age 90, his publicist says Get the top headlines of the day in your morning briefing from NBC 4 New York, Monday through Friday. Sign up for our newsletter here. At Least 7 Killed After U.S. Launches Missiles, Syrian Military Says The United States launched dozens of cruise missiles at a Syrian airfield in response to what it believes was Syria's use of banned chemical weapons that killed at least 100 people, U.S. military officials told NBC News. Two U.S. warships in the Mediterranean Sea fired 59 Tomahawk missiles intended for a single target: Shayrat Airfield in Homs province in western Syria, the Defense Department said. That's the airfield from which the United States believes the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad fired the banned weapons. According to the Associated Press, Syrian military said the strike killed at least seven people and wounded several others. Talal Barazi, the governor of Homs province, said seven others were wounded in the attack. He had earlier said a fire raged in the air base in Homs for over an hour following the barrage of missiles. Filibuster Busted: Senate OKs 'Nuclear Option' for Gorsuch Republicans invoked the "nuclear option" in the Senate, unilaterally rewriting the chamber's rules to allow President Trump's nominee to ascend to the Supreme Court. Furious Democrats objected until the end, but their efforts to block Judge Neil Gorsuch failed as expected. Lawmakers of both parties bemoaned the long-term implications for the Senate, the court and the country. The maneuvering played out in an atmosphere of tension in the Senate chamber with most senators in their seats, a rare and theatrical occurrence. A final confirmation vote on Gorsuch is expected and he could then be sworn in in time to take his seat on the court later this month and hear the final cases of the term. Clinton Deeply Concerned About Russian Election Role, She Says Hillary Clinton said she is "deeply concerned" about allegations of Russian meddling in last year's presidential election and says there needs to be an independent, nonpartisan investigation to make sure it doesn't happen again. Speaking in New York at a summit on women's issues, Clinton said Russian involvement was meant to sow "distrust and confusion." Clinton called on Congress to put party squabbles aside and look into it. Otherwise, she said, "They will be back." Her appearance at the Women in the World Summit is the latest in a string of public appearances for Clinton in the past few weeks. In a one-on-one conversation with columnist and author Nicholas Kristof, Clinton touched on a range of issues, including lessons learned in the election, the war in Syria and her own future plans, which include the book she's currently writing. Cancer-Causing HPV Virus Affects 1 in 4 US Men, Study Shows New government statistics show that 25 percent of men have the strain of HPV (human papillomavirus or human wart virus) that causes cancer, NBC News reported. Twenty percent of women have the same strain as well, and 45 percent of men have some kind of genital HPV, according to new data from the National Center for Health Statistics. People under 25 are able to receive a vaccine that can protect them from cancer-causing HPV strains, but for the rest of the population, the virus is still an issue. Neck and head cancer are some of the implications of HPV, and some experts say that 70 percent of all head and neck cancers are caused by HPV, most likely spread through oral sex. According to experts, by 2020 head and neck cancer will beat out cervical cancer as the most common HPV-related cancer. People with Chronic Pain Scared by New Opioid Rules People dealing with chronic pain say recent moves by Ohio's governor to fight the plague of opioid overdoses could leave them suffering, NBC News reported. Gov. John Kasich restricted how many painkillers may be prescribed to patients, but people who rely on the drugs say the rules could force them to go underground to find relief from their anguish. One woman doesn't believe assurances from officials that the rules only apply to acute pain, not chronic pain. Don Rickles, Legendary Insult Comic, Dies at 90, Publicist Says Emmy-Award winning comedian Don Rickles died Thursday. He was 90. Rickles died at his home in Los Angeles as a result of kidney failure, his publicist Paul Shefrin confirmed to NBC Los Angeles. He is survived by his wife of 52 years, Barbara, as well as their daughter Mindy Mann and her husband Ed, and Rickles' two grandchildren, Ethan and Harrison Mann. Funeral services will be private. In lieu of flowers, it is suggested that donations be made to the Larry Rickles Endowment Fund at Children's Hospital Los Angeles. Rickles, whose career spanned more than seven decades and included roles in films like "Casino" and the "Toy Story" trilogy, was a fixture on the late-night talk show circuit. A New York native, Rickles went to Newtown High School in Queens, where, as he put it to WNBC's Jack Cafferty on "Live at Five" in a rollicking May 1985 interview, "I studied failure." Would you fly on a battery-powered jet? One startup intends to find out - with the help of Boeing and JetBlue. Zunum Aero, a three-year-old company based in Kirkland, Wash., announced on Wednesday it had received investments from the manufacturer and airline. The startup intends to use the financing to further develop its proposed regional aircrafts that hold 10 to 50 passengers for flights up to 1,000 miles. The jets primarily operate on battery power with an aviation diesel or turbine range-extending power generator available as backup, if needed. I consider us very fortunate to have backers like JetBlue and Boeing, Zunum Aero founder and CEO Ashish Kumar told Business Insider. We have been engaged with both companies for about a year, and both are as passionate as we are in this opportunity to reinvent regional air travel. Zunum believes its planes will be environmentally friendly. Smaller planes with fewer passengers along with a switch from jet fuel to electricity could cut operating costs for airlines by 40% to 80%, the company said, according to BI. In addition, the planes are designed to incorporate hybrid propulsor technology, which is expected to lower aircraft noise emissions by 75%. Everyday commuters could also benefit from Zunums proposed strategy. By flying in and out of smaller, regional airports, overall passenger commute times could dwindle - including time spent waiting in security lines. Zunums CEO told BI that the company could offer door-to-door speeds that are two to four times faster than highways, high-speed rail, or conventional aircraft. This article was originally published on FORTUNE.com What to Know The April 3 derailment was the second at New York's Penn Station in 11 days; the first involved an Amtrak Acela The derailments brought days of havoc for NJT, Amtrak, Long Island Rail Road and PATH riders; Amtrak blamed "track problems" for both Rail commuters who endured days of aggravation after a train derailment at Penn Station woke up Friday morning with assurances that track repairs would be completed and service restored, but soon discovered that wasn't entirely accurate. The MTA says it canceled 10 Long Island Rail Road trains into Manhattan for Friday's morning rush hour and terminated four others at stations in Queens because Amtrak crews didn't finish track repair work by 4 a.m. as promised. Amtrak issued a statement shortly before 7 a.m. saying the "major repair work" had been completed, but crews were conducting tests to ensure safe operation. By 7:30 a.m., Amtrak said service had been restored at all tracks, but warned of delays for New Jersey Transit and LIRR riders. The minor derailment so badly damaged a switch machine at the Manhattan hub that more than a third of the 21 tracks at the station were out of commission for days, forcing NJ Transit to run high-trafficked lines out of Hoboken, hobbling Amtrak and LIRR service and causing extensive congestion on PATH trains as rush-hour riders sought alternatives. PATH was cross-honoring through the morning rush, but that was to discontinue at 10 a.m. At a news briefing Thursday, Amtrak President & CEO Wick Moorman said he wanted to apologize "personally" to the tens of thousands plunged into the depths of despair by service changes from the second derailment at the Manhattan hub in 11 days. The two derailments renewed calls for accelerating progress on an ambitious, $20 billion-plus project, known as Gateway, to add a new rail tunnel under the Hudson River and expand Penn Station. The current tunnel is more than 100 years old and operates at capacity during peak commuting hours. John Porcari, a former deputy U.S. secretary of transportation who is the interim head of the development corporation overseeing Gateway, said a new tunnel wouldn't have prevented the two recent derailments. It would, he said, lessen the aftershock to commuters because the eight tracks knocked out of service April 3 would have been able to connect to the new tunnel. Police have arrested a Brooklyn, New York, man after officers found a small alligator, drugs and a weapon inside his apartment, according to authorities. Officers executed a search warrant at Tracey Habakkuk's apartment in Flatbush around 6:20 a.m. Wednesday and recovered a loaded .380 semi-automatic handgun, crack cocaine and a caiman inside a tank kept in his living room, authorities said. Police arrested the 41-year-old Wednesday. Habakkuk was charged with criminal possession of a controlled substance, criminal possession of a loaded firearm and possession of a prohibited wild animal. As part of a sweeping hunt for any accomplices of the St. Petersburg suicide bomber, investigators Wednesday rounded up seven suspected Islamic State recruiters from the Central Asia region of the former Soviet Union but found no immediate evidence of their involvement in the subway attack. The Investigative Committee hasn't caught any associates of 22-year-old Akbarzhon Dzhalilov, a native of the Central Asian nation of Kyrgyzstan. The committee, Russia's top criminal investigation agency, said it's looking into the possibility that Dzhalilov, who carried out Monday's deadly attack, could have been linked to the militant group. The impoverished, predominantly Muslim countries in Central Asia are seen as fertile ground for Islamic extremists, and thousands of their residents are believed to have joined IS in Syria and Iraq. Meeting with the heads of security services from a regional alliance that includes most of Russia's Central Asian neighbors, President Vladimir Putin warned that terror threats still loom over the region. "We see that, unfortunately, the situation is not improving," Putin said. "The recent tragic events in St. Petersburg are the best confirmation of this. We know that each of our countries, practically every one, is a possible and potential target of terrorist attacks." In Wednesday's sweep in St. Petersburg, law enforcement agencies arrested seven Central Asian migrants who are suspected of acting as recruiters for the Islamic State and the al-Qaida's branch in Syria. The detainees were accused of seeking "mostly immigrants from the republics of Central Asia to commit crimes of a terrorist nature and encourage them to get involved in the activities of terrorist organizations," the Investigative Committee said. Investigators were still checking their contacts, it added, but noted that as of now, "there is no information about any links between the detainees and the perpetrator of the terror attack." The investigators also have searched Dzhalilov's home and found objects similar to those used in the subway bomb, it said. CCTV footage from outside his apartment building showed him leave home with a bag and a backpack on Monday. The explosion on a train running along a busy north-south subway line killed the attacker and 13 other people. Another 55 have remained hospitalized, and several of them are in critical condition, according to the Russian Health Ministry. Before blowing himself up, Dzhalilov left a second bomb, hidden in a bag, at another subway station. Police found and deactivated it, and Dzhalilov's DNA was found on the bag. At Dzhalilov's hometown of Osh in southern Kyrgyzstan, his schoolteacher described him as "well brought up, calm and balanced." Fatima Saipjanova, who taught Dzhalilov at School-Gymnasium No. 26, said she never saw him get into any trouble. "I do not believe that this boy could do something wrong," she said. Like many others from Central Asia, Dzhalilov moved to St. Petersburg with his parents and eventually got Russian citizenship. He worked at a car repair shop and a sushi bar, and stayed in the city when his family returned home. His parents arrived Wednesday in St. Petersburg for questioning after being interrogated by Kyrgyz security services. They identified his remains, according to the Investigative Committee. Churches across the city held prayers for victims killed in the attack, including Irina Medyantseva, a 50-year-old artist who was locally famous for the dolls she made and sold. Medyantseva was on the subway with one of her two daughters when the bomb went off. She apparently shielded her 28-year-old daughter, Alyona, who survived. "Irina was a very fun, creative person, she was full of plans," Medyantseva's sister, Anna, recalled. "She was a very good mom. She did a lot for her children." Anna attended one of the services, at St. Trinity Church, holding red tulips and a picture of her sister with a black ribbon tied to it. After the attack, several politicians have called for restoring capital punishment in Russia. But parliament speaker Vyacheslav Volodin dismissed the statements and upbraided the politicians, saying: "One must not use a tragedy to promote oneself." Isachenkov reported from Moscow. Jim Heintz in Moscow contributed. Members of Congress late Thursday took to Twitter to respond to the Trump administration's decision to fire a barrage of cruise missiles into Syria in retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. Rep. Barbara Lee, D- Calif., called the move an "act of war" and said Congress must meet to debate the Syrian issue. Meanwhile, U.S. Sen Dick Durbin, D-Ill., released a statement saying that his "preliminary briefing by the White House indicated that this was a measured response to the Syrian nerve gas atrocity. Any further action will require close scrutiny by Congress, and any escalation beyond airstrikes or missile strike will require engaging the American people in that decision." U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., said he supported the move, adding: "I hope this teaches President Assad not to use chemical weapons again. U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said that "by acting decisively against the very facility from which Assad launched his murderous chemical weapons attack, President Trump has made it clear to Assad and those who empower him that the days of committing war crimes with impunity are over." U.S. Rep. Brendan F. Boyle, D-Pa., a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, echoed Lee's call for members of Congress to meet on Syria. As our country initiates military action against a foreign country, it is clear that Speaker Ryan must immediately recall members of Congress into an emergency session to debate and vote on our policy toward Syria," he said. U.S. Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that while he was encouraged that the Trump Administration has felt compelled to act forcefully in Syria against the Assad regime, Im gravely concerned that the United States is engaging further militarily in Syria without a well-thought-out, comprehensive plan. Frankly, the Presidents actions today generate more questions than answers." U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, released a statement calling Assad "a monster, a puppet of Russia and Iran, and he has once again used chemical weapons against his own citizens, murdering innocent men, women, and children." ... Any military action in Syria must be justified as protecting the vital national security interests of America including decisive action to prevent chemical weapons from falling into the hands of radical Islamic terrorists and I look forward to our Commander-in-Chief making the case to Congress and the American people how we should do so in the days ahead, he said. Rep. Scott Peters, D-Calif., in a statement, said the chemical attack this week was the latest in a long line of brutal atrocities committed against the Syrian people by Bashar al-Assad it warranted a response. However, I am concerned that President Trump would launch an attack unilaterally without consulting the legislative branch. Congress has not provided the authority to conduct war against the Syrian government. Going forward, the President owes it to Congress and the American people to inform them of the larger strategy in Syria and any future military actions." U.S. Sens John McCain, R-Ariz., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., released a joint statement, saying that "building on tonights credible first step, we must finally learn the lessons of history and ensure that tactical success leads to strategic progress. That means following through with a new, comprehensive strategy in coordination with our allies and partners to end the conflict in Syria." "The first measure in such a strategy must be to take Assads air forcewhich is responsible not just for the latest chemical weapons attack, but countless atrocities against the Syrian peoplecompletely out of the fight," they said. U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, released a strong statement saying the administration acted "recklessly." It angers and saddens me that President Trump has taken the advice of war hawks and escalated our illegal regime change war to overthrow the Syrian government. This escalation is short-sighted and will lead to more dead civilians, more refugees, the strengthening of al-Qaeda and other terrorists, and a possible nuclear war between the United States and Russia. This Administration has acted recklessly without care or consideration of the dire consequences of the United States attack on Syria without waiting for the collection of evidence from the scene of the chemical poisoning." Hyundai and Kia are recalling 1.4 million cars and SUVs in the U.S., Canada and South Korea because the engines can fail and stall, increasing the risk of a crash. The recall covers some of the Korean automakers' most popular models in the U.S. and Canada including 2013 and 2014 Hyundai Santa Fe Sport SUVs and Sonata midsize cars. Also covered are Kia Optima midsize cars from 2011 through 2014, Kia Sportage SUVs from 2011 through 2013 and Kia Sorento SUVs from 2012 through 2014. The South Korean recall includes Hyundai's Grandeur and Sonata sedans and Kia's K5, K7 and Sportage with engines produced from 2009 to 2013. All have either 2-Liter or 2.4-Liter gasoline engines. The U.S. engines were made at the Hyundai's engine plant in Alabama. The companies say in documents posted Friday by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that debris left from manufacturing can restrict oil flow to connecting rod bearings. Since they are cooled by oil, the restriction can increase temperatures and cause the bearings to wear and fail, and the engines could stall. Owners will hear a knocking sound from the engine that increases in frequency as the engine speed rises. They also could get engine warning lights on their dashboard, Hyundai spokesman Jim Trainor said. Those with problems should contact their dealers. Hyundai and Kia will notify owners and dealers will inspect the engines. They'll replace the block if needed at no cost to owners. The recall is scheduled to start on May 19. Trainor said the company has no reports of any crashes or injuries. The U.S. recall is the second in the past two years for the same engine problem. In September of 2015, Hyundai recalled 470,000 Sonata sedans from the 2011 and 2012 model years with the same engines. Kia documents posted Friday by U.S. regulators show the company at first didn't think the problem affected its engines because warranty claims and field reports were low. But claims started growing and by May 2016 the company extended warranties on the engines. Eventually it decided to do a recall because of the potential safety problem. Kia is a smaller affiliate of Hyundai. Together they are the world's fifth-largest automaker. Syrian refugees in the United States say they are horrified by the grim images showing the aftermath of a suspected chemical weapons attack in their home country that killed more than 80 people, including at least 27 children. Its extreme, Samer Dukhar tells NBC Boston. Dukhar left Syria just after the civil war broke out in 2011. He now lives in Manchester, New Hampshire, and said he learned of Tuesday's dawn attack on Facebook after relatives and friends began posting photos and videos from the scene. The images are from the Idlib province, the region Dukhar called home for more than 25 years, now devastated by chemical warfare. You see, they are killed without a single drop of blood, they look like they are sleeping, but they are not they are gone, Dukhar said, while watching a video posted on social media by a friend in Syria. Activists in Turkey have reported the death toll at about 100, with more than 400 injured, NBC News reported. Its really chaos now, people are scared, they dont know whats coming next, Dukhar said. Bashar al-Assad has denied responsibility, but Dukhar says theres no question in his mind that the countrys president is the mastermind behind the attacks. He needs to be held accountable, Dukhar said. Six years ago, Dukhar stood with hundreds in his hometown to protest the Assad regime in what he thought would be a revolution. But the government responded by killing civilians, and the uprising against President Assad gradually turned into a full-scale civil war. Almost every single family has lost somebody, Dukhar said. Since migrating from Syria, Dukhar has earned a masters degree in the U.S. and created a Facebook page to help connect other refugees in New Hampshire. He hopes someday itll be safe enough to return to his birth country and rebuild. I feel its a responsibility, Dukhar said. When justice finds its way to Syria, peace will absolutely happen. Former Vice President Joe Biden returned to the University of Delaware Friday for an outdoor rally. The noon event outside Memorial Hall came on the heels of the launch of the Biden Institute at his alma mater. It featured the UD Pep Band and spirit teams as well as remarks from Biden himself and school officials. The Institute is a new research and policy center focused on domestic issues including economic reform, environmental sustainability, criminal justice and civil rights. Biden will be the founding chair of the Institute, which will be part of the university's School of Public Policy and Administration. Biden will be splitting his time between the University of Delaware and the University of Pennsylvania, where he will head a foreign policy institute called the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. The foreign policy institute will be located in Washington, D.C., but Biden also will have an office on the Penn campus in Philadelphia. The presence of the bacteria that causes Legionnaires' Disease caused a Chester County high school to close Friday. Kennett Consolidated School District superintendent Barry Tomasetti posted a letter to the schools website explaining how school officials discovered the potentially deadly bacteria. "We are notifying you that during routine testing of the hot water systems at Kennett High School, a positive test result for legionella bacteria was confirmed," Tomasetti said. No injuries were reported and the school began taking actions to get rid of the bacteria. "In response to this test result, we have consulted with the Chester County Health Department and contracted with an environmental remediation firm to eliminate the bacteria," Tomasetti said. "As a proactive measure, we have discontinued use of the boiler room spigot where the positive sample was taken and as an additional precaution shut down all showers. [NATL] Top News Photos: Pope Visits Japan, and More "According to the Health Department, the presence of the bacteria, which are commonly found in water, is no concern for alarm at this time. The Health Department officials stated that there are no confirmed reports of Legionnaires disease and the Health Department would not be issuing a public advisory at this time." Legionnaires' disease is a lung infection named after a 1976 outbreak among people at an American Legion convention in Philadelphia. If contracted, legionella is rarely spread from person to person but rather by breathing in small droplets of water in the air that contain the bacteria, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. An opening prayer reading from the Quran at the Delaware Senate drew a sharp rebuke from a Republican lawmaker, who said the Muslim holy book calls for the death of Americans. Two representatives from the Tarbiyah Mosque in Newark were invited to Wednesday's session to deliver the prayer. They began with an Arabic chant before reading a prayer in English based on a Quranic verse but with references to Allah removed. Republican Sens. Dave Lawson and Colin Bonini walked out of the chamber before the prayer. Lawson rose afterward to speak, calling what happened "despicable." "We are in the shadows of the Dover Air Force Base morgue and our people are being killed and coming here by these people and they're not being killed by prison," Lawson later told NBC10. Democratic President Pro Tem David McBride later took Lawson to task, saying he was personally offended that the Muslim guests would not feel welcomed. One of the guests told NBC10 he doesn't want his children to live in fear. "I am as American, as patriot, as anybody else," Dr. Naveed Baqir of the Delaware Council on Global and Muslim Affairs told NBC10. "What am I supposed to do for my children, what am I supposed to teach them? Am i supposed to teach them that they have to live in fear? Do I have to tell them they have to grow up thinking they will be be mistrusted and nobody will trust them? That's not fair." Lawson said he would except an invitation from Baqir to talk out their differences but that his concern of the direction of the country would likely not change his opinion. "I have a deep concern for the welfare of this country and where it is going and where my grandchildren will have to live," the Kent County senator said. "And if it's under Muslim rule, then I've failed." San Diego police have taken a wanted domestic violence suspect into custody after a high speed pursuit across surface streets around the County. The pursuit began at approximately 2:08 p.m. Thursday near southbound Interstate 5 and Interstate 8 when officers spotted the suspect's faded red van near Mission Bay. The suspect, who has not been identified, was wanted for an assault reported earlier Thursday in Lemon Grove. He was believed to be armed. Police attempted to pull the man over, but he fled. The suspect raced down Interstate 5 and headed to eastbound Interstate 94 before he got off in Lemon Grove. He drove on surface street through the neighborhood, to La Mesa, then back to Lemon Grove and to San Diego. At one point, shortly before 3 p.m., the suspect pulled onto the lawn of a home on the 600 block of Flicker Street in San Diego's Skyline neighborhood and was taken into custody. No other information was available. Please refresh this page for updates on this breaking story. Details may change as more information becomes available. Back in 1405, Chaucer coined a saying that has resonated through Shakespeare, modern psychology, and mommy blogs alike: For loue is blynd alday and may nat see, he wrote in Merchants Tale. The saying Love is blind has also repeatedly been proven true by scientists, at least in the context of parental and romantic love. And a new study suggests that startup founders ought to heed the wisdom of the father of English literature, too. The study, Entrepreneurial and parental loveare they the same?, published in the journal Human Brain Mapping on March 13, investigates the neurological and behavioral basis of entrepreneurial love. Researchers at Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland hypothesized that male business owners would demonstrate the same neurological and emotional reactions when shown images of their companies that fathers experience when shown images of their own children. Questionnaires were used to measure affect intensity, positive emotions, confidence, and closeness between father and child, entrepreneur and company, and fMRI scans were used to assess brain activity. The participants were 42 men: 21 entrepreneurs and 21 fathers, aged 24-45. The fathers had no entrepreneurial experience, and founders were growth-oriented and not serial entrepreneurs. Behaviorally, fatherly and entrepreneurial love proved strikingly similaron measures of closeness, joy, satisfaction, pride, and love, participants rated their own children and businesses higher than other peoples children and businesses. Fathers and entrepreneurs ratings significantly differed on only one measure: Entrepreneurs displayed a more intense positive bias toward their companies than fathers did toward their children. In previous studies, when parents viewed images of their children, researchers noted decreased activity in brain regions linked to social cognition and emotional processingthe regions that, when active, allow us to objectively reason. This is the science behind blind love. Story continues In this study, entrepreneurs who reported feeling close or interconnected with their business experienced brain activation patterns identical to those of fathers. For these participants, brain activation in regions linked to social cognitionand the capacity for objective thoughtsignificantly decreased when looking at images of their own businesses or children. Self-confidence was also strongly correlated with brain activity: The more confident the entrepreneur or father was, the less activity occurred in brain regions that enable logical emotional processing. These results suggest that overconfidence and the repression of negative emotions may lead to [entrepreneurs and fathers] overestimating the probability of success for their company or child, says Marja-Liisa Halko, the studys co-author and a professor of neuroeconomics at the University of Helsinki. The opposite was true for less confident entrepreneurs and fathers, indicating that they were more attuned to their childrens and businesses flaws and risks, says Halko. Startup founders may know their brain children better than anyone. But the more they consider their business an extension of their self (as a parent considers their child), the more they should seek outside advice. Emotional attachment is key to long-term startup success, but may also veil a ventures weakness. Sign up for the Quartz Daily Brief, our free daily newsletter with the worlds most important and interesting news. More stories from Quartz: With Russia unwilling or unable to remove chemical weapons from Syria, the United States is prepared to do more after its widely hailed missile strike against a Syrian air base, said the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations on Friday World leaders and U.S. lawmakers have rallied around President Donald Trump's surprise decision to launch the stirke, the most significant military action of Trump's young presidency. However, Russia, one of Syrian President Bashar Assad's most important patrons, condemned the move as an act of "aggression." But U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley cast the move as "a very measured step" in remarks at the U.N. Security Council, and discussed Russia's "failure" to remove chemical weapons from Syria, something she said the nation was supposed to do. "The United States took a very measured step last night. We are prepared to do more, but we hope that will not be necessary," Haley said. As for why there were chemical weapons in the wartorn nation, Haley suggested Russia either knowingly allowed them to remain, was incompetent to remove them, or "it could be that the Assad regime is playing the Russians for fools." In his own statement, Russia's deputy U.N. ambassador, Vladimir Safronkov, said his country firmly stands by the Syrian government, calling it a force against terrorism and saying it deserves the presumption of innocence in the chemical weapons attack. He strongly criticized what he called the U.S. "flagrant violation of international law and an act of aggression" whose "consequences for regional and international security could be extremely serious." Also Friday, senior U.S. military officials said the Pentagon is looking into whether Russia participated in Syria's chemical weapons attack earlier this week. A drone belonging either to Russia or Syria was seen hovering over the site of the chemical weapons attack Tuesday after it happened, according to the officials, who weren't authorized to speak publicly on the matter and demanded anonymity. The drone returned late in the day as citizens were going to a nearby hospital for treatment. Shortly afterward, officials say the hospital was bombed. The officials believe the hospital attack may have been an effort to cover up evidence of the attack. They said they are still reviewing evidence. Trump, who has long warned against the U.S. getting involved in Syria's civil war, is said to have been moved to act by the heartbreaking images of children killed in a chemical weapons attack earlier this week. Even as his advisers insisted that the strikes did not mark a significant shift in U.S. policy, Trump called on other nations to help "end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria." The president approved the strike while in Florida for a two-day summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Trump did not respond to shouted questions about the assault from reporters as he opened meetings with Xi Friday morning. The strikes 59 missiles launched from the USS Ross and USS Porter hit the government-controlled Shayrat air base in central Syria, where U.S. officials say the Syrian military planes that dropped the chemicals had taken off. The U.S. missiles hit at 8:45 p.m. in Washington, 3:45 Friday morning in Syria. The missiles targeted the base's airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, officials said. Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which support the Syrian opposition, welcomed the missile strike, with Riyadh calling it a "courageous decision" by Trump. British Prime Minister Theresa May's office says the action was "an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, and is intended to deter further attacks." France, Italy and Israel also welcomed the strikes. In Washington, Republican leaders applauded Trump's actions, despite the president launching the strike without congressional authorization. Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell called Trump's decision "entirely correct." "I think the president had the authority to do what he did, and I'm glad he did it," McConnell said. Democrats were muted in their response. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, R-Calif., said the strikes were "a limited but necessary response" and called on Trump to "develop a comprehensive strategy to end Syria's civil war." The Syrian military said at least 7 people were killed and several were wounded in the strikes on the air base. The U.S. assault marked a striking reversal for Trump, who warned as a candidate against the U.S. being pulled into the Syrian civil war that began six years ago. U.S. officials placed some of the blame on Russia, which has brokered a 2013 agreement with Washington to strip Syria of its chemical weapons stockpiles. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in Florida with Trump, said Moscow had "failed" to live up to its obligations. "Either Russia has been complicit or Russia has been simply incompetent in its ability to deliver on its end of the agreement," Tillerson said. The U.S. Tomahawk missiles, fired from warships in the Mediterranean Sea, targeted an air base in retaliation for the attack that America believes Syrian government aircraft launched with the nerve agent sarin mixed with chlorine gas. The president did not announce the attacks in advance, though he and other national security officials ratcheted up their warnings to the Syrian government throughout the day Thursday. The strike came as Trump was hosting Xi in meetings focused in part on another pressing U.S. security dilemma: North Korea's nuclear program. Trump's actions in Syria could signal to China that the new president isn't afraid of unilateral military steps, even if key nations like China are standing in the way. "This clearly indicates the president is willing to take decisive action when called for," Tillerson said. Trump has advocated greater counterterrorism cooperation with Russia, Assad's most powerful military backer. Just last week, the Trump administration signaled the U.S. was no longer interested in trying to push Assad from power over his direction of a conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and led to the worst refugee crisis since World War II. U.S. officials portrayed the strikes as an appropriate, measured response and said they did not signal a broader shift in the Trump administration's approach to the Syrian conflict. "The intent was to deter the regime from doing this again," said Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, the Pentagon spokesman. "It will be the regime's choice if there's any more, and it will be based upon their conduct going forward." Still, the assault risks plunging America into the middle of Syria's conflict, complicating the safety of the hundreds of U.S. forces fighting a separate campaign against the Islamic State group in the north of the country. If Assad's military persists in further gas attacks, the Trump administration might logically pursue increased retaliation. Russia and Iran, Assad's allies, pose other problems. Russian military personnel and aircraft are embedded with Syria's, and Iranian troops and paramilitary forces are also on the ground helping Assad fight the array of opposition groups hoping to topple him. Before the strikes, U.S. military officials said they informed their Russian counterparts of the impending attack. The goal was to avoid any accident involving Russian forces. Nevertheless, Russia's Deputy U.N. ambassador Vladimir Safronkov warned that any negative consequences from the strikes would be on the "shoulders of those who initiated such a doubtful and tragic enterprise." The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin believes that the U.S. strike on a Syrian air base is an "aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law." Iran's foreign ministry also condemned the strike and called it a violation of international law. The U.S. also notified its partner countries in the region prior to launching the strikes. Trump's decision to attack Syria came three-and-a-half years after President Barack Obama threatened Assad with military action after an earlier chemical weapons attack killed hundreds outside Damascus. Obama had declared the use of such weapons a "red line." At the time, several American ships in the Mediterranean were poised to launch missiles, only for Obama to abruptly pull back after key U.S. ally Britain and the U.S. Congress balked at his plan. He opted instead for the Russian-backed plan that was supposed to remove and eliminate Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles. The world learned of the chemical attack earlier in the week in footage that showed people dying in the streets and bodies of children stacked in piles. The international outcry fueled an emotional response from Trump, who appeared to abandon his much-touted "America First" vision for a stance of humanitarian intervention, akin to that of previous American leaders. The show of force in Syria raises legal questions. It's unclear what authority Trump is relying on to attack another government. When Obama intervened in Libya in 2011, he used a U.N. Security Council mandate and NATO's overall leadership of the mission to argue that he had legal authority arguments many Republicans opposed. Trump can't rely on either justification here. This weekend is shaping up to be spring-like and beautiful, said Storm Team4, which is perfect since there will be so many fun things to do in the D.C. area. We've rounded up some of the can't-miss events happening this weekend -- and scroll down to see a map of all locations. Union Market's Drive-In movie series returns Friday night, with a screening of "The Royal Tenenbaums" at 8 p.m. There's a $10 parking fee per car, but the movie is free for walk-ups. The lot will close at 7:30 p.m., so get there early! Buy parking tickets in advance here. (See the complete movie schedule online here.) This is the last weekend of Light City Baltimore, and you won't want to miss it. Road-trip it to Baltimore's Inner Harbor for dazzling illuminated art installations, performances, food and drinks Friday and Saturday nights from 7 p.m. to midnight. Meanwhile, the cherry blossom excitement continues with the National Cherry Blossom Festival Parade on Saturday from 10 a.m. to noon. The parade will march along Constitution Avenue from 7th to 17th streets NW. Parade viewing is free and open to the public along the streets, but be sure to arrive early for the best views. Grandstand seating is also available for $20. Also part of the National Cherry Blossom Festival, the Sakura Matsuri Japanese Street Festival (M Street and New Jersey Avenue SE in the Capitol Riverfront neighborhood) celebrates Japanese culture in the United States. You'll find vendors, food, cultural groups and performances for the whole family to enjoy. The festival is Saturday from 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Since Emancipation Day will fall on Easter this year, D.C. will celebrate this Saturday instead of April 16. A parade will march Pennsylvania Avenue NW starting at 1 p.m., followed by a concert at 3 p.m. at Freedom Plaza (see the list of performers here). Then, at 9 p.m., fireworks will illuminate the sky over Freedom Plaza. Emancipation Day celebrates the day President Abraham Lincoln signed the Compensated Emancipation Act, freeing more than 3,100 enslaved people in the District. Looking to get a head start on enjoying Easter candy? Check out PEEPS Day on Saturday at National Harbor. You'll find a PEEPS eating contest, a dance contest, face painting, a moon bounce and a screening of "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory." The Anacostia River Festival will wrap up the weekend Sunday, from 1 to 5 p.m. at Anacostia Park (Anacostia Drive and Good Hope Road SE). Ride your bike in the bike parade, play lawn games, get a bike tuneup and check out the local arts scene at Anacostia Park. A D.C. police officer has been arrested in Maryland and is facing an array of charges after police say he paid a 15-year-old girl for sex and then demanded the money back at gunpoint. Anne Arundel County police arrested 27-year-old Metropolitan Police Officer Chukwuemeka Ekwonna of Glenn Dale on Thursday. Ekwonna is charged with armed robbery, firearm use, first, second and third-degree assault, third-degree sex offense, reckless endangerment and prostitution offenses, police said. All of the charges stem from an alleged incident on Jan. 9. Court documents show the teen told authorities she met a man on social media, and he offered her $80 for sex. After they met and had sex, she said the man pointed a gun at her and took his money back. This man was later identified as Ekwonna, police say. Ekwonna had been with the police department for 14 months and was assigned to the Second District. His police powers were revoked and he was placed on a "non-contact status," the department said. The department said Ekwonna was terminated on Friday. No attorney is listed in online court records. After powerful storms tore through Northern Virginia Thursday afternoon, parents found that their young son had drowned in a pond. A 3 1/2-year-old boy died after he was found facedown in a pond near his family's townhouse in South Riding, Virginia, officials and neighbors said. The child, who was not identified immediately, slipped out of the house as his mother went to retrieve a garbage can that had blown away during the storm, neighbors told News4. Tragedy in South Riding after a toddler slips out of his home & is found in a pond. Neighbor's describe the rescue effort #NBC4DC@530 pic.twitter.com/i19ITflUTc Julie Carey (@JulieCareyNBC) April 6, 2017 When the family discovered the boy was missing, they began searching for him. A neighbor joined in the effort. He and the boy's father found the little boy facedown in the shallow water about 2:15 p.m. "The father pulled the boy out of the water," neighbor Sasi Gopinadam said. "The boy was lying on the ground, and they were trying to do the CPR by pressing 30 times on the chest." Another neighbor called 911, and the dispatcher gave instructions to try to save the child. The boy was rushed to a hospital, but it was too late. The child was pronounced dead. Neighbors said he is survived by a twin sister. "It's a very sad day," Gopinadam said. Stay with News4 for more details on this developing story. Vermonters got a reminder Thursday of the value of the "gift of life" at a ceremony at the Statehouse in Montpelier. Gov. Phil Scott signed a proclamation declaring April "Donate Life Month." He and the New England Organ Bank encouraged Vermonters to consider becoming potential organ donors. The New England Organ Bank said in a news release that more than 1,000 lives in New England were saved in 2016 through organ donation, and many more were greatly enhanced through tissue donation. The wife of a Brattleboro man who received a heart transplant in 2007 said that before he died late last year, he wanted to become a donor himself. "He was able to donate both his corneas, which was his request, and which the family members I, included, obviously thought was wonderful," Wendy Magnaghi said. "Today, theres a 78-year-old woman and an 81-year-old gentleman from Michigan who both have their sight back." The New England Organ Bank said there are more than 118,000 Americans waiting for a life-saving organ, more than 5,000 of them in New England. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers detained a man from Somalia in Portland Thursday, the first arrest of its kind in a Maine courthouse. Now, some worry the ICE arrest could have a chilling effect among Maines immigrant community. I dont think its healthy for our city, and I dont think its healthy for our state, said Portland Mayor Ethan Strimling, who is calling on county officials to consider a policy for ICE agents going forward. Attorney Tina Nadeau said she was meeting with her client, Abdi Ali, after he made a court appearance for an OUI charge Thursday morning. She said three ICE agents arrested him in the hallway of the courthouse as soon as they ended a private meeting. I did not expect it to go down in that courthouse, said Nadeau. This is extremely rare. Mary Ann Lynch, a spokesperson for the Maine Judicial Branch, said she is not aware of ICE agents making arrests inside courthouses before, and that the judicial branch does not have a policy about this. A spokesperson for ICE said agents typically only make arrests inside courthouses if they have exhausted other options. There needs to be a conversation about this, said Steven Biel, a spokesperson for the group Progressive Portland, which is now circulating an online petition to have county officials oppose ICE arrests inside court facilities. Biel said if immigrants are worried about deportation they may not want to report crimes to the police or appear in court to testify, crippling the criminal justice system. You might be the victim of a crime, and the witness is an undocumented immigrant, said Biel. All of a sudden, the perpetrator is going to walk. Portland City Councilor Pious Ali, an immigrant from Ghana, said he has been fielding phone calls from members of Maines immigrant community about this recent arrest. Theres a lot of concern about whats next, said Ali. Are [ICE agents] going to into schools or hospitals? ICE spokesman Alvin Phillips said this case was cut and dry, and Abdi Ali is going through the process of being deported. ICE arrested a citizen of Somalia The subject has an extensive criminal history that includes convictions, including two convictions for assault, said Phillips in a written statement. Portlands Police Chief Michael Sauschuck said his officers were not aware of the ICE raid and did not coordinate with them. We work very hard to build trust between the Portland Police Department and all immigrant communities, said Chief Sauschuck. A man from Maine was arrested and charged with murder nearly 40 years after his son died and police closed the case. Four-month-old Nathan Hagar was found unresponsive in an apartment in Brunswick on School Street in May 1979. He was taken to the Parkview Hospital where he died shortly after. Officials originally identified the cause of death as SIDS, but state police say investigators quietly reopened the case in 1991. Within the past year investigators gathered new evidence that eventually led to the arrest of the babys father, Burton "Ben" Hagar. Now, 38 years after Nathans death, the 62-year-old was indicted, arrested at his home on Marvel Street in Farmington, and officially charged with murdering his son. According to state police, this is officially the oldest unsolved homicide case that has been resolved. It's unclear if Hagar has an attorney. He's due in court next week. Lawmakers in Massachusetts are putting forward a new measure that would raise the age to purchase tobacco to 21. According to the Boston Globe, lawmakers hope to pass the measure by the end of June. Currently, buyers have to be at least 18-years-old. Lawmakers in favor of the measure argue that raising the age would standardize it with the legal age necessary to purchase alcohol and marijuana. Currently more than 140 towns and cities, including Boston and Worcester, have raised the age to 21. If approved, the decision would apply to the entire state. Those against the age increase believe the measure is unfair to young adults who are able to serve in the military, drive a car and vote, but would no longer be able to purchase cigarettes. The new measure would grandfather in those who are already 18-years-old or older. (Adds Argentina and Colombia agree to tax-free auto trade) BRASILIA, April 7 (Reuters) - Brazil has agreed to allow imports of Colombian vehicles and car parts without a 30 percent industrial products tax (IPI) as part of a bilateral auto pact under negotiation during Mercosur trade talks with Latin America's Pacific coast countries, a Brazilian government source said on Friday. The source at the trade meeting in Buenos Aires said final details were still being worked out with Colombia, an increasingly important market for Brazil's auto exports, which are helping the industry recover after a four-year downturn. Non-Mercosur autos pay the IPI tax as well as another 35 percent import tax to be sold in Brazil. "We have agreed to give the Colombian auto industry the same preferential treatment given to the Argentine industry," the source said. "Their cars will not pay the 30 percent IPI tax." The agreement will help Brazilian exports to Colombia with reciprocal treatment that was still being worked out, the source added. The agreement with Colombia would begin on Jan. 1, 2018. Separately in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Colombia agreed to eliminate taxes on their auto trade, allowing Argentina to sell Colombia up to 12,500 vehicles tax-free a year, rising to 42,000 in four years, officials from both countries said. Brazil had been the world's fourth-biggest car market, and auto output accounted for one fifth of industrial production and about 5 percent of GDP before a devastating 2015-16 recession ravaged its economy. Spurred by strong exports that rose 73 percent in the first two months of this year and expectations of recovering sales, automakers in Brazil ramped up production in February. Brazil's auto exports have traditionally been concentrated in neighboring Argentina, but carmakers are pushing to improve access to markets such as Peru and Colombia. Industry group Anfavea says it is seeing increased sales across Latin America. Foreign and trade ministers meeting in Buenos Aires on Friday discussed ways to bring the South American customs union formed by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay closer to the free-trading countries of the Pacific Alliance that includes Chile, Peru, Colombia and Mexico. (Reporting by Anthony Boadle; Addition reporting by Alberto Alerigi in Sao Paulo; Editing by G Crosse and Leslie Adler) For the second time this school year, campus police at the University of Southern Maine are investigating anti-Muslim graffiti found on the Portland campus. Earlier this week, students found the words Kill the Muslin [sic] on a poster explaining how to handle an active shooter situation. A spokesperson for USM said the implication is believed to be that the active shooter would be a Muslim. I cannot begin to tell you how this strikes at the heart of everything we are trying to accomplish here as a place where everyone feels welcome and safe, said Glenn Cummings, USM President, in a written statement. Staff at all three USM campus locations held drop-in hours for students to discuss the graffiti, and other concerns about Islmaphobia. This is something we are taking seriously, said Assistant Dean of Students Sarah Holmes Last fall, students found the words Deus Vult written in the campus center. It is a Latin phrase from the Crusades, that has recently been adopted by the Alt-Right to intimidate Muslims. Theres a lot of frustration, and theres a lot of fear, said USM Student Body President Humza Khan, who is a Muslim. Why does this keep happening? Campus police and Portland police are working with USM administrators to find the person responsible. Khan said many people have shown support for Muslim students this week, which has helped them feel safer. But he does feel this latest graffiti incident was a direct threat to students. When someone says were going to kill someone, I think thats where we have to draw the line, he said. Speaking to the immense demand Apple is forecasting for the iPhone 8, the Cupertino, California-based company recently inked a deal for a whopping 92 million OLED panels from Samsung. While reports from earlier in the week pegged Apple's OLED order in the 70 million range, a more recent from Digitimes relays the figure has since been bumped up. "Based on the contract," the report notes. "Samsung Display will ship 70-92 million small-size OLED panels to Apple in 2017. ... This means that about 30 percent of iPhone devices shipped in 2017 will come with curved OLED panels, given that Apple currently ships about 200 million iPhone devices a year." Hardly a surprisemany analysts anticipate that the iPhone 8 will anchor the largest iPhone upgrade cycle in history. Not only will the iPhone 8 introduce a long-overdue change to a form factor that has largely remain stagnant since 2014, but the current pool of iPhone owners in the market for an upgrade is larger today than it's ever been before. Taken together, demand for the iPhone 8 will presumably be off the charts. Prepare for iPhone sales records to be set Said to feature a 5.2-in. display within a form factor similar to the current 5.5-in. iPhone 7 Plus, the iPhone 8 will be a flagship device all across the board. With improved battery life, wireless charging and an advanced 3D camera system, it's not outside the realm of comprehension to imagine the iPhone 8in unison with the iPhone 7s and 7s Plussmashing every existing iPhone sales record set to date. While OLED panels aren't new to the smartphone industry, the iPhone 8 will mark the first time Apple has embraced the technology. OLED technology features more vibrant and rich colors, not to mention improved power efficiency, but it's also prone to colors dulling over time. Presumably, Apple has addressed this shortcoming ahead of the iPhone 8 release date. Speaking of which, the most recent rumblings from the rumor mill points to the highly anticipated devices arriving on store shelves sometime between October and November. As we noted earlier this week, Apple is reportedly experiencing a few minor manufacturing issues regarding the OLED lamination process and the incorporation of the aforementioned 3D cameras. Hero "acted in the face of fear" to save toddler from drowning on holiday A FIREFIGHTER from Newbury has been praised for his bravery to act in the face of fear after saving the life of a toddler who was pulled unconscious from a Dubai swimming pool. Oliver Parker was on his honeymoon with his pregnant wife, Heidi, and two young children when the two-year-old was spotted motionless in the pool of the Hilton Dubai Jumeirah Beach. Her distraught father pulled the girl out of the water and lay her on the side as by-standers looked on in horror. It was then Mr Parkers training as a firefighter kicked in. We were leaving the pool area and I just heard a lot of screaming, said the 33-year-old. It was quite obvious she had drowned it was just horrific. She was completely blue and not breathing. None of the lifeguards had come over, everyone was just in shock. I just went into complete work mode. Mr Parker, who has been a firefighter for 13 years, immediately started CPR at the poolside while instructing those nearby to call an ambulance. The heroic fireman performed the emergency life-saving procedure for three minutes in a desperate effort to bring the young girl from Finland back from the brink of death. When she came around, she came around so quick, it was from nothing, he recounted. She took a deep breath and opened her eyes and all the colour came back to her. It was all just so emotional shes exactly the same age as one of my daughters. Even now its hard to describe. Ill never forget how she looked when she came out of the water and Ill never forget that feeling when she came back. The toddler, who her family have asked not to name, was taken by ambulance to hospital where she spent two days before returning to the hotel. She came out on our last day there and we were reunited with her and her family, said Mr Parker. They were obviously very emotional. When thanking me her mother said I hadnt just saved her daughters life, but Id saved the whole familys. Watch manager Ian Gibson, who has worked with Mr Parker for four years, praised his colleagues heroic actions. He said: This is something that Olly will live with forever. He stepped up when everyone else froze with fear. Thats my definition of bravery action in the face of fear. What he did was exceptional and I couldnt be more proud to have him on my crew and as a friend. However, the modest father-of-two, who is stationed at Aldermaston, has played down his actions saying his training took over. He said: Ive never had to do anything like this outside of work. Ive never actually had to do CPR on anyone in work. I remember feeling very calm despite all the panic around. I just did what Ive been trained to do for the last 13 years. Man on day release from Thornford Park wounded himself in shopping centre toilets AN investigation is underway after a psychiatric patient out on day release from Thornford Park reportedly wounded himself in the Kennet Shopping centre toilets. Emergency services were called to the shopping centre on Monday, March 13, but no information was provided at the time. The has since learned that the incident was sparked by a patient from the secure psychiatric hospital in Crookham Common. A source said that the patient was out on day release from the hospital with a member of staff, who then left him unattended for around an hour. The patient reportedly got hold of a knife and seriously wounded himself in the toilets. Police and ambulance crews were called to the shopping centre and an air ambulance was also dispatched to the scene, but was not required. A spokesman for the South Central Ambulance Service, David Gallagher, said: This was a concern-for-welfare incident at the centre. The patient had sustained a serious injury and was taken by road to the major trauma unit at The John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford. Thames Valley Police cordoned off the area while paramedics treated the patient. Police spokeswoman Holly Claydon-Bevan said that a man in his 60s was found injured in the toilets and that his injuries were not believed to be life-threatening. Thornford Park, previously run by the Priory Group, is now operated by Elysium Healthcare. When questioned about the incident, a spokesperson said: We can confirm this incident involved a patient from Thornford Park. We are undertaking a full review of the incident. When asked about the patients risk level, Elysium said it could not comment further. Thornford Park hit the media spotlight in 2014 after patient John Maguire absconded from the medium secure facility by scaling the fence using bedsheets. He was found at Birmingham New Street station four days later by British Transport Police. Reports have also linked the Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe with the facility, as well as the Stockwell Strangler Kenneth Erskine. By Marc Jones and Ritvik Carvalho LONDON (Reuters) - Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau said on Friday he could not judge the likelihood of the United States introducing a new border tax following meetings with U.S. officials this week. Speaking in London, he said discussions with the White House over the last few days had underscored that President Donald Trump's team was pushing for broad U.S. tax changes but said he would make no guesses at any outcome on trade tariffs. Trump's proposed Border Adjustment Tax (BAT) has sent shivers through all major exporters to the U.S., and especially neighbors like Canada and Mexico whose companies sell an enormous amount of their goods there. It would exempt U.S. export revenues from federal corporate tax but levy an implicit 20 percent tax on imports by preventing U.S. companies from deducting the cost of imported goods and supplies. "I can't handicap (judge chances of) an outcome other than to say I spoke to Steven Mnuchin about the ideas of this U.S. administration," Morneau said. "I think they are very clear about corporate taxation rates in the United States, which they see as a challenge, and they do talk about the importance of dealing with middle class taxation as well." Morneau, who said that Canadian growth looked like being better-than-expected this year, added that Trump's team and local U.S. decision makers were "fully aware" of Canada's view that a border tax would be detrimental all around. "They are fully aware of developments, we have been met with a positive response (from local officials and mayors)... In the White House, they do as well, but they are also making sure it works for the United States." Morneau also touched on Canada's hot-running housing market, acknowledging the need for affordable housing, and also said he had steered away from ideas like hiking capital gains tax in the country's recent budget. He said a trade deal with Britain as it leaves the European Union would happen after the two sides had reached their own new arrangement, adding that Canada would be "respectful" and "supportive" during the delicate process. "We hope that we can have an agreement with the UK rapidly afterwards (after Britain leaves the EU) and would be making sure that we have the ongoing dialogue that will allow that to occur," he said. He said the forged but still-to-be-ratified Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) EU-Canada trade deal would be used as a 'framework' with Britain, though it doesn't include financial services, which play an oversized role in UK economy. "I think trying to change that agreement at this particular juncture ... people may have other things they're working on," Morneau said. (Reporting by Marc Jones and Ritvik Carvalho; Editing by Tom Heneghan) By PTI NEW DELHI: Locked in an intense battle with Amazon, homegrown e-commerce major Flipkart is looking at re-entering the grocery segment that accounts for a significant portion of India's retail industry. "Yes we will get into grocery... 80 per cent of units bought in India is grocery... USD 400-600 million is grocery market, so we have to get into it," Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy said at a TiE event here. This will be the second attempt into the grocery segment for the Bengaluru-based firm. In October 2015, Flipkart had launched a separate groceries ordering app called Nearby for delivering fruits, vegetables, soaps and other staples from supermarkets to customers. However, following a weak response, Flipkart closed the business a few months later. Flipkart's rival Amazon India has launched its grocery ordering app, Amazon Now last year. The app is now available in four Indian cities including Bengaluru, Delhi-NCR and Mumbai. Amazon plans to invest around USD 500 million in e-retail of food products in India. "There are three models for grocery. One is a daily purchase, the average selling price (ASP) there is very low at about Rs 300-400. Then there is a weekly business model, which is a bit higher. Thankfully, 60-70 per cent of the market is the third one which is monthly basket where average is about over Rs 2,000. With those, it's a very sustainable business," he said. The online food and grocery segment also includes players like BigBasket and Grofers, who are also looking at expanding their operations. As per industry reports, the online F&G delivery market is estimated to be around USD 600 million in India and pegged to touch USD 5 billion by 2020. Talking about acquisitions, Krishnamurthy said the company is looking at targets for enhancing capabilities. "We will look at M&A, size doesn't matter. What we are looking at is capabilities. A lot of business we acquired over time were actually small," he said citing examples of PhonePe and Jeeves. Flipkart, which has made big-ticket acquisitions like Myntra and Jabong as well, is believed to be in fray for acquiring its smaller rival Snapdeal. NEW DELHI: Locked in an intense battle with Amazon, homegrown e-commerce major Flipkart is looking at re-entering the grocery segment that accounts for a significant portion of India's retail industry. "Yes we will get into grocery... 80 per cent of units bought in India is grocery... USD 400-600 million is grocery market, so we have to get into it," Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy said at a TiE event here. This will be the second attempt into the grocery segment for the Bengaluru-based firm. In October 2015, Flipkart had launched a separate groceries ordering app called Nearby for delivering fruits, vegetables, soaps and other staples from supermarkets to customers. However, following a weak response, Flipkart closed the business a few months later. Flipkart's rival Amazon India has launched its grocery ordering app, Amazon Now last year. The app is now available in four Indian cities including Bengaluru, Delhi-NCR and Mumbai. Amazon plans to invest around USD 500 million in e-retail of food products in India. "There are three models for grocery. One is a daily purchase, the average selling price (ASP) there is very low at about Rs 300-400. Then there is a weekly business model, which is a bit higher. Thankfully, 60-70 per cent of the market is the third one which is monthly basket where average is about over Rs 2,000. With those, it's a very sustainable business," he said. The online food and grocery segment also includes players like BigBasket and Grofers, who are also looking at expanding their operations. As per industry reports, the online F&G delivery market is estimated to be around USD 600 million in India and pegged to touch USD 5 billion by 2020. Talking about acquisitions, Krishnamurthy said the company is looking at targets for enhancing capabilities. "We will look at M&A, size doesn't matter. What we are looking at is capabilities. A lot of business we acquired over time were actually small," he said citing examples of PhonePe and Jeeves. Flipkart, which has made big-ticket acquisitions like Myntra and Jabong as well, is believed to be in fray for acquiring its smaller rival Snapdeal. Tushar Kaushik By Express News Service BENGALURU: In many ways, Mithun Rais job was as bad as manual scavenging. The 25-year-old ragpicker from West Bengal died last Tuesday when a BBMP vehicle offloaded tons of garbage on him at Bellahalli landfill near Bagalur in North Bengaluru. Mithun would usually rummage through small piles of garbage to find recyclable material which he would sell to factories. But it didnt pay him much. While Mithuns case was a rare one, the plight of a majority of ragpickers in the city, an estimated 25,000, is deplorable. Sugandhi, in her late 20s, starts her day at 5am, rummaging through garbage for recyclable objects before the BBMP vehicle arrives. Without any protective gear, identity proof or uniform, residents never trust her and hence, police ask her not to venture to certain places. But she has to keep frequenting the garbage dumps as she has no other source of income. What she gets out of picking waste is a meagre `100-`200 per day. Manjanna (28) too has the same routine and income. With the job comes ill heath. I would often fall sick. Over this, the police would frequently harass me regarding my identity. A woman sorts through garbage for recyclable objects at Belahalli landfill near Bagalur | jithendra m A lot of ragpickers about 10,000 of them according to an NGO have been moved to other jobs with better work conditions and pay, where their knowledge of identifying recyclable waste from garbage is utilised. Dr H Ravikumar of KC General Hospital said that in the absence of protective gear like gloves, gumboot and masks, ragpickers face risks of infection and air-borne diseases like TB. He added, In case the ragpicker has a wound, they are all the more susceptible to getting infected. A lot of efforts have been made by NGO Hasiru Dala (Green Force), sometimes in collaboration with the government, to stop the practice in its current form. The NGO, among other initiatives, has arranged jobs at waste management centres of residential societies and office buildings for over 7,000 waste pickers, who have also been provided identity cards. Nalini Shekar, the founder, said one of their new methods is to teach them to grow mushrooms at their homes, as it is a cheap source of protein. She said, There are an estimated 25,000 ragpickers in the city, and we have contacted only 10,000 of them. There is still a lot of work to be done, especially now, as with lesser waste on the streets, waste pickers will find it tougher. Speaking about the incident which claimed Mithuns life, Nalini said similar incidents had occurred in other cities too. A different system should be adopted where dumping vehicles either stop outside the dumping zone for some time or dump a part of the garbage outside from where ragpickers can do their jobs safely, she felt. BENGALURU: In many ways, Mithun Rais job was as bad as manual scavenging. The 25-year-old ragpicker from West Bengal died last Tuesday when a BBMP vehicle offloaded tons of garbage on him at Bellahalli landfill near Bagalur in North Bengaluru. Mithun would usually rummage through small piles of garbage to find recyclable material which he would sell to factories. But it didnt pay him much. While Mithuns case was a rare one, the plight of a majority of ragpickers in the city, an estimated 25,000, is deplorable. Sugandhi, in her late 20s, starts her day at 5am, rummaging through garbage for recyclable objects before the BBMP vehicle arrives. Without any protective gear, identity proof or uniform, residents never trust her and hence, police ask her not to venture to certain places. But she has to keep frequenting the garbage dumps as she has no other source of income. What she gets out of picking waste is a meagre `100-`200 per day. Manjanna (28) too has the same routine and income. With the job comes ill heath. I would often fall sick. Over this, the police would frequently harass me regarding my identity. A woman sorts through garbage for recyclable objects at Belahalli landfill near Bagalur | jithendra mA lot of ragpickers about 10,000 of them according to an NGO have been moved to other jobs with better work conditions and pay, where their knowledge of identifying recyclable waste from garbage is utilised. Dr H Ravikumar of KC General Hospital said that in the absence of protective gear like gloves, gumboot and masks, ragpickers face risks of infection and air-borne diseases like TB. He added, In case the ragpicker has a wound, they are all the more susceptible to getting infected. A lot of efforts have been made by NGO Hasiru Dala (Green Force), sometimes in collaboration with the government, to stop the practice in its current form. The NGO, among other initiatives, has arranged jobs at waste management centres of residential societies and office buildings for over 7,000 waste pickers, who have also been provided identity cards. Nalini Shekar, the founder, said one of their new methods is to teach them to grow mushrooms at their homes, as it is a cheap source of protein. She said, There are an estimated 25,000 ragpickers in the city, and we have contacted only 10,000 of them. There is still a lot of work to be done, especially now, as with lesser waste on the streets, waste pickers will find it tougher. Speaking about the incident which claimed Mithuns life, Nalini said similar incidents had occurred in other cities too. A different system should be adopted where dumping vehicles either stop outside the dumping zone for some time or dump a part of the garbage outside from where ragpickers can do their jobs safely, she felt. By IANS NEW DELHI: The Delhi Police on Friday were taken aback when they learnt from the media that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had gone to the airport to receive Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, without keeping them in the loop. Joint Commissioner of Police Dependra Pathak said that senior officers learnt through the media about Prime Minister Modi travelling from his Lok Kalyan Marg official residence to Delhi's Palam Air Force station in normal traffic and with no route restrictions in place. The Delhi Police is responsible for the security of VVIP movements in the national capital. "Generally, we are informed about any VVIP movement in advance and accordingly route restrictions are put in place for security purpose. But, we were not informed about Prime Minister's visit to the airport today (Friday)," Pathak told IANS. At the airport, the Prime Minister welcomed Hasina, who is on four-day visit to India from Friday, with a bouquet as she alighted from the aircraft. Both the leaders are expected to ink over 20 agreements ranging from ICT to defence cooperation during the visit. NEW DELHI: The Delhi Police on Friday were taken aback when they learnt from the media that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had gone to the airport to receive Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, without keeping them in the loop. Joint Commissioner of Police Dependra Pathak said that senior officers learnt through the media about Prime Minister Modi travelling from his Lok Kalyan Marg official residence to Delhi's Palam Air Force station in normal traffic and with no route restrictions in place. The Delhi Police is responsible for the security of VVIP movements in the national capital. "Generally, we are informed about any VVIP movement in advance and accordingly route restrictions are put in place for security purpose. But, we were not informed about Prime Minister's visit to the airport today (Friday)," Pathak told IANS. At the airport, the Prime Minister welcomed Hasina, who is on four-day visit to India from Friday, with a bouquet as she alighted from the aircraft. Both the leaders are expected to ink over 20 agreements ranging from ICT to defence cooperation during the visit. By Express News Service NEW DELHI: Objecting drinking in public place triggered an attack on senior journalist Aparna Kalra. According to the police, three men have been arrested in the case who were in an inebriated condition when they attacked Aparna. Cops are claiming that accused live in a nearby slum area and all are drug addicts and told them that she tried to raise alarm as they were drinking inside the park. Meanwhile, Aparna is still critical and on life supporting system, cops said. Cops are also claiming that doctors have told them that they will have to wait at least for 10 days to record her statement. The journalist was attacked on Wednesday when she was out for an evening walk. When she entered the park, found three men drinking inside the park. When she objected, they attacked her with iron rods multiple times, a police official said. WATCH VIDEO: "A visitor noticed the victim lying on the ground and called the police. He told the cops that he was not aware of the attack and that he had just seen her lying on the ground. So far no one has been identified in the case, a Delhi police official investigating the case said. Aparnas family got to know about the incident from the hospital. She has sustained severe injuries to her brain and skull. She was hit with iron rods and parts of her skull have suffered grievous injuries, said a police official. Delhi police have registered a case against an unknown person for attempting murder but no arrest has been made so far. NEW DELHI: Objecting drinking in public place triggered an attack on senior journalist Aparna Kalra. According to the police, three men have been arrested in the case who were in an inebriated condition when they attacked Aparna. Cops are claiming that accused live in a nearby slum area and all are drug addicts and told them that she tried to raise alarm as they were drinking inside the park. Meanwhile, Aparna is still critical and on life supporting system, cops said. Cops are also claiming that doctors have told them that they will have to wait at least for 10 days to record her statement. The journalist was attacked on Wednesday when she was out for an evening walk. When she entered the park, found three men drinking inside the park. When she objected, they attacked her with iron rods multiple times, a police official said. WATCH VIDEO: "A visitor noticed the victim lying on the ground and called the police. He told the cops that he was not aware of the attack and that he had just seen her lying on the ground. So far no one has been identified in the case, a Delhi police official investigating the case said. Aparnas family got to know about the incident from the hospital. She has sustained severe injuries to her brain and skull. She was hit with iron rods and parts of her skull have suffered grievous injuries, said a police official. Delhi police have registered a case against an unknown person for attempting murder but no arrest has been made so far. By Express News Service HYDERABAD: In a major catch, as many as 2300 tablets of Methaqualone, a psychotropic drug, was seized by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) in Hyderabad on Friday. The contraband tablets were concealed in the waistbands of eight pants and was being sent to Kuwait, as an air cargo consignment, said officials. On specific intelligence that certain cargo booked by a courier company to Kuwait contained contraband material, the officials of DRI, Hyderabad Zone, inspected the courtier company on Friday to verify the cargo. The officials found eight pants in the cargo, in which red-colored tablets of Methaqualone were found. DRI additional director general MK Singh said the cargo was packed in a carton, which contained six jeans pants, one corduroy pant and one half pant of different colors. When stitches of the waistband were removed, red-colored tablets having 225 marks on one side of each tablet. When tested with the kit, the tablets tested positive for Methaqualone. A total of 2,300 tablets weighing 860 gm were found. They are estimated to be valued about Rs 9.2 lakh. The consignees name and address was indicated as Mohammed Rafi of Proddutur in Kadapa district of Andhra Pradesh, said the additional DG, adding that Methaqualone is a psychotropic drug prohibited under Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act. The drug was to be exported out of the country as a consignment. Efforts are on to locate the consignee and further investigation in the case is in progress, he added. HYDERABAD: In a major catch, as many as 2300 tablets of Methaqualone, a psychotropic drug, was seized by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) in Hyderabad on Friday. The contraband tablets were concealed in the waistbands of eight pants and was being sent to Kuwait, as an air cargo consignment, said officials. On specific intelligence that certain cargo booked by a courier company to Kuwait contained contraband material, the officials of DRI, Hyderabad Zone, inspected the courtier company on Friday to verify the cargo. The officials found eight pants in the cargo, in which red-colored tablets of Methaqualone were found. DRI additional director general MK Singh said the cargo was packed in a carton, which contained six jeans pants, one corduroy pant and one half pant of different colors. When stitches of the waistband were removed, red-colored tablets having 225 marks on one side of each tablet. When tested with the kit, the tablets tested positive for Methaqualone. A total of 2,300 tablets weighing 860 gm were found. They are estimated to be valued about Rs 9.2 lakh. The consignees name and address was indicated as Mohammed Rafi of Proddutur in Kadapa district of Andhra Pradesh, said the additional DG, adding that Methaqualone is a psychotropic drug prohibited under Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act. The drug was to be exported out of the country as a consignment. Efforts are on to locate the consignee and further investigation in the case is in progress, he added. Sudhir Srinivasan By Express News Service Its generally believed that all the good ideas are taken. But if Colossal is any indication, apparently not. Its the sort of premise that would make aspiring writers hit their head against the wall for not thinking of it first. The wacky idea is this: A woman in New York realises that the mythical monster thats terrorising South Korea is her spirit animal; that shes responsible for its actions. Its as gloriously simple, and writer-director Nacho Vigalando doesnt concern himself with explaining how its practically possible. All he cares about is telling you an interesting story while milking each situation for humour. For instance, once Gloria (Anne Hathaway) and Oscar (Jason Sudeikis) realise that they are controlling the creatures that are unleashing havoc on the other side of the world, they alleviate their guilt by donating money to the South Korean cause. Its that sort of a film. The joke, often, is their insensitivity. Colossal is also one of those films that lends itself to manifold interpretations. You could say that the monsters are merely projections of the demons within Oscar and Gloria. While Oscars smug arrogance serves to mask his self-hatred, Glorias battle is with her alcoholism. These are the real monsters, and the story is about what happens when two people with deep-rooted issues come in close proximity. Alcohol is a running motif, and its a pity when such a film is releasing in India, for it means plenty of blurred images. Gloria and Oscar are almost always drinking. When you first see Gloria, shes hungover from a night of heavy drinking. When she meets Oscar for the first time, they end up drinking for a whole night. Almost every scene of note after their meeting has the booze flowing freely. It could be a bit of a stretch, but if youre so inclined, you could even make the case that the whole story itself is an artificial reality constructed by two alcoholics to deal with the mundanity of everyday life, and as a means of escape from their issues. As I said, its that sort of a film. The true issues are when the film, as light as a breeze till the final portions, decides to turn serious suddenly. Oscar gets an inexplicable transformation, and the movie becomes bereft of weirdness and humour, its twin life forces. The final scenes are a let-down too. But let that not make you forget that Colossal, for the most part, is a bit like Phoebe of F.R.I.E.N.D.S. Its weird, and refreshingly so. Theres even a laugh-out-loud Phoebe moment when Oscar meets Gloria for the first time. He tells her that his father passed away, and when Gloria asks about his mother, he tells her she passed away way before him. Gloria emphathises only to be reminded by Oscar that she actually came for the funeral. I spat my drink in laughter. Its the sort of everyday joke that makes Colossal so much fun for the mo Director Nacho Vigalando Cast Jason Sudeikis, Anne Hathaway Rating 3.5/5 Its generally believed that all the good ideas are taken. But if Colossal is any indication, apparently not. Its the sort of premise that would make aspiring writers hit their head against the wall for not thinking of it first. The wacky idea is this: A woman in New York realises that the mythical monster thats terrorising South Korea is her spirit animal; that shes responsible for its actions. Its as gloriously simple, and writer-director Nacho Vigalando doesnt concern himself with explaining how its practically possible. All he cares about is telling you an interesting story while milking each situation for humour. For instance, once Gloria (Anne Hathaway) and Oscar (Jason Sudeikis) realise that they are controlling the creatures that are unleashing havoc on the other side of the world, they alleviate their guilt by donating money to the South Korean cause. Its that sort of a film. The joke, often, is their insensitivity. Colossal is also one of those films that lends itself to manifold interpretations. You could say that the monsters are merely projections of the demons within Oscar and Gloria. While Oscars smug arrogance serves to mask his self-hatred, Glorias battle is with her alcoholism. These are the real monsters, and the story is about what happens when two people with deep-rooted issues come in close proximity. Alcohol is a running motif, and its a pity when such a film is releasing in India, for it means plenty of blurred images. Gloria and Oscar are almost always drinking. When you first see Gloria, shes hungover from a night of heavy drinking. When she meets Oscar for the first time, they end up drinking for a whole night. Almost every scene of note after their meeting has the booze flowing freely. It could be a bit of a stretch, but if youre so inclined, you could even make the case that the whole story itself is an artificial reality constructed by two alcoholics to deal with the mundanity of everyday life, and as a means of escape from their issues. As I said, its that sort of a film. The true issues are when the film, as light as a breeze till the final portions, decides to turn serious suddenly. Oscar gets an inexplicable transformation, and the movie becomes bereft of weirdness and humour, its twin life forces. The final scenes are a let-down too. But let that not make you forget that Colossal, for the most part, is a bit like Phoebe of F.R.I.E.N.D.S. Its weird, and refreshingly so. Theres even a laugh-out-loud Phoebe moment when Oscar meets Gloria for the first time. He tells her that his father passed away, and when Gloria asks about his mother, he tells her she passed away way before him. Gloria emphathises only to be reminded by Oscar that she actually came for the funeral. I spat my drink in laughter. Its the sort of everyday joke that makes Colossal so much fun for the mo Director Nacho Vigalando Cast Jason Sudeikis, Anne Hathaway Rating 3.5/5 Chandrakanth Viswanath By Express News Service KOCHI: Many were in a shock when they learned, a few years ago, that 'Paathu', the talkative smart Muslim housewife of 'M 80 Moosa', a popular television soap, had got married at the Sreekrishna Temple of Guruvayoor, where the entry is restricted to Hindus. However, soon their frowns turned to awe when they learned that the actress, identified closely with her Kozhikoodan Muslim character with her trademark colloquial Malayalam, was Surabhi Lakshmi in real life. The 30-year-old actor, the native of Narikkuni, on the outskirts of Kozhikode, was first noticed for her stunning performance as the mother of two teenagers in the TV soap. She has nearly three dozen films to her credit. I am a small actor who played minor roles in some films. I could take this role to a higher level only with the support of my director, writer and co-actors, especially (co-actor) Krishan (Balakrishnan) who helped me in learning the dialect, Surabhi told media persons in Salala, Oman, where she is on a visit. She had received a special mention for the same role in the State film awards too. In her award-winning role, Surabhi portrays the challenges of a middle-aged widow and mother from a lower-income group. The role was reportedly rejected by many actors in view of being typecast. We came across her after seeing a still from the movie, 'Ayalum Njanum Thammil'. And when we narrated the character to her over the phone, her reply was very positive and she said she had come across such women in her daily life, said Anil Thomas, director of 'Minnaminung'. Six things you did not know about Surabhi Lakshmi: Surabhi came into limelight after winning the reality show "Best Actor" aired on a prominent Malayalam television channel. Her award-winning role in Minnaminung- The Firefly' which brought the national award back to Malayalam film industry after a gap of 14 years, was Surabhi's first full-length role. She began her career in 2005 with a role in 'By the People' directed by Jayaraj. Surabhi had bagged the Kerala Sahitya Nataka Academy's best actress award in 2010 and 2016 for her role in Yakshikathakalum Naattuvarthamanangalum'. She is the fifth Malayalam actress to bag the prestigious award. Previously, Sarada, Monisha, Shobhana and Meera Jasmine had won the award. She is a research scholar at Kalady Sree Sankara University, where she did her MA in Theatre arts. Surabhi is a first rank holder in BA Bharatha Natyam from the same Kalady Sree Sankara University. KOCHI: Many were in a shock when they learned, a few years ago, that 'Paathu', the talkative smart Muslim housewife of 'M 80 Moosa', a popular television soap, had got married at the Sreekrishna Temple of Guruvayoor, where the entry is restricted to Hindus. However, soon their frowns turned to awe when they learned that the actress, identified closely with her Kozhikoodan Muslim character with her trademark colloquial Malayalam, was Surabhi Lakshmi in real life. The 30-year-old actor, the native of Narikkuni, on the outskirts of Kozhikode, was first noticed for her stunning performance as the mother of two teenagers in the TV soap. She has nearly three dozen films to her credit. I am a small actor who played minor roles in some films. I could take this role to a higher level only with the support of my director, writer and co-actors, especially (co-actor) Krishan (Balakrishnan) who helped me in learning the dialect, Surabhi told media persons in Salala, Oman, where she is on a visit. She had received a special mention for the same role in the State film awards too. In her award-winning role, Surabhi portrays the challenges of a middle-aged widow and mother from a lower-income group. The role was reportedly rejected by many actors in view of being typecast. We came across her after seeing a still from the movie, 'Ayalum Njanum Thammil'. And when we narrated the character to her over the phone, her reply was very positive and she said she had come across such women in her daily life, said Anil Thomas, director of 'Minnaminung'.Six things you did not know about Surabhi Lakshmi: Surabhi came into limelight after winning the reality show "Best Actor" aired on a prominent Malayalam television channel. Her award-winning role in Minnaminung- The Firefly' which brought the national award back to Malayalam film industry after a gap of 14 years, was Surabhi's first full-length role. She began her career in 2005 with a role in 'By the People' directed by Jayaraj. Surabhi had bagged the Kerala Sahitya Nataka Academy's best actress award in 2010 and 2016 for her role in Yakshikathakalum Naattuvarthamanangalum'. She is the fifth Malayalam actress to bag the prestigious award. Previously, Sarada, Monisha, Shobhana and Meera Jasmine had won the award. She is a research scholar at Kalady Sree Sankara University, where she did her MA in Theatre arts. Surabhi is a first rank holder in BA Bharatha Natyam from the same Kalady Sree Sankara University. Sudhir Srinivasan By Express News Service The weeks before the release of a Mani Ratnam film are striking for their sights and sounds. Its all you can do to not hum the songs of the film in question, to not get yourself a makeover in the likeness of the lead actors. As I happily hum Azhagiye, I realise its just normal service this week. Its almost surreal to consider that the filmmaker has been bewitching us so since the 1980s. Is there another contemporary who has been around for as long, who has remained as invigorated? What do you suppose youre doing right? (Laughs) I dont know. But lets not forget that Ive barely made as many films as some other senior filmmakers. But it isnt just the number, is it? Its quite impressive youve managed to remain relevant for so long. Years are numbers too. Okay, let me ask you. Youre a journalist. Do you think your exposure to your environment will somehow fade with time? Its the same with me. Only, I have the opportunity to turn my reactions to scripts. Today, theres much discussion over censorship, over freedom of expression. In such times, are you able to write the stories you want to? Say, if you wanted to elaborate on the atheism of Aadhi in OK Kanmani, could you have done so? I suppose I can. I think Ive always done that. Im a part of this culture, thissetup, and naturally, I have my own reactions, my opinions. As long as Im convinced they are genuine and I feel confident expressing them, Im sure I can write as I please. Without worrying over potential backlashes? There are so many factors that curb ones creativity. Let me assure you, whatever creativity we channel into our films, it isnt pure. In fact, it is my view that its sometimes good to have limiting factors. The dates of artistes,the limitations of budgets, the unavailability of technology...these are all curbs too. If anything, they help you operate intensely within a defined space. As much as you can express yourself in a newspaper, I can express myself in my film. Its rather surprising that youve followed up one love story (OK Kanmani) with another (Kaatru Veliyidai). Its not what I wanted originally. I had something else in mind, but the casting didnt fall into place. I fell back on this story. Hold on. Mani Ratnam has casting trouble? (Smiles) It isnt just about availability of artistes. There are so many other factors that come into play. For instance, the role may demand that the artiste shave their head. But they may be committed to other projects. Even if everything falls into place, its important for me that they not be too right for the role either. What do you mean? The actor in question shouldnt have done too much of the same role. If he has, then it makes the audience view the actor, not the character he plays. Yes, its a risk to cast actors against the grain, but it makes it easier for the audience to find immersion in my world. A still from Kaatru Veliyidai Do you tell the actor to transform himself completely into the characters shoes? ? The first thing I usually tell an actor is that theyre not on the sets to please me. I have the power to say yes, but the actor shouldnt be worried about that. I want the actor to invest himself in the role. Sometimes, Im quite happy for them to do the opposite of what I expect them to, so long as its genuine. It is this that make the role real and unstructured. In mind and heart, the actor must become the character. Having said that, we all know that every actor interprets the same role differently, just like every director interprets the same script differently. Sometimes, theres a tendency for fans to speak in superlativesto say that nobody could have played the role of Velunaicker as Kamal Haasan did in your Naayagan; that he was perfect. I dont think its right to call anything perfect in art. Every individual contributes uniquely. In that sense, think of Kaatru Veliyidai as the Mani Ratnam-Karthi-Aditi version of it. Youve never had trouble getting the creme de la creme of the industry to work with you. Your first film, Pallavi Anuppalavi, had music by Ilaiyaraaja, was edited by Lenin, and was shot by Balu Mahendra. (Smiles) It was just a matter of asking them. It was really as simple. I had faith in my script, and wanted to work with those I felt could do justice to it. Also, as I had no experience, I had nothing to lose. What was the worst that could happen? They would say no? After painstakingly making these films, are you able to enjoy them the same way an average fan does? Unfortunately, no. Im never truly able to enjoy them. I disassociate from my work after its done. However, its different with the music. It doesnt feel like its mine. Once Im done shooting it, the music exists as a standalone art form. As much as I can enjoy a Ilaiyaraaja song from another film, Im able to enjoy a Rahman song from my film. Music is beautiful like that. Elaborate videos of two of your songs from Kaatru Veliyidai Sarattu Vandiyila and Azhagiye were released ahead of the films release. As a filmmaker who no doubt wants to share the full work at once, is this annoying? Thats the nature of marketing these days. The shelf life is so short that its important that films be advertised widely. I have no choice but to embrace how its done. After all, I also consume other trailers, and find myself motivated to watch films based on promo videos. There are film writers out there who are latching on to every frame, trying to predict the story. (Laughs) Its a trailer, people. Thats two minutes of footage from a film that is over two hours long. I hope we are not revealing too much. The trailer does indicate that Kaatru Veliyidais is a broader canvas than OK Kanmanis. Yes, this is also more classical. The film is wide in every sense: emotion, duration, texture, tone Its a period film set in the 90s. It seems to me that such a classical love story wouldnt be bound by time. It isnt. You can set it in another time period if you wish, another place even. Its a relationship film; it about two very real people. It can happen anywhere. Perhaps Im overreaching here, but the films promo videos hinted at some patriotic beats. I dont know if you are right in drawing conclusions based on a scene or two from the trailer. Fair enough. Tell me, how much of yourself do you pour into your protagonist? Not every protagonist is me, but every protagonist has a bit of me. In fact, its true of every character in my film, not just the protagonist. Thats the beauty of writing a story. You can breathe life into multiple characters. Even the villains have a bit of me. I cant tell you that they dont; I mean, where else did they come from? In that case, are you a patriot? Leaving aside undertones from Kaatru Veliyidais trailer, the climax of Roja is a bit of a giveaway too. (Pause) If you were born in China, you woul be rooting for it. If you were born in the US, you will be supporting it. Ultimately, these lines, these boundaries, they are checks, controls to unify us, to manage large groups of people If youre asking me whether as a way of life, these divisions caste, religion, nation, language ma ter to me? No. Not for me. Kaatru Veliyidai releases today. The weeks before the release of a Mani Ratnam film are striking for their sights and sounds. Its all you can do to not hum the songs of the film in question, to not get yourself a makeover in the likeness of the lead actors. As I happily hum Azhagiye, I realise its just normal service this week. Its almost surreal to consider that the filmmaker has been bewitching us so since the 1980s. Is there another contemporary who has been around for as long, who has remained as invigorated? What do you suppose youre doing right? (Laughs) I dont know. But lets not forget that Ive barely made as many films as some other senior filmmakers. But it isnt just the number, is it? Its quite impressive youve managed to remain relevant for so long. Years are numbers too. Okay, let me ask you. Youre a journalist. Do you think your exposure to your environment will somehow fade with time? Its the same with me. Only, I have the opportunity to turn my reactions to scripts. Today, theres much discussion over censorship, over freedom of expression. In such times, are you able to write the stories you want to? Say, if you wanted to elaborate on the atheism of Aadhi in OK Kanmani, could you have done so? I suppose I can. I think Ive always done that. Im a part of this culture, thissetup, and naturally, I have my own reactions, my opinions. As long as Im convinced they are genuine and I feel confident expressing them, Im sure I can write as I please. Without worrying over potential backlashes? There are so many factors that curb ones creativity. Let me assure you, whatever creativity we channel into our films, it isnt pure. In fact, it is my view that its sometimes good to have limiting factors. The dates of artistes,the limitations of budgets, the unavailability of technology...these are all curbs too. If anything, they help you operate intensely within a defined space. As much as you can express yourself in a newspaper, I can express myself in my film. Its rather surprising that youve followed up one love story (OK Kanmani) with another (Kaatru Veliyidai). Its not what I wanted originally. I had something else in mind, but the casting didnt fall into place. I fell back on this story. Hold on. Mani Ratnam has casting trouble? (Smiles) It isnt just about availability of artistes. There are so many other factors that come into play. For instance, the role may demand that the artiste shave their head. But they may be committed to other projects. Even if everything falls into place, its important for me that they not be too right for the role either. What do you mean? The actor in question shouldnt have done too much of the same role. If he has, then it makes the audience view the actor, not the character he plays. Yes, its a risk to cast actors against the grain, but it makes it easier for the audience to find immersion in my world. A still from Kaatru Veliyidai Do you tell the actor to transform himself completely into the characters shoes? ? The first thing I usually tell an actor is that theyre not on the sets to please me. I have the power to say yes, but the actor shouldnt be worried about that. I want the actor to invest himself in the role. Sometimes, Im quite happy for them to do the opposite of what I expect them to, so long as its genuine. It is this that make the role real and unstructured. In mind and heart, the actor must become the character. Having said that, we all know that every actor interprets the same role differently, just like every director interprets the same script differently. Sometimes, theres a tendency for fans to speak in superlativesto say that nobody could have played the role of Velunaicker as Kamal Haasan did in your Naayagan; that he was perfect. I dont think its right to call anything perfect in art. Every individual contributes uniquely. In that sense, think of Kaatru Veliyidai as the Mani Ratnam-Karthi-Aditi version of it. Youve never had trouble getting the creme de la creme of the industry to work with you. Your first film, Pallavi Anuppalavi, had music by Ilaiyaraaja, was edited by Lenin, and was shot by Balu Mahendra. (Smiles) It was just a matter of asking them. It was really as simple. I had faith in my script, and wanted to work with those I felt could do justice to it. Also, as I had no experience, I had nothing to lose. What was the worst that could happen? They would say no? After painstakingly making these films, are you able to enjoy them the same way an average fan does? Unfortunately, no. Im never truly able to enjoy them. I disassociate from my work after its done. However, its different with the music. It doesnt feel like its mine. Once Im done shooting it, the music exists as a standalone art form. As much as I can enjoy a Ilaiyaraaja song from another film, Im able to enjoy a Rahman song from my film. Music is beautiful like that. Elaborate videos of two of your songs from Kaatru Veliyidai Sarattu Vandiyila and Azhagiye were released ahead of the films release. As a filmmaker who no doubt wants to share the full work at once, is this annoying? Thats the nature of marketing these days. The shelf life is so short that its important that films be advertised widely. I have no choice but to embrace how its done. After all, I also consume other trailers, and find myself motivated to watch films based on promo videos. There are film writers out there who are latching on to every frame, trying to predict the story. (Laughs) Its a trailer, people. Thats two minutes of footage from a film that is over two hours long. I hope we are not revealing too much. The trailer does indicate that Kaatru Veliyidais is a broader canvas than OK Kanmanis. Yes, this is also more classical. The film is wide in every sense: emotion, duration, texture, tone Its a period film set in the 90s. It seems to me that such a classical love story wouldnt be bound by time. It isnt. You can set it in another time period if you wish, another place even. Its a relationship film; it about two very real people. It can happen anywhere. Perhaps Im overreaching here, but the films promo videos hinted at some patriotic beats. I dont know if you are right in drawing conclusions based on a scene or two from the trailer. Fair enough. Tell me, how much of yourself do you pour into your protagonist? Not every protagonist is me, but every protagonist has a bit of me. In fact, its true of every character in my film, not just the protagonist. Thats the beauty of writing a story. You can breathe life into multiple characters. Even the villains have a bit of me. I cant tell you that they dont; I mean, where else did they come from? In that case, are you a patriot? Leaving aside undertones from Kaatru Veliyidais trailer, the climax of Roja is a bit of a giveaway too. (Pause) If you were born in China, you woul be rooting for it. If you were born in the US, you will be supporting it. Ultimately, these lines, these boundaries, they are checks, controls to unify us, to manage large groups of people If youre asking me whether as a way of life, these divisions caste, religion, nation, language ma ter to me? No. Not for me. Kaatru Veliyidai releases today. Namita Bajpai By Express News Service LUCKNOW: Rudyard Kipling's Mowgli came alive in the jungles of Katraniyaghat in Bahraich district, 200 km from Lucknow, when local policemen rescued an eight-year-old girl from a troop of monkeys recently. The cops had to face resistance from the simians before they could rescue the girl. Mowgli, the man-cub protagonist of Kipling's The Jungle Book was reared by wolves pack in 'Seeonee hills', now in MP. The eight-year-old girl found living with a troop of monkeys in the Kataraniyaghat Wildlife Sanctuary in hospital after being rescued by police in Bahraich on Thursday.(Photo | PTI) The girl was spotted when a police party of Motinagar range in Bahariach headed by sub-inspector Suresh Yadav was on routine night patrol in the woods of Katarniyaghat. We spotted her playing among apes. As we tried to go near the girl, the monkeys surrounded her and some of them pounced on us, says sub-inspector Yadav. Even the girl also resisted the cops and screeched at them. The girl, without clothes, was significantly comfortable among the apes. She, however, was finally taken out by the police party and immediately admitted to the district hospital. There is no lead about the family or parents of the girl who can neither talk nor can comprehend any language. She behaves like an ape and screams loudly if doctors try to reach out to her, says Dr DK Singh, chief medical superintendent, Bahraich District Hospital adding that her behaviour is making her treatment difficult. However, he says that the girl, who has been in the hospital for over two months now, is showing definite improvement in her medical condition. The girls presence in the district hospital has evoked curiosity among the locals. As she sees anyone looking at her even from a distance, she starts growling, says Shiraz, who is one among those visiting the strange patient in the district hospital regularly. When she was brought to the hospital, she had wounds all over her body. Her nails and hair were unkempt like monkeys, says superintendent of police (City) Dinesh Tripathi. From her behaviour, it appears that she had been with the monkeys since birth. I visit her personally time-to-time, Tripathi adds. Sharing other details, Dr Singh says that the girl even walks, eats and sits like monkeys. Sometimes she walks on feet and suddenly comes down on all four, says the doctor. Even while eating, the girl spreads the eatables on bed and doesnt use hands to put them in her mouth. She uses her mouth to pick the eatables, says a nurse of Bahraich district hospital. The treatment is proving to be a difficult task for the doctors as she does not understand anything and makes noises and faces like monkeys, and attacks the doctors when they approach her, says a junior doctor. According to the hospital staff attending to her, the girl gets scared on seeing human beings and gets violent very often on seeing people looking at her. LUCKNOW: Rudyard Kipling's Mowgli came alive in the jungles of Katraniyaghat in Bahraich district, 200 km from Lucknow, when local policemen rescued an eight-year-old girl from a troop of monkeys recently. The cops had to face resistance from the simians before they could rescue the girl. Mowgli, the man-cub protagonist of Kipling's The Jungle Book was reared by wolves pack in 'Seeonee hills', now in MP. The eight-year-old girl found living with a troop of monkeys in the Kataraniyaghat Wildlife Sanctuary in hospital after being rescued by police in Bahraich on Thursday.(Photo | PTI)The girl was spotted when a police party of Motinagar range in Bahariach headed by sub-inspector Suresh Yadav was on routine night patrol in the woods of Katarniyaghat. We spotted her playing among apes. As we tried to go near the girl, the monkeys surrounded her and some of them pounced on us, says sub-inspector Yadav. Even the girl also resisted the cops and screeched at them. The girl, without clothes, was significantly comfortable among the apes. She, however, was finally taken out by the police party and immediately admitted to the district hospital. There is no lead about the family or parents of the girl who can neither talk nor can comprehend any language. She behaves like an ape and screams loudly if doctors try to reach out to her, says Dr DK Singh, chief medical superintendent, Bahraich District Hospital adding that her behaviour is making her treatment difficult. However, he says that the girl, who has been in the hospital for over two months now, is showing definite improvement in her medical condition. The girls presence in the district hospital has evoked curiosity among the locals. As she sees anyone looking at her even from a distance, she starts growling, says Shiraz, who is one among those visiting the strange patient in the district hospital regularly. When she was brought to the hospital, she had wounds all over her body. Her nails and hair were unkempt like monkeys, says superintendent of police (City) Dinesh Tripathi. From her behaviour, it appears that she had been with the monkeys since birth. I visit her personally time-to-time, Tripathi adds. Sharing other details, Dr Singh says that the girl even walks, eats and sits like monkeys. Sometimes she walks on feet and suddenly comes down on all four, says the doctor. Even while eating, the girl spreads the eatables on bed and doesnt use hands to put them in her mouth. She uses her mouth to pick the eatables, says a nurse of Bahraich district hospital. The treatment is proving to be a difficult task for the doctors as she does not understand anything and makes noises and faces like monkeys, and attacks the doctors when they approach her, says a junior doctor. According to the hospital staff attending to her, the girl gets scared on seeing human beings and gets violent very often on seeing people looking at her. By PTI NEW DELHI: Air India today lifted its ban on Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad after he expressed regret for assaulting one of its employees, ending his 14-day humiliating ordeal when other airlines also refused to let him on board in solidarity with the national carrier. In a sudden climbdown after combative Shiv Sena members disrupted Lok Sabha proceedings, the tough-talking MP from Maharashtra's Osmanabad, had written a letter to Union Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju yesterday expressing "regret" over the "unfortunate incident". He had also virtually given and undertaking that there would be no repeat of the unsavoury incident and sought lifting of the ban. An Air India spokesperson said the move follows a written order from the Ministry of Civil Aviation. A top official of the Civil Aviation Ministry, in a letter to the Air India CMD said in view of the "apology tendered by Shri Gaikwad and the undertaking of good conduct given by him" the ban should be lifted A spokesperson for the national carrier said, "AI is committed to ensuring its employees are not assaulted or misbehaved with. We will take strong action to preserve dignity of our employees." Aviation sources said that with the AI revoking the ban, private airlines may follow suit after the Civil Aviation Ministry was learnt to have asked private airlines to also revoke the ban. The revocation of the ban came despite two AI unions of the cabin crew and pilots deprecating any move to lift the restrictions imposed on air travel of the MP before he tendered an "unconditional apology" for assaulting R Sukumar, a sexagenarian duty manager of the state-run airline. However, the AI spokesman said," Air India is a subsidiary of the Ministry of Civil Aviation and, therefore, an apology to the ministry is akin to an apology to the airline and our employees." Meanwhile, the government is in the process of preparing a "national no-fly list" of unruly passengers in the aftermath of the row. The Civil Aviation Requirements (CAR) are being amended by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to facilitate such a list, the ministry of civil aviation said in a letter to Air India CMD, while making an appeal to him to lift the ban on Gaikwad. "In order to deal with unruly passengers in a more effective manner in future, an amendment to CAR is being drafted by the DGCA in consultation with this Ministry for establishing a national no-fly list," the letter said. Earlier, while strongly pleading against lifting the ban on Gaikwad, the Air India Cabin Crew Association wrote to its CMD Ashwani Lohani, saying "Unless he tenders an unconditional apology to AI employees, and undertakes in writing to abide by the Chicago and Tokyo Conventions & Rules of the Air and follow all cabin safety and public behaviour norms, we must not let him on board." It said any decision by either the Ministry of Civil Aviation or Parliament to lift the ban will affect the morale of the employees. "Ravindra Gaikwad is and will continue to be a risk to flight safety and flight operations and to Cabin Crew safety on board, and hence Government must think long and hard about letting him back on," the letter added. The association said it would be a "crying shame" if he is let off "without even a rap on the knuckles", adding "It would also crush the morale of all employees and indeed all fair minded Indians. We do not wish to be flying such a person." The Indian Commercial Pilot's Association, one of the unions of pilots of Air India, also demanded an "unconditional apology" from the Shiva Sena MP, failing which they threatened to not fly him. "ICPA strongly condemns his misconduct and demands an unconditional apology for the same, failing which we will be constrained to direct our members not to operate any flight which has Mr Ravindra Gaikwad on board in the interest of the safety and security of our own people," they wrote in a letter to the Civil Aviation Minister. Gaikwad had yesterday written to Raju voicing "regret" over the incident but stopped short of tendering an apology. "It could have been no one's intention to have let the situation aggravate to the level that it eventually did. While the on-going investigation will bring out the factual sequence of events to fix responsibility, this incident may kindly not be seen as a reason for likely recurrence of such an event in future also," he said in the letter. Agitated Shiv Sena MPs had earlier in the day repeatedly forced the House to adjourn amid unruly scenes and even threatened to disrupt Air India operations in Mumbai and Pune. The party's Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Raut had declared the Sena would boycott the April 10 NDA meeting if the ban was not lifted by then. Gaikwad's letter to the Civil Aviation Minister followed a meeting in Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan's chamber in Parliament yesterday where Shiv Sena MPs were told that if he issued a statement undertaking that he would not engage in any such incident in future, the government could intervene and have the ban revoked. The Osmanabad MP had assaulted the AI employee on March 23 after he landed here on a Pune-Delhi all-economy flight. Complaining about not being able to travel business class, Gaikwad repeatedly hit Sukumar with slippers when the latter went to persuade him to disembark after he refused to alight. Gaikwad later boastfully claimed on TV he had hit the official 25 times with slippers. NEW DELHI: Air India today lifted its ban on Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad after he expressed regret for assaulting one of its employees, ending his 14-day humiliating ordeal when other airlines also refused to let him on board in solidarity with the national carrier. In a sudden climbdown after combative Shiv Sena members disrupted Lok Sabha proceedings, the tough-talking MP from Maharashtra's Osmanabad, had written a letter to Union Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju yesterday expressing "regret" over the "unfortunate incident". He had also virtually given and undertaking that there would be no repeat of the unsavoury incident and sought lifting of the ban. An Air India spokesperson said the move follows a written order from the Ministry of Civil Aviation. A top official of the Civil Aviation Ministry, in a letter to the Air India CMD said in view of the "apology tendered by Shri Gaikwad and the undertaking of good conduct given by him" the ban should be lifted A spokesperson for the national carrier said, "AI is committed to ensuring its employees are not assaulted or misbehaved with. We will take strong action to preserve dignity of our employees." Aviation sources said that with the AI revoking the ban, private airlines may follow suit after the Civil Aviation Ministry was learnt to have asked private airlines to also revoke the ban. The revocation of the ban came despite two AI unions of the cabin crew and pilots deprecating any move to lift the restrictions imposed on air travel of the MP before he tendered an "unconditional apology" for assaulting R Sukumar, a sexagenarian duty manager of the state-run airline. However, the AI spokesman said," Air India is a subsidiary of the Ministry of Civil Aviation and, therefore, an apology to the ministry is akin to an apology to the airline and our employees." Meanwhile, the government is in the process of preparing a "national no-fly list" of unruly passengers in the aftermath of the row. The Civil Aviation Requirements (CAR) are being amended by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to facilitate such a list, the ministry of civil aviation said in a letter to Air India CMD, while making an appeal to him to lift the ban on Gaikwad. "In order to deal with unruly passengers in a more effective manner in future, an amendment to CAR is being drafted by the DGCA in consultation with this Ministry for establishing a national no-fly list," the letter said. Earlier, while strongly pleading against lifting the ban on Gaikwad, the Air India Cabin Crew Association wrote to its CMD Ashwani Lohani, saying "Unless he tenders an unconditional apology to AI employees, and undertakes in writing to abide by the Chicago and Tokyo Conventions & Rules of the Air and follow all cabin safety and public behaviour norms, we must not let him on board." It said any decision by either the Ministry of Civil Aviation or Parliament to lift the ban will affect the morale of the employees. "Ravindra Gaikwad is and will continue to be a risk to flight safety and flight operations and to Cabin Crew safety on board, and hence Government must think long and hard about letting him back on," the letter added. The association said it would be a "crying shame" if he is let off "without even a rap on the knuckles", adding "It would also crush the morale of all employees and indeed all fair minded Indians. We do not wish to be flying such a person." The Indian Commercial Pilot's Association, one of the unions of pilots of Air India, also demanded an "unconditional apology" from the Shiva Sena MP, failing which they threatened to not fly him. "ICPA strongly condemns his misconduct and demands an unconditional apology for the same, failing which we will be constrained to direct our members not to operate any flight which has Mr Ravindra Gaikwad on board in the interest of the safety and security of our own people," they wrote in a letter to the Civil Aviation Minister. Gaikwad had yesterday written to Raju voicing "regret" over the incident but stopped short of tendering an apology. "It could have been no one's intention to have let the situation aggravate to the level that it eventually did. While the on-going investigation will bring out the factual sequence of events to fix responsibility, this incident may kindly not be seen as a reason for likely recurrence of such an event in future also," he said in the letter. Agitated Shiv Sena MPs had earlier in the day repeatedly forced the House to adjourn amid unruly scenes and even threatened to disrupt Air India operations in Mumbai and Pune. The party's Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Raut had declared the Sena would boycott the April 10 NDA meeting if the ban was not lifted by then. Gaikwad's letter to the Civil Aviation Minister followed a meeting in Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan's chamber in Parliament yesterday where Shiv Sena MPs were told that if he issued a statement undertaking that he would not engage in any such incident in future, the government could intervene and have the ban revoked. The Osmanabad MP had assaulted the AI employee on March 23 after he landed here on a Pune-Delhi all-economy flight. Complaining about not being able to travel business class, Gaikwad repeatedly hit Sukumar with slippers when the latter went to persuade him to disembark after he refused to alight. Gaikwad later boastfully claimed on TV he had hit the official 25 times with slippers. Namita Bajpai By Express News Service LUCKNOW:In the aftermath of the Supreme Court ruling for shifting of liquor shops away from national and state highways and their subsequent relocation, ongoing anti-liquor protests, spearheaded mainly by women in several UP districts, continued on Thursday. While women protestors took to the streets against shifting of liquor shops to residential areas, the administration geared up to take corrective measures and ensure security to vendors. Several cases of violence, arson and vandalism have been registered against the protestors in over two dozen districts of the State during the last two days. However, the administration continued to grapple with the situation.While CM Yogi Adityanath made a fervent appeal to protestors not to take the law into their own hands, he also directed authorities concerned to ensure that shops were located away from educational institutions, offices, religious places and residential areas. The chief secretary, meanwhile, issued directives to DMs, district police chiefs and divisional commissioners to respect public sentiments while ensuring compliance of the SC order. He cautioned officers concerned against shifting shops to residential areas. Officers were also told to be careful and ensure that protestors do not target the legal and licensed shops. On the other hand, principal secretary, Home, Debashish Panda, asked district officials to provide security to liquor vendors. The excise officials were directed to check sale of spurious liquor. Besides, reports of protests and subsequent arrests in different localities of Lucknow wherein anti-liquor protestors attacked several booze shops, broke the locks and destroyed bottles, 63 persons, including 9 women were booked on charges of arson and vandalism in Saharanpur on Thursday. Incidents of violent stir, led by women, were also reported from Firozabad, Aligarh, Bareilly, Kanpur Dehat and many other places. In a village in Badaun district, women chased away the liquor vendors and put their shop on fire. The situation took a serious turn in Etah, where the protestors gheraoed a District Magistrates office, demanding action against the authorities granting licences to liquor vendors who were setting up shops in residential localities after being shifted from national and state highways. In Bareilly, protestors wanted liquor shops to be moved out of their localities while in Shahjahanpur district, they blocked traffic on NH 24 against shifting of a shop to their village. In Meerut, women put deities outside a booze shop to register their protest. In fact, the State authorities are rushing with the relocation of liquor shops in compliance with SC order. LUCKNOW:In the aftermath of the Supreme Court ruling for shifting of liquor shops away from national and state highways and their subsequent relocation, ongoing anti-liquor protests, spearheaded mainly by women in several UP districts, continued on Thursday. While women protestors took to the streets against shifting of liquor shops to residential areas, the administration geared up to take corrective measures and ensure security to vendors. Several cases of violence, arson and vandalism have been registered against the protestors in over two dozen districts of the State during the last two days. However, the administration continued to grapple with the situation.While CM Yogi Adityanath made a fervent appeal to protestors not to take the law into their own hands, he also directed authorities concerned to ensure that shops were located away from educational institutions, offices, religious places and residential areas. The chief secretary, meanwhile, issued directives to DMs, district police chiefs and divisional commissioners to respect public sentiments while ensuring compliance of the SC order. He cautioned officers concerned against shifting shops to residential areas. Officers were also told to be careful and ensure that protestors do not target the legal and licensed shops. On the other hand, principal secretary, Home, Debashish Panda, asked district officials to provide security to liquor vendors. The excise officials were directed to check sale of spurious liquor. Besides, reports of protests and subsequent arrests in different localities of Lucknow wherein anti-liquor protestors attacked several booze shops, broke the locks and destroyed bottles, 63 persons, including 9 women were booked on charges of arson and vandalism in Saharanpur on Thursday. Incidents of violent stir, led by women, were also reported from Firozabad, Aligarh, Bareilly, Kanpur Dehat and many other places. In a village in Badaun district, women chased away the liquor vendors and put their shop on fire. The situation took a serious turn in Etah, where the protestors gheraoed a District Magistrates office, demanding action against the authorities granting licences to liquor vendors who were setting up shops in residential localities after being shifted from national and state highways. In Bareilly, protestors wanted liquor shops to be moved out of their localities while in Shahjahanpur district, they blocked traffic on NH 24 against shifting of a shop to their village. In Meerut, women put deities outside a booze shop to register their protest. In fact, the State authorities are rushing with the relocation of liquor shops in compliance with SC order. Ramananda Sengupta By Express News Service The war of words over the Dalai Lamas visit to Arunachal Pradesh took a sharper turn on Thursday, with state-run Chinese media warning that the Tibetan leaders nine-day visit to the State, which China claims, would lead to serious consequences. Indias ambassador to China Vijay Gokhale was called in to the foreign ministry office in Beijing on Wednesday, to express Chinas strong displeasure over the visit. China cites historical reasons to claim huge swathes of the State, including Tawang, which houses the largest Buddhist monastery outside Lhasa. On Thursday, an editorial in the state-run Global Times warned that China, apart from being far more powerful, also wielded enormous influence in Indias turbulent northern states. Hence, if China engages in a geopolitical game with India, will Beijing lose to New Delhi? India, on the other hand, asserts that Arunachal is an Indian state which elects members to Parliament. One of them, Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju, has asked China to stop interfering in Indias internal affairs, while the Chief Minister of the State, Pema Khandu, has said China has no right to threaten India on the Dalai Lamas movement within the country, as India shares boundary with Tibet and not China. This is a statement they (Beijing) have to make, says General (retd) Jiti Bajwa, editor of Indian Defence Review and author of several books and papers on the Peoples Liberation Army. They have said that Arunachal, rather Tawang, is part of southern Tibet, and the Splittist Dalai Lama should not go there. So if hes going there and they keep quiet, their own people will ask why they are not doing anything. So, its a political necessity for them. Calling in an ambassador hardly matters. They had even called our Ambassador Nirupama Rao at midnight (in 2008, when Tibetans tried to scale the walls of the Chinese embassy in New Delhi). These are normal diplomatic actions when they want to make a strong statement, Jiti Bajwa says. India has also taken a strong stand, that this is our country. The resolution is you have to sit somewhere and talk. They cannot threaten and get anything out this way. Also, why are they claiming this monastery (in Tawang)? If it is only a religious place, then we have been going to Kailash Mansarovar for centuries... we have not cited historical grounds to say it belongs to us! As for Kashmir, the disputed areas are with them. The disputed areas are known. They cant create new disputes. Can they now say we are taking over more of eastern Ladakh? That would be an act of war! But if they are talking about the Line of Actual Control, those disputes will be sorted out on the ground. They cannot conquer territory. Or add to the disputed territory, he adds. Jabin T Jacob, a Fellow at the Institute of Chinese Studies, New Delhi, has a different take. The Chinese now have a very different view of themselves, Jacob says.Xi Jinping is meeting Trump as we speak, and I think they want to keep the focus on that. I wouldnt take Global Times too seriously. The Chinese leaders and their media have all become extremely confident of putting their point of view across, and India too has begun to matter in their perceptions now. Weve also called in their chaps for a demarche every now and then. Also, they have been telling us for a few years that they have to be more responsive to Chinese public opinion, including social media. So calling in our ambassador is as much a signal to their domestic audience as it is for India. They are taking a strong line on reincarnation. They have objected to every statement the Dalai Lama has made, like maybe he will not reincarnate, or maybe he will be reincarnated in non-Chinese controlled territory, he says. The war of words over the Dalai Lamas visit to Arunachal Pradesh took a sharper turn on Thursday, with state-run Chinese media warning that the Tibetan leaders nine-day visit to the State, which China claims, would lead to serious consequences. Indias ambassador to China Vijay Gokhale was called in to the foreign ministry office in Beijing on Wednesday, to express Chinas strong displeasure over the visit. China cites historical reasons to claim huge swathes of the State, including Tawang, which houses the largest Buddhist monastery outside Lhasa. On Thursday, an editorial in the state-run Global Times warned that China, apart from being far more powerful, also wielded enormous influence in Indias turbulent northern states. Hence, if China engages in a geopolitical game with India, will Beijing lose to New Delhi? India, on the other hand, asserts that Arunachal is an Indian state which elects members to Parliament. One of them, Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju, has asked China to stop interfering in Indias internal affairs, while the Chief Minister of the State, Pema Khandu, has said China has no right to threaten India on the Dalai Lamas movement within the country, as India shares boundary with Tibet and not China. This is a statement they (Beijing) have to make, says General (retd) Jiti Bajwa, editor of Indian Defence Review and author of several books and papers on the Peoples Liberation Army. They have said that Arunachal, rather Tawang, is part of southern Tibet, and the Splittist Dalai Lama should not go there. So if hes going there and they keep quiet, their own people will ask why they are not doing anything. So, its a political necessity for them. Calling in an ambassador hardly matters. They had even called our Ambassador Nirupama Rao at midnight (in 2008, when Tibetans tried to scale the walls of the Chinese embassy in New Delhi). These are normal diplomatic actions when they want to make a strong statement, Jiti Bajwa says. India has also taken a strong stand, that this is our country. The resolution is you have to sit somewhere and talk. They cannot threaten and get anything out this way. Also, why are they claiming this monastery (in Tawang)? If it is only a religious place, then we have been going to Kailash Mansarovar for centuries... we have not cited historical grounds to say it belongs to us! As for Kashmir, the disputed areas are with them. The disputed areas are known. They cant create new disputes. Can they now say we are taking over more of eastern Ladakh? That would be an act of war! But if they are talking about the Line of Actual Control, those disputes will be sorted out on the ground. They cannot conquer territory. Or add to the disputed territory, he adds. Jabin T Jacob, a Fellow at the Institute of Chinese Studies, New Delhi, has a different take. The Chinese now have a very different view of themselves, Jacob says.Xi Jinping is meeting Trump as we speak, and I think they want to keep the focus on that. I wouldnt take Global Times too seriously. The Chinese leaders and their media have all become extremely confident of putting their point of view across, and India too has begun to matter in their perceptions now. Weve also called in their chaps for a demarche every now and then. Also, they have been telling us for a few years that they have to be more responsive to Chinese public opinion, including social media. So calling in our ambassador is as much a signal to their domestic audience as it is for India. They are taking a strong line on reincarnation. They have objected to every statement the Dalai Lama has made, like maybe he will not reincarnate, or maybe he will be reincarnated in non-Chinese controlled territory, he says. Namita Bajpai By Express News Service LUCKNOW: A day after 8-year-old jungle girl, recovered from the woods of Katarniyaghat wild life sanctuary in Bahriach, hit the headlines, a Lucknow-based NGO Drishti Samajik Sansthan on Friday came forward to adopt the child undergoing treatment in Bhariach District hospital for the last two months. Drishti Samajik Sansthan provides shelter to mentally challenged destitute children. The 8-year-old was brought to Lucknow to the shelter home on Saturday. The nameless kid, however, has been given the name Puja by the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) of State Child and Women Welfare department. The hospital authorities agreed to send the girl to Lucknow only after the CWCs approval. Ever since she caught media attention, people started thronging Bahraich hospital to have a glimpse of the child. On Thursday night, she was given another name Van Durga by Bahriach district magistrate during his visit to the hospital. Since she was rescued from the forest so the DM called her Van Durga, said a hospital staff. WATCH VIDEO: The rush on Friday was such that the hospital authorities had to lock the gates to keep visitors outside. "It was becoming difficult to control the crowd, said Dr DK Singh, chief medical superintendent, Bahraich District Hospital. Meanwhile, on the advice of CWC, professor PK Dalal, head, Department of Psychiatry, King Georges Medical University, Lucknow also visited Puja in Bahraich district hospital to examine her. Responding to the query if the girl was deaf and dumb since birth, Dr Singh said that it could be so but nothing could be said with certainty as she was often seen mumbling for water. The girl, first discovered by firewood pickers in the forests of Katarniyaghat and rescued by Motipur range police team, was admitted to the district hospital on January 25. The girl is mentally challenged and is being looked after by a woman staff of the hospital. LUCKNOW: A day after 8-year-old jungle girl, recovered from the woods of Katarniyaghat wild life sanctuary in Bahriach, hit the headlines, a Lucknow-based NGO Drishti Samajik Sansthan on Friday came forward to adopt the child undergoing treatment in Bhariach District hospital for the last two months. Drishti Samajik Sansthan provides shelter to mentally challenged destitute children. The 8-year-old was brought to Lucknow to the shelter home on Saturday. The nameless kid, however, has been given the name Puja by the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) of State Child and Women Welfare department. The hospital authorities agreed to send the girl to Lucknow only after the CWCs approval. Ever since she caught media attention, people started thronging Bahraich hospital to have a glimpse of the child. On Thursday night, she was given another name Van Durga by Bahriach district magistrate during his visit to the hospital. Since she was rescued from the forest so the DM called her Van Durga, said a hospital staff. WATCH VIDEO: window.__ventunoplayer = window.__ventunoplayer||[]; window.__ventunoplayer.push({video_key: 'OTE3OTU5fHw4fHw2fHwxLDIsMQ==', holder_id: 'vt-video-player', player_type: 'vp', width:'100%', ratio:'4:3'}); The rush on Friday was such that the hospital authorities had to lock the gates to keep visitors outside. "It was becoming difficult to control the crowd, said Dr DK Singh, chief medical superintendent, Bahraich District Hospital. Meanwhile, on the advice of CWC, professor PK Dalal, head, Department of Psychiatry, King Georges Medical University, Lucknow also visited Puja in Bahraich district hospital to examine her. Responding to the query if the girl was deaf and dumb since birth, Dr Singh said that it could be so but nothing could be said with certainty as she was often seen mumbling for water. The girl, first discovered by firewood pickers in the forests of Katarniyaghat and rescued by Motipur range police team, was admitted to the district hospital on January 25. The girl is mentally challenged and is being looked after by a woman staff of the hospital. Santwana Bhattacharya By Express News Service NEW DELHI:Teesta is running dry in peak summer! Wheres the scope of sharing? These were the words of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee at a public meeting a day ago, in the run up to Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasinas New Delhi visit. On Thursday, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj made it clear an agreement on Teesta waters is not on the cards when Hasina comes. In between these two statements, however, theres an attempt to break the ice. That Banerjee finally agreed to fly down to New Delhi on Friday evening, coinciding with Hasinas visit and she agreed to attend the PMs luncheon meeting at Hyderabad House is a pointer to the changing optics. It took a persuasive phone call from President Pranab Mukherjee for Banerjee to consider a trip to Delhi. Even then she did not readily agree to attend the formal banquet for the Bangladesh premier at Rashtrapati Bhawan, where CMs of the Northeastern states too have been invited. The Presidents special gesture had to be followed up by Sushma Swaraj with a bout of domestic diplomacy. A video conference call with the Bengal CM was organised on Wednesday, to soften her further. One of Banerjees main grouses against the Modi government (and the previous Manmohan Singhs) has been that her State was never kept in the loop. In 2011, she embarrassingly pulled out of Manmohans trip to Dhaka at the last moment, spoiling chances of both the Land Boundary Agreement and the Teesta pact. Modi seems to have handled the mercurial Banerjee a bit better, in the sense that the historic Land Agreement happened. Now the Teesta accord, hanging fire since 1984, remains. In a tactical move, Banerjee has been singled out as the only CM whom Modi has invited to be by his side at the Hyderabad House, when the two train services and one bus service from Kolkata to Khulna, Bangladesh, are launched. As a high-level government source pointed out: Many things can happen when leaders sit around the sofa and talk informally. This is first time that Modi and Banerjee will be in proximity after the bitter fallout over demonetisation. Theres another reason though. Like Mukherjee, Banerjee too has a personal equation with Hasina. And as a CM of a border State, Banerjee needs to maintain good ties with Dhaka, even if she continues to be a stumbling block to the Teesta agreement. NEW DELHI:Teesta is running dry in peak summer! Wheres the scope of sharing? These were the words of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee at a public meeting a day ago, in the run up to Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasinas New Delhi visit. On Thursday, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj made it clear an agreement on Teesta waters is not on the cards when Hasina comes. In between these two statements, however, theres an attempt to break the ice. That Banerjee finally agreed to fly down to New Delhi on Friday evening, coinciding with Hasinas visit and she agreed to attend the PMs luncheon meeting at Hyderabad House is a pointer to the changing optics. It took a persuasive phone call from President Pranab Mukherjee for Banerjee to consider a trip to Delhi. Even then she did not readily agree to attend the formal banquet for the Bangladesh premier at Rashtrapati Bhawan, where CMs of the Northeastern states too have been invited. The Presidents special gesture had to be followed up by Sushma Swaraj with a bout of domestic diplomacy. A video conference call with the Bengal CM was organised on Wednesday, to soften her further. One of Banerjees main grouses against the Modi government (and the previous Manmohan Singhs) has been that her State was never kept in the loop. In 2011, she embarrassingly pulled out of Manmohans trip to Dhaka at the last moment, spoiling chances of both the Land Boundary Agreement and the Teesta pact. Modi seems to have handled the mercurial Banerjee a bit better, in the sense that the historic Land Agreement happened. Now the Teesta accord, hanging fire since 1984, remains. In a tactical move, Banerjee has been singled out as the only CM whom Modi has invited to be by his side at the Hyderabad House, when the two train services and one bus service from Kolkata to Khulna, Bangladesh, are launched. As a high-level government source pointed out: Many things can happen when leaders sit around the sofa and talk informally. This is first time that Modi and Banerjee will be in proximity after the bitter fallout over demonetisation. Theres another reason though. Like Mukherjee, Banerjee too has a personal equation with Hasina. And as a CM of a border State, Banerjee needs to maintain good ties with Dhaka, even if she continues to be a stumbling block to the Teesta agreement. By PTI NEW DELHI: Sharpening its attack on the Arvind Kejriwal government in Delhi over the findings of Shunglu Committee, the BJP today demanded CBI and CVC probes into "illegal" decisions of the AAP dispensation as flagged by the panel in its report. The party also demanded Lt Governor Anil Baijal set aside all appointments of AAP functionaries in the Delhi government, made without the LG's approval. Addressing a press conference here, BJP leader Meenakshi Lekhi alleged that Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal "looted" public money to benefit AAP functionaries. Lekhi, flanked by Leader of Opposition in Delhi Assembly Vijender Gupta, also charged the Kejriwal government with engaging in "nepotism and corruption". "We demanded CBI and Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) probes into the three-member Shunglu panel report which has flagged AAP-led Delhi government's various illegal decisions including appointment of party functionaries, and allotment of land to Aam Aadmi Party for its office," she said. Gupta alleged that Kejriwal-led Delhi Cabinet violated laid down rules to take several decisions. In its report, the panel has pointed out "gross abuse of power" by the AAP government. Yesterday, BJP demanded the "suspension" of AAP government, which enjoys a massive mandate of 65 out of 70 seats in the Assembly. The committee headed by former CAG V K Shunglu was set up in August, 2016 to ascertain the functioning of the AAP government. Delhi Congress chief Ajay Maken had accessed the report through an RTI in February. NEW DELHI: Sharpening its attack on the Arvind Kejriwal government in Delhi over the findings of Shunglu Committee, the BJP today demanded CBI and CVC probes into "illegal" decisions of the AAP dispensation as flagged by the panel in its report. The party also demanded Lt Governor Anil Baijal set aside all appointments of AAP functionaries in the Delhi government, made without the LG's approval. Addressing a press conference here, BJP leader Meenakshi Lekhi alleged that Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal "looted" public money to benefit AAP functionaries. Lekhi, flanked by Leader of Opposition in Delhi Assembly Vijender Gupta, also charged the Kejriwal government with engaging in "nepotism and corruption". "We demanded CBI and Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) probes into the three-member Shunglu panel report which has flagged AAP-led Delhi government's various illegal decisions including appointment of party functionaries, and allotment of land to Aam Aadmi Party for its office," she said. Gupta alleged that Kejriwal-led Delhi Cabinet violated laid down rules to take several decisions. In its report, the panel has pointed out "gross abuse of power" by the AAP government. Yesterday, BJP demanded the "suspension" of AAP government, which enjoys a massive mandate of 65 out of 70 seats in the Assembly. The committee headed by former CAG V K Shunglu was set up in August, 2016 to ascertain the functioning of the AAP government. Delhi Congress chief Ajay Maken had accessed the report through an RTI in February. ExxonMobil Corporation XOM is reportedly holding discussions for the acquisition of a refining and petrochemical complex in Singapore. The company, through this buyout, aims to enhance the production of fuel and chemical in Asia. However, no deal has been inked to date. The U.S oil giant is in talks with the receiver for Singapore-based Jurong Aromatics Corporation Pte Ltd. regarding the purchase of the Jurong Island properties of the latter. Per Reuters, Jurong Aromatics Corporation placed itself into receivership in Sep 2015, and Exxon Mobil is likely to acquire the bankrupt company. The accord, if successful, will increase Exxon Mobils paraxylene capacity to 1.8 million tons, annually. Irving, TX-based ExxonMobil is the worlds largest publicly traded oil company, engaged in oil and natural gas exploration and production, petroleum products refining and marketing, chemicals manufacture, and other energy-related businesses. ExxonMobil is the worlds best run integrated oil company based on its track record of high return on capital employed. It has long been a core holding for investors seeking defensive as well as continued dividend growth. Despite its strong fundamentals, ExxonMobils shares underperformed the Oil & Gas-International Integrated industry in the last six months. During the aforesaid period, the stock lost 6.1% compared with 0.8% decrease for the broader industry. As a result, ExxonMobil carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Some better-ranked players in the energy sector include Antero Resources Corporation AR, Pioneer Natural Resources Company PXD and Energy Transfer Equity, L.P. ETE. Antero Resources and Pioneer Natural sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) while Energy Transfer carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. Antero Resources earnings beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate in all the prior four quarters with an average positive earnings surprise of 239.10%. Story continues Pioneer Naturals earnings surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate in three of the prior four quarters with an average positive earnings surprise of 21.86%. Energy Transfer is expected to witness year-over-year earnings growth of 42.12% in 2017. Zacks Best Private Investment Ideas While we are happy to share many articles like this on the website, our best recommendations and most in-depth research are not available to the public. Starting today, for the next month, you can follow all Zacks' private buys and sells in real time. Our experts cover all kinds of trades from value to momentum . . . from stocks under $10 to ETF and option moves . . . from stocks that corporate insiders are buying up to companies that are about to report positive earnings surprises. You can even look inside exclusive portfolios that are normally closed to new investors. Click here for Zacks' private trades >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Energy Transfer Equity, L.P. (ETE): Free Stock Analysis Report Exxon Mobil Corporation (XOM): Free Stock Analysis Report Pioneer Natural Resources Company (PXD): Free Stock Analysis Report Antero Resources Corporation (AR): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Deepa Venkatesan By Former BJP MP Tarun Vijay has been asking people on his Twitter timeline to watch his interview carefully and listen again before labelling him a racist. I, a black south Indian woman, who would like to be described as a dusky Tamilian rather, have watched your video 10 times already, sir. "If we were racist, then why would have all the entire south which is complete... you know... Tamil, Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra.... Why do we live with them? We have blacks, black people all around us. You're denying your own nation, you're denying your ancestry, that's very bad. I think we can be as good or as bad as any other human community." That is what you have said. There is no ambiguity in it. As a dusky Tamil woman watching Tarun Vijay utter these words, I felt disgusted. Too many childhood memories surfaced as I watched the minister pause before saying the word 'black' referring specifically to 'all South Indians'. The one distinct recall is from school, when as a 6-year old, a teacher asked me to take the back row during a dance performance. Two girls from the front row laughed. And one even asked, "Teacher, is she behind because she is black and should not be in the centre of our dance?" The teacher just silently moved on to arrange all the other six-year-olds. So began my journey of attacks on my skin, and my learning to live with it silently. I have often observed racial remarks being passed casually, as jokes. But today when I heard it from a former Rajya Sabha MP and realised this was the mentality of a person who has held a position in which he is responsible to his people, including me, to keep our best interests at heart while performing his duties, I could not keep silent anymore. How can it not be racist, when clearly there is discrimination? Discrimination that I, and others like me, face all the time. In a land where the most successful cosmetic is a product that promises elusive fairness and therefore loveliness, where movies mostly have a distinctly white-washed lead cast, except for some superstars and many villains and their lowly sidekicks, the discrimination is quite evident. The leading ladies are invariably fair and lovely, as society expects them to be an example of that clearly evident in matrimonial ads, which showcase fair-skinned girl as a selling point in the marriage market. How then can the former MPs remark not be considered racist? Having hit the headlines over the remarks he made in a Skype interview to an international news channel about the attack on Nigerians in Noida, Tarun Vijay issued a clarification. His remarks may have been merely bad ad lib, but he didnt help things by invoking Lord Krishna to salvage his image. "Yes, it sounds ridiculous and very bad. I meant we worship Krishna, which literally means black. And we have never had any racism," Vijay said. Vijay is now spending a lot of time on social media, replying, tweeting and clarifying his stance to each and every person he may have offended. Add to that, he has been retweeting old pictures and statements of his in an effort to prove that he has done a lot of good work for the community, or to use his phrase, blacks of South India. In fact, one Twitter user sought to remind people how, as a North Indian, Tarun Vijay had contributed to the spread of ancient Tamil literary great Thiruvalluvar's legacy. Many would recollect how school children and teachers from Tamil Nadu were invited in 2015 to recite verses of the Thirukural in Parliament, thanks to Tarun Vijay's efforts. But does that make up for his stereotyping of the people of a region of the country in discriminatory language? Isnt this the same kind of treatment a whole lot of us accord to people who have an epicanthic fold on their upper eyelids and call them using the derogatory term 'chinkis' because they belong to the north-east? Former BJP MP Tarun Vijay has been asking people on his Twitter timeline to watch his interview carefully and listen again before labelling him a racist. I, a black south Indian woman, who would like to be described as a dusky Tamilian rather, have watched your video 10 times already, sir. "If we were racist, then why would have all the entire south which is complete... you know... Tamil, Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra.... Why do we live with them? We have blacks, black people all around us. You're denying your own nation, you're denying your ancestry, that's very bad. I think we can be as good or as bad as any other human community." That is what you have said. There is no ambiguity in it. As a dusky Tamil woman watching Tarun Vijay utter these words, I felt disgusted. Too many childhood memories surfaced as I watched the minister pause before saying the word 'black' referring specifically to 'all South Indians'. The one distinct recall is from school, when as a 6-year old, a teacher asked me to take the back row during a dance performance. Two girls from the front row laughed. And one even asked, "Teacher, is she behind because she is black and should not be in the centre of our dance?" The teacher just silently moved on to arrange all the other six-year-olds. So began my journey of attacks on my skin, and my learning to live with it silently. I have often observed racial remarks being passed casually, as jokes. But today when I heard it from a former Rajya Sabha MP and realised this was the mentality of a person who has held a position in which he is responsible to his people, including me, to keep our best interests at heart while performing his duties, I could not keep silent anymore. How can it not be racist, when clearly there is discrimination? Discrimination that I, and others like me, face all the time. In a land where the most successful cosmetic is a product that promises elusive fairness and therefore loveliness, where movies mostly have a distinctly white-washed lead cast, except for some superstars and many villains and their lowly sidekicks, the discrimination is quite evident. The leading ladies are invariably fair and lovely, as society expects them to be an example of that clearly evident in matrimonial ads, which showcase fair-skinned girl as a selling point in the marriage market. How then can the former MPs remark not be considered racist? Having hit the headlines over the remarks he made in a Skype interview to an international news channel about the attack on Nigerians in Noida, Tarun Vijay issued a clarification. His remarks may have been merely bad ad lib, but he didnt help things by invoking Lord Krishna to salvage his image. "Yes, it sounds ridiculous and very bad. I meant we worship Krishna, which literally means black. And we have never had any racism," Vijay said. Vijay is now spending a lot of time on social media, replying, tweeting and clarifying his stance to each and every person he may have offended. Add to that, he has been retweeting old pictures and statements of his in an effort to prove that he has done a lot of good work for the community, or to use his phrase, blacks of South India. In fact, one Twitter user sought to remind people how, as a North Indian, Tarun Vijay had contributed to the spread of ancient Tamil literary great Thiruvalluvar's legacy. Many would recollect how school children and teachers from Tamil Nadu were invited in 2015 to recite verses of the Thirukural in Parliament, thanks to Tarun Vijay's efforts. But does that make up for his stereotyping of the people of a region of the country in discriminatory language? Isnt this the same kind of treatment a whole lot of us accord to people who have an epicanthic fold on their upper eyelids and call them using the derogatory term 'chinkis' because they belong to the north-east? Hamsini Hariharan By I believe the most likely eventual outcome of the struggle underway in East Pakistan is a Bengali victory and the consequent establishment of an independent Bangladesh. At the moment we possess the goodwill of the Awami League. We would be foolish to forfeit this asset ... Archer Blood. April 6 marks 46 years of the infamous Blood Telegram that was sent to the US StateDepartment marking the dissent of the twenty-odd staff at the American Consulate in Dhaka. This was when the massacre of Bengali citizens in the then East Pakistan had been going on for months. The Bangladesh of 2017 is very different from the Bangladesh of 1971. However, Bloods advice to the United States holds true for India currentlywe do possess the goodwill of the Awami League. Relations between the Sheikh Hasina government and India have never been better. While relations with Bangladesh continue without a hiccup, they have not moved forward since the finalisation of the 2015 Land Boundary Agreement. Newspapers rant about the Teesta Water Treaty as though the treaty is a board examination that has to be submitted in three hours. True enough, the treaty is particularly important for both the Awami League and the BJP both of whom face national elections in 2019. The treaty is particularly important for the Hasina government (which has often been accused by critics as leaning towards India) to show that there has been genuine progress in bilateral relations. On the Indian side, however, there are some yellow flags. The treaty is an important example of how states can play a large role in foreign policy. The Trinamool Congress possesses tremendous negotiating power because of the Constitution's provisions; no deal can be passed without its approval as it indicated in 2011 when West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee refused to accompany the then PM Manmohan Singh on his visit to Bangladesh where the treaty was to be signed. However, if we are to go by her willingness to sign the 2015 Land Boundary Agreement, she will also agree to the new treaty depending on how much the Centre provides her to make up for the losses. Banerjee needs a good deal for her state because parts of West Bengal have been facing a drought-like situation over the last year. Terrorism, not new in South Asia, is now more pertinent than ever. While the influence of Daesh (Islamic State) is waning around the world, it declared its presence in South Asia and claimed several of the terror attacks from 2015 onwards as perpetrated by its henchmen. However, this has been vehemently denied by Hasina who instead claims that it is the home-grown Neo-Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangaldesh which is behind the attacks. Islamic State or not, the increasing spate of terror attacks should worry all the states on the eastern border, particularly West Bengal. Bangladesh has shown that it is serious in cracking down on terrorismthe high court awarded and upheld the death penalty to those accused of killing liberal blogger Rajib Haider in 2013. Also, over the last week, it conducted its Operation Twilight during which four militants were killed by the Rapid Action Battalion in Sylhet. Rumours abound about the defence treaty to be signed between India and Bangladesh this week. If they are to be believed, it will be a long-term defence deal that will allow for increased defence cooperation, information sharing, joint exercises, training and so on. However, India needs to figure out where it can meet Bangladeshs security concerns, considering Bangladeshs largest defence partner is China. While India has supposedly proposed a $500 million line of credit to Bangladesh so that the latter can procure its arms from it, Indias own defence ecosystem is dependent on imports. However, Indian analysts know and will argue that India cannot compete with Chinas much larger defence market and that this is merely the first step in the right direction. The most important issue in contemporary Asian geopolitics is transit and connectivity. In 2016 when Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Bangladesh, the smaller country agreed to join the One Belt, One Road Project (OBOR). China is already investing in a number of infrastructure projects in the country including the deep sea port at Chittagong. It is likely that these projects will now be subsumed under the OBOR project. Bangladeshs joining the OBOR allows for India to also wade into the project and gauge its nature. China is already touting the BCIM (Bangladesh-China-Indian- Myanmar) Economic Corridor as an integral part of OBOR that will engage the rest of South Asia. Despite Indias wariness of OBOR, it should take note that its own efforts at promoting connectivity in the region have been limited. Subregional groupings such as the BBIN (Bangladesh-Bhutan-India-Nepal), the BIMSTEC (The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) have both turned out to be multilateral initiatives and there has been little headway. As an energy-strapped country whose existing ports are overloaded, Bangladesh is keen to find new avenues for energy transit as well as investment in infrastructure. India is a natural partner of Bangladesh. Despite the current administrations fanfare about putting its neighbourhood first, it has only sparingly demonstrated such an intent. Both governments are looking to secure deals that will appear favourable to them in the run-up to the respective national elections in 2019. The time is ripe for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to sign deals with Bangladesh. One can only hope he uses the opportunity well. Hamsini Hariharan is a Research Associate at The Takshashila Institution, Bengaluru Email: hamsini@takshashila.org.in I believe the most likely eventual outcome of the struggle underway in East Pakistan is a Bengali victory and the consequent establishment of an independent Bangladesh. At the moment we possess the goodwill of the Awami League. We would be foolish to forfeit this asset ... Archer Blood. April 6 marks 46 years of the infamous Blood Telegram that was sent to the US StateDepartment marking the dissent of the twenty-odd staff at the American Consulate in Dhaka. This was when the massacre of Bengali citizens in the then East Pakistan had been going on for months. The Bangladesh of 2017 is very different from the Bangladesh of 1971. However, Bloods advice to the United States holds true for India currentlywe do possess the goodwill of the Awami League. Relations between the Sheikh Hasina government and India have never been better. While relations with Bangladesh continue without a hiccup, they have not moved forward since the finalisation of the 2015 Land Boundary Agreement. Newspapers rant about the Teesta Water Treaty as though the treaty is a board examination that has to be submitted in three hours. True enough, the treaty is particularly important for both the Awami League and the BJP both of whom face national elections in 2019. The treaty is particularly important for the Hasina government (which has often been accused by critics as leaning towards India) to show that there has been genuine progress in bilateral relations. On the Indian side, however, there are some yellow flags. The treaty is an important example of how states can play a large role in foreign policy. The Trinamool Congress possesses tremendous negotiating power because of the Constitution's provisions; no deal can be passed without its approval as it indicated in 2011 when West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee refused to accompany the then PM Manmohan Singh on his visit to Bangladesh where the treaty was to be signed. However, if we are to go by her willingness to sign the 2015 Land Boundary Agreement, she will also agree to the new treaty depending on how much the Centre provides her to make up for the losses. Banerjee needs a good deal for her state because parts of West Bengal have been facing a drought-like situation over the last year. Terrorism, not new in South Asia, is now more pertinent than ever. While the influence of Daesh (Islamic State) is waning around the world, it declared its presence in South Asia and claimed several of the terror attacks from 2015 onwards as perpetrated by its henchmen. However, this has been vehemently denied by Hasina who instead claims that it is the home-grown Neo-Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangaldesh which is behind the attacks. Islamic State or not, the increasing spate of terror attacks should worry all the states on the eastern border, particularly West Bengal. Bangladesh has shown that it is serious in cracking down on terrorismthe high court awarded and upheld the death penalty to those accused of killing liberal blogger Rajib Haider in 2013. Also, over the last week, it conducted its Operation Twilight during which four militants were killed by the Rapid Action Battalion in Sylhet. Rumours abound about the defence treaty to be signed between India and Bangladesh this week. If they are to be believed, it will be a long-term defence deal that will allow for increased defence cooperation, information sharing, joint exercises, training and so on. However, India needs to figure out where it can meet Bangladeshs security concerns, considering Bangladeshs largest defence partner is China. While India has supposedly proposed a $500 million line of credit to Bangladesh so that the latter can procure its arms from it, Indias own defence ecosystem is dependent on imports. However, Indian analysts know and will argue that India cannot compete with Chinas much larger defence market and that this is merely the first step in the right direction. The most important issue in contemporary Asian geopolitics is transit and connectivity. In 2016 when Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Bangladesh, the smaller country agreed to join the One Belt, One Road Project (OBOR). China is already investing in a number of infrastructure projects in the country including the deep sea port at Chittagong. It is likely that these projects will now be subsumed under the OBOR project. Bangladeshs joining the OBOR allows for India to also wade into the project and gauge its nature. China is already touting the BCIM (Bangladesh-China-Indian- Myanmar) Economic Corridor as an integral part of OBOR that will engage the rest of South Asia. Despite Indias wariness of OBOR, it should take note that its own efforts at promoting connectivity in the region have been limited. Subregional groupings such as the BBIN (Bangladesh-Bhutan-India-Nepal), the BIMSTEC (The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) have both turned out to be multilateral initiatives and there has been little headway. As an energy-strapped country whose existing ports are overloaded, Bangladesh is keen to find new avenues for energy transit as well as investment in infrastructure. India is a natural partner of Bangladesh. Despite the current administrations fanfare about putting its neighbourhood first, it has only sparingly demonstrated such an intent. Both governments are looking to secure deals that will appear favourable to them in the run-up to the respective national elections in 2019. The time is ripe for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to sign deals with Bangladesh. One can only hope he uses the opportunity well. Hamsini Hariharan is a Research Associate at The Takshashila Institution, Bengaluru Email: hamsini@takshashila.org.in By Express News Service BENGALURU: More than a month after the doctors of Apollo Hospital, Bannerghatta Road performed Karnatakas first successful intestine transplant surgery on 42-year-old Venkatesh Naik, a factory worker from Davangere, he is able to consume food and meet three-fourth of his nutritional requirements. Venkatesh suffered from severe stomach pain nine months ago while at work. Assuming it to be a case of appendicitis his employers had him admitted to a hospital in his hometown. As the severity of the pain increased over the next day where the patient had to be strapped to his bed, the family decided to move him to a hospital in Udupi. Post several diagnostic tests it was revealed that Venkatesh suffered from a condition called Intestinal Ischemia. Intestinal Ischemia Acute Mesenteric Ischemia is a type of Intestinal Ischemia which usually affects the small intestine. It has an abrupt onset. In certain cases, when the individual is genetically predisposed to forming clots, this condition can be observed. It occurs due to lack of supply of oxygen-rich blood to the intestine and as a result, the cells of the intestine die. The small intestine is about six meters long in an adult. This is where 90 per cent of the digestion and absorption of food takes place. By the time the condition Naiks condition was diagnosed, most of the tissues of his intestines had died and begun to decay. The only option was to surgically remove the decaying intestinal tissue. The operation was successfully completed and after a short stay in the hospital, the doctors referred the patient to Apollo Hospital in Bengaluru for intestinal transplant. WATCH VIDEO: Surviving without an intestine Venkatesh was put on Total Parenteral Nutrition (TPN) after the surgery in which his intestine was removed. TPN is a way of supplying all the nutritional needs of the body by bypassing the digestive system and injecting nutrient solution directly into a vein. But this procedure cannot be permanent due to its various shortcomings. TPN can cause venous thrombosis, infection, lack of independent mobility, and the fact that it costs Rs 4000 to Rs 5000 per day makes TPN a temporary option until a transplant. The donor for intestinal transplant is a cadaver and choosing the right organ is imperative for the success of the procedure. Since the patient was on TPN for a duration of nine months it had significantly shrunk his abdominal cavity, so choosing the right organ, procuring it at the correct time and maintaining the stability of the patient is important. There were times when we had to postpone the operation as the condition of the patient was not stable due to elevated sugar levels, fluctuating blood pressure and even infections due to the TPN, said Dr Mahesh Gopasetty, consultant transplant surgeon, Apollo Hospitals, Bengaluru. No stoma created In March this year, the procedure was finally conducted without creating a stoma. A stoma is a loop of the intestine or a bag which is connected for excretion. By not creating a stoma the patient can continue his bowel movement in a normal manner without any discomfort of having to carry the bag with him always. Father-son duo, a happy lot What happened to my father was unexpected, we were confused at the beginning and even post the removal of the intestine we were not sure of how his life would be. We are thankful. The doctors instilled courage in my father that he will lead a normal life again. I cannot express my joy in words now that I see him on his feet again, said Vinay, son of Venkatesh, a class XII student. The surgery has been crowdfunded by pharma companies and donors. The typical cost of such a transplant is around Rs 20 lakh. Post the transplant, Venkatesh has started consuming food and can perform his chores independently. I am grateful to Dr Mahesh. The doctor and the hospital understood our financial constraints and helped us procure funds from NGOs. I would like to thank the team for their relentless service and for giving me a hope to live again, said Venkatesh. BENGALURU: More than a month after the doctors of Apollo Hospital, Bannerghatta Road performed Karnatakas first successful intestine transplant surgery on 42-year-old Venkatesh Naik, a factory worker from Davangere, he is able to consume food and meet three-fourth of his nutritional requirements. Venkatesh suffered from severe stomach pain nine months ago while at work. Assuming it to be a case of appendicitis his employers had him admitted to a hospital in his hometown. As the severity of the pain increased over the next day where the patient had to be strapped to his bed, the family decided to move him to a hospital in Udupi. Post several diagnostic tests it was revealed that Venkatesh suffered from a condition called Intestinal Ischemia. Intestinal Ischemia Acute Mesenteric Ischemia is a type of Intestinal Ischemia which usually affects the small intestine. It has an abrupt onset. In certain cases, when the individual is genetically predisposed to forming clots, this condition can be observed. It occurs due to lack of supply of oxygen-rich blood to the intestine and as a result, the cells of the intestine die. The small intestine is about six meters long in an adult. This is where 90 per cent of the digestion and absorption of food takes place. By the time the condition Naiks condition was diagnosed, most of the tissues of his intestines had died and begun to decay. The only option was to surgically remove the decaying intestinal tissue. The operation was successfully completed and after a short stay in the hospital, the doctors referred the patient to Apollo Hospital in Bengaluru for intestinal transplant. WATCH VIDEO: Surviving without an intestine Venkatesh was put on Total Parenteral Nutrition (TPN) after the surgery in which his intestine was removed. TPN is a way of supplying all the nutritional needs of the body by bypassing the digestive system and injecting nutrient solution directly into a vein. But this procedure cannot be permanent due to its various shortcomings. TPN can cause venous thrombosis, infection, lack of independent mobility, and the fact that it costs Rs 4000 to Rs 5000 per day makes TPN a temporary option until a transplant. The donor for intestinal transplant is a cadaver and choosing the right organ is imperative for the success of the procedure. Since the patient was on TPN for a duration of nine months it had significantly shrunk his abdominal cavity, so choosing the right organ, procuring it at the correct time and maintaining the stability of the patient is important. There were times when we had to postpone the operation as the condition of the patient was not stable due to elevated sugar levels, fluctuating blood pressure and even infections due to the TPN, said Dr Mahesh Gopasetty, consultant transplant surgeon, Apollo Hospitals, Bengaluru. No stoma created In March this year, the procedure was finally conducted without creating a stoma. A stoma is a loop of the intestine or a bag which is connected for excretion. By not creating a stoma the patient can continue his bowel movement in a normal manner without any discomfort of having to carry the bag with him always. Father-son duo, a happy lot What happened to my father was unexpected, we were confused at the beginning and even post the removal of the intestine we were not sure of how his life would be. We are thankful. The doctors instilled courage in my father that he will lead a normal life again. I cannot express my joy in words now that I see him on his feet again, said Vinay, son of Venkatesh, a class XII student. The surgery has been crowdfunded by pharma companies and donors. The typical cost of such a transplant is around Rs 20 lakh. Post the transplant, Venkatesh has started consuming food and can perform his chores independently. I am grateful to Dr Mahesh. The doctor and the hospital understood our financial constraints and helped us procure funds from NGOs. I would like to thank the team for their relentless service and for giving me a hope to live again, said Venkatesh. By Express News Service Amid political gang-up against her in Puducherry, Lt Governor Kiran Bedi tells her side of the story in an exclusive email interview with The New Indian Express What is the genesis of the present controversy surrounding the transfer and reinstatement of Puducherry municipal commissioner R Chandrasekaran? Raj Nivas holds an Open House every evening from 4-6 pm. Any person who has an issue, if he thinks the Lieutenant Governors office could be of help, comes. He is heard and the matter attended. In one such Open House, residents of a locality came with the grievance that their colony has heaps of garbage and unattended plots due to which pigs roam around and the colony is infested with snakes and mosquitoes. I brought the matter to the notice of the Municipal Commissioner and told him in another two weeks I on my weekend morning rounds will visit the locality. This is the way I identify places for my weekend 6 am rounds. Accordingly we did. I saw that the colony was suffering and civic amenities were seriously amiss. It needed attention. As a standing practice whenever I visit a locality, my office informs the area MLA with a request to join me in the visit. It is a different matter that none of them turn up. He did not do this time too. We always minute and document, video and photograph the meeting. We recorded the deficiencies and the Municipal Commissioner assured the residents that he shall attend to them. As a follow up the Municipal Commissioner went to the area and during one of his meetings the local MLA (A Bhaskar) along with his goons barged in and disturbed the meeting as complained by the Municipal Commissioner. The residents got scared. They all ran away. The Municipal Commissioner gave a written complaint to the police. The MLAs complaint was why did the Municipal Commissioner hold a meeting without informing him and without his permission. The fact is there is nothing in the law and rules where a public servant doing his duty is mandated to do so. In fact he is expected to work on his own. And MLAs should be happy that officers are working on their own. The MLA could have supported him and taken his help in improving the constituency. But he obstructed the officer from doing his duties. The MLA too complained to the Speaker that a breach of privilege happened. Did you ask Chandrasekaran not to invite the local MLA? I dont need to... And he does not need to, to do his duty. If you didnt, did Chandrasekaran do it by himself? Was he right in ignoring the MLA? A public servant does not need approval to do his duties. However he can always inform the MLA. But it is not mandated. Would you agree Chandrasekaran is a mere pawn in the fight between you and Chief Minister V Narayanasamy? I have no fight. As an Administrator I am a protector of officers who perform their duty honestly and sincerely. It is my duty. I have done this all my life, all through my career. When you cite Rule 47 to assert that the Lieutenant Governor alone is empowered to decide on service matters, the Chief Minister cites Rule 47(2) saying he must be consulted before any decision is taken. Do you agree? Consultation would have happened if the Chief Secretary (Manoj Parida) had sent the file. I got no file. I was bypassed, due to which I have declared the order invalid. And the Government of India is in agreement with me. The Chief Secretary left no scope for consultation. Had he forwarded the file to me the ball would have been in my court to consult or not to consult. He issued the orders despite my written instructions sent by email to wait and come and discuss. Whose word is final on service matters, the Lieutenant Governors or the Speakers, who has invoked his powers under the breach of privilege law to punish Chandrasekaran? When all other files of transfers were coming to me this too should have come. Which means in transfer and posting the Lieutenant Governors is final. If there was doubt, the Chief Secretary could have asked for legal opinion. The government has a law secretary. Why was his opinion not taken by him? How would you respond to the charges that you are encroaching into the domain of ministers by issuing direct orders to officers? I am accountable for all I do. I am strictly adhering to the laid down rules. If anyone has a contrary opinion they can certainly take legal recourse. To the best of my knowledge nowhere in business rules does the Speaker or the Legislature have powers to post or transfer. They can take higher legal opinion if they think they have, which is why I have asked the Government of India to send us legal guidance. Just for your information, whenever we have sought legal clarity in the past from the MHA on the division of responsibilities, the political establishment has declared such opinions as mere interpretation. Hence, despite MHA directions they continue to transgress. Why dont you and the Chief Minster settle it mutually instead of targeting bureaucrats for punishment? I have not targeted the bureaucrats. I have identified the key officer in key position who triggered and abetted the breakdown of administration. You are a fighter. But since there is a political gang-up against you, would you consider putting in your papers? I am a performing Lieutenant Governor and not a rubber stamp. I am also entrusted with Executive and Financial responsibilities. I am doer. I am here to serve Puducherry with total sense of responsibility - administrative and financial. I am here to check corruption and mismanagement inherited and also attempted to be practiced. I have been able to halt it. Right now I am on a sacred mission. Destiny will decide for how long I will continue. On my own I will continue to correct and transform for the love of Puducherry. It deserves good governance. Amid political gang-up against her in Puducherry, Lt Governor Kiran Bedi tells her side of the story in an exclusive email interview with The New Indian Express What is the genesis of the present controversy surrounding the transfer and reinstatement of Puducherry municipal commissioner R Chandrasekaran? Raj Nivas holds an Open House every evening from 4-6 pm. Any person who has an issue, if he thinks the Lieutenant Governors office could be of help, comes. He is heard and the matter attended. In one such Open House, residents of a locality came with the grievance that their colony has heaps of garbage and unattended plots due to which pigs roam around and the colony is infested with snakes and mosquitoes. I brought the matter to the notice of the Municipal Commissioner and told him in another two weeks I on my weekend morning rounds will visit the locality. This is the way I identify places for my weekend 6 am rounds. Accordingly we did. I saw that the colony was suffering and civic amenities were seriously amiss. It needed attention. As a standing practice whenever I visit a locality, my office informs the area MLA with a request to join me in the visit. It is a different matter that none of them turn up. He did not do this time too. We always minute and document, video and photograph the meeting. We recorded the deficiencies and the Municipal Commissioner assured the residents that he shall attend to them. As a follow up the Municipal Commissioner went to the area and during one of his meetings the local MLA (A Bhaskar) along with his goons barged in and disturbed the meeting as complained by the Municipal Commissioner. The residents got scared. They all ran away. The Municipal Commissioner gave a written complaint to the police. The MLAs complaint was why did the Municipal Commissioner hold a meeting without informing him and without his permission. The fact is there is nothing in the law and rules where a public servant doing his duty is mandated to do so. In fact he is expected to work on his own. And MLAs should be happy that officers are working on their own. The MLA could have supported him and taken his help in improving the constituency. But he obstructed the officer from doing his duties. The MLA too complained to the Speaker that a breach of privilege happened. Did you ask Chandrasekaran not to invite the local MLA? I dont need to... And he does not need to, to do his duty. If you didnt, did Chandrasekaran do it by himself? Was he right in ignoring the MLA? A public servant does not need approval to do his duties. However he can always inform the MLA. But it is not mandated. Would you agree Chandrasekaran is a mere pawn in the fight between you and Chief Minister V Narayanasamy? I have no fight. As an Administrator I am a protector of officers who perform their duty honestly and sincerely. It is my duty. I have done this all my life, all through my career. When you cite Rule 47 to assert that the Lieutenant Governor alone is empowered to decide on service matters, the Chief Minister cites Rule 47(2) saying he must be consulted before any decision is taken. Do you agree? Consultation would have happened if the Chief Secretary (Manoj Parida) had sent the file. I got no file. I was bypassed, due to which I have declared the order invalid. And the Government of India is in agreement with me. The Chief Secretary left no scope for consultation. Had he forwarded the file to me the ball would have been in my court to consult or not to consult. He issued the orders despite my written instructions sent by email to wait and come and discuss. Whose word is final on service matters, the Lieutenant Governors or the Speakers, who has invoked his powers under the breach of privilege law to punish Chandrasekaran? When all other files of transfers were coming to me this too should have come. Which means in transfer and posting the Lieutenant Governors is final. If there was doubt, the Chief Secretary could have asked for legal opinion. The government has a law secretary. Why was his opinion not taken by him? How would you respond to the charges that you are encroaching into the domain of ministers by issuing direct orders to officers? I am accountable for all I do. I am strictly adhering to the laid down rules. If anyone has a contrary opinion they can certainly take legal recourse. To the best of my knowledge nowhere in business rules does the Speaker or the Legislature have powers to post or transfer. They can take higher legal opinion if they think they have, which is why I have asked the Government of India to send us legal guidance. Just for your information, whenever we have sought legal clarity in the past from the MHA on the division of responsibilities, the political establishment has declared such opinions as mere interpretation. Hence, despite MHA directions they continue to transgress. Why dont you and the Chief Minster settle it mutually instead of targeting bureaucrats for punishment? I have not targeted the bureaucrats. I have identified the key officer in key position who triggered and abetted the breakdown of administration. You are a fighter. But since there is a political gang-up against you, would you consider putting in your papers? I am a performing Lieutenant Governor and not a rubber stamp. I am also entrusted with Executive and Financial responsibilities. I am doer. I am here to serve Puducherry with total sense of responsibility - administrative and financial. I am here to check corruption and mismanagement inherited and also attempted to be practiced. I have been able to halt it. Right now I am on a sacred mission. Destiny will decide for how long I will continue. On my own I will continue to correct and transform for the love of Puducherry. It deserves good governance. By PTI CHENNAI: The Income Tax department has seized cash worth about Rs 5.5 crore after it conducted searches on the premises of Tamil Nadu Health Minister C Vijayabaskar and others even as it is sending a report to the EC in view of the pending bypolls. Among the other seizures are a volume of "incriminating documents" and a number of voters list, reportedly of the R K Nagar Assembly constituency, kept at certain locations that were covered as part of the tax raids. The department also expanded its searches and has covered over 50 premises by late evening in and around the state capital here, from the 33 locations that it began raiding early morning. Officials said while Rs 5.5 crore in cash was seized from the "associates" of Vijayabaskar, a cash of about Rs 26 lakh neatly kept in envelopes was seized from the premises of a close family associate of the minister. The department, officials said, will also send a comprehensive report on its probe in the role of illicit funds being allegedly moved in the wake of the R K Nagar bypolls here on April 12. The operations are still on at about nine locations and are expected to end late night, they said. Over 100 I-T sleuths along with central security personnel are part of the operation even as premises related to officials of a medical university in the state are also being searched. There were also several complaints of alleged money distribution by AIADMK's Amma faction. The seat fell vacant after the death of the then chief minister J Jayalalithaa and it is being viewed as a battle of prestige between the two factions of the AIADMK. Vijayabaskar is a prominent loyalist of AIADMK (Amma) faction's candidate T T V Dinakaran. Vijayabaskar, who is the first state minister to come under the lens of taxmen, is among the key campaigners in the bypolls. Officials said certain leads in the Sekhar Reddy case, the mining baron arrested for alleged financial irregularities post-demonetisation, have also prompted the latest action. CHENNAI: The Income Tax department has seized cash worth about Rs 5.5 crore after it conducted searches on the premises of Tamil Nadu Health Minister C Vijayabaskar and others even as it is sending a report to the EC in view of the pending bypolls. Among the other seizures are a volume of "incriminating documents" and a number of voters list, reportedly of the R K Nagar Assembly constituency, kept at certain locations that were covered as part of the tax raids. The department also expanded its searches and has covered over 50 premises by late evening in and around the state capital here, from the 33 locations that it began raiding early morning. Officials said while Rs 5.5 crore in cash was seized from the "associates" of Vijayabaskar, a cash of about Rs 26 lakh neatly kept in envelopes was seized from the premises of a close family associate of the minister. The department, officials said, will also send a comprehensive report on its probe in the role of illicit funds being allegedly moved in the wake of the R K Nagar bypolls here on April 12. The operations are still on at about nine locations and are expected to end late night, they said. Over 100 I-T sleuths along with central security personnel are part of the operation even as premises related to officials of a medical university in the state are also being searched. There were also several complaints of alleged money distribution by AIADMK's Amma faction. The seat fell vacant after the death of the then chief minister J Jayalalithaa and it is being viewed as a battle of prestige between the two factions of the AIADMK. Vijayabaskar is a prominent loyalist of AIADMK (Amma) faction's candidate T T V Dinakaran. Vijayabaskar, who is the first state minister to come under the lens of taxmen, is among the key campaigners in the bypolls. Officials said certain leads in the Sekhar Reddy case, the mining baron arrested for alleged financial irregularities post-demonetisation, have also prompted the latest action. By AFP CYPRUS: Greek Cypriot lawmakers voted on Friday to overturn a controversial bill calling on schools to mark a decades-old vote on union with Greece, after peace talks with Turkish Cypriots broke down over the law. UN-backed negotiations aimed at reuniting the divided island came to a standstill in February in a row over Greek Cypriot schools marking the anniversary of the unofficial 1950 referendum supporting "Enosis", or union with Greece. Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci told his Greek Cypriot counterpart Nicos Anastasiades on Tuesday that he was ready to restart the talks next week provided the Enosis bill was revoked. Following a heated parliamentary debate, an amended bill was passed on Friday by 30 votes to 20. The bill was put forward by Anastasiades's ruling conservative Disy party and backed by the opposition communist Akel. In the original vote, Disy MPs abstained, allowing the bill to pass after it was proposed by the far-right Elam. A few dozen Elam supporters demonstrated outside parliament on Friday urging lawmakers not to back down with a banner saying "Disy-Akel are murdering history". Akinci had insisted he would only return to the negotiating table once the Enosis bill was annulled. He is scheduled to meet Anastasiades on Tuesday. The two leaders have been engaged in fragile peace talks since May 2015 that observers saw as the best chance in years to reunify the island. Since the bill passed, a climate of trust between the sides has deteriorated, with each blaming the other for the deadlock. Much of the progress in recent talks was based on the strong personal rapport between Anastasiades and Akinci. The eastern Mediterranean island has been divided since 1974 when Turkish troops invaded its northern third in response to an Athens-inspired coup seeking Enosis. After a failed referendum on a UN peace plan in 2004, the Cyprus republic now headed by Anastasiades joined the European Union with the island still divided. The breakaway state in the Turkish-held north headed by Akinci is recognised only by Turkey. CYPRUS: Greek Cypriot lawmakers voted on Friday to overturn a controversial bill calling on schools to mark a decades-old vote on union with Greece, after peace talks with Turkish Cypriots broke down over the law. UN-backed negotiations aimed at reuniting the divided island came to a standstill in February in a row over Greek Cypriot schools marking the anniversary of the unofficial 1950 referendum supporting "Enosis", or union with Greece. Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci told his Greek Cypriot counterpart Nicos Anastasiades on Tuesday that he was ready to restart the talks next week provided the Enosis bill was revoked. Following a heated parliamentary debate, an amended bill was passed on Friday by 30 votes to 20. The bill was put forward by Anastasiades's ruling conservative Disy party and backed by the opposition communist Akel. In the original vote, Disy MPs abstained, allowing the bill to pass after it was proposed by the far-right Elam. A few dozen Elam supporters demonstrated outside parliament on Friday urging lawmakers not to back down with a banner saying "Disy-Akel are murdering history". Akinci had insisted he would only return to the negotiating table once the Enosis bill was annulled. He is scheduled to meet Anastasiades on Tuesday. The two leaders have been engaged in fragile peace talks since May 2015 that observers saw as the best chance in years to reunify the island. Since the bill passed, a climate of trust between the sides has deteriorated, with each blaming the other for the deadlock. Much of the progress in recent talks was based on the strong personal rapport between Anastasiades and Akinci. The eastern Mediterranean island has been divided since 1974 when Turkish troops invaded its northern third in response to an Athens-inspired coup seeking Enosis. After a failed referendum on a UN peace plan in 2004, the Cyprus republic now headed by Anastasiades joined the European Union with the island still divided. The breakaway state in the Turkish-held north headed by Akinci is recognised only by Turkey. By AFP BEIRUT: The Damascus regime and its ally Russia furiously condemned an American air strike on a Syrian airbase today that marked the first direct US assault on President Bashar al-Assad's government. US allies rallied around Washington after President Donald Trump launched the massive strike in retaliation for a "barbaric" chemical attack he blamed on Assad. But Assad's office called the strike "foolish and irresponsible" and Moscow announced a series of retaliatory steps including plans to strengthen Syrian air defences. Russia also demanded an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council and US diplomats said it was to meet at 11:30 am (local time) today. The strike -- Trump's biggest military decision since taking office -- marked a dramatic escalation in American involvement in Syria's six-year civil war. It followed days of outrage at images of dead children and victims suffering convulsions from the suspected sarin gas attack in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhun. US officials said 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired from Navy ships in the Mediterranean at the Shayrat airfield at 3:40 am (local time), dealing heavy damage to the base from where Washington believes Tuesday's deadly attack was launched. Syrian state news agency SANA said nine civilians including four children were killed in villages near the base. "What America did is nothing but foolish and irresponsible behaviour, which only reveals its short-sightedness and political and military blindness to reality," Assad's office said in a statement. Syria's regime has denied using chemical weapons in Khan Sheikhun, where at least 86 people, including 30 children, were reported killed and more than 500 wounded. With US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson due in Moscow next week, the Kremlin called the US strike a "gross... violation of international law" and warned it would inflict "considerable damage" on US-Russia ties. It immediately suspended a deal with the United States aimed at avoiding clashes in Syrian airspace. The Russian military also announced a series of measures "to strengthen and improve the effectiveness of the Syrian armed forces' air defence system" in the wake of the strike. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif of Iran, another staunch Assad ally, said on Twitter that the US strike was based on "bogus CW (chemical weapons) allegations" and would aid jihadists in Syria like the Islamic State group. Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Japan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey all supported Washington, with Ankara also calling for a no-fly zone in Syria. Trump announced the strike in a brief televised address delivered hours after the Security Council failed to agree on a probe into the suspected chemical attack. "Tonight I call on all civilised nations to join us in seeking to end this slaughter and bloodshed in Syria and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types," Trump said. The missiles were fired from the USS Porter and the USS Ross, which belong to the US Navy's Sixth Fleet, in the eastern Mediterranean. The strike targeted radars, aircraft, air defence systems and other logistical components at the base south of Homs in central Syria. In a statement read on state television, the army confirmed the strike and said it had caused extensive damage. Russia's military said the strike had an "extremely low" military impact, with fewer than half of the 59 missiles reaching the base. The strike destroyed six planes under repair and several buildings, including a storage depot and radio station, it said. Opposition and rebel fighters, who have for years urged more direct US military action in support of their uprising, hailed the strike and called for more. The National Coalition, the main opposition grouping, called on Washington to take further steps to "neutralise" the regime's air power. "We hope for more strikes... and that these are just the beginning," spokesman Ahmad Ramadan told AFP. Rebels have suffered a series of setbacks in recent years as Assad's forces have reclaimed much of the territory once under opposition control. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a longtime foe of Assad, also called for further action. "I welcome this concrete step as positive," Erdogan said at a rally in the southern city of Antakya just north of the Syrian border. "I don't see this as enough... the time has come for steps for a serious result to protect the oppressed Syrian people." But the White House was quick to paint the decision as limited to deterring the use of chemical weapons, and not part of a broader military campaign. "The intent was to deter the regime from doing this again, and it is certainly our hope that this has had that effect," Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain Jeff Davis told reporters. US officials said Russia's military in Syria was informed of the strike beforehand in order to avoid casualties that could prompt a broader crisis. Russia stood by Damascus this week despite the global uproar, insisting that the chemical weapons that caused the deaths in Khan Sheikhun had been stockpiled by "terrorists" and possibly released by a conventional strike. "We consider these strikes not only as a reaction, but a way to avenge the blood of the martyrs who fell here," said Haj Kassar, a merchant in his 50s. Trump had previously indicated no willingness to engage further in Syria's civil war, beyond stepping up efforts to battle the jihadists of IS, who have been targeted by US-led air strikes in Syria and Iraq since mid-2014. His administration had in fact signalled in recent days that it was no longer seeking the Assad's departure from power. But Trump said the "very barbaric attack" in which "even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered" had required a response. BEIRUT: The Damascus regime and its ally Russia furiously condemned an American air strike on a Syrian airbase today that marked the first direct US assault on President Bashar al-Assad's government. US allies rallied around Washington after President Donald Trump launched the massive strike in retaliation for a "barbaric" chemical attack he blamed on Assad. But Assad's office called the strike "foolish and irresponsible" and Moscow announced a series of retaliatory steps including plans to strengthen Syrian air defences. Russia also demanded an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council and US diplomats said it was to meet at 11:30 am (local time) today. The strike -- Trump's biggest military decision since taking office -- marked a dramatic escalation in American involvement in Syria's six-year civil war. It followed days of outrage at images of dead children and victims suffering convulsions from the suspected sarin gas attack in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhun. US officials said 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired from Navy ships in the Mediterranean at the Shayrat airfield at 3:40 am (local time), dealing heavy damage to the base from where Washington believes Tuesday's deadly attack was launched. Syrian state news agency SANA said nine civilians including four children were killed in villages near the base. "What America did is nothing but foolish and irresponsible behaviour, which only reveals its short-sightedness and political and military blindness to reality," Assad's office said in a statement. Syria's regime has denied using chemical weapons in Khan Sheikhun, where at least 86 people, including 30 children, were reported killed and more than 500 wounded. With US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson due in Moscow next week, the Kremlin called the US strike a "gross... violation of international law" and warned it would inflict "considerable damage" on US-Russia ties. It immediately suspended a deal with the United States aimed at avoiding clashes in Syrian airspace. The Russian military also announced a series of measures "to strengthen and improve the effectiveness of the Syrian armed forces' air defence system" in the wake of the strike. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif of Iran, another staunch Assad ally, said on Twitter that the US strike was based on "bogus CW (chemical weapons) allegations" and would aid jihadists in Syria like the Islamic State group. Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Japan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey all supported Washington, with Ankara also calling for a no-fly zone in Syria. Trump announced the strike in a brief televised address delivered hours after the Security Council failed to agree on a probe into the suspected chemical attack. "Tonight I call on all civilised nations to join us in seeking to end this slaughter and bloodshed in Syria and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types," Trump said. The missiles were fired from the USS Porter and the USS Ross, which belong to the US Navy's Sixth Fleet, in the eastern Mediterranean. The strike targeted radars, aircraft, air defence systems and other logistical components at the base south of Homs in central Syria. In a statement read on state television, the army confirmed the strike and said it had caused extensive damage. Russia's military said the strike had an "extremely low" military impact, with fewer than half of the 59 missiles reaching the base. The strike destroyed six planes under repair and several buildings, including a storage depot and radio station, it said. Opposition and rebel fighters, who have for years urged more direct US military action in support of their uprising, hailed the strike and called for more. The National Coalition, the main opposition grouping, called on Washington to take further steps to "neutralise" the regime's air power. "We hope for more strikes... and that these are just the beginning," spokesman Ahmad Ramadan told AFP. Rebels have suffered a series of setbacks in recent years as Assad's forces have reclaimed much of the territory once under opposition control. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a longtime foe of Assad, also called for further action. "I welcome this concrete step as positive," Erdogan said at a rally in the southern city of Antakya just north of the Syrian border. "I don't see this as enough... the time has come for steps for a serious result to protect the oppressed Syrian people." But the White House was quick to paint the decision as limited to deterring the use of chemical weapons, and not part of a broader military campaign. "The intent was to deter the regime from doing this again, and it is certainly our hope that this has had that effect," Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain Jeff Davis told reporters. US officials said Russia's military in Syria was informed of the strike beforehand in order to avoid casualties that could prompt a broader crisis. Russia stood by Damascus this week despite the global uproar, insisting that the chemical weapons that caused the deaths in Khan Sheikhun had been stockpiled by "terrorists" and possibly released by a conventional strike. "We consider these strikes not only as a reaction, but a way to avenge the blood of the martyrs who fell here," said Haj Kassar, a merchant in his 50s. Trump had previously indicated no willingness to engage further in Syria's civil war, beyond stepping up efforts to battle the jihadists of IS, who have been targeted by US-led air strikes in Syria and Iraq since mid-2014. His administration had in fact signalled in recent days that it was no longer seeking the Assad's departure from power. But Trump said the "very barbaric attack" in which "even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered" had required a response. By AFP PARIS: From strong messages of support to fierce condemnation, here are the main global reactions to a US strike on a Syria air base in response to a suspected chemical attack. Against RUSSIA: Unsurprisingly, the main ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was robust in its opposition to the strike. The strikes were an "aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international norms," the Kremlin said in a statement. The action has inflicted "considerable damage" to already "lamentable" US-Russia ties, it added. As a first practical response, Moscow said it would "halt" its deal with the US to avoid clashes in Syrian airspace. Russia also called for an urgent UN Security Council meeting following the strikes. IRAN: The Iranian regime, another Syrian ally, "strongly condemned" the strike, just as it condemned "all unilateral military action". It said the US action was taken under the "pretext" of the chemical strike. For FRANCE/GERMANY: In a joint statement, President Francois Hollande and Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Assad bore "sole responsibility" for the US strike following the suspected chemical attack. BRITAIN: The close American ally said it "fully supported" the strikes, judging them an an "appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack". It said the strikes were "intended to deter further attacks." TURKEY: NATO ally Turkey, which is a key player in the Syria conflict and has endured choppy relations with Washington recently, welcomed the strikes as "positive." The deputy foreign minister added: "We believe that the Assad regime must be punished completely in the international arena." Turkey called for a no-fly zone in Syria in the wake of the US strike. SAUDI ARABIA: A foreign ministry official hailed US President Donald Trump as "courageous" for taking action when "the international community has failed to put a halt to the regime's actions." ISRAEL: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel "fully supports" the "strong and clear message" sent by the air strikes. He added that the message should "resonate not only in Damascus, but in Tehran, Pyongyang and elsewhere." JAPAN: Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that Japan "supports the US government's resolve that it will never tolerate the spread and use of chemical weapons." SYRIAN REBELS: A leading Syrian rebel group said one strike was "not enough", adding that there were "26 airbases that target civilians." Others CHINA: Beijing offered a nuanced reaction, saying it was "urgent" to avoid "further deterioration of the situation." A foreign ministry spokeswoman added: "We oppose use of chemical weapons by any country, organisation or individual in any circumstance, for any purpose." PARIS: From strong messages of support to fierce condemnation, here are the main global reactions to a US strike on a Syria air base in response to a suspected chemical attack. Against RUSSIA: Unsurprisingly, the main ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was robust in its opposition to the strike. The strikes were an "aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international norms," the Kremlin said in a statement. The action has inflicted "considerable damage" to already "lamentable" US-Russia ties, it added. As a first practical response, Moscow said it would "halt" its deal with the US to avoid clashes in Syrian airspace. Russia also called for an urgent UN Security Council meeting following the strikes. IRAN: The Iranian regime, another Syrian ally, "strongly condemned" the strike, just as it condemned "all unilateral military action". It said the US action was taken under the "pretext" of the chemical strike. For FRANCE/GERMANY: In a joint statement, President Francois Hollande and Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Assad bore "sole responsibility" for the US strike following the suspected chemical attack. BRITAIN: The close American ally said it "fully supported" the strikes, judging them an an "appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack". It said the strikes were "intended to deter further attacks." TURKEY: NATO ally Turkey, which is a key player in the Syria conflict and has endured choppy relations with Washington recently, welcomed the strikes as "positive." The deputy foreign minister added: "We believe that the Assad regime must be punished completely in the international arena." Turkey called for a no-fly zone in Syria in the wake of the US strike. SAUDI ARABIA: A foreign ministry official hailed US President Donald Trump as "courageous" for taking action when "the international community has failed to put a halt to the regime's actions." ISRAEL: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel "fully supports" the "strong and clear message" sent by the air strikes. He added that the message should "resonate not only in Damascus, but in Tehran, Pyongyang and elsewhere." JAPAN: Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that Japan "supports the US government's resolve that it will never tolerate the spread and use of chemical weapons." SYRIAN REBELS: A leading Syrian rebel group said one strike was "not enough", adding that there were "26 airbases that target civilians." Others CHINA: Beijing offered a nuanced reaction, saying it was "urgent" to avoid "further deterioration of the situation." A foreign ministry spokeswoman added: "We oppose use of chemical weapons by any country, organisation or individual in any circumstance, for any purpose." By AFP WASHINGTON: The US Senate on Friday confirmed Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, ending a bruising year-long political battle and presenting President Donald Trump with a welcome victory. Republicans and a handful of Democrats got the federal judge from Colorado across the finish line with a 54-45 vote, one day after opposition Democrats launched a historic blockade of the nominee. Senate Republican leaders countered with the so-called "nuclear option," a maneuver that changed the chamber's rules so that moving Gorsuch -- and all subsequent Supreme Court nominees -- ahead for a final vote requires a simple majority of 51 votes, rather than the traditional 60 votes. "Today is a new day," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said just before the vote, seeking to put a positive stamp on what has been a contentious congressional process for Trump's new administration. Gorsuch is "going to make an incredible addition to the court," McConnell said. "He's going to make the American people proud." Gorsuch, 49, has been hailed by Republicans as a worthy successor to conservative justice Antonia Scalia, who died in February 2016 as the presidential race was gaining steam. Then-president Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland as Scalia's replacement, but McConnell balked, arguing that since it was an election year, the next president should pick the nominee. The nine-justice court has had one seat on the bench empty for more than a year amid the ensuing political battle, with Democrats and Republicans sliding into bitter attacks and accusations of blame. The White House has said it expects Gorsuch to be sworn in as early as Monday. WASHINGTON: The US Senate on Friday confirmed Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, ending a bruising year-long political battle and presenting President Donald Trump with a welcome victory. Republicans and a handful of Democrats got the federal judge from Colorado across the finish line with a 54-45 vote, one day after opposition Democrats launched a historic blockade of the nominee. Senate Republican leaders countered with the so-called "nuclear option," a maneuver that changed the chamber's rules so that moving Gorsuch -- and all subsequent Supreme Court nominees -- ahead for a final vote requires a simple majority of 51 votes, rather than the traditional 60 votes. "Today is a new day," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said just before the vote, seeking to put a positive stamp on what has been a contentious congressional process for Trump's new administration. Gorsuch is "going to make an incredible addition to the court," McConnell said. "He's going to make the American people proud." Gorsuch, 49, has been hailed by Republicans as a worthy successor to conservative justice Antonia Scalia, who died in February 2016 as the presidential race was gaining steam. Then-president Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland as Scalia's replacement, but McConnell balked, arguing that since it was an election year, the next president should pick the nominee. The nine-justice court has had one seat on the bench empty for more than a year amid the ensuing political battle, with Democrats and Republicans sliding into bitter attacks and accusations of blame. The White House has said it expects Gorsuch to be sworn in as early as Monday. By AFP JUBA: More than 6,000 people have fled fighting in southern South Sudan, with refugees recounting the slaughter of civilians by armed forces, the United Nations refugee agency said today. Fighting between government forces and rebels erupted on Monday in the town of Pajok in the country's southern Equatoria region, a previously peaceful part of the country that has seen a surge in the conflict in recent months. According to a statement from the UNHCR over 6,000 people have fled into the northern Ugandan district of Lamwo since the attack while many others were hiding in the bush trying to find their way to safety in Uganda as main roads were blocked by armed groups. "People fleeing the recent incident claimed that the town came under an indiscriminate attack by the South Sudan armed forces," the statement said. "Refugees told the UNHCR team on the ground in Lamwo terrifying stories of violence and abuse against civilians. Many have witnessed their loved ones shot dead or slaughtered like animals," UNHCR spokesman Rocco Nuri told AFP. "Families fled in all directions. Those unable to run were reportedly shot dead, including the elderly and people with disabilities." A local pastor who fled Parjok on Wednesday, and asked not to be named, told AFP soldiers had entered the town in tanks "and suddenly we saw the shooting and we just had to run." Both he and regional Anglican Bishop Oringa Benard reported that some 135 people had been killed, however, this could not be independently verified. The UN peacekeeping mission UNMISS said in a statement on Wednesday that they had twice been prevented from accessing Pajok. "The mission has received reports of fighting between SPLA (government) troops and the opposition there and is trying to follow-up on reports of civilians killed in the area," the statement added. UNMISS urged the government to immediately allow it access "so it can fully implement its mandate, including to protect civilians and report on human rights violations." South Sudan government spokesman Michael Makuei confirmed to AFP that its forces had attacked Pajok. JUBA: More than 6,000 people have fled fighting in southern South Sudan, with refugees recounting the slaughter of civilians by armed forces, the United Nations refugee agency said today. Fighting between government forces and rebels erupted on Monday in the town of Pajok in the country's southern Equatoria region, a previously peaceful part of the country that has seen a surge in the conflict in recent months. According to a statement from the UNHCR over 6,000 people have fled into the northern Ugandan district of Lamwo since the attack while many others were hiding in the bush trying to find their way to safety in Uganda as main roads were blocked by armed groups. "People fleeing the recent incident claimed that the town came under an indiscriminate attack by the South Sudan armed forces," the statement said. "Refugees told the UNHCR team on the ground in Lamwo terrifying stories of violence and abuse against civilians. Many have witnessed their loved ones shot dead or slaughtered like animals," UNHCR spokesman Rocco Nuri told AFP. "Families fled in all directions. Those unable to run were reportedly shot dead, including the elderly and people with disabilities." A local pastor who fled Parjok on Wednesday, and asked not to be named, told AFP soldiers had entered the town in tanks "and suddenly we saw the shooting and we just had to run." Both he and regional Anglican Bishop Oringa Benard reported that some 135 people had been killed, however, this could not be independently verified. The UN peacekeeping mission UNMISS said in a statement on Wednesday that they had twice been prevented from accessing Pajok. "The mission has received reports of fighting between SPLA (government) troops and the opposition there and is trying to follow-up on reports of civilians killed in the area," the statement added. UNMISS urged the government to immediately allow it access "so it can fully implement its mandate, including to protect civilians and report on human rights violations." South Sudan government spokesman Michael Makuei confirmed to AFP that its forces had attacked Pajok. Messaging Apps Vs Social Networks This story was delivered to BI Intelligence Apps and Platforms Briefing subscribers. To learn more and subscribe, please click here. On Thursday, Facebook rolled out suggestions from M, its AI-powered virtual assistant, to all Messenger users in the US. The feature pops up within conversations on the chat app and suggests relevant actions, such as sending a sticker or sharing a location, that aim to enrich the way people communicate and get things done. For example, if a user asks a friend on Messenger where are you? M will privately suggest that the friend share their location information. The company first tested suggestions from M to a limited number of users in December 2016. A wider rollout of the feature is expected soon. Suggestions from M will thrust Facebooks AI assistant in front of more users. The company has been trialing its M assistant to select users in the US since 2015 to assess how users interact with the virtual concierge. Suggestions from M is a slight tweak to Facebooks existing AI-assistant efforts, pushing information rather than waiting for users to request, or pull, it. This will help surface buried Messenger features, as the company aims to make the app more useful. The chat app has been increasingly adding features such as calendar updates, group chat polls, ride-sharing options, and P2P payments (in the US). However, many of these additions are hidden within the app, and users have to click through several menus to reach them, potentially hindering accessibility. If suggestions from M gain traction, it could begin letting third-party developers integrate their apps into the platform. For now, the service is targeting internal Messenger features. However, the inclusion of ride-hailing services like Lyft and Uber suggests Facebook could open its platform to brands and business. That would vastly improve the reach, discoverability, and usage rates for app developers, as well as provide brands with a new commerce avenue: Story continues Facebook Messenger has a wide global reach. Facebooks chat app boasts more than 1 billion monthly active users globally across both iOS and Android, effectively making it one of the largest mobile platforms in terms of reach. Building apps within chat apps reduces the friction of launching and running apps. Because M Suggestions pushes commands to users, it could increase the chance that they see and interact it. This could include pushing brands chatbots, which would go a long way in solving Facebooks bot discovery issues. Chat apps over-index when it comes to app engagement. The average number of daily sessions for chat apps is more than four times higher than that of traditional apps, according to Flurry. Messenger could provide developers with the opportunity to build an app experience where users are spending their time, increasing usage. The top four messaging apps Facebook's Messenger, WhatsApp, WeChat, and Viber now claim nearly 3 billion monthly active users combined, narrowly outnumbering the combined active users on the world's four largest social networks, including Facebook. These numbers have caught the attention of a wide range of businesses, publishers among them. News industry leaders including the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and the BBC are establishing a presence on a number of chat apps in an effort to be out front and build an audience on the latest platforms where people are consuming content. These early adopters are experimenting to learn which chat apps work for their audience and how they can leverage chat for the distribution of digital content, including articles, images, surveys, and video. BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on messaging apps for publishers that looks at the appeal of these apps and how they're becoming a dominant platform for media consumption. It compares the leading chat platforms, including WhatsApp, WeChat, Facebook's Messenger, and Viber, and what features publishers should know about when thinking about how they might leverage these properties. It also looks at strategies for content distribution across chat apps and finally spotlights some of the challenges that publishers may encounter as they begin to dip their toes into content distribution via messaging apps. Here are some of the key takeaways: There are dozens of messaging platforms, each with distinct user demographics and features, and these differences will determine which apps a publisher should try and what type of content is most fitting. Publishers like The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and the BBC are experimenting to learn which chat apps work for their audience and how they can leverage chat for the distribution of digital content, including articles, images, surveys, and video. Chat apps are especially appealing to publishers because they allow these brands to tap into users' "dark social" activity. Dark social traffic stems from people sharing content privately through IM programs, messaging apps, and email, among other means. Because chat apps were once primarily used for peer-to-peer communications, publishers have an opportunity to reach audiences on these platforms through a more conversational exchange. In full, the report: Breaks down the pros and cons of each major messaging app. Explains the different ways publishers can distribute content on messaging apps. Highlights the differences between native and linked content. Looks at the potential barriers that could limit chat apps' utility for publishers. Interested in getting the full report? Here are two ways to access it: Subscribe to an All-Access pass to BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report and over 100 other expertly researched reports. As an added bonus, you'll also gain access to all future reports and daily newsletters to ensure you stay ahead of the curve and benefit personally and professionally. >> START A MEMBERSHIP Purchase & download the full report from our research store. >> BUY THE REPORT More From Business Insider By PTI WASHINGTON: Islamic State-linked hackers have released a "kill list" of over 8,700 people, mostly from the US and the UK, calling for lone wolf attacks on the targets in a chilling video posted online, according to a media report. The hackers, known as the United Cyber Caliphate (UCC), ordered those watching to, "Kill them wherever you find them", Fox News reported. The video, just under six minutes, begins with a warning for the United States. "We have a message to the people of the US and most importantly your President (Donald) Trump," the text on the screen reads. In the posting on Telegram -- a private messaging app -- the group first warned that a release of the names was imminent. About 10 minutes later, the hackers posted the actual list of 8,786 names and addresses, which includes names of seemingly random individuals from primarily the US and the UK, according to terror monitoring group SITE. "More than 7,000 of the names were from the US," a source from the cyber department at SITE was quoted as saying. "Know that we continue to wage war against you. Know that your counter attacks only make us stronger. The UCC will start a new step in this war against you," the message was quoted as saying. Terror analysts were quoted as saying that it is not yet determined how serious a threat the list may pose in the US and elsewhere. "This group has released several 'kill lists' in the past and so far there's been no confirmed incident of someone on the list being directly targeted or attacked," the source said. The UCC released a video on March 16 saying its leader, Osed Agha, had been killed in a US airstrike. The video threatened retaliation for his death. WASHINGTON: Islamic State-linked hackers have released a "kill list" of over 8,700 people, mostly from the US and the UK, calling for lone wolf attacks on the targets in a chilling video posted online, according to a media report. The hackers, known as the United Cyber Caliphate (UCC), ordered those watching to, "Kill them wherever you find them", Fox News reported. The video, just under six minutes, begins with a warning for the United States. "We have a message to the people of the US and most importantly your President (Donald) Trump," the text on the screen reads. In the posting on Telegram -- a private messaging app -- the group first warned that a release of the names was imminent. About 10 minutes later, the hackers posted the actual list of 8,786 names and addresses, which includes names of seemingly random individuals from primarily the US and the UK, according to terror monitoring group SITE. "More than 7,000 of the names were from the US," a source from the cyber department at SITE was quoted as saying. "Know that we continue to wage war against you. Know that your counter attacks only make us stronger. The UCC will start a new step in this war against you," the message was quoted as saying. Terror analysts were quoted as saying that it is not yet determined how serious a threat the list may pose in the US and elsewhere. "This group has released several 'kill lists' in the past and so far there's been no confirmed incident of someone on the list being directly targeted or attacked," the source said. The UCC released a video on March 16 saying its leader, Osed Agha, had been killed in a US airstrike. The video threatened retaliation for his death. By AFP THE HAGUE: Dutch authorities have arrested an employee of the German industrial giant Siemens on suspicion he was spying for a Chinese rival, raiding his home and workplace and seizing digital data, prosecutors and the company said today. "A 65-year-old man was arrested on Thursday at a station in Twente as part of an investigation into company espionage," the Dutch prosecution service said, referring to a region in the country's east. He "is suspected of infringing patent rights and violating trade secrets," it said in a statement. Siemens told AFP that an employee at Siemens Netherlands was arrested on Thursday, emphasising that the individual alone, and not the company, was the subject of the investigation. "We can confirm that one of our Siemens Netherlands employees was arrested on 6 April 2017 and questioned by the Dutch authorities," a Siemens spokesman, Yashar Azad, said. "Neither Siemens Netherlands nor Siemens AG is the subject of the investigation. The authorities are investigating the actions of a single employee," he said. The man was about to travel to China, and after his arrest "his workplace, home and his luggage were searched and a number of digital data items seized," prosecutors said. "The suspect may have provided technical information to a Chinese competitor," they said, adding that the probe had been launched after his employer became suspicious. Siemens, a multibillion-dollar conglomerate whose businesses range from trains and medical equipment to home appliances and gas and wind turbines, said it was fully cooperating with the investigation, but could not comment further. THE HAGUE: Dutch authorities have arrested an employee of the German industrial giant Siemens on suspicion he was spying for a Chinese rival, raiding his home and workplace and seizing digital data, prosecutors and the company said today. "A 65-year-old man was arrested on Thursday at a station in Twente as part of an investigation into company espionage," the Dutch prosecution service said, referring to a region in the country's east. He "is suspected of infringing patent rights and violating trade secrets," it said in a statement. Siemens told AFP that an employee at Siemens Netherlands was arrested on Thursday, emphasising that the individual alone, and not the company, was the subject of the investigation. "We can confirm that one of our Siemens Netherlands employees was arrested on 6 April 2017 and questioned by the Dutch authorities," a Siemens spokesman, Yashar Azad, said. "Neither Siemens Netherlands nor Siemens AG is the subject of the investigation. The authorities are investigating the actions of a single employee," he said. The man was about to travel to China, and after his arrest "his workplace, home and his luggage were searched and a number of digital data items seized," prosecutors said. "The suspect may have provided technical information to a Chinese competitor," they said, adding that the probe had been launched after his employer became suspicious. Siemens, a multibillion-dollar conglomerate whose businesses range from trains and medical equipment to home appliances and gas and wind turbines, said it was fully cooperating with the investigation, but could not comment further. By AFP UNITED STATES: The UN Security Council will meet on Friday at 11:30 am (1530 GMT) to discuss the US missile strikes on Syria, US diplomats said. Russia demanded an emergency meeting after angrily denouncing the military action as an "aggression against a sovereign state." US President Donald Trump on Thursday ordered cruise missile strikes on a Syrian air base in response to a suspected chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held town that killed 86 people and shocked the world. The strike -- the first direct US action against President Bashar al-Assad and Trump's biggest military decision since taking office -- marked a dramatic escalation in American involvement in Syria's six-year war. The Security Council failed during a meeting on Thursday to agree on terms for an investigation of the suspected sarin gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhun. Council members will hold an open meeting on Friday and hear a briefing on the US military action, the US mission to the United Nations said. The United States holds this month's presidency of the Security Council. Russia's Deputy Ambassador Vladimir Safronkov on Thursday warned of "negative consequences" from the US military action, which he described as a "doubtful, tragic enterprise." "Look at Iraq, look at Libya," he said, referring to Western interventions that unleashed years of chaos in those countries. At least 27 children died in the suspected attack in Khan Sheikhun. Results from post-mortems performed on victims point to exposure to the deadly sarin nerve agent, according to Turkish health officials. UNITED STATES: The UN Security Council will meet on Friday at 11:30 am (1530 GMT) to discuss the US missile strikes on Syria, US diplomats said. Russia demanded an emergency meeting after angrily denouncing the military action as an "aggression against a sovereign state." US President Donald Trump on Thursday ordered cruise missile strikes on a Syrian air base in response to a suspected chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held town that killed 86 people and shocked the world. The strike -- the first direct US action against President Bashar al-Assad and Trump's biggest military decision since taking office -- marked a dramatic escalation in American involvement in Syria's six-year war. The Security Council failed during a meeting on Thursday to agree on terms for an investigation of the suspected sarin gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhun. Council members will hold an open meeting on Friday and hear a briefing on the US military action, the US mission to the United Nations said. The United States holds this month's presidency of the Security Council. Russia's Deputy Ambassador Vladimir Safronkov on Thursday warned of "negative consequences" from the US military action, which he described as a "doubtful, tragic enterprise." "Look at Iraq, look at Libya," he said, referring to Western interventions that unleashed years of chaos in those countries. At least 27 children died in the suspected attack in Khan Sheikhun. Results from post-mortems performed on victims point to exposure to the deadly sarin nerve agent, according to Turkish health officials. By Associated Press BEIRUT: The United States blasted a Syrian air base with a barrage of cruise missiles Thursday night in fiery retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. President Donald Trump cast the U.S. assault as vital to deter future use of poison gas and called on other nations to join in seeking "to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria." It was the first direct American assault on the Syrian government and Trump's most dramatic military order since becoming president just over two months ago. The strikes also risk thrusting the U.S. deeper into an intractable conflict that his predecessor spent years trying to avoid. Announcing the assault from his Florida resort, Trump said there was no doubt Syrian President Bashar Assad was responsible for the chemical attack, which he said employed banned gases and killed dozens. "Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children," Trump declared. The U.S. strikes some 59 missiles launched from the USS Ross and USS Porter hit the government-controlled Shayrat air base in central Syria, where U.S. officials say the Syrian military planes that dropped the chemicals had taken off. The U.S. missiles hit at 8:45 p.m. in Washington, 3:45 Friday morning in Syria. The missiles targeted the base's airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, officials said. Trump approved the strikes without approval from Congress or the backing of the United Nations. The White House said about two dozen lawmakers from both parties were briefed on the actions. Syrian state TV reported a U.S. missile attack on a number of military targets and called the attack an "aggression." The U.S. assault marked a striking reversal for Trump, who warned as a candidate against the U.S. being pulled into the Syrian civil war that began six years ago. But the president appeared moved by the photos of children killed in the chemical attack, calling it a "disgrace to humanity" that crossed "a lot of lines." Video of US military launching cruise missiles in Syria (Source: US Department of Defense) U.S. officials placed some of the blame on Russia, one of Syria's most important benefactors. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in Florida with Trump, said Moscow had failed in living up to a 2013 agreement that was intended to strip Syria of its chemical weapons stockpiles. "Either Russia has been complicit or Russia has been simply incompetent in its ability to deliver on its end of the agreement," Tillerson said. About 60 U.S. Tomahawk missiles, fired from warships in the Mediterranean Sea, targeted an air base in retaliation for the attack that America believes Syrian government aircraft launched with the nerve agent sarin mixed with chlorine gas. The president did not announce the attacks in advance, though he and other national security officials ratcheted up their warnings to the Syrian government throughout the day Thursday. The strike came as Trump was hosting Xi in meetings focused in part on another pressing U.S. security dilemma: North Korea's nuclear program. Trump's actions in Syria could signal to China that the new president isn't afraid of unilateral military steps, even if key nations like China are standing in the way. "This clearly indicates the president is willing to take decisive action when called for," Tillerson said. Trump has advocated greater counterterrorism cooperation with Russia, Assad's most powerful military backer. Just last week, the Trump administration signaled the U.S. was no longer interested in trying to push Assad from power over his direction of a conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and led to the worst refugee crisis since World War II. U.S. officials portrayed the strikes as an appropriate, measured response and said they did not signal a broader shift in the Trump administration's approach to the Syrian conflict. Still, the assault risks plunging America into the middle of Syria's conflict, complicating the safety of the hundreds of U.S. forces fighting a separate campaign against the Islamic State group in the north of the country. If Assad's military persists in further gas attacks, the Trump administration might logically pursue increased retaliation. Russia and Iran, Assad's allies, pose other problems. Russian military personnel and aircraft are embedded with Syria's, and Iranian troops and paramilitary forces are also on the ground helping Assad fight the array of opposition groups hoping to topple him. Before the strikes, U.S. military officials said they informed their Russian counterparts of the impending attack. The goal was to avoid any accident involving Russian forces. Nevertheless, Russia's Deputy U.N. ambassador Vladimir Safronkov warned that any negative consequences from the strikes would be on the "shoulders of those who initiated such a doubtful and tragic enterprise." The U.S. also notified its partner countries in the region prior to launching the strikes. Trump's decision to attack Syria came three-and-a-half years after President Barack Obama threatened Assad with military action after an earlier chemical weapons attack killed hundreds outside Damascus. Obama had declared the use of such weapons a "red line." At the time, several American ships in the Mediterranean were poised to launch missiles, only for Obama to abruptly pull back after key U.S. ally Britain and the U.S. Congress balked at his plan. He opted instead for the Russian-backed plan that was supposed to remove and eliminate Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles. The world learned of the chemical attack earlier in the week in a footage that showed people dying in the streets and bodies of children stacked in piles. The international outcry fueled an emotional response from Trump, who appeared to abandon his much-touted "America First" vision for a stance of humanitarian intervention, akin to that of previous American leaders. "I think what happened in Syria is a disgrace to humanity," he said Thursday. Trump seemed to rapidly reconsider his feelings about Assad, saying: "He's there and I guess he's running things, so something should happen." The show of force in Syria raises legal questions. It's unclear what authority Trump is relying on to attack another government. When Obama intervened in Libya in 2011, he used a U.N. Security Council mandate and NATO's overall leadership of the mission to argue that he had legal authority arguments that many Republicans opposed. Trump can't rely on either justification here. Unclear also is whether Trump is adopting any broader effort to combat Assad. Under Obama, the United States largely pulled back from its support for so-called "moderate" rebels when Russia's military intervention in September 2015 led them to suffer a series of battlefield defeats. Instead, Obama sought to work with Russia on a negotiated transition. Trump and his top aides had acknowledged in recent days the "reality" of Assad being in power, saying his ouster was no longer a priority. But the chemical weapons attack seemed to spur a rethink. In Florida on Thursday, Tillerson said of Assad: "There's no role for him to govern the Syrian people." BEIRUT: The United States blasted a Syrian air base with a barrage of cruise missiles Thursday night in fiery retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. President Donald Trump cast the U.S. assault as vital to deter future use of poison gas and called on other nations to join in seeking "to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria." It was the first direct American assault on the Syrian government and Trump's most dramatic military order since becoming president just over two months ago. The strikes also risk thrusting the U.S. deeper into an intractable conflict that his predecessor spent years trying to avoid. Announcing the assault from his Florida resort, Trump said there was no doubt Syrian President Bashar Assad was responsible for the chemical attack, which he said employed banned gases and killed dozens. "Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children," Trump declared. The U.S. strikes some 59 missiles launched from the USS Ross and USS Porter hit the government-controlled Shayrat air base in central Syria, where U.S. officials say the Syrian military planes that dropped the chemicals had taken off. The U.S. missiles hit at 8:45 p.m. in Washington, 3:45 Friday morning in Syria. The missiles targeted the base's airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, officials said. Trump approved the strikes without approval from Congress or the backing of the United Nations. The White House said about two dozen lawmakers from both parties were briefed on the actions. Syrian state TV reported a U.S. missile attack on a number of military targets and called the attack an "aggression." The U.S. assault marked a striking reversal for Trump, who warned as a candidate against the U.S. being pulled into the Syrian civil war that began six years ago. But the president appeared moved by the photos of children killed in the chemical attack, calling it a "disgrace to humanity" that crossed "a lot of lines."Video of US military launching cruise missiles in Syria (Source: US Department of Defense) U.S. officials placed some of the blame on Russia, one of Syria's most important benefactors. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in Florida with Trump, said Moscow had failed in living up to a 2013 agreement that was intended to strip Syria of its chemical weapons stockpiles. "Either Russia has been complicit or Russia has been simply incompetent in its ability to deliver on its end of the agreement," Tillerson said. About 60 U.S. Tomahawk missiles, fired from warships in the Mediterranean Sea, targeted an air base in retaliation for the attack that America believes Syrian government aircraft launched with the nerve agent sarin mixed with chlorine gas. The president did not announce the attacks in advance, though he and other national security officials ratcheted up their warnings to the Syrian government throughout the day Thursday. The strike came as Trump was hosting Xi in meetings focused in part on another pressing U.S. security dilemma: North Korea's nuclear program. Trump's actions in Syria could signal to China that the new president isn't afraid of unilateral military steps, even if key nations like China are standing in the way. "This clearly indicates the president is willing to take decisive action when called for," Tillerson said. Trump has advocated greater counterterrorism cooperation with Russia, Assad's most powerful military backer. Just last week, the Trump administration signaled the U.S. was no longer interested in trying to push Assad from power over his direction of a conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and led to the worst refugee crisis since World War II. U.S. officials portrayed the strikes as an appropriate, measured response and said they did not signal a broader shift in the Trump administration's approach to the Syrian conflict. Still, the assault risks plunging America into the middle of Syria's conflict, complicating the safety of the hundreds of U.S. forces fighting a separate campaign against the Islamic State group in the north of the country. If Assad's military persists in further gas attacks, the Trump administration might logically pursue increased retaliation. Russia and Iran, Assad's allies, pose other problems. Russian military personnel and aircraft are embedded with Syria's, and Iranian troops and paramilitary forces are also on the ground helping Assad fight the array of opposition groups hoping to topple him. Before the strikes, U.S. military officials said they informed their Russian counterparts of the impending attack. The goal was to avoid any accident involving Russian forces. Nevertheless, Russia's Deputy U.N. ambassador Vladimir Safronkov warned that any negative consequences from the strikes would be on the "shoulders of those who initiated such a doubtful and tragic enterprise." The U.S. also notified its partner countries in the region prior to launching the strikes. Trump's decision to attack Syria came three-and-a-half years after President Barack Obama threatened Assad with military action after an earlier chemical weapons attack killed hundreds outside Damascus. Obama had declared the use of such weapons a "red line." At the time, several American ships in the Mediterranean were poised to launch missiles, only for Obama to abruptly pull back after key U.S. ally Britain and the U.S. Congress balked at his plan. He opted instead for the Russian-backed plan that was supposed to remove and eliminate Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles. The world learned of the chemical attack earlier in the week in a footage that showed people dying in the streets and bodies of children stacked in piles. The international outcry fueled an emotional response from Trump, who appeared to abandon his much-touted "America First" vision for a stance of humanitarian intervention, akin to that of previous American leaders. "I think what happened in Syria is a disgrace to humanity," he said Thursday. Trump seemed to rapidly reconsider his feelings about Assad, saying: "He's there and I guess he's running things, so something should happen." The show of force in Syria raises legal questions. It's unclear what authority Trump is relying on to attack another government. When Obama intervened in Libya in 2011, he used a U.N. Security Council mandate and NATO's overall leadership of the mission to argue that he had legal authority arguments that many Republicans opposed. Trump can't rely on either justification here. Unclear also is whether Trump is adopting any broader effort to combat Assad. Under Obama, the United States largely pulled back from its support for so-called "moderate" rebels when Russia's military intervention in September 2015 led them to suffer a series of battlefield defeats. Instead, Obama sought to work with Russia on a negotiated transition. Trump and his top aides had acknowledged in recent days the "reality" of Assad being in power, saying his ouster was no longer a priority. But the chemical weapons attack seemed to spur a rethink. In Florida on Thursday, Tillerson said of Assad: "There's no role for him to govern the Syrian people." By Express News Service As many as 72 people, including 20 children, were killed in an airstrike on Tuesday that is said to have released toxic gases in Khan Sheikhun, a town in Idlib province of Syria held by rebel forces opposed to the undemocratic regime of President Bashar Al Assad. This is the fourth time in the six-year Syrian conflict, which has claimed about 3,00,000 lives and displaced as many, that chemical weapons have been used by the regime against the rebels. How do we know that nerve gas was used? Survivors of Tuesdays attack were treated for suffocation, convulsions, pinpoint pupils, and rapid pulses symptoms of having inhaled noxious gases, doctors who treated 160 of the wounded told AFP. Videos and photographs circulated by people from the region of the dead show stiff bodies of children with no visible injuries, unlike in explosion deaths. Autopsies conducted on the bodies of victims later confirmed the use of the deadly nerve gas Sarin. Russia claims Syria did not use chemical weapons The regimes foremost ally Russia, said there had indeed been a Syrian air strike in Khan Sheikhun but that the a rebel warehouse making bombs using toxic material had been hit, discharging poisonous gases into the air. A chemical weapons expert, Col Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, rubbished this alibi, telling the BBC the idea that a nerve gas like Sarin could spread after a weapons manufacturing depot had been hit was not sustainable. Syria has gassed its citizens before In 2013, the Bashar Al Assad regime had used the deadly nerve gas, Sarin, on the outskirts of Damascus, an attack in which as many as 1,429 people were killed, according to a US intelligence report. There was widespread condemnation and major diplomatic efforts as the world for the first time intervened in the Syrian conflict. Syria was forced to give up its chemical weapons arsenal and sign the Chemical Weapons Convention in 2013 to avoid military action by Western powers. But that didnt stop Syria. There were two attacks, in which Chlorine was used, between 2014 and 2015, a United Nations-led probe said. Will action be taken against Syria? United States President Donald Trump has said that Assad has crossed many lines with this attack, while Vice-President Mike Pence when asked if the US would intervene to overthrow the regime, said all options are on the table. Will it be another invasion like Iraq? Meanwhile, Britain, France and the US proposed a resolution to have an investigation by Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons investigate the attack. The UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria and the UNs chemical arms watchdog too have launched investigations to ascertain whether Syria used toxic gases to attack its people. What is the history of the conflict? Eleven years after President Bashar al-Assad succeeded his father, Hafez, in 2000, peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations began in Syria in March 2011 in the backdrop of similar protests in West Asian countries, including Tunisia and Egypt, known as the Arab Spring. Assad crushed the demonstrations with brute force, which led to protests demanding his resignation. It quickly escalated as opposition supporters resorted to an armed struggle. By June 2012, 18 months later, the Red Cross had declared that Syria was in a state of civil war. Shia government versus divided opposition While the government headed by Assad, who belongs to the Alawite minority community of the Shia sect, managed to keep the Shias on the government side, the Opposition, which was composed mainly of Sunni groups and some Kurds, split into several hundred rebel outfits, as sectarian differences cropped up. Sectarianism cropped up as a major problem in West Asia since the US-led war on Iraq in 2003, which too was a secular country until then under Saddam Hussein. International support based on sectarian divide There have been long-standing animosities between Shia and Sunni majority countries in West Asia. So they naturally sided with the Syrian government or the opposition groups according to their sects interests. Rich Sunni countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, apart from Turkey, supported different rebel groups, while Shiite Iran and the Hezbollah in Lebanon backed the Assad regime. Secular regime versus Islamist rebels To gain the support of rich Islamic nations like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the rebel outfits began reorienting themselves as increasingly Islamist and jihadist by early 2012, giving shape to Ahrar al-Sham and the al-Nusra Front. The Syrian forces stuck together behind President Assad and the narrative became one of secular versus Islamist. This environment also led to the rise of the so-called Islamic State also known as ISIS, which had begun as an offshoot of the Al Qaeda in Iraq. ISIS made good of the conflict to capture several regions of Syria and Iraq, which it has declared as the Caliphate. Syria becomes proxy battleground for US, Russia Fearing the rise of the Islamic State, which was born as a result of the United States invasion of Iraq, the United States began pushing for a change of regime but stayed shy of getting directly involved, instead preferring to arm rebel groups. Sensing an opportunity to reclaim its spot as a major world power, Russia stepped in to the conflict in September 2015, launching air strikes to target terrorists like ISIS and help the Bashar Al Assad regime. Russia is accused of targeting US-military backed rebel installations, and it has led to a proxy war between Moscow and Washington. Now with the United States launching direct air strikes on Syria, the proxy war has been escalated. Lives claimed, people displaced More than 3,00,000 people have been killed in the six years that the Syrian conflict has lasted, according to a UK-based monitoring group names Syrian Observatory for Human rights. Other groups quote higher figures closer to 500,000. Ten times that number of people have fled the war-torn country to neighbouring Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. Of the 5 million, 10 per cent of them have been relocated in European countries. The mass migration sowed political discord in Europe, particularly in the Britain, France, Germany, and is said to have been one of the key nudge-points that led to Britons choosing to leave the European Union in the Brexit referendum. As many as 72 people, including 20 children, were killed in an airstrike on Tuesday that is said to have released toxic gases in Khan Sheikhun, a town in Idlib province of Syria held by rebel forces opposed to the undemocratic regime of President Bashar Al Assad. This is the fourth time in the six-year Syrian conflict, which has claimed about 3,00,000 lives and displaced as many, that chemical weapons have been used by the regime against the rebels. How do we know that nerve gas was used? Survivors of Tuesdays attack were treated for suffocation, convulsions, pinpoint pupils, and rapid pulses symptoms of having inhaled noxious gases, doctors who treated 160 of the wounded told AFP. Videos and photographs circulated by people from the region of the dead show stiff bodies of children with no visible injuries, unlike in explosion deaths. Autopsies conducted on the bodies of victims later confirmed the use of the deadly nerve gas Sarin. Russia claims Syria did not use chemical weapons The regimes foremost ally Russia, said there had indeed been a Syrian air strike in Khan Sheikhun but that the a rebel warehouse making bombs using toxic material had been hit, discharging poisonous gases into the air. A chemical weapons expert, Col Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, rubbished this alibi, telling the BBC the idea that a nerve gas like Sarin could spread after a weapons manufacturing depot had been hit was not sustainable. Syria has gassed its citizens before In 2013, the Bashar Al Assad regime had used the deadly nerve gas, Sarin, on the outskirts of Damascus, an attack in which as many as 1,429 people were killed, according to a US intelligence report. There was widespread condemnation and major diplomatic efforts as the world for the first time intervened in the Syrian conflict. Syria was forced to give up its chemical weapons arsenal and sign the Chemical Weapons Convention in 2013 to avoid military action by Western powers. But that didnt stop Syria. There were two attacks, in which Chlorine was used, between 2014 and 2015, a United Nations-led probe said. Will action be taken against Syria? United States President Donald Trump has said that Assad has crossed many lines with this attack, while Vice-President Mike Pence when asked if the US would intervene to overthrow the regime, said all options are on the table. Will it be another invasion like Iraq? Meanwhile, Britain, France and the US proposed a resolution to have an investigation by Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons investigate the attack. The UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria and the UNs chemical arms watchdog too have launched investigations to ascertain whether Syria used toxic gases to attack its people. What is the history of the conflict? Eleven years after President Bashar al-Assad succeeded his father, Hafez, in 2000, peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations began in Syria in March 2011 in the backdrop of similar protests in West Asian countries, including Tunisia and Egypt, known as the Arab Spring. Assad crushed the demonstrations with brute force, which led to protests demanding his resignation. It quickly escalated as opposition supporters resorted to an armed struggle. By June 2012, 18 months later, the Red Cross had declared that Syria was in a state of civil war. Shia government versus divided opposition While the government headed by Assad, who belongs to the Alawite minority community of the Shia sect, managed to keep the Shias on the government side, the Opposition, which was composed mainly of Sunni groups and some Kurds, split into several hundred rebel outfits, as sectarian differences cropped up. Sectarianism cropped up as a major problem in West Asia since the US-led war on Iraq in 2003, which too was a secular country until then under Saddam Hussein. International support based on sectarian divide There have been long-standing animosities between Shia and Sunni majority countries in West Asia. So they naturally sided with the Syrian government or the opposition groups according to their sects interests. Rich Sunni countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, apart from Turkey, supported different rebel groups, while Shiite Iran and the Hezbollah in Lebanon backed the Assad regime. Secular regime versus Islamist rebels To gain the support of rich Islamic nations like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the rebel outfits began reorienting themselves as increasingly Islamist and jihadist by early 2012, giving shape to Ahrar al-Sham and the al-Nusra Front. The Syrian forces stuck together behind President Assad and the narrative became one of secular versus Islamist. This environment also led to the rise of the so-called Islamic State also known as ISIS, which had begun as an offshoot of the Al Qaeda in Iraq. ISIS made good of the conflict to capture several regions of Syria and Iraq, which it has declared as the Caliphate. Syria becomes proxy battleground for US, Russia Fearing the rise of the Islamic State, which was born as a result of the United States invasion of Iraq, the United States began pushing for a change of regime but stayed shy of getting directly involved, instead preferring to arm rebel groups. Sensing an opportunity to reclaim its spot as a major world power, Russia stepped in to the conflict in September 2015, launching air strikes to target terrorists like ISIS and help the Bashar Al Assad regime. Russia is accused of targeting US-military backed rebel installations, and it has led to a proxy war between Moscow and Washington. Now with the United States launching direct air strikes on Syria, the proxy war has been escalated. Lives claimed, people displaced More than 3,00,000 people have been killed in the six years that the Syrian conflict has lasted, according to a UK-based monitoring group names Syrian Observatory for Human rights. Other groups quote higher figures closer to 500,000. Ten times that number of people have fled the war-torn country to neighbouring Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. Of the 5 million, 10 per cent of them have been relocated in European countries. The mass migration sowed political discord in Europe, particularly in the Britain, France, Germany, and is said to have been one of the key nudge-points that led to Britons choosing to leave the European Union in the Brexit referendum. Sorry, that page not found! Please visit our Home Page for latest updates Trump 'deeply committed' to preserving strong relationship with Jordan New Delhi , Apr. 6 : U.S. President Donald Trump welcomed Jordan's King Abdullah II to the White House on Wednesday. (Posted on 06 April 2017, 1667909462 173O212O198O32) https://www.newkerala.com/us-news.php (Posted on 06 April 2017, 1667909462 173O212O198O32) Taking to his Twitter page, Trump wrote, "I am deeply committed to preserving our strong relationship and to strengthening America's long-standing support for Jordan. @KingAbdullahII."Trump and first lady Melania greeted King Abdullah and Queen Rania Al-Abdullah at the West Wing portico.About the meeting, the U.S. President tweeted, "The King has been a leader in calling for a plan to defeat ISIS once and for all. This is what we spoke about today, and that is what we are going to do - we will destroy ISIS, and we will protect civilization. King Abdullah and I also discussed measures to combat the evil ideology that inspires ISIS and plagues our planet."He further wrote, "The historical ties and close friendship between our two countries date back three-quarters of a century. In that time, the Middle East has faced many periods of crisis and unrest. Through them all, America has looked to Jordan as a valued partner, an advocate for the values of civilization and a source of stability and hope." Gaikwad arrives in parliament, Shiv Sena backs him New Delhi, Apr 5 : Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad, who is facing criticism for his alleged unruly behaviour with an Air India staffer, on Thursday arrived in the Parliament and is expected to share his side of story in front of the house. (Posted on 06 April 2017, 1667909463 173O212O198O32) https://www.newkerala.com/maharashtra-news.php (Posted on 06 April 2017, 1667909463 173O212O198O32) Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut backed Gaikwad and said that he won't run away and will speak on the matter on the floor of the house today."Today there is a parliament session, he is in there and will keep his point of view in front of the house. Nobody from the Shiv Sena runs, Gaikwad ji will speak," said Raut.According to reports, Sena MPs will urge Speaker Sumitra Mahajan to allow Gaikwad to make a statement in the Lok Sabha to give his side of the story, which may include a denouncement of the attitude of Air India and private airlines, as well as the role of the Ministry of Civil Aviation, while demanding immediate revocation of his ban on boarding flights.The Shiv Sena MP from Osmanabad in Maharashtra has been banned by airlines after a ruckus with an Air India employee recently.Air India and six private airlines banned the 56-year-old MP from flying as he refused to apologise for the incident that triggered nationwide outrage. Gujarat: Four-year-old child dies after falling into 500-feet borewell Surendranagar (Gujarat) , Apr. 6 : In a shocking incident, a four-year-old childwas found dead on Thursday after falling into a 500-feet borewell in Karsangadh village of Gujarat's Surendranagar district. (Posted on 06 April 2017, 1667909465 173O212O198O32) https://www.newkerala.com/gujarat-news.php (Posted on 06 April 2017, 1667909465 173O212O198O32) Earlier, the locals made all efforts to take the child out of the borewell.In a similar incident last year, a one-year-old girl had fallen into a borewell in Surendranagar district. She later died during the treatment after being rescued. Bullock cart race legalised in Maharashtra Mumbai (Maharashtra) , Apr. 6 : The Maharashtra Assembly on Thursday moved an amendment in the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960 making bullock carts races legal in the state. (Posted on 06 April 2017, 1667909466 173O212O198O32) https://www.newkerala.com/maharashtra-news.php (Posted on 06 April 2017, 1667909466 173O212O198O32) Animal Husbandry Minister Mahadev Jankar tabled the Bill in the Lower House.Bullock cart races were banned in 2011 after bulls were categorised as performing animals under the Act.Shiv Sena MP from Pune Shivajirao Adhalrao Patil and Peasants and Workers Party legislator Jayant Patil have been campaigning to lift the ban.Patil had raised the issue in Parliament seeking intervention of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to restore cart races in the state.However, animal rights activists have been raising objections to the move, saying it amounts to subjecting bulls to cruelty and torture. Maharashtra Cabinet nods for draft bill prohibiting attack on journalists Mumbai (Maharashtra) , Apr. 6 : The Maharashtra Cabinet on Wednesday gave nod to a draft bill prohibiting attack on journalists in the state. (Posted on 06 April 2017, 1667909466 173O212O198O32) https://www.newkerala.com/maharashtra-news.php (Posted on 06 April 2017, 1667909466 173O212O198O32) The Journalists Protection Act will now be tabled in the state legislature.This comes in the wake of an attack on a senior journalist working with a national daily who was attacked by unknown persons in Navi Mumbai' Kharghar on Friday.Last week, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis announced that a bill to protect journalists from attacks will be introduced in the legislature."The draft of the bill regarding attacks on journalists is ready and we plan to introduce it in the ongoing session of the state Legislature," he said in the assembly.Last year a delegation led by S. M. Deshmukh, convenor of action committee on attacks on journalist had met Fadanvis and apprised him about the situation. Hospitals risking your data Washington D.C. [USA], Apr. 7 : Lying onn a hospital bed, the last thing you should have to worry about is a personal data breach. (Posted on 07 April 2017, 1667909467 173O212O198O32) https://www.newkerala.com/world-news.php (Posted on 07 April 2017, 1667909467 173O212O198O32) Yet, a recent research co-authored by a Michigan State University business scholar found nearly 1,800 occurrences of large data breaches in patient information over a seven-year period.According to the study by Xuefeng "John" Jiang and colleagues from Johns Hopkins and Ball State universities, the data breaches occurred in health care facilities ranging from UC Davis Medical Center in California to Henry Ford Hospital in Michigan."Our findings underscore the critical need for increased data protection in the health care industry," Jiang said. "While the law requires health care professionals and systems to cross-share patient data, the more people who can access data, the less secure it is."The researchers examined Department of Health and Human Services data for the period October 2009-December 2016. By law, hospitals covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPPA, must notify HHS of any breach affecting 500 or more individuals within 60 days from the discovery of the breach.They found that healthcare providers reported 1,225 of the 1,798 recorded breaches, while business associates, health plans and healthcare clearinghouses reported the rest.257 breaches reported by 216 hospitals, while 33 hospitals experienced more than one breach - many of which are large, major teaching hospitals.This research reinforces the critical trade-off patients face: healthcare systems having access to information they need, versus a hacker planning to spend your savings at Best Buy.The study is published in JAMA Internal Medicine. - By Mark Yu Ford (NYSE:F) was reported Saturday to recall 52,600 F-250 pickup trucks sold in the U.S. and Canada because the vehicles could roll after the driver moves the automatic transmission lever into the park position. (Ford) According to Reuters, this recall comes after last week's recalls for 211,000 Ford vehicles with potentially faulty side door latches, and another 230,000 Ford vehicles that presented a fire risk in the engine compartment. Earnings performance In January, the $46.3 billion Michigan-based carmaker delivered its full-year fiscal 2016 results. Ford reported a 1.5% sales increase to $151.8 billion and a disappointing 37.7% profit reduction to $4.6 billion - a 3% profit margin compared to 4.9% in 2015. The marked profit reduction in 2016 was brought by some $3.6 billion in special items expenses. This compares to Ford's $698 million charge in 2015. In review, $2.99 billion of the special items expenses were in relation to year-end pension and other postretirement employee benefits remeasurement losses among others. "We achieved a solid 2016 net income of $4.6 billion as well as an adjusted pretax company profit of $10.4 billion, which was our second best ever - building on the all-time record we had set the year before. This underscores the substantial progress we are making in expanding our business to be an auto and a mobility company. This year we're focused on building on our strengths, transforming underperforming parts of our business and investing in the emerging opportunities that will provide even more profitable growth in the future." - Mark Fields, president and CEO Total returns Ford has underperformed the broader Standard & Poor's 500 index in the past half decade. According to Morningstar data, the car company delivered a total 8.96% loss for the past year compared to S&P 500's 17.2% gain. In the past five years, Ford returned 2.8% compared to the index's 13.3%. Story continues Valuations Ford is undervalued compared to its peers. According to GuruFocus data, Ford had a trailing price-earnings (P/E) ratio of 10.2 times vs. industry median 17.8 times, a price-book (P/B) value of 1.6 times vs. industry median 1.67 times and a price-sales (P/S) ratio of 0.31 times vs. industry median 0.8 times. Ford had 5.17% trailing dividend yield with a 52% payout ratio. In average analyst expectations for fiscal 2017, Ford had forward P/S and P/E ratios of 0.33 times and 7.32 times. Ford According to filings, Ford was incorporated 113 years ago to produce and sell automobiles designed and engineered by Henry Ford. Ford is a global automotive and mobility company with the core business that includes designing, manufacturing, marketing and servicing a full line of Ford cars, trucks and SUVs as well as Lincoln luxury vehicles. In 2016, Ford generated 61.6% or $93.4 billion of total sales in the U.S., followed by 6.6% each in the United Kingdom and Canada, 4.8% in Germany and 20.4% from other countries. Ford reported four operating segments: Automotive, Financial Services, Ford Smart Mobility LLC and Central Treasury Operations. Ford Smart Mobility LLC and Central Treasury Operations are combined into one All Other segment. (10-K) Automotive Ford's Automotive segment primarily includes the sale of Ford and Lincoln brand vehicles, service parts and accessories worldwide, together with the associated costs to develop, manufacture, distribute and service the vehicles, parts and accessories. Further, the division includes five regional business units: North America, South America, Europe, Middle East & Africa and Asia Pacific. In 2016, Automotive sales grew 0.7% to $141.5 billion or 93.2% of total Ford sales. The segment also delivered a pretax margin of 6.7% compared to 6.8% in 2015. (10-K) Financial Services The Financial Services segment primarily includes Ford's vehicle-related financing and leasing activities at Ford Motor Credit Co. LLC. In 2016, Financial Services sales grew 14% to $10.3 billion or 6.8% of total Ford sales. The segment also delivered a pretax margin of 17.8% compared to 22.6% in 2015. (10-K) All Other According to Ford, the All Other division is a combination of two operating segments that did not meet the quantitative thresholds in this reporting period to qualify as reportable segments. All Other consists of Central Treasury Operations (formerly Other Automotive) and Ford Smart Mobility LLC. The Central Treasury Operations segment is primarily engaged in decision making for investments, risk management activities and providing financing for the Automotive segment. Ford Smart Mobility LLC, meanwhile, is a subsidiary formed to design, build, grow and invest in emerging mobility services. Designed to compete like a startup company, Ford Smart Mobility LLC will design and build mobility services on its own and collaborate with startups and tech companies. In 2016, All Other sales improved to $1 million compared to nil in 2015. The segment also delivered pretax losses of $867 million compared to losses of $796 million in 2015. Sales and profits (10-K) In the past three years, Ford generated sales and profit growth and margin averages of 1.1%, 126% and 2.9%. Outlook (10-K) Ford expects its fiscal 2017 operations to be generally lower than 2016, driven by investments in emerging opportunities. (10-K) As per Ford's Automotive segment, which generated most of the company's business, the segment is further subdivided into different regional business units as shown in the image. Ford expects its profits in North America and Europe to be lower than 2016, projecting improvements in results in South America, Middle East & Africa and Asia Pacific. Results for Ford Credit and All Other are expected to be lower than 2016. Cash, debt and book value As of December, Ford had cash and cash equivalents of $15.9 billion and $29.2 billion in debt payables within one year and long-term debts resulting in a debt-equity ratio of 4.9 times compared to 4.6 times. Ford also had a book value of $29.3 billion in 2016 - a 1.85% growth from 2015. The car company had total underfunded pension plans of $8.9 billion in 2016 compared to $8.2 billion in 2015. Cash flow (10-K) In 2016, Ford grew its cash flow from operations by 2.24% to $19.8 billion. Capital expenditures were $7 billion leaving the car company with $12.8 billion free cash flow compared to $8.97 billion in 2015. (10-K) *Free cash flow is defined as cash flow from operations minus capital expenditures. Adding operating leases and finance receivables to capital expenditures resulted in negative net cash flow. Meanwhile, Ford also set aside $2.07 billion in equity and debt securities purchases net sales and maturities. (10-K) Conclusion Ford demonstrated steady business growth in its recent fiscal year operations, especially its financial services business. However, the company does not expect to have the same business growth but evidently lower this fiscal 2017. Ford also became a little more leveraged in 2016 while also carrying a good amount of underfunded pension liabilities. Ford exhibited steadily improving free cash flow in recent years. (Ford Share Price and Price-Sales Ratio, GuruFocus) In February, Jefferies and Barclays both upgraded their outlooks on Ford shares to hold and overweight. Twenty-two analysts had an average target price of $13.18 or 13% upside from $11.64, the share price at the time of writing. Applying three-year P/S multiple average, 1.5% growth rate and a 20% margin would give a value of $45.2 billion or $11.4 per share - keeping the same amount of shares outstanding. Ford is a hold. Disclosure: I do not have shares in the company mentioned. Start a free seven-day trial of Premium Membership to GuruFocus. This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Two soldiers dead, one missing after avalanches hit Batalik sector in Ladakh Ladakh (Jammu and Kashmir) , Apr. 7 : Two of the five soldiers trapped in a series of avalanches in Jammu and Kashmir's Batalik succumbed to their injuries on Friday, while one is still missing. (Posted on 07 April 2017, 1667909468 173O212O198O32) https://www.newkerala.com/india-news.php (Posted on 07 April 2017, 1667909468 173O212O198O32) At least five soldiers were trapped when a series of avalanches hit the Batalik sector in the Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir clamping down an army post yesterday.Four soldiers have been rescued from the area, so far.Since Tuesday, most places of the state received moderate to heavy rains. Met office said that the higher reaches received heavy snowfall.Divisional Administration Kashmir had issued an avalanche warning for next 24-hours for hilly and avalanche prone areas of Kashmir Valley and Kargil district.According to MeT department officials, Srinagar received 83.9 mm rain and snowfall since yesterday while Kokernag in south Kashmir received 69.9 mm of rains in that period.Pahalgam, also in south Kashmir, recorded a rainfall of 64.2 mm since yesterday.As many as 20 Army personnel including a Major and a Junior Commissioned Officer lost their lives in three separate incidents of avalanches in Sonamarg area of Ganderbal, Gurez in Bandipora and Machhil in Kupwara districts in January this year. J-K flood situation: PM Modi calls Mehbooba Mufti, offers all possible help from Centre New Delhi , Apr. 7 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday spoke to Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti to offer help from the Centre to deal with the flood-like situation in the Kashmir Valley. Spoke to J&K CM @MehboobaMufti on the flood situation in the state. Offered all possible support from Centre in dealing with the situation. Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) April 7, 2017 (Posted on 07 April 2017, 1667909469 173O212O198O32) https://www.newkerala.com/india-news.php (Posted on 07 April 2017, 1667909469 173O212O198O32) Prime Minister Modi took to Twitter to convey the above-mentioned.On Thursday, Mufti chaired a high-level meeting here to take stock of the situation.She has asked the divisional administration to gear up to meet any eventuality in view of the inclement weather, an official spokesman said.Flood levels have eased a little since yesterday when the water level in the Jhelum river yesterday crossed the 'flood declaration' mark at Ram Munshi Bagh in Srinagar.Most water bodies in the valley including rivers, lakes and streams were swollen.The flood control department on Thursday alerted all its staff to be present at their places of posting round the clock so that the water level in local rivers, lakes and streams can be continuously monitored. Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina to arrive today on four-day India visit New Delhi , Apr. 7 : Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will arrive in India on a four-day visit today and will meet External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj. (Posted on 07 April 2017, 1667909470 173O212O198O32) https://www.newkerala.com/more-news.php (Posted on 07 April 2017, 1667909470 173O212O198O32) India will sign an inter-governmental agreement on civil nuclear energy with Bangladesh during Prime Minister Hasina's visit to India.According to Dhaka Tribune, India and Bangladesh may sign around 35 deals and Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) on trade and commerce, economy and connectivity, and on defence related issues.The MoUs will include prevention of human trafficking, blue economy and maritime cooperation in the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean, use of Chittagong and Mongla seaports, Indian economic zone, and joint research on oceanography of the Bay of Bengal.Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Joint Secretary Sripriya Ranganathan on Thursday said that India was expecting to sign over 20 agreements with Bangladesh during this visit.Ranganathan further said the two countries would also launch a bus service connecting two cities of India and Bangladesh and a train service between West Bengal and Bangladesh.The Bangladesh Government on Monday approved the draft of a proposal to establish a new passenger bus service between Dhaka in Bangladesh and Kolkata in India via Khulna.The draft of the proposal was approved in a weekly Cabinet meeting presided over by Prime Minister Hasina.The visit will be aimed at expanding bilateral trade, boosting investment, connectivity and sub-regional assistance.India is likely to offer USD 500 million Line of Credit to Bangladesh for defence exports from the country during the visit. It is unlikely that the Teesta water sharing agreement would be signed. My Vande Mataram statement taken 'out of context', says Uttarakhand Minister Rawat New Delhi , Apr. 7 : After suggesting that Vande Mataram, the national song, and Jana Gana Mana, the national anthem, be sung compulsorily in colleges in Uttarakhand, Minister of State for Higher Education Dhan Singh Rawat on Friday said his statement had been taken out of context and must not be linked with religion. (Posted on 07 April 2017, 1667909470 173O212O198O32) https://www.newkerala.com/india-news.php (Posted on 07 April 2017, 1667909470 173O212O198O32) Talking to ANI, Rawat said, "I believe that my statement was not understood properly. I said that there should be Vande Mataram and national anthem in all education institutes. It would be good if Vande Mataram and national anthem are sung in educational institutions, universities.""We are thinking of having Vande Mataram and national anthem from next session in colleges. No education institutes have any problem. Singing Vande matram is not a crime. We are not an enemy of any religion. Nobody should have problem with Vande Mataram," he added.Rawat had earlier made the hoisting of the national flag mandatory in universities across the state and was doing the same for the national song."Uttarakhand mein rehna hai, toh Vande Mataram kehna hoga (If you want to stay in Uttarakhand, you have to sing Vande Mataram)," the minister told students at a function at a college in Roorkee on Wednesday.After his statement triggered frenzied debate among both the student and teacher communities.Suggesting the minister and the BJP government to elevate the standard of education in the state, rather than focusing on such issues, state Congress chief Kishore Upadhyay had earlier said, "The issue of reciting national anthem or national song is not new. Being in absolute majority, the BJP can get a bill in this regard passed in the assembly. We fail to understand why so much of hue and cry is being created on the issue." Hindustan Power contributes 10 pct of Bihar's installed solar capacity New Delhi , Apr 7 : The clean energy arm of Hindustan Power commissioned a 10 MW solar plant at Shergati, Gaya in Bihar to power the cumulative solar capacity in Bihar to ~ 100 MWs. (Posted on 07 April 2017, 1667909471 173O212O198O32) https://www.newkerala.com/business-india-news.php (Posted on 07 April 2017, 1667909471 173O212O198O32) The plant commissioned at an investment of Rs. 81 crore is spread over 56 acres of land using 34920 modules has been generating 45000 units of clean energy per day, since its commissioning in November 2016.The PPA for the 10 MW project has been signed with Bihar State Power Holding Corporation Ltd. and the power is evacuated to 33 kV Sherghati Substation."To achieve 100 GW target from solar by 2022, the States needs to promote a policy framework that is conducive to the industry and at the same benefits the people. In recent times, Bihar has made a very positive beginning by announcing revised solar target and providing necessary infrastructure support to ramp up the capacity," said chairman Hindustan Power, Ratul Puri."We are very happy to partner the State of Bihar in achieving its solar targets. Considering India receives solar energy in the region of five to seven kWh/m2/day for 300 to 330 sunny days, we have focused on developing mid to large sized solar farms in the country," added Ratul Puri."Our experience of working in Bihar was very good and learning. I must mention the role played by the local administration and Bihar State Power Holding Corporation Ltd officials was very crucial to the timely commissioning of the project. I must acknowledge and thank my team for working round the clock and establishing newer benchmarks in commissioning of the plant," said CEO Domestic Solar Hindustan Power, Rajya Ghei.With a current solar capacity of ~ 600MW, the company is one of the key players championing the adoption of solar on mass scale in India. The clean energy arm of the company is generating carbon savings of approx 720000 tonnes per year. PM Modi receives Bangladesh PM Hasina in New Delhi New Delhi , Apr. 7 : Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina today landed in New Delhi to kickstart her four-day visit to the country. (Posted on 07 April 2017, 1667909472 173O212O198O32) https://www.newkerala.com/india-news.php (Posted on 07 April 2017, 1667909472 173O212O198O32) Prime Minister Narendra Modi received his counterpart at the Palam Technical Airport.Officials from Prime Minister Hasina's entourage took selfies with Prime Minister Modi.The two leaders are expected to hold official talks on a range of issues including an inter-governmental agreement on civil nuclear energy.According to Dhaka Tribune, India and Bangladesh may sign around 35 deals and Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) on trade and commerce, economy and connectivity, and on defence related issues.The MoUs will include prevention of human trafficking, blue economy and maritime cooperation in the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean, use of Chittagong and Mongla seaports, Indian economic zone, and joint research on oceanography of the Bay of Bengal.Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Joint Secretary Sripriya Ranganathan on Thursday said that India was expecting to sign over 20 agreements with Bangladesh during this visit.The Bangladesh Government on Monday approved the draft of a proposal to establish a new passenger bus service between Dhaka in Bangladesh and Kolkata in India via Khulna.The draft of the proposal was approved in a weekly Cabinet meeting presided over by Prime Minister Hasina.The visit will be aimed at expanding bilateral trade, boosting investment, connectivity and sub-regional assistance.India is likely to offer USD 500 million Line of Credit to Bangladesh for defence exports from the country during the visit. It is unlikely that the Teesta water sharing agreement would be signed.During her stay in New Delhi, Prime Minister Hasina will call on President Pranab Mukherjee and Vice President Mohammed Hamid Ansari.The Bangladesh Prime Minister will be staying at the President House as a special guest during her stay. GAO, Mali, April 7 (Reuters) - France does not want an escalation of the Syrian conflict following the U.S. missile strikes and Russia should now join talks to bring about a negotiated solution to the conflict, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said on Friday. Speaking in Mali, alongside German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, Ayrault said: "We do not want an escalation. We have to stop the hypocrisy. If Russia is acting in good faith it should stop and negotiate. "We do not wish to raise the stakes, but to find a solution. You can not deal with reality (use of chemical weapons) by resorting to propaganda," he said. (Reporting by John Irish; Writing By Richard Balmforth) 'Best Actor' Akshay Kumar feels 'truly humbled' with 'National Award' win New Delhi Apr. 7 : It is indeed a day for Akshay Kumar and his family, friends and fans to rejoice, as the actor won his first National Award in the 'Best Actor' category, for 'Rustom.' (Posted on 07 April 2017, 1667909474 173O212O198O32) https://www.newkerala.com/bollywood-news.php (Posted on 07 April 2017, 1667909474 173O212O198O32) Thanking everyone for his big win, the 'Khiladi' actor said that he feels "humbled by this honour."He took to Twitter to share a video message for all and wrote alongside, "#NationalFilmAwards : Best Actor for Rustom,countless emotions,very hard to express my gratitude right now but still tried,a big THANK YOU."In the one-minute video, the 'Airlift' actor said, "Thank you is a very small word to say. But I don't know how else to express what I am feeling right now. I am truly humbled by this honour. I would like to thank the National Award jury and all my fans, from the core of my heart, for believing in my talent.""Rustom was a very special role to play. Wearing the uniform of Indian Navy personnel is an achievement by itself, be it for a film. Now this award has made it yet more special," he continued."I would like to dedicate this award to the blessings of my parents and love of my family, especially to my lovely wife who always jokes, 'Good that you have stopped going to Award events. You don't get anything.' However, it's better late than never."Concluding his statement, Akshay, who is presently shooting with Sonam Kapoor for R. Balki's upcoming film 'Padman,' said, "As I speak this, National Award winning actress Sonam Kapoor, who is shooting with me, is here now. So, it's a double celebration for us today."On the same note, Sonam Kapoor's 'Neerja' won the National Award in the 'Best Hindi Feature Film' category.Wife Twinkle Khanna also expressed her overwhelming happiness and tweeted, "I don't know if I am crying or laughing-emotions all over the place-So proud of you @akshaykumar you smart, humble, amazing creature!"Akshay's friend's from the industry too showered their wished on the actor.His 'Rustom' costar Ileana D'Cruz wrote, "Russi continuing to win hearts nationwide and his Cynthia couldn't be prouder! Congratulations @akshaykumar!!!!!""Congratulations to my bro @akshaykumar for winning the national award for best actor for Rustom ! more power to you #NationalAward," tweeted his 'Brothers' co-star Sidharth Malhotra."Congratulations to @akshaykumar for winning #NationalAward for #BestActor. What an inspirational career graph & reinvention of an actor.:)" wrote Anupam Kher."Congrats @akshaykumar best actor for rustom..one more feather in an overcrowded cap..luv u sundi #NationalFilmAwards," tweeted Sajid Khan. NHRC asks Delhi Govt.for report on administering contaminated injections to GTB Hospital patients New Delhi , Apr.7 :The National Human Rights Commission has taken suo motu cognizance of a media report that 20 eye patients had to be rushed to the AIIMS from the Guru Teg Bahadur (GTB) Hospital, Delhi on 2nd April, 2017, when they complained about blurred vision, pain and watery eyes after they were, allegedly, administered contaminated injections at the hospital. About 8 of them reportedly require eye surgery. (Posted on 07 April 2017, 1667909476 173O212O198O32) https://www.newkerala.com/india-news.php (Posted on 07 April 2017, 1667909476 173O212O198O32) The commission has observed that the contents of the news report raise serious issue of negligence by the GTB Hospital doctors and its management, putting the eyesight of the patients to risk. Accordingly, it has issued a notice to the Chief Secretary, Government of NCT of Delhi calling for a detailed report in the matter within four weeks.According to the media report,20 patients, as part of their follow up treatment, were administered injections containing the drug "Avastian", which is globally used to prevent blindness due to ageing, diabetes, hypertension and rupturing of blood vessels. Reportedly, Dr. Atul Kumar, Chief of the R.P. Centre for Ophthalmic Sciences at AIIMS has said that 'Avastian' is classified as sight saving drug and used all over the world. In this case, it seems that the injections were contaminated, which caused the reaction.Reportedly, the Medical Director of the GTB Hospital has stated that the samples of the injection have been sent to the microbiology lab for testing so that suspected contamination could be determined. He has informed that specialists were called immediately when the patients complained about blurred vision and mild pain, during the follow up and the serious cases were referred to the AIIMS, New Delhi. Kalraj Mishra lauds PM Modi for shunning traffic restrictions New Delhi , Apr. 7 : Union Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Minister(MSME) Kalraj Mishra on Friday praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for ending VIP culture by shunning traffic restrictions to receive Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at the airport this afternoon. (Posted on 07 April 2017, 1667909476 173O212O198O32) https://www.newkerala.com/india-news.php (Posted on 07 April 2017, 1667909476 173O212O198O32) "Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India is a perfect example of an ideal and capable prime minister a country should have," Mishra told ANI.He said this act of the Prime Minister also shows he considers the prime minister of the neighboring country an equal and one among us.Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Modi travelled from his residence on Lok Kalyan Marg to Delhi Airport, in normal traffic when he went to the airport to receive Hasina.Several efforts have been made to end the VVIP culture in the state.Recently, the Punjab government put a ban on use of red beacons on government vehicles.Meanwhile, Hasina today landed in New Delhi to kickstart her four-day visit to the country.The two leaders are expected to hold official talks on a range of issues including an inter-governmental agreement on civil nuclear energy.According to Dhaka Tribune, India and Bangladesh may sign around 35 deals and Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) on trade and commerce, economy and connectivity, and on defence related issues.The MoUs will include prevention of human trafficking, blue economy and maritime cooperation in the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean, use of Chittagong and Mongla seaports, Indian economic zone, and joint research on oceanography of the Bay of Bengal.Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Joint Secretary Sripriya Ranganathan on Thursday said that India was expecting to sign over 20 agreements with Bangladesh during this visit.The visit will be aimed at expanding bilateral trade, boosting investment, connectivity and sub-regional assistance.The Bangladesh Prime Minister will be staying at the President House as a special guest during her stay. ITD operations intensify, more raids being planned in coming weeks New Delhi , Apr. 7 : The Income Tax Department (ITD) is conducting investigation in around 100 locations across four major cities, namely Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad. (Posted on 07 April 2017, 1667909476 173O212O198O32) https://www.newkerala.com/business-india-news.php (Posted on 07 April 2017, 1667909476 173O212O198O32) The Chennai Directorate is searching at 33 locations in Chennai and Trichy, as part of investigation against Tamil Nadu Health Minister C Vijaybhaskar and his associates, who are in the business of manufacturing and trading of blue metals and sand mining.The Minister faces allegations of a huge amount of payoff received from illegal sand mining operations, medicine supply to hospitals and distribution of cash to voters in the by-elections in Chennai.In Mumbai, the Directorate is conducting a search operation on a jewellery group and has so far recovered cash worth Rs. six crores. Seven premises have been raided, according to ITD sources.Hyderabad Directorate is carrying out investigation in more than 25 premises of a group engaged in chit fund business. This chit fund group has deposited more than Rs. 80 crores of cash during the period of demonetisation.Meanwhile, searches are also underway in Delhi at 26 premises, involving a leading business group engaged in commodity imports. 14 premises of this group have been raided in Delhi, Lucknow and other places in Uttar Pradesh.Core allegations include Benami trading on NCDEX/MCX, bogus purchases and under-invoicing of sales. ITD is also conducting verification of builders who are allegedly a business associate of a politician.The Government crack down on tax evaders is set to intensify in the coming weeks, with more such actions planned across the country. Crown Princess Mary of Denmark visited Bangladesh together with Minister for Development Cooperation, Ulla Pedersen Trns. The purpose of that visit was to determine what economic opportunities are present for the women in the region and to try to strengthen those opportunities and to make the region a part of the number five global target on unequality. The visit has been kept confidential for safety reasons. Longtime tattoo artist opening new shop in the heart of Middletown Jennifer Beirola has a long history in tattooing and will soon have a place to call her own locally. Champaign, IL (61820) Today Sunny to partly cloudy. High 63F. Winds E at 10 to 20 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. Low around 45F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph. Reporter 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). DUBAI, UAE / ACCESSWIRE / April 7, 2017 / Many people do not realize the history behind their beloved morning cup of coffee. In fact, the history of coffee dates back as far as the 10th century. Coffee lovers around the world also have Yemen to thank for some of their favorite brews. Around the 15th century, coffee had begun to grow in the Yemeni district of Arabia. From the 15th to the 18th centur,y Mocha, Yemen, a historic port, was famous for being the major marketplace for coffee. The term mocha later entered European language as a reference to high-quality coffee. The Struggling Yemen Coffee Exports Today For decades, farmers in Yemen have raised their legendary coffee beans in high-elevation farms. Since 2015, coffee bean exports have ultimately dropped, only shipping 8,000 bags of coffee last year, compared to Brazil who exports 28 million bags a year. Yemeni farmers are also not encouraged to grow coffee and were advised to grow Qat instead; an easier and cheaper crop that guarantees faster profits and harvest, according to this 2015 article by The New Arab. "The Yemeni government does not provide the necessary support for the declining coffee industry, however, prompting many farmers to switch to growing Qat," Sanaani said. "There is no high demand. We used to depend on selling coffee to tourists, but even tourism has stopped completely, due to the deteriorating security situation." However, despite the coffee exports not being in the humble farmers' favor, one Yemeni entrepreneur rose above the odds in a hope to revive the struggling coffee industry. Breakthrough Yemeni Entrepreneur Makes a Big Difference 37-year-old Hussein Ahmed, CEO of Mocha Hunters, remains unfazed amid the ongoing war in Yemen and not even President Trump is stopping him from achieving his dream. What began as a love for coffee evolved into a mission to uncover the best coffee in Yemen, and then share that coffee with the world. A recent Forbes article, Coffee Commando, highlights the work Ahmed is doing. After finding a business partner that shared his love of coffee, Mocha Hunters was born and registered in 2016. Now, Ahmed has a group of 25 farmers in Bani Matar and Anis. By working with these farmers, Ahmed has already produced 1 ton of dried coffee cherries. Story continues "To warehouse them, Ahmed gutted a room in his family house, covering the windows to keep the light low and the temperature stable. To prevent any scents from tainting the beans, he posted a list of rules for family and guests: No cooking pungent food and burning incense." Mocha Hunters plan to ship between 300 and 400 kilos of coffee to Counter Culture Coffee, a wholesale and retail roaster based in Durham, North Carolina. "We're running a business, we have to be creative and we have to find solutions," Ahmed says. "Randomness exists, we just have to deal with it." There's a lesson for business executives. - Haitham Alaini 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 Children who are given high-quality education at an early age - starting at six weeks old and continuing through their first five years of life - are more likely to be employed full-time and have better relationships with their parents as adults, according to new results from a longitudinal study now entering its fifth decade. Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute scientists will present the research results at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development at noon Central Daylight time Friday, April 7, in Austin, Texas. More than 6,000 child development professionals and other researchers are expected to connect and exchange ideas at the conference. The study follows 96 children who have continuously participated in the Abecedarian Project, an early education program for at-risk infants and children that started in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in 1971. The National Institutes of Health funded the original study. "The most recent findings from the Abecedarian Project are about the quality of life, tied to what the children experienced in the first five years of life," said Craig Ramey, a professor and distinguished research scholar of human development at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute. Ramey spearheaded the Abecedarian Project over the past 45 years and led the team that produced the new follow-up report. "We have demonstrated that when we provide vulnerable children and families with really high quality services - educationally, medically, socially - we have impacts of a large and practical magnitude all the way up to middle age," said Ramey, who also serves as a chief science officer of Roanoke, Virginia. Both the control group and treatment group received health care, nutrition, and family support through social services; however, the treatment group also received five years of early care and education. According to Ramey, high-quality education all day for five days a week, and for 50 weeks a year, beginning at six weeks of age and continuing until the child starts kindergarten, makes a lifetime of difference. "And in our early education program, the most important thing is the quality of interaction between the teachers and the children," Ramey said, pointing to the teachers' abilities to tailor educational activities to a child's specific needs, in a fun and natural way, as a critical element of the study's results. "It's pretty clear that's what the magic ingredient is." The quality of natural teaching - via social interaction between the teacher and child - is highly important, especially in infancy, according to Ramey. This includes such things as the conversational aspect of language and the focus on interactive reading as enjoyable, rather than a chore. "The data show that children who received the educational treatment are successful socially, especially in a familial setting, as indicated by their close relationships with their mothers and fathers in middle age," said Libbie Sonnier-Netto, a doctoral student in human development at Virginia Tech's College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, who conducted the follow-up interviews for this study. Sonnier-Netto also noted that individuals in the educational group are more likely to be employed full-time, with more assets, such as owning a car, a home, and having a savings account. According to Ramey, the connection between the results is obvious. Ramey and his team have followed-up with 78 of the 96 participants so far, with more interviews and physical check-ups planned for most of the remaining participants. Of the 96 participants, only one has declined to participate. It's an unusually high retention rate for a study spanning so many decades. "What we've discovered is that if you treat people well, they thrive and they, in turn, give back," Ramey said. "Part of our task is to make what we now know to be so important - high-quality, early childhood education and care - widely available to all who need it in this country." Sharon Ramey, a professor and distinguished research scholar at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute, has contributed to the Abecedarian research and analysis since 1987. She co-wrote the book on the Abecedarian approach with Ramey and Joseph Sparling, who helped plan the original early childhood curriculum. Beyond the familial bond and employment status, Sharon Ramey says the researchers are seeing another trend among the treatment group participants. "We also discovered that individuals who received early high-quality care and education also have a keen sense of social equality - and make decisions that balance the equation between those who 'have' and those who 'have much less,'" said Sharon Ramey, who is also a chief science officer of Roanoke, Virginia. The researchers expect to continue analyzing the dataset about the effects of early care and education on the children as they progress through middle age. Source: Virginia Tech The University of Chicago Medicine's Center for Interdisciplinary Inquiry and Innovation (Ci3) in Sexual and Reproductive Health has launched a research initiative aimed at reducing HIV infection and transmission among vulnerable youth of color, including young men who have sex with men (YMSM) and young transgender women. The goal of this project is to provide job readiness and employment skills to increase placement within companies with existing diversity and inclusion policies that protect LGBTQ young people. Funded by the National Institutes of Health Adolescent Medicine Trials Network for HIV/AIDS Interventions, this project, titled Work2Prevent, will explore how employment and job readiness skills can prevent adolescent homelessness, drug use, and migration to other "street economies" associated with increased risk for HIV infection. "Recognizing economic hardship as a critical factor contributing to HIV risk, our goal is to help gear young people toward economic stability through job placement and training, identifying career trajectories for young people that embrace and support gender and sexual diversity," said Dr. Brandon Hill, Ci3's executive director. "This research intends not only to decrease the number of adolescent HIV infections among youth ages 16-24, but also highlight the significant role economics play in the spread of disease, as well as, overall health and well-being among marginalized youth." In 2015, Chicago youth ages 30 and younger represented nearly 50 percent of all new HIV infections, with nearly 30 percent occurring among those ages 13-24. Individuals who identified as black/African American comprised 54 percent of all new infections and were more likely to be diagnosed at a younger age. Sexual and gender minority, including LGBTQ youth, are disproportionately impacted by HIV. Additionally, LGBTQ youth face social harassment and even violence, contributing to employment disparities including hiring bias, job discrimination, and unequal pay and benefits. As a result, studies suggest that a fair majority of LGBTQ youth, particularly those of color, live in poverty, experiencing high rates of homelessness, limited access to health care and HIV services, few economic opportunities, and increased reliance on survival sex work. The project will work with collaborators from the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, Children's Hospital Los Angeles, Boston Children's Hospital, University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) Department of Psychiatry, Chicago House TransLife Center, and Thresholds to develop, tailor and test this new employment intervention program. "Given shifting federal and state policies, including employment discrimination protections, restroom use laws, and access to legal name change on identification documents, understanding the potential impact such changes may have on LGBTQ health and well-being, including adolescent HIV infection, is crucial to the development of efficacious structural level interventions," said Hill. Some sea creatures cover themselves with hard shells and spines, while vertebrates build skeletons out of the same minerals. How do these animals get the calcium they need to build these strong mineral structures? Professors Lia Addadi and Steve Weiner of the Weizmann Institute of Science's Structural Biology Department asked this question about sea urchins, which need to extract quite a few calcium ions from sea water to build their spines. The answer surprised them, and it could change the way scientists think about the process of biomineralization. Several years ago, Addadi and Weiner had discovered that sea urchins build their spines with tiny packets of "unorganized" material that hardens into crystal when laid in place. "So the question went back a step: How do they get the calcium ions they need to make this material in the first place?" says Addadi. "Free calcium is not abundant in sea water," adds Weiner, "so they need an efficient way to extract and concentrate the ions." To answer the question the researchers, including Netta Vidavsky, needed methods to observe the animal's cells "as is," that is, as they are in life, water included. For this the group turned to Dr. Andreas Schertel of Carl Zeiss Microscopy in Germany and Dr. Sefi Addadi of the Weizmann Institute of Science's Life Sciences Core Facilities. Very new cutting-edge techniques enabled them to observe thin slices of the cells in sea urchin embryos and then to reconstruct three-dimensional images of these cells and their intake of labeled calcium ions. "Even a few years ago, we could not have done this study," says Addadi. Lab Diagnostics & Automation eBook Compilation of the top interviews, articles, and news in the last year. Download a copy today The images showed that sea urchin larval cells actually "drink" seawater, taking in drops of water and manipulating the ions in the water within the confines of the cell. This is in contrast to the theory that these cells take in only ions, one at a time, through special channels in their outer membranes. The cells they observed were filled with networks of bubbles called vacuoles that collect the calcium ions, evidently creating concentrated packages of calcium for building the spines. This method may be more energy efficient than taking in ions through channels (which the cells also did), but it presents another problem: The cells must be able to pick out the calcium as well as expel other ions in the sea water, especially the sodium and chloride. "Researchers may be busy for years to come figuring out how these cells manipulate the ions in the sea water they drink," says Weiner. Addadi and Weiner point out that this is not the first time this type of calcium ion intake has been observed. Prof. Jonathan Erez of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem had described this phenomenon in single-celled, hard-shelled microorganisms called foraminifera a decade ago. At the time, it was thought to be a "curiosity," but finding the same process in two very different creatures suggests that it may be quite widespread. Although we do not live in sea water, even the cells that build our bones may use a similar method to obtain calcium. Lying in a hospital bed, the last thing you should have to worry about is a personal data breach. Yet recent research co-authored by a Michigan State University business scholar found nearly 1,800 occurrences of large data breaches in patient information over a seven-year period. The study, by Xuefeng "John" Jiang, MSU associate professor of accounting, and colleagues from Johns Hopkins and Ball State universities, is published in JAMA Internal Medicine. The data breaches occurred in health care facilities ranging from UC Davis Medical Center in California to Henry Ford Hospital in Michigan. "Our findings underscore the critical need for increased data protection in the health care industry," Jiang said. "While the law requires health care professionals and systems to cross-share patient data, the more people who can access data, the less secure it is." The researchers examined Department of Health and Human Services data for the period October 2009-December 2016. By law, hospitals covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPPA, must notify HHS of any breach affecting 500 or more individuals within 60 days from the discovery of the breach. What they found was alarming: Healthcare providers reported 1,225 of the 1,798 recorded breaches, while business associates, health plans and healthcare clearinghouses reported the rest. 257 breaches reported by 216 hospitals. 33 hospitals experienced more than one breach - many of which are large, major teaching hospitals. This research reinforces the critical trade-off patients face: healthcare systems having access to information they need, versus a hacker planning to spend your savings at Best Buy. Synthetic biologists at Rice University have engineered gut bacteria capable of sensing colitis, an inflammation of the colon, in mice. The research points the way to new experiments for studying how gut bacteria and human hosts interact at a molecular level and could eventually lead to orally ingestible bacteria for monitoring gut health and disease. The research, published in a new study in Molecular Systems Biology, involved a series of breakthroughs in the lab of Jeffrey Tabor, assistant professor of bioengineering and of biosciences at Rice, and key contributions from collaborators Robert Britton and Noah Shroyer at Baylor College of Medicine. Tabor's team, including lead co-author and postdoctoral researcher Kristina Daeffler, identified the first genetically encoded sensor of a novel biomarker linked to inflammation, inserted the genes for the sensor into a well-studied gut bacterium and collaborated with Shroyer and Britton to use the engineered bacteria to detect colon inflammation in mice. "The gut harbors trillions of microorganisms that play key roles in health and disease," Tabor said. "However, it is a dark and relatively inaccessible place, and few technologies have been developed to study these processes in detail. On the other hand, bacteria have evolved tens of thousands of genetically encoded sensors, many of which sense gut-linked molecules. Thus, genetically engineered sensor bacteria have tremendous potential for studying gut pathways and diagnosing gut diseases." Synthetic biologists like Tabor specialize in programming single-celled organisms like bacteria in much the same way an engineer might program a robot. In particular, Tabor's team is working to develop bacterial sensors that can detect disease signals in the gut. Like electrical engineers who build circuits from wires and electronic components, Tabor's team uses genetic circuits to program single-celled creatures to carry out complex information processing. Previous work has suggested that alterations to the gut microbiota, genetic predisposition and other environmental factors may play key roles in inflammatory bowel disease, a condition that includes Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis and which affects as many as 1.6 million Americans. "Based on a number of previous studies, we hypothesized that the molecule thiosulfate may be elevated during colitis," Daeffler said. "It has been difficult for scientists to study this link because there aren't tools for reliably measuring thiosulfate in living animals. Our first goal in this project was to engineer such a tool." From the outset of the project in 2015, Daeffler said, the idea was to use sensor bacteria, in this case an engineered form of Escherichia coli, to sense thiosulfate and related sulfur-containing compounds that may also be biomarkers of colitis. There were well-understood methods for programming E. coli to produce a fluorescent green protein in response to specific stimuli, but there were no known genes -- in any organism -- that were used to sense thiosulfate, and few for the other compounds. Genetics & Genomics eBook Compilation of the top interviews, articles, and news in the last year. Download a copy today "There's a link between gut sulfur metabolism and inflammation, and we knew that we needed to be able to measure sulfur metabolites accurately to diagnose colon inflammation," she said. Tabor said study co-author Ravi Sheth, an undergraduate researcher in the group in 2015, used a computer program to identify potential sensors of thiosulfate and other sulfur compounds in the genome of Shewanella, a type of bacteria that live in marine sediment. Tabor's group believes that Shewanella likely breathe these molecules and use the sensors to turn on the proper enzymes in their presence. Daeffler spent one year engineering E. coli to express the sensor genes, validate their function and optimize them to respond to the potential biomarkers by producing a green fluorescent protein signal. It took another year to prove that the system worked and detected colon inflammation in mice. The researchers administered orally two drops containing about a billion sensor bacteria to both healthy mice and to mice with colitis. They measured the activity of the sensor bacteria in each group six hours later. The tell-tale green fluorescent protein showed up in the feces of the mice. Though it was not visible to the unaided eye, it could easily be measured with a standard laboratory instrument called a flow cytometer. The team found that the thiosulfate sensor was activated in the mice with inflammation, and was not activated in the healthy mice. Furthermore, the researchers found that the more inflammation the mouse had, the more the sensor was activated. Tabor said the study shows that gut bacteria can be outfitted with engineered sensors and used to noninvasively measure specific metabolites and that this result could open the door to many new studies that could help elucidate a wide range of gut processes. Though it would likely take several additional years of development, and it remains unknown if thiosulfate is a biomarker of human colitis, the sensor bacteria might eventually be re-engineered to function as a diagnostic of human colitis, Tabor said. In particular, the green fluorescent protein could be replaced with an enzyme that makes a colored pigment. "We'd like to develop a home inflammation test where a person prone to colitis flare-ups would eat yogurt that contained the engineered bacteria and see blue pigment in the toilet if they were sick," he said. Tabor said such a test could reduce unneeded and costly trips to the doctor and unneeded colonoscopy procedures, which are both expensive and invasive. He said his team has begun collaborations with gastroenterologists at Baylor to achieve this goal. New research indicates that measuring ammonium excretion in the urine may be help identify patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) who face serious health risks. The findings appear in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN). Keeping the body's pH level in balance is important for normal organ function. Doctors commonly assess whether a patient's body fluids contain too much acid, a condition called acidosis, by measuring bicarbonate levels in the blood. This can indicate whether the body is having trouble maintaining its acid-base balance, but it may reveal only part of the picture because the kidneys are important for eliminating acid in the urine. Kalani Raphael, MD (University of Utah) and his colleagues looked to see if urine levels of ammonium may be a better indicator of acid accumulation in the body. Their analysis included 1044 individuals with CKD in the African American Study of Kidney Diseases and Hypertension. The researchers found that low urine ammonium excretion predicted kidney failure or death in CKD patients irrespective of serum bicarbonate concentration. Compared with participants with the highest levels of daily ammonium excretion, those with the lowest levels had a 46% higher risk of dying or needing dialysis, and those with intermediate levels had a 14% higher risk. Low ammonium excretion predicted these outcomes even in patients who had normal serum bicarbonate. In addition, those with low ammonium excretion had a 2.6-fold higher risk of developing acidosis within one year. "These results suggest that low urine ammonium excretion identifies individuals at high risk of CKD progression or death irrespective of the serum bicarbonate concentration," said Dr. Raphael. "Overall, acid levels in the urine provide important information about kidney health above and beyond acid measurements obtained from the blood." The findings also suggest that CKD patients with low urine ammonium excretion might benefit from alkali before overt acidosis develops. Additional research is needed to test this. Queen's University Belfast and AWARE, the national depression charity for Northern Ireland, announce a new online support service for adults with depression to mark World Health Day (Friday 7 April). Research has shown that those experiencing depression may feel embarrassed about seeking help from health professionals and ultimately decide not to ask for support at all. This study aims to give those people an alternative option to face-to-face support by developing a peer-led online support service using video conferencing technology, such as Google Hangouts, which users can access via their home computer, laptop or mobile phone. Dr Paul Best, from the School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work at Queen's, who is leading the study, said: "We are aiming to give those people in need of help an alternative option to face-to-face support, which they can access from home. In previous studies, this technology has shown to be beneficial in treating a number of mental health problems and can be more cost effective for charities to run." Depression is now the leading cause of disability worldwide according to WHO (World Health Organisation), impacting 1 in 4 people in Northern Ireland. It is also a significant risk factor for self-harming behaviours and suicide. Availability of support and accessible opportunities for people to talk about their depression is crucial. AWARE have been delivering peer led face-to-face support groups since 1996. These groups provide a vital opportunity for adults with depression to share their experiences and learn from peers in a safe and understanding environment, however face-to-face groups may, for a variety of personal and practical reasons, may not be a suitable option for all individuals. Tom McEneaney, Head of Business Development at AWARE, said: "We are delighted to be working with Queen's University on this study. This service will mean we can provide alternative support for people who are not comfortable with face-to-face, so they can get the help they need. This service will make a difference to people living with depression across Northern Ireland, who are perhaps too afraid to ask for help." Christine Roberts, AWARE support group user, commented: "I used to walk past AWARE every day for two years before I finally plucked up the courage to walk through the doors. I was so nervous going to the group for the first time, I had no intentions of speaking but when I did, I felt such a relief. "The support groups has been particularly beneficial to me because I am able to share my own experience with other people who understand and know how I am feeling. My first support group meeting signalled the beginning of my recovery from depression. "I have been attending the group for four years and I still have good days and bad days, but I continue to attend the group every week as it really is my lifeline. I think the online support groups are fantastic and would be very beneficial to people that aren't able to attend the face-to-face groups. I know personally how worthwhile the support from AWARE has been for me, so I would urge other people that are suffering from depression to make that first step and sign up to the online support group." The 12 month study on the feasibility and acceptability of group based video conferencing for adults with depression is being funded by the Health and Social Care Research and Development office (HSC R&D). The new online support service will start recruiting for participants to use the service in early summer 2017. A six-month analysis of the pivotal MOMENTUM 3 trial found that patients implanted with the new HeartMate 3 left ventricular assist system (LVAS) had fewer adverse clotting and bleeding events than patients implanted with the control, HeartMate II LVAS. In this randomized, non-blinded study, a multi-institutional team found that 69 percent of the 151 patients who received Abbott's Heartmate 3 survived without any bleeding or clotting-related adverse events, compared to 55 percent of those who received the Heartmate II. Both devices are made by Abbott. The results were announced April 6 in a late-breaking session at the 2017 meeting of the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation in San Diego and simultaneously published in the journal Circulation. The researchers also devised a novel scoring system - the HemoCompatibility Score (HCS) - to quantify the burden of such events and their clinical relevance. Lower scores are better. "For the HCS, mild events, such as two or fewer non-surgical bleeding episodes, receive one point," explained Nir Uriel, MD, professor of medicine and director of the heart failure, transplant and mechanical circulatory support programs at the University of Chicago. "A non-disabling stroke is assessed at 2 points. An operation to replace the device gets 3 points. A disabling stroke gets 4 points." Patients with the HeartMate 3 had fewer of these adverse events - 28 percent of patients versus 38 percent for those on HeartMate II. Those on HeartMate 3 tended to have bleeding events, which are less likely to be severe. Those on HeartMate II had both bleeding and clotting events. They spent more time in the hospital. There were 14 deaths overall in the first 30 days on the pump. Five of those patients were on the HeartMate 3; nine were on the HeartMate II. The HeartMate 3 consequently scored numerically better on the HCS, collecting only 101 points, compared to 137 points acquired by the smaller group on HeartMate II. Those in whom the HCS score was higher, however, were less healthy overall. They were older, and also less likely to take aspirin to prevent blood clots. Two thirds of the patients on the HeartMate 3 had no adverse events for six months, compared to half of those on the HeartMate II. Overall, "patients implanted with the HeartMate 3 gained a significant increase in freedom from adverse events, driven predominantly by a reduction in non-disabling strokes and complete absence of pump thrombosis, compared with the HeartMate II," said senior author Mandeep R. Mehra, MD, medical director of the Brigham and Women's Hospital Heart and Vascular Center and chairman of the publications committee for MOMENTUM 3. "No patients on the HeartMate 3 had pump-related clotting, requiring a pump reoperation," Mehra noted. "There was also no difference in disabling strokes, a typically devastating complication." The Heartmate 3 has certain potential advantages because it was "designed to prevent thrombosis," Uriel explained. It was engineered to be less destructive to blood cells as they are swept through the pump and into the aorta. "It has a frictionless rotor, wide gaps for permissive blood flow and reduced shear stress," he said. The study has significant limitations, the authors note. It followed a small number of patients for a limited time. It is difficult to distinguish between late post-operative bleeding, pre-existing issues such as a bleeding gastric ulcer, and early pump-related blood loss. The MOMENTUM 3 trial is "evaluating its long-term outcomes and hemocompatibility-related adverse-event profiles," Mehra said. "These will become clearer in subsequent analyses." Source: University of Chicago Medical Center Tulsi Gabbard Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii torched President Donald Trump on Thursday night over his decision to launch a missile strike against airfields in Syria. Gabbard said Trump "acted recklessly" in authorizing the strikes on Shayrat airfield and nearby military infrastructure controlled by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The operation was a response to a chemical weapons attack that killed at least 80 civilians in northwestern Syria earlier this week. Gabbard said: "It angers and saddens me that President Trump has taken the advice of war hawks and escalated our illegal regime change war to overthrow the Syrian government." The Democrat congresswoman made similar remarks after returning from a "fact-finding trip" to Syria and Lebanon days after Trump's inauguration. During her January trip to Syria, Gabbard met with Assad. Following Monday's chemical weapons attack in Syria, Gabbard tweeted, then deleted a statement saying that ISIS or al-Qaeda could have committed the strike. The congresswoman, an early supporter of Bernie Sanders, met with President-elect Donald Trump in late November to discuss how to avoid "the drumbeats of war" that may lead to US intervention in Syria, among other national-security concerns, Business Insider's Natasha Bertrand reported in January. Gabbard on Thursday night called the strike "short-sighted," and said it would lead to "more dead civilians, more refugees ... and a possible nuclear war between the United States and Russia." Her statement represents one of the strongest condemnations of Trump's strike order, and a departure from a bipartisan group of congressional lawmakers who cautiously applauded the commander-in-chief's action late Thursday night. Read Rep. Gabbard's full statement below: "It angers and saddens me that President Trump has taken the advice of war hawks and escalated our illegal regime change war to overthrow the Syrian government. This escalation is short-sighted and will lead to more dead civilians, more refugees, the strengthening of al-Qaeda and other terrorists, and a possible nuclear war between the United States and Russia. This Administration has acted recklessly without care or consideration of the dire consequences of the United States' attack on Syria without waiting for the collection of evidence from the scene of the chemical poisoning. If President Assad is indeed guilty of this horrible chemical attack on innocent civilians, I will be the first to call for his prosecution and execution by the International Criminal Court. However, because of our attack on Syria, this investigation may now not even be possible. And without such evidence, a successful prosecution will be much harder." Story continues NOW WATCH: TRUMP: The Syrian chemical attack crossed 'many, many lines' More From Business Insider A student-led team from The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) is the beneficiary of a $50,000 grant to UTSA's CITE program from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support the continued development of their infrared medical camera, InfraVein, which makes simple work of finding veins. As a result of the grant, the team will be heading to Boston for the NSF I-Corps this month to test the business model of InfraVein and explore how to market the device. "With this opportunity in Boston, I hope to experience how to interact with different customer segments and to use their feedback in order to develop our technology further," said Sanjiv Patel, a team-member and masters student in biomedical engineering. The students will attend the NSF I-Corps seminar series, which supports entrepreneurship that leads to the commercialization of the technology previously supported by NSF-funded research. The original team of engineering and business undergraduate students included Kristen Hamalainen '16, Sanjiv Patel '16, Andrew Shiels '16, Kreg Zimmern '16, Rachel Loeffler '16, Cody Baker '16, Alexis Morales '16 and Ileana Gonzales '16. The group won the top prize at the UTSA Center for Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship (CITE) $100K Student Technology Venture Competition last spring is a collaboration between the UTSA College of Engineering and College of Business. "It's always exciting to see students who succeeded at the competition continue growing their ideas and expanding their business," said Cory Hallam, director of CITE and UTSA chief commercialization officer. "These are entrepreneurs who are getting their start as undergraduates, and this is just one of many examples of students taking advantage of a great opportunity and making the most of it." The idea to create a device that could help medics locate veins came about while the biomedical engineering students were working on their senior design project. The idea to help military medics came about because San Antonio has a strong connection to the military. The team discussed what would be possible and beneficial on the battlefield with doctors from the Institute for Surgical Research (ISR) at the San Antonio Military Medical Center (SAMMC) and Department of Emergency Medicine at UT Health San Antonio. The UTSA students have discovered that their device had many possible applications, from helping doctors insert needles in people with small veins or aiding in catheter insertion. The device can also be used by people who are obese or have darker skin pigmentations, or for babies whose tiny veins can be hard for medical professionals to find and access. "Our students have the true spirit of entrepreneurs and engineers," said Teja Guda, assistant professor of biomedical engineering and assistant director of CITE for the College of Engineering. "They saw a need and they created a tool to fill that need. It's been wonderful to see them continue to grow and develop their business." CITE is sending Zimmern and Patel to Boston in April to test InfraVein with 100 possible customer interviews. This will give them the chance to improve their product by defining issues users currently face and ensuring that their product checks all the right boxes. "The UTSA CITE program gives our students an interdisciplinary educational experience unlike most other universities," said Hallam. "They get a chance to patent their invention while they are still undergraduates and the opportunity to launch their company and incubate it on campus. By working with the CITE and challenging themselves they helped secure a $50,000 NSF grant to explore the marketability of their product. They represent the 10th UTSA team to be awarded one of these NSF grants in the past two years, a feat that reinforces UTSA's prominence as the regional hub for university-based innovation and entrepreneurship." Guda has mentored the team since the competition began. He and Hallam will be accompanying the young entrepreneurs on their trip to offer advice during the customer discovery process. "There are multiple teams of both undergraduates and graduates that have gone through the entrepreneurship and innovation core here at UTSA," said Guda. "It is a pipeline that is set up and brings about a change in the cultural in terms of contributing back to both the university and the San Antonio area. When these students' small companies are formed, they are not only contributing to the economy, but they are showing exactly what UTSA alums can achieve because that is what they have done as part of their training process." Commercial vehicle maker Daimler India Commercial Vehicles Pvt. Ltd. on Friday launched upgraded trucks complying with BS IV emission norms but announced no price hike, with a top company official saying it hopes to be profitable next year.He said the company may follow a similar strategy with regard to its range of buses.Addressing media persons here after launching the upgraded trucks, Managing Director and CEO Erich Nesselhauf said the company is ready with vehicles compliant with BS IV norms.He also said that the company is ready with the BS VI emission norm-compliant vehicle. The BS VI emission norms would kick in from 2020 onwards.At a time when the competition has decided to increase the prices of BS IV emission norm-compliant trucks, Daimler India decided to hold the price line of its upgraded trucks."We will not have any price disadvantage. Now, vehicle sales will be based on technology," Nesselhauf said.The Supreme Court recently banned the sale of vehicles not complying with BS IV norms."The Supreme Court made a wise decision. The industry running up BS III vehicle inventory of 97,000 is not by accident but intentional," Nesselhauf said.Most of the commercial vehicle makers had said there will be a price hike of around 7-10 percent in the case of BS IV-compliant vehicles.While Daimler India has held its price line and the price differential between BharatBenz trucks and competition will narrow down, officials are of the view that there will not be any negative impact on the truck's premium brand equity/image."The performance will give the premium for our trucks," Soumindra Singh, Vice-President, Domestic Sales, Product Management and Network, said.Speaking of the upgraded trucks across various segments, Nesselhauf said the vehicle now have better payload capacity, technology and fuel efficiency and the tagline is 'Profit Technology'.He said the company has sold more than 1,000 BS IV-compliant trucks and is now leading the BS IV transition in the commercial vehicle segment.The BharatBenz range of heavy duty trucks comprises of three categories -- haulage trucks, construction trucks and tractors.According to Nesselhauf, the new range of trucks offer better fuel efficiency as the company decided to delink the engine from exhaust gas treatment.The truck's emissions comply with the new regulations with the use of an aqueous urea-based fluid called AdBlue, which is sprayed into the exhaust stream to break down dangerous nitrogen oxides emissions into harmless nitrogen and water.The consumption of AdBlue fluid is only a fraction of fuel consumption, so refill intervals are fewer. The fluid is available at all BharatBenz dealerships.According to officials, fuel efficiency has been increased in the upgraded truck range with improvements in auxiliaries, aerodynamic changes and friction reductions.The trucks come with cruise control, LED-accented lamp, reverse camera, and air conditioner to reduce driver fatigue.Asked whether Daimler India would continue to hold the price line and offer more features in case of its buses, Nesselhauf said maybe the same thing would be followed. I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library. Jorge Luis BorgesDELHIS SOUTH EXTENSION with all its pizzaz and unabashed show of wealth is every shoppers nirvana. But tucked somewhere in the neighbourhood, within the quaint lanes and softer quarters, is a world so enchanting, it can ensnare bibliophiles and history lovers alike.The house is a conventional one a facade waiting to unravel its secrets. There are no boards indicating this is the address of the antiquarian book-selling Southex Books & Prints. But the affable Rashi Jain, third-generation entrepreneur and custodian welcomes me in.Everything about the hall spells vintage. The furniture and carpets are immaculate. Colossal bookshelves, housing literary treasures, define the walls. The heavy chandeliers hoisted from the ceiling add to the kaleidoscope of antiquity.Rashi is joined by her father Rajiv Jain and first cousin Divya. Southex Books & Prints was started by the patriarch GC Jain in 1967. It began in Calcutta (now Kolkata). My brother and I joined our father in the early '80s. In 1982, we travelled to Delhi; got this place in 1985 and have been here since, says Mr Jain.We, basically, specialise in rare and antiquarian books. In our possession are some of the very first books published on India and the Indian subcontinent. For the Europeans, India was an exotic place, since they had little understanding and knowledge of the country. They, therefore, wanted some written material that excited them. So they came down in the 1600s, armed with the printing technology, and started writing books on India. Those accounts were published mostly in Europe, explains Jain.Besides books, several thousand artworks too were made, in the form of prints. Southex Books & Prints have almost 70-80% of these in their possession.Bringing everything antique under one roof is an arduous task. How do the Jains manage it?When my father started this business, he would procure antiquarian books and other rare items from dealers and the old houses of Calcutta. As the years progressed, we started finding it difficult to source things. The tropical climate of India is not very friendly towards the paper. Once you have the temperature soaring above 30C with high humidity, the paper tends to deteriorate fast. On the contrary, countries with moderate climate add to the longevity of these rare and old books. Whatever we acquire, is from around the world, he says.India, once upon a time, comprised several princely states. Every royal and high-profile state had a library, with a British resident director. They used to advise the Maharajas to promote whatever was produced in England. Unfortunately, owing to our lack of heritage upkeep, things got lost over the course of time, Jain laments.The antique in the antiquarian are the first editions, signed copies, maps, old editions, illustrations and other rare artworks that the family has sensibly curated over a period of time. The prices range anywhere from a few thousands of rupees, to lakhs.We have built a network over the years. Some of these things are so rare that only a few copies have stood the test of time. We always have to be on the lookout; you cannot build up a collection like this otherwise. The rarity makes it special, he says.A few days ago, a gentleman from America described Southex as a museum. The only difference, he said, was that unlike museums, things here are for sale. I know of no other dealer in the country or in southeast Asia who will have so much under one roof. You name it and there is an 80% chance of us having it. Even the best of libraries will not have so much. A single family has built up its collection over the years. We have gratified several libraries in India, including the Indira Gandhi Centre for the Arts, he says.Southex Books & Prints has a global clientele. Bibliophiles and art lovers from around the world who know of this treasure trove come here. The family also holds exhibitions, besides auctioning most of the things.There are nearly 5,000 dealers of antiquarian and rare books in the UK itself. But, you will be surprised to know that we do not have even six world-class dealers in India. This is a niche market, catering to a small segment of people with Western exposure and interest, he says.It is a sad state of affairs. There are hardly any antiquarian dealers left in India. When you go to places like Hauz Khas village, you will find a few people claiming to be antiquarian book keepers and dealers. They are part-time workers. Here, everything is collected, adds Rashi.And how does one vouch for the authenticity of the antique items?Honestly, it is the gut feeling, and the experience, says Rashi. She pulls out an ostensibly old-looking book and runs her fingers through the pages. Just take the book in your hands and see for yourself. How can anyone reproduce something like this? It is not possible; feel its texture. With books, you cannot get away with a replica. As far as prints are concerned, most of them are dated. The exact dates are mentioned, so we just know, she says.Rashi, along with her sister Divya, wishes to take the business forward. My first goal is to make people aware of the existence of such rare things. If they are not aware, or educated, and do not value these things, how will businesses like these survive? People think we merely sell old books. And I have to tell them that we actually sell rare ones. They are not easily available, says Rashi.The sisters want to revamp the website too. It is archaic. It needs to change, laughs Divya. New Delhi: Social Justice Minister Thawar Chandra Gahlot has sought to allay fears that the proposed law to provide constitutional status to the National Commission for Backward Classes would over-ride states power to hold a separate list of backward classes for the purpose of providing reservations in state services and educational institutions. During the discussion on the bill in Parliament, some parties had expressed apprehensions that the statute will impinge on federal structure of the polity. "It would not have any bearing on the powers of the state governments, Gehlot told CNN-News18. The confusion is on account of the insertion of Article 342 (A) in the Constitution. The clause to be inserted by way of constitutional amendment is identical to the clause making similar provision for the SC/STs. However, for SC/STs, the state and central list is the same, and any changes inclusion or exclusion of castes can be done only through parliamentary approval. In the case of OBCs, however, the current status provides for separate state and central lists. Some castes in the state lists are not in the central list, rendering them outside the purview of quota. B Mahtab of the BJD, while speaking on the bill, raised the issue in Lok Sabha on Thursday. The constitution amendment bill needs to be passed by both Houses of Parliament by a two-thirds majority. And there are indications that the Opposition may ask the bill to be sent to a slect commitee of the Rajya Sabha. "There seems to be some ambiguity in this regard. And we will seek clarifications from the government, said D Raja of the CPI. New Delhi: The Legislative assembly of Ontario has passed a motion extending the official recognition to the 1984 riots as Sikh "genocide" in India, which has strongly rejected the proposal terming it as "misguided". External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Gopal Baglay said India's views have been conveyed to the government and political leadership in Canada. "We have noted the passage of a Private Members' Motion in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario on April 6. We reject this misguided Motion which is based on a limited understanding of India, its constitution, society, ethos, rule of law and the judicial process." "Our views have been conveyed to the government and political leadership in Canada," he said. He was replying to a question regarding passage of a private members' motion in the legislative assembly of Ontario. The motion by Harinder Malhi, a Liberal member of provincial parliament, read "That, in the opinion of this House... Should reaffirm our commitment to the values we cherish - justice, human rights and fairness - and condemn all forms of communal violence, hatred, hostility, prejudice, racism and intolerance in India and anywhere else in the world, including the 1984 Genocide perpetrated against the Sikhs throughout India, and call on all sides to embrace truth, justice and reconciliation. Jerusalem: Israel has signed a USD 2 billion contract with India to supply it with missile defence systems, the state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries said on Friday. Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) in an announcement said that it has been awarded its largest defence contract of almost USD 2 billion for supplying advanced medium-range surface-to-air missile systems (MRSAM) to India. IAI said it would also supply additional long-range air and missile defence systems (LRSAM) for the first locally produced Indian aircraft carrier. The contract is worth USD 1.6 billion for IAI, with the rest going to another state-owned defence company Rafael, that will be providing components for the systems. "The current contracts represent an enormous expression of confidence by the government of India in IAIs capabilities and advanced technologies, which are being developed with our local partners as part of the Indian governments Make in India policy," IAI Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Joseph Weiss said in a statement. President Reuven Rivlin, who is said to have discussed the deal with Indian leaders during his trip to India early this year, called to congratulate Weiss on this "historic" deal terming it truly "exceptional". "Please pass on my congratulations to all who contributed to this important achievement. You have come such a long way to arrive at this point, it is truly exceptional," Rivlin told IAIs CEO. "Israels willingness to share technology and form joint ventures with Indian companies to develop and manufacture military equipment supporting the Make in India initiative is said to have been well received in New Delhi. In the case of MRSAM, an advanced air and missile defence system that provides protection against a variety of aerial threats, the technology is said to have been jointly developed by IAI and Indias Defence Research and Development Organisation in collaboration with Rafael and IAIs Elta division. Indian companies such as Larsen & Toubro are said to have also participated in the project. MRSAMs current version is operational with the Indian Air Force, Indian Navy and Israel Defence Forces (IDF). The system includes an advanced phased-array radar, command and control, mobile launchers and missiles with advanced RF seekers. : Just as Air India lifted the ban on Sena MP Gaikwad, it found itself at the centre of another controversy involving yet another MP, albeit this time from Trinamool Congress (TMC).It is being alleged that TMC Rajya Sabha MP Dola Sen delayed Air India's Delhi-Kolkata flight by nearly 40 minutes over seating arrangement and refused to abide by security protocol.According to a source, an Air India staff requested Dola Sen to shift her mother's seat, who is a senior citizen, from the emergency exit but the MP refused and created a ruckus, on the other hand the politician said she wanted an emergency exit for her mom and the airline wasn't cooperating.The MP's mother was on a wheel chair and couldn't sit near exit as per rules. So the crew requested Sen to change the seat following which the TMC MP "shouted and screamed" at the cabin crew, the airline claimed.This forced the pilot to come out of the cockpit, who offered business class seats to the MP's mother but Sen declined.Sen could not be immediately reached for comments.Meanwhile, speaking on the controversy, Union Minister Babul Supriyo said, "Nobody has any right to disrupt anything. If any common man or even an MP is abusing the airport staff then they should be stopped. But people at times lose their cool." New Delhi: A people's group on Friday demanded the release of Delhi University Professor G N Saibaba who has been sentenced with four others to life imprisonment for alleged links to Maoists. Janhastakshep, the group, alleged that Saibaba has been "falsely implicated" in the case under sections of UAPA and that he should be immediately freed and the case dropped. It also condemned the Aadhar project terming it as the "newest threat" to individual freedom and civil liberties and called for its shelving. The civil liberties group made the demands in a resolution, which was adopted in a gathering in the national capital, where it also sought the withdrawal of punishment to the Maruti workers. A Gurgaon court had awarded life sentence to 13 former employees of Maruti-Suzuki India Limited, found them of guilty of murder, in connection with the violence at the automobile giant's Manesar plant in 2012. The Supreme Court on Friday issued notices to six BJP-ruled states Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat over rising incidents of cow vigilantism.A bench comprising Justices Dipak Misra and AM Khanwilkar asked the states to file their reply within three weeks. The bench has fixed the matter for hearing on May 3.The notices come amid uproar over the lynching of a man in Rajasthans Alwar and the subsequent flip-flop by Union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi over the issue in and outside Parliament.Police in Alwar have arrested three people for allegedly beating 55-year-old Pehlu Khan to death. Speaking to News18, a source in Alwar police said all three have confessed to the crime and said they were angered on seeing the cows being mistreated.Police sources said five people were identified from the video that was circulated on social media. Of them, three were seen beating Pehlu Khan and others, while the other two were seen standing nearby.During the brief hearing on Friday, the counsel appearing for the petitioner referred to the recent incident at Alwar.The counsel claimed that the ground-level situation in these states was worrisome as the cow vigilante groups were resorting to violence there.Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar, appearing for the Centre, told the bench that formal notices were not issued to the states on the plea after which the apex court sought response from these six states.The Supreme Court had on October 21, last year agreed to examine the plea which sought action against cow vigilantes who were allegedly indulging in violence and committing atrocities against Dalits and minorities.Activist Tehseen S Poonawalla, in his plea, said violence committed by these 'Gau Raksha' groups have reached to such proportions that even Prime Minister Narendra Modi had declared them as people who are "destroying the society".The plea also alleged that these groups were committing atrocities against Dalits and minorities in the name of protection of cows and other bovines and they needed to be "regulated and banned in the interest of social harmony, public morality and law and order in the country"."The menace caused by the so-called cow protection groups is spreading fast to every nook and corner of the country and is creating disharmony among various communities and castes," the petition said.The plea sought to declare as "unconstitutional" section 12 of the Gujarat Animal Prevention Act, 1954, Section 13 of Maharashtra Animal Prevention Act, 1976, and Section 15 of Karnataka Prevention of Cow Slaughter and Cattle Preservation Act, 1964, which provide for protection of persons acting in good faith under the Act or rules."These laws and the protection granted therewith act as a catalyst to violence perpetrated by these vigilante groups," it said.Speaking to CNN-News18, activist Shehzad Poonawala said: My brother and I are petitioners in the case. Several wrong practices are being carried out in the name of cow vigilantism. They can't take the law into their hands.(With PTI inputs) Six people were killed and several wounded in a US missile strike on an airbase, the Syrian military said on Friday.Also Read: Why US Chose Tomahawk Missiles to 'Punish' Assad for Chemical Attack Also Read: Can Donald Trump Attack Another Country Without Congress? The United States blasted the airbase with a barrage of cruise missiles Thursday night in fiery retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. President Donald Trump cast the US assault as vital to deter future use of poison gas and called on other nations to join in seeking "to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria."It was the first direct American assault on the Syrian government and Trump's most dramatic military order since becoming president just over two months ago. Announcing the assault from his Florida resort, Trump said there was no doubt Syrian President Bashar Assad was responsible for the chemical attack, which he said employed banned gases and killed dozens.Also Read: US Missile Attack on Syria: How 60 Tomahawks Pounded Key Airbase The US strikes hit the government-controlled Shayrat air base in central Syria, where US officials say the Syrian military planes that dropped the chemicals had taken off. The US missiles hit at 8:45 pm in Washington, 3:45 am Friday morning in Syria. The missiles targeted the base's airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, officials said.The surprise US assault marked a striking reversal for Trump, who warned as a candidate against the US getting pulled into the Syrian civil war, now in its seventh year. But the president earlier in the week appeared moved by the photos of children killed in the chemical attack, calling it a "disgrace to humanity" that crossed "a lot of lines."The president did not announce the attacks in advance, though he and other national security officials ratcheted up their warnings to the Syrian government throughout the day Thursday.Russia said it considers the strike an "aggression against a sovereign state," which will further harm US-Russia ties. "President Putin considers American strikes on Syria aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international norms, and under an invented pretext," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.Russia has also called for a United Nations Security Council meeting over the strikes, AFP reported. "We call upon the UN Security Council to hold an extraordinary meeting to discuss the situation," the foreign ministry in Moscow said in a statement, calling the strike a "gross... violation of international law."(With agency inputs) Gaikwad had written a regret letter to the civil aviation minister on Thursday over the "unfortunate incident". Gaikwad, who was accused of beating up an Air India employee, on Thursday attended the Lok Sabha proceedings for the first time after the incident last month. "I am a victim of injustice. What is my mistake? The employee was shouting at me. When I told that I am an MP, the Air India employee said 'so what you are not Narendra Modi'. They misbehaved with me. I can show you clippings as proof," he said. Earlier, Air India had cancelled Gaikwads Delhi-Mumbai and Mumbai-Delhi tickets for April 17 and 24, respectively. Air India on Friday lifted the flight ban on Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad, nearly two weeks after he was barred from flying after he assaulted the national carrier's staffer.The ban was reportedly revoked after the airline received a letter from the civil aviation ministry to do so."We have lifted the ban on Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad with immediate effect, soon after receiving the instructions from Aviation ministry," an Air India spokesperson said.Addressing a press conference in the evening, GP Rao, General Manager of Air India corporate communication, said there was no pressure from the government to lift the ban. Gaikwad tendered an apology to the civil aviation ministry. Then we got a directive from the ministry to lift the ban.Meanwhile, Private airlines are likely to follow Air India's decision and revoke the ban on Sena MP.CNN-News18 had reported on Thursday that the national carrier was likely to lift the ban on Gaikwad in a day or two.During the Zero Hour, Gaikwad presented his side of the story in front of the House and accused the Air India employee of misbehaving with him.Gaikwad dismissed the claims made by Air India that he created ruckus inside the aircraft.He said after the Pune-Delhi flight landed in the national capital, he asked for the complaint register. "Then an officer came, then two or three more officers came... When I said that I was a politician, one of them said 'But you are not Narendra Modi. Are you?'" said the Sena MP, giving his version of the incident.This was the seventh attempt on the part of the Sena MP to book a flight on Air India, which barred him from flying after he assaulted the airline's staffer last month. New Delhi: The Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM), an affiliate of the Sangh Parivar, is preparing a white paper on Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), questioning the philanthropic organisations influence on Indias health policies. In its draft paper, the Manch has alleged that BMGF has business links with some of the pharmaceutical companies that the government is planning to engage with for its pan-India immunisation drive. The idea is to enable the government in making an informed decision with regards to public health, said one of the experts working on the white paper. Speaking to News18, co-convener of SJM, Ashwini Mahajan said, We are questioning the role of BMGF and their influence on health policies, particularly the immunisation drive. The white paper also dwells into the alleged business links between BMGF and big pharmaceutical companies. The SJMs experts have expressed concerns over rotavirus field trials and the Pentavalent vaccine a five-in-one vaccine that combines five antigens, namely: Diphtheria; Pertussis; Tetanus; Hepatitis B (HB) and Haemophilus influenza type b (Hib) in the governments immunisation scheme for children. Mahajan said, We will request the government to publish data on Rotavirus field trials for different cases, especially with regard to cases in Vellore. The Rotovac clinical trial was conducted on 6,799 infants in Delhi, Pune and Vellore between 2011 and 2013. According to activists, the Vellore trial shows an excess of 11 cases of intussusception per 10,000 vaccinated children as compared to the trial figures from Delhi. This is up to 10 times higher than the risk of intussusception with the Rotashield vaccine which was withdrawn from the market and nearly 70 times higher than the risk associated with the current internationally licensed vaccine, RotaTeq. Mahajan added that until proven safe for children, no vaccination should be introduced across India. We have recommended that the vaccines should be fool-proofed before going pan-India. When asked, a BMGF spokesperson said, One aspect of our work in India has been to support increased local capabilities in vaccine development, high-quality manufacturing and testing in alignment with Indias priorities. For example, our collaboration with DBT and Bharat Biotech on the 116E vaccine for rotavirus led to the development of an Indian vaccine that offered significant cost savings compared to international products and through our partnership with WHO, Serum Institute of India developed MenAfriVac, a high-quality, low-cost meningitis vaccine for Africa, to avert many deaths from the epidemic, the BMGF spokesperson said. BMGF said the Rotavirus vaccine has been introduced in India by the government after due diligence and necessary approvals. The SJM white paper demanding an inquiry into the role of the BMGF comes soon after another RSS affiliate Bharatiya Kisan Sangh lobbied to regulate cotton seed prices to break the monopoly of Monsanto, an American agrochemical and agricultural biotechnology company. After allowing Monsanto for decades, the government acted and regulated the cotton seed prices, said a statement recently issued by the SJM. The outfit further said, Monsanto got used to excessive profiteering at the cost of farmers, disregarding the law of the land. It was exploiting the farmers by creating a monopoly on Bt cotton seeds in India. The Manch said the failure of Monsantos varieties in India showed that the local germplasm (living tissue from which new plants can be grown) is more popular than the Bt variety brought by Monsanto for enhancement of cotton yields. Through such false propaganda, they have exploited the farmers for about 15 years, SJM said in a written statement. The outfit is known to promote domestic products and services, and has always emphasized on the need to avoid foreign influence in Indian policies. According to some media reports, the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization (NTAGI) will no longer be serviced through the Gates Foundation-funded Immunization Technical Support Unit (ITSU) at the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI). When asked about the organisations future engagement in India, the BMGF spokesperson said, We are committed to Indias national health goals and look forward to supporting the government in its ambitious health agenda to save the lives of mothers and children. The government and experts in Dhaka recognize this reality. But ahead of 2019 elections in Bangladesh, she may have to make some noise on the issue. The river originates in Sikkim's Chhombo Chhu glacial lake at the tip of the Teesta Khangse glacier. According to experts, one of the key solutions to the problem could be small storage dams near upper Teesta in Sikkim during the rainy season. Mamata might suggest Centre to initiate talks with Bhutan to link Sankosh River with Teesta for augmenting water supply. She may also seek funds for augmentation of Teesta water flow at Gazoldoba (near Siliguri) to store more water for the lean seasons. : With Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's India visit, after seven long years, the anticipation of a discussion on the Teesta water dispute is high. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's scheduled presence at the luncheon meeting has further raised the curiosity.Considering that Bangladesh is a water rich country when compared with India, Hasina doesn't have to seek a hard bargain. India has 1,907.8 billion cubic metres (BCM) water resources, of which West Bengal's share is a meager 176 BCM. On the other hand, Bangladesh, a much smaller country, has 1,211 BCM water resources.Teesta is a rain-fed river with an average annual flow of 60 BCM. During lean season between April and June, the average flow in lower areas is just 6 BCM.Considering these factors, it will be difficult for India to share water on a 50:50 basis. Also, the catchment area in India is higher at 10,155 sq km, compared with Bangladeshs 2004 sq km.The Teesta dispute is more of a political issue. And it will be difficult to resolve the issue without including Sikkim, from where Teesta originates, in the talks.Speaking to News18, senior journalist Amalendu Kundu said, "Our Chief Minister was never consulted on this issue. Every time Teesta issue is being hijacked by the Centre and West Bengal government. Even Bangladesh never tried to reach our Chief Minister. There are allegations that we blocked the river, which is affecting its flow in West Bengal. But that is not right. Several time our Chief Minister asked for a tripartite meeting, but this never happened."File photo of Sikkim Chief Minister Pawan Kumar Chamling.Kundu added, "Without Sikkim's involvement, what is the relevance of such meetings? When the river is originating from Sikkim, all of us should sit together to find out solution. In future, we are willing to participate in such meetings for Sikkim's interest."If Trinamool Congress insiders are to be believed, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was restless on Thursday evening over the Teesta issue. Sources said she discussed how to put Teesta facts before the Bangladesh Prime Minister to seek a better deal without hampering her relationship with Hasina.Farming of drought resistant crops and interlinking of Manas-Sankosh-Teesta-Ganga (MSTG) Rivers for lasting solution might also be on the table.The MSTG project is proposed under the Himalayan component of National Perspective Plan (NPP). MSTG link canal will divert surplus water of Manas and Sankosh rivers with supplementation from the intermediate major streams to augment the flow of Ganga at Farakka. It would further transfer water to Krishna, Pennar and Cauvery basins, boosting irrigation along the way.The pre-feasibility report of the link has been prepared and sent to all the concerned state governments for their views. On Manas-Sankosh and Sankosh-Teesta linking plan, National Water Development Agency (NWDA) has carried out alternate studies to avoid reserved forest. The preparation of its feasibility report will begin soon.The copy has been updated on April 10, 2017, changing the designation of Amalendu Kundu to senior journalist. The Government of Sikkim has clarified that Kundu is not Senior Advisor to the CM, as earlier reported, and that his views are personal. Most days, teachers dont come in. Even on days they are present, they are busy chatting on their mobiles. Though a building has been commissioned for another wing, it still remains under-construction a sharp contrast from what the Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal claims in the advertisements where he says, Now, government schools have swimming pools for students. Fifteen-year-old Rohit (name changed) says they have only two-and-a-half hours of classes every day in his school. His friend adds that this includes the lunch break and each class is only 15-minutes long.The chat was disturbed when school authorities realised that the students were talking to reporters. They were then chased away.This is the story of the Government Senior Secondary School, Karawal Nagar the only high school in the area that caters to over 5,000 students of the locality.The school runs in four shifts two each for girls and boys. Even the high school students have classes for less than three hours. We come to the school only for the midday meal, says a student.News18 spoke to over 20 students and each of them complained that if they depend on the school, they would never be able to pass the Board exam. But this is not the story of one school. As per an affidavit submitted by the Delhi government in High Court, the total sanctioned strength for teachers is 59,796 and there is a vacancy for 27,142 permanent teachers. There are about 17,000 temporary teachers in the system but their competence remains a suspect. And over 9,000 teaching positions are completely vacant.The AAP government, which has often promised to make Delhi the model state for health and education, blames this on the legacy they have inherited from the previous government. Speaking to News18, Advisor on Education to the Deputy Chief Minister, Atishi Marleena says, It is not that there are no teachers or principals. Where ever there are no principals, there are others who are acting as the head of the schools. We wanted to regularise the temporary teachers but that is being delayed due to litigations. Our proposals are yet to get L-Gs approval.But education activist Ashok Agarwal who has taken up the matter in High Court questions the claims of the AAP government, asking how the system can work when there is over 50% vacancy of permanent teachers. New Delhi: Air India has cancelled Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwads Delhi-Mumbai and Mumbai-Delhi tickets for April 17 and 24, respectively. This was the seventh attempt on the part of the Sena MP to book a flight on Air India, which barred him from flying after he assaulted the airline's staffer last month. Gaikwad, who is accused of beating up an Air India employee, on Thursday attended the Lok Sabha proceedings for the first time after the incident last month. During the Zero Hour, Gaikwad presented his side of the story in front of the House and accused the Air India employee of misbehaving with him. "I am a victim of injustice. What is my mistake? The employee was shouting at me. When I told that I am an MP, the Air India employee said 'so what you are not Narendra Modi'. They misbehaved with me. I can show you clippings as proof," he said. Gaikwad dismissed the claims made by Air India that he created ruckus inside the aircraft. He said after the Pune-Delhi flight landed in the national capital, he asked for the complaint register. "Then an officer came, then two or three more officers came... When I said that I was a politician, one of them said 'But you are not Narendra Modi. Are you?'" said the Shiv Sena MP, giving his version of the incident. He further asked for justification on the FIR that was filed against him in an attempt to murder and seeks Home Minister Rajnath Singh's intervention into the matter. "I have been charged under IPC 308, which is for 'attempt to murder'. Was I holding any weapon? Is this justice. I don't know why did Delhi police do this. I request the Home Minister Rajnath Singh to look into this matter," he said. Reacting to the news that Gaikwad had last week attempted to book air tickets using different honorifics and spellings of his name, he said: "It was totally false that 7 tickets were issued in my name...I did not try to travel at all." As soon as the House met for the day, Shiv Sena leader Anandrao Adsul said the party has been cooperating on the issue since the controversy broke out. "He is present and will make a statement. Either you allow him (to speak) now or later today, he should be allowed (to speak)," he said. Speaker Sumitra Mahajan said he can speak during Zero Hour but not during Question Hour. Before Adsul spoke, Sena members raised slogans against Air India when Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapati Raju rose to reply a question in regional airports. "Goonda raj band karo...nyay karo, nyay karo (Stop bullying, do justice)" was among some of the slogans they raised. Union minister Ananth Geete, who is also a Sena leader, urged the Speaker to allow Adsul to speak briefly. Gaikwad, who had confessed to hitting an Air India duty manager for not being given a business class seat, said in the House that on the day of the incident (March 23) he was made to travel in economy class despite having a business class ticket. Actress Anushka Sharma has been appointed ambassador for toothpaste brand Colgate Active Salt, it was announced on Thursday. She says its blend of modern and traditional approach is something which resonates with her life's ideology. "While it is a traditional approach to oral care, it is also a modern toothpaste that you are using for your teeth. I am also like that -- while I am modern and I lead my life that way, but I am also traditional in my thought process. I am very simple as a person," Anushka told IANS. The actress-producer, most recently seen in Bollywood film "Phillauri", said she always endorses the brands that she actually uses herself. "It's a real pleasure to be associated with Colgate, the most trusted brand for 6 consecutive years in India. I think Colgate is a recognised household name and I have been using it since my childhood. So today I feel very happy that I am associated with an iconic brand like Colgate. At a time when one hears that Bollywood stars undergo all sorts of treatments to look beautiful on screen, Anushka says she prefers to use "nani ke nuskhe". "I am a huge believer in nani ke nuskhe and using organic things for my health. Even what I eat is organic. So I am someone who is a huge flagbearer for that," added the 28-year-old, who is busy shooting a film with superstar Shah Rukh Khan. For her latest brand endorsement, she has shot a television commercial which she describes as "quirky". At a time when many traditional crafts are struggling to survive, Ajrakhpur -- a tiny village in the Kutch region of Gujarat -- is alluring domestic and international buyers with its beautiful natural-dyed, block-print cloth that is turned into exquisite garments and home furnishing. Ajrakh, as the particular print is called, is the result of a long and laborious process that the 100-odd families in the village are involved in and which finally makes its way to the collection of top-notch fashion labels. While Ajrakhpur, the village, in itself is not very old -- the artisans, led by the family of Sufiyan Ismail Khatri, shifted from a different village, Dhamadka, there after the devastating 2001 Bhuj earthquake -- their craft is more than 400 years old. Sufiyan, who is a ninth generation Ajrakh printer, traces his roots to the 16th century when his ancestors carried their craft here all the way from Sindh. As the scorching sun beats upon the dry land in this western part of the country, the brown landscape suddenly starts getting dotted with sheets after sheets of colourful cloth, all dyed and block-printed, and laid out in the open to dry. Heavy stones are put at the four corners to keep the sheets from flying off. "Traditional Ajrakh printing using natural dyes is a 16-stage process which takes anywhere between 14 to 21 days, depending on the number of colours and layers of block print designs used," Sufiyan said while explaining a particular design to one of his workers in the workshop. The lengthy dyeing and printing process includes un-dyed fabric being first prepared by being torn into a particular length -- usually nine metres -- and being soaked in water overnight before being washed to remove the starch. It is then dried in the sun. After that, it is dyed with myrobalam and again put out in the sun. From a collection that is maybe decades old, artisans then select a wooden block with traditional designs. The first block is coated with lime and acacia gum and carefully pressed onto the cloth at regular intervals -- an act termed the "resist". "One of the main differences between Ajrakh and the block printing you find in Rajasthan is this 'resist' technique," Sufiyan told this correspondent. Thenceforth, artisans continue selecting blocks, coating them with dyes and pressing them carefully on the cloth in a particular alignment. After each colour of print, the cloth is washed and sun-dried. As the name suggests, the natural dyes are all sourced from nature. In fact, the name 'Ajrakh' is linked to the Arabic word for indigo, a blue plant which once thrived in the arid landscape of Kutch until the 1956 earthquake. But the popular story among artisans is that the name is derived from the phrase "aaj rakh", meaning "keep it for today". It is very common to see scrap iron lying around workshops in Ajrakhpur. That is because the colour black is derived from a mixture of iron, jaggery and gram flour. The process, Ismail Anwar, another artisan of the village said, takes about 15 days and they make around 200 litres in one go. Tamarind seed powder and alum makes red, turmeric makes yellow, and lime is used for white. "Traditionally, Ajrakh printing was only in natural colours, but because there is also a demand for cheaper variety, we also make clothes with pigment or artificial colours. Artificial colour printing is also faster -- printing a sari will take two days -- so it works well when there is heavy demand," Anwar explained. Artificially coloured cloth can be priced at Rs 50-60 per metre; if the print is of an antique design, it can go up to Rs 100. Natural coloured cloth starts at Rs 70-75 per metre and with antique designs can go up to Rs 180. It has not all been a colourful story for Ajrakh -- there have been difficult times, like when the artisan families had to move to their present address and put together all their resources to re-build their lives. "But our craft is now in much demand. Designers like Tarun Tahliani have worked with me, and I have visited many countries, including the US, Australia, the Netherlands and Hungary, on invitation by designers to showcase our art and to learn from each other," Sufiyan said. Between July and November this year, he is visiting 12 countries and is also working on a project "to revive the 400-year-old art linkages" with Thailand and the Netherlands. Anwar similarly said he has received many students from design institutes to learn his craft. Most artisans also participate in exhibitions across India. Even as hot winds blow through an April afternoon in Ajrakhpur, work does not come to a halt. "These summer months are the best time for our work," Anwar smiled. Overlooking the work of his nephew in his workshop, he added: "Our craft is everything to us; it is passed down generations. Earlier, it was the nomadic pastorals like Ahirs and Rabaris who wore Ajrakh; now it's finding its presence in urban homes. People's love for Ajrakh is a big gift to us." New Delhi: Actor-producer Aamir Khan has decided against releasing his Bollywood blockbuster "Dangal" after the censor board in Pakistan demanded that two scenes involving the Indian flag and anthem be cut. Mobashir Hasan, Pakistan's Central Board of Film Censors (CBFC) head, told IANS over social media: "Yes, the board unanimously decided to skip two scenes." Asked why the Indian flag and anthem needed to be cut, Hasan said: "The decision is the collective wisdom of the board." He added that it was now up to the local distributor to release it or not. He said the movie's distributor in Pakistan was Geo Films. Subsequently, Aamir has decided not to release the movie in Pkistan, saying the demanded cuts were crucial to the spirit of the film, his spokesperson told IANS. "Dangal" is a movie inspired by the real life story of wrestler Mahavir Singh Phogat, who trains his daughters to become wrestling champions. The movie was loved by Indian audiences -- proven by its whopping Rs 385 crore-plus collection in the country. The news comes just over two months after Pakistani film exhibitors and cinema owners lifted a self-imposed ban on the screening of Indian films in the wake of heightened tensions with India over the September 2016 terror attack in Uri that left 19 Indian soldiers dead. Mani Ratnams tongue twister of a title Kaatru Veliyidai is extracted from a Subramanya Bharathi poem, , - - translation: in this breezy expanse my darling, your love keeps me happy . One usually aspires to the brand of love showcased in a Mani Ratnam film, but this time the filmmaker explores a destructive kind of love. Dr. Leela Abraham, played by Aditi Rao Hydari falls in love with IAF Captain Varun in wintry Kashmir, and this love story is set in the backdrop of the Kargil war. Its a toxic all-consuming love between a delicate porcelain wisp of a girl drawn to a man of brute unstoppable force, shes torn between her self-respect and this man in aviators whose ego is writing checks his body cant cash, shedding her pride and melting with one look, one word, one glance. Its a destructive love thats like a clarion call over the roar of fighter jets, a magnetic force that extends beyond borders. Religion is not a problem here, and parents make jokes about a pre-marital visit from the stork. The hero is the conflict, its him vs him. Borders are a breeze for him whose real struggle is with the violence within. You almost wonder why Leelas drawn to this abusive man but Ratnam preempts your question by stamping the inexplicability of love all over the plot. Ravi Varmans panoramic cinematography of snow-laden forests and molten gradient skies despite being set in sub-zero temperatures brings to mind the new buzzword Hygge, it's a Swedish word that means the quality of warmth and comfort that makes you feel content. The brilliant cinematography coupled with A.R. Rahmans plaintive pleas elevate Ratnams tale of inconvenient love. You are immersed in their tumultuous love story rooting for one, drawn to the other, this is gut wrenching love like we haven't seen from Mani Ratnam in years. Long indulgent takes, lingering glances, urgent dialogues, postcard frames Ratnams movies are in the moments. The throwbacks are unmissable, theres Alaipayuthey in the one open eye of a man coming back to life, Roja where he stays alive in captivity with the memories of his lover. Aditi Rao Hydari's eyes do all the talking, her performance packs a gentle caress instead of a punch and Karthi simmers as the schizophrenic hero. Supporting cast RJ Balaji, Rukmini Vijayakumar and Delhi Ganesh are impactful despite their limited screen space. If the all too common proverb all is fair in love and war had to be encapsulated in a film this would be it, a film thats far from common though. And if Ive have mentioned love too many times in this review thats because love is what all Ratnam films are about, the story exists on the fringes. I'm going with three and a half out of five, Kaatru Veliyidai keeps you flying high long after you walk out of the cinema hall. Ratings: 3.5/5 Cast: Lalit Behl, Adil Hussain, Geetanjali Kulkarni, Palomi Ghosh, Navnindra Behl, Anil K Rastogi Director: Shubhashish Bhutiani The notion that the highest level of being is all about freeing yourself from the transient human life runs through Hinduism, much like other religions. And this idea of the breakout from the worldly pleasures which is called moksha becomes the core concept of Shubhashish Bhutianis debut feature Mukti Bhawan. Set in Varanasi, the film revolves around a 77-year-old Dayanand Kumar (Lalit Behl) who announces to his family while having a meal that his time to die has arrived, and that hed want to visit Varanasi for his last journey. This decision, quite clearly leaves his son Rajeev (Adil Hussain), Rajeevs wife Lata (Geetanjali) and daughter Sunita (Palomi Ghosh) in a state of shock. And because Rajeev cant let his father visit Varanasi alone, he despite a hectic work life decides to accompany him. The sacredness of quaint Varanasi is obvious from the fact that the city on the Ganges is the best place to attain moksha, or as many call it release at the moment of death. As Kumar prepares himself for the release from the cycle of life, death and reincarnation by breathing his last in Varanasi, he decides to check in to a moksha retirement lodge. But attaining salvation comes with its own terms and conditions. Kumar is initially not allowed to stay beyond 15 days. So if he doesnt die within the aforementioned time frame, he will be asked to vacate the room to make it available for other dying visitors. While this remains the key rule, the manager doesnt really adhere to it. Just when the time limit expires, the manager informs Rajeev, desperate to take his father back home, that he doesnt have the right to ask a dying guest to vacate. This further makes it incumbent for Rajeev to leave his father in Varanasi and join work and family. Director Bhutiani does an amazing job in capturing the essence of the spiritual power of the city. From taking shots of a group of people crooning bhajans to displaying bodies tied to bamboo frame being carried on willing shoulders to focusing the varied moods of faith - Bhutiani does it all in the most real way. In a nutshell, he explores the long association with death in a way that will remain with you for the longest time. What also works for Mukti Bhawan is the sensitivity and warmth with which Bhutiani handles the relationship that a busy son shares with a father awaiting his death. What makes the relationship even more interesting is the manner in which it evolves. From being compelled to arrange milk from a buffalo dairy to being made to sit up straight while sleeping to get water for his father, the dutiful and compliant son Rajeev shoulders his responsibility with utmost seriousness. It is a delight to see Bhutiani explain the complexities involved in their relationship, and also tackle the issues theyve faced in the most genuine way. In fact, there is a sequence wherein Kumar expresses his desire to be a kangaroo in his next life. The reason? Well, kyunki unki pocket hoti hain aur mai saari cheezein pocket mei rakhunga, Kumar chuckles. This is the moment when we realize that even though this father-son relationship appears intense and dynamic, there are humorous moments to be found as well. And cry too! Behl was last seen essaying the role of a father in Titli, which offered a disturbing story on Delhis underbelly. Even though he essays the same role, the understanding and depiction of the stormy relationship he shares with his son needs to be lauded. Even as he waits for salvation in a dingy room in Varanasi, he socializes with friends over meals and bhajans. In fact, his death unties Rajeev with his daughter Sunita. And the message Karo wahi jo mann ko bhaye that he shares with Sunita also comes across as the greater truth because there is nothing more important than following your heart and never have regrets. After leaving an indelible impact in films which are as diverse as Ishqiya, Parched, Life of Pi and English Vinglish, Hussain plays a role of a docile son battling his fathers attempts to attain salvation with maturity. Since he gets so deep into it, he doesnt face any problem in losing his self in the role. Geetanjali and Palomi Ghosh also play their parts well. At a time when being different isnt taboo in Bollywood, we are happy that Bhutiani takes up a topic that we are aware of, but not explored much in movies. While the film will definitely find several takers especially amongst the older generation, it will also resonate with the youngsters. For, heres a theme that nobody irrespective of their age group cant avoid. Rating: 4/5 mayor Larry Morrissey Rockford Illinois Rockford, Illinois, is suing Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals over the price of one of the company's blockbuster drugs, Acthar. Rockford is accusing Mallinckrodt of taking advantage of its hold on the market and charging an exorbitant price for the drug which is listed at about $35,000 for a vial. The drug cost $40 a vial as recently as 2001, but the price was raised by its previous owner, which Mallinckrodt acquired, and then again by Mallinckrodt. In 2015 the town paid almost $500,000 for just nine prescriptions of the drug to treat two children, according to the complaint. The gross, per-vial cost of the medication was $54,339.76. "By engaging in the antitrust conduct and other unlawful conduct described herein, the Defendants have been knowingly enriched by the amount charged for Acthar over and above what they could have charged in a competitive market, and what was charged previously before the unlawful conduct was undertaken," the complaint said. "By establishing and maintain a monopoly, exercising monopoly power, and engaging in other unlawful acts and practices, the Defendants were able to extract exorbitant revenue from consumers that had nowhere else to turn for treatment." The city is accusing Mallinckrodt of violating antitrust laws and the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Practices Act. The lawsuit also names United BioSource (UBC), a subsidiary of the nation's largest pharmacy benefit manager, Express Scripts as a defendant. It alleges that UBC and another Express Scripts subsidiary, CuraScripts, colluded with Mallinckrodt to maintain its monopoly. "Mallinckrodt is aware of the lawsuit filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois," a company representative told Business Insider. "The company has received and is evaluating the complaint, and will consider its response after completing its assessment." Details of the lawsuit were first reported by the Rockford-based television station WIFR. Story continues One of the worst offenders The station broadcast comments from the mayor of Rockford, in which he called Mallinckrodt "one of the worst offenders," citing "unconscionable price increases." Mallinckrodt acquired Acthar in 2014 when it bought another pharmaceutical firm, Questcor. In January, Mallinckrodt paid $100 million to settle claims with the Federal Trade Commission and five states that Questcor had purchased a competitor to the drug to stifle competition. The company did not admit wrongdoing. Rockford's complaint, however, attributes a monopoly by Mallinckrodt, in part, to what happened with the other drug, called Synacthen. HP Acthar chart price "Such conduct reasonably contributed to Mallinckrodt's maintenance of monopoly power," it says. "The purpose and effect of such conduct has been to suppress rather than promote competition on the merits." Acthar isn't just controversial for its price. Even though the drug is primarily used to treat infantile spasms, and is prescribed by less than 1% of doctors in the US, it has become one of the 20 most costly drugs for Medicare Part D, a government prescription drug program for the elderly. The drug cost the program about half a billion dollars in 2015. Acthar can be used to treat 19 ailments, including multiple sclerosis, though many insurers restrict its use for anything other than infantile spasms. Doctors have also questioned the drug's efficacy overall, in part because it has never undergone clinical trials. The Rockford complaint also questions whether the drug is as efficacious as its marketing suggests. Read the entire complaint below: RockfordMNK Complaint by Linette Lopez on Scribd NOW WATCH: Robert Shiller on what a rate hike will do to asset prices and who Trump shouldn't put in charge of the fed More From Business Insider The list of winners for National Film Awards 2017 is out. And those who have watched the much-talked about film Mukti Bhawan or are planning to watch this today will be happy to know that actor Adil Hussain has won a Special Mention. Interestingly, the renowned actor has earned Special Mention for not one, but a couple of his projects - Maj Rati Keteki and Mukti Bhawan.During his exclusive interaction with News18.com, Hussain expressed his elation on winning special mention for his work in the aforementioned titles.Im quite delighted that I have been mentioned and noticed as one of the performers who did well. To be recognized by the National Award Jury is both prestigious and inspiring for me, he said.The actor is also delighted because the National awards mention comes on a day when the film Mukti Bhawan releases across India. Today is when the film gets an official release. This is a happy coincidence.Mukti Bhawan, which has been directed by Shubhashish Bhutiani, is set in Varanasi, and features Lalit Behl, Geetanjali Kulkarni and Palomi Ghosh in key roles.With an interesting story that revolves around life and relationships in a way that no other film has ever been able to achieve, Mukti Bhawan revolves around a 77-year-old Daya (Lalit Behl) who feels that he is nearing his death. Much like a true Hindu, he wants to spend his last few days on the banks of river Ganges.Hussain plays a compliant son in the film, who tries to strike a balance between his father and work, a role which many can associate with.Im so happy that the film has also got amazing reviews. It is so encouraging that films like Mukti Bhawan which have been made under a limited budget have been mentioned and appreciated across the board.But I also want the audience to watch the film with with parents, and make it a commercial film too, he quickly added.Hussain refers to Mukti Bhawan as a film that has the potential to change the future of Indian cinema because such projects thrive on stories, not stars. Mumbai: Veteran Bollywood actor Vinod Khanna, who was hospitalised last week due to severe dehydration, has responded positively to treatment and is stable, doctors treating him said on Thursday. The actor "was admitted to Sir H.N. Reliance Foundation Hospital on Friday with severe dehydration. He is under the care of our doctors and has responded positively to the treatment and is now stable," the hospital spokesperson said. "His family thanks his well-wishers for the good wishes and requests to respect their privacy," he added. Vinod Khanna's son Rahul told IANS on Tuesday: "Dad was hospitalised on Friday (March 31) for severe dehydration. The situation was quickly brought under control, he's doing much better and the doctors are looking to discharge him soon." Rahul, who is also an actor, added that the family is "touched by all the good wishes pouring in". The actor, who is a sitting Bharatiya Janata Party member of the Lok Sabha from the Gurdaspur constituency in Punjab, was admitted to Sir H.N. Reliance Foundation Hospital and Research Centre in Girgaon, Mumbai. The 70-year-old actor has featured in films like Mere Apne, Insaaf and Amar, Akbar, Anthony. AAP's Delhi unit convenor Dilip Pandey claimed, of these 4600 are faulty. "The suspicion that the EVMs could be faulty and tampered now becomes more solid with this report. We again urge the state election commission to postpone the poll dates so that traditional paper ballots could be used for MCD elections," Pandey said. The AAP on Friday renewed its demand to use paper ballots, alleging that the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) could be tampered with.Citing media reports, the party claimed that nearly 30,000 ballot units and 20,000 control units have been ordered by the state election commission for MCD polls.Ballot units are the ones through which people cast their vote while control units record these votes and it is under the supervision of election officer.Amid Election Commission's plan to invite politicians to try and hack EVMs, the AAP has asked the poll body to allow it to pick machines randomly from Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, where Assembly elections were recently held.The party, in a letter to Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi on Thursday, also requested the EC to provide the details of components like micro-controllers, and chips used for storage of memory in voting machines. If we were racist, why would we have all the entire South (India) which is you know Tamil Nadu, you know Karnataka and Andhra why do we live with them? We have black people all around us, Vijay said in response to Mahesh Shantaram, a Bengaluru-based photographer who said he found Indians to be racists. Commenting on the recent attack on African students in Greater Noida, he said, It cant be a racist attack. There have been many such incidents for several reasons like economy or sometimes even without a reason because of the criminalised behaviour doesnt need any logic. I said we worship Krishna, which literally em,ans black, we were the first to oppose any racism and were in fact victims of racist British https://t.co/kjSBSNl9w8 Tarun Vijay (@Tarunvijay) April 7, 2017 I feel the entire statement sas this- we have fought racism and we have people with different colour and culture still never had any racism. Tarun Vijay (@Tarunvijay) April 7, 2017 Thank you Sri Tarun Vijay. Us South Indians are proud to be black. Also, much thanks for your compassion. Chinmayi Sripaada (@Chinmayi) April 7, 2017 BJPs former Rajya Sabha member and president of the India-Africa Parliamentary Friendship Group Tarun Vijay has kicked a storm by calling South Indians blacks while participating in an Al Jazeera show on the recent racist attacks in India.You are denying your own nation, you are denying your own ancestry, you are denying your own history, you are denying your own culture and you are trying to be good. Thats very bad, an agitated MP told the photographer before the moderator intervened.In his opening remarks on the show, The Stream, Vijay said, To say that Indians can be racist is the most vicious thing because we worship black gods... Krishna is back. And we have been seeing the descendants of the Africans living amicably in states like Maharashtra and Gujarat.We gave Gandhi to Africa and Africa turned him into a Mahatma and sent him back to us, said Vijay. We are the victims of racism how can we be racist? We have fought against racism.Later, in a series of tweets, the BJP leader said he had been misquoted.Hitting out at Tarun Vijay for his remarks, Congress leader Khushboo Sundar said: Tarun Vijays statement is bizarre and senseless. Where does the colour come from... This statement is surprising.Its high time that people stop looking at others for the colour from their skin, she told CNN-News18.DMKs Kanimozhi termed it an anti-national statement. I hope the BJP takes strict action against him, she told CNN-News18.Chinmayi Sripada also hit out at Tarun Vijay and tweeted:TKS Elangovan an organisation Secretary of DMK said, Racism is not in colour, Racism is in culture. This is funny that people living in Tamil Nadu or Kerala are black. He has chosen a wrong word to define South Indians".On March 27, at least nine Africans were seriously injured in mob violence in Greater Noida in a fallout of March 24s raid on Nigerian students by local people who accused them of cannibalism. Seven Nigerian passers-by were attacked at Pari Chowk at the heart of Greater Noida by a mob of about 100, which was demanding the government expel all Africans because of their alleged cannibalism and drug abuse. Two other Nigerians were assaulted the next day, by three masked men who had arrived on a motorcycle, in front of a private hostel. The Association of African Students in India later alleged a third attack and uploaded a video on WhatsApp of an African man being beaten by a mob, apparently in a Noida mall. Bhopal: Having cornered Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan over variety of issues including illegal mining, transport recruit scam and Vyapam scam, opposition Congress has resorted to a unique tactic this time round. Party chief spokesperson KK Mishra has written a letter to the Director General of Police Hrishi Kumar Shukla expressing concern over the safety of CM Shivraj. "The CM falls in VVIP security category but the police was not serious on his security and negligence remains evident time and again." Mishra in the letter further said that on occasions, there are ant-social elements who remain present in the CM's function and even CM Chouhan does not know them. "At times, goons manage to get close to him by breaching the security barrier," Mishra said in the missive. "As an opposition party, setting aside all the ideological, political and personal differences, we are concerned about CM Shivraj's security," said the party spokesperson who is pitted against Chouhan in a defamation suit filed by latter over his allegations in transport recruitment anomalies. Showing plenty of political shrewdness, Mishra tagged pictures in which CM Shivraj is seen sharing space with people like goon Shiraj named in underworld don Abu Salem fake passport case, Dr Gulab Singh Kirar named in Vyaapam scam, Raghvendra Tomar also an accused in Vyapam scam, Dhruv Saxena named in ISI case and Katni hawala scandal accused Satish Sarawgi. "Police should verify the credentials of those who remain present around CM Chouhan during public functions." Mishra said. Interestingly, Mishra's lawyer had shown pictures of Raghvendra Tomar and Dr Gulab Singh Kirar to CM Chouhan during a recent hearing of defamation case but Chouhan had declined knowing them. Meanwhile BJP's chief spokesperson Dr Deepak Vijayvargiya responding to the letter from Congress said that they (Congress) can't succeed their agenda by resorting to such tactics. "Police and security agencies take proper precautions in CM Shivrajs security," he said. Chennai: AIADMK Amma faction Deputy General Secretary and its candidate in the April 12 RK Nagar assembly byelections T T V Dinakaran on Friday rubbished allegations of money distribution by his camp in the constituency. He alleged that DMK, Panneerselvam-led AIADMK Puratchi Thalaivi Amma faction and BJP had been making such claims ever since naming their candidates for the bypoll. "They say it is happening unnoticed, if it is so how they came to know of it," he said. If money distribution was allegedly happening, was it not a "fault" of the officials who did not prevent it? he asked. Despite the demployment of a large number of officials (from other states) for the poll duty and deployment of Central security forces, allegations of money distribution continued, he said and sought to know whether it was not a lacunae on the part of officials. The opposition parties have been alleging that money was being distributed to voters by the ruling camp. On April 5, around Rs 15 lakh was seized and 28 persons were arrested for their alleged roles in various incidents of money distribution to voters and violence in the run up to the byelection, necessitated due to the death of late Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa. The Election Commission has also deployed mobile teams of micro observers to check against malpractices. New Delhi: The Air India Cabin Crew Association has said Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad must not be allowed to fly until he tenders an "unconditional apology" for beating up a 60-year-old staffer, and asserted that he poses a risk to flight safety. In a letter to the AI Chairman and Managing Director Ashwani Lohani, the association has said that a decision by either the Ministry of Civil Aviation or Parliament to lift the ban will affect the morale of the employees. "Unless he tenders an unconditional apology to AI employees, and undertakes in writing to abide by the Chicago and Tokyo Conventions & Rules of the Air and follow all cabin safety and public behaviour norms, we must not let him on board," says the letter. On Thursday, Gaikwad, in a letter to Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapthi Raju, had conveyed his "regrets" over the "unfortunate incident", but stopped short of tendering an apology to either the national carrier or to the staffer concerned. "Ravindra Gaikwad is and will continue to be a risk to flight safety and flight operations and to Cabin Crew safety on board, and hence Government must think long and hard about letting him back on," the letter added. The association said it would be a "crying shame" if he is let off "without even a rap on the knuckles". "For either the ministry or the Parliament to allow such a person to get away without even a rap on the knuckles or even forcing an apology to all Air- Indians and indeed all Indians, would be a crying shame. "It would also crush the morale of all employees and indeed all fair minded Indians. We do not wish to be flying such a person," the association wrote in the letter. As far as his appointment is concerned, the Yogi provided a timeline, according to which Modi not only was sure about victory in UP, but had also made up his mind that Adityanath would be his man in Lucknow. The UP chief minister stated that the prime minister struck his name off the list of MPs nominated by MEA to visit the United States and Port of Spain on March 10, a day before counting. He promised officers there would be no witch hunt and bureaucrats and police officers appointed by the previous regime could breathe easy, provided they pursued BJP's primary commitments to voters: providing efficient governance and ensuring the rule of law. But his statement that babus adapt " to the political leadership's priorities" also indicates his view that the bureaucracy has little mind of its own. This would surely not go down well with several in the system. Not to be missed is the fact that the Yogi skirted the issue of palayan or "forced migration" which had become a contentious issue on the BJP plank during polls. Instead of using the prism used to highlight the party's claims on Kairana, the chief minister used the word in the economic framework and contended that people migrate because of no employment and business opportunities. Leaving no doubt that the Modi Model was his, Adityanath announced a decision on which heckles have been raised by the RSS in the past - teaching English in schools. He promised to introduce the language from the nursery level because to make children " wait till Class VI to get familiarised with the English alphabet makes little sense." In contrast Sanskrit will be introduced from Class III with option of a foreign language from Class X. In an obviously carefully crafted media strategy, newly appointed Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath, granted three interviews to different media print television and online . The interviews, almost echoing or mirroring each other, depict a leader making a conscious effort to tone down his public image while not abandoning the basis of his politics.Adityanath's selection by the Bharatiya Janata Party triggered a howl of protests all over. This stemmed from his association with the so-called fringe in the Sangh Parivar, his personal background as Mahant of Gorakhnath Peeth and for his not so easy relations with several leaders in the saffron fraternity.Internationally, the verdict was split with one section drawing attention to potential rise in anxiety of religious minorities while the other group, including American and French Presidents Donald Trump and Francois Hollande, calling up Prime Minister Narendra Modi to compliment him for leading his party to a stunning victory.In an article in Firstpost , sister publication of this website, I argued that with his appointment, Adityanath was presented with a historic opportunity to "reinvent himself" and his position had "striking parallels" with where Modi had been in after winning leading BJP to power in 2002.Back then, Modi embarked on recasting himself as Vikas Purush as distinct from Hindu Hriday Samrat. The three interviews suggest that the new chief minister is turning out to be a quick learner and his words were restrained and devoid of provocation. The charged up Yogi is clearly in the past and what emerges from these interviews is a man who knows that he has an opportunity the most envy and it was up to him to make the best out of it.There is little doubt that this Yogi sees Modi not just as his role model, but as a bigger yogi. When he was asked that many questioned a person who began as a religious priest and is expected to renounce material comfort and political power was appointed chief minister, Adityanath turned the argument on its head. Cleverly, he expanded the idea behind the word and converted Yogi as a metaphor. He argued that any person with commitments matching Modi's or his, was best suited to govern, "Raj satta to Yogi hee chala sakta hai," he asserted and that "satta is not for mauj-masti but for sadhna."The latter construction obviously is the Adityanath's way of connecting with his core constituency - to convey his idea of politics as Dharma and that there was nothing wrong for a religious leader to sit in a position of power provided it was for the good of people. His future hypothesis on this theme has to be watched to study evolution of the Hindutva theory of political practise.In these interviews, obviously granted after agreement that there would be no cross examination, Adityanath held forth on his agenda: the rationale behind loan waiver, his development priorities, health, education, law and order, streamlining decision making, wheat procurement policy, woes of cane farmers.Predictably, Adityanath was faced with the two most contentious issues - Romeo squads and closure of illegal slaughter houses. On both, he batted for the government and its push on these issues with reserve in contrast to the high octave, once his trademark in public speeches. Yet, at no point was Adityanath on the defensive and display the attributes of a man uncertain of his decision.Adityanath knew that whenever he talks about insecurity of 'mataaen aur bahnein' during the previous regime, people understand what he was talking about and thus there is no to be explicit. Clearly, Adityanath has tailwind behind him because of woeful record of the previous regime in maintaining law and order and its conscious decision to overlook the National Green Tribunal's order on slaughter houses.In needs to be recalled that RSS was not in favour of introducing English in schools early. Modi brushed aside these objections in 2009 and attempted to use the Educational Satellite of the Indian Space Research Organisation and take the language to schools by installing TV sets in schools and directly telecast English lessons by the teachers based in Gandhinagar.Because Adityanath does not want to face hurdles that Modi failed to surmount, he has begun early. He was asked if his stance on promoting English was surprising given his image of a traditionalist. He replied: " Traditional and modern should blend." Clearly, Adityanath is aiming for a combination of the extreme and moderation. He will push his politics and much more, but all with a benign face. That would be quite an astute strategy.The author is a Delhi-based writer and journalist. He authored 'Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times', and 'Sikhs: The Untold Agony of 1984.' He is @NilanjanUdwin on Twitter. Views are personal. Amsterdam's rapidly-growing Schiphol airport is reaching its limits for the safe movement of planes on its busy airstrips, the Dutch safety watchdog warned Thursday, saying runway risks needed to be addressed before any further expansion. "The boundaries to safely conclude air traffic movements are approaching," the Dutch Safety Board (OVV) said in a report. "There are no indications that the airport is unsafe at this point, but stakeholders need to act to reduce the safety risks," the OVV said in the 215-page report. The aviation hub is now one of the top five busiest in Europe. Last year, some 63.6 million passengers passed through Schiphol, up from 58 million in 2015, according to airport figures. There were 479,000 aircraft movements around Schiphol's five main runways in 2016, the airport said in a separate report last year. The safety watchdog launched a probe after "several incidents over the last few years", it said, including so-called "runway incursions" when a plane, person or other object is on a runway without authorisation, planes taking off from taxiways, or taking off or landing without permission from air traffic control. Included in the investigation was the 2009 Turkish Airlines crash that killed nine people and injured 120 others. The Boeing 737-800 from Istanbul to Amsterdam crashed on approach on February 23 that year, which the OVV later mainly blamed on a faulty altimeter, but also on pilot error. The OVV warned no further expansion could take place at Schiphol unless safety issues are dealt with. "Before any decision can be taken about the expansion of Schiphol, the risks in and around the airport need to be addressed," it said. "A fundamental discussion is needed about the future of Dutch aviation... for which the Dutch state needs to take responsibility," the OVV said. The airport last year concluded itself that "we will reach the agreed limits of growth at Schiphol sooner than expected, probably as early as 2017." It said it had agreed to limit air transport movements to a maximum of 500,000 by 2020. "The unexpectedly strong growth in passenger numbers in 2016 may have something to do with the fact that Schiphol is now nearing that limit," the airport said, citing factors such as globalisation and cheaper airfares as some of the main reasons. Lawmakers on Thursday called for the issue to be debated in the Dutch parliament. With Easter break round the corner you might want to take a break away from crowds. Here is a list if destinations that are weird, wild, exciting and spectacular, but above all, they're all miles from anywhere. The Garvault Scottish Highlands, United Kingdom Known as 'Britain's most remote hotel', The Garvault occupies a lonesome place in the Scottish highlands, with nothing for miles around. An ideal place for hikers and cyclists, it's also sold as a haven for shooting, fishing and birdwatching. Amankora Bhutan Amankora is a series of lodges across the central and western valleys of Bhutan, itself already isolated between the Tibetan Plateau and India. Nestled in the mountain passes, the lodges provide breathtaking scenery and luxury design touches including baths and wood-burning stoves. Kokopelli's Cave Farmington, New Mexico Seventy feet (21 meters) underground, nobody can hear you scream. Or do anything else for that matter. These cave dwellings are basic but comfortable, and you can be assured there are no noisy neighbors, just meters and meters of solid rock. Posada de Mike Rapu Easter Island, Chile This eco-lodge demands a four-hour flight over the Pacific from South America to get there, then a trek of more than eight kilometers from the most populated part of Easter Island. On arrival though, it'll all be worth it, with rooms offering stunning views of the open ocean, a swimming pool, solar-heated jacuzzi and bar. Hotel Budir Iceland Wild Iceland is remote enough for some, but lazing under the stunning skies on the western Snaefellsnes peninsula, stars and Northern lights puncturing the blackness, is an experience not to be missed. By day, there's plenty to do too, including seal watching in the bay and exploring the Snaefellsjokull glacier. Jotunheimen National Park Fannarakhytta, Norway The huts dotted around this hiker's paradise are available to rent from the Norwegian Trekking Association, and many are mercifully equipped with basic facilities such as a stove. Hiking in the shadow of Northern Europe's highest peak, Mt Galdhoppigen, is an experience not to be missed. Wolwedans Private Camp NamibRand Nature Reserve, Namibia This suite caters for only four guests, so it's perfect for a family keen to get away from it all. The lodge offers stunning views out to the plains, but each room is equipped with en-suite bathrooms and there's a fully equipped kitchen to make sure no one goes hungry. Petit St Vincent St Vincent and Grenadines Billed as a 'private island for private people', this island offers non of the connectivity we're used to, with television, internet and mobile phone signal all conspicuously absent. instead. Petit St Vincent offers a spa, yoga, sailing and privacy that's almost unmatched. (Repeats story published earlier with no changes to text.) * Buying LNG at fixed prices is a "gamble" -JERA * Flat $8/mmBtu could be expensive in 2023 -Diamond Gas Int'l * Tellurian's Souki says has seen strong response to offer * Australia's Woodside also considering flat price offers -CEO By Aaron Sheldrick and Osamu Tsukimori CHIBA, Japan, April 6 (Reuters) - Japanese buyers of liquefied natural gas have shown cautious interest in Tellurian Inc's bold guarantee of U.S. LNG delivered at a fixed price from 2023, wary of locking themselves into a price that may eventually work to their disadvantage. Tellurian Chairman Charif Souki - who pioneered the first U.S. LNG exports ex-Alaska as head of Cheniere Energy - stirred things up at the Gastech conference in Japan from the start, offering cargoes delivered to Japan at a flat $8 per million British thermal units (mmBtu). That goes against four decades of selling LNG and building liquefaction plants worth billions of dollars on the basis of long-term, fixed-volume contracts linked to the price of oil. Souki's move looked to be in keeping with LNG importers pushing for lower prices and better terms, yet even some of the most aggressive buyers seemed taken aback by the flat rate. "Fixed prices are a gamble," JERA Co's chief fuel transactions office Hiroki Sato told Reuters in an interview at the conference when asked about Souki's offer. "If you hear now that you can buy LNG for Japan at $8 in 2023, everybody would probably say it's cheap. But ... actions based on predictions rarely work out. That is how it works in the world," he said. 'NOT BUYING AT $8' Tokyo-based JERA Co, a partnership of Tokyo Electric Power and Chubu Electric Power, is the world's biggest buyer of the fuel. Last month it joined with Korea Gas Corp and China National Offshore Oil Corp to form a club to force producers to drop so-called destination clauses. Despite Sato's wariness, Souki "is a genius (for) throwing a stone in the pond and creating a ripple. I don't know how I evaluate that or if it is good or bad," he said. Story continues During supply shortfalls - such as when the Fukushima nuclear crisis of 2011 led to the shutdown of Japan's reactors and imports of LNG and coal spiked to records to replace lost power generation - prices can run up rapidly. Spot LNG prices in Asia (LNG-AS) were at more than $20/mmBtu in February 2014, for instance, but with the more recent surplus they are now trading at less than $6/mmBtu. Buyers might decide that $8/mmBtu looked cheap if oil prices were at $80 or $100, said Ryosuke Tsugaru, chief executive of Diamond Gas International, a subsidiary of Mitsubishi Corp , said on the sidelines of the conference. "But oil by nature is volatile. And if a fixed $8 turned out to be expensive, I don't know what they would do," Tsugaru said. "I am not buying at $8," he said. DRUM ROLL, PLEASE Souki made his offer on Tuesday to deliver LNG to Japan at $8/mmBtu from 2023 under five-year contracts, including shipping. The offer covers an initial 7 million tonnes a year of LNG from Tellurian's planned Driftwood project in Louisiana. "I think we will be sold out by the end of the year," he later said, as two Taiko drummers banged away at Tellurian's stand in the conference hall in Chiba near Tokyo, drawing a crowd of gas executives and onlookers who snapped pictures while drinking wine and champagne. Souki told Reuters he had received a strong response from buyers in Japan, which takes about a third of global LNG output. He declined to identify any companies that had shown interest. Australia's Woodside Petroleum is also considering sales of some of its LNG on a fixed-price basis, Chief Executive Officer Peter Coleman told reporters at a Gastech press briefing, although he mentioned no specific level. "We can get to Japan for eight bucks, so it is fine with me," said Elizabeth Spomer, executive vice president at Veresen Inc and head of its planned Jordan Cove LNG project, when asked about the Tellurian offer. The Jordan Cove terminal will be built in Oregon on the Pacific Coast of U.S. so is closer to Japan. Driftwood supplies from the U.S. Gulf Coast would need to come through the expanded Panama Canal or make an even longer journey. "Charif is always provocative and it will be interesting to see what they do," Spomer said. (Reporting by Aaron Sheldrick and Osamu Tsukimori; Additional reporting by Mark Tay; Editing by Tom Hogue) Egypt is keen to help India restore a 4,000-year-old mummy-in-residence which has been "lying in a bad condition" at the Indian Museum here, one of Asia's oldest, but is a star attraction for its visitors. Hatem Tageldin, Egypt's Ambassador to India, who had visited the museum's Egyptian gallery in February 2016, has proposed an initiative to assist in the restoration of the mummies in India, including the one in Kolkata. "I am not an expert, but I could see it (the mummy) was in a bad condition. We offered to send a team of experts from Egypt if India will host them and/or invite a group from the Indian side to visit Egypt to provide training for them," Tageldin told IANS. The envoy has also expressed a desire to meet the director-in-charge of the museum. "We hope to hear from them on our proposal. We need details and documents about the mummy... which family it belongs to, how it arrived in India, etc., so we can help in restoring it," he said, adding the cooperation on offer was sent through official channels and was extended for all mummies in India. "We heard there are six or seven mummies in India." On his visit to the Egyptian gallery at the Indian Museum in December 2016, Minister of State for External Affairs M.J. Akbar expressed dissatisfaction over the mummy's preservation. However, according to Indian Museum authorities, a "climate-controlled air-conditioned environment" is now maintained for the exhibit. In Arabic and Persian, an embalmed corpse is called "mumiya" and "mum", respectively, and the process by which an embalmed corpse is preserved with wax or bitumen in Egypt after the draining out of moisture is called mummification. The mummy's arrival in India, reportedly from "tombs of the kings at Gourvah" (in Egypt) to Bombay (now Mumbai) via sea and then to Calcutta (now Kolkata), can be traced back to British India of the 1800s. It arrived in Calcutta in 1882 and was mentioned in a listing of the attractions of the museum published the next year. It was originally encased in a wooden frame and covered with another frame on which the face of the mummy was carved. In an insulated glass cabinet at the museum, it now lies nestled in the bottom half of the encasing while the top cover is removed and laid by its side, for visibility. "The body is seen wrapped in cloth, the arms tied down to the sides. The flesh of the face and head has crumbled away, leaving the bones exposed. The mask which lay over the face has been removed and laid on the chest. This mummy is probably about 4,000 years old," says the write-up about the mummy at the museum. Digital records of the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (Vol III, dated 1834) say the mummy was a gift to the Society, which founded the museum, from a British officer in the same year. "A letter from Lieutenant E.C. Archbold of the Bengal Light Calvary, dated Bombay July 5, 1834, announced that he had forwarded to the Secretary (James Prinsep), as a present to the Asiatic Society of Bengal, an Egyptian Mummy." "The mummy was obtained with some difficulty from the tombs of the kings at Gourvah," the Journal reports. "The native crew on board the ship which brought Lieutenant A. from Mocha, having objected to receive the mummy with his baggage, he had been under the necessity of requesting one of the officers of the Sloop of War Coote to bring it onward to Bombay, whence it will be forwarded to Calcutta by the earliest opportunity." The mummy is displayed along with another artefact from the nation, a mummified hand. The mummified hand was gifted to the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1844, as noted in the book "Jadughar" (the popular name of the museum) launched on the occasion of 200 years of the Indian Museum 1814-2014. Commenting on the diplomat's view, Sayan Bhattacharya, Education Officer of the museum, said: "If there is an official request (for restoration) then the competent authority will take a call." As part of its latest customer service upgrade, on Thursday April 6, the low cost airline announced that passengers will now be able to book Ryanair connecting flights online. This is a first step towards a new system in which passengers will soon be able to book connecting flights offered by other carriers via Ryanair. Ryanair has presented the fourth phase (year 4) "always getting better" initiative aimed at improving customer services, both on the web and in the air. Among the novelties on offer in this upgrade, the option to reserve connecting flights will be seen as a major step forward. Ryanair has yet to provide details of the date in 2017 when it will be possible to book connecting flights offered by other airlines. The Irish carrier also plans to introduce an "express booking" system that will allow travelers to save preferred bundles of bags, extras, seat preferences and so on in their user profiles, and thus purchase a flight with two or three clicks. Travelers who purchase seats will also benefit from auto check-in, which will enable them to simultaneously check in for both legs of round trip flights. Finally, the low-cost company has promised an upgrade to its "Ryanair Rooms" system, which enables passengers to book hotel rooms. Washington: The U.S. missile strikes Thursday on a Syrian air base were conducted without formal congressional approval. Some questions and answers about how and why presidents can conduct military action without permission from the 535 representatives of the American people. DID CONGRESS KNOW? Trump did let Congress know of his plans to launch 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles Thursday evening, targeting the air base from which Syrian President Bashar Assad launched a chemical weapons attack earlier this week against his own people, killing more than 80 men, women and children. A White House official said more than two dozen members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, were briefed Thursday by White House and Cabinet officials. House Speaker Paul Ryan, the No. 3 U.S. official, said he was among those informed. IS INFORMING THEM ENOUGH? DON'T THEY GET A SAY? The War Powers Resolution, enacted in 1973, long after American troops began fighting in Vietnam, required the president to consult with Congress before sending U.S. armed forces into combat unless there already had been a declaration of war. The troops could not stay more than 90 days unless lawmakers backed the decision. The law also sought to give the president "leeway to respond to attacks or other emergencies," according to the Council on Foreign Relations. And it is that leeway that presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and now Trump have used to their advantage. Following the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, Congress gave Bush authority to attack any countries or groups involved in the attacks, which was generally accepted to mean al-Qaida. Obama used that same authority to fight the Islamic State militant group, which emerged in 2014 as an outgrowth of al-Qaida. Trump has used that same authority to continue military action in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. The Obama administration maintained in 2011 that U.S. involvement in the months-long air campaign against Libya didn't require congressional permission because American forces were largely playing a supporting role as part of an international coalition. In February 2015, Obama asked Congress to formally authorize war against the Islamic State, saying the militant group could threaten the U.S. homeland if left unchecked. His resolution would have limited authorization to three years, with no geographic restrictions for U.S. forces. It would have banned "enduring offensive combat operations," an ambiguous term that attempted to define a middle ground between Democrats leery of another protracted Middle Eastern conflict involving ground troops, and Republicans, who largely believe the U.S. needs maximum flexibility to pursue IS. Congress held a few hearings, but never acted on the proposal. WHAT DOES CONGRESS THINK NOW? Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, the Republican chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said before Thursday's missile launch that he thought it would be prudent to consult with Congress, but didn't insist Congress had to approve Trump's actions. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, insisted that if the U.S. increased the use of military force in Syria, "we should follow the Constitution and seek the proper authorization from Congress." Kentucky lawmakers Thomas Massie and Rand Paul, both Republicans, agreed. "President Trump should make his case in front of the American people and allow their elected representatives to debate the benefits and risks of further Middle East intervention to our national security interests," Lee said in a statement. Other Republicans, like former Trump primary opponent Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, applauded the strikes without mentioning congressional approval. Symbolic though it may be, the latest US action could trigger significant changes. Relations with Russia may witness new tensions. Committed as Putin is to Assad, Russia will resist greater US military action. The Kremlin press secretary has called the American attacks an aggression against a sovereign state. The Russian military presence in Syria complicates the options open to Trump in the use of military force. And calls for such force may well become stronger, both domestically and internationally. There has been criticism of Obamas decision in stepping back from military strikes after the 2013 gas attack. Having taken the first step, it will be difficult for Trump to retract. Hours after President Trump accused the Syrian government of crossing many, many lines, 59 Tomahawk missiles fired from two US warships in the Mediterranean Sea struck the government controlled Shayrat airbase. The Syrian aircraft, which allegedly carried out the poison gas attack on civilians in Idlib Province on Tuesday, is said to have taken off from the same airbase.The attack is in stark contrast to actions of the Obama administration. In 2013, after the Assad government carried out a chemical weapons strike in the Ghouta district of Damascus, the US had almost resorted to military attacks against the Syrian government. This was called off after Syria agreed to a US-Russia deal to turn over its chemical weapons stockpile for destruction. It is now apparent that some chemical weapons were retained by Syria.The US strike signals a shift in how the Trump administration will approach the conflict in Syria. However, whether this will mean a greater and more direct American role in the Syrian civil war is still unclear. As of now the Tomahawk attack appears to be a limited action, more symbolic rather than a precursor to a new sustained and more forceful military approach. There are some obvious pointers only one airfield was struck, the Russians were warned of the impending strike and would have informed the Syrian government. The latter would have moved out at least some of the critical equipment from the airbase. Some eyewitnesses have reported evacuation of personnel from the airbase prior to the attack.The Americans may well want to see the back of Assad but there is no clarity on what will follow. Regime changes have not always led to stability, as we are witnessing in Libya. The vacuum in Syria could be filled by radical, Islamic terrorists and strengthen the ISIS, the opposite scenario to what the Americans want to achieve in the Middle East.Obviously, Syria has no options for any direct action against US forces but indirect threats cannot be ruled out. Iran, which has also strongly backed Assad, has a significant presence in Iraq where they are supporting the Shiite militia. Currently the Shiite militia is fighting the ISIS and therefore has a common aim with the US forces in Iraq but his could change. Pressure on Assad could see Iran-backed militia targeting American soldiers, vitiating an already complicated situation in Iraq.There are also some positives. Greater pressure on Assad could lead to a stable cease-fire agreement, something that has eluded Syria despite many attempts in the past. The Syrian government will, at least for the present, shun the use of chemical weapons. Both these will bring enormous relief to the civil population that has witnessed a huge human tragedy unfolding in Syria.It is only hours after the Tomahawks hit the ground in Syria but opinions are already divided on the wisdom of the strike. Clearly there are both positives and negatives. How the new Trump administrations treads its future path will be the real challenge.(The author is former Northern Commander, Indian Army, under whose leadership India carried out surgical strikes against Pakistan in 2016. Views are personal.) Jerusalem: Israel has signed a USD 2 billion contract with India to supply it with missile defence systems, the state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries said on Friday. Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) in an announcement said that it has been awarded its largest defence contract of almost USD 2 billion for supplying advanced medium-range surface-to-air missile systems (MRSAM) to India. IAI said it would also supply additional long-range air and missile defence systems (LRSAM) for the first locally produced Indian aircraft carrier. The contract is worth USD 1.6 billion for IAI, with the rest going to another state-owned defence company Rafael, that will be providing components for the systems. "The current contracts represent an enormous expression of confidence by the government of India in IAI's capabilities and advanced technologies, which are being developed with our local partners as part of the Indian government's 'Make in India' policy," IAI Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Joseph Weiss said in a statement. President Reuven Rivlin, who is said to have discussed the deal with Indian leaders during his trip to India early this year, called to congratulate Weiss on this "historic" deal terming it truly "exceptional". "Please pass on my congratulations to all who contributed to this important achievement. You have come such a long way to arrive at this point, it is truly exceptional," Rivlin told IAI's CEO. "Israel's willingness to share technology and form joint ventures with Indian companies to develop and manufacture military equipment supporting the 'Make in India' initiative is said to have been well received in New Delhi. In the case of MRSAM, an advanced air and missile defence system that provides protection against a variety of aerial threats, the technology is said to have been jointly developed by IAI and India's Defence Research and Development Organisation in collaboration with Rafael and IAI's Elta division. Indian companies such as Larsen & Toubro are said to have also participated in the project. MRSAM's current version is operational with the Indian Air Force, Indian Navy and Israel Defence Forces (IDF). The system includes an advanced phased-array radar, command and control, mobile launchers and missiles with advanced RF seekers. The Hague, Netherlands : South Africa on Friday denied it had flouted international law by refusing in 2015 to arrest visiting Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, wanted by war crimes judges on charges of genocide in Darfur. At an unprecedented hearing at the International Criminal Court, Pretoria fended off accusations it had failed in its obligations to the very tribunal it helped found. There "was no duty under international law on South Africa to arrest the serving head of a non-state party such as Mr Omar al-Bashir," argued Pretoria's legal advisor Dire Tladi. Despite two international arrest warrants issued in 2009 and 2010, Bashir remains at large and in office amid the raging conflict in the western Sudanese region of Darfur. He has denied the ICC's charges, including three accusations of genocide as well as war crimes and crimes against humanity. The deadly conflict broke out in 2003 when ethnic minority groups took up arms against Bashir's Arab-dominated government, which launched a brutal counter-insurgency. The UN Security Council asked the ICC in 2005 to probe the crimes in Darfur, where at least 300,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced, according to UN figures. 'No immunity waiver' Pretoria, which had sought legal clarification from ICC judges before Bashir's 2015 visit, argues the Sudanese leader has immunity as a head of state. There was "nothing at all" in the UN resolution which waived Bashir's immunity, said Tladi. Therefore Pretoria could not arrest him during his brief visit to South Africa in June 2015 for an African Union summit, despite its obligation to cooperate with the ICC set out in the tribunal's founding Rome Statute. "The duty to arrest Mr Omar al-Bashir was not as clear as the office of the prosecutor would suggest," added Tladi. But prosecutor Julian Nicholls shot back that South Africa "had the ability to arrest and surrender him and it chose not to do so." "All the reasons for not arresting Mr al-Bashir, in the end, simply boil down to that South Africa disagreed with the court's jurisprudence, the law as set out..., so it did not comply." Several victims of the conflict, who now live in The Netherlands, were attending Friday's hearing in the tribunal in The Hague. Conditions in Darfur remain "dire," said Monica Feltz, executive director of the rights group, International Justice Project. The 10 Darfurians who will watch the hearing are "hoping to see that their story is told, and that their voices are heard, and that the international community still cares," she told AFP. Presiding judge Cuno Tarfusser said the aim of the hearing was to decide "whether South Africa failed to comply with its obligations ... by not arresting and surrendering Omar al-Bashir ... while he was on South African territory." 'Most serious crimes' The prosecution argues that since the ICC does not have its own police force it relies on member states to help execute arrest warrants. Without such help, "the court's going to be unable to carry out its most basic function: putting on trial persons charged with the most serious crimes," said Nicholls. The judges will return their decision at a later date, and may decide to agree with the prosecution's request to report Pretoria to the UN Security Council for non-compliance and eventual sanctions. But Pretoria's lawyers argued such a move would be "unwarranted and unnecessary," aimed only at casting South Africa "in a bad light." Although this is the first public hearing of its type, last year the ICC referred Chad, Djibouti and Uganda to the UN for also failing to arrest Bashir. So far no action has been taken against them. The Sudanese leader was also a guest last month at an Arab League summit hosted by Jordan -- also a signatory to the Rome Statute. South Africa had moved to withdraw from the court, angered by the case against it. But it formally revoked its decision last month after its own High Court ruled it would be unconstitutional. "Assad choked out the lives of innocent men, women and children," Trumped declared. About 60 US Tomahawk missiles, fired from warships in the Mediterranean Sea, targeted an air base in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack that American officials believe Syrian government aircraft launched with a nerve agent, possibly sarin. "I think what happened in Syria is one of the truly egregious crimes and shouldn't have happened and it shouldn't be allowed to happen," Trump told reporters traveling on Air Force One to Florida, where he was holding a two-day summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Read President Trumps full remarks following the US military strikes on Syria https://t.co/ndZqA9fvTm pic.twitter.com/Rg7Aa8qDSN CNN (@CNN) April 7, 2017 Russia and Iran, Assad's allies, pose other problems. Russian military personnel and aircraft are embedded with Syria's, and Iranian troops and paramilitary forces are also on the ground helping Assad fight the array of opposition groups hoping to topple him. A US defense official says the strike on Syria was targeted on runway, aircraft and fuel points https://t.co/gz5j06cnKG pic.twitter.com/e36c98GQGy CNN (@CNN) April 7, 2017 The #USSPorter and #USSRoss fired #Tomahawk missiles into Syria in retaliation for the Assad regime using nerve agents against its people. pic.twitter.com/Ad908k3oIe U.S. Dept of Defense (@DeptofDefense) April 7, 2017 At the time, several American ships in the Mediterranean were poised to launch missiles, only for Obama to abruptly pull back after key US ally Britain and the US Congress balked at his plan. Trump seemed to rapidly reconsider his feelings about Assad, saying: "He's there and I guess he's running things, so something should happen." The United States blasted a Syrian air base with a barrage of cruise missiles Thursday night in fiery retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. President Donald Trump cast the US assault as vital to deter future use of poison gas and called on other nations to join in seeking "to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria."It was the first direct American assault on the Syrian government and Trump's most dramatic military order since becoming president just over two months ago. Announcing the assault from his Florida resort, Trump said there was no doubt Syrian President Bashar Assad was responsible for the chemical attack, which he said employed banned gases and killed dozens.The US strikes hit the government-controlled Shayrat air base in central Syria, where US officials say the Syrian military planes that dropped the chemicals had taken off. The US missiles hit at 8:45 pm in Washington, 3:45 am Friday morning in Syria. The missiles targeted the base's airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, officials said.Syrian state TV reported a US missile attack on a number of military targets and called the attack an "aggression."The surprise US assault marked a striking reversal for Trump, who warned as a candidate against the US getting pulled into the Syrian civil war, now in its seventh year. But the president earlier in the week appeared moved by the photos of children killed in the chemical attack, calling it a "disgrace to humanity" that crossed "a lot of lines."The president did not announce the attacks in advance, though he and other national security officials ratcheted up their warnings to the Syrian government throughout the day Thursday.The strike came as Trump was hosting Xi in meetings focused in part on another pressing US security dilemma: North Korea's nuclear program. Trump's actions in Syria could signal to China that the new president isn't afraid of unilateral military steps even if key nations like China are standing in the way.Trump has advocated greater counterterrorism cooperation with Russia, Assad's most powerful military backer. Just last week, the Trump administration signalled the US was no longer interested in trying to push Assad from power over his direction of a conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and led to the worst refugee crisis since World War II.US military officials sought to portray the strikes as an appropriate, measured response. But the assault still risks plunging America into the middle of Syria's conflict, complicating the safety of the hundreds of US forces fighting a separate campaign against the Islamic State group in the north of the country. If Assad's military persists in further gas attacks, the Trump administration might logically pursue increased retaliation.Before the strikes, US military officials said they informed their Russian counterparts of the impending attack. The goal was to avoid any accident involving Russian forces.Nevertheless, Russia's Deputy UN ambassador Vladimir Safronkov warned that any negative consequences from the strikes would be on the "shoulders of those who initiated such a doubtful and tragic enterprise."The US also notified its partner countries in the region prior to launching the strikes.Trump's decision to attack Syria came three-and-a-half years after President Barack Obama threatened Assad with military action after an earlier chemical weapons attack killed hundreds outside of Damascus. Obama had declared the use of such weapons a "red line."He opted instead for a Russian-backed plan that was supposed to remove and eliminate Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles.Thursday night's strikes were launched from the USS Ross and USS Porter and landed in the early morning Friday in Syria.The world learned of the chemical attack earlier in the week in footage that showed people dying in the streets and bodies of children stacked in piles. The international outcry fueled an emotional response from Trump, who appeared to abandon his much-touted "America First" vision for a stance of humanitarian intervention, akin to that of previous American leaders. "I think what happened in Syria is a disgrace to humanity," he said Thursday.The show of force in Syria raises legal questions. It's unclear what authority Trump is relying on to attack another government. When Obama intervened in Libya in 2011, he used a U.N. Security Council mandate and NATO's overall leadership of the mission to argue that he had legal authority arguments that many Republicans opposed. Trump can't rely on either justification here.Unclear also is whether Trump is adopting any broader effort to combat Assad. Under Obama, the United States largely pulled back from its support for so-called "moderate" rebels when Russia's military intervention in September 2015 led them to suffer a series of battlefield defeats. Instead, Obama sought to work with Russia on a negotiated transition.Trump and his top aides had acknowledged in recent days the "reality" of Assad being in power, saying his ouster was no longer a priority. But the chemical weapons attack seemed to spur a rethink. In Florida on Thursday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said of Assad: "There's no role for him to govern the Syrian people." The US military has launched cruise missile strikes ordered by President Donald Trump against a Syrian airbase controlled by President Bashar al-Assad's forces in response to a deadly chemical attack in a rebel-held area.Heres what we know about the strikes:- Some 60 Tomahawk missiles were launched from US Navy warships in the Mediterranean Sea- A target was identified as an airbase in Homs which is controlled by Syrian President Bashar al-Assads forces- The US strikes hit the government-controlled Shayrat air base in central Syria, where US officials say the Syrian military planes that dropped the chemicals had taken off.- The US missiles hit at 8:45 pm in Washington, 3:45 am Friday morning in Syria.- Syrian state TV reported a US missile attack on a number of military targets and called the attack an "aggression.- Donald Trump ordered the missile strikes just a day after he pointed the finger at Assad for this week's chemical attack, which killed at least 86 people, including 27 children, in the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun. The Syrian government has denied it was behind the attack.- The US military action has put the new president at odds with Russia, which has air and ground forces in Syria after intervening there on Assad's side in 2015 and turning the tide against mostly Sunni Muslim rebel groups.- The missile strikes came hours after Russia warned the United States that there could be "negative consequences" if Washington took military action against Syria.- US officials tells AFP on condition of anonymity, that Russia was informed before the missile strike. Paris: From strong messages of support to fierce condemnation, here are the main global reactions to a US strike on a Syria air base in response to a suspected chemical attack. Against RUSSIA: Unsurprisingly, the main ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was robust in its opposition to the strike. The strikes were an "aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international norms," the Kremlin said in a statement. The action has inflicted "considerable damage" to already "lamentable" US-Russia ties, it added. As a first practical response, Moscow said it would "halt" its deal with the US to avoid clashes in Syrian airspace. Russia's military said the Syrian forces' air defences will be boosted following the US strike. "To protect Syria's most sensitive infrastructure, a complex of measures will be implemented in the near future to strengthen and improve the effectiveness of the Syrian armed forces' air defence system," said spokesman Igor Konashenkov. Russia also called for an urgent UN Security Council meeting following the strikes. SYRIA: The Syrian government said it would redouble its efforts against rebel groups after the US strike which it called "foolish and irresponsible". "What America did is nothing but foolish and irresponsible behaviour, which only reveals its short-sightedness and political and military blindness to reality," President Bashar al-Assad's office said in a statement. IRAN: The Iranian regime, another Syrian ally, "strongly condemned" the strike, just as it condemned "all unilateral military action". It said the US action was taken under the "pretext" of the chemical strike. For NATO: Syria is to blame for the US missile strikes NATO head Jens Stoltenberg said. "The Syrian regime bears the full responsibility for this development," Stoltenberg said in a statement. "Any use of chemical weapons is unacceptable, cannot go unanswered, and those responsible must be held accountable," he added. EUROPEAN UNION: EU President Donald Tusk said in a tweet that the "US strikes show needed resolve against barbaric chemical attacks. EU will work with the US to end brutality in Syria." FRANCE/GERMANY: In a joint statement, President Francois Hollande and Chancellor Angela Merkel said Assad bore "sole responsibility" for the US strike following the suspected chemical attack. BRITAIN: The close American ally said it "fully supported" the strikes, judging them an "appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack". It said the strikes were "intended to deter further attacks." TURKEY: NATO ally Turkey, which is a key player in the Syria conflict and has endured choppy relations with Washington recently, welcomed the strikes as "positive" but said that more action was needed. "I want to say that I welcome this concrete step as positive," said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a longtime foe of President Bashar al-Assad. "I don't see this as enough... the time has come for steps for a serious result to protect the oppressed Syrian people," he added. Turkey called for a no-fly zone in Syria in the wake of the US strike. And foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu repeated Ankara's call for Assad to be removed from power, stressing: "This regime should be ousted from leading Syria at once." SAUDI ARABIA: A foreign ministry official hailed US President Donald Trump as "courageous" for taking action when "the international community has failed to put a halt to the regime's actions." ISRAEL: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel "fully supports" the "strong and clear message" sent by the air strikes. He added that the message should "resonate not only in Damascus, but in Tehran, Pyongyang and elsewhere." JAPAN: Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that Japan "supports the US government's resolve that it will never tolerate the spread and use of chemical weapons." SYRIAN REBELS: A leading Syrian rebel group said one strike was "not enough", adding that there were "26 airbases that target civilians." CANADA: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada supports the strike. "Canada fully supports the United States' limited and focused action to degrade the Assad regime's ability to launch chemical weapons attacks against innocent civilians, including many children," he said in a statement. Others CHINA: Beijing offered a nuanced reaction, saying it was "urgent" to avoid "further deterioration of the situation." A foreign ministry spokeswoman added: "We oppose use of chemical weapons by any country, organisation or individual in any circumstance, for any purpose." UNITED NATIONS: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged restraint and said there was "no other way to solve the conflict than through a political solution." "Mindful of the risk of escalation, I appeal for restraint to avoid any acts that could deepen the suffering of the Syrian people," he added in a statement. A Lynchburg pipe company is facing more than $10,000 in penalties from the Virginia Department of Labor and Industry following a workplace death that occurred in August. The company is contesting the citations. Horsley, Jesse James "Rev" Jesse James Horsley went home to be with the Lord on Wednesday, August 10, 2016. He was born A news release from the Lynchburg Police Department issued at the time stated Jesse James Horsley, 56, of Lynchburg, died after being trapped by a falling piece of scrap metal at Griffin Pipe Products Co. on Aug. 10. The Chief Medical Examiners Office in Roanoke reported at the time Horsley died from mechanical asphyxia and the manner of his death was accidental. The Virginia Occupational Safety and Health Compliance Southwest regional office in Roanoke issued the company three violations Feb. 3, with the proposed penalties totaling $10,395. The citations state an employee suffered fatal injuries while operating a crane to remove scrap metal tubs between casting machines at the facility. According to an accident investigation summary on the OSHA website, The employee pulled the tub over and dumped the scrap onto himself while attaching chains to the tabs of the lifting crane and was crushed underneath. UPDATE: State labor department investigating Griffin Pipe fatality UPDATE: 8 a.m.: The Virginia Department of Labor and Industry said Friday morning it is inve One violation contends the casting deck between casting machines where Horsley was removing scrap metal tubs was congested with other unused scrap metal tubs and materials, a violation of a requirement for clean and orderly workplaces. Another violation states guard rails in the same casting deck were folded down and or not in place exposing employees to a fall hazard of approximately eight feet. The final violation states a control box for a wireless crane Horsley was operating wasnt clearly marked. Each of the violations was abated meaning the hazard was removed by mid-February, according to the administration website. U.S. Pipe, which owns Griffin Pipe Products Co., did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Horsleys family could not be reached for comment. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration website states U.S. Pipe is contesting the citations, with a contest date recorded as Feb. 23. According to OSHA guidelines, the company will not have to pay the penalties until the item contested has been resolved through litigation. Incumbent Campbell County supervisor Mike Rousseau will run for re-election Nov. 7. Rousseau, 42, is seeking his second term as the Timberlake District supervisor. Currently chairman of the board of supervisors, Rousseau will be running as a Republican. I want to continue to bring a message of smaller, more efficient government and represent the people of Timberlake on matters that are specific and important to them, he said by phone Thursday. Some of those specific issues are traffic on the Waterlick Road corridor, emergency management services in his district and to maintain Brookville High School. In just four years on the board, Rousseau said he has campaigned, and was successful, in establishing a six-person career EMS staff in the Timberlake District. We take the highest call volume. We take the most densely populated district in the county. As great [as] the jobs the volunteers [with Campbell County Rescue Squad] were doing, we needed another career service, he said. Rousseau said he will continue to work with the Campbell County Public Safety department in providing EMS to the entire county. Rousseau said his close second-best accomplishment was saving Brookville High School from the consolidation wrecking ball. Rousseau was one of five supervisors to vote down a school consolidation plan in early 2015, preserving the countys two middle schools, two high schools and two combined secondary schools. That was a big deal to a lot [of people] in this district. I ran promising I would not support consolidation; students, the ones that were aware, were happy to know Brookville would remain," Rousseau said. When asked about his goals for a second term, he replied he is the type of person that believes the less government does, the better off people will be. However, he said he will continue to offer good government without a tremendous tax cost. Rousseau is one of two incumbent county supervisors who won the Republican nomination after no one filed to run against them in the June 13 primary by the March 30 deadline. Rustburg Supervisor Eric Zehr is the second. Mike and Eric have been champions for limited government, the rights of the individual, and conservatism, Campbell County Republican Committee Vice Chair Mark Bold said in a news release. Bold added in the release the two supervisors succeeded in improving pay for teachers and sheriffs office deputies while keeping taxes low. Last year, Rousseau served on the countys public safety committee and on the library board of trustees. This year he serves on the board of the Fray Family Trust and administration/human services committee. Rousseau owns and operates Front Line Adjusting Inc., an insurance claims service. He is a Liberty University graduate with two children and originally is from Waterbury, Connecticut. No one had filed to run against Rousseau as of Wednesday, according to Campbell County Registrar Karen Danos. Zehr, Charlie A. Watts and Dean B. Monroe also are running for the Campbell County Board of Supervisors. Watts and Moore are running to replace Brookneal Supervisor J.D. Puckett, who is not seeking re-election. RUSTBURG An Amherst man was sentenced to 15 years in prison Thursday for his part in the robbery of five people at a Campbell County motel last year. Corevon Aquarius Copeland, 20, was sentenced to an active term matching those of two co-defendants. Copeland apologized in Campbell County Circuit Court for his actions, telling the judge he wants to take up a trade while in prison and become a productive citizen on his release. His defense lawyer, Robert Goad, portrayed Copeland as a follower among a group of three people who took part in multiple robberies at Timberlake Motel off U.S. 460 the night of Jan. 26, 2016. Prosecutors earlier said in court Copeland and two others gathered in a motel room with five other people who ended up as victims after one of the defendants, Cornellius Cornell Pendleton, then 19, pulled out a gun. At that point, according to prosecutors, Pendleton shouted Everybody needs to give it up! Pendleton, Copeland and a third defendant, Jordan Tavon Harsley, then 19, were accused of then taking cellphones, cash and a backpack from the victims. Goad argued Thursday in court Copeland was following others in the group and had shown remorse for his involvement in the robbery. He called witnesses who testified to that and law enforcement officers who said Copeland while in jail had volunteered information regarding separate, gun-related incidents. Assistant Commonwealths Attorney Eric Harrison noted while questioning witnesses Copeland had been charged with possession of a firearm and had been caught shortly after the robbery in a car with Pendleton and the gun used in the robbery. Harrison also drew information from Copeland that he had made about a dozen phone calls from jail in an alleged effort either to bribe witnesses or ask someone to give false information in court to fix the problem of his arrest. What the court heard was the defendant trying to get out of the consequences for what he did, the prosecutor said. Harrison asked Copeland serve no less time than Pendleton and Harsley, each of whom was ordered earlier to serve 15 years. Circuit Judge John Cook ordered a sentence totaling 15 years for Copeland, consisting of: Five years on each of five robbery charges, with all but 15 months suspended on each count except for one, which was all but 14 months suspended. Five years on each of five conspiracy charges, with all but 14 months suspended on each count. Three years (mandatory) on use of a firearm in commission of a felony. Copeland also must comply with two years of supervised probation and good behavior from now until four years from his release, as well as pay $500 in restitution. Staff writer Ashlie Walter contributed. Following three deaths, a U.S. Department of Justice investigation is underway into the decision to transfer Central Virginia Training Center residents to another state facility, according to Secretary of Health and Human Resources William A. Hazel Jr. Of six individuals transferred from CVTC to Hiram W. Davis Medical Center in Petersburg since October as part of a plan to address a nursing shortage and eventually close the Madison Heights facility, three have died, Hazel said in a phone interview Thursday. The Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services transferred twins Tyler and Taylor Bryant to Hiram Davis on Jan. 17 despite their mothers insistence they remain at CVTC, where they had lived for 20 years. At least one other patient also was transferred while her family protested. Tyler Bryant died March 16 at the age of 23 at Chippenham Hospital in Richmond. DOJ, which has regularly overseen a settlement agreement with the state leading to the decision to close CVTC in 2020, has hired three experts from out of state to come in to do the investigation, Hazel said. We do welcome that, and I think I can speak for Dr. [Jack] Barber and myself, they cant get here fast enough, Hazel said, referring to DBHDS Interim Commissioner Jack Barber. The reality is they appear to be gearing up for a full-scale investigation. DOJ declined to comment Thursday in an email from a spokesperson. Martha Bryant said she emailed DOJ in August after receiving a letter her sons would be transferred without her consent from CVTC, which serves people with severe developmental disabilities. While DOJ responded, an investigation at this point is reactive rather than proactive, she said. It didnt protect anybody. Its after the fact, Bryant said in a phone interview Thursday. Bryant questions the states oversight of its medical centers and said her sons medications were changed or drastically reduced upon their transfer. Taylor Bryant still resides at Hiram Davis. Bryant spoke last week with two DOJ attorneys regarding the circumstances surrounding her sons death. On Monday, Sen. Steve Newman, R-Bedford County; Sen. Mark Peake, R-Lynchburg; and Del. Scott Garrett, R-Lynchburg, sent letters jointly to Hazel and acting State Inspector General Michael Westfall asking for independent review into the decision to close CVTCs skilled nursing facility. The letter referred to Tyler Bryants death and that of an elderly patient who died just weeks after leaving CVTC where she also was stable for many years. We believe that our Commonwealth simply cannot ignore the fact that nearly half of the residents of CVTC that were moved to Hiram Davis died within a few months, the letter to Hazel said. Nor can we ignore the fact that both of these individuals were apparently stable at CVTC and had lived for decades in this facility until their removal. Tyler Bryant required hospital-level attention within 10 days of his transfer and spent little time at Hiram Davis before his death at a Richmond hospital, according to Martha Bryant. The letter to Hazel asks for a truly independent investigation from outside of the department into the decision-making process behind moving residents from CVTC as well as the quality of care at Hiram Davis. The letter also asks whether any other individuals died after being transferred from CVTC to Hiram Davis from 2016 to 2017. Hazel said the DOJ investigation should fulfill the letters request. Its independent. Its federal. Theyve been aware of the situation at Central Virginia Training Center going back to 2007 when they first came, Hazel said. The DOJ settlement agreement stemmed from an investigation at CVTC. A spokeswoman from the inspector generals office said in an email Thursday, We are evaluating the letter and how this office can assist. Garrett, a retired doctor, agreed the DOJ would qualify as an independent review for his purposes. Theres a need now, certainly in hearing from family and friends that they need some trust reaffirmed, and this is one way of accomplishing that, Garrett said by phone Thursday. The independent review would add to two reviews automatically triggered by any death at a state facility, the letter said. One is by Hiram Davis and the other by DBHDS, Garrett said. A timely review is necessary because weve got other folks that would potentially be impacted, Garrett said. For Newman, a DOJ review wouldnt be enough. He wants both an investigation from the inspector general as well as a separate review from outside DBHDS. He wants the two agencies with different authorities, scopes and perspectives to investigate to see if they yield the same result. I think that the statutory authority of the inspector general is not as broad as I wish it were but I think they are truly independent, Newman said by phone Thursday. The department has access to much more information and can statutorily review very broadly, but we hope that they will do it in an independent way. The central question for DOJ, Hazel said, should be whether it was appropriate to do the transfer or not. A nursing shortage at CVTC prompted DBHDS to declassify its skilled nursing facility at Building 31 to a lower level of care requiring fewer nurses in January, DBHDS has said. While Building 31, which previously housed the skilled nursing beds, is still in operation, DBHDS had plans to close it at the end of this year as part of a gradual downscaling of CVTC. DBHDS plans to close four of five training centers by 2020, although the department reclassified Hiram Davis as a training center as part of the justification to transfer residents there. The legislators also plan to ask the court-appointed independent reviewer overseeing the DOJ agreement to investigate these deaths, the letter said. Martha Bryant supports the legislators request for additional review, asking, Are there lessons to be learned? Update: A defendant in the homicide case of Raymond Wood, 17, of Lynchburg, appeared before Bedford County Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court by video Thursday afternoon, where he was appointed a public defender by the court. Jose Coreas-Ventura, 21, is charged with second-degree murder in the slaying along with two other defendants, Victor Arnoldo Rodas, 19; and Lisandro Posada-Vazquez, 24. According to Bedford County Sheriff Mike Brown, all three are members of the MS-13 gang. All three are undocumented immigrants from El Salvador and were arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on March 28 after initially being detained by the Bedford County Sheriffs Office, according to Carissa Cutrell, an ICE public affairs officer. Bedford County Commonwealths Attorney Wes Nance confirmed Thursday that Coreas-Ventura was arraigned at about 2:30 p.m., was appointed a public defender and a preliminary hearing was scheduled for June 16 at 1 p.m. in Juvenile and Domestic Court. The court declared Coreas-Ventura indigent Thursday, but an advisement order filed in court states he was employed at the time of the arrest. The amount of money he made was unclear, according to the document. Coreas-Ventura has no real estate in the U.S. but may have an interest in real estate in El Salvador, according to the advisement order. The order states he has no other assets. Coreas-Ventura also has been charged with first-degree murder in Montgomery County, Maryland, in connection with the June 2016 slaying of 18-year-old Cristian Antonio Villagran-Morales that occurred in the city of Gaithersburg. Nance said despite the Maryland charges, he believes Bedford County will proceed with its charges against him, and potentially any sentence imposed would be served before Maryland would seek to extradite him. This is still very much a situation that continues to develop but the consensus is that Bedford County will forge ahead with its charges against this individual and his co-defendants, Nance said in an email. Coreas-Ventura remains in jail in Amherst. Staff writer Christopher Cole contributed to this report. Revisit the founding of the JSA and foreshadow its future in The New Golden Age #1 preview And see what lies ahead in the future of the DC Universe Vladimir Putin Russian president Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said Thursday that while Russia and Syria "enjoy a relationship of cooperation," Russia does not support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad "unconditionally." Peskov added that "it is not correct to say that Moscow can convince Mr. Assad to do whatever is wanted in Moscow. This is totally wrong." Peskov's comments came as President Donald Trump indicated he was prepared to retaliate against Assad for allegedly launching the worst chemical weapons attack on Syrian civilians since 2013. But experts are skeptical that Putin is really prepared to relinquish his support for an ally he has consistently defended throughout more than six years of brutal civil war. In late September 2015, Moscow went as far as to intervene in the conflict on Assad's behalf, waging a scorched-earth campaign on rebel-held enclaves and ultimately winning back Syria's largest city, Aleppo that remains ongoing. "Russian officials have said similar things before, but everything we have witnessed in Russian policy over the past six years indicates that Putin is staunchly supportive of Assad and will go to great lengths to keep him in power, no matter how many people he massacres through the most bestial means," said Mark Kramer, program director for the Project on Cold War Studies at Harvard's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. Kramer noted that Peskov's comments were "especially cynical," because he "implied, falsely, that Russia has no real ability to keep Assad from committing mass murder and should therefore not be blamed for anything that happens in Syria." "The whole thing is a grotesquely cynical charade, and no one in the West should construe any sign of flexibility in this," Kramer added. putin assad Story continues Some observers viewed Peskov's statement Thursday as a signal that Russia is willing to use its leverage in Syria not to remove Assad, but to negotiate some kind of deal with the US that would, at least temporarily, deter American military action. The posture struck some as eerily reminiscent of Russia's last-minute offer to dispose of Assad's chemical weapons stockpile in 2013 as the Obama administration threatened a military response to a gas attack that left more than 1,000 civilians dead. "I think the Kremlin is dangling out this statement as a way to entice the West into another round of talks and push back the possibility of punitive strikes on the regime," said Boris Zilberman, a Russia expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. While the statement does not go quite as far as Russia's offer to Obama in 2013, preventing US military strikes against Assad is likely the Russians' "main goal right now," Zilberman said, so Moscow "would like to make it seem" as though there is room for negotiation. Ian Bremmer, president of the political risk firm Eurasia Group, agreed that it was "very unlikely" that Russia was ready to throw Assad under the bus. "But [Peskov's] statement does put some pressure on Assad to both rein him in on his military activities" and push for "eventual diplomatic outcomes," Bremmer said. "Russia is one of two key external players here Iran being the other and it needs to assert itself with Assad, not just with the international community." Most analysts who have been monitoring the conflict agree that deliberate US action is the only thing that can significantly stymie the Assad regime's momentum. After failing to follow through on its threat to strike Assad after he crossed Obama's now-infamous "red line" in 2013, the US lost credibility in the region and signaled to Russia and Iran that not even the worst chemical weapons attack in decades was enough to spur the US to attack Assad directly. The US absence from the field, in other words, "left most of the shots available to the Kremlin," Gianni Riotta of the Council on Foreign Relations wrote late last year. Trump, however, is more unpredictable. His slate of foreign-policy and military experience is blank, leaving Putin with little idea of what he is capable or willing to do. Indeed, Trump's sudden about-face on Wednesday from advocating non-intervention in Syria to calling the attack "unacceptable" and indicating he would like to respond left his own Cabinet reportedly bewildered. "Pentagon officials were left confused after Trump appeared to signal a potential future policy change toward Syria," Buzzfeed's Nancy Yousseff reported on Wednesday. Three defense officials told Yousseff that Assad may have used the chemical weapons to "test" how the US would respond especially since, last week, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, suggested removing Assad from power was no longer a priority. Faced once again with the threat of military action against one of his closest partners, Putin appears to be staging a test of his own. But, because Putin has never been known to bend to the US's will, it is unclear what will happen if Trump fails it. Defense Department officials, including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are already developing plans for a military strike, multiple outlets reported on Thursday. Tillerson confirmed that "steps are underway" to retaliate against Assad for the chemical weapons attack, which he said "requires a serious response." Trump reiterated Thursday that "what happened in Syria is a disgrace to humanity," though his calls to action were a bit more subdued: Assad's "there, and I guess he's running things, so I guess something should happen." NOW WATCH: Animated map shows which states are the biggest winners and losers from 'Trumpcare' More From Business Insider Melissa wanted to leave home Mohammed-Ramkissoon, 31, who worked at a graphics store in Marabella, was shot in her head while in a car driven by a male relative and which also contained a close friend of hers. Both men remain in custody at two police stations in Central Division. Both claim the other shot Mohammed- Ramkissoon. The suspects, aged 31 and 35, are said to be childhood friends and live in the same area in Claxton Bay. Yesterday, relatives of Mohammed-Ramkissoon told Newsday she was having an extra- marital relationship for almost a year and recently decided to leave the marital home. Shortly after being shot, Mohammed- Ramkissoons friend jumped out of the car and fled, while the relative who was driving, proceeded to the Chaguanas Police Station. Mohammed-Ramkissoon was pronounced dead at the police station. An autopsy done at the Forensic Science Centre in St James confirmed she was killed by a single shot to the head. A revolver containing four live rounds and a spent shell was found in the car, while in the trunk, 12 rounds of ammunition were found. Yesterday, Steve Mohammed who said he is an uncle of Mohammed- Ramkissoon, described her as an extremely friendly and hard-working individual. He added that she was extremely close to her family. According to Mohammed, Mohammed-Ramkissoon had everything she could ever want and did not appear to be having any marital difficulties. Mohammed said he knew that Mohammed-Ramkissoon and the family friend (who is in custody) are very close but could not say if their was an intimate relationship as well. Mohammed- Ramkissoon will be buried today following a service at the Seventh Day Adventist Church in Sum Sum Hill, Claxton Bay then buried at the Forres Park cemetery. Police investigators said yesterday they are awaiting the results of gunshot residue tests done on the hands of the two suspects before submitting a file to Director of Public Prosecutions Roger Gaspard SC, for his advice on how police are to proceed in the matter. Attorney gets $75,000 bail on fraud charge Campbell, 76, of Fyzabad, is accused of fraudulently converting a certified cheque in the sum of $132,153 for his own use but which was to be used for the purchase of the parcel of land. According to the charge, the alleged incident took place sometime between August 18, 2014, and April 5, 2017, in San Fernando. He was charged on Wednesday night after being arrested by Fraud Squad officers on Tuesday at his law chambers on Harris Promenade, San Fernando. Campbell, who has over 40 years in private practice, also has a pending matter in the High Court for perverting the course of justice, arising out of an allegation that he paid a bribe to a police officer. Although the official police criminal record trace was not available, police prosecutor Inspector Winston Dillon said the prosecution was not objecting to bail. Campbell was represented by attorney Ian Brooks who had asked that his client be released on his own recognisance with conditions because of Campbells age, his profession and that the matter pending in the High Court was 12 years old and he made no attempt to abscond. Instead, the Chief Magistrate granted bail in the sum of $75,000 to be approved by a Clerk of the Peace III. She advised that if Campbell did not secure bail by 4 pm yesterday, he will have to seek the approval of the Clerk of the Peace at the San Fernando Magistrates Court from today. The matter was adjourned to April 12, where Campbell will appear before a San Fernando magistrate. In 2005, Campbell, who was found guilty of professional misconduct in 1996, lost his appeal before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. He was ordered to repay $29,400 to a former client along with interest dating back to 1996, which was paid to him for two parcels of land in Sangre Grande. The land was never given to the client and the money was not returned. At the Privy Council, the Law Lords expressed surprise that Campbell was not fined or reprimanded. EMBD chairman: Goverment will judge me Mohammed was appointed to chair the Estate Management and Business Development Company (EMBD) 16 months ago, and appointed to chair Caribbean Airline Limited, five months ago. Asked by Chairman of the Public Accounts (Enterprise) Committee Wade Mark at its meeting to inquire into the operations of the EMBD on Wednesday if he can function effectively as chairman for both entities, Mohammed said, I would leave that decision up to the persons who have appointed me to determine if I function effectively and efficiently. Asked about his greatest challenge was as chairman of EMBD, Mohammed said, Coming into an organisation that did not provide accounts. No company, no State enterprise, in my personal view should be handed billions of dollars without any sense of accountability. The second challenge, he said, was the sheer value of outstanding liabilities to contractors and trying to understand how did we get there. He said it was difficult to understand how as an organisation can be awarded a $6-million contract and end up with a $600 million contract. How can one account for these liabilities that might be hidden in some state enterprises somewhere? Do we truly know the true liabilities as a people and as country? he queried. These are the two most surprising things for me and what I would consider the biggest challenges for me to resolve, he said. The State enterprises manual, he said, provides very clearly the responsibilities of directors and state enterprise. When people accept the responsibilities and duties of directors, he said, If we all follow the requirements of the manual clearly we would not have been in the position we are in at the EMBD. It was not just an issue for the EMBD but other State enterprises, he said. He urged those who would have been appointed as directors to make a concerted effort to fulfil their duties Intellectual property strategy to be implemented soon This is according to Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of the Attorney General and Legal Affairs (AGLA), Ingrid Seerattan. Speaking yesterday at the opening of a two-day national workshop on How to make a living from Music at the Cascadia Hotel, St Anns Seerattan said, It is no secret that the music and creative industry has tremendous potential to diversify the Trinidad and Tobago economy for economic prosperity. The workshop attracted a large number of musicians among others. It was sponsored by the Ministry of the Attorney General and Legal Affairs, the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) and Trinidad and Tobago Music Company. The number of local, regional and international resource personnel at the workshop included Dimeter Gantchev, Director, Copyright Infrastructure Division, WIPO, Switzerland; Dr Vanus James, Professor of the University of Technology, Jamaica; Simon Baptiste, manager/performer and Konata Alleyne, performer/musician/ director. A 2014 study conducted by economist Dr Vanus James for the IPO, Seerattan said, found that the copyright industries and all the economic activity that hinges on economic rights alone contribute roughly under five percent to our GDP. This is a staggering statistic. The IPO, she said, was a net generator of revenue having earned $18.7 million from 1995 to 2005 and $48.8 million in gross revenue from 2006 to 2015. Economic diversification through IP and its link to innovation are supported by existing and planned activities of the IPO, Seerattan said. Noting that the IPO has the task of promoting innovation in the society, she said, the AGLA signed a memorandum of understanding with the University of Trinidad and Tobago to cooperate in IP affairs. Sirjusingh appointed Director of Womens Health An average of eight pregnant women die every year in this country based on the approximate 18,000 babies born annually. The ministry revealed on Tuesday at a news conference held at the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex, that complications during pregnancy and childbirth are a leading cause of death and disability among women of reproductive age. Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh said the director will review the operations of all of the public health facilities where women go to deliver babies. Sirjusinghs appointment has been approved by cabinet in response to the alarming number of deaths and maternal mishaps at hospitals in years gone by. Deyalsingh, during a visit to the San Fernando General Hospital on January 1 (New Years Day) to congratulate mothers of babies born on that day, had announced that there were less such deaths in 2016. There were only three maternal deaths, he said, and after the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) was invited to audit the countrys health systems, it was discovered that post-partum haemorrhage was the main cause of such deaths. Sirjusingh, who chairs the Zika Pregnancy Committee in the ministry, sat on two recent prime ministers committees to review the countrys health services in which recommendations were made for the improvement of health care. Deyalsingh said, I had challenged the public health system that by the year 2020, our maternal mortality rate should match that of developed countries. Sirjusinghs mandate, according to the ministry, is to ensure that there are clear national strategies, policies and clinical guidelines for this area of health in keeping with the World Health Organisations sustainable developmental goals for 2030. One of the objectives is reduce maternal morbidity and mortality. Tom Brady Just Became First NFL Player to Do This By Rory Carroll SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Even with the U.S. economy boasting impressive job growth and domestic equity markets near record highs, a fragmented recovery has left many states struggling to close budget deficits nearly a decade after the 2008 financial crisis. The broad recovery has benefited large, economically diverse states like California and Texas, ratings agencies say, while states heavily dependent on oil revenues, like North Dakota and Alaska, and those like Illinois that are grappling with large unfunded pension obligations, have seen budget deficits bloom. That has left those struggling states with painful decisions over spending cuts and tax increases, and ill prepared to deal with another economic downturn or cuts to federal money tied to the Medicaid program. S&P Global has downgraded 11 states compared to just two upgrades since January 2016. It has 11 states on negative outlook, which means the ratings agency believes more than 20 percent of states are in danger of a credit downgrade. The uneven nature of the bounce back is unusual in post-recession U.S. economic history, analysts said. "The economy is showing signs of strength. The stock market is at a record high, the Federal Reserve has raised (interest) rates, and economists predict growth will continue," said Gabe Petek, an analyst with S&P Global. "But when you look back to the state sector, many continue to lag their forecasts or are projecting budget gaps," he said. Half of the states face budget shortfalls despite overall economic growth and lack the revenue needed to maintain services at existing levels in 2018, according to a recent report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). LOW-PAYING JOBS Despite a national unemployment rate of just 4.9 percent, or less than half of a 2010 peak, growth has been in the kind of jobs that do little to boost state revenues reliant on higher income and sales tax receipts. States have been adding low-wage and part-time jobs, a reality that some state lawmakers have yet to catch up to when making budget forecasts. Story continues Despite seeing its unemployment rate fall steadily since 2010, Maryland still had to address a $400 million revenue shortfall in its $43.5 billion state budget last month. Job growth in the health care sector, for example, has centered on low-wage home health care aides, said Nick Samuels, an analyst at Moody's Investors Service. An increase in leisure and hospitality industry jobs has also helped push down the unemployment rate without translating into the flood of revenue for state tax coffers that relatively higher-paying professional and business services positions would typically provide, he said. And some states that have failed to add higher-paying jobs have also had to grapple with population shifts as workers seek better employment elsewhere, further pressuring tax revenues. Illinois, a state with a record 22-month budget stalemate, has $12.7 billion in unpaid bills and an unfunded pension liability of $130 billion. It saw its population shrink 0.6 percent between 2013 and 2016, according to Moody's, while at the same time the national population increased 2.2 percent. Increasing revenue from taxes becomes more difficult as the population declines, adding another layer of fiscal pressure. OILY STRUGGLES Among the states struggling the most to close budget gaps are oil producers and refiners like Oklahoma, Louisiana, North Dakota and Alaska, which rely on taxes on energy production and often high-paying oil industry salaries to help fill state coffers. They were hit hard by the collapse of oil prices beginning in mid-2014. Despite a modest rebound this year, U.S. light crude oil, which settled at $51.70 a barrel on Wednesday, still lags the soaring highs of over $100 hit during the summers of 2013 and 2014. (CLc1) Falling crude prices had also brought expectations that lower gasoline prices would fuel consumer spending on other items and net some states higher sales tax revenues. That boost did not materialize, however, as consumers instead held onto their extra disposable income. "The recession was so deep that it had a lasting impact and people are holding on to some of that additional disposable income that they are seeing because of the low gas prices," said Emily Raimes, an analyst at Moody's. (Reporting by Rory Carroll; Editing by Daniel Bases and Meredith Mazzilli) Repeating the same phrase 100 times on your college application wouldn't seem, at first glance, to be a winning strategy for gaining acceptance to a highly competitive school. But for Ziad Ahmed, it was part of what got him into Stanford, CBS News reports, with the university calling the 18-year-old a "fantastic match." Ahmed, a high school senior in Princeton, NJ, wanted to be "authentic" when answering one of the college's application questions, which asked him to describe, in 100 words or less, "What matters to you, and why?" His recurring answer, which stretched down the entire answer field: "#BlackLivesMatter," with Ahmed (who describes himself as an "unapologetic progressive activist") noting in an email to CBS that the "why" part of the question was "embodied in the words themselves," and that explaining the hashtag was just "inherently problematic." On Saturday, Ahmed tweeted a pic of his answer and the Stanford congrats letter. Not that Ahmed is incapable of using more than three words and a hashtag to explain why this issue is important to him. "Declaring the humanity and value of black lives is necessitated by the painful reality that the collective humanity is frequently denied when perpetrators of violence enjoy impunity," he told CBS. Not everyone is impressed, notes Heat Street. "No way a black kid could get rewarded for doing the same thing," one commenter tweeted. Ahmeda Muslim-American who founded a nonprofit to help teens fight stereotypes and who was honored for his efforts by then-President Obama in 2015says he hasn't decided yet where he's going in the fall: He's also been accepted into Yale and nearby Princeton, per NBC News. (Another New Jersey teen has been accepted into all eight Ivy Leagues.) A man accused of the strangulation death of a New York City runner has been indicted on first-degree murder charges, the AP reports. Queens District Attorney Richard Brown says the 13-count indictment also charges Chanel Lewis with sexual abuse. Karina Vetrano was attacked while running near her home on Aug. 2. Her father found her badly beaten body in a secluded marsh. Philip Vetrano said he and his wife are pleased with the grand jury's decision. Police said evidence included genetic material found under Vetrano's fingernails and on her phone and neck. The Legal Aid Society says it has concerns about how DNA was collected and about "the overall reliability" of evidence. Lewis' mother says he has mental health problems and would not hurt anybody. (Read more murder stories.) A trip to Disney World has sparked a battle in Britain's highest court, the AP reports. In a case with implications for millions of parents, the UK Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a father broke the law by taking his daughter on vacation to Florida during school time. Jon Platt was fined $150 after taking his 6-year-old daughter out of school for a week in 2015, and prosecuted when he failed to pay. Lower courts found he had not acted unlawfully because his daughter had a good overall attendance record. Those rulings led to a surge in British parents taking children on vacation during school terms, when airplane fares and hotel prices are significantly cheaper. But local officials, backed by the British government, took the case to the country's top court. Five justices ruled unanimously Thursday that UK schools had the right to set rules about what constitutes "regular" attendance. Judge Brenda Hale said unauthorized absences were "a slap in the face to those obedient parents who do keep the rules." Platt said the ruling means millions of parents in Britain no longer have the power to make decisions about their own children. He said he has no plans to plead guilty or pay the fine. (Read more Disney World stories.) The chemical used in an attack this week that left at least 86 people27 of them childrendead in Syria was sarin, a banned nerve agent, the New York Times report. The Turkish Health Ministry says it confirmed the chemical as sarin following an autopsy on three victims. Many of the victims of Tuesday's attack in Idlib Province were taken to Turkey afterward. President Bashar al-Assad, who is being blamed for the attack, signed a treaty banning the use of sarin less than four years ago following an earlier attack. The Syrian government promised to get rid of its chemical weapons after signing the treaty. The Syrian government is denying any responsibility for this week's assault. Rex Tillerson says "steps are underway" to plan for Assad's removal from power in response to the chemical attack, USA Today reports. It's unclear what those steps are, but the secretary of state says Assad has no future leading Syria and that Russia, which is standing behind the Syrian government's claims of innocence in the attack, should rethink its support for the Syrian president. According to the Washington Post, the Trump administration is now considering potential military action against Syria, with the Pentagon presenting possible options to the White House. Those options could include strikes on Syrian military targets or keeping the Syrian air force from flying. However, there are concerns about how Russia could react to US military action. (Read more Syria stories.) Police in Missouri have had to give the parents of Jessica Runions the news they dreaded: One of two skulls found outside Kansas City this week is that of their 21-year-old daughter, who disappeared in September. Police say the case is now a homicide investigation, People reports. Authorities say that identifying the other human remains could take weeks or months. The area in rural Cass County is still being searched for additional remains. The family of Kara Kopetsky, a 17-year-old who disappeared in 2007, was notified when the remains were found. Both Runions and Kopetsky were linked to the same man, 28-year-old Kylr Yust, who was charged with "knowingly burning" Runions' car after she vanished. It's not clear whether Yust will face additional charges now that Runions' remains have been found. "Kylr has not been charged with anything, with anything outside of knowingly burning a car, again ... and that we intend to fight," his attorney told ABC News before the remains were identified. Runions was last seen leaving a party with Yust, who was a friend of her boyfriend. Yust was also a suspect after Kopetsky, his ex-girlfriend, disappeared. In 2011, he pleaded guilty to domestic violence after choking another girlfriend. She told police he threatened to kill her, telling her he had "killed people before, even ex-girlfriends, out of sheer jealousy." (Read more missing woman stories.) The United States has attacked a Syrian air base with roughly 60 cruise missiles in response to a chemical weapons attack it blames on President Bashar Assad. US officials say the Tomahawk missiles were fired from two warships in the Mediterranean Sea, targeting a government-controlled air base in Syria, reports the AP. The move comes after US officials accused Syrian aircraft of killing dozens of civilians by using chlorine mixed with a nerve agent, possibly sarin, earlier this week. President Trump, who had said the Syrian attack crossed "many, many lines" for him, said Thursday night that it was in the "vital national security interest" of the United States to stop the use of chemical weapons. Syrian state TV reported a US missile attack on a number of military targets and called the attack an "aggression." The Washington Post notes that the US attack brings with it a heightened risk of confrontation with Syria supporters Russia and Iran. Russia initially defended Assad after the civilian deaths, saying that government airstrikes had hit chemical weapons being stored illegally by rebels. But on Thursday, a Kremlin spokesman made a point to say that its support was not "unconditional." Hundreds of US troops are currently stationed in Syria, advising local forces ahead of an assault on the city of Raqqa, an ISIS stronghold. (Read more Syria stories.) The US hit a Syrian air base with almost 60 Tomahawk missiles early Friday in what President Trump says was a response to a chemical attack on civiliansand what Russia and Syria say was an act of aggression. A spokesman for Vladimir Putin told reporters Friday that Putin considers the strike aggression and a violation of international law, carried out under a "trumped-up" pretext. Russian officials say the strike on the Shayrat airfield has destroyed the chances of US-Russia anti-terror cooperation in Syria, CNN reports. Iran also condemned the attack, calling it "dangerous" and "destructive." US allies, including the UK, Australia, and Saudi Arabia, described the action as an appropriate response to the chemical attack, the AP reports. More on the US strike: Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis says Russian forces were present at the base hit by American missiles, but the Russians were informed of the strikes in "multiple conversations," the Guardian reports. "We took extraordinary precautions to not target the area where the Russians are," Davis says. Davis said the strike was the result of the Assad regime's conduct, and it "will be the regime's choice if there's any more, and it will be based upon their conduct going forward." Syria has denied carrying out a chemical attack, and while Bashar al-Assad's allies claim it would have been a "crazy move" for the regime to provoke the US with such an attack, analysts tell the New York Times that it was in fact part of a deliberate strategy of escalating attacks on civilians. The tactics are designed to demoralize the opposition and demonstrate that the Syrian government can act with impunity, analysts say. "Rarely has a policy changed so far and so quickly" and led to such swift action as Trump's position on striking the Assad regime over the last two days, notes Jon Sopel at the BBC. It's not clear, however, whether this was a one-off strike or the start of something more prolonged. Sources tell Time that the turning point for Trump, who ran on a nationalist, isolationist "America First" platform, may have been the distressing images of children killed in the attack, some of them the same age as his 10-year-old son, Barron. The sources say Trump was disturbed by the photos and spoke of them repeatedly. USA Today notes that Trump's position on striking Syria has changed not just since 2013, when he warned Obama against attacking the country, but since his campaign, when he said: "You're going to end up in World War III over Syria if we listen to Hillary Clinton." Analysts tell the Washington Post that Tomahawk missiles were probably used because they could be launched from US warships, meaning that American pilots didn't have to go anywhere near the target and deal with Russian air defenses. (Read more Syria stories.) On the 24th anniversary of the crime, a 74-year-old Louisiana man confessed to killing his son-in-law in North Carolina, officials say. Maj. Tom Effler of the Wayne County Sheriff's Office in Goldsboro, NC, said that on Feb. 7, Allen Deaver told authorities he'd killed Sydney Maurice Gregory on Feb. 7, 1993, the AP reports. Gregory, who was in his 20s, was beaten and left inside a mobile home that was set on fire in Seven Springs, NC. "This came out of the blue," Effler said of learning of the crime. "It wasn't even on our radar." Effler said Deaver began talking with his minister about the crime while he was hospitalized in February. Deaver didn't say why he killed his daughter's husband, Effler said. "It's my opinion that because he started talking about it while in the hospital, maybe his conscience was bothering him or he might have wanted to just get it off his chest before he meets his maker," Effler speculated. Gregory was found in the bedroom of his burned mobile home. His death certificate lists blunt force trauma as his cause of death. No one else was injured. Effler said Deaver moved to Walker, La., shortly after the slaying. A Wayne County grand jury indicted Deaver on a charge of first-degree murder Wednesday. Effler said deputies from the Livingston Parish Sheriff's Office arrested him on a fugitive warrant and he's being held in Louisiana without bond at the parish jail. (Read more murder stories.) President Trump's decision to strike a Syrian airbase in retaliation for a chemical attack on civilians has bipartisan supportand bipartisan opposition. House Speaker Paul Ryan and Sens. John McCain and Marco Rubio were joined by Democrats, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, in voicing their support for what they called an "appropriate" and "proportional" strike, though the Democrats added that Congress will have to approve any further escalation, Politico reports. Republicans including Sens. Rand Paul and Mike Lee, meanwhile, were joined by Democrats such as Sen. Tim Kaine in slamming Trump for launching the strikes without congressional approval. In other developments: Syria says the strike, which involved around 60 Tomahawk missiles launched from US destroyers in the Mediterranean, killed six people, wounded several others, and caused "significant" damage, the Los Angeles Times reports. A statement from the Syrian military denounced the strike as "blatant aggression" that will be a setback to its "counterterrorist" activity. Deutsche Welle reports that the attack was endorsed by European countries, including the UK, France, and Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Bashar al-Assad bears "sole responsibility" for the strike against his regime's forces. Russia's military says only 23 out of the 59 American missiles reached the Shayrat airbase in Homs province, the AP reports. The military says the attack destroyed six Syrian planes, but left the runway intact. Vladimir Putin has denounced the strike as American aggression, a spokesman says. The New York Times looks at the risks and opportunities the strike has opened up for Trump. There's now an opportunity for the US to demand that Russia help get rid of Assadbut there's the risk Putin might reject any such deal, that the strike could hurt the fight against ISIS, and that Trump's team has no real plan for peace in Syria. Syrian opposition groups welcomed the attack and said they hoped it marked the beginning of a wider campaign against Assad. "For Syrians, any military intervention that will neutralize Assads ability to continue his genocide will fall on our hearts like music," a civil defense volunteer in northern Syria tells the Los Angeles Times. The Guardian reports that a monitoring group says that despite the US strike, a warplane believed to be Russian or Syrian carried out an airstrike near Khan Sheikhoun, the town hit by the chemical attack, on Friday. (Read more Syria stories.) (Adds comments by Minnesota agriculture officials, details on investigation, amount of fine) By Renita D. Young and Tom Polansek April 6 (Reuters) - An invasive weed likely entered Minnesota through seed planted on land in a U.S. conservation program, state agriculture officials said on Thursday, bringing to a close an official probe of a growing threat to agricultural production. Infestations of the weed, Palmer amaranth, have affected other states in the U.S. Midwest through seed planted on land in the federal Conservation Reserve Program, weed scientists have said. The program pays farmers to remove land from crop production to improve water quality, prevent soil erosion and protect endangered species. Palmer amaranth, which is native to the Southwest, has spread across conservation land in Iowa, which accounts for nearly a fifth of U.S. corn production and in 2016 exported more than $1 billion of corn and soy. Infestations of Palmer amaranth, which can grow as much as 2 inches a day, spread over 30 plantings in the federal program in Minnesota, according to the state agriculture department. Until now, Minnesota officials were unsure of how the aggressive weed entered the state. Were pretty certain it came from the seed source just because there was no other pathway for the seed to have gotten there," said Geir Friisoe, director of the state agriculture department's plant protection division. All infested Minnesota conservation plantings used seed from Cottonwood, Minnesota-based Green Valley Seed, the department said in a statement. The investigation did not find Palmer amaranth in leftover seed that was not used. Green Valley could not immediately be reached for comment. The company was fined $4,000 for violating the state seed law. One violation involved mislabeling seed from Texas, where Palmer amaranth is widespread, as being from Minnesota, according to the department. The vicious weed was spread uniformly across the infested Minnesota fields, Friisoe said in an interview. Weed scientists have noted that is a clear sign that the source of Palmer amaranth was the seed. Story continues Palmer amaranth is hard to kill and, if left unchecked, destroys as much as 91 percent of corn on infested land, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The weed has not yet spread into cropland in Minnesota, Friisoe said. Under the state's seed law, it is illegal to sell or transport seed mixes containing the Palmer amaranth seed. Landowners face increased costs to control the weed. Minnesota's agriculture department will offer eradication services to help landowners eliminate the weed, Friisoe said, including testing suspect seed mixes. (Reporting by Renita D. Young and Tom Polansek in Chicago; Editing by Bill Rigby and Matthew Lewis) President Trump may be considering putting American nuclear missiles in South Koreaor even assassinating Kim Jong-un. Military and intelligence officials tell NBC News the National Security Council has presented Trump with options on responding to North Korea's refusal to curtail its nuclear program. The options all represent big changes in US foreign policy. The US removed its nukes from South Korea 25 years ago; putting them back would be the first time US nuclear weapons were located overseas since the Cold War. Another optionapart from the assassination of North Korea's leaderis sneaking special forces into North Korea to sabotage its nuclear program and abilities. The options would be considered if China doesn't successfully put more pressure on North Korea. And one intelligence official tells NBC he doesn't see a diplomatic solution forthcoming. Trump has vowed to keep building defenses against North Korea, prompting a North Korean ambassador to threaten the "most ruthless blow" if the country is provoked, News.com.au reports. We have the readiness and ability to counter any challenge from the US, Kim Hyong-Jun says. Meanwhile, South Korean officials say North Korea appears ready to unveil a new intercontinental ballistic missile during a huge military parade planned for April 15, according to UPI. (Read more North Korea stories.) Mitt Romney might be re-entering politics. Six sources tell the Atlantic Romney, former Massachusetts governor and US presidential candidate, is "actively discussing" a Senate run in Utah. Republican leaders and donors, sources say, want 83-year-old incumbent Sen. Orrin Hatch to decline to seek re-election in 2018 and Romney to take his place. The sources say Romney would not move forward with the plan unless Hatch approves. It seems like he might: Hatch, who has served in the Senate for more than 40 years, said in a recent interview that he would consider retiring if he "could get a really outstanding person to run" for his position, adding, "Mitt Romney would be perfect." But Hatch has since said he hasn't yet decided whether to run again, calling the buzz that surrounded his comment about Romney "premature speculation" and "overhyped intrigue." Sources say Romney has discussed the idea with Hatch and other party leaders both in Utah and Washington DC. Breitbart notes that Romney has "strong links" to Utah, including a vacation home there. The Atlantic says that should he decide to run, winning the seat "would likely be a cakewalk." The opinion editor of the Deseret News agrees, saying it would be "the easiest Senate bid in the history of the United States of America." Even the CEO of Utah's World Trade Center, who is considering his own run, says he'd opt out if Romney ran. As for why Romney might get back into politics now, his longstanding opposition to President Trump is one reason; the Washington Post thinks Trump should worry if he runs, because "Romney would come in to the Senate with almost unimpeachable power to say whatever he wanted about Trump, should he choose to do so." Another reason, per a friend: Romney is "bored" in retirement. (Read more Mitt Romney stories.) The victim death toll from the London terror attack last month is now at five after a woman pulled from the Thames was taken off life support Thursday and died, the New York Times reports. Andreea Cristea, a 31-year-old architect from Romania, had been on the Westminster Bridge on March 22 when Khalid Masood rammed his car into a crowd of pedestrians. The Times says it still hasn't been determined whether the force of Masood's car sent Cristea into the river or if she jumped in to get out of the way, though the BBC quotes the Romanian ambassador to the UK as saying it appears Masood's car hit Cristea's boyfriend, Andrei Burnaz, before slamming into Cristea and sending her over the edge of the bridge. Cristea and Burnaz had been in London to celebrate Burnaz's birthday, and Burnaz, who suffered a broken foot in the attack, had an even bigger surprise planned: He intended to ask Cristea to marry him the same day as the attack. He joined her family in issuing a statement that described the "crushing pain and emptiness" now that Cristea has passed, noting she was "cruelly and brutally ripped away from our lives in the most heartless and spiritless way." They also added any leftover money people had donated to help fund her medical care would now go to charity. London's mayor paid tribute to Cristea on Twitter, saying he was "deeply saddened" to hear she had died. "Londoners hold her & her loved ones in our thoughts today," tweeted Sadiq Khan early Friday. (Read more London terror attack stories.) One potentially dangerous consequence from the US strike on Syria: A hotline of sorts between Russia and the US is kaput. In the wake of the strike, Moscow says it will no longer participate in what is known as a "deconfliction line," reports the AP. The premise was straightforward: The two nations used it to keep their pilots from colliding in the cramped airspace over Syria. And cramped isn't an overstatement: Those skies are filled with pilots from the US-led coalition, the Syrian government, and Russia, which has been waging an air campaign on behalf of Syria. Things were dicey even with the coordination in place: In January, a Wall Street Journal report described the situation as "an international incident waiting to happen" after interviewing US pilots involved in close calls. "This is very risky," says the head of the Russian International Affairs Council, per Bloomberg. "This agreement helped to avoid direct military confrontation in this difficult situation. We dont want to start World War III." The US ran its end of the line out of a military base in Qatar, where air traffic controllers and military officials shared information with their Russian counterparts in Syria. The US has not commented publicly on the Russian decision. Meanwhile, Russia has promised to help Syria strengthen its air defenses in the wake of the US strike. A Russian defense ministry spokesman didn't provide details but said a "complex of measures" would be put in place, per the AP. (Read more Russia stories.) Neil Gorsuch will be the next justice on the Supreme Court. The Senate made it official Friday with a confirmation vote of 54-45, reports the AP. The vote comes after Republicans invoked the controversial "nuclear option" to overcome a Democratic filibuster. Gorsuch, 49, will leave his seat on the US Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Denver to become the high court's 113th justice. He will replace the late Antonin Scalia and is expected to restore the court's 5-4 tilt in favor of conservatives. The New York Times reports that he will hear his first arguments a week from Monday. (Read more Neil Gorsuch stories.) Things are getting tense between the US and Russia following the US missile strike on a Syrian air base. Vladimir Putin's office says the attack dealt a "significant blow" to the relationship between the two countries, the New York Times reports. And according to Reuters, Russia's deputy UN envoy told the UN Security Council that the "illegitimate" strike could have "extremely serious" consequences in Syria and abroad. Meanwhile, Russia's prime minister says the strike was nearly an attack on the military of Russia itself. The Shayrat air base appears to house Russian special forces and helicopters. US officials warned Russia about the incoming missiles 60 to 90 minutes before they hit. In response to the attack, Russia says it will shore up Syria's air defenses and move a frigate into the area. It also says it cut off communications with the US regarding air operations over the country. Russia and the US had been holding multiple calls a week to share information and avoid accidental conflicts in Syria, such as firing on each other's troops or colliding with each other's planes, the Los Angeles Times reports. US officials deny Russia has followed through on that threat, saying the two countries held their regularly scheduled call Friday morning. (Read more Syria stories.) Last week, President Trump tweeted that his meeting with the Chinese president "will be a very difficult one"not a surprising prediction given Trump once accused China of having "raped the US," but apparently an incorrect one. The BBC reports Trump ended his two-day summit with Xi Jinping by crowing about the "tremendous progress" made by the two. He says they now have an "outstanding" relationship and that "lots of very potentially bad problems will be going away," according to Reuters. Xi echoed Trump's positive generalities and invited the US president to visit China soon, an offer Trump accepted. Chinese state media reported positively on the summit, noting that Trump's granddaughter sang and recited poetry in Chinese, the New York Times reports. Despite the rosy words, there was one dark cloud hanging over the meeting. Xi is likely to be privately angry about the timing of the US airstrike on Syria, which occurred in the middle of the summit. Not only did it break with Chinese protocol, but it upstaged Xi, who had hoped to use the meeting to be seen by the world as Trump's equal. China typically sides with Russia in support of Assad and opposes unilateral military action. Experts believe Xi and China are more likely to take Trump's threats against North Korea seriously following the airstrike, which may result in China doing more to pressure the regime of Kim Jong Un. (Read more Xi Jinping stories.) Amritsar : Two Pakistani sisters who are jailed in Amritsar jail in a drug case from last 10-years, found themselves a step closer to release. A Batala-based non-government organisation, Sarbat Da Bhala Humanity Club, has paid Rs 4 lakh against the fine imposed on them in 2006. Fatima Bibi and Mumtaj, were awarded 10-years jail term, and fined Rs 2 lakh each. Fatima and her younger sister Mumtaj were arrested from the Samjhauta Express on May 8, 2006, at the Attari railway station for carrying drugs. The sisters completed their jail term in November last year. Navtej Singh Gaggu of the NGO deposited the money in the central jail account and handed over the receipt to jail authorities in presence of advocate Navjot Kaur Chabba. On the status of Fatimas 10-year-old daughter Hena, who took birth in the jail, Chabba said, By birth, she is an Indian citizen. Now, Pakistan government has to take a call. I dont think she will have any problem in going to Pakistan with her mother and aunt whenever that happens. Sorry! This content is not available in your region Last year, a mysterious candidate named Rodney Stooksbury spent just $346 to win more than a third of the votes cast in the 2016 general election for Georgia's 6th congressional district. Later this month, the 18 candidates vying in a special election for the seat vacated by Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price would love that kind of return on investment. The very red U.S. House district in Georgia is attracting more money and national attention than it ever has because it holds one of the first congressional races of the President Donald Trump era. Almost all of that money has gone toward helping or directly opposing a 30-year-old Democrat. A special election on April 18 will start to settle who will hold the seat in the Atlanta suburbs. The crowded field includes the leading Democrat, Jon Ossoff, and several Republicans who have served in state government, like former Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel and former state Sens. Judson Hill and Dan Moody. The high-profile contest, which some see as an early test of whether Democrats can flip Republican districts in the Trump era, has sparked the interest of outside groups, as well. It is one of four special elections in which a red seat is up for grabs, vacated by a Trump nominee. The race has attracted more cash from around the country than the district has ever seen. As of March 29, Ossoff had raised $8.3 million and spent $6.1 million more than double the highest amount Price spent in any one of his seven election campaigns there. Price first won the seat in 2004 and never spent more than $2.5 million in an election. Ossoff's haul is all the more remarkable because Price was no slouch with spending he spent more than the average Republican and Democratic House incumbent in 2016. Several groups dedicated to keeping the Republican House majority, as well as wings of the National Rifle Association and Planned Parenthood, have funneled more than $3 million into the race. Story continues At least $2.5 million of that was spent to oppose Ossoff, the former congressional aide who has led most polling in the race, partly because of fractured support among Republicans. Ads targeting Ossoff have claimed he lacks experience and is too closely tied to top Democrats. One even hit him for dressing up as "Star Wars" character Han Solo when he was in college. Another tied Ossoff to terrorist groups, even including an image of Osama bin Laden, because his filmmaking company reportedly produced documentaries for news outlet Al Jazeera. There is nothing to indicate that Ossoff has any ties to terrorist organizations. His campaign manager Keenan Pontoni called the ad a "smear attack" and said it was "truly shameful." In a statement, he said Ossoff is "proud of his work as an investigative filmmaker." Ossoff has easily outraised his opponents. As of March 29, Handel raised about $463,000, Hill garnered about $473,000 and Moody about $108,000. All the more unusual is the Hollywood attention Ossoff has attracted. Actor Jon Cryer and comedian Chelsea Handler both donated $2,700 to his campaign, and actress Alyssa Milano has publicly supported him, prompting an attack from Handel. If no candidate in the April 18 election wins 50 percent of the vote, it goes to a June runoff. The top two candidates will advance regardless of party. One recent poll showed Ossoff with 43 percent of support, well ahead of Handel's 15 percent. However, he faces a much tougher task in a runoff, as support would likely coalesce around a Republican. Trump won the district by only 1.5 points last year. Still, Price got more than 60 percent of the vote there in 2016. More From CNBC Waiting in place for their new owners, prior to the start of the African Bicycle Contribution Foundation's (ABCF) recent bike distribution event, at the Drobonso SDA Basic School, in the Ashanti Region, are 35 news EcoRide bamboo Bicycles.Click here for high-resolution version SEKYERE AFRAM PLAINS DISTRICT, GHANA--(Marketwired - April 07, 2017) - With a bicycle distribution event, held here, at its fourth location in Ghana, at the Drobonso SDA Basic School, in the Ashanti Region, the African Bicycle Contribution Foundation (ABCF), a U.S.-based, 501(c)3 corporation, today announced that it has now provided nearly 100, free, ecologically-friendly bamboo bikes to Ghanaian, transport-dependent students, parents, small farmers and healthcare workers. In previous bike distribution events, ABCF has provided the iconic Eco-Ride bamboo bicycles, made by Founder and CEO Bernice Dapaah's Ghana Bamboo Bikes Initiative (GBBI), to similar recipient groups in Accra, Kumasi and Koforidua, Ghana. As has been the case in ABCF's previous bike distributions, the event at the Drobonso SDA Basic School was hosted on behalf of the Foundation, by its Ghana-based partners, Bright Generation Community Foundation (BGCF) and GBBI. ABCF plans to distribute 2500 free bicycles in primarily rural areas in Ghana, over a five-year period. BGCF Development Consultant Solomon Owusu-Amankwaah spoke to the gathering of nearly 300 bicycle recipients and dignitaries, on behalf of ABCF's chairman, A. Bruce Crawley, and its executive director, Patricia Marshall Harris. In his remarks to the attendees, including, among others, Sekyere Afram Plains District Director of Education Mrs. Amina Achiaa; Drobonso Community Chief Nana Dankwa Dwubisiaw II; and Head Teacher Richard Awuah, Owusu said: "The ABCF program aligns with Ghana's national development agenda, in areas of poverty alleviation and access to education, and is expected to contribute, among other things, to improved school attendance for young, rural students, and greater operating efficiency for rural farmers." He also mentioned that the U.S.-based foundation plans to build upon its initial bicycle distribution efforts to provide technology-facilitated, inter-continental seminars and classroom discussions between students and entrepreneurs in Ghana and the U.S., and to assist GBBI in expanding its capacity to export its world-class bicycles to the U.S., and to other countries across the globe. Story continues To date, the ABCF program has been well received by public officials in Ghana, and previous bicycle recipients have expressed their appreciation for the numerous ways in which having their own bicycles has positively impacted their daily lives. Who Is ABCF? The African Bicycle Contribution Foundation (ABCF) is a 501(c) 3 non-profit corporation whose mission is to generate funding to underwrite the distribution of bicycles to needy students, families and transport-dependent small business owners on the African continent. The Corporation has made a commitment to finance the free distribution of 2,500 bicycles, in Ghana, over its first five years of operation. ABCF works in partnership, in Ghana, with the Ghana Bamboo Bikes Initiative, Bright Generation Community Foundation, The Respect Alliance, and the U.S.-Ghana Chamber of Commerce. Included among the foundation's corporate and charitable nonprofit sponsors are Independence Blue Cross and the Omega Omega Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority. For further information about ABCF, please contact the ABCF office: info@africanbike.org Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2017/4/7/11G135400/Images/all_the_bikes-ea685953eb5f8644853fabde5ca44c6f.jpg Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2017/4/7/11G135400/Images/group-5f2deb2714e89883a38cec57ee71b1fd.jpg Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2017/4/7/11G135400/Images/student_bike-73a321092792adeb940a629a514ab369.jpg Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2017/4/7/11G135400/Images/bernice-4bea9f0993bba11ba1995248ae80e655.jpg Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2017/4/7/11G135400/Images/solomon-6df9b08f5e4991789035cad8a5acaabe.jpg Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2017/4/7/11G135400/Images/big_group_with_bikes-27abe7ed09b09e90927166ac04d1f3b4.jpg Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2017/4/7/11G135400/Images/little_boy_getting_bike-9e064243d2198fc2b7fff9bc21542008.jpg Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2017/4/7/11G135400/Images/amina_achia-5e82f3070ebb8e3fa95f71a1c2e4d5bc.jpg Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2017/4/7/11G135400/Images/shaking_hands-e1f870a80f4aa4b7836c52255bc875e2.jpg Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2017/4/7/11G135400/Images/little_girl_and_guy-cbf85082fe53888ead490d1c2d763d83.jpg Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2017/4/7/11G135400/Images/guy_speaking-b997b6b4a7168eb08b14ee97c47651c6.jpg Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2017/4/7/11G135400/Images/3_photo_1-53cc6c16d1a391d8b872ef3db40e2c6e.jpg Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2017/4/7/11G135400/Images/3_photo_3-df7cfd7d15028ca8b5d20955048a572f.jpg Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2017/4/7/11G135400/Images/3_photo_2-a58d0068288fb7c6b98cc49e2581e66f.jpg Fairbanks, AK (99707) Today Snow this morning will give way to partly cloudy conditions this afternoon. High 24F. Winds light and variable. Chance of snow 100%. About one inch of snow expected.. Tonight Partly cloudy skies this evening will become overcast overnight. Low 13F. Winds light and variable. New Delhi: If you are Reliance Jio customer and woke up with a news that Summer Surprise offer has been withdrawn, do not fret. Even as the telecom giant has rescinded the offer, the summer surprise complimentary benefits are still available to those who have already enrolled for the scheme. Reliance Jio customers, who have already recharged for plans of Rs 303 and more, will be able to enjoy the complimentary benefits of the scheme. Reliance Jio on Thursday night announced that the mobile network will be discontinuing its recently announced Summer Surprise offer after an order from Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. Users who signed up for the offer by making a first-time recharge will, however, continue to get complimentary benefits. "All customers who have subscribed to Jio Summer Surprise offer prior to its discontinuation will remain eligible for the offer," Jio said. Under the Jio Summer Surprise offer, subscribers who enrolled before April 15 and recharged for plans of Rs 303 and more were entitled to get three months of complimentary service. Reliance Jio had on March 31 extended the deadline for subscribing to Jio Prime service till April 15, 2017. The move came as a surprise as Jio was expected to withdraw Jio Prime subscriptions from April 1. Read | Reliance Jio Summer Surprise offer: All you need to know New Delhi: A suspicious parcel containing white powder, proclaiming it to be Anthrax was delivered at Sholinganallur office of Infosys on Tuesday. The letter with no name arrived with powder sprinkled on it, demanding a ransom of 500 crore from the company. Anthrax is a lethal contagious disease that is spread through bacterial spores. In 2001, these spores were packed in letters in a powder-form and used as a bio-weapon. The threat letter is believed to be targeted at members of the companys Sholinganallur branch, who were involved in a certain scam which the letter referred to. ALSO READ | Infosys strongly defends 33 per cent pay hike for COO citing global standards The letter demands firing all corrupt members, failing which the disease will be dispersed through letters or the companys water sources. The letter also mentions that the company has the option to evade such situation if transfers`500 crore into the given bar code details in the letter. According to Indian Express, the local police have handed over the letter to Chennai Crime Branch Police for further probe. Srinagar: Two days before polling in the by-election in Srinagar, prominent Shia leader Agha Syed Mohsin on Friday switched allegiance from National Conference (NC) and joined the ruling Peoples Democratic party (PDP) lead by Mehbooba Mufti . Hailing from a prominent religious family of Budgam, Mohsin was welcomed into the party fold by Chief Minister and PDP president Mehbooba Mufti, a spokesman of the party said. Mohsin is the son of political activist and religious scholar late Agha Syed Mustafa and uncle of NC leader and former minister Agha Syed Ruhullah. Also Read : CM Mehbooba tells Pakistan to stop fanning militancy in J-K if it wants dialogue with India Mohsin said he had been observing the functioning of the PDP for long and had come to the conclusion that it was the only political party that worked for the interests of the poor, marginalised and backward communities in Jammu and Kashmir. He had joined the NC in 2014. The Srinagar Lok Sabha constituency, spread over the three Assembly seats of Srinagar, Budgam and Ganderbal, will go to polls on Sunday. NC president Farooq Abdullah is contesting the seat against PDP's Nazir Ahmad Khan. Abdullah had contested and lost from the seat in the 2014 general election. Mumbai: The Maharashtra Legislative Assembly on Friday passed a bill that seeks to prevent attacks on journalists and media houses. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis introduced the bill of Maharashtra Mediapersons and Media Institutions (Prevention of Violence and Damage or Loss to property) Act, 2017, in the lower house, which was passed without discussion in the absence of opposition members. The bill provides for prevention of violence against journalists while carrying out their duties as media persons, and prevention of damage or loss of property of media persons or media houses in the state. As per the provisions of the Act, anyone who commits or attempts to commit/ abets/ instigates or provokes the commission of any act of violence, shall be punished with imprisonment, which may extend to three years, or with fine, which may extend to Rs 50,000 or with both. The offence shall be cognisable and non bailable and triable by the court of Judicial Magistrate First Class. ALSO READ | Maharashtra govt tells Bombay HC it may hike compensation for rape victims A police officer not below the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police shall investigate any offence under this Act. The offender shall be liable to pay compensation for damage or loss caused to the property of the media person or media house, as determined by the court and also be liable to reimburse the medical expenditure incurred by the media person, the Act says. If the compensation and medical expenditure is not paid, it will be recovered as it were arrears of land revenue. A media institution has been defined as any registered newspaper establishment, news channel establishment, news based electronic media establishment or news station establishment. A media person means a person, whose principal vocation is that of a journalist, who is employed as a journalist, whether on regular or contract basis. Media person is defined as editor, sub editor, news editor, reporter, correspondent, cartoonist, news photographer, television cameraman, leader-writer, feature writer, copy tester and proof reader. Violence is defined as an act, which causes or may cause any harm, injury or endangering life of a media person during the discharge of his duty as a media person or causing damage or loss of property belonging to any media person or media institution. Fadnavis said on account of the rampant instances of violence and attacks against media persons and damage or loss of property of media houses, there is a strong demand to prevent such violence against media persons or damage or loss to the property belonging to media persons and media houses to check the recurrence of such incidents. The need is to enact a special law to effectively curb the occurrence of such incidents in the state and to protect and safeguard the media persons and property of the media persons and media houses, he said. Patna: The BJP demanded that Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar should sack Tejashwi Prasad Yadav and Tej Pratap Yadav from his ministry for their alleged involvement in some financial irregularities. "Charges of serious financial irregularities have been levelled against Lalu Prasad's two sons, deputy chief minister Tejashwi Prasad Yadav and minister Tej Pratap Yadav. The two have allegedly got benami properties worth Rs 750 crore registered in their names in Patna," senior BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi told reporters. "The Chief Minister should sack the two ministers," he said. Sushil Modi has already demanded a probe into the purchase of soil worth Rs 90 lakh by Sanjay Gandhi Biological Park, Patna from a firm controlled by Lalu Prasad's family. He had alleged that during his tenure as Railway Minister, Lalu Prasad had sold off two hotels in Puri and Ranchi controlled by the Railways, to a hospitality chain owned by one Harsh Kochar in 2005. Kochar in turn got two acres of land registered in the name of Delight Marketing Company Private Limited, in which Lalu Prasad's wife Rabri Devi and his two sons Tej Pratap Yadav and Tejashwi Prasad Yadav were directors. "There was a direct conflict of interest in the purchase of soil as it was initiated by the department of forest and environment by passing tendering process and Tej Pratap Yadav was the minister of the department," Sushil Modi alleged. "The issue is not confined to only Rs 90 lakh. It has exposed financial irregularities worth Rs 750 crore committed by Lalu Prasad's family including his two minister sons," the BJP leader alleged. Delight Marketing Company Private Limited, in which RJD MP and former union corporate affairs minister Prem Chand Gupta and his family had 70 per cent stake, was rechristened as LARA Projects Private Limited and Rabri Devi, Tejashwi and Tej Pratap were made directors, he alleged. Sushil Modi said it was now clear why Lalu Prasad objected to the Centre's demonetisation move and accused the former Bihar chief minister of getting properties transferred in the name of his family members to protect them from being declared as 'benami'. New Delhi: Bollywood's Badrinath who has recently found his 'Dulhaniya' is now taking care of his new 'siblings' Roohi and Yash Johar, director Karan Johar's newborn twins. Like a true elder brother Varun has shopped for Karan Johar's kids. When asked about what is he getting for Roohi and Yash he says, "There's a lot of stuff, but it's all a surprise which I first want Karan to see. I just hope he likes them." Also Read: Watch: Jupiter to appear bigger and brighter tonight, moves 414 million miles closer to Earth Meanwhile, Varun Dhawan is busy preparing for the next schedule of 'Judwaa 2', which is been directed by his father David Dhawan. Judwaa 2 is an extension of the Salman Khan comedy. When talked about the film Varun says, "I'm leaving for London soon where a big chunk of the film will be shot. That's where most of the story unfolds. There's a lot of work we're doing before the schedule starts." Also Read: Is Vinod Khanna fighting bladder cancer? Photo of ailing veteran actor with family goes viral The actor also added that "'Judwaa' entertained a generation of cine goers. It was hilarious. It was a riot purely because of the way Salman pulled off the roles. I'm sure even our film will entertain a lot of people. I'm looking forward to starting the shoot. Also Read: Sara Khan NOT arrested in Pakistan: Know what she has to say (Credit: TOI) For all the Latest Entertainment News, Bollywood News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. OSLO, April 7 (Reuters) - Norway and China have agreed to resume free-trade talks later this year, Norway's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries said in a statement on Friday. At the latest, the talks will start after the summer, it added. Chinese authorities confirmed the agreement. (Reporting by Terje Solsvik, editing by Gwladys Fouche) New Delhi: The 64th National Film Award has begun, this was one of the much-awaited awards. The list of the winners of the 64th National Film Awards for the films was released in 2016 but the winner's name will be declared during a press conference at 11:30 am at National Media Centre in New Delhi on Friday, April 7. Indian Filmmaker Priyadarshan who is the chairperson of the jury in feature films category, cinematographer and writer Raju Misra is the chairperson in non-feature category. Over ten Malayalam film have reached the final round. The list of nominees for best actor includes Vinayakan, who won the Kerala Governments Best Actor award for his outstanding performance as Ganga in Kammattipadam. Film Director Shri Radha Krishna Jagarlamudi is the Jury Member for Film Friendly Award. Eminent film critic Smt Bhawana Somaaya is the Jury Chairperson in Writing Jury. Bollywood star Akshay Kumar won his first National Film Award for his role in court room drama "Rustom" which was inspired by the 1959 Nanavati case. The movie, directed by Tinu Suresh Desai, was loosely based on the murder of Prem Ahuja by Commander K M Nanavati. Rajesh Mapuska will be honored as the best director for his Marathi film "Ventilator". The jury, headed by filmmaker Priyadarshan, chose Amitabh Bachchan-starrer "Pink", a female-centric courtroom drama, as the best film on social issues. Sonam Kapoor-starrer "Neerja", a story on flight attendantNeerja Bhanot who was killed by terrorists while saving passengers after the plane was hijacked, bagged the best Hindifilm award. The actress received a special mention for hercritically-lauded performance. Here are the Live updates of 64th National Film Awards 2016: # Surabhi C M was named as the best actress for her role in Malayalam film "Minnaminungu-The Firefly" # Marathifilm "Kaasav" was named the best picture # Best Feature Film on social issues is 'Pink' # Special Mention Award 'The Eyes of Darkness' # Best Hindi Feature Film is 'Neeraja', directed by Ram Madhvani # Award for Best children film goes to 'Dhanak', # Best Hindi Feature Film is 'Neerja', directed by Ram Madhvani # Best Actor of the year conferred to Shri Akshay Kumar # Best Bengali Film conferred to ' Bisarjan' # Best Kannada Film conferred to 'Reservation' # Best Environmental film including agriculture conferred to 'The Tiger who crossed the line' # Best Marathi film conferred to 'Dashakriya' # Best Short Fiction Film: Abba # Special Animation Film Award: Hum Picture Banate Hai # Best Book on Cinema: Lata Sur Gatha # Best Movie Critic: G Dhananjayan # Most Film Friendly State: Uttar Pradesh For all the Latest Entertainment News, Bollywood News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Veteran actor Vinod Khanna who was hospitalised in HN Reliance Hospital in Girgaum on March 31 due to severe dehydration, has responded positively to treatment and is stable now. A spokesperson for the HN Reliance Foundation Hospital said, "Vinod Khanna was admitted to Sir HN Reliance Foundation hospital on Friday with severe dehydration. He is under the care of our doctors and has responded positively to the treatment and is now stable. His family thanks his well wishers for the good wishes and requests to respect their privacy." Read more: Is Vinod Khanna fighting bladder cancer? Photo of ailing veteran actor with family goes viral Earlier a photo of the Bollywood star in a frail heallth condition had gone viral online and sparked rumours of him suffering from bladder cancer. The 70-year-old actors son Rahul Khanna said in a statement that Khannas condition was quickly brought under control following hospitalisation. He is doing much better and the doctors are looking to discharge him soon. Our family is most grateful for the extraordinary care he has been receiving at the hospital and we are touched by all the good wishes pouring in, he said. Read more: 'I'll donate one of my organs to him', Irrfan Khan on Vinod Khanna's health condition The hospital said Khanna would be discharged in a day or two depending on the doctors reports. For all the Latest Entertainment News, Bollywood News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: The tenth season of popular reality show Bigg Boss is once again in the headlines two of its contestants are said to be dating each other. Well if you are thinking of Manu Punjabi and Nitibha Kaul's love story, then you need to hold your horses. As this time it is Om Swami and Priyanka Jagga. Surprised? Well, as per the media reports, this happens to be true. Reportedly, Om Swami has been in constant touch with Priyanka post his forced elimination from the Bigg Boss house. Also Read | 'Bawali Baba' Om Swami looks UNRECOGNISABLE in his new avtar (see pics) In fact, he was also said to be staying at Jagga's house for a while. This is not all. The media reports also suggest that Swami's changed avatar is all because of Priyanka Jagga and it was her brother who took the self-proclaimed godman for a makeover. While this reports of Priyanka and Om's rumoured affair has set the tinselvile talking, the buzz doesn't end here. Also Read | Ex-Bigg Boss contestant Om Swami to enter 'Nach Baliye 8'? According to the media reports, this rumoured new couple will also be seen making an appearance on celebrity dance based reality show Nach Baliye 8. So far no official confirmation announcement has been made in this regard neither by the channel nor by the rumoured couple. However, if the reports turned out to be true, it will be interesting to see Priyanka Jagga shaking a leg with Om Swami. New Delhi: Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad on Friday again tried to book tickets on Air India flights, but the airline rejected the booking. This is the seventh attempt on the part of the Sena MP to book a flight on Air India, which barred him from flying after he assaulted the airlines staffer. There was an attempt to book a ticket at 5 AM today through our web portal. The reservations were being made for March 17 for travel from Delhi to Mumbai and for 24 March from Mumbai to Delhi, said an airline source. The ticket was being booked under the name Ravindra Gaikwad and we were alerted through our tracker, the source said. The MP has also made an attempt each to book an IndiGo flight as well as SpiceJet flight since the flying ban on him by all domestic carriers was put in place. Copy of Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad's Air India ticket which was cancelled by the Airlines. pic.twitter.com/qdluTZsOHk ANI (@ANI_news) April 7, 2017 Also Read: Shiv Sena MP Gaikwad not allowed to fly unless he tenders unconditional apology in writing: AICCA For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: India on Thursday refused to categorise the attacks of African nationals in Greater Noida as racial and said pending the probe it is not correct to draw a conclusion on "the nature and the reason" of these acts. On the alleged attack on a Kenyan woman on Wednesday, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said Kenyan diplomats had a meeting with officials of the ministry concerned and it has been conveyed to the Indian side that the reported incident "does not correspond with reality". Asserting that such attacks were "completely unacceptable and have been condemned", he said the government is engaged with the authorities concerned as well as the students. Asked if these were racial attacks, Baglay said, "Pending the investigation it is not correct to go into nature and the reason for these particular activities." There will be abetter understanding after the outcome of the probe, he said. Also Read: Attack on Africans: RWA asks civic society to withdraw cases Four Nigerian students were attacked by a group of Greater Noida residents who took out a candle-light march after a 17-year-old boy Manish died last week in the NSG BlackCats Enclave due to suspected drug overdose. The protest march was taken out after the police released some Nigerians detained for questioning in connection with death of Manish due to "lack of evidence". Terming these acts as "the action of the uninformed and misguided few", Baglay said they do not detract from the deep belief of the government and the people of India of 'vasudevakutumbakam' (the world is one family). "We will continue to welcome African people including students and youth as valuable partners. Our engagement with Africa, embodied among others in the implementation of the historic IAFS III, will continue to grow," he said. Baglay said the external affairs minister has spoken to the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh and Minister of State for External Affairs M J Akbar has spoken to the acting high commissioner of Nigeria. Also Read: Sushma Swaraj in Rajya Sabha assures of impartial probe into brutal attack on African nationals in Noida "We are in touch with the Nigerian High Commission in New Delhi. The students who were hurt during the incident have been treated in a local hospital and have already been released," he said. Law enforcement authorities of the district have made arrests and a large number of people are under watch, he said, adding, "The investigation is on and the law of the land will prevail." The ministry is in touch with the district administration of Gautam Buddha Nagar, which has enhanced round-the-clock security in the area, he said. He also noted that the district magistrate held a meeting of the residents, foreign students' associations in presence of the representatives from the Nigerian High Commission inNew Delhi. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Dhaka: Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Friday leaves for a four-day trip to India.The trip will witness signing of at least 25 bilateral agreements including in key areas of civil nuclear cooperation and defence. During her visit, which comes after a gap of seven years, Hasina will hold wide-ranging talks with her Indian counterpart Narendra Modi tomorrow during which India is also set to announce a line of credit of USD 500 million to Bangladesh for military supplies. "The upcoming visit is expected to further expand the cordial and cooperative relationship between India and Bangladesh and build on the strong ties of friendship and trust between the two leaders," a joint statement issued by the two countries said earlier. Hasina will also call on President Pranab Mukherjee and meet opposition leader Sonia Gandhi. She will visit Ajmer on Sunday and will meet Indian business leaders on Monday. She will also join a function at Manekshaw Centre to honour Indian Armed Forces members who embraced martyrdom in Bangladeshs War of Liberation in 1971. Diplomatic quarters of both sides expected that the reciprocal visit of the Bangladesh premier would take the Dhaka-New Delhi "historic relations" to a new height unveiling newer dimensions of cooperation in various sectors including trade and commerce, economy and connectivity. It will be Hasinas first bilateral visit to India in her current term as prime minister. Ramping up cooperation in defence and security will be a major focus area of the talks between Modi and Hasina and apart from an MoU to provide USD 500 million credit, another pact is likely to be inked to formalise regular defence engagements. Issues like combating terrorism, containing radicalism and enhancing security cooperation between the two countries are likely to figure prominently besides stalemate over the Teesta pact during talks between Modi and Hasina. Liberation War Affairs minister AKM Mozammel Haque, Water Resources Minister Anisul Islam Mahmud, Law Minister Anisul Haque, Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali, the Premiers Economic Affairs Advisor Moshiour Rahman and State Minister for Foreign Affairs Shahriar Alam are accompanying Hasina for the visit. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Jaipur: Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is scheduled to visit Ajmer dargah in Rajasthan on Sunday. She will arrive at Sanganer airport here in a plane from New Delhi and will go to Ajmer in a helicopter on Sunday. The Bangladeshi PM will pay obeisance at the dargah of sufi saint in Ajmer, an official of the state government said here. She will return the same day. Hasina arrived in national capital on Friday on a four-day visit during which she will hold bilateral talks with her Indian counterpart Narendra Modi. ALSO READ | PM Modi breaks protocol, travels through normal traffic to receive Sheikh Hasina at airport Both the sides would be signing at least 25 pacts in various key sectors including civil nuclear cooperation and defence but there was unlikely to be any agreement on the Teesta water sharing. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Sharpening its attack on the Arvind Kejriwal government in Delhi over the findings of Shunglu Committee, the BJP on Friday demanded CBI and CVC probes into illegal decisions of the AAP dispensation as flagged by the panel in its report. The party also demanded Lt Governor Anil Baijal set aside all appointments of AAP functionaries in the Delhi government, made without the LGs approval. Addressing a press conference here, BJP leader Meenakshi Lekhi alleged that Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal looted public money to benefit AAP functionaries. ALSO READ | Shunglu report: Congress demands Kejriwal's resignation, AAP says BJP resorting to mud-slinging ahead of MCD polls Lekhi, flanked by Leader of Opposition in Delhi Assembly Vijender Gupta, also charged the Kejriwal government with engaging in nepotism and corruption. We demanded CBI and Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) probes into the three-member Shunglu panel report which has flagged AAP-led Delhi governments various illegal decisions including the appointment of party functionaries, and allotment of land to Aam Aadmi Party for its office, she said. Gupta alleged that Kejriwal-led Delhi Cabinet violated laid down rules to take several decisions. In its report, the panel has pointed out gross abuse of power by the AAP government. Yesterday, BJP demanded the suspension of AAP government, which enjoys a massive mandate of 65 out of 70 seats in the Assembly. ALSO READ | Shunglu committee points out 'gross abuse of power' by AAP government The committee headed by former CAG V K Shunglu was set up in August, 2016 to ascertain the functioning of the AAP government. Delhi Congress chief Ajay Maken had accessed the report through an RTI in February. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Lok Sabha was informed on Friday, that the centre plans to set up a 24-hour national health helpline to address medical queries of the people Minister of State for Health Anupriya Patel said in a written reply that the facility - called 'Doctor on Call'--will reduce the need to pay personal visit to healthcare centres and thus decrease the load on government hospitals. "Government proposes to start 'Doctor on Call (DoC) 24X7 national health helpline for addressing the medical queries of citizens telephonically," she said. The facility will also help in speedier consultations, increase government-to-citizen interaction and vice veras, and build trust in government services and deliverables, she said. "The scheme is yet to be approved by the competent authority," Patel added. Also Read : Medical apathy: 22 patients put at risk as Delhi's GTB Hospital doctors administer contaminated medicine She said the government has taken steps to reduce pressure on hospitals which include strengthening of primary and sub-health centres by increasing the number of professionals in them. The government is also establishing telemedicine centres in rural areas for virtual consultations with specialists by utilizing telecom and SATCOM infrastructure, the minister said. "Online Registration System (ORS) has been introduced for scheduling appointments with doctors and specialists at major tertiary care hospitals by citizens reducing long queue and rush at hospitals," she added. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Citing security concerns, the government on Friday refused to share in the Lok Sabha the number of Brahmos cruise missiles deployed in the country. Responding to a question on the number of Brahmos missiles used by Russia, the number deployed in India and the quantum of investment by the two nations, Minister of State for Defence Subhash Bhamre said the Indo-Russia joint venture was a big success for India. Brahmos is a state-of-the-art supersonic cruise missile, which is a universal missile capable of being launched from multiple platforms... As regards the details that he has asked, I do have all the details. But due to security reasons of the country, I would not like to divulge, he said during the Question Hour. ALSO READ | BrahMos supersonic cruise missile successfully test-fired from Odisha coast, says DRDO Responding to a question on the need for uninterrupted supply of spares from Russia for military equipment, he said the issue has been discussed between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin. As a result of that, there was an inter-governmental military industrial conference held on March 17 and 18. It was primarily aimed at long term supply agreement between Russian original equipment manufacturers and the Indian armed forces and companies for spare parts of different platforms and formation of joint ventures and partnerships between Indian vendors and Russian original equipment manufacturers, he said. The first agreement was for long-term support for Sukhoi 30 MKI fleet, he said. ALSO READ | India holds talks with Vietnam on sale of indigenously developed Akash and Bramhos missile For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. john mccain cnn Sen. John McCain had supportive words for President Donald Trump on Friday after the US launched missile strikes against Syrian government targets in response to a chemical weapons attack inside the country days earlier. But the Arizona senator and chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee warned that it would do little for the war-torn region. "Don't expect one strike to one airfield one time to knock out a country's air force," McCain said in a CNN interview Friday. "We've been bombing ISIS for years," he said, referring to US coalition air strikes throughout Syria and Iraq. Indeed, the dozens of cruise missiles launched from two US Navy ships reportedly did little to hamper Syria's air operations, as Syrian forces took off from the targeted airfield hours later. When asked whether the US should send ground troops to Syria, McCain said Assad "will not be overthrown by American troops." He said only a trained, well-equipped free Syrian army would prevail. "The only reason why Bashar Assad is in power today is because of Russia and Iran certainly not because of Syrians," McCain said. Sen. John McCain says Russia and Iran are the only reasons Bashar al-Assad is still in power https://t.co/fW4tgkRxvf CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) April 7, 2017 Russian President Vladimir Putin has been a staunch ally to Assad, and Russia became more involved on his behalf in 2015, tipping the scales in favor of Assad's government. The civil war roiling Syria has been ongoing for six years. CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer appeared to strike a nerve with a question about Sen. Rand Paul's statement on the US missile strikes. Paul criticized Trump's move to strike, saying "the United States was not attacked," and reminding the commander-in-chief of his obligation to consult with Congress about military actions, adding that previous US interventions in the region "have done nothing to make us safer." McCain dismissed Paul, a former presidential candidate and frequent voice of opposition, out of hand. Story continues "He doesnt have any real influence in the United States Senate," McCain said. Watch a portion of McCain's interview below: NOW WATCH: ADMIRAL McRAVEN: Attacking Syria was 'the exact right thing to do' More From Business Insider New Delhi: Banking on the 40 lakh strong migrant vote bank in the National Capital, Janta Dal (United) is ready to make forays into Delhi politics, one step at a time. Nitish Kumar's JDU has decided to make its presence felt in Delhi, starting from MCD elections. "Delhi's Purvanchalis want us to come here," Sanjay Jha, JDU Delhi in-charge told News Nation Digital. According to Jha, Delhi needs Bihar's Nitish model for development. "People see only Lutyen's Delhi, they don't see Delhi which lives in JJ colonies and unauthorised colonies." These areas of the Union Territory are mostly inhabited by migrant population hailing from Purvanchal regions of UP and Bihar. In an interview with News Nation Digital, a close aide of Nitish Kumar, Jha also revealed that, for JDU, a strong performance in MCD elections would mean a stepping stone for upcoming Lok Sabha and assembly elections in 2019. Here are the excerpts from the interview: Q: Why has the party decided to contest MCD elections in Delhi? Idea? Goal? A: When Nitish Kumar took over as party president we decided to expand our reach. In Delhi, Purvanchalis wanted us to come here. With that in mind, we relaunched our party in National Capital on Dec 3. Q: On how many seats the party is contesting polls? All 272 or just some selective A: We are fighting elections on roughly 100 seats, basically, the seats which have the majority of people from Purvanchal - UP, Bihar and migrant community or poors like in areas such as Sangam Vihar, Burari and Kirari. What we have seen is ironical. Delhi needs more governance than Bihar. Bihar has seen much much better things. People see only Lutens Delhi, they have not seen the other Delhi, which lives in JJ colonies, unauthorised colonies and living conditions there. Here in Delhi people voted big time for Aam Adami Party, their major support comes from Purvanchal but they have done nothing... I think AAP has been a big let down. Q: Why do you think the Delhi voters will vote for JDU A: BJP has been in Delhi MCD for past 10 years. If you want to see the ground reality of PM Swachhta Abhiyan you should go and see what MCD counsellors have done. Nitish Kumar has really changed the face of Bihar. He has changed the perception of the state. People of Delhi need Nitish Model. With these elections we hope bring 'Nitish Model' to Delhi. If Bihar can be changed, why Delhi's neglected area can't be changed? Q: What advantage does JDU have over AP, BJP or Congress with Delhi voters? A: Number one, majority voters are Purvanchilis. Earlier they had to sit outside political offices to be heard but now their own people are fighting elections. Secondly, people from Purvanchali community have voted AAP and BJP in the past but to vain. They continue to live in 30-40 sq ft houses in unauthorised colonies. They can't take a loan on those houses. These governments have done nothing for them. The migrant community has trust for Nitish Kumar. They know that JDU may be a regional party but its leader Nitish Kumar has national prospects. So they know if he promises something he delivers. Q: What are the disadvantages for JDU? A: We don't have resources as compared to BJP or AAP. Plus we are new party here but with these elections, we will make our presence felt Q: But, auto drivers have already extended their support to JDU? A: On auto wallahs: Auto drivers were cheated by AAP. They were the one who promoted AAP in Delhi free of cost. But the party did nothing for them. Now they are saying that our own leader has come 'Nitish ji is the only one who can understand our problems, if he comes here he can help us'. AAP has done nothing for auto wallahs, rehri-patri wallahs, poor people living in unauthorised colonies. Now they are seeing that Nitish Kumar has come, 'my own party leader has come' Q: JDU has made forays in Delhi with MCD elections, is this first step towards other Delhi offices like CM or the ultimate post - PM? A: MCD elections are the first step towards Delhi assembly elections and then Lok Sabha elections. We will definitely contest from here. There are seven seats in Delhi, three seats in Noida, Ghaziabad and Faridabad with a huge presence of migrants. JDU definitely has a presence in these areas. These elections are kind of stepping stone for us for Lok Sabha polls Q: Is JDU fighting MCD polls with RJD, the alliance partner in Bihar? A: JDU not fighting elections along with RJD. We have an alliance in Bihar not in Delhi. Q: What's your take on BJP's huge victory in UP, and the selection of Yogi Adityanath as CM? A: Congress has not tried to assimilate the alliance. It would have been different result had they tried, particularly in Puravanchal region. No doubt it is a huge victory. They also have an advantage in MCD elections because of the Euphoria created by the UP results but they also have a great challenge they have to perform as well. Anti-incumbency factor will play a huge role in Delhi MCD elections. Councillors are so corrupt, the kind of money they make is unimaginable for even Members of Parliament. BJP is there in all three corporations, which makes them accountable to all queries. Only changing candidates will not give them a clean chit. Q: How do you see PM Modi's three years in office in Centre? A: Prime Minister Modi promised a lot, but delivery is yet to be seen. During Bihar elections, he promised crores of rupees, but I don't think the state has seen a penny of it so far. Q: Some media reports do speculate that Nitish Kumar may go with BJP in the coming days. What is the truth? Is everything fine in the ruling alliance in Bihar? A: Nitish Kumar cannot compromise when it comes rule of law and governance. So I think the alliance is working fine, so I don't think there is any question of going with BJP. MCD elections: The last MCD polls were held in 2012. The much-awaited polls will decide the fate of 272 councillors. While NDMC and SMDC have 104 seats each, EDMC has 64 seats. The total number of the electorate for the civic polls stands at 1,32,10,206, which include 73,15,915 men, 58,93,418 women and 793 voters in the other category, according to the state election commission. Nitish Kumar is scheduled to hold two public rallies for JDU candidates in MCD polls on April 9. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Mumbai: National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) will get faster as the Reserve Bank has decided to reduce clearance time so as to enhance the efficiency of electronic payment system and add to customer convenience. In line with the document on Vision-2018 for Payment and Settlement Systems, the NEFT settlement cycle will be reduced from hourly batches to half hourly batches, the RBI said in the first bi-monthly monetary policy for 2017-18. Consequently, 11 additional settlement batches will be introduced at 8.30 am onwards, taking the total number of half hourly settlement batches during the day to 23, the newly appointed Deputy Governor B P Kanungo said. This will enhance the efficiency of the NEFT system and add to customer convenience, he said. The starting batch at 8 am and closing batch at 7 pm shall remain the same and the return discipline will also remain the same, that is B+2 hours (settlement batch time plus two hours) as per the existing practice, it said. On promoting financial inclusion and literacy, it said the RBI is initiating a pilot project on financial literacy at the block level to explore innovative and participatory approaches to financial literacy. The pilot project will be commissioned in nine states across 80 blocks by non-government organisations (NGOs) in collaboration with sponsor banks, it said. Six NGOs registered with the Depositor Education and Awareness Fund, viz. CRISIL Foundation, Mumbai; Dhan Foundation; Swadhaar Fin Access, Mumbai; Indian School of Micro Finance for Women (ISMW); Samarpit, Chhattisgarh and the PACE Foundation have been selected to execute the pilot project in collaboration with banks, it said. The pilot project will be executed with the following broad objectivesactive saving and good borrowing; financial planning and goal setting and going digital and consumer protection. The Centres for Financial Literacy (CFL) will be set up under a common name and logo, Money-wise Centre for Financial Literacy. The sponsor banks will enter into contracts with the identified NGOs within three months, that is, by June 30, 2017. Thereafter, the NGOs will start operating the CFLs within three months of entering into contracts with banks, it said. Also Read: PM Modi in Mann Ki Baat: Take fight against black money, support digital payments For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: All India Cabin Crew Association said on Friday that Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad will continue to be risk for flight safety and he could only board the flight if he tenders unconditional apology to AI employees and undertakes in writing to abide by all norms. "In a letter to Air India, The AICCA wrote We as Cabin Crew, must only point out that Mr.Ravindra Gaikwad is and will continue to be a risk to Flight Safety and flight Operations and to Cabin Crew safety on board, and hence Government must think long and hard about letting him back on. In fact, Unless he tenders an unconditional apology to AI employees, and undertakes in writing to abide by the Chicago and Tokyo Conventions & Rules of the Air and follow all Cabin safety and public behaviour norms, we must not let him on board. On 23 March, Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad assaulted an elderly Air India officer with his slippers in a brazen burst of fury over being unable to travel business class despite having insisted on boarding an all-economy flight. Also Read: Gaikwad fly ban: Shiv Sena MP voices regret in a letter, no reaction from Air India yet Ravindra Gaikwad slapped and, by his own claim, hit 60-year-old duty manager Sukumar 25 times with his slippers when the official went to persuade him to disembark after he refused to alight, holding up the aircraft for over 40 minutes. Also Read: Shiv Sena threatens to boycott NDA meet if ban on party MP Gaikwad not revoked For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Srinagar: Two recently-recruited militants belonging to Hizbul Mujahideen were arrested today from Sopore township of north Kashmirs Baramulla district, a senior police officer said. Two newly recruited HM militants were arrested today from Achabal village of Sopore, Superintendent of Police (SP), Sopore, Harmeet Singh Mehta told PTI. Mehta said acting on a specific information from a reliable source about the presence of militants in an orchard near the village, security forces cordoned off the area and launched a search operation. He said during the search operation, the duo, Yawar Nabi Mir and Arsalan Rasool Teli, both residents of Mohalla Sheikh Sahib in Chinkipora area of Sopore were apprehended. The SP said, on questioning, the two revealed that they left their home on March 28 and joined Hizbul Mujahideen militant outfit on the instigation of some local recruiters. Also Read | 2008 serial terror blasts case: 12-day police custody for Yasin, Assadulla Their families had lodged a missing report on the same day, Mehta said. He said they also revealed that they were motivated to join the militancy by two persons, Arif Teli alias Tiger and Mohammad Shafi Teli, both residents of Arampora area of Sopore. Both these recruiters have been arrested and booked under law for their criminal intention, the SP said, adding few other recruiters are yet to be apprehended. The apprehension of these two newly recruited militants is in continuation to the policy of bringing back the local youth who have joined the militancy, the police officer said. Also Read | J&K Police bust module of Hizbul Mujahideen, six arrested in Kulgam For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: The BJP-led Uttar Pradesh government is putting all effort to improve government functionaries in the state. As Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is looking in full action, his cabinet ministers are also following his footsteps. On Thursday, UP Health Minister Siddharth Nath Singh visited Balrampur hospital in Lucknow and inspected the privileges are being given to the patients. Singh went to the canteen area and checked pulses that is being served to patients in the hospital. Singh asked the officials to maintain the quality of edible items. The state health minister also visited registration counter and took stock of the situation. Also Read: Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath asks officials to make yoga education compulsory in all govt schools In another major decision, the Uttar Pradesh government on Thursday said it would not allow the liquor shops to operate in those areas, where the locals are opposing them, even if it results in loss of revenue. At any cost, we will not allow the the liquor outlets (which shifted from highways following a Supreme Court order) to operate in areas where the locals are opposing, even if it results in loss of revenue to the exchequer, UP Excise minister Jai Pratap Singh said. Also Read | No liquor shops in residential areas: UP govt For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi/Lucknow: BJP-led Uttar Pradesh Government has decided to remove the 'Samajwadi' tag from all government schemes. Now all state schemes will be called 'Mukhya Mantri Yojna' while Central schemes will be known by their original names. The decision was taken by the state Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath during the second ministerial presentation session on Thursday. The presentation session which ran late into night ended with a series of decisions. In this session, 15 ministries presented their work. Next UP Cabinet meet will be held on April 11. Read | CM Yogi Adityanath to UP doctors: Work to earn patients' blessings, don't run after money Important decisions taken in Thursday's meeting: -Samajwadi word to be dropped from govt schemes -State schemes to be re-christened as Mukhya Mantri Yojna -Central schemes to be known by original names -Speeding up of govt schemes to keep cost in check -Focus on industrial town and industrial corridor being developed by Centre -To bring UP in top 5 states from number 14 currently -Focus on Khadi Gramudyog because they are associated with Mahatma Gandhi -Check corruption in energy production and distribution -Develop new capacities in renewable energy with an aim to add 2000 Mega Watt Read | No liquor shops in residential areas: UP govt For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Washington: US space agency National Aeronautics and Space Administrations (NASA) Cassini spacecraft, which has been on Saturn mission for 20 years, is about to die. NASA will kill the Cassini spacecraft worth USD 3.26 billion. The Cassini probe is in its last lap, where it will take a series of daring steps as it will fly between Saturn and its rings between April and September. The probe will then take a plunge into the atmosphere of Saturn, will explode like a meteor and die. On its last journey, the Cassini will make a close flyby of Saturns moon Titan and will leap over the icy rings of the planet, starting 22 weekly dives between the planet and its rings. So, NASA will destroy its 20-year-old Cassini spacecraft. Heres why: Reasons: The NASA Cassini spacecraft is running low on fuel as it has been in orbit around Saturn since 2004. NASA took this decision in order to protect and preserve Saturns moons, especially the potentially habitable Enceladus, for future exploration. The thrilling finale will help NASA scientists to further understand how giant planets as well as planetary systems form and evolve. What all will happen in the final chapter of Cassini spacecraft? On Saturday, April 22, NASAs Cassini will make a transition to its grand finale orbit. It will perform a last close flyby of Saturn's giant moon Titan on the same day. As part of the Saturn missions grand finale, the Cassini probe will make first of a series of dives through the 1,500-mile-wide (2,400-kilometer) space between Saturn and its rings on Wednesday, April 26. "No spacecraft has ever gone through the unique region that we'll attempt to boldly cross 22 times," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. On September 15, the NASA Cassini spacecraft will head towards its fateful plunge into Saturn and will beam back data from several instruments until it loses contact with Earth. "This planned conclusion for Cassini's journey was far and away the preferred choice for the mission's scientists," said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. "Cassini will make some of its most extraordinary observations at the end of its long life." ALSO READ | NASA bidding adieu to Cassini probe: Spacecraft will explode and become a part of Saturn The NASA team responsible for the mission hopes to seek strong insights into the internal structure of Saturn and the origin of the rings, get the first-ever sampling of atmosphere of Saturn and particles that come from the main ring and capture the closest-ever views of the clouds of the planet and its inner rings. ALSO READ | NASA's Saturn probe Cassini sends stunning picture of wavemaker moon Daphnis For all the Latest Science News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: For the first time in the history of Science, an atmosphere has been detected by scientists around an Earth-like planet, located 39 light years away in the constellation of Vela. Planet Gliese 1132b or GJ 1132b is 1.4 times of the size of the Earth. However, it is highly unlikely that it could be habitable with over 250C temperature. Still, scientists say it is one of the most important discovery as it paves the way for the possibility that life could thrive beyond the solar system. GJ 1132b planet was discovered back in 2015 but at that time scientists didnt have any idea whether it had an atmosphere. On April 6, 2017, it was reported in the Astronomical Journal that recent observations revealed that an atmosphere around it exists. Interestingly, the atmosphere has traces of water and methane. An ESO/MPG telescope at the European South Observatory in Chile was used by the researchers who studied the planet in seven different wavelengths. We managed to obtain the telescope time to do the observations, and indeed found an atmosphere of a similar size to that which we hoped might be there, Dr. John Southworth, lead author of the paper in Journal, from Keele University in the UK, told Wired. When different wavelengths were studied, it was found that GJ 1132b planet appeared larger at one wavelength compared to others. These things dont pop up in the way you expect, said Southworth. We found evidence for the atmosphere at one wavelength band and that wasnt what we were expecting. After observation, scientists suggest that the planet has a thick atmosphere rich in steam and/or methane. "One possibility is that it is a 'water world' with an atmosphere of hot steam," said Dr Southworth. ALSO READ : Searching for alien worlds: Scientists detect more than 100 new potential exoplanets "What we have shown is that planets around low mass stars can have atmospheres and because there are so many of those in the Universe, it makes it that much more likely that one might have life, he added. Watch Video | Aliens exist on Mars? 'Three towers' arranged in perfect straight line found on the red planet by UFO hunters According to scientists, the super-Earth appears to be cloaked in a thick layer of gases that may be water or methane or a mix of both. The study has been published in the Astronomical Journal. For all the Latest Science News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Melbourne: In a breakthrough, a new way power of attraction that could help save Australias iconic Great Barrier Reef from starfish has been discovered by the scientists. The power of attraction may destroy one of Great Barrier Reefs fiercest enemies, according to Researchers at the University of Queensland in Australia. The researchers have said that because of a release of pheromones the rown-of-thorns starfish gather in large numbers. The pheromones is a scent that they have decoded so the prickly pests can be lured to their capture. For an already struggling Great Barrier Reef, and indeed any reefs across the Indo-Pacific region, these starfish pose an enormous threat due to the ability of a single female to produce up to 120 million offspring in one spawning season, said Professor Bernard Degnan, who led the study. They feast on the coral and leave it bleached white and vulnerable to destruction in heavy storms, said Degnan. Over many years, several steps have been taken and millions of dollars have been spent to capture crown-of-thorns starfish via diver collection, injections or robotics. Now we have found the genes the starfish use to communicate, we can begin fabricating environmentally safe baits that trick them into gathering in one place, making it easier to remove reproductively-primed animals, Degnan said. ALSO READ | Undersea landslide found in Australia's iconic Great Barrier Reef The research has been published in the journal Nature. For all the Latest Science News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Astronomers from University of Massachusetts Amherst are going to join researchers around the globe this week to create what could be said one of historys most divulging looks at a black hole. The university is going to train their telescopes at the center of the Milky Way in Mexico in collaboration with seven telescopes in Hawaii, Arizona, Chile, Spain, and at the South Pole to create the effect of an Earth-sized device powerful enough to see the center of our galaxy, which is 26,000 light years away. Read more: Watch: Jupiter to appear bigger and brighter tonight, moves 414 million miles closer to Earth The main aim is to examine the thin edge, or event horizon, of the black hole, which has a mass 4 million times that of the sun. Such an extreme environment could provide an opportunity to gather data to evaluate theoretical concepts including Einsteins general theory of relativity. Research professor Gopal Narayanan of UMass Amherst said These are the observations that will help us to sort through all the wild theories about black holes. And there are many wild theories". With data from this project, we will understand things about black holes that we have never understood before. UMass, which will be the Large Millimeter Telescope with Mexicos Instituto Nacional de Astrofisica, said the technique in the study has been applied before, but this is the first time it has been carried out on such a large scale. The observations began on Wednesday and will conclude by April 15. Read more: An uncanny presence of radio waves coming from outer space puzzle scientists Using Earths rotation and aiming each telescope at the same object, over the course of many hours their sampled curves, combined, resemble the observational effect of one large instrument, the university said in a news release. For all the Latest Science News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Islamabad: Pakistan Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif accuses India for its strained ties with Afghanistan. Speaking to a private news channel, the minister claimed the strained relations between the two countries were due to Indian influence on Afghanistan's side. He emphasised the sacrifices of the Pakistan armed forces in the country's "war on terror", adding that every possible step would be taken to flush out militants and the menace of "terrorism" from the country, Express Tribune reported. He also appreciated the armed forces for extending their services during the census process. When asked about former army chief General Raheel Sharif's appointment as head of Saudi-led military alliance, Asif said the decision of the coalition forces was yet to be taken. Also Read : India, Pakistan should consider all options to resolve Kashmir issue, says Farooq Abdullah Relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan appear to be back on track after months of tensions and war of words, as the Prime Minister's Advisor on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz reported progress in his recent talks with senior Afghan officials in London. Briefing the National Assembly Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Sartaj Aziz said the London meeting with Afghan National Security Advisor Hanif Atmar had helped break the ice. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New York: India-born former top federal prosecutor Preet Bharara took swipes at President Donald Trump in his first public appearance since being fired, and says "you dont drain a swamp with a slogan" and poked fun at his fixation on crowd sizes. During an hour-long speech at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art here, Bharara used wit as well as brutal criticism as he offered his thoughts about the Trump administration and reflected on his 7.5 year journey as the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Bharara, who was fired by the Trump administration last month, used the Presidents popular campaign slogan to "drain the swamp" to offer a brutal criticism of the new administration and its way of working. "There is a swamp, a lot of the system is rigged and lots of your fellow Americans have been forgotten and have been left behind. Those are not alternative facts. That is not fake news," the 48-year-old said to a packed hall. "But I would respectfully submit you dont drain a swamp with a slogan. You dont drain it by replacing one set of partisans with another. You dont replace muck with muck. To drain a swamp you need an Army Corps of Engineers, experts schooled in service and serious purpose, not do-nothing, say-anything neophyte opportunists who know a lot about how to bully and bluster but not so much about truth, justice and fairness." "Draining a swamp takes genuine commitment to justice and fairness and not attention to what benefits one group over another or divides one group against another," he said. Bharara began The John Jay Iselin Memorial Lecture yesterday by taking a dig at Trumps fixation with crowd sizes, saying the audience for his own event was much bigger than the one that showed up for former President Barack Obama. "This actually seems like a very great and welcoming crowd. This is like the largest sell-out crowd of my career," Bharara said, adding that the last time he was in the Cooper Union hall was about seven years ago when Obama was there to give a speech. "I just want to say one thing for the record in front of everyone about crowd size," Bharara said amid huge round of applause and laughter. "I dont care what the picture shows. My crowd is a lot bigger than Obamas crowd, much bigger than Obamas crowd. From where I stand here, it looks to be about 1-1.5 million people. Its a really huge crowd. Look thats the information I was given," he said. He was referring to Trumps constant bragging of how the size of the crowd at his inauguration was much bigger than that at the time of Obamas swearing-in ceremony in 2009. Bharara acknowledged the presence of some of his former colleagues, including some from his press office who he said "were the only people who stood between me and the dishonest media," in another swipe at Trump. "Thats called tongue and cheek," Bharara said. He also thanked New York Universitys School of Law for giving him a job as the distinguished scholar in residence. "My father-in-law was really happy to hear that I was going to have a job," he said. During the lecture, Bharara reflected on his time as Manhattans top federal prosecutor and his offices accomplishments in rooting out corruption and fighting terrorism and insider trading cases. He said he has no complaints and remorse and his term as US Attorney will be the "greatest professional honour of my life." Even when Bharara was in office, he repeatedly dismissed speculation that he will eventually run for public office and reiterated that he will not enter politics. "I dont have any plans to enter politics just like I had no plans to join the circus. I mean no offense to the circus," he said to laughter from the audience. Bharara called on American citizens to unite and continue the fight against injustice, saying active citizenship matters and is "desperately needed now more than ever, individually and collectively." "In this time of antagonism and polarisation, in this time of head-strong faith that your side is always right and the other side is always wrong," Bharara cited the example of processes in a court of law where both sides have the right to present arguments and to challenge arguments. He said a court "lets both sides do so without fear of being shouted down or shut down." For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Three people were killed and many injured after a truck drove into pedestrians on a Stockholm street, according to the Swedish media.A Suspect in Stockholm truck ramming attack has been apprehended. The attack happened few metres away from Indian Embassy, says an ANI report. The local police officials have said that they are treating the incident as a potential terrorist attack. As per embassy sources in Stockholm all embassy local and Indian staff are reported to be safe. "Saw two people lying on street, heard loud noises, saw three others injured, helicopters flying," Indian Ambassador to Sweden Monika Mohta told ANI.A Swedish Prime Minister says one person arrested in the deadly truck attack on a Stockholm department store.A "Sweden has been attacked, Stockholm crash a terror attack," said Swedish PM. Stockholm metro has been shut down after attack. People in the downtown area fled in panic, and the countryas intelligence agency said a large number of people were injured. Swedish radio put the death toll at three. aSweden has been attacked,a Lofven said. aThis indicates that it is an act of terror.a Swedish broadcaster SVT said shots were fired at the scene, though it wasnat clear by whom and police said they could not confirm that. Live television footage showed smoke coming out of the upscale Ahlens department store on Drottninggatan Street, which the truck smashed into. The department store is part of Sweden-wide chain. The building includes several stores at street-level. aWe stood inside a shoe store and heard something ... and then people started to scream,a witness Jan Granroth told the Aftonbladet daily. aI looked out of the store and saw a big truck.a Photos from the scene showed a beer truck sticking out of the department store, and Aftonbladet daily reported that Swedish beer maker Spendrups said one of its trucks had been carjacked earlier today. Todayas incident is near the site of a December 2010 attack in which Taimour Abdulwahab, a Swedish citizen who lived in Britain, detonated a suicide bomb, killing himself and injuring two others. Abdulwahab rigged a car with explosives in the hope that the blast would drive people to Drottninggatan, the street hit today, where he would set off devices strapped to his chest and back. The car bomb never went off, and Abdulwahab died when one of his devices exploded among panicked Christmas shoppers. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for todayas attack, but vehicles have been common weapons in recent extremist attacks. ANI Exclusive: Latest visuals of the site of terror attack in Stockholm which happened in close proximity to Indian embassy #swedenattack pic.twitter.com/XxGtUF7Rqm a ANI (@ANI_news) April 7, 2017 A .@AFPphoto Map of #Stockholm showing central location where a truck drove into a crowd, leaving dead and many injured, intelligence services said pic.twitter.com/QPnyA4yGlV a AFP news agency (@AFP) April 7, 2017 ANI Exclusive: I was in a nearby store on Drottninggatan street when attack happened, there was a lot of chaos, people crying- Eyewitness pic.twitter.com/kbzFa2pq84 a ANI (@ANI_news) April 7, 2017 A ANI Exclusive: Visuals of the Stockholm attack from Drottninggatan street (Visuals deferred by unspecified time) pic.twitter.com/tu4koGRL4m a ANI (@ANI_news) April 7, 2017 A A A A A A For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi : Russia on Friday said that US strikes in Syria have inflicted 'considerable damage' to US-Russia ties. President Vladimir Putin considers the US strike on a Syrian airbase on Friday as "aggression against a sovereign state," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. "President Putin considers American strikes on Syria aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international norms, and under an invented pretext," Peskov was reported as saying. Earlier, Russia, one of the key supporter of the Assad regime in Syria, has "failed in its responsibility" to deliver on a 2013 commitment to secure Syria's chemical weapons, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said ahead of his visit to Moscow next week. Tillerson's visit, the first trip to Russia by a Trump administration official aimed at establishing closer ties with the former Cold War foe, was announced after the US launched cruise missiles against an air base in Syria in retaliation to the chemical weapons attack in Khan Sheikhun in rebel-held Idlib province. Also Read | Several dead in US strike on Syria base: Homs governor "Clearly Russia has failed in its responsibility. EitherRussia has been complicit or either Russia has been simply incompetent in its ability to deliver on its end of that agreement," Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters atPalm Beach in Florida after the US launched cruise missiles against a Syrian air base. The US launched a massive military strike on a Syrian air base in retaliation to a"barbaric" chemical attack on civilians allegedly by embattledPresident Bashar al-Assad's regime and asked all "civilised" countries to join it to end the killing of innocent people. Also Read: Syria chemical attack Russia defends Assad govt amid international outcry On President Donald Trump's orders, US warships in theMediterranean Sea launched between 50-60 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Shayrat air base, in Homs governorate, where the warplanes that carried out the chemical attacks are based,US officials said. (with PTI Inputs) For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Moscow/Ankara: Russian President Vladimir Putin called the US air strike on Syria as an aggression against a sovereign state and demanded an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss the strike against ally Bashar al-Assad's forces in Syria. "We call upon the UN Security Council to hold an extraordinary meeting to discuss the situation," the foreign ministry in Moscow said in a statement, calling the strike a"gross... violation of international law." Moscow also announced that it is halting an agreement with the United States aimed at avoiding clashes between their forces in the skies over Syria in response toWashington's strike in the war-torn country. Also Read: US military claims deadly air strike on Al-Qaeda meet in Syria, denies targeting mosque "The Russian side is halting the effect of the memorandum for prevention of incidents and ensuring the safety of air flights during operations in Syria which was agreed with the US," a statement by the Russian foreign ministry said. Following the US air strike on a Syrian airbase, Turkey called for a no-fly zone in Syria. "In order to prevent similar massacres from happening again, it is necessary to enforce a no-fly zone and create safe zones in Syria without further delay," Turkish PresidentRecep Tayyip Erdogan's spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said in a statement. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. A PROJECT to build a new parish centre in Gerrards Cross got off the ground last Sunday when 1.3 million was pledged to the scheme in just one day. St James, Gerrards Cross, and St James, Fulmer, raised more than half the target of 2.25 million in a single day of pledges from churchgoers. The Rector, Paul Williams, described the sum as "wonderful", but pointed out that it was just the first step towards collecting the total funding for the scheme. The proposed new building would include a 500-seater auditorium, two large rooms for youth and children's groups, stage, lighting and sound systems, a creche and catering facilities. Mr Williams said: "Our prayers have been answered and the response from the congregation has been magnificent. "Not only are we well over half-way to our target of 2.25 million, but the project has also attracted support from most of our members. "We shall go into the New Year full of enthusiasm." The new building would be host to a wide range of activities including mother and toddler groups, parenting and marriage courses and concerts and plays. Ten per cent of all the money raised will be given to causes outside the church, including Toybox, a local charity that supports work with street children in Guatemala. Duncan Dyason, director of Toybox, said: "We are very excited here in realising that a local church is prepared to get behind a local charity. "One of the strong points of Toybox is that local people come together to support work for people in other countries." The next steps are to draw up the detailed requirements of the plan, taking into account views expressed by church members. Mr Williams believes there is a need for the hall, which he hopes will serve the the whole village, not just members of the church. He added: "The new centre will be designed to meet the needs of a growing congregation and enable us to have new opportunities to serve the wider community." "We require modern, flexible space for a wider range of youth activities, adult teaching and community programmes. "We shall keep in close contact with the Community Association to ensure that a new building at St James will complement the facilities at the Memorial Centre." The new hall would replace the existing three buildings on the site, Main Hall, Cedar Hall and Green Hall. Russia has 'egg on their face' after Trump airstrike, says former US ambassador to Syria Russian President Vladimir Putin is likely furious after the U.S. fired cruise missiles at a Syrian air base in response to a chemical weapons attack, former U.S. Ambassador to Syria Theodore Kattouf told CNBC on Friday. "But they have egg on their face," Kattouf, who served under the George W. Bush administration, said on " Squawk Box ." Kattouf said that Russia guaranteed in 2013 that Syria's chemical weapons arsenal would be removed or destroyed. Obviously, that did not happen "100 percent," Kattouf said. After Thursday's U.S. missile strikes on a Syrian air base, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Russia had failed to carry out the 2013 agreement to secure Syrian chemical weapons. He said Moscow was either complicit or incompetent in its ability to uphold that deal. Russia said the U.S. strikes against Bashar Assad's government violated international law. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin believed the U.S. attacks on Syria showed aggression against a sovereign state. President Donald Trump ordered the attack by 59 Tomahawk missiles on a Syria military air base in response to Tuesday's deadly chemical weapons attack allegedly carried out by Assad's military on a rebel-held area. Kattouf said the strikes against Assad's government sent "just the right message." James Stavridis, a retired admiral who served as NATO's supreme allied commander, told CNBC on Friday that the attack showed the U.S. is not afraid to use force. "Let's face it: Part of the audience here is not just Russia, Iran and Syria. Part of the audience is (Chinese) President Xi (Jinping)," Stavridis said on "Squawk Box." As missiles hit a Syrian air base, Trump was meeting with the Chinese president in Florida. "Perhaps it is no coincidence that the strikes get launched while President Xi is down in Mar-a-Lago. Pretty good signal that the United States intends to play hard with North Korea," Stavridis said. Story continues CNBC's Everett Rosenfeld contributed to this report. More From CNBC Easter will be celebrated on April 16 this year, and there are plenty of opportunities to fill baskets with candy and chocolate made here in Connecticut. According to a survey by the National Confectioners Association, candy and chocolate play a major role in consumers' Easter celebrations, with 75 percent saying they have shared chocolate or candy with family and friends on the holiday. The National Retail Federation said consumers are expected to spend $2.6 billion on candy this Easter. Don't you just love beer-related holidays? April 7 is National Beer Day, and what better way to celebrate than to enjoy a cold pint at your local brewery. Check out our rundown of Connecticut's breweries in the slideshow. Connecticut is home to about 1.3 breweries per capita, according to the Brewers Association (BA), a nonprofit trade organization made up of brewers. The number of breweries in the state has also been on the rise for the past five years, increasing from 16 in 2011 to 35 in 2015. Chris Flynn, the founder of the Facebook Group CT Beer Drinkers talked about the evolution of beer in Connecticut in a January interview. "We had, in Connecticut, the same old beer choices for many years, and then now there's a trend in the US to support your local store and local restaurant," Flynn said. "Everyone wants to support their local brewery or winery. It seems to have taken off everywhere." The trend has continued as a few breweries recently opened up right in our backyard. Aspetuck Brew Lab and Veracious Brewing hit the scene in Bridgeport and Monroe, respectively, back in 2015. And in 2016, Brewport, in Bridgeport, and Fairfield Craft Ales, in Stratford, both opened in August. If you ask a local brewer, chances are they'll say the industry is just starting to see its rise. Back in October 2016, Tom Sobocinski, cofounder of Black Hog Brewing in Oxford, talked about this: He said consumer interest has played a big role in the industry's rise. He said while Black Hog Brewing is "kind of off the beaten path," customers make it up to try something new. "Consumers are just really interested in exploring new beers," Sobocinski said. "And we have a lot of support from local restaurants and bars. It's just a very trending market." Thanks to this, Sobocinski added that there are still plenty of opportunities for new breweries. "I think there's still a lot of room [for new breweries]," Sobocinski said. "I think it's going to become a lot more localized. There's going to be a focus on quality [as an industry]." Phil Markowski, cofounder of Two Roads Brewing in Stratford, also said he believes Connecticut's craft brewery scene is just getting started. "Right now, there are 40 some odd breweries in Connecticut and seemingly no end in sight," Markowski said. "It's really exciting the quality of beer being brewed in Connecticut." When it comes to craft beer, there are only a few states considered the powerhouses of the industry: California, Oregon, and Colorado. Employing a little math, Markowski said if you consider there are roughly 4,600 to 4,700 craft breweries in the U.S., the current trend lends some evidence to there being about 100 breweries in Connecticut in the next decade and just as strong success as leading states. "There's still a bigger perception that beers on the west coast are superior to beers made locally," Markowski said. "We [at Two Roads] want to do our part to put Connecticut on the map in terms of craft brewing. We have every reason to believe that's our future as well." Since 2012, when Connecticut changed a law to allow breweries to sell beer on their premises without being restaurant, the state's craft brewery scene has exploded with more than two dozen breweries opening around the state. But part of this larger craft expansion can also be due to consumer perceptions. As both Sobocinski and Markowski noted, consumers are valuing quality more and more. "It's part of this movement away from industrialized food. Beer is another example of that," Markowski said. "People have discovered that beer can be off all different flavors and made all different ways." Around the country, craft breweries have been on the rise since 2006, according to BA. Between 2010 and 2015, the number of breweries around the country jumped from about 1,813 to 4,269. If you're asking yourself why we should be celebrating American beer, just consider the history. In the January 1920, America halted the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol with the introduction of the 18th Amendment. In response, the rise of "bootlegging" and "speakeasies" created their own colorful history between the 1920s and 1930s. Eventually the 21st Amendment repealed the 18th Amendment, ending the country's Prohibition era. (Updates with Rouhani reaction) April 7 (Reuters) - U.S. allies expressed support on Friday for Washington's missile strikes on Syria, calling them a proportionate response to Syrian forces' suspected use of chemical weapons. The strikes were denounced as illegal by Syria and its allies Russia and Iran. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani called on the world "to reject such policies, which bring only destruction and danger to the region and the globe". Iraq criticised "hasty interventions" in an apparent comment on the U.S. action. But a wide range of U.S. allies from Asia, Europe and the Middle East expressed support, if sometimes cautiously, in similar terms. "The U.K. government fully supports the U.S. action, which we believe was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime and is intended to deter further attacks," a British government spokesman said. Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters: "Many innocent people became victims from the chemical attacks. "Japan supports the U.S. government's determination to prevent the spread and use of chemical weapons," he said. Turkey viewed the strikes positively and the international community should sustain its stance against the "barbarity" of the Syrian government, Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said. In an interview with Turkish broadcaster Fox TV, Kurtulmus said Assad's government must be punished in the international arena and the peace process in Syria needed to be accelerated. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said Russia and Iran needed to understand that supporting Assad made no sense and that the escalation of the U.S. military role in Syria was a "warning" to "a criminal regime". "Use of chemical weapons is appalling and should be punished because it is a war crime," Ayrault told Reuters and France Info radio. French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel issued statements saying Assad was solely to blame for the air strikes. Story continues The Dutch government said: "The United States has given a clear signal that the use of poison gas crosses a line." It also labelled the strikes a "proportionate" response. "U.S. strikes show needed resolve against barbaric chemical attacks. EU will work with the US to end brutality in Syria," the chairman of the council of EU leaders, Donald Tusk, said on Twitter. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the strikes sent "a vitally important message" that the world would not tolerate the use of chemical weapons. "The retribution has been proportionate and it has been swift," he told reporters in Sydney. "We support the United States in that swift action." Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which back rebels fighting Assad, said they supported the U.S. strikes and held only the Syrian government responsible for the attacks. Other Gulf countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait, also expressed support for the attacks. Some countries expressed reservations about the U.S. decision to launch strikes without authorisation from the U.N. Security Council. Indonesia, home to the world's largest Muslim population, condemned the use of chemical weapons in Syria. "At the same time, Indonesia is concerned with unilateral actions by any parties, including the use of Tomahawk missiles, in responding to the chemical weapon attack tragedy in Syria," Foreign Ministry spokesman Armanatha Nasir said in a text message. "Military actions, undertaken without prior authorisation of the U.N. Security Council, are not in line with international legal principles in the peaceful settlement of disputes, as stipulated in the U.N. Charter." (Additional reporting by Kanupriya Kapoor in Jakarta, Parisa Hafezi in Ankara, Guy Faulconbridge in London, Andrew Osborn and Jack Stubbs in Moscow, John Irish in Nouakchott, Mauritania, Colin Packham in Sydney, Tulay Karadeniz in Istanbul, Maher Chmaytelli in Erbil, Aziz El Yaakoubi and Sami Aboudi in Dubai and Marcin Goettig in Warsaw; Writing by Nick Macfie; Editing by Clarence Fernandez, Sonya Hepinstall and Giles Elgood) DANBURY With her client facing a possible lifetime in prison, defense attorney Jennifer Tunnard sought Friday to get the charges reduced against the nanny who is accused of abusing three children under her care. Lidia Quilligana, who worked as a nanny for a Danbury family in 2015, is facing 23 counts of risk of injury to a minor and one count of first-degree assault for what police said was repeated abuse of a 3-year-old girl and her twin 1-year-old siblings. If convicted, she could face up to 10 years in prison for each of the risk-of-injury charges and 20 years on the assault charge. The 32-year-old sat solemnly in a Danbury Superior courtroom Friday afternoon, listening through headphones as a Spanish interpreter translated her attorneys pretrial argument that some of the charges against Quilligana should be consolidated and others should be dismissed altogether. The defense contends that, in some instances, the nanny was merely disciplining the children. Not every act of discipline perpetrated will threaten his or her health, Tunnard said. It does not give rise to enough of an act to endanger the physical well being. Quilligana was arrested in March 2015, the day after police said she was recorded on video beating and burning the 3-year-old girl in her care. Authorities said the woman is seen in the video force feeding the girl before slapping her, knocking her to the ground, jumping on her and pressing her hands and leg to a stove burner. After reviewing two weeks worth of video from the familys home security system, prosecutors concluded that Quilligana had abused the child and her 1-year-old twin siblings repeatedly, court records show. Tunnard took issue with most of the 15 additional charges issued after police reviewed the videos a month after Quilliganas initial arrest. Im not asking to dismiss the case, just those charges she said. Assistant States Attorney Warren Murray said it was premature to dismiss any of the charges against Quilligana. He added that, as case examples show, risk of injury charges do not require an actual injury to the child. In October, Quilligana elected to have a judge, rather than a jury, decide her case. A trial date has not been set. Murray said the charges do not include all the details of the incidents, which would be revealed in a trial and show the extent of the abuse. It should be up to the judge during the trial to interpret the full scope of evidence, he said. It is not improper discipline, it is striking a child, he said Friday. That just argues the need for an evidentiary hearing. Tunnard said Friday that several incidents that happened within seconds of each other should not be charged separately. Treating them as distinct incidents, she said, would constitute double jeopardy. Murray maintained that each charge represented a separate incident, some because they were two distinct types of assault. Quilligana, who gave birth to her third child in December 2015, has been held on a $1 million bond since her arrest. She rejected a plea deal offered by prosecutors last April that called for a 25-year sentence suspended after serving 17 years in prison. The judge said Friday he will review both attorneys claims and decide his ruling at a later date. aquinn@newstimes.com; @QuinnNewsTimes TORONTO, April 6, 2017 /CNW/ - Collins Barrow Toronto is pleased to announce their support of the C150 Global Odyssey (C150GO). With a passion for aviation, adventure and their home country, Canadian father-son team Bob and Steven Dengler set out with C150GO on Canada's first around-the-world helicopter flight. As an added distinction, they are also the first-ever father-son global circumnavigation team. The Canadian crew will fly a Canadian-made Bell 429 Global Ranger helicopter over 37,000 km in just over one month. Starting in Ottawa on July 1, 2017 and zigzagging the globe, the crew will visit more than 100 airports in 14 countries as they travel the world. "At Collins Barrow Toronto, we judge ourselves by the company we keep," said Michael Allen, partner and member of the firm's management committee. "We are very proud to support Bob and Steven's adventure, follow their journey and allow our clients the opportunity to experience something they can't get elsewhere." In celebration of Canada's 150th Anniversary, C150GO will support and raise funds for both the Southlake Regional Health Centre Foundation and True Patriot Love Foundation. CB Toronto is excited to extend the opportunity to join the C150 Global Odyssey as a virtual crew member, and is inviting those interested in sponsoring this special flight to contact them. For corporate sponsorship opportunities, please call 647.727.3675. SOURCE Collins Barrow National Cooperative Incorporated For further information: Michael Allen, Partner, Collins Barrow Toronto LLP, [email protected], 416.322.1659, Connect on LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/michaelallencpa; Tanya Kostiw, Media Relations, Akcessia | Mayk Ideas, [email protected], 647.946.4079, Connect on LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/tanya-kostiw-58240385; https://www.linkedin.com/company/collins-barrow, https://www.collinsbarrow.com Related Links www.collinsbarrow.com EDMONTON, April 6, 2017 /CNW/ - AutoCanada Inc. ("AutoCanada" or the "Company") (TSX: ACQ) announces that it will release its financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2017 on Thursday, May 4, 2017 after market close. The Company will hold a conference call and webcast to discuss the results on Friday, May 5, 2017 at 8:00am Mountain Time (10:00am Eastern). The conference call will include prepared remarks from Steven Landry, President & Chief Executive Officer and Chris Burrows, Chief Financial Officer. After the prepared remarks, the Company will accept questions from analysts and institutional investors. Date: Friday, May 5, 2017 Time: 8:00am MT (10:00am ET) Call: 1.888.231.8191 (Canada and USA) Participants are asked to call at least 10 minutes prior to the start of the call. For those unable to participate on the live call, a replay will be made available until Friday, May 12, 2017 by dialing 1.855.859.2056 (Canada and USA), passcode 97406222. The public is invited to listen to the live conference call or the replay. This conference call will be webcast live over the internet and can be accessed by all interested parties at the following URL: http://investors.autocan.ca/Q12017 To listen to the live webcast, visit the weblink at least 10 minutes early to register, download and install any necessary audio software. For those unable to listen during the live webcast, an audio replay will be available shortly after the conclusion of the conference call for a period of 90 days. Webcast of AGM Presentation AutoCanada will hold its Annual Meeting on Friday, May 5, 2017 at 10:00am Mountain Time (12:00pm Eastern) at the Hilton Doubletree West Edmonton Hotel, Room SBCC #7, 16615-109 Avenue, Edmonton, Alberta (the "Meeting"). The Meeting materials are available online on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and on AutoCanada's website at http://investors.autocan.ca. To view a live webcast of the Annual Meeting, please access the following URL: http://investors.autocan.ca/2017AGM At the Meeting, shareholders will be asked to elect the directors of the Company for the ensuing year and to appoint PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as the independent auditor of the Company. Following the conclusion of the formal proceedings of AutoCanada's annual shareholder meeting, Steven Landry, President & CEO, will address shareholders and provide a recap of 2016, discuss the current state of the Company, and will discuss key initiatives for the coming year. The Company is also pleased to announce that Arlene Dickinson, Chief Executive Officer of Venture Communications Ltd., has been nominated for election as a director at the Meeting. About AutoCanada Inc. AutoCanada is one of Canada's largest multi-location automobile dealership groups, currently operating 56 franchised dealerships, comprised of 64 franchises, in eight provinces and has over 4,250 employees. AutoCanada currently sells Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram, FIAT, Chevrolet, GMC, Buick, Cadillac, Infiniti, Nissan, Hyundai, Subaru, Mitsubishi, Audi, Volkswagen, KIA, BMW and MINI branded vehicles. In 2016, our dealerships sold approximately 60,000 vehicles and processed approximately 864,000 service and collision repair orders in our 928 service bays. Additional information about AutoCanada Inc. is available at www.sedar.com and the Company's website at www.autocan.ca. SOURCE AutoCanada Inc. For further information: Glen Nelson, Investor Relations, Phone: 780.733.7994, Email: [email protected] Related Links www.autocan.ca OTTAWA, 7 April 2017 /CNW/ - Bank of Canada Governor Stephen S. Poloz and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance Ginette Petitpas Taylor today unveiled a commemorative $10 bank note celebrating the 150th anniversary of Confederation. This special noteshowcasing our history, land and culturewas revealed during a ceremony at the Bank's head office in Ottawa. It will enter into circulation on 1 June. "This bank note is intended to captivate our imagination and instill pride in what we, as a nation, have accomplished," said Governor Poloz. "It celebrates the natural beauty and majesty of our land and some of the important parliamentarians who helped shape our great country." The intricately designed note is unique in many ways. For the first time, four individuals are portrayed on the front of a Canadian bank note: Sir John A. Macdonald, Sir George-Etienne Cartier, Agnes Macphail and James Gladstone or Akay-na-mukahis Blackfoot name. With Parliament's Hall of Honour in the background, these four parliamentarians remind us that Canada has been shaped by the vision, courage and effort of people of different backgrounds. Upon circulation, the commemorative note will mark the first time that a Canadian woman and an Indigenous Canadian are depicted as portrait subjects on a Bank of Canada bank note. The design also incorporates Inuit and Metis cultural elements: a colourful reproduction of the artwork Owl's Bouquet by world-renowned Inuit artist Kenojuak Ashevak; and the distinctive arrow sash pattern, an important symbol of the Metis nation. "Canada's diversity is our greatest strength," said Ms. Petitpas Taylor. "As we celebrate Canada 150 we are reminded of what makes us who we arefrom our shared history, to our cultures and languages to the breathtaking natural beauty that is instantly recognized around the world. On behalf of the Government of Canada I thank Governor Poloz and the Bank of Canada for their contribution to this truly national celebration." The Canada 150 note also showcases Canada's natural beauty and unique landscapes. Five different landscapes representing the various regions of Canada are featured on the other side of the note: the Lions/Twin Sisters (Western Canada), a wheat field (Prairie provinces), the Canadian Shield (Central Canada), Cape Bonavista (Eastern Canada) and the Northern lights (Northern Canada). The commemorative $10 note also has new security features, including a colour-shifting arch depicting an arch found in the Memorial Chamber on Parliament Hill, as well as three-dimensional maple leaves. A comprehensive consultation process was undertaken by the Bank to ensure that this commemorative bank note reflects the input of Canadians. The ideas and suggestions received through public opinion research, consultation and focus groups influenced the note's content and have been carefully incorporated into the design. Starting in June, the Bank of Canada will issue 40 million of these commemorative bank notes and distribute them through financial institutions to be broadly available across Canada by 1 July. The Canada 150 note will circulate alongside the current Polymer series $10 note, but it does not replace it. Both the current $10 note and the commemorative $10 note are of equal value and can be used interchangeably in transactions. As announced in December, human rights and freedoms icon Viola Desmond will be featured on a new $10 note, which will mark another historic first: Desmond will become the first Canadian woman to be featured on a regularly circulating Bank of Canada bank note, expected in late 2018. Notes to Editors: Visit our website to find out more about each element featured on the $10 commemorative bank note. commemorative bank note. View videos about the commemorative bank note and its security features. Download photos from the Bank of Canada's Flickr gallery. Flickr gallery. Learn about the public consultation the Bank undertook to inform the visual content and design of this commemorative bank note. Financial institutions will be distributing this commemorative note over the counter in branches starting 1 June 2017 . . This is the fourth time that the Bank of Canada has issued a commemorative note. The first, issued in 1935, celebrated the Silver Jubilee of King George V; the second, issued in 1967, marked the centennial of Confederation; and the third, issued in 2015, honoured the historic reign of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, who became the longest-reigning sovereign in Canada's modern era. has issued a commemorative note. The first, issued in 1935, celebrated the Silver Jubilee of King George V; the second, issued in 1967, marked the centennial of Confederation; and the third, issued in 2015, honoured the historic reign of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, who became the longest-reigning sovereign in modern era. Find out more about our Principles for Bank Note Design. Consult the Bank of Canada's bank notes web pages. bank notes web pages. Contact Media Relations for B-roll, available upon request. SOURCE Bank of Canada For further information: Media Relations, 613-782-8782 Related Links http://www.bank-banque-canada.ca OTTAWA, April 6, 2017 /CNW/ - Representatives from the Recreation Vehicle Dealers Association (RVDA) of Canada and the Canadian Camping and RV Council (CCRVC) are on Parliament Hill today to discuss the need for increased investments in tourism policies and infrastructure upgrades and the need for implementation of a fair tax regime for campgrounds across Canada. As this year marks Canada's 150th Anniversary, the RVDA of Canada and the CCRVC would like to ensure that individuals and families are able to explore Canada's natural heritage both throughout this camping season and for generations to come. RVing and camping in Canada has a considerable economic impact; the manufacturing, purchasing, servicing and use of recreation vehicles contributes billions to the Canadian economy each year. In fact, in 2011, the total economic activity associated with the Canadian recreation vehicle industry reached $14.5 billion. There are over 4,231 campgrounds across Canada, each offering a unique experience for Canadians and international visitors. The promotion of the RV sector and proper infrastructure in our existing parks are crucial to the growth of the RVing and camping industries, as well as a prosperous Canadian tourism sector. The RVing industry contributes billions to the national economy, but the more than 4,321 campgrounds across Canada require infrastructural improvements in order to accommodate new camping and RV technologies. As stated by RVDA Chairman Sam Parks, "RVing and camping are large components of tourism, both internally and externally. There is a crucial need for this to be recognized by Destination Canada as a viable growth area for tourism in Canada." A fair tax regime and investment in the necessary infrastructural updates for small businesses would benefit the family-owned campgrounds and RV dealerships that enable Canadians and visitors alike to experience the all that Canada has to offer. At present, campgrounds face an approximate 300% increase in their tax bills. Robert Trask, Chairman of the CCRVC, explains this will result in campgrounds facing "a larger tax rate than major billion dollar corporations which is dumbfounding." The Recreation Vehicle Dealers Association of Canada is a national, volunteer federation of provincial and regional RVDA associations and their members, who have united to form a professional trade association for all businesses involved in the recreation vehicle industry. The Canadian Camping and RV Council represents the Provincial Campground Owners Associations and their Private Campground Members across Canada. SOURCE Recreation Vehicle Dealers Association of Canada For further information: Ashley Rensler, Office: 613.233.8906, Cell: 647.967.9324, [email protected] Web Site: www.CuMtn.com TSX: CMMC VANCOUVER, April 6, 2017 /CNW/ - Copper Mountain Mining Corporation (TSX: CMMC) (the "Company" or "Copper Mountain") will hold a conference call on Tuesday, April 25th, 2017 at 7:30 am (Pacific Standard Time) for management to discuss the Q1 2017 Financial and Operating Results. Results will be released before the market opens on Tuesday, April 25, 2017. Conference call and webcast details are as follows: The conference call and audio webcast will be held on Tuesday, April 25, 2017 at 7:30 am (Pacific Standard Time) and will be followed by a question-and-answer period with investors. Live Dial-in information Toronto and international: 647-427-7450 North America (toll-free): 1-888-231-8191 To participate in the webcast live via your computer go to: http://event.on24.com/r.htm?e=1396431&s=1&k=67F97D9094AA01C7BA6587307E6DA50A Replay call information Toronto and international: 416-849-0833 Passcode: 95448533 North America (toll-free): 1-855-859-2056 Passcode: 95448533 The conference call replay will be available from 10:30 am (PST) on Tuesday, April 25, 2017, until 11:59 pm PST on Tuesday, May 9th, 2017. Participant audio webcast will also be available on the company's website at http://www.cumtn.com About Copper Mountain Mining Corporation: Copper Mountain's flagship asset is the Copper Mountain mine located in southern British Columbia near the town of Princeton. The Company has a strategic alliance with Mitsubishi Materials Corporation who owns 25% of the mine. The Copper Mountain mine has a large resource of copper that remains open laterally and at depth. This significant exploration potential will be explored over the next few years in order to fully appreciate the property's full development potential. Additional information is available on the Company's web page at www.CuMtn.com. On behalf of the Board of COPPER MOUNTAIN MINING CORPORATION "Rod Shier" Rodney A. Shier, CA. Chief Financial Officer Note: This release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. These statements may differ materially from actual future events or results. Readers are referred to the documents, filed by the Company on SEDAR at www.sedar.com, specifically the most recent reports which identify important risk factors that could cause actual results to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to review or confirm analysts' expectations or estimates or to release publicly any revisions to any forward-looking statement. SOURCE Copper Mountain Mining Corporation For further information: Dan Gibbons, Investor Relations, 604-682-2992 ext. 238, Email: [email protected]; Rod Shier, Chief Financial Officer, 604-682-2992 ext.222, Email: [email protected], Website: www.CuMtn.com Related Links http://www.CuMtn.com SAINT-HYACINTHE, QC, April 6, 2017 /CNW Telbec/ - Stephane Rochon, President and CEO, announced the financial results for 2016 at Humania Assurance's annual general meeting today. "We have continued to shake up the status quo with a successful shift toward web-based services. With HuGO, a client can purchase coverage up to $1 million online without automatically being required to pass a test or medical exam. Decisions can now be made in under 15 minutes," said Mr. Rochon. Business Development Throughout 2016, Humania Assurance Inc. was able to increase its presence outside of Quebec markets, with 43% of individual insurance sales, including those of its subsidiary LS-Travel, primarily in Ontario and Western Canada. In addition, 40% of the company's sales were transacted online by independent advisors. Financial Results Gross revenues for Humania Assurance Inc. grew to a total of $157.2 million. The company reported $6.3 million in earnings before taxes in 2016, up 25% from last year. It posted net earnings of $4.6 million after taxes. The company's assets as at December 31, 2016, totalled $535 million, up $21 million from 2015. Meanwhile, the solvency ratio reached 239%. 2017 Forecast In 2017, Humania Assurance Inc. will continue to build on its technological edge with its online HuGO platform (hugoinsurance.ca). It will fine tune the platform's artificial intelligence to further increase what are already very strong instant issue ratios. To capitalize on opportunities in the growing debt insurance market, including the mortgage sector, the company has already added optional disability coverage to its IWME product (withoutmedicalexam.ca), launched in March 2017. Lastly, while working to maintain its strong position in Quebec, Humania Assurance will continue to pursue a growth strategy with a focus on the company's development throughout Canada. Annual report online: ra.humania.ca SOURCE Humania Assurance For further information: Johanne Belanger, Executive Assistant, Humania Assurance Inc., 1-877-554-7181, ext. 247, [email protected] Related Links www.humania.ca By GMM 6 April 2017 - 09:05 Ousted F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone says he rejected plans to add a Vietnamese grand prix to the race calendar. The 86-year-old, recently stepped down as the sports chief executive by new owners Liberty Media, was criticised in the past for adding races to the calendar that lack fan support but pay premium race fees. But Ecclestone told F1 business journalist Christian Sylt that Vietnam was rejected last year because it lacked "racing history", while F1 "already has several races in the region". Ecclestone also told the Independent newspaper: "I could have done the deal and signed it in August." But he rejected the Vietnam deal, also explaining: "It hasnt got any racing history at all. "So I didnt want to put another race in the same sort of area where we already have very good promoters. And I was criticised for putting the races in Baku and in Russia because they hadnt got that much racing history." By GMM 7 April 2017 - 07:01 Lewis Hamilton admitted he is concerned that his first taste of Pirellis new wet tyres will be this weekend in China. The weather forecast throughout the Shanghai weekend is poor, and Fridays opening session was indeed badly affected by rain. Less concerned is Hamiltons current title nemesis Sebastian Vettel, who has snapped up every opportunity to help Pirelli test for this years new rules. "The reason why Im generally happy to do it (testing) is because I love driving. So when theres an opportunity to test, even though it can sometimes be a bit dull, still its better than sitting on the bike," said the Ferrari driver. In contrast is Mercedes driver Hamiltons approach, with the Briton having cited injury niggles and car reliability issues as the reason for not extensively testing. Indeed, in China Hamilton said taking up the testing opportunities would have been "a waste of time". But that doesnt mean he wont admit to feeling "apprehensive" about the weather forecast for this weekend. "I am not really looking forward to a wet track because I havent driven on the new tyres. Usually I like driving in the wet, but I am a little bit apprehensive," Hamilton said. "If you had to bolt them on for qualifying right now I have never driven them before," he added. "It is a much bigger tyre this year and there is a big risk that in the wet you damage the car. "But I do relish the challenge and I believe if anyone is able to do it, I can, so I will figure it out," said Hamilton. Vettel, meanwhile, said he will continue to snap up "every opportunity" to test, amid tight track-time restrictions in modern-day F1. "Thats personal, but I cant understand why you would reject it," said the German. "I think theres always something you learn, so the days I did with Pirelli to help them get feedback, for sure they also helped me." International offshore drilling company SeaDrill Limited SDRL is likely to face the most trying times ahead in the coming months. The companys shares plunged more than 55% to close at a record low of 74 cents on Apr 4 amid debt woes and bankruptcy talks. The shares further slid by around 7% to 69 cents on Apr 5. The sharp decline came after the company announced that it has extended the deadline of the restructuring with the lenders yet again by three months till July 31. If SeaDrill does not manage to get the restructuring right within the aforesaid time frame, the company is likely to default and the investors may face steep losses as the shares may lose all its value. What led to the Plunge? Due to the plunge in oil prices since 2014, energy companies reduced their spending and slashed rig hires. The demand for drilling reduced further as the rigs ordered during the boom period led to oversupply. This in turn led to reduced activities and diminishing contract backlog, creating pressure on revenues, earnings and cash flows of energy firms. SeaDrill, being one of the worst sufferers of the downturn, carries the heaviest debt burden in the oil rig industry, battling with a total of $14 billion debts and liabilities. The company has been contemplating restructuring under bankruptcy for quite some time now but has not been able to secure a restructuring deal yet. Post the announcement of the extension of the renegotiation period, the company has warned shareholders of severe losses. The following is a part of the statement released by the company a few days back. We currently believe that a comprehensive restructuring plan will require a substantial impairment or conversion of our bonds, as well as impairment, losses or substantial dilution for other stakeholder The company currently expects that shareholders are likely to receive minimal recovery for their existing shares. What lies Ahead? SeaDrill is negotiating with more than 40 banks, including Norway's DNB, Sweden's Nordea and Denmark's Danske Bank, as well as with bondholders and several rig-building yards. However, the chairman of the company, John Fredrisken, has a bleak outlook on the industry and is unsure of how the restructuring negotiations will play out with the creditors. Story continues SeaDrill has just been one of the victims of the 20142016 downturn in the oil and gas prices. Many offshore drilling companies like Ocean Rig UDW LLC. ORIG, Paragon Offshore, Hercules Offshore, Inc. and Vantage Drilling Company have also filed for bankruptcy protection amid declining oil prices. Zacks Rank & Key Picks Headquartered in London, SeaDrill is one of the leading offshore drilling contractors in the world. The company owns or has partial ownership interests in 68 mobile offshore drilling rigs comprising jackups, semisubmersibles, drillships, tender rigs and semi-tender rigs. The companys stock peaked at $46.42 per share in Sep 2013. Since then, it has witnessed a decline. Over the past one year, SeaDrills shares plummeted more than 75%, underperforming the Zacks categorized Oil-Gas Drilling industrys 15% gain. Though SeaDrill is a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) stock, the company has seen estimates move lower lately. Over the past 30 days, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for fiscal years 2017 and 2018 deteriorated considerably. The negative revisions, suggesting bleak outlook ahead for SeaDrill, might push this stock to a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell) or 5 (Strong Sell). Better-ranked players in the same industry include Precision Drilling Corp. PDS and Parker Drilling Company PKD. Both these stocks carry a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. Precision Drilling reported positive earnings surprise in each of the four trailing quarters, the average being 36.31%. Parker Drilling posted positive earnings surprise in each of the last four quarters, the average being 13.79% Zacks Best Private Investment Ideas In addition to the recommendations that are available to the public on our website, how would you like to follow all Zacks' private buys and sells in real time? Our experts cover all kinds of trades from value to momentum . . . from stocks under $10 to ETF and option moves . . . from stocks that corporate insiders are buying up to companies that are about to report positive earnings surprises. You can even look inside exclusive portfolios that are normally closed to new investors. Starting today, for the next month, you can have unrestricted access. Click here for Zacks' private trades >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Seadrill Limited (SDRL): Free Stock Analysis Report Ocean Rig UDW Inc. (ORIG): Free Stock Analysis Report Parker Drilling Company (PKD): Free Stock Analysis Report Precision Drilling Corporation (PDS): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research Martin Altenburg Fargo North High School senior Martin Altenburg is an outlier among the class of recently accepted college students. The 17-year-old North Dakotan went into admissions season unsure how many Ivy League schools might accept him. He already had an inclination that good things may be ahead after he applied early to Stanford and was accepted. Next came likely letters an early notification of acceptance for regular decision students from Harvard, Columbia, and Brown. So as he began opening his remaining five Ivy League decision letters on a bus ride back from a science Olympiad tournament last Thursday, anticipation began to mount. Letter after letter confirmed his acceptance. When he got to the last letter, from Yale University, the entire bus took note. "Everyone was looking over me on the back of the bus when I opened it," Altenburg told Business Insider. "They have the little bulldog video that they play when you get in and everyone sort of went crazy," he continued. In addition to the eight Ivies, Altenburg was also accepted at Stanford University, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, The California Institute of Technology, and the University of Chicago. Attending a college outside of North Dakota let alone an Ivy League school wasn't even on his radar at the start of high school. "Originally my parents didn't want me to apply to these schools because they thought we'd have to pay full price which, at a lot of these schools, is more than our yearly income," he said. Financial obstacles weren't the only hindrance to him setting his sights on top colleges. Because he didn't have much exposure to information about top colleges, or reassurance that he and students just like him could do well in college, early in high school he never even considered he could go. Harvard students Story continues But after gaining knowledge about the admissions process and confidence that not only could he attend a prestigious school, but excel at one, he set his sights as high as he could, applying to some of the best colleges in the world. "We're sort of a low-income family and so I wanted to push myself to see where I could be able to see the world, be able to get a job that allows me to understand how the world works, and make a really big difference," he said. Altenburg also has a voracious appetite for learning, and has scored a 5 the highest mark achievable on every single Advanced Placement exam he's taken, which include biology, European history, human geography, English language, Calculus AB, and chemistry, to name a few. "I like taking the AP exams and studying for them because it's a lot like a college environment where you learn how to study like a college student," he said. When Altenburg ran out of math courses available at his high school, he took Calculus II at MIT his junior summer in a program called Minority Introduction to Engineering and Science (MITES). In the fall semester of his senior year, he took Calculus III at a local college in his area. Altenburg scored a 35 out of 36 on the ACT and a 1510 on the SAT, though he didn't use his SAT score on his applications. In addition to all of this, Altenburg plays the violin and thinks he may minor in music while at college. He competes as a three-sport athlete in cross country, track, and swimming. As the school year winds down, Altenburg must now decide which of the schools to attend. His top contenders are Harvard, Princeton, MIT, and Stanford. In addition to finding a school that will help him explore his academic interests, he's looking for the school that will be the right fit. "I know in high school I'm sort of an outlier in terms of my interests and my motivations, and I really want to find a community in college where I'm able to relate to having a passion for environmentalism and the sciences," Altenburg said. If you have something to share about your college-admissions experience, email ajackson@businessinsider.com. NOW WATCH: The former head of the CIA reveals the best advice he's ever gotten More From Business Insider Segun Adewale, factional chairman of the Lagos state chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has accused Ayodele Fayose, Ekiti stat... Segun Adewale, factional chairman of the Lagos state chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has accused Ayodele Fayose, Ekiti state governor, of biting the fingers that fed him.In a statement released on Thursday, Adewale said Fayose had been causing distractions in the party.He also refuted the claim that he was plotting to unseat Fayose and replace him with Kayode Fayemi, his predecessor.My attention has been brought to a spurious claim in a publication, purporting that I, Otunba Segun Adewale (Aeroland) is plotting to unseat the governor of Ekiti state, Ayodele Fayose, in order to install former governor, Kayode Fayemi, by bribing Supreme Court judges with a N150 million, Adewale said.Ordinarily, I would not have dignified such porous reasoning feigned as publication with a response, as the entire public can verify or vouch that I will never partake in questionable conducts, more else, engage in what is not only against the Nigeria constitution but foully against humanity.May I again dismiss abundantly the claims in the said publication, which are not only entirely false, but show the writers lack sense to even think as human beings.It is an aberration for a sitting PDP governor of a state, Ayodele Fayose, to be acting a mole in a party that got him into office, a glaring case of biting the fingers that fed him.Adewale denied any relationship with the APC or any of its leaders, including Fayemi.Contrary to the fictitious publication, which was carved in a vendetta scheme against me for rightly exposing governor Fayose on his romance with All Progressives Congress (APC) leadership, I must emphasise that I do not know Kayode Fayemi nor have I met him, he said.Adewale claimed that though his elections in 2011 and 2015 were purportedly manipulated, he had remained a faithful and committed party man.He reassured the party leaders of his unwavering loyalty and commitment to the party.I am an unrepentant believer in the ideology of the PDP especially under the current leadership of senator Ali Modu Sheriff as the national chairman. I refused to leave the party when it was very easy to do so as an unrecognised member, he said.He also accused Fayose of being hypocritical, adding that his open romance with some APC kingpins was worrisome.Is it not worrisome that a governor and leader in our party speak from both sides of the mouth on issues that relate to the ruling party? he asked.At one point, the governor Fayose is busy abusing the President Muhammadu Buhari, alleging former governor Fayemi of corruption but at the same time praising Asiwaju Bola Tinubu who was instrumental to the election of both men into office at every opportunity.His open romances with leaders of the ruling party like governor Rauf Aregbesola of Osun, visiting governor Akeredolu of Ondo and praising Asiwaju Bola Tinubu are major discouragements that dampen the morale of our members.A supposed leader of our party in the southwest but sells out on values and proposition of our party for his selfish personal interests. Whoever dares stand against his attempt to destroy the party is immediately under the attack of his propaganda machinery to the detriment of the party.The Ekiti state born business man however stated that it is within his right to aspire to any political position including the highest position in Ekiti state on the platform of the PDP.I will answer the call of my people when the time is ripe notwithstanding the ongoing efforts by my detractors. Governor Fayose and his lost sheep cannot stop the will of God and good people of Ekiti state, he said. Former Nigeria striker, Osaze Odemwingie, has revealed that Michael Essien convinced him to sign for Indonesian side, Madura United.The 35-year-old has signed a one-year deal with the option of an extension.I had no plans to join any team in Europe. To be honest before I came here, I heard Michael Essien had been here first, Odemwingie said.I then communicated via messages with him when he was in London.And he (Essien) told me he was impressed with the charm of Indonesia. He said Indonesia people are very friendly and he was eager to return. So yes, thats the story, he convinced me to come here.The former West Brom and Stoke City forward, last played for Rotherham, before leaving in January. The Presidency has denied the involvement of the Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo in a N10m bribe as claimed by former Chief of Army Staff, L... The Presidency has denied the involvement of the Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo in a N10m bribe as claimed by former Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen Ishaya Bamaiyi(rtd).Bamaiyi, in his book, The Vindication of A General alleged that Osinbanjo was directed to convict him and others within six months during the time, he, Osinbajo was Lagos State Attorney- General.The former Army claims that Osinbajo shielded the then trial judge, Justice Ade Alabi, whom he accused of demanding a N10 million bribe from him.However, the Senior Special Assistant to the Vice-President on Media and Publicity, Laolu Akande, described Bamaiyis claims as blatant lies.In a statement, Akande said Osinbajo was never called to Abuja or given any form of instruction on how to resolve the case.According to Akande, My attention has been drawn to claims made by General Bamaiyi in his book Vindication of a General, where he alleged that the then Attorney-General of Lagos State, Osinbajo, the trial judge, (in the criminal case of his involvement in the shooting of Alex Ibru) Justice Ade Alabi and the State Police Commissioner were called to Abuja and directed to convict us at all costs within six months.That Justice Ade Alabi asked for a N10m bribe through one Mr. Martin to facilitate his bail application in the case, and that the National Judicial Council panel composed to investigate the bribery allegation, protected the Judge.Specifically that Prof. Osinbajo brought what he said was the panel report during one of the motions. Unfortunately, pages one through twenty-nine of the report were not produced.While the Vice President, Osinbajo would take more comprehensive steps to address the evil insinuations made by the retired General, I have confirmed from him, i.e. Prof. Osinbajo, that he was never called to Abuja or at any time given any instructions on how to resolve the case. This blatant lie arose only from the fertile imagination of the author.Equally, the shifty recollections of the retired General about Prof. Osinbajo bringing a panel report with pages missing is as ludicrous as it is incongruous. For instance, is the author saying the then Lagos State Attorney-General was responsible for the NJC panel report? That would be incredible and clearly a mischievous proposition.Akande stated that Bamaiyis counsel, Mike Okoy, who argued the bail application for the former Army Chief had confessed in open court and in several newspaper public notices as ordered by Court that he lied against Justice Alabi.Okoye actually had to read his confession and apology in the open court in a case that involved such prominent lawyers like Chief F.R.A Williams, who in particular pressed that Okoye be held fully responsible for his wild accusations.It is incredible that after all of this, the author went on to mislead the public. What impudence! the presidency stated, Akande added.Read Bamaiyis allegation belowHis words: We were in prison until we were taken to court in Lagos on December 22, 1999 to face Justice Alabi, who was said to have been called to Abuja with the Attorney-General and Lagos State Commissioner for Justice, Prof. Osinbajo.They were said to have been directed to convict us at all costs within six months. Unknown to our persecutors, we had a lot of sympathy within the Presidency, the Police, and the DSS.As such, whatever instructions were passed to them got to us within a short while. I applied for bail even though I knew it would not be granted. After the argument by my counsel and the counter-argument by the state, led by the A-G, the case was adjourned without a date for ruling on my bail application.After some days, one Mr. Martins came to prison to visit Al Mustapha, who came and told me that he had been sent by Justice Ade Alabi to discuss my bail issue. He told me the judge was ready to grant me bail if I would give him N10 million.We discussed this with Al Mustapha and I expressed my fears regarding Mr. Martins message. We told Mr. Martins to prove that Justice Alabi had really sent him.He left, but after about two weeks, he came back and told us that when next we went to court, the trial judge would give us two months for the ruling on the bail application. This would be his proof that the judge had sent him.He said the judge was aware we were in prison and needed time to get money. At our next court appearance, the judge adjourned for two months. This proved to us that Mr. Martins was genuine.I informed my counsel, Mr. Mike Okoye, who argued the bail application. He said we should think about it and that he would try to find out the matter. We waited until I decided that I would give nobody any money.One day in court, Al Mustapha got fed up and challenged the judge. At the next court date, I asked the judge for permission to speak. He initially hesitated but changed his mind. I believe he thought I was going to apologize for Al Mustaphas action during the previous hearing.I started by saying, I have respect for the rule of law and the judiciary. I also have respect for this court. This made the judge relax. I quickly added, But a situation where the judge sends people to collect money from accused persons is unacceptable. You know what I am talking about.The judge ordered me to sit down. I did because I had said what I had wanted to say. Afterwards, we petitioned the National Judicial Council, NJC, against Justice Alabi. He wanted to continue with the case against the advice of lawyers and some judges. Eventually, he was forced to return the case file to the administrative judge.The NJC then decided to investigate our allegation. On March 25 to 27, at the Kirikiri Magistrate Court, the panel, headed by a retired Justice of the Supreme Court, started hearing our petition. Unknown to us, the panel had decided to protect Justice Alabi who was working for the government.The panel was made up of Justice B.O. Babalakin (Chairman); Amb. M.L. Sambo (member) and T.J. Onomigbo Okpoko, SAN (member). Justice Ade Alabi brought in Chief Afe Babalola, SAN as lead counsel and he came with Chief Ladi Williams, SAN, Prof. G.A Olawotin, SAN; Kola Awioderin, SAN, Ikenwa Okoli, Gboyega Oyewole, Adebayo Aderipekun. Justice Alabi was docked and examined by Chief Afe Babalola who led him in evidence. He was then cross-examined by Y.C. Maikyau, Bala Ibn NaAllah and Jingi.They succeeded in stopping members of the press from covering theses proceedings. Later we got to know why the press was barred from the panel. The panel report was full of lies. The panel report stated that Justice Alabi was not docked and was not cross-examined by our counsel. I only hope Afe Babalola did not see that panel report. These are clear lies, as Justice Alabi was docked and cross-examined.Prof. Osinbajo brought what he said was the panel report during one of the motions. Unfortunately, pages one through 29 of the report were not produced. This was very clear because we, the petitioners, gave evidence and Justice Alabi was examined and cross-examined.I believe the missing pages contained our statements and the examination and cross-examination of Justice Alabi by our counsels. I believe these actions are understandable because Justice Ade Alabi was given an assignment to carry out injustice and he had to be protected by those who had given him the assignment.We were disappointed with the former Justice of the Supreme Court, Justice Babalakin, who disrespected himself and let down all justices of the Supreme Court. Even in retirement, they should be honourable.I am looking forward to the day we see the complete report of the panel and the statements made by those who gave evidence. We also hope the investigation of the death of Mr. Martins under suspicious circumstances will be made available one day. Two middle-aged persons, Debora Fojo and Musa Garba on Friday appeared before a Malumfashi Chief Magistrates Court in Katsina State for b... Two middle-aged persons, Debora Fojo and Musa Garba on Friday appeared before a Malumfashi Chief Magistrates Court in Katsina State for breach of trust and cheating.The two were accused of collecting N429, 000 to invest in an online business called MMM.Fojo and Garba are residents of Government Girls Secondary School Malumfashi Quarters and Unguwar Danyawa village in Kafur local government area respectively.According to the separate First Information Reports (FIR) read to the court, Fojo allegedly collected N229, 000 from one Sani Salisu of Unguwar Sodangi in Malumfashi to invest in the scheme.Garba, on the other hand, collected N200, 000 from one Adamu Aliyu of Gangarawa also in Malumfashi to invest in MMM.The Police Prosecutor, Insp. Sani Ahmed, told the courts that the accused deceived the complainants with a promise that business would provide 30 percent returns within 30 days.He said that neither the original money nor the interest were returned to the complainants after the expiration of the agreed period.He said that the accused were charged with criminal breach of trust and cheating, offences that contravened sections 312 and 322 of the penal code laws.The two accused persons, however, pleaded not guilty to the charges.The Chief Magistrate, Lawal Usman adjourned Fojos case till April 11, while that of Garba was moved to April 18, for mention.He ordered that the two accused persons be remanded in prison custody. Justice Binta Nyako of the Federal High Court in Abuja has fixed April 25 for ruling on whether or not to review her earlier order allowin... Justice Binta Nyako of the Federal High Court in Abuja has fixed April 25 for ruling on whether or not to review her earlier order allowing the shielding of the prosecutions witnesses in the trial of four Biafra agitators, including Nnamdi Kanu.Security was heavy at the court, which was filled up with the defendants sympathisers, among them traditional rulers, priests and elders.Justice Nyako chose the date after listening to arguments from lawyers to the parties in the case in relation to an application by the defence for the court to review its ruling on the protection of witnesses.Kanu, Chidiebere Onwudiwe, Benjamin Madubugwu and David Nwawuisi are being tried on an amended 11-count charge.On December 13, last year, Justice Nyako granted the prosecutions request that its witnesses identity be shielded from the public as a form of protection for them, because most of the witnesses are members of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), the group headed by Kanu.Yesterday, Kanus lawyer, Ifeanyi Ejiofor urged the court to review its December 13 ruling since the nature of the case has changed with the striking out of charges relating to terrorism in the courts last ruling.Ejiofor argued that since terrorism charge has been struck out in the charge, there was need to review the ruling which gave the prosecution the right to shield witnesses.He said the Terrorism Act allows the prosecution to seek leave to protect witnesses, but that since his client was no longer charged with terrorism, it was appropriate for the court to set aside the order of December 13, 2016.Ejiofor said: An accused who is not standing trial on offences not mentioned in that section can be tried in the open court.Another defence lawyer, Emmanuel Esene, cited Section 36 (4) of the 1999 Constitution as amended as saying that defendants standing trial on criminal cases should be tried in open court.Esene said: When the order (to shield witnesses) was made, terrorism charge was included; now you my lordship struck out the charge against the defendants, that order should be vacated.Another member of the defence team, Chukwuma Ozougwu, counsel to the fourth defendant, urged the court to note that everybody before the court was equal and should be treated equally.Ozougwu said: On what basis is the prosecution opposing the application for open trial. The prosecution counsel has not given enough reasons why my application should be refused.No basis, no foundation for opposing the application. Justice should not only be seen to be done but should not also be clouded in darkness. For interest of justice, I urge the court to grant my application, Ozougwu held.Prosecuting lawyer Shuaibu Labaran urged the court to dismiss the defendants application, describing it frivolous, lacking in merit and an attempt to slow down the progress of the case.Labaran drew the attention of the court to Section 232 (4) of the Administration of the Criminal Act (ACJA), which gives a judge discretion to determine whether or not a witness in a case deserves protection.Supporters not allowed to access the court premises stood outside the courts main entrance while proceedings lasted.With banners bearing IPOB logo and insignia, they chanted solidarity songs in Igbo language under the watchful eyes of security men. The late Rear Adm. Daniel Ikoli, the Fleet Commander, Western Naval Command, Lagos, who was found dead at his Apapa residence on April 5, ... The late Rear Adm. Daniel Ikoli, the Fleet Commander, Western Naval Command, Lagos, who was found dead at his Apapa residence on April 5, did not kill himself, contrary to some media reports.According to authoritative sources at the command, Ikoli may have been assassinated as he had no cause to kill himself.Ikoli has been penciled down by the President as the next Chief of Naval Staff; he recently earned a special promotion to his present rank from Commodore.He was on the panel probing arms deal which also affects the Armed Forces, including the Navy.Ikoli was a disciplined, gentle, straightforward and honest man, who had no regard for protocol. It is nothing but a murder case, a source told the News Agency of Nigeria on Friday in Lagos.The source also said that because of his performance as the Commander, NNS Beecroft, he was loved by all officers and the junior ones.He said:Ikoli transformed the place by introducing smart I.D. cards and increasing special duty allowance from N4, 000 to N12, 000.Everybody is aware that he was an introvert, but he made sure that things worked properly and he had respect for all and zero tolerance for corruption.He really complimented President Buhari on his anti-corruption war and I think that was why he was appointed to serve on the arms deal probe panel.His elevation as the next Chief of Naval Staff would have been announced if not for the presidents trip to London for medical checkup.Another officer, who said he worked with him, also told NAN that the late Ikoli was an easy going man who did not believe in bothering people.At the close of work, he usually allows his aides to go home and stay with their families.In most cases, he will be the one to open the gate of his residence for visitors using a remote control.The officer would not have killed himself; it is pure case of assassination.There is a mystery surrounding his death; for instance, the two ambulances they brought to take him to the mortuary refused to move.It was when they brought his service car and transferred the body into it that they were able to take his corpse to the morgue, he said. Ita Enang, senior special assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on national assembly matters (senate), says Nigerians should be worried... Ita Enang, senior special assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on national assembly matters (senate), says Nigerians should be worried if the executive and legislative arms of government work hand in gloves.Addressing state house correspondents on Thursday, Enang said the disagreements between the two arms of government are necessary for democracy to thrive.He said though there could be tension between both arms, there is no indication that they are at loggerheads.If at any time you find the legislature hands in gloves with the executive, without the executive raising questions or the legislature asking questions, the public should be worried, he said.That is why we have separation of powers. Each arm should check the other. When these checks arise, that is when the public feels there is tension, but there is absolutely no tension.I am here to confirm to you that the relationship between the executive and the legislature is very cordial, constitutional, and in all manners, usual.The relationship between the president and the senate president is perfect and very cordial, personal and official.Enang said if the federal lawmaker had issues with his principals, they will not be coming to the presidential villa as often as they had been doing in recent times.You have seen that many times the president of the senate and even the speaker of the house of representatives coming to have personal interactions with the president on the affairs of the legislature and other functions of the state, he said.It appears that because of some incidences on the screening of some nominees, people think there is tension, but let me assure you that there is no tension.It is only that the constitution requires that when the president makes a nomination to the legislature, the legislature is to screen, consider and approve as thought fit. If the legislature has reason to have reservations, there is always consultation. It will make its opinion known to the executive by way of appropriate communication.Even if it appeared in the past that there were tensions, the actions of this week: the consultations between the president and the leaders of the national assembly have doused that.In all the issues that have arisen, no question was raised against the action of the president. This shows that in all manners, the president has not done anything that will make the legislature to call him to question. Oil price went to a one-month high on Friday after the United States attacked a Syrian government airbase, killing six people, rattling th... Oil price went to a one-month high on Friday after the United States attacked a Syrian government airbase, killing six people, rattling the oil-rich region.On Thursday night (Nigerian time), US warships launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at Shayrat Airfield, in response to a chemical attack on civilians in the town of Khan Sheikhoun earlier in the week.After the toughest action the US has taken on Syria in six years, oil, gold, foreign exchange, German and US 10-year bonds, made strong statements for financial markets across the globe.According to Reuters figures, Brent crude futures were up 88 cents at $55.77 a barrel at 9:27am Nigerian time, the highest since March 8, after after reaching an intra-day high of $56.08 a barrel shortly after the overnight air strikes were announced.US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were up 85 cents at $52.55 a barrel, having reached a intra-day high of $52.94 a barrel.The airstrike does not necessarily cut oil supplies from Syria, but may damp investors appetite in the short term.The airstrike was strongly supported by Saudi Arabia, the leading oil producer in the world, and the core leader of Sunni Muslims in the world.Vladimir Putin of Russia regarded the airstrike as an act of agreession, which is considered to have strained US-Russia relations.Putin views the US strikes on Syria as aggression against a sovereign state in violation of the norms of international law and on a made-up up pretext. Washingtons step will inflict major damage on US-Russia ties, Dmitry Peskov, Putins spokesman said.Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande, leaders of Germany and France, released a joint statement in support of the attack against Assads regime.Assad bears full responsibility for this development. His continued use of chemical weapons and mass crimes cannot go unpunished. This is what France had asked in the summer of 2013, the day after the chemical attack in Ghouta, their statement reads. BEIRUT (AP) World leaders rallied around the United States after it launched a missile strike early Friday on a Syrian air base in response to this week's chemical attack, while Russia condemned the move as "aggression" and suspended crucial coordination with Washington in Syria's congested skies. The overnight missile attack, which marked the first time the U.S. has directly targeted Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces, was condemned by his allies in Russia and Iran but welcomed by the Syrian opposition and its supporters, who expressed hope it signaled a turning point in the devastating six-year-old civil war. The bombing represents Trump's most dramatic military order since taking office and thrusts the U.S. administration deeper into the complex Syrian conflict. The Obama administration threatened to attack Assad's forces after previous chemical attacks, but never followed through. About 60 U.S. Tomahawk missiles hit the Shayrat air base, a small installation with two runways, where aircraft often take off to bomb targets in northern and central Syria. The U.S. missiles hit at 3:45 a.m. (0045 GMT) Friday and targeted the base's airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, U.S. officials said. They were fired from two warships in the Mediterranean Sea, in retaliation for Tuesday's deadly chemical attack, which officials said used chlorine mixed with a nerve agent, possibly sarin. Assad's office called the U.S. missile strike "reckless" and "irresponsible." The Syrian military said at least seven people were killed and nine wounded. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition monitor said the seven included a general and three soldiers. The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin believes the U.S. strike is an "aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law." Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said "Washington's move deals a significant blow to the Russia-U.S. relations, which are already in a deplorable shape," and poses a "serious obstacle" for creating an international coalition against terrorism. Story continues Russia said it is suspending a memorandum with Washington signed after Russia began an air campaign in support of Assad in September 2015 under which the two exchange information about their sorties over Syria. The Kremlin said just 23 of 59 missiles reached the air base, destroying six Syrian jets but leaving the runway intact. A U.S. official said all but one of the 59 missiles struck their targets, hitting multiple aircraft and air shelters, and destroying the fuel area. The official, who was not authorized to discuss initial reports, spoke on condition of anonymity. A U.S.-led coalition has been bombing Islamic State targets in Syria since 2014, while Russia's air force has been striking both extremist groups and Syrian rebels in order to aid Assad's forces. Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which support the Syrian opposition, welcomed the missile strike, with Riyadh calling it a "courageous decision" by Trump. Iran called it a "dangerous" move that would "strengthen terrorists" and exacerbate the conflict. Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Lebanese group that has sent thousands of fighters to Syria to bolster Assad, said the "foolish" strike would lead to a "dangerous escalation in the region." The British government said it was informed in advance about the strike and firmly supports the American action. Prime Minister Theresa May's office says the action was "an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, and is intended to deter further attacks." France, Italy and Israel also welcomed the strikes. The opposition Syrian Coalition said the U.S. attack puts an end to an age of "impunity" and should herald the start of a larger campaign against Damascus. Maj. Jamil al-Saleh, a U.S-backed rebel commander based in the area where the U.S. attack took place, told The Associated Press he hoped the strike would be a "turning point" in the six-year-old war, which has killed an estimated 400,000 people. Assad had been under mounting international pressure after the chemical attack on the northern town of Khan Sheikhoun, which killed 87 people, including 31 children. Even Russia has said its support is not unconditional. Syria denied using chemical weapons. Russia has said the toxic agents were released when a Syrian airstrike hit a rebel chemical weapons arsenal, and that blame should not be apportioned until a full investigation has been completed. Russia's military intervention in Syria has turned the balance of power in Assad's favor, and Moscow has used its veto power at the Security Council on several occasions to prevent sanctions against Damascus. The U.S. had initially focused on diplomatic efforts, pressing the U.N. Security Council to adopt a resolution to condemn Syria's suspected use of chemical weapons. But the vote was canceled because of differences among the 15 members. The Security Council plans to meet at 11:30 a.m. (1530 GMT) for a briefing on the U.S. strike. In Geneva, the U.N. envoy for Syria told the AP his office is in "crisis" mode after the strike, and that he would soon convene an urgent meeting of a Syrian cease-fire task force chaired by the United States and Russia. Staffan de Mistura said Russia requested the meeting, which was "agreed upon" by the United States. The envoy has been spearheading peace-making efforts for nearly three years, with little progress. Trump had said the chemical attack crossed "many, many lines," and put the blame squarely on Assad's forces. Speaking Thursday on Air Force One, Trump said the attack "shouldn't have happened, and it shouldn't be allowed to happen." A survivor of the chemical attack said he hopes the U.S. missile attack puts an end to government airstrikes, creating a safe area for civilians. Alaa Alyousef, who lost 25 relatives in the chemical attack, said the U.S. missile strike "alleviates a small part of our suffering," but he worries it will be an "anesthetic" that merely numbs the pain while allowing the international community to save face. ___ Associated Press writers Albert Aji in Damascus, Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow, Lolita C. Baldor in Washington and Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report. Former President, Goodluck Jonathan has said that nothing would stop the People's Democratic Party, PDP from getting out of the crisis... Former President, Goodluck Jonathan has said that nothing would stop the People's Democratic Party, PDP from getting out of the crisis and regaining power in 2019.Mr. Jonathan said this in response to walk-stage out by Senator Ali Modu Sheriff and his faction during the stakeholders' forum in Abuja on Thursday.He described Sheriff's action as a minor setback which will be resolved after the committee submits it report in two weeks.He said: "The committee will be chaired by any of us but we will consult widely. I may chair the committee or if I'm not there, former Vice President Namadi Sambo or Senator David Mark may chair that committee. But if I'm around, I will chair the committee.The BoT will select six people, one per geo-political zone. Each of the blocks will bring six persons, one per geo-political zone. All our governors will be members; Deputy Senate President, Senate Minority Leader; Minority Leader, House of Representatives and Minority Whip; two former governors from both groups, one from the North, one from South; two former ministers, one from the North, one from South; two women, one from the North, one from the South and two youths."Within two weeks, they will come up with strong recommendations. And a smaller group larger than that committee will meet."By the time we come back, those minor areas that caused what we saw in the earlier part of the meeting will not be there again because all those issues must have been smoothen out. We regret that little situation we encountered. Peoples Democratic Party, PDP chairman, Senator Modu Sheriff on Thursday stormed out of a meeting organized by ex-president Goodluck Jona... Peoples Democratic Party, PDP chairman, Senator Modu Sheriff on Thursday stormed out of a meeting organized by ex-president Goodluck Jonathan to solve the leadership crisis plaguing the party.Senator Sheriff said he walked out on former President Goodluck Jonathan at a stakeholders' meeting held at the Shehu Musa Yar'Adua Centre, Abuja because he was not properly recognised as the national chairman.He said: I respect Dr. Jonathan. He is a former President but as of today, I'm the most senior member of this party. Therefore, if I respect him, the respect must be reciprocated."You can't call me for a meeting of PDP and say I cannot address the meeting as national chairman of the party. We are here for PDP stakeholders' meeting and the PDP has only one national chairman, which is Ali Modu Sheriff. There is no PDP meeting that will take place under whatever arrangement that I will not open the session as national chairman. Today, I'm the most senior member of this party."I think Governor Seriake Dickson made a proposal for reconciliation. And we have accepted. Some people want to deviate from this programme, to bring agenda which was not part of it. And as national chairman of the party, what I have told you people in my office when Dickson brought the report is the only thing that we have agreed at this moment. And I will not be party for anybody using me for another programme. I'm not going to be part of it."At the meeting were Sen. Ahmed Makarfi, Chairman of the party's Board of Trustees (BoT), Senator Walid Jibrin, Deputy Senate President, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, Governors Nyesom Wike (Rivers); Ayo Fayose (Ekiti) ; Darius Ishaku (Taraba); deputy governors of Gombe and Ebonyi states, former members of the party's National Working Committee (NWC), including Uche Secondus; Olisa Metuh; Abubakar Mustapha; Abdullahi Maibasira, and other party leaders.Sheriff's action came as a rude shock to National Executive Committee members present.Some of them followed him to pacify him but he refused to return to the meeting. Yakubu Dogara, speaker of the house of representatives, has challenged governors to make public their security votes. Yakubu Dogara, speaker of the house of representatives, has challenged governors to make public their security votes.Speaking at a retreat organised by the national assembly in Kaduna on Friday, the nations number four citizen also challenged state executives to disclose the amount allocated to local governments.He was reacting to the demand of Nasir el-Rufai, governor of Kaduna, who had earlier asked the legislature to make its budget public.I will like to challenge him (el-Rufai) to champion this cause for transparency in the budgetary process from the national assembly to other arms of government, he said.We want to see clearly how chief executives of states are paid. What do they spend monthly as security votes? And if they can publish what happens to local government funds under their jurisdictions. That will help our discussion going forward.Describing the national assembly as the most misunderstood institution in the country, Dogara said no parliament in the world can win popularity contest.When, for instance, public discussions on funding of the legislature are being made, the entire bureaucracy is often completely discountenanced, neither is any consideration given to the fact that this is a special bureaucracy saddled with a multitude of masters who must be equally served in addition to service to the nation, he said.Dogara, said the Nigeria civil service will begin to record progress when it breaks away from its usual tradition to new ways of carrying out its functions.He said there ought to be productivity in the workforce and innovation, which is borne out of motivation of staff through rewards such as promotions based on merit.As leaders, you must be prepared to motivate the workforce. Motivation is the key to innovation anywhere, he said.For far too long, the bureaucracy in Nigeria has failed to innovate because it is locked in a tradition that defines boundaries that must not be crossed. A tradition that says we have always done it this way and apportions sanctions for those who dare doing it the other way even if the outcomes are better.These are chains that bind the bureaucracy in Nigeria from within. Although the most difficult chains to break are those within us, we must break them in order to free the bureaucracy and make it competitive and innovative. The key to achieving this is undoubtedly, training and retraining in an environment such as this.The necessity for every manager to fully understand the ecology of his organisation is not negotiable. The legislature is a distinct organisation with several peculiarities, thereby making strategic management approach an imperative.The management of the national assembly, whatever their managerial competencies, cannot provide efficient and effective services to the legislature except they fully understand and appreciate the organisational goals, objectives and the attendant challenges.I need not warn you of the bitter lesson of life, which is that it will never offer you more than who you are. But the good news is that you can become more. To become more, you must change your ideas and you will never change your ideas until you learn something new.New things learnt are useless and cannot result in growth until you put them to use. That is why you cannot over spend on training. Tell me the size of your organisations budget for training and retraining and Ill predict with absolute certainty, the future of your organisation. Russia has condemned US President Donald Trump for launching an airstrike on a Syrian military base for a chemical attack on civilians. Russia has condemned US President Donald Trump for launching an airstrike on a Syrian military base for a chemical attack on civilians.Kremlin on Friday issued a strong statement describing the US move as aggression against a sovereign nation.Moscow said the strikes had been carried out on an invented pretext and claimed the Syrian army did not have chemical weapons.According to Russia, the strike would do significant damage to US-Russia ties and created a serious obstacle to creating an international coalition to defeat Isis.Kremlin also added that Russian president Vladimir Putin views the strikes as an attempt to deflect world attention from civilian deaths in Iraq where at least 150 people died in a series of coalition airstrikes in Mosul last month.Russia has called for a United Nations council meeting on the strikes. The President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, was one of the top government officials who joined President Muhammadu Buhari for the Jumat pr... The President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, was one of the top government officials who joined President Muhammadu Buhari for the Jumat prayer at the Presidential Villa, Abuja on Friday.The Acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Ibrahim Magu; and the Comptroller-General of Nigeria Customs Service, Col. Hameed Ali (retd.), who have been having running battles with the Senate also participated in the prayer.The Katsina State Governor, Aminu Masari; and the Director-General of the Department of State Services, Lawal Daura, were also in attendance.After the service, Saraki walked pass the Press Gallery to meet briefly with Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo in his office.He was walking a few metres being Magu who also took the same route out of the premises.The Senate under Sarakis leadership had rejected the nomination of Magu as the substantive chairman of the EFCC two times based on security report authored by Daura-led DSS.Ali had also dragged the Senate to court over the insistence of the Senators that he must appear before them in uniform.None of the officials spoke with journalists at the end of the prayer. WINSLOW -- A father and son were arrested after a bloody bar fight that began during an argument about the NFL's Philadelphia Eagles, police said. Brittan B. Holland, 32, and Christopher Hoffman, 56, both of the Sickerville section of town, were each charged with aggravated assault in the fight after police found them at their home. "They told officers that they did engage in a mutual fight at the Tavern," police said in a statement. "Ironically Hoffman was wearing Pittsburgh Steelers slippers and Holland admitted to being a Dallas Cowboys fan." When Winslow police arrived at Joe's Tavern on Williamstown Road at 8:30 p.m. Thursday, they found an unconscious 36-year-old man in the parking lot with a head injury covered in blood. He was hospitalized with multiple facial fractures. A 26-year-old man, who is the son of the tavern owner, had a severely swollen nose later determined to be broken. The two men they fought with outside the bar fled in a car, but Holland and Hoffman were tracked down and arrested, police said. Both were still covered in blood when police found them. Hoffman was charged with third-degree aggravated assault and released. Holland was charged with second-degree aggravated assault and held in the Camden County jail. Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JeffSGoldman. Find NJ.com on Facebook. NEWARK -- A registered nurse has agreed to temporarily surrender his license and to cease practicing nursing in the state pending the resolution of sexual assault and other charges recently brought against him, state Attorney General Christopher Porrino said in a statement Thursday. Kevin A. Cavallaro, who served as a supervisory nurse at a Camden County rehabilitation facility, is accused of having sexual contact with a patient. He was arrested Feb. 2 and charged with four counts of criminal sexual contact, one count of sexual assault and four counts of endangering the welfare of children. Authorities did not disclose the facility where the abuse allegedly occurred, but said it happened between Oct.1 and Nov. 9. On March 3, Cavallaro signed a consent order surrendering his license. Paul Milo may be reached at pmilo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter@PaulMilo2. Find NJ.com on Facebook. WILDWOOD -- Three men robbed a drug dealer at his home in Wildwood on Wednesday, authorities said. Officers on patrol around 7 p.m. saw two of the three men leave a house on the 100 east block of Rio Grande Avenue "at an unusually fast pace", Wildwood police said in a statement. When cops approached the trio, they tried to re-enter the home but were quickly detained. An investigation revealed the men committed a "home invasion style robbery" of a man police described as a street-level marijuana dealer. A search of the house turned up two pounds of marijuana, more than 800 tablet doses of suspected steroids and more than 40 vials of liquid steroids as well as packaging material. The resident, Lee Robinson, 45, was charged with possession and intent to distribute of both marijuana and a controlled dangerous substance. Police released him on a summons. Police charged Sharif Wilson, 36, Kyle Wilson, 34, and Vincent Tyler, 24, with robbery, marijuana possession and intent to distribute. The Wilsons live in Wildwood, while Tyler is a Philadelphia resident. They were sent to the Cape May County jail. All are still in custody as of 10 a.m. Friday, according to the jail's website. Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JeffSGoldman. Find NJ.com on Facebook. LOWER TWP -- A 51-year-old man was charged with possessing child pornography and other related charges, authorities said. Charles Dodds Jr. was arrested at his home in North Cape May on Thursday, according to a statement from the Cape May County Prosecutor's Office. Police received a tip that someone uploaded suspected child pornography from social media sites and authorities executed a search warrant at Dodds' home. Several computers and cell phones were seized in the raid, the prosecutor's office said. Dodds was also charged with intent to distribute and distribution of child pornography. He was released on a summons pending a court hearing. Rajeev Dhir may be reached at rdhir@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @googasmammoo. Find NJ.com on Facebook. OCEAN GROVE -- The three-story home, equipped with six bedrooms and three bathrooms, sits on Ocean Pathway in Ocean Grove, just a quick walk away from the beach. The home sold in December 2008 for $135,000. Earlier this year, the property was listed at $1.395 million -- a 933 percent increase from its last sale price. The stark rise in value of this property in Ocean Grove, a community less than a half-mile in total area within Neptune Township, is a snapshot of the improving housing market there, and how the millions poured into neighboring Asbury Park in recent years has now traveled across Wesley Lake, the separating body of the two communities. But it's a snapshot, too, of the power of an invested community -- in this case, New Jersey's small, but increasingly visible gay community -- to transform real estate markets, even in a shorefront village with a history as one of New Jersey's most conservative and religious communities. "In the 80s or 90s, there was just a lot of run down properties here," says Ray Huizenga, who founded Ocean Grove Realty, now Century 21 Coastal Realtors, in 1979. "Ocean Grove is less than a square mile. You couldn't say there is a blighted street now." The market is "at the highest it has been in years," with property values rising in the community of 3,000 residents, adds Lisa English, a real estate agent for Keller Williams Realty. Part of the reason for the community's burgeoning, experts say, is simple spillover. For years, Ocean Grove residents have been observing the constant development in Asbury Park. In August 2015, iStar, a real estate investment company, announced a multi-billion dollar redevelopment plan of Asbury Park's waterfront, which will add 2,100 homes, 300 hotel rooms and various other mixed-use developments. Yet for both year-round residents and weekenders from New York City or Philadelphia, Ocean Grove offers a comparative peacefulness. It's a a dry town with an uncommercialized beachfront. But it's also just a few minutes drive into the lively Asbury Park downtown, which is packed with bars, restaurants and music venues. "It's the quaintness, cuteness," English says of Ocean Grove's appeal. "It has history and a charm." But, "Asbury Park is its selling point," she says. Kelsey Kloza, 29, lived in Asbury Park for three years before the homeowner she was renting from sold the home. She says she saw the "renaissance" in Asbury Park materialize in those three years. "It was just inevitable Ocean Grove and surrounding areas would take advantage of it," she says. Kloza and two friends relocated to Ocean Grove last summer. The other key component of the area's transformation? Many locals point to an influx of gay residents over the past three decades. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, Ocean Grove now has the most same-sex couples per 1,000 households (40.16) in the state. Harriet Bernstein said the "gay-friendly" culture in Asbury Park and Ocean Grove "absolutely led to me buying here" 19 years ago. The transformation echoes one that has taken place in neighborhoods around the country, from New York City's Chelsea to Los Angeles's West Hollywood -- what was once borderline seedy is now borderline unaffordable. "The area was not doing well," says Luisa Paster, Bernstein's wife. "But a lot of gay people moved in and rehabbed the homes and opened businesses." "There were big old Victorian houses in a small town," Bernstein adds. "For the gay community, with no children, schools were not a concern. You could buy homes for very cheap. It appealed to gay people. That is why it started." The irony of all this, of course, is glaring. Ocean Grove is a traditionally staunch Methodist community -- not exactly where you'd expect to see gay people flocking. When you enter town, one of the first things you see is a sign that says, "God's Square Mile at the Jersey Shore." Bernstein and Paster say that Ocean Grove has been a very welcoming place for the LGBTQ community, though Paster notes that "every once in awhile there is an eruption," a clashing of values between the old guard and the newer, often more liberal, newer residents. Like, when a state judge ruled Bernstein and Paster were discriminated against when the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, a community ministry association, denied the couple use of its boardwalk pavilion for their civil union ceremony in 2007. Or when, in 2012, the meeting association invited former child-actor Kirk Cameron, who has called homosexuality "unnatural," to make a public appearance in the community. In each incident, though, hundreds of residents, gay and straight, have rallied together to support the inclusiveness of Ocean Grove that Bernstein said she has felt in her day-to-day life for the last 19 years. "The population has changed since 1998," Bernstein says. And the market has also remained strong despite increased property taxes. In 2014, Neptune Township underwent a town-wide property revaluation, including Ocean Grove. The average residential property tax bill in Ocean Grove is now $6,176, compared to Asbury Park's average of $5,150. Since 2014, property values have increased by more than 25 percent, while residents average property taxes have increased by 5 percent in Neptune Township. (During that same time period, average property taxes rose by 4.8 percent throughout the state to $8,549.) As for whether Ocean Grove might soon be facing some of the same criticisms that Asbury Park has encountered in recent years -- that it's become too expensive and drifted away from its roots as an affordable enclave -- there are two schools of thought. On one hand, Ocean Grove may already warrant such belief; there is surprisingly little difference in prices between the communities. Separated by just a 15-minute walk, a six-bedroom, five-and-half-bathroom home in Ocean Grove is currently on sale for $799,000, while a single-family four-bedroom and five-and-half bathroom Asbury Park home is currently on sale for $729,000. Both homes are a few blocks from the beach. On the other hand, residents and real estate agents say that the town still boasts a modesty and peacefulness that sets it apart from its neighbor. "Ocean Grove has done a great job piggy backing off of Asbury Park, but not getting lost within that," English says. "The community has not gotten away from what they are." Joe Atmonavage may be reached at jatmonavage@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @jatmonavageNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook. It might seem remarkable that the US Navy can strike multiple corners of a remote Syrian airfield with only one or two days notice. But this is old technology that actually underplays the Pentagons most advanced capabilities. The Navy fired 59 Tomahawk missiles on April 6 at Syrias Al Shayrat airfield, about 70 miles northeast of Damascus, in retaliation for chemical weapons attacks a few days earlier that reportedly originated at the base. Its not yet clear how much damage the US strikes inflicted, although Syrian officials claimed at least 9 people died. Key foreign leaders and senior Democrats on Capitol Hill have generally backed President Trump, who ordered the strikes. The missiles came from two destroyers, the USS Ross and the USS Porter, steaming in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, off Syrias coast. The Tomahawk missile is an appealing weapon for such a mission: it requires no pilot flying in harms way and can be launched from a safe distance of up to 1,500 miles away. This is an old missile, in one sense, says Tom Karako, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But in another sense, its being continually modernized. Its frequently the thing for which we reach first in these kinds of engagements. The Tomahawk, built by Raytheon (RTN) at a cost of about $1.4 million apiece, is 20 feet long at launch, and weighs as much as a Mini Cooper. Its 1,000-pound warhead can pulverize a small building and leave a 20-foot crater in the ground. It can be fired from submarines as well as surface ships, making it hard to detect where its coming from. A booster powers the missile into flight, while a turbofan engine powers it to the target once the booster is discarded. The Tomahawk, doesnt have a radar-defeating stealth design, like the B-2 bomber. Yet by flying 100 feet or so above the earths surface, it often avoids radar detection. It can also zig and zag on its way to the target, so its flight path is unpredictable. Story continues The Navy first fielded the Tomahawks in the 1980s, and the missiles first use came in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, when the United States used nearly 300 of them to degrade Iraqs air-defense system and other key defense nodes. A few Tomahawks were shot down, and others malfunctioned, but the Tomahawklike similar missiles fielded by the Air Forcewas generally praised as a wonder weapon heralding a new era of less-bloody standoff warfare. (That may be true for combat pilots, but grueling ground wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have since proven that bloodless warfare remains a long way off.) The USS Ross fires a tomahawk land attack missile Friday, April 7, 2017, from the Mediterranean Sea. (Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Robert S. Price/U.S. Navy via AP) Sophisticated militaries such as those of Russia and China have the capability, on paper, to shoot down or otherwise defeat subsonic cruise missiles like the Tomahawk. But most other nations dont, which is why five dozen of them were able to fly through Syrias airspace unmolested and strike a target roughly 60 miles inland. If the United States were at war, as Syria is, such a missile fired from the sea would trigger alarms well before it made land. Tomahawks were fired into Iraq several times after 1991, to punish Saddam Hussein for various violations of United Nations sanctions. They were the weapon of choice in 1998 when the Pentagon tried, with limited success, to destroy al Qaeda facilities in Afghanistan and Yemen. Other Tomahawk strikes have occurred in Bosnia (1995), Serbia and Montenegro (1999), Afghanistan again (2001), Iraq again (2003), Somalia (2008), Yemen again (2009), Libya (2011), Syria (ISIS targets, in 2014), and Yemen again (2016). The Navy has substantially upgraded the Tomahawk since its wartime debut in 1991. Early versions could be programmed to fly on their own to a target, but that was about it. Newer versions can be reprogrammed in flight, if a more important target pops up. Newer Tomahawks can loiter and shoot footage of prior strikes, to help war planners assess damage and the need for follow-on strikes. The upgraded versions also launch more quickly than prior models. And the contractor Raytheon is working on processors and other active-seeker technology that would enable the missile to hunt moving targets, a missing capability that essentially limits the Tomahawks use, for now, to fixed targets such as buildings. The Navy has about 4,000 Tomahawks in inventory, but plans to eventually replace the aging design with newerand perhaps stealthiertechnology. The Tomahawk is nowhere near the fastest cruise missile in the world, for one thing. That distinction probably belongs to the joint Russian-Indian Brahmos missile, which can travel more than 2,000 miles per hour, or roughly four times as fast as a Tomahawk. That makes it far harder to shoot down. And while the Tomahawk is useful against fixed targets, the Navy increasingly needs weapons able to strike fast-moving ships and other mobile targets. For now, however, the Tomahawk remains a stalwart friend of war planners and presidents. Read more: Rick Newman is the author of four books, including Rebounders: How Winners Pivot from Setback to Success. Follow him on Twitter: @rickjnewman The logo of Takata Corp is seen on its display at a showroom for vehicles in Tokyo, Japan, February 9, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai (Reuters) By David Shepardson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal judge in Detroit said on Thursday he plans to name former FBI director Robert Mueller to oversee nearly $1 billion in Takata Corp restitution funds as part of a U.S. Justice Department settlement. In January, Takata agreed to plead guilty to criminal wrongdoing and to pay $1 billion to resolve a federal investigation into its air bag inflators linked to at least 16 deaths worldwide. As part of the settlement, Takata agreed to establish two independently administered restitution funds: one for $850 million to compensate automakers for recalls, and a $125 million fund for individuals physically injured by Takata's airbags who have not already reached a settlement. U.S. District Court Judge George Steeh in February accepted Takata's guilty plea and approved the previously agreed settlement. With the criminal settlement and penalties set in the United States, where the majority of air bag-related fatalities and injuries have occurred, Takata is expected to continue its search for a buyer or financial backer, a process which has dragged on for a year. Takata paid the $125 million on March 29 and must pay the $850 million within five days of the "anticipated sale, merger, acquisition, or combination involving a transfer of control of Takata," Steeh wrote. Mueller, now a partner at a WilmerHale, served as a federal court settlement master in a series of Volkswagen AG civil suits over excess emissions. Steeh plans to finalize the appointment after hearing any potential objections. Takata has declared about 100 million inflators defective worldwide and automakers have recalled 46 million Takata air bag inflators in 29 million U.S. vehicles. By 2019, automakers will recall 64 to 69 million U.S. inflators in 42 million vehicles, U.S regulators said in December. In February, Steeh said automakers could be victims of Takata's decisions to hide evidence for over 15 years that its inflators were defective and still be subject to civil litigation for harm done to individuals. Story continues A person briefed on the matter said this week that resolution might not be reached until late April or May. Takata has denied investor speculation that it would have to seek some form of bankruptcy protection in the United States or Japan. In February, Steeh and lawyers for the Justice Department alluded to the potential for Takata to collapse if it could not find a buyer. (Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Sandra Maler) Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has has had a rough 2017, maneuvering through scandal after scandal. Source: Reuters Uber has arguably had the roughest year of its 8-year existence, and its only April. The company was beset by scandal after scandal, including what some considered tacit support of the White Houses ban on refugees from predominantly Muslim countries, allegations of sexual harassment, questionably legal anti-regulation tactics, and more. Starting in late January, the #deleteUber hashtag went viral and the company had to create a new part of their app they never thought to builda way for people to delete their account. (Previously, users had to contact the company.) Over 200,000 people deleted their Uber accounts by the first week of February. With the viral nature of the anti-Uber sentiment, questions emerged about how much damage the viral campaign would actually do to the company, and what boons there might be for competitors like Lyft. The New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) has released the numbers for Februarythey run on a two-month delayfinally giving insight into the damage from the scandals in Ubers biggest market. The TLC report covers number of rides by taxis, limousines, and any other car-for-hire services, which include app-based services like Uber, Lyft, Juno, and Gett. Without knowing Marchs data yet, its too early to know the effects of many of the scandals, but the month following the #deleteUber campaigns beginning is on the books. There doesnt appear to have been much damage. Uber ridership numbers typically fluctuate, and trips were at a localized peak of around 272,000 per day when the hashtag began to trend on Jan. 28 and became most prevalent over the week following (President Trump issued the administrations first travel ban on Jan. 27). Its hard to say how much Uber was affected by #deleteUber in New York City. Source: TLC/Todd Schneiderman About a week later, trips were down 11%. Whether that was because of Ubers bad reputation or other factorsrandom drops like this are commonplace due to weather and holidaysis impossible to know. The point, however, becomes somewhat moot when, on Feb. 18, the numbers return to 270,000 rides per day. Uber appears to have been negligibly affected. Story continues With so much noise in the system from demand naturally fluctuating, its hard to attribute changes to a cause like #deleteUber). However, the TLC data, pulled and consolidated into a visualization above by data scientist Todd W. Schneider, shows an uptick in Lyft that appears to be statistically significant. On Jan. 28, the day #deleteUber was born, Lyft made 44,000 trips and by Feb. 4, they were at 59,000, a massive 44% jumpduring Ubers 11% decline. (Yellow cabs also experienced a jump during that period.) Adding more detail is difficult. Lyft could have cannibalized new signups that would have otherwise gone to Uber, or riders could have simply used Lyft slightly more. Its impossible to say. The TLC data is not current thanks to the lag period, so there isnt any data from March to provide further insight into any fallout (for example, from a different allegation against Uber). However, a survey published in late March and conducted by LendEDU, a student loan company, found that 93% of US millennials indicated they wouldnt stop using Uber despite the controversy surrounding the tech unicorn. The reasons? On the one hand, it works really well. But as one Uber rider told Yahoo Finance in the wake of the scandal, its hard to turn down taxi rides subsidized by VC while they last. Ethan Wolff-Mann is a writer at Yahoo Finance focusing on consumer issues, tech, and personal finance. Follow him on Twitter @ewolffmann. Got a tip? Send it to tips@yahoo-inc.com. Read more: Subprime auto loans too small to be a big problem, says Dimon An interesting market sign says private jet sales may be about to take off Democrats found a way to speak Trumps language What Trumps intriguing Nafta changes say about his other promises Facebooks copy of Snap stories is a reminder of a Silicon Valley hard truth The trick to getting credit card fees waived? Just ask These two companies lobby to make your taxes way harder Chases Sapphire Reserve is very worth it, even with its slashed bonus The Vivendi logo is pictured at the main entrance of the entertainment-to-telecoms conglomerate headquarters in Paris, March 10, 2016. REUTERS/Charles Platiau By Jonathan Stempel NEW YORK (Reuters) - Vivendi SA (VIV.PA) said it agreed to pay $26.4 million to end nearly 15 years of U.S. litigation accusing the French media company of misleading shareholders about its finances in connection with a $46 billion three-way merger. Thursday's accord resolved claims that Vivendi and officials including former Chief Executive Jean-Marie Messier made false or misleading statements that concealed liquidity problems after the 2000 combination of Vivendi, Seagram Co and Canal Plus. A preliminary settlement was filed with the federal court in Manhattan, and requires approval by U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer. It resolves claims by investors whose financial advisers bought Vivendi's American depositary shares on their behalf from Oct. 30, 2000 to Aug. 14, 2002, according to court papers. The $26.4 million payment represents one-third of the maximum amount the investors might have won had litigation continued, the papers showed. Vivendi said that including the payment, it will have paid $78 million to resolve the entire litigation, in which investors at one time had hoped to recover $9.3 billion. A federal jury in Manhattan had in January 2010 found Vivendi liable for violating U.S. securities laws. But a U.S. Supreme Court decision five months later in an unrelated case ultimately scuttled most claims by Vivendi investors, including over ordinary shares listed in Paris. Vivendi said it will release a roughly 25 million euro ($26.6 million) reserve it had set aside for Thursday's accord. The case is In re Vivendi Universal SA Securities Litigation, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 02-05571. (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by David Gregorio) Fast food and low wage workers and their supporters stage a protest at McDonald's on Carrollton Avenue in New Orleans as part of a national Fight for $15 rally on April 15, 2015. (Photo by Kathleen Flynn, NOLA.com l The Times-Picayune) The federal government plans to pour $125 million into the fight against a mysterious disease that has ravaged corals in Florida and much of the Caribbean, and now poses a dire threat to the treasured reefs off the Louisiana and Texas coasts. WASHINGTON (AP) The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol has issued a subpoena to Donald Trump. The nine-member panel sent a letter to the former president's lawyers on Friday, demanding his testimony under oath by mid-November and outlining a series of corresponding documents. The decision by lawmakers to exercise their subpoena power comes a week after the committee made its final case against the former president, who they say is the "central cause" of the multi-part effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election. It remains unclear how Trump and his legal team will respond to the subpoena, if at all. tomahawk missile TLAM Syria After launching dozens of missiles against Syrian airfields early Friday morning, the Pentagon released images and videos of the footage taken from US destroyers stationed in the Mediterranean Sea. The 59 cruise missiles impacted their targets reportedly runaways, aircraft, and fuel points for the aircraft around 4:40 a.m. local time, in what was the US' first intentional attack on Syrian government targets since its civil war broke out six years ago. Fired from two guided-missile destroyers, USS Porter (DDG 78) and the USS Ross (DDG 71), the missiles themselves have been part of the US' arsenal since 1991, and commonly carries a 1,000 pound warhead, according to The Washington Post. It was last used against three radar sites in Yemen after Houthi rebels fired their own missiles towards US ships. The attack was President Donald Trump's response to an alleged chemical attack by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces that killed around 80 people in the northwestern part of country, earlier this week. Syrian officials have denied the allegations, saying that they "did not and will not" use chemical weapons. Here's the launch from USS Porter (DDG 78) Here's several angles of the launch from USS Ross (DDG 71) NOW WATCH: Here are the countries the US sells the most weapons to More From Business Insider Welcome to non league daily news now - your number one spot for all things relating to the National League System. Our dedicated reporters have come straight from the sidelines to bring you news fresh from the dugout - but not before theyve stopped off at the burger van first! We know that non league football fans are full of heart, passion, and belief. You trust the manager, you believe in the team, and, for some strange reason, you trust those rickety stands, too! Here at Non League Daily, we hope we can become your trusted non league news resource - a platform thats just as passionate about non league daily news now as you. Come rain or shine, well be out reporting on the latest non league fixtures. Well also be scouring the news, refreshing social media, and sourcing information from team websites in the hopes of finding the latest breaking non league daily news for our readers. As youll soon see, weve got exclusive match reports on the Vanarama National League, weve got transfer speculation thatll affect the National League South, weve found great stories thatll spice up the National League North, and weve even got news on the latest giant killers of the FA Cup. We may not be able to agree on who is going up this year, but we can all agree that any news on the NLS worth knowing will be published here, at Non League Daily. A Council Bluffs man was found guilty of domestic abuse and child endangerment, but was found not guilty of sexual assault or kidnapping following a trial this week. Dusty Rhodes, 35, faced life in prison for allegedly kidnapping, beating and raping his then-girlfriend in December 2016. In court Thursday, Rhodes sat next to his attorney Michael Winter while Assistant Pottawattamie County Attorney Shelly Sudmann reviewed the details of the case against him once more. The jury of 10 men and two women listened as Sudmann explained the events of Dec. 29, 2016, when Rhodes allegedly cornered, beat and raped his then-girlfriend. Once she and the defendant moved in together, he became possessive. Controlling. Always suspicious of what she was doing and who she was with, Sudmann told the jury. On Dec. 29, 2016, the woman said Rhodes picked her up off the couch, tossed her onto the bed and began hurting and choking her before raping her. Relatives of the alleged victim testified Rhodes had a history of abusive and controlling behavior, and would accuse the woman that she was having an affair. He said it was his right, he could take whatever he wanted, Sudmann said as she recounted the womans testimony when she was held down against her will. DNA evidence collected from a towel at the scene tested positive for both the womans and Rhodes DNA. However, a vaginal swab from the woman which was taken after the alleged rape was not tested, Winter said. Sudmann said the swab wasnt tested due to issues with the Iowa Department of Criminal Investigation Laboratory. After the assault, Sudmann said Rhodes constantly hindered or outright forced the woman to stay next to him, even while they were outside having a cigarette. Rhodes would lay on top of the woman to prevent her from moving from the bed or couch, Sudmann said. That morning, the woman eventually locked herself in the bathroom and called a family member for help before escaping out of the window into the arms of police. Evidence collected showed several calls and text messages around that time from Rhodes phone, asking for his mother to come to the house as soon as possible. As the woman was crawling out of the window and police were at the front door, Rhodes took his daughter and left through the back door, ignoring the womans sister in the driveway and running from police, Sudmann said. Rhodes was arrested by police nearby. In the police cruiser, Rhodes was recorded by cameras being concerned about his possessions in his house and that the woman was going to steal stuff. When asked why he left the house with his daughter, Rhodes said I left to poop, and had gone to use the bathroom at a nearby convenience store while the woman was in the bathroom. In his statement, Winter said the alleged victim had been through at least seven failed relationships and that there was a lack of evidence to prove she was raped. Winter also pointed out the woman didnt try to escape when she had ample opportunity to. If she had been raped, why didnt she try to get away while they were outside smoking, screaming rape so the whole neighborhood could hear? Winter asked the jury. When the pair later slept on a couch in the living room, Winter said he thought it would be difficult to sleep after being raped. Is she trying to create drama? A story to convince police that (Rhodes) had done something awful? Winter again asked. He said Rhodes wasnt trying to run from police. In fact, Rhodes did not know police were present when he left the house with his daughter to go use the bathroom, but was trying to distance himself from the situation. She said she was trying to figure out the best way possible to get away from him or to get him to move out. And by accusing him of rape, shed never have to deal with him again, Winter said. Iowa government spending would be stagnant in its next state budget under a plan released by Republican lawmakers. The proposal, they acknowledged, could mean cuts for some departments in order to meet promised spending in other areas such as K-12 education. The joint spending targets, which total roughly $7.2 billion, would go into effect for the budget year that begins in July. Its about $14 million less than the current budget. Republicans earlier this year slashed the current budget by more than $110 million to plug a budget shortfall, in part by cutting spending for state agencies, community colleges and public universities. They also agreed to use more than $130 million from a rainy day fund to plug a second shortfall. GOP lawmakers unveiled their budget targets on Wednesday and have vowed to repay the dip in cash reserves within two years and keep a commitment to spend about $40 million more on K-12 education in the upcoming budget year. It means other areas of state government will take a hit in the process, though the details will be unclear until lawmakers piece together the bills that ultimately will make up the budget. There are quite a few thatll take a hit, said Rep. Charlie McConkey, D-Council Bluffs. David Roederer, a chief budget official for Gov. Terry Branstad, said such reduced spending from one budget year to the next is rare. GOP lawmakers also acknowledged its not common, though they argued it was necessary to balance the budget amid revenue constraints. Clearly were working in a difficult budget year, said Rep. Mary Ann Hanusa, R-Council Bluffs, noting the rarity of the two measures taken during this budget year to plug the gaps. In my seven years weve never had to deal with those two circumstances, Hanusa said. A state panel that makes budget projections has repeatedly reduced expected revenue over the past few months, stating that receipts are coming in at a slower than expected rate. Different groups have different perspectives on whats causing the decline. Hanusa said a less-than-robust agriculture economy hurt state revenues. As diversified as Iowa is, were still a largely ag economy. The ag economy is not faring as well as it has been several years past, Hanusa said, noting for example, the price of corn dropping from around $7 per bushel in recent years. The current price is $3.25 per bushel and has been below that at times. That makes a difference because of the farm economy on its face, but also in Iowa a lot of our industries are ag related, she said. When the base of the ag economy is not churning along at an optimum level that affects manufacturing and other industries related to agriculture. Democrats have criticized tax credit spending and surplus use. Were giving away money through exemptions and tax credits. Its hurting the state, but also the cities and counties too, McConkey said. Were overspending, but we wouldnt be if we werent limiting the income coming in. We need to cut down the tax credits and give-a-ways. Both McConkey and Hanusa called for an examination of the tax credits in the state, saying that some are working, while others arent. But Hanusa said blaming the tax credits is incorrect. In terms of them being reexamined, I think that we should look at every tax credit that we have, she said. Some are wildly popular and theyre very well run and very effective. Hanusa lauded the historic preservation tax credit, which has been used by developers in Council Bluffs and elsewhere to restore historic buildings. Not all tax credits are created equal, Hanusa said. We need to make sure theyre meeting the legislative intent make sure theyre still serving the purpose for which they were intended. Its a little easy to say if we didnt have tax credits we wouldnt have those (budget) problems. Thats simply not true. McConkey and his colleagues in the minority party will have little legislative power to stop Republicans and their proposed spending plan. Their budget will not build the skilled workforce we need or protect Iowas most vulnerable citizens, said Rep. Chris Hall, D-Sioux City and ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee. McConkey expressed disappointment in the cuts. This is historic, to have a good economy where we have to cut the budget this much, the lawmaker said. Branstad released a revised budget recommendation last month that lowered spending in response to the shortfalls, though he proposed spending about $38 million more than Republicans in the Legislature. Still, the governors office offered support for the GOP plan. Spokesman Ben Hammes said in an email we have worked hand in hand to reach the targets. It indicates Republican lawmakers could approve a state budget and adjourn within weeks. Its now up to GOP-led budget committees to finalize the expected spending cuts. Sen. Charles Schneider, R-West Des Moines and chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said he believes the public understands their reasoning. I would like to think that citizens would think were budgeting responsibly, and making sure that we have enough revenues to carry over into next year and to adequately prepare ourselves for what could be a continuous slow period of growth, he said. Barbara Rodriguez of the Associated Press contributed to this report. Sen. Chuck Grassley supports the continued investigation of Russian influence on the 2016 election. The Iowa Republican has also questioned the involvement of an FBI deputy director whose wife has ties to former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Every emphasis weve had on Russia interfering with our election is legitimate, Grassley said in his weekly press call. But theres not enough concern about whos leaking (information). During the call on Wednesday, the senator praised the intelligence committees of both the House and Senate as doing a good job in investigating the role of Russia in our campaign. On Thursday, Republican Rep. Devin Nunes of California withdrew from his role leading a congressional investigation into the Russian interference, citing ethics complaints that he mishandled classified information. The decision by Nunes comes amid partisan turmoil on the House intelligence committee. Democrats have alleged that Nunes, who was on President Donald Trumps transition team, is too close to the White House and cannot lead an impartial inquiry. In an extraordinary step, the usually-quiet House ethics committee said that it is investigating whether Nunes improperly disclosed classified information. Trump said Nunes is a very honorable guy. Nunes blamed left-wing activist groups for filing accusations against him with the Office of Congressional Ethics. The charges are entirely false and politically motivated and are being leveled just as the American people are beginning to learn the truth about the improper unmasking of the identities of U.S. citizens and other abuses of power, Nunes said in a statement. Nunes was referring to Susan Rice, Barack Obamas national security adviser. According to a U.S. official, Rice asked spy agencies to give her the names of Trump associates who surfaced in intelligence reports she was regularly briefed on. Rices official role would have given her the ability to make those requests for national security purposes. Rice, in an interview with MSNBC, acknowledged that she sometimes asked for the names of Americans referenced in reports. She would not say whether she saw intelligence related to Trump associates or whether she asked for their identities, though she did say that reports related to Russia increased in the final months of the presidential election. Rice has firmly denied that she or other Obama officials used secret intelligence reports to spy on Trump associates for political purposes. Absolutely false, Rice declared. The unnamed U.S. official said Rices Trump-related requests were discovered as part of a National Security Council review of the governments policy on unmasking the intelligence communitys term for revealing Americans identities that would otherwise be hidden in classified reports. Grassley said that he didnt believe Rice had violated any laws, but was involved in things she shouldnt have been involved in, unmasking people. The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff of California, said he appreciated Nunes decision to step aside from the Russia investigation. There was a cloud hanging over us after the White House incident, Schiff said Thursday. The FBI is also conducting an investigation into ties between Trumps associates and Russia. In late March, Grassley sent a letter to FBI Director James Comey questioning what involvement FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe had in the investigation. In the letter, Grassley noted McCabe is under investigation by the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, which is examining whether the political and financial connections between McCabes wifes Democratic political campaign and Clinton associates warranted his recusal in the FBIs Clinton email investigation. He shouldve recused himself, Grassley said Wednesday. There was a conflict there. In the letter, Grassley discussed the FBIs own investigation into the Russian interference in the election, including investigating whether there was any collusion between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government. Given the timing of the investigation and his position, it is likely that Mr. McCabe has been involved in that high-profile, politically charged inquiry as well. If Mr. McCabe failed to avoid the appearance of a partisan conflict of interest in favor of Mrs. Clinton during the presidential election, then any participation in this inquiry creates the exact same appearance of a partisan conflict of interest against Mr. Trump, Grassley said in his letter to Comey. Grassley also said he is asking the FBI if it paid for a dossier on Trumps Russian ties that the senator said was compiled by an opposition research firm that also worked for Clinton. Is taxpayer money being spent on this? Grassley said. Were trying to get information. We dont have it yet. The Justice Department is investigating McCabes boss as well. The department continues to investigate FBI actions before the election, including whether Comey followed established policies in the email investigation of Hillary Clinton. Comey, during an announcement in the summer, chastised Clinton and her aides as extremely careless in their email practices. Its highly unusual for federal law enforcement officials to discuss a criminal case that ends without charges being filed. Comey reignited the email controversy on Oct. 28 when he informed Congress that agents would be reviewing a cache of emails between Clinton aide Huma Abedin and Clinton for any new evidence related to Clintons handling of sensitive State Department material. That move boiled in the campaign for nine days, before Comey announced on Nov. 6 two days before Election Day that the inquiry had found no new evidence of wrongdoing. Julie Pace, Ken Thomas, Deb Riechmann, Eileen Sullivan, Chad Day and Matthew Daly of the Associated Press contributed to this report. ANITA Iowa Department of Natural Resources officials are investigating a possible drowning that occurred at Lake Anita State Park. A passerby spotted an overturned kayak on Lake Anita in Cass County around 3 p.m. Thursday and alerted authorities who soon found the body of Roland Rollie Henderson, 63, of Wiota. Hendersons body was pulled from the lake and taken to the Iowa State Medical Examiners Office in Ankeny where an autopsy will be performed. Capt. Brian Smith, a law enforcement officer with the DNR, said witnesses claim to have seen Henderson with the kayak in the late afternoon Wednesday. Smith asked that anyone who may have seen Henderson on or around the lake between Wednesday evening and Thursday to contact his office at 712-254-0550. Were trying to narrow down the timeline of events, he said. Witnesses told investigators that Henderson frequently went kayaking on the lake in the late summer and early fall last year, though he hadnt been seen so far this year until Wednesday. There was no damage to the kayak and Smith said he has no reason at this point to believe another boat was involved. Investigators also did not find a personal floatation device on Hendersons body, on the water or on the lakes shoreline. Smith said Iowa law states boats must have wearable and accessible personal floatation devices for each person onboard the vessel. DNR law enforcement will continue to investigate. Ceremonies were held at the Veterans Plaza in Bayliss Park in downtown Council Bluffs this morning to remember Americas entry into World War 1 exactly a century ago to the day. Members of the local Daughters of the American Revolution and from Dodge House participated Thursday morning, the 100th anniversary of the United States entry into World War I. They were joined by retired veteran Harvey Kahl of Malvern, who laid a wreath by the names of local soldiers who died in that war. A short prayer was then said for the veterans. Jan Ehrens, DAR chaplin, said its always important to honor those who died serving their country. They gave the ultimate sacrifice, Ehrens said. Remembering their legacy is especially important for todays children, she said. They need to know what was done for them to enjoy the freedom they have, Ehrens said. Daniel Eachus will perform at North Platte Community College at 7 p.m. on Wednesday in the McDonald-Belton Theater on the south campus of North Platte Community College. The NPCC Student Life Department is sponsoring the show. Its free and open to the public, but best suited for those who are at least 12 years old. Eachus, 25, is a rising young star in the comedy world. He has the chops of a comedy veteran and people are taking notice. Born and raised in Fresno, California, Eachus was surrounded by farms, but didnt want to smell raisins for the rest of his life. He turned to comedy to get him out. Eachus left Fresno to study in Long Beach, California. By day, he was a student, and by night, he performed on the stand-up comedy circuit. After one year of nightly performances, Eachus became the youngest finalist ever in the Funniest Comic in Los Angeles contest at the Jon Lovitz Comedy Club. He has been entertaining audiences ever since. Eachus has been a regional finalist on Comedy Centrals Up Next, featured on Sideshow Networks Five Spot and just made his first appearance on SpikeTV. When not doing stand-up, Eachus acts, writes and produces the comedy sketch series Bigfoot Chasers. NP Area Chamber unveils incentive assistance initiative The North Platte Area Chamber and Development Corporation hosted an orientation workshop Thursday to outline the process for its new worker incentive plan. Area business owners and managers attended the session at the Best Western Plus to kick off the worknp.com program introduced to the city council last month. This is a new program were launching today that were very excited about, said Gary Person, president and CEO of the chamber. We think it has great potential. Its kind of out there on the creative side, and we dont know of another community that is doing it quite like this. The program is designed to address issues that local employers have identified including recruiting and training, as well as the lack of availability of a skilled work force. We wanted to give our chamber members an incentive edge in competing with other Midwest employers in other communities, Person said. We have a lot of communities and some statewide attention kind of watching how this program unfolds. The program is designed to bring in quality jobs, which were identified as those that would pay enough to entice non-local workers to apply and be willing to relocate to Lincoln County, Person said. The program will allow employers to offer new hires a financial incentive with matching funds from the city. Each employer is limited to two incentive packages. The employee signs a three-year employment agreement, Person said. The incentive comes in the form of a performance-based forgivable loan. He said one-third of the loan will be forgiven on the anniversary date of each of the first three years of employment, and repayment will be prorated if the agreement is not fulfilled. The program focuses on local businesses, Person said. Theres some national statistics that recently validated the Nebraska Department of Economic Development data that said 80 percent of a communitys economic growth comes from the existing business community, Person said. Person said often communities focus on new businesses coming to town. This program really emphasizes taking care of what we already have in Lincoln County, Person said. The logo for worknp.com was unveiled Thursday. A website that will provide information about applying for the program will go live in about 10 days, said Megan McGown, vice president of economic development and director of communications and marketing for the chamber. A group of 35-40 members of the business community attended the orientation, including Lesley Nordhausen, talent engagement coordinator at Allo Communications. At Allo we retain a lot of our qualified applications, but we can obviously be bringing more, Nordhausen said. We need those high-skilled employees to run our network, to get installs to support the customer, and so I think were really interested in this. She said it is difficult to find those highly skilled people, but the people they do find are staying. Were really proud of the fact theyre coming, theyre staying, Nordhausen said. Most are staying because of the culture we have, the benefits packages we offer. Kelsey Miller, regional manager for the Nebraska Department of Labor office of employment and training in North Platte, said that agencys website now includes the worker incentive plan so job seekers might consider looking at North Platte. We cover a large territory and cover 19 counties in our area, Miller said. Our major goal is really just a public labor exchange, so its simply communication between businesses that are looking to hire people and job seekers looking for employment. Details of the program are available on the worknp.com website, including employee and employer agreements that outline how the process works. Employers can also contact the chamber at 308-532-4966 for more information. Construction crews spent Thursday pouring concrete at the new Anchor Memorial Park near North County Road in Sutherland. It followed three years of fundraising, planning and grant funding. Dean Kealy, a Sutherland contractor, donated nearly 7 acres to the Village of Sutherland to be used for a park. Angela Dorram, a member of the subcommittee that established the park, said that while the Sutherland Chamber of Commerce supported the idea of a park, it couldnt take on the project itself. So residents established the subcommittee which spoke to other residents and groups. We had a lot of [people in the] community that thought wed never do it, Dorram said, that itd come out of taxes. Last summer, Sutherland received a grant of more than $190,000 from the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission for the park. Fundraising through wine tasting, microbrew and sportsman banquet events, as well as a $5,000 gift from the chamber, matched $18,000 of the grant. The committee asked residents what they wanted in a park, and the village factored park maintenance into its yearly maintenance plan. Then the committee waited the park still had to meet regulations, and then winter came, committee members said. Now, Sutherlands huge community of walkers and joggers will have three-quarters of a mile of trail, Dorram said. Trails are wide enough for wheelchairs, bikes and roller blades. Jessica Krajewski, another committee member, said many streets in town lack sidewalks, so the trail will allow parents to let their children ride bikes or run without worrying about trucks. Next, the committee plans to apply for more grants for playground equipment and a bandstand. It hopes to bring live music and celebrations including the villages Fourth of July celebration to the park. This summer, the committee plans to have a drive to purchase trees for the park. WWI innovations remain in use a century after joining war Machine guns. Tanks. Chemical weapons. Warplanes. Submarines. Trench coats. Wristwatches. Thursday marked the 100th anniversary of the U.S. entry into World War I, and some of the innovations that were developed or came into wide use during the conflict are still with us today. America entered nearly three years after the war began, joining Britain, France and Russia in the fight against Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. When it ended on Nov. 11, 1918, more than 4.7 million Americans served and some 115,000 died. The worlds first mechanized war introduced enhanced weaponry and equipment, most of it designed to take lives but some of it aimed at saving lives. Heres a look at some of the things that were new to the doughboys that we take for granted today: Machine guns Hand-cranked, high-capacity, rapid-firing firearms had been used as far back as the Civil War. But it was American inventor Hiram Maxims 1880s design for a single-barrel, portable machine gun and other later versions that became ubiquitous on both sides during World War I. It forced opposing forces to dig hundreds of miles of trenches, with a deadly no mans land in between where soldiers could get mowed down. This kind of fighting was unfamiliar to most American forces, who had been trained in the tactics of mobile warfare, always advancing. Then it becomes, How do we get out of the trenches? said Maj. Kyle Hatzinger, a history instructor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. The Americans by 1917 have to figure this out. Tanks One way to break out of the trenches along the Western Front was to bust through with newly developed armored tracked vehicles dubbed tanks. The British introduced a large number of tanks to the battlefield for the first time in September 1916, during the battle of the Somme. Other armies soon were developing their own versions. In September 1918, a 32-year-old Army lieutenant colonel named George Patton led a U.S. tank unit into battle for the first time. A quarter century later, during World War II, he was the most famous commander of American armored units. Chemical weapons Germany launched the first use of a chemical weapon, chlorine gas, at Ypres, Belgium, in April 1915, against French troops. By 1917 other chemicals, including mustard gas, were being used by both sides. Some estimates put the number of deaths from gas attacks at about 900,000, with another 1 million injured. Gas masks were developed. But using gas could result in friendly fire casualties when winds blew the toxic fumes back into the attackers positions. And if you attack you now have to go through the gas cloud youve created, Hatzinger said. Theres a lot of trial and error with the technology. Outrage over the use of chemicals weapons in WWI led to the 1925 Geneva Protocol treaty that banned the use of chemical or biological weapons in international armed conflicts. Air warfare A little more than a decade after the Wright Brothers flew their first airplane, WWI combatants took to the skies to spy on one another and then to shoot each other down. Early in the war, aircraft were equipped with cameras for taking reconnaissance photographs. Pilots started arming themselves with handguns and rifles to shoot down enemy biplanes. Soon, mounted machine guns were being used in aerial combat known as dogfights, giving rise to such legendary fighter aces as Germanys Manfred von Richthofen (aka The Red Baron), American Eddie Rickenbacker and Canadas Billy Bishop. Women in uniform WWI was the first time in the nations history that women were officially attached to branches of the U.S. military, and more than 30,000 served in uniform, mostly as nurses or switchboard operators. Thousands of other women joined the various stateside private organizations aiding the war effort, and they also wore uniforms. A cartoon in popular Life magazine at the time showed two American soldiers looking at a young woman working at a desk job. What will you do after the war if you cant get your old job back? one asked. The other replied: Marry the girl whos holding it down. A North Platte man was arrested Wednesday after police said he failed to return a borrowed pickup. According to Investigator John Deal of the North Platte Police Department, an officer took a report of a stolen vehicle Wednesday afternoon. A woman told the officer that she had allowed an acquaintance, Joshua Salisbury, 34, to borrow her 1990 Chevrolet pickup. The truck is valued at about $1,500. Deal said the woman told Salisbury he could take the pickup to the Omaha area and return it within a couple of days. About three weeks later, the pickup had not been returned, he said. All attempts by the victim to get the vehicle back had failed, Deal said. Police were called back to the residence that evening because Salisbury had returned without the truck. Deal said Salisbury could not tell police where it was. Salisbury was arrested on suspicion of possession of stolen property and unauthorized use of a motor vehicle. The United States entered World War I 100 years ago Thursday. Much has changed since then, obviously. And a lot of whats changed has done so because the United States finally entered the fight. Here are seven of them not even counting the simple fact that the U.S. entry on the Allied side saved a mutinous French army and blunted Germanys last-ditch offensive in 1918. 1. Woodrow Wilson and Americas liberal internationalism: After winning re-election on a promise to stay out of the war, Wilson took the doughboys in, effectively launching a new chapter in U.S. foreign policy that lasts, with variations, to the present day. Sure, the League of Nations was spurned by the Senate and ended up being a toothless organization that failed to stop World War II, but the notion that European affairs can threaten the United States took hold, as did the idea of collective security which led directly to the creation of the United Nations at the end of WWII. 2. 1930s Germany: Wilsons insistence on an end to Prussian militarism meant that Germanys socialist government, and not the military dictatorship, was associated with the armistice, which did not exactly help the Weimar moderates reputation and helped fuel the stab in the back meme that simmered for years in Germany. That, coupled with France and the United Kingdoms insistence that Germany pay dearly for the war, helped ensure that the Great War was not, in fact, the war to end all wars. 3. All those little countries: Wilson loved national self-determination. He loved it so much he made it one of his 14 Points. And so the American entry into WWI can also be seen as the final nail in the coffin of Europes land empires. Austria-Hungary? Auf wiedersehen. That transformed the map of Europe and created a quiltwork of smaller, ethnic nationality-based countries out of the Hapsburg ruins, like Austria, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. (Self-determination also set the stage for U.S. animosity toward Europes colonial empires, with consequences like the Britains Suez Canal debacle decades later.) 4. The Importance of oil: Lord Curzon, days after the Armistice, noted that the Allies floated to victory on a flood of oil. That crude was mostly American as were the trucks that gave Allied armies an edge over their rail- and foot-bound central power rivals. (That same motorized edge would again pay off in WWII, and help power the Red Armys eastward march.) U.S. preoccupation with securing an ample supply of oil for itself and its friends was a key theme after the war and continues to this day with the 5th Fleets patrolling of the Persian Gulf. 5. America started spy-hunting: Two months after the United States entered the war, Congress passed the Espionage Act, formally criminalizing spying, sharing national security information, or hampering U.S. war efforts on behalf of a foreign power. The following year, Congress cracked down on spying further with the Sedition Act, which outlined harsh penalties for a broad array of subversive acts, from spying to interfering in war efforts, to even insulting the U.S. government or military. Congress repealed the Sedition Act in 1921, but the federal government wielded the Espionage Act as a blunt legal instrument to crackdown on socialists, anti-war activists, and later suspected communists during the Cold Wars Red Scare. The act remains in place to this day (it even cropped up this year, when some constitutional experts warned President Donald Trump could, in theory, pursue criminal charges against journalists and government leakers under the law). 6. It foreshadowed the U.S.-Soviet Cold War face-off: While the United States was still wrapping up World War I, Wilson decided U.S. troops needed to intervene in another part of Europe: Russia. While war was raging on the western front, Wilson deployed two contingents totalling some 13,000 U.S. troops to northern Russia to shore up imperialist White Russian forces fighting Soviet revolutionaries. It was the first and only time U.S. troops deployed to Russian soil. During their 19 month stint in the harsh Russian north, some 420 American soldiers died. Its an oft-forgotten chapter of American history, but the victorious communist forces didnt forget. And it didnt exactly get U.S.-Soviet relations off to a great start, foreshadowing the U.S.-Soviet standoff that defined the post-World War II order. 7. The start of U.S. global naval supremacy: Washington was still on the sidelines as Britains and Germanys steel castles duked it out in big naval battles like Jutland. But Wilson knew that naval power was key to American security. The 1916 naval bill, and U.S. entry into the fight against German U-boats, laid the groundwork for an unmatched U.S. naval supremacy the world still sees today. (When warned in 1916 building a big navy could anger seafaring power Britain, Wilson replied Let us build a navy bigger than hers and do what we please! So they did just that.) PORTER Porter Bank has adopted a new logo as part of its rebranding process. The locally owned bank, which has offices in Porter, Chesterton and The Pines, was founded more than 95 years ago. This new branding will enable Porter Bank to compete more successfully against the larger, less personal banking firms, and enable us to attract a whole new generation of loyal customers while maintaining our hometown, feel, value-added service and reputation, said said Executive Vice President Jacqueline Ruge-Perkins. Ruge-Perkins said the banking firm's executive team and staff won't change, but the bank now offers an updated messaging platform along with the new logo. We are very pleased with the concept developed along with ACI, said Ruge-Perkins. We believe it will be strongly innovative and user-friendly, and will incorporate all the latest communications strategies and technologies for a more convenient banking experience for our customers. A new tagline, Friendly Banking Built on Trust, will be a focal point of the new branding to emphasize personalized customer service, reliability and security. EAST CHICAGO Mayor Anthony Copeland took a shot at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday, accusing the federal agency of rushing local officials into making rapid decisions about the future of West Calumet, one of three contaminated neighborhoods in the EPAs USS Lead Superfund site. Deeming a new initiative Project Openness and Transparency, Copeland said he wants to first meet with neighborhood groups, faith-group organizations and others at the federal, state and local level to address the contamination, and avenues for redevelopment, of the public housing complex site, built decades ago in the footprint of a former lead smelter. Copeland said during his State of the City speech on Wednesday he would not settle for anything short of the EPA returning the land to residential status, which would allow the city to develop the land now owned by the East Chicago Housing Authority into anything it wished. 'Not a time for secrecy' In March, Robert Kaplan, acting regional administrator for EPA Region 5, sent a letter to Copeland, asking he disclose anticipated future land use for the soon-to-be-demolished West Calumet Housing Complex. The letter explained EPA cannot select a remediation plan until city officials provide more details. I continue to be amazed that the Environmental Protection Agency would prevent the City of East Chicago from knowing what discussions and agreements they reached with those responsible for the contamination of the West Calumet neighborhood. Knowing the result of those discussions would better enable our community and the City of East Chicago to make plans for improvements in the area. This is not a time for secrecy It is a time to be open and transparent, Copeland said. In a statement Thursday, the EPA said the agency continues to work closely with Copeland, having briefed a city attorney the same day the EPA secured $16 million in funding for cleanup of zones 2 and 3 of the Superfund site. Copeland butted heads with EPA officials last summer, when he accused the federal agency of breaking trust for not disclosing soil results first taken in late 2014 to the city until spring 2016. Earlier this week, the city dug up the playground at the West Calumet Housing Complex, Janet Pope, the EPA's community involvement coordinator, told a Times staff photographer Wednesday during a tour of the complex for NAACP leaders. A video posted online by a West Calumet resident showed the dig in progress. The city did this without notifying the EPA, and the EPA later covered the bare soil with mulch to prevent further lead exposure, Pope said during the tour. On Thursday, the city did not respond to a request for comment about the citys removal of the playground. Who will pay? James Cunningham, deputy regional administrator for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in Chicago, said the federal agency is conducting an environmental review of the site a key step prior to making a determination on the local housing authority's application for demolition. HUDs environmental review is separate from a review determining future land use, HUD has said. In a letter to HUD Secretary Ben Carson dated March 15, Copeland said the city "has yet to receive solid answers" as to whether HUD, the EPA, polluters or another entity will fund the demolition of West Calumet. Copeland noted the city has requested the site be cleaned to residential standards, with foundations removed and "the land completely cleaned in order to protect the public from further exposures." Copeland also told Carson in the letter the city has submitted to HUD two applications, one to demolish the complex and another seeking emergency capital fund dollars. HUD last year told The Times that ECHA will continue to get its full annual capital grant funding for the West Calumet property, even after its vacated, until the property is demolished. After demolition, the ECHA will then receive demolition transition funding for five years, equal to the value they would receive if the property were still standing. Those dollars could be used for actual demolition, HUD said in September. The Times staff photographer Jonathan Miano contributed to this report. MICHIGAN CITY Extra police patrols in March focused on dangerous driving and resulted in seven arrests, Det. Sgt. Ken Havlin of the Michigan City Police Department said Thursday. Officers stopped 164 vehicles, Havlin said in a news release. One arrest was made for a check deception warrant, a felony. Two arrests were made for failing to appear in court, misdemeanor criminal trespassing and never receiving a license. Two arrests were for driving while suspended, and two arrests for never receiving a license, Havlin said. Officers wrote 72 citations, including 46 seat belt violations and 14 speeding violations. Officers also wrote 104 warning citations, including 89 warnings for speeding, Havlin said. In April, Michigan City police officers will add extra patrols to enforce speed limits along U.S. 20 in Michigan City. Officers will also enforce other aggressive traffic violations throughout the city, including seat belt, texting, speeding, following too closely, automatic signal and stop sign violations, Havlin said. EAST CHICAGO The Lake County prosecutor is investigating whether city police properly declined to pursue drunken driving charges against a county councilwoman. State police also may join the investigation into Lake County Councilwoman Christine Cid, D-East Chicago. The East Chicago Police Department issued a written statement Friday afternoon that Officer Korey Dumas stopped Cid at 1:09 a.m. Friday at Chicago Avenue and Carey Street, then later cited her for driving left of center and failure to use a turn signal. Carter said he was told Friday that Dumas stopped Cid on suspicion of drunken driving, ordered her car towed and brought her into the police station, but released her without pursuing charges of operating a vehicle while intoxicated. The department's statement continues: "While it is within an officer's discretion to detain, arrest or release the subject of a traffic stop when the subject is cited or charged, the East Chicago Police Department has referred this matter to the Indiana State Police for further investigation." Cid has served on the Lake County Council since August 2004. She represents East Chicago, Hammond and Highland on the County Council, which governs all spending by county government departments. She also has run for county commissioner. Carter said he spoke with Police Chief Frank Smith about the case and further learned the existence of "video of her being brought into the station." Carter said he asked for and Smith promised that his department's internal affairs investigators will look into the matter and issue a report to Carter. "It all depends on what the internal investigation reveals ... whether any criminal violations may have occurred," said Carter, adding he also may ask the Indiana State Police to join the investigation. Cid and Smith did not return calls seeking comment Friday. The Times is requesting the East Chicago police and the Lake County E-911 departments provide copies of audio and video recordings as well as any police reports of the incident. Carter said police departments can give their officers wide discretion on whether to pursue impaired driving charges, but his office takes drunken driving violations seriously "whether it's an elected official or not." Carter said his office has tightened up enforcement by no longer giving automatic charge reductions to drunken driving offenders. MICHIGAN CITY A Michigan City man is charged with raping a 16-year-old girl. Scott Wood, 37, was being held in the LaPorte County Jail on $25,000 cash-only bond. During his initial appearance in LaPorte Superior Court 1 on Tuesday, Judge Michael Bergerson scheduled a hearing for April 18 to consider Wood's request for a reduction in bail. Wood is charged with level 3 felony rape and level 5 felony child seduction. According to court documents, Wood was intoxicated on St. Patrick's Day when he began kissing a girl at a home in Michigan City. It's alleged his advances progressed to further inappropriate contact with the girl, then after quitting soon began fondling her again. The girl kept telling him to stop, but he didn't until after she tried elbowing him repeatedly, court records said. After kissing her again, though, he resumed touching her, then left, police said. According to court documents, Wood, after seeing the girl again, claimed not to remember anything and then asked "if this could be their secret." Authorities were contacted after the girl, who lives about 20 miles away, returned home and revealed what had transpired, court records disclosed. He could face from 3 to 16 years on the most serious of the two felony counts. CROWN POINT Police said Friday they are investigating a person of interest in connection with a bomb threat Thursday at the Lake County Government Complex. The Lake County E-911 Center received a call at 5:41 p.m. Thursday of a possible bomb threat at the complex, police said. Because of the time of day, only a few employees were in the buildings and night court was in session, police said. Lake County sheriff's police evacuated the buildings. K-9s from the Lake County Sheriff's Department and Dyer Police Department searched the building as a precaution, police said. Sheriff John Buncich and the three Lake County commissioners were notified, police said. This is the second bomb threat at the government complex in two months. On Feb. 8, an unidentified woman called the Lake County prosecutor's office and said her husband, who had appeared in court that morning, had placed bombs at various locations in the government center, police said. Confusion over evacation after the February bomb threat prompted questions about the building's security. Officials scheduled a meeting to discuss the matter. Police did not suspect the two incidents were related, Lake County Deputy Police Chief Dan Murchek said Friday. Register for more free articles. Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading. Sign up for our Crime & Courts newsletter Get the latest in local public safety news with this weekly email. Sign up! Already a Subscriber? Already a Subscriber? Sign in Terms of Service Privacy Policy GARY The owner of an Illinois-based trucking firm hopes to open up a new facility in Gary which could create an estimated 500 jobs within five years. Henry Malukas, the owner of HMD Trucking Inc., said he hopes to open the new facility in the first quarter of next year. It will include parking for 100 trucks and trailers and be located on an approximately 11-acre site between Texas and Michigan streets, north of East 15th Avenue. Plans call for the site to include a 17,000-square-foot facility for truck and trailer maintenance and repair and warehousing. There will also be 9,000 square feet of office space for dispatchers, managers and others. Malukas said a driving school also may be situated there. Malukas said he is hoping to hire Gary residents as much as possible. He spoke of how it makes more sense to have people working there who live in the local area rather than employees who would have to travel in from the Chicago area. "We want local people, there is no question," he said. Malukas joined Patrick Lee, of the Gary project management and construction firm of LEE Companies, in presenting the proposal to the Gary Redevelopment Commission on Wednesday. It still has to get various city approvals, including for the site plan. Lee said warehouse workers can make $21 an hour and managers and professional employees can make more than $50,000 annually. The company will retain its facility in Chicago Ridge, Lee said, but Gary will be the company's headquarters. According to officials, the project will represent a $5 million investment into the area. As part of the deal, $1.1 million in bonds will be issued to be paid off from money raised from funds in a tax increment financing district covering the site. The company plans to purchase the bonds. Malukas cited the location of the site near Interstate 65 and Interstate 80 as the reason the company is coming to the city. Joseph Van Dyk, the city's planning and redevelopment director, said the project "really fits well' with the economic development plans for that area of the city. EAST CHICAGO Newly confirmed Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson committed Thursday to visiting the lead- and arsenic-contaminated West Calumet Housing Complex. Carson agreed to visit the site in a phone call with U.S. Sen. Joe Donnelly, according to a news release. The complex was built in the footprint of a defunct lead smelter and is part of an EPA Superfund site listed in 2009 that is named after a second, nearby smelter called USS Lead. No date has been set yet for Carson's visit, and details will be released at a later date, a Donnelly spokesman said. Earlier this week, Donnelly, D-Ind.; U.S. Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind.; U.S. Rep. Pete Visclosky, D-Merrillville; and Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb announced Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt would visit the site April 19. Details of Pruitt's visit also are pending. "The federal government has a responsibility to help provide a long-term solution that ensures the health and safety of the more than 300 families that recently lived in the complex," Donnelly said in a statement. "Secretary Carsons visit will provide firsthand insight and help him understand the housing needs of those impacted. Donnelly, Young and Visclosky last month sent a letter to Carson and Pruitt inviting them to personally visit the site, which has been a focus for local, state and federal officials since the magnitude of lead- and arsenic contamination became clear last summer. In December, the city and EPA announced EPA found elevated lead levels in drinking water at a limited number of homes sampled as part of a pilot study related to the Superfund cleanup. Lead in water and lead in soil are not related, but residents exposed to both face greater health risks. The highest levels of soil contamination were found in the complex, and more than 300 families were ordered by the city to relocate. Residents living at more than 1,000 properties in two other residential cleanup areas will remain as EPA continues to excavate contaminated soil from around their homes. EAST CHICAGO Last summer, the West Calumet Housing Complex was a much different place, teeming with children chasing each other through yards. Now the East Chicago neighborhood is hardly recognizable, with trash cans tipped over in the streets and unwanted possessions abandoned on the sidewalk. Homes have been boarded up with plywood and marked with a blue dot, signaling vacancy. The low-income, public housing complex, built in the early 1970s on the footprint of a former lead smelter, is the most highly contaminated area of the Environmental Protection Agencys USS Lead Superfund site. Families first learned last summer that they were being forced to relocate because of the lead and arsenic in the soil. Since that time, more than 1,000 people including 670 children have scattered to new homes across Northwest Indiana, to neighboring states, and as far as Texas and Nevada. A few dozen families remain. It's a ghost town that was once a close-knit community, Lethette Howard said. "I got to know a lot of people with my kids going to school with their kids. West Calumet, it's a community. We looked out for each other," Howard said. 'I got tired of looking' Moving to her sisters house in Gary is not what Howard envisioned for her family upon leaving the lead- and arsenic-contaminated complex, but it's better than moving to Chicagos gang-riddled South Side, where the East Chicago Housing Authority recently assigned her a temporary unit, with a deadline of today to pack her things and leave. I didnt want to rush into something and take my kids out of school in the middle of the year, Howard said, saying she will have to drive her two children to East Chicago schools every day from Gary. Her search for affordable, subsidized housing has not been easy. You dont know how overwhelming its been, to just keep dialing and dialing, trying to find a place. Ill think Ive found one. Then I find out they dont accept Section 8, Howard said. I got tired of looking. As of Wednesday, 56 families remain at the complex, some of which are in the process of moving into a new place, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Federal and local housing officials have said its becoming an issue of health and public safety due to the lead in the soil and the high vacancy rates. At the end of March, ECHA staff hand delivered 10-day relocation notices, triggering protests among residents and community members. James Cunningham, HUD's regional deputy director for Chicago, said the emergency transfers have slowed in recent days. As families continue to find permanent units, more families assigned to places in Chicago may instead be relocated to units in East Chicago or in Indiana, Cunningham said. HUDs goal is not to have to move people twice, Cunningham said. Health problems Most households' relocation vouchers do not expire until the end of June. Even as they move to temporary housing, families will have about 12 more weeks to continue searching for a new home, HUD has said. Akeesha Daniels, a mother of three, is leaving behind couches, bedding and other furniture possessions that may otherwise carry lead dust particles into her next place. She doesnt want to chance re-contaminating the interior of her house, where two of her three sons will live. But there are some things Daniels cant leave behind, like a box containing two of her three sons medical records, some of which date back to when her 13-year-old son was a toddler. Hundreds of pages detail countless doctor and emergency room visits for gastrointestinal issues, vomiting and other health problems. Daniels suspects lead exposure may be behind it. These are health problems that will follow them for the rest of their lives, Daniels said. I dont think Ill ever feel comfortable again, wherever I move. But I have to do what I have to do. Her new place is within the boundaries of the EPA's USS Lead Superfund site, but Daniels said she was told during the inspection process that the property is free of lead. Daniels is among a dozen or so who filed grievances to delay forced moves and provide more time to finding safe, permanent housing. Daniels' hearing on Monday was delayed for hours due to paperwork issues, and the matter still is unresolved, she said. Daniels has a newly signed lease agreement and keys in hand, but she's still waiting on NIPSCO paperwork to be processed before moving in. Grievance hearings planned Patricia Roman Hass, managing attorney at the Merrillville branch of the Indiana Legal Services, said the majority of her teams clients have only been offered units in Chicago. We are hopeful that as part of the grievance procedure appropriate units in Indiana are made available to them, Roman Hass said. Many of her clients rely on public benefits, she said, so moving across state lines would require them to reapply. Most have children in schools in Indiana. The school year is almost over, ISTEP is coming. Removing them from school or having them commute an hour or hour and a half would create undue hardships," Roman Hass said. Jalisa Wash is a 27-year-old mother of two who was born and raised in the West Calumet Housing Complex. "This is all we know. This is home to us," Wash said. She said she wanted to stay in her hometown of East Chicago, but the lack of affordable housing forced her to look elsewhere, in Hammond. She is moving to Hammond on Monday, but leaving her childhood home won't be easy. Its devastating, Wash said. "This is going to be an adventure. We have no other choice but to leave. I don't want to, but we have to." GARY The eastbound Borman Expressway was a parking lot for much of Friday morning after a three-car crash caused a semitrailer to roll over and dump soil across two lanes of the interstate at Colfax Street, police said. Indiana State Police described the load as contaminated soil and wood chips, but a spokesman for the Indiana Department of Environmental Management said the soil was not contaminated. Police said a 50-year-old Hammond woman was driving a 2001 Pontiac east in the right lane about 7:45 a.m. near Colfax Street when she cut in front of a 2006 Mack semitrailer pulling a dump trailer owned by Disposal and Recycling out of Cicero. The semi driver, a 41-year-old Chicago man, hit the back of the Pontiac as the Pontiac driver braked and traffic slowed, police said. The semi swerved to the left and hit the right rear quarter panel of a Dodge Dakota pickup truck owned by NIPSCO and driven by a 50-year-old Highland man, police said. After hitting the pickup, the semi swerved back to the right and began to roll over onto the driver's side, spilling contaminated soil and wood chips across two right lanes, police said. The semi and trailer came to rest in a south ditch. The Pontiac and semi drivers were taken to Methodist Hospitals Northlake Campus with non-life-threatening injuries, police said. The pickup driver was not hurt. All lanes had been reopened as of 11:15 a.m., police said. During the cleanup, traffic backups stretched as far west as the Interstate 294/Ill. 394 interchange in Illinois and beyond. VALPARAISO Audience members were invited to sit across a small card table from award-winning director Julie Winokur on Thursday night, just as hundreds had done at that same table in her film, Bring It To the Table. The film was screened, followed by the one-on-one discussions, as part of Valparaiso Universitys second annual Dialogue and Discernment event to encourage the community to have difficult discussions that divide us. Winokur said she started her film after she received insight from her son. I started five years ago, when politics was painfully divisive and I found myself doing a lot of finger-pointing, and my son said I was the most intolerant person he had ever met and if the other side had a good idea, I wouldnt know it. I thought wait a minute, maybe its not just them, maybe its me. It was a sobering moment, Winokur explained Thursday. As a result, Winokur set out to interview a variety of Americans on their political ideals, in spaces across the country such as barber shops, ballparks, agricultural fields, churches, downtown sidewalks, political conventions and barbecue joints, all at the same American-flag-themed card table with an inviting small red vase and bright yellow sunflower. I set up my table so I could listen. People need to figure out how to talk to the other half, and that is what this project is about, she said. The film began prior to the current administration, which she said has only made the country more divided, making her message more important. Partisanship has become toxic. I wanted to know, have people become as divided as their leaders? asked Winokur, who narrated her own film. Her subjects offer their opinions, and Winokur seeks to create a conversation, which proves difficult. I dont like talking about politics because it can be very controversial, said one person interviewed in the film, while another admitted, You explain your side to me, and I hear you, but you still sound dumb as hell. As the film progresses, interviewees begin to deconstruct their own ideologies and when honestly questioned, gain a better sense of themselves and others. Its about listening, because if all you do is talk, youre not learning anything. Its amazing what you learn about people when you actually listen, Winokur says. The Indiana General Assembly hammered home two key spikes for the future growth of South Shore Line commuter rail expansion Thursday. Our Region has strong, respected local leadership and a shared vision with state government leaders to thank for it. The Republican-controlled Indiana Senate laid some game-changing tracks Thursday, approving $6 million in the state budget for double-tracking a portion of the commuter rail line and passing a bill to hasten development along planned rail expansions. Both measures, already approved by the Indiana House, help drown out the din of a vocal minority who've remonstrated against Region rail expansion and its promise of economic growth in recent weeks. One aspect of Thursday's rail victories comes largely on the steam of state Rep. Hal Slager, R-Schererville, who sponsored the bill to create transit-oriented development districts along the planned double-tracking routes between Gary and Michigan City and the planned rail expansion from Hammond to Dyer. The success of Slager's bill, pending a signature from Gov. Eric Holcomb, will allow the Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority to capture tax revenues within designated half-mile districts along the commuter rail line. This revenue will be used to pay debt accumulated by developing the districts. It's a self-sustaining financing tool enhancing the economic engine we expect the rail line to become. Slager has become a respected Region leader in the Statehouse, in no small way because of his support of fiscally sound policy. He deserves major credit for this commuter rail funding victory. Essential matching federal funds for Region commuter rail expansion may still be in question as the Trump administration and Congress feel their way through budgetary changes. But the passage of these two key measures should send a resounding message to Washington: Planned expansions of commuter rail which in turn spur population and economic growth by providing transportation options to Chicago jobs and other amenities have the strong backing of state and Region leaders. Thursday's wins provide perspective on some of the low-brow attacks the rail projects have experienced largely on social media from people who would rather see our Region fester in a lack of growth and opportunity. We're confident Holcomb, a very public champion of South Shore Line expansion, will sign the transit district bill. Now it's time for state and Region leaders to continue this resolve by lobbying federal authorities for the next big piece of the equation. WASHINGTON The NYPD says it is monitoring developments in Syria after the United States launched an airstrike on a Syrian air base in response to a chemical weapons attack. We are monitoring the events developing in Syria pic.twitter.com/DR1TC1JMtt NYPDCounterterrorism (@NYPDCT) April 7, 2017 U.S. officials say about 60 Tomahawk missiles were launched from two warships across the Mediterranean Sea. The airstrikes targeted a government-controlled air base around 4:40 a.m. Syrian time. The Pentagon says the base was used to store chemical weapons. It says measures were taken to avoid casualties. They say the strike destroyed Syrian aircrafts and infrastructure that could be used for future chemical attacks. Syrian state TV is calling the air strikes an act of aggression. President Donald Trump indicated earlier this week he might change his mind about U.S. involvement in the Middle East and do something in response. He is calling on all civilized nations to join the U.S. in seeking to end the bloodshed in Syria and end terrorism. "It is in the vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons," Trump said. The airstrike came after the U.S. blamed the Syrian government and President Bashar al-Assad for the attack on Tuesday that killed more than 80 people, including 30 children. NEW YORK - A judge on Friday ruled in favor of the city in its efforts to destroy records tied to its municipal ID program, stemming from a lawsuit filed by two state Assembly members from Staten Island. The city's municipal ID program, IDNYC, now has more than one million cardholders, which means there are millions of documents containing those people's personal data. The city had planned to destroy those records by the end of last year, in part to prevent the federal government from accessing them for deportation purposes. Two Staten Island Assembly members, Nicole Malliotakis and Ron Castorina, went to court to try to stop them. "Our concern is what does this mean now for a government being able to destroy records. What does that mean for the future of judicial inquiries, law enforcement wanting to access information, Freedom of Information Law requests being satisfied," Malliotakis said. On Friday, Justice Philip Minardo ruled in favor of the city, ruling the Assembly members had no legal standing to file suit. But the city cannot begin destroying the records immediately. That will have to wait until a ruling by an appeals court. In a statement, Mayor Bill de Blasio said, "With this decision the State Supreme Court protected the personal information of a million New Yorkers. IDNYC was created to protect people and connect them to vital services and todays decision ensures it will continue to do just that. We applaud the ruling and will fight any attempt to appeal it." Warren Buffett has been unveiled as the cover star for the launch of a new Coca-Cola product in China. Buffett may be the worlds best known fan of Cherry Coca-Cola and, thanks to his popularity in China, the Oracle of Omaha has seen his likeness added to cans and bottles of Cherry Coke to help celebrate the launch of the product. Four or five months ago, [Coca-Cola chairman and CEO] Muhtar [Kent] said they were going to introduce Cherry Coke into China and asked me about putting my picture on the cans and bottles, Buffett told Yahoo Finance. I said it would be fine to do it for the first six months after launching the product. If there are no problems associated with this and he asks me to continue, I will likely say OK. Buffett enjoys something akin to rock star status in mainland China. Thousands of hopeful investors fly in from China to Omaha for Berkshire Hathaways annual meeting, which is also broadcast on Chinese television. I cant think of a better way to launch Cherry Coke than with its best-known fan on the package, Kent said, according to Yahoo Finance. It is an honour for us to be able to feature Warren on his favourite drink as it rolls out in one of the worlds most exciting and dynamic consumer markets. Buffett, who is worth an eye-watering US$75.6 billion, isnt trying to cash in on his new found endorsement deal though, as there is no fee involved. This article is from Insurance Business NZ by Jordan Lynn One reason for the growing swarm of Democrats challenging Orange Countys Republican members of Congress is a rapidly shifting partisan tilt of voters in those four districts. San Clemente Democrat and political novice Doug Applegate exposed county Republicans vulnerability last year when he came within 0.7 percentage points of upsetting veteran Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista. Another sign of Democrats opportunity showed in presidential elections tallies, with voters favoring Hillary Clinton in all the countys GOP congressional districts. It no secret that Republicans are losing market share countywide the partys 10-point edge in 2012 is now less than 4 points. Less publicized is how that trend extends to the House districts. Issa, who has two Democratic challengers for 2018 so far, has seen the GOP advantage in his district go from 13 points in 2012 to 7 points today. Rep. Mimi Walters, R-Laguna Beach, who has three Democratic opponents, has watched the edge go from 15.5 points to 9 points. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Costa Mesa, who has four Democratic challengers, has seen the spread go from 15 points to 11 points. For Rep. Ed Royce, R-Fullerton, the advantage has slipped from 7 points to 2 points. Although he has the narrowest registration advantage of the four Republicans, hes yet to draw a challenger. Also of concern to the GOP is the historical tendency of the party winning the presidency to lose congressional seats in the subsequent mid-term election cycle. Royces difference Activists with Indivisible, a group committed to opposing Trumps agenda, have been quick to demonize Royces right-of-center positions and his reluctance to hold a town hall meeting since the November election. But the 13-term congressman has regularly held public events in his district throughout his career and is probably the least controversial of the countys GOP House members. He is chairman of the high-profile Foreign Affairs Committee and regularly appears on cable news including CNN to discuss international relations in a sober manner, avoiding the accusations of grandstanding that have dogged Issa and Rohrabacher at times. Royce offered public support for candidate Trump only after the nomination was secured and even then, it was lukewarm. I have always voted for the Republican nominee and will do so this year, he said in an emailed response to the Register last May, not bothering to mention Trump by name. With Democratic challengers in Orange County eager to link GOP incumbents to Trump, Royce may have distinguished himself from the other three Republicans as the most independent from the president. He was the least committed to the proposed replacement to Obamacare and has expressed reservations with Trumps proposed budget, including concerns that cuts could hurt efforts to combat terrorists, poachers and human traffickers. And many are rightly concerned about how proposed cuts will impact humanitarian assistance at a time when more than 65 million people have been displaced by conflict, and famine looms in four countries, Royce said March 28 during his committees review of the budget. Prior to Tuesdays chemical attack in Syria, when the Trump administration was still taking a hands-off position toward Syrian President Bashar Assad, Royce was calling for Assad to be held accountable for other controversies and was co-author of a bipartisan bill calling for sanctions on Assad supporters. Hes also been critical of Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential election and its efforts to splinter the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Trump scorecard But in most cases, Royce is indeed aligned with Trump. The analytic news site fivethirtyeight.com is tracking key partisan bills supported by Trump. Of the 25 voted on to date by the House, Royce has shared Trumps position on 96 percent. Issa and Walters have voted the Trump position every time. Rohrabacher, Trumps most outspoken supporter on controversial issues including the border wall and building closer relations with Russian, has also shown a relative bit of independence, voting the presidents way 92 percent of the time. Rep. Lou Correa, D-Santa Ana, has voted Trumps position on those bills 20 percent of the time. Rep. Alan Lowenthal, D-Long Beach, favored those positions just 8 percent of the time. Irvine-based Ingram Micro Inc. has acquired the business assets of Dubai-based Network Information Technology. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Ingram Micro is a distributor of technology products and services. NIT is a distributor of security solutions in the Middle East and Africa. Its management team will operate as a business unit of Ingram Micro META (Middle East, Turkey and Africa). With the acquisition of NIT, Ingram Micro gains a well-established foothold as a recognized expert in the physical security market, further expanding our capabilities in the rapidly growing and higher value Middle East and Africa market. NIT customers and vendors will benefit from an even greater breadth of value add services and solutions to help them realize the promise of technology. Our company cultures are well aligned and together we look forward to offering NITs high value solutions across META and expanding into new geographies, said Dr. Ali Baghdadi, senior vice president Ingram Micro and chief executive Ingram Micro, META, in a statement. This is Ingram Micros first acquisition in 2017. In the last five years, the company has made roughly 30 acquisitions. At the end of 2016, the deal to sell Ingram Micro to China-based Tianjin Tianhai Investment Co. for $6 billion closed. The all-cash transaction amounted to $38.90 per share for Ingram Micro, which became a private company and subsidiary of Tianjin Tianhai under HNA Group. AUGUSTA, Ga. The crowd might have trouble believing that Charley Hoffman could shoot 65 in the first round of the Masters. Those who played Thursday had trouble believing anyone could. Hoffman, 40, held his ground through most of his late-afternoon round, then laid waste to Augusta Nationals back nine. With birdies on 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17, he leads the Masters by four strokes over William McGirt. For lack of a better word, it was a dream, Hoffman said. Im a very visual person. This course just fits my eye. I feel good when I get here. Hoffman had to sink a par-saving putt on the par-5 13th after he sent his second shot into water. Without warning, his putter turned into a lightsaber. He sank a 22-footer on 14 and a 25-footer on 15, then hit winning iron shots for two-foot and four-foot birdies on the next two holes. Hoffman bounced his approach off the bunker at 18 onto the green and came within an inch of that birdie. In the end, Hoffman had become the fourth player in tournament history to birdie all four par-3s in a single round, had a 10-hole stretch in which he shot 7-under, and shot almost 10 strokes lower than the field average. I got lucky in some ways, he said. I had good yardages. When you have good yardages you can aim left, aim right and it gives you confidence. But I came out today thinking even-par was a good score. The wind never really laid down all day. Augusta was besieged by steady 20 mph winds that gusted to 40 on occasion and caused guesswork on a course that requires precision At No. 12, Brandt Snedeker spent agonizing minutes on the tee trying to judge conditions, then asked the crowd, Do any of you want to hit this? It was not a good day for favorites, beginning with top-ranked Dustin Johnson, who withdrew due to a Wednesday fall down the steps in his rented house. Johnson hurt his left lower back and couldnt get loose on the driving range. It just wouldnt let me get through a backswing, he said. I did everything I could to try to play. Ice, heat, ice I was up pretty much all night. Johnson said he was welcoming his son Tatum back from day care when he decided to move his car in the rainstorm. In his stocking feet, he slipped down a three-stair flight. Jordan Spieth shot a 9 on the par-5 15th and faded to 75, and Rory McIlroy had to rally for three birdies on the back to shoot 72, two strokes better than Jason Day. Phil Mickelson eagled the second hole and wound up at 71,. Of the 11 players that shot under par, only Mickelson, Justin Rose (1-under) and Jason Dufner (1-under) have won majors. McGirt, playing in his first Masters, is one stroke ahead of the unsinkable Lee Westwood, who is 0-for-17 in this event but has three Top 3 finishes. Thomas Pieters, the Belgian who was on Europes Ryder Cup team, was 5-under at one point but double-bogeyed 12 and 18 and wound up even par. Ernie Els, 47 and winless in 22 Masters, charged home with three birdies on the back to shoot 72. Hoffman finished ninth here two years ago. The San Diegan has won four tour events, including San Antonio last year, and won a memorably windy Bob Hope Classic in 2007. He was struggling this year until he consulted with friends, who told him to improve his self-belief. He finished fourth in the Genesis Open at Riviera, then second at Bay Hill and 23rd at Houston. A tip from caddie Brett Waldman, who helped his putting alignment, came in handy as well. The four-stroke lead is one short of the largest for the first round. Craig Wood shot 66 in 1941 and led by five. He also went on to win. If youre not going to believe in yourself, who is? Hoffman said. As dumb as it sounds, sometimes you forget to do that out here. Im definitely doing that now. Im in a good spot. Q. Hello Honk! I am confused. While applying for an original California drivers license, I was informed by the Department of Motor Vehicles that a U.S. passport card is not acceptable as proof of birth date/legal presence, but for some reason a passport book is? I have gone to multiple DMVs and spoken to management, who all say the same thing. Isnt California required by federal law to accept the passport card? Jonathan Tucker, Huntington Beach A. If Albert Pujols has your timing this season, Jonathan, he is going to be jogging around the bases a lot at the Big A. Artemio Armenta, a DMV spokesman, said his agency started the process a year ago to accept passport cards, and just this week began accepting them for those seeking their first California drivers license or ID card. Should they have accepted the cards before? Seems so. This is what the U.S. State Department says on its website: The passport book and passport card are both U.S. passports. If issued for the full validity, they are both proof of your U.S. citizenship and identity. Passport cards have been issued since 2008, with the target audience those who cross the border a lot and prefer flashing the card instead of the more cumbersome U.S. passport. But be advised: The card does not work for international air travel. We added the U.S. passport card to offer more options for our customers, Jean Shiomoto, the DMVs director, said in a statement. The passport card is secure, more convenient, and less expensive than a passport book and it will help new driver license and ID card applicants establish their legal presence. Was it illegal for the DMV not to accept the passport card? Honk, thankfully, didnt go to law school, but either way the agency gladly accepts it now. Q. Do the Do Not Block signs at intersections apply during the entire traffic-signal cycle, or do they apply only while the signal is red? My understanding, though it might not be correct, is that you can be in the intersection while the signal is green or yellow, but you better be able to clear the intersection before the light goes red. Is my interpretation correct? Dan Freiberger, Costa Mesa A. If you could have seen Honk while reading your question, his heading was nodding like a bobble heads. And he was wrong. No, you can never block an intersection at any time, Sgt. Zack Hoferitza of Costa Mesa PDs Traffic Safety Bureau told Honk in an email. To ask Honk questions, reach him at honk@ocregister.com. He only answers those that are published. To see Honk online: ocregister.com/honk. Jayne Reich brushes past a dozen of her sculptures as if they dont exist, offers a slice of mouth-melting raspberry cheesecake and launches into her favorite topic. The intersection of quantum theory and art. Its not that Reich isnt proud of her work. Sculptures of the human body, most about 2 feet long and 18 inches high, decorate her Laguna Beach living room. They surround her small pool. But understand, each piece represents an exploration that Reich has completed. What interests Reich isnt the past but the future, discoveries that stretch even the most nimble brains. The frontier that hasnt really been explored is the inner, Reich explains, eyes sparkling with energy and excitement. Im looking for truth and the essence of the universe. Her comment may sound New Age-y, but its more about cutting-edge thought. Understand, Reich holds her own in a league of serious brainiacs. In November at Chapman University, Reich joined filmmaker Werner Herzog and a powerhouse of professors to discuss the intersection of art, creativity and science. She is married to Jeff Tollaksen, co-director of the Institute for Quantum Studies at Chapman. The couple shares a deep and passionate love for contemplating mind-bending questions about such things as free will, developing new ways of observation, natures relation to relativity. When you sit down over coffee and cheesecake with Reich, strap yourself in because the discussion is like riding a rocket to the cosmos and beyond. SPONTANEOUS ALIVENESS Reich grew up in New Haven, Conn., and like many visual artists knew when she was 7 years old that her lifes work would be as an artist. She studied at the Art Students League of New York, graduated from Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and worked under renowned artist Marshal Glasier. She taught drawing and sculpture in New York as well as at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Wash. While in Tacoma, Reich reports, she created portraits for billionaire Chauncey Griggs that became part of his collection in his home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. She draws, paints and works with clay, baking her sculptures in a kiln and painting them with a stone-texture patina. One of her sculptures of a nude woman is called Transformation and is on permanent display at Leatherby Libraries at Chapman University. I explore nature, the beauty of the human figure and negative space, Reich explains. I perceive and express the figure as a mass of biomorphic forms that keeps moving with every possible angle. Her work has appeared at the Dan Miller gallery in Laguna Beach, the Festival of Arts and she will unveil a new show on Saturday at Bistango restaurant in Irvine. Reich says much of her process is to remain open, stay in a zone of flow. When Im creating, I know nothing. Im in a space of total mind expansion. She calls her creative space the spontaneous aliveness of infinite freedom. If her words cascade too fast, think of the zone elite athletes or trail runners and rock climbers enter. Time and space jump or disappear. You live in the moment without distraction. Tollaksen, Reichs husband, finishes his slice of cheesecake, nods and elaborates. Jayne will get into someones psyche, collaborate and connect emphatically. Typically, she works with models. But whats atypical is that Reich often collaborates with her models. Last year, she was invited to the Perimeter Institute near Toronto, Canada, to help a gathering of 45 scientists become more creative. She went so far as to ask each one to choose the color of the chalk she would use for their portraits. The models I works with, the artist offers, are very important because they are creative individuals in their own right. She calls the style she used for the physicists the now of drawing and wrote a book with the same name. The process includes talking with the model, and using the artists entire body and sweeping arm motions to create life-sized portraits. After a red chalk on black paper drawing was nearly finished, Justin Dresel, assistant professor of physics at Chapman, scribbled an equation and wrote, Creative inspiration stems from identifying and elaborating patterns. Technical investigation rejects useless patterns requiring focus and dispassionate diligence. Their union yields discoveries. Reich says as an artist, part of her job is to capture a moment in time that doesnt disappear. Yet she lives a life filled with purposeful change. Never step in the same river twice, Reich says, and never repeat what you know. It is one of many paradoxes we explore as the cheesecake shrinks. To help develop her artistic vision, Reich traveled the world and studied art, architecture, archaeology. Her favorite place was India with its varied architecture, culture and art. She also credits people shes met with widening her scope. She grew up in an extended family that included Jews who fled the Holocaust as well as a great uncle, Harry Fischel, who helped found Yeshiva University in New York. Shes chatted with Morgan Freeman about quantum mechanics, lived with Duke Ellingtons sister, Ruth, and Reich and her husband currently share a house dubbed QuantumHaus with Yakir Aharonov, an Israeli physicist who is a fellow Chapman professor and specializes in theoretical physics. As afternoon turns into evening, I step out to examine Reichs art, feel the slightly rough patina, run a finger over the curves of several sculptures. Some seem to fold in on themselves, becoming closed beings hiding from the universe. Others appear to bask in the beyond, open to anything. As I prepare to head home, Reich offers a final question to ponder about the art she devotes her life to creating. Is it there when youre not observing it? Contact the writer: dwhiting@scng.com BUENA PARK Pastor Wiley Drake has informed city officials that he is no longer seeking restraining orders against the citys police chief and two other city employees. Drake, the longtime pastor of First Southern Baptist Church, told Buena Park City Attorney Patrick Bobco that he doesnt plan to attend the Friday, April 7, court hearing. An Orange County Superior Court commissioner was due to hear allegations of civil rights violations the pastor has made against the city, according to a letter filed Wednesday with the court. An Orange County Superior Court commissioner was to hear allegations of civil rights violations the pastor had made against the city, according to a letter filed Wednesday with the court. I have elected to not pursue my action against the city, Drake wrote in the letter. I believe the judicial officer is prejudice in favor of the city. Buena Park city officials did not respond to requests for comment. The dispute centers around the citys decision to shutter the churchs homeless shelter run by Drake because of alleged health, safety, and fire violations. Meanwhile, Drake accused the city of attacking the church, invading its property and violating the privacy rights of the homeless. Its been up to code for 15 years, and has passed every year, Drake said. We are helping people get back on their feet and get their lives together. A March 3 hearing at the Fullerton courthouse, shortly after Drake filed the requests for the restraining orders, included a testy exchange between Drake and Commissioner Glenn Mondo; the pastor was denied his request to be aided during the court proceeding by J. Steven Davis, who he referred to as his spiritual counselor. The commissioner noted that Davis was not a practicing attorney, and therefore was not able to represent Drake. According to the California State Bar, Davis resigned from the bar in 2004 while under investigation and is unable to practice law in California. Drake and Davis indicated that they are now turning their attention to a federal lawsuit against the city that seeks to allow contractors to enter the shelter and determine what needs to be fixed. On Thursday, Drake and Davis said that the city has refused to consider repairs, instead pushing for the building to be torn down. After the shelter was closed, more than a dozen homeless men and women moved into the church. Nearly a dozen others relocated in the lead-up to the closure. In front of an audience of city officials and fellow entrepreneurs, a pair of local businessmen Wednesday signed a lease agreement to bring a brewery to the massive ground floor of the historic former Bank of America building in Uptown Whittier, a move some local leaders hoped would revitalize the heart of the citys main commercial district. Ricardo Diaz, a local chef who heads Colonia Group Inc., the operator of three well-reviewed Mexican restaurants in Whittier, plans to turn the 15,000-square-foot space into The Whittier Brewing Company, a restaurant and craft brewery. Officials said it would be the first craft brewery in the city. Diaz said he expects to open sometime next year. We are going to create different kitchens and food concepts that will constantly evolve and change, said Diaz. Attached to the ground floor is a 3,815-square-foot courtyard. Diaz, 47, said with the restaurant he hoped to attract new customers to the area who respect artisanship and craftsmanship. Diaz signed the 15-year lease for the space with John Hsu, the CEO of STC Management Inc., which bought the building at the corner of Greenleaf Avenue and Philadelphia Street in October 2014. The owners later renamed the building Nixon Plaza after a previous tenant President Richard M. Nixons first law office was located in the building. The renaming was required when the six-story building was registered as a National Historic Landmark. Mayor Joe Vinatieri called the intersection the jewel of the city. He said Hsu and Diaz were visionaries. When STC Management bought the building, Hsu proposed signing tenants that would bring more shoppers and visitors to the long-struggling business district. At the time, Hsu said a top target for the ground floor was Cheesecake Factory. The company planned a $2 million renovation that would update the buildings interiors, as well as redevelop the upper floors, with the possibility that some housing would be included linked to the buildings offices. Hsu also said at the time that he had plans for an upscale lounge/bar in the basement of the building modeled after The Edison on Second Street in Los Angeles. Built in 1923, Nixon Plaza was designed by architects John and Donald Parkinson, who also designed the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and Los Angeles City Hall. When I was looking at properties to purchase, I was looking for something special, said Hsu. Its a beautiful building that is important to this community, and I wanted it to come back to life. Hsu, who came to the United States more than 30 years ago as a teenager from Taiwan, said he felt an obligation to bring a unique business to anchor the building. This building is located in the heart of Whittier and deserves to have a business that deserves to be here, he said. After interviewing many prospective tenants, he decided on Diaz because of his ties to Whittier. Most important he understands Whittier and knows its traditions, he said. Vinatieri was especially pleased with the selection of Diazs concept for the space. Diazs concept is cutting-edge and he has already shown to be a successful businessman, he said. The brewing company will be a cultural and economical boost to the city. The location previously struggled to maintain a ground-floor tenant. Bank of America moved out of the building in 1980, though most continued to refer to the location by the name of its old tenant. In 1988, Whittier Building Inc. bought the building for $900,000. In 1995, Qs Billiards Club opened on the ground floor. Just three years later, the space was later taken over by Stixx Billiards. In the two years following the arrival of Stixx, complaints due to noise and crime led the City Council to impose tougher operating rules for businesses. By 2000, Ibiza Steak and Lounge Restaurant had taken over the space. The restaurants name was changed to Rome Fine Dining, but that business also closed after losing its liquor permit after complaints about noise and security problems. A large fight in August 2005 sprawled out into the street. One person was stabbed. A furniture store was the last occupant of the buildings expansive ground floor. No recall Re: Lake Forest has had enough recalls [Opinion, April 6]: Amen on your editorial on Lake Forest recalls. Being a Lake Forest resident, I went to the local Ralphs and a guy approached me about the recall. I thought I had time-traveled for a moment, but no, it was real. I said to him, Again with the animal shelter, that is what November is for. He just shrugged. Even the signature gatherers have a sense the second time around is as futile as the first. Didnt Hilary Clinton famously say it would be horrifying if we didnt accept election results? So embarrassing. Bud Carbonaro, Lake Forest Speaking of recalls Re: Are California road repairs worth a tax hike? [Opinion, April 4]: On the increase in gas taxes and, especially, vehicle registration fees, I have one comment for Gov. Brown: Didnt we recall somebody named Gray Davis over this same issue a little while back? Eric Metz, Huntington Beach Make it worth their while Re: Voters attempt to speed executions should be quickly nullified [Opinion, April 6]: Erwin Chemerinsky points to a problem with Proposition 66: There is a shortage of lawyers qualified to handle these matters, so capital defendants often wait years for appointment of counsel. Do we solve this problem, or give capital defendants a Get Out of Jail Free card? If we were able to cut years off the wait time, the saving in time and money would be large. Find a way to give a portion of that savings to the lawyers. Make this work and many of the other problems Chemerinsky pointed out will go away. Bob Pruitt, Fullerton My mistake Oh, my mistake. When I read, Quick executions should be quickly nullified, I just assumed, given common sense and a moral compass, that Dean Chemerinsky was talking about the killing of innocent preborn children through abortion. American children are executed without judge, jury or trial. Terry McDermott, Rancho Santa Margarita Train more lawyers Death penalty cases are being held up by a shortage of qualified lawyers? Ridiculous! Our state is crawling with lawyers and law schools that could quickly train them. George Hill Newport Beach The Surfrider Foundation, headquartered in San Clemente, was founded more than three decades ago to protect the beach-going experience in California. Today, the nonprofit environmental organization claims to be dedicated to the protection and enjoyment of the worlds oceans and beaches through a powerful activist network that flexes its grassroots muscles on issues related to climate change. But, when it comes to disclosure, something is amiss. According to the groups Form 990, Surfrider generates $6.7 million in annual revenue, supposedly to combat climate change, but claims to spend minimal sums on political advocacy and lobbying. From 2010 to 2014, the groups total lobbying limit, given its 501(c)(3) status, was roughly $2.3 million, yet Surfrider reported less than $70,000 in lobbying expenditures three percent of the total limit. During that period, Surfriders total grassroots lobbying limit was about $600,000, yet the group only spent a reported $24,909 on grassroots lobbying four percent of its limit. Surfriders financial disclosures suggest that its priority is old-fashioned, roll-up-your-sleeves activism the phone banking, door-knocking kind. The spirited locals over six-figure lobbyists kind. But the groups own press releases and online materials reveal something far more sinister. On various occasions, Surfrider has sent advocates to Washington, D.C., to meet with members of Congress. In 2014, Surfrider deployed at least six representatives to Washington to lobby in support of funding for the BEACH Act for the stated purpose of granting money to states to support microbiological testing and monitoring of beaches and to affect legislation on other environmental issues. As recently as last year, dozens of Surfrider representatives visited Capitol Hill for Surfriders Coastal Recreation Lobby Day. Participants visited more than 50 Senate and House offices to encourage certain government actions on the climate change issue. The problem: Surfrider reported a mere $10,125 in total lobbying and $0 in grassroots lobbying that year. Pursuant to Internal Revenue Service rules, Surfrider and other nonprofits must report allocable overhead and administrative costs including staff salaries and benefits attributable to lobbying activities. It is difficult to believe that BEACH Act lobbying not to mention other activities that year only cost several thousand dollars, given the substantial costs of lodging, meal and transportation costs in the District of Columbia. And dont forget the front-end preparation costs, from setting up meetings to preparing and distributing written materials. That same year, Surfrider enlisted the help of the lobbying firm Platinum Advisors to push Senate Bill 968 through the California State Legislature, which restored public access to Martins Beach in San Mateo County after billionaire Vinod Khsola the owner of the property lobbied to keep the beach private. Khosla hired a top-tier lobbyist, which led Surfrider to pursue extensive lobbying in Sacramento. Furthermore, public records show that Surfrider contributed $49,500 to the California Conservation Campaign in support of Californias 2014 Propositions 1 and 2, both of which passed. (Proposition 1 authorized roughly $7 billion in general obligation bonds, supposedly for public water system improvements, while Proposition 2 made environmentalist-supported changes to the states rainy day fund.) Surfriders $49,500 expenditure was clearly connected to lobbying, yet its reported total for 2014 remained $10,125. Something doesnt add up. The group touts more than 400 victories protecting our coasts, but these victories dont come cheap; they require hand-to-hand combat in Congress and statehouses nationwide. Surfrider clearly has an appetite for politics and lobbying. The group recently condemned the Trump administrations rollback of the Environmental Protection Agencys burdensome regulations, falsely claiming that the repeal of the Clean Water Rule would put drinking water for 117 million Americans at risk. Surfrider has also taken to attacking President Trumps cabinet and Big Oil. Theres nothing wrong with criticizing government officials or corporations, of course, provided that youre not dishonest in the process. When it comes to an activist group like the Surfrider Foundation, what counts is what lies beneath the surface. Dr. Steven J. Allen is vice president and chief investigative officer of the Capital Research Center, an investigative think tank in Washington, D.C. Currently, public school teachers in California are essentially guaranteed lifetime employment if they can make it through their first two years on the job. This brief period in which a teacher earns tenure, or, more accurately, permanent employee status, puts a lot of pressure on principals. They are forced to make a decision after just 16 actual teaching months by March of a teachers second year whether or not someone is good enough to spend their professional career influencing hundreds, and in many cases thousands, of young minds. About 98 percent of all teachers who seek tenure receive it in the Golden State. The latest attempt to rework teacher permanence comes from Assemblywoman Shirley Weber. Cosponsored by Teach Plus and Educators for Excellence, two teacher-led activist organizations, the San Diego Democrat has introduced legislation that would extend the time it takes to attain permanent status from two years to three. Assembly Bill 1220 would also allow some teachers who dont meet the requirements within three years an extra year or two, during which time they could get additional mentoring and receive other professional development resources. So, depending on a teachers effectiveness, the permanence perk would be moved from two to as many as five years. While a principal may not want to take a chance on a teacher who is not doing well in his first two years, the added time frame might see that teacher blossom or it might not. Hence, its a crapshoot for his students. Just last year, Susan Bonilla, D-Concord, introduced Assembly Bill 934, a much tougher bill. As originally written, it would have placed poorly performing teachers in a professional support program, but if they received a second low performance review after a year in the program, they could be fired via an expedited process, regardless of their experience level. But the California Teachers Association rejected the bill because it would make education an incredibly insecure profession. After CTA arm-twisting, AB934 was eviscerated so badly that most of its original supporters decided that the new version was unacceptable, and it was eventually killed by the Senate Education Committee. Not surprisingly, CTA opposes AB1220. Two years is plenty of time for an administrator to figure out whether someone is performing well or not, CTA spokesman Frank Wells told me, and we believe the current law works. Wells added that changing the law would discourage newer teachers from entering the profession. However union leaders may try to disparage AB1220, the bill is hardly radical, as 42 states set tenure at three or more years. In fact, three states dont offer tenure at all, which brings up the question of why teachers need permanent status. Doctors, lawyers and accountants have no such entitlements. Why teachers? The stock teacher response is that permanent status is important so that I can advocate for my students without fear of losing my job. This statement is ludicrous. What kind of teacher or principal would not advocate for their students? In fact, to really advocate for your students, you should demand an end to permanence period. Thousands of students stuck with underperforming teachers, not to mention their parents and taxpayers, would be much better off. It is scandalous that because of this law, in concert with arcane dismissal statutes, California is able to fire just 2 teachers a year out of about 300,000 for incompetence, especially in a state where student National Assessment of Educational Progress scores languish at the bottom of the barrel. And this points to the biggest problem with AB1220: What do you do with a burned out teacher who, after 20 years in the classroom, is just going through the motions, spending the day ignoring his students, adding to his pension, dreaming of the beach in Hawaii where he will retire? The answer is, you cant do a darn thing. That said, AB1220 is slightly better than the law on the books, and should be supported. But we really need to go much further and promote a system where teachers must earn their right to stay on the job throughout their career just like any other professional. Larry Sand, a retired teacher, is president of the California Teachers Empowerment Network. A Silicon Valley slowdown is coming, and Sacramento isnt ready. Although some insiders even let the dreaded B word bubble pass their lips, it doesnt take a crash of the app economy for Californias fragile fortunes to be shaken to their foundations. The warning signs suggest that the Golden State may already have hit peak productivity from the digital tech it relies on to fill coffers, fuel markets, drive investment and justify largesse and inefficiency in policymaking. Its time for a wake-up call. Venture capital dropped 20 percent for startups in 2016, even though investment funds have more than $800 billion in uninvested funds. Some 3,200 Silicon Valley jobs have been shed since August. Sky-high rents are sinking, but the dip, from an average of $4,400 a month to $4,200, wont relieve the regions acute housing shortage. True, these figures could suggest a healthy and relatively smooth correction. No boom can last forever, and a gentle shift toward a new equilibrium can help ensure that big, sudden gains arent shed just as abruptly. But Californias disproportionate reliance on the world of bits suggests that policymakers are loathe to interpret the downturn prudently. After all, they lack any comparable way to sustain the big budgets and utopian sensibility surrounding deep-blue politics. Gov. Jerry Brown has labored year in and year out to correct for such errors in thinking and spending, well aware that the last time a tech and housing bubble hit, the state was plunged deep into the red. He has ensured that California can boast a multibillion-dollar rainy day fund. Yet, with Proposition 55, voters, egged on by tax-and-spend politicians, doubled down on an even higher take from tech wealth. As the share of income tax collection drawn from the top 1 percent of earners has risen to around 50 percent in recent years, income tax collections this year have already fallen well short of projections. Meanwhile, more than three-quarters of state income comes from taxes a third from the top 1.5 percent of earners. California even risks losing tech income if IPOs dry up, since it takes a cut whenever companies go public. Sacramento has embraced a risky policy of counting the tech gooses golden eggs well before they hatch. Negative trends in the rest of the state might worsen the pain that could be on the way. Since 2004, California has experienced net outmigration of more than 1 million residents, totaling dozens of billions in yearly income. Since 2008, about 10,000 businesses have been lost, with a $15-an-hour minimum wage poised to eat away even more. Yet, Sacramento continues to spend 8 out of 10 dollars on entitlements, social programs and interest on debt, with more than a third of its budget reliant on federal funds. Divisions in tech are deepening over whether Silicon Valley can innovate its way out of the states risky mess. Some are now focusing on lobbying Washington to keep federal supports in place for the states imbalanced ideology. Others are eyeing San Franciscos exits and warning that even a little turbulence could turn Sacramentos utopian dreams into a California nightmare. LONDON A 31-year-old Romanian architect who plunged into the River Thames when a terrorist plowed a vehicle into pedestrians in London became the fifth victim to die as a result of the attack last month, police said on Friday. The story of the Romanian woman, Andreea Cristea, captured the hearts of Londoners and people around the world after the March 22 attack on Parliament, which also wounded more than 50 people. Her boyfriend, Andrei Burnaz, was planning to propose to her on the day of the attack, according to Romanian news reports and officials, and the couple was in London to celebrate his birthday. The police said Cristea had received medical treatment in London but that life support had been withdrawn Thursday. It was not clear whether Cristea was thrown into the Thames after being hit by the vehicle the assailant, Khalid Masood, was driving, or if she leapt into the water to escape. She was rescued from the water by a lifeboat crew before being hospitalized. During the attack, Masood, a British-born 52-year-old with a history of violence, rammed a rented Hyundai into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge. He then crashed the vehicle into a fence, burst through a gate of the Palace of Westminster and fatally stabbed an unarmed police officer. He was shot and killed by the police. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, although the extent of Masoods links to the militant group remains unclear. The police have been investigating whether he acted alone. Burnaz, who, like Cristea, is reportedly from the Black Sea port city of Constanta, was also hospitalized after the attack for a broken foot, but he was discharged. Cristeas family and Burnaz said in a statement that the attack had convulsed them with grief. There are no words to even begin to describe the crushing pain and emptiness that is left in our hearts, they said, adding that unused money that had been raised to finance her recovery would be donated to charity. From a list of 88 nominees, the following 10 students have been named finalists for the 2017 Artist of the Year in 2D visual arts. The students were chosen by a panel of teachers from based on applications, performance videos and artistic resumes. Included are the styles of art they create as well as quotes about how they relate to their craft. Visual artists include those who work in painting, drawing, digital and film photography, mixed media and graphic design. The final round of adjudication will take place over the next few weeks, during which the students will be interviewed by a panel of distinguished artistic professionals and faculty members from Southern California universities as well as a few representative high school teachers. Interviews will include a live presentation by the students followed by a question-and answer-session. One student from each of the seven disciplines theater, dance, instrumental music, vocal music, film, 2D visual art and 3D visual art will then be named a 2017 Artist of the Year. The Artists of the Year will be announced Thursday, April 20, with full profiles appearing Sunday, April 23, in The Orange County Register. James Armas, senior, Irvine High School digital photography, film-based photography Simply getting my photos into exhibits has made me want to do it more. My passion is to create beautiful works and to help others create amazing art pieces. Seeing others get excited about having their works selected for exhibits inspires me to want to have my work selected. Ernesto Bustamante, senior, Orange Lutheran High School drawing Visual arts has helped me to view the details in everyday things and also stop and find other ways around problems. If I mess up on a piece I am thoroughly far into, rather than use some sort of masking to get rid of the blemish, I have learned to try and incorporate the mistake into the piece and make it more natural and so it wont show any sort of outside touch-ups. Danielle Drislane, junior, St. Margarets Episcopal School drawing, painting, digital photography, graphic design I recently began finding inspiration in the profound beauty of the things that we so often take for granted or overlook the most important, to me, being light and human nature. While we, as humans, can exist in harmony while remaining unaware and unconcerned with each others beauty or pain, lately, I have studied and picked apart the behaviors and thoughts of those around me through my study of portraiture. This has brought me to a deeper level of not only sympathy, but empathy as well. With my portraiture, my goal is to provoke this same feeling in those who view my art. Chiara Ghidoli, senior, Laguna Hills High School drawing, mixed media For the majority of my work, I used either graphite, charcoal or Prismacolor pencil because these mediums allow me to create fine details that bring my work to life. It is important for me to accomplish a realistic quality in my work because I want to render images in a way that makes them seem as if they are physically present to the viewer. I am drawn to create anything that radiates an intense feeling or emotion, which I try to enhance and elaborate in my work. I want my compositions to have a visual impact on others and to create a strong feeling that inspires people to see the beauty in simple creatures and objects Alisa Huang, senior, Cornelia Connelly School drawing, painting, mixed media My father always emphasized the importance of white space when I was practicing Chinese painting. I used to think that leaving white shows the lack of creativity. But the more art I create, the more I appreciate the beauty of simplicity, the magic of white space. Nowadays, our society is filled with numerical terms science and math are greatly appreciated. While STEM specialists are showing us how much, how many, how far, how fast, I hope I can become one of the diverse artists, to be able to bring back the pure pleasure of living around art, restore the traditional art as well as interact with modern ideas, create a white space for people to enjoy living with art in this chaotic world. Celine Kim, senior, University High School painting My work aims to amuse, challenge and emotionally impact my audience. Common themes in my work are nostalgic memories from my life in countries outside the U.S., and the innocence and fragility of youth. My works are a reflection and analysis of my own awkward coming of age. While inspired by specific intimate moments, my hope and belief is that theyre also relatable to an outside viewer. Elisa Kim, senior, Crean Lutheran High School drawing, painting, mixed media, printmaking Growing up, I experienced art in many different arenas: Chicago, Hong Kong, Seoul and Los Angeles. These travels made me realize that art is not necessarily confined to museums, but permeates all life. In Hong Kong, I observed art morph into an integral part of pro-democracy movements. To protect themselves against tear gas, activists used umbrellas; overnight the umbrella became an artistic symbol for pro-democracy. In Seoul, despite the overwhelming technological landscape, touches of art graced the city. Seemingly ordinary establishments like McDonalds or Starbucks would tailor themselves to the unique tastes of Korean society often you can find burgers infused with kimchi. In Los Angeles, I witnessed the power of graffiti and its forms of self-expression. Popularly thought of as vandalism, this unique medium has become synonymous with the urban landscape dominating Southern California. Hanmin Ko, senior, Troy High School drawing, painting, mixed media My artwork is derived by the personal elements that detail my life experiences and stream of thoughts. I desire to encourage others and bring light upon topics that are crucial in todays society through a creative lens. I strive to ultimately connect my life with others, as if my pieces were mirrors that allow people to stop, think and reflect. Zaid Shahbaz, senior, Magnolia High School digital photography, graphic design As a kid, I have always been fascinated with design, photography and video. Rather than being an observer, I wanted to be an innovator that made impact through his creativity. Putting my dreams to life, I started my own design agency known as ZaidArts. My mission is to empower brands and make a change in how others conceive art through social media. Erin Shin, senior, Orange County School of the Arts drawing, painting, concept design Reference material is an integral part of figurative art, and one thing it requires artists to do is to branch out and seek new experiences from yourself and others. I have traveled to New Mexico, Costa Rica, Japan and New York all in the past year, and it was the most traveling I have ever done in my life.Though some were not trips specifically dedicated to gathering reference for my art, it definitely served as inspiration. From the larger-than-life skyscrapers in New York to the lush junglescape in Costa Rica, all showed me new experiences that I, as an individual born and raised in Southern California, could fondly remember and apply to my craft. Contact Varsity Arts: 714-796-2258 or varsityarts@ocregister.com Apolla Echino, a Canadian who now lives in New York, has created an online travel docu-series called "A women's guide to the world." Courtesy of Apolla Echino Reporter Laylan Connelly traveled to New Zealand solo for her 30th birthday, finding adventure at every turn. Courtesy of Laylan Connelly Apolla Echino, a Canadian who now lives in New York, has created an online travel docu-series called "A women's guide to the world." Courtesy of Apolla Echino Apolla Echino, a Canadian who now lives in New York, has created an online travel docu-series called "A women's guide to the world." Courtesy of Apolla Echino Reporter Laylan Connelly traveled to New Zealand solo for her 30th birthday, finding adventure at every turn. Courtesy of Laylan Connelly Reporter Laylan Connelly traveled to New Zealand solo for her 30th birthday, finding adventure at every turn. Courtesy of Laylan Connelly Reporter Laylan Connelly traveled to New Zealand solo for her 30th birthday, finding adventure at every turn. Courtesy of Laylan Connelly Reporter Laylan Connelly traveled to New Zealand solo for her 30th birthday, finding adventure at every turn. Courtesy of Laylan Connelly Reporter Laylan Connelly traveled to New Zealand solo for her 30th birthday, finding adventure at every turn. Courtesy of Laylan Connelly Apolla Echino, a Canadian who now lives in New York, has created an online travel docu-series called "A women's guide to the world." Courtesy of Apolla Echino Apolla Echino, a Canadian who now lives in New York, has created an online travel docu-series called "A women's guide to the world." Courtesy of Apolla Echino Apolla Echino, a Canadian who now lives in New York, has created an online travel docu-series called "A women's guide to the world." Courtesy of Apolla Echino Apolla Echino, a Canadian who now lives in New York, has created an online travel docu-series called "A women's guide to the world." Courtesy of Apolla Echino Apolla Echino, a Canadian who now lives in New York, has created an online travel docu-series called "A women's guide to the world." Courtesy of Apolla Echino Apolla Echino, a Canadian who now lives in New York, has created an online travel docu-series called "A women's guide to the world." Courtesy of Apolla Echino Apolla Echino, a Canadian who now lives in New York, has created an online travel docu-series called "A women's guide to the world." Courtesy of Apolla Echino Apolla Echino in her home of New York getting ready to head out for a surf trip. Echino has a docu-series called "A women's guide to the world.' photo by Margaret Pattillo Photography Apolla Echino, a Canadian who now lives in New York, has created an online travel docu-series called "A women's guide to the world." Margaret Pattillo Photography Apolla Echino, a Canadian who now lives in New York, has created an online travel docu-series called "A women's guide to the world." Margaret Pattillo Photography Apolla Echino, a Canadian who now lives in New York, has created an online travel docu-series called "A women's guide to the world." Margaret Pattillo Photography Always walk confidently. Dress intelligently, know the culture you are going into. Trust your gut instinct, and if you sense trouble, remove yourself from the situation as soon as possible. If anyone knows insider tips for females flying solo on adventures around the world, its Canadian-born Apolla Echino, who has made it her life mission to explore the globe for an online docu-series fittingly called A Womens Guide to the World. Her latest film, shot on the south island of New Zealand with surfboard in tow, gave me a warm feeling a bit of nostalgia as I thought of my own solo adventure to the lush land for my 30th birthday, an impromptu trip filled with adventures. Ive loved traveling alone since I was in my early 20s and caught the travel bug, first testing out my ability to spend time by myself on a road trip up the California coast to San Francisco, then on a much bigger backpacking trip to Australia. Related Articles Photos: New Zealands hiking trails offer one spectacle after another Cheapo Travel: Tips on saving in Hawaii Back in those days and Im totally dating myself here the internet was new and bookings were still done over the phone. As a policy with most trips I have taken through the years, I only reserved the first night, leaving life unplanned. That flexibility and ability to let life take you where it will is one of the reasons I loved traveling alone. No need to check with anyone or negotiate plans. You simply get to go wherever you want, whenever you want. I rang a hostel in an area called Kings Cross, which I found out after booking was a part of town lined with strip clubs and other shady businesses. Oops. All turned out fine, and I ended up staying for a few days. Despite its roughness, it turned out to be a perfect central location to stay and explore nearby beaches, Sydneys famed Opera House and other touristy highlights before I flew north to the Cairns region, where I got to explore my wild side by jumping out of a plane and rafting in raging rapids. Empowering Others I found that theres something empowering about traveling alone. As a youngster, it forced me to fine-tune my social skills and make friends with strangers. Often when you are traveling with people you know, you rely on just hanging out with them. And a persons sense of independence is fueled youre put to the test to rely solely on yourself, and theres strength gained in knowing you need no one else to survive. After a few more lone trips through my 20s, I ended up in New Zealands north island for my 30th birthday, wanting to travel to a place filled with adventure. With nothing planned but my first-nights stay in Auckland, I ended up doing a laundry list of things I loved: Bungee jumping off the Auckland bridge, visiting nearby Waiheke Island via ferry for wine tasting, canyoning (jumping off and repelling down rocks into streams and small pools of water), surfing for a week on 90-mile beach and even snowboarding down slopes at Whakapapa. So when I saw a trailer about Echinos film on traveling to New Zealands south island, it struck a chord in my heart: Shes trying to encourage and empower females to explore the world alone, just as Ive done with many of my beautifully-independent friends who have also roamed the world solo. Id like to think my gentle nudging encouraged them to jump on a plane alone. Echino, who now lives in New York, credits her upbringing with nourishing her love for travel. My dad had two daughters and he didnt know what to do with us so he raised us like boys, she said with a chuckle via cell phone from her home in New York. And gave us boy haircuts to match. They camped and traveled often as kids, and by 24, she booked a flight to India to live for a year and a half. It was literally half way around the world from where I was born and raised, she said. I wanted to completely unplug from the culture I knew. She remembered arriving in Bombay at 2 a.m. and since this was back in 2004 she had to seek out an internet cafe to let her family know she had arrived safely. I was hot. I was naive. And new, she said. I remember it minute-by-minute, from stepping out to the airplane, to being in the most chaotic airport Id ever seen and being bombarded by taxi drivers and being pushed into a car. And the driver taking off and pulling over to a dark road in the middle of Bombay and another guy jumping in the front seat. Oh great, she thought, Ive read these stories. She survived that first night, clutching her bag tight at the train station after being dropped off by the taxi, and stayed awake by scribbling into her notebook. She ended up in Nepal, visiting Mount Everest and staying in the region for two years. It was in some of the remote places that shed get questions from locals wondering why she was traveling alone, like where is your husband? Filming her Adventures On a trip to Antarctica she decided to film the first episode of her series. She boarded a 100-year-old ship filled with strangers for a 23-day journey. The hope, with her first film, is that the show will inspire the upwardly mobile career woman, the housewife and the trepid new single gal, who wants more from life, she writes in the video description. The film also shows an adventure she took to the Amazon. She slept in a hammock, explored the jungle, and took a dip (unknowingly) in a piranha -filled river. For Echino, traveling helped her gain an inner strength. We put all this attention on our looks in our teenage years and 20s, she said. When it starts to fade, you better have something else inside of yourself. Many of the reasons Echino enjoys traveling alone aligned with my own thoughts. It forces you to make decisions on your own, with no one else to blame, she said. It makes you very responsible. She found that the lone time allowed her to come to her own conclusions about values and beliefs and thoughts on cultures and ideals that were different than she was brought up with. I could find out what I thought on my own, without someone whispering in my ear, oh thats bad, thats archaic, or whatever, she said. New Zealand is the latest installment of her series, an unplanned journey taken when a relationship with a Kiwi fell apart. She had left her life in New York for love, but when that relationship soured, she did what she knows how to do hit the road to explore and clear her mind. And what better way to re-center yourself after a split than a break-up trip? For me, those were always the best times to reflect, reconnect with myself and think about what I wanted for my future. Inspiring Solo Travelers The goal is to inspire other women to be the subject of their own adventure story. This isnt a story about a girl getting over a boy, she said in the film. Its the story of a girl exploring the world, getting to know herself. She wanted better filming quality for the docu-series, so she hired a camera-person to join her. Now, this of course isnt traveling totally solo, but she had strict rules to maintain the integrity of her journey. No talking outside of filming, no eating meals together. The only times they saw one another was during filming. This is still a solo trip, so dont come strike a conversation with me, she told the filmer. She started out finding winter waves on the south island at a spot called Kaikoura, where there were no crowds and small waves. She also got to explore nature, coming close with seal pups and sperm whales, between surf stops. Throughout the 40-minute film, she lets the audience into her fun-filled moments searching for surf and her moments of insecurity as she wipes away tears after a frustrating surf session. She has a long list of places she wants to explore. Portugal, because its gritty and adventurous, but not quite third world. And theres Canada, with so many places to explore in her own home town. You can do something and be so off the beaten path, but feel like you are safe and comfortable, she said. Our conversation ends with a question: Do I see myself taking a solo adventure in the near future? she asks. I had to think about that for a minute. My life has changed since I was in my free-spirited 20s, and now my joy comes from taking my two young children to explore the world. And theres one thing missing when you travel alone: someone to share the experiences with, to laugh at all the crazy moments and to reminisce about the journey. Im not sure that Ill be booking a solo flight anytime soon, but if I ever get that itch, Ill know I can live vicariously through Echinos adventures. Global sushi bar, Nobu, is finally opening at Lido Marina Village on Friday. The opening comes more than 18 months after the developers of the newly renovated Lido village announced it had nabbed the luxury sushi restaurant operated by Japanese chef Nobu Matsuhisa. The celebrated chef has more than 30 restaurants around the globe spanning from Las Vegas to Hong Kong. We look forward to bringing guests the Nobu signatures they have come to love along with some very special items that are only available at Nobu Newport Beach, Matsuhisa said in a statement released late Thursday afternoon. The 16,000-square-foot former Warehouse space, facing Newport Harbor, has been under construction for several months. The restaurant was expected to open late last year. The Newport Beach restaurant will feature: The first-ever Nobu Grand Cordon Bar, a patio bar serving rotating craft cocktails created by Nobu bartenders around the country. The bar & lounge will feature offerings from critically acclaimed Japanese breweries, including Hitachino Dai Dai IPA by Kiuchi Brewery. The bar menu includes Takumi Burgers, Lobster and Ribeye with Rocoto Butte, Seafood Ceviche and Nobu Style Tacos. Nobu Newport Beach is located at 3450 Via Oporto in Newport Beach. Later this spring, Lido Bottles Works is slated to open at the village center. SANTA ANA A 16-year-old boy suspected of firing a handgun was arrested Friday after he was found hiding inside a restroom at a Santa Ana park, police said. Officers responded to a shots-fired call around 12:30 p.m. in the 1500 block of South Standard Avenue, said Santa Ana police Cpl. Anthony Bertagna. A .380 caliber handgun believed to have been used in the shooting was recovered in the bathroom, he said. Witnesses reported that the suspect ran across the street to Madison Park. He was found by officers hiding in a womens bathroom at the park and taken into custody, Bertagna said. The suspects name and information regarding the charges he faces were not immediately released. It appears the incident is gang-related, Bertagna said. LAGUNA BEACH An unvaccinated Laguna Beach High School student has been quarantined by county health officials after contracting measles. Jessica Good, spokeswoman for the Orange County Health Care Agency, said Thursday, April 6, that the teen may have exposed other students to the highly contagious virus. Infectious disease specialists did an assessment at the high school and identified six other unvaccinated students who may have been exposed to the virus when the infected student was on campus March 29. All of them have been barred from attending school and will have to stay home until April 18, the end of the incubation period, Good said. The case is the second in the county in 2017. The first case was reported to the Health Care Agency earlier this year. The adult, who was vaccinated, was exposed on an international flight. Because the person chose to self-quarantine and there was no risk of exposure, the county agency is not required to disclose the persons identity or location, Good said. In 2016, there were 35 reported cases in the county. On Wednesday, the Laguna Beach Unified School District sent notices to all parents of students in its four schools. The notification included symptoms associated with the infectious disease, including fever; rash; cough; and red, watery eyes. Measles spreads easily by air and by direct contact with an infected person. It is contagious even before a rash appears. The district advised parents who notice any of these symptoms to notify the Health Care Agency immediately. Children must be immunized against the following nine diseases: diphtheria, hepatitis B., measles, mumps, whooping cough, polio, rubella, tetanus and chicken pox. This particular incident is unearthing the conversation of whether to vaccinate or not, said Cynthia Jenkins, a parent who has a freshman at Laguna Beach High School and had heard of the measles incident shortly after it happened. Im from a family of doctors and support vaccinating. I respect everyones decision, but it certainly validates mine. Jenkins said she had heard some talk of the measles incident after March 29 but didnt think about it again until getting the notice from the Laguna Beach Unified School District on Wednesday. I was like oh, but my kids are vaccinated, she said. Its scary. But she credits the school district and the OC Healthcare Agency with their quick response. Everyone is alerted, she said. Im pleased it hasnt turned into something alienating. Jenkins said that from her understanding the affected student is doing better. A state law, Senate Bill 277, that went into effect in 2016, says parents of children who attend public or private schools can no longer refuse to vaccinate their children based on personal belief. They can still receive medical exemptions. If parents submitted personal-belief exemptions prior to Jan 1, 2016, the exemptions will remain in place until the student is in seventh grade. Contact the writer: 714-796-2254 or eritchie@scng.com On Twitter: @lagunaini A trial set to start next week over the legality of a beachfront nuclear waste dump at San Onofre was postponed Friday, so the battling sides can sit down for settlement talks. The likelihood that such talks would result in the immediate removal of the 3.6 million pounds of waste from the bluff overlooking the Pacific are slim, some observers said. Construction of a concrete monolith dry-cask storage system on the site already is well under way, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. Concrete is being poured. But middle ground will be sought. People of good will must come together and work to find a solution that is in the best interests of the people of the state of California, Mike Aguirre, attorney for Citizens Oversight, a nonprofit citizens advocacy group that filed suit over waste storage at the site, said in a prepared statement. We believe the parties in the case and many community leaders share a common goal to transfer San Onofres used nuclear fuel off-site as soon as reasonably possible, Tom Palmisano, Southern California Edisons vice president and chief nuclear officer, said in a prepared statement. We are hopeful that settlement discussions will permit the parties to reach a mutually agreeable solution. Shortly after the California Coastal Commission approved a 20-year permit for the construction of the storage system in 2015, Citizens Oversight filed suit to stop it. It claims that the Coastal Commission which must approve all seaside projects before they can proceed failed to adequately evaluate potential off-site storage spots, or the system that will entomb the waste. The Coastal Commission also failed to support its decision with adequate findings or provide evidence supporting the findings it did make, and denied opponents a fair hearing, Citizens Oversight argued in court documents. The nonprofit also targeted Edison, San Onofres operator, saying Edison failed to consider other storage spots, instead presenting the spot just a few hundred feet from the beach as the only option. In court filings over the years, the Coastal Commission said it followed California law and Edison argued that the new dry storage system is an expansion of an already-existing safe, secure facility to temporarily store the spent nuclear fuel. The highly radioactive fuel presently stored in comparatively-vulnerable pools is much safer in the steel-and-concrete bunker thats being built, Edison said. All waste is currently slated to be in dry storage by 2019. Edison has little choice here, it argued. The NRC has exclusive jurisdiction and extensive regulations governing the transport, monitoring and storage of spent nuclear fuel. The federal government also has the legal and contractual obligation to permanently dispose of spent nuclear fuel not just from San Onofre, but from every commercial reactor in the nation. Thus, while SCE is more than willing to transport all the remaining spent nuclear fuel to a storage facility off-site, SCE must implement plans now to store the spent fuel at an on-site facility, it argued in legal papers. Dry storage offers greater protection against earthquakes, fire, tsunamis and terrorist threats, and getting it into canisters for dry storage is the first step toward transferring it off-site when a facility finally becomes available. This is a welcomed opportunity to implement a much safer way to manage highly radioactive waste in our midst, Gary Headrick of San Clemente Green wrote via email. Edison said it is seeking a solution for storing the waste that is acceptable to everyone. We appreciate their good intentions but will be in trust but verify mode as things proceed. San Clemente Green has been promoting the idea of an independent advisory panel of nuclear experts to be involved in the decision making process for some time now. This could be a very big step in that direction. Our intention is to see that San Onofre becomes a pilot project for the rest of the nation to follow, by establishing the highest safety standards possible, Headrick said. The Coastal Commission will not be part of the talks at this early stage, spokesperson Noaki Schwartz said. But if discussions involve changes to Edisons permit, such as moving the waste to another site, the commission would join the negotiations. Rory Schaff The year was 2007, and it was also the year I got my start in PR. I didnt know it at the time most in the profession didnt but the industry was teetering on the edge of transformation. Social media has had such a significant impact on brand communications that its difficult to imagine the industry without it. And do we really want to? Its been an enlightening and entertaining and sometimes, downright terrifying experience. Weve seen social media make or break brands and agencies alike, but it was a risk we were all willing to take. Now that we have a decade under our belts, its time to reflect on the past and leverage what weve learned to improve and prepare for the future. In the beginning Did you know LinkedIn was the first major heavy hitter? It was founded in 2002 as a way for professionals to share the contents of their Rolodex with other professionals. We all know how Facebook got its start; it was created as a network for Harvard students to connect. Theres a pattern here. Social networks werent created with brands in mind but, rather, people. Where the people go, brands will follow. Social media presented an opportunity for brands that was so obvious, so effortless, that communications professionals were dumbfounded when a brand passed it up. A lot of them did in the beginning; they thought it was a passing phase. No way to determine ROI? Then, no way. When years went by and other players began entering the arena YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat social media became a must-have for brands. The benefits and challenges that came with social media were unimaginable at the time but were also quickly realized. Key takeaways from 10 years Like I said, social networks were created to connect people. When brands stepped in, they were given the same superpower (because thats what it was). The ability to directly connect with a key audience on a channel of said audiences choice was and will always be the social networks greatest benefit. More traditional means of communication such as media relations and press releases, which are still very relevant and necessary today dont afford brands the ability to drop the marketing jargon, say it like it is to buyers and get a direct response within seconds. At a time when third-party validation was the main driver of changing perceptions, this new approach was huge. It was the embodiment of communications. Needless to say, there was a lot of talking going on. Brands not only leveraged social networks to engage with buyers, they began weaving social media into marketing plans. However, they took a production line approach to it. Content was produced and pushed out in record time, so much so, that content became overwhelming. We realized this when social networks began to change their algorithms. They had to if they wanted users to see information that was pertinent to them. This has been a real challenge for brands, as it requires a shift from a content in mass quantities to less is more approach. But when you produce less content, you really need to hone in on the content that matters most to buyers. How do brands know what matters most? Enter big data. More users, more engagement and more content meant more data. Social analytics tools began popping up left and right to aggregate and evaluate trillions of online conversations. What did this mean for brands? They were handed the keys to unlock buyer interest. Leveraging data, brands could create not only content that spoke to key interests, but metrics-driven social programs. Data brought with it another revelation, though: sentiment. Brands had deeper insight into how buyers felt about them. The importance of brand transparency and buyers trust has been magnified with social media. More than two billion smartphone users now have a wealth of information at their fingertips. Within seconds they can seek Siri on a brand, do a little research and determine whether or not they trust the brand enough to do business with them. This is really where that make or break reality comes into play. Brands need to be on top of their game when it comes to building a transparent and trustworthy brand online. Tell your story in a genuine fashion and back it up through business practices; otherwise, youll get the virtual equivalent of a glitter bomb. So thats where we are. The ride has been a wild one, but the roller coaster car weve been on is now ascending the largest hill yet. Stepping into a new reality Last month marked SXSWs 30th year. Since 1987, its become one of the largest interactive media conferences of all time. This years conference is important to note, though, because the main topic of conversation plays directly into the next decade for social media. User experience is vital for social networks. Fail to keep up with it and you fail. Period. Just look at SixDegrees, MySpace and others. With the influx of content, the need to differentiate it increases. Thats why visual storytelling has been on the rise over the past few years. This approach will be getting a serious facelift in the next few years, though. Stories will come to a face near you thanks to virtual reality, and augmenting that is augmented reality. The technology is there, but social networks are still in the very early stages of figuring out how to incorporate it into the user experience. The same could be said with brands and communications. Right now, theyre taking baby steps with 360-degree photos and videos. I predict within the next 10 years that social networks will begin enabling VR experiences. In turn, brands will begin creating content that completely immerses buyers in a unique and interactive experience, enabling them to get a taste of products and services before actually making a purchase. And the shopping cart? Its part of the experience. Imagine slipping on a VR headset to scroll through your news feed. A post from your favorite fashion brand pops up. You click on it, and youre immediately pulled onto a runway. You look down, and youre wearing next seasons line. A shopping cart pops up to your right and you can easily swipe items into your cart before checking out. What if you have questions about sizing? A customer service rep is on standby in the crowd surrounding the runway. It may sound like an episode of Black Mirror, but wouldnt that be nice? It could be the future of social media, and if it is, we need to start planning for it now. *** Rory Schaff is online services supervisor at McGrath/Power Public Relations. Attacking fears that truth might be dead, a thought proposed by the April 3 Time mag, the Arthur W. Page Society this week reaffirmed its commitment to truth and facts and said journalists and PR people must work closely together. Our profession is intertwined with journalism, said a statement from the 35-member board headed by David Samson, general manager of PA, Chevron. The statement was read to 330 members at the spring seminar of the group at the Conrad New York Hotel. Said the statement: "The Arthur W. Page Society is rooted in the Page Principles, the first of which is 'Tell the truth.' As communicators, our duty is to deal honestly in facts, even when they are inconvenient. Truth is not dead, as some may fear. It remains, as ever, the foundation of credibility and the lifeblood of trust. On behalf of the members of the Page Society, we reaffirm our deep commitment to ensuring truth in the practice of public communication." Andy Polansky, Weber Shandwick photos: Eliot Mizrachi Gerard Baker (L), WSJ editor-in-chief, with Andy Polansky Chris Langdon (L) & Nik Gowing, co-authors, Thinking the Unthinkable Dave Samson, Chevron Dawn Lyon (L), Glassdoor; Tracy Chou, Project Include David Benoit (L), WSJ; Mike Miller, Monster.com (formerly) M. Farooq Kathwari (L), Ethan Allen; Stacy Sharpe, Allstate "Corporations, governments, non-governmental organizations and media don't get everything right. But all of us must share a commitment to the facts and the pursuit of the truth. Distorting information, withholding the truth or promulgating falsehoods violates the public's trust and denies its rightful opportunity to be engaged and informed. This is precisely why democratic societies require a free and fair press. In this respect, our profession is intertwined with journalism." "The Page Society declares its support for journalists and public relations professionals who fearlessly fight for the truth, bring facts to light and hold government, business and other institutions accountable." Roger Bolton, Page president, made a live presentation on the issue yesterday morning on the subject. He then had a live a webcast conversation with Gary Sheffer, former VP-communications and PA of General Electric, explaining why Page decided to take a public stance on its commitment to truth on behalf of the membership. Activism Challenges Companies Theme of the conference is The Changing Face of Activism: Reaching Common Ground in a Polarized World. Andy Polansky, CEO of Weber Shandwick and chair of the conference, said members must think differently about the stakeholder environment and their ability as communicators to engage effectively. Nik Gowing and Chris Langdon, co-authors of Thinking the Unthinkable, said leaders must have a keen sense for anticipating the future and both the ability and courage to take action to head off threats. The real challenge, they said, is actually "thinking the unpalatable" and coming to terms with things humans might deny rather than confront. "There's permafreeze myopia," said Gowing, arguing that willful blindness and groupthink are often systematic in that the "mavericks" who think way outside the box are often shuffled to the side. "It's not about rewriting the systems in companies," he added, "but reconfiguring the human software." Lyon Focuses on Employee Activism Dawn Lyon, VP of corporate affairs, Glassdoor, told a panel on employee activism that "if employees feel that they're not heard, that can have downstream implications for customers and other stakeholders, and ultimately diminish the value that you deliver." Two in three employees expect their companies to take a stand on social issues, she said. When it comes to issues like diversity and inclusion, the most effective way to engage employees is to be authentic be honest about the reality, be clear about what actions are being taken, and keep stakeholders informed on the progress that's being made. David Benoit, activism reporter at the Wall Street Journal, said WSJ has a policy of no surprises, meaning it shares stories with subjects before they hit print. Barrett Golden of Joel Frank said that ninety percent of the work that we do with press is on background, helping educate them in advance about the issues and the company so they're more apt to reflect the company's position fairly and accurately. Mike Miller, former General Counsel of Monster.com, said he viewed his job as helping the CCO communicate to the C-Suite and the board to ensure the company was mindful not only of its financial risks but also of the communication that must take place between company and activist investors. Board, Employees Must Get Same Message Bill Wohl of Commvault, who moderated, said communicators must "conduct PR as if the whole company depends on it," since it sometimes does when it comes to dealing with activist investors. Farooq Kathwari, CEO of Ethan Allen, who has a reputation as an activist CEO, said companies of all types remain must true to their culture and values. "You need to be willing to lose for a principle," he said. The actions that the company takes and the behavior that its leadership exhibits manifests itself throughout the company, he said. He advised leaders to communicate a single message to all audiences. "Our messages to employees and to board members has to be the same, they have to believe in who we are. If you dont convince your people, nothing much happens. Samson, summarized Day One of the conference by saying it was about company values, and how they relate to the actual value that a company creates in the world for employees, for customers, for shareholders, and for society at large. He said that in this "era of big activism" PR people have an opportunity to lead not only on what the company says, but what it stands for and believes in. Page Covers WSJ's Baker, Other Speakers Eliot Mizrachi, VP-communications of Page, posted coverage of todays panels. Some coverage is not by Mizrachi. Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief Gerry Baker said media can fail to realize their natural tendency to focus on issues that aren't at the fore between the coasts. Bringing light to immigration, transgender rights and gay marriage are certainly important social issues, but in Baker's view, the press and at the same time, the political establishment has failed to fully appreciate how disaffected and marginalized at least half of the U.S. is in the current economic environment. He said the Presidential campaign, as reported by other attendees at the event, showed "the massive gulf between the mainstream media and so many American voters. There was this arrogant, disdainful, condescending view that anyone for Trump was bad or stupid. It was a terrible indictment of the media and of how the media has become so detached from people." Baker, according to a story by Sydney Ember in the Feb. 13, 2017 New York Times, "vigorously defended his newspapers coverage of President Trump, rejecting suggestions that The Journal had not been aggressive enough." The story said: "Facing tough questioning at a town-hall-style meeting with the staff, Mr. Baker denied that The Journal had been too soft in its coverage, according to several people who participated in the meeting. He suggested that other papers had discarded objectivity, and that anyone who wanted to work at an organization with a more oppositional stance toward the administration could find a job elsewhere, these people said." We cant allow ourselves to be dragged into the political process, to be a protagonist in the political fight, Ember quoted him as saying according to one of the people. The story further said, "He said that Americans already distrusted the news media, and that if The Journal covered Mr. Trump in an overly confrontational way, that distrust might increase." Echoing that point was CNN commentator Sally Kohn, who previously appeared on Fox News debating conservative pundits. She expressed her fear that we lack civility in our discourse, and are too predisposed to demonize and hate the so-called "other side." "You can't argue with feelings," she said, "but when feelings are damaged, it's more difficult for persuasion to happen. So it's important to affirm peoples' feelings even if you don't validate their point of view." At the same time, she points out that the rate at which people defriend people on social media due to their opposing political views is on the rise a troubling reinforcement of the media echo chambers that we can now choose to live in. Read more. GE's Welch Saw Need for Trust Bakers comments were similar to those of former GE chief executive Jack Welch, who was on the same stage two years before. Welch noted then that the relationship between CEO and CCO is based on "truth and trust." So, too, is the relationship between CCO and media, said Baker. While it has been forever the case that spokespersons, political leaders and others have been "economical with the truth," there is concern that the boundaries have shifted closer to outright lies and that reporting misinformation as a lie, which insinuates actual intent to deceive, is a complicated issue for journalists. But take heart, he says the story of those student journalists in Kansas who exposed the false credentials of their new principal, ultimately leading to her ouster, bodes well for the survival of the foundational essence of journalism to seek truth and bring it to light. That's all well and good, but it's no secret that for every honest reporter running down a story, there is a propaganda machine churning out blatantly false news stories dressed up as real news. "There are best practices for fake news," said Adam Singolda, CEO of Taboola. It's gotten very adept at looking like the real thing. But the true challenge, especially for media platforms news, search and social alike is to separate the real from the fake. As individuals, we have to make smart choices. "Nobody eats sushi on a plane," Singolda added. And nobody would feel bad if you got sick doing so. But on the distribution side, that's something that no algorithm can do reliably at least not yet. Nevertheless, the real heroes in media, according to Singolda, are the ones who resist the temptation to pay attention to fake news "clickbait," rejecting the business value of those eyeballs in favor of the real value of maintaining trust. PR Execs Should be Activists--Mallory Tamika Mallory, one of the organizers of the Women's March that followed the presidential inauguration, implored the audience to think about themselves as activists, because in some form or another, we all are. As communicators, we bear the responsibility to ensure that brands are true to their values while being sensitive to cultural and social issues. It can be easy for those at the top of an organization to think they know it all, she said, but it's impossible to know what you don't know about the experience, feelings and perspectives of other people. "In your companies, there's someone working in the kitchen that you can run stuff by. Do it. They'll be happy to tell you." Companies can only benefit from welcoming and considering diverse perspectives rather than succumbing to arrogant groupthink. "Activists are passionate people who are fed up," she added. But that passion must be directed at revealing the truth rather than stifling it. The media decides which parts of the issues to show us, but anyone on social media journalists, bloggers and others are bringing these realities to light. "Telling those stories truthfully is activism." 07/04/2017 Almost 50 delegates from 14 countries and 7 organisations gathered in Tbilisi for the second regional meeting of the Inclusive Framework on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) in the Eastern Europe and Central Asia region. This meeting, coming after the second plenary meeting of the Inclusive Framework held in Paris on 26-27 January 2017, belongs to a new series of regional events that offer participants from different regions in the world the opportunity to provide their views and input to the Inclusive Framework on BEPS. Participants discussed the status of implementation of the BEPS measures, with a specific focus on the peer-review mechanisms as well as timelines for the implementation of the minimum standards. The work on toolkits designed to help low-income countries was extensively considered together with capacity-building initiatives currently in place or under development to address countries' needs. The meeting also offered an opportunity to participants to be updated on recent developments in transfer pricing and the tax treaties area, including country-by-country reporting and the tax treaty-related minimum standards. There was a specific focus on the Multilateral Instrument as a means of swiftly implementing the tax treaty-related measures. Tullamore DEW has been named the Official Irish whiskey of the Boston Red Sox. The agreement includes the opening of a customized in-park bar for games and special events, serving signature Tullamore DEW drinks. The second largest Irish whiskey brand has take up residence in a brand new Right Field Grandstand bar in Fenway Park named Tully Tavern, which has been inspired by the look and feel of the legendary Irish whiskey distillery. We couldnt think of a more perfect partner than the Boston Red Sox, whose fans are as loyal to the Sox as ours are to our whiskey, commented Paige Parness, Senior Brand Manager at Tullamore DEW. Tullamore DEW is thrilled to have Tully Tavern as a new Boston home base at Fenway Park, one of the citys most iconic landmarks. Red Sox Executive Vice President Troup Parkinson remarked, We are excited to welcome Tullamore DEW as our official Irish whiskey, and couldnt be more pleased with the new Tully Tavern bar installed in right field." Production of Tullamore DEW returned home to Tullamore in September, 2014 when the 35 million state of the art facility was opened just outside the town. The initial work at the facility took two years to complete on the 58 acre site with more construction work currently taking place. Beef Buzz News Derrell Peel Writes Feedlot Business a Clean Bill of Health Noting Aggressive and Current Marketings Feedlot operators are bucking a trend of recent years, sending bigger and bigger carcasses to packing plants. In 2017 so far, carcass weights of cattle being shipped off are significantly lower compared to those seen last year. Oklahoma State University Extension Livestock Market Economist Dr. Derrell Peel says that is a good thing, and it is helping us manage the larger numbers of cattle now entering the pipeline. He talked to Radio Oklahoma Ag Network Farm Director Ron Hays from a mathematical standpoint as to why feedlots are making the switch. "When you multiply the increase in slaughter, we're having and we expected to have," he said, "you offset part of that with this decreased carcass weight. So, it moderates the increase in beef production that's going on. That's the immediate effect." Generally, though, lower carcass weights in a time of growing supply, to Peel, is indicative of a healthy feedlot situation right now. He insists that is the best strategy to handle the larger number of cattle in production currently. "These feedlots have continued to market cattle very aggressively, very timely," Peel pointed out. "They're current, and you know, that's good!" Listen to Dr. Peel's prognosis of the cattle industry as he takes the pulse of the feedlot situation with Ron Hays, on today's Beef Buzz. The Beef Buzz is a regular feature heard on radio stations around the region on the Radio Oklahoma Network and is a regular audio feature found on this website as well. Click on the LISTEN BAR below for today's show and check out our archives for older Beef Buzz shows covering the gamut of the beef cattle industry today. Listen to Dr. Derrell Peel's prognosis of the cattle industry as he takes the pulse of the feedlot situation WebReadyTM Powered by WireReady NSI Beef News Kids are starting to search for the Easter Bunny and eggs. So we rounded up a list of Easter egg hunts in the Omaha area. Use our map to find one near you. The events are free unless otherwise noted. Friday Easter Egg Hunt at the Millard Library Where: Millard Library, 13214 Westwood Lane When: 9:30 a.m. What you should know: Kids up to 5 years old are welcomed for story time and an Easter egg hunt. Saturday Party Pals of Omaha Egg Hunt Where: Ramble Ridge Park, 11424 Fort St. When: 10 a.m.-noon What you should know: There will be separate hunts for big kids, little kids and dogs. LaVista Easter Egg Hunt and Food Drive Where: LaVista Sports Complex, 7346 S. 66th St., La Vista When: 10 a.m. What you should know: Kids in four age groups can participate in an Easter egg hunt on the soccer fields. One canned food item is the recommended donation. Easter Extravaganza at Lauritzen Gardens Where: Lauritzen Gardens, 100 Bancroft St. When: 9 a.m. What you should know: Lauritzen Gardens will offer pictures with the Easter Bunny, crafts and an egg hunt. Register for this event before Wednesday by calling 402-346-4002. Admission is $10 for adults, $5 for kids, plus $3 for the egg hunt. Bass Pro Shop Easter Egg Hunt Where: Bass Pro Shop, 2901 Bass Pro Drive, Council Bluffs When: 1:30 p.m. What you should know: Kids can return five eggs for a treat. Better Together Egg Hunt Where: Abide, Better Together Campus, 3223 N. 45th St. When: 11:30 a.m. What you should know: In addition to the egg hunt, there will be lunch, prizes, bounce houses and music. Clarinda Easter Egg Hunt Where: Page County Courthouse, 112 E. Main St., Clarinda, Iowa When: 10:30 a.m. What you should know: Kids 9 and under are welcome to participate. Walnut Grove Baptist Church Easter Egg Hunt Where: Walnut Grove Baptist Church, 1001 N. 29th St., Council Bluffs When: 11 a.m. What you should know: There will be a scavenger hunt for kids 9 and older and an Easter egg hunt for kids 8 and under. Boyscout Troup 528 Easter Egg Hunt Where: Lake Manawa, 1100 S. Shore Drive, Council Bluffs When: 10 a.m. What you should know: This Easter egg hunt is for kids under 12 years old. Spring Fling at Masters Hand Candle Co. & Gift Shop Where: Masters Hand Candle Co. & Gift Shop, 3599 County Road F, Tekamah, Nebraska When: 8 a.m. What you should know: Spring Fling will include guest appearances by Frozen characters Queen Elsa, Princess Anna and Olaf, pony rides, a baby animal petting zoo, face painting, free moonwalk and train rides, storytime and other entertainment. STOCKHOLM (AP) The syringe slides in between the thumb and index finger. Then, with a click, a microchip is injected in the employees hand. Another cyborg is created. What could pass for a dystopian vision of the workplace is almost routine at the Swedish startup hub Epicenter. The company offers to implant its workers and startup members with microchips the size of grains of rice that function as swipe cards: to open doors, operate printers or buy smoothies with a wave of the hand. The injections have become so popular that workers at Epicenter hold parties for those willing to get implanted. The biggest benefit, I think, is convenience, said Patrick Mesterton, co-founder and CEO of Epicenter. As a demonstration, he unlocks a door by merely waving near it. It basically replaces a lot of things you have, other communication devices, whether it be credit cards or keys. The technology in itself is not new. Such chips are used as virtual collar plates for pets. Companies use them to track deliveries. Its just never been used to tag employees on a broad scale before. Epicenter and a handful of other companies are the first to make chip implants broadly available. And as with most new technologies, it raises security and privacy issues. While biologically safe, the data generated by the chips can show how often an employee comes to work or what they buy. Unlike company swipe cards or smartphones, which can generate the same data, a person cannot easily separate themselves from the chip. Of course, putting things into your body is quite a big step to do, and it was even for me at first, said Mesterton, remembering how he initially had doubts. But then, on the other hand, I mean, people have been implanting things into their body, like pacemakers and stuff to control your hearing. Thats a way, way more serious thing than having a small chip that can actually communicate with devices. Epicenter, which is home to more than 100 companies and some 2,000 workers, began implanting workers in January 2015. Now, about 150 workers have them. A company based in Belgium also offers its employees such implants, and there are isolated cases around the world where tech enthusiasts have tried out the technology in recent years. The small implants use Near Field Communication (NFC) technology, the same as in contactless credit cards or mobile payments. When activated by a reader a few inches away, a small amount of data flows between the two devices via electromagnetic waves. The implants are passive, meaning they contain information that other devices can read, but cannot read information themselves. Ben Libberton, a microbiologist at Stockholms Karolinska Institute, said hackers could conceivably gain huge swathes of information from embedded microchips. The ethical dilemmas will become bigger the more sophisticated the microchips become. The data that you could possibly get from a chip that is embedded in your body is a lot different from the data that you can get from a smartphone, he said. Conceptually, you could get data about your health, you could get data about your whereabouts, how often youre working, how long youre working, if youre taking toilet breaks and things like that. Libberton said that if such data is collected, the big question remains of what happens to it, who uses it and for what purpose. So far, Epicenters group of cyborgs doesnt seem too concerned. People ask me, Are you chipped? and I say, Yes, why not? said Fredric Kaijser, 47, the chief experience officer at Epicenter. And they all get excited about privacy issues and what that means and so forth. And for me, its just a matter of, I like to try new things and just see it as more of an enabler and what that would bring into the future. The implants have become so popular that Epicenter workers stage monthly events where attendees have the option of being chipped for free. That means visits from self-described body hacker Jowan Osterlund from Biohax Sweden, who performs the operation. He injects the implants using pre-loaded syringes into the fleshy area of the hand, just next to the thumb. The process lasts a few seconds, and more often than not there are no screams and barely a drop of blood. The next step for electronics is to move into the body, he said. Sandra Haglof, 25, who works for Eventomatic, an events company that works with Epicenter, has had three piercings before, and her left hand barely shakes as Osterlund injects the small chip. I want to be part of the future, she said with a laugh. LINCOLN The Nebraska Supreme Court has ordered a review of an Omaha mans claim that authorities withheld evidence that would have helped him beat a murder conviction. Jack E. Harris, 45, convinced the Supreme Court on Friday that allegations in his motion for post-conviction relief should be reconsidered by a lower court. Harris is serving a life term for the 1995 slaying of Anthony Jones, 35, of Omaha. Prosecutors proved to a jury that Harris and Howard Homicide Hicks plotted to rob the victim of drugs and money. At trial, two jailhouse informants and Hicks testified against Harris. Harris says Hicks lied when he told jurors that Harris shot and killed the victim. Hicks reached a plea agreement to provide his testimony and was sentenced to four to seven years for robbery and use of a weapon to commit a felony. He got out of prison in 2000. After the trial, Hicks recanted his testimony against Harris, saying he lied because police had intimidated him. Harris now has identified a witness who gave police information in 1999 that implicated Hicks. Sarpy County District Judge William Zastera considered the claim but concluded the prosecutors did nothing improper because police did not provide the witness statements to them. But Supreme Court Judge Jeffrey Funke wrote in Fridays opinion that the lower courts conclusion was incorrect. Under both federal and state law, the prosecutor had a duty to learn of favorable material evidence known to others acting on the governments behalf in the case. Thus, the states duty to disclose favorable material evidence existed even if the evidence was known only to police investigators and not to the prosecutor, the judge wrote. The high court ordered the district court judge to reconsider the merits of the motion filed by Harris, who is represented by Sarah Newell with the Nebraska Commission on Public Advocacy. PITTSBURG, Kan. Just hours before publishing their story last week, four co-editors and two reporters on the Pittsburg High School newspaper, sitting at home in their bedrooms, powered on their laptops and engaged in a Google group chat to check every last fact. The six students were about to shed light on the questionable education credentials of their newly hired principal. They didnt know it then, but by Wednesday the story would bring them global media attention from the Washington Post, New York Times, Good Morning America, Today Show, the BBC, the Telegraph of London and the Boston Globe Spotlight investigative team, to name a few. The school paper the Booster Redux with their story spread across the front page and tucked inside The Morning Sun, Pittsburgs local paper, hit driveways in the southeast Kansas town of about 20,400 early last Friday. Their story questioned the legitimacy of the private college Corllins University where Amy Robertson, who had been hired March 6 to lead Pittsburg High School, got her masters and doctorate degrees years ago. The students story reported that the U.S. Department of Education could not find evidence of Corllins in operation, and they found several articles referring to Corllins as a diploma mill where people can buy a degree, diploma or certificates. The Corllins website didnt even work. Tuesday evening in a meeting room packed with faculty, students and community members, school board President Al Mendez announced that Robertson had resigned from the $93,000-a-year job. On Wednesday, Destry Brown, the Pittsburg schools superintendent, said the district was reposting the job and from now on would be doing a background check and vetting credentials before any candidate is hired. Brown said the district had been following a process. Thats why the questions eventually came up, he said. Brown said the district had no way of knowing whether Corllins University was accredited during the time Robertson attended. But he admitted that school officials had not vetted her. He said the district would rely on the Kansas Department of Education to vet her credentials before issuing her a license to teach in the state. But state education officials said they had not received any information on Robertson, so no review process was ever started. Pittsburg High School junior Gina Mathew, one of the co-editors on the reporting team, said Wednesday that the students work speaks volumes about the power of student journalism. At the end of the day, we were just doing our job. We knew there was a story that had to be told, and we were going to be the ones to tell it. The students said they were shocked by the impact the story had in the community and even more stunned to get streams of electronic letters of congratulations and kudos from professional journalists around the country. The six spent all of Wednesday in the journalism classroom answering hundreds of emails and doing news, radio and television interviews that they expected to extend into Thursday afternoon. This is not something that we are used to, said Kali Poenitske, a junior and Booster co-editor. We are all very humbled by all the respect we are getting from the national media, Connor Balthazor chimed in. Most kids our age never get that kind of attention from the national media. What the students had hoped for, Mathew said, was for the school board to re-examine Amy Robertson. They did that, and the rest is just extra. Robertson, who has been living off and on in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, for the past 19 years, is the CEO of an education consulting firm that starts and runs private, for-profit, K-12 English-language schools in Dubai. The student journalists effort began as a routine article to introduce her to the school and the community. When co-editor Maddie Baden Googled Robertsons name, several 2012 articles popped up about Dubais education authority suspending the license for Dubai American Scientific School, which was run by Robertson. The articles accused Robertson of not being authorized to serve as principal of that school. The school received an unsatisfactory rating on Dubai education authority inspection reports every year from 2008 to 2012 and was closed in September 2013. That raised a red flag, Baden said. That started us doing more research. Students later found that Robertson had received her two top degrees from Corllins University, which didnt appear to be accredited by a recognized accreditation agency. Robertson received her bachelors degree from the University of Tulsa. Contacted by email last Friday, Robertson said that the current status of Corllins University was not relevant because when I received my MA in 1994 and my Ph.D. in 2010, there was no issue. She declined to comment on the students questions, saying, I have no comment in response to the questions posed by PHS students regarding my credentials because their concerns are not based on facts. LINCOLN Omaha State Sen. Ernie Chambers declared Friday that justice was served by the dismissal of an election challenge against him. A special legislative committee voted unanimously to reject a claim that the veteran lawmaker does not live in his north Omaha legislative district. The committees decision now goes to the full Legislature for a vote. The seven-member committee ruled after a hearing on the challenge raised by John Sciara, who lost to Chambers in the November election. Sciara, who represented himself in the case, sought to prove that Chambers does not live at the home he owns at 1825 Binney St. This is going to be a pretty simple case, he said. During the hearing, Sciara questioned water usage at the home, saying it was lower than would be expected. Sciara also testified that he had driven past, or parked near, the house at various hours of the day and night without seeing evidence that someone was living in the house. Chambers, through his attorney, Mark McGuire, countered with several documents intended to prove that the Binney Street house is his legal home. He argued that it would be a very, very serious act to remove him from office and overturn the will of the voters, who re-elected him by an overwhelming margin. It should be based on more than rumor, scandal-mongering or whatever else is involved with this, Chambers said during testimony. The Nebraska Constitution requires that a senator live for at least a year in his or her district to be eligible to serve in the Legislature. Sciara said he first was alerted to questions about Chambers residency by articles in The World-Herald in 2012. His initial petition cited conversations with numerous people as his reason for filing the challenge. In a brief filed Wednesday he claimed that Chambers had taken up residence in the Bellevue home of his legislative aide, Cynthia Grandberry, sometime before November 2015. On Friday, however, none of Sciaras witnesses, who included Sen. Carol Blood of Bellevue and Grandberry, provided testimony backing that claim. Blood, who lives down the street from Grandberry, said she has seen Chambers drive there to pick up his aide for work or drop her off after work, but she said she has never seen him spend the night. We know whats going on in our neighborhood, and Sen. Chambers does not live there, Blood said. Grandberry said, in response to questions, that Chambers sometimes stays to eat a meal with her and has an opener for her garage door. But, she said, he does not do laundry or have clothes at her home. In his closing argument, Sciara said he did not have to show where Chambers lives, only whether he lives at the Binney Street house. Toward that end he argued that water use at the house was well below average, pointing to Chambers Metropolitan Utilities District bill from February showing that 748 gallons of water were used that month. Questions about Chambers water usage followed, including whether he does laundry at the house (no), whether he showers there (he bathes) and even whether he flushes the toilet. Sen. Dan Hughes of Venango asked about his electricity use, which also appeared low some months. Chambers said he has a television, a small refrigerator and a microwave. Although he has an electric stove, he said he doesnt use it. McGuire said the utility usage is low because Chambers is the only person living in the house, and he spends most of each day in Lincoln working on legislative matters. McGuire walked Chambers through a typical day, which begins about 4:30 a.m. when he gets up and reads the newspaper. Chambers said he leaves about 5:30 a.m. to pick up Grandberry and commute to the Capitol in Lincoln. He doesnt return to the house until 13 or 14 hours later. Chambers also presented several documents as evidence that the Binney Street house is his home. Among them are documents showing his purchase of the house, repair and maintenance done on the house, a listing in the telephone book, his vehicle registration and his voter registration at that address. McGuire pointed particularly to his daily subscription to The World-Herald, which billing documents show is to be delivered to the Binney Street address. If you didnt reside at 1825 Binney St., why would you have the paper delivered there? he said. Under the committees hearing procedures Sciara had the burden to prove his claims by the greater weight of the evidence. That means the evidence had to show the claims were more likely true than false. After the hearing, Sciara said he was at a disadvantage because he had not seen Chambers brief and did not see Chambers evidence until the deadline for filing objections was passed. I dont see how that was fair, he said. Sen. Dan Watermeier of Syracuse, chairman of the special committee, said the brief had been emailed to Sciara on Thursday and there had been numerous discussions with him about the deadlines. The special committee was created to decide the residency issue, as required by legislative rules. Former Nebraska Supreme Court Judge William Connolly was hired to provide legal counsel in the matter. After the hearing, Chambers said he believes the legislative rules need to be changed to require that future challenges be based on more than hearsay. He also expressed anger that Sciara had been watching his house and Grandberrys house, saying the practice amounted to stalking. Chambers was seated conditionally at the beginning of the session, pending the outcome of the challenge. It was an improbable ending to the search for a missing autistic boy. About 4 miles from where Jaden Otis was mistakenly dropped off by a school bus, a man learned the boy was missing, looked out his window and saw Jaden walking right in front of him, said Officer Phil Anson, an Omaha police spokesman. He was crying and a little scared but fine, Anson said. Ten-year-old Jaden had been dropped off Thursday at 38th and Cuming Streets about 4:40 p.m. At 7:06 p.m. he was spotted near Florence Boulevard and Larimore Avenue, police said. The boy is a fifth-grader at Walnut Hill Elementary School, where classes end about 4 p.m. Monique Farmer, a spokeswoman for Omaha Public Schools, said a substitute was driving the bus and had been given an incorrect route sheet. Farmer said the driver has been placed on administrative leave pending a district investigation. Jadens family has moved, and the spot where Jaden was dropped off matched his former address. Jadens mother realized quickly that something was amiss. She called OPS transportation officials at 4:40 p.m. to say her son had not arrived home. At 5:26 p.m., a missing persons report was filed with Omaha police and at 6:54 p.m., Omaha police disseminated a photo of Jaden, asking for the publics help. Many people helped with the search, including Omaha police officers and firefighters, a police helicopter, a handful of OPS bus drivers, and neighbors. A neighborhood association in the area, Gifford Park, put out an alert to its members to assist with the search. Anson said police appreciated the publics help. A police officer picked Jaden up from the home near Florence and Larimore and drove him back to his family. He had a big smile on his face, said Farmer, who was at the scene. He was happy to see mom. The mother could not be reached for an interview. Farmer said OPS is investigating the incident. We are looking into how that happened, obviously, so we can take the corrective actions to make sure that does not happen again. In September, a 5-year-old Burmese native was missing for hours before Omaha police, who had searched by helicopter and car, found him locked in his school van at 24th Street and Fowler Avenue. The driver of the school van in that case was ticketed on suspicion of child neglect. That driver was a substitute, too. A similar incident occurred last year with another OPS student. A 5-year-old girl with cerebral palsy, a feeding tube and selective mutism, was found locked inside a school bus 9 miles from home. World-Herald staff writer Nancy Gaarder contributed to this report. The baseball, still with its original box, has been certified by Professional Sports Authenticator, the largest third-party trading card and grading company in the world. PSA gave it a score of 8.5 on its 10-point scale. Bidding will start at $50,000. WASHINGTON (AP) The Senate has confirmed Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, bringing a contentious 14-month partisan battle to a close after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. The vote was 54-45 on Friday. The victory gives President Donald Trump's 49-year-old nominee a lifetime spot on the court and his party a much-needed political win after failing to pass legislation on health care and other issues. The final confirmation vote came after Senate Republicans rewrote the chamber's rules, voting to eliminate the 60-vote filibuster threshold on Supreme Court nominees. The change allowed the Senate to proceed to the final vote with a simple majority. Democrats opposed Gorsuch in part because Senate Republicans blocked former President Barack Obama's nominee, Merrick Garland, last year. * * * * * Earlier: Gorsuch on path to confirmation as Senate rips up own rules President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, headed for confirmation on Friday after Republicans tore up the Senate's voting rules to allow him to ascend to the high court over furious Democratic objections. "He's an exceptional choice, and I'm very much looking forward to confirming him today," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said ahead of the vote. "Of course, I wish that important aspects of this process had played out differently." Vice President Mike Pence was expected to preside as all 52 Republicans and three moderate Democrats from states that Trump won Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Donnelly of Indiana cast their votes for the Supreme Court nominee. Democrats denounced the GOP's use of what both sides dubbed the "nuclear option" to put Gorsuch on the court, calling it an epic power grab that would further corrode politics in Congress, the courts and the United States. Many Republicans bemoaned reaching that point, too, but they blamed Democrats for pushing them to it. "I believe it will make this body a more partisan place," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the Senate floor ahead of the vote. "It will make the cooling saucer of the Senate considerably hotter, and I believe it will make the Supreme Court a more partisan place." Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a senior Republican, warned of the implications of lowering the 60-vote threshold for Supreme Court nominees, thereby eliminating any role for the minority party in ratifying the selection. "I am very concerned about the future, which will then, with only a 51-vote majority required, lead to polarization of the nominees as far as their philosophies are concerned, when the majority does not have to consider the concerns and the votes of the minority," McCain said. McCain himself voted to lower the threshold. The final confirmation vote on Gorsuch was scheduled midday Friday. He is expected to be sworn in within days, in time to hear the final cases of the term. He was nominated by Trump shortly after the January inauguration. The Senate change, affecting how many votes a nominee needs to advance to a final confirmation vote, will apply to all future Supreme Court candidates as well. Trump himself predicted to reporters aboard Air Force One that "there could be as many as four" Supreme Court vacancies for him to fill during his administration. "In fact, under a certain scenario, there could even be more than that," Trump said. There is no way to know how many there will be, if any, but several justices are quite elderly. Even as they united in indignation, lawmakers of both parties, pulled by fierce political forces from left and right, were unwilling to stop the confirmation rules change. The maneuvering played out in a tense Senate chamber Thursday with most members in their seats, a rare and theatrical occurrence. First Democrats mounted a filibuster, denying Gorsuch the 60 votes needed to advance to a final vote. Then McConnell raised a point of order, suggesting that Supreme Court nominees should not be subjected to a 60-vote threshold but instead a simple majority in the 100-member Senate. McConnell was overruled, but he appealed the ruling. And on that he prevailed on a 52-48 party-line vote. The 60-vote filibuster requirement on Supreme Court nominees was effectively gone, and with it the last vestige of bipartisanship on presidential nominees in an increasingly polarized Senate. The developments were accompanied by unusually bitter accusations and counter-accusations. And yet in many ways the showdown had been pre-ordained, the final chapter in years of partisan warfare over judicial nominees. In 2005, with the Senate under GOP control, Republicans prepared to utilize the "nuclear option" to remove the filibuster for lower-court nominees. A bipartisan deal at the time headed off that change. But then in 2013, with Democrats in charge and Republicans blocking President Barack Obama's nominees, the Democrats did take the step, removing the filibuster for all presidential appointments except the Supreme Court. McConnell accused Democrats of forcing his hand by trying to filibuster a highly qualified nominee in Gorsuch, 49, a 10-year veteran of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver with a consistently conservative record. But Democrats were unable to pull back from the brink, partly because they remain livid over McConnell's decision last year to block Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, who was denied even a hearing after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016. Instead McConnell kept Scalia's seat open, a calculation that is now paying off for Republicans and Trump. Even as senior Republicans lamented the voting change, McConnell and some allies argued that all they were doing was returning to a time, not long ago, when filibusters of judicial nominees were unusual, and it was virtually unheard-of to try to block a Supreme Court nominee in that fashion. WASHINGTON The Trump administration is weighing military retaliation against the Syrian government following a chemical attack Tuesday that killed scores of civilians, but it is complicated by the presence of Russian forces in the country and concerns about U.S. troops deployed in Syria in the campaign against the Islamic State, according to U.S. officials. The Pentagon is in the process of presenting options to the White House on potential military responses, which could include strikes on Syrian military targets and actions designed to ground the Syrian air force. Senior White House officials met on the topic Wednesday evening in a session that lasted into early Thursday, and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Army Lt. Gen. H.D. McMaster, the national security adviser, have communicated repeatedly about the issue since Tuesday's attack, the officials said. Some officials urged immediate action, warning against what one described as "paralysis through analysis." But others were concerned about second- and third-order effects, including the response of Russia, which also has installed sophisticated air-defense systems in Syria, according to the officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Mattis called the attack a "heinous act" that would be "treated as such," and President Trump suggested that he was deeply affected by the sight of the children and "beautiful babies" who were killed. "That crosses many, many lines," Trump said. "Beyond a red line many, many lines." On Thursday, Tillerson said, "We are considering an appropriate response for this chemical weapons attack that violates all previous U.N. resolutions, that violates international norms. ... It is a serious matter. It requires a serious response." The United States has a broad arsenal already in the region should Trump decide to attack, including dozens of strike aircraft on the USS George H.W. Bush, an aircraft carrier that is deployed to the Middle East and accompanied by guided-missile destroyers and cruisers that can also launch Tomahawk cruise missiles. Additionally, an amphibious naval force in the region that includes the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit could muster Harrier jets and Cobra gunship helicopters. The Pentagon also has scores of aircraft in the region flying operations every day against the Islamic State group, including from Incirlik air base to the north in Turkey. U.S. Central Command has had plans for striking the Syria government for years, but those plans would potentially need to be tailored to the precise goals of a strike in response to the chemical attack . Officials said one consideration in examining a possible response is the presence of hundreds of American troops within Syria. Officials said there were measures in place to protect those troops, but declined to give details. U.S. aircraft also would have to contend with a modest web of Syrian air defenses and potentially more advanced types of surface-to-air missiles provided by Russia. One of Assad's more prevalent systems, the S-200, was used to target Israeli jets last month, but missiles were intercepted by Israeli defense systems. The S-200 has a range of roughly 186 miles, according to U.S. military documents, and can hit targets flying at altitudes of around 130,000 feet. Russian S-300 and S-400 missiles, located primarily around Hmeymim airbase in eastern Syria, have a shorter range than the S-200, but have more advanced radar systems and fly considerably faster than their older counterparts used by Syrian forces. The S-300 has range of roughly 90 miles and could also be used to target incoming U.S. cruise missiles. Sen. John McCain, R.-Ariz., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in an interview Thursday that he and Trump have discussed Syria in the last few days, but that the president did not talk in particular about military options. McCain, who has long backed a more aggressive response to the Assad government, laid out a short list of goals if the U.S. strikes. "Take out his air assets. No airplane should fly. No more barrel bombs. No more sarin gas," the senator said. McCain said he glad to see Trump's position on striking Assad changing. "I know that he was deeply moved, as we all were, at the spectacle of this slaughter," McCain said. BEATRICE, Neb. (AP) The Beatrice City Council has approved a measure to pave the way for the construction of new housing. The Beatrice Daily Sun reported that the council Monday approved the demolition of the old Beatrice Community Hospital. Excel Development Group plans to build 10 ranch-style homes where the southern third of the old hospital and its parking lot currently stand. A subsidiary of Excel also plans to build eight duplex units that will be managed senior homes on the same property. Copyright 2017 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. LINCOLN Three same-sex couples who successfully challenged a policy banning the placement of foster children with gay parents saw their victory affirmed Friday by the Nebraska Supreme Court. The courts unanimous opinion also upheld the payment of nearly $174,000 in costs and attorneys fees to the couples, who won a previous decision striking down a policy instituted decades ago by the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services. The 1995 policy prevented the placement of foster children with those who identify themselves as homosexuals. It also applied to unmarried heterosexual couples. In 2015, Lancaster County District Judge John Colborn ruled for the couples, saying the states policy violated their constitutional right to equal protection. Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson appealed that decision, arguing the couples were actually not denied a foster placement, and therefore, they did not have standing to sue. The Supreme Court found no merit to the states appeal. The harm the plaintiffs wish to avoid is not just the possible, ultimate inability to foster state wards; it is the discriminatory stigma and unequal treatment that homosexual foster applicants and licensees must suffer if they wish to participate in the foster care system, stated the unanimous opinion, written by Judge John Wright. Petersons office issued a statement Friday afternoon saying the appeal brought up legitimate jurisdictional issues that needed to be considered by the court. The court has ruled. The attorney general did not challenge the constitutional issues decided in the 2015 ruling. Rather, he asked the Supreme Court to find that the lower court should have dismissed the lawsuit because by the time it was filed in 2013, Nebraska was no longer enforcing the ban on gay foster parents. The Supreme Court rejected the position, saying HHS had not formally rescinded the policy by 2013. In fact, records showed the department continued to display the policy on its website until 2015. As a result, there was confusion among members of the public and HHS staff members about whether the long-standing policy still was in force. This is a victory for children in Nebraska. This is a victory for LGBT Nebraskans, said Danielle Conrad, executive director of the ACLU of Nebraska, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of the couples. The high court also affirmed the lower courts order that the state pay the costs and attorneys fees of the couples. The lawsuit was brought by Joel Busch and Todd Vesely, who passed the training and home studies to become foster parents; Greg and Stillman Stewart, who had previously adopted five foster children in California; and Lisa Blakey and Janet Rodriguez. Since the 2015 ruling, Busch and Vesely have since been able to open their home to help children in need, Conrad said Friday. Critics of the 2015 ruling said it was too broad. They also said it should be up to HHS to give priority to heterosexual married couples, arguing that children do best in such arrangements. To see the full opinion, click on Stewart v. Heineman in this link: https://supremecourt.nebraska.gov/sc/opinions/2017-04-07 I am thrilled that a bipartisan majority has voted to confirm Judge Gorsuch, who is eminently qualified to serve on our nations highest court, said Senator Ernst. Throughout his career, Judge Gorsuch has shown an unparalleled depth of understanding and respect for our Constitution. He is dedicated to interpreting the text of the Constitution and statutes as they are written, rather than attempting to legislate from the bench. Its easy to see why Judge Gorsuch was previously confirmed by the Senate with unanimous support including the support of Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. The American people are behind Judge Gorsuch, and I look forward to seeing him take his seat on the bench very soon. Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa Today Judge Gorsuch takes his black robe to the Supreme Court and thats an important civics lesson for our kids. Hes a judges judge who knows that his job isnt to wear a red or blue jersey under that black robe and re-write laws. His duty is to faithfully uphold the Constitution. Thats good for Nebraskans, good for the rule of law, and good for the next generation of Americans. Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb. Today the Senate confirmed Judge Neil Gorsuch to serve as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court. He has exemplary credentials, the right judicial temperament, and a solid commitment to the rule of law. As a circuit court judge, he demonstrated he is well within the mainstream. Moreover, he has promised to apply the law equally and fairly to all people. I congratulate Judge Gorsuch on his confirmation and wish him well as he takes his place on the bench of our nations highest court. Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb. WASHINGTON Most Capitol Hill Republicans from Nebraska and Iowa offered statements of support for President Donald Trumps attacks on Syria. Syrian President Bashar Assads use of chemical weapons is inexcusable, Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., said in a press release that reflected the tone of most Midlands lawmakers. I support the actions of President Trump in sending a swift and clear message to deter further atrocities of this nature, Bacon said. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, had not issued a statement by Friday evening. But Rep. David Young, R-Iowa, and Reps. Jeff Fortenberry and Adrian Smith, both Nebraska Republicans, backed Trumps action, and so did all four senators from Nebraska and Iowa. The horrific actions of Bashar al-Assad, including the use of chemical weapons against his own people, had to be met with firm resolve, Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in her press release. Indeed, many lawmakers from both parties have expressed support for the airstrike Thursday. Proposed military intervention in Syria received a markedly different congressional reception in 2013, however, when President Barack Obama asked Congress to support it also in response to Assads use of chemical weapons. At that time, Fischer said the vast majority of Nebraskans opposed military intervention. She criticized Obama for what she called an erratic approach to foreign affairs and said that he hadnt made the case that such military action served the U.S. national interest. Indeed, even his argument for an overwhelming moral purpose is undercut by his desire to focus narrowly on the latest use of chemical weapons in a conflict that has raged for years and claimed over 100,000 lives, Fischer said at the time. Asked Friday what has changed since 2013, Fischer pointed to the many who have died in Syria in the intervening years as well as the tide of refugees from the conflict and the threat that poses to the United States. Whats changed is the continuing use of chemical weapons that were supposed to be destroyed, Fischer said. Lawmakers have been split over whether Trump needs to seek congressional approval for further military action. Fischer said that depends on the action. Others, however, have been clear that they want to see Trump seek approval. It is critical that the president establish a clear strategy and end goal with regards to Syria and consult with Congress before taking further military action, as is required under the Constitution, Bacon said. The Omaha congressman, a retired brigadier general, said that strategy should address the need to work with allies on providing refugees havens close to their home country. Congress must evaluate the proposed strategy and vote on an authorization for the use of military forces, Bacon said. Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, described the attack on Syria as a surgical strike that she believes will change Assads calculations. This is not about a regime change, Ernst said. This is about retaliation against the use of weapons of mass destruction specifically chemical agents. PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) The United States blasted a Syrian air base with a barrage of cruise missiles Thursday night in fiery retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. President Donald Trump cast the U.S. assault as vital to deter future use of poison gas and called on other nations to join in seeking "to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria." It was the first direct American assault on the Syrian government and Trump's most dramatic military order since becoming president just over two months ago. The strikes also risk thrusting the U.S. deeper into an intractable conflict that his predecessor spent years trying to avoid. Announcing the assault from his Florida resort, Trump said there was no doubt Syrian President Bashar Assad was responsible for the chemical attack, which he said employed banned gases and killed dozens. "Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children," Trump declared. The U.S. strikes 59 missiles launched from the USS Ross and USS Porter hit the government-controlled Shayrat air base in central Syria, where U.S. officials say the Syrian military planes that dropped the chemicals had taken off. The U.S. missiles hit at 8:45 p.m. in Washington, 3:45 Friday morning in Syria. The missiles targeted the base's airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, officials said. The attack killed some Syrians and wounded others, Talal Barazi, the governor of Syria's Homs province, told The Associated Press. He didn't give precise numbers. Trump ordered the strikes without approval from Congress or the backing of the United Nations. U.S. officials said he had the right to use force to defend national interests and to protect civilians from atrocities. Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., released a statement late Thursday night saying that Trump should follow up the attack by presenting Congress with a comprehensive strategy. "The use of chemical weapons cannot become normal - civilized people cannot grow indifferent to such suffering," Sasse said. Syrian state TV reported a U.S. missile attack on a number of military targets and called the attack an "aggression." The U.S. assault marked a striking reversal for Trump, who warned as a candidate against the U.S. being pulled into the Syrian civil war that began six years ago. But the president appeared moved by the photos of children killed in the chemical attack, calling it a "disgrace to humanity" that crossed "a lot of lines." U.S. officials placed some of the blame on Russia, one of Syria's most important benefactors. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in Florida with Trump, said Moscow had failed in living up to a 2013 agreement that was intended to strip Syria of its chemical weapons stockpiles. "Either Russia has been complicit or Russia has been simply incompetent in its ability to deliver on its end of the agreement," Tillerson said. The U.S. Tomahawk missiles, fired from warships in the Mediterranean Sea, targeted an air base in retaliation for the attack that America believes Syrian government aircraft launched with the nerve agent sarin mixed with chlorine gas. The president did not announce the attacks in advance, though he and other national security officials ratcheted up their warnings to the Syrian government throughout the day Thursday. The strike came as Trump was hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping in meetings focused in part on another pressing U.S. security dilemma: North Korea's nuclear program. Trump's actions in Syria could signal to China that the new president isn't afraid of unilateral military steps, even if key nations like China are standing in the way. "This clearly indicates the president is willing to take decisive action when called for," Tillerson said. Trump has advocated greater counterterrorism cooperation with Russia, Assad's most powerful military backer. Just last week, the Trump administration signaled the U.S. was no longer interested in trying to push Assad from power over his direction of a conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and led to the worst refugee crisis since World War II. U.S. officials portrayed the strikes as an appropriate, measured response and said they did not signal a broader shift in the Trump administration's approach to the Syrian conflict. "The intent was to deter the regime from doing this again," said Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, the Pentagon spokesman. "It will be the regime's choice if there's any more, and it will be based upon their conduct going forward." Still, the assault risks plunging America into the middle of Syria's conflict, complicating the safety of the hundreds of U.S. forces fighting a separate campaign against the Islamic State group in the north of the country. If Assad's military persists in further gas attacks, the Trump administration might logically pursue increased retaliation. Russia and Iran, Assad's allies, pose other problems. Russian military personnel and aircraft are embedded with Syria's, and Iranian troops and paramilitary forces are also on the ground helping Assad fight the array of opposition groups hoping to topple him. Before the strikes, U.S. military officials said they informed their Russian counterparts of the impending attack. The goal was to avoid any accident involving Russian forces. Nevertheless, Russia's Deputy U.N. ambassador Vladimir Safronkov warned that any negative consequences from the strikes would be on the "shoulders of those who initiated such a doubtful and tragic enterprise." The U.S. also notified its partner countries in the region prior to launching the strikes. Trump's decision to attack Syria came three-and-a-half years after President Barack Obama threatened Assad with military action after an earlier chemical weapons attack killed hundreds outside Damascus. Obama had declared the use of such weapons a "red line." At the time, several American ships in the Mediterranean were poised to launch missiles, only for Obama to abruptly pull back after key U.S. ally Britain and the U.S. Congress balked at his plan. He opted instead for the Russian-backed plan that was supposed to remove and eliminate Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles. In a statement praising the strikes Thursday night, Sen. Joni. Ernst, R-Iowa, said the 'tragic reality' in Syria 'has gone on far too long.' Unlike the Obama administration, the Trump administration is showing global leadership and we must work to find an end to the root causes of this crisis," Ernst said. The world learned of the chemical attack earlier in the week in footage that showed people dying in the streets and bodies of children stacked in piles. The international outcry fueled an emotional response from Trump, who appeared to abandon his much-touted "America First" vision for a stance of humanitarian intervention, akin to that of previous American leaders. Trump seemed to rapidly reconsider his feelings about Assad, saying: "He's there and I guess he's running things, so something should happen." The show of force in Syria raises legal questions. It's unclear what authority Trump is relying on to attack another government. When Obama intervened in Libya in 2011, he used a U.N. Security Council mandate and NATO's overall leadership of the mission to argue that he had legal authority arguments many Republicans opposed. Trump can't rely on either justification here. Unclear also is whether Trump is adopting any broader effort to combat Assad. Under Obama, the United States largely pulled back from its support for so-called "moderate" rebels when Russia's military intervention in September 2015 led them to suffer a series of battlefield defeats. Instead, Obama sought to work with Russia on a negotiated transition. Trump and his top aides had acknowledged in recent days the "reality" of Assad being in power, saying his ouster was no longer a priority. But the chemical weapons attack seemed to spur a rethink. In Florida on Thursday, Tillerson said of Assad, "There's no role for him to govern the Syrian people." Copyright 2017 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. A former Russian lawmaker and harsh critic of Vladimir Putins government, Denis Voronenkov, was gunned down in broad daylight in Ukraine last month. Ukraines president quickly labeled Voronenkovs brazen murder an act of terrorism by Russia. The killing is part of an unsettling pattern showing how Putins government has allowed a brutal culture to arise in which people run grave risks by crossing the government. That makes it doubly impressive that so many Russians have joined street protests to decry government corruption. Among other Russians critical of the Putin government who have been killed under mysterious circumstances: Boris Nemtsov, former deputy prime minister and a prominent opposition leader, shot dead near the Kremlin in 2015. Investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, shot dead in Moscow in 2007. Alexander Litvinenko, a former intelligence officer, poisoned with radioactive polonium in London in 2006. Politifact reported last year that 34 Russian journalists have died since 2000 in cases confirmed or likely to be work-related homicides. Nina Ognianova, with the Committee to Protect Journalists, has said journalists can be slain with impunity in Putins Russia for covering corruption and human rights abuses. This grim reality underscores that our own government needs to be wide awake to the kind of government its dealing with in Moscow. No apology, no flight: Air India again cancels Sena MP Gaikwad's tickets India oi-Madhuri All India Cabin Crew Association on Friday in its written letter to Air India said that Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad is and will continue to be risk to flight safety. They further said that government must think hard about letting him back on. Copy of Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad's Air India ticket which was cancelled by the Airlines. pic.twitter.com/qdluTZsOHk ANI (@ANI_news) April 7, 2017 The letter further read that Gaikwad must not be allowed onboard unless he tenders unconditional apology to Air India employees & undertakes in writing to abide by all norms. Meanwhile, Indian Commercial Pilot Association said that they appreciate the stand taken by Air India to not to fly the plane if Gaikwad is on board, unless he apologises to the staffer he attacked. Gaikwad had yet again tried to book tickets on Air India flights, but the airline rejected the booking. This is the seventh attempt on the part of the Sena MP to book a flight on Air India, which barred him from flying after he assaulted the airline's staffer. The MP has also made an attempt each to book an IndiGo flight as well as a SpiceJet flight since the flying ban on him by all domestic carriers was put in place. Earlier on Thursday, Gaikwad told Lok Sabha that he was ready to apologise to Parliament but not the airlines and the employee. Gaikwad had hit a 60-year-old airline duty manager with his sandal on a Pune-Delhi flight AI 852. He was allegedly angry because Air India changed his seat from business to economy class. OneIndia News Do RAW, others get a raw deal in the name of 'intelligence failure'? Keep it clean, keep it safe: How the federal agencies raided the PFI Are Rohingya Muslims part of a new outfit called Harakah al-Yaqin India oi-Vicky By Vicky A new insurgent group called the Harakah al-Yaqin comprising Rohingya Muslims is under the scanner of the Intelligence Bureau. It is believed to comprise Rohingya Muslims and the groups spreads across India, Bangladesh and Myanmar. B Mahtab, a BJD leader took the Lok Sabha by storm when he pointed out that there were over 40,000 Rohingya Muslims in India. He said that all of them had entered India illegally are in Jammu. He said that they have all got Aadhaar cards. While quoting a report by Brussels based International crisis group, he said that they had entered through the Bay of Bengal, Bangladesh and Myanmar. He urged the government to take action. The need of the hour is immediate action and let us not wait for a cloudburst to happen, he also said. The statements by the leader come in the wake of the Home Ministry seeking a report on the Rohingya Muslims. The government had sought to identify and deport those living illegally. Who are the Rohingya Muslims: They are a Muslim minority group in Myanmar. There are around 1.33 million Rohingya in Myanmar. They have claimed a lineage in Rakhine. However in 1982 the Citizenship Law, enacted by Myanmar's former military government, excluded them from a list of more than 100 groups recognised as ethnic minorities. This rendered them stateless. Today they face several restrictions. They cannot travel and seek medical treatment or get married without official permission. Communal violence in 2012 killed at least 192 people and uprooted 146,000 people from their homes. 86,000 people left Rakhine by boat between June 2012 and April 2014 to start new lives. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, April 7, 2017, 7:39 [IST] As China fumes, Dalai Lama reaches Tawang India ians-IANS By Ians English Dirang, April 7: Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama arrived at the Tawang monastery in Arunachal Pradesh on Friday evening. The monks at the monastery, the biggest in India, and scores of devotees received him warmly and with piety. Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu accompanied the Tibetan leader, who has lived in India in self-imposed exile since he fled from his homeland in 1959. The Dalai Lama was to start his week-long religious visit to Arunachal Pradesh from Tawang on April 4. But bad weather forced him to take to the road as his helicopter couldn't take off from Dibrugarh in Assam. Nestled among the snow-covered mountains and perched at a height of 10,000 feet, Tawang is home to Monpa people who practice Tibetan Buddhism. The town is all set to welcome the Dalai Lama. Tawang has been decorated with colourful prayer flags, besides Indian and Tibetan flags and flowers. The roads have been repainted and the drains cleared. The Nobel peace laureate will stay at Tawang monastery, the largest in India and second only to the world's largest - the Potala Palace in Tibet. The 81-year-old Dalai Lama's journey to Tawang will take him over the 13,700 feet Sela Pass. He is likely to touch Tawang after noon. "Hundreds of people are holding traditional ceremonial scarves and burning incense all along the road to see the Dalai Lama and receive his blessings," a government official said. Security forces kept a vigil, particularly at Sela Pass, which is wet because of melting snow, muddy and slippery. "All necessary security arrangements have been taken," Arunachal Pradesh police chief Sandeep Goel said. The Dalai Lama first arrived in Bomdila, the district headquarters of West Kameng in Arunachal, and delivered his religious discourses and interacted with people. From there, he drove to Dirang valley, about 50 km from Tawang where he consecrated the Thupsung Dhargyeling monastery on Thursday. Chief Minister Pema Khandu is accompanying the Tibetan leader. The Tawang monastery belongs to the Gelugpa school of Mahayana Buddhism and had a religious connection with Lhasa's Drepung monastery that continued during the British rule. Beijing refers to this connection to claim Tawang as part of China after invading and taking over Tibet in 1950. The Dalai Lama had stayed in the Tawang monastery for some days before he reached Assam after fleeing his homeland in 1959. Thousands of people as far as from Ladakh and neighbouring Bhutan have descended at Tawang for a glimpse of the Dalai Lama. "We have been preparing for the last two months. Everybody wants to see him, talk to him and get his blessings. The Dalai Lama is our revered leader," said the monastery Secretary, Lobsang Khum. This will be the Dalai Lama's first visit to Arunachal after eight years. His first visit to this mountainous state was in 1983 and the last trip was in 2009, which coincided with his 50 years since he crossed through Arunachal Pradesh. The Dalai Lama has lived in India in self-imposed exile since 1959. India is also home to some 100,000 Tibetan exiles. IANS Cauvery: SC rejects Karnataka's review to release 6,000 cusecs water India oi-Vicky By Vicky The Supreme Court has rejected Karnataka's review plea in the Cauvery waters case. Karnataka has sought a review of the SC order directing the state to release Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu. Karnataka had filed a review against three orders of the court. The orders had directed the constitution of a Cauvery Water Management Board. It also sought review of the order directing Karnataka to release 6,000 cusecs of water till October 6. Karnataka contended that the court had committed an error in directing the centre to constitute the Board. Further Karnataka stated that further water release orders from the reservoirs of Karnataka would "cause irreparable injury" to Karnataka as once the release are made from the reservoirs of the state, the water cannot be retrieved in case of good normal North-East monsoon. OneIndia News Dera violence: Haryana CM rejects calls for resignation, says whatever we did was right In Telangana new mothers to get 'KCR Kit' India oi-PTI Hyderabad, April 6: The Telangana government will offer financial assistance of Rs 12,000 to poor pregnant women who visit state-run hospitals for deliveries. Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, who held a meeting with officials on the issue on Friday, asked a committee of senior women bureaucrats to prepare a plan of action for the implementation of the decision, a release from his office said. The chief minister also reviewed the government's decision to provide a kit of useful items to women after delivery. The kit, named 'KCR Kit', would have mosquito net, shampoo, soaps, powders and towels. These measures are aimed at helping poor women reduce infant mortality, according to the release from the CM's office. PTI Congress urges loan waiver for farmers in Uttarakhand India oi-PTI Haridwar, April 7 : Congress in Uttarakhand has demanded payment of dues to sugarcane cultivators, loan waiver for farmers of the state on the lines of their Uttar Pradesh counterparts and regularisation of guest teachers. Talking to reporters in Haridwar, Pradesh Congress Commiittee president Kishore Upadhyaya said he had written to Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat reminding him of his pre-poll promise of settling the dues of sugarcane farmers within 15 days of coming to power. "It is more than a fortnight since Rawat took oath but the promise is yet to be fulfilled. If the government forgets pre-poll promises like his it will be a matter of concern for the people of the state," he said on Thursday. Upadhyaya said the new season for plantation of the crop has begun but last year's arrears had not yet been paid. Terming it a matter of concern, he asked the chief minister to immediately take steps about it. Citing the example of Uttar Pradesh where farmers had been exempted from repaying loans up to Rs 1 lakh recently, the Congress leader said farmers of Uttarakhand should also get a similar waiver. "Our farmers both in the hills and the plains have suffered natural calamities for several years which have hit them hard economically. Hence we demand that they should also be exempted from repaying their loans," he said. PTI For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, April 7, 2017, 15:53 [IST] Delhi MCD Election 2017: AAP is 'BAAP 'of Congress, says Naidu India oi-PTI New Delhi, Apr 6: Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu on Thursday said the Congress and the AAP are like two the sides of the same coin with leaders of both the parties allegedly facing serious charges. "People are saying that AAP is 'BAAP' of Congress. Many of the ministers and MLAs in the ruling party of Delhi are facing serious charges ranging from corruption to indecent behaviour," he said while addressing public meeting in New Delhi to mark the kick-start of campaign of Delhi's civic polls. Naidu claimed within a short period of time, the AAP leaders are proving that they are 'no better than Congress' and added 'Congress and AAP are like head and tail of the same coin'. He said the country is moving forward under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi with the mantras of 'Reform - Perform - Transform'. He claimed that a lot of transformation has taken place in the last three years and attributed it to BJP's winning in the recent assembly elections. Naidu accused AAP and Congress of playing negative politics and indulging in blame game and disinformation campaign. "I appeal to give BJP a chance so as to strengthen the hands of Modiji in making Delhi a better place," he said. Naidu flagged off 'Vijay Ratha Yatra' which was also attended by Delhi BJP President Manoj Tiwari and other senior party leaders. The yatra is slated for 14 days. PTI For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, April 7, 2017, 9:45 [IST] Instant karma! Woman falls while trying to kick bike rider, video goes viral Chandra Grahan 2022: Check the start and end timing of lunar eclipse in major cities Total Lunar Eclipse LIVE: Blazing red 'blood moon' to appear in the sky today Doctor on Call: Centre mulls 24-hour national health helpline India pti-PTI New Delhi, April 7: The government plans to set up a 24-hour national health helpline to address medical queries of the people, the Lok Sabha was informed on Friday. Minister of State for Health Anupriya Patel said in a written reply that the facility- called 'Doctor on Call'-- will reduce the need to pay personal visit to healthcare centres and thus decrease the load on government hospitals. "Government proposes to start 'Doctor on Call (DoC) 24X7 national health helpline for addressing the medical queries of citizens telephonically," she said. The facility will also help in speedier consultations, increase government-to-citizen interaction and vice veras, and build trust in government services and deliverables, she said. "The scheme is yet to be approved by the competent authority," Patel added. She said the government has taken steps to reduce pressure on hospitals which include strengthening of primary and sub-health centres by increasing the number of professionals in them. The government is also establishing telemedicine centres in rural areas for virtual consultations with specialists by utilizing telecom and SATCOM infrastructure, the minister said. "Online Registration System (ORS) has been introduced for scheduling appointments with doctors and specialists at major tertiary care hospitals by citizens reducing long queue and rush at hospitals," she added. PTI 'Two-finger test' should be banned in matrimonial dispute cases too, says Maharashtra doctor Fadnavis asks party leaders to keep welfare of people at centre of politics India pti-PTI Mumbai, April 7: Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Thursday asked the party leaders and workers to keep welfare of people at the centre of their politics. Addressing a meeting here to mark 37th foundation day of the BJP, Fadnavis said Atal Bihari Vajpayee gave a direction to the party in 1980s, and it reached the peak under Narendra Modi's leadership. Greetings to all #BJP karyakartas & supporters on #BJPSthapanaDiwas ! We reaffirm our commitment for service to Nation with good governance! pic.twitter.com/Q06ty8aUAs Devendra Fadnavis (@Dev_Fadnavis) April 6, 2017 "BJP is an ideology-driven party. Party workers think beyond themselves in the larger interest of the society," he said. "There was a time when Congress' mass base was strong . But when individuals became bigger than the party and ideology, people found an alternative in the BJP," Fadnavis said. "Work for people and think beyond self-interest. Remember, red-beacon cars are there as long as we keep the development agenda in mind. Otherwise we will be back on bicycles," he said. People trust Prime Minister Modi's agenda of transparency and development, and the recent election results proved this, he said. BJP should not betray the trust of the common man and should ensure a people-oriented and corruption-free government, he said. PTI FIR registered after morphed pictures of UP CM posted on social media India oi-Gulam Rabbani Ghaziabad, April 7: Just after two days the Loni Nagar Palika councillor was sent to jail for allegedly posting the morphed and objectionable pictures of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Facebook, the Ghaziabad police on Thursday registered another FIR against a man who allegedly took to his Facebook handle and posted objectionable pictures of the chief minister. The Facebook account named as 'Arjun Arjun Kumar', had posted morphed images of Yogi Adityanath with a model. A resident of Ghaziabad who looked at the post took a print out and handed over to the Kotwali police along with a complaint. Mukesh Mittal, who registered a complaint on the unidentified Facebook user, said that the police were not ready to register a FIR as the matter was related to the chief minister. However, after approaching a senior official, the case was registered and an inquiry was launched. Similarly, a councillor identified Ramkumar Chouhan was arrested two days ago for allegedly posting the objectionable pictures of chief minister on social media. The complaint was registered by the Hindu Yuva Vahini, an organisation that was formed by Yogi Adityanath in 2002. Earlier in March, a man identified as Rahat Khan was arrested in Greater Noida for posting objectionable content on Facebook. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, April 7, 2017, 12:33 [IST] From 'traitors' to 'nationalists', Farooq Abdullah's flip-flop on stone pelters India oi-Oneindia By Oneindia Staff Writer Srinagar, April 6: National Conference chief Farooq Abdullah created a new controversy ahead of elections in Jammu and Kashmir by calling stone pelters as 'nationalists' during a campaign rally in Srinagar on Wednesday. The Srinagar and Anantnag Lok Sabha bypolls are scheduled on April 9. [Also Read: Modi sahib, a stone pelter has nothing to do with tourism: Abdullah on J&K unrest] Abdullah's comment on stone pelters came days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked youths of Kashmir to join development and shun violence while addressing a rally at Udhampur in Jammu and Kashmir after inaugurating Asia's longest tunnel -- Chenani-Nashri. "Some misguided youngsters are pelting stones but see here, Kashmir youth are using the same stones to build infrastructure. Youth of Kashmir have a choice to make from two paths -- tourism or terrorism," PM Modi had said. "I want to tell Modi sahib that tourism is our life no doubt about that, but a stone pelter has nothing to do with tourism," Abdullah was quoted saying by news agency ANI. "If he (stone pelting youth) is giving up his life, he is not doing it for tourism. He is giving his life so that the destiny of this nation is decided which should be acceptable to the people of this place. This needs to be understood," he said. His remarks have been slammed by most of the political parties, including the People's Democratic Party, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress. The BJP said that Abdullah, who earlier used to call stone pelters as 'traitors', has changed his stand. "Abdullah used to call these stone pelters traitors during his government and when his son was the chief minister. They have nothing to do with the nation and religion. Changing statements just for the sake of vote does not suit any politician," BJP leader Prabhat Jha told ANI. BJP leader Shahnawaz Hussain added that Abdullah's statement was unfortunate. "In Parliament, he raises slogans like 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai', 'Hindustan Jindabad' on the other hand he is protecting the ones who are pelting stones at the Indian Army. This is very saddening and he should apologise for his statement," Hussain told ANI. For promoting the cause of stone pelters, who are under the scrutiny of security forces for their alleged role in terrorism, the Congress said Abdullah was misleading the children of Kashmir. "This whole scenario is entirely depended on tourism and terrorism, where tourism needs peace while terrorism is increasing day by day for which we have to make an all out effort to eradicate it as soon as possible," added Tulsi. OneIndia News GST: How Manmohan Singh saved the day for the government India oi-Vicky By Vicky On Thursday when the Rajya Sabha approved four GST-supporting bills, one got to witness the Congress work in tandem with the Congress. It was the advise of former Prime Minister of India, Dr Manmohan Singh which ensured that the bills were passed without any amendment. Dr Singh advised the Congress members in the Rajya Sabha not to disturb the fine consensus that had been arrived at in the GST Council. It will send a wrong signal for a new federal framework, the former PM advised while telling Congress members such as Jairam Ramesh not to press for any amendments. While the discussions were on Ramesh told the House that he was not moving the amendments keeping with the spirit of consensus to maintain the federal framework. None of the Congress members such as Ramesh and Vivek Tankha moved amendments. However the Left and Trinamool Congress leaders did press for an amendment following which a division of votes was sought on two amendments. The amendments were however negated with 113 voting against it and only 9 voting in favour. Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley appeared relieved and after the bills were passed, he went up to the Congress benches and shook hands with Dr Singh and other Congress leaders while thanking them. It was an excellent debate, Deputy Chairman in the Rajya Sabha, P J Kurien said while congratulating all members in the House. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, April 7, 2017, 6:57 [IST] Gujarat assembly polls: NCP, JD(U) forge alliance against BJP India oi-PTI Ahmedabad, April 7: In a politically significant development, the Nitish Kumar-led Janata Dal (United) and the NCP headed by Sharad Pawar, on Friday forged an alliance to take on the ruling BJP in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state, going to polls later this year. JD (U) leader K C Tyagi said that cobbling the tie-up is part of the call for a "grand alliance" of the opposition parties at Centre and the state, and that the "endeavour has started from Gujarat." The announcement was made by the NCP state in-charge Praful Patel and Tyagi, the JD(U) general secretary, at a joint press conference in Ahmedabad. Tyagi said the "gathbandhan" (alliance) is necessary as no opposition party can defeat the BJP in Gujarat on its own. "Every section of the society wants to see change in power. However, no opposition party can defeat the BJP single-handedly in Gujarat. That is why we have called for a grand alliance of Opposition parties at the Centre as well as here. "Since Gujarat is going to polls in near future, we have decided to kick off this endeavour of the grand alliance from this state. Nitish Kumar had recently met Sharad Pawar and the CPI leaders to form a strong opposition front at the Centre," said Tyagi. The development came days after the JD(U) president and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar stressed for a grand alliance of the opposition parties at the national level to stop the surge of the BJP. He had also urged the Congress and the Left parties to take the initiative in this regard. As per Tyagi, the "key purpose" of the front is not to remove Narendra Modi, but to remind him of his "unkept electoral promises." "We are not talking anything negative. Our idea behind this coalition is to tame the BJP and Modi, as they have failed to fulfil any of their pre-poll promises. Our aim is to remind them of their promises. The JD(U) and the NCP have joined hands to kickstart this endeavour from Gujarat," the JD(U) leader said. NCP leader Patel said all the "like-minded" parties are welcome to join the coalition in Gujarat. "Opposition parties in Gujarat have failed to uproot the BJP since last 22 years. However, it is also a fact that people are not happy with the BJP. Thus, our leaders Sharad Pawar and Nitish Kumar stressed on forming an alliance here," the Rajya Sabha MP said. The NCP, which entered into a pre-poll alliance with the Congress in 2012, currently has two MLAs in the Gujarat Assembly, namely Kandhal Jadeja and Jayant Patel, whereas Chhotu Vasava is the sole JD(U) legislator in the 182-member House. Responding to a query on the seat-sharing between both the parties and the number of seats the alliance would contest in polls, Patel said the decision would be taken afterwards. "Our aim is to field maximum number of candidates. However, the decision in this regard will be taken afterwards. We want to emerge as the biggest instrument to defeat the BJP here. We will also talk with other like-minded parties, including the Congress, to be a part of the alliance," said Patel. PTI For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, April 7, 2017, 19:23 [IST] Hindu Rashtra remark: Congress slams Yogi; asks to eradicate poverty, unemployment India oi-Oneindia By Oneindia Staff Writer New Delhi, April 7: The opposition Congress has criticised Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath over his remark on Hindu Rashtra on Friday. The Congress has asked the new chief minister of India's most populous state to work towards eradicating poverty and unemployment, instead of engaging in 'politics of polarisation'. "I don't think problems like poverty and unemployment will reduce by declaring India a Hindu Rashtra. Adityanath should work on some concrete policy instead of playing around on sentimental issues. It seems like he is involving into politics of polarisation by making such statements," Congress leader Sanjay Nirupam told ANI. Nirupam added that the Uttar Pradesh chief minister should focus on overall development of the state. "According to the Constitution of India, our nation is secular. This is Adityanath's own view that he wants to make India a Hindu Rashtra, but the fact is our Constitution is paramount," said Congress leader Pramod Tiwari. In an interview to Doordarshan, Adityanath on Thursday said, "I want to say something clearly. That is, the idea of Hindu Rashtra is not wrong. A full bench of the Supreme Court has clearly ruled that Hindutva is not a... religion, or a ritual but a way of life. If this rashtra (nation) and raasta (road) helps to improve the lifestyle of people, to bring them happiness, then there should be no reason why anyone should hesitate to adopt it." OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, April 7, 2017, 6:55 [IST] How companies took bogus deposits to hoodwink IT sleuths India oi-Vicky By Vicky A company took bogus entry deposits through the sale of shell firms and operators in Mumbai and Koklata for fake sub-contract charges and other expenses totalling Rs 100 crore. Similar operations was found at several other locations following which the Income Tax department conducted searches in 50 locations. On Thursday, taxmen conducted raids in several locations in a bid to crackdown on tax evaders to the tune of Rs 100 crore. This was the first major action by the IT department after the black money window of the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojna was announced by the government for stash holders to come clean. The scheme came to a close on March 31 and the announcement to come clean was made after the decision on demonetisation was announced. IT officials also found that a company in Pune had engaged in processing and trading of agriculture commodities. These actions were taken by these companies to evade tax and hoard black money, IT officials informed OneIndia. The raids became necessary since under the PMGKY the income disclosure was not so encouraging. Officials say that under the scheme just Rs 3,000 crore had been declared as opposed to the Rs 67,382 crore declared under the Income Disclosure Scheme. IT officials say that raids would continue as information has been trickling in regarding the refusal by people to disclose their income and black money hoarding. Companies in Hyderabad, Kolkata, Rajkot, Mumbai, Delhi and Ahmedabad are under the scanner, IT officials also informed. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, April 7, 2017, 11:28 [IST] How India surgically struck out 16,000 jihadi social media accounts India oi-Vicky By Vicky It was a surgical strike on the online accounts run by ISI backed jihadis from Pakistan. The Pakistan based jihadi groups had floated a little over 16,000 social media accounts to propagate against India and also carry out an online war. The Indian security forces put together their best resources to counter this menace. Social media accounts of jihadi groups had started to increase and the first step was to identify each of them. The process itself took a couple of months. The next step was to understand the pattern. Most of the accounts had coded messages apart from propaganda material on them. It was noticed that the stone pelting during encounters in Jammu and Kashmir were directly linked to the posts on the social media. It was not exactly a spontaneous reaction to an encounter in the Valley, an Intelligence Bureau official explained. Before any stone pelting incident there would be a clarion call or a coded message posted on these accounts. In minutes of the posting, a group of youth would land up at the encounter site and begin pelting stones. This would lead to a chain reaction and in the next hour or so a large crowd would gather. The Indian forces understood that the problem was online. They put their best minds to use and after identifying and understanding the pattern, the clean up process began. Fake ids were used to counter proxy accounts. This online war waged against the jihadi groups brought down several accounts. There were posts to counter the propaganda and many accounts were taken down by the Indian agencies. An Intelligence Bureau official explained to OneIndia that this is an ongoing process. There are a lot of accounts and as we take them down, some more keep coming up. However the menace has reduced, although we cannot say that it has stopped completely, the officer also explained. However it has managed to derail them to a large extent. When accounts are taken down by the dozen, it demoralises the enemy who will have to once again begin re-thinking strategy the official also explained. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, April 7, 2017, 9:26 [IST] How a 'No Fly list' like China's would have stopped Mallya, Gaikwad India oi-Anusha Air India on Friday lifted the ban on Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad after he expressed 'regrets' over 'the March 23 incident. Post the incident, the Directorate general of civil aviation is considering establishing a 'National No Fly List'. While India is still considering the 'No Fly List', China is miles ahead on the 'No Fly List' which also including bank defaulters. Had the same been implemented in India earlier neither would there have been a Gaikwad incident now would have defaulters like Vijay Mallya fled the country easily. Air India on Friday said, "To deal with unruly passengers in an effective manner in future, amendment to the Civil Aviation Requirements are being drafted by DGCA in consultation with this(Civil aviation) ministry for establishing a National No Fly List." Since the list is being considered, the government can look into the kind of people who can be put on the no-fly list without limiting it to merely unruly passengers. Here is what China does If someone like Vijay Mallya were in China, he would be blacklisted and restricted from travelling by plane apart from being restricted from applying for loans or credit cards or even getting promoted. While India has allowed willful defaulters like Vijay Mallya to easily flee the country by not putting them on a 'No-Fly' list, China has recorded unprecedented crackdown on 6.73 million bank defaulters by blacklisting them. Supreme People's Court in China has blacklisted 6.73 million bank defaulters stopping them from travelling by plane, applying for loans or credit cards or getting promoted. "SPC has cooperated with airlines and railway companies to bar the defaulters with the help of their official IDs and passports. The implementation of the ban based on passports was initiated as earlier many defaulters with barred ID card numbers started buying plane tickets with their passports," said Supreme people's Court enforcement bureau chief, Meng Xiang. Since the enforcement of the crackdown, at least one million defaulters had voluntarily obeyed court orders. We think it is time for India to adopt the same, do you? OneIndia News In Babri Masjid demolition case, Advani could face 5 years in jail India oi-Vicky By Vicky L K Advani and others could be sentenced to five years in jail if conspiracy charges in the Babri Masjid demolition case is proven. The Supreme Court pointed out that a 25 year pendency in this case was 'evasion of justice,' while stating that it would direct the Lucknow court to complete the trial in two years while ordering a day to day hearing. On Thursday, the CBI told the SC that it wanted the trial against Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharti to be conducted. The CBI also sought that the conspiracy charges that were dropped should be restored. The premier agency also said that it wanted the case to be transferred from Rae Bareili to Lucknow. The SC indicated that it was inclined to permit a joint trial and revival of the conspiracy charges. The conspiracy charges are serious the CBI had said. It said that a secret meeting took place at the residence of Vinay Katiyar on the eve of the demolition. On that day final decision had been taken to raze the masjid. It was a conspiracy hatched in 1990 by Advani and others which ultimately culminated in the demolition, the CBI chargesheet also said. There are two sets of cases relating to the demolition on December 6 1992. The first case relates to unnamed karsevaks and second relates to the VVIPs in a court in Rae Bareili. The SC on Thursday said that 25 years had passed and in the interest of justice the matter must be heard in one court, preferably in Lucknow. We will use our extraordinary power under Article 142 of the Constitution to transfer the case to Lucknow the court said. A person should not suffer litigation for 25 years. In your own interest the trial must come to an end and this is for your betterment, the SC told Advani's counsel. The court also asked, "how of the accused are dead and some will die now. As far as the Rae Bareily case is concerned, the court has examined 57 witnesses and have to examine another 105. In Lucknow, in the case against the karsevaks, 195 witnesses have been examined and 800 are still remaining, the SC further pointed out. OneIndia News J-K: Two newly recruited Hizbul Mujahideen militants arrested India pti-PTI Srinagar, Apr 7: Two recently-recruited militants belonging to Hizbul Mujahideen were arrested on Friday from Sopore township of north Kashmir's Baramulla district, a senior police officer said. "Two newly recruited HM militants were arrested today from Achabal village of Sopore," Superintendent of Police, Sopore, Harmeet Singh Mehta told PTI. Mehta said acting on a specific information from a reliable source about the presence of militants in an orchard near the village, security forces cordoned off the area and launched a search operation. He said during the search operation, the duo, Yawar Nabi Mir and Arsalan Rasool Teli, both residents of Mohalla Sheikh Sahib in Chinkipora area of Sopore were apprehended. The SP said, on questioning, the two revealed that they left their home on March 28 and joined Hizbul Mujahideen militant outfit on the instigation of some local recruiters. Their families had lodged a missing report on the same day, Mehta said. He said they also revealed that they were motivated to join the militancy by two persons, Arif Teli alias Tiger and Mohammad Shafi Teli, both residents of Arampora area of Sopore. Both these recruiters have been arrested and booked under law for their criminal intention, the SP said, adding few other recruiters are yet to be apprehended. The apprehension of these two newly recruited militants is in continuation to the policy of bringing back the local youth who have joined the militancy, the police officer said. PTI Karnataka bypolls: Rs 20 lakh found in a car, seized India oi-Anusha The Chamarajnagar police seized unaccounted cash worth more than Rs 20 lakh from a private person's car on Friday. Police officers who have stepped up the vigil for the April 9 bypoll in Gundlupet and Nanjangud found more than Rs 20 lakh in new Rs 2,000 currency notes stashed in a car belonging to a person identified as Manoj. Police searched the car that was parked in Hotel Gateway Karnataka in Gundlupet following a tip-off and found the money. Manoj, a native of Hubballi has been detained for carrying unaccounted cash while model code of conduct is in force for the bypolls. It is unclear if the money that was found was being utilised for corrupt electoral practices. The seizure comes a day after Karnataka Mahila Congress president Laxmi Habbalkar landed in a controversy over a video purportedly showing her distributing money to voters emerged from Gundlupet. OneIndia News Kashmir floods: Modi speaks to Mufti offers help from Centre India oi-Madhuri Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday spoke to Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti on the flood situation and offered all possible support from Centre in dealing with the situation. On Thursday, Mufti chaired a high-level meeting to take stock of the situation. She reviewed the preparedness and the steps to be taken by the administration in view of the emerging situation of rains and waterlogging in many parts of Kashmir Valley. Air traffic to and from Srinagar International airport was also affected due to weather conditions. Ten flights were cancelled and most others delayed. The water level in river Jhelum had crossed the 'flood declaration' mark at Ram Munshi Bagh in Srinagar, prompting authorities to set up emergency control rooms, even as 17 people were rescued from flash floods in Poonch and a woman was killed in lightning in Rajouri. Vehicles and of passengers were also remained stranded at Udhampur as authorities are not allowing traffic movement. OneIndia News (with PTI inputs) For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, April 7, 2017, 9:51 [IST] Chandra Grahan 2022: Check the start and end timing of lunar eclipse in major cities IRCTC update: 136 trains cancelled on Nov 08; here is the complete list 'Kejriwal ji, if my claims true, you'll resign and retire': Sukesh writes a new letter Mishap averted at Delhi airport as Air India, Indigo flight come face-to-face India oi-Madhuri A major mishap was averted at the Indira Gandhi International airport in New Delhi after two planes came dangerously close on the runway on Friday. The two aircraft belonged to Air India and Indigo. There was miscommunication with the Air Traffic Control tower, initial reports suggested. According to reports, the incident happened when Air India's AI 156 with over 120 people on board was rolling at a high speed to take off for Goa in the runway at about 11.30 am. Earlier on Friday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi travelled from Lok Kalyan Marg to Delhi airport in normal traffic to receive his Bangladesh counterpart Sheikh Hasina, setting aside protocol. OneIndia News No question of extending date to deposit demonetised notes, centre tells SC India oi-Vicky By Vicky In a major blow to those still possessing demonetised notes, the centre told the Supreme Court that it cannot extend the date to deposit the same. Those who have demonetised notes will lose it, the centre submitted in the court. The court is hearing a batch of petitions seeking a directive to the centre to extend the date to deposit demonetised notes. The petitioners had cited the Prime Minister's speech in which it was stated that a window of opportunity would be given after the December 31 deadline. It was stated that the centre had promised that demonetised notes could be deposited in the Reserve Bank of India until March 31. However the RBI refused to accept the notes the petitioners alleged. While the SC asked the government if it could consider these pleas, the Attorney General of India said that it could not be done. The AG cited the law that was passed post demonetisation and said that the date could not be extended. The AG said that the decision was taken to prevent black hoarders from exchanging their notes. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, April 7, 2017, 19:19 [IST] Lt. Colonel Niranjan Kumar Lt. Colonel Niranjan Kumar was commissioned in the Engineers Regiment of the Army in 2004, he was assigned to a "mopping up procedure" on the encounter spot. He was killed while defusing a live grenade from the body of a terrorist. President Pranab Mukherjee presenting Shaurya Chakra to the widow and mother of Lt Col Niranjan EK during the Defence Investiture Ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhawan in New Delhi. Photo credit: Subhav Shukla/PTI Naik Gawade Pandurang Mahadev Naik Gawade Pandurang Mahadev was martyred in a fierce encounter with five heavily armed terrorists on May 21. Mother and wife of the late Naik Gawde Pandurang Mahadev after receiving Shaurya Chakra from President Pranab Mukherjee during the Defence Investiture Ceremony atRashtrapati Bhawan in New Delhi. Photo credit: Subhav Shukla/PTI Lance Havildar Prem Bahadur Resmi Magar Lance Havildar Prem Bahadur Resmi Magar a 'Ghatak' commando of the unit, was part of the team that prevented an infiltration bid and shot dead four terrorists. He had served the defence forces for 18 years and was a battle hardened soldier with distinguished service, he was also involved in two previous operations in the same area in which seven terrorists were killed. The widow of Lance Havildar Prem Bahadur Resmi Magar before receiving Shaurya Chakra from President Pranab Mukherjee on behalf of her husband during the Defence Investiture Ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhawan in New Delhi. Photo credit: Subhav Shukla/PTI Hd Const Sanjewan Singh of J & K Police Head Constable Sanjewan Singh succumbed to his injury and laid down his life after gunning down two terrorists in Tral, Pulwama district, J&K. President Pranab Mukherjee presenting Shaurya Chakra to the widow and mother of Hd Const Sanjewan Singh of J & K Police during the Defence Investiture Ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhawan in New Delhi. Photo credit: Subhav Shukla/PTI Major Rajat Chandra Major Rajat Chandra had killed two terrorists during the surgical strike. He was tasked to undertake close surveillance of the terrorist's hideout in Jammu and Kashmir. President Pranab Mukherjee presenting Shaurya Chakra to Major Rajat Chandra during the Defence Investiture Ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhawan in New Delhi. Photo credit: Subhav Shukla/PTI Bharat Jodo Yatra will proceed to Srinagar, come what may, says Rahul Gandhi as march enters Maharashtra Rahul Gandhi tries hard to revive his flop political career India oi-Oneindia By Oneindia Staff Writer Critics have already written off Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi as a politician of any consequences, especially after the Congress' 'humiliating' debacle in assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand recently. After the elections, the scion of Gandhi family spent a couple of days in the United States, where his mother and party president Sonia Gandhi underwent medical treatment. Afterwards, the vice president of Congress is trying hard to be visible in public domain, as he attended Parliament sessions and public functions in the last few days. While Rahul has attacked the Centre for the brutal killing of a dairy farmer in Alwar, Rajasthan, by a group of gau rakshaks, he praised Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's decision to waive off farmers' loans. Here we bring you a pictorial glimpse of what Rahul is doing these days... Rahuls Parliamentary smile Congress vice president attends the budget session in Parliament in New Delhi on Thursday. Picture credit: PTI Homage to the great leader! Rahul pays homage to Babu Jagjivan Ram on his birth anniversary in New Delhi on Wednesday. Picture credit: PTI Mother and son Sonia and Rahul were seen together during the budget session at Parliament, in New Delhi, on Wednesday. Picture credit: PTI Rahul smiles for the camera A smiling Rahul is seen outside Parliament flanked by his bodyguards on Wednesday. Picture credit: PTI Rahul lends support to TN farmers protest Rahul met Tamil Nadu farmers, who are agitating for loan waiver and compensation for their crop failure, at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi, last week. Picture credit: PTI Rahul with his party colleagues Rahul talks with other party MPs in the Lok Sabha in New Delhi recently. Picture credit: PTI OneIndia News IT dept conducts raids at 40 locations in Rajasthan, 3 businessmen on radar Rajasthan bypolls: BJP, Congress woo voters in Dholpur India oi-IANS By Ians English Jaipur, April 7: Leaders of the BJP, Congress and their supporters on Friday continued to campaign vigorously in a last-ditch effort to woo over 1.92 lakh voters for the Dholpur assembly bye-election to be held on Sunday. The voters, including over 90,000 women, are expected to cast their votes at the 231 polling stations across Dholpur, where the by-poll was necessitated after Bahujan Samaj Party legislator Banwari Lal Kushwah was disqualified after being convicted in a murder case last year. The Congress has fielded former minister Banwari Lal Sharma while the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has fielded Kushwah's wife from the assembly seat which is the home turf of Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje. Raje is busy monitoring the situation in the assembly constituency on a daily basis. Counting will take place on April 13. While Raje, state BJP President Ashok Parnami and her Cabinet colleagues spent several days in the segment to woo voters, the Congress fielded senior leaders like state unit chief Sachin Pilot, former Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and Leader of Opposition Rameshwar Dudi. "It is a test of the BJP government's three-and-half years in government. Moreover, it is a prestige issue for Raje, known as Maharani here," said a political analyst. Presently, the BJP has 160 members and the Congress 24 in the 199-member assembly. IANS For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, April 7, 2017, 17:28 [IST] Rajasthan submits preliminary report on Alwar lynching case India oi-PTI New Delhi, April 7 : The Union Home Ministry on Friday received a report from the Rajasthan government which said a special police team has been constituted to arrest all accused allegedly involved in the lynching of a Muslim man in Alwar. The Rajasthan government gave a preliminary report about the incident in which a 55-year-old man, Pehlu Khan, was beaten to death in Alwar district allegedly by a group of cow vigilantes on April 1. The local police reached the spot soon after receiving the report about the incident, rescued four of Khan's colleagues and took him to a hospital, the report to the Union Home Ministry said. The police team will try to arrest the remaining accused, sources said quoting the report. The incident took place when as many as 16 people were allegedly transporting 36 bovines in six pickup vans. The deceased, Khan, and four others, including his two sons, were beaten brutally by some locals at Behror in Alwar suspecting they were smuggling cows, police said. The incident rocked both Houses of Parliament where the Congress attacked the BJP saying the Constitution was being violated in the name of cow protection in the states ruled by the saffron party. PTI For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, April 7, 2017, 18:28 [IST] Srinagar bypoll: Parties campaign on social media India oi-PTI Srinagar, April 7: The campaigning for the by-poll to the prestigious Srinagar Lok Sabha seat has been a low key affair in the backdrop of the five-month summer agitation last year but political parties and independent candidates have heavily relied on social media to reach out to the electorate. The constituency, where campaigning ends today for the poll on Sunday, will witness a virtual direct contest between opposition National Conference stalwart Farooq Abdullah and ruling PDP's Nazir Ahmad Khan, although there are seven other candidates in the fray including 25-year-old techie Mehraj Khursheed Malik and Chetan Sharma of Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasbha. With the fear of the gun and boycott call by separatists looming large, political parties and other candidates have chosen the social media as their main medium for wooing the electorate and create awareness about their agenda. Aijaz Jan, who handles the social media campaign of National Conference, said social media was a better way of connecting with the younger generation. "Around 90 per cent of youngsters use social media like Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp. It is a better way to connect with them. We get a feed back also through such media. "Some agree with us, some disagree. That is part of democracy. It is the best way to engage with the youth," he said. Malik, who claims to have quit a job with an MNC in Bengaluru to jump into electoral politics, bemoans the lack of time for proper campaigning. "I have been using WhatsApp and Facebook to reach out to the electorate as there was very little time given for campaigning," he said. Malik justified joining the electoral fray by saying that growing discontent among the youth "clearly indicates failure of successive governments and political parties in addressing the concerns of the younger generation. Somebody had to rise." Maintaining that he had an uphill task to "convince" the youth, Malik said after engaging with them, "many agreed with my point of view and many others agreed to disagree". He claimed that his decision to "stand up for the people" was inspired by the teachings of Islam, life of Gautam Buddha, Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa. The election campaign for Srinagar by-poll did not witness any major rallies, except for a few held by former chief minister Abdullah in Ganderbal, Kangan and Beerwah areas of the constituency. "While I have to make use of the social media as youth is connected with technology, I still went around my constituency holding rallies and meetings. "After all, I am a traditional politician who belongs to the old school," he said. Abdullah is the joint candidate of National Conference and Congress for the Srinagar seat under an agreement in which the regional party has extended support to PCC president G A Mir in the south Kashmir constituency going to polls on April 12. While the ruling PDP has also extensively used the social media to reach out to the electorate, its candidate Nazir Ahmad Khan has depended more on holding meetings with smaller groups of people in Srinagar district. "I held hall meetings, meeting with workers and went for door-to-door campaigning. It was a strenuous process but I had a chance of reaching out to more people," he said. Waheed Para, the youth president of the party and incharge of social media campaign, said 60 per cent of the state's population belongs to the younger generation which uses social media as a medium of expression. "We have used the social media to reach out and communicate with the younger generation," he said, noting that the young people were following the PDP campaign and social media gives them the option of "listening to us and then agree or disagree. It is better than addressing a rally". "You either use the social media or the social media uses you," he said. Chetan Sharma, who had contested the 2014 Lok Sabha election from Srinagar and got 650 votes, said he was using the polls to impress upon the international community that Kashmir is an integral part of India. "There is a fear in the air (in Kashmir) but my standing in the election is a message to the international community that Kashmir is part of India. "I have been raising the issue of unemployment which is the major problem of Kashmir," Sharma said. He said that while he has been using social media, his campaign has stressed more on "meeting people individually". More than 11.72 lakh voters spread across three districts of Srinagar, Budgam and Ganderbal are eligible to exercise their franchise at over 1500 polling stations this Sunday. The by-poll was necessitated by the resignation of then PDP leader Tariq Hameed Karra from the Lok Sabha in September last year to protest the alleged "atrocities" by security forces during the summer unrest triggered by the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani in an encounter in July last year. Karra, who recently joined the Congress, had defeated Abdullah three years ago but is now supporting the National Conference president following the agreement between the two parties. The voter turnout in 2014 polls was 26 per cent in Srinagar constituency, slightly better than 25.55 per cent recorded in 2009. PTI UP most film-friendly state: After voters rejection, National Film Awards 'honours' Akhileshs govt India oi-Oneindia By Oneindia Staff Writer Lucknow, April 7: The winners for 64th National Film Awards were announced on Friday. Uttar Pradesh bagged the award for the most film-friendly state, announced filmmaker Priyadarshan, who was the chairperson for the jury panel this year. Jharkhand also got a special mention in the same category. "64th National Film Awards: Uttar Pradesh is selected ' Most Film Friendly State', Special mention Award to Jharkand," tweeted ANI. 64th National Film Awards: Uttar Pradesh is selected ' Most Film Friendly State', Special mention Award to Jharkand ANI (@ANI_news) April 7, 2017 The honour for the state comes at a time when Uttar Pradesh recently got a new regime under the Bharatiya Janata Party. However, the award is for the period between 2016-2017, thus the laurel is a pat on the back of former chief minister of the state, Akhilesh Yadav, and his party, the Samajwadi Party. We don't know how much Akhilesh would cherish the honour. However, the Samajwadi Party president and the former chief minister of the state steadfastly worked to attract filmmakers, especially from Bollywood, to shoot movies in the state during his tenure. After the humiliating poll debacle in the recent assembly elections, where the Samajwadi Party and the Congress alliance managed to win just 54 seats in the 403-member Uttar Pradesh Assembly, the award comes as some sort of solace for Akhilesh. The hashtag--#NationalFilmAwards--trended on Twitter on Friday after a host of film awards were announced by the jury members. The National Film Awards is considered one of the most prestigious film awards in the country as the jury decides the fate of films, and not public voting. Like in the past, this year too it looks like a couple of controversies would erupt over the selection of winners in the coming days. OneIndia News Rajasthan government's reaction The state Home Minister Gulab Chand Kataria said it was "alright" if some people caught those who were illegally transporting animals but maintainaimed the five men were thrashed in the presence of police and demanded action against the force personnel. Rajasthan police filed an FIR against the victims? As per a report published inScroll, Rajasthan police allegedly filed an FIR against the victims of Alwar lynching. The report says that a man named Damodar Singh Gurjar charged Khan and his sons Irshad and Arif under the Rajasthan Bovine Animal (Prohibition of Slaughter and Regulation of Temporary Migration or Export) Act, 1995, on Sunday. Gurjar, a bystander of the incident, was driving through Alwar highway at around 7.30 pm. In the FIR, Gurjar had claimed that three men had no documents to prove where the cows were from and that they were being taken from Rajasthan to Haryana for slaughter. Two hours later, Alwar police also filed an FIR against an unidentified mob, that thrashed Khan and four others. Meanwhile, Khan's sons have maintained that they were not carrying the required receipts to prove that they had purchased the cows for their dairy farm in Haryana. BJP reaction As lynching case genereated heat in Parliament, the Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said it was a very sensitive issue, but "no such incident has happened, the way the matter is being presented here." "A message should not be sent out that the House supports cow slaughter," he said, and added that "the state government has refuted (the allegations). We do not justify hooliganism". Naqvi later said action was being taken against the accused and that he was in no way condoning the violence. Defending the Rajasthan government, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said it has taken cognisance of the incident and action as per law would be taken. Congress reaction Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the RSS, saying there is no place in the country for those disagreeing with them and that tragedies of huge proportion occur when government "abdicates responsibility". Talking to reporters outside Parliament, Gandhi charged that the prime minister is propagating a vision where only one idea will prevail. In a series of tweets, Rahul Gandhi hit out at the Rajasthan government for the "brutal and senseless attack" in Alwar. "When Government abdicates responsibility and allows lynch mobs to rule, tragedies of immense proportion follow. Shocking breakdown of law and order in Alwar," he said. He said all right thinking Indians must condemn this "blind brutality" and hoped the state government will take strict action against those responsible for the "senseless attack". Gandhi said, "We expect Government to take strict action against those responsible for this brutal and senseless attack." What happened on April 1 night? The incident took place on Saturday when as many as 16 people were allegedly transporting 36 bovine animals illegally in six pick up vans. They were on their way towards Haryana from Jaipur when the vigilantes intercepted two of their vehicles in Behror on the Jaipur-Delhi national highway. Pehlu Khan, his sons Aarif and Irshad were in the first van, while two more persons Ajmat (28) and Sharif (24) were in the second. All of them were attacked and their vans damaged. The remaining vans were stopped by the police in which 11 people were found and arrested under relevant sections of the Rajasthan Bovine Animal (Prohibition of Slaughter and Regulation of Temporary Migration or Export) Act, ASI of Behror police station Vikram Singh said. The five men who were beaten were admitted to a district hospital where Pehlu Khan died on Monday night. Following Khan's death, a case of murder was registered against six persons namely Om Yadav, Hukamchand Yadav, Naveen Sharma, Sudhir Yadav, Rahul Saini and Jagmal, while 200 other "unidentified" people were listed as accused. World Health Day: Modi prays for wonderful health for all; commits to make India healthy India oi-Oneindia By Oneindia Staff Writer New Delhi, April 7: On the occasion of World Health Day, observed across the globe on Friday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi prayed for 'wonderful health' for all. "On #WorldHealthDay, I pray that you are blessed with wonderful health, which gives you the opportunity to pursue your dreams & excel," PM Modi tweeted. On #WorldHealthDay, I pray that you are blessed with wonderful health, which gives you the opportunity to pursue your dreams & excel. Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) April 7, 2017 The PM reiterated the government's commitment to provide quality healthcare to all. "When it comes to healthcare, our government is leaving no stone unturned to provide quality healthcare that is accessible & affordable," PM Modi added. When it comes to healthcare, our Government is leaving no stone unturned to provide quality healthcare that is accessible & affordable. Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) April 7, 2017 The PM said that recently the Cabinet approved the National Health Policy, which is extensive, comprehensive and citizen friendly. PM Modi also shared his last Mann ki Baat speech, where he spoke extensively on depression. This years #WorldHealthDay theme is depression. Shared my views on the subject during the previous #MannKiBaat. https://t.co/8jdgBWJsel Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) April 7, 2017 This year, the theme of World Health Day campaign is depression. World Health Day is celebrated every year on April 7 by the World Health Organisation. "We (in India) are afraid to talk about it (depression) openly," the PM said. "The focus of World Health Day this year is depression," he added. The PM insisted that those who are depressed must share how they feel with their loved ones. "Suppression of depression is not good. Expression is always good. If depressed, share your feelings with others, it will make you feel better," PM Modi said. OneIndia News UP ATS picks up two more accused in Al-Qaeda radicalisation case Yoga has got nothing to do with any religion: UP Deputy CM India pti-PTI Lucknow, Apr 7: Yoga does not belong to any religion and should be practiced by everyone considering its health benefits, Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma said on Friday. The state government is of the view that Yoga should be made a compulsory part of education in state-run school and included in the curriculum, Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma told mediapersons in Lucknow. "People try to create confusion, but Yoga is neither of Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs or Christians...should be that the body of all is healthy...what is wrong if school children do it...all should practice it in view of its health benefits," Sharma said. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath recently said that Yoga will be attached with education and made compulsory in all government schools in Uttar Pradesh. "I have not invented Yoga, it has been an ongoing practice in the universe and a tradition given by our saints for the welfare of people. It is a form given by our saints for ensuring a healthy body and healthy mind," he had said. Directions were given in a meeting chaired by Adityanath earlier this week to the state officials to bring out a Yoga education programme in every school in the state. According to an official statement, the chief minister directed that 'Rani Laxmibai Aatmaraskha Kaaryakram' (self defence programme) and 'Yog Shiksha Kaaryakram' (Yoga education programme) would be compulsory. PTI Yoga, traditional practices helpful in treating depression: President India oi-PTI New Delhi, Apr 7: President Pranab Mukherjee on Friday said traditional Indian values and Yoga can become good mechanisms to support people suffering from mental health disorders and noted that social stigma attached to such conditions remains a 'major' problem in India. On World Health Day, which focuses on depression this year, Mukherjee said that this condition is the most common form of mental health disorders and asked medical fraternity to focus on traditional support systems, social support systems and spiritual beliefs and practices in providing wellbeing to all. Observing that 5.2 per cent of the adult population in India suffer from depression in some form, he appealed to health professionals to 'think globally and act locally' and come together to meet the challenges of depression. "Out of all mental health disorders, depression is probably the most common. As per the National Mental Health Survey 2015-16 conducted by National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, 5.2 per cent of the Indian adult population suffers from depression in some form or other," he said while addressing a World Health Day summit organised by NIMCARE. "The problem of depression often gets ignored due to lack of understanding on the part of the family members. The social stigma attached to a mental disorder is also a major problem in India. However, people have now started talking about these issues leading to greater awareness," he added. He said the entire world made a commitment in the form of Sustainable Development Goals in which mental health and wellbeing figure prominently. Noting that with the SDGs, countries have committed to achieve quantified targets by 2030, the President said looking at the scale of the problems and the limited time available, the task is 'challenging'. "Traditional Indian values along with family systems can be good mechanisms to support those who suffer from mental health disorders. I urge medical practitioners to focus on the social support systems, spiritual beliefs and practices as well as system of Yoga in their quest for providing wellbeing to all," he said. Observing that lack of mental wellbeing contributes significantly to the total disability and morbidity burden across the world, he said productivity of human beings, whether in workforce or in the family situation, gets reduced if one has any mental disorder. Mental health disorders have a wide range, from simple disorders to very complex situations, he said adding that it is often seen that simple disorders, if not managed in time, tend to become more complex putting the patient at higher risk of morbidity. He said there is a severe shortage of mental health professionals in India and the gap can be bridged effectively by telemedicine. He said telemedicine application in armed forces healthcare delivery and the health monitoring of defence force personnel and their dependents is of paramount importance. With the introduction of new norms for implementation of telemedicine for the army, accessibility to quality healthcare, specially in hilly areas of the North East will be provided, he said. "I have no doubt that telemedicine will play a very important role in saving the lives of our jawans and provide them advanced updates on health-related issues. Telemedicine is well suited for armed forces and will significantly improve the healthcare delivery system," he added. Mukherjee expressed happiness that the organisers of the summit had planned strategic follow up conferences in different cities of the world to create broad framework for collective action. "I appeal to all of you to think globally and act locally. I also urge all the health stakeholders to come together in meeting the challenges of depression," he said. PTI For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, April 7, 2017, 17:31 [IST] Trump blasts Assad's airbase in Syria with 60 Tomahawk cruise missiles International oi-Vicky By Vicky The United States of America has launched a military strike on the Syrian government in retaliation for the chemical weapon attack on civilians earlier this week. Officials said that the US launched dozens of cruise missiles on on an airbase in Syria. Officials also said that around 50 missiles were launched on the orders of Donald Trump, president of the United States of America. It was reported that at least 50 Tomahawk cruise missiles were launched at a Syrian government airbase where the warplanes that carried out the chemical attacks were based. US defence officials said that the strike was targeted on runway, aircrafts and fuel points. The missiles were launched from the warships on the Eastern Mediterranean, officials also said. "Strikes over, until another decision is made," the officials also said. Trump met with his national security team prior to his dinner meeting with the Chinese president Xi Jinping. It was there that the decision was taken. This is the biggest military action of his presidency. The strikes are the first direct military action the US has taken against the Syrian leadership. While airstrikes have been carried out by the US in Syria since 2014, they were targeted only at terrorist groups. However this is the first action against the Syrian government. Trump had said after the chemical attacks that it crossed the line and he felt a sense of responsibility to respond. "I will tell you it has already happened that my attitude towards Syria and Assad has changed very much," Trump had also said. Following the strikes, Trump called on civilised nations to join the US to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria. OneIndia News Italy's Meloni tries to distance herself from fascism In Europe, the bird will fly by our rules: EU commissioner on Twitter takeover EU backs US strikes in Syria, says it showed necessary 'resolve' International oi-PTI Brussels, Apr 7: The US missile strikes on a Syrian airbase on Friday demonstrated 'needed resolve' against chemical attacks, EU President Donald Tusk said. "US strikes show needed resolve against barbaric chemical attacks," tweeted Tusk, who represents the 28 EU member states, adding the bloc will work with the US to 'end brutality' in Syria. Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, the EU executive, expressed his support for the US decision. "President Juncker has been unequivocal in his condemnation of the use of chemical weapons," a Commission statement said. "The repeated use of such weapons must be answered. He understands efforts to deter further attacks," it said. Juncker made 'a clear distinction' between US missile strikes on a military base and the use of "chemical weapons against civilians." He also urged diplomatic efforts to end the six-year war in Syria "be redoubled" as only a "political transition" can achieve lasting peace. The US launched a military strike on a Syrian government target in retaliation for their chemical weapons attack on civilians earlier in the week, President Trump told the media. The US launched 59 cruise missiles into Syria in the first direct military attack by the country on President Bashar al-Assad's regime since the civil war began. The strike came in response to a chemical weapons attack that struck a town in northern Syria. PTI For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Friday, April 7, 2017, 18:00 [IST] Israel-India sign historic USD 2 billion missile deal International pti-PTI Jerusalem, April 7: Israel has signed a USD 2 billion contract with India to supply it with missile defence systems, the state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries said on Thursday. Israel Aerospace Industries in an announcement said that it has been awarded its largest defence contract of almost USD 2 billion for supplying advanced medium-range surface-to-air missile systems to India. IAI said it would also supply additional long-range air and missile defence systems for the first locally produced Indian aircraft carrier. The contract is worth USD 1.6 billion for IAI, with the rest going to another state-owned defence company Rafael, that will be providing components for the systems. "The current contracts represent an enormous expression of confidence by the government of India in IAI's capabilities and advanced technologies, which are being developed with our local partners as part of the Indian government's 'Make in India' policy," IAI Chief Executive Officer Joseph Weiss said in a statement. President Reuven Rivlin, who is said to have discussed the deal with Indian leaders during his trip to India early this year, called to congratulate Weiss on this historic deal terming it truly exceptional. "Please pass on my congratulations to all who contributed to this important achievement. You have come such a long way to arrive at this point, it is truly exceptional," Rivlin told IAI's CEO. Israel's willingness to share technology and form joint ventures with Indian companies to develop and manufacture military equipment supporting the 'Make in India' initiative is said to have been well received in New Delhi. In the case of MRSAM, an advanced air and missile defence system that provides protection against a variety of aerial threats, the technology is said to have been jointly developed by IAI and India's Defence Research and Development Organisation in collaboration with Rafael and IAI's Elta division. Indian companies such as Larsen & Toubro are said to have also participated in the project. MRSAM's current version is operational with the Indian Air Force, Indian Navy and Israel Defence Forces. The system includes an advanced phased-array radar, command and control, mobile launchers and missiles with advanced RF seekers. PTI Meet the pilot who quit flying because of the climate crisis Meet Pilot Odujinrin, the 1st African to fly solo around the world International oi-Gulam Rabbani By Gulam Rabbani Abuja, April 7: Pilot Ademola Odujinrin became the first African to fly alone around the world, said his foundation Transcend on Thursday. The 38-year-old Nigerian pilot also identified as 'Lola' left Washignton in Cirrus SR22, a single machine airplane in September last year. He landed his plane at Dulles Airport just outside the American capital on March 29 from where he took off last year. The pilot wants every African to think that they can do too what he has done. Earthrounders, the website listed Odujinrin as the first African pilot among 120 pilots who flew around the globe since American Wiley Post became to do so in 1933. Lola, commercial airline pilot since 2011 has worked for Air Djibouti, which helped his project to some extent financially. OneIndia News 32,000 girls converted to Islam and sold as ISIS slaves: This is The Kerala Story Pakistani man stabbed to death in Australia, IS link suspected International pti-PTI Melbourne, April 7: A 29-year-old Pakistani man was stabbed to death allegedly by two teenagers in a "horrific" crime spree in Australia, prompting police to investigate if the attack was inspired by the Islamic State terror group. Zasheen Akbar, a service station attendant, was found with stab wounds by a fellow employee at the Caltex service station in New South Wales late last night. The fellow employee found Akbar, a Pakistani, lying on the floor and windows smashed, The Daily Telegraph reported. Counterterrorism police are investigating if the two 15-year-old and 16-year-old boys, who allegedly murdered the attendant, had been radicalised by extremist Islamic ideology. The two teenagers have been arrested and police have not provided further details. The Australian media claimed that a sheet of paper that covers the window of the service station where letters "IS" were reportedly written in blood after the attendant was fatally stabbed. Police believe the youths, from Queanbeyan, went on a rampage, allegedly stabbing another man in the stomach, hitting a third with a tyre iron and a fourth with a beer bottle. "The teenagers went on a violent crime spree but we think one of the violent crimes at the servo has the hallmarks of an IS inspired terrorist act," a senior police source was quoted as saying by The Daily Telegraph. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull also said allegations that the teenagers killed a service station employee in Queanbeyan "underline" the government's concerns about terrorism. "The involvement in this crime of two males, two youths, teenagers, is a shocking matter and one that underlines many of the concerns we have raised in this field...they are in custody following the alleged murder of a 29-year-old man in Queanbeyan overnight," Turnbull said. "Our condolences goes to the family of the victim. We send our prayers and best wishes to the two other victims of that evening," Turnbull said. The police will be making a statement about this but I can say that the circumstances have raised sufficient concern, as I have discussed with the Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police (AFP), Andrew Colvin, raise sufficient concern to warrant the involvement of the Joint-Counter Terrorism eam, he said. Police expect to lay a number of serious charges, Monaro Police Superintendent Rod Smith said. "Our investigation into these matters will continue, but it doesn't need to be said it doesn't get more serious than this is an absolute horrific series of events," Smith said. He wanted to reassure the public "two people we believe are involved in all of these are in custody". NSW Deputy Commissioner Catherine Burn said police had "sufficient information" to believe the 16-year-old's involvement in the alleged murder may be related to terrorism. That information comes from physical evidence at the scene and other sources, Burn said. PTI Subramanian Swamy welcomes US strike against Syria after horrible chemical attack International oi-Oneindia By Oneindia Staff Writer Although, India is yet to issue an official statement regarding the US' military strike against Syria on Thursday, senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader and Rajya Sabha member of Parliament, Subramanian Swamy, has welcomed President Donald Trump decision to attack the war-ravaged country with a renewed vigour. "In my personal capacity & analysis I welcome US strike against Syria as retaliation for the horrible poisonous chemical attack on civilians," tweeted Subramanian Swamy. In my personal capacity & analysis I welcome US strike against Syria as retaliation for the horrible poisonous chemical attack on civilians Subramanian Swamy (@Swamy39) April 7, 2017 The US has launched a military strike on a Syrian government target in retaliation for their chemical weapons attack on civilians earlier in the week, President Trump told the media. "Tonight (Thursday), I ordered a targeted military strike on the air field in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched," Trump told reporters at Mar-a-Lago. The US launched 59 cruise missiles into Syria in the first direct military attack by the country on President Bashar al-Assad's regime since the civil war began. The strike came in response to a chemical weapons attack that struck a town in northern Syria, Efe news reported on Thursday. OneIndia News Xi Jinping arrives in US to meet Donald Trump for the first time International ians-IANS By Ians English Washington, April 7: Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in the state of Florida on Thursday for the first meeting with his US counterpart Donald Trump, in a bid to chart the course of bilateral ties in a new era. The plane carrying the Chinese president, First Lady Peng Liyuan and other members of the delegation landed in the early afternoon at an aiport in the southeastern coastal town of Palm, Xinhua news agency reported. Under the gaze of an enthused welcoming crowd, including US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and his wife, Xi and Peng stepped out of the hatch and waved before they walked down the ramp hand in hand. During his two-day stay in Florida, Xi is scheduled to hold talks with Trump in the Mar-a-Lago resort, which Trump calls "the Southern White House", to exchange views on bilateral ties and major regional and global issues of common concern. Xi and Peng will also attend a welcome banquet hosted by Trump and First Lady Melania, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Zheng Zeguang told a press conference on March 31. "The meeting will be of great significance to charting China-US relationship in a new era and advancing the development of bilateral ties...and promoting peace, stability and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region and the world at large," Zheng said. The US is the second leg of Xi's ongoing two-nation tour, which has already taken him to Finland for a state visit. IANS 2008-2022 One News Page Ltd. All rights reserved. One News is a registered trademark of One News Page Ltd. We value your privacy. Focus Taiwan (CNA) uses tracking technologies to provide better reading experiences, but it also respects readers' privacy. Click here to find out more about Focus Taiwan's privacy policy. When you close this window, it means you agree with this policy. Rumble 13 Jan 2022 Join us as I talk to Mike Hayes, former commanding officer of SEAL Team TWO and the current chief digital transformation officer at.. Rumble 29 Mar 2022 Dave Rubin of The Rubin Report talks about the fallout from Joe Biden saying that Putin cannot remain in power, if Biden is.. Rumble 10 Oct 2022 The mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, visited the site of a missile attack in his city Monday. The air strikes on several cities.. ODN 30 Sep 2022 ITV News reports from the scene where at least 25 people have died in a missile strike on a humanitarian convoy in the city of.. euronews (in English) 02 Nov 2022 Here is all you need to know about the Ukraine war on Wednesday. Haaretz 01 Nov 2021 Beyond the public diplomacy campaign, the cyberattacks and Syria strikes attributed to Israel are also failing to budge the Biden.. NewsVoir 08 Nov 2022 Prapul (21) and Prajwal (24), siblings from Bengaluru helped save the lives of two blood cancer patients. The brothers were matched.. Rumble 30 Oct 2022 We are live with Word, Worship and wonders at The well in Tomahawk WI !! With Anointed Holy Spirit filled Worship and tangible.. The Iranian and Syrian foreign ministers also spoke hours after the airstrikes that reportedly killed at least 17. A U.S. official.. Haaretz 26 Feb 2021 Jean Keller Benedicte Gravrand, Opalesque Geneva: Geneva has not managed to become the new El Dorado of the hedge fund world, laments Swiss daily Le Temps, as those who moved to the Swiss city in the past have since substantially decreased their headcounts. "We overestimated the attractiveness of the region to foreign hedge funds," Jean Keller, executive director of Quaero Capital and former head of 3A, the alternative investment division of Syz Bank, told Le Temps. For example, Californian hedge fund Passport Capital closed its Geneva-based division two weeks ago. The reason for doing so may have been down to red tape and financial losses. In the last decade, two major alternative investment houses moved out of London and domiciled in Geneva: Brevan Howard and BlueCrest, who managed up to $40bn combined. But the announced exodus never really took place. The reason may be that Geneva never really put its welcome strategy in place, and that the location is too quiet compared to the City of London. Brevan Howard has halv...................... To view our full article Click here Innovations and Developments in Technology Drives the Global Gamma Knife Market http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Gamma knife is an advanced radiation therapy for the treatment of cancer in adults and children. Gamma knife is not really a knife; it is a beam of highly focused gamma rays, to precisely cut or destroy the tumor or damaged cells, generally in the brain, causing little or no damage to the surrounding normal cells. Gamma knife technology is used to treat medium brain tumors, trigeminal neuralgia, epilepsy, nerve disorders that causes chronic pain, abnormal blood vessel formations called arteriovenous malformations, and other neurological conditions.Patients with serious diseases can be treated with the help of this technology which is a noninvasive procedure and get cured in a few days with no long hospital stay, returning to normal life and activity promptly. Typically, gamma knife treatment is completed in a few hours with little or no side effects. According to Leksell Gamma Knife Society, gamma knife technology is universally preferred and no other radiosurgery system has greater clinical acceptance as gamma knife. Gamma knife radiosurgery is performed in leading hospitals around the world, with more than 70,000 patients treated every year. To treat with gamma knife technology the surgeon neither requires to make an incision in the scalp, nor an opening in the skull.The gamma knife market can be segmented by disease indication and geography. Based on disease indication, the market is classified into cancer, arteriovenous malformation (AVM), trigeminal neuralgia, essential tremor and others (epilepsy, Parkinsons disease etc.). Cancer holds the dominant share of the gamma knife market by disease indication, and its increasing prevalence is expected to boost the overall market. There are over 100 types of cancer. According to WHO, about 16% of the world population die because of cancer. In 2015, 8.8 million people died of cancer. This is expected to be the prominent driver for the gamma knife market.Geographically, the gamma knife market is classified into five regions, North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. North America has the leading market share followed by the other developed region, Europe. The U.S. accounts for a major share of the global market. According to the American Cancer Society, in 2016, about 1,685,210 new cancer cases were diagnosed. Advanced technologies, high awareness levels, and high purchasing power in North America influenced the gamma knife technology market expansion significantly.However, the same factor of affordability has restrained the markets in developing regions. Despite this, the gamma knife market in Asia Pacific has shown significant increase in growth rate. Rising population, increase in disposable income, increase in the geriatric population, and increase in awareness levels are some key factors driving the Asia Pacific market. Due to these factors, the Asian market is observing a large number of new entrants compared to developed regions.Other factors that drive the gamma knife market are increasing prevalence of various types of cancer, increasing preference toward non- and minimally-invasive procedures, high adoption and acceptance in developed markets, high success rate of gamma knife procedure, innovations and developments in technology, and comprehensive health insurance cover for radio surgery procedures. The market is also experiencing certain restraints such as stiff competition among existing players, high cost of the procedure, low equipment availability, and lack of awareness about gamma knife therapy among the rural population in developing and underdeveloped economies.The major players in the gamma knife market include Elekta, Varian Medical Systems, Huiheng Medical, Inc., Nordion Inc., ET Medical Group, and American Shared Hospital Services.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: Antidepressants Market: Asia Pacific is Expected to Witness Appreciable Growth due to Rapid Economic Growth in Countries http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/antidepressants-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=19037 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Antidepressants are drugs used for the treatment of depressive disorders including dysthymia, obsessive compulsive disorder, anxiety, chronic pain, eating disorders, and neuropathic pain. Depression is a medical disorder which is related to the brain. Symptoms of depression include feeling sad and tired, lacking energy, and having difficulty enjoying routine daily activities. According to CDC, depression affects about 1 in every 5 individuals in the U.S. According to WHO (World Health Organization), at present an estimated 350 million people worldwide are affected by depression. Depression affects 10% to 15% men and about 10% to 25% of women.Browse Market Research Report @The antidepressants market has been segmented based on the drug classes commonly used for the treatment of various types of depressive disorders. There are different types of antidepressant drugs available in the market such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI), serotonin and noradrenaline reuptake inhibitors (SNRI), noradrenaline reuptake inhibitors, tricyclic antidepressants (TCA), reversible inhibitors of monoamine oxidase A (RIMA), tetracyclic antidepressants, etc. The different types of antidepressants are used in the treatment of depressive disorders.The different classes of antidepressants are as effective as each other, but some patients respond better to one antidepressant compared to another antidepressant. Side effects can also be different between these groups of antidepressants. Different types of depression disorders include dysthymic disorder, postpartum depression, psychotic depression, major or clinical depressive disorder, and seasonal affective disorder.Factors driving the antidepressants market are declining side effects and rising efficacy of drugs in various classes as well as growing geriatric population where rate of mental illness is higher. However, the overall antidepressants market growth would decrease due to patent expiry of key antidepressants, fragile pipeline of new drugs, increasing number of generic drug alternatives, and growing prevalence of treatment-resistant psychiatric disorders.Region wise, the global fermented ingredients market is segmented into five regions; North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East & Africa. North America is the most dominant market for antidepressants due to the presence of a large patient population suffering from various types of anxiety disorders and depression. However, the antidepressants market in the U.S. is currently saturated, as several antidepressant drugs are available on prescription for the same indication. Hence, the future growth of the market would depend on introduction of efficacious drugs for new indications.For more information on this report, fill the form @Moreover, loss of patent exclusivity, market maturity, generic infiltration, and shortened drug lifecycles are the additional factors that contribute to the decline in market growth in the region. Asia Pacific is expected to witness appreciable growth due to multiple factors such as high prevalence of psychiatric disorders and rapid economic growth in countries such as China, Japan, and Australia. Additionally, positive marketing approval for innovative medicines is likely to drive the market in the near future.Currently, the market is highly fragmented and competitive in nature due to the involvement of both large and small pharmaceutical companies. AstraZeneca plc, Eli Lilly and Company, Forest Laboratories, GlaxoSmithKline plc, H. Lundbeck A/S, Johnson & Johnson, Merck & Co., Inc., Pfizer, Inc. and Sanofi S.A. are major companies operating in the antidepressants market. Majority of the market players are focusing on expanding distribution network as well as expanding geographical presence, as Asia Pacific, the Middle East& Africa, and Latin America are developing regions with an increasing prevalence of various types of depressive disorders and improving economic conditions.Differences in clinical efficacy between drugs are generally small because most modern antidepressants work through a common biological mechanism. As a result, drug makers use direct-to-consumer advertising and tweak side effect profiles in order to differentiate their products.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: Global Anti-Obesity Drugs Market Trends & Industry Forecast by 2016 - 2024 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/anti-obesity-drugs-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=12461 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com https://tmrresearch.blogspot.com/ Global Anti-Obesity Drugs Market: OverviewThe World Health Organization reveals that global obesity has more than doubled since 1980, with over 1.9 billion adults overweight in 2014, of which, more than 600 million were obese. Percentage-wise, an estimated 39% of adults were overweight and 13% were obese in 2014. An additional 42 million children below the age of five were found to be overweight or obese in 2013. Based on two surveys conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an astounding 68.8% of the U.S. adult population is considered to be overweight or obese. It is no surprise, then, that today, most of the worlds population lives in countries where obesity and overweight are claiming more lives than underweight and malnutrition.This alarming rise in the prevalence of obesity, particularly in the developed region of North America, has been single-handedly propelling the anti-obesity drugs market. Anti-obesity drugs both prescription and OTC are of two main types: Centrally-acting drugs and peripherally-acting drugs. These contain a host of pharmacological agents that control or reduce weight by altering either the absorption of calories or regulating appetite.This comprehensive research publication offers clients an exhaustive database of accurate, authentic, objective, and the most recent information on the global anti-obesity drugs market. The overall market is segmented based on several key criteria and each segment is thoroughly evaluated to identify the leading and weakest categories. Statistical data and inputs from industry experts support the qualitative data offered in the report and help clients devise actionable and profitable decisions for the future.Obtain Report Details @Global Anti-Obesity Drugs Market: Key Trends and Regional OutlookThe global market for anti-obesity drugs has been expanding at a significant pace in recent years. With the obvious driving factor being the surge in obesity levels around the globe, this market is also propelled by the strong pipeline of anti-obesity drugs. Advanced medical research by drug-manufacturing companies, medical universities and institutes, and government agencies has also substantially contributed toward the growth of the anti-obesity drugs market.The anti-obesity drugs market in North America has been flourishing over the years owing to the high level of awareness among the population about obesity and the various risks arising from the medical condition, increased healthcare expenditure, the presence of favorable reimbursement policies, extensive research and development activities in the field, and the increased involvement of government as well as non-government organizations in generating awareness and funding research.The Asia Pacific market for anti-obesity drugs is anticipated to gain momentum in the coming years thanks to the rise in obese population, resulting from increased spending on processed and packaged foods and the growing consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages. Improving healthcare infrastructure and mounting healthcare expenditure is also expected to drive the market for anti-obesity drugs in APAC.Global Anti-Obesity Drugs Market: Competitive Landscape SnapshotThe leading companies operating in the global anti-obesity drugs market include Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH, Arena Pharmaceuticals Inc., Takeda Pharmaceuticals Company Limited, Zydus Cadila, Rhythm Pharmaceuticals, Merck & Co. Inc., Eisai Co. Ltd., Novo Nordisk A/S, Orexigen Therapeutics Inc., Zafgen, GlaxoSmithKline PLC, Norgine B.V., Pfizer Inc., and F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG. Owing to the increasing prevalence of obesity in several parts of the world, the degree of competition among players in the anti-obesity drugs market has been on the rise. Companies have been heavily investing in the development of agents with increased weight-loss efficacy and a high safety threshold. This gives players a greater chance of approval from regulatory bodies such as the US FDA.Companies around the globe are also focused on the development as well as successful commercialization of anti-obesity drugs that are both clinically effective and safe in the long run and also have the potential to generate massive sales and reach blockbuster status. The current portfolio of prescription weight-loss drugs and emerging anti-obesity drugs in pre-clinical or clinical trials acts as a significant force driving the global anti-obesity drugs market.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.Fill the form for an exclusive 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. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:Browse market research blog: United States Scar Treatment Market by Type & Application 2016 - 2024 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/scar-treatment-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=12509 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com https://tmrresearch.blogspot.com/ U.S. Scar Treatment Market: OverviewOften considered a concept that draws from wound care and first aid, scar treatment has emerged as a niche market promising high growth to medical device manufacturers. However, products used in scar therapy are far more advanced than conventional first-aid adhesives. Driven by innovations, demand in the U.S. scar treatment market is poised to surge exponentially between 2016 and 2024.A scar is any mark on the skin caused by injury, burns, surgery, acne, or inflammation of tissue. Scars can impact the mental and physical well-being of an individual, resulting in poor self-esteem, depression, embarrassment, and altered social interactions. Scars can be of various types depending on their age, color, shape, and sizes. The incidence of skin problems leading to scar formation is significantly high in the U.S., which is driving the scar treatment market in the country.Obtain Report Details @Additionally, the U.S. scar treatment market is significantly gaining from the easy availability of technologically advanced products with the capability of fading apparent scars. The growing geriatric population and rising consciousness about appearance among consumers are also aiding the expansion of the scar treatment market in the U.S. Increasing expenditure on personal grooming also has been boosting the U.S. scar treatment market.A comprehensive overview of the U.S. scar treatment market has been provided in the report. The factors impacting the markets growth are studied in detail. The report also presents insights into the growth drivers and restraints that are expected to influence the markets trajectory during the forecast period. Some of the companies operating in the market are profiled in the report to examine the competition prevailing in the U.S. scar treatment market.U.S. Scar Treatment Market: Key Opportunities and ThreatsThe increasing disposable income of consumers and rising economic growth are cited as reasons for the revenue generated from the increasing sale of scar treatment products. It is important to note that while the treatment of keloids and burn scars is considered medically important by regulatory bodies, the treatment of mild to medium acne and spot correction is not considered a medical necessity. However, a rise in the affluence of the population has been fuelling the demand for aesthetic corrective procedures such as dermal filling, wrinkle reduction, volume restoration, and laser treatment.Botulinum type-A injections and hyaluronic acid based dermal fillers are primarily used for aesthetically improving a persons appearance.The U.S. scar treatment market is also significantly gaining from the increasing demand for combination therapeutics in scar treatment to enhance the effectiveness of procedures and shorten the time taken for treatment.The various products available in the U.S. scar treatment market include ointments, creams, gels, oils, and sprays. These products have proven helpful in reducing redness, bumps, pain, and itching caused by scars. Since these products can mostly be applied onto scars without any medical supervision, demand for them is quite high in the U.S. Additionally, the demand for minimally invasive surgical treatments and laser treatments has also significantly increased for the treatment of more severe scars.On the flip side, some of restraints witnessed by the market include the increasing awareness about the side effects associated with the usage of scar treatment products. The high cost of scar treatment therapies also has an adverse impact on the scar treatment market in the U.S.U.S. Scar Treatment Market: Competitive InsightTo present insights into the prevailing competition in the U.S. scar treatment market, the report also profiles companies such as Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc., Johnson & Johnson Services, Oculus Innovative Sciences, Inc., and others.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.Fill the form for an exclusive 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. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:Browse market research blog: In vitro Diagnostics Market - BRICS Industry Analysis and Forecast 2016 - 2024 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/in-vitro-diagnostics-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=12959 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com https://tmrresearch.blogspot.com/ In Vitro Diagnostics Market: OverviewIn vitro diagnostics (IVD) is a suite of diagnostic tests performed using analytical instruments and reagents, on samples such as blood, stools, urine, tissues, and other body fluids. These samples are derived from patients or healthy individuals, to detect diseases or infections. Some of the significant technologies incorporated in in vitro diagnostics are polymerase chain reaction (PCR), immunoassays, and sequencing technologies. In vitro diagnostics play significant role in risk assessment, and disease monitoring. Great advances have been achieved lately, particularly in the field of clinical immunology Recombinant allergens have been investigated in diagnosing asthma and food, pollen-induced and insect allergies, in in vitro testing.Obtain Report Details @In Vitro Diagnostics Market: SegmentationThe market can be segmented across different categories such as product types, applications, end users and geography. Based on product types, the market is segmented into, instruments, data management systems and reagents & kits. Based on application, the market is further segmented into, diabetes, infectious diseases, oncology, cardiology, nephrology, HIV, and other applications. Laboratories, standalone clinics, hospitals and patients form the major end-users of the market.The in vitro diagnostic market comprises several tests such as thyroid function tests, renal function tests, lipid profiling, liver function tests, basic metabolism tests, immunoassays, Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA), radio Immunoassay (RIA), florescent Immunoassay (FIA), hematology, full blood count (RBC, WBC, and platelets), bone marrow testing, blood coagulation tests, biopsy, microbiology, and other IVD techniques.In Vitro Diagnostics Market: Regional InsightOn basis of geography, the market has been segmented into five countries Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. The BRICS IVD market is expected to have a healthy growth rate owing to the booming healthcare industry, thus driving the in vitro diagnostics market. China is expected to have the major share and is likely to remain the largest regional segment of BRICS countries, followed by Brazil, Russia, India, and South Africa.Rampant economic growth observed in BRICS countries and emerging markets enabling patient base to afford diagnostic services has resulted in steady increase in healthcare expenditure. This is likely to remain an important driver for the BRICS IVD market in coming years. Increased awareness of diseases and personalized medicines, and rising health conscious urban population, combined with growing incidences of infections and diseases, has led to rise in demand for in vitro diagnostics in BRICS countries. Large aging population and prevalence of chronic diseases, combined with government support for healthcare market will drive the in vitro diagnostics market in China.Brazil Chamber of Laboratory Diagnostics (BCLD) study demonstrated that out of the total in vitro diagnostics market, laboratories comprised 88%, followed by blood banks at 11%, whereas Point of Care (POC) testing centers comprised only 1%. Increasing healthcare budgets along with rising number of private hospitals, and income levels backed by huge untapped population base offer interesting growth opportunities for IVD market in Brazil. However lack of proper reimbursement policies and a stringent regulatory framework may hamper the market growth. IVD market in South Africa has reached a stable phase with growth concentrated around infectious diseases diagnostics. However price sensitivity, lack of reimbursement policies and labor shortages continue to prove a hindrance to the growth of IVD market in South Africa.In Vitro Diagnostics Market: Key PlayersThe in vitro diagnostics market is competitive in nature and hence possesses higher threat to new entrants. Some major players of in vitro diagnostics market comprises Roche diagnostics, Siemens Healthcare, Danaher, Abbott Laboratories, Inc., Johnson & Johnson, and Bio Rad laboratories, Inc.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.Fill the form for an exclusive 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. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:Browse market research blog: Global Semiconductor CVD Equipment Market 2016 Industry, Analysis, Research, Share, Growth, Sales, Trends, Supply, Forecast to 2021 Market Research Reports http://www.qyresearchreports.com/report/global-semiconductor-cvd-equipment-industry-2016-market-research-report.htm http://www.qyresearchreports.com/report/global-semiconductor-cvd-equipment-industry-2016-market-research-report.htm http://www.qyresearchreports.com/press-releases.htm Qyresearchreports include new market research report Global Semiconductor CVD Equipment Market 2016 Industry, Analysis, Research, Share, Growth, Sales, Trends, Supply, Forecast to 2021 to its huge collection of research reports.This market intelligence report examines extensively the trends in the global Semiconductor CVD Equipment market. It highlights the latest market state, the progress pattern in the previous years, and the prospects present for market participants in the near future. The research methods and tools employed in the achievement of this research publication are both secondary and primary. The market intelligence study also provides facts about the investments initiated by several organizations, institutions, government, and non-government authorities and regulatory bodies.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @The publication further presents a valuation of the facets that are likely to prevent or encourage the expansion of the global Semiconductor CVD Equipment market. The global Semiconductor CVD Equipment market has been examined scrupulously based on aspects such as application, technology, product, end user, and geographical segment. An examination has been carried out in the research report of the chief regional segments and their respective place and share in the Semiconductor CVD Equipment market. The estimated revenue and volume valuation of the global market for Semiconductor CVD Equipment has also been stated in the study.An estimate of the market attractiveness and the level of competition that new entrants along with their new products are likely to offer to the experienced products and players has also been delivered in the market research publication. The market report also discusses the new expansions, the innovations, branding techniques, marketing approaches, and products of the chief players operational in the global Semiconductor CVD Equipment market. The vendor landscape has been broadly scrutinized employing the Porters five forces and value chain analysis to deliver a strong conception of the market. The challenges and opportunities in the near future for the key participants have also been stressed upon in the research publication.Browse Complete Report with TOC @Table of Contents1 Industry Overview of Semiconductor CVD Equipment1.1 Definition and Specifications of Semiconductor CVD Equipment1.1.1 Definition of Semiconductor CVD Equipment1.1.2 Specifications of Semiconductor CVD Equipment1.2 Classification of Semiconductor CVD Equipment1.3 Applications of Semiconductor CVD Equipment1.4 Industry Chain Structure of Semiconductor CVD Equipment1.5 Industry Overview and Major Regions Status of Semiconductor CVD Equipment1.5.1 Industry Overview of Semiconductor CVD Equipment1.5.2 Global Major Regions Status of Semiconductor CVD Equipment1.6 Industry Policy Analysis of Semiconductor CVD Equipment1.7 Industry News Analysis of Semiconductor CVD Equipment2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Semiconductor CVD Equipment2.1 Raw Material Suppliers and Price Analysis of Semiconductor CVD Equipment2.2 Equipment Suppliers and Price Analysis of Semiconductor CVD Equipment2.3 Labor Cost Analysis of Semiconductor CVD Equipment2.4 Other Costs Analysis of Semiconductor CVD Equipment2.5 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Semiconductor CVD Equipment2.6 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Semiconductor CVD Equipment8 Major Manufacturers Analysis of Semiconductor CVD Equipment8.1 IBL International8.1.1 Company Profile8.1.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.1.3 Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Gross and Revenue8.1.4 Contact Information8.2 Immundiagnostik8.2.1 Company Profile8.2.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.2.3 Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Gross and Revenue8.2.4 Contact Information8.3 Immunodiagnostic Systems8.3.1 Company Profile8.3.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.3.3 Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Gross and Revenue8.3.4 Contact InformationList of Tables and FiguresFigure Picture of Semiconductor CVD EquipmentTable Product Specifications of Semiconductor CVD EquipmentTable Classification of Semiconductor CVD EquipmentFigure Global Production Market Share of Semiconductor CVD Equipment by Types in 2015Table Applications of Semiconductor CVD EquipmentFigure Global Consumption Volume Market Share of Semiconductor CVD Equipment by Applications in 2015Figure Industry Chain Structure of Semiconductor CVD EquipmentTable Global Semiconductor CVD Equipment Major ManufacturersTable Global Major Regions Semiconductor CVD Equipment Development StatusTable Industry Policy of Semiconductor CVD EquipmentTable Industry News List of Semiconductor CVD EquipmentTable Raw Material Suppliers and Price AnalysisFor Latest QYResearchreports Press Release Visit @QYReseachReports.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.1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United States Dairy Snack 2017 Global Key Players - Nestle SA, Danone, Dairy Farmers of America Inc., Kraft Foods, Inc., Unilever, Amul Market Analysis and Forecast to 2022 Dairy Snack https://www.wiseguyreports.com/sample-request/1154827-global-dairy-snack-market-research-report-2017 https://www.wiseguyreports.com/reports/1154827-global-dairy-snack-market-research-report-2017 https://www.wiseguyreports.com/checkout?currency=one_user-USD&report_id=1154827 www.wiseguyreports.com Dairy SnackReport Details:Global Dairy Snack market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer; the top players includingNestle SADanoneDairy Farmers of America Inc.Kraft Foods, Inc.UnileverAmulBreyersDean Foods CompanyFonterra Group Cooperative LimitedGroupe Lactalis SAMegmilk Snow Brand Co. Ltd.Meiji Dairies Corp.Parmalat S.p.AArla Foods UK Plc.Blue Bell CreameriesFrieslandCampinaSancor Cooperativas Unidas LimitedClick here for sample report @Geographically, this report is segmented into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue (million USD), market share and growth rate of Dairy Snack in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), coveringNorth AmericaEuropeChinaJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaOn the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoCheeseYogurtButterButtermilkIce CreamLactose-Free MilkOthersOn 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 Dairy Snack for each application, includingSuper Markets/ Hyper MarketsConvenience StoresGrocery StoresOnlineOthersSome Major Points from Table of content:Global Dairy Snack Market Research Report 20171 Dairy Snack Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Dairy Snack1.2 Dairy Snack Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global Dairy Snack Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category) (2012-2022)1.2.2 Global Dairy Snack Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Cheese1.2.4 Yogurt1.2.5 Butter1.2.6 Buttermilk1.2.7 Ice Cream1.2.8 Lactose-Free Milk1.2.9 Others1.3 Global Dairy Snack Segment by Application1.3.1 Dairy Snack Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.3.2 Super Markets/ Hyper Markets1.3.3 Convenience Stores1.3.4 Grocery Stores1.3.5 Online1.3.6 Others1.4 Global Dairy Snack Market by Region (2012-2022)1.4.1 Global Dairy Snack 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 Dairy Snack (2012-2022)1.5.1 Global Dairy Snack Revenue Status and Outlook (2012-2022)1.5.2 Global Dairy Snack Capacity, Production Status and Outlook (2012-2022)For Detailed Reading Please visit @7 Global Dairy Snack Manufacturers Profiles/Analysis7.1 Nestle SA7.1.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.1.2 Dairy Snack Product Category, Application and Specification7.1.2.1 Product A7.1.2.2 Product B7.1.3 Nestle SA Dairy Snack Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.1.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.2 Danone7.2.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.2.2 Dairy Snack Product Category, Application and Specification7.2.2.1 Product A7.2.2.2 Product B7.2.3 Danone Dairy Snack Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.2.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.3 Dairy Farmers of America Inc.7.3.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.3.2 Dairy Snack Product Category, Application and Specification7.3.2.1 Product A7.3.2.2 Product B7.3.3 Dairy Farmers of America Inc. Dairy Snack Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.3.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.4 Kraft Foods, Inc.7.4.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.4.2 Dairy Snack Product Category, Application and Specification7.4.2.1 Product A7.4.2.2 Product B7.4.3 Kraft Foods, Inc. Dairy Snack Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.4.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.5 Unilever7.5.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.5.2 Dairy Snack Product Category, Application and Specification7.5.2.1 Product A7.5.2.2 Product B7.5.3 Unilever Dairy Snack Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.5.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.6 Amul7.6.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.6.2 Dairy Snack Product Category, Application and Specification7.6.2.1 Product A7.6.2.2 Product B7.6.3 Amul Dairy Snack Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.6.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.7 Breyers7.7.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.7.2 Dairy Snack Product Category, Application and Specification7.7.2.1 Product A7.7.2.2 Product B7.7.3 Breyers Dairy Snack Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.7.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.8 Dean Foods Company7.8.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.8.2 Dairy Snack Product Category, Application and Specification7.8.2.1 Product A7.8.2.2 Product B7.8.3 Dean Foods Company Dairy Snack Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.8.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.9 Fonterra Group Cooperative Limited7.9.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.9.2 Dairy Snack Product Category, Application and Specification7.9.2.1 Product A7.9.2.2 Product B7.9.3 Fonterra Group Cooperative Limited Dairy Snack Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.9.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.10 Groupe Lactalis SA7.10.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.10.2 Dairy Snack Product Category, Application and Specification7.10.2.1 Product A7.10.2.2 Product B7.10.3 Groupe Lactalis SA Dairy Snack Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.10.4 Main Business/Business Overview..ContinuedBuy now @Contact Us:NORAH TRENTPartner Relations & Marketing Managersales@wiseguyreports.comPh: +1-646-845-9349 (US)Ph: +44 208 133 9349 (UK)About UsWise 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 understand how essential statistical surveying information is for your organization or association. Therefore, we have associated with the top publishers and research firms all specialized in specific domains, ensuring you will receive the most reliable and up to date research data available.WISE GUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, HadapsarPune - 411028Maharashtra, IndiaPh: +91 841 198 5042info@wiseguyreports.com Report on Global Stand-up pouches Markets Research Forecast 2017-2022 with Manufacturers, Key Vendors , Suppliers. Stand-up pouches Industry https://www.wiseguyreports.com/sample-request/59502-stand-up-pouches-market-in-the-us-2015-2019 https://www.wiseguyreports.com/reports/59502-stand-up-pouches-market-in-the-us-2015-2019 https://www.linkedin.com/company/wise-guy-research-consultants-pvt-ltd-?trk=biz-companies-cym https://www.wiseguyreports.com/checkout?currency=one_user-USD&report_id=59502 www.wiseguyreports.com stand-up pouchThis report studies the stand-up pouch on global market, focuses on the top players in US market and also the market status and outlook by type and application.Request For Sample Report @Scope of the Report:A stand-up pouch provides various features such as zipper reclosure, pour spouts, slider closures, release valves, and strong shelf presence. It also offers high clarity and excellent barrier properties to the product enclosed in it. It is mostly used in the packaging of food, beverages, fertilizers, pet food, and cosmetics. The raw materials used in the production of stand-up pouches are LLDPE, PPE, BOPP, and PE.Technavio's analysts forecast the stand-up pouches market in the US to grow at a CAGR of 9.67% over the period 2014-2019.Covered in this ReportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the stand-up pouches market in the US for the period 2015-2019. It provides the segmentation of the market based on the following criteria: application and end-user.Technavio's report, Stand-up Pouch Market in the US 2015-2019, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. It covers the market landscape and its growth prospects in the coming years. The report includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.Key Vendors Amcor Bemis Flair Flexible Packaging Sonoco ProductsOther Prominent Vendors Accredo Packaging All American Containers Cheer Pack North America Diamond Flexible Packaging Exopack Flexaco Fres-Co Systems Kendall Packaging MJS Packaging Mondi Jackson Peel Plastic Products Polymer Packaging Precision Pouches Printpack Star Packaging WinpakKey Market Driver Preference for Esthetically Appealing Products For a full, detailed list, view our reportKey Market Challenge Competition Landscape For a full, detailed list, view our reportKey Market Trend Introduction of Sustainable Stand-up Pouches For a full, detailed list, view our reportKey Questions Answered in this Report What will the market size be in 2019 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?Complete Report:Table of Contents1 Executive Summary2 List of Abbreviations3 Scope of the Report3.1 Market Overview3.2 Product Offerings4 Market Research Methodology4.1 Market Research Process4.2 Research Methodology5 Introduction6 Market Landscape6.1 Market Overview6.2 Market Size and Forecast6.3 Five Forces Analysis7 Market Segmentation by Application8 Market Segmentation by End User8.1 Segmentation of Stand-up Pouches Market in US by End Users 2014 and 20198.2 Stand-up Pouches Market in US by Beverage Manufacturers08.2.1 Market Overview08.2.2 Market Size and Forecast8.3 Stand-up Pouches Market in US by Food Manufacturers08.3.1 Market Overview08.3.2 Market Size and Forecast8.4 Stand-up Pouches Market in US by Pet Food Manufacturers08.4.1 Market Overview08.4.2 Market Size and Forecast8.5 Stand-up Pouches Market in US by Non-food Manufacturers08.5.1 Market Size and Forecast9 Buying Criteria10 Market Growth Drivers11 Drivers and Their Impact12 Market Challenges13 Impact of Drivers and Challenges14 Market Trends15 Trends and Their Impact16 Vendor Landscape16.1 Competitive Scenario16.1.1 Key News16.1.2 Vendor Analysis16.2 Other Prominent Vendors17 Key Vendor Analysis17.1 Amcor17.1.1 Key Facts17.1.2 Business Overview17.1.3 Business Segmentation17.1.4 Business Segmentation by Revenue17.1.5 Geographical Segmentation by Revenue17.1.6 Business Strategy17.1.7 Key Information17.1.8 SWOT Analysis17.2 Bemis17.2.1 Key Facts17.2.2 Business Overview17.2.3 Business Segmentation17.2.4 Business Segmentation by Revenue17.2.5 Geographical Segmentation by Revenue17.2.6 Business Strategy17.2.7 Key Information17.2.8 SWOT Analysis17.3 Flair Flexible Packaging17.3.1 Key Facts17.3.2 Business Overview17.3.3 Recent Developments17.3.4 SWOT Analysis17.4 Sonoco17.4.1 Key Facts17.4.2 Business Overview17.4.3 Business Segmentation17.4.4 Business Segmentation by Revenue17.4.5 Geographical Segmentation by Revenue17.4.6 Business Strategy17.4.7 Key Information17.4.8 SWOT Analysis18 Other Reports in this SeriesContinuedVisit to our official website on Linkedin@Continued.Buy This Report@CONTACT US:NORAH TRENTPartner Relations & Marketing Managersales@wiseguyreports.comPh: +1-646-845-9349 (US)Ph: +44 208 133 9349 (UK)Wise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. and offers premium progressive statistical surveying, market research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe. Wise Guy Reports features an exhaustive list of market research reports from hundreds of publishers worldwide. We boast a database spanning virtually every market category and an even more comprehensive collection of market research reports under these categories and sub-categoriesOffice No. 528, Amanora Chambers Magarpatta Road, HadapsarPune - 411028 Maharashtra, India Report on Global Car-sharing Markets Research Forecast 2017-2022 with Manufacturers, Key Vendors , Suppliers. Corporate Car-sharing Industry https://www.wiseguyreports.com/sample-request/59904-corporate-car-sharing-market-in-europe-2015-2019 https://www.wiseguyreports.com/reports/59904-corporate-car-sharing-market-in-europe-2015-2019 https://www.linkedin.com/company/wise-guy-research-consultants-pvt-ltd-?trk=biz-companies-cym https://www.wiseguyreports.com/checkout?currency=one_user-USD&report_id=59904 www.wiseguyreports.com Car-sharingThis report studies the Car-sharing on global market, focuses on the top players in US market and also the market status and outlook by type and application.Request For Sample Report @Scope of the Report:About Corporate Car-sharingCorporate car-sharing refers to sharing of company-owned fleet of vehicles by employees of the company for business purposes. Because of its cost-effective features and environmental benefits, companies are increasingly adopting corporate car-sharing over other mobility solutions.Technavio's analysts forecast the corporate car-sharing market in Europe to grow at a CAGR of 87.22% over the period 2014-2019.Covered in this ReportTechnavio's report, Corporate Car-sharing Market in Europe 2015-2019, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.Key Vendors ALD Automotive Group Alphabet Arval Sixt Group UbeeqoOther Prominent Vendors Autolib Cambio CarSharing DriveNow Europcar Fleetster Greenwheels Mobility Carsharing Mobility Mixx Sunfleet ZipcarMarket Driver Cost savings For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket Challenge Complexities of car-sharing For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket Trend Increased demand for corporate car-sharing For a full, detailed list, view our reportKey Questions Answered in this Report What will the market size be in 2018 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?Complete Report:Table of Contents1 Executive Summary2 List of Abbreviations3 Scope of the Report03.1 Market Overview03.2 Product Offerings04. Market Research Methodology04.1 Market Research Process04.2 Research Methodology05. Introduction06. Europe: An Overview06.1 Economic indicators06.2 Logistics performance07. Market Landscape07.1 Evolution of Corporate Mobility in Europe07.2 Market Size and Forecast by Unit Shipment07.3 Five Forces Analysis08. Market Segmentation by Typology08.1 Corporate Car-sharing Market in Europe by Typology 201408.2 Corporate Car-sharing Market in Europe by Typology 2014-201908.3 Corporate Car-sharing Market in Europe by Mobility Solution Providers08.3.1 Market Size and Forecast08.4 Corporate Car-sharing Market in Europe by CSO08.4.1 Market Size and Forecast08.5 Corporate Car-sharing Market in Europe by OEM08.5.1 Market Size and Forecast08.6 Corporate Car-sharing Market in Europe by Car Rental/Leasing08.6.1 Market Size and Forecast09. Market Segmentation by Commute Mode09.1 Corporate Car-sharing Market in Europe by Commute Mode 201410. Key Leading Countries10.1 Germany10.2 UK10.3 France11. Buying Criteria12. Market Growth Drivers13. Drivers and their Impact14. Market Challenges15. Impact of Drivers and Challenges16. Market Trends17. Trends and their Impact18. Vendor Landscape18.1 Competitive Scenario18.1.1 Key News18.1.2 Mergers and Acquisitions18.2 Other Prominent Vendors19. Key Vendor Analysis19.1 Alphabet19.1.1 Key facts19.1.2 Business overview19.1.3 Recent developments19.1.4 SWOT analysis19.2 ALD Automotive19.2.1 Key facts19.2.2 Business overview19.2.3 SWOT analysis19.3 Arval19.3.1 Key Facts19.3.2 Business Overview19.3.3 Product Categories19.3.4 Key Solutions19.3.5 Recent Developments19.3.6 SWOT Analysis19.4 Sixt19.4.1 Key Facts19.4.2 Business overview19.4.3 SWOT Analysis19.5 Ubeeqo19.5.1 Key Facts19.5.2 Business Overview19.5.3 Recent Developments19.5.4 SWOT Analysis20. Other Reports in this SeriesContinuedVisit to our official website on Linkedin@Continued.Buy This Report@CONTACT US:NORAH TRENTPartner Relations & Marketing Managersales@wiseguyreports.comPh: +1-646-845-9349 (US)Ph: +44 208 133 9349 (UK)Wise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. and offers premium progressive statistical surveying, market research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe. Wise Guy Reports features an exhaustive list of market research reports from hundreds of publishers worldwide. We boast a database spanning virtually every market category and an even more comprehensive collection of market research reports under these categories and sub-categoriesOffice No. 528, Amanora Chambers Magarpatta Road, HadapsarPune - 411028 Maharashtra, India Global Magnetic Beads Manufacturers, Market Overview, Industry Analysis, Growth Opportunities and Forecast To 2022 Magnetic Beads Manufacturers https://www.wiseguyreports.com/reports/1163237-global-magnetic-beads-market-research-report-2017 https://www.wiseguyreports.com/sample-request/1163237-global-magnetic-beads-market-research-report-2017 https://www.wiseguyreports.com/check-discount/1163237-global-magnetic-beads-market-research-report-2017 https://www.wiseguyreports.com/report-info.pdf?report_id=1163237 www.wiseguyreports.com Magnetic Beads ManufacturersWiseGuyReports Publish a Latest Market Research Report On Global Magnetic Beads Manufacturers Report 2017 Industry Research, Manufacturers, Sales, Consumption, Segmentation, Price, Revenue, Share and Forecasts to 2022.Description:Magnetic Beads 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).Browse Detailed TOC, Tables, Figures, Charts and Companies Mentioned in Magnetic Beads Market Research Report@The report firstly introduced the Magnetic Beads 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 Magnetic Beads Market;3.) the North American Magnetic Beads Market;4.) the European Magnetic Beads Market;5.) market entry and investment feasibility;6.) the report conclusion.Sample Report Request of Magnetic Beads Market Research Report@Table of ContentsPart I Magnetic Beads Industry OverviewChapter One Magnetic Beads Industry Overview1.1 Magnetic Beads Definition1.2 Magnetic Beads Classification Analysis1.2.1 Magnetic Beads Main Classification Analysis1.2.2 Magnetic Beads Main Classification Share Analysis1.3 Magnetic Beads Application Analysis1.3.1 Magnetic Beads Main Application Analysis1.3.2 Magnetic Beads Main Application Share Analysis1.4 Magnetic Beads Industry Chain Structure Analysis1.5 Magnetic Beads Industry Development Overview1.5.1 Magnetic Beads Product History Development Overview1.5.1 Magnetic Beads Product Market Development Overview1.6 Magnetic Beads Global Market Comparison Analysis1.6.1 Magnetic Beads Global Import Market Analysis1.6.2 Magnetic Beads Global Export Market Analysis1.6.3 Magnetic Beads Global Main Region Market Analysis1.6.4 Magnetic Beads Global Market Comparison Analysis1.6.5 Magnetic Beads Global Market Development Trend AnalysisChapter Two Magnetic Beads 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 Magnetic Beads Industry (The Report Company Including the Below Listed But Not All)Chapter Three Asia Magnetic Beads Market Analysis3.1 Asia Magnetic Beads Product Development History3.2 Asia Magnetic Beads Competitive Landscape Analysis3.3 Asia Magnetic Beads Market Development TrendChapter Four 2012-2017 Asia Magnetic Beads Productions Supply Sales Demand Market Status and Forecast4.1 2012-2017 Magnetic Beads Capacity Production Overview4.2 2012-2017 Magnetic Beads Production Market Share Analysis4.3 2012-2017 Magnetic Beads Demand Overview4.4 2012-2017 Magnetic Beads Supply Demand and Shortage4.5 2012-2017 Magnetic Beads Import Export Consumption4.6 2012-2017 Magnetic Beads Cost Price Production Value Gross MarginChapter Five Asia Magnetic Beads Key Manufacturers Analysis5.1 Company A5.1.1 Company Profile5.1.2 Product Picture and Specification5.1.3 Product Application Analysis5.1.4 Capacity Production Price Cost Production Value5.1.5 Contact Information5.2 Company B5.2.1 Company Profile5.2.2 Product Picture and Specification5.2.3 Product Application Analysis5.2.4 Capacity Production Price Cost Production Value5.2.5 Contact Information5.3 Company C5.3.1 Company Profile5.3.2 Product Picture and Specification5.3.3 Product Application Analysis5.3.4 Capacity Production Price Cost Production Value5.3.5 Contact Information5.4 Company D5.4.1 Company Profile5.4.2 Product Picture and Specification5.4.3 Product Application Analysis5.4.4 Capacity Production Price Cost Production Value5.4.5 Contact Information..CONTINUEDCheck Discount on Report Magnetic Beads Market @Report on Magnetic Beads Market Download in PDF Format @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.Pune, India Aerospace Carbon Fibers 2017 Global Key Players - Toray, Mitsubishi Rayon, TOHO TENAX, SGL Group, Hexcel, DuPont Market Analysis and Forecast to 2022 Aerospace Carbon Fibers https://www.wiseguyreports.com/sample-request/1154464-global-aerospace-carbon-fibers-market-research-report-2017 https://www.wiseguyreports.com/reports/1153311-global-fast-moving-consumer-goods-fmcc-packaging-market-research-report-2017 https://www.wiseguyreports.com/checkout?currency=one_user-USD&report_id=1153311 www.wiseguyreports.com Aerospace Carbon FibersReport Details:Global Aerospace Carbon Fibers market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, and revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer; the top players includingTorayMitsubishi RayonTOHO TENAXSGL GroupHexcelDuPontCommunicationse-Go AeroplanesCytec IndustriesSystron Donner InertialTencateComacBombardierGulfstreamEmbraerBellFinmeccanicaRussian HelicoptersClick here for sample report @Geographically, this report is segmented into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue (million USD), market share and growth rate of Aerospace Carbon Fibers in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), coveringNorth AmericaEuropeChinaJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaOn the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoPolyacrylonitrile-Based Carbon FiberPitch-Based Carbon FiberOn 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 Aerospace Carbon Fibers for each application, includingMilitary AviationCivil AviationGeneral AviationUAVSome Major Points from Table of content:Global Aerospace Carbon Fibers Market Research Report 20171 Aerospace Carbon Fibers Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Aerospace Carbon Fibers1.2 Aerospace Carbon Fibers Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global Aerospace Carbon Fibers Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category) (2012-2022)1.2.2 Global Aerospace Carbon Fibers Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Polyacrylonitrile-Based Carbon Fiber1.2.4 Pitch-Based Carbon Fiber1.2.4 Type II1.2.4 Type II1.3 Global Aerospace Carbon Fibers Segment by Application1.3.1 Aerospace Carbon Fibers Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.3.2 Military Aviation1.3.3 Civil Aviation1.3.4 General Aviation1.3.5 UAV1.4 Global Aerospace Carbon Fibers Market by Region (2012-2022)1.4.1 Global Aerospace Carbon Fibers 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 Aerospace Carbon Fibers (2012-2022)1.5.1 Global Aerospace Carbon Fibers Revenue Status and Outlook (2012-2022)1.5.2 Global Aerospace Carbon Fibers Capacity, Production Status and Outlook (2012-2022) For Detailed Reading Please visit @7 Global Aerospace Carbon Fibers Manufacturers Profiles/Analysis7.1 Toray7.1.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.1.2 Aerospace Carbon Fibers Product Category, Application and Specification7.1.2.1 Product A7.1.2.2 Product B7.1.3 Toray Aerospace Carbon Fibers Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.1.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.2 Mitsubishi Rayon7.2.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.2.2 Aerospace Carbon Fibers Product Category, Application and Specification7.2.2.1 Product A7.2.2.2 Product B7.2.3 Mitsubishi Rayon Aerospace Carbon Fibers Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.2.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.3 TOHO TENAX7.3.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.3.2 Aerospace Carbon Fibers Product Category, Application and Specification7.3.2.1 Product A7.3.2.2 Product B7.3.3 TOHO TENAX Aerospace Carbon Fibers Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.3.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.4 SGL Group7.4.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.4.2 Aerospace Carbon Fibers Product Category, Application and Specification7.4.2.1 Product A7.4.2.2 Product B7.4.3 SGL Group Aerospace Carbon Fibers Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.4.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.5 Hexcel7.5.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.5.2 Aerospace Carbon Fibers Product Category, Application and Specification7.5.2.1 Product A7.5.2.2 Product B7.5.3 Hexcel Aerospace Carbon Fibers Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.5.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.6 DuPont7.6.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.6.2 Aerospace Carbon Fibers Product Category, Application and Specification7.6.2.1 Product A7.6.2.2 Product B7.6.3 DuPont Aerospace Carbon Fibers Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.6.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.7 Communications7.7.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.7.2 Aerospace Carbon Fibers Product Category, Application and Specification7.7.2.1 Product A7.7.2.2 Product B7.7.3 Communications Aerospace Carbon Fibers Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.7.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.8 e-Go Aeroplanes7.8.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.8.2 Aerospace Carbon Fibers Product Category, Application and Specification7.8.2.1 Product A7.8.2.2 Product B7.8.3 e-Go Aeroplanes Aerospace Carbon Fibers Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.8.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.9 Cytec Industries7.9.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.9.2 Aerospace Carbon Fibers Product Category, Application and Specification7.9.2.1 Product A7.9.2.2 Product B7.9.3 Cytec Industries Aerospace Carbon Fibers Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.9.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.10 Systron Donner Inertial7.10.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.10.2 Aerospace Carbon Fibers Product Category, Application and Specification7.10.2.1 Product A7.10.2.2 Product B7.10.3 Systron Donner Inertial Aerospace Carbon Fibers Capacity, Production, Revenue,..ContinuedBuy now @Contact Us:NORAH TRENTPartner Relations & Marketing Managersales@wiseguyreports.comPh: +1-646-845-9349 (US)Ph: +44 208 133 9349 (UK)About UsWise 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 understand how essential statistical surveying information is for your organization or association. Therefore, we have associated with the top publishers and research firms all specialized in specific domains, ensuring you will receive the most reliable and up to date research data available.WISE GUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, HadapsarPune - 411028Maharashtra, IndiaPh: +91 841 198 5042info@wiseguyreports.com Global Mobility Technologies Market 2016 Share, Trend, Segmentation and Forecast to 2021 Mobility Technologies Market https://www.wiseguyreports.com/sample-request/1163647-global-mobility-technologies-market-research-report-2017 https://www.wiseguyreports.com/enquiry/1163647-global-mobility-technologies-market-research-report-2017 https://www.wiseguyreports.com/checkout?currency=one_user-USD&report_id=1163647 www.wiseguyreports.com Executive SummaryMobility Technologies Market :-WiseGuyReports.com adds Animal Hospitals Market 2017 Global Analysis, Growth, Trends and Opportunities Research Report Forecasting to 2022reports to its database.WiseGuyReports.Com Publish a New Market Research Report On Request a Sample Report @Mobility Technologies 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 Mobility Technologies 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 Mobility Technologies Market;3.) the North American Mobility Technologies Market;4.) the European Mobility Technologies Market;5.) market entry and investment feasibility;6.) the report conclusion.Browse Full Report Details@Some Major Points from Table of Content:Table of ContentsPart I Mobility Technologies Industry OverviewChapter One Mobility Technologies Industry Overview1.1 Mobility Technologies Definition1.2 Mobility Technologies Classification Analysis1.2.1 Mobility Technologies Main Classification Analysis1.2.2 Mobility Technologies Main Classification Share Analysis1.3 Mobility Technologies Application Analysis1.3.1 Mobility Technologies Main Application Analysis1.3.2 Mobility Technologies Main Application Share Analysis1.4 Mobility Technologies Industry Chain Structure Analysis1.5 Mobility Technologies Industry Development Overview1.5.1 Mobility Technologies Product History Development Overview1.5.1 Mobility Technologies Product Market Development Overview1.6 Mobility Technologies Global Market Comparison Analysis1.6.1 Mobility Technologies Global Import Market Analysis1.6.2 Mobility Technologies Global Export Market Analysis1.6.3 Mobility Technologies Global Main Region Market Analysis1.6.4 Mobility Technologies Global Market Comparison Analysis1.6.5 Mobility Technologies Global Market Development Trend AnalysisChapter Two Mobility Technologies 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 Mobility Technologies Industry (The Report Company Including the Below Listed But Not All)Chapter Three Asia Mobility Technologies Market Analysis3.1 Asia Mobility Technologies Product Development History3.2 Asia Mobility Technologies Competitive Landscape Analysis3.3 Asia Mobility Technologies Market Development TrendChapter Five Asia Mobility Technologies Key Manufacturers Analysis5.1 Company A5.1.1 Company Profile5.1.2 Product Picture and Specification5.1.3 Product Application Analysis5.1.4 Capacity Production Price Cost Production Value5.1.5 Contact Information5.2 Company B5.2.1 Company Profile5.2.2 Product Picture and Specification5.2.3 Product Application Analysis5.2.4 Capacity Production Price Cost Production Value5.2.5 Contact Information5.3 Company C5.3.1 Company Profile5.3.2 Product Picture and Specification5.3.3 Product Application Analysis5.3.4 Capacity Production Price Cost Production Value5.3.5 Contact Information5.4 Company D5.4.1 Company Profile5.4.2 Product Picture and Specification5.4.3 Product Application Analysis5.4.4 Capacity Production Price Cost Production Value5.4.5 Contact InformationChapter Six Asia Mobility Technologies Industry Development Trend6.1 2017-2021 Mobility Technologies Capacity Production Overview6.2 2017-2021 Mobility Technologies Production Market Share Analysis6.3 2017-2021 Mobility Technologies Demand Overview6.4 2017-2021 Mobility Technologies Supply Demand and Shortage6.5 2017-2021 Mobility Technologies Import Export Consumption6.6 2017-2021 Mobility Technologies Cost Price Production Value Gross MarginPurchase a Copy of This Report @CONTINUEDMore about WiseGuyReports:Contact Us:NORAH TRENTPartner Relations & Marketing Managersales@wiseguyreports.comPh: +1-646-845-9349 (US)Ph: +44 208 133 9349 (UK)Wise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. and offers premium progressive statistical surveying, market research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe. Wise Guy Reports features an exhaustive list of market research reports from hundreds of publishers worldwide. We boast a database spanning virtually every market category and an even more comprehensive collection of market research reports under these categories and sub-categories.WISE GUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, HadapsarPune 411028Maharashtra, India Adme-Toxicology Testing 2017 Global Market Expected to Grow at CAGR 10.65% and Forecast to 2019 ADME-Toxicology Testing Industry https://www.wiseguyreports.com/sample-request/59911-ADME-Toxicology https://www.wiseguyreports.com/reports/59911-ADME-Toxicology https://www.linkedin.com/company/wise-guy-research-consultants-pvt-ltd-?trk=biz-companies-cym https://www.wiseguyreports.com/checkout?currency=one_user-USD&report_id=59911 www.wiseguyreports.com ADME-TOXICOLOGYThis report studies the ADME-TOXICOLOGY on global market, focuses on the top players in US market and also the market status and outlook by type and application.Request For Sample Report @-market-in-china-2015-2019Scope of the Report:ADME-toxicology testing is the evaluation of the metabolism of a drug molecule and its toxicity in an organism. ADME describes the pharmacological changes of a drug inside a living organism. These studies are traditionally carried out in vivo or in vitro in a controlled laboratory environment.Technavio's analysts forecast the global ADME-toxicology testing market to grow at a CAGR of 10.65% over the period 2014-2019.Covered in this ReportThis report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global ADME-toxicology testing market for the period 2015-2019. To calculate the market size, Technavio analysts consider revenue generated from the sales of products (instruments, assays systems, software solutions, and reagents) used in the following ADME-toxicology testingtechnologies:In vivo: test performed inside a living organism for drug evaluationIn vitro: test performed in a laboratory (outside of a living cell)This report provides the details about the market in the following there regions: Americas, APAC and EMEA.Key Regions Americas APAC EMEAKey Vendors Accelrys (Dassault Systemes) Agilent Technologies Bio-Rad Laboratories Promega Sigma Aldrich Thermo Fisher ScientificOther Prominent Vendor Cyprtorex CytoPulse Entelos LI-COR Biosciences Mattek Miltenyi Biotec Molecular Toxicology Quintiles RTI Health Solutions SBW Xenobiotic Detection Systems XenometrixMarket Driver Demand from Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Companies For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket Challenge High Cost For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket Trend Advances in Technology For a full, detailed list, view our reportKey Questions Answered in this Report What will the market size be in 2019 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?Complete Report:-market-in-china-2015-2019Table of Contents1 Executive Summary2 List of Abbreviations3 Scope of the Report03.1 Market Overview03.2 Product Offerings04. Market Research Methodology04.1 Market Research Process04.2 Research Methodology05. Introduction06. Market Landscape06.1 Market Overview06.2 Market Size and Forecast06.3 Five Forces Analysis07. Market Segmentation by Product07.1 ADME-TOXICOLOGY Market in the US by Product 2014-201907.2 Liquid ADME-TOXICOLOGY Market in the US07.2.1 Market Size and Forecast07.3 Energy Shots Market in the US07.3.1 Market Size and Forecast07.4 Energy Drink Mixes Market in the US07.4.1 Market Size and Forecast08. Market Segmentation by Distribution08.1 ADME-TOXICOLOGY Market in the US Segmentation by Distribution09. Buying Criteria10. Market Growth Drivers11. Drivers and their Impact12. Market Challenges13. Impact of Drivers and Challenges14. Market Trends15. Trends and their Impact16. Vendor Landscape16.1 Competitive Scenario16.2 Market Share Analysis 201416.3 Other Prominent Vendors17. Key Vendor Analysis17.1 Coca-Cola17.1.1 Key Facts17.1.2 Business Overview17.1.3 Business Segmentation by Revenue 201317.1.4 Business Segmentation by Revenue 2012 and 201317.1.5 Geographical Segmentation by Revenue 201317.1.6 Business Strategy17.1.7 Recent Developments17.1.8 SWOT Analysis17.2 Monster Beverage17.2.1 Key Facts17.2.2 Business Overview17.2.3 Business Segmentation by Revenue 201417.2.4 Business Segmentation by Revenue 2013 and 201417.2.5 Geographical Segmentation by Revenue 201417.2.6 Recent Developments17.2.7 SWOT Analysis17.3 PepsiCo17.3.1 Key Facts17.3.2 Business Overview17.3.3 Business Segmentation by Revenue 201317.3.4 Business Segmentation by Revenue 2012 and 201317.3.5 Geographical Segmentation by Revenue 201317.3.6 Business Strategy17.3.7 Recent Developments17.3.8 SWOT Analysis17.4 Red Bull17.4.1 Key Facts17.4.2 Business Overview17.4.3 Business Categories17.4.4 Recent Developments17.4.5 SWOT Analysis17.5 Rockstar17.5.1 Key Facts17.5.2 Business Overview17.5.3 SWOT Analysis18. Other Reports in this SeriesContinuedVisit to our official website on Linkedin@Continued.Buy This Report@CONTACT US:NORAH TRENTPartner Relations & Marketing Managersales@wiseguyreports.comPh: +1-646-845-9349 (US)Ph: +44 208 133 9349 (UK)Wise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. and offers premium progressive statistical surveying, market research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe. Wise Guy Reports features an exhaustive list of market research reports from hundreds of publishers worldwide. We boast a database spanning virtually every market category and an even more comprehensive collection of market research reports under these categories and sub-categoriesOffice No. 528, Amanora Chambers Magarpatta Road, HadapsarPune - 411028 Maharashtra, India Global Industry Insight: 3D NAND Flash Memory Market Size, Share, Development, Growth and Demand Forecast to 2020 www.psmarketresearch.com/market-analysis/3d-nand-flash-memory-market www.psmarketresearch.com/industry-report/semiconductor-and-electronics www.psmarketresearch.com The global 3D NAND flash memory market is growing, due to increasing demand for solid state drives with increasing memory space for devices, such as laptops, tablets, and smartphones. The increasing need of small form factor and high memory requirement is supporting the increasing research and development activities. Electronic device manufacturers are one of the major end-users of 3D NAND flash memory. The incorporation of 3D NAND flash memory in consumer electronic products and enterprise applications is one of the major factors, providing ample growth opportunities for the global 3D NAND flash memory market in the coming years; however the low adoption of products, such as ultrabook and high initial prices are restraining the growth of the market.To Browse Full Report Visit Here:The Asia-Pacific 3D NAND flash memory market leads among the global regions, due to high presence of electronic device manufacturers in the region. In comparison to 2D or planer NAND flash memory, 3D NAND flash memory offers several advantages, such as enhanced performance, more scalability and durability, better stability, and higher level of reliability. Also, it fulfills high endurance storage and performance needs of tablets, laptops and smartphones. As 3D NAND flash memory retains data without power supply, they are also used in solid state drives; while their manufacturing process is less complicated, in comparison to other alternative technologies. This is because; it uses similar material such as that of NAND with minimal modifications in it.3D NAND flash memory is formed by arrangement of array in three-dimension on a silicon substrate. The memory cells are stimulated to the third dimension for achieving a considerable increase in density. This is done by stacking cells on the top of each other vertically or horizontally, for conducting charge through NAND strings.Browse For Related Research Visit Here:The primary buyers of 3D NAND flash memory are manufacturers of enterprise devices, such as servers and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) of consumer electronics products. The adoption of solid state drive is increasing in the enterprise server category, due to consumption of less power, and more efficiency and reliability of 3D architecture. For storage, flash memory is preferred in place of hard disk drives in notebooks and smartphones, due to resistivity of flash memory to vibrations. The ability to stream videos on the net through smart devices and large file uploading capabilities are some of the factors, expected to drive the growth of the mobile device category among the end users of 3D NAND flash memory.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:AbhishekAssistant Client Partner347, 5th Ave. #1402New York City, NY - 10016Toll-free: +1-888-778-7886 (USA/Canada)Email: enquiry@psmarketresearch.comWeb: Global Industry Insight: Arbitrary Waveform Generator Market Size, Share, Development, Growth and Demand Forecast to 2020 www.psmarketresearch.com/market-analysis/arbitrary-waveform-generator-market www.psmarketresearch.com/industry-report/semiconductor-and-electronics www.psmarketresearch.com The global arbitrary waveform generator market is growing, due to increasing requirements from communication sectors and increasing application of technology in manufacturing and military sectors. Additionally, it has been observed that enterprises are switching from traditional function generators to advanced performance producing arbitrary waveform generators. The advantage of using arbitrary waveform generator over archival function generators is that the performance of equipment can be enhanced, and it is also cost effective for the computing capabilities and applications. Some of the factors supporting the growth of the global arbitrary waveform generator market are limitations of conventional function generators, reduced operating expenses of manufacturing sector, and alignment of arbitrary waveform generator substructure based on machine requirements.To Browse Full Report Visit Here:The Asia-Pacific market is expected to grow with the highest rate in the coming years, due to increased emphasis on manufacturing with high cost sensitivity and increased spending in research and development by various governments of the countries of the region. The European market is also expected to grow with a considerable rate in the coming years, due to increasing revenues from industries such as communications, aerospace and defense, and manufacturing. The market in Africa and Middle East are expected to mature in the coming years, due to shift in emphasis for effective manufacturing and policies of production center management.In the measurement paraphernalia and overall test industry, the arbitrary waveform generator market is growing with a considerable rate. Among all the end users, education sector is leading the market due to applicability of waveform generators in all the technical universities, colleges, and schools. Among all the applications of, the global arbitrary waveform generator market, the medical and automobile segments are growing, due to materialization of human computer interaction. The usage of arbitrary waveform generator is also increasing in commercial applications, due to advanced integrity in direct digital synthesis integrated circuits.Browse For Related Research Visit Here:The increased adoption of arbitrary waveform generator in armed forces, defense and aerospace sectors is also supporting the growth of the global market. The installation of arbitrary waveform generator has been made compulsory in some simulation purposes in the military research and development sector. The technology also supports the training of military personnel. In the previous years, many products were launched in the market from several test equipment vendors. One of the major trends observed in the market is increasing deployment of arbitrary waveform generator in new end user applications.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:AbhishekAssistant Client Partner347, 5th Ave. #1402New York City, NY - 10016Toll-free: +1-888-778-7886 (USA/Canada)Email: enquiry@psmarketresearch.comWeb: Automotive Wiring Harness Market to Reach US$ 91.53 Bn by 2025 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-37 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/askus/rep-gb-37 www.futuremarketinsights.com Future Market Insights (FMI) recently announced the release of its report titled Automotive Wiring Harness Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2015-2025. According to the report, the global automotive wiring harness market was valued at US$ 36.82 Bn in 2014 and is anticipated to reach US$ 91.53 Bn by 2025, expanding at a CAGR of 8.7% throughout the forecast period.Automotive Wiring Harness Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe global automobile industry registered an annual growth rate of over 5.5% from 2010 to 2015, and is estimated to be valued at US$ 5.1 trillion by end of 2015. Consistent growth in the parent industry is expected to fuel demand for automotive wiring harness in the near future.Currently, increasing fuel costs and stringent government regulations regarding CO2 emissions are boosting demand for electric vehicles in regions such as North America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe and Asia Pacific.Governments across various geographies have mandated use of certain electronic safety features such as Anti-Lock Braking System (ABS), Electronic Stability Program (ESP) and other features in both passenger and commercial vehicles. Furthermore, rise in demand for high-end electronics and safety features in vehicles, particularly passenger cars, along with cost reduction and enhanced reliability is leading to increase in global demand for automotive wiring harnesses.Automotive Wiring Harness Market TrendsUse of automotive Ethernet by automotive OEMs represents a new trend in the external as well as internal electronics devices connectivity in an automobile. These automotive Ethernets minimise the use of complex wiring harness structures to a great extent and, thereby, may act as a restraint for growth of the global automotive wiring harness market in the coming years.Request For Sample@Rise in technological developments is expected to create favourable growth opportunities in the market in the near future. Growing demand for connectivity and car digitisation, which not only helps establish connectivity within the integral parts of a vehicle but also enables communication with other vehicles through improved and intelligent roadway infrastructure, is an emerging trend in the market.Automotive Wiring Harness Market SegmentationRegion-wise, APEJ (Asia Pacific Excluding Japan) dominated the global automotive wiring harness market in 2014, accounting for 38.3% value share of the overall market. Furthermore, APEJ is foreseen to expand at a relatively high CAGR of 10.4% during the forecast period and is expected to maintain its revenue share dominance till 2025 end. Rise in automotive production and sustained economic growth are some of the factors driving the APEJ automotive wiring harness market currently.North America and Western Europe are expected to register high Y-o-Y growth during the forecast period, owing to increasing demand for e-vehicles and e-bikes in these regions. Growth of the connected car market has resulted in rise in demand for multiple electronic devices in vehicles in North America and Western Europe.Japan is currently witnessing moderate growth in demand for e-bikes, and the trend is expected to continue during the forecast period as well. The Japan automotive wiring harness market is expected to register a sluggish CAGR of 4.0% during the forecast period, due to the matured automotive industry in the country.On the basis of vehicle type, the passenger vehicles segment dominated the global automotive wiring harness market in 2014 in terms of revenue, and is foreseen to expand at a CAGR of 8.6% during the forecast period. In terms of revenue, the hybrid vehicles and electric vehicles segments are expected to register significant CAGR between 2015 and 2025, in view of the stringent government regulations and growing fuel prices globally.On the basis of application type, the chassis & safety segment dominated the global automotive wiring harness market in 2014 in terms of revenue, accounting for 40.8% share of the overall market. This segment is expected to lose its market share to the HVAC segment, which is projected to expand at a significant CAGR of 10.1% during the forecast period. Furthermore, HVAC manufacturers are designing new eco-friendly devices in order to follow the environment standards along with introducing new innovating designs.Send An Enquiry@Automotive Wiring Harness Market: Key CompaniesKey market players covered in the report include YAZAKI Corporation, Aisin Seiki Co., Samvardhana Motherson Group (SMG), Delphi Automotive PLC, Fujikura Ltd., Sumitomo electric Industries, Ltd., Lear Corporation, LEONI AG, Furukawa Electric Co., Ltd. and PKC Group PLC.Most players in the market are engaged in various activities, such as mergers and acquisitions, increasing investments in technological and product developments, geographical expansion and brand building via strong marketing strategies, in order to sustain their position in the competitive 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: Exhaust Sensor Market Analysis and Value Forecast Snapshot by End-use Industry 2017-2027 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-3249 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-3249 www.futuremarketinsights.com Exhaust Sensors sense the exhaust from the automobile and determine the appropriate fuel mixture in order to reduce the emissions from the exhaust. Exhaust sensors are primarily used in automotive industry and they are very important for automobile efficiency, safety, comfort and for monitoring emissions. Due to increasing environment awareness among the people and increasing global warming led various governments to implement strict exhaust norms on emissions. These norms and regulations imposed by government encourages exhaust sensors manufacturers to improve their engineering and target market with advanced products and technology. Exhaust sensors are commercially attractive market which can grow at faster rate.In past couple of years exhaust sensor market witnessed a few technological advancements such as adoption of Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS), as a result of which manufacturers are able to manufacture miniaturized form of advanced sensors with increased accuracy, reliability and its response time which enables integrators to easily deployable into vehicles.Request Report Sample@Market drivers & challenges:Thedemand for exhaust sensor is likely to increase due to strict emission norms worldwide and due to growing automobile market. Many automobile manufacturers are readily implementing electronics instruments into the vehicles for the sack of safety, comfort ability and stability, which increases demand for exhaust sensors into the automobiles. Recently mergers and acquisitions have been observed by key players of exhaust sensor market in order to expand their market share. In order to meet governmentguidelines, automobile manufacturers are installing large number of exhaust sensor in their vehicles.Manufacturers also investing largely in R&D facilities to create more efficient exhaust sensors in order to sustain in highly competitive world, which is a major factor driving global exhaust sensor market.Market Segmentation:Exhaust sensor market is segmented on the basis of sensor type, type of vehicle and geography.On the basis of sensor type global exhaust sensor market is segmented into oxygen sensor, particulate matter sensor, exhaust temperature sensor, NOx sensor, engine coolant sensor and mass air flow sensor.On the basis of vehicle type, global exhaust sensor market is segmented into motorcycle, passenger car, light commercial vehicle and heavy commercial vehicle.Global exhaust sensor market is also segmented on the basis of region like North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe Asia pacific and Middle East & Africa. Among all aforementioned regions Asia Pacific region is expected to dominant the market due to high sell of cost effective sensors provided by Chinese manufacturers across the globe.Market overview & Key Market Players:Europe is second most contributor of exhaust sensors in the exhaust sensor market as majority of key players have establishments in Europe and also introduction and adoption of Euro norms is fuelling the growth of exhaust sensor market in the region.Request For TOC@Global exhaust sensors market have several established key players and also medium and small scale enterprises. The global players are expanding their reach by mergers and acquisitions and small & medium enterprises struggle to meet the quality and also to comply with the norms and regulations laid down by regional government.Few of exhaust sensor market key players include Robert Bosch GmbH, Denso Corporation, Sensata Technologies Inc., Hitachi Automotive systems Ltd, Continental AG, Delphi Automotive, ABB etc 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.compress@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: Global Animal Healthcare Market Revenues to Surpass $35 Billion by 2016-end http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-431 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/askus/rep-gb-431 www.futuremarketinsights.com Animal healthcare has become a focus area for many pharmaceutical companies in past decade. The particular market has become even more important because of greater instances of animal disease outbreaks coupled with large scale factory farming that requires high quality animal feed additives, vaccines as well as hygiene management products.The global animal healthcare market is estimated to value at US$ 32,081.5 million in 2014 and expected to reach 43,032.1 million by 2020, reflecting a CAGR of 5.1% during forecast period. The animal healthcare market is expected to show major growth in feed additives segment due to rising demand of meat, milk and egg worldwide.The market has been accessed by product type as feed additive, pharmaceuticals and vaccines for both companion/pet and production/farm animals.Request Report Sample@Feed additive segment was valued at US$ 14,998.3 million in 2014 with 46.8% market share. Currently, feed additives account for the largest market and is expected to gain further market share to maintain its dominant position through the forecast period. Pharmaceuticals accounted for the second largest market share with 37.0% market share in 2014. Vaccines segment was valued at US$ 5,204.6 Mn in 2014 and is expected to reach US$ 6,901.4 Mn by 2020 reflecting a CAGR of 4.9% between 2015 and 2020.By animal type, production animal accounts for the major market share with 65.1% in 2014. It was valued at US$ 20,871.7 Mn in 2014 and is expected to reach US$ 27,791.6 Mn by 2020. In contrast, companion animal segment accounted for 34.9% market share in terms of revenue, but is expected to grow faster than the production animal segment for various pharmaceuticals and vaccines. The companion animal segment was valued at US$ 11,209.8 Mn in 2014 and is projected to reach US$ 15,240.5 Mn by 2020.Geographically, the market is segmented into five regions namely North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Middle East & Africa (MEA). Europe and North America together constituted more than 63% of the market share in 2014 which is expected to come down to 61.4% by 2020. Major growth is expected to come from Asia Pacific, Latin America, MEA and some East European countries. Asia Pacific which is one of the highest producer of animal meat in the world is expected to consume highest amount of feed additive followed by North America. North America and Western Europe is a potential market for companion animal products whether it be pharmaceuticals or vaccines.Consumers demand for natural products and food processors demand for transparent labelling would drive the demand of Animal Healthcare categories. Furthermore, development in micro-encapsulation techniques and packaging innovation would give thrust to carotenoid market. Government regulations are highly supportive towards the use of natural products, thus there are numerous supply side and demand side drivers fuelling the expansion of Animal Healthcare market globally.Send An Enquiry@Over the last decade, various independent entities have emerged as standalone animal healthcare companies to fulfill the ever-increasing demand for feed additives, veterinary drugs, and vaccines. Animal healthcare market has also seen some very important mergers and acquisitions to acquire expertise in developing new drugs/active pharmaceutical ingredients. The market is also highly potential for branded generic drugs in as most of the blockbuster drugs are now off-patent. Greater investment in R&D to develop new drugs would fetch animal healthcare companies greater profits in the coming 15-20 years.Some of the market leaders across the globe are in the pharmaceutical & vaccine segment of animal healthcare market includes Zoetis, Inc. (Pfizer), Merck & Co., Inc. (Intervet), Eli Lilly and Company (Elanco/Novartis), Bayer Healthcare AG, Ceva Sante Animale, Virbac S.A, Vetoquinol SA, Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH, Nutreco N.V. and Sanofi S.A. (MERIAL Limited). Major animal feed additive manufacturers are Cargill Inc. (Provimi), ADM Alliance Nutrition, Koninklijke DSM N.V and Evonik Industries AG among 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.compress@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: Ortho-Xylene Market : Quantitative Market Analysis, Current and Future Trends, 2014 - 2020 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-157 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-157 www.futuremarketinsights.com Xylenes are petrochemicals produced by catalytic reforming and coal carbonization in the manufacture of coke fuel. They are used in various industries and medical technology as a solvent. It occurs naturally in coal, wood tar and coal among others. Xylenes are mainly produced as a part of the BTX aromatics. They are derived from various sources within a refinery including pyrolysis gasoline, toluene disproportionation and reformate among others. Reformate accounts for over three fourths of mixed xylenes market. There are three types of xylenes, viz., ortho-xylene, meta xylene and para xylene.Ortho-xylene is a commercial isomer of xylene. It is a hydrocarbon based on benzene with two methyl substituents bonded to the aromatic ring. It is liquid at room temperature. It is used extensively for producing phthalic anhydride (PAN)-primarily dio-octyl phthalate for PVC. The major use for PAN is for producing plasticizers which are largely used in automobile and construction industry. In addition, it is used in solvent based paints. It is extracted by means of distillation from xylene stream in a plant designed for para-xylene production. It is a constitutional isomer of m-xylene and p-xylene. Moreover, it is produced with its isomers paraxylene, metaxylene and ethylbenzene. Friedel Crafts alkylation of toluene yields a mixture of ortho-xylene .This reaction gives a pure form of o-xylene. Furthermore, it is used in alkyd resins having wide applications in the coating industry. It has a large demand in the petrochemical industry.Request For Report Sample@The growing construction industry coupled with burgeoning development in the automobile industry is expected to drive the demand for ortho-xylene within the forecast period. Additionally, the growing paints and adhesive industry is expected to fuel the demand for ortho-xylene further over the next few years. However, acute inhalation or exposure to ortho-xylene in humans results in irritation of eyes and neurological effects. Furthermore, chronic exposure of ortho-xylenes results in central nervous system effects, cardio-vascular and kidney effects. It reacts violently with oxidants causing fire and explosion hazard. Thus, stringent regulations on use of ethylene are expected to hamper the ortho-xylene market in near future.In Asia, prices of xylene are anticipated to weaken due to weak downstream conditions in the purified terephthalic acid and paraxylene sectors. Global manufacturing coupled with supply chain and access to feedstock are the key strengths of the companies involved in the ortho-xylene market.Asia Pacific is expected to be the fastest growing regional market within the forecast period on account of the growing chemical industry and in turn, rapid industrialization. China dominated the otho-xylene production in 2011 and this trend is expected to continue within the forecast period. In India, Reliance Industries is a manufacturer of ortho-xylene with a capacity of 150 KTA. Consumption of ortho-xylene in Eastern Europe and Russia is expected to be strong on account of the thriving construction industry.Request For TOC@The major players in the ortho-xylene market are Creasyn Finechem (Tianjin) Co., Ltd., Doe & Ingalls of North Carolina Inc., DynaChem Inc, Minda Petrochemicals Ltd, Shell Chemicals, Sonoco Chemicals, U.S. Petrochemical Industries Ltd. and Puritan Products, Inc. among others. Ortho-xylene projects by major companies are planned in China, Taiwan and Singapore within the forecast period.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.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: Asia Pacific Industrial Solvents Market : Dynamics, Segments, Size and Demand, 2014 - 2020 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-ap-280 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-ap-280 www.futuremarketinsights.com A solution is defined as a mixture of two or more substances with uniform chemical and physical properties. Every solution consists of two basic components as solvent and solute. The main purpose of the solvent is to convert substances into a suitable form for a particular use, with its ability to dissolve, suspend or attract other materials. Solvents once used can be discarded, reused or recycled in an eco-friendly manner. Usually industrial solvents are liquids but they can also be present in the form of solids and gases. The importance of solvent is brought about the most important fact that, many substances exhibit their greater usefulness when dispersed in a solution.Industrial solvents are typically used as ingredients in formulation of products or processing auxiliaries in manufacturing. The physical and chemical properties of a solution can be best utilized by making use of proper choice of solvents, thus making themsuitable for use into a variety of processes and methods of industrial applications.Industrial solvents market has significantly changed the modern living and made solvents one of the most valuable and useful products for various end user industries and manufacturing companies. On the basis of application, industrial solvent market is segmented as pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, printing ink, paints & coatings, and adhesives. Some of the more important uses of industrial solvents are in electronic industry, pesticides, photographic reproduction and textile industries. Large quantities of industrial solvents are also involved in oil refining and recovery, dry cleaning, rubber and polymer, fuel additives and metal degreasing. Most of the solvents in industrial solvents market are primarily used as dissolution agent in various industries which accounts for about half of market share followed by cleansing, degreasing and purification. The growing demand from pharmaceutical, paints and coating industry is fueling the global demand for industrial solvent market.Request For Report Sample@On the basis of product types, industrial solvents market can be segmented intooxygenated, hydrocarbon, and halogenated. These have been further segmented into alcohols, glycols, ketones, ethers, glycol ethers and esters for oxygenated solvents, aromatic and aliphatic solvents for hydrocarbon, perchloroethylene, methylene chloride, trichloroethylene for halogenated solvents. The other possible segmentation of industrial solvents market can be done on the basis of raw materials such conventional and green, whilst green industrial solvents market is expected to show high CAGR during the forecast period.On the basis of end use, the industrial solvents market is segmented into manufacturing industrial solvents and non-manufacturing industrial solvents. Manufacturing industrial solvents market as of 2013, commanded dominant market share whereas sub-segments of non-manufacturing industrial solvents market such as transportation and cleaning are anticipated to register high growth rate during the forecast period.Rapid industrialization in developing economies and chemical sales have led to significant demand for industrial solvents market. Industrial solvents market is anticipated to grow at higher pace in countries such as China, India and other developing countries due to potential growth in industrial value added over the past few years.Global industrial solvents market is expected to grow significantly with an increasing demand from pharmaceuticals, paints and coatings industry. As of 2013, APAC was the predominant industrial solvents market, followed by Europe and North America and is expected to maintain its dominant position during the forecast period.The growth in the construction and automobile industries with comparatively less strict environment regulations is fuelling the demand for industrial solvents market in the APAC region. Availability of abundant labour and petrochemical feedstock are major drivers for growing demand in APAC industrial solvents market, and is also one of the major reasons to attract manufacturers in the APAC region. The growth in pharmaceutical, paint & coatings industry in emerging economies such as India and China is playing a significant role in industrial solvents market. However, strict legal regulations and growing environmental awareness amongst end user industries are major restraints for industrial solvents in the APAC region. Penetration of bio based and green solvents is the new rising trend in the APAC industrial solvents market.Request For TOC@Key players in the industrial solvents market include Arkema, BASF SE, BP PLC., Diacel Chemical Industries Ltd, Exxon Mobil Corporation, Lyondell Basell Industries, Royal Dutch Shell Plc., PetroleoBrasileiroS.A, Dow Chemical and Total S.A. Asia Pacific industrial solvents market has become a global manufacturing hub which is attracting major players to set up their manufacturing plants and target high growth markets such as India and China. Upcoming opportunities with increasing preference of green solvents, continuous research and development and product innovation is anticipated to drive growth in industrial solvents market in the coming future.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: Europe Will Remain Dominant in Yacht Charter Sales, Global Revenues to Surpass US$ 878 Mn through 2026 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-543 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/askus/rep-gb-543 www.futuremarketinsights.com Europe to be the leading regional market in the global yacht charter market over the forecast periodThe rapidly developing global yacht charter market is encouraging new players to enter the market and is also ushering in technological advancements in yachts and improving the services offered by yacht charter companies. Various associated businesses such as yacht management, which assists in the construction of new yachts are also fast emerging. Yacht charter companies are focussing on vertical integration with major yacht manufacturers to increase their revenue.Request Report Sample@The global yacht charter market is estimated to witness a steady growth rate in the coming decadeGrowing number of bookings by young customers and increasing collaboration between online yacht charter mediators and flight booking service providers are key trends observed in the global yacht charter market. Online yacht charter service providers are collaborating with leading travel agencies to offer combined yacht and airline packages. New promotional booking methods are allowing customers to book boat trips while booking their flight tickets. Also, this strategy is being increasingly adopted by online mediators as a direct response to growing customer inclination towards considering the proximity of airports for booking yachts. Yacht charter services have witnessed significant adoption from younger travelers looking to experience sailing holidays. A majority of young customers are first-time boaters, who often celebrate events such as birthdays and weekend parties in luxury yachts to make it unique and memorable.Send An Enquiry@Currently, the number of offline yacht charter bookings is substantially high; however, the emergence of online yacht charter service providers has proved to be a useful marketing platform for vendors operating in the global yacht charter market and is expected to attract an increasingly large number of young customers over the forecast period.yacht charter market_image for preview analysisEurope yacht charter market is expected to gain significant market share by 2026 over 2015The North America yacht charter market was valued close to US$ 150 Mn in 2015 and is likely to reach a valuation of more than US$ 200 Mn by 2026, registering a CAGR of 3.3% during the assessment period. The North America yacht charter market is expected to represent absolute $ opportunity of US$ 4.4 Mn in 2017 over 2016. Customers in North America prefer to visit charter destinations in large groups to primarily enjoy the benefits of group discounts offered by various yacht charter companies and also to reduce personal spending by sharing expenses among themselves. In the U.S., consumers are more inclined towards yachts that provide comfort rather than performance. Moreover, as most consumers in the region are tech savvy, yacht charter companies focus on providing customers with yachts that are equipped with the latest technology.In Eastern Europe, Turkey attracts the maximum number of tourists. This country is the most popular charter destination. Motor yacht is mostly used in this region by yacht service providers. These yachts are strong build, spacious and backed by good engines. Revenue from the yacht charter market in Europe is expected to increase 1.4X over the forecast period. The Europe yacht charter market is anticipated to be valued at more than US$ 500 Mn by the end of 2026, expanding at a CAGR of 3.4% over the forecast period. Several suitable market conditions are likely to expedite the growth of the Europe yacht charter market in the years to come. The yacht charter market in the Middle East is projected to witness a moderate growth during the forecast period. In 2015 the Middle East yacht charter market crossed a market valuation of US$ 10 Mn and is likely to stay below US$ 25 Mn till the end of 2026.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: Global Intelligent Pigging Services Market Expected to Expand at a CAGR of 6.3% due to Stringent Government Regulations and Technological Advancements in Intelligent Pigging Services http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-390 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/askus/rep-gb-390 www.futuremarketinsights.com Global Intelligent Pigging Services Market OverviewGlobal intelligent pigging services market is projected to account for US$ 826.5 Million by 2025 at an estimated CAGR of 6.3% during the forecast period. Globally, the estimated oil & gas pipeline network is approximately 3.5 million km long. Pipeline operators are responsible for maintaining smooth functioning of the pipelines. The most important aspect for pipeline operators is maintaining pipeline integrity. Oil & gas pipelines are subject to many problems such as corrosion and wax deposition, which can result in mishaps and directly affect functioning of the pipeline. A pig (pipeline inspection gauge) is a device that can travel through pipelines for inspection and maintenance purposes. Pigs can be used to inspect and clean the pipeline. In-line pigs are used for analysing pipeline condition and provide accurate information about the same. As pipelines transport valuable fluids, overall infrastructure of the pipeline is expensive and needs regular maintenance in order to ensure smooth functioning and longevity. Pipeline operators are investing in pigging technology to aid efficient maintenance of the pipeline infrastructure. Intelligent or smart pigs use electronic chips to record data about condition of the pipeline which is used to analyse and resolve the problem in the pipeline.Market SegmentationRequest Report Sample@Technology OverviewOn the basis of technology, the market is segmented into magnetic flux leakage (MFL) and ultrasonic test (UT). The MFL technology segment contributed around 66.6% share of market revenue in 2014. MFL technology segment is identified the fastest growing segment during the forecast period, expanding at a CAGR of 6.5%. The UT technology segment is expected to register a CAGR of 6.1% over the forecast period.Regional OverviewNorth America is estimated to dominate the market and account for around 48.5% share of the global market, followed by Eastern Europe and Middle East & Africa by the end of 2015. The North America intelligent pigging services market is estimated to be valued at US$ 216.7 Million by the end of 2015, which is projected to account for US$ 401.2 Million by 2025. Eastern Europe and Middle East & Africa are estimated to be the other major contributors to the global market the end of 2015; contribution from these regions is estimated to account for 19.4% and 8.8% shares respectively. Though, Latin America accounted for miniscule share in the global market, it is expected to register a CAGR of 8.6% during the forecast period.DriversIncreasing consumption of petroleum products and natural gas is expected to fuel demand for intelligent pigging services market globally. In addition, economic revival in regions such as Eastern Europe, Western Europe & North America and economic growth in regions such as APEJ and Latin America is expected to propel growth of the global intelligent pigging services market over the forecast period. As demand for innovative inspection technologies is growing across the globe, OEMs/vendors are investing in R&D activities to innovate inspection technologies to further enhance efficiency of pig. This is expected to further fuel growth of the global intelligent pigging services market over the forecast period.TrendsVarious OEMs offer comparatively smaller intelligent pigs as compared to conventionally used pigs equipped with sophisticated and small size electronic systems. Due to invention of small intelligent pigs, inspection and maintenance of small-diameter pipelines is possible. Pipeline inspection includes other costs such as travel, evaluation and data analysis costs apart from standard inspection costs. According to our primary respondents, intelligent pigging service costs are expected to increase over the next 10 years. To avoid increased maintenance costs, pipeline operators are entering into long-term contracts with intelligent pigging service vendors/OEMs.Send An Enquiry@Competition LandscapeKey players across the supply chain in the global intelligent pigging services market include OEMs/vendor of intelligent pigging services and oil & gas explorers and producers. The OEMs/vendors that we have analysed in the report are LIN SCAN, T.D. Williamson, Inc., Baker Hughes Incorporated, GE Oil and Gas (PII Pipeline Solutions), NDT Global and Enduro Pipeline Services Inc. The oil & gas explorers and producers that analysed in this report are Petrobras, OMV Group, ConocoPhillips and Royal Dutch Shell Plc.In future, OEMs/vendors should continue investing in the North America and Eastern Europe market exploring untapped avenues. At the same time, APEJ and Latin America are expected to generate significant demand for intelligent pigging services. OEMs/vendors should focus on improving combinational technologies, as combinational inspection technologies are superior to individual technologies that are currently available.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: Absinthe Market In-Depth Market Research Report 2017 2027 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-3195 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-3195 www.futuremarketinsights.com Absinthe is a distilled and highly alcoholic beverage containing 45-74% of alcohol. Absinthe is derived from flowers and leaves of grand wormwood along with green anise, sweet fennel and other medicinal herbs. Absinthe was originated in Switzerland and was popular in artists and writers. Absinthe contains traces of thujone chemical compound which is considered as harmful to human. Traditional absinthe are made from white grapes, they are also made from grain, beets, or potatoes nowadays. Painkilling, sedative and antiparasitic properties of absinthe makes it useful in medical industry as it helps improving metabolism, protects from stomach pain, remove intestinal worms, relief stress and calm the nerves. Absinthe is prohibited in some of the countries due to its harmful effects and its use as hallucinogen drug.Market Segmentation:Absinthe market is segmented on the basis of application in food and beverage industry, cosmetic industry, medical industry. In food and beverage industry, absinthe is used in food recipes such as oysters Rockefellers, sorbet, Michelin etc. to enhance the flavour and taste of food. In cosmetic industry, absinthe is used for its anti-inflammatory, anti-microbial and insect repellent properties for cleansing purposes. In medical industry as a medicine for cough, also it is used as intoxicating agent.Request Report Sample@Absinthe market is segmented on the basis of type as absinthe blanche, absinthe amber, absinthe verte, absinthe ordinaire, absinthe reve pastis, absinthe bohemian, absinthe liqueur, premium absinthe etc. Absinthe balance have green color with mild taste and is little sweet for consumption. Absinthe amber is named over its amber color obtained from herbs from which it is prepared. Absinthe verte have bitter taste and contains 70% alcohol. Absinthe bohemian is made without aniseed and is popular in European countries. In absinthe liqueur, aniseed ingredient is replaced with lemon or other fruit extract to obtain fruit flavour in absinthe.Absinthe market is further segmented on the basis of regions as North America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Latin America, Asia Pacific Excluding Japan, Japan, and Middle East and Africa.Market Regional Outlook:On the basis of regions, the absinthe market has been segmented into North America, Latin America, Western and Eastern Europe, Asia-Pacific region, Japan, Middle East and Africa. France and Switzerland are the maximum exporters of absinthe globally. Absinthe is also popular in Spain, Great Britain, the U.S. and Czech Republic as alcoholic beverage. Absinthe is legal in all those countries where alcohol is legal which in turn increasing demand for this spirit is increasing in global market.Market Drivers and Trends:Absinthe is trending in global market as a result of its medicinal benefits such as it stimulates digestive tract by enhancing saliva, stomach acid and digestive enzyme production. Absinthe has application in treating parasitic worm infection too. Increasing demand of cosmetics in market is also responsible for increasing demand of absinthe as it is used as an anti-inflammatory, anti-microbial and insect repellent product in industry. Use of absinthe in food industry has seen increasing due to property of absinthe in enhancing flavours and taste of food products. Absinthe is also an alcoholic beverage consumed globally and is increasing demand in global market which has shown significant growth in forecast period.Request For TOC@Absinthe Market Key Players:Some of the key players in the Absinthe market include La Fee Absinthe, Lucid Absinthe Superieure, Kubler Absinthe Superieure, La Clandestine, Hill's Liquere North America, Doubs Mystique, Duplais Verte, Pacific Distillery, Alandia GmbH & Co. KG, Butterfly absinthe, Jade Liqueurs LLC, Philadelphia Distilling Company, Teichenne, S.A., Milan METELKA a.s, RUDOLF etc. are among these.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: Bonded Abrasives Market : In-Depth Market Research Report 2015 2025 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-357 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-357 www.futuremarketinsights.com An abrasive is a material that when rubbed against a surface, producesthe desired surface finish and shape. Abrasives are usually minerals that are often available in a wide range of shapes, sizes and types. They are usually used to clean, grind, scour, abrade or remove the solid material usually by using impact or by the rubbing action. Abrasives are mainly classified as bonded abrasives, steel abrasives, coated abrasives, loose abrasives grain and raw super abrasives, among others. The abrasives material or the abrasives product finds various applications in industries such as electrical & electronics, machinery, metal fabrication and transportation among others.Bonded abrasives are the natural or synthetic abrasive grains which are usually bonded into a solid form. Bonded abrasives are usually made of the abrasive grains that are closely sized and molded or pressed to produce a wide variety of the products. Bonded abrasives are usually in the shape of a wheel. The products range of the bonded abrasives also includes the snagging wheel, mounted wheel, grinding and the cut-off wheel, cones and plugs. Bonded abrasives are mainly used for precision grinding, cutting, rough grinding, lapping, sharpening and light grinding among others.Request For Report Sample@The growing automobile industry is expected to boost the overall growth of the bonded abrasives market. Bonded abrasives are widely used in giving the required surface finish as well as the desired design to the automobiles. The increasing demands for the advanced technology based machineries are further expected to boost the demand for the bonded abrasives. The bonded abrasives help in the super finishing of the machine shaft in order to achieve the required roughness. The bonded abrasives are used in providing the smooth finish to the various tools and the machineries that are manufactured. The bonding abrasives are used in the polishing as well as deburring of the bore holes on the machine blocks. Regular maintenances of the workshops further boost the overall demand for the bonded abrasives market. The increasing use of the bonded abrasives for de-scaling and for the rust and dust removal has augmented the overall growth for the bonded abrasives market. The bonded abrasives are also widely used in the medical sector. Bonded abrasives are used to sharpen the dental tools. The bonded abrasives are also used for smoothening of the edges of the dental tools such that it is extremely convenient for the doctors to use the dental tools on the patients.The bonded abrasives segment accounts for the largest share within the global abrasives market. North America is expected to be the largest market for the bonded abrasives. The growing demand especially in U.S is expected to boost the growth of the global bonded abrasive market. Europe is expected to be the next largest consumer of the bonded abrasives especially due to the growing demand especially in Germany. Asia Pacific is expected to be fastest growing market for the bonded abrasives market mainly due to the presence of various end-use industries especially in China and India.Request For TOC@Norton, 3M, Baystate, Tyrolit, Treibacher and Noritake among others are some of the key participants of the global bonded abrasives market. Companies are extensively conducting research in order to develop and introduce new products in the market such that they can efficiently cater the needs for the specific application.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: Anisic Aldehyde Market : Key Growth Factors and Industry Analysis 2015-2025 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-479 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-479 www.futuremarketinsights.com Scented products are chosen by a large number of inhabitants. Considering daily life, products containing fragrance are preferred, consumed and utilized which in turn has resulted in increase in demand for global anisic aldehyde market. Anisic aldehyde also known as para-methoxybenzaldehyde is a clear colourless pale yellowish liquid with powerful aroma. Being an organic compound, it is used in both natural and synthetic form to provide fragrance and flavour. Anisic Aldehyde, form of speciality chemical is increasingly cited as a trigger to produce more scented and odourless products. It is found in vanilla aroma and in essential oils of fennel and anise. It is produced commercially by methoxytoluene using manganese dioxide. It can also be created by oxidation of anethole (an allied fragrance that is found in alcoholic beverages). Owing to its good persistence, it is widely used in perfumery and pharmaceuticals applications.Anisic Aldehyde Market: Drivers & RestraintsThe demand for anisic aldehyde is constantly rising with growth in fragrance & flavour, pharmaceuticals and personal care industry. An advanced chemical, physical & efficient property of anisic aldehyde drives the demand for global anisic aldehyde market. With progress in the global pharmaceutical market followed by high consumption in cosmetics and personal care, the global anisic aldehyde market is likely to expand at double digit CAGR during the forecast period (2016-2025). However, unexpected fluctuation in raw materials along with government regulations is acting as a restraint in the growth of global anisic aldehyde market.Request For Report Sample@Anisic Aldehyde Market: SegmentationOn the basis of end-user, the global anisic aldehyde market has been broadly segmented into:Perfumes & FragrancesPharmaceuticalsPersonal & Home CareOthersOn the basis of regions the global acetophenone market has been segmented into North America, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Middle East & Africa, Asia-Pacific and Japan.Anisic Aldehyde Market: Region-wise OutlookThe global anisic aldehyde market is expected to register a double-digit CAGR for the forecast period. India and China is the major manufacturing hub for anisic aldehyde. As of 2015, Asia Pacific, and Western Europe dominates the global anisic aldehyde market in terms of market revenue. U.S., Australia and South Africa are few other countries having a large consumer base for speciality chemicals like anisic aldehyde. India, China & Japan are projected to expand at a substantial growth and will continue to contribute to the global anisic aldehyde market value, exhibiting a robust CAGR during the forecast period, 2016?2025.Request For TOC@Anisic Aldehyde Market: Key PlayersSome of the key market players in global bariatric surgery devices market are BASF SE, Atul Ltd, Neshiel Chemical Pvt Ltd, Parchem, AscentFinechem Pvt ltd and Elan Chemical Company and Nandolia Organic Chemicals Pvt Ltd, Global Essence, among many 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: Jojoba Oil Derivatives Market set to record exponential growth by 2024 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/12607 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/12607 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com Global jojoba oil derivatives market is segmented on the basis of product type, application and region. Based on Product type, global jojoba oil derivatives market is segmented into lipids, esters, alcohol, wax, proteins, and others. Among these jojoba oil derivatives segments, lipids and wax segments contributes major market share. Based on the application, global jojoba oil derivatives market is segmented into cosmetic & personal care products ingredients, food, lubricants, waxes, other applications. Among these jojoba oil derivatives segments, cosmetic & personal care products ingredients contributes to higher market share in terms of value. On the basis of region, global jojoba oil derivatives market is segmented into five regions, North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa.North America and Europe is the leading market for jojoba oil derivatives due to increasing demand of surging alternative bio lubricant feedstock, rapid technological innovations, and high investment on research and development in these regions. Asia-Pacific is projected to grow at a substantial growth due to large consumer base, and high disposable income will contribute to the global jojoba oil derivatives market value exhibiting a robust CAGR during the forecast period, 2016-2024.Jojoba oil is the liquid which is extracted from the seed of jojoba plant. Jojoba seeds are mainly produced in Arizona, California, and in Mexico. Jojoba seed can produce 50.0% of its weight of oil, which mainly contains free fatty acids like palmitic acid, stearic acid, oleic acid, arachidic acid, behenic acid, erucic acid, eicosenoic acid, lignoceric acid, and nervonic acid. Due to high content of free fatty acids in jojoba oil derivatives are beneficial for skin, due to which jojoba oil derivatives are mainly used in cosmetics and personal care products.Jojoba oil is a liquid wax which composed of acids and contains no glycerides which makes it unique vegetable oil. Due to high nutrient properties of jojoba oil in comparison to other vegetable oil such as corn, olive, peanut, soybean and castor makes it healthy substitute.Jojoba oils pureness, resistance to rancidity, and lack of smell, sort it as natural base for ointments and creams. Jojoba oils sulfurized or sulfurhalogenated derivatives can have high lubricity and a long performance life. Jojoba oil can also have positive use in antifoaming agents, detergents, disinfectants, driers, emulsifiers, fibers, plasticizers, protective coatings, resins, and surfactants.The factors driving the jojoba oil derivatives market are significant growth in overall cosmetic industry, increasing alternative bio lubricant feedstock demand particularly in developed markets of North America and Europe, high nutritional value of jojoba oil derivatives, and Increasing concern regarding side effects of chemicals and synthetic additives used in food and beverages and in cosmetics is fuelling demand for natural alternatives like jojoba oil derivatives in the market.However, long-term jojoba oil production varies on the regular supply of resources and capabilities to replace industrial oil with various applications at comparable price. Production yield of the crop highly varies on the farming method. The seeds takes more than five years to become completely accessible. This possibly will act as a major barrier for the market.A sample of this report is available upon request @The global jojoba oil derivatives market is anticipated to expand at a healthy CAGR in terms of value and volume, during the forecast period (20162024). Factors such as increasing urge of the consumers for living a healthy lifestyle, coupled with increasing alternative bio lubricant feedstock demand, is fuelling the market growth across the globe.Request to view table of content @Some of the key participating player in global jojoba oil derivatives market are Vantage Specialty Ingredients, Inc., Charkit Chemical Corporation, ECO OIL ARGENTINA, Desert Whale Jojoba Company, Purcell Jojoba International, Egyptian Natural Oil Co., Mosselman s.a, LaRonna Jojoba Company, and others.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb: Impact of Existing and Emerging Biologics Contract Manufacturing Market Trends 2017-2027 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-2679 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-2679 www.futuremarketinsights.com Biologics are genetically engineered proteins which originate from human genes. These drugs target the specific parts of the immune system. Biologics are entirely different from chemically synthesized drugs. There is wide range of biologics products include vaccines, blood components, allergenic, somatic cells, gene therapy and recombinant therapeutic proteins. Biologics are constituted as nucleic acids or proteins or may be cells and tissue from living entities. Biologics are isolated from different sources such as animal, human or microbes by using different biotechnological methods. Biologics are a complex mixture, and it is heat sensitive product and highly susceptible to microbial contamination. Therefore manufacturing of biologics needs very aseptic environment and skilled professional. Hence, the demand for biologic contract manufacturing has shown subsequent growth. The pharmaceutical companies are signing an agreement with CMOs for the manufacturing of biologics.Biologics Contract Manufacturing Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe factors driving the growth of biologics contract manufacturing are growing number of drug development by traditional pharmaceutical companies and the entrance of various small manufacturers in the pharmaceutical market. Increasing rate of drug approval by FDA and number drugs in the pipeline has also boosted the growth of biologic contract manufacturing market. Increase in generic drugs competition and rise in patent expiry has also propelled the growth of biologics contract manufacturing market. Increasing geriatric population and increasing the prevalence of diseases such as cancer are driving the growth of biologic contract manufacturing market. Production of biologics requires highly skilled professional and aseptic environment which will restrain the growth of this market. Beside that production of biologics are very complex and costly method which can again hamper the growth of this market.Request For Report Sample@Biologics Contract Manufacturing Market: SegmentationBased on product type biologics contract manufacturing market is segmented into followingAntisenseCell TherapyGene TherapyGrowth FactorsInterferonsMonoclonal AntibodiesRecombinant HormonesRNA InterferenceVaccinesOthersBased on indication biologics contract manufacturing market is segmented into followingAutoimmune DisordersBlood DisordersCancerCardiovascular DiseasesDigestive DisorderEye ConditionGenetic DisorderInfectious DiseasesMusculoskeletal DisordersNeurologic DisordersRespiratory DisordersSkin DiseasesOthersBased on geography biologics contract manufacturing market is segmented into followingNorth AmericaLatin AmericaWestern EuropeEastern EuropeAsia Pacific excluding JapanJapanMiddle East and AfricaBiologics Contract Manufacturing Market: OverviewBiologics contract manufacturing is expected to show significant growth over the forecast period. Biologics cover around 10-15% of revenue from overall revenue generated by leading pharmaceutical companies. Biologics contract manufacturing market is expected to show double growth in every five years. This market is growing because of traditional pharmaceutical companies are unable for meet the need required for the production of biologics, besides that they are also the lack of skilled professional. Biologic contract manufacturing market can be classified by product type and indication. On the basis on product type biologic contract manufacturing market is classified as antisense, gene therapy, cell therapy, growth factors, interferons, monoclonal antibodies, recombinant hormones, RNA interference, vaccines and others. From all product type monoclonal antibodies is expected to dominate the biologic contract manufacturing market.Biologics Contract Manufacturing Market: Regional OverviewRegion-wise contract manufacturing market is classified as North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia-Pacific excluding Japan, Japan, Middle East and Africa. North America is expected to dominate the biologics contract manufacturing due to rise in FDA approval in last decade. Western Europe and Asia-Pacific then follow this market. Western Europe is projected to show subsequent growth due to the high availability of skilled professional for the production of biologics. Asia-Pacific region is expected to show the fastest growth over the forecast period owing to rise in the number of CMOs.Visit For TOC@Biologics Contract Manufacturing Market: Key PlayersSome of the key players in biologics contract manufacturing market are Boehringer Ingelheim, Lonza, FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies U.S.A., Inc., Rentschler Biotechnologie GmbH, Celonic AG, AutekBio Co. Ltd., WuXiAppTec, Kemwell Biopharma, Shasun Pharma, Intas Pharmaceuticals, Syngene, Piramal Pharma Solutions, AAIPharma Services, Alpax Pharmaceuticals, Cantab Biopharmaceuticals Ltd, 3P Biopharmaceuticals, and BIBITEC GmbH.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 Voice over LTE Market Analysis & Trends 2016-2025: Market Trends and Key Developments |The Insight Partners http://www.theinsightpartners.com/reports/voice-over-lte-market http://www.theinsightpartners.com/sample/TIPTE100000325 http://www.theinsightpartners.com/discount/TIPTE100000325 http://www.theinsightpartners.com/buy/TIPTE100000325 Latest market study on Voice over LTE Market to 2025 - Global Analysis and Forecasts by Technology, the report include key understanding on the driving factors of this growth and also highlights the prominent players in the market and their developments.Browse market data tables and in-depth TOC of the Voice over LTE Market to 2025 @Voice over LTE (VoLTE) is a technology evolved for the transmission of voice as data packets over the existing telecom network for its faster and efficient transmission due to the increasing call traffic and cost optimization demands. In the VoLTE technology analog calls are sent in the form of packets, like data is transmitted over the network. With this, consumers can call using the OTT applications instead of calling from the communication service provider's network. This reduces the calling costs for the end consumer."The report aims to provide an overview of Global Voice over LTE Market along with detailed segmentation of market by technology and five major geographical regions. Global voice over LTE market is expected to witness aggressive and exponential growth during the forecast period due to increasing demands of reduction in the calling prices, reduction in call drops and need for faster & efficient transmission of calls over the network.Request Sample Copy @The objectives of Voice over LTE Market report are as follows: To provide overview of the global Voice over LTE market To analyze and forecast the global Voice over LTE market on the basis of technology To provide market size and forecast till 2025 for overall Voice over LTE market with respect to five major regions, namely; North America, Europe, Asia Pacific (APAC), Middle East and Africa (MEA), and South America (SAM), which are later sub-segmented across respective major countries To evaluate market dynamics effecting the market during the forecast period i.e., drivers, restraints, opportunities, and future trend To provide exhaustive PEST analysis for all five regions To profiles key voice over LTE players influencing the market along with their SWOT analysis and market strategiesInquire about discount on this report @Segmentations Covered in the Voice over LTE Market Technology: Circuit Switched Fall Back (CSFB), Voice over IP Multimedia Subsystem (VoIMS), Voice Over LTE Via Generic Access Network (VOLGA), Single Radio Voice Call Continuity (SRVCC), Dual Radio/Simultaneous Voice and LTE (SVLTE) Geographical Analysis: North America, Europe, Asia Pacific (APAC), Middle East & Africa (MEA), South America (SAM)Some of the leading players in Voice over LTE Market Report AT&T Inc. Verizon wireless Communications Alcatel-Lucent Huawei Technologies Ltd. Ericsson SK Telecom T-Mobile US, Inc. D2 Technologies LG Uplus Corp. K2 Corporation.Why Buy Voice over LTE Market Report? Highlights widely used product offerings thereby allowing organizations to gain revenues by focusing majorly on select products The key findings and recommendations highlight crucial progressive industry trends in the Voice over LTE market, thereby allowing players across the value chain to develop effective long term strategies Get reliable information about the strategies manufacturers in this market use to drive revenue Gain insights into the competitive landscape, to strengthen market competitiveness and positioning Highlights key business priorities in order to assist companies to realign their business strategies Develop/modify business expansion plans by using substantial growth offering developed and emerging markets Scrutinize in-depth global market trends and outlook coupled with the factors driving the market, as well as the those hindering it Enhance the decision-making process by understanding the strategies that underpin commercial interest with respect to client products, segmentation, pricing and distribution Examine the current and future impact of the five forces namely: bargaining power of suppliers, bargaining power of buyers, threat of substitutes, threat of new entrants and degree of competitionProcure Full Report @About The Insight Partners:The Insight Partners is a one stop industry research provider of actionable intelligence. We help our clients in getting solutions to their research requirements through our syndicated and consulting research services. We are a specialist in Technology, Media, and Telecommunication industries.Contact Us:Call: +1-646-491-9876Email: sales@theinsightpartners.com505, 6th floor, Amanora Township,Amanora Chambers, East Block,Kharadi Road, Hadapsar, Pune-411028 Robotic Aseptic Syringe Filler Capper Market Growth, Demand and Key Players to 2027 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-3239 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-3239 www.futuremarketinsights.com Aseptic syringe filling is a profoundly risky process due to multiple contaminations that are reported each year, leading to serious repercussions. Mortality rate of 15% was reported owing to contamination by parenteral products. Out of this 15%, 2 out of 10 contagions were due to the erroneous pharmaceutical manufacturing processes. This lead to a serious debate over the introduction of a manufacturing process with less human interference and an aseptic environment. The introduction of robotics in packaging line has been the much-anticipated innovation owing to the flexibility, affordability, and adaptability offered by the robotics system. Since the equipment required by the pharmaceutical and medical manufacturers is complex, the introduction of robotics provides more prominent adaptability, minimizes human contact with the packaging machinery, improvisations in the quality control, efficient operations and enhanced operator safety. Aseptic Syringe fillers are used for unit dose medication in the healthcare industry. Robots are anticipated to be utilized for 27 percent of essential packaging for therapeutic devices by 2018, contrasted with only 3 percent in 2013. For pharmaceuticals, robots are relied upon to deal with 34 percent of packaging operations, up from 21 percent in 2013.Robotic Aseptic Syringe Filler/Capper: Market DynamicsThe key driver of this market is the increasing need for highly repeatable and reproducible system for packaging by customers to avoid any risk of contamination. Moreover, minimizing safety hazard for both patients and operators is also fuelling the robotic aseptic syringe filler/capper market. Sterile drug requirement and easy programmability of the robots are also one of the key drivers of the market. One restraining factor involved in the robotic aseptic syringe filler/capper market is the initial cost of production which is comparatively higher than the traditional filler systems. The increasing preference for efficient, highly sterile and less erroneous systems is likely to create an opportunity for the robotic aseptic syringe filler/capper market. Incorporation of robotics in the packaging system is itself a trend for this market as large number of industries are incorporating robot systems in their packaging line to garner maximum efficiency.Request Report Sample@Robotic Aseptic Syringe Filler/Capper Market: Market SegmentationThe robotic aseptic syringe filler/capper market can be segmented on the basis of end-use market, application, packaging type and geography. On the basis of end use, the robotic aseptic syringe filler market can be segmented into pharmaceuticals, healthcare and food and beverage market. With considerable demand arising from the pharmaceutical sector, it is the largest market for the aseptic syringe filler. The food and beverage industry is further segmented into beverages, dairy products etc. By application, the market can be segmented into analytical & small batch production, pharmaceuticals, proteins & potent products, personalized therapies and drug manufacturing. On the basis of packaging type, the robotic aseptic syringe filler market can be segmented into primary packaging and secondary packaging. On the basis of geography, the market can be segmented into Middle-East and Africa (MEA), North America, Asia Pacific (APAC), Europe and Latin America.Robotic Aseptic Syringe Filler/Capper: Regional OutlookGeographically, the robotic aseptic syringe filler/caper market can be segmented into Middle East and Africa (MEA), North America, Asia-Pacific (APAC), Europe and Latin America. North America is currently leading the market due to increasing health concerns followed by Europe. The Robotic aseptic syringe filler market is still in its niche stage in the Asia Pacific region but is expected to grow in the forecast period owing to expanding working population of the Indian and Chinese economy. The demand for aseptic syringe fillers is projected to gradually grow in the United States over the forecast period.Request For TOC@Robotic Aseptic Syringe Filler/Capper: Key playersThe key players of the robotic aseptic syringe filler market are ESS Technologies Inc. (U.S.), Steriline Srl (Italy), Vanrx Pharmasystems Inc. (Canada),AST Inc. (U.S.) and Staubli Corporation (U.S.), Marchesini Group SpA (Italy).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: Internet Of Things (IoT) Market Shares, Emerging Evolution, Advancement, Strategies, And Forecasts, Worldwide, 2017 To 2023 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/1054302 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/publisher/5 The 2017 study has 678 pages, 240 tables and figures. Worldwide Internet of Things (IoT) markets are poised to achieve significant growth with the use of sensors, cameras, and platforms that are used to help implement precision digital control and send alerts for all manner or management of devices and machinery. Visualization and digitization let people better control any device or mechanical thing.Providers of Industrial IoT aim to implement asset efficiency solutions. Designing the asset efficiency solution, developing the application, adapting advanced engineering knowledge for the use cases, and supplying the information platform is the composite task of the analytics engine. IBM is a premier supplier of an analytics engine with its Watson product.There is enormous variety in the Internet of things markets. Bosch supplies industrial IoT sensor technology, acquiring data from the edge, providing device management. Scalability is achieved by the Bosch IoT Suite and ProSyst IoT middleware. The Vorto code generator enables M2M modelling. PTC supplies the Thingworx Application Enablement Platform (AEP), used for creating dashboards, widgets and other user interface elements. Intel provides the Moon Island Gateway used for data aggregation at the edge, as well as horizontal infrastructure in collaboration with HP.Download Sample Copy Of This Report :Hitachi analytics is used to diagnose manufacturing process. Hitachi uses its analytics platform to integrate production and sensor data outputs to help visualize, analyze and diagnose a manufacture polymer mixing problems. A polymer mixing process was said to be producing inconsistent output quality, with yields dipping to 50%. Hitachi addressed the scrapping of poor batches and huge costs by addressing ever-changing product specifications and variations in a range of production parameters. Using IoT and the analytics platform, production engineers were able to stabilize the process even as new product formulations were introduced.The Internet of Things (IoT) is the next Industrial Revolution. It will impact the way all businesses, governments, and consumers interact with the physical world. 1 Gbps and 10 Gbps speed has been used in data centers for years. The jump to 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps has come rapidly as a result of the need to increase the quantity of data managed inside the data center with more analytics and more applications. Many of the Cloud 2.0 mega data centers have moved to 100 Gbps, presaging the move to 400 Gbps.One reason for the increase in speed is the growth of data consumption, attributed to smartphones, social media, video streaming, Internet of Things (IoT), and big data. Big pipes are used to cope with the huge quantities of data that are being transferred.Users, partners, suppliers and other mega-datacenters communicate using digital systems that are automated and self-healing. The effect on the business is compelling, managers have much more responsibility to create maps of strategy and work with IT to see that developers tune the software to fit the current competitive environment.The explosion of data comes from smart phone apps and IoT digital onslaught of streaming data that needs to be processed in real time to look for anomalies, look for change, set alerts, and provide automated response to shifts.Get More Published Reports By Winter Green Research Market Research Reports:Transparency is one of the benefits of IoT that sensors bring to digital controls. The benefits of digital manufacturing, farming, and automotive vehicles are higher productivity and more efficient use of resource. Transparency in is being asked for by consumers. Consumers want to know where their food came from, how much water and chemicals were used in food preparation, and when and how the food was harvested and transported. They want to know about consistent refrigeration during transport.Use of IoT sensors and cameras represents a key milestone in provision of value to every industry. Customized cameras are used to take photos and videos with stunning representations. Digital controls will further automate flying and driving, making ease of use, flight stability, and automated cars a reality. New materials and new designs are bringing that transformation forward. By furthering innovation, IoT continued growth is assured.The worldwide market for Internet of Things (IoT) is $16.3 billion in 2016 anticipated to reach $185.9 billion by 2023. Sensors and software analytics platforms are implemented with connectivity capability for streaming data from endpoints and using analytics to process the data in a manner that generates alerts when appropriate. The complete report provides a comprehensive analysis of Internet of Things (IoT) in different categories, illustrating the diversity of uses for digital tracking devices in industry, healthcare and consumer markets. Analytics makes the images more cogent to everyone, farmers, doctors, machine operators, the uses of IoT are quite diverse. Letting people anticipate problems that only become visible to humans days or weeks after the sensors and images detect issues is a fundamental aspect of IoT, along with generating apocopate levels of alerts. Not too many and not too few.MarketResearchReports.biz supports your business intelligence needs with over 100,000 market research reports, company profiles, data books, and regional market data sheets in its repository. Our document database is updated by the hour, which means that you always have access to fresh data spanning over 300 industries and their sub-segments.State Tower90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948(USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz Ethernet Switch Market Dynamics, Segments, Size and Demand, 2017 - 2027 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-3248 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-3248 www.futuremarketinsights.com Most business uses a switch to connect computers, printers, servers and other devices within a building or campus to form a network. Switch is a cost effective solution which increases business productivity by allocating resources and sharing information across the business network. Global Ethernet switch market is estimated to cross US$ 5 Bn in 2015 and is expected to expand with a healthy CAGR during forecast period owing to increasing demand for Ethernet switches in manufacturing industry. Also, for past few years, increasing investment of IT decision makers on Ethernet infrastructure has been witnessed due to macro-economic developments and maturing IT architectures, which further beef up the demand for Ethernet switch across the globe.Global Ethernet Switch Market: Market DynamicsAs the demand for bandwidth & high data speed is continuously increasing along with growing number of internet users across the globe hence, Ethernet switch market is expected to experience decent growth during forecast period.Request Report Sample@In the global Ethernet switch market, due to intense competition vendors are more focused to target market with cost efficient and advanced technology, as top vendors are coming up with emerging terabit networking where terabit routing and switching takes place. Key drivers help to move global Ethernet switch market forward are; increased digital data traffic over the existing network and the rapid increasing demand for bandwidth, rising market of data centers, increase in cloud storage adoption by different organizations are few of them. On the flip side the key restraints acting as hurdles for the growth of Ethernet switch market are; Ethernet switches (mainly unmanaged ones) are difficult to install and use, they often need training personals if network goes down.Global Ethernet Switch Market: SegmentationGlobal Ethernet switch market is segmented on the basis of product types, end-user, verticals and geography. On the basis of product types, global Ethernet switch market is segmented into modular Ethernet switches and fixed configuration Ethernet switches. Fixed configuration Ethernet switch segment is further sub segmented into unmanaged switch, smart switches and managed L2 and L3 switches. Among aforementioned product type segments, demand for modular switches is more specially in industrial application because of its flexible nature which allows end user to add expansion modules (such as firewall, wireless and network analysis) into switch as per their requirement. On the basis of end user, global Ethernet switch market is segmented into small enterprises, medium enterprises and large enterprises. On the basis of verticals, global Ethernet switch market is segmented into automotive, consumer packaged goods, education, energy, financial services, government, healthcare, hospitality and life sciences.Request For TOC@On the basis of Geography, global Ethernet switch market is segmented into seven reason which are given below; North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan), Japan as a separate region and Middle East & Africa. Among all the regions, APEJ holds maximum market share in global Ethernet Switch market. A key driver of this growth is buyers in China as well as the Cloud, which is helping to move the market forward.Global Ethernet Switch Market: Competition OverviewGlobal Ethernet switch market has witnessed drastic change in its supply chain; In traditional networking supply chain, contract manufacturers used to provide cost effective manufacturing supply to OEMs and these products were rebranded by OEMS with high gross margin and then reached to end user through distributors or resellers whereas, in new networking supply chain, original design manufacturers supply these products to OEMS or directly to end users. This evolution in supply chain results in reduction of selling price of network products by more than 60% compared to traditional supply chain. The augmented global demand for data centers is the key driver for the growth of this market. Due to increasing application of big data analytics and cloud-based services in various end-user segments, the global demand for data centers is expected to increase. This increase in the number of data centers is envisaged to fuel the adoption of Ethernet switches and routers during the forecast period.Key PlayersSome of few key players of global Ethernet switch market are Brocade Communications Systems, Inc., Allied Telesis, Inc., Linksys, TP-Link, Juniper Networks, TRENDnet, Inc., Hewlett-Packard, D-Link Corporation, Cisco Systems, Inc., NETGEAR Inc., Cisco Systems, Inc. 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: Anti-Static Bubble Pouch Market Volume Analysis, Segments, Value Share and Key Trends 2017-2027 www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-2820 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-2820 www.futuremarketinsights.com Handling and shipping of electronic goods and items can be very risky and it requires more than just standard bubble wrap or bubble bags to protect them from any damage in transit. Static can cause problems within the components in a standard bubble bag or pouch, as sealed air is used to produce cushioning in standard bubble bags that protects the fragile item. However, it has an ability to generate static electricity when handled, which can damage integrated circuits and other essential electronic parts and therefore, the importance of anti-static bubble pouch comes into picture that also offers the same cushioning safety as normal bubble wrap along with static protection.Anti-static bubble pouches are made from PET (Polyethylene Terephthalate) that protects the sensitive electronic components against static discharge. Mostly, anti-static bubble pouches or bags are self-sealed and are tinted pink as this color signifies antistatic properties within the packaging industry. The self-seal on these pouches provides an easy closure solution and the bubble offers protection against fragile items. The anti-static bubble pouches are produced using air retention technology, which prevents the bubble cells from collapsing and provides thick, long-term protection from shock and abrasion. The anti-static bubble pouches with lip and tape eradicates the danger of static electricity when storing and shipping electronic components. This type of packaging also protects goods from any external damages. The anti-static bubble pouch does not leave any scratch on sensitive items as these are non-abrasive. In addition, the anti-static bubble pouches are side welded that further provides burst proof strength and also protection from moisture.Request For Report Sample@Anti-Static Bubble Pouch Market Dynamics:The increasing shipments of electronic devices is considered as the major factor driving the growth in the anti-static bubble pouch market. Furthermore, the growth in ecommerce is also expected to fuel the growth in the anti-static bubble pouch market. The growing automotive industry is another factor that is accelerating the growth in the anti-static bubble pouch market, as automotive industry frequently comes up with technological developments to augment its functionalities and uses components like ICs and semiconductors that leads to increased demand for semiconductor wafers and in turn its packaging material like anti-static bubble pouch. In addition, the growth in the demand for smart devices like smart phones, smart wearables, smarts TVs etc. has fueled the growth in the anti-static packaging including the anti-static bubble pouch market. However, rising regulations against the use of plastics in several countries can act as a restraint in the anti-static bubble pouch market.Anti-Static Bubble Pouch Market Segmentation:On the basis of end use, the global anti-static bubble pouch market is segmented into:ElectronicsAutomotiveConsumer goodsIndustrial goodsOthersOn the basis of color, the global anti-static bubble pouch market is segmented into:PinkClear/transparentOn the basis of type, the global anti-static bubble pouch market is segmented into:Flat bagsZipper topButton closureFlexiloop handlePatch handleOthers (drawstring etc.)Anti-Static Bubble Pouch Market- Regional Outlook:Geographically, the anti-static bubble pouch market can be segmented into North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia-Pacific (APAC) and Middle East & Africa (MEA). In terms of region, Asia Pacific is expected to be the dominating region and is projected to witness the maximum growth in the anti-static bubble pouch market primarily driven by the developing economies. China, Korea are considered to be the major manufacturers of electronic devices and components, likewise countries like India and China are witnessing huge growth in the demand for smartphones, these two factors together act as a major driving force for growth in anti-static bubble pouch market in Asia Pacific. North America and Europe are also expected to experience an above average growth in the anti-static bubble pouch market.Visit For TOC@Anti-Static Bubble Pouch Market- Key Players:Some of the leading players identified across the globe in the anti-static bubble pouch market are: Smurfit Kappa Group PLC, LPS Industries, LLC, SECO Industries, Staples, Inc., Sancell Pty Ltd, Sealed Air Corporation, Uline, Inc., Kite Packaging Ltd., 3A Manufacturing Ltd etc.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: Cananga Odorata Flower oil Market set to record exponential growth by 2024 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/12718 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/12718 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com The market of Cananga Odorata (Ylang Ylang) flower oil is expected to be driven by its high perfumery and medicinal values. Owing to its gentle fragrance, it has found wide application in the perfumes and aromatherapy treatments. It provides various health benefits such as relief from anxiety, stress, blood pressure and depression. The flower oil can also heal the wounds, and treated as a remedy in hair fall. Some of the macro-economic factors such as population growth, recovered GDP, and increased disposable income are fueling the growth of Cananga Odorata (ylang ylang) flower oil market during the reviewed period. Apart from this, rising demand of aromatic flavors in perfumes, shift from synthetic to natural products, and growing emphasis of preventive health care practices among health conscious consumers also propels the growth of Cananga Odorata (ylang ylang) flower oil.Cananga odorata is also known as the cananga tree, is a large evergreen tropical tree originated in the rain forest of various Asian and South Pacific Islands such as Indonesia, Philippines, Polynesia, Sumatra, Java, and Comoro. The essential oil of Cananga odorata can be extracted by the steam distillation of its fresh flowers called ylang ylang. The essential flower oil has found wide usage in aromatherapy owing to its pleasing fragrance. Cananga odorata (ylang ylang) flower oil has emerged as an essential perfumery ingredient with strong demand in floral and oriental compositions. Ylang ylang flower oil is of high medicinal value due to its properties such as an antidepressant, antiseptic, antiseborrhoeic, hypotensive, aphrodisiac, nervine, and sedative substance. The high growth of cananga odorata (ylang ylang) flower oil is attributable to its perfumery and medicinal applications.The segmentation of Cananga Odorata (Ylang Ylang) flower oil market is based upon application, and geography. On the basis of application, Cananga Odorata (Ylang Ylang) Flower oil market is segmented into food & beverages, medical, personal care, and others. Cananga Odorata (Ylang Ylang) Flower oil is used as a preservative and flavoring agent in the food and beverages application. The increasing health consciousness of consumers has escalated the demand of Cananga Odorata (Ylang Ylang) Flower oil in the medical segment. The personal care segment is expected to grow at a rapid pace in the Cananga Odorata (Ylang Ylang) flower oil market owing to the rising demand of aromatic flavors as well as fragrances in personal care products such as perfumes and cosmetic products. Additionally, the increased demand of spa and relaxation applications due to the change in life-style is anticipated to fuel the market growth in upcoming years.Request to view table of content @On the basis of geography, Cananga Odorata (Ylang Ylang) flower oil market is segmented into five different regions namely North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Middle East and Africa. The market size of Cananga Odorata (Ylang Ylang) flower oil is expected to be prominent in the European region owing to the rising awareness and increasing demand of cosmetics and beauty products, medicines, and nutraceuticals. Europe was followed by North America to emerge as the second major region in the Cananga Odorata (Ylang Ylang) Flower oil market. Factors such as highly developed industries, increasing per capita income, subsidies and tax benefits from the government, contribute vitally to growth of the market in the North America region. Asia Pacific region is projected to be the fastest growing market owing to the change in life style and increased awareness about health benefits of the products derived from natural sources.A sample of this report is available upon request @The players in the Cananga Odorata (Ylang Ylang) Flower oil market focuses upon the integration across the value chain to attain cost-benefit ratio in the longer run. Some of the key players in the Cananga Odorata (Ylang Ylang) Flower oil market include Biolandes SAS, doTerra International, Sydney Essential Oils Co., The Lebermuth Co., Inc., Young Living Essential Oils, Farotti Essenze, and Essential Oils of New Zealand, among others.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb: Food Ingredients Sterilization Market set to record exponential growth by 2024 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/12724 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/12724 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com Food ingredients sterilization market segment have been segmented on the basis of ingredients and sterilization method. Market segment by ingredients, it includes spices, herbs and seasonings, dried fruits and vegetables, meat and poultry, seafood, dairy ingredients, cereals and pulses, tea blends and nuts. Market segmentation, on the basis of sterilization method, its market is segmented by heat, moisture, radiation and others. Further, on analyzing the demand for food ingredients sterilization market, it assessed that the demand for food ingredients sterilization equipment is expected to increase in spices, herbs and seasonings as they have wide application in food processing industry. On the other side, food ingredients sterilization by heat is expected to account largest share in the global market followed by radiation method. Moreover, the regulations of government regarding food safety and health concern led to support the growth of food ingredients sterilization equipment in the global food industry.Food ingredients sterilization equipment is used to sterile the food ingredients. There are different processes through which food ingredients are processed such as heat, moisture, radiation etc. in order to reduce or destroy the micro-organisms present in food ingredients. Increasing demand for and increasing demand for processed and packaged food from last few decades has led to increasing in demand of food ingredients in global food and beverage industry. In addition, the demand for food ingredients sterilization also rising to increase shelf life of treated food ingredients. Growing demand for spices, herbs, meat, poultry, cereals, pulses etc. in the food industry is expected to drive the growth of food ingredients sterilization in developing regions. In terms of value, it is expected that North America accounts for the majority of share in global food ingredients sterilization market and Asia-Pacific is expected as the fastest growing market.Some of the key drivers influencing the demand for food ingredients sterilization the global market are driven by the food safety and health protection. Proper sterilization of food keeps the food products safe and also increases the potential of food manufacturers to deliver quality food with extended shelf life. On the other side, the increasing trend of packaged and prepared food in developing region has led to increasing in demand for food sterilization among food manufacturers as it adds significant shelf life to food ingredients and keeps the packaged food safe for the longer period of time. Demand for food ingredients sterilization also increasing in the global market due to stringent food safety norms of government regarding the use of sterilization equipment in food and beverage industry. In near future, the demand for food ingredients sterilization is expected to create better opportunities in food industry as advancement in sterilization technology and development of new sterilization products is creating opportunities for the food manufacturers to develop new food products to meet growing demand of consumers.A sample of this report is available upon request @On the basis of regional segment, food ingredients sterilization market is segmented into five regions including North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia-Pacific & Japan and the Middle East and Africa. On analyzing the demand for food ingredients sterilization market, it is expected that North America and Europe accounts for the largest market share in the global food ingredients sterilization market in terms of value. Moreover, demand for food ingredients sterilization is also expected to increase in Asia-Pacific & Japan in near future due to an increasing number of food manufacturing plants in the region.Request to view table of content @Some of the key players in food ingredients sterilization market are Sterigenics International LLC, Croll Reynolds, Balchem Corporation, Global Sterilization and Fumigation, Wenda Ingredients, Namah Steam Sterilization, Napasol AG, Cosmed Group, Safe Spice and ATTEC Food Technology among others.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb: Cocoa Market 2016 by Overview of key geographical regions producing cocoa, Analysis and Forecast to 2020 ReportsWeb http://www.reportsweb.com/global-cocoa-market-2016-2020 http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW0001345901/sample http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW0001345901/buying http://www.reportsweb.com/buy&RW0001345901/buy/2500 Cocoa is cultivated primarily in countries located in the belt between 10N and 10S of the equator on account of the favorable climatic conditions. The demand for cocoa is increasing rapidly with the growth of chocolate confectioneries and other end-products. Cocoa production is characterized by the presence of small-scale farmers who have limited access to finance and technology, as well as dated skills. Cocoa production is likely to grow over the next few years with the incorporation of modern agronomy techniques for cocoa cultivation. The governments of most cocoa-producing countries are developing infrastructure and encouraging cocoa cultivation to increase trade. Infrastructure in terms of warehousing facilities and roads for transportation in regions such as Africa are expected to improve. Political stability can greatly affect the supply potential of cocoa and hence is crucial for steady market growth.Publisher's analysts forecast the global cocoa market to grow at a CAGR of 3.14%, in terms of volume, during the period 2016-2020.Complete Report Available atCovered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global cocoa market for 2016-2020. To calculate the market size, Publisher considers the consumption of cocoa in terms of volume in major regions of the world such as the Americas, APAC, Europe, and ROW.The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:- Americas- APAC- Europe- ROWPublisher's report, Global Cocoa Market 2016-2020, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.Key vendors- Archer Daniels Midland (ADM)- Barry Callebaut- Blommer Chocolate Company- Cargill- Cocoa Processing Company- OlamGet Sample of the Report at:Other prominent vendors- CEMOI- Daarnhouwer- Dutch Cocoa- Newtown Foods- Puratos- The Hershey Company- United Cocoa ProcessorMarket driver- Consistent demand for chocolates- For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challenge- Fluctuating cocoa prices- For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trend- Increasing popularity of Fairtrade-certified cocoa products- For a full, detailed list, view our reportInquire about Report at:Table of Contents:PART 01: Executive summaryPART 02: Scope of the reportPART 03: Market research methodologyPART 04: IntroductionPART 05: Market landscapePART 06: Market segmentation by productPART 07: Market segmentation by applicationPART 08: Geographical segmentationPART 09: Key producing countriesPART 10: Market driversPART 11: Impact of driversPART 12: Market challengesPART 13: Impact of drivers and challengesPART 14: Market trendsPART 15: Vendor landscapePART 16: AppendixPurchase this Premium Research Report at:. (Priced at US$ 2500).ReportsWeb.com is a one stop shop of market research reports and solutions to various companies across the globe. We help our clients in their decision support system by helping them choose most relevant and cost effective research reports and solutions from various publishers. We provide best in class customer service and our customer support team is always available to help you on your research queries.505, 6th floor, Amanora Township,Amanora Chambers, East Block,Kharadi Road, Hadapsar, Pune-411028 Soy Sauce Powder Market set to record exponential growth by 2024 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/12799 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/12799 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com Soy sauce powder market is segmented on two different basis, on the basis of type and on the basis of application. Soy sauce powder market segment on the basis of by type, it includes fermented soy sauce powder and roasted soy sauce powder. Another market segmented for soy sauce powder is on the basis of by application, it includes soups, sauces, seasonings, snacks, meat items and others (salad dressings, gravies, and dips). The demand for soy sauce is primarily increasing from food manufacturers, food catering, households, and an increasing number of fast food chains as it has wide application in food products as it gives authentic flavor, aroma of soy sauce, color, crust formation and also function as umami food recipes. Soy sauce powder has become the ideal base for sauces, snacks, dips, dressings, gravies, instant seasoning food products for flavor enhancement purpose and to offer the better taste in food items.Soy sauce powder is prepared from soybeans to primarily satisfy the demand for food and beverage industry and one of the ideal ingredient which is used in food products to enhance the taste, tenderness, color and flavor. Soy sauce powder also includes ingredients such as maltodextrin, wheat and salt as it gives better flavor enhancement in food products. It is also known as dehydrated soy sauce. Soy sauce powder is easily dissolved in water to create liquid soy sauce or paste. Rising demand for fast food, snacks, meals, prepared food and many other products has influenced the demand for soy sauce powder in the global market. It is expected that North America and Asia-Pacific is expected to account largest market share for soy sauce powder in near future.Demand for soy sauce powder in the global market is driving from increasing demand for health conscious consumers as soy sauce powder is rich in protein, and amino acids. Due to health and wellness trends, soy sauce manufacturers are also introducing the new range of powders in the market to meet the consumer demands. Growing consumer concerns towards different flavor and taste preferences and changing consumer eating habits are the key factors increasing the demand for soy sauce powder. Currently, the demand for soy sauce is increasing especially among food manufacturers, fast food retail chains and restaurants as they use soy sauce powder for flavor enhancement, coating, seasoning, soups and for many other purposes. Food manufacturers also used soy sauce powder in dry or in rehydrated form which has wide application in seasoning mixes, sauces, dips, gravies, soups, snacks etc.Request to view table of content @On the basis of the regional segment, the market of Soy sauce powder is segmented into five regions: North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Japan, and the Middle East & Africa. On analyzing the demand for soy sauce powder market in the graph, it is expected that Asia-Pacific and Japan account for majority of market share in the global market in terms of volume and in terms of value North America accounts the majority of share in global soy sauce powder market.A sample of this report is available upon request @Some of the key players operates in business of soy sauce powder are Nikken Foods USA, Inc., Shanghai Hensin Industry CO., Ltd., Chaitanya Group of Industries, SEEWOO FOODS LIMITED, Halcyon Proteins Pty. Ltd., La Herbal (india), AmTech Ingredients, PHILIPPINE AMINOSAN CORPORATION, YAMASA Corporation, and Kikkoman Corporation among others.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb: Population Health Management Platforms Market Expected to Expand at a Steady CAGR through 2026 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-2456 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-2456 www.futuremarketinsights.com It is an open secret that the healthcare industry, like many others, is undergoing dramatic changes. Information Technology has brought about sweeping changes in every aspect of our lives and healthcare is no exception. The flip side of the IT boom is a fast-paced lifestyle that has led to problems like hypertension, diabetes, and stress. These affect not only the high-risk geriatric population but are also troubling middle-aged people and youth below the age of thirty now. People have begun to take their health a lot more seriously and there is a desire to lead a fitter life. The convergence of healthcare and IT is what resulted in the population health management platforms market. It is the collection of patient data across various IT health resources, analysis of that into a single, actionable record and then actions taken which can improve both patient health and organisation financial health. PHM improves group health by monitoring & identifying individual patients within the group. Business Intelligence tools are used to aggregate data & provide a comprehensive clinical picture of each patient. The scope of the population health management platforms market will only grow as more hospitals shift to population healthcare payment and delivery arrangements.Population Health Management Platforms Market DriversContinued pressure to reduce costs, improving overall quality and implementing value-based payment programs are a few drivers for the population health management platforms market. Government initiatives like the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) provide incentives for quality & safety and also better care coordination. In addition to government regulation, a dramatic increase in ailments like diabetes, hypertension, and stress is making people more conscious of their health than ever before. These patients will demand better care than what they currently receive and they might want to access their medical data in one location. All these factors will be responsible for increasing the size of the population health management platforms market.Request Report Sample@Population Health Management Platforms Market RestraintsThere are several challenges in the population health management platforms market. One is a disjointed workflow with the electronic health record (EHR). Barring the large EHR vendors, PHM solutions function as separate modules today, and they require an additional sign-on for a completely different UI. This causes a broken workflow and impedes training and adoption in a healthcare organisation. The second problem is a lack of data standardisation. Data stored across different health systems is often unstandardized and vocabulary, calculations, formulae may be differing. The same data might even mean something entirely different sometimes. The third constraint is restrictive regulations. Despite many governmental mandates to free health data, the ownership of it is still ambiguous. IT vendors, healthcare organisations, individual providers & health information exchanges (HIEs) all claim to own this information. The fourth restraint in the population health management platforms market is the fragmented patient portals. Patients prefer a single point of access for all their healthcare records. Healthcare providers split it across different systems and EHRs. They may also have multiple patient portals for the same person. For e.g. - One portal for patient care, another for their primary care specialists and a third for their bill payments!Population Health Management Platforms Market Key RegionsNorth America is the largest population health management platforms market followed by the E.U and Asia. It is also anticipated to grow at the fastest rate due to implementation of the Affordable Care Act, Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP) and an ageing population.Visit For TOC@Population Health Management Platforms Market Key Market PlayersSome of the major players in the population health management platforms market are McKesson Corporation, Cerner Corporation, Allscripts, Inc., Verisk Health Inc., WellCentive, Inc., Health Catalyst LLC, i2i Systems, Inc., Conifer Health Solutions, LLC, OptumHealth, Inc., IBM Corporation and Healthagen, LLC.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: Content Is The New Currency: How Wireless Carriers Are Missing The Boat On Content Management https://goo.gl/ciKn3f https://www.bigmarketresearch.com/content-is-the-new-currency-how-wireless-carriers-are-missing-the-boat-on-content-management-market http://www.bigmarketresearch.com A content delivery network or content distribution network (CDN) is a large distributed system of servers deployed in multiple data centers across the Internet. Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) is an open standard that allows different content management systems to interoperate via an IP connection.Get Purchase copy of report @Report AudienceMobile Cellular CarriersWireless Device ManufacturersWireless Infrastructure ProvidersCommerce, Content and Application ProvidersOur research indicates:Carriers are too focused on issues such as content billing and content rules such as those put in place by the CTIAs Wireless Content Guidelines Classification Criteria.Carriers are missing a huge opportunity for customized content, especially in the area of enterprise content.Carriers need to partner with content brokers and also prepare for next generation content optimized for new sources and devices such as wearable wireless.This report covers the content development, management, and distribution marketplace with recommendations for wireless carriers and others within the ecosystem. The report includes a market outlook and forecasts.View complete report from here @Contact us:5933 NE Win Sivers Drive,#205, Portland, OR 97220United StatesDirect : + 1-503-894-6022Toll Free : + 1-800-910-6452Email: help@bigmarketresearch.comWeb:Big Market Research is striving to help businesses, investors, organizations, new entrants, and corporations by offering a collection of reports that cater to their research needs. Our research reports highlight current industry trends, development scope, and estimations of market size over the next few years. We reduce your efforts find the reports through a systematic approach and arrangement in appropriate categories and subcategories.5933 NE Win Sivers Drive, #205 Methyl Isobutyl Ketone Market - Focus on Development of Bio-based Products to Improve their Positions By 2024 Methyl Isobutyl Ketone Market http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/methyl-isobutyl-ketone.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=1310 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/ http://globalresearchmarket.blogspot.in/About The vendor landscape of the global methyl isobutyl ketone market is largely consolidated, with top five companies accounting for more than 55% of the overall market, notes a recent market study by Transparency Market Research. These are Shell Chemicals, Celanese Corporation, LCY Chemical Corp., Kumho P&B Chemicals Inc., and The Dow Chemical Company. With a strong distribution and sales network, top companies in the market have been able to reach out to customers globally resulting in a low to medium degree of competition in the market. In a bid to strengthen their position, production of bio-based methyl isobutyl ketone (MIBK) is the focus of top companies and to expand their product portfolio as well.The global methyl isobutyl ketone market is expected to expand at a CAGR of 7.5% between 2016 and 2024 for the valuation of the market to increase from US$827.4 to US$1,572.3 mn between 2015 and 2024.Browse Market Research Report @Steady Demand from Automotive Industry for Rubber Chemical and Solvent Applications Key to GrowthBy application, the solvent segment held the leading share of the methyl isobutyl ketone market in 2015 and is expected to maintain its dominance throughout the forecast period. This is because the high growth of the automotive industry has benefitted the growth of MIBK market due to the increased demand for solvents for rubber processing chemicals and surface coatings. Over the coming years, the demand for MIBK across the automotive industry is anticipated to be highly influential for the growth of the global MBK market.In terms of geography, Asia Pacific held the leading share of more than 42% in the global market in 2015. This is mainly due to the increasing demand for MIBK in crop-protection and automotive industries in India, China, and ASEAN countries. Amongst all, China accounts for the leading consumption of MIBK especially for antiozonants application. Asia Pacific is expected to display a rise in production and demand for MIBK, thereby resulting the region to hold commanding position in the coming years.Enter your information below to receive a sample copy of this report @North America MIBK market is expected to rise at a moderate pace as the region mainly consists of developed countries that are mature for MIBK end-use industries. Countries in the Middle East and Africa region are expected to contribute substantially to the growth of MIBK market due to developmental projects for commercial infrastructure.The flourishing growth of the automotive industry has indirectly benefitted the MIBK market for solvent applications. Methyl isobutyl ketone is an excellent solvent for resins that are used in various surface coatings in the automotive industry. Methyl isobutyl ketone is used as a solvent in industries that produce paints, chemicals, and rubber products. It is also extensively used in rubber chemicals for the manufacture of tires, surfactants, and insecticides.Human Health and Environmental Considerations Restrains Market GrowthHowever, impact of MIBK on human health even in low concentrations is leading to a declining use of petroleum-based, synthetic MIBK across a large number of end-use industries. Petroleum-based MIBK have environmental concerns as well as it can form explosive peroxides on contact with air. These factors have led to an increasing demand for bio-based MIBK across a large number of applications in the recent years. The low cost factor of bio-based MIBK and its ecological viability is leading to the adoption of bio-based MIBK across a number of industries. Hence, the rising adoption of bio-based MIBK and process development in the manufacture of MIBK from plant sources is expected to extend growth opportunities to the global MIBK market.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insights for 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, TMR employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Contact Us:-Transparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:Visit Blog:Us Canned Salmon Market set to record exponential growth by 2025 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/12982 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/12982 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com Canned salmon market has been gaining popularity amongst the masses due to the fact that such canned salmon are processed to be consumed with or without other food items. Salmon fish provides various health benefits for which it has gained significant popularity amongst it consumers. Health benefits such as enhances heart health, controls blood pressure, helps in growth and development, assist in weight loss and obesity, boost immune system, fire up energy levels, increases blood circulation, cancer prevention, reduces probability of kidney diseases, reduce inflammation, cell membrane damage are associated with consumption of salmon fish. Increase in trade network among various nations. Rise in modern retail outlets, establishments of processed food industry across countries with development of food parks. Increase in investments by budding entrepreneurs in processed food industry are few of the viable factors which is driving the canned salmon market.Recent research study has revealed that canned salmon consumption can be hazardous to ones health, illegal fishing of salmon, depletion in salmon population are few possible restraint which can affect the growth of canned salmon market.The canned salmon market is segmented into four parts based on the product type, distribution channels, and geography. Few possible health benefits which canned salmon fish providesBased on the product type the canned salmon market is segmented into: Sockeye Salmon Coho Salmon Pink Salmon Chum salmonBased on the type of distribution channels canned salmon market is segmented into: Internet Retailing Mass Retailers Direct Selling OthersRequest to view table of content @Regarding geography, canned salmon market has been categorized into five key regions including North America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, APEJ, Japan, Latin America, and the Middle East & Africa. North America is anticipated to witness canned salmon market to register a healthy CAGR during the forecast period. This is due to the very fact that packaged food has a strong demand in North America due to the prevalence of culture where such foods are preferred and moreover canned salmon has been a staple food for North American dwellers. Asia-Pacific represents the significantly higher market share next to North America over the forecast period. Countries in APEJ such as India, China, and Thailand are witnessing significantly higher demand for canned salmons due to increase in consumption of canned salmons among the masses. Western Europe stands next to APEJ for canned salmon market, where the consumers prefers canned salmons for breakfast and salads Eastern Europe has a similar trend alike Western Europe. Japan has been a strong market for canned salmon. The population of Japan have a special liking towards fish and sea products owing to its geography and canned salmon has been one of the favorites for Japanese. MEA and Latin America has also been witnessing affinity for canned salmon and over the forecast period the market of canned salmon will gain significant share in these regions.A sample of this report is available upon request @Some of the key players identified in the canned salmon market are:- Equa Seafoods Raincoast Trading Wild Planet Freedom Foods Group Limited Peter Pan SeafoodsAbout 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: Turmeric Oleoresin Market Segments, Opportunity, Growth and Forecast By End-use Industry 2016-2026 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-2510 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-2510 www.futuremarketinsights.com Turmeric oleoresin is one type of spice oleoresin which is a pure turmeric (Curcuma longa) extract. Turmeric oleoresin contains flavor components same as in the spice and has around 5 to 15% of curcumin in the oleoresin. Turmeric oleoresin is widely used as a flavoring agent in the food industry. Rapidly increasing demand for packaged spices in food products has forced to increase the production of turmeric oleoresins. Turmeric oleoresin is globally used as a food additive in various food products due to its soluble characteristics. India, Brazil and China are the market leaders in the turmeric oleoresin market. Turmeric oleoresins is having wide application in cosmetic industry as well in products such as dye, lotions, creams, and others. Turmeric oleoresins is widely preferred in preparation of drugs that are used for treating back pain, cancer, and other such related problems. Increasing consumer preference towards natural oleoresins over the conventional oleoresins has resulted in the growth of the global turmeric oleoresin market.Global Turmeric Oleoresin: Market SegmentationThe global turmeric oleoresin market is segmented on the basis of forms, application and region. The turmeric oleoresin market is segmented on the basis of form into powder, paste and oil. The turmeric oleoresin market is segmented on the basis of application includes food and beverage, cosmetics and personal care products, and pharmaceuticals. Turmeric oleoresin is used as a natural colour in various food products such as pickles and salad dressings, dairy products, bakery products, beverages and cereals. Turmeric oleoresin is mostly used as a food coloring agent due to its intense coloring properties. Among the application segment food and beverage segment hold the major share in terms of value and volume. Hence, the global Turmeric oleoresin market is expected to increase the revenue contribution significantly over the forecast period.Request Report Sample@Global Turmeric Oleoresin Market: Regional OutlookGeographically, the global turmeric oleoresin industry can be divided by major regions which include North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific excluding Japan, Japan, Middle East and Africa. Globally, among all regions, Asia Pacific has developed as the dominant region in global turmeric oleoresin market followed by Latin America. India, China and Brazil are the major leading countries in the production of turmeric oleoresins. Increasing consumer preference towards natural ingredients coupled with ease of application and available in different forms, has strengthened the growth of global turmeric oleoresin market and hence is market projected to significantly expand over the forecast period.Global Turmeric Oleoresin Market: Growth DriversIncreasing consumer demand for natural food coloring agents due to the intense coloring property is one of the major driving factor of the global turmeric oleoresin market. Turmeric oleoresins are widely used in baking industry. Another major driving factor of global turmeric oleoresin market is the usage of oleoresin in dry mixes and margarines which is leading to the increase in consumption of the oleoresin over the forecast period. Turmeric oleoresins are avalible in dry powder provides ease in mixing as compared to turmenric powder, hence, find the application in instant mixes including beverage, soups, ready meal, etc. As a result of easy storage and easy transportation, the market is expected to witness significant growth in the next few years.Visit For TOC@Global Turmeric Oleoresin Market: Key PlayersSome of the key players identified across the value chain of the global turmeric oleoresin market include, Nikita Extracts, Ungerer & Company, Kancor Ingredients Limited, Asian Oleoresin Company, Vidya Herbs pvt. Ltd., Naturite Agro Products Ltd., Universal Oleoresins, Synthite Industries Ltd, DDW The Color House, Ozone Naturals and Indo-World. The companies are expected to expand their business by enhancing their product portfolio in global turmeric oleoresin market. The companies are projected to frame business strategies in future in order to gain the competitive advantage in global turmeric oleoresin market till 2026.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: 2017-2021 Global Automotive Clutch Release Bearing Market Trend & Forecast Research report http://www.orbisresearch.com/contacts/request-sample/250039 http://www.orbisresearch.com/contact/purchase/250039 https://www.linkedin.com/company/orbis-research https://twitter.com/orbisresearch https://www.facebook.com/OrbisResearch Summary:2017 Market Research Report on Global Automotive Safety Restraint Systems (SRS) Industry Marketed by, Research Approach, Manufacturers, Regions, , Type, Price, Application, Profiles, Analysis & Forecast (2017-2022)Description: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 Automotive Safety Restraint Systems (SRS) Market is confident in meeting their needs and expectations. The 2017 market research report on Global Automotive Safety Restraint Systems (SRS) 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 Automotive Safety Restraint Systems (SRS) Market report is a noteworthy.The Global Automotive Safety Restraint Systems (SRS) 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 Automotive Safety Restraint Systems (SRS) Industry 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 Automotive Safety Restraint Systems (SRS) Industry. Accurate forecasts and expert opinion from credible sources, and the recent R&D development in the industry is also a mainstay of the Global Automotive Safety Restraint Systems (SRS) Market report.Request a sample of this 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.Purchase a copy of this report @Finally, the Automotive Safety Restraint Systems (SRS) 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 Automotive Safety Restraint Systems (SRS) Industry is the holy grail of information which serious knowledge seekers can benefit from. The report which is the result of ultimate dedication of pedigree professionals has a wealth of information which can benefit anyone, irrespective of their commercial or academic interest.Some Points from Table of ContentsChapter One: Automotive Safety Restraint Systems (SRS) Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Automotive Safety Restraint Systems (SRS)1.2 Automotive Safety Restraint Systems (SRS) Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global Automotive Safety Restraint Systems (SRS) Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category) (2012-2022)1.2.2 Global Automotive Safety Restraint Systems (SRS) Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Safety Belt1.2.4 Airbag1.2.4 Type II1.2.4 Type II1.3 Global Automotive Safety Restraint Systems (SRS) Segment by Application1.3.1 Automotive Safety Restraint Systems (SRS) Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.3.2 Passenger Car1.3.3 Commercial Vehicle1.4 Global Automotive Safety Restraint Systems (SRS) Market by Region (2012-2022)1.4.1 Global Automotive Safety Restraint Systems (SRS) Market Size (Value) and CAGR (%) Comparison by Region (2012-2022)1.4.2 United States Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 EU 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 South Korea Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.7 India Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 Global Market Size (Value) of Automotive Safety Restraint Systems (SRS) (2012-2022)1.5.1 Global Automotive Safety Restraint Systems (SRS) Revenue Status and Outlook (2012-2022)1.5.2 Global Automotive Safety Restraint Systems (SRS) Capacity, Production Status and Outlook (2012-2022)For more information contact sales@orbisresearch.comOrbis 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; +912064101019Follow Us on LinkedIn:Follow us on Twitter:Like us on Facebook: Female Stress Urinary Incontinence Treatment Device Market Volume Analysis, Segments, Value Share and Key Trends 2016-2026 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-2533 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-2533 www.futuremarketinsights.com Urinary incontinence is a condition wherein there is unintentional loss of urine. This is also referred to as stress incontinence which happens during physical activities like coughing, sneezing, running or lifting heavy weights, thats exerts pressure on the bladder. Stress incontinence differs from urinary urge as it is caused by contraction of bladder muscles. Stress incontinence is very common among females than in males and can be of the reason for isolating oneself from the social life. Female stress urinary incontinence is caused by weal sphincter muscle. There are two types of female stress urinary incontinence: urethral hypermobility and intrinsic sphincter deficiency. In urethra hypermobility, the urethra changes its position due to increase in abdominal pressure, whereas in intrinsic sphincter deficiency there is inability in the sphincter to get sealed. Female stress urinary incontinence is most commonly observed above the age of 60 years as weakening of pelvic muscles occurs by this age. There are further more causes of female stress urinary incontinence like pregnancy and childbirth, hysterectomy, nerve or muscle damage during birthing or surgical trauma, obesity, menopause, chronic coughing, anatomical predisposition and impact of various heavy physical activities.The major driver of the female stress urinary incontinence market is changing lifestyle and its complications. Lifestyle changes has led to many anatomical changes which has causes gynecological problems with females at younger age. Increase in the conception, increase in the number of hysterectomy cases, large number of women with early onset of menopause, increase in obese population and stress which weakness the nerves and muscle and also stressed induced smoking has increased in the women. However the major restrain for female urinary incontinence market is that these devices are all under FDA approval process. There are also some of the side effects of using female urinary incontinence treatment devices such as pain, organ perforation, and painful intercourse, urinary and fecal incontinence. Also, social constraint faced by women in understanding the condition this leads many women remain undiagnosed and untreated.Request Report Sample@The global female stress urinary incontinence treatment device is segmented by the type of devices, type of material used by end users and by geographySegmentation by Type of DevicesInternal Urethral DevicesInternal Vaginal DevicesTraditional DevicesPurpose made devicesExternal Urethral DevicesSegmentation by type of Material UsedSiliconePolyurethane foamSegmentation by End UsersGynecology ClinicHospitalsAmbulatory Surgical CentersSegmentation by geographyNorth AmericaLatin AmericaEuropeMiddle East and AfricaAsia PacificThe female urinary incontinence market is expected to grow over the forecast period due to FDA approval of these devices and huge investment in the healthcare sector. The future is developing improved devices with less side effects and with easy usage. Along with investment in the healthcare sector and there is requirement of awareness among the female population regarding the causes and treatment of urinary incontinence and break the social barrier regarding the same. The female stress urinary incontinence treatment device market is segmented according to the type of device as internal urethral devices, internal vaginal devices and external urethral devices. Among these internal vaginal devices are more widely used and also termed as transvaginal mesh or vaginal sling. These are further classified as traditional devices and purpose made devices. The traditional device segment consists of tampons, pessaries and contraceptive diaphragms and the purpose made device segment consist of vaginal slings which are generally used for uplifting the bladder. The internal and external urethral devices are not widely used ones. The other segment of the female stress urinary incontinence treatment device market is according to the material used in making these devices like silicone and polyurethane foam. The market further can be segmented according to end users of these devices which are gynecology clinics, hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers.Visit For TOC@According to geography, the female stress urinary incontinence treatment device market is segmented into North America, Latin America, Europe, Middle East and Africa and Asia Pacific. The factors contributing for the growth of female urinary incontinence treatment device market differs by region, as less obesity but higher smoking rates in Chines population. Lack of awareness among the symptoms and social barriers in developing countries. Furthermore, U.S., Canada and United Kingdom are the major growth areas whereas the Middle East and Africa are slowly emerging markets due to lack of awareness, poverty and less healthcare facilities. The Asian countries are also expected to grow in the coming years due to rising awareness, healthcare facilities at affordable cost and overcoming the socioeconomic barriers. Owing to the growth in the developing counties, the prominent players are attracted to these regions with a strategic view to increase productivity and expansion of business.The major players contributing to the growth of female stress urinary incontinence treatment device market are Johnson & Johnson, Bard Medical, American Medical Solutions, Boston Scientific, Teleflex, Karl Storz and Coloplast.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: Emerging Opportunities in Machine Vision System And Services Market with Current Trends Analysis http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-2596 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-2596 www.futuremarketinsights.com Machine vision technology is a vital part of industrial automated production process that serves to improve the overall speed and quality of a final product. Superior to normal human visual sense, machine vision technology offers a critical capability of judging a product being manufactured. Machine vision system and service providers allow manufacturers to achieve rapid production lines with accurate, precise non-contact product measurement, and closed-loop process control. High quality product inspection, lesser setup time and quick downtime, and increased production flexibility are among top advantages machine vision systems offer.Virtually employed by all industrial manufacturing verticals, vision inspection enabled early detection and resolution of production inconsistency. In addition to boosting production efficiency, it also helps increase product integrity and thereby fulfil all associated legal compliance standards. In a nutshell, manufacturers cannot afford to bypass machine vision technology during the production process, as it ultimately helps companies to preserve their brands reputation in the long run.Request Report Sample@Machine Vision System and Services Market: Drivers and RestraintsWith an increasing number of industrial verticals embracing production automation, the demand for machine vision technology is likely to be on the rise. Moreover, increased adoption rate of machine vision technology-based robotic systems and intense need for high-quality product inspection will foster the demand for machine vision system and services globally. Surging requirement of high production output in manufacturing industries will remain a prominent driver to demand for machine vision technology. Growing demand for machine vision technology in IT, optics, and mechanics will continue to sustain adoption of vision system and services.Rising need for improved product inspection will continue to provide an impetus to machine vision system and services in near future. In addition to a wide range of technological advantages of machine vision technology, growing demand for faster yet cost-effective vision inspection technology is expected to fuel the machine vision system and services market. Shooting adoption of machine vision technology by a growing number of end-user verticals, including electronics, healthcare, automotive, pharmaceuticals, defence, food and beverages, packaging, and many more will further fuel the sales of machine vision systems over the next decade.Higher labour costs will remain the key factor propelling the sales of vision systems in developed markets. Whereas, some of the emerging Asian countries are expected to present lucrative opportunities to machine vision system and service providers, attributed to soaring number of manufacturing companies within the region and rising demand for application-specific systems.Visit For TOC@Complex requirement regarding highly accurate and stable product placement while operating machine vision systems often needs skilled resources. The stringency of the process doubles in case of small-sized products. This can remain a longstanding challenge to widespread adoption of machine vision systems over the forecast period.Vision System and Services Market: SegmentationSegment-wise, the global market for machine vision system and services is categorised into four key segments, viz. type, application, component, and end-user application.By type, the global vision system and services market is segmented into-3D measurement2D measurement1D measurementBased on application, the global vision system and services market is classified as IdentificationPositioningMeasurementVerificationFlaw detectionOn the basis of component, the global machine vision system and services market is fragmented into -LensesLightingSmart CameraFrame grabberEmbedded systemBy end-user vertical, the global machine vision system and services market is segmented into ElectronicsHealthcareAutomotiveIndustrialOthersMachine Vision System and Services Market: Region-wise outlookGeographically, the machine vision system and services market is assessed for five key regions, viz. North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Middle East and Africa.North America (U.S., Canada)Latin America (Brazil and Mexico)Europe (U.K., France, Germany, and rest of Europe)Asia-Pacific (China, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and rest of APAC)Middle East and Africa (MEA)Machine Vision System and Services Market: Key PlayersThe report profiles some of the key players operating in the global machine vision system and services market. Cognex Corporation, National Instruments Corporation, Teledyne Technologies, Inc., and Texas Instruments, Inc. are a few of them. Other leading providers of machine vision system and services, include Keyence Corporation, Baumer Optronic GmbH, Allied Vision Technologies GmbH, Sick AG, Basler AG, and Omron Corporation.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT: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: Cheese Ingredient Market Trends, Regulations And Competitive Landscape Outlook to 2027 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-2609 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-2609 www.futuremarketinsights.com Cheese is a milk product which is formed by the coagulation of casein, a milk protein. Cheese is consumed everyday all over the world. The global cheese ingredient market is expected to change rapidly due to fast changing patterns of eating across all the globe. The use of cheese is increasing day by day because people all over the world are consuming more fast foods like pizza and burger on daily basis, which is expected to drive the cheese ingredient market in the forecast period. The basic cheese ingredient which is required to make cheese are milk, bacterial culture, enzyme and additives such as cheese salt. The bacterial culture which is used as cheese ingredient are probiotic in nature which is very essential for our body, so the selection bacterial culture has high importance fro he production of cheese. Recently, consumers have also been preferring healthy cheese products with good taste, availability at convenience and use of quality ingredients. Companies are also investing heavily in research and development to innovate new cheese products in order attract the consumers.Market Segmentation:Cheese market is segment on the basis of cheese type, ingredients and region. On the basis of cheese type market is segmented into processed cheese and natural cheese. The demand for natural cheese is more due to the benefits it offers such as, it is rich in vitamins, proteins, minerals, healthy bacterial culture (probiotic) and enzymes. On the basis of cheese ingredient the market is segmented into bacterial cultures, milk type (milk cream, powdered milk and fresh milk), milk additives (food colors, cheese salts and others) and enzymes (lipase and rennet). The market of ingredient segment is led by milk, followed by enzyme. The demand for enzymes is high due to the increased shelf life of the enzyme modified cheese makes it a preferred option for the manufacturers. On the basis of region cheese ingredient market is segmented into North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific, MEA and Japan.Request Report Sample@Market Regional Outlook:Regional segment for the market of cheese ingredient is divided into seven different regions: North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific, MEA and Japan. Among these segment North America is expected to have the major market share globally, as it is the largest exporter and producer of cheese.In North American region the United States is generating the major revenue followed by Canada. In terms of revenue Asia Pacificis also one of the prominent contributor in the cheese ingredient market. New Zealand and Australia has the largest cheese ingredient markets in the Asia-Pacific region. Large scale milk production in countries like India and china has led to low cost production of cheese.Market Drivers:Rising demand of enzyme modified cheese with longer shelf life coupled with lower price is pushing the growth of cheese ingredient market during the forecast period. Factors such as rapid urbanization and increasing food budget have also increased the demand for cheese ingredients. The growing demand from the emerging markets such as China, India and Brazil among others, the market of cheese ingredient is expected to grow at a faster pace in the forecast period. Moreover, the market is also driven by the increasing awareness among the consumers about the health benefits associated with the ingredients used in the manufacturing of natural cheese.Visit For TOC@Market Key Players:Some of the key players in cheese ingredientmarket areArla Foods, Fonterra Co-operative Group, CSK Food Enrichment, E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, Chr. Hansen Holding A/S, Archer Daniels Midland Company, Almarai, Koninklijke DSM N.V., Saputo Inc. and Alpura.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: Meat, Poultry and Seafood Packaging Market To Make Great Impact In Near Future by 2027 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-2622 http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-2622 www.futuremarketinsights.com Packaging has developed itself as an important component in the modern lifestyle due to its transportation, storage, and rising consumer inclination towards convenience on the backdrop of a fast paced lifestyle. Moreover, the growing demand for healthy products have witnessed developments in terms of its consumption over the last few years and easy availability due to its effective packaging solution. Meat, poultry and seafood packaging are designed to meet all the physical requirement of the supply chain to ensure that the product arrives on time along with preserving the texture, nutritive quality and taste. Moreover, high quality printed boxes allow the usage of color and graphics to promote the product or brand and achieve marketing objectives, as eye-catching presentation is a required for sales.Meat, Poultry and Seafood Packaging- Market Segmentation:The global meat, poultry and seafood packaging market can be segmented on the basis of product type, raw material type, technology type and application type. On the basis of product type, the global meat, poultry and seafood packaging market can be segmented into rigid packaging and flexible packaging, wherein, flexible packaging is expected to grow faster than rigid packaging solution due to easy handling and carrying solution along with less required material for manufacture. Rigid packaging is further segmented into corrugated box, trays, folding carton, cans, container, sleeve & others, and flexible packaging is further segmented into plastic films, bags, pouches and others, wherein, trays is expected to grow exponentially in the global meat, poultry and seafood packaging market over the forecast period, as microwaveable tray are heat resistant and can be used safely in microwave ovens, provide maximum convenience for consumer who are able to re-heat the product in its packaging. On the basis of raw material type, the global meat, poultry and seafood packaging market can be segmented into plastic, paper and metal. On the basis of technology type, the global meat, poultry and seafood packaging market can be segmented into modified atmosphere packaging, case ready packaging, vacuum packaging, active & intelligent packaging and retort packaging, wherein, modified atmosphere packaging is expected to account for significant market value and volume share, as the air is removed from the packaging chamber and replaced with a different mixture of gases specifically formulated to preserve the food from inside. On the basis of application type, the global meat, poultry and seafood packaging can be segmented into fresh & frozen, processed and ready to eat food, wherein, ready to eat food is expected to grow significantly during the forecast period to increasing usage of convenient products.Request Report Sample@Meat, Poultry and Seafood Packaging Market - Market Dynamics:One of the significant factors contributing towards the growth of global meat, poultry and seafood packaging market is the government initiative to increase healthy eating results in rising healthy eating trends which have risen the demand for meat, fish and seafood production. Adding to this, the growing demand for small size and single portion item is expected to drive the growth of the global meat, poultry and seafood packaging market. Moreover the ever growing retail sector coupled with rising disposable income among individual is considered as another factor towards the growth of the global meat, poultry and seafood packaging market. In addition to this, manufacturer and retailers had witness a shift towards case ready packaging as it reduces the cost of labor and increase protection due to the usage of high barrier films which is expected to drive the growth of the global meat, poultry and seafood packaging market. Furthermore, the growing population and rising GDP along with improved living standard and growing demand for ready to eat meals in emerging economies is expected to drive the growth of the global meat, poultry and seafood packaging. The advantageous feature of providing longer shelf life of the product and user friendly solution in terms of storage and reseal ability is expected to fuel the demand for the global meat, poultry, and seafood packaging market. However, the consumer and the manufacturer of growing economies are still inclined towards fresh food product, is expected to hinder the growth of the global meat, poultry and seafood packaging.Meat, Poultry and Seafood Packaging Market - Regional Outlook:Geographically, the meat, poultry and seafood packaging can be segmented into North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific (APAC) and Middle East & Africa (MEA). The growth of the global meat, poultry and seafood packaging is expected to witness a growing CAGR over the forecast period of 2016-2024. North America is expected to witness a fast paced growth of meat, poultry and seafood packaging as North Americans are inclined towards convenience products. Moreover, the emerging economies such as China and India is expected to heavily contribute to the growth of the global meat, poultry and seafood packaging market due to rising disposable income and eating healthy trend. Therefore, the Asia-Pacific region is expected to gain higher market value share in the global meat, poultry and seafood packaging.Visit For TOC@Meat, Poultry and Seafood Packaging Market - Major Players:Some of the major players identified in the global meat, poultry and seafood packaging are Bemis Company Inc., AEP Industries Inc., DuPont (EI) de Nemours, Smurfit Kappa Group, Visy Industries Holdings Pty Ltd, Tri-Mach Group Inc., Printpack, Inc., Orora Packaging Australia Pty Ltd, ABBE CORRUGATED PTY. LTD and Cambridge Packing Company.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: South Korea Wine Market forecast to grow at a CAGR of 13.3% by 2020 http://www.orbisresearch.com/reports/index/consumer-and-market-insights-wine-in-south-korea http://www.orbisresearch.com/contacts/request-sample/252755 http://www.orbisresearch.com/contact/purchase/252755 Key Findings of Wine market in South Korea:- The Wine market in South Korea is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 13.3% in value terms during 2015-2020- South Koreas consumers are opting for value for money products in the Wine market- The Sparkling Wine category is expected to register fastest value growth among all categories during 2015-2020- Hypermarkets and Supermarkets is the leading distribution channel in South Koreas Wine market- The use of Glass as packaging material is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 12.0% during 2015-2020 Browse the full report @The Wine market in South Korea is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 13.3%, in value terms during 2015-2020. Among all categories, Sparkling Wine category is expected to register the fastest value growth during 2015-2020. Hypermarkets and Supermarkets is the leading distribution channel. Dom Perignon and Duegradi are the leading brands in the South Korean Wine Market. Imported Wine will still dominate the South Korean Wine market.Companies Mentioned:E and J Gallo WineryF.W. Langguth Erben GmbH and Co. KGLVMH Moet Hennessy Louis VuittonPernod Ricard S.A.The Bourgogne Wine BoardVina Concha Y Toro S.A.Request a sample @SynopsisThe Wine market in South Korea is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 13.3%, in value terms during 2015-2020. Among all categories, Sparkling Wine category is expected to register the fastest value growth during 2015-2020. Hypermarkets and Supermarkets is the leading distribution channel. Dom Perignon and Duegradi are the leading brands in the South Korean Wine Market. Imported Wine will still dominate the South Korean Wine market.Reasons To Buy- Identify high potential categories and explore further market opportunities based on detailed value and volume analysis- Existing and new players can analyze key distribution channels to identify and evaluate trends and opportunities- Gain an understanding of the total competitive landscape based on detailed brand share analysis to plan effective market positioning- Access the key and most influential consumer trends driving Wine products consumption, and how they influence consumer behavior in the market which will help determine the best audiences to target- Access to analysis on products launched in the market- Our team of analysts have placed a significant emphasis on changes expected in the market that will provide a clear picture of the opportunities that can be tapped over the next five years, resulting in revenue expansionPurchase a copy of the report @Table of Contents:Consumer and Market Insights: Wine in South KoreaTable of ContentsIntroductionReport ScopeCountry ContextMacroeconomic indicators GDP Per Capita, Population, Consumer Price Index and Age ProfileMarket OverviewValue and volume analysis for South Korea's Wine marketImpact of exchange rate fluctuations on South Korea's Wine marketDegree of trade up/down in South Korea's Wine marketVolume analysis by categoryMarket value and growth rates, by categoryHistoric and forecast value analysis by categoryWinners and losers by categories with change in market shareSegment share in a category (value terms) and change in market shareAverage category level pricingRetail Landscape and Key Distribution ChannelsLeading retailers in South Korea's Wine & Spirits marketLeading distribution channels (volume terms) in South Korea's Wine marketLeading distribution channels (volume terms) by categoryCompetitive LandscapeMarket share of leading brands (in volume terms) by categoryPackagingWine market by type of packaging material/container (in volume terms)Wine market by type of packaging closure/outer (in volume terms)Wine market by type of packaging, forecast(in volume terms)Consumer trend analysisGlobalData's consumer trend framework and explanation of the sub-trendsFor key trends in South Korea's Wine market:How the trend is influencing consumption in South Korea's Wine marketHow to target the trend in South Korea's Wine marketHow the trend will evolve in South Korea's Wine marketKey target demographic and the rate at which the trend will evolveWhat are the key drivers that will influence growth of Wine market in the futureAppendixCountry contextCategory value and volume dataSector OverviewSegment dataPackaging dataCategory definitionsSegment definitionsChannel definitionsExplanation of sub-trendsMethodologyAbout GlobalDataAbout 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 customised reports as per the requirements of our clients. We have complete information about our publishers and hence are sure about the accuracy of the industries and verticals of their specialisation. This helps our clients to map their needs and we produce the perfect required market research study for our clients.4144N Central Expressway, Suite 600 Automotive Oil & Fuel Market to Record Sturdy Growth by 2026 www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/11371 www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/11371 Automotive oil is a lubricant which is used in internal combustion engines that power motorcycles, cars, engine-generators, lawnmowers, and such kind of other machines. There are parts in the engines that moves against each other and this friction wastes useful power in the form of heat from kinetic energy conversion. Sometimes, the wear of those parts takes place that would lead to degradation and lower efficiency of engine. All these factors decreases power output of the engine, and increases the fuel consumption and can even lead to failure of the engine. To prevent this damages and losses lubricating motor oil is used that forms a thin film between the adjacent moving parts to avoid the direct contact between the parts. Thus the wear and the friction gets reduced and engine gets protected. An automobile fuel is used to power the engines and ultimately the vehicles, mostly the fuel used in the vehicles are gasoline or diesel. There are even other fuels available in the market these days and it includes biodiesel, ethanol, compressed natural gas (CNG), propane, hydrogen and charged batteries. The fuel in the vehicle ignited in the engine to provide energy, in case of a diesel engine the fuel ignites by compression and in case of gasoline engine it ignited by spark. The global automotive oil & fuel market is anticipated to have an healthy CAGR in the forecast period.Request for Sample Report @The ever increasing automobile industry leads to the rise in the consumption of fuel required to run the vehicles is the major driving factor for the global automotive oil & fuel market. Also rising industrialization and urbanization is making the automobiles to run more than required and leads to the maintenance of its engines. Thus the need of the oil required for the maintenance of the automobiles is at its peak. All these factors leads to the growth of global automotive oil & fuel market.However, the surging cost of the fuels such as diesel and gasoline is leading to the unaffordability of the use of automobiles that can slowdown the growth of automotive oil & fuel market. Also the risk of explosion of vehicles, specially the vehicles running on gas is scaring people to opt for these kind of vehicles that can again hamper the automotive oil & fuel market.The global automotive oil & fuel market can be divided into seven regions, namely North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan and Middle East and Africa. Europe is the dominant region in the global automotive oil & fuel market owing to the ever increasing automobile market in this region. Asia Pacific is the second major contributor in the automotive oil & fuel market due to the automobile giants such as Maruti, Hero and other companies. The companies such as General Motors, Ford are having a significant contribution in the global automobile market making North America a considerable player in the global automotive oil & fuel market. Japan is technologically advanced country in terms of automotive markets and so the technology of automotive oil & fuel is very common in this country. Latin America and Middle East and Africa are at a nascent stage in the automotive oil & fuel market but is anticipated to have a modest CAGR in the forecasted period.Request for Table of content @The research report presents a comprehensive assessment of the market and contains thoughtful insights, facts, historical data, and statistically supported and industry-validated market data. It also contains projections using a suitable set of assumptions and methodologies. The research report provides analysis and information according to market segments such as geography, technology and applications.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Persistence Market Research Pvt. Ltd.305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.com Automotive Switch Market Progresses for Huge Profits During 2016 - 2026 www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/11380 www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/11380 Automotive switch is like an electromechanical device that is used to operate an electrical circuit. It is used in vehicles for a wide variety of applications such as infotainment system, HVAC system, and electronic component systems. It helps the driver to control the direction indicators, infotainment, windows, and headlights without getting distracted from driving. There are different types of automotive switches such as rotary, push button, toggle switches, and knobs. Nowadays, Illuminated switches are provided in the vehicles to indicate the actuation about a specific function, thus making it convenient for the user to locate and identify the switch position during low light. Illumination is provided in a number of switches, including rocker switches, push button switches, toggle switches and rotary switches.Request for Sample Report @As new technologies are implemented and accepted, so complexity of electrification in automobiles is increasing. In order to make the automobiles system more reliable and efficient automobile manufacturers are using electronics devices. With the growing control requirements, increased vehicles electrification, and simplified wiring, automotive switches use is inevitable. The global automotive switch market is anticipated to have a modest CAGR in the forecast period.Global Automotive Switch Market: Drivers and RestrainsThe ever increasing global automobile market and the growing adoption of automotive switches in the operating systems of vehicles is the major driving factor for the global automotive switch market. Also the technological advancements in the automobiles in terms of electronics systems and electrifications is making the use of automotive switch more common in vehicles. The ease of operating the different functions during driving through automotive switches, and the illuminating nature of automotive switch that makes it easy to locate are bolstering the growth of global automotive switch market.However, luxury car manufacturers are incorporating screen touch panels in their vehicles for different electronics operations that can hamper the global automotive switch market. Also after a prolonged use of automotive switches their service starts deteriorating and delays the operations that can again slowdown the automotive switch market.Request for Table of content @Global Automotive Switch Market: Region Wise OutlookThe global automotive switch market can be divided into seven regions, namely North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan and Middle East and Africa. Europe is the dominant region in the global automotive switch market owing to the ever increasing automobile market in this region. Asia Pacific is the second major contributor in the automotive switch market due to the automobile giants such as Maruti, Hero and other companies. The companies such as General Motors, Ford are having a significant contribution in the global automobile market making North America a considerable player in the global automotive switch market. Japan is technologically advanced country in terms of automotive markets and so the technology of automotive switches is very common in this country. Latin America and Middle East and Africa are at a nascent stage in the automotive switch market but is anticipated to have a modest CAGR in the forecasted period.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 Wireless Charging Market - Constant Technological Innovations to Create Lucrative Opportunities http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=11174 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/wireless-charging-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Wireless Charging Market: Overview and SegmentationWireless charging is recharging batteries of electrical devices with no physically connected cables. Currently, charging of devices is an important aspect of business is response to power intensive applications. Mobile manufacturers such as Samsung, Nokia, LG Electronics and HTC are positioning phones with wireless charging to drive demand at the high end.Fill the form to gain deeper insights on this market @The global wireless charging market is segmented by application into consumer electronics, industrial, medical, automotive and defense. Consumer electronics is expected to be the largest application segment in the wireless charging market.On the basis of geography the market is segmented as North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle-east and Africa and Latin America. High volumes of electronics devices such as smartphones and laptops in Asia Pacific make it the most promising region for wireless charging market. However, United States is the largest regional market for wireless charging. Increase in adoption of wireless charging for industrial applications and growing awareness of wireless power technology among consumers propels market growth in this region.On the basis of technology wireless charging market is segmented as Inductive, RF and Resonant. Inductive technology is mature and has high demand in wireless charging market owing to its use in all the applications. On the other hand, RF and resonant technologies are gaining traction in the wireless charging market. Companies such as Qualcomm and Samsung support resonant technology which allows charging multiple devices simultaneously.Browse Market Research Report @Alliance for Wireless Power (A4WP), Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) and Power Matters Alliance (PMA) are the three groups present in the wireless charging market. Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) uses Qi standard commonly found in smartphones whereas Alliance for Wireless Power (A4WP) uses resonance technology which is still in the early stages of development. Interoperability between these groups is of prime importance for the wireless charging market. Companies such as AT&T are seeking a commitment to one standard of wireless charging from their handset vendors.Wireless Charging Market: Trends and DriversThe penetration of wireless charging is expected to increase in wearable devices over the years. Wireless charging market is expected to experience a boom in electrical vehicles too. In-car charging and wireless charging of electrical vehicles are the key trends in the automotive industry. Rise in electrical vehicles manufacturing globally will help in the wireless charging market growth. Significant investments in R&D are being made by the market participants, wherein the leading players are focusing on improving the power transmission range. This would facilitate charging of devices wirelessly over long distances, subsequently expanding the application base. However, retaining the costs low is the key challenge for the wireless charging devices market.Wireless Charging Market: Competitive ScenarioWireless charging market is highly fragmented with start-ups and large market participants. Players are trying to distinguish themselves on the basis of quality and affordability. Few of the key players in the wireless charging market include Qualcomm Inc., Fulton Innovation LLC, Texas Instruments, Inc., WiTricity Corporation, Convenient Power HK Ltd., Integrated Device Technology, Inc., Murata Manufacturing Co. Ltd., Duracell Powermat (Procter & Gamble Co.), Energizer Holdings, Inc, Oregon Scientific, Inc. and Anker 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.Contact Us :-Transparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Global Steel-Concrete-Steel Sandwich Panel Market Research Report Forecast 2017-2021 Steel-Concrete-Steel Sandwich Panel Market http://www.marketresearchstore.com/report/global-steel-concrete-steel-sandwich-panel-market-research-110849 https://goo.gl/nF7B5t The report, titled Global Steel-Concrete-Steel Sandwich Panel Market 2017 is a methodical research study based on the Steel-Concrete-Steel Sandwich Panel market, analyzing the competitive framework of the industry in the world. Using efficient analytical tools such as SWOT analysis and Porters five forces analysis, the report provides a comprehensive assessment of the Steel-Concrete-Steel Sandwich Panel market.The report estimates the market size in terms of volume (kilo tons) and revenue (US$) produced, whereas, the key segments and the geographical subdivision of the Steel-Concrete-Steel Sandwich Panel market are also analyzed in detail. The market drivers, limitations, and growth prospects of each segment are discussed in this report and, based on that, analysts have determined the future of the market for Steel-Concrete-Steel Sandwich Panel in the global arena.Get full report with TOC @The report covers each aspect of the market for Steel-Concrete-Steel Sandwich Panel in globally, starting from the basic information about the market and advancing to the various criteria on the basis of which the market is classified. The major applications of the Steel-Concrete-Steel Sandwich Panel market are also discussed in the report.The report studies the Steel-Concrete-Steel Sandwich Panel market by evaluating the market chain, prevalent policies, and regulations as well as the manufacturers, their manufacturing chain, cost structures, and contribution in the industry. The regional markets for the global Steel-Concrete-Steel Sandwich Panel market are examined by analyzing the pricing of products in the region compared to the profit generated. The production capacity, demand and supply, logistics, and the historical performance of the market in the given region is also evaluated in this market report.Get Free sample report @The report is arranged to provide an overview of the Steel-Concrete-Steel Sandwich Panel market by product, company and geography. Forecasts are broken down by geographic region or by country. The worldwide market is analyzed and data provided for each disease sub-segment.The report determines the leading players in the global market. The company profiles of the major participants operating in the global Steel-Concrete-Steel Sandwich Panel market have been reviewed in this study.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.Contact UsJoel 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. 1-855-465-4651Email: sales@marketresearchstore.com Motorcycle Accessories Market to Develop Rapidly by 2026 www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/1139 www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/11398 Improved economic outlook across the globe resulted into substantial increase in purchasing power of consumers over the past few years. Consequently, several industry verticals reported an increase in overall demand for respective products, and automotive industry is no different. However, different trends in sales reported across sub-segments within the automotive sector, but motorcycle sales has always remained impressive, particularly in high potential markets. Growth in global motorcycle market ascertained the growth of allied industries such as motorcycle component and accessories. Motorcycle accessories, apart from increasing aesthetic appeal, also ensure better performance, safety and security. Global motorcycle accessories market is projected to register a CAGR higher than 5% by 2020 and decline a bit on long term projections till 2026. A variation in CAGR is evident across geographies and clusters, subjected to penetration of products launched by established motorcycle accessories suppliers and cyclicity of product launched by local and regional player in respective geography.Request for Sample Report @Motorcycle Accessories Market: Drivers and RestraintsPerpetual growth in motor cycle sales coupled with new variants of motor cycle introduced by manufacturers catalyzed the growth of motorcycle accessories market, which grew at a CAGR of over 4% in past five years. Expansion of European and American motorcycle manufacturers in emerging markets also contributed to the demand for motorcycle accessories. Technology advancement led to wider adoption of accessories across target customer base.Increasing consumers demand for motorcycle is one of the factor fuelling the demand for motorcycle accessories. Furthermore, development of cost effective combustible engines along with increasing popularity of motorcycles among youths is expected to boost overall sales of motorcycle accessories worldwide. Worldwide sales of motorcycle in the developed as well as developing countries is projected to augment the demand for motorcycle accessories over the forecast period. With more manufactures focusing on technology and product development, the demand for motorcycle accessories is expected to showcase a promising future throughout the forecast period. Consumers preference for aftermarket can hinder the sales for OEM (Original Equipment Market), as is one of the big challenge for the growth of the motorcycle accessories market.Motorcycle Accessories Market: SegmentationOn the basis of product type, the global motorcycle accessories market is segmented into,Protective GearFrames and FittingsLightingHeadlightsFlashersBags & LuggageBatteriesOthersOn the basis of motorcycle type, the global motorcycle accessories market is segmented into,StandardCruiserSport bikesTouringDual-purposeScooters, mopedsOn the basis of distributional channel, the global motorcycle accessories market is segmented into,Multi brand RetailOrganized Retail OutletIndependent OutletsSingle Brand Retaile-RetailOn the basis of market type, the global motorcycle accessories market is segmented into,Original Equipment Market (OEM)AftermarketOn the basis of geography, the global motorcycle accessories market is segmented into,North AmericaLatin AmericaWest EuropeEastern EuropeMiddle East & AfricaAsia Pacific excluding JapanJapanMotorcycle Accessories Market: Region-wise outlookBy region wise, the global motorcycle accessories market has been divided in to seven key regions including North America, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia-Pacific excluding Japan, Middle East & Africa and Japan. The global motorcycle accessories market is expected to register healthy CAGR during the forecast period. Asia pacific is expected to dominate motorcycle accessories market throughout the forecast period. Significant presence of accessories along with substantial rise in overall consumer spending is expected to drive the demand for motorcycle accessories market in the region. Next, North America and Europe are expected to create substantial demand for motorcycle accessories market. In Latin America and Middle East & Africa is expected to grow at a subdued rate owing to low consumer spending.Request for Table of content @Motorcycle Accessories Market: Key PlayersSome of the Key players operating into the global motorcycle accessories market are Akropovic, Bajaj Auto Limited, Suzuki, Honda Motor Company Limited, KTM Company, Loncin Motorcycle, Ducati Motor Holding S.p.A, Hero Motocorp Limited, Chongqing Lifan Industry (Group) Company Limited.The research report presents a comprehensive assessment of the market and contains thoughtful insights, facts, historical data, and statistically supported and industry-validated market data. It also contains projections using a suitable set of assumptions and methodologies. The research report provides analysis and information according to market segments such as geography, technology and applications.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Persistence Market Research Pvt. Ltd.305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.com Automotive Fuel Tank Caps and Locks Market Estimated to Flourish by 2026 www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/11401 The automotive fuel tank caps and locks, also known as gas caps with locks has evolved from simple plug-ins to more sophisticated plastic or metal caps with locks. The main purpose of automotive fuel tank caps and locks are to avoid the contamination of pollutants and rain water with the tank fuel which can lead to clogging of the fuel filters and fuel pumps. They also prevent loss of fuel during rollover and impact situations, thus preventing the occupants from burns or death. The automotive fuel tank caps and locks have vents or valve to remove the pressure which might accumulate in the fuel tank in a controlled manner. The other major uses of automotive fuel caps and locks are prevention of fuel theft and evaporation of harmful fuel vapours which can reduce mileage. The smart automotive fuel caps and locks available have sensors attached to it which sets an alarm whenever anyone tries to damage it. The fuel tank lock system has also improved with auto-lock and keys required only to unlock the cap.Automotive Fuel Tank Caps and Locks Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe benefits of automotive fuel tank caps and locks over the traditional plug-ins such as robustness and less fuel evaporation are the driving factors for global automotive fuel tank caps and locks market. The stringent rules and regulations to the automobile manufacturers to reduce pollution caused by harmful emissions from automobiles has also fuelled the growth of automotive fuel tank caps and locks market. The growing safety concerns among automobile users can boost the automotive fuel tank caps and locks market.The major drawback of steel fuel caps is that it gets heated up making it difficult to be removed. There is also a possibility of heat transfer through conduction from the atmosphere to the fuel tank by steel fuel caps causing catastrophic effect, which can lead to the slowdown of global metal fuel caps and locks market.Automotive Fuel Tank Caps and Locks Market: SegmentationOn the basis of vehicle type, the automotive fuel tank caps and locks market can be segmented as follows:-Light vehicles (cars, motorcycles)Heavy vehicles (trucks, buses)On the basis of product types, the automotive fuel tank caps and locks market can be segmented as follows:-VentedNon-ventedLockingNon-lockingWith knobsWith legsOn the basis of lock type, the automotive locking fuel tank caps and locks market can be segmented as follows:-Sideways lockCenter lockOn the basis of product style, the automotive fuel tank caps and locks market can be segmented as follows:-Chrome finish push inPlastic screwPlastic push and turnMetal bayonetOn the basis of market, the automotive fuel tank caps and locks market can be segmented as follows:-Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM)AftermarketAutomotive Fuel Tank Caps and Locks Market: Region Wise OutlookThe global automotive fuel tank caps and locks market can be divided into seven regions, namely North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan and Middle East and Africa. Asia Pacific holds the largest market share in the automotive fuel tank caps and locks market. The leading automotive fuel tank caps and locks markets in Asia Pacific are China and India owing to the increased sales of automobiles in the country. Japan also has a significant share in the automotive fuel tank caps and locks market due to the increasing automobile industry. North America holds the second position in automotive fuel tank caps and locks market. Regions such as Latin America, Europe holds a significant market share due to the large number of automobile industry in this region and also the increasing number of automobile users. Middle East and Africa are at nascent stage in the automotive fuel tank caps and locks market and is expected to show a modest CAGR in the forecast period.Request for Sample Report and Table of content @The research report presents a comprehensive assessment of the market and contains thoughtful insights, facts, historical data, and statistically supported and industry-validated market data. It also contains projections using a suitable set of assumptions and methodologies. The research report provides analysis and information according to market segments such as geography, technology and applications.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Persistence Market Research Pvt. Ltd.305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.com Global Aluminum Market Share, Size, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2017-2025 http://www.indexbox.co.uk/store/world-aluminum-unwrought-not-alloyed-market-report-analysis-and-forecast-to-2020/ http://www.indexbox.co.uk/store/world-aluminum-unwrought-not-alloyed-market-report-analysis-and-forecast-to-2020/ www.indexbox.co.uk IndexBox has just published a new report "World: Aluminum (Unwrought, Not Alloyed) - Market Report. Analysis and Forecast to 2025" (This report has been designed to provide a detailed analysis of the global aluminium market. It covers the most recent data sets of quantitative medium-term projections, as well as developments in production, trade, consumption and prices. The report also includes a comparative analysis of the leading consuming countries, revealing opportunities opened for producers and exporters across the globe. The forecast outlines market prospects to 2025.Countries coverage: WorldwideProduct coverage: Unwrought aluminium, not alloyed.Data coverage: Aluminium market size and volume; Aluminium market trends and prospects; Global aluminium production and its dynamics; Per capita consumption; Breakdown of production by region and country; Medium term outlook; Aluminium trade (exports/imports); Prices for aluminium; Profiles of the main manufacturers.The report will help you: Get a bigger picture of the market; Rewire your business around market trends; Devise your marketing strategy; Operate with increased effectiveness.TABLE OF CONTENTS1. INTRODUCTION1.1 REPORT DESCRIPTION1.2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY2. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY2.1 KEY FINDINGS2.2 MARKET TRENDS3. MARKET OVERVIEW3.1 MARKET VOLUME AND VALUE3.2 CONSUMPTION BY COUNTRY3.3 MARKET OPPORTUNITIES BY COUNTRY3.4 MARKET FORECAST TO 20254. PRODUCTION4.1 PRODUCTION IN 2007-20154.2 PRODUCTION BY COUNTRY5. IMPORTS5.1 IMPORTS IN 2007-20155.2 IMPORTS BY COUNTRY5.3 IMPORT PRICES BY COUNTRY6. EXPORTS6.1 EXPORTS IN 2007-20156.2 EXPORTS BY COUNTRY6.3 EXPORT PRICES BY COUNTRY7. PROFILES OF MAJOR PRODUCERSDownload a free sample of the report now!IndexBox is a leading market research publisher in the world. We conduct market research and publish reports.You can find more than 25,000 research reports in our web store, which cover global industries and regional markets. All the worldwide marketing data you need is at your fingertips.We collect this data from hundreds of highly reliable sources, verify it and carry out market analysis, uncovering new business opportunities and empowering you with actionable insights.The structure of our reports is intuitive and clear. We do our best to allow you to make strategic decisions and take immediate action. If you want to go further and be a step ahead of the market, just tell us your goals and we will tailor a report to your needs.Company Name: IndexBoxContact Person: Kirill BezverhiEmail: kirill.bezverhi@indexbox.co.ukPhone: +44 20 3239 3063Adress: United Kingdom, 44 Main Street, Douglas, South Lanarkshire, Scotland, ML11 0QWWebsite: Australia Lime Market to Spread a Predictable Worth of US$ 211.0 Million by 2016 Australia Lime Market http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/11503 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/market-research/australia-lime-market/toc http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/checkout/11503 www.persistencemarketresearch.com The lime market in Australia is expected to expand at a CAGR of 1.7% in terms of value over the forecast period, 20162024. The market has been segmented by product type and application. The application segmentation consists of mining & metallurgy, building materials, agriculture, water treatment and others of which the mining & metallurgy segment is expected to account for the highest share of the lime market in Australia throughout the forecast period, to account for 31.4% by 2024.Australia Lime Market:Sample of this report is available upon request @Demand for energy-efficient and cost-effective solutions is expected to be a priority for lime manufacturers in the country over the forecast period. By product type, slaked/hydrated lime segment is expected to continue to dominate the market in terms of both value and volume throughout the forecast period. The segment is estimated to be valued at US$ 146.7 Mn and account for volume share of 68% in 2016. By application, mining & metallurgy and building materials, segments in the Australia lime market are expected to account for significant volume shares of 38% and 35%, respectively.New South Wales is expected to be the largest market for lime in Australia throughout the forecast period. The market in the region is estimated to be valued at US$ 59.1 Mn by 2016 end. In terms of production, Western Australia is expected to be a major producer, contributing over 65% to the total lime production in the country, and is expected to expand at a CAGR of 0.8% over the forecast period.Request to view Table of Content @Key players in the Australia lime market include Adelaide Brighton Ltd., Boral Limited, Sibelco Australia, Omya Australia Pty. Ltd, Wagners, and Lime Group Australia. Key players in the Australia lime market are focusing on enhancing their product portfolios. They are focusing not only on basic lime products but also on importing quicklime from ASEAN countries such as Thailand and Vietnam and Southeast Asian countries such as China to minimize a cost of raw materials involved in a lime production. Manufacturers are focusing on capitalizing on economies of scale to increase production, profitability, and offer cost-effective products in order to target cost-sensitive population in the region. Joint ventures, acquisitions, and strategic collaborations in terms of production and distribution of lime have been the common strategies employed by these companies to achieve their production objectives.To Buy Full Report for a Single User @Long-term Outlook: The long-term outlook on the Australia lime market remains on the conservative side, with the market expected to expand at a modest CAGR of 1.7% in terms of value during the forecast period. The revival of the mining sector in the country, increasing demand from the construction sector, particularly in the countrys east coast region, and demand from the water treatment industry are some of the factors expected to sustain a growth of the lime market in Australia.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a full-service market intelligence firm specializing in syndicated research, custom research, and consulting services. PMR boasts market research expertise across the Healthcare, Chemicals and Materials, Technology and Media, Energy and Mining, Food and Beverages, Semiconductor and Electronics, Consumer Goods, and Shipping and Transportation industries. The company draws from its multi-disciplinary capabilities and high-pedigree team of analysts to share data that precisely corresponds to clients business needs.PMR stands committed to bringing more accuracy and speed to clients business decisions. From ready-to-purchase market research reports to customized research solutions, PMRs engagement models are highly flexible without compromising on its deep-seated research values.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.commedia@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb: Global Bio-Implant Insights Market Size, Status and Forecast 2022 http://www.qyresearchreports.com/sample/sample.php?rep_id=1041863&type=E http://www.qyresearchreports.com/report/global-bio-implant-insights-market-size-status-and-forecast-2022.html http://www.qyresearchreports.com/category/healthcare-market-reports-56.htm http://www.qyresearchreports.com Qyresearchreports include new market research report "Global Bio-Implant Insights Market Size, Status and Forecast 2022" to its huge collection of research reports.The global Bio-Implant Insights is the core objective of examination in this research report recently added to our extensive database. The report to a great degree is a spellbinding and savvy archive that helps chalk out a careful and comprehensive investigative Bio-Implant Insights, covering all key classifications and their market segments, alongside the elements that have the capability of being powerful sooner rather than later. The report accordingly displays a 360-degree examination of the present condition of the Bio-Implant Insights market to its reader.The market has been unearthed from a ground-up manner, where simple information and key, industry-particular meanings of the Bio-Implant Insights components are portrayed in the outline. The report then moves into the complete examination of Bio-Implant Insights, adhering to viewpoints, including arrangements, industry chain structure, applications, approaches, industry diagram, and recent market improvements.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @The enormous volume of market information incorporated into the report has been collected after some time with the assistance of various essential and optional research systems. This information is additionally limited to utilizing standard industry-based systematic procedures so that the vital areas of subjective and quantitative data are offered to the report's clients.The competitive and administrative scene of the Bio-Implant Insights are also broken down and examined in the research report. The different levels of elements on the standards, controls, arrangements, and arrangements are likewise incorporated into the expansion to an investigation of their effect on the markets general development prospects. The report additionally incorporates a point by point inspection of the market players business profiles ranging in the top categories.Browse Complete Report with TOC @Table of ContentsGlobal Bio-Implant Insights Market Size, Status and Forecast 20221 Industry Overview of Bio-Implant Insights1.1 Bio-Implant Insights Market Overview1.1.1 Bio-Implant Insights Product Scope1.1.2 Market Status and Outlook1.2 Global Bio-Implant Insights Market Size and Analysis by Regions1.2.1 United States1.2.2 EU1.2.3 Japan1.2.4 China1.2.5 India1.2.6 Southeast Asia1.3 Bio-Implant Insights Market by Type1.3.1 Cardiovascular Implants1.3.2 Spine Transplant1.3.3 Orthopedic, Trauma Implants1.3.4 Implant1.3.5 Ophthalmic Implants1.3.6 Implanted Nerve Stimulation1.3.7 Others1.4 Bio-Implant Insights Market by End Users/Application1.4.1 Hospital Use1.4.2 Clinic Use1.4.3 Research1.4.4 Others2 Global Bio-Implant Insights Competition Analysis by Players2.1 Bio-Implant Insights Market Size (Value) by Players (2016 and 2017)2.2 Competitive Status and Trend2.2.1 Market Concentration Rate2.2.2 Product/Service Differences2.2.3 New Entrants2.2.4 The Technology Trends in Future3 Company (Top Players) Profiles3.1 Medtronic Inc3.1.1 Company Profile3.1.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.1.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.1.4 Bio-Implant Insights Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.1.5 Recent Developments3.2 Abbot Laboratories3.2.1 Company Profile3.2.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.2.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.2.4 Bio-Implant Insights Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.2.5 Recent Developments3.3 AAP Implantate AG3.3.1 Company Profile3.3.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.3.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.3.4 Bio-Implant Insights Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.3.5 Recent Developments3.4 Bausch & Lomb Incorporated3.4.1 Company Profile3.4.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.4.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.4.4 Bio-Implant Insights Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.4.5 Recent Developments3.5 Biomet Inc3.5.1 Company Profile3.5.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.5.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.5.4 Bio-Implant Insights Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.5.5 Recent Developments3.6 Biotronik SE & Co KG3.6.1 Company Profile3.6.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.6.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.6.4 Bio-Implant Insights Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.6.5 Recent Developments3.7 Boston Scientific Corporation3.7.1 Company Profile3.7.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.7.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.7.4 Bio-Implant Insights Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.7.5 Recent Developments3.8 Crook Group Inc3.8.1 Company Profile3.8.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.8.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.8.4 Bio-Implant Insights Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.8.5 Recent Developments3.9 CR Bard Inc3.9.1 Company Profile3.9.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.9.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.9.4 Bio-Implant Insights Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.9.5 Recent Developments3.10 Toshiba Corporation3.10.1 Company Profile3.10.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.10.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.10.4 Bio-Implant Insights Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.10.5 Recent Developments3.11 GE Healthcare3.12 Edwards Lifesciences Corporation3.13 Endo Health Solutions Inc3.14 Johnson & Johnson3.15 Philips Corporation3.16 Stryker Corporation3.17 Integral Lifesciences Holdings Corporation3.18 Integrated Orbital Implants3.19 Lifenet Health Inc3.20 Mimedx Group Inc3.21 Orthofix International N.V.3.22 Smith & Nephew, PLC3.23 Zimmer Holdings3.24 Guangdong Guanhao3.25 Advanced Technology&Materials3.26 LEPU MEDICAL3.27 Jointown Pharmaceutical4 Global Bio-Implant Insights Market Size by Type and Application (2012-2017)4.1 Global Bio-Implant Insights Market Size by Type (2012-2017)4.2 Global Bio-Implant Insights Market Size by Application (2012-2017)4.3 Potential Application of Bio-Implant Insights in Future4.4 Top Consumer/End Users of Bio-Implant Insights5 United States Bio-Implant Insights Development Status and Outlook5.1 United States Bio-Implant Insights Market Size (2012-2017)5.2 United States Bio-Implant Insights Market Size and Market Share by Players (2016 and 2017)6 EU Bio-Implant Insights Development Status and Outlook6.1 EU Bio-Implant Insights Market Size (2012-2017)6.2 EU Bio-Implant Insights Market Size and Market Share by Players (2016 and 2017)Read more @About 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 Isostearyl Alcohol Market Anticipated to Increase to US$ 164.7 Million by 2024 Isostearyl Alcohol Market http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/11617 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/market-research/isostearyl-alcohol-market/toc http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/checkout/11617 www.persistencemarketresearch.com A rising demand for isostearyl alcohol as an ingredient in personal care products and cosmetics is expected to boost growth of the isostearyl alcohol market over the forecast period. However, increasing demand for multifunctional personal care ingredients and development of natural ingredients for anti-aging skin care products are major challenges likely to affect the global isostearyl alcohol market. Isostearyl alcohol is basically derived from isostearic acid and globally, 16%18% of isostearic acid produced is captively consumed for production of isostearyl alcohol. However, isostearic acid producers are moving towards development of environmentally friendly emollients and surfactants, which could reduce the percentage of conversion of isostearyl acid into isostearyl alcohol over the forecast period. The report focuses on the key drivers and trends likely to impact the global isostearyl alcohol market over the forecast period.Sample of this report is available upon request @The global isostearyl alcohol market was pegged at 14,700.0 tons in 2015 and is anticipated to increase at a CAGR of 3.2% over an eight-year forecast period to reach 19,594.4 tons by the end of 2024. Persistence Market Research in a latest report titled Global Market Study on Isostearyl Alcohol: Increasing Demand for Isostearyl Alcohol as an Ingredient in Personal care Products and Cosmetics Likely to Boost Market Growth? focuses on the growth of the global isostearyl alcohol market from 2016 to 2024 and provides useful insights into key market dynamics impacting this growth.The global isostearyl alcohol market is segmented on the basis of application, end use, and region. On the basis of application, the emollient and solvent segments collectively accounted for 49.5% share of global consumption of isostearyl alcohol in 2015 and are expected to exhibit CAGRs of 3.9% and 3.5% respectively over the forecast period. The glossing agent and dispersing agent segments collectively accounted for 28.0% share of global consumption of isostearic alcohol in 2015 and are expected to exhibit CAGRs of 4.4% and 3.9% respectively over the forecast period. On the basis of end use, personal care is currently the most prominent segment in this market in terms of volume while the cosmetics segment is expected to gain traction over the forecast period due to a rising demand for anti-aging products. Increasing per capita consumer expenditure on personal care and cosmetics products and a growing demand for skin care products in the Asia Pacific geography especially in China are some of the factors driving demand for anti-aging products, in turn anticipated to boost growth of the isostearyl alcohol market.Request to view Table of Content @By region, the market is segmented into Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. The Europe and North America markets collectively accounted for 57.5% share of global consumption of isostearyl alcohol in 2015 and are expected to exhibit CAGRs of 3.0% and 2.5% respectively over the forecast period. Asia Pacific accounted for 22.4% share of global consumption of isostearyl alcohol in 2015 and is expected to exhibit a CAGR of 4.2% over the forecast period to account for 24.0% share by the end of 2024. Latin America accounted for 15.2% share of global consumption of isostearyl alcohol in 2015 and is expected to exhibit a CAGR of 3.7% over the forecast period to account for 15.9% share by the end of 2024.To Buy Full Report for a Single User @Croda International Plc., Oleon N.V (Avril Group), Jarchem Industries Inc., and Nissan Chemicals America Corporation are the top producers of isostearyl alcohol. While isostearic acid is the basic raw material for the production of isostearyl alcohol, most producers are shifting their production to other isostearic acid derivatives due to the monotonic properties of isostearyl alcohol as compared to other fatty alcohols.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a full-service market intelligence firm specializing in syndicated research, custom research, and consulting services. PMR boasts market research expertise across the Healthcare, Chemicals and Materials, Technology and Media, Energy and Mining, Food and Beverages, Semiconductor and Electronics, Consumer Goods, and Shipping and Transportation industries. The company draws from its multi-disciplinary capabilities and high-pedigree team of analysts to share data that precisely corresponds to clients business needs.PMR stands committed to bringing more accuracy and speed to clients business decisions. From ready-to-purchase market research reports to customized research solutions, PMRs engagement models are highly flexible without compromising on its deep-seated research values.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.commedia@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb: MyAssignmenthelp.com Caters To The Search Can Anyone Write My Dissertation https://myassignmenthelp.com/dissertation/mba-dissertation-help.html https://myassignmenthelp.com/dissertation/writing-my-dissertation.html UK, April, 7, 2017: MyAssignmenthelp.com is glad to announce that it has become the foremost MBA dissertation help service provider. Therefore, students who often wonder, Is there anyone who can write my dissertation should avail help from us.We offer our exclusive MBA dissertation writing help() services at affordable rates. 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Students can contact us at +61-2-6100-3843 for further assistance.MyassignmenthelpLytchett House, 13 Freeland Park Wareham Road Lytchett Matravers,Poole Dorset,Uk, BH16 6FAPhone +441212854112Email id: contact@myassignmenthelp.com United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia Transplantation Clinical Trials Market Size, Status and Forecast 2021 http://www.qyresearchreports.com/sample/sample.php?rep_id=855285&type=E http://www.qyresearchreports.com/report/united-states-eu-japan-china-india-and-southeast-asia-transplantation-clinical-trials-market-size-status-and-forecast-2021.htm http://www.qyresearchreports.com/category/pharmaceutical-market-reports-38.htm http://www.qyresearchreports.com Qyresearchreports include new market research report "United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia Transplantation Clinical Trials Market Size, Status and Forecast 2021" to its huge collection of research reports.This examination looks at the United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia Transplantation Clinical Trials market in a persistent way by explaining the main features of the market that are relied upon to hold a sizeable impact on its improvements over the given time frame. The key drivers of the market's development, restrictions, and patterns affecting the United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia Transplantation Clinical Trials market are surveyed in extraordinary detail, notwithstanding a subjective and quantitative examination relating to the anticipated effect of these elements on its development prospects sooner rather than later.The vast volumes of data on the Transplantation Clinical Trials by and large makes it an intense undertaking to take it down to the exceptionally significant bits of data and the genuine bits applicable to the present business issues in the market. Many organizations are additionally known to not have the fundamental committed assets and aptitude for taking up an illustrative statistical surveying in view of recorded information. Centered statistical surveying procedures can help these associations in framing clearer thoughts on their business systems and gather significant stakes in the market.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @A sweeping volume of information concerning the basic components of the Transplantation Clinical Trials that can impact its extent of development is given in the report. The report in this manner makes for an exceptionally useful review and can successfully permit organizations and their leads in tending to the main difficulties that as of now control the market, and deliberately increase greatest conceivable advantages inside the profoundly focused market scene.The report likewise gives data on the current improvements in items and innovations as currently visible in the market, alongside an examination of the general impact that these progressions may have on any future advancements. The report likewise offers its clients a 360-degree examination of the competitive situation in the Transplantation Clinical Trials. This is legitimate for organizations of all sizes and development levels inside the worldwide Transplantation Clinical Trials market and helps different associations get a handle on the main dangers and openings that sellers regularly need to manage.Browse Complete Report with TOC @Table of ContentUnited States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia Transplantation Clinical Trials Market Size, Status and Forecast 20211 Industry Overview of Transplantation Clinical Trials1.1 Transplantation Clinical Trials Market Overview1.1.1 Transplantation Clinical Trials Product Scope1.1.2 Market Status and Outlook1.2 Global Transplantation Clinical Trials Market Size and Analysis by Regions1.2.1 United States1.2.2 EU1.2.3 Japan1.2.4 China1.2.5 India1.2.6 Southeast Asia1.3 Transplantation Clinical Trials Market by End Users/Application1.3.1 Application 11.3.2 Application 21.3.3 Application 32 Global Transplantation Clinical Trials Competition Analysis by Players2.1 Transplantation Clinical Trials Market Size (Value) by Players (2015-2016)2.2 Competitive Status and Trend2.2.1 Market Concentration Rate2.2.2 Product/Service Differences2.2.3 New Entrants2.2.4 The Technology Trends in Future3 Company (Top Players) Profiles3.1 Novartis AG3.1.1 Company Profile3.1.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.1.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.1.4 Transplantation Clinical Trials Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.1.5 Recent Developments3.2 Astellas Pharma Inc3.2.1 Company Profile3.2.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.2.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.2.4 Transplantation Clinical Trials Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.2.5 Recent Developments3.3 Pfizer Inc3.3.1 Company Profile3.3.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.3.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.3.4 Transplantation Clinical Trials Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.3.5 Recent Developments3.4 Sanofi3.4.1 Company Profile3.4.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.4.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.4.4 Transplantation Clinical Trials Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.4.5 Recent Developments3.5 Bristol-Myers Squibb Company3.5.1 Company Profile3.5.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.5.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.5.4 Transplantation Clinical Trials Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.5.5 Recent Developments3.6 Amgen Inc3.6.1 Company Profile3.6.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.6.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.6.4 Transplantation Clinical Trials Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.6.5 Recent Developments3.7 Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Inc3.7.1 Company Profile3.7.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.7.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.7.4 Transplantation Clinical Trials Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.7.5 Recent Developments3.8 Parexel International Corporation3.8.1 Company Profile3.8.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.8.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.8.4 Transplantation Clinical Trials Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.8.5 Recent Developments4 Global Transplantation Clinical Trials Market Size by Application (2011-2016)4.1 Global Transplantation Clinical Trials Market Size by Application (2011-2016)4.2 Potential Application of Transplantation Clinical Trials in Future4.3 Top Consumer/End Users of Transplantation Clinical Trials5 United States Transplantation Clinical Trials Development Status and Outlook5.1 United States Transplantation Clinical Trials Market Size (2011-2016)5.2 United States Transplantation Clinical Trials Market Size and Market Share by Players (2015-2016)6 EU Transplantation Clinical Trials Development Status and Outlook6.1 EU Transplantation Clinical Trials Market Size (2011-2016)6.2 EU Transplantation Clinical Trials Market Size and Market Share by Players (2015-2016)Read more @About 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 Lamination Adhesives Market Poised to Account for US$ 2.2 Billion by 2024 Lamination Adhesives Market http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/11668 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/market-research/lamination-adhesives-market/toc http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/checkout/11668 www.persistencemarketresearch.com The global market share of the lamination adhesives for flexible packaging market in 2016 is estimated at US$ 1.3 Bn and this is likely to increase to US$ 2.2 Bn by 2024, projected to increase at a CAGR of 6.4% throughout the forecast period (20162024). In a new report titled Lamination Adhesives for Flexible Packaging Market: Global Industry Analysis and Forecast, 20162024, Persistence Market Research throws light on the market growth of lamination adhesives for flexible packaging and identifies key factors and trends impacting this growth.Lamination Adhesives Market:Sample of this report is available upon request @Lamination adhesives for flexible packaging are one of the emerging adhesive solutions widely used for food packaging. The lamination adhesives for flexible packaging market is estimated to project increased growth throughout the forecast period, driven by factors such as lesser cure time, lesser emission, lower wastage, and higher bond strength. Also, increasing demand for packaged foods in healthcare and personal care products have augmented market growth. However, government initiatives and rising consumer awareness towards usage of eco-friendly adhesives have limited the growth of the lamination adhesives for flexible packaging market. Market consolidation has been observed as a key trend, with leading market players engaging in strategic mergers and acquisitions to enhance their product portfolio and increase global footprint. Another notable trend indicates that solvent fewer lamination adhesives are fast replacing solvent based adhesives owing to their eco-friendly nature.The global lamination adhesives for flexible packaging market report is categorically split into three sections based on product type (further segmented into water based, solvent based, solvent less, and heat/cold seal), end use (further segmented into food packaging, medical packaging, industrial packaging, and other end use), and region. The solvent based product type emerges as the dominant segment due to its wide application in multiple industries. This segment is estimated to account for 42.8% of the overall lamination adhesives for flexible packaging market revenue by the end of 2016. However, the segment is anticipated to lose substantial market share to the solvent less segment, owing to an increasing preference of eco-friendly adhesives among end users. The solvent less segment is estimated to witness fastest Y-o-Y growth during the forecast period from 6.0% in 2014 to 8.2% in 2024.The food packaging segment stands out among all segments owing to the rising demand for packaged foods. The medical packaging segment is forecasted to be the fastest growing end-use segment owing to a high consumer spending in the healthcare sector and is estimated to expand at a significant CAGR of 6.9% during the forecast period. Food packaging is the key segment driving demand for lamination adhesives over 60% of the overall market demand is generated by the food packaging segment.Request to view Table of Content @By region, the market is segmented into North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Middle East & Africa. The market in Asia Pacific is anticipated to register a steady Y-o-Y growth from 7.1% in 2014 to 9.0% in 2024. This market alone is estimated to account for over 40% of the global flexible packaging market in terms of value by the end of 2016. Within the Asia Pacific region, the markets in China and India are anticipated to witness maximum Y-o-Y growth across the forecast period. The lamination adhesives for flexible packaging market in North America is expected to increase 1.5X over the forecast period; while the Latin America market is poised to increase 1.6X over the forecast period.To Buy Full Report for a Single User @H.B. Fuller, Henkel AG & Co. KGaA, The Dow Chemical Company, 3M, Flint Group, Arkema Group, Ashland Inc., Coim Group, Morchem, DIC Corporation, and Chemline India Ltd. are the leading market players in the lamination adhesives for flexible packaging market.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a full-service market intelligence firm specializing in syndicated research, custom research, and consulting services. PMR boasts market research expertise across the Healthcare, Chemicals and Materials, Technology and Media, Energy and Mining, Food and Beverages, Semiconductor and Electronics, Consumer Goods, and Shipping and Transportation industries. The company draws from its multi-disciplinary capabilities and high-pedigree team of analysts to share data that precisely corresponds to clients business needs.PMR stands committed to bringing more accuracy and speed to clients business decisions. From ready-to-purchase market research reports to customized research solutions, PMRs engagement models are highly flexible without compromising on its deep-seated research values.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.commedia@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb: Global Vitamin A Industry 2016 Market Research Report http://www.qyresearchreports.com/sample/sample.php?rep_id=710377&type=E http://www.qyresearchreports.com/report/global-vitamin-a-industry-2016-market-research-report.htm http://www.qyresearchreports.com/category/chemicals-market-reports-57.htm http://www.qyresearchreports.com The Vitamin A has been expressively dissected in this statistical surveying that has been added to our frequently growing industry knowledge arrangement. The archive takes after an arrangement that gives a careful and scientific diagram of the Vitamin A and moreover inspects the main sections, compelling components, and market components that administer the development rate of the market and its competitive and regional scenes.The report offers to its clients an all-encompassing 360-degree point of view of the Vitamin A from the back to front, starting with the core values of the mechanical components, then proceeding onward to the examination of information on the different perspectives including as industry chain structure, groupings, industry diagram, arrangements, applications, and late advancements.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @The data offered in the report has been accumulated through the assistance of various essential and auxiliary research strategies. Quantitative and subjective information appraisal for key market sections on the regional and the aggregate worldwide front have also been given in the report. The gigantic archives of information that have been sifted through by industry-best investigative techniques will give to the user the points of interest that matter the most.The report also gives a portrayal of the administrative situation of the Vitamin A and gives points of interest relating to the more prominent arrangements, approaches, controls, and decides in that effect the numerous business related choices in the market. A point by point outline of the competitive scene of the Vitamin A has additionally been given in the report, wherein itemized business profiles, SWOT examination, and numerous different insights about a portion of the real sellers in the market are incorporated.For more information on this report, fill the form @Table of ContentsTable of Contents1 Industry Overview of Vitamin A1.1 Definition and Specifications of Vitamin A1.1.1 Definition of Vitamin A1.1.2 Specifications of Vitamin A1.2 Classification of Vitamin A1.2.1 Vitamin A11.2.2 Vitamin A21.3 Applications of Vitamin A1.4 Industry Chain Structure of Vitamin A1.5 Industry Overview and Major Regions Status of Vitamin A1.5.1 Industry Overview of Vitamin A1.5.2 Global Major Regions Status of Vitamin A1.6 Industry Policy Analysis of Vitamin A1.7 Industry News Analysis of Vitamin A2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Vitamin A2.1 Raw Material Suppliers and Price Analysis of Vitamin A2.2 Equipment Suppliers and Price Analysis of Vitamin A2.3 Labor Cost Analysis of Vitamin A2.4 Other Costs Analysis of Vitamin A2.5 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Vitamin A2.6 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Vitamin A3 Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis of Vitamin A3.1 Capacity and Commercial Production Date of Global Vitamin A Major Manufacturers in 20153.2 Manufacturing Plants Distribution of Global Vitamin A Major Manufacturers in 20153.3 R&D Status and Technology Source of Global Vitamin A Major Manufacturers in 20153.4 Raw Materials Sources Analysis of Global Vitamin A Major Manufacturers in 20154 Capacity, Production and Revenue Analysis of Vitamin A by Regions, Types and Manufacturers4.1 Global Capacity, Production and Revenue of Vitamin A by Regions 2011-20164.2 Global and Major Regions Capacity, Production, Revenue and Growth Rate of Vitamin A 2011-20164.3 Global Capacity, Production and Revenue of Vitamin A by Types 2011-20164.4 Global Capacity, Production and Revenue of Vitamin A by Manufacturers 2011-20165 Price, Cost, Gross and Gross Margin Analysis of Vitamin A by Regions, Types and Manufacturers5.1 Price, Cost, Gross and Gross Margin Analysis of Vitamin A by Regions 2011-20165.2 Price, Cost, Gross and Gross Margin Analysis of Vitamin A by Types 2011-20165.3 Price, Cost, Gross and Gross Margin Analysis of Vitamin A by Manufacturers 2011-20166 Consumption Volume, Consumption Value and Sale Price Analysis of Vitamin A by Regions, Types and Applications6.1 Global Consumption Volume and Consumption Value of Vitamin A by Regions 2011-20166.2 Global and Major Regions Consumption Volume, Consumption Value and Growth Rate of Vitamin A 2011-20166.3 Global Consumption Volume and Consumption Value of Vitamin A by Types 2011-20166.4 Global Consumption Volume and Consumption Value of Vitamin A by Applications 2011-20166.5 Sale Price of Vitamin A by Regions 2011-20166.6 Sale Price of Vitamin A by Types 2011-20166.7 Sale Price of Vitamin A by Applications 2011-20166.8 Market Share Analysis of Vitamin A by Different Sale Price Levels7 Supply, Import, Export and Consumption Analysis of Vitamin A7.1 Supply, Consumption and Gap of Vitamin A 2011-20167.2 Global Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Revenue, Supply, Import, Export and Consumption of Vitamin A 2011-20167.3 United States Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Revenue, Supply, Import, Export and Consumption of Vitamin A 2011-20167.4 EU Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Revenue, Supply, Import, Export and Consumption of Vitamin A 2011-20167.5 China Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Revenue, Supply, Import, Export and Consumption of Vitamin A 2011-20167.6 Japan Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Revenue, Supply, Import, Export and Consumption of Vitamin A 2011-2016Read more @About 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 Micro Irrigation Systems Market has Started To Witness Traction from Agricuture Sector Micro Irrigation Systems Market http://www.orbisresearch.com/contacts/request-sample/221924 http://www.orbisresearch.com/reports/index/global-micro-irrigation-systems-market-segmented-by-type-application-and-geography-trends-and-forecasts-2017-2022 http://www.orbisresearch.com/contact/purchase/221924 https://www.linkedin.com/company/orbis-research https://twitter.com/orbisresearch https://www.facebook.com/OrbisResearch Micro-irrigation describes a family of irrigation systems that apply water through small devices. These devices deliver water onto the soil surface very near the plant or below the soil surface directly into the plant root zone. The market was worth $1,934.3 million in 2013. The market is estimated to grow at the CAGR of 17.2% during the forecast period of 2014-2020 and is estimated to reach $5,875.1 million by 2020.Rising water scarcity and costs are the major drivers of the market. Unpredictable rainfall in rainfall dependent countries is forcing the farmers to install micro irrigation system and reduce wastage of seeds, crops etc. Support from Governments for waste water treatment especially in China and India is another major factor for growth of the market. High cost of initial installation and continuous requirement of maintenance are restraining the growth of the market. Increasing awareness among the farmers and support from the Government in Asia-Pacific and South America is the opportunity for key players.Request sample copy of this report at:Sprinkler irrigation system accounts for around 50% of market share as it is cost effective for small farmers. Drip irrigation is the fastest growing segment with a forecasted CAGR of 18.1% during the forecast period.Orchards and plantations are the fastest growing segment in the market. Major application area of the system is agriculture followed by public parks.North America accounts for 35% of the market share followed by Asia-Pacific. Asia-Pacific is forecasted to be the fastest growing region with an estimated CAGR of 18.5% due to rising farmers awareness and available Government subsidies.Investment in research and development to introduce effective technologies is the most sought after strategy of major players. Netafim and Jain Irrigation are the market leaders accounting for more than half of the market share. The major players in the market are Netafim Ltd., Jain Irrigation Systems Limited, Deere & Company among others.Read more details of the report at:In this report we offer,1. Market Definition for the specified topic along with identification of key drivers and restraints for the market.2. Market analysis for the Global Micro Irrigation Systems Market, with region specific assessments and competition analysis on a global and regional scale.3. Identification of factors instrumental in changing the market scenarios, rising prospective opportunities and identification of key companies which can influence the market on a global and regional scale.4. Extensively researched competitive landscape section with profiles of major companies along with their share of markets.5. Identification and analysis of the Macro and Micro factors that affect the Global Micro Irrigation Systems market on both global and regional scale.6. A comprehensive list of key market players along with the analysis of their current strategic interests and key financial information.Why should you buy this report?1. For getting a comprehensive overview of the worldwide Micro Irrigation Systems market2. To gain wide ranging information about the major players in this industry and the strategies adopted by them.3. To gain an insight about the major countries/regions in which this industry is blooming and also identify the regions which are untapped.Enquire more details of the report at: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.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:Follow Us on Twitter:Like us on Facebook: JMA Pilani Celebrates World Health Day Theme Depression Lets Talk with Shruti Naik Apollo Hospitals Hyderabad JMA Pilani Celebrates World Health Day Theme Depression Lets Talk with Shruti Naik Apollo Hospitals Hyderabad http://jmapilani.org http://jmapilani.org/ According to the World Health Organization - WHO, India has the highest rate of depression with 36% of the population battling this serious mood disorder. The majority of patients suffering fall in the age bracket of 6 and 25.Depression is a mental disorder where the person suffers from prolonged period of sadness, which disrupts not just their mood but daily activities as well. Depression could lead to drugs and alcohol abuse and vice versa too. Right from its inception, Smt Jamuna Mishra Academy JMA which is one among the top ranking schools in Pilani has embarked on a rich tradition of celebrating various days of national and international significance.World Health Day is observed every year on 7 Apr to mark the anniversary of the founding of the WHO on this very date in 1948 and the theme for 2017 is Depression Lets Talk. On this occasion, Ms Shruti Naik a Birla Institute of Technology and Science - BITS Pilani graduated Mechanical engineer turned Techie in IT Majors Oracle, Capgemini & Infosys turned Psychologist currently working with Apollo Hospitals Hyderabad addressed the students of JMA Pilani in the Lecture Theatre and shared the following.The teenagers sadly suffer alone as they face a host of pressures, right from questions about who they are and whether they fit in, to the changes that occur during transition from childhood to youth. They rely on parents, teachers and other caregivers including friends to recognize their suffering and give them the help they need.Teenagers with depression dont necessarily appear sad. The most prominent symptoms may in fact be anger, irritability and rebellion. Teens with depression may have no motivation, feel directionless and even become withdrawn and complain frequently of unexplained headaches, stomach pain, etc. Teens develop feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness over their grades, appearance, social status with peers, family life, unrealistic expectations, lack of a proper support system, relationship problems etc. But whatever is the cause, when their family or friends dont try to improve their mood or sense of isolation, theres a good chance he or she may get depressed.Symptoms of depression in teenagers can vary in severity, but they can be divided into two categories - namely mood (emotional) and behavioral. Depression is twice as common among Indian women as men, but the number of men seeking treatment for depression is much higher than women. Some ways that can help fight depression include staying connected, pursuing a hobby, healthy food, good music, regular exercise, outdoor activities, good night sleep etc. Habits which need to be curbed include binge eating, fatty foods, taking unwanted stress, internet addiction, daytime sleepiness etc.Concluding her talk, Shruti expressed her happiness to be connected back to Pilani after a decade and invited the JMA students to remain connected to her for all advices relating to their careers. Principal Mrs Booma Natarajan anchored the proceedings and proposed vote of thanks. The students gave a thunderous applause and assured to remain cheerful in coming times.For more details about JMA Pilani seeAbout JMA Pilani: Smt. Jamuna Mishra Academy (JMA) established in the year 2004 which has been making rapid strides in early childhood education is presently one of the most sought after schools at Pilani considered as Oasis in the desert state of Rajasthan well known in India today for one among top in world ranking BITS Pilani University as well as CSIR Laboratory CEERI and globally renowned Birla Science Museum. JMA Pilani is a Co-educational English Medium School with Experienced Teachers, Spacious Classrooms and Modern Amenities designed to impart Quality Education combined with All Round Personality Development and lay the Best Foundation for the Childs Future. JMA which started in 2004 with an enrollment of 60 students for the Nursery, LKG, First Junior and Class I has grown today till Class XII and enrollment of 900. While the school admits both boys and girls, the girl student enrollment has been steadily rising every year and is presently nearly 50% of the total strength. The school has boys NCC, girls band which has been winning laurels every year too. Yoga and Fine arts are not just part of school routine but a way of life for the students.Mrs Booma Natarajan, M.Sc., M.A., B.Ed.Principal, Jamuna Mishra Academy JMANear Old Pilani Post OfficePilani Rajasthan 333031 IndiaPhone 91-1596-242314Email booma_pilani at yahoo.co.inWebsite: Automotive Daytime Running Lamps Market to Develop Rapidly by 2026 www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/11428 Automotive daytime running lamp (DRL) is a part of automotive lighting system. Automotive daytime running lamps were mainly developed to increase visibility of a vehicle in daylight hours to curb daytime road accidents. It emits white, yellow or amber light to increase the visibility of the vehicle during daytime. The daytime running lamp are automatically switched on when the vehicle is in a motion. Number of countries have mandated or permitted the use of DRLs in the vehicles, which have enhanced the market for automotive daytime running lamp. Automotive daytime running lamps market has shown a growth in the past few years and is projected to show a significant growth over the forecast period.Request for Sample Report and Table of content @The automotive daytime running lamps market is driven by increasing vehicle production & sales, safety concerns, and technological advancements. The technology advancement in the field of safety and security is expected to fuel the demand of automotive daytime running lamps market throughout the forecast period. The daytime running lamps equipped with LED (Light Emitting Diodes) light source are the most recent technology used in the automobile industry as LED light source is more energy efficiency than the conventional light source that is halogen. Despite of the various growth drivers, there are some challenges faced by the market such as expensive price of LED and high development costs. The advantages of global LEDs lights over traditional lights are low voltage, durable, zero UV emission, flexible designs, eco-friendly, and long life.The global automotive daytime running lamps market is segmented on the basis of technology, vehicle type, and region.The global automotive daytime running lamps market is segmented on the basis of technology as: Halogen and LEDOn the basis of vehicle type, the global automotive daytime running lamps market is segmented into: passenger car, light commercial vehicle, and heavy commercial vehicle. The market for daytime running lamp is estimated to be highest for passenger car in 2015 and it is anticipated that the market for passenger cars remain same for the forecast period.The global automotive daytime running lamps market is segmented on the basis of region as: North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific exc. Japan (APEJ), Japan, and Middle East & Africa (MEA).In terms of geography, the automotive daytime running lamps market has been divided in to seven key regions including North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Japan, Asia-Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ), and Middle East & Africa. The global automotive daytime running lamps market is expected to register healthy CAGR during the forecast period. North America is anticipated to be the dominant market for automotive daytime running lamps market followed by Europe and Asia Pacific. Factors such as increase in the adoption of daytime running lamps as they are mandated and permitted by government agencies along with an increase in vehicle production & sales and rising safety & security system per vehicle, are fuelling the demand for automotive daytime running lamps market globally.The major players identified across the value chain of global automotive interior ambient lighting systems market include Hella KGaA Hueck & Co., Koito Manufacturing Co. Ltd., Magneti Marelli S.p.A, Valeo SA, Ichikoh Industries Ltd., Stanley Electric Co., Ltd., and ZIZALA Lichtsysteme among others. Major light source suppliers are Koninklijke Philips N.V., General Electric, and Osram GmbH. The automotive lighting companies work closely with OEMs to provide customized daytime running lamps as per the OEMs requirements to match the design of the vehicle.The research report presents a comprehensive assessment of the market and contains thoughtful insights, facts, historical data, and statistically supported and industry-validated market data. It also contains projections using a suitable set of assumptions and methodologies. The research report provides analysis and information according to market segments such as geography, technology and applications.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Persistence Market Research Pvt. Ltd.305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.com Motorcycle Engine Management System Market to be at Forefront by 2026 www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/11461 Now a days Engine Management System (EMS) is common for low end vehicles and motorcycles. The engine management system is responsible for maintaining ignition timing and amount of fuel injected in the combustion cylinder. The engine management system helps to maximize the power output of engine, lower the exhaust, and lower the fuel consumption thus helping the vehicle to meet the required emission norms worldwide with improved energy performance. The engine management system is basically an Electronic control unit with sensors, sensors are used to send the information about intake air temperature, coolant temperature, throttle position, engine speed to electronic control unit. Electronic control unit takes the action and modifies the air fuel ratio and control the engine speed.Request for Sample Report and Table of content @Global Motorcycle Engine Management System Market Dynamics:Global motorcycle engine management system market is directly influenced by global motorcycle production & sales and emission regulations in different part of the world. The Asia-Pacific region is the largest market for motorcycles, there is a huge demand for motorcycles in India, and this factor makes this region the most lucrative market for engine management systems suppliers. The consumer demand for the more fuel efficient motorcycles in Asia-Pacific region is also a major driver for the global motorcycle engine management system market. Aftermarket installation of engine management system may contribute positively in the global motorcycle engine management system market. North America and Europe is the small market as compared with Asia-Pacific, but the demand for advance and efficient motorcycles is increasing, thus there is an opportunity for the engine management system suppliers in these regions.The increase in the demand for environment friendly electric bikes and scooters is posing a threat for motorcycle engine management system market.Global Motorcycle Engine Management System Market Segmentation:Global motorcycle engine management system market is segmented on the basis of types of motorcycle where it is used, such as sport bikes, cruiser bikes, touring bikes, sport-touring bikes, dual-sport bikes, and scooter and mopeds. Further, the market is segmented on the basis of components such as; ECU, pressure sensors, temperature sensors, speed sensors, position sensors, and others. Global motorcycle engine management system market is also segmented on the basis of capacity of the engines such as, less than 250 cc, 251 to 500 cc, 501 to 1000 cc, and larger than 1000 cc.Global Motorcycle Engine Management System Market: Regional OutlookGeographically, the Global Motorcycle Engine Management System market can be divided by major regions which include North America, Latin America, Western and Eastern Europe, Asia-Pacific region, Japan, Middle East and Africa. European and North American motorcycle market mainly consist of sport bikes, touring (adventure) bikes which are all high performing bike with advance engine technology. Asian motorcycle market mainly consist of two-wheelers with engine capacity less than 250 cc. Asia-Pacific is largest market for motorcycles, more than 70% of the global motorcycle market.Global Motorcycle Engine Management System Market Key Players:The major global player identified across the value chain are Robert Bosch GmbH, Denso Corporation, Delphi Automotive LLP, Infineon Technologies AG, Omnitek Engineering Corp., and Mitsubishi Electric Corporation among others. Companies are focusing on integration of smartphone through mobile application with engine management system which will help the companies to track the real time performance of a vehicle.The research report presents a comprehensive assessment of the market and contains thoughtful insights, facts, historical data, and statistically supported and industry-validated market data. It also contains projections using a suitable set of assumptions and methodologies. The research report provides analysis and information according to categories such as market segments, geographies, types and applications.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Persistence Market Research Pvt. Ltd.305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.com Cesium Hydroxide Market to Record an Impressive Growth By 2027 Cesium Hydroxide Market https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/1027 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/cesium-hydroxide-market Cesium Hydroxide Market:The global cesium hydroxide market has experienced a stable growth in over the past few years. Growing demand from the applications side such as electrolyte, catalyst has increased inflow of cesium hydroxide in the global market. From the end users segment, cesium hydroxide has a stable place in manufacturing of alkaline batteries and in color photography. These factors are driving the global cesium hydroxide market.Request a Sample Copy @Key Players of Cesium Hydroxide Market: Mc Chemical Co., Ltd Svs Chemical Corporation Triveni Interchem Pvt. Ltd. Caesium Hydroxide Hangzhou J&H Chemical Co.,Ltd Univar Cristian Grup Srl Novachim Trading Srl CogerSegmentation:As per MRFR analysis, the global Cesium Hydroxide market is segmented into types, application and end users. On the basis of types, the global market is segmented into lepidolite, pollucite and others. The applications for globalcesium hydroxide market include electrolyte, catalyst and others. The end users segment is divided into alkaline batteries, color photography and others.Study Objectives of Cesium Hydroxide 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 Cesium Hydroxide Market. To provide insights about factors affecting the market growth. To analyse the global cesium hydroxide 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 types and application. To provide strategic profiling of key players in the market, comprehensively analysing their core competencies, and drawing a competitive landscape for the market. To track and analyse competitive developments such as joint ventures, strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions, new product developments, and research and developments in the global cesium hydroxide market.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 Immune Checkpoints Activators: Competitive Landscape, Technology and Pipeline Analysis 2017 https://www.delveinsight.com/ DelveInsights, Immune Checkpoints Activators Competitive Landscape, Technology and Pipeline Analysis, 2017, the report provides comprehensive insights about pipeline drugs across this Mechanism of action. The key objective of the report is to establish the understanding for all the pipeline drugs that fall under Immune Checkpoints Activators.This report provides information on the therapeutic development based on Immune Checkpoints Activation mechanism dealing with 3 Phase II, 16 Phase I drugs and 19Preclinical and Discovery drugs. The report also covers the information for 20+ active companies involved in the therapeutic development of the products. The report also includes the information related to discontinued and dormant drugs. There are 5 discontinued products.Key findings from the report:In the past years 4 years, 14 collaborations have been seen between different companies, research institutions, and 7 companies have raised finance for their promising products.There are around 40 products in the pipeline.With the majority of the products being focused on OX-40 and GITR agonists.50% of the product trials have completed and posted results for 4-1BB agonist which makes it a responsive candidate.There are in total 9 technology platforms being used for the production of Immune checkpoint activators.Out of the 24 companies launching their products for Immune Checkpoint activators, Apogenix takes the lead with the maximum number of products.There are total 17 indications being targeted by Immune checkpoint activators out of which solid tumor remains the main focus with 22 products being targeted towards it.It is also spreading its application to the use of rare indications like Ovarian Cancer with 2 products in the pipeline.Report Highlights:The report also includes the information regarding the pipeline drugs and their current clinical status for various other indications.This report also has a market analysis that covers various deals, agreements, collaborations, acquisitions between various companies for successful development and future growth of drugs based on this mechanism of action.This report provides information on the therapeutic development based on the Immune Checkpoints Activatorsdealing with all pipeline drugs.The report provides drug profile which includes product description, MOA, licensors & collaborators, development partner and chemical information.This report covers the comparative analysis of Immune Checkpoints Activators at various stages covering Phase II, Phase I, Preclinical, Discovery and unknown stages, therapeutics assessment by monotherapy and combination products and molecule type drug information.It also has highlighted the discontinued products.DelveInsight is a Business Consultant company and serves as a Knowledge partner across the value chain of Pharmaceutical Industry. With the use of proprietary databases and analytical models, DelveInsight provides cutting-edge market and pipeline analysis and API intelligence across all therapy areas to the Pharma and biotech sector, helping clients to quantify market events and evaluate their impact on the valuation of products, portfolios, and companies.DelveInsight business research,A20, Sector 7, Near to Maxfort. School, DwarkaNew Delhi-110077, IndiaTel: +91-11-4568 9769 | +91 9650213330Email: info@delveinsight.comContact Person: Shikha Can EN 14986:2017 Form the Basis of International Certification? www.sgs.co.uk/en-GB/Local/UK/News-and-Press-Releases/2017/02/SGS-Baseefa-New-Edition-of-EN-14986-2017.aspx www.sgs.co.uk/sgsbaseefa www.sgs.co.uk/sgsbaseefa A new edition of standard EN 14986 Design of fans working in potentially explosive atmospheres was issued in January 2017. While the new standard does not make substantial changes to the 2007 version, many fan manufacturers will need to consider the amendments before the previous version loses harmonisation status. While the new edition has not yet been published in the Official Journal, it is speculated that this will happen in January 2020.Learn more about the changes to EN 14986, click here: (For stakeholders, the main question raised by the update will be whether EN 14986 can form the basis of true international certification, even though it is a European standard?The experts at SGS Baseefa have concluded that it can.During the previous year, the International Organization of Standardization (ISO) has published: ISO 80079-36 Explosive Atmospheres - Non-electrical equipment for explosive atmospheres -- Basic method and requirements ISO 80079-37 Explosive Atmospheres - Non-electrical equipment for explosive atmospheres -- Non-electrical type of protection constructional safety ''c'', control of ignition sources ''b'', liquid immersion ''k''It is these standards, rather than the older European standard EN 13463, that EN 14986:2017 now refer to.Since the ISO 80079 series of documents are also available for use by IECEx, and it is recognised that published material from any source can be used to back up the Ignition Hazard Assessment required by ISO 80079-36, it must be concluded that EN 14986 will be considered a valid document in supporting the Ignition Hazard Assessment.The IECEx certificate will still be tested against ISO 80089-36 and -37, but the assessment process and reports generated by compliance with EN 14986 can clearly be used to support both the IECEx certificate and the ATEX documentation.The availability of these new standards suggests that more and more manufacturers will seek to use IECEx documentation as the basis for the ATEX Technical File and EU Declaration of Conformity. This will be for both ATEX Category 3 Equipment and Non-Electrical ATEX Category 2 Equipment. The paperwork created for IECEx certification will form not only the basis for the ATEX Technical File, but also provide documentation which is accepted in many authorities around the globe.SGSs Baseefa Certification ServicesWith a history that dates back to the 1920s, SGS Baseefa is now a world leader in the field of hazardous atmospheres. They offer a range of services including certification and training, and can help companies comply with a range of national and international requirements, including ATEX and IECEx. Learn more about SGSs Baseefa Certification Services (For further information contact:SGS Baseefa LimitedRockhead Business ParkStaden LaneBuxton, Derbyshire, SK17 9RZUnited KingdomTel: +44 (0)1298 766600Email: Baseefa@sgs.comWebsite:About SGSSGS is the worlds leading inspection, verification, testing and certification company. SGS is recognized as the global benchmark for quality and integrity. With more than 90,000 employees, SGS operates a network of over 2,000 offices and laboratories around the world.1, Mons CalpeChitcombe RoadBroad OakRyeEast SussexTN31 6EU The authority of housing and communal services held a regular meeting of investors Meeting of ivestors The authority of housing and communal services of the Lipetsk region held a regular meeting within "Day of the investor". The investors, interested in projects on processing of waste and development of waste-processing branch and also in construction or reconstruction of treatment facilities, took part in this event.We will remind that the priority directions for attraction of private investments are water supply and water disposal, solid public waste manegement, improvement, building of rent housing.The deputy head of the authority of housing and communal services Oleg Govorukhin noted increase in interest and trust from private business to projects in housing sector and expressed confidence that the number of investments will grow in the municipal sphere further.Meetings with investors take place on a constant basis. The section which is completely devoted to investments into housing sector is posted on the website of the authority. The urgent information on potential interesting objects for capital investments, normative legal acts regulating investment activity on the territory of the Russian Federation and the subject and also contacts for interaction are published here.JSC Management Company "Investment Projects Fund" acts as the strategic tool for increasing of enterprise and investment activity in the Lipetsk region. Among our main goals are creation of new approach to development of territories and as a result improvement of investment climate of our region.We invite projects initiators and investors from all Russian regions and from abroad to mutually beneficial cooperation.JSC Managing company Investment Projects FundPhone: +7 (4742) 39-32-43E-mail: invest-lip@mail.ruAddress: 2 Slavyanova Street, Room 2, LipetskPresscontact: AnastasiaPhone: +7 980 262 32 46Web-site: en.invest-lip.ru Global Photochromic Lenses Market to Witness Comprehensive Growth by 2020 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/3067 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/3067 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com The Photochromic Lenses Market provides in-depth analysis of parent market trends, macro-economic indicators and governing factors along with market attractiveness as per segments. The report also maps the qualitative impact of various market factors on market segments and geographies.Ophthalmology market is growing at a stable rate from past few years. This is due to increase in aging population, large patient pool for eye diseases and increasing awareness about eye diseases. Photochromic lenses refer to the eye lenses that when exposed to ultraviolet radiations in sunlight, darken automatically. They return to lighten shade when no longer exposed to ultraviolet radiations. Photochromic lenses may be made of glass or plastic. Glass photochromic lenses have an embedding of microcrystalline silver halides molecules in glass substrate, whereas plastic photochromic lenses are made of organic photochromic molecules. Market for photochromic lenses is growing due the increasing levels of ultraviolet radiations in the atmosphere resulting in increased prevalence of eye diseases.A sample of this report is available upon request @North America, followed by Europe, dominates the global market for photochromic lenses, due to high level of awareness among people and technological advancement in the region. Asia is expected to experience high growth rate in the next few years in global photochromic lenses market. Countries with large population base, such as China and India, are expected to have the fastest growing photochromic lenses markets in the Asia region. Some of the key driving forces for photochromic lenses market in emerging countries are growing awareness and increase in the disposable incomes.Increasing prevalence of eye diseases, introduction of photochromic lenses with improved quality, reduced costs and increasing awareness among people are driving the global photochromic lenses market. However, discomfort and other drawbacks associated with the use of photochromic lenses and economic slowdown are restraining the global photochromic lenses market. In addition, advanced technology in alternatives available such as dedicated sunwears restrain the photochromic lenses market.Growing popularity and innovation of products with more advanced technology are expected to offer good opportunities for photochromic lenses market. Some of the major trends that have been observed in the photochromic lenses market include involvement of companies in R&D of new variety of lenses by use of different technologies. For instance, drivewear lenses have been developed by use of photochromic lenses and nupolar polarization technology.To view TOC of this report is available upon request @Some of the major companies dealing in photochromic lenses market are Transitions Optical, Inc., Corning, Inc., Rodenstock GmbH, SEIKO Optical Europe GmbH and Carl Zeiss AG. Other companies with significant presence in photochromic market include Essilor international, Vision Ease Lens, Younger Optics, Inc, Optical Dynamics and Signet Armorlite, Inc.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: Flame Detectors Market Buoyed by Rising Residential Adoption of the Fire Detector in Asia-Pacific http://www.marketintelreports.com/report/air0071/flame-detectors-market-analysis-by-type-single-ir-triple-ir-multi-ir-single-uv-dual-ir-or-uv-and-others-and-by-application--with-forecast-20162021 http://www.marketintelreports.com/pdfdownload.php?id=air0071 http://www.marketintelreports.com/inquiry-before-buying.php?id=air0071 http://www.marketintelreports.com/purchase.php?id=air0071 www.marketintelreports.com The Flame Detectors Market deals with the development and manufacture of equipment whose primary purpose is the early detection of fire. A flame detector, also known as a flame sensor, emits an alarm as soon as it detects the presence of a fire.The Flame Detectors Market has also expanded its safety features by ensuring that a UV flame detector can also kick-start the fire extinguish systems. A flame detector has the ability to work under extremely challenging conditions and can detect radiations intensity as well. The two main variants, UV flame detector and infrared fire detector, can also keep track of a fire within a burner.Browse our 135 Pages of Recent Research on Global Flame Detectors Market Analysis: By Type (Single IR, Triple IR, Multi IR, Single UV, Dual IR or UV, and Others) and By Application - with Forecast (2016-2021) @Scope & Regional Forecast of the Flame Detectors MarketThe Flame Detectors Market has played a big part in industrial growth for several decades and alarm systems will continue to feature prominently in the future as the cost of an industrial accident is too costly to bear. Fire safety equipment has also advanced to such an extent that a fire detector can be manufactured and customized depending on the application and industry vertical.Some of the obstacles in the path of the Flame Detectors Market include the sizeable investment needed as well as the lack of knowledge, especially in developing countries where manufacturing sites are managed in very dangerous surroundings. As regulations and safety protocols as well as their implementation keep improving, the demand for alarm systems is expected rise proportionally.Unsurprisingly, the Flame Detectors Market does best in the North American and European markets thanks to the strict regulations enforced in those regions. This is largely due to the importance attached to fire safety equipment in settings like offices and residential buildings.Avail more information from Sample Brochure of the Report, Request a Copy @Segmentations & Key Players Involved in the Flame Detectors MarketThe Flame Detectors Market can be broken down into various segmentations on the basis of Type: Single IR, Triple IR, Multi IR, Single UV, Dual IR or UV and Others. Application: Oil and Gas, Mining, Marine & Environment, Automotive, Healthcare, Manufacturing, Transportation and Logistics, Aerospace and Defense and Others. Geographical Location: North America, South America, Asia-Pacific, Europe, Middle East and Africa.Make an Inquiry before buying @Some of the key players involved in the Flame Detectors Market are as follows: Siemens AG Tyco Honeywell International Inc Simtronics ASA Johnson ControlsPurchase this Report @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.Contact us:Sales ManagerMayur S2711 Centerville Road, Suite 400,Wilmington,Delaware,19808United Statespr@marketintelreports.comTelephone: 1-302-261-5343 North America Ventricular Assist Device Market By Analysis of Major Industry Segments 2016 - 2024 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/north-america-ventricular-assist-device-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=16508 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com https://tmrresearch.blogspot.com/ North America Ventricular Assist Device Market: OverviewAdvance Heart Failure is characterized as weakening of the heart caused due to failure of the left ventricle, due to which the heart is unable to pump blood to different parts of the body. According to the AHA (American Heart Association), 5.7 Mn people in the U.S suffer from heart failure and 300,000 die each year of heart failure. Moreover, the AHA predicts that advance heart failure will become the most common cause of death globally. However, these statistics have already materialized in the U.S. and Canada, where advance heart failure is currently said to be the leading cause of mortality. In Canada, the figures are rising day by day. In Canada nearly 600,000 of the total is affected by heart failure. A large proportion of these population can be saved with proper treatment and care. Thus, the existence of an unmet medical need is clearly evident and is anticipated to augment the ventricular assist device market.Obtain Report Details @North America Ventricular Assist Device Market: Scope of the StudyThis report on the ventricular assist device market in the North America analyzes the current and future prospects of the market. The report comprises an elaborate executive summary, including a market snapshot that provides overall information of various segments and sub-segments. The research is a combination of primary and secondary research. Detailed qualitative analysis of factors responsible for driving and restraining market growth and opportunities has been provided in the market overview section. Market revenue in terms of US$ Mn for the period between 2014 and 2024 along with the compound annual growth rate (CAGR %) from 2014 to 2024 are provided for all the segments, considering 2015 as the base year. Market related factors such as technological developments, patent expiry, recent approvals, investment in clinical studies and acquisitions by leading players in the market, and historical year-on-year growth have been taken into consideration while estimating the market size. Growth rates for each segment within the North America ventricular assist device market have been determined after a thorough analysis of past trends, demographics, future trends, technological developments, drug development life cycle, and regulatory requirements. These factors would help the market players to take strategic decisions in order to strengthen their positions and expand their share in the ventricular assist device market in North America.North America Ventricular Assist Device Market: SegmentationBased on product type, the North America ventricular assist device market has been segmented into Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD), Right Ventricular Assist Device (RVAD), Biventricular Assist Device (Bi-VAD) and total artificial heart (TAH).Based on indication, the North America ventricular assist device market has been segmented into bridge to transplant (BTT), destination therapy (DT) and bridge to recovery (BTR). The American Heart Association reported that 2.6% of the total population is suffering from cardiovascular disease and heart failure is the leading cause of death in the U.S. and around 1.6% in Canada suffer from heart failure, and the number is rising each year. Therefore consequently driving the ventricular assist device market in North America during the forecast period.North America Ventricular Assist Device Market: Geographical OutlookGeographically, the North America ventricular assist device market has been segmented into two countries: the U.S. and Canada. These countries have been further segmented by indication and product type. The competition matrix section included in the report is likely to assist the existing players to increase their market shares and new companies to establish their presence in the ventricular assist device market in North America.Companies Mentioned in the ReportThe report also profiles major players in the market based on various attributes such as company overview, financial overview, SWOT analysis, key business strategies, product portfolio, and recent developments. Key companies profiled in the report include ABIOMED, St. Jude Medical, HeartWare, SynCardia Systems LLC, Sunshine Heart, Inc., Berlin Heart GmbHFill the form for an exclusive 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. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:Browse market research blog: yStats.com releases a Free Report on Global E-Commerce and Online Payment Markets yStats.com Logo www.yStats.com https://www.ystats.com/product/free-report-2017-global-b2c-e-commerce-and-online-payment-developments/ www.ystats.com www.twitter.com/ystats www.linkedin.com/company/ystats www.facebook.com/ystats Germany-based secondary market research firm yStats.com has issued a special Free Report, containing valuable insights from its highly-regarded publications regarding B2C E-Commerce and Online Payments worldwide. The report is available for download atThis unique free report, titled Global B2C E-Commerce and Online Payment Developments is a composite of text and graphic charts from reports as published by yStats.com in 2016, with the same authentic, carefully researched information as in the publications purchased by clients of yStats.com, which are sector-leading companies worldwide. The footnotes showing information about the original source are included, reflecting the companys methodology of secondary research from a wide variety of respected, authoritative primary sources to insure reliability of the information for the end users.The samples in this free report demonstrate the variety of topics covered in publications of the Hamburg-based research firm. Readers can see data on the vertiginous growth of the use of mobile payments in South Korea, the evolving use of omnichannel purchase methods such as click and collect in the United Kingdom and the penetration of cross-border shopping in Canada, among other topics. The charts in this free report represent the wider and deeper coverage in the complete library of yStats.com reports: over 70 markets in all global economic regions.This free report is an example of the boardroom ready reports that yStats.com has provided to its clients since 2005, containing data to guide informed decisions in this fast-growing field of online retail.We are pleased to have been providing boardroom ready reports to our clients since 2005. This invitation to request our sample free report conveys our desire to be of assistance to a wider audience in providing data to guide informed decisions in the fast-growing fields of online retail and payments.The report is available for download after registration here:About yStats.comFounded in 2005 and headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, yStats.com is one of the world's leading secondary market research companies. We are committed to providing the most up-to-date and objective data on Global B2C E-Commerce and Online Payment markets to sector-leading companies worldwide.Our multilingual staff researches, gathers, filters and translates information from thousands of reputable sources to synthesize accurate and timely reports in our areas of expertise, covering more than 100 countries and all global regions. 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KGBehringstrasse 28a, D-22765 HamburgPhone: +49 (0)40 - 39 90 68 50Fax: +49 (0)40 - 39 90 68 51E-Mail: press@ystats.comInternet:Twitter:LinkedIn:Facebook: Analgesics Market to Witness an Outstanding Growth by 2024 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/analgesics-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=12113 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/ Global Analgesics Market: OverviewAnalgesics, or painkillers, are used to reduce and treat aches and pains. Internal and external analgesics are used to combat pain resulting from inflammation, cancer treatments, physiological injury, neuropathic conditions, surgeries, wounds, and phantom aches. The most prominent therapeutic classes of analgesics are local anesthesia, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), and opioids. The growing incidence of cancer worldwide and the rise in chronic diseases are mainly responsible for the consistent growth of the global analgesics market.Read Complete Market Details at:The research publication offers clients a comprehensive summary of the global analgesics market and elucidates the various factors driving and hampering its growth during the forecast period. The report also evaluates the chief players competing in the global market for analgesics and profiles them on the basis of a number of key attributes, such as company and business overview, recent developments, product portfolio, business strategies, and financial strength.Global Analgesics Market: Key Trends and Competitive LandscapeThe increasing therapeutic benefits offered by analgesics, in addition to effective and fast relief from pain, have significantly driven the demand for analgesics over the years. The development of innovative drugs and rising awareness about these treatment options have also supported the analgesics market. Moreover, the rise in recurring aches and pains owing to an increase in the prevalence of cancer, cardiovascular disease, arthritis, and other chronic and acute diseases has propelled the demand for analgesics. Other key factors positively impacting the global analgesics market include the growing prevalence of pain worldwide, the rise in effective treatment options, a surge in the aging population, and the growing acceptance of analgesics by a wider target audience.Eli Lilly and Company, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., Bayer AG, F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., Pfizer Inc., Endo Pharmaceuticals, Reckitt Benckiser plc, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Sanofi, Johnson & Johnson, Novartis AG, and GlaxoSmithKline PLC are some of the major companies actively participating in the global analgesics market. In the quest of increasing their share in the analgesics market, an increasing number of firms have been adopting acquisitions as their main development strategy.Global Analgesics Market: Region-wise OutlookThe global analgesics market has been categorized into Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, and Rest of the World based on geography. North America is presently the leading market for analgesics and is projected to retain its dominant position through 2024. Recent regulatory changes in the U.S., accompanied by new marketing strategies by analgesics companies, have greatly benefited this regional market. After declining sales owing to frequent recalls, the analgesics market in the U.S., in particular, has been stabilizing on account of the return of prominent brands, the rising occurrence of aches and pains, the rise in the average age of the population, and an alarming rate of obesity. These demographic and lifestyle developments have significantly propelled the North America analgesics market.The Europe analgesics market is also anticipated to expand in the coming years owing to the rapid commercialization of new drugs and an increasing geriatric population. Although analgesics form one of the largest product areas in over-the-counter drugs, this segment has been negatively affected by the growing trend of improving health instead of merely treating symptoms. An increasing number of consumers in the U.K., for instance, have restricted their consumption of analgesics with this trend in mind, thereby negatively impacting the sales of analgesics.Get the Sample PDF Brochure for this market research at:In contrast, consumers in several Asia Pacific countries seem relatively less concerned over the possible side-effects of analgesics. A higher willingness to self-medicate instead of visiting a trained physician for mild pain and fever is a trend that is common in a number of countries, more prominently in India. Moreover, the immensely stressful lifestyles in most urban parts of the region have resulted in consumers looking for quick and easy solutions to combat pain. This, combined with the surge in purchasing power, has enabled the demand for as well as sales of analgesics to remain steady over the years.Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Our data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Thoracoscopes Market, By End-User Forecast to 2022 https://www.scalarmarketresearch.com/request-sample.php?id=848 https://www.scalarmarketresearch.com/market-reports/thoracoscopes-market Thoracoscopes are used for visual examination of the chest cavity. It is used in a procedure called as thoracoscopy involving biospy and intenral examination. Thoracoscopes market is set to grow in the forecast period as the technology is making progress and people are becoming increasingly open to adapt it. North America and Europe are the top regions with highest share of thoracoscopes market because of high acceptance among people and good healthcare facilities provided to the citizens of these regions. Asia-Pacific is supposed to have a high growth rate in future for the thoracoscopes market because of large population and high number of people suffering from cardiovascular diseases.The report on the global Thoracoscopes market uses the top-down and bottom-up approaches to define, analyze, and describe the market trends for the next five years. The report also tracks the emerging applications, innovative technologies, and mergers & acquisitions. It also focuses on the growth drivers and restraints for the key market players during the forecast period.Download Free Sample:KEY PREMIUM INDUSTRY INSIGHTS1. The key reasons for the growth of thoracoscopes market are technological advancements, rise in the global aging population, improvement in healthcare facilities, and increasing demand for diagnosis.2. Expanding horizon of thoracoscopes usage in developing countries is one of the key growth opportunities in the thoracoscopes market.3. However, the thoracoscopes market will be hampered by the lack of skilled surgeons and stringent government policies especially in developing economies.Request Free Sample:KEY MARKET PLAYERSKey players in the thoracoscopes market include:1. Aesculap2. Camb3. Karlstorz4. GYRUS ACMI5. Innovexmed6. Johnson & Johnson7. BME8. Omec9. CovidienABOUT US:Scalar Market Research Inc. aspires to assist organizations from around the world to achieve their business goal with premium market research reports and consulting services. Our real-time industry tracking with the help of advanced analytics offers a crystal clear view of all the activities in niche markets. Our team, with thorough global understanding, works relentlessly to gather the necessary market insights, including customer analysis, competitions and global forecast.CONTACT:Moses Nakka8770 W Bryn Mawr Ave.,Suite 1300Chicago, IL 60631Tel.: +1-800-213-5170 (U.S./Canada Toll-free)Email: sales@scalarmarketresearch.com The Future of the Moroccan Defense Market Reach to US$3.4 Billion in 2017 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/976687 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/analysis/976687 https://www.linkedin.com/company/marketresearchreports-biz http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ "The Report Future of the Moroccan Defense Industry - Market Attractiveness, Competitive Landscape and Forecasts to 2022 provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"The Future of the Moroccan Defense Industry - Market Attractiveness, Competitive Landscape and Forecasts to 2022, published by Strategic Defence Intelligence, provides readers with detailed analysis of both historic and forecast defense industry values, factors influencing demand, the challenges faced by industry participants, analysis of industry leading companies, and key news.Key FindingsMoroccos defense expenditure decreased from US$3.8 billion in 2013 to US$3.4 billion in 2017, at a CAGR of -2.80%. The decline in defense spending is primarily attributed to the drop-in exchange rates of Moroccan Dirhams (MAD) with respect to US dollars. The country consistently imports advanced arms and ammunitions such as fighter and training aircraft, ships, missiles, tanks, and frigates to strengthen its armed forces; a trend expected to continue over the forecast period. The defense budget is expected to increase from US$3.5 billion in 2018 to US$3.9 billion by 2022, reflecting a CAGR of 2.80%. Moroccos future procurement plan includes warplanes, helicopters, submarines, radar systems, and naval vessels.On a cumulative basis, the country is expected to invest US$18.6 billion for defense purposes, of which US$5.7 billion is earmarked for capital expenditure to fund defense procurements. The governments well-defined military modernization plans to counter influence of Algeria are expected to corner significant part of investment.The MoD is expected to invest in fighters & Diesel Electric Submarine, Military-IT & Networking and Anti-Tank Missiles over the coming years.Get Sample Copy Of This Report @This report offers detailed analysis of the Moroccan defense industry with market size forecasts covering the next five years. This report will also analyze factors that influence demand for the industry, key market trends, and challenges faced by industry participants.In particular, it provides an in-depth analysis of the following:The Moroccan defense industry market size and drivers: detailed analysis of the Moroccan defense industry during 20182022, including highlights of the demand drivers and growth stimulators for the industry. It also provides a snapshot of the countrys expenditure and modernization patternsBudget allocation and key challenges: insights into procurement schedules formulated within the country and a breakdown of the defense budget. It also details the key challenges faced by defense market participants within the countryPorters Five Force analysis of the Moroccan defense industry: analysis of the market characteristics by determining the bargaining power of suppliers, bargaining power of buyers, threat of substitution, intensity of rivalry, and barriers to entryImport and Export Dynamics: analysis of prevalent trends in the countrys imports and exports over the last five yearsMarket opportunities: details of the top five defense investment opportunities over the next 10 yearsCompetitive landscape and strategic insights: analysis of the competitive landscape of the Moroccan defense industry. It provides an overview of key players, together with insights such as key alliances, strategic initiatives, and a brief financial analysisView Report @Reasons To BuyThis report will give the user confidence to make the correct business decisions based on a detailed analysis of the Moroccan defense industry market trends for the coming five yearsThe market opportunity section will inform the user about the various military requirements that are expected to generate revenues during the forecast period. The description includes technical specifications, recent orders, and the expected investment pattern by the country during the forecast periodDetailed profiles of the top domestic and foreign defense manufacturers with information about their products, alliances, recent contract wins, and financial analysis wherever available. This will provide the user with a total competitive landscape of the sectorA deep qualitative analysis of the Moroccan defense industry covering sections including demand drivers, Porters Five Forces Analysis, Key Trends and Growth Stimulators, and latest industry contractsFollow us on LinkedIn:Table Of Contents1 Introduction1.1. What is this Report About?1.2. Definitions1.3. Summary Methodology1.4. About Strategic Defence Intelligence2 Executive Summary3 Market Attractiveness and Emerging Opportunities3.1. Current Market Scenario3.1.1. Primary threat perception3.1.2. Military Doctrine & Strategy3.1.3. Military Fleet Size3.1.4. Procurement Programs3.1.4.1. Ongoing procurement programs3.1.4.2. Future procurement programs3.1.5. Social, Political and Economic Environment & Support for Defense Projects3.1.6. Political & Strategic Alliances3.2. Defense Market Size Historical and Forecast3.2.1. Moroccan defense budget is expected to register a CAGR of 2.80% over the forecast period3.2.2. Counter-terrorism, border security, and the need to modernize outdated defense equipment to drive Morocco's defense expenditure3.2.3. Defense expenditure as a percentage of GDP is expected to average 2.7% over the forecast period3.3. Analysis of Defense Budget Allocation3.3.1. Share of capital expenditure expected to increase over the forecast period3.3.2. Capital expenditure expected to grow at a CAGR of 2.65% over the forecast period3.3.3. Per capita defense expenditure expected to increase during the forecast period3.4. Homeland Security Market Size and Forecast3.4.1. Moroccan homeland security expenditure expected to increase at a CAGR of 7.88%3.4.2. Human trafficking, drug smuggling, and cybercrime form the major components of homeland security expenditure3.4.3. Morocco is at some risk from external and internal threats3.4.4. Morocco faces some level of threat from foreign terrorist organizations3.4.5. Morocco has a terrorism index score of 0.93.5. Benchmarking with Key Global Markets3.5.1. Morocco is the fourth largest defense spender in the North African region3.5.2. Morocco's military expenditure is low when compared to the largest defense spenders but on par in comparison to the other African countries3.5.3. Morocco allocates a moderate percentage of GDP to defense3.6. Market Opportunities: Key Trends and Growth Stimulators3.6.1. Diesel Electric Submarine3.6.2. Military IT-Networking3.6.3. Anti-Tank Missiles4 Defense Procurement Market Dynamics4.1. Import Market Dynamics4.1.1. Defense imports to be driven by modernization initiatives over the forecast period4.1.2. Morocco imports majority of arms from Europe4.1.3. Aircraft accounted for the majority of defense imports during 2011-20154.2. Export Market Dynamics4.2.1. Morocco does not export arms due to its under-developed domestic arms industry5 Industry Dynamics5.1. Five Forces Analysis5.1.1. Bargaining power of the supplier: medium to high5.1.2. Bargaining power of the buyer: low to medium5.1.3. Barrier to entry: medium to high5.1.4. Intensity of rivalry: medium5.1.5. Threat of substitution: mediumAbout 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 Global Portable CT Scanners Market to grow at a CAGR of 7.65% during the period 2017-2021 http://www.orbisresearch.com/contacts/request-sample/241305 https://www.linkedin.com/company/orbis-research SummaryOrbis Research Inclusive Report: Global Portable CT Scanners Market to grow at a CAGR of 7.65% during the period 2017-2021DescriptionRecent Research Report Global Portable CT Scanners Market 2017-2021the following companies as the Key Players in the Global Portable CT Scanners Market: Philips Healthcare and NeuroLogica.Other Prominent Vendors in the market are: LifeHealthcare, Medtronic, and Providian Medical.Commenting on the report: One trend in market is growing focus on the development of PET/MRI hybrid imaging systems. PET/MRI systems are emerging hybrid imaging devices, which will likely drive the market growth. These scanners combine anatomical imaging and functional imaging data, bringing MRIs optimal soft tissue characterization and imaging without ionizing radiation. Further, research studies stated that PET/MR systems provide more quantitative data on the density and profusion of tumors.According to the report, one driver in market is rise in incidence of neurological disorders and trauma cases. Medical imaging equipment such as portable CT scanners and MRI systems provide better visual representation of the internal organs for the detection of any abnormalities. Portable CT scanners are high in demand due to the rise in neurological cases and accidents. These portable CT scanners help in minimizing the movement of critically ill patients, and therefore help in reducing transportation-related morbidity.Get a PDF Sample of Global Portable Computerized Tomography Scanners Market Report at:Further, the report states that one challenge in market is high cost of portable CT scanners. The high cost of portable CT scanners negatively affects their adoption. The cost of a portable CT scanner is about $350,000-$450,000. The additional packages required for the scanner costs about $7,000-$10,000. The cost of a CT scan ranges from $1,200 to $3,200 globally. A large population in APAC, especially in countries such as India and China, will provide a sizeable demand for PET/CT scanners. Since the revenue generated by the diagnostic market in APAC is less than that generated by markets in the Americas and EMEA, the high cost of portable CT scanners can reduce the adoption rate even further, thereby affecting the growth of the market.The study was conducted using an objective combination of primary and secondary information including inputs from key participants in the industry. The report contains a comprehensive market and vendor landscape in addition to a SWOT analysis of the key vendors.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.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: Introduction of New MVNOs in Europe: Data and M2M Segments Will Present the Highest Growth Opportunities to MVNOs in Europe http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/analysis/664573 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/664573 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ "The Report MVNOs in Europe: Data and M2M Segments Will Present the Highest Growth Opportunities to MVNOs in Europe provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"The overcrowded European MVNO market has been showing strong momentum and is set to grow at a CAGR of 5% during 2015-2020 to reach 110.7m MVNO subscribers at the end of the year 2020. Germany, with more than 140 MVNOs will remain the largest MVNO subscriber market during 2015-2020 followed by the UK. Moreover, increasing usage of mobile data mainly driven by the increasing smartphone penetration, deployment of 4G/4G+ spectrum, favorable regulatory framework and rising VAS offerings are some the factors which will boost the MVNO market in Europe. Increasing opportunities are to be witnessed in non-traditional MVNO business models such as data only and M2M during the forecast period.View Report @Key Findings- The most preferred business model in the Europe is discount based model which is being adopted by 21% of the total MVNOs present in the region, closely followed by niche segment occupying 20% market share, catering to segments including youth, elderly (50+ aged), students and NGO supporters. Business and ethnic models follow, accounting for 19% and 11% respectively, while the roaming model is adopted by 10% of MVNOs.- Pyramid Research projects Germany will remain the largest MVNO country, in terms of subscriptions serving 23m users at the end of 2015, followed by the UK with 14.1m subscriptions and penetration of 14.8%. Other markets such as Belgium, Spain,Denmark and the Netherlands are considered hotbeds for MVNO growth.- Regulators are formulating MVNO specific framework to boost competition and reduce tariffs along with setting up laws relating to rolling MNPs, reducing MTRs, harmonizing the tariff differentials between off-net and on-net voice traffic, etc. in order to ease up the entry barriers for MVNOsGet Sample Copy Of this Report @SynopsisMVNOs in Europe: Data and M2M Segments Will Present the Highest Growth Opportunities to MVNOs in Europe', an Insider report by Pyramid Research offers a thorough study of the MVNO market in Europe. It examines the various MVNO business models adopted in Europe based on their marketing approach, and provides an in-depth look at the changing landscape of trends in MVNO adoption and investment.The report analyzes the MVNO market and the role of other market participants such as MNOs and regulators in this expanding opportunity and consists of the following sections:- Introduction: This Insider first presents taxonomy of MVNOs to provide a conceptual structure for the analysis, taking the perspective of mobile operators.- Market context (Global and Europe): This section examines the global MVNO market analysis, MVNO trends in the European region and most prevalent MVNO business models operating in the region.- Case studies: The report examines four leading MVNOs in the region in more detail: Drillisch, Virgin Mobile, Freenet and Lebara Mobile. These studies focus on the MVNO offerings, their sales and promotional strategies and recent moves by the telcos in the MVNO space.- Key findings and recommendations: The Insider concludes with a number of key findings and a set of recommendations for MNVOs, MNOs and regulatorsReasons To BuyThe report examines the product and service portfolio being offered by MNVOs in Europe to enable new entrants' telcos to align their product offerings. The report also provides analysis of different MVNO business model adopted in various countries in WE and CEE region and identify the opportunities offered by each of them.- Helps executives build proactive, profitable growth strategies by offering comprehensive, relevant analysis of the Europeregion's MVNO opportunity, regulatory framework, competitive environment and best practices of the existing virtual operators.- The case studies focus on product offerings of leading three MVNOs in the region including the strategies being pursued by them to drive their MVNO business, which can be beneficial to local players or prospective market entrants.- By understanding the interests and positions of the main stakeholders in the MVNO market - MNOs, end users, regulators, content providers and ISPs - telecom professionals/operators can develop strategies and increase their participation in the growing MVNO marketAbout 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 Impact of Over-the-top Communications Services on Mobile Carrier Business : Emerging monetization paths http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/analysis/689824 www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/689824 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/pressreleases http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ "The Report Over-the-top communications services: Emerging monetization paths provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"SummaryOver the top (OTT) messaging leaders are rapidly evolving their key mobile messaging application interfaces to new voice and video communications, with revenue dilution implications for carriers worldwide. The progress made in mobile IP voice and video in the past year alone from key OTT players such as Facebook and Google is a clear indication of heightened mobile communications competitive pressure from these new players in 2016 and beyond. OTT players are transforming their communications apps into rich media platforms that serve as social networking hubs, offering a number of media services. Apps built on top of messaging enable users to solve broad problems. Messaging becomes a hub for consuming content and making transactions. Still, we argue that OTT communications providers need partnerships with carriers, to garner scale and differentiation.View Report @Key FindingsThe strategy of most, if not all, OTT messaging providers is to gain scale first and then monetize. All communications OTT apps with global aspirations are in a race to become the biggest platform in order to attract developers, which in turn should add more value to an offering.OTT players are transforming their communications apps into rich media platforms that serve as social networking hubs, offering a number of media services. Apps built on top of messaging enable users to solve broad problems. Messaging becomes a hub for consuming content and making transactions.LINE Messenger and WeChat are the few OTT communications players to demonstrate revenue. They can serve as a blueprints for other players.Messaging apps have significantly eroded carriers' revenue from previous cash generators such as SMS services. The threat to carriers is increasing with the migration of voice calls from carriers to VoIP providers such as Skype and WhatsApp.WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger represent the most disruptive OTT communications players in the market. Monetization could be highly disruptive.A number of partnership opportunities are emerging as carriers are growing convinced that they can generate revenue from OTT communications. The challenge lies in business tie-ups and infrastructure capabilities.Get Sample Copy Of This Report @SynopsisOver-the-top communications services: Emerging monetization paths offers an analysis of the state of the OTT communications market, the market drivers, and a number of company initiatives that highlight how market players are moving toward monetization. We highlight a number of monetization strategies and case studies employed by the world's largest OTT communications players. We also look at how carriers are impacted by OTT communications providers and how they can partner with key players to drive revenue. We conclude with recommendations for OTT companies and carriers.The Report is structured as follows:Section 1: Market context. This section provides an overview of the OTT communications providers along with the competitive landscape and recent acquisitions and investments in OTT messaging app market. It also provides details on key OTT communications features and information on these communications apps are now evolving into powerful digital platforms.Section 2: Emerging monetization strategies. Here we explore the various monetization strategies adopted by the major OTT communications companies globally.Section 3: OTT communications case studies. The report includes six case studies: Facebook Messenger, Line, Viber, WeChat, Snapchat and WhatsApp. Each case study offers detailed analysis of the trajectory and approach taken by OTT service providers for generating revenues along with the progress made in recent years.Section 4: Key findings and recommendations. We conclude with a summary of our findings on the emerging monetization paths adopted by various OTT service providers around the world, as well as specific recommendations for network carriers and OTT service providers looking to increase their revenue and develop partnerships in the OTT arena.Reasons To BuyAssess revenue models for OTT communications services and learn what works and what doesn't.Learn effective strategies for minimizing the adverse impact of OTT communications services on mobile carrier businessExamine the business case for OTT/carrier partnershipsRead our latest Press Release atTable of ContentsTable of exhibitsExecutive SummarySection 1: OTT communications market contextState of the marketCompetitor landscapeKey featuresBusiness model evolutionSection 2: Emerging monetization strategiesDigital contentSponsored chatsAdvertisingMobile payments / commerceSection 3: OTT communications provider case studiesFacebook MessengerLINESnapchatViberWeChatWhatsAppSection 4: The OTT/carrier partner modelWhy carriers and OTTs need partnershipsOTT/carrier partnership landscapeOTT/carrier partnership opportunitiesSection 5: Key findings & recommendationsKey findingsRecommendationsAppendicesAcronyms and definitionsCompanies mentionedAbout Pyramid ResearchPyramid Research contact informationAbout 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 Research Report on United States Solar Cells Market 2017 Industry Application in Aerospace, Military, Defense, Automotive, Energy and Power : SunPower, SolarWorld, Hanhua http://www.qyresearchreports.com/sample/sample.php?rep_id=1047463&type=E http://www.qyresearchreports.com Geographically, this report splits the United States market into seven regions:The WestSouthwestThe Middle AtlanticNew EnglandThe SouthThe Midwestwith sales (volume), revenue (value), market share and growth rate of Solar Cells in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast).United States Solar Cells market competition by top manufacturers/players, with Solar Cells sales volume, price, revenue (Million USD) and market share for each manufacturer/player; the top players includingSanyo SolarKyocera SolarSharpMotechSunPowerSolarWorldCanadian SolarHanhuaBoschIsofotonRECNeo Solar PowerGintech EnergyE-Ton Solar TechOn the basis of product, this report displays the sales volume, revenue, product price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoAmorphous Solar CellsCrystalline Solar CellsOn the basis on the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, sales volume, market share and growth rate of Solar Cells for each application, includingMilitary FieldAerospace FieldIndustryOtherGet a Free Sample Copy of this Report here @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 C4ISR Market 2017- Lockheed Martin Corporation, Boeing, Raytheon https://goo.gl/r5y7v1 http://marketinsights.biz/global-c4isr-market-2017-by-manufacturers-countries-type-and-application-forecast-to-2022/ http://marketinsights.biz C4ISR Market 2017 Industry research report provides important information to identify and analyze the market need, market size and competition. This market research report used in maintaining competitiveness over competitors.C4ISR is a military terminology, it is by the C2 (Command, Control) evolved, usually translated as command automation system. It is abbreviated of Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence Surveillance, Reconnaissance.C4ISR system to provide military information command and management system, improve command efficiency. Now C4ISR has become the nerve center of modern army.Kosovo war is the first large-scale military use of C4ISR system by US.Get Sample of Report(No cost for sample) @Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the C4ISR 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.Market Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversLockheed Martin CorporationBoeingRaytheonNorthrop Grumman CorporationL-3 Communications HoldingsElbit SystemsBAE SystemsThales GroupHarris CorporationDRS TechnologiesDetail Info of Report & Enquiry for Buying Report Visit at:Market Segment by Regions, regional analysis coversNorth 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)Market Segment by Type, coversCommand & ControlCommunicationsComputersIntelligenceSurveillanceMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided intoLand Based SystemNaval SystemsAir Force SystemSpace SystemC4ISR market report provides a detailed view based on applications and segment. Key applications included in the report.It also provides market volume and revenue for each application and product under every country level segment.Finally, the feasibility of new investment projects is assessed, and methodology of the report are offered.About Us:"MarketInsights.Biz 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 US:Frank ValadezDirector of Business DevelopmentWebsite:Email:sales@marketinsights.biz A look at the Global Connector Market 2017 updated research report https://www.reportsworldwide.com/report/the-world-connector-market-handbook-2017 https://www.reportsworldwide.com/enquiry?report_id=21061 ReportsWorldwide has announced the addition of a new report title The World Connector Market Handbook 2017 to its growing collection of premium market research reports.This comprehensive seven-chapter, 228-page report analyzes all aspects of the world electronic connector market. The report provides detailed connector statistics by equipment sector and product category for North America, Europe, Japan, China, Asia Pacific, and the ROW region.Included is a complete chapter on worldwide connector industry results by region, equipment sector, and product category. Data is provided for the years 2007 2016, and projections for 2017 and 2022 (including five-year CAGRs).To view a detailed description and Table of Contents please visit:ANALYSIS OF THE WORLD ELECTRONIC CONNECTOR MARKETIncreasing over $2.11 billion, connector industry sales increased +4.1% in 2016. Percentage wise, the Chinese region exhibited the greatest growth, with a year-over-year sales increase of +11.9%, followed by ROW with a year-over-year increase of +5.6% and Europe with a year-over-year increase of +5.4%. The only regions to not show an increase were Japan and Asia Pacific, where sales decreased -7.8% and -3.4% respectively. In US dollars, the greatest growth was seen in China, where sales grew $1,746.3 million, followed by Europe where sales grew $562.3 million.END-USE EQUIPMENT SECTORSAutomotive was the largest end-use equipment sector for electronic connector products, with 2016 shipments of $12,759.9 million, and is anticipated to maintain this position in 2017. Connectors utilized in the automotive sector accounted for 23.6% of all connectors manufactured in 2016. Connectors used in the telecom/datacom sector followed behind automotive, with 21.4% percent of the total market.To Enquire about this Report please visit @About ReportsWorldwide.comReportsWorldwide.com is a leading provider of global market intelligence reports and services. With research reports from top publishers, consulting and advisory firms, ReportsWorldwide.com offers instant online access to a growing database of expert insights on global industries, companies, products, geographies and trends.Press Contact:Abigail CrastoSenior Vice President101, Arch StreetBoston, MA 02110USPhone +1 (617) 398-4994Fax +1 (617) 398-4995abigail@reportsworldwide.com Petroleum Coke Market to Exceed US$ 26.0 Billion Globally by 2021 https://www.marketresearchengine.com/reportdetails/global-petroleum-coke-market https://www.marketresearchengine.com/requestsample/global-petroleum-coke-market https://www.marketresearchengine.com/ New York, April 07: Marketresearchengine has released its latest research, Petroleum Coke Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2014 - 2021 with latest market insights. Petroleum coke is a by-product of the oil refining process. As refineries worldwide seek to operate more efficiently and extract more gasoline and other high value fuels from each barrel of crude oil, a solid carbon material known as Petcoke is produced.Browse Full Report here:Petroleum coke can be further categorized into green coke or calcined coke. Green coke is the initial product obtained from the cracking and carbonization of the feedstock to produce a substance with high carbon hydrogen ratio. Green coke is further processed to produce calcined coke. Additional processing eliminates the volatile matter and increases its electrical conductivity.Uses of Petroleum CokePetroleum coke is typically used as a source of energy, or as a source of carbon for industrial applications. Fuel grade petcoke represents nearly 80 percent of worldwide production and is a source of fuel for cement kilns and electric power plants. Calcined petcoke has the highest carbon purity and is used to manufacture energy, as well as in the aluminum, graphite electrode, steel, titanium dioxide and other carbon consuming industries.The report analyzes two major segments in the petroleum coke market fuel grade coke and calcined coke. The former is projected to remain the predominant segment globally because it is regarded as being more cost competitive than coal and natural gas. Petroleum coke has made significant inroads in the cement and power industry and has started giving competition to coal. Petroleum coke is an excellent, inexpensive product to blend with coal in traditional coal fired boilers.The report mentions and profiles the top companies that operate in the global petcoke market, namely BP Plc, Chevron Corporation, ExxonMobil Corporation, Saudi Arabian Oil Company, Valero Energy Corporation, Essar Oil Ltd, Indian Oil Corporation Limited, Reliance Industries Limited.Download Free Sample Report:The global petcoke market is segmented as follows:Petroleum Coke Market: by Product Type Analysis Fuel Grade Coke Calcined CokePetroleum Coke Market: by End Use Segment Analysis Calcining Power Plants Cement Kilns Blast FurnacePetroleum Coke Market: by Regional Analysis North America Europe Asia Pacific Rest of the World (RoW)Scope of the Report: We provide latest information about all active and planned refineries. We Provides historical data from 2014 to 2015, and forecast period to 2020 Information on refining, by refinery and country Provides operator information for top active and planned refineries Latest developments and contracts related to petro refineries across different countries globally. Details of end use consumption of petroleum coke in major countries. Pricing scenario of petroleum coke in major countries.5 Reasons to Buy this Report: Obtain the most up to date information available on all active and planned refineries globally Identify growth segments and opportunities in the industry Facilitate decision making on the basis of strong historic and forecast refinery and unit capacity data Assess your competitors refining portfolio and its evolution. Gain valuable insights on the pricing scenario of petroleum coke industry.About MarketResearchEngine.comMarket Research Engine is a global market research and consulting organization. We provide market intelligence in emerging niche technologies and markets. Our market analysis powered by rigorous methodology and quality metrics provide information and forecasts across emerging markets, emerging technologies and emerging business models. Our deep focus on industry verticals and country reports help our clients to identify opportunities and develop business strategies.Media ContactCompany Name: Market Research EngineContact Person: John BayEmail: john@marketresearchengine.comPhone: +1-855-984-1862, +91-860-565-7204Website:Address: 3422 SW 15 Street, Suite #8942, Deerfield Beach, FL 33442, United States Global A2P SMS Market Research Report 2016 Examine the Historical Development Status, Current Messaging Trends, Services, Channels & Growing Popularity http://www.qyresearchreports.com/sample/sample.php?rep_id=890744&type=E http://www.qyresearchreports.com This report studies A2P SMS in Global market, especially in North America, Europe, China, Japan, Southeast Asia and India, focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, coveringMBloxCLX CommunicationsSyniverse TechnologiesNexmo Co. Ltd.SAP Mobile ServicesInfobip3CinteractiveSITO MobileTyntecVibes MediaSilverstreet BVSound Bite CommunicationsSopranoFortyTwo Telecom ABOgangi CorporationBeepsendClearSkyOpenMarket Inc.AMD Telecom S.AMarket Segment by Regions, this report splits Global into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue, market share and growth rate of A2P SMS in these regions, from 2011 to 2021 (forecast), likeNorth AmericaEuropeChinaJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaGet a Free Sample Copy of this Report here @Table of ContentsGlobal A2P SMS Market Research Report 20161 A2P SMS Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of A2P SMS1.2 A2P SMS Segment by Type1.3 A2P SMS Segment by Application1.4 A2P SMS Market by Region1.4.1 North America Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.2 Europe Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.3 China Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.4 Japan Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.5 Southeast Asia Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.6 India Status and Prospect (2011-2021)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 Cloud Computing Market Overview, Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis, Growth Opportunities & Restraints to 2027 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/1013 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/cloud-computing-market https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/enquiry/1013 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/retail-cloud-market-2414 Market Overview:Cloud computing is a type of Internet-based model that provides shared computer processing resources and data to computers and other devices on demand. It is a universal model for enabling ubiquitous, on-demand access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources. It specifically refers to a common storage space through which all the devices in the network can access data simultaneously. The use of Cloud computing technology not only gives cost benefits but also makes applications accessible to all devices in the network at any time and from any location.The global cloud computing market will grow remarkably during the forecast period and will register a significant rate of CAGR by 2027.The global cloud computing market is majorly driven by the cost effective services of cloud computing. And the concern pertaining to the data security is the key restraint for the growth of cloud computing market.By adopting cloud computing technology, Organizations can ensure a huge savings upon their total annual cost. Yet, organizations choose an in-house data centers over a virtual cloud network; as the in-house data centers ensure more security towards the data. The biggest challenge for the growth in the adoption rate of the cloud computing technology is to increase the awareness about its security aspects.Request a Copy of Sample Report @Major Key Players Amazon Web Services LLC (U.S.) Microsoft Corporation (U.S.) IBM Corporation (U.S.) Google Inc. (U.S.) Akamai Technologies Inc. (U.S.) CA Technologies (U.S.) Dell Inc. (U.S.) Hewlett-Packard Development Company L.P. (U.S.) Joyent Inc. (U.S.) Flexiant Ltd. (U.K.)Industry News: Akamai Technologies has announced its partnership with KT, a leading telecommunications company in Korea in May 2016. The partnership is done to combines ucloud biz which is a KTs enterprise could services to provide platform for Korean companies to expand their businesses. Amazon web services has launched cloud computing data center in Mumbai, India on June 2016. This new data center will provide 35 availability zones 13 technical infrastructure region.Taste the market data and market information presented through more than 50 market data tables and figures spread in 110 numbers of pages of the project report. Avail the in-depth table of content TOC & market synopsis on Cloud Computing Market Research Report- Global Forecast to 2027Access Report Details @Objective of Cloud Computing market Study: 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 Cloud Computing market. To provide insights about factors affecting the market growth. To Analyze the Cloud Computing 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 cloud service type, by cloud type, by application 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 Cloud Computing market.Make an Enquiry @Market SegmentsSegmentation by Cloud Service type Software as a service (SaaS) Platform as a service (PaaS) Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)Segmentation by Cloud type Private cloud Public cloud Hybrid cloud Community cloudSegmentation by Application Government Banking HealthcareIn addition to that, there are various cloud platforms such as public cloud which is offered over internet and operated by cloud provider, private cloud is operated by a specific organization and thus managed by third party.Browse Related ReportGlobal Retail Cloud Market, By Type (Solution, Service), By Service Model (Software as a Service, Platform as a Service, Infrastructure as a Service), By Deployment (Public, Private, Hybrid) - Forecast 2022About 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 Anand,Market Research Future+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com Global Photovoltaic Glass Sales Market 2017 - Guardian, AGC, NSG, PPG, Interfloat, Taiwan Glass http://www.fiormarkets.com/report-detail/45726/request-sample www.fiormarkets.com www.9dimenreports.com The research study Global Photovoltaic Glass Sales Industry offers strategic assessment of the Global Photovoltaic Glass Sales market. The industry report focuses on the growth opportunities, which will help the Global Photovoltaic Glass Sales industry to expand operations in the existing markets or aid its development of the emerging markets. The study assess new product and service positioning strategies in the Global Photovoltaic Glass Sales market. Furthermore, the new and evolving technologies and their impact on the market is analyzed in detail in this report.The leading players in the Global Photovoltaic Glass Sales market have been profiled in this report. The key market players with their business overview, marketing strategies, strategic alliances and acquisitions are included in this report. In addition, the report includes the evaluation of the top market players product and service offering and revenue analysis. The report features significant industry insights, market expectations, and key developments, which will help firms operating in the market to make informed business decisions.The report also delivers a detailed segment-based assessment of the Global Photovoltaic Glass Sales market. The segments along with their sub-segments have been analyzed in this report. Furthermore, the report evaluates the trends that will help to fuel the growth of the individual sectors. The key segments of the Global Photovoltaic Glass Sales market along with their market forecasts both in terms of revenue and volume have been covered in the research study. The report also talks about the emerging geographical sectors in this market and the trends that will drive the industry across these regional segments.Download Free Sample Report @The report on the Global Photovoltaic Glass Sales market is created using a data collection mix of supply side and demand side. For the purpose of primary research, information and statistics with regards manufacturers, product wholesalers and distributors, and raw material suppliers from the supply side is analyzed. To evaluate the demand trends exhibited by the market, the report studies consumer surveys, application surveys, and mystery shopping. The report also refers to information obtained from secondary data sources. Backed by extensive research, the report delivers valuable market forecasts and estimates.Fior Markets is a leading market intelligence company that sells reports of top publishers in the technology industry.Our extensive research reports cover detailed market assessments that include major technological improvements in the industry. Fior Markets also specializes in analyzing hi-tech systems and current processing systems in its expertise.We have a team of experts that compile precise research reports and actively advise top companies to improve their existing processes. Our experts have extensive experience in the topics that they cover.Contact UsMark StoneSales ManagerPhone: (201) 465-4211Email: sales@fiormarkets.comWeb:Blog: Appinventiv Rendering World-class Android App Development Services Android App Development Services https://appinventiv.com/ Appinventiv, is a mobile app development company with a complete difference. It has managed an exceptional growth in the last two years, staying ahead of the intense competition in the app development marketplace. It has empowered brands all over the globe with its best-in-class, responsive Android app development services. It has relentlessly stayed on its path of developing quality apps for clients with pursuit of excellence and implementing best practices in the Android app development services rendered by it.Android is preferred being an open-source platform, building zest across the entire mobility space. It is widely accepted in the developing nations in comparison with the iOS platform offering a much more cost-effective solution. There is an escalation in the demands for mobile apps all over the world and they make it sure that they develop wonderful apps based on brilliant ideas, result of many a brainstorming sessions.There are many benefits of Android app development. Android has lower barriers for entry as it has a software development kit (SDK), which minimizes the development and licensing costs. The magic of using Android as a platform lies in the fact that the Android SDK is an open-source platform, freely available to developers, which enables an interaction with the community for the objective of fulfilling the needs of mobile app development. Moreover, you can tweak and integrate your mobile app as per your business requirements. Furthermore, Android is scripted in Java language, with a rich set of libraries. It is most aptly termed as the preferred platform among the app developers, as it is easier to adopt and script code while using it. The proficient app developers at Appinventiv are extremely adept in developing customized solutions with advanced skills on latest tools and technologies.Appinventiv is a leading mobile app development company which has achieved stupendous success of delivering world-class mobile apps. It develops business-centric apps across a wide range of platforms like Android, iOS and iPad. It has a highly skilled team of app developers who are constantly working hard, using the latest technologies like iBeacons, IoT and Wearables. They excel in driving your business by maximizing the profit for your esteemed organization by providing end-to-end solutions as per the business requirements of its customers.So, if you are seeking for an ideal Android app development company that can give a concrete shape to your brilliant app idea into a real-life solution by creating perfect apps then contact us at Appinventiv.Feel free to contact us at:79 Madison Ave, Manhattan, NY 10001 Europe Pure Nicotine Market is Expected to Grow at a CAGR of 5.83% by 2022 Europe Pure Nicotine Market https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/2476 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/europe-pure-nicotine-market-2476 Market Research Future published a cooked research report on Europe pure nicotine market which is estimated to grow more than 5.83% after 2022.Market Overview:Pure nicotine is a colorless liquid with a characteristic acrimonious odor. It is a colorless liquid that turns brown and smells like tobacco when exposed to air. It is the purest and freshest Nicotine solution available in the market that is derived from the finest, pesticide-free Tobacco leaves. It is naturally sourced, filtrated, extracted, separated and distilled to amass a true and clean nicotine produce. The Europe pure nicotine market has witnessed continued demand during the last few years and is projected to reach 5.521 Kilo tons at a CAGR of 5.83% by 2022. Increase in demand for the nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) products will drive the higher demand for the pure nicotine in the coming years. Increase in demand across various applications including e-liquid, smoking cessation products, bio pesticides and other industrial purposes is driving higher demand for pure nicotineKey Players of Europe Pure Nicotine Market: Chemnovatic Contraf Nicotex Tobacco GmbH (CNT) Nicobrand Limited Alchem International SA Purenic (BGP Europe AG)Request a Sample Copy @Market Segmentation:Europe pure nicotine market is segmented by type, application and country.Market Analysis:Europe pure nicotine market, based on application, is segmented into e-liquid, smoking cessation products, pharmaceuticals, bio-pesticide and others E-liquid dominated and having more than 50% market share in the year 2016 and is projected to grow at the highest CAGR at 5.85% during the forecast period followed by smoking cessation products with market share more than 25% and growing at CAGR of 5.8% for the corresponding period. The innovations in pure nicotine products and process prime objectives include achieving reductions in cigarette consumption by providing various product forms, flavors, and packaging styles is supporting the market growth.Regional Analysis:Rest of the Europe part accounted for the largest market share which is more than of 50% in 2016, with a market volume of 2.063 kilo tons and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 5.38% during the estimated period. Bulgaria is emerging as new target country with projected CAGR of 7.08% followed by Poland and Germany.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 the prime objective to provide optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies depending on products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments enables our clients to know more consequently do more, which gives them answer for their each and every important question.In order to stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meeting with industry experts and does 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 Microsoft Trending Technologies - Microsoft Certification Training BestDotNetTraining is Microsoft Silver partner provides MS.NET portal providing high end quality online training courses. We have all topics of MS.NET like C#, ASP.NET, MVC, WPF, WCF etc covered in-depth. 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Window Packaging Market - Technological Advancements, Evolving Industry Trends and Insights 2016 - 2024 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=18797 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/window-packaging-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Packaging has become an important constituent of modern life due to the ease of transportation, storage and preference of the consumer towards a wide usage of bags and boxes. Window packaging is basically designed to give outstanding visibility of the product inside the packaging and to attract consumers. Window packs are the combination of the strength and stability of corrugated, solid board or folding carton boxes with a visibility section that permits the consumer to see what they are buying. Customization of window packaging in terms of space, capacity can improve the market globally in the forecast period. In the absence of any major economic crisis, sales in key markets such as the US, China, Japan and France are expected to grow steadily over 2016-2024.For more information on this report, fill the form @Window Packaging Market- Market Segmentation:The global window packaging market can be segmented on the basis of material type, product type, end use and by region. On the basis of material type window packaging can be segmented into paper & paperboard, plastic, glass, and others. Further paper & paperboard can be categorized into corrugated paper, Kraft paper, poly coated paper, folding box board and others. On the basis of product type window packaging market can be segmented into boxes, pouches, bottles & jars, containers, and others. On the basis of end use window packaging can be segmented into food, beverages, pharmaceuticals & healthcare, personal care and cosmetics industry, industrial goods and others. On the basis of region, window packaging market can be segmented into North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East & Africa.Window Packaging Market- Market Dynamics:Growth in demand for window packaging is expected to grow steadily for several reasons. Increasing demand for flexible packaging is one of the major reason which is driving the growth are the high gloss, glaze, flat furnished and custom print on board tubes are used as a display pole that supports temporary, semi-permanent & seasonal display and act as an added value to the product which not only improves the shelf presence but also helps in achieving maximum consumer appeal. Most of the major packaging companies are now shifting their attention towards eco-friendly flexible packaging with window display packaging in order to achieve greater consumer satisfaction. On the other hand, the restraining factor towards the growth of the window packaging market is the higher initial cost of raw materials and lack of awareness among users. However, lack of government support especially in the developed countries is expected to curb the growth of the window packaging market.Browse Market Research Report @Window Packaging Market- Regional Outlook:Geographically, the window packaging market can be segmented into North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia-Pacific (APAC) and the Middle East & Africa (MEA). The growth of global window packaging market is expected to witness a healthy CAGR over the forecast period of 2016-2024. Moreover, Asia-Pacific is expected to witness a high growth of cluster packaging market due to the rising consumption of food and beverage products. The demand of the window packaging market is expected to witness an above average growth in North America due to the higher adoption of window packaging in ready to eat food.Window Packaging Market- Major Players:Some of the key players in the global cluster packaging market are Amcor Ltd., Bemis Company, Inc., Westrock, Wipak, Mondi Group, Smurfit Kappa Group PLC, Klockner Pentaplast GmbH & Co. KG., Graham Packaging, Berry Plastic Group Inc., Alpha Packaging, Constar International, Dunmore, Shenzhen Tianya Paper Products Co., Ltd., Guangzhou Best Printing Trade Co., Ltd., Liaoning Hengyue Printing And Packaging Co., Shenzhen Xing Jun Hui Yinshuapin Limited, Guangzhou Xilong Plastic & Hardware Co., Ltd.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: Cold Form Foil Market 2017 Industry Trends and Forecast to 2024 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=18803 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/cold-form-foil-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Cold form foil is an aluminum based film, also known as cold-form foil blisters especially in the pharmaceutical sector. Cold form foil, not only provides an impervious barrier to moisture, oxygen and other gasses, but also offers complete protection of the drugs, maintains the product integrity in order to show high tolerant compliance rate. Hence, the cold form foil market is highly influenced by the growing packaging demand from pharmaceutical industry. Pharmaceuticals packaging manufacturers are implementing new methods coupled with product advancements like tamper-evident and senior-friendly packages worldwide. Rising stringent regulations and environmental apprehensions which are imposed by Food and Drug administration (FDA) and World Packaging Organization (WPO) for sealing and labeling are projected to strengthen growth in the cold form market.Fill the form for an exclusive sample of this report @Cold Form Foil Market: DynamicsThe growth of cold form foil is attributed to the growing demand for advanced medical amenities from the consumers and adoption of numerous healthcare programs in developing countries. Nowadays, manufacturers are considering cost-effective and high quality alternatives for producing convenient packages for the end-users, which in turn, drives the demand for cold form foil market. Increasing consumption of packaging materials that provides protection as well as safety for the extension of product shelf life is expected to further drive the cold form foil market in the near future. Though cold form foil market size is growing at an impressive rate, there are factors that prohibit the growth of cold form foil market, like lack of translucency of the packages, slower production speed capacity as compared to the thermoforming and huge sizes of the blister packages which hinder the growth of the cold form foil market.Cold Form Foil Market: SegmentationOn the basis of application, the global cold form foil market is segmented into,PharmaceuticalsConsumer productsFoodIndustrial goodsBrowse Market Research Report @On the basis of material, the global cold form foil market is segmented into,AluminumPlastic FilmPolyvinyl chloride (PVC)Rigid PVCPETPolyethylene (PE)Polypropylene (PP)OthersOthersOn the basis of technology, the global cold form foil market is segmented into,ThermoformingCold formingCold Form Foil Market: Region Wise OutlookOn the basis of region, cold form foil finds its market scope in five regions, which includes North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Middle East & Africa. Europe, dominates the cold form foil market, followed by North America. The growth in Europe region is attributed to the increasing pharmaceutical sectors coupled with the rising availability of raw materials. Further, France, Germany, and the U.K. are expected to experience strong growth in the coming years. Though, Europe, represents the largest global cold form foil market, the highest rates for cold form foil market is in Asia Pacific, primarily in developing countries like India, China, Japan Taiwan and Korea. The growth is attributed to the increasing awareness of health benefits among consumers is likely projected to drive the demand. The developing countries are expected to create sustainable opportunities for manufacturers of cold form foil, owing to its growing demand for semiconductor and electronics application. Furthermore, Latin America and Middle East & Africa are expected to witness a moderate growth in the coming years.Cold Form Foil Market: Key PlayersSome of the major players of the cold form foil market includes, Amcor Limited, Sonoco Company Products, Bemis Company, Inc., Constantia Flexibles Group, ACG Pharmapack Pvt Limited, Essentra PLC, Tekni-Plex, Inc., Honeywell International Inc., and MSP CorporationAbout 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: High Abuse Shrink Bags Market - The Biggest Trends to Watch out for 2016-2024 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=18914 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/high-abuse-shrink-bags-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Shelf life acts as an essential factor among meat packaging manufacturers while choosing packaging bags and films. High-abuse shrink bags are one such solution to extend the shelf life of fresh meat products by offering advanced innovative and patented technology. High abuse shrink bags are designed for surface pasteurization of meat products inside of the packaging. Nowadays, meat packaging manufacturers are more focusing on the designs of packaging in order to sell their products differently as it is highly dependent on the purchasing decision for a positive impact. Further, this led to the specific requirement of packaging films for meat packaging applications.Fill the form for an exclusive sample of this report @Raw materials play a major role in packaging films in order to gain popularity among meat packaging manufacturers and retailers in the future. For instance, material like Ethylene Vinyl Alcohol (EVOH), which is highly used in high abuse shrink bags has properties such as high gas barrier, amazing strength and environmentally friendly as compared to other raw materials.High Abuse Shrink Bags Market: Drivers and RestraintsAccording to the U.S Food and drug administration, sales of fresh meat majorly accounts for about 65% of the overall food sales thus creating ample opportunities for high abuse shrink bags consumption, which in turn driving high abuse shrink bags market. Moreover, the food sector coupled with food service restaurants have shown a promising growth in the recent past years which is fueling the growth of meat packaging as well as the high abuse shrink bags market.Browse Market Research Report @Food packaging acts majorly driving the growth of the high abuse shrink bags market as flexible packaging accounts for nearly 50% of the total food packaging market. The rise in prices of meat products can be a major challenge to the global high abuse shrink bags market.High Abuse Shrink Bags Market: Region wise OutlookIn terms of geography, the global high abuse shrink bags market is divided into majorly five regions namely North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Middle East & Africa. Among these regions, North America and Europe are expected to collectively dominate the global high abuse shrink bags market throughout 2016 to 2024. North America, being the largest producer of meat packaging which is attributed to the huge usage of high abuse shrink bags in the developed countries of North America. However, the trend is gradually picking up the pace in developed markets for the global high abuse shrink bags market. Furthermore, Asia Pacific is expected to be primarily driven mainly by china, Japan and India in the global high abuse shrink bags market. Latin America and Middle East & Africa are expected to witness steady growth over the forecast period. In Latin America, Brazil, Argentina and Mexico are expected to create market opportunities for companies involved in the high abuse shrink bags market.High Abuse Shrink Bags Market: SegmentationOn the basis of material type, the global high abuse shrink bags market is segmented intoEthylene Vinyl Alcohol (EVOH)Ethylene-Vinyl Acetate (EVA)PolyolefinPolyethylene (PE)Polypropylene (PP)Polyester (PET)Polyamide (PA)Polyvinylidene chloride (PVDC)On the basis of application type, the global high abuse shrink bags market is segmented intoFresh MeatFrozen Fish and Sea FoodNon gassing CheeseNon-ripening cheeseOthersOn the basis of meat type, the global high abuse shrink bags market is segmented intoBeefVealLambPorkOthersHigh Abuse Shrink Bags Market: Key PlayersSome of the key players in the global high abuse shrink bags market includes Bemis Krehalon UK Ltd., Flexopack, Krehalon Industries B.V., EPACKAGING LLC., TDI PACKSYS LLC, Apex Packaging Corporation, Printpack, Fortune Plastics, Novolex, and Berry Plastics Group Incorporated, Fuji Seal International Incorporated, Inteplast Group Limited and many more.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: BioControl Agents Market Size, Share, Analysis, Report and Forecast to 2022 http://www.strategymrc.com/report/biocontrol-agents-market http://www.strategymrc.com/report/biocontrol-agents-market According to Stratistics MRC, the Global BioControl Agents market is estimated at $1.55 billion in 2015 and is poised to reach $3.67 billion by 2022, growing at a CAGR of 13.1% from 2015 to 2022. Rising concern regarding food contamination due to excess usage of pesticides is one of the key factors driving the market growth. Furthermore, concern about environment and soil fertility are the factors favoring the market growth. However, lack of adequate awareness among users acts as a restraint for BioControl Agents market.Based on application, On-Field segment is likely to acquire the highest market share during the forecast period driven by the use of beneficial insects. On-field and seed treatment segments are capturing maximum of the market share in BioControl Agents application market. Due to their low cost and large availability, Microbials are the most widely chosen active substances. North America leads the market globally with the largest market share and is expected to grow at the highest CAGR among the other regions.Some of the key players in the global market include Andermatt Biocontrol AG, BASF SE, Bayer CropScience AG, Biobest N.V., BioTech Systems LTD, Certis USA LLC, Dow AgroSciences, DuPont, FMC Corporation, Kenogard S.A., Koppert Biological Systems B.V., Marrone Bio Innovations, Inc., Monsanto Company Inc., Novozymes A/S and Syngenta AG.For More, Please Visit:Crop Types Covered: Vegetables & Fruits Cereals & Grains Pulses & Oils Other CropsActive Substances Covered: Microbialso Fungio Bacteriao Viruseso Other Macrobialso Weed Killerso Parasitoidso Predators Entomopathogenic NematodesEnvironment Covered: Out Field Crops HorticultureApplications Covered: On-Field Post-Harvest Seed TreatmentTarget Pests Covered: Micro-Organisms Arthropods WeedsRegions Covered: North Americao USo Canadao Mexico Europeo Germanyo Franceo Italyo UKo Spaino Rest of Europe Asia Pacifico Japano Chinao Indiao Australiao New Zealando Rest of Asia Pacific Rest of the Worldo Middle Easto Brazilo Argentinao South Africao EgyptWhat our report offers:- Market share assessments for the regional and country level segments- Market share analysis of the top industry players- Strategic recommendations for the new entrants- Market forecasts for a minimum of 7 years of all the mentioned segments, sub segments and the regional markets- Market Trends (Drivers, Constraints, Opportunities, Threats, Challenges, Investment Opportunities, and recommendations)- Strategic recommendations in key business segments based on the market estimations- Competitive landscaping mapping the key common trends- Company profiling with detailed strategies, financials, and recent developments- Supply chain trends mapping the latest technological advancementsFor More, Please Visit:We offer wide spectrum of research and consulting services with in-depth knowledge of different industries. We are known for customized research services, consulting services and Full Time Equivalent (FTE) services in the research world. We explore the market trends and draw our insights with valid assessments and analytical views. We use advanced techniques and tools among the quantitative and qualitative methodologies to identify the market trends. Our research reports and publications are routed to help our clients to design their business models and enhance their business growth in the competitive market scenario. We have a strong team with hand-picked consultants including project managers, implementers, industry experts, researchers, research evaluators and analysts with years of experience in delivering the complex projects.STRATISTICS MRC17049 King James Way, Gaithersburg,MD, 20877, USA Global Dimethyl Oxalate Market 2017 Covering Manufacturers - Hubei Meibo Technology, Zhonglan Industry, Anhui Jin'ao Chemical http://www.fiormarkets.com/report-detail/44931/request-sample https://goo.gl/ktWi67 www.fiormarkets.com www.9dimenreports.com Global Dimethyl Oxalate Market 2017, presents a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the Dimethyl Oxalate market globally, providing basic overview of Dimethyl Oxalate market including Definitions, Classifications, Applications and Industry chain structure, Dimethyl Oxalate Market report provides development policies and plans are discussed as well as manufacturing processes and cost structures. Dimethyl Oxalate market size, share and end users are analyzed as well as segment markets by types, applications and companies.Download Free Sample Report @The report, titled Dimethyl Oxalate is an in-depth analysis of the Dimethyl Oxalate market across the world. A brief historic overview of the Dimethyl Oxalate market has been mentioned in the report, followed by the present scenario of the market. The report analyses the size of the market and forecasts the valuation and the growth rate of the market in the span of next couple of years. Key drivers and restraints of the overall market has been pointed out. The report cites the various opportunities to favor the growth of the Dimethyl Oxalate market during the forecast period. It also indicates the key market trends shaping up the market.The Dimethyl Oxalate market has certain distinct aspects. The report throws light on each of these aspects and studies the various segments of the market in detail. The growth of each of the market segments during the forecast horizon has been analyzed in the report. The present state of the Chinese economy has lowered the demand from every market. The report discusses the impact of the various initiatives taken by the government in China to revive the economy and how this would impact the demand from Dimethyl Oxalate market in the nation. The report also takes note of the various micro- and macro-economic factors governing the overall market in rest of the world.Access Full Report @Discussing about the key players operating in the Dimethyl Oxalate market, the report provides crucial information about them. The Dimethyl Oxalate market has become very competitive worldwide. The report profiles the key players and analyzes their growth in the next couple of years. The report serves as a useful tool for enterprises looking out to invest in projects in the Dimethyl Oxalate market.Various analytical tools are applied in the analysis on the Dimethyl Oxalate market to achieve an accurate understanding of the market players into the potential development of this market. These tools include Feasibility Analysis, Investment Return Analyses, as well as SWOT Analysis of the major market players.Dimethyl Oxalate Market Research Report 2017 Covers the following Manufacturers,Hubei Meibo TechnologyZhonglan IndustryAnhui Jin'ao ChemicalFior Markets is a leading market intelligence company that sells reports of top publishers in the technology industry.Our extensive research reports cover detailed market assessments that include major technological improvements in the industry. Fior Markets also specializes in analyzing hi-tech systems and current processing systems in its expertise.We have a team of experts that compile precise research reports and actively advise top companies to improve their existing processes. Our experts have extensive experience in the topics that they cover.Fior Markets provides you the full spectrum of services related to market research, and corroborate with the clients to increase the revenue stream, and address process gaps.Mark StoneSales Manager2566, Lincoln StreetPrinceton,New Jersey 08540USAPhone: (201) 465-4211Email: sales@fiormarkets.comWeb:Blog: Igor Iankovskyi: why robotization shouldnt be feared Igor Iankovskyi, businessman, philanthropist Innovations in robototronics will completely transform the economy structure. In this regard, one question rises with increasing frequency: how will the machines affect our employment whether the robots will make our life more easy and interesting or completely substitute the human labor?What prevail anyway risks or opportunities?Both, - considers Martin Ford, businessman and futurologist from Silicon Valley analyzing robototronics era in his book Rise of the Robots. He suggests that the shortage of employment will lead to the purchase power decline, which will greatly undermine modern economy based on mass consumption.However, Martin Fords projections are not being fulfilled yet. Robots replace humans in the most hard and monotonous domains, but the employment is not being downsized, while the consumption is even increasing. People have more time for creativity. They use the liberated time and resource looking for other fields to apply themselves arts, new business models, and entrepreneurship.For example the creative economy growth rate in Great Britain attends 9% yearly. This is one of the most fast-growing industrial sectors in country.The ideas outsourcing is also gaining popularity big corporations and giant industries tend to sign contractors who propose the most interesting technological solution. For example the BMW consortium contracts other small companies to procure a wide range of spare parts.Nowadays the manufacturing becomes more individually-tailored. Artisans have won back the reins over markets, as manual assembling for an individual clients order is as competitive as world brands such as IKEA.Such realities are not as much of a problem, than of a challenge. Those countries who will address it initially will make the new future leaders.Nevertheless, where to look for new jobs in the world of robots? To begin with in their manufacturing and maintenance. Where new opportunities for Ukrainian economy are emerging, primarily in military robototronics.During last few years Ukraine has accomplished something in this field: war in the East boost innovations in the military industry.This market is actively developing, while we have not much of a concurrence here. Experts from MarketsandMarkets project the military robototronics world market will grow from $13,5 to $21,11 billion from 2105 to 2020.A range of inventions by Ukrainian developers have already been highly appraised at world military robototronics exhibits.The latest major achievement is Ukrainian drone armored fighting vehicle Fantom that entered into top-5 at flagship international exhibit IDEX-2017 in concurrence with thousands other inventions from 50 countries!Furthermore, several Ukrainian-made drones have already been deployed to facilitate the warfare for the Armed Forces: Horlytsia by Antonov SE, Sparrow and ANSER by Spytech from Odesa.We do have the potential; the main thing is to realize it. To achieve this, it is necessary to reunite the efforts of the State, scientific community and businessmen. Only such scope of cooperation can provide results in condition of financial scarcity and booming development of the new technologies.Igor Iankovskyi,Businessman, philanthropist"Initiative for the Future" is a Ukrainian Charity Foundation, founded by Igor Iankovskyi a successful Ukrainian businessman, financier and philanthropist. Charities unite like-minded people in a common goal - to develop and implement educational and cultural programs in Ukraine. Activities of the organization are based on voluntary initiatives.Since its creation, the Foundation supports talented young people from all over Ukraine, contributing to the creation of a highly cultured society. The Foundation has a strong international dimension, having successfully completed a range of projects abroad: in Belgium, Hungary, Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Netherlands, Poland, United Kingdom and the USA.Horizon Park business center12 Amosova str, Level 5, Kyiv, Ukraine Global Healthcare BI Platform Market Analysis, Size, Share, Growth Trends and Forecast 2015 - 2023 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=686059 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=686059 http://www.researchmoz.us/ http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Healthcare BI Platform Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth Trends, and Forecast 2015 - 2023" to its huge collection of research reports.Business Intelligence (BI) platforms help build BI applications by providing competences in analysis, platform integration, and information delivery. As healthcare organizations are realizing the untapped potential of huge amounts of data, they are implementing solutions that utilize business intelligence to help collect, sort, and mine valuable insights from this data. The complex data gathered from numerous sources (operational, patient data) is analyzed and used by healthcare providers with the aid of BI platforms for the larger population.This research report provides a detailed analysis of trends in the healthcare BI platform market. It also comprises a broad analysis of the industry drivers, restraints, and opportunities. The report also provides a comprehensive assessment of key market player strategies. The market for healthcare BI platform has been segmented into various functions: clinical analytics, financial analytics, operational analytics, and others. Financial analytics is expected to be the largest healthcare BI platform function over the forecast period, whereas clinical analytics is expected to be the fastest growing functional segment over the forecast period. The global healthcare BI platform market has been extensively analyzed on the basis of deployment type into on-premise and cloud. Cloud is expected to be the fastest growing healthcare BI platform segment by deployment type over the forecast period. On the basis of model type, the healthcare BI platform market is segmented as self-service BI and corporate BI. Self-service BI is the latest trend in the BI market and is expected to be the fastest growing segment over the forecast period. The market size and forecasts in terms of revenue (US$ Mn) for each of these segments have been provided for the period 2013 to 2023, considering 2013 and 2014 as the base years. The report also provides the compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) for each segment of the market for the forecast period 2015 to 2023.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @The healthcare BI platform market is segmented based on geography into North America, Europe, Middle-East and Africa, Asia Pacific, and Latin America, and a detailed regional analysis is provided. A country-level analysis is also included in the report, covering the countries in each region. North America is expected to be the largest and fastest growing healthcare BI platform market among all regions. Europe is one of the mature markets for healthcare BI platform, whereas Asia Pacific is expected to be one of the most attractive markets in the near future.Market estimates for the healthcare BI platform have been assessed considering different political, environmental, social, technological, economic, and legal factors. The share of leading players of the global healthcare BI platform market is provided for the year 2014. Company profiles (CPs) of market leaders elucidate on details such as company overview, segmentation, recent developments, business strategies, and financial information in the healthcare BI platform market. Companies profiled in the report include SAP SE, Oracle Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, SAS Institute, Inc., IBM Corporation, OpenText Corporation, and Information Builders. The report would allow healthcare organizations and research and development agencies to make informed decisions about healthcare BI platforms, and thus gain competitive advantage in the market.Segmentation of the Global Healthcare BI Platform MarketGlobal Healthcare BI Platform Market, by Function- Clinical Analytics- Financial Analytics- Operational Analytics- Others (Regulatory Reporting, etc.)Global Healthcare BI Platform Market, By Deployment Type- On-premise- CloudGlobal Healthcare BI Platform Market, By Model Type- Self-service- CorporateGlobal Healthcare BI Platform Market, By Geography- North America- Europe- Asia Pacific- Middle East and Africa- Latin 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 Biodegradable Plastics Market Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2015 - 2023 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=631828 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=631828 http://www.researchmoz.us/ http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Biodegradable Plastics Market for Packaging, Textile, Agriculture, Injection Molding, and Other Applications - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2015 - 2023" to its huge collection of research reports.Plastics that decompose in the nature by the action of microorganisms are generally referred as biodegradable plastics. These plastics are divided into different categories such as bio-based and petro-based biodegradable plastics. The most common process employed in the manufacturing of biodegradable plastics includes fermentation of sugar or canola oil to produce polylactic acid (PLA) or polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA), which in turn is converted into biodegradable plastics.The report provides in-depth analysis and forecast of the biodegradable plastics market on the global as well as regional level. It includes forecast for the period from 2015 to 2023 in terms of volume (kilo tons) and revenue (US$ Mn). Quantitative data has been derived through extensive secondary research of the global biodegradable plastics market. Secondary sources typically include company websites, relevant magazines, government documents, and press releases. The top-down approach has been adopted to derive the regional numbers from global revenue and volume figures. Furthermore, the bottom-up approach has been employed to derive data for various product segments based on demand for biodegradable plastics in each geographic segment. A combination of top-down and bottom-up approaches helps validate the quantitative data. The data was further validated with the help of primary research with industry experts to ensure accuracy of derived numbers.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Detailed analysis of various factors driving the global biodegradable plastic market has been included for astute decision making. Impact of these drivers has been included with data to substantiate research findings. Furthermore, factors restraining market growth have been included for better understanding of the market. Impact of these restraints has been analyzed over the course of the forecast period. The report also comprises various opportunities available for market growth over the next eight years. Opportunities entail untapped or recently explored factors that are anticipated to drive the biodegradable plastics market during the forecast period.The report includes value chain analysis to help understand the industry thoroughly. Value chain analysis comprises detailed evaluation of the roles of various entities involved in the biodegradable plastics industry, from raw material suppliers to end-users. Various processes employed in the manufacture of biodegradable plastics have been included in the value chain analysis. Porters Five Forces model has been employed to determine the degree of competition in the market during the forecast period. Company market share analysis has been included for better understanding of the competitive landscape. Company market share analysis includes the market share of dominant players in 2014, based on their production capacities. Furthermore, market attractiveness analysis has been conducted to analyze product segments that are expected to be lucrative during the forecast period. This is based on various factors such as market size, growth rate, profitability, raw material procurement, and competition in each product segment.Based on product, the biodegradable plastics market has been segmented into polylactic acid, polyhydroxyalkanoates, polybutylene succinate, polycaprolactone, starch-based, and regenerated cellulose. The report comprises detailed analysis of all the segments in the regional and global markets and forecast based on current and future trends in the industry in terms of volume (kilo tons) and revenue (US$ Mn). In terms of region, the market has been segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. Demand for biodegradable plastics in each of its application segment has been analyzed and forecast for the period of eight years.The report also comprises profiles of leading companies in the biodegradable plastics market. These include BASF SE, BIO-ON, Biome Bioplastics, Corbion, FKuR, Nature Works LLC, Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation, Plantic, and Natur -Tec India Private Limited. Various attributes of these companies such as company overview, business strategies, and recent developments form the core of the company profiles section.This report segments the global biodegradable plastics market as follows:Biodegradable Plastics Market Product Segment Analysis- Polylactic Acid- Polyhydroxyalkanoates- Polybutylene Succinate- Polycaprolactone- Starch-based- Regenerated CelluloseBiodegradable Plastics Market - Application Analysis- Packaging- Textile- Agriculture- Injection Molding- Others (Including Electronic, Medical, etc.)Biodegradable Plastics Market - Regional Analysis- North America- U.S.- Rest of North America- Europe- U.K.- Spain- France- Germany- Italy- Rest of Europe- Asia Pacific- China- Japan- ASEAN- Rest of Asia Pacific- Latin America- Brazil- Rest of Latin America- Middle East & Africa (MEA)- GCC- South Africa- Rest of MEAMake an Enquiry of this report @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @ Global Power Transmission Towers and Cables Market Analysis, Size, Share, Growth Trends and Forecast 2015 - 2023 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=631819 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=631819 http://www.researchmoz.us/ http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Power Transmission Towers and Cables Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth Trends and Forecast 2015 - 2023" to its huge collection of research reports.The power transmission towers and cables market report by Transparency Market Research provides in-depth analysis of the power transmission towers and cables market globally. The report segments the market on the basis of type and geography. The report analyzes the global power transmission towers and cables market in terms of both sales volume and revenue (US$ Mn) for the 20152023 period. For this research study, the base year is 2014, whereas the forecast is from 2015 to 2023.The report provides a comprehensive competitive landscape and features companies engaged in the manufacturing, construction, installation, and operation of power transmission towers and cables. This report includes the key dynamics affecting the power transmission towers and cables market globally. The analysis in the report provides detailed insights of the global power transmission towers and cables market. Market dynamics such as drivers, opportunities, and restraints of the market were analyzed in detail and are illustrated in the report through tables. The report also provides a detailed industry analysis of global power transmission towers and cables with the help of Porters Five Forces model.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Power transmission towers and cables are a vital part of the power transmission infrastructure. These components are used for transmission and distribution of electricity from power generation facilities to the end-users. Power transmission towers are tall vertical structures usually erected for the purpose of supporting and carrying transmission lines. Power transmission cables are used either as overhead, underground or submarine cables for the onshore and offshore operations to connect with power grid.The power transmission towers and cables market has been segmented on the basis of type and geography. The power transmission towers and cables market has been segmented by type into power transmission towers and power transmission cables. The power transmission towers and cables market has been segmented geographically into five regional segments and further into 12 unique country sub-segments. The regional segments are North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa, and Latin and Central Americas. The 12 countries which have been separately addressed in this report are the U.S., Canada, Mexico, CIS countries, Germany, the U.K, China, India, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Brazil, and Argentina.Asia Pacific held the major share of the global power transmission towers and cables market in 2014, accounting for more than 35% of the global market share in terms of sales revenue. Asia Pacific is expected to be the fastest growing market for power transmission towers and cables. Counties such as China and India are expected to be the main divers for growth in Asia Pacific power transmission towers and cables market. North America was the second-largest market for power transmission towers and cables in 2014. Middle East and Africa, Europe, and Latin and Central Americas together constituted for less than 50% share of the global power transmission towers and cables market in that year. Middle East is expected to increase its market share of the global power transmission towers and cables market. Middle East is expected to be second fastest growing market for power transmission towers and cables. Huge investments in power transmission infrastructure by countries such as Saudi Arabia and others are expected to drive the demand for power transmission towers and cables in this region. Power transmission cables type segment accounted for around 70% share of the global power transmission towers and cables market in 2014.Some of the key market participants in the power transmission towers and cables market include Kalpataru Power Transmission Ltd., Zhejiang Shengda Steel Tower Co. Ltd., Nanjing Daji Iron Tower Manufacturing Co. Ltd., ShanDong DingChang Tower Co. Ltd., KEC International Ltd., Prysmian S.p.A., Nexans S.A., General Cable Technologies Corporation, Sumitomo Electric Industries Ltd., and Southwire Company LLC. The report provides an overview of these companies, followed by their financial details (if available), business strategies, and recent developments. The power transmission towers and cables market has been segmented as follows:Global Power Transmission Towers and Cables Market: By Type- Power Transmission Towers- Power Transmission CablesGlobal Power Transmission Towers and Cables Market: By RegionNorth America- The U.S.- Canada- MexicoEurope- CIS countries- Germany- The U.K- Rest of EuropeAsia Pacific- China- India- Rest of Asia PacificMiddle East and Africa- Saudi Arabia- South Africa- Rest of Middle East and AfricaLatin and Central Americas- Brazil- Argentina- Rest of Latin and Central AmericasMake 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 Electronic Health Records Solution Market Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2015 - 2023 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=631810 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=631810 http://www.researchmoz.us/ http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Electronic Health Records Solution Market (Web Based, Client Server Based, Software as Services) for Applications in Hospitals, Physicians Office, Ambulatory Centers - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2015 - 2023" to its huge collection of research reports.The report analyzes each of the segments and its sub-categories in detail for market trends, recent developments, outlook, and opportunities. The market overview section of the report explores market dynamics such as drivers, restraints, and opportunities that currently have strong impact on the global EHR market and could influence the market in the future as well. Market attractiveness analysis has been provided in the market overview section in order to explain the intensity of competition between leading market players operating across the globe. The report also mentioned about leading players for each of the product segment/technology that dominates the market or expected to emerge in forthcoming years.All these factors would help market players to take strategic decisions in order to strengthen their positions and expand their respective market shares. The recommendations section included in the report would assist existing market players in targeting all major stake holders of this industry such as companies, hospitals, emergency, assisted living facilities, home care providers government agencies and also to those aiming to seek an entry. The report also profiles major players in the global EHR market based on various attributes such as company details, business overview, details of EHR business, product adoption in the U.S., head to head competition, awards and recognition, flagship customer names, financial details, business strategies and recent developments.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Additional information such as vital components of EHR, hosting platforms, application areas of EHR, and legal requirements are covered in the market overview chapter which provide every minute details to assist new and existing players to venture and explore latent market opportunities in forthcoming years. The report also featured a detailed list of major revenue contributing EHR products, their certification, and manufacturer details to depict competition in the market.Key players profiled in the electronic health record market study encompasses Allscripts Healthcare Solutions, Inc., Athenahealth, Inc., Cerner Corporation, CPSI, Epic Systems, eClinicalWorks, GE Healthcare, Greenway Health, LLC, Medical Information Technology, Inc., McKesson Corporation, NextGen Healthcare and 4medica.The electronic health records market has been segmented as follows:Global Electronic Health Records Market, by Installation- Web Based- Client Server Based- Software as ServicesGlobal Electronic Health Records Market, by End User- Hospital- Physician Office- Ambulatory CentersGlobal Electronic Health Records Market, by Geography- North America- United States- CanadaEurope- United Kingdom- Germany- France- Rest of EuropeAsia Pacific- India- China- Australia- Malaysia- Japan- Rest of Asia PacificLatin America- Brazil- Mexico- Argentina- Rest of Latin AmericaRest of the World- Israel- Russia- South Africa- Saudi Arabia- Rest of the WorldMake 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 Smart Healthcare Products Market By Product Type, By Application Industry Analysis, Trends and Forecast 2015 - 2023 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=667903 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=667903 http://www.researchmoz.us/ http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Smart Healthcare Products Market (By Product Type - Smart Syringes, Smart Pills, Smart RFID Cabinets and Electronic Health Record; By Application - Health Data Storage and Exchange, Monitoring and Treatment, and Inventory Management - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2015 - 2023" to its huge collection of research reports.The Smart Healthcare Products Market report provides the analysis for the period 2014 2023, where in period from 2015 to 2023 is forecast period and 2014 is considered as the base year. The report precisely covers all the major trends and technologies playing a major role in the Smart Healthcare Products market growth over the forecast period. It also highlights the drivers, restraints and opportunities expected to influence the market growth during the said period. The study provides the holistic perspective on the Smart Healthcare Products market growth, throughout the above forecast period in terms of revenue (in US$ Mn), across different geographies, which includes Asia Pacific (APAC), Latin America (LATAM), North America, Europe, and Middle East & Africa (MEA).The market overview section of the report demonstrates the market dynamics and trends such as drivers, restraints and opportunities that influence the current nature and future status of this market. Impact analysis of key trends has also been provided for every geographical region in the report, in order to give a thorough analysis of the overall competitive scenario in smart healthcare products market globally. Moreover, the report provides the overview of various strategies and the winning imperatives of the key players in the smart healthcare products market and analyzes their behavior in the prevailing market dynamics.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @The report segments the global smart healthcare product market, on the basis of product types including Smart Syringes, Smart Pills, Smart RFID Cabinets, and Electronic Health Record. On the basis of applications including, Health Data Storage and Exchange, Monitoring and Treatment, and Inventory Management. Thus, the report provides in-depth cross segment analysis for Smart Healthcare Product market and classifies it into various levels, thereby providing valuable insights on macro as well as micro level.The report also provides the competitive landscape for the Smart Healthcare Product market, thereby positioning all the major players according to their geographic presence, market attractiveness and recent key developments. The complete Smart Healthcare Product 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 smart healthcare product market growth.Epic Systems Corporation, Allscripts Healthcare Solutions, Inc., eClinicalWorks, CapsoVision, Inc. Medtronic, Olympus Corporation, Becton Dickinson and Company, Terumo Corporation, Stanley Healthcare, and TAGSYS are some of the major players operating in the global Smart Healthcare Products market, which have been profiled in this study. Details such as financials, business strategies, recent developments, and other such strategic information pertaining to these players has been duly provided as part of company profiling.Smart Healthcare Products MarketBy Product Type- Smart Syringes- Smart Pills- Smart RFID Cabinets- Electronic Health RecordBy Industry Vertical- Health Data Storage and Exchange- Monitoring and Treatment- Inventory ManagementBy Geography- North America- Europe- Latin America- APAC- Middle East and 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 @ Global Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Market By Component, By End-User Industry Analysis, Trends and Forecast 2015 - 2023 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=667888 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=667888 http://www.researchmoz.us/ http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Market (By Component - Software, Services; By End-User - Automotive and Transportation, Aerospace and Defense, BFSI, Energy and Utilities, Retail, Healthcare, IT and Telecom, Others) - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2015 - 2023" to its huge collection of research reports.This report on the global ALM market provides analysis for the period from 2013 to 2023, wherein 2014 is the base year and the years from 2015 to 2023 are the forecast period. Data for 2013 has been included as historical information. The report covers all the prevalent trends and technologies playing a major role in the growth of the ALM 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 on market growth throughout the above forecast period in terms of revenue estimates (in US$ Mn) across different geographies, which include North America, Europe, Asia Pacific (APAC), Middle East & Africa (MEA), and Latin America (LATAM).The emerging IT applications are changing the way business is done today. The integration of ALM is necessary in order to remove inefficiencies and blocks in the software development lifecycle process. ALM helps a company to develop the best virtual methods for every phase of the software application process, including research, requirements planning, prototyping, engineering, design, time to market, programming, testing, risk management, defect tracking, and measurement. Benefits such as business agility, enhanced organizational agility, and improved resource utilization provided by ALM have significantly increased the demand for this technology worldwide. North America dominates the overall market for ALM globally owing to surging technological advancements and automation in this region.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @This research report provides in-depth analysis of the global ALM market on the basis of component and end-users. The ALM market based on component includes software and services. The software component is sub-segmented into on-premise and cloud-based ALM solutions, which are further sub-divided into agile-centric ALM and process-centric ALM. The ALM services is segmented into consulting, professional, operation, and maintenance. The ALM end-user segment comprises automotive and transportation, aerospace and defense, BFSI, energy and utilities, retail, healthcare, IT and telecom, and others.In terms of geographical regions, the report segments the global ALM market into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa (MEA), and Latin America; the regions are analyzed in terms of revenue generation. The report provides cross-sectional analysis of the global ALM market in terms of market estimates and forecasts for all segments across different geographic regions.The report also includes competitive profiling of major players engaged in the development of ALM. The major business strategies adopted by these players, their market positioning, and their recent developments have also been identified in the research report. This report also provides market positioning analysis of major players in the ALM market based on their 2014 revenues. Some of the major players profiled in the report include Atlassian Corporation Plc, CollabNet, Inc., IBM Corporation, Inflectra Corporation, Micro Focus International plc, HP Development Company, L.P., VersionOne, Inc., Microsoft Corporation, Parasoft Corporation, and Polarion Software GmbHThe global ALM market is segmented as below:ALM Market:By ComponentSoftware- On-PremiseAgile Centric ALMProcess Centric-Cloud-BasedAgile Centric ALMProcess Centric- ServicesConsultingProfessionalOperation and MaintenanceBy End-User- Automotive and Transportation- Aerospace and Defense- BFSI- Energy and Utilities- Retail- Healthcare- IT and Telecom- OthersBy RegionNorth AmericaThe U.S.Rest of North AmericaEuropeEU7CISRest of EuropeAsia PacificJapanChinaSouth AsiaAustralasiaRest of APACMiddle East & AfricaGCCSouth AfricaRest of Middle East & AfricaLatin AmericaBrazilRest of Latin 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 @ Intelligent Virtual Assistant Market to Reach US$ 2000 Million Globally by 2022 https://www.marketresearchengine.com/reportdetails/intelligent-virtual-assistant-market https://www.marketresearchengine.com/requestsample/intelligent-virtual-assistant-market https://www.marketresearchengine.com/ Florida, April 07: Market Research Engine adds a new research report, titled Intelligent Virtual Assistant Market (By Technology - Text-to-Speech, Speech Recognition; By End User - Individual Users, Small and Medium Enterprise Users, Large Enterprise Users) - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2015 - 2022.Global Intelligent virtual assistant Market was valued at US$579.7 Million in 2014 and is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 31.8% from 2015 to 2022.Browse Full Report:IT virtual assistant are applications and programs that enable the users to access easy-to-use features. These features are designed for the purpose of uses that include tracking, assisting and monitoring the need of the user.The intelligent virtual assistant market has further been segmented based on technology such as text-to-speech and speech recognition. The study provides forecast and estimates market for each type in terms of revenue and volume during the forecast period from 2015 to 2021. Each type has been further analyzed based on regional and country levels from 2014 to 2021 interims of volume and revenue.The intelligent virtual assistant market has been segmented based on end-users such as individual users, small and medium enterprise and large enterprise. The study provides forecast and estimates market for each application in terms of revenue and volume during the forecast period from 2015 to 2021.Each application has been further analyzed based on regional and country levels from 2014 to 2021 in terms of volume and revenue.In terms of geography, the intelligent virtual assistant market has been segmented into regions such as North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. The study provides a detailed view of country-level aspects of the market on the basis of application segments and estimates the market in terms of revenue and volume during the forecast period.The report also offers a competitive landscape of the overall market with company profiles of players such as Anboto Group, Artificial Solutions Ltd., Code Baby Corp., and Creative Virtual Ltd., eGain Communications Corp., IntelliResponse Systems Inc., Next IT Corporation, Nuance Communications Inc. and Speaktoit Inc.Download Free Sample Report:SEGMENTATIONS IN REPORT:Intelligent Virtual Assistant By Technology: Text-to-speech Speech RecognitionIntelligent Virtual Assistant By End-User: Individual Users Small and Medium Enterprise Large EnterpriseIntelligent Virtual Assistant By Geography: Asia Pacific North America Europe Latin America Middle East And AfricaAbout Market Research EngineMarket Research Engine is a global market research and consulting organization. We provide market intelligence in emerging, niche technologies and markets. Our market analysis powered by rigorous methodology and quality metrics provide information and forecasts across emerging markets, emerging technologies and emerging business models. Our deep focus on industry verticals and country reports help our clients to identify opportunities and develop business strategies.Media ContactCompany Name: Market Research EngineContact Person: John BayEmail: john@marketresearchengine.comPhone: +1-855-984-1862, +91-860-565-7204Website:Address: 3422 SW 15 Street, Suite #8942, Deerfield Beach, FL 33442, United States Igor Iankovskyi about the nine Ukrainian start-ups for responsible people Igor Iankovskyi, businessman, philanthropist Internet of things (or IoT) is one of the most promising directions in technology. Commercial success of the majority of such start-ups proves: the innovations become closer. If in the XXth century the new technologies were strongly associated with great projects discovery of space or nuclear synthesis, in the XXIth century the inventions are being tailored to human size. Smart gadgets and mobile applications help people to make the life more comfortable, meet the needs for creative self-fulfillment, sound communication with close ones, care for health and cautious treatment of natural resources.The latter is critical to Ukrainian society that is only starting to realize the practical value of energy saving. Perhaps that is why one of the most known recent Ukrainian IoT start-up is Ecois.me. The idea of the project is to create a smart home system with intelligent energy consumption that is being monitored by the house overseer. If you forgot to turn off the iron or stove, Ecois.me will take care of it and send a notification to you, - as comment their device the inventors. By the way, the innovative solution has already been noticed by emblematic businessman Richard Branson, who took away Ukrainian start-up to his Virgin Media Accelerator.A range of Ukrainian projects denounce a common opinion that digital gadgets alienate people from each other. Interesting example occurred in an IT-company, whose employees were literally sleeping at office while developing a new platform for market targeting. Finally they realized that working hard is good, but not worse ignoring phone calls and messages from loved ones. That is how the application FamilyInSafe has been born. Its users create closed groups (hubs), accessible only by invitation. The application precisely captures users geolocation, omitting faults done by other popular geo-services, while also notificating groups participants about planned activities and grouping selected places on the map: shops, cafes, pharmacies, municipal establishments etc.Another popular Ukrainian start-up that managed to acquire $ 3,8 million investment, gives a possibility always to stay in touch with a house pet. It is referred to Petcube device that allows the owner to survey remotely over his dog or cat and entertains them with laser beam with the help of a smartphone. The developers are planning to install PetCube for free at homeless animals shelters.Naturally, the Internet of things was deemed to once intersect with another modern trend growing popularity of the healthy lifestyle. There are several start-ups emerged at this intersection that turned out pretty successful. One of them has been created by grade students from Kyiv. Their project named Helko is a virtual gym instructor. Embedding into any implement, the device captures the initial load and calculates its optimal volume for the user. The same thought direction has been adopted by other two start-ups - FORCE emotion and Mevics. The first one is the smart bracelet that monitors the physical state of his owner, the second device to control a persons posture.However, healthy lifestyle is not only fitness but right nutrition as well. Ukrainian start-up BioSens offers to anybody to conduct a 15-minutes express-assay of food products, while Myhelix project gives individually-tailored nutrition and lifestyle recommendation based on a persons DNA test. Following those recommendations is facilitated by UAberry start-up, specialized on small strawberry farms with automated watering system and temperature control. These farms could be placed in summer house, balcony or roof-top and enjoy fresh strawberry all year round.The list of Ukrainian start-ups can be much longer. The main question is what is in common between such different propositions while simultaneously making them popular. It seems to me that all such innovations are driven by the sustainability concept sustainable development and responsible consumption. The penetration of this concept into common conscience of Ukrainians by the means of useful devices and services is excellent news for our country that has been stuck with resource-dominated economy for the long time. Meaning, that aside of their main tasks, Ukrainian start-uppers are engaged in a very important mission background reforming of social practices that leads to a more modern Ukraine.Igor Iankovskyi a successful Ukrainian businessman, financier and philanthropist.Igor Iankovskyi was born in Ukraine, in Dnipropetrovsk (Dnepropetrovsk region) May 24, 1974. Today Igor - philanthropist, chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Ukrainian Charity Foundation "Initiative for the future", a successful entrepreneur and businessman. He graduated the Dnepropetrovsk Medical College with honors. In 1994 he became a student of the International Scientific-Technical Institute named after Academician Yuriy Bugai, and in 1996 - a student of the Long Island University CW Post (New York, USA). In 1999, Igor received his BA in BS Business Finance.Horizon Park business center12 Amosova str, Level 5, Kyiv, Ukraine Direct Drive Wind Turbine Market Global Industry Analysis Forecast 2016 - 2024 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/direct-drive-wind-turbines-market.html# http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=39 Direct drive wind turbines, also known as gearless wind turbines, are wind turbines without a gearbox. The rotor shaft is directly connected to a synchronous or permanent magnet generator for power generation. Direct drive wind turbines usually use either permanent-magnet excited direct drive generator system or electrically excited direct drive synchronous generator system depending upon cost, location, and other constraints. Direct drive wind turbines are better alternatives for offshore applications, as they require less preventive and break down maintenance vis-a-vis geared wind turbines. Furthermore, most direct drive wind turbines are contactless and contain fewer parts. Operation and maintenance is also more expensive for offshore farms as compared to their onshore counterparts. This ultimately increases the overall reliability of turbines and wind farms.Obtain Report Details @ :Increase in demand for energy, especially renewable energy, across the globe is one of the major factors driving the direct drive wind turbine market. Direct drive wind turbines are viable alternatives for offshore wind farms due to high reliability and lower maintenance costs. Furthermore, offshore winds farms eliminate several severe problems caused by windmills such as noise pollution and ecosystem damage. The overall weight of direct drive wind turbines is substantially low as compared to that of its geared counterparts. Gearless wind turbines are also noticeably efficient. This further reduces operating costs and increases the energy output. However, the cost of setting up direct drive wind turbines is relatively high due to the substantial usage of rare neodymium magnets, technology costs, and large size of generators. The average energy yield per unit cost of direct drive wind turbines is also low. However, the cost of manufacturing and setting up direct drive wind turbines is anticipated to decline in the near future, led by the rise in demand for these turbines and economies of scale.Based on application, the direct drive wind turbine market can be segmented into onshore direct drive wind turbine and offshore direct drive wind turbine. The offshore application exhibits significant growth opportunities due to the various advantages offered by direct drive wind turbines compared to geared wind turbines. Based on the capacity of turbine, the direct drive wind turbine market can be classified into less than 1 MW, 1 to 4 MW, and 4 MW and above segments. In terms of generator, the market can be segregated into permanent-magnet excited direct drive generator system and electrically excited direct drive synchronous generator system. Both these technologies carry certain advantages; however, electrically excited direct drive synchronous generator systems are relatively expensive.Fill the form for an exclusive sample of this report @ :In terms of geography, the direct drive wind turbine market can be divided into Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. Asia Pacific is a major market for direct drive wind turbines; China is one of the leading countries in terms of installation of direct drive wind turbines. Increase in demand for energy and need for environmental protection are boosting the demand for wind farms across the globe. Europe and North America are also lucrative markets for direct drive wind turbines, as these regions are investing significantly in harnessing renewable energy. Countries such as Germany, Italy, and France have invested in direct drive wind turbines to meet their demand for energy.Key players operating in the global direct drive wind turbine market are Siemens, General Electric, ENERCON GmbH, Argosy Wind Power Ltd, and Goldwind Science & Technology Co., Ltd.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 market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR syndicated research report covers a different sector - such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, TMRs syndicated reports strive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207 Almond Butter Market to Witness Healthy Growth The Reasons http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/almond-butter-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=22469 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Almond Butter Market Introduction:Almond butter is a food paste, made from raw or roasted almonds. Almond butter is a rich source of unsaturated fats which are heart friendly. It also contains high amount of proteins, vitamins and minerals. Along with these properties, almond butter also contains the presence of omega-3 fatty acid that makes the almond butter a complete health product. Almond butter is most commonly used as spreads on bread or dips for snacks. Almond butter is also used as breakfast treat in many recipes like granola, pancakes. Almond Butter is a hydrating, moisturizing and natural emollient making it ideal for use in massage, and it blends easily with essential oils and hence is expected to increase the revenue contribution of almond butter market.Obtain Report Details @Almond Butter Market Segmentation:Based on its applications the almond butter is used in many end user industries which includes food industry and cosmetics industry. The demand for almond butter in food industry is expected to grow mainly due to its taste and nutrition. The almond butter market in cosmetics industry is expected to grow in future in various cosmetics, due to its excellent spreading ability and moisturizing effect.Based on the product forms available in the almond butter market, the market is segmented into two main segments such as organic and conventional. The organic segment is further sub-segmented into raw almond butter and roasted almond butter. Raw organic almond butter is unexposed to heat rendering its nutritional content unharmed. The health benefits of the almond butter are thus expected to drive the growth of this segment in the forecast period. On the other hand roasted organic almond butter which are made by dry roasting process is the most common almond butter, it provides a tastier option in the same category. This segment is therefore expected to show a steady growth in the global almond butter market. The conventional almond butter is available as a low cost product and the demand of the same is expected to rise steadily.Make an Enquiry @Based on distribution channel, the global almond butter market is segmented which includes online retail, supermarkets/hypermarkets, convenience store and departmental stores. Among these, the online retail is expected to gain major revenue shares over the forecast period.Almond Butter Market Regional Outlook:On the basis of regions, the almond butter market is segmented into following key regions; North America, Western and Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific and The Middle East and Africa. North America grabs the major share of global almond butter market and it is expected to grow at a steady rate. Western Europe regional market is expected to grow at a relatively higher growth rate over the forecast period.Almond butter Market Drivers and Trends:The high nutritional value of almond butter and other health benefits are some of the driving factors which are expected to grow the global almond butter market in food industry. Almond butter has high demand in several sectors and world market. Principle factor driving the global almond butter market is continuous rise in demand for peanut butter substitute products due to consumer indulgence like, availability of low cost substitutes and variety of options in speeds. Rising market demand for natural products based cosmetics and skin care products is becoming another market driver for almond butter. Its hydrating, moisturizing and natural emollient making it ideal for use in massage, it blends easily with essential oils and hence is expected to fuel the market growth of almond butter.Almond Butter Market Key Players:Almond butter is gaining acceptance at a growing rate and some of the key players participating in the global almond butter market which includes; Barney Butter, Maranatha, Futter's Nut Butters, Once Again Nut Butter, Dakini Health Foods, Edennuts, Cache Creek Foods, Justin's, Sokol & Company, The J.M. Smucker Company, Nuts'n More, Zinke Orchards, Premier Organics, California Almonds, Solstice Canyon, Prana.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: Biscuits Market Growing with Rapid Lifestyle Changes http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/biscuits-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=1219 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Global Biscuits Market: OverviewThe market for biscuits is very promising and is expected to witness a continuous growth. Product innovation is continuously changing the dynamics of the market worldwide. New flavors, shapes, taste, and attractive packaging are causing consumers of all age groups to buy biscuits. Players in the global biscuits market are making effective strategies on how to sell biscuits, and in contemplating the kind of packing that will prove to be effective, along with the price strategy. As consumers are increasingly concerned about ingredients and health benefits, manufacturers are maintaining transparency in labeling. The emphasis on low sugar and low calorie content is driving manufacturers in the biscuits market to develop nutritious biscuits with low sugar content.Obtain Report Details @The report on the global biscuits market is an analysis of the changing competitive dynamics. The study offers an unbiased perspective on the growth of industry, by taking into factor different driving and restraining factors. It also takes into consideration the current trends and future opportunities, which are likely to have an impact on the global biscuits market. The report segments the global biscuits market on the basis of key criteria and studies it in an in-depth manner. The competitive landscape has also been discussed in detail. The market share held by the top players and the degree of competition has been analyzed. The buyer and supplier bargaining power and the entry barriers faced by new entrants have also been analyzed.Global Biscuits Market: Trends and OpportunitiesThe global biscuits market is driven by rising urbanization, increasing disposable income, demand for convenience foods, and busy lifestyles. The proliferation of supermarkets and hypermarkets has led to an increased visibility of the wide range of biscuits available in the market. In addition to this, promotional strategies employed by marketing team such as television ads are also aiding the growth of the market. Companies are increasingly experimenting with new flavors, new ingredients, and trying out new combinations, to fuel the interest of consumers.Fill the form to gain deeper insights on this market @Digestive biscuits have become a rage at present and this trend is expected to last for the coming years as consumers are becoming health conscious. The inclination towards high fiber food products will drive manufacturers to include fibrous and other nutritious ingredients in their products. As consumers are showing interest in premium products, manufacturers are introducing organic products, eliminating artificial flavors and preservatives, high fructose corn syrups (HFCS) and other such unhealthy ingredients. Manufacturers are also introducing variety and convenience in terms of servings and sizes. On the other hand, increased competition, high cost of raw materials, and increasing taxes are expected to be factors restraining the global biscuits market.Global Biscuits Market: Region-wise OutlookThe report segments the global oil and gas automation market on the basis of geography, into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and the Rest of the World. Of these, Europe and North America are leading in the biscuits market. In addition to this, it is estimated that Asia Pacific will emerge as the fastest growing market in the coming years.Key Players Mentioned in the ReportThe report profiles key players operating in the global biscuits market. The business and financial overview of each of the companies and their recent developments have been discussed in the report. Key players studied in the report are: Parle Products Pvt. Ltd. Nestle UK Ltd. Kellogg Company, Britannia Industries Ltd., Burton's Foods Ltd., Lotus Bakeries NV, ITC, Cadbury, United Biscuits, Walkers Shortbread Ltd etc.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: Cryocooler Market - Military Sector Has Contributed Immensely Towards The Growth Of The Market. http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/cryocooler-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=12686 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Global Cryocooler Market: OverviewAccording to the Cryogenic Society of America Inc., a cryogenic cooler or a cryocooler is a device designed to allow active cooling at temperatures of about -150 degrees Celsius or colder. Different thermodynamic techniques and cycles are utilized in the process of cryocooling. On an average, a cryocooler has a capacity of 100W or less whereas a cryogenic refrigerator or a cryoplant has a capacity of 500W. The cryogenic fluids such as liquid helium, liquid nitrogen, or very cold nitrogen and helium gas are utilized for cryocooling. The liquefied gas is circulated to absorb heat from the interior of the cryocooler and transfer it outside.The ability of a cryocooler to cool its interior environment depends on various thermodynamic properties of the circulating gas. The global cryocooler market has been witnessing considerable demand from the developed economies owing to the rapidly evolving technologies in the military and healthcare sectors.Obtain Report Details @Some of the common types of cryocoolers are Stirling cryocoolers, Brayton cryocoolers, pulse-tube cryocoolers, Joule Thomson cryocoolers, and Gifford-McMahon cryocoolers. In terms of services, the global cryocooler market can be segmented into product repair and refurbishment, customer training, technical support, and preventive maintenance. The key application sectors in the global cryocooler market are research and development, energy, military, commercial, medical, space, transport, and environmental. The military sector has contributed immensely towards the growth of the market.Global Cryocooler Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe growing demand for cryocoolers across the military and healthcare sectors has been boosting the global cryocoolers market. In the military sector, cryocoolers are used to maintain cryogenic temperatures for IR sensors installed in night vision-based systems, satellite-based surveillance, and missile guidance. In the healthcare sector, the rising demand for cryocoolers can be attributed to their extensive utilization in proton therapy, cryosurgery, MRI systems, and liquefaction of oxygen in hospitals. The rapid shortage of helium gas across the developing economies has also supported the markets growth. Cryocoolers are also used for superconductivity applications in semiconductor fabrication units and magnetic levitation trains. The global cryocooler market has immense growth opportunities with the increasing applications of cryocoolers in the space sector.Global Cryocooler Market: Region-wise OutlookGeographically, the global cryocooler market has been segmented into Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, and Rest of the World. In North America, the cryocooler market has been registering significant growth due to the rising adoption of cryocoolers for proton therapy in the treatment of cancer. Cryocoolers are being also used for satellite monitoring and missile guidance in the military sector. In November last year, the U.S. Navys aircraft carrier USS Gerald R Ford was successfully installed with the cryocooler technology. The robust growth of the military and healthcare sector in the U.S. has driven the growth of the cryocooler market in North America. Asia Pacific and Europe are expected to exhibit considerable demand for cryocoolers.Global Cryocooler Market: Vendor LandscapeThe prominent players in the global cryocooler market are Superconductor Technologies Inc. Brooks Automation Inc., Advanced Research Systems, Inc., Janis Research Company LLC, Cryomech, Inc., Chart Industries, Inc., DH Industries BV, Sumitomo Heavy Industries Ltd., and Sunpower, Inc. The key players are focusing on expanding the applications of cryocoolers across the military and energy sector.Fill The Form For An Exclusive Sample Of This Report @Furthermore, the players are looking to partner with research organizations and governments to expand their business. For example, Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corporation has won a contract worth US$18.2 mn to design, test, and deliver a cryocooler for NASAs Landsat-9 spacecraft. For NASAs James Webb Space Telescope to be launched in 2018, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory has developed an innovative cryocooler that will freeze the telescopes Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI).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: Hydropower (Large Hydro, Small Hydro And Pumped Storage) - Global Market Size, Segmentation, Investment Trends, Regulations And Key Country Analysis To 2025 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/1054382 Hydropower (Large Hydro, Small Hydro and Pumped Storage) - Global Market Size, Segmentation, Investment Trends, Regulations and Key Country Analysis to 2025 is the latest market analysis report from GlobalData, the industry analysis specialists that offer comprehensive information and understanding of the hydropower market.The report provides a detailed insight into the global hydropower market along with market analysis of key countries - US, Canada, Brazil, Norway, Turkey, Russia, China, India, Japan, Vietnam and Iran. The report covers information related to market size, installed capacity, power generation and market segmentation (small hydro, large hydro and pumped storage) during 2006-2025. The report analyzes key market aspects which determine hydropower sector and provides information on active and upcoming hydropower plants, tenders and contracts, and investment trends.The report uses data and information sourced from proprietary databases, primary and secondary research, and in-house analysis by GlobalDatas team of industry experts.Download Sample Copy of This Report:ScopeThe report includes -- Hydropower market study at global level and at key country level, covering countries such as US, Canada, Brazil, Norway, Turkey , Russia, China, India, Japan, Vietnam and Iran- Historic and forecast data for cumulative and annual installed power capacity for hydropower- Historic and forecast data for cumulative and annual installed power capacity by segment- Information on active and upcoming hydropower plants, major tender and contracts and investment trends in the top countries- Analysis on major market forces driving or restraining the growth of hydropower market at global and regional level- Market size data at country and global level- Key policies and regulations supporting the development of hydropower market at country levelReasons to buyThe report will allow you to -- Facilitate decision-making by providing historical and forecast data in hydropower sector- Identify opportunities and plan strategies- Identify key factors driving investment opportunities in key countries- Develop strategies based on developments in the hydropower market- Position yourself to gain the maximum advantage of the industrys growth potential- Identify key partners and business-development avenues- Respond to your market structure, strategies and prospectsMarketResearchReports.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-segmentsState Tower90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948(USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz Digital Radio Frequency Memory Market worth 1,222.2 Million USD by 2022 http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownload.asp?id=5581016 http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/drfm-market-5581016.html The report "Digital Radio Frequency Memory (DRFM) Market by Platform (Defense, Commercial & Civil), Application (Electronic Warfare, Radar Test & Evaluation, Electronic Warfare Training), Architecture (Processor, Modulator, Converter, Memory) - Global Forecast to 2022", was valued at USD 613.9 Million in 2016, and is projected to reach USD 1,222.2 Million by 2022, at a CAGR of 12.16% from 2016 to 2022.Download PDF Brochure @Browse 70 market data tables and 48 figures spread through 136 pages and in-depth TOC on "Digital Radio Frequency Memory (DRFM) Market - Global Forecast to 2022"Early buyers will receive 10% customization on reports.The electronic warfare segment is projected to lead the Digital Radio Frequency Memory (DRFM) market during the forecast periodOn the basis of application, the Digital Radio Frequency Memory (DRFM) market has been segmented into electronic warfare, radar test & evaluation, electronic warfare training, and radio & cellular network jamming. The electronic warfare segment accounted for the largest share of the Digital Radio Frequency Memory (DRFM) market in 2016. Electronic warfare uses control over electromagnetic spectrum to disrupt enemy electronic systems. The use of DRFM systems in jammers has improved the capability of electronic warfare systems. These systems can store and modify signals, before transmitting them to enemy radars. Electronic warfare systems use different deception techniques, such as multiple false target generation, Range Gate Pull-Off (RGPO), and Velocity Gate Pull-Off (VGPO), among others. DRFM-based systems are used for Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) and Communications Intelligence (COMINT) missions to capture the electromagnetic signatures of enemy aircraft, ships, and other units. These electromagnetic signatures can provide intelligence about the capabilities of enemy ships and types of electronic systems in operation.The processor segment is projected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast periodOn the basis of architecture, the Digital Radio Frequency Memory (DRFM) market has been segmented into processor, modulator, converter, memory, and other components. DRFM systems use various microprocessors, memory blocks, and other components that are embedded on their integrated circuits. The integrated circuit processors in DRFM systems are commonly known as System-on-Chip (SOC). Specific Application Programmable Logic Devices SOCs are programmed using the Hardware Description Language (HDL), such as Verilog or VHDL. The use of Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) in DRFM systems has offered various advantages, such as low power consumption and faster operation. However, new DRFM systems are using FPGAs over ASICs, as FPGAs have low operating cost and offers re-programmability. Xilinx Virtex-5 is a type of FPGA that is commonly used in DRFM systems.Report Details @North America is projected to be the largest market for Digital Radio Frequency Memory (DRFM)North America accounted for the largest share of the Digital Radio Frequency Memory (DRFM) market in 2016, followed by Europe. The growth of the DRFM market in North America is mainly attributed to the increasing investments made by defense forces for the development of technologically advanced DRFM systems. There are various well-established and prominent DRFM manufacturers in this region. Leading market players in North America include Northrop Grumman Corporation (U.S.) and Raytheon Company (U.S.).Northrop Grumman Corporation (U.S.) is one of the key players in the Digital Radio Frequency Memory (DRFM) marketKey players operating in the Digital Radio Frequency Memory (DRFM) market include Airbus Group (Netherlands), Northrop Grumman Corporation (U.S.), Raytheon Company (U.S.), Elbit Systems Ltd. (Israel), and BAE Systems plc (U.S.), among others. These companies adopted growth strategies such as new product launches and contracts to enhance their presence in the Digital Radio Frequency Memory (DRFM) market.About MarketsandMarketsMarketsandMarkets provides quantified B2B research on 30,000 high growth niche opportunities/threats which will impact 70% to 80% of worldwide companies revenues. Currently servicing 5000 customers worldwide including 80% of global Fortune 1000 companies as clients. Almost 75,000 top officers across eight industries worldwide approach MarketsandMarkets for their painpoints around revenues decisions.Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors. MarketsandMarkets now coming up with 1,500 MicroQuadrants (Positioning top players across leaders, emerging companies, innovators, strategic players) annually in high growth emerging segments. MarketsandMarkets is determined to benefit more than 10,000 companies this year for their revenue planning and help them take their innovations/disruptions early to the market by providing them research ahead of the curve.MarketsandMarketss flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "RT" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets.MarketsandMarkets701 Pike StreetSuite 2175, Seattle,WA 98101, United StatesUSA : 1-888-600-6441sales@marketsandmarkets.com Global Artificial Intelligence Market Poised for Dramatic Growth, to Account for US$3,061.35 billion by 2024 http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=685993 http://www.researchmoz.us/ict-market-reports-96.html http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG http://deep-research-report.blogspot.com/ ResearchMoz added Latest Research Report titled " Artificial Intelligence Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2016 - 2024 " to it's Large Report database.The Artificial Intelligence Market report provides analysis of the global artificial intelligence market for the period 20142024, wherein the years from 2016 to 2024 is the forecast period and 2015 is considered as the base year. The report precisely covers all the major trends and technologies playing a major role in the artificial intelligence markets growth over the forecast period. It also highlights the drivers, restraints, and opportunities expected to influence the market growth during this period. The study provides a holistic perspective on the markets growth in terms of revenue (in US$ Bn), across different geographies, which includes Asia Pacific (APAC), Latin America (LATAM), North America, Europe, and Middle East & Africa (MEA).The market overview section of the report showcases the markets dynamics and trends such as the drivers, restraints, and opportunities that influence the current nature and future status of this market. Moreover, the report provides the overview of various strategies and the winning imperatives of the key players in the artificial intelligence market and analyzes their behavior in the prevailing market dynamics.Request for Sample PDF of Premium Research Report with TOC:The report segments the global artificial intelligence market on the types of artificial intelligence systems into artificial neural network, digital assistance system, embedded system, expert system, and automated robotic system. By application, the market has been classified into deep learning, smart robots, image recognition, digital personal assistant, querying method, language processing, gesture control, video analysis, speech recognition, context aware processing, and cyber security. Thus, the report provides in-depth cross-segment analysis for the artificial intelligence market and classifies it into various levels, thereby providing valuable insights on macro as well as micro level.The report also provides the competitive landscape for the artificial intelligence market, thereby positioning all the major players according to their geographic presence, market attractiveness and recent key developments. The complete artificial intelligence 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 artificial intelligence markets growth.Read All ICT Market Research Reports @Table of ContentChapter 1 Preface1.1 Research Scope1.2 Market Segmentation1.3 Research MethodologyChapter 2 Executive Summary2.1 Market Snapshot: Global Artificial Intelligence Market, 2015 & 20242.2 Global Artificial Intelligence Market Revenue, 2014 - 2024 (US$ Bn) and CAGR (%)Chapter 3 Global Artificial Intelligence Market Analysis3.1 Key Trends Analysis3.2 Market Dynamics3.2.1 Drivers3.2.2 Restraints3.2.3 Opportunities3.3 Value Chain Analysis3.4 Global Artificial Intelligence Market Analysis, By Types3.4.1 Overview3.4.2 Artificial Neural Network3.4.3 Digital Assistance System3.4.4 Embedded System3.4.5 Expert System3.4.6 Automated Robotic SystemAbout ResearchMozResearchMoz is the world's fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives. ResearchMoz's service portfolio also includes value-added services such as market research customization, competitive landscaping, and in-depth surveys, delivered by a team of experienced Research Coordinators.Contact Us:Mr. Nachiket Ghumare90 State Street, Albany NY, United States - 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074 / Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn at:Follow me on Blogger at: Pureen Warehouse Stock Promotion (April 2017) Pureen Malaysia is offering warehouse stock promotion. Enjoy great savings when you visit this sale event at Glenmarie, Shah Alam, 9.30am 5.30pm daily from 22 23 April 2017. Apparel price start from only RM3 onwards. Terms and conditions apply. 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Other Ongoing FREE Samples Giveaway Food Safety Products and Food Safety Testing Market Progressing with Concerns for Food Safety http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/food-safety-products-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=312 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Global Food Safety Products and Food Safety Testing Market: OverviewThe global food safety products and food safety testing market has been exhibiting substantial growth over the last couple of years owing to the rising prevalence of food-borne disease worldwide. The growing awareness regarding the rising incidences of food borne diseases and the employment of technologically advanced equipment and techniques are further expected to fuel the adoption of food safety products and food safety testing equipment. Concerns regarding food safety have impelled consumers to adopt food safety tests and food safety products. The primary challenges that the food industry faces today are traceability, identification, and prevention of food contaminants. The implication of stringent regulations regarding food safety to prevent contamination of food has impelled food product manufacturers and consumers have increased the use of food safety tests and food safety products.Browse Market Research Report @With the progress of food and beverage manufacturing industry and expansion of the food service industry, the global market for food safety products and food safety testing is also expected to grow. The sales of several diagnostic test products are likely to increase over the next couple of years due to the projected rise in the inspection of food plants. However, the growth of the market is likely to be adversely impacted by the lack of awareness among people in developing economies. The disorganization in the regulatory systems is further expected to hinder the growth of the global food safety products and food safety testing market.The global food safety products market is expected to rise at an 8.6% CAGR between 2010 and 2018. It is projected to touch US$19.42 bn by the end of 2018 from a valuation of US$10.15 bn in 2010. Likewise, the global market for food safety testing market is expected to touch a valuation of US$4.89 bn by 2018, rising at a CAGR of 8.5% during the forecast period.Fill the form for an exclusive sample of this report @Processed Food Products to Dominate Market owing to Changing Taste PreferencesIn terms of consumption, the processed food segment emerged dominant in 2011 with a share of almost 36%. This segment was closely trailed by the dairy products segment accounting for a share of 22% in 2011 in the global food safety products and food safety testing market. However, the meat and poultry products segment is likely to exhibit a strong CAGR of 7% owing to the rising consumption of dairy products.Europe to Lead Market with 34% ShareIn 2011, the global food safety products and food safety testing market was dominated by Europe with a share of 34%. The region was closely trailed by Asia Pacific and North America. It has been predicted that by the end of 2018, the market in Asia Pacific will grow significantly owing to improvement in safety standards.Some of the prime players in the market are Ecolab Incorporated, IDDEX Laboratories Inc., Douglas Scientific, 3M Company, Biomerieux SA, Thermofischer Scientific, and Biocontrol Systems.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: Pneumatic Tyres Market Estimated to be Driven by Innovation and Industrialization www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/3423 www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/3423 In the past, rubber tyres were solid not pneumatic. In the recent scenario, majority of tyres are pneumatic inflatable structures and comprising a doughnut-shaped body of cords and wires encased in rubber and usually filled with compressed air to form an inflatable cushion. Pneumatic tyres production needs various raw materials such as synthetic rubber, natural rubber, fabric and wire, along with other chemicals. Different types of rubber are used for production of pneumatic tyres, the most common being styrene-butadiene copolymer. Pneumatic tyres consist of a tread and a body. The tread provides traction while the body provides containment for a quantity of compressed air. Pneumatic tyres provide grip to the vehicle, resist abrasion and carry and transport loads. Thus pneumatic tyres provide safety and performance to the vehicle. On the basis of vehicle type pneumatic tyres market can be classified as bicycle, bus and lorry, car, motorcycle and aircraft. The use of tyres are not limited in new vehicles only, it can also be used in old vehicles due to wear and tear and for replacement purpose, which is also a major market for tyres. Airplane tyres are a niche market, but is a high revenue contributor to the pneumatic tyres market.Request to view Table of Content @North America is the largest market for pneumatic tyres, followed by Europe and Asia Pacific. Asia Pacific is expected to be the fastest growing market. China and India hold the key for future market trends in pneumatic tyres market owing to large population, rising disposable income and high growth rate of automotive industry in these regions. Germany, France and Italy are hub for some of the major automobile manufacturers in Europe where as the U.S. is the largest market in North America.The market of pneumatic tyres is expected to witness a double digit growth rate in the coming years. Some of the major drivers contributing the overall market growth of pneumatic tyres include increased in the production of vehicles globally, rising disposable income and ever-increasing population. Increasing price of raw materials and rise in fuel prices can act as restraints for pneumatic tyres market.A sample of this report is available upon request @The major companies operating in the pneumatic tyres market include Dunlop, Michelin, Bridgestone Corporation, MRF, Goodyear and Maxxis International.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Persistence Market Research Pvt. Ltd.305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.com Global Automotive Air Filters Market to Register Unwavering Growth www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/3478 Air filters are essential component of an automotive which serves basically two purposes based on its type. There are two types of automotive air filters namely intake air filters and cabin air filters. Where the former acts as a barrier against foreign particles such as dust to enter engines combustion chamber, the latter restricts the entry of dust in the cabin of the vehicle through the vent of HVAC system. Non-performance of intake air filters may lead to inefficiency of engine and increase in its emission levels. Therefore, it becomes necessary for the vehicle user to clean it at regular intervals and replace it with new once it completes its lifetime.Request to view Table of Content @Automotive air filters have both OEM as well as replacement markets wherein the latter dominates the global sales. The automotive air filter market is driven by increasing demand for automobiles, strict emission norms and changing lifestyles. The increasing number of vehicles with air-conditioned cabins is boosting the market for cabin air filters. The increasing health consciousness of people wherein they require resistance from dust, pollution, harmful exhaust gases and other contaminants while driving is attracting the car users for the cars with cabin air filter. According to The World Health Organization (WHO), the urban outdoor air pollution causes about 1.3 million deaths every year worldwide. Apart from the developed countries, the developing countries are also becoming conscious about their safety from outdoor pollution which is a positive sign for the growth of cabin air filters market in the long term.Based on vehicle type, automotive air filter market can be segmented under passenger cars, light commercial vehicles and heavy commercial vehicles. However, there exist certain restraints for automotive air filters market including large interval of their replacement in the developing countries and increasing market for duplicate automotive air filters.Growing per capita income in other Asian countries such as India is propelling the demand for passenger cars. On the other hand, the increasing industrialization and commerce in Asian countries are boosting the market for commercial vehicles which is driving the automotive air filters market in the region. Commercial vehicles in the developing countries need more care and maintenance as the quality of parts used in them is low as compared to the commercial vehicles manufactured in the developed countries. Moreover, due to less developed infrastructure the chances of entry of dust and dirt in the combustion compartment are high. Due to these factors, the replacement market in the developing markets including Asia Pacific is high as compared the developed countries. However, cabin air filters finds very less usage in commercial vehicles as the requirement for cabin convenience is very less in their case.Among the regions, Asia Pacific dominated the global sales of automotive air filters followed by North America. China surpassed U.S. in 2010 to become the country with largest automotive population. Some of the key companies operating in automotive air filter market include AC Delco Inc., Affinia Group, Denso Corporation, Hengst GmbH and Company KG, Cummins Inc, Toyota Boshoku Corporation and Hollingsworth & Vose Company Inc.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 Latest Research report on Panoramic X-ray Machine Market predicts favorable growth and forecast till 2021 https://marketreportscenter.com/request-discount/535600 https://marketreportscenter.com/request-sample/535600 https://marketreportscenter.com/buy-now?sku=QYAPR041753 https://marketreportscenter.com/reports/535600/global-panoramic-x-ray-machine-market-research-report-2017 The latest industry research report on Panoramic X-ray Machine by MRC provides a thorough analysis of the global Panoramic X-ray Machine market. The report scrutinizes the market by different segments including regions, applications, competitive landscape, etc. over the predicted time frame. This report provides 360 Degree perspective of the Panoramic X-ray Machine industry with an all-inclusive discussion of definitions, classifications, and market players in the industry chain structure. It features qualitative and quantitative analysis of the industry taking into consideration the significant development factors, competition in the market, and important reasons impacting the market growth.Check the discount on report atMedical devices are used to provide various healthcare services to patients thus aiding in monitoring conditions, initiating better recovery and reducing pain. Owing to increasing population, health awareness, growing numbers of chronic diseases, demand for medical equipment is growing. Constant technological advancement and innovation in design are making these devices user-friendly, thus propelling the growth of the Panoramic X-ray Machine market.Get sample of report atThe research report focuses on the analysis of its major geographies, and different segments. This all-inclusive study discusses the current market development and trends, important factors driving market growth like drivers, restraints, market projections, and market structure for each region and its sub-segments. It also provides glimpses on the recent technological advancements in the market along with detailed profiles of key industry players. The report also includes an analysis of the micro and macro aspects noteworthy for the present active and the new entities apart from the study of the value chain.Buy report atKey Topics Covered in the Report: Comprehensive overview of parent market with market definition, classification Recognition of factors influencing the market scenarios and analysis of market drivers, barriers, and their impact on the market growth Current and future market trends, market scope and detailed market segmentation on the basis of application, region, and competitive scenario Value Chain Analysis, Strategic insights, and market estimations Technology, trends, developments, and changing market dynamics of the Panoramic X-ray Machine industry Facts, stats, historical data, market size forecast regarding volume and value Analysis of competitive landscape and assessments on a regional scale with company profiles of leading market players, finance metrics, product offerings and key business strategies and growth prospects for the projected period Insights on prospective opportunities and challenges, success and riskThe report brings to your attention analysis of the Panoramic X-ray Machine market in major geographies including North America, Europe, the Asia-Pacific, and the Rest of the World. This research report provides a complete insight of the market trends and guides in making informed business decisions. It gives a clear understanding of the competitive environment, key market players, their portfolio, and strategies. It also features a technological growth map over a time and helps understand its impact on the market.Market ScopeThe research report takes different facets into consideration to scrutinize the global Panoramic X-ray Machine industry. It brings to your attention market overview, market trends and future outlook, market growth and dynamics, market challenges and opportunities, competitive landscape, and potential investment segment.For More information on segmentation, companies profiled, Submarkets and detail table of content visit @Connect for more details:Sam CollinsMarket Reports Center1-646-883-3044 (US)info@marketreportscenter.comAbout Market Reports Center;Market Reports Center is an e-commerce platform obliging the needs of knowledge workers, experts, professionals who are subject to market research information for their work, or to make strategic business decisions. We are dedicated to create a comprehensive offering of market research which is accurate, credible and affordable.Market Reports Center currently has more than 4,00,000 plus titles and 50+ Publishers on our platform and growing consistently. We cover more than 35 industry verticals being: Automotive, Electronics, Manufacturing, Pharmaceuticals, Healthcare, Chemicals, Construction, Agriculture, Food, Beverages, Banking & Finance, Media and Government, Public Sector Studies.304, Avon Complex,Baner, Pune - 411045 Mining Machinery Market 2017 -2022 Research Explores Economic Impact in Global Industries Manufactures, Growth, Size, Share, Trends Mining Machinery Market http://www.mrsresearchgroup.com/market-analysis/global-mining-machinery-market-2016-production-sales-supply.html http://bit.ly/2ogl6Oe http://bit.ly/2ogl6Oe The Global Mining Machinery Market 2017-2022 report by QY Research offers a comprehensive assessment of the Mining Machinery market and consists of historical data, scope, significant approaches, and statistical data of the global market. Besides these, it also includes anticipated facts that are assessed with the aid of an appropriate set of postulations and techniques.Read Complete Report @The Mining Machinery market report is a helpful source which assists manufacturers, distributors, suppliers, customers, and individuals and investors who have interest in this market.The research report provides an in-depth systematic study of the Mining Machinery market, covering key areas such as future prospects of the market, growth drivers, market restraints,Size, Share, Trends, Demand, Supply, Application, Segmentation, Opportunity, Market Development, production, capacity utilization, supply, Analysis and Forecast by 2022.Check Free Sample Research Report @The impact of the economic condition prevailing in Globe is assessed in the context of the Mining Machinery in Global 2017-2022 Industry. The report ends with definitive and authoritative conclusions about the Mining Machinery in Global 2017-2022 Industry.Market Segment by Regions, this report splits Global into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue, market share and growth rate of Mining Machinery in these regions, from 2011 to 2021 (forecast), likeNorth AmericaU.S.EuropeUKAsia PacificChinaJapanIndiaLatin AmericaBrazilMiddle East & AfricaSend us your Enquiry @The report provide Vendors, Traders and distributors analysis with contact details. For material and equipment suppliers also, contact details are given. New investment feasibility Studied and Industry growth is included in the report.MRS Research Group provides a range of marketing and business research solutions designed for our clients specific needs based on our expert resources. The business scopes of Prof Research cover more than 30 industries including energy, new materials, transportation, daily consumer goods, chemicals, etc. We provide our clients with one-stop solution for all the research requirements.Joel John3422 SW 15 Street,Suit #8138Deerfield Beach,Florida 33442United StatesToll Free : +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803Email: sales@mrsresearchgroup.com Global (North America, Europe And Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East And Africa) X-Ray Irradiators Market 2017 Forecast To 2022 http://www.reportbazzar.com/request-sample/?pid=881618&ptitle=Global+%28North+America%2C+Europe+and+Asia-Pacific%2C+South+America%2C+Middle+East+and+Africa%29+X-Ray+Irradiators+Market+2017+Forecast+to+2022&req=Sample http://www.reportbazzar.com/product/global-north-america-europe-and-asia-pacific-south-america-middle-east-and-africa-x-ray-irradiators-market-2017-forecast-to-2022/ http://www.reportbazzar.com/ SummaryX-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.Get Sample Report @Market Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversPrecision X-RayFaxitronXstrahlRad SourceGilardoniBest TheratronicsKimtronHopewell DesignsHitachiKUB TechnologiesMarket Segment by Regions, regional analysis coversNorth 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)Market Segment by Type, coversImage Guided X-ray IrradiatorCabinet X-ray IrradiatorMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided intoBlood IrradiationMaterial IrradiationAnimal IrradiationThere are 15 Chapters to deeply display the global X-Ray Irradiators market.Chapter 1, to describe X-Ray Irradiators Introduction, product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyze the top manufacturers of X-Ray Irradiators, with sales, revenue, and price of X-Ray Irradiators, in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 3, to display the competitive situation among the top manufacturers, with sales, revenue and market share in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 4, to show the global market by regions, with sales, revenue and market share of X-Ray Irradiators, for each region, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, to analyze the market by countries, by type, by application and by manufacturers, with sales, revenue and market share by key countries in these regions;Chapter 10 and 11, to show the market by type and application, with sales market share and growth rate by type, application, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 12, X-Ray Irradiators market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2017 to 2022;Chapter 13, 14 and 15, to describe X-Ray Irradiators sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers, Research Findings and Conclusion, appendix and data sourceBuy Complete Report Visit @About Us:Reportbazzar.com is your trusted source for the most inclusive and informative assortment of market research reports designed to empower you with the latest in industry information that translates to time and cost savings for your business. We not only help you give wing to your latent business ideas but also facilitate you in taking the best informed and strategic decisions that guarantee success in your most promising business endeavors.Contact Us:ReportBazzar30 Wall Street, 8th floor,New York, NY 10005.United States.US: +1 (212) 389-6363India: +91 20 66528525Email Id: sales@reportbazzar.comWebsite: Tahini Market : Conventional retail to Grow at 34% in 2025 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/12883 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/market-research/tahini-market/toc http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/checkout/12883 http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com Driven by growing popularity across the globe and steady adoption by the F&B industry, global tahini market volumes are estimated to surpass 314 thousand tonnes in 2016, up from nearly 305 thousand tonnes in 2015. According to the latest report published by Persistence Market Research titled Global Market Study on Tahini: Paste and Spreads Product Type Segment Projected to Remain the Largest Segment During the Forecast Period, global volumes are projected to reach 423,854 tonnes in 2025.Besides the availability of myriad flavors, rising adoption by local eateries are most likely to impact the global tahini market. Market Research Expert, Persistence Market ResearchGrowing popularity of authentic Middle Eastern food flavors is expected to escalate the demand for tahini-based products, such as hummus and tahini spread. The surging significance of social media marketing will play a pivotal role in the promotion of tahini and derived products. Emerging tahini applications in hummus, butter and spreads, halva, salads, bakery products, toppings, and traditional Middle Eastern recipes such as Baba Ghanoush will also influence the market favorably.By product type, tahini paste and spreads will witness the highest demand Paste and spreads segment will account for over 55% share in terms of revenues by 2025 Desserts and sweets segment, aggravated by growing popularity of halva, will maintain a market share of over 25% during the assessed period Sustained consumption of tahini dips and sauces will fuel the sauces and dips sub-segment, capturing over 18% market value shareBy distribution channel, major tahini sales will be directed through exports Conventional retail will lose its market share over 2015-2025; from over 37% market share in 2015, this sub-segment will settle at around 34% in 2025 Modern trade is expected to witness decent growth, accounting for a revenue share of over 29% by 2025 end Exports will, however, exhibit the fastest growth in terms of a distribution channel. With over 20% share of the revenues, this sub-segment is anticipated to reach US$ 465.9 Mn with a promising CAGR of 6.1%Considering product size, the tahini market is projected to gain the highest traction in the 50-150 gm size sub-segment With over 56% value share in 2025, the 50-150 gm size sub-segment will reportedly reach a consumption of around 243,189 tonnes Above 150 gm size sub-segment is likely to witness an uptick over the forecast period, capturing a considerable 28% market value share in 2025 Below 50 gm product size will be the fastest growing sub-segment at 5.9% CAGRDepending on the production process, industrial production process will remain dominant over conventional process With a slight setback from 76% share in 2015 to around 73% share estimated by 2025 end, industrial production process will witness moderate growth with a CAGR to the tune of 5.3% Conventional process will experience significant growth over the forecast periodA sample of this report is available upon request @According to Persistence Market Researchs regional analysis, Western Asia will continue to be the largest market, whereas GCC will emerge lucrative by 2025 end West Asia, identified as the most lucrative market for tahini, will predictably cross US$ 608 Mn by 2025 end, accounting for maximum revenues in the global market GCC countries will exhibit the fastest growth at 5.9% CAGR, primarily driven by Kuwait, UAE, and Saudi Arabia. GCC tahini market revenues will reach around US$ 202 Mn by 2025 end North Africa, followed by the U.K., are projected to grow moderately at respective CAGRs of 5.7% and 5.4%Request to view table of content @Dipasa International S.A., Sunshine International Foods, Inc., Kevala International LLC, Joyva Corp, Premier Organics, Haitoglou Bros S.A., Halwani Bros. Co., Prince Tahina Ltd., El Rashidi El Mizan, Al-Wadi Al-Akhdar S.A.L, Carleys of Cornwell Ltd., Balsam Tahini, Ismail Termurcugil, and Alseedawi Sweets Factories Co. constitute some of the key players in the global market for tahini. While major export opportunities lie in Asia and North America, a majority of leading players are based in the Middle East and North America. Halwani Bros. Co. and Haitoglou Bros. are top Middle East companies, whereas Joyva Corp, Dipasa, and Kevala Int. are the key North American players. Alwadi Al Akhdars new factory in Lebanon is due in 2017 and Sabra Dipping Co. will soon double its tahini hummus production capacity.Buy Now: You can now buy a single user license of the report @The final report customized as per your specific requirement will be sent to your e-mail id within 7-20 days, depending on the scope of the report.For more information, please e-mail us at sales@persistencemarketresearch.comAbout 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: Portable Water Purifier Market-By Type (UV, RO, Solar Distillation) Forecasts (2016-2021) Portable Water Purifier Market 2021 http://www.marketintelreports.com/report/cpr0105/portable-water-purifier-marketby-type-uv-ro-solar-distillation-by-end-user-residential-industrial-municipality-by-applications-drinking-water-purification-toc-reduction-othersforecasts-20162021 http://www.marketintelreports.com/pdfdownload.php?id=cpr0105 http://www.marketintelreports.com/purchase.php?id=cpr0105 www.marketintelreports.com Portable water purifiers are used in many areas where the people want drinking water from the untreated water sources including rivers, lakes, ponds and many similar sources. The primary purpose of these purifiers is to purify the contaminated water/waste water into usable water. They are used in Domestic purpose, Industrial, Commercial and Municipality. The conditions/ environment for operation of Portable water purifiers are not the same as it was a few decades ago owing to the dynamism of this market. Portable water purifiers market is growing rapidly with the invention of new methodologies for purification of water. When compared with past years people have gained more awareness about drinking hygienic water and thus they protect their own health.Water is not only used for drinking but also for many purposes. Since water is a Universal solvent, it is used in many industries like pharmaceuticals. Manufacturing of a medicine is done in extremely hygienic conditions and if any minute mistake regarding the hygiene is done it effects in a major loss. Hence pharmaceuticals need pure and disinfected water. Some chemical manufacturers need distilled water to conduct chemical research and other activities in that case clean water may not be available all the time hence they will have their own water filtering system which produces clean water in large amount.Check Complete Report @These days due to increase in population density and urbanization and many other factors the water has become contaminated and we have no choice we have to use such water because it is the only resource. Hence water purifier comes into the picture in that case. Ever-changing technology combined with above mentioned factors are the major drivers for this industry.Since past decade, the market has experiencing a rapid upsurge in providing the water purifiers for residential, industrial, commercial and municipality purposes and integrating the entire value chain of portable water purifier industry. Moreover, huge investment in this industry has further fueled the Portable water purifier application across the various places.Owing to benefits such as 99% disinfected water, availability of the purifiers in various sizes, Portable water purifiers are being used in different areas. However, residential, different industries, commercial water sellers, municipalities and water treatment agencies are key end use industries of the global portable water purifiers market.The global market for Portable Water purifiers was estimated to be $XX billion in 2015. The global market for Portable water purifier market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of XX% and is forecast to reach $XX billion by 2020. The UV and RO purifiers are forecast to have the highest growth of X% during the forecast period 2015-2021. Oil & gas, chemical and water treatment are the major end-users for water purifiers. North America and Europe alone are estimated to occupy a share of more than XX% during 2015-2021.North America is the leading market for Portable water purifiers with USA leading the charge. Asia region is forecast to have highest growth in the next few years due to growing industries, population and pollution. North America Portable water purifiers market accounts to xx% of the global market for Portable Water purifiers and is the fastest growing market followed by Europe. In Americas, domestic as well as chemical industry is the major end users of Portable water purifiers.Get Sample Brochure of the Report @Pure Hygienic and Healthy Drinking waterIn todays increasing pollution and contamination of water, the need for purification is essential in every field; clean water is a very essential and critical requirement for the survival of human beings and to process different mechanisms in chemical industry. In the past few decades the number of manufacturers and players in each company has increased substantially demanding huge requirement of clean water. With the scarcity of clean water, the governments of various countries like the U.K, China, India, Russia, South Africa, Japan, America and others are taking initiatives to supply clean and hygiene water to the people living in their Countries.In order to provide sterile drinking water to the people, Indian Government is building new water plants which includes the construction of new projects.As Portable water purifiers are an important components in many aspects, increasing investments in providing clean and pure water from the waste and contaminated water would drive the demand for Portable water purifier Market.Portable water Purifiers are Eco- FriendlyWater purifiers do not release any harmful gases and compounds that pollute the nature and living beings and hence these are Eco-friendly.Order a copy of Portable Water Purifier 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 Active Calcium Silicate Market Regional Analysis, Key Players, Industry Segments, Development, Opportunities, Forecast to 2022 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/2114 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/active-calcium-silicate-market Market Overview:Global Active Calcium Silicate Market sees a strong growth due to its demand from residential and infrastructure sector owing to its characteristics which includes adhesive, fire resistant and sound absorbent. Active calcium silicate contains three major raw materials these are sodium silicate, limestone and hydrochloric acid. These materials add certain properties to ceramics, paints & coatings which allows calcium silicate to be used in construction of high temperature insulation. Constructions such as roads, rail transports, airports and harbors will boost the active calcium silicate market.Active Calcium Silicate has vast applications like insulation, ceramics, paint & coatings and fire protection. Ceramic application of active calcium silicate is quite high in the overall market with increase in usage of acoustic tiles, false ceilings and plaster of paris. Frequent and growing application of plaster of paris and false ceilings in residential and construction sector is demanding for more beautiful aesthetics view which is propelling the active calcium market growth. Due to characteristics like fire resistant and intumescent, active calcium silicate is widely used in wallboards, clay and bricks to reduce shrinkage when exposed to heat.Market Segmentation:Global Active Calcium Silicate Market is majorly segmented on the basis of application. Based on application the market is classified into paints & coatings, ceramics, cement, insulation, fire protection.Request a Sample Report @Global Active Calcium Silicate Market Key Players: HIL Limited, Imerys Filtration Minerals Co., 2K Technologies, R.K. Oil Industries Pvt. Ltd., Ramco Industries Ltd, Promat International, Weifang Hong Yuan Chemical Co., Skamol limited, Xella Sverige AB, Magnesia GmbH, BIP ChemicalsAccess the market data and market information presented through more than 25 market data tables and 25 figures spread over 145 numbers of pages of the project report Global Active Calcium Silicate Market - Forecast to 2022Regional Analysis: Europe shares the largest market of Global Active Calcium Silicate Market. Germany is top share holder for active calcium silicate. Regulatory bodies for standardization and technology used in construction are cautiously monitored and provide manufacturer an opportunity to have projects in this field. US in North America are witnessing a reasonable growth due to favorable regulatory compliances in terms of thermal and acoustic insulators in residential and commercial buildings. Asia Pacific is second largest market in this segment as countries like China and India are developing in infrastructure. These causes huge demand for ceramics and paints & coatings which are sound proof and heat resistant. Increase in construction spending by government to build new airports, roads and harbors will fuel the demand of active calcium silicate market. Changing trade statistics in South Africa and Saudi Arabia will boost the active calcium silicate market growth.Access Report Details @List of FiguresFIGURE 1 Global Active Calcium Silicate market segmentationFIGURE 2 Forecast MethodologyFIGURE 3 Five Forces Analysis of Global Active Calcium Silicate MarketFIGURE 4 Value Chain of Global Active Calcium Silicate MarketContinued.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.ContactAkash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com Barite Market Analysis 2016-2022: Key Findings, Regional Analysis, Key Players Profiles and Future Prospects https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/2035 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/barite-market Market Overview:Global Barite Market has been evaluated to be rapidly growing and is expected to grow tremendously. The benefits such as superior properties like good stability, strong inertia & rigidity and high specific gravity etc. had increased their market globally. With numerous usage of barite, the global barite market is expected to increase in the future. Moreover, increasing demand in construction industry owing to the rising surge for paints is another factor that drives the global barite market growth over the forecasted period 2022.Automobile Industry is also increasing the demand for barite which is used in brakes, clutch plates and finishing coats to make them smooth and resistance to corrosion. All these things are expected to drive the market globally in coming years. Due to the non-toxic property of barite; it can be used in barium, which will further grow the barite market by 2022. Other application of barite is in medical equipments, electronic devices like computer, television and smartphone; all these are leading the growth of global market.Market Segmentation:Global Barite Market is majorly segmented on the basis of grades and by application. Based on grades the market is segmented into Sp. Gr. 3.9, Gr. 4.0, Gr. 4.1, Gr. 4.2, Gr. 4.3 & above. Further on the basis of application the market is classified into paints, automobiles, oil & gas, textiles, pharmaceutical, electrical appliances and more.Request a Sample Report @Key Players: Halliburton Company, Excalibar Minerals LLC, Ashapura Minechem Ltd, CIMBAR Performance Minerals, Desku Group Inc, P & S Barite Mining Co. Ltd, Anglo Pacific Minerals, Kaomin Industries, Andhra Pradesh Mineral Development Corporation Limited, Mil-Spec Industries CorporationAccess the market data and market information presented through more than 25 market data tables and 25 figures spread over 140 numbers of pages of the project report Global Barite Market - Forecast to 2022Study Objectives of Barite Market: Studying market overview of Barite. Estimating market size by grade and application. To provide insights about market drivers, restrains and opportunities. To provide geographically market analysis and future outlook for North America, Europe, Asia, and Rest of the World (ROW) and their countries. To analyze the global barite market based on various factors- supply chain analysis, porters five force analysis etc. To provide strategic profiling of the key players in the market, broadly analyzing their core competencies. To evaluate competitive developments such as joint ventures, strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions, new product developments, and research and developments in the global bariteAccess Report Details @Reasons to buy This report includes in-depth study analysis of Barite market It covers market segmentation by grade and by application. It helps in identifying region-wise major suppliers and understand consumption patterns. The report will provide useful and premium insights that will support in investments of Barite and allied companies providing details on the fast-growing segments and regions. In addition, it will provide key findings that will help the companies to improve profitability by using supply chain strategies, cost effectiveness of various products mentioned in the report. The data used in the report is primarily based on primary interviews with the major producing companies and industry experts and supported by authentic industry data from secondary sources.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.ContactAkash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com You can see the pride in Melissa Heavicans face when she talks about it. Heavican is registered nurse and clinical leader at Fremont Health, which has begun implementing a protocol that can make having a baby even safer. The procedure literally takes the traditional guesswork out of determining the amount of blood a woman has lost after childbirth. Instead of estimating that amount as clinicians throughout the nation have done for years professionals at Fremont Health now measure it. And in about a years time, Fremont Health has put into place a practice that can take up to four years at other hospitals. The number of American moms dying from pregnancy or childbirth has been going up more than doubling in 25 years, states data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Each year, more than 600 women in the United States die due to pregnancy or delivery complications. Hemorrhaging after the birth of a child is one of the main complications that can lead to a mothers death. In November, Fremont Health began implementing a potentially life-saving practice. For years, nurses and doctors across the country have estimated the amount of blood lost after a woman had a baby. Yet studies have shown that 50 percent of even the most experienced clinicians have underestimated the blood loss. Underestimating blood loss can lead to a delay in life-saving interventions such as transfusions, states the Council on Patient Safety in Womens Health Care. Overestimation can lead to costly, unnecessary treatments, the council states. Heavican added that receiving blood transfusions involves both benefits and risks. At Fremont Health, the blood loss is measured in two ways. For a vaginal delivery, blood is collected in pouches, specially marked with measurements. For a Cesarean birth, blood is collected using suction canisters. In both cases, blood-saturated items, such as pads in a vaginal birth or sponges in a C-section, are weighed on a scale. If the amount is more than 500 cubic centimeters (ccs) for a vaginal delivery and 1,000 for a C-section, this is an indicator that the mother is hemorrhaging. Heavican said 500 ccs would equal the same amount of liquid as two cans of pop. Measuring is important giving nurses and doctors the indication that there may be trouble well before a moms vital signs would change. Youre recognizing earlier that there may be a problem and get treatment earlier, she said. The health professionals measure how much blood is lost cumulatively as hemorrhaging may not start until a few hours later. Nurses check on the mother every hour, but also tell her to activate their call light if they feel an expulsion of fluid. Measuring the blood loss can lead to more precise communication between nurses and physicians and with hospital lab. Professionals at Fremont Health have conducted practice drills, simulating how theyd handle a situation where a mother had 600 ccs of blood loss. Fremont Health began looking at using this protocol (standard way of doing things) in October 2015. It was fully implemented by November 2016. At some hospitals it takes up to four years to implement what Fremont has in essentially one year, Heavican said, adding, You are getting the best evidenced-based care at Fremont Health and we strive to be the best birthing center in the area. Heavican also noted that Fremont Health has 97 percent satisfaction rate by patients for overall care. Factors in that survey rating include effective communication, responsiveness of nurses, pain control and quiet and clean environment. She cited Dr. Jamie Gustafson, obstetrics physician, at Fremont Health Care for Women and Jolynn Hartman, registered nurse and longtime Fremont Health employee, for their work in leading the implementation of whats called the best practices. We work really hard to make sure our standards of care are where they need to be to ensure you have a safe delivery with a good outcome, Heavican said. Mobile Accessories market is expected to grow with CAGR of 6% between years 2016 to 2022 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/1908 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/mobile-accessories-market Market Synopsis of Mobile Accessories Market:Market Scenario:The rapid proliferation of smartphones and other handheld mobile devices with a strong distribution network has spurred the Mobile Accessories Market globally. The increasing disposal income and rising urbanization across regions such as Latin America and Asia-Pacific has fuelled the market of mobile devices as well as mobile accessories. The demand for mobile accessories are increasing due to the high consumption of smartphone in emerging economies such as China, India and Brazil among others.Mobile phone accessories include protective cases, headphones or earphones, power bank chargers, memory cards, batteries, and portable speakers. The demand of protective accessories such as tampered glasses, and screen guards is increasing to protect smartphones from physical damage. The growing demand for wireless mobile accessories such as Bluetooth headsets, wireless charger among others is one of the crucial trends that is driving the market of mobile accessories. The increasing adoption of E-commerce and E-banking have triggered the demand for mobile devices worldwide that in turn is further contributing to the growth of mobile accessories market.Hence the market for Mobile Accessories is expected to grow at US ~$104 billion by end of 2022 with CAGR of ~6% between years 2016 to 2022.However, the user preference over mobile accessories and Security issues in online shopping are some of the restraining factor in Mobile Accessories Market.Segments:Global Mobile Accessories Market has been segmented on the Basis of Products, Distribution Channel and Price Range. The Product includes Headphone/earphone, Protective Cases, Power Bank, Portable Speakers among others. Distribution Channel are Online, Offline among Others. Price Range include Premium, Medium, and Low.Request a Sample Report @Key PlayersThe prominent players in the market of Mobile Accessories are- Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (South Korea), Sony Corporation (Japan), Panasonic Corporation (Japan), Apple Inc. (U.S.), JVC Kenwood Corp. (Japan), Plantronics, Inc. (U.S.), Bose Corporation (U.S.), Griffin Technology (U.S.), Otter Products, LLC (U.S.), Sennheiser Electronics GmbH & Co. KG (Germany) among others.Browse Report Details @Intended Audience Accessories Manufacturers Smartphone Accessories Suppliers Phone case and display protector manufacturers E-commerce and Retail Portable battery manufacturersStudy Objectives of Mobile Accessories Market: To provide detailed analysis of the market structure along with forecast of the various segments and sub-segments of the Global Mobile Accessories Market To provide insights about factors affecting the market growth To analyze the Mobile Accessories market based on various factors- 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)Regional AnalysisAsia-Pacific is dominating the market of Mobile Accessories Market due to the high number of smartphone and other handheld devices in regions such as China and India. Growing mobile phone users and internet based activities such as online shopping in this region are also contributing in the growth of Mobile Accessories market. North America is the second largest Mobile Accessories Market due to the high adoption of smartphone users and internet based services in this region. Europe is expected to register healthy growth in the Mobile Accessories Market due to increasing demand of mobile phones and mobile accessories.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.Akash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com Medical Tourism Market: Global Markets & Advanced Technologies https://goo.gl/7Lq4Mc http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/malaysia-medical-tourism-market.html www.transparencymarketresearch.com Malaysia Medical Tourism Market: SnapshotThe medical tourism market in Malaysia is forecast to grow at a robust pace between 2016 and 2024. Persistent government activities synergizing the medical tourism industry and lower cost of medical services compared to their counterparts in developed nations are boosting the medical tourism market in Malaysia. Over the course of the forecast period from 2016 to 2024, the market is poised to exhibit an impressive 30.05% CAGR. At this pace, its valuation is expected to increase from US$424.96 mn in 2016 to US$3.5 bn before 2024 ends.Download The Full Brouchre of Report:Accelerated pace of gains is on cards due to the increasing influx of medical tourists from MENA and neighboring countries. Besides this, the market will gain from various macro-economic factors such as tax exemptions by government on revenue generated from foreign patients and excellent transport and recuperation facilities. While the regional players will continue exhibiting promising growth, the established players might emerge as major gainers rendering the vendor landscape of Malaysia medical tourism market consolidated.Other factors such as low language barrier and the presence of sophisticated healthcare infrastructure will continue fuelling opportunities in the medical tourism market of Malaysia.Medical Travelers from Indonesia Highest in NumberCountry-wise, the influx of medical tourists from the neighboring country Indonesia is recorded at the highest. In addition, the nation welcomes an increasing number of medical travelers from India, China, Nepal, Iran, Libya, Australia, the U.S., and the U.K. The healthcare industry in Malaysia has been identified as one of the 12 national key economic areas hence, the nations government keep no stone unturned to attract an increasing number of foreign patients every year. For instance, it offers lucrative incentives and tax exemptions on revenue generated from medical travelers. Besides this, the government of Malaysia has developed the Malaysia healthcare travel council (MHTC) within its healthcare ministry to support foreign patients and their families visiting Malaysia in every way possible.In order to woo patients from the Middle-east the country maintains favorable stance on the Halal medical tourism. Hence several hospitals in the nation offer halal medical services to patients from the Middle East country. Under these services, the hospitals provide a full range of Muslim friendly services to their patients. Medical tourism assistance centers are also set up in places to help patients and their families traveling from the Middle East or other nations with Islam dominance.Browse Global Strategic Business Report:Demand for Dental Treatment Recorded the HighestAmong the segments based on procedure type, the Malaysia medial tourism market was dominated by dental treatment in 2016. The aesthetics/cosmetic surgery segment trailed closely emerging as the second-leading market segment in the same year. According to TMR, approximately 36.6% of the medical tourists visiting Malaysia opt for dental treatment. Factors such as the low cost of services compared to those offered in the U.S. and favorable government activities are expected to aid growth witnessed in the aforementioned categories. Besides this, the market is forecast to witness rising demand for orthopedic treatment, cosmetic surgeries, and regular health screening. These segments, coupled with the field of dental treatment, occupied over 70% of the overall medical tourism market in Malaysia.Some of the key enterprises operating in the Malaysia medical tourism market are Pantai Holdings Berhad, KPJ Healthcare Berhad, Dentalpro Group, Prince Court Medical Centre, Island Hospital, IJN Health Institute, Mahkota Medical Centre, Sunway Medical Centre, LohGuanLye Specialists Centre, and Tropicana Medical Centre.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: Blood Component Extractor Market: Technologies, Markets and Players https://goo.gl/2R5RAu http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/blood-component-extractor-market.html www.transparencymarketresearch.com Whole blood is a mixture of cells, colloids, and crystalloids and can be separated into four major components: plasma, red blood cells, platelets, and cryoprecipitate. Each of these components have different applications as per indications in medicinal practice. Blood component extractors are used to isolate these specific blood components. These extracted components require different storage and temperature conditions on the basis of lifespan of each component. Centrifugation and filtration techniques are used for blood component extraction. Technological developments such as dual press technology, bar code readability, and easy connectivity to monitors using LAN/WAN and Wi-Fi, and development of advanced filtration membrane in blood component extraction has led to development of automated blood component extraction using centrifugation technique. The filtration technique is restricted to therapeutic purpose and has limited market. Apheresis process, which involves extraction of desired blood component from donor and returning back remaining blood to donor, is commonly followed practice worldwide for extraction of blood components. Blood component extractor enhances the utility of whole blood unit. Blood component extractor equipment are required by hospitals, blood banks, research institutes, and pharmaceutical companies.Download The Full Brouchre of Report:Blood component extractors using centrifugation techniques are characterized by single and dual press system, number of sealing heads, number of optical sensors, number of inbuilt programs, blood volume capacity, barcode reader, connectivity to LAN/WAN and Wi-Fi, and number of blood donations that can be performed at a time. Centrifugation can be done either continuously or intermittently as per need and requirement. Blood component extractors are required in hospitals for different apheresis processes. These processes include plasmapheresis, erythropheresis, erythrocytopheresis, platelatepheresis, and leukapheresis. Blood component extractors have different applications in these apheresis processes. One blood component extractor may have applications for one or more of the above processes. Hemodialysis machines are also used for plasmapheresis using filtration technique. In filtration techniques, different types of membranes such as hollow fiber membrane, polysulfone membranes, and polyethylene membranes are used for separation of plasma from blood.Rise in demand for specific blood component instead of whole unit of blood, increasing pressure of requirement of high quality purified blood components, time saving, ease of access, multiple applications of blood component extractors with one unit of blood, increasing number of blood banks and hospitals, increasing number of blood transfusion therapies worldwide, and significant improvement in health care infrastructure especially in developing countries are the key drivers of the global blood component extractor market. High cost of blood component extractors and maintenance of blood components, lack of interest of donors for blood donations, lack of trained/skilled manpower for handling these equipment, histocompatibility issues, and costlier therapeutics process are the major restraints of the global blood component extractor market.Browse Global Strategic Business Report:In terms of region, the global blood component extractor market has been segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa, and Latin America. Automated blood component extractors hold major share of the blood component extractor market in North America. Isolation of blood components using membrane filtration technique is least practiced. In countries such as Germany and Japan, plasmapheresis process is widely practiced using membrane filtration technique than centrifugation. Europe is the second largest market for blood component extractors. Regions such as Asia Pacific and Middle East & Africa are expected to grow at a higher rate in the near future.Kawasumi Laboratories, Inc., NxStage Medical, Inc., Fenwal, Inc. (Fresinius Kabi), Bioelectronica MILANO, Terumo Corporation, Delcon SRL, Medica S.p.A., Haemonetics Corporation, and Baxter International, Inc. are the key players in the global blood component extractor market.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR syndicated research report covers a different sector such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, TMRs syndicated reports strive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Dynamic Mechanical Analyzers Market: Trends, Opportunities and Forecasts 2024 https://goo.gl/H5gPI4 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/dynamic-mechanical-analyzers-market.html www.transparencymarketresearch.com Dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) is the analysis technique to understand the viscoelastic and other physical properties of polymers. In this technique, different parameters are applied such as oscillating frequency, temperature, time, stress, atmosphere, and others to estimate the viscoelastic characters of the material such as stiffness (storage and loss modulus), energy dissipation (damping), dynamic viscosity, glass transition temperature, etc. DMA has proven to be more useful compared to conventional thermo-mechanical analysis as it can characterize the sample polymer based on different parameters besides temperature. Dynamic mechanical analyzers have their applications spanning in different industries. Study of viscoelastic parameters are polymers user in pharmaceutical and biomedical industry are of great importance as the characteristics of these polymers can affect the clinical performance of drug delivery systems and medical devices.Download The Full Brouchre of Report:Several polymeric materials are used in health care such as components in medical devices, tissue engineering scaffolds, fixation, and regeneration of tissues. These health care products are becoming more complex in design and composition to be more efficient and give better performance. These items undergo great stress and varied environments (temperature, strain) during their operations. It becomes important for researchers and product developers to characterize those materials in order to avoid failure. DMA applications in achieving these goals are expected to drive the usage of DMA in the near future. The varied applications of dynamic mechanical analyzer such as understanding product dimensional stabilities, impact properties, temperature performance, and adhesion over the conventional thermo-mechanical analyzers are expected to drive the market. The dynamic mechanical analyzers market is expected to witness strong growth driven by technological advancements and industry players thriving to have an added advantage over competitors in their product features. Additionally, in order to comply with the stringent regulatory laws in product development and clinical trials for new health care products, industry players are focused on developing better quality products. This is expected to propel the global DMA market. However, high cost associated with dynamic mechanical analyzers and their limited access is expected to bolster the growth for dynamic mechanical analyzers market.Based on product type, the dynamic mechanical analyzers market has been segmented into forced resonance analyzers and free resonance analyzers. Owing to limitations of free resonance DMA in compatibility of the sample type and shape, their application are lesser when compared to forced resonance DMA. Most of the industry players are offering forced DMA. DMA applies stress and strain on a sample to analyze its characteristics. In terms of strain and stress application method, the dynamic mechanical analyzers market has been segmented into axial analyzers and torsional analyzers. Axial analyzers are more suitable for solid and high viscous samples, while fluids, polymer melts, and even solids can be analyzed with torsional analyzer.Major end-users of dynamic mechanical analyzers are contract research organizations (CRO), pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, medical device manufacturers, and research institutes. Most of the pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, and medical device manufacturers are posed to outsource the sample analyzing process to contract research organizations due to high cost of the equipment and its limited use. Hence, contract research organizations provide the sample analysis services to OEMs and other industry. The contract research organizations market is expected to hold prominent position in the dynamic mechanical analyzers market.Browse Global Strategic Business Report:Geographically, the global dynamic mechanical analyzers market has been segmented into four major regions: North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Rest of the World. North America is expected to lead the global dynamic mechanical analyzers market owing to high acceptance of technology advancements and higher research projects being carried out. Stringent health care regulations for quality products and demand for advanced health care products are expected to propel the dynamic mechanical analyzers market in the region. Europe is expected to account for a significant share of the global dynamic mechanical analyzers market due to large industry base. Rising expenditure on technically advanced health care products and industrial evolution in emerging markets such as India, China, and Japan are projected to boost the growth of the dynamic mechanical analyzers market in Asia Pacific during the forecast period from 2016 to 2024.Major players operating in the market include Mettler-Toledo International, Inc., PerkinElmer, Inc., NETZSCH-Geratebau GmbH, Hitachi High-Technologies Corporation, Psylotech, Inc., Alpha Technologies, Anton-Paar GmbH, Acoem Group, and Illinois Tool Works 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.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: Non-lethal Biochemical Weapons Market Growth To 2024 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=20858 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/non-lethal-biochemical-weapons-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=D&rep_id=20858 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/ http://depthresearchreport.blogspot.in/ Global Non-Lethal Biochemical Weapons Market - OverviewInterest of military forces and law enforcement agencies in non-lethal biochemical weapons has witnessed tremendous development in the recent past as progress in technology in science has appeared to provide the assurance of innovative non-lethal weapons, used in a wide variety of militarily and politically threatening situations. These weapons, also known as less than lethal biochemical weapons, intend to be less probable for killing living targets than traditional firearms or knives. These devices are specialized munitions which use chemicals calibrated to inflict injury or harm to human beings, and organisms or pathogens to cause disease. These pathogens may include viruses, bacteria, toxins or fungi.To Get Sample Of the Reports @Global Non-Lethal Biochemical Weapons Market Key Trends and OpportunitiesRising defense expenditure by the governments of economies that are considered emerging, such as India, China, Turkey and South Korea, is projected to provide many development opportunities for the stakeholders in the global non-lethal biochemical weapons market space. Besides, the increasing research and development within this field is anticipated to boost the growth prospects of these weapons during the forecast period.However, the development of the non-lethal biochemical weapons can be impacted by certain definite restraining factors in the near future. These restraints include a decline in the defense budget of developed countries, and stringent governmental and environmental regulations.The opportunities of demand in the global non-lethal biochemical weapons market are the result of different incidents of civil conflicts and unrest in South Asia, the Middle East, and the North African regions. These zones have been recognized as highly dynamic markets for non-lethal biochemical weapons, because of the exponential rates of demand growth in the recent past. For instance, the sectarian unrest in Lebanon, the Syrian civil war, and the political viciousness in Jerusalem call for enhanced response by the military as well as law enforcement agencies. As a consequence, the securing of non-lethal biochemical weapons by military forces is expected to rise substantially during the forecast period. Thus the dynamic global market for these weapons has high potential. So the opportunities of the market could be accredited to the transforming political and regional dynamics of the world economy, rising incidences of armed terrorism and violence.Global Non-Lethal Biochemical Weapons Market Key Market SegmentsBased on the various non-lethal biochemical weapons operations, the global market is segmented into defensive, offensive, and genetic attack. Swift growth in demand for genetic attack weapons is a major factor to boost the demand for non-lethal biochemical weapons, globally. On the basis of product type, this market is segmented into directed energy weapons (DEW), and direct contact weapons. Non-lethal biochemical weaponry in the directed energy segment has accounted for an astounding pace of consolidation, because of giant industrial conglomerates taking over smaller organizations rapidly. With respect to end use, the global non-lethal biochemical weapons market can be segmented into law enforcement agencies and military forces.Global Non-Lethal Biochemical Weapons Market Regional OutlookBy geography, the global non-lethal biochemical Weapons market has been classified into five regions namely North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa, and Latin America. Currently, the Middle East and Africa segment held the major share of the market, followed by North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, and Latin America. The Asia Pacific region is expected to develop rapidly with rising trade with North America and Europe. Regional players have been focusing on partnerships with players in regions such as Africa.Global Non-Lethal Biochemical Weapons Market Vendor LandscapeThe leading manufacturing companies profiled in this report are BAE Systems, Inc.; Lamperd Less Lethal, Inc., Taser International, Inc.; Raytheon Company; Textron Systems, Corp.; General Dynamics Corporation; Chemring Group PLC.; Moog, Inc; Qinetiq Group, Inc.; and LRAD Corporation. These organizations focus on evolving innovative products after investment of substantial amount of their net sales in research and development for introducing progressive technologies with large range abilities, reduced weight, and relatively higher precision.To Get Full Detail of The Reports @The segments covered in the Non-Lethal Biochemical Weapons market are as follows:Global Non-Lethal Biochemical Weapons Market: By Operation Type Defensive Offensive Genetic AttackGlobal Non-Lethal Biochemical Weapons Market: By Product Type Directed Energy Direct ContactGlobal Non-Lethal Biochemical Weapons Market: By End Use Military Forces Law Enforcement AgenciesGlobal Non-Lethal Biochemical Weapons Market: By Geography North Americao U.S.o Canadao Mexico Europeo U.K.o Germanyo Franceo Italyo Rest of Europe Asia Pacifico Chinao Japano Indiao South Koreao Rest of Asia Pacific Middle East and Africao UAEo Saudi Arabiao South Africao Rest of MEA Latin Americao Brazilo Argentinao Rest of Latin AmericaTo Get Discount Of the Report @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.Transparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:Visit Blog : Baby Diapers Market Growth, Trends, Price, Demand and Forecasts To 2024 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=13925 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/east-africa-baby-diapers-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=D&rep_id=13925 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/ http://depthresearchreport.blogspot.in/ East Africa Baby Diapers Market: OverviewIn recent years, the demand for baby diapers has grown steadily in various nations of East Africa.Baby diaper forms a key hygiene product required to be worn by infants for the purpose of incontinence. The increasing awareness of urban as well as rural population toward maintaining hygiene of infants to ensure their proper growth have led parents to use diapers for their babies. With constant advances in manufacturing technology, the market has witnessed the launch of super-absorbent diapers containing natural odor-blockers that are gentle and soft on the infants skin. Recent product innovations have stimulated the use of plant-based and sustainable materials in manufacturing baby diapers, which has boosted their use.The report provides an in-depth insight into the key market dynamics, emerging trends, recent design innovations, and competitive landscape. The study offers a thorough statistical analysis related to the market share and size of segments and analyzes the key factors shaping the competitive dynamics. Recent efforts by governments of various countries and private players in East Africa are highlighted and their impact on the pricing strategies of vendors are evaluated. The study takes a closer look at the development of distribution channels in various developing and developed nations which help investors identify lucrative avenues.To Get Sample Of the Reports @East Africa Baby Diapers Market: Trends and OpportunitiesThe East Africa baby diapers market is primarily driven by a continuous decline in the infant mortality rate in developing nations, an upsurge in urban population with significant disposable incomes, and increasing awareness related to the hygiene of infants. Coupled with this, intensive and consistent efforts made by several governmental and non-governmental organizations to create awareness among rural population have led to an increasing use of baby diapers to promote the healthy growth of infants.Growing shift toward the use of eco-friendly and sustainable materials in manufacturing baby diapers has resulted in various product innovations. The growing popularity of diapers made with naturally derived and plant-based materials has opened exciting opportunities for manufacturers. Furthermore, the advent of ultra-soft and hypoallergenic diapers made without the use of any additives is expected to propel the market over the forecast period.However, the growing trend of parents preferring longer in-between changing times of diapers has resulted in skin rashes and infections among babies. Various studies reiterating the role of disposable diapers in causing testicular cancer among males are likely to hinder the growth of the market to an extent. On the other hand, the increasing awareness toward proper practices of changing baby diapers among parents is expected to boost the market in the coming years.East Africa Baby Diapers Market: Regional OutlookThe major countries analyzed in the research report are Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi. Kenya is the most lucrative market for baby diapers in East Africa. The impressive demand for baby diapers in Kenya is propelled by the significant rise in birth rate combined with a substantial decline in the infant mortality rate compared to other developing nations of East Africa. Tanzania is the second largest revenue contributing country in the East Africa diapers market. The Tanzania market is poised to expand at an impressive rate along the forecast period.East Africa Baby Diapers Market:Leading players are also developing sustainable products made with biodegradable materials to attract parents who are conscious of the environmental impact of disposing diapers. Major manufacturers are making product innovations and actively boosting their distribution channels to consolidate their presence across major countries. Key players operating in this market include Procter and Gamble, Unicharm Corporation, Johnson and Johnson, INDEVCO Group, SCA Hygiene Products GmbH, Mega Soft (Fujian) Hygiene Products Co. Ltd., and Interconsumer Products Ltd.To Get Full Detail of The Reports @Major countries analyzed under this research report are: Kenya Uganda Tanzania Rwanda Burundi Rest of East AfricaThis report gives you access to decisive data such as: Market growth drivers Factors limiting market growth Current market trends Market structure Market projections for the coming yearsKey highlights of this report Overview of key market forces propelling and restraining market growth Up-to-date analyses of market trends and technological improvements Pin-point analyses of market competition dynamics to offer you acompetitive edge An analysis of strategies of major competitors An array of graphics and SWOT analysis of major industry segments Detailed analyses of industry trends A well-defined technological growth map with an impact-analysis Offers a clear understanding of the competitive landscape and key product segmentsTo Get Discount Of the Report @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.Transparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:Visit Blog : Worldwide Seafood Industry Analysis and Future Outlook to 2022 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/1971 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/seafood-market-1971 Global Seafood Market Information- By Type (Fish, Roe, Shellfish, Molluscs, Echinoderms, Medusozoa, others), By Processed Type (Dried Seafood, Salted Seafood, Smoked Seafood, Pasteurized Seafood, Frozen Seafood and others), By Application (Table Consumption, Personal care products, Nutraceuticals, Fast Food chains and others), and by Region - Forecast to 2022The seafood prominently includes fish and shellfish. The market for seafood is growing steadily with increasing in demand for protein rich food. Moreover, in recent years the major players are investing in growing market regions like APAC, this market has shown huge potential. Globally the market for seafood is expected to grow at the rate of about 3% from 2016 to 2022.Request for sample copy @Seafood market has been segmented on the basis of main type which comprises of fish, roe, shellfish, molluscs, echinoderms, medusozoa and mixed grain. On the basis of process, market is segmented into fresh seafood, dried seafood, salted seafood, smoked seafood, pasteurized seafood, pasteurized seafood and others. On the basis of application, market is segmented into table consumption, personal care products, nutraceuticals, fast food chains and others.Key Findings: Secondary data reveals that the seafood market is projected to grow more than 3% annually post the year 2022 The top 5 exporters of frozen fish are China, U.S., Chile, Norway, and SpainStudy Objectives of Seafood Market In depth study of the market segments and sub-segments To estimate and forecast market size by type, process, application, and region To analyze the key driving forces influencing the market Region level market analysis and market projections for North America, Europe, Asia, and Rest of the World (ROW) and their countries Competitive landscaping of major market players Company profiling of major players in the market Product positioning of major companies in the market Analysis of historical market trends, and technologies, and current government regulatory requirementsComplete Report Available atAPAC accounted for higher market share in the seafood during the period 2011-2015, with market value of USD XX million and is expected to grow over USD XX million by 2022. Major companies are targeting APAC as potential region for investments in the seafood market due to potential demand scenarioKey Players Austevoll Seafood ASA (Norway) Cooke Aquaculture, Inc. (Canada) Dongwon Group (South Korea) Trident Seafoods Corporation (US) Lyons Seafoods Limited (UK) Thai Union Group PCL (Thailand) Zhanjiang Guolian Aquatic Products Co., Ltd. (China) Princes Ltd. (UK) Tri Marine International Inc. (US) and Amalgam Enterprises (India)The seafood market is segmented under the following regions mentioned below:North America US CanadaEurope Germany France Italy Spain UK Rest of EuropeAsia-Pacific China India Australia Singapore Rest of Asia PacificRest of the world Brazil Argentina Saudi Arabia South Africa OthersAt 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 Future+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com Managed File Transfer Market to US$1,637.3 mn by 2024 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/managed-file-transfer-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=11435 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Digitization, mobilization, globalization, and virtualization are bringing about a major change in the way many operations are executed, communications take place, and enterprises work.These changes are also churning out vast volumes of data, which is transferred across enterprise and even global boundaries. Maintaining the safety of critical business data while it is being transferred across diverse digital paths has made it imperative for organizations to have reliable file transfer solutions and mechanism in place.Managed file transfer (MFT) has come ahead as a viable alternative to conventional file transfer ways such as e-mails and File Transfer Protocol (FTP). TMR findings state that the global MFT market will exhibit a favorable 7.7% CAGR from 2016 to 2024 as companies increasingly embrace this file transfer mechanism. The market is expected to rise from a valuation of US$774.3 mn in 2014 to US$1,637.3 mn by 2024.Browse Market Research Report:BFSI Sector Leads the WayThe highly critical nature of data in the BFSI segment is vulnerable to security breaches such as hacking and phishing attacks, theft of storage devices, and employee frauds.Thus the BFSI industry has traditionally remained a major procurer of efficient MFT solutions, representing a dominant 20.82% of the global MFT market in 2015. Recent incidents such as the loss of HSBC Bank compact discs containing sensitive consumer information and the loss of back-up tapes of Zurich Insurances U.K. branch have affirmed the need for effective MFT solutions in the BFSI sector. The sector will continue to be a major driver for the market and represent over 21% in the global market by 2024.Known to provide excellent security to data, on-premise deployment has traditionally been the most preferred way of deploying MFT solutions, especially across data sensitive fields such as BFSI and defense.On-premise deployment presently holds the largest share in the global MFT market. The segment is projected to remain a major contributor to the overall revenues of the market in the future years as well, owing majorly to revenues generated from maintenance and after sales services.However, cloud-based deployment is expected to emerge as the most preferred MFT deployment methods from 2016 to 2024. The rising awareness regarding cost and flexibility benefits of cloud-based deployment services, and the rapid enhancement being achieved in the field of data security are granting cloud-based deployment services an upper hand.The hybrid mode of deployment, allowing combined benefits of cloud and on-premise deployment modes, will also witness huge demand from small- and medium-sized companies over the said period.Set to revolutionize the MFT market dynamics, cloud-based deployment will expand at the highest, 9.0% CAGR and hybrid deployment will expand at an 8.7% CAGR from 2016 to 2024. On-premise deployment will achieve the least traction, and will exhibit a 6.8% CAGR over the same period.Developing Economies to be Key Determinants of Success for Managed File Transfer TechnologyRapid digitization of organizational processes across developing parts of Asia Pacific and Latin America has highlighted the need for effective safety mechanisms governing the digital file transfer routes and are thus driving the increased demand for MFT systems and solutions.Fill the form to Gain Deeper Insights on this Market:Digitization is especially rampant in government organizations and the banking sector in Latin America and Asia Pacific. In response to this trend, major MFT vendors are aligning their strategies towards these regions and are expected to earn a major share in revenues from sales of services and solutions in these regions over 2016 to 2024.The MFT market in Asia Pacific is expected to expand at the fastest CAGR of 10.3% over the said period. The MFT market in Latin America will witness growth at the second-highest pace, a 9.2% CAGR over 2016 to 2024.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: An Aloha man was sentenced Thursday to 15 years in prison after admitting to breaking into his neighbor's apartment to take her underwear and secretly recording women and children in his home and at his job at Little Caesars Pizza. Leighton T. Olson, 38, filmed people without their knowledge between 2012 and 2016 while they were in his apartment bathroom or in an employee bathroom at Little Caesars in Aloha, according to Washington County Deputy District Attorney John Gerhard IV. He pleaded guilty to recording two female co-workers and a girl at Little Caesars and another girl while she was in his bathroom, but Gerhard said investigators identified at least a dozen people in videos he kept at home. Olson was convicted of using a child in a display of sexually explicit conduct, first-degree encouraging child sexual abuse, first-degree invasion of personal privacy and first-degree burglary. He has a criminal history that includes convictions between 1997 and 2015 for criminal trespassing, assault, driving under the influence of intoxicants and methamphetamine possession. Olson made no statements and hung his head during much of the hearing. Judge Eric Butterfield ordered him to register as a sex offender. Gerhard said Olson was found out after he gave permission to a woman who lived next door to periodically enter his apartment to check on him and make sure he didn't overdose on drugs. When she entered his home last August, she found him passed out on the couch, his bedroom door wide open and a large pile of women's underwear on the floor. She recognized some of the underwear as her own. The neighbor put the underwear into a duffle bag and took them back to her apartment, Gerhard said. Many of the undergarments were encrusted with semen with the crotch cut out. In the pile, she also found photos of people sitting on toilets apparently unaware they were being photographed. There also was a thumb drive with videos of people in a bathroom in various stages of undress, Gerhard said. The neighbor reported what she found to police. Detectives with the Washington County Sheriff's Office found several VHS tapes and more thumb drives with recordings of people when they served a search warrant at Olson's apartment. He had a video recording set up in his bedroom with wiring that went underneath his floor into the bathroom. Investigators determined that he went through his attic, knocked out a firewall that separated his apartment from his neighbor's and dropped into her unit to steal from her, Gerhard said. Sheriff's officials also said they found thousands of women's stolen underwear in Olson's apartment. At the Little Caesars, Olson placed a camera inside his motorcycle helmet and left it on a shelf in the employee bathroom, Gerhard said. It was also the room where employees changed clothes before and after work shifts. "He was able to record males and females, adults and juveniles in a state of nudity," the prosecutor said. "He would then take it upon himself to edit these videos and essentially create compilation videos of people he wanted to watch again." Olson would also record himself masturbating while watching the edited videos. He admitted to investigators that he made the recordings, broke into his neighbor's apartment and that he had an obsession with women's underwear, Gerhard said. It's not clear how he obtained all the stolen underwear. -- Everton Bailey Jr. ebailey@oregonian.com 503-221-8343; @EvertonBailey Meadowlark versus Osprey Oregon lawmakers are closer to designating the osprey as the official state bird (right). If approved, the raptor would replace the Western meadowlark. (Associated Press photos) Audubon Society leaders "strongly oppose" a proposal to recognize the osprey as the official state bird, a move they say is unnecessary and shoves aside an important chapter in Oregon history. If approved, the osprey would supplant the Western meadowlark, a less common bird west of the Cascades. Osprey are birds of prey and commonly seen on waterways across the state. In 1927, then-Gov. Isaac L. Patterson proclaimed the meadowlark the state bird. Though the legislature never formally signed off on the designation, the robin-sized creature known for its signature call has held the title in practice. But the meadowlark wasn't the lawmakers' idea. Thousands of schoolchildren chose it after a statewide contest orchestrated by the Audubon Society. State Sen. Fred Girod, R-Stayton, who introduced the osprey resolution, said it's time for a do-over. "I really think [an injustice] was done in 1927 giving it to the meadowlark," he said last month during a Senate Rules Committee hearing. "I want to have the beauty pageant revisited." Girod's resolution describes the meadowlark as an "unoriginal choice" for state bird -- Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota and Wyoming also share it. The resolution notes that the meadowlark population has been in "continual decline for decades" while ospreys are "resilient." Meadowlarks have a nice call, Girod said, but they are not that exciting. "I want to get kids jazzed, and I want to get them jazzed about birds," he said at the hearing, "and it's kind of difficult with the state bird that we have." The leaders of eight state Audubon chapters disagree. "The declines of meadowlarks and other grassland birds should not be an impetus to remove it as our state bird," they wrote in a letter to the committee March 26. "Rather, its continued designation should serve as a reminder of the imperiled state of many of Oregon's birds and the importance of continued efforts to restore these species and the habitats on which they depend to health." Audubon officials say they aren't opposed to recognizing the osprey, but they would rather designate a state raptor. "It would truly be a missed opportunity if a change like this were simply done quietly and entirely within the confines of the Oregon State Legislature without any effort at outreach, engagement and education," the presidents continued. Ospreys are inspiring and have recovered, along with bald eagles and peregrine falcons, from being "nearly eliminated" by the pesticide DDT, Audubon leaders said. "Audubon chapters across Oregon would be happy to help facilitate a contest similar to the one we did in the 1920's to have Oregon's schoolchildren select an official state raptor." So far, that message has gone unheeded. The State Senate voted 24-5 on Thursday to formally designate the osprey as the official state bird. The House of Representatives will hold a first reading on the osprey proposal on Monday. -- Andrew Theen atheen@oregonian.com 503-294-4026 @andrewtheen After-school programs provide elementary and middle school students at Fremont Public Schools with a place to grow and learn outside of regular school hours. The programs provide students with healthy snacks, help with school work, and the extra attention necessary to work on concepts that will help them in the classroom. Students are also exposed to enrichment activities, such as STEM, writing and art clubs. We provide supervision and a safe place for the kids to be, but a lot of it is about giving them academic support. We get homework done, and a big portion of the program is dedicated to enrichment as well, Leah Hladik, Program Director of Fremont Expanded Learning Opportunities, said. Under President Donald Trumps proposed budget, after-school programs at FPS and around the country are at risk of being defunded. Trumps budget proposal, released in March, would eliminate the $1.2 billion 21st Century Community Learning Center grant program, which serves about 1.6 million children nationally. In 2016, FPS received a $512,250 federal grant through 21st Century Community Learning Centers for programs at Bell Field, Clarmar, Grant, and Howard Elementary Schools as well as Johnson Crossing Academic Center and Fremont Middle School. This grant program funds all of our after-school programs, we get generous donations and in-kind contributions from community partners but other than that we rely on these funds. So if this budget were to go through we have about 600 to 700 students that would be left without after-school and summer learning programs, Hladik said. Through the grant, after-school programs at FPS elementary schools and JCAC are offered every day from school dismissal until 6 p.m., as well as a 40-day program over the summer. The programs are designed to provide students with academic enrichment that coordinates with what is being taught inside the classroom. Our programs are aligned with the school day, so the academic enrichment that is received after-school is aligned with the academic topics that are being covered during the school day, so that is one of the critical pieces, Jan Handa, Coordinator of Nebraska 21st CCLC, said. In Nebraska, 21st CCLCs funding is provided by the Federal government through the No Child Left Behind Act and is administered by the Nebraska Department of Education. The 21st CCLC program allows schools, nonprofits and community-based organizations to fund before- and after-school programs. The money pays for academic support and enrichment for students, particularly those attending high-poverty, low-performing schools. After-school programs definitely provide the results that they are intended to provide, one of the main things in making them available to students is that we have a lot of low income students that need that extra support and wouldnt get it otherwise, Hladik said. According to Hladik, during the 2015-16 school year 73 percent of students in the district that received free or reduced lunch rates, participated in the after-school programs. In addition, 29 percent of English Language Learners (ELL) in the district participated in the programs. An English Language Learner is a student who is learning the English language in addition to his or her native tongue. So we here in Fremont see high percentages of our low income students participate in these programs, and these are the students we really want to have in the program because it helps them with the academics, and again they are not getting the support otherwise, Hladik said. The after-school programs at FPS are meant to narrow the achievement gap between different groups of students. The achievement gap shows up in grades, standardized-test scores, course selection, dropout rates, and college-completion rates, among other success measures. We are giving kids opportunities to participate in these activities and a lot of our teachers express that each year they see achievement from the beginning of the school year to the end of the school year raise in subjects like math and reading specifically, Hladik said. We see a huge narrowing of achievement gaps in our summer program. When compared to non-participating peers Fremont summer program students experienced higher growth rates in math and reading from fall 2014 to fall 2015. In defense of the proposed cuts, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said there is no evidence that the programs help kids do better in school. Theres no demonstrable evidence they (after-school programs that feed kids) are helping kids do better at school, he said at a White House press conference in March. Hladik said the idea that after-school programs dont benefit students is out there. I cant stress enough that our kiddos really benefit from programs like this and the notion that these dont help students succeed is absurd, she said. I see it every year, you can go in and tour the programs see the kids in action and they will tell you how much fun they are having and how much they are learning. Discretionary spending limits, addressed by Trumps budget proposal, are set by congressional budget resolutions. It will be Congress that will vote on the budget, and 21st CCLC has been around since the beginning of NCLB so we are in our 14th year. The law that authorized NCLB was up for reauthorization during the prior administration and when that passed it had bipartisan support, so we will see how this plays out, Handa said. If the cut to 21st CCLC were to be enacted by Congress, FPS would have until the end of September to provide after-school programs. It would really be devastating for a lot of the kids here in Fremont, it would be a tremendous disservice to a lot of our kids if we didnt have these funds available to provide these programs, Hladik said. In 2015-2016, grant awards by 21st CCLC totaled $5,496,155 to benefit students in 116 sites in 31 Nebraska communities. Young salmon and steelhead migrating from the Columbia River Basin in unusually high flows face a potentially lethal problem in spillways at dams where increased nitrogen in the water can cause tissue-damaging trauma. However, managers of fisheries say special features at dams meant to reduce nitrogen will help the fish make it to the ocean, and survival should be about average based on previous high-flow years. Like natural waterfalls, a dam's spillway increases dissolved gas, including nitrogen, in water when it smashes into other water below. The nitrogen can cause bubbles to form inside fish, similar to the condition that human divers experience when they get the bends. The standard for total dissolved gas considered safe for fish is 110 percent. Dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers have been near or above 120 percent in recent weeks. "We're seeing elevated symptoms of gas bubble trauma," said Ritchie Graves of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "''But I wouldn't say something horrible is happening at this stage." Fish flows at four federal dams on the lower Columbia River and four more on the lower Snake River are about double what is typical this time of year. As a result, managers are being forced to spill water rather than run it through energy-generating turbines. Graves said studies have found that about 1 percent of fish have symptoms when the total dissolved gas reaches 115 to 120 percent. At 135 percent, about 20 to 25 percent of fish have symptoms that include gas bubbles forming in gill filaments, fins and eyes. Graves said fish can't sense the danger. The problem became apparent with the building of the John Day Dam on the Columbia River. Dissolved gas reached 140 percent, killing thousands of adult fish migrating upstream. In the 1990s, after runs of salmon and steelhead started receiving federal protection under the Endangered Species Act, dams on the lower Columbia and lower Snake rivers began being retrofitted with deflecting structures at spillways to reduce dissolved gas. Called flip lips and costing millions of dollars to install, the structures cause spillway water to shoot out near the surface rather than plunge deep. The result is less dissolved gas in the water. In March, fears of high gas levels below Dworshak Dam in northern Idaho caused hatchery managers downstream to release a million juvenile chinook salmon sooner than usual because they were showing signs of gas bubble trauma. Ann Setter, a fish biologist with the Walla Walla District of the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, said managers had been monitoring fish before the release, noticing bubbles in the gills and fins in mid-March and days later in lateral lines and eyes. While dissolved gas can be a problem for young fish heading to the ocean, the high flows can help them get downstream faster. "There's some good things and bad things in this," Graves said. "We've seen pretty decent survival." -- The Associated Press A humble worker's cottage now contains clues to Lake Oswego's captivating history. Iron built this city south of Portland and starting Saturday, April 8, the doors to the restored Iron Worker's Cottage, at 40 Wilbur St., will open to the public. Inside will be artifacts like bars of pig iron and miner's tools that have never been on public display. The cottage in the city's Old Town is now the Lake Oswego Preservation Society's History Center & Museum. Hours are 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays plus the first Saturday of each month. Opening day hours will be 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is free. The 700-square-foot cottage was born when the area was nicknamed the "Pittsburgh of the West." Built using inexpensive vertical plank construction techniques without a frame, posts or studs around 1870, it is the last survivor of houses for Oswego's iron industry workers. "It is rare for so humble a dwelling to have survived when much grander houses have been demolished in the name of progress," according to the preservation society. The cottage was owned by the iron company and rented to a worker who was paid with company-supplied scrip instead of dollars. The cottage was purchased by the city in 2003 and has been designated a City of Lake Oswego Landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. This year marks the 150th anniversary of the first iron made on the West Coast, according to Lake Oswego Preservation Society research. The museum's inaugural exhibit, "1867 - 2017 Oregon's Iron Jubilee: Celebrating the First Iron Furnace on the Pacific Coast," helps tell the story of the first U.S. company to smelt pig iron west of the Rocky Mountains. In 1867, thanks to the Oregon Iron Co. based in the settlement of Oswego, builders in the West Coast no longer had to import expensive iron shipped around Cape Horn. The company's named changed to Oswego Iron Company in 1878 and the Oregon Iron & Steel Co. in 1883. Local iron was used for railroad tracks and construction. Historians say 180 Portland buildings had cast iron fronts by 1889. Even though few of these structures remain -- exceptions include the New Market Building, Smith Block and Failing Building -- Portland still has the second largest collection of cast-iron fronted buildings in the country, after New York City's historic Soho District, according to the Oregon Encyclopedia. On display at the new museum is the capital from Portland's 1883 Smith and Watson building, which was on the northeast corner of SW 1st Avenue and Main Street until it was demolished in 1974. As the Oregonian's John Killen described Lake Oswego's blue-collar beginnings: "Going back about 150 years ago, it was an iron town, with company housing, company stores and a giant iron furnace that was essentially a man-made volcano." Less expensive iron from the Great Lakes region, the Panic of 1893 and poor quality ore eventually shut down iron operation in 1919. The lake, owned by the Oregon Iron & Steel Co., was left "stump-filled and unattractive," as described by the Lake Oswego Preservation Society. Continue learning about the city's past by visiting nearby George Rogers Park along the Willamette River, which has the only 19th century blast furnace remaining west of the Rocky Mountains. Interpretive signs explain how iron ore was hauled down from the primary iron mine on the aptly named Iron Mountain, smelted in the furnace then shipped out on the river. Other explorations should include the sites on the Oswego Iron Heritage Trail, suggests Marylou Colver, founder and president of the Lake Oswego Preservation Society. -- Janet Eastman jeastman@oregonian.com 503-799-8739 @janeteastman gun safety.JPG (File photo) By Leigh Dolin, MD When it comes to gun violence, Oregon faces an ongoing public health crisis. Firearm violence is the leading cause of violent death in the state, and deaths due to gun violence have risen in Oregon since 2011, according to the Oregon Health Authority. Between 2010 and 2015, more people in Oregon died from firearm related injuries than from motor vehicle accidents, and suicides accounted for 82% of all firearm deaths. As physicians, we take an oath to protect life. This is what drives us to serve the public and informs how we contribute to the public discourse. The members of the Oregon Medical Association, the state's physician and physician assistant society, stand strongly in support of ending the ongoing damage to our families and our communities by firearms. We urge our leaders in the Legislature to take action this year to better protect the public from gun violence. We recognize that the regulation of guns is best treated as a public health matter; politicization and polarization too often cloud conversation. We support responsible gun use by Oregonians, but we want to put a stop to irresponsible and dangerous gun use. Addressing firearm violence as a public health issue, rather than as a question of individual rights, recognizes that for a small portion of society, such as those experiencing a crisis, access to a gun puts them and others at risk. For the vast majority of Oregonians, guns can be used responsibly. But it is important that their guns do not fall into the hands of those who might endanger themselves or others. The Oregon Medical Association supports two bills currently before the Oregon Legislature. Senate Bill 797 would better protect victims of domestic violence by keeping guns out of the hands of abusers. The bill would also make those convicted of a stalking misdemeanor ineligible to purchase a firearm. Senate Bill 868 would establish an Extreme Risk Protective Order in Oregon, similar to laws in Washington, California and Connecticut. The Order would allow law enforcement and family members to seek a temporary court order removing firearms from an individual in crisis who demonstrates a clear danger to themselves and others. The Order is temporary, and due process is guaranteed for all parties. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2015 the U.S. had an age-adjusted suicide rate of 13.3 per 100,000, while Oregon's rate was higher, at 17.8 per 100,000. Nearly half of these Oregon suicides were due to firearm injury. Research from Connecticut has indicated these policies are effective in reducing gun suicides. As doctors, our job is to prescribe the best course of care for our patients--even if that requires making changes. For too long, we've treated gun violence as an inevitable or intractable problem. It is not. Evidence and research demonstrate there are common-sense steps we can take to make our communities safer and still allow responsible gun use. The United States is unique among the nations of the developed world in its high rate of gun violence. We can take action to start correcting that here in Oregon. Leigh Dolin, MD is past president of the Oregon Medical Association and lives in Portland. 1soda.JPG (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) I'm 75 and don't drink soda, but I also don't believe in "Big Brother" running our lives, especially as a means to collect more taxes to cover what government misspends or wastes. How long will it be before our local politicians mandate morning exercise on our front sidewalks with exercise police monitoring who's not there and assessing fines? Stick to the job guidelines that we employ you for and don't move Portland from absolutely weird to bizarre. Laird Heater, North Portland The Nebraska Supreme Court Friday upheld a Lincoln judges ruling in favor of three same-sex couples who said a state policy prevented them from adopting foster kids because of their sexual orientation. The Attorney Generals office contended the matter was moot because Memo 1-95, despite being online until February 2015, hadnt been in effect for at least a year before the American Civil Liberties Union of Nebraska filed the lawsuit in 2013. And they contended that the couples lacked standing because they hadnt been denied a foster home license. Attorneys for Greg and Stillman Stewart, Lisa Blakey and Janet Rodriguez, and Todd Vesley and Joel Busch, said two of the plaintiffs did in fact seek licenses and got letters from HHS saying they were categorically banned from applying. Two others called HHS and were told the same by phone, they said. The license is necessary for anyone who wants to adopt a foster child in Nebraska. The three couples sued, saying the state was treating them differently in violation of their constitutional rights. And in September 2015, Lancaster County District Judge John Colborn rescinded the terms of the memo and enjoined the state from enforcing it. The state appealed, in an apparent effort to avoid attorney fees. Before the appeal, attorney fees already had added up to just over $145,000 (the bulk of it going to Sullivan & Cromwell LLC, a New York law firm). In an opinion Friday, the states highest court agreed with the district court that the controversy was neither hypothetical nor speculative just because they hadnt yet been denied placement of state wards in their homes. The plaintiffs were faced with the unavoidable inability to be treated on equal footing if they wished to pursue being foster parents, and the district courts order effected an immediate resolution of that imminent and serious harm, Justice John Wright wrote. He said while the state argued that the 1995 memorandum no longer represented official policy of the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services, the fact that it stayed on the website affirmed a representation to the public that it was the current policy. Wright said Thomas Pristow, then-director of the Division of Children and Family Services, intentionally avoided formally rescinding the memo and, in fact, avoided creating anything in writing disavowing it. Memo 1-95 was deliberately maintained on the website in order to give the public the impression that it represented official DHHS policy. The defendants cannot now complain that the plaintiffs believed it so, were deterred by the discriminatory exclusion set forth so clearly therein, and brought this action to challenge it. he wrote. As for its eleventh hour removal from the website, which came in February 2015, Wright said a defendant couldnt automatically moot a case simply by ending its unlawful conduct once sued. And the court affirmed the district courts judgment and award of attorney fees and costs. ACLU of Nebraska Executive Director Danielle Conrad called it a victory for children in Nebraska and for LGBT Nebraskans. Today in Nebraska love wins! she said in a news release. Conrad said since the lower court ruling striking down the states ban on gay and lesbian foster parents, their clients Vesley and Busch have opened their hearts and homes to several children in need. There are tens of thousands of LGBT people who call the Cornhusker State home and thousands of Nebraska children in need of a foster care placement. This victory means that Nebraskas motto of Equality before the Law rings out more truly for all in our state, she said. In an email Friday afternoon, Suzanne Gage, a spokesman for the Attorney Generals office, said: There were legitimate jurisdictional questions that needed to be considered by the Court. The court has ruled. This lecture explores some aspects of the representation of war and warriors in archaic Greece (ca. 800-480 B.C.). I begin by introducing the Greek warrior ethic, then discuss the phalanx and its representations, and then move to the popular but puzzling figure of the solitary hoplite. Since archaic Greek warfare was a mass affair where formation and discipline counted for everything, the solitary hoplite is both an anomaly and an anachronism. Or is he? Next, I address the ever-present spectre of death and the warriors code of honor, with a glance at his memorialisation in funerary sculpture. Finally, I turn to the Persian Wars (490-479) and the new battle imagery generated in response to them. Andrew Stewart, UC Berkeley Nicholas C. Petris Professor in Greek Studies Professor of Art History and Classics Curator of Mediterranean Archaeology, Hearst Museum of Anthropology Andrew Stewart, UC Berkeley Nicholas C. Petris Professor in Greek Studies Professor of Art History and Classics Curator of Mediterranean Archaeology, Hearst Museum of Anthropology Date Tuesday, 11 April 2017 Time 6:00pm - 7:00pm Audience All University,Public Event Category Humanities Event Type Seminar Lecture Campus Dunedin Department Classics Location Burns 2, Arts Building Save this event The Delta College Planetarium and Learning Center in downtown Bay City will host a free public event from 6:30 to 10 p.m. on Friday, April 7 to celebrate the Second Annual Statewide Astronomy Night. The event represents a partnership of planetariums, museums and observatories across Michigan that have coordinated a special evening to enjoy presentations and activities that reveal the wonders of the night sky. This is the 60th year of competition where thousands of high school students across the state participate in the Michigan Mathematics Prize Competition sponsored by the Michigan Section of the Mathematics Association of America. Over $20,000 in scholarships are awarded each year. These range from $250 to $2,500. Students take a two-part examination from topics in high school mathematics. Part I consists of 40 multiple choice questions. This year approximately 6,000 students participated in Part I. The highest 1,000 scores from Part I are then invited to participate in Part II of the competition. Here students work on five challenging problems and write their solutions providing full justification and proofs of their claims. These are hand graded by college professors and professional mathematicians. The top 100 students are honored at an awards banquet and presented with their awards. This year the awards banquet was held on Saturday, March 11 at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti. State Rep. Gary Glenn announced a grant award of $728 to Studio 23/The Arts Center in Bay City from the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs. Tara Welch, executive director of Studio 23/The Arts, stated in a letter: It is because of your continued support of MCACA that we are able to provide our community with a quality cultural event. United Way of Midland County will host the eighth annual Spirit of the Community celebration April 25 at the Great Hall in Midland. The event honors the many ways that individuals and organizations are lending their time, talents, voices and hearts to create a better and stronger community, United Way stated. Spirit of the Community is a celebration of those who work tirelessly to make a positive impact throughout Midland County, said Ann Fillmore, executive director of United Way of Midland County. We are blessed with a compassionate and generous community, and it is an honor to shine a light on the work of the many individuals and organizations that are dedicated to changing lives. 2017 Spirit of the Community honorees are: Captain Brian Goodwill (Salvation Army) 2017 Charles J. Strosacker Award This award recognizes an individual from a United Way partner agency for his or her contribution and leadership in promoting the well-being of others. Goodwill impacts countless families each year by providing meals, clothes and everyday necessities for those in need. He gives generously of his time and heart to Midland County, United Way stated. Jamie Moore and Chris Shuster (The Dow Chemical Co.) 2017 Torch Bearer Award This award recognizes United Way campaign volunteers who demonstrate a true passion for sharing the Live United message. Shuster and Moore embody the spirit of the community and served as a bellwether for success of the Dow/Dow Corning team working together ahead of the merger to coordinate their community impact from Dow locations throughout the Great Lakes Bay Region, United Way stated. Betty Chenoweth (community volunteer) 2017 Heart of the Community Award This award recognizes a group or individual who has demonstrated a passion for serving the community through volunteering. Chenoweth has been active in the community for more than 50 years, serving as a board member on the Midland Public Schools Board, the Midland branch of the American Association of University Women and through a variety of volunteer initiatives at Memorial Presbyterian Church. Dave Vercellino (New Life Vineyard Church) 2017 Shining Star Award Recipient This award celebrates an individual that shines bright in the community as a visible symbol of caring and compassion through advocacy. As a pastor and community volunteer, Daves impact can be felt throughout the community, United Way stated. Thanks to his leadership, Vercellino inspired several local organizations to combine forces to form the Friends of Whispering Pines nonprofit to improve the lives of those in the Whispering Pines Mobile Home community and beyond. Jordan Summers (Chemical Bank) 2017 Outstanding Young Leader Award This award recognizes a member of United Ways Young Leaders United who encourages the spirit of philanthropy and volunteerism among emerging leaders. In addition to his work with Young Leaders United, Summers is also actively involved with Memorial Presbyterian Church, the Disability Network of Mid-Michigan, Midland County Bar Association and Northwood University. Laura Rhodes (Northwood University) 2017 Outstanding Student Award This award recognizes a local student who Lives United and encourages the spirit of volunteerism within their school and community. Rhodes has been instrumental in the planning and coordination of several events on campus and throughout the community, and she has inspired students of all ages to get involved and make a difference in Midland County. 2017 Companies That Care Companies That Care are characterized not only by the financial commitment they and their employees make, but the impact they have through advocacy and volunteerism. This year, United Way is honoring 25 organizations: AptarGroup, Ayre/Rhinehart Realtors, Bolger + Battle, Chemical Bank, City of Midland, County of Midland, Deloitte, Dow Chemical Employees Credit Union, Fisher Contracting Co., Garber Chevrolet, Gavin and Associates, LLC, Great Lakes Loons, Ieuter Insurance Group, McKay Press, Members First Credit Union, Midland Cogeneration Venture, Midland Daily News, Midland Public Schools, MidMichigan Medical Center Midland, Northwood University, The Dow Chemical Co., Three Rivers Corp., Trinseo, Wolverine Bank and Yeo and Yeo. Trinseo has the honor of being selected as the 2017 Caring Company of the Year as the stand-out organization for giving, advocating and volunteering in the community. United Way invites everyone to attend the Spirit of the Community celebration on April 25 at the Great Hall. Tickets are $30 each or a table of 10 for $300. To reserve a seat, call United Way at (989) 631-3670 or visit www.unitedwaymidland.org To the editor: If a martian landed in Emerson Park and the first thing he did was read the editorial page of the Midland Daily News, what impression would he get of our fair city? He might think he had landed in a socialist/liberal/progressive/politically correct mecca that was in near revolt against the tyrants John Moolenaar and Donald Trump. Yet, not five months ago, the electorate of our republic clearly thought otherwise. I doubt if the Russians even know who John Moolenaar is. So why the disconnect? The U.S. Air Force plans to deploy five RQ-4 Global Hawks and approximately 105 personnel, currently based at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, to Yokota Air Base, Japan, from May to October 2017. Summer Global Hawk operations from Guam are adversely impacted by the frequency of inclement weather, including typhoon activities. This rotational deployment of the Global Hawk is temporary but necessary to provide a base from which the platform can be reliably operated during the summer. The United States continues to deploy its most advanced capabilities to Japan, including the Global Hawk, in keeping with our commitment to further contribute to the security of Japan and to the stability of the region. BLOOMINGTON Despite bitter partisan divisions, legislators who represent the Twin City area are united in their support of the air assault on a Syrian air base ordered Thursday night by President Donald Trump. U.S. Sens. Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin, both Democrats and frequent critics of the Republican president, released statements applauding the strike, as did Republican U.S. Reps. Rodney Davis of Taylorville, Adam Kinzinger of Channahon and Darin LaHood of Dunlap. "My preliminary briefing by the White House indicated that this was a measured response to the Syrian nerve gas atrocity," said Durbin in a statement. "Further action will require close scrutiny by Congress, and any escalation beyond airstrikes or missile strikes will require engaging the American people in that decision." Trump ordered the strikes without approval from Congress or the backing of the United Nations, the Associated Press reported. Officials said he had the right to use force to defend national interests and to protect civilians from atrocities. Duckworth said Friday that while the strike "sends a clear and measured message to (Syrian President) Bashar al-Assad that his horrific, unacceptable and illegal use of chemical weapons against innocent civilians will not go unanswered by the United States," it also "heightened tensions between our nation and adversaries like Russia and Iran." Davis said he hopes "Assad hears this message loud and clear." "The atrocities the world witnessed this week were not only horrific, but a threat to our national security," he said. "The swift action by President Trump and our military sent a clear message to the world that America will not tolerate the use of chemical weapons." Kinzinger criticized former President Barack Obama, a Democrat, for not taking similar action, which the congressman said he had been advocating "for several years, since the first reports of chemical attacks." "President Obama failed to take action, and we as a nation have watched this genocide claim nearly 500,000 Syrian lives," he said. "(Trump's actions) send a strong message: America will no longer allow evil to prevail." LaHood called Assad "a barbaric and ruthless dictator who must be held accountable." "The tactical strikes carried out by our military targeted the very air base that launched the chemical weapons earlier this week," he said. "I will continue working with the administration as they further engage with Congress on the situation in Syria. While Duckworth supports the air strikes, she slammed Trump for his attempts to bar Syrian refugees from entering the United States. "After weeks of sending dangerously mixed signals on Syria, the president owes it to our troops, who are now in greater danger, to clearly and unequivocally outline the long-term strategic end state he is seeking to achieve in Syria and the region," Duckworth said. "He owes it to the American people to... ensure they have a voice, through their representatives in Congress, in any further use of force in carrying out his strategy." NORMAL Normal police are investigating a gunfire report Thursday evening on West Orlando Avenue. Police were called about 6 p.m. to an apartment complex in the 700 block of West Orlando by reports of five to seven gunshots, Normal police Lt. Nick Thacker said. No one was injured and no one was in custody Thursday night, he said. "We don't believe it was a random act," he said. "There is no threat to the general public." Evidence technicians were examining the scene for physical evidence such as damage to vehicles or buildings or shell casings, and several witnesses were being interviewed Thursday night. BLOOMINGTON Less than two years ago, Jose Patino, his wife, Nela, and their sons, Jose and Miguel, fled Venezuela after their lives were threatened by political police. On Thursday morning, Jose Patino thanked some people who welcomed him and his family to Bloomington-Normal. "We leave home with four suitcases," Patino told 220 people at the Bloomington-Normal YMCA, 602 S. Main St. "But here, in Bloomington-Normal, we found home. All of you have been a blessing for us," Patino said. Thursday's event was the 2017 YMCA Strong Kids Campaign kickoff. In the campaign, people donate money to help cover part of the cost of YMCA membership for people who can't afford it. Jose, 10, and Miguel, 8, students at McLean County Unit 5's Cedar Ridge Elementary School in Bloomington, attend Y-Pals, the YMCA before- and after-school program at Cedar Ridge, so their parents can work. Because the Patinos couldn't afford the full cost of Y membership, they applied for and received a scholarship that allows them to pay a discounted fee, Patino said. Scholarships are covered by donations to the Strong Kids Campaign. Last year, YMCA provided 2,360 scholarships valued at $204,190, YMCA Executive Director B.J. Wilken said. The amount of each scholarship depends on household income and size. The goal for this year's campaign chaired by Connie Mandula and Chad Beaty is $200,000. If reached, about 2,500 people could receive access to YMCA membership and programs, Wilken said. Last year's campaign raised $193,725. Patino, 49, told The Pantagraph the government in Venezuela was oppressive and left people with daily challenges such as waiting in line for hours for milk, searching garbage cans for food and living with rationed water and electricity. "We try to work toward democracy," Patino said. But after he became politically active, the window of his car was broken by political police who threatened his wife, and then police came to his home and threatened him if he persisted. The Patinos decided to leave the country and were allowed to do so on May 13, 2015, but only after he paid two bribes to government officials. They came to Bloomington-Normal because he is friends with Dr. Gustavo Galue with OSF Medical Group. They lived in his basement for three months and did volunteer work until Jose Patino was hired as a project manager with Millennium Pain Center and his wife was hired as a bilingual family liaison for Unit 5. They now rent a home in Normal and Patino continues his volunteer work at the Community Health Care Clinic. "We came here with almost nothing and you guys, as a community, help us," said Patino, who has applied for political asylum. "We came here to be a part of American society." "They're not looking for anything free," Wilken said. "They are looking for help so they can give back to the community. Strong Kids helps people who want to better themselves and better their community." WASHINGTON, D.C. The United States blasted a Syrian air base with a barrage of cruise missiles Thursday night in fiery retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. President Donald Trump cast the U.S. assault as vital to deter future use of poison gas and called on other nations to join in seeking "to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria." It was the first direct American assault on the Syrian government and Trump's most dramatic military order since becoming president just over two months ago. Announcing the assault from his Florida resort, Trump said there was no doubt Syrian President Bashar Assad was responsible for the chemical attack, which he said employed banned gases and killed dozens. "Assad choked out the lives of innocent men, women and children," Trumped declared. The U.S. strikes hit the government-controlled Shayrat air base in central Syria, where U.S. officials say the Syrian military planes that dropped the chemicals had taken off. The U.S. missiles hit at 8:45 p.m. in Washington, 3:45 a.m. Friday morning in Syria. The missiles targeted the base's airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, officials said. Syrian state TV reported a U.S. missile attack on a number of military targets and called the attack an "aggression." The surprise U.S. assault marked a striking reversal for Trump, who warned as a candidate against the U.S. getting pulled into the Syrian civil war, now in its seventh year. But the president earlier in the week appeared moved by the photos of children killed in the chemical attack, calling it a "disgrace to humanity" that crossed "a lot of lines." About 60 U.S. Tomahawk missiles, fired from warships in the Mediterranean Sea, targeted an air base in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack that American officials believe Syrian government aircraft launched with a nerve agent, possibly sarin. The president did not announce the attacks in advance, though he and other national security officials ratcheted up their warnings to the Syrian government throughout the day Thursday. "I think what happened in Syria is one of the truly egregious crimes and shouldn't have happened and it shouldn't be allowed to happen," Trump told reporters traveling on Air Force One to Florida, where he was holding a two-day summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The strike came as Trump was hosting Xi in meetings focused in part on another pressing U.S. security dilemma: North Korea's nuclear program. Trump's actions in Syria could signal to China that the new president isn't afraid of unilateral military steps. even if key nations like China are standing in the way. Trump has advocated greater counterterrorism cooperation with Russia, Assad's most powerful military backer. Just last week, the Trump administration signaled the U.S. was no longer interested in trying to push Assad from power over his direction of a conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and led to the worst refugee crisis since World War II. U.S. military officials sought to portray the strikes as an appropriate, measured response. But the assault still risks plunging America into the middle of Syria's conflict, complicating the safety of the hundreds of U.S. forces fighting a separate campaign against the Islamic State group in the north of the country. If Assad's military persists in further gas attacks, the Trump administration might logically pursue increased retaliation. Russia and Iran, Assad's allies, pose other problems. Russian military personnel and aircraft are embedded with Syria's, and Iranian troops and paramilitary forces are also on the ground helping Assad fight the array of opposition groups hoping to topple him. Before the strikes, U.S. military officials said they informed their Russian counterparts of the impending attack. The goal was to avoid any accident involving Russian forces. Nevertheless, Russia's Deputy U.N. ambassador Vladimir Safronkov warned that any negative consequences from the strikes would be on the "shoulders of those who initiated such a doubtful and tragic enterprise." The U.S. also notified its partner countries in the region prior to launching the strikes. Trump's decision to attack Syria came three-and-a-half years after President Barack Obama threatened Assad with military action after an earlier chemical weapons attack killed hundreds outside of Damascus. Obama had declared the use of such weapons a "red line." At the time, several American ships in the Mediterranean were poised to launch missiles, only for Obama to abruptly pull back after key U.S. ally Britain and the U.S. Congress balked at his plan. He opted instead for a Russian-backed plan that was supposed to remove and eliminate Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles. Thursday night's strikes were launched from the USS Ross and USS Porter and landed in the early morning Friday in Syria. The world learned of the chemical attack earlier in the week in footage that showed people dying in the streets and bodies of children stacked in piles. The international outcry fueled an emotional response from Trump, who appeared to abandon his much-touted "America First" vision for a stance of humanitarian intervention, akin to that of previous American leaders. "I think what happened in Syria is a disgrace to humanity," he said Thursday. Trump seemed to rapidly reconsider his feelings about Assad, saying: "He's there and I guess he's running things, so something should happen." The show of force in Syria raises legal questions. It's unclear what authority Trump is relying on to attack another government. When Obama intervened in Libya in 2011, he used a U.N. Security Council mandate and NATO's overall leadership of the mission to argue that he had legal authority arguments that many Republicans opposed. Trump can't rely on either justification here. Unclear also is whether Trump is adopting any broader effort to combat Assad. Under Obama, the United States largely pulled back from its support for so-called "moderate" rebels when Russia's military intervention in September 2015 led them to suffer a series of battlefield defeats. Instead, Obama sought to work with Russia on a negotiated transition. Trump and his top aides had acknowledged in recent days the "reality" of Assad being in power, saying his ouster was no longer a priority. But the chemical weapons attack seemed to spur a rethink. In Florida on Thursday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said of Assad: "There's no role for him to govern the Syrian people." Pantagraph readers who want to help actualize government of the people, by the people, and for the people, should consider Illinois local and state government published annual audited financial statements. Prominently displayed government-wide financial statements are concealing more than they reveal. That misleads and unnecessarily alarms us concerning our governments economic condition, financial viability and capacity to deliver public goods and services. Resultant overwrought concern about debt, deficits and the amount of government spending is distracting us from scrutinizing and influencing the nature and objectives of government spending. When that scrutinizing and influencing is proactively interactive and ongoing, it becomes inclusive public informed consent. That consent is the essential foundation of the ongoing process of sound internal control, which is required to keep government responsive to the public interest. Wise stakeholders will beware of misleading inferences radiating from government-wide financial statements; focus public attention on the mission-critical importance of effectively insisting upon detailed multiple expenditure classifications in budget to actual comparisons for individual funds; pressure the legislative and executive branch and local and state government elected officials who represent them to require outside auditors to once again provide full audit opinion coverage for such comparisons, instead of lesser public-interest-assurance-inadequate in relation to coverage; and write to the Governmental Accounting Standards Board at director@gasb.org or P.O. Box 5116, Norwalk, CT 06856 and urge them to stop prescribing government-wide financial statements or require their relocation behind the vastly more important financial statements of individual funds. Dick Haas, Pontiac A sixth grader asked her schoolmates to donate a penny in order to help a child abuse organization in Utah. This came in the light of April declared as Child Awareness Month. Reports identified the sixth-grader as Faith Luna from Entheos Academy. She chose the organization called Prevent Child Abuse Utah to be the recipient of her penny drive. The organization was known for bringing awareness regarding child abuse. The 12-year-old student and the representatives from Prevent Child Abuse Utah met earlier this week because the girl wanted to personally give the money and the organization wanted to thank her and the school in person as well. Miss Utah also went with them. Luna and her classmates spent three weeks in order to collect money for the organization. Luna shared they went to all the classrooms and asked their schoolmates to bring a penny or a coin every day for the last three weeks. They were able to collect a total of $107, Good 4 Utah reported. The representatives of Prevent Child Abuse Utah wanted the $107 donation to go a long way. They then set up a website wherein people could match the $107 donation from the students until the end of this month. The teacher of the students, Leslie Harris, asked her students to research about organizations and shortlist four that they felt strongly about. There were a lot of other organizations but Prevent Child Abuse Utah was the easiest and most convenient since it is just local. "Especially when you are a 6th grader you get caught up you don't see the good that you are doing," Harris shared. "This actually helps lots of people." More on April being the Child Abuse Prevention Month, Indiana planned a number of activities through this month in order to bring more awareness regarding child abuse cases. Child abuse cases in Indiana increased in the past years, Kokomo Perspective shared. If you want to know more about child abuse prevention, you can call Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-CHILD (1-800-422-4453). You can also check Child Abuse hotlines in every state on Google. Pierce Brosnan recently opened up about losing his first wife and daughter to ovarian cancer. Ovarian cancer remained as one of the top killers of women in the United States and other countries. Brosnan gave the not-so-frequent interview for Esquire magazine's latest issue as he also promoted his new show, "The Son," which will air on AMC. Brosnan said he lost his first wife, Cassandra Harris, and his daughter, Charlotte, to such type of cancer two decades apart. Harris died in 1991 and in 2013, Charlotte passed away from ovarian cancer. Charlotte was not a biological daughter of Brosnan as he adopted the two children of Harris from a previous relationship. Harris and Brosnan did have one child together, a son named Sean, now 33. Brosnan told Esquire they found out about Harris' illness when they returned to London from a trip to India. Harris was in her late 30s that time. Harris' mother also died from ovarian cancer. Brosnan shared, "From day 1, we really had a fight on our hands. This wasn't a shadow or a small tumor - this had invaded Cassie's being." He added his wife weighed the circumstances surrounding her illness and although he kept quiet through the ordeal, he made sure he was there for her, Us Weekly reported. They battled Harris' condition for four years through chemo therapy, surgeries and treatments. In December 1991, Brosnan and Harris knew they lost their fight to ovarian cancer and the actor shared with the magazine he was in a helpless state and was both confused and angry. Brosnan noted the death of Harris made him the man, the father and the actor he is now. That was not the first blow for Brosnan as he lost their daughter Charlotte to the same disease. Charlotte died when she was 41 and had two children with her husband. Brosnan said his daughter faced cancer with grace, humanity, courage and dignity. Brosnan re-married years after the death of his first wife. He and Keely Shaye Smith have two children together, 20-year-old Dylan and 16-year-old Paris, People shared. More on ovarian cancer, the most common symptoms are pelvic and abdominal pain, frequent urination, loss of appetite, lower back pain, fatigue, pain during intercourse and constipation. If you have most of these symptoms, get yourself checked. Aside from that, Brosnan talked about his father, Thomas Brosnan, who abandoned him and his family when the actor was still a baby. In the new AMC series "The Son," Pierce played the role of a father who works in the oil business and passes it down to his family. Dwaine Glathar cant describe the smell of fear, but he knows what it smells like. And yet, the Fremont man stayed calm during enemy attacks when he was a 24-year-old tank platoon leader in Vietnam. Now 71, Glathar still remembers the falling shrapnel that sounded like hail during a night attack in Vietnam. He remembers friends lost during an ambush in Cambodia and another time, in Vietnam, when his tank hit a landmine. Glathar is modest about the two Bronze Stars he earned, but proud and deeply touched when recalling the day a granddaughter sat on his lap at a veterans program at her school. He will get another honor. On May 1, Glathar will be among 650 Vietnam veterans from Nebraska making the daylong trip to Washington, D. C. Four charter planes will fly what will be the largest group of Vietnam veterans from any single state on whats called The Final Mission. Glathar, who was born in Humboldt, is a 1964 graduate of Dawson-Verdon High School. He went to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he majored in animal science and was in the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC). He graduated from UNL and was commissioned a second lieutenant in 1968. He entered military service that December and after more training would be assigned to the 13th Armored Battalion of the First Armored Division in the U.S. Army at Fort Hood. Glathar had jungle training for two weeks in the Panama Canal Zone, learning survival techniques such as how to cross a river and eat off the land. In what was called the Slide for Life, he hung onto a rope that was under his arms and secured to a pulley that carried him down from a cliff and across a river. He would rappel from a tower and a 120-foot cliff with a small waterfall. You did some things you didnt think you could do, he remembered. I didnt think I would jump out of a 90-foot rappelling tower. Glathar still had bruises on his shoulders from the ride over the river when he went to Vietnam about three weeks later. He flew into Bien Hoa in November 1969 and would be assigned to the 2/11 Armored Cavalry, H company as a tank platoon leader. In that capacity, he led a platoon of five tanks with four crew members in each tank. The group also included a medic and sometimes a Kit Carson scout a South Vietnamese person whod see or hear things the Americans might not otherwise notice. As a tank platoon leader, Glathar led a platoon and fought in one of the five tanks. Three platoons (15 tanks) could go on a mission. If the company commander and the executive officer were gone, the senior platoon leader didnt have to be a tank commander. Instead, he took over command of the entire company. It was a situation Glathar faced on April 9, 1970. The attack occurred at a fire support base, called Fort Defiance, in Vietnam near the Cambodian border. Glathar was in a compound track vehicle when the Viet Cong hit hard that night. We were getting in mortars and rockets and people attacking us on all sides. A major firefight was going on, he said. Glathar was on the radio working to calm the men, tell them to pace themselves with the firing, saying theyd be resupplied with ammunition shortly. He called for a medivac to transport the wounded and ordered Lt. Bill Gregory to take a platoon and create an area big enough for the helicopter to land. Three or four wounded men were evacuated. Tanks were resupplied with ammunition. And at some point in the night, the firefight ended. Glathar, whod earn a Bronze Star for his actions, recalls a couple of things about that night. One was how calm he was falling back on his training and how hed been awakened in the night by what sounded like hail, but which was shrapnel hitting the compound track vehicle. He recalls something else: A small soldier nicknamed Frenchy, who picked up and carried his 6-foot-tall best friend and got him into a tank recovery vehicle during the firefight. Theres no way he could have lifted him any other time, but he did that night, Glathar said. When recalling this attack, Glathar paused to talk about fear. You can smell fear, he said. There were many times I was afraid, but I think for the most part I was able to control it You have to do the job and not worry about the fear. If you have fear, you panic and that causes problems. The war continued and President Richard Nixon would make a decision to send American troops into Cambodia. Viet Cong were moving weapons, supplies and troops on the Ho Chi Minh Trail from that country into Vietnam. Glathars platoon was among those sent to Cambodia. We fought in a lot of different skirmishes on the way up there, he said. The soldiers destroyed enemy caches of food, mostly rice, and weapons. In mid-May, Glathar and his platoon were in an ambush, which began after the lead tank was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG). That stopped the whole tank company. Another RPG hit the tank in front of Glathars. Capt. Miles Sisson, the company commander, was blown off that tank and lost a leg. Tank commander Sgt. James Slick Diagle was killed. When that happened, Richard Cunningham, the tanks driver and Diagles friend, jumped out of the tank and got into the commanders cupola and began firing a machine gun. Cunningham was killed when another RPG hit that tank. With Sisson wounded, Glathar became the company commander. Trees fell as the tanks fired. A medivac came to carry away the wounded and the dead needed to be taken away. The ambush didnt last long. Looking back, Glathar recalls how just minutes before the ambush he and Diagle had shared a cigarette and talked. Only 10 or 15 minutes later, Glathar was getting Diagle, whod been killed, out of the tank. Glathars company would return to Vietnam. It was late May or early June when Glathars tank hit a mine. There was an awful smell and he heard something that sounded far away at first, then got louder. It was the voice of his driver talking over an intercom. Are you OK? the driver asked. Glathar and other men in the tank were fine, but the explosion had blown off the track and a road wheel and support roller. Soldiers would repair the tank in about three days. Glathar would become an executive officer with various duties. He left Vietnam in November 1970 and returned to the United States. He called his future wife, Cathie, who picked him up at the airport in Lincoln. He returned home and attended a family Thanksgiving dinner. He was surprised when no one said anything about his being in Vietnam. Years later, hed learn that his father and an uncle told other family members not to say anything, concerned that it might upset him. Glathar would work for the Hormel Foods Corp., for 35 years, retiring in 2005, then worked part time at Granite Marble Interiors. He was involved with Fremont Area Habitat for Humanity for more than nine years. He and Cathie married in 1974. They have a son, Dr. Matthew Glathar and daughter, Courtney Thompson, and four grandchildren. In 2016, he shared a poignant moment with granddaughter Olivia, who invited him to a Veterans Day program at her school in Elkhorn. Then 8 years old, she came and sat on his lap for a moment something reminiscent of what the girl did when she was little. Glathar was touched that his granddaughter was proud that he was a veteran. I thought it was extra special, he said. Glathar has learned not to take life for granted not after seeing 19- and 20-year-old men lose their lives. You never know how long life and friendships are going to last, he said. You need to take advantage of doing things with your life not just for yourself, but for other people. First Lady Melania Trump met with Jordan's Queen Rania and the two women went to an all-girls school in Washington. The two women both believed education is a major necessity in a child's life. Reports confirmed the school they visited as Excel Academy located at a disadvantaged area in Washington. Excel Academy marked the only public charter school for girls in the area and it caters to children from pre-kindergarten until the eighth grade. During the visit, both women participated in a listening session wherein a panel took questions from the Queen and the First Lady. At one point, Queen Rania asked a parent and asked the CEO of the school about their mission related to preparing children to have life skills. The CEO of Excel Academy, Deborah Lockhart, told Queen Rania and the First Lady that they believed educating a girl means educating the girl's family and the whole community, CNN reported. The school does not focus on academic activities but they also teach girls extracurricular and social activities. Special needs programs are also part of their curriculum. It seemed that the First Lady and Queen Rania had a lot in common since education has been their priority. For Queen Rania, she launched a number of programs and foundations related to education. These include the Queen Rania Foundation for Education and Development, Queen Rania Teacher Academy, Jordan River Foundation and Madrasti. Her initiatives centered on child safety and community empowerment as well as connecting individuals to private companies and organizations for educational support especially those in the public schools. As for Melania, just like her husband Donald Trump, she and the administration wanted to focus on school choice. She also expressed during her all-girls school visit that empowering women and girls is important. During the campaign of the now-president Donald, the First Lady expressed that she wanted to focus on women's and children's issues as well as cyberbullying. She also talked about Excel Academy in a written statement after the tour and noted that it is an exceptional example of preparing women to succeed in a global community and overcome gender bias, Time shared. The president and Queen Rania's husband, King Abdulla II had meetings at the White House while their wives visited the all-girls school. Queen Rania's visit with Melania marked the fourth stint she spent time with a First Lady. This service applies to you if your subscription has not yet expired on our old site. You will have continued access until your subscription expires; then you will need to purchase an ongoing subscription through our new system. Please contact the Parsons Sun office at (620) 421-2000 if you have any questions Videos Sorry, there are no recent results for popular videos. It's being reported by many publications in China such as TechWeb that in a patent infringement suit brought against Samsung Electronics by Chinese smartphone maker Huawei Technologies, the court ruled in favor of the plaintiff, Huawei. Yesterday the Quanzhou Intermediary Court in Fujian ordered three Samsung subsidiaries in China to pay 80 million yuan (US$11.6 million) for compensation. The news was also reported on by Reuters. The latest verdict was the result of a second patent infringement lawsuit raised by Huawei in June last year. The Chinese company at the time argued in its complaint, "Samsung took advantage of our patents in relation to icons in the phone's folder and the way its widget works." The products on whose patents Huawei claimed were infringed include 16 models including Samsung's Galaxy S7. Earlier in May last year, the Chinese company brought Samsung to court in the United States and China in relation to its 4G mobile standards. Samsung Electronics officials responded that they would determine what to do after examining the ruling carefully. An official said, "We haven't decided whether to appeal the case as of yet." The products on whose patents Huawei claimed were infringed include 16 models including Samsung's Galaxy S7. Here's to hoping that the Chinese Courts don't allow Samsung to play the never ending game of appeals while attempting to nullify the patents used against them as they have endlessly done with other cases including their case with Apple. Patent infringement cases should allow one swift appeal and then have an iron fist of justice force the infringers to pay up or have their products removed from the marketplace. Habitual patent infringers like Samsung have to be handled swiftly to make blatant infringing unprofitable. About Making Comments on this Site: Patently Apple reserves the right to post, dismiss or edit comments. Those using abusive language or behavior will result in being blacklisted on Disqus. Spirituality is difficult for us to touch because it flows to and from the invisible, from love and the mystery of death. It comes out of the meltdown that we know as love and compassion and the surrender that we know as death. It flows from the ground of our relationship, not only between human beings, but also between all beings, including mountains and rivers. It is often born from suffering, and it evokes within us compassion, which allows us to see through the eyes of innumerable beings. Joan Halifax A Buddhist Life in America: Simplicity in the Complex (New York, Paulist Press, 1998: pp 44-5) Ive never had a particularly good memory. I know people who have vivid recollections from when they were three years old, and some say even earlier. Im moderately confident pretty much all my earliest memories are in fact constructs of family stories told over and over until theyve imprinted as my own. These days Im aware of the slippage, where a name that should come immediately does not. Like many people of my age Ive worried about dementia. And, some years ago I even went so far as to go to Harvard Medicals memory unit to get checked out. They were comforting, sort of. They let me know Im quite smart. They said I have deficits, but suggested these probably have been in place for my whole life. And they assured me memory does indeed begin to slip away even without dementia. Since I was a small child Ive been aware of the fragility of life. Lots of reasons. Environment, of course. I came out of a poor and chaotic family situation, where we never lived anywhere two years running. But, theres something else, as well. Something I seem to have come into this world with. A sense of that tentativeness, of that passingness to all things. So, eventually, it would seem inevitably I found my way to Buddhism. As it became my own and claimed me, it would be of a rationalist flavor and influenced by my other great passion in this lifetime, Unitarian Universalism. But, if I had to say what my spirituality was in one word, that word would be Buddhist. I consider my memories as they rise and I notice some as they fall, others Im just aware of because of the gap that now exists. Gaps. It all slips away Im quite fond of Joan Halifax. Fellow pilgrim on the great way, exploring of the contours of the heart and mind, and, somehow she landed in a style of Buddhism not that dissimilar to my own. She is enough similar and at the same time coming from sufficient distance that her observations can at times both tantalize and confuse. In particular I find myself considering that passage Ive begun this small meditation with. I think about that dawn of our spirituality in our suffering. Yours and mine. Ours. I think of that mystery which encompasses all our life, the darkness before birth, the wall at the end through which we each of us inevitably will find our own door. Mystery piled upon mystery. And all along the way love. Love as many things. Desire. Hope. Dream. Lots of dreams. Some my own. Some other peoples. Some, Im pretty sure dreamt by the world itself. And there I wonder who owns the dreams? Who owns the memories? A name? A mountain? The great ocean? The memories of the innumerable beings. News and commentary on organized crime, street crime, white collar crime, cyber crime, sex crime, crime fiction, crime prevention, espionage and terrorism. Hard-Line Cleric Raisi Announces Candidacy For Iranian President 04/06/17 Source: RFE/RL Ebrahim Raisi, a hard-line cleric who heads one of Iran's wealthiest state charities, has announced his candidacy for the country's May 19 presidential election, Iranian news agencies report. Raisi, the custodian of Astan Quds Razavi, which oversees Iran's holiest shrine, announced his decision through his representative at a meeting of conservatives in the Iranian capital on April 6. Iranian cleric Ebrahim Rais-Sadat, commonly known as Ebrahim Raisi Raisi's representative was quoted by Iranian media as saying that the cleric has resigned from an election supervisory board in order to be able to run. Conservatives gathered to issue a shortlist of candidates to face President Hassan Rohani, who has the support of moderates and reformists. Rohani's aides have said that he will run for a second term. Raisi, 56, has served in the past as state prosecutor and also first deputy to the head of the powerful judiciary. He is a member of the Assembly of Experts, which is tasked with supervising the work of the country's supreme leader and choosing the future one. Would-be candidates for the election must register between April 11 and April 15. They must be approved by the Guardians Council, which vets all election candidates. With reporting by ISNA and Mehr Hungary, Iran to jointly build nuclear plant 04/07/17 Source: Press TV Hungary says it is preparing to cooperate with Iran over the joint construction of a small nuclear plant. The announcement was made by Janos Lazar, the chief of staff of Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Janos Lazar, the chief of staff of Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban Lazar was quoted by Reuters as telling the media that the project would be in line with a landmark nuclear deal that Iran achieved in 2015 with the five permanent members of the Security Council - the US, Britain, France, China and Russia - plus Germany. He emphasized that Hungary and Iran had already agreed over plans for the construction of the plant which he said would be designed for "scientific and educational purposes". cartoon by Mohammad Ali Rajabi, Arman daily The official emphasized that the cooperation had been agreed on during a visit by Orban to Iran in 2015. "When the Prime Minister was there, we undertook to take part in jointly creating a mini nuclear plant with educational, scientific purposes, and now this agreement will be implemented," Lazar said. In early 2016, Ali Akbar Salehi who heads the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) said the country had proposed a pilot project with Hungary to design a 25-megawatt reactor and then a reactor of up to 100 megawatts to be sold in Africa and Asia. According to him, the reactor would fit the poorer countries in the region, as it requires less cooling water. "One particular project that I suggested was to see if we can... together design a small reactor of 25 megawatts. It was received well, and we hope that we can start this project, just on paper," Salehi said, as quoted by Reuters. After 40 critical vulnerabilities on Samsungs Tizen used in smart TVs and smartwatches were exposed this week by Israeli researcher Amihai Neiderman, the company is scrambling to patch them. But Samsung still doesnt know many of the bugs that need to be patched. Its also unclear when Tizen devices will get security patches, or if older Tizen devices will even get OS updates to squash the bugs. Beyond Samsungs smart TVs, Tizen is also used in wearables like Gear S3 and handsets like Samsungs Z-series phones, which have sold well in India. Samsung wants to put Tizen in a range of appliances and IoT devices. Tizen also has been forked to be used in Raspberry Pi. Samsung is now trying to resolve the issues, but progress has been slow because the company says it doesnt have full details about the vulnerabilities, according to a post in the Tizen developers forum. The researcher has not provided a clear list of the 40 issues he claimed so far, Samsungs Carsten Haitzler, said while responding to a developer email seeking an update from Tizen on patching the vulnerabilities. Haitzler stressed that securing the OS was extremely important. Neiderman, in an email, said he sent Tizen handpicked vulnerabilities, but he also sent a presentation that provides all the clues about what needs to be fixed in the OS. I sent them about four different vulnerabilities and a list of common types of problems they have all over their code, Neiderman said. There wasnt enough time to review all the major exploits with Samsung, Neiderman said. It seems they are only interested in the ones who affect their smart TV and not in the smartphones in developing countries, he said. Neiderman may have a point. Email exchanges in the Tizen developer forum cast doubt on when fixes will be made or whether they will even reach all devices using either the full Tizen OS or parts of it. Updating is difficult because the Tizen development team is decentralized, and the OS has an Android-like defragmentation. While smart TVs and wearables may get patched, its not known if an OS update will come to Raspberry Pi 3 or other devices. Many developers take the open-source Tizen code and modify it for their devices. Updating their devices with the patches would be up to them, and its possible some Tizen devices may not get updated code. Older Tizen devices remain especially susceptible to the bugs. Products take Tizen and modify it and then ship a product and whatever group does that is in charge. The platform maintainers have limited influence or control over this, Haitzler said in a forum post. Tizen can fix the platform bugs but cant guarantee if an update will ship for devices or if it will be changed by the time it ships for a device, Haitzler added. Thats how all of this is structured. I wish I was able to change this. The OS showed promise early on, but the developer base has dwindled as programmers moved over to Android, iOS, or Windows platforms. The Tizen team has patched bugs and updated the OS, but the pressure has been growing on developers to address a growing list of issues. Tizen has provided a website for reporting bugs. The Tizen development community is much smaller than Androids. Samsung has been releasing previews of Tizen 4.0, with a first public milestone release coming in May. That coincides with Samsungs Tizen Developer Conference, which will be held in San Francisco on May 16 and 17. Twitter has withdrawn a lawsuit against the U.S. government after the Customs and Border Protection backed down on a demand that the social media outlet reveal details about a user account critical of the agency. The lawsuit, filed Thursday, contended that the customs agency was abusing its investigative power. The customs agency has the ability to get private user data from Twitter when investigating cases in areas such as illegal imports, but this case was far from that. The target of the request was the @alt_uscis account, one of a number of alt accounts that have sprung up on Twitter since the inauguration of President Donald Trump. The accounts are critical of the new administration and most claim to be run by current or former staff members of government agencies. The customs agencys investigation into who started the @alt_uscis account led to the request that Twitter identify the author. USCIS is the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and is part of the Department of Homeland Security alongside the customs service. Twitter said it filed the lawsuit after warning the government it would do so if the request was not withdrawn. On Friday, a day after Twitter delivered on its threat and after a heap of media coverage, the government withdrew its request. The speed with which the government buckled shows just how blatantly unconstitutional its demand was in the first place, said Esha Bhandari, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, which was representing the Twitter user in the case. Speaking anonymously about issues of the day is a longstanding American tradition, dating back to when the framers of the Constitution wrote under pseudonyms. The anonymity that the First Amendment guarantees is often most essential when people criticize the government, and this free speech right is as important today as ever, Bhandari said in a statement. A quiet wreath-laying ceremony at Riverside National Cemetery on Thursday, April 6, marked the 100th anniversary of the United States entry into World War I. Cemetery Director Pete Young spoke briefly about the conflict. In researching the war, Young said, One of the things that surprised me was 25 percent of the men between 18 and 31 were in active duty. Four million men were part of a draft-strengthened military force during the war. More than half of those served overseas, Young said, and 100,000 lost their lives. There are more than 4,000 World War I veterans buried at Riverside National Cemetery, he added. Dianne Verdugo was one of only two civilians to attend the ceremony. She and Mike Sheehan, 67, of Wildomar, helped Young lay the wreath. Im here to honor my friend, Harry Ed Cooper, said Verdugo, 73, of Hemet. Verdugo said she cleaned Coopers home when she was younger. He surprised her one day by telling her he was a doughboy in Gen. John Pershings army during the war as well as before. He said, We chased that Poncho Villa back to Mexico, she said. Theres nothing like God-given rain. Thats what Mike Rennie, co-owner of Leoness Cellars, said about this years wet winter and the effect its likely to have on his grape crop as the growing season begins. The benefit is to the soil. The biggest problem weve had in the last three or four years, because of the lack of rain, is high salinity in the soils, he said. Salinity inhibits propagation. Whats happened is our vines the last few years have been somewhat stunted. The foliage has been a little stunted. The salts are high and the vines have struggled a little bit because of it. The salinity comes from irrigation water, which growers have depended on during the drought. Rain leached the soil. RELATED: 5 things you may not know about Temecula Valley Wine Country Greg Pennyroyal, vineyard manager at Wilson Creek Winery, expects it will bring a huge burst of nutrients. The result could be a little bigger canopy, more fruit, and maybe more work. Rainfall seemed enormous in Temecula after several dry winters, but it was not the deluge seen in Northern California that endangered dams and flooded vineyards. Depending on the measurement, Temecula averages between 12 and 16 inches annually, according to Pennyroyal, and this year it got 18 inches. Were really just back to normal, he said. But the timing was beneficial. The nice part was we had a light rain early on and a heavy rain later. And once you get a little bit of water in the soil, the soil opens up and becomes very porous. So that was a huge benefit to us. Temecula vineyards are at bud break, when shoots begin to show. This is also the time of suckering, when excess shoots grow in the wrong places and have to be clipped off. Pennyroyal expects a vigorous suckering season. Growers who use cover crops as an organic alternative to fertilizer will have a lot of mowing to do. .Not so great for the tractor operators, Pennyroyal said. But that translates to more nutrients for the plants. After the rains, growers can use irrigation to regulate the fruit, Rennie said. We dont get as much rain as they do up north so we can monitor our berry size. We can make sure we can get good concentrated flavor into our wine the larger the berry gets the less concentrated the flavor. With our perfect climate and our good soil, were able to bring the best of the varietal into the market. RELATED Total Wine and More coming to Temecula Pair your pet pooch with pinot in Temeculas Wine Country Gov. Jerry Brown declared an end to Californias historic drought Friday, lifting emergency orders that had forced residents to stop running sprinklers as often and encouraged them to rip out thirsty lawns during the states driest four-year period on record. The drought strained native fish that migrate up rivers and forced farmers in the nations leading agricultural state to rely heavily on groundwater, with some tearing out orchards. It also dried up wells, forcing hundreds of families in rural areas to drink bottled water and bathe from buckets. Brown declared the drought emergency in 2014, and officials later ordered mandatory conservation for the first time in state history. Regulators last year relaxed the rules after a rainfall was close to normal. But monster storms this winter erased nearly all signs of drought, blanketing the Sierra Nevada with deep snow, Californias key water source, and boosting reservoirs. This drought emergency is over, but the next drought could be around the corner, Brown said in a statement. Conservation must remain a way of life. The governor lifted the drought emergency in all California counties except Fresno, Kings, Tulare and Tuolumne, where emergency drinking water projects will continue to help address diminished groundwater supplies. Water conservation will become a way of life in the nations most populated state, Felicia Marcus, chairwoman of the State Water Resources Control Board, who led conservation planning. Officials already have started charting long-term rules to make California more resilient as climate change makes weather patterns more severe. Theres a greater appreciation of just how precious water is, she said. Weve got to plan for longer droughts. Cities and water districts throughout the state will be required to continue reporting their water use each month, said the governor order, which also bans wasteful practices. New rules are expected to permanently ban wasteful practices, such as hosing off sidewalks and watering landscapes in the days after it rains. Officials say they will work aggressively to stop leaks that waste water. Susan Atkins of the charity Self-Help Enterprises said the drought is not over for more than 900 families who have large water tanks in their yards because their wells dried up during the years long drought. Most of them are in Tulare County, a farming powerhouse in central Californias San Joaquin Valley. Atkins said she still receives calls from people whose wells are running dry and need a tank and bottled water. In no way is it over, she said of the drought. We will run out of money before we run out of people that need help. As decision day loomed Thursday, April 6 in Sacramento on a $52.4 billion transportation funding package that would raise the gas tax and impose new fees on vehicles, the California Republican Party turned up the pressure on a newly elected Inland Democratic assemblywoman. The party paid for videos on social media urging the public to call Assemblywoman Sabrina Cervantes, D-Riverside, and vote no on SB 1, which faced an uncertain fate going into Thursday. Cervantes was undecided on SB 1 entering the day. Tell Assemblywoman Sabrina Cervantes to fix our roads, not raise our taxes! from California Republican Party on Vimeo. Cervantes, who represents part of Riverside, Corona, Norco, Jurupa Valley and Eastvale, defeated GOP Assemblyman Eric Linder in November. She faces a tough decision on SB 1. Vote for the bill and she risks angering tax-weary constituents who drive long distances to work. Vote no and shell anger Democratic leadership not a recipe for success if youre a first-term lawmaker in Sacramento. A mini storm is heading to Southern California, and should bring light rain late Friday and Saturday along with below-average temperatures and gusty winds in some areas, forecasters say. Rainfall totals, which keep being revised downward, now arent expected to top an inch except for maybe in the San Bernardino Mountains, according to the National Weather Service. The system is moving in from the north where it will bring much heavier rain and should arrive in Los Angeles County on Friday evening. Theres about a 70 percent chance of rain, most of which is expected to fall between midnight and sunrise Saturday, the Weather Service said. RELATED: Forecast of rain washes away planned 15 Freeway closure starting Friday night The storm will hit the northern Inland Empire and Orange County late Friday, while the greatest chance for rain 40 percent in Orange County and 50 percent in the Inland valleys is Saturday morning. As for rainfall totals, a small portion of the San Bernardino Mountains could get over an inch, forecasters say. The slopes of the San Gabriel Mountains should expect about a half-inch. From northern Orange County through the Inland valleys, about a quarter-inch could fall. In Los Angeles County, a quarter-inch or less of rain is expected, though south-facing mountain slopes could get a little more. Winds wont be notable in much of Southern California, but the mountains and deserts will be an exception. There, they were expected to pick up Thursday night and stay strong through at least Saturday. Gusts of up to 45 mph are possible, the Weather Service said. Saturday should be the coolest day of the next week; in the Inland valleys, some areas may not top 70 degrees. But highs will climb about 5 degrees Sunday and 5 more Monday before leveling off for the rest of the week in the upper 70s to low 80s. The United States blasted a Syrian air base with a barrage of cruise missiles Thursday night in fiery retaliation for this weeks gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. President Donald Trump cast the U.S. assault as vital to deter future use of poison gas and called on other nations to join in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria. It was the first direct American assault on the Syrian government and Trumps most dramatic military order since becoming president just over two months ago. Announcing the assault from his Florida resort, Trump said there was no doubt Syrian President Bashar Assad was responsible for the chemical attack, which he said employed banned gases and killed dozens. Assad choked out the lives of innocent men, women and children, Trumped declared. PHOTOS: US Tomahawk missiles strike Syria base where chem planes took off The U.S. strikes hit the government-controlled Shayrat air base in central Syria, where U.S. officials say the Syrian military planes that dropped the chemicals had taken off. The U.S. missiles hit at 8:45 p.m. in Washington, 3:45 a.m. Friday morning in Syria. The missiles targeted the bases airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas, officials said. Syrian state TV reported a U.S. missile attack on a number of military targets and called the attack an aggression. The surprise U.S. assault marked a striking reversal for Trump, who warned as a candidate against the U.S. getting pulled into the Syrian civil war, now in its seventh year. But the president earlier in the week appeared moved by the photos of children killed in the chemical attack, calling it a disgrace to humanity that crossed a lot of lines. About 60 U.S. Tomahawk missiles, fired from warships in the Mediterranean Sea, targeted an air base in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack that American officials believe Syrian government aircraft launched with a nerve agent, possibly sarin. The president did not announce the attacks in advance, though he and other national security officials ratcheted up their warnings to the Syrian government throughout the day Thursday. I think what happened in Syria is one of the truly egregious crimes and shouldnt have happened and it shouldnt be allowed to happen, Trump told reporters traveling on Air Force One to Florida, where he was holding a two-day summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The strike came as Trump was hosting Xi in meetings focused in part on another pressing U.S. security dilemma: North Koreas nuclear program. Trumps actions in Syria could signal to China that the new president isnt afraid of unilateral military steps. even if key nations like China are standing in the way. Trump has advocated greater counterterrorism cooperation with Russia, Assads most powerful military backer. Just last week, the Trump administration signaled the U.S. was no longer interested in trying to push Assad from power over his direction of a conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and led to the worst refugee crisis since World War II. U.S. military officials sought to portray the strikes as an appropriate, measured response. But the assault still risks plunging America into the middle of Syrias conflict, complicating the safety of the hundreds of U.S. forces fighting a separate campaign against the Islamic State group in the north of the country. If Assads military persists in further gas attacks, the Trump administration might logically pursue increased retaliation. Russia and Iran, Assads allies, pose other problems. Russian military personnel and aircraft are embedded with Syrias, and Iranian troops and paramilitary forces are also on the ground helping Assad fight the array of opposition groups hoping to topple him. Before the strikes, U.S. military officials said they informed their Russian counterparts of the impending attack. The goal was to avoid any accident involving Russian forces. Nevertheless, Russias Deputy U.N. ambassador Vladimir Safronkov warned that any negative consequences from the strikes would be on the shoulders of those who initiated such a doubtful and tragic enterprise. The U.S. also notified its partner countries in the region prior to launching the strikes. Trumps decision to attack Syria came three-and-a-half years after President Barack Obama threatened Assad with military action after an earlier chemical weapons attack killed hundreds outside of Damascus. Obama had declared the use of such weapons a red line. At the time, several American ships in the Mediterranean were poised to launch missiles, only for Obama to abruptly pull back after key U.S. ally Britain and the U.S. Congress balked at his plan. He opted instead for a Russian-backed plan that was supposed to remove and eliminate Syrias chemical weapons stockpiles. Thursday nights strikes were launched from the USS Ross and USS Porter and landed in the early morning Friday in Syria. The world learned of the chemical attack earlier in the week in footage that showed people dying in the streets and bodies of children stacked in piles. The international outcry fueled an emotional response from Trump, who appeared to abandon his much-touted America First vision for a stance of humanitarian intervention, akin to that of previous American leaders. I think what happened in Syria is a disgrace to humanity, he said Thursday. Trump seemed to rapidly reconsider his feelings about Assad, saying: Hes there and I guess hes running things, so something should happen. The show of force in Syria raises legal questions. Its unclear what authority Trump is relying on to attack another government. When Obama intervened in Libya in 2011, he used a U.N. Security Council mandate and NATOs overall leadership of the mission to argue that he had legal authority arguments that many Republicans opposed. Trump cant rely on either justification here. Unclear also is whether Trump is adopting any broader effort to combat Assad. Under Obama, the United States largely pulled back from its support for so-called moderate rebels when Russias military intervention in September 2015 led them to suffer a series of battlefield defeats. Instead, Obama sought to work with Russia on a negotiated transition. Trump and his top aides had acknowledged in recent days the reality of Assad being in power, saying his ouster was no longer a priority. But the chemical weapons attack seemed to spur a rethink. In Florida on Thursday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said of Assad: Theres no role for him to govern the Syrian people. This story is developing. Check back for updates. TWENTYNINE PALMS >> A decorated Marine pleaded not guilty this week to killing two women in a Twentynine Palms home last month. Rafael Ari Aikens, 22, of Sacramento, was in Morongo Superior Court Tuesday and denied fatally shooting Christy McKissic, 32, and Renee Metcalf, 62, both of Twentynine Palms, court records show. He was charged with two counts of murder and two counts of discharge of a firearm causing great bodily harm. The relationship between the women and the Marine are not clear. PREVIOUSLY: Arrest made in Twentynine Palms double homicide San Bernardino County sheriffs homicide investigators, assisted by investigators from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, arrested Aikens March 30 at his assigned housing on Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, according to a news release states. Aikens is a lance corporal assigned to 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, according to USMC spokesman 1st Lt. Matthew Gregory. Aikens enlisted for four years on Dec. 16, 2014. He was deployed to Iraq for six months last year as part of Operation Inherent Resolve. His awards include a Sea Service Deployment Ribbon, a Global War on Terrorism Service Medal and a National Defense Service Medal. Deputies found the women shortly after midnight March 24 after responding to a 911 call of two people dead inside a home in the 7700 block of Bedouin Avenue in Twentynine Palms, officials said. Deputies also found McKissics 10-year-old daughter unharmed in the home, according to sheriffs authorities. Initially there were rumors circulating that another man, Terrance Kennard Hodges, 42, of Wonder Valley, had been arrested for the shooting, but sheriffs authorities said that was not correct. Instead, officials said Hodges was arrested on suspicion of evading a police officer, robbery and for violating the terms of his parole after he led deputies and California Highway Patrol officers on a high-speed chase in a stolen vehicle beginning about 2:30 a.m. March 24, a news release stated. It is unclear why authorities interviewed him in connection with the womens deaths. Aikens is expected to be back in court April 12. The Akufo-Addo government, has issued a total of 2.25 billion dollars in four bonds contrary to its campaign promise not to borrow, because Ghanas debt stock, had risen beyond the countrys capacity to service it. The New Patriotic Party (NPP) while in opposition, had condemned the Mahama government for pushing the country into a debt crisis, but last Monday, the first two bonds, totaling 1.13 billion dollars was issued at 15 and 7 years period with a 19.75 percent interest. In addition, the Ministry of Finance, raised the cedi equivalent of USD1.12 billion in 5 and 10 year bonds via a tap-in arrangement. These activities raised a total of USD2.25 billion and resulted in the lengthening of the maturity profile of the instruments available on the domestic market, a press release from the Finance Ministry stated. This issuance, represents the largest amount issued by a sub-Saharan African country in a day. The pricing obtained was also consistent with the initial price range of 18.95percent 19.85percent. The issuance attracted a number of global portfolio investors, including a very substantial investment in the 15-year bond by a very well respected global financial investor. The Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta, stated that the issuance proceeds would be used to repurchase and/or retire a portion of the higher coupon short-term public debt instruments, explaining that there will not be an overall increase in the total debt stock. This is in line with our liability management strategy which seeks to re-profile our public debt stock, extend tenors, reduce short term rollover pressures, and lower domestic interest cost. Additionally, this issuance will further help improve our foreign exchange reserves by over USD2 billion and further support the cedi, the statement said. It pointed out that the successful bond issuance and the significant amount raised, especially the longer tenor of 15 years, is an indication of the strong appetite for Ghana Bonds due to the markets renewed confidence in the long term prospects of the Ghanaian economy and a major vote of confidence in the new governments economic policies, fiscal measures and programmes as outlined in the 2017 Budget. Also, on Friday the Parliament of Ghana passed the Appropriation Bill for the 2017 budget, including the landmark re-alignment of statutory funds which frees up about GHS4.5 billion in fiscal space for 2017, the statement said. This is an indication of the markets belief in our commitment to building an effective public financial management system, improve the countrys debt sustainability outlook and mitigate the crowding out of the private sector. It is imperative that we re-profile our total debt stock of USD30 billion which should help put us on a path of Ghana beyond Aid, the minister added. Source: Theheraldghana.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 The Public Utility Workers Union (PUWU) of the Trade Union Congress (TUC) has expressed worry about the silence of government over the privatization of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG). According to the Union, the long delay on the part of government concerning the consultation process on the ECG privatization creates the impression that the President is dragging its feet on the issue. At a press conference in Accra yesterday, the Union called on President Akufo-Addo to fulfill his promise of undertaking consultations with stakeholders, including labour, before taking a decision on the privatization of ECG. Michael Adumatta Nyantakyi, General Secretary of PUWU, in his remarks, said the Union was not opposed to the Compact II in principle. However, he said PUWU is against the single concession which is tantamount to creating a virtual private monopoly in electricity distribution. Consequences Mr. Nyantakyi said the concessionaire would not have any commitment to the social dimension of ECGs operations, which would adversely affect rural electrification and undermine governments one district, one factory agenda. Obviously tariffs will go up as experience in other countries has shown. The private investor is interested to see hikes in tariffs to boost its profit objective. This will definitely defeat the governments promise to reduce electricity tariffs, he said. Will the PURC have sufficient authority to compel this investor to submit to its tariff regime? Ghanaians should not lose sight of the dangerous potential of Article 7.1 of the compact, which seeks to override the laws of Ghana, Mr. Nyantakyi quizzed. By extension, he said the private investor would not be bound by the tariff guidelines set by the PURC. This and other aspects of the compact, in particular the privatization of ECG, have informed PUWUs position on the Compact, Mr. Nyantakyi said. He said government has a choice between one that satisfies the profit motive of a foreign investor or that which will in long-term help contribute money to the consolidated fund. It is a choice between an option that will lead to repatriation of profits from Ghana as against an option that the profits will be retained in the country. Accordingly, the government must take a decision primarily for the benefit of Ghana, Mr. Nyantakyi said. Source: Daily Guide Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Former Governor of the Bank of Ghana (BoG), Dr. Kwabena Duffuor, has urged financial institutions operating in Ghana to make their services and products accessible to people living in rural areas of Ghana. Dr. Duffuor made the call in a keynote address at the 38th Management Day Celebration of the University of Ghana Business School (UGBS) held recently in Accra under the theme: Finance and Insurance For Inclusive National Development. According to Dr. Duffuor, expanding financial services to a large number of people, especially those in the rural areas, where over 60 percent of the population are affected by poverty is one of the surest ways of promoting inclusive development and reducing poverty. In his opinion, an inclusive financial system among others, facilitates efficient allocation of productive resources and can potentially reduce the cost of capital, improve the day-to-day management of finances. An inclusive financial sector aimed at inclusive national development can generate positive externalities to the government, contributing to job creation and macroeconomic stability. He indicated that inclusiveness brings about a broader client base and dependable source of funding. It also reduces some risks in money laundering activities by bringing the much unregulated/underground economy into the regulated sector, thereby achieving financial stability and integrity. Poor Access Financial inclusiveness, he stated, is measured by the level of the peoples access to financial services, adding that improved access to financial services strengthens financial sectors and domestic resource mobilization and can therefore make a significant contribution to social and economic development. However, in Ghana our financial services are only available to a few people, he added. It is regrettable, therefore that a huge chunk of the populace still find themselves outside the financial system. Majority of Ghanaians have no bank accounts; they do not receive credit from the formal financial system, neither do they have any insurance policies, he said. Dr. Duffuor stated that access to financial services is so poor that there remains a large group of unbanked people in Ghana. The percentage of the population with no insurance policy is even much higher. Source: Daily Guide Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video 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. Benin's National Assembly has narrowly rejected a proposal by President Patrice Talon to amend the constitution. He was seeking to limit his successors to a single six-year term in office. Mr Talon was elected last year, saying he wanted to shorten presidential terms to combat complacency. He needed the approval of three-quarters of the National Assembly to go ahead with the change. The one-term proposal appears to be in contrast to what is happening in some countries, such as Rwanda and the Republic of Congo and Burundi, where presidents have had their time in office extended. The term-limit proposal was part of a raft of changes to the constitution including setting a cap on political party funding. But some of Mr Talon's critics say that singe term presidencies are open to abuse, as the president would not have to court the favour of voters at the end of his term. It is not known if the president, who was elected last year, will seek a second term as provided by the constitution. Or whether he will organise a referendum to amend the constitution, as he had promised before he came to power. Source: BBC 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 third freed person from the Guantanamo Bay prisons has been spotted in Ghana. Mohammed El Gharani came to Ghana on his volition. He is currently in the country. The 3rd Gitmo prisoner is said to be a close associate of the other two who are currently been hosted in the country. Information available to Adomonline.com indicates that he was in the same cell with the other two. Mohammed El Gharani arrived in Ghana in 2011. Source: adomonline 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 President Nana Akufo-Addo has called for strong bilateral ties between Ghana and Korea, as government seeks to engage social and economic transformation programmes to develop the nation. The President made this remark when the outgoing South Korean Ambassador to Ghana, Lyeo Woon-Ki paid a courtesy call on him at the Flagstaff House. He assured the Korean delegation that his administration will intensify efforts to deepen the relations betwen the two countries. Read full statement below: PRESIDENT AKUFO-ADDO ADVOCATES FOR GROWTH IN GHANA-KOREA RELATIONS The President of the Republic, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, is advocating for the growth of bilateral ties and relations between Ghana and Korea, as government seeks to embark on an ambitious programme of social and economic transformation modeled on the programmes used by the Asian Tigers. The President made this known when Mr.Lyeo Woon-Ki, the outgoing South Korean Ambassador to Ghana, called on him at the Presidency to bid him farewell, as his 2 year duty tour of Ghana has come to an end. According to President Akufo-Addo, many of us see your country (South Korea) as an inspiration of how, with organization, determination, hard work and creativity, a poor nation can, within a generation, transform itself to become one of the leading economies of the world. He added, It continues to be a beacon for us, because we all know about the parallel periods of birth of Ghana and South Korea, and, yet, Korea is one of the advanced economies, and we are still struggling. To this end, President Akufo-Addo indicated that, under his tenure of office, he would intensify efforts to deepen the relations between the two countries, stressing that economic exchanges between the two countries have a lot more room for growth and development. We are particularly interested in getting Korean industries to interest themselves in Ghana as a basis for producing things not just for the country, but for the regional and continental markets. We are about to institutionalize the continental free trade area. All of this is to give us an opportunity to develop our own industrial and manufacturing basis. I think the involvement of Korea in this exercise will be mutually beneficial for all of us, he noted. To the outgoing South Korean ambassador, President Akufo-Addo expressed the appreciation of Ghanaians for the work done by Mr.Lyeo Woon-Ki during his stay, which, amongst others, led to the signing of a framework agreement between the two countries, enabling Ghana to obtain a concessionary loan facility of $200 million from the Economic Development Cooperation Fund (EDF). We know how committed you have been to developing and deepening the relations between our two countries. And, that is why Ghanaians will always have a very fond memory of you as ambassador. We know very well that, in you, Ghana has a committed friend. Ghana-Korean relationship would grow and flourish, and it will all be as a result of the work that you have done here. You go back to Korea with your head held high. You have done a great job for your country, President Akufo-Addo said. On his part, the South Korean Ambassador described leaving Ghana as the moment I have been afraid to face, because I fell in love with Ghana during the last 2 years. He was confident of Ghanas future because President Akufo-Addo has a great vision for the development of the country. He has a strong commitment to enhancing our bilateral relationship. In a sense, I feel very sad leaving this country, but I also confident that our bilateral relations will be much stronger in the coming years. Source: Peacefmonline.com/Ghana Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video It has been revealed that the deaths, recently recorded at the Kumasi Academy Senior High School in Ashanti were due to meningitis. In all, a total of 26 cases of meningitis have since been reported at various hospitals from the school with four ending up with deaths. According to Graphic Online's Kumasi reporter, Kwadwo Baffoe Donkor, the Ashanti Regional Minister, Mr Simon Osei Mensah made this known at a press conference at the school on Wednesday morning. The Regional Minister explained that if all the four cases had been sent to the same facility, the cause would have been detected earlier. Meningitis is an inflammation (swelling) of the protective membranes covering the brain and spinal cord known as the meninges. This inflammation is usually caused by an infection of the fluid surrounding the brain and spinal cord. Meningitis is usually caused by bacteria or viruses, but can be a result of injury, cancer, or certain drugs. Source: Daily Graphic 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 Many people, who took part in the funeral of three out of four students, who lost their lives in the meningitis outbreak at the Kumasi Academy (KUMACA) in the Asokore-Mampong Municipality of the Ashanti Region, wept controllably. Relations of the deceased- Prince Kodua, 15, Benjamin Opoku Acheampong, 18, and Samuel Okyere Kwabi Dapaah, 17, could not hold back their tears, as they were joined by well-wishers at Asawasi in Kumasi, Offinso-Ahenkro and Kuntanase in the Bosomtwe District, to bid farewell to their sons. While Benjamins burial was held at Asawasi, that of 15-year-old Prince Kodua and Samuel Okyere Kwabi Dapaah, were held at Suntans and Offinso-Ahenkro respectively. At Asawasi, the mother of 18-year-old Benjamin Opoku Acheampong, Akua Pomaah, broke down in tears and had to be consoled by mourners at the venue. The mortal remains of Form-Two Science Student, who wanted to become a medical doctor, was laid to rest days after he died mysteriously at home. Benjamin and his colleagues, who were in the same dormitory, were taken ill on the campus of the school and referred to the schools sickbay before they were sent home by the schools authorities to die in similar fashion, thereby causing fear among the students and parents. On Wednesday, officials said the four students died of meningitis contrary to food poisoning. Ashanti Regional Minister, Simon Osei Mensah, announced that health experts from Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) and the Ghana Health Service (GHS) discovered that the highly contagious disease was responsible for the deaths of the students. According to the Minister, 26 suspected cases of meningitis were detected at the school from March 22 to 31, 2017 and that most of the remaining students were undergoing treatment. The Minister indicated that appropriate measures had been put in place to detect the disease early and added that all second cycle schools in the region had been assigned hospitals by GHS for quick treatment. Source: Daily Guide Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Businessman Alfred Agbesi Woyome has petitioned the International Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), over the GHC51.2 million judgment debt paid to him by the past National Democratic Congress (NDC) government which the Supreme Court has ordered him to refund to the state. The apex court ruled that he got the money wrongfully. However, dissatisfied with the ruling by the court, Mr Woyome has resorted to an international body to determine the matter. Responding to his petition, the ICC said: The Secretariat of the International Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce acknowledges receipt of your request for Arbitration. Source: classfmonline.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 Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kwesi Amakye Boateng believes the current government is on a dangerous mission with the kind of precedence it is setting in respect of appointments. According to him, the widespread protests against some appointees are courting some acrimony for the presidency and the party at large calling on its leadership to tread cautiously. His comments follow the appointment Dr Otchere Addai-Mensah as Chief Executive for the Ghana Standards Authority and his subsequent resignation less than a month after some bigwigs within the party opposed to the move by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo. Their justification was that he [Otchere Addai-Mensah] never supported the president during the internal contest of the party and must therefore not be given any post a move Kwesi Amakye Boateng disagrees insisting he is still a staunch member of the New Patriotic Party (NPP). I think the NPP is on a dangerous mission and they are setting up the president to fail. This is because they are courting a lot of enmity for the president as a result of their actions and the kind of advice they are giving the president regarding his appointments. I am surprised they are today questioning the Addai-Mensahs loyalty and standing within the NPP. I am reliably aware of how the same NPP approached the gentleman to contest the Bantama parliamentary seat for the NPP which he declined. Addai-Mensah declined to contest at Bantama because he believed the incumbent MP has not committed any blunders that warranted him to mount a challenge and he thought on principles, if he had contested, his candidature could have divided the NPP in Bantama so he declined in the interest of party unity, he revealed. Tell me, to what extent could such a persons loyalty to the NPP as a political party be questioned, he asked. Source: mynewsgh.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 The Ghana Bar Association (GBA) has called on the Inspector General of Police (IGP) David Asante-Apeatu to re-arrest the 13 accused persons who were freed from court by some members of pro-NPP vigilante group, Delta Force earlier today. The GBA condemned the attacks by the Delta Force at the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) Circuit Court earlier today. The Association, in a statement, expressed utter shock at the group's action which it described as "blatant disregard for the orders of a duly constituted court of law and attack on the Judge in the discharge of her lawful duties. This is an affront to the independence of the Judiciary and an attack on the rule of law". The GBA stressed that the vigilante's action was "unacceptable", endangers the country's peace and "creates room for anarchy, chaos and lawlessness" which is alien to the 1992 Constitution of Ghana. "Such glorification of violence, dastardly acts and threat to our Judiciary cannot be tolerated or allowed under our democratic dispensation. It is totally unacceptable under whatever pretence to disobey orders of the court, attack or threaten to attack the person of the judge thereby endangering the peace of our country. "The GBA notes that any system that allows an individual, group of persons or institutions to disobey orders made by a court of competent jurisdiction with impunity undermines the independence of the judiciary, creates room for anarchy, chaos and lawlessness. This certainly has no place under the 1992 Constitution of Ghana", the statement further read. Full statement below: GHANA BAR ASSOCIATION'S STATEMENT ON THE "DELTA FORCE" ATTACK ON THE KUMASI CIRCUIT COURT AND FREEING ITS MEMBERS ON 6TH APRIL 2017 The Ghana Bar Association is shocked and horrified at the news item and video recordings which have gone viral alleging that members of the supposed "Delta Force" have attacked the Circuit court in Kumasi earlier today after the Circuit Court presided over by Her Honour Mary Senkyere had reportedly ordered the thirteen (13) persons who were charged with the offence on conspiracy to commit crime, assault on a public officer, causing unlawful damage and preventing a public officer from doing his lawful duty, to be remanded in custody and re-appear on the 20th day of April, 2017. The 13 persons who the Circuit Court ordered to be remanded in custody were said to have been taken away by the members of the alleged "Delta Force" in clear disobedience of the Court's order. The report further stated that the few police personnel present did their best to protect the Judge whilst the alleged members of the "Delta Force" destroyed some court property. It is sickening and horrifying to watch the said videos of persons using violence as a means to defy the Court's orders. The GBA condemns in no uncertain terms this blatant disregard for the orders of a duly constituted court of law and attack on the Judge in the discharge of her lawful duties. This is an affront to the independence of the Judiciary and an attack on the rule of law. Such glorification of violence, dastardly acts and threat to our Judiciary cannot be tolerated or allowed under our democratic dispensation. It is totally unacceptable under whatever pretence to disobey orders of the court, attack or threaten to attack the person of the judge thereby endangering the peace of our country. The GBA notes that any system that allows an individual, group of persons or institutions to disobey orders made by a court of competent jurisdiction with impunity undermines the independence of the judiciary, creates room for anarchy, chaos and lawlessness. This certainly has no place under the 1992 Constitution of Ghana. We therefore call on the Inspector-General of Police to immediately re-arrest the 13 persons ordered to be remanded, cause a thorough investigation of the incident to ensure that all persons who played any role whatsoever in the attack on the court are arrested, duly charged and prosecuted. We also call on the Minister of Interior to as a matter of urgency take steps to ensure the immediate disbandment of the "Delta Force" and all other vigilante groups that have sprung up in our country. We call on all well meaning Ghanaians to condemn this resort to violence in flagrant disobedience of court orders. The Bar wishes finally to emphasize that an independent judiciary is the backbone of the rule law. A judiciary that is protected against all forms of intimidation and interference is the key to securing judicial independence and the freedoms of the citizenry. We should therefore not, in any circumstance, countenance any attack whatsoever on the courts and the Judiciary as a whole for that matter. Issued in Accra, this 6th day of April 2017. Signed Benson Nutsukpui National President Justin Amenuvor National Secretary 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. Featured Video On Friday April 7, the president will be three months in office, inching close to hundred days, but it appears Nana Akufo-Addo, is governing only three regions. He is stuck in the Flagstaff House in the Greater Accra Region; the seat of government, from where he visits the Ashanti Region, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) stronghold and his home region, Eastern Region, if he is not out of the country. Apart from his presence at the 60th Anniversary celebration of Okuapeman School in the Eastern Region on Saturday, February 11, 2017, Mr. Akufo-Addo, has on countless times visited Kyebi, for a Thanksgiving Church Service for his election as President and also to a visit to the gravestone of his grand uncle Dr. J.B. Danquah. Apart from the aforementioned regions, the president is yet to visit any of the seven regions to work or inspect ongoing projects, particularly those embarked upon by the John Mahama administration. This is a man who claims he is in a hurry, but it appears he is in a hurry only in three regions and not the rest of the country. The last time he toured some of the seven regions was in December to say Thank You, days after he was declared winner of the 2016 Presidential Election. Since that time, little has been heard as far as the Volta, Upper East, Upper West, Northern, Brong Ahafo, Western Region and Central regions are concerned. Meanwhile, there are several projects on-going in these regions, which were initiated by the erstwhile John Mahama government. During the 2016 campaign and shortly after his victory, President Akuf-Addo, promised to continue with the many developmental projects initiated by the Mahama government, but with his first 100-days fast approaching, he appears not ready to visit some of these projects sites to inspect progress of work. It appears visiting roads, hospital, interchanges, airports, schools and others, will amount to acknowledging his predecessor, whom he had condemned for doing nothing for the country. In the Greater Accra Region where he is often based, several projects have been initiated and left by the immediate past government. One of such project is the Construction of the Terminal 3 at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA) by Ghana Airports Company Limited (GACL). There are similar projects in almost all the capitals and towns nationwide, especially Kasoa interchange, Tamale, Wa and Ho airports. His elephant size 110 appointees most of whom have been vetted and approved by Parliament, have limited themselves to their offices, while these projects are continued anyhow. Last week, the President paid a three day visit to the Ashanti Region, but failed to visit any of the project sites. In that region alone, massive infrastructural projects that are underway include, Kajetia Market, the Military hospital, second to the 37 Military hospital in Accra, cocoa road projects, as well as several other road, water, and school projects. The visit which was centred in Kumasi, was to calm the nerves of NPP militia group, Delta Force and not to connect with the people and learn about their primary problems as many Ghanaians were made to believe. The group draw their powers from the regional chairman of the NPP, Bernard Antwi-Boasiako aka Chairman Wontumi. Delta Force, had a week before President Akufo-Addos visit, forcibly ousted his appointee for the position of regional security coordinator, George Adjei from his office at the Regional Coordinating Council (RCC) spilling blood and damaging state properties in the process. The action of the group, was seen as an attempt to usurp the powers of the 73-year-old president leading to his hurriedly organized visit under the guise of going to thank them for their support. While on the 3-day visit to Kumasi, Nana Akufo-Addo, is reported to have said he would deal with vigilante groups who are threatening the peace of Ghana. He assured the Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II that, he would deal with the lawlessness in the country. There are a few things, Delta [force] and other issues that are unpleasant, but we are working to deal with those issues to ensure peace and understanding in Kumasi, Ashanti Region and the whole country. I will not ignore such issues. The law applies to everyone in Ghana. I know it is of concern to you, but do not worry, we will ensure that everything is resolved, he is reported to have said. His support in the Ashanti Region, had shrunk according to The Herald sources. The usual unprecedented crowd that often follows him anytime he visited that part of the country as NPP flagbearer, has shockingly reduced. Just a day after his visit to Kumasi, another group, Invisible Forces on Monday stormed the Eastern Regional offices of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), forcibly locking the office of the regional manager. The Police in the presidents home region as usual, looked on helplessly and allowed them to escape. According to media reports, the heavily built men numbering 20, said they could not work with the said regional manager who they argue is not from their party, the NPP. It was the same Invisible Forces that were blamed for the Kintampo Water Falls disaster leading to 17 deaths. The thugs had taken charge of the site after the NPP was declared winners of the December 7, 2016 elections. They had no expertise in the management of the place. The absence of the swimmers and rescue team to save people from drowning, led to the untimely death of the 17 students. It is argued that, if the radical group had not sacked the tourist guides, who had been trained for that purpose, they could have prevented the school children from nearing the water falls, when it was about to rain, and did rain heavily. Elsewhere, the president is quoted to have said It will not be under my watch that people will take the law into their own hands, neither will it be under my watch that the laws of our land will not be enforced. That will never happen. The law will work without fear or favour. This appears to be far from the reality as private individuals and ex-government appointees, have even had their vehicles snatched from them at various times of the day. Some were rudely awoken from their bed. Source: Theheraldghana.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 former Deputy Minister for Interior, James Agalga, has said that the recent violent activities of New Patriotic Party-affiliated vigilante group, Delta Force, is an indication of weak leadership on the part of the government. I am not surprised that the Delta Force has taken up the challenge to scare off security agencies of the state like they did in the case of the regional liaison officer in the Ashanti region. These things have happened because leadership is beginning to show signs of weakness. I will say without fear of any contradiction that leadership has failed in dealing with the vigilante groups, Mr. Agalga said. Speaking on Eyewitness News on Thursday, James Agalga said the failure of the government to prosecute members of vigilante groups that perpetrated various forms of violence in the past, has emboldened them to commit more of such acts with impunity. Right after the verdict was declared by the EC, we started experiencing once again the nefarious activities of these vigilante groups mostly those associated with the NPP. Maybe they felt emboldened by the fact that their party had won political power and so they can act with impunity. Unfortunately, leadership did not act decisively. Up till date, no arrests have been effected. Im sure this is what has emboldened the Delta Force to misconduct themselves in monumental proportions in Kumasi. It is a dangerous situation that is beginning to unfold. Our national security is at stake and those who are charged with the responsibility of managing our national security must sit up, he said. Some members of a vigilante group affiliated to the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Delta Force, stormed the Kumasi Circuit Court on Thursday, and freed 13 members of their group who were facing charges for causing disturbances at the Ashanti Regional Coordinating Council. The group vandalized some court property, and almost assaulted the Judge, Mary Senkyire. The judge had ruled that, they be remanded to reappear before the court on the 20th of April, 2017, after charges of conspiracy to assault a public officer and causing unlawful damage. Since the news broke, many Ghanaians have expressed anger over the blatant demonstration of lawlessness, and urged the various stakeholders to deal with the matter. According to Mr. Agalga, urgent efforts must be made to arrest those who raided the court premises. Report yourselves or be pursued Derry warns Delta Force Meanwhile, the Minister of the Interior, Ambrose Derry, has given a strong indication that members of the vigilante group will be arrested and brought to book. He said other security agencies will be engaged if necessary, to clamp down on the group and ensure that justice prevails. Speaking at an emergency press conference in Accra, Ambrose Derry warned the perpetrators that it will be in their interest to resubmit themselves to the police. Meanwhile, eight members of those who attacked the court have been arrested by the Police. The Ashanti Regional Police Public Relations Officer, ASP Yaw Nketiah-Yeboah said the eight were arrested around the Asafo overhead close to the Prempeh Assembly Hall in the capital, Kumasi. 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 Ashanti Regional Chairman of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), Bernard Antwi Bosiako has called on the National Security Minister to desist from describing NPPs vigilante group, Delta Force as criminals. He said members of the group are not criminals as purported by Mr. Kan-Dapaah - after describing their recent attack on a Kumasi Circuit court to free their detained members as Unfortunate. The group also attacked the presiding judge, Mrs Mary Nsenkyire who had earlier ruled that the suspects be remanded i custody to reappear before the court on April 20, 2017. Chairman Wontumi or Governor 1, - as he is affectionately called - who is alleged to be funding activities of the group, says Even though their action was uncalled for, they helped the party secure victory in the December 2016 elections. Where was Kan-Dapaah during the elections? he questioned in an interview with Kumasi based Ash FM. A furious Bernard Antwi Bosiako however cautioned that Kan-Dapaah should know that he is in power because of this same group he is calling criminals. He never campaigned for the party but is rather enjoying after the group has suffered for the party. He should be very careful and shut up and behave like an elderly person. Meanwhile, the 13 members of the vigilante group who escaped from the Kumasi Circuit court on Thursday have turned themselves over to the Police. Source: King Edward Ambrose Washman Addo/Peacefmonline.com/ Twitter: @Washman5/ Instagram: Washman007 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 Known charlatan and cancer fraud Belle Gibson has been ordered to pay $30,000 in prosecution costs to Consumer Affairs Victoria. The $30k is a contribution to the cost of CAVs fraud case against Gibson, during which the disgraced blogger and owner of company Inkerman Road Nominees (now in liquidation) was found guilty of most of the claims made against her. In case you missed this particular gob-smacking debacle first time around, Gibson rose to fame after spruiking herself as a wellness expert who had cured her brain cancer through healthy eating. She made a small fortune off the back of her claims, with an app and a cookbook both titled The Whole Pantry, and quickly built her brand into a worldwide wellness empire. As it turns out, its pretty easy to cure cancer when you dont have it in the first place. Gibson made it all up. And yeah, it is illegal to lie about that kind of shit. Consumer Affairs Victoria launched an investigation into Gibsons nonsense two years ago, and the initial outcome is this $30k prosecution cost. If she doesnt pay up within 60 days, she could face jail time. When a penalty is finally handed down on the case, Gibson could also be looking at a personal fine of $220,000 and a fine of $1.1 million for her company. Lie your way out of that one, genius. Source: ABC. Image: Instagram. News is breaking in the United States that the Trump administration has launched missile strikes against Syria, in the wake of last weeks chemical attack which intelligence linked to the government of Bashar al-Assad. Though Trump has in the past made statements that he would avoid this kind of open conflict with the Syrian government, he flagged the fact that the chemical attack which is believed to have killed over 100 people changed his mind. On Air Force One he made a statement to gathered journalists which flagged his change of mind: I think what happened in Syria is a disgrace to humanity, and hes there, and I guess [al-Assad is] running things, so something should happen. Two U.S. warships in the Mediterranean Sea fired at least 50 Tomahawk missiles at the al-Shayrat airfield, a Syrian military site close to Homs which U.S. intelligence believes was the site the chemical attack was launched from. CNN reports that the targets at the military airbase included runways, aircraft and fuel points. Senior U.S. military commanders have long argued against the country involving itself deeply in the fractious, multifaceted Syrian civil war likely fearing a complete boondoggle like Iraq. It is unknown the extent to which the U.S. plans to involve itself, or if it has any longterm plans on what to do in the country. Trump will address the media from his Mar-a-Lago estate soon. Source: The Guardian. Photo: Getty Images. The great lol of Melbourne is that while it is objectively the Best City, it is also a nightmarish box designed to trap people in and never let them escape thanks largely to the ghoulish horrors of the Tullamarine Freeway; a road designed to allow free passage to precisely 4 vehicles per day. At present, getting to the Melbourne Airport is practically a two-day trek. And when public transport options are limited solely to the SkyBus which, would ya believe, also has to use the accursed road, things have gotta change. Thankfully, the Federal Government appears to be on the verge of forcing the previously stubborn Victorian Governments hand by pouring money into a long-awaited rail link to the Airport in next months Federal Budget. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull stated that the lack of an airport rail link in Melbourne is a grand omission, particularly given that Melbourne is the only major city in the country without a dedicated mass-transit option to and from its major air hub. Its always been something thats been seen as an omission in Melbourne not to have a rail line out to the airport. There is no doubt as our cities become bigger and more densely settled, you need to have more mass transit. NewsCorp publications are reporting that the Government is willing to make a multi-year commitment to the project, which is tipped to cost somewhere in the vicinity of $5billion. The Andrews Government in Victoria, however, asserts that any Federal infrastructure funding coming into Victoria is far better suited to projects that are already ready to go. Transport Minister Jacinta Allen asserted that any airport rail project would not be able to be built until after the Melbourne Metro Tunnel project is completed. We already have a public transport system that has significant challenges because theres not the space to run extra trains. The Metro tunnel unlocks that capacity and thats why were working very hard to deliver that right now. The Infrastructure Victoria report indicated that an airport rail link is needed within 15 to 30 years. We certainly want to work towards achieving that. Youve gotta wonder whether that report was published 15 to 30 years ago, because an airport rail link is more overdue than Chinese Democracy. The Federal Government plan is reportedly keen to investigate a number of different options for a dedicated rail link, including a seperate, standalone line that operates outside of the current suburban rail system. The 2017-18 Federal Budget is due to be handed down by the Turnbull Government on Tuesday, May 9th. Source: Herald Sun. Photo: Steve Christo/Getty. Two teenagers have been arrested after allegedly stabbing a service station attendant to death in Queanbeyan overnight. A co-worker at the Caltex service station attempted to revive the 29-year-old man, who died from his injuries at the scene. Police allege the 15-year-old and 16-year-old boys stabbed him as part of a violent spree, which also saw them bludgeon two other men and stab another. The second stabbing victim is recovering in hospital in a serious but stable condition. Police appealed for public assistance to locate the suspects in the hours after the attacks. Monaro Local Area Commands Superintendent Rod Smith said our police came across a silver Ford Falcon sedan and attempted to pull that car over. After that proved unsuccessful, officers pursued them from southern New South Wales into the ACT. Superintendent Smith said that pursuit finished shortly after with both of those offenders being arrested without incident. Superintendent Smith said its an absolutely horrific series of events, and wed just like to reassure everybody that there are two people that we believe are involved, and both of those people are currently in custody. Police are attempting to extradite the suspects back to NSW. Local authorities are conducting a forensic examination at the scene of the crime. Source: Sydney Morning Herald / ABC. Photo: Michael Hammond / Twitter. Frankly, this looks pretty goddamned great. Tupac Shakur, easily one of the most controversial and strongest voices in the history of American hip hop culture, is set to have his tragically short life documented on the big screen in the upcoming biopic All Eyez on Me. The film, which was originally titled simply Tupac, copped its first trailer after distributing company Lionsgate dropped it earlier this morning. And it looks extremely promising. If nothing else, the film has certainly nailed its casting efforts, with lead actors Demetrius Shipp Jr. and Jamal Woolard the spitting images of the late Tupac and Biggie Smalls respectively. The film focuses on Tupacs life and career, from his upbringing in a family with deep ties to the Black Panther movement, to his untimely murder in Las Vegas in September 1996 amid a deep and bloody division of the American hip hop community. The film was directed by prolific music video creator Benny Boom, and also stars Danai Gurira, Lauren Cohen, Dominic L. Santana as Suge Knight, and Kat Graham as Tupacs school friend Jada Pinkett. Its set for a US release on June 16th. No word yet on any potential Australian release date. Source: YouTube. Welp. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has all but confirmed that Australia will be following the United States lead on the Syrian conflict, after President Donald Trumps administration oversaw a missile strike on a Homs airbase earlier this afternoon. Speaking to 3AW Radio following the strike, Turnbull said he cant go into any more detail regarding Australias response to a nerve gas attack which killed scores of Syrian civilians earlier this week. However, he said the gas attack, which is widely believed to have been perpetrated by the ruling Bashar al-Assad regime, cries out for a strong response. Regarding that response, Turnbull said Australia remains in close and constant communication with our allies, in particular the United States. The Prime Minister confirmed hes spoken to Defence Minister Marise Payne and Chief of the Australian Defence Force Mark Binskin regarding the matter. If the conflict escalates and if our defence force does fully align itself with further American military interventions Australia may be dragged even deeper into one of the most complex conflicts of the modern age. Source: The Guardian. Photo: Anadolu Agency / Getty. PEDESTRIAN.TV has teamed up with Virgin Australia to celebrate one of their newest routes: Melbourne to Los Angeles. As of April 4th, youll be able to throw on those oversized Miu Miu shades, pack your LV cabin trunk and hotfoot it straight to the City of Angels, all glam, no stopover. You can book a flight here. Think about your major goal in life. You know, the bigger picture, your craziest dream. Just take a moment to visualise it. Now imagine that youve hit it, youve clocked it; youre there. Do you not picture yourself riding away into the sunset in a convertible?! No?! It goes that way in all the best stories. Danny Zuko and Sandy Olsson. Marge Simpson and Ruth Powers. Thelma and Lou oh wait Regardless of how it ends, theres definitely something special about a droptop. The most iconic place to ride round getting your hair all wind-whipped? America! LA is the perfect place to take a sneaky lil road trip from there are tons of amazing places just a few hours away, and most take you on some pretty incredible winding roads, past gorgeous beaches or through desert plains. Heres a brief index of the places you must roll into on a vehicular trip through the states. And absolutely do so in a convertible. LA > JOSHUA TREE NATIONAL PARK Time: 2 hours. Photo: Emil Muench / Getty. Sitting between the Colorado and Mojave deserts, this region is a protected national landmark thats basically built for a road trip. Rugged rock formations and stark desert landscapes are what make this place really special. Named after the iconic twisted trees that dot its landscape, Joshua Tree National Park is just the place you can imagine driving through, blaring Jamiroquai. It even has desert tortoises. LA > MALIBU Time: 45 minutes. Photo: Doug Pensinger / Getty. Make like Malibu Barbie, hire yoself a hot pink convertible and take in all that the California coastline has to offer. This highway is the longest in the state, running from top to bottom, but from LA, even cruising down to Malibu will get you maximum coastal vibes and fresh salt air. Plus, Malibu is home to a significant portion of LAs best mansions and plenty of celebs live in the quieter area, so youre likely to spot a few when you stop for a green juice. LA > PALM SPRINGS Time: 2 hours. Photo: Frederic Lewis / Getty. If youre a fan of midcentury-modern architecture, hot springs and rolling greens, Palm Springs if the place 4 U. Lucile Ball, Don Barclay & Leonardo DiCaprio have (or had) all called this place home at some point, and its not hard to see why. Cruise the suburban streets thats where youll cop the sight of most of the best homes. LA > LAS VEGAS Time: 4 hours. Photo: PictureNet / Getty. The views on the way there arent much to write home about think bumper to bumper highway traffic but the route from LA to Vegas is featured in a billion movies (The Hangover, anyone?) so youll love it sick regardless. The real visual win comes when you hit The Strip try and get in at dusk for the best blend of Vegas lights and the beaut desert sunset. Cruise in a loop for as long as you want theres plenty to check out, from the fountain show at Bellagio to the faux-volcano at Mirage. LA > LAGUNA BEACH Time: 1 hour. Photo: Jessica Crutchfield / Getty. Consider this trip the perfect blend of gorgeous beachside vistas, and all the 00s mems. This semi-sleepy beach town full of rich people was the setting for the eponymous MTV show starring real teens who went on to be big stars (paging Kristen Cavallari and Lauren Conrad), so if you were a fan back in the days of elastic belts and chequered Vans, expect to fan hard over all the memorable sites. Never heard of it? Well you definitely once watched The OC, and this tripll take you through most of general Orange County, where Marissa and Ryan lived it up in the coastal mansions. Wanna hit up LA yourself and give one of these road trips a whirl? You could win return tix from Melbs > LA thanks to Virgin Australia if you enter our lil comp right here: WIN RETURN TIX FROM MELBOURNE TO LA THANKS TO VIRGIN AUSTRALIA Photo: Nrah Michelle. Your mates and ours Queens of the Stone Age are coming back down to Australia for a whirlwind series of headline shows including, for the first time, a gig in Darwin. Theyre coming down for Splendour in the Grass, but theyre making time for a few headliner sideshows as well. Theyll play Sydneys Hordern Pavilion on Wednesday 19th July, and Melbournes Festival Hall on Thursday 20th July. Then theyre hitting up Darwins Convention Centre on Sunday 16th July Which is fucking great, obviously more international acts should head to the Top End while theyre swanning around the eastern states. General public tickets to all shows will go on sale Wednesday 12 April. There arent gonna be any more shows so this isnt one to miss. Photo: Supplied. Steinman Communications, the owner of LNP and LancasterOnline has sold the Intelligencer Printing Company. Lancaster County-based Pemcor Printing Company LLC and AE Litho LLC of Beverly, New Jersey formed Intellicor Communications on Monday in order to acquire the Intelligencer Printing Company from Steinman Communications and combine all three operations. The new company headquarters will be based in the former Intelligencer Printing building at 330 Eden Road in Manheim Township. Eventually, printing and mailing services will be consolidated at the building on Eden Road. The Pemcor facility at 2100 State Road in East Hempfield Township will remain operational for the foreseeable future, the new company said in a press release. The AE Litho facility in Beverly, New Jersey will serve as the fulfillment and logistics center for Intellicor. The company's marketing division, AIM Communications will be a strategic focus for the group, the press release said. Pemcor offers commercial printing, mailing and marketing. AE Litho specializes in the healthcare and financial markets providing business forms, custom labels, promotional products and more. Intelligencer Printing is a commercial printer. Intelligencer, dates back to 1794 and employs 112 full-time and part-time employees, according to an LNP report. The companies will continue operating under their individual names as divisions of Intellicor Communications for the foreseeable future, the press release said. Dean Baker is the president of Intellicor. Baker had a 32 year history with Intelligencer, including serving as president since October 2016. Jeff Bozzi and Michael Hurly are the principals of the new company. Two women are dead following a wee-hour, wrong-way crash in western Pennsylvania. As TribLive.com reports, the 3:30 a.m. Thursday crash occurred on Route 28 in Pittsburgh as one of the women was driving the wrong way on an inbound lane of the highway, striking the other driver head-on. Two women in their 20s are dead following a wee-hour, wrong-way crash in western Pennsylvania. And there is still no explanation for why one of the drivers was going the wrong way on a major city route. Police identified the wrong-way driver as Sidney Cope, 24, of Coraopolis, Pa. She was pronounced dead shortly after being rushed to a local hospital. The other driver, also killed, was Clara Katherine Roberts, 24, of Pearland, Texas. She lasted several hours at the hospital before being pronounced dead, according to the TribLive.com report. There was no immediate explanation for why Cope was driving the wrong way. An investigation into the crash continues. You will leave Fisher's Deli & Bakery smelling like bacon. The griddles at the stand, located in the brick building at the Broad Street Market in Harrisburg, sizzle non-stop. Strips of cooked bacon are stacked high in containers, waiting to be topped onto sandwiches. Fisher's Deli & Bakery at the Broad Street Market is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. Customers don't mind waiting in line for Fisher's meaty subs, generous breakfast sandwiches and deli salads. They say the prices are right. A 12-inch regular Italian sub costs $5.50, a Reuben sandwich is $5.25 and the 12-inch cheesesteaks $7. The Amish-run stand also sell pies, doughnuts, cookies, whoopie pies, and ice cream as well as entrees including Italian sausages and pork barbecue. It's simple, no-frills food. This year, Fisher's is celebrating its 30th anniversary at the market. In 1987, Levi Fisher purchased the stand, which is now operated by his daughter, Mary Ann Esh. A celebration and thank you to customers will be held April 8 with free hot dogs, coffee and tote bags. The stand also will be offering samples of some of its foods. Otherwise, the stand is open from 7 a.m.-6 p.m. Thursday-Friday and 7 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturdays. Food Finds is a feature that takes a look at foods worth ordering at central Pennsylvania restaurants, from off-the-beaten spots to corner bars and ethnic eateries. The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture oversees restaurant inspections in the state. Inspection reports are "snapshots" of the day and time the inspections took place. In many cases, violations are corrected on site prior to the inspector leaving. The following restaurants and other establishments in Lebanon County that handle food were inspected during the week of March 12-18 and were recorded as of March 29 READ MORE: READ MORE: March 16 DAIRY QUEEN #10429 1512 E CUMBERLAND ST., LEBANON Regular inspection Blender pitchers not all smooth, easily cleanable and/or resistant to pitting, cracking or scratching. SHEETZ #370 195 ROCHERTY ROAD, LEBANON Regular inspection Food contact surfaces of several plastic containers not smooth, easily cleanable and/or resistant to pitting, cracking or scratching; plastic food containers had food residue and were not clean to sight and touch. March 15 KUGO CHINESE GRILL 1723 QUENTIN ROAD, LEBANON Regular inspection Commercially processed refrigerated, ready-to-eat, time/temperature-control-for-safety food in the sushi area held more than 24 hours not being marked with the date it was opened; raw chicken stored above raw shrimp in walk-in box; fume hood not fully equipped with filters across the entire exhaust area; ice machine not cleaned at a frequency to prevent the presence of mold; ice in the hand-wash sink, indicating uses other than hand-washing. MCDONALD'S #22266 1725 QUENTIN ROAD, LEBANON Regular inspection Food employees in prep area not wearing hair restraints, such as nets or hats that completely restrain the hair; packages of food stored in areas where is it subject to splash from dish washing; food-contact surface of plastic containers not smooth, easily cleanable and/or resistant to pitting, cracking or scratching; assorted food-contact containers on the drying shelf had food residue; shelving in rear area had an accumulation of dust, dirt, food residue, debris on non-food-contact surfaces. MUSSER'S MARKETS #321 1750 QUENTIN ROAD, LEBANON Regular inspection Food employees not wearing proper hair restraints, such as nets or hats that control pony tails; exposed food preparation in deli area under dirty ventilation ducts, subject to potential contamination; metal shelving in seafood cooler rusty; food containers on drying rack not clean to sight and touch in deli area; ground meat patty machine and vegetable chopper had residue and were not clean to sight and touch. March 13 BURGER KING #620 2040 W. CUMBERLAND ST., LEBANON Regular inspection Cleaning agents stored with or above towels used for wiping food-contact surfaces; several stored food storage items had food residue and were not clean to sight and touch; non-food-contact surfaces not cleaned at a frequency to preclude accumulation of dirt and soil; food debris and litter under and around equipment. DAIRY QUEEN WEST #10430 2600 W. CUMBERLAND ST., LEBANON Regular inspection Collars used to make blizzards not protected from splash during preparation. GIANT FOOD #6098 481 W. PENN AVE., CLEONA Regular inspection Food employees in deli and produce areas not wearing proper hair restraints, such that pony tails and longer hair were not restrained; overhead vents at fume hoods dusty, posing a risk of contamination of exposed food during preparation; hand sinks have residue in the junctures of the basin and shields. SPEEDWAY #06732 2190 W. CUMBERLAND ST., LEBANON Regular inspection Food containers on drying rack had food residue and were not clean to sight and touch; food debris and litter under equipment and shelving. WENDY'S #0400 2420 W. CUMBERLAND ST., LEBANON Regular inspection Shelving for storing food and related items have food debris that can be dislodged, with the potential to cause contamination of stored items; back-up plastic and metal food storage items had food residue and were not clean to sight and touch; non-food-contact surfaces not cleaned at a frequency to preclude accumulation of dirt and soil; food debris and litter under and around equipment. Establishments with no violations. March 17 PRETZEL HUT, THE 2224 FURNACE HILL PIKE, NEWMANSTOWN Regular inspection March 16 COLEBROOK TAVERN & RESTAURANT 1510 MOUNT WILSON ROAD, LEBANON Regular inspection For more than five decades, George "Toby" Young Jr. was the voice of gospel radio music and the African American community in Harrisburg. Young, who hosted the "Echoes of Glory" gospel show on radio station WCMB, died Wednesday at the age of 83. "I came here in 1974 and his radio program was one of the few outlets the African American community had to hear news that related specifically to them. His community bulletin board afforded African Americans an opportunity to announce their activities, as a courtesy of the radio station he was working at," said Reginald Guy, co-founder of the MLK Leadership Development Institute. "Toby was generous with his microphone. When there were matters of civil rights that needed to be discussed he would afford the community an opportunity to air its concerns and grievances." Guy said Young was "a community person" who had "an enormous capacity to love his fellow man." In 1987, Young was honored by the Harrisburg Chapter of the Black United Fund. At the time, he was affirmative action officer for the Pennsylvania Civil Service Commission. He also was honored by the state House and Senate for his work. In 1990 he received a Harrisburg Gospel People's Choice Glo Award for lifetime achievement. He was honored for his work to promote gospel music in the city. He also was named favorite gospel disc jockey. He was responsible for helping to arrange a sold-out concert by James Brown at the Zembo Temple in 1959. In 2014, Guy had a theater party to celebrate the release of the James Brown biopic, "Get on Up." Young was the guest of honor. "He was so proud of the fact that that movie had come out and he had played a role in bringing James Brown to town," Guy said. "We have lost a giver. He wasn't a taker, he wasn't selfish at all. He was generous with his time, his mic and with his heart," Guy said. In November 1991, Patriot-News staff writer, the late Cal Turner, interviewed Young. Here is that story: Harry Truman was still in the White House when George "Toby" Young stepped out of the old William Penn High School with his diploma in spring 1952. But it wasn't Harry and Korea that was on Young's mind. He remembers asking himself, how and where "can a colored guy get in? Remember that was almost 40 years ago." His buddy and classmate, Olin Harris, pondered the same question. Both black, both outstanding baritones, whizzes in speech and both anchored to their churches - Young to St. Paul's Baptist and Harris to Goodwin Memorial Baptist - and gospel music, their futures weren't awash with career opportunities. But, oh, what good fortune we had, recalls Young. "I had been talking about broadcasting," he said. "I just wasn't interested in television. Olin was interested in broadcasting, too. But like I said, we had good fortune. We had our pastor, [the late] Reverend Franklin Henley as our mentor. "He met with us. We had our [radio] program of gospel music and church information - 'Echoes of Glory,' which Olin started in 1957 on WCMB. I came aboard in 1966, and the program had done extremely well right from the beginning. "But we had these good talk sessions with Reverend Henley and he said it was important that 'Echoes of Glory' stay on the air for the good of the community. He said, 'Olin will go to WHP-TV and Toby will stay with 'Echoes of Glory.' "Olin became the first black anchor on television in the area. He was one of the best - black or white. I stayed with 'Echoes' and have not regretted one day of it. It's heard now from 9 to 11 a.m. on Sundays from WMIX-AM, Wormleysburg." A broad-shouldered man of 58 with full features and a solid mustache, Young exudes a hard-won self-sufficiency and a pleasantness that has not crumbled in the workaday world of radio and selling ads, three years in the Army and in his post with the Pennsylvania Civil Service Commission. Radio and gospel still captivate him. "Radio calls for the listener - and the broadcaster - to use their imaginations," he said. "It's not like television where things are spread right out there in front of you and you might absorb it. Radio needs listener participation, that imagination, and I have to use mine. He also had "The Toby Young Show," a rhythm-and-blues radio show in the 1970s. "I felt that the church community would have objections," he said. "During the week, I'm saying 'Oh Baby' and on Sunday it's 'Thank You, Lord.'" He said that he was reminded of those lyrics from blues classic "Stormy Monday": "The eagle flies on Friday. Saturday I go out and play. Sunday I go to church and fall down on my knees and pray." "Toby and I grew up together," said Ernie P. Davis, local insurance and financial-planning specialist. "He is one of the nicest persons you can find. He will always try to do for you. He is the senior warden in Chosen Friends Lodge 43." Growing up in Bessemer, Ala., and Harrisburg, Young said he knew well the sting of segregation and the struggle of the black person in white America. "Things for blacks have improved somewhat," he said. "But there is still a long way to go. You shouldn't be fooled by the progress of a few. A lot of people are still on the ground." Recent combat with two searing illnesses has not darkened his spirit. "Through it all I've remained a Christian. In the long run that is what counts. Anytime, anywhere, I wouldn't be without my church," he said. "Ever." A crash has closed a portion of Route 147 in Lower Mahanoy Township, Northumberland County, near the Dauphin County line, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. The crash was reported earlier Friday morning. Traffic in both directions has been shut down between Mahantongo Creek Road and Mountain Road, PennDOT said. A detour is in place using Mahantango Creek Road, Malta Road and Hill Road, according to PennDOT. A detour is in place using Route 3024 (Mahantango Creek Road), Route 3017 (Malta Road) and Hill Road. The road is expected to be closed for several hours. For more traffic information, follow live traffic updates, accident reports and road closures below from PennDOT, Total Traffic Network and other Twitter sources. Get a look at conditions on local roads -- via PennDOT traffic cameras -- anytime here on PennLive. For Pennsylvania Turnpike updates and possible travel delays visit the Turnpike website here. Tweet us at @pennlive with any incidents you see on your commute or send a submission to submissions@pennlive.com. gavel.jpeg (PennLive archives) Diane Moyer this week received the Ronald Wilson Reagan Public Policy Award from the U.S. Department of Justice. She is the former legal director for the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape and is now on the faculty of AEquitas, a national institute where Moyer instructs prosecutors in the handling of non-stranger rape cases. The Justice Department cited Moyer for her work in Pennsylvania, which included efforts to increase penalties for drug-induced rape, extend the civil statute of limitations for child victims, and establish a statewide plan for the community supervision of sex offenders. "As an advocate and a nationally recognized trainer and policy expert, Ms. Moyer has worked tirelessly to open legal avenues for victims of rape and sexual abuse," Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Justice Programs Alan R. Hanson said in a news release. "The Department of Justice is proud to honor her for her outstanding service and for her unflagging pursuit of justice on behalf of the injured and aggrieved." FILE - In this March 21, 2016, file photo Spanish-American chef Jose Andres answers questions during a panel discussion at an event on entrepreneurship at La Cerveceria, in Havana, Cuba. Andres has settled his dispute with The Trump Organization after backing out of a plan to open a restaurant in WashingtonAos Trump hotel. AndresAo ThinkFoodGroup and The Trump Organization issued a statement Friday, April 7, 2017, saying the lawsuit has been settled. The dealAos terms are confidential. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File) In his search for common ground with the new U.S. administration, federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau has been drawing parallels between the underlying forces that elected Justin Trudeau and Donald Trump. Morneau is seen during a tour of the Vector Institute at the MaRS Discovery District, in Toronto in a March 30, 2017, file photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christopher Katsarov This satellite image provided by DigitalGlobe shows an image captured on April 7 of destroyed aircraft shelters on the southeast side of the Shayrat air base in Syria, following U.S. Tomahawk Land Attack Missile strikes on Friday, April 7, 2017 from the USS Ross (DDG 71) and USS Porter (DDG 78). The United States blasted the air base with a barrage of cruise missiles on Friday, April 7, 2017 in fiery retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. (DigitalGlobe via AP) Today more religious sites are used for corporate events. The latest addition to that is Londons St Pauls Cathedral that joins Searcys Collection. Searcys, the iconic collection of restaurants, bars and venues throughout the UK showcased one of its newest acquisitions, the iconic St Pauls Cathedral, to corporate buyers at an exclusive event on Wednesday night. The evening demonstrated the grandeur, services and creative catering skills that are available at the historical and exclusive venue as well as its links to the rest of the Searcys Collection. St Pauls is an important institution at the very heart of our nations culture. The cathedral is one of the most famous and most recognisable sights of London. Its dome, framed by the spires of Wrens City churches, has dominated the skyline for over 300 years. With Searcys long and illustrious catering heritage, there are two fundamentals that have remained constant for Searcys innovation and quality. As the in-house caterer at St Pauls Cathedral, they can offer an exceptional level of service in order to deliver food and experiences of the highest quality. As part of Searcys growth and business development strategy both the individual venue teams and Searcys Exclusive Events team are constantly seeking new ways to engage with potential clients and influencers. Searcys, who operate St Pauls with catering and event management, served up a range of delectable canapes and champagne and the evening was made even more special with a unique, private organ recital. The evening was also supported by Lavender Green, who dressed the venue with stunning flowers, and Wise Productions, who provided the lighting and AV for the evening. Colin Gray, Operations Director for Searcys at St Pauls, said: Our partnership with St Pauls allows us to provide uniquely creative catering, and we were delighted to showcase this to all our potential clients. Our event hosted over 200 corporate buyers and journalists, who are some of the industrys most influential people. The organ recital was an incredible and very special touch our aim is to always inspire potential clients and offer them a memorable experience. Elise Aspeling, Events Producer at the Guardian news and media, commented; This is my first time at St Pauls Cathedral and its been amazing what an opportunity to listen to a private organ recital in a world-famous landmark such as St Pauls. The venue is spectacular and the Searcys hospitality showcase was second-to-none. I wont hesitate to recommend St Pauls Cathedral and its offering to my organisation. St Pauls hosts a selection of wonderful, flexible spaces suitable for a wide variety of event styles and sizes, from dinners to receptions and daytime meetings. Rooms available for hire include the Wren Suite, Temple Bar, Nelson Chamber, North Churchyard, Chapter House and The Crypt, which can accommodate various sizes from intimate dinners of 20 to 250 guests for a seated dinner or a standing reception. Debby Hickling, Supplier Liaison Manager at the TFI Group, said; St Pauls Cathedral is a perfect venue for us, particularly for a gala dinner or reception. The magnificent, historic spaces here offer us something truly unique that would make an event extra special and memorable, and provide an impressive backdrop for the exclusive catering services offered by Searcys. Event enquiries can be taken via the Searcys Exclusive Events team, who use their extensive venue knowledge to provide buyers with a one-stop service for the sourcing and booking of venues across the Searcys portfolio. Community discussion about wheelway repair efforts set for Nov. 15 The Top of Michigan Trails Council and Beards Brewery will be hosting an event to discuss recent updates on the Little Traverse Wheelway collapse. Tellurian LNG export company offer fixed-price LNG deliver to Japan buyers CHIBA, Japan Petroleumworld 04 07 2017 Japanese buyers of liquefied natural gas have shown cautious interest in Tellurian Inc's bold guarantee of U.S. LNG delivered at a fixed price from 2023, wary of locking themselves into a price that may eventually work to their disadvantage. Tellurian Chairman Charif Souki - who pioneered the first U.S. LNG exports ex-Alaska as head of Cheniere Energy - stirred things up at the Gastech conference in Japan from the start, offering cargoes delivered to Japan at a flat $8 per million British thermal units (mmBtu). That goes against four decades of selling LNG and building liquefaction plants worth billions of dollars on the basis of long-term, fixed-volume contracts linked to the price of oil. Souki's move looked to be in keeping with LNG importers pushing for lower prices and better terms, yet even some of the most aggressive buyers seemed taken aback by the flat rate. "Fixed prices are a gamble," JERA Co's chief fuel transactions office Hiroki Sato told Reuters in an interview at the conference when asked about Souki's offer. "If you hear now that you can buy LNG for Japan at $8 in 2023, everybody would probably say it's cheap. But ... actions based on predictions rarely work out. That is how it works in the world," he said. 'NOT BUYING AT $8' Tokyo-based JERA Co, a partnership of Tokyo Electric Power and Chubu Electric Power, is the world's biggest buyer of the fuel. Last month it joined with Korea Gas Corp and China National Offshore Oil Corp to form a club to force producers to drop so-called destination clauses. Despite Sato's wariness, Souki "is a genius (for) throwing a stone in the pond and creating a ripple. I don't know how I evaluate that or if it is good or bad," he said. During supply shortfalls - such as when the Fukushima nuclear crisis of 2011 led to the shutdown of Japan's reactors and imports of LNG and coal spiked to records to replace lost power generation - prices can run up rapidly. Spot LNG prices in Asia LNG-AS were at more than $20/mmBtu in February 2014, for instance, but with the more recent surplus they are now trading at less than $6/mmBtu. Buyers might decide that $8/mmBtu looked cheap if oil prices were at $80 or $100, said Ryosuke Tsugaru, chief executive of Diamond Gas International, a subsidiary of Mitsubishi Corp , said on the sidelines of the conference. "But oil by nature is volatile. And if a fixed $8 turned out to be expensive, I don't know what they would do," Tsugaru said. "I am not buying at $8," he said. DRUM ROLL, PLEASE Souki made his offer on Tuesday to deliver LNG to Japan at $8/mmBtu from 2023 under five-year contracts, including shipping. The offer covers an initial 7 million tonnes a year of LNG from Tellurian's planned Driftwood project in Louisiana. "I think we will be sold out by the end of the year," he later said, as two Taiko drummers banged away at Tellurian's stand in the conference hall in Chiba near Tokyo, drawing a crowd of gas executives and onlookers who snapped pictures while drinking wine and champagne. Souki told Reuters he had received a strong response from buyers in Japan, which takes about a third of global LNG output. He declined to identify any companies that had shown interest. Australia's Woodside Petroleum is also considering sales of some of its LNG on a fixed-price basis, Chief Executive Officer Peter Coleman told reporters at a Gastech press briefing, although he mentioned no specific level. "We can get to Japan for eight bucks, so it is fine with me," said Elizabeth Spomer, executive vice president at Veresen Inc and head of its planned Jordan Cove LNG project, when asked about the Tellurian offer. The Jordan Cove terminal will be built in Oregon on the Pacific Coast of U.S. so is closer to Japan. Driftwood supplies from the U.S. Gulf Coast would need to come through the expanded Panama Canal or make an even longer journey. "Charif is always provocative and it will be interesting to see what they do," Spomer said. Individuals and businesses that are making the world more welcoming for LGBTQ travelers in 2017 will be presented at the 34th Annual Global Convention of the International Gay & Lesbian Travel Association with the support from Visit Philadelphia. The IGLTA board of directors selects the IGLTA Honors recipients from the associations member businesses in 70 countries and its allies. And the awards will be presented throughout the conference, 4-6 May, in St. Petersburg, Florida. The IGLTA Annual Global Convention promotes education and networking for LGBTQ tourism professionals to ensure more welcoming global tourism experiences, said IGLTA Board Chair Juan Julia. This years IGLTA Honors recipients have been working for years promoting, educating, and improving LGBTQ tourism. They give voice to our community and support us as we journey around the world. Corporate Leadership: George A. Kalogridis, President, Walt Disney World Resort . He currently oversees a workforce of 74,000 Cast Members at four theme parks and 26 resort hotels, all in Orlando, Florida. He also serves on the boards of the Metro Orlando Economic Development Commission Governors Council, Out & Equal Workplace Advocates and Give Kids the World. Under the leadership of Kalogridis, Walt Disney World has increased its commitment to diversity and given greater support to LGBTQ family travel. Community (based in the convention state/region): Barbara Poma/onePULSE Foundation. The owner of Pulse nightclub in Orlando established a Foundation to assist victims of the mass shooting at the club and to transform the site into a memorial for the 49 lives lost in the 12 June 2016 tragedy. Hanns Ebensten Hall of Fame Award: Christina Guggenberger , who founded the Stockholm Gay and Lesbian Network 10 years ago, has spent more than three decades promoting her home city. This Honor, bestowed on a longtime IGLTA member, takes its name from the man widely considered the father of gay travel. Pioneer in Destination Marketing: Tourism Authority of Thailand , for taking the lead in LGBTQ travel promotion in Asia, where there has been little government-supported outreach to our community. The Go Thai. Be Free LGBTQ campaign launched in 2011. Travel Writer: Andrew Collins began his career at Fodors in 1991 and five years later, as a freelancer, authored Fodors Gay Guide to the USA, t he first LGBTQ travel guidebook produced by a major mainstream guidebook publisher. He has since contributed to more than 180 Fodors titles and countless LGBTQ publications. In addition, the IGLTA staff honors a member of its volunteer ambassador team for outstanding contributions to the association and LGBTQ tourism. Ambassador of the Year: Russell Lord , representing Israel, was instrumental to IGLTAs representation in the inaugural Pink Pavilion for LGBTQ travel at the International Mediterranean Tourism Market (IMTM) in Tel Aviv this year and has been a long-term supporter of IGLTA and LGBTQ tourism in Israel. Get your history straight and your nightlife gay: visitphilly.com/lgbt/ Book your hotel in St. Petersburg, Florida and attend the Annual Global Convention, please visit iglta.org/convention for more information about the convention. Philadelphia is ranked amongst the top 50 most dog-friendly cities in America. This comes as no surprise since the town is home to countless beautifully maintained parks for pets to enjoy. Were breaking down the best dog parks in Philly Operating 41 lounges in 13 countries, Turkeys TAV Operation Services will operate two lounges at the terminal Building of Arturo Merino Benitez Santiago International Airport and will provide meet & assist services. Arturo Merino Benitez Santiago International Airport has become the 25th airport included to the portfolio of primeclass, the brand of TAV Operation Services that offers solutions to the ones who seek comfort while traveling. With this addition, TAV Operation Services reached 41 lounges at 25 airports worldwide. The Primeclass Pacifico and Servicios Aeroportuarios S.A. partnership established in Chile won the tender for the operation of the lounges for five years. Arturo Merino Benitez Santiago International Airport is the seventh busiest airport in Latin America with 19.2 million passengers. TAV Operation Services General Manager Ali Bora Isbulan stated: TAV Operation Services undertakes innovative projects with its advanced technology and strong infrastructure. At TAV Operation Services, which established its business development mentality on a global perspective, is glad to include a new lounge to its existing operations. Thanks to our 15 years of experience and our portfolio including more than 40 lounges and establishing a partnership with Primeclass Pacifico and Servicios Aeroportuarios S.A., our company has the goal to welcome 280,000 passengers per year at the lounges and provide meet & assist services. TAV Operation Services has become one of the world's highly-preferred brands in developing privileged travel solutions. We host 3 million passengers per annum at the lounges we operate and provide meet & assist services to 100,000 passengers. Following Turkish Airlines Star Alliance lounges that we opened in Nairobi and Washington D.C. Dulles airports in 2016, we will put into operation lounges at Frankfurt, Muscat, Copenhagen and Zurich airports with our primeclass brand in 2017". Operating at 19 terminals which are operated by TAV Airports in 9 countries, TAV Operation Services develops products and services to meet the changing requirements, demands and circumstances of the passengers as well as administrating non-aviation revenues. Furthermore, the company manages the creation of exclusive products and services, marketing of advertisement and promotional areas, allocation of commercial areas, CIP Service, operation of lounges, TAV Tourism, TAVport.com, Airporteasy.com, "TAV Passport" Card and "primeclass" Lounge Card membership schemes at various airports, train stations, marine terminals and cruiser terminals in Turkey and abroad. At least four people were killed when a truck was driven into pedestrians on the busiest street in the center of Stockholm, Swedish police say. Several people were also injured in the incident on Drottninggatan (Queen Street), one of the city's major pedestrian streets. Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said everything pointed to an act of terrorism. Local media reported one arrest, but police have said no-one is being held. The truck was hijacked earlier on Friday, its owner said. The crash happened at the Ahlens department store just before 15:00 local time. Police in Stockholm have urged people to stay at home and avoid the city center. Parliament and the Stockholm subway were placed in lockdown. All train services in and out of Stockholm Central Station were halted and people were evacuated, the Swedish state railway company said. The Planetary Society Our Vision Know the cosmos and our place within it. Our Mission Empowering the world's citizens to advance space science and exploration. David Griffith (Photo: Kelly Bracken) Last month a Chicago-area criminal was sentenced to nine years in prison for shooting a former member of his gang. This will be his second term in prison. His first experience with the penal system began when he was 13 years old. In 1993 Thaddeus Jimenez, who was a "peewee" member of a gang called the Simon City Royals, was convicted and sentenced to 45 years for killing a 19-year-old who was in a rival gang. He served only 16 years because it was proven that he had been wrongly convicted. Another man even confessed to the crime. Upon his release Jimenez sued for the loss of 16 years of freedom. He won the lawsuit. So in 2012 the city of Chicago was ordered to pay him $25 million. His lawyers reportedly took half of the judgment. Jimenez was left with $12.5 million. Imagine what you could do with $12.5 million. You could play with some of it, invest some of it, put some in safe savings, and you, your children, and maybe even your grandchildren, would probably never have to worry about money again. But that's not what Jimenez did. He reportedly used the money to further his criminal ambitions. Authorities say the reason he shot that man in 2015 was the man refused to rejoin the Simon City Royals. The victim had left the "life," but Jimenez was rebuilding the gang with himself as the leader and wasn't willing to take "no" for an answer. Prosecutors say Jimenez used the judgment he was awarded for his wrongful conviction to pay $50,000 recruiting bonuses to gangbangers who would join his crew. He even bought them guns and cars. That means the taxpayers of the city of Chicago actually paid this guy money so he could make area crime even worse. Tax money should be going for things like public safety, better roads, and services for people who need them. It shouldn't be used for building criminal empires. Nor should it be used to make plaintiffs' attorneys rich. But plaintiffs' attorneys are getting rich. They have unleashed a never-ending plague of contingency-fee lawsuits against law enforcement and government agencies that promise them up to and sometimes more than 40% of any award they win for their clients. People should be able to sue for compensation when they have been legitimately damaged. But the awards being paid to settle some lawsuits are out of control, and we need to do something about them. According to Governing, a publication for state and local government workers, New York City paid out $720 million in claims and judgments in fiscal year 2016. In the same article, Governing reported that the 24 largest cities in the U.S. paid out more than $1.2 billion over the same period. Many of the claims against those cities were reaally against law enforcement, which is tragic because they likely could have been prevented if the agencies involved had been given that money in the first place. With more money the agencies could have hired more officers, fielded better equipment, and offered more comprehensive training. Governing's report says this situation is getting worse. And the reason is because plaintiffs' attorneys are getting very creative and "constantly coming up with new theories of litigation and new ways to sue." So I believe it's time for taxpayers and government officials to band together and get creative to fight this trend. Here's my admittedly far-fetched solution. We need reasonable liability limits. There's no way Thaddeus Jimenez should have been paid $25 million for his wrongful conviction. He deserved a bunch of money, but that's insane. Such precedent-setting awards spur higher and higher judgments in liability cases. Once liability is limited, government entities should refuse to settle any suit. The "bend over" legal strategy practiced by most cities has to end. Finally, if a person who has been awarded a judgment or settlement against a government entity commits a violent crime, that should mean automatic forfeit of the award or anything purchased with it. Of course, any attempt to restrict liability and awards would also trigger political action by trial lawyers and probably a bunch of lawsuits supported by the ACLU. So it's likely impossible to do anything to rein in the settlements and judgments that rob citizens of services and you of resources. But I can dream. Can't I? Officer Jeronimo Yanez (Photo: Ramsey County SO) The trial of St. Anthony, MN, police officer Jeronimo Yanez in last year's fatal shooting of Philando Castile will remain in Ramsey County, where the death occurred, a judge ruled Thursday. Ramsey County District Court Judge William H. Leary III issued his decision denying defense attorneys' motion for a change of venue after hearing impassioned arguments in court Tuesday morning, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports. Yanez's attorneys, Paul Engh, Earl Gray and Thomas Kelly, argued in court filings and at Tuesday's hearing that media coverage was "slanted" against their client, and that the case had become an "omnipresent spectacle." "The Minnesota Supreme Court has held that pretrial publicity is not solely determinative of whether a change of venue should be granted," Leary wrote in his decision. "Rather, the fundamental issue is whether jurors from the community where the alleged crime occurred can honestly and in good conscience set aside pretrial publicity and their own impressions or opinions regarding the case." Officer Yanez, 29, was charged Nov. 16 with second-degree manslaughter and two felony counts of dangerous discharge of a firearm in the death of Castile, 32, during a traffic stop in Falcon Heights on July 6. The last two charges filed against Yanez, who is on paid administrative leave, are for endangering Castile's girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, and her then-4-year-old daughter, who were in the car at the time. The trial is scheduled for May 30. Today the New York City Police Department announced the release of its proposed police officer body-worn camera (BWC) procedure. The language of the proposed procedure ensures officers participating in the body-worn camera pilot program capture objective records of encounters, while encouraging lawful and respectful interactions between the public and the police. This updated procedure has been submitted to Peter Zimroth, the NYPD federal monitor, for his review and approval. The body-worn camera procedure is the culmination of a yearlong negotiation involving the NYPD Inspector General, NYCs respective District Attorneys, members of the New York City Council, Public Advocate, New York Civil Liberties Union, Civilian Complaint Review Board, Patrolmans Benevolent Association, Citizens Crime Commission, and more. Significant provisions of the policy cover when and under what circumstances cameras should activated, how footage can be viewed, retention of footage, and the release of footage to the public: Activation of cameras: Mandatory activation during all enforcement and investigative encounters. Mandatory deactivation during interactions with confidential informants or sex crime victims, as well as internal meetings and training. Viewing of footage: An officer may view his or her own, and other officers BWC footage in the furtherance of official duties (arrest processing, etc.). During an official department investigation, including serious injury or death of a person, or an officer firearms discharge, the officer concerned may view his or her own BWC recordings at a time deemed appropriate by the supervisor in charge of the investigation before being required a compelled statement. Retention of footage: Body camera footage will be retained for one year (and can be retained longer on a case by case basis). Release of footage: The procedure will also cover how and when footage is released to prosecutors, during litigation, and to the public. Training: Officers participating in the BWC rollout will be given a customized one-day training course at the NYPD Police Academy in Queens. The curriculum will include an overview of the program, a review of BWC videos, participation in role-play scenarios, and a workshop explaining the video management software. Beyond this initial training, each participating precincts training sergeant will oversee a 90-day field-training period at the precinctin conjunction with the Risk Management Bureau and the Information Technology Bureau. Feedback from officers who participated in the initial BWC pilot program has been positive. Officers noted members of the public were receptive to the BWC and that footage from the cameras proved helpful with police investigations, and with allegations of misconduct. In the report being released today, the Department responds to that input, explaining its reasoning in reaching important policy decisions. The Department in formulating its procedure reviewed the policies of 50 other departments across the country. Based on the Departments research and the accompanying feedback, the NYPD made several modifications to the initial BWC procedure, including: Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print Well, that was quick, wasnt it? According to NBC News, the U.S. has officially taken military action in Syria just days after Bashar al-Assad launched a chemical attack on his people Trumps first major military intervention and hes only been in office for 76 days. More than 50 Tomahawk cruise missiles fired by US on Syrian airfield nears Homs; runway, aircraft, infrastructure targeted. NBC Nightly News (@NBCNightlyNews) April 7, 2017 The news organization reports that dozens of missiles were launched from Navy destroyers, targeting a Syrian airfield where its believed the chemical attack originated from. More from NBC News: The United States launched dozens of cruise missiles Thursday night at a Syrian airfield in response to what it believes was the Syrian governments use of banned chemical weapons blamed for having killed at least 100 people on Tuesday, U.S. military officials told NBC News. The U.S. military fired at least 50 Tomahawk missiles intended for a single target Ash Shairat in Homs province in western Syria, the officials said. Thats the airfield from which the United States believes the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad fired the banned weapons. The missile launch authorized by the Trump administration represents a stunning reversal of the presidents previous position, which was opposition to any military action in Syria. In 2013, he even tweeted this: President Obama, do not attack Syria. There is no upside and tremendous downside. Save your powder for another (and more important) day! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 7, 2013 Not all of the details are known at this hour, but what is evident is that Trump or whoever made this decision while the president remains at his non-secure Mar-a-Lago resort was more interested in making a symbolic, political move than he was in making a thoughtful decision that would have a positive, lasting impact on the situation in Syria and the region more generally. Its still not clear whether Americas allies or the U.S. Congress were informed by the administration before they launched this offensive in Syria. Its also important to remember that Trump had no approval, whether from the United Nations or Congress, to bomb a sovereign country. This is still a developing situation, but it certainly didnt take the new president long to start a new war in the Middle East. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print Congressional Democrats and activists are criticizing President Trump for launching a missile strike against Syria without congressional authorization which means that Trump illegally escalated the US militarys role in Syria. Ilya Sheyman, executive director of MoveOn.org Political Action, said in a statement provided to PoliticusUSA: This illegal and unauthorized escalation could have devastating consequences, killing innocent Syrians and costing the lives of U.S. service members. Lets be clear: Theres no doubt that Bashar Assad is a brutal dictator who has slaughtered his own people and is complicit in the use of chemical weapons. But this is no humanitarian mission. These are missiles ordered by a flailing president with plummeting approval ratings, trying to show how tough he can be. The result will likely be increased suffering for the Syrian people. And this unilateral U.S. attack could possibly even draw in Russia and Iran, which have been close partners of the Assad regime. Congress must not allow Trump to act unilaterally. It must stay in session and force consideration of an Authorization for Use of Military Force before any more military action is taken. And moreover, members of Congress should vote no to Trumps march to war. The activists arent alone. Democratic congressional leaders immediately pointed out that Trump acted unilaterally without the approval of Congress. The only thing that Trumps missile strike has accomplished is that it escalated the US role in the Syrian conflict. True to character, the Trump administration appears to have taken a knee-jerk unilateral reaction without a long-term strategy. Donald Trump wants Americans to be blinded by flag waving into not asking the critical questions of what his unauthorized executive action means, and what the next step is in Syria? Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print Four-star Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey took aim at Donald Trumps Syrian response on Thursday, claiming it would be a mistake for the commander-in-chief to rush the military into action without thinking it through. McCaffrey said it would be a mistake to conduct limited political signaling in response to Bashar al-Assads chemical attack on his own people. Video: Four-star Army General Barry McCaffrey criticizes Trumps rush to military involvement in Syria: pic.twitter.com/GwNHV5kyGU Sean Colarossi (@SeanColarossi) April 6, 2017 When MSNBCs Chris Matthews asked McCaffrey what the rationale is behind Trumps probable military intervention in Syria, besides political, the four-star general said: I dont think there is an argument. I think it would be a mistake to conduct limited political signaling using naval airpower or F-16s flying out of some place in the region Military power invited unknown consequences when you carry it out. The question might be why dont we consider significant humanitarian assistance to Syrian refugees and border regions of Turkey and Jordan and Iraq in lieu of ineffectual military strikes. As the general said, its obvious that the only real justification for engaging militarily so soon after Assads chemical attack is pure politics. There is never a good reason to recklessly jump to war, especially after the U.S. has essentially been engaged in endless military conflict for over 15 years. But Trump has spent nearly three months in office racking up nothing but losses on issue after issue. In recent days, in particular, his administration has been drowning in scandal and incompetence, both with respect to Russia and the presidents paranoid claims about President Obama wiretapping Trump Tower. Rushing to war will likely provide no positive, lasting impact on Syria, but it will change the subject and play into Trumps phony strongman schtick. But like McCaffrey noted, the U.S. should be emphasizing its humanitarian role in all of this, like, say, helping the refugees or funding humanitarian aid, not rushing to engage our military. Not only would this be a sensible response to this international crisis, but it would be much more effective than dropping bombs in order to score some political points. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print While Americans sit with baited breath awaiting the next batch of Tweets from the Trump, his zealot supporters in the religious right are unleashing some serious Catholic patriarchal domination on women. Either Americans have completely succumbed to living in a theocracy and accept that adult women are destined to be treated like livestock, something not out of the realm of possibility, or the media could not care less that religious Republicans are on a tear to put women in the place the religious right thinks they belong: under church authority. Over the past week, there were two separate atrocities in Iowa that inform women in the state are on the verge of losing what few rights as American citizens they have remaining. One of the horrors, and it has the possibility of being a deadly horror, is the brainchild of a religious Republican representative who believes it is important to force women to carry a dead fetus to term. To demonstrate the level of the cruelty inherent in the religious right, it is noteworthy that the Republican is a woman and proud to be leading the Iowa pro-life movement to subjugate other Iowa women to the whims and absurd ideology of the Catholic pro-life, personhood movement. The other travesty is contained in the same piece of religious legislation lovingly named the feticide bill. And although it is part of the personhood bill forcing women to carry a dead fetus to term, it unconstitutionally grants an unmarried adult womans parents authority to prevent her from terminating a pregnancy. The Iowa personhood/feticide bill might at one time faced certain rejection by the Supreme Court, but Iowas religious Republicans are confident that Trumps religious Justice Department leader and what looks to be a theocratic Supreme Court will rule that adult women deserve fewer rights than a zygote, embryo, or a fetus. A state House panel sent a bill, SF 471, to the full committee that criminalizes abortions that occur 20 weeks after the moment of conception; a moment determined by the Catholic personhood movement. There are no provisions or exceptions for cases of rape or incest, what personhood advocates and most Republicans claim is part of gods plan to populate the Earth. As Iowa Democrats noted, SF 471 also gives parents the legal right to prevent their unmarried adult daughters from having an abortion and empowers them to punish doctors treating adult women. The wording of the religious legislation states, injunctive relief to prevent a physician from performing abortions may be obtained by a parent or guardian of the woman if the woman is less than eighteen years of age or unmarried at the time the abortion. Of course, the theocratic edict doesnt address a situation where the adult womans parents are unavailable, but it is likely they will include a provision in the final version giving some personhood advocate injunction to prevent a physician from performing a legal medical procedure on an adult woman. During what was supposed to be a debate on the merits of allowing the personhood advocates to have purview over womens autonomy, one of SF 471s managers let slip that she condones, and the her edict will force a woman, married or not, to carry a dead fetus (miscarriage) to term. A Democrat on the committee posed a question to Rep. Shannon Lundgren (RR) and her reply informed that requiring women to continue such a miscarriage pregnancy is just fine by her; something about pro-life and personhood. Lundgrens answer also revealed that she either doesnt comprehend the health and safety ramifications of her legislation or more likely that she perfectly understands and is proceeding with religious fervor. Because god. A Democrat on the committee, Rep. John Forbes is a pharmacist and the past president of the Iowa Pharmacy Association and noted to Lundgren that he has a pregnant daughter. He posed a question to Lundgren regarding how the theocratic legislation might affect her, and her life. Mr. Forbes said: Worst case scenario, she talks to her doctor next Wednesday and her doctor tells her, we dont see a heartbeat anymore in this child. Under this legislation, she would have to carry that baby until her life became endangered? Is that good medicine? Without missing a beat Lundgren responded that according to how and why she wrote the legislation, that yes, Mr. Forbes daughter would be forced to carry the rotting fetus to term if it didnt kill her first. Lundgren said, out loud no less; Rep. Forbes, this bill wasnt written for [sic] the intent to protect or govern, on the side of the woman. It was written to save babies lives. I would concur that yes, she would have to carry that baby. Lundgren is an ignorant sot; ignorant of her own bible and ignorant of the most basic fundamentals of human biology. First, a fetus, an embryo, or zygote is not, never has been, and never will be considered a baby regardless what the Catholic personhood movement says. A baby is a human infant that has exited the womb. Furthermore, according to Lundgrens personal copy of the Christian bible, even her almighty gods immutable utterance does not consider a fetus a living being until it is out of the womans womb and breathes air under its own power. That is not this authors opinion, it is the unerring words of the evangelicals biblical god; something the Catholic personhood movement refuses to acknowledge. What should be most revealing, and distressing to women everywhere and the men who care about them was Lundgrens defense of such an extreme religious policy and her own admission that she has no interest in, and her edict wasnt written with the intent of, protecting women; it was written to protect zygotes, embryos and fetuses at the expense of womens lives and their autonomy. The personhood movement and religious Republicans have lusted to take extreme measures to put women under the auspices of the religious right, but until now there was a constitutional firewall against legislation establishing religion; especially when it involves depriving Americans of their civil rights. Now with a facilitator in the White House, a religious maniac as vice president, and an evangelical attorney general who claims the Separation Clauses in the Constitution are unconstitutional, the personhood advocates are emboldened to do what their bizarre interpretation of the Christian religion commands; subjugate women to religious men. If any American thinks for one second that this abomination in Iowa will not be enacted at the federal level, they are deluded because this is Trumps America now and his administration will go to any lengths to sate the religious rights thirst for power over the entire nation, starting with women. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print On MSNBCs MTP Daily, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) urged Trump to strike Syria without authorization from Congress. McCain also outlined a plan that would be a repeat of the mistakes the US made in Iraq. Video: Sen. McCain made three points that sounded like a repeat of the Iraq war. 1). McCain said that Trump could strike Syria without Congressional authorization and that the US needed a new AUMF (Authorization for the Use of Military Force) presumably to cover the new war in the Middle East that some Republicans already have in mind. 2). Sen. McCain wants the US to take out the Assad regimes air force, create safe zones, and arm and supply rebels. 3). John McCain wants the US to rebuild Syria after the war. Mccain wants the US military heavily involved in Syria. It is a small jump from arming rebels and air strikes to sending in ground troops. The Trump administration has refused to rule out military strikes in North Korea and Syria. As their domestic agenda fails, Trump is increasingly showing signs that he will try to boost his popularity through a military conflict. Despite all of his bashing of the Iraq war, it looks like Trump is itching to be a wartime president. Sen. McCain was already laying out the strategy for the next US war in the Middle East. McCain never mentioned international coalitions or cooperation, because it appears that America is back to being led by a president who wants to go it alone in the Middle East. The clouds of war are building, and it seems it is only a matter of when, not if, Donald Trump and the Republican Party will repeat their many mistakes of Iraq. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print Trump showed what a weak president he is when he was asked by the White House press pool about Syria and removing Assad, I guess hes running things, so I guess something should happen there.Under Donald Trump, American leadership and courage have been replaced by I guess. Heres Trumps full answer on Syria via the White House press pool traveling with Trump on the way to Florida as provided to PoliticusUSA: Asked about whether Assad should step down, the president said: I think what happened in Syria is a disgrace to humanity, and hes there, and I guess hes running things, so I guess something should happen. What Assad did is terrible. What happened in Syria is truly one of the egregious crimes, and it shouldnt have happened. And it shouldnt be allowed to happen. I dont want to say what Im going to be doing with respect to Syria, POTUS said, when pressed on what specific steps he might take. Trumps answer is exactly Putin was hoping for when he helped Trump win the election. Trump has weakened America. The moral voice in response to a horrific chemical attack by the Assad regime in Syria coming from the United States cant be an I guess. America doesnt I guess when it comes to atrocities. America is supposed to lead. Sec. of State Rex Tillerson talked tough to reporters about Syria being responsible for the chemical attack, but it doesnt matter if the President Of The United States is only capable of projecting ignorance, uncertainty, and weakness. President Obama tried to get the US to lead and act in response to Assad, but Republicans in Congress would not even consider legislation to authorize him to use force. Donald Trump guesses that something should be done. Trumps answer typified the weakness of his administration. Putin wanted Trump to win for a reason, and we are seeing that reason play out before our very eyes on the issue of Syria. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) responded to Trumps military action in Syria by showing the country how a president should handle the Middle East. In a statement provided to PolticusUSA, Sen. Sanders said: In a world of vicious dictators, Syrias Bashar Assad tops the list as a dictator who has killed hundreds of thousands of his own citizens to protect his own power and wealth. His regimes use of chemical weapons against the men, women and children of his country, in violation of all international conventions and moral standards, makes him a war criminal. As the most powerful nation on earth, the United States must work with the international community to bring peace and stability to Syria, where over 400,000 people have been killed and over 6 million displaced. The horror of Syrias civil war is almost unimaginable. If theres anything we shouldve learned from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in which the lives of thousands of brave American men and women and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan civilians have been lost and trillions of dollars spent, its that its easier to get into a war than get out of one. Im deeply concerned that these strikes could lead to the United States once again being dragged back into the quagmire of long-term military engagement in the Middle East. If the last 15 years have shown anything, its that such engagements are disastrous for American security, for the American economy and for the American people. The Trump administration must explain to the American people exactly what this military escalation in Syria is intended to achieve, and how it fits into the broader goal of a political solution, which is the only way Syrias devastating civil war ends. Congress has a responsibility to weigh in on these issues. As the Constitution requires, the president must come to Congress to authorize any further use of force against the Assad regime. Further, the US must work with all parties to reinforce longstanding international norms against the use of chemical weapons, to hold Russia and Syria to the 2013 deal to destroy these weapons and to see that violators are made accountable. Sen. Sanders was right on all counts. A president shouldnt be acting alone and shooting off missiles. The go it alone strategy was a disaster for George W. Bush in Iraq. A president needs to be working with the international community to remove a brutal dictator like Assad. The president also should be getting authorization from and consulting with, Congress before military force is used. Donald Trump did none of these things. He fired off a bunch of missiles and then announced that he has no real policy to handle Syria or get rid of Assad. Trump is stumbling down the same road as Bush, and by schooling the president, Bernie Sanders was trying to prevent America from repeating the mistakes of the recent past. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print From one right-wing autocrat to another: job well done. Thats the message of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Friday to Donald Trump after Trump launched an illegal and unauthorized missile strike against Syria yesterday that killed at least 7 people. According to Netanyahu, Trumps troubling reversal of position in response to Assads use of poison gas in 24 hours represents a message of resolve. Sounds more like waffling and indecision, but okay. Whatever gets you to sleep at night: In both word and action, President Trump sent a strong and clear message today that the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated. Israel fully supports President Trumps decision and hopes that this message of resolve in the face of the Assad regimes horrific actions will resonate not only in Damascus, but in Tehran, Pyongyang and elsewhere. Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman reveals that the U.S. did inform the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) ahead of time: The American update to the IDF and security establishment before the attack in Syria is further proof of the strength of the relationship and depth of the connection between Israel and its largest ally, the United States. According to Liberman, Trumps unauthorized attack on Syria was an important, necessary and moral message by the free world, led by the United States. It was a message all right. That message is that, in the case of Syria intervention, if not in immigration and travel bans and environmental protections, the man Steve Bannon calls a cuck, Jared Kushner, and not Steve Bannon, had the presidents ear. And it did set an example. Just not the right one. After all, it was Trump who in 2013 told President Obama repeatedly not to attack Syria. Now he has attacked Syria. And it was just last week that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the longer-term status of President Assad will be decided by the Syrian people. Now it seems it will be decided, at least in part, by American Tomahawk cruise missiles. As for our allies, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom, and Turkey, have also expressed support for the airstrike and, apparently, Trumpian hypocrisy and abuse of power. Vladimir Putin is unhappy calling the response to the gassing of children an aggression against a sovereign state in violation of the norms of international law, and under a trumped-up pretext at that. TASS reports that a Russian frigate also loaded with cruise missiles is headed for Syria. The Russian news agency says a military-diplomatic source in Moscow revealed that The Admiral Grigorovichs presence will depend on the situation, but in any way it will last more than a month. Russia, it scarce needs be said at this point, is an ally of Syria. The question must be asked what Putin will do if Trump attacks another Syrian air force base while a Russian frigate loaded with cruise missiles sits nearby. Chinas state newspaper, the Global Times, said Trumps haste and inconsistency has left people with a deep impression. Thats one way of putting it. And it is a saner response by far than that of Benjamin Netanyahu. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print Did President Trump take the bait President Obama foresaw? Thursday evening, Trump ordered, without a plan and without Congressional approval, 50 Tomahawk missile strikes at an airfield in the sovereign country of Syria. He did it on instinct, as a show of force, it seems, as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that the strikes dont represent change in our policy or our posture in Syria. Trump justified this action because children were killed by the chemical attack. However, seven civilians were reportedly killed by the Trump missiles and 4 of them were children. A senior administration official said the strike should not be interpreted as beginning of wider campaign to weaken or remove Assad. It was an emotional reaction, possibly, to being called weak for Trumps failure to take action after a horrific chemical attack on innocents in Syria. Anyone who saw the pictures would be provoked to want to take action. The thing is, what kind of action and to what end. If we learned anything after former President Bushs disastrous invasion of another sovereign country, Iraq, it should have at least been that we have to have a plan before taking action. But Trump has no plan. What he might have done instead is reveal the United States as weak, by playing into Assads hands. President Obama was the kind of president who thought things all the way through. When it came to foreign policy and the Obama doctrine, in his efforts to avoid the trap of another Iraq, the Democratic President was known for asking, Then what? The question President Obama often asked his national security team was: Then what? Jen Psaki, CNN political commentator former White House communications director during the Obama administration, wrote in a CNN opinion column Friday. He wanted to know what the plan was for the days and weeks after military action, what the costs and consequences would be and whether our objective would be met not just that day, but over the longer term. Obama wanted to avoid the Iraq trap. In 2013, Obama feared, not without justification, the second- and third-order consequences of an American missile strike on the regime, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote of the Obama doctrine Friday morning in the Atlantic . Obama worried about the slippery slope in the Middle East, Goldberg explained. The Democratic President worried that if he struck Syria and Assad survived, it would be presented as a sign of American weakness. Goldberg explained (my bold), In Syria, he understood that Assad would most likely survive an American missile strike on his airbases; the day after such strikes ended, Assad, Obama believed, would have emerged from his hiding place, and declared victory: The greatest power in the world tried to destroy him, and failed. Assad and his allies, understanding that the appetite of average Americans for yet another Middle Eastern war was limited, could have tried to provoke Obama into escalation. Obama called that, because: In other news. AFP sources in Syria report that the base hit by Trump yesterday is already being used again to launch air strikes. Andrew Beatty (@AndrewBeatty) April 7, 2017 For President Obama, the Syria issue was a challenge to not react emotionally not just to the atrocities, but to the sense that he was being pushed to show strength and was being humiliated to some degree for not showing it. The perception was that my credibility was at stake, that Americas credibility was at stake, Goldberg quoted Obama as saying. And so for me to press the pause button at that moment, I knew, would cost me politically. And the fact that I was able to pull back from the immediate pressures and think through in my own mind what was in Americas interest, not only with respect to Syria but also with respect to our democracy, was as tough a decision as Ive madeand I believe ultimately it was the right decision to make. Its a hard call to say what the right action or response is, and certainly the human right atrocities require a long range strategy. Shouldnt that strategy include allowing Syrian refugees in the U.S. another thing Trump campaigned against. (Not for the first time, Trump is learning on the job, reinventing the wheel even on the most basic of issues.) At the very least, Trump should be listening to the concern Obama put forth, when he predicted the very weakness Trump just enacted. Trump should have had a plan, he should have had Congressional approval, he should have thought about the safety of the ground troops we have in Syria right now, and hopefully he should have other allies on board with a strategy that involved diplomacy as well as military strength. The big problem here is that by doing this without any plan, Trump might have done Assads bidding for him. Trump took the bait. The act now, sort it out later doctrine of Trump is reminiscent of Bushs invasion of Iraq. But its actually much worse, because Trump sold himself as an isolationist. Trump says there wont be follow up to this attack. Trump gave Russia a heads up, while not giving Congress a heads up. At least Bush was willing to follow through on his beliefs. Trump doesnt really have beliefs, he has feelings. And many of those feelings revolve around how he is seen, rather than what is best for the country, let alone the world. Obamas stance on Syria wasnt one that made us feel good right away, and perhaps it wasnt the best choice. That is a matter worthy of debate. But the endless war or reveal the US as weak trap he foresaw is real and Trump just took the bait. Donald Trump didnt just solve the crisis in Syria. He lobbed a stone rather ineffectually and is now walking away, having added four more dead children to the tally with no visible threat to stop further atrocities. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print For most people who have lost innocent loved ones to violence, the means of their relatives demise is completely irrelevant; a senseless death is a senseless death. It doesnt matter if innocent civilians are killed as a result of terrorism, civil unrest, a civil war, or an American caused human catastrophe; a needless death is exactly that, a needless death. Over the past couple of days Americans, including Trump, have made an issue over the deaths of innocent Syrians, and displaced Iraqis, allegedly killed by the Syrian military using chemical weapons. Of course it is a big issue, but while the Americans and the international community are outraged over the deaths of an estimated 86 innocent civilians in Syria, no-one is the least bit concerned, much less outraged, over the estimated 1,472 civilian casualties, all Muslim casualties, in the month of March alone and all at the hands of the United States of America under the Trump regime. One can fairly say it would be a sure and safe bet that none of the family members of either the 86 innocent Syrian civilians or 1,472 innocent Syrian and Iraqi civilians really care about how their innocent loved ones were massacred; they just know their loved ones died. And yet all the attention is being focused solely on the 86 deaths by chemical weapons as opposed to 1,472 civilians killed by American-made and delivered bombs in the month of March alone. As an investigative journalist who heads a British monitoring group, Airwars, Chris Woods reported: This is worse than anything we have ever seen from the coalition, and its up there with the levels of allegations we saw against Russia a year ago. Something is shifting a lot more [innocent Muslim] civilians are dying, and its happening on Donald Trumps watch. It is believed by many international experts and a few American pundits unafraid of being labeled un-American that the dramatic jump in civilian casualties is the direct result of a Trump order to change the risk/reward calculations when determining how many innocent civilians, innocent Muslim civilians, are acceptable casualties when America launches airstrikes against what it certainly knows are heavily-populated civilian areas. It is worth reiterating that Trump pledged during the campaign that if he was controlling Americas military, he would direct them to bomb the shit out of ISIS; in Trump-speak ISIS means Muslims. And, it is noteworthy to mention that despite the outrageous numbers of innocent Muslim civilians killed as a result of Trump bombing the shit out of them, neither he, his administrations spokespeople, or Republicans have uttered even one word about the catastrophic deaths of innocent civilians under Trump. It has not been the case in Trumps America, but internationally the innocent civilian death toll under Trump has been increasingly covered by the media since the ill-planned and botched Jan. 29 raid in Yemen that claimed the life of a Navy SEAL and at least 23 innocent civilians, including children. Although ignored in Trumps America, the international community has rightly blamed the United States for a string of high-profile attacks resulting in innocent civilian casualties in Syria and Iraq in its never-ending war in the Middle East that created the dreaded ISIS. It is important to note, yet again, that prior to Americas invasion and occupation of Iraq, there was no such thing as ISIS or civil unrest in Syria that its President Assad predicted would happen shortly after Bush invaded Iraq in 2003; an invasion that even Bush admitted paved the way for the rise of ISIS. Assad rightly predicted that there would be a flood of Iraqi refugees fleeing into safe territory in Syria and would destabilize the country, cause civil unrest and attract religious extremists to organize a revenge war against the Iraqis that chased them out of the country straight into Syria. It was Americas ill-advised invasion that allowed Iraqi Shias to purge the nation of minority Sunnis and send them fleeing, by the millions, into Assads Syria seeking sanctuary from revenge-minded Iraqi Shias. Those beleaguered refugees fleeing Bushs war, including Saddam Husseins former Baathist military leaders, joined forces with religious extremists and became ISIS; a goal-oriented group intent on reclaiming their homeland in Iraq. Innocent civilian deaths are unacceptable, few people would argue otherwise and they likely do not make a distinction between the means of destruction when expressing their outrage. However, the deafening silence from Americans that their incompetent leader is responsible for massacring at least 18 times more innocent Syrian and Iraqi civilians in one month than an alleged Syrian chemical attack is revealing. It doesnt matter how many innocent Muslims America under Trump slaughtered with bombs and missiles, but they are outraged at the news that an American and Israeli-created civil war destabilized Syria and claimed 86 lives. As this piece was being finished, reports were that America launched dozens of missiles at Syrian targets leading one to believe there will be more civilian casualties. And it will be acceptable because the innocent civilian deaths were caused by American missiles instead of chemical weapons. Shortly before that a highly-respected retired 4-Star General, Barry McCaffrey, said Trumps reckless rush to war was a political stunt, and it may appear that he is correct. However, there is some news that General McCaffrey is almost certainly aware of; Trump has been sending American military personnel into Syria and Iraq since he moved into the White House to start Americas new war in Syria. His action may appear to be a so-called political stunt, but it is as many pundits, at least one Democratic Senator, and opinion columnists predicted a reckless rush to start another Middle East war that began in late January 2017, not early April. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print It was Donald Trump who not only spent 2013 telling President Obama not to attack Syria, but who also reminded Obama that if he wanted to attack Syria he had to get Congressional approval first: The President must get Congressional approval before attacking Syria-big mistake if he does not! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 30, 2013 In other words, Trumps attack last night without congressional approval is, in his own words, a big mistake. Donald Trump hasnt demonstrably put a lot of thought into any decision he has made. He seems instead to listen to what the last person he spoke to whispered in his ear. In this case, that person must have been Jared Kushner, who favors intervention, rather than Steve Bannon, who doesnt care what happens to Syrian children. Some of our allies including Israel are happy and say Trumps action against Syria sends the correct sort of message to the world. China, Iran, and Syrias ally Russia are not. As a result of his launch of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles last night, Russia will soon have a frigate loaded with Russian cruise missiles anchored at the logistics base in Syrias port of Tartus. The bigger question for Americans is the limits on the presidents power to launch attacks, especially when that president has proven himself to be less than emotionally stable let alone well-briefed on facts he is more likely than not to dismiss as fake news. Donald Trump himself stands condemned by his own words, and some Republicans, like Rand Paul, have indeed condemned him, while others, like sometimes-critic Marco Rubio, have applauded him instead. Meanwhile, Trumps far-right allies, reports The New York Times, say theyre officially off the Trump train. Dont mistake this for a pivot. Trump would have to have set a firm course to be able to say he pivoted from it. And thats the problem: the lack of a set policy on pretty much anything, including foreign policy. This single tweet by Greg Sargent makes that point all on its own: Huh. Trump's Secretary of State says course of action Trump backed in 2013 helped normalize chemical weapons:https://t.co/8RpClARiT7 pic.twitter.com/J1EyyhRq5r Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) April 7, 2017 Opportunism and this seems to be the rankest sort of opportunism, representing as it does a chance to distract from Trumps many scandals starts wars. It is unlikely in the extreme that a Republican Congress will condemn Trumps abuse of power any more than they will willingly investigate his ties to Russia, or force him to release his tax returns, or submit to a medical examination to prove he is even fit to hold office. They didnt even bother to vet his appointees. Why on earth would anyone think they would question his decisions? They havent and they wont, not as long as there is a ghost of a chance of getting everything they want out of Donald Trump first. In a word, you dont have to be a cynic to be cynical about Donald Trumps decision to attack Syria. After all, even he said it was a mistake. CEU answers key questions related to legislative changes in Hungary Central European University (CEU) has on Friday published a Q&A on its website to present its students how the current legislative changes made by Hungarian lawmakers on 5 April will affect their future. Related article Hungary practically decapitates Central European University 04/04/2017 2:03pm Key statements CEU complies with Hungarys higher education rules; CEU will continue its operations under all circumstances; CEU has no plan to relocate from Budapest; CEU will use all legal means to fight legislation it considers discriminatory; CEU will remain independent; CEUs international faculty, its curriculum or the quality of education will not be compromised; The accreditation of CEU degrees will not be affected; All programs will start as normal in the fall of 2017 and those that have already started will continue. Related article CEU says new higher education law unconstitutional 05/04/2017 5:10pm Related article Soros spokesperson: CEU does not want to relocate from Budapest 07/04/2017 9:24am The following is an excerpt from the publication, which answers key questions not only for students but everyone that cares about CEUs future and academic freedom in Hungary.As CEU President and Rector Michael Ignatieff has repeatedly stated, CEU will continue all of its current academic activities. Now that the Hungarian Parliament has passed these discriminatory amendments, CEU will use all legal means to fight them.CEU remains unalterably opposed to any legislation that puts academic freedom at risk and will contest the constitutionality of this legislation. CEU will ensure that it continues its operations as a free and independent graduate university. Prospective students should not fear that these amendments will affect their education. Even if the amendments go into effect, CEU has until January 1, 2018 to comply. The amendments will not have retroactive effect and all programs that have already started on or before January 1, 2018 will continue under the current rules.This is patently false. CEU has been operating legally in Hungary for over two decades.CEU will, indeed, continue its operations under all circumstances.We are committed to remain in Budapest, our home town of over two decades. We will use all legal means to fight discriminatory legislation.5. Will CEUs name change?CEU is a recognized brand for quality graduate education and we do not intend to change the name.Yes, a crucial part of higher education is the ability of students and professors to be free to research the topics of their choice in an open environment that welcomes debate and discussion. As CEU President and Rector Michael Ignatieff wrote in his New York Times op-ed on April 3, 2017, As for Central European University, its board and its administration will never surrender its academic freedom to anyone."Absolutely not. The quality of our programs and curriculum is well-known throughout Europe and the world. CEUs academic programs are ranked highly by Times Higher Education and QS Rankings Worldwide. CEU is recognized as the 39th best young university in the world according to the latest Times Higher Education ranking, published on April 5, 2017. In addition, our degree programs in the fields of politics and international studies were ranked 42nd in the world according to the latest Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) subject ranking, as announced on March 8, 2017. CEU faculty remain dedicated to providing this high level of academic excellence.You should absolutely feel confident in applying for academic year 2017/2018 (as stated in #1).No. CEU holds an absolute charter from the New York State Education Department. In the United States, CEU is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, while its Hungarian entity, KEE (Kozep-europai Egyetem) is accredited by the Hungarian Accreditation Committee. Neither will change.No. All programs are and remain registered by the New York State Education Department. Similarly, the Hungarian programs are and will remain accredited by the Hungarian Accreditation Committee. The law affects none of them.Indeed, all programs will begin as normal in the fall of 2017.As per #1, all programs that have already started on or before January 1, 2018 will continue under the current rules and therefore, will not be affected.No, the current situation does not affect your application for scholarship. CEU's Offices of Admissions & Financial Aid continue to work as normal. We started publishing admissions decisions on April 3, 2017, for those of you who applied by February 1, 2017. Notifications are ongoing, so please bear with us.The universitys financial situation is secure. CEU, like most American universities, has an endowment meant to support the university's operations over its lifetime. Some of CEU's programs are also supported by generous donors and foundations. In addition, CEU is the regional leader in winning European Research Council (ERC) grants. Charleston, SC (29403) Today Sunshine to start, then a few afternoon clouds. High near 75F. Winds WNW at 10 to 15 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy early with increasing clouds overnight. Low 53F. Winds NNW at 10 to 20 mph. The first cidery in the city of Minneapolis defies expectations. In fact, they technically make graff, which is a cider-like beverage that includes beer ingredients like grains and hops. Though they operate under a brewery license, the products at Sociable are apple-forward and great additions to the world of cider. The atmosphere at Sociable Cider Werks is in tune with the nearby taprooms of Northeast Minneapolis. The warehouse is long and narrow in layout, with wooden spool tables giving a rustic craftsman feel that integrates into the industrial feel of the building. Tables are right near the equipment and the feel is definitely close and personal, especially when the space isnt packed to capacity. Sociables ciders are balanced and offer mixed ingredients that focus on sessionability and refreshment without an overpowering sweetness. Using unfermented cider from Pepin Heights as their base, theyve built an impressive and varied line-up from sweet and dessert-like to a classic dry, and more experimental ciders with unexpected ingredients, like Burnout (made with cucumber and habanero peppers) or Plum Freewheeler, which adds a rich heartiness to their flagship dry cider, Freewheeler. The original Freewheeler is a blend of Haralson, Honeycrisp, and SweeTango apples thats versatile for pairing with meals, sitting in the boat, or while out with friends. Hop-A-Wheelie takes that dry foundation, but is brewed with hops to add a citrus zest to the experience. On the more experimental side, Sociable makes the one-of-a-kind Spoke Wrench, equal parts stout and cider, tasting of cacao followed by a sharp apple tartness. Rusty Chain adds cranberries, while Candy Apple is a drink best suited for the State Fair, tasting more or less exactly like a caramel apple, and their summer shady, Road Rash, is brewed with a strong dose of fresh lemon juice, delivering the best of both flavors in an easy going drink. ADVERTISEMENT Two seasonal additions are Training Wheels, described by owner Jim Watkins as "an unfiltered, juicy reminder of what going to the apple orchard is like." Its a colonial-inspired recipe thats juicy like non-alcoholic cider but mellow and with a tempered but sharp finish. While everything at Sociable is one of a kind, Burnout is the most distinct. Infused with cucumbers and habanero peppers, its heavily cucumber up front, but with a hot pepper bite that slowly builds as the pint goes down. Its super refreshing, which is why the cidery has released it in cans for the spring season. While most of the line-up is gluten free, they also brew beer and try to keep two on tap at all times. A search warrant executed Thursday afternoon in southeast Rochester could lead to felony drug charges for a local man, authorities said today. Amir Sabackic, 48, was arrested about 2 p.m. after members of the Southeast Minnesota Violent Crimes Task Force saw him driving away from 615 Seventh Ave. SE, a residence they were watching in advance of serving a search warrant. He was, in fact, a target of the warrant, said Olmsted County Sheriff's Capt. Scott Behrns, which included a search of his person. Officers initiated a traffic stop in the 1000 block of Broadway Avenue South, Behrns said, and found Sabackic with $945 in cash, more than an ounce of marijuana and 30 prescription drug tablets. Back at the house he'd left, officers found 339 prescription tablets of varying drugs, 23 firearms several loaded and within reach of children and $17,500 in cash, the report says. The drugs have an estimated street value of about $10,000. Also living in the home and present at the time were children ranging in age from 3 years to 13 years, Behrns said. ADVERTISEMENT Sabackic could be charged as early as today with felony counts of second-degree controlled substance sales and third-degree controlled substance possession, as well as gross misdemeanor child endangerment and possession of a firearm as a user of controlled substances. Since arriving at Mayo Clinic last year, fetal surgeon Dr. Rodrigo Ruano has already performed several complex surgeries on fetuses in the womb. He has removed a mass from a fetus' lung and operated on an unborn baby with severe spinal bifida a condition in which the bones of the spine fail to form properly around the spinal cord. He has done several other high-stakes procedures, and for many of these tiny patients, the medical outlook would be grim without the surgery. "Their chance of dying is very high," he said. But Ruano would not be practicing at Mayo Clinic if it had not been for a law passed last year. The measure established a Medical Faculty License. It allows extraordinarily skilled physicians trained in other countries the opportunity to practice at the state's two academic medical centers the University of Minnesota and Mayo Clinic. That law expires July 1, 2018. If that happens, Ruano and others would lose their licensure. Mayo Clinic is urging lawmakers to take action this year and make the law permanent. Sen. Carla Nelson, R-Rochester, is sponsoring a bill in the Senate to do just that. She said it is critical that Mayo Clinic be able to keep recruiting top medical talent from around the world. ADVERTISEMENT "We want to ensure that Minnesota continues to be a world-leading spot for research and be an innovative hub," Nelson said. The push to make the law permanent enjoys strong bipartisan support. House Health and Human Services Finance Chairman Matt Dean, R-Dellwood, is sponsoring a similar measure in the House. Rochester DFL Rep. Tina Liebling is a co-sponsor of the bill. "Mayo has a worldwide reach, so it makes sense for Mayo to be able to bring physicians who have unique skills as long as we're careful that we're upholding our standards and they are properly vetted," she said. The story behind the law One Mayo Clinic doctor's determination led to the new law. Dr. Ola Famuyide had spent years trying to find someone who could establish a fetal surgery program at the clinic. After interviewing Ruano, he knew he had found the perfect person for the job. Then he discovered he couldn't hire Ruano because he had done his medical training outside the U.S. even though the fetal surgeon had been practicing in Texas. So Famuyide begged Mayo Clinic lobbyist Erin Sexton to push to pass a bill in the final days of the session. Despite the steep odds, the measure was approved and the clinic was able to hire Ruano. "If we couldn't do what we did with the help and assistance of the Legislature and the governor, he simply wouldn't be here," Famuyide said. Without the law, Ruano would have had to spend up to a year studying to pass the U.S. Medical License Exam to be licensed in Minnesota something the veteran surgeon said he wouldn't have been interested in doing. The new medical faculty license allows a foreign-trained physician to practice in Minnesota if they are deemed to be a person with "extraordinary ability in the field of science or as an outstanding professor or researcher" as defined under federal regulations. Several other states have similar laws, including Ohio, New York and Texas. Four licenses already issued ADVERTISEMENT Since the law took effect, the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice has issued four medical faculty licenses. All of them have been for physicians at the Mayo Clinic. They run the gamut from a cardiovascular surgeon trained in Turkey to a South Korean physician who specializes in complex transplant surgeries. Minnesota Board of Medical Practice Executive Director Ruth Martinez said board members were frustrated last year that the license bill passed so quickly without giving them a chance to weigh in. However, she said the program has worked well so far. "The board took a neutral position on it because they don't have any opposition to it, "Martinez said. "It's gone extremely smoothly. I can honestly say we have not seen any challenges or difficulties or problems." While the bill enjoys strong bipartisan support, there is the danger it could get caught up in partisan disputes over funding. The measure is included in a House health and human services budget bill. Liebling said that bill as written faces strong opposition from Democrats and, in its current form, she said would likely be vetoed by the governor. There is the potential the bill could be passed as a stand-alone measure. If law expires, 'door is closed' Since Ruano became director of Mayo's Fetal and Diagnostic and Intervention Center, Famuyide said the clinic has been able to recruit other talented professionals eager to work with the surgeon. "If the law expires, what it means is the door is closed to Mayo or any other entity to hire any other world-class surgeon or physician," Famuyide said. As for Ruano, he said he was shocked and grateful to learn that a law had been passed to allow him to come to the Mayo Clinic. ADVERTISEMENT "That was amazing. It was impressive. And of course, I was very happy," he said. The Brazilian native said he is eager to continue building the clinic's fetal surgery program. He added, "It is important for Mayo Clinic and also for the Midwest because we can bring our experience and combine with the other providers here to get the best quality of health care for the patient." CLEAR LAKE, Minn. When you walk through the swinging double doors into the production area of McDonald's Meats in Clear Lake, the labyrinthine back rooms smell of wood smoke, seasoned meat and crisp refrigerated air. This is co-owner and general manager Jennifer Dierkes' home turf. "This is custom processing," she says as she turns a corner, past a man filling gigantic pans with armfuls of pork. "Not everyone is prepared for it," she warns. But as she steps aside, the scene she reveals is akin to Willy Wonka's chocolate factory for meat lovers. Workers expertly carve massive cuts of meat from a leg of beef while perfectly portioned sausages pop from a machine at the push of a button. There's a swirl of activity, and people pass carrying trays of fine steaks or pushing racks off of which meat sticks hang like strands of glistening jewels. Dierkes opens a smoker and is immediately engulfed in rich, jerky-scented steam; it's the world's strangest skin treatment. If you can stomach the sight of freshly slaughtered ("We prefer to say 'harvested.' You know, PR," laughs Dierkes) beef or pork, this peek behind the proverbial curtain is a fascinating look at how the sausage gets made literally. But for Dierkes, it's just another day on the job. ADVERTISEMENT Dierkes began working at McDonald's Meats when she was just 14 years old. At a time when most teens were smuggling their Metallica T-shirts and eyeliner to school in their backpacks, Dierkes' bag was filled with work whites. "When I started to work here, I just wanted a job!" Dierkes said. "I would get dropped off here by the bus after school and go to work. Now when people from my high school come in, they always say, 'You're still at the meat market?' " Dierkes is a member of the fourth generation to own and operate McDonald's Meats. Along with her stepbrother Travis McDonald, Dierkes manages the family business, which is over 100 years old. All of Dierkes' hard work has earned her the nickname "Jen the Meat Babe," a humorous moniker that is often heard during radio commercials for McDonald's Meats. The nickname was first created by a radio host whose show Dierkes' frequented with tasty samples in tow, but Dierkes laughed off her sales manager's suggestion to use it in advertising until one very telling incident. "I was at a blackjack party where I knew about half the people, and the other half were strangers. At one point a friend of mine said from across the room, 'Hey, Jen the Meat Babe, come over here!' And three people at the table turned to me and went, 'You're Jen the Meat Babe?!'" Dierkes said with a smile. "And then I realized I should listen to my sales guy, because he knows what he's talking about. It's stuck ever since." Whether she's known as "The Meat Babe" or just Jennifer, Dierkes is proud of the stamp she's made so far on the business's history. "I like looking at the whole process of where we were as a business when I started here to where we are today, and knowing how integral I've been in that process," Dierkes said. "It's just my nature to be very questioning, always asking 'Why?' Some people can look at processes and see them as a whole very quickly; they can say 'OK, here's how we should do this differently.' I started here at 14, so I developed that sense at a very young age." ADVERTISEMENT Dierkes said she makes a point to be open-minded in her business ventures. "When you grow up in (this business), it becomes second nature. When you've been around it for so long, it can be like, 'Yes, this is the way we do it!'" she said. "But I think that's part of the success of McDonald's Meats since I came on I don't have blinders on." Dierkes' focus on innovation has helped the meat market score some major awards. Their braunschweiger, a liverwurst sausage originally hailing from Germany, received a makeover after Dierkes attended workshop and decided to make the sausage her pet project. "After I learned some new info, I thought I should go back and re-do our whole process. I did that, and interestingly enough since then we've won not only grand champion in the class but also the Best in Show awards given out by the Minnesota Association of Meat Processors twice in a row," Dierkes said. "Last year when they announced that we'd won, we were all shocked. Braunschweiger? Braunschweiger never wins!" she laughed. "You're competing against hams and specialty bacons, but we won it again this year!" "The Meat Babe" will soon have an even bigger project on her hands: expanding McDonald's Meats. Dierkes said the upcoming expansion has been a long time coming, and reflects the meat market's booming business. "We've grown to a point where we are at capacity in our current facility. I jokingly say we either have to expand, or stand at the door and tell every fifth customer they can't come in!" Dierkes said. ADVERTISEMENT As part of the expansion, a new production facility will be built, including a space for the business to continue bringing live animals onto the premises for slaughter. The space that currently houses the production area will be converted back into retail that building's original purpose dating back to the early 20th century and will expand the overall retail space by more than double. But Dierkes doesn't seem nervous about filling all that space with McDonald's Meats products (after all, Dierkes said that creating "new and yummy" products is her favorite part of the job), or about keeping the historic meat market's legacy alive. In fact, McDonald's Meats' over 100 years of success may help to give Dierkes the confidence to lead the business at her own pace. "We've always been very good at controlled growth," she said. "You never want to grow too fast. Because then, you'll lose sight of where you came from." Heather Mac Donald is the nations leading expert on policing and race. Her book The War On Cops is a classic of social science. In December my think tank, Center of the American Experiment, hosted Heather for a speech in Minneapolis that was attended by more than 400, including over 150 law enforcement officers. That was a great crowd. But when Heather spoke at UCLA last night, at the invitation of the college Republicans, the crowd was not so welcoming. In the real world, ignorance is frowned upon. But on college campuses, it is treated as a positive virtue. The College Fix reports on what happened last night: A speech by Heather Mac Donald at UCLA on Wednesday frequently descended into chaos as Black Lives Matter protesters stormed the stage and chanted their signature phrase over and over, and also took over portions of the Q&A with angry accusations and raucous shouting, a video of the event shows. Heather was pretty much able to give her speech, but when the time came for questions and answers, the barbarians took over. For the most part, they didnt actually ask questions, they just chanted, gasped and and snapped their fingers. (Whats with that?) Event organizers tried to calm the crowd and regain order. After the Black Lives Matter chant ended, several protesters remained at the front of the room, shouting and making gestures as a student organizer asked for calm. But they started up with more chants, including: America was never great! After the uproar which lasted about eight minutes finally died down, Mac Donald fielded questions from the audience, including from a black female who asked her to speak on whether black victims killed by cops mattered. Yes, Mac Donald replied. And do black children that are killed by other blacks matter to you? At that the room erupted in gasps and angry moans and furious snaps, and the young lady who asked the original question began to yell at Mac Donald, pointing her finger and repeating the original question. Mac Donald, known and admired for her unapologetic stance to report facts over emotion, doubled down on the infuriated young black woman. Of course I care, and do you know what, Mac Donald said. There is no government agency more dedicated to the proposition that black lives matter than the police. Again, gasps and moans filled the auditorium. Bullshit! Bullshit! a young woman off camera could be heard screaming. I cant emphasize enough what a hero Heather Mac Donald is. She needs to deal with morons like those who disrupted her speech last night like she needs a hole in the head. But she tirelessly works to spread light amid the darkness of Americas college campuses. Last night she had to be escorted away from the baying hounds of barbarism to safety. You can see video of the entire event at the link, but it doesnt seem to be available in embeddable form. What is Heather doing tonight? Speaking at Claremont, where the forces of stupidity are already lying in wait: Mac Donald is scheduled to speak at Claremont McKenna College tonight and already plans are in the works to shut down the event, the Claremont Independent reports. The Independent cites a private Facebook page organizing the protest that state: Heather Mac Donald has been vocally against the Black Lives Matter movement and pro-police, both of which show her fascist ideologies and blatant anti-Blackness and white supremacy. Lets show CMC that having this speaker is an attack on marginalized communities both on campus and off. Together, we can hold CMC accountable and prevent Mac Donald from spewing her racist, anti-Black, capitalist, imperialist, fascist agenda. Right. In other words, more ignorance is in store. But maybe a handful of teachable students will attend, too. Heather Mac Donald, we salute you. STEVE adds: As it happens, I hosted Heather on campus up at BerkeleyBerkeley!on Monday, but it was a small affair on the issue of free speech on campus. (Several local Power Line readers were in attendance.) It went fine, and Heather gave her usual high-octance performance. But there were no protests, and we had a great conversation going to the airport. Heather just emailed an hour ago to say about tonights scheduled appearance in Claremont: There is already black lives matter chant going on outside my little apartment here in Claremont an hour and a half before my speech this is going to be much worse than UCLA. P.S. On Tuesday I doubled down, and snuck Charles Murray onto the Berkeley campus and had him speak, with no prior announcement, to my Constitutional Law class. Several students asked him good, tough questions, but there was no silliness. The real test of whether Berkeley can behave better is at the end of the month. Ann Coulter is scheduled to speak. Stay tuned for updates. I may get some inside info on how the administration is planning to handle it. I agree with Scott that last nights strike against a Syrian air base was an appropriate and long-overdue assertion of American power. But the Democratic Party press doesnt see it that way. (The presss attitude would have been entirely different, of course, if Barack Obama or Hillary Clintonwho called for the strike shortly before it happenedhad ordered the missile attack.) The Associated Press uses an age-old trick, headlining the presidents defense of the strike as though the most salient fact were that some Democrats criticized it: Trump defends attack on Syria; demands end the slaughter.' Other newspapers, like the Minneapolis Star Tribune, followed suit: The AP story contrasts President Trumps Syria policy with Barack Obamas: It was the first direct American assault on the Syrian government and Trumps most dramatic military order since becoming president just over two months ago. The strikes also risk thrusting the U.S. deeper into an intractable conflict that his predecessor spent years trying to avoid. That is an awfully charitable characterization of Obamas disastrous failure in Syria, and more broadly, the Middle East. The Democrats will never be satisfied, but those whose opinions count for more supported the strike. Like Benjamin Netanyahu: At least five people [more recent reports say four] were killed today in Stockholm, and more injured, when a man drove a stolen truck into a crowd. The driver, who wore a balaclava over his head, escaped. Authorities are treating the incident as a terrorist attack, and the modus operandi suggests Islamic terrorism, like the vehicle attacks in Nice, Berlin and Westminster Bridge. The Daily Mail has photographs, including this one of the truck after it came to rest mostly inside a store: UPDATE: Not sure why the earliest reports didnt include the fact, but three armed men jumped out of the truck and fired into the crowd. [Probably because this later report turned out not to be true.] Obviously a terrorist attack, presumably Islamic. One man has been arrested: Bodies are visible in the street: As always, early reports are fragmentary and unreliable, but it sounds as though two terrorists are still on the loose, so the carnage may not be over. MORE: The attack took place on Stockholms busiest pedestrian street, and directly above ground from the citys main train station. MORE: This closed circuit television captured the moments when people fled the truck, and the speeding truck drove past a shop window: ISLAMIC TERRORISM CONFIRMED: The Daily Mail has the story ahead of most respectable news outlets: Two suspects were arrested last night in relation to the truck attack in Stockholm that saw at least four people killed and 15 injured. The arrest of the first suspect, a 39-year-old man believed to be from Uzbekistan, took place after police were alerted when he acted strangely in a store, according to Swedish media. The Uzbek father of four was arrested in the northern suburb of Marsta after going on the run following the attack, reported the Swedish newspaper Aftonblat. The man, who police suspect was driving the truck, was found lightly injured and was wearing a balaclava, with broken glass on his clothes. He reportedly confessed to being behind the attack. Police suspect he was behind the wheel of the truck, although other sources say the driver is still at large. He had posted propaganda films by IS on Facebook and liked pictures of casualties after the terrorist attack on the Boston Marathon in 2013, Aftonblat reported. A further arrest was made at 11pm last night in the Stockholm suburb of Hjulsta, according to Swedish newspaper Expressen. Pictures show the second man, who looked younger, being handcuffed and taken away in a police car. Detectives have not confirmed whether the arrest was in connection with the terror attack. So if that report is correct, this is one more in a long series of ISIS-inspired Islamic attacks. FINAL UPDATE: More here. Today is a great day to be an American. Among other things, Tenth Circuit Judge Neil Gorsuch will be confirmed to the Supreme Court and become Justice Gorsuch. He will take the seat formerly held by the remarkable Justice Antonin Scalia. The case against Neil Gorsuch: there wasnt one. The Democrats opposition to Judge Gorsuchs confirmation constituted little more than an assertion of political will conforming to the fantasies of the Democrats deranged base of activists. Yet Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and his Democratic colleagues purported to make out a case against Judge Gorsuch himself. Here allow me to revisit the local angle doing the job the Star Tribune wont do. We were offered the spectacle of Minnesota Senator Al Franken tangling with Judge Gorsuch on an issue of statutory construction. Franken hasnt been funny in a long, long time I remember a night in the summer of 1976 when he tried out some decent new material with Tom Davis at the old Dudley Riggs satellite workshop on the West Bank in Minneapolis but Franken arguing statutory construction with Gorsuch was comedy gold. When there is a scrivener there priceless. New frontiers in creepy clowndom. Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar is a fount of amiable vacuity. She issued a statement on March 28 articulating her opposition to the confirmation of Judge Gorsuch. The statement is posted here. She is using the statement in a form letter responding to constituents who write her on the subject. The statement doesnt say much and it is not candid. It would have been so much more straightforward for Senator Klobuchar to acknowledge that she was toeing the party line, as always. She could have shortened up her statement if she had simply explained that Schumer told her what to do. Such a statement could have done double duty accounting for her vote in favor of the filibuster against Gorsuchs confirmation, but on that she (predictably) chose to remain mum. If Judge Gorsuch were not such a sterling nominee, it is doubtful that the weak sisters among the Republican caucus would have remained onboard to extend the Reid Rule. In the event, however, Judge Gorsuch vindicated Mitch McConnells long game and allowed President Trump to fulfill the promise that attracted many of us to vote for him. Thank you, Senator McConnell. Thank you, President Trump. And congratulations to Judge Gorsuch. Nigeria needs an oil price of $139 a barrel to balance its budget this year, Fitch Ratings Ltd said on Thursday. Fitch, an international rating agency, in an April 5 report, said Nigeria has the worst situation among 14 major oil exporting nations in the Middle East, Africa and emerging Europe. Bloomberg reports that the agency said Kuwait is in the best position of major oil exporting nations to have a balanced government budget this year with oil forecast to average $52.50 a barrel. The report noted that even after cuts in government subsidies and currency devaluations, 11 of them wont have balanced government budgets this year, including Saudi Arabia. Fiscal reforms and exchange rate adjustments are generally supporting improved fiscal positions compared to 2015, but have not prevented erosion of sovereign creditworthiness, the rating agency said. It explained further that only Kuwait, Qatar and the Republic of Congo have estimated break-evens that are below Fitchs oil price forecast for this year. Kuwait at $45 a barrel traditionally has a low break-even because of its high per-capita hydrocarbon production and more recently its large estimated investment income from its sovereign wealth fund, Fitch added. Earlier, Brent crude, a global benchmark, averaged about $55 a barrel for 2017. The rating agency said it substantially raised the fiscal break-even prices for Nigeria, Angola and Gabon from 2015 levels because of rising government spending. A breakdown of the Fitch forecast 2017 break-even oil prices per barrel shows that Nigeria was pegged at $139, Bahrain at $84, Angola at $82, and Oman at $75. Others are Saudi Arabia at $74, Russia at $72, Kazakhstan at $71, and Gabon at $66; as well as Azerbaijan at $66, Iraq at $61, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, at $60, Republic of Congo at $52, Qatar at $51 and Kuwait at $45. Share this: Twitter Facebook President Muhammadu Buhari has commended the Kaduna State government for adopting the Ease of Doing Business Committee model created by the federal government at the beginning of this administration in a bid to promote investment for economic growth. This was contained in a goodwill letter by the president which was conveyed to the government of Kaduna State during the second Kaduna Economic and Investment Summit holding in Kaduna from Wednesday 5th-Thursday 6th April 2017. According to President Buhari, the federal government initiated the ease of doing business committee because it recognises the need to encourage the private sector to provide the needed investment that will drive economic growth. He said: I am aware that Kaduna State has replicated the ease of doing business committee. And I commend this decision. This action reflects that Kaduna state government understands the huge responsibilities sub-national actors have in our quest for national rebirth. It is my hope that KADINVEST 2.0 aptly themed Making Kaduna Business Destination of Choice, will result in reliable partnership and beneficial collaboration that can promote economic prosperity for the people of Kaduna state and Nigeria at large During the summit, Governor Nasir El-Rufai unveiled the Kaduna State Ease of Doing Business Charter which outlines the governments commitment and measures aimed at simplifying business processes and operations in the state. The aim is to demonstrate the states business-friendly environment that is also supported by a favourable legal framework. Also launched were the State Sector Implementation Plans, the Infrastructure Master Plan 2017-2050, the Eyes and Ears platform which allows for citizens participation in projects monitoring across the state. Speaking at the opening of the second edition of Kaduna Economic and Investment Summit KADINVEST 2.0, Mr. El-Rufai said the Infrastructure Master Plan details the physical and social infrastructure needs of the state from 2017-2050. The plan, which identifies about 300 projects, links the states development plans with actual needs of the people. According to Mr. El-Rufai, the major objective of the master plan is to create a conducive environment for public/private participation in infrastructure project development. The governor explained that the state government has taken a number of measures to strengthen the business environment of the state since the last edition of the summit. The measures include passing a number of laws, producing the State Development Plan (SDP) 2016-2020 and empowering the agencies to drive it, leveraging on the participation of the private sectors in key sectors of the economy, among others. Also speaking at the event, the Emir of Kano, Lamido Sanusi, said Nigerias growth will only come from investment. While delivering a keynote address at the summit, the emir decried the trend in Nigeria and other African countries where the growth model is hinged on increased spending and borrowing to finance spending. The emir called on state governors of the north to emulate Kaduna by encouraging investment saying there is the need for citizens to invest in the country as Dangote is doing to make the economy grow. Since the last edition of the summit in April 2016, investment of more than $350 million have come into Kaduna state with thousands of jobs created. The Kaduna Economic and Investment Summit (KADINvest) is an annual two-day event that showcases Kadunas potentials and the policies government is implementing to attract and retain the investors that can create the jobs and provide the revenues needed for development. The inaugural edition of KADInvest was held in 2016. The theme of the 2017 edition is Making Kaduna a Business Destination of Choice. Share this: Twitter Facebook The police on Friday fired rubber bullets and tear gas at some protesters in downtown Johannesburg, injuring a man and a woman, as thousands of people marched in South African cities to protest against President Jacob Zuma. The opposition Democratic Alliance, DA, party, which called for the marches, held a rally of more than 10,000 people in another part of Johannesburg which was calm. Thousands marched in major South African cities to protest against Mr. Zuma, demanding he quit after a cabinet reshuffle triggered the latest crisis of his presidency. Zumas sacking of Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan in the reshuffle last Thursday has outraged allies and opponents alike, undermined his authority and caused rifts in the ruling African National Congress, ANC, which has governed South Africa since the end of white-minority rule in 1994. In the countrys commercial hub, Johannesburg, several residents stood along the roads, waving placards demanding that Mr. Zuma step down. Mmusi Maimane, leader of the DA party, was due to lead a march in downtown Johannesburg, where thousands of marchers wearing blue DA T-shirts gathered to start the march, with many bussed in from other areas. Some held placards saying Fire Zuma. This president is mishandling the presidency and he should leave office, said Graham Fish, 62. A holding hands picket was due to take place in Cape Town, where motorists hooted in support of the march holding up South African flags. About 2,000 people were also marching in coastal city of Durban. (Reuters/NAN) Share this: Twitter Facebook Gambian President Adama Barrows United Democratic Party, UDP, has won Thursdays parliamentary election, taking 31 seats in the 53-member parliament, the electoral commission announced Friday. Former president Yahya Jammehs Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction (APRC) came second alongside Gambia Democratic Congress, a party formed by a former lawmaker in Jammehs regime. The two parties took five seats each. The election of a new parliament was seen as an important step towards establishing a democracy after more than two decades of Mr. Jammehs autocratic rule in the West African nation. The poll the countrys first election since Mr. Jammeh went into exile in January, saw 239 candidates from nine political parties competing for 48 seats in the national assembly. Five additional seats will be appointed by Mr. Barrow, who took power on January 19. It was hoped in the nation of 1.8 million people that the legislative election will provide Gambia with a functional national assembly that will help amend the wrongs committed during Jammehs regime. (dpa/NAN) Share this: Twitter Facebook The Russian President, Vladimir Putin, condemned U.S. cruise missile strikes on Syria on Friday, warning the move would further damage already battered U.S.-Russia relations which Moscow had hoped President Donald Trump would revive. U.S. officials said they had informed Russian forces ahead of the strikes, intended to punish the Syrian government for what they say was a chemical weapons attack on Wednesday, and had avoided hitting Russian personnel. Satellite imagery suggests the Shayrat air base that was struck in western Syria is home to Russian special forces and military helicopters, part of the Kremlins effort to help the Syrian government fight Islamic State and other militant groups. Russias main air base and a naval facility were not hit. Moscow had been hoping to cooperate with Trump to jointly fight Islamic State in Syria, a move it was banking on to boost U.S.-Russia ties which are at a post-Cold War low. After the U.S. strikes, that task now looks harder. President Putin views the U.S. strikes on Syria as aggression against a sovereign state in violation of the norms of international law and on a made-up up pretext, said a Kremlin statement. This step by Washington will inflict major damage on U.S.-Russia ties. Putin, a staunch ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, was holding a meeting of Russias Security Council to discuss the strike on Friday afternoon and the Russian Foreign Ministry called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council. A foreign ministry statement said Moscow was suspending a Syrian air safety agreement with the U. S. originally drawn up to ensure that the two countries planes did not collide. Its clear to any specialist that the decision to launch a strike was taken in Washington before the events in Idlib (the province where the gas poisoning took place) which were simply used as a pretext for a show of force, the ministry said. The Russian Defence Ministry meanwhile mocked the effectiveness of the U.S. strikes, saying only 23 missiles had found their targets. It was unclear where another 36 had landed, it said, promising Syrian air defences would now be beefed up. The Russian Foreign Ministry said in the statement that the deal was designed to prevent possible military incidents between the two great powers, which support opposing sides in the Syrian civil war. Russia condemns the U.S. illegitimate actions against the lawful Syrian government, the Foreign Ministry said, referring to the U.S. bombing carried out in response to the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Syrian state military. Russia denies that the Syrian state military used chemical weapons, and maintains that Syrian militants were responsible for a recent chemical weapons incident in the north-western province of Idlib, the Russian Foreign Ministry said. U.S. President Donald Trump ordered missile strikes against the airfield from which a deadly chemical attack was allegedly launched, declaring he acted in Americas national security interest against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The strikes drew sharp criticism from Russia, Mr. Assads ally. U.S. officials said the military fired dozens of cruise missiles against the base in response to the suspected gas attack in a rebel-held area this week, which Washington has blamed on Assads forces. The Syrian government has strongly denied responsibility and says it does not use chemical weapons. The governor of Homs province said earlier that the airbase was used to support Syrian army operations against Islamic State. The U.N. Security Council was expected to hold closed-door consultations on Friday about the U.S. strike on Syria following a request by Bolivia, an elected member of the council, a senior Security Council diplomat said. A Russian frigate armed with Kalibr cruise missiles sailed through the Bosphorus en route to the eastern Mediterranean in the early hours of Friday morning, according to pictures taken by Turkish bloggers for their online Bosphorus Naval News project. It was unclear if that was related to the U.S. strikes. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said there were no reports of any Russians being hurt in the attack. He said he hoped U.S.-Russia ties would not be irreparably hurt as a result. Rex Tillerson is due to make his first visit to Moscow next week as U.S. secretary of state, an eagerly awaited event in Russia where politicians have been anxious to try to use the change of administration to reboot relations. Share this: Twitter Facebook The UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, has urged restraint to avoid any escalation of the situation in Syria, after the U.S. responded militarily to an alleged chemical weapons attack earlier this week. In the wake of the U.S. airstrikes, Mr. Guterres said: I continue to follow the situation in Syria closely and with grave concern. Mindful of the risk of escalation, I appeal for restraint to avoid any acts that could deepen the suffering of the Syrian people. These events underscore my belief that there is no other way to solve the conflict than through a political solution, Guterres said in a statement. The UN chief called on the parties to urgently renew their commitment to making progress in the Geneva intra-Syrian talks. According to the U.S., the launch of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles into the Shayrat Airbase was a response to what it stated was the Syrian Governments use of chemical weapons from the base. The alleged April 4 chemical weapons attack killed many civilians in the Khan Shaykhoun area of Idlib. Decrying the chemical weapons attack, the UN chief stressed the need for accountability for such crimes in line with existing international norms and Security Council resolutions. Meanwhile, the Security Council convened an urgent session to hear an update on the situation in Syria. UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, Jeffrey Feltman, said the December 30, 2016 Syrian ceasefire brokered by Russia, Iran and Turkey had faltered in the last two months amid a steady escalation of military activity. Mr. Feltman said that in mid-February, Government forces escalated their military operations in several areas of Damascus and Homs, recapturing Wadi Barada and al-Waar in Homs. In February and March, armed opposition groups, sometimes coordinating with al-Nusra Front, launched offensives in Daraa, Damascus and Hama. On April 4, as Government forces were fighting to regain territory recently lost to opposition offensives in northern Hama, disturbing reports emerged of an alleged chemical attack, in nearby Khan Shaykhoun in southern Idlib, Mr. Feltman said. He added that the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) had announced that its fact-finding mission was starting to investigate the alleged attack. A statement from the Syrian General Command of the Army and the Armed Forces called the U.S. response a blatant act of aggression which had caused six deaths and huge material damage. Mr. Feltman said that Iran and Russia condemned the U.S. attack, with the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands and New Zealand expressing some support for the U.S. strikes. The Security Council has the primary responsibility for international peace and security, Mr. Feltman said. He urged the 15-member body to unite and exercise that responsibility to investigate the alleged use of chemical weapons in Khan Shaykhoun. Security Council resolution 2254 (2015) and the 2012 Geneva Communique remain the foundation of, and contain the core principles for, United Nations mediation efforts and ultimately a solution in this regard, he said. (NAN) Share this: Twitter Facebook The death toll from suspected cases of meningitis has reached 438, an official said. John Oladejo, the incident manager of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, NCDC, stated this in a statement released by the centre. As at April 5, 2017, 3,959 suspected cases have been reported as part of the current outbreak, of which 181 cases have been laboratory-confirmed. A total of 438 deaths (11 per cent of all cases) have been reported from 106 LGAs in 19 states in the country and outbreak response and control activities are ongoing in the State to curtail the outbreak, he added. In Zamfara, the state most affected by the outbreak of the Cerebro Spinal Meningitis, residents have been turning out in large numbers for a mass vaccination exercise against the disease. The Federal Government on Thursday kicked off the vaccination exercise in Zamfara State. The state governor, Abdulaziz Yari, earlier in the week came under fire from across the country for attributing the outbreak of the disease to Gods anger over the sins of Nigerians. The National Primary Health Care Development Agency, NPHCDA, and the NCDC, responded to the outbreak by beginning the vaccination exercise in Zamfara, in collaboration with the state government. A statement on Friday by NCDC stated that the campaign, which targets 300,000 persons aged 2 29 years, started on Thursday in the eight most affected local government areas in Zamfara State, and will continue until Sunday. It said more campaigns are planned in other states in the near future. Abdullahi Shinkafi, the Secretary to the Zamfara State Government and Chairman of the Zamfara State Committee for the Control of Meningitis, is coordinating oversight of the vaccination exercise, in close collaboration with the NCDC Chief Executive Officer, Chikwe Ihekweazu, who is leading an NCDC technical team to monitor and supervise the campaign. According to the statement, the Zamfara State government had worked with the Federal Ministry of Health, NPHCDA, NCDC and other global partners on an intensive sensitization exercise to increase community participation ahead of the vaccination campaign. The team of experts is tasked with planning, coordinating and implementing an effective vaccination campaign in collaboration with the recently commissioned Meningitis Emergency Operations Centre at NCDC, it stated. Traditional leaders and several community groups are helping with mobilization of people across the state, it added. Mr. Ihekweazu was quoted as saying the commitment of the traditional rulers has been evident in the state; stating that they had helped mobilise their community members for the exercise. Indeed, we see an opportunity for a sustainable initiative which will go beyond this response. Reports from the field indicate early progress in the vaccination exercise. In Zamfara State, there has been a massive turnout recorded in the target local government areas. To support effective outbreak response coordination across the entire country, the Minister of Health, Isaac Adewole, had mandated the NCDC to activate an Emergency Operations Centre which has swung into action. The Centre is currently staffed with experts from the NCDC, NPCHDA, the Federal Ministry of Health and others from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, World Health Organization, UNICEF and other partner agencies. The Incident Manager, Mr. Oladejo, said their work at the EOC is to put in place a sustainable process for responding to the current Meningitis outbreak. We are happy to say that this is truly a partnership focused on successfully stopping the outbreak. We will work round the clock to implement rapid response plans and deal with emerging issue. He also stated that the National Assembly was aware of the work of the EOC and the NCDC and had expressed its support. Share this: Twitter Facebook The United States has carried out a missile strike on a Syrian air force base in response to the Syrian governments alleged use of chemical attack that killed at least 80 civilians this week. The Syrian govt has denied responsibility for the use of the chemical weapons. The New York Times quoted a senior Pentagon official as saying that the 59 Tomahawk missiles hit the Al Shayrat airfield, destroying fighter jets, and other infrastructure but avoided anything that may have had chemical weapons. The cruise missile, which started hitting the air base around 8:30 Eastern Time, also avoided Russian fighter jets and other Russian military facilities. Russia is a staunch ally of the Bashir Assad-led Syrian government and has been instrumental in co-ordinating some of the countrys military air strikes on rebel positions. The Pentagon said it informed Russian military officials before the air strike. With a lot of Tomohawks flying, we didnt want to hit any Russian planes, an unnamed American military official was quoted as saying. Tonight, I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched. It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons, US President, Donald Trump said in a statement from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. The missiles, which were launched from two Navy warships, hit the air base for about 4 minutes. According to U.S. military officials, it was intended to send a clear message to Mr. Assad that U.S. will not shy away from using military force, if he continues to use chemical weapons. The strike is the first direct White House-ordered military action against Syrian forces since the beginning of the countrys civil war. It is also a departure from the restrained approach of the Barack Obama administration. U.S. military officials said the speed at which the Mr Trump administration responded, was meant to capitalise on the element of surprise. Support for the airstrike has been pouring in from unlikely quarters. Hillary Clinton, Mr Trumps rival in last Novembers election praised the strike saying that the Obama administration, under which she served as secretary of state, should have taken out Mr. Assads air force. Another critic of Mr Trump, Republican senator, John McCain, said in a statement that Mr. Trump should go further and take Assads air force which is responsible not just for the latest chemical weapns attack, but countless atrocities against the Syrian people completely out of the fight. Mr. McCain had been perhaps the most vocal critic of Mr Obamas approach to the Syrian conflict. However, Democratic congressman, Seth Moultonn slammed Mr Trumps decision to order the airstrike. So @POTUS cares enough about the Syrian people to launch 50 Tomahawks but not enough to let the victims of Assad find refuge & freedom here, Moulton tweeted following reports of the strike. Share this: Twitter Facebook Nine civilians including four children were killed in the U.S. missile attack on a Syrian airbase near the city of Homs on Friday, the Syrian state news agency said. The SANA report said the civilians died in villages near the airbase. It said seven more people had been wounded and homes in the area had been badly damaged. Earlier, Homs governor, Talal Barazi, said seven people had been killed in the attack. It was not immediately clear if these were separate casualty tolls. U.S. President Donald Trump said he had ordered missile strikes against the airfield from which a deadly chemical attack was allegedly launched, declaring he acted in Americas national security interest against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The strikes drew sharp criticism from Russia, Mr. al-Assads ally. U.S. officials said the military fired dozens of cruise missiles against the base in response to the suspected gas attack in a rebel-held area this week, which Washington has blamed on Mr. al-Assads forces. The Syrian government has strongly denied responsibility and says it does not use chemical weapons. The governor of Homs province said earlier that the airbase was used to support Syrian army operations against Islamic State. The UN Security Council was expected to hold closed-door consultations on Friday about the U.S. strike on Syria following a request by Bolivia, an elected member of the council, a senior Security Council diplomat said. Meanwhile, Turkish Foreign Minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, on Friday called for the removal of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as soon as possible, saying a transitional government must be established. Mr. Cavusoglu also called for the establishment of an interim government in Syria, adding Turkey was informed of the U.S missile attacks on the Syrian airbase ahead of time. The U.S informed Turkey before it attacked a Syrian base at Friday dawn. U.S. Ambassador to Ankara John Bass contacted our (Foreign Ministry) Under-secretary Umit Yalcin. Information on the attack was also diffused through the coalition members fighting against the Islamic State (IS), Mr. Cavusoglu said on Friday in Antalya. Mr. Cavusoglu said he had spoken with the French and German foreign ministers on phone without specifying when. He said contacts had been initiated with Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. He said that safe zones for civilians in Syria were now more important than ever. Like Turkey, a British official said the UK was contacted before the attack. U.S. Defence Secretary James Mattis asked for Britains view on whether Bashar al-Assads regime was responsible for a chemical attack in Syria before Washington launched a missile attack on a Syrian airbase, Britains defence minister said on Friday. In a sharp escalation of the U.S. military role in Syria, two U.S. warships fired dozens of cruise missiles from the eastern Mediterranean Sea at the airbase controlled by Assads forces in response to the poison gas attack in a rebel-held area on Tuesday. The American defence secretary consulted me early yesterday evening about our assessment of the regimes culpability for the chemical weapons attack and we reviewed the need to understand and to deal with any likely Russian reactions to the attack, Michael Fallon told BBC Television. He was then reviewing the different options to put before the president, he then called me later on to advise us of the presidents decision and to give us notice of the attack and our prime minister was kept informed throughout, he said. The U.S. on Friday fired dozens of cruise missiles at a Syrian airbase from which it said a deadly chemical weapons attack was launched this week, an escalation of the U.S. military role in Syria that immediately raised tension with Russia. Just hours after U.S. President Donald Trump announced he had ordered the attack, a spokesperson for Russian President Vladimir Putin said the strike had seriously damaged ties between Washington and Moscow. Two U.S. warships fired 59 cruise missiles from the eastern Mediterranean Sea at the Syrian airbase controlled by the forces of President Bashar al-Assad in response to a poison gas attack in a rebel-held area on Tuesday, U.S. officials said. Putin, a staunch ally of Assad, regarded the U.S. action as aggression against a sovereign nation on a made-up pretext and a cynical attempt to distract the world from civilian deaths in Iraq, his spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, was cited as saying by agencies. It was the toughest direct U.S. action yet in Syrias six-year-old civil war and leaves Mr. Trump facing his biggest foreign policy crisis since his January 20 inauguration, raising the risk of confrontation with Russia and Iran, Assads two main military backers. U.S. officials said they informed Russian forces ahead of the missile attacks and that they took pains to avoid hitting Russian troops at the base, saying there were no strikes on sections of the base where Russians were present. They said the administration did not seek Moscows approval. Share this: Twitter Facebook The House of Representatives member who last week urged President Muhammadu Buhari to step down on health grounds, has apologised to the president. Abdulmumini Jibrin apologised to President Buhari, Nigerians and the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC. He also organised a special prayer at a Jumaat mosque for the success of the Buhari administration and for the presidents recovery. Mr. Jibrin, who received hundreds of his supporters at his Kofa hometown, told journalists his call for the president to resign was misunderstood. Nonetheless, Im apologising to anybody I offended, he added. First, the president himself who is a father and who I truly believe in, the ruling APC and indeed Nigerians. Mr. Jibrin said Mr. Buhari remained his hope for a better Nigeria, and said any other claim did not reflect his position. On Friday, Mr. Jibrin, who is on suspension, having being sanctioned by the House of Representatives for accusing Speaker Yakubu Dogara of budget fraud, led Quranic recitations shortly after Jumaat prayers at the Kofa central mosque. The chief Imam of the mosque, Aminu Ibrahim, also offered special prayers for the president. After the offering of the prayers and the recitations, a cow was slaughtered as a sacrifice for the success of the Buhari government and for his full recovery. The APC chairman in Kofa, Bala Shuaibu, alongside his 25 executive members, also denied moves to recall Mr. Jibrin. He said claims of Mr. Jibrins recall was false. Share this: Twitter Facebook The speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, on Friday challenged the governor of Kaduna state, Nasir el-Rufai, to extend his call for budget transparency in the National Assembly to other arms of government. Mr. Dogara was speaking at the closing of a retreat for the management of the National Assembly. The retreat held in Kaduna. The speaker reacted to a statement credited to Mr. el-Rufai, urging the legislature to make its budget public. Mr. Dogara said governors should, in the spirit of accountability and transparency, publish how they utilise funds allocated to local governments and how they spend their security votes. I will like to challenge him (El-Rufai) to champion this cause for transparency in the budgetary process from the National Assembly to other arms of government beginning with the judiciary, he said. What do they spend monthly as security votes, and if they can publish what happens to local government funds under their jurisdictions, that will help our discussion going forward. Mr. Dogara said the National Assembly was the most misunderstood institution, and that no parliament in the world can win popularity contest and Nigerias National Assembly cannot be an exception. When, for instance, public discussions on funding of the legislature are being made, the entire bureaucracy is often completely discountenanced, he said. No consideration is given to the fact that this is a special bureaucracy saddled with a multitude of masters who must be equally served in addition to service to the nation, he explained. Mr. Dogara had earlier promised to make the National Assembly budget open starting from 2017. Share this: Twitter Facebook The Lagos State command of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency has apprehended 138 suspected drug traffickers and seized 1,399.780 kilogramme (about 1.3 metric tons). The drugs were seized in in Ikeja, Oshodi, Mushin, Lagos Island, Ikorodu and other parts of the State within the first quarter of 2017, the agency said in a statement on Thursday. Those apprehended in connection with drug trafficking include 137 males and one female. The NDLEA Lagos commander, Aliyu Sule, gave a breakdown of the seized drugs as well as arrests. The Lagos command of the NDLEA between January and March 2017 arrested 138 suspected drug dealers including a female and seized 1,399.780kg of drugs. Cannabis has the largest share with 1,390.38kg, Tramadol 9.35kg, Cocaine 23.65 grammes and Heroin 22.8 grammes. The Commander added that 84 drug dependent persons were successfully counselled and re-united with their families while 54 drug dealers were convicted with 125 pending cases. One of the suspects, Ngozi Owunna, 34, who allegedly distributes cannabis within Ikeja was caught at Allen Junction with 600 grammes of hemp after close monitoring by undercover narcotic agents. According to the suspect, I was a commercial motor cyclist but when the Lagos State Government banned commercial motor cycles I then shifted to cannabis sales. I am from Enugu State. I am married with 3 children. Another suspect, Abdulrauf Oshilaja, 50, who was caught with 50.3kg of cannabis, said financial hardship made him to deal in cannabis. I am married to 2 wives and I have 5 children. I used to sell motor tyres but due to family problem I started selling drugs because there is more profit in it than selling motor tyres. I was arrested at Ogijo, Ikorodu, said the suspect who hails from Oyo State. The Lagos Command also traced and seized 372.6kg of cannabis inside a shop at Lagos Island belonging to one Ojomu Saheed who hails from Kwara State. The 46 years old suspect told narcotic officers he had rented the shop to another suspect who is currently at large but investigation is ongoing. The NDLEA Chairman, Muhammad Abdallah, who vowed to intensify Nigerias fight against drug production, trafficking and abuse said the war against drugs is on course and that there is no going back. He however called on stakeholders to enlist and actively participate in the anti-drug campaign. Share this: Twitter Facebook A Karmo Grade 1 Area Court, Abuja, on Friday ordered that a 22-year-old electrician, Ahmed Umar, be given 10 strokes of the cane for stealing a horse. Mr. Umar of Kado Biko village, Abuja, was convicted by the judge, Abubakar Sadiq, as he admitted committing the offence. The prosecuting counsel, Florence Auhioboh, told the court that one Friday Job of Jabi Lake, Abuja, reported the matter at the Life Camp Police Station on April 6. Ms. Auhioboh said that on the same date at about 4 a.m. the defendant went to Jabi Lake and stole a horse. She said that Mr. Umar was apprehend and handed over to the police for further investigation. The prosecutor said that during police investigation, the convict admitted committing the offence. She said that the offence contravened Section 287 of the Penal Code. (NAN) Share this: Twitter Facebook Ekiti State Governor and Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Governors Forum, Ayodele Fayose, has lambasted the chairman of the party, Ali Modu Sheriff, for walking out on party leaders on Thursday during a reconciliation meeting held in Abuja. It is now obvious that he (Sheriff) is working for enemies of former President Goodluck Jonathan and the PDP, Mr. Fayose said in a statement sent to PREMIUM TIMES on Friday. From what Ali Modu Sheriff did yesterday, it should now be clear to all well-meaning Nigerians that he is not acting on his own. He is an agent of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and by extension an enemy of democracy in Nigeria. The man Ali Modu Sheriff is an impostor, an impossible character, agent of darkness and APC-sent to destroy our party. If he cannot sit with the leader of our party, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, I am also telling him that we in the PDP are also not interested in holding any discussion with him. He is a virus that has infected the PDP and by the grace of God, he will be cured permanently. He grew up the black leg of every organisation. His flirting with Obasanjo/PDP destroyed the All Peoples Party (APP) and ANPP. He is at again but this will be the last of the series. He is a serial plotter. I regretted my association with him and bringing him forth. I will not work with him. He is a betrayal of confidence and does not represent peace and hope. I will not be part of any meeting with such a dirty desperado. Anybody supporting, promoting or financing him is an enemy of Nigeria. Our country will not end up in a one party system which I imagine is the reason his business is thriving with the APC. Share this: Twitter Facebook The President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, on Thursday called for increased global attention for HIV/AIDS funding in Nigeria. In a statement by Yusuph Olaniyonu, his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Mr. Saraki said that the fate of over 3.4 million Nigerians living with the infection would be uncertain with poor funding. Information at our disposal reveal that significant global support for HIV/AIDs in Nigeria has been withdrawn. In order not to jeopardise the treatment of millions of Nigerians that are living with HIV and AIDS, government at all levels must continue to work with our international partners to identify alternative sources of funding. The fire brigade approach will not work on this issue. Foresight, preparation and strategies must be put in place to tackle the potential threat to life. Additionally, we must assemble a team of prominent medical professionals and eminent Nigerians at home and abroad to create a campaign. This is to persuade the donor community to reconsider their decision, he said. Mr. Saraki also stated that the Senate would work to ensure that there were no gaps in the HIV/AIDS funding regime. He expressed optimism that governments external funding request would be granted. He said that the 2017 budget contained provisions to fund initiatives aimed at rolling back the spread of polio and cholera, which had experienced gradual resurgence in the northern part of the country. With the various challenges facing Nigerians health sector, now is not the time to retreat on HIV/AIDS. The loss of funding will create immediate stress on an already overburdened system, Mr. Saraki said, adding that Nigeria would overcome the challenge. (NAN) Share this: Twitter Facebook A Russian online cyber security firm, Kaspersky, Thursday, alleged that North Korean hackers are allegedly attacking banks in Nigeria and 17 other countries. The organisation noted in its report that this could be regarded as the biggest bank heist in world history. Reports said banks and security researchers had previously identified four similar cyber-heists attempt on financial institutions in Bangladesh, Ecuador, the Philippines and Vietnam. But on Thursday, researchers at Kaspersky said the same hacking operation, known as Lazarus, also attacked financial institutions in Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Gabon, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Kenya, Malaysia, Poland, Taiwan, Thailand, Uruguay and Nigeria. But the Central Bank of Nigeria has since said it was not aware of the development. The new report is coming after more than a year-long investigation into the activity of Lazarus, the hacking group allegedly responsible for the theft of $81 million from the Central Bank of Bangladesh last year. The claims that North Korea could have been behind the attack has added to concerns that the country is becoming bolder in its cyber attacks against global financial institutions. CNN reports that North Koreas mysterious Lazarus hacking operation has been blamed for several large international cyber attacks in recent years. Reserchers at Kaspersky said the hackers can be traced back to North Korea, adding that to hide their location, hackers typically launch cyber attacks from computer servers far from home. The Lazarus hackers, according to Kaspersky, carefully routed their signal through France, South Korea and Taiwan to set up that attack server but a connection that briefly came from North Korea was spotted by Kaspersky. Vitaly Kamluk, who leads Kasperskys Asia-Pacific research team, said, North Korea is a very important part of this equation, but the North Korean government has reportedly denied allegations of the hack. Kaspersky Lab has, however, said despite the evidence of the North Korean IP address, it is not enough proof to provide definitive attribution given that the connection session could have been a false flag operation. Share this: Twitter Facebook Two middle-aged persons, Debora Fojo and Musa Garba, on Friday appeared before a Malumfashi Chief Magistrates Court in Katsina State for alleged breach of trust and cheating. The two were accused of collecting N429,000 to invest in MMM, a Ponzi popular among millions of Nigerians. Ms. Fojo and Mr. Garba are residents of Government Girls Secondary School Malumfashi Quarters and Unguwar Danyawa village in Kafur local government area respectively. According to the separate First Information Reports (FIR) read to the court, Ms. Fojo allegedly collected N229,000 from one Sani Salisu of Unguwar Sodangi in Malumfashi to invest in the scheme. Mr. Garba, on the other hand collected N200,000 from one Adamu Aliyu of Gangarawa also in Malumfashi to invest in MMM. The police prosecutor, Sani Ahmed, told the courts that the accused deceived the complainants with a promise that business would provide 30 per cent returns within 30 days. He said that neither the original money nor the interest were returned to the complainants after the expiration of the agreed period. He said that the accused were charged with criminal breach of trust and cheating, offences that contravened sections 312 and 322 of the penal code laws. The two accused persons, however, pleaded not guilty to the charges. The Chief Magistrate, Lawal Usman adjourned Ms. Fojos case till April 11, while that of Mr. Garba was moved to April 18, for mention. He ordered that the two accused persons be remanded in prison custody. Nigerian authorities estimate that three million residents lost N18 billion after the MMM suspended its operations in December last year. Although the scheme has since returned, majority of those who invested last year are yet to get their money and the interest. Millions of Nigerian still participate in MMM and other Ponzi schemes despite repeated warnings by regulators. (NAN) Share this: Twitter Facebook The late rear admiral, Daniel Ikoli, the Fleet Commander, Western Naval Command, Lagos, who was found dead at his Apapa residence on April 5, did not kill himself, contrary to some reports. According to authoritative sources at the command, Mr. Ikoli may have been assassinated as he had no cause to kill himself. Ikoli has been penciled down by the President as the next Chief of Naval Staff; he recently earned a special promotion to his present rank from Commodore. He was on the panel probing arms deal which also affects the Armed Forces, including the Navy. Ikoli was a disciplined, gentle, straightforward and honest man, who had no regard for protocol. It is nothing but a murder case, a source told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Friday in Lagos. The source also said that because of his performance as the Commander, NNS Beecroft, he was loved by all officers and the junior ones. He said: Ikoli transformed the place by introducing smart I.D. cards and increasing special duty allowance from N4,000 to N12,000. Everybody is aware that he was an introvert, but he made sure that things worked properly and he had respect for all and zero tolerance for corruption. He really complimented President Buhari on his anti-corruption war and I think that was why he was appointed to serve on the arms deal probe panel. His elevation as the next Chief of Naval Staff would have been announced if not for the presidents trip to London for medical checkup. Another officer, who said he worked with him, also told NAN that the late Mr. Ikoli, a rear admiral, was an easy-going man who did not believe in bothering people. At the close of work, he usually allows his aides to go home and stay with their families. In most cases, he will be the one to open the gate of his residence for visitors using a remote control. The officer would not have killed himself; it is pure case of assassination. There is a mystery surrounding his death; for instance, the two ambulances they brought to take him to the mortuary refused to move. It was when they brought his service car and transferred the body into it that they were able to take his corpse to the morgue, he said. (NAN) Share this: Twitter Facebook The Apo Division of the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) on Friday dismissed a N100billion libel suit instituted by a former Chief of Army Staff, Azubuike Ihejirika, against an Australian, Stephen Davies, Editor-in-Chief of Arise TV, Nduka Obaigbena and his firm, Leaders and Company Limited. The court threw out the case for lacking in merit. Justice Valentine Ashi held that the plaintiff failed to establish prima facie case against the defendants. Mr. Ihejirika, a retired lieutenant general, had in 2014 instituted suit against Mr. Davies for accusing him (Ihejirika) of sponsoring the Boko Haram terrorist group. He asked the court to grant him N100 billion as damages for defamation. His lawyers argued that the retired general suffered grievous wrong and was exposed to scandal, odium, ridicule, humiliation while his character, credit and reputation were brought into disrepute, both in Nigeria and abroad. He had also then obtained an order of the court to serve the process on the defendant abroad, while his lawyers, on the strength of the court order, applied to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to enable them to serve Mr. Davis who was said to reside in Perth, Australia. Mr. Ihejirika also sought an order of perpetual injunction restraining Mr. Davis or his agents from further making defamatory comments about him. He equally sought an order compelling the defendant to publish a full and unqualified retraction and apology conspicuously in the front page of a newspaper to assuage the plaintiff for the said false, malicious and libelous publication. The plaintiff however, with the leave of court on March 11,2015, joined the second and third defendants in the suit. Two witnesses were called and three exhibits, A-C, were tendered by the complainant. While the first respondent did not file appearance in the case, the second and third defendants through their counsel, Frank Chude, filed their statements of defence on May 18, 2016 and called one witness. According to the defendants, the major issues for determination were: whether the second defendant was properly joined in the suit; whether Exhibit A, tendered by the plaintiff was not wrongly admitted in evidence by reason of non compliance with the provisions of section 84 of the Evidence Act; whether the second and third defendants were able to push through their defence of qualified privilege and whether, in view of the pleadings and evidence led, the plaintiff is entitled to the reliefs sought. However, delivering judgment on the matter Friday, Justice Ashi agreed with the counsel of the second and third defendants that the second defendant, being an agent of a disclosed principal cannot be held liable for the act of the third defendant. The judge held that the second defendant was wrongly joined in the suit and thereby struck out his name. Similarly Justice Ashi held that the plaintiff failed to comply with section 84 of the Evidence Act as regards computer generated evidence and that Exhibit A was wrongly admitted in evidence. Exhibit A was an LG/DVD player from which the said interview of Davies on Arise Television was replayed in court. Following the rejection of Exhibit A as evidence, the court then discharged the first defendant of liability. On the issue of qualified privilege pleaded by the defendants, the judge also held that the plaintiff failed to establish prima facie case against the defendants. Justice Ashi noted that the defence, though not denying the said publication, was able to show that it acted in the interest of the general public and not out of malice against the plaintiff. Citing various authorities Justice Ashi added that what can destroy the plea of qualified privilege is a proof of malice and not the truth of the publication. He stated that at the time the alleged defamation was made, the issue of security was key in the country, and that the third defendant had a duty to inform the public. He held that public interest is paramount to private interest or convenience and that since the third defendant acted in the general interest of the public, it is immune from liability. Justice Ashi, while noting that Mr. Ihejirika was given the opportunity to state his side of the story, held that a person with malice against another party will not go out of his way to obtain the views of that person. He said, All the forgoing facts show that there was absence of malice in their publications. He therefore dismissed the case for lacking in merit. Similarly on the issue of whether the plaintiff established a claim for damages based on libel, the judge stressed that proof of publication was only one step towards claiming damages as the plaintiff must further prove that his estimation had been lowered in the eyes of the public. The judge held that it is third partys estimation that matters in establishing whether the reputation of the plaintiff has been damaged and not the complainants own assessment. The judge noted that while the plaintiff witness 2, Ashihiru Adebayo, in his evidence-in-chief stated that he was petrified by the said publication, he however contradicted himself under cross examination when he said that he did not believe the version of Mr. Davies but that of Mr. Ihejirika who denied sponsoring Boko Haram. The case is hereby dismissed due to the failure of the plaintiff to establish a prima facie case against the defendants, the judge held. Share this: Twitter Facebook The chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption, Itse Sagay, has described this weeks string of court decisions against the corruption cases prosecuted by the Nigerian government as worrying. Mr. Sagay, who spoke on the sidelines at a Strategic Engagement with Investigative Journalists in Lagos, Thursday, said the courts decisions call for a deep reflection. At least three judges delivered rulings that went against the corruption cases instituted by the federal government. On Monday, Justice Abulazeez Anka of a Federal High Court in Lagos vacated a freeze order on the account of a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Mike Ozekhome, after initially ordering a temporary forfeiture of N75 million found in Mr. Ozekhomes Guarantee Trust Bank account. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) had sought for a freeze order on the account alleging it to be proceeds of crime. On Wednesday, a High Court of the Federal Capital Territory discharged a judge of the Federal High Court in Abuja of all 18-count charges of fraud brought against him, his wife and a senior lawyer. The judge, Adeniyi Ademola, and his wife, Olabowale, as well as Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Joe Agi, were accused of fraudulent diversion of huge sums, ranging from local and foreign currencies, possession of firearms and involvement in illegal collection of gratification. On Thursday, a Federal High Court in Lagos issued an order unfreezing the Skye Bank account of a former First Lady, Patience Jonathan. The EFCC had in November 2016 filed an application before the court seeking an order freezing the account. The commission had contended that the funds were reasonably suspected to be proceeds of crime. The account is said to harbour the sum of $5.8 million. Definitely, Im worried, said Mr. Sagay, a professor of Law. Its a complex matter that will need a lot of reflection. But what I can say, generally, is that all those involved in the anti-corruption struggle should not be discouraged, they should continue to do their best. Mr. Sagay reiterated his earlier stance that he would not honour a summon by the Nigerian Senate over comments he made about them. Ive made it abundantly clear that Im not going to respond to that summons because it is illegal and way beyond the powers of the Senate, he said. And there is need to demonstrate that there is limitation to powers of institutions otherwise they will become oppressors of the country and our democracy will be at risk. My speech was made under my constitutional right, and Im protected by the Constitution to hold such right. Definitely, you will not agree that the Constitution be trampled upon because some people have thin skins. If anybody has problems with what I said, there are institutions created by law to which they can seek redress. But Im not going to allow the Senate to be the accuser, the prosecutor, and judge in its own case because thats absolutely unconstitutional. Mr. Sagay also said the comments by Bolaji Abdullahi, the All Progressives Congress spokesperson, that his utterances about the Senate are worsening the relationship between the Executive and the Legislature were out of line. The man who spoke (Mr. Abdullahi) is an APC official, I have nothing to do with him. Im not an APC official, they didnt elect me. Hes way out of line, let him face his party and let me face my own work. On the Senates refusal, for the second time, to confirm the nomination of Ibrahim Magu as EFCC chairman, Mr. Sagay said, Magu is the best hand we have, hes done nothing wrong and he should remain in position. Period. Share this: Twitter Facebook The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation, FAO, on Thursday, said it has set aside the total sum of $65 million to help farmers who were displaced by Boko Haram return to business. The FAO said farmers from the three states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe state who had lost their means of survival as a result of the Boko Haram insurgency would be assisted to get back on their feet. The FAOS acting country representative, Nouron Macki, who was in Maiduguri, Borno State, on an official visit, informed journalists at a press briefing that his agency will be helping the farmers in the three states under a special post insurgency program. The program, according to Mr. Macki, is tagged Restoring Agricultural Livelihood of IDPs, Returnees and Vulnerable Host Families in the North-East of Nigeria. He said so far, the program has empowered more than 200,000 IDPs across the three states. The 200, 000 farmers have been empowered their restart their livestock and fish farming, as well as crop farming. Among those assisted so far are 48,000 displaced farming households in Borno State who had benefitted from the program during the dry season while about 2,160 benefitted during the raining season. Mr. Macki said, So far, about 174,000 had so far benefitted from our dry season intervention while about 146,000 had benefitted during the rainy season in Adamawa, Yobe and Maiduguri, he said. Our implementing partners for this program include the Borno state government, the National Program for Food Security(NPFS), World Food Program (WFP), and FADAMA 111. The programme was sponsored by the FOA, Government of Ireland, Government of Belgium and Government of Japan. The objective was to empower about 1.8 million farmers across states who lost their means of livelihood. Eighty per cent of the population rely on farming as their main sources of their livelihood; and some of them have not been able to farm for about three years, while some have lost all their agricultural assets to the strangulating insurgency, he said. He added that the agency will require about $65 million dollars to revolutionise farming in the north-east. Immediately, we need about $20 million for the rainy season farming to cater for 114,000 farmers who will improve food production in the state. Share this: Twitter Facebook Hundreds of protesters stormed the administrative headquarters of the Federal Capital Territory on Friday, lashing out at the FCT Minister for alleged incompetence. The demonstrators accused Muhammed Bello, who was appointed in 2015, of sitting idly as crime rates soar and auto crashes as a result of defective traffic lights become frequent. In addition to wrecked streetlights and poor waste management, the demonstrators said the minister has displayed incompetence in handling basic amenities across the nations capital. This, they said, marks a strange dimension for Abuja, where past ministers were widely regarded for their hands-on approach that guaranteed functional municipal infrastructure. Since the creation of Abuja, this minister is the most clueless, Deji Adeyanju, one of the organisers of the protest told PREMIUM TIMES Friday. The protest began around 11:00 a.m., and participants carried placards bearing anti-government slogans. The march comes a few months after PREMIUM TIMES reported how residents were growing increasingly frustrated by the poor state of facilities in Abuja. Motorists who spoke with this newspaper in the October 2016 story expressed dissatisfaction with the traffic control situation, which they said was badly affecting their daily activities. Nonso Ifedili, a commuter, said he had witnessed accidents happen because the traffic lights malfunctioned at busy road points. Recently, a cab I boarded to Area 3, Garki almost had a head-on collision with another vehicle close to the National Defence College. The traffic lights showed green on all the stands at the same time, resulting in a maddening rush, Mr. Ifedili said at the time. Other residents interviewed for the report cited concerns from barely lit roads and walkways to an increase in criminal activities like pick-pocketing and other petty thefts. A spokesperson for Mr. Bello could not be reached for comments, but the minister has often blamed vandals for the decrepit facilities. Mr. Adeyanju said kidnapping has now become a regular feature of events in Abuja, and gave the minister a seven-day ultimatum to sit up. The immediate execution of turn-around maintenance works on streetlights and traffic lights within the Abuja metropolis and an immediate improvement of the refuse disposal system in Abuja are amongst the seven areas where the protesters demanded urgent action from the minister. We demand that these conditions be met within the next seven days failing which we will be compelled to hold protests at night to highlight the decaying state of infrastructure within the city, Mr. Adeyanju said in a statement. Share this: Twitter Facebook The Oyo State Governor, Abiola Ajimobi, on Friday inaugurated the caretaker chairpersons for 55 local governments and local council development areas in the state. Mr. Ajimobi, who inaugurated the chairmen at the Executive Council Chambers, Governors Office, Ibadan, disclosed that elections into the 33 local governments and 35 local council development areas, LCDAs, of the state would be held as soon as the suit against it was settled. A Federal High Court in Abuja presided by John Tsoho had in January 2017 ordered the Oyo State Independent Election Commission (OYSIEC) not to proceed with its plan to conduct the election earlier slated for February 11. The order was sequel to a motion ex-parte filed on behalf of 16 traditional chiefs, baales, from Oyo Federal Constituency by their lawyer, Ahmed Raji, pursuant to the creation of 35 LCDAs in the state. But Mr. Ajimobi maintained at the inauguration ceremony that immediately the case was settled, the much-anticipated local government election would be held. The day the court case is settled is the day we will announce the date of election, the governor said. He, however, urged the new chairmen to perform creditably so as to boost their chances of being voted by the time the election would be held. The governor said, The only advantage you have now as you have been sworn in is that you can quickly do things that will endear you to your people before election. You are caretakers, holding forth for others and your tenure is temporary. So be rest assured that your good work will be your certificate of retention. If you fail to work well, we will remove you, he said. Bosun Ajuwon, one of the newly inaugurated chairmen, speaking on behalf of his colleagues, promised that the new council bosses would deliver on their promises, adding that they would ensure better life for the people at the grassroots. PREMIUM TIMES reports that some aggrieved members of the ruling APC in the state, especially from Oke-ogun axis of the state, had earlier on Monday protested the nomination of the council chairpersons. Share this: Twitter Facebook President Andrzej Duda Polands President Andrzej Duda has expressed his "full support" for the US military operation in Syria. "Poland strongly condemns crimes committed against civilians and urges the entire international community to engage even more strongly in the restoration of peace in Syria, to stop the madness of war, to break the spiral of violence", the president said in a statement. "Today, I was informed by the US side about the details of the operation", the president said. "I also instructed the head of the National Security Bureau to prepare a special situation report". US President Donald Trump's decision to attack a Syrian air base was a reaction to the use of chemical weapons by Bashar al-Assad's regime against civilians, President Duda said. "The civilized world could not remain indifferent in the face of this act of unimaginable barbarism", President Duda added. The president noted that Poland supported the activities of the US administration in this regard - as an ally of the United States, but also as a state that shows solidarity with the victims of the Syrian civil war. (PAP) The first step has been taken toward a new look for part of downtown west Dearborn. Construction of Wagner Place a joint venture by the city and Ford Land to redevelop a two-block area at Michigan Avenue near Monroe Street began this week as work commenced on the 373-spot parking deck on Lot H at the southwest corner of West Village Drive and Monroe Street. Fords Wagner Place project encompasses two blocks over a four-acre area for two mixed-use retail and restaurant buildings totaling 150,000 square feet, along with outdoor green space and renovation of the former Wagner Hotel. The new buildings will feature first-floor retail stores creating about 50 new jobs and top-level offices for up to 600 Ford employees. The project is expected to wrap up in summer 2018. The four-level parking deck, being built by the city to support the Wagner Place project and the entire business district, is getting support from the Michigan Strategic Fund, which includes a local and school tax capture of $31.4 million through Dearborns Redevelopment Authority. The city also is investing $8 million through bond financing to build the parking deck and will bond for $7 million in utility improvements and streetscaping in connection with the project. The newly constructed buildings will be set back from the street to create wider sidewalks, along with other features to make the west downtown area more pedestrian friendly. While public parking is limited to 50 spaces in Lot H now, city leaders said there still are plenty of parking available during the year-long construction for people visiting shops, restaurants and other business with about 1,500 spots within a five-minute walk. Visitors are being encouraged to use Lot G and the west/east decks. When construction is complete, about 800 public parking spots will be available near Wagner Place, which is part of Fords 10-year transformation of its Dearborn campus. The renovation of the more than 60-year-old facilities will consolidate 30,000 employees from 70 buildings into two sites a product campus and a world headquarters campus. Other construction details to note: -Construction will occur between 7 a.m. and 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays with the possible weekend work depending on weather and schedule. -The pile driving operation to install the deep foundations for the parking deck will take approximately six week from early May through mid-June. -Roads around the development project will remain open during construction except when deliveries to the construction sites are occurring. -Michigan Avenue will stay open except for periodic lane closures in 2018 related to streetscape work. Visit dearbornwestonline.com to sign up for updates through a bi-weekly e-newsletter and text messaging as well as to view a parking map and other information. Regular updates and answers to frequently asked questions will be available starting April 12 on the web site. IIHMR University in Collaboration with JHU offers MPH Program 2017 ( Read 22318 Times) 07 Apr 17 Share | Print This Page India. The Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH) offers the Master of Public Health (MPH) degree program in India, in cooperation with the IIHMR University, Jaipur. The Master of Public Health is a two-year full-time program with a total number of 30 seats. Applications are invited for its 5th batch starting from October 2017. For the past four batches, all of whom have been placed very well, the MPH Program has been receiving admission interests from India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Myanmar. Dr. SD, Gupta, Chairman, IIHMR University says, Public Health sector is changed drastically in the last century. Poised to meet the needs of students confronting public health challenges in South Asia, this program also blends the JHSPHs excellence with IIHMR Universitys expertise in Health Management Research. There is a dire necessity to build public health capacities in developing countries, especially in the low and middle income ones in the South. We need to focus on generating unlimited capacities and professional skills in public health education. Hence, it is time to re-examine our curriculums to ensure we are delivering education, research exposure, and learning experiences that are vibrant, viable, relevant and realistic. This is primarily the reason and what we aim to provide with the Johns Hopkins-IIHMR program of Master of Public Health. With regard to the heavily subsidized nature of the MPH, Dr. Gupta added, What is even more striking is that, the programs fee is one third of what a student would be shelling from his pocket when he opts for any other MPH program in the USA. The course fee for JHSPH/IIHMR MPH program is USD 22000. Students admitted to this program will be provided a travel and stay international scholarship to attend two-week course on Problem Solving in Public Health at an Intensive Institute at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, USA. The MPH degree program is designed to focus on public health capacity building in developing countries, cultivate students health management skills so that they will be prepared to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of public health programs and services. The program will be able to prepare professionals for challenging careers in public health domain in the public as well as the private sector, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), national and multinational organizations. MPH Alumni are placed with organizations such as National University of Singapore, Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, Singapore, Smart Analyst, Gurgaon, IIHMR University, Jaipur, Rajasthan Medical Service Corporation Limited, Jaipur, Jhpiego, N.Delhi, Northland Government University, Auckland, NZ, Hospital Consultant, USA, Public Health Consultant, USA, Hospital Consultant, Rajasthan, Independent Consultant, Australia, Health Unlocked, London, United Kingdom, World Health Organization Country Office for India, Jhpiego, Nepal, New ERA, Katmandu, Nepal, KMCT Medical College, Calicut. Interested individuals must fulfill the following criteria, regardless of their nationality, to apply for the program: 1. A Bachelor degree 2. A minimum of 2 years of full-time health- related experience beyond the Bachelors/Masters degree. (Work experience is waived for Ph.D. and M.B.B.S graduates.) 3. Prior college-level mathematics courses; prior college-level biology course plus another health-related course. 4. Demonstrated English proficiency through prior degree, TOEFL or IELTS. 5. Demonstrated quantitative and verbal skills through GRE, MCAT, LSAT, or GMAT. (Applicants with degrees beyond the Bachelors may request a waiver of standardized test scores if they are other sources of quantitative abilities.) Applicants applying must go through a prescreening process and have been pre-approved for this program by IIHMR before they apply. Those who wish to apply for the MPH program are required to follow these steps: Step 1: Candidate should download a pre-screening questionnaire from www.mph.iihmr.edu.in and send the completely filled pre-screening questionnaire along with updated CV/resume to mph@iihmr.edu.in by MAY 31, 2017. Step 2: A confirmation mail will be sent to each candidate after receipt of the materials in STEP 1. After pre-approval for the application is given through an email from the IIHMR University, the candidate will receive another email from the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health with an invitation to complete the online MPH application through SOPHAS (Schools of Public Health Application System) http://sophas.org/program-finder/. In order to be considered for admission, completed applications (including payment of the US $ 135 application fee and a fully submitted application) should be received by JULY 01, 2017. Application Requirements at SOPHAS: In order for your application to be reviewed, you must submit the following: Curriculum Vitae/Resume (*will be uploaded with application) 2 Page Personal Statement (*will be uploaded with application) 3 Letters of Recommendation Electronically Through SOPHAS o We cannot receive official letters through the postal service. Official TOEFL Scores send to SOPHAS in Massachusetts use code 5688 Official GRE Scores send to JHSPH at SOPHAS 3738 /or GMAT Scores should be sent to KGB-3R-06 o Official Credential Evaluation of all Foreign Transcripts (all colleges/universities outside of the U.S. that you have attended) should be sent through World Education Services or WES. The CAS provider you should choose is SOPHAS o In order to expedite the review of your application, please send unofficial copies of ALL university transcripts to JHSPH directly o Please visit our website (http://www.jhsph.edu/admissions/international-students/) for more information. About the IIHMR: The mission of the Institute of Health Management Research University,Jaipur is to improve health through better health services management that results in more effective and efficient health systems that provide accessible and affordable quality health care. The not-for-profit institution, founded in 1984 in Jaipur, India, pursues its mission through academic education, workforce training, applied/operational research, and technical support. IIHMR public health and hospital management activities have garnered national and international recognition. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare of India recognizes IIHMR as an Institute of Excellence and the World Health Organization has designated it a WHO Collaborating Center for District Health Systems. Collaboration with the Bloomberg School of Public Health spans several decades. About Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health: Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH) is the oldest and largest independent graduate school of public health in the world, founded in 1916. Consistently ranked number one globally, the School has over 600 full-time public health faculty members renowned for teaching, Public Health practice, and for their cutting-edge research in the US, and in more than 130 countries. JHSPH has ten departments and over 50 research centers. The student body consists of over 2,000 masters and doctoral students who come from approximately 70 countries. The school has 17,000 alumni from more than 120 countries. Because of these accomplishments, US News and World Report perennially ranks JHSPH number 1 among schools of public health. MPH Program Overview: Since 2013, the Johns Hopkins Universitys Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH), Baltimore, Maryland, USA in partnership with the Institute of Health Management Research University (IIHMR) has been offering its Master of Public Health (MPH) degree program in Jaipur, India, for Indian students as well as those from surrounding countries. This prestigious program is designed with the following objectives: To cultivate students health management skills so that they will be prepared to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of public health programs and services To enhance the capabilities of public health professionals in countries of the Global South. To prepare professionals for challenging careers in public health management in the public and private sectors, non-governmental organizations, as well as national and multinational organizations Source : This Article/News is also avaliable in following categories : Education Your Comments ! Share Your Openion ATLANTIC CITY A tiny coffee shop next to the Atlantic City Rescue Mission offers a welcoming place for residents to sit, relax or grab a cup of coffee at a very reasonable price. Its pay what you want, said Michael DAquilante, director of facilities for the Rescue Mission and the activist-in-residence at Stockton University. A partnership between the Rescue Mission and Stockton, the Hopeful Grounds coffee shop developed from a walk DAquilante and Stocktons former activist-in-residence Rona Whitehead took outside the mission one day last year. We wanted to talk and had to get away from the phone that kept ringing, Whitehead said. We walked by the building and talked about how the front would be a perfect coffee shop, and maybe a way to do some job training, DAquilante said. Whitehead, who teaches a course at Stockton called Tools for Social Change, took the project to her class, which embraced it as community service, helping to raise money and staff the site. On Thursday a few students arrived with supplies they got at Walmart with proceeds from a bake sale. The cafe is small, and the decor is simple but homey. The counter, made from wooden pallets, was built with help from a Mission resident with construction experience. There are several small tables for two with chairs, and a couple of arm chairs in the corner. The coffee shop is open to the public, and neighborhood residents and workers are discovering its affordable fare. Offerings depend on donations, which on a Thursday included jumbo muffins and croissants. But it is also a place for residents of the Mission, or clients of the nearby John Brooks Recovery Center to take a break. Sometimes all people need is someone to talk to, said Stockton student volunteer Juliana Murcia, 18, of Egg Harbor Township. There is so much stigma to being homeless. A cup of coffee is a small thing, but it can make a big difference. City resident Stephanie Abdul Kabiir said she shops at the Rescue Mission thrift shop in the back of the building. She likes the cafe and said she gives what she can. Id feel bad about just taking. You have to give back, too. Thats how you get blessed, she said. Shelby Boggs, 22, an employee of the Rescue Mission who also helps at the coffee house, said most people pay something, typically 50 cents or $1, change in their pocket. A few leave much more. We had one person leave $20, she said. That was unexpected. A Stockton grant of $750 paid for the coffee makers and some startup equipment, and some coffee companies have donated beans. Whitehead said one of her students, Jessica Pazsko, is developing a food recovery program, picking up leftovers from Starbucks and Manhattan Bagel. Whitehead brought a couple trays of fresh fruit and pastries left over from a Stockton event.DAquilante said they would like to develop a network of businesses to regularly donate. The cafe is open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays. The ability to keep it open through the summer or extend the hours will depend on the sites ability to get more volunteers and donations. It really doesnt take long to go through 1,000 coffee cups, DAquilante said. Customer Andrea Germanis said she would be willing to volunteer over the summer to help keep the cafe open. A former Showboat employee and occasional resident of the Rescue Mission over the last few years, she said while the mission is a tough place to live, the coffee shop is welcomed. I can see it being a safe place for people, she said. DAquilante said the goal is not to be a retail store but a safe haven for residents who cant afford fancier coffee shops. He added a small bookshelf with books customers can take with them. On Thursday a local resident worked on his Bible study at one of the tables. We are not trying to be a business, DAquilante said. We are trying to be a blessing. ATLANTIC CITY Twenty-seven years ago, before he was president, Donald Trump walked the gaming floor of the Trump Taj Mahal, celebrating its grand opening. On the anniversary of the propertys opening ceremony, Hard Rock International on Wednesday detailed plans to spend nearly $400 million rebranding the property into the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino Atlantic City. The new facility will feature two separate arenas with seating totaling 7,000 and more than 2,400 slot machines. The property is expected to open in the summer of 2018. If we cant do it right, were not going to do it, said Jim Allen, chairman of Hard Rock International. Our commitment to Atlantic City has never been stronger, and we look forward to being a catalyst for further growth and development of the area. Allen is confident Hard Rocks opening will not hurt the citys remaining seven casinos. In 2016, the casino industry generated more than $3.6 billion in revenue. Atlantic City, no doubt, has had some challenging times, said Allen, who owns a home in Linwood. I think that its very important to understand that its still the second biggest gaming market in the United States. Resort casinos have struggled for years as gambling spread to Pennsylvania, New York and elsewhere, siphoning gamblers who once came exclusively to Atlantic City. But Allen says Hark Rock will bring new people to Atlantic City. With the Hard Rock brand and its ability to attract 100 million people on an annual basis, we are very confident that we can grow the market, Allen said. I can assure you our marketing plans are not just to take the customers from the existing properties. Former Revel tenants are moving on ATLANTIC CITY When Revel Casino Hotel closed in September 2014, it left many including c Hard Rock bought the casino March 1 from billionaire investor Carl Icahn. The project is expected to create more than 1,000 construction jobs and 3,000 permanent jobs, according to Hard Rock. Since the transaction was finalized March 31, Hard Rock has already hired 23 employees as it sets out to bring the once-iconic Taj Mahal back to life under a new name and identity. While no purchase price was given, the property was valued at $86 million, according to Icahn Enterprises 2016 financial report. Icahn closed the property Oct. 10, following a labor dispute with Unite Here Local 54. This is an extraordinary brand that is coming here to Atlantic City, Gov. Chris Christie said. The investment is great news for the city and the state. Hard Rock is partnering with the fellow New Jersey residents Joseph Jingoli and Jack Morris. In true New Jersey fashion, the event featured a Bruce Springsteen tribute band and a speech by E Street Band member Steven Van Zandt. Morris joked the project would be a success because Allen, Jingoli and himself are all Jersey boys. When I met him (Allen), I saw in his eyes and heart how he felt about Atlantic City. This was not another deal to him, this was personal, Morris said. I have a passion for turning things around. I will try with all my heart to do just that. Its not just about rebuilding the Taj Mahal casino with one of the worlds best hotel casinos. Its about Atlantic City. The Hard Rock Cafe opened in the Taj Mahal in November 1996 amid great fanfare over its hallmark rock memorabilia. Under the redevelopment plan, the restaurant will move to a new 400-seat venue in the property featuring beach access. 2018 is going to be a great year for us, Mayor Don Guardian said. PLEASE BE ADVISED: Soon we will no longer integrate with Facebook for story comments. The commenting option is not going away, however, readers will need to register for a FREE site account to continue sharing their thoughts and feedback on stories. If you already have an account (i.e. current subscribers, posting in obituary guestbooks, for submitting community events), you may use that login, otherwise, you will be prompted to create a new account. WASHINGTON - As you breeze through the patchwork of fur coats, crystal bedazzled evening gowns and sequined suits from the archives of the Ebony Fashion Fair, now on display at the George Washington University Museum and the Textile Museum, don't expect to learn much about the careers of Stephen Burrows, Patrick Kelly, Marc Bohan or any of the other designers who contributed to the legendary fashion roadshow. This is not a traditional fashion exhibition, in which the garments alone tell a story. "Inspiring Beauty: 50 Years of Ebony Fashion Fair," open through July 24, isn't focused on a particular designer's work process or aesthetic; it doesn't explore a singular theme that connects fashion to an inflection point in history; and it's not a celebration of techniques or textiles. And although some of the garments are dazzling, other frocks are, quite simply, odd. If you look only at the clothes, you may leave feeling confused about how they came to be in a museum at all. But pause to read the exhibition text and listen to the accompanying videos, in which designers and regular folks reminisce about what it meant to attend Ebony Fashion Fair - the thrill of seeing so many African-American women and men parading into a theater or high school auditorium to bear witness to African-American beauty - then the heart of the show becomes plain. "Inspiring Beauty" is not so much about the academics of clothes, but about the people who wore them - on the stage or in the audience of a Fashion Fair show, perhaps, but sometimes only in their dreams. Ebony Fashion Fair began in 1958, the brainchild of Eunice Johnson and her husband, John H. Johnson, the founders and publishers of the Chicago-based Ebony and Jet. Like the magazines, the fashion show spoke directly to African-American consumers. Black models walked the runway in flamboyant fashions from Milan, Paris and New York. During the show's heyday in the 1970s and '80s, it traveled an annual circuit throughout the United States, Canada and the Caribbean, making well over 100 stops a year. The work of black designers was showcased. And black audiences saw themselves in glossy, glamorous relief. Eunice Johnson was the chief organizer of the show and regularly traveled to Europe in search of the most theatrical, entertaining and provocative clothes. She didn't borrow samples from the designers; she bought the clothes - but only after expending countless hours persuading recalcitrant fashion houses to sell them to a black woman. Over the years, she accumulated about 3,500 pieces, many of which were too well-worn to be exhibited. The models were chosen from open auditions and, over the years, began to include plus-size women. The troupe of models, dressers and mistresses-of-ceremony crisscrossed the country by bus, navigating the Jim Crow South and serving as exemplars of black accomplishment. In each city, the show was hosted by a sorority or other community organization to raise money for charities, most notably the United Negro College Fund. Each ticket also came with a subscription to Ebony or Jet. Ebony Fashion Fair was a perfectly circular marketing and fundraising tool. And as the wheels turned, it spoke to the social aspirations, dignity and self-confidence of a rising black middle class. In making her purchases, Johnson noted fashion trends. The exhibition, for example, includes a fine example of Christian Lacroix's operatic flourishes. It's possible to see Bill Blass's menswear-influenced tailoring, Yves Saint Laurent's roving eye for Asian culture, Patrick Kelly's whimsical use of buttons and Burrows's splendid use of color. But those revelations register as mere asides rather than the main event. The heart of "Inspiring Beauty" is the connection between fashion and a community of people. Johnson, for instance, would often select the model with the darkest skin tone to wear the boldest colors, to highlight blackness. It was her way of declaring it beautiful at a time when the broader society would not. For Johnson, representation of black people in the realm of fashion was part of a political and social imperative. Elegant style and conscientious grooming were, in her eyes, social currency. As the exhibition catalogue notes, the "responsibility to attend to one's appearance for the collective good of the race was particularly impressed upon women." They were asked to be emblematic of social mobility, grace and appropriateness. To that point, "Inspiring Beauty" showcases a dignified and reserved navy Pauline Trigere dress from 1972 pulled from Johnson's personal wardrobe. But you're also left considering what a great burden it is to have one's physical presence imbued with so much meaning and possibility. The black models twirled with such grace and seeming effortlessness, at a time when they had to enter hotels through back doors, their opportunities for advancement limited, their very personhood devalued. "Inspiring Beauty" was first exhibited at the Chicago History Museum, and that setting should tip you off to the social context that is crucial to grasping the relevance of Ebony Fashion Fair. The show was born in a city teeming with examples of blacks working in the visual arts and in architecture, and one closely chronicled by a lively black press. Eunice Johnson, who studied sociology and art at Talledega College in Alabama, wrapped social and economic striving in the soothing embrace of fashion. Ebony Fashion Fair spoke profoundly to its audiences. No matter how bawdy the clothes, it was an achievement for black people simply to wear them. The exhibition makes the theatrics of the clothes clear. The reason all that mattered is harder to discern, but worth the effort. For the first time in 10 years, Atlantic City casinos have seen a year-over-year increase in total gaming win. This break in the citys decade-long losing streak, attributed to the rapidly growing internet gaming market, is encouraging but not necessarily the answer to the citys long-term success. From 1978 through the early 1990s, New Jersey had a virtual monopoly on East Coast casino gaming. However, as the casino gaming market expanded (from 1992 to 2010, in Connecticut, Delaware, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Rhode Island) and competition increased, Atlantic City found itself sharing more and more of the East Coast gaming market. As a result, gaming revenue has been reduced to less than half of what it was at its height in 2006 ($5.2B), reaching its lowest point in 2015 ($2.5B). Annual double digit percentage gains in internet gaming win seem to have slowed the decline in gambling revenue and contributed significantly to the modest year over year increase in total gaming win (1.55 percent) in 2016. However, just as Atlantic Citys monopoly on regional casino gaming came to an end, so too its monopoly on internet gaming is coming to a close. At present only Delaware, Nevada and New Jersey have legalized internet gaming; however, California, New York, Pennsylvania and an increasing number of states are all poised to enter that market. The impact of new competition may not be felt immediately as internet gaming continues to experience its initial growth but, as the industry matures, Atlantic City may again be sharing only a piece of the market. In this environment, the role of nongaming revenue in Atlantic City has become increasingly important. Changes in revenue share between gaming and nongaming revenue signal a shift in focus for Atlantic City casinos. In 1989 nongaming revenue represented 21 percent of total casino revenue; as of 2015, it represents 29 percent. For casino industry leader Las Vegas, the shift is even more distinct from a 60/40 split gaming vs. nongaming in 1989 to a 35/65 split in 2015. The shift in focus toward nongaming revenue has manifested in a number of ways, among them investments in convention venues and night clubs to serve both the expanding meetings and conventions business and the growing audience of millennial consumers. Recent investments in the conventions business, Borgata ($11 million), Harrahs (Waterfront Conference Center, $125.8 million) and Resorts ($9.4 million), have already seen a return on investment. According to the Atlantic City Tourism Sales Barometer, prepared by Atlantic City Convention and Visitors Authority, hotels (including casino owned properties) saw a 23.2 percent increase in the number of conventions, trade shows, and meetings held at their venues in 2016. The total number of shows offered in the city increased by 10.1 percent in 2016, drawing 9 percent more meeting attendees/delegates who used 21.5 percent more rooms. In addition to these gains in the meeting and convention business, casino properties have pursued opportunities for growth in attractions targeting millennial consumers. Investments in renovations to the Pool at Harrahs ($3 million), the Premier Nightclub ($14 million) at the Borgata and Ivan Kanes Kiss Kiss Nightclub (part of a $40 million renovation) at the Tropicana are all examples of this. Interestingly, as Atlantic City celebrates a streak of good news including Hard Rock Internationals purchase of the shuttered Taj Mahal to reopen it as a casino hotel, most discussion has focused on what the reopening will mean in nongaming rather than in gaming revenue terms. Likewise, conversation regarding the reopening of the Atlantic Club focuses on what the project will add in terms nongaming amenities, rather than what it will lose in gaming space. With both projects, the number of rooms, meeting and parking space, as well as the number of local jobs they are expected to create, are all major topics of interest whereas the new casinos impact on the gaming market has received comparatively little attention. In fact, Colin Mansfield, director of U.S. corporates at Fitch Ratings, told The Press of Atlantic City that he didnt expect the opening of the Hard Rock Casino to have any significant impact on gaming. With or without it, A.C. is still a $2.4 billion market. The way forward for Atlantic City will likely come through embracing what the city has to offer in terms of nongaming amenities. The gaming market may be fixed (for now) at $2.4 billion, but growth in nongaming revenue is potentially limitless. Rummy Pandit, of Galloway Township, is executive director of the Lloyd D. Levenson Institute of Gaming, Hospitality & Tourism at Stockton University. President Donald Trump's decision to fire 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airfield was met with support by South Jersey's congressional delegation. Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters in Palm Beach, Florida, on Friday that the attacks on a Syrian air base late Thursday were the result of a "72-hour evolution." The White House says the U.S. response to suspected chemical attacks by the Syrian government was "justified and proportional." Congressman Frank LoBiondo said the attack was justified. "The United States must no longer lead from behind," LoBiondo, wrote in a statement on Facebook."I strongly encourage the President and his National Security Team to fully engage Congress in this effort. Democrat Donald Norcross said in a statement that Russia should also be held accountable for its support of Syrian President Bashar Assad. The strikes were an appropriate, proportional response to Bashar al-Assad regimes horrific use of chemical weapons against civilians, including innocent children," Norcross said. Dozens of innocent people were killed in the suspected chemical attack Tuesday. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Thursday that the U.S. feels confident Assad's government was behind the attack and that sarin gas was apparently used. Congressman Tom MacArthur voiced his support as well. These strikes send an important message that America will not stay silent and allow this type of evil to exist in the world," he said in a Facebook post. Spicer says Trump was offered a variety of options of a U.S. response from his Cabinet and members of his national security team. He gave the green light on the missile strike ahead of dinner with China's President Xi Jinping. Spicer says Trump told Xi about the attack during their dinner Thursday night. WILDWOOD Three men were charged with robbery Wednesday after police said they stole marijuana from a drug dealer. Sharif Wilson, 36, and Kyle Wilson, 34, both of Wildwood, and Vincent Tyler, 24, of Philadelphia, were each charged with first-degree robbery of more than 50 grams of marijuana in a home invasion, police said Friday. The robbery victim, Lee Robinson, 45, of Wildwood, was arrested after officers searched his home in the 100 block of East Rio Grande Avenue and found marijuana and steroids, police said. Patrol officers saw two men exit Robinsons home at an unusually fast pace just after 7 p.m. Wednesday, police said. A third man stood outside the residence, police said. When officers approached the home, the two men tried to run back inside but were detained by police along with the man standing outside, authorities said. In addition to robbery, Wilson, Wilson and Tyler were each charged with third-degree possession of marijuana with intent to distribute, fourth-degree possession of more than 50 grams of marijuana and fourth-degree conspiracy, police said. Robinson implicated himself as a street-level marijuana dealer in a statement to detectives, police said. Police seized about 2 pounds of marijuana, 800 tablet doses of suspected steroids, 40 vials of suspected steroids, packaging material and a weighing device at Robinsons home, police said. Robinson was charged with third- and fourth-degree drug-related charges, police said. Wilson, Wilson and Tyler were taken to the Cape May County jail; Robinson was freed on a summons, police said. The community will come together this month to honor the service and ultimate sacrifice of Charles Ingram III. A year ago this region was shaken to its core when Ingram took his life to end his suffering at the hands of a VA system neglecting veterans. Because of his death, the VA has finally begun to meet the promises it made long ago to South Jersey veterans. This time last year I joined with Sens. Cory Booker and Robert Menendez to announce our lack of confidence in the VA Wilmington Medical Center leadership, which oversees South Jerseys community-based outpatient clinics (CBOCs) and care of local veterans. We forced the VA to remove oversight of our CBOCs from Wilmington, demanded staffing levels to meet the real needs of our veterans, and set clear goals for the VA to meet or face bipartisan congressional action. Our directives resulted in action. The director at Wilmington was removed. More than a dozen medical and support staff positions have been identified and filled at our CBOCs. A new, expanded Vineland clinic opened, and hours extended at both Vineland and Northfield CBOCs. Last year the VA had zero provider agreements with local medical facilities. Let me repeat: Not a single formal agreement was established to send our veterans to existing non-VA facilities. Today the VA has provider agreements with more than 220 South Jersey medical providers including Inspira, Shore Medical Center, Cape Regional Medical Center, HealthSouth and the Bacharach Institute. A wide range of services is now available locally, from behavioral health and cancer treatments to dental care and womens health. More local services means fewer South Jersey veterans travel to VA medical centers in Wilmington or Philadelphia for treatment. In fact, from September to March there was a nearly two-thirds reduction in the number of veterans crossing state lines for care from the Northfield (69.5 percent) and Vineland (62 percent) CBOCs. This led to a long-overdue development: the end of the outdated VA shuttle van. In February I was pleased to announce the reviled VA shuttle van, which had looped between the CBOCs and Wilmington, was ending. This bathroom-less van had long been the symbol of neglect and disrespect for our veterans. Now with VA Express, veterans who require or opt to be seen at Wilmington receive point-to-point car service. With a user-friendly reservation system, veterans no longer spend hours in transit and/or waiting for fellow veterans to finish their appointments. VA Express will even make stops for bathroom breaks at the veterans request. There has been real progress the past year to make right what was undisputedly wrong. The VA has made tangible strides, but is far from mission accomplished. A renewed trust, while on the mend, is not yet cemented. There is more to be done and I intend to keep the VAs feet to the fire. At my insistence, our CBOCs will remain outside of Wilmingtons oversight for the foreseeable future, particularly while the search for a new director continues. Expansion of services in Cape May County is also a priority and I am pleased the VA has committed to establishing a larger presence, including expanded clinic space. Preliminary meetings with local veterans groups to identify possible locations have started and additional feedback sessions with county veterans are being scheduled. It is expected that this new CBOC will come online by early 2019. The VA has also pledged to continue its community outreach, from creating two positions solely focused on community engagement to additional enrollment and benefits clinics held in cooperation with my office. Reversing the VAs historic lack of communication and engagement in South Jersey will take time and a sustained commitment. Finally, in Congress, I have reintroduced legislation inspired by area advocates to create a local pilot program giving each eligible veteran a Health ID, enabling them to receive medical care at non-VA facilities. The community clinic or hospital would simply bill the VA. Our veterans have pledged their lives to protect our freedoms; we should all honor their service and sacrifice. For those seeking a hardship waiver for non-emergent care, my Mays Landing office stands ready to assist. If there is a question or concern about VA services, please contact Mike Francis my veterans liaison at 609-625-5008. It is clear veterans care in South Jersey has measurably improved the past year, but we still have a long way to go to fulfill the promises made to those who wore the uniform for the nation. U.S. Rep. Frank LoBiondo is a Republican representing the 2nd District. The Cape May County Sheriffs Office recently joined a partnership program with federal Immigration Customs and Enforcement. It can now begin processing undocumented immigrants in the county jail, ones charged with or convicted of a crime, for possible federal deportation. Representatives of advocacy groups protested the participation by the sheriffs office, saying among other allegations that those in jail arent necessarily serious criminals and that the action would create anxiety in the immigrant community enough to perhaps avoid the county. A review of the 287(g) program suggests that on its own, the Cape partnership will neither greatly increase the deportation of criminal, undocumented immigrants nor change much about immigrant-community conditions in the county. The Clinton administration began the program in the mid-1990s without fanfare. At one point, 72 localities participated in it. From 2006 to 2015, program participants identified about 400,000 people for possible deportation. By comparison, the Obama administration annually deported about that many people, criminal or not, on average. The Cape Sheriffs Office became the 38th law-enforcement agency to partner with ICE. Others in New Jersey are in Salem, Monmouth and Hudson counties. The Cape sheriff said his office already has worked with ICE at the county jail for eight years, helping process the removal of 193 inmates from there and other facilities. He said an important change will be getting access to the federal agencys computer system. ICE will give three Cape officers four weeks of training, including in immigration law, the use of ICE databases, multicultural communication and the avoidance of racial profiling, adding the latter will not be tolerated by programs or officers. Refresher courses are required every two years. The Sheriffs Office apparently didnt require the approval of the county freeholders but would have gotten it if needed. Freeholder Director Gerald Thornton said, Were not going to be considered a sanctuary county. Regarding undocumented immigrants charged or convicted of crimes, he said, Its crazy to release them back into society again. The sheriff noted that New Jerseys new bail reform that releases on summonses many more charged with crimes means most of those held in the jail are there on serious charges. The 287(g) program became law in 1996 and operated for many years without much public attention. There is no story about it in The Press archives, nor about the decline of participation by law-enforcement agencies under the Obama administration. But once the Trump administration asked the Department of Homeland Security to enter into more such agreements, it instantly became a matter of contention. That suggests its a flashpoint for President Trumps supporters and opponents over immigration policy, which is fine. But participation by the sheriffs office looks to us like whats been considered normal immigration enforcement for the past two decades. Extend EHT bike path Its time to continue developing the walking/jogging/biking path along West Jersey Avenue. Increasing Egg Harbor Township pedestrian infrastructure would provide safe passage to educational facilities, recreational areas and retail establishments on foot and bikes while interconnecting the townships wonderful intergenerational and multicultural neighbors. A multistage developmental plan could be a collaboration of national, state, county and local officials working with private industry, foundations and other charitable institutions. The ultimate outcomes would be safer places to walk and ride bikes, healthier citizenry, greater sense of community and a higher quality of life. In addition, finding a way to connect the path to the recreational path through Pleasantville, Northfield, Linwood, Somers Point and over the Ocean City causeway would provide an expansive grid to places of interests throughout Atlantic and Cape May counties. We should act as many neighboring smart communities throughout southern New Jersey have done and develop a local pathway to the future through initiating this very important planning process. Bob Zentmeyer Egg Harbor Township A.C. teachers suffered, still back other unions Regarding the March 26 letter, A.C. teachers must share in painful cuts: In 2015, over 200 Atlantic City teachers and support staff members lost their jobs in a reduction in force. The consequences of the RIF were far reaching. Many members lost their homes, endured financial hardships and had difficulty finding employment. Those of us who were fortunate enough to keep our jobs saw an increase in our workload and class sizes. As a union, we understand the fiscal problems the city is enduring. Therefore, in recent negotiations we made considerable concessions to ease the citys burden including a dramatic reduction in opt-out payments and the change from private health insurance to the State Health Benefits Program. The Atlantic City Education Association, of which Im president, stands in solidarity with its fellow public employees and is against any effort to breach the current contracts. Disregarding the contractual agreements negotiated with the police, firemen or any other public employee union is totally unacceptable. During these difficult times, it is imperative the community comes together and realize we are only as strong as we are united. Marcia Genova Ventnor Doubts about LoBiondo Should a vote against the presidents health care bill be considered a vote for Obamacare? Republican Rep. Frank LoBiondo said of the American Health Care Act: This bill does not meet the standards of what was promised; it is not as good as or better than what we currently have. In other words, after seven years of committing to repeal of Obamacare, LoBiondo was going to vote with the Democrats in favor of keeping the Affordable Care Act for the foreseeable future. The acronym RINO Republican in name only, could describe those whose political views or actions are not consistent with the partys 2016 platform calling for repeal of the dishonestly named Affordable Care Act of 2010: Obamacare. LoBiondo has been in Congress since 1994 and has been re-elected with at least 59 percent of the vote, even though he represents a district that is marginally Democratic. He rescinded his endorsement of Donald Trump for president in 2016. Is he a RINO? The answer can only be determined by the voters and if his party chooses to support him come primary time. Art Mooney Little Egg Harbor Township MUNICH, April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Further investment from leading Silicon Valley VC Internal round led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) Funds will be used for new product features and market entry in further European countries Dr. Greg Papadopoulos , Venture Partner at NEA, joins Board of Directors CEO Andreas Kunze : "Show of confidence by existing investors" Munich-based IIoT startup KONUX announced today that it has raised another $9 million from existing investors, led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA). This internal round was the third and final close of their Series A financing, bringing the total raised to $16 million. Other participants in the comprehensive Series A include: MIG, Upbeat Ventures, Andy Bechtolsheim, Michael Baum, UnternehmerTUM, Warren Weiss and Lothar Stein. KONUX is one of the very few German based startups that were able to attract leading Silicon Valley VCs. KONUX also announced that Dr. Greg Papadopoulos, Venture Partner at NEA and former CTO at SUN Microsystems, will be joining its Board of Directors. "KONUX has the potential to have a massive impact on the industrial world through its AI solutions," said Papadopoulos. "It will significantly change the way companies approach their asset management and maintenance processes. KONUX has demonstrated impressive progress with its predictive analytics solution for railway operators and has successfully installed its first systems in the field - giving us the confidence and excitement to increase our original investment." KONUX combines smart sensors and AI-based analytics to help customers know their assets' performance in real-time and switch to predictive maintenance. The company's vision is to enable a data-driven industrial world. "Predictive analytics for critical assets is one of the largest opportunities for industrial companies in the era of digitalization," stated Board Observer Dr. Torsten Kreindl, Managing Partner at Upbeat Ventures and former longtime Swisscom board member. "KONUX has managed to find a huge market and to profit from its roots in two innovative technology hubs: Its product development is based on both the executional speed of Silicon Valley and the quality of German engineering." Board Member Dr. Soren Hein, Venture Partner at MIG and former Vice President of Infineon, stressed KONUX' in-house expertise: "KONUX has built a team of both young entrepreneurs and senior professionals who have decades of experience in the field of engineering and AI. This combination of innovative ideas and deep technical know-how is clearly reflected in their solution." KONUX has recently achieved several important milestones, including the start of its work with Deutsche Bahn (DB), Europe's largest rail operator. The company has also begun its successful expansion into further European markets. The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) startup enables rail operators to digitize their network through condition monitoring of switches, the most critical part of railway infrastructure. The smart sensors and analytics solution will help them predict maintenance needs in advance and react in time, thereby increasing network availability and punctuality. Over the last months, KONUX was awarded the German Mobility Price as well as the German Digital Price "Spark Award" for its predictive analytics solution. The startup and its founders furthermore made it into the "AI 100" list by CBInsights and the "Forbes 30 under 30 ". The additional funding will be used primarily for the development of new product features and the market entry in further European countries. "Over the last year, we've made significant progress with our customer projects," stated KONUX CEO Andreas Kunze. "We aim to continue this strong momentum and drive IoT implementation with real business results. We feel very proud to have our current investors believing in us and supporting us on our journey. This additional funding is a true show of their confidence." About KONUX Munich-based IIoT company KONUX integrates smart sensor systems and AI-based analytics to deliver asset insights in real time and enable its customers to switch to predictive maintenance. The end-to-end solution uses artificial intelligence to help clients continuously monitor their infrastructure, identify maintenance needs ahead of time and improve operational efficiency. KONUX empowers industrial and rail companies to reach a new level of asset performance. Since its foundation in 2014, KONUX has raised a total of $18M in funding from world leading investors and has built a team of currently 35 employees. For more information visit: konux.com About NEA New Enterprise Associates, Inc. (NEA) is a global venture capital firm focused on helping entrepreneurs build transformational businesses across multiple stages, sectors and geographies. With nearly $17 billion in cumulative committed capital since the firm's founding in 1977, NEA invests in technology and healthcare companies at all stages in a company's lifecycle, from seed stage through IPO. The firm's long track record of successful investing includes more than 200 portfolio company IPOs and more than 320 acquisitions. For additional information, visit www.nea.com About MIG MIG Verwaltungs AG is a leading German VC investor with an investment focus on early to mid-stage technology and life science companies. The portfolio of the funds managed by MIG currently comprises 26 companies. For additional information, visit www.mig.ag; www.mig-fonds.de About Upbeat Ventures Upbeat Ventures invests in leading technology companies in both Europe and the US, always with a transatlantic view. It considers itself a strategic, high-value add investor for its entrepreneurs that leverages both its large senior executive network and long-lasting tier-one VC relationships for its portfolio companies. The Upbeat team combines many years of and lessons from successful European and West Coast VC investment practice, international business leadership and significant governance experience. About UnternehmerTUM UnternehmerTUM Fund invests in young technology companies across Germany in the fields of Industry 4.0, Enterprise Software, and Mobility & Smart Cities. Portfolio companies benefit from UnternehmerTUM's longstanding experience in developing young companies. The UnternehmerTUM Fund has in-house industry experts and a unique network of connections in industry and to other venture capital investors. www.unternehmertum.de/vc Media Contact: Andreas Kunze Chief Executive Officer Tel: +49-159-04155111 andreas.kunze@konux.de SOURCE KONUX MENLO PARK, Calif., April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Accel-KKR, a technology-focused private equity firm, today announced that it has completed its sale of its portfolio company Abila to Community Brands. Accel-KKR acquired Abila in 2013 when the business, which provides software and services to associations, nonprofit organizations and governmental entities, was spun-off from UK-based The Sage Group plc. Following its initial investment in 2013, Accel-KKR rebranded the company, augmented the management team, and invested to build the infrastructure to position the company for significant organic growth and strategic consolidation. During the past four years, Abila grew its revenues threefold, successfully integrated three acquisitions to expand its product offerings in the non-profit and association sector, and transformed its revenue base to a primarily subscription-based (SaaS) model. Dean Jacobson, Managing Director of Accel-KKR, said, "We are extremely proud of the leadership position Abila established under our ownership. We believed that with the right team, the right products and the right delivery model this business could grow faster and make a bigger impact for its customers. That vision was achieved. We are excited by the possibilities that Abila will have as part of Community Brands." "Accel-KKR was a true partner to Abila in every phase of our growth. The team provided guidance and support in a myriad of ways from the initial carve-out to helping us build a world-class management team and beyond. We could not have successfully tripled the size of the company, creating opportunity for our employees as well as our customers without Accel-KKR," said Craig Charlton, Abila CEO. Tom Barnds, Managing Director of Accel-KKR and Chairman of Abila, said, "Our experience with Abila illustrates one key tenet of our approach to investing -- we are very comfortable with complex deal dynamics. Having completed more than 20 divisional acquisitions in our history, we have the capabilities, patience and expertise to complete complex transactions and then invest to help our companies accelerate their growth through both organic and inorganic means post-acquisition." Accel-KKR will maintain a small equity ownership position in Community Brands going forward. About Accel-KKR Accel-KKR is a technology-focused investment firm with over $4.0 billion in capital commitments. The firm focuses on software and IT-enabled businesses well-positioned for topline and bottom-line growth. At the core of Accel-KKR's investment strategy is a commitment to developing strong partnerships with the management teams of its portfolio companies and a focus on building value through significant resources available through the Accel-KKR network. Accel-KKR focuses on middle-market companies and provides a broad range of capital solutions including buyout capital, minority-growth investments, and credit alternatives. Accel-KKR also invests across a wide range of transaction types including private company recapitalizations, divisional carve-outs and going-private transactions. Accel-KKR is headquartered in Menlo Park with additional offices in Atlanta and London. For more information, please visit: www.accel-kkr.com. About Abila Abila is the leading provider of software and services to associations and nonprofit organizations that help them improve decision-making, execute with greater precision, increase engagement, and generate more revenue. With Abila solutions association and nonprofit professionals can use data and personal insight to make better financial and strategic decisions, enhance member and donor engagement and value, operate more efficiently and effectively, and increase revenue to better activate their mission. Abila combines decades of industry insight with technology know-how to serve nearly 8,000 customers across North America. For more information, please visit www.abila.com. Contact: Todd Fogarty KEKST 212-521-4854 [email protected] SOURCE Accel-KKR Related Links https://www.accel-kkr.com "Justice Gorsuch exemplifies everything a good judge should be, realizing it's his job not to be a legislator, but to take the cases and controversies as he finds them and apply the Constitution and the law to them," said Jay Sekulow , Chief Counsel of the ACLJ, who has appeared before the Supreme Court in numerous cases. "We urged the Senate to follow tradition and give the American people a voice in selecting the next Supreme Court Justice. The American people spoke at the polls. The President kept his promise and nominated a rock solid conservative to the Supreme Court. The Senate did its job following the Constitutional option and confirmed the President's pick the people's choice. Today the Constitution won the rule of law won and the American people won." The ACLJ launched a national media campaign to advocate for the confirmation of Judge Gorsuch. The ACLJ has more than one million members and utilized radio, television, online and social media to urge the Senate to act without delay to confirm Judge Gorsuch. Nearly 245,000 people signed on to an ACLJ petition demanding his confirmation. Led by Chief Counsel Jay Sekulow, the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), focusing on constitutional law, is based in Washington, D.C. and is online at www.aclj.org. MEDIA CONTACTS: For Print: Gene Kapp (757) 575-9520 For Broadcast: Anna Hutsell or Christine Cape (770) 813-0000 SOURCE American Center for Law and Justice Related Links http://www.aclj.org THE HAGUE, The Netherlands, April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Aegon N.V. today published the agenda for its Annual General Meeting of Shareholders (AGM) on Friday, May 19, 2017. The agenda includes proposals to adopt the Annual Accounts 2016, and to approve the final dividend for 2016 of EUR 0.13 per common share, bringing the total dividend for 2016 to EUR 0.26 per common share. Also included in the agenda is the proposal to appoint Mr. Matthew Rider as Chief Financial Officer and member of the Executive Board of Aegon N.V. Mr. Rider joined Aegon on January 1, 2017, after 25 years in various roles within the financial services industry. Most recently, he was Chief Administration Officer and a member of the Management Board at ING Insurance, based in the Netherlands. In this role he was responsible for all of ING's insurance and asset management operations, and specifically for Finance and Risk Management. Prior to being on the Management Board of ING Insurance, Mr. Rider held various other management positions at ING, Merrill Lynch Insurance Group, Transamerica and Banner Life Insurance Company. His proposed appointment has been approved by DNB. The Supervisory Board proposes to reappoint Mrs. Dona Young as a member of the Supervisory Board for an additional term of four years as of May 19, 2017. Mrs. Young was appointed to Aegon's Supervisory Board in 2013 and she is a member of the Audit Committee and Risk Committee. Furthermore, the agenda includes a proposal to appoint Mr. William Connelly and Mr. Mark Ellman as members of the Supervisory Board for a term of four years as of May 19, 2017. Mr. Connelly is a former member of the Management Board of ING Bank. Mr. Ellman is former Vice Chairman of Global Origination at Bank of America/Merrill Lynch and a member of the Non-Executive Board of Aegon US for which his membership will be terminated if he is appointed as member of the Supervisory Board at the AGM. Their proposed appointments have been approved by DNB. Further details of the proposed (re)appointments can be found in the AGM agenda, on aegon.com. About Aegon Aegon's roots go back more than 170 years - to the first half of the nineteenth century. Since then, Aegon has grown into an international company, with businesses in more than 20 countries in the Americas, Europe and Asia. Today, Aegon is one of the world's leading financial services organizations, providing life insurance, pensions and asset management. Aegon's purpose is to help people achieve a lifetime of financial security. More information on aegon.com/about. For the Editor Updates Contacts Media relations Debora de Laaf +31(0)70-344-8730 [email protected] Investor relations Willem van den Berg +31(0)70-344-8405 [email protected] PRN NLD SOURCE Aegon N.V. ATLANTA, April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Atlanta Housing Authority announced today that it is seeking private-sector developers to create a sense of place and belonging with affordable and market-rate housing in the Englewood District and in partnership with the Atlanta BeltLine, Inc. "This Request for Qualifications represents the starting point of an unprecedented opportunity to redevelop a community along the Atlanta BeltLine where families can live, work and thrive," said Catherine Buell, CEO of the Atlanta Housing Authority. "This new partnership with AHA significantly accelerates ABI's unwavering commitment to an equitable Atlanta BeltLine for all," said Paul Morris, CEO of Atlanta BeltLine, Inc. AHA and its partners are seeking developers to build the first phase of a 37-acre property located in southeast Atlanta near the Atlanta BeltLine, within the Chosewood Park neighborhood and south of Grant Park. The 37 acres consist of two non-contiguous sites. The first is a former public housing site located on the south side of Englewood Avenue and directly across from the BeltLine's Boulevard Crossing Park. The second area is located on the north side of Englewood Avenue and adjacent to the BeltLine. It is anticipated that approximately 10 acres of the 37 acres will be released to one or more developers as the first phase for development. For future phases, AHA may offer development options to respondents or issue a new solicitation. AHA may also select one or more respondents for a co-terminus development of Phase 1. AHA and the Atlanta BeltLine, Inc. will spearhead an Area Development Plan, which will take into account the area's infrastructure, storm water management, green space, transportation and affordable housing needs. The extensive planning process -- which will include the City of Atlanta, Invest Atlanta, the Atlanta Public Schools and other development stakeholders -- will serve as a catalyst for neighborhood revitalization and the creation of the Englewood District. "Making affordable living a reality around the BeltLine and all across the city is a team sport," said Morris. "All who work to make a great community have an essential role to play. With AHA as our partner, this project will ensure we do well by doing good for all." AHA will select qualified developers with a track record of engaging community leaders and stakeholders, stimulating economic development with retail opportunities, and mitigating community displacement. A conference and site tour will be held 10 a.m. Thursday, April 20, 2017, at AHA headquarters at 230 John Wesley Dobbs Ave., NE, Atlanta, Georgia 30303. Submissions to the RFQ are due 10 a.m. Wednesday, May 10, 2017. About Atlanta Housing Authority The Housing Authority of the City of Atlanta, Georgia (AHA) is the largest housing authority in Georgia and one of the largest in the nation. AHA provides and facilitates affordable housing resources for nearly 22,000 low-income households comprised of approximately 50,000 people. These affordable housing resources include AHA-owned residential communities, AHA-sponsored mixed-income, mixed-finance residential communities, tenant-based vouchers, project based rental assistance, supportive housing arrangements and homeownership opportunities. AHA's programs are funded and regulated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development ("HUD"). Visit Atlanta Housing Authority at http://www.atlantahousing.org or follow on Twitter and Instagram at @housingatlanta or Facebook at @AtlantaHousing. About Atlanta BeltLine, Inc. The Atlanta BeltLine is the most comprehensive transportation and economic development effort ever undertaken in the City of Atlanta and among the largest, most wide-ranging urban redevelopment programs currently underway in the United States. The Atlanta BeltLine is a sustainable redevelopment project that will provide a network of public parks, multi-use trails and transit along a historic 22-milerailroad corridor circling downtown and connecting many neighborhoods directly to each other. Atlanta BeltLine, Inc., (ABI) is the entity tasked with planning and executing the implementation of the Atlanta BeltLine in partnership with other public and private organizations, including City of Atlanta departments. For more information on the Atlanta BeltLine, please visit www.BeltLine.org. SOURCE Atlanta Housing Authority "By elevating and normalizing conversations around bowel health, Allergan and the AGA believe Toilet Talk SM will empower patients to feel more comfortable and confident when speaking with their healthcare professional," said Aimee Lenar, Vice President, Gastroenterology. "No one should suffer because they are too embarrassed to talk about their IBS-D symptoms." At the center of this multimedia campaign is a bold video created in partnership with celebrity entrepreneur and Daytime Emmy nominated talk show host, Wendy Williams, whose candid, no-holds-barred personality encourages sufferers to speak to a healthcare professional. "I don't shy away from talking about taboo topics, and talking about number two, isn't any different," said Wendy Williams. "I'm excited to be a part of Toilet Talk, helping to advocate and spread the word that it's okay to talk about bowel health. Once we explained that bowel health is a vital component of your overall health, it was easy to get people talking about poop. The responses we received are honest, enlightening and even a little fun." As many as 16 million Americans are affected by IBS-D,[1],[2] and according to the "IBS in America" survey, a web-based survey of IBS-C and IBS-D sufferers by the AGA, nearly 4 in 10 patients waited three or more years before seeing a healthcare professional about their symptoms.[3] Patients would rather discuss STDs or impotence rather than their bowel health with their HCPs.3 Allergan and the AGA are determined to change this pattern of behavior. "Many IBS sufferers dismiss their symptoms until diarrhea impacts their daily lives, causing them to miss work or social events. It's unfortunate that instead of communicating these issues with their healthcare professional, they resort to an ongoing cycle of lifestyle modification and over the counter treatments," said J. Sumner Bell, MD, AGAF, AGA patient engagement advisor. "It's our goal that by raising awareness of the importance of bowel health, Toilet TalkSM will empower sufferers to seek medical treatment earlier than ever before, and speak frankly with their healthcare professional so that they can control their symptoms and regain confidence in their daily lives." Filmed on the Santa Monica Pier in California, the Toilet Talk SM video features men and women, approached at random, sitting on toilets having an honest discussion about their bowel movements. Talking about poop may be awkward and uncomfortable, and Toilet Talk perfectly captures both the taboo and authentic nature of the topic, while underscoring that bowel health, among other factors, can be an important component in overall well-being. The campaign further empowers patients to understand more about their own bowel movements by answering five simple questions that will help them start the discussion with their healthcare provider. For every completed questionnaire, Allergan will donate $1 to the AGA Research Foundation to support digestive disease research, up to $50,000. Toilet Talk SM will be amplified further through digital advertising as well as with a Toilet Talk SM Facebook page. In addition, Toilet Talk SM will reach healthcare practitioners and consumers via in-office brochures. For additional information, to view the video, or to learn more about IBS-D visit www.thetoilettalk.com. Viewers are also encouraged to inspire open bowel health conversation by sharing via social media using the hashtag #ToiletTalk. About the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) The American Gastroenterological Association is the trusted voice of the GI community. Founded in 1897, the AGA has grown to include more than 16,000 members from around the globe who are involved in all aspects of the science, practice and advancement of gastroenterology. The AGA Institute administers the practice, research and educational programs of the organization. www.gastro.org. About Allergan plc Allergan plc (NYSE: AGN), headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, is a bold, global pharmaceutical company and a leader in a new industry model Growth Pharma. Allergan is focused on developing, manufacturing and commercializing branded pharmaceuticals, devices and biologic products for patients around the world. Allergan markets a portfolio of leading brands and best-in-class products for the central nervous system, eye care, medical aesthetics and dermatology, gastroenterology, women's health, urology and anti-infective therapeutic categories. Allergan is an industry leader in Open Science, the Company's R&D model, which defines our approach to identifying and developing game-changing ideas and innovation for better patient care. This approach has led to Allergan building one of the broadest development pipelines in the pharmaceutical industry with 70+ mid-to-late stage pipeline programs in development. Our Company's success is powered by our more than 16,000 global colleagues' commitment to being Bold for Life. Together, we build bridges, power ideas, act fast and drive results for our customers and patients around the world by always doing what is right. With commercial operations in approximately 100 countries, Allergan is committed to working with physicians, healthcare providers and patients to deliver innovative and meaningful treatments that help people around the world live longer, healthier lives every day. For more information, visit Allergan's website at www.Allergan.com Forward-Looking Statement Statements contained in this press release that refer to future events or other non-historical facts are forward-looking statements that reflect Allergan's current perspective of existing trends and information as of the date of this release. Except as expressly required by law, Allergan disclaims any intent or obligation to update these forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from Allergan's current expectations depending upon a number of factors affecting Allergan's business. These factors include, among others, the difficulty of predicting the timing or outcome of FDA approvals or actions, if any; the impact of competitive products and pricing; market acceptance of and continued demand for Allergan's products; difficulties or delays in manufacturing; and other risks and uncertainties detailed in Allergan's periodic public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to Allergan's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2016. Except as expressly required by law, Allergan disclaims any intent or obligation to update these forward-looking statements. [1] Grundmann O, Yoon SL. Irritable bowel syndrome: epidemiology, diagnosis and treatment: an update for health-care practitioners. J Gastroenterol Hepatol. 2010 Apr;25(4):691-9. [2] Quick Facts. United States Census Bureau website. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/00. Accessed April 4, 2017. [3] Data on file. Forest Laboratories, LLC. Media Contacts: Mark Marmur 862.261.7558 Tara Schuh 201.427.8888 SOURCE Allergan plc Related Links http://www.allergan.com WASHINGTON, April 6, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today Ambassador Paul Altidor met with US Congressman Jeff Duncan, chairman of the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere to discuss the US- Haiti bilateral relationship, Venezuela, and the departure of MINUSTAH from Haiti among other topics. "I am happy to have met with Chairman Duncan today to continue the longstanding practice of our open discourse between the Embassy and members of the US Congress," said Ambassador Altidor. "We, given our belief in upholding democratic principles, are encouraging the actors in Venezuela to engage in a dialogue to address and possibly resolve this political internal matter. Haiti and other countries in the region, through the OAS and other avenues, can play a critical role in mediating this discussion, if and when necessary, without undermining Venezuela's sovereignty." In addition to the topic of Venezuela, the departure of MINUSTAH was discussed, as well as a congressional delegation visit in the near future. "I look forward to working closely with Chairman Duncan and other congressional leaders to facilitate a CODEL to Haiti. These trips further strengthen the bond between our two nations and serve as an opportunity for members to meet with the recently elected Administration in Haiti, while assessing the nature of US efforts on the ground." Contact: Embassy of Haiti at [email protected] SOURCE The Embassy of Haiti Audionamix also offers a lite version at a lower price point. TRAX 3 SP includes all features of TRAX Pro 3 SP with the exception of the additional spectral editing capabilities. For more information visit https://adx.bz/pr-sp-link or find Audionamix inside the Hyperactive booth Hall 9.1 Stand E54 at Musikmesse in Frankfurt, Germany. TRAX Pro 3 SP Features Automatic Speech Targeting Automatic Consonants Detection New Automatic Extraction Options Speech-Optimized Pitchogram Full-frequency Spectral Toolkit Pan-Specific Spectral Editor Denoise Tool Tonal / Noise Filter SP Pricing TRAX 3 SP (lite version) Buy $599 or Subscribe $39.99 /mo or Subscribe /mo TRAX Pro 3 SP Buy $999 or Subscribe $66.99 /mo About Audionamix Since 2003, Audionamix has established itself as the global leader in audio source separation. Based on years of audio signal processing research, the company developed the revolutionary, patented ADX Technology, and continues to pioneer audio solutions for the film, broadcast and music industries. As the 2014 Pro Sound Network NAMM "Best Of Show" winner, and 2017 Electronic Musician Editor's Choice Award, Audionamix has demonstrated technical expertise in isolating and separating elements from master recordings to empower content owners, engineers, producers and artists to create exciting new productions, and unlock television and movie assets for worldwide distribution. For more information, please visit http://audionamix.com. Useful links Videos: https://adx.bz/pr-sp-videos Product information: https://adx.bz/sp-pr-link Audionamix product portfolio: http://learntraxsp.com/ SOURCE Audionamix WELLESLEY, Mass., April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Babson College, the top-ranked college in the United States for the study of entrepreneurship, and Junior Achievement USA, the country's leading organization giving young people the knowledge and skills to own their economic success, have partnered to offer a $20,000 per year merit scholarship for a Junior Achievement USA student selected from applicants to Babson from across the country. The Babson College/Junior Achievement Scholarship was presented to senior Zachary Sadaka, who has been admitted to Babson, during ceremonies April 6, 2017 at St. Andrew's School, Boca Raton. "Babson College is committed to creating scholarship opportunities for deserving students and we are thrilled to award our first Junior Achievement Scholarship to a gifted scholar and future entrepreneurial leader," said Babson President Kerry Healey. "Babson and Junior Achievement have a shared goal to prepare young people to lead and succeed in a rapidly changing global society. We look forward to presenting this inaugural award and welcoming a talented Junior Achievement scholar to our Babson community." "We greatly appreciate Babson College providing this opportunity to Junior Achievement students," said Jack Kosakowski, President & CEO of Junior Achievement USA. "Babson is the premier institution of higher education related to entrepreneurship, and we are pleased to see a Junior Achievement student earn the opportunity to continue his entrepreneurial journey with the support of this scholarship." Among those attending the scholarship presentation to the student were Junior Achievement USA President and CEO Jack E. Kosakowski, Babson Dean of Undergraduate Admission Courtney Minden, Babson Vice President for Strategic Corporate Relations and Engagement Kevin Sullivan, Babson Admissions Associate Director Adrienne Ramsey, and school and local officials. The Babson College Junior Achievement Scholarship amounts to $20,000 per year for four years. Students enrolling in Babson in Fall 2017 were eligible. In order to apply for the scholarship, applicants needed to submit an essay titled "What does Junior Achievement mean to you and how will you apply your Junior Achievement experience while at Babson?" Federal government data finds that Babson College undergraduates who receive financial aid enjoy career success during their earning lifetime. According to the 2016 U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard, Babson College undergraduate alumni enjoy median salary earnings of approximately $86,700 ten years after entering college. This is more than double the national average of $33,800, according to the College Scorecard, and places Babson College at the top among elite college and universities in the United States. Babson College's Women Innovating Now (WIN) Lab Miami is open to any woman entrepreneur who is ready to build a successful business. Weekly meetings for WIN Miami occur one evening each week at the Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC) Miami, located at the University of Miami Life Science & Technology Park in Overtown. Created by the Center for Women's Entrepreneurial Leadership (CWEL) at Babson College, WIN Lab provides women entrepreneurs with an inspiring community and a rigorous, experiential process that catalyzes innovative thinking and enables them to successfully launch or transform businesses. About Saint Andrew's School Saint Andrew's School is a nationally recognized junior kindergarten (PreK) through grade 12, day and boarding, college preparatory school in Boca Raton, Florida. They offer a rigorous curriculum that fosters creative thinking, opportunities to achieve balance, and experiences that build strong character. Saint Andrew's is delighted to serve students from over 40 countries of multiple faiths and cultures. About Junior Achievement USA Junior Achievement (JA) is the world's largest organization dedicated to giving young people the knowledge and skills they need to own their economic success, plan for their future, and make smart academic and economic choices. JA programs are delivered by corporate and community volunteers, and provide relevant, hands-on experiences that give students from kindergarten through high school knowledge and skills in financial literacy, work readiness, and entrepreneurship. Today, JA reaches 4.8 million students per year in more than 100 markets across the United States, with an additional 5.6 million students served by operations in over 100 other countries worldwide. Visit www.ja.org for more information. About Babson College Babson College is the educator, convener, and thought leader for Entrepreneurship of All Kinds. The top-ranked college for entrepreneurship education, Babson is a dynamic living and learning laboratory where students, faculty, and staff work together to address the real-world problems of business and society. We prepare the entrepreneurial leaders our world needs most: those with strong functional knowledge and the skills and vision to navigate change, accommodate ambiguity, surmount complexity, and motivate teams in a common purpose to make a difference in the world, and have an impact on organizations of all sizes and types. As we have for nearly a half-century, Babson continues to advance Entrepreneurial Thought & Action as the most positive force on the planet for generating sustainable economic and social value. Provided by Newswise, online resource for knowledge-based news at www.newswise.com Media Contact: Michael Chmura, 781-239-4549, [email protected] SOURCE Babson College Related Links http://www.babson.edu Bill Downe intends to retire as CEO after steering bank through transformative decade Planned transition taking place against a backdrop of strong performance, driven by a focus on customers and continued operating discipline Board expresses confidence in transition plan, current leadership structure and team TORONTO, April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ - Robert Prichard, Chairman of BMO Financial Group (TSX:BMO)(NYSE:BMO), today announced that Bill Downe has shared his intention to retire as Chief Executive Officer of the bank on October 31, 2017. Mr. Prichard also announced the Board's intention to appoint Chief Operating Officer, Darryl White, as the successor to Mr. Downe, effective November 1, to correspond with the start of the new fiscal year. Mr. Downe will serve as CEO for the remainder of fiscal 2017 and will work closely with Mr. White to ensure a smooth succession. "This planned succession will provide continuity for our bank as we focus on the strategic priorities that have been set, in this, our 200th year of serving customers," said Mr. Prichard in announcing the succession. "Darryl White's leadership has been steadfast and successful at every juncture of his banking career and he will maintain and build on our positive momentum. Darryl has spent more than two decades at BMO directly engaged with clients and global markets. He is a natural and authentic leader and the right person to lead the bank in a time of change in the wider economy. His varied experience will serve him well as he assumes the role of Chief Executive Officer," added Mr. Prichard. "The leadership team we have assembled represents an exceptional combination of strengths and is among the most capable in the industry. They are achievement oriented, act early on business opportunities and have driven strong performance in the businesses. Individually and collectively, this team put the bank on a path of sustained growth, and Darryl is eminently qualified to lead them further down that path," said Mr. Downe. "Darryl possesses a deep understanding of the financial industry. His command of the bank's fundamental performance drivers and what constitutes opportunity for the organization is distinctive," added Mr. Downe. Mr. White has progressed through a series of key leadership roles at BMO. Currently, he provides strategic leadership for the bank's Personal, Commercial and Wealth businesses across North America and globally. He is also accountable for ensuring BMO's marketing strategy contributes strongly to the bank's overall growth plans, while ensuring the bank's technology function delivers strategic capabilities to all businesses. Mr. White is also responsible for ensuring consistent operating discipline in every part of the bank with a focus on expanding BMO's agility and responsiveness to market opportunities. He is accountable for driving strategies that grow the bank's customer base, while ensuring that all BMO businesses and functional areas operate as one bank to introduce business models and technologies to unlock new sources of value for customers and shareholders. Additionally, Mr. White is a Director of BMO Financial Corp., the entity that has overall responsibility for the activities of the bank in the United States. Prior to being appointed Chief Operating Officer, Mr. White delivered strong performance as Group Head, BMO Capital Markets, in a competitive and rapidly changing context. Mr. White has spent considerable time in the United States deepening the group's strategy and U.S. presence. He has had a direct hand in shaping the success of BMO Capital Markets, bringing this operating group closer to the bank and strengthening its culture. Mr. White has strong community ties. Mr. White is a longstanding volunteer with the United Way of Greater Toronto and York Region and currently serves on the organization's Campaign Cabinet as Chair of the Finance Sector. In 2016, he was honoured by the United Way of New York City at its annual Gridiron Gala. Mr. White also serves as a Director of St. Michael's Hospital and of the Montreal Canadiens, and is a past Member of the Advisory Council of Women in Capital Markets. Mr. Prichard expressed the Board's confidence that all of BMO's stakeholders will continue to benefit from proven and steady leadership throughout the succession process. After the conclusion of his tenure as CEO, Mr. Downe will remain engaged with the bank in an advisory capacity for a brief period. "I am energized by the opportunities ahead both for BMO's customers and for our employees. Bill Downe's leadership has been extraordinary on every level. I think I speak for everyone at BMO when I say we are extremely fortunate to have such an accomplished Chief Executive Officer leading the bank," said Mr. White. "I am deeply appreciative of the Board's confidence and look forward to spending the remainder of the fiscal year working alongside Bill. The bank's leadership team is first-rate and BMO employees are, quite simply, the greatest. I also look forward to working with them and doing my part as we continue to build on our momentum," added Mr. White. Mr. Prichard expressed the Board's gratitude for the steady leadership shown by Bill Downe throughout his more than ten years of service as BMO's CEO. "Bill Downe is a globally respected CEO who has driven high quality growth across every BMO business. Thanks to his leadership the bank is in its strongest financial and strategic position in our history and well positioned for future success," said Mr. Prichard. "Bill has steered a transformation in the bank's approach to customer experience that included an unprecedented investment in forward-thinking technology infrastructure in addition to fostering a vibrant brand and culture of which employees are proud to be a part. He has also consistently championed the values of community giving and improving corporate diversity, particularly with regard to improving the representation of women in senior leadership roles," added Mr. Prichard. Over the last ten years, adjusted earnings1 have grown from $2.8 to $5 billion. The bank's U.S. footprint has doubled. Book value per share has grown by 7.5% annually and total shareholder return grew at a rate of 8.5%, nearly double that of the TSX on a calendar year basis. "Business and community leaders alike applaud Bill's leadership as the bank's most senior officer for the last decade. As we look ahead, we take confidence in the continuity that Darryl brings to the leadership team. He represents the best of BMO's values and is ready to lead the bank from strength to strength," concluded Mr. Prichard. "One of the key responsibilities of a CEO is to work with the Board of Directors on a strong leadership succession plan; the process BMO has in place is second to none. I have complete confidence in Darryl to continue to build on our bank's success," said Mr. Downe. "In the coming months I look forward to working closely with him to ensure a smooth transition. The bank is very well positioned and the timing is right for BMO and its customers," concluded Mr. Downe. Caution Regarding Forward-Looking Statements This document contains forward-looking statements. All such statements are made pursuant to the "safe harbor" provisions of, and are intended to be forward-looking statements under, the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and any applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking statements may involve, but are not limited to, comments with respect to our succession plans, objectives and priorities for fiscal 2017 and beyond, our strategies or future actions, our expectations for our financial condition, and outlook for our operations. By their nature, forward-looking statements require us to make assumptions and are subject to inherent risks and uncertainties. There is significant risk that predictions, forecasts, conclusions or projections will not prove to be accurate, that our assumptions may not be correct and that actual results may differ materially from such predictions, forecasts, conclusions or projections. We caution readers of this document not to place undue reliance on our forward-looking statements as a number of factors could cause actual future results, conditions, actions or events to differ materially from the expectations, estimates or intentions expressed in the forward-looking statements. Please see the Enterprise-Wide Risk Management section on pages 79 to 112 of BMO's 2016 Annual Report, which outlines certain key factors and risks that may affect Bank of Montreal's future results. Investors and others should carefully consider these factors and risks, as well as other uncertainties and potential events, and the inherent uncertainty of forward-looking statements. Bank of Montreal does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements, whether written or oral, that may be made from time to time by the organization or on its behalf, except as required by law. The forward-looking information contained in this document is presented for the purpose of assisting our shareholders in understanding our plans, strategic priorities and objectives, and may not be appropriate for other purposes. About BMO Financial Group Established in 1817, and currently marking its 200th year of operations, BMO Financial Group is a highly diversified financial services provider based in North America. With total assets of $692 billion as of January 31, 2017, and more than 45,000 employees, BMO provides a broad range of personal and commercial banking, wealth management and investment banking products and services to more than 12 million customers and conducts business through three operating groups: Personal and Commercial Banking, Wealth Management and BMO Capital Markets. (1) Adjusted earnings is a non-GAAP measure. Readers are cautioned that adjusted earnings does not have a standardized meaning under GAAP and is unlikely to be comparable to similar measures used by other companies. Reported net income for 2006 and 2016 was $2.7 billion and $4.6 billion, respectively. A discussion of non-GAAP measures as well as the rationale for their use, and a reconciliation of adjusted earnings to reported net income for 2016 can be found on page 33 of BMO's 2016 Annual MD&A, which is available on our website at www.bmo.com/investorrelations. For News Media Enquiries: Paul Gammal, Toronto, [email protected], (416) 867-3996 Frederic Tremblay, Montreal, [email protected], (514) 877-1873 For Investor Relations Enquiries: Jill Homenuk, Toronto, [email protected], (416) 867-4770 Christine Viau, Toronto, [email protected], (416) 867-6956 Internet: www.bmo.com SOURCE BMO Financial Group NEW YORK, April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Bauer Media Group USA's digital business - Bauer Xcel Media USA - today announced that Allison Mezzafonte has been promoted to EVP, USA. In this expanded role, Allison will be responsible for all of the business's US operations, including editorial, revenue, and technology. Mezzafonte will also have oversight of all US digital products, including InTouch, Life&Style, Woman's World and J-14, all of which are supported by functional teams to leverage cross-brand efficiencies and insights. Mezzafonte joined Bauer Xcel Media USA in December 2015 as SVP of Operations, and has been instrumental in driving many key initiatives, helping to scale Bauer Xcel's lean approach to its business. Mezzafonte advanced the data-driven editorial operation, oversaw the launch of titles such as FHM and Empire, expanded the executive leadership with senior product, data and editorial hires and helped grow the division's successful programmatic-first approach to advertising sales. Allison Mezzafonte, EVP, Bauer Xcel Media USA said: "Bauer Xcel Media offers the unique benefits of working for an innovative business within a huge global media organization. In my expanded role, I'm looking forward to continuing on our profitable growth trajectory, overseeing new product launches, and advancing existing ones,using our lean, data-driven model. We'll also be giving our key titles a fresh look this year, and going deeper on our data-driven editorial strategy, to delight our users while driving meaningful revenue." Christian Baesler, President of Bauer Xcel Media USA and Managing Director of Bauer Xcel Media UK said: "Allison has proven to be a highly effective and innovative digital media executive. Under her leadership, the company has enjoyed unprecedented success, as we've continued to grow our teams and expand our product portfolio. I'm thrilled to have her lead our US teams as we implement our ambitious strategy." About Bauer Xcel Media Bauer Xcel Media is advancing the media industry by applying user driven strategies to deliver cutting edge news and build original, innovative products centered around audience needs. With 150 million monthly unique users and offices in New York, Hamburg, London, Sydney, Melbourne and Warsaw, Bauer Xcel Media is one of the world's fastest growing digital media companies. About Bauer Media Group Bauer Media Group is one of the world's most successful media corporations. Over 600 magazines, more than 400 digital products and over 100 radio and TV stations are enjoyed by millions of people across the globe. The corporate portfolio also includes print shops, postal, sales and marketing services. Bauer Media Group's global positioning underscores its passion for people and brands. We see ourselves as the home of popular media, as illustrated by our strapline "We think popular." a claim which inspires and motivates our global workforce of some 11,500 employees in 20 countries. SOURCE Bauer Xcel Media MIAMI, April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Carnival Corporation & plc (NYSE/LSE: CCL; NYSE: CUK) has announced a 14 percent increase in its quarterly dividend to $0.40 per share from the previous dividend amount of $0.35 per share. Additionally, the company's board approved the re-authorization of up to $1 billion in share repurchases covering both Carnival Corporation common stock and Carnival plc ordinary shares. Since resuming the share repurchase program in late 2015 the company has repurchased more than 56 million shares valued at $2.7 billion. "The increased dividend, along with another $1 billion share repurchase authorization, reflects continued confidence in our outlook and our ongoing commitment to return value to our shareholders," said David Bernstein, chief financial officer for Carnival Corporation & plc. The board approved a record date for the quarterly dividend of May 26, 2017 with a payment date of June 16, 2017. Holders of Carnival Corporation common stock and Carnival plc ADSs will receive the dividend payable in U.S. dollars. The dividend for Carnival plc ordinary shares will be payable in U.S. dollars or sterling. In the absence of instructions or elections to the contrary, holders of Carnival plc ordinary shares will automatically receive the dividend in sterling. Dividends payable in sterling will be converted from U.S. dollars at the exchange rate quoted by the Bank of England in London at 12 noon on June 1, 2017. Holders of Carnival plc ordinary shares wishing to receive their dividend in U.S. dollars or participate in the Carnival plc Dividend Reinvestment Plan must elect to do so by May 26, 2017. The share repurchase authorization covers both Carnival Corporation common stock traded on the New York Stock Exchange and Carnival plc ordinary shares traded on the London Stock Exchange. Repurchases will take place in the open market or privately negotiated transactions in accordance with applicable laws, rules and regulations. The stock repurchase is subject to prevailing market conditions and other considerations. Carnival Corporation & plc is among the largest, most profitable and financially strong leisure travel companies in the world, with a portfolio of 10 cruise brands in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia, comprised of Carnival Cruise Line, Fathom, Holland America Line, Princess, Seabourn, AIDA Cruises, Costa Cruises, Cunard, P&O Cruises (Australia) and P&O Cruises (UK). Together, these brands operate 103 ships visiting over 700 ports around the world and totaling 230,000 lower berths with 18 new ships scheduled to be delivered between 2017 and 2022. Carnival Corporation & plc also operates Holland America Princess Alaska Tours, the leading tour companies in Alaska and the Canadian Yukon. Traded on both the New York and London Stock Exchanges, Carnival Corporation & plc is the only group in the world to be included in both the S&P 500 and the FTSE 100 indices. Additional information can be found on www.carnival.com , www.fathom.org , www.hollandamerica.com , www.princess.com , www.seabourn.com , www.aida.de , www.costacruise.com , www.cunard.com , www.pocruises.com.au and www.pocruises.com . SOURCE Carnival Corporation & plc MIAMI, April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Carnival Corporation & plc (NYSE/LSE: CCL; NYSE: CUK), the world's largest leisure travel company, announced today that Darrell Campbell joins the company as corporate treasurer, effective April 10, 2017. His responsibilities will include overseeing global treasury operations, risk management, tax compliance and tax strategy. Campbell fills the role currently held by Josh Weinstein, who is transitioning to a new position as president of Carnival UK. Campbell brings to Carnival Corporation extensive accounting, audit and financial experience. He most recently served as an audit partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, where he led financial statement and internal control audits of Fortune 500 and S&P 500 companies with revenues over $10 billion and market capitalization up to $40 billion. During his career he has supervised multinational teams, provided regulatory reporting advice for capital market transactions and periodic filings, and co-authored guidance on industry topics including compliance, accounting and financial reporting. "Darrell brings us nearly two decades of extensive financial experience, and has the depth of expertise and insights to provide critical leadership for this key global role," said David Bernstein, chief financial officer for Carnival Corporation. Campbell will report to Bernstein and will be based at Carnival Corporation's headquarters in Miami. Campbell is a licensed CPA in Florida and New Hampshire. He has master's degrees in accounting from Florida International University and in international business from the University of Florida. He also holds a bachelor's degree from University of the West Indies in Jamaica. About Carnival Corporation & plc Carnival Corporation & plc is the largest leisure travel company in the world, and among the most profitable and financially strong in the industry. With a portfolio of 10 cruise brands in North America, Europe, Australia and Asia, comprised of Carnival Cruise Line, Fathom, Holland America Line, Princess Cruises, Seabourn, AIDA Cruises, Costa Cruises, Cunard, P&O Cruises (Australia) and P&O Cruises (UK). Together, these brands operate 103 ships visiting over 700 ports around the world and totaling 230,000 lower berths with 18 new ships scheduled to be delivered between 2017 and 2022. Carnival Corporation & plc also operates Holland America Princess Alaska Tours, the leading tour companies in Alaska and the Canadian Yukon. Traded on both the New York and London Stock Exchanges, Carnival Corporation & plc is the only group in the world to be included in both the S&P500 and the FTSE 100 indices. In 2017, Fast Company recognized Carnival Corporation as being among the "Top 10 Most Innovative Companies" in both the design and travel categories. Fast Company specifically recognized Carnival Corporation for its work in developing Ocean Medallion, a high-tech wearable device that enables the world's first interactive guest experience platform capable of transforming vacation travel into a highly personalized and elevated level of customized service. Additional information can be found on www.carnival.com, www.fathom.org, www.hollandamerica.com, www.princess.com, www.seabourn.com, www.aida.de, www.costacruise.com, www.cunard.com, www.pocruises.com.au , and www.pocruises.com. SOURCE Carnival Corporation & plc Related Links http://www.Carnivalcorp.com Investors may listen to the conference call by dialing 1-888-347-1165 for U.S/Canada and 1-412-902-4276 for international callers. Participants should ask to be joined into the CatchMark call. Access to the live webcast will be available at www.catchmark.com . A replay of this webcast will be archived on the company's website shortly after the call. About CatchMark CatchMark Timber Trust, Inc. (NYSE: CTT) is a self-administered and self-managed, publicly-traded REIT that strives to deliver superior risk-adjusted returns for all stakeholders through disciplined acquisitions, sustainable harvests, and well-timed sales. Headquartered in Atlanta and focused exclusively on timberland ownership, CatchMark began operations in 2007 and owns interests in approximately 499,600 acres* of timberland located in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. For more information, visit www.catchmark.com. From time to time, CatchMark releases important information via postings on its corporate website. Accordingly, investors and other interested parties are encouraged to enroll to receive automatic email alerts regarding new postings. Enrollment information is found in the "Investors Relations" section of www.catchmark.com. * As of December 31, 2016. SOURCE CatchMark Timber Trust, Inc. Related Links http://www.catchmark.com WASHINGTON, April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, Inc. (CFP Board) announced today public disciplinary actions against the following individuals, effective immediately or on the date noted in each case. Public disciplinary actions taken by CFP Board, in order of increasing severity, include letters of admonition, suspensions and permanent revocations. This release contains information about disciplinary actions relating to 23 current or former CFP professionals. Of these actions, there were 5 letters of admonition, 11 suspensions, and 7 administrative revocations. The basis for each decision can be found in a Disciplinary Action Report below and on CFP Board's website. The public may check on an individual's disciplinary history and certification status with CFP Board at www.CFP.net/verify. CFP Board's enforcement process is a critical consumer protection. CFP professionals agree to abide by CFP Board's Standards of Professional Conduct (Standards), which includes the Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibility (Code of Ethics), Rules of Conduct and Financial Planning Practice Standards (Practice Standards). The Standards set forth the ethical standards for financial planners who hold the CFP certification. CFP Board enforces its ethical standards by investigating incidents of alleged unethical behavior by CFP professionals. In cases where violations are found, the Disciplinary and Ethics Commission (Commission) may impose discipline ranging from a private censure or public letter of admonition to the suspension or revocation of an individual's right to use the CFP marks. CFP Board's Disciplinary Rules and Procedures (Disciplinary Rules) set forth the process for investigating matters and imposing discipline where violations have been found. The Commission meets at least three times a year to provide a fair, unbiased review of any matter in which a CFP professional is alleged to have committed violations of the Standards. The Commission functions in accordance with the Disciplinary Rules and reviews all matters on a case-by-case basis, taking into account the details specific to an individual case. While CFP Board has attempted to capture the details relevant to each decision, the summary nature of these releases may omit certain details affecting the decision. Accordingly, the decisions and/or rationale described in the releases may not apply to other cases reviewed by the Commission or reflect the Commission's future interpretation or application of the Standards. STATE NAME LOCATION DISCIPLINE Alabama Charles J. McCarn Birmingham Letter of Admonition Arkansas Adam J. Kuettel Bentonville Suspension California Tiffany Peacock Asakawa Huntington Beach Administrative Revocation California W. Jon Bettis Carlsbad Suspension California Amy Sam Ho Arcadia Automatic Interim Suspension California Eric W. Kuchel Brea Administrative Revocation California Edward A. Rusowicz, CFP Irvine Letter of Admonition Colorado Christopher S. Scott, CFP Colorado Springs Letter of Admonition Florida Stuart Horowitz Coral Springs Administrative Revocation Florida Andrew G. Rosenberg Weston Administrative Revocation Florida Bruce M. Weinstein Boca Raton Automatic Interim Suspension Georgia Brian Sullivan, CFP Alpharetta Letter of Admonition Kentucky Hampton Scurlock, III Lexington Suspension Maryland Sharon J. Fall Chester Administrative Revocation Maryland Cory D. Williams Monkton Administrative Revocation Minnesota Daniel M. Myers Woodbury Suspension Missouri Sheldon Jay Harber St. Louis Suspension New Jersey Brian P. Carr Chatham Suspension Ohio Douglas S. Miller Toledo Automatic Interim Suspension Pennsylvania Theodore P. Williams East Earl Suspension Utah Laurence D. Black Park City Administrative Revocation Washington William M. Swayne, II Seattle Suspension Wisconsin Scott A. Larsen, CFP Kenosha Letter of Admonition PUBLIC LETTERS OF ADMONITION ALABAMA Charles J. McCarn (Birmingham): In December 2016, CFP Board's Disciplinary and Ethics Commission (Commission) ordered that a Public Letter of Admonition be issued to Mr. McCarn. The Commission determined that Mr. McCarn filed for Chapter 7 Bankruptcy in 1993 and again in 2016, which reflects adversely on Mr. McCarn's integrity and fitness as a certificant, on the CFP marks, and on the profession. The Commission determined that Mr. McCarn's conduct violated Rule 6.5 of CFP Board's Rules of Conduct and provided grounds for discipline pursuant to Article 3(A) of CFP Board's Disciplinary Rules and Procedures. Accordingly, the Commission admonished Mr. McCarn with regard to the above-mentioned conduct. Mr. McCarn administratively relinquished his CFP certification in November 2016. CALIFORNIA Edward A. Rusowicz, CFP (Irvine): In November 2016, CFP Board's Disciplinary and Ethics Commission (Commission) accepted an offer of settlement wherein Mr. Rusowicz received a Public Letter of Admonition. In the offer of settlement, Mr. Rusowicz consented to CFP Board's findings that he was convicted of Alcohol Related Reckless Driving in 2003 and Driving Under the Influence twice in 2015. CFP Board determined that Mr. Rusowicz's conduct violated Rule 6.5 of CFP Board's Rules of Conduct and provided grounds for discipline pursuant to Articles 3(A) and 3(C) of CFP Board's Disciplinary Rules and Procedures. Accordingly, the Commission admonished Mr. Rusowicz with regard to the above-mentioned conduct. COLORADO Christopher S. Scott, CFP (Colorado Springs): In November 2016, CFP Board's Disciplinary and Ethics Commission (Commission) accepted an offer of settlement wherein Mr. Scott received a Public Letter of Admonition. In the offer of settlement, Mr. Scott consented to CFP Board's findings that he entered into a Letter of Acceptance, Waiver and Consent (AWC) with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc. (FINRA), in which he consented to the entry of FINRA's findings that he borrowed $10,000 from a family trust, for which he was co-trustee, one of several beneficiaries, and the registered representative, in violation of his firm's rules. Mr. Scott consented to a 15-day suspension from association with any FINRA member in any capacity and a $5,000 fine. CFP Board determined that Mr. Scott's conduct violated Rules 1.4, 3.6, 4.3 and 5.1 of CFP Board's Rules of Conduct and provided grounds for discipline pursuant to Articles 3(A) and 3(D) of CFP Board's Disciplinary Rules and Procedures. Accordingly, the Commission admonished Mr. Scott with regard to the above-mentioned conduct. GEORGIA Brian Sullivan, CFP (Alpharetta): In November 2016, CFP Board's Disciplinary and Ethics Commission (Commission) accepted an offer of settlement wherein Mr. Sullivan received a Public Letter of Admonition. In the offer of settlement, Mr. Sullivan consented to CFP Board's findings that he: 1) signed a client's signature on account documentation in 2010; and 2) failed to disclose a termination and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc. investigation on his 2012, 2014, and 2016 CFP Board Ethics Declaration. CFP Board determined that Mr. Sullivan's conduct violated Rules 5.1 and 6.2 of CFP Board's Rules of Conduct and provided grounds for discipline pursuant to Article 3(A) of CFP Board's Disciplinary Rules and Procedures. Accordingly, the Commission admonished Mr. Sullivan with regard to the above-mentioned conduct. WISCONSIN Scott A. Larsen, CFP (Kenosha): In February 2017, CFP Board's Disciplinary and Ethics Commission accepted an offer of settlement wherein Mr. Larsen received a Public Letter of Admonition. In the offer of settlement, Mr. Larsen consented to CFP Board's findings that he drove the wrong way on the highway after consuming alcohol. Mr. Larsen pleaded no contest and was convicted of Recklessly Endangering Safety, a Class G felony. CFP Board determined that Mr. Larsen's conduct violated Rule 6.5 of CFP Board's Rules of Conduct and provided grounds for discipline pursuant to Articles 3(A) and 3(C) of CFP Board's Disciplinary Rules and Procedures. Accordingly, the Commission admonished Mr. Larsen with regard to the above-mentioned conduct. SUSPENSIONS ARKANSAS Adam J. Kuettel (Bentonville): In February 2017, CFP Board's Disciplinary and Ethics Commission accepted an offer of settlement wherein Mr. Kuettel received a 10-month suspension of his CFP certification. In the offer of settlement, Mr. Kuettel consented to CFP Board's findings that he assisted investors with the purchase of shares of stock and warrants in a public company through a private investment in public equity. Mr. Kuettel assisted investors with their purchases by researching and sharing information about the transaction, answering investor questions, making recommendations regarding the investment and transmitting paperwork to and from the investors. As a result of this conduct, Mr. Kuettel entered into a Letter of Acceptance, Waiver and Consent with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc. (FINRA). FINRA suspended Mr. Kuettel from association with any FINRA member in any capacity for 10 months and fined him $10,000. CFP Board also determined that Mr. Kuettel failed to disclose the suspension by FINRA to CFP Board within the required timeframe. CFP Board determined that Mr. Kuettel's conduct violated Rule 4.3 of CFP Board's Rules of Conduct and provided grounds for discipline pursuant to Articles 3(A), 3(D), and 3(E) of CFP Board's Disciplinary Rules and Procedures. Mr. Kuettel's suspension is effective from February 28, 2017 until December 28, 2017. CALIFORNIA W. Jon Bettis (Carlsbad): In October 2016, CFP Board's Disciplinary and Ethics Commission (Commission) issued an order suspending Mr. Bettis' CFP certification for three years and six months or until Mr. Bettis' satisfaction of a court order by making full payment of a court-ordered judgment, whichever occurs first. The Commission issued its order after finding that the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc. (FINRA) suspended Mr. Bettis from association with any FINRA member in any capacity for failure to comply with an arbitration award and to satisfactorily respond to a FINRA request for information concerning the status of a compliance issue. Mr. Bettis also failed to report his FINRA suspension to CFP Board within the required timeframe, failed to disclose his professional license suspension on two separate CFP certification renewal applications and failed to respond to multiple requests for information by CFP Board. The Commission determined that Mr. Bettis conduct violated Rule 6.5 of CFP Board's Rules of Conduct and provided grounds for discipline pursuant to Articles 3(A), 3(D), 3(E), 3(F), and 3(G) of CFP Board's Disciplinary Rules and Procedures. Mr. Bettis suspension became effective on December 31, 2016. Amy Sam Ho (Arcadia): In March 2017, CFP Board issued Ms. Ho an automatic interim suspension of her CFP certification. CFP Board issued the interim suspension after discovering that Ms. Ho was convicted of two felony counts: Second-Degree Murder and Dependent Adult Abuse Causing Death on July 8, 2016. On December 16, 2016, Ms. Ho was sentenced to prison for a term of 15 years to life. Pursuant to Article 5.7 of CFP Board's Disciplinary Rules and Procedures, "[a]n interim suspension shall immediately be issued without a hearing when CFP Board Counsel receives evidence of a convictionin accordance with Article 13.1 forfelony conviction of any crime." Under the interim suspension order, Ms. Ho's right to use the CFP certification marks is suspended pending CFP Board's completed investigation and possible further disciplinary proceedings. The interim suspension order became effective on March 13, 2017. FLORIDA Bruce M. Weinstein (Boca Raton): In December 2016, CFP Board issued Mr. Weinstein an automatic interim suspension of his CFP certification. CFP Board issued the interim suspension after discovering that Mr. Weinstein entered into a Letter of Acceptance, Waiver and Consent with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc. (FINRA), in which he consented to FINRA's findings that he knowingly submitted false expense reports to his firm and accepted reimbursements on ineligible expenses. Mr. Weinstein consented to a permanent bar from association with any FINRA member in any capacity. Pursuant to Article 5.7 of CFP Board's Disciplinary Rules and Procedures, "[a]n interim suspension shall immediately be issued without a hearing when CFP Board Counsel receives evidence of a conviction or a professional discipline in accordance with Article 13.1 forrevocation of a financial professional license (securities, insurance, accounting or bank-related license)." Under the interim suspension order, Mr. Weinstein's right to use the CFP certification marks is suspended pending CFP Board's completed investigation and possible further disciplinary proceedings. The interim suspension order became effective on December 21, 2016. KENTUCKY Hampton Scurlock, III (Lexington): In August 2016, CFP Board's Disciplinary and Ethics Commission (Commission) issued an order suspending Mr. Scurlock's CFP certification for two years. The Commission issued its order after finding that Mr. Scurlock entered into a "finders' agreement" with a bond issuer, pursuant to which he would be paid a 5 percent commission. The bond issuer would ultimately pay at least a portion of the commissions to Mr. Scurlock's firm rather than Mr. Scurlock himself. As a result of this conduct, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission determined that Mr. Scurlock and his firm violated Section 15(a)(1) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 by effecting transactions in securities without registering as a broker or dealer. In addition, Mr. Scurlock violated his fiduciary obligations to clients when he failed to disclose material information about the bond issuer's financial circumstances to his clients. Finally, the Commission determined that Mr. Scurlock failed to respond to two requests for information made by CFP Board staff. The Commission determined that Mr. Scurlock's conduct violated Rules 1.4 and 4.3 of CFP Board's Rules of Conduct and provided grounds for discipline pursuant to Articles 3(A) and 3(F) of CFP Board's Disciplinary Rules and Procedures. Mr. Scurlock's suspension is effective from October 4, 2016 until October 4, 2018. MINNESOTA Daniel M. Myers (Woodbury): In August 2016, CFP Board's Disciplinary and Ethics Commission (Commission) issued an order suspending Mr. Myers' CFP certification for two years. In reaching its decision, the Commission found that Mr. Myers was convicted of Driving While Intoxicated once in 2003, twice in 2008 and once in 2014, which reflected adversely on his integrity and fitness as a CFP professional, upon the CFP marks and upon the profession. The Commission determined that Mr. Myers' conduct violated Rule 6.5 of CFP Board's Rules of Conduct and provided grounds for discipline pursuant to Articles 3(A) and 3(C) of CFP Board's Disciplinary Rules and Procedures. Mr. Myers' suspension is effective from October 4, 2016 until October 4, 2018. MISSOURI Sheldon Jay Harber (St. Louis): In February 2017, CFP Board's Disciplinary and Ethics Commission (Commission) accepted an offer of settlement wherein Mr. Harber agreed to a five-month suspension of his CFP certification. In the offer of settlement, Mr. Harber consented to CFP Board's findings that he participated in private securities transactions by investing, and facilitating investments by six other investors, in a company through an outside investment vehicle without providing written notice to, or receiving approval from, his firm. As a result of Mr. Harber's conduct, he entered into a Letter of Acceptance, Waiver, and Consent with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc. (FINRA), which imposed a four-month suspension from association with any FINRA member in any capacity and a $10,000 fine. CFP Board also determined that Mr. Harber failed to disclose the suspension by FINRA to CFP Board within the required timeframe and made false statements to CFP Board regarding the FINRA suspension and a termination by his firm on his CFP Board Ethics Declaration. CFP Board determined that Mr. Harber's conduct violated Rules 4.3 and 5.1 of CFP Board's Rules of Conduct and provided grounds for discipline pursuant to Articles 3(A), 3(D), 3(E) and 3(G) of CFP Board's Disciplinary Rules and Procedures. Mr. Harber's suspension is effective from February 28, 2017 until July 28, 2017. NEW JERSEY Brian P. Carr (Chatham): In August 2016, CFP Board's Disciplinary and Ethics Commission (Commission) issued an order retroactively suspending Mr. Carr's CFP certification for five years. In reaching its decision, the Commission found that Mr. Carr was the subject of a New Jersey Administrative Consent Order, which concluded that he violated New Jersey law when he defrauded investors, made materially false and misleading statements and/or omissions, engaged in a course of business that led to fraud and/or deceit upon investors, unlawfully acted as an agent in representing his firm in conducting transactions while not being registered in New Jersey and sold unregistered securities. Mr. Carr was also the subject of an order from the Arkansas Securities Commissioner revoking his firm's investment advisor registration and fining his firm $30,000 in connection with the offer and sale of unregistered, non-exempt securities. The North Carolina Securities Division also issued a temporary order requiring Mr. Carr's firm to cease and desist from selling securities until properly registered. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc. (FINRA) suspended Mr. Carr from association with any FINRA member in any capacity for failure to comply with an arbitration award or settlement agreement or to satisfactorily respond to a FINRA request to provide information concerning the status of compliance. Mr. Carr failed to disclose the FINRA suspension to CFP Board within the required timeframe. The Commission noted that Mr. Carr did not act with intent to defraud his clients and had undertaken diligent efforts to recover client funds. The Commission determined that Mr. Carr's conduct violated Rules 102, 201, 606(a) and 607 of CFP Board's Code of Ethics and Rules 1.4, 2.1, 4.1, 4.3, 4.4, 4.5, 4.6 and 6.5 of CFP Board's Rules of Conduct, providing grounds for discipline pursuant to Article 3(A) of CFP Board's Disciplinary Rules and Procedures. Mr. Carr's suspension is retroactively effective from October 4, 2013 until October 4, 2018. PENNSYLVANIA Theodore P. Williams (East Earl): In August 2016, CFP Board's Disciplinary and Ethics Commission (Commission) issued an order suspending Mr. Williams' CFP certification for one year and one day. The Commission found that Mr. Williams failed to act in a client's interest when he recommended and sold her unsuitable variable universal life insurance, variable annuities and real estate investment trusts and placed a bulk of the client's assets into long-term investments with high fees and expenses when the client's primary objective was income. Mr. Williams made these recommendations when he knew the client's primary objective was income and that the client had a negative monthly discretionary income. The Commission determined that there was no evidence to indicate Mr. Williams discussed with the client how her negative monthly discretionary income would impact her ability to purchase illiquid investments. The Commission determined that Mr. Williams' conduct violated Rules 201, 202, 701 and 703 of CFP Board's Code of Ethics and Practice Standards 200-1, 300-1, 400-3 and 500-2, providing grounds for discipline pursuant to Articles 3(A) and 3(B) of CFP Board's Disciplinary Rules and Procedures. Mr. Williams' suspension is effective from October 4, 2016 until October 5, 2017. OHIO Douglas S. Miller (Toledo): In February 2017, CFP Board issued Mr. Miller an automatic interim suspension of his right to use the CFP certification. CFP Board issued an interim suspension after discovering that Mr. Miller entered into a Letter of Acceptance, Waiver and Consent with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc. (FINRA), in which he consented to FINRA's findings that he participated in the sale of investments in limited liability companies to clients without providing written notice to his firm, failed to disclose to the firm that he received compensation from the limited liability companies for advising the companies, and failed to appropriately disclose to the firm investments he made personally or on behalf of family members in the limited liability company. Mr. Miller consented to a permanent bar from association with any FINRA member in any capacity. Pursuant to Article 5.7 of CFP Board's Disciplinary Rules and Procedures, "[a]n interim suspension shall immediately be issued without a hearing when CFP Board Counsel receives evidence of a conviction or a professional discipline in accordance with Article 13.1 forrevocation of a financial professional license (securities, insurance, accounting or bank-related license)." Under the interim suspension order, Mr. Miller's right to use the CFP certification marks is suspended pending CFP Board's completed investigation and possible further disciplinary proceedings. The interim suspension order became effective on February 16, 2017. WASHINGTON William M. Swayne, II (Seattle): In December 2016, CFP Board's Disciplinary and Ethics Commission (Commission) issued an order suspending Mr. Swayne's CFP certification for one year. The Commission found that Mr. Swayne worked with several clients who came to him with highly concentrated portfolios of low-basis real estate investments. While Mr. Swayne effectively used tenancy-in-common investments to diversify the client's real estate portfolio, he recommended and sold the clients alternative investments that were unsuitable because of the clients' ages, risk tolerances, and investment objectives and because the investments resulted in an unsuitable concentration of the clients' assets in alternative investments. The Commission determined that Mr. Swayne violated Rules 201, 202, 606(a), and 703 of the Code of Ethics and Financial Planning Practice Standards 300-1 and 500-2, providing grounds for discipline under Articles 3(A) and (B) of the Disciplinary Rules and Procedures. Mr. Swayne's suspension is effective from February 7, 2017 until February 7, 2018. ADMINISTRATIVE REVOCATIONS CALIFORNIA Tiffany Peacock Asakawa (Huntington Beach): In November 2016, CFP Board issued an order permanently revoking Ms. Asakawa's right to use the CFP certification marks. This discipline followed Ms. Asakawa's failure to file an answer to CFP Board's Complaint within the required timeframe. CFP Board's Complaint alleged, among other things, that Ms. Asakawa: 1) engaged in excessive trading, unsuitable trading, unauthorized trading and misrepresentation and omissions of materials facts in multiple client accounts; 2) entered 22 inaccurate trade orders; 3) executed at least 200 discretionary trades in two customer accounts without prior written authorization from the customers or written approval from her firm; 4) falsely represented to her firm in four annual compliance questionnaires that she had not entered trades in customer accounts on a discretionary basis; 5) knowingly attempted to place trades for clients in a state in which she was not registered to do so by using the representative number of another individual licensed in the state; 6) failed to pay an arbitration award; and 7) failed to respond to multiple requests by CFP Board staff to produce documents and information. CFP Board's Complaint alleged that Ms. Asakawa's conduct violated Rules 102 and 606(b) of CFP Board's Code of Ethics and Rules 4.3, 5.1, and 6.5 of CFP Board's Rules of Conduct, providing grounds for discipline under Articles 3(A), 3(D) and 3(F) of CFP Board's Disciplinary Rules and Procedures (Disciplinary Rules). Ms. Asakawa failed to file an Answer to CFP Board's Complaint within 20 calendar days of the date of service, as required by Article 7.3 of Disciplinary Rules. In accordance with Article 7.4 of the Disciplinary Rules, the allegations set forth in the Complaint were deemed admitted, and CFP Board issued an Administrative Order of Revocation. Ms. Asakawa's revocation was effective as of December 8, 2016. Eric W. Kuchel (Brea): In November 2016, CFP Board issued an order permanently revoking Mr. Kuchel's right to use the CFP certification marks. This discipline followed Mr. Kuchel's failure to file an answer to CFP Board's Complaint within the required timeframe. CFP Board's Complaint alleged, among other things, that Mr. Kuchel was the subject of a Default Decision from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc. (FINRA) in connection with his failure to appear for testimony during FINRA's investigation surrounding various mutual fund transactions at Mr. Kuchel's broker-dealer. FINRA's Default Decision permanently barred him from association with any FINRA member in any capacity. CFP Board's Complaint also alleged that Mr. Kuchel failed to cooperate with CFP Board's investigation. CFP Board's Complaint alleged that Mr. Kuchel's conduct violated Rules 4.3, 5.1, 6.1 and 6.3 of CFP Board's Rules of Conduct and provided grounds for discipline under Articles 3(A) and 3(D) of CFP Board's Disciplinary Rules and Procedures (Disciplinary Rules). Mr. Kuchel failed to file an Answer to CFP Board's Complaint within 20 calendar days of the date of service, as required by Article 7.3 of Disciplinary Rules. In accordance with Article 7.4 of the Disciplinary Rules, the allegations set forth in the Complaint were deemed admitted, and CFP Board issued an Administrative Order of Revocation. Mr. Kuchel's revocation was effective as of December 5, 2016. FLORIDA Stuart Horowitz (Coral Springs): In November 2016, CFP Board issued an order permanently revoking Mr. Horowitz's right to use the CFP certification marks. This discipline followed Mr. Horowitz's failure to file an answer to CFP Board's Complaint within the required timeframe. CFP Board's Complaint alleged, among other things, that Mr. Horowitz entered into a Letter of Acceptance, Waiver and Consent with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc. (FINRA) in which he consented to a one-year suspension from association with any FINRA member in any capacity and a $10,000 fine. FINRA determined that Mr. Horowitz recommended that clients convert real estate-backed limited partnership units to preferred notes at a time when he had no reasonable basis to believe the preferred notes were suitable for the clients based on the information he knew about the client's investment objectives, risk tolerance, investment experience, and financial status. CFP Board's Complaint also alleged that Mr. Horowitz sent a misleading email to clients in which he recommended the clients convert to preferred notes at a time when he should have known the preferred notes were not a viable investment because of numerous red flags about the issuer. The Complaint further alleged that Mr. Horowitz failed to provide adequate responses to requests by CFP Board staff. CFP Board's Complaint alleged that Mr. Horowitz's conduct violated Rules 1.4, 2.1, 4.3, and 4.5 of the Rules of Conduct and Financial Planning Practice Standards 500-2, providing grounds for discipline under Articles 3(A), 3(B), 3(D) and 3(F) of CFP Board's Disciplinary Rules and Procedures (Disciplinary Rules). Mr. Horowitz failed to file an Answer to CFP Board's Complaint within 20 calendar days of the date of service, as required by Article 7.3 of Disciplinary Rules. In accordance with Article 7.4 of the Disciplinary Rules, the allegations set forth in the Complaint were deemed admitted, and CFP Board issued an Administrative Order of Revocation. Mr. Horowitz's revocation was effective as of December 7, 2016. Andrew G. Rosenberg (Weston): In November 2016, CFP Board issued an order permanently revoking Mr. Rosenberg's right to use the CFP certification marks. This discipline followed Mr. Rosenberg's failure to file an answer to CFP Board's Complaint within the required timeframe. CFP Board's Complaint alleged that Mr. Rosenberg entered into a Letter of Acceptance, Waiver and Consent (AWC) with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc. (FINRA) in which he consented to a three-month suspension from association with any FINRA member in any capacity and a $10,000 fine. FINRA determined that Mr. Rosenberg failed to disclose to investors in a security and to his firm that he was providing legal services for compensation to the issuer of the securities. In addition, the Florida Office of Financial Regulation denied Mr. Rosenberg's Investment Advisor Application based on the findings in FINRA's AWC. CFP Board's Complaint further alleged that Mr. Rosenberg was the subject of multiple FINRA arbitrations in which he was alleged to have: 1) made multiple misrepresentations to clients; 2) recommended and sold unsuitable investments to clients; 3) failed to undertake reasonable investigation of financial products he recommended to clients; 4) failed to disclose the risks of investments to clients; and 5) failed to disclose material information to clients. CFP Board's Complaint alleged that Mr. Rosenberg's conduct violated Rules 102, 202, 401(a), 606(a), 703 and 704 of CFP Board's Code of Ethics, Rules 1.4, 2.1, 4.5 and 6.5 of CFP Board's Rules of Conduct and Financial Planning Practice Standard 500-2, providing grounds for discipline under Articles 3(A), 3(B) and 3(D) of CFP Board's Disciplinary Rules and Procedures (Disciplinary Rules). Mr. Rosenberg failed to file an Answer to CFP Board's Complaint within 20 calendar days of the date of service, as required by Article 7.3 of Disciplinary Rules. In accordance with Article 7.4 of the Disciplinary Rules, the allegations set forth in the Complaint were deemed admitted, and CFP Board issued an Administrative Order of Revocation. Mr. Rosenberg's revocation was effective as of December 7, 2016. MARYLAND Sharon J. Fall (Chester): In October 2016, CFP Board issued an order permanently revoking Ms. Fall's right to use the CFP certification marks. This discipline followed Ms. Fall's failure to file an answer to CFP Board's Complaint within the required timeframe. CFP Board's Complaint alleged that: 1) Ms. Fall's firm terminated her for borrowing money from clients in violation of firm policy; 2) Ms. Fall failed to disclose the termination on her CFP Certification Renewal Application; 3) Ms. Fall's subsequent firm terminated her for communicating with clients before her registration was approved, in violation of firm policy; 4) the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc. (FINRA) permanently barred Ms. Fall from association with any FINRA member in any capacity because she failed to provide testimony in connection with her termination for borrowing money from clients; 5) Ms. Fall failed to respond to a request by CFP Board staff to produce documents and information; and 6) Ms. Fall failed to disclose the FINRA bar to CFP Board within the required timeframe. The Complaint alleged that Ms. Fall's conduct violated Rules 3.6, 4.3, 5.1, and 6.5 of CFP Board's Rules of Conduct and provided grounds for discipline under Articles 3(A), 3(D), 3(E), 3(F), and 3(G) of CFP Board's Disciplinary Rules and Procedures (Disciplinary Rules). Ms. Fall failed to file an Answer to CFP Board's Complaint within 20 calendar days of the date of service, as required by Article 7.3 of the Disciplinary Rules. In accordance with Article 7.4 of the Disciplinary Rules, the allegations set forth in the Complaint were deemed admitted, and CFP Board issued an Administrative Order of Revocation. Ms. Fall's revocation was effective as of November 11, 2016. Cory D. Williams (Monkton): In November 2016, CFP Board issued an order permanently revoking Mr. Williams' right to use the CFP certification marks. This discipline followed Mr. Williams' failure to file an answer to CFP Board's Complaint within the required timeframe. CFP Board's Complaint alleged that Mr. Williams was the subject of an order from the United States Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) ordering him to cease and desist from causing further violations of the Adviser's Act, barring him from association from any broker-dealer or investment adviser and ordering him to pay $94,191 in fines plus $9,854 in interest. The SEC order resulted from Mr. Williams' conduct where he assisted a partner with managing firm advisory client portfolios, which included client investments in a security that was not approved for sale by his firm. Despite this, Mr. Williams accepted undisclosed fees from the security issuer. CFP Board's Complaint also alleged Mr. Williams entered into a Letter of Acceptance, Waiver and Consent (AWC) with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc. (FINRA), in which FINRA barred Mr. Williams from association with any FINRA member in any capacity because Mr. Williams: 1) participated in the private securities transactions that were the subject of the SEC order; 2) willfully failed to disclose tax liens on his Form U4; and 3) made false statements to his firm regarding the existence of his tax liens. The Complaint further alleged Mr. Williams failed to cooperate with CFP Board's requests for information during the course of its investigation. CFP Board's Complaint alleged that Mr. Williams' conduct violated Rules 102, 201, and 401 of CFP Board's Code of Ethics and Rules 1.4, 2.1, 4.1, 4.3, 4.4, 4.5, 5.1 and 6.1 of CFP Board's Rules of Conduct, providing grounds for discipline under Articles 3(A) and 3(D) of CFP Board's Disciplinary Rules and Procedures (Disciplinary Rules). Mr. Williams failed to file an Answer to CFP Board's Complaint within 20 calendar days of the date of service, as required by Article 7.3 of the Disciplinary Rules. In accordance with Article 7.4 of the Disciplinary Rules, the allegations set forth in the Complaint were deemed admitted, and CFP Board issued an Administrative Order of Revocation. Mr. Williams' revocation was effective as of December 14, 2016. UTAH Laurence D. Black (Park City): In October 2016, CFP Board issued an order permanently revoking Mr. Black's right to use the CFP certification marks. This discipline followed Mr. Black's failure to file an answer to CFP Board's Complaint within the required timeframe. CFP Board's Complaint alleged that Mr. Black failed to state material facts to clients when he failed to disclose that he associated with an individual who was barred by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) due to felony securities fraud convictions. The association with the individual barred by the SEC was a violation of state law. CFP Board's Complaint also alleged Mr. Black failed to: 1) update and provide his Form ADV Part 2 and Brochure Supplement to clients; 2) keep proper records of cash receipts and disbursements, securities transaction orders, client correspondence, litigation and complaint files, and marketing and advertising files; 3) maintain complaint and up-to-date client files; 4) maintain surety bond or minimum escrow account values at all times; 5) have policies and procedures and code of ethics documents; and 6) maintain general and auxiliary ledgers reflecting asset liability, reserve, capital, income, and expense accounts. CFP Board's Complaint further alleged Mr. Black failed to cooperate with CFP Board's investigation and requests for information. CFP Board's Complaint alleged Mr. Black's conduct violated Rules 2.1, 4.3 and 6.1 of CFP Board's Rules of Conduct, providing grounds for discipline under Articles 3(A) of CFP Board's Disciplinary Rules and Procedures (Disciplinary Rules). Mr. Black failed to file an Answer to CFP Board's Complaint within 20 calendar days of the date of service, as required by Article 7.3 of CFP Board's Disciplinary Rules. In accordance with Article 7.4 of the Disciplinary Rules, the allegations set forth in the Complaint were deemed admitted, and CFP Board issued an Administrative Order of Revocation. Mr. Black's revocation was effective as of November 11, 2016. ABOUT CFP BOARD The mission of Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, Inc. is to benefit the public by granting the CFP certification and upholding it as the recognized standard of excellence for competent and ethical personal financial planning. The Board of Directors, in furthering CFP Board's mission, acts on behalf of the public, CFP professionals and other stakeholders. CFP Board owns the certification marks CFP, Certified Financial Planner, CFP (with plaque design) and CFP (with flame design) in the U.S., which it awards to individuals who successfully complete CFP Board's initial and ongoing certification requirements. CFP Board currently authorizes more than 76,000 individuals to use these marks in the U.S. SOURCE Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, Inc. Related Links http://www.cfp.net WASHINGTON, April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Gilbert Chagoury today responded to the US Government's motion to dismiss the complaint he filed in September 2016 in US District Court for the District of Columbia. Mr. Chagoury's lawsuit charged the United States Government with leaking false information to the media, causing great damage to his reputation and property, and denying his Constitutional right to due process. The US government's motion to dismiss was filed with the court Wednesday, April 5, 2017. "The government's illegal leak caused great harm to Mr. Chagoury's reputation, property and business interests," said Stewart Baker of Steptoe and Johnson, LLP, attorney for Mr. Chagoury. "Taking the government to court is already helping to undo some of that harm." The government's motion admits that unauthorized leaks like the release of Mr. Chagoury's information are improper and a violation of law. The government admits at several points in its motion that Mr. Chagoury has not been placed on any Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) or OFAC sanctions lists, the usual sanction for individuals linked to terrorism. It also insists that it is not trying to prevent banks or other institutions from doing business with Mr. Chagoury. For example, the government's motion at page 15 states that Mr. Chagoury "was not and never has been on the SDN list." It goes on to argue that Chagoury's complaint is not litigable because it is "undisputed that plaintiff was never placed on the SDN List or any other OFAC sanctions list." While Chagoury and his counsel welcome the government's admission that he is not on any official US Government lists linking him to terrorism, they reject the government's arguments. "It's a shame that I have had to sue the US Government in order to get them to admit that it has never imposed terrorism sanctions on me and that its unauthorized leaks to the media violated the law," said Chagoury. "But even with this welcome admission by the US government, the fact remains that severe damage has been caused to me and my family by the illegal leaks of false information. American justice demands due process, yet I still have been given no explanation for having my reputation dragged through the mud and no opportunity to rebut these falsehoods. That is not the America I know and love. I deserve my day in court in order to clear my good name." As the original complaint makes clear, despite his well-known love of the United States and his numerous, generous charitable contributions over 35 years of visiting America, Gilbert Chagoury was denied a visa by the United States Department of State in 2015. This decision was based on false information. This injustice was compounded when anonymous employees of the US Government leaked information to the media about the denial of Mr. Chagoury's visa application, including the false information that led to the visa denial. Because Gilbert Chagoury is a successful businessman, an influential advocate for religious freedom, a global philanthropist and a friend of prominent political leaders including many here in the United States, the LA Times published the story. In its just filed motion to dismiss, the government acknowledges that, "Unauthorized government leaks violate the law and are subject to criminal prosecution." At the same time, the government argues that it cannot be held responsible for the damage done to Mr. Chagoury's reputation and property because financial institutions would not have faced any government imposed sanctions. "The government claims that because Mr. Chagoury is not on any government lists linking him to terrorism, the financial institutions that ceased doing business with him were under no legal requirement to do so," said Baker. "That argument rings hollow. Bankers read the newspapers and watch television. Mr. Chagoury's reputation was publicly smeared and his business and property interests damaged through outrageous, illegal leaks by anonymous government officials who knew exactly what they were doing." The intentional leak to the media of false information about Mr. Chagoury repeats a similarly unlawful incident from 2010, when he was wrongly placed on the no-fly list, without notice or opportunity to be heard, and his placement on the no-fly list was leaked to the media. When challenged with facts, the U.S. Government reversed that decision and formally apologized. It should be noted that Chagoury had to amend his original 2016 complaint and withdraw the Judicial Redress Act motion after the US Department of Justice, in the wake of the United Kingdom's decision to exit the EU, would not certify that British citizens such as Mr. Chagoury have standing under the Act (even though the law was enacted before the UK voted to exit the EU). While US citizens have long been protected by the Privacy Act, until recently, foreign nationals have not had recourse under that statute when their privacy has been violated by the US Government. The Judicial Redress Act extends those Privacy Act protections to citizens of European countries to sue the United States for unlawful disclosure of personal information under the terms of the Privacy Act. CONTACT: Mark Corallo Corallo Media Strategies, Inc. 703-838-9705 [email protected] SOURCE Gilbert Chagoury SANTA ROSA, Calif., April 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport (STS) and American Airlines announce the addition of a second daily non-stop flight to Phoenix-Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX). The initial arriving flight into Sonoma County will be on July 5, 2017 at 10:17 p.m. Thereafter, daily nonstop flights will be available departing Sonoma County at both 6 a.m. and 12:35 p.m. The two-hour flights will operate as American Eagle on its 70-seat Bombardier CRJ-700 aircraft. The seating is a comfortable 2-class configuration offering three rows of First Class, inflight Wi-Fi, and food and beverage service. Tickets for these daily flights can be purchased at www.aa.com Charles M. Schulz - Sonoma County Airport (STS) "American Airlines started service February 16, 2017, and flights have been exceeding expectations. We are thrilled American Airlines has offered a second daily flight, providing our Community more opportunities to Phoenix and connectivity to several eastbound and Mexico destinations," said Chairwoman Shirlee Zane, Sonoma County Board of Supervisors. About Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport (STS) The Charles M. Schulz - Sonoma County Airport (STS) is located in the heart of Wine Country, 55 miles north of the Golden Gate. The Airport offers daily direct flights on Alaska Airlines to Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, Orange County, and San Diego, twice a week flights on Allegiant Air to Las Vegas, and twice a day flights to Phoenix Sky Harbor on American Airlines. Offering a hassle-free experience with shorter lines, the Charles M. Schulz - Sonoma County Airport also features convenient ground transportation, easy and affordable parking, the Alaska Airlines Wine Flies Free program and the on-site Sky Lounge Steakhouse & Sushi Bar. For additional airport information, visit: www.sonomacountyairport.org. Follow Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport on Facebook and Twitter. For further information, journalists are asked to contact Jon Stout, Airport Manager at [email protected] or (707) 565-7243. This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com SOURCE Charles M. Schulz - Sonoma County Airport (STS) Related Links http://sonomacountyairport.org Mr. Gunter, with more than 30 years of insurance industry experience at Chubb, most recently served as Chief Operating Officer in Chubb's North America Personal Risk Services division. Prior to the ACE acquisition of Chubb in January 2016, he served as Chubb Commercial Insurance Global Chief Underwriting Officer. He will report to Paul Krump, Executive Vice President, Chubb Group President, North America Commercial and Personal Insurance. "Scott's deep expertise and industry knowledge as well as his proven leadership capabilities position him perfectly to meet the complex underwriting and servicing needs of our commercial customers in North America," said Paul Krump, Executive Vice President, Chubb Group President, North America Commercial and Personal Insurance. "I look forward to working with him even more closely to generate exceptional results for the organization." Mr. Gunter succeeds Steven R. Pozzi who, after a distinguished 36-year career in the insurance industry, will retire at the end of this year. Mr. Pozzi joined The Chubb Corporation in 1981 as a Commercial Underwriter Trainee, and during the course of his career held a number of underwriting and managerial positions with the company. Prior to the acquisition, Mr. Pozzi was Chubb Commercial Insurance Global Chief Operating Officer, and since January 2016 he has played a key role as SVP, Chubb Group and Division President of North America Commercial Insurance for the combined organization. Through the remainder of 2017, Mr. Pozzi will be available to Mr. Gunter to ensure a successful transition, and he will also serve as an advisor on special projects for Chubb's North America and Overseas General divisions. "For more than three decades, Steve has been a trusted and dependable partner to Chubb," said Mr. Krump. "He has my deepest thanks for his outstanding contribution, and I look forward to working with him and Scott on a smooth transition in addition to his continued endeavors for the company." Mr. Gunter has an Honours Bachelor of Administration degree from Wilfrid Laurier University (Ontario, Canada) and an executive management certificate from Queen's University. About Chubb Chubb is the world's largest publicly traded property and casualty insurance company. With operations in 54 countries, Chubb provides commercial and personal property and casualty insurance, personal accident and supplemental health insurance, reinsurance and life insurance to a diverse group of clients. As an underwriting company, we assess, assume and manage risk with insight and discipline. We service and pay our claims fairly and promptly. The company is also defined by its extensive product and service offerings, broad distribution capabilities, exceptional financial strength and local operations globally. Parent company Chubb Limited is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: CB) and is a component of the S&P 500 index. Chubb maintains executive offices in Zurich, New York, London and other locations, and employs approximately 31,000 people worldwide. Additional information can be found at www.chubb.com. Chubb Insurance Company of Canada has offices in Toronto, Calgary, Montreal and Vancouver and provides its products and services through licensed insurance brokers across Canada. For additional information, visit: chubb.com/ca. SOURCE Chubb Related Links http://www.chubb.com IRVINE, Calif., April 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- CommerceWest Bank (OTCBB:CWBK) was named as a 2017 "Super Premier Performing" bank by The Findley Reports. The Findley Reports provides the banking industry with performance benchmarks by designating banks as "Super Premier Performing," "Premier Performing," and "Commendable Performing" banks. To receive one of the top designations, banks must first meet the A-Quality scoring criteria that looks at growth, net operating income, net loan loss and equity return. "The team continues to execute our strategy by delivering outstanding financial results," stated Ivo A. Tjan, Chairman and CEO of CommerceWest Bank. He continued, "We remain focused on building strong partnerships with the businesses in our community and look forward to expanding our client base in 2017." CommerceWest Bank is a California based full service commercial bank with a unique vision and culture of focusing exclusively on the business community. Founded in 2001 and headquartered in Irvine, California. The Bank serves businesses throughout the state with an emphasis on clients in Orange County, San Diego, Los Angeles, and Riverside Counties. We are a full service business bank and offer a wide range of commercial banking services, including concierge services, remote deposit solution, online banking, mobile banking, lines of credit, working capital loans, commercial real estate loans, SBA loans, and cash management services. Mission Statement: CommerceWest Bank will create a complete banking experience for each client, catering to businesses and their specific banking needs, while accommodating our clients and providing them high-quality, low stress and personally tailored banking and financial services. Please visit www.cwbk.com to learn more about the bank. "BANK ON THE DIFFERENCE" SOURCE CommerceWest Bank Related Links http://www.cwbk.com LAS VEGAS, April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Nearly 3,000 United Steelworkers (USW) local union leaders and allies from across the United States, Canada and the Caribbean will meet next week to chart the future course of the largest industrial union in North America during the USW's International Constitutional Convention in Las Vegas. The union's triennial convention runs from April 10 to 13 at the MGM Grand Conference Center. More than 2,300 elected delegates, 600 observers, international officers and staff, along with more than 100 international guests from unions representing 22 countries, will gather under the banner "The Power of Unity." The USW delegation represents a diverse array of industries including metals, mining, rubber, paper and forestry, oil refining, chemicals, natural gas, health care, renewable energy, communications, transportation, higher education and the public sector. Convention proceedings are scheduled to begin on Monday, April 10, at 10 a.m. local time. USW International President Leo W. Gerard will deliver his opening keynote address on the state of the union and the challenges facing USW members as well as working families across North America. Guest speakers will include former U.S. Labor Secretary Tom Perez, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, Canadian New Democratic Party leaders Tom Mulcair and Andrea Horwath, North Carolina NAACP President Rev. William J. Barber II, Napoleon Gomez, president and general secretary of the National Union of Mine, Metal, Steel and Allied Workers of Mexico, and Tony Burke, assistant general secretary for Unite the Union in Great Britain and Ireland. Updates and video highlights from the convention will be made available daily on the union's website, www.usw.org/convention2017. A daily photo collection will be available at www.usw.org/flickr. To sign up for text messages, text USWUnity to 47486 (U.S.) or to 32323 (Canada). Social media updates will be available as follows: Facebook.com/Steelworkers, Facebook.com/USWMetallos ( Canada ) ) Twitter.com/Steelworkers, @steelworkers, @steelworkersCA ( Canada ), #USWUnity ), #USWUnity Instagram.com/Steelworkers MEDIA: Credentials are necessary for reporters to gain access to the convention floor. Call or e-mail Wayne Ranick or R.J. Hufnagel of the USW using the information above to obtain credentials. The USW is the largest industrial union in North America, representing workers in a range of industries including metals, mining, rubber, paper and forestry, oil refining, health care, security, hotels, and municipal governments and agencies. CONTACT: (702) 891-2812, Wayne Ranick, [email protected], R.J. Hufnagel, [email protected] SOURCE United Steelworkers (USW) Related Links http://www.usw.org RALEIGH, N.C., April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Duke Energy and Piedmont Natural Gas today announced an additional $5 million investment to connect community college students with career development opportunities, bringing the company's total investment to $35 million over the last 13 years. These funds support the company's philanthropic focus on economic and workforce development. The grants will be open to community colleges throughout the state for apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship programs, giving students hands-on experience and businesses access to a pipeline of skilled workers. In June 2016, Duke Energy announced that it hit its $30 million investment milestone with 49 N.C. community colleges receiving grants to equip students with industry-specific training, and to develop programs such as robotics, welding, mechatronics, and other high-skilled areas with growing demand in North Carolina. "The NC Community College System is appreciative of the investment Duke Energy and Piedmont Natural Gas are making in our students," said system President James Williamson, Ph.D. "The apprenticeship experience can be incredibly valuable to our students and we look forward to working with industry and business partners to put our students to work." "Duke Energy is committed to building a smarter energy future to benefit all North Carolinians, which requires making smart investments in our workforce," said David Fountain, Duke Energy's North Carolina president. "As we continue to add jobs in North Carolina, our state's community colleges are key to developing the skilled workers that our company and others across the state rely on." "Apprenticeships in North Carolina are training people for high-quality jobs, helping businesses find qualified workers, and setting the stage for long-term economic prosperity," said N.C. Department of Commerce Secretary Anthony Copeland. "This grant reinforces the Department of Commerce's commitment to helping businesses develop a pipeline of talent through strong partnerships with NCWorks Apprenticeship and their local community colleges." The application process will open on June 1 with a letter of intent, and specific directions will be available then at the Foundation For The Carolinas website (Duke Energy Carolinas customers and Piedmont Natural Gas customers in western NC) and North Carolina Community Foundation website (Duke Energy Progress customers and Piedmont Natural Gas customers in eastern NC). Applications will be reviewed by a committee of representatives from Duke Energy, NC Community College System and NC Department of Commerce. NC Community College System With 58 colleges located across our state and nearly 840,000 students, the North Carolina Community College System is one of the largest institutions of higher education in the United States and is internationally recognized for its programs supporting economic and workforce development. Learn more at www.nccommunitycolleges.edu. Follow NC Community Colleges on Twitter and Facebook. Duke Energy Foundation The Duke Energy Foundation provides philanthropic support to address the needs of the communities where its customers live and work. The foundation provides more than $30 million annually in charitable gifts. The foundation's education focus spans kindergarten to career, particularly science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), early childhood literacy and workforce development. It also supports the environment and community impact initiatives, including arts and culture. Duke Energy employees and retirees actively contribute to their communities as volunteers and leaders at a wide variety of nonprofit organizations. Duke Energy is committed to building on its legacy of community service. For more information, visit http://www.duke-energy.com/foundation. Headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., Duke Energy is an S&P 100 Stock Index company traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol DUK. More information about the company is available at http://duke-energy.com. The Duke Energy News Center serves as a multimedia resource for journalists and features news releases, helpful links, photos and videos. Hosted by Duke Energy, illumination is an online destination for stories about people, innovations, and community and environmental topics. It also offers glimpses into the past and insights into the future of energy. Follow Duke Energy on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook. Contact: Meredith Archie, Duke Energy Office: 919.546.2109 | 24-Hour: 800.559.3853 Email: [email protected] Twitter: @DE_MeredithA SOURCE Duke Energy Related Links http://www.duke-energy.com CHICAGO, April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- ForeverCar.com, the company that is transforming the way people buy and benefit from vehicle protection products, today announced the addition of an industry veteran to its executive team, signaling a next phase of their growth strategy. Ryan Kasprzak has joined as Chief Operating Officer. Prior to joining ForeverCar, Ryan was Vice President of Pricing and Product Portfolio Strategy at Asurion, a global leader in protection and support for mobile devices and other consumer electronics. Prior to his seven years at Asurion, Ryan was a manager at Bain & Company, a global strategy consulting firm. His educational credentials include Marquette University, Northwestern University and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Ryan also studied at the University of Frankfurt am Main as a Fulbright Scholar. The expansion of ForeverCar.com's executive team with an industry veteran emphasizes the company's reputation as an innovator. Ryan's background will be instrumental as the company continues to innovate and redefine how extended warranties are priced and distributed to consumers. "After proudly winning the 2016 Chicago Innovation Award, we could have been complacent," said Mark Hodes, CEO of ForeverCar.com. "But we decided to be even more aggressive and bold. We realized there was more to do in an industry that badly needs bold ideas. With Ryan's incredible background and experience, we now have all the leadership pieces in place to significantly expand the appeal and value of extended warranties." About ForeverCar.com ForeverCar.com is a full-service provider of car repair protection plans that gives people complete and honest information, transforming the way consumers buy and benefit from car repair protection plans. ForeverCar.com is the first online platform to display quotes and enable purchasing of car repair protection plans, giving car owners full visibility into what's covered and what's not covered. ForeverCar's platform powers vehicle service contract shopping and selling for dealers, auto insurers and credit unions. You can also shop and buy directly from ForeverCar at www.forevercar.com. Media Contact Anthony Millot [email protected] (844) 392-4797 SOURCE ForeverCar Related Links https://www.forevercar.com SAINT PAUL, Minn., April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- As the days get longer and weather gets warmer, Minnesotan's yearn for the long, lazy days of summer. And nothing tastes better on a hot day than an ice-cold malt. But what about a malt with dill pickle chips mixed in? Or crushed up spiced "airplane" cookies in a sundae with lemon and chocolate? Or a taco-inspired malt? These might not be the first flavors that come to mind, but for the third year in a row, Midwest Dairy Association will make room for one of these imaginative, and delicious, new concoctions on its Minnesota State Fair menu by inviting fans to pick their favorite "Flavor of the Fair." Malt and sundae fans will have the chance to vote April 7-17 on which malt or sundae flavor will be made and sold at the Dairy Goodness Bar at this year's great Minnesota get-together. Minnesota's dairy farmers want the public's help choosing a new featured malt and sundae from the following selection of three delectable flavor combinations: Pie 'n the Sky - Take flight with this nostalgic mix of crunchy, spiced "airplane" cookies and lemon curd, topped with a dark chocolate drizzle. A little sweet, a little tart, this delicious treat will remind you of childhood summers at picnics filled with pies and bright blue skies. Nacho Average Malt - Taco 'bout a sweet treat! Hot sauce packs a punch in cool vanilla ice cream, while crunchy tortilla chips and shredded Parmesan cheese complete this Tex-Mex creation. Whether it's a malt or sundae, it's sure to be "Nacho Average" treat. Vanilly Dilly - Reserve judgment and bite into the tangy crunch of dill pickle potato chips mixed with smooth, creamy vanilla ice cream. Garnished with a dill pickle, this sweet, savory and oh-so-craveable treat will keep you coming back for more Now through Monday, April 17, ice cream-lovers can visit midwestdairy.com/DairyGoodnessFlavor to take the "Flavor of the Fair" poll and choose a favorite. Visitors are encouraged to share their pick online with the hashtag #DairyGoodnessFlavor. The winning addition will be announced in the coming months. Last year's winning flavor, Call It Breakfast, a vanilla malt or sundae topped with latte-flavored syrup and chunks of bakery-fresh doughnuts, had fair-goers stopping by the dairy building earlier than usual to grab this tasty treat, to literally "Call it Breakfast." Salted Caramel Puff, 2015's Flavor of the Fair, featuring puffcorn with caramel drizzle atop a creamy vanilla malt or sundae, was also a fan and food writer's favorite. To add to the fun, during this year's Minnesota State Fair, fair-goers can once again suggest 2018 "Flavor of the Fair" combinations while they enjoy this year's winning creation and watch Princess Kay of the Milky Way and the other finalists for her title have their likenesses carved in butter. The Dairy Goodness Bar, located in the Minnesota State Fair's Dairy Building (at the corner of Judson and Underwood), will feature a location where visitors can write in suggestions of their own. This year's fair runs from August 24 through September 4. For more information or to vote in the poll, please visit midwestdairy.com/DairyGoodnessFlavor. Midwest Dairy Association represents 8,000 dairy farm families and works on their behalf to increase dairy sales, foster innovation and inspire consumer confidence in dairy products and practices. Midwest Dairy is funded by checkoff dollars from dairy farmers in a 10-state region, including Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma. For more information, visit MidwestDairy.com. Follow us on Twitter and find us on Facebook at Midwest Dairy. SOURCE Midwest Dairy Association Related Links https://www.midwestdairy.com LONDON, April 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Forecasts by Type (Concrete Admixtures, Adhesive & Sealants, Asphalt Additives, Flame Retardants), by Region Plus Profiles of Top Companies Visiongain's new 150 pages report assesses that the global Construction chemicals market will reach $31.62 billion in 2017. Are you involved in Construction chemicals or need to understand its market dynamics? If so, then you must read this report It's vital that you keep your knowledge up to date. You need this report. Market scope: This brand new report from visiongain is a completely fresh market assessment of the Construction chemicals market based upon the latest information. Our new market study contains forecasts, original analysis, company profiles and, most crucially, fresh conclusions. The report gives detailed forecasts and analysis of the Construction chemicals markets by region and end-use sectors. Construction chemicals Market Forecast 2017-2027 report responds to your need for definitive market data: Where are the Construction chemicals market opportunities? 116 tables, charts, and graphs reveal market data allowing you to target your strategy more effectively When will the Construction chemicals market grow? Global, national and the Construction chemicals submarket forecasts and analysis from 2017-2027 illustrate the market progression Which Construction chemicals submarkets will flourish from 2017-2027? Concrete Admixtures Submarket Forecast 2017-2027 Adhesive & Sealants Submarket Forecast 2017-2027 Asphalt Additives Submarket Forecast 2017-2027 Flame Retardants Submarket Forecast 2017-2027 To see a report overview please email Sara Peerun on [email protected] Where are the regional Construction chemicals market opportunities from 2017-2027? Focused regional forecasts and analysis explore the future opportunities Asia-Pacific forecast 2017-2027 Europe forecast 2017-2027 North America forecast 2017-2027 Middle-East forecast 2017-2027 Latin America forecast 2017-2027 Africa forecast 2017-2027 China forecast 2017-2027 India forecast 2017-2027 Japan forecast 2017-2027 South Korea forecast 2017-2027 Others forecast 2017-2027 Germany forecast 2017-2027 Italy forecast 2017-2027 France forecast 2017-2027 U.K. forecast 2017-2027 Others forecast 2017-2027 U.S. forecast 2017-2027 Canada forecast 2017-2027 Mexico forecast 2017-2027 What are the factors influencing Construction chemicals market dynamics? SWOT analysis explores the factors. Research and development (R&D) strategy Supply and demand dynamics Advances in product quality Who are the leading Construction chemicals companies? We reveal market share, positioning, capabilities, product portfolios, R&D activity, services, focus, strategies, M&A activity, and future outlook. Arkema S.A. BASF DOW Chemical Company Ashland Inc. Mapei W.R. Grace & Company RPM International Fosroc International Ltd. Sika AG Who should read this report? Anyone within the Construction chemicals value chain, including Raw material suppliers R&D specialists CEO's COO's CIO's Business development managers Marketing managers Technologists Investors Banks Government agencies Contractors Get our report today Global Construction Chemicals Market 2017-2027: Forecasts by Type (Concrete Admixtures, Adhesive & Sealants, Asphalt Additives, Flame Retardants), by Region Plus Profiles of Top Companies. Avoid missing out - order our report now. To request a report overview of this report, please email Sara Peerun at [email protected] or call Tel: +44-(0)-20-7336-6100 Or click on:https://www.visiongain.com/Report/1837/Global-Construction-Chemicals-Market-2017-2027 Companies Mentioned in the Report ABP Coatings Aditya Birla Chemicals Admiral Steel - Alsip, IL Admixture Advanced Cement Technologies, LLC Air Products AkzoNobel Alteco Technik American Ready Mix Arkema S.A. Ashland Inc. Aus Gutem Grund Badger Meter, Inc. Barrier One, Inc BASF BEIJING JIANKAI CONCRETE ADMIXTURE CO., LTD Binker Material Schutz Bornit Borregaard Lignotech BYK additives and Instruments Cementaid Cemex Chaotic Pigments Cipy Polyurethane Concrete Additives & Chemicals Concrete Admixtures Group ConShield Technologies Inc Cortec Corporation Cresco Concrete Products, LLC Dow Chemical Company Elkem Materials Euclid Chemical Company Evonik Industries Five Star Products Inc Fosroc International Ltd. Fritz Industries Inc GCp GCP Applied Technologies H&R Johnson Hanover Specialties Inc. Headwaters Resources Imrae Corporation JE Tomes & Associates Kalmatron Corp Kaufman Products, Inc. Kel-Crete Industries, Inc Krete Industries Inc Mapei S.P.A. Metalcrete Industries Michelman MIG MATERIAL INNOVATIVE GESELLSCHAFT MBH Oil-Rite Corporation Oscrete Construction Products Perma Construction Aids Private Limited R.W. Sidley, Inc. RPM International Inc. Saicos Coating Systems Schonox Schulke & Mayer Gmbh Sika AG Sika Corporation SILPRO LLC Soudal Spiess Urania Sto Corp. Sunshine Supply Co., Inc. Tikkurila Tongzhou Tremco Illbruk Triflex Tygar Mfg. Inc Uzin Utz AG Vandex Velosit W.R. Grace & Company Wacker Widopen Produkte Wolman Worlee Yara UK Ltd To see a report overview please email Sara Peerun on [email protected] SOURCE Visiongain Ltd HOUSTON, April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Group 1 Automotive, Inc. (NYSE: GPI), an international, Fortune 500 automotive retailer, today announced that senior management will present at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch 2017 Auto Summit on April 12, 2017, at the JW Marriott Essex House in New York City. The presentation is scheduled to begin at 1:00 p.m. ET. The presentation will be simulcast live on the Internet at http://www.group1corp.com/events. A softcopy of the presentation will also be available within http://www.group1corp.com/events and within the Investor Relations section of Group 1's website at http://group1corp.com/company-presentations. About Group 1 Automotive, Inc. Group 1 owns and operates 157 automotive dealerships, 208 franchises, and 38 collision centers in the United States, the United Kingdom and Brazil that offer 31 brands of automobiles. Through its dealerships, the Company sells new and used cars and light trucks; arranges related vehicle financing; sells service contracts; provides automotive maintenance and repair services; and sells vehicle parts. Investors please visit www.group1corp.com, www.group1auto.com, www.group1collision.com, www.facebook.com/group1auto, and www.twitter.com/group1auto, where Group 1 discloses additional information about the Company, its business, and its results of operations. FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS This press release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which are statements related to future, not past, events and are based on our current expectations and assumptions regarding our business, the economy and other future conditions. In this context, the forward-looking statements often include statements regarding our goals, plans, projections and guidance regarding our financial position, results of operations, market position, pending and potential future acquisitions and business strategy, and often contain words such as "expects," "anticipates," "intends," "plans," "believes," "seeks," "should," "foresee," "may" or "will" and similar expressions. While management believes that these forward-looking statements are reasonable as and when made, there can be no assurance that future developments affecting us will be those that we anticipate. Any such forward-looking statements are not assurances of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those set forth in the statements. These risks and uncertainties include, among other things, (a) general economic and business conditions, (b) the level of manufacturer incentives, (c) the future regulatory environment, (d) our ability to obtain an inventory of desirable new and used vehicles, (e) our relationship with our automobile manufacturers and the willingness of manufacturers to approve future acquisitions, (f) our cost of financing and the availability of credit for consumers, (g) our ability to complete acquisitions and dispositions and the risks associated therewith, (h) foreign exchange controls and currency fluctuations, and (i) our ability to retain key personnel. For additional information regarding known material factors that could cause our actual results to differ from our projected results, please see our filings with the SEC, including our Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and Current Reports on Form 8-K. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements after the date they are made, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Investor contacts: Sheila Roth Manager, Investor Relations Group 1 Automotive, Inc. 713-647-5741 | [email protected] Media contacts: Pete DeLongchamps V.P. Manufacturer Relations, Financial Services and Public Affairs Group 1 Automotive, Inc. 713-647-5770 | [email protected] or Clint Woods Pierpont Communications, Inc. 713-627-2223 | [email protected] SOURCE Group 1 Automotive, Inc. Related Links http://www.group1auto.com FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich., April 7, 2017 Hino Motors Manufacturing U.S.A., Inc. announces a new management structure that places emphasis on North American expertise and a refined focus on responsibilities. The new management team, including Chairman, President and two Executive Vice Presidents, represents decades of experience in the USA and brings together a formidable knowledge of manufacturing from Hino globally. Appointed to Chairman, Mr. Yoshinori Noguchi. Mr. Noguchi is also President and CEO of Hino Motors Sales, Inc. (dba Hino Trucks, Hino Motors Manufacturing sister company in the USA), He joined Hino in 1977 and has held various domestic and overseas assignments in his 39-year career with the company. He has served in the USA since 2013. Appointed to President, Mr.Takashi Ono. Succeeding Mr. Kazuhiro Somiya, Mr. Ono, a veteran of the automotive industry, has held a number of domestic and international leadership positions over his 35-year career at Toyota Motor Corporation. Most recently, Mr. Ono served as Senior General Manager of Hino Motors Ltd. Appointed to Executive Vice President, Mr. Davey Jung. Mr. Jung has held numerous roles at Hino Motors Manufacturing Michigan offices throughout the last decademost recently as SVP for Purchasing, Sales, R&D and Corporate Strategy. Previously, during a 13-year period at Dana Incorporated in Ohio, Mr. Jung held positions including Chief Engineer and Director of Sales. Appointed to Executive Vice President, North American Vehicle Production, Mr. Kenji Nomura. Mr. Nomura will oversee North American Vehicle Production and Sales, R&D and Quality Assurance in addition to other focused executive management responsibilities. About HMM and Hino Trucks. Hino Motors Manufacturing U.S.A., Inc. ("HMM") Headquartered in Farmington Hills, Michigan, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Hino Motors, Ltd., and sister company to Hino Motors Sales,Inc., (Hino Trucks). Together, HMM and Hino Trucks manufacture and distribute Americas fastest growing premier truck brand. With a combined 10 facilities spanning 5 states supporting manufacturing, R&D, Sales and Parts Distribution, the two companies employ over 1000 people. HMM assembles medium duty trucks in Williamstown, West Virginia, manufactures automotive parts in Marion, Arkansas, and operates parts centers in Mira Loma, California and Gahanna, Ohio. HMM is also a Tier-1 supplier of high quality automotive parts throughout North America. Learn more about HMM at http://hmmusa.com Learn more about Hino Trucks at http://www.hino.com SOURCE Hino Motors Manufacturing U.S.A. Related Links http://hmmusa.com SAN FRANCISCO, April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Blockchain Capital, the premier venture capital firm investing in blockchain technology companies, today announces Vinny Lingham, Andrew Keys, and Matthew Roszack, the Co-Founder and Chairman of Bloq, as some of the early investors in the firm's new digital liquid venture fund raised through a digital token offering called the BCAP Token. This announcement underscores initial excitement in the first VC fund ever raised by a digital token offering. In line with its strategy to drive innovation based on blockchain technology, Blockchain Capital is pursuing an offering of Ethereum-based tokens that will represent an evergreen fractional ownership in a new fund called Blockchain Capital III Digital Liquid Venture Fund, LP. With a digital token issued by a Singapore entity, taking advantage of the JOBS Act securities law liberalizations in the US, the transaction structure draws on significant progress being made by forward-thinking regulators and jurisdictions in creating the necessary flexibility to allow this unique new market to mature. Full details of the offering are disclosed on vctoken.com. "These thought leaders and investors have made Blockchain Capital's pursuit of the first liquidity-enhanced venture capital fund a reality," said Brock Pierce, Managing Partner of Blockchain Capital. "Our investors see the same gap in venture capital that we did when we started down the ICO path the need for venture funds via a liquid, tradable, digital token that still abide by all regulatory compliance rules. Together we expect to democratize the venture capital industry and provide a unique product to the broader crypto investment community." "Blockchain Capital and I share a unique vision for the future of blockchain technology," said Vinny Lingham, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Civic. "The initial coin offering not only aligns with our traditional values and investment beliefs, but furthers our confidence that the venture capital industry will soon offer more flexibility in today's market climate. We are excited to work with Blockchain Capital on this unique new structure." "Blockchain Capital is revolutionizing venture investing by unlocking liquidity in previously illiquid secondary venture markets by tokenizing assets via Ethereum," said Andrew Keys, Head of Global Business Development at ConsenSys. "Capital markets will be forever changed by this type of financial instrument innovation." The investment focus of the fund continues Blockchain Capital's established practice of identifying outstanding blockchain technology companies led by ambitious management teams and partnering with them to accelerate growth. As enterprise use cases for the blockchain proliferate across industries beyond financial technology, this capital raise gives Blockchain Capital the opportunity to maintain its leadership position in supporting the broadening ecosystem. A number of technology partners are aligning with Blockchain Capital for this offering. The blockchain identity company Civic will contribute its blockchain-based KYC/AML technology. ConsenSys Diligence will review the smart contract for the token, and Jaxx, a leading Ethereum wallet, will offer support for the token. The offering is bookrun by The Argon Group, via its subsidiary Argon Investment Management LLC, under Regulation D Section 506(c) and Regulation S exemptions from registration with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. About Blockchain Capital Blockchain Capital is the premier venture capital firm investing in blockchain technology companies. Launched in 2013, Blockchain Capital's initial fund was the first venture capital fund dedicated to the Bitcoin / blockchain ecosystem, and was also the first fund to accept capital calls in Bitcoin. Blockchain Capital is a sector specific, multi-stage, venture capital firm that seeks to gain diverse exposure to the blockchain ecosystem while offering unique co-investment opportunities and proprietary deal flow to its investors. The firm was founded by Bart Stephens, Brad Stephens, and Brock Pierce. For more information, please email [email protected], visit www.blockchain.capital, follow @blockchaincap, or call 415-677-5340. About The Argon Group The Argon Group (the "Group") is an investment bank with a focus on digital finance - the emerging cryptocurrency and token-based capital markets. The Group provides financial advisory, placement, and technology services to companies seeking to raise equity, debt, and non-dilutive capital. The Group develops technical placement solutions, including digital tokens powered by advanced smart contracts, which Argon operates through a digital asset placement platform TokenHub.com. For more information, please email [email protected], follow @theargongroup, visit www.argongroup.com or call 650-665-9210. SOURCE Blockchain Capital Related Links http://www.blockchain.capital NEW YORK, April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Levi & Korsinsky announces it has commenced an investigation of WestRock Company (NYSE:WRK) concerning possible breaches of fiduciary duty. To obtain additional information, go to: http://zlk.9nl.com/westrock-wrk or contact Joseph E. Levi, Esq. either via email at [email protected] or by telephone at (212) 363-7500, toll-free: (877) 363-5972. There is no cost or obligation to you. Levi & Korsinsky is a national firm with offices in New York, Connecticut, California, and Washington D.C. The firm's attorneys have extensive expertise in prosecuting securities litigation involving financial fraud, representing investors throughout the nation in securities lawsuits and have recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for aggrieved shareholders. For more information, please feel free to contact any of the attorneys listed below. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes. Levi & Korsinsky, LLP Joseph E. Levi, Esq. Eduard Korsinsky, Esq. 30 Broad Street - 24th Floor New York, NY 10004 Tel: (212) 363-7500 Toll Free: (877) 363-5972 Fax: (212) 363-7171 www.zlk.com SOURCE Levi & Korsinsky, LLP Related Links http://www.zlk.com Jared is a serial entrepreneur active in the cybersecurity industry and the US National Security community. Jared is the CEO and board member of BitVoyant, a cyber defense and intelligence company delivering risk intelligence, proactive cyber defense, cyber M&A due diligence, and supply chain analysis. Jared, through his proprietary sources at BitVoyant, controls many of the world's largest libraries of cyber intelligence. Prior to BitVoyant, Jared founded Curved Skies; a company he built into a successful unique public-private partnership to provide classified aerospace mission critical technology to the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community. In 2016, Jared sold Curved Skies to Southern Research Institute. Jared started his career as a civil servant within the Intelligence Community. He later earned and maintained NASA flight currency to operate aircraft and sensors above 60,000 feet of the earth. During Operation Enduring Freedom, Jared accrued over 400 combat flight hours. In addition to his responsibilities as CEO at BitVoyant, Jared invests in early-stage technology startups and serves on various corporate and non-profit boards. Jared sits as committee chair for endorsements of the American Geographical Society, the oldest geographic organization in the United States. Jared earned his Bachelor's Degree in Physics at University of Florida. Outstanding Young Alumni Awards are presented annually by the University of Florida Alumni Association. The award program was established in 2006 to recognize alumni who have graduated within the past 10 years, and whose achievements positively reflect the Gator Nation. Criteria for the award include making a significant impact on their industry and having professional accomplishments at the state, national or international level. The Outstanding Young Alumni Awards recognize graduates from all of UF's 16 colleges. This year's winners range from doctors and pharmacists to entrepreneurs and artists. Past award winners include meteorologist Stephanie Abrams, politician Adam Putnam and sportscaster and television personality Erin Andrews. A complete list of winners is available here. To learn more about the UF Alumni Association, please visit ufalumni.ufl.edu. Media Contact: JP Wimer, 352-846-3605 or [email protected] SOURCE BitVoyant SUGAR LAND, Texas, April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--KBR Incorporated (Houston, Texas) announced it will bid farewell to the fixed-price model for its engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) services following completion of the natural-gas-fired, combined-cycle (NGCC) Marshalltown Generating Station in Iowa. Marshalltown is just one of nearly $10.4 billion worth of KBR projects that have been completed, or are set to be completed, in 2017, according to Industrial Info's project platform. Within this article: Details on the progress of the NGCC station in Iowa and other projects that are set to wrap up by the end of the year, including an oil sands mine in Canada, and chemical plants in Oklahoma and Saudi Arabia. Other companies featured: Alliant Energy, Suncor Energy Incorporated, and Koch Industries Incorporated For details, view the entire article by subscribing to Industrial Info's Premium Industry News, or browse other breaking industrial news stories at www.industrialinfo.com. Industrial Info Resources (IIR), with global headquarters in Sugar Land, Texas, five offices in North America and 10 international offices, is the leading provider of global market intelligence specializing in the industrial process, heavy manufacturing and energy markets. Industrial Info's quality-assurance philosophy, the Living Forward Reporting Principle, provides up-to-the-minute intelligence on what's happening now, while constantly keeping track of future opportunities. Follow IIR on: Facebook - Twitter - LinkedIn. For more information on our coverage, send inquiries to [email protected], or visit us online at http://www.industrialinfo.com. William Ploch 713-783-5147 SOURCE Industrial Info Resources, Inc. Related Links http://www.industrialinfo.com "Nicolai is a seasoned IT executive with considerable experience across a variety of industries, systems and geographies," says Mattamy's Chief Operating Officer Brian Johnston. "He is a strong communicator and creative leader who has a proven track record of building high-performing IT teams and managing complex projects and platforms." Most recently Nicolai was the Managing Director, Customer Success for Delphix (a market leader in data virtualization), and has also held senior IT roles at Aimia and Procter & Gamble. Nicolai has a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Universidad De Los Andes and a certification from the Project Management Institute of Boston University, and is a graduate of the Executive Education Program at York University's Schulich School of Business. He is an Advisory Board Member for the CIO Leadership Summit and a member of the Board of Directors for PMI Southern Ontario (Toronto and GTA). "I am so pleased to be joining an organization that is an industry leader and has such an amazing purpose helping to build homes for families and communities across North America," says Nicolai. "I'm looking forward to working with the Mattamy team to transform the business into the digital age." About Mattamy Homes Mattamy Homes is the largest privately owned homebuilder in North America, with operations across the United States and Canada. Mattamy has sold 90,000 homes in hundreds of communities. In the United States, the company is represented in nine metropolitan areas Minneapolis-St. Paul, Charlotte, Phoenix, Tucson, Jacksonville, Orlando, Tampa, Sarasota and Naples and in Canada, those communities stretch across the Greater Toronto Area, as well as in Ottawa, Calgary and Edmonton. Visit www.mattamyhomes.com for more information. SOURCE Mattamy Homes Limited Related Links http://www.mattamyhomes.com/ OAKLAND, Calif., April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Eight young poets in Oakland were selected as the Oakland Youth Poet Laureate Finalists -- one will be named the 2017 Oakland Youth Poet Laureate, a top literary honor. Launched in 2011, as a partnership between the Oakland Public Library and Youth Speaks, this program encourages young, Oakland poets to showcase their talent and leadership skills in a program that celebrates the authentic voice of young people. The 2017 Oakland Youth Poet Laureate will receive a $5,000 college scholarship. Feature performances by all Finalists and Honorable Mentions (listed below) will be presented on Saturday, April 29 at Pegasus Books (5560 College Ave in Oakland). The 2017 Oakland Youth Poet Laureate will be announced at the annual Oakland Book Festival ( http://www.oaklandbookfestival.org ), presented at Oakland City Hall, on Saturday, May 21. 2017 Finalists are: Javier Mejia Cuenca, 16, MetWest High School Miles DeRosa, 15, Oakland School for the Arts Lucy Flattery-Vickness, 17, Oakland Technical High School Emma Linnea Hardison, 17, Oakland School for the Arts Leila Mottley, 14, Oakland School for the Arts Lizette Navarro, 14, Skyline High School Krysia Olszewska, 17, Piedmont High School Amaya Wilson, 16, Oakland School for the Arts 2017 Honorable Mentions: Isabella Catalano, 17, Oakland Technical High School Isabel Hallock, 18, Bishop O'Dowd High School Harrison Harvey, 17, Head-Royce School 2017 Judges Mg Roberts, local author and educator Eugene Ace Johnson, poetic activist and founder of iVisionary Academy Gracia Mwamba, UC Berkeley student Kwan Booth, award-winning writer and journalist Tova Ricardo, 2015 Oakland Youth Poet Laureate About Youth Speaks: Founded in San Francisco in 1996, Youth Speaks exists to shift the perception of young people by combating illiteracy, alienation, and silence, creating a global movement of brave new voices bringing the noise from the margins to the core. Recently, the Ford Foundation named Youth Speaks as one of the 10 most important arts organizations in the nation's future, and The Wallace Foundation named Youth Speaks one of eight exemplary arts education organizations. About Oakland Public Library: The Oakland Public Library is a part of the City of Oakland in California and has been in existence since 1878. The Oakland Public Library empowers all people to explore, connect, and grow. For more information, Tara Dorabji, Communications Director, Youth Speaks, [email protected] or 415-942-4331. Lana Adlawan, Supervising Librarian, Teen Services, at [email protected] or 510-238-7613. SOURCE Youth Speaks; Oakland Public Library Related Links http://youthspeaks.org/ SOMERSET, Ky., April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Del Spina Enterprises Miracle Mile Mall Complex will provide Kentucky an opportunity to obtain national recognition as a major tourist attraction on the order of Gatlinburg which generates $1-billion in tax revenue annually for their Tennessee residents. Del Spina Enterprises Del Spina's determination to build in Kentucky dates back to July 17, 1968, when the Commonwealth Journal printed a full-page report on a Government Study conducted for the National Park Services to determine the feasibility of making Roberts Bend Rd. Burnside, KY a national recreational site. The $78,000 Study later determined it was not economically feasible to develop the 2-mile area and construct a boat ramp. In 1995, the Del Spinas acquired 500-acres in this region, disagreed with the Forest Service decision and began construction of the one mile roadway to the lake region and built the South Fork Boat Ramp, all with private funds. Upon completion, both these parcels with a cost base of $1,700,000 were then gifted to Pulaski County as a recreational site for all vacationers to enjoy. The remaining 500-acres were developed into Lake Cumberland Resort; Kentucky's most prestigious gated lakefront community and generated a tax base of $50,000,000 to Pulaski County. (At that time, the Del Spinas became aware 57 families were living on rainwater stored in barrels within this peninsula. By requesting and receiving a $5-Million Grant, the entire peninsula today is with city water for all residents to enjoy. It takes perseverance to get any new project underway. The complexity of the current project, Miracle Mall, touting 500-acres and 1,000,000 sq ft of retail space has the communities jumping with joy. The jury is still out on sufficient political support that seems to be the only drawback to the project. To show determination and good faith, a portion of the 300-acre north side of the parcel is about to be cleared. Residents, when passing by mile marker 38-39 on Hwy-80 will then be able to observe the magnitude of the jobsite. We assure the general public we will work hand in hand with any agency that can expedite our acquiring water, sewer and road access. Government funding such as (TIF) Tax Incrementing Financing or Economic Development Funding are generally available, if there is truly an interest and an effort in supporting the project. Instruments of this nature are paid off, not with general obligation but only the revenue generated from the project. (This type of funding is not uncommon and very successful to most communities who have used this type funding.) For more information, Log on to Complex Website: http://mmm-ky.com/ This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com. SOURCE Del Spina Enterprises ATLANTA, April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Morehouse College Board of Trustees unanimously voted today to implement several leadership changes and reforms at the board and executive levels. The actions, which were taken based on recent feedback from the Morehouse community, will add a new structure to the Board that will help shape a brighter future for Morehouse College. The Board has voted to take the following actions, which were also discussed in a meeting with students and faculty that took place today: Immediate Appointment of Bill Taggart as Interim President: Effective immediately, John Wilson will step down as President of Morehouse College and William (Bill) Taggart will assume the role of Interim President. Bill, who has been the Chief Operating Officer of Morehouse since 2015, steps into his new role today and will assume day-to-day leadership responsibilities for the College until a new President is identified and hired. Effective immediately, will step down as President of and will assume the role of Interim President. Bill, who has been the Chief Operating Officer of since 2015, steps into his new role today and will assume day-to-day leadership responsibilities for the College until a new President is identified and hired. Installation of New Board Officers effective immediately: Effective today, Chairman Robert Davidson steps down as Chairman of the Board of Trustees, and Willie Woods is appointed new Board Chair. Other new Board officer appointments include John Thorton as Vice Chair, Richard Thaler as Treasurer, Harold Martin as Secretary and Dr. Dorothy Yancy as Assistant Secretary. "It is an honor and privilege to be named Chairman of the Board of Trustees. I want to emphasize that the decisions made today were out of love for the College and with a focus on turning the page towards better positioning the institution for future success," said Willie Woods, Chairman, Morehouse College Board of Trustees. "I would also like to thank Bob Davidson for his contributions as Chairman over the past six years, and John Wilson for his more than four years of service as President of Morehouse College. I wish them both continued success." "I am honored to assume the role of Interim President," said Bill Taggart, Interim President, Morehouse College. "This is a seminal time in Morehouse's history as we honor the College's 150th year as a premier educational institution. As an Atlanta native, I look forward to working with the entire Morehouse Community, including the Board, students, faculty, alumni and donors, to continue on our path of success and build upon Morehouse's strong foundation and reputation of academic excellence." "Having fully participated in today's Board Meeting, we are extremely happy with today's outcome, furthering our discussions of shared governance," said Johnathan Hill, President of the Morehouse College Student Government Association. "With this new chapter, the Board is keeping both institutional priorities and student centricity at the forefront. I appreciate the collaborative culture of this new leadership, and know that we will as stakeholders continue to hold one another accountable. It's going to take a team effort to place Morehouse back in a position of strength, and what I witnessed today has been just that." "The Ray Charles Foundation would like to thank all the members of the Board of Trustees of Morehouse college for their diligent efforts in ensuring that Morehouse College is led with integrity and follows the traditions with which its great reputation has been built since 1867," said Valerie Erwin, President of the Ray Charles Foundation. "In light of the recent turn of events, The Ray Charles Foundation is pleased to effectuate its pledge of $1 million to the College forthwith and will stand by Morehouse College through this transition." Ranked America's fifth "Most Entrepreneurial College" by Forbes Magazine in 2015, Morehouse College is the nation's largest liberal arts college for men. Founded in 1867, the College enrolls approximately 2,100 students and historically has conferred more bachelor's degrees on black men than any other institution in the world. Morehouse College has produced more Rhodes Scholars than any other HBCU. Prominent alumni include Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Nobel Peace Prize laureate; Dr. David Satcher, a former U.S. Surgeon General; Shelton "Spike" Lee, American filmmaker; Maynard H. Jackson, the first African American mayor of Atlanta, Ga.; and Jeh Johnson, the Secretary of Homeland Security. Media Contacts: Michele Mendelson Kwittken 646-747-7163 (direct) [email protected] Cathy Tyler, Morehouse College Executive Director of Strategic Communications 470-639-0543 (direct) 404-790-8918 (cell) [email protected] SOURCE Morehouse College Related Links http://www.morehouse.edu MERRITT ISLAND, Fla., April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Physician Partners of America would like to welcome Susan Clark ARNP to our Merritt Island Interventional Pain Management location. Ms. Clark is a Board Certified Advanced Registered Nurse Practitioner with extensive experience in Interventional Pain Management and Clinical Research. Her passion for working with pain conditions led her to develop an Osteoporosis focused clinic which she will continue with PPOA. Other specialty areas include Spine Surgery and Urgent Care. Ms. Clark obtained her Master's Degree in Nursing from the University of South Florida as well as a Master's Degree in Business Administration from Florida Tech in Melbourne, Florida. She is Board Certified by the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners and the American Nurses Credentialing Center as an Adult Nurse Practitioner as well as an Acute Care Nurse Practitioner. She is also a Certified Research Coordinator. For more information or to schedule an appointment: Please visit http://physicianpartnersofamerica.com or call 1-844-542-5724 (844-KICK-PAIN) to schedule an appointment. Ms. Susan Clark is now accepting patients at the Merritt Island location: 595 Courtenay Parkway #206 Merritt Island, Florida 32953 About PPOA: Physician Partners of America (PPOA) is a national healthcare organization focused on strengthening the doctor-patient relationship and improving patient outcomes. PPOA, and their affiliates; Florida Pain Relief Group, Texas Pain Relief Group, Texas Foot and Ankle Group, Urgent Care of Texas and National Medical Practices, all share a common vision to ensure the well-being of patients and provide their physician partners the opportunity to focus on the practice of medicine. This model allows physicians to be physicians, caring about patients and their needs versus the ever-complex administrative requirements. For more information about Physician Partners of America, visit http://physicianpartnersofamerica.com. For more information, contact: Diana Petrik, Universal Media Group 214.347.7803 [email protected] This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com. SOURCE Physician Partners of America MERRITT ISLAND, Fla., April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Physician Partners of America would like to welcome Beth Holtham, PA-C to our Merritt Island Interventional Pain Management location. Physician Partners of America Ms. Holtham comes to PPOA with a wealth of knowledge in the Interventional Pain Management industry with over 20 years' experience treating chronic pain and neurology disorders. A graduate of Nova Southeastern University's Physician Assistant program, Ms. Holtham is also certified by the National Commission of Certification of Physician Assistants. She is a member of the Florida Academy of Physician Assistants, the American Academy of Physician Assistants, and the Space Coast Clinicians Group. Additional areas of experience include: Internal Medicine, Family Practice, Urgent Care, Pulmonology, and Urology. For more information or to schedule an appointment: Please visit www.physicianpartnersoa.com or call 1-844-542-5724 (844-KICK-PAIN) to schedule an appointment. Ms. Beth Holtham is now accepting patients at the Merritt Island location: 595 Courtenay Parkway #206 Merritt Island, Florida 32953 About PPOA: Physician Partners of America (PPOA) is a national healthcare organization focused on strengthening the doctor-patient relationship and improving patient outcomes. PPOA, and their affiliates; Florida Pain Relief Group, Texas Pain Relief Group, Texas Foot and Ankle Group, Urgent Care of Texas and National Medical Practices, all share a common vision to ensure the well-being of patients and provide their physician partners the opportunity to focus on the practice of medicine. This model allows physicians to be physicians, caring about patients and their needs versus the ever-complex administrative requirements. For more information about Physician Partners of America, visit www.physicianpartnersoa.com. For more information, contact: Diana Petrik, Universal Media Group 214.347.7803 [email protected] This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com SOURCE Physician Partners of America Related Links http://www.physicianpartnersoa.com BOCA RATON, Fla., April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Physician's Seal (PS), innovators of the non-prescription sleep product REMfresh, an ultrapure melatonin in a sophisticated delivery system, announced today the appointment of Terry Stecz as President of Physician's Seal. "Terry has played a critical role in the successful commercialization of our first product, REMfresh," said Fred Hassan, the non-executive Chairman of Physician's Seal. "We are confident that Terry will provide leadership to allow the company to continue to grow rapidly, well beyond the current strong growth of REMfresh and beyond the launch of our innovative products in the pipeline. One could not find a better, more experienced commercial executive to assume this responsibility," he added. In this new position, Terry will report to Dan Hassan, Chief Executive Officer, Physician's Seal. Terry Stecz joined Physician's Seal in August 2015 as Senior Advisor. Prior to joining the company, he had a successful career in the Education and Consumer Health Care Industries. In Consumer Health Care, Terry served as President of Whitehall-Robins (marketers of Advil, Robitussin and Centrum). "I am grateful to Dan and Fred for their mentorship," said Mr. Stecz. "I am both humbled and honored to be chosen for this position. I look forward to working with my colleagues to commercialize our exciting product range and pipeline." About Physician's Seal Physician's Seal is the innovator of REMfresh, the first and only continuous release and absorption melatonin that mimics the way the body naturally releases and maintains melatonin over a 7-hour period. Physician's Seal, founded in 2015, is a privately held company based in Boca Raton, Florida. It is committed to bringing cutting-edge life science applications to doctors and their patients. For more information, visit www.remfresh.com. Media Contact: Gail S. Thornton Worldview Communications 908-392-3420 [email protected] SOURCE Physician's Seal LOS ANGELES, Calif., April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- PLJ Income, a leading financial firm based in Los Angeles, California, announced today they will be launching the Money Confidence Global Women Initiative, a financial literacy campaign focused on providing free educational programs to women organizations and charities. Millions of women in the United States, and around the globe are suffering from debt and poor financial planning. According to a recent study, 7 out of 10 Americans have less than $1000 in savings. Crystal Oculee, president of PLJ Income, says that "this is due to poor saving habits and a lack of financial literacy." When it comes to the United States, personal finance is a missing part of the American educational system, with only 17 US states offering the mandatory course in high schools. The Money Confidence Global Women Initiative aims to deliver easy financial courses to help the millions of women around the world overcome financial pitfalls, and to better manage and build their wealth. PLJ Income empowers women to take control of their money by asking relevant questions. PLJ Income is committed to raising awareness for financial literacy in women and children throughout the world. By providing free financial literacy courses, PLJ Income aims to reduce the global consumer debt by educating the public on the fundamentals of personal finance. Said CEO Rem Oculee, "We are extremely proud to announce our global mission to improve the lives of millions of women around the world. As a successful company, our mission is a natural extension of who we are we want to help others succeed by understanding the basic concepts of financial success. We are excited to announce that this mission is ongoing and we will continue to raise awareness and financial literacy indefinitely." ABOUT PLJ INCOME PLJ Income is a rapidly-growing financial firm specializing in income, financial, and insurance solutions. PLJ Income is committed to helping women and their families with retirement income, and help protect them from uncertainties by using conservative income strategies. To learn more about the PLJ Income and its mission, please visit www.PLJincome.com. ABOUT CRYSTAL OCULEE Crystal Oculee is a personal finance expert and author of "Money Confidence: Advice for Women to Take Control of Their Financial Freedom Now." Oculee has been a financial literacy advocate for women by empowering them to take control of their finance. To learn more about Crystal Oculee, please visit CrystalOculee.com. CONTACT: Hollie Nguyen, [email protected] SOURCE PLJ Income Related Links http://www.pljincome.com AUSTIN, Texas, April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- When it comes to spring purchases, staples like flowy tops, spring break excursions and updates for the home are all must-haves. In order to not break the bank this season, RetailMeNot, a leading savings destination, has done the research and found the top categories that garner the best savings this month. Spring Apparel Spring apparel and accessories prove to be great purchases this month because historical price comparisons show that these items are often discounted close to 32% off the original price. "Spring clothing has been in the stores for a couple of months now, and the rule of thumb is that every two months, retailers tend to discount what items they still have in order to make room for the next round of inventory," says RetailMeNot shopping and trends expert Sara Skirboll. "As the weather gets warmer, retailers will need to shift their offerings from spring to summer, so expect a lot of savings on spring items and essentials." Travel Spring breakers have their eyes on rest and relaxation this April, and booking spring and summer trips now is a good idea in order to get the best deals. About 6 in 10 (61%) people say they plan to take a vacation between now and September of this year, with just 1 in 10 saying they'd take three or more vacations. "According to our most recent survey, the top vacation activities include going to the beach (52%), road tripping (43%) and visiting an amusement/theme park (36%)," adds Skirboll. Spring Cleaning Of course, not everyone is looking to get away. Some are ready to start the spring season with a clean house. Vacuums and other cleaning necessities are heavily discounted in April to help tackle spring cleaning projects. "If you're weary of disposing of items you may need later, like holiday decor and Halloween costumes, organization is key," says Skirboll. Baskets and plastic bins are perfect for organizing items by theme. "It keeps everything in one easy place and simple to find." Spring isn't just a time to dust or vacuum, it's also a time to simplify and declutter. Gather all of your old electronics, books and knickknacks and consider donating to a local charity or organization. Outdoor Furniture and Decor Planning to host an outdoor get-together for Easter, Mother's Day or graduation? Look out for great deals on lighting, patio furniture and other entertaining needs that are sure to wow guests. According to RetailMeNot internal data, discounts in April range anywhere from 20% to 30% off on outdoor furniture and colorful accents like outdoor pillows and throw rugs, with the deepest discounts falling on the second week of the month. Survey Methodology The RetailMeNot Q1 2017 survey was conducted between February 2 and 5, 2017, among 1,028 nationally representative Americans ages 18 and over, using an email invitation and an online survey. Quotas are set to ensure reliable and accurate representation of the entire U.S. population ages 18 and over. Results of any sample are subject to sampling variation and are estimated. The magnitude of the variation is measurable and is affected by the number of interviews and the level of the percentages expressing the results. In this particular study, the chances are 95 in 100 that a survey result does not vary, plus or minus, by more than 3.1 percentage points from the result that would be obtained if interviews had been conducted with all persons in the universe represented by the sample. The margin of error for any subgroups will be slightly higher. About RetailMeNot, Inc. RetailMeNot, Inc. (http://www.retailmenot.com/corp/) is a leading savings destination connecting consumers with retailers, restaurants and brands, both online and in-store. The company enables consumers across the globe to find hundreds of thousands of digital offers to save money while they shop or dine out. During the 12 months ended December 31, 2016, RetailMeNot, Inc. experienced over 650 million visits to its websites. It also averaged 23.1 million mobile unique visitors per month during the three months ended December 31, 2016. RetailMeNot, Inc. estimates that approximately $4.4 billion in retailer sales were attributable to consumer transactions from paid digital offers in its marketplace in 2016, more than $600 million of which were attributable to its in-store solution. The RetailMeNot, Inc. portfolio of websites and mobile applications includes RetailMeNot.com in the United States; RetailMeNot.ca in Canada; VoucherCodes.co.uk in the United Kingdom; ma-reduc.com and Poulpeo.com in France; and GiftCardZen.com and Deals2Buy.com in North America. Media contact: Katie Hammill RetailMeNot, Inc. +1 412 600 4869 mobile [email protected] SOURCE RetailMeNot Related Links http://www.retailmenot.com BOSTON, April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- RISI, the leading information provider for the global forest products industry, today announced that it has been acquired by Euromoney Institutional Investor PLC, a global business-to-business information group. RISI's product suite includes objective pricing data, industry news, mill intelligence, research and analytics, specialized conferences, and custom projects for the pulp, packaging, wood products, wood fiber, and sawlog markets. "The level of service and quality of information we deliver to clients will remain unchanged," said Charles Rutstein, Chief Executive Officer of RISI. "We are excited to have access to greater resources that will allow RISI to invest in new ways to serve and provide the highest value to the people who depend on us." Through this acquisition, Euromoney will create a cross-commodity price reporting and market intelligence business, incorporating RISI and the existing Metal Bulletin Group a price reporting agency serving the metals, minerals, and mining markets. This new commodities pricing and analytics unit within Euromoney will provide data for over 4,400 commodity prices, forecasts, and market analysis, supported by a team of over 350 employees located in several locations across the world, including the USA, Europe, Brazil, Singapore and China. "RISI is a high-quality business and complements our existing metals pricing services. RISI combines an excellent price reporting operation with a world-class analytics and cost division. The scale of the new combined business will enable increased product investment resulting in an even better user experience for all our clients," said Raju Daswani, CEO of Metal Bulletin Group and head of Euromoney's commodities price reporting businesses. About RISI (www.risi.com) RISI is the leading information provider for the global forest products industry. The company works with clients in the pulp and paper, packaging, wood products, timber, biomass, tissue and nonwovens industries to help them make better decisions. Headquartered in Boston, MA, RISI operates additional offices throughout North and South America, Europe and Asia. For enquiries, please contact: Deanna Talbot VP of Marketing O: +1 781 734 8970 E: [email protected] SOURCE RISI Related Links http://www.risiinfo.com VANCOUVER, April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ - Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers Incorporated (NYSE and TSX: RBA) has published its March 2017 auction metrics on the company's website. This information can be accessed at the following link: https://investor.ritchiebros.com/historical-auction-metrics Monthly auction metrics should not be considered indicative of quarterly, annual or future performance. Auction metrics and corporate performance vary considerably month-to-month, due to the number of auctions held each month and seasonal factors. Ritchie Bros.' actual results could differ materially from those implied by this monthly auction disclosure. Investors are encouraged to review Ritchie Bros.' performance on a 12-month rolling or annual basis before making investing decisions. 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. SOURCE Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers Related Links http://www.rbauction.com After a quiet couple of months, the Iowa Legislature might do something in the area of water quality in 2017. Of course, nothing has passed yet. But the fact lawmakers are at least considering water quality legislation is a step in the right direction, according to agriculture and environmental leaders. From my perspective this has always been bubbling, says Roger Wolf, director of environmental programs and services for the Iowa Soybean Association. There are a lot of people looking at Iowa to see if we can be effective (in dealing with water quality). The state enacted its water quality initiative in 2013, and the voluntary program was embraced by many in the agricultural community. But it soon became apparent a much larger pot of money would be necessary to address the states water quality issues. Gov. Terry Branstad vetoed extra funding for water quality in 2014, and the Des Moines Waterworks eventually filed a lawsuit against officials in several counties. Agricultural groups began pushing for a large, dedicated fund that would help finance water quality efforts in Iowa. Last year, state lawmakers debated several proposals that would have pumped more money into the effort. Branstad made one proposal dealing with local sales taxes that was attacked as taking money away from education. Republicans in the Iowa House pushed another bill that would move money from existing sources. Some Democrats and Republicans supported the idea of raising the states sales tax, pointing to a 2010 referendum in the state when 63 percent of voters supported language that said if the state sales tax were increased, the first 3/8 cent of that increase would be channeled into a natural resources fund that would be used for a variety of items, including water quality. At the end of the day, there appeared to be support for the idea of establishing a fund, but no consensus on where the money should come from. And that brings us to this year. Republicans took full control of the House and the Senate in the 2016 election, and for the first two-and-a-half months of the session, their priorities were on trying to balance the budget and pushing issues such as dramatic changes to the states collective bargaining law. The Legislature has yet to take any significant action on water quality, says Ralph Rosenberg, executive director of the Iowa Environmental Council. But at least lawmakers are starting to talk about the subject. Farmers are investing a lot of their own resources on this issue, says Matt Steinfeldt, a policy advisor with the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation. Were hoping the Legislature finds a way to invest some dedicated state funds. But there are a lot of moving parts right now. Rep. Bobby Kaufmann, R-Wilton, and other Republicans also point to a bill in the Iowa House being pushed by Rep. Chip Baltimore, R-Boone, which deals with structural issues related to the use of water quality money. The idea behind that bill, they say, is to better target water quality funding toward watershed-based programs. Wolf points out that both Minnesota and Missouri have enacted laws that put tax dollars toward similar conservation funds. Those funds are targeted not only to water quality but also toward parks, trails and other natural resource areas. And he says that water quality is a bi-partisan issue. Rosenberg says lawmakers need to provide a dependable source of money for the effort and there needs to be accountability with how taxpayer dollars are spent. There are some issues with finding a large sum of money for the effort while remaining revenue-neutral, he says. We dont want to rob Peter to pay Paul, he says. The Legislature has a record of being able to increase taxes when it knows what the funds will go for. ASCHHEIM, Germany, April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Chinese tourists can shortly pay with Alipa y at checkouts and online shops Quick and easy integration into Rossmann's central checkout system Wirecard AG has secured Dirk Rossmann GmbH, one of the largest drugstore chains in Germany, as a customer: Rossmann will soon offer Alipay as a new payment method in all branches with immediate effect. This means that Chinese tourists can shortly use their familiar Alipay App to pay at all of the merchant's checkouts and online shops. In order to do this, Wirecard has integrated Alipay Barcode Payment into Rossmann's till system and will assume the processing for these payments. In future, mobile Alipay Barcode Payment will be available at over 2,000 Rossmann branches in Germany. Additionally, the new Alipay payment method will now also supplement the payment choices in the online shop at http://www.rossmann.de. This means that Rossmann is the first major German merchant to tap into the booming Chinese tourism market. Two million Chinese tourists travel to Germany every year. On average, they spend EUR 3,000 on shopping alone during their holidays. Wirecard often records hundreds of Alipay Barcode Payment transactions at individual merchants. CEO Raoul Romann: "For us, Chinese tourists are an increasingly important target group - they have a particularly high demand for baby products, cosmetics and organic products. This is why we are delighted to introduce Alipay as a new payment method together with Wirecard, both at all of our points of sale and also for our e-commerce platform." Christian Reindl, Executive Vice President Sales Consumer Goods at Wirecard, adds: "We are proud to have Rossmann as a customer. Our ConnectedPOS platform enables us to quickly and easily implement acceptance for Alipay payments in Rossmann's central till system and also make it available for online customers. This is a prime example of the omnichannel approach, which means that customers can pay easily and securely across channels. Technical integration at Rossmann has been carried out so as to facilitate further developments in the field of alternative payment procedures." Wirecard has been offering this innovative POS payment acceptance at retailers across Europe through the Alipay app since December 2015. For more information on Wirecard's Alipay solutions, please visit: https://www.wirecard.com/alipay. Wirecard media contact: Wirecard AG Jana Tilz Tel.: +49(0)89-4424-1363 Email: [email protected] About Wirecard: Wirecard AG is a global technology group that supports companies in accepting electronic payments from all sales channels. As a leading independent supplier, the Wirecard Group offers outsourcing and white label solutions for electronic payments. A global platform bundles international payment acceptances and methods with supplementary fraud prevention solutions. With regard to issuing own payment instruments in the form of cards or mobile payment solutions, the Wirecard Group provides companies with an end-to-end infrastructure, including the requisite licences for card and account products. Wirecard AG is listed on the Frankfurt Securities Exchange (TecDAX, ISIN DE0007472060, WDI). For further information about Wirecard, please visit http://www.wirecard.com or follow us on Twitter @wirecard. Rossmann media contact: Dirk Rossmann GmbH Stephan-Thomas Klose Tel.: +49(0)5139-898-4444 Email: [email protected] About Rossmann: Dirk Rossmann GmbH is the second largest drugstore chain in Germany and is one of the ten most important grocery retailers in Germany by sales. ROSSMANN is placed 111th out of the 250 largest retailers worldwide. In 1972, Dirk Romann opened his first store in Hanover. Dirk Romann GmbH is still an owner-managed company, the majority of which is owned by the Romann family. The company is headquartered in Burgwedel near Hanover. SOURCE Wirecard AG CASTRIES, Saint Lucia, April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Saint Lucia Labour Party (SLP) strongly condemns the action of the Speaker of the House of Assembly to remove the Motion on the Order Paper of the Sitting of the House of Assembly to debate the changes made by the Prime Minister to the CIP Regulations. The SLP contends that the action of the Speaker, which she said was on the request of the Prime Minister, was illegal and an abuse of power. The removal of the Motion for debate was followed by the Prime Minister presenting a Minister's Statement on the CIP. This Statement is not what is required by the CIP Act which clearly states what information must be presented to the Parliament and people of Saint Lucia accompanied by an Auditor's Report of the finances earned by the Programme. This course of action surely raises a question as to what does the Prime Minister seek to hide in the operations of the CIP. There must be something wrong about why the Prime Minister would not want a debate nor submit a formal report required by law - to the Parliament. The SLP continues to express its deepest concern with the actions of the Allen Chastanet Administration, which actions serves to weaken the reputation of the Citizenship by Investment Programme (CIP). Under our SLP Government, the Programme was introduced with the objective to create a well-regarded, well-regulated and prized Programme which respects the values of the St Lucian people and their citizenship rights. Sadly, this vision has been compromised by the actions of the current Administration. Specific safety mechanisms, including the annual cap of 500 applicants and the requirement to show proof of minimum $3 million net worth, which were specifically created to protect the programme, have been removed. The Labour Party believes that these changes, along with the cheapening of the level of donation as a qualifying investment and the guarantee of processing all Desert Star Holdings (DSH) applicants within 35 days should all be reconsidered for the sake of the reputation of Saint Lucia. The SLP and other concerned parties are not in agreement with these changes, as these changes will undoubtedly undermine the national security safeguards which were embedded in the setting up of the CIP. The Labour Party believes that the CIP should be presented as a premium, selective and highly valued option and not sold as the lowest option available to any and everybody. The refusal of the Prime Minister and the Speaker to allow a debate or to present a Report as required by law to Parliament forces the Saint Lucia Labour Party to take a strong stand against the present management of the Saint Lucia CIP. Without any hesitation, when the Labour Party resumes office, we will reinstate the net worth requirement and will undertake another due diligence assessment on each and every application granted under the UWP, with our promise to revoke any passports of applicants, who do not meet the $3 million net worth requirement or does not meet the strict due diligence requirements which Saint Lucians expect. Applicants applying for citizenship in St Lucia should be warned that when the SLP is returned to office, we will also demand that all citizens who did not donate the full contribution amount of USD 200,000, will be compelled to top up the contribution that they made at the time of becoming citizens. For the sanctity of our citizenship, we do not tolerate any applicants who do not meet the first-class standard that we expect from individuals seeking citizenship in St Lucia. MEDIA CONTACT: Ernest Hilaire Saint Lucia Labour Party [email protected] SOURCE Saint Lucia Labour Party DALLAS, April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Southwest Airlines Co. (NYSE: LUV) (the "Company") today reported its March and first quarter preliminary traffic statistics. The Company flew 11.3 billion revenue passenger miles (RPMs) in March 2017, an increase of 3.9 percent from the 10.9 billion RPMs flown in March 2016. Available seat miles (ASMs) increased 4.5 percent to 13.4 billion in March 2017, compared with March 2016 ASMs of 12.9 billion. The March 2017 load factor was 84.1 percent, compared with 84.6 percent in March 2016. Based on these results, the Company continues to estimate its first quarter 2017 operating revenue per ASM (RASM) will decline in the two to three percent range, as compared with first quarter 2016. Bookings and unit revenue trends for second quarter 2017 remain strong. This release, as well as past news releases about Southwest Airlines Co., is available online at Southwest.com. Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements This news release contains 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. Specific forward-looking statements include, without limitation, statements related to the Company's financial outlook and projected results of operations, including specific factors expected to impact the Company's results of operations. These statements involve risks, uncertainties, assumptions, and other factors that are difficult to predict and that could cause actual results to vary materially from those expressed in or indicated by them. Factors include, among others, (i) changes in demand for the Company's services and other changes in consumer behavior; (ii) the impact of economic conditions, fuel prices, actions of competitors, and other factors beyond the Company's control, on the Company's business; (iii) the Company's ability to timely and effectively implement, transition, and maintain the necessary information technology systems and infrastructure to support its operations and initiatives; (iv) the impact of governmental regulations and other governmental actions related to the Company's operations; (v) the Company's dependence on third parties; (vi) the impact of labor matters on the Company's business; and (vii) other factors, as described in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the detailed factors discussed under the heading "Risk Factors" in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2016. Southwest Airlines Co. Preliminary Comparative Traffic Statistics MARCH 2017 2016 Change Revenue passengers carried 11,293,513 10,944,627 3.2% Enplaned passengers 13,591,122 13,113,439 3.6% Revenue passenger miles (000s) 11,300,137 10,875,078 3.9% Available seat miles (000s) 13,436,867 12,852,734 4.5% Load factor 84.1% 84.6% (0.5) pts. Average length of haul 1,001 994 0.7% Trips flown 116,196 113,053 2.8% FIRST QUARTER 2017 2016 Change Revenue passengers carried 29,538,790 28,603,479 3.3% Enplaned passengers 35,578,350 34,628,441 2.7% Revenue passenger miles (000s) 29,340,658 28,408,164 3.3% Available seat miles (000s) 36,699,870 35,268,149 4.1% Load factor 79.9% 80.5% (0.6) pts. Average length of haul 993 993 - Trips flown 321,790 314,537 2.3% SW-T SOURCE Southwest Airlines Co. Related Links http://www.southwest.com HOLLYWOOD, Fla., April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Sunshine Capital, Inc. (OTC-Pink: SCNP) today announced that the Company's business plan, e.g. using DIBCOIN to purchase assets, has been described as "Genius" by Forbes.com contributor Peter J. Reilly. Forbes article can be found here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterjreilly/2017/04/06/florida-man-goes-from-multilevel-marketing-to-cryptocurrency-what-could-possibly-go-wrong/ "It's an honor to be mentioned in a financial news icon like Forbes.com," stated Adam Petty, President and CEO. "The real genius of our business plan is Sunshine Capital, unlike the majority of public companies who use their stock as 'currency,' ours is structured in such a way that DIBCOIN will be used as a currency and that our shareholders' ownership will never be diluted." Sunshine Capital, Inc. currently holds approximately 4 Billion DIBCOINS in its portfolio. The Company intends to prove that DIBCOIN can be used as a dollar substitute to purchase real world assets. In addition, the Company will prove that DIBCOIN is a currency, accepted at points of sale across the internet and at retail establishments across the globe. "When DIBCOIN is accepted in stores worldwide and we add billions in assets to our Company's balance sheet with no debt or dilution to the shareholders; then the markets will see how different we are from all other cryptocurrencies," stated Honson Luma, Vice President of Sunshine Capital, Inc. "We are close to proving that DIBCOIN will be the first-ever cryptocurrency in the world to purchase real assets for a public company." DIBCOIN trades on the public platform LiveCoin.net. As of today, DIBCOIN is currently trading between .85 and $1.50 per DIBCOIN, with a high of $28 per DIBCOIN in the last 7 days. For Every $1 DIBCOIN trades at, gives Sunshine Capital, Inc. approximately $4 Billion Dollars in assets or a book value of $235 per share. Shareholders can find information about Sunshine Capital, Inc. and its subsidiaries by visiting the companies' websites: http://www.sunshinecapitalinc.us, http://www.dibfunding.us, https://dibcoin.us, https://dibaffiliate.com, and http://www.dibnation.com. The private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 provides a safe harbor for forward-looking information made on the company's behalf. All statements, other than statements of historical facts which address the company's expectations of sources of capital or which express the company's expectation for the future with respect to financial performance or operating strategies, can be identified as forward-looking statements. Such statements made by the company are based on knowledge of the environment in which it operates, but because of the factors previously listed, as well as other factors beyond control of the company, actual results may differ materially from the expectations expressed in the forward-looking statements. MEDIA CONTACT: Adam Petty Sunshine Capital, Inc. [email protected] Phone: (954) 703-2538 *LOGO for media: Send2Press.com/mediaboom/17-0407s2p-dibcoin-300dpi.jpg *VIDEO: https://youtu.be/zjwzdBn5DwY SOURCE Sunshine Capital, Inc. Related Links http://www.sunshinecapitalinc.us RYE BROOK, N.Y., April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Klafter Olsen & Lesser LLP and Hepworth Gershbaum & Roth PLLC announce that Target Corporation and Target Corporation of Minnesota (NYSE: TGT), have offered to pay $83,000 to two Executive Team Leaders for failing to pay proper overtime wages, including one Executive Team Leader being offered $68,000, in connection with a lawsuit filed in the District of New Jersey, Locicero, et al. v. Target Corporation, et al., 16-cv-05592. Target also agreed to pay the Executive Team Leader's attorney's fees and costs. The claims arose under the Fair Labor Standards Act ("FLSA") and asserted that Target violated the FLSA by failing to pay Executive Team Leaders all wages due and owing to them for working more than 40 hours a week. Target did not pay overtime to the Executive Team Leaders at time and one-half, and Plaintiffs alleged that its practice violated the law. The full number of Executive Team Leaders who were subject to Target's pay practice is not known. The Target Executive Team leaders are represented by Seth Lesser, Fran Rudich, and Chris Timmel of Klafter Olsen & Lesser LLP and Marc Hepworth, David Roth and Rebecca Predovan of Hepworth Gershbaum & Roth PLLC. "We are thrilled to obtain these thousands of dollars for these two clients," said Seth Lesser of KOL. "It is one of Klafter Olsen & Lesser's priorities, and that of co-counsel, Hepworth Gershbaum & Roth, to help workers obtain overtime premiums to which they are entitled, and we hope that these judgments send another message to Target and other employers that they need to be vigilant in complying with the law," Mr. Lesser explained. For more information, contact either Christopher Timmel at [email protected]fterolsen.com or 914-934-9200 or Rebecca Predovan at [email protected] or 212-545-1199. The two firms representing Plaintiffs have extensive experience in bringing FLSA and wage and hour cases involving the failure to pay overtime. Please visit either of the firms' websites, www.klafterolsen.com and www.hgrlawyers.com , for more information. Contact: Seth R. Lesser KLAFTER OLSEN & LESSER LLP Two International Drive., Suite 350 Rye Brook, New York 10573 (914) 934-9200 Marc S. Hepworth HEPWORTH GERSHBAUM & ROTH PLLC 192 Lexington Avenue Ste 802 New York, New York 10016 (212) 545-1199 SOURCE Klafter Olsen & Lesser LLP Related Links http://www.klafterolsen.com ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, N.J., April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- LG Electronics' brand new smartphone, the LG G6, is now available in the US. The LG G6 has the Google Assistant built in and is available at major carriers and national retailers as early as this week, including AT&T, Best Buy, B&H, Sprint, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular and Verizon. LG Electronics' newest smartphone, the LG G6 is available now. LG Electronics' newest smartphone, the LG G6 is available now. LG Electronics' newest smartphone, the LG G6 is available now. LG Electronics' newest smartphone, the LG G6 is available now. LG Electronics' newest smartphone, the LG G6 is available now. The latest in the LG G series of premium flagship smartphones, the G6 was developed to specifically deliver the features consumers want most a back to basics, no gimmicks approach to smartphones and a big screen experience without the inconvenience of a bigger phone. The Big Screen That Actually Fits in Your Hand The G6 comes with a 5.7-inch QHD+ (2,880 x 1,440 resolution) FullVisionTM display, and for the first time ever in a smartphone, an 18:9 screen aspect ratio. This FullVision display is made possible by the 80% body to screen ratio, complemented by an aluminum and glass body. The new 18:9 format also offers a more immersive experience for streaming videos and playing games compared to the conventional 16:9 aspect ratio. Get More In, Leave Nothing Out With the G6, you don't need to ask people in the picture to reposition, cram together or find another place to stand in order to get everything in, simply choose between standard and wide angle settings. With dual 13MP rear cameras, including a 125-degree wide-angle lens, the G6 captures panoramic shots that regular phone cameras can't. The G6 delivers an outstanding and unique camera experience by creating seamless transitions when zooming in and out between the wide-angle and standard camera lenses even during 4K video capture. The G6 also comes with an expanded 100-degree field of view with its 5MP front camera, which means users can take selfies without the need for a selfie stick. Tested to a Higher Standard* The G6 can go just about anywhere without worry, thanks to its IP68 water and dust resistance so it is sealed against dust and can be safely immersed in up to 1.5 meters of water for as long as 30 minutes. Moreover, the LG G6 has the distinction of having met and passed the MIL-STD 810G standard for durability, conducted by independent testing and certification firm MET (Maryland Electrical Testing) Laboratories. The G6 passed the following 14 tests: Low Temperature, High Temperature, Humidity, Vibration, Solar Radiation, Low Pressure, Sand and Dust, Immersion, Temperature Shock, Salt Fog and Rain. Tough enough to pass military standards tests, the LG G6 is ready to tackle your day-to-day activities with confidence. The G6 also endures further tests for battery reliability, including high temperatures and nail penetration, leveraging a proprietary technology that dissipates heat from vital components via an internal heat pipe, the first in an LG smartphone. Designed from Consumer Demand "The LG G6 pioneers the next chapter in smartphone usability, from the 18:9 display to its seamless design featuring the removal of needless protrusions," said Juno Cho, president of LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company. "The LG G6 has been designed based on the features consumers have been asking for most. Now those consumers can pick up the brand new LG G6 and experience FullVision and the almost impossibly narrow bezels for themselves." Buy it Now! The LG G6 is available now online and in-store. For a limited time, purchase the LG G6 and get a Google Home, both with the Google Assistant, on LG. To take advantage of this deal and for the complete list of price, availability and promotions, please visit: http://www.lg.com/us/mobile-phones/g6/promo. Key Specifications: ** Chipset: Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 Processor Snapdragon 821 Processor Display: 5.7-inch 18:9 QHD+ FullVision Display (2880 x 1440 / 564ppi) Camera: Front 5MP Wide (F2.2 / 100) Rear Dual: 13MP Wide (F2.4 / 125) / 13MP Standard OIS 2.0 (F1.8 / 71) Battery: 3,300mAh (embedded) Operating System: Android 7.0 Nougat Size: 148.9 x 71.9 x 7.9mm Weight: 163g Network: LTE-A 3 Band CA Connectivity: Wi-Fi 802.11 a, b, g, n, ac / Bluetooth 4.2 BLE / NFC / USB Type-C 2.0 (3.1 compatible) Colors: Black / Platinum Other: Water and Dust Resistant / Fingerprint Sensor / UX 6.0 / Dolby Vision / HDR10 / Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 *Military standard tests include the following: MIL-STD-810G Low Pressure (Procedure II) Method 500.5, High Temperature (Procedure I Storage) & (Procedure II Operation) Method 501.5, Low Temperature (Procedure I Storage) & (Procedure II Operation) Method 502.5, Temperature Shock (Procedure I-C) Method 503.5, Solar Radiation (Procedure I) Method 505.5, Rain (Procedure III) Method 506.5, Humidity (Procedure I) Method 507.5, Salt Fog - Method 509.5, Sand and Dust (Procedure I) Method 510.5, Immersion (Procedure I) Method 512.5, Vibration (Category 4) Method 514.6, & Mechanical Shock (Procedure IV) Method 516.6. Passed 14 different MIL-STD 810G Tests for durability conducted by an independent laboratory in U.S. that conforms to U.S. military standards. Device may not perform as tested in all conditions. Test performed in controlled environment. Do not attempt. **Specifications may vary depending on the particular market. About LG Electronics MobileComm U.S.A., Inc. LG Electronics MobileComm U.S.A., Inc., based in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., is the U.S. sales subsidiary of LG Electronics, Inc. a global innovator and trend leader in the global mobile communications industry. LG is driving the evolution of mobile forward with its highly competitive core technologies in the areas of display, battery and camera optics and strategic partnerships with noted industry leaders. LG's consumer-centric products -- including the flagship premium V Series models -- incorporate unique, ergonomic designs and intuitive UX features that enhance the user experience. The company remains committed to leading consumers into the era of convergence, maximizing inter-device connectivity between smartphones, tablets and a wide range of home and portable electronics products. For more information, please visit www.LG.com. SOURCE LG Electronics USA Related Links http://www.LG.com SILVER SPRING, Md., April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Students from The Siena School in Silver Spring, MD, are participating in Learning Ally's Build-A-Book initiative. Over thirty students in grades 4-12 are contributing original short stories, poems, illustrations, and works of art for a collaborative anthology entitled The Siena School Project: Here to be Heard. On Tuesday, April 18th, 2017, the students will spend the day at Learning Ally's Studio in Washington, D.C., and will populate the nine recording booths. Learning Ally volunteers will instruct the students on using EasyBooks and the students will be able to record their own pieces for digital publication. Students who contributed artwork will describe the visuals and meaning behind their work. The anthologyproduced by and for studentswill be assembled as a softcover paperback and an ebook. An audiobook version will soon be available on Learning Ally EasyBook shelves for students throughout the country. This collaborative anthology is being produced as part of the 2017 Learning Ally Building Books for Student Success campaign. The Siena School is a Learning Ally member school. About The Siena School The Siena School in Silver Spring, Maryland serves bright, college-bound students with language-based learning differences, such as dyslexia. Siena's staff and board of advisors include distinguished national, state and local education leaders and professionals. The school was established in 2006 and serves students in grades 4 12. Siena's program is designed for students with mild to moderate learning needs who are experiencing a discrepancy between their academic achievement and intellectual abilities in one or more areas such as reading, writing, oral expression or math. Siena delivers an individualized educational program featuring small class sizes, research-based instructional methodologies, a highly trained staff and an educational environment specifically designed to meet the unique needs of our students, with a specific emphasis on the arts. For further information, The Siena School can be contacted at (301) 244-3600 or on the web at www.thesienaschool.org. About Learning Ally Founded in 1948, Learning Ally supports K-12, college and graduate students, veterans and lifelong learners all of whom read and learn differently due to dyslexia, blindness or visual impairment, and other disabilities. Through its extensive community events and support programs, Learning Ally enables parents, teachers and specialists to help students thrive and succeed. The organization hosts live and virtual events for families and teachers; provides instructive webinars led by experts as well as peer-to-peer sessions led by students; personal consultations for parents; and professional development workshops for educators. Learning Ally's collection of 80,000 human-narrated audio textbooks and literature titles can be downloaded by students using their smartphones and tablets, and is the largest of its kind in the world. As a 501(c)3 nonprofit, Learning Ally is partially funded by grants from state and local education programs, and the generous contributions of individuals, foundations and corporations. For more information, visit http://LearningAlly.org. CONTACT Bekah Atkinson (301) 244-3600 [email protected] SOURCE The Siena School Mr. Groover is a partner with Clarkston Consulting , a premier consulting company with global operations. Although Mr. Groover provides advisory services to life sciences companies across the globe, many of his clients are in the Research Triangle Park area. Mr. Groover is known for his ability to analyze market trends and develop valuable solutions to help biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies navigate the increasingly complex regulatory and economic environments. Mr. Groover explains, "I am focused on, and passionate about, helping life sciences companies. Despite not being a scientist myself, I feel the best way I can contribute to these companies' missions and success is to help these organizations build process and technology foundations needed in order to bring their science to commercial market." Clarkston Consulting's life sciences leader, Janel Firestein, adds, "Traigh is a thought leader in the bio-pharmaceutical industry, enabling him to help our clients achieve their goals. We are excited for this acknowledgment of Traigh's impact to the life sciences industry over the past 20 years." "The Triangle area is such a hotbed for the burgeoning life sciences industry," wrote TBJ Publisher Jason Christie. "It's an honor to recognize these individuals and companies that are doing such life-changing work." In addition to his consulting work, Mr. Groover is active in the community and a founding board member of the Ruth Wallace Foundation, which has a mission to provide support to cancer sufferers. To read more about the 2017 Life Sciences Award, please visit http://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/news/2017/04/03/2017-life-sciences-awards-winners-revealed.html About Clarkston Consulting Clarkston Consulting provides management, operations, and implementation consulting services for life sciences and consumer products companies. Clarkston has achieved a 16-year average client satisfaction rate of 97% by continuously pushing for success for our clients, our consultants, and our company. For more information, please visit www.clarkstonconsulting.com. SOURCE Clarkston Consulting Related Links http://www.clarkstonconsulting.com SAN JOSE, Calif. and CHICAGO, April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The acclaimed business publication, The CEO Magazine, today released a statement regarding a magazine called 'CEO Americas' after the company reportedly had many enquiries this week from clients and PR companies. "We have received a substantial number of queries from companies in both the US and Latin America regarding a former employee of The CEO Magazine called Stuart McCourt, and a new magazine called CEO Americas," the statement said. "We can officially confirm that The CEO Magazine is not affiliated in any way with either Stuart McCourt and/or CEO Americas magazine. Stuart McCourt's employment at The CEO Magazine finished in December 2016 and he is not employed by the company any more; we want to make that very clear. "Stuart McCourt and CEO Americas is not endorsed and/or authorised by us to launch any kind of edition of The CEO Magazine. No editorial content in CEO Americas will ever appear in The CEO Magazine. "As one of the world's leading business magazines it is important to protect our identity and to clarify who we are, to avoid our clients being confused. If any company has been approached by CEO Americas regarding a potential interview with their CEO, or editorial feature in a proposed US-based version of The CEO Magazine, they are welcome to contact us for any clarity on the situation at [email protected]. "CEO Americas is not an edition/version of The CEO Magazine, and is not connected with us in any way, shape, or form." The CEO Magazine is considered by many as one of the world's most influential business magazines and is headquartered in Sydney, Australia. The company has offices in Sydney, Stockholm, Manila, India, and Singapore and operates four global monthly editions with a brand reach of some 250,000. PRLog ID: www.prlog.org/12631770 SOURCE The CEO Magazine Related Links http://www.ceoamericas.com LONDON and MILAN, April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- VALENTINO and YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP (YNAP) have partnered to create a new omni-channel business model - NEXT ERA - to elevate the customer experience by reinventing the relationship between luxury brands and online retailers. NEXT ERA is built on YNAP's unique understanding of the evolving luxury consumer ecosystem. It is a new business model that has its foundations in the valentino.com Online Flagship Store (powered by YNAP, a long-term partnership formed in 2008). This next generation model will enable VALENTINO customers' unprecedented online access to its products by leveraging the inventory from VALENTINO boutiques and logistic centres as well as YNAP's global network of eight fulfilment centres across the globe, stretching from New York and Dubai to Milan and Shanghai. NEXT ERA will capitalize on YNAP's unique distribution channels, specifically designed for the luxury industry. Through this all-encompassing platform, VALENTINO customers will gain access to an even more extensive product assortment, in-store mobile features (smooth checkout flow, full product information and availability of online inventory), and faster delivery, with an enhanced service available in major cities where orders can be fulfilled from VALENTINO boutiques. NEXT ERA combines YNAP's state-of-the-art technology with a leading-edge Order Management System in partnership with IBM that offers VALENTINO a single view of its inventory and a comprehensive profile of its customer base. Utilising the Group's unparalleled knowledge of online luxury customer behaviour, YNAP will create a fully revamped valentino.com, creating a superior retail experience with a mobile-centric interface, a new look and feel and new functionality powered by Artificial Intelligence such as on-site personalisation and contextual search, enabling customers to use natural language to interact with the digital store. The scope of this initiative is broad-reaching. Beyond the apparent benefits to be enjoyed by VALENTINO customers, the model unlocks enormous service improvements to customers of both NET-A-PORTER and MR PORTER. By integrating the VALENTINO Online Flagship Store inventory with the one allocated to NET-A-PORTER and MR PORTER the circa 10 million unique visitors of the world's leading fashion e-commerce sites will have access to an unrivalled assortment of VALENTINO product with enhanced express delivery options around the world. Building on the strengths of NET-A-PORTER and MR PORTER, the VALENTINO collections will continue to be brought to life through award winning content, superior product photography and video and expert styling and will be delivered in the stores' hallmark packaging. NEXT ERA is a pioneering initiative that has at its heart YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP's innovative, service-centric approach and its dedication to its ever-growing and highly discerning customer base and brand partners. NEXT ERA will launch in early-2018 (see appendix). Briefing Note for Media Definition of new functionalities Integrated Inventory Brands will have a unified view of their inventory across stores and warehouses, allowing them to manage their inventory more efficiently. This also allows customers to see what is available in-store and online, from wherever they are browsing. In the future, brand-owned and YNAP-purchased inventory could even be viewed across the same system, increasing the opportunities to sell full-price by selling inventory from either the brand or YNAP across each other's stores. Mobile in store Mobile in-store has a variety of functions: Smooth the checkout flow by carrying out full payment via mobile to avoid the friction and discomfort created by transacting with in-store staff If customers want to shop undisturbed, or the sales staff are occupied, help customers find the items they are looking for in the sizes they want and suggest items that might work for them via the mobile Alternatively, direct customers or sales staff to one another to maintain the personal touch associated with luxury Pick up and return in store They can then order online and pick up or return their items in store, giving them new ways to fulfil their orders as they see fit. When customers enter the shop the brand can create more opportunities for them to shop. Fastest Fulfilment Fast delivery is the ultimate in luxury service. Customers will receive their orders faster than ever before as the platform will automatically select the best fulfilment option to satisfy the customer's order. Single Customer View VALENTINO will gain a single view of its customers' interactions in-store and online, enabling them to continually optimise the experience, from product, store and site, to marketing and service. Multi-Fulfilment Give customers the option to fulfil their purchases however suits them. If a customer wants to return something they bought online in store, decides to buy a pair of swimming trunks to take to the beach that day, and also wants a pair of shoes that is only available in another country to be delivered to their city address in another country, the brand can fulfil the orders exactly as the customer wants. Briefing Note for Media VALENTINO Online Flagship Store Merchandising Facts When did our Online Flagship Store division first start to run valentino.com? VALENTINO Online Flagship Store opened in 2008 with first season SS08 (spring summer 08) 2. Most expensive VALENTINO items sold SS16 - Embroidered Rock Jacket 4,200 FW16 - Long dress in embroidered tulle 9,900 VALENTINO In-Season Merchandising Facts When did we first stock VALENTINO on NET-A-PORTER and MR PORTER? SS06 for NAP, FW12 for MR P Most expensive VALENTINO item sold on NET-A-PORTER SS16 - 14,500 CRSS17 - 5,000 YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP Media contacts Analyst/Investor contacts Silvia Scagnelli Corporate Development & Investor Relations Director T +39 02-83112811 [email protected] Finsbury Edward Simpkins, James Thompson, Benita Barretto T: +44 (0)207-251-3801 [email protected] Image Building Giuliana Paoletti, Simona Raffaelli T +39 02-89011300 [email protected] YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP is the world's leading online luxury fashion retailer. The Group is a Global company with Anglo-Italian roots, the result of a game-changing merger, which in October 2015 brought together YOOX GROUP and THE NET -A-PORTER GROUP; the two companies had revolutionized the luxury fashion industry since their birth in 2000. YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP is a unique business with an unrivalled offering including multi-brand in-season online stores NET-A-PORTER and MR PORTER, and multi-brand off-season online stores YOOX and THE OUTNET, as well as numerous ONLINE FLAGSHIP STORES, all "Powered by YNAP". Through a joint venture established in 2012, YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP has partnered with Kering to manage the ONLINE FLAGSHIP STORES of several of the French group's luxury brands. In 2016, YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP joined forces with Symphony, an entity controlled by Mohamed Alabbar's family, to establish a groundbreaking joint venture to create the Middle East's undisputed leader for online luxury retail. Uniquely positioned in the high growth online luxury sector, YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP has an unrivalled client base of more than 2.9 million high-spending customers, 29 million monthly unique visitors worldwide and combined 2016 net revenues of 1.9 billion. The Group has offices and operations in the United States, Europe, Japan, China and Hong Kong and delivers to more than 180 countries around the world. YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP is listed on the Milan Stock Exchange as YNAP. For further information: http://www.ynap.com | LinkedIn: YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP | Twitter: @YNAP VALENTINO VALENTINO Press Office Alice Zampolli [email protected] VALENTINO The house of VALENTINO is nested in the heart of Rome, the Eternal City, and expresses a point of view on the contemporary world using history as a playground and the Atelier as a place that produces both beauty and thought. The story began in 1959. 2016 marks a new beginning, under the Creative Direction of Pierpaolo Piccioli. A new set of values, that are both of the moment and faithful to its heritage, are created: grace and delicacy, both as an attitude and as a silhouette; a celebration of individuality; emotional beauty; the blending and merging of different languages. Style is essential and impalpable. The idea of contemporary humanism leads a creative quest that revolves around the personality of the wearer. Vision, products, retail spaces share the same traits: from the one-of-a-kind Haute Couture creations to women's and men's ready-to-wear and accessories, from eyewear to fragrances to the boutiques, Valentino is synonymous of elegance, pureness, craftsmanship, uniqueness. SOURCE Yoox Net a Porter EVANSDALE Authorities have declined to comment on any investigation into possible links between Jeff Lee Altmayer and the disappearance and deaths of cousins Lyric Cook-Morrissey and Elizabeth Collins. Altmayer, 57, of Ankeny, is charged with attempting to lure children into his silver passenger car as far west as Onawa near the Nebraska border to a mobile home park just east of Dike. Hes also a person of interest in a similar incident at a Cedar Falls park. Lyric, 10, and Elizabeth, 8, disappeared while riding their bikes in Evansdale on July 13, 2012, and their bodies were found Dec. 5, 2012, in a rural wilderness area in Bremer County. No arrests have been made in their deaths. Black Hawk County Attorney Brian Williams said investigators in the cousins' case are aware of Altmayer. The Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation agent who filed the criminal complaint in Altmayers Jasper County case is the lead agent in the cousins' probe. In the past, authorities have commented about the rarity of double abductions when talking about the cousins case, and Black Hawk County Sheriff Tony Thompson said he found interesting the fact at least one of Altmayers crimes involve approaching a pair of girls at the same time. The double abduction angle also has been a red herring for the cousins' investigators. In 2013, authorities began looking into Michael Klunder for possible ties to Lyric and Elizabeths deaths. Klunder, a 42-year-old farm worker who had served prison time for abductions, picked up two girls near a Dayton bus stop in May 2013. One fled, and he killed the other before taking his own life. Investigators eventually ruled out Klunder as a suspect in the cousins' case after accounting for his whereabouts. Reached Wednesday, Elizabeths father, Drew Collins, said he wasnt familiar with the Altmayer case and said authorities havent contacted him about it. However, he remembers hearing about the enticement attempts last summer before Altmayer was arrested. Collins is skeptical about any connection to his daughters death. It doesnt seem like that would fit, Collins said. Whoever this is, I think if he takes a couple of little girls, why would he let them go if he already killed a couple kids. Collins said hes heard countless leads and rumors since his daughters death. It can be maddening, he said. I think something different every day, man. I think in my head, it could be this, but the next week or the next day or 20 minutes later, Im thinking its this guy or that guy. Ive heard a ton of names, I cant keep them all in my brain. All I can do is speculate, and I think about it all day, every day, Collins said. MIAMI, April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Vme is excited to announce the STEM Mio platform and the Generation STEM television series. This is an initiative to assist the next generation of U.S. Hispanic students and help them discover and explore future college pathways and STEM careers. Vme collaborated with strategic partners including the Lead partner, ASU's Center for Games & Impact, they were joined by the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities [HACU] and E-Line Media. All partners were essential and offered unique perspectives and resources throughout the development of this program. The project is funded by the National Science Foundation. STEM Mio was designed as a multichannel platform with educational resources, games, mentorships, events and programming content to assist future students, parents and teachers navigate educational and career opportunities available in different STEM areas of interest. "It gives me great pleasure to announce the STEM Mio initiative and to thank all the partners involved in creating this new platform," said Magaly Rivera Co-Project Manager and STEM Mio visionary. "It's been my mission to bring these much needed STEM resources to our Hispanic youth in order to enhance the opportunities of our next generation of Latinos pursuing STEM career paths." A college tour event, hosted by HACU, will be held at the University of Texas at San Antonio on Saturday, April 8th from 9:00AM-2:00PM in the H.E.B University center ballroom. A subsequent HACU event will take place at Arizona State University on Saturday, May 6th from 9:00AM-2PM. Both events are open to prospective students, parents and teachers alike. Generation STEM, the television series, will debut Friday, April 7 at 5:00PM ET in English on Primo TV. This 13-part television series explores the exciting world of STEM from the perspective of students, teachers and professionals in their respective fields. Generation STEM is also available for Spanish viewers on Vme every Saturday at 5:00PM ET. "We are proud to debut Generation STEM and collaborate on the STEM Mio project," said Ralph Parkman, Vice President of Marketing at Vme Media Inc. "This initiative falls in line with Vme's core values to create content that entertains, educates and inspires. We want to be a resource for the next wave of young Latinos to become STEM innovators by providing them with the power and potential to influence important advancements in this country." Registration and information for the STEM Mio platform can be found at: Gamesandimpact.org/initiatives/stem-mio Information regarding Generation STEM programming on Primo TV or Vme TV: http://www.primotv.com/generation-stem http://www.vmetv.com/generacion-stem About Vme Media Vme Media (pronounced veh-meh), is a family of three television networks; including Vme TV, Vme Kids and Primo TV, which provide quality programming for Hispanic families. Vme Media selects programming which is engaging, empowering, educational and entertaining with a contemporary mix of original productions, exclusive premieres, acquisitions and popular children's programs specially adapted for U.S. Hispanic families. To learn more about Vme Media and their networks, visit www.vmetv.com, or www.vmekids.com or www.primotv.com. Media Contact: Michael Fernandez [email protected] 786-924-8330 SOURCE Vme Media BURBANK, Calif., April 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Walt Disney Records is set to release the digital soundtrack to Disneynature's new film Born in China on April 21, 2017the same day the film opens in theaters nationwide. The album features original score composed by Emmy Award-winning film and television composer, Barnaby Taylor, along with the original track "Everything Everything" performed by Island Records recording artist American Authors, who wrote the song after seeingand being deeply inspired bythe film. The music video and single are available today. The video can be seen HERE. The single is available at digital retailers disneymusic.co/AAuthorsEverything and streaming services disneymusic.co/AAuthorsEverythingWS. The story of "Born in China"fun but emotional, intimate yet vast, and wild while heartfeltcalled for a score that evoked the majesty of China's natural world. Composer Barnaby Taylor is behind the Emmy-winning music for "Wild China," the BBC's six-part landmark series that was executive produced by "Born in China" producer Brian Leith, and originally broadcast in 2008. "It's a traditional Western orchestral score that's infused with some lovely Chinese flavors," says Leith of the "Born in China" score. "I think he's done a fantastic job." Says Taylor, "'Born in China' celebrates the epic, sometimes other-worldly landscapes of China, while simultaneously revealing the most intimate moments in the lives of four charismatic animals: panda, monkey, chiru and snow leopard," he says. "Musically linking these animals with an overarching theme is the semi-mythical crane, a bird that symbolizes rebirthan ancient philosophy and belief system that has a strong vein in the 'Born in China' film. Therefore, the music had to be intimate whilst also reflecting the varied regions of China." Given an array of animals featured in the film, Taylor applied individual themes to each of the central characters and infused the sounds of China into the score with a host of unique instruments, including the Tibetan horn, Mongolian fiddle, Guzheng (zither) and Chinese dulcimer. Filmmakers called on the New York-based rock-pop band American Authors to provide the compelling and optimistic end-credit song. "'Everything Everything' is about how life is so much better when you're with your best friends," says band frontman Zachary Barnett. "There are so many exciting adventures in this world and they should be shared with loved ones. We wanted to channel each of the animals' spirits and journeys into this song." The Born in China soundtrack will be available at digital retailers and streaming services on April 21. For more information on Walt Disney Records' releases, please visit Disney.com/music, become a fan at Facebook.com/disneymusic, follow us at Twitter.com/disneymusic, Instagram.com/disneymusic and Snapchat. Moviegoers who see Disneynature's new True Life Adventure film "Born in China" during its opening week (April 21-27, 2017) will benefit the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Based on opening-week attendance, Disneynature, via the Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund, will make a contribution to the WWF to help protect wild pandas and snow leopards. Advance tickets to the movie are on sale now at Fandango. http://www.fandango.com/borninchina_185550/movietimes ABOUT THE MOVIE Narrated by John Krasinski ("13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi," NBC's "The Office," Amazon's "Jack Ryan"), Disneynature's new True Life Adventure film "Born In China" takes an epic journey into the wilds of China where few people have ever ventured. Following the stories of three animal families, the film transports audiences to some of the most extreme environments on Earth to witness some of the most intimate moments ever captured in a nature film. A doting panda bear mother guides her growing baby as she begins to explore and seek independence. A two-year-old golden snub-nosed monkey who feels displaced by his new baby sister joins up with a group of free-spirited outcasts. And a mother snow leopardan elusive animal rarely caught on camerafaces the very real drama of raising her two cubs in one of the harshest and most unforgiving environments on the planet. Featuring stunning, never-before-seen imagery, the film navigates China's vast terrainfrom the frigid mountains to the heart of the bamboo foreston the wings of red-crowned cranes, seamlessly tying the extraordinary tales together. Opening in U.S. theaters on April 21, 2017, "Born in China" is directed by accomplished Chinese filmmaker Lu Chuan, and produced by Disney's Roy Conli and renowned nature filmmakers Brian Leith and Phil Chapman. For more information, check out Facebook.com/Disneynature, twitter.com/Disneynature and http://instagram.com/disneynature. SOURCE Walt Disney Records SEATTLE, April 6, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Washington's National Park Fund (WNPF), the official philanthropic partner for Mount Rainier, North Cascades and Olympic National Parks, announced its collection of 2017 priority projects aimed at furthering science and research, visitor experiences, volunteerism and stewardship, and youth and family programs across the state's 1,660,000 acres of national parks. Selected in collaboration with park superintendents, the projects total more than $1 million and, without the support of WNPF, would likely go unfunded. Founded in 1993 and supported through a combination of private donors, foundations, events, corporate support, and a statewide license plate program, WNPF empowers supporters with the ability to allocate funds to a specific park, and one of that park's top eight projects. In 2016, WNPF raised more than $650,000 for projects that included preservation of a search and rescue cabin at Mount Rainier, the citizen-scientist Cascade Butterfly Project at North Cascade, and the youth program "Adventures in your Big Back Yard" at Olympic. For 2017, "Preservation with a Purpose" is a key theme, with projects ranging from sustainable trail and camping management along the Pacific Crest Trail at North Cascades National Park, investments into equipment for search and rescue staff at Olympic National Park, and work to reduce and eliminate human-wildlife conflicts at Mount Rainier National Park. All efforts aim to support the parks into the next 100 years. "We in Washington have the wonderful gift of three unique national parks to steward, celebrate and protect," said Laurie Ward, executive director, Washington's National Park Fund. "The national parks system is reporting a $12 billion backlog of maintenance projects. In Washington alone, the number is more than $440 million. With an increase in the number of visitors across Mount Rainier, North Cascades and Olympic National Parks, private investment is critical to preserve our national resources." Being government entities, the national parks are unable to fundraise individually in support of projects, making friends groups like WNPF critical to expanding access and functions of our national parks. Each year superintendents from Mount Rainier, North Cascades and Olympic National Parks submit projects directly to the fund for support. "The funding given by Washington's National Park Fund is critical for us," said Randy King, superintendent, Mount Rainier National Park. "Rangers and volunteers are safer, scientific research is being conducted, trails are maintained, volunteer programs are able to manage thousands of participants, and children from around these parks are visiting them for the first time. If not for Washington's National Park Fund, these things wouldn't be possible." To learn about all the 2017 funding priorities and for ways to get involved, including the upcoming annual Spring Dinner and Auction, visit www.wnpf.org. About Washington's National Parks Fund Washington's National Park Fund (WNPF) is the official philanthropic partner of Mount Rainier, North Cascades, and Olympic National Parks, which span more than 1.6 million acres of the Evergreen state. Annually, WNPF allocates monies to more than 75 otherwise unfunded projects with the goal of deepening the public's love for, understanding of, and experiences in Washington's National Parks. Get involved at http://wnpf.org. SOURCE Washingtons National Park Fund Related Links http://www.wnpf.org OELWEIN | Four individuals were arrested in a drug search Friday morning. Oelwein police, assisted by the Fayette County Sheriffs Office, executed a search warrant around 1:15 a.m. in the 600 block of 1st Avenue Southeast. Officers located and seized over 65 grams of methamphetamine, 8 grams of marijuana, 44 grams of psychedelic mushrooms and drug paraphernalia. The following were arrested: Elizabeth Helen Gabriel, 30, and Randy John Butts, 38, both of Oelwein, each were charged with possession of methamphetamine in excess of 5 grams; possession of marijuana with the intent to deliver; gathering where controlled substances are used; possession of psilocyn (psychedelic mushrooms) with the intent to deliver; drug tax stamp violation and misdemeanor possession of drug paraphernalia. Zacharias James Stowe, 29, of Oelwein was charged with gathering where controlled substances are used; possession of methamphetamine third or subsequent offense and possession of drug paraphernalia. Matthew Scot Davis, 39, of Oelwein, was charged with gathering where controlled substances are used and possession of methamphetamine second or subsequent offense. These arrests are the result of a several month investigation, Chief Jeremy Logan said. Further arrests and charges are pending. BELMOND | A benefit is scheduled for Saturday for Bob and Kathy Vierkant, a rural Belmond couple who lost their home during an explosion and fire last year that also severely burned Bob. The Vierkants lost all their belongings in the Dec. 12 incident, which was the result of a gas leak. Bob received second and third-degree burns over 60 percent of his body. He has undergone a dozen surgeries so far for skin grafting to his arms, hands, legs and abdomen. He continues his recovery at Covenant Hospital in Waterloo. Belmond man hospitalized after house explosion BELMOND | A Belmond man burned in a house explosion remained hospitalized Thursday in Iowa City. "A lot of people have been praying for him," said Kathy, who was not injured but needed time off work to be with her husband and help him with his recovery. The benefit is from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Saturday at Cattlemans at the Club, 1608 Third St. N.E., Belmond. The meal is being provided by Carol's Lunch Wagon. Freewill donations will be accepted. The benefit also will feature a live auction, a DJ and extreme bingo. Bob was in the basement trying to find the gas leak when the explosion happened. He was able to get himself out of the basement, and his wife drove him to Iowa Specialty Hospital in Belmond. He was later flown by helicopter to a hospital in Iowa City. On March 8 he was transferred to the rehabilitation center at Covenant. Doctors told the Vierkants he would probably be there for two months before being allowed to go home, depending on how his recovery went. "He's doing better. He's improving every day," Kathy said. Bob recently started walking on his own and feeding himself, she said. This isn't the first time the family has lost everything in a fire. That house fire was on Sept. 13, 1990, in Meservey. Kathy is pleased at the way the community has rallied around them following the December fire. "Everyone has been great," she said. If you were looking for the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee website and ended up here, try this Got news tips, gossip, suggestions, complaints?E-mail us: progressivecharlestown@gmail.com We strive to avoid errors in our articles. Our correction policy can be found here Stockholm, April 3 : Three persons were killed and around 30 others have been injured in a bus accident in central Sweden, media reports said on Sunday. The accident occurred on Sunday morning between Sveg and Fagelsjo in Harjedalen, central Sweden, Xinhua news agency reported. "I have heard the horrifying news of the bus accident near Sveg. It leaves me and the entire country in mourning," Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said in a statement. Swedish Television quoted sources as reporting that the bus was carrying young people on their way to a ski trip. There were 59 persons on the bus, including 52 youth and seven adults. Among the injured, six people were in serious condition. All the wounded have been transported to a hospital. The bus was travelling in the northbound direction and ran off the road. Site pictures showed that the bus is on the side of a small slope to the road. Investigation teams have been set up to find out the reasons of the accident. New Delhi, April 5 : After making a "miraculous" recovery, CRPF's breavheart commander Chetan Kumar Cheetah, who went into a deep coma two months ago on sustaining nine gunshot wounds in an anti-terror operation in Jammu and Kashmir, walked out of hospital on Wednesday, doctors said. "His (Cheetah) recovery is no less than a miracle... Despite several complications in the treatment causing hurdle, the team of doctors did their best and made him recover," Amit Gupta, AIIMS spokesperson, told IANS. The Central Reserve Security Force (CRPF) said it was due to the specialised surgical and medical intervention by the All India Medical Institute of Sciences (AIIMS) that helped Cheetah come back to life. Treatment of Cheetah, who was in coma for weeks after being brought to the Jai Prakash Narayan Apex Trauma Centre of the AIIMS, required the combined efforts of medical experts from six departments: Trauma Surgery and Critical Care, Intensivist, Neurosurgery, Orthopaedic, Opthalmology and Plastic surgery. Cheetah, 45, was injured in a gunfight between three suspected Lashkar-e-Taiba militants and a joint team of the CRPF, the Indian Army and the Jammu and Kashmir Police on February 14 morning in Parraypora village, in Bandipora district's Hajin area. He suffered injuries to his head, upper limbs, waist, and pelvic region, hands, right eye and suffered a maxillofacial injury. He was initially treated at the Army Base Hospital, Srinagar, before being airlifted to the AIIMS Trauma Centre, where he underwent a brain surgery. According to the AIIMS, after he was shifted to the hospital, Cheetah was taken up by the division of Trauma and Critical Care. "At the time of presentation, he was on mechanical ventilation and was hypotensive. He was then shifted to Intensive Care Unit and adequately resuscitated," said the AIIMS before Cheetah's discharge. AIIMS spokesperson Amit Gupta said that a repeat NCCT -- a procedure for head -- was done which showed ruptures in the frontal injured tissue and skin and ruptured blood capillaries. "After his treatment by the neurosurgeons and opthalmologists, he was again shifted to the ICU. He was on mechanical ventilation for 16 days. The patient in between developed CSF-rhinorrhea, which is the drainage of the fluid which surrounds the brain into the nose. It was managed with lumbar drain placement which was removed later," said the statement. The hospital authorities also said that Cheetah developed signs of sepsis -- life-threatening complication of an infection -- due to his wound and injuries which was managed by critical care specialists in ICU. "His wounds were regularly debrided in which all materials that may promote infection and impede healing are removed," said the statement. According to the hospital, with progress in the health, Cheetah was shifted to special ward on March 16 where he underwent rehabilitation in the form of physiotherapy and speech therapy. "The ICU stay was 30 days, subsequently the wounds were covered with skin grafting by plastic surgery team," said the AIIMS statement. During the hospital stay, Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju visited Cheetah. London, April 7 : The President of the European Council said he had agreed to maintain regular contact with the British Prime Minister throughout future negotiations on the Britain's withdrawal from the EU. In the first meeting between Donald Tusk and Theresa May since she notified the EU of Britain's desire to leave the bloc, the pair talked for about two hours at May's official residence, Efe news reported. "Meeting PM May to make sure Brexit talks get off to good start," Tusk tweeted. "Agreed to stay in regular contact throughout process." He refused to comment further as he was leaving the residence and said "no" to a series of questions, including whether the duo had discussed the Gibraltar issue. Asked whether the talks had been constructive, he said "as always". On March 29, Britain officially notified the EU of its wish to pull out of the EU, and thus triggered a two-year period of Brexit negotiations. Brussels has said it would only begin talks on future trade agreements with Britain once "sufficient progress" had been made in the negotiations. Chicago, April 7 : Almost precisely 20 years to the day since the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) came into force, the United States has launched a military strike against Syria for using them against its own civilian population. The strike by the U.S. using at least 60 Tomahawk missiles on al-Shayrat airfield near the city of Homs marks President Donald Trump's debut as an active Commander-in-Chief ordering military strikes. Significantly, the strike came in the midst of his first meeting in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, with China's President Xi Jinping, who is on his first visit of the Trump presidency. Although unplanned, the strikes would nevertheless send a message of firm resolve by an unsteady President in the company of Washington's most important global interlocutor. To some extent, they also end Trump's notorious ambiguity towards Russia and its President Vladimir Putin who have been propping up the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The strikes are likely to unexpectedly define the Trump presidency so early in its first term, barely 76 days after he took over. The CWC came into force on April 29, 1997, after 87 countries signed it, making it a binding international law. It took 17 years of intense international negotiations starting in 1980. Notwithstanding, it has been violated several times, the first time by Iraq under Saddam Hussein in the 1980s against Iran and, more notably, by Syria on numerous occasions. Before the attack on Idlib on Tuesday, there had been at least five similar attacks since August 21, 2013, as confirmed by the United Nations, and several unconfirmed but seriously suspected ones. Then UN Secretary-General Ban ki-moon had said this in his report: "On the basis of our analysis of the evidence gathered during our investigation between April and November 2013 and the laboratory results obtained, the conclusion is that chemical weapons have been used in the ongoing conflict between the parties in the Syrian Arab Republic, not only in the Ghouta area of Damascus on 21 August 2013 as concluded in (A/67/997-S/2013/553), but also on a smaller scale in Jobar on 24 August 2013, Saraqueb on 29 April 2013, Ashrafiah Sahnaya on 25 August 2013 and Khan Al Asal on 19 March 2013. This result leaves us with the deepest concern." For Trump, the military strikes represent a 180-degree turn in his assertively stated view on how to deal with Syria. In a series of tweets between May and September 2013, in the thick of the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime, he had offered unsolicited advice to President Barack Obama against doing anything. On September 7, 2013, barely two weeks after the Jobar attack, he had tweeted, "President Obama, do not attack Syria. There is no upside and tremendous downside. Save your 'powder' for another (and more important) day!" Two days prior to that he had tweeted, "Russia is sending a fleet of ships to the Mediterranean. Obama's war in Syria has the potential to widen into a worldwide conflict." He was vocally against the Obama administration getting involved in Syria and elsewhere and instead advised it to focus on "fixing America". What changed his view of Syria and Assad were the heartbreaking images of the Idlib gas attack that killed over 70 children, women and men and wounded hundreds. Although the Assad government denied having used the chemical weapons, with its benefactor Russia also chiming in in denial, Trump said yesterday it had crossed "many, many lines" for him beyond the red line. He said he was particularly affected by the images of dead and maimed children. Of course, the 2013 deaths were equally gruesome when he was expressly speaking out against Obama's much-criticised proclamation that Syria had crossed his "red line" with the use of chemical weapons. "The only reason President Obama wants to attack Syria is to save face over his very dumb RED LINE statement. Do NOT attack Syria, fix U.S.A.," he had tweeted. Known for his flair for grandiosity, President Trump is likely to turn the strikes into a spectacle of his much-proclaimed militarist decisiveness. The strikes could also bolster his otherwise sagging popularity, hovering around barely 35 per cent. Add to that the optics of Trump acting decisively in the presence of President Xi and the strikes have all the makings of an important political moment for the new President. As for the CWC, currently 189 countries representing 98 per cent of the global population have signed it and the use of chemical weapons is considered almost universally abhorrent. In defying that yet again, the Assad regime may have finally sealed its own fate. Considering the strikes came just days after Washington was signalling its intention not to dislodge him, it is quite a turn of events. (Mayank Chhaya is a Chicago-based journalist. He can be reached at mcsix@outlookc.com) Jammu/Srinagar, April 7 : Four persons were killed and five others went missing due to incessant rains in Jammu and Kashmir as authorities declared flood in the valley on Friday. "In the Jhelum River, water was flowing at 21.50 feet at Sangam in Anantnag and at 20.20 feet at Ram Munshibagh in Srinagar at 8 a.m. today (on Friday)," Muhammad Hanief Lone, chief engineer Flood Control Department told reporters here. "At both these places the water level is above the flood mark. In view of this development, the state government has declared floods in the valley and all related emergency arrangements have been made," Lone said. The Chief Engineer also said even though the weather was likely to improve from Friday, the water level in rivers, lakes and streams of the valley was expected to rise further. "People living in low lying areas and close to the banks of rivers and streams are advised to remain vigilant," Lone said. Four people have so far died due to incessant rains in the state during the last 24 hours. A father and his son were killed by an avalanche in Kargil district of the Ladakh region on Thursday. A woman was killed by lightning in Rajouri district of Jammu region and a 10-year-old girl drowned in north Kashmir's Kupwara district. The girl's body was washed away by a roaring mountain stream. Rescue teams recovered the body two km away from the place where the girl had drowned, an official said. An avalanche hit a post of the Indian Army in the Batalik sector of Ladakh region on Thursday burying five soldiers under it. Two soldiers have been rescued so far while rescue operation is on to locate the other three missing soldiers. Five passengers of a taxi were miraculously rescued after the vehicle fell into the overflowing Brengi mountain stream in Anantnag district on Thursday. Two passengers of the ill-fated vehicle were still missing. Army used helicopters to rescue 17 people marooned in flash floods in Poonch district of Jammu region on Thursday. Dozens of houses across the state have been partially damaged due to the flood and torrential rains. At least 40 sheep perished in a house collapse in Reasi district of Jammu region on Thursday. Water has entered many villages in north Kashmir's Baramulla district where authorities have pressed in rescue teams with boats to help the marooned people. In residential and commercial areas of Srinagar city including Maisuma, Karan Nagar, Bemina, Batmaloo, Wazir Bagh, Rajbagh, Mehjoor Nagar, Chanapora etc people complain that water had entered their homes. More than two feet deep water logging was witnessed in Budshah Chowk, Jehangir Chowk and Regal Chowk areas of uptown Srinagar causing traffic jams. Authorities used fire and emergency services pump sets to clear the water logging on the uptown main roads. Authorities have closed all schools and colleges in the Valley till Monday. The strategic Jammu-Srinagar highway remained closed for the third consecutive day on Friday due to landslides in Ramban district and fresh snowfall in Bannihal sector of the highway. Ten flights of different airlines were cancelled on Thursday at the Srinagar International Airport due to poor visibility and bad landing conditions. The MET office has forecast improvement in weather from Friday onwards. New Delhi, April 7 : Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday paid tribute to freedom fighters who spent years in Cellular Jail at Port Blair in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. "Paid tributes to those brave freedom fighters of India's Independence struggle who spent years in Cellular Jail of Andaman and Nicobar Islands," the minister tweeted. The Cellular Jail, colloquially known as 'Kala Pani', was a colonial prison used to exile freedom fighters -- described by the British as political prisoners -- to the remote archipelago. It is one of the murkiest chapters in the history of colonial rule in India. Moscow, April 7 : Russia on Friday condemned US cruise missile strikes on a Syrian military target and suspended a deal with the US to prevent mid-air collisions over Syria. "The Russian side suspends the memorandum on preventing incidents and ensuring flights safety during operations in Syria signed with the US," the Foreign Ministry said, after the US fired 59 cruise missiles at a military target in Syria on Thursday. According to Moscow, the Thursday night strike would impair the already "deplorable" bilateral ties between Russia and America and hamper the "effective fight" against terrorism. "We're urging the UN Security Council to hold an emergency meeting to discuss the current situation," the Ministry said. The US struck the Shairat military base in Homs province in central Syria, killing six Syrian soldiers and causing huge damage. Russia also said the air strikes were planned by the US before Tuesday's toxic gas attack in Idlib. Moscow and Damascus have termed the barrage an "American aggression". According to US President Donald Trump, the strike was in response to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad-led government's chemical weapons attack in Idlib province that left dozens of civilians dead. Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov, citing President Vladimir Putin, termed the strike "an attempt to distract attention from numerous civilian casualties in Iraq". "Washington's move impairs the Russian-US relations, which are in a deplorable state, substantially," Peskov said. "Putin believes that this step does not bring us closer to the ultimate goal in the fight against international terrorism... It creates serious obstacles to efforts to forge an international coalition to fight against it and effectively counter this global evil," the Kremlin spokesman said. New Delhi, April 7 : Air India on Friday lifted its ban on Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad, whose flight bookings had been cancelled repeatedly after he assaulted an officer of the national carrier last month. Official sources told IANS that the ban was lifted after the Civil Aviation Ministry wrote to the airline, a day after Gaikwad expressed "regrets" over the March 23 incident. The sources said the Ministry took the decision after the MP assured that such incidents won't be repeated. OSAGE | A former Mitchell County naturalist has threatened to sue the county, alleging it has prevented her from obtaining another job. Former Mitchell County Naturalist MaryJo Burkgren resigned in 2012 and sent the county a letter of complaint in December 2016, alleging they have prevented her from obtaining another job, Mitchell County Attorney Mark Walk said during a Mitchell County Board of Supervisors meeting April 4. Her 2012 resignation letter said there were "rumors going around that say I have used county trailers and trucks to move my son during past years, as well as stealing cans and other things. "I know these accusations are false, but I will no longer stand for it," the letter stated. From the information we obtained, they have never offered her the job," Walk said. "The offer was contingent upon her references checking out and the references were the ones who said that they would not hire her for that job. If a lawsuit were to be filed, Walk advised the county against settling. We will be sending a letter back to her attorney saying that we are not willing to pay her anything, Walk said. We are not going to pay for a nuisance case. "It has always been Mitchell Countys position that we are not going to pay nuisance value to make a case go away," he continued. "I think thats why there are so many nuisance cases these days, its because other counties have paid it. If someone has a legitimate claim, we will pay it, but if not, no. Walk told the board he would keep them informed on the case. Burkgren's attorney, Thomas Foley, didn't respond to two phone messages from the Globe Gazette for the Press-News Thursday and Friday seeking more information. Burkgren later worked as coordinator of the Clear Lake Enhancement and Restoration (CLEAR) project in Clear Lake from 2013 to 2015. She submitted her resignation in 2015 because she believed the Hancock County Soil and Water Conservation District would no longer administer the CLEAR Project, which would effectively shutter the project if another sponsor could not be found. The project has since continued in a new form in Clear Lake. Tokyo, April 7 : Three pandas born at a zoo in Japan will be returned to China to breed, the zoo said on Friday. Officials at the Adventure World zoo amusement park in Wakayama prefecture said that two pandas aged six and a four-year-old will be returned to the Chengdu Research Base, Xinhua news agency reported. The pandas will leave for Chengdu on June 5. The zoo has been serving as a branch of the breeding facility in Sichuan province and the success rate of pandas returning to China and breeding has been high, said the officials. New Delhi, April 7 : Air India on Friday lifted its ban on Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad, whose flight bookings had been cancelled repeatedly after he assaulted an officer of the national carrier last month. According to Air India, the ban was lifted after the Civil Aviation Ministry wrote to the airline, a day after Gaikwad expressed "regrets" in the Lok Sabha over the March 23 incident. "Ministry of Civil Aviation has today directed us to lift the ban in view of the apology tendered by Mr.Gaikwad to the Hon'ble Minister of Civil Aviation. The ban placed by Air India on Mr. Gaikwad has, therefore, been lifted with immediate effect," the airline said in a statement. "Air India, however, remains committed to ensure that its employees are not assaulted and neither misbehaved with by any passenger and would always take strong action to preserve the dignity of its employees at all times." The national passenger carrier had placed a ban on the movement of the MP on its flights after the incident in which Gaikwad assaulted an Air India employee. Bhubaneswar, April 7 : Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Friday said the upcoming Bharatiya Janata Party National Executive meeting in the state capital will have no impact on the people. "I don't think there will be any effect on Odisha," Patnaik, who is also the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) President, told the media before leaving on a five-day visit to Delhi. Patnaik would attend the Inter-State Council meeting and meet Union Ministers while in the national capital. The BJP's National Executive meeting is scheduled to be held here on April 15 and 16. The meet would be attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP President Amit Shah and several other senior leaders, including chief ministers from the BJP-ruled states. The BJP, however, said "the upcoming meeting is already having its impact on the people". "Had that not been the case, Patnaik would not have reacted," said party spokesperson Sambit Patra. The BJP also asserted it would win the 2019 assembly elections in Odisha. "Lotus will bloom on Lord Jagannath's feet in 2019 elections and BJP will come to power in Odisha," said Patra. Reacting to the allegations that the BJP is engineering a split in the BJD, Patra said his party believed in building and not breaking. "We believe in 'Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas'," he said. BJP national media in-charge Anil Baluni said there is a positive vibration in the country in favour of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the massive mandate in Uttar Pradesh has proved that. "In Odisha also, people want BJP and Modi," he said. Thiruvananthapuram, April 7 : The Congress on Friday slammed the CPI-M's defence of the police action against the hapless mother of Jishnu Prannoy, an engineering student who, according to her, was "killed" by his college authorities. She has blamed the college's Chairman Krishnadas and some others, all of whom are now out on bail, for her son's death. "If Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has any sense of morality left, he should apologise to Mahija (the breaved mother)," Leader of Opposition in Kerala Assembly Ramesh Chennithala told reporters here. "She was 'dragged and roughed up' by the police, when she and her relatives were going to the office of the state police chief to lodge their protest over the manner the probe is going on... It's been 90 days since Prannoy left this world," he said. Mahija and her brother are admitted in a hospital here after being "dragged and attacked" by the police on Wednesday and they are on an indefinite fast. "Now a CPI-M statement says that the Congress is behind the action that took place on Wednesday. Not a single leader of ours was anywhere near there. So, this charge against the Congress is nothing but a joke. "Vijayan's statement that the police did not do any wrong is in fact a reply to V.S. Achuthanandan, M.A. Baby and CPI state Secretary Kanam Rajendran, who have all condemned the police action against the hapless mother," added Chennithala. State Tourism Minister Kadakampally Surendran on Friday called on Mahija and assured her that the state government would do everything they can to address her grievance and urged her to call off her protest. But Mahija and her brother and other relatives are determined that they would not retract from their earlier stance that their protest would continue till the two senior police officials, who roughed them, are suspended. They have also demanded that the state government ensure arrest of three more staff members, who are on the run ever since her son passed away. The arrest of five social activists, including the former private secretary of Achuthanandan -- K.M. Shahjahan, who was present when Mahija was walking towards the office of the police chief, came under fire from several quarters. The ageing mother of Shahjahan -- a retired scientist of the Rubber Board -- told the media here that her son was being harassed by Vijayan as he had filed a petition against the Chief Minister in the SNC Lavalin case. "This is nothing but a vindictive action unleashed by Vijayan against my son, as he has taken up the cudgels against Vijayan," said Thankamma, the mother of Shahjahan, who has threatened to sit on an indefinite fast in front of the jail where her son is kept. Public sympathy is growing for Mahija in her home district Kozhikode, where her daughter's fast entered the third day. A good number of local people have also joined her in the fast. State Minister for Fisheries J. Mercykutty told the media that there was no police excess against Mahija, but the police could have acted in a more reasonable manner. Prannoy was found hanging in January on the campus of the Nehru College of Engineering and Research, a private college in Thrissur. Initially, it was dismissed as a case of suicide, but following Mahija's strong protest, the police have taken up the case again. New Delhi, April 7 : Environmental activists here on Friday accused GM crop giant Monsanto of "illegally" introducing a GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) based crop in various states of India and urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take action against the multinational. On the occasion of World Health Day, Navdanya, a networking body of seed keepers from around the country, and Swadeshi Jagaran Manch, an association which advocates indigenous industry, appealed to the Prime Minister to "ban Monsanto on account of illegal introduction of herbicide-tolerant GMO 'Round-up Ready Flex' (RRF) Bt Cotton", during a meet. Noted environmental activist and Founder of Navdanya, Vandana Shiva, said the seed is not going to help farmers and using it would mean risk to plants lives as "rest of the crops are going to die and soil is going to die". The Manch alleged in a statement that "Monsanto (apparently) had released RRF trait after transferring it into several local varieties, into the Indian environment so that they will be able to induce the farmers to grow herbicide resistant cotton to sell their herbicide 'Roundup' in large quantities". It said that samples submitted by farmers from several states -- Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra, Odisha, and Gujarat -- were tested by Central Institute for Cotton Research (CICR) and that the latter "confirmed the presence of RRF Bt Cotton, which is not only illegal but a massive fraud on the faith of Indian government and Indian people". Roundup is a herbicide brand which is being sold by Monsanto since the 1970s around the world, including India. The 'glyphosate'-based brand is used for killing weeds and other grasses which compete with the crop. Round-up Ready Flex is a form of Bt Cotton designed by Monsanto which, according to the firm, "offers a high margin of crop safety due to its tolerance ot glyphosate". Shiva also cited a World Health Organisation report that "declared (gylophosate-based herbicide) a probable carcinogen" to denounce the multinational giant further for the "contamination". However, Monsanto, when contacted by IANS, rubbished the allegations as "baseless" and said that it conducts all its business ethically. "Monsanto conducts its businesses in a transparent and ethical manner and in adherence with the laws of the land. Technologies introduced by us have been subject to rigorous regulatory evaluations over the years and have been approved by the country's regulators. "The history of safe use of glyphosate is supported by comprehensive assessments of the scientific evidence that span four decades. Glyphosate is one of the most widely used and comprehensively evaluated herbicides with a 40-year history of safe use. "The European Chemical Agency (ECHA) as recently as March 2017 after a rigorous and comprehensive assessment of the safety data on glyphosate, affirmed glyphosate is safe and not a carcinogen," Monsanto India said in a statement shared with IANS. Stockholm, April 7 : A truck on Friday rammed into a store in the centre of the SWedish capital Stockholm, and police and witnesses said three people died and many others were injured. "Sweden has been attacked. Everything indicates that this is a terror attack," Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven told a press conference, Xinhua news agency reported. The police have urged people to stay indoors, the SVT news reported, adding that the Parliament House has been cordoned off. All Metro services in the Swedish capital city have been shut following the incident, Radio Sweden reported. The truck involved in the incident was hijacked earlier Friday from outside a restaurant in central Stockholm, according to Radio Sweden. New Delhi, April 7 : External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Friday said over 4,000 applications have been received for Kailash Mansarovar Yatra, 1,400 more than last year. An additional batch of pilgrims will be sent on the pilgrimage via Nathula Pass this year due to increase in the number of applicants, and 49 more seats will be available for the yatra. "To facilitate travel of elderly pilgrims, who may require support during the yatra, four family members will be allowed to travel in the same batch instead of two," Sushma Swaraj said. The minister was speaking at a function held here for computerised draw to select pilgrims. "We do not anticipate any vacant seats this year. Earlier, seats were available even after waiting list was taken care of," Sushma Swaraj said. The minister specially thanked Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister yogi Adityanath, whose first announcement on taking charge was to double the state support to pilgrims from Rs 50,000 to Rs 1,00,000. "Because of the increased aid, the number of applicants from Uttar Pradesh has increased," she said. The Kailash Manasarovar Yatra is organised by the External Affairs Ministry in cooperation with the Chinese government through two routes. In 2016, as many as 1,430 pilgrims in 18 batches of 60-strong via the Lipulekh route in Uttarakhand and 50 pilgrims each in seven batches via the Nathu La route in Sikkim undertook the pilgrimage. PrintlinQs Inc., one of Canadas oldest providers of Web to Print software, online proofing, SaaS Printing Storefronts, and Variable Data Printing (VDP) Solutions, has launched a new brand identity, story and website at this year Graphics Canada tradeshow. This rebrand marks a significant period of growth and development for the company, said Timothy Madden, CloudPrintTechs CEO. Customers thought of us primarily as an integration and deployment company. The new identity better reflects the robust solutions we offer as a Web to Print technology company, as well as our continual pursuit of the latest technology to serve the printing community. CloudPrintTech also formally announces its partnership with Canon Canada and the addition of imagePrograf and Poster Designer Plus to its product line. The print industry is moving print ordering online to reduce costs and speed up timelines, said Peter Dulis, Manager, Large Format Printers for Canon Canada. CloudPrintTech is perfectly positioned to provide powerful, cost-effective web-to-print technology to large format printers. According to InfoTrends, the online print business will double to $70 billion in online transactions in 2017. Poster Designer Plus is a powerful, cost-effective web-to-print plug-in software that adds a large-format poster design engine, shopping cart and checkout functionality to any existing website. Designed for easy and fast integration, this cloud-hosted printing storefront gives printers the tools they need to take advantage of the trend towards online ordering. About CloudPrintTech For over 10 years, CloudPrintTech has been involved in creating web to print software, websites for printers, print procurement storefronts and online proofing software that let print buyers design, proof and order printing services directly from your online printer's presence. For more information, please visit: http://www.cloudprinttech.com About Canon Canada Inc. Headquartered in Brampton, Ontario, Canon Canada Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Canon USA, is a leading provider of consumer, business-to-business and medical digital imaging solutions. Innovation and cutting-edge technology have been essential ingredients in Canon's success. Canon Canada Inc. is committed to the highest level of customer satisfaction and loyalty, providing 100 per cent Canadian-based service and support for all of the products it distributes. Canon Canada Inc. is dedicated to its Kyosei philosophy of social and environmental responsibility. For more information, please visit: http://canon.ca "212 Media Studios not only assisted, but eagerly advanced this initiative to promote our core beliefs and goals." Bill Katip 212 Media Studios has partnered with Grace College & Seminary to launch a comprehensive, $37 million fundraising campaign for the school. Dr. Bill Katip, president of Grace College & Seminary, announced the Aspire campaign on March 23, 2017 at the Manahan Orthopaedic Capital Center in Winona Lake, Ind. 212 Media Studios began its partnership with Grace in 2015 to provide marketing services and strategic oversight. The goal of the campaign is to raise $37 million to further develop four key priorities of Grace: educational excellence, connected community, culture of innovation and sustainable affordability. These initiatives include the newly completed Bernard and Linnie Key Track & Field Complex and upcoming Dr. Dane A. Miller Science Complex construction. Our team is pleased to have a key role in this exciting season for Grace, says CMO of 212 Media Studios David Phelps. We are committed to seeing the Aspire campaign pave the way for Graces future. Using strategic branding and marketing initiatives, we are helping Grace tell the story of its vision for educating and empowering students to achieve their dreams and impact the world for Christ. With a thorough understanding of the mission and goals of Grace College & Seminary, 212 Media Studios partnered with the school to create the Aspire campaigns brand identity, including the logo, brand standards and core verbiage. The marketing company then worked with Grace to finalize the four strategic pillars, plan and launch a gala event, implement a direct-mail campaign to stakeholders, produce a custom prayer publication and oversee post-launch efforts. This is a historic time for Grace College, says Dr. Bill Katip, president of Grace College & Seminary.We are thankful for the growth and opportunities the Lord is providing for our students and community. Shared vision is important, especially in communicating the vision for the future. 212 Media Studios not only assisted, but eagerly advanced this initiative to promote our core beliefs and goals. We have full confidence in 212 and enjoy a mutually open, communicative relationship. Our shared values enable Grace and 212 to promote the institution in the best ways possible. Drew Flamm, VP of Advancement, Grace College & Seminary More information about the companies and campaign is available online at http://www.grace.edu/aspire and http://www.212mediastudios.com. #### 212 Media Studios is a digital marketing agency based in Warsaw, Ind. specializing in branding, storytelling and inbound marketing techniques, customized to the industry and business needs of their clients. The products that first made a name for themselves in the aircraft industry are returning to Las Vegas for their sixth SEMA Show. International AERO Products, (AERO Detail Products) will be exhibiting at the show held at the Las Vegas Convention Center October 31st - November 3rd, 2017. This year, the AERO booth will be located in the North Hall among other premium brands. The AERO Crew has already begun preparations for the upcoming show scheduling celebrity appearances, filming with Social Media Director Cheryl Hansen, preparing for the New Product Showcase and so much more. I am very excited to be attending our sixth SEMA Show, says Hansen. Every year it is like an aftermarket family reunion; catching up with old friends and making new ones. This year I will be out on the show floor gathering as much content as I can for our AERO fans, as well as our AERO booth to highlight what an incredible industry event this show is. AEROs full line of premium detailing products are now all around the world, and are being used today to clean multi-million dollar private aircraft to this day. The AERO line includes products to fulfill all of your cleaning, detailing and protective coating needs Finale, Final Wipe Down; Shine, Dry Wash and Speed Wax; View, Glass and Multi-Surface Cleaner; Immaculate, Interior Cleaner; Supple, Leather Conditioner; Polish, Metal and Aluminum Polish; Suds, Wet-Wash Soap; Protect, Tire and Vinyl Dressing; Spot, Carpet and Fabric Cleaner; Away, Tire and Engine Cleaner; Glide, Polymer-Infused Clay Bar; Shield, 2-Part Protectant and Fusion, Polymer Infused Liquid Carnauba Wax. For more information on International AERO Products and upcoming events, Like AERO on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/internationalaero International Aero Products (IAP) or http://www.facebook.com/aerodetailproducts Aero Premium Detailing Products and Follow AERO on Instagram @internationalaeroproducts AERO http://www.instagram.com/internationalaeroproducts or @aerodetailproducts AeroDetailProducts http://www.instagram.com/aerodetailproducts and Follow AERO on Twitter at https://twitter.com/AEROcarcare International AERO. About International AERO Products International AERO Products are designed to withstand the most extreme environments on Earth, from airfield surface temperatures that can reach 120 F to a frigid -60 F at 50,000 feet above the Earth. Until now, AERO premium detailing products have only been available to the aerospace industry for maintaining the worlds most exclusive aircraft. International AERO Products offers a wide selection of quality tested and approved cleaning, polishing, protective coating and detailing products which are bottled in small batches to ensure the quality and freshness for all of your vehicles maintenance needs. To find out where to purchase AERO products visit http://www.InternationalAeroProducts.com or call (800) 337- 9274. Working with For 3 Sisters and knowing that our dresses are making a difference in the lives of those affected by cancer is everything to me. Elite Secrets Bridal, located in Mount Vernon, Baltimore at 525 North Charles Street is pleased to debut the new 2017 Collections from Justin Alexander at our Trunk Show. Join us on Friday, April 21 and Saturday, April 22, from 1 PM to 5 PM. The premier bridal studio will host a two-day trunk show featuring bridal gowns from Justin Alexanders 2017 collections and more. From breathtaking ball gowns to romantic A-lines to sleek modern dresses, the new 2017 Sweetheart and Sincerity Collections by Justin Alexander is what fairy-tale dreams are made. Equal parts classic and romantic there is something for everyone. Think soft traditional fabrics, intricate details, and graceful hues all coming together to create some of the most elegant and show stopping gowns you will ever see. Beyond extraordinary gowns, shopping with Elite Secrets Bridal supports a worthy cause! A portion of the proceeds from retail sales of the bridal trunk show will go to For 3 Sisters, a Maryland-based nonprofit organization with a mission to raise awareness and improve the quality of life for men and women affected by breast cancer. For 3 Sisters commitment to men and women affected by breast cancer is unparalleled, said LaTonya Turnage, bridal expert and owner of Elite Secrets Bridal. The organization's core program, Road to Resources, provides resources for everyday needs so those affected can focus on fighting, surviving, and healing. Working with For 3 Sisters and knowing that our dresses are making a difference in the lives of those affected by cancer is everything to me. Elite Secrets Bridal is located at 525 North Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21201 The studio is open Monday through Friday, from 8 AM to 9 PM and Saturday, from 8 AM to 6 PM. For reservations or additional information, please visit https://elitesecretsspringtrunkshow.eventbrite.com/. Stamp Collecting brings the world into your home. Mark your calendar! The American Stamp Dealers Association, Inc. is hosting its annual National Spring Postage Stamp Show, April 1315, 2017, in New York City. The show will be held at the New York Hilton Midtown, 1335 Avenue of the Americas, 6th Avenue and 53rd Street, New York, NY 10019. The doors open daily at 10 a.m. and there is no cost for admission. Thursday and Friday the show runs until 6 p.m.; Saturday until 5 p.m. There is something for everyone from the experienced collector to the non-collector dealers, specialty collecting groups, and much more. What To Do at the Show Dealers will be buying and selling stamps and historic envelopes from across the nation and around the world from vintage to modern, stamp collecting supplies, and more. Participating dealers: Colonial Stamp Company, Dutch Country Auctions, Excelsior Collection, Gary Posner Inc., Henry Gitner Philatelist, Inter-Governmental Philatelic Corporation, James Bardo, Larry Volovski, Long Island Philatelics, Mark Reasoner, Markest Stamp Company, Millers Stamp Co., Mountainside Stamps and Coins, Nordica, Richard A. Champagne, Richard Friedberg Stamps, Stampman, Inc., Stanley M. Piller & Associates, Toga Associates, United Nations Postal Administration, Vidiforms Company, Vogt Stamps, Walter Kasell, Wayne Gehret. Collectors can purchase with confidence with ASDA Member Dealers. Visit the United Nations Postal Agency Booth to purchase their newest stamps and other issues. Take Advantage of the Complimentary Appraisal Service Bring in those stamps/collections that have been inherited or taking up space for years. This service will put a verbal value on your material and advise you on what to do with the collection. The appraisal service will be open for business from 10 a.m.3 p.m. each day of the show. To participate in this service, check in at the ASDA Booth located at the show entrance. Two societies will have a presence at the show -- the Ebony Society of Philatelic Events and Reflections, Inc. and the Philatelic Foundation. Kids can get into collection. Enjoy the fun and challenge of stamp collecting. Each child, ages 6-10, who is accompanied by an adult, will receive a free copy of My Stamp Album. Be sure to visit the ASDA Table to purchase the show cachet and past show souvenirs. Celebrate Spring and come to the Show April 1315 at the New York Hilton Midtown. Admission is free. Doors open daily at 10 a.m. Explore the wide, wonderful world of postage stamp collecting a hobby for a life time! Visit the ASDA online (http://www.americanstampdealer.com for all show information schedule of events, dealers in attendance, and more. The American Stamp Dealers Association, Inc., is a professional organization serving stamp collecting and its dealers since 1914. Evolven Software (http://www.evolven.com), an industry recognized IT Operations Analytics (ITOA) leader, today announced that they were granted a patent from the United States Patent and Trademark Office that covers their unique method for analyzing and prioritizing changes to configuration parameters of applications in information technology systems. This method provides extremely valuable information to IT and business users, allowing them to prevent and better manage problems that can occur in IT systems, thereby reducing mean time to resolution (MTTR). Todays enterprise organizations may have an enormous amount of interconnected systems. IT operations struggle to cope withand derive value from the huge amounts of data generated in dynamic infrastructures and applications. Due to the complexity of the underlying systems, human and policy-driven management is unable to react fast enough and realize value from large amounts of data statistics and patterns. An average business system depends on tens and hundreds of thousands of configuration parameters. If any of these parameters are misconfigured or omitted, the change may impact the performance and stability of IT operations, said Sasha Gilenson, CEO of Evolven, This patent confirms the unique change-centric technology offered by Evolven, strengthening the value of our product, and raising the bar for our competitors. Evolven's technology has been granted U.S. Patent No. US 2016/0042285 A1 (http://bit.ly/2nmnFiB) The patent covers Evolvens technology: Change collection: Evolvens agents automatically collect initial state and sequential changes, with minimal resource consumption. Change analysis: Evolven turns collected data into actionable insights. Evolven consolidates, cleans and correlates all of the data, then assesses risk of changes over time and differences across environments. Risk scoring: Evolven calculates risk and probability for each change/difference dimension and blended data. Evolven analyzes and prioritizes risky change, allowing users to focus on the ones that present the highest risk to stability and performance. Evolvens patented solution helps companies: Improve quality of services and customer experience. Transition from a reactive mode of operation to a preventive mode, freeing up time from valuable resources to focus on more strategic projects. Avoid compliance and security issues by automatically detecting unauthorized and undesired changes. Operate through a single pane of glass by avoiding unknowns and drastically reducing operational risks. By applying Evolvens exclusive machine learning capabilities, enterprise organizations can correlate information across silos, extract patterns, automatically identify anomalies, and apply reasoning about incident and problem root causes, said Bostjan Kaluza, Chief Data Scientist for Evolven. With Evolvens machine learning capabilities, IT teams can unlock the value hidden in huge volumes of operations data, reducing the time to find and diagnose issues, preventing breakdowns, and enhancing support for critical business services. About Evolven While its well known that unknown changes are the root cause of most stability issues, IT still struggles to know what actually changed. Until nowEvolven lets you finally know all actual changes carried out in your environment. It uses machine learning to detect and prioritize the most risky ones. With Evolven, IT Operations, DevOps and ITSM teams experience fewer incidents, faster MTTR, and improved productivity. Evolven is a recognized IT Operations Analytics (ITOA) leader and was selected by Gartner as a Cool Vendor in IT Operations. Evolven is also the winner of the Red Herring Top 100 North America. TiE 50 Top Startup, 20 Most Promising Data Center Solution Providers, Banking CIO Outlook and ITOA50 awards Evolven is a privately held, venture-backed company headquartered in the U.S., with presence in Europe and the Middle East. Evolven's executive team and advisory board include world-renowned experts in IT management and enterprise software. Evolven's investors are leading venture capital firms Pitango Venture Capital (http://www.pitango.com) and Index Ventures (http://www.indexventures.com). For a free demo call 1-888-841-5578, or follow us on Twitter @evolven # # # Media Contacts Stefanie Guzikowski Evolven Software 603-817-9464 Stefanie(at)evolven(dot)com Inspiration behind the Ayllu logo The merging of cultures with differing ideas and ways of thinking has made the US one of the most innovative countries in the world. The diversity causes a combustion of ideas that creates the necessary energy to bring innovative concepts to life." With the release of the Ayllu collection, Bling Jewelry (https://www.blingjewelry.com/) CEO and Founder, Elena Castaneda, wants to remind shoppers what made America great in the first place - diversity. The Ayllu symbol represents the coming together of different people, values and cultures. It consists of three emblems, a heart, an infinity sign and a clover - encompassing the power of Love. Luck. Unity. The Ayllu collection is a beautiful expression of communities uniting through solidarity. Inspiration for Ayllu originates from Castanedas multicultural upbringing and Peruvian heritage. The word ayllu means community in the ancient Quechua language of the Incas. Castaneda grew up in a multicultural household - her mother of German heritage and her father from Peru. Although they came from vastly distinctive backgrounds, they learned to celebrate and embrace their differences as a family. The merging of cultures with differing ideas and ways of thinking has made the United States one of the most innovative countries in the world, Castaneda said. The diversity causes a combustion of ideas that creates the necessary energy to bring innovative concepts to life." "Take a look at North Korea - the country shares a single culture which has resulted in a lack of innovation," Castaneda added. "Diversity is what has made America so great - weve come too far to denounce that fact." Castaneda encourages wearers to continue sharing the spirit of Ayllu long after the initial purchase. She would like the Ayllu community to log onto social media (@aylluofficial) and share inspiring stories on how their communities are coming together through solidarity. Continuing its commitment to charity, Bling Jewelry will donate 10% of every Ayllu purchase to the American Civil Liberties Union to heal and unite the global community. The ACLU has sought to defend the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and has seen an upsurge of donations in recent months. When my fathers friends emigrated from Peru to his new homeland in New York, he would greet them with ayllu and a warm embrace, Castaneda reminisces. He always reminded people that the love of community extended past borders. ABOUT BLING JEWELRY Bling Jewelry is the ideal online destination for stylish, high-quality jewelry. With thousands of unique styles in stock, their products appeal to a wide range of trendsetters. With a clever eye on the trends, Bling Jewelry hones in on what fashion dictates and what people fall in love with and buy. Bling Jewelry is ranked 700 on Internet Retailers Second 500 companies and was one of Inc. 5000s fast growing companies in 2016. "Proofs commitment to the arts and the Duluth community is a strong bond," shares Adam Noyes, President of Proof of the Pudding. Following the events of 9/11, childrens painter and illustrator, Kathy Andrews Fincher, felt a responsibility to offer a message of hope to American families. Kathys patriotic nature and her deep concerns about Constitutional principles led her to create a painting, named "The Dream Keepers," which is in the George W. Bush personal collection, and it is a tribute to the artist that it is currently hanging in his home. Kathy and her family are an integral part of the Duluth, Georgia community. As The Dream Keepers found more notoriety and lithographs continued to sell all over the world, the artist set out to bring the painting to life as a life-sized bronze in the patriotic city and her hometown of Duluth. When Proof of the Puddings Larry Larsen learned about Kathys painting coming to life in the Duluth square he knew that Proof should be involved in some way. Larry has been with Proof of the Pudding for over 20 years and his involvement with the city of Duluth, Gwinnett County by way of the Infinite Energy Center, and even the Duluth Fine Arts League, stretches back just as far. Proof of the Pudding will be sponsoring the reception prior to the memorials unveiling on Saturday, April 29, 2017. When I first saw Kathys painting, The Dream Keepers I knew it was something special. Larry Larsen, Assistant Vice President of Operations for Proof of the Pudding, commented. But as I studied it the nuances of the piece and the underlying meanings of the artwork are overwhelming and gave me goose bumps. Adam Noyes, President of Proof of the Pudding adds, Proofs commitment to the arts and the Duluth community is a strong bond. Our company looks forward to joining Childrens Healthcare of Atlanta, the Central Georgia Mounted Color Guard, Veterans, Active Military and First Responders that will be present at the April 29th unveiling of this important 9/11 memorial here in Georgia. The artist, Kathy Fincher has partnered with renowned sculptor, Martin Dawe owner of Cherrylion Studio in Atlanta, Georgia to bring the Bronzes to fruition. Both artists are classically trained, and the quality of the design and sculpting reflects more than 65 years of combined experience. There are 7 children in the sculpture as there are in the painting, each representing one of the seven continents. Many of the bronze children have been adopted but there are still two that can be sponsored. Contact the Duluth Fine Arts League for more information on how to be involved. As the largest figurative patriotic public works of children in the world, the artist believes this will become a destination public art piece. Governor Nathan Deal will attend and Rodney Mims Cook, Jr., President of The National Monument Foundation, will dedicate the artwork as a 9/11 Memorial. The public unveiling is scheduled for Saturday, April 29th. There will be a childrens parade beginning at 6:00pm followed by the unveiling ceremony at 7:00pm. Location is The Duluth Town Green. Bring the children and dress patriotic! ABOUT PROOF OF THE PUDDING: Proof of the Pudding was founded in 1979. Over the past 37 years, Proof has maintained its distinctive and personal style, setting it apart from other caterers and food service management companies. Today Proof of the Pudding is Atlanta's Premier Go To Company for delicious food, operating more than five state of the art kitchens in the Atlanta market alone. Proof of the Pudding has been a shining star on the Atlanta food service and catering scene. Innovative culinary creations coupled with a personalized style of presentation and service, has won them numerous industry awards and the consistent rating as Atlanta's best caterer and foodservice management company by clients and media alike. PR News will hold its annual Measurement Conference, which includes the Social Media Boot Camp on April 20-21 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., where attendees will learn the newest best practices in measuring social media engagement and tying PR to the bottom line. The full-day boot camp on social media is designed for PR, marketing and social media professionals and will focus on the ins and outs of the top social platforms and what it takes to succeed in this multimedia digital space. VIP Rates end today, April 7, and government/nonprofit rates are available. More Information At the PR News Measurement Conference, youll hear from thought leaders at the Philadelphia Eagles, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Porter Novelli, Amtrak and Paine Publishing as they walk attendees through the steps of creating a measurement dashboard all the way through to tying PR metrics to sales figures. Sessions for the PR News Measurement Conference, which includes the Social Media Boot Camp include: Measurement Dashboards That Communicate PR's Business Value How to Buy Smart on Facebookand Reach Your Audience Organically When Buying Isnt an Option How to Measure Media Coverage and Tie It to Organizational Goals Case Studies: What Success on Twitter Really Looks Like How to Choose Between Snapchat and Instagram Stories Case Study: PR Measurement at Work in the Real World Measuring Social: How to Measure Your Impact Across Social Media Platforms Presented by PR News, the industry's most trusted PR and marketing brand, these events will fill up quickly so register today. Sponsors: BurrellesLuce, LexisNexis, Mediametric and Trendkite To become a sponsor, contact Jonathan Politte at jpolitte(at)accessintel(dot)com. For questions regarding registration, contact Jessica Placencia at jplacencia(at)accessintel(dot)com. About PR News: The PR News Group at Access Intelligence, LLC is a go-to source that serves the communications and marketing community at corporations, agencies and nonprofits. The PR News group focuses on honing and growing PR practitioners skills in social media, crisis management, digital PR, measurement, employee relations, media training, CSR and writing through its flagship newsletter, webinars, conferences, awards programs, workshops and guidebooks. With the launch of its weekly newsletter over 70 years ago, PR News has remained dedicated to supporting the growth of communicators all while keeping them abreast of the latest news affecting the industry. For more information, please visit http://www.prnewsonline.com. # # # MASON CITY | When Lorenz Daleske started working for Floyd & Leonard Auto Electric, Dwight Eisenhower was president, Mickey Mantle was a home run champion and you could mail a letter with a 3-cent stamp. The company is celebrating its 80th anniversary this week, and Daleske, the majority owner, has been there for 60 of those years. Daleske, who will be 79 later this month, started in March 1957 working behind the counter and picking up lawn mowers. He served as parts manager for about 10 years. Now he comes in about three hours a day and helps out where ever he's needed. Daleske is in the middle generation of what has been a family-owned business since it was opened in 1937 by Floyd Ollenburg and Leonard Haijsman, Daleske's father-in-law. Tom Abbas, vice president of the company, is Daleske's son-in-law. "It's quite an accomplishment to be at the same place for 60 years," Abbas said. "I know Lorenz is proud of the family lineage in the business." Daleske said he has seen many changes over the years. When he started, the company was located downtown in what became the J.C. Penney parking lot when Southbridge Mall was built. It has been in its present location at 510 S. Washington Ave. for more than 30 years. "We used to do a lot of outside sales," said Daleske. "One person covered a 50-mile radius. I did some of that." The company also was involved in automobile repairs. "We used to have five mechanics for car repairs. I worked on speedometers from time to time," he said. Another big change, he said, has been in technology, not only in the merchandise being sold but in the bookkeeping of all those sales. "It's all computers now," he said. The store is filled with flashy new products, but there is a sense of history too. It is depicted not only in the old photos on the walls in the company's office but also in the memories of its longest-serving employee, Lorenz Daleske, who, after 60 years, still loves to come to work every morning. Steven Tyler signs Soundwaves Art Foundation limited editon artwork to benefit Janie's Fund. Steven Tyler signs Soundwaves artwork to benefit Janie's Fund. Steven Tyler is bringing the re-recording of Janies Got A Gun to life to support his philanthropic initiative Janies Fund. The project with Soundwaves artist Tim Wakefield has produced unique and distinctive digital artworks on canvas to be sold through the Soundwaves Art Foundation to support the fund. Through Janies Got a Gun, Tyler gave a voice to abused girls and women. Now, with the creation of Janies Fund, he is helping girls heal from the trauma of abuse and neglect. Tyler says, Janies Got A Gun? No. Janies Got a FUND! Janies Fund was created by Tyler in partnership with national nonprofit Youth Villages. Janies Fund provides proven ways to address the trauma of sexual and physical abuse in children and through the help of Tyler, have been able to expand these services to help more girls. At the end of its first year, an outpouring of support from donors across 38 countries helped raise more than $1.9 million for Janies Fund, allowing Youth Villages to provide more than 56,000 days of care for abused and neglected girls. Wakefields artwork has been described as a truly unique visual expression of sound. His creations begin by digitally manipulating, shaping, and coloring sound waves generated from a studio recording of the song. The result is a visually stunning representation of the audio, taking on an entirely new art form. Wakefields collaboration with Steven Tyler and Janies Fund features three artworks created from the re-recording of Janies Got A Gun. There is one original and 33 limited edition pieces of each artwork. All pieces are numbered and signed by Steven Tyler and Tim Wakefield. The artwork is available for purchase here: https://soundwavesartfoundation.com/product/steventylerart/ Previous collaborators with Soundwaves Art Foundation include: ABBA, Alt-J, The Avett Brothers, Bee Gees, The Black Keys, Bon Jovi, Joe Bonamassa, Coldplay, Duran Duran, Elbow, Bryan Ferry, Peter Frampton, Ellie Goulding, Hunter Hayes, Jason Isbell, Journey, Joy Division, The Killers, Kings of Leon, Mark Knopfler, Nick Mason (of Pink Floyd), Steve Miller, Mumford & Sons, Muse, New Order, Robert Plant & Band of Joy, Queen, R.E.M.s Mike Mills, Royal Blood, Sam Smith, Stereophonics, Take That, Derek Trucks, Steve Vai, Roger Waters, and Brian Wilson. Founded by Tim Wakefield, Soundwaves Art Foundation has raised funds around the world for music-related charities. I am so excited for this years fundraiser. The list of artists involved is spectacular, and I am so proud to have been able to work with them to create these unique pieces, Wakefield states. While the creative process is always special for me, whats really near and dear to my heart is the philanthropic side of this. The proceeds from the sale of the artwork will benefit some great charities chosen by the collaborating icons and myself; its an honor to know that every piece purchased will go to a great cause. Hi-res images are available upon request. About Soundwaves Art Foundation Soundwaves Art Foundation was founded by renowned artist Tim Wakefield in 2014. The foundation has been involved in giving events with the Gibson Foundation, T.J. Martell Foundation, Nordoff Robbins, the Bonnaroo Works Fund, Notes for Notes, Music Rising, Hope & Homes for Children, and MusiCorps. In 2014 Wakefield offered his creations in an effort with Austin City Limits to benefit ACL, KLRU, and Austin PBS; through his work they raised over $40,000. In 2015 he partnered with War Child to raise over $86,000 for their Children of Syria campaign. Wakefield continues to collaborate with artists to create his signature Soundwaves Art. For more information on Soundwaves Art Foundation: http://www.soundwavesartfoundation.com About Janies Fund Janies Fund is a philanthropic initiative created by Steven Tyler in partnership with Youth Villages to bring hope and healing to girls who have suffered the trauma of abuse and neglect. Steven first gave voice to this cause with his hit Janies Got a Gun, and his establishment of the fund ensures that these vulnerable girls will have an enduring voice for years to come. Janies Fund has two important goals: to bring much-needed awareness to the issue of abuse and neglect of children and to generate financial support to ensure that girls receive the most effective services available to help them overcome the trauma and pain of abuse. Contributions to Janies Fund support proven programs at Youth Villages that have demonstrated effectiveness in addressing the trauma of sexual and physical abuse in children as well as expansion of these services to help even more girls. Since its founding in 2015, Janies Fund has attracted donors from 38 countries, raising $1.9 million and providing more than 56,000 days of care for abused and neglected girls. Learn more at http://www.JaniesFund.org. About Youth Village Youth Villages is a private nonprofit organization that helps more than 22,000 of America's most vulnerable children and families each year in 13 states and Washington, D.C. Youth Villages has been recognized by Harvard Business School and U.S. News & World Report, and was identified by The White House as one of the nation's most promising results-oriented nonprofit organizations. For more information about Youth Villages, visit http://www.youthvillages.org. Denise Cobb, PhD, SIUE provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs. The Southern Illinois University Board of Trustees approved the appointment of Denise Cobb, PhD, as SIUE provost and vice chancellor for Academic Affairs, during its regularly scheduled meeting Thursday, April 6 on the Carbondale campus. Cobb served as interim provost since October 2015. Prior to that appointment, she was assistant provost for academic innovation and effectiveness, and then associate provost for academic affairs since June 2012. In the Office of the Provost, Cobbs responsibilities and achievements have included: Coordinating the successful reaffirmation of SIUEs institutional accreditation through the Higher Learning Commission Assisting in the Universitys strategic planning and assessment Facilitating the curricular review process and revising the Universitys honors program Supporting the vibrancy of the Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities (URCA) Program, senior assignment and faculty development programming Launching a Junior Faculty Development Program in collaboration with the associate chancellor for diversity and inclusion, and the director of faculty development Facilitating the development and launch of new academic programs, including a rapid online program development initiative Supporting efforts to promote student retention and success Cobb joined the SIUE Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice Studies in 2003 as an assistant professor in sociology and was promoted to professor in 2015. She has been integrally involved in numerous externally funded research projects with the SIUE Graduate School and is dedicated to broadening participation and success of under-represented student and faculty populations in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) graduate programs. An Arkansas native, Cobb earned a bachelors in sociology from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock in 1993 where she was a Donaghey Scholar. She earned a masters in 1995 from the University of Central Arkansas and a doctorate from Tulane University in 2003. Southern Illinois University Edwardsville provides students with a high quality, affordable education that prepares them for successful careers and lives of purpose to shape a changing world. Built on the foundation of a broad-based liberal education, and enhanced by hands-on research and real-world experiences, the academic preparation SIUE students receive equips them to thrive in the global marketplace and make our communities better places to live. Situated on 2,660 acres of beautiful woodland atop the bluffs overlooking the natural beauty of the Mississippi Rivers rich bottomland and only a short drive from downtown St. Louis, the SIUE campus is home to a diverse student body of more than 14,000. Diane Guerrero Salt Lake Community College will honor graduates during commencement ceremonies May 5, 9:30 a.m. at the Maverik Center in West Valley City. This years keynote speaker will be Diane Guerrero, known for her roles in the Netflix series Orange is the New Black and The CW Network series Jane the Virgin. Guerrero was raised in the Jamaica Plain and Roxbury neighborhoods of Boston after being taken in by other Colombian families. She had an interest in acting since a young age and took advantage of free opportunities in the neighborhood or at school. Then she attended Boston Arts Academy, a performing arts high school, where she was in the music department. In 2015, Guerrero was named a White House Ambassador for Citizenship and Naturalization. She is an outspoken advocate for common sense, comprehensive immigration reform and has worked with Immigrant Legal Resource Center and Mi Familia Vota, a nonpartisan Latino civic engagement organization to promote citizenship and voter registration. Variety named her one of the top 10 Latina actresses to watch. SLCCs 2017 honorary doctorate recipients are H. Roger Boyer, chairman of The Boyer Company as well as its director and advisor, and the Honorable Shauna Graves-Robertson, who was appointed to the Salt Lake County Justice Court by the Salt Lake County Commission in January 1999. Boyer received his Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Utah and his Master of Business Administration from Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration. Graves-Robertson graduated from Arizona State University in 1980 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Criminal Justice. Judge Graves-Robertson received a Master of Arts in Public Administration in 1987 and Juris Doctor from the University of Utah in 1990. Lisa Gough, vice president of Sysco, and Shawn Newell, vice president of business development for Industrial Supply Company, were named Distinguished Alumni. Gough received her associates degree in business from SLCC in 1995 and a bachelors degree in accounting from the University of Utah in 1997. She earned a Master of Business Administration degree from Westminster College in 2007. Newell earned an associates degree in marketing management from SLCC and his bachelors of science degree in sociology from the University of Utah. Newell also earned a masters degree in management from the University of Phoenix. Salt Lake Community College is an accredited, student-focused, comprehensive community college meeting the diverse needs of the Salt Lake community. Home to more than 61,000 students each year, the College is Utahs leading provider of workforce development programs. SLCC is also the largest supplier of transfer students to Utahs four-year institutions and a perennial Top 10 college nationally for total associate degrees awarded. The College is the sole provider of applied technology courses in the Salt Lake area, with multiple locations, an eCampus, and nearly 1,000 continuing education sites located throughout the Salt Lake Valley. Personal attention from an excellent faculty is paramount at the College, which maintains an average class size of 20. How can our Catholic institutions fully live up to our theological principles about Islam, and what would it mean for a Catholic institution to help nurture the spirituality of a Muslim? Emmanuel College Associate Professor of Theology and Religious Studies Laurie Johnston, Ph.D. has received a Fulbright grant to teach and research at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. During the spring semester of 2018, Johnston will study the relationship between Catholic educational institutions and Muslim students in Belgium. She will also teach a graduate level course on ethics and international relations. The focus of Johnston's research grew out of work she is currently engaged in while on sabbatical from Emmanuel. "I became interested in this topic from reading about European institutions and their relations to Islam," she says. According to Johnston, "the integration of Muslims is a challenging and fraught topic for European countries," and it has had a profound impact on some Catholic schools. For example, she says that in France "some Catholic schools have predominantly Muslim student populations because they allow students to wear the veil, whereas secular schools do not." For Catholic institutions, she says, working with large Muslim populations presents "both challenges and opportunities." Catholic religious doctrine, she explains, "says that we greatly respect and esteem the faith of Muslims, and we worship the same god." Still, she asks "how can our Catholic institutions fully live up to our theological principles about Islam, and what would it mean for a Catholic institution to help nurture the spirituality of a Muslim?" Johnston will explore these questions and also investigate if Catholic institutions in Europe can serve as "a kind of mediating presence between the hardline secularists and religiously observant Muslims." She will also look to see if the European experience offers any lessons for Catholics in the United States, a place where anti-Islamic rhetoric has been on the rise. Although this is Johnston's first Fulbright award, she has been involved with the Fulbright U.S. Student Program for several years. Johnston serves as Director of Fellowships and Scholarships, and she has been instrumental in helping Emmanuel students apply for and win Fulbright scholarships and other awards. Over her past five years as Director, Emmanuel has had a Fulbright U.S. Student Program winner every year. In addition, Emmanuel produced two Fulbright U.S. Scholars in 2015-2016--more than any other bachelor's institution in New England. For these accomplishments, the Fulbright Program named Emmanuel a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Top Producer" for 2015-2016. "Professor Johnston has done an extraordinary job spearheading our Fulbright efforts with students," said Emmanuel's Vice President of Academic Affairs and Dean, William C. Leonard, Ph.D. "Her own Fulbright award is well-deserved and a testament to the groundbreaking nature of her research and scholarship." The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to build relations between the people of the United States and the people of other countries to solve global challenges. The Fulbright Program is funded through an annual appropriation made by the U.S. Congress to the U.S. Department of State. Participating governments and host institutions, corporations, and foundations around the world also provide direct and indirect support to the Program, which operates in over 160 countries worldwide. About Emmanuel College Located in the heart of Boston, Emmanuel inspires students to dream big and work hard as they discoverand begin to fulfilltheir lifes purpose. Home to 2,000 undergraduate and graduate students from across the nation and around the world, the College provides boundless opportunities for students to expand their worldview through rigorous coursework, collaborations with distinguished and dedicated faculty, participation in a vibrant campus community, and countless internship and career opportunities throughout the Boston area and beyond. Emmanuels more than 50 programs in the sciences and liberal arts foster spirited discourse and substantive learning experiences that honor the Colleges Catholic educational mission to educate the whole person and provide an ethical and relevant 21st-century education. For more information, visit http://www.emmanuel.edu. Donor families release over a hundred butterflies at Legacy of Life Hawaiis Donor Remembrance Ceremony. Our desire is to give hope to others along their healing journeyCherilyn Rabago To celebrate 30 years of honoring Hawaiis organ donor heroes, two families will be reunited commemorating the 10th anniversary of their loved ones life-saving organ donation at the annual Legacy of Life Hawai'i Donor Remembrance Ceremony at Koolau Ballrooms in Kaneohe. The event also marks the 30th anniversary of Legacy of Life Hawaii, an organization founded in 1987 to serve the people of Hawaii through organ, eye and tissue donation and transplant. Ten years ago, Dusty Rapoza, a young man of 17 years, passed away suddenly on the Big Island and was flown to Oahu where his family made the difficult decision to donate his organs, giving others another chance at life. This Saturday, the Rapoza ohana will be reunited with Cherilyn Rabago, the young mother from Waipahu who received Dustys kidney and pancreas. The two families will share this reunion with more than 100 other local Hawaii families who have been directly touched by donation. Our desire is to give hope to others along their healing journey, said Rabago. The Donor Remembrance Ceremony honors and celebrates local organ and tissue donors, provides support for grieving families and gives transplant recipients an opportunity to say, thank you for their second chance at life. Also to be unveiled at the event are the Donor Remembrance Quilts displaying squares created by donor families honoring their loved ones. Each square is made of photos, mementos and keepsakes of each organ and tissue donor to highlight the uniqueness of the individual. Year after year, the quilts reflect the healing love of the donor families, a display that is lovingly stitched together by the team of Legacy of Life Hawaii volunteers and staff. At the Quilt Pinning Ceremony families share a memory, describe how the design was chosen and/or share a poem on the story square. The pinning ceremony is significant because families give the square to Legacy of Life Hawaii, entrust it into their care after having invested their love and energy into creating it. This is symbolic, as these same families had entrusted their loved ones into the care of Legacy of Life Hawaii in order for donation to have occurred. The event will conclude with the Monarch Butterfly Release. when 140 monarch butterflies are released in honor and in memory of Hawaiis organ, tissue and eye donors. Each donor family receives one monarch butterfly, symbolizing the renewed that hope their loved ones gave to the many transplant recipients by consenting to organ and tissue donation. The butterfly symbolizes hope, rebirth, peace and emergence from darkness into a new life, which is similar to a familys experience of grief. Families at the time of the darkness of grief, somehow find the strength to give the gift of donation. Many families consider the releasing of the butterfly to be a releasing of the spirit, or a way to send a message or wish to their loved one on the butterflys wings. Families find much comfort when the butterflies linger - find a place to rest on a lei or nearby flower - families often express a sense that their loved one is near. ABOUT LEGACY OF LIFE HAWAII Legacy of Life Hawai'i is a nonprofit organization and the only organization in Hawai'i federally designated to recover organs and tissue for transplant. Founded in 1987 to serve the people of Hawaii, Legacy of Life Hawaiis mission is to save and enhance lives through recovering organs and tissue for transplant, encourage organ donation through community outreach and education, and honor and support organ donors and their families. Legacy of Life Hawaii works closely with our island hospitals to cultivate an understanding in our diverse communities that life is worth giving. Oswego Groundbreaking This new facility will provide the police department with space for today with capacity for future growth. Gilbane is proud to be a partner on this exciting project! said Douglas Lim, Gilbane Building Company Vice President Community and village officials as well as representatives from local police and fire departments were in attendance to celebrate the official groundbreaking for the new police station in the Village of Oswego on Friday, March 24, 2017. Also in attendance were representatives from the building project team including Gilbane Building Company; Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum Inc.; and McClaren, Wilson & Lawrie. The Village of Oswego is located 50 miles west of Chicago in Kendall County, one of the fastest growing counties in the nation. Significant growth and design limitations in the existing police building caused the police department to functionally outgrow the facility and resulted in the need for expansion to a new facility. Gilbane will serve as the construction manager for the new 70,000 SF police station. The new facility will accommodate multi-agency police operations, provide space for the training of Oswego Police Department and other police agencies, and build in capacity to meet the growing needs of the police department as the community expands. The project will target LEED Silver certification. After attending the groundbreaking ceremony, you can really feel the excitement from the Village and community members. This new facility will provide the police department with space for today with capacity for future growth. Gilbane is proud to be a partner on this exciting project! said Douglas Lim, Gilbane Building Company Vice President Additionally, the project team held a trade contractor outreach session to maximize local participation in Oswego and support the Oswego community. About Gilbane Building Company Gilbane provides a full slate of construction and facilities-related services from preconstruction planning and integrated consulting capabilities to comprehensive construction management, close-out and facility management services for clients across various markets. Founded in 1873 and still a privately held, family-owned company, Gilbane has more than 50 office locations around the world. For more information, visit http://www.gilbaneco.com. Gilbane has two permanent offices located in Chicago, as well as an extensive knowledge of the Chicagoland market including construction processes, area subcontractors/suppliers, local M/WBE contractors, and familiarity with Chicago jurisdictional authorities. With 39 years of success in the highly competitive Chicagoland market, Gilbane is committed to continuing the strong tradition of excellence in the Chicago construction industry. EtQ today announced that it will be attending the North America Manufacturing Excellence Summit (NAMES) from April 11th to April 12th in Chicago, Illinois. EtQs Bhavin Virani will be presenting a session titled, Business Excellence Manufacturing: Risk Management and its Impact on Quality Management Systems. This will take place on April 12th from 7:40 a.m. to 8:15 a.m. Get more information on NAMES, here. For more information on EtQs products or services, visit us at http://www.etq.com. About NAMES As the North American manufacturing landscape continues to evolve, companies are constantly facing pressures to keep up with growing competition. Agility is crucial as manufacturers manage complex issues like controlling escalating costs and managing a dynamic workforce; all while dealing with pressures to implement a better, more efficient way of manufacturing. Senior leaders are, now more than ever, seeking answers to their daily challenges before they erode profitability. The North American Manufacturing Excellence Summit brings together the whos who of manufacturing executives, cutting edge technology providers and media partners for North Americas premier manufacturing event. About EtQ EtQ is the leading Quality, EHS, Operational Risk and Compliance management software provider for identifying, mitigating and preventing high-risk events through integration, automation and collaboration. At the core of EtQs framework is a compliance management platform that enables organizations to implement best in class compliance processes configured to meet their existing processes, create new compliance processes and automate and control their compliance ecosystem. EtQs product lineup includes Traqpath for individual compliance users, Verse Solutions for small to medium sized businesses and Reliance for enterprise organizations. EtQ was founded in 1992 and has main offices located in the U.S. and Europe. To learn more about EtQ and its various product offerings, visit http://www.etq.com or blog.etq.com. COFES 2017 The complexness and inter-connectivity of our world continues to baffle us. That is what we will explore at COFES 2017. Cyon Research Corporation today welcomes attendees to the opening of the 18th annual Congress on the Future of Engineering Software (COFES). COFES runs from April 6-9 and is held at the Scottsdale Plaza Resort. Widely recognized as a think-tank event, COFES gathers vendors, users, press, and analysts to discuss the most important issues facing both customers and providers of design and engineering technologies. The three-day event provides a relaxed and informal atmosphere designed to foster thoughtful conversation. Key to the success of COFES is its briefings and roundtable discussions, where participants explore trends and technologies of engineering software that will drive future innovation. The theme for COFES 2017 is Complexity and Transformation. For the past 17 years, COFES has provided an ideal environment for busy engineers and business leaders to lift their heads from the daily grind and consider their work in a broader context. This year COFES will challenge attendees to focus on interventions that can transform existing systems to mitigate the effects of complexity. We live in a complex world, but our brains are wired for simplicity, said Brad Holtz, president and CEO of Cyon Research Corporation. When confronted with logarithmic growth, we are constantly surprised because our innate expectation that the world follows linear projections consistently leads us to the wrong conclusions. Similarly, the complexness and interconnectivity of our world continues to baffle us. That is what we will explore at COFES 2017. Fridays keynote speaker is Melanie Mitchell, an expert in complex systems. In her talk, "An Introduction to Complexity," Mitchell will take participants on a tour of the sciences of complexity, a broad set of efforts that seek to explain how large-scale complex, organized, and adaptive behavior can emerge from simple interactions among a myriad of individual components. Based on her work at the Santa Fe Institute, Mitchell brings clarity to the workings of complexity across a broad range of biological, technological, and social phenomena. Saturdays first keynote is Through the Eyes of Data, where Harry Blount will share his insights on how to create a sustainable information advantage using Big Data while avoiding the most common pitfalls. Blount will lead attendees through the key aspects of a big data process including targeting the optimal data sources, designing a scalable data model, passive and active insight discovery, persistent improvement in platform intelligence, contextual analytics, and synthesized visualization. The second keynote on Saturday will be The Business Implications of the New International Political Landscape delivered by Scott Foster and Mark Anderson. To set the stage for Scott Fosters talk, Mark Anderson will provide insight on the global geo political arena. Scott Foster will then go into depth from the Japanese perspective. Foster will cover a number of issues including Asian surpluses and the loss of American jobs. This years COFES will also feature a report from ASSESS: The Analysis, Simulation, and Systems Engineering Software Summit. ASSESS is a working congress, set up to educate, guide and influence software strategies for multidisciplinary simulation and design exploration. Also today is the eighth annual Design and Sustainability (DaS) Symposium, a unique gathering of leaders within the COFES community who represent diverse industry sectors with strategic interest in software. The goal of the DaS Symposium is to bring sustainability to the forefront of the conversation among software developers and to look for opportunities and issues that may be best served by the industry as a whole, rather than by individual players within the industry. Leaders of the DaS Symposium hope to inspire, raise awareness, build relationships and seek sustainable synergies. The bulk of the DaS Symposium will take place on Thursday, April 6 from 8:30 AM to 3:00 PM PDT, followed by discussions as part of the general COFES program. To view the full agenda of COFES 2017, please visit: http://cofes.com/Events/COFES-2017/Agenda.aspx About COFES Now in its 18th year, COFES is the annual, invitation-only event for the design and engineering software industry. Widely recognized as a think-tank event, COFES gathers design and engineering software leaders (vendors, users, press, and analysts) together to discuss the role engineering technology will play in the future survival and success of business. COFES is renowned for hosting leading keynote visionaries that provide a new perspective to the future of the industry. COFES is a Cyon Research event. cofes.com About Cyon Research Cyon Research Corporation is a think-tank providing key information, research, analysis, and consulting to its clients worldwide. COFES (c) is Cyon Research's primary event. cyonresearch.com Guardian Jet LLC Welcomes Sasha Khounani as Aviation Marketing Specialist Sasha is a consummate aviation professional, someone who lives and breathes this industry and everything that it stands for," said Don Dwyer, Guardian Jet LLC. Aviation professional Sasha Khounani was recently named Marketing Specialist for Guardian Jet LLC (guardianjet.com), the Guilford, Connecticut-based business aviation consulting and brokerage firm. In his new position, Sasha will lead many of Guardian Jets efforts to identify new business opportunities and build relationships with business aviation clients and aircraft brokers. Additionally, he will lead the companys market research function, support all major business jet transactions and maintain specifications on all aircraft for sale or lease. Don Dwyer, Managing Partner of Guardian Jet LLC, expressed enthusiasm for Khounanis appointment and his potential role with the company. "Sasha is a consummate aviation professional, someone who lives and breathes this industry and everything that it stands for, Dywer said. Hes going to make a major contribution in our efforts to build an ever greater business at Guardian Jet. Prior to joining Guardian Jet, Khounani spent several years in international finance and sales and marketing for The Boeing Company. Beginning as an intern at Boeing before being accepted in the companys prestigious fast-track program for promising young executives, Khounani soon gained significant experience appraising, estimating and pricing, and marketing commercial aircraft and military weapons systems. He also handled contract negotiations for many of Boeings international sales programs. From his late teens onward, Khounani spent many years working in his familys luxury automobile sales business, where he marketed such high-end brands as Porsche, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati, Bentley, Rolls Royce, Audi, Mercedes and BMW. Khounani earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Aviation Business Administration from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona. He is a private pilot, with experience flying a variety of small aircraft, as well as Citation jets. The two things that get me excited about marketing and selling business jets are the products and the clients, Khounani says about his new position. In a niche industry like business aviation, our clients are highly successful individualsas well as corporationsand I enjoy learning from their unique experiences. About Guardian Jet LLC Founded in 2002, Guardian Jet offers business aviation brokerage, consulting and oversight services for thousands of clients worldwide. The company distinguishes itself with its focus on integrity and industry expertise, and by consistently providing business value to clients. Guardian Jets core mission is to earn the right to buy and sell aircraft on behalf of its clientele by providing great consulting advice, market intelligence and flawless execution. For more information, visit guardianjet.com. Tuscany and Piedmont Wine Tour October 8-14, 2017 Weve been providing luxury private wine tours to Italy for the last ten years. We feel the time is right to open up exclusive small group offerings to Italy. French Wine Explorers announces a new small group wine tour to Italy to compliment their award-winning wine programs in France. French Wine Explorers has been designing once-in-a-lifetime, luxury wine tours to France since 2000. They are now turning their expertise to small group wine tourism to Italy. Their new program, Treasures of Tuscany and Piedmont, will debut in the fall of 2017: October 8th-14th and is limited to 12 guests. This is the ideal tour for the wine lover who wants to discover the two most iconic wine regions in Italy. Weve been providing luxury private wine tours to Italy for the last ten years, explains Pascale Bernasse, President of French Wine Explorers. We feel the time is right to open up exclusive small group offerings to Italy. Participants will arrive in Tuscany and check into The Hotel Palazzo San Lorenzo. The four-starred hotel is set in the medieval town of Colle Val dElsa. This will be their home for the next four days. Guests will taste iconic wines such as Brunello di Montalcino and Vino Nobile di Montepulciano. Also they will experience gourmet meals perfectly paired with wines from the region, including a special wine tasting lunch at Ornellaia, one of the most famous Super Tuscans of the region. The tour moves next to Piedmont. This region is best known for its prize-winning wines such as Barolo and Barbarescoboth of which will be tasted on the tour. Here guests stay at the Villa dAmelia. The luxury boutique hotel is a late 19th century country house that boasts spectacular vistas, along with a gourmet restaurant offering great food and wine. On the last full day of touring, guests will take part in a special cooking class and lunch with a local chef. To cap off this stunning tour, French Wine Explorers has arranged for a gala dinner at a Michelin 3* restaurant, Piazza Duomo in Alba. The tour will be hosted by an English-speaking wine expert and a local wine expert guide. The tour includes five lunches with premium wine, and four gastronomic wine dinners. French Wine Explorers is recognized as a leader in the boutique wine tour industry. Bernasse offers tours that are exclusively designed to help wine lovers become connoisseurs. Conde Nast has awarded her the coveted title of Top Travel Specialist since 2011. Publications such as Travel + Leisure, Wine Enthusiast, and Gourmet Traveler have all highlighted Bernasses travel expertise. To find out more about Treasures of Tuscany and Piedmont or other small group or private programs offered by French Wine Explorers, visit their website at http://www.wine-tours-france.com, email info(at)wine-tours-france.com, or call 1-877-261-1500. Chic Retreats provides a new marketing channel for small accommodation providers These are the places and the people that travelers search for; the ones locals know. Little Hotelier, the all-in-one business solution for bed & breakfasts, guesthouses and small hotels, today announces it has partnered with Chic Retreats to provide a new marketing channel for small, charming boutique accommodation providers to attract travelers that crave an authentic local experience. Chic Retreats specializes in boutique hotels, villas, guesthouses, bed & breakfasts and restaurants with rooms mostly independently-owned and with a high level of personalized service. The niche booking website combines advanced technology with sophisticated digital marketing to maximize booking opportunities for its small property clients and to bring their stories to life for discerning guests. Todays partnership sees Chic Retreats join 350 other marketing channels that connect directly into Little Hoteliers combined front desk, direct booking and distribution system to provide small accommodation providers with global visibility and reach. Chic Retreats CEO, Amir Azulay, says, Chic Retreats is the discerning travelers connection to unique small hotels that deserve attention, to knowledgeable hosts and their captivating stories. These are the places and the people that travelers search for; the ones locals know. We are very excited to be working with Little Hotelier in our joint quest to provide smaller boutique properties with the technology and tools they need to operate more efficiently and be discovered online. A 2017 trend report by National Geographic confirms that small has never been bigger and so, too, is the demand for family-owned properties. Nicolay Alexiev, product manager for Little Hotelier, says, There has never been a more exciting time to service small accommodation providers who lead the hospitality industry in providing a most genuine, memorable guest experience for the worlds discerning travelers. Little Hotelier is thrilled to provide yet another marketing channel for small properties to stand out from the crowd and to showcase the very best they have to offer. ABOUT LITTLE HOTELIER Little Hotelier, powered by the leading cloud platform for hotels, SiteMinder, is an all-in-one hotel business solution for small accommodation businesses including bed and breakfasts, guesthouses and motels. Little Hotelier is specifically designed to empower small hotel owners, through best-of-breed cloud technology that allows those hoteliers to compete online with industry giants and on a global scale. Local support and implementation is also at the core of the Little Hotelier solution with offices in Bangkok, Cape Town, Dallas, Galway, London and Sydney. For more information, visit http://www.littlehotelier.com. ABOUT CHIC RETREATS Chic Retreats strives to be the most effective online marketplace at matching small, charming boutique hotels with discerning travelers who want to stay in places that are labors of love, that deliver immersive local experiences with a sense of place. We celebrate authenticity seeking out the genuine places that truly deserve attention. Our passion for travel is infectious, we lead guests to places they never dreamed of, to secret locations only locals know. Our head office is in London. UK travelers are our biggest customer group but we appeal to a broad English-speaking base. We feature properties globally but our current focus is increasing Chic properties within the UK, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Croatia, Morocco and South Africa. For more information, visit http://www.chicretreats.com. To join Chic Retreats, please apply at http://partner.chicretreats.com. Attorney Timothy J. Richardson I see my job as being the last person who can save an innocent person from going to prison. Criminal defense attorney Timothy J. Richardson, founder of The Law Offices of Timothy J. Richardson, is celebrating his twentieth anniversary practicing law, having reached 3,000 cases served. I think criminal defense has always intrigued me. When I was a kid and saw Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird, I saw him as a true hero, a man of honor. I think to some degree that influenced me, said Richardson, a 1999 Outstanding Trial Lawyer recipient presented by Consumer Attorneys of San Diego. I see my job as being the last person who can save an innocent person from going to prison. In the case where Richardson received the Outstanding Trial Lawyer award (Case no. SCD137667) his client was innocent. He was charged with a home invasion robbery but he was innocent and I knew the evidence would prove it, said Richardson. He was looking at over 10 years in prison. His brother was also charged but because he was 17 years old, he was charged in juvenile court. He was given a public defender, convicted and sent to juvenile hall. Richardson continued, I was successful in getting a not guilty verdict for my client. Afterwards, I filed a habeas corpus petition and got the younger brothers trial reversed. The District Attorney looked at the evidence and agreed that both boys were innocent. They agreed to drop the charges against the juvenile brother. My client was able to spend Christmas with his mother, who died three months later, added Richardson. Stories like that keep me going. Im thankful that I can make an impact on others lives. Richardson served as Board of Director for the San Diego County Bar Association from 2007 to 2010, and also served as its Vice President in 2009 and Treasurer in 2008. Richardson graduated from the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, cum laude. When I started my own practice a year after graduation, my son was 5 years old. Today he is 25 and in his last semester of law school, noted Richardson. I feel proud that he was influenced by my love for this profession so much that he wants to be a lawyer as well. This man saved my life four years ago, said client Emmanuel D. Tim really put me at ease through what was the most stressful time of my life. I had never had any legal issues and I was facing two felony charges that would have put an abrupt stop to a 10+ year career in the military. The secret to Richardsons success and longevity is staying on top of the law. Each day he reads the new cases that were decided the previous day, frequently spending Saturday mornings catching up on his reading. Furthermore, all criminal cases begin with pre-investigation, and Richardson has his own investigators to find the flaws in the prosecutors case. Being a criminal defense trial lawyer is a part of me; its my identity and never really felt like a job, concluded Richardson. Its a privilege to appear in court on behalf of my client and argue on his or her behalf. It really has been an honor to be in this profession. About Timothy J. Richardson, The Law Offices of Timothy J. Richardson Timothy J. Richardson focuses his practice on criminal defense. He has tried over 75 cases before a jury and successfully litigated hundreds of pre-trial motions, many of which have resulted in dismissal before trial. All cases at The Law Offices of Timothy J. Richardson are handled directly by Mr. Richardson, which ensures that no evidence is overlooked. For more information, please call 619-231-6577, or visit http://www.criminaldefenseinsandiego.com. The law office is located at 401 B Street, Suite 2215, San Diego, CA 92101. About the NALA The NALA offers small and medium-sized businesses effective ways to reach customers through new media. As a single-agency source, the NALA helps businesses flourish in their local community. The NALAs mission is to promote a business relevant and newsworthy events and achievements, both online and through traditional media. For media inquiries, please call 805.650.6121, ext. 361. MASON CITY | A Mason City man has been ordered to spend up to five years in prison for felony possession of marijuana with intent to deliver. Aaron L. Nixon, 31, pleaded guilty to that charge this week in Cerro Gordo County District Court. A $750 fine was suspended, but he was ordered to pay a $125 surcharge and court costs. Nixon was arrested on Dec. 27 after law enforcement served a search warrant at his residence. He was found to be in possession of a large amount of suspected marijuana along with small plastic bags and digital scales, according to court documents. Nixon is to serve his sentence for that offense concurrently with another five-year sentence after having his probation revoked on a 2015 conviction of marijuana possession with intent to deliver. Nixon attended the Cerro Gordo County Drug Court program as a condition of his probation. He graduated from the program in October 2016 and was placed on regular probation. Mary Pieper (Editors Note: It is the policy of the Globe Gazette and the Press-News to not publish the names of sexual assault victims, in order to protect the victim and their family. In this article, we refer to our victim as "Ann.") NORTH IOWA | To have a voice. To share the pain. To have a chance to heal. For one North Iowa sexual assault victim, this is an opportunity to tell her story, and for once, to be heard. I want people to know my story and know I matter, Ann said. What happened to me matters, and it happens all too much. Ann, a North Iowa resident, is in her early 30s, has children and is enrolled in college full-time. After several years of not being able to have any interests of her own, she decided it was time to finish her degree and to do something that makes myself happy, she said. Anns sexual assault occurred in the summer of 2015. However, the abuse started much earlier. For many years, I did not have a voice, she said. I was abused sexually, physically, emotionally, verbally and economically, by the same person. People can wear a mask well and lure you in before you even know what hit you. Ann has a long history of repeated trauma with the same man and sadly, the abuse is still ongoing in certain aspects. In 2015, Ann said her assault was violent and disturbing. The same man sexually assaulted me again eight months later, while I was pregnant, Ann said. The experiences I endured were horrific and I dont wish it on anyone, not even my abuser. This man stole everything good about me. He ripped it right out of me and stomped it to the ground till nothing was left. When Ann was finally able to escape her abuser, her first plan of action was to get into a safe environment, which she did. She was then able to report some of the abuse. No one knew about the sexual assaults until I managed to deal with it mentally, and until I felt it was safe enough to come forward, Ann said. This man had tried to kill me twice, and at that point, I didnt dare come forward. Knowing what he was capable of, Ann cut off all ties to him, changed phone numbers and accounts, and even had a protective order put in place against him. Ann said she has good days and bad days. She has lots of nightmares and flashbacks. She triple locks her doors. She is constantly looking over her shoulder. Little things taken for granted, like swimming and washing hair, are a struggle for Ann. I end up gasping for air, she said. I guess its understandable after having someone attempt to drown me, but I wish it wasnt a problem. I have reported the assaults, but its still an ongoing battle, she said. I live in fear every day, and I stay at home a lot because he continues to follow me, no matter where I go. Ann said if she sees someone who resembles her abuser or she smells a scent related to him, she freezes dead in my tracks. I literally get crippled with fear. To help with her recovery, Ann said she does a lot of therapy. She works with three different organizations to try to make sense of what happened to me. I have come across some amazing ladies who have helped me to start healing, she said. They threw me a lifeline when I desperately needed it. I will forever be grateful to them for helping me discover my voice. Ann said she write a lot, as a way to vent and to say what she needs to say without anyone ever reading it. I have written things, read them aloud and then ripped them up, she said. I get to say what I need to say instead of being angry. Ann said her children also help keep her going. I try to look at the world through their perspective, she said. Innocence is something that was robbed from me, but they still have it. To look at things the way they do is indescribable. She said she is still trying to figure out what she wants out of life and how to get it. I want to heal too fast and forget it happened, which isnt working out, Ann said. I have learned you cant feel joy and happiness without feeling the pain and sadness. Being able to forgive and forget is very hard for me. Some people just dont deserve any kind of forgiveness. When it comes to her friends and family, Ann said when you experience something traumatic, they do as well. They might not have lived it first-hand, but hearing the gory details make it seem like they have experienced it as well. She said she had multiple loved ones get upset when they finally heard everything. Ann said she was asked several times why she didnt tell them or ask for help. I was hurt, at first, but I see the big picture now, she said. I think some of them feel like they failed me because they couldnt protect me. It was my bad situation, and I had to handle it without letting it hurt them. Ann said she thinks they are in a better place now she and those close to her have discussed everything. We are starting to get back to where we used to be, before it happened. I am glad I still have them in my life and I didnt lose them through all this. Her advice to a victim of sexual assault: Its not your fault. You didnt deserve what happened to you. Nothing you could have done could have changed what happened. In regards to the attacker, We have no control over what others do. If a person decided they are going to assault someone, they will. Making it through your experience makes you a survivor. If they couldnt take that away from you, there is still hope. Ann gave some advice for friends and relatives of a sexual assault victim: Dont tell them what to do. Dont pressure then into doing anything they are not ready to do. Give them a safe place to stay and a shoulder to cry on. Dont speak; just listen. Be understanding, not judgmental. What does the future hold for Ann? Im not certain I would make a good advocate for other sexual assault victims, she said. I think I would get too emotionally invested in my clients and it would break my heart if something bad happened to them. Regardless of whether I become an advocate, I still want to make a difference and help others in any way that I can. Ann said she is slowly picking up the pieces of a shattered existence. I have still have no clue who I am, she said. After all I have been through, I still have a good head on my shoulders. I am still a caring person. I am still optimistic and this something he will never take from me. It might hurt for now, but it cant rain forever. There is always sunshine after the storm. Welcome Guest! You Are Here: Home Regional News East News World news German Application for Nord Stream 2 Available for Public Consultation after Easter Nord Stream 2 AGs Swedish permit application was also sent out on public referral by the Swedish Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation AUTHOR: publics.bg nord-stream2.com The application documents for the construction and operation of the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline in the 85 km-long German segment will be available for public consultation at several locations in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania starting from April 18, 2017. According to a press release by the company for the construction of Nord Stream 2 the full documentation will be accessible for review and comments by the general public until May 17, 2017 in the offices of the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH) in Hamburg and Rostock, the Stralsund Mining Authority, and the administrative offices of Bergen auf Rugen, Lubmin, Monchgut-Granitz, Usedom-Nord, Anklam-Land and the city of Putbus. The availability of the documents for public review marks the start of the public consultation phase, which is a key component of the permitting process for the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline, said Jens Lange, Permitting Manager Germany at Nord Stream 2 AG. Our plans build on the extensive experience and significant monitoring results gathered with the existing Nord Stream project. The results of the extensive environmental surveys and planning are an important part of the 6,000-page application materials. These documents include a general proposal, an assessment of alternatives, a technical explanatory report, an environmental impact analysis, a flora-fauna-habitat impact study, a legal biotope protection assessment, an expert paper on species protection regulation, an accompanying conservation plan and expert papers on the Water and Marine Strategy Directives, as well as documentation volumes and application papers. Nord Stream 2 AGs Swedish permit application was also sent out on public referral by the Swedish Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation. The public referral pertains to Nord Stream 2s planned offshore pipeline system on the Swedish continental shelf outside Swedish territorial waters in the Swedish Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). The route will stretch for approximately 510 km in Swedish EEZ and run broadly parallel to the existing Nord Stream pipelines. It will be available for public referral until June 2017. This article is part of an ongoing series profiling participants in the PubTechConnect conference, presented on April 20, 2017 by PW and the NYU School of Professional Studies Center for Publishing. The conference is fast approaching and there have been a few late additions to the stellar lineup of presenters sharing new and disruptive business ideas from the tech industry. Rounding out the Reaching Your Next Audience panel is Otis Chandler, the founder and CEO of Goodreads, the leading book-centered social network. Goodreads has been a titanic force in the book business, enabling far-flung readers to rate, review, and discuss books, creating communities of readers all over the world. Amazon bought the company in 2013. Chandler works at the exact intersection of books and tech. At PubTechConnect, hell share his strategies for building a highly engaged audience around shared passions. Two amazing innovators have joined our breakout session entitled Heres My Platform - Use It Well: Marcelle Hopkins and Max Linsky. Hopkins has an amazing job at the New York Times: shes executive producer for 360 News. Whats that mean? Yup, thats right, shes in charge of the Times 360 degree video initiatives, including the Daily 360, a first-of-its-kind project that delivers immersive videos from Times journalists every day. Shell discuss this emerging platform at the conference. Max Linsky, co-founder of Pineapple Street Media, has taken the podcast to new heights. His company most recently produced the runaway success Missing Richard Simmons as well as Women of the Hour with Lena Dunham. Linksky served as Hillary Clintons co-host on her campaign podcast. At the conference, hell discuss the changing podcast medium. Tara Brannigan is the head of marketing for Book by Cadillac. With Book, a luxury car subscription service, Cadillac offering an even newer twist on a new-ish idea: on-demand car rental. Book subscribers can reserve a Cadillac through the Book smartphone app and then pick up their car right away. So far, the program is active in the New York metro area, but more markets are coming. Brannigan has plenty of experience reinventing well-known brands: before joining Cadillac, she was at American Express, where she worked on Bluebird, the digitally-driven banking alternative. At PubTech Connect, Brannigan will join the panel Electrifying Legacy Brands: The Future Is Now, which will be moderated by Moira Forbes, another recent addition to the lineup. Forbes is executive vice president of Forbes Media, where she oversees new business initiatives and branding for Forbes worldwide events. She is also the President of ForbesWomen, a website and live events portfolio that delves into the experiences of professionally successful women. Learn more about the conference and buy tickets here. Bill O'Reilly and co-author Martin Dugard debuted at #4 on PWs Religion Nonfiction List with the newly-released paperback edition of Killing Jesus: A History, which has sold 1.5 million copies in its original hardcover format since it was first published in 2013. The book lands amid a growing controversy about allegations of sexual harassment by the Fox News TV host, and is being promoted on OReillys website as an Easter gift option. Rachel Macy Stafford took #6 with her latest, Only Love Today, which urges readers to set aside the worlds distractions and put love at the top of their to-do list, according to PWs review. Marketing and publicity for the book, which was released in time for Mothers Day shopping, included a pre-order campaign that offered free bonus materials, a mini-film series about the book on YouTube, and coverage in Real Simple magazine as well as on Arianna Huffingtons website, Thrive Global. Rob Drehers The Benedict Option, a guide for Christians living in a post-Christian nation, according to the subtitle, came in at #7. Penguin Random Houses Sentinel imprint oversaw a national media campaign for the book that included coverage in The New York Times, Huffington Post, Washington Post, and Religion News Service, as well as in conservative and Christian media. The book was also promoted on Dreher's blog, The American Conservative, and on Twitter, where he has over 15,000 followers. On the Religion Fiction List, the 2008 edition of The Shack by Wm. Paul Young maintained the #1 position amid its successful big screen adaptation, while the book tie-in took #2. Eve, Young's 2015 retelling of the creation, followed at #9. Both the Religion Fiction and Nonfiction Lists are based on print unit sales as tracked by NPD BookScan. Jens Christian Grondahl, trans. from the Danish by the author. Twelve, $23 (176p) ISBN 978-1-4555-7007-2 In Danish novelist Grondahls stunning latest, a recently widowed 70-year-old woman reexamines her life and past decisions with sagacity and aplomb. The novel is written in the form of a letter from Ellinor to her long-deceased best friend, Anna, whose husband Ellinor married after Anna died. In it, Ellinor shares her feelings about their close-knit bond, the challenge of taking Annas place after her death as a mother to her twin boys, growing accustomed to being Georgs new wife, and the decision to sell the house after he died. Some of Ellinors complaints are par for the course; the boys are miffed she got a new apartment so quickly after Georgs death, for example. But a number of weightier matters are also addressed, including Ellinors botched abortion and Annas secret affair with Ellinors first husband, Henning, just before she died. Toward the second half of the book, parallel narratives seamlessly emerge that add depth and an extra layer of sorrow to Ellinors story, including the truth about her absentee fatherthe German soldier her mother fell in love with during World War IIand details about her ill-matched relationship with Henning. Despite the books gloomy subject matter, Ellinor comes off like a beacon of strength with a firm grasp on reality. Plus, Grondahl has full command over his proseits more frank than maudlin. What results is a compassionate and often edifying commentary on the elasticity of love, the strength it takes to move forward after a death, and the power of forgiveness. We need the arts now more than ever, said Paris Review editor Lorin Stein. And these days I want the unexpected, the new, the next. With the U.S. government planning to cut funds to the arts and humanities, the Paris Review sticks with a fundraising tradition it's had since the magazine's beginning in the early 1950sthe annual Revel. This spring's galawhich drew more than 500 peopletook place Tuesday evening, April 4, at Cipriani 42nd St. Standing on a stage between columns bathed in red light, Stein hosted the event. An image of the hadadaan American eagle holding a pen and wearing a Phrygian cap, which adorned the covers of the Paris Review magazinewas cast on the wall to his right. Underwood manual typewriters served as centerpieces for the dining tables, with carnations sprouting from the carriages. Yiyun Li (Kinder than Solitude) presented the Plimpton Prize for Fictionwhich recognizes new voices and carries an award of $10,000to Alexia Arthurs, for her short story Bad Behavior. The Terry Southern Prize for Humor (a $5,000 award) went to Vanessa Davis (Spaniel Rage), who wrote an eight-part illustrated column, "Summer Hours" and "Autumn Hours," for the Paris Review Daily; director and screenwriter Todd Solondz presented the award. Topping off the ceremony, poet and critic Edward Hirsch (Gabriel: A Poem) presented the Hadada Awardwhich is given to a distinguished member of the writing communityto poet and translator Richard Howard, who served as the Paris Review poetry editor from 1992 to 2005. In attendance were Mona Simpson, Jeffrey Eugenides, Zadie Smith, Nick Laird, Emma Cline, Gabriella Hearst, Lucas Zwirner, Griffin Dunne, Walter Mosley, Gay Talese, Rebecca Hall, Grace Schulman, Antonio Weiss, Akhil Sharma, Lewis Lapham, Timothy Donnelly, and David Salle. Susannah Hunnewell, publisher of the Paris Review, said in her opening remarks that this will be an evening of weeping, thanking, and bragging. Earlier that day the Paris Review was nominated for two Webby Awards, for best cultural blog and best mobile site. Hunnewell also remembered Robert Silvers, who died in March. He was the longtime editor of the New York Review of Books, and served as the managing editor of the Paris Review from 1954 to 1956. Penguin Random House (PRH) has signed an agreement with Grupo Zeta to acquire Barcelona-based Spanish-language trade publisher Ediciones B. The agreement was announced yesterday by Antonio Asensio Mosbah, president of the Zeta Group, and by Markus Dohle, CEO of Penguin Random House. The purchase price has been reported in the Spanish media to be 40 million euros. Ediciones B was founded in 1987 and publishes a full range of adult and children's titles across numerous imprints. It has subsidiary operations in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Uruguay and Venezuela. PRH's Markus Dohle said: "With the acquisition of the highly regarded publishing house Ediciones B, we further expand and grow in the strategically important Spanish-speaking markets, and we build upon our commitment to providing our authors with outstanding publishing resources and maximum reach." This is the second significant Spainish acquisition by PRH, which acquired the assets of Spanish publisher Santillana three years ago. With this week's purchase, PRH expects to publish as many as 2,000 Spanish-language titles per year across the globe. Earlier this week, representatives of Ediciones B were participating in the Bologna International Children's Book Fair, where Catalonia was the Guest of Honor. Asked then about the rumors of the acquisition by PW, Ediciones B's editorial director Berta Noy Falco declined to comment. Grupo Zeta announced last year that it was struggling to service debt and was looking raise 25 million euros; this week's sale of Ediciones B is likely a direct result of Grupo Zeta's need to raise further capital. ALGONA | Edna Hanselman, 100, of Algona formerly of LuVerne, died Wednesday April 5, 2017, at the Kossuth Regional Health Center in Algona. Funeral services will be held at 10 a.m. on Saturday April, 8, at Trinity Lutheran Church in Algona with the Rev. Eric Haun officiating. Burial will take place at LuVerne Cemetery in LuVerne. Visitation will be held on Saturday from 9 a.m. until the time of the services at Trinity Lutheran Church in Algona. Lentz Funeral Home, Algona. America in 2017 is a house divided, and this seasons art and photography titles reflect a level of political outrageand activismnot seen for decades. Using the image as a form of public address, these books offer running commentary on income inequality, unrest over the killing of unarmed African-Americans by police, outrage at sexual assault on college campuses and the targeted harassment of women on Twitter, and on the election of a highly polarizing president. A few entries offer historical lessons from the graveyard of revolutionary dreams: propaganda art from the Soviet Union, Maos China, and other socialist utopias of the 20th century. Weve seen a tremendous increase in interest in all our bookson black politics, feminism, immigration, international politics, the working class, everything, says Julie Fain, an editor at Haymarket Books, whose website describes it as a radical publisher. Weve sold over 40,000 copies of Angela Daviss Freedom Is a Constant Struggle and 25,000 copies of Keeanga Taylors From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation in the past year, far exceeding our expectations. I think the hunger for books dealing with movements around race and gender extends to all categories, even ones that arent traditionally political, including photography books. Daniel Power, CEO of PowerHouse Books, attributes spiking interest in social-justice titles to the anti-Trump backlash, specifically among LGBTQ and feminist readers. Were seeing some big-scale projectsa mind-blowing one from the artist iO Tillett Wright, [which] were doing next year, comes to mind, of 10,000 portraits of LGBT folk from all 50 statesin addition to a few projects pitched recently on the Womens March, and the amazing signage from it, Power says. As this new administration continues with the dismantling of the Great Society programs, well see more of these projects coming forth. Lia Ronnen, publisher and editorial director at Artisan Books, thinks visual titles are well suited to capturing history in a hurry. Feminism, empowerment, and womens rights will be strong themes in 2017, she expects, and the power of photography to convey that message is huge. She adds, In the Company of Women, a collection of photographs and interviews with creative women business owners that we published six months ago, was a standout on holiday tables and continues to sell strongly. Here we discuss new and upcoming titles whose images of injustice and inequality, and of the protests, propaganda, and politically minded art that this injustice and inequality have inspired, exhort readers to engage with the issues of our timesand to heed the lessons of revolutions past. At the Barricades Infuriated by the election of a man who dismissed Hillary Clinton as a nasty woman and boasted, on tape, about groping women against their will, millions took to the streets in protest on January 21. Why We March (Artisan, out now) collects 500 thought-provoking placards wielded at marches around the nation and overseas. Nastiness is a theme: one sign has a drawing of a peel-and-stick name tag that reads, Hello, Im nastier than ever. So are allusions to Donald Trumps notorious brag that when youre a star, you can grab em anywhere: This pussy grabs back, reads another. There are borscht belt one-liners (Trump eats pizza with a fork) and zingers aimed at the GOPs anti-choice agenda (Elephant in the womb). Best in show: We shall overcomb. All royalties go to Planned Parenthood. Dictatorships are tragic farces, and authoritarian types are notoriously humorless. In Belarus, in 2011, crowds mocked the despotic President Alexander Lukashenko with waves of ironic applause; disloyal clappers were promptly rounded up, a one-armed man among them. Such absurdities are a gift to political subversives, as Street Spirit (Michael OMara, May) by Steve Crawshaw, director of the Office of the Secretary General at Amnesty International, makes clear. A book of photos accompanied by brief essays, Street Spirit freeze frames 50 history-making moments when activists challenged brute power with Groucho Marxist wit. Crawshaw quotes the Saudi comedian-turned-activist Fahad Albutairi: If you want to tell people the truth, make them laughotherwise theyll kill you. Comrades in Arms Earnest to a fault, subtle as a flying mallet, the angry graphics in See Red Womens Workshop (Four Corners, out now), by members of the eponymous guerrilla-art collective, are undeniably effective. Founded in London in 1974 and disbanded in 1990, the group cranked out a blizzard of silk-screened posters whose cartoony drawings and cut-the-crap slogans took aim at sexist advertising, stereotypical gender roles, antiabortion legislation, and lesbian bashing. They mustve been doing something right: the far-right National Front trashed their workshop. A bobby half-heartedly investigating the vandalism blandly inquired whether they printed any kind of controversial leaflets that people might object to. Too easily caricatured as a folk artistthe Grandma Moses of Manhattan, if Grandma Moses had joined the Young Communist League, fought fascists in Spain, and palled around with Pete Seegerself-taught painter Ralph Fasanella (19141997) was conversant in 19th-century political theory and had an in-depth knowledge of all the French Impressionists, writes his son Marc, an art professor, in Ralph Fasanella (Pomegranate, Sept.), a monograph coauthored by art historian Leslie Umberger. In brash, brightly colored paintings informed by van Gogh and Diego Rivera, Fasanella lifted his voice against McCarthyism, wage slavery, and racism. In some canvases, he dreamed of a better world. Unsurprisingly, his version of the workers paradise looks a lot like a boisterous Italian-American family crowded around a well-laid table. Released in the centenary year of the Russian Revolution, Revoliutsiia! Demonstratsiia! Soviet Art Put to the Test (Art Institute of Chicago, July), edited by Matthew S. Witkovsky and Devin Fore, evokes the revolutionary fervor of another historical moment, when art and agitprop were one. On the cover of a book titled Stories About Lenins Death, a photo of Lenins death mask is given the constructivist treatment. The jazzy, syncopated suprematist art of Malevich and El Lissitzky reverberates with the dynamism of the machine age, and the streamlined Pravda building, as envisioned in the 1920s by architect Aleksei Shchusev, looks like the prow of an art deco spaceship, en route to some socialist utopia. Communist Posters (Reaktion, May) collects the poster art of Cuba, China, Mongolia, North Korea, the Soviet Union, Vietnam, and Eastern Europe. Edited by art historian Mary Ginsberg, this encyclopedic study puts to rest the notion that communist propaganda art consists of nothing but kitschy images of apple-cheeked proletarians. Inspired by French painting styles, folk art, Constructivism, Socialist Realism, and even American comic strips, Vietnamese revolutionary posters never cease to surprise, writes Sherry Buchanan in one of the accompanying essays. Cuban propaganda posters are as endlessly inventive as Cuban music, and the Polish poster school of the late 1950s draws on surrealism and Victorian engravings. Commenting on a Maoist poster, Red Loudspeakers Are Sounding Through Every Home, Ginsberg quotes its textLoudspeakers are attached to the villages PA system, so this family can enjoy the political songs, slogans, and lectures broadcasted all daythen drily notes, What they cant do is turn them off. Race, Rage, and Redemption Issued in a limited run of 1,963 copies, Taschens new edition of The Fire Next Time (May) counterpoints James Baldwins explosive essays on the race problem, as it was euphemistically called in 1963, with photojournalist Steve Schapiros closely observed images from the civil rights struggle, shot on assignment for Life and published here for the first time. Last years critically acclaimed documentary about Baldwin, I Am Not Your Negro, has rekindled interest in the novelist and essayist, and Taschens new edition of his influential text will introduce the Black Lives Matter generation to his eloquent yet gut-punchingly-direct writings on race. Schapiros photossegregationists waving Confederate flags, the bullet holes in Fannie Lou Hamers front doorare a full-throated response to the call of Baldwins sermon. In A Beautiful Ghetto (Haymarket, June), Devin Allen, an African-American photographer who grew up in Baltimore, bears witness to the uprising ignited by Freddie Grays death in police custodyuprising, not riots, as Allen insists in one of the brief, diaristic musings that accompany his images, because to focus on the riots is to ignore the larger picture. Baltimore saw something that so many cities are going through right now: unrest, riots, protesting, Allen writes. All these different aspects are ways to get our voices heard. But in the eyes of many, its negativity. The photos in A Beautiful Ghetto are intended, he asserts, to show you the beauty of our struggle, what we face every day, but we always thrive and find ways out. In stark black and white, Allen confronts readers with the blight and impoverishment to be found an hour from the nations capitalgutted buildings, the blackened carcass of a burned-out car. Even so, the bulletproof spirit of Allens beautiful ghetto shines through in such portraits as that of a dauntless little girl sticking out her tongue at us and that of a female protester in short shorts and a crop top brandishing a sign that reads, The rise of the woman = the rise of the nation. Kerry James Marshall (Phaidon, June) is the skeleton key to the multifaceted artists work and thought. Marshall was the subject of a recent blockbuster retrospective at New Yorks Met Breuer museum that won critical hosannas and drew shoulder-to-shoulder crowds. As Charles Gainess interview and Greg Tates and Laurence Rassels essays make clear, Marshall is as sharply self-analytical as he is profoundly thoughtful about race, art, and American history. Hes also prodigiously talented, equally at ease in figurative painting, Romare Beardenlike cut-paper collages, photography, and even the comic-book medium. But its his acrylic portraits that mesmerize: stunning images of black people framed by riotous colors or, even more dramatically, all but swallowed up in darkness. Tate sees visual echoes of Velazquez and Hans Holbein in Marshalls tableaux of black barbershops and beauty parlors, images that exalt black life by employing the conventions of classical art even as they question the Western canon. Trigger Warning Shot by Kathy Shorr (PowerHouse, Apr.) is probably the only photography book youll ever read that has an afterword by a trauma surgeon. Shorr, a photographer whose work crosses penetrating portraiture with a rage for justice, forces the reader to look long and hard at 101 survivors of gun violence. Ranging from ages eight to 80 and photographed at the scenes of their shootings, they testify, with their wheelchairs, their prosthetic limbs, their scars running like grotesque zippers from sternum to navel, against the everyday lunacy of a land with the highest rate of gun violence of any other high-income country in the world, as the surgeon notes. Mostly, though, its their eyes that indict. How the Other Half Lives The color-saturated portraits of the superrich and their domestics in Generation Wealth (Phaidon, May) embody the aspirational fantasies of the 99%. In photographer Lauren Greenfields travelogue of our new Gilded Age, we meet Tamara Ecclestone, 28, who, Greenfield writes, tapped her trust fund to buy a $70-million mansion, which she tricked out with a $1.5 million rock-crystal bathtub, among other indulgences. German businessmen celebrate the purchase of an Alaskan oil field at an Abu Dhabi club called Plastik, which describes itself as exclusively for the filthy rich and aesthetically perfect. But we also meet a Filipino nanny who lives in a playhouse built for the ultrarich twins she cares forthey lost interest in itand a homeless woman sporting a flawless knockoff of a Louis Vuitton handbag. True to its title, Autopsy of America (Carpet Bombing Culture, June) is a postmortem of the heartland. Trespassing in the ruins of the American dream, photojournalist Seph Lawless uses eerie, unsettling images of foreclosed homes, decaying factories, and ghost malls, their mannequins posing for no one, to counterpoint his sardonic ruminations on the devastation wrought by the decline of heavy manufacturing and the offshoring of American jobs. This is the postrecession rust belt, where working-class dreams have soured and the buildings are left as rotting memorials to times of stability and economic growth, writes journalist Michael Goldfarb in his accompanying essay. The smoldering sense of abandonment kindles an anarchic, cynical anger among even young people, he notes. Lawless, he recalls, told him early on that Trump had a shot at winning. He was right. Mark Dery is a cultural critic and the author, most recently, of the essay collection I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts (Univ. of Minnesota, 2012). He is writing a biography of Edward Gorey for Little, Brown. Below, more on the subject of art and photography books. Library Love: Art & Photography 2017 A boomlet of spring art and photography books about libraries coincides, serendipitously, with National Library Week. MASON CITY | Kathleen Margaret Boots, 73, of Mason City, died Saturday, April 5, 2017, at the Muse-Norris Hospice Inpatient Unit. Funeral services will be held 12 p.m. Monday, April 10, at Major Erickson Funeral Home, 111 N Pennsylvania Avenue, with the Rev. Kent Mechler and Pastor Scott Davis officiating. Interment will take place in Memorial Park Cemetery, Mason City. Visitation will be held one hour prior to services Monday at Major Erickson Funeral Home. Memorials may be directed to the Kathleen Boots Memorial Fund. Arrangements are with Major Erickson Funeral Home & Crematory, Mason City. Daniel Chetel has been named interim conductor of the Quad City Youth Symphony and Youth Philharmonic starting June 1, through the 2017-18 season, while a national search takes place for the youth ensembles' music director position. After three years, Ben Klemme is leaving the job to become the Vermont Youth Orchestra Associations music director. Dr. Chetel who earned a B.A. from Harvard, master's in music the University of Maryland, and doctorate in orchestral conducting from the University of Kentucky School of Music is the director of orchestral activities at Augustana College. Before joining the Augustana faculty last fall, he served as the director and conductor of the Central Kentucky Youth Orchestras in Lexington, where he led a youth orchestra program including six performing ensembles and three community-based programs serving nearly 400 students from 12 counties and 60 schools. In addition, Dr. Chetel served as the conductor of the University of Kentucky Philharmonic and assistant conductor of the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra. He has led orchestras and opera companies across the U.S. and has traveled to Acarigua, Venezuela, to work with the nationwide Venezuelan Youth Orchestra System, El Sistema. During his time at the Central Kentucky Youth Orchestras, Dr. Chetel developed the program North Limestone MusicWorks, an El Sistema-inspired string training program in the underserved North Limestone neighborhood of Lexington, Ky. COAL VALLEY Village officials have declined an intergovernmental agreement from Moline to provide water system operations and maintenance services. Village administrator Annette Ernst removed the agreement from the agenda during Wednesday night's board meeting, saying it was no longer necessary with the recent hiring of Chad Blunt as the new building inspector. Former building inspector Anthony Fairchild resigned March 1 after five years of service with the village. Public works director Ryan Hamerlinck, who has a Class C water operator's license, has been acting as interim building inspector in addition to interim director of water and sewer operations. Having Mr. Blunt on staff will allow more time for Mr. Hamerlinck to do inspections himself, Ms. Ernst said. The intergovernmental agreement, approved by Moline officials during their April 4 council meeting, would have provided Coal Valley with another licensed water inspector, as required by the Environmental Protection Agency. Before the agreement was removed from the agenda, residents expressed concern over bringing in an outside water inspector. "We do have someone who is a Class C operator, and the only thing we need taken care of is Arrowhead Ranch," Mr. Fairchild said. "I don't think we should by paying out money when we have someone who is classified to run our water systems." Resident Jim Van Quathem also questioned the need for additional support. "As I understand it, we're going to pay somebody from Moline to come out here daily for two hours to test our water? Is that correct?" Mr. Van Quathem said. "Why are they testing our water when they're trying to come in here? We can test our own water." Ms. Ernst explained the village is mandated by the EPA to test for chlorine, fluoride and other contaminants. "At the time, we had an ad in the paper, and no one had applied for it. We needed a special Class B license. At the time, we had two Class C license (employees)." Ms. Ernst said when water and sewer director Stephen Mullen resigned, Hamerlinck took over his responsibilities, in addition to building inspector duties. At that point, Ms. Ernst introduced Mr. Blunt to the trustees, noting he will begin work April 24. "I'm really happy to bring him aboard; he's got a great background. We're really excited about it," Ms. Ernst said. ROCK ISLAND Mike Thoms hasn't found his downtime yet after winning a four-way race for mayor on Tuesday. He's not complaining. Mr. Thoms was on his cell phone Thursday, heading for the second floor offices he shares with his father, Stuart Thoms, at the downtown U.S. Bank building in Rock Island. Mr. Thoms had just met with Ald. Joshua Schipp, 6th Ward, a supporter of unsuccessful mayoral challenger Andy Rowe. Today, he is scheduled to meet with outgoing mayor Dennis Pauley. Mr. Thoms said he is scheduled to take office on May 1. In the coming weeks, he wants to meet with city staff, city council and community members. Mayor is a new title for him. When Thoms Proestler Co., a family-owned food service distributor based in Rock Island, was sold in 2002 to Performance Food Group, Mr. Thoms was TPC's chief operating officer. He served 29 years in the family business. Mr. Thoms hopes some of his contacts can help the city in the future. "I love this city," Mr. Thoms said. "I love the Quad-Cities. My dad, he could have moved to Florida. He's here. It's the family culture I was brought up in. I'm fortunate to have the opportunity (mayor) that I have now. "The community gave to us. Now, I want to give my time back to the community." Mr. Thoms said he wants input, but his managerial style is to be somewhat "hands on." "I may have a tendency to be a little bit more vocal," Mr. Thoms said. "But, I am a big believer that the mayor and the council should not micro-manage the city." Some of his thoughts may differ with those of other council members, something he said can be worked out. One example is interim city manager Randy Tweet. Mr. Thoms said he is a big fan of Mr. Tweet, knows him personally, but would like to see the city conduct some type of search for a city manager. He said Mr. Tweet may indeed be the right person. "I think the citizens would feel better if we looked broad enough to make sure we've got the right person," Mr. Thoms said. "Now, if the council says, 'no' to a search, I'm not going to stand in the way. "I think the city would be in good hands with Randy." On other issues, Mr. Thoms said he wants to see a private developer work on the 11th Street site, the location of the failed Wal-Mart Supercenter. Despite losing Wal-Mart, and the city paying approximately $15 million to buy various businesses and properties in the area, Mr. Thoms said he wants to look ahead. "We (city) do have a community economic development department, but with that size of project, I think it would best be served by a private developer," Mr. Thoms said. As for the downtown, Mr. Thoms said he does not want to see The District's stage removed, but instead improved. Mr. Thoms said he would like to see the city find ways to improve and enhance connectivity in the downtown and other areas of the city, similar to LeClaire, the Village of East Davenport and Galena. He put an emphasis on more retail but said there are other areas the city can't ignore, such as light industrial. While there may not be sales tax dollars, Mr. Thoms said light industrial brings in property tax dollars. He said diversity is one of the city's assets. "How about an ethnic grocery store?" he asked. "Let's be inclusive. "We have to look at all options," Mr. Thoms said. "We have a lot of good things in Rock Island, and we can be stronger." G'day! It's Murray here. I've put together a little quiz to test your musical knowledge. Think you can score top marks in Murray's Magic Music Quiz? Give it a go now! Line GTX A services will operate at up to 180 km/h, linking Ilsan in northwest Gyeonggi-do with Seoul and Dongtan in the southeast of Gyeonggi-do. GTX high-speed services will support long-distance travel within the densely-populated Seoul capital region. While Seoul is already well connected in terms of public transport, commuting to and from surrounding cities can be time-consuming due to the number of stops services make. Implementation of the GTX project has been under discussion for some time, but progress has been slower than expected. The network will comprise three lines: GTX A (Ilsan - Dongtan), GTX B (Songdo - Cheongnyangni), and GTX C (Uijeongbu - Geumjeong). Molit plans to open GTX A in 2023 and the 37.4km section from Ilsan to Samseong will be built privately. With feasibility studies complete, a request for proposals will be issued later this year. A shortlist of candidates will be selected early next year with the aim of starting construction towards the end of 2018. The southern section from Samseong to Dongtan will open in 2021, and is being built by the Korea Rail Network Authority. Much of this route is already in place, as GTX services will share tracks with the SRT high-speed line. GTX A will serve nine stations including Ilsan (Kintex), Daegok, Yeonsinnae, Seoul, Samseong, Suseo, Seongnam, Yongin and Dongta. Once completed, the total length of the line will be 76.9km. Services will operate at an average speed of 116 km/h, three-to-four times faster than a standard metro journey, and will reduce travel time within the Seoul Capital Area significantly. For example, the trip from Kintex to Seoul Station, which currently takes 52 minutes by metro, will be reduced to just 13 minutes with GTX. GTX A is expected to cost Won 3.58 trillion and the line is expected to attract average daily ridership of around 300,000 passengers, eliminating 50,000 car trips from the regions roads by 2025. An extension north from Ilsan to Paju is also being considered. President Trump on April 7 nominated Derek Kan as Under Secretary of Transportation for Policy at the U.S. DOT. If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Kan would be responsible for providing policy guidance as it relates to motor vehicle, air, rail, marine and other forms of transportation. A White House spokesperson said Kan is a highly qualified nominee, and if appointed, would work with Secretary Chao on Trumps agenda to modernize and rebuild the countrys transportation system. Kan is the General Manager for Lyft (a service similar to Uber) in Southern California. He has served on the Board of Amtrak since 2015, for which he was unanimously confirmed by the Senate. Previously, he was Director of Strategy at a startup in Silicon Valley, and also worked as a management consultant at Bain & Company. Earlier in his career, Kan was a policy advisor to Senate Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (who is married to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao) and as an economist for the Senate Republican Policy Committee. Before becoming a Hill staffer, Kan served as a Presidential Management Fellow at the White House Office of Management and Budget. Kan received a B.S. from the University of Southern California, an M.Sc. from the London School of Economics, and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar. He and his wife and three children live in San Gabriel, Calif. Editors note: Railway Age Capitol Hill Contributing Editor Frank N. Wilner points out that a post-PRIIA Amtrak Board statute eliminated the former prohibition on federal employees (other than the DOT Secretary) serving on the Board , and allows an existing Board member to remain on the Board for as long as five years beyond expiration of their term until a successor is confirmed by the Senate. This means Kan may remain on the Amtrak Board indefinitelyso long as Trump does not nominate a successor to himeffectively giving the Transportation Secretary (as Kan would report to Chao) two votes on the 10-member Amtrak Board. Welcome to Railway Gazette. This website uses cookies to improve your experience. By continuing to browse this site you are agreeing to our use of these cookies. You can learn more about the cookies we use here. OK The rationale heard repeatedly in Congress from Minnesota Rep. Jason Lewis and others during the debate over the Republican health reform plan boiled down to this: We should vote for this bill because we made a campaign promise to repeal Obamacare. What Lewis and his party need to grasp, especially in the wake of the GOP plan's recent failure, is that voters' judgments are going to be based far more on pragmatic metrics than political ones. Primarily, did Republicans now controlling Congress help friends, family and neighbors better afford quality care and coverage? In our view, the Republican plan, known as the American Health Care Act (AHCA), would have made health insurance more affordable for some the young and wealthy but with unacceptable trade-offs, such as dramatic premiums increases for older people, the loss of coverage for 24 million people and cuts to long-term care funding. Ongoing Republican arguments for this plan are moot. They don't have the numbers to pass it. Those with an eye toward re-election in 2018 and beyond should see the current situation as an opportunity not a setback. While President Trump has said accurately, if belatedly, that health care is "hard," fixing the Obama health reform law's flaws need not be. There is widespread consensus in health policy circles on what should be done. Those doing political calculations should also factor in that fixing what's in place vs. starting over with something brand-new is an easier sell to voters. That's why the 2010 Obama law has broad support, while polls showed that fewer than 20 percent supported the AHCA. A message from congressional leadership saying that pragmatic fixes are the strategy, even for the short-term, would help stabilize the individual health insurance market right now. This market, where about 5 percent of Minnesotans buy coverage, is where consumers buy plans if they don't get insurance through employers or public programs such as Medicare. Uncertainty over congressional action has made insurers leery. The result: fewer choices and higher-priced premiums to cover their risk. More specific strategies for improving competition and affordability shouldn't be a heavy lift, either. Congress should revive the Obama law's temporary financial-risk protection programs for insurers. These funds were put in place to help insurers adjust to an individual market that reformers knew would be made volatile by new consumer protections and better access to coverage. But a 2015 measure backed by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., undercut one of these aid programs, a move that led to rising premiums. Expanding and extending another one of these financial risk programs "reinsurance" is also worthwhile. Reinsurance offsets medical care costs for consumers with expensive medical needs. Just a few of these patients can sharply drive up premiums. Minnesota legislators have passed a reinsurance measure this session, but continuing that level of state funding is daunting. Congress also should back away from its efforts to derail the Obama law's "cost-sharing" provisions, which helped consumers meet deductibles. In addition, the Trump administration should signal that it will vigorously enforce the individual mandate to buy insurance. That would enlarge the insurance "risk pool" and help drive down premium costs for everyone. The brash real-estate developer in the White House might also consider going beyond incremental improvements. Allowing Americans 55 and older to buy into Medicare, the federally run program for those 65 and up, would likely have broad voter appeal and reset the health debate. Launching a Medicare buy-in would be more complex than it first appears, but backing it would allow Trump to rebrand himself as a health care innovator. That could be a boost for an administration struggling to find its footing. This editorial appeared in the March 31 edition of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. As the military campaign to recapture the city of Raqqa intensifies with the arrival of U.S. forces in Syria, and the battle for the Iraqi city of Mosul reaches its last stages, the decimation of the Islamic State groups self-styled caliphate appears imminent. In preparation for ISISs final act, much has been written on what Iraq and Syria will look like in the wake of its reign. However, beyond discussion about the terrorist diaspora that will descend upon the United States and Europe as thousands of foreign fighters return home, little attention has been paid to the future territorial ambitions of the ISIS core. In September 2014, at the height of ISISs power, local Iraqis and Syrians comprised 90 percent and 70 percent respectively of ISISs military cadre in its so-called Islamic State. When the caliphate falls, what will this core tenet of fighters -- discarded by their home communities and fluent in the jihadi organizations military and ideological tradecraft -- pick as their next theater? It may be tempting to address this question from a military perspective alone -- especially in light of President Trumps multibillion-dollar fortification of the defense budget -- but an understanding of ISISs ideological infrastructure provides a more accurate guidebook. The Islamic State groups ideological beliefs and military activity are often analyzed separately, by different U.S. agencies, with de-radicalization efforts aimed at ideology, and military activity informing Americas battlefield response. However, a close read of this influential ISIS manifesto suggests that this siloed approach may be misdirecting the United States broader counterterrorism campaign. Pairing the main tenets of ISIS ideology with the groups past military activities helps to better understand the organizations operational goals, its ideological selection of targets, and the tactics it uses to ensure longevity. Using these three factors to forecast what country ISIS will seize as its next territorial conquest, Afghanistan emerges as an attractive and tenable target. The Management of Savagery While relatively unknown to the Western world, a booklet called The Management of Savagery: The Most Critical Stage Through Which the Umma Will Pass has been claimed by several ISIS commanders as part of the organizations curriculum. Published to the Internet in 2004 under the pseudonym Abu Bakr Naji, Management of Savagery was originally written for al-Qaeda but was rejected by leader Ayman al-Zawahiri for being too radical. Its strategy did, however, resonate with top ISIS commanders Baathist roots, and it subsequently spilled over to guide that organizations two-tiered crusade to consolidate the Muslim world territorially and ideologically. Management of Savagery is striking because it resembles a comprehensive military plan more than the outline of a specified Islamist ideology; it outlines a series of military campaigns with the ultimate goal of restoring the caliphate and establishing an Islamic state. First, in the stage of the power of vexation and exhaustion, Naji instructs militants to exhaust the chosen state and overthrow the governing authorities, creating savagery and chaos in order to force the targeted society to suffer from the absence of security. Second, the stage of the administration of savagery prescribes the militants management of the regions of savagery, which, if successful, will enable them to consolidate control throughout the conquered territory. ISISs Campaign Strategy Applied to Afghanistan Afghanistan is a viable target because ISISs stage-one goal of vexing and exhausting the state has already been accomplished by domestic actors. The Taliban are resurgent in Afghanistan, and the foreign military presence is perpetual yet fluctuating. Against that backdrop, political violence, corruption, and a stagnating economy have broken down Afghanistans political space. In the eyes of the Islamic State group, this makes Afghanistan an easy operational target because the countrys lack of democracy and security helps ISIS exacerbate existing societal divides. ISISs affiliate in Afghanistan, known as the Khorasan Province, has successfully exercised this tactic to gain territory in at least seven Afghan provinces. It is important to note that similar to ISISs tactic of seizing upon historically significant territory that negates the sovereignty of Iraq and Syrias state borders, the Khorasan Province claims jurisdiction over a historical region incorporating parts of modern-day Afghanistan and Pakistan. Defining territory based upon its historical importance to Islam, as opposed to nation-state borders, furthers ISISs goal of delegitimizing Afghanistans institutions and planting fertile roots for a prospective takeover by ISIS core. Second, Management of Savagery, in addition to ISISs record of attacks around the globe, reflects that the group seeks to eliminate what it considers apostate Muslims in addition to foreign infidels. Foreign troops in Afghanistan deployed by NATO, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia have been frequent targets of ISISs vendetta against what it considers infidels. Additionally, similar to the Taliban, ISIS views much of Afghanistan as occupied by apostate Muslims given the countrys reenergized focus on education -- especially for women -- in the early 2000s. This apostate narrative is furthered by the fact that ethnic and tribal affiliations shape the average Afghans identity more profoundly than an adherence to Islam. Thus, Afghanistans role as host to so-called apostates and infidels makes it an attractive theater for ISIS to target both enemy groups on one territorial battleground. Finally, looking to the regions where ISIS has most effectively acquired affiliates and sympathetic proxies -- Egypt, Libya, Pakistan -- it has done so by absorbing existing Islamist militants into its fold. In Afghanistan, the Khorasan Province is already capitalizing on the countrys historical struggle with Islamist and tribal factions. While it competes with the Taliban -- which benefits from their Deobandi and Pashtun roots in the local population -- ISIS has exploited personal and factional grievances within established militant networks, along with bribery, to co-opt defection. Former Taliban commander and Guantanamo Bay detainee Abdul Rauf Aliza defected from the Taliban and became the Khorasan Provinces deputy commander. Additionally, multiple commanders and officials of the Pakistani Taliban publicly defected to pledge allegiance to the Khorasan Province. By absorbing Taliban members and other Islamist militants into its ranks, ISIS has increased its human capital while gaining operatives with knowledge of Afghanistan and Pakistans unique histories, geographies, and socio-political environments. Notably, this method also masquerades as ISISs ability to administer and manage savagery. While we cannot know whether ISIS will try to manufacture another caliphate after Iraq and Syria fall from its grasp, the organizations promotion of territory as a central component of its brand makes it likely that ISIS will at least attempt to recreate its claim to divinely sanctioned land. Given that the international community was blindsided by the conception of ISISs first caliphate, the United States should rely on ISISs ideology for more than a rhetorical battle about terrorisms terminology. By extending the tactics outlined in Management of Savagery to the battlefield, the United States and its allies may be able to prevent Afghanistan from becoming the next Islamic State. KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Even for a president who advertised his coldblooded pragmatism, the moral dimensions of leadership find a way of penetrating the Oval Office. In the case of Donald Trump, the emotional distance seems to have been shattered by simple, indelible images of suffering children in Idlib, Syria. "When you kill innocent children, innocent babies -- babies! -- little babies, ... that crosses many, many lines. Beyond a red line, many, many lines," Trump said Wednesday, his voice high and stretched, after pictures surfaced of lifeless infants choked to death by poison gas. The recognition: The Syria slaughter "is now my responsibility." And the admission: "I do change." American interventionism is our best and worst national trait. Historically, until 1941, America was a reluctant warrior, fearful of foreign entanglement. Thursday marked the 100th anniversary of America's entry into World War I, a war conflict that still drips with senseless, dutiful killing. The young men of Europe had been slaughtering each other since 1914, but on the other side of the Atlantic it was "America First" until Congress backed Woodrow Wilson and declared war on April 6, 1917. Trump's wariness on Syria had been like President Obama's: He said repeatedly, over the last six years and during the campaign, that he opposed more headlong American military actions in quests that might be morally urgent but strategically fuzzy. Republican hawks such as Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham had blasted Obama's reluctance to intervene, but not Trump. Back in 2013, he'd argued against calls to bomb Syria in retaliation for President Bashar Assad's use of chemical weapons. Given that Trump's view of Syria was so similar to Obama's, his attempt to blame the latest chemical attack there on his predecessor's alleged weakness was especially dubious. It displayed his embattled, defensive self-image: He is a victim of someone else's bad decisions. A similarly immature blame-shifting troubled many military leaders after Navy SEAL William "Ryan" Owens died in a special forces raid in Yemen. "This was something ... they wanted to do -- the generals, who are very respected. ... And they lost Ryan," Trump said. Why did Assad use nerve gas in Idlib? It's impossible to know. Maybe it was a signal to an increasingly aggressive Israel that he still had chemical weapons; or maybe it was a warning to Russia that he wasn't a pawn to be traded in a grand bargain with Trump. But most likely, it was a reaction to the free hand he was seemingly given when Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said a few days earlier during a visit to Turkey that Assad's future "will be decided by the Syrian people" -- meaning that America no longer demanded his departure. The irony is that Trump faces the same bad military options in western Syria that Obama did. U.S. military commanders have focused on the battle against the Islamic State in eastern Syria. The Pentagon has a plan for a relatively rapid conquest of Raqqah, the caliphate of the Islamic State, by a force led by Syrian Kurdish fighters. U.S. troops will augment this assault with heavy artillery, Apache helicopter gunships, and forward-deployed advisers. It's a pragmatic plan for ending the ISIS terror threat quickly, even at the risk of offending Turkey and leaving Assad and the political muddle in Damascus. This plan had all the pieces except a final White House stamp of approval. Then came those pictures of the Syrian children. Now, by his own account, he has to do more. This appears to be one of those unforeseen tipping points on which decisions of war and peace so often rest: the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915, the "Zimmermann telegram" of 1917, Pearl Harbor in 1941, the Gulf of Tonkin attack in 1964, the Iraqi WMD delusion in 2003. What all these triggers for war have in common is that people didn't see them coming. The World War I centennial is especially haunting as we think about the choices Trump faces in Syria. A century later, that conflict is still unfathomable, more like a mystery than a settled narrative. Historians who gathered at the National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City debated Thursday why it began, and why the treaty that ended the conflict proved so unstable. Trump might study the example of Harry Truman, another president who came to office radically unprepared for the global responsibilities he faced. World War I had made Truman. He commanded an artillery battery in the Argonne Forest. Like so many people caught up in war, he didn't know what he could do until he was tested. (c) 2017, Washington Post Writers Group Find a great selection of commercial real estate, manufactured homes, timeshares and more for Sale Buy real estate. Find a great selection of commercial real estate, manufactured homes, timeshares and more for Sale in US and Canada. Search Real Estate Property details: Great Parcel for House or Mobile Home!! This is a great building site with electric and water!! You are bidding on the down payment only. Please read entire auction before bidding. Clearing With Driveway to it Ozark Acres is near Hardy Arkansas at Williford, Arkansas or about 45 miles south of West Plains, Missouri. It has two lakes, a marina, several parks, an airport and even a clubhouse. Hardy, which is 5 miles away, has banks, shopping, McDonalds and numerous antique shops. The country side ... Price: $ 99 Seller State of Residence: Missouri Type: Recreational Zoning: Unrestricted City: Williford State/Province: Arkansas Location: 724**, Williford, Arkansas You will be redirected to eBay Nearby Arkansas , We're sorry, this article is not currently available Reality TV World is now available on the all-new Google News app and website. Click here to visit our Google News page, and then click FOLLOW to add us as a news source! LAS VEGAS, April 06, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In a press release issued on March 15, 2017 by Global Market Advisors, there was erroneous information that has since been properly updated. The full, updated press release follows. Global Market Advisors (GMA), a leading international consulting firm serving the casino gaming, hospitality, and airline industries, today announced that Erika Meeske Rafferty has joined the firm as Vice President of Native American Gaming. The partners and associates at GMA are proud to have Erika join the growing GMA team. GMA has provided consulting services to over sixty tribes in North America and has long known of Erikas capabilities and expertise. Few people in our industry have the skill sets, depth of knowledge, and respect for Indian culture as does Erika, said GMA Senior Partner Andrew Klebanow. Erika has completed over 250 projects, working with more than 75 different tribes, providing expert analysis at varying development stages. Erikas in-depth understanding of the nuances and challenges that face Native American and First Nation communities provides a valuable asset, built on over a decade of gaming and hospitality consulting experience. Erika has had life-long exposure and experience working in the hospitality industry, having been raised in the hotel and resort business. Erikas experience in resort management has resulted in a well-honed ability to think strategically to solve complex problems and produce tangible business solutions for clients. Erika is a periodic contributor to Global Gaming Business Magazine and Tribal Government Gaming. She continues to be a featured speaker and panelist on relevant industry trends and topics at G2E Las Vegas and NIGA. About Global Market Advisors, LLC GMA is well regarded for its independence and quality thought leadership. Completing projects in over 40 countries, GMA assists governments in developing public policy for integrated resorts, evaluating new markets and opportunities for public and private companies, and due diligence for potential acquisitions. Global capabilities of GMA are enhanced with offices in: Las Vegas, Denver, Taipei, Bangkok and an extended staff associate network. To learn more, visit www.globalmarketadvisors.com. Porterville, CA (93257) Today Periods of rain. High 61F. Winds SSE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a half an inch. Locally heavy rainfall possible.. Tonight Rain likely. Low 47F. Winds SE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch. 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. As a university with more than 2,600 international students from 125 countries around the world, its fair to say that the University of Geor 'NDB plans to issue $300-500 mn worth masala bonds in rupee.' 'To aim for 7.1 per cent growth (in 2016-17) in spite of having gone through demonetisation is something one should compliment the government for.' Ahead of the New Development Bank's annual meeting in New Delhi, the multilateral institute's president, K V Kamath, bottom, left, says it plans to issue $300-500 million worth of 'masala bonds' by August. A talk with Arup Roychoudhury on its priorities for the year ahead and some policy issues. Excerpts: What is the New Development Bank's plan for the year and which sectors in India will it focus on? Last year, we did $1.5 billion of lending. This year, we plan to lend $2.5-$3 bn. We raised money last year through renminbi bonds worth roughly $450 million. So, we have got our feet wet and got cracking. This year, we will also look at issuing masala bonds (issued abroad but denominated in rupees) worth $300-500 mn. That will happen by July-August, once we have these rated by international rating agencies. Our focus is on sustainable infrastructure. Within that, we have prioritised 'green' projects. Other areas we are focusing on include water projects and roads. Areas which will open up are various sectors within urban rejuvenation -- waste management, water within the urban space, smart cities. So, NDB is looking forward to working with the government in smart city projects. What is your view of the economic changes carried out by the Modi government so far and what should be the focus ahead? I would think the government has done very well in keeping the growth momentum where it has been, given the constraints it faced. To aim for 7.1 per cent growth (in 2016-17) in spite of having gone through demonetisation is something one should compliment the government for. The impact of demonetisation has been spoken about; so, I will not elaborate further on that. In terms of GST (the coming goods and services tax), it will certainly have a significant impact in the coming year. With multiple rates, it becomes slightly more complicated than what was envisaged earlier. But, clearly, there is rationalisation compared with the existing system in terms of ease of doing business. As far as the reforms process is concerned, for me the biggest challenge the government has to now deal with is to revive infrastructure. So far, it has picked up the slack here through higher public spending. Now, the private sector also needs to push. That process will get accelerated. That is connected to the issue of non-performing assets. What more needs to be done on that front? Would you support the proposal of a state-backed 'bad (loans) bank'? Typically, the most difficult part is identifying the problem. In India's case, the problem has been identified. We know what is the amount of toxic assets in the banking system. We know the recapitalisation the banks need. The troubled assets have two solutions. Either you deal with these within the banks or take these out to a bad bank. In a bank, the problem arises when the asset is not provided for; there is enormous pain when you take it out. But, here, the asset is provided for. The provisioning has been done. You then need to start putting it into use and earning productive returns. If you take it out in an asset reconstruction company or a bad bank, then you need money to take that asset out. I am not so sure that funding is available for a structure which can take these assets out. So, funding becomes a concern. The fact is, we are running out of time. The urgency has been expressed by the finance minister and an urgent solution is needed. Creating funding for an external agency like a new bad bank...it is probably a little late for these things. There are concerns in India about the 'one belt, one road' corridor China has been working on. Does a situation arise where the NDB is helping fund a project for a BRICS member which another BRICS member might be uncomfortable with? We have a focus on projects in our member-countries. Within that context, we will participate in projects which have value. We will have to look at all projects in that context. I don't see a complication in this at all. One belt, one road is not one project. It is a series of projects in various areas, running across Asia in various tracks. Photograph: Jitendra Prakash/Reuters Luxembourg, 7 April 2017 - ArcelorMittal has published a convening notice for its Annual and Extraordinary General Meetings of shareholders ("General Meetings"), which will be held on 10 May 2017 at 11.30 a.m. CET at the company's registered office, 24-26, Boulevard d'Avranches, L-1160 in Luxembourg. It is proposed that after the upcoming General Meetings the Board of Directors will be composed of nine directors, of which eight are non-executive directors and five are independent directors. Mr. Lewis Kaden and Mr. Narayanan Vaghul will step down from the Board at the date of the General Meetings on 10 May 2017. From this date, it is proposed that Mr. Bruno Lafont will serve as Lead Independent Director. In addition, Mrs. Karyn Ovelmen will succeed Mr. Narayanan Vaghul as the chairman of the Audit & Risk Committee. The ArcelorMittal shareholders entitled to vote at the General Meetings will be those who are shareholders on the record date of 26 April 2017 at midnight (24:00 hours) CET. The convening notice, the Annual Report 2016, the Form 20F 2016, the amended draft of the articles of association, the voting forms and all other meeting documentation will be available on ArcelorMittal's website http://corporate.arcelormittal.com/ under "Investors - Equity investors - Shareholders' meetings - General Meetings 10 May 2017" from 7 April 2017. Shareholders may obtain, free of charge, a copy of the Annual Report 2016 (in English) and the amended draft of the articles of association at ArcelorMittal's registered office, by calling +352 4792 3198, or by emailing privateinvestors@arcelormittal.com. About ArcelorMittal ArcelorMittal is the world's leading steel and mining company, with a presence in 60 countries and an industrial footprint in 19 countries. Guided by a philosophy to produce safe, sustainable steel, we are the leading supplier of quality steel in the major global steel markets including automotive, construction, household appliances and packaging, with world-class research and development and outstanding distribution networks. Through our core values of sustainability, quality and leadership, we operate responsibly with respect to the health, safety and wellbeing of our employees, contractors and the communities in which we operate. For us, steel is the fabric of life, as it is at the heart of the modern world from railways to cars and washing machines. We are actively researching and producing steel-based technologies and solutions that make many of the products and components people use in their everyday lives more energy efficient. We are one of the world's five largest producers of iron ore and metallurgical coal. With a geographically diversified portfolio of iron ore and coal assets, we are strategically positioned to serve our network of steel plants and the external global market. While our steel operations are important customers, our supply to the external market is increasing as we grow. In 2016, ArcelorMittal had revenues of $56.8 billion and crude steel production of 90.8 million tonnes, while own iron ore production reached 55.2 million tonnes. ArcelorMittal is listed on the stock exchanges of New York (MT), Amsterdam (MT), Paris (MT), Luxembourg (MT) and on the Spanish stock exchanges of Barcelona, Bilbao, Madrid and Valencia (MTS). A 2014 study had ranked IITs as fourth among the top 50 universities globally, whose graduates were entrepreneurial. Entrepreneurs who graduated from Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have built 12 Unicorns (privately held companies valued at more than $1 billion), the fourth-highest in the world, according to an analysis by UK software firm Sage. Stanford University tops the list with 51 Unicorns, Harvard comes in second with 37, and the University of California comes in before the IITs at 18. Interestingly, IITs ranking is higher than Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), whose alumni have set up nine Unicorns. Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, co-founders of Indias largest e-commerce firm Flipkart, graduated from IIT-Delhi, as did Rohit Bansal, co-founder of smaller rival Snapdeal. InMobi, the ad tech firm, which turned profitable last quarter, was founded by Naveen Tewari, Abhay Singhal and Amit Gupta, all from IIT-Kanpur. Bhavish Agarwal and Ankit Bhati, co-founders at Ola, the countrys largest taxi aggregator, graduated from IIT-Mumbai. IITs rank among the best educational institutions in India after the Indian Institute of Science (IISc). But, getting into the elite schools is considered the toughest in the world, with just one-two per cent of the 1.4 million students sitting for the admission test making the cut. Students from IITs are favoured by multinationals and large Indian companies over other colleges, which gives them a natural advantage to start on their own. A 2014 study by Pitchbook Data, a US private equity and research firm, had ranked IITs as fourth among the top 50 universities globally, whose graduates were entrepreneurial. It said around 264 entrepreneurs founded 205 companies and had raised a total of $3.15 billion in venture capital and private equity funding. Do you know you can invest in funds to donate money for a good cause? Tinesh Bhasin discusses some options. Illustration: Uttam Ghosh/Rediff.com Innovations in financial products and technology have not only made donating for a cause easier, but also ensures that your funds are utilised diligently. While these new products and platforms offer a wide array of options to suit your way of giving, they can at times be inflexible and in some cases require some due diligence. HDFC Mutual Fund, for example, has launched a cancer cure scheme. A three-year close-ended fund, it lets you donate the gains to the Indian Cancer Society, a non-governmental organisation supported by some of the biggest corporates in the country including the Tatas and the Godrejs. At the end of the tenure, the investor gets the principal back. An investor can choose either a debt or an arbitrage plan. The scheme proposes to give half-yearly dividends which will be donated to the ICS, according to the option chosen by the investor. "It ensures that the NGO has a sustainable flow of funds during this tenure to disburse money to the needy cancer patients," says Milind Barve, managing director of the fund house. Being an equity-oriented scheme, the arbitrage fund is more tax efficient. There's no tax on dividend or capital gains. The debt fund, which would be a preferred mode of investment for corporates, attracts tax on dividend as well on the gains. The minimum investment in the fund is Rs 50,000. When the person signs up, s/he can choose to donate either 50 per cent or 100 per cent of the dividend. The NGO automatically sends the receipt and other documents for tax deduction to the investor's registered address. The fund house bears all scheme-related expenses, except mandatory charges. The average annual returns of arbitrage funds are around 6.63 per cent. This means on an investment of Rs 1 lakh, the investor donates Rs 6,630 a year or Rs 553 a month. To make a significant contribution, an investor would need to invest much higher amounts. If you want to donate for cancer treatment but don't want to lock in a large portion of money, you can also directly donate to ICS and still get the tax benefit. If your priority area for charity is another field, you can log on to crowdfunding Web sites that give you many options -- animal welfare, environment, disability, education and so on. Impact Guru, a start-up incubated at THE Harvard Innovation Lab, lets donors give directly to the beneficiaries (say, a patient in need of money) or to NGOs through its platform. The company vets the track record of NGOs before letting them raise funds on its platform. The donor's money first goes to the Impact Guru Foundation and then is transferred to the respective NGO. This lets donors get the tax benefit. But if you are funding the beneficiary directly, you won't get the tax deduction. An NGO or an individual raising funds initially needs to get a few donors to give money through the platform. The visitors donate the remaining amount. "Most people are comfortable giving to a campaign that already has some donors. If a campaign starts from scratch, few would have the confidence to donate," says Piyush Jain, co-founder and CEO, Impact Guru. The platform charges 10 per cent of the money raised as fees. Investment advisors suggest it would make sense to opt for projects that are closer to your location. "We advise people to first visit the NGO, do the due diligence, understand what they do and how they do it, and only then give money," says Suresh Sadagopan, founder, Ladder 7 Financial Advisories. If you are unsure about donating money directly, you can also buy products for an NGO. Amazon India has started the Gift a Smile initiative that lets an individual see the list of products an NGO has shortlisted on Amazon. You can choose to gift books or school bags to children or food and toiletries to the elderly. The only drawback is you must buy from the listed products. If there's a cheaper alternative that's equally good, you don't have the option to buy it. Also, you won't get a tax deduction on buying products. Two giant brands get into a slugfest over the goodness of ice creams and frozen desserts, reports Sohini Das. IMAGE: Bengali actress Rituparna Sengupta (left) and actress June Malia ahead of an ice cream eating competition in Kolkata. Photograph: Sucheta Das/Reuters. Temperatures are soaring this summer in the ice creams versus frozen desserts battle between the countrys two behemoths: Dairy major Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation that markets the Amul brand of ice creams and FMCG major Hindustan Unilever Limited, which owns the Kwality Walls brand. The two have sparred earlier too but, this time, the stakes are bigger given that both are fighting not just for a bigger slice of the summer pie, but are also battling customer perceptions about health and nutrition. HUL has moved Bombay high court against Amul over a recent commercial that urges consumers to use their discretion when buying their favourite dessert. The ad, which features a little girl visiting a dentist, ends with a voiceover that asks customers to go for real milk-based ice creams from Amul and not vegetable oil-based frozen desserts. It asks the consumer to check the pack for the word ice cream. Amul has chosen this narrative, as according to the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, there is a technical difference between ice creams and frozen desserts. Ice creams that are made with vegetable oil have to be labelled frozen desserts, while only those that are made with milk fat can be legally called ice cream. Amul has chosen to hype its brand strength in the ad, say experts, who see nothing wrong in that. According to Ambi Parameswaran, founder of Brand-Building.com, Amul has always positioned its ice creams as real milk real ice creams and now, in this ad, it is highlighting its strength. This is not the first time that Amul and HUL have taken each other on; in 2012, Amul had insisted that HUL strike the word ice cream off its ads since they were misleading the consumer about the true nature of the product. Amul had complained to Advertising Standard Council of India. Consequently, ASCI had asked HUL to replace ice cream with frozen dessert. HUL had given in to the order at the time. What has got HUL hot under the collar this time? Sources indicate that the company has objected to the use of the term vanaspati tel in the Hindi advertisement, which makes the product look unappealing. An HUL spokesperson said, Amul has been airing a misleading television commercial since March 2017. This advertisement makes factually incorrect statements creating apprehensions among consumers of frozen desserts. It makes incorrect claims about the usage of vanaspati/vanaspati tel in frozen dessert. We wish to clarify that Kwality Walls range of frozen desserts does not contain vanaspati. The company makes it clear that they use milk/milk solids like ice creams and the only difference is that frozen desserts use vegetable fat instead of dairy fat. This actually makes them healthier as they have lower saturated fat and do not have cholesterol, the spokesperson adds. R S Sodhi, managing director, GCMMF, says that HUL can go ahead and promote the goodness of its products. He however notes that vegetable oils are much cheaper than milk fat. Vegetable fat costs around 60 per kg, while milk fat is around 300 per kg. Even then, prices of HULs frozen desserts are higher than Amuls by 10-20 per cent. Given that the fight is over the 7,500-odd ice creams plus frozen desserts market in India, which is roughly growing at 10-12 per cent annually, the aggression on display is hardly surprising. Tempers are even more frayed since both brands have had to face the brunt of challenger brands that have emerged as significant players in regional pockets. Ahmedabad-based Havmor Ice Creams, which categorises itself as a mass premium ice cream and prices its fare a tad higher than Amul, is the market leader in Gujarat, with close to 40 per cent share in the state, followed by the number two position in Rajasthan. In the South, Arun Ice Creams is a strong and established player taking on both big brands. Euromonitor, which tracks data on only the ice cream market, said that, between 2017 and 2021, it is likely to grow at 10.3 per cent. While Amul is the market leader with a pan India presence in the space, according to Euromonitor, it has a 17 per cent value share in the ice creams plus frozen desserts market. Clearly there is enough room for growth but, given the proliferation of small brands and the growing customer preference for local labels, it is becoming imperative that brands put up a strong fight for their turfs. However, at the end of it, Parameswaran says, These battles cannot be won in courts. Ultimately the brand wins or loses the battle. The consumer would decide the victor. 'Do we not all exhibit a sense of entitlement every day,' asks Savera R Someshwar. Illustration: Dominic Xavier/Rediff.com Like most mornings, I shared my newspaper with a cup of tea. Let me share with you something I read today. 'If separatists, rapists and terrorists are allowed to travel on flights, then why not an MP?' This was a statement made by a member of Parliament in defence of another MP from his party who attacked the employee of an airline for doing his duty. As a result of having slapped the airline staffer '25 times,' as claimed by the MP himself, he has been slapped in return with a 'no-fly' ban by airlines. To the member of Parliament who raised this question, Sanjay Raut of the Shiv Sena, I would like, vinamrapurvak haath zodoon (with my hands folded respectfully), to ask: When did it become all right to equate a member of Parliament, an elected representative of the people, with a terrorist? A rapist? A separatist? When did it become all right for the Union minister in charge of heavy industries to shout at his Cabinet colleague -- incidentally, they are born in the same month in the same year -- the Union minister for civil aviation and pound his desk in anger in Parliament? Anant Geete's defence? 'As a Shiv Sena leader, I need to take care of the rights of party MPs.' The rights that the honourable minister was referring to are not clear. The list of amenities for an MP do not specify that an MP needs to travel by business class or, indeed, by air -- Parliamentofindia.nic.in makes it clear that an MP's travelling facilities include rail, air, steamer and road. This is not the said MP's first transgression. There are three criminal cases filed against Ravindra Vishwanath Gaikwad. The Quint has listed his controversial acts (external link). They include, among others, criminal intimidation, rioting and becoming violent to stop public servants from doing their duty and force-feeding a Muslim employee of Delhi's Maharashtra Sadan because he and 10 Shiv Sena MPs were unhappy with the quality of the food. Gaikwad has been a two time MLA from Osmanabad in Maharashtra, the constituency that elected him as MP -- his first ever Parliamentary stint -- in 2014. A post-graduate -- he has completed his MCom -- and a former teacher, he is a member of the Parliamentary standing committee on agriculture. He has participated in 27 Parliamentary debates; the national average is 49.2 per cent; only four MPs from his party -- at 25, 18, 16 and 20 -- have participated in fewer debates. He has asked 173 questions; the national average is 180. If you look at his own party, five MPs have asked more than 600 questions and only two MPs have asked fewer questions than he has. He has an attendance record of 64 per cent; the national average is 80 per cent; only one MP from his party, Sanjay Haribhau Jadhav, has -- at 56 per cent -- a lower attendance record. (Information: Kind courtesy PRS Legislative Research India). Gaikwad tried to book an airline ticket seven times since the incident; an attempt that has been rejected seven times. He has, as a result, had to face the 'ignominy' of having to travel by train to Delhi to attend his Parliamentary duties. (In his regret letter, written on Thursday evening to Union Minister for Civil Aviation Ashok Gajapathi Raju, Gaikwad says, 'As the restriction on flying is affecting the effective discharge of my duties and responsibilities, I would request you to lift this restriction and let the investigation eventually determine the circumstances which led to the incident.') Gaikwad's anger was triggered by the fact that he had to travel economy class, on an all economy flight, though he held a business class ticket. The statement released by Air India makes it clear that the MP's personal assistant was informed of the fact. 'The (Pune) airport manager told the PA this is an all economy flight operated regularly. Since the MP wanted to travel on this flight he was allotted the seat in the first row itself since there is no business class on this flight,' says the Air India statement. Yet, among the many important, and vital, issues facing the country that need Parliament's attention, a good part of Thursday's session was devoted to the ruckus created by the Shiv Sena, which has a strength of 18 MPs in the Lok Sabha. Why did all this happen? Because of one individual's sense of entitlement and self-importance. Why am I telling you all this? Because -- and before you flagellate me, do take a moment to think -- we all suffer from the same disease. At no point am I supporting or justifying the behaviour of this MP or his party. I hope the airlines don't let Mr Gaikwad use their services any time soon. But do we not all exhibit a sense of entitlement every day? When we are rude to someone from a lower economic class -- a watchman, a waiter, a ticket seller, a shop floor attendant, a vendor -- because we think we are 'superior'? When we break simple traffic rules and then try the 'connections' route to get out of trouble? When we think that someone less educated than us cannot be right, or should not disagree with us, because, well, they are less educated? When we don't have a ticket but argue with the ticket checker anyway about the fine? When we discriminate on the basis of caste, creed, religion, skin colour and looks? When we won't stand in a queue, or we break into one, because we, and our time, is obviously more important? When we torment our women? When we cheat to save a few bucks? What do you think? Are you entitled? 'Surely, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will not be able to pay or compensate the Russians for deployment and use of Russian men and equipment,' says Brigadier S K Chatterji (retd). With the Russian defence budget registering a 7 per cent drop from the previous year's allocation, it's time to take stock of the potential of the often touted Russian resurgence and the possible threat it can pose to European Union countries. The Russian budget for 2017 amounts to $48 billion. The EU, made up of 28 countries, of which 22 are a part of NATO, put together, spent a total of 203.143 billion on defence in 2015. This is not an increase over previous years; however, it largely arrested the downward trend of about 4 to 5 per cent after the financial crisis of 2007. The decrease in 2015 was a mere 0.4 per cent. 2016 witnessed greater vigour among EU states to ramp up military capabilities. Overall, EU had an 8.3 per cent increase in defence budgets in 2016. The Americans, who would in all likelihood, be embroiled in any major operations in the European continent, have a far larger budget. Donald Trump's US defence budget proposes $824.1 billion for 2017; a 10 percent or a $54 billion increase as compared to 2016. The increase sought, by itself, is more than what the Russians have earmarked as their entire defence budget for the year. The Americans undertook a major build-up in Eastern Europe in January 2017 with 4,000 men and over a hundred tanks. An analysis of Russian commitments throws more light on the issue of its capability at any further force projection in Europe or otherwise. Russia maintains its military presence in 10 countries: Abkhazia, Armenia, Belarus, Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, the unrecognised Transnistrian Republic, Syria, Tajikistan and South Ossetia. Each deployment calls for allocation of funds. Sputniknews.com on October 8, 2016 quoted Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, stating that Russia intends enhancing its military bases abroad. According to the minister, Russia is in discussions with Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, the Seychelles and Singapore among others. The Russian commitment in Syria is the most active deployment that it is funding. Various estimates of the cost of engagement in Syria are available. An IHS estimate of 2015 pegs the flow at $2.4 million per day. Surely, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will not be able to pay or compensate the Russians for deployment and use of Russian men and equipment. The Russians also have to incur substantial expenditure to keep Crimea afloat. That would definitely not be reflected in the defence budget, but would perforce have to go out of the same exchequer's books. Should the Russians pursue their plans of connecting Krasnodar Kray and Crimea with a 12 mile rail and motor bridge stretching over the Black Sea, it would, by some estimates, consume three-fourths of the Russian outlay for roads and rails. Notwithstanding the huge difference in funding between a combined EU and that of Russia, the former considers Russia as its biggest threat. With the outlays for defence being so widely different when a comparison is drawn between the overall defence spending and the US presence in Europe, is Russia really the great big threat that EU seems to have sleepless nights about? With oil and gas prices unlikely to ride a steep curve in the near future, it may not be possible for the Russians to raise the level of threat either. President Trump having expressed his aversion to footing the bill for European security, there is every likelihood of EU members increasing their defence spending. NATO members are even otherwise agreed to spend 2 percent of their GDP for defence; but, as on date, many of its members fall far short. If NATO members increase their budgets, it helps EU too. EU's current threat perceptions, primarily Russia centric, further accentuated by terrorism, especially post the Syrian narrative; can push their defence budgets further north. In the Russian case, Russian defence expenditure after long years of increased spending has gone south. EU countries take the stance that post the 2007 financial downturn, when their budgets dipped; Russia continued to enhance its military expenditure and hence the Russian threat is more viable. The argument has some well founded rational logic. As per SIPRI, Russia's military spending in 2015 was $66.4 billion, up 91 per cent compared with 2006 and 7.5 per cent in comparison to 2014. The current apparent sensitivity to the Russians is not necessarily the true picture. As far as a conventional threat is concerned, with a budget one-fifth of the EU, and commitments globally, it is hardly feasible for the Russians to stage another version of the German blitzkrieg. The Russians may try to go beyond current positions in the Ukraine and try to nibble in the neighbourhood at best. That is as much as the Russians can afford. Beyond it would be overreach, which actuated the break-up of the Soviet Union to Russia. However, even such limited fallout creates great consternation in European capitals and needs to be guarded against with sufficient deterrence in place. EU's common security and defence policy is the instrument for optimising defence expenditure of member States. The problem areas lie in integrating capabilities of member States. Such a synthesis has proven to be quite a hurdle race. EU countries have differing threat perceptions. Russia's proximate neighbours are more sensitive as compared to central/western/southern EU countries. The Baltic States bordering Russia reflect the maximum increase. Latvia's budget will be up 60 per cent this year, Lithuania's by 35 per cent and Estonia will spend an additional 9 per cent. Poland has implemented a substantial rise of 9 per cent in its defence expenditure. Romania has also enhanced its budget. Putin may be ambitious, but is also a realist for sure. With Russia trying to strengthen its influence in Central and South Asia, there is hardly any room for fresh manoeuvres in Europe. The dilution creeping in the IndiaRussia relationship and the strengthening of the India-US relations has spurred the Russians to relate more strongly with China and work on linkages with Pakistan. Russia is also assuming the role of a pre-eminent power broker in Afghanistan. However, its growing influence in South and Southeast Asia may not whet the Russian appetite, and they would like to be counted in Europe for certain. If, by their logic, their neighbours get too proximate to the EU, or territories of such neighbouring States attract deployments that imperil them, the Russians could get the pot to boil and blow the bugle to caution the EU. The EU has the second largest defence budget globally. If EU countries can maintain their 18 battle groups in a high state of readiness and station them closer to Russian borders, the deterrence value could keep Russian moves in check. As on date these battle groups have not been deployed on a mission, but are operational. EU forces also have different logistics, command, control and communication systems. The EU requires multinational battle groups capable of operating cohesively. They need to share costly resources and undertake long term acquisition planning to give their defence industry the best chance. The Russian defence budget is fairly stretched by the current deployment of its force. The EU can meet the challenge by better coordinated defence rather than higher allocations for defence. IMAGE: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad with Russian President Vladmir Putin at the Kremlin, October 20, 2015. Photograph: Alexei Druzhinin/RIA Novosti/Reuters In Yogi Adityanath's Uttar Pradesh wayward Romeos would all be in the lock-up, says Sunil Sethi. Illustration: Dominic Xavier/Rediff.com 'The pursuit of happiness... in Lucknow of the 1950s meant pursuing girls... The theatre of operations revolved around Hazratganj... They would arrive in cars and rickshaws wearing tight, extremely tight, salwars and kurtas... Glances were exchanged, remarks were passed, optimistic conclusions were reached...' -- Vinod Mehta, Lucknow Boy, 2011. For generations a favoured sport in the city of Lucknow is 'Gunging.' This has nothing whatever to do with the OED meaning of clogging or encrusting with 'sticky, congealed matter'; it refers to loitering with intent in the cafes and cinemas of Hazratgunj, the city's ever-popular thoroughfare. The cool dudes of Lucknow lay in wait for the passing beauties and In Mr Mehta's time the swains included the late politician from Padrauna, C P N Singh, father of the former Congress minister R P N Singh, and the well-known journalist Saeed Naqvi -- 'Saeed... in his black shirt and tight black trousers... compiled sexy English poetry about the girls of Lucknow and pasted it all over Hazratganj.' In Yogi Adityanath's Uttar Pradesh such wayward Romeos would all be in the lock-up. The setting up of 'anti-Romeo' squads at police stations all over the state is only the start of an enforced new morality that will cover what people can eat, how they dress or how they behave in the streets. The Muslim-baiting chief minister's views on women and male-female relationships are well-known: He rails against 'Western feminism' -- whatever that is -- because it 'hampers the creation and stability of the home and family.' And if men 'acquire women-like qualities they become gods but when women acquire men-like qualities they become "rakshasa" or demon-like.' In provincial towns such as Meerut there is already a backlash against police patrols to round up any suspected Romeos outside colleges or paan stalls; but in Lucknow the IG has ordered a squad in each of the state capital's 11 zones. If this is an attempt to maintain public peace it could also be a flimsy excuse at settling scores. Uttar Pradesh has a highly politicised police force, often seen as incompetent and corrupt. In Mayawati's heyday thousands of officers were transferred overnight; five years of Samajwadi Party rule, and in its earlier phase of power in 2003-2007, a gradual Yadavisation took place. This was the cause of goonda raj, a blatantly partisan law and order machinery, the BJP campaigned against. The political weather vane has now swung again, and the UP police are adept hands at pleasing their new masters. While the ill-fated Romeos of Hazratgunj await corporal and other punishments, the saffron leader's food rules are more punitive. Slaughterhouses are being shut down, illegal or not, the saddest casualty being the century-old shop of Tunday's succulent kebabs, in Lucknow's old Chowk area and other outlets. For many no visit to the city is complete without a taste of its refined Awadhi cuisine, its galautis, kakoris, biryanis and kormas. This pinnacle of culinary excellence is under threat. Tunday's blighted shop owner ran out of buffalo meat and offered chicken as a poor substitute. Thousands of others will be put out of livelihoods in UP's celebrated food industry. This first wave of cultural intimidation will take a serious toll of a highly sophisticated, syncretic, intellectually stimulating and idiosyncratic culture. Memoirist after memoirist, from the writer Ira Pande, daughter of the great Hindi novelist Shivani, to the historian Veena Talwar Oldenburg, have recorded it vividly. In an obituary of Hazratgunj's famous bookseller Ram Advani, who died last year, Ms Pande records uniquely Lakhnavi terms for local landmarks -- the Zoo is called Bandriya Bagh, the Museum known as Murda Ajayabghar and Loreto Convent Bhaktin Iskool. For a more delightful and rewarding compendium there is nothing to beat Professor Talwar Olderburg's Sham-e-Awadh: Writings on Lucknow (Penguin; Rs 395) that takes in the times of Wajid Ali Shah, the lives of its courtesans, accounts of the 1857 revolt and the many strands of a mannered culture that form the crucible of Ganga-Jumni tehzeeb. This rich tapestry has given Indian cinema some of its richest dividends. Will Mr Adityanath also ban blockbusters such as Chaudhvin Ka Chand, Pakeezah and Umrao Jaan for portrayals of pulsating romance and promiscuity? Or ordain as subversive dramatic fictions spun from history and literature such as Satyajit Ray's Shatranj Ke Khiladi and Shyam Benegal's Junoon? The ill-starred putsch against the Romeos of Hazratgunj is like sucking the Gomti river dry -- it's now just an arid trickle. Perhaps it's time to compose a new kind of marsiya, an elegy traditionally sung by the Shias of Uttar Pradesh, to commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Hussain that Saeed Naqvi and his family movingly rendered in 'Expressions of Muharram.' DON'T MISS the features in the RELATED LINKS below... 'Every single American act to weaken Syrian forces would only tilt the military balance in favour of ISIS whom Trump pledges to vanquish from the face of the earth,' says Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar. IMAGE: A US Tomahawk missile heads for the al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs in Syria. Photograph: US Department of Defence/Reuters Although Bill Clinton and Donald Trump are different in some ways, the structural analogy of the two American cruise missile attacks -- on Afghanistan on August 20, 1998 and on Syria on April 6, 2017 respectively -- cannot be brushed aside. Clinton ordered the strike as retaliation for Al Qaeda's bombings on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killing 12 American nationals, whereas Trump ordered Thursday's strike, according to the Pentagon, as a 'proportional response' to the Syrian government's 'heinous act' of use of chemical weapons in Idlib province two days earlier against civilians and 'intended to deter the regime from using chemical weapons again.' Where the analogy holds fundamentally could be that both Clinton and Trump acted as beleaguered presidents. The missiles were launched on Afghanistan only three days after Clinton testified on the Monica Lewinsky scandal while the attack on Syria took place on a tumultuous day in American politics when Devin Nunes, Trump's chief ally on the Congressional committees investigating the president's connections to Russia, stepped aside from the inquiry, leaving the White House extremely vulnerable. Both Clinton and Trump stood to gain by shifting attention away from the prevailing narrative in American politics. However, no matter motivations, attacks on sovereign countries without clear-cut politico-military objectives can be risky. Al Qaeda reacted with the 9/11 attacks. Trump's move is also fated to be consequential. Further disarray in the war against terrorism can affect international security. Unsurprisingly, the UK and France feel uneasy. British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has warned the US not to rush into a confrontation against the Syrian government. Johnson said the top priority should be complementary peace talks and passing a United Nations resolution to investigate Tuesday's attack in Idlib. 'It is very important to try first to get out a UN resolution,' he said. Jean-Marc Ayrault, the French foreign minister, echoed that view, saying: '(The first stage) is not to go in ourselves, under the pretext that the US president may have a rush of blood to the head, and get onto a war footing.' Ironically, in an identical situation in 2013 when Barack Obama was contemplating a strike on Syria, Trump himself had felt agitated, tweeting furiously and repeatedly: 'A GAIN, TO OUR VERY FOOLISH LEADER (Obama), DO NOT ATTACK SYRIA - IF YOU DO MANY VERY BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN & FROM THAT FIGHT THE U.S. GETS NOTHING!' 'President Obama, do not attack Syria. There is no upside and tremendous downside. Save your "powder" for another (and more important) day!' 'Let the Arab League take care of Syria. Why are these rich Arab countries not paying us for the tremendous cost of such an attack?' Funnily, Trump insisted that if at all, Obama should seek Congressional approval first. He tweeted: 'The President must get Congressional approval before attacking Syria-big mistake if he does not!' Again, just a week ago, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's future should be left to the Syrian people. Now both he and Trump feel Assad must go. Clearly, Trump has existential considerations weighing on his mind. The biggest challenge ahead will be to avoid a collision course with Russia. The Kremlin's reaction has been exceptionally sharp. Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday: 'President (Vladimir) Putin regards the US attacks on Syria as an aggression against a sovereign State in violation of the norms of international law, and under a trumped-up pretext at that. 'Putin also sees the attacks on Syria by the US as an attempt to divert the international community's attention from the numerous casualties among civilians in Iraq.' 'The fact of the destruction of all chemical weapons stockpiles has been recorded and confirmed by the OPCW, a specialised UN unit.' 'At the same time, in Putin's opinion, total disregard for the use of chemical weapons by terrorists only drastically aggravates the situation.' Yet, the Pentagon claims, 'Russian forces were notified in advance of the strike using the established deconfliction line.' 'US military planners,' the Pentagon added, 'took precautions to minimise risk to Russian or Syrian personnel located at the airfield.' It seems the Russians did nothing to stop the US attack on the Shayrat airfield in Homs, situated virtually in the neighbourhood of their own main base at Hymemim, which is equipped with three formidable layers of advanced air defence systems. Obviously, Moscow shied away from a military confrontation with the US. But serious issues arise. The Shayrat airfield has been totally destroyed and all aircraft located there have been damaged. This becomes a blot on Russia's prestige too. Therefore, the so-called 'deconfliction' proceedures with the US come under stress. Do the Russians acquiesce with any future US attack on Syrian government forces? This is important since the raison d'etre of the Russian military presence in Syria has come under a cloud. Moscow's prevarications over Trump are denting its credibility. Second, how far does the Russian military cooperate with the US on the ground hereafter in coming battles? The battle for Raqqa, the self-styled capital of ISIS, and the US plans to set up 'safe zones' on Syrian soil are predicated in varying degrees on Russia's cooperation. Of course, Moscow's hopes of forming an international anti-terrorist coalition with the US have been blown to smithereens. Put differently, any US military operations in Syria will be outside the pale of the UN Charter and international law. This, in turn, severely affects whatever residual chances exist for any US-Russia detente in a foreseeable future. Tillerson's talks in Moscow next Wednesday will be taking place in a tense atmosphere. US policies in Syria are in total shambles. On the ground, the US' key allies are the Syrian Kurds whom Turkey regards as terrorists. Yet, the US critically depends on the Incirlik base in eastern Turkey for staging its operations in northern Syria. The total number of US military personnel in Syria is estimated to be in the region of 1,000. The rebel groups whom the US trained and equipped have vanished into thin air. Clearly, the US' capacity to influence the tide of war becomes even more limited after Thursday's attack on Syrian government forces. The real paradox lies somewhere else though. Every single American act to weaken Syrian forces would only tilt the military balance in favour of ISIS whom Trump pledges to vanquish from the face of the earth. To be sure, Russia has heavy stakes in the fight against ISIS. The subway attack in St Petersburg has only hardened the Russian resolve. The good thing is that firstly, there could be some clarity in the Russian mind, finally, that waiting for Trump to show up at the barricades in Syria as comrade-in-arms has been a delusional hope. On the other hand, Trump is intelligent enough to grasp that the missile strike on Thursday has been an act of dissimulation and it settles nothing in Syria. 'I wear heels. It's not for a fashion statement.' 'It's because if I see something wrong, we're going to kick them every single time.' 'If you challenge us, be prepared for what you're challenging us for, because we will respond.' IMAGE: US Ambassador Nikki Haley at the AIPAC Conference in Washington, DC. Photograph: Kind courtesy PolicyConference.org. In the less than three months after she was sworn in as the United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Nikki Haley has positioned herself as a champion of Israel. After a recent UN Security Council meeting on the Middle East, Haley told the media, 'The discussion today on the Middle East was not about Hezbollah's illegal buildup of rockets; it was not about the money and weapons that Iran provides to terrorists; it was not about how we defeat ISIS; it was not about how we hold Bashar Assad accountable. Instead, the meeting focused on criticising Israel, the one true democracy in the Middle East." 'I'm here to say the United States will not turn a blind eye to this anymore,' she added. Haley, who is firmly against the anti-Israel BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) Movement, also successfully mounted pressure on the UN secretary-general to have a report against Israel retracted. Her actions made her a particularly popular speaker at the recent American Israel Public Affairs Committee Conference in Washington, DC. Edited excerpts from her remarks at the conference: That statement you made following the Security Council meeting on the Middle East. Were you surprised what you saw about the attitudes and discussions on the Middle East at the UN? What could be done to change it? You know, I was confused. It was totally bizarre because in my first month, talking about the Middle East, there's a lot to talk about. And whether you're talking about Hezbollah or ISIS, all the issues in Syria, which is a problem, that's what I expected us to talk about. I didn't expect an Israel-bashing session. And literally, listening to each member say the same thing over and over again, I knew they said it was bad, but until you hear it and you see it, you just can't comprehend how ridiculous it is. So a lot of people here are just getting to know you for the first time. The theme of our conference this year is Many Voices, One Mission, celebrating the diversity of the pro-Israel cause. Can you talk a little bit about how you started to learn about Israel, your affinity for Israel? Well, I am the daughter of Indian parents who reminded my brothers, my sister and me every day how blessed we were to live in this country. And the truth is, I have seen so many similarities between the Israeli culture and the Indian culture. We're very close-knit. We love our families. We have a strong work ethic. We believe in professionalism and philanthropy and giving back. It's very true. So that's all the good things. We're aggressive. We're stubborn. And we don't back down from a fight. You recently said that any resolution of the Syrian civil war should not leave Iran in any control of territory, or influence in territory, where it could pose a threat to America's allies, including Israel. So, from your perspective, at the UN what is the attitude about the enforcement of the Iran deal and how to hold Iran accountable? Most importantly, how do we hold Iran accountable for the deal and for the threats it's posing? It's concerning. And the reason it's concerning is because when the Iran deal took place, all it did was empower Iran, and it empowered Russia. And it emboldened Iran to feel like they could get away with more. You can put sanctions on a country. To take sanctions away, it's very hard to go back and put sanctions back on. So, what we have said is we're going to watch them like a hawk. We're going to make sure that every single thing they do is watched, processed, and dealt with. But my concern is, you are seeing a lot of love for the Iran deal in the Security Council. And that's unfortunate. And why that was ever allowed to go through, why that was ever passed, is beyond me. I mean, it's terrible. I want to quote from your first remarks -- your first public remarks as ambassador. You said, regarding those countries, those nations, that don't have America's back at the UN -- I think everyone was sort of stunned when you said this because you said, 'We're taking names and we will make points to respond to that accordingly.' So, specifically, what can the US do, what can the ambassador for the US do, to hold countries accountable to, as you said, don't -- to address the fact that many of them don't have America's back at the UN? You want to see my list, don't you? You know, basically what it comes down to is I'm not there to play. And what I wanted to make sure of was that the US started leading again. And leading isn't saying and doing things when it's comfortable. Leading is saying and doing things when it's not comfortable. So the goal was have the backs of our allies. Never again do what we saw happen with Resolution 2334 (stating that Israeli settlements in 'Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem' violate international law) and make anyone question our support. When Resolution 2334 happened, and the US abstained, the entire country felt a kick in the gut. We had just done something that showed the US at its weakest point ever. Never do we not have the backs of our friends. We don't have a greater friend than Israel. And to see that happen was not only embarrassing, it was hurtful. So, what I can tell you is everyone at the UN is scared to talk to me about Resolution 2334. And I wanted them to know that, look, that happened, but it will never happen again. So to answer the question on what can we do at the UN, we can do a lot. The power of your voice is an amazing thing. So one, changing the culture of the UN is very important. And the way you change the culture of the UN is the US tells them what we're not going to put up with. We start to change the culture to what we should be talking about. And then we actually act on what we say. I wear heels. It's not for a fashion statement. It's because if I see something wrong, we're going to kick them every single time. So how are we kicking? We're kicking by, number one, putting everybody on notice, saying that if you have our back -- we're going to have the backs of our friends, but our friends need to have our back too. If you challenge us, be prepared for what you're challenging us for, because we will respond. The next thing we did was we said, the days of Israel-bashing are over. We have a lot of things to talk about. There are a lot of threats to peace and security. But you're not going to take our number one democratic friend in the Middle East and beat up on them. I think what you're seeing is they're all backing up a little bit. The Israel-bashing is not as loud. They didn't know exactly what I meant outside of giving the speech, so we showed them. When they decided to try and put a Palestinian in one of the highest positions that had ever been given at the UN, we said no and we had him booted out. That doesn't mean he wasn't a nice man. That doesn't mean he wasn't good to America. What it means is, until the Palestinian Authority comes to the table, until the UN responds the way they're supposed to, there are no freebees for the Palestinian Authority anymore. So, then they tested us again. A ridiculous report, the Falk Report, came out. I don't know who the guy is or what he's about, but he's got serious problems. Goes and compares Israel to an apartheid State. So the first thing we do is we call the secretary-general and say, this is absolutely ridiculous. You have to pull it. The secretary-general immediately pulled the report. And then the director has now resigned. Last thing. So, for anyone that says you can't get anything done at the UN, they need to know there's a new sheriff in town. The session with Nikki Haley was moderated by Dan Senor, and investment professional and co-author of Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle. The National Human Rights Commission has issued notices to the Centre and the Rajasthan government over the lynching of a man allegedly by cow vigilantes in Alwar, even as three persons arrested in connection with the attack were sent to 14-day judicial custody on Friday. The commission termed the incident as painful and serious violation of human rights saying self-proclaimed volunteers are creating an atmosphere of fear in the society. In the notice issued to the Rajasthan chief secretary, the commission has called for a detailed report in the matter along with action taken against the culprits. A notice has also been issued to the Union home secretary, calling for a response as to what steps have been taken or proposed to be taken by the Centre to deal with such incidents in the country. They have been asked to respond within four weeks. Meanwhile, the Union home ministry on Friday received a report from the Rajasthan government which said a special police team has been constituted to arrest all those allegedly involved in the lynching. The Rajasthan government gave a preliminary report about the incident in which a 55-year-old man, Pehlu Khan, was beaten to death in Alwar district allegedly by a group of cow vigilantes on April 1. The local police reached the spot soon after receiving the report about the incident, rescued four of Khans colleagues and took him to a hospital, the report to the Union home ministry said. The Rajasthan government said three people have been arrested so far and a special police team has been constituted to probe the incident and find out the circumstances leading to it. The three arrested accused -- Kalu Ram, 44, of Ratanpura; Vipin Yadav, 19, and Ravindra Yadav, 30, both from Behror -- were on Friday produced in a court in Jaipur which granted their custody and they were sent to jail, Alwar Superintendent of Police Rahul Prakash said. He said no fresh arrest has been made in the case and that police teams are looking for other accused named in the first information report. The three were on one-day police remand on Thursday after they were booked under Indian Penal Code Sections 302 (murder), 143 (unlawful assembly), 308 (culpable homicide), among others. They have identified on the basis of a video footage and are among the prime accused in the case. The police team will also try to arrest the remaining accused, sources said quoting the report. The incident took place when as many as 16 people were allegedly transporting 36 bovines in six pickup vans. The deceased, Khan, and four others, including his two sons, were beaten brutally by some locals at Behror in Alwar suspecting they were smuggling cows, police said. The incident rocked both Houses of Parliament where the Congress attacked the BJP saying the Constitution was being violated in the name of cow protection in the states ruled by the saffron party. Army on Friday found bodies of three soldiers who were missing after multiple avalanches struck the post in Batalik scetor of Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir. Army today recovered bodies of three soldiers who went missing during avalanches, an army official said. Unprecedented snowfall triggered multiple avalanches in Batalik on Thursday, burying a post, he said. The soldiers have been identified as -- Havaldar Prabhu Kirke, 43, Lance Naik Bihari Marandi, 34, and Sepoy Kuldeep Lakra, 22. All of them hailed from Jharkhand, the official said. The bodies were trapped under 15 feet of snow. The soldiers were deployed at the hills of Kargil. Fresh avalanches on Friday hit army posts in Kaksar belt of Kargil district but all affected soldiers were rescued, he said. In Jammu region one person was killed and 8 others injured, while over 40 structures including houses and a temple were damaged in incidents of floods and high speed winds. One woman was washed away after a drain was flooded Sudhmahadev area, while around 8 persons were injured in Udhapur district, DC Neeraj Kumar said. Efforts are on to restore the power supply and clear the roads in the district, he said. Four shops and some houses were also damaged in floods in Mendhar belt of Poonch district, officials said adding that 17 people washed away in flash floods have been rescued. In Reasi district, 40 sheep were killed after a cow shed collapsed due to heavy rains in Shandi Balmatkote area on Thursday, they said. 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: Kames Capital Plc (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. 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(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: Ordinary Share Interests Short positions Number % Number % (1) Relevant securities owned and/or controlled: 6,330,534 1.6521 0 0.00 (2) Cash-settled derivatives: 1,778,206 0.4640 0 0.00 (3) Stock-settled derivatives (including options) and agreements to purchase/sell: 0 0.00 0 0.00 TOTAL: 8,108,740 2.1161 0 0.00 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. 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Date of disclosure: 07/04/2017 Contact name: Stephen Adams Telephone number: 0131 549 6714 For any issues relating to this disclosure please contact 0141 549 3288 or kamestradeoperationsmb@kamescapital.com Public disclosures under Rule 8 of the Code must be made to a Regulatory Information Service and must also be emailed to the Takeover Panel at monitoring@disclosure.org.uk. The Panel's Market Surveillance Unit is available for consultation in relation to the Code's disclosure requirements on +44 (0)20 7638 0129. The Code can be viewed on the Panel's website at www.thetakeoverpanel.org.uk. The Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama arrived in Tawang on Friday along with Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu amid protests by China. The Tibetan leader was to reach Tawang by chopper on April 4 but due to bad weather, he travel over 550 km by road from Guwahati to reach Tawang. He covered 140 km by road from Dirang in West Kameng district accompanied by Khandu with a 30-km stretch of the route at Sela being partly snow-covered and having turned into muddy and slippery due to the melting snow. The state police and paramilitary personnel are keeping vigil along the 140-km stretch between Dirang and Tawang, particularly at Sela (13,700 feet). His first stop was Bomdila, the headquarters of West Kameng district, from where Chinese soldiers retreated after the 1962 war. A day after after delivering sermons in Bomdila, he spent two days at Dirang, about 40 km north of Bomdila, where he consecrated the Thupsing Dhargye monastery. Tawang has been decorated with colourful prayer flags and flowers with the roads repainted and the drains cleaned. A series of religious discourses by the Dalai Lama will begin tomorrow (Saturday). He will stay at the Tawang monastery for four nights before leaving on April 11, Tawang deputy commissioner Sang Phuntso said. Security has been strengthened around the Tawang monastery, the Yid-Ga-Choezin ground where the spiritual leader will deliver his sermons. The 336-year-old monastery is the largest in India and second largest in the world after Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet. Perched on a cliff at 10,000 feet, Tawang monastery is known in Tibetan as Tawang Gaden Namgyal Lhatse, meaning celestial paradise chosen by the horse. It belongs to the Gelugpa school of Mahayana Buddhism and had religious connection with Lhasas Drepung Monastery that continued during the British rule. Beijing refers to this connection to claim Tawang as part of China after invading and taking over Tibet in 1950. Chinese state media had said on Wednesday that India is using the Dalai Lama as a diplomatic leverage to challenge Chinas bottom line. The Dalai Lama was compelled to flee Lhasa in 1959 and cross over to India by foot via the Tawang sector. IMAGE: Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama interacts with media at Bomdila in West Kameng district of Arunachal Pradesh. Photograph: PTI Photo During Hasina's visit, which is her first after Modi assumed office in 2014, the two sides will be signing at least 25 pacts in various key sectors including civil nuclear cooperation and defence, but any agreement on the Teesta water sharing is unlikely to be inked. Bangladesh Prime Minister Shiekh Hasina arrived in New Delhi on Friday on a four-day visit during which she will hold wide-ranging talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was at the airport to receive her as a special gesture. During Hasinas visit, which is her first after Modi assumed office in 2014, the two sides will be signing at least 25 pacts in various key sectors including civil nuclear cooperation and defence but any agreement on the Teesta water sharing is unlikely to be inked. Modi and Hasina, who is staying at the Rashtrapati Bhawan, will hold comprehensive discussions on Saturday. India is also set to announce a line of credit of $500 million (Rs 3,200 crore) to Bangladesh for military supplies. Apart from a courtesy call on by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, Hasina's schedule on Friday included events at the Bangladesh High Commission. Officials in New Delhi said, It will be a visit without water, indicating that a pact on Teesta river waters is not on the cards. The central government will not go ahead with the agreement on Teesta without taking West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on board and she has been opposing it stridently citing water crisis in the state. However, the two sides are looking at the inking of a framework agreement on civil nuclear energy which will provide for extensive cooperation in the sector including setting up of nuclear reactors in Bangladesh by India. It will be a very, very special visit. We hope the visit will take the ties between the two countries to new level, Joint Secretary in the Bangladesh-Myanmar division of the external affairs ministry Sripriya Ranganathan told reporters. On Teesta pact, she said, Teesta agreement remains a work in progress...We have not reached a closure on it. The Teesta deal was set to be signed during the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singhs visit to Bangladesh in September 2011, but was postponed at the last minute due to objections by Banerjee. Teesta water is crucial for Bangladesh especially in the leanest period from December to March when the water flow often temporarily comes down to less than 1,000 cusecs from 5,000 cusecs. Issues like combating terrorism, containing radicalism and enhancing security cooperation between the two countries are likely to figure prominently, besides stalemate over the Teesta pact during talks between Modi and Hasina. The West Bengal chief minister has accepted an invitation by the government to attend the launch of some projects between the two countries as well as a lunch to be hosted by Modi in honour of Hasina. On the agreements, Ranganathan said another pact on formalising regular defence engagements will also be signed. To boost trade, the two sides are likely to announce setting up of another set of trade facilitation huts along the borders in the North-eastern region. Hasina will visit Ajmer on Sunday and will meet Indian business leaders on Monday. Minister of State for Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises Babul Supriyo is the minister-in-waiting for the Bangladesh PM. Images: Prime Minister Narendra Modi welcomes Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina at the Delhi Airport on Friday. Photograph: Atul Yadav/PTI Photo. US President Donald Trump ordered military strikes against Syria on Thursday in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack that killed dozens of civilians, including children. Two US warships in the eastern Mediterranean launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian government airbase, US officials said. Heres the attack in images. The guided-missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG 78) launches a tomahawk land attack missile in the Mediterranean Sea. Photograph: US Department of Defense/Reuters A US-launched missile heads for the al-Shayrat military airfield near Homs in Syria on Friday where it caused severe damage to military aircraft and weapons. Photograph: US Department of Defense/Reuters A US Navy image shows the USS Ross (DDG 71) firing a tomahawk land attack missile at the Syrian air base. Photograph: US Department of Defense/Reuters Smoke rises from the deck of the USS Porter as the United States blasted a Syrian air base with a barrage of cruise missiles in fiery retaliation for this week's gruesome chemical weapons attack against civilians. Photograph: US Department of Defense/Reuters The 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles were launched after the US informed the Russians of the attack. Photograph: US Department of Defense/Reuters A combination image released by the US Department of Defense which they say shows the impact crater associated with April 4, 2017 Chemical Weapons Allegation released after US cruise missile strike against Syria. Photograph: US Department of Defense/Reuters Biting mice, carrying skulls, rolling on the ground. Farmers from Tamil Nadu have been using unique ways of highlighting their plight while protesting at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi for the past 24 days. Due to a dire drought situation, the farmers have been pleading the government for debt relief. In February, Tamil Nadu CM Edappadi Palanisami offered Rs 2,247 crore to more than 32 lakh farmers in the state. After their tireless protests, it was on Wednesday that the Madras high court took cognisance and ordered the government to waive of all agricultural loans. Take a look at their ways of making their voices heard. A farmer from the southern state of Tamil Nadu bites a rat during the protest demanding a drought-relief package from the central government. Photograph: Cathal McNaughton/Reuters Farmers have carried skulls of those who have committed suicide to the protest in the national capital. Photograph: Cathal McNaughton/Reuters Apart from biting rats, the farmers have shaved half their heads and moustache during the protest. Photograph: Cathal McNaughton/Reuters The farmers want drought relief, inter-linking of rivers, pension to farmers who are above 60 years of age and also land for widows and children of the farmers who commit suicide or die at a young age. Photograph: Cathal McNaughton/Reuters The Madras HC tells Tamil Nadu government to waive off loans obtained by all farmers, irrespective of their land holding. Photograph: Cathal McNaughton/Reuters However, the Centre had said it would not share the financial burden of farm-loan waivers announced by states. Photograph: Cathal McNaughton/Reuters Many leaders, including Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi met the protesting farmers in New Delhi. Photograph: Vijay Verma/PTI Photo A large beer truck crashed into an upscale department store in central Stockholm barely a few metres away from the Indian Embassy on Friday, killing at least three people and injuring several others. IMAGE: The spot at Drottninggatan Street in central Stockholm where a truck crashed into a department store on Friday. Photograph: Jessica Gow/TT News Agency/via Reuters Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said all indications were that it was a terror attack. Sweden has been attacked, Lofven said, adding, This indicates that it is an act of terror. One person was arrested in connection with the attack later. People in the downtown area fled in panic, and the countrys intelligence agency said a large number of people were injured. IMAGE: The attack took place just a few metres away from the Indian Embassy in Stockholm. Photograph: ANI Swedish radio put the death toll at three. I saw two people lying on street and heard loud noises. Also saw three others injured and helicopters flying, Indian Ambassador to Sweden Monika Mohta was quoted as saying by ANI. The attack took place just a few metres away from the Indian Embassy. However, as per embassy sources in Stockholm, all local and Indian staff was safe. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said all embassy officials are safe after the terror attack in the Swedish capital of Stockholm which took place very close to the Indian embassy. I am in touch with Indian Ambassador in Sweden. The attack was very close to Indian Embassy. Our embassy officials are safe, Swaraj tweeted. Indians in Stockholm: Please note the Emergency number: 0768982764, Counsellor : 0734262097, she said in another tweet. IMAGE: People in the downtown area fled in panic, and the countrys intelligence agency said a large number of people were injured. Photograph: Jessica Gow/TT News Agency/via Reuters Swedish broadcaster SVT said shots were fired at the scene, though it wasnt clear by whom and police said they could not confirm that. Live television footage showed smoke coming out of the upscale Ahlens department store on Drottninggatan Street, which the truck smashed into. The department store is part of Sweden-wide chain. The building includes several stores at street-level. Prime Minister Narendra Modi condemned the attack and said India stands firmly with the people of Sweden in this hour of grief. IMAGE: Swedish broadcaster SVT said shots were fired at the scene, though it wasnt clear by whom. Photograph: Jessica Gow/TT News Agency/via Reuters We condemn the attack in Stockholm. My thoughts are with the families of the deceased & prayers with those injured, he tweeted. India stands firmly with the people of Sweden in this hour of grief, he added. Photos from the scene showed a beer truck sticking out of the department store, and Aftonbladet daily reported that Swedish beer maker Spendrups said one of its trucks had been carjacked earlier on Friday. Police vans circulating in the city using loudspeakers urged people to go straight home and avoid large crowds. The centre of the usually buzzing city was in lockdown, with the central train station evacuated and other stores quickly emptied of shoppers. The Stockholm metro was also completely shut down, with the attack taking place at the citys T-Centralen station, through which all the citys lines pass. The area around the attack was cordoned off, but other streets in the city were packed with pedestrians trying to find a way home on a Friday afternoon. Helicopters could be heard hovering in the sky over central Stockholm, and a large number of police cars and ambulances were dispatched to the scene, witnesses said. IMAGE: Swedish policemen stand guard in central Stockholm on Friday. Photograph: Daniel Dikson/Reuters Fridays incident is near the site of a December 2010 attack in which Taimour Abdulwahab, a Swedish citizen who lived in Britain, detonated a suicide bomb, killing himself and injuring two others. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Fridays attack, but vehicles have been common weapons in recent extremist attacks. European politicians expressed solidarity, with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker saying that it was an attack on us all. A spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said: Our thoughts go out to the people in Stockholm, to the injured, their relatives, rescuers and police. We stand together against terror. French President Francois Hollande voiced his horror and indignation over the assault. The Trump-led administration has launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian government airbase in response to a suspected chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held town. IMAGE: The US launched 59 Tomahawk missiles from the Eastern Mediterranean. Photograph courtesy: US Department of Defense The United States on Friday launched a massive military strike on a Syrian air base in retaliation to a barbaric chemical attack on civilians allegedly by embattled President Bashar al-Assads regime and asked all 'civilised' countries to join it to end the killing of innocent people. On President Donald Trumps orders, US warships in the Mediterranean Sea launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Shayrat air base, in Homs governorate, where the warplanes that carried out the chemical attacks are based, US officials said. The move signals a dramatic shift in Trumps position on whether the US should take military action against Assads regime. Trump, during his campaign for president, had opposed any such move. The missiles from two US warships hit at 3:45 am (local time) and targeted the bases airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas. IMAGE: A satellite view of the Shayrat airfield. The Shayrat airbase had been used to store chemical weapons used by the regime until 2013, when a deal was struck with the US and Russia to remove its declared arsenal. Photograph courtesy: Pentagon Speaking from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Trump said he ordered targeted missile strikes at the Syrian airfield. A military official quoted on Syrian TV said the US action caused material damage. Describing the chemical attack on innocent civilians as horrible, Trump said President Assad took the lives of helpless men, women and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror, he said. It is in vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter use of deadly chemical weapons, Trump told reporters. The military action comes after Tuesdays deadly chemical attack that officials said used chlorine mixed with a nerve agent, killing 86 people, including 27 children, in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhun in northwestern Syria. This is the first direct military action the US has taken against the regime of Assad in Syrias six-year civil war and represents a substantial escalation of the US military campaign in the region. However, it was reported that the US strike also killed nine civilians, including four children, Syrian state news agency SANA reported. The news agency said five of the civilians, among them three children, were killed in the village of Shayrat just outside the base of the same name. An American missile also hit the village of Al-Hamrat, which killed four civilians including a child, it said. Another seven civilians were wounded when a missile hit homes in Al-Manzul, four kilometres away from the Shayrat air base, it added. IMAGE: US President Donald Trump delivers an statement about missile strikes on a Syrian airbase, at his Mar-a-Lago estate in West Palm Beach, Florida. Photograph: Carlos Barria/Reuters US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who is set to visit Moscow next week, said Russia 'failed in its responsibility' to deliver on a 2013 commitment to secure Syrias chemical weapons. Clearly Russia has failed in its responsibility. Either Russia has been complicit or either Russia has been simply incompetent in its ability to deliver on its end of that agreement, Tillerson told reporters. He said that the US has a very 'high level of confidence' that the chemical attacks were carried out under the direction of Assads regime. We have very high confidence that the attacks involved the use of sarin nerve gas, he said. Russia, who has provided military support for Bashar al-Assads government since September 2015, said that the air strikes could undermine efforts to fight against terrorism in Syria while Israel and Syrian rebels welcomed the attack. Pentagon Press Secretary Captain Jeff Davis said Russian forces were notified in advance of the strike using the established deconfliction line. US military planners took precautions to minimise risk to Russian or Syrian personnel located at the airfield, he said. IMAGE: The airstrike has been welcomed by American lawmakers, saying the action was sending out an important message. Photograph: US Department of Defense The Pentagon said the missile strike that targeted Shayrat Airfield was a proportional response to Assads heinous act. The strike was a proportional response to Assads heinous act. Shayrat Airfield was used to store chemical weapons and Syrian air forces. The US intelligence community assesses that aircraft from Shayrat conducted the chemical weapons attack on April 4, Davis said. The strike was intended to deter the regime from using chemical weapons again, he said. Russian forces were notified in advance of the strike using the established deconfliction line. US military planners took precautions to minimise risk to Russian or Syrian personnel located at the airfield, Davis said. The deaths of civilians in Syria sparked international outrage with many pointing the finger at the government of President Assad. The US military strike was widely hailed by the world community with nations like the United Kingdom and Israel backing it as a just response to the chemical attack by President Bashar Al-Assad's regime, but Russia and Iran strongly condemned the unilateral move. The UK government said it fully supports the US missile strike. A 10 Downing Street spokesperson said, Overnight, the US has taken military action against the Syrian regime, targeting the airfield in Shayrut which was used to launch the chemical weapons attack earlier this week. The UK government fully supports the US action, which we believe was an appropriate response to the barbaric chemical weapons attack launched by the Syrian regime, and is intended to deter further attacks. UK defence secretary Michael Fallon told the BBC that the UK had been in close contact with the US over the last few days and that British Prime Minister Theresa May had been informed throughout. He said that the UK government had not been asked to take part in the strike. China condemned the deadly chemical weapons attack in Syria. We condemn the recent chemical attack in Syria, and we support the independent and comprehensive investigation conducted by the relevant UN agencies into ... the use or suspected use of chemical weapons so as to reach a conclusion that stands the test of history and facts on the basis of solid evidence, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said. We have noted the latest developments. What is urgent now is to prevent the situation from deteriorating and uphold the hard-won political process to settle the Syrian issue, she said, without mentioning the US military strike which came as Chinas President Xi Jinping met his American counterpart Donald Trump in Florida. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he supports the strong and clear message sent by the US strike. In both word and action, President (Donald) Trump sent a strong and clear message today that the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated, a statement from Netanyahus office said. Israel fully supports President Trump's decision and hopes that this message of resolve in the face of the Assad regimes horrific actions will resonate not only in Damascus, but in Tehran, Pyongyang and elsewhere. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said, The Australian government strongly supports the swift and just response of the United States. This was a calibrated, proportionate and targeted response, Turnbull said, adding that the US had informed Australia before the strike. He said Australia was not involved in the strike, but remained fully committed as a coalition partner to ongoing military operations in Iraq and Syria. European Union President Donald Tusk said the US missile strikes demonstrated needed resolve against chemical attacks. US strikes show needed resolve against barbaric chemical attacks, tweeted Tusk, who represents the 28 EU member states, adding the bloc will work with the US to end brutality in Syria. Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, the EU executive, expressed his support for the US decision. President Juncker has been unequivocal in his condemnation of the use of chemical weapons, a Commission statement said. The repeated use of such weapons must be answered. He understands efforts to deter further attacks, it said. Juncker made a clear distinction between US missile strikes on a military base and the use of chemical weapons against civilians. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his country fully supports the US action. Canada fully supports the United States limited and focused action to degrade the Assad regimes ability to launch chemical weapons attacks against innocent civilians, including many children, he said in a statement. President Assads use of chemical weapons and the crimes the Syrian regime has committed against its own people cannot be ignored, he added. These gruesome attacks cannot be permitted to continue operating with impunity. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged restraint and the search for a political solution in Syria. Mindful of the risk of escalation, I appeal for restraint to avoid any acts that could deepen the suffering of the Syrian people, he said in a statement. There is no other way to solve the conflict than through a political solution. Meanwhile, the UN Security Council met in an emergency session on Friday following the US missile strikes. France and Britain called for a renewed push for political negotiations to end the six-year war in Syria. Bolivian Ambassador Sacha Lorenti said the United States had behaved like investigator, attorney, judge and executioner in Syria. This is not what international law is all about, he told reporters ahead of the meeting. Russia, one of the closest allies of the regime of Assad, said it considers the US strike as aggression against a sovereign state which will further harm US-Russia ties. President Putin considers American strikes on Syria aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international norms, and under an invented pretext, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. The Syrian army does not have any chemical weapon stockpiles, Peskov said. The fact of destruction of all chemical weapon stockpiles of the Syrian armed forces was recorded and confirmed by the (Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons). This step by Washington inflicts considerable damage to US-Russia relations, which are already in a lamentable state, Peskov added. Russia also called for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council to discuss the US missile strikes. Iran also strongly condemned the military strike. We condemn all unilateral military action and the missile strike by US warships against Shayrat airbase under the pretext of Tuesdays suspected attack on Khan Sheikhun, foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghassemi told the Fars news agency. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande issued a joint statement in response to the US air strike and blamed Assad for the US action. President Assad alone bears the responsibility for this development. His repeated use of chemical weapons and his crimes against his own people demand sanctions which France and Germany already asked for in the summer of 2013 after the massacre at Ghouta, they said. Italy gave its support to the US action, saying it was a suitable response to Syrian aggression and a deterrent against the use of chemical weapons by its leader. European Union President Donald Tusk said the US missile strikes demonstrated needed resolve against chemical attacks. The bloc will work with the US to end brutality in Syria, he said. North Atlantic Treaty Organisation head Jens Stoltenberg blamed Syria for the US missile strikes. Any use of chemical weapons is unacceptable, cannot go unanswered, and those responsible must be held accountable, he said. Saudi Arabia said it fully supports US strikes, terming it a courageous decision by Trump in response to the use of chemical weapons against civilians. A responsible source at the foreign ministry expressed the Kingdom of Saudi Arabias full support for the American military operations on military targets in Syria, which came as a response to the Syrian regimes use of chemical weapons against innocent civilians, a statement carried by state news agency SPA said. Turkeys foreign ministry said it viewed US missile strikes against a Syrian air base extremely positively and added that Turkey would fully support steps that would ensure accountability for the Syrian regime. Meanwhile, Turkish President Recap Tayyip Erdogans spokesman called for the creation of a no-fly zone and safe zones within Syria. Assad's office, however, termed the strike as foolish and irresponsible. What America did is nothing but foolish and irresponsible behaviour, which only reveals its short-sightedness and political and military blindness to reality, a statement said. Assads office said the government would redouble its efforts against rebel groups after the US strike. This aggression has increased Syrias determination to strike these terrorist agents, to continue crushing them and to speed up the pace of work on this, wherever they are on Syrian territory, it said. The disgraceful act of targeting a sovereign states airport demonstrates once again that different administrations do not change deeper policies. The Syrian army on Tuesday denied that it had used chemical weapons against Khan Sheikhun. Tulsi Gabbard, the first Hindu lawmaker in the US Congress described the massive American military strike as reckless and short-sighted amid bipartisan support from the House of Representatives to President Trumps punitive action. It angers and saddens me that President Trump has taken the advice of war hawks and escalated our illegal regime change war to overthrow the Syrian government, Gabbard, the Democratic Congresswoman from Hawaii, said in a statement. Gabbard is an Iraq war veteran and a member of the powerful House Foreign Relations Committee. In January Gabbard travelled to Syria to meet Assad, thus making her perhaps the only senior US official to meet the Syrian leader. This escalation is short-sighted and will lead to more dead civilians, more refugees, the strengthening of al-Qaeda and other terrorists, and a possible nuclear war between the US and Russia, she said. This administration has acted recklessly without care or consideration of the dire consequences of the US attack on Syria without waiting for the collection of evidence from the scene of the chemical poisoning, Gabbard said. If President Assad is indeed guilty of this horrible chemical attack on innocent civilians, I will be the first to call for his prosecution and execution by the International Criminal Court. she said. However, because of our attack on Syria, this investigation may now not even be possible. And without such evidence, a successful prosecution will be much harder, Gabbard, who is also a co-chair of the Congressional India Caucus said. Gabbard appeared to be the lone voice in opposing the Trumps decision to carry out missile strikes against the Syrian regime. Trump appeared to have bipartisan support to his military decision, which came in less than 100 days of him taking over the office of presidency. What exactly are Tomahawk missiles? The weapon has been a major part of the American military arsenal since the early 1990s and has been used in many high-profile operations, including the first Gulf War to the fight against Islamic State and conflict in Yemen. Here are its most prominent features -- >> Range of up to 2,500 kilometres >> Typically carry a 450 kg warhead >> Recent estimates have put the cost of a single Tomahawk at US$1.3 million or more >> Manufacturer Raytheon says the "highly accurate" weapon can be used "to conduct precise strikes on high-value targets with minimal collateral damage" WATCH THE VIDEO HERE -- Video courtesy: US Department of Defence Parliament is likely to witness another stormy day over cow vigilantism in the country. On Thursday when discussing the man who died in Alwar after he was beaten up by gau rakshaks, Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi created a furore in the Upper House when he said 'no such incident had taken place'. Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad had shot back saying it was sad that the minister didn't know and that a foreign publication like the New York Times had reported on it. Watch the live proceedings HERE. The poll promise is an attempt to woo the middle-class and rich voters in the wake of the partys growing unpopularity, says Sahil Makkar. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has promised to waive property tax if the Aam Aadmi Party is voted to power in the citys three municipal corporations on April 23. The Bharatiya Janata Party is in power in the three municipalities in the national capital. The poll promise is an attempt to woo the middle-class and rich voters in the wake of the partys growing unpopularity and its recent debacles in the Punjab and the Goa assembly elections. The AAPs vote bank in Delhi is concentrated among unauthorised colonies and the party wants to broaden it to replicate its success in the Delhi assembly elections, which the party had won on promises of free water and electricity. The abolition of property tax will result in the rich being spared from paying tax. Municipal corporations will have to provide the same services in authorised and unauthorised colonies because the current categorisation will become irrelevant. The cash-strapped civic bodies will also face greater difficulty in paying salaries to their staff. The East Delhi Municipal Corporation and the North Delhi Municipal Corporation already bear a huge financial burden. According to the revised Budget Estimate of 2016-17, the EDMC was sitting on a deficit of Rs 2,041 crore. It owed Rs 590 crore in wages and pension, Rs 600 crore to paryavaran sahayaks and another Rs 150 crore to its contractors. The EDMC said the Delhi government was yet to pay its dues of Rs 4,928 crore as recommended by the Fourth Delhi Finance Commission. The EDMC budget deficit is expected to rise to Rs 2,243 crore in 2017-18. Yet the BJP-ruled body announced populist measures like installing CCTV cameras, exempting residential properties measuring up to 41.81 sq metres from tax, and reduction of conversion charges in the current financial year. The NDMC budget deficit for 2016-17 was estimated at Rs 2,754 crore and is expected to rise to Rs 3,610 crore in 2017-18. Despite this, the NDMC announced free mobile phones for 28,000 sanitation workers and permanent jobs to 6,000 daily wagers in this financial year. If property tax is waived, the biggest loss will be for the South Delhi Municipal Corporation, which collected Rs 775 crore property tax in 2016-17, around 28 per cent of its total internal revenue of Rs 2,755 crore. The SDMC has revenue surplus, but the loss of property tax will bring it into deficit. The EDMCs internal revenue was Rs 1,478 crore in 2016-17, of which property tax contributed 9 per cent, or Rs 128 crore. The NDMCs internal revenue in 2016-17 was Rs 2,688 crore and property tax contributed 16 per cent, or Rs 435 crore. Only 30-35 per cent of residents pay property tax in Delhi as the rest of the population is outside the tax net. The EDMC has 2,28,000 taxpayers among 4,00,000 property owners, the NDMC has 3,35,000 taxpayers among one million property owners and the SDMC has 4,75,000 taxpayers among its 1.1 million property owners. IMAGE: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Deputy CM Manish Sisodia addressing a press conference in New Delhi. Photograph: PTI Photo Serious question marks remain over how effectively, or whether at all, India can actually execute a disarming CF strike that takes out most of Pakistans nukes, says Ajai Shukla. Former national security advisor Shivshankar Menon has shed new light on an especially worrying aspect of Indias nuclear doctrine -- New Delhis barely credible promise of automatic, massive nuclear retaliation against any adversary that targets India, or Indian forces anywhere, with weapons of mass destruction. The credibility gap in this strategy of massive retaliation, as pointed out by critics worldwide, is that it would cause carnage in the adversarys towns and cities but leave intact much of his nuclear arsenal. With those surviving nukes (second-strike capability), the adversary would then wreak havoc on Indian towns and cities. It is hard for New Delhi, globally regarded as a restrained power, to convince analysts and adversaries that it would knowingly trigger the catastrophic deaths of millions of civilians on both sides by responding massively to a far smaller attack -- even a single Pakistani tactical nuclear weapon that killed perhaps a hundred Indian soldiers deep inside Pakistani territory. Yet, Indias nuclear doctrine, promulgated on January 4, 2003, undertakes that nuclear retaliation to a first strike (by an adversary) will be massive and designed to inflict unacceptable damage. Now Menon, in his recent book entitled Choices: Inside The Making Of Indian Foreign Policy, indicates that Indias threat of massive retaliation need not involve nuclear strikes against Pakistani urban centres (counter-value or CV strikes). Instead, Indias massive response could take the form of targeting Pakistans nuclear arsenal (counter-force or CF strikes), leaving that adversary with a greatly diminished capability of striking back at India. In a key paragraph in his book, Menon -- who, as NSA, oversaw nuclear targeting policy -- analyses the meaning of a massive strike. He says: There would be little incentive, once Pakistan had taken hostilities to the nuclear level, for India to limit its response, since that would only invite further escalation by Pakistan. India would hardly risk giving Pakistan the chance to carry out a massive nuclear strike after the Indian response to Pakistan using tactical nuclear weapons. In other worlds, Pakistani tactical nuclear weapon use would effectively free India to undertake a comprehensive first strike against Pakistan. Menon carefully differentiates between first use (which Indian nuclear doctrine forbids) and first strike, which -- in widely-accepted nuclear vocabulary -- refers to a disarming CF strike aimed at leaving an adversary without nuclear recourse. Menon clearly enunciates the logic of a disarming CF strike: India would hardly risk giving Pakistan the chance to carry out a massive nuclear strike after the Indian response In other words, Indias second strike (in response to a TNW against its forces) must leave Pakistan with little or no third strike capability. But does a disarming counter-force strike (which Menon terms a comprehensive first strike) amount to a massive response, which Indian doctrine mandates? A senior Indian official asks: Who says a massive response must necessarily be directed at CV targets? Menons insights extend the focus of Indias second-strike well beyond counter-value targets to counter-force targets. Contacted by Business Standard, Menon declined to elaborate, stating only: Indias nuclear doctrine has far greater flexibility than it gets credit for. Menons book has been in print since November, but only now has this nuance been noted by Vipin Narang, a highly regarded nuclear strategist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Narang tweeted: Indian strategy following Pak tacnuke (tactical nuclear) use is neither proportional response nor massive retaliation. But [rather, it is a] disarming counterforce strike. Even so, serious question marks remain over how effectively, or whether at all, India can actually execute a disarming CF strike that takes out most of Pakistans nukes. Partly because of the possibility of Indian attack, Pakistan is building up its nuclear arsenal faster than any other country, running its Khushab nuclear reactor at full tilt to produce plutonium. It is currently estimated to have 120-130 nuclear warheads. Especially difficult for India to target are Pakistans small, highly mobile TNWs that are basically truck-mounted, tube-launched artillery. Furthermore, any impression in Pakistan of Indian counterforce strikes, or the fear that the nukes might soon be lost, would incentivise their early use -- the use them or lose them dilemma. Indian public debate has traditionally focused on another aspect of our doctrine -- the commitment of No First Use of nuclear weapons. The Bharatiya Janata Party questioned NFU in its pre-2014 election manifesto, before backing off quickly. Then, last year, former defence minister Manohar Parrikar raised questions over the need for NFU, before the BJP dismissed that as his personal view. However, given Pakistans conventional military weakness in the face of a sudden Indian offensive under the Cold Start doctrine, Rawalpindis operationalisation of TNWs, and its declared plan to use them early in a conflict, make Indias response a matter of life and death for millions. Image: India's surface-to-surface missile, the Prithvi. Photograph: Kamal Kishore/Reuters. 'We could crack IM modules in the country because one arrested member would spill beans on the other.' 'With ISIS, every module is different and is possibly being handled by different operators abroad.' Sahil Makkar reports. In May 2014, four Muslim youths, in their early 20s, from Maharashtra, left India to join Islamic State of Syria and Iraq, ISIS, the most lethal terror organisation in the world. The youth reached Syria, took up arms and allegedly fought in the war. Six months later, one of them, identified as Areeb Majeed, decided to come back after he was shot twice and survived an air strike by the United States-led coalition forces fighting the ISIS extremists in Syria. Majeed, 23, approached the Indian consulate in Turkey and sought an emergency certificate, a travel document issued in case a passport is lost, stolen or damaged, to return to India. He was arrested from the Mumbai airport in November 2014. Majeed's arrest was the first case where an ISIS operative was arrested in India. The National Investigation Agency, India's premier anti-terror probe agency, took over the case from the Mumbai police and tried to unravel ISIS' nefarious plans in India through Majeed. Investigators and intelligence sleuths learnt, to their surprise, many Indian youth, including engineers, had got attracted to ISIS after it began taking control over territories in Syria and Iraq in 2013. These youths started out by searching for ISIS videos related to the war, brutal killings of journalists and foreign nationals, scripts that goad believers to burn liquor and cigarette factories, and material related to destruction of cultural heritage sites. The jihadi literature was freely and readily available on social media, networking sites and mobile applications. These aspiring extremists also downloaded speeches of radical Islamic preachers such as Anwar Awlaki, Abdu Sami Qasmi, Meraj Rabbani, Tausif ur Rehman, Jerjees Ansari and Zakir Naik, besides regularly getting updates from the so-called ISIS magazine, Dabiq, which ostensibly convinced them that ISIS was fighting for the rights of the Sunnis. A senior officer in NIA says the misguided youth didn't have any direct links with the ISIS operatives in Syria. In fact, those running ISIS propaganda from overseas wouldn't easily trust anyone trying to connect with them on the social networking sites. "ISIS puts a possible recruit on watch for several months and it only communicates with him through various cryptic apps and Web sites, making it difficult for the intelligence agencies to keep an eye on such people," says the officer. "The recruits are called to Syria only if they are strongly recommended by someone within ISIS." The recruits, according to him, have to first sign a baya'a, which is an oath of allegiance to the caliphate, and then they are asked to send a scanned copy of the same through email to their online handlers. In this case, the baya'a was signed in the name of ISIS head Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the officer says. Many youth left India on the pretext of performing Umrah, the pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia which can be undertaken at any point of time. From there they jumped ship and tried to reach Turkey, Iraq and Syria. The Indian government said it has arrested 75 suspected ISIS operatives so far who belonged to Kerala (21), Telangana (16), Karnataka (9), Maharashtra (8), Madhya Pradesh (6), Tamil Nadu (4), Uttarakhand (4), Uttar Pradesh (3), Rajasthan (2), Jammu & Kashmir (1) and West Bengal (1). This is a change from a few years ago, when the then prime minister, Manmohan Singh, claimed that not a single ISIS operative had been found in India, though the country has the world's second largest population of Muslims. The data suggests that people subscribing to the ISIS ideology are present across the length and breadth of the country and it is increasingly becoming difficult for the law enforcement agencies to keep track of them. This perhaps explains the failure of the intelligence agencies to prevent the low-intensity blast on the Bhopal-Ujjain train that injured 10 people last month. The agencies, however, were quick to arrest eight accused and neutralise one in Lucknow's Thakurganj area. Officers in intelligence agencies say not every accused travels to Syria and Iraq. Some got attracted to the ISIS ideology while they were employed in West Asia. They were indoctrinated and sent to India to recruit local people for the cause. "A large number of Indian expatriates work in West Asia. Some have got radicalised and are suspected to be arranging funds for terrorist activities in India. They are channelling money through the hawala route," says an intelligence officer. This has added a new dimension to the problem and made the work of the intelligence agencies all the more difficult. Last year, the police arrested five men in Hyderabad for allegedly hatching a conspiracy to carry out a terror strike in the country. The suspects had held various meetings, made efforts to join ISIS in Syria, and tried to recruit more men. The NIA seized several electronic gadgets, mobile phones, hard discs, semi-automatic pistols, air rifles, pellets, target boards, chemicals used for making Triacetone Triperoxide which was suspected to be used during the Brussels attack, capacitors, gas stove, cylinder, weighing balance, nails, knives, quartz alarm and bundles of wires. Their interrogation revealed another trend: The accused neither visited Syria nor were they influenced by those who had returned from West Asia -- these men had got together and formed an organisation named Jhund ul Khalifa Fi Bilad al Hind (Army of the Caliph from South India) on their own. The NIA says the accused used the deep Web through the Tor browser, encryption applications such as Amn al Mujahid (an encryption programme by the Al-Fajr Media Centre, an exclusive distributor of Al Qaeda propaganda) and encrypted e-mail systems to communicate with their overseas handlers. "The accused recruited other members, contributed money, procured raw materials, mobile phones, SIM cards, firearms, ammunition and explosive in pursuance of the terror conspiracy," says the NIA. Officers in the Union home ministry and in the national security advisor's office are worried on three accounts: One, they fear a lone wolf attack, similar to the attack outside the UK parliament; two, the presence of numerous and distinct modules which can be activated at short notice; and three, some radicalised youth approaching other terror outfits for logistical assistance -- a network of ultras. The NIA arrested an ISIS suspect and lone wolf called Mohammed Musa last July from West Bengal before he could attack foreigners and the Missionaries of Charity headquarters in Kolkata. Investigation revealed that Musa was in touch with the Bangladesh-based Jamat Ul Mujahideen Bangladesh, or JMB, which is said to be responsible for the attack on Dhaka's Holey Artisan cafe that killed 20 people. Some investigators feel that ISIS is becoming a serious challenge to the country as its ideologues are not part of an organised syndicate like the Lashkar-e-Tayiba or the homegrown terror outfit, Indian Mujahedeen. "We could crack the IM modules in the country, because one arrested member would spill beans on the other. With ISIS, every module is different and is possibly being handled by different operators abroad," says the NIA officer quoted above. The officers feel the only way to keep a check on ISIS activities in India is to mount round-the-clock technical and human surveillance of suspects. The Indian authorities are in constant touch with their overseas counterparts for technical assistance. It could be the toughest challenge they have ever faced. MORE ISIS and INDIA features in the RELATED LINKS below... NEW YORK, April 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Dr. Amit Acharya, Director of the Institute for Oral and Systemic Health at Marshfield Clinic Research Foundation, has been selected to join the Industry Board at the American Health Council. He will be sharing his knowledge and expertise on Oral and Systemic Health, Research, Dentistry, Biomedical and Dental Informatics, and Health Information Technology. With over a decade of experience in the field of Health Information Technology, Dr. Acharya offers valuable insight in his role as the Director of the Institute for Oral and Systemic Health at Marshfield Clinic Research Foundation. He subsequently serves as the Chief Dental Informatics Officer of the Family Health Center at Marshfield Clinic. Founded in 1916 by six physicians looking to provide healthcare for the community, Marshfield Clinic has expanded to be a leading healthcare system in Wisconsin. As Director of the Institute for Oral and Systemic Health (IOSH) and a tenured research scientist at Marshfield Clinic Research Foundation (MCRF), Dr. Acharyas day-to-day responsibilities include research, development, implementation and evaluation of clinical information systems by leveraging the field of dental and biomedical Informatics. His research focus has been on studying the inter-relationship between oral and systemic conditions, integration of medical and dental data, images and clinical systems, architecture of electronic health records (EHRs), developing clinical decision support (CDS) and expert systems, machine learning and natural language approaches, information modeling, developing ontologies and terminologies, and secondary analysis of EHR data for oral-systemic associational studies. In 2010, Dr. Acharya earned his Ph.D. in Biomedical Informatics from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. To further his professional development, he graduated with a Masters in Computer Science from the Western Kentucky University in 2004. In 1999, Dr. Acharya earned his Bachelor of Dental Surgery / Doctor of Dental Surgery from the Bangalore University. Dr. Acharyas desire to pursue the field of health information technology developed due to a desire to bridge the gap between medical and dental care. Dr. Acharya maintains affiliations with the following organizations: American Dental Association, American Medical Informatics Association; IEEE Computer Society, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers; International Medical Informatics Association; ADA SCDI Subcommittee 11 on Electronic Health Record, ADA SCDI on General Dental EHR Information; American Academy for Oral Systemic Health, National Network for Oral Health Access, and Health Level 7. He volunteers with the Children International Organization, which is dedicated to fighting poverty and supporting children in need in poor and developing countries. Additionally, Dr. Acharya has been instrumental in the founding of the Institute for Oral and Systemic Health, the integration of Marshfield Clinics electronic dental record with its propriety electronic medical record and the establishment of one of the very few oral health informatics postdoctoral fellowship program in the world. He has authored over 100 peer-reviewed publications and received multiple grant funding dedicated to bridging the medical and dental divide throughout the course of his career. Dr. Acharyas commitment to the field of Health Information Technology has led to him being a recipient of Excellence for Outstanding Academic Performance in Biomedical Informatics. He has been recognized in the 2011 Edition of Marquis Whos Who in America and the 2011-2012 Edition of Marquis Whos Who in the field of Medicine and Healthcare. In his free time, he enjoys cooking, traveling, and spending time with his family. Dr. Acharya takes pride in being a great father to his two young daughters. Considering the future, Dr. Acharya hopes to create predictive algorithms for EHR Systems to predict different medical and dental conditions, work on the cost of containment of Healthcare, and improving of care. SANTA CLARA, Calif., April 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Hitachi Insight Group, which is responsible for driving the global unified internet of things (IoT) business and go-to-market (GTM) strategy for Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE:6501), today announced that the Hitachi Group will be exhibiting at Hannover Messe, demonstrating innovative industrial IoT technologies, artificial intelligence and robotics applications. The theme of this years Hannover Messe event is Integrating Industry Creating Value and Hitachi will use this platform to demonstrate how businesses can take advantage of the many new opportunities being created in the IoT era. The event marks the first time Hitachis humanoid service robot, EMIEW3, will be in Europe. EMIEW3 can move at a maximum speed of 3.7mph, avoid obstacles, regain its posture if it should fall over and interact with people needing assistance in multiple languages. Scheduled demonstrations will be held where visitors to the Hitachi booth can see EMIEW3 in action. The Hitachi booth is in Hall 12, Stand C80, at the intersection of the areas on energy and industrial automation. There, Hitachi will showcase several exciting industrial and energy IoT innovations from across its group company portfolio, including Lumada, its intelligent and composable IoT platform, and will introduce a simultaneous optimization system of distributed power generation resources and energy trading, and smart manufacturing capabilities. Hitachi will have multiple technology demonstrations for visitors to engage with and will offer guided tours of the booths highlights. Patrik Sjoestedt, Co-Head of Social Innovation Business for EMEA-CIS, Social Innovation Business Division, Hitachi, Ltd., will participate in the Global Business & Markets Forum on April 24th. Patrik will offer his opinion on the opportunities presented by new manufacturing trends and how Hitachi is pursuing new digitalization strategies, with a particular focus on Germany. Keiji Kojima, Senior Vice President and Executive Officer, Hitachi. Ltd., and CEO of Hitachi Insight Group, will present at the 11th German/Japanese Economic Forum on April 26th, discussing the work Hitachi is undertaking around Society 5.0 in Japan and Industrie 4.0 in Germany through its Social Innovation Business, as well as how Japan and Germany can work together to create value. Hannover Messe 2017 will include over 6,500 exhibitors and is expected to attract over 200,000 visitors. This years focus is on current industry trends, such as integrated energy, predictive maintenance and other practical applications of Industrie 4.0. Through its Social Innovation Business, Hitachi is committed to creating solutions to challenges currently facing society, helping to create a safer, smarter and more sustainable world with its technologies and solutions. Register to meet with Hitachi at Hannover Messe: https://www.hitachiinsightgroup.com/go/events/hannover-messe.html?utm_source=corpcomms&utm_medium=pressrelease&utm_campaign=hannovermesse&id=pr_de_en_hannovermesse About Hitachi Insight Group Hitachi Insight Group is dedicated to driving business and societal transformation through digitalization. Its digital solutions deliver connected intelligence from the internet of things and actionable insights that support better decision-making, exceptional outcomes and smarter, safer, healthier, more efficient societies. Leveraging Hitachi's rich industrial heritage and extensive expertise in both operational and information technologies (OT and IT), Hitachi Insight Group accelerates solution creation with the Lumada IoT platform, serving public and private sector customers across three market categories: Smart City, Digital Energy and Industrial IoT. The group is based in Santa Clara, CA, USA, with offices and operations worldwide. For more information, visit www.hitachiinsightgroup.com. Connect with Hitachi Insight Group About Hitachi Ltd. Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE:6501), headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, delivers innovations that answer societys challenges. The companys consolidated revenues for fiscal 2015 (ended March 31, 2016) totaled 10,034.3 billion yen ($88.8 billion). The Hitachi Group is a global leader in the Social Innovation Business, and it has approximately 335,000 employees worldwide. Through collaborative creation, Hitachi is providing solutions to customers in a broad range of sectors, including Power / Energy, Industry / Distribution / Water, Urban Development, and Finance / Government & Public / Healthcare. For more information on Hitachi, please visit the company's website at http://www.hitachi.com. Cambodia: ARTICLE 19 demands #Free5KH Publisher Article 19 Publication Date 5 April 2017 Cite as Article 19, Cambodia: ARTICLE 19 demands #Free5KH, 5 April 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58e6433a4.html [accessed 8 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. Almost a year since their arbitrary detention, ARTICLE 19 joins the global call for the release of detained Cambodian Human Rights Defenders known as the Khmer Five. Ny Sokha, Yi Soksan, Nay Vanda, Lim Mony, and Ny Chakrya, current and former staff members of human rights and development NGO, ADHOC, have been arbitrarily detained on bribery charges for close to a year, on what are widely seen as trumped up and politically-motivated charges. They have been repeatedly denied bail and their detention comes amidst an increased crackdown on civil society that has seen arrests multiply and mounting legal restrictions on legitimate activity by human rights activists. United Nations mechanisms have been public in their condemnation of this crackdown and the continued detention of the Khmer Five. At last months Human Rights Council session, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights made reference to the worsening situation for human rights defenders in Cambodia stating that: the pre-electoral period has featured a host of charges and threats against members of opposition parties and people exercising freedom of expression. Amendments to the Law on Political Parties, which were recently passed by Parliament without public consultation, permit indefinite de facto suspension of parties without due process, and fall far below human rights standards for freedom of association. The arbitrary pre-trial detention of human rights defenders from the Cambodia Human Rights and Development Association, ADHOC, has now surpassed 10 months, with no trial in sight. [] I stress that credible elections must be grounded in guarantees that courts will be independent and impartial, and that the freedoms of expression, peaceful assembly and association will be protected. In January of this year, the Special Rapporteur for Cambodia joined international calls for their release, making clear that: the use of criminal provisions as a pretext to suppress and prevent the legitimate exercise of the right to freedom of expression and to silence human rights defenders is incompatible with Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, (ICCPR), which has been signed by Cambodia Further, in November 2016, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) concluded that the continued detention of the Khmer Five was arbitrary and in contravention of Cambodias commitment under the ICCPR. UNWGAD thus called for their immediate release. In March, ARTICLE 19 joined 78 international and Cambodian civil society groups to condemn the worsening crackdown on dissent in the lead up to commune and national elections in Cambodia, calling on the government to cease their unlawful attacks on human rights defenders and comply with their responsibility to adhere to legally binding international human rights standards. The detention of the ADHOC current and former staff members sits within a worrying context of dangerous government rhetoric, restrictive legislation, and judicial harassment of human rights defenders. In August 2016, Tep Vanny, a high-profile land rights activist, was arrested while protesting for the release of the Khmer Five. She has since been convicted and sentenced to two and a half years imprisonment for 'intentional violence with aggravated circumstance' in a case dating back to 2013, related to a protest outside Prime Minister Hun Sen's Phnom Penh mansion. The recent intensified crackdown creates an environment which further curtails freedom of expression and dramatically impacts on democratic participation, particularly in the context of upcoming elections. ARTICLE 19 calls on the Cambodian government to immediately release the Khmer Five and other detained HRDs, including high profile activist, Tep Vanny, and to remove illegitimate restrictions on freedom of expression and association so that a vibrant Cambodian civil society can flourish and contribute to improved accountability, democratic participation, and an advancement of human rights throughout the country. Copyright notice: Copyright ARTICLE 19 Bahrain: Rights Groups to F1: Cancel the Race if You Can't Guarantee Safety Publisher Article 19 Publication Date 6 April 2017 Cite as Article 19, Bahrain: Rights Groups to F1: Cancel the Race if You Can't Guarantee Safety, 6 April 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58e643884.html [accessed 8 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. Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD), ARTICLE 19, the Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR) and Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) The Formula 1 Grand Prix in Bahrain should be cancelled unless it can uphold its human rights commitments, say human rights NGO's in a letter made public today. The Bahrain Grand Prix (GP) has been controversial since it was first cancelled in 2011, when the Government of Bahrain declared a state of martial law to violently repress mass pro-democracy protests. The GP returned in 2012, but has been an annual flashpoint for human rights abuses. In the same year, a father of five, Salah Abbas, was shot dead by police at the time of the race. No independent investigation was ever carried out. The letter, addressed to Formula 1's administration, the NGOs state that "human rights violations have been a common occurrence during Formula 1 Grand Prix races in Bahrain. The death of Ali Abdulghani last year never elicited a credible independent investigation, and the Government of Bahrain's record has only regressed further in the year since the last race. Formula 1 will become complicit in these human rights violations if it does not cancel its upcoming races in Bahrain." The letter is signed by the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD), ARTICLE 19, the Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR) and Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB), who led negotiations with the Formula 1 in 2015 that led to the adoption of its human rights commitments. The adoption of those commitments by F1 followed an OECD complaint brought by Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB), a signatory of today's letter. However the NGOs argue that not enough is being done ahead of the race. "Formula 1 cannot stand by in view of the deteriorating situation in Bahrain, the likelihood of further incidents in the run-up to the race and while those who negotiated in good faith with you are imprisoned and their relatives victimized for their work." The NGOs continue: "In light of the deteriorating human rights situation and F1's inability to guarantee against the abuses which accompanied the past two Grand Prix circuits in Bahrain, F1 should cancel all its events there in 2017." The 2016 Grand Prix was marked by the death of Ali Abdulghani, 17 who was critically injured during arrest in Shahrakan village, within three miles of the Bahrain International Circuit. He died on 4 April, a day after the Grand Prix concluded. Witnesses state he was hit by a police vehicle, while the police state he fell from a building while trying to evade them. No credible investigation was ever carried out. It is clear, say the NGOs, that Formula 1 is not doing enough to ensure the safety of people whose human rights are violated because of the race's presence in Bahrain. That includes human rights defenders facing reprisals for their work and protesters injured by the police's excessive use of force. Individuals who negotiated with the F1 continue to face reprisals for their human rights work. Nabeel Rajab, the president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, was arrested on 2 April 2015, while negotiations were ongoing. He was released later that year, but rearrested in June 2016 having been held largely in solitary confinement for the past nine months and faces up to 18 years in prison for his human rights work. His treatment at the hands of the authorities has elicited concerns of the use of torture from the UN. In addition the family of Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, Director of Advocacy at BIRD, have also been targeted as a result of his human rights work. Most recently, Bahraini police arrested Alwadaei's mother-in-law and brother-in-law on 2 March 2017. They remain in detention and allege torture. "Arbitrary arrests always increase when the race is held, and many of those arrested are then tortured and unfairly prosecuted" saysSayed Ahmed Alwadaei, "Then there is Ali Abdulghani, who was fatally injured during arrest a mere three miles from the circuit. Formula 1 should not forget their responsibility to ensure the safety of the people of the host country. If Formula 1 cannot do that, then the Grand Prix should not go to Bahrain." Husain Abdulla, Executive Director, ADHRB, said: "Two years after reaching an agreement with F1 we have serious doubts whether they are really taking their human rights policies seriously. Independent reports of human rights violations and the adverse effects of the race on the overall human rights conditions have been shared with the F1 administration, yet we've seen no serious actions taken, not even the implementation of their own human rights policy." He continued: "This is deeply troubling because Bahrain's oppressive regime uses the Grand Prix as a PR tool to whitewash its human rights abuses." Copyright notice: Copyright ARTICLE 19 Hundreds of Roma to be forcibly evicted as EU leaders' refusal to sanction Italy exposed Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 6 April 2017 Cite as Amnesty International, Hundreds of Roma to be forcibly evicted as EU leaders' refusal to sanction Italy exposed, 6 April 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58e73dad4.html [accessed 8 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. Infringement proceedings against Italy blocked at the highest level of the European Commission Amnesty International spokespeople on the ground and available for interview As European leaders were today revealed to have blocked action against Italy for discrimination against the Roma, Amnesty International warned that the imminent forced eviction of Romani residents from Gianturco informal settlement in Naples, will render hundreds, including children, elderly, sick and disabled, homeless. The evictions of more than 1,000 people are due to take place without consultation, notice, or alternative housing being provided and are symptomatic of systemic discrimination against Roma in Italy. They come as the Financial Times reveals today that attempts to start infringement proceedings against Italy were blocked at the highest level. "As the bulldozers are poised to move in, hundreds of Roma people in Gianturco are set lose not just their homes but their livelihoods," said Catrinel Motoc, Amnesty International's Regional Campaigner. "Forcibly evicting families without providing adequate alternative housing or support is a callous act which violates Italy's international human rights obligations. It is typical of the systemic discrimination against Roma in Italy which the European Commission is failing in its duty to combat." Up to 1300 people have been living in the settlement. Many of those expected to be forcibly evicted have been living there for up to six years. They have been told repeatedly throughout the last year that they would be moved but were not informed where they would be moved to or when. Although around 200 people have now been told that they will be relocated to a new ethnically segregated container camp, hundreds of others still do not know where they will go. One Gianturco resident told Amnesty International that last week the police told them to "get out by 10 April or we'll chase you away". Another woman told Amnesty International: "I had two surgeries one month ago. Where am I supposed to go? My son is sick as well. He has heart problems, my daughter-in-law has diabetes. We will be left on the street just like dogs." In recent months, Gianturco inhabitants have reported police harassment, including frequent checks and searches. This harassment has resulted in the seizure of food, cars, scooters, carts and trolleys the families use to transport recyclable materials collected from across town. The community's livelihood has been significantly affected after the authorities shut down an informal market of second-hand goods in the square of the settlement. The forced eviction and the relocation of some residents to an ethnically segregated camp highlight the Italian authorities' failure to respect human rights for Roma people and implement a so-called inclusion strategy adopted more than five years ago. They also highlight the consequences of the European Commission's failure to take action against repeated violations of European Union anti-discrimination law. Despite having opened a preliminary case against Italy for discrimination against Roma almost five years ago, the EC is yet to begin infringement procedures. The Financial Times has today revealed that this is being blocked at the very highest levels. In that time, thousands of Roma have suffered forced evictions and other violations of their right to access to housing. "The Gianturco eviction is merely the latest in a long and shameful list of forced evictions of Roma across Italy. Every direction they turn, Romani people in Italy face the most virulent forms of discrimination," said Catrinel Motoc. "The European Commission is fully aware of the widespread segregation and injustice suffered by Roma in Italy. Today's revelation shows that after five years of utter inaction, the barriers to action lie right at the top. The Commission must stop dragging its feet and open infringement procedures against Italy for breaching EU anti-discrimination law." Copyright notice: Copyright Amnesty International Russian authorities ban Putin 'gay clown' meme but fail to investigate homophobic killings Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 6 April 2017 Cite as Amnesty International, Russian authorities ban Putin 'gay clown' meme but fail to investigate homophobic killings, 6 April 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58e7431b4.html [accessed 8 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. After the Russian government banned a digitally altered image depicting President Vladimir Putin wearing lipstick and mascara - widely reported in global media as a "gay clown" meme - Sergei Nikitin, Director of Amnesty International's Moscow office, said: "In its twisted definition of justice, the Russian authorities have chosen to use anti-extremism legislation to silence peaceful freedom of expression at a time when state-supported homophobia inspires violence across the country. "Rather than clamping down on political satire, the state should be using the machinery of justice to investigate the recent horrific reports of mass abduction, torture and killings of gay men in Chechnya." Background It emerged this week that the satirical image of President Putin in make-up - which carries the caption, "Putin voters... they say there are lots of them, but there aren't any among the people I know" - has been added to the Ministry of Justice's list of banned "extremist materials". The image first appeared in response to a 2013 law banning "propaganda of homosexuality among minors", a law which restricts human rights and has fuelled homophobia. The Ministry of Justice website said the picture implies the "alleged nonstandard sexual orientation of the President of the Russian Federation." It was banned by the Central District court of Tver, Central Russia in May 2016, along with other images uploaded to the Russian social media platform Vkontakte by defendant Aleksandr Tsvetkov. Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported on 1 April that at least 100 men believed to be gay had been abducted in Russia's Chechnya region and three had been killed, apparently as part of a coordinated homophobic campaign. Copyright notice: Copyright Amnesty International Ethiopia extends emergency as old antagonisms fester Publisher IRIN Author James Jeffrey Publication Date 3 April 2017 Cite as IRIN, Ethiopia extends emergency as old antagonisms fester, 3 April 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58e743b24.html [accessed 8 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 Ethiopian government has extended a nationwide state of emergency for four months, hailing it as successful in restoring stability after almost a year of popular protests and crackdowns that cost hundreds of lives. But while parts of Amhara, one of the hotbeds of the recent unrest, may be calm on the surface, IRIN found that major grievances remain unaddressed and discontent appears to be festering: There are even widespread reports that farmers in the northern region are engaged in a new, armed rebellion. Human rights organisations and others have voiced concern at months of draconian government measures - some 20,000 people have reportedly been detained under the state of emergency, which also led to curfews, bans on public assembly, and media and internet restrictions restrictions. "The regime has imprisoned, tortured and abused 20,000-plus young people and killed hundreds more in order to restore a semblance of order," said Alemante Selassie, emeritus law professor at the College of William & Mary in the US state of Virginia. "Repression is the least effective means of creating real order in any society where there is a fundamental breach of trust between people and their rulers." The government line is far rosier. "There's been no negative effects," Zadig Abrha, Ethiopia's state minister for government communication affairs, told IRIN shortly before the measures were extended by four months, on 30 March. "The state of emergency enabled us to focus on repairing the economic situation, compensating investors, and further democratising the nation [and] allowed us to normalise the situation to how it was before, by enabling us to better coordinate security and increase its effectiveness." Clamping down On 7 August 2016, in the wake of protests in the neighbouring Oromia region, tens of thousands of people gathered in the centre of Bahir Dar, the capital of Amhara. They had come to express their frustration at perceived marginalisation and the annexation of part of their territory by Tigray - the region from which the dominant force in Ethiopia's ruling coalition is drawn. Accounts vary as to what prompted security forces to open fire on the demonstration - some say a protestor tried to replace a federal flag outside a government building with its now-banned precursor - but by the end of the day, 27 people were dead. That toll climbed to 52 by the end of the week. In all, some 227 civilians died during weeks of unrest in the Amhara region, according to the government. Others claim the real figure is much higher. A six-month state of emergency was declared nationally on 9 October. Military personnel, under the coordination of a new entity known as the "Command Post", flooded into cities across the country. "Someone will come and say they are with the Command Post and just tell you to go with them - you have no option but to obey," explained Dawit, who works in the tourism industry in the Amhara city of Gondar. "No one has any insurance of life." Local people told IRIN that the Command Post also took control of the city's courts and did away with due process. Everyday life ground to a halt as traders closed shops and businesses in a gesture of passive resistance. In Bahir Dar and Gondar, both popular historical stop-offs, tourism, an economic mainstay, tanked. "In 2015, Ethiopia was voted by the likes of The New York Times and National Geographic as one of the best destinations," said Stefanos, another Gondar resident who works in the tourism sector. "Then this happened and everything collapsed." Lingering resentment Before it was renewed, the state of emergency was modified, officially reinstating the requirement of search warrants and doing away with detention without trial. Prominent blogger and Ethiopian political analyst Daniel Berhane said the state of emergency extension might maintain calm in Amhara. It "isn't just about security," he said. "There is a political package with it: Since two weeks ago, the government has been conducting meetings across the region at grassroots levels to address people's economic and administrative grievances, which are what most people are most concerned about." But bitterness remains. "We have no sovereignty. The government took our land," a bar owner in Gondar who gave his name only as Kidus explained. "That's why we shouted Amharaneut Akbiru! Respect Amhara-ness!" during the protests, he added. Others still feel marginalised and are angry at the government's heavy-handed response. "If you kill your own people, how are you a soldier? You are a terrorist," 32-year old Tesfaye, who recently left the Ethiopian army after seven years, a large scar marking his left cheek, told IRIN in Gondar. "I became a soldier to protect my people. This government has forgotten me since I left. I've been trying to get a job for five months." A tour guide in Gondar, speaking on condition of anonymity, was also critical of the response: "The government has a chance for peace, but they don't have the mental skills to achieve it. If protests happen again, they will be worse." However, some do believe the authorities have to take a tough line. "This government has kept the country together. If they disappeared, we would be like Somalia," said Joseph, who is half-Amharan, half-Tigrayan. "All the opposition does is protest, protest. They can't do anything else." Mountain militias Even as calm has been restored in some areas, a new form of serious opposition to the government has taken shape: Organised militia made up of local Amhara farmers have reportedly been conducting hit-and-run attacks on soldiers in the mountainous countryside. "The topography around here is tough, but they've spent their lives on it and know it," said Henok, a student nurse who took part in the protests. "They're like snipers with their guns." "The government controls the urban but not the rural areas," he said. "[The farmers] are hiding in the landscape and forests. No one knows how many there are," he said, adding that he'd seen "dozens of soldiers at Gondar's hospital with bullet and knife wounds." Young Gondar men like Henok talk passionately of Colonel Demeke Zewudud, who led Amhara activism for the restoration of [the annexed] Wolkite district until his arrest in 2016, and about Gobe Malke, allegedly a leader of the farmers' armed struggle until his death in February - reportedly at the hands of a cousin on the government's payroll. "The farmers are ready to die," a priest in Gondar told IRIN on condition of anonymity, stressing that the land is very important to them. "They have never been away from here," he explained. Without referring specifically to any organisation of armed farmers, Zadig, the government minister, said the state of emergency had been extended because of "agitators" still at large. "There are still people who took part in the violence that are not in custody, and agitators and masterminds of the violence who need to be brought before the rule of law," he said. "And there are arms in circulation that need to be controlled, and some armed groups not apprehended." Solutions? Terrence Lyons, a professor at The School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University in the United States, said the government must decentralise power to achieve longer-term stability. "Grievances haven't been addressed by the state of emergency or by the government's commitment to tackle corruption and boost service delivery," Lyons told IRIN. "There needs to be a reconsideration of the relationship between an ethnic federation and a strong centralised developmental state, involving a process that is participatory and transparent - but we aren't seeing that under the state of emergency." In 1995, Ethiopia adopted a federal system of government, which in theory devolves considerable power to the country's regions. But in practice, key decisions are still taken in Addis Ababa. "If the government wants a true and real form of stabilisation, then it should allow for a true representative form of governance so all people have the representation they need and deserve," said Tewodros Tirfe of the Amhara Association of America. In a report presented to a US congressional hearing in early March, Tewodros said some 500 members of the security forces had been killed in the recent clashes in the Amhara region. "Deeper resentment and anger at the government is driving young people to the armed struggle," he told IRIN. But Zadig and the government insisted: "The public stood by us." "They said no to escalating violence. In a country of more than 90 million, if they'd wanted more escalation we couldn't have stopped them." Lyons warns of complacency. "As long as dissidents and those speaking about alternatives for Ethiopia are dealt with as terrorists, the underlying grievances will remain: governance, participation, and human rights," he told IRIN. "The very strength of the [ruling] EPRDF is its weakness. As an ex-insurgency movement, its discipline and top-down governance enabled it to keep a difficult country together for 25 years. Now, the success of its own developmental state means Ethiopia is very different, but the EPRDF is not into consultative dialogue and discussing the merits of policy." UN convenes Rohingya abuse investigation, but Myanmar says it won't cooperate Publisher UN News Service Author Sara Perria Publication Date 4 April 2017 Cite as UN News Service, UN convenes Rohingya abuse investigation, but Myanmar says it won't cooperate, 4 April 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58e744564.html [accessed 8 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 UN's main human rights body is assembling a team to probe alleged atrocities against Myanmar's Rohingya, even as the government appears set to deny investigators access to areas where crimes against humanity may have occurred. While the resolution sponsored on 24 March by the European Union at the UN Human Rights Council called for "ensuring full accountability for the perpetrators and justice for victims", Myanmar has no obligation to cooperate with the fact-finding mission and has strongly signalled that it won't. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has told IRIN it is putting together the team anyway. "It is now up to the council president, Ambassador Joaquin Alexander Maza Martelli (El Salvador), to appoint members of the mission; this is expected to happen in the coming weeks," Rolando Gomez, a spokesman for the Human Rights Council, said in an email. In the meantime, letters to the Myanmar government are being prepared and a team of specialists - including experts in forensics and gender-based violence - will be assembled in Geneva to support the mission in establishing the facts and circumstances of alleged human rights violations by security forces in Rakhine State. The resolution says the scope of the probe will include, but not be limited to, "arbitrary detention, torture and inhuman treatment, rape and other forms of sexual violence, extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary killings, enforced disappearance, forced displacement and unlawful destruction of property". "It is the hope of the Human Rights Council that the mission will be facilitated by the government of Myanmar through unfettered access to the affected areas," Gomez said. However, this sort of access seems highly unlikely. At the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Myanmar "disassociated" itself from the resolution to create a fact-finding mission. Three days later, on Armed Forces Day, Myanmar's military chief, Min Aung Hlaing, gave a speech rejecting "political interference" and claiming that the Rohingya are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Myanmar's civilian leader, Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, also rejected the UN decision, saying in a televised address: "It is not suitable for our country." Even if Aung San Suu Kyi agreed with the UN mission, there would be little she could do to facilitate it. The elected, civilian administration she leads has a tenuous relationship with the military, which enforced absolute rule over Myanmar for almost half a century before enacting reforms in 2011. The reforms allowed political freedom, but Aung San Suu Kyi has no power and limited influence over the military. The Human Rights Council has no legal powers of enforcement and is in no position to punish Myanmar if it fails to cooperate. Should the government and military deny access, the UN mission is expected to begin detailed investigations among the tens of thousands of Rohingya who fled across the border into Bangladesh after Myanmar's military launched counter-insurgency operations late last year. "If access is barred, the mission will try to reach witnesses wherever they are, including Bangladesh," said a UN source on condition of anonymity, as they were not authorised to speak to media on the subject. Groups, including the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, have already collected testimonies from Rohingya in Bangladesh, and OHCHR's February report suggested it was "very likely" that security forces committed crimes against humanity. The mission will consider that report and aims to use the specialised forensic and investigative tools of a team with experience in international law, military- and gender-based violence to ascertain the facts. Myanmar has denied that atrocities took place during the counter-insurgency operations, but has prevented any outside scrutiny by sealing off the conflict zone in northern Rakhine State. Aid deliveries were also completely blocked for about two months, and the UN's emergency aid coordination body, OCHA, said on Monday that humanitarian access is still "severely limited". Little pressure Rights advocates had hoped the Human Rights Council would instead approve a weightier Commission of Inquiry, which would have had a broader mandate and could have put greater pressure on Myanmar to accept it. The international community could lean on Myanmar to accept the weaker fact-finding mission, but there is no evidence of any serious attempt so far. Myanmar's two powerful neighbours, China and India, both "disassociated" themselves with the resolution. Indonesia has been outspoken about the crisis facing the Rohingya, but its embassy in Yangon told IRIN that - in rejecting the resolution - Myanmar's government was acting "within the framework of upholding law as a sovereign country". European governments are insisting that Myanmar cooperate with the UN mission, but their language is hardly threatening - public statements stress the need to promote the country's "democratic transition". Roland Kobia, EU ambassador to Myanmar, told IRIN the EU would "look forward to Myanmar's full cooperation with the fact-finding mission" and "confirmation of the country's cooperative approach with the international community". But there was no suggestion of any steps that might be taken to twist Aung San Suu Kyi's arm or press the military into opening the door to the investigation team. Possible trade-offs Despite what could evolve into a diplomatic stand-off between the UN and Myanmar (if it continues to push back), analysts say the fact-finding mission may still serve a purpose. Charles Petrie, a former UN resident coordinator in Myanmar and author of a landmark report on the failure of the UN to protect civilians during Sri Lanka's civil war, admitted that the chances of investigators gaining access were "pretty slim". But he told IRIN that the UN resolution could boost the prospects of Myanmar's government implementing the recommendations made by an advisory commission on Rakhine. That commission was appointed by Aung San Suu Kyi last August and is headed by former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan. The Geneva resolution should be seen in the context of Annan's interim report released on 16 March, Petrie said, describing them as "closely linked". Annan's panel recommended closing the displacement camps that have been holding some 100,000 people since violence erupted between ethnic Rohingya Muslim minority communities and the Buddhist ethnic Rakhine majority in 2012, killing hundreds. The vast majority of the victims were Rohingya. The panel also said the government should launch a new citizenship process and allow freedom of movement. Aung San Suu Kyi's administration quickly welcomed the proposals, in a sign, according to Petrie, that it is trying to "gain political capital from it". "So, right now, the best-case scenario is that they will focus on one [Annan] to try and defuse the other [Geneva]," said Petrie. "They will implement the recommendations of the Annan report as a means to deflect or reduce the significance of the human rights mission." Establishing citizenship is a crucial issue for the Rohingya, who number about one million people in Rakhine and are mostly denied freedom of movement and severely restricted in their access to jobs, healthcare, and education through an institutionalised policy of segregation. This denial of rights and the 2012 violence led to the rise of militancy among some Rohingya, according to a a report by the International Crisis Group. Rohingya insurgents calling themselves Harakah al-Yakin [Faith Movement in Arabic] struck first on 9 October, attacking police posts on the border with Bangladesh and killing nine officers. The attacks triggered the military's crackdown, which rights groups say was brutal and targeted entire communities. Despite its limitations - notably the likelihood that investigators will be barred from visiting crime scenes inside Myanmar - the fact-finding mission could also still play a useful legal role, according to Irene Pietropaoli, a Yangon-based human rights consultant. Even if investigators are prevented from visiting areas inside Myanmar, they can collect evidence from witnesses and survivors of attacks who fled to Bangladesh. "You are still going to have a United Nations report establishing what happened, which will in turn come useful in political and advocacy terms," she said. "But also from a legal perspective, if a victim will want to seek justice, this will represent an important document." Although the mission cannot bring perpetrators of rights abuses to justice, its detailed findings, recommendations, and possible identification of offenders could lay important foundations for future action. The process may hopefully also serve as a deterrent against future atrocities, Pietropaoli said. Almere, The Netherlands April 7, 2017 ASM International N.V. (Euronext Amsterdam: ASM) will report operating results for the 2017 first quarter ended March 31, 2017 at approximately: ASM International will host an investor conference call and webcast on Friday, April 21, 2017 at 15:00 Continental European Time (9:00 a.m. - US Eastern Time). The teleconference dial-in numbers are as follows: United States: +1 646 254 3363 International: +44 (0)20 3427 1904 The Netherlands: +31 (0)20 716 8257 Access Code: 8413062 A simultaneous audio webcast and replay will be accessible at www.asm.com. About ASM International ASM International NV, headquartered in Almere, the Netherlands, its subsidiaries and participations design and manufacture equipment and materials used to produce semiconductor devices. ASM International, its subsidiaries and participations provide production solutions for wafer processing (Front-end segment) as well as for assembly & packaging and surface mount technology (Back-end segment) through facilities in the United States, Europe, Japan and Asia. ASM International's common stock trades on the Euronext Amsterdam Stock Exchange (symbol ASM). For more information, visit ASMI's website at www.asm.com . Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements: All matters discussed in this press release, except for any historical data, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. These include, but are not limited to, economic conditions and trends in the semiconductor industry generally and the timing of the industry cycles specifically, currency fluctuations, corporate transactions, financing and liquidity matters, the success of restructurings, the timing of significant orders, market acceptance of new products, competitive factors, litigation involving intellectual property, shareholders or other issues, commercial and economic disruption due to natural disasters, terrorist activity, armed conflict or political instability, epidemics and other risks indicated in the Company's reports and financial statements. The Company assumes no obligation nor intends to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect future developments or circumstances. CONTACT Investor contact: Victor Bareno T: +31 88 100 8500 E: victor.bareno@asm.com Media contact: Ian Bickerton T: +31 625 018 512 At Security Council, new UN peacekeeping chief urges faster implementation of Mali peace deal Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 6 April 2017 Cite as UN News Service, At Security Council, new UN peacekeeping chief urges faster implementation of Mali peace deal, 6 April 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58e74b134.html [accessed 8 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 new United Nations peacekeeping chief today stressed the need for the parties to the conflict in Mali to redouble their efforts to accelerate the implementation of their 2015 peace agreement while expressing a concern about the volatile security situation in the landlocked West African country. "In recent months, there has been positive progress in the implementation of the Peace Agreement," Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix told the Security Council in his first briefing since succeeding Herve Ladsous, earlier this month. The briefing followed a joint visit to Mali about two weeks ago by Mr. Lacroix and Mr. Ladsous. They met with authorities, including President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, who has been seeking to unify the country after a rebellion, a coup and an insurgency. The installation of the interim authorities in Taoudenni and Timbuktu by 13 April was announced yesterday. "These developments illustrate the gradual return of State authority to northern Mali under the interim arrangements," the new peacekeeping chief said, noting that the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission (MINUSMA) is making every effort to assist the achievement of concrete results on the ground. On the security front, the situation remains worrying, he said, citing the creation of a new alliance that brings together the most active terrorist groups in Mali, including Al Qaeda. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Da'esh) slowly made its appearance in the Sahelian band. "This convergence of threats is particularly worrying in a context where often the presence of the State is weak or sometimes non-existent and where the implementation of the Peace Agreement still has to translate into tangible results on the ground," he said. Mr. Lacroix also underscored the need to address the scourge of transnational organised crime and its impact on the peace efforts. On this particular aspect, he added, the Security Council has already expressed its intention to consider targeted sanctions against spoilers of peace. "We believe it is time to consider establishing such a sanctions regime," he said. Given these political and security circumstances, MINUSMA continues to adjust its priorities and posture to provide the best support within its current mandate, he said, adding that his department will revert to the Council, before the Mission's mandate expires on 30 June 2017, if any mandate adjustments are required. Post latest missile test, Security Council condemns DPRK's 'highly destabilizing behaviour' Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 6 April 2017 Cite as UN News Service, Post latest missile test, Security Council condemns DPRK's 'highly destabilizing behaviour', 6 April 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58e74b804.html [accessed 8 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 Security Council today strongly condemned the latest ballistic missile launch by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), calling it in grave violation of the country's international obligations under six of the body's resolutions passed between 2006 and 2016. In a press statement, the 15 members said that they were concerned about DPRK's highly destabilizing behaviour and flagrant and provocative defiance of the Security Council following the 4 April launch. The members of the Security Council demanded that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea shall immediately refrain from further actions in violation of the relevant Security Council resolutions and comply fully with its obligations under these resolutions, according to the statement. The latest launch comes less than three weeks after the previous launch on 21 March, and two additional rounds of launches and an engine test in February and March 2017. Such activities contribute to the development of nuclear weapons delivery systems and are significantly increasing tension in the region and beyond, the members cautioned. They further regretted that the country is diverting resources to the pursuit of ballistic missiles while the country's citizens have great unmet needs. Also in the statement, the Council called on all UN Member States to redouble their efforts to implement fully the measures imposed on the DPRK by the Council. These include, for example, limiting the number of bank accounts held by diplomatic missions and consular posts within their respective territories, and suspending scientific and technical cooperation with persons or groups officially sponsored by or representing DPRK. The Council also emphasized the vital importance of DPRK showing sincere commitment to denuclearization, and expressed its own commitment to a peaceful, diplomatic and political solution to the situation. 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. Russia: Police harassment as Supreme Court considers ban Publisher Forum 18 Author Victoria Arnold Publication Date 7 April 2017 Cite as Forum 18, Russia: Police harassment as Supreme Court considers ban, 7 April 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58e798af4.html [accessed 8 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. Russia's Supreme Court is due to resume considering a total ban on Jehovah's Witness activity on 12 April. Already police in several towns have disrupted their worship. A Moscow community's rental of a hall to mark their main annual commemoration was cancelled after an FSB visit. More than 6,000 flee fresh South Sudan violence into Uganda Publisher UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Author Mary Theru Wambui Publication Date 7 April 2017 Cite as UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), More than 6,000 flee fresh South Sudan violence into Uganda, 7 April 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58e79a574.html [accessed 8 November 2022] Following a recent attack on the town of Pajok in South Sudan, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency today expressed alarm at the deteriorating security situation in the country which has forced even more refugees to flee for their lives. Uganda's northern Lamwo district has received over 6,000 South Sudanese since Monday (April 3), with at least 4,500 still crowded together at the border. As well as the fighting near Pajok in Eastern Equatoria, ongoing fighting is also reported in the districts of Magwi and Oboo close to the border with Uganda, now the main host of the world's fastest growing refugee crisis. "This spreading of violence signifies a worrying development. People fleeing the recent incident claimed that the town came under an indiscriminate attack by the South Sudan armed forces," UNHCR spokesperson Babar Baloch told a news briefing in Geneva. Refugees have witnessed loved ones shot dead at a close range, with many others arrested and then killed, including children. Auma Lucy Yubuan escaped and walked for two days. "The soldiers were looting, breaking doors and beating people. They would arrest you and ask you to show them where the rebels are. But when you tell them you don't know, they beat you. They killed people," she told UNHCR. She and her children ran in different directions, but found each other again at the border. "I am so happy even though I have nothing to eat and I have lost everything, my children are alive. I was so scared I didn't know if I would see them again. The bullets were flying everywhere and you couldn't move, you had to lie on your belly. I am very grateful I am alive," she added. Baloch said families fled the attack in Pajok in different directions; the elderly and disabled who could not run were shot dead. Many people are still hiding in the bush trying to find their way to Uganda, while homes and properties were looted and burned. Main roads out of the town are reportedly blocked by armed groups. UNHCR staff in northern Uganda are helping desperate women, children, elderly, and the disabled. Refugees are in dire need of immediate humanitarian assistance including food, shelter, water and medical care. Around 4,000 refugees immediately fled South Sudan in the after aftermath of the horrible attack on Pajok town, which has an estimated population of up to 50,000. Uganda currently hosts more than 832,000 refugees from South Sudan. Some 192,000 have arrived in 2017 with an average of 2000 refugees fleeing insecurity, violence and famine every day. Over 62 per cent of the new arrivals are children. Some 1.7 million refugees have fled the world's youngest country and the continuing brutal conflict. For more details, click here. Hungary: Plan to brand NGOs has sombre echoes of Russia's 'foreign agents law' Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 7 April 2017 Cite as Amnesty International, Hungary: Plan to brand NGOs has sombre echoes of Russia's 'foreign agents law', 7 April 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58e79b0b4.html [accessed 8 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. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Hungary that receive foreign funding - even direct European Union support - risk being discredited and undermined by a draft law leaked to the media, said Amnesty International today. Proposals in the draft Law on the transparency of organizations funded from abroad would force NGOs receiving more than 24k EUR per year to re-register as "civic organization funded from abroad" and to put this stigmatizing label on every publication. "This draft law - and the government rhetoric around it - is worryingly reminiscent of Russian's draconian 'foreign agents' law and is an ominous blueprint for the oncoming assault on Hungarian civil society," said John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International's Director for Europe. "Thinly disguised as an attempt to protect Hungarian interests, this law would have the opposite effect, discrediting and intimidating NGOs and undermining their capacity to protect human rights and provide valuable services to Hungarian people." The Hungarian government has tried to justify the law as a bid to fight against money laundering and international terrorism. But this is a flimsy attempt to legitimize the authorities' real goal of denouncing NGOs that carry out vital work, such as promoting the rule of law, protecting the rights of refugees, migrants and other marginalized groups, and providing social and legal services not offered by the state. As it stands, the law would introduce selective new requirements for the "transparency" of NGO funding and place unnecessary additional administrative burdens on them. NGOs are already required to publicly report on their foreign funding on an annual basis, and may be audited by authorities at any time. A comprehensive law, adopted by the same government in 2011, contains copious requirements, including detailed reporting on funding to ensure the transparency and accountability of NGOs. The law would likely breach EU regulations on free movement of capital and could also be discriminatory under EU law, as it only applies to certain types of NGO. Under the draft law, organizations failing to comply with these new rules would face warnings, fines and ultimately the suspension of their right to operate in Hungary. By forcing NGOs to label themselves as "foreign funded", the Hungarian government is seeking to discredit their work and turn people against them. The rationale of the proposal suggests that NGOs funded from abroad may serve "foreign interests" and their funding can contribute to "endangering the sovereignty and national security of Hungary". The proposals echo Russia's "foreign agents law" which has seen the reputation of hundreds of credible organizations tarnished, their staff intimidated and their work bogged down by administrative requirements. Since it entered into force in 2012, it has effectively made the legal and reputational risks of foreign funding too great for NGOs. "This bill has nothing to do with transparency and everything to do with obstructing and discrediting critical civil society voices. It would be a significant step in Viktor Orban's march to 'illiberal democracy' and should be strongly opposed by fellow EU member states," said John Dalhuisen. "Hundreds of NGOs in Hungary are coming together to speak with one voice and reject this calculated assault on the rights to freedom of expression and association. Viktor Orban's government must take note and take steps to ensure that this draft bill is never tabled. Amnesty International will certainly not be alone in challenging this law if it ever hits the statute books." Background The Law CLXXV of 2011 on the right to association, the public benefit status, and the operation and support of civil society organizations, (Sections 20, 29-30) prescribes detailed reporting requirements for civil society organisations. See Amnesty International 2015 report on pressure put on civil society in Hungary https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/eur27/0001/2015/en/ Copyright notice: Copyright Amnesty International ATLANTA, April 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Mueller Water Products, Inc. (NYSE:MWA) plans to release financial results for its second quarter ended March 31, 2017 on Thursday, April 27, 2017 after the market closes. Scott Hall, president and chief executive officer of Mueller Water Products, and other members of the Company's leadership team will discuss the financial results during a conference call on Friday, April 28, 2017 at 9:00 a.m. ET. The conference call will be webcast live on Mueller Water Products website, www.muellerwaterproducts.com, and will be archived for approximately 90 days. About Mueller Water Products, Inc. Mueller Water Products, Inc. (NYSE:MWA) is a leading manufacturer and marketer of products and services used in the transmission, distribution and measurement of water in North America. Our broad product and service portfolio includes engineered valves, fire hydrants, metering products and systems, leak detection and pipe condition assessment. We help municipalities increase operational efficiencies, improve customer service and prioritize capital spending, demonstrating why Mueller Water Products is Where Intelligence Meets Infrastructure. For more information about Mueller Water Products, visit www.muellerwaterproducts.com. Russia: kidnappings, torture and killings of men suspected of homosexuality are actually happening in Chechnya Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 7 April 2017 Cite as Amnesty International, Russia: kidnappings, torture and killings of men suspected of homosexuality are actually happening in Chechnya, 7 April 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58e79db74.html [accessed 8 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. FIDH and its member organisation Anti-Discrimination Centre Memorial (ADC Memorial) express their full confidence in reliability of information provided by their long-term partner Russian LGBT Network who confirmed the facts of kidnapping, unlawful detentions, torture and killings of men suspected of homosexual relations in Chechnya. We hereby confirm that news of massive attacks on men suspected of homosexuality appeared in the media following reports received by human rights organisations, including those working on LGBT rights. Starting on 1 April 2017, media reports published information about a wave of appalling crimes in Chechnya against men suspected of carrying out homosexual relations. It was reported that starting from the beginning of March 2017, at least 160 men were kidnapped, unlawfully detained and tortured, leading to the deaths of at least three persons. The information was later refuted by various actors, including local authorities and others who denied receiving such information. As a response, the initial media source published an additional in-depth media report. FIDH and ADC Memorial hereby call on the Council of Europe and the United Nations, notably the UN Working groups on Arbitrary Detention and on Enforced disappearances, the UN Expert on sexual orientation and gender identity to take all measures at their disposal for the release of all persons unlawfully detained in Chechnya on the suspicion of homosexuality. We call on the Russian authorities to guarantee security and integrity of all persons and ensure an impartial investigation of massive crimes reported and confirmed by human rights organisations. Copyright notice: Copyright Amnesty International Voting on Tuesday? Check here to get the information you need English Lithuanian AB Klaipedos nafta (Company code 110648893, registered address Buriu str. 19, Klaipeda, hereinafter Company), has prepared Corporate Social Responsibility report for the year 2016 (hereinafter - Report). This Report provides the information on the social responsibility activities, performed by AB Klaipedos nafta in 2016, as well as environment protection activities and relations with the employees and the society. The Report describes the strategic directions, activities and achievements in the area of social responsibility within the Company for the year 2016. Lithuanian English On 6 April 2017 the Board of AB Vilkyskiu pienine (hereinafter AB Vilkyskiu pienine or the Company) decided: - To approve the draft of the audited annual separated and consolidated financial statements of the Company for the year 2016 and to propose to the Companys Annual General Meeting of Shareholders to approve the draft of the Companys annual separate and consolidated financial statements for the year 2016. In 2016, AB Vilkyskiu pienine Group sales revenue amounted to mEUR 90.5, up by 7 percent from mEUR 84.4 in 2015. In 2016, net profit reached mEUR 4.5, a rise form mEUR 1.2 the year before, showing an increase of 3.8 times. The increase in sales revenue and profit was caused by the balance between demand and supply of dairy products in export markets in the second half of 2016, an increase in prices and changes in cheese production technologies. - To approve the Companys Consolidated Annual Report for the year 2016, prepared by the Company and assessed by the auditors, and to propose to the Companys Annual General Meeting of Shareholders to approve Companys Consolidated Annual Report. - Taking into consideration the successful financial results of the Company in 2016, the dividend policy approved by the Company and the decision of Companys shareholders not to pay dividends for the year 2015, Board of the Company proposes for the annual shareholder meeting to approve dividends in the amount of mEur 1.433 for the year 2016. Board of the Company emphasizes that allocation of mEur 1.433 of consolidated profit (2016) for the payment of dividends would enable the return of long-term dividend policy execution (the dividend payout ratio should correspond to the minimum of 25% of the Companies consolidated net profit) . Also this decision would compensate missed dividend payments for the year 2015 according to the dividend policy approved by the Company. - To approve the allocation project of the Companys audited net profit under IAS for the year 2016 and to propose it to the Companys Annual General Meeting of Shareholders to approve. Resolution: To approve the audited net profit allocation under IAS for the year 2016 as follows: thousand EUR 1) Non-appropriated profit (loss) at the end of the year 2015 9,681 2) Approved by shareholders dividends of the year 2015 - 3) Transfers to reserves provided by law 0,454 4) Portion of the profit allocated to the reserve for the purchase of own shares - 5) Non-appropriated profit (loss) at the beginning of the current financial year after dividends payout and transfer to reserves 9,681 6) Net profit (loss) of the reporting period 6,991 7) Transfers from reserves 150 8) Total profit (loss) to be appropriated: 16,822 - portion of the profit allocated to the legal reserve - - portion of the profit allocated to the reserve for the purchase of own shares - - portion of the profit allocated for payment of the dividends 1,433 - portion of the profit allocated to the other reserves - 9) Non-appropriated profit (loss) at the end of the current financial year carried forward to next financial year 15,389 - To approve a decision with regard to the purchase of own shares and to propose to the Companys Annual General Meeting of Shareholders to approve: a) To purchase up to 10 percent of the Companys shares. b) The purpose of acquisition of own shares to maintain and increase the price of the Companys shares. c) Period during which the Company may acquire own shares until 27 April 2018. d) To set the maximum price per share of own shares to be acquired at 2.10 EUR, at the same time setting the minimum acquisition price per share equal to the nominal value of a share, i.e. 0.29 EUR. e) To commit the Board to organize the purchase of own shares, to determine the procedure for purchase and sale of shares, time, number of shares and price, as well as to perform other actions relating thereto in compliance with the terms set in this resolution as well as in accordance with the requirements established in the Republic of Lithuania Law of Companies. - To convoke the Annual General Meeting of Shareholders at the office of Vilkyskiu pienine AB (P.Lukosaicio g. 14, Vilkyskiai, LT-99254 Pagegiu sav., Lithuania), at 15.00 on 28 April 2017, and to propose to the Annual General Meeting of Shareholders the following draft agenda: 1) Company's consolidated annual report for the year 2016. 2) Company's auditor's report of 2016 (financial accountability). 3) Approval of Company's annual separate and consolidated financial statements for the year 2016. 4) Net Profit appropriation of the year 2016. 5) Regarding the purchase of own shares. 6) Election of the independent member of Audit Committee. 7) Election of the company's audit firm and setting the conditions of payment. Vilija Milaseviciute Economics and Finance Director phone +370 441 55102 Chinese parents of babies sickened by milk powder contaminated with the industrial chemical melamine protest against the new owners of the bankrupt company that produced the baby formula in Shijiazhuang, northern China's Hebei province, March 4, 2009. A court in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong has retrospectively acquitted a father jailed for demanding compensation after his infant daughter was sickened by the 2008 melamine-tainted milk scandal. Guo Li, a simultaneous interpreter, was handed a five-year sentence by a court in Guangdong's Chaozhou in 2010 for "extortion" linked to his campaign for compensation from Guangzhou-based infant formula maker Scient after his child became ill with kidney stones. Guo made a brief statement immediately after the hearing: "After a simple hearing that lasted around 20 minutes, the court found that I am innocent. Everything I did was in the cause of justice, and none of my actions constituted a crime," he said. Following his release, Guo then lodged an appeal with the Guangdong Provincial High Court, which found that the facts of the case were unclear, that there was insufficient evidence, that the court of first instance had breached due process on two occasions, and that the case was inconclusive. The provincial court found insufficient evidence to prove that Guo had used threats to extort material gains from the company, according to the judgment. Guo was recently notified by the same court that it will be issuing a verdict following a rearraignment, and had been advised that he would likely be acquitted. "The day has come when the slate has been wiped clean," he told RFA. "I would like to thank everybody for their concern for our cries for justice on behalf of my child," he said. Guo now suffers ongoing mental and physical health problems he attributes to maltreatment, including poor food and dirty water in prison. Guo's daughter was one of 300,000 made ill by infant formula milk laced with the industrial chemical melamine, which saw a total of 21 people convicted for their roles in the scandal, two of whom were executed. The government said after the 2008 scandal that it had destroyed all tainted milk powder, but reports of melamine-laced products have occasionally re-emerged. Guo has previously described three years of harsh treatment, including beatings and solitary confinement, during his prison sentence, as the authorities put pressure on him to "admit to his crimes." Held in a cell measuring little more than one meter (3.3 feet) wide and deprived of adequate food and water, Guo was given moldy food and dirty ditch-water instead. Shocking and immoral Fellow "kidney stone baby" relative Jiang Yalin, who has criticized Guo's jailing as a political case. "We parents of the victims are very happy to see the Provincial High Court acquit [Guo]," Jiang said. "The main thing is that it sends the message that justice has been done." "As for Guo Li, I am full of admiration for him, because of his five-year ordeal in jail and for the three years he spent pursuing this appeal ceaselessly," said Jiang, whose own daughter became ill from drinking tainted infant formula. "The way they mistreated him in jail was shocking and immoral, and for him to have hung in there through all of that really shows what an amazing father he is," he said. Campaigners say promises from then-premier Wen Jiabao that the government would foot the medical bills for all of the children affected by melamine-tainted milk haven't been kept. Instead, Jiang said, the scandal has led major health insurance companies in China to start excluding kidney-related diseases from policies, owing to the huge medical bills racked up following the scandal. "Now, most major illness cover has an exclusion for kidney conditions," she said. "If a lot of people were to develop kidney conditions [as a result], then the company would lose money." At least four infants died from kidney stones, and many of those who got sick, like Jiang's daughter, have yet to return to full health owing to calcification. But the authorities retaliated against the most vocal parent activists, including Zhao Lianhai, who launched an advocacy group Kidney Stone Babies after officials refused to meet with victims' families, or to allocate compensation funds earmarked for the children. In Hong Kong, local residents staged protests in 2015 after parallel traders began buying up imported infant formula powder in bulk for resale to worried parents across the internal border in mainland China. Reported by Qiao Long for RFA's Mandarin Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie. UPDATED at 3:40 p.m. EST on 04/07/2017 As U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping met for the first time in Florida, rights groups hit out at the apparent absence of human rights from an agenda dominated by North Korea's nuclear program, Taiwan and trade. "Any absence of human rights from the agenda ... would risk emboldening governments across the globe to pursue divisive, toxic and dehumanizing politics," London-based Amnesty International said in a statement as Xi and his wife Peng Liyuan down to dinner with Trump and First Lady Melania Trump at Trump's Spanish-style Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida on evening. The two leaders began Thursday with cordial meetings during which Xi called for cooperation with the United States on trade and investment and invited Trump to visit China. With more substantial talks scheduled for Friday, Trump was expected to raise longstanding concerns about China's trade practices and press Xi to do more to curb North Korea's nuclear ambitions. Calling on Xi and Trump to place human rights "at the heart" of their meeting's agenda, Amnesty's Secretary General Salil Shetty warned the world is heading "in a very dangerous direction." "This meeting comes as both presidents are rolling back human rights protections, impacting millions of people in China, the US and across the globe," Shetty said. "From refugees turned away at the U.S. border to human rights lawyers languishing in Chinese prisons, the consequences of their contempt for human rights are devastating," he added. Amnesty hit out at Trump's "hateful xenophobic" travel ban that aims to stop people in several majority Muslim countries from entering the U.S., and the lifting of human rights conditions on the sale of fighter jets to Bahrain for potential use in the bombing of Yemeni civilians. Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio, chairman of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Friday urging Trump to keep up human rights pressure on Xi even while discussing strategic and economic issues. "History teaches that when a government fears its own citizens and tramples daily on their fundamental human rights, it is unlikely to become a responsible global stakeholder, abide by its international commitments, or be trustworthy in trade agreements or efforts to tackle common challenges."Meanwhile, the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) detailed a litany of Beijing's rights abuses to lay at Xi's door. "Torture, disappearances, imprisoning peaceful advocates, destroying religious communities, internet censorship President Xi has plenty to answer for on these subjects," HRW China director Sophie Richardson said ahead of the presidential summit. Major crackdown on lawyers China launched a nationwide police operation targeting more than 300 rights lawyers in that has seen six lawyers and rights activists sentenced and another eight held in secret locations with no access to a lawyer. In the U.S., Jin Bianling, whose human rights lawyer husband Jiang Tianyong is currently detained in China, said she had written to President Trump about him ahead of their meeting. "I wrote the fourth letter from the families of the detainees to Trump," Jin told RFA. "I called on Trump and Xi Jinping to discuss the release of the human rights lawyers detained in that crackdown, and all prisoners of conscience." And the wife of jailed Guangzhou rights lawyer Tang Jingling, known by his nickname "China's Gandhi," said she had sent a similar letter. "The [human rights] situation back in China is looking really bad right now," U.S.-based Wang Yanfang told RFA. "But since I came to the U.S., I have met a number of ... senators and representatives in Congress who care enough to raise the cases of political prisoners, which gives their relatives so much hope," she said. Peaceful critics of the ruling Chinese Communist Party are routinely jailed on subversion or state security charges, or "picking quarrels and stirring up trouble," HRW said. "[In all cases] the legal proceedings have fallen far short of international standards," it said. 'Brutality and repression' Meanwhile, internal disciplinary investigations have seen large numbers of officials locked up under Xi's anti-corruption campaign, where they have been subjected to "prolonged sleep deprivation, forced stress positions, deprivation of water and food, and in some cases severe beatings," the group said. It cited the ongoing expulsion and "political re-education" of Tibetan Buddhist monks and nuns and the demolition of Buddhist teaching institution Larung Gar. "No one should be fooled by a man and a government who preside through brutality and repression," Richardson said. "Xis record speaks for itself." Amnesty International meanwhile cited a recent series of draconian "national security" laws that have legalised the crackdown on peaceful dissidents through the use of political charges and secret detentions. According to Shetty, the laws are putting a "chokehold" on civil society. "These are dark times for human rights in China," Shetty said. "The authorities are ... showing a total disregard for international human rights law." Amnesty also hit out at Beijing for using its veto action at the U.N. to prevent sanctions being imposed on those responsible for mass atrocities in Syria, and at the U.S. for being "willing to shield Israel from scrutiny for its serious human rights violations." "If two of the worlds most powerful leaders continue to side-line human rights it will have a devastating domino effect, placing established human rights protections in jeopardy and lead to further crises," Shetty said. Protesters championing diverse rights causes including the jailed lawyers, petitioners for government redress, the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement, Tibet and the Uyghurs clustered along Xi's motorcade route. Large numbers of flag-waving Xi supporters were also mobilized to drown out the protests. The local newspaper Palm Beach Post quoted the city's sheriffs office as saying five people on charges ranging from obstruction of a roadway to resisting arrest. Li Huanjun, a human rights activist and petitioner against forced house demolitions in China who escaped to the United States in 2015, was protesting outside Xi's hotel in Palm Beach on Thursday and broke into tears during an interview with RFA's Mandarin Service, describing her plans to run in front of Xi's motorcade. If they (the Chinese authorities) didnt rob our property, why would we come here to protest and why would we try to stop Xi Jinpings motorcade? asked a sobbing Li, whose house in Beijing was confiscated and demolished in 2011. Among supporters mobilized by China and wearing red shirts and waving China'a red national flag to welcome Xi, a woman told RFA she turned out because "He is a good chairman. He is clean and has integrity. Asked about the plight of Li and other petitioners who told their stories in her present, the woman, who declined to give her name, also broke down in tears and said she was "very sympathetic. Asked to clarify that she supported Xi and the petitioners, she said: Yes, they should tell this to him; let him know this. According to the Palm Beach Post, Li was not among those arrested, although her colleague was twice detained by authorities. Reported by Xin Lin for RFA's Mandarin Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie. Authorities in Myanmar on Friday sentenced and jailed a researcher from the ruling National League for Democracy party for criticizing the countrys commander-in-chief of the armed forces on social media. NLD researcher Myo Yan Naung Thein was sentenced to six months in jail by a court in Kamaryut Township in the north central part of the commercial capital Yangon court for criticizing Senior General Min Aung Hlaing in a Facebook post. He was accused of defaming the military chief under Section 66(d) of the Telecommunications Law, which prohibits use of the telecom network to defame people and carries a jail sentence of up to three years and a fine for those who violate it. Lieutenant Colonel Lin Tun, who filed a lawsuit against Myo Yan Naung Thein, told RFAs Myanmar Service he had no comment on the jail sentence and that questions could be directed to officials in the Military Office in Myanmars political capital Naypyidaw. The number of defamation suits filed under the statute have soared under the government of de facto national leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her civilian-led NLD government. So far, 54 people have been charged under the article, seven of whom have been sentenced to jail. During the previous military-backed government of former president Thein Sein, only seven people were charged under Section 66(d), and five of them received prison sentences. Section 66(d) is needed, but we need to amend it because people have misused it, he said. Its obvious that we have two groups ruling Myanmar, not only our government. No intention to insult Ma Cho, Myo Yan Maung Theins wife, pointed out that her husband has been in jail since Nov. 3, 2016, and will have been there six months on May 3. It seems the judge concluded that his words on Facebook constituted an insult [to Min Aung Hlaing], but it is obvious that he did not do this in the post he wrote, she said. He wrote it as an opinion piece with no intention of insulting the army chief, she said. Maung Saung Kha, a Myanmar poet who was arrested in November 2015 for posting a short poem online that was construed to be offensive to Myanmars president and sentenced under Section 66(d), said this section of the telecommunications law should be amended. If it isnt amended, there are many people who will be charged and sentenced under it this month, he told RFA. In May 2016, Maung Saung Kha was convicted by a Yangon court on defamation charges for penning the lines, A tattoo of the president is on my penis; my wife felt detestation when she married me. He was sentenced to six months in prison, but was set free because he had already served six months and 19 days in prison. We have had more charges and sentences [under Section 66(d)] during the current governments term, and it has destroyed the governments reputation, he said. We must amend it, and I want this issue to be discussed in coming parliament meetings in May, he said. Reported by Thiha Tun for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.